A flamboyant Indian “god man” has been convicted of killing a journalist who was investigating two rapes committed by the influential spiritual leader. Ram Rahim Singh was convicted on Friday along with three others of killing Ram Chander Chhatrapati, 51, in 2002. Singh, once known as the “guru of bling”, was a cult leader who claimed to have 60 million followers worldwide, played himself in hagiographic biopics and courted India’s most powerful politicians. He lived with tens of thousands of his followers on a sprawling 400-hectare ashram in Haryana state with its own hotel, factories, cinemas, schools and cricket stadium. His rule came to a violent end in August 2017 when he was convicted of raping two female followers and 150,000 of his supporters ran amok across two Indian states. The Indian army was called in to quell the unrest, which left at least 30 people dead and more than 250 injured. The rape investigation arose when a woman wrote an anonymous letter to the Indian prime minister in 2002 claiming she had been raped by Singh. News of the letter was published by Chhatrapati in his newspaper, Poora Sach. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation alleged that Singh, 51, and his associates believed Chhatrapati was responsible for the circulation of the letter. He was shot five times at point-blank range by two assailants outside his home about five months later. The gunmen and the owner of the weapon were named in the first charge sheet, but the journalist’s son had to fight for years to have the case transferred from the local police to federal authorities, who found evidence of Singh’s involvement. The court in Haryana said on Friday that Singh had ordered the hit. Curfews were imposed in the surrounding town after the conviction and security was increased but there were no reports of violence. The headquarters of Dera Sacha Sauda, Singh’s sect, has largely been deserted since his conviction for the rapes in 2017, according to Indian media reports. It is unclear who now leads the organisation or how many supporters remain. The guru achieved mainstream popularity in 2014 when he appeared in the first of two films about his life, in which he was credited for 30 roles, including director, producer and choreographer. Its ticket sales flagged after Indian police went public with accusations that Singh had been organising “mass castrations” of his followers, a charge he denied. Singh is serving a 20-year jail sentence for the rapes. He will be sentenced for the murder on 17 January.It’s the summer of 2016 and things aren’t going well. Yes, there is Brexit and yes, Donald Trump, but also my heart is aching. It’s an all-consuming ache that gets worse by the hour as my brain keeps raising the stakes from “We’re just not compatible” to “This was the love of my life and I ruined it!” I crave tangible change I can hold on to. Change that will deliver me to a new life where I’m not just living one breakup to another. So I, a Middle Eastern woman with olive skin, dye my hair blond. I dye my hair blond thinking it will come out white and I’ll look like a real life Storm from X Men. I dye my hair blond because the girls I see in fashion editorials and on the lady-centric clickbait sites I use, like an opiate to numb all brain activity, have white-blond hair that alludes to a wild interior life, exactly like the wild interior life I’d like to allude to. I dye my hair blond because all of my worth is placed in the way I look. I fail to observe that the women I’m trying to channel are all model types with no bad angles or body fat. I also fail to observe they are all white. I go in with photos of St Vincent and leave eight hours later with a frizzy halo of what looks and feels like a cheap wig. It’s grey, but not like the electric, explosive grey of St Vincent. It’s grey like I’m out of focus. My statement hair makes the statement “… meh”. When life hurts, I blame my face. And also my body. My skin, hair, nails – it’s all fair game. This is something I’ve been programmed to do and that I recognise in the women I know intimately. We learned young: any kind of praise included a mention of beauty, and when you’re brainwashed to equate beauty with goodness, the reverse becomes true too. At your most powerless, you think if only you could strong-arm your way to beauty it would erase the ugly in your life. When I was 19, I returned home from my freshman year of college a self-pity zombie, living one nap to the next, marinating in the kind of heartbreak only a teenager could manufacture from a one-month relationship. I had fallen in love with a cotton-candy-haired coke-head from Delhi I’d met in a support group for cutters. As you do. She took my virginity, told me she loved me, then left me waiting on her doorstep for hours. I was closeted, heartbroken and finally allowed my parents to talk me into the nose job they’d been lobbying for since puberty. The nose job is a problematic Iranian rite of passage I had spent years successfully dodging, but my defences were down. I probably would have undergone a lobotomy if someone told me it would turn me into a muse. Of course, rhinoplasty didn’t improve my face or my confidence. I returned for the next year of school, still lonely and horny, with a slightly smaller profile. Between March and October last year, I spent all my waking hours in pitch black rooms, in post production on The Bisexual, a series I co-wrote, direct and star in. It was seven months of swimming in my mistakes, trying to cobble together the least shameful product possible with the footage. I couldn’t be more proud of the series now, but at the time I was exhausted, insecure and scared. When you’re sitting in a black 10ft x 10ft editing suite throughout the hottest UK summer on record, watching yourself struggle to remember lines while you simulate sex, you start to look for answers where you can get them – which is how I came to spend hundreds of pounds on a 15-step Korean skincare regime that definitely did not work. This isn’t really about beauty. I know this because the process of staring at myself on screen all day doesn’t faze me. My ego lies in the work. I could look like Sloth from The Goonies, but if the scene works, I’m happy. It was the lack of control I felt as a director, the remorse over rushed scenes and squandered takes that kept me up at night. When I’m making something, my face and body are just a vehicle, acting in service of a larger goal. Unfortunately, the fact that it felt as though I’d failed to reach that goal made me want to turn right back to obsessing over my face and body. This is about power. More specifically, how women perceive it and are conditioned to see their place in it. We’re raised to believe that beauty is power, but that is a lie meant to distract you, keep you obedient, lull you into a calm stupor where the source of your problems is that you’re just not hot enough. Or at least it was for me. The new nose has had no meaningful impact on my life beyond the shock value I get from people who discover I’ve had plastic surgery. The Korean skincare regime is in the bin, and for a little over a year after I bleached my hair, I was left living with a daily reminder of my stupidity every time I ran my hands through my straw-like mane. So the next time I find myself rationalising the purchase of a microneedle roller thingy you’re supposed to drag across your face eight times in 16 different angles until you start to look like Hellraiser, I will ask myself: “What am I chasing and why?” • Desiree Akhavan is a film-makerIn the last 12 months Danny Dyer has called David Cameron a “twat” on live television, watched his daughter win Love Island and delivered Channel 4’s Alternative Christmas Message. Now there may be a simple explanation for the actor’s elevation to national treasure status: he is the descendant of a saint. The EastEnders actor made the discovery while filming Danny Dyer’s Right Royal Family, which airs on 23 January on BBC One. Among other revelations, the actor is told that his 26th great-grandfather is the French King Louis IX, a devout religious leader who died in 1270 and was later canonised as Saint Louis. Dr Emily Guerry, a medieval historian, told Dyer that his distant ancestor at one point wore the robes of a humble monk to lead a procession through Paris honouring the arrival of a religious relic purported to be the crown of thorns worn by Jesus Christ at his crucifixion. To commemorate his ancestor’s actions, Dyer recreated the walk through the French capital barefoot. The actor, who has previously established a blood connection to the English rulers William the Conqueror and Edward III, said he was impressed to discover his new relation. “I can be told all sorts of information but to actually walk in King Louis IX’s footsteps, to think that he did this as a king, I admire him because he does exactly as he preaches and is showing everybody. He walked for six miles barefoot, in pain, and that you’ve got to respect. Considering the money and power he had and the life he could have lived, I think it’s very brave. Bless him.” After being told that Louis was later elevated to sainthood after a series of miracles, Dyer said: “It’s just so much to take in. I’m related to a saint.” He said it was hard to believe sacred blood was “coursing through my veins”. However, Dyer may not be alone. Dr Adam Rutherford, the author of a book on genes entitled A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, said the passage of time and overlapping ancestries meant “there is a time in history where all lines of all family trees cross through all people”, meaning many Britons of European ancestry are likely to be descended from Saint Louis. Rutherford added: “Every European is descended from every European alive in the 10th century, if they have any living descendants. We know from his royal pedigree that Charlemagne has living descendants (Richard Branson boasted of it, Christopher Lee, too), which means that literally every European is also descended from Charlemagne. “The basic problem is that we think of family trees fanning out from us into the past, but that means that the number of ancestors we have doubles every generation back. By 1,000 years ago, every person has more ancestors than people who have ever existed.” Despite this, he said, it was impressive that Dyer had been able to follow his ancestry back this far and prove the connection to the French king. King Louis IX, who led the seventh crusade to the Middle East, was canonised by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297 and lent his named to many settlements around the world, including the US city of St Louis in Missouri. Dyer has yet to have any settlements named after him, nor has he led an armed intervention in the Holy Land.Bart De Strooper is clear about his decision to accept the post of running Britain’s massive pioneering research project on dementia. “I would have not gone for it had I known what I know now,” the 59-year-old Belgian biologist told the Observer last week. The cause of his dismay is simple: Brexit has blighted the nation and distorted its attitude to international science, said De Strooper. As a result, his UK Dementia Research Institute, set up in 2016 at a cost of £250m with the aim of turning the UK into a world leader in dementia research, now faces serious funding and recruitment problems. De Strooper insisted he would continue leading the project and help its scientists achieve their goals. Brexit just makes that aim much more difficult. “There used to be an open mentality in this country, but over the past two years that has changed to something that is close to racism,” said the scientist. “I always felt at home in Britain so, when I took up the job, I thought I would be coming to family. “But the country has become anti-European, anti-international. Many Brexiters say Anna Soubry is a fascist. It is just the reverse, of course, and as a foreigner I ask, ‘When will it be my turn?’ When are they going to gather outside my institute, demanding why I am recruiting all these foreigners. ‘Belgian, go home’, they’ll shout.” These prospects worry De Strooper, who last year was awarded one of the world’s top science awards, the Brain Prize, for his work on dementia. “I am not going to be able to convince bright young scientists to come over, along with their families, so that they can work with me and help beat the scourge of dementia. They will know they will not be made welcome. Some are already being turned back, in fact.” Last year, De Strooper said, he tried to get a temporary visa for a young Indian scientist, who was then working in Belgium, to speak at a UK seminar. “He was highly educated, an expert in his field, and had a good salary, but the UK authorities would not let him attend a two-day meeting. Nor would they explain the grounds for that refusal. So we are already treating foreign scientists badly.” De Strooper contrasted Britain’s attitude to scientists with its luring of top foreign footballers to ensure the English Premier League is the best in the world. “It sees nothing wrong with that, but it does not want to do the same for scientists who would make sure our science maintains its top-flight status in the UK.” Another country or group of countries will do it and Britain will be the losers The UK Dementia Research Institute consists of a hub, at University College London, which coordinates the efforts of six other centres around the UK. “Dementia research has been underfunded for decades and, by setting up a UK centre of excellence on the subject, we are hoping to uncover the very early causes of conditions such as Alzheimer’s and so develop treatments. We already have about 250 researchers working on projects and one day hope to reach 700,” he said. “That would be a formidable total.” But Brexit now threatens that goal. Apart from discouraging brilliant young scientists from outside the UK, a hard Brexit could cripple the institute’s economic underpinning, De Strooper believes. Britain has a first-class record in attracting research funds from the European Union; the money it pulls in greatly exceeds the cash it invests in research budgets for the EU. For example, in the period 2007-13 Britain paid a total of €5.4bn towards research, development and innovation activities in the EU. In return, it received €8.8bn in EU grants for research projects carried out at universities and other scientific centres in the UK. “We would no longer be eligible for these grants after a hard Brexit and so British scientists would lose a great deal of money,” said De Strooper. And one of the first probable victims could be the groups of scientists working on UK Dementia Research Institute projects, he added. The institute was expected to continue to expand for several more years. “But if there is a hard Brexit, we will no longer be eligible for European grants which we would otherwise expect to form a major part of the funding of that expansion,” he said. After a hard Brexit, most financial experts believe the UK economy would take a hit and government coffers would have much less in them than at present. “That means that when I go for the next set of UK grants to maintain our work, there will be little chance of them being maintained at current level – never mind making up for all that EU money we will also have lost,” said De Strooper. Dementia research in the UK would stall. Other nations would be likely to take up the challenge. Dementia is a global threat with numbers of patients set to double over the next 10 years. De Strooper said: “Another country or group of countries will do it. And we will be the losers. If a nation invents a medication, all the income from it goes to its coffers. The patents, the development, the jobs will all be taken up there. You will be the first to profit from this drug. And any treatment of dementia is going to be a world leader. “So, if you want the UK to be great, then this should be allowed to go ahead. Brexiters should realise that.”Journalism is a good career for the perpetually anxious. It doesn’t allow time to dwell on failures and expands to fill all available space, meaning you can ignore everything that isn’t work. This is quite relaxing until suddenly it isn’t. I have a number of techniques for dealing with the frittering restlessness that follows. Watching four seasons of a television show in a week. Listening to Good Omens on audiobook while lying on the floor. Watching every available episode of QI so there’s always someone talking, even when I am sleeping or in the shower. But the thing that works best is reading romance novels. I discovered this by way of another anxiety remedy: podcasts. Not the fashionable true crime podcasts, but gentle discussions of books and pop culture such as may murmer away in the background. A few years ago I listened to the entire back catalogue of the BookRiot podcast and for several episodes in a row of one of the hosts, Rebecca Schinsky, raved about how she had read her first romance novel. Like most people who considered themselves serious readers, she said, she had been prejudiced against the genre and dismissed it as badly-written mush. And, like most people who consider themselves serious readers, she was wrong. The book Schinsky recommended was A Rogue By Any Other Name, by Sarah MacLean. I didn’t really like it. The male protagonist was a jerk in a way I was supposed to find sexy but didn’t and I got hung up on the sex scenes, which seemed to involve an inordinate amount of growling and use of the word “pleasure” and once, “milking”. But it was well written and the dialogue skipped along and the female protagonist was interesting and funny and, more importantly, it was the first thing with a plot that I had seen through to the end in months. So I downloaded the next book in the series, and then the next. Five years later, I have 500 romance novels. I read them as e-books, partly because it is surprisingly difficult to find romance novels in regular bookshops despite the popularity of the genre, but mostly because I tend to binge and instantly buy the next instalment, even, or especially, if it’s 3am and my alarm is set for 6am. I wandered into contemporary romance novels for a bit, which was nice because the female characters weren’t all blushing virgins but frustrating because they still tended to get married and knocked up within six weeks. Popular romance tropes of forced proximity or marriages of convenience or extremely overbearingly alpha men can make sense in a historical setting but are frankly baffling in modern-day San Francisco. Women who have political and economic agency of their own should not marry men they just met, no matter how unrealistically sculpted their abs. My most comforting stories – and this is comfort food in its purest form, nourishing but unchallenging – are set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in England, usually involving the British aristocracy. This is in direct conflict to everything I care about in real life but that is the appeal of romance novels. They do not concern real life. They are not, except for specific and very narrow examples, concerned with politics or the fact that their self-made men, who return from years overseas, have been plundering colonised cultures in order to show their father, who believed they spent too much time a-whoring, that they are not a useless fribble after all. (The father, naturally, shuns them for engaging in trade.) The female characters in these stories are interesting and smart. The writing is good. The male character may be a chauvinist on page one but is reformed by the end. The setting is historical but the sensibilities are not: homophobia, racism, and old-fashioned beliefs in the superiority of penetrative sex are all absent. Bodice-rippers may have launched the modern romance genre but they no longer define it. Once the two point-of-view characters have been introduced, it’s fairly clear what’s going to happen. You read along to see if it’s done well. If it’s not, you can abandon that author and find another. The number and variety of stories is infinite. There are historicals, contemporaries, paranormals, and erotica. The majority still depict white, monogamous, heterosexual pairings but the number of LGBT, polyamorous, and non-white stories and authors is large and growing. Every category sprouts a dozen sub-categories, allowing readers to narrow in on exactly the story they want to read. The blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books provides weekly recommendations to people who write in with a genre and a trope. Snowed in plus second chance? Simply Unforgettable by Mary Balogh. Friends to lovers historical set outside the Regency period? Let it Shine by Alyssa Cole. Hygge in a novel? Anything by Tessa Dare, staring with The Duchess Deal. There are few things I have worked so hard to conceal as my love of romance novels. As an overweight single woman who lives alone with a cat, I know I match an unkind stereotype and that to say I like romance is to invite people to dismiss me as frivolous and silly. That is what we have done to women who write stories for and about women, or read stories for, about, and by women, since the days of the Minerva Press. But that stereotype is wrong, both about me and about the novels. Many of them are genuinely good. Not just good romance novels: good books. And it’s time to break my silence publicly, if only to better be able to enthusiastically recommend my favourites to people I barely know and receive their recommendations in return. I’ll start: the Girl Meets Duke series by Tessa Dare, The Worth Saga series by Courtney Milan, and the A Season For Scandal series by Kelly Bowen. Now tell me who you love.Good morning briefers and a happy new year. I’m Martin Farrer and it’s my turn to bring you the best news from the Guardian this Monday morning. It might be the new year, but it’s the same old problem for Theresa May as she makes yet another desperate plea to EU leaders for concessions to persuade rebellious MPs to back her deal in a vote which she has promised will take place next week. Without offering any details, the prime minister said on Sunday that she was seeking “further assurances” on the Irish border backstop and Britain’s future relationship with Europe. But as parliament prepares to debate the Brexit deal this week, the PM faces formidable obstacles, including vehement opposition by many of her backbenchers and the Democratic Unionists to the backstop plan, implacable EU opposition to reopening talks on the 535-page withdrawal agreement and a groundswell of bipartisan support in Westminster for a second referendum. It comes as Germany’s foreign affairs minister flies to Ireland tomorrow as the governments in Berlin and Dublin intensify their efforts to find a fix for the Irish border problem. Relations between the two countries have blossomed during the Brexit imbroglio, helped by the fact that the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, speaks German. But one EU source warned any fix would be around the forthcoming “political agreement”, and not on the withdrawal package which was “locked”. To find out what might happen over the next two weeks, check out this explainer from our political editor, Heather Stewart. Oscar Favourite? – Olivia Colman seems set to go head-to-head with Glenn Close for an Oscar next month after they both won best actress awards at the Golden Globes in Los Angeles overnight. The British star triumphed in the musical or comedy category for her tragicomic turn as Queen Anne in The Favourite, while the veteran American won in the drama segment for The Wife. Other notable British successes were Ben Whishaw for his portrayal of Norman Scott in A Very British Scandal and Richard Madden for The Bodyguard. Christian Bale was also on the board for his role in Vice. The big surprise came at the end, however, when the critically unloved Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody scooped best drama and best dramatic actor for Rami Malek. Read how the awards unfolded at our live blog here and who won the battle of the red carpet. Health pledge – In a welcome diversion for Theresa May, the embattled prime minister will today announce a new long-term plan for the NHS detailing ambitious plans to use genomics, cutting-edge surgery and artificial intelligence to help save up to half a million lives over the next decade. Health chiefs hope the plan will dramatically reduce the number of people dying from common killers such as cancer, heart attacks and strokes. But some experts voiced concern that funding cuts and staff shortages could undermine the bold vision. Trump threat – Donald Trump has repeated his threat to declare a national emergency in order to override Congress and secure the $5.6bn funding he needs to build a wall along the border with Mexico. The US president raised the idea twice over the weekend as the government shutdown he triggered last month entered its 16th day. The newly installed House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has refused to drop her opposition to the wall. Adam Schiff, a Democratic leader on Capitol Hill, said the idea that Trump could invoke the 1976 National Emergencies Act, which grants a president powers to take unilateral acts in times of crisis, was “a non-starter”. Trade hope – US and Chinese officials are meeting in Beijing today in the hope of ending the damaging trade standoff between the world’s two largest economies. The dispute over tariffs, technology transfers and intellectual property rights has rattled financial markets, where fears are running high that a prolonged trade war risks a worldwide recession. However, hopes that the sixth round of negotiations between the two sides could yield a breakthrough have helped Asian shares rise overnight, combined with optimism on the back of strong US jobs figures on Friday. The FTSE is set to see a modest rise of 0.1% this morning. Teenager’s plea – A Saudi teenager who fled her family claiming physical and psychological abuse has barricaded herself in a hotel room in Bangkok after being refused onward passage to Australia. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, 18, has renounced Islam and fears she will be killed if she returns to Saudi Arabia. A friend close to her said the threats to her life were real. Thai immigration officials said they would force her to board a plane to Kuwait on Monday but it left without her. She is refusing to leave her room until she sees the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. The re-emergence of the disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield has fuelled a resurgence of vaccine scepticism among rightwing populists. After a surge in measles outbreaks across the EU in 2018, Sarah Boseley looks back at how confidence in the MMR vaccine was dented after Wakefield’s discredited campaign against it. Plus: Sonia Sodha on how to improve the British honours system. The Channel 4 dramatisation of the Brexit referendum campaign has been well-timed for what might prove to be one of the most pivotal two weeks in recent political history. With Theresa May fighting for her deal– and her career – the screening of Brexit: The Uncivil War has taken us back to where it all began. Stephen Moss has spoken to some of the protagonists depicted in James Graham’s film and most agree that it is brilliantly acted, with Benedict Cumberbatch outstanding as the leave strategist Dominic Cummings. Some quibble about the details though, with arch-leaver Daniel Hannan complaining that Michael Gove is portrayed as a “fool” and that it is written too much from a remain perspective. Peter Mandelson has the last word, however, saying that the film only makes you wonder: “What on earth was it all for? What has the country gained?” Darren Currie, Barnet’s caretaker manager, praised the fearlessness of his side after they provided the biggest shock of the day in the FA Cup to reach the fourth round by beating Sheffield United at Bramall Lane. England’s all-time-leading scorer, Wayne Rooney, was arrested in the US for being drunk and swearing in public at a Washington DC airport. The three-times Formula One world champion Niki Lauda has been admitted to hospital with flu five months after a lung transplant. The Football Association has launched an investigation after Tottenham Hostpur Ladies defender Renée Hector alleged monkey noises were directed at her by an opposition player during a game on Sunday. And former Spain and Barcelona star Andrés Iniesta has been criticised on social media for posting a photo showing him with a group of people, including two in blackface, as part of the Three Kings Day celebration in Spain. Away from the markets, a survey by the TUC warns that the UK’s household debt mountain has reached a new peak, with homes now owing an average of £15,385 to credit card firms, banks and other lenders. The figures do not include mortgage debt. The study says each household has added an average of £886 to their debt in the past year. On foreign exchanges, the pound is buying $1.275 and €1.115. The government’s 10-year NHS plan is published today and dominates coverage. The Express reports: “NHS mission to save 500,000 more lives”, as does the Mail: “We’ll save 500,000 more lives vows NHS”. The Telegraph says: “Gene test for every child with cancer”, but the Times is concerned about how the NHS can meet its commitments: “NHS faces £1bn budget hole despite cash boost.” The Guardian has the NHS news on the front, but its main story is “May pleads for EU to give ground and rescue Brexit”. The FT has “US and China under pressure to end tariff war as fresh talks open”. The news that Wayne Rooney was arrested for being drunk leads the Sun – “Boozy Roo nicked in USA” – and the Mirror: “Rooney US booze shame”. For more news: www.theguardian.com The Guardian morning briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here.Thousands of British companies have already triggered emergency plans to cope with a no-deal Brexit, with many gearing up to move operations abroad if the UK crashes out of the EU, according to the British Chambers of Commerce. Before a crucial week in parliament, in which MPs will try to wrest control from Theresa May’s government in order to delay Brexit and avoid a no-deal outcome, the BCC said it believed companies that had already gone ahead with their plans represented the “tip of the iceberg” and that many of its 75,000 members were already spending vital funds to prepare for a disorderly exit. It said that in recent days alone, it had been told that 35 firms had activated plans to move operations out of the UK, or were stockpiling goods to combat the worst effects of Brexit. Matt Griffith, director of policy at the BCC’s west of England branch, said that many more companies had acted to protect themselves since May’s Brexit deal was decisively rejected by MPs in the Commons earlier this month. He said: “Since the defeat for the prime minister’s deal, we have seen a sharp increase in companies taking actions to try and protect themselves from the worst effects of a no-deal Brexit. No deal has gone from being one of several possible scenarios to a firm date in the diary.” Labour MP Yvette Cooper has revealed to the Observer that two major employers in her West Yorkshire constituency – luxury goods manufacturer Burberry and confectioner Haribo – had both written to her, warning of the damaging effects of no deal on their UK operations. Burberry employs 750 people in Castleford, and Haribo 700 across her constituency. Cooper is pushing for a Commons amendment – likely to be voted on in Tuesday’s debate – that would pave the way for Brexit to be delayed until the end of this year. Last week some of the UK’s largest employers – including Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace manufacturer, which employs 14,000 people in the UK and supports another 110,000 through supply chains – warned of potentially disastrous effects of no deal on its UK activities. Tom Enders, the boss of Airbus, said: “Please don’t listen to the Brexiters’ madness, which asserts that because we have huge plants here we will not move and we will always be here. They are wrong.” Ever since the vote to leave the EU in 2016, business groups including the BCC and the Confederation of British Industry have lobbied ministers, arguing that our exporters need access to the EU’s customs union, which allows goods to be imported tariff-free. But the prime minister has insisted that the UK must leave both the customs union and EU single market if it the referendum result of 2016 is to be fully respected. Business concerns are growing as Downing Street braces for a series of Commons ambushes over Brexit this week. As well as moves to delay the date of leaving beyond 29 March, MPs worried about a cliff-edge exit or a hard Brexit are also planning to force a series of “indicative votes” in parliament on a range of alternative ways forward. These include a Norway-style arrangement and a second referendum. Some ministers, including Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, and Richard Harrington, the business minister, have signalled they could quit if May does not allow them to back plans to delay Brexit by granting all Tory MPs including ministers a free vote on the issue. Meanwhile, some pro-Brexit cabinet ministers are pushing the PM to submit her own amendment pledging to renegotiate her Brexit deal, in a bid to win over Tory Brexiters and the Northern Irish DUP. Concerns are growing within the Tory party that the impasse may end in a snap election. Today, writing in the Observer, cabinet minister David Lidington says he shares the concerns of those worried about no deal and says the government intends to put a revised deal back to the Commons for another “meaningful vote” next month. “Once we have a blueprint for a plan that can secure the support of the House, the prime minister will go back to the EU,” Lidington writes. “MPs will then have another meaningful vote as soon as possible.” Meanwhile European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has warned Theresa May in a private phone call that shifting her position in favour of a permanent customs union is the price she will need to pay for the EU revising the Irish backstop. He said without a major shift in the PM’s position, the current terms of the withdrawal agreement were “non-negotiable”. Details of the call, contained in a leaked diplomatic note, emerged as Juncker’s deputy, Frans Timmermans, told the Observer that there had been no weakening of the resolve in Brussels in support of Ireland, and accused the Tory Brexiters of a “cavalier” approach to peace. “Let me be extremely clear: there is no way I could live in a situation where we throw Ireland under the bus,” Timmermans said.A tech developer with a successful London e-learning company has said he has already quit Britain after 10 high-flying years because of the uncertainty and “mindless tribalism” caused by Brexit. Jan, an IT specialist from the former Yugoslavia, has set up a new business in Switzerland where he says the approach could not be more welcoming. He said the drop in the value of the pound “killed” his business because the cost of paying subcontractors in places such as Romania and India has shot up, destroying his margin. He also felt unwanted after the referendum and with a heavy heart he and his wife decided they didn’t “want to be trapped on an island that is descending into mindless tribalism” after 10 successful years here. His story reflects the struggles of many small to medium-sized businesses hit by the collapse of the pound after the referendum and its continuing weakness today. Jan, who did not want his real name used, managed to get well paid jobs in the capital and diverted some of his savings into a fund which eventually allowed him to set up his own business developing e-learning apps and games. He won customers in the UK and a valuable client list in the US, and collaborated with tech giants such as Apple. “Our products were winning awards regularly every year,” he said. “Then Brexit happened and the currency dive took its toll on our business. We were working with subcontractors all over the world and big fluctuations in currency and general instability is devastating to business.” Jan, 42, has moved his business to Switzerland, where he works with clients including an aerospace firm. He decided to move despite the fact he was generating “new money” for the exchequer through foreign clients. “With a heavy heart, we cancelled our mortgage plans, moved the family, opening up a company in Switzerland and slowly drained the UK company, moving all the private savings, and started to learn German. It was difficult and felt useless, but we didn’t want to be trapped on an island that is descending into mindless tribalism,” he said. Born and raised in communist Yugoslavia, he says he remembers well what he describes as “Serbian nationalism, exceptionalism and tribalism” after the death of Josip Tito, the dictator. He moved to London in 2005 and says he “got a very good job in a prestigious digital media studio”. “I then started my own business with lots of American clients and paid a lot to Her Majesty in taxes. Life was great.” He says Switzerland’s welcoming approach to business is in stark contrast to the UK’s since the referendum. About 25% of the population are foreign and all new immigrants are invited to a lounge party with the town’s mayor with free food and wine and a free city tour to help them get to know their new home. “If immigration was the problem, Switzerland would be the poorest country on the planet,” he said. “Accountants tell me I am not the only one who has quit Britain and that they are swamped with small UK businesses setting up shop in Switzerland. The country is not in the EU but it couldn’t be more different than Britain post-2016. “It is amazing to me that Britain by ‘wanting more control’ in 2016 decided to become more like Serbia in 1988 than Switzerland in 2018,” he said. He said he is watching from the sidelines with interest but predicts mayhem in the event of a no-deal Brexit for small to medium-sized businesses with sub-contractors in Europe. After Brexit he predicts it will become difficult to move money around, as he found out when he moved lock, stock and barrel to Switzerland. “When I moved, the bank were imposing restrictions all of a sudden. It might have been to do with money-laundering measures, but the fact is it is difficult and who knows what will happen after Brexit? Who knows what the banks will do?” he said,. “I would like to stress that we were pure net positive for UK, taking the money from US customers and bringing it to Her Majesty in the form of taxes. This was new money that did not exist before in the UK. Frankly, I still can’t believe what has happened and that a nation can work actively to chase out people like me. “I still keep the company in the UK but only for minor UK-based transactions, and maybe in the tiny remote hope that this madness will be stopped. “Nobody seems to care about how small businesses will function day to day with international trade and nobody is taking care of this in an organised manner. I decided I could not have my business held hostage so moved and I got out,” he said. If you are a small business owner and are being impacted by Brexit, email lisa.ocarroll@theguardian.comShai Hope made his debut against England at the Kensington Oval four years ago and has since risen to become the West Indian batsman of whom they are truly wary. A Test average of 28 might not suggest such but after those sparkling twin hundreds at Headingley in 2017 – the only time in the ground’s 129-year first-class history – the tourists know full well the numbers are misleading. What they may not be aware of, however, is that Hope once briefly considered throwing his lot in with them. In the afterglow of the right‑hander’s storming of Leeds, much credit was given to a scholarship at St Bede’s in Sussex, after being scouted by the county’s former batsman Alan Wells in 2012. He spent two years tearing up schools cricket and forging friendships for life, little surprise given his polite and diligent demeanour. It was during this time that he gave some thought to staying in the UK permanently. His friend and fellow Bajan, Chris Jordan, had already taken the leap following a similar scheme at Dulwich College, while Jofra Archer, another chum, is ticking off the days until he becomes England qualified by way of residency. It was a thought. [But] I never really wanted to do that. I always wanted to play for the West Indies But having learned his cricket playing with his (since similarly Test-capped) brother, Kyle, on the beaches of Barbados and the backyard of their home in Christchurch, Bridgetown – first using a bat made by his father, a joiner – Hope’s heart was always in one place only. Speaking at training on Monday, he said: “You’ve got to look around at your competitors and see who’s vying for the same positions as you. And at that particular stage it crossed my mind. “It was a thought. [But] I never really wanted to do that. I always wanted to play for the West Indies. You look at your options – you want to play international cricket – but, having said that, as a West Indian you want to play for the West Indies. I wouldn’t do anything different. I’m pleased with my decision.” Hope has no issue with Jordan or Archer – “They’re human beings, they have a mind for themselves” – and was quick to reply that stemming the talent drain from the Caribbean is not something that’s on him. He can play his part, of course, by inspiring the next generation through his deeds on the international field. Still only 25, Hope’s best years surely lie ahead of him and, if his Test returns have been a touch patchy, back-to-back centuries during a recent one-day series against Bangladesh mean he is coming into the series with some form of which to speak. Not all the pressure will be on his shoulders, either. Kraigg Brathwaite will be looking to blunt the new ball from opener, having done so in that Headingley heist for a century of his own, while Darren Bravo returns following a two-year absence caused by his use of social media, rather than a lack of talent. “Darren is a quality player,” Hope said. “He definitely makes the dressing room feel a lot more confident with the batting. So it’s just key for him to settle in again. We know what he’s capable of, so we need to make sure that we grasp his knowledge as well.” How competitive the series is will likely hinge on how the West Indies batsmen stand up. And while he is keen to take the attention away from his golden Test two years ago – “that’s history and in the past” – Hope fancies a similar mindset from the team this week could well be the way to go. That five-wicket victory in Leeds was in direct response to the fallout from a crushing defeat at Edgbaston the week before and it was telling both he and Kemar Roach, the fast bowler who also spoke at training, stressed their “underdog” status. Hope said: “I can speak for the guys here: having come off that loss the week before and with the series at stake, what they were saying about us, we just used that as a big motivator and put up a big performance. Everyone will be against us [this time] and we are so-called underdogs. But if we play our cricket, we’re going to beat these guys.”Soft-Brexit cabinet ministers fear that Theresa May is determined to appease hardline leavers rather than reach out across the House of Commons, after key figures were excluded from discussions with other ministers. May spoke to senior figures including the home secretary, Sajid Javid, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, the leader of the Commons, Andrea Leadsom, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, and the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt. Ministers who have urged a more flexible route, such as the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, the justice secretary, David Gauke, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, were not at either of the two lunchtime meetings on Friday. However, government sources suggested this may have been down to logistics. Gauke has previously said the government should not be “boxed in” when it explores new ways to get a Brexit deal through parliament. Rudd has also said there should be “everything on the table because the priority is to find a negotiated settlement”. Downing Street said the prime minister wanted to update cabinet ministers about her talks with MPs, which included her allies in the Democratic Unionist party, and senior Brexiters such as Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and Steve Baker, who are members of the European Research Group (ERG). One cabinet source questioned why May was prioritising the views of those who had done so much to damage her. “The ERG spent two years conjuring up every violent image they could think of in order to discredit the PM,” the source said. “Then they tried to bring her down. And then when that failed, they tossed her carefully crafted Brexit plan in the bin. Remind me why we are inching towards this mob?” Those in attendance said they had been reassured May was not seeking to find a customs union compromise arrangement in order to get the deal through parliament. Cabinet sources said ministers at the Friday meetings had pressed the PM for reassurance that her public statements rejecting any movement on a customs union or a referendum reflected what was being said in private. “It was a classic ‘listening mode’ meeting which did not take us much further, but there were reassurances that a customs union and a second referendum are not the direction this is going in,” one said. “As to what the next steps are, we are none the wiser.” Another cabinet source said May was urged not to pursue a route that could see a Tory split. “The only way forward that doesn’t split the party is to bring the DUP and the ERG on board,” the source said. It is understood that the international trade secretary Liam Fox, a committed Brexiter, will make the government’s case on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, which a cabinet source suggested was intended to send a signal to the ERG about May’s priorities. Mordaunt put down a marker before the meeting, suggesting that leaving the EU without a deal would outweigh the benefits of staying in the EU. “It’s only when ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ is believed by the EU that we’ll maximise our chances of a deal,” she tweeted. May will spend the weekend making more calls from her Chequers retreat to ministers and world leaders on how to break the current impasse. On Thursday night and on Friday morning, she took calls from European leaders including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, and the EU leaders Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk. In her call with Rutte, May insisted there would be no delay to the UK’s departure from the EU on 29 March, while he in turn said the withdrawal agreement would not be “tweaked” to help her get the deal through parliament. “She is really expecting Brexit to go ahead on 29 March,” Rutte told his weekly press conference, adding that he was concerned about the lack of time to avoid a no-deal scenario. “It will cause disruptions and we are trying to minimise those,” he said. “We need to look at the facts and prepare for all scenarios. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst … time is running out. 29 March is only 10 weeks away.” Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, said May had promised to keep him abreast of her efforts to find a way through parliament during a recent call. “The pressure is on London to tell us what they want,” he said. Juncker, who has been in text contact with May since the loss of the vote on Tuesday, would only say there had been “exchange of information”. May will return to the Commons on Monday to make a statement to MPs and lay a motion for a vote on 29 January, when MPs are expected to make a number of attempts to halt the default march towards no deal in the absence of an agreed settlement in the Commons. The former Tory minister Nick Boles and Labour’s Yvette Cooper will present a tweaked version of their bill, which would force the government to delay the UK’s departure from the EU unless a consensus could be found by early March. That would in effect make it impossible for the government to legally leave the EU without a deal on 29 March. The bill, initially proposed by Boles, has been resubmitted to remove a controversial clause which had suggested parliament’s liaison committee, made up of the chairs of departmental select committees, should take a formal role in assessing a consensus Brexit plan, which members of the committee said they did not want. Cooper will lay a new version of the bill on Monday. The bill has significant private support from a number of ministers, the Guardian understands, with several suggesting that they could resign if the government does not allow a free vote on it.Eddie Marsan, 50, is a prolific British character actor who has played roles as diverse as Shimon Peres, Heinrich Himmler and Bob Dylan. Born and raised in east London, he left school at 15 and apprenticed as a printer before becoming an actor. It took a decade before he started getting regular work, helped by Mike Leigh casting him in Vera Drake (2004) and as a volatile driving instructor in Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). In the US, where he now mostly works (though he lives in Chiswick), he is best known for his role as Terry, an ex-boxer with Parkinson’s, in the Showtime series Ray Donovan. For his latest film Vice, exploring Dick Cheney’s insidious role in the last Bush administration, Marsan plays deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz. When did you realise that you resembled Wolfowitz enough to play him in Vice?I got a call saying that [director] Adam McKay would like me to play this part. I knew who Paul Wolfowitz was – I’m a bit of a politics geek – and I saw the physical similarity. It still needed a lot of time in makeup, but I’m used to that – I’m married to a makeup artist. Did you come away thinking that Wolfowitz was a bad guy?No. I understood him as a man who believed in promoting democracy in other countries, and I played him as somebody who thought he was doing the right thing. I don’t think anybody wakes up in the morning and says: “I’m going to be evil today.” I played Himmler a couple of years ago [in The Exception] and even Himmler didn’t think he was being evil. But didn’t you get a whiff of sulphur as you took a closer look at the Bush administration?No, I don’t work like that. I don’t demonise. If I did, I’d be a terrible actor, because I play absolute motherfuckers all the time. Have you heard any Republican reactions to the film?I heard that Jared Kushner and Ivanka [Trump] walked out of a screening – that was quite funny. I work with [vocal Republican supporter] Jon Voight on Ray Donovan, and he hasn’t said anything. Me and him do sometimes talk about politics, but we’re always very graceful with each other. I’ve got a lot of affection for him, I just don’t agree with him politically, which is fine. There’s lots of people who I agree with politically who I can’t fucking stand. What did you make of Christian Bale’s turn as Dick Cheney?I was blown away by it. As an actor I could see how much work he put into it – the discipline, the hours in makeup, the weight he put on. He’s a very unshowy actor who just quietly gets on with his job and I admire that. You’re a busy actor. Do you ever panic if you see a gap in your schedule?No, not really. I need more breaks actually, because I work too hard. I think it comes out of that fear when you’re young and there’s gaps and you never know when the next job is going to turn up. I’m still working at that level. But it’s not only to do with work: since my late teens, I’ve needed to be in control of my own life. You would have been badly suited to a full-time job…Yeah, I would have hated it. I love the challenge of not knowing what’s coming next and having to adapt. Have you ever felt typecast?No. I think the reason I avoided that, to be honest with you, is that I was never successful enough for anyone to have a fixed idea of me. So when people began to take notice of me, my career already had that diversity. Suddenly people started going, “Who’s this bloke? He’s all over the place.” You’ve never had a defining role.The closest I’ve had is on Ray Donovan. I’ve played Terry for seven or eight years now and people have a lot of affection for him. They’re always disappointed if they spend five minutes in my company and discover I’m not as charismatic as Terry. Most actors prefer to keep their political views to themselves, but you’re very outspoken. Why is that?I was outspoken before I became an actor, so the idea that I should be quiet now, I don’t agree with. Also the things that I’m saying are very close to my heart. I have a great personal investment in a country that believes in diversity, and I find Brexit is the opposite of that. You spend a lot of time arguing about Brexit on Twitter, often with Corbyn supporters.If you look at the far left, they know that people were manipulated and lied to over Brexit but they don’t support a people’s vote. Rather than giving people the information and letting them make up their own mind, they would rather lie to them more because they take comfort in their ideology – it’s more important to them than the people their ideology is supposed to help. You get a lot of flak on Twitter. Does it bother you?I don’t mind it really. My wife says Twitter is my midlife crisis. “You never went to university so this is your debating society.” And I do find it interesting, I love debating with people, listening to different views. Usually when they say something personal, it’s very inaccurate and says more about them than me. When you’re not working, what do you get up to?Taking my kids to school, helping them with their homework. I read a lot, mostly politics and economics. I keep fit as much as possible. Terry Donovan is quite a physical part so I have to keep in pretty good shape. It’s well documented that I don’t really like pubs, but I have lots of friends around for dinner. What have you got coming up?A film called Feedback where I’m playing a radio talkshow host in London who’s obsessed by Brexit and his studio gets hijacked by terrorists. It’s sort of James O’Brien meets Die Hard. Do your kids ever watch your films?They do. My son was really excited his dad was in Deadpool 2. Though the boys at school were like, “Your dad’s a paedo.” [Marsan plays a perverted headmaster in the film.] Which led to: “Daddy, why do you have to be a paedophile, why can’t you be a superhero?” Unfortunately, I’ve got no control over that. Vice is in cinemas from 25 JanuaryVietnam has introduced a new cybersecurity law, which criminalises criticising the government online and forces internet providers to give authorities’ user data when requested, sparking claims of a “totalitarian” crackdown on dissent. The law, which mirrors China’s draconian internet rules, came into effect on 1 January and forces internet providers to censor content deemed “toxic” by the ruling communist government. Vietnam’s ministry of public security said it will tackle “hostile and reactionary forces”, but human rights groups said it was authorities’ latest method of silencing free speech. The Vietnam government has intensified a crackdown on criticism since 2016, jailing dozens of dissidents. Spreading information deemed to be anti-government or anti-state online is now illegal in the country, as is using the internet to “post false information that could cause confusion and damage to socio-economic activities”. Last week, the country’s Association of Journalists published a code of conduct banning reporters from posting information that could “run counter” to the state on social media. Daniel Bastard of Reporters Without Borders called the measures “a totalitarian model of information control”. The government has asked Facebook and Google to open offices in Vietnam, and to agree to comply with the new censorship and user data rules. Hanoi claimed that Google has put steps in place to open a base in the country, although the search engine has not confirmed this. In response to the new law, Facebook said it would protect users’ rights and safety. Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director, said the legislation was “the legal equivalent of a hammer to bash online critics, with overly broad provisions that can be easily used to classify almost any critical comment as criminal.” He told the Guardian: “While it’s likely that activists who have previously spoken up against government abuses will be targeted first, the government’s longer-term plan is to bring the internet under the same draconian controls that affect print media, TV and radio. The government’s new year gift to its citizens is intensified fear about what they can say online, and uncertainty about what issues and statements will trigger arrests and prosecution.”The German government and security agencies have been accused of not taking internet security seriously, following a huge data breach that affected hundreds of politicians and celebrities. Joachim Herrmann, interior minister for the southern state of Bavaria, said he was appalled at the way the federal government and information security agency, the BSI, was handling the scandal, the biggest data leak in German history, after it was revealed it had dismissed a breach in December as one-off incident. “I was astonished at the way they communicated this, it was bewildering,” he told the tabloid Bild. Herrmann said he believed the perpetrator behind the hack was an individual and not a foreign government, as was initially feared, with many pointing the finger at Russia. A 19-year-old German man was being questioned by police on Monday, over his alleged involvement with the hacker believed to be responsible. Police raided the teenager’s house in the town of Heilbronn in south-west Germany on Sunday and took away the contents of rubbish bins and computer equipment. Identified only as Jan S, he has denied being the main perpetrator behind the leaks but claims to know “Orbit”, the hacker who has claimed responsibility via Twitter. Jan S, who works in the IT industry, told the state broadcaster ARD he had been questioned “for several hours”. He is so far being treated only as a witness to the security breach, having allegedly been in communication with Orbit. It was revealed on Friday that the BSI was investigating a data leak affecting many prominent politicians, including the chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The information, drip-fed on Twitter throughout December, included mobile phone numbers, credit card details, contact information and family photographs. Celebrities and journalists were also affected. Herrmann insisted the BSI should be forced to reveal what it knew when, and why it failed to crack down on the breach at the earliest opportunity. The federal interior minister, Horst Seehofer, has come under attack for failing to address the issue publicly and for not providing reassurance to ordinary Germans about the safety of their data. His parliamentary state secretary, Stephan Mayer, told German media on Monday that Seehofer would give MPs a detailed assessment of the cyber-attack in a special meeting of the Bundestag’s interior committee on Thursday. On his Twitter account, Jan S said he had been in touch with the hacker known as Orbit for years via an encrypted messenger service. He said Orbit had sent him an email shortly after the publication of the hacked data, telling him he was planning to destroy his computer so he could not be traced. Jan S said the alleged hacker had since deleted his account with the messenger service. The hack is likely to increase Germans’ comparatively high degree of scepticism towards social media, experts say. Among the more prominent victims of the hack who said they would drastically alter their use of social media was Robert Habeck, co-leader of the Green party, who said he would delete his Facebook and Twitter accounts. He described the panic he felt on realising that large amounts of data from his accounts, including family photographs, had been hacked, but said he also regretted the manner in which he had frequently adopted a polemical style to further his arguments. Habeck said social media had encouraged him to be “more aggressive, louder, more polemical and pointed – and at a speed in which it’s hard to allow any room for reflection,” he said.When, early last June, the Italian football league agreed a €20m deal to play three of the next five Italian super cups in Saudi Arabia, it provoked very little controversy. This is, after all, a trophy that has frequently been decided on foreign soil, sometimes in quite unlikely locations. In 2002, the year that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi bought 6.4m shares in Juventus, the Supercoppa brought the Turin side to play Parma in Tripoli. Since then the match has been hosted once by the United States, twice by Qatar and four times by China. Wednesday’s game between Milan and Juve in Jeddah will be the sixth time in 10 years that the Supercoppa has been decided outside Europe. It took until October before opposition to the match started to bubble and brew, as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi turned the spotlight on to associations – sporting and political – with the Saudis. “We must immediately reverse the decision to play the Supercoppa in Riyadh,” said the former sports minister Luca Lotti, a member of parliament for the opposition Partito Democratico. “The world of sport cannot let itself fall behind. I can imagine that there are various economic interests behind this match but what took place in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul cannot pass in silence.” He called on the government to “use all necessary measures to prevent Italian football from striking a blow against values and rights”. In November Gaetano Miccichè, the Serie A president, contacted the Italian ambassador in Riyadh to discuss whether to move the game and was strongly advised not to do so. “Football is a part of the Italian culture and economy and it cannot have an approach, certainly in the field of international relations, different to that of its homeland,” Miccichè said. “Saudi Arabia is Italy’s largest trading partner in the middle east. Dozens of important Italian companies trade there and have bases there, and none of these relationships have ended [since Khashoggi’s murder]. With the approval of Fifa, Uefa and the Asian Confederation, we are going to play a match in a country with its own laws, created over many years, where local traditions impose constraints that cannot be changed overnight.” Controversy over the match ebbed for a while, until Serie A released ticket details at the start of this year – and revealed that large parts of the stadium would be out of bounds for women, who are permitted only inside designated family areas. The game sold out in a few hours but suddenly debate was as hot as the tickets. Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and a keen Milan fan, fumed: “For the Supercoppa to be played in an Islamic country where women cannot go into the stadium unless they are accompanied by a man is sad. It’s disgusting. I won’t watch the game.” Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, said the game “should be organised in a country that respects our women and our values”. On Friday Codacons, a consumer and civil rights organisation, asked fans not to watch live coverage of the game, which will be shown by the public service broadcaster Rai, “as a form of protest against the crazy policies of Saudi Arabia and the odious discrimination against women which is still rife not only in Arab countries but also in Italy”. Miccichè, however, insisted the advent of family sections in Jeddah’s King Abdullah Sports City Stadium was a positive development. “The Supercoppa will go down in history as the first official international football competition which Saudi women were permitted to watch live,” he said. “We are working to ensure that in the next games we will play in the country, women will be able to access all parts of the stadium.” But condemnation has not been universal. Giovanni Malagò, president of the Italian Olympic Association, said that those leading the outcry were engaged in “a triumph of hypocrisy”, having raised few objections to existing trade agreements between the countries. “If you take their money, you have to take what comes with it,” said the television presenter Ilaria D’Amica. “Otherwise you need to make it clear from the start: I’ll bring you the Supercoppa but in return we want respect for women. Instead, when the decision was made to play the game in Jeddah, everyone was silent.” Milan qualified for the Supercoppa by reaching the final of last season’s Italian Cup, where after a goalless first half Juventus eventually cantered to a 4-0 win. Juve lead Serie A by nine points, having won 17 and lost none of their 19 matches; Milan are 22 points behind after winning one of their last five. Hope for the Rossoneri comes from memories of the 2016 Supercoppa between the same teams in Doha, for which they were similarly unfancied but which they won on penalties after a 1-1 draw. They will be without the Spanish forward Suso, suspended after being sent off against Spal at the end of December, while Juventus may also be missing a key attacker, with Mario Mandzukic ruled out of this weekend’s cup game against Bologna with a thigh injury and considered doubtful. Consensus, however, is that Juve can win without Mandzukic while Milan cannot win without a miracle. “Everyone agrees who the favourites are,” says Davide Calabria, the Milan full-back. “Their players are at the highest level while our team is a work in progress. It will be hard to win but it’s not impossible. We proved in Doha that they are not unbeatable. Even if we go into the game as underdogs, it starts at 0-0 and we’ll give everything.”Donald Trump has reiterated his threat to declare a national emergency if Congress does not meet his demand for billions of dollars to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border as part of a deal to end the partial government shutdown. The president visited the Texas border on Thursday – the 20th day of a partial government shutdown – in a publicity ploy to help make the case for funding his long-promised wall after negotiations with Democrats broke down. As he left the White House for McAllen, Texas, Trump told reporters he would prefer to work with Congress on a deal to end the shutdown, which was triggered by his insistence on funds for the wall, but warned that he would use his emergency powers to circumvent Congress if they can’t come to agreement. “I have the absolute right to declare a national emergency,” Trump said, contradicting legal scholars who have questioned the president’s right to take such action in this case. “I haven’t done it yet, I may do it. If this doesn’t work out, probably I will do it. I would almost say definitely,” he said. If the shutdown continues into the weekend, it will become the longest government closure in US history. As part of a series of events at the border Trump held a roundtable discussion between his officials, border enforcement figures and local citizens, including ranchers, to discuss security. At the meeting Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that a border wall would bring crime down and listened as a sympathetic panel who praised his leadership. Later, near Mission, Texas, Trump accompanied law enforcement to a rural stretch of the border where he shook hands with soldiers and border patrol agents. The visit falls at a highly awkward and politically perilous moment for Trump. His dogged refusal to reopen the government unless Democrats in control of the House sign off on $5.6bn for his border wall means that 800,000 federal employees have been sent home or are working without pay. On Thursday, the association that represents thousands of FBI agents warned that the shutdown could cause laboratory delays, reduce money for investigations and make it harder to recruit and retain agents. The FBI Agents Association sent a petition to the White House and congressional leaders encouraging them to fund the FBI immediately. Friday will be the first day that the nearly 13,000 special agents will miss their paychecks. “This is not about political for special agents. For special agents, financial security is national security,” Tom O’Connor, the association’s president, told reporters in a conference call. Nearly 5,000 special agents, intelligence analysts and other staff are currently furloughed. Trump’s border tour came as the rift between Trump and the newly powerful Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives appeared to be hardening. On Wednesday, Trump walked out of a meeting with the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, after Pelosi repeated her refusal to fund the wall. With Trump digging himself into a hole in which he has vowed to keep the shutdown going for months or even years unless he gets his wall, an end to the impasse looks distant. His strategic priority appears to be sustaining the support of his political base of hardline supporters by fueling fears of a “humanitarian crisis” at the border. He did just that earlier this week in his first primetime address to the nation from the Oval Office. The speech warned of “vast quantities of illegal drugs” and criminals pouring into the US in terms that the Democrats denounced as “misinformation and even malice”. On Thursday, Trump blamed the Democrats for cancelling a planned visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later this month amid the shutdown, signalling he was prepared for the political showdown to stretch into late January. “Because of the Democrats intransigence on Border Security and the great importance of Safety for our Nation, I am respectfully cancelling my very important trip to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum,” Trump wrote on Twitter. Among those traveling to Texas with the president is the top White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, prompting speculation that Trump might be preparing to declare the “national emergency” in the hope of bypassing Congress in funding the wall. The 1976 National Emergencies Act grants a president powers to take unilateral acts in times of crisis. But any such move in this case would almost certainly face instant challenges in the courts. The last time Trump travelled to the Mexican border was in March when he made a much-vaunted inspection of eight 30ft-high prototypes of a border wall outside San Diego. Four months later, the US Government Accountability Office that monitors federal services on behalf of Congress issued its report on the prototypes. The GAO found that they failed to meet several basic standards that included faulty construction and inappropriate design for difficult terrain.Cognac is one of France’s most iconic products, yet little of it is consumed at home: 98% is exported. Authentic cognac can only be produced from a specific region but this vast vineyard stretches from the grand town of Cognac itself inland across the Charente region and over to the Atlantic coast. It is a delight to explore, with winemakers, distillers and the famed maisons de négoces (cognac merchants) open for visits. Most people begin in Cognac with one of the multimedia tours (around €20) of the likes of Hennessy, Martell or Rémy Martin, all established since the 1700s. Alternatively, many houses and winemaker-distillers in the nearby countryside offer just as interesting (if no-frills) tours for free. Many sites are open all year and from November to 31 March it’s possible to see the distilleries in action. The 90-minute tour of this traditional maison de négoce is the perfect introduction to understanding cognac. Find it in Cognac’s backstreets and then stumble into its Dickensian office, with clerks bent over antique sloping desks. Since 1905, the owners have been the Norwegian Bache Gabrielsen family. As the guide explains the complex process of cognac production, visitors may glimpse Jean-Philippe Bergier – the revered maître de chai, (cellar master) – sitting in a side room that resembles a pharmacy with its many sample bottles of cognacs, which he tests and sniffs while he searches for new blends. The tour continues in the cellar and distillery, where visitors discover what is known as Paradis, where precious vintages going back a 100 years are stored under lock and key in giant glass demijohns, a magic ingredient waiting to be used for a prestigious blend.• Free visit and tasting of five cognacs, 32 Rue de Boston, Cognac, bache-gabrielsen.com Cognac’s majestic royal castle was the birthplace of one of France’s most illustrious kings, Francis I, but after the French Revolution it was acquired by the entrepreneurial Baron Otard who realised it was the perfect venue for his newly founded cognac house, with Renaissance salons transformed into barrel-ageing cellars. As with Richard Hennessy from Cork and Jean Martell from Jersey, Otard was another of Cognac’s 18th-century mavericks, arriving from across Europe to make their fortune. His family came from Scotland and Norway, and although today the maison is owned by Bacardi, an 11th-generation Otard is still ambassador for the brand. The entertaining guide brings to life the long history of the chateau – even Richard the Lionheart stayed here – and the Otard method of production, including a sensorial test illustrating the different aromas created by light and heavy toasting of the barrel.• Tour and tasting of two cognacs €21, 127 Boulevard Denfert Rochereau, Cognac, chateauroyaldecognac.com In the bustling town of Jarnac, birthplace of François Mitterand, this is one of the top tours for explaining the A-Z of cognac production in layman’s language. Visual exhibits emphasise the crucial importance of the vineyard and fermentation, the way a double distillation transforms cloudy unfiltered wine into clear eau-de-vie, ageing and blending, the Paradis and the mysterious part des anges, whereby evaporation claims up to 40% before the cognac is finally bottled. Hine is the only cognac house to receive a royal warranty, perhaps because the founder, Thomas Hine, was from Dorset. He arrived in Jarnac in 1791 to learn the secrets of cognac, and married his boss’s daughter.• Free tour and tasting of three cognacs and, this summer, a cocktail, 16 Quai de l’Orangerie, Jarnac, hinecognac.com Cognac cannot exist without the 4,000-odd viticulteurs who tend, harvest and ferment acidic ugni blanc grapes into wine that distillers and maisons de négoces distil and age. But more than 1,000 of the winemakers are also bouilleurs de cru – distillers themselves – who sell to the big maisons but also keep a part to create their own single-vineyard cognacs. This 40-hectare (98.8 acres) domaine is run by brothers Jean-Philippe and Emmanuel, who describe to visitors how, in 1934, their grandfather first started making his own cognac to differentiate themselves from Rémy Martin, who then – and today – buy most of their produce. The vines run right outside the house, and the 90-minute tour passes through the distillery where they use two copper pot stills traditionally mounted on red-brick gas-fired stoves, and then a tiny cellar and tasting room jam-packed with barrels. • Tour and tasting free, by appointment only, 3 Rue Gourry, Segonzac,  cognacpainturaud.com Dany Barbot and her brother Serge Marcadier offer a splendid experience for visitors, beginning with a bumpy vineyard tour in a 1943 US army jeep. Back in the distillery, Dany, a retired teacher, gives a detailed description of the distilling process: the première chauffe (first heating) distillation producing 30C alcohol, the second, bonne chauffe, trickling out at 72C. Tasting its four artisan cognacs it is easy to appreciate the differences from its 10-year-aged VSOP to the 40-years Hors d’Âge. Serge rents out a nearby farmhouse B&B, where a double room costs €52 with use of a big swimming pool, outdoor barbecue and modern kitchen.• Free tour and four cognac tasting, Le Pible, Segonzac, barbot-marcadier.com Bertrand and Sabine de Witasse gave up high-powered jobs in Paris to take over the family estate 24 years ago. Bertrand learned winemaking and distilling from scratch, and Sabine now acts as a guide, explaining: “I am going to recount the reality of our daily life, our family story, and show how one of the world’s most sophisticated, technically perfect products, actually starts out life here in this rustic, chaotic, rural environment.” Their imposing farm was built in 1861 and the chai (storeroom) stretches for 150 metres, from the point where the grapes arrive from the harvest, direct into the press, then pumped into concrete cisterns to ferment into wine and then, at the end, are two pot stills for distilling. They are one of the rare bouilleurs de cru who still heat with wood rather than gas, but it means Bertrand spends two months living and sleeping next to the 1926 alambic – as every 45 minutes he needs to restoke the wood fire.• Free tour and tasting of four cognacs, 137 rue de Porches, Angeac-Champagne, raisonpersonnelle.wixsite.com A cognac visit with a difference. Dynamic Sophie Blanchard runs one of the region’s rare organic vineyards, produces her own €5-€8 red, rose, white and bubbly wine, and sells 75% of her production direct to customers who have been loyal since her pioneering father made the estate bio in 1972. The tour takes in the vineyard, cellars and distillery, then Sophie makes everyone feel at home round the tasting room’s bar, letting them in on insights, such as cognacs bought directly from winemaker distillers like hers are usually aged far longer than the classic commercial bottle. A VSOP (Very Special Old Pale) has a minimum ageing of five years but an artisan cognac may be 10-15 years old, while the top-end XO (Extra Old) could be 25 years old rather than the statutory 10.• Free visit and cognac and wine-tasting, 1 Chemin de Routreau, Boutiers-Saint-Trojan, brard-blanchard.fr One of the crucial ingredients in the mix that creates cognac is the barrel used for ageing. The cask must be French oak: wood that imparts aromas such as vanilla, caramel and spicy ginger. The countryside around Cognac is dotted with artisan cooperages but only the family-run Allary opens to the public. Be prepared for a lot of noise and action: from the hammering and sawing, dust, smoke and leaping flames as they toast the inside of the barrels, while one bearded cooper performs what looks like a manic dance round the barrels, pounding the staves with a giant hammer.• Four tours (1-1½ hours) daily, €4pp, under-12s free, 29 route de Cognac, Archiac, tonnellerie-allary.com Jovial Frédéric Audouard presides over his old-fashioned bistrot from behind the wooden bar where you will see a cross-section of Cognac life – from pinstripe-suited négociants to artisans from the barrel cellars wearing faded blue overalls – noisily enjoying an aperitif before settling down for a meal. The plat du jour costs €12 and could be traditional Charentais gigot d’agneau (leg of lamb confit) with white beans or sausages resting on a bed of lentils; the outstanding wine list stretches to some 600 vintages, with more than 60 cognacs to choose from. • 42 allee de la Corderie, Cognac, restaurant-lechai.com Although there are several reasonably priced hotels in the centre of Cognac, this is in a sprawling park along the Charente river. It is a relaxing resort that could be in the middle of the countryside. The standard hotel rooms are in a renovated red-brick furniture factory but for a supplement it’s possible to reserve a roulotte gypsy caravan, a cosy wooden lodge or romantic waterside stilt cabin with balcony looking out over the river. Great for kids, with its outdoor games, a big pool, as well as a gym.• Lodge doubles from €79 B&B, 16 rue des Pontis, Cognac, quaidespontis.comWhenever David Green belched he would say “Boycott!” and since he belched a lot “Boycott” was probably one of the first few words I ever heard him say, followed, in short order, by a philippic against “whichever fucker” had forgotten to replace the cellophane wrap on the tray of sandwiches at the back of the press box, the admonishment of a sloppy piece of outfielding, and a caustic enquiry about whether any of the rest of us could possibly help him solve a cryptic crossword clue which he probably already knew the answer to. Green, who played county cricket for 15 years, and wrote about it for another 30, was one of those characters people worry aren’t around any more. He died in 2016. In 1965, Green scored 2,000 runs and, they say, put away a pint for every one of them. “If ever there was a larger than life character it was Greeny,” said his old Gloucestershire teammate Mike Procter. “Extremely intelligent and witty, he had an old-fashioned attitude to new-fangled things such as training and fitness programmes. He didn’t believe in them. For him, cricket was a way of making a lot of friends, knocking the cover off the ball if possible, and making regular attempts to boost the profit of certain breweries.” I read that quote back to Green once, and he replied “Aye, he’s a fine fucking one to talk” and followed up with an eye-popping anecdote about their adventures together. Green knew a lot of those. Not just about Procter. He cared deeply about the game, but he couldn’t stand cant, and used to take great pleasure in disabusing all the rest of us of our romantic ideas about some of the men who played it. He horrified the biographer of one well-known cricketer by insisting that his idol had only ever walked when it suited him. Which is one of the few tales he had that are fit for publication. Green was a raconteur, with a repertoire of sordid stories about the stuff some of our heroes used to get up to at night-time. It was quite an education for a kid who had learned most of what he knew about the game back then by reading Wisden. All that came back to me on Monday when Tom Harrison, the CEO of the England and Wales Cricket Board, was talking through what the board are planning to do in reaction to the recent disciplinary cases involving Ben Stokes and Alex Hales – who, as you already know if you’ve read this far, were both fined over their involvement in a fight – and Joe Clarke and Tom Kohler-Cadmore, who have just been dropped from the England Lions squad after it was revealed that they were involved in a WhatsApp chat group that recorded sexual conquests. I guess Green wouldn’t have approved, but I know he wouldn’t have been surprised. Harrison was asked whether the ECB’s sponsors were worried about the damage these cases had done to the reputation of the game. Yes, he said, they are. “The reason why commercial partners get involved in some cases is because the culture beneath your game is something that attracts people,” Harrison said. “What cricket means to people, beyond the performance of the England teams, or the performance of the county teams, is this underlying sense of decency. The spirit that is associated with the game is a hugely important part of it.” Really, though, that decency is a bit of a myth. Players have been fighting, drinking and sleeping around for as long as they’ve been batting, bowling and catching. Harrison touched on that himself. “These are societal trends, in some cases, that are coming into the game, and perhaps have been there for a long time but are coming to the surface,” he said. Then in his next breath he added: “It’s our responsibility as a governing body of the game to get on the front foot by addressing these issues whether they’re with problem gambling, whether they’re about drink, whether they’re about consent, whether they’re about recreational drug use. Whatever it is, these are issues that are pervading society now in a way that perhaps they weren’t 20, 25 years ago.” It’s not that the vices have grown any more common now than they used to be, of course; an hour listening to David Green talk about the old days would have taught anyone that much. It’s just that it’s a lot harder for the players to keep them secret. Back when Green was playing, and long after he’d finished for that matter, journalists used to protect the players they were on tour with. They say that all changed in the late 80s, when Ian Botham became such a draw that newspapers started sending news journalists on tour. Since then, the development of social media and the spread of smartphones has meant that everything changed all over again. And standards are different now, too. The “societal trend” Harrison mentioned is not that people are misbehaving more now, but that everyone else is forgiving them less. Expectations have changed, thank God. Which is why Harrison was right to promise that the ECB, together with the Professional Cricketers’ Association, are going to redouble their efforts again this season “to make sure that those messages are renewed and updated”. Players are as flawed and fallible as they always were, only now they can’t afford to be.After Donald Trump seized on coverage of a new book by a former editor of the New York Times to argue that the newspaper is biased against him, the editor herself said her words had been taken “totally out of context”. Tweeting from the White House on a Saturday otherwise consumed by the government shutdown, Trump shared a version of Washington Times and Fox News headlines about Jill Abramson’s forthcoming book, Merchants of Truth, which suggested Abramson believes the Times is biased against the president. “Ms Abramson is 100% correct,” he wrote, before seeking to justify his controversial attacks on the newspaper and other media outlets. “Horrible and totally dishonest reporting on almost everything they write. Hence the term[s] Fake News, Enemy of the People, and Opposition Party!” Abramson was the first woman to be executive editor of the Times, filling the role from 2011 to 2014. She is now a columnist for the Guardian. In an email to the Guardian on Saturday, she wrote: “Donald Trump is echoing a piece on Fox News (surprise) that distorts and takes what I wrote totally out of context. “Both the NYT and [Washington Post] have had superb coverage of the corruption enveloping the Trump administration, the best investigative reporting I’ve seen. My book is full of praise for both papers.” Merchants of Truth, which will be released on 5 February, recounts how four news organizations – the Times, the Post, BuzzFeed and Vice – negotiated the rocky transition to the age of online news. In a tweet addressed to Trump on Saturday, Abramson wrote: “Anyone who reads my book … will find I revere [the Times] and praise its tough coverage of you.” The book includes Abramson’s story of her time as Times editor, including her firing amid dramatic public fallout. Abramson left following conflict with Dean Baquet, a deputy who replaced her as executive editor. In her book, discussion of Baquet’s choices in steering the paper includes the words: “His news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump.” In an emailed statement, a Times spokeswoman said: “Every political administration complains about the scrutiny and coverage it receives from the free press. But our job is to seek the truth and hold power to account, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. “That is what we have done during the Trump administration, just as we did in the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations. We take pride in our long history of journalistic independence and commitment to covering the news without fear or favor.”A BBC interview with Jacinda Ardern is raising eyebrows after the New Zealand prime minister was asked whether she has any plans to propose marriage to her partner Clarke Gayford and was questioned over her feminist credentials. Ardern met with UK prime minister Theresa May early this week and is now making her way to Switzerland to attend the world economic forum in Davos. During a wide-ranging interview with the BBCs Victoria Derbyshire, Ardern discussed her hopes for a future trade deal with the UK post-Brexit, the murder of British backpacker Grace Millane, and the changing global world order. Concluding the interview Derbyshire asked Ardern whether she had any plans to propose to her long-term partner Clarke Gayford, who is the father to their child, and a fishing presenter on New Zealand television. The prime minister laughed loudly at the awkward question, seemingly surprised, and then answered: “No I would not ask, no.” “You’re a feminist?” replied Derbyshire. “Oh absolutely, absolutely I am a feminist” said Ardern. “But no, I want to put him through the pain and torture of having to agonise about that question himself, that’s letting him off the hook, absolutely not.” “Ok, fair enough,” said Derbyshire. “We await that day.” Ardern was also questioned on how she juggles running a country and being a new Mum, and whether she experiences “guilt” regarding the balancing act. Ardern said it was “sometimes a struggle” but it was giving her a valuable and “insightful” experience that was more closely akin to how regular women juggled their work and family responsibilities. New Zealand-based political commentator Bryce Edwards said the question regarding Ardern’s marriage status seemed to take the prime minister by surprise, and it was unusual for her to have her “feminist credentials” questioned. “Such a question is actually very surprising, and the prime minister’s reaction suggested that she was entirely surprised by it,” said Edwards, adding that the episode was reminiscent of a 2017 interview in which Ardern was questioned on whether or not she was planning to start a family. “Certainly a lot of New Zealanders would see such probing of the prime minister about her relationship with her partner and her plans for marriage as being inappropriate.” Some on social media noted that it would be unusual to hear a male prime minister asked a similar question.I have written a lot of things in my life, but this year it has become clear to me that I only have one story to tell. That thing is often in disguise – maybe it’s a political article, maybe it’s a cookbook, maybe it’s a collection of poetry – but I’m writing the same thing, over and over again. It’s this: it’s nice to have a friend. I’ve never written anything that wasn’t really about the pure joy of meeting someone who gets it and gets you. In everything I ever write I’m trying to articulate why friends are so good, and why we devalue friendship in favour of other kinds of relationship, and how all relationships are more complicated and beautiful and boundless than the labels we stick on them. We just don’t have the vocab because we don’t really believe that friendship matters The word “friend” has to cover all manner of sins. It has to mean that girl you work with, but don’t want to offend; a mutual Twitter follower you’ve never met, but speak to every day; the flatmate who makes you toast every morning. It’s the same word for someone you’ve just met as for someone who has known you your whole life; it’s the same word for somebody you kind of like as for somebody without whom you feel like you might die. We just don’t have the vocab because, culturally speaking, we don’t really believe that friendship matters. “We’re just friends,” we say, of someone we love dearly, but aren’t sleeping with. “Just friends, nothing more,” as if friendship were a sort of place on the road to monogamous sex-on-tap. Because we’re obsessed with couples, with The One. The One is Friendship Plus. The One is the most evolved Pokémon of love. This is, when you think about it, a profoundly curious idea: a real multiple-egg-single- basket distribution error. I didn’t used to think like this. Even with my flexible definitions of family, expanding and contracting depending on who was around, I was pretty sure that it was just a question of finding the right One. I thought that with the right One, I’d do it all properly. Nuclear family with all the bits correctly labelled, like a diagram in a science textbook. And then, you see, I met him. He was – and I am unbiased here – really something. He was a smasher. He was funny and mean and beautiful and clever, and I absolutely worshipped him, and then he died. There’s a bit in the 2002 classic About a Boy that I think about all the time. A thing that tiny Nicholas Hoult in his woolly hat says, just after his mum Toni Collette tries to kill herself. He says, “That’s when I realised: two people isn’t enough. You’ve got to have backup. If there are only two people, and one of you drops off the edge, you’re on your own.” My person, the writer John Underwood, dropped off the edge by degrees. He had cancer, to start with; then he acquired a brain injury; and then he died. The thing about his getting ill was this: he got sick at exactly the wrong age. We were the wrong age. I was just 22, he was 25, 25 is a year too old for the young person’s cancer unit, where they have PlayStations and support networks; but much too young for the “how to tell your children you have cancer” and “mortgage support” leaflets. Perhaps if we’d been just a bit older, we’d have had a house and kids and a marriage certificate of our own, and if we’d have been just a bit younger, we’d have gone home to our parents and been kids again ourselves. But we were who we were, and we had what we had, and what we had was each other. We had each other, and our friends. “Friends are the family you choose” is a trite statement, but I watched as it became true. In the mad world of John’s sickness, friendship became to us something as important as any blood relationship, something as vital and meaningful and profound as any romantic relationship. Other people our age were bonding over nights out and drinking and occasional trips to A&E. Other people our age never thought about blood counts or sperm banks or any other bodily fluids outside the context of a sexual health clinic. Other people our age lived in a world that seemed entirely distinct from ours, like two pieces of acetate laid over each other. I used to come out of the hospital and stare at people in pubs on my way home, baffled it could be Friday and baffled that Friday meant something still. It must be said that we were a pretty close-knit friendship group before my partner had cancer It must be said that we were a pretty close-knit friendship group before my partner had cancer. We did elaborate birthday treats and dinners that went on until well past the last tube. We talked a lot. We walked a lot. We lay around on the sofa, drinking red wine and playing the guitar, like people from films. If this sounds romantic, it’s meant to: it was. What else could you call it? I met Caroline at a party my first year in London; we locked eyes and fell hopelessly in love and knew we were best friends. A little while later we ran through the rain together, holding hands and laughing. Harry – a work colleague of John, and a stranger to me – turned up an hour early to a dinner party I’d forgotten was happening; we started talking about music and pies and we’ve been doing that, pretty much, ever since. Lily offered me a doughnut in a pub; Lettie asked me about a (cheerfully gaudy) statuette of Catherine of Aragon in my window; I ran into Cornelia’s arms outside the Gare du Nord on an unseasonally warm October day a decade ago now; I saw Katya in a queue and immediately texted a mutual friend to demand we be set up. In the romcom world, they call this a meet-cute. In the real world, we don’t have a vocabulary for meeting people we don’t want to sleep with. If I have a flexible definition of family, I also now have a flexible definition of romance. Which gives me a kind of freedom from overthinking things. Freedom to be different; to change and to grow and to evolve. And in that way, once John was ill, our friendships became different. Our meet-cutes became real, profound, life-changing relationships. It was only then, when our world had fallen apart, that our friends became our family. We were forged in a kind of emotional fire, I suppose, and the word “friend” started to sound almost laughable. They were there, too. They were in the hospital with us; they were at the end of the phone at two in the morning. They were there for our birthdays and Christmases when we couldn’t go to our families for fear of being far from the hospital. They were there for celebratory dinners whenever his blood counts got better and commiseration drinks when things got awful again. They slept in our bed and on our sofa and sat in hospital cafés for hours until I had a minute. They smuggled guitars and expensive meatball sandwiches into sterile wards; folded laundry and answered emails and drove cars and were, in every sense, there. Some of them I’d known for a long time; some I barely knew at all. If you said you’d been dating someone for a year, you’d imply a certain degree of seriousness; to say you’ve only been friends with someone for a year implies in some ways that you barely know them. But they were there, and they were family. “Friend” seemed such a flimsy word to describe a person who had washed your clothes and helped you dress; a person who had driven you to the beach so that you could yell into the sea, and filled your fridge, and cleaned your sink; a person who had pushed squares of Marmite toast into your open mouth as if you were a baby bird; a person who had curled herself around you as you slept so that if you woke you wouldn’t feel the coldness of the space across the double bed. “Friend” didn’t carry the kind of weight we needed it to bear – it didn’t carry the heft of the burden at all. It didn’t carry the duty, the responsibility, the care. It did not carry the love. It’s hard to write about this in a way that doesn’t feel fragile or melodramatic or saccharine: we don’t have the language. With Caroline, we went for “my sister”, often; sometimes “my wife”. Our friend Harry became our collective “wayward nephew”: it seemed easier than explaining the complex intricacies of our gentle co-dependence. A gang of women I adored became my “aunts”, sending hampers and cards and constant support. Mark was our “London Dad”; Lily mothered me and fed me fish fingers as she fed her own small daughter. The small daughter – our godchild – drew pictures. They were there the whole time, and they were there after he died and we were all left, reeling. But I was not on my own. I was never on my own. We had lost a pillar of our family, but there were enough of us left to hold each other up. “Maybe you will be worried about being alone now,” our godchild (seven) wrote to me carefully, after John died. “But, you are my family and you do not have to be!” This part was underlined twice, in red pen, with a ruler. We are friends, my goddaughter and I, in that we talk about things that we both like (pictures of horses, Taylor Swift) and build Lego together and she tells me, cryptically, about the gossip from Year Four. But she’s right: we’re more than that. We’re family. We’re family in the way my housemate Tash and I are family: we’re a household, technically speaking, because we share “at least one meal a day together” (what a lovely definition that is). But it’s more than that: she knows everything that happens to me, because she’s the one here. We have small domestic routines, and all the tiny intimacies that you learn when you live with someone. I make the tea; she makes the toast. I cook; she washes up. I see tiny signs that we might be moving collectively away from that 1950s 'couples' cultural burden of The One “You sound… married,” someone remarked the other day, and I told Tash this over dinner and we agreed it made sense. I don’t think we’re alone in this kind of non- marital domestic set-up: every week I hear about women living together to raise their children, or someone living with his adopted granny, or some other kind of non-nuclear communal living. “I used to think two wasn’t enough,” Nicholas Hoult also says, at the end of About a Boy, looking around at his new, chaotic life full of relationships that are impossible to articulate. “And now there were loads of people. I don’t think couples are the future. You need more than that. You need back-up.” I see tiny signs that we might be moving collectively away from that cultural burden of The One: queer culture in particular has taught me a great deal about perceptions of love. I like this; I hope it means that one day we’ll have the language to explain it. But until then, I’ll keep looking. I’ll keep trying to articulate it, keep writing 2,000 words to try and say it better. For now, though, I’ll just keep flying this flag: it’s nice to have a friend. Midnight Chicken and Other Recipes Worth Living For by Ella Risbridger and Elisa Cunningham (Bloomsbury, £22). Buy it for £19.36 from guardianbookshop.comSentiment counts for little in sport but what there is left in Melbourne this week will be split in the semi‑finals between a former champion, Petra Kvitova, and Danielle Collins, a 25-year-old American who had dreams of being a lawyer and has defied all expectations except her own. The 28-year-old Kvitova, one of the nicest people in tennis, is in her first semi-final here in seven years, after killing Bambi – the hometown favourite, Ashleigh Barty – 6-1, 6-4. Collins’s has been a different fairytale at the first grand slam tournament of the year. The feisty outsider with a nice line in on-court sledging looked very much at home at this level as she grumbled and rumbled for most of the two and a quarter hours it took her to crush the other remaining unseeded aspirant, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 2-6, 7-5, 6-1. Kvitova, the two-time Wimbledon champion, should win and go on to the final. She is back to near her best a little over two years since she survived a knife attack by a burglar in her home town in the Czech Republic. After surgery and rehab, she rattled off five titles in 2018 to get back into the top five and she will return there next week. Kvitova took Barty to another place. From the start she was sharp and dangerous, breaking serve within seven minutes. The world No 6 said later: “I always wanted to come back and play at the highest level. I can compete with the best, play the grand slams, be very deep in the slams. It’s happening.” The Czech broke down in tears immediately after her win, and said later: “Yeah, it just took me a bit to tears – but happy tears, for sure.” Collins, who was three points away from defeat in the first round, and a year ago failed to get out of the first round of qualifying, has performed heroically. “This has all been a really incredible experience,” she said. “This time last year I was playing a Challenger in Newport Beach. I’m really embracing it. But I’m playing really good tennis. I’ve put in a lot of hard work.” She said of her previous failures at major tournaments: “When I lost at the French Open, I played Caroline Wozniacki. When I lost at Wimbledon, I played Kiki Mertens. When I lost at the US Open, I played Aryna Sabalenka. I lost to some really good players. I did everything I could those days.” Of her dreadful start on day eight she said: “Even though the [first] set was 6-2, it took an hour. I felt like it was very close, regardless of the score.” Collins is aware of the buzz building around her. “The support has been incredible. There’s been so many nice things that people have said.” As for her dramatically higher profile, she said: “I embrace all of this attention that I’ve been getting. It’s been really nice that people have recognised my success. It’s very flattering. Hopefully I can continue to get some good energy.” It should not be a problem. Collins, who took two years out after joining the Tour to complete a media studies degree, seems more grounded than most players hurled into the spotlight from obscurity. As for her strong showing on Tuesday, she said: “We both look to take the ball early. She came out in the first set and, quite frankly, the last couple of matches, I was in positions where I was controlling from the get-go. “The second set, I don’t think I was playing totally freely. I was trying to extend the points, make it more physical. There were some tight situations. So that made it even more challenging. She was playing really great tennis. “In the third set I knew that she was nervous. I knew that she was physically deteriorating. I decided that I wanted to play some long points, extend some rallies. I went after my shots at the right time.” She will need all that self-belief in the semi-final against Kvitova, who was superb against Barty, the most popular woman in Australian sport. Collins said: “We had a really great battle a couple weeks ago, one of the best matches I’ve played – and I didn’t even win. She’s an incredible champion, has gone through a lot.” Kvitova has waited a long time to get back to near the top of the mountain. It is hard to see her slipping in sight of at least a good grab at the prize. This is her 11th visit to Melbourne, her 10th time in the main draw. She has gone out in the first round four times, in the second round three times (once to Laura Robson), in the third round once. She battled into the semi-finals in 2012, only to lose in three sets to Maria Sharapova. She is in the mood to stop the rot.Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer and aide Michael Cohen says he has accepted an invitation from a top House Democrat to testify publicly before Congress next month. His testimony before the House oversight and reform committee on 7 February will be the first major public oversight hearing for Democrats, who have promised greater scrutiny of Trump after winning control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Cohen said in a statement: “I look forward to having the privilege of being afforded a platform with which to give a full and credible account of the events which have transpired.” The New Yorker, who is to begin a three-year prison sentence in March, is a pivotal figure in investigations by the special counsel Robert Mueller into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, and by federal prosecutors in New York into campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments to two women who say they had sex with Trump. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s chair, said the panel would avoid interfering with Mueller’s investigation. “We have no interest in inappropriately interfering with any ongoing criminal investigations, and to that end, we are in the process of consulting with Special Counsel Mueller’s office,” Cummings said in a statement. Cohen’s 2017 congressional testimony before the Senate intelligence and House intelligence committees led to a guilty plea in November 2018 for lying under oath about Trump’s business dealings in Russia. In the plea, Cohen said: “I made these misstatements to be consistent with Individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual 1.” Individual 1 was a reference to Trump. Cohen also pleaded guilty in August 2018 to several counts of fraud and campaign finance violations. When asked about Cohen’s testimony on Thursday, Trump said: “I’m not worried.” Trump has previously attacked Cohen as “a rat” and “a liar” on Twitter.Social media campaigning will be heavily restricted in the upcoming Thai election, in a move political parties claim will gag freedom of expression and directly affect younger voters. Following the confirmation that Thailand’s much-postponed election would finally be held on 24 March – the first election since the military seized power in a bloodless coup in 2014 – the election commission released strict guidelines on political campaigning. The commission particularly targeted social media in the new rules, banning posts that contained anything other than candidates’ names, pictures and biographies, and the party name, logo policies and slogans. The rules were seen to target newer progressive parties that rely heavily on social media to spread their message. The new social media campaigning restrictions are an apparent extension of Thailand’s already draconian computer crimes law, where people can be arrested simply for sharing a piece of content deemed critical or damaging by the authorities, and which over the past five years has been used to stifle freedom of expression under the military regime. Parties have also been instructed not to “like” posts that violate any of these rules, spread “false information” or defame other candidates and parties in any way. All parties also have to register any social media channels with the election commission or face heavy fines and jail time. A special committee has also been set up by the election commission solely to monitor online campaigning and political discussion in the build-up to the election, leading many to question how free and fair campaigning will be. Future Forward is one of the new progressive political parties that claim to speak for the younger generation of Thais and use social media as a key part of their strategy for reaching out to voters. It has condemned the social media restrictions as “ambiguous and confusing”. Future Forward party spokeswoman Pannika Wanich said: “When speaking of the youth, this definitely affects their political engagement and awareness. Without a doubt social media has been the main platform for communication and access of information during this period. “These legal terms restrict not only freedom of expression but most importantly voters’ rights to information, which are the main principles of democracy in regard to conducting free and fair elections. The question is who actually benefits from these limitations? Definitely not the people.” Hours after the rules were announced, Sudarat Keyuraphan, head of election strategy for the Pheu Thai party and its possible candidate for prime minister, deactivated her Facebook account in an apparent move to avoid any violations. She was followed by several other political candidates. Chaturon Chaisang, an advisor in the Thai Raksa party, claimed the social media restrictions were a futile and outdated move by the election commission. “This is due to the fact the election commission does not understand the term ‘freedom’,” he said on his Facebook page. “But there’s no way they can block it. The social media world has gone far ahead. The election commission can’t catch up with it.” The announcement of the election rules has, for many, confirmed the fears that the military junta would try to retain strict control over the messaging of the election, and that even with the ban on political campaigning lifted, freedom of expression, particularly freedom to criticise the junta, would be limited. Last year the Computer Crimes Act was used to target Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the leader of Future Forward. Police charged him with spreading “false” information about the ruling junta in a Facebook Live broadcast – charges he denied. In addition, the military has formed its own political party to run in the election and the new constitution heavily skews the parliamentary system in its favour, leading many to predict the election will do little to unseat the power of the military.In a televised new year’s message to his atrophying nation, Nicolás Maduro struck an upbeat tone. “Victory awaits us! The future awaits us! And everything will be better!” Venezuela’s embattled president insisted, declaring 2019 “the year of fresh starts”. But the sandbags and rifle-toting troops that now encircle the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas suggest far less confidence about the days ahead, as Venezuela sinks deeper into economic ruin and political isolation and questions grow over Maduro’s future. Hugo Chávez’s 56-year-old heir – narrowly elected after his mentor’s 2013 death and then again in disputed elections last May – will begin his second presidential term on Thursday, amid intensifying international condemnation of what critics call his illegitimate and authoritarian rule. Last week, a regional bloc known as the Lima Group turned up the heat, with 13 of its 14 members announcing they would not recognise Maduro’s new six-year term and urging him to step down. Those countries included Brazil, whose new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is well-known for his hostility to Maduro and whose pro-Trump foreign minister recently called for Venezuela’s “liberation”. The US has also stepped up pressure ahead of what it calls Maduro’s “sham inauguration” with the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, telling one Brazilian newspaper “several things” could be done to rid Venezuela of Maduro’s “unacceptable” regime. Pompeo did not specify what those “things” might be but the remark echoed Donald Trump’s thinly veiled threat that military action was possible if Maduro did not go voluntarily. Despite the rhetorical war – Maduro recently ordered his troops to prepare to rip out the hearts of “imperialist” invaders – observers still consider a foreign military intervention unlikely. “I don’t see boots on the ground,” said Matias Spektor, an international relations specialist from Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas Foundation. But after years of dawdling, regional patience does appear to be running out, as the situation in Venezuela deteriorates and Latin American politics swerves to the right under leaders such as Bolsonaro, Colombia’s Iván Duque, Chile’s Sebastián Piñera and Argentina’s Mauricio Macri. “The dynamics are changing and they are changing very fast,” said Spektor, calling the rise of those politicians decidedly bad news for Maduro. Spektor said the Lima Group’s unexpectedly firm declaration – which includes plans for financial sanctions, preventing top Venezuela officials entering their countries, and suspending military cooperation – appeared partly designed to persuade the Venezuelan military to abandon their commander-in-chief. “For the regime to collapse you need to get Maduro out of the country and you need to get the military to stop supporting the regime … The way you do that is by sending signals to the military that in the long run if they stick to Maduro and the regime they will lose power,” he said. Latin American governments did not want regime change imposed by outsiders “because they know full well it would backfire – but they do want to see regime change via peaceful means”. Under its new leftist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico has resisted joining the anti-Maduro offensive, a move decried by human rights activists and Venezuela’s opposition. “I don’t stick my nose into other countries’ affairs,” López Obrador said last week, emphasizing Mexico’s return to a foreign policy of non-intervention. But most Latin American countries are moving in the opposite direction, leaving Maduro increasingly friendless in a region his Bolivarian predecessor, Hugo Chávez, dreamed of uniting during the “pink tide” era of leftist rule. Brazil, in particular, looks poised to play a frontline role in the diplomatic push to force Venezuela’s president out. “In the early days of the administration, my understanding is that people in the Bolsonaro government want to send a very clear and unequivocal signal that Maduro’s costs in the region are about to go up,” said Spektor. Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, hinted at that harder line this week arguing: “You have to face the threats, and the main one comes from non-democratic regimes that export crime, instability and oppression. You can’t simply wish away dictatorships such as Venezuela and Cuba.” Bolsonaro’s politician son, Eduardo, tweeted: “The noose is tightening around Nicolás Maduro.” David Smilde, a Venezuela expert from the Washington Office on Latin America advocacy group, said there was a growing sense that with the end of Maduro’s first term and growing regional pressure the crisis was entering a new phase: “But nobody really knows just exactly what it amounts to. “It’s one thing to say: ‘You’re illegitimate’. But how much does that mean in the end? It doesn’t look like any of the Lima Group members or the United States are going to close up their embassies or break off diplomatic relations,” he said. “They want Venezuela to return to democracy in some way … [and to stop] the mass exodus of Venezuelans … but I don’t think they really have much of an idea how to do that.” Maduro and his inner circle would be fretting over their increasing isolation “and that’s why you see them reaching out to the Russians and the Chinese continually”, Smilde said. But any international effort to engineer a peaceful transition would founder unless Venezuela’s fractured opposition united. “Until that happens, the government can kind of do whatever it wants – even a weak government can consolidate if it has no opposition.”Europe’s media and commentators had few words harsh enough for the mess in which the UK – and Europe – now find themselves after Theresa May’s deal suffered a crushing defeat in the House of Commons. In the Netherlands, Volkskrant columnist Bert Wagendorp was particularly brutal: “It is almost certainly the case that in recent European history, absent a threat of actual war, no country has landed itself in such complete and utter chaos,” he wrote. “The oldest parliament in the world after Iceland’s is in one hell of a state. Brexit has split a once stable country in two and transformed its politicians into lemmings, throwing themselves off the white cliffs into the sea. It’s great theatre – but tragic.” Writing in the Spanish daily El País, Lluís Bassets warned that Tuesday’s vote had been far from decisive, despite the scale of May’s defeat, and worse could be to come. “To the misfortune of the British, and perhaps also the Europeans, this Tuesday was a historic day that does not preclude more historic days – all accompanied by the tragic storm clouds that tend to shadow history,” he wrote. Bassets said “the great shredding machine that is Brexit” was still hard at work, “fed by uncertainty, bitterness and rancour – the three dismal feelings that May evoked in her defeat speech, and the three evil spirits that only grow with each day that Brexit remains unresolved”. In an editorial, the rightwing ABC said that since neither May nor parliament had shown themselves capable of dealing with the crisis, “the most sensible thing to do would be hold another referendum, as voters get to grips with the true arguments rather than just the nationalist-populist propaganda of the pro-Brexit lobby”. The online paper eldiario.es noticed that the environment minister, Michael Gove, had invoked the famous Game of Thrones line, “Winter is coming”. Gove was “one of the heavyweights in the party, that had the most influence in the Brexit referendum”, wrote Iñigo Sáenz de Ugarte. “Gove and others like him brought winter to British politics and are now horrified at how cold things have got. Too cold for their fellow countrymen.” In Sweden’s Aftonbladet, Wolfgang Hansson said May’s historic defeat flowed from “one of the biggest mistakes a British prime minister has ever made: David Cameron’s promise in 2013 to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership”. That decision had “divided the British people into two tribes that over time have become bitter enemies”, Hansson said. “A proud, once-great power is now dedicated to committing serious self-harm – which could also damage Sweden … And no one, I repeat no one, knows what will happen now.” The German press was more constructive, Berliner Morgenpost saying the situation in the UK was now so desperate that the EU must adapt. “The bloc has negotiated hard, wanting to set an example, and has pushed May right up against the wall,” it said. “It’s time for the EU heads to leap over their own shadows and offer a compromise. It is not yet too late to give May support.” The Rheinische Post, however, asked what might happen if the British stayed. What sort of country would it be? A “traumatised partner … would be far harder to integrate than before,” it said. “A politically hopelessly divided and lame Britain could cause a great deal of harm within the EU. “Which is why, for both sides, it would actually be better if the British were to complete their exit. If they then notice in the next few years that the EU maybe wasn’t the hell on earth they had thought it to be, they could gladly return.” France’s Les Echos said it was “difficult to say what will happen” over the next few days, since “the rejection of the text by such a huge margin, 70 days from Brexit day, risks plunging the country into deep uncertainty”. Le Monde had a portrait of May (“Shipwrecked by Brexit”) saying the prime minister was “valiant, but without a clear vision on Europe … She has shown herself, for the last two years, incapable of implementing Britain’s exit from the EU.” The paper said the rejection of the Brexit text “aggravates the uncertainty over the UK’s future.” Europe1 radio said the defeat was “humiliating” for the British prime minister, while France Inter radio described the defeat as a “coup de Trafalgar”, with the prime minister hit – though not necessarily knocked down altogether. In Italy, Enrico Franceschini said – with apologies to Winston Churchill – in La Repubblica that Brexit “has revealed itself as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma: cancelling it would entail problems – but that could be the only way out of the labyrinth it has created.” In La Stampa, Stefano Stefanini warned that, without an agreement, 29 March “will be chaos. The risks extend beyond the Channel, where emergency plans are already being made for medicines and food. Repercussions would also be felt on the continent.” In Greece, the media was in rare agreement that the UK was in uncharted waters. “There is astonishment that a democracy as old as Britain has got itself into such a dead end,” commentator Pantelis Kapsis said. “It’s the sort of mess Greece would get itself into.” The Efimerida Twn Syntaktwn paper, which often reflects the views of prime minister Alexis Tsipras’s leftist government, predicted that while May would likely survive tonight’s confidence vote, the most likely scenario was an extension of the country’s exit date until July “in order to give London more time”. The conservative Kathimerini, in particularly pessimistic mood, said prospects for an alternative solution were far from good. Reporting team: Sam Jones in Madrid, Kim Willsher in Paris, Kate Connolly in Berlin, Angela Giuffrida in Rome and Helena Smith in AthensThe mayor of the northern Polish city of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, was stabbed on Sunday evening in an apparent assassination attempt in front of thousands of people during a charity concert. Adamowicz, who has served as mayor of Gdańsk since 1998, was resuscitated at the scene and rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent surgery. Doctors described his condition as “critical” and “serious”. Interior minister Joachim Brudziński described it as “an attack of inexplicable barbarity”. Polish president Andrzej Duda said: “Today I am unconditionally with him and his loved ones, just as I hope all of us compatriots are. I pray for his return to health and full strength.” “Shocked to hear of the attack on Paweł Adamowicz, Mayor of Gdańsk, this evening,” the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wrote on Twitter. “Sending best wishes for his swift recovery, and solidarity to the city he leads, his family and supporters.” Polish media reports quoting police sources have named the alleged assailant as Stefan W, a 27-year-old from Gdańsk with a record of violent crime. Polish law restricts the surnames of people accused of a crime being reported. Video footage of the incident shows the assailant addressing the crowd from a microphone on the stage. He is reported as saying: “Hello! Hello! My name is Stefan. I sat innocent in prison, I sat innocent in prison. Civic Platform tortured me, and that’s why Adamowicz is dead.” Adamowicz was a member of Poland’s pro-European Civic Platform, which governed Poland between 2007 and 2015, before leaving the party to fight local elections as an independent. It is understood that Stefan W was convicted of a series of violent assaults and sentenced to prison in 2014. According to police sources quoted by Polish news broadcaster TVN24, the assailant is understood to have been planning the attack for some time. The fact that the assailant was able not only to gain access to the stage and to attack the mayor but also to address the crowd in the aftermath has raised serious questions about security, which was provided by a private firm. The attack happened during the culmination of the annual Great Orchestra of Christmas festivities, a nationwide charity drive for equipment to treat children in state-run hospitals. The charity has raised more than 951 million zloty (£200m) since it was founded 26 years ago. Concerts were being held for the charity across the country. Adamowicz was a powerful liberal voice in a country that has been governed by the rightwing Law and Justice party since 2015. He is best known in Poland and internationally as a staunch supporter of LGBT rights and the rights of migrants and refugees during a period of rising anti-migrant sentiment. “I am a European so my nature is to be open,” Adamowicz told the Guardian in 2016. “Gdańsk is a port and must always be a refuge from the sea.”Amazon’s latest low-cost Alexa-powered smart speaker, the third-generation Echo Dot, looks better, sounds better, but still costs the same budget-friendly £50. When the second-generation Echo Dot launched in the UK it had very little in the way of competition. Having everything that was good about Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant squeezed into a smaller package half the price of the bigger Echo, it was a no-brainer. But now the Echo Dot has some stiff competition from Google, in the form of the £50 Home Mini and its Assistant, and Amazon’s own second-generation Echo, which is now only £90. The Echo Dot is Amazon’s small, puck-like smart speaker with the firm’s Alexa voice assistant built in. New for the third generation is a softer, more rounded aesthetic with fabric sides. It is also slightly larger in all directions, measuring 99mm in diameter and 43mm tall. At the back is a circular power socket, replacing the microUSB socket of the old Dot, and a standard 3.5mm analogue socket for connecting to a stereo. On top you have the volume buttons, action button and the microphone mute button. You can also use Bluetooth to stream from the Dot to other speakers or from your phone or other device to the Dot to use it as Bluetooth speaker. The updated design is joined by an improved speaker. The sound is fired out from the fabric sides of the new Dot, instead of the plastic top of the old model, projecting sound further into the room making it much better for music. The quality of the speaker has also been upgraded. It won’t beat larger speakers, but for the money it sounds pretty good, edging out Google’s Home Mini. The mids are punchy, the highs relatively crisp and while there’s no real bass to speak of, the new Dot sounds relatively rounded for a small speaker. Feed it guitars and vocals from something like the live version of Hotel California by the Eagles from Hell Freezes Over and you’re greeted with a warm, inviting tone. Classical tracks such as Jupiter from Holst’s the Planets sound fairly rounded too. The Dot struggles with bass-driven electronica, but coped better than expected with Dr Dre’s Still D.R.E. despite its pumping bassline. The Dot can also get pretty loud, although not quite as loud as Google’s Home Mini, and the audio starts to distort in high-energy tracks at maximum volume. With smart speakers, the hardware you buy is only half the story: they live or die by the capability of the voice assistant within them. The Dot’s Alexa performance is first rate, with its four-microphone array being able to hear you over things like the cooker hood going full pelt in the kitchen or when playing music at maximum volume even if you do have to shout a bit. Alexa also sounds good through the Dot’s speakers. But where Alexa was the only game in town, it’s now a two-horse race between Alexa and Google Assistant. For most things Alexa and Assistant are on a level playing field, particularly if you’re not entirely integrated into Google’s ecosystem already. Smart home control, music playback, podcasts, news briefings, playing radio stations, setting multiple alarms, timers and various other little bits like that all work great. Alexa has a lot of third-party “skills” (apps), including those from news publishers such as the Guardian, games such as Escape the Room, utilities such as National Rail app and silly things such Star Trek – Red Alert, so you can pretend you’re on the starship Enterprise. You can change Alexa’s wake word too, which is the word it listens out for when dormant before activating. “Alexa” is the default, but options include Echo, Computer or Amazon - helpful if you have anyone called Alex in your house and want to avoid accidental activations of either the Dot or the human. Where Google’s Assistant has the edge is in interpreting speech when you mess up your questions, or when you issue multiple commands at once such as “turn off the Christmas tree and the living room lights”. Google can also answer a greater range of questions than Alexa. Alexa can finally recognise different voice profiles for different users in one home in the UK as of November The blue light ring around the top is easy to see from across the room You can buy things on Amazon via voice if you want, but it can be a laborious process unless you know the precise name of the item and variant. I turned it off. The Amazon Echo Dot (third generation) is available in black, grey or white costing £49.99, although supply constraints mean you might need to shop around. For comparison, the previous version also cost £50, while Google’s competing Home Mini costs £49. Amazon’s larger Echo costs £89.99, the Echo Plus £139.99, the Echo Spot £119.99 and the Echo Show £219.99. The new Echo Dot is a slight improvement over the old one in every way. It’s more attractive, sounds better, hears you just as well, still has a 3.5mm socket and Bluetooth audio in and out. It isn’t a patch on the larger Echo speakers, which are almost twice the price, but just about beats its closest rival, the Google Home Mini, on sound and connectivity. At £50, or frequently £30 on deals, you get a lot of smart speaker for the money with the Echo Dot. But where the original Echo Dot was a no-brainer, the decision now comes down to whether you want Alexa or Google Assistant in your tiny smart speaker, which is a much tougher call to make. Pros: can always hear you, small but loud enough, great device support, clear when muted, activity can been seen from across the room, Bluetooth, 3.5mm audio socket Cons: music distorts at max volume, no real bass, general knowledge not quite as good as Google Assistant Amazon Echo second-generation review: smaller, cheaper and better Google Home review: the smart speaker that answers almost any question Google Home Mini review: a brilliant little £50 voice assistant speaker This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.The Iowa senator Joni Ernst has stated she turned down the opportunity to be Donald Trump’s vice-president because she believed her husband Gail “hated any successes I have”. In an affidavit filed as part of divorce proceedings with her husband of 26 years, Ernst states: “in the summer of 2016, I was interviewed by Candidate Trump to be vice president of the United States. I turned Candidate Trump down, knowing it wasn’t the right thing for me or my family. “I continued to make sacrifices and not soar higher out of concern for Gail and our family,” she added. The Iowa Republican met with Trump in New Jersey at his Bedminister golf course on 4 July 2016 and gave a positive statement about the meeting. However, within two days, Ernst told Politico: “I made that very clear to him that I’m focused on Iowa. I feel that I have a lot more to do in the United States Senate. And Iowa is where my heart is.” However, in the affidavit, Ernst points to a strained marriage as the reason for her decision. “Meanwhile, he hated any successes I had and would belittle me and get angry any time I achieved a goal,” she says. In his own court filing, Gail Ernst insists that he had been supportive of his ex-wife’s political career, but details the toll he believes it took on him. “I gave up all my aspirations and goals to be a good dad and husband so Joni could pursue her dreams,” the filing says. Gail Ernst’s attorney did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment from the Guardian. Had Ernst decided to seek the vice-presidential nomination, it would have been a historic election with a woman on the ticket for both parties. Hillary Clinton was the first female presidential nominee for a major party. Two women have been major party vice-presidential nominees, Democrat Geraldine Ferraro and Republican Sarah Palin. No woman has ever been elected president or vice-president. Trump eventually chose Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, for vice-president out of a group of three finalists that also included the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, and former speaker Newt Gingrich. Ernst, the first woman elected to federal office in Iowa’s history, had been touted as a vice-presidential prospect during the campaign. She was also the first female combat veteran elected to the Senate in American history. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Facebook staff discussed charging companies for access to user data, before ultimately deciding against such a policy, according to reports. The internal discussions were revealed due to improperly redacted court documents, released as part of Facebook’s lawsuit against American software developer Six4Three last year. According to Ars Technica and the Wall Street Journal, an 18-page court filing contains three pages that were supposed to be blacked out because they contain “sensitive discussion of Facebook’s internal strategic analysis of third-party applications”, Facebook said in other court filings. But while the sensitive discussions were masked with a black bar, the underlying text was not removed from digital versions of the documents, allowing it to be uncovered. That text reportedly shows Facebook staff discussing how to use access to user data to extract higher advertising spend from major clients, in emails dating from 2012 and 2013. The conversations occurred at roughly the time that Facebook decided to change the way third-party developers could access user data, which had the effect of closing the hole through which Cambridge Analytica partner GSR had managed to extract the personal information of millions of Facebook users. In the filings, the Wall Street Journal reports, one employee proposes blocking access “in one go to all apps that don’t spend … at least $250k a year to maintain access to the data”. Elsewhere, the filings suggest that Facebook offered to extend the length of time Tinder could continue using the old, more permissive terms of access in exchange for a licence for the dating company’s trademark on the term “Moments”. There is no suggestion that Facebook acted on the proposals, and the company has always maintained that it tightened the restrictions on what could be done with its public access for privacy and security reasons. The filings are drawn from a set of Facebook emails obtained by Six4Three in the discovery portion of its lawsuit against the social network, subsequently sealed by the Californian court. On Sunday, however, the UK parliament seized copies of the emails from Six4Three’s chief executive, and quoted from them during its grilling of a Facebook executive on Tuesday. During the hearings, Labour’s Clive Effort asked whether “apps were shut down on the basis that they could not pay a large sum of money for mobile advertising”, and whether apps were “whitelisted” based on their advertising spend. Richard Allan, Facebook’s head of public policy in Europe, said no to both. In a statement, Facebook’s director of developer platforms and programs, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, told the Guardian: “As we’ve said many times, the documents Six4Three gathered for this baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context.” Facebook declined a request to provide the Guardian with the emails in their additional context, saying: “Evidence has been sealed by a California court so we are not able to disprove every false accusation.” Papamiltiadis added: “That said, we stand by the platform changes we made in 2015 to stop a person from sharing their friends’ data with developers. Any short-term extensions granted during this platform transition were to prevent the changes from breaking user experience. “To be clear, Facebook has never sold anyone’s data. Our APIs have always been free of charge and we have never required developers to pay for using them, either directly or by buying advertising.”As hundreds of thousands of federal workers go without pay amid a government shutdown, Donald Trump’s political appointees are set to get raises of $10,000 a year. The pay raises will go into effect for cabinet secretaries, their deputies, agency administrators and other senior officials, the Washington Post reported. The vice-president, Mike Pence, will receive a raise too. The raises will kick in automatically on 5 January, unless there is legislation to stop them, according to office of personnel management documents obtained by the Post. In 2013, Congress voted to impose a pay freeze on federal executives. It has renewed it each year. But when government funding was allowed to expire on 21 December 2018, leading to the partial government shutdown, the pay cap expired as well. Raises that otherwise would have been due to top officials since 2013 will therefore kick in in their next paycheck. Cabinet secretaries will get a raise from $199,700 to $210,700, while deputy secretaries will go up from $179,700 to $189,600, the Post reported. Pence’s salary will increase from $230,700 to $243,500. About 800,000 federal workers are affected by the shutdown, which happened after Trump refused to approve government funding unless money to build a border wall was included. They are either put on leave or required to work without pay if their jobs are considered essential, and are set to miss their next paycheck. Nita Lowey of New York, the new Democratic chair of the House appropriations committee, told the Post: “At a time when more than 800,000 federal employees aren’t getting paid, it is absolutely outrageous that the Trump administration would even consider taking advantage of the shutdown to dole out huge raises to the vice-president and its political appointees.” At a Rose Garden press conference on Friday, Trump said he “might consider” blocking the raises, whether permanently or just during the shutdown. Pence said he would not accept his if the government was still shut down. Last week, Trump signed an executive order eliminating a 2.1% raise for all federal employees that had been due to take effect in January.Members of Venezuela’s opposition canvassed military bases across the embattled nation on Sunday, offering amnesty to troops and police officers who defect from the South American nation’s embattled president Nicolás Maduro. The bold attempt to dent Maduro’s grip on the military – long seen as the arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela – was led by Juan Guaidó, the leader of the opposition-held national assembly, who last Wednesday declared himself interim president until fresh elections are held. “What you have, not with me but with us, is a guarantee of protection,” Guaidó said to supporters and troops at one event in Caracas. Copies of an amnesty law drafted by the national assembly, though not approved, were also distributed. “In Venezuela there are more than 300 political prisoners, citizens subjected to torture and the unjust justice of the regime, for raising their voices and fighting for a free, democratic and just nation,” Guaidó tweeted on Sunday morning. “The amnesty law is for them and by them.” At that event and several others that began on Sunday morning, members of the opposition handed out letters to troops, which promised that members of “the military and police that contribute to the reestablishment of democratic order will be able to reinsert themselves in the democratic life of our country”. In Petare, a working class neighbourhood in Caracas, officials burnt the documents, while at one event outside a base attached to La Casona, a presidential residence in Caracas that Maduro has opted not to use, soldiers opened the gate to receive the documents before moments later launching the papers across the floor. “This is why this amnesty law is so important,” said Nancy Zea, a Guaidó supporter. “We don’t want any confrontation with the security forces; we don’t want a coup.” Despite high tensions, violence had not broken out by Sunday lunchtime. Some police officers even expressed support for the amnesty. “We have had enough – we are also normal people and we are suffering like everyone else,” said one police officer who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. “That’s why why want change and we believe that this government must go. We want these insects to go.” Oil-rich Venezuela is racked with hyperinflation, rendering the bolivar currency practically worthless. Shortages in food staples and basic medicines are rampant, and crime is widespread. More than 3 million Venezuelans have fled, causing consternation across the continent. Sunday’s attempts to sway the military follow the defection of Maduro’s defence attache to the Venezuelan embassy in Washington to Guaidó on Saturday.Climate change could be kept in check if a phaseout of all fossil fuel infrastructure were to begin immediately, according to research. It shows that meeting the internationally agreed aspiration of keeping global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is still possible. The scientists say it is therefore the choices being made by global society, not physics, which is the obstacle to meeting the goal. The study found that if all fossil fuel infrastructure – power plants, factories, vehicles, ships and planes – from now on are replaced by zero-carbon alternatives at the end of their useful lives, there is a 64% chance of staying under 1.5C. In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the difference between 1.5C of warming and the earlier international target of 2C was a significantly lower risk of drought, floods, heatwaves and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. Christopher Smith, of the University of Leeds, who led the research, said: “It’s good news from a geophysical point of view. But on the other side of the coin, the [immediate fossil fuel phaseout] is really at the limit of what we could we possibly do. We are basically saying we can’t build anything now that emits fossil fuels.” Nicholas Stern, of the London School of Economics, who was not part of the research team, said: “We are rapidly approaching the end of the age of fossil fuels. This study confirms that all new energy infrastructure must be sustainable from now on if we are to avoid locking in commitments to emissions that would lead to the world exceeding the goals of the Paris agreement.” The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, used computer models to estimate by how much global temperatures would rise if a fossil fuel infrastructure phaseout began immediately. The lifespan for power plants was set at 40 years, cars an average of 15 years and planes 26 years. The work also assumes a rapid end to beef and dairy consumption, which is responsible for significant global emissions. In this scenario, the models suggest carbon emissions would decline to zero over the next four decades and there would be a 66% chance of the global temperature rise remaining below 1.5C. If the phaseout does not begin until 2030, the chance is 33%. The analysis did not include the possibility of tipping points such as the sudden release of huge volumes of methane from permafrost, which could spark runaway global warming. The scientists accept their scenario is at the extreme end of ambition, but said it was important to know that meeting the 1.5C target was still physically possible and dependent on the choices made now and in the coming years. “The climate system is not stopping you [hitting the target], global society is stopping you,” Smith said. Other work, using a different approach, has also shown that keeping within the 1.5C limit is possible if radical action is taken immediately. In some sectors, zero-carbon technology already exists, such as renewable energy. But in others, such as aviation, it does not. “Maybe the solution here is flying less,” Smith said. Prof Dave Reay, of the University of Edinburgh, who also was not part of the research team, said: “Whether it’s drilling a new gas well, keeping an old coal power station open, or even buying a diesel car, the choices we make today will largely determine the climate pathways of tomorrow. The message of this new study is loud and clear: act now or see the last chance for a safer climate future ebb away.” Smith’s personal belief is that global heating will surpass 1.5C. “We are going the right way, but I don’t think we will do enough, quickly enough. I think we are heading for 2C to 2.5C.” But he added: “If you don’t have a goal, you are not going to get anywhere. If you have a target that is really hard to achieve and you miss it slightly, that is better than wandering aimlessly into a future climate that is no good for anybody.”A Chinese court has sentenced a Canadian to death over charges of drug smuggling, after deeming his original sentence of 15 years “too lenient”, as the tensions between the two countries continue to mount. Robert Schellenberg, 36, was convicted in November of being an accessory to drug smuggling and sentenced to prison time. Prosecutors appealed, claiming new evidence implicated Schellenberg in an “important role” in drug trafficking operations. The Dalian intermediate people’s court in the northeastern province of Liaoning agreed with prosecutors, issuing a judgment sentencing the Canadian to death, according to a statement on Monday. It said Schellenberg could appeal to the Liaoning high court within 10 days of receiving his judgment. The case is expected to escalate diplomatic tensions between China and Canada. On 1 December, Canadian authorities arrested a senior Huawei executive and Chinese citizen, Meng Wanzhou, for extradition to the US. Critics say Beijing is using Schellenberg’s case to exert pressure on Ottawa. Within weeks of Meng’s arrest, Chinese authorities detained a former diplomat, Michael Kovrig, and a businessman, Michael Spavor. Several other Canadians have been detained and deported. Schellenberg, 36, has been detained since 2014 in a case that attracted little public notice. In December, authorities ordered a retrial and invited foreign media, a rarity for Chinese courts which normally go to great lengths to bar foreign media. “Beijing will have to answer to the world why this particular case against a citizen of a particular country had to be retried at this particular moment,” said Sophie Richardson, China director for Human Rights Watch. Foreigners have been executed for drug-related crimes in China, but Shellenberg’s case is notable for its timing and the publicity Chinese authorities gave the retrial. “This is all the more shocking given the rushed nature of the retrial, and the deliberate way in which the Chinese authorities drew attention to the case,” said William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International. “When they actually invite the international press corps it’s very unusual, and a good sign the Chinese authorities sought to highlight the case for a political messaging purpose.”It was a tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorist’s wildest prognostication come true: the trusty and beloved iPhones that accompany users to work, to bed and even to the toilet suddenly transformed into an all-purpose spying device, transmitting audio and video to anyone with your phone number or email. “This is the nightmare scenario,” said Marcus Carey, a cybersecurity expert and author of Tribe of Hackers. “It does incite privacy fears because this is the same scenario that most people fear from the US government and other regimes.” The bug, which was publicized Monday, transmitted audio (and, under certain circumstances, video) to a caller despite the recipient not having accepted the call. It was triggered when the initial caller added a third person to a FaceTime call. Though Apple has yet to issue a software patch, the company has disabled group chatting on FaceTime, preventing users from further exploiting the bug. But the major flaw in FaceTime has raised concerns about Apple’s security practices just as the company reports disappointing financial results. And reports that a teenager and his mother spent days attempting to alert Apple to the problem have also raised questions about the company’s procedures for receiving reports of vulnerabilities. Michele Thompson, an Arizona attorney whose identity was confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, began posting about her son’s discovery of the bug on Facebook and Twitter on 20 January – eight days before Apple took action. “My son just found a major flaw in Apple’s new iOS, that allows you to hear another person in the vicinity of their iPhone or iPad,” Thompson wrote on Facebook. “We just submitted the bug report to Apple and are waiting to hear back. We won’t provide the details since it’s a major security risk, but it’s unbelievable that my 14-year-old figured this out.” Thompson made numerous attempts to alert Apple to the problem, first through social media and later through the company’s customer service system, according to the Journal. She eventually went so far as to register as a developer in order to submit a report through Apple’s bug bounty program. Katie Moussouris, the founder of Microsoft’s bug bounty program and CEO of Luta Security, said that the problem for Apple was not that it failed to act quickly enough to patch the bug, but that it failed to manage Thompson’s expectations of how quickly a bug can be patched. “It’s best not to rush,” Moussouris said. “You have to do in-depth investigations or else you can have unintended consequences. You don’t want people issuing patches that no one trusts or that break other things.” For Apple, the best case scenario would have been to keep the existence of the vulnerability secret until the patch was tested and ready, Moussouris explained, a process that could reasonably take 30 to 60 days. “You have to do this balance between thoroughness and timing, and in this circumstance there were misunderstandings that are understandable, and a missed opportunity for level-setting expectations,” she said. That a phone call should start transmitting audio before the recipient picks up is counterintuitive to the lay person, but FaceTime was probably designed that way on purpose, according to someone who has built a similar system. Luke Ma, the director of product management at video conferencing company BlueJeans Network, explained that software like FaceTime will initiate audio and video connections as soon as the call is made, and then mute them until the call is accepted. “In order to accelerate speed of connection, your call is fully connected as soon as it can and your ‘answering’ the call basically just un-mutes everything,” Ma said. Or, as Dr Jonathan Hill, dean of computer science and information systems at Pace University, put it, the ability for your phone to send audio before you answer is “not a bug. It’s a feature.” The bug itself was likely a “logic error”, said Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity and privacy researcher. “Logic errors make systems behave in unexpected ways,” he explained, and may just be the result of oversight. “Apple has one of the best security and privacy teams in the world. This case highlights how difficult proper security and privacy can be in practice.” Carey said that the FaceTime bug was “a black eye” for a company that does indeed have a strong reputation for security and privacy. “They’re going to have to be fully transparent on how this bug happened, and when it was introduced,” Carey said. “They need to release information about whether they can track to see if it was exploited, and they should notify customers.” Apple did not respond to numerous queries from the Guardian requesting additional information about the bug.The former British and world No 1 Andy Murray has posted pictures on Instagram after undergoing hip resurfacing surgery in London on Monday. Murray has already announced that he will retire during 2019 and has stated that he would like to finish after this year’s Wimbledon tournament but made an early exit from the Australian Open in round one after defeat to Roberto Bautista Agut amid fears that the game could be his last. “I now have a metal hip,” Murray said in his social media post following his operation. “Feeling a bit battered and bruised just now but hopefully that will be the end of my hip pain.” Having the surgery means he might not be fit to take part at Wimbledon this summer. In the lead up to his operation, he was in constant dialogue with American doubles specialist Bob Bryan, who has just returned to the game following the same procedure last summer. It is the second round of surgery on the troublesome joint, 12 months after the first one, which did not solve the issue. Murray made a long-awaited comeback at Queen’s last summer but pulled out of Wimbledon and struggled to play matches. It was hoped an extensive rehabilitation period in Philadelphia, followed by a gruelling pre-season stint in Miami might prove the answer, but Murray was still in significant pain on the court. Murray will now undergo more rehabilitation to see if he can play again. I underwent a hip resurfacing surgery in London yesterday morning...feeling a bit battered and bruised just now but hopefully that will be the end of my hip pain 😀 I now have a metal hip as you can see in the 2nd photo 👉👉 and I look like I've got a bit of a gut in photo 1😂 A post shared by  Andy Murray (@andymurray) on Jan 29, 2019 at 12:18am PST The ATP Tour tweeted support for Murray. A post on Tuesday morning read: “Yesterday andy-murray underwent hip resurfacing surgery in London. Get well soon Andy, we know you will do everything to get back on tour! ?? GetwellsoonAndyMurray.”The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has agreed to attend a summit organised by the US in Warsaw originally billed as an alliance to confront Iranian aggression, but only on the condition that the US secretary of state hosts a meeting on Yemen on the summit’s margins. Hunt is the first senior European minister to declare that he will attend the summit, which starts on 13 February. European diplomats have been reluctant to attend, suspecting that the event is part of a US drive to undermine Europe’s support for the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015. The EU shares Washington’s concerns about many aspects of Iranian behaviour but has been at loggerheads with the Trump administration over the US pullout from the nuclear deal and the subsequent imposition of US secondary sanctions on any firms that seek to trade with Iran or purchase its oil exports. The EU is due to publish long-delayed and technically fraught plans to circumvent US sanctions. Washington had called on ministers from 70 countries to attend the summit. Faced by the European reluctance to join a two-day event exclusively attacking Iran, US diplomats were forced to broaden the agenda to include wider issues in the Middle East. Hunt, after talks with the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in Washington this week, has agreed to attend, but only on the condition that the UK, US, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia hold a meeting on the margins about Yemen. The UAE and Saudi are key backers of the government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who is fighting a Houthi rebellion. The meeting helps avoid a rare UK-US standoff and gives Hunt a chance to hear about the chances of salvaging a UN-sponsored ceasefire agreed in Stockholm last month. There are ever louder claims by Saudi Arabia that Houthis are ignoring the ceasefire terms. The ceasefire prevented a Saudi-sponsored assault on the port city of Hodeidah. The port is critical to the supply of aid into Yemen. The Hadi government claims to have documented more than 400 breaches of the ceasefire and wants the UN special envoy Martin Griffiths to declare that Houthis are not abiding by it. Griffiths was in Sana’a, the Houthi-held capital of Yemen, for talks this week and has been trying to agree clearer arrangements for the control of Hodeidah port and for a civilian security force to run the city. The Houthis and the Saudis have different interpretations of how the civilian force should be composed.Fashion has been integral to music festivals since Woodstock, and festival dressing around the world tends to exemplify the trends of the times. When I started going to festivals, it was all petticoat dresses, Pennywise T-shirts and seasonally inappropriate velvet. These days it’s short shorts, floral playsuits and culturally appropriated tribal headwear. This cultural codependence peaks annually at Coachella, as the world’s biggest music artists frolic with fashion’s biggest influencers and everyone else tries to get a look-in. I’ve heard some women start planning their Coachella outfits as soon as tickets go on sale. I can barely plan my outfit for tomorrow. This summer, at music festivals across Australia, an even stranger sartorial phenomenon has emerged. It seems hundreds of male punters have been rocking up to festivals in exactly. The same. Shirt. The fashion fiasco was first spotted by Instagram user/fashion detective @ohhellocalum, and witnessed at Falls, Fomo Adelaide and Lost Paradise. It was soon discovered that the garment in question – a short-sleeved button-down that could clothe a competitive bowling team – can be yours too, for just $29.99. And because sometimes life is beautiful, it’s actually called Festival Shirt. The Festival Shirt is currently available in 12 colourways, most of them featuring vertical stripes. There’s a subdued cream, blue and orange style that says, “I’m ready to meet your parents,” and a bold red, white and black stripe that screams, “I drive a sedan.” Cotton On confirmed to Guardian Australia that the shirt has been “one of our most popular styles for the season”. The Festival Shirt has gone viral and, after more were spotted by pop culture site Junkee at Fomo Sydney last weekend – potentially thanks to the first stories, which have led to some kind of hideous shirt snowball effect even among women – it appears to be gaining momentum. I’d like to introduce you to my new religion... 🙏 @fomoaus 📸 @jrdjms A post shared by  James Anthony (@namesjanthony) on Jan 12, 2019 at 12:43pm PST So, some questions: was this – at least initially – a simple coincidence, or did all these people all buy the same shirt on purpose, as a joke? Or did they all simply Google “festival shirt”, and click on the first thing they saw? Is Cotton On running an aggressive ad campaign that is only visible to dudes who like Peking Duk? Are dark forces at play here? Why the yellow one? But seriously, why the yellow one? Big shout-out to the “offical” uniform of Australian summer festivals 2019 🤠🤷‍♀️ #FestivalShirt #FOMO (Also, very big shout-out to Travis Scott - SICKO MODE which was played no less than 25+ times through out the day) A post shared by  Roger M (@rogthe) on Jan 12, 2019 at 5:33am PST I have theories. Firstly, yellow is very on-point right now. I myself currently have three tabs open with shopping baskets filled with yellow clothes (I probably won’t buy). It’s everywhere and it’s not going anywhere. According to retail data company Edited, yellow will continue dominating men’s and women’s fashion in 2019 with its buddies pink and green by its side. Without getting philosophical about capitalism and class, high fashion has long been flirting with non-fashion brands. From Jeremy Scott’s McDonald’s accessories for Moschino, to Vetements’ DHL T-shirts and Balenciaga’s $2.5K bag that’s basically just an Ikea tote, lines have been blurred between pushing creative boundaries and just being arseholes. And as we know, the survival of fast fashion brands is partly based on how well they emulate high fashion trends – so it should come as no surprise that, as the Daily Mail noted, the most popular iteration of the Festival Shirt could pass as an Ikea uniform, which could pass as a shirt by French label Vetements, which is now being made by Cotton On. Celebrated costume designer Edith Head once said: “You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.” Apparently hundreds of festival bros want to sell flat-packed furniture. (Of course, it’s likely hundreds of women at these festivals were also wearing the exact same thing, such as a $29.99 pair of denim cut-offs or a crochet crop top. But as these items don’t have the sartorial audacity of the Festival Shirt, the women retained their individuality while also looking like everyone else there.) Official gay culture update: the hets have discovered stripes. Out of vogue, y’all have to burn your shirts now 🔥 https://t.co/Wn48XCQAwe In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell postulates that ideas spread like epidemics; that once they reach a point of critical mass they become unstoppable. Gladwell describes how in the mid-1990s, some club kids in New York City started wearing iconic dad-shoes Hush Puppies. Within months fashion icons like Isaac Mizrahi were falling over themselves to get a pair and the once-struggling brand couldn’t keep up with the orders. “No one was trying to make Hush Puppies a trend,” says Gladwell. “Yet, somehow, that’s exactly what happened.” Could that be what’s happening here? Cotton On confirmed to Guardian Australia the shirt, inspired by “the global trend of bold, block colour stripes” which originated in Korea, is indeed “incredibly popular” with people who are “embracing the party vibe of summer”. But as for how it started, they had no light to shed. Is the Festival Shirt a tipping point, or just a funny coincidence? Only time and several more music festivals will tell. With Oscar nominations set to be announced in a few weeks, the field of possible contenders in each category has been whittled down as awards bodies and guilds go through their paces. Favourites have emerged, and the prospect of any genuinely surprising nominees unfortunately dims with each stop on the awards season freight train. With that in mind, here’s a last-ditch appeal to the Academy on behalf of 11 performers who’ve been flouted by the awards-season-industrial complex – some on account of admittedly stiff competition, others because they appear in smaller, less Oscar-baity films that staged less robust PR campaigns, and a few, sadly, because the movies in which they appear aren’t in English. Yes, the race for best actress is as stacked with terrific performances as it’s been in years, but the exclusion of Carey Mulligan from the conversation is as strange and egregious an oversight as they come. In Wildlife, the directorial debut from Paul Dano, Mulligan plays Jeanette, a 1960s housewife left to her own devices after her unemployed husband abandons her and her son to fight wildfires in the forests of Montana. In a narrative presented mostly from the perspective of Jeanette’s teenage son, Joe, Mulligan gives the best acting performance of the year, male or female: she’s fickle, fierce, combustible, and impish, her tone of voice often oscillating from cheerful to coarse in accordance with the character’s mood. In a story that’s more or less about a kid coming to recognize and reckon with his parent’s flaws, Mulligan plays Jeanette with a thrilling unpredictability that calls to mind Gena Rowland in A Woman Under the Influence – and forces us, as viewers, to recount the moment we realized our parents were human, too. In a film with a cast as numerous and decorated as Widows’ ensemble – Viola Davis, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Carrie Coon, Bryan Tyree Henry, Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Erivo, and Jacki Weaver are all here – it takes a real howitzer of a performance to stand out from the bunch. But in Steve McQueen’s follow-up to 12 Years a Slave, Daniel Kaluuya and Elizabeth Debicki do just that, occupying opposite ends of the film’s vast and frequently fluctuating moral continuum. As Jatemme Manning, the mob enforcer to his brother Jamal’s political campaign, Kaluuya oozes menace: to look into his eyes as he stares down a lackey spitting a few rap bars is to vow never to freestyle again. Debicki, meanwhile, is the film’s heart, a damaged woman in thrall to her abusive mother and husband who joins the Viola Davis-led heist and convinces you her life depends it. Both performances, though overlooked by most awards bodies (save a few critics’ groups), are emotionally rich but tactful, too, governed less by histrionics than meaningful glances and grimaces. The star of the year’s best film, Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio, still has an outside shot at nabbing a best actress nomination. But in a crowded year for supporting actress, headlined by Regina King, Amy Adams, and the women of The Favourite, Aparicio’s co-star Marina de Tavira has fallen through the cracks. That’s a shame, since what she does with her role as the matriarch of a household in turmoil is pretty breathtaking. Her character Sofia swings like a pendulum; she lets out strident commands (“¿Adónde vas?,” she screams at her disobedient son); provides comic relief (watch her attempt to wriggle her Ford Galaxy between two trucks on a Mexico City freeway); and allows her character’s compassion and dejection to surface in gestures both big and small, a vast arsenal of actorly gifts at her disposal. “No matter what they tell you, as women, we are always alone,” she says to Cleo in a moment of desolation that’s brilliantly, perhaps surprisingly, punctuated by a burst of drunken physical comedy. In the humble opinion of this writer, it was the year’s second-best performance (a smidgen behind Mulligan). The year’s best, most cryptic villain – a personification of the “you v the guy she told you not to worry about” meme – was Steven Yeun’s Ben in Burning, the director Lee Chang-dong’s hypnotizing adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story. Think Jay Gatsby meets Patrick Bateman meets Dickie Greenleaf: Yeun plays this smooth-talking cosmopolite with a pathological charm that never quite reveals itself in full, which is precisely what makes the characterization so uniquely chilling and seductive. It’s a testament to Yeun’s commitment that Ben’s veneer of disquieting swagger never breaks: he yawns, laughs, speaks, smokes, shakes hands, and discloses his casual pyromania all with the same air of arrogant self-possession. Critics’ groups out of Chicago, Los Angeles, and Toronto recognized Yeun as the year’s best supporting actor, so perhaps it isn’t asking too much that the Academy take note too. This 20-year-old actor’s debut in Josephine Decker’s brilliant Madeline’s Madeline is on par with Natalie Portman in Black Swan and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York, in the pantheon of art-and-life-blurring roles. A gifted actress in a New York City-based experimental theatre troupe, and a mercurial teenager on the verge of a psychotic break, Howard’s Madeline is that rare characterization of an adolescent that’s refreshingly unmoored from convention. Immersed in her subjectivity, we experience Madeline’s sense of disorientation in the world and then watch her bring pain and suffering into uncomfortably sharp focus, particularly in a dramatic monologue in which she’s asked to portray her own mother. In a year of outstanding film debuts from young female actors (Aparicio in Roma, Elsie Fisher in Eight Grade, Kiki Layne in If Beale Street Could Talk), Howard’s was particularly noteworthy. In the wake of the Golden Globes, Christian Bale may very well ride his win to a best actor Oscar, with Bradley Cooper and Viggo Mortensen trailing close behind. Each represents a different version of the kind of muscular, immersive leading performance the Academy likes to honor. What Lakeith Stanfield does in Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, however, is considerably different. As Cassius “Cash” Green, an upwardly mobile telemarketer, Stanfield is often comically incredulous. Despite his ascent in the world of tech, things happen to Cash more often than he makes them happen, and Stanfield plays it with a certain affable bemusement. It’s one of those performances that works in service of a film-maker’s vision, in this case Riley’s wild satire of a late-capitalist wasteland and its machine full of cogs. Rare is a protagonist, especially a female, middle-aged protagonist, as multitudinous as Isabelle of Claire Denis’ radiant romcom Let the Sunshine In, the lifeblood of which is Juliette Binoche’s effusive, heartfelt, and guileless lead performance as a woman looking for love. Isabelle, and as far as we can tell, Binoche too, feels everything to the fullest extent, and throughout the film, a dialogue-heavy procession of encounters with different men, her face is a transient canvas of emotions experienced not one-by-one but all at once. Watch her, for instance, in the film’s final scene, a long discussion with a clairvoyant who predicts the future of Isabelle’s various dalliances. His every divination is met with its own reaction: Isabelle’s neck tenses up, or she laughs incredulously, or her smile broadens, or her lips purse. It’s a nakedly human and life-affirming performance from one of our greatest actors. The slow burn and eventual emotional gut punch of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters is reflected most clearly in the supporting performance of Sakura Andô, who plays her character, Nobuyo, with a delicate touch not dissimilar to the film’s direction. She is sincere but necessarily stealthy, loving and devious, easily one of the most sympathetic and likable characters on film this year, which is odd if you come across a bare-boned synopsis of the movie: a family of savvy shoplifters kidnaps a young girl. In a scene where Nobuyo is interrogated by Japanese police, her eyes evince profound sadness and principled determination, like vectors for Kore-eda and the film’s touching exploration of a family linked by trust instead of blood. If it were up to me, Joaquin Phoenix would have two Oscars to his name and a third – for his performance as Joe in Lynne Ramsey’s You Were Never Really Here – on the way. Alas, Phoenix’s harsh, uncompromising turn as a hired gun who rescues sex-trafficked young girls has been mostly ignored by major awards bodies and critics’ groups, even though he took home the best actor prize at the Cannes film festival, where the film premiered in 2017. Here, Phoenix and his body appear more lived-in than ever, the lines that branch across his face suggesting toil and trauma. With more action than talk, Phoenix and Ramsey invite us into the character’s wounded headspace, effectively evoking the sense of rage and violent resolve that compels him to do what he does. As if the best actress conversation weren’t crowded enough, here’s another tour de force to consider. As a kindergarten teacher and failed poet in Sara Colangelo’s remake of the 2015 Israeli film of the same name, Maggie Gyllenhaal gives the year’s most anxiety-inducing performance, embodying obsessive compulsion and intellectual unease. Her character Lisa takes what seems like an innocent, maternal interest in the poetic ingenuity of one of her students, seeing it as her responsibility to cultivate his talent before it’s soiled, presumably like her own, by an increasingly vainglorious world. What ensues is a crescendo of discomfiting events that are both more and less ethically ambiguous than they feel, anchored by Gyllenhaal’s tremendous ability to be entirely consumed by her character’s one-track mind and strange sense of duty.‘Being good with quotations means avoiding having to think for oneself,” observes the narrator of Optic Nerve, a seductively clever debut novel about an art historian who sees her life through the paintings and artists who enthral her. It is, in itself, an excellent quotation, and it’s delivered with a wink. Maria Gainza, a 43-year-old Argentinian art writer, is extremely good with other people’s quotations – Stendhal and Carson McCullers, AS Byatt and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Reflecting on Mark Rothko’s final work before his suicide, she recalls TS Eliot: “The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind that creates.” But no one could accuse the author of avoiding thinking for herself. The narrative intrigue of Optic Nerve lies precisely in the way Gainza shares her mental processes. Part criticism, part autofiction, part meditation on the act of seeing, it has much in common with the recent novels of Rachel Cusk, Ben Lerner and Olivia Laing. But it’s a highly original, piercingly beautiful work, a book you’ll want to savour. We first meet the narrator when she’s working as a tour guide, showing rich foreigners around the art galleries of Buenos Aires. She is a mother “hovering at the midpoint of life” whose dysfunctional family descends from a line of Argentinian aristocrats. She’s brittle (“I simply wasn’t cut out for life”), self-aware (she refers to herself as “a bourgeois art girl”), and when faced with a crisis, she runs straight for a museum or gallery. Optic Nerve is full of beautiful shocks. And they are often devastating Her identity only emerges in flashes and fragments. In between, we get miniature portraits of El Greco, Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Rousseau and, most memorably, Gustave Courbet, the 19th-century French painter. In front of one of his seascapes, she reflects: “Every time I look at it something inside me becomes compressed, a sensation between my chest and my throat, like a small bite being taken out of me.” A novel about the experience of perception could easily have ended up wishy-washy, but Gainza keeps the book rooted in human experience: fear of pain, of disillusionment, of parenthood, of flying in a plane and dying. She describes her painters and their work with maturity and a wry wit; her prose, adroitly translated by Thomas Bunstead, is muscular and refreshingly free of international art speak. Like the critic John Berger, to whom she has been compared, Gainza writes about how we are never looking at just one thing: we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. At one point, the narrator literally sees herself in a work of art, startled to come across Augusto Schiavoni’s painting of a girl in a hat that looks just like her as a child: “I know, I know, this is about as far from hard‑nosed criticism as you can get,” she says, “but isn’t all artwork – or all decent art – a mirror? Might a great painting not even reformulate the question what is it about to what am I about?” At times Gainza can be evasive – often frustratingly so. I found the passages where she addresses herself in the second person “you” a little trying. But there’s a hypnotic, oneiric quality to the way her accounts of artists’ lives merge with unsettling stories about her friends and family. A description of Alfred De Dreux’s painting of a dying deer segues into the tale of the narrator’s college friend who is killed in the most ridiculous of ways. The story of Rothko’s refusal to finish his murals for the Seagram Building in Manhattan merges with an account of her husband undergoing chemotherapy in a hospital where, each night, a prostitute visits the patients. “You write one thing in order to talk about something else,” she says. She recalls her flamboyant great-uncle Marion, who commissioned the Catalan artist Josep Maria Sert to redecorate his palace boudoir. He “needed to have these beautiful shocks in his life. He had to have them. Otherwise he’d wither and die.” Optic Nerve is full of beautiful shocks. And they are often devastating. After she visits her doctor to examine a tremor in her eye, the narrator takes a final look at the Rothko poster in the waiting room and is reminded that she will die: “It gives me a feeling of my singularity: a clear sense of the brutal solitude of this slab of sweating flesh that is me.” Gainza is a writer who feels immediately important. I felt like a door had been kicked open in my brain, which is just the kind of bracing experience you need at the start of the year. Her next novel, Black Light, has already been published in Spanish. I hope they hurry up with the translation. • Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza is published by Harvill Secker (£14.99). To order a copy for £13.19 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99The growth of Amman, the capital of Jordan, is visible everywhere. It is now an international business and financial hub, an arts and culture destination, and a tourism hotspot with thriving nightlife. But what we want it to be known as most of all is a model for how to clear the air of tobacco smoke. Tobacco in Jordan starts with cigarettes. Smoking rates among men with low incomes are soaring. About 57% of men earning 100-250 Jordanian dinars a month (£110-£275) smoke regularly, and these men spend up to half of their income on cigarettes. Overall, more than half of all men in Jordan smoke cigarettes habitually, the worst rate in the Middle East. The use of argileh, or waterpipes, has also grown significantly in Jordan, and it is not only a toxic staple of nightlife but of lunch hours and coffee breaks, even rush hour traffic. Alarmingly, many teens smoke argileh – 26.7% of young people aged 13-15, including both boys and girls – and many do not understand that the health risks are comparable with smoking cigarettes. Additional research shows that while boys are more likely than girls to start smoking cigarettes in the seventh grade of school, girls of that age are more likely to begin to use argileh. As in many places across the world, peer pressure and family members who smoke are the primary reasons why teens in Jordan take up smoking. All of this growth in tobacco use has taken place as we have passed smoke-free laws. The current national legislation, which is ten years old now, bans smoking in hospitals, schools, cinemas, libraries, museums, government buildings and public transport, and also gives the national minister of health the discretion to determine other places that should be free from tobacco smoke. Implementation and enforcement, however, are the key challenges for us. Smoking is seen in many quarters as a sign of manhood, and elderly Bedouins can often be found in public spaces rolling their own cigarettes. Business owners have invested in operations that cater to this pursuit, and often decline the opportunity to help us move Jordanian culture towards a healthier, smoke-free lifestyle. Even the legislators push back on implementation. They are often seen smoking in parliament, as are cabinet ministers at their workplaces – all in defiance of the law. Tellingly, many politicians were smoking cigarettes while voting in favour of laws that ban smoking in public spaces. While smoking is still culturally embraced in these quarters, tobacco use is also aided by low-cost cigarettes. Our country is working hard to change this. Last year we raised taxes on cigarettes by $0.64 (50p), to $1.70 for each pack, which is roughly equal to the average tax levied by states in the US. My administration feels that the government should live up to its responsibility and lead by example. It is our duty to exert a more determined effort to enforce the anti-smoking law, to make sure that regulations are strictly applied and enforced – and not to violate the laws we seek to uphold. Adults in Jordan who do not consume tobacco are starting to get the message about the risks of second-hand smoke and addiction to cigarettes. Public health campaigns showing that second-hand smoke is a cause of premature birth, cancer, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases have strengthened the resistance of these non-smokers. The effect of our public campaigns has also been strengthened by HRH Princess Dina Mired, the new president of the Union for International Cancer Control. Her visibility – and advocacy for healthy lifestyles – provides a strong role model for young women and teenagers to emulate. All this is to say that in Amman we have a long way to travel before we can be leaders in public health. As Jordan’s capital, we are the premier city and face of a growing nation. We have the legislative framework, the political will for enforcement, the support of the ruling family and a charismatic member as a role model, and we also have the growing reputation of a rising economic and tourism hotspot. But we also have a culture of tobacco use that has been resistant to change – and has only strengthened its deadly grip on my people. In which direction will Amman lead Jordan? If I as Mayor can have my way, we will head towards clean air and away from the smoky darkness of tobacco’s past. * Yousef Shawarbeh is the mayor of Amman, one of 54 cities in the Partnership for Healthy Cities, a network supported by the World Health Organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Vital StrategiesHuddersfield Town have identified Borussia Dortmund’s second team manager, Jan Siewert, as their preferred choice to replace David Wagner. Talks have taken place between the clubs with Dortmund looking for a €300,000 compensation package before releasing the 36-year-old. Siewert has coached the under-23s since July 2017 after succeeding the Norwich-bound Daniel Farke. Huddersfield’s chairman, Dean Hoyle, believes the relatively unknown coach has the potential to replicate the impact Wagner had after making the same move in 2015. Wagner, who led Huddersfield into the Premier League in 2017, also arrived at the club having worked as Dortmund’s under-23 manager. It is understood Huddersfield are not looking for a firefighter despite their ominous position in the table. They are bottom, having won only two matches this season, and welcome the champions Manchester City to the John Smith’s Stadium on Sunday. The club believe the new man should be given time to implement his plans, even if they are faced with relegation to the Championship. Dortmund’s sporting director, Michael Zorc, confirmed talks had been held but added “nothing is decided yet”. Siewert has managed Rot-Weiss Essen, who play in the fourth tier in Germany, and been assistant manager at Bochum, who are in the second tier. He has also worked with the Germany under-17 and under-18 teams. Wagner left Huddersfield this week, with Hoyle saying he needed time away from the “rigours of football management”.The dilemma I am 21 and I have a four-month-old son with my boyfriend of four years. We broke up a month ago. Our relationship was full of ups and downs. Since the break up, I’ve noticed my attraction to women is very strong. I’m intimidated by the thought of having sex with a man at the moment and have realised that in every relationship I’ve had, I’ve never been truly satisfied sexually, even with the father of my son. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me. I still love him deeply and care for him, but the way my body excites when I think of a woman is completely different to how it excites to men. I always suppressed how I felt with women, because I thought it had to do with the fact my first sexual encounter was being molested by a woman. I’m confused. I’ve only been in romantic relationships with men and I’ve never (with consent) been sexual with a woman, yet I feel such attraction to them. My mind is flooded with questions and I just can’t seem to understand what is happening. Mariella replies So let’s focus. I appreciate your sexuality is a concern, but perhaps not your most important one right now. Being molested by this woman may well have created a trigger for you and if that continues to play on your mind then I recommend you seek professional help (Women’s Aid, 0808 2000 247, womensaid.org.uk). A good therapist will be able to guide you through the subliminal trauma and unpick the legacy of an experience that will be contributing to your state of confusion. You begin your letter by saying you split up with the father of your baby. Forgive me for presuming that your main preoccupation in the aftermath of that is how to best raise your child. Instead, just four weeks after separation you’re focused on which sex you physically gravitate toward. Let’s presume it’s a form of post-traumatic emotional-displacement disorder. I’m sorry that you and his father are no longer together, but if it turns out you prefer women it’s probably for the best. Raising a child alone is hard work, requiring patience, time and an awful lot of loving; raising a child with the wrong person is equally, if not more, challenging. Luckily at the first glimpse of our baby, most of us are overwhelmed by a tsunami of love that carries us through the challenges ahead and makes the sacrifices seem bearable. But there will be grey days, long nights and what feel like simply impossible periods, and having someone who has your back is incredibly valuable for you and your baby. If it’s at all possible to keep your ex involved in your lives you should be working on it. There’s relationship happiness out there and whether it’s with a man or a woman is something only you can decide Having a decent, committed male role model in a child’s life is of unique value. From the start babies are picking up life skills, even while they sit on your breast. Children can be raised by single parents or single-sex parents or adoptive parents, it’s the love they receive that counts, but it’s really important particularly during your son’s developing years that he has access to elements both Yin and Yang. Keeping him connected with his father would be a great achievement. For that reason (unless there were unwholesome reasons for the split) I’d urge you to repair your friendship with the child’s father and ensure that he’s an integral part of both your lives. It’s not what you wrote to me about, but making peace and creating a sustainable way forward is the best possible gift you can give to all three of you. Nothing is more important than the needs of your child and although right now you’ve got a tiny, barely communicating baby in your hands, the environment he’s growing up in is already influencing the person he will become. You need to make protecting him from the vagaries of life during your “auditioning” process for a new lover your biggest priority. There’s relationship happiness out there and I’ve no doubt you’ll find it. Whether it’s with a man or woman is something only you can decide, but it should be fun trying to find out! There’s nothing prescriptive about our sexuality, and in the best cases it’s people, not gender, who attract our attraction. It’s not a choice you need to make immediately, or one you should worry too much about until you meet a person who potentially works for you on all levels. Whatever way your instincts lead you, provided you are safe, is the way to go. One last thing, you’re very young to have embarked on motherhood and I’m well aware that it’s probably not something you considered doing alone. Parenting responsibly requires a vast amount of sacrifice in terms of time and also in terms of how you conduct yourself. Sexual experimentation that could have taken place at a whim must unfortunately now be tempered, so that the auditioning process happens out of view and only successful candidates are admitted into your circle of two. That’s where your ex might come in handy as babysitter! So make the following New Year resolutions: see a therapist about your historic molestation, work on co-parenting with your ex and find yourself a lover you can have some fun with (either sex will do). If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1A Royal Academician has followed in the footsteps of JMW Turner and John Ruskin to capture in photographs the breathtaking sites in the French Alps that 19th-century artists caught so strikingly. The resulting images reveal a stark depiction of how climate change has taken its toll on the glaciated landscape. For a forthcoming exhibition on Ruskin and Turner, Emma Stibbon was commissioned to go to Chamonix and record the glaciers around Mont Blanc where, in the early 1800s, Turner painted sublime watercolours that inspired Ruskin to embark on his Alpine tours decades later, photographing and drawing awe-inspiring glaciers such as the Mer de Glace. In June, the same month in which Ruskin produced his daguerreotypes (early photographs) of the Mer de Glace more than 160 years ago, Stibbon found his viewpoint for her own images, using another early photographic process, cyanotype. While Turner and Ruskin observed the drama of a sea of ice almost at the level they stood, Stibbon looked down into an exposed deep valley with “a dark moraine-covered floor, almost completely devoid of ice”. She saID: “It’s unrecognisable.” Her commission forms part of the Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud, exhibition opening at the York Art Gallery in March and Abbot Hall, Kendal, in July. It is part of a worldwide programme of exhibitions, conferences and publications to mark the 200th birthday of Ruskin, a writer, artist and social reformer whose achievements are sometimes eclipsed by scandals, including his ill-fated, unconsummated marriage to Effie Gray and a libel action brought by painter James McNeill Whistler. “When we think of the Alps,” said Stibbon, “we think of iconic white peaks. By the end of this century, there probably won’t be any snow.” She added that Ruskin was ahead of his time in realising “the Industrial Revolution was affecting air quality and that air pollution was linked to the use of coal. He could see that glaciers move and I think he suspected that there was some [ice] recession, which would have been starting around that period in the 1850s.” Suzanne Fagence Cooper, research curator at York Art Gallery and author of a new book, To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters, said Stibbon’s images show the glacier retreat “very clearly”, and capture a “sense of real loss”. While Ruskin events extend to Japan and America, in the UK there is a cinema screening, from 22 February, of Effie Gray – the 2014 film written by Emma Thompson – and the exhibition, John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing, from 26 January at Two Temple Place, London. It features more than 190 exhibits revealing how Ruskin’s influence is still felt. Robert Hewison, author of the recently published Ruskin and His Contemporaries, said: “Ruskin was, by the end of his life, treated as a kind of prophet – although not in his own country – for predicting both economic and ecological deterioration. Climate change appears to show that he was right.”Longer video footage of a confrontation between a Native American activist and Kentucky high school students at a protest has surfaced, providing fresh insight into the controversial encounter and offering a broader view of deepening divisions in America. Initial footage circulated online appeared to show students from the private, all-male Covington Catholic High School taunting Native American demonstrators, and prompted extensive condemnation. The students have denied wrongdoing and their supporters urged against rushing to judgment. In this initial short footage, the boys – some of them wearing pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” apparel – appear to surround a group of Indigenous Peoples March participants on Friday, near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The students were in the city for the anti-abortion March for Life, which took place the same day. One of the students in a Maga cap, who was later identified as Nick Sandmann, appears to be standing face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, an Omaha tribe elder. As Phillips chants and plays a drum, Sandmann appears to snidely grin at him. Phillips, a Vietnam-era veteran, appears to look back calmly with a smile. The 64-year-old later told Detroit Free Press that he was trying to maintain calm between the predominately white students and several members of another protest group of Black Hebrew Israelites. According to Phillips, the students came over to watch the Black Hebrew Israelites, and were offended by their comments. Tensions mounted as the high school group swelled to approximately 100 students. “They were in the process of attacking these four black individuals,” Phillips claimed. “So I put myself in between that, between a rock and hard place.” Phillips told the paper that some of the four Black Hebrew Israelite members present group did say “some harsh things” and that one spat toward the Catholic students. In a statement released on Sunday, Sandmann insisted he was trying to be the peacemaker. “When we arrived, we noticed four African American protestors who were also on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,” Sandmann said in a statement published by WKRC, a local media outlet. “I did hear them direct derogatory insults at our school group … They called us ‘racists,’ ‘bigots,’ ‘white crackers,’ ‘faggots,’ and ‘incest ‘kids.’” Several minutes later, a group of Native Americans, including Phillips, approached. “He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face,” Sandmann claims. “I was not intentionally making faces at the protester. I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation.” Phillips alleged that the students directed their anger toward him, however. “When I was there singing, I heard them saying, ‘Build that wall! Build that wall!’” Phillips claimed in a Twitter video. Among those outraged by the initial video were New Mexico representative Deb Haaland, who was among the first Native American women elected to Congress last year. “The students’ display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance is a signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration. Heartbreaking,” Haaland said on Twitter late Saturday morning. Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes wrote on Facebook “I refuse to shame and solely blame these children for this type of behavior” but “instead, I turn to the adults and administration that are charged with teaching them, and to those who are silently letting others promote this behavior”. The alleged mocking of Native Americans by mostly white teens, some of whom wore Maga apparel, comes after Donald Trump has used rhetoric enflaming racial tensions. The fresh video, which runs much longer to one hour and 46 minutes, suggests that the four Black Hebrew Israelites might be more culpable than Covington students in instigating the apparent standoff than the initial footage suggests. Tensions start heating up at the one-hour eight-minute mark. Someone among in the Black Hebrew Israelites - who had been long shouting at passersby - appears to call these students “a bunch of incest babies”. The Black Hebrew Israelites later seem to continue taunting the teens, referring to them as future “school shooters” and calling African American students the N-word. The school and Diocese of Covington issued an apology and hinted at harsh discipline for the students involved in the scene. “This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person,” they said jointly in a statement. “The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.”Last week, universities in England were preparing reports on how they have diversified their student populations. These reports will be submitted to the director of fair access at the Office for Students. My university, King’s College London, will report, happily, that our undergraduate intake is now 77% state school, more than 52% ethnic minority and has the fastest growing population of low-income students in the Russell Group. And what has made all this progress and vital work possible? The very thing that many believe to be the enemy of educational opportunity – tuition fees. Thanks to the tuition fee regime, widening participation programmes are now delivered at every single university When, in 2012, the coalition government introduced the then £9,000 fee regime, what’s little known is that it came with serious regulatory machinery to secure gains in access and participation. As a result, higher tuition fees have leveraged £800m into schemes and bursaries for poorer students. The system, then, acts in a redistributive way. Alongside the poorest, its beneficiaries include refugees, forced migrants, care leavers and “estranged students” (those not supported by their parents). Thanks to the tuition fee regime, programmes designed to widen intake are now delivered at every single university. Education centres, homework clubs, tutoring by PhD students, summer schools and teacher training events are just some of the initiatives under way across the country. It’s a shame that this work does not feature more in the debates the Augar review of post-18 education funding in England. The 2016 Labour party manifesto proposed the abolition of tuition fees, while there are suggestions that the Augar review will recommend a significant reduction. Both proposals endanger vital widening participation resources and infrastructure. In fact, without compensatory safeguards, universities will have to dismantle programmes and initiatives, and dismiss staff who support students to fulfil their ambitions. The loss will be massive and will hurt a generation of young people and their communities. In the past few decades, there has been a transformation in who gets to become a graduate. Now, more than one in three 18-year-olds are studying in higher education. Entry rates have increased in 95% of parliamentary constituencies since 2006. And perhaps, most hearteningly, in 2017 English pupils receiving free school meals were 83% more likely to go to university than they were in 2006. However, this picture does vary by region. While in 2017 41.8% of 18-year-olds in London went to university, only 28.9% of the same population in the south-west and 30.3% in the north-east did. In terms of undergraduates from black and minority ethnic groups, the numbers rose by 38% between 2007-08 and 2015-16. There is scant evidence that higher fees have deterred less-advantaged young people from going to university While widening participation is concerned with all university attendees, the fair access debate focuses on who gets to study at the most selective institutions. Here, progress has been much slower. Access to Oxbridge, for instance, is moving at glacial speed, though there are green shoots, with programmes such as the Lady Margaret Hall foundation year and University College Oxford’s Opportunity Programme showing some lateral thinking. Change must come at these universities – and others not performing well that still seem to avoid the glare of press scrutiny. But if you abolish tuition fees you also abolish the cash that provides the means to support low-income and underrepresented students. And there is scant evidence that higher fees have deterred less-advantaged young people. There are less drastic changes that would help. These include a recasting of the current regime as a graduate tax to relieve the sense of debt burden, a grace period on interest rates while studying and a block on early repayment. Most fundamentally, a reintroduction of maintenance grants to the poorest learners gives a powerful message that the government wants these students to go to university and significantly reduces the strain of their living costs. When the fruits of higher education are fairly distributed, I will be happy to see a free system. Until that day, tuition fees are a smart and socially just way to ensure the widest range of students. Anne-Marie Canning is director of social mobility and student success at King’s College LondonFour men accused of carrying out the spectacular heist of a giant solid gold coin worth €3.6m from a Berlin museum are to go on trial on Thursday. The men stand accused of stealing the 100kg “Big Maple Leaf” from the Bode Museum after using a ladder to enter a third-floor window, smashing the bulletproof cabinet in which the coin was on display, then transporting it in a wheelbarrow to a nearby park and abseiling with it to a getaway vehicle. The theft in the early hours of 27 March 2017 stunned the German public, not least because of its audacity and old-fashioned simplicity, and the fact that no alarms were triggered in the museum. Three of the men on trial, identified according to German custom only as Wissam R, Ahmed R, and Wayci R, are members of a Berlin crime family. The fourth is a security guard identified as Denis W, who is accused of assisting the men by providing them with information about the museum which was vital to the plot. The coin – 53cm in diameter and 3cm thick – was on loan to the museum from a private owner, one of only five pure gold commemorative pieces issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007 and bearing the face of Queen Elizabeth II. It is legal tender and was marketed as the world’s largest gold coin by the Canadian Royal Mint, worth 1 million dollars, but valued at €4m Euros according to the value of gold at the time of its theft. Its value at today’s gold spot price would be €3.6m. It is believed to have been broken up and melted down shortly after the theft and it is thought it will never be recovered. Detectives revealed early on in the investigation that the “R” family was part of a crime ring well known to police and whose members had carried out numerous high-profile crimes over several years, including break-ins, a bank robbery in which the bank building was blown up to hide evidence, and acts of violence in Berlin including a murder in broad daylight. Last summer Berlin investigators confiscated 77 properties valued at €9.3m which members of the R family were believed to have purchased with the proceeds from various crimes. During the investigation into the coin robbery, prosecutors said that unknown persons had tried to destroy evidence in a vehicle believed to have been the getaway car, which had been confiscated after an illegal car rally. The culprits gained access to a police compound where the car was parked and sprayed fire-extinguishing foam into its interior. But the attempts to hide evidence failed after police found gold deposits on the upholstery. The trial is expected to take about 12 days amid a huge media presence before a chamber of Berlin’s regional court reserved for youth crimes due to the ages of the three men – between 18 to 20 – when they allegedly carried out the heist.Travel was disrupted, householders suffered power cuts and schools were shut as heavy snow swept across the UK on the coldest day for seven years. Motorists were stranded in vehicles and trains and planes were delayed or cancelled. Emergency services up and down the UK said they were being inundated and called on people to only travel if they needed to. Friday is also forecast to be very cold, with the Met office predicting highs of 3C in London and 2C in Edinburgh. Snow is forecast across the south, heavy in parts, from Cardiff to London, stretching right across to Chelmsford, Rochester and Canterbury. In the north, snow is forecast in York and Newcastle and on parts of the east coast. The coldest spot on Thursday was Braemar in north-east Scotland, where residents shivered in temperatures of –14.4C (6.1F), the Met Office said – the lowest in the UK since 2012, when it reached –15.6C (3.9F) at Holbeach in Lincolnshire. An amber severe weather warning – meaning a potential risk to life and property – was in place for parts of south England and Wales on Thursday, with the Met Office predicting heavy snow falls could cut off communities, especially on high ground. South Western Railway has already warned passengers that trains may be cancelled on Friday morning while work is done to check and clear the tracks. British Airways said it would cancel some short-haul flights on Friday due to the adverse weather conditions. Snow led to the cancellation of some sporting events, including race meetings at Fakenham in Norfolk and Wincanton in South Somerset. By mid-afternoon on Thursday, the snow had hit the south-west. Devon and Cornwall police said it was causing disruption on the A30 near Jamaica Inn at Bolventor. As darkness fell about 100 vehicles were trapped on the same road at Temple on Bodmin Moor, where the Met Office said snow was up to 12cm deep. There were also reports of cars trapped on the A38, A39 and A380. Police advised trapped motorists to stay in their vehicles. One flood alert was issued for the south Devon coast from Start Point to Dawlish Warren, and Torquay seafront was shut because of high tides and stormy conditions. About 400 students were stranded at Callywith College in Bodmin, Cornwall. Principal Mark Wardle said buses to transport students had not been able to get to the sixth-form college, but catering staff were providing students with sausages, chips and beans. Highways England advised people to avoid roads including the M5 in the south-west and the A303, where some motorists became trapped a year ago. It had 25 snowblowers ready to clear snow from motorways and major A roads. Dartmoor national park closed some roads because of ice and advised drivers to avoid the area. Sgt Olly Taylor, lead investigator for fatal road crashes in Devon and Cornwall, said: “Please think about whether your journey is really essential. Emergency services are likely to be busy.” The AA advised motorists to carry a winter survival kit containing items such as an ice scraper, de-icer and a blanket. A spokesman said: “People should also take it slow, as stopping distances are 10 times longer. Gentle manoeuvres are the key to safe driving in ice and snow.” In Wales, Dyfed-Powys police asked for people to think twice before contacting the force. Head of specialist operations, Supt Craig Templeton, said: “We have been busy planning for the adverse weather so we can continue to serve our communities in the way they expect. “To help us do this, we are asking the public to consider their options before contacting us, as in some cases, other organisations may be better placed to help you. For example, if you are calling about a tree or power/telephone pole that is down, you should only call us to report this if there is a significant risk to others, or there has been a collision and someone is injured.” In Caerphilly, South Wales, a gritting truck overturned on ice, despite the road being gritted three times in one day. Councillor Sean Morgan, cabinet member for highways, said: “This was a very experienced driver, but between the third and fourth gritting treatments the hill had iced over and this demonstrates that road surfaces can still be dangerous, even when gritted.” On Wednesday night, all four parts of the UK set new records for the 2018-19 winter with Sennybridge, Powys, dropping to -9.3C (15.3F), Katesbridge in Northern Ireland falling to -8.2C (17.2F) and Redesdale Camp, Northumberland, recording temperatures of -10.5C (13.1FF). The Met Office said the sleet and snow would ease in the south on Friday but there could be more wintry showers, especially in the north and east. Mark Wilson, a Met Office forecaster, said the cold temperatures were due to stick around: “Saturday night into Sunday could also be very cold.”Mousa Dembélé’s impending move to Beijing Guoan is a reminder of Tottenham’s lack of depth in important areas. The Belgian midfielder was once a mandatory pick for Mauricio Pochettino but injuries have caught up with him and he has featured in only 10 league games this season. Dembélé’s decline has been a blow for Pochettino and Tottenham’s manager has also had to deal with injuries to Eric Dier and Victor Wanyama, forcing him to ask a lot from Harry Winks and Moussa Sissoko in the past month. Sissoko and Winks have responded by forming an effective partnership in central midfield, enabling Tottenham to force their way into the title race, but they looked tired against Chelsea on Tuesday. Manchester United, who visit Wembley on Sunday, will spy a weakness to exploit given that Pochettino’s only alternative in recent weeks has been the inexperienced Oliver Skipp. Paul Pogba is probably licking his lips at the thought of stamping his authority all over midfield – assuming, of course, the United showman’s resurgence under Ole Gunnar Solskjær is the real deal. JS If you want an idea as to why some Leicester fans are frustrated with their team and Claude Puel, then observe their infuriating inconsistency of late. Their past six games in all competitions have been: defeat on penalties to Manchester City in the Carabao Cup after making a number of changes to the team; victory at Chelsea; victory in the league over Manchester City; defeat at home to Cardiff; victory at Everton; defeat to Newport in the FA Cup. Puel’s decision to make wholesale changes against Newport was more defensible than against City, with their opponents 13th in League Two. But now they are out of both cups and have only that big seventh place to fight for as Puel prepares to take on his former club Southampton on Saturday. That is where they are at the moment but they may not stay there if they continue to be so erratic. NM Unai Emery has an intriguing call to make when Arsenal visit West Ham on Saturday. Mesut Özil is back in training after shaking off the knee injury that has kept him out since Boxing Day, and in previous seasons the German would have expected to walk straight back into the starting lineup. Not in the post-Wenger era, though. Özil’s importance has dwindled, even though he still has the ability to unlock any defence with an eye-of-the-needle pass. The thinking is the team’s defensive structure is not strong enough to carry brittle individuals and, although Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s foot injury means a creative spot needs filling, Arsenal also have to think about containing Marko Arnautovic and Felipe Anderson in West Ham’s attack. With that in mind, it could be a day for Alex Iwobi or Aaron Ramsey to provide extra thrust in midfield. Iwobi is in good form and Ramsey has knuckled down despite his impending move to Juventus; both will have cause to feel aggrieved if they lose out to Özil. JS The dismissal of Gary Rowett by Stoke this week called to mind another manager who is talking a good game but not getting the results to back up his words. Marco Silva is different to Rowett in that he does have trophies to his name, most prominently the Greek title with Olympiakos, but even that is worth putting in context: Olympiakos have been champions 10 times since the Superleague was formed in 2006, so he was not exactly dragging a team to success with his managerial brilliance. Troy Deeney recently rated Silva as the best coach he has worked with but that will not be much use with the words of the majority shareholder, Farhad Moshiri, hanging in the air. “I look at the table and it is just not good enough,” said Moshiri, and while he also said the club will “stick with” Silva, things can change extremely quickly. Everton host Bournemouth on Sunday. NM Having seen how Chelsea were frustrated by Southampton’s organisation in their previous league game, it is unlikely that Newcastle will be adventurous when they visit Stamford Bridge on Saturday evening. Rafael Benítez often uses a spoiling approach against the big sides and the Spaniard will surely tell his players to sit deep, absorb pressure and try to take advantage of Maurizio Sarri’s issues in attack. Chelsea drew another blank in their midweek defeat by Tottenham, despite dominating territory and possession, and it will not be in Newcastle’s interests to play an open game. Another game of patience will test Sarriball’s foundations. JS Liverpool could head to Brighton on Saturday with Virgil van Dijk as their only fit recognised central defender. With Joe Gomez and Joël Matip sidelined and Dejan Lovren not expected to recover from a thigh injury in time, Jürgen Klopp will likely turn to Fabinho. Chris Hughton’s side are unbeaten in four games and have proved a tough nut to crack at home – only Tottenham and Chelsea have beaten them there in the league this season. But the assured performance of the 16-year-old Ki-Jana Hoever in Liverpool’s FA Cup defeat at Molineux on Monday will have given Klopp food for thought, especially when watching him wriggle away from Hélder Costa and Rúben Neves before freeing Mohamed Salah on the counterattack. Klopp must choose whether to throw the Dutch teenager in at the deep end once more, or opt for a more experienced head. BF Huddersfield’s defeat by Bristol City in the FA Cup was the equivalent of a boxer’s shorts falling down after being beaten up for eight rounds, one last indignity after the previous pummelling. They have lost nine matches in a row, eight of those in the league, and while they have got some way to go before reaching the Premier League record (Sunderland’s 2002-03 run of 15 consecutive losses), they have definitely reached the stage where they are looking for any help they can get. In the run-up to Saturday’s away game at Cardiff, David Wagner said he has no idea whether they will be able to address their biggest problem by signing a striker, so they may have to look to another source for goals. Jason Puncheon has not scored this season but, at the very least, his arrival from Crystal Palace will add a little more dynamism to their attack. At this point, anything is worth a try. NM It has been a tough journey to fitness for Tom Cleverley. An achilles problem kept him out of the Watford team for the best part of a year, but after a few substitute appearances he made his first start against Woking in the FA Cup last weekend. “It’s been a long hard year and a long road back,” he said. “It’s a big moment for me.” In some respects, Cleverley’s return could not be better timed, given the continuing uncertainty over Abdoulaye Doucouré, who this week offered the world’s politest “come and get me” plea to PSG. Central midfield is not an area of massive weakness for Watford, who visit Crystal Palace on Saturday, but if Doucouré does depart then Cleverley being an option again will at least mean they will not have to rush to find a replacement. NM Pep Guardiola’s side have hammered in 16 goals in two matches and, regardless of opposition, those numbers are frightening. Wolves have an impressive record against the top six, appearing to raise their game when the big boys come to Molineux, having beaten Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham. But when Manchester City – who host them on Monday – are in the mood, especially at the Etihad, they are a different beast. Wolves should arrive with confidence and not total trepidation after upsetting Liverpool in the FA Cup but Nuno Espírito Santo’s side must again bring their A-game. Wolves, so comfortable without the ball, are solid but flexible in defence – they have conceded fewer goals than Manchester United and Arsenal – and given that City will want to dominate possession, they will have to show patience. BF Is it a coincidence that Burnley’s results have improved since Dwight McNeil broke into their first team? Maybe but the young winger has certainly added more of a spark to Sean Dyche’s side, who have won all three games he has started, two in the league and against Barnsley in the FA Cup. They host second-bottom Fulham on Saturday. “It’s not like we put him in for the sake of it, it’s because we think he can deliver performances, which he has done,” said Dyche. “I think we’ve timed our run well with that. It’s not just dropping somebody in, taking them out and you never see them again, it’s been building up slowly but surely.” As well as McNeil’s introduction, Tom Heaton has returned in goal, and praise must go to Dyche: neither decision was hasty but both are paying off nicely so far. NMHope springs eternal. At least on New Year’s. On this first of January, the coming year is a blank slate. It’s a time when we can set our goals – to exercise more, to eat less, to perform our best – in the hopes of making 2019 a year that we can look back on with pride. There’s one problem, though: the success rate for New Year’s resolutions is pretty bleak. Less than 10% of resolutions have been kept by year’s end and 25% fail before 15 January. In a society as obsessed with success as ours – where bestsellers offering advice on how to be gritty, goal-directed, and disciplined line the shelves of almost every bookstore – this seems a rather odd situation. If the advice science has been offering for how to reach goals is on target, why are the success rates so low? It’s because the advice we’re being given is wrong. To understand why, we should consider what resolutions are. At base, they’re almost all a form of a dilemma economists term intertemporal choice, meaning decisions that have different consequences as time unfolds. Keeping resolutions usually requires accepting some sacrifice in the moment to gain rewards in the future. For example, regularly putting money in an IRA (independent retirement account) rather than spending it to enjoy the newest smartphone or overpriced restaurant helps ensure a more enjoyable retirement; eating a kale salad for lunch, while maybe not bringing as much immediate enjoyment as a double cheeseburger, helps ensure a healthier future. Yet while most of us would agree with this logic, we don’t typically follow it. Research by Kathleen Vohs at the University of Minnesota shows that, on average, people give into temptations that conflict with their long-term goals about one out of every five times they try to resist – a figure that rises rapidly if they’re tired, busy or stressed. The root of the problem is that our brains have a bit of a glitch: they over-value immediate pleasures relative to future ones. For example, in my own research, we found that people view $100 in a year as worth only $17 today. Or, put differently, if we gave them $17 dollars today, they’d forgo getting $100 in a year. Unless you need that money for immediate survival, turning down the opportunity to quintuple your money in a year doesn’t make much sense. Yet, people continually use such questionable “logic” with all types of rewards. The way we’re usually told to resist desires for immediate pleasures that get in the way of pursuing long-term goals is to use willpower. If you want to get a promotion or better grades this year, put your nose to the grindstone rather than spending time listening to music you enjoy. If you want to lose weight, force yourself to go to the gym rather than revel in an extra helping of dessert. Logical, yes; easy, no. A good deal of research shows that it’s difficult and often stressful to continually force yourself to choose the less of two desirable options. But in truth, that’s what it means to use willpower. Willpower isn’t the only tool that fosters the self-control and grit we need for success And herein lies the problem. What all those bestsellers neglect to say is that willpower isn’t the only tool that fosters the self-control and grit we need for success. The mind comes equipped with another powerful source of motivation: emotions. And when it comes to problems of intertemporal choice – ones where we need to be more oriented toward future goals – the emotions that matter are the moral ones. For most of human history, what led to success was good character. You had to be seen as a good partner, as someone worth cooperating with. That meant you had to be honest, fair and generous; acts that require making a sacrifice to share, as opposed to being selfish, in the moment to ensure greater rewards in the future. And it was emotions such as gratitude, compassion and a pride in one’s true abilities and reputation that supported these virtues, a fact backed up by modern psychological science. What our research has demonstrated, however, is that these emotions help people resist temptation not by increasing willpower, but by simply nudging the mind to place a greater emphasis than it normally would on future rewards relative to immediate ones. For instance, grateful people don’t see $100 in a year as worth only $17 today. To them, it’s worth double that. And similar effects are found for pride and compassion. The upshot, of course, is that by increasing the value people place on future gains, these emotions make persevering toward those goals much easier. And as you’d expect, regularly feeling these emotions has been shown to increase time spent on difficult tasks, to reduce procrastination, to increase regular exercise, to enhance performance on the job, and to reduce addictive or impulsive behaviors – all things that require resisting temptations that divert people from pursuing future success. Unlike relying on willpower, cultivating these emotions throughout the coming year offers a less stressful way to help keep your promises to yourself intact. Yet doing so also offers an added benefit. It will make sure that as you’re striving to reach your goals, you will be strengthening your relationships. Practicing gratitude, compassion and an authentic pride (as opposed to hubris) binds you to others, and in so doing, makes certain that you’ll look back on 2019 not only as a year where you reached a personal goal, but also made a difference in the lives of those around you. David DeSteno is professor of psychology at Northeastern UniversityMore than 15% of refugees travelling north through the Horn of Africa were kidnapped during their journey last year, according to what is believed to be one of the most comprehensive surveys of migration journeys. Researchers from the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), who conducted 11,150 interviews across 20 countries and seven migration routes, warned that kidnappings may be increasing and identified people travelling through the Horn of Africa to north Africa and Europe as the most vulnerable. While previous reports have highlighted the issue of refugee kidnappings, most of the information was anecdotal. This is the first large survey to provide percentage figures. The research will inform policy responses on the ground, and contribute to the development of a dashboard system to forecast future migration patterns. Bram Frouws, head of the MMC, said the hardening of borders had left people even more vulnerable to abuse by smugglers, who often work alongside or with tacit permission from state officials. “Usually, families receive a phone call from kidnappers saying they have their family member and demanding a ransom. Sometimes they can hear the voice or even the torture happening on the phone to force them to pay,” said Frouws. Ransoms are often about $2,000 (£1,570). It is possible that smugglers are increasingly turning to kidnapping as they look for alternative sources of income because of the decreasing number of people travelling through certain routes, he added. “As numbers are going down – at least the number arriving in Europe is going down – as a result of attempts to stop or control this migration, this means there are fewer clients for smugglers,” Frouws said. “Maybe some of them are earning less or being pushed out of business. This could be a way to make it up.” Almost all the victims are held with the threat of or actual use of violence, and most are physically restrained. The research showed that, while travelling through the Horn of Africa, some nationalities are much more vulnerable than others. Almost one in five of the 1,200 Ethiopians interviewed said they had been kidnapped at least once during their journey. Of the 288 Sudanese people interviewed along the same route, 4% said they had been kidnapped. Researchers believe this may be because most kidnappings take place in the Sudan, and that Sudanese people might be better at circumventing the risks, or that they might be starting their journeys beyond the most dangerous areas. Researchers surveyed people as they passed through key migration hubs between May 2017 and September 2018. The sample is not representative because there is little concrete data on the absolute numbers of people on the move worldwide, but researchers say the findings are indicative of the horrific abuses suffered by many. Across all migration routes, 615 people reported that they had been kidnapped at least once. Researchers found the second most dangerous route was from Afghanistan to Europe, where around 8% of people reported they had been kidnapped at some stage along their journey. Frouws said the dehumanisation of refugees by politicians or the media was making it easier for smugglers to carry out such crimes. “The more they are dehumanised, there’s less and less outrage over this kind of inhumane treatment,” said Frouws. “Media articles talking about tides of migrants, waves of migrants, migrants streaming into Britain – all of this really dehumanises people and presents migration as something that is really out of control.” Last week, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, appeared to suggest that he would make it harder for people to seek asylum, a right enshrined in international law, in order to deter people from crossing the Channel. He was also criticised for repeatedly referring to people making the Channel crossing as “illegal” migrants. It is not against the law to seek asylum.California is now allowing a third gender option on state identification cards and driver’s licenses, a major win for non-binary people that could pave the way for reforms across the country. On Wednesday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) began issuing IDs to non-binary residents, who aren’t male or female, giving them an “X” marker instead of the traditional “M” or “F”. The new law is part of a recent wave of changes in states throughout the US that have made it easier for transgender, gender-nonconforming and intersex people to have accurate documents that recognize their identities. “I’m glad that finally non-binary people are recognized, that we exist,” said Alon Altman, who is genderqueer and was one of the first people in line on Wednesday morning to get their new ID. Altman, who uses gender-neutral “they/them” pronouns, said the document provided a formal rebuttal to bigoted people who continue to assert that “there are only two genders”: “Now, I have an official paper that says no.” Oregon became the first state to adopt the “X” marker for state IDs in 2017, and a number of states and cities have since followed suit and also adopted new rules to allow non-binary people to have gender-neutral markers on their birth certificates. At the same time, there have been legal battles and legislative efforts across the globe aimed at allowing non-binary passports. Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Canada and other countries have implemented changes, but the US government has not. Having the correct gender on a state ID can help non-binary and trans people in their daily interactions and transactions where they may be misgendered or denied basic recognition, whether at work, a bar, a doctor’s office, a bank, a police station or any other place where people have to show ID. “It’s the very beginning of a way larger fight,” said Nazanin Szanto, a 25-year-old genderqueer Oakland resident. “Non-binary people have been here forever … Now, we’re getting recognition. We’re getting a chance to live slightly more authentically.” California estimates that about 54,600 people will take advantage of the reforms and seek an ID gender change in the first year of the new law, said Artemio Armenta, a DMV spokesperson. The new law allows people to “self certify”, which means they don’t need medical records. This change will also make it easier for trans people to change their IDs to male or female since they previously required doctor’s notes. The state estimates roughly 20,000 people will seek gender changes each subsequent year, Armenta said. California often leads the way in progressive policies and could set the stage for the rapid adoption of reforms across the nation, said Toby Adams, the executive director of the Intersex and Genderqueer Recognition Project, noting that many in California have long advocated for this change and are heading to the DMV this week. “Having an ‘M’ or ‘F’ marker on that piece of identification that is used so frequently is really like being forced to carry around a lie about who you are,” she said. Xin Farrish and Char Crawford, who are San Francisco spouses and are non-binary, said they anticipated the “X” marker on their IDs would lead to frequent questions and opportunities to educate others about non-binary people. “I’m very eager and curious to see what will happen,” said Crawford, 34. “It’s the right thing to do … I do hope the rest of the country follows the lead of California and Oregon.” Farrish, 36, said people often make incorrect assumptions about their gender when they see their ID and hope the change to “X” can make a difference: “This feels like it is exactly right.” Some have recognized that there are risks to getting the “X” marker, including the potential for increased harassment or interrogation from federal agencies that don’t recognize the third gender option. “There are a lot of folks who can’t be out, and it’s safer for them to have ‘M’ or ‘F’ on their license,” said Szanto, who plans to get the “X” marker. “It’s not something that I’m doing for myself. It has a lot more to do with visibility and advocacy for folks who can’t be visible.” Altman, who works at Google and went to the Santa Clara DMV, live-tweeted their experience and said in an interview after getting their ID that the process was fairly smooth. At airports and other places, people often scrutinize their ID out of “curiosity”, they said. “They see me and say, ‘Wait is that a man or a woman?’ They think the IDs will tell the ‘truth’ … I don’t want to have to deal with people second-guessing, what is their real gender?”I met Freddy while I was at university. I introduced him to my sister. They hit it off and ended up in a relationship for six years. But then he got a new job and had to move away, and they broke up. By then, Freddy was a good friend and we kept in touch. I went travelling last year and heard Freddy was travelling, too, and that he would be homeless when he got back. I was planning to return at the same time, so I suggested we moved in together. My sister and I are very close. I don’t think she was best pleased – but only because she wanted me to move in with her. Perhaps she finds the situation a bit strange when she comes to visit, but it’s no big deal because I can go to her house instead. Freddy and I have a very intimate relationship, similar to that of a brother and sister. I feel protective about him. It’s a stronger bond than I have with any of my other friends. My friendship with Alice solidified when I was seeing her sister, Harriet, so I made an effort to keep in contact with her afterwards. Alice is an awesome person to have as a friend, and because the breakup with her sister was not traumatic, it meant Harriet and I stayed friends as well. I’m glad I don’t have to house-share with a stranger. We’re both quite laid-back, but because I work in art galleries installing exhibitions, I’m interested in the fine details of stuff. I’m probably quite annoying in that respect. I like things to be neat and tidy, and will make furniture to sort out a problem. Alice is really good at letting me do that stuff. I would happily buy a house with her. Living with her has made my life a whole lot better. • If you have a story to tell about who you live with, fill in this form and tell us a little about your set-up.A new road in the West Bank that separates Palestinian and Israeli drivers was closed by protesters on Wednesday, before they were dispersed by Israeli police deploying teargas and stun grenades. Route 4370 is dubbed the “apartheid road” by some campaigners because of its 8-metre dividing wall of concrete and metal. The western side of the road is principally for Israelis, and the eastern side principally for Palestinians. The road, which opened earlier this month, allows residents of Jewish settlements in the West Bank to reach Jerusalem faster than if they had to pass through the congested Hizma checkpoint north of the city. The Palestinian side of the road is designed to take cars into an underpass that will eventually connect the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem without motorists having to drive through Jerusalem. Most Palestinians living in the West Bank do not have permits to enter Jerusalem. A group of protesters, comprising Israeli, Palestinian and international activists, blocked access to the road for about 30 minutes on Wednesday morning, holding a banner saying “No to apartheid, no to annexation”. One person was arrested and another injured. “We came to protest against the opening of what is essentially an apartheid road. This road is mainly meant to benefit settlers. We don’t support segregated roads built on Palestinian land,” said Maya Rosen, one of the protesters. She said police had used teargas and stun grenades to disperse protesters. Israeli police could not be contacted for comment. Israeli officials say that both sides of the roads are open to Israelis and Palestinians as long as they have the correct documentation. Yisrael Gantz, the head of the Binyamin regional council, which represents more than 40 settlements and outposts in the West Bank, said the new road was “no less than an oxygen line for the region’s residents, who work, study and go out for entertainment in Jerusalem”. Access to the city had been “revolutionised”, he said. “The claim that this is an apartheid road is complete nonsense. Apartheid is discrimination based on ethnic and racial background,” Gantz told CNN. “The entry to Jerusalem through the [eastern] road is allowed to all those who have a legal entry permit, regardless of their nationality, religion, ethnic or racial background.” At the road’s opening ceremony, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of public security, said the road was “one move of many to strengthen … sovereignty in the region.” He added: “The road that was opened today is an example of how we can create mutual life between Israelis and Palestinians, while at the same time safeguarding all the existing security challenges.” Hanan Ashwari, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive, said: “The creation of this new apartheid road affirms Israel’s wilful intent to entrench its racist colonial regime and superimpose ‘Greater Israel’ on all of historic Palestine. “With the blanket support of the current US administration, including endorsement of Israel’s egregious violations and total disdain for international law and the global consensus, Israel is successfully destroying the territorial contiguity and territorial integrity of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) to enhance its colonial settlement enterprise and facilitate the creation of bantustans throughout occupied Palestine.” Bantustans or “homelands” were areas set aside for black South Africans under the apartheid regime. Israel has previously segregated roads in the West Bank. A section of route 443 was barred to Palestinian vehicles – easily identifiable by their yellow number plates – for eight years before Israel’s high court ordered the policy to end in 2010.The Foreign Office is seeking to recoup the cost of repatriating young women who have been forced into marriages overseas, it has been revealed, prompting charities to criticise the government for making women “pay for their protection”. An investigation found that many of the 82 victims of forced marriage repatriated in 2016-17 had to pay for living costs incurred between making distress calls and returning home, as well as their airfare, while others received loans from the Foreign Office. They had to give up their passports as a condition of the loan until they repaid the debt, with a surcharge added to unpaid bills after six months. Four young British women imprisoned and tortured at a “correctional” religious school in Somalia ahead of expected forced marriages told the Times they each had to pay £740 to return home, where the burden of the loans allegedly contributed towards them becoming destitute. Pragna Patel, the founder of Southall Black Sisters, a charity that helps women escape from forced marriages, told the Times: “These are vulnerable young women who have been taken abroad through no fault of their own and forced into slavery, and yet they are being asked to pay for their protection. It can’t be right. Protecting victims from forced marriage must be seen as a fundamental right and not a profit-making business.” In March 2017, the Foreign Office announced it would amend its repatriation policy so that British 16- and 17-year-olds who got into difficulty abroad would no longer have to reimburse the government the costs of their journey home. The policy is still in place for people aged 18 and over. The change came after the Guardian and the Muslim Women’s Network UK highlighted the practice of requiring victims of forced marriage to pay their own repatriation costs. The Guardian detailed the case of a 17-year-old British girl who arrived at the UK embassy in Islamabad in 2014 seeking help to escape a forced marriage. The girl, who could not be named for safety reasons, was required to sign a loan agreement and surrender her passport before she was flown back to the UK. She was then issued a bill for £814, the cost of her repatriation from Pakistan, and told she would not have her passport returned until she repaid the money. The joint Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office forced marriage unit works with charities, shelters and safe houses in a number of countries to ensure victims of forced marriage are safeguarded. It assists with rescues of victims held against their will overseas in extreme circumstances. Foreign nationals who had been living in the UK must pay for this service; UK nationals are not charged. Jeremy Hunt, the UK foreign secretary, who is in Singapore at the start of a three-day visit to Asia, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he wanted “to get to the bottom” of the issue. He said: “I have asked officials to give me some proper advice on the whole issue on the basis of seeing this story. “Any interventions that I have had on these consular matters I have always stressed to embassies and posts abroad that they need to use discretion. Of course we should always behave with compassion and humanity in every situation.” A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “In very exceptional circumstances, including in cases of forced marriage overseas, we can provide an emergency loan to help someone return home. “We recognise an emergency loan can help remove a distressed or vulnerable person from risk when they have no other options, but as they are from public funds we have an obligation to recover the money in due course. “When people contact us for help … we work with them to access their own funds, or help them contact friends, family or organisations that can cover the costs. Many of the victims who the forced marriage unit help are vulnerable, and when offering any support their safety is our primary concern.”Controversial documentaries about Michael Jackson and Harvey Weinstein are set to make waves at this year’s Sundance film festival. Leaving Neverland, a co-production between Channel 4 and HBO, will reportedly feature the stories of two men who claim that the singer sexually abused them as children. The film has already been labelled “an outrageous and pathetic attempt to exploit and cash in on Michael Jackson” by his estate. In response to protests from fans, Sundance released a statement to corporate partners. “We don’t currently plan to comment publicly or engage in the discourse around Leaving Neverland and would recommend that you do the same,” it read. “We plan to proceed with the screening as announced.” Local police are on alert for protests that are reportedly being planned on social media by Jackson’s fanbase. The Utah-based festival will also see the premiere of Untouchable, a documentary tracking the downfall of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, who allegedly carried out acts of sexual assault at Sundance in years prior. The film is set to feature many of his accusers speaking on camera for the first time. Last year, a hotline was launched for attendees to report incidents of sexual assault and it has been announced that it will be returning this year. A host of big stars will be descending on Park City with a lineup littered with A-listers from Jake Gyllenhaal to Keira Knightley. The Brokeback Mountain star will premiere Velvet Buzzsaw, his reunion with the Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy, a Netflix-produced horror set in the art world. After impressing audiences last year with literary drama Colette, Knightley will take on the role of whistleblower Katharine Gun in Official Secrets, one of many politically impassioned films premiering. Sundance will also see Vice unveil The Report, a fact-based drama about the investigation into CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation program, starring Annette Bening as Dianne Feinstein and recent Oscar nominee Adam Driver. Documentaries focused on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Steve Bannon will also be at the festival, which runs from 24 January to 3 February. The festival was started in 1978 by Robert Redford, who has praised this year’s diverse lineup which boasts female directors behind 45% of features and 36% from film-makers of colour. “Society relies on storytellers,” Redford said. “The choices they make, and the risks they take, define our collective experience. This year’s festival is full of storytellers who offer challenges, questions and entertainment. In telling their stories, they make difficult decisions in the pursuit of truth and art; culture reaps the reward.” Last year’s Sundance saw the launch of breakout horror Hereditary, Boots Riley’s satire Sorry to Bother You and critically acclaimed comedy Eighth Grade. Native Son Moonlight’s Ashton Sanders takes the lead in an adaptation of Richard Wright’s controversial novel about a young man’s descent into violence. Late Night Emma Thompson stars as a talkshow host forced to work with a female writer, played by Mindy Kaling, in one of the most high-profile films of the festival. The Lodge The directors of Austrian thriller Goodnight Mommy could well score this year’s Sundance horror hit with this slow-burn tale of psychological demons. The Last Black Man in San Francisco A fact-based drama about gentrification in San Francisco focused on a young black man trying to keep his grandmother’s house, played by the man whose life inspired it. Velvet Buzzsaw Jake Gyllenhaal reteams with the Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy for a creepy art world horror about a cursed set of paintings and the havoc they wreak. The Report Annette Bening stars as Senator Dianne Feinstein in a political drama about the investigation into the CIA’s post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Official Secrets The story of GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun is brought to life with Keira Knightley in the lead role and support from Matt Smith and Ralph Fiennes. Untouchable The latest, and reportedly most comprehensive, documentary about Harvey Weinstein, with many accusers speaking on camera for the first time. Share A bleakly topical drama about a high school girl who discovers that half-dressed, semi-conscious videos of her have gone viral. Blinded by the Light Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha aims for another crowd-pleaser with this coming-of-age tale of a Bruce Springsteen fan.Police have spoken to the Duke of Edinburgh after he was pictured driving a new Land Rover, seemingly without a seatbelt, just 48 hours after his crash with a Kia car carrying two women and a baby. Images published on Saturday appear to show Prince Philip, wearing tinted glasses, back behind the wheel of a replacement Freelander on the Queen’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk. The 97-year-old passed a police eyesight test on Saturday morning as the investigation into Thursday’s crash continued, with police saying “any appropriate action” would be taken if necessary. It also emerged on Saturday that police and councillors had clashed over plans to install speed cameras prior to Thursday’s crash. On Friday, the day after the Land Rover driven by the Queen’s husband was in the collision, Norfolk county council’s environment, development and transport committee approved the installation of cameras and a cut to the speed limit on the A149 near the Sandringham estate. But it has transpired the plans were agreed by police more than two years ago, only to be rejected by councillors, who feared the cameras would become a “cash cow”. Councillors called for further consultation before giving their backing, the Eastern Daily Press reported. Their move prompted Norfolk’s chief constable, Simon Bailey, to raise his concerns about the consequences if there was a serious accident. He wrote to Tom McCabe, Norfolk county council’s executive director of community and environmental services, in September, saying: “Whilst I appreciate the views of the local councillors are a key consideration, as I understand it, the responsibility for and the liability arising from the decision impacts on the council as a whole (particularly given the risk to the council in the event of legal challenge or a fatality). As such, can I ask if the matter has been raised with the relevant highways committee?” Bailey suggested the council’s decision to reject the plan could be exposed under the Freedom of Information act. He added: “As we are all well aware, decisions made by our respective bodies are subject to disclosure under FoI and may also be the subject of consideration by a court or at an inquest, so it is important for me to understand if and how those issues have been considered and what plans are in place to respond to any such eventuality.” In a move welcomed by police on Friday, Cllr Martin Wilby, chairman of the council’s transport committee, said: “The committee has agreed to reduce the speed limit of the A149 to 50mph on two sections of the road and approved the Norfolk Camera Safety Partnership scheme to install road safety cameras along the road.” Some motorists have criticised the use of speed cameras, seeing them as a tax on drivers. However, Luke Bosdet, a spokesman for the AA, said regular polls suggested they had more than 70% support among its members. “When they are in the right place and properly marked, they have their place,” Bosdet said. Norfolk police has said it “would be inappropriate to speculate on the causes of the collision until an investigation is carried out”. The passenger in the Kia car involved in the incident has been named by the Sunday Telegraph as Emma Fairweather, 45. She broke her wrist, and her friend was reported to have suffered cuts to the knee. Police said the nine-month-old baby boy was unharmed. The newspaper reports Fairweather, a mother-of-two, told family and friends she was unhappy with how the incident has been dealt with by police and Buckingham Palace. A Norfolk constabulary spokeswoman said the force was aware of the photographs taken on Saturday and that “suitable words of advice have been given to the driver”. She said: “This is in line with our standard response when being made aware of such images showing this type of offence.” Buckingham Palace did not comment on the images.A book once owned by Adolf Hitler, which scholars suspect was a blueprint for a Holocaust in North America, has been acquired by Canada’s national archive. The rare book, of which only a handful of copies remain, was bought online by government librarians last year and unveiled for the first time in Ottawa on Wednesday. The acquisition, which curators say will preserve a critical piece of history, comes at a time of growing antisemitism and Holocaust denial in Canada. Published in 1944 by the German researcher and linguist Heinz Kloss, Statistics, Media, and Organizations of Jewry in the United States and Canada is a disturbingly thorough catalogue of Jewish residents in the two countries and reflects Nazi plans in the event they gained control over the continent. “[The book] demonstrates that the Holocaust wasn’t a European event – it was an event that didn’t have the opportunity to spread out of Europe,” Michael Kent, a curator at Library and Archives Canada, told the Guardian. “It reminds us that conflicts and human tragedies that seemed far away could find their way to North America.” Experts believe the book was once part of Hitler’s extensive library at his alpine hideaway and was probably removed by Allied soldiers or dignitaries who visited the complex following the defeat of the Nazis. Kloss, who frequently worked for the Third Reich, used 1930s data, drawn from his extensive contact network of Nazi sympathizers, to sort Jewish residents in Canada by language and ethnic origins. “I think that’s part of the horrors of world war two and the Holocaust – recognizing how much intellectual effort went into work of the perpetrators,” said Kent. Acquired by a private collector in the US at a cost of US$4,500, the book will go on public display on Saturday, in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The item will become a permanent addition to archive’s collection of more than 22m books. The book highlights Nazi plans for an eventual presence in North America. They made larger strides than is often realized: in 1943, the year before Kloss’s book was published, the Germans established an automated weather station in what is now the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. There are also numerous wartime stories in eastern Canada of German U-boats making headway up the St Lawrence river. Kent likens the library’s recent acquisition to the Black Book, a list of prominent British residents identified as potential targets, in the event of a successful Nazi invasion of the United Kingdom. While many Holocaust memorials in the US refuse to acquire Nazi memorabilia – including the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC – the library’s mandate is to preserve and document historical items that are important to Canadian history, said Kent. “Obviously, given the provenance and given the subject matter of the book, there had to be a larger reflection than just our standard operating procedures,” he said. The acquisition by the national archive comes at a time when scholars have warned of rising ignorance among Canadians about the Holocaust. On Thursday, editors of a Toronto-based publication, Your Ward News, were found guilty of hate crimes for its depiction of women and Jewish figures. The judge called the paper’s views an “unrelenting promotion of hate”. The verdict follows a study that found more than half of Canadian adults were unaware that more than 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and as many as two-thirds of young respondents failed to demonstrate knowledge of the event. “I’m still fighting Nazis and white supremacists in ways that I never dreamed I’d be doing in retirement,” said Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. “When I go into schools I see young people who have not been taught the lessons of the past.” He hopes that better education – including the archive’s acquisition of the book – can combat the “absolutely horrendous” trend of ignorance among young Canadians. “I don’t want Nazi memorabilia falling into the hands of neo-Nazis. I do want Nazi memorabilia falling into the hands of Holocaust centres, museums and archives,” he said. “That’s where they belong, that’s where they can be studied and that’s where lessons will be learned.”Alex Salmond is one of the most significant political figures of recent British history, whose tenure as first minister of Scotland transformed the debate about the UK’s constitutional future. In less than a decade, Salmond succeeded in normalising the question of Scottish independence, rebuilt the Scottish National party into an electoral machine that has convincingly replaced Labour as Scotland’s dominant political force, and laid the groundwork for significant new powers for its devolved government and parliament. News of the charges against him will send shockwaves through his party and its current leadership. Although his influence has diminished markedly since he lost his House of Commons seat in 2017, Salmond still commands significant levels of loyalty among its activists and SNP parliamentarians. Many of them have supported him after the disclosure that the Scottish government had investigated allegations of sexual harassment from two female civil servants. When he launched crowdfunding to back his legal action over the government inquiry, he raised more than £100,000 from more than 4,000 people in a matter of days. On 7 January, after months of insisting it would robustly defend its handling of the harassment claims, the Scottish government admitted in an emergency court hearing it had botched it. Leslie Evans, Scotland’s chief civil servant, acknowledged the official charged with handling the formal inquiry had in fact met and counselled both women before they had officially complained. Evans insisted that the outcome did not “have implications, one way or the other, for the substance of the complaints or the credibility of the complainers”, but acknowledged that prior contact was unlawful and gave the appearance of bias. The Police Scotland investigation was already under way, and entirely separate from Salmond’s legal dispute with his former government. Salmond had become the first SNP first minister in 2007, winning the Holyrood election by a single seat over Labour, with bullish promises to re-energise the Scottish government, making bold offers to abolish student debt and cut local taxes. By then an SNP veteran, it was Salmond’s second stint as leader. He had led the SNP through the 1990s when it was a minor political force with just six MPs. He resigned in 2000, for reasons which remain poorly understood, but came back as leader in 2004, to recast his party as a far more disciplined, focused force. Running a minority government with a one-seat advantage forced Salmond into delicate parliamentary alliances at Holyrood, most notably with the Scottish Conservatives. Their horse trading over police numbers, business rates and drugs policy meant the Tories backed Salmond at budget time. Confronted with an adept and combative SNP leader, Scottish Labour imploded, losing a series of Holyrood leaders, and found itself out of power in Westminster too. In the 2011 Holyrood elections, Salmond led the SNP to a landslide victory. Holyrood’s proportional voting system was designed to promote power-sharing. But for the first time since the Scottish parliament’s formation in 1997, Salmond was leading a majority government. That in turn put the SNP’s quest for a referendum on Scottish independence immediately on to the agenda. The SNP was unprepared for this, but within a year the UK government headed then by David Cameron, a Tory prime minister, agreed to legally enable a referendum to take place. At that stage support for independence hovered at around 32%; by September 2014 when the referendum was held, the pro-independence vote had jumped as high as 52% after a remarkably vigorous and passionate campaign, putting the UK government into a tailspin of panic. In the event, Salmond and the independence campaign lost 55% to 45%. Overshadowed during the campaign by his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond resigned as first minister and SNP leader the following day. Sturgeon was anointed party leader and then first minister in November 2014 without a contest. Buoyed by an extraordinary surge in SNP membership after the independence referendum, under her leadership the SNP won nearly every Westminster seat in Scotland in the 2015 general election. Diminished by the defeat in 2014, Salmond became his party’s foreign affairs spokesman at Westminster – a role he never appeared to enjoy, often subtly contradicting Sturgeon in public on policy. Over the following years their once-close friendship came under strain and has since been destroyed. After the 2016 Brexit referendum found Scotland voting in favour of EU membership while England voted to leave, Salmond helped persuade Sturgeon this was the time to launch a fresh campaign for Scottish independence. He believed this the best possible opportunity to do so. Yet angry that Brexit was being weaponised to resurrect independence, Scottish voters disagreed; the SNP lost 21 of its 56 Westminster seats in the snap election called by Theresa May in 2017. Crucially, one of those was Salmond’s. He was furious. After 30 years in either the Commons or Scottish parliament, and at one time in both, he was out of power. Senior party sources say Salmond blamed Sturgeon’s election campaign. Nursing his wounds, he sought other employment and landed a controversial contract with the Russian government-funded TV station RT to host a chatshow. Sturgeon was furious about that, and made it clear privately. When news of the Scottish government’s internal investigation leaked, Sturgeon chose to firmly side with her officials and the rights of women to be protected and heard, rather than her former mentor and close friend. In the days since winning his civil action against the Scottish government, Salmond’s grudge against her grew into an open feud, appearing to end any prospect of his return as an SNP figurehead.Westminster is in deadlock. The progress of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement has stalled in parliament, where a majority of MPs are opposed to it. Jeremy Corbyn has refused to enter talks with the prime minister until she rules out a no-deal Brexit, a demand she describes as “an impossible condition”. So how do our political representatives get themselves out of this impasse? “Negotiation is an art, not a science,” says Dr J Simon Rofe, a reader in diplomatic and international studies at Soas, University of London, who teaches a course called “the art of negotiation”. “There is no manual and some people are better at it than others,” he said. The best approach to political arbitration has been theorised over for thousands of years – from Thucydides and Plato to Cardinal Richelieu – and the fact we haven’t come up with a set of definitive guidelines is a testament to the complexity of the matter, said Rofe. But there are some things that experts in negotiation can agree are vital. “The first and most overriding one is listening to the other party, which is perhaps common sense,” said Rofe. “There has to be mutual respect. You have to listen [to the person you are negotiating with] and not talk over them and be prepared to take on board their point of view. That is not something that has been very evident in the debate in this country in the past couple of years.” Philip Williams, a senior consultant at the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), is a former director of the UK’s Hostage and Crisis Negotiation programme. “There is not an incident that I have been involved in in the past – whether it be suicide intervention, kidnap, hijacking or a big siege – where there has not been deadlock, and not just one period of deadlock, but many, many periods of deadlock, big and small,” he said. “It is about keeping going and being creative and flexible. “When people say: ‘How did you talk them into doing that?’, we would say: ‘We didn’t. We listened them into it’,” he said. Amid criticism of Corbyn’s hardline approach, the shadow home secretary Diane Abbott insisted on Thursday night her party was “prepared to be flexible on everything”. “We are not being rigid like the prime minister,” she said. “The only thing we are saying is she has to take no-deal off the table.” “It’s very common in very difficult negotiations for parties to want to set parameters before they have the conversation and sometimes you can see justification for it,” said Dr Karl Mackie, chief executive of CEDR and an internationally recognised mediator in commercial disputes. “But in my experience, most of the time, the key thing is to treat it holistically, have the conversation, get all the issues on the table, like them or not, because that’s the reality of the world,” he said. “It feels like, at the moment, the condition that has been set is already implicitly agreed by everyone, so why spend time putting people in a position where someone has to lose face.” Cathie Jo Martin, professor of political science at Boston University who co-edited the Political Negotiation Handbook, said there were similarities between the crisis in Westminster and the government shutdown in the US in the apparent lack of interest in compromise displayed by key players. “If our children behaved in this way, we mothers would give them a time-out,” she said. “Too bad that one cannot do the same for unruly politicians.” She said good negotiation required those involved to avoid “sibling rivalries”, ie a preoccupation with the idea that the other party could get more from a proposed deal, and sacrificing something that would leave everyone better off to prevent that. Rofe said one thing required for effective negotiation, which Westminster politicians do not necessarily have, is time. “Being given the opportunity to have those conversations is important. Having to do it now under these circumstances and under this timeframe is not ideal.” MPs should set aside two or three days for intensive discussion, rather than having hurried meetings in the evening, said Mackie. “Theresa May had her Chequers moment with her own party. She also needs to extend that kind of intensive get-together to other parties.” And Westminster needs outside help to reach an agreement – preferably from an impartial international politician with good diplomacy and negotiation experience, who is supported by professional mediators. “Good football teams need coaches and good negotiators need coaches too,” said Mackie. “They need people there who could keep the momentum going in the negotiation without a stake in the outcome … and it would take some of the burden off the shoulders of Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May.” “We have got limited time,” said Mackie. “We’re now in a crisis negotiation. Two years ago we could have been in a thoughtful negotiation. At the moment politicians are not giving any indication that they are capable of reaching a mature outcome, but let’s get them together and see what they can do with support.”Christopher Wylie, the Canadian whistleblower who last year exposed the misuse of data by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, has been hired by the Swedish fashion retailer H&M. The business confirmed that it had signed a consultancy contract with Wylie, who will take the role of research director. His main focus will be “to help H&M group improve its capabilities within consumer, product and market insights. Besides that, he also supports our work on sustainable and ethical AI,” said a spokesperson for the retailer. It comes after H&M reported its sixth consecutive quarter of falling profits, as well as an announcement in March that it had an increased level of unsold garments, worth more than $4bn (£3.05bn) in total. As a result, the company is stepping up its use of data and artificial intelligence to predict future sales and minimise such costs. Wylie was working towards a PhD in fashion trend forecasting when he joined SCL Elections, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. He devised a method that used personal information harvested from Facebook accounts to create political and psychological profiles of users. Targeted advertisements could then be used to influence the political opinions and voting habits of those signed up to the social network. The method was found to have been used during the 2016 US presidential election. Last November, Wylie was invited to speak at the annual Business of Fashion Voices event in Oxfordshire, where he explained that “music and fashion are the most informative [tools] for predicting someone’s personality”. He also spoke of how Cambridge Analytica had “exploited the cultural narratives that the fashion and culture industry put out”, but placed blame with the fashion industry itself for allowing such narratives to develop. Wylie also revealed how his research had found that fans of American denim brands such as Wrangler, Hollister and Lee Jeans were found to be more likely to engage with pro-Trump messaging. Fashion labels such as Kenzo or Alexander McQueen were more likely to attract Democratic voters, he said. Wylie had tweeted about trips to Sweden twice in the last month, where H&M’s head office is based. News of his hiring follows extensive efforts by the retailer to improve its stance on ethical and sustainable fashion. In April, H&M will launch its latest Conscious Exclusive collection, which promotes the use of recycled materials. The group is also reported to be increasing its focus on its non-core brands such as Monki, & Other Stories, Cos and Weekday. In September, the H&M chief executive, Karl-Johan Persson, said the effects of the company’s revamp could start to be seen in sales as it developed better ways to forecast trends and prices.A successful society is a progress machine. It takes in the raw material of innovations and produces broad human advancement. America’s machine is broken. The same could be said of others around the world. And now many of the people who broke the progress machine are trying to sell us their services as repairmen. When the fruits of change have fallen on the US in recent decades, the very fortunate have basketed almost all of them. For instance, the average pretax income of the top 10th of Americans has doubled since 1980, that of the top 1% has more than tripled, and that of the top 0.001% has risen more than sevenfold – even as the average pretax income of the bottom half of Americans has stayed almost precisely the same. These familiar figures amount to three-and-a-half decades’ worth of wondrous, head-spinning change with zero impact on the average pay of 117 million Americans. Globally, over the same period, according to the World Inequality Report, the top 1% captured 27% of new income, while the bottom half of humanity – presently, more than 3 billion people – saw 12% of it. That vast numbers of Americans and others in the west have scarcely benefited from the age is not because of a lack of innovation, but because of social arrangements that fail to turn new stuff into better lives. For example, American scientists make the most important discoveries in medicine and genetics and publish more biomedical research than those of any other country – but the average American’s health remains worse and slower-improving than that of peers in other rich countries, and in some years life expectancy actually declines. American inventors create astonishing new ways to learn thanks to the power of video and the internet, many of them free of charge – but the average US high-school leaver tests more poorly in reading today than in 1992. The country has had a “culinary renaissance”, as one publication puts it, one farmers’ market and Whole Foods store at a time – but it has failed to improve the nutrition of most people, with the incidence of obesity and related conditions rising over time. The tools for becoming an entrepreneur appear to be more accessible than ever, for the student who learns coding online or the Uber driver – but the share of young people who own a business has fallen by two-thirds since the 1980s. America has birthed both a wildly successful online book superstore, Amazon, and another company, Google, that has scanned more than 25m books for public use – but illiteracy has remained stubbornly in place, and the fraction of Americans who read at least one work of literature a year has dropped by almost a quarter in recent decades. The government has more data at its disposal and more ways of talking and listening to citizens – but only a quarter as many people find it trustworthy as did in the tempestuous 1960s. Meanwhile, the opportunity to get ahead has been transformed from a shared reality to a perquisite of already being ahead. Among Americans born in 1940, those raised at the top of the upper middle class and the bottom of the lower middle class shared a roughly 90% chance of realising the so-called American dream of ending up better off than their parents. Among Americans born in 1984 and maturing into adulthood today, the new reality is split-screen. Those raised near the top of the income ladder now have a 70% chance of realising the dream. Meanwhile, those close to the bottom, more in need of elevation, have a 35% chance of climbing above their parents’ station. And it is not only progress and money that the fortunate monopolise: rich American men, who tend to live longer than the average citizens of any other country, now live 15 years longer than poor American men, who endure only as long as men in Sudan and Pakistan. Thus many millions of Americans, on the left and right, feel one thing in common: that the game is rigged against people like them. Perhaps this is why we hear constant condemnation of “the system”, for it is the system that people expect to turn fortuitous developments into societal progress. Instead, the system – in America and across much of the world – has been organised to siphon the gains from innovation upward, such that the fortunes of the world’s billionaires now grow at more than double the pace of everyone else’s, and the top 10% of humanity have come to hold 85% of the planet’s wealth. New data published this week by Oxfam showed that the world’s 2,200 billionaires grew 12% wealthier in 2018, while the bottom half of humanity got 11% poorer. It is no wonder, given these facts, that the voting public in the US (and elsewhere) seems to have turned more resentful and suspicious in recent years, embracing populist movements on the left and right, bringing socialism and nationalism into the centre of political life in a way that once seemed unthinkable, and succumbing to all manner of conspiracy theory and fake news. There is a spreading recognition, on both sides of the ideological divide, that the system is broken, that the system has to change. Some elites faced with this kind of gathering anger have hidden behind walls and gates and on landed estates, emerging only to try to seize even greater political power to protect themselves against the mob. (We see you, Koch brothers!) But in recent years a great many fortunate Americans have also tried something else, something both laudable and self-serving: they have tried to help by taking ownership of the problem. All around us, the winners in our highly inequitable status quo declare themselves partisans of change. They know the problem, and they want to be part of the solution. Actually, they want to lead the search for solutions. They believe their solutions deserve to be at the forefront of social change. They may join or support movements initiated by ordinary people looking to fix aspects of their society. More often, though, these elites start initiatives of their own, taking on social change as though it were just another stock in their portfolio or corporation to restructure. Because they are in charge of these attempts at social change, the attempts naturally reflect their biases. For the most part, these initiatives are not democratic, nor do they reflect collective problem-solving or universal solutions. Rather, they favour the use of the private sector and its charitable spoils, the market way of looking at things, and the bypassing of government. They reflect a highly influential view that the winners of an unjust status quo – and the tools and mentalities and values that helped them win – are the secret to redressing the injustices. Those at greatest risk of being resented in an age of inequality are thereby recast as our saviours from an age of inequality. Socially minded financiers at Goldman Sachs seek to change the world through “win-win” initiatives such as “green bonds” and “impact investing”. Tech companies such as Uber and Airbnb cast themselves as empowering the poor by allowing them to chauffeur people around or rent out spare rooms. Management consultants and Wall Street brains seek to convince the social sector that they should guide its pursuit of greater equality by assuming board seats and leadership positions. Conferences and ideas festivals sponsored by plutocrats and big business – such as the World Economic Forum, which is under way in Davos, Switzerland, this week – host panels on injustice and promote “thought leaders” who are willing to confine their thinking to improving lives within the faulty system rather than tackling the faults. Profitable companies built in questionable ways and employing reckless means engage in corporate social responsibility, and some rich people make a splash by “giving back” – regardless of the fact that they may have caused serious societal problems as they built their fortunes. Elite networking forums such as the Aspen Institute and the Clinton Global Initiative groom the rich to be self-appointed leaders of social change, taking on the problems people like them have been instrumental in creating or sustaining. A new breed of community-minded so-called B Corporations has been born, reflecting a faith that more enlightened corporate self-interest – rather than, say, public regulation – is the surest guarantor of the public welfare. A pair of Silicon Valley billionaires fund an initiative to rethink the Democratic party, and one of them can claim, without a hint of irony, that their goals are to amplify the voices of the powerless and reduce the political influence of rich people like them. This genre of elites believes and promotes the idea that social change should be pursued principally through the free market and voluntary action, not public life and the law and the reform of the systems that people share in common; that it should be supervised by the winners of capitalism and their allies, and not be antagonistic to their needs; and that the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo should play a leading role in the status quo’s reform. This is what I call MarketWorld – an ascendant power elite defined by the concurrent drives to do well and do good, to change the world while also profiting from the status quo. It consists of enlightened businesspeople and their collaborators in the worlds of charity, academia, media, government and thinktanks. It has its own thinkers, whom it calls “thought leaders”, its own language, and even its own territory – including a constantly shifting archipelago of conferences at which its values are reinforced and disseminated and translated into action. MarketWorld is a network and community, but it is also a culture and state of mind. The elites of MarketWorld often speak in a language of “changing the world” and “making the world a better place” – language more typically associated with protest barricades than ski resorts. Yet we are left with the inescapable fact that even as these elites have done much to help, they have continued to hoard the overwhelming share of progress, the average American’s life has scarcely improved, and virtually all of the US’s institutions, with the exception of the military, have lost the public’s trust. One of the towering figures in this new approach to changing the world is the former US president Bill Clinton. After leaving office in 2001, he came to champion, through his foundation and his annual Clinton Global Initiative gatherings in New York, a mode of public-private world improvement that brought together actors like Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller Foundation and McDonald’s, sometimes with a governmental partner, to solve big problems in ways plutocrats could get on board with. After the populist eruption that resulted in Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 US election, I asked the former president what he thought lay behind the surge of public anger. “The pain and road rage we see reflected in the election has been building a long time,” he said. He thought the anger “is being fed in part by the feeling that the most powerful people in the government, economy and society no longer care about them or look down on them. They want to become part of our progress toward shared opportunities, shared stability and shared prosperity.” But when it came to his proposed solution, it sounded a lot like the model to which he was already committed: “The only answer is to build an aggressive, creative partnership involving all levels of government, the private sector and nongovernment organisations to make it better.” In other words, the only answer is to pursue social change outside of traditional public forums, with the political representatives of mankind as one input among several, and corporations having the big say in whether they would sponsor a given initiative or not. The public’s anger, of course, has been directed in part at the very elites he had sought to convene, on whom he had gambled his theory of post-political problem-solving, who had lost the trust of so many millions of people, making them feel betrayed, uncared for and scorned. What people have been rejecting in the US – as well as in Britain, Hungary and elsewhere – was, in their view, rule by global elites who put the pursuit of profit above the needs of their neighbours and fellow citizens. These were elites who seemed more loyal to one another than to their own communities; elites who often showed greater interest in distant humanitarian causes than in the pain of people 10 miles to the east or west. Frustrated citizens felt they possessed no power over the spreadsheet- and PowerPoint-wielding elites commensurate with the power these elites had gained over them – whether in switching around their hours or automating their plant or quietly slipping into law a new billionaire-made curriculum for their children’s school. What they did not appreciate was the world being changed without them. Which raises a question for all of us: are we ready to hand over our future to the plutocratic elites, one supposedly world-changing initiative at a time? Are we ready to call participatory democracy a failure, and to declare these other, private forms of change-making the new way forward? Is the decrepit state of American self-government an excuse to work around it and let it further atrophy? Or is meaningful democracy, in which we all potentially have a voice, worth fighting for? There is no denying that today’s American elite may be among the more socially concerned elites in history. But it is also, by the cold logic of numbers, among the more predatory. By refusing to risk its way of life, by rejecting the idea that the powerful might have to sacrifice for the common good, it clings to a set of social arrangements that allow it to monopolise progress and then give symbolic scraps to the forsaken – many of whom wouldn’t need the scraps if society were working right. It is vital that we try to understand the connection between these elites’ social concern and predation, between the extraordinary helping and the extraordinary hoarding, between the milking – and perhaps abetting – of an unjust status quo and the attempts by the milkers to repair a small part of it. It is also important to understand how the elites see the world, so that we might better assess the merits and limitations of their world-changing campaigns. There are many ways to make sense of all this elite concern and predation. One is that the elites are doing the best they can. The world is what it is, the system is what it is, the forces of the age are bigger than anyone can resist, and the most fortunate are helping. This view may allow that elite helpfulness is just a drop in the bucket, but reassures itself that at least it is something. The slightly more critical view is that this sort of change is well-meaning but inadequate. It treats symptoms, not root causes – it does not change the fundamentals of what ails us. According to this view, elites are shirking the duty of more meaningful reform. But there is still another, darker way of judging what goes on when elites put themselves in the vanguard of social change: that doing so not only fails to make things better, but also serves to keep things as they are. After all, it takes the edge off of some of the public’s anger at being excluded from progress. It improves the image of the winners. By using private and voluntary half-measures, it crowds out public solutions that would solve problems for everyone, and do so with or without the elite’s blessing. There is no question that the outpouring of elite-led social change in our era does great good and soothes pain and saves lives. But we should also recall Oscar Wilde’s words about such elite helpfulness being “not a solution” but “an aggravation of the difficulty”. More than a century ago, in an age of churn like our own, he wrote: “Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.” Wilde’s formulation may sound extreme to modern ears. How can there be anything wrong with trying to do good? The answer may be: when the good is an accomplice to even greater, if more invisible, harm. In our era that harm is the concentration of money and power among a small few, who reap from that concentration a near monopoly on the benefits of change. And do-gooding pursued by elites tends not only to leave this concentration untouched, but actually to shore it up. For when elites assume leadership of social change, they are able to reshape what social change is – above all, to present it as something that should never threaten winners. In an age defined by a chasm between those who have power and those who don’t, elites have spread the idea that people must be helped, but only in market-friendly ways that do not upset fundamental power equations. Society should be changed in ways that do not change the underlying economic system that has allowed the winners to win and fostered many of the problems they seek to solve. The broad fidelity to this law helps make sense of what we observe all around: powerful people fighting to “change the world” in ways that essentially keep it the same, and “giving back” in ways that sustain an indefensible distribution of influence, resources and tools. Is there a better way? The secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a research and policy organisation that works on behalf of the world’s richest countries, has compared the prevailing elite posture to that of the fictional 19th-century Italian aristocrat Tancredi Falconeri, from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard, who declares: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” If this view is correct, then much of today’s charity and social innovation and buy-one-give-one marketing may not be measures of reform so much as forms of conservative self-defence – measures that protect elites from more menacing change. Among the kinds of issues being sidelined, the OECD leader wrote, are “rising inequalities of income, wealth and opportunities; the growing disconnect between finance and the real economy; mounting divergence in productivity levels between workers, firms and regions; winner-take-most dynamics in many markets; limited progressivity of our tax systems; corruption and capture of politics and institutions by vested interests; lack of transparency and participation by ordinary citizens in decision-making; the soundness of the education and of the values we transmit to future generations.” Elites, he wrote, have found myriad ways to “change things on the surface so that in practice nothing changes at all”. The people with the most to lose from genuine social change have placed themselves in charge of social change – often with the passive assent of those most in need of it. It is fitting that an era marked by these tendencies should culminate in the election of Donald Trump. He is at once an exposer, an exploiter and an embodiment of the cult of elite-led social change. He tapped, as few before him successfully had, into a widespread intuition that elites were phonily claiming to be doing what was best for most Americans. He exploited that intuition by whipping it into frenzied anger and then directing most of that anger not at elites, but at the most marginalised and vulnerable Americans. And he came to incarnate the very fraud that had fuelled his rise, and that he had exploited. He became, like the elites he assailed, the establishment figure who falsely casts himself as a renegade. He became the rich, educated man who styles himself as the ablest protector of the poor and uneducated – and who insists, against all evidence, that his interests have nothing to do with the change he seeks. He became the chief salesman for the theory, rife among plutocratic change agents, that what is best for powerful him is best for the powerless too. Trump is the reductio ad absurdum of a culture that tasks elites with reforming the very systems that have made them and left others in the dust. One thing that unites those who voted for Trump and those who despaired at his being elected – and the same might be said of those for and against Brexit – is a sense that the country requires transformational reform. The question we confront is whether moneyed elites, who already rule the roost in the economy and exert enormous influence in the corridors of political power, should be allowed to continue their conquest of social change and of the pursuit of greater equality. The only thing better than controlling money and power is to control the efforts to question the distribution of money and power. The only thing better than being a fox is being a fox asked to watch over hens. What is at stake is whether the reform of our common life is led by governments elected by and accountable to the people, or rather by wealthy elites claiming to know our best interests. We must decide whether, in the name of ascendant values such as efficiency and scale, we are willing to allow democratic purpose to be usurped by private actors who often genuinely aspire to improve things but, first things first, seek to protect themselves. Yes, the American government is dysfunctional at present. But that is all the more reason to treat its repair as our foremost national priority. Pursuing workarounds of our troubled democracy makes democracy even more troubled. We must ask ourselves why we have so easily lost faith in the engines of progress that got us where we are today – in the democratic efforts to outlaw slavery, end child labour, limit the workday, keep drugs safe, protect collective bargaining, create public schools, battle the Great Depression, electrify rural America, weave a nation together by road, pursue a Great Society free of poverty, extend civil and political rights to women and African Americans and other minorities, and give our fellow citizens health, security and dignity in old age. Much of what appears to be reform in our time is in fact the defense of stasis. When we see through the myths that foster this misperception, the path to genuine change will come into view. It will once again be possible to improve the world without permission slips from the powerful. This is an edited extract from Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas, published by Allen Lane on 24 January and available to buy at guardianbookshop.com • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.Since Greggs announced a new vegan alternative to its meaty sausage roll at the start of the year, the Quorn pastries have “flown off the shelves”, the bakery chain says, selling hundreds of thousands in the first week alone. Its success is a testament to both a remarkable PR stunt and the seemingly unstoppable rise of veganism, which, according to a new study, has been led by Bristol. If you have a vegan friend you will know it The online food blog Chef’s Pencil used Google Trends data to look at the most popular cities for vegan-related searches, which were at record levels last year, rising 11% from 2017 and 35% from 2016. According to Google Trends, the interest level around the world for all things vegan – restaurants, recipes, dog food – was highest in Bristol, followed by Portland, Edinburgh, Vancouver and Seattle. Six of the top 20 cities were in the US, with European and Australian cities also showing a strong interest in going meat-free. Google searches won’t give you an accurate idea of how many people commit to vegan diets or buy vegan products, but Chef’s Pencil says the analysis does tell you there “is an intent in taking action about your diet” in these cities. “In Bristol there is a vibrant local community,” says a spokesperson from Chef’s Pencil, “and having a core community of vegans plays a huge role because they’re so active and loud. If you have a vegan friend you will know it.” Bristol has long been seen as place for all things green and liberal. It’s home to the Viva! animal rights campaigning group. Three out of four Bristol MPs say they are vegan or veggie. And the online community Vegan Bristol has a long, thorough list of places that are meat-free. Portland’s vegan voice is equally loud. Paul McCartney and the animal rights campaign group Peta named it the most vegan-friendly city in 2016, even handing the mayor a bouquet of vegetables. Portland has a vegan summer camp, a venue for punk music that also promotes veganism, a vegan shopping mall and even a vegan strip club. The rise of veganism has undoubtedly been led by city dwellers. A 2016 UK survey by the Vegan Society found veganism was significantly more popular in urban areas rather than rural places. Two-thirds of those surveyed who said they didn’t eat meat and avoided dairy products lived in urban and suburban Britain. This is partly due to a greater ease of access to vegan options, according to Sam Calvert from the Vegan Society. A vegan for 24 years, she remembers a lot of friends in previous years saying it would be “too hard” to eat out and find suitable alternatives. With more choices available now, people are more likely to make that leap. “The typical vegan would be young and female, and you’re more likely to find young people in cities,” she says. “As with all communities it’s easier to find more people of the same in cities. There are lots of vegan meet-up groups, which tend to be in cities.” Other cities have seen the veggie lifestyle promoted from a political level, mainly for environmental reasons and as a push towards sustainability. In 2016 Barcelona declared itself vegan- and vegetarian-friendly, encouraging residents to embrace a meat-free diet by promoting meat-free Mondays and creating a vegetarian guide to the city. That same year Turin’s new mayor declared the Italian city to be the world’s first “vegan city”. “The promotion of vegan and vegetarian diets is a fundamental act in safeguarding our environment, the health of our citizens and the welfare of our animals,” the city said in a statement. It was intended as programme to raise awareness of sustainability and alternatives to meat, but was unsurprisingly divisive. If being a true “vegan city” involved banning the sale of meat or dairy products, then the Gujarat town of Palitana would be on the list. A hunger strike by Jain monks in 2014 led to the local government declaring the city and its holy sites to be meat-free zones. Interestingly, while India is viewed by the rest of the world as a predominantly vegetarian country, research last year from the US-based anthropologist Balmurli Natrajan and the India-based economist Suraj Jacob suggested only about 20% of India’s population are vegetarian – lower than official statistics suggest. The Indian cities with the highest proportion of people with vegetarian diets are Indore with 49%, Meerut with 36% and Delhi with 30%. Most lists of vegetarian- or vegan-friendly cities are based on the number of veggie restaurants or cafes in a place rather than the amount of people interested in practising veganism. According to Happy Cow, a crowdsourced list of veggie and vegan restaurants, London is the most vegan-friendly city in the world. It was the first on the site to surpass 100 completely vegan restaurants, in 2017, and currently has 110 vegan eateries in a five-mile radius within the city. It is closely followed by Berlin, with 65 vegan restaurants within a five-mile radius. But perhaps it is all in a name. Last year animal rights activists tried to change the name of the West Country village of Wool to “Vegan Wool”. If the proposal had been accepted by the parish council (it wasn’t), then this unassuming place in Dorset would have surely taken the title of the world’s vegan capital by default. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereIn the last nine months of 2018, according to the United Nations, Palestinians – many of them children – were killed at the rate of around one a day while taking part in protests along Israel’s perimeter fence with Gaza about their right to return to ancestral homes. They included medics and journalists. Most of the dead were unarmed and posed no danger to anyone, with little more than rocks in their hands and slogans on their lips. Yet Israel continued with an immoral and unlawful policy that sees soldiers of its military, which is under democratic civilian control, shoot, gas, shell and kill protesters, including those who pose no credible threat. Hospitals in Gaza, which already struggle under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, have been stretched to breaking point in dealing with the flood of patients ferried in from the protests. In its defence, Israel’s diplomats cast Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, as terrorists who are organising demonstrations in “a war zone”. It would appear, sadly, that Israel wishes to conduct a war over the airwaves, as well as one on the ground, against the Palestinians. This blatant disregard for Gazan lives and the lack of accountability is underpinned by a politics of resentment and dissembling that has profound repercussions for Israel. If one can kill with impunity, then can one lie without consequence? The tensions between judicial and public opinion will be tested in the cauldron of Israel’s general election. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, unexpectedly called for early elections in December in what seems a transparent bid to head off possible corruption charges. The decision by Mr Netanyahu to dissolve the Knesset came days after the state prosecutor’s office recommended that Israel’s attorney general indict Mr Netanyahu on charges of bribery, which he denies. Mr Netanyahu is not only running for a fifth term in office, he is also running for his political life. His lawyers, it is reported, are arguing that a possible indictment be delayed; on the campaign trail Mr Netanyahu casts himself as an embattled leader persecuted by a leftwing elite comprised of lawyers, journalists and human-rights do-gooders. Echoing his friend Donald Trump, Mr Netanyahu has told reporters that Israel can choose its leadership only at the ballot box and not through legal investigations, which are a “witch-hunt”. Like the US president, the message from Mr Netanyahu is that democratic norms, those unwritten rules of toleration and restraint, are for the weak, not for the strong. Yet without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances are less mainstays of democracy than a mirage. The novelist Amos Oz’s words that “even unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation” have been ignored for too long. Mr Netanyahu’s nearest rival brags that he sent parts of Gaza “back to the stone age” when in the military. Mr Netanyahu would dismiss Oz’s warnings; but perhaps he ought to take heed of the recent spat between the historian Benny Morris and the writer Gideon Levy. The former, who made his name by lifting the veil on the ethnic cleansings on which Israel was founded, but drifted rightwards to say that these heinous crimes did not go far enough, and the latter, a leftwing columnist, agree that the two-state solution is a fading prospect. Mr Netanyahu lulls the public with the notion that a two-state solution will wait until Israel deems the conditions to be ripe. He hints that new friends in Washington, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi will come up with a proposal the Palestinians will swallow. This is pure cynicism. There is no new plan – just a rebranding of the status quo, maintained by force by Israel, and with Palestinians within and without Israel’s borders subjugated and dependent. Israelis must turn away from the occupation, which is debasing their society and suffocating the Palestinians.Wally Downes said the fear of being humiliated on live television inspired his AFC Wimbledon players to a historic FA Cup win against West Ham on Saturday night. A late goal from the substitute Toby Sibbick ensured the League One side will be involved in Monday’s fifth-round draw as they sealed a thrilling 4-2 victory at Kingsmeadow. Downes, the former Wimbledon midfielder who returned to south London as manager in December, was delighted to have caused an upset against the club where he spent 18 months as a coach. “If we had played like we did on Tuesday, it would have been a cricket score,” he said. “Fear is the biggest motivator in the world and it forced them into playing well. Now they’ve shown me they have got that ability. “This should breed confidence because we’re going to Sunderland next, who were a Premier League club two years ago and are at the top of the table now. You can’t go there as shrinking violets and you can’t go there as Charlie Big Potatoes. They have to perform again.” Several members of Wimbledon’s 1988 FA Cup-winning side were at Saturday’s Cup tie, including Vinnie Jones, who was working for BT Sport and saw the new incarnation of his former club race into a 3-0 lead. Even though West Ham cut the deficit to 3-2 with 19 minutes left after goals from the substitutes Lucas Pérez and Felipe Anderson, Downes insisted he had remained calm throughout. “They had chances to make it 3-3 but you have to ride your luck against a Premier League team,” he said. “You need to be in control of your emotions and you need to be thoughtful about what you’re going to do. “To be honest, I hadn’t planned to be 3-0 up and hanging on for grim death. That was the first time we have had that. You can’t allow your thinking to be clouded. You need to be measured and not lose your head.”Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will hold a second summit near the end of next month, the White House has announced, after the president held an Oval Office meeting with a North Korean emissary. Kim Yong-chol, North Korea’s top negotiator and a veteran spy chief, met the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for about an hour in a Washington hotel about an hour from the White House, and then spent a bit more than an hour and a half with Trump in the Oval Office, before leaving for a lunch with Pompeo, to discuss more details. After the envoy left the White House, Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, put out a statement saying the two men had met “to discuss denuclearization and a second summit, which will take place near the end of February”. “The president looks forward to meeting with Chairman Kim at a place to be announced at a later date,” Sanders said. US diplomats have been scouting locations in the Pacific for the second summit, including Hanoi, Bangkok and Hawaii, with the Vietnamese capital currently seen as the more likely. Since the first summit in Singapore in June, North Korea has continued its pause in nuclear and missile tests, and Trump has called off joint military exercises between US and South Korean forces, but it has not led to any substantial dismantling of Pyongyang’s nuclear programme that Trump claimed would follow from the Singapore summit. There has been evidence that North Korea has stepped up uranium enrichment and missile production. This week the vice-president, Mike Pence, conceded that Washington was still “waiting for concrete steps” from the Kim’s regime, and the US unveiled a plan for a significantly expanded missile defence system, much of it designed to counter what the Pentagon termed “an extraordinary threat” from North Korea. For its part, the Pyongyang regime has insisted that it will not unilaterally disarm, and has demanded the relaxation of international sanctions before offering any more concessions on its nuclear programme. Kim Jong-un is also demanding security guarantees from the US, and a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean conflict. The last time Kim Yong-chol, whose official title is vice-chairman of the Workers’ party, was in Washington, to finalise arrangements for Singapore, he presented Trump with a letter from the North Korean leader in an outsized envelope. Trump and Kim Jong-un have already exchanged letters in recent weeks, and the US president at one point claimed that they were so positive, the two men had “fallen in love”. The North Korean former spy chief has returned to the US capital at a time when Trump is under intense pressure from a special counsel investigation into his campaign’s links to the Kremlin, and he is locked into a struggle with Congress that has led to a partial government shutdown. “I sense a little bit of desperation on the part of the president to try and get a meeting to take all of the attention away from everything else,” Victor Cha, a former national security council official, told NBC News.In 2017, a US law firm signed a contract with the Sudanese government, to assist in efforts to lift the economic sanctions that had been suffocating the country since 1997. Within weeks, George Clooney and John Prendergast, veteran activists for human rights in Sudan, wrote a letter in Time magazine, objecting to this. They asked rhetorically, did the law firm’s senior ranks, filled with ex-senators and congressmen, not know that president Omar al-Bashir’s regime had committed mass atrocities? That it was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur? That it persecuted Christians? “The question of their firm working in the service of such a brutal and vile regime can only be answered by the simplest of terms,” they concluded. “Probably, they just don’t know.” The sanctions were lifted, but it made little difference. The world had forgotten Sudan and was in no rush to be reminded. All that was associated with the country, ticked off neatly in the Clooney/Prendergast letter, was unsavoury. So allow me to remind you. For the past four weeks, Sudan has been seized by a popular uprising on the part of a people that has been suffering under a brutal dictatorship for 30 years, and from the effects of the global human rights machine that cut them off from the world for 20. Now, as people rise up to remove a government that western campaigns have failed to vanquish, the moral market is closed In late December, protests at rising inflation started, small but angry, then spread. As the momentum increased, the government’s response grew more thuggish. Intimidation of protesters turned into imprisonment and beatings, tear gas turned to live bullets. Last week, the shooting of a young doctor assisting injured protesters drew a mob outside the hospital in which he died. The crowd swelled with anger and mourning until the small hours of the morning. At his funeral the next day, instead of fear, there was more determination, as his wake turned into another protest. Every day brings fresh tales of bloodshed and loss, videos of mothers wild with grief when their children’s bodies are brought home, and yet every day the Sudanese people leave their homes and workplaces and march into a storm of bullets and tear gas. It is no longer about inflation. For the past 30 years, corruption, ethnic division, impoverishment to the benefit of a networked few, and religious oppression have gripped the country. And death. So much death. In wars in the south, east and west of the country, in the government’s own “ghost houses” and torture cells, and in the wards of hospitals, where babies have died for want of an oxygen canister. The rising anger has burst its banks and has nowhere to flow but into the streets, deluging the government and its security forces, and seriously threatening its survival for the first time. And yet, the Sudan human rights community that secured an international criminal court arrest warrant for Bashir on charges of war crimes, and lobbied to the last minute against the lifting of sanctions, does not seem as exercised by these developments. This is the closest the government has come to collapsing, and those who supposedly fought for this for years are missing in action. Over the past two decades, an entire human rights industry has thrived around Sudan and its volatile government. There was no more fashionable cause. The government’s brutality was parcelled off into neat little David and Goliath narratives, each with its own infrastructure of funding, advocacy and massive media campaigns. The Christian south had to be saved from the savage, Muslim north, and so Christian lobby groups and celebrities midwifed the birth of South Sudan. So, in Darfur, an ethnically purist Arab regime victimised African tribes. It happened in other parts of the country too, such as the Nuba mountains and Kordofan. The Arab/African binary was boosted by the government’s association with Osama bin Laden in the 90s, which landed the country with the super pariah “terror sponsor” designation. And so western governments mobilised, economic sanctions were slapped on the country, South Sudan seceded, and the human rights caravan moved on, content with having done its moral duty in ejecting the Sudanese government from polite global society. It didn’t matter that those sanctions were doing nothing but empowering Bashir and slowly choking the people. And now, when those people finally rise up, paying with their lives to remove a government that several western campaigns have failed to vanquish, the moral market seems to be closed. There is no narrative, you see, no ethnic angle, no religious angle, no duality that an advocate can wedge themselves between and sell. It’s just a good old fashioned uprising in a dusty Saharan country where the virtue dividends for an intermediary are low. This might seem bloodless and cynical, but consider this simple fact. In 2008, the collective Sudan celebrity/high-profile politician vehicle formally coalesced into an Africa monitoring organisation called Not On Our Watch, whose name came from a chant at Darfur rallies in the mid-noughties, the biggest of which, in 2006, attracted the attendance of then-Senator Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Alongside two others, it was founded by Clooney and fellow actors Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Brad Pitt. The last update on its website is from 4 December 2018, an item about a new book on the Congo, featuring photographs by Ryan Gosling. The question of their organisation making no mention of Sudan’s uprising, and the deaths of protesters at the hands of such a brutal and vile regime can only be answered by the simplest of terms. Probably, they just don’t know. • Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnistAs I do most years, I watched the Golden Globes red carpet show last week. I like red carpet shows. Among other things, I like the parade of pretty frocks and the awkwardness of one group of adults milling around shouting the names of another group of adults nearby. This year, however, the entertainment was impaired by the sense that – as the parenting manuals like to say – I was showcasing bad behaviour for my daughters. Along with “can I have a treat?” and “when is it going to be my birthday?”, the question “do I look pretty?” now comes up regularly in my house – and the attraction of the rote answer, “yes”, has started to pall. I can’t put all the blame on the Disney princesses, although God knows they don’t help. The present generation of animated heroines have been given “feisty” attitudes and desires beyond marriage, but, with the exception of Moana, they still have tiny waists, tinier noses and, in the case of Elsa from Frozen, an amazing Dolly Parton chest that busts out at the climax of Let It Go, to the ongoing amazement of her four-year-old fans. Recently, out of curiosity, I flipped to a page in People magazine and asked one of my daughters who was prettier: a glamorous woman in her 50s or a glamorous woman in her 20s. Without knowing who they were, the age gap was almost imperceptible, but she glanced down and pointed effortlessly to the younger woman. I tried this several times and both daughters always called the “right” answer. None of this is news. But to see the bias in action, and to hear myself consolidate it by saying, as I do without thinking, “you look so pretty” has been sobering. In a UK study undertaken by the Girl Guides last year, more than a third of seven to 10-year-old girls said they were made to feel the way they looked was more important than anything else. In the US, the journal Science published a paper in which the question “is my daughter overweight?” was googled 70% more often than the question “is my son overweight?” It’s not something we can opt out of, but these days I’m at least trying to check myself. “Do I look pretty?” asked my daughter the other day, to which I replied, “you look extremely kind and very clever.” She was not impressed by this. “Anyway it’s not a competition,” I said, at which point my other daughter chipped in with, “it’s important to be a good girl, right?” and I found myself hesitating. “Up to a point,” I said. She looked at me quizzically. “It’s important to do what mummy says,” I said and we all stood for a moment in baffled silence. There is some hope. At the weekend, I took them to an event they have been begging to go to, billed as a Princess Show, which promised to introduce them to the real Elsa, Rapunzel, Moana and Ariel-from-the-Little-Mermaid. Dutifully we waited in line for the photo op and when we got to the front, they stared at the adult women in Disney costumes and wigs and both looked completely appalled. “Go on,” I said, pushing them towards the line-up. But they wouldn’t. “It’s Elsa!” I said brightly, but both my children scowled. “It isn’t real,” said one of them. Now if only they can hang on to that lesson. • Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist based in New YorkIt was a pity John Coleman saw fit to savage Jon Moss, stealing the headlines when his players’ tremendous performance against Derby deserved more attention. The referee did not get everything right but the Accrington manager was wrong to describe his decisions as horrendous, particularly as his supposedly worst call only led to the corner that resulted in the goal. Frank Lampard was on safer ground talking of the magic of the FA Cup. “We had 2,500 fans here and I thought it was great, it felt like a proper game,” the Derby manager said. “I’ve played in Cup ties like that for Chelsea, we won 1-0 at Scarborough a few years back and by no means were we the much better team. This was difficult, it was real football, and I’m glad my players experienced it. That’s the beauty of the FA Cup, it’s not just about winning the final, it’s about adapting to new challenges and different conditions. I enjoyed being a part of it.” Paul Wilson • Waghorn’s late winner ends Accrington dream Even by West Ham’s standards the timing was curious. Minutes after their defeat by AFC Wimbledon was confirmed on Saturday night the club’s Twitter account announced their star forward had signed a contract extension. “I glad [sic] to play again, show myself and score goals, to make assists,” said Marko Arnautovic, who had been linked with a move to China. “But also to say that the major point is Marko Arnautovic never refused [to play or train]. I would never refuse.” The Austrian was nowhere to be seen at Kingsmeadow as West Ham failed to reach the fifth round for the third successive season but he is expected to be in contention to face Wolves on Tuesday having made only three appearances in 2019. Yet after he appeared so willing to leave West Ham to “win titles” in China, one has to doubt whether Arnautovic will stick around much longer. Ed Aarons • Wagstaff double sends West Ham packing • Scott Wagstaff, who scored twice for AFC Wimbledon against West Ham, had scored twice in his previous 44 appearances in all competitions. • Manchester City have won all seven of their games in 2019, scoring 30 times in the process. • Millwall are the first club from outside the top division to win  five consecutive FA Cup home games against top division sides since West Ham between 1958 and 1991. • Jake Cooper, who brought Millwall level at 2-2, has been directly involved in nine goals in 17 home games this season, more than any other defender in England’s top four divisions. • As a result of their 4-1 win over Gillingham, Swansea City reached the last 16 of the FA Cup in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1963-64 and 1964-65. Ole Gunnar Solskjær gave a little tactical insight with the nonchalance of a kid solving a Rubik’s Cube with one hand whirring away while staring casually into the middle distance. The matter in question was the posting of Romelu Lukaku down the right channel. Solskjær proved his eye for strategic awareness by identifying the need to put someone physically strong against the barrelling Sead Kolasinac – one of Arsenal’s most productive instigators of attacks – while also noting the opposition full-backs leave spaces to exploit. Bingo. Lukaku was highly influential, creating two goals with precision passes for Alexis Sánchez and Jesse Lingard, while also nullifying a threat. Solskjær’s shrewd choices and calm explanations provide further evidence there is more to this situation than an old friend turning up and making everyone feel happy. He means business. Amy Lawrence • United beat Arsenal to maintain Solskjær’s perfect start Gonzalo Higuaín was energetic and whole-hearted, super-keen to make an impression on his Chelsea debut against Sheffield Wednesday; to illuminate his first appearance in English club football with something special. It did not happen. The service from a Chelsea midfield which saw three different players tried in the role in front of the back four was poor but what stood out was that understanding would not come instantly. “He made a couple of great moves in the first half but we couldn’t find the right ball,” Gianfranco Zola, the Chelsea assistant manager, said. “We couldn’t see his movements.” A number of quality players have laboured in the role of Chelsea No 9 – even Eden Hazard – and it is because it is a tough gig; heavy on workload, surprisingly low on touches. It will be fascinating to see whether Higuaín can make the necessary adjustments in the coming weeks. David Hytner • Hudson-Odoi on target as Chelsea progress Mauricio Pochettino’s decision to leave Christian Eriksen out of his squad was a factor in Spurs’ defeat at Selhurst Park but it was understandable with the Dane having played 90 minutes against Chelsea on Thursday, a testing Premier League match against Watford on Wednesday, Borussia Dortmund on the horizon, and the very real risk of losing him to injury amid Harry Kane’s and Dele Alli’s enforced absences. With Lucas Moura, Érik Lamela and Fernando Llorente, Pochettino still had enough attacking options to beat Palace but was let down by his players up against a Palace central defensive pair who have played only one game together this season. That Spurs did not score is testament to Martin Kelly, Scott Dann and Roy Hodgson’s coaching but also how disappointing Lucas, Llorente and Lamela, as a second-half substitute, were. James Piercy • Wickham ends long wait to knock out Tottenham For Pep Guardiola the challenge for Manchester City is clear – try to “imitate Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich” by relentlessly competing for trophies. This was the manager’s mantra after City cuffed Burnley aside 5-0. “It’s important in January we are there,” Guardiola said. “The big clubs, that is the big difference – Juventus, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, these are the best teams in the last decade in Europe: why? Because every season they win the league, every season they win the cups, every season they are there [competing]. It’s [very] difficult to imitate them. So Premier League until the end, Carabao Cup final after [winning it last season] – chapeau, hats off for my players. Through in the FA Cup, prepare to play Schalke in the Champions League [next month]. That’s when you become a better team, a better club.” Jamie Jackson • De Bruyne thunderbolt leaves Burnley reeling Dave Parnaby could not hide his disappointment when the team-sheets were distributed. The former head of Middlesbrough’s academy had hoped to watch one of his old protégés, Matty Dolan, play in midfield for Newport. Dolan, though, was feeling his way back from hamstring trouble and began on the bench, leaving Parnaby, watching from the press box, to wait 87 minutes for his introduction. And what a bow it was too – in the fourth minute of stoppage time, a swipe of Dolan’s left foot made it 1-1, setting the scene for an evocative replay at Rodney Parade. The Teessider left Boro without making a first-team appearance and seemed slightly startled to find himself addressing a post-match media conference but, tellingly, Dolan spent a fair percentage of it praising Parnaby’s influence on his career. Louise Taylor • Dolan stuns Boro to earn Newport a replay Just over a year since Marco Silva was sacked by Watford there are no strong suggestions he is going to suffer the same fate at Everton any time soon. Equally Silva finds himself on increasingly icy ground after seven defeats in 12 games with the most recent being the worst. There was an element of injustice to Everton’s defeat by Millwall given the handball involved in Jake Cooper’s goal but, regardless, they deserved little given how poorly they defended at set pieces and how little they offered in attack. And therein lies a major problem for Silva – Everton’s failings keep repeating themselves, fuelling the belief held by an increasing number of observers that he is a manager incapable of learning from his mistakes. Silva’s task between now and the end of a season with otherwise little meaning for Everton is to prove the naysayers wrong. Sachin Nakrani • Everton up in arms over Wallace’s late Millwall winner Watford visit Tottenham on Wednesday in the Premier League and, with FA Cup semi-finals played at Wembley, the midfielder Will Hughes said: “Let’s hope this is the first of three visits to Wembley this season.” Watford reached the semi-final in 2016 – losing to Crystal Palace – and with 33 points in the league, Javi Gracia’s squad can have a go in the Cup. Gracia’s 11 changes for their fourth-round win at Newcastle – “the most important thing is the confidence I have in all my players” – highlighted Watford’s depth, certainly in contrast to that of their opponents. “Today is the 26th of January,” said a downbeat Rafael Benítez of the absence of Newcastle recruits. “We have what we have. We have 15 games now to play in the league and we have to be sure everyone is focused and no distractions. I have no reason to say anything more.” Michael Walker • Gray pounces to fire Watford past limp Newcastle Absent ball boys is a new one when it comes to reasons for adding on time but that, according to Sam Ricketts, was factored into the six additional minutes at New Meadow on Saturday. Wolves completed their comeback from two goals down in the 93rd minute to deflate Shrewsbury and prompt criticism of an injury time that was surprising and costly. Ball boys were moved for their own safety when trouble broke out between rival fans after Luke Waterfall’s 71st-minute goal for the League One side. But there were no prolonged breaks in play as a consequence and only those ball boys close to the scuffles were shifted. It did not explain six minutes of stoppage time in a Cup tie featuring six substitutions and no physio involvement, although it was a stretch to claim that was the cause of Shrewsbury’s heartache. While Wolves were given fresh impetus by the time-keeping, it was Shrewsbury’s inability to hold out for the win that lay at the root of Ricketts’ anger. Andy Hunter • Doherty’s last-minute rescue act saves WolvesThis was a defeat to leave all Chelsea’s frailties brutally exposed and the head coach reverting to his native tongue to make clear the depths of his dissatisfaction. Overwhelmed as Arsenal ripped into them through a one-sided first half, Maurizio Sarri’s team had no incision of their own with which to muster anything approaching a riposte. A side lacking a focal point to their front-line limped away in defeat attempting to recall what had constituted their solitary shot on target, and with the gap to fifth and sixth place trimmed to a precarious three points. Their efforts had been feeble. They are a team treading water at present with Gonzalo Higuaín, a short-term fix at 31 and a striker with no previous experience of the helter-skelter of this division, cannot arrive on loan from Juventus soon enough. How they could have done with the Argentinian in his pomp here as they attempted to retrieve the deficit shipped in that furious opening period, though that lack of firepower was only one aspect of the problem. Their play was too stodgy, their threat only ever sporadic, but it was Sarri’s attack on their character which will have stung most of all. His post-match laceration questioned his players’ motivation, determination and, as a result, their basic commitment. A club which only recently was built around John Terry and Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Petr Cech, has suddenly been rendered mentally frail. Prone to implosion. A side who roll over who are “never going to be a team well known for its battling and fighting qualities”. That was utterly damning, the kind of public criticism that, when key players had the owner’s ear, might actually have left the head coach’s position under serious scrutiny. Sarri’s predecessor, Antonio Conte, was once rendered equally livid by a thrashing in this arena, but duly ripped up his blueprint and started again with a completely different approach. Chelsea went on to win the title that season. Sarri, however, does not work that way. He was brought to this club to play a certain way, with a style that established his reputation at Napoli, and he will not change. Yet, if this group really cannot adapt, that inflexibility could end up costing all dear. Their points tally is identical now to the same stage last season, when Conte’s tenure was apparently unravelling, but they have scored one goal fewer. This is a team whose identity is drifting. They had wilted before the break, blown away by Arsenal’s greater intensity. Their defending was made to look flimsy by the excellence of Aaron Ramsey, Alexandre Lacazette and a workaholic Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and a tigerish midfield. Yet, in many ways, it was the inability to recover which was more troubling. Marcos Alonso nodded against a post, the 16th time this season Chelsea have struck the woodwork, but that was as close as they came. The statisticians’ insistence that the visitors had managed a first shot on target since the 64th minute against Newcastle seven days previously had felt generous, whether it referred to Ross Barkley’s attempt, blocked by Laurent Koscielny, just after the hour-mark or Alonso’s cross shot, pushed away by Bernd Leno, eight minutes from time. Regardless, each effort had been repelled with relative ease. It was telling that Koscielny, a player whose form had been rusty ahead of a sixth league appearance after seven months out with a ruptured achilles, looked a centre-half reborn. The days when Drogba would rampage at will in this arena, wrecking Arsenal opponents’ careers en route, have never felt more distant. This was a victory to cherish for Unai Emery after a difficult week. His switch to a diamond midfield, tipped by the Juventus-bound Ramsey, proved a masterstroke, and the furious nature of the hosts’ first-half display showcased Arsenal at their attacking best. The hosts might have scored three times even before, as the quarter-hour mark approached, Lacazette collected Héctor Bellerín’s centre on his instep amid a clutter of opponents. The Frenchman, initially with his back to goal, twisted smartly away from Pedro and beyond Alonso’s half-hearted attempt to block before, with the angle suddenly horribly tight, spitting away a shot which ripped high inside Kepa Arrizabalaga’s near-post with the goalkeeper pawing at fresh air. Had they led by only one at the break, Arsenal might have been frustrated given the misses by Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Koscielny and Aubameyang. As it was, the home side would not be denied. Papastathopoulos’s optimistic shot six minutes from the interval turned into an astute cross with Koscielny, stooping on the edge of the six-yard box, looping in a second improbably off his right shoulder. Emery later suggested that progress was being made on Denis Suárez’s loan arrival from Barcelona, the only sour note on a restorative evening’s work a serious knee injury sustained by Bellerín late on. That will need to be scanned “but first impressions are not positive”. His team have already claimed more points – eight – against the top six this season than they did last, and are now hovering alongside Manchester United on Chelsea’s shoulder. Both will smell blood.Vice-president Mike Pence said Donald Trump has yet to decide whether he will declare a national emergency over his demand for a wall along the southwest border – the key sticking point in negotiations over the partial government shutdown that has affected 800,000 federal employees. White House counsel is reviewing whether the president has the ability to declare a national emergency in the current situation, Pence told reporters at a media briefing on Monday. He added that the administration would prefer to secure the funding for border security from an agreement with Congress. “What I’m aware of is that they’re looking at it and the President is considering it,” Pence said during the briefing alongside homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Office of Management and Budget acting director Russell Vought in Washington. But asked whether Trump has made up his mind on declaring a national emergency as a way to bypass congressional approval and move ahead with spending public money on construction of the wall, as the president has repeatedly threatened in recent days, Pence replied: “He’s made no decision on that.” Such a move would all but certainly invite legal challenges. Trump nevertheless declared on Monday that there was”no doubt” he had the legal authority to declare a national emergency but said “let’s get our deal done in Congress” despite the impasse with the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives over the matter. As the shutdown stretches into its third week, the Internal Revenue Service announced on Monday that it would process tax returns beginning 28 January 2019 and would provide refunds to taxpayers despite the shutdown. The agency said it would be recalling some of its furloughed employees to process the filings. Amid the tense stand-off in Washington, Trump announced he would make his public case for $5.7bn in funding to build a border wall during a rare prime-time national televised address on Tuesday night from the Oval Office followed by a visit to the border on Thursday. “President @realDonaldTrump will travel to the Southern border on Thursday to meet with those on the frontlines of the national security and humanitarian crisis,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said, announcing the visit on Twitter. It is not yet known which part of the 1,989-mile border, which crosses four US states, Trump plans to visit or what he plans to do there. Negotiations between Democratic congressional leaders and the White House are at a stalemate with both sides dug in over the wall after fraught meetings last week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called the wall “immoral” and refuses to budge on providing taxpayers’ funding for it. As a first act, the newly-empowered House Democrats passed legislation last week to re-open the government while congressional leaders and the administration continued to debate border security. But the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said he would not take up legislation the president did not support. House Democrats have vowed to pass a series of smaller spending bills that would individually fund federal agencies, a strategy that is unlikely to move Republican leadership. Senate Democrats are, meanwhile, threatening to block any legislation that does not reopen the federal government as a way to pressure McConnell to bring up a government funding bill for a vote in the Senate. Pence had convened senior administration officials and congressional aides for a series of meetings over the weekend, which he described as productive. A Democratic aide said there was no progress was made. At the briefing on Monday, reporters asked the vice-president why Trump’s $5.7bn demand is so much more than the administration sought only a few months ago. He replied: “Things have gotten a lot worse.”The UN has tried to prevent the collapse of the ceasefire agreement in Yemen by endorsing a fresh security council resolution urgently increasing the number of monitors overseeing the deal in Hodeidah, the strategic port that lies at the heart of the three-year civil war. The resolution, drafted by the UK, extends the UN monitoring role for a further six months and increases the number of monitors to as many as 75 people. UN personnel are likely to be transferred from Djibouti to Hodeidah. The Houthi rebels and the UN-backed government of Yemen’s president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, have accused each other of multiple breaches of the ceasefire. The terms of that ceasefire – agreed in haste at UN-brokered talks in Stockholm in December – were seen as flawed due to a lack of precision and the country’s geographical limits. Having too few monitors has also made it more difficult for the UN to ascribe responsibility for breaches, and so prevent their repetition. The British and Americans have accused the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of breaching the spirit of the ceasefire after drones were used to attack a Yemeni government military parade, killing six people including the head of Yemeni intelligence. The Houthis said the attack in Lahij governorate was outside the ceasefire zone and accused the Saudi air force of continuing to launch airstrikes in Hodeidah since the ceasefire was announced on 18 December. Alistair Burt, the UK’s Middle East minister, in evidence to a Lords select committee on Wednesday, stressed that “the ceasefire was holding”, but admitted “confidence between the parties is nil”. The Houthis have started to boycott meetings of the UN-backed regional deployment committee (RDC). It was set up to oversee the ceasefire, including a phased withdrawal of Houthi forces and the introduction of a new security force in Hodeidah. Peter Salisbury, a senior Yemen analyst at the International Crisis Group, said in a recent report: “With the deadline for redeployments now past – they were scheduled for completion by 8 January – speculation is mounting that the deal may be on the verge of collapse. The Stockholm agreement is imperfect and imprecise, but it was hard-won. If it is allowed to break down, there will be no opportunity for a similar deal for a long time.” He added: “Unlike most ceasefire agreements, this one did not include technical details on the scope, nature or duration of the halt to hostilities; definition of breaches; or mechanisms for quickly stopping fighting if it breaks out anew.” Salisbury said the loopholes in the deal left the Houthis free to hand over the ports to themselves. The Houthi leadership claimed Patrick Cammaert, the UN chair of the committee, was overstepping his mandate, and that meetings were being held in Yemeni government-controlled territory. Burt said: “My sense is that it is only so far that a resolution can go. It is really about confidence-building between the parties.” He added it was critical to keep the RDC talks going. He warned: “It is not just the two parties in the room. The UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, estimates there could be as many as 1 million combatants in Yemen because other groups have joined the conflict.” Burt also disclosed that David Beasley, the UN world food programme director, had spoken this week “of a more positive Houthi attitude” to cooperation over the distribution of humanitarian supplies in its areas, which had improved, although food was still being diverted and taxes imposed. In another positive step, Jordan had agreed to stage talks next week on a mass political prisoner exchange, one of the confidence-building measures that the UN hopes could build trust. Burt said Oman’s foreign minister was acting as a mediator, adding the issue was “very live”. Burt, contrary to some American descriptions of the conflict, said he did not believe the Houthis were a proxy of Iran, describing them as independent-minded, and pointing out Iran had played a part in ensuring the Houthis attended the Stockholm talks. But he said it was not possible to minimise “the huge existential fears” felt by the Gulf states due to Iran. He said: “Saudi Arabia is not going to to take the risk of a border which could be under the influence, if not the control, of another power that it considers to be hostile.” The civil war in Yemen began in 2014 when the rebels captured the capital, Sana’a, and a Saudi-led coalition intervened a year later, fighting alongside government troops.The Oval Office is an iconic space in American political life. Televised addresses from the seat of presidential power have marked historic moments of national anxiety: JFK and the Cuban missile crisis, Ronald Reagan and the Challenger disaster, George H. W. Bush and the start of the Gulf War. To that august list we can now add Donald Trump and the most pressing crisis facing this commander-in-chief: the disastrous damage already inflicted on his own ego by his dopey idea of a beautiful border wall. This is a very real crisis inside one man’s cranium and it’s playing out in the living rooms of a weary nation. That crisis is called reality. At every campaign stop in 2016, Trump promised to build a wall that Mexico would pay for. Soon it became clear that Mexico was laughing too loud to pay for anything. Somewhere along the way, the wall became a series of steel slats. At this point, it’s hard to know which one of his many delusions are winning the day. When Trump’s lapdog Republicans controlled all of Washington, he couldn’t get Congress to pay for his wall. Now the Democrats control half of Congress, he thinks he can force Congress to pay for his wall. His forcing mechanism is to shut down his own government, claim credit for the shutdown, and then blame everyone else. Now he looks like a fool both before and after he loses this macho game of staring himself down in the mirror. A genius move nobody has ever dared consider. Until now. These desperate times call for desperate measures. If reality won’t bend to Trump, then Trump will have to bend reality. Sitting behind the Resolute desk where he sometimes poses to sign blank pieces of paper, Trump reframed his indiscriminate crackdown on immigrants as “a growing humanitarian and security crisis.” Summoning the shallow reserves of human empathy that lie buried deep within, he lamented how families were suffering at the border. “The children are used as human pawns,” he declared, noting that “women and children are the biggest victims, by far, of our broken system.” He gulped at the words on the prompter like he was swallowing horse pills How true. They have been used as human pawns – by a president with an immoral and illegal policy to separate infants from parents, locking up children in detention camps, and caring so little for their wellbeing that several have died in the custody of the richest country on the planet. Not since Hannibal Lecter tried to charm Clarice have we witnessed such a chilling love of humanity. To be fair, Trump isn’t concerned with all Americans. He’s especially troubled by the way immigrants are hurting our minorities. “Among those hardest hit are African-Americans and Hispanic Americans,” said the man who thought there were some very fine people among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. Far from reassuring a troubled nation, Trump did what he does best: he tried to scare the living daylights out of them. Especially the poor old scared folk who already watch Fox News. He said there are “vast quantities” of drugs coming over the Mexican border that would literally run into a brick wall if there was one. Or possibly a steel slat. He didn’t mention all the drugs smuggled in containers by land, sea and air, which get waved through customs. But he did mention the murders and rapes, the hammer beatings and knife stabbings, and of course the beheadings and dismemberments. And no, he wasn’t talking about his Saudi friends. He was talking about undocumented immigrants, who are in fact responsible for a lower crime rate than the general population. For a reality TV star, Trump is a helplessly untrained beast in his natural environment. This was less of a fireside chat than a trial by fire and brimstone. He gulped at the words on the prompter like he was swallowing horse pills. He sniffed and snorted between sentences like he was mid-way through the punishing workout of an elite 239-pound athlete. He squinted at the camera as if it was hiding between steel slats, made in American steel mills. Of course, this is no ordinary stage. Reagan was a camera-ready star but he never lived down his B-movie career in gems like Bedtime for Bonzo. Trump, on the other hand, will never live up to his primetime career as a businessman in The Apprentice. According to our entrepreneur-in-chief, his beloved border wall will pay for itself many times over by stopping all those drugs. It will also be paid for many times over by tariffs on Mexican goods. In that case, we have a self-financing bridge in Brooklyn that the Trump organization might be interested in purchasing. In one way, Trump is right. There is a national emergency threatening the peace and prosperity of its citizens. Americans desperately need a drastic intervention to wall off unprecedented and unwanted dangers to our law and order. But the solution is less of a construction than a prosecution. There are concrete and steel-slatted structures that can deal with the nefarious actors who are undermining America’s national identity in such profound ways. They may be a fifth century solution to containing threats to the public order, but they do succeed, no matter what the Democrats say. They’re called prison cells and you can find several of Trump’s one-time closest aides inside them now or soon. It is beyond time to recognize that foreigners have infiltrated this country’s borders, as malicious governments send us their very worst people. Unfortunately they are not crossing the southern border but rather taking flying caravans as they travel from Russia to meet with Trump’s aides in various foreign capitals. Some have even tried to melt into the heartland as card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association. If we ever needed a space force, it’s now. Failing that, the president could trust his own CIA and FBI again. Trump goes to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to round up a posse to take on the immigrants just as some of his formerly loyal deputies start to get scared off by common sense and the looming 2020 elections. This is no joke. In the blathering words of the great bumbler himself, this is “a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.” If they re-open the government and start paying people like the airport security officers, they could do no end of harm. We’re talking about Trump’s reputation here, not some trivial abstraction. “When I took the oath of office, I swore to protect our country,” Trump concluded. “And that is what I will always do, so help me God.” While you’re at it, dear Lord, please help the children at the border. They’re human pawns, you know. • Richard Wolffe is a columnist for the Guardian USThe world’s biggest tantric yoga school, which closed after multiple women alleged rape and sexual assault, has reopened with the accused leader back in charge and amid accusations that management suppressed an investigation into the abuse. Agama Yoga, which is located on the Thai island of Koh Phangan, shut down for “restructuring” in September after the Guardian published allegations by 14 women accusing the school of facilitating rape, sexual assault and misogynist teachings at the hands of its leader, Swami Vivekananda Saraswati, a Romanian whose real name is Narcis Tarcau, for 15 years. Sixteen former pupils and staff told the Guardian they thought a “sex cult” was operating inside Agama, and two formal accusations of rape against Tarcau were filed, though the three-month statute of limitations on rape cases in Thailand meant they could not be investigated by Koh Phangan police. Tarcau was also accused of using his influence to promote “dangerous” health theories, which allegedly contributed to at least two women not seeking treatment for cancer with “devastating consequences”. The school remains stripped of its Yoga Alliance certification. Tarcau left Thailand when several of the victims went public. The school apologised for “any harm that any Agama teacher may have caused” and pledged they were “dedicated to change”, hiring a consultant to carry out an independent investigation, before closing down operations to carry out a “restructuring”. But the Guardian can reveal that Tarcau has since returned to Koh Phangan and reopened Agama, where he is once again teaching female pupils in classes and workshops. On the Agama website in December he was listed as the teacher leading a New Year retreat as well as other yoga workshops, though later all teachers’ names were removed from the website. Several other teachers who were also accused of misconduct, rape, assault, or were accused of being part of attempts to cover up the allegation, have also returned to teach at the school. Multiple female complainants told the Guardian of their distress that the school had reopened with no acknowledgement of the allegations. Agama has also been accused of covering up the results of the investigation into the alleged abuse, which was carried out by independent consultant Helen Nolan. It is understood that none of those interviewed for the report have been sent a copy and its author has been banned from discussing or publishing her findings. Nolan told the Guardian that “despite being told that my report would be published, it was not. I was also reminded that my contract included a confidentiality clause, so I was not allowed to share the report with anyone.” Nolan said legally she was unable to discuss the contents of her final report but added: “The fact that they didn’t publish the report is telling in itself.” However, the Guardian understands that the report was “very critical” of Agama and could open the school up to lawsuits. Agama did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In previous statements to the Guardian, the school apologised for the “suffering expressed by many women” and added that “we have not, at any point, denied the allegations”, but also claimed there was a “campaign of hate” against the school. As well as allegations of sexual misconduct, concerns have been raised that the same alleged “brainwashing’ and “dangerous” health theories would resume with the school’s reopening with Tarcau at its helm. Ana Smith, the mother of former Agama pupil, Deborah Topp, claimed that in 2017 Tarcau convinced her daughter not to return to Australia for breast cancer treatment and instead follow his natural remedies, which included eating only brown rice and drinking her own urine and menstrual blood, which she said he claimed to have used in the past to “successfully cure cancer”. According to her mother, Topp only returned to Australia months later after the lump had grown rapidly and it emerged that “the three months she had stayed at Agama had been crucial to her survival”, said Smith. Despite a mastectomy, it was “too late”, said Smith, as the cancer had spread and “her chances of survival had long expired”. Topp died in December 2017. Smith, who said she was speaking out only because she had heard that Tarcau was reopening Agama, said she was “still trying to come to terms with this man’s arrogance and God-like image of himself”, which she claimed had contributed to her daughter’s death. “There is only regret that I did not travel to Agama and forcefully remove her from this man’s grip and influence,” she said. Agama did not respond to these direct allegations. After Tarcau returned to the island in late October staff member Mihaiela Pentiuc, who had promised reform in his absence, resigned. In a message on the school’s Facebook page she wrote: “I no longer have the authority nor the support to continue the internal restructuring and changes started under my initiative.” Since it has reopened, Agama has introduced “Boundaries and Consent/Conscious Touch Workshops”, which are mandatory for those taking part in tantra workshops, although the school has been accused of using this for profit, charging every pupil an additional fee to attend the class. Agama would not clarify if Tarcau or other accused teachers would be running these sessions. Due to the three-month statute of limitations on rape cases in Thailand, the police were unable to carry out an investigation into the rape reports filed against Tarcau. Koh Phangan police colonel Sathit Kongniam confirmed they were “still monitoring” Agama, and made regular visits to the school, although told the Guardian the police believed that Tarcau was no longer at the school.Imagine a shopper in an electronics store. Look, there’s a Fitbit display, with its “activity bands” which measure your steps and show details. Or, more pricey, its Versa smartwatch. Perhaps to save money, just buy the activity band? But wait … just over there are some generic activity bands, and they’re cheaper. Maybe save some money with those. Move along a bit, and there are GoPro cameras. But once again, there are some slightly cheaper models beside them; not well-known brands, but a camera is a camera, surely? Further along, there’s a Parrot drone. Next to those is a Sonos speaker, which works with Amazon’s Alexa. But beside it is a cheaper Amazon Echo, and a voice-controlled Google Home, and a Siri-enabled Apple HomePod. Why would you go with the smaller brand, faced with those offerings from tech’s behemoths? Or, at the previous displays, why not just buy the cheaper models? That’s the challenge for many consumer electronics firms. Not how to make things, or how to distribute them and get them in front of potential buyers. It’s how to make a profit. Out of Fitbit, GoPro, Parrot and Sonos – each operating in different parts of the consumer electronics business – only the latter made an operating profit in the last financial quarter, and all four have made a cumulative operating loss so far this year. Making a profit in hardware has always been difficult. By contrast, in software, all the significant costs are in development; reproduction and distribution are trivial – a digital copy is perfect, and the internet will transport 0s and 1s anywhere, effectively for free. If your product is free and ad-supported, you don’t even need anti-piracy measures; you want people to copy it and use it. Software companies typically have gross margins of around 80%, and operating profits of 40% or so. In hardware, though, the world now seems full of companies living by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s mantra that “your [profit] margin is my opportunity”. Indeed, Amazon is one of the reasons why long-term profit is more elusive: it provides a means for small startups to distribute products without formal warehousing arrangements, and compete with bigger businesses at lower cost. That, together with the rise of a gigantic electronic manufacturing capability in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, about an hour’s drive north of Hong Kong, has made the modern hardware business one where only those with huge reserves of capital and brand recognition can hope to thrive. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony can probably rely on their brand name; after that, it’s survival of the fittest. So is it already game over for GoPro and the rest? None is a newcomer. GoPro was founded in 2002 by Nick Woodman, who wanted to capture better pictures of a surfing trip to Australia; it came to market in June 2014. Sonos was also founded in 2002, focusing on multi-room high-quality sound, and came to the market earlier in 2018. Fitbit was set up in March 2007, and joined the stock market in June 2015. Parrot is the oldest of them all, founded in 1994 and has made many consumer electronics products, including a voice-recognition system (in 1995) and a Bluetooth-based hands-free kit for cars in 2000. Parrot got into drones, both for consumers and business, in 2010 and early in 2018, its chief executive and co-founder, Henri Seydoux, confidently called the drone market “the emergence of a new industry with global strategic and economic stakes”. By November, though, he was contemplating a 40% year-on-year crash in revenues. The shares sank to an all-time low of €1.58 (£1.44) – down from €37 in 2015 – valuing Parrot at less than its cash reserves. Seydoux insists the consumer drone market is just “taking a break”. Fitbit is struggling to move away from fitness bands – simple devices that record steps and calories burnt – where low-cost Chinese products are swamping the market. It is trying to shift into smartwatches, which are higher-priced, have more uses and generate higher customer loyalty. But it’s not easy; in the first nine months of the year it sold 8.4m fitness bands – and 2.8m smartwatches. The opportunity is there: Fitbit has 25m users who pay a subscription to its services, and could be future smartwatch buyers. But in the most recent quarter it made a $200m (£157m) operating loss on sales of $940m and over the past eight quarters it has made a net loss of $624m. Its shares, which hit $47 soon after its IPO in 2015, are now $4.97. GoPro has managed to stabilise its unit sales, at about 1m per quarter, but profitability has remained elusive. So it is trying to encourage owners on to a subscription offering, at $5 per month; so far 185,000 have signed up, generating about $11.1m a year. That’s about the same revenue as selling an extra 44,000 cameras – but the profit on subscriptions, as with software, is far higher than on the hardware. Its shares are currently at $4.24, down from $87 in 2014. “It’s harder for any company that focuses mainly on hardware to survive in the long term,” says Francisco Jeronimo, a smartphone analyst for the research group IDC. “But the big problem for many of these companies is that there isn’t a strong incentive to keep buying them. I might buy a GoPro, but I don’t need it on a daily basis if I have a smartphone. Same with Parrot – it’s a very niche segment. These companies were so eager to get to an IPO that they took advantage of the hype around their category, but haven’t been able to reinvent themselves, and they need to do that to keep alive.” The risk for such companies is that they are consigned to the virtual, or real, cupboard under the stairs to gather dust, while smartphone capability expands to take on functions that once needed a separate device. Yet it’s never been easier to make and sell hardware. Crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo provide easy ways to find early adopters who will stake money on entrepreneurs with unproven designs, which can then be realised in Shenzhen. The Pebble smartwatch raised $10.3m as a Kickstarter project in 2012, then its biggest-ever fundraising; it topped that in 2015, raising $20.3m for a newer model. Yet in December 2016 it announced it would close, citing financial trouble. (Fitbit bought its intellectual property – essentially, the smartwatch software – for $23m.) “Crowdfunding sites are great for attracting early adopters, but the majority of consumers don’t go there,” says Jeronimo. “It misleads companies into thinking their category is going to explode.” Even while it tried to expand beyond those early adopters, Pebble’s problem (which is now also Fitbit’s problem) was that Apple launched its own smartwatch in 2015, and quickly became the largest smartwatch maker. Sonos, similarly, found that a market it once had to itself – multi-room speakers streaming music and radio from the internet – turned into a jostling match with Amazon in 2014, followed by Google and most recently, Apple. Suddenly, everyone is making a “smart speaker”, and Sonos’s hardware-only model has come into sharp focus because it doesn’t have a native voice assistant (it is adding Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s ‘OK Google’). The ability for the big players to squash smaller players isn’t unique to hardware; Facebook has tried to do it to rivals such as Snapchat. But in hardware, firms such as Sonos find themselves assaulted by both the big brands and the unheard-of ones leveraging Shenzhen and Amazon’s distribution. Sonos’s response has been to insist that people will move upmarket, to its better sound quality. It is also looking for collaborations, most notably with Ikea, whose fruits are promised in 2019. Patrick Spence, the Sonos CEO, is confident he can rely on the existing Sonos user base of 20m devices across 7.4m households. “We have a strong base of existing customers that we can tap into and have a good relationship with,” he said in November. “And so, I think that puts us at an advantage, [compared with rivals] quite frankly.” But Amazon is coming up fast: it is reckoned to have 35m of its Echo devices installed in the US alone. The squeeze on smaller hardware players has played out before, in PCs and smartphones. In the mid-1990s, the PC market was dominated by American companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Gateway, Apple, Compaq, NCR, Packard Bell and Zenith. As manufacturing costs in the US rose, they shifted production to Taiwan, South Korea and, gradually, China – only to be usurped by local rivals using that manufacturing expertise and building international distribution networks. Now, only Dell, HP and Apple remain; the three other biggest PC makers are Acer and Asus, of Taiwan, and China’s Lenovo. Similarly in smartphones, the early advantage that American companies such as BlackBerry and Motorola had in 2009 was quickly eroded as the market expanded. Now there are hundreds of Chinese companies offering smartphones. But profits are thin: Counterpoint Research estimated recently that the top five smartphone companies grab 99% of the profits – leaving 600 others to scrap for the remaining 1%.Six days before Christmas, an airport security officer at Gatwick was finishing his shift at about 9pm when he saw something unusual. There were two drones, each in the shape of a cross, flying over the south perimeter road with sharply flashing lights. The worker reported what he had seen – and chaos ensued. About 1,000 flights affecting 140,000 passengers were cancelled or diverted across three days. Tempers flared, and hearts were broken. Two people were arrested and released without charge. The army was brought in. For all that activity, 11 days since Christmas and more than two weeks after that initial report, very little is known about what actually happened. Confusion has been the running theme, with suggestions that there might not have been any drones in the first place – or that many of the 100-plus sightings could have been anti-drone drones operated by the police. In addition to the passengers whose Christmas getaways were grounded, there were two additional victims in Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk, the 47-year-old and a 54-year-old arrested by Sussex police on 22 December, three days after the first drone sighting. Gait and Kirk were cornered into giving a public statement outside their home in Crawley on Christmas Eve, in which they said they felt “completely violated” by the arrest and subsequent media coverage. They were identified in many newspapers and the Mail on Sunday ran the couple’s picture on its front page next to the headline: “Are these the morons who ruined Christmas?” Calm has been restored to the small cul-de-sac a mile from the airport’s southern perimeter. Few neighbours are willing to talk to the media after, as one resident described, “constantly having our door knocked by journalists”. As the military took away anti-drone technology on Thursday, three plane spotters resumed their positions on the southern perimeter fence, huddled in the cold outside the offices of Scorpio Worldwide, a travel retail firm. Drones were far from their mind; they were more concerned with the difficulties Gatwick’s infrastructure presents for aviation enthusiasts. As for the police, they have fallen silent. The last update was on Saturday, when the chief constable of Sussex police, Giles York, said he was absolutely certain a drone was flown over Gatwick airport, but admitted that contradictory statements from other officers at his force “amplified the chaos” caused by the incident. He was alluding to the car-crash interview, in which one officer, DCS Jason Tingley, said there was “always a possibility that there may not have been any genuine drone activity in the first place”. It remains the case that apart from Gait and Kirk there have been no arrests. Two damaged drones recovered nearby have been ruled out of the inquiry. No individual or group has come forward to claim responsibility. Gatwick, which has offered a £50,000 reward, is very much on a “business as usual” footing. The most repeated question in the pages of commentary given to the incident has been: could this or will this happen again? There have been some legislative changes to deal with drones but ultimately experts say these will not help to identify rogue operators. “The civil law is not really adequate to address the risk of drones,” said Alison Oldfield, a real estate litigation partner from law firm Eversheds Sutherland. “It only gives a property owner the right to use the airspace above his land to such height as is necessary for the ‘ordinary use and enjoyment’ of his land. “What that means in practice in this context is untested but is generally thought to be confined to a fairly limited height above the ground. With the increasing use of low-flying drones, we can perhaps expect the law to develop in this area.” Identifying the owners of registered drones is simple, she said. “The challenge though is to identify rogue perpetrators – or those who currently have no obligation to registration. In practice that can be difficult.” Many people say the warnings to ministers were long in the offing. Lord Harris, in his review of London’s preparedness to respond to a major terrorist incident, highlighted the potential for drones to disrupt flights. Writing for the Observer last month, he said: “I was by no means the first. The year before, a House of Lords committee issued similar warnings, as had academics, technical experts and airline pilots. “A few months ago the government finally made it illegal to fly a drone above 400ft or within a kilometre of an airport. This was too little, too late and the penalties nothing like sufficient to stop those responsible from creating havoc with the holiday plans of thousands of families last week.” The Labour party is calling for a full inquiry into the Gatwick chaos. Andy McDonald, Labour’s shadow transport secretary, said: “The government has neither understood nor fully assessed the risk posed by drones to the UK’s national infrastructure. It has not undertaken anything like appropriate contingency planning. And it has not prepared properly, despite protective technology being available. “It’s obvious that drones should not be able to get anywhere near an airport before being taken down. But the government has dithered and delayed on regulating drones.” He added: “The delay in bringing forward legislation is indicative of this government’s failure to concentrate on the day-to-day business in front of them. They have taken their eye off the ball. The scale of disruption is unacceptable and it demands that we find out how this was allowed to happen, which is why Labour are calling for an independent inquiry.” On Thursday, it emerged that both Gatwick and Heathrow will spend millions of pounds on anti-drone equipment in the wake of the December incident. While a spokeswoman for Gatwick would not say exactly what equipment had been installed since the drone chaos, she said the airport’s owners had bought a system that provided a similar level of protection to the hardware provided by the military and had installed it about a week ago. Heathrow’s spokeswoman also confirmed the reports of its investment in military-grade anti-drone equipment were accurate. Chris Grayling is understood to have chaired a meeting of police, aviation and defence chiefs on Thursday to discuss what lessons can be learned. The transport secretary spoke with the chief constable of Sussex police, along with representatives from the Ministry of Defence, the Metropolitan police, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Home Office. It is understood the aviation minister, Lady Sugg, who was also present at the meeting, will meet with the heads of all UK airports next week to discuss their counter-drone strategies. The lack of progress by the police has led to criticism from some. Katy Bourne, the police and crime commissioner for Sussex, defended the response. “Sadly, we have seen further examples of those armed with a little knowledge seeking to exploit the incident as a failure of policing,” she said. “That is not something I recognise. “Indeed, the approach being taken by Sussex police in both the investigation and prevention measures has been first class given the extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances within which they have been operating. Even the Met police have said that they would not be doing anything differently. “The rush to find answers has blinded some commentators to where the real focus of concerns should be – our national capacity to tackle drone incursions and how information and assets are shared and deployed.”Theresa May’s Irish backstop is Donald Trump’s wall. It is the howl of power thwarted by the implacable opposition of a democratic assembly. The prime minister today again sets her face against MPs who are now desperately searching for a parliamentary consensus on how to leave the EU. She will plead with her Tory right wing – which is what it is – to support a supposedly “tweaked” deal on the Irish border under Brexit. For two years, experts have hunted the fantasy of “Brexit with an open border”, and found only a contradiction in terms. You cannot have a customs union and not a union. Yet May apparently believes she can convince her ever more ramshackle coalition to the contrary. This time she has hours rather than days to prove it. From the outset, May rightly sought a Brexit deal on which parliament’s majority parties could agree. It would be impossible to rule with authority with a third of her MPs against her, and only Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in support. Last week, that tactic fell on its face. When invited to call Corbyn’s bluff and agree to remove “no deal” from the table, her nerve failed her. She could not bring herself to abandon party unity in favour of national interest. She decided on a reckless last throw. Unless May is divorced from reality, she must know that the option being promoted by a growing number of senior MPs – from all parties – now makes most sense. As set out by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, the Tory MP Nicky Morgan and others, it postpones article 50, rules out no deal, sets aside past “red lines”, and sets up a brisk debate on the sort of Brexit the country really wants. That debate should have taken place two years ago, and May is to blame for not instigating it. Such a debate is not, as the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, said on Sunday, anti-Brexit. Indeed it would be a useful concession to the pro-Brexit public if reversing the referendum were left off the agenda. It should embrace the proposal for a citizens’ assembly, backed by the Guardian and Gordon Brown, among others. It would be aimed at answering the question the referendum glaringly failed to answer: if Brexit, which Brexit? For May to restrict this debate to a hardline minority within her party was inexcusable, and has not worked. There is emphatically no parliamentary majority for crashing out of the EU without a deal. Yet May is now risking just that outcome. Parliament has to form itself into a coherent collective – and stop her. • Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistSalma has never even heard of the Spice Girls. Her life, hunched over a sewing machine for up to 16 hours a day, is a world away from the luxuries enjoyed by the millionaire pop band. But while neither knows it, Salma and the Spice Girls are connected. The factory where she has worked for more than five years, off a narrow, winding road three hours’ drive from Dhaka, is where charity T-shirts designed by the group were made. The £19.40 garments were produced on behalf of the Spice Girls and then sold to raise money for a Comic Relief campaign intended to “champion equality for women”, which pointed out how “women earn less”. It is a reality Salma knows only too well. Perched on a chair in the tiny room she shares with her husband and seven-year-old son – barely more than 3.5 metres by 3.5 metres (12ft x 12ft) in size – she describes the harsh reality of her working life at the Interstoff Apparels factory. Salma, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, speaks gently but vividly recounts the repeated injustices she and her colleagues face. A small gas-burning stove on the floor in a small corridor is shared between four families. There is one toilet – a hole in the ground – and an overhead pipe without a shower head for washing. Despite her modest surroundings, at 5,000 Bangladeshi taka (£46.30) a month, the rent eats up more than half her 9,080Tk salary, which includes an attendance bonus that she does not receive if she is sick. • Machinists at the Interstoff factory in Gazipur stitch the garments together for about 35p an hour.• The T-shirts are shipped to the Czech Republic, where another company prints the #IWannaBeASpiceGirl slogan. • The Belgian brand Stanley/Stella, which oversees the production process, receives approximately €5 (£4.40) for each T-shirt from the US "crowdselling platform" Represent. • The Spice Girls, who have announced that proceeds from the T-shirts will go to Comic Relief, appear on The Jonathan Ross Show in November, with the host proudly holding up one of the garments to the camera. • Represent, which had been commissioned by the Spice Girls to get the T-shirts made, puts them on sale online for £19.40 each plus postage and packaging. • Comic Relief said about £11.60 from the sale of each T-shirt was given to the charity. Even with her husband’s income, the couple barely get by, with bills including their son’s school fees, food, electricity and medical expenses. Other workers at Interstoff Apparels’ factory earn less, Salma said. Salaries are set by grades that depend on experience. Pay is to rise this month as the government increases the minimum wage in the garment industry to 8,000Tk a month. It is the first rise in five years, but workers point out it does little for more experienced employees who already earn more. Salma is expecting a modest increase of a few hundred taka, but is unsure exactly what she will receive. Workers at the factory are given “impossible” targets of sewing up to 2,000 garments a day, she said. Speaking through a translator, Salma, who is in her mid-20s, explained: “Suppose someone is given a production target, but she couldn’t hit her goal. The chances are high that she’d get verbally scolded very badly. She might even get called inside the office of the production manager and get verbally abused. “Inside the production manager’s office they use very bad, abusive language. Like, ‘This isn’t your father’s factory’, ‘The door is wide open, leave if you can’t meet the production goals’. “Sometimes they use more obscene language like ‘khankir baccha’ (daughter of a prostitute), and many more that I can’t even say. “Sometimes many female workers can’t bear the insults and pressure from the management, and they quit. Even last month, a few of my colleagues left because they faced very bad behaviour and they were shattered.” Workers, including those who are pregnant, have to do overtime, she claimed. “Many workers don’t want to do the overtime, sometimes they even cry when the management make them do overtime forcefully. There was a worker I knew who was pregnant and she was forced to do night duty on top of her regular hours and overtime,” Salma said. The Spice Girls are “deeply shocked and appalled” by the Guardian’s findings, according to a spokesman for the band, who said they found it “heartbreaking to hear about the treatment that these women receive”. The band had sought assurances from Represent, the online retailer that sold the T-shirts, that the garments would be ethically made, and said the manufacturer was changed without their knowledge. The band pledged to personally fund an investigation into the factory’s working conditions and demanded Represent donate profits to “campaigns with the intention to end such injustices”. A Comic Relief spokesman said the charity was “shocked and concerned” and had also checked the ethical sourcing credentials of the supplier, which was then changed without its knowledge. The charity was due to receive approximately £11.60 for each £19.40 T-shirt sold but had yet to be given any money, the spokesman added. Represent said it would refund customers on request, calling the reported conditions at the factory “appalling and unacceptable”. A spokesman said: “Represent has strict ethical sourcing standards for all of our manufacturers, and we had felt confident printing on blank shirts from Stanley/Stella for this campaign due to the brand’s strong reputation and leadership within the Fair Wear Foundation. “To clarify, Comic Relief and Spice Girls did everything in their power to ensure ethical sourcing, and we take full responsibility for the choice of Stanley/Stella in this campaign, and confirm that this is something that we didn’t bring to the attention of Spice Girls or Comic Relief.” The factory's co-owner Shahriar Alam, a Bangladeshi foreign affairs minister, said he did not think it was “right from a journalistic point of view to add my name to this story”. He admitted being a part-owner and co-founder of the company behind the factory, Interstoff, but said he resigned from the board five years ago. Interstoff Apparels' director, Naimul Bashar Chowdhury, confirmed the factory produced blank T-shirts for Stanley/Stella. He said Alam was “a mere shareholder of the company” and was not involved in the management of the business. He said the company would investigate the Guardian’s findings but also described them as “simply not true”, adding that Interstoff has a “zero-tolerance policy on harassment and use of any slangs or abusive language”. However, he admitted there had been “single incidents” in the “long past where verbal abuse have resulted to employee dismissal”. He said no complaints had been received about excessive targets and the company adhered to the government’s legal minimum wages. It has a “participation committee” elected by workers to voice complaints, he said, adding that the factory is regularly audited. “The living wage is a debatable and subjective issue; we for ourselves can say our basic pay is as per the local law and we have over that different performance-based financial incentives,” Chowdhury added. He pointed out the company employs 80 disabled workers, staff are trained about harassment and abuse, and a medical centre at the factory provides healthcare. Pregnant workers are given monthly checkups, Chowdhury said. Bruno Van Sieleghem, the sustainability manager at Stanley/Stella, said the brand was investigating the findings and “strongly committed to help this country and his workers to improve their welfare”. The Fair Wear Foundation, a organisation funded by brands that works to improve standards, audits Interstoff every three years, he said, adding that the company's team is “closely monitoring” FWF’s “corrective action plan”. He said Stanley/Stella was aware that machinists at Interstoff work overtime until 9pm, but not that they stayed on until midnight. He said the brand had received no reports about employees complaining of harassment at the factory. He said the brand, which received approximately €5 (£4.40) for each T-shirt, was committed to improving standards for garment workers in Bangladesh, but admitted it used factories in the country because they offer a “competitive price”. The T-shirts were printed by a company in the Czech Republic, Van Sieleghem added. FWF said it inspected the factory in December, interviewing 30 workers off-site. The organisation said some “non-compliances” were discovered, but the interviews “did not reflect the allegations of harassment in the factory”. However, the foundation acknowledged that this “does not mean this did not happen”. It described the hours at the factory as “excessive”, but FWF said it found workers are “free to refuse overtime”. It said it supported staff being paid a living wage. “So she had to work from eight in the morning till midnight. She was crying all the time. “One day she was throwing up and she repeatedly said she’s not feeling well. Still she was forced to work late. She left the job the next day because of that incident. “It pains so much when we watch this kind of incidents, but there’s only so much we could do. We tried to talk to the supervisor, even offered any of us would fill in for her – just let her go. But the supervisor didn’t agree, he said, ‘No, she has to finish her shift’.” Salma estimated she has to work overtime in the evenings for half the days in the month, sometimes until midnight. The intense work environment creates health problems for machinists. “Fainting is pretty common,” she said. “Especially during the hot summer. Also, the huge workloads put a lot of pressure on the workers. Sometimes they just fall from their chairs. It happens every month. “I think it is because of the workload and also they can’t sleep properly because they are working late, but also they have to come to the office in the morning. So they don’t get enough sleep in between. There are many workers with neck and back pain as well because they are always working on [the] same posture. “There are air conditioners in the floor but it’s too many people. So it’s always hot.” Recently, she said, she has started to have severe neck pain. “It is a huge trouble,” she said. “The doctor has shown me some exercises. But for that, I have to take at least a 10-minute break during my shift. If I take a break and when I return to my station, I see a huge number of products already piled up there.” A spokesman for the band said they were “deeply shocked and appalled” by cases such as Salma’s and would personally fund an investigation into the factory’s working conditions. Comic Relief said the charity was “shocked and concerned”. The online retailer that sold the T-shirts, Represent, said it took “full responsibility” for the situation, while Interstoff said the findings would be investigated but were “simply not true”. Salma is not alone. Another machinist at the factory, a single mother of two who has worked there since 2013, told how she is forced to loan money from family and neighbours to survive. She said she is paid 8,450Tk a month, including a 600Tk attendance bonus, for a 54-hour week including paid lunch breaks. It would take her more than a week to earn the £19.40 it cost to buy one of the Spice Girls T-shirts. The wages barely cover her rent and the school fees for her 17-year-old daughter and younger sister. She recently had to borrow 20,000Tk from her brother for bills. Her ex-husband, who has a new family, provides no financial support. The machinist, in her mid-30s, said she has no choice but to work overtime. In the most extreme cases, she and her colleagues stay on until midnight. “Recently the workload has gone down, but I had spent as long as 16 hours per day working in the factory on several occasions. And I lost count how many days I worked this long in the past six years, but the number would be huge,” she said. Though she desperately needs the extra money, she also yearns for the freedom to be able to choose when she finishes. Once, she cried for hours at work, begging bosses to let her go on time so she could help her daughter revise for important exams. But she was told she had to stay on in the factory. “When my elder daughter appeared for a public examination, I was given ‘night duties’ on top of my regular work hours – every day. One day I cried for three hours just to get an early leave, but I wasn’t given any. I couldn’t help her revising, I couldn’t cook on time, she wasn’t fed properly,” the woman said. Speaking at the end of an 11-hour shift, she said: “We don’t get a choice. The factory only cares about their problems, not ours. It’s terrible.” Such is the pressure to work and hit targets, she is scared to use her 10-day holiday entitlement. Last year, she took three days; the year before, it was seven. The male managers are intimidating and regularly shout at machinists, she explained. It is so normal, she said she barely notices any more. There is a medical facility at the factory and workers can sometimes get sick pay, but on many occasions they do not, the woman added. She said she once went home during a lunch break and vomited, and had to be taken to a clinic by concerned neighbours, meaning she missed the rest of her shift. She was not paid. When complimented about how hard she works for her family, she offers a fleeting smile. For the rest of the interview, she soberly describes the hardships in her life. “I never compromise on my children’s education, so I have to sacrifice a lot of other things like good food, clothes. It is the winter and my kids need warm clothes, but for the last couple of months I’m telling them to wait, but still I am not able to purchase them,” the woman added. She asked British consumers to consider the circumstances that she and other similar workers face. “The salary we get is peanuts compared with the enormous pressure we face every day at work,” she said. “The environment is not good either. I just want to address this issue to the global audience that we don’t get paid enough and we work in inhuman conditions here.” Additional reporting by Redwan AhmedAre straight directors qualified to tell gay stories on screen? The Australian actor-director Joel Edgerton didn’t think he was. At least, not when first reading Boy Erased: A Memoir, Garrard Conley’s account of his childhood experiences in gay conversion therapy. He knew it would make a compelling film, but he didn’t believe he was best placed to do it. “I was like: fuck, this would be a great movie and I would love to be the one to do it. But I don’t think I can, simply because I’m not of the LGBTQ community,” he says. “I’d really started to think in the last couple of years a lot about representation – mainly in front of the screen.” He optioned the book anyway, unable to shake it from his mind. He sought out Conley, spoke to survivors of conversion therapy, researched the infrastructure surrounding it, met with Conley’s abuser and then began a screenplay. Directing it became a less distant possibility. “It was like, I feel so passionate about it and I can’t get this out of my head.” The resulting film follows Conley – Jared, played by Lucas Hedges – as he comes out to his mother (Nicole Kidman) and father (Russell Crowe), a Baptist preacher who convinces his son to enroll on a 12-day conversion therapy course. The film is largely set in Memphis at the real-life Love in Action, an “ex-gay” Christian ministry, run on screen by Edgerton as chief therapist Victor Sykes (a portrayal of the ministry’s former director, John Smid). This is not Edgerton’s first film behind and in front of camera (four years ago, he made a psychological thriller called The Gift). Boy Erased was Oscar-tipped at the time of the first trailer, but has been largely overlooked since, despite positive reviews. But it is not the critics – or Oscar voters – Edgerton is worried about. “Obviously, I crave acceptance of that [LGBTQ] community,” he says. “To know that, with respect, I’m an ally who felt passionate enough to make it but I didn’t fuck anything up.” To that end, he showed Conley every draft of the script and cut of the movie, and one of the first versions was sent to Glaad, the US organisation that monitors media coverage of LGBTQ issues. According to Edgerton, the organisation had only “one or two” concerns. One character removed from an early draft was a girl enrolled in the Love in Action programme after her parents caught her having an “indiscretion” with the family pet. “Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction,” says Edgerton. “I don’t want any chance for people to watch this movie and think we’re painting anyone of the LGBTQ community as deviant.” Instead, he swung the other way, writing in Troye Sivan’s character, Gary: a composed, seemingly well-adjusted young gay man, savvy enough to tell the conversion therapists what they want to hear. “Love in Action was trying to make people into deviants,” adds Edgerton, “it was not our job as film-makers to do that.” Another omission was that of a teacher who had assaulted his students. The character was originally included to highlight the institution’s practice of putting sexual abusers in the same group as young people (“I found that a fascinating indictment of the lack of care in the place”), but, on reflection, Edgerton felt time constraints inhibited an adequate exploration of the character. Although you wonder how a gay director would have tackled the same issues, the fact that Edgerton is in some ways sanitising Conley’s memoir – rather than sensationalising it – perhaps demonstrates the increasing sensitivities straight directors have about how they tell queer stories. But by Edgerton’s own admission, his eagerness to avoid feeding into gay tropes or causing offence limited his writing. “I also wish I could have been a smart enough writer to amplify a quality in Garrard that he described in the book: that, even at Love in Action, his way of coping, like many of us, was through humour, and he was a bit of a class clown,” he says. “My fear was that if I had Lucas cracking jokes and doing other stuff, it would give the wrong steer and diminish the tension. But I wonder if a better writer than me would have been able to include that as a builder of tension, rather than a diminisher.” Edgerton’s preparation for the film took him to Texas, where he met Smid, the man he would be portraying. Smid joined the Love in Action leadership in 1986 and eventually became its director. He left in 2008 and publicly apologised three years later for the wounds the programme inflicted on vulnerable young people. At the end of the film – spoiler alert – it is revealed that Smid married another man in 2014. Edgerton says Smid was “brave enough” to come to the film’s premiere in New York, and had originally offered himself up as a consultant during its production. Smid is not entirely sold on the telling of events according to Edgerton (although he has written in the Advocate that the film was “largely an accurate depiction of such programmes”). “Looking back, Smid thinks things weren’t as bad and there wasn’t any shouting and all that,” says Edgerton. “But then it’s a case of ‘he said, she said’, I think. Garrard will tell you one thing. John might tell you another. My point of access is Garrard: he’s the guy I side with. But I appreciate John’s open-heartedness to reflect on something and to put his hand up and acknowledge that he made big mistakes. “It was important from me to hear everybody’s point of view,” he continues, “because we were setting out to have an empathetic approach to everybody.” Born in New South Wales, Edgerton was raised a devout Catholic – a “Ned Flanders kid” – in a town he describes as homophobic. Now agnostic (aside, he says, from some Catholic guilt), he internalised the town’s attitudes and had to learn to accept homosexuality later in life. “I experienced bullying, but I also remember being in a group chastising somebody else and being a bully,” he says. “I’ve played both sides of that coin. And I don’t think anybody, or certainly I, never really knew what homosexuality was and yet we would all use these words, these slurs and these derogatory ways of teasing people. And so I’ve definitely been a part of that. Almost like that culture of behaviour that’s learned. “You just treat anybody who’s different in a way that you single them out,” he continues. “You push them around. You do all that stuff. I was never aware of what any of that meant until I met my first gay man when I was 16.” It wasn’t until he began drama school in Sydney that he developed meaningful relationships with gay men and acquired a “real deeper understanding of seuxality and its spectrum. “I had been living in such a cloistered environment where everything is same-same and everybody’s pretending and nobody is doing anything out of the ordinary because it’s all about safety and not being singled out,” he says. “And I was like, OK, there’s a whole other world out here that I’ve never experienced and I’m getting my crash course in right now.” One sequence in the film has met with disapproval: a graphic depiction of a sexual assault on Garrard by another student at his college. Some were frustrated that the only sexual act between two men in the film involved violence; others felt that the trauma of sexual abuse was ignored and the film lacked an adequate trigger warning (Edgerton says there is one in Australia). “Most criticism of the film, I find fair,” he says. “I can appreciate that some people are like, ‘Well, where’s the love and tenderness?’ … but the first sexual experience you see in the film is one of violence. It happened to Garrard, it’s very much part of his story. It was a catalyst for him coming out. I wanted to be unflinching about it. “It sounds trite, but it’s tough to please all of the people all of the time, especially when you’re going out on a limb on something that is extreme, like assault,” he adds. Boy Erased scores points among many, however, for casting in its lead role an actor open about his own sexual fluidity. This at a time when the debate over whether straight actors should portray gay characters rages anew, following Darren Criss’s announcement that he would no longer take on gay roles, and awards acclaim for Rami Malek and Olivia Colman playing LGBTQ characters. Edgerton is clearly aware of the sensitivities around the debate. And he recognises that, as a straight man, he will be under particular scrutiny. But he dances around the topic, referencing the backlash against Scarlett Johansson after it was announced she’d been cast as Dante “Tex” Gill, a trans man, and he refuses to commit to either side of the debate. “Maybe that movie will never get that made,” he says. “Is it better that the movie is made? And I’m not putting my opinion into this.” Regardless, he’s happy with the Boy Erased casting in this regard, and fairly so: Hedges (who has previously stated he’s “not totally straight”) in the main role, while Xavier Dolan and Sivan (both out gay men) are cast in secondary roles as gay men. But does he think there is a still a broader issue with hiring LGBTQ people in Hollywood? “Definitely not behind the scenes,,” says Edgerton. “A massive percentage of my behind-the-camera crew, heads of department, are from the LGBTQ community. And they don’t have any trouble getting employment, as far as I can tell.” He hopes that Sivan’s performance in Boy Erased, as well as his various successes elsewhere, could help to inspire other actors to come out. “Troye has shown by example that, by being out and proud, there’s actually maybe an even bigger audience for you than the assumption that you would diminish your audience,” says Edgerton, who claims to “absolutely” know actors who aren’t out. “Clearly, I wouldn’t out anybody. But just the idea that that is your world – it’s almost like you’d rather take away your fame and just lead a normal life. I just can’t imagine what that would feel like. It shouldn’t exist in the acting community.” Edgerton’s hopes for his own finished film are similarly virtuous: being used as an “icebreaker” between young LGBTQ people and their parents, or as a guide for those considering enrolling their children in conversion therapy. He is certainly keen for it to be wider educational piece: before the end credits, viewers are told that 700,000 LGBTQ Americans have undergone conversion therapy programmes, while only 14 US states have deemed it illegal. Ultimately, his ambition seems to be for the film’s cultural relevance to diminish. “It would be nice if, as soon as possible, the film was really a museum piece so that people can watch it and go: ‘Oh shit, they used to do that kind of thing.’ Of course, it’s very naive to say that the persecution of LGBTQ people could ever just go away because conversion therapy is one thing,” he says, before invoking – ambitiously, but perhaps not unfairly – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. “The hope is that there was no point even making the film.” • Boy Erased is released on 8 February in the UK.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has feet. And she washes sometimes. In order to do this she takes off her clothes, the brazen hussy. I presume this to be the case, although the picture of feet in the bath that the Daily Caller published seems to have been falsely ascribed to her. Experts have been brought in to analyse the length of the toes in the image, because this is clearly the biggest issue in America right now. This quite insane attempt to shame her is so bizarre after the video of her dancing on a rooftop at college backfired and she responded by dancing into her congressional office. She is more popular than ever. She excites the left because of her youth, her passion and her politics. She excites the right because she has a body – and, God knows, she may even enjoy that fact. This must be highlighted as sinful, over and over again. That, in 2019, the public mechanism of shaming women over their bodies is still thought to be effective stuns me, but on it rolls. Body shaming is nothing new, of course. It patrols its territory with ever smaller subsets of self-appointed police divisions. The monitoring of cellulite now looks positively old-fashioned, as every area of a woman’s body has the potential to look, and therefore be, wrong. Bits you never considered before are probably not up to scratch. The actual functions of a female body, from periods to pregnancy, childbirth and menopause are subject to shame and ever-growing regulations disguised so often as “advice”. Beneath all this “caring” and ordering of the messiness of femaleness in mainstream culture is a tangible disgust. That disgust reveals much anxiety about the biggest taboo: female pleasure. That is Ocasio-Cortez’s transgression: enjoyment. Women’s pleasure in themselves remains an enormous threat to fundamentalists everywhere. That is why the continuing effort at shaming women in the public eye keeps misfiring. The refusal of shame is a powerful weapon. Someone alert the media that is currently guarded by various members of the establishment whose main message to young women is that they are attention seeking ( Lily Allen, Little Mix), and whose sole message to older women is: put it away (Madonna and, now, anyone over 50). These messages are propped up by midlife crisis love gods, from Piers Morgan to Michel Houellebecq, and now some other random French bloke no one has heard of. If you look at any men’s rights sites the variety of ways in which women can be shamed is mind-boggling: being fat is not just bad; being a foodie when you are slim is also bad. Using birth control, “cake-face makeup”, acting like a porn star in bed: these are all things women should be shamed for. When an actual porn star such as Stormy Daniels talks back, the power of her almighty sass comes from her absolute refusal to be shamed. Ariana Grande simply pointed out that women can be both “sexual and talented” – as though this needed to be said again. But it does. Shaming exists to keep us objectified, even to ourselves. And, of course, we all internalise it. Shame is the water we learn to swim in and in which some of us drown. The 14-year-old girl pressured into sending a nude selfie is not the same as the celeb who chooses very carefully how to be portrayed. However, the mechanism by which we watch ourselves being judged remains. Humiliation lurks, embodied as impure femininity. Girls grow up seeing female pleasure exaggerated in porn, where women orgasm while being choked and spat on, but denied in real life, where any hint of female desire is condemned as sluttish. I just got sent a dress code for my teenager’s school, which focused only on what girls must not wear; nothing about boys at all. When we ask that female pleasure be integrated into sex education, it is because it is key to any discussion about consent. This is not radical – it is realistic. The taboo on female pleasure surfaces in the oddest of places. The Osé “ personal massager”, made by a female tech and using micro-robotics, and promising “hands-free” orgasms for women, won an award for innovation at the Consumer Electronics Show in the US. But that award from the Consumer Technology Association has been withdrawn, with the organisation saying that the Osé broke a rule that entries not be “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane”. This from an organisation at whose show a sex doll for men was launched, and which features VR porn exhibits. We have “rapeable” robots, but something that may pleasure women is profane. All this endless shaming is about the male gaze and the idea that women are there only to please it. All this is disrupted the minute women refuse to be ashamed of ourselves, our bodies, our pleasures. This is much easier said than done when we live in a world where the powers that be think a clever young woman can be brought low by a picture of her bare feet. But she can’t. She will keep on dancing. As we all should. For the sheer hell of it. • Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnistMPs will attempt to force the government to return with an alternative to Theresa May’s Brexit deal within three days of her plan being defeated in parliament. Another five-day debate leading up to a vote on May’s deal on 15 January will start on Wednesday, opened by the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay. Before that, MPs must approve a business motion to allow the debate and vote to go ahead, which a cross-party group of MPs, led by the Conservative Dominic Grieve, hope to amend if the Speaker allows it. The amendment says that following defeat of the government’s plan, which is widely anticipated, “a minister of the crown shall table within three sitting days a motion … considering the process of exiting the European Union under article 50”. Other MPs who have signed the amendment include the former Tory cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin and ex-Tory ministers Jo Johnson, Guto Bebb and Sam Gyimah. It has also been backed by Labour MPs including Stephen Doughty and Chris Leslie. Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative chair of the health select committee, who also signed the amendment, said the aim was to prevent the government “running down the clock” towards no deal. Previously, the Commons had mandated the government to make a statement within 21 days. “If and when the PM’s plan is voted down on Tuesday, MPs can’t be made to wait potentially until 12 Feb for the next vote. The situation is too urgent now,” Leslie said. A previous amendment by Grieve that the Commons voted through before Christmas means that any statement the government brings forward after a defeat is in itself amendable – allowing MPs to put forward their own alternatives for the future of the Brexit process. The government’s business motion has been tightly drafted, meaning the amendment may not be selected for a vote because the terms of the motion suggest that only a government amendment is permissible. The move comes after the government suffered a significant defeat on the finance bill, in which a powerful cross-party group of MPs led by Labour’s Yvette Cooper passed an amendment limiting the government’s tax administration powers in the event of no deal, unless no deal was explicitly endorsed by MPs. Those behind the amendment’s success conceded it may have little material effect on no-deal preparations. Instead, its purpose had been to galvanise MPs across the House of Commons and proves there was a parliamentary majority to oppose no deal. The rebels said they could seek to amend any and every piece of legislation the government brings to parliament between now and March. At the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, May conceded to senior ministers she was on course to lose next week’s vote and told her cabinet she would respond swiftly with a statement to the House of Commons. The prime minister is still seeking a form of legally binding reassurance from the European Union about the temporary nature of the backstop in the withdrawal agreement, the main bone of contention that has led Tory MPs to reject her deal. David Lidington, May’s de facto deputy, said on Wednesday MPs should not expect Brussels to unpick the withdrawal agreement. “I don’t think that the British public are served by fantasies about magical alternative deals that are somehow going to sort of spring out of a cupboard in Brussels,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “This deal on the table has involved some very difficult give and take on both sides and if you go around and talk to the other EU 27 governments they will say that there are elements of this that cause them some political pain, but they are very clear, in conversations I have had with them as well as their public statements, they ain’t going to be going back and unpicking this for some brand new brilliant renegotiations. “So, the choice that people have is this deal or it is no deal or it is, as some MPs advocate, to reverse the 2016 referendum entirely.”Tom Rogic scored deep into injury-time to ensure the Socceroos emerged from a nervy game against Syria with the win they needed to progress from Group B in second place. Australia were ahead after 41 minutes when a terrific decoy run from the industrious Rhyan Grant created just enough space for Awer Mabil to lash a perfect curled effort past the outstretched Ibrahim Alma and into the top corner. While it should have calmed the Asian Cup holders’ nerves, it led to an immediate slip in concentration. Almost immediately from kick-off, Syria were level through Omar Khrbin as a well-directed cross from Mouaiad Alajaan caught Milos Degenek out of position. Mat Ryan’s save from the resulting header could only momentarily halt Khrbin, who followed up the rebound to bundle the ball into the net. A controversial 54th minute Chris Ikonomidis goal, after a glorious through-ball from Tom Rogic, once again had the Socceroos in front. Meanwhile, the vocal Syrian crowd at the Khalifa bin Zayed showed their displeasure at the awarding of a goal they believed had not crossed the line. Not to be denied though, the Syrians earned a fortuitous 80th minute penalty that was smashed home by Omar Al-Soma to draw level after two Syrian players collided in the penalty box. It ensured a captivating conclusion to the match as Syria pushed for a win that would see them qualify from Group B. The Australians managed to regain composure deep in stoppage time, though, and the imperious Rogic capped off a fine performance with the match-winning goal. Australia will look back on their group stage campaign disappointingly after failing to secure first place. The opening game defeat to Jordan meant they were out of contention for top spot before this game. That defeat highlighted the problems the team has in attack, with their inability to break down organised teams defending in a low block. This lacklustre performance against a reinvigorated Syrian team – whose manager Bernd Stange was sacked after their second match – showed that the team can be susceptible to defensive errors and lapses in concentration. On the available evidence, it will be difficult for Socceroos fans to take a great deal of confidence into the knockout rounds. A possible matchup against Japan and a realistic matchup against Uzbekistan will do little to quell fears. At times throughout this game, the Socceroos looked nervous as Syria looked to press them at every opportunity as they played out from defence. It was an open and attacking first half as both teams produced a string of chances predominantly through their respective strikers; Jamie Maclaren and Al-Soma. Syria had a close penalty shout denied as Mark Milligan found himself isolated on Al-Soma before the Mexican referee César Ramos waved away the Syrian’s appeal. Milligan again found himself at the centre of controversy as Syria thought they were a goal up, only to have it revoked after the referee spotted a body-check from Mohammed Osman on the Australia captain. The Socceroos continued to receive favourable calls in the second half as the referee waved away another penalty appeal on Milligan. On this occasion, the handball after a poor first touch from the 33-year-old was extremely fortunate not to be judged a penalty. This was nonetheless cancelled out by Ramos’s penalty call later in the second half. The teams traded blows just before half-time, but Australia had started to move into the ascendancy, despite another intimidating atmosphere. In midfield, the match-winner Rogic had one of his finest games in a Socceroos jersey as he continuously found willing runners in Maclaren, Mabil, Grant and Ikonomidis. Nerves remained defensively despite Ikonomidis’ goal early in the second-half but the Socceroos looked imperious surging forward. Ikonomidis and Maclaren will both look back on this game wondering how they did not each score two or three, while Apostolos Giannou hit a post with a rasping low drive after coming off the bench. Al-Soma’s late penalty ensured fans were left on tenterhooks but Australiafought back to claim an important victory and seal progression to the round of 16, where they will return to the Khalifa bin Zayed Stadium to play on Monday.Considering what a bunch of entitled, vegan sausage roll-eating brats we apparently all are in 2019, there’s a fair chance the final season of Game of Thrones will satisfy exactly no one. Finales, after all, are notoriously tricky to get right. Some shows nail their farewells with a flourish (Breaking Bad, The Sopranos). Others bisect their fanbase right down the middle (Battlestar Galactica, er, The Sopranos) and become the launchpad for petty online spats with strangers for decades to come. Given that season seven of Game of Thrones was its shakiest yet, season eight could feasibly fall into the latter camp.In order to prevent a backlash of such magnitude that it may knock the Earth off its rotational axis, Game of Thrones must ensure it sticks the landing, for the sake of us all. And it can, if it keeps to some very simple principles. For everything it did well, season seven required whopping suspensions of disbelief, as characters zipped around the world in the blink of an eye, or acted entirely against their established personalities in order to further the plot. If you’re desperately invested in a show with dragons, zombies and Kit Harington being northern, and it’s geographical inconsistency that is getting you riled up, something is very wrong indeed. The characters and world used to feel real, constrained by rationality and reason. They need to again. Tentpole action sequences are what Game of Thrones does better than any other TV show in history – and most movies, for that matter. The Battle of the Bastards remains the zenith, a chaotic, claustrophobic tour de force, with last season’s Battle of the Goldroad or season five’s Hardhome not far behind. But as anyone else who overindulged on creme de menthe and stilton over Christmas will attest, too much of a good thing will make you quite sick. Battles need breathing space. We don’t need one giant face-off an episode. Rein it in. If you cast your mind back to season one, there were no epic battles whatsoever. This, admittedly, was for budgetary reasons, but working within such a rigid framework forced the show to get creative. Battles occurred off-screen. “OMG” moments were based on human drama. Plots were knotty. Backs were stabbed. Skulls were duggered. One of the best scenes of last season consisted of an old lady drinking some wine. This scheming and politicking is what made people fall in love with Thrones in the first place. Hopefully there’s still room for it among the wars, fire and widespread incest of season eight. If you cast your mind back to season one again, barely a conversation could be uttered without someone flashing their delicates at the nearest camera. At one point, Littlefinger had some exposition to get out of his system, but was in his brothel at the time, so inexplicably did so over the sound of Ros and Armeca groaning upon a chaise longue. It was gratuitous, and all a bit embarrassing. Luckily, the show has come a long way since “tits and dragons” could be hurled at it as a pejorative, and isn’t as desperate to prove its adult credentials these days. Hopefully it won’t backslide too much. Jon v the Night’s King. Cersei v Dany. Theon v Euron. An ice-zombie dragon v a non-ice-zombie dragon. A direwolf v literally anything, we don’t mind. And the Hound v the Mountain. Come on, we’ve been waiting for that since 2011. Cough up. Another criticism lobbed at more recent seasons is the show’s reluctance to mercilessly cull its cast in the laissez-faire way it did in its pomp. There hasn’t been anything as shocking as Ned’s death or the Red Wedding for what seems like an age. Not all of our main players are going to be around to the bitter end; that much is certain. But the show needs to bring back the constant tension of no one being safe. What if the good guys – or as close as Thrones gets to good guys – don’t win? What if the world just, well, ends? What if Bronn murders everyone and claims the Iron Throne for himself? Give us the unexpected. It’s what we want, whether we know it or not.When I first went to Chile 30 years ago, I interviewed a television weatherman. Every evening after the six o’clock news, this fellow had to say : “Tomorrow it will be very hot in the north, pleasantly warm in the middle, and perishing at the bottom.” What a shape. That was what attracted me to this long, thin country. Could a Chilean woman at the top possibly have anything in common with a man born 4,270 kilometres (2,653 miles) below her? How can a country function when it is 25 times longer than it is wide? I went to find out. This is the story of a love affair with a land where I spent six months travelling from the Peruvian border to Cape Horn; it is also a story of return; and of the ever-changing past. The working title of the book that resulted from that first journey was Keep the Mountains on the Left. If I did that, I couldn’t get lost. The Juan Fernández archipelago, 650km out in the Pacific off the coast of Chile, was, at the time my first visit, occupied by 550 people and two cars. The largest island was called Robinson Crusoe, as for four years it had been the home of the man on whom Daniel Defoe based his character, in real life the mercurial Scottish mariner Alexander Selkirk. Most of the men, when I pitched up, were called Robinson or Alejandro, and they fished, collectively, for langosta de Juan Fernández – large red crustaceans resembling pincerless lobsters which fetch high prices in the fancy restaurants of Santiago. I went out fishing for langosta with a Robinson and an Alejandro across the bay where the captain of the fabled German cruiser Dresden blew up his magazine in 1915 after the British warships Kent and Glasgow cornered his vessel. We ate langosta for lunch cooked over a fire in the boat, and I managed 13 hours without a bathroom to use. I stayed at the tip of Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost police station in the world, with three policemen who were on the lookout for Argentinian invaders from Ushuaia, the lights of which town we could see twinkling opposite. When I asked my new friends what we would do in the event of an invasion, they didn’t have an answer. But they often put the generator on to watch Argentinian soaps. Prevailing south-westerlies had twisted the beech trees into alphabet configurations alongside the cold Beagle Channel where Yaghan people once paddled their canoes. The Yaghan – long gone – lived off shellfish, and had a monosyllabic verb meaning “to unexpectedly come across something hard when eating something soft”, like a pearl in an oyster. To reach Cape Horn I accompanied a coffin on a 100ft supply boat heading for a north American cruise ship on which a passenger had expired, a round trip of 16 hours. The black curve of a finback whale broke the surface of the grey water, and uninhabited islands dripped from the end of the continent like water from a leaky tap. In the Roaring Forties (westerly winds) we had a hell of a time getting the coffin off our deck, into a Zodiac and on to the cruise ship. The book I wrote about that journey flourished, and this month is its silver anniversary. On my second visit to Chile, 13 years after the first, there were no vats of pisco sour, no strange men and, disappointingly, no bad behaviour of any kind. I took my eight-year-old son, Wilf, with me. I had caught my first fish in Chile, and I wanted him to do the same. We made a three-day horse trek from Cochamó to La Junta in the region of Los Lagos – the lakes – following an 18th-century trading route over the Andes. (It was there that I realised I was too old to travel on small horses up steep slopes.) How had Chile changed? In the south the salmon industry had ushered in prosperity. You could get decent coffee almost everywhere, and people didn’t hate the Argentinians as much as they had on my first visit because of the spectacular collapse of that neighbour’s economy. Bolivia seemed to have taken up the baton of public enemy number one. While my son and I were there, Chileans returned their first female president. And then there was Pinochet. On my first trip he was no longer at the helm, but I sensed him everywhere, stalking the national imagination and permeating life itself. Memories were fresh, and the wily monster was still crouching in his lair. In the intervening years the world had witnessed the bizarre sequence of events surrounding Pinochet’s detention in London and Surrey from winter 1998 to early spring 2000. I had gone down to London’s Devonshire Street to stand with protesting Chilean refugees, holding candles to the white curtains of the private hospital where the old man was being treated for a spinal hernia. He was finally spirited home and, back on Chilean tarmac, rose from his wheelchair, Lazarus style (perhaps Ernest Saunders is a better example than Lazzers). History will judge both Pinochet and his UK supporters. I saw Wilf learning to love Chile as I had done. It was deeply gratifying. I was one step away from Chile that second time: you don’t have the same sense of the open road when you travel as a parent. Responsibility is a roadblock. Wilf and his brother were adults when I made my third visit a few months ago. I was free again. To prepare for a Patagonian road trip I fished out my old notebooks and, re-reading them, met myself coming back. I said I’d travelled to Cape Horn, but on my original journey I had spotted something like a slice of cake suspended from the bottom of every map, even those on boy scouts’ arms. This turned out to be Chilean Antarctica – for Chile is one of the seven claimants of Antarctic territory (claims not recognised by anyone). It was actually illegal to publish a map without this triangle of ice. It made me realise what territory means to a young country. So I had hitched a lift south from Punta Arenas on a Chilean air force plane. At the first iceberg, I saw my next book in front of me – the first ever travelogue about the Antarctic. What happened next is another story. Travels in a Thin Country is a young woman’s book. Re-reading it now from the misty vantage point of middle age, I hardly recognise the solitary figure who shouldered a carpetbag for 4,185km. But she was me once. And now the past is all there is for a writer like me: the present isn’t around for long enough. Would I do it differently? Yes. There would be fewer passive tenses in the book and way fewer adjectives. As for the weatherman, he told me that the real difference in his country is east to west, from the Camanchaca sea mists that creep across a narrow band in the north to the mountains joining the Andes and the coastal Cordillera like rungs on a ladder. I saw for myself that people got shorter and darker as one climbed inland. The country surprised me at every turn. Let’s give the last word to the Chilean Nobel laureate in literature, Pablo Neruda: “He who does not know the Chilean forests, does not know the planet.” Sara Wheeler’s book, Chile: Travels in a Thin Country, is published in paperback (Abacus, £9.99). On Monday 7 January she is giving a talk about her return to Chile, at the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 (rgs.org) In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin (published in 1977)Still viewed as one of the most influential modern travel books, In Patagonia combines personal anecdote (Chatwin’s childhood fascination with his grandma’s giant sloth skin inspired his journey) with a vivid interest in everything from Darwin and the Welsh to a log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. Venice by Jan Morris (published in 1993)Widely acclaimed as the classic evocation of Venice and the best book every written about the city, or any city. Not quite a history book or a guide, it’s more an immersion into every aspect of Venetian living. Siberia by Colin Thubron (published in 1999)Thubron charts his 15,000-mile journey into Siberia after the fall of communism. He depicts a land of strange, often bleak physical extremes, from the ice-bound graves of ancient Scythians to the world’s deepest lake, Baikal, which reaches depths of a mile.‘I still have to pinch myself. Head coach. Ladies’ first team. At a club with so much credibility.” You can hear the giddy excitement in Annie Zaidi’s voice. The new head coach of Solihull Moors Ladies, who play in Division One Midlands of the Women’s National League, has worked hard for this opportunity – harder than most have to because the 34-year-old is not only a woman working in a profession dominated by men but has also had to battle racial and religious stereotyping and abuse as a Pakistani Muslim. She strives to avoid being defined by those labels, craving the day when her talent is all anyone notices. Widely known as “Coach Annie”, Zaidi has been working with Solihull’s boys’ youth teams since 2017. “A lot of credit goes to Mark Fogarty, the sporting director of Solihull Moors,” she says. “They didn’t see my gender, they just saw me as a really good coach and that says a lot about them as individuals and the club as a whole. All they saw was my work on the pitch and how I’d developed players.” After doing well with the youth sides Zaidi was offered the chance to add the women’s team to her workload – she will remain head coach of the Under-16 boys’ elite players, the Under-13 boys’ technical coach and Under-9s’ head coach. In her first game in the new job, a 2-1 defeat by Birmingham and West Midlands Ladies last Sunday, Zaidi got a first look at the scale of her task. Solihull are one place off the bottom, having won one game and lost the other 10. But she is confident “everything will fall into place”. “They’re professionals in their own right in the daytime, footballers in the evenings and on weekends,” she says of her players. “They’re mature women, they get it – there’s a mutual respect.” Although Zaidi has been in and out of football, the one constant since she began playing in the garden with her two older brothers being her love of the game. She stopped playing aged 14, feeling there was no place for her in women’s football. We had a game and I was getting tackled aggressively – I felt like I had been in the ring with Mike Tyson “You can take my ball away, you can take my bib away, you can take my boots away but you can’t take away my passion,” she says. “Even though I wasn’t playing football it was always there, in my belly. I watched it, I read magazines, I bought the sticker books.” Doing a master’s at Durham in community development and youth work studies brought a new chance to be involved in football and she was encouraged into coaching for her placement. “I always said I wanted a job where I could wear trainers, because I had more trainers than high heels,” Zaidi says . “One of my placements was in the west end of Newcastle. Bear in mind this was after 9/11 and 7/7 and perceptions of Muslim people were very negative. “I went down on a cold evening in November. I got there, there were 30 young people aged 16-25. They were from very deprived areas – two out of the 30 did not have a criminal record. “You can imagine a 5ft 2in brown girl from Coventry saying: ‘All right lads, let’s play football.’ First session I got bruised. We had a game and I was getting tackled aggressively – I felt like I had been in the ring with Mike Tyson. “The racist abuse happened, the sexist abuse happened, but I kept coming back. After week five, another group on the next pitch started hurling abuse at me. Before myself or my line manager could intervene, the boys did, they had my back. Inside I was like: ‘Yesssss.’ “They got me involved, we played some games, a few [nut]megs built my confidence. They would come to the youth centre to talk to me whatever issues they were going through. They wanted to know more about me. “After week 12 they came to realise – and so did I – that football is such a powerful tool because it broke down the gender and cultural barriers. It built a bridge.” She continued to do youth work based around football before joining a Sunday league club. “I was the only female manager of 400 teams in the league. I had more downs than ups. I eventually decided to leave because it was poisoning the passion I had. The racism, the sexism, even the club I was working for said people had been saying I was a shit coach and wasn’t going to go far.” Zaidi was told by people in the professional game to stick to community or female coaching, advised to forget the elite pathway she had dreamed of. “I was like: ‘No, football doesn’t have a gender or religion.’” Finally she met people who believed in her. First was Wallace Hermitt, co-founder of the Black and Asian Coaches Association. Then Chris Ramsey and Les Ferdinand took her to QPR while she was working towards her Uefa B licence. “They put so much time and effort into me. They wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t seen something special within me. In a professional set-up if you don’t know the game, you’ll get found out. “I thought my first session there would be with under-16s but it was under-18s and under-21s. I took a deep breath. I had the Eminem 8 Mile song [Lose Yourself] running through my head. I was like: ‘Come on Annie, this is your time!’” She laughs. Having been given the Helen Rollason award for inspiration in 2015 and a BEM (British Empire Medal) in 2017, Zaidi is a role model. “It’s a big responsibility. I didn’t take on the role. You have no control over it. I’m still chasing what I need to do; I’m not the end product yet. It’s weird.” With the help of Hermitt she has set up the Coach AnnieZ Foundation, working with young girls and encouraging them to follow their dreams. Have things improved? “It hasn’t changed. A few weeks ago we’re at an away game, the lads are getting changed and I was getting the kit bag out the car and the opposition manager said: ‘Are you the physio, love?’ I ignored him, he went over to the other coaches and said: ‘Which one’s the manager?’ The coaches pointed in my direction saying: ‘Annie’s the manager.’” • West Ham have added South Korea captain Cho So-hyun from Norway’s Avaldsnes IL and the Canadian Adriana Leon – whom manager Matt Beard worked with at Boston Breakers – to bolster their injury-hit squad. • Manchester United have been handed their first test against top WSL opposition with a trip to Arsenal in the Continental League Cup semi-finals. Chelsea welcome Manchester City in the other fixture. They will be played on 5 and 6 February. • Orlando Pride have appointed Marc Skinner as head coach after Birmingham announced he was leaving. Orlando’s players include six-times world player of the year Marta and USA’s in-form striker Alex Morgan.Hollywood stars never tell you what they’re actually allowed to eat, and political memoirs never tell you how a politician actually got elected. Senator Kamala Harris’s new autobiography, released just before she announced her presidential campaign, reveals very little about the California senator’s fascinating, historic rise in Democratic politics. Campaign memoirs are not a literary exercise: they’re an excuse for a speaking tour. Like most examples of the genre, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey is a mix of copy-pasted policy papers and “relatable” personal anecdotes. Harris repeats, sometimes nearly word for word, many of the stories she has shared in speeches and interviews. Still, hidden between the recaps of recent crises, there’s a surprisingly clear portrait of a candidate wary of the cost of sharing too much about herself. When Harris decided to become a prosecutor in the Oakland district attorney’s office, she had defend her choice to “incredulous” friends and family. She was raised in Berkeley at the height of the civil rights movement and had been taken to protests in her stroller. (Once, when she was upset as a toddler, her mother asked her what she wanted. “Fweedom!” tiny Kamala yelled back.) Harris writes that she has often faced questions about “how I, as a black woman, could countenance being part of ‘the machine’ putting more young men of color behind bars”. “I knew part of making change was what I’d seen all my life, surrounded by adults shouting and marching and demanding justice from the outside,” Harris writes. “But I also knew there was an important role on the inside, sitting at the table where decisions were being made. When activists came marching and banging on the doors, I wanted to be on the other side to let them in.” The “regal” superior courthouse in Oakland, which looks like “an art deco wedding cake”. “The “gray, solemn and imposing” Hall of Justice in San Francisco. The “magnificence” of the supreme court in Washington. Harris is at her most effusive when she describes government buildings, particularly court houses. “These are buildings that speak,” she writes, explaining her habit of visiting high court buildings whenever she tours foreign countries. Harris writes about bureaucratic dysfunction. One of the offices where she worked as a young lawyer had a culture of backstabbing so intense that attorneys were afraid to attend good-bye parties for their fired colleagues. Later, Harris was elected to run that office, and she recounts proudly how she worked to change the office culture, starting with repainting and installing photocopiers that actually worked. “I’ve always believed there is no problem too small to fix,” she writes. There are real personal details in the first, carefully sketched chapter about Harris’ childhood in Berkeley: her neighbors and caretakers, her mother’s cooking, her trips to visit her mother’s family in India and her father’s family in Jamaica. (Sorry, Canadians: Montreal, where she and her mother and sister moved when she was 12, gets a scant six paragraphs.) But the few personal details of Harris’ adult life feel forced. The book opens, with artificial intimacy, with Harris waking up in bed. Her love of Doritos, already mobilized as an acceptable quirk, makes another appearance. As she watched the 2016 election returns and realized Trump was going to win, Harris, who had just been elected to the Senate, ate an entire “family-size” bag of Doritos by herself. “Didn’t share a single chip,” she writes. Harris dated the former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown for a year, when he was 60 and she was 29. Harris is only one of Brown’s political proteges, who include California’s governor and San Francisco’s mayor, who once babysat Brown’s children. Her memoir does not mention Brown’s name. More surprising is how little Harris shares about her adult relationship with her younger sister, Maya Harris, a former top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and now the chair of Harris’ 2020 campaign. Maya, a veteran of influential progressive groups, and her husband, Tony West, the third-ranking official in Obama’s justice department, are often mentioned, but never quite in focus, as if each time the camera turns toward them, they move to the edge of the frame. The work of a political memoir, see-sawing between impressive achievements and “but I’m just like you” details, seems to leave no space for the story of how two brilliant sisters, the daughters of immigrants from India and Jamaica, made their family into a Democratic political force. It would be interesting, for example, to hear how the family handled the moment when both Harris and her brother-in-law were presumed to be on the list of potential replacements for Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general, in 2014. Harris writes with zeal when she describes settlement negotiations with bank executives over the role the institutions played in the foreclosure crisis. Harris, then attorney general of California, explains how the negotiations unfolded and what it took for her to be able to pull California out of them altogether. Instead of broadly describing needy Americans, she gives sharp portraits of her opponents and the one-liners she landed at conference tables. (Her staff, she writes later, jokes that “Kamala” means “get more commas in that settlement price”.) Harris will continue to face scrutiny over whether she was tough enough on bank executives, including Steve Mnunchin, now Trump’s treasury secretary. But her description of the foreclosure fight offers a hint of a broader critique, perhaps to come, of just how unprepared bank executives were to face any kind of real accountability from the government. “You represent the people,” Harris tells young lawyers. “So I expect you to know exactly who the people are.” But in the stories Harris tells about her career, the people she has helped are often faceless and nameless. She describes her feelings on the first day she went to trial on her own, but says nothing about her client. Her fight to make sure that a young mother swept up in a drug raid did not have to spend the weekend in jail was “a defining moment in my life”, Harris writes, but she notes that she never actually met the mother. Harris writes with warmth about friends and allies, and seems proud to be part of a cohort of women who helped each other rise. She is not above a few well-placed jabs at the men who underestimated her. (“I hope you know how big a job this is going to be,” she describes her Republican opponent telling her, as he concedes the race for California attorney general.) But in writing about the Americans who need politicians’ help, Harris often slips into vague cliches: grieving mothers, anxious fathers. Harris married Doug Emhoff, an entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles, in 2014. His Twitter feed portrays him as his wife’s biggest fan and a proud father. (He has two children from a previous marriage.) That moment when you walk by the tv in your office lobby and see your wife speaking to ⁦@jaketapper⁩ on that tv... pic.twitter.com/rglvdvAksY The glimpses Harris gives us of her husband are sweet and goofy: wearing goggles to chop onions in the kitchen (“Let me tell you, there’s nothing more attractive than a man in onion goggles”), or being so excited to propose to her that he can’t wait until their romantic trip to Italy. Instead, he takes out the ring as she’s distracted and trying to pack the night before their flight. In an early joint media interview, after Harris dodges a question about who would play her in a movie, Emhoff says he’d be “delighted” to be played by Bradley Cooper. When they first started dating, Harris was the attorney general of California, and Emhoff appeared to take her busy schedule very seriously. “The morning after our first date, Doug emailed me with all of his available dates for the next couple of months. ‘I’m too old to play games or hide the ball,’ the e-mail read. ‘I really like you, and I want to see if we can make this work.’” It has been known for a while that the amount of animal products being eaten is bad for both the welfare of animals and the environment. People cannot consume 12.9bn eggs in the UK each year without breaking a few. But the extent of the damage, and the amount by which people need to cut back, is now becoming clearer. On Wednesday, the Lancet medical journal published a study that calls for dramatic changes to food production and the human diet, in order to avoid “catastrophic damage to the planet”. The study sets out the targets for a daily diet to “place consumption within the boundaries of the planet”. They include a reduction in red meat consumption of more than 50%, and a doubling of the intake of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes. “But in specific places the changes are stark. North Americans need to eat 84% less red meat but six times more beans and lentils. For Europeans, eating 77% less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds meets the guidelines,” wrote The Guardian’s Damian Carrington. Others have called for even more drastic changes to human diet to be mad. Another study, published in Octoberin the journal Nature, estimated that meat consumption had to be reduced by 90% to avoid unsustainable global warming, deforestation and water shortages. Whatever the figure, there is a growing consensus that a drastic reduction in overall meat consumption is needed to maintain the health of the planet. What is not clear is how that will be achieved. Excessive meat consumption, like other environmental crises, needs political solutions. Yet most discussion about whether to eat meat remains rooted in personal choice. So far the biggest change in our diets has come from a small but increasing percentage of people who identify as vegetarian or vegan: their answer to a global crisis is to swap out beef for cauliflower steak. The trend towards a meat-reduced diet is largely being driven by young people. A study released this month by the analysts Mintel found the UK has overtaken Germany in the number of new vegan products brought to market. Another agency, Acosta, found 26% of millennials are currently vegetarian or vegan. But by just focusing on personal consumption, a paradoxical situation has emerged where the number of people who consider themselves vegetarian has risen, but so has overall meat consumption because the population of the world is increasing, and many people who do eat meat are eating more of it. That is why many are now calling for a shift in approach: towards a regime that can involve more people and be less rigid about the rules of meat consumption. Sometimes given the slightly clunky titles flexitarian or reducetarianism, advocates of this approach are not especially bothered if you eat a bowl of chicken soup every now and again. What is more important to them is encouraging people to think about what they can do to reduce meat consumption worldwide. One of the leaders of this movement is a man called Brian Kateman, who coined the term reducetarian and now runs a foundation bearing that name. Speaking to the Guardian via Skype, he paces his office eating a bowl of vegetables from the salad chain Sweetgreen. He says there is no one thing behind his desire to motivate people to eat less meat: he is worried about heart disease, animal cruelty, high food prices and environmental destruction. Reducing meat intake can solve a lot of problems, but he says people need to be less puritanical. His own inspiration came from a bout of sibling score-settling. “I remember one Thanksgiving, I ate a small piece of turkey and in that moment my sister, as siblings will do, said to me: ‘I thought you were a vegetarian Brian.’ I couldn’t articulate then as well as I can now, but I thought about how the average person in the developed world eats around 200lb [90kg] of meat a year, and I’m eating let’s say 5lb of meat a year. That’s a lot better. We need to be mindful of how challenging that can be for people and we need to create systems where the default choice is the moral one.” Brian also says that not all meat is the same. High quality, organic meat produced in cruelty free conditions is preferable. The foundation he set up aims to encourage society at large to reduce its intake. “We’re used to thinking about food as a personal choice so in our brain we’re accustomed to it being in this different category. But once you understand that factory farming and the products it produces are so connected to so many issues that are detrimental not just to ourselves but to others, it allows us to recognise that what comes out of your mouth is just as important as what goes into your mouth.” He suggests supporting policy initiatives and encouraging restaurants to broaden their menus as small actions that can help. While there has been some light government intervention around food when it comes to personal health, including improvements to school dinners and the levy on sugary drinks, food ethics has traditionally been outside the realm of parliamentary politics. Dr Marco Springmann, who led the research group that published the report in Nature, says the stakes are too high for politicians to remain squeamish about regulation. “Just yesterday I had a meeting with civil servants from Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] and they were commenting that dietary change is a contentious topic and politicians don’t want to get close to that. We saw similar statements from some politicians after we released the report. I think they’re just so afraid of not being electable if it appears to be trying to prescribe what people eat. If there is not a substantial change within society first, politicians won’t lead the way because it’s too controversial.” He says he is hopeful there will be a groundswell of change, particularly in big cities where restaurants specialising in plant-based dishes are popular. But millennials cannot make the change on their own. “The challenge is to make it not only a very trendy thing for young folks but also to make it accessible for the older generation.” A big problem with relying on vegetables becoming increasingly fashionable, though, is that it is a global issue that needs a global solution. Even if it becomes cool to eat less meat in western metropolitan cities, will that offset increases in meat consumption elsewhere in the world? Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, pork demand in China has increased by an average of 5.7% each year. It is now the biggest per-capita consumer of pork products in the world. But Springmann says small local changes can still have a global impact. “If you look at why people in China eat the way they eat, for one they have a huge rise in income levels so they can afford more meat, but why do they even want to eat meat? Well they very often look towards the west to see what rich people eat,” he says. “If you talk to a Chinese person and you say you’re vegetarian for example they don’t get it. But if there is a large enough group that eats that way and it’s clear that it is progressive rather [than] a sacrifice, then it would be a strong signal to rapidly industrialising countries like China that want to catch up.” Even in the west, people switching from animal to plant products does not necessarily mean an immediate reduction in meat and dairy production. In the US, a decrease in dairy consumption has led to lower milk prices, meaning that farmers are now overproducing to try to offset their loses. Thousands of gallons of unwanted milk have been turned into processed cheese and is sitting in warehouses across the US, uneaten. But there are reasons to be optimistic. In California, campaigners petitioned for a ballot measure that would make intense factory farming of caged chickens illegal. It passed during the most recent midterm elections and although Peta and others say it does not go far enough, itis a step in the right direction. If, in the UK, councils fine people for not recycling and high-emissions cars can be banned from the centre of London, it is time for individuals, companies and governments to actively work to reduce people’s meat intake, whether they want to or not, campaigners say. Springmann says if we do not get over our squeamishness about making these changes quickly, things are going to get a lot worse. “If we continue with our current levels of meat consumption, it’s very likely that we will have more flooding, more hurricanes, extreme weather that is associated with exceeding the two-degree target for climate change ... if nothing is done then those pressures could increase by 50 to 90% and by that time it will basically exceed all environmental limits or so-called planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity.”Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s dream start continues, this a fifth victory in five games, setting up what will be the first stern test of his interim reign: the trip to Tottenham next Sunday. The run equals Sir Matt Busby’s non-wartime club record, but how United fare against a team 10 points and three places better off will be a litmus test of progress. With the downing of Reading ensuring safe passage to the FA Cup fourth round, Solskjær batted away the proposition that they had an easy run of matches. “When you go to Cardiff in the first game it’s never easy,” he said. “At home you’re expected to beat Bournemouth and Huddersfield, never easy games. There are no easy games in the Premier League. Newcastle away, I thought that was a professional performance. “It’s never easy when you make nine changes but we still won. Spurs away, Wembley, that’s a proper test. That will give me more of a reference for where we are against the top boys. “We’re not happy talking about fifth, sixth or fourth in a year or two. The club needs to move on and move up the table.” Towards the end, Alexis Sánchez was forced off with an injury. “Hopefully he will be OK,” Solskjær said. “He was feeling his hamstring.” United were hardly the previous well-oiled machine, as Solskjær kept only Phil Jones and Juan Mata from the team who started Wednesday’s 2-0 win at Newcastle while the Reading manager, José Gomes, made four changes from the side who lost 4-1 at home to Swansea on Tuesday, drafting in Liam Kelly, Liam Moore, Callum Harriott and Danny Loader. Solskjær had conceded that making so many changes was a risk and United’s disjointed display demonstrated it. He said: “I made it hard for the players because it’s a team that’s never played together. Reading made it really difficult. We never had a kick for the first five minutes, they just kept possession and we weren’t cohesive enough in our pressing.” An early Scott McTominay header was one warning from United and better was the quick and slick back-to-front sequence that had Sánchez nipping inside from his left channel and shooting only marginally too high to trouble the Reading goalkeeper, Anssi Jaakkola. United’s were soon ahead, courtesy of VAR. As Mata touched the ball off to Fred, Omar Richards took the Spaniard down. Fred found the net and was ruled offside, but after a rather lengthy consultation the video official gave a penalty that Mata dispatched with aplomb. Sánchez is in the mould of the kind of tricky, goalscoring forward Solskjær favours. The problem has been a lack of goals and lack of trickery since he signed a year ago. The latest evidence of the his struggles came as the interval neared. Yet again, he had the ball in a dangerous area but got his feet mixed up, and Jaakkola was able to clear. The Chilean showed some backbone by being willing to take the responsibility of trying to create and this time it worked. He threaded a pass into Romelu Lukaku. The centre-forward left Jaakkola a spectator and as the angle narrowed he deftly slotted home. Just as United’s goalkeeper, Sergio Romero, had been forced to save a near-post Andy Yiadom effort moments before Lukaku’s strike, so the keeper had to be sharp to repel a shot by Harriott’s from near the penalty spot. United’s response came via a Mata attempt that was stymied and later some neat touch stuff involving Diogo Dalot, McTominay and Fred that turned midfield ball into attack rapidly. Just after the hour, Solskjær made a double switch, taking off Fred and Mata for Marouane Fellaini and Tahith Chong, the 19-year-old Dutchman making his debut. He followed this up by removing Sánchez for Marcus Rashford. “You know the quality he has – so he’ll be fine,” Solskjær said of Sánchez. Rashford and Chong tried to increase the pace of United’s attacks but were sucked into the general mediocrity on show. But an FA Cup victory achieved when below par is always welcome, while Gomes now returns to trying to stave off relegation. The Reading manager was happy with the Championship club’s display but would like to sign “five, six players” in the transfer window.Nothing lasts for ever. Things do fall apart, and can’t be mended; there are only so many times a juddering old boiler can be coaxed back from the brink, and only so many loads of muddy PE kit a washing machine can take. But if you’ve ever had a sense that things are falling apart faster than they used to, invariably just after the warranty runs out, then you may have a point. A 2015 study showed that between 2004 and 2012, the proportion of household appliances that died within five years of purchase had doubled. This speeded-up cycle of stuff breaking down, being chucked away and having to be replaced isn’t just expensive, it’s environmentally unsustainable too, as every new appliance carries a hidden price tag thanks to the climate change gases released during the making of it. Hence the proposals discussed by EU member states this week on strengthening what’s been called the “right to repair”, or consumers’ freedom to patch and mend and eke something perfectly serviceable out for a bit longer. (Yes, it is ironic that one of the last things we’ll hear from Brussels as a member state is about how things are falling apart, when they could be fixed back together. No, they’re probably not trolling us deliberately). The suspicion, fairly or unfairly, is that we’re all being taken for a ride here. Fashion retailers keep their customers coming back by convincing us that whatever was hot six months ago is suddenly not to be seen dead in, and the tech industry at least comes up with new gadgets to covet. But white goods? Everyone who can afford a fridge pretty much already has one, they don’t really go out of style, and there’s only so much cutting-edge technology it’s possible to bring to what is essentially a big, cold cupboard. The most obvious way to keep selling fridges is for fridges to keep wearing out. This is fertile territory for urban myths about wicked manufacturers deliberately programming things to go bang. Radio phone-ins this week have been full of them, including the caller who was insistent that after the war, factories began secretly inserting something into domestic appliances to make them fail as a job creation scheme for returning soldiers. (Though that one may have its roots in the infamous lightbulb conspiracy, or the way German, US and British companies were caught colluding to reduce the lifespan of lightbulbs in the 1920s so that we’d all have to buy more of them). But in truth, much of what is darkly referred to as “planned obsolescence” probably isn’t anything of the sort. Sometimes it’s just a side-effect of cut-throat consumer price wars, and the pressure to build things as cheaply as possible, which means cutting corners on durability. And sometimes it’s more to do with technology’s restless habit of overtaking itself. Lately, regulators have been casting a rather more sceptical eye over this, with French prosecutors probing Apple’s admission last year that older iPhones were deliberately designed to slow down when new software updates came along. But maddening as it is for people who only really use their smartphones to text and check their emails, the market is driven by those forever hankering after a slightly improved version. The unwritten assumption is that there’s no point making them to last a lifetime. There’s no reason the unglamorous workhorses of our domestic lives should follow suit, however, and that’s where the new EU proposals are squarely aimed; not at cutting-edge tech but washing machines and TVs and things that are becoming curiously harder to fix. The manufacturers’ argument for warranties being automatically invalidated if you have a go at mending something yourself is that technology has moved on, that there’s no place any more for amateur tinkering. But tell that to generations of engineers who started out by taking things apart in the kitchen as kids, spreading bits all over the floor. And how on earth did we fall into the trap of lights where the bulb is sealed in, so that when it goes you have to replace the whole unit? Make do and mend can sound a horribly old-fashioned concept, redolent of blitz spirit and keeping bits of string in drawers in case they come in handy. And it’s true that in a consumer economy, jobs depend on the constant churn of material things. But there is something very timely about the right to repair, blending the thrifty satisfaction of fixing stuff with green ideals of reusing and recycling. The vast buildups of single-use plastic – drinking straws and plastic bags, drinks stirrers and cotton buds – have shown how destructive disposability can be. It feels morally wrong to keep wasting things on such an epic and self-destructive scale, when we know how very far one man’s trash is from being another man’s treasure. • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistAwards season is not, as a rule, a terribly exciting time for men’s fashion. As women dominate the photo opportunities and red-carpet chatter with their extravagant haute-couture gowns, expectations of men have remained fixed for decades: black tie, white shirt, patent-leather shoes, and you’re ready to go. Some variations are permitted, but usually not enough to earn more than a few seconds’ notice. Which is why Michael B Jordan bewildered onlookers at Sunday night’s Screen Actors’ Guild awards by slipping a purple floral harness over an otherwise sleek double-breasted suit. Timothee Chalamet wore a sparkly black version to the Golden Globes last month. Both looks bring to mind the Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon’s fetishwear-inspired tuxedo at last year’s Oscars – shoulderless, so as to give suitable exposure to the leather-and-steel BDSM harness crossing his chest. This wasn’t just a rakish Hollywood bad boy turning up without a tie, but an out-and-proud gay celebrity actively queering the carpet, brashly defying showbusiness’s prescribed models of masculinity. The harness is the uniform of the once underground gay leather bondage scene, a richly coded symbol of male sexual submission and control; refashioning it as mainstream formalwear before an audience of millions was an explicit statement that LGBT sexuality is no longer something to be hidden or marginalised. The gesture was applauded, a handful of thinkpieces were written, and Rippon went back to wearing more conventionally chic skinny suits at public events. What we didn’t anticipate was that a year later, the harness – now co-opted by Louis Vuitton – would become the accessory of choice for straight male stars looking to up their red-carpet game. Vuitton’s version strips the item of its leather-scene implications: now constructed from thick fabric, it looks like the kind of safety harness used by frazzled parents to control roaming toddlers. Whether this backwards-Baby-Björn look strikes you as charmingly whimsical or just idiotic, it’s hard not to see it as one more item of queer culture being appropriated and neutralised by the pop machine. You would like to imagine its straight wearers are winkingly complicit in redressing masculinity, though Chalamet’s response to queries about his outfit suggests otherwise: “I thought it was a bib,” he admitted. “I had a friend send me a thing that, like, sex-dungeon culture is a thing where you wear harnesses. I didn’t do it for that reason.” In Chalamet’s defence, his obliviousness is testament to the fashion world’s successful rebranding of the harness as Yolo bro-wear: if best actor frontrunner Rami Malek wears one to the Oscars next month, to pick up an award for his sanitised portrayal of the queer icon Freddie Mercury, it would be a fitting gesture.GoCycle GS e-bikePrice £2,499, gocycle.comTop speed 15.5mphRange up to 40 milesRecharge time 4 hoursGears 3Weight 16.5kg Lennie the bulldog is a big fan of bikes. So much so that when I stopped, he wandered over and lifted his leg against my rear wheel. “Sign of respect,” said the dog’s gruff owner with a sniff. Lennie certainly seems to know his stuff. The bike he’d taken aim at was a box-fresh GoCycle, which its own makers describe as the “best electric bike in the world”. That’s a bold claim. And how on earth would you prove that anyway? But here’s the thing. If you ask me – or Lennie – they might be right. I’ve ridden dozens of e-bikes:over the years some cheaper, some lighter and some more powerful, but I’ve yet to ride one I thought was better. The brand was established in 2002 when Richard Thorpe left his design job at McLaren – manufacturers of some of the world’s most coveted sports cars – to try his hand at building electric bikes. It shows the confidence he had in his own product – at that time it was little more than a concept cycle for an almost nonexistent sector. I wonder how much pleasure he now gets from telling his naysayers: “I told you so!” The business he started was Karbon Kinetics and after seven years of trial and error he launched his ground-breaking GoCycle G1. In many ways it was the bike that kickstarted the e-bike revolution. It was, for one thing, the first “injection-moulded magnesium alloy” bicycle in history. Before you glaze over with technical overload, this means that Richard was able to create lightweight and durable bikes with the exact frame shape he wanted. Gone was the old “diamond geometry” that had served bike-makers so well for more than a century. The new geometry now had the flexibility to accommodate riders of either sex, ranging in height from 4ft 10in to 6ft 7in. Since the G1, we’ve had the G2, the range-topping G3 and later this year we’ll see the GX (which will fold in 10 seconds or less). The GS, which Lennie and I have both taken a liking to, is the “entry-level” model. GoCycle doesn’t expect to sell too many of these as the hope is that once you enter a dealership you’ll quickly trade up to the G3 as you’ll be tempted by its safer daylight running lights, informative dashboard and automatic gear shifting. These extras do make life on a GoCycle even more pleasant. But in terms of the essentials, the cheaper GS has everything covered. The drivetrain is enclosed, keeping your clothes free of oil. The single-sided design makes the five-spoke starfish wheels quick and easy to remove. There is bump-smoothing rear suspension, torque-sensing pedal-assist power and a fully integrated battery. Other brands (Brompton) have gone for a detachable battery which isn’t nearly as useful. The bike can be folded, though it’s a bit of a faff. The whole thing weighs just 16.5kg and if you grab it round the waist you’ll find it has “neutral” balance, which makes it simple to lug up a flight of stairs. All its settings can be accessed through a free app on your phone. The GS also comes with a sturdy built-in lock and kickstand – which I love. Why do most bikes not have kickstands any more? Portable, clean, light: the GS is an incredibly easy bike to live with, especially as the ride it delivers is smooth, stable and engrossing. And so it should be – it’s the best electric bike in the world. Even Lennie thinks so. Know your limits with this chest-worn monitor which gives accurate real-time feedback on your heart rate. No excuses now… By creating an effort-based reading, from your personal handicap and maximum heartrate, the Myzone MZ-3 will give you a colour reading that will keep your fitness goals in check. This will tell you if you are in the peak zone, the cardio zone, the aerobic zone or the fat burning zone and is accurately read across different exercises to help you plan workouts that help you achieve specific targets. With this revolutionary way of tracking effort, you can set yourself personal challenges, monthly goals and even interact through the Myzone App with friends, work colleagues or teammates who can set up challenges against you or share updates with you. Working as a closed network with Instagram-like pictures and a news feed of your networks workouts, you can like and comment on each other’s achievements. Whether you are competitive or love collecting those likes to keep you moving, Myzone wants you to stay happy and healthy all the way through this year. Myzone MZ-3 Fitness Tracker, £129, amazon.co.uk Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@MartinLove166 This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Theresa May’s room for manoeuvre should her Brexit deal be rejected next week was further constrained on Wednesday night, after the government lost a second dramatic parliamentary showdown in as many days. An increasingly boxed-in prime minister must now set out her plan B within three working days of a defeat next Tuesday, after a rebel amendment passed on Wednesday. There were furious scenes in the House of Commons, as the Speaker, John Bercow, took the controversial decision to allow a vote on the amendment, tabled by former attorney general Dominic Grieve. A string of MPs, including the leader of the house of Commons Andrea Leadsom, repeatedly intervened to question the Speaker’s approach, with some accusing him of being biased against Brexit. But parliament went on to back Grieve, as Conservative rebels determined to hand control of the Brexit process to MPs if next week’s vote is lost, defied the prime minister. The fresh defeat, which followed a separate backbench amendment to the finance bill on Tuesday, means the government will have to return to parliament swiftly with a plan. An accelerated timetable will also pile the pressure on Labour to move quickly. The motion setting out the government’s plan can be amended by MPs hoping to push their own alternative proposals, from a second referendum to a harder Brexit. Corbyn’s party will have to decide which to back. Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, on Wednesday became the most senior Labour figure to suggest that the article 50 process might have to be extended, if the deadlock in parliament cannot be broken. He told MPs: “There is a question of the extension of article 50, which may well be inevitable now, given the position that we are in, but of course we can only seek it, because the other 27 [EU member-states] have to agree.” The mooted extension to the transition period is a new idea being put forward by the EU to help Theresa May square the circle created by the written agreement last December and the draft withdrawal agreement in March. That committed the UK and the EU to ensuring there was no divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But it also, after an intervention by the Democratic Unionist party, committed the UK (not the EU) not to have any trading differences between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The problem is that these are two irreconcilable agreements. They also impinge on the legally binding Good Friday agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland and in some senses pooled sovereignty of Northern Ireland giving people a birthright to be Irish or British or both. If the UK leaves the EU along with the customs union and the single market then the border in Ireland becomes the only land border between the UK and the EU forcing customs, tax and regulatory controls. The backstop is one of three options agreed by the EU and the UK in December and would only come into play if option A (overall agreement) or option B (a tailor-made solution) cannot be agreed by the end of transition. The Irish have likened it to an insurance policy. The new EU idea is to extend the transition period to allow time to get to option A or B. But an extension is problematic for Brexiters and leave voters, who want the UK to get out of the EU as soon as possible. The Irish and the EU will also still need the backstop in the withdrawal agreement, which must be signed before the business of the trade deal can get under way. Otherwise it is  a no-deal Brexit. Extending the transition into 2021 would mean another year of paying into the EU budget. Britain would have to negotiate this but it has been estimated at anywhere between £10bn and £17bn. Staying in the EU for another year would also mean continued freedom of movement and being under the European court of justice, which Brexiters would oppose. Starmer also said: “We are going to have to look at what available options are realistically still on the table and what now are the merits of each of them.” The government announced details of new concessions on the Brexit deal on Wednesday, in a bid to win over sceptics. Brexit secretary Steve Barclay announced the government would accept a proposal from Tory MP Hugo Swire that will allow MPs to vote, before the Irish backstop is implemented, if a trade deal has not been reached by mid-2020. Theresa May’s spokesman said the plan would give MPs the options of implementing the backstop, extending the transition period, or “alternative ways you could look at, including technology”. But the idea that it would strengthen MPs’ powers to prevent the backstop coming into force was swiftly dismissed in Brussels. An EU diplomat said: “This is a purely internal arrangement in the UK. What counts is the treaty and the legally binding commitments in the treaty and why would the UK not want to honour its international obligations?” Asked whether the EU would have to concur with whatever decision was reached, the spokesman said not: “My understanding on that is that it’s a decision for the UK parliament as to which route we choose to go down.” However, one senior Brexiter concurred with the view in Brussels, that the withdrawal treaty, once ratified, would trump any vote in Westminster: “That’s the point of international treaties!” he said. More details were also announced of the so-called “Stormont Lock”, giving the Northern Ireland Assembly a “strong role” in regulatory arrangements, if the backstop comes into force. But with the assembly currently suspended, a paper published by the government setting out the plans was quickly rubbished by the Democratic Unionist party (DUP). Winning over the DUP was at the heart of No 10’s strategy for smoothing the path to her deal being passed by parliament. But there has been little sign since the new year that their resolve to reject the deal has weakened. Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s leader at Westminster, described the latest proposals as “cosmetic and meaningless”. Earlier, Bercow had clashed repeatedly with MPs over his decision to fly in the face of parliamentary convention and allow the Grieve motion to be voted on. “The chair is simply seeking to discharge the responsibility of the holder of the office to the best of his ability,” he insisted, speaking about himself in the third person. “That is what I have always done, and no matter what people say or how forcefully they say it, or how many times they say it or by what manner of co-ordination it is said, I will continue to do what I believe to be right.” But veteran Brexiter Peter Bone was one of those Tories expressing concern, and warned that the decision plunged parliament into “pretty choppy and dangerous waters at the time in our nation’s affairs when, frankly, we can least afford it”. Another MP challenged the Speaker about a sticker on his car that “makes derogatory comments about Brexit” – with Bercow shooting back that the car belonged to his wife. Rebel backbenchers believe the decision to allow the vote strengthens their hand in what they expect to be a series of battles in the days ahead, as they seek to prevent the government leading Britain out of the EU without a deal. Downing Street sought to play down the significance of the amendment. A spokesman said: “Our intention has always been to respond quickly and provide certainty on the way forward in the event that we lose the meaningful vote.”Long before the sun rises above the towering Himalayan peaks that overlook Pokhara in central Nepal, scores of young men gather in the dark on the edge of the town to train for the race of a lifetime. At the starter’s signal, they charge off, first heaving a 25kg sack of sand into a “doko” wicker basket on their backs, and then starting a gruelling 5km race up the steep mountainside. Finish in less than 46 minutes and they have a chance to join the Gurkhas, the legendary brigade of the British army. The Gurkhas’ reputation as a fighting force is almost mythical: brave young men from the hills of Nepal who fight by the motto, “Better to die than to be a coward”. This month hundreds of Nepalese young men aged 18-21 are battling it out at the British Gurkha Camp in Pokhara for just 400 coveted places, in a series of demanding physical and mental tests, which include the feared “doko race”. To make it this far, they have already seen off more than 6,000 young hopefuls who signed up for the regional selection phase in late summer 2018. The prize is not just a job in the British army, but a lucrative salary and pension, and the right to settle in the UK. For young men from one of the poorest countries in Asia, it is like winning the lottery. The British army insists the recruitment process is, “free, fair and transparent”, but with so much riding on selection, Gurkha recruitment has become big business for private training academies across Nepal. It has also become the target of bribery and extortion from unscrupulous dalals, or agents. They approach families of some potential recruits claiming to be able to use contacts at the British camp to secure them a place with the Gurkhas in exchange for a payment of tens of thousands of pounds. Their pitch is a lie – they have no links to the British army and no way to influence decisions in the British camp – but with so much at stake, it is one that desperate parents are susceptible to, especially in a country where corruption is widespread. “There is a real craze for the British army … so it’s common – you can ask anyone applying,” says Om Thapa, who runs a training academy for potential recruits. Ashok Thapa, 19, one of this year’s candidates, says his mother was approached by the son of a retired Gurkha demanding 2 million rupees (£13,500) to secure a place for him in the brigade. “My mum was willing to pay because she would do anything to help me [but] I told her this is a bet for them. If I get through they get money for nothing,” says Thapa, who convinced his mother not to pay up. Years ago, the British army used to send ex-Gurkhas out into the hills to find potential recruits. Poverty was no bar to selection. Today, recruits are more likely to come from middle or upper-class urban families. The vast majority of the finalists have been to private school and speak fluent English. “The selection process now is completely different. Most of the candidates have achieved top grades. They are more professional and educated now, but in the past they were stronger,” says Rajesh Rai, an owner of Gurkha Fitness training academy. While potential recruits do not have to pay anything to the British army, they are shelling out thousands of pounds to join training academies, which promise to prepare them for recruitment. The number of academies nationwide has increased fivefold in the past 10 years to more than a hundred. Many candidates sign up months before the British army’s first phase of recruitment, and if they make the cut, they stay on at the academies until final selection, meaning the schools are guaranteed a year-round income with no shortage of repeat clients. The standard admission fee is 35,000 rupees for each phase of recruitment, but a candidate who spends a whole year at an academy can easily pay £1,800 in admission and hostel fees. Nepal’s per capita income is less than £800 a year. “The academies are like a trap … There is a fiction that if you don’t go to an academy you can’t succeed. Nobody wants to take that risk, because [joining the Gurkhas] is a one in a million chance,” says Ashok Thapa. Rabi Sharma, 20, says he and all his friends have had to borrow money to pay the fees. “I didn’t join an academy in the past because I couldn’t afford it, but this is my last chance so I want to be prepared,” says Sharma, who will be too old to apply next year. Himal Limbu, vice-secretary of the Kathmandu branch of the Nepal Physical Training Association, the body that represents most of the training academies, says: “It’s up to a candidate to decide whether to prepare independently or go to the training centre. That’s a matter of individual choice. We have been charging a nominal fee. For most of the training centres, the fee is hardly enough to pay for renting space and staff.” The British Gurkhas say they have no connection to any training academies and do not engage with them. “We actively advertise that it is not necessary to attend a training academy in order to successfully pass recruitment selection,” said a spokesperson for the British Gurkhas. The Gurkhas say they discourage people from spending money to get selected. “All the information on our selection assessments … are available on the army website. However, we cannot force people not to go to training academies and ultimately it is their choice,” said the spokesperson. Noah Coburn, a political anthropologist who has researched Gurkha recruitment, believes the British army should take more responsibility. “Numerous young men drop out of school or leave career paths to train for the British army. Once they fail, few actually rejoin school. Many are in pretty serious debt too … the British army ignores these repercussions,” says Coburn. Gurkha Fitness is one of a new crop of academies run by ex-British army soldiers. Co-owner Rajesh Rai says the academy attracted 700 candidates during the first phase of selection, guaranteeing a bumper pay day for his company. Its compound resembles an army camp, with dormitories packed with bunk beds, a canteen and a gym. Eye test charts are pinned to the walls alongside stacks of doko baskets. Kumar Newar, 19, has been at living at the academy for two years. Last time round he failed final selection because of a perforated ear drum. “I felt so bad, I cried … my family has spent a lot of money, about 300,000 rupees (£2,090) in two years.” After an operation to repair his ear, and another year of relentless training, Newar is confident he will win selection this time. “I want to join the Gurkhas for the fame and fortune,” he says. Becoming a Gurkha brings prestige and status, but for most the real motivation is the money. Each morning and evening at Pokhara’s sports ground, groups of potential recruits jog around the rough cinder track or pump out sit-ups to their favourite songs, blaring from their phones. “I want to continue the glorious legacy of the Gurkhas,” says Rabi Sharma, between laps of the track, repeating the standard response his academy has drilled into him, before adding, “and get a good salary and pension, and move to the UK. The salary and pension are the most important.” For potential recruits like Prakash Rana, 20, the cost is a risk worth taking. “If 35,000 rupees can bring 3.5m rupees in the future, then why not?” Some names have been changed to protect identitiesFrom our special correspondent20 January 1919 The great conference was formally opened at the Quai d’Orsay, yesterday on the 48th anniversary of that scene, so calamitous to Europe, when the German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles on the eve of the capitulation of Paris. If anyone had chanced to be present at both ceremonies, he would have been struck by a sense of contrast. The meeting in the Galerie des Glaces gave birth to a new order which has been a fatal burden to Europe. The meeting at the Quai d’Orsay is to give birth to a new order to which all mankind is looking for freedom and peace. At the first scene, when a new empire was created, nothing was omitted that pomp and ceremony could contribute to make the spectacle impressive. At the second, when a new world was to be created, men acted as if the event itself were so solemn that appearances were of little moment. Those who looked into the future felt that the expectations of mankind at this crisis would have needed for their full expression a religious leader rather than a statesman – an inspired fanatic rather than a self-possessed and eloquent speaker. Round the horseshoe tableThe simplicity of the scene was its most striking feature. There were not half a dozen uniforms round the table. Indeed this indifference to state was carried to excess, for, while one could admire the deliberate disregard of display, it was impossible not to regret that (owing to a mistake in the official programme supplied) the British Prime Minister’s place at M. Poincaré’s left hand was empty when the conference opened, and the presence of officials and secretaries scattered through the room gave a look almost of confusion to the scene. The several delegates were received by M. Pichon, and then they passed into the great Clock Room, where they gradually found their way to their places at this horseshoe table. On the right hand off M. Poincaré sat the United States delegates, on the left the British. Next to the United States representatives, round the corner of the table on the outside, came in order the French, Italian, and Belgian representatives. On either side of that end of the horseshoe were seated the Brazilian delegates, and on the inside, from the end up to the centre, came the delegates from Cuba, Greece, Haiti, Peru, Portugal, Serbia, Czecho-Slovakia, and Uruguay. On the other side of the horseshoe, to the left of M. Poincaré, next to the British delegation, sat the delegates from Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and India; and lastly the Japanese representatives. On the inner side of the table facing them, starting from the bottom, sat the delegates from Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, the King of the Hedjaz, Liberia, Panama, Poland, Rumania and Siam. First questions: punishment of the Kaiser20 January 1919 The Inter-Allied peace conference was formally opened on Saturday afternoon at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris with a plenary meeting of all the 32 Allied and associated nations (including the British dominions and India) that have been allotted delegates. It was, in accordance with Friday’s decision, an “open” meeting, held in the presence of journalists of many countries, who, however, could only see and hear with difficulty. The speech in which President Poincaré declared the conference open set before it its task of creating a new order in the world on the unanimously accepted principles of President Wilson, including the establishment of a general League of Nations. M. Clemenceau, the French prime minister, was elected president of the conference. Proceeding at once to business, M. Clemenceau stated that the question ordered for the day were: 1) Responsibility for the war.2) Penalties on crimes committed during the war.3) International legislation in regard to labour. M. Clemenceau asked the delegates to begin by examining into the question of the responsibility of the authors of the war, which, he said, would be facilitated by a report to be sent them on the criminal responsibility of the ex-Kaiser. Both Frenchmen also referred to the reparation and guarantees of security needed, particularly by France. Read the full article. 20 January 1919 As M. Poincaré reminded the delegates, the conference at Paris opened 48 years to the day after the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles. The coincidence was probably designed, one of those strokes in which the historical and the aesthetic sense of France delights. The coincidence is one well worth meditating upon. In 1914 the German Empire had every air of being as solidly founded a political fabric as any in the world. At its head stood a Royal house which enjoyed popular esteem. It was governed by a bureaucracy which was a byword for patience and for skill. Its army was the strongest in the world. Its people one of the most laborious races in Europe. Its commerce was flourishing and expanding all over the globe. All this magnificent structure has collapsed. The German Empire has had not one of the longest, but one of the shortest lives among the empires in the history. What is the reason? Here is a fine subject for the historian, and the moralist. Yet the central reason is plain. We can accept Bismarck’s own teaching that the German Empire was made by blood and iron. It was fashioned by violence and by a wholly amoral ruthlessness. In the deliberate philosophy of the makers of the German Empire it was a monument to the virtue of pure force and pure calculation, and its success was the vindication of pure force and pure calculation as sovereign remedies in politics. Up to the very eve of the war the German Empire and German statecraft were quoted as convincing rebukes to democracy. The German people sold liberty for the success of German Imperialism. Bismarck undertook to destroy the liberal movement in Germany by demonstrating that Biskmarckian statesmanship was the way to glory. No doubt in his case force was tempered by prudence, and we may well believe that he would not have made the mistake of provoking universal distrust and enmity and launching Germany into a war with whole world. But just as it is in the nature of great men to be succeeded by small men, so it was in the nature of his philosophy that in the hands of small men it should lead Germany to this disaster. The essence of his gospel was force, and force intoxicated, except with those rare individuals who can coldly calculate the limits of bayonets. The fall of the German Empire is not in despite of Bismarck, but in consequence of Bismarck. It has collapsed because of his foundations. Two other great Empires – the Russian and the Austrian – passed out of history along with the German Empire. They were fit companions. So dulled is our imagination when actually living through great events that we fail to grasp their magnitude. We look upon the destruction of Austria and of Russia as inevitable, commonplace. Nevertheless, a few years ago what serious student would have foretold it? The search for morals in history requires much faith. We might conclude from the fall of three great Empires the old and not too comforting lesson of the mortality of human things. Even that would have its value if it served to tame the arrogance of political architects and to lend something of moderation and of tolerance, along with a dash of melancholy, to political speculation and political conflict. It is not without use to look at things from the standpoint of eternity. But in the tremendous events through which we are passing we may discover at least two other lessons of value to the world in the work of reconstruction upon which it is engaged. The first is that force and amorality are a rotten foundation for states. M. Poincaré tells us that justice must rule the deliberations of the peace conference. It is fine saying, and the Allied statesmen must be true to it in spirit and in word. They are under every sort of temptation to be false to it. They are the heirs of a bad tradition – the tradition of secrecy, the tradition of power, the tradition of barter. Again, there is nobody to resist them. The whole world is spread before them; they have but to stretch out their hands and take. To fortify them in resisting these temptations they have the moral spectacle of the destruction of three empires which acted as though force were the highest law. If the passionate desire of the peoples of the world for peace and justice should fail to convert the Allied statesmen, there is the powerful argument of Germany, Austria, and Russia that the way of violence and rapacious appetite does not prosper. The second moral is that the fond belief that politics abhors the small state is erroneous. Whatever the ultimate aspect of Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, it is certain that they will slough off many states. The peace conference will sanctify the birth or revival of a dozen new states in two continents. We need not enter into the rather sterile debate as to the rival merits of great states and little states. The world never was constituted entirely of the one or the other. The tide which for 50 years seemed to be running strongly towards the great state has definitely turned. The world of the future will see a balance between the great states and the little states. Both have their place in scheme of things. The Allied statesmen in conference would make a profound error if they thought the function of the small state was merely to adorn their triumphs or to be the instrument for their purposes. To create them in that spirit and with that object would be merely to establish the rule of force under a plausible mask. The old school of diplomacy, a school which is very far from dead, knew no other way of working, but if the peace conference were to follow it its work would lack stability and permanence. The small states and the small peoples must come into their rights for their own sakes. This is an edited extract. Read the full article. The treaty was signed on 28 June 1919 and took force on 10 January 1920.The government shutdown, now in its fourth miserable week, shows few signs of ending. Donald Trump, obsessed with curtailing immigration at all costs, wants money for a border wall House Democrats won’t give to him. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, has been content to do Trump’s bidding, twice blocking Democratic bills to reopen the government. This is now the longest shutdown ever and it’s striking how little Trump and the Republican Senate majority care. McConnell has turned into a political phantom. Trump gloats about ordering fast food for football players because the cooks in the White House have been furloughed. It’s easy to see the shutdown as another symptom of Trump’s instability and hatred of Mexican immigrants – and it is. The lack of alarm from his Republican peers is, just as importantly, revelatory of another disturbing truth: the rightwing, anti-government forces which first took root in the GOP more than 40 years ago are now in full bloom and Trump is their willing avatar. Republican party leaders have long talked about slashing the size of government, reducing the social safety net, and privatizing whatever they can. Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, called social security a “Ponzi scheme”. It has long been the dream of movement conservatives to bring to the knees a federal government that grew dramatically in scope under the Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B Johnson’s anti-poverty programs. About 800,000 federal workers are currently furloughed. Many of them have the kind of job protections and benefits rightwing intellectuals have long demonized. For many people of color, a government job has been the path to a middle-class existence, with healthcare, a pension and paid time off. It was Ronald Reagan’s administration that once spoke of “starving the beast” of the federal government to achieve his desired policy outcomes. The idea was simple: deprive the government of tax revenue, reduce its ability to function, and cut spending on as many programs as possible. Nothing domestically should be spared: Medicare, Medicaid, social security, housing programs and welfare. While Trump appears incapable of reading a book, he has absorbed – through osmosis, as well as through cabinet members such as the vice-president, Mike Pence, and acting the chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, – the philosophies of hardline conservative economists, especially Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek and James Buchanan. All three men were the godfathers of modern conservatism, which sought to purge the remnants of the Republican party’s liberalism and its taste for a certain element of noblesse oblige. The growing federal government, with its programs for the poor and its ossifying bureaucracy, was the true enemy of liberty in their eyes, and a total war must be waged against it. Trump’s declaration in early January that he could keep the government shutdown going “months or even years” was taken as a sign, in most circles, of his usual recklessness and his commitment to a farcical border wall. It should also be viewed through another lens: a Republican leader telling the American people the shutdown just doesn’t mean very much to him. One could imagine a President Ted Cruz saying something similar. The Texas senator was the architect of the last shutdown in 2013, willing to temporarily kneecap the federal government over his hatred of the Affordable Care Act. Cruz and Trump share an equal disdain for a healthcare law that is market-based and anything but socialism. It was their willingness to shred it at all costs that was another reminder of how extreme Republican party leaders have become. If you believe an expansive federal government is ultimately illegitimate and an impingement on liberty, what difference does a shutdown make? Though it’s unlikely the shutdown will last as long as Trump said it could, what if federal workers, tired of being at home without a paycheck or working without getting paid, simply walked away and hunted for other jobs? Reagan infamously fired striking air traffic controllers, presaging the long, successful war against once powerful labor unions. In the fantasies of the most fevered rightwing thinkers, Trump could have his own Reagan moment. Conservative columnists are already arguing that “the temporary shutdown of parts of the federal government is a good argument for the permanent shutdown of parts of the federal government”, in the words of the National Review’s Kevin Williamson. Remember: the conservatives in Trump’s corner have no incentive for government to work well. Ineffective, pared down bureaucracy is merely a further argument for its inability to help people, and the vicious cycle spins on. Starve it so it can’t be of use to anyone. And then hope Americans lose any loyalty to the services it provided. This chilling vision still may not come to pass. Anti-government fervor is not a mainstream position. Even Republican voters like getting their social security checks and Medicare. Universal healthcare polls well. This has always been a source of frustration for the most committed fundamentalists of an unfettered free market. Beyond unrestrained capitalism and business owners being left to their own devices, they can’t really offer much else. Most Americans implicitly understand “freedom” doesn’t mean the reduction of healthcare coverage, poorly funded schools or the end of protections for consumers. It will be up to the next Democratic president to undo the damage Trump has done. Until then, we can only hope somehow, someway, Trump and his allies decide it’s not fun any more to lock hundreds of thousands of people out of work.The door to Bradford Cox’s wood-framed house is unlocked, so I wander in. Set in a leafy bit of Atlanta, it is the kind of place that would make Marie Kondo freak out, with the entire contents of Cox’s brain seemingly emptied on to its handsome wooden furniture: a topography of shells, tools, vials and records. His voice calls out a greeting, digitally garbled through a loudspeaker, and a dog treat fires across the room. Faulkner, Cox’s stocky mutt, skids on to the kitchen floor. “I love you boy!” Cox is on his way back in his Volvo, but is using an app to monitor, talk to and remotely feed Faulkner. “I love dogs more than humans,” he tells me later. “I don’t like hateful things. I like sweet dogs with velvet ears.” As the frontman and creative engine of Deerhunter, Cox’s ambient rock music – forged at the crossroads of shoegaze, doo-wop and 60s psych – has made the five-piece one of the great US bands of the century. Their new album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is terrifically bleak without being maudlin, beautifully sketching out worlds that are teetering or actually ending. But Cox, once ensconced in his home, is a picture of contentment. “The only great fear I have is losing my parents, or anyone in my family, and my dog,” he says. “I wish those things could last for ever, and then I would have heaven. I have everything I want.” He has double-booked me, and apologises: would I mind going to his friend Michael Stipe’s birthday party? As inconveniences go, it ranks low, and so we head off to Athens, the next sizeable town to the east. This is where Cox grew up, poor, and had a tough childhood: complications resulting from Marfan syndrome left him his rake-thin profile, and required surgery and months in hospital. Succour eventually came from going to see bands such as Stereolab. “When I was just a boy at 12 or 13, [Stereolab co-founder] Tim Gane said to me his favourite word was ‘juxtaposition’. I remember that sticking out to me. And I said: ‘Well, that’ll be my favourite word, and my life will be devoted to juxtaposing.’” At Stipe’s house, Cox does not seem particularly thrilled by the party element of the birthday party, and mostly wants to give Stipe his present, a painting by fellow Atlanta visionary Lonnie Holley. His lanky frame stiffens when we enter Stipe’s noisy kitchen, and we make fitful small talk next to Helena Christensen, Cox holding an untouched portion of cake as if out of duty. There is a great spread, but he would rather head off and eat elsewhere. We get back in the Volvo and head to a diner, where Deerhunter bassist Josh McKay happens to be sitting at another table. A journeyman Georgia indie rocker who once played in a band with River Phoenix, McKay replaced Josh Fauver, who later died young at 39, a subject Cox will not talk about. McKay and keyboardist Javier Morales had themselves dodged death the previous week, after a car smashed into theirs. Cox is not massively sympathetic, slightly scolding McKay for not buying his previous Volvo; McKay breathes his irritation in through his nose and swallows it. There’s something uniquely toxic about this current situation, a new chemical scent that I’ve never smelled before It is the only glimpse all weekend of the frictions that have sometimes flared up in the band, that first formed in 2001. All the members seem to agree that they are in a better place now than when they were making previous records. Guitarist Lockett Pundt describes 2013’s Monomania as having “a kind of snarl, a lot of anger and resentment … the creation was kind of nightmarish”, but has recently noticed a “maturation in the band … we enjoy each other’s company more [now] than in the past”. McKay says they are like “misunderstood cousins” with Cox as “mum and dad in one”. Cox meanwhile, who writes the bulk of the band’s music as demos before the band refine it together, describes their creative process as: “This oil just erupted through the floor of the desert, but now we’re going to build a scaffolding around it.” The waitress brings over the bill with a Deerhunter lyric quoted on top in Biro. The next day, Faulkner leads us around their cloudless Atlanta neighbourhood as we talk about town planning. In the local cafe, they know how Cox likes his tea: on ice, steeped for seven minutes. Where on earth has Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?, “empirically a bummer record” according to Cox, come from amid this indie version of Eden? “I’m basically trying to take a zeitgeist and run with it,” Cox says, back sitting in his living room. “There’s something uniquely toxic about this current situation, a new chemical scent that I’ve never smelled before. It’s like burning plastic.” Is Trump to blame for this social discord? “How can you blame one person? There’s a general narcissism, a general sense of meaninglessness, really. And the rush to synthesise some sort of meaning out of the versions of ourselves that we create and promote.” Not that it’s a bad thing for art he says: he was up late watching The Third Man, and quotes the Orson Welles line about the Italians having bloodshed and Michelangelo, and the Swiss having peace and the cuckoo clock. “It is an interesting way of framing human history: the worse it gets, art restates its value and necessity. In a peaceful and contented culture, art becomes subdued – all of its art is going to be based on designs for living. [Apple designer] Jonathan Ive is probably one of the most important modern artists,” he says, witheringly. One song, the Kinks-referencing No One’s Sleeping, was written straight after Cox heard about the killing of British MP Jo Cox by a man opposed to her stance on the EU and immigration: “Great unrest / In the country / There’s much duress / Violence has taken hold.” “I was laying in bed with my dog, reading the news, and I was moved to stand up and groan by the frustration,” Cox says. “It’s just violence, it’s sickening.” Like many, he regards the rise of populism wearily. “Having grown up in the American south, I understand about poverty. And how poverty can leave one to feel a strange, brassy sense of dignity, and a need for one to possess one’s culture and identity. There’s an aspiration to be the ruling class, the ones who can trace their ancestry to primitive beaches. We feel entitled to a national identity, and tribalism, which is sad.” He compares us unfavourably to Faulkner and his canine friends. “When I take my dog up to the dog park, he doesn’t play with dogs of his own size or colouring or breed, he plays with all the dogs. They become a mad pack, tongues wagging, happy to be together.” Punk’s much easier when you don’t have to wake up in the morning, and that’s who dominates punk Another song, Element, is even more stricken, seemingly taking place in a painterly nuclear apocalypse. “Humanity is like a 12-year-old who has just realised what suicide is: ‘Wait, we could actually just end it all?’ Well, everyone wants to leave if things get not fun; no one wants to stay at a party that turns foul.” He segues into free association, also his songwriting method. “Are black holes punk? Are they nihilist? Do they have safety pins through their cheeks? Is antimatter suicidal, does it possess an urge to destroy, to uncreate?” When he first moved to Atlanta, Cox lived with an underground punk crowd and his no-fucks-given performances (including one where he covered My Sharona for an hour) have a punk attitude, but he is jaded by the snotty aesthetic that “punk” conjures. To begin with, “punk is essentially just as misogynistic as being in a frat; a lot of it really was white men creating more conniving ways to impose their self-perceived superiority on people”. Moreover, it was a culture of privilege, he says. “Punk’s much easier when you don’t have to wake up in the morning, and that’s who dominates punk. The working class wake up and they work. The punks would be very happy with all this conservative psychosis: ‘Yeah, let’s watch it burn!’ Whereas there’s no little object in this house that I haven’t worked for, and I don’t want the world to fall apart because I want my dog and I to stay here.” So have you become more socially conscious? “Quite the opposite. I do not feel myself becoming more engaged with culture or society.” And yet you are communing with what’s happening in that culture. “We’re living in supernatural times, and the supernatural has always appealed to me. Well, supernatural is now just referred to as genetically modified. Witchcraft is real, now. It’s patented.” He grimaces. “I just sound like a fucking Radiohead interview in 1996.” He warms to the theme, though. “They’re like the big brothers in college when I was a kid, and now I’m in college, and I’m like: ‘The world is fucked up!’ And they’re like, ‘We already knew that. We’re married with kids now, we’re happy, we’ve realised you can just settle into it.’ But I’m an apocalypse writer.” The final track, Nocturne, is described as “a final dispatch before ascending to heaven”, and Cox is saved from total desperation by his belief in God, “in a way that virtually no one would understand. I’m appalled by what people have done in the name of Christianity. But God’s all I’ve got because if I didn’t have that faith … Are you listening to my lyrics, this stuff that’s coming out of my mouth? I’ve not got a lot else to live for. The flowers in my garden die and are reborn in the spring; I like to hope there’s some design to this cycle.” He calls the new album “very hopeless”, so has he ever felt truly hopeless himself? “I’ve never been suicidal, if that’s the implication. I don’t find it romantic, I just find it selfish and distasteful. Hopelessness is no different from hunger or having to defecate; it’s just part of the process until the next sense of renewal. I take antidepressants, I’ve battled depression like so many others, but I wasn’t feeling hopeless when I wrote this album; I was writing this album about hopelessness. Horror is not eternal. I personally hug my dog.” And he writes music, including superb solo albums as Atlas Sound; he rushes upstairs to show me how he works, building up a track from drums, guitar and a tone-generation machine used to test children’s hearing. A proud asexual, he says his lack of libido means “my entire world is based on aesthetic contemplation, with no distractions”. In 2016, Cox told the podcast Start Making Sense that “at 34 years old, I’m actually a virgin”. Might he ever be interested in sex? “That’s like asking a homosexual: do you think you’ll ever be interested in a woman? It’s a bit rude. The problem with society is they patted themselves on the back – which is a very white male behaviour – for accepting the homosexual, the bisexual, the transgender person, as much as they do, which leaves a lot to be desired. But no one acknowledges asexuality as an actual thing. People so often say to me: ‘Well, you just haven’t met the right person.’ As if asexuality is like having braces, they’ll come off eventually.” Instead, he can settle into being an aesthete, and a father to his band and Faulkner. He tells me what he finds beautiful: “Designs in plastics like Bakelite, English watercolours, the bass clarinet, always the drums, really fine French paper. It’s kind of pretentious, but there is nothing more beautiful than a blank piece of paper. It’s a bit like seeing a puppy and thinking: ‘What an amazing time I’m going to have raising you.’” We head off to the park, where Faulkner runs around happily with all the other dogs. • Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is out now on 4ADRoger Stone is due back in court on Tuesday, this time in Washington DC, where he will be called to answer the charges first made against him in court in Florida on Friday in the Trump-Russia investigation – witness tampering, obstruction and lying to Congress. Stone, a long-time ally of Donald Trump and a notorious, self-declared political “dirty trickster” and Republican operative, was arrested in Fort Lauderdale early on Friday in a pre-dawn call by FBI agents armed with assault weapons and a warrant. Prosecutors say he lied about his pursuit of hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to the indictment. The US government says the emails were hacked by Russian intelligence officers, and they ended up being made public by WikiLeaks. In its most serious accusation from special counsel Robert Mueller, the indictment states that after WikiLeaks had begun releasing hacked Democratic emails, “a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton campaign”. This direction was given to the unnamed senior Trump campaign official after 22 July 2016 – more than a month after it was reported that it was Russian government hackers who had broken into the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems. Stone has maintained his innocence and has said he will plead not guilty. But he is just the latest in a string of senior Trump campaign or administration figures charged with serious crimes. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort appeared in court in Washington on Friday for the latest hearing in his case, pre-sentencing. On Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the charges against Stone had “nothing to do with the president” but she would not answer whether Trump was the individual who ordered a senior campaign official to ask Stone about more dirt on the Clinton campaign. Later on Friday, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, fresh from her victory of conceding nothing on behalf of the Democrats before Trump ended the 35-day partial shutdown of the federal government over disagreement on funding for a wall on the border with Mexico, spoke up on the many Trump campaign allies who have now been charged or convicted of crimes. In a strongly-worded and probing statement, Pelosi said: “The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people … In the face of 37 indictments, the president’s continued actions to undermine the special counsel investigation raise the questions: what does Putin have on the president, politically, personally or financially?” In court on Friday, the judge told Stone he was to surrender his travel documents and that his movements would be curtailed, limited to any future court appearances in Florida, New York, Washington DC and Virginia. Stone replied: “I do not currently own a passport, it’s expired.”At the start of what is going to be, at least numerically speaking, an odd year, we look ahead to 12 months with no men’s football World Cup or European Championship; a time when, away from the lush pastures of the world’s most popular and attention-demanding sport, the often icy and ignored playing fields of a few different disciplines can finally receive the focus they deserve. The men’s Cricket World Cup starts in May and the rugby version in September, but there is no need to go so long in search of global competition when alternative events already abound like so much January snowfall. Starting with the Men’s Handball World Championship, co-hosted by “the two handball-loving countries of Germany and Denmark”, which starts on Thursday. For all that the event is about pitting nation against nation in very literally hand-to-hand combat, it is imbued with a spirit of cooperation that does not end with the harmonious hosts. The German singer Dominik Klein – not to be confused with the German international handball player Dominik Klein, even though he seems to have been chosen quite deliberately for that purpose – collaborated with the Danish DJ Kongsted to record the official song, the suitably energetic Stand Up Stand Out (“Full arenas and the best handball in the world need a song that gets us all excited and ready to party,” says Klein) while the mascot was designed “partly by fans” after a global crowdsourcing initiative. This might have been a tactical error. They ended up with a moon-faced humanoid called Stan, who looks like Frank Sidebottom has just joined the Power Rangers. Stan, it turns out, is a visitor from the fictional planet GD19 where “most days we just celebrate, dance and sing”. The German handball association started its press release introducing Stan with the assertion that “mascots have always been born of strange ideas” and it is certainly true of theirs. January, however, is full of events that do not need an outsized alien to get people muttering about strange ideas. Take the World Ice Fishing Championship, which starts in Batak, Bulgaria, in a fortnight, and involves contestants drilling access to a frozen lake and attempting to coax fish from its frigid depths by rapidly wiggling their miniature rods. “This sport is very interesting,” said the Russian Nikolai Volodin after he came 76th in 2017. “Chess on ice, you could say.” There are certainly more meaningless things to do on ice, as contestants of this week’s IceSnowFootball World Cup will surely discover. The event has attracted four star-studded sides to the Swiss town of Arosa, including Stéphane Chapuisat from the host nation, Germany’s Torsten Frings and Mario Basler, Spain’s Gaizka Mendieta and, somehow finding himself in a global all-stars squad, Danny Mills. All will attempt to play the game on the unforgiving terrain of an Alpine ice rink covered in snow, and though it must be extremely hard for players to keep their footing in such conditions, anyone who watched Neymar’s performances in Russia last year will appreciate that the same is sometimes true on perfectly-manicured grass, only without the obvious excuse. Those in search of something a little less prone to melting or falling over should look instead to Las Vegas on 23 January, when the Bricklayer World Championship will be not so much played as laid. To the outsider this looks like the undoubted highlight of the industry conference it is crowbarred into, thrillingly entitled World of Concrete, and is apparently known as the “Super Bowl of Masonry”. It involves two-man teams attempting to build a 26ft 8in, double wythe brick wall over the course of a single hour. The biggest wall wins, though “a team’s final brick count may be adjusted down if judges detect workmanship infractions”. This sounds like exactly the event José Mourinho has been working towards in recent years, his career having turned into an exercise in putting up barriers both on the pitch and off it, ending up with something curiously like a double wythe wall in that observers increasingly discerned a big gap in the middle where something meaningful might have been. Less promisingly, his final months at Old Trafford were practically littered with workmanship infractions. Football, like most sports, is an inherently competitive endeavour, but as the Bricklayer World Championship suggests, increasingly there is nothing humans will not turn into some kind of battle. Witness the first of this month’s cookery-related contests, the 2019 World Championship Scotch Pie Awards, whose winners will be announced on 15 January. It takes a bit of cheek to apply the word “world” to a competition with three English finalists, 47 from Scotland and none from anywhere else, or to associate it with 2019 when the pies were both cooked and judged last November, but this is the world we live in. The Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie is a step up in seriousness. Teams from 21 countries will head to Lyon this month to create a range of frozen and baked morsels over 10 hours of remorseless kitchen-based action. This year among the required products is a honey biscuit, included because, according to the event’s president, Philippe Rigollot: “We considered it fitting to use the fame of the Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie to further a cause as noble and important as the defence of bees, who are true sentinels of our environment.” This is a noble goal, though whoever decided a good way to further the cause of bees would be to steal their honey and use it to make biscuits was almost certainly more interested in biscuits than bees. Still, these aren’t the World Beekeeping Awards – we’ve got to wait until September for those.“Not even a phone call.” Maurizio Sarri could not hide his disappointment. Gonzalo Higuaín had just left Napoli for Juventus for £75.3m but had not been in touch to say either goodbye or to explain himself. For Sarri, that was inexcusable. “I find it very difficult to focus on him right now because I have just seen him in a Juventus shirt,” Sarri said in an interview with Corriere dello Sport in July 2016. “It was his decision because the offer we made to him was similar to the other offers he had. From a personal point of view there is bitterness because I expected him to make a short phone call at least, maybe even five minutes before his medical [at Juve].” The regret was there for everyone to see, yet in the same interview Sarri called Higuaín “the best centre‑forward in the world” and two and a half years later they have been reunited at Chelsea. It has got all the ingredients to go horribly wrong. Higuaín is not the player he was during that 2015-16 season when he and Sarri worked together and he scored 36 goals in 35 Serie A games, a joint record for the league together with Torino’s Gino Rossetti, who achieved that particular feat in 1928-29. The Premier League will also be a new experience for the 31-year-old after six years in Spain and then five and a half in Italy and it is fair to question whether he will be able to adapt. Finally, he is joining a team who have lost their way somewhat after a superb start to the season, which is not unusual when it comes to Sarri. Despite all this, Sarri has fought – and won – the battle to sign the player he wanted. Even back in October, when he had been in the Chelsea job for only a few months, Sarri admitted that he was missing Higuaín “a lot”. It is clear, despite the disappointment of how Higuaín conducted himself after leaving Napoli, that Sarri has forgiven the Argentinian and firmly believes he is the answer to Chelsea’s goalscoring problems. Both Sarri and Higuaín have fond memories from the season they spent together at Napoli. Higuaín has called Sarri the best manager he has worked with and that the Italian made him able to “express himself” on the pitch more than anyone else. Sarri, meanwhile, has talked fondly about how Higuaín treated him when he arrived at the club in 2015, when the Argentinian was already an established star at Napoli. “How can he be labelled a traitor by Napoli fans and be like a son to me?” Sarri asked rhetorically in September 2018. “Higuaín is a champion, that is without a question. When I arrived from Empoli at a point when I was a nobody coach, he was always available to me without any hesitation and with a lot of simplicity.” That season at Napoli is still Higuaín’s best in club football but that is not to say that he has been poor otherwise. He has averaged more than 20 goals a season during his time in Italy and is a natural goalscorer. His spell at Milan, whom he joined on loan from Juventus at the start of this season, has been a huge disappointment and he has at times looked unfit but Sarri would get to work on that immediately. Higuaín recalls that Sarri called him “lazy” during their time in Naples but added: “He wanted me to score like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and to be fair to him I scored 36 that season.” Higuaín’s fitness will be key as he sets about attempting to prove a lot of people in England wrong. The Argentinian has had a strange career in some ways, with an extraordinary amount of goals scored – more than 300 – yet so few trophies to show for them. He has been on the losing side in a World Cup final, a Champions League final and two Copa Américas. He has three Spanish league titles and two Italian ones although he was at Real Madrid at a time when they were not challenging for or winning the Champions League on a regular basis. Il Pipita, as Higuaín is frequently called, is still fiercely competitive and said in a Guardian interview in 2017: “I want to leave my name at the highest level of this sport. To do that you need to have the humility to continue growing. Gigi Buffon always says as much: he’s almost 40 years old and he still believes he can improve. Imagine. I feel like I can as well. I’m young. I hope I’ve still got lots of years ahead of me in football.” It is too early to say whether the majority of them will be spent in west London. What is clear, though, is that he has the chance to once again team up with the manager who got the best out of him. Sarri will work Higuaín hard at the training ground and give him the freedom to go out and express himself. It is unlikely to be a straightforward journey but the mutual respect exists, and that is a good start. Sarri once said: “With him I have the same sensation you have towards a child that is driving you absolutely mad but who you still love.” And if Sarri can get Higuaín fit and up and running there is no doubt in the Italian’s mind that he has a world-beater in his squad. “Higuaín will score goals for as long as he is alive,” Sarri told Corriere dello Sport in September 2018. “He is goals. He is a goal animal, an infernal machine.”Petty officer George Kromah, of the Liberian coastguard, slings his AK47 across his back before disappearing over the side of the Sam Simon, joining his colleagues in the rib below. The boat roars off, quickly followed by a second, speeding through the choppy Atlantic swell in pursuit of a suspected illegal fishing vessel that has crossed into Liberia’s territorial waters from Sierra Leone. Kromah and his fellow officers are on the frontline of the little nation’s ill-matched crackdown on fisheries crime – which Interpol has linked with the trafficking of drugs and people, as well as fraud and tax evasion. The largely ungoverned waters of west Africa are plagued on a daily basis by big industrial vessels from wealthier nations that plunder hundreds of tonnes of fish, at the expense of local fisherman. One 2017 study estimates the cost of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) to just six west African countries at $2.3bn (£1.8bn) a year. It is a cost that Liberia, one of the world’s poorest nations – and heavily dependent on foreign aid after decades of civil war – cannot afford. But neither has it funds to police its 370km of coastline. Two years ago, the defence ministry of this tiny country of 4.7 million people took an unusual step to tackle multi-million dollar crimes: partnering with Sea Shepherd, self-styled “eco-vigilantes”, known for controversial tactics against Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean. The Guardian travelled with the coastguard aboard the Sam Simon, a 56-metre patrol vessel provided to the military, along with its largely volunteer crew. The pursuit of the suspected illegal tuna boat, the Oriental Kim, ended undramatically with a warning rather than an arrest. It was found to be broadly operating legally, with some discrepancies. But according to Sea Shepherd, news of policing at sea has “spread like wildfire” among vessel owners, creating a deterrent effect. Onboard, where crew are hosing down the Oriental Kim after hauling their morning catch of 10 tonnes of tuna, Kromah expresses satisfaction. “It was a good operation,” he says. “We did everything we could. The offences did not warrant an arrest but the next time, if they have not corrected the irregularities, they will be arrested.” A lot has changed since the partnership, known as Operation Sola Stella, began. “A lot of illegal things were going on before in the deep sea, but with our ships we could not get to them. Before, the fishermen didn’t want to get licences and they would just go to the deep sea and take anything they want. Now our water is safe.” In the capital, Monrovia, Major General Prince Johnson, chief of staff for the commander of the Liberian Army, says: “We are losing a huge amount – millions of dollars – to illegal fishing. “Since the coming in of Sea Shepherd, Liberia has benefitted a lot. Those who do illegal activities in our waters know they can no longer carry on.” Data given to the Guardian by the Liberian MoD shows the impact the operation has had in just two years. Arrests have more than quadruped, the range of coastguard patrols have doubled, and the government has recovered at least a million dollars in fines. In the seven years prior to Sola Stella, the coastguard made only three arrests. One of the vessels, South Korea-flagged Nine Star, remains rusting in Monrovia’s port after its owners abandoned it, leaving $1.5m in unpaid fines, in 2013. But from February 2017 to January this year, arrests rose to 14. Among them were two internationally blacklisted vessels. The Hai Lung, an Antarctic and Patagonian toothfish vessel, was suspected of absconding from authorities in Nigerian waters, and found to have forged Indonesian documentation, while the Liberia-flagged Labiko 2 was blacklisted by three different organisations under its previous name, the Maine. The latter was using gill nets, instead of the long lines for which it had a licence, and was fishing for deep-water sharks. Five of the 14 vessels were found guilty of illegally fishing, the rest were found guilty of related crimes, including fraud, tax evasion and under-reporting catches. Two of the five, the Bonheur and the Starshrimper 25 trawlers, were found fishing inside the six-mile inshore exclusion zone, from which industrial ships are banned by the Liberian government so that the waters can be reserved for the country’s 33,000 small scale fishermen. Not everyone is happy with the arrangement, however. “The Europeans don’t like the fact the Liberian coastguard are inspecting their ships,” says Johnson. “They feel they are reporting their catch and are working with the fisheries authority. Sometimes, they even accuse us of acting illegally, even though we have a Liberian flag.” He has had pushback from many quarters, particularly about firearms. “They want us not to have weapons – they want us to go in with our hands shaking. I would never send my men to sea without a weapon. “The majority of those found fishing illegally, who we have arrested in our waters, are Chinese. We have also arrested one or two European vessels.” Often, the real ownership of vessels acting illegally remains a mystery, hidden by layers of shell companies. Ernest Vaffe, deputy minister for operations, coastguard, says the truth frequently remains undiscovered. “You will get a local lawyer, who says: This is my client. They pay the fine.’ We have never had an international lawyer say: ‘This is our vessel.’” But none of the vessel owners have ever argued they are not guilty. Vaffe argues that even legal fishing by foreign vessels in Liberia’s water is unfair, due to what he describes as a “flawed” system of cheap licences issued by the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority. “These vessels don’t take the fish to bring them back to African ports, they take them to Europe and elsewhere,” says Vaffe. “They benefit a lot, influencing their economy. To the detriment of our economy. They are also creating unemployment among the local fishermen. The cost is huge.” In Robertsport, one of Liberia’s main fishing communities, near the Sierra Leone border, narrow wooden canoes line the beach. The fishermen there have another word for what foreign vessels are guilty of. “They are stealing what is ours,” says town governor Kofu Weah. “They come into Liberia, take the fish and then they leave.” Robertsport’s fishermen, who go out alone in small boats, or in groups with larger, motorised canoes, say the industrial foreign trawlers often cut through their nets, costing them between $150 and $1,500, depending on the size, and often capsizing their boats. Emmanuel Frances, 36, says: “I’ve been fishing my whole life. We sometimes leave the nets and go elsewhere. But when we return we could find the net gone. Trawlers cut through them.” A good catch, for 25 men in a motorised canoe, would make just over a US dollar each for a night’s work – not enough to pay for new nets. They welcome the joint patrols, which they sometimes see from shore, and say the number of incursions into their waters from foreign trawlers has fallen. Ibrahim Turey, 43, a newscaster at the local Radio Pisco station says: “Illegal fishing was rampant, in the war and afterwards. But they are no longer coming here with their boats. We see Sea Shepherd out there on patrol.” On the bridge of the Sam Simon, captain Alistair Allan, 27, a tattooed Australian who has worked with Sea Shepherd since he was 19, says he believes the campaign against illegal and unregulated fishing is vital for the planet. “Humankind has thought of the ocean as a never-ending resource. It’s so vast, how can we make a dent in it? But we’re not just making a dent in it, we are wrecking the whole thing. It is happening over the horizon, out of sight.” He gestures at the vast expanse of ocean around us. “Out there, you can see the over-reaching arm of the industrial fishing industry. The ocean cannot sustain that level of fishing. The scale is enormous. And then, there is a social justice element. There are 33,000 people in Liberia dependent on fish. And the Chinese and the EU steal it from under their noses. It is important to understand the battle that developing nations face.”While the grievances of the self-styled “yellow vest” protesters outside parliament can seem varied and opaque, it is unlikely that they include pancakes. But it is pancakes – more specifically pancake racing – that has paid the price for their activities. The annual parliamentary pancake race between MPs, peers and political journalists has been cancelled because of the level of bad feeling connected to Brexit, the charity that organises the event has said. Rehab, which helps people with disabilities or disadvantages get into work, said the event, scheduled for 5 March, had been called off owing to the “intense level of activity around Westminster arising from the ongoing Brexit debate”. This has centred around a small group of activists modelling themselves on the French gilets jaunes protesters, some with far-right links, who have in recent weeks barracked and abused  MPs and journalists, interrupted TV interviews with chants and blocked Westminster Bridge. Jonathan Smallman of Rehab said in a letter to MPs who previously took part in the event that it would not be appropriate to stage it “against the background of this activity and the unique debate taking place this year”. He said: “The decision to cancel the 2019 race has not been taken lightly and I want to take this opportunity to thank those members of the House of Commons who have already committed themselves to supporting and highlighting the work of Rehab and Momentum Skills by agreeing to take part in this popular annual event.” The race is expected to return in 2020. The Labour MP Rupa Huq, who took part in the 2018 race, raised the issue in parliament on Friday, asking the Speaker, John Bercow, for advice on who to consult so the event might be able to take place. Bercow responded by saying he believed increased security measures meant it should be able to happen. In a separate statement, Huq said the cancellation “reflects the lamentable state that our country is in”. She said: “The toxic nature of Brexit has unleashed an atmosphere that feeds and exacerbates the worst aspects of the adversarial culture in our politics that has poisoned matters. The timing on 5 March so near exit day means potential difficulties are foreseen.”More than a decade after his release from jail over the 1983 kidnapping of the beer magnate Freddy Heineken – turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins in 2015 – a 65-year-old man has appeared back in an Amsterdam court alongside his son on suspicion of planning an armed robbery. Frans Meijer is on trial after being shot and arrested last October following an altercation with a police officer who had been alerted by residents to the suspicious behaviour of two men near a security van carrying cash. The court heard on Wednesday that Meijer, who was wearing a fake moustache and had a stolen van nearby, was armed and carrying two bulletproof vests and a device to jam mobile phone signals, when approached. He threatened the officer but was shot several times as he fled the scene in the Staatsliedenbuurt district of Amsterdam, the court heard. Meijer’s 26-year-old son gave himself up. A third suspect appearing in court for a first appearance relating to the charges was Laurens Boellaard, 35, the son of a second Heineken kidnapper, Jan Boellaard. All three men deny the charges. Boellaard was released on bail for the duration of the trial while Meijer and his son remain in custody. Heineken was one of the richest people in the Netherlands and chairman and chief executive of the family brewing company when he and his driver, Ab Doderer, were kidnapped on 9 November 1983 outside the firm’s offices in Amsterdam. As the kidnappers sought a £15m ransom, Meijer’s daily job was to feed the two men, who were tethered to a wall in a hut on an Amsterdam business park. Meijer would tell drinkers on leaving his favourite pub every dinnertime that he was “going to give Heineken something to eat”, comments erroneously thought to have been a joke about the story that was dominating the news. On 30 November, the men were released in exchange for 35m Dutch guilders (£15.7m), in what was the highest ransom ever paid at the time. The ransom given to the kidnappers was not recovered in full. Heineken died, aged 78, in 2002. The kidnappers – Meijer, Boellaard and William Holleeder, who is currently on trial in The Hague over unconnected cases of murder, manslaughter and attempted murder – fled on being paid their money. Meijer, however, gave himself up amid a massive manhunt. Ahead of his trial he was sent to a psychiatric observation clinic from which he escaped without trace in 1985. He was convicted in absentia the same year. He was tracked down in 1994 by the TV crime journalist Peter Rudolf de Vries in Paraguay, where he had married a local woman and had three children. Meijer was running a burger restaurant and claimed to both regret his crimes and to have converted to Christianity. After a complicated legal process to get him back to the Netherlands, Meijer was finally extradited in 2002. He was released from a Dutch jail in 2005, after which he was thought to have returned to Paraguay. The current court case is expected to resume in March.A Cameroonian opposition leader who claims he won last year’s election has been arrested. Police held Maurice Kamto and several other opposition figures. One was pulled out of his hospital bed where he was recovering from gunshot wounds sustained at a protest against the country’s longtime president, Paul Biya. Kamto was arrested at a supporter’s house in the economic capital, Douala, on Monday and, according to local media, was transferred to the judicial police station in the political capital, Yaoundé. However, the prominent lawyer and activist Felix Agbor Nkongho said he had been taken to “an unknown destination”. After he was taken away, hundreds of people surrounded the house. Police officers fired shots in the air to disperse them. Kamto and his party, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, claim they won the election in October, but official figures showed them taking only 14% of the vote, in second place behind Biya, 85, who has been in power for 36 years. Since then, the opposition has organised several protests, the latest of which took place on Saturday in towns across the country and led to the arrests of 117 people. Police opened fire on protesters with live ammunition. Turnout in October’s election was 54%, far lower than in previous polls, and it was 10% in English-speaking regions, where rebels have been fighting a bitter battle for secession since their demands for English speakers to be appointed in courts and schools were brutally suppressed by authorities. More details to follow …Julian Assange, the fugitive WikiLeaks founder whose diplomatic sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy appears increasingly precarious, is launching a legal challenge against the Trump administration. Lawyers for the Australian activist have filed an urgent application to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) aimed at forcing the hand of US prosecutors, requiring them to “unseal” any secret charges against him. The legal move is an attempt to prevent Assange’s extradition to the US at a time that a new Ecuadorian government has been making his stay in the central London apartment increasingly inhospitable. He has been staying in the Knightsbridge flat, which houses the embassy, since 2012 when he fled extradition proceedings at the UK’s supreme court. Swedish prosecutors have since dropped their request to extradite him to Stockholm over a rape investigation. If he were to walk out on to the street, Assange is likely to face contempt of court charges for fleeing British justice. His chief fear, however, is that once arrested, the US authorities would begin fresh extradition proceedings against him alleging security offences. It is believed American prosecutors have been investigating Assange since at least 2011, when a grand jury hearing was opened into the whistleblowing website’s publication of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables, in conjunction with a number of international newspapers including the Guardian. The IACHR monitors human rights in the Americas and hears appeals on individual cases. The Trump administration, however, has boycotted its recent hearings. The 1,172-page submission by Assange’s lawyers calls on the US to unseal any secret charges against him and urges Ecuador to cease its “espionage activities” against him. Baltasar Garzón, the prominent Spanish judge who has pursued dictators, terrorists and drug barons, is the international coordinator of Assange’s legal team. He has said the case involves “the right to access and impart information freely” that has been put in “jeopardy”. The Trump administration is refusing to reveal details of charges against Assange despite the fact that sources in the US Department of Justice have confirmed to the media that they exist under seal. “The revelation that the US has initiated a prosecution against Mr Assange has shocked the international community”, the legal submission to the IACHR states. The US government “is required to provide information as to the criminal charges that are imputed to Mr Assange in full”. The application alleges that US prosecutors have begun approaching people in the US, Germany and Iceland and pressed them to testify against Assange in return for immunity from prosecution. Those approached, it is said, include people associated with WikiLeaks’ joint publications with other media about US diplomacy, Guantánamo Bay and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange’s lawyers say the Trump administration has pressurised Ecuador to hand over Assange, making increasingly overt threats. In December, the New York Times reported that Ecuador’s new president, Lenin Moreno tried to negotiate handing over Mr Assange to the US. in exchange for “debt relief”. The application also highlights what it says are “espionage operations” against Assange in the London embassy.Pep Guardiola said he has no “magician’s ball” to tell him how many points Manchester City may need to defend their Premier League title following Monday’s 3-0 win over Wolves that cut Liverpool’s lead to four. Jürgen Klopp’s side have 57 after 22 games and City claimed last season’s title with 100 points. After two goals from Gabriel Jesus and a late Conor Coady own goal Guardiola was asked what tally might be required to be champions again. He said: “I don’t have a magician’s ball to discover how many. I said to them [players] don’t look at the schedule, don’t look at the calendar for the Liverpool games. Forget about it, [otherwise] normally when this happens in my experience you then lose your own games. And then it’s over. All we can do is win our games and be there and maybe one day they [Liverpool] fail; but if we don’t win, they will be champions. “The best way is to look at the next game – [at] Huddersfield [on Sunday], who have a new manager. If Liverpool win the title, then I am sure I will congratulate Jürgen because it will be well deserved.” Willy Boly was sent off for a 20th-minute lunge on Bernardo Silva. Nuno Espírito Santo had no complaints. “It’s very close to me and I think it’s a clear red card,” the Wolves manager said. Silva confirmed Boly had said sorry to him. “It was quite a bad tackle but I’m fine. Yes, he did apologise at the end of the game. These things happen. You don’t do it on purpose, I think, and he said that. Everything is fine, it’s football.” Of leaving Kevin De Bruyne and Sergio Agüero out of his starting team Guardiola said: “I have an incredible squad, [Ilkay] Gündogan made six or seven assists but didn’t [start] either. It is what it is. Today one of my favourite players, Phil [Foden], was not in the 18.”Dusk falls in Dar es Salaam, and for hundreds of thousands of people in this African megacity-to-be the daily chaos and frustration of the journey home begins. People cram themselves into dalla dalla minibuses, some even climbing through the windows once the entrance is blocked. Others hang out of the doors, but the Kilwa Road heading south towards Mbagala slum is blocked and these diesel-belchers are going nowhere fast. On Bagamoyo Road to the wealthier areas in the north, solo drivers in blacked-out 4x4s sit stationary too – captive customers for the hawkers who trudge up and down the traffic jams selling charging cables and garish wall clocks, carved wooden animals and plastic skipping ropes. Their metal and glass boxes are expensive and air-conditioned, but they’re still boxes. By 2035 another 15 cities will have populations above 10 million, according to the latest United Nations projections, taking the total number of megacities to 48. Guardian Cities is exploring these newcomers at a crucial period in their development: from car-centric Tehran to the harsh inequalities of Luanda; from the film industry of Hyderabad to the demolition of historic buildings in Ho Chi Minh City. We'll also be in Chengdu, Dar es Salaam, Nanjing, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baghdad, Kuala Lumpur, Xi'an, Seoul, Wuhan and London. Read more from the next 15 megacities series here. Nick Van Mead So far, so normal for a sprawling megalopolis of 6 million with virtually no public transport and only eight lanes of major road heading to and from the centre. Dar es Salaam, the de facto capital of Tanzania, is one of the fastest growing cities in Africa. Its population has increased eightfold since 1980 and swells by half a million people every year. The latest UN projections anticipate it will become a megacity within seven years as its population passes 10 million, reaching 13.4 million by 2035. A paper by Daniel Hoornweg for the Global Cities Institute forecasts the city could be home to an incredible 73.7 million people by 2100. In 2018, four out of five of its people live in single-storey informal settlements on the sprawling fringes, where the journey to and from the centre regularly takes over two hours. It can be longer if rain turns dirt roads to mud. But Dar es Salaam is pinning its hopes on a solution that could offer a different model for Africa’s megacities, giving them an alternative to a future in thrall to the private car. Unlike many cities on the continent, Dar es Salaam isn’t trying to build a metro. It has chosen a less sexy but cheaper and more achievable route: the bus. Even in the middle of the day, traffic frequently grinds to a halt without warning. It is not unusual for cars and minibuses to queue for 20 minutes at a single pinch-point intersection. A lone suburban rail line serves residents in a few areas to the south but is tiny in the context of the wider city. Outside the centre many rely on boda boda motorbike taxis to navigate the narrow side alleys and potholed mud roads that make up much of the metropolis. Their safety record is notorious. Dar es Salaam’s reliance on four arterial roads – two lanes each way for the most part, one lane in places – is a legacy of the colonial government that planned the city at the start of the 20th century for a population of 35,000. Most of the growth is made up of young people arriving from the countryside to find work, and as the population has exploded Dar es Salaam has grown around those four highways. Nearly all the expansion is happening on the periphery, and nearly all is informal and unplanned. Until recently, Morogoro Road, the arterial serving the north-west, was one of the most congested and polluted. “It was just dalla dallas,” remembers Ulisses Navarro, a consultant on the city’s original Dart bus rapid transit design in 2005, as we squeeze on to a packed bus for the long trip out towards the edge of the city. “That was the only way for people living out here. It was one of the worst.” The Dart system boasts bus lanes separated from other traffic, mostly in the middle of the road to reduce stoppages. Ticket payment and control takes place at stations rather than on board, while step-free stations and boarding mean the entire route is accessible to people in wheelchairs or with buggies. We get on the first bus fine, but for the return journey have to wait for three buses before there is space to board. You should have seen how busy the journey was before, says Navarro. The average journey time from the centre to the terminus at Kimara has been slashed from two hours each way to just 45 minutes, according to sustainable transport group the ITDP. That adds up to a saving of around 50 hours a month for the average bus passenger making the full trip. The ITDP awarded the system Africa’s only “gold standard” bus rapid transit (BRT) rating. “The new buses are much, much better,” says Paulas George, a young IT worker waiting at Manzese station. He takes the bus every day and it has cut his journey time by two-thirds. He says it is not perfect though, complaining drivers sometimes turn off the air conditioning to save fuel. For millions of people in African cities, this is their best hope of ever being connected That is not the only teething problem. A shortage of buses after the main depot flooded during the 2017 rainy season means the system is carrying 200,000 people a day – half the expected capacity. Smartcard readers at station entrances aren’t working either, forcing passengers to buy individual paper tickets for every journey. Each is printed with a scannable QR code, but there are no scanners. Station staff stand by the gates and tear tickets as people enter. Lines are long at peak times. Morogoro Road was phase I of the BRT project. Phases II and III will install bus lanes along Nyerere Road to the south-west and Kilwa Road to the south. Construction on both routes is due to start imminently. Phase IV, towards Bagamoyo in the north, is in the preliminary design stage. “Much of the city will have access to a world-class transport system within the space of a few years,” says Chris Kost, the ITDP’s Africa director. All phases are being planned to gold standards and, once complete, a third of city residents will be within a 10-minute walk of the BRT network. The ITDP bemoans Africa’s obsession with metros. Lagos in Nigeria – the largest city in the world without a mass transit system – has been trying to build a metro since the 1980s. In the latest of many incarnations, the project was supposed to begin operations in 2012 at a cost of $2.4bn (£1.9bn). Six years after the supposed start date, construction is “nowhere near complete”, says Kost. A BRT line is also planned. Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast, began construction of a metro last year. The French-financed and -built line is projected to carry 500,000 passengers a day at a cost of $1.7bn. Dar es Salaam’s bus system, by contrast, has capacity for 400,000 people and cost less than a 10th of that – about $150m. Addis Ababa in Ethiopia opened a Chinese-built and -operated light rail line last year at a cost of $475m. Shenzhen Metro Group has a deal to run it for the first five years. “With a metro, an international firm will often just parachute in its own system,” says Kost. “Bus rapid transit allows existing stakeholders to get involved. That’s what we did in Dar es Salaam and what we’re planning in Nairobi, where the bus bodies will be built in the city and local operators will look after tickets, fare collection and IT. It’s good for the development of the local economy.” So why are these cities choosing the metro over the bus? Karol Zemek, the editor of Metro Report International, says trains can carry far more passengers than buses, have higher speeds, reduce emissions – and deliver a status boost buses cannot match. “Metro is the top end of mass transit,” he says. “If you want to carry large numbers of people you cannot beat it, and moving large numbers of people around the city is crucial for economic growth.” Kost, though, sees it more as political expediency. “Because metro systems don’t take up road space and don’t take away from cars then they are politically easier,” he says. “Politicians see it as a big project with no sacrifices. But what if it never gets built? What if what is built is too expensive and so limited in size it leaves the majority of city residents no better off? “It can be tempting for those in power, but is it really addressing the needs of people of the city? Bus rapid transit has been transformational for Dar es Salaam. For millions of people in African cities, this is their best hope of ever being connected.” Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereIronically, the sunniest of fruits are at their best at the gloomiest time of year, with varieties such as the Sicilian blood orange and the Spanish Seville filling the grocers’ shelves right now. These fruit, bursting with sunset colours and sharp-sweet flavours, are, I believe, nature’s way of assuring us of sunnier days to come. Fondant puddings may sound like relics, but I adore them. Without the sauce, these are pretty quick to make and can easily be prepared ahead of time, ready to go in the oven just when you need them. The sauce is very good, though, and can also be made a day ahead. Omit the chilli for a child-friendly version. Prep 10 minChill 1 hr-overnightCook 1 hrServes 8 For the fondants250g unsalted butter, softened and cut into 1½cm cubes, plus extra for greasing 2 tbsp cocoa powder, for dusting125g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), roughly broken into bite-sized pieces125g milk chocolate, roughly broken into bite-sized pieces 5 whole eggs, plus 1 yolk extra225g light soft brown sugar1 tsp chipotle chilli flakes½ tsp salt1 tsp vanilla extract200g creme fraiche, to serve (optional) For the orange caramel sauce4 large oranges100g caster sugar1 tbsp Grand Marnier¼ tsp chipotle chilli flakes1 pinch salt Finely grate the zest of two oranges, to get one tablespoon. Using a small, sharp knife, top and tail all the oranges, then cut along their curves to remove the skin and pith. Place a sieve over a medium bowl. Working over the bowl, cut in between each membrane to release the segments into the sieve. Squeeze whatever is left of the oranges into the bowl – you want about 60ml juice, so save any extra for another use. Put the segments in a separate small bowl. Grease the inside of eight dariole moulds with butter, dust with the cocoa powder, shaking off any excess, then put on a baking tray. Put the butter and both chocolates in a heatproof bowl placed over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally, until melted and smooth. Set aside to cool slightly. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment in place, lightly whisk the eggs, extra yolk, sugar, chilli, salt, vanilla and orange zest on medium-low speed until smooth and combined, about 30 seconds. Add the melted chocolate and butter, and mix until fully combined – about 30 seconds more. Spoon into the prepared moulds, so they’re two-thirds full, then chill for at least an hour, or overnight. For the sauce, put the caster sugar in a small saucepan on a medium-high heat and cook, swirling the pan gently, until it melts and turns an amber caramel. Slowly add the orange juice, Grand Marnier, chipotle and salt, and whisk for a couple of minutes, until smooth and melted – it will sputter, so be careful. Turn off the heat, then pour the mixture over the orange segments, stirring to combine, and chill. Heat the oven to 190C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Bake the fondants straight from the fridge for 18 minutes, or until cooked on the outside and slightly wobbly in the centre. Leave to rest for a minute, then, using a tea towel, carefully unmould on to individual plates. Serve with the sauce and, if you like, creme fraiche alongside. This impressive vegetarian main course is a delicate balancing act between sweet and savoury. It’s rich, complex and very comforting. I could eat a slice three times a day. Prep 30 minCook 1 hr 50 minServes 4 For the tart crust100g plain flour30g wholemeal flour20g polenta1½ tsp caster sugar¾ tsp flaky salt1 tbsp sage leaves, finely chopped (about 6 leaves)80g unsalted butter, fridge-cold and cut into 1½cm cubes20ml olive oil60ml ice-cold water For the filling1 butternut squash, halved, deseeded and cut into ½cm-thick, skin-on half-moons (680g net weight)2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1cm rounds 2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to finish2 tbsp finely chopped sage leaves, plus 3 whole, to garnish2 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and rushed Flaky salt and black pepper1 head garlic, top cut off to expose the bulbs1 banana shallot, skin on, top trimmed to expose the flesh2-3 oranges, zest finely grated, to get 1½ tsp, and juiced, to get 160ml50ml maple syrup125g mascarpone1 small egg, beaten Heat the oven to 240C (220C fan)/465F/gas 9. For the crust, whisk together the first six ingredients with a good grind of pepper. Add the butter and oil, then incorporate the butter by squashing each cube between your fingers – don’t over-work it, though: you want chunks throughout the dough, so only squash it lightly. Add the water, stir to combine, then use your hands to gather the dough together – it will be quite sticky. Transfer to a very well-floured work surface and roll into a 28cm x 18cm rectangle, flouring the rolling pin, surface and pastry as you go. Fold the longer ends in towards each other, so they meet in the middle, then roll out once. Now fold in the shorter ends to meet in the middle, roll out once more, then fold in half, so you end up with a square. Use your hands to stretch the dough into a 14cm circle, then wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes. While the dough is chilling, toss the squash and carrots in the oil, a tablespoon of chopped sage, the caraway, a teaspoon of salt and plenty of pepper. Spread out on two large oven trays lined with baking paper; don’t worry if there is some overlap. Drizzle the garlic and shallot with a little oil, wrap both separately in foil, and put on one tray. Roast the butternut and carrots for 25 minutes, or until golden brown, then remove from the oven. Leave the garlic and shallot to roast for 15 minutes more, then remove and, once cool enough to handle, squeeze out the flesh and finely chop. Turn down the oven to 220C (200C fan)/425F/gas 7. Transfer the dough to a well-floured surface and roll out into a 30cm circle, dusting the rolling pin as you go. Gently lift the dough on to a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and refrigerate for another 30 minutes. Put the orange juice and maple syrup in a medium saucepan on a medium-high heat and cook for about 10 minutes, or until it reduces to the consistency of a thick, sticky syrup. In a small bowl, mix the mascarpone with the chopped roast garlic and shallot, the orange zest and remaining chopped sage. Season with a pinch of salt and plenty of pepper, and stir again to combine. Spread the mascarpone mixture over the dough, leaving a 4cm border around the edge. Scatter the butternut and carrot haphazardly over the top, to cover, then drizzle over the orange caramel. Fold the edges of the pastry up and over the filling, brush the exposed pastry with the egg, then bake for 30 minutes, until crisp and golden brown. Leave to cool for 20 minutes, then serve with the remaining sage leaves roughly torn over the top. These are like sweet arancini. They are very impressive served at the end of a dinner party, and aren’t at all heavy. They can be prepared to the chilling stage up to a day in advance, so you’ll just need to fry them and serve. The sauce can also be made a day ahead. Prep 5 min Set 90 min-overnightCook 1 hr 35 minServes 4 90g small pearl tapioca420ml whole milk120ml double cream1 tsp vanilla paste½ tsp ground star anise 3 tbsp caster sugar⅓ tsp flaked sea salt1 egg, separated, plus 1 extra yolk 3 oranges, zest of 1 finely grated, to get 1½ tsp75g runny honey2 whole star anise15g tapioca flour500ml sunflower oil, for frying10g icing sugar, to dust Put the tapioca in a medium-sized, heavy-based, cast-iron saucepan with 120ml of the milk and leave to soak for 20 minutes. Add the remaining milk, the cream, vanilla and ground star anise, place on a medium-high heat and bring to a simmer. Add the sugar and salt, lower the heat to medium and cook for 12 minutes, stirring often, until the tapioca turns translucent and chewy, and the pudding has thickened. In a small bowl, whisk the two egg yolks with three tablespoons of the tapioca mixture, then tip back into the saucepan. Switch off the heat, and stir continuously for about a minute, until the yolks have blended into the pudding, but not scrambled. Stir in the orange zest, then pour into a bowl and leave to cool for about 15 minutes. Beat the egg white to medium-firm peaks, stir into the pudding, then cover the surface with clingfilm, to prevent a skin forming. Transfer to the fridge to set – at least 90 minutes, or overnight. Juice two of the oranges, to give you 80ml. Using a small, sharp knife, trim the top and tail off the remaining orange, then cut down its curves to remove the skin and pith. Release the segments by cutting between the membranes, then cut each segment in half. Now make the syrup. Put the orange juice, honey, 30ml water and the whole star anise in a small saucepan and bring to a boil on a medium-high heat. Leave to bubble away for about 10 minutes, until reduced by half, then turn off the heat, stir in the orange segments and leave to cool completely. Meanwhile, stir the tapioca flour into the pudding mixture until combined. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan on a medium-high heat. Once hot, take about 35g of the tapioca mixture and shape into a rough ball with your hands; it will be very sticky, so you may prefer to wear gloves. Gently drop the ball into the hot oil and, working quickly now, make another four balls, so you cook about five at a time, until deeply golden on the outside and warmed through the centre – about four to five minutes. Transfer the cooked balls to a tray lined with kitchen towel, and repeat with the remaining tapioca mix. You should end up with 15 balls in all. Divide the syrup between four plates, top each serving with three tapioca balls (save the three extra ones for seconds), dust with icing sugar and serve.Unai Emery is two men down because of long-term injuries to Rob Holding and Danny Welbeck and so he would be open to adding a defender and striker. But with Aaron Ramsey on his way out and the continuing uncertainty over Mesut Özil, what he really wants is a new midfielder. David Hytner A spate of knee injuries has left Eddie Howe with a defensive crisis, particularly at right-back with Simon Francis and Adam Smith sidelined. Howe has stated how January is a notoriously difficult time to recruit, but injuries have forced him into a rethink. Links to Nathaniel Clyne make sense, and Howe admires Brentford’s Chris Mepham. Keeping hold of Callum Wilson, a Chelsea target, will be crucial. Ben Fisher Chris Hughton has been trying to reduce the burden on Glenn Murray ever since promotion. Attempts to lure the Liverpool forward Dominic Solanke appear to have failed, though Jürgen Locadia’s form has eased anxiety. They have also been linked with Tunisia’s Youssef Msakni. The Rangers captain James Tavernier and Wigan playmaker Nick Powell were previously of interest. BF Sean Dyche has described Burnley as minnows when it comes to matching other Premier League clubs for spending power, which is why they frequently raid the Championship in their search for value. The same may happen this January, as long as Burnley can convince targets they are not about to return to the Championship, with West Brom’s Jay Rodriguez and Matt Phillips among the usual suspects, along with Conor Hourihane of Aston Villa. Paul Wilson Neil Warnock said on Saturday that Cardiff had “nine or 10 concrete inquiries in for players”, which provides an indication of how desperate he is to strengthen. He would like to take Nathaniel Clyne on loan from Liverpool but the priority remains a proven striker. A budget of £10-12m feels realistic. Stuart James Chelsea are attempting to secure Christian Pulisic from Borussia Dortmund for the summer, and have spoken to Juventus and Milan about taking Gonzalo Higuaín on loan. If the latter arrives, Álvaro Morata could depart to San Siro in a similar arrangement. Yet the priority could be squad trimming, with Victor Moses, Gary Cahill and Danny Drinkwater likely to leave, and Tammy Abraham, currently on loan at Aston Villa, potentially also on the move. Dominic Fifield Palace have needed a natural goalscorer all season, and are confident of securing Dominic Solanke on loan from Liverpool. They lack the budget to invest heavily mid-season but may be tempted to add another forward-thinking player, which would allow them to cancel Jordan Ayew’s loan from Swansea and send out Alexander Sørloth for greater game-time. DF Marcel Brands, Everton’s director of football, has stated this will be the quietest window for some time at Goodison Park. “It is not a goal to sell, it’s not a goal to bring in new players,” he said. The need for a quality striker and to secure André Gomes on a permanent deal is pressing, however. Andy Hunter Fulham may have to cancel Timothy Fosu-Mensah’s loan to bring in another temporary signing from the Premier League, but they will surely find money to spend on permanent deals, even after a vast summer outlay, given their desperation to stay up. They will be tempted to invest in Chelsea’s potential rejects. Danny Drinkwater, after all, has flourished under Claudio Ranieri before. DF With 12 goals in 20 league matches – and none from their centre-forwards – Huddersfield are crying out for players who can give them a cutting edge, starting with a clinical finisher. David Wagner has said they will do “everything we can” to improve their attack. That may mean breaking the club’s transfer record of £17.5m. Paul Doyle Leicester will be looking to trim rather than add to their bloated and imbalanced squad, with Andy King and Adrien Silva, two of seven central midfielders, expected to depart. The out-of-favour Shinji Okazaki could move on, too. The perennial question for Leicester is where do they find a deputy for Jamie Vardy? SJ Despite repeated links to Borussia Dortmund’s Christian Pulisic Jürgen Klopp maintains he is unlikely to move in the January market unless circumstances change and dictate otherwise. Liverpool were the biggest spenders in the summer as they built with a title challenge in mind and a healthy lead at new year has vindicated their planning. AH The champions insist there will be no incomings, yet given the lack of competition to 33-year-old Fernandinho another defensive midfielder would be welcomed by Pep Guardiola. Lyon’s Tanguy Ndombele is one potential candidate – and his asking price of around £55m is affordable. Left-back is another problem area; Leicester’s Ben Chilwell may, again, be of interest. Jamie Jackson As always there will be sizeable funds available. A centre-back is the prime requirement for the interim manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, given the lack of clean sheets. Porto’s Éder Militão, Tottenham Hotspur’s Toby Alderweireld, Leicester City’s Harry Maguire and Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly may be ideal but whether any can be prised away in the winter window is the challenge. JJ Rafael Benítez wants a playmaker – ideally Atlanta United’s 24-year-old Paraguay international Miguel Almirón – a left-back, a winger and an extra striker. Whether he gets any of those – or even one player on the shopping list – remains to be seen. No one in and around the first-team squad is for sale. Louise Taylor Southampton blew their modest January budget on Mark Hughes’s severance package and the new manager, Ralph Hasenhüttl, wants to trim the squad. He would listen to offers for Cédric Soares, Manolo Gabbiadini, Fraser Forster and Steven Davis. A new right-back and pace in the final third would be welcome. DH Mauricio Pochettino resorted to mime when asked whether he would make any January signings, turning his pocket inside out to indicate it was empty. Spurs have no money, as they wrestle with their £1bn stadium project, and any incoming business would have to be funded by outgoings – Mousa Dembélé being one possibility. DH Watford do not intend to sell any members of their first-team squad but some peripheral players will be made available on loan, and they are open to making a small number of signings, in particular a central defender. They would like a proven goalscorer, but given salary constraints and with their need not desperate they may wait until the summer. Simon Burnton Manuel Pellegrini spent heavily last summer but an injury crisis could force the manager to dip into the market again. Samir Nasri is set to join on a free when his doping ban ends and Pellegrini also wants more depth in central midfield. Gary Medel, the experienced Besiktas midfielder, could be available for a modest fee. Jacob Steinberg Nuno Espírito Santo gives nothing away about Wolves’ transfer plans, but the club are known to be looking for another striker to provide some competition and cover for Raúl Jiménez. Identifying the right players midway through a season, rather than coming up with the money, is the issue for Wolves. SJMore than 400 years after her brutal slaying at the hands of her royal English cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots continues to mesmerise the captains and kings of Hollywood. Edinburgh will host the premiere of Mary Queen of Scots, the eagerly anticipated latest screen adaptation of history’s most turbulent queen. It stars Saoirse Ronan as the ill-fated monarch who combined exquisite gifts of statecraft with ruthless expediency to control and manipulate her court of perfidious noblemen. Margot Robbie plays Mary’s cousin, Queen Elizabeth of England, and the film also features David Tennant and Guy Pearce. In post-Reformation Scotland Mary was reviled for her Catholic faith and for her sexual allure at a time when princesses were considered mere chattels and chess pieces to be paraded across the kingdoms of Europe to seal treaties and unite empires. The film-makers resisted the lure of a contrived Hollywood locution, as the title of the film bears witness to the universal fame of its subject. Not even the old Scottish warrior king, Robert the Bruce, was accorded such a distinction. Last year’s Netflix extravaganza about him was saddled with the melodramatic title Outlaw King. Like Helen of Troy, another queen who toyed with the affections of great men, Mary’s name alone needs no further embroidery. The ancient Spartan queen may have had a face that launched a thousand ships but Mary stirred the imaginations of a thousand Scottish radicals. The leftwing Scottish political commentator, Angela Haggerty, said: “It was always the thread of injustice in Scottish history that stuck with me. I was so enchanted by the story of Mary that I dressed up as her for Halloween, which I think is the ultimate mark of a child’s respect. The year before that I’d dressed up as John Lennon. Mary and Lennon were equally cool in my eyes.” The story of Mary has also transfixed film-makers across Europe for more than a century. She has been played by Fay Compton, Vanessa Redgrave, Katharine Hepburn and Samantha Morton. In 1895, the short film The Execution of Mary Stuart depicted her death in such a realistic way that audiences believed the actor playing Mary had actually been beheaded. The drama of Mary’s short reign and its ruthless denouement at the hands of a close blood relative has lent it a disproportionate significance in Scotland’s history. Mary was the only surviving legitimate offspring of King James V but was brought up in France while Scotland was ruled by regents in her minority. Returning to Scotland in 1561 following the death of her French husband, King Francis II Mary married her first cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley in 1565. A son, James, was born the following year. This is when the sex, betrayal and bloody vengeance began in earnest. Darnley was a bit of a popinjay hated by everyone, including eventually by Mary, who began an affair with her bisexual Italian secretary, David Rizzio. Darnley hated Rizzio and oversaw his brutal murder, bludgeoned and knifed in front of Mary. The queen nonetheless regained her composure rather quickly and not long afterwards learned that her husband has been burned to death by another nobleman, the Earl of Bothwell. Showing remarkable strength of purpose, Mary then married Bothwell. This enraged the rest of the Scottish lords. She was besieged and imprisoned at Lochleven Castle in Kinross and then fled south of the border seeking the protection of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth of England. Elizabeth, no slouch in protecting her interests at all costs either, knew Mary also had a blood claim on her throne and – depending on who you believe – discovered letters written by Mary proving that she still fancied her chances in England. Elizabeth didn’t mess around and quickly showed the ruthlessness and conviction that defeated the Spanish Armada the following year. She duly had her cousin beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire in 1587 following several years as a reluctant guest touring some of the National Trust’s most gilded English properties. Without giving the game away, that’s more or less it. Scottish historian Professor Sir Tom Devine deploys a sanguine and less emotional approach when assessing Mary’s place in Scotland’s history:“Of course, one must sympathise with and admire the courage of a young, Catholic and widowed queen returning from France to confront the iron men of the Scottish Reformation in an era dominated by unyielding patriarchy. Indeed, I would not be surprised if this film helped to reinvent Mary as a 21st-century feminist icon. “But the inordinate attention long paid by writers and film-makers to a figure of essentially minor historical significance also confirms that a story of romance, failure and tragedy can always trump in popular interest the major issues of Scottish history. Bonnie Prince Charlie is another obvious example of the same seductive allure of this kind of historical personality.” Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon is expected to attend tomorrow’s gala premiere of the film – and may have cause to reflect on some shared experiences with her troubled predecessor. Like Mary, she is under siege by a cadre of ambitious male earls in the modern palace of Holyrood. Unlike Mary, she can use 21st-century political statecraft to thwart their stratagems.In “Chiberia” – as locals have dubbed Chicago as temperatures have plummeted to -23F (-30C) – it is cold enough to freeze an egg on the sidewalk. Or to turn a bubble blown outside into a beautiful frosty snow globe before it splinters with the cold. A blast of polar air has swept across many cities in the US leading to the lowest temperatures in a generation. Schools and businesses have closed, flights have been cancelled and as of Wednesday evening, at least eight deaths had been linked to the system. Chicago isn’t the only city hit by the low temperatures, or the coldest, with the temperature dropping to -42F (-41C) in Park Rapids, Minnesota. While the extreme cold is miserable for many, some have been trying to find a bright side. In Chicago, residents have posted photographs on social media showing just how freezing life has become. Because Pulitzers don't win themselves, @MorGreene and I braved to elements to prove it's cold enough to freeze an egg on a Chicago sidewalk today. https://t.co/YxjMqzBXYS Local news outlets have made their reporters brave the elements to test whether an egg placed in a frying pan at these temperatures would freeze – the opposite of frying an egg on the sidewalk in extreme heat, which the Guardian Australia team found required hotter temperatures than you might expect. “Cold as ºF,” was the headline on the Loyola Phoenix, the official student newspaper of Loyola University in Chicago and on Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune ran sage weather-related advice on its front page: “Expert: avoid being outside”. On your day off from school, curl up with this week's issue of The Phoenix! pic.twitter.com/05rBwQjWW6 Today's Front Page of Chicago Tribune (https://t.co/FQYVlMg3tN) via @Newseum #TFP https://t.co/kfafiuzhtg pic.twitter.com/64TpeubYCN But many ignored the expert warnings and ventured into the cold to attempt the “boiling water challenge”, which saw people throw pots of boiling water into the air, which froze before hitting the ground. At Alpha Bridge we do hard technical diligence. When I heard -50 degrees in Chicago meant boiling water turns to snow before it hits the ground, I sent @HowieDelicious to verify. Nothing is too dangerous or unpleasant for me to make Howie do it. Send your suggestions... pic.twitter.com/A9egAU1h4N How cold is it in Chicago at the moment....? pic.twitter.com/U3wJnHZwFY Others posted videos of bubbles blown outside, which freeze into gorgeous baubles before cracking, or of their fork suspended in mid-air by a waterfall of frozen noodles. The hashtag #DogsofChiberia was created, showing pets rugged up in custom puffer jackets, hats and booties so they could survive a trip outside. Videos also circulated that appeared to show train tracks across Chicago on fire. The fires, which actually run next to the rails, are used by Metra, the Chicago-area commuter rail, to make the rails expand in an attempt to avoid cracks forming and switches clogging. Chicago is so ridiculously cold that the railroad tracks need to be on fire to keep the trains moving.https://t.co/sALHCcAias pic.twitter.com/qN8CCzkSX7 Temperatures in Chicago were expected to fall into the -20s F (-30s C) again on early Thursday, but should warm up to the comparatively balmy 20Fs (-7 to -2C) by Friday. We didn't choose the Chiberia life, the Chiberia life chose us 🥶#chiberia #dogsofchiberia pic.twitter.com/1VjqZBIpd4Police have detained one of the leaders of France’s gilets jaunes anti-government movement for organising an unauthorised protest, as authorities adopt a tougher approach to try to curb the demonstrations. Eric Drouet, a lorry driver, already faces trial in June for “carrying a prohibited category D weapon”, after he was allegedly found with a wooden stick at a previous protest. He was arrested by police on Wednesday night as he was heading towards the Champs Élysées in Paris, where several demonstrators had been waiting for him. They said they intended only to light candles for the people injured during demonstrations or killed in road accidents during the six weeks of protests on roads and roundabouts, which began in November as a fuel tax revolt but morphed into a movement against the president, Emmanuel Macron, and policies seen to favour the rich. Drouet’s lawyer called the arrest “totally unjustified and arbitrary”. He said Drouet had intended to lay candles at Place de la Concorde in Paris then meet others in a private place. The economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, defended Drouet’s arrest, saying: “It’s called respecting the rule of law ... It’s normal that when you break the laws of the republic, you face the consequences.” Since 17 November, the gilets jaunes – or “yellow vests”, named after their fluorescent jackets – have regularly held demonstrations that were not declared to the authorities. For several weekends, demonstrations in Paris and other cities such as Toulouse and Bordeaux saw violent skirmishes with police as well as banks and shops smashed up and cars burned. The authorities now appear to be clamping down on the continuing protests. The interior ministry wrote to local police chiefs this week saying the rural and suburban roundabouts and toll booths that have been occupied for weeks should be cleared of protesters. Some said the arrest of Drouet, often seen on TV as a gilets jaunes spokesman, could turn him into a sort of martyr figure and harden the resolve of demonstrators. The leftwing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fierce critic of Macron, tweeted: “Again Eric Drouet arrested, why? Abuse of power. A politicised police targeting and harassing the leaders of the yellow vest movement.” Benjamin Cauchy, another gilets jaunes media figure who takes a more moderate line on the protests, said after Drouet’s arrest: “Unfortunately I have the impression that the government wants to radicalise the movement. The executive is pouring oil on the fire. They’ve just put another coin in the jukebox and the gilets jaunes song is going to go on playing, that’s for sure.”Sitting on the edge of Newtown national nature reserve, Shalfleet Manor Estate is in a top spot for birdwatching, canoeing and walks around the Newtown estuary. The 17th-century Grade-II listed manor and separate outbuilding conversions have been recently renovated, and share the heated outdoor pool (May-September), tennis courts and gardens. The heritage colour palette keeps spaces light, while a large restored oak fireplace in the main house adds a touch of drama. A mooring on the nearby river is also available to guests. No more than a 35-minute drive to anywhere on the Isle of Wight, it makes a good base to explore the many bays and beaches, sea-view eateries and activities from sailing to fossil-hunting.Cottages sleep 2-14 (+ cots), dog-friendly, from £352 a week, bluechipholidays.co.uk/shalfleet-barn and bluechipholidays.co.uk/shalfleet-manor The Stables and the Coach House are two modern cottages in the grounds of 17th-century Trewan Hall, with access to a shared heated pool (under a dome in cold weather, usually closed in winter), onsite shop and various entertainment in the barn, including local bands and choirs. The 36-acre woodland estate is a 20-minute drive from Newquay and Padstow, 10 minutes from the sandy beach of Mawgan Porth and five minutes from the village of St Columb Major, which has several pubs, restaurants and a medieval “hurling the silver ball” contest on Shrove Tuesday.• Each cottage sleeps 4 (+ cot), dog-friendly, seven nights from £347, classic.co.uk Family-focused Tredethick Farm in the lower Fowey valley has eight cottages, most with woodburners and all with access to an indoor heated pool, outdoor hot tub and playrooms. It also has a menagerie of animals, with feeding sessions each weekday morning and bottle-feeding lambs in spring. Bikes are available for riding trails in the surrounding woods and coast, or looping up to Colliford Lake on Bodmin Moor. Nearby Fowey has dinner options including Havener’s Bar & Grill on the quayside, where sailing and canoeing trips are also on offer.• Cottages sleep 4-6 (+ cot), from £650 a week, tredethick.com Once the stables and outbuildings of Grade II-listed Corffe House, a former rectory in Tawstock, these nine cottagesshare a large heated indoor pool, seasonal tennis court, all-weather barbecue hut, play areas and five-acres of land. Tuesday evenings see Piccolo Pizza Co serving suppers from the woodfired oven in the cottage courtyard. Barnstaple (a 10-minute drive) has a 1930s cinema and one of Britain’s largest indoor markets; Exmoor national park and the sandy beaches of Woolacombe, Saunton, Croyde and Westward Ho! are all 20-30 minutes by car.• Cottages sleeping 4-10, from £275 a week, corffe.co.uk Close to the south Devon coast, the six Fingals Apart cottages have shared use of a sauna and heated indoor pool in a conservatory, plus seasonal croquet and tennis courts. The largest is the Barn, sleeping six, with heavy oak trusses and an open living space with grand piano. The riverside villages of Dittisham and Cornworthy are a five-minute drive, with a few pubs and shops, or reach Dartmouth in 20 minutes, where the steam railway and boats run to Totnes and Paignton (round robin day trip from £26). The famous Blackpool Sands beach (20-minutes by car) offers kayaking and paddleboarding, and nearby walking routes include the circular Dart Valley Trail (nine miles) and the South West Coast Path.• Cottages sleeping 2-6 (+ 2 cots), dog-friendly, from £490 a week, fingalsapart.co.uk Crossroads Cottage in Frogham village in the heart of New Forest national park has a private, heated spa-style pooland walking routes and horse riding on the doorstep. For cosy nights in, there’s an inglenook fireplace with woodburner, and a bright conservatory leads out to a garden with carp pond and sun loungers. The sandy beaches of Highcliffe, Boscombe and Bournemouth are 30 minutes away by car, and the towns of Fordingbridge (10 minutes) and Ringwood (20 minutes) have options for afternoon tea and pub grub.• Sleeps 5, from £731 a week, newforestcottages.co.uk Lavender Hill, near Taunton, is a 15-minute drive from the Quantock Hills, England’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (designated in 1956), with walking trails around heathland, woodlandand the Bristol Channel’s Jurassic coast, plus plenty of country pubs. All of the cottages here have private outdoor hot tubs as well as shared use of a heated indoor pool. Properties include 17th-century Cherry Tree Farmhouse (sleeps 10 + cots), with a large garden and play area; Cornflower Cottage (sleeps 4), a converted Grade II-listed barn; and two treehouse-style homes.• Cottages sleeping 2-10, dog-friendly, from £395 a week, lavenderhillholidays.co.uk A good base for exploring the beautiful Suffolk coast, Wheat Barn in Bawdsey is a converted farm building a mile from the sea with views over meadows to the Deben estuary. The cottagehas an open-plan living space with exposed beams and high ceilings, shared use of the heated outdoor pool (April-October) and tennis courts. Nearby Bawdsey Quay has a narrow sandy beach, and further north are thecoastal towns of Southwold and Aldeburgh – famous for its fish and chips.• Sleeps up to 8, dog-friendly, from £460 a week for 4 people/£695 a week for 8, suffolkcottageholidays.com Bromholm Priory in Bacton was once a popular site of pilgrimage, the ruins now just a few minutes walk away from Pilgrims Cottages. Originally the abbey’s farm buildings in the 16th century, the four holiday homes include a converted barn, stables and forge, a thatched cottage and a larger Grade II-listedhouse. They share a heated indoor pool, sauna, gardens and play areas with giant chess set. Nearby Bacton beach is a good place to spot grey seals and pups, a common sight along this coast. There’s a beachside cafe, chippie and village pub close by, or it’s a 25-minute drive to Cromer for its famous crab.• Cottages sleep 4-6, dog-friendly, from £507 a week, norfolkcottages.co.uk There are plenty of hiking, biking and wild swimming opportunities within easy reach of Mirefoot, a collection of five modern cottages in the village of Burneside, north of Kendal. Each includes an open fire or woodburner, private patio, and shared gardens, heated indoor pool, hot tub, sauna, gym and treatment rooms (on request). Windermere is a 15- minute drive, and Kendal, gateway to the Lakes, is 15 minutes the other way, with 18th-century wool trade yards to explore, plus shops, pubs and restaurants, and the Brewery Arts Club for live music, film and exhibitions.• Cottages sleep 2-4, dog-friendly, from £995 a week, mirefoot.co.uk The heated outdoor pool (May-September) at The Grove is set in two acres of grounds with views across the Towy estuary and surrounding countryside. The three cottages, built in the 1700s, all have private terraces. Close by, Llansteffan has a couple of pubs, a village shop and the ruins of a 12th-century castle overlooking a golden sandy beach. Carmarthen old town (a 15-minute drive)has independent restaurants and shops; and Laugharne (30 minutes) is home to poet Dylan Thomas’s boathouse, with tea room, a favourite stop-off for walkers on the Wales Coast Path.• Cottages sleep 4-8, dog-friendly, from £441 a week, grovebarnllansteffan.co.uk The Beach Huts, an open-plan eco-cottage, is not actually on the beach but in Oving, six miles inland. The name refers to the jaunty facade which looks a row of colourful wooden huts. The property has a private terrace with barbecue and brand new heated indoor pool (May-November), plus shared access to the tennis court (lessons available). The village has a couple of pubs, and walkers will enjoy the nearby South Downs pational park. Chichester, known for its theatre, cathedral and ancient wall walk, is 10-minutes drive away, and the long sandy beach at West Wittering is worth the drive (25 minutes).• Sleeps 4 (+ cot), from £520 a week, thebeachhutsholidays.com Helping to fund the onsite rescue centre for exotic animals, the Deepdean the Cockerel holiday home is a converted 17th-century barn with many original features, on a working farm in the Forest of Dean. It has shared access to 60 acres of woodland, country gardens and a heated outdoor pool. Guests can also meet and greet the 30 species of animal here, including alpacas, zebras and meerkats. The peaceful valley location is a 10-minute drive to Ross-on-Wye, for vintage shops, restaurants and canoeing.• Sleeps 4 (+ cot), from £939 a week holidaycottages.co.uk Chocolate box-pretty cottage the Barn at Sopps Farm in West Tytherley is well placed for walks in the New Forest (20 minutes by car) and fly fishing on the Test and the Dun. The thatched-roof property has an open fire, heavy drapes and stag motifs throughout. Its well-manicured garden was inspired by Highgrove House, Prince Charles’ country home, and has a seasonal outdoor pool (heated and private), pagoda and lily pond. Salisbury is less than half an hour by car, and there are pubs and local shops in the quaint nearby towns of Stockbridge and Romsey, former home of Lord Palmerston and Florence Nightingale.• Sleeps 3 (one room with double and single bed + cot), from £510 a week, mulberrycottages.com Five minutes’ walk from Rigg Bay, a secluded sandy beach, Pavilion Cottage sits within the walled garden of Garlieston House on the Galloway House Estate, former home to the area’s various earls. The cottage has a large garden with a heated outdoor pool (May-September), beyond which there is woodland, an orchard and a paddock for the estate’s rare-breed sheep, ducks and hens. Walks in nearby Galloway Forest Park take in the wild upland regions dotted with lochs, and southern Scotland’s highest mountain, Merrick, at 843 metres. The area also offers some of the best mountain biking in the UK, and two of the 7stanes trail centres are nearby, with routes to suit all abilities. Garlieston has a harbourside pub (five minutes’ drive) and there’s a wider selection of shops and eateries further north in Newton Stewart (30 mins).• Sleeps 6, from £860, oneoffplaces.co.uk There are four typical Yorkshire stone cottages (and two yurts) at Uppergate Farm in Hepworth, in the picturesque Holme Valley. The cottages share the use of an indoor heated swimming pool, sauna, steam room, and play areas. The largest, Bray Cottage, has a private hot tub too. Guests can help out on the farm with daily activities such as collecting the free range eggs, and feeding the piglets in summer. The town of Holmfirth (10 minutes drive), filming location of Last of the Summer Wine, has lots of good restaurants, cosy pubs and even a vineyard. There are some great walks nearby including the southern end of the Pennine Way, and through Yorkshire Sculpture Park (25 minutes drive).• Cottages sleep 2-10, from £400 a week, uppergatefarm.co.uk Each of the 10 cottages at Haddon Grove Farm in the centre of the Peak District national park come with a log burner, comfy interiors and access to an indoor heated pool and games room. After a day exploring the park, homemade, made-to-order pies and desserts are available, or barbecue packs can be delivered from the local butcher. For stargazers, there are several designated dark sky sites nearby. There is a Monday market in nearby Bakewell, and the thermal spa town of Buxton (20 minutes’ drive) has a heritage trail, some great bars and restaurants and several live music venues, including Buxton Opera House and the Pavilion Arts Centre.• Cottages sleep 2-10, from £717 a week, some dog-friendly, haddongrovefarmcottages.co.uk High above the Stour valley, the Grade-II listed Manor Coach House is a fun upside-down cottage conversion, with bedrooms on the ground floor and a spiral staircase leading up to a living area that comes with a record player, vinyl collection and a karaoke machine. The terrace looks out to a large garden with a heated pool (April-November), barbecue area and table tennis table. Cyclists and anglers will enjoy the surrounding Kent countryside, and walkers the North Downs Way. There are a few pubs in the village, Chartham, and Chilham (five minutes’ drive) has a tearoom and farm shop for local produce. Canterbury is a 15-minute drive.• Sleeps 6 (+cot), dog-friendly, from £649 a week mulberrycottages.com Former abbey stables, the 12 Bruern Cottages all have open fires, country-house style interiors, private terraces with barbecues (some also have gardens), and guests receive a treat-filled welcome basket. The properties share the use of a heated indoor pool in the sunny conservatory, as well as the sauna, gym, spa room (treatments on request) and large gardens with wisteria tunnel, apple trees and croquet lawn. A two-story wendy house, games cabin and adventure play areas will keep children of all ages entertained. There are several pubs within a few minutes drive south towards Shipton or north to Kingham, and nearby activities include the wildlife park, model village and horse-riding at Bourton Vale (all around a 20 minutes’ drive).Cottages sleep 2-10, from £672 a week bruern-holiday-cottages.co.uk Beater’s Cottage, near the tiny village of Maerdy, is surrounded by a 140-acre sheep farm and woodlands, and is a 15-minute drive from Snowdonia national park and Bala, Wales’ largest natural lake. The stone cottage, with woodburner, four-poster bed and games room, has shared use of an indoor heated pool, sauna and tennis court. There is a river just outside for trout fishing (with permits), and several pubs and local shops in the nearest town of Corwen, a few minutes away. The Llangollen Heritage Steam Railway runs from here for 10 miles through the Dee Valley (£16 return), an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, to Llangollen, where canal boat trips stop at Unesco world heritage site of Pontcysyllte, Britain’s largest aqueduct.• Cottages sleep 8, from £635 a week sykescottages.co.uk This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.David Beckham has become a shareholder in Salford City, taking a 10% stake and so joining Gary and Phil Neville, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes as Class of 92 owners. Beckham’s acquisition of his stake from Peter Lim makes the Class of 92 majority shareholders, the Singapore businessman retaining 40%. Beckham said: “It’s a proud moment for me to join Peter Lim and the Class of 92 lads as an owner of Salford City. My early years in Manchester were spent in Salford – I grew up there in many ways – so to be able to finally join the lads today is a great feeling. Salford City has achieved so much success in a short space of time, the fans are incredible and I’m really excited to be spending more time in Salford again.” The Class of 92 said: “From the very beginning we wanted David to be involved and be with us on this incredible journey; however circumstances and commitments didn’t allow that. Now the time is right and its another exciting chapter in Salford City’s history. It is important to emphasise that nothing will change in the day-to-day operations but to have us all together was always the vision.” The Class of 92 bought the club in 2014 with Salford in the Northern Premier League Division One North. The club became full-time in 2017 and play in the National League following three promotions. They are one point off top spot, with the division’s winners earning automatic promotion to League Two.A woman and her two sons have suffocated to death in a windowless shed to which they were banished in the latest tragedy linked to the illegal practice of chhaupadi, whereby women in Nepal are forced to sleep in “period huts”. Police said Amba Bohara, 35, had spent four days in the cowshed with her sons Ramit, nine, and Suresh, 12, when her father-in-law discovered their bodies on Wednesday morning. She had been confined in line with the outlawed practice of chhaupadi – when woman having their monthly periods are forced to sleep inside tiny sheds or animal shelters because they are considered impure. Uddhav Singh Bhat, deputy police chief in western Nepal’s Bajura district, said it appeared the family had lit a fire to keep warm inside the freezing mud hut but were overcome by fumes, and flames had spread to their blanket. “The doctors have already finished the postmortem but we are yet to get the results,” he said. Chhaupadi was criminalised in 2005, with penalties including a 3,000-rupee (£21) fine and a three-month jail term introduced last year for those convicted of perpetuating the custom. But it remains deeply embedded in some communities, particularly in the country’s poor western regions. The tradition, associated with Hinduism, controls what a women can eat, where she sleeps and who she can interact with during her monthly cycle. Many adherents believe that disobeying the rules invites misfortune and death. The UN has linked the practice to reports of diarrhoea, pneumonia and respiratory illnesses as well as sexual abuse or attacks by wildlife. It has also been blamed for infant and maternal deaths when mothers and babies are confined to the huts after birth. Another woman suffocated to death in a shed in January 2018, and the previous year a teenager was bitten by a snake and died. “Although NGOs are advocating against the blind belief and even educating the people, most women are unable to let go the tradition because of societal norms and religion,” said Judda Bahadur Rawal, the programme manager from an advocacy group in Bajura district. He said the local government should take action against those upholding the custom. “Though the number of women practising the tradition is decreasing, there are still a number of women who practice it without being forced. The new law itself is not effective.” Agni Shahi, NGO Federation president for Bajura, said that, despite ongoing education programmes, it had been “a real struggle to make the women let go of the belief that’s been plaguing the country”.What would the advertising industry do without Piers Morgan? Whenever they need a grumpy middle-aged man to be triggered, there he is, reliable as clockwork. He did it with Greggs’ vegan sausage roll, helping catapult their January marketing wheeze onto the front pages by complaining that it was a monstrosity. And he’s done it again with the new Gillette ad targeting toxic masculinity, which twists its familiar “the best a man can get” tagline to suggest that men can do a lot better than Harvey Weinstein and fighting in the street. It ends on a heroic note, with images of men in general and fathers in particular showing their sons a better way. But that didn’t stop Morgan dismissing it as “absurd virtue-signalling PC guff” that might drive him to get his razors elsewhere. “Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men,” he harrumphed on Twitter. The ad clearly has offended some male customers who take deep exception to being lumped in with gropers and thugs. It’s certainly a far cry from the approach of women’s brands, which generally seek to woo their customers with feelgood, body-positive campaigns rather than awkward truths. But if the aim was to generate oodles of free publicity by whipping up controversy, then like the vegan sausage roll it worked. Anything to get the brand name out there, in an era when customers fast-forward through the adverts while watching TV on catchup and use ad-blockers online. And crucially by pitting older men like Morgan against more woke millennials young enough to be their sons, it may have helped reposition an established brand that was in danger of starting to look old-fashioned as something more cutting edge. (It won’t have done itself any harm at all with mothers of teenage sons buying razor blades on their behalf, either). I've used @Gillette razors my entire adult life but this absurd virtue-signalling PC guff may drive me away to a company less eager to fuel the current pathetic global assault on masculinity. Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men. https://t.co/Hm66OD5lA4 Gillette is solemnly insisting that it’s not just a stunt; that in addition to the ad it will be putting money into projects to “inspire and educate” men of all ages, and routinely challenge male stereotypes in the images and words it chooses. Like all marketing gambits, that should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt. And it should go without saying that one slightly mawkish advert for razor blades is not going to make a difference to London’s knife crime problem or force a perpetrator of domestic violence to change his ways. But the culture in which boys are steeped still matters, and it shouldn’t be left to women to make that point. This has to be an argument in which men themselves get involved, and the point where many men do start thinking about it is when they become fathers. We’re witnessing something deeply troubling about the expectations with which too many boys are being raised, something evident not only in the #MeToo revelations or in cases like the recent rape trial involving Irish rugby players but in men’s infinitely greater predisposition to committing violent crime. And that should worry parents of boys as much as it does parents of girls. Feminism has endlessly opened up horizons for girls, giving them permission to be anything they want to be. They are bombarded with messages about how it’s fine to be both smart and pretty, encouraged to visualise themselves in male-dominated careers and to push the boundaries of behaviour considered “acceptable” for women. That paves the way for girls who never fitted the pink princess stereotype to be far more comfortable in their skins. But expectations of boys have remained more rigid, to the detriment both of those who don’t fit the macho stereotype and of those who will grow up to be the victims of insecure male rage. “Let boys be boys” is an excellent principle. But only if we recognise the full range of things boys are capable of being, when we let them. • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistArsenal’s grand plans to restructure post-Arsène Wenger have begun to splinter with Sven Mislintat, brought in as head of recruitment, set to leave after feeling his position has become untenable. The German, whose ideas in the sphere of spotting and developing talent are highly regarded in European football, was initially appointed in November 2017 by Ivan Gazidis, with the idea that his role would evolve into that of a technical director as the club aimed to refresh its operation once they moved on from the Wenger era. Wenger was no fan of the technical director concept and brushed aside the idea, which was one the club were keen to move towards. Since Gazidis departed to join Milan and handed over to a new internal management scheme led by the director of football, Raul Sanllehi, and the managing director, Vinai Venkatesham, Mislintat’s chances of becoming technical director have diminished. He was the natural choice but with Arsenal looking elsewhere, including towards their former midfielder Edu (currently a coordinator for Brazil’s national team), Mislintat has sensed that he would be sidelined, no longer having a decisive say on prospective signings. It seemed like his position, instead of growing as he had hoped, would be reduced to that of a glorified chief scout, which is not what he moved from Borussia Dortmund to do. Quite apart from the experience he can bring to the role, Mislintat will be a loss to Arsenal as a person. In character and ideas, he shares something of Jürgen Klopp’s rock and roll vibe and has a similar bigger-picture belief in football’s capacity to pay attention to the game’s soul in a heavily financed modern world. He also had a lot to offer to the strategic overhaul intended to refresh the way the club operates at executive level, and brought with him a modern way of thinking and a strong passion for his area of expertise. Mislintat has in recent months been part of the new executive team set up to bring a shared leadership which included his fellow German Per Mertesacker as head of the academy as well as senior figures from the business, football, contracts and data side of the club. He is the kind of person who is keen to bring his own ideas to the table, without feeling the need to adhere to convention. Down to earth, as interested in people as performances, his attributes extend beyond just having a good eye for a potential player. Before moving to London he spent many years at Dortmund, where he helped in the development of Shinji Kagawa, Robert Lewandowski, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ousmane Dembélé, among others. This track record made him an exciting appointment for the overdue modernisation of recruitment at Arsenal. Dortmund are an example to aspire to for a club hoping to streamline their operation and become more efficient in the market by spotting potential talent before it becomes prohibitively expensive. Mislintat was heavily involved in the recruitment of Aubameyang a year ago. Arsenal then signed a range of players during last summer’s transfer window – the goalkeeper Bernd Leno, experienced defenders Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Stephan Lichtsteiner, and the youthful, zesty Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi in midfield. But there is unease during this January window with Emery having admitted recently that the club are able to bring players in only on loan. With Aaron Ramsey set to leave on a free transfer at the end of the season, Petr Cech announcing his retirement, Danny Welbeck’s contract unlikely to be renewed and the ongoing bafflement over the situation engulfing their highest earner, Mesut Özil, this is far from an ideal time to have upheaval on the recruitment front.The US has begun making a new, low-yield nuclear warhead for its Trident missiles that arms control advocates warn could lower the threshold for a nuclear conflict. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in an email it had started manufacturing the weapon at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas, as ordered by Donald Trump’s nuclear posture review (NPR) last year. The NNSA said the first of the new warheads had come off the production line and that it was on schedule to deliver the first batch – an unspecified number referred to as “initial operational capability” – before the end of September. The new weapon, the W76-2, is a modification of the existing Trident warhead. Stephen Young, a senior Washington representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said its yield had most likely been cut by taking away one stage from the original two-stage, W76 thermonuclear device. “As best we can tell, the only requirement is to replace the existing secondary, or second stage, with a dummy version, which is what they do every time they test fly a missile,” Young said, adding that the amount of tritium, a hydrogen isotope, may also be adjusted. The result would be to reduce its explosive power from 100 kilotons of TNT, to about five – approximately a third of the force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Trump administration has argued the development of a low-yield weapon would make nuclear war less likely, by giving the US a more flexible deterrent. It would counter any enemy (particularly Russian) perception that the US would balk at using its own fearsome arsenal in response to a limited nuclear attack because its missiles were all in the hundreds of kilotons range and “too big to use”, because they would cause untold civilian casualties. Low-yield weapons “help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely”, the 2018 nuclear posture review said. To what extent does this signal a new willingness on the part of the US to start using strategic nuclear weapons? Many critics say that is an optimistic scenario that assumes there will be no miscalculation on the US side. “There are many other scenarios, especially with a president who takes pride in his unpredictability and has literally asked: ‘Why can’t we use our nuclear weapons?’”, Young said. Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists said the new warhead marked a sharp break from the Obama administration policy of making no new weapons or capabilities. He said it risked starting an arms race with Russia involving smaller nuclear weapons. “To what extent does this signal a new willingness on the part of the US to start using strategic nuclear weapons in a tactical and very limited way early in a potential conflict?” Kristensen asked. “Frankly, mission creep is my greatest worry about this.” There has been a spate of developments signalling that a new arms race is gathering pace. Vladimir Putin has unveiled a new generation of Russian weapons, and Russia’s suspected development of an cruise missile banned under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. Trump has declared he will take the US out of the treaty, and the administration is expected to suspend compliance and serve six months’ notice of withdrawal on Saturday. The Trump nuclear weapons review expanded an ambitious modernisation plan already underway. It ordered work to start on a new sea-launched cruise missile and blurred the line between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons. The NPR said the US could respond with nuclear weapons against “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks,” including attacks on “civilian population or infrastructure”. It also said the US would “strengthen the integration of nuclear and non-nuclear military planning”. It is not inevitable that all of Trump’s nuclear weapons plans will be pursued. Since the funds for the initial batch of warheads was approved, Democrats have taken over Congress, and are sceptical about their cost and purposes. Last week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report projecting the nuclear weapons costs over the next decade as nearly a half billion dollars, up 23% from the last estimate two years ago. “I don’t think we need as many as they’re talking about,” Adam Smith, the new head of the House armed services committee, said in a C-Span interview. “I just don’t think we can afford what the NPR is calling for and I don’t think it is necessary.” The nuclear weapons budget is likely to be an important battlefield in the struggle between Trump and congressional Democrats. The president is increasingly surrounding himself with Reagan-era nuclear hawks, including John Bolton, his national security adviser and who pushed for the INF to be jettisoned. Bolton’s new deputy, Charles Kupperman, once argued a nuclear war could be won “in the classical sense” if one side emerged the stronger, even if there were tens of millions of casualties. Speaking to reporters last week, former defence secretary William Perry, an arms control advocate, said he was less worried about the number of nuclear warheads left in the world than by the return of cold war talk about such weapons being “usable”. “The belief that there might be tactical advantage using nuclear weapons – which I haven’t heard that being openly discussed in the United States or in Russia for a good many years – is happening now in those countries which I think is extremely distressing,” Perry said. “That’s a very dangerous belief.”Laila Haidari is considered a criminal, despite never committing a crime. The 40-year-old works with drug addicts in Kabul. “The addicts I work with are considered criminal and dangerous and by extension I am considered criminal,” she says. Despite opposition and death threats, eight years ago, Haidari opened the city’s only private drug rehabilitation centre, which so far has helped nearly 4,800 Afghans who would otherwise have ended up on the streets, or worse, dead. She opened the centre, called the Mother Camp, after watching her brother fall into addiction. “I cared for my brother and helped him recover, even if it was briefly, because I believe that he deserved to be saved. He was a good man,” she says. Each of the addicts who pass through her shelter are good people who’ve gone astray, she adds, and they deserve a second chance. Afghanistan’s drug problem is not a secret. The country is the world’s largest producer of opium. In November 2017, the UN reported that opium production had increased by 87% over the previous 12 months to a record high, despite almost two decades of counter efforts by the US. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar), since 2001 the US has spent $8.6bn on disrupting the illicit drugs trade, yet the country still produces about 80% of the world’s opium. Afghans remain among the worst victims of the failed war on drugs. According to the 2015 Afghanistan national drug use survey, in a country of 35 million people, an estimated 2.9 million are addicts. But there aren’t enough government-run shelters to meet the growing needs. Kabul has 27 government shelters and there are about 115 across Afghanistan – all of which are over capacity. Mother Camp, named by the first drug addicts Haidari took in, was established in 2010. “I used to look after them, clean them, cook for them and sometimes even feed the weaker ones. That is when they started to call me ‘mother’,” she explains. Using her own savings, Haidari, once an aspiring filmmaker, rented a small space in the west of Kabul to open the shelter. It was basic, with furniture donated by friends and family. This year alone the shelter has admitted 117 new addicts, most of whom were rescued from under Kabul’s Pul-e-Sokhta bridge, known for the homeless community that lives there. The shelter has a capacity of 25 residents at one time, but it has hosted up to 40. Haidari and her team try to keep track of residents after they leave, but since many of them are homeless it’s not easy. About 20% of people who leave the centre will drop off the radar, while some will have relapses and return. So far this year, everyone who’s been in the shelter is accounted for and in various stages of recovery. “The addicts normally stay 30 to 40 days at the camp. Once they are admitted to the shelter, volunteers clean, shave and wash them, explains Jalil Pažwak, a young Afghan media professional, who volunteers at Mother Trust, the NGO that runs Mother Camp. The shelter takes the “cold turkey” approach to recovery – a common approach in the country, where resources and access to other medication and expertise is limited. Doctors are on hand if any problems occur. “Cutting them off completely from drugs is the main step and the important one. In our experience it has never had a negative effect. But it helps them become determined in their mission of getting rid of addiction,” Haidari believes. Residents are encouraged to join in group counselling and attend meetings, and eventually help with cooking and cleaning. It costs between $1,500 and $3,000 every month to run the shelter, depending on how many residents it hosts. The costs are met by Haidari and friends and family. She’s yet to receive any money from government or international organisations. In Afghanistan, drug addicts are seen as unwanted and a nuisance. “Contributing funds to help addicts has never been met with much enthusiasm among Afghans. “The initial years were the most difficult and I put all my savings and money to this project,” she says. To help meet costs, in 2011 Haidari opened a restaurant – the Taj Begum, which means “the crown of a queen” – run by the residents and furnished with donations. There were worries that no one would visit a restaurant operated by recovering addicts. “However, we were able to generate interests among a lot of people, especially those already familiar with our work. The clientele is largely young, educated Afghans who are eager to support our work,” says Haidari. Taj Begum serves Afghan cuisine, tea and snacks. However, this venture has not been without trouble. Men and women can socialise freely, which has ruffled feathers in a conservative society. “They’ve accused me of encouraging immoral and unIslamic values. Some have even accused me of running a brothel,” she says. She has received death threats. But, Haidari has her supporters. Mina Sharifi, founder and director of Sisters4Sisters, a mentorship programme for Afghan girls, says she is doing important work. “We’re so far behind in even understanding what addiction is, never mind accepting it as a disease to be treated. If we wait for society and the government to catch up, that’s an immeasurable loss of valuable lives,” she says. “Laila has combined addressing drug addiction with being a female lead in the fight. These are two huge things that many people here have a problem with. Her critics are scared of change and intimidated by what her success, with almost no money, says about their progress,” Sharifi adds. Her work has received international attention. A documentary of her life and work – Laila At The Bridge – recently premiered in North America and at several European film festivals. Despite constant threats to her own life and safety, Haidari remains determined to continue. “It has it’s flaws, but this is a good country, with good people who are thirsty for compassion. They deserve to be saved.”Johanna Konta has calmed fears she could miss the Australian Open by taking up a lucky loser spot in the main draw of the Sydney International, just hours after retiring from a qualifying match with a neck injury. The British No 1 withdrew from her second qualifier in Sydney against Ekaterina Alexandrova, of Russia, just 18 minutes into the match after hurting her neck in the warm-up. Konta was 4-1 down at the time. Her camp insisted the move was precautionary and, soon after treatment, she accepted the place in the draw that was made vacant by the withdrawal of the US Open champion Naomi Osaka. Konta was due to face Kiki Bertens, the world No 9 from the Netherlands, in the first round. With Kyle Edmund and Andy Murray among the wounded suffering from injuries old and new, Konta’s injury update was a welcome lift for British hopes at the Australian Open, which begins in a week’s time. Murray arrived in Melbourne sounding lukewarm about his chances of making an impression in a tournament in which he has lost five times in the final. He went out in the second round of the Brisbane International on Wednesday to Daniil Medvedev, who reached the final of that tournament on Sunday night before losing in three sets to Kei Nishikori. There was a glimmer of British hope when Heather Watson qualified for the main draw of the Hobart International by beating the 22-year-old Australian Isabelle Wallace, 6-4, 6-4, in qualifying. It followed her fine win over Naiktha Bains in the first round. Watson, who won this title four years ago and reached the semi-finals last year, exchanged breaks with Wallace before breaking again to take the first set in 45 minutes. She blew two match points in the 10th game then served out for the win. “When I come to Hobart I’m always feeling really positive and excited about the tournament,” she said. “When I’m happy, I play better. I’m very happy here and I think it shows in my results.” In Brisbane, Nishikori beat Medvedev to win his first ATP title in nearly three years – and only the 12th of his career – a poor return for such a talent. But the world No 9, so often hampered by injury, will go to Melbourne buoyed by his form and fitness after winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 against one of the brightest young contenders in the field. Nishikori, who had lost nine finals in a row, surrendered the first three games before taking six of the next seven and converting five of 15 break-point chances. Medvedev, who beat Nishikori in the Japan Open final in Tokyo last year, soaked up serious pressure to level at a set apiece. However, Nishikori broke for 3-1 in the third and stayed solid to win for the first time since he lifted the Memphis title in 2016. The former world No 1 Karolina Pliskova also had to fight to win her 12th Tour title – and second in Brisbane – coming from a set and a break down to beat Lesia Tsurenko 4-6, 7-5, 6-2. The world No 8 sensed victory when her Ukrainian opponent rolled her ankle at the start of the third set, and said later: “I think everything was against me today. I felt there is no chance I can win. I felt so far away from playing good tennis.” Pliskova becomes the third woman to win the event twice, after Victoria Azarenka (2009 and 2016) and Serena Williams (2013 and 2014).The highest-profile Catholic cleric to be embroiled in a paedophile scandal in France has denied in court that he failed to report a priest who abused Scouts in the 1980s and 90s. Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, one of the most prominent Catholic figures in France, is accused with five others of helping to cover up abuse. At the opening of a trial on Monday, Barbarin appeared to pray as the judge read the accusations against the defendants. “I never sought to hide, much less cover up these horrible acts,” Barbarin told the court in Lyon, reading from a written statement. Barbarin, 68, an arch-conservative, could face up to three years in prison and a fine of €45,000 (£40,000) if convicted. Another defendant, Pierre Durieux, the archbishop’s former chief of staff, said the defendants were the subject of a “witchhunt”. The Catholic church in France has been convulsed in recent years by abuse allegations, which emerged after a global move by victims to come forward with evidence. The scandal of abuse and its cover-up has erupted in many countries, including the US, Australia, Chile, Ireland and Germany, causing enormous damage to the church’s standing. Pope Francis has summoned bishops’ representatives from around the world to the Vatican next month for an unprecedented summit to focus on the scandal, which has threatened to engulf his papacy and has made him vulnerable to critics. Last month, he demanded that priests who abused children turn themselves in “to human justice and prepare for divine justice”. He vowed that the church would “never again” cover up abuse – although he has been accused of “covering for” a former archbishop accused of abuse and of failing to grasp the severity of the issue. On Monday, Francis described paedophilia as one of the “vilest” crimes. In his annual address to ambassadors to the Holy See, he said: “I cannot refrain from speaking of one of the plagues of our time, which sadly has also involved some members of the clergy. “The abuse of minors is one of the vilest and most heinous crimes conceivable. Such abuse inexorably sweeps away the best of what human life holds out for innocent children, and causes irreparable and lifelong damage.” The bishops’ summit was “meant to be a further step in the church’s efforts to shed full light on the facts and to alleviate the wounds caused by such crimes”, he asaid. Last week, the Vatican confirmed that Gustavo Zanchetta, an Argentinian bishop who has held a senior position at the Holy See since 2017, was under preliminary investigation over sexual abuse claims. The scandal in Lyon emerged in 2015 when a former Scout went public with allegations that a local priest, Bernard Preynat, had abused him as a child 25 years earlier. François Devaux, who has since formed a victims’ group, also filed a complaint against Barbarin, the priest’s superior, alleging he had known about the abuse and covered it up. After six months of investigation and 10 hours of interviews with Barbarin, investigators dropped the case in 2016, saying the allegations against him were either too old or impossible to prove. But a group of victims succeeded in having the case reopened which led to Barbarin and others, including the archbishop of Auch and the bishop of Nevers in France, having to stand trial. The victims’ group, La Parole Libérée (Freed Speech), began with a handful of people but soon received calls and testimony from 85 people claiming to have been victims of Preynat in Lyon. After he was first denounced in 1991, the priest was prevented from leading Scout groups, but was later allowed to teach children and held positions of authority in parishes until the scandal became public in 2015. Preynat has acknowledged abusing boys and is to be tried later this year. The head of the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Spanish archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, has also been accused of complicity in the alleged cover-up in Lyon. In correspondence with Barbarin about the priest, the Vatican’s No 3 advised the cardinal to take “necessary disciplinary measures while avoiding public scandal”. The Vatican has cited his immunity from prosecution and he will not go on trial. Agence France-Presse contributed to this reportA Russian politician has been arrested on the floor of parliament for his suspected role in ordering at least two contract killings. Senator Rauf Arashukov was detained on Wednesday during a session of the federation council, the upper house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, and charged with murder, witness tampering and involvement in organised crime. When Arashukov arrived for a regular session of parliament, the house speaker abruptly announced the session closed to the press. Then a vote was announced to relieve Arashukov of his parliamentary immunity to allow him to be charged for murder. Arashukov attempted to flee through the parliament gallery, but then surrendered to law enforcement, who came to the building to arrest him. He pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges later on Wednesday. Senators are generally protected by immunity and Arashukov’s colleagues had to agree to his arrest during an extraordinary session of the legislative body. Reports from the courtroom said Arashukov tried to escape the chamber via the balcony while being told to “sit down” by the chairwoman of the Federation Council, often called Russia’s senate. Witnesses told Russia’s RBC news that the session was interrupted by the country’s prosecutor general and the head of its investigative committee, who announced the charges against Arashukov. They included the 2010 murders of a presidential aide and youth politician from Arashukov’s native Karachay-Cherkessia, an area in Russia’s North Caucasus region. Arashukov, the son of a prominent businessman, was elected to the body in 2016. A lawyer for the aggrieved parties said Arashukov may have been responsible for at least four murders. During the interrogation, Arashukov reportedly requested an interpreter because he did not speak Russian well and required translation into his native language, according to an investigative committee spokeswoman. Investigators also said they had detained Arashukov’s father, who was suspected of embezzling 30bn rubles (£350m) in gas supplies. “He really tried [to run],” the the Federation Council speaker, Valentina Matviyenko, told reporters. “He tried to get upstairs and out of the session. I told him to sit in his place, because according to current rules, he has the right to speak and give an explanation.” “He declined the opportunity,” she said. “That is also his right.” Russian lawmakers have sometimes used parliamentary immunity to avoid prosecution for crimes. Andrei Lugovoy, who was identified by a 2016 inquiry of having deliberately poisoned the Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, has been an MP since 2007.In February 2015, Chris Elliott made his final appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. As Letterman’s funniest and best-known collaborator, Elliott took a moment to reflect on the differing paths they’d taken over the years. “Look here, you’re a television icon adored by billions,” he gushed to Letterman, to a surge of applause. Then, as the clapping stopped, his face soured. “And I’m on the Pop network with a show called Schitt’s Creek,” he spat. “So we’ve both achieved our dreams.” Not a huge amount has changed in the years since. David Letterman is still an icon, albeit mainly now in the field of pogonology, while Schitt’s Creek remains a weird little curio that exists just beyond the reach of most peoples’ interest. This is a crying shame. It’s a crowded field to be sure, but Schitt’s Creek is almost definitely the best sitcom you haven’t quite got around to watching yet. Actually, that might not be the case. Ever since it appeared on Netflix, Schitt’s Creek has been gradually growing a word of mouth fanbase, thanks to a steady trickle of converts who feel obliged to hand-sell it to their friends as soon as they’ve finished watching it. This is why a recent CBC article – Schitt’s Creek airs on CBC in its native Canada – called it “the little engine that could”. Why are people so consistently falling for it? There are a number of reasons. First, as it enters its fifth season this week in the US, it has arguably the most impressive cast of any comedy on television. There’s Chris Elliott, of course; still as offbeat and unpredictable as he’s ever been. But there’s also Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, the latter of whom delivers such a masterclass of oblivious comedy that she has single-handedly created an unscalable mountain of reaction gifs. Then there’s the gradual blossoming of the characters. Since it began, Schitt’s Creek has told a very deliberately paced story. Episode one began with a family of newly-broke millionaires arriving at their one remaining asset; a backwater town they bought for their son as a joke. And, as such, it was a largely predictable comedy of contrasts. The family looked down their noses at the residents, who in turn sneered at the family’s lack of real-world knowledge. It was great. Levy, O’Hara and Elliott are all perfectly capable of taking a premise as admittedly hacky as this and elevating it to sustain a couple of seasons of monstrous caricature work. However, the magic of Schitt’s Creek is that it has been unafraid to let everyone develop in a vaguely naturalistic way. So, what’s happened over the years is that everyone has slowly become more accepting of each other. And then, last year, something clicked. As one, the characters all seemed to embrace their better instincts. Eugene Levy’s patriarch became more commanding and more empathetic. Annie Murphy’s daughter settled on a career path that worked to all her intolerable strengths. And then there’s David. David, played by showrunner Daniel Levy, is the heart of the show. At first presented as a ridiculous pansexual clotheshorse, in season four he excelled by making himself vulnerable and entering into a relationship for apparently the first time in his life. Episode by episode we’ve watched him edge closer to his business partner Patrick, then drop away brokenhearted, then edge back again. You don’t expect a show called Schitt’s Creek to gun for such full-throated sincerity, but that’s what it has done. There’s an episode where David serenades Patrick by lip-synching to a Tina Turner song, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the moving things I’ve ever seen. That’s what Schitt’s Creek is now. It’s warm and inclusive and tolerant, and up there with something like The Good Place when it comes to making comedy from the art of self-improvement. It’s a tight bearhug of a series. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should. Just try not to be put off by the fact that it’s named after actual faeces. Schitt’s Creek is available to watch on Netflix with new episodes airing in the US on Pop TV on WednesdaysDwayne “The Rock” Johnson has claimed the Daily Star fabricated a front-page story in which the film star appeared to criticise millennials as “snowflakes”. The story, which appeared on Friday’s front page under the headline “The Rock Smacks Down Snowflakes” and was billed as an exclusive, was picked up by news outlets around the world. The Daily Star piece, which remains online, implied the film star was offended by various incidents in the UK, such as the University of Manchester student union discouraging students from clapping in meetings and claims that a a bakery had renamed gingerbread men “gingerbread people”. “This generation are looking for a reason to be offended; generation snowflake are actually putting us backwards,” - The Rock makes the front page of Friday’s Daily Star: https://t.co/aqh1l347bS #WWE #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/1Q6DZZMuOQ The Star, which used the piece to assert that “the UK is mourning the death of comedy due to humourless crowds demanding no risky jokes”, also said Johnson believed “whining snowflakes are draining positive change through their constant moaning”. It quoted the actor as allegedly saying that “generation snowflake or, whatever you want to call them, are actually putting us backwards” and “if you are not agreeing with them then they are offended – and that is not what so many great men and women fought for”. However, Johnson, a former wrestler who has become one of the world’s biggest film stars, used an Instagram video to insist the quotes were fake. “The interview never took place, never happened, never said any of those words, completely untrue, 100% fabricated, I was quite baffled when I woke up this morning,” he said. “You know it’s not a real DJ [Dwayne Johnson] interview if I’m insulting a group, a generation or anyone, because that’s not me.” The Daily Star is overseen by the Independent Press Standards Organisation, meaning Johnson could make an accuracy complaint to the press regulator. Last year the newspaper was sold to Reach PLC, which also owns the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror. The Daily Star did not immediately return a request for comment.This nightmarish Indian sex-trafficking drama about a village girl sold into modern slavery is told with passion and urgency by Tabrez Noorani, a producer on Lion and Slumdog Millionaire making his directing debut. Love Sonia has the glossy production values of those movies, but Noorani is going for something harder-hitting here, inspired by the true story of an Indian girl found in a container ship in California. It is powerful filmmaking, but I found questionable the packaging of sexual violence with the uplifting notes of mainstream entertainment. Mrunal Thakur gives a performance of quiet intensity as Sonia, a shy 17-year-old whose father sells her sister Preeti (Riya Sisodiya) to clear his debts. “I’ll get you a nice job in Mumbai,” coos the female trafficker to Preeti. Their dad goes along with the sham but his face betrays him: he knows the truth. Not long afterwards, Sonia naively follows her sister to Mumbai, where she is herself trafficked and taken to a filthy brothel, where she is handcuffed to a bed while the owner-pimp phones around to get the best price for his “fresh” village girl. Sonia never stops looking for Preeti, even as she is smuggled across continents. In one of the clunkier scenes, set in LA, Mark Duplass plays a nice-guy beardy rich white dude, paying for sex and turning a blind eye to human trafficking. Demi Moore also makes an appearance. Noorani impressively conveys the sense of living hell and you can’t criticise his intention to shout at the top of his voice that something is desperately wrong in India. But the framing device of Sonia’s epic search for her sister, and a fluffy love story, let down his authentic-styled drama. You may walk out of the cinema sad and angry for the real Sonias, but strangely enough unmoved by the character, in spite of Thakur’s first-class performance.England’s all-time-leading scorer Wayne Rooney was arrested in the US accused of public intoxication and swearing at a Washington DC airport, it has emerged. The former Manchester United star, who currently plays for the Major League Soccer team DC United in America, was taken into custody on 16 December in Virginia, according to court records. He was released on his own recognisance – a promise to appear in court, which means there was no need to post bail – and paid a $25 (£20) fine plus $91 costs on Friday. A spokesman for the footballer said the arrest came after he was left “disorientated” by prescribed sleeping tablets that he took on a flight from Saudi Arabia following a one-day promotional business trip. “During the flight Wayne took a prescribed amount of sleeping tablets mixed with some alcohol consumption and consequently was disorientated on arrival,” his spokesperson said. “He was approached by police who arrested him on a minor misdemeanour charge. He received a statutory automatic fine and was released shortly afterwards at the airport. The matter is now at an end. “Wayne would like to put on record his appreciation for the manner he was treated by all involved. No further comment will be made.” Two days before the arrest at Washington’s Dulles airport he had posted an image online of himself in a car at the Riyadh Formula E championship race in Saudi Arabia. #BreakingNews: DC United’s Wayne Rooney was arrested on public intoxication and swearing charges, sources tell @abc7news #MLS #DCUnited pic.twitter.com/W4KWnnDkcT A spokesman for Loudoun County sheriff’s office in Virginia said: “He was booked into the Loudoun County adult detention centre on 16 December, 2018, on a charge of public intoxication stemming from an arrest by the Metropolitan Washington airports authority police (MWAA). “He was later released on a personal recognisance bond.” In September 2017, Rooney was banned from driving for two years and given a 12-month community order after pleading guilty to being almost three times over the drink drive limit during an incident in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. He was caught by police driving a woman’s Volkswagen Beetle. Following the incident, Rooney issued a public apology for his “unforgivable lack of judgment”. He added: “I have already said sorry to my family, my manager and chairman and everyone at Everton FC [his club at the time]. Now I want to apologise to all the fans and everyone else who has followed and supported me throughout my career.” After playing for Everton he transferred to DC United and made his debut on 14 July last year.Sweden’s inconclusive September election saw a record 161 women take their seats in the 349-member Riksdag – the highest proportion of female MPs in Europe (ahead of two other Nordic countries, Finland and Norway) and the seventh highest in the world. But the country that in 2014 proudly declared that it had “the first feminist government in the world” has never had a female prime minister, and is about to enter an unprecedented fifth month under a caretaker administration. The key to resolving the latter problem could well lie with 35-year-old Annie Lööf, a former business minister and, since 2011, the youngest ever leader of the tax-cutting, business-promoting, immigrant-welcoming Centre party. Neither is it inconceivable that Lööf, Sweden’s most trusted politician in a host of polls since 2017, could also find herself rectifying the former problem – although most analysts think it unlikely and she herself has said the top job is not her focus. The election left the two dominant centre-right and centre-left blocs separated by a single seat, deadlocked – and facing a major problem in the form of the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, the country’s third biggest party. Lööf’s Centre, the fourth largest party with 31 seats, a sharp increase on its tally in the previous parliament, is part of the four-member centre-right Alliance, and has sworn never to be a part of, or support, a government backed by the Sweden Democrats. Centre’s votes could give a majority to Stefan Löfven, the outgoing Social Democrat prime minister and leader of the three-party centre-left bloc – except that Lööf campaigned on a promise not to govern with the Social Democrats either. Both Löfven and the Alliance leader, Ulf Kristersson, have tried and failed to form a new government. Lööf was also asked to explore coalition options, but soon gave up, blaming the Social Democrats’ reluctance to accept liberal reforms. Only two more formal attempts to form a coalition are allowed before fresh elections must be called on 23 January. If Löfven tacks right and wins Lööf’s support, she could demand high office as a reward, perhaps even very high office. Whether she would get it, of course, is another matter.They are the one couple who could ever be called the parents of Amazon.com, and now the split of MacKenzie and Jeff Bezos is casting a spotlight on the woman who might soon become the world’s wealthiest. The pair jointly announced on Wednesday that they plan to divorce, a reminder that the planet’s “richest man” is one half of its richest couple. A share of 16% in Amazon.com is ascribed to Jeff Bezos, who founded the firm in 1994 after the then newlyweds left New York City for Seattle. The former couple’s announcement struck a kind tone, and offered nothing on how their wealth, estimated at $137bn, would be divided. “As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends,” the announcement posted on Twitter read. “We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other. “If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again.” MacKenzie, 48, would become the world’s richest woman if she receives half the Bezos fortune. That title, according to Bloomberg estimates, is currently held by the L’Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, whose net worth is estimated at $45.6bn. MacKenzie Bezos, an acclaimed novelist who has four children with Jeff,  met her future husband while interviewing for a research position at the Manhattan hedge fund where Jeff Bezos dreamed up Amazon.com. In interviews, MacKenzie Bezos described theirs as an unusual match. Then 23, she was a reserved, aspiring writer working in finance to pay the bills. He was a gregarious guy six years her senior in the office next door. “Through the walls I would hear him laughing that giant laugh,” MacKenzie Bezos told Charlie Rose. “All day long. And it was, it was totally love at first listen.” They married six months later, and, shortly thereafter, headed west to follow Jeff’s passion project, launching an online bookstore. “To me, you know, watching your spouse, somebody that you love have an adventure, what is better than that and being part of that? Couldn’t wait to hop in the car,” she said in that 2013 interview promoting her second novel, Traps. MacKenzie was a key player in Amazon.com’s early days in a suburban Seattle garage; according to a 1999 Wired report, she negotiated the company’s first freight contracts from a Starbucks attached to a Barnes & Noble near their home. She described the experience while offering a scathing review – on Amazon.com, expectedly – of Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. “I worked for Jeff at DE Shaw, I was there when he wrote the business plan, and I worked with him and many others … in the converted garage, the basement warehouse closet, the barbecue-scented offices, the Christmas-rush distribution centers, and the door-desk filled conference rooms in the early years of Amazon’s history,” she wrote. While parenting their young family, MacKenzie Bezos continued exercising her passion: writing. A San Francisco native, she studied under Toni Morrison while earning her bachelor’s degree at Princeton. MacKenzie Bezos has described Morrison as an attentive mentor who continued to support her during the decade she spent writing her first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, which won an American Book Award in 2006. MacKenzie Bezos has acknowledged wealth’s role in her success. Speaking with Vogue in 2013, though, she described herself as a “lottery winner” of a different sort. “The fact that I got wonderful parents who believed in education and never doubted I could be a writer, the fact that I have a spouse I love, those are the things that define me,” she said at the time. The Bezos’s recent move into philanthropy has seen MacKenzie Bezos launch an anti-bullying initiative, Bystander Revolution. The couple last year pledged $1bn to fight homelessness in America. What becomes of the rest of their wealth remains to be seen. Divorce papers do not appear to have been filed in Washington state, where they made their home. Under Washington state law, unless there is a prenuptial agreement, property acquired during a marriage is usually equally divided in the event of a divorce, said Carol Bailey, managing partner at Integrative Family Law in Seattle. “The court’s objective when there is considerable wealth is to make sure that both spouses in a long-term marriage of 20 years or more will, after divorce, be taken care of for the rest of their lives, and to make the ultimate financial result fair given the overall context and events of the marriage.” The announcement was followed by a National Enquirer report alleging that Jeff Bezos had been romantically involved with the wife of an entertainment industry agent. Jeff Bezos has been a frequent target of Donald Trump, whose ties to the Enquirer have been the subject of a criminal investigation.Astronomers have detected mysterious, ultra-brief repeating energy bursts from deep space for only the second time in history, and some experts suggested they could be evidence of advanced alien life. The origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs), millisecond-long pulses of radio waves, is unknown, but most scientists say they are generated by powerful astrophysical phenomena emanating from billions of light years outside our galaxy, the Milky Way – such as black holes or super-dense neutron stars merging together. Some, however, including Prof Avi Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian centre for astrophysics, have posited more outlandish theories, suggesting they could be evidence of incredibly advanced alien technology. The new discovery, made by a Canadian-led team of astronomers searching for FRBs, was published in the journal Nature following a three-week period last summer during which the group detected 13 of the flashes using a new type of radio telescope, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (Chime), in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. For only the second time ever, spanning more than 60 FRBs recorded to date, one of the FRBs was detected repeating. The Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico previously observed such repeating bursts in 2015, after FRBs were first detected by accident in 2007 when a burst was spotted in radio astronomy data that had been collected in 2001. It is likely that many more FRBs with even lower frequencies often travel past our planet, and with technological advances we might be able to detect more of them. “Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB,” said a Chime astrophysicist, Dr Ingrid Stairs, from the University of British Columbia. “Knowing that there is another suggests that there could be more out there. And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles – where they’re from and what causes them.” The majority of the 13 FRBs showed signs of “scattering”, suggesting their sources could be powerful astrophysical objects in locations with special characteristics, the scientists said. “That could mean in some sort of dense clump like a supernova remnant or near the central black hole in a galaxy,” said Dr Cherry Ng, a team member in the study from the University of Toronto. “But it has to be in some special place to give us all the scattering that we see.” The new FRBs were recorded at unusually low radio frequencies. Most of those previously detected have had frequencies of around 1,400 megahertz (MHz), but the new ones fell within a range below 800 MHz. Seven of the new bursts registered at 400 MHz – the lowest frequency the Chime telescope can detect. In 2017 Loeb and his Harvard colleague Manasvi Lingam proposed that FRBs could be leakage from planet-sized alien transmitters. Rather than being designed for communication, they would more likely be used to propel giant spaceships powered by light sails which bounce light, or in this case radio beams, off a huge reflective sheet to provide thrust, the scientists said. “Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven’t identified a possible natural source with any confidence,” said Loeb in a statement after the publication of a previous paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. “An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking. “Science isn’t a matter of belief, it’s a matter of evidence. Deciding what’s likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It’s worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge.”Since last month’s announcement that the US will imminently withdraw its troops from Syria, President Trump has backtracked. The White House has declared that the withdrawal may yet take a number of months, amid a series of other contradictory remarks from senior American officials over whether the US plans to withdraw its troops entirely or to maintain some presence in eastern Syria. On Sunday Trump generated further confusion by declaring plans for a “safe zone” in Syria across the border with Turkey (without explaining who would enforce this zone, and where it would be located), even declaring that the US would “devastate Turkey economically” if it attacked Syria’s Kurds. A precipitous withdrawal would be indeed be bad news: it could pave the way for an Islamic State resurgence – the jihadist organisation is thought to still have 30,000 fighters at large in Syria and Iraq – as well as expanded Iranian influence. And both of these outcomes could be hastened if there is a conflict between Turkey and Syria’s Kurds. Turkey has national security concerns over the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the organisation that dominates the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has fought alongside the US under the auspices of the campaign to defeat Isis. The YPG is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which has fought the Turkish state for more than 40 years. The future of the YPG in Syria’s north-east, where it established its own self-governed autonomous region during the civil war, is a thorn in Turkey-US relations that first emerged under the Obama administration. Yet the US has still failed to establish a sustainable, viable strategy that can alleviate Turkish concerns but also maintain the SDF as a buffer against the Assad regime and Iran, as well as the critical fighting force it has been in the war on Isis. It is not too late. A potential US withdrawal combined with widespread concerns of a bloody Turkish-YPG conflict has added urgency and impetus to the need to find a compromise with Ankara over the future of the SDF. The US, in concert with its European (particularly French) allies, should push Turkey and the YPG to make some difficult choices. Ankara’s long-term approach to the Kurdish question in Syria would be to go back to the 2014 peace process aimed at ending its conflict with the PKK. That could still be revitalised down the line and provide a lasting solution. In the meantime, Turkey must be appreciative of the reality that US interests in Syria, and those of its allies, can only be secured if there are reliable on-the-ground partners who provide immediate solutions in a difficult landscape. The YPG has been that solution, filling a security void in 2014 at a critical moment for the international community. But that does not mean the US cannot push the organisation to share power on a more equitable basis and make support conditional on its willingness to share power with other groups (Kurdish and Arab). The objective here would be to establish credible and legitimate governing structures as well as alternative partners to the YPG, who can then alleviate some of Turkey’s concerns. There are limited alternatives. Turkey lacks the capacity to suppress the YPG in eastern Syria (it has attempted, and failed, to defeat the PKK within and across its borders without success for decades). It would struggle to keep the peace in the Kurdish-dominated northeast if it deployed its already stretched armed forces, risking in the process a quagmire that enables the ascendancy of jihadist terrorist groups. The YPG could turn to and embrace the Syrian regime if it is left to choose between either a Turkish onslaught or negotiations with an administration that is in the process of normalising its relationship with the international community. The YPG is inseparable from Syria’s security and governing structures, yet Turkey will lose the capacity to shape the landscape altogether if the YPG is forced into the regime’s orbit of influence. Contrary to the hyperbole surrounding Turkish apprehensions toward the YPG, Ankara has in fact engaged the Democratic Union party (PYD), the YPG’s political wing, before and has hosted its head, Salih Muslim. The Turkish government is not entirely averse to negotiating with the organisation, while Ankara found in the 90s that by cooperating with the US and by developing stronger relations with the Iraqi Kurds, it became far more capable of influencing events in Iraq. A compromise is not beyond reach. The US, Turkey and YPG all stand to lose if Assad and his backers take control of the east. It would be the worst outcome for the Syrian people and the region at large. • Ranj Alaaldin is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in DohaVenezuela’s supreme court has imposed a travel ban and financial restrictions on self-declared interim president Juan Guaidó, including freezing his bank accounts. On Tuesday, the political crisis deepened as the country’s attorney general ordered an investigation into the opposition leader, who last week declared himself interim president in a rare challenge to the incumbent, Nicolás Maduro. Tarek Saab, a Maduro loyalist, announced that Juan Guaidó – who has received the backing of the US and other regional powers including Brazil and Colombia – would be investigated over his supposed role in “serious crimes that threaten the constitutional order”. Hours earlier the US tightened the screws on Maduro by announcing sweeping sanctions against the country’s state-owned oil company PDVSA in what experts said was an attempt to economically asphyxiate his regime. A series of anti-Maduro demonstrations are due to take place on Wednesday in Caracas, the capital, and across the country. Guaidó appeared to take the threat of imprisonment in his stride. He said: “We are here, we will keep acting and working to confront the humanitarian crisis.” The US national security adviser, John Bolton denounced the “threats” from Saab – who he described as the “illegitimate former Venezuelan attorney general”. “There will be serious consequences for those who attempt to subvert democracy and harm Guaido,” Bolton tweeted. José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch, said the move had been expected: “The only question, given the domestic and international support for Guaidó, is if the Maduro dictatorship is able to really flex its muscles and sideline Guaidó like it has with previous opposition leaders.” Maduro’s government has long sidelined or arrested figureheads of movements that threaten his power, such as Guaidó’s mentor Leopoldo López, currently under house arrest after organising protests in 2014. Others leaders have gone into self-imposed exile. Protests that began on Monday last week were met with brutal repression, with the UN human rights office reporting that security forces in Venezuela had detained nearly 700 people last Tuesday, the highest tally in a single day in Venezuela in over two decades. Between Monday and Saturday last week, more than 40 people were killed, and 850 people were detained overall, including 77 children. On Tuesday morning, residents of Petare, a sprawling, downtrodden neighbourhood in Caracas, were still reeling from the crackdown launched after tens of thousands took to the capital’s streets on 23 January. Later that night, police and national guardsmen swarmed the streets of Petare, summarily executing suspected agitators, witnesses told the Guardian. “It was horrible, I was terrified by all the gunfire, so much gunfire,” said one resident who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. “The police arrived and entered people’s home, and people say they killed people in their own homes who had no criminal records.” Another resident, who also asked not to be named, expressed solidarity with Guaidó in the face of possible legal troubles. “He has done what no other political has done in about 10 days,” the resident said. “I believe in him and I ask that he helps us change Venezuela.” However, there was also support for the move against the opposition leader. “I agree with it because I think that Guaidó is a usurper. He has to respect President Maduro and I think he has to sit down and talk to him and reach an agreement to solve the country’s problems,” said Douglas Flores, 58, a cobbler from the José Félix Ribas neighbourhood in Caracas. “I think was wrong to proclaim himself president and although I do not judge him, I think he should apologize to President Maduro. He was re-elected and that must be respected. We must respect what the constitution says.” Guaidó has said he was aware of the consequences of standing up to Maduro, but said he was not fearful. “I am more afraid of continuing to live in this situation of uncertainty and chaos,” he told the Guardian in an interview last Saturday. “I always think of my daughter when people ask me this, and I have to say my biggest fear is seeing her grow up thinking that this situation is normal. It is not normal and we need to leave the chaos behind.”On Sunday 4 March 2018, emergency services were called to what they believed was a straightforward medical incident – a middle-aged man and a young woman who had been taken ill on a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury. It turned out to be anything but routine. The man was the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and the woman was his daughter, Yulia. They were the victims of a nerve agent attack blamed on a Russian hit squad. A police officer, DS Nick Bailey, was also poisoned when he went to search Skripal’s house in Salisbury, and Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were taken ill at the end of June in the town of Amesbury, eight miles north of Salisbury, when they apparently found a container of the nerve agent novichok disguised as a perfume bottle. Sturgess sprayed some of it on her skin and died. As the area hopes for a simpler 2019, four people reflect on an extraordinary period for Salisbury and Amesbury, and express their hopes for an overdue period of normality and revival. In the run-up to the novichok attack, Salisbury had been dealing with a wintry storm known as the beast from the east. “On the Monday morning [5 March], we had just finished dealing with the snow,” Daszkiewicz said. “We knew straight away what had happened in Salisbury was unprecedented. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t happen in Salisbury; it doesn’t happen anywhere, actually. “There’s no rulebook. You are working in a multilayered, multidisciplinary space, working across government. You’ve got an investigation running, you’ve got a public health process running. We were also dealing with an issue of national security, which is a gamechanger in the way you operate and way you think.” Working closely with Public Health England, one of Daszkiewicz’s key roles was to try to say whether the people of Salisbury were safe. The oft-repeated line was that the risk to residents was “low”, but this claim was undermined by the sight of service personnel in hazmat suits. “There was an apparent contradiction between the low-risk message and the hazmat suits,” Daszkiewicz said. The job of public health officials became more difficult when Rowley and Sturgess fell ill. The message that the risk was low no longer seemed convincing. There isn’t widespread anxiety, but there is that constant need for reassurance for answers “You can’t unsay what was said,” Daszkiewicz said. “Messages were given with the best intentions at the time. I didn’t agree with all of them. You have to go out with messages that are as reassuring as possible within the boundaries of truth.” Having learned from the Salisbury attack, the agencies swung into action in Amesbury to explain and reassure. “For me, the key point was becoming very visible to the Amesbury community as quickly as possible. We had moved into the rounds of a same but different incident. Losing Miss Sturgess is the biggest tragedy in this – three children have lost their mum,” Daszkiewicz said. Helping the people of Salisbury and Amesbury is a long-term job. “We usually see patterns of emotional wellbeing changing at about the six-to-eight months mark,” she said. This has happened in Wiltshire, where people are coming forward wanting to talk about what happened. “There are more conversations now,” Daszkiewicz said. “It’s not high levels of distress, just conversations, questions. It could be that someone lives close to one of the sites or were working at one of the places that the Skripals visited. There isn’t widespread anxiety, but there is that constant need for reassurance for answers.” Checks will be carried out for at least five years, she added. “Support systems will need to be in place for as long as it takes. It’s an unknown.” But are Salisbury and Amesbury safe now? “We’ve worked closely with a range of professionals. I think the people of Salisbury and Amesbury can live their lives safely. What has happened is unprecedented. We’ve lost somebody, it’s incredibly sad. I swing from getting on with it and being incredibly angry at the impact on our community. I’ve seen the impact on people who just want their lives back. There’s something nice about normal and ordinary. I see it as my job to give them back that. Shop owners tried to carry on regardless in the days after the attack. “To begin with, we didn’t realise the magnitude of what had happened,” Tribbeck said. “Life carried on as normal, but then it kept gathering momentum. To have the international media, looking at little Salisbury was just so strange. It didn’t occur to us we were in risk or danger, but for the general public it was different. “Some businesses were closed, others were reporting a 40-50% drop in footfall. Visits to the cathedral and other attractions were down. We would have calls from people saying ‘We’re worried, we’re not coming in’, and we would tell them, ‘Well, we’re here, we’re not foaming at the mouth’. It was very difficult. “We battled on. We were just beginning to pick up and put it behind us when Charlie and Dawn fell ill. The consequences for Dawn were horrendous.” Consultants have been brought in to “rebrand” Salisbury as it attempts to recover. “You can’t rename it or anything like that,” Tribbeck said. “But the idea is to look at what Salisbury is and what Salisbury means – gathering a picture of where we’re at. It’s about how to communicate what is special about Salisbury, how to conceptualise that and communicate that message to local people and the wider world. That’s what rebranding is about.” Tribbeck was born in Salisbury and began working on Saturdays in the shop when she was 14. “Salisbury is unique. We are a city but we’re small, so we have the friendliness, that nice personal feel. You can walk down the street and people will say hello to you. We call it ‘Smallsbury’ because everyone knows everyone. There’s an overgrown village feel to it,” she said. The suspects probably walked past the shopfront of HR Tribbeck & Son, which was established in 1905 by Rachel’s great grandfather Herbert. “One of the CCTV images of them was on the bridge just over there. I still have trouble believing it did happen here. It’s like something out of James Bond,” she said. “I feel quite cross. I almost feel quite insulted they could come to our city, do something like that and think they could get away with it. What makes me really angry is the way they discarded this perfume bottle for someone else to pick up. That showed a complete lack of any humanity.” Within days of the attack, planning for recovery began. “We’d been dealing with the beast from the east,” Cunningham said. “The snow went away, we felt we’ve done well and straight into this. “From the first week, we were looking at recovery. It was clear there was going to be a big impact on the city. We had our recovery plan in draft by the end of the first week and were sharing it with government the week after.” Cunningham said there was frustration over some of the outlandish stories that emerged in the media. “We had to bite our lip at some of them and gently bang our heads against a wall. You can’t always put the truth on the table. What we were trying to do was get as much information out to the public as we could. That’s why we organised all the community meetings,” he said. At those public meetings, people asked how the authorities could be sure they were safe. “I think we were pretty open and honest,” said Cunningham. “We had to follow the evidence and advice.” The alternative would have been to shut down the city, the county, the ports the novichok may have been moved through. The city is not back to normal yet. By the end of 2018, 1m fewer visits will have been made to Salisbury compared with 2017. Takings are 15%-20% down. “That’s their profit, their livelihood,” Cunningham said. Decontamination work continues at the homes of Skripal and Rowley. “There was a difference in the two attacks. Salisbury was a targeted attack that caused collateral damage to the city. I don’t think anyone thought there would be such a callous disregard from the perpetrators that they would discard their weapon in a public space for someone to find. What they did [to the Skripals] was callous, but to leave the weapon in the city was shocking,” Cunningham said. He paid tribute to the strength of Wiltshire, a county that is proud of its military history, particularly its links to the British army. “The population is used to the military. We didn’t have that additional factor of people being scared by the sight of troops on the street, which could have been a factor elsewhere,” Cunningham added. A striking aspect of the poisonings has been the dedication of public servants. “We do these jobs because we believe in public service,” he said. “We do it for the satisfaction of delivering for the people of Wiltshire. You do it because it needed doing. That’s our job.” “It seems like a long time ago now,” said Sullivan. “It was a normal day and suddenly the cordons began to pop up all over the place. To be honest, it was a bit of a shock that something was actually happening in Salisbury. It’s very quiet normally, not the sort of place you expect anything major to happen.” Like many residents, Sullivan took the drama in his stride. “ I wasn’t really frightened, but we did start to keep an eye open for anything out of the ordinary. Once we knew there had been poisonings, we obviously didn’t go around picking objects up, but we didn’t have any control of it. Work carried on as normal, there were just a few routes through the city blocked off. It was a bit surreal seeing people walking around in protective suits. That was a bit sci-fi.” There was grim amusement when the alleged attackers claimed they were in Salisbury to visit the cathedral and had gone there on two consecutive days because they were initially driven back by the slush. “I suppose the cathedral is the obvious landmark. If they had said they had come for any other reason, it would have seemed even odder,” he said. Sullivan said life in the stonemasons’ yard – and across the city – has carried on. “I would say for the most part, it’s back to normal. Everything seems to have calmed down, talk of novichok has quietened down. When it first happened, everybody was talking about it,” he said. Salisbury – and the cathedral – are stolid. “The cathedral has been here for 800 years. In stonemasonry, we tend to think in a slightly different timeframe – things are measured in hundreds of years, not days or weeks or months. In the end, what happened won’t have a major impact on the cathedral or the city.”David Neiwert has lived in his Seattle neighbourhood for decades. But it, like the US, has changed beyond recognition around him. Once upon a time, the journalist and author of the book Alt-America explains, “most of the houses were older, but they were cheap. They were places where working-class people who work on these fishing boats out here” – he gestures towards the docks at Salmon Bay – “could live, right? You know, 500 bucks a month. It all got torn down during the gentrification phase and replaced with multistorey condos that cost $1,500 or $2,000 a month.” Amazon, whose headquarters are in Seattle, “changed the city”, he says. “All the folks who work on those fishing boats are still in the neighbourhood, but they’ve got no place to live. They’re all living on the street.” He offers a characteristic wry grin. “We’ve got a lot of motor homes around the neighbourhood now.” Neiwert has spent his career studying far-right movements. Alt America analyses their growth over the past several decades, and looks at how authoritarianism and conspiracy thinking have come to hold sway over US politics. Neiwert believes that the far right’s surge, the election of Donald Trump and mass homelessness in Seattle all spring from a common root: the deliberate assault on democracy by the US right and the Republican party. For several decades following the Great Depression, when capitalism and liberal democracy teetered on the brink, Republicans and Democrats “agreed to defend democracy, and defend the values of democracy because it benefited them all by following basically FDR’s program. Now, we’ve lost that because conservatives have decided they are no longer willing to submit to any kind of government run by liberals,” Neiwert says. “The current conservative movement has decided it no longer wishes to be part of a liberal democracy.” The principal reason, he thinks, is greed. “By the time they got to the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president, all they cared about was: ‘Well, fuck you, you can’t take my money away. You can’t tax me!’ Politics has become so focused on economics that we’ve lost sight of humanity.” For Neiwert, Trumpism is the apogee of the decades-long drive to create a dog-eat-dog economy. The chaos that this has unleashed, and the deliberate promotion of anti-democratic sentiment, has led conspiracy theories and authoritarianism to permeate the political right – and the brain of the current occupant of the White House. Neiwert says that “authoritarianism appeals to our desire for security and safety and control. When fearfulness and chaos are being promoted, authoritarianism ramps up.” He points to a recent example of incipient authoritarianism – the young men from Covington Catholic college in Kentucky who hooted and taunted in the face of a Native American man on the National Mall. “It’s yet another indication of how we’re radicalising this generation of young men,” Neiwert says. “The rabbit hole they’re falling down leads to white nationalism, but the pathway is authoritarianism.” He mentions the new media landscape that has been crafted to appeal to young men, such as the “authoritarianism lite” offered by the likes of Jordan Peterson. “These young men are being conditioned to develop authoritarian personalities.” Authoritarianism, in turn, uses conspiracy theory to drive a wedge between a movement’s followers and the world. “Conspiracy thinking ensures that the authoritarian leader has their followers’ loyalty because they thereby enter his version of reality.” He offers a concrete example: “When Trump is lying nakedly, but all of his followers still believe him, well, that’s what he’s doing. “Democracy is about people actually linking arms, and having the franchise, and real political power resting with them, not with the people at the top. If we don’t revive democracy, frankly I don’t know where we’re going.” Neiwert’s observations, and his arguments in Alt-America, are rooted in decades of tireless, and sometimes thankless, reporting on the far right. He has developed the knack of getting up close to the ugliest parts of American life without being obtrusive. He is still a regular at far-right rallies in the Pacific Northwest, which he has, until recently, reported on for the Southern Poverty Law Center. (In early January he began working as a correspondent for the progressive website the Daily Kos.) “I blend in because I am a schlub like most of these guys are,” Neiwert says on the way to a December open-carry militia rally, entitled Liberty or Death, in Seattle. The self-deprecation is typical, although in fact Neiwert takes pains not to stand out in such crowds. But in middle age, with a round and creased face, and a certain heaviness in the midsection, Neiwert does resemble the average attendee at the far right’s public events. Generally, he maintains a silent, watchful presence, smiling his sardonic smile, usually decked out in the colours of the Seattle Seahawks, the NFL team he is devoted to. At the rally, Neiwert moves easily among a crowd of AR-15-toting members of the Three Percenters group, who oppose what they call the tyranny of the gun restrictions, and who are named after the supposed proportion of the American population who fought against Britain in the revolutionary war. That day, they were there to protest what they called leftwing media bias. Neiwert, who they would probably lump in with leftwing media, was unfazed. If he looks at home among the self-styled rebels on the radical right, it is because, in a complicated way, this is his tribe. Neiwert grew up as a rural Republican in the years before the Republican party went, he says, “completely over the cliff”. His childhood in the 1960s and 1970s was spent in south-east Idaho, as a scion of a German-American clan who arrived in the state as pioneers. Although his family were Methodist, the area was predominantly Mormon. At the time, he says, elements of the Mormon church were heavily entwined with the conspiracy-minded, anti-communist John Birch Society. This was known for proclaiming far-reaching communist conspiracies in every area of American life (it has enjoyed a small resurgence in the Trump era, although nowadays it talks more about “the deep state”). “That’s probably part of why I’m immune to conspiracism,” he says, “because I got exposed to it at a pretty early age and I think by the time I was 12, 13, 14, I’d figured out that it was 90% bullshit.” As a boy he hunted and fished in the great wilderness of the inland west, and in college he worked on campaigns for Republican politicians. Almost as soon as he left college to work as a reporter, he was confronted by the first in a long string of far-right surges. His work as a reporter on smalltown papers, and later as an environmental journalist, brought him face to face with a succession of movements that were seeking to push back – sometimes violently – against the encroachments of a modern, pluralistic world. From the late 70s, he saw activists associated with the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion – in which ranchers and farmers demanded that the federal government cede control over public lands, and spread conspiratorial stories about environmentalists, and misinformation about the law and the constitution. A strong anti-environmental strand remains in the so-called Patriot Movement, the umbrella term for far-right nationalist, anti-government, pro-gun and often survivalist groups. The occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge in Oregon demanded that the federal government hand back its land to the states so it could be opened once more for unfettered economic exploitation. At the same time, “damaged men” who had returned from Vietnam were heading into the wilds of Idaho and Montana to build a survivalist movement. Eventually, some of this became entwined with the militia uprising of the 1990s. “But by the 90s,” Neiwert says, “I would say three-quarters of the guys that I would see joining militias were Larpers.” This term, derived from “live-action role playing”, is for those who have lots of shiny weapons and equipment, but precious little training or smarts. Then, as now, the problem was what he calls “the McVeigh factor”, referring to Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf war veteran who killed 171 people when he bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1996. In a comprehensive study of domestic terrorism in the US that he authored in 2017, Neiwert found many incidents of extremists plotting various horrific acts of terrorism, “but they’re rarely competent enough to pull it off. But the guys who concern you, obviously, are the Tim McVeighs, the ones who are competent, the ones who have the military training.” The US’s endless wars still produce a steady stream of veterans, a small but alarming proportion of whom have joined or even formed far-right groups in recent years. Parts of the fragmenting “alt-right” have displayed a growing interest in paramilitary organisation, and groups such as the Three Percenters encourage veterans to join their ranks. Despite all this Neiwert still sees a reluctance of mainstream media organisations to properly cover the far right because, he says, of a fear of being accused of “liberal media bias”. After McVeigh’s bombing, the militia movement stalled. But Neiwert argues that the far right never went away, and what we see now is the result of decades of momentum. Soon enough, prominent figures in conservative media began in earnest to build an alternative reality in which to envelop their audiences. After 9/11, he says, he saw “the conservative movement really starting to develop rhetoric and behaviour that I thought was deeply authoritarian, especially towards critics of the war”. In his 2009 book The Eliminationists, Neiwert explained how this post-9/11 authoritarianism was fuelled by increasingly lurid fantasies in conservative media of destroying liberals, Muslims and other perceived enemies. These bubbled away throughout the presidency of Barack Obama, himself the subject of endless conspiracy theorising. Trump, of course, became the principal pusher of the idea that Obama wasn’t born in the US. His subsequent presidential campaign was powered by authoritarian and conspiratorial fantasy. And so, Alt-America has its president. But can the problems Neiwert points to actually be remedied? “I’m not optimistic,” he says. “I believe that we’ve dug ourselves a really deep hole and we have a really long way to dig up.” He believes that while Trump is likely to lose in 2020, the movement, and the party, that propelled him to power will continue to have a malign effect. One important step to challenge this would be media reform. He says that the internet and corporate ownership of local media have “basically gutted the ability of local newspapers to cover local news, gutted the ability of larger newspapers to do consumer and investigative reporting”. Social media, a paradise for conspiracy theorists, is filling the gap. Political reform is also needed. “The Democrats need to become more progressive and stop being afraid of their progressive wing.” The Republican party as it stands, he thinks, may be too toxic to change, but the US does need a legitimate conservative force that is loyal to democracy. If nothing else, Trump’s election has disclosed some home truths to a group of Americans who “were asleep, but now maybe are awake”, he says. Among these truths are “that America is not over its racism. That we still have a lot of work to do. That we still have a long way to go to become an equitable and fair nation that lives up to the values that it proclaims to the rest of the world. “I mean, Trump’s all about ‘make America great again’. It’s this idea that this American exceptionalism will never die. And it has to die,” he says. He looks out of his window once more, over a neighbourhood partly buried under the glass, steel and concrete of the gentrifiers. “It has to die because it’s killing us.”As motor industry executives descend on Detroit this week for its annual motor show, the icy winds sweeping in off the Great Lakes will not be the only thing sending a sub-zero chill through their bones. The 2019 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), to give it its proper title, returns to the Motor City on Monday at what many believe is the most pivotal – and perhaps the most dangerous – period in the car industry’s history. Experts are not mincing their words. “There’s going to be more change in the next 15 to 20 years than in the last 100 years,” said Prof David Bailey of Aston University. According to Prof Karel Williams of the Manchester Business School: “The car as we know it may be on the edge of becoming history, the way that [photographic company] Kodak became history.” Predictions aside, there is abundant evidence of a looming crisis. Around £100bn was wiped off the value of car firms last year, with the pain felt on production lines and in boardrooms around the world. Last November, Detroit-based General Motors announced it was shedding 14,700 jobs and closing plants as it deals with flagging sales of saloon cars in a US market that many expect to slow in 2019 and 2020. Only last week, Britain’s largest carmaker, Jaguar Land Rover, announced 4,500 job cuts, citing weakening demand in China and sliding diesel-vehicle sales in the wake of the Dieselgate emissions-rigging scandal. The spectre of a no-deal Brexit also hangs over JLR and several other manufacturers with major operations in the UK. On the same day as JLR’s announcement, Ford revealed it would be scaling down its European operations dramatically, having unwisely overexpanded. The cuts are expected to include 1,000 job losses in Bridgend – more than half the workforce at the carmaker’s engine factory in Wales. Other, less structural, issues have further shaken the industry. The death of lionised former Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne piled personal grief on top of professional gloom in 2018. And when the head of the Renault-Nissan alliance, Carlos Ghosn, was arrested in Japan and charged with financial misconduct offences – which he denies – it showed that even a figure seen as superhuman in some circles could be suddenly toppled. There could be more pain to follow – and in short order. An expected Chinese economic slowdown means that the engine of growth on which some companies have become reliant risks stalling. At the same time, President Trump’s apparent willingness to engage in bruising trade wars with Beijing offers yet another hazard for the industry. But it is the long-term structural issues that cast the longest shadows. Electrification, autonomous vehicle development and the threat posed by ride-hailing services to personal vehicle sales pose challenges that not all companies will be able to meet. According to Williams, the industry has seen nothing like this since Henry Ford’s Model T rolled off the production line in 1908. “In that [following] period, the US industry defined the idea of the people’s car – an internal combustion engine with a gearbox and so on,” he said. “What happened after world war two was that the Europeans and Japanese downsized the model. But European cars like the VW Beetle, the Fiat 500, the Mini, would all have been recognised by Henry Ford. The real big thing is that the car, as Ford and General Motors invented it, is going to be reinvented with electrification and autonomy.” As if to underscore this tectonic shift, major European brands including Audi, JLR, Mercedes-Benz and Mini have all dropped out of the Detroit show this year, turning their noses up at the city that gave birth to the industry. From next year, the show will move to summer, perhaps mindful that the gala unveiling of shiny new models inside cavernous buildings protecting delegates from the Michigan cold is losing its lustre. But the seasonal switch is unlikely to be enough to restore Detroit’s former glory, particularly with Silicon Valley becoming just as important to the industry’s future direction. “It’s not at all clear that manufacturers whose expertise is in petrol and diesel vehicles are well placed to benefit from electric and autonomous vehicles,” said Williams. “The likely beneficiaries are the data companies, like Google, or mobility providers like Uber.” Several carmakers have already cosied up to the tech giants as an insurance policy against a future in which personal vehicles take a back seat to a broader range of transport options. Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker by vehicle production, has poured $500m into a driverless car partnership with Uber, while Volvo also has a partnership with the company and JLR has unveiled a long-term tie-up with Waymo, part of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Driverless technology is not without its problems, including several fatal accidents. Polling, at least in the US, shows most drivers don’t yet trust autonomous cars, with 73% of American drivers saying they would be too afraid to ride in a fully self-driving vehicle. That may create nagging doubts for an industry spending billions on robot vehicles, particularly given that investment is all the harder to sustain when sales of traditional vehicles are not holding up well. But most pundits are in little doubt about the ultimate direction of travel. Analysts at Citigroup think autonomous features will be standard in personal vehicles in the early 2020s, with services diversifying after that to include autonomous vehicle (AV) subscriptions. “A lease payment for an AV subscriber would include use of the car plus insurance and maintenance,” the analysts write. “In addition to extra AV safety features on this car, the car will drive itself to get services in the middle of the night, or a new car with enough seats to pick up the whole family at the airport can be sent to your house overnight.” Ultimately, Citigroup’s analysts envisage a global “Robotaxi” market with an enterprise value of some $1tn. Autonomous or not, the cars of the future will be powered by electricity. This poses yet another existential threat to industry players that do not manage the change well. “China will become the centre for global electric vehicle production,” said Bailey. “Unless the industry transforms, large chunks of it could get wiped out. Renault-Nissan are well ahead and BMW has invested very heavily, then you have Tesla as a new entrant and firms such as JLR catching up. “Those that are really lagging are companies such as Ford, which is well behind and is going into collaboration with Volkswagen, who are having to reorientate in the wake of Dieselgate.”The growing concentration of the world’s wealth has been highlighted by a report showing that the 26 richest billionaires own as many assets as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of the planet’s population. In an annual wealth check released to mark the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the development charity Oxfam said 2018 had been a year in which the rich had grown richer and the poor poorer. It said the widening gap was hindering the fight against poverty, adding that a 1% wealth tax would raise an estimated $418bn (£325bn) a year – enough to educate every child not in school and provide healthcare that would prevent 3 million deaths. Oxfam said the wealth of more than 2,200 billionaires across the globe had increased by $900bn in 2018 – or $2.5bn a day. The 12% increase in the wealth of the very richest contrasted with a fall of 11% in the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population. As a result, the report concluded, the number of billionaires owning as much wealth as half the world’s population fell from 43 in 2017 to 26 last year. In 2016 the number was 61. Among the findings of the report were: In the 10 years since the financial crisis, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled. Between 2017 and 2018 a new billionaire was created every two days. The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, saw his fortune increase to $112bn. Just 1% of his fortune is equivalent to the whole health budget for Ethiopia, a country of 105 million people. The poorest 10% of Britons are paying a higher effective tax rate than the richest 10% (49% compared with 34%) once taxes on consumption such as VAT are taken into account. Oxfam’s director of campaigns and policy, Matthew Spencer, said: “The massive fall in the number of people living in extreme poverty is one of the greatest achievements of the past quarter of a century but rising inequality is jeopardising further progress. “The way our economies are organised means wealth is increasingly and unfairly concentrated among a privileged few while millions of people are barely subsisting. Women are dying for lack of decent maternity care and children are being denied an education that could be their route out of poverty. No one should be condemned to an earlier grave or a life of illiteracy simply because they were born poor. “It doesn’t have to be this way – there is enough wealth in the world to provide everyone with a fair chance in life. Governments should act to ensure that taxes raised from wealth and businesses paying their fair share are used to fund free, good-quality public services that can save and transform people’s lives.” The report said many governments were making inequality worse by failing to invest enough in public services. It noted that about 10,000 people per day die for lack of healthcare and there were 262 million children not in school, often because their parents were unable to afford the fees, uniforms or textbooks. Oxfam said governments needed to do more to fund high-quality, universal public services through tackling tax dodging and ensuring fairer taxation, including on corporations and the richest individuals’ wealth, which it said were often undertaxed. A global wealth tax has been called for by the French economist Thomas Piketty, who has said action is needed to arrest the trend in inequality. The World Inequality Report 2018 – co-authored by Piketty – showed that between 1980 and 2016 the poorest 50% of humanity only captured 12 cents in every dollar of global income growth. By contrast, the top 1% captured 27 cents of every dollar. Oxfam said that in addition to tackling inequality at home, developed nations currently failing to meet their overseas aid commitments could raise the missing billions needed to tackle extreme poverty in the poorest countries by increasing taxes on extreme wealth. China’s rapid growth over the past four decades has been responsible for much of the decline in extreme poverty but Oxfam said World Bank data showed the rate of poverty reduction had halved since 2013. In sub-Saharan Africa, extreme poverty was on the increase. Oxfam said its methodology for assessing the gap between rich and poor was based on global wealth distribution data provided by the Credit Suisse global wealth data book, covering the period from June 2017 to June 2018. The wealth of billionaires was calculated using the annual Forbes billionaires list published in March 2018. • This article was amended on 21 January 2019 to clarify that the figure of 10,000 people dying for lack of healthcare is per day. Borussia Dortmund have confirmed that Christian Pulisic will join Chelsea for €64m (£58m), with the United States forward to be loaned back to the Bundesliga leaders until the end of the season. The 20-year-old, who moved to Germany as a teenager and has made more than 80 appearances for Dortmund, admitted in November that he hoped to play in the Premier League having refused to sign an extension to his existing contract. “It was always Christian’s dream to play in the Premier League,” said BVB’s sporting director, Michael Zorc. “That certainly has to do with his American background, and as a result we were unable to extend his contract. Against this background, we have decided to accept an extremely lucrative bid by Chelsea, given the low contract maturity. “Christian Pulisic is a character perfect player. I am sure that in the coming months he will do everything in his power to bring his high quality to the team and to achieve his sporting goals with his teammates at Borussia Dortmund.” Speaking to Chelsea’s website, Pulisic said it was “a privilege to have signed for such a legendary club and I look forward to working hard towards being a contributor to their team of world class players”. Liebe Borussen 🖤💛 (🇺🇸🇬🇧) pic.twitter.com/nAKgF1sHdI He becomes the most expensive American player in history, with Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia stating her delight to have signed “one of Europe’s most sought-after young players”. “Christian has shown his quality during a fantastic spell in Germany and at just 20, we believe he has the potential to become an important Chelsea player for many years to come,” she said. “We look forward to welcoming him to Stamford Bridge in the summer and wish him and Dortmund every success for the remainder of the season.’Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel prize for physics. Frida Kahlo was a pioneering Mexican artist. And the ballet dancer Janet Collins was one of the first African Americans to take the stage in the 1950s. Together, these women broke barriers and to celebrate their legacies, an artist in California has painted roughly 200 portraits of them and other groundbreaking heroines — from suffragists to civil rights activists and gospel singers — as part of an upcoming exhibit at the Women’s Museum of California, entitled Groundbreaking Girls. The artist, Allison Adams, will present around 40 selected portraits of influential women through history in an exhibit opening 1 February. “When I start saying to myself ‘I can’t do this single parenting thing, I can’t make it as an artist, I can’t, I can’t,’ these women’s stories helped me,” said Adams. “I wanted to educate people to that spirit, which is what we have access to as humans and as women.” It all started in 2016, when Adams’ husband died tragically after surviving a car crash. “I was in a place where I felt the need to find inspiration,” said Adams, “so I started reading more about Eleanor Roosevelt’s life and I had this vision of sharing stories like hers to remind people we come from this legacy of amazing people we aren’t taught about very much.” She painted her first portrait of Roosevelt, who is remembered as the longest serving First Lady of the US and is recognized for drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. “Eleanor had a remarkable spirit of confidence and helping others,” she said. “It lifted me out of my funk, I thought ‘I’m going to paint her, I want that voice in my life.’” Adams continued to paint portraits of women – all of who had something in common: “I started looking for stories of women who overcame things,” she said. Painting the series was a cathartic process for Adams, who was grieving. “It’s hard to talk about it without getting personal,” she said. “I was in a pretty dark place after losing my husband, it was shortly after the election in 2016 and everything was falling apart for me.” The series features a portrait of the Maryland abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery and saved thousands of slaves by pioneering the Underground Railroad. “I knew her from history class, but I never noticed the courage she had,” said Adams. “She is a voice in my mind when I’m feeling insecure, she overcame so much and didn’t let anything stop her.” She has also painted Ida B Wells, an African American civil rights pioneer and suffragist who helped establish early women’s organizations, as well as Nancy Ward, an 18th century Cherokee political leader and peace activist who defended her tribe’s land. “These women, whether we know about them or not, all had to overcome something major; for me, that was life-changing and what I wanted to share,” said Adams. “A lot of them came from a hard place. I gathered strength from that.” “I feel like they want to have their stories told and I am lucky enough to share them,” she adds. She has also painted portraits of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, a 20th century forebearer of feminist art, as well as Lee Krasner, a painter who was the wife of Jackson Pollock, the alcoholic artist who had highly publicized love affairs with several women including Peggy Guggenheim. “When her husband died, she protected his estate and sold his work to museums and got more money for his pieces than any other abstract expressionist,” said Adams. “She did a lot for the art world.” As New York City works towards getting more women monuments up in a city that has just five women statues in a city of 150 monuments, and with the ongoing sexual assault allegations as a result of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, now is the apropos time to host this exhibit. “Women’s stories and justice are important now,” said the artist. “It’s exciting to make it during this time.” When she paints them, Adams – a former actor – says she gets into their character, much like an actor would. “There is a sense of trying to get into their heads,” she said. “Their spirits are not gone, we can live by their words.” It’s also a critical time to show these paintings given the eradication of certain women from some history classes. In the fall, the Texas Board of Education voted to remove former first lady Hillary Clinton and deaf-blind activist Helen Keller from the school curriculum, both of which ranked low for their historical significance. “That worries me,” said Adams. “I have a duty to share and protect these stories.” As the mother of a young daughter, Adams is concerned for the next generation of young women, and future generations to come. “There’s a lot of pushback of people trying to put women back in their place,” she said. “I am trying to keep these stories alive longer.”Nirvana are suing designer Marc Jacobs for copyright infringement. The brand’s recent Redux Grunge collection features several items that resemble the Seattle grunge band’s black-and-yellow iconography, Forbes reports. Representatives for the group, which split in 1994 following the death of frontman Kurt Cobain, claim that Marc Jacobs’ unauthorised use of “Nirvana’s copyrighted image on and to promote its products is intentional”. The suit claims that the use of Nirvana’s iconography, which the group has used since 1992, is to “make the ‘Grunge’ association with the collection more authentic”. The Guardian has contacted representatives for Nirvana and Marc Jacobs. The suit also cites the use of Nirvana references in Marc Jacobs marketing materials, including a meme posted to the brand’s Tumblr account featuring a clip of the group’s 1991 hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit, and an image of Jacobs wearing a T-shirt above the words Come As You Are, the title of a 1992 hit by the trio. The suit describes Marc Jacobs’ actions as “oppressive, fraudulent and malicious” and claims that they “have caused Nirvana to suffer irreparable injuries” and “threaten to dilute the value of Nirvana’s licenses with its licensees for clothing products”. The department stores Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus are also included in the suit for selling the items that allegedly infringe the band’s copyright. The group is seeking monetary damages, the removal of sale of any such items and the removal of Nirvana references from promotional materials. Nirvana’s iconography is subject to regular bootlegging: the hoodies found on market stalls worldwide are seldom licensed items. The group would be unlikely to pursue these vendors because of the low possibility of recovering significant damages, says Alexander Ross, a partner at music lawyers Wiggins LLP. “Suing a major brand for alleged infringement, however, makes more sense from a financial perspective, and for PR and scale purposes, assuming of course that the action is successful,” says Ross. “It also sends a message to other players in the fashion industry that the IP in question is jealously guarded against infringement.” In 1992, at the height of Nirvana’s fame, Marc Jacobs was fired from designer Perry Ellis after showing his infamous grunge collection, which mixed plaid, silk and skull caps. “Grunge is anathema to fashion,” said American fashion critic Cathy Horyn. Jacobs started his own line a year later, launching his debut collection in 1994. The Nirvana suit is the latest controversy to hit the designer. “The label is turning out clothes and accessories that lack a compelling point of view, failing to generate the excitement created by younger peers Alexander Wang and Joseph Altuzarra,” New York Times reporter Steven Kurutz wrote in June. Kurutz cited luxury goods research by Exane BNP Paribas that estimated the brand had been losing more than £45m annually over the past few years. By contrast, the value of band merchandise continues to grow, becoming increasingly important to artists’ revenue streams following the decline of physical media and the impact of streaming on the market. Partnerships between bands and fashion houses have proven lucrative, such as Canadian rapper Drake’s collaboration with winter wear brand Canada Goose. Official artist merchandise can attain the status of high fashion, a charge led by the designs produced for Kanye West’s tour in support of his 2013 album Yeezus. The market for vintage band T-shirts is also booming. In 2011, an anonymous Australian buyer spent $10,000 on a Led Zeppelin T-shirt from the group’s 1979 gig at Knebworth.Late-night hosts couldn’t ignore the third-longest government shutdown in American history. On Late Night with Seth Meyers, the host minced no words in taking a closer look at the government shutdown. “There is no more basic test of a political leader than this: can you keep the government running?” he opened, comparing Trump to a guy running a pizza place who’s too stoned to unlock the front door. As with the other hosts, Meyers listed some of the shutdown’s litany of costs, including a shortage of TSA agents during peak travel season. You didn’t think air travel could get any worse? Think again, Meyers said. By the end of Trump’s term, he said, “the only airline will be Spirit, the only in-flight movie will be Dirty Grandpa, and every seat will be a middle seat”. In short, “We are in a self-inflicted crisis over a government shutdown because the president is incompetent and unhinged.” Meyers also tackled the media planning to broadcast Trump’s primetime White House address over the proposed border wall. “OK, first of all, just because Trump wants to address the nation doesn’t mean networks should air it. Otherwise, they’re just passing on his lies unfiltered,” Meyers said. Instead, he offered an alternative. “They should either reject him outright or, if he insists on speaking in primetime, make him do it as a contestant on the Masked Singer.” After his own two-week shutdown, Stephen Colbert returned to his usual form: skewering the president, often in a decently convincing mock-Trump voice. In particular, Colbert looked at Trump’s claim, in a recent tweet, that his proposed border wall would actually be a “Steel Barrier rather than concrete” because it’s “both stronger & less obtrusive”. “Oh thank goodness, the last thing you’d want in a border wall is something obtrusive,” Colbert joked. “That’s why they call it the ‘Inconspicuous Wall of China’.” Instead of steel or concrete, Colbert suggested a more effective deterrent for migrants considering a journey across the border: Trump’s latest promotional photo, which borrows Game of Thrones language to declare “The Wall is Coming.” “Forget the wall, just put that on the border!” Colbert said. “People will run: ‘Turn back amigo! There’s a giant bloated skin bag on the horizon! Get out of there!” To be fair, Colbert continued, “I can understand why Trump loves that Game of Thrones wall, because the only walkers who got through were white.” Unsurprisingly for a president whose signature campaign promise originated as a memory trick for stump speeches, Trump mixed up his Game of Thrones references. “Also you can’t say the wall is coming – that’s mixing up two different things in the series,” Colbert explained. “That’s like quoting The Godfather by saying ‘I’m going to make him an offer he can’t cannoli.’” Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, cut right to the chase. “Donald Trump is doing what Donald Trump does best: not paying the people who work for him,” he said in the show’s opening. “That is where he shines.” Though this is the third-longest shutdown ever, Kimmel observed that it is “the first for no reason”, and lamented that “it’s unfortunate that these workers who have nothing to do with this ridiculous wall aren’t getting paychecks, especially right after the holiday.” Kimmel then announced his personal plan to help out: hiring a federal employee for Jimmy Kimmel Live “tonight and every night until the shutdown is over”. He then introduced John Kostelnik, a prison guard at the federal correctional complex in Victorville, California, who can now add another line to his résumé: temporary live tambourine player.Way back in the 1950s, a pioneering British cybernetician, W Ross Ashby, proposed a fundamental law of dynamic systems. In his book An Introduction to Cybernetics, he formulated his law of requisite variety, which defines “the minimum number of states necessary for a controller to control a system of a given number of states”. In plain English, it boils down to this: for a system to be viable, it has to be able to absorb or cope with the complexity of its environment. And there are basically only two ways of achieving viability in those terms: either the system manages to control (or reduce) the variety of its environment, or it has to increase its internal capacity (its “variety”) to match what is being thrown at it from the environment. Sounds abstruse, I know, but it has a contemporary resonance. Specifically, it provides a way of understanding some of the current internal turmoil in Facebook as it grapples with the problem of keeping unacceptable, hateful or psychotic content off its platform. Two weeks ago, the New York Times was leaked 1,400 pages from the rulebooks that the company’s moderators are trying to follow as they police the stuff that flows through its servers. According to the paper, the leak came from an employee who said he “feared that the company was exercising too much power, with too little oversight – and making too many mistakes”. An examination of the leaked files, says the NYT, “revealed numerous gaps, biases and outright errors. As Facebook employees grope for the right answers, they have allowed extremist language to flourish in some countries while censoring mainstream speech in others.” Moderators were instructed, for example, to remove fundraising appeals for volcano victims in Indonesia because a co-sponsor of the drive was on Facebook’s internal list of banned groups; a paperwork error allowed a prominent extremist group in Myanmar, accused of fomenting genocide, to stay on the platform for months. And there was lots more in this vein. Some numbers might help to put this in context. Facebook currently has 2.27bn monthly active users worldwide. Every 60 seconds, 510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated and 136,000 photos are uploaded to the platform. Instagram, which allows users to edit and share photos as well as videos and is owned by Facebook, has more than 1bn monthly active users. WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging service that is also owned by Facebook, now has 1.5bn monthly average users, more than half of whom use it several times a day. These figures give one a feel for the complexity and variety of the environment that Facebook is trying to deal with. In cybernetic terms, its approach to date has been to boost its internal capacity to handle the variety – the torrent of filth, hatred, violence, racism and terrorist content – that comes from its users and is funnelled through its servers. In the beginning, the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, went for the standard Silicon Valley line that there is a tech solution for every problem – artificial intelligence (AI) would do the trick – although he had to concede that the technology was not sophisticated enough to do the job just yet. As criticism mounted (and the German Bundestag began to legislate), the company went on a massive drive to recruit human moderators to police its pages. Facebook now employs 15,000 of these wretches, the cost of whom is beginning to eat into profit margins. Many if not most of these moderators are poorly paid workers employed by external contractors in low-wage countries such as the Philippines. They have to implement – in split seconds – the confusing guidelines that were leaked to the NYT. One of the most useful aspects of the documents is the way they illustrate the impossibility of the task. The guidelines, says the paper, “do not look like a handbook for regulating global politics. They consist of dozens of unorganised PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets with bureaucratic titles like ‘Western Balkans Hate Orgs and Figures’ and ‘Credible Violence: Implementation standards’.” If you want to see what this kind of work involves, then a recent documentary, The Cleaners, filmed with the cooperation of Facebook moderators in Manila, makes sobering viewing. It shows that they have an impossible job and have to work under fierce time pressure to make their employer’s performance targets. Five seconds to make a judgment, thousands of times a day. And at the end of the shift, they go home, morally and physically exhausted. These are the people who process Facebook’s waste so that nothing unclean appears in the news feeds of more affluent users in other parts of the world. To anyone with a moral compass, the fact that humans should have to do this kind of work so that a small elite in Silicon Valley can become insanely rich is an outrage. To a cybernetician, though, it is merely confirmation that Facebook is no longer a viable system. Don’t bother me now Are digital distractions the reason for the productivity gap? This is the subject of a thoughtful post by Dan Nixon on the Bank of England’s Bank Underground blog. As ye sow, so shall we weep… Take a look at Cloudscene’s interesting guide to server farms (otherwise known as data centres) in Europe. There are more than you’d think… How did we get there from here? Answers can be found in Morgan Housel’s bracing (and breakneck) potted history of the United States in the postwar era – in one longish blog post.For some years, the Academy Awards have been seeking to shake up their annual telecast, in an attempt to freshen the ceremony and lure a larger – and younger – audience. Veteran producers have been let go; edgier hosts employed – and ratings continued to fall. This year, however, a radical reinvention of the ceremony has been all but forced on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, following the decision of Kevin Hart to step down three days after he was announced as host in December. Hart – an actor and comedian particularly popular with exactly the demographic the Oscars were keen to court – was reportedly told to apologise anew for homophobic remarks he had made in the past or quit his post. He chose the latter, but speculation had been strong as no replacement was unveiled – and Hart did indeed apologise a few days later anyway. Last week, he appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’s chatshow and declared he would be open to a return, if only to “take a stand against the trolls” who he felt had hounded him online. The 91st Academy awards take place on 24 February at the Dolby theatre in Los Angeles. It is broadcast live on ABC in the US, on Sky in the UK, and on Channel Nine in Australia. The red carpet portion of the show is broadcast live by the E! network. The Oscars are voted for by members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (aka Ampas), which currently numbers just under 8,000 voting members, divided into 17 separate branches, including actors, directors, costume designers, etc. (To join, names have to be proposed and approved by individual branches.) The Academy has received considerable criticism in recent years for the perceived white/male/elderly bias of its voters – and a drive to create a more diverse membership was instituted after the #OscarsSoWhite campaign in 2016.  There are 24 categories – ranging from best picture to best sound mixing – presented on Oscar night. The Academy also gives out a bunch of Scientific and Technical awards: this year, for example, it will honour the people behind Adobe Photoshop and the Medusa Performance Capture System. Also there are the honorary Oscars: this year they are going to actor Cicely Tyson, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, Steven Spielberg's PR flack Marvin Levy and composer Lalo Schifrin (of Mission: Impossible renown). Each of the main awards has its own rules and regulations for slimming down all the eligible entries – first to a longlist, then a shortlist, then the final nomination list. In most categories, to be eligible a film must have been released for seven days in Los Angeles before 31 December, and a specialist committee makes the selection for the nomination – which is then voted on by the full membership. For the best foreign language film award, each country can submit one film (89 were put forward this year), before a committee boils them down to a final five. The Oscar statuette isn't solid gold: it's gold-plated bronze on a black metal base. It is 34 cm tall and weighs 3.8 kg. While the Academy doesn't own it once it is handed over, its acceptance is conditional that recipients won't sell them unless they have offered them back to the Academy for $1. But the backlash to the interview was considerable, with many objecting to Hart’s appropriation of victimhood and DeGeneres’s agreement with his assessment that his detractors were simply “haters”. Reports have now emerged in the Hollywood trade press that the telecast team have resigned themselves to the lack of a replacement and sought instead to secure the services of countless stars to act as awards presenters. Top of the producers Donna Gigliotti and Glenn Weiss’s wish list for the 24 February show is said to be the cast of the Avengers franchise, ahead of the release two months later of the “final” instalment, Endgame. The 2013 telecast featured a dry run for such an event, with Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L Jackson together on stage, among many others. ABC, the network that broadcasts the Oscars in the US, is owned by Disney, which also now owns Marvel. Should such topline talent be enticed on to the stage, a host-free setup could be perceived as a win-win: audiences are reportedly increasingly bored by the political rhetoric that can make up much of the patter of an official emcee, while publicists and studios would be pleased by the diminished opportunities for the ceremony to go off-script. Such a situation is not entirely without precedent: in 1989, producer Allan Carr and director Jeff Margolis oversaw a show that replaced the opening monologue with a now-infamous 11-minute musical number involving a duet between the actor Rob Lowe and an unknown actor, Eileen Bowman, dressed as Snow White. The show was appallingly received by critics, audiences and all those present in the room, with Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Julie Andrews and Billy Wilder signing an open letter deriding it as “an embarrassment to both the Academy and the entire motion picture industry”. Lowe is still attempting to live it down, while Bowman returned to her San Diego hometown the following morning, never to return to Los Angeles. Carr never worked again and lived most of the remaining years of his life as a recluse. Multiple hosts have also been sighted through the years, with Bob Hope, Jack Lemmon, Rosalind Russell and Donald Duck sharing the billing in 1958, Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Charlton Heston and Rock Hudson in 1973 and Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn and Paul Hogan in 1987. The most recent example came in 2011, when James Franco and Anne Hathaway acted as co-hosts. Their efforts were widely perceived to be disastrous, with a striking lack of chemistry or humour, and had a negative impact on the careers of both. Speaking in 2017, Franco again denied being stoned during the engagement, but did admit to having either “high or low energy. In my head, I was trying to be the straight man. I guess I just went too far or came across as the dead man … I mean, I shouldn’t have been doing it”.A powerful regional body of African states has called for a recount in the contested presidential election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The unexpected move underlines growing worries that instead of marking a turning point for the troubled country, the 30 December  vote and the deepening political crisis it has triggered will instead lead to a slide into anarchy and violence. Such concerns are urgent for regional powers well aware that extensive conflict in the vast and mineral-rich DRC has the potential to destabilise significant parts of central, east and southern Africa. A civil war between 1997 and 2002 killed 5 million people and drew in all neighbouring states. The surprise victor of the election was Félix Tshisekedi, leader of the country’s main opposition party. Tshisekedi beat opposition politician Martin Fayulu by a narrow margin. However Fayulu, a widely respected former business executive and parliamentarian, claims that he in fact won by a landslide and that Tshisekedi struck a deal with Joseph Kabila to be declared victor. Fayulu’s claims have been bolstered by DRC’s influential Catholic church, which deployed 40,000 election monitors on the day of the election and has stated that its data showed a different winner to that announced by the electoral commission. Sunday’s statement from the Southern African Development Community, which includes 16 states, notes the “strong doubts cast on the poll outcome by the … church, the opposition coalition and other observers” and calls for a recount “to provide the necessary reassurance to both winners and losers”. The organisation also suggested “a negotiated political settlement for a government of national unity”. Initial reactions to the polls from other African nations were broadly supportive of the conduct of the poll by the country’s much-criticised electoral commission. Though outgoing President Kabila, in power since 2001, can ignore pressure from western powers, including the US, major regional states have significant leverage. Kabila, who was constitutionally banned from standing for a third term, only reluctantly called the elections under pressure from Angola and South Africa. Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, Kabila’s handpicked candidate, came a poor third. The church has refused to reveal who won according to its findings, but diplomats briefed on the church data say it indicates a clear victory for Fayulu, in line with pre-election polls that had put him at least 20 points ahead of Tshisekedi. Fayulu filed a fraud complaint on Saturday with DRC’s highest court to challenge the result. Better news for the government was that parties supporting Kabila had won a majority in the 500-seat national assembly. This will consolidate the position of the former president, whoever takes power. Kabila has ruled since the 2001 assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, who overthrew the long-serving dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. Tshisekedi would be the first leader to takes power via the ballot box in DRC since Patrice Lumumba shortly after DRC won independence from Belgium in 1960. Lumumba was toppled in a coup and killed four months later. DRC suffers from widespread corruption, continuing conflict, endemic disease, and some of the world’s highest levels of sexual violence and malnutrition. It is also rich in minerals, including those crucial to the world’s smartphones and electric cars.If you love theatre and want to read a measured review of a play that you can go and see, stop right here. The play that I am talking about, Martin Crimp’s When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, which I feel could be the title of much of what I have sat through in the theatre, is one you are unlikely to see either. It is at the National Theatre and is completely sold out. Tickets could only be obtained by public ballot. It stars Cate Blanchett, who is of course bloody wonderful, and is full of sex and violence. I am not a theatre buff (though I have been a film critic), but most of what I have seen in the theatre in the last 40 years has been mediocre beyond belief. I love Beckett and recently loved the Pinter revival. But what is so brilliant about Pinter is how much fear and menace he conjures just off stage. Every line a threat, every character is implicit in the horror. Its not in your face, it just gets in your head. But that is not how to get middle-aged bums on expensive seats: instead promise something obscene and brutal, which is even more powerful when performed in a small, intimate space, as with this production. And this new play has already done what this sort of play should do. It has made someone pass out. Perhaps stars should be given based on how many people can be made to faint during any given production? Certainly this sounds five-star, involving as it does orgies in cars, sex toys and violence dished out by Game of Thrones star Stephen Dillane . Some have said it is extremely gross, with much violence meted out to women (is that a shock?), and Blanchett is being lauded as “brave” for portraying messed-up sex and violence. It’s not as if such treatment is new – if you want to watch S&M in an intimate space go to a club, if you want to watch orgies in cars go dogging and if you want to watch women being brutalised you can watch most crime series on TV or any Gaspar Noé movie. Why then are we so precious about theatre? The young actor who helped the elderly woman who passed out said: “The play was sexually explicit and violent right from the start … and if you are not about that life, it might come across as shocking.” I’d say if you can afford the £50 in order to be shocked you may not be “about that life”, but what do I know? The most shocked I have been in a theatre is at seeing standing ovations given to shouty actors who can’t even do an American accent. The real question is how valuable is shock as an aesthetic? This play uses Samuel Richardson’s Pamela as a provocation as six characters act out domination and resistance. It’s directed by Katie Mitchell, who also directed Sarah Kane’s Cleansed in 2016, which was hard to sit through, full as it was of hideous mutilations and torture. But Kane was the real deal. It’s not a success that’s easy to repeat. The National Theatre says the play explores “the messy, often violent nature of desire and the fluid, complicated roles that men and women play”. One could say the same of The Fall, or indeed EastEnders, but maybe that is unfair and simply speaks of the tired respectability of much West End fare. “Theatre”, as Stella Adler said “is a spiritual and social x-ray of its time.” When it’s good that may well be true. For those who get to see the x-rays, it may even be great. For the rest of us we will have to torture each other with what we never got a chance to see. • Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnistTwo of the world’s smallest and most vulnerable penguins have been stolen in a brazen overnight raid on their nests in New Zealand. Little blue penguins – or kororā – are native to New Zealand and are listed by the Department of Conservation (DoC) as an at-risk, declining population. Little blues are the world’s smallest penguin, and are threatened by common predators such as dogs and cats, urban development on their coastal environment and being hit by cars, boats or caught in nets. Last week two men wielding a crowbar orchestrated a late-night raid on a little blue penguin burrow at Perfume Point in Napier, on the east coast of the North Island. The DoC believes the thieves used the crowbar to prise heavy rocks off the penguins burrow, and then hooked the instrument around the birds’ necks to pull them from their sanctuary. One penguin died in the attack, and two others were wrapped in towels and taken away in a vehicle, in what DoC staff worry may not be a one-off smuggling attempt, with the birds likely destined for the illegal wildlife trade. Rod Hansen, a DoC officer at Hawkes Bay, described his team as “outraged and disturbed” by the incident. “We are really concerned as we believe this might not be a one-off. The very next day another penguin/kororā was found dead floating nearby and it appears it may have died from a head injury,” said Hansen. “We have no idea where these birds are being taken to and we are seeking CCTV footage from the surrounding area.” Little blue penguins moult from January through to March and stay in their burrows for protection during the “vulnerable” period. Hansen said it was “disturbing” that the thieves had chosen to target the animals when they were enclosed and defenceless. “They are nocturnal animals and the time this offence occurred – in the evening – further suggests the poachers knew exactly when best to target the birds.” Locals in the area expressed shock and disgust at the incident, which has rattled the local community who play a vital role in protecting the birds and their fragile coastal habitat. “I think it’s pretty sick really,” one local told Newshub. Kororā are protected under the wildlife act and anyone found harming the animals could face a NZ$100,000 fine and up to two years in prison. New Zealand police have been contacted for comment.Lady Gaga has criticised the US vice-president, Mike Pence, and his wife, Karen, over her role teaching art at a school that excludes LGBT students and parents. On stage at her Las Vegas concert residency, Gaga said: “You say we should not discriminate against Christianity; you are the worst representation of what it means to be a Christian. I am a Christian woman and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice and everybody is welcome. So you can take all that disgrace Mr Pence and you can look yourself in the mirror and you’ll find it right there.” Karen Pence is to return to Immanuel Christian School, Virginia, to teach art two days a week. She worked there for 12 years before her husband became vice-president. The school has a “parent agreement” that states the school can “discontinue enrolment” of a student if they or their parents “are in opposition to the biblical lifestyle the school teaches”. This definition includes “supporting or condoning sexual immorality, homosexual activity or bisexual activity”. Following criticism of the policy, Mike Pence said in an interview with Christian television station EWTN: “To see major news organisations attacking Christian education is deeply offensive to us.” Gaga also criticised Donald Trump’s shutdown of the US government. “Please put our government back in business,” she said. “There are people who live paycheck to paycheck and need their money.” Gaga, who defines as bisexual, has long been a champion of gay rights. Her famous “meat dress” was a statement on the anti-LGBT policies in the US military, and her hit single Born This Way was a celebration of LGBT identities.EU officials fear Theresa May is setting the UK on course for a no-deal exit at the end of June because she will not have the political courage to ask for the longer Brexit delay they believe she needs. Senior figures in Brussels have been war-gaming the likely next steps by the British government, and believe a delay to the UK’s exit date of 29 March is inevitable. But they fear the prime minister’s strategy of seeking simply to survive from day to day will lead to her requesting an inadequate short three-month extension for fear of enraging Brexiters in the Conservative party. EU officials and diplomats said the danger of the UK then crashing out in the summer was an underappreciated risk given that the escalation of no-deal planning and the cries of betrayal by Brexiters would give momentum to a cliff-edge Brexit. On Thursday the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, became the first cabinet minister to admit that the two years of negotiations allowed under article 50 may have to be prolonged, describing the Brexit impasse as “a very challenging situation”. EU sources suggested it was unlikely that the heads of state and government of the 27 member states would reject such a request given the pressure that would be applied from the business community. On Thursday, Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said he believed a delay would be the wisest course given May’s hopes of a renegotiation. The Brady amendment demands that the backstop arrangement in the EU withdrawal agreement to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland should be replaced with 'alternative arrangements'. The backstop is hated by many Tory Brexiters because it would keep the UK in an effective customs union until an alternative solution could be found to prevent the need for infrastructure at the border. The backstop has no time limit and exit can be only by joint agreement between the UK and the EU. Brexiters would like to see the backstop replaced either by an as-yet-unknown technological solution to ensure a smooth border or at least an end date or a unilateral exit mechanism.In order to seek this from Brussels, Theresa May decided the government should back an amendment tabled by Sir Graham Brady, a Tory backbencher, which said the backstop should be replaced. She also pledged to reopen the withdrawal agreement and change the text. The European Union has been adamant that both things cannot happen, but Downing Street believes that gaining a majority in the House of Commons for the change would demonstrate the crucial breakthrough needed to avoid a no-deal Brexit. After initial scepticism, members of the hard-Brexit European Research Group swung behind the government, though Tory remainers rebelled against it, and the amendment passed by 16 votes. However, the group has made it clear it will not necessarily back whichever compromise she may come back with. “We have negotiated an agreement and the British parliament now says: we do not like this backstop clause, we have a better one,” Silva said. “What we are saying is: show us a better one. Still more preferable would be to prolong, to delay the moment of departure, to have time to rationally revisit all this.” The EU will try to shape the process if the UK makes a request, and its deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, said on Monday that the EU’s heads of state and government would need information on “the purpose of an extension”, adding: “The idea of going into serial extensions really isn’t very popular in the EU27.” But EU diplomats say the bar is likely to be low should the UK want to delay Brexit, “although that might well just be delaying the agony”, one said. Mujtaba Rahman, a former UK Treasury and European commission official, who is head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said: “There’s a growing realisation in the EU that the UK might need longer to get its house in order than the UK itself realises. “The bar to extending article 50 for the EU will be quite low – leaders love to kick the can. If there is a contentious issue, it’s more about the length of any article 50 extension as opposed to the principle of whether there should be one.” May is getting ready to head back to Brussels, in an attempt to reopen the Brexit deal that she negotiated over the past 18 months, having been told by parliament to replace the Irish backstop in the withdrawal agreement with an “alternative arrangement”. Brexiters fear the backstop, which would keep the UK in a customs union unless an alternative solution can similarly avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, will stand in the way of the forging of an independent trade policy. In a call with Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, on Wednesday afternoon, May was asked to come up with “concrete proposals” but did not offer any new thinking, failing even to cite the previous suggestions of a time limit or unilateral exit mechanism. On Thursday, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, tweeted after a phonecall with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, that Brexit was “now in final phase”. “The EU is united; the withdrawal agreement is the best and only deal on the table. Awaiting proposal from UK that is acceptable to EU and will enable ratification in the UK,” he said. The EU is not planning any concessions before the prime minister faces another vote in the Commons on 14 February. It is feared there will instead be a series of difficult weeks before a regular leaders’ summit in March, just seven days before the UK is due to leave the bloc, when the two sides could be forced to act. Next Monday, the Commons select committee for exiting the EU, led by the Labour MP Hilary Benn, is planning to travel to Brussels to question the European commission’s secretary-general, Martin Selmayr, and the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, over the next steps.A record 250,000 people worldwide signed up to the Veganuary movement this year by embracing plant-based diets this month, the campaign has revealed. As more consumers drop all meat and dairy products from their diet for health or ethical reasons, the charity behind the annual event said the record figures and strong global support had made 2019’s Veganuary the most popular since its launch in 2014. Many more people are thought to have taken part in the event without signing the official pledge. At the same time, Britain’s supermarkets are reporting a surge in sales of vegan food and drink, which they expect to continue throughout the year. They are tapping into not only the burgeoning vegan market but also the UK’s estimated 22 million “flexitarians”, who enjoy meat but want to reduce their meat consumption. The number of Veganuary pledges for 2019 exceeded those in the previous four years combined, suggesting that veganism is becoming a mainstream movement. The organisers of Veganuary say six in 10 who take the “Veganuary pledge” say they plan to stay vegan. Thirteen new overseas partnerships increased Veganuary’s presence elsewhere in the world – in India, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa, Japan, Iceland and Russia. “With a quarter of a million participants this year, Veganuary is finishing on an all-time high,” said Rich Hardy, head of campaigns at Veganuary. “I think Veganuary has reached critical mass now – vegan living is growing; it’s here to stay, it’s part of the national conversation and it has credibility. That’s great news for people, animals and the planet.” Support for the campaign has also led to a vegan boost among food producers, with supermarkets, manufacturers and high street restaurant and pub chains also bolstering their plant-based ranges to meet demand. The Papa John’s takeaway chain this week ran into trouble with vegans who claimed they were sent real cheese pizzas after dairy-free alternatives ran out. On supermarket wine aisles, sales of Co-op’s own-label vegan varieties have doubled since it rolled out front-of-pack labelling last year. A new organic and vegan white wine has also had a fivefold increase in sales. Tesco says sales of a non-meat version of the Scottish delicacy haggis have increased by 120% year on year. “The current clamour for vegan and vegetarian food has really helped send sales soaring,” said the retailer’s local sourcing buying manager, James Lamont. “Even though vegetarian haggis has been around for a few years, we have never seen anything like the current demand – not just for Burns Night but all year round.” Sainsbury’s has recently started selling fake meat next to the real thing, after a successful trial last year when it launched a new range of plant-based burgers and mince. Rather than being displayed in a dedicated vegan section, meat and fish alternatives such as jackfruit burgers and mushroom “shroomdogs” are being stocked alongside their meat counterparts in 20 branches of Sainsbury’s.Manchester United have been handed the chance to exact FA Cup revenge when they travel to face the holders next month. United, who have won eight consecutive games since the arrival of Ole Gunnar Solskjær last month, will face a trip to Stamford Bridge in a tie which was the undoubted highlight of the fifth-round draw. Chelsea beat José Mourinho’s United 1-0 in last year’s somewhat forgettable final thanks to Eden Hazard’s penalty. Middlesbrough or Newport will host Manchester City while League One Doncaster will welcome Crystal Palace to the Keepmoat Stadium. AFC Wimbledon’s reward for beating West Ham is a home tie with Millwall, who knocked out Everton on Saturday evening. Frank Lampard’s Derby travel to either Brighton or West Brom while Bristol City will host either Shrewsbury or Wolves. Swansea are at home to Barnet or Brentford and the winner of the replay between Portsmouth and QPR will welcome Watford. The ties will take place between 15-18 February. Bristol City v Shrewsbury/Wolves, AFC Wimbledon v Millwall, Doncaster v Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough/Newport v Manchester City, Chelsea v Manchester United, Swansea v Barnet/Brentford, Portsmouth/QPR v Watford, Brighton/West Brom v Derby.We knew that the 116th Congress was going to be the most diverse in history, with 102 women, many more openly gay members, more blacks, more Latinos, the first two female Native Americans, a Somali immigrant and the first ever Palestinian American woman elected to the House. But it was an altogether different thing to actually see that blazingly colorful diversity assembled under the portraits of the older white men who have lorded over the House of Representatives for so long. As Nancy Pelosi made her way through the chamber to reclaim the speaker’s gavel, stopping after almost every step to receive a hug, it was a very emotional scene and the first time since Donald Trump’s election that I felt lightness and happiness radiating from the Capitol. And color. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, wearing a traditional Pueblo dress, was on the verge of tears as she embraced Sharice Davids of Kansas, a member of Ho-Chunk Nation. They are the first Native American women to serve in the House. Openly gay, Davids is also one of the record number of LGBTQ members of the chamber. Nearby, Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant from Minnesota, was resplendent in her white and gold hijab. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, chose a copy of the Qu’ran to swear herself in as the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress. (The Qu’ran once belonged to Thomas Jefferson). When Pelosi joined the House in 1987, there were only 23 female members. As of Thursday, there are 102, nearly 90% of whom are Democrats. It was striking when Pelosi passed a row that included Democratic representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Barbara Lee, Jahana Hayes, Lauren Underwood and Sheila Jackson Lee, all women of color. That rainbow was only visible on the left side of the dias – the Democratic side. On the right, where the Republicans sat, there was still the usual sea of suits worn by mainly older white men. They will be a formidable force, trying to stymie Pelosi at every turn and frustrate the new, younger activists who are such an important part of her governing coalition. But change was everywhere on Thursday, from the line outside the women’s bathroom off the House floor (only gained in 2011) to the fans who practically overwhelmed Ocasio-Cortez outside Pelosi’s office. There were, naturally, some sour notes. This was Washington, after all. Liz Cheney’s attempt to get a “Build That Wall” chant going, some stony Republican grimaces, and, lowest of all, a tape from Ocasio-Cortez’ college days of her dancing on a rooftop that was put up on Twitter by a rightwing troll. There was also the false suggestion that she wasn’t really from the Bronx. “Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is,” read the post, with the user, who has since deleted their account, claiming it was a “high school video of ‘Sandy’ Ocasio-Cortez”. It will be scintillating to watch Pelosi's moves and how the White House reacts It’s frustrating in a post #MeToo world that women in power are still caricatured as inauthentic. Trump’s sneers at Elizabeth Warren, calling her Pocahontas, are meant to portray her as a phony, faking her ethnic roots. Pelosi, and, of course, Hillary Clinton, are often portrayed as stiff and inauthentic. It frightens the rightwing to see urban liberals like Ocasio-Cortez amass real followings and assert their growing power. So the rightwing tries to take them down with hackneyed caricatures and doctored tapes. In the case of the dancing tape of Ocasio-Cortez, the attempted attack completely backfired. Of course, the dancing tape went viral and clearly increased her popularity on social media and enhanced her status as a young sensation on Capitol Hill. And she hit back in the best way, with humor. “You hate me cuz you ain’t me, fellas,” Ocasio-Cortez said. Then she quickly made a new video of herself dancing outside her new congressional office. In the lighthearted, 11-second clip, she dances along to a line from Edwin Starr’s classic Motown hit War: “What is it good for? Absolutely nothing,” she sings (or lip-syncs), pointing half playfully, half defiantly at the camera before bursting into laughter and flinging herself through the door of her office as if she had occupied her seat on Capitol Hill for years, not 24 hours Thursday felt like the start of something truly new and important. It was clear that it rattled the president, as he ranted about calling a national emergency to get his wall built and said he was willing to let the government showdown go on forever. Pelosi is a great strategist and she’s already outmaneuvered the president on the wall. She has talked of working with rational Republicans and extending a hand of friendship. She knows exactly what she needs to put together a winning vote. It will be scintillating to watch her moves and how the White House reacts. It’s a new day and it’s not Trump’s Washington any more.How we value and perceive ourselves and our abilities is believed to be strongly tied to influences in childhood. A recent longitudinal study following nearly 9,000 participants in the US from birth to age 27 found that family environment (covering parenting, cognitive stimulation and physical home environment) in childhood, and especially in the first six years of life, has a long-term impact on self-esteem. The first step to achieving healthy self-esteem as an adult, suggests the NHS, is to challenge negative beliefs you have about yourself, perhaps by writing down self-critical thoughts and the evidence against them, or by speaking to yourself the way you would of a friend. It’s impossible to get an accurate view of other people, says the clinical psychologist Linda Blair, especially from their online presence. “You’re comparing yourself with a fantasy, and that will lead to either excessive striving or disappointment.” She advises focusing on what you yourself want to accomplish instead. Her other advice is to “get rid of the word ‘should’”. People can put a lot of effort into what they think others want or expect from them, which they may have misjudged – a recipe for unhappiness, she says. Aiming for too-ambitious a goal can be setting yourself up for failure, knocking your self-confidence even if you have taken big steps towards it. A sense of accomplishment is key to maintaining your pride, says Blair, who suggests setting short- to mid-term goals. Although keeping to your comfort zone can offer short-term relief, it can backfire in the long term, says Chris Williams, professor of psychosocial psychiatry at the University of Glasgow. “It teaches you the unhelpful rule that the only way to cope is by avoiding things.” Think of that boost you feel once you tick off a challenge. Low self-esteem can sometimes lead to neglect of physical health. The mental health charity Mind recommends considering any negative impacts on your life of stress, exercise, sleep, diet and drugs and alcohol. Finding ways to relax and addressing any issues you may have with your diet or substances can have a significant effect on your sense of self-worth. Physical activity has been found to positively influence self-esteem and wellbeing. A 2016 study found that physical activity, perceived physical fitness and body image play an important role in self-esteem, and recommended that “regular physical activity should be promoted, in particular among adults reporting lower self-esteem”. Research published in the Journal of Public Health in 2015 found that just one session of gardening in an allotment yielded significant improvements in mood and self-esteem. If an allotment isn’t an option and you don’t have your own garden, search online for nearby gardening groups.Riots in the streets, inflation exceeding 1 million percent, two men claiming to be the rightful president and warnings of civil war – Venezuela is making a lot of headlines, none of them good. Six years after the death of Hugo Chávez died, when power passed to his protege Nicolás Maduro, the economy has imploded, democratic trappings have been stripped away, millions have fled the country and Donald Trump is threatening to aid in ousting Maduro and establish the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as president. Raul Gallegos’s Crude Nation shows how what was once South America’s most stable, wealthy country swerved towards the abyss. A former economic journalist who lived in Caracas, Gallegos dissects the nationalisations, expropriations, subsidies and controls on prices and currencies that warped the economy during Chávez’s 12-year rule. Petrol became virtually free while milk, sugar, coffee and toilet paper routinely vanished from stores. Gallegos blends analysis with reportage, including a picaresque roadtrip with a Che Guevara lookalike – to show how Maduro inherited a mess and made it worse. Dragon in the Tropics, by the Venezuelan academics Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold, is a scholarly focus on the politics, explaining how Chávez bequeathed a system based on populism, personality cult, electoral success and authoritarianism to a hapless successor. Lacking the comandante’s charisma and his luck with high oil prices, Maduro dialled up the thuggery and militarisation. Fernando Coronil’s The Magical State, published in 1997, is a prophetic, anthropological and at times lyrical meditation on how successive presidents used oil revenues to pose as transcendent figures who could conjure modernity, but in the end delivered dysfunction. “Between the cracks one could fleetingly see that the magic of oil money could no longer sustain the magical state.” After taking power in 1999, Chávez intensified the cycle. He masked the continuity by wearing a red beret and, after surviving a US-backed coup in 2002, raining insults on George Bush, who he said was “more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade”. Chávez renamed his country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and called his revolution the “Bolivarian process” in honour of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century liberator who ended Spanish rule. Marie Arana’s Bolívar gallops through an extraordinary life and a complex political legacy, both progressive and authoritarian, which laid the foundations of Venezuela. A bracing antidote to the Bolívar cult. When Chávez dug up his bones he gushed: “This glorious skeleton must be Bolívar because you can feel his ardour.” Few contemporary novels have been translated, alas – Jonathan Jakubowicz’s rollicking skewering of the “boligarchs” in Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard deserves a wider readership. But for a portrait of an earlier elite there is a translation of Iphigenia, Teresa de la Parra’s sexually charged story of a young woman who seeks to escape stifling patriarchal decorum, which caused a sensation when published in 1924. Rómulo Gallegos’s Doña Bárbara (1929) is Venezuela’s classic novel, the one schoolkids have to read. It depicts a battle of wills between the mercurial, eponymous heroine and a rancher, with lush, prolix descriptions of the great plains – the llanos – cowboys and spirits. Gallegos, Venezuela’s first democratically elected president, gives insight into the man who succeeded him decades later. Chávez was a llanero, a boy from the plains steeped in its lore, and in office commandeered the airwaves to regale the nation with its songs and stories and myths. • Rory Carroll was formerly the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent. He is the author of Comandante: Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela (Penguin).No North Atlantic right whales were killed in Canadian waters last year – a rare glimmer of hope for officials working to protect one of the world’s most endangered species. While the government protection measures appear to be working, the outlook for the whales remains bleak: only 411 are believed to remain worldwide, with fewer females giving birth than in previous years. The urgency in deploying environmental protections comes after a catastrophic 12 right whales were killed in Canadian waters in 2017 – the deadliest year on record for the species. Most of the deaths were the result of collisions with marine vessels. Rope entanglements from fishing boats were also suspected in two deaths. Another six were killed in American waters. Sweeping measures introduced last year by Canada’s government include a 100-meter buffer zone between the whales and boats, fishing closures and vessel slowdowns. Violations of the rules can run steep: fines range from C$100,000 ($73,000) to C$500,000 ($366,543) – with repeat offenders facing potential jail time. Large boats, including cruise ships, are required to slow their speed down to 10 knots in protection zones, reducing the risk of colliding with whales. The new limits have prompted some cruise ship companies to modify itineraries and bypass the region. The government has also implemented dynamic fishing closures, meaning fishermen must quickly pull up any traps, lines and ropes if whales are spotted in the area. The habitat range of right whales has become increasingly erratic and unpredictable, making it difficult to anticipate which areas are in need of closure. In recent years, right whales have become a common sight in the Gulf Saint Lawrence – Canada’s busy shipping thoroughfare – setting the stage for deadly interactions with marine traffic. The strict rules have frustrated both the fishing industry and residents in the Quebec and Newfoundland. Over the summer, Nadia Minassian, the prefect for the town of Rocher-Percé in Quebec, called the rules “draconian and uncompromising”. Fishing groups have argued the regulations are too broad and are in need of further refinement. While the government has acknowledged the protections have affected local economies, the rules are likely to remain in place for 2019. Adam Burns, the director-general of fisheries management at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, told the Canadian Press in the summer: “These measures have a real impact on fish harvesters, processors and communities in Atlantic Canada; however the long-term economic risks of not adequately protecting North Atlantic right whales is greater.”First, it emerged that the “startup” company hired to operate extra ferries as part of no-deal Brexit planning had no ships. Now, new questions are being asked about the readiness of Seaborne Freight to handle the £13.8m contract after it turned out that terms and conditions on its website appeared to be intended for a food delivery firm. “It is the responsibility of the customer to thoroughly check the supplied goods before agreeing to pay for any meal/order,” read part of the text on the company’s website. Questions were also being raised about other parts of the terms and conditions, including a passage which stated: “Delivery charges are calculated per order and based on [delivery details here].” Another section, which appeared to be constructed with a view more to mitigating against the impact of prank pizza orders than transporting goods across some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, warned: “Users are prohibited from making false orders through our website.” It added: “Seaborne Freight (UK) Limited reserves the right to seek compensation through legal action for any losses incurred as the result of hoax delivery requests and will prosecute to the full extent of the law.” Chris Grayling’s Department for Transport said a section of the terms and conditions on the company’s website had been put up in error and was being immediately rectified. Ridicule was also heaped on Seaborne’s “privacy terms”, which stated: “Members hold freedom to express themselves in their feedback. Although your intellectual freedom is respected, [Business name] reserves the right to remove from our website any material deemed threatening, immoral, racist, inaccurate, malicious, defamatory, in bad taste or illegal.” Among those criticising the company after the curious language on the terms and conditions was first pointed out by Twitter users was Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, who said: “Seaborne Freight. No ships, no trading history and website T&Cs copied and pasted from a takeaway delivery site.” Andy McDonald, the shadow transport secretary, said: “Awarding a contract to a ferry company with no ships is yet another disgraceful misuse of public money by the transport secretary. “The idea that Chris Grayling is backing a new business and has looked at this ‘very carefully’ is utterly risible. It’s yet another example of his incompetence and mismanagement of the UK’s transport system.” Another Labour MP, Tonia Antoniazzi, said: “This is beyond a joke. It’s not just that the government have panic-hired a firm with no ships to conduct ferry services. That firm has literally nothing prepared to suggest the £13.8m handed over to them is a sound investment. They’ve seemingly copied and pasted their terms off a takeaway fast food website, and their login portal sends you back to Google.” Other signs that the website may have been cobbled together included a “portal login” section that was an image of username and password boxes rather than an actual means of logging in. A language settings option also appeared to be an image of a union flag rather than an interactive option. Grayling, the transport secretary, was forced to defend the contract on Wednesday when he said he would “make no apologies for supporting a new British business” after widespread criticism. The contract is one of three agreements worth a total of £107.7m signed by the government to help ease congestion at Dover by securing extra lorry capacity in the event of a no-deal Brexit. There was also pressure on the government to guarantee that the new ferry services aimed at easing pressure on Dover would be crewed by British seafarers. Mick Cash, the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union, wrote to Grayling to seek assurances that any ships would be fully crewed by UK workers and to stress that collective bargaining agreements should be in place. Sandra Welch, the deputy chief executive of the Sailors’ Society charity, expressed concerns about safety. “Safety is paramount,” she said. “And to avoid tragedy it is crucial that the right people with the necessary skills are involved.” Seaborne hopes to operate freight ferries from Ramsgate from late March, beginning with two ships and increasing to four by the end of the summer. A spokesperson at Grayling’s department said on Thursday: “Before any contract was signed, due diligence on Seaborne Freight was carried out both by senior officials at the Department for Transport, and highly reputable independent third-party organisations with significant experience and expertise into Seaborne’s financial, technical and legal underpinning.”Theresa May reiterated her opposition to a second Brexit referendum on Monday night, claiming it would threaten Britain’s “social cohesion” and insisting the centrepiece of her strategy remained negotiating changes to the Irish backstop. With just 67 days to go until Britain is due by law to leave the European Union, May exasperated MPs and business groups by offering scant evidence that she was willing to change course. Giving a statement in the House of Commons, the prime minister outlined three changes she claimed had emerged from discussions with colleagues in the six days since her Brexit deal was rejected by MPs with a crushing margin of 230: • A more consultative approach to the next phase of negotiations, with MPs, business groups and unions more involved. • Stronger reassurances on workers’ rights and environmental standards, “with a guarantee that not only will we not erode protections for workers’ rights and the environment but we will ensure this country leads the way”. • Another attempt to address the concerns of Tory and Democratic Unionist party MPs about the Irish backstop – which she could then discuss with Brussels. May dismissed the idea of extending article 50 and stepped up warnings about the potential consequences of asking the public to vote again on Brexit. “There has not yet been enough recognition of the way that a second referendum could damage social cohesion by undermining faith in our democracy,” she said. Afterwards, May’s spokesman said: “There is a covenant of trust between the electorate and the government of the day and the PM’s firm belief is that it is the government’s duty to act on clearly expressed wishes of the electorate and, obviously, were that not to happen, that wouldn’t be, and shouldn’t be, without consequence.” May flatly rejected the idea of ruling out a no-deal Brexit, claiming the only way to do so was to accept her deal – or revoke article 50 altogether. But the prime minister faces a looming revolt over the issue, with cabinet ministers and other Tory frontbenchers likely to step up calls for a free vote on an amendment put forward on Monday night by Labour’s Yvette Cooper that could pave the way for an extension of article 50 if no agreed deal has been reached. The work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, is understood to have warned May that resignations from the front bench may follow, if the prime minister did not allow ministers to express their backing for the move. Tobias Ellwood, a defence minister, also tweeted his tacit support. “Cooked a banana cake yesterday. Told my son it will be ready in 20 mins – according to the cookbook. It took 30. It was a big decision – honouring the cookbook or take more time to get the right result,” he wrote. Business groups reacted with alarm to the lack of new thinking in May’s statement, with the CBI director general, Carolyn Fairbairn, calling it “another bleak day for business”. “The government’s move to consult more widely is welcome, as is the commitment to scrap the settled status charge for EU citizens, but the fundamentals have not changed. Parliament remains in deadlock while the slope to a cliff edge steepens,” she said. May claimed she had met MPs and other parties “in a constructive spirit, without preconditions”, and criticised Jeremy Corbyn for refusing to take part unless she ruled out a no-deal departure. But the Labour leader said her talks had been a “PR sham” and accused her of being in “deep denial” about the scale of defeat in last week’s meaningful vote. “The logic of that decisive defeat is that the prime minister must change her red lines because her current deal is undeliverable. So can she be clear and explicit to the house: which of her red lines is she prepared to move on?” Corbyn asked. Labour later tabled its own amendment to May’s Brexit motion, calling for the government to put in place a process for choosing between possible options – including Corbyn’s own policy – and a “public vote”. Hilary Benn, the Labour chair of the Brexit select committee, tabled his own amendment which would allow indicative votes on four options set out by the committee, May’s deal, no deal, a renegotiation based on a Canada or Norway model, and a second referendum. It was unclear what changes to the backstop May hopes to secure, but the Tory backbencher Andrew Murrison is understood to be in advanced discussions about tabling an amendment time-limiting the backstop, after hearing May tell the Commons that “the length of the backstop was being actively considered”. Should he decide to table an amendment, it may call for a five-year limit as suggested by the Polish foreign minister earlier on Monday. Murrison had attempted to table an amendment to the prime minister’s Brexit deal last week, putting a time-limit on the backstop, but it was not selected by the Speaker. The prime minister also announced on Monday that the controversial fee for EU nationals to register to stay in Britain after Brexit will be waived, after a backlash from citizens’ rights groups and MPs from across the spectrum of Brexit opinion. Under the planned scheme for EU nationals to apply to stay in the UK, which is currently being piloted, those aged over 16 have to pay £65, with a cost of £32.50 for anyone younger. Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, put down a tightly-worded amendment on Monday night to give time for a bill that would give parliament the power to support an extension of article 50. A more radical amendment is planned by the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, which would allow any motion put forward by a minority of 300 MPs from at least five parties – including 10 Tory MPs – to be debated in the Commons the following day. It is understood that some MPs present expressed concern that Grieve’s amendment may not attract the support of the Labour frontbench, who are concerned about its major constitutional implications. “We really need Labour to whip for this for it to have any chance of winning,” one source present said. Second referendum campaigners are expected to focus their efforts on the moves to extend article 50, rather than tabling their own amendment. “A people’s vote will probably not secure a majority in the House of Commons until every Brexit option has been exhausted, but there will be multiple opportunities in parliament to give the public the final say when it has become clear this is the only way forward,” a spokesman said.Fading hopes for survivors of a deadly dam collapse in Brazil were further dashed on Sunday when rescue efforts were temporarily halted because of concerns that another dam operated by the same company was also at risk of rupturing. As the search was paused authorities began evacuating several neighbourhoods in the south-eastern city of Brumadinho that were within range of the B6 dam owned by the Brazilian mining company Vale. “Leave here, this is at risk,” police officials told firefighters. “Within a little while, more mud will fall.” Flavio Godinho, a spokesman for the regional civil defence agency, later said that authorities were no longer concerned that the B6 dam was at risk of collapse, and that the evacuation of up to 24,000 people from Brumadinho had been called off. At least 37 people have been confirmed killed and hundreds remain missing following Friday’s mudslide. Even before the latest setbacks, hope that people had survived the tsunami of iron ore mine waste from the dam collapse was turning to anguish that there would be no more survivors. Just below a football field where military rescue helicopters were parked, a Vale building had been turned into a centre for people waiting for news of missing relatives. People waiting here were increasingly worried that family members might not be found and were critical of the lack of information the company had supplied. Sunday was the second day that Marina and Manaira Avila had come with other relatives in search of news of their cousin Angélica Avila, a Vale employee last seen by a colleague on Friday morning. “I am losing hope,” Marina Avila said. “I am praying for a miracle. “We don’t know if there will be more searches today. How long do we come here, a month, two months, two days? The morgue has 37 bodies and has only identified eight of them. We are in a state of anguish. Where else would my cousin be safe if not at work? It is revolting.” Marconi Machado had come with three relatives in search of news of his missing nephew Wanderson da Silva, a Vale geologist due to get married in May. He had been on the phone to Marconi’s brother as the wave of mud hit. “He said, ‘goodbye, I’m just going to lunch,’ then he said, ‘oh, something happened here,’ I’m going.” That was the last anyone heard of him. Marconi found out about the tragedy when videos and news began circulating on WhatsApp. He too criticised the lack of information. “Brazil continues not learning its lessons. It has wonderful opportunities to construct its history but insists on making the same mistakes. People rely on words and not actions,” he said. Marconi gestured at the volunteers on a row of tables wearing yellow vests. “They should be in charge. They are people with attitude,” he said. Other volunteers were offering religious help. Sirmalia Jesus, an evangelical Christian missionary, came with a large group of church members to offer prayer and support. “It is very sad. We came to offer hope with a hug and a gesture,” she said. Natália Xavier was volunteering psychological and emotional support using the teachings of the Japanese Sukyo Mahikari religious group. “We wanted to offer this light to people,” she said. In 2015, another dam owned by Vale collapsed in the city of Mariana in the same state of Minas Gerais, resulting in 19 deaths and forcing hundreds from their homes. The Minas Gerais state prosecutors office said on Sunday that a further 6bn reais (£1.2bn) of Vale’s assets had been frozen – taking the total to 11bn reais. The chief executive of Vale, Fabio Schvartsman, apologised on Saturday without taking responsibility for the incident, in a television interview. “Apologies to society, apologies to you, apologies to the whole world for what has happened,” he said. “I don’t know who is responsible, but you can be sure we’ll do our part.” Meanwhile Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, said on Twitter that his government would do everything in its power to prevent more tragedies like Mariana and Brumadinho.By now, you’ve surely seen the video. On the steps outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, a white teenager sporting the red cap accoutrements of the Trump campaign stands nose-to-nose with a bespectacled Native American elder singing and playing a hand drum. The teen is smirking – his expression, for me, oozes entitlement. Behind him an unruly crowd – all male, all white, many also wearing the conspicuous Maga apparel – is jeering the elder in a frenzy of Lord of the Flies privilege. (In another video, some of the boys can be seen cackling while war-whooping and making the tomahawk chop gesture popularized by sports teams with Native American mascots like the Atlanta Braves.) Against the rabble, the old man is steadfast. In the stare-down, he never breaks eye contact. He just keeps singing. Off-camera, you can hear one or two voices rising with his. You probably didn’t recognize the song the elder is singing against the fracas, but I did: it’s the anthem of the American Indian Movement. We used to gather around the drum to sing it after powwow dance practice every Thursday night at the Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland, California. Some say it was composed to honor the life of Raymond Yellow Thunder, an Oglala Lakota beaten to death by two white men in Gordon, Nebraska, in 1972. Our elders told us to carry forward the legacy of the men and women who sang it. Against the rabble, the old man is steadfast. In the stare-down, he never breaks eye contact When that clip first appeared on my Twitter feed, I could not click play. As an Indian, the fear of a face-to-face encounter with a sneering white superior is deeply engrained in my psychology. I cannot watch that film and not think about the youth hockey opponent who knocked me down while yelling “Indian boy!” Or the man who accused my father and I of stealing our own car. Or the Raiders fans who yelled epithets at a group of Native dancers and me performing for a heritage month celebration at their home game. Or the dirty looks I get in many parts of this country as a brown man with a braid hanging down my back. I saw that thumbnail image and thought about the Indian agents who kidnapped and assaulted my grandmother and took her away to Catholic school. I thought about my relatives. I feared that men younger than I still believed us all to be inferior; that an elder who reminded me of uncles, cousins and so many other Native men I’ve met and loved could still be put in his place; that the songs we sing are, to the Maga youth, a laughingstock. Many on the internet were moved as I was. But others were not. They saw, in the teens, their sons and their own adolescence. They feared that a social justice witch-hunt was afoot. There were many ways to follow this story. They revealed less about what actually happened at the Lincoln Memorial on Friday and more about who has the power to tell the story and the biases underlying how that story is told. From opposite sides of the socioeconomic-political-cultural-racial divide, reporters and citizen journalists followed the facts in opposite directions. We learned that the elder was a sacred pipe carrier, activist, veteran and boarding school survivor from the Omaha Nation named Nathan Phillips. We learned that he was a founder of the Native Youth Alliance who helped lead prayer walks after Standing Rock and participates in an annual gathering for Native veterans at Arlington National Cemetery. We learned that he was in town for the Indigenous Peoples March. Some of us noted that the Washington DC National Football League team name, the Redskins, is a dictionary-definition racial slur. And in later interviews, we learned that Phillips was singing to pray for the young men staring him down. We learned that the youth was an 11th-grade student at the expensive all-boys Covington Catholic private school in Kentucky. (Upon learning this, some of us may have noted that private schools sprouted up in the south to preserve segregation.) We learned that his school has no women or people of color in authority positions. A photo has circulated of Covington Catholic basketball fans, some in black face, yelling at an African American opponent. We learned that his mother is a vice-president at Fidelity Investments. We learned that the school sent its students to the capital to participate in the anti-abortion March for Life. And after we learned many of these details, we learned the boy’s name was Nicholas Sandmann and that his family hired a PR firm to respond to the controversy. But as more videos and reports emerged, we also learned that there was a group of Black Hebrew Israelites who were yelling insults at both the students and the Native Americans. They may have instigated the confrontation. We learned that Phillips approached the students in part to defuse those tensions. We learned, surprisingly, that Sandmann is a fan of the politically conscious rapper Logic. And we learned, unsurprisingly, through Sandmann’s press release that the he does not believe what he did was hateful or racist. It is the job of the press and the discerning reader and viewer to compile and synthesize these messy facts and statements into a coherent narrative. And in that task a great deal of the press and a large portion of the discerning have failed. Early coverage of Phillips and Sandmann’s encounter was, for me, in a small sense, encouraging: outrage suggested that maybe the media and the multitude could grapple with anti-Indian racism. That my experience – what I and many other Native people felt when we watched that clip – could be met with compassion and perhaps even a moment of reflection on the enduring psychology of racial entitlement that snatched this continent out from under our ancestor’s feet and still today deprives elders like Nathan Phillips of their dignity. But, as the days have passed, it seems that as soon as the story becomes more complicated – when a fuller picture emerges in all of its messy human detail – the Indigenous are no longer deserving of compassion. If it was Phillips who approached the Covington students, commentators suggest, then maybe the cacophony of laughter, war whoops, tomahawk chops and that smug grin was not what we saw: racism. I hoped that this time their empathy was real, that the condemnation could withstand the obfuscation that is always the follow-up story: that the Native elder was the aggressor, that the black youth gunned down by the cops was actually a crook, that the hard-working immigrant is stealing your job. But it appears that a great deal of this nation – including its supposedly liberal Fourth Estate – is not ready to look at the nasty complexity of racism, power and privilege squarely in the face and tell the truth.The crowd at San Siro was the smallest it had been for any game in this Serie A season, yet also perhaps the most uplifting. Inter’s match against Sassuolo was originally supposed to be played behind closed doors, as a punishment for racist abuse of Kalidou Koulibaly by supporters at the stadium last month. Club officials persuaded the footballing authorities to let them distribute 11,000 tickets to schoolchildren instead. They filled a part of the stadium’s lower tier, with the remaining seats covered over by gigantic banners upon which ‘BUU’ had been printed in various fonts. That spelling is used by Italian journalists to represent monkey noises directed at black players during games. Inter were inviting us to reinvent the letters as an acronym – to be written, not said – ‘Brothers Universally United’ against discrimination. Write and share your BUU so it's never heard again. Let's make it a message of unity, rather than racism. #BrothersUniversallyUnited #NoToDiscrimination #FCIM pic.twitter.com/J1gqj4gsOd The young audience cheered both teams: showing a great enthusiasm for attacking football in general. Such a convivial atmosphere stood in contrast not only to that game against Napoli but also the stark silence of Inter’s Coppa Italia win over Benevento on 13 January – when the full stadium ban was in force. Sadly, neither team could give the kids a goal to celebrate. Saturday’s game finished 0-0, with Sassuolo enjoying slightly the better chances. There was no shortage of scoring elsewhere, though. After its grim end to 2018, Serie A returned from the winter break with an entertaining round of games: from Roma’s helter-skelter 3-2 win over Torino to Atalanta’s 5-0 rout of Frosinone and a defiant 2-1 victory for a short-staffed Napoli over Lazio. If those kids in the stands at San Siro offered hope for the future, then so too did a 19-year-old on the pitch at the Stadio Olimpico, Nicolò Zaniolo climbing off his backside to improvise an opening goal for the Giallorossi. His namesake Nicolò Barella, 21, has been running games for Cagliari all season but highlighted his performance against Empoli with some precocious acts of individualism as well. Most absorbing of all was the match between Fiorentina and Sampdoria at the Stadio Artemio Franchi. Both teams begin 2019 with aspirations of qualifying for Europe, or perhaps even – given the underwhelming form of Lazio, Milan and Roma – of seizing a place in the top four. Toward that end, Fiorentina signed Luis Muriel on loan from Sevilla at the start of this month. The Viola had been frustrating to watch in the first half of this campaign: a young team blessed with abundant creative talent but lacking the quality up front to capitalise on it. Only Torino, in the top half, had scored fewer. Muriel might seem a curious choice in that regard. Although likened to the Brazilian Ronaldo by reporters throughout his previous stint in Italy, he has never been especially prolific. Only twice in his career has he made it to double figures – scoring 11 Serie A goals for Udinese in 2012-13, then the same number for Sampdoria in 2016-17. He did furnish a further nine assists during that latter campaign, though, prompting Sevilla to make him their most expensive signing of all time. Muriel departed for Spain, talking of a desire to “make that step forward towards the top five or six teams in Europe”. Plainly, things did not work out as he envisaged. Muriel was unfortunate to join Sevilla in what would become a period of constant upheaval, the club rotating through four managers in less than a year, but he also frustrated fans with erratic performances and drew criticism for his fluctuating weight. He had played just six league games this season, and only one as a starter. His impact for Fiorentina, however, would be immediate. Muriel opened the scoring against his former club with a memorable goal: picking the ball up just inside the Sampdoria half and sprinting 30 yards before slipping the ball between two defenders and easing a side-foot finish into the far corner just as a third arrived to close him down. He declined to celebrate, as he would again after producing an even more special strike midway through the second half. The game had turned against Fiorentina in the interim. Edimilson Fernandes was sent off for a second booking and Gastón Ramírez equalised before the interval. The visitors were pressing for a second goal, when Federico Chiesa played a ball out of defence towards Muriel on the edge of the centre circle. The Colombian took one touch to spin past Joachim Andersen and one more to evade the challenge of Nicola Murru. Nobody else could catch him as he sprinted half the length of the pitch to finish across the goalkeeper once again. For Fiorentina supporters, it was a goal that evoked memories of Roberto Baggio’s coast-to-coast against Napoli in 1989. Still, Muriel would only hold his hands up in apology. An act of deference towards Sampdoria’s fans, but perhaps also their manager, Marco Giampaolo, whom he credits as the first coach ever to truly show faith in him. Muriel chose Fiorentina ahead of Milan this January in part because he got the sense that Stefano Pioli might become the second. “You’re the only one who reminds me of Ronaldo, O Fenomeno,” the manager is reported to have told him. “Now prove it.” Sunday’s game represented a pretty good start, even if it still was not enough to secure three points. Sampdoria have a phenomenon of their own in Fabio Quagliarella, who struck twice in five minutes to turn the game on its head. In doing so, he extended his personal scoring streak to 11 consecutive games in Serie A – the joint-longest run of all-time, matching Gabriel Batistuta’s run from 1994. Fiorentina dragged themselves level again in injury-time, Germán Pezzella poking home a deflected cross at the back post. The draw did not really suit either team, yet Giampaolo could not fight back a smile as he reflected on his “weakness” for Muriel – even now he is playing for an opponent – during his post-game interview. Football in Italy had shown us its ugliest side at the end of 2018. The new year began with a reminder that the sport can be beautiful, too. Napoli 2-1 Lazio, Cagliari 2-2 Empoli, Fiorentina 3-3 Sampdoria, Spal 1-1 Bologna, Frosinone 0-5 Atalanta, Inter 0-0 Sassuolo, Udinese 1-2 Parma, Roma 3-2 Torino The difference between victory and defeat on Manchester United’s last trip to London, their 1-0 sneak past Tottenham at Wembley, was goalkeeper David de Gea’s stunning performance but he did not board the first-class train carriage taking Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s team to the capital. Instead, Sergio Romero will don the gloves with Lee Grant as reserve. Despite Romero being the Argentinian national team’s long-term first-choice, De Gea’s absence surely lifts Arsenal’s expectations. Solskjær has displayed old-school values since taking over, won the FA Cup twice with United, and started that legendary 1999 semi-final replay against Arsenal, but modern practice dictates reserve goalies getting their chance in the competition. Barring Unai Emery deciding to rotate out his leading strikers, that spells opportunity for Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. JB Except for anyone who took part in or spied on Derby County’s training this week, no one knows exactly what sort of shape 38-year-old Ashley Cole is in these days. But we may get some insight this Saturday, when the best English player of his generation could play for his new club against Accrington Stanley. While it would be wonderful to see Cole close to his best, the right and proper thing to hope for is a dramatic victory for the League One side, who, thanks to victories in previous rounds against Colchester, Cheltenham and Ipswich, have a chance to advance to the fifth round of the FA Cup for the first time in their history. Accrington operate in a different world to your Coles and your Frank Lampards – the £180,000 in prize money they would get for beating Derby would surpass their entire season-ticket revenue – and the scenes of joy that would accompany a home win on Saturday would be priceless. PD It’s deja vu all over again as Manchester City meet Burnley in the FA Cup at the Etihad for the second season in succession. Last year, the sides met in the third round and City ran out easy winners despite going behind. At the time Burnley were seventh in the Premier League while their opponents were coasting towards an easy title win. A little over a year on and much has changed: Pep Guardiola’s men are playing catch-up against a Liverpool team currently enjoying a sunshine break, while Sean Dyche’s squad are fighting for their Premier League lives. While both men treated last year’s FA Cup tie with the utmost seriousness, circumstance and necessity suggest they may not do so on Saturday. BG Now Manuel Pellegrini has shown Marko Arnautovic that no individual is bigger than the team, the next task for West Ham’s manager is to restore the Austrian’s hunger. Arnautovic’s attempts to force through a move to China have been an unwelcome distraction for West Ham and there are no guarantees the 29-year-old will knuckle down after being dropped against Bournemouth last weekend. While the forward is in contention to feature against AFC Wimbledon on Saturday night, it remains to be seen if strong and decisive management from Pellegrini will draw the right reaction from a seasoned professional whose dismay at being denied a transfer left him unable to play a Premier League game. He could return with a point to prove or could just leave Pellegrini thinking he should have taken the money by sulking for the rest of the season. Only one thing is certain: West Ham need a motivated Arnautovic after witnessing the very worst of Andy Carroll against Bournemouth. JS Following their victory over Liverpool, Wolves travel to New Meadow on what promises to be a bumper payday for Shrewsbury Town. Currently 18th in the third tier, they are managed by Sam Ricketts, who will attempt to mastermind a famous victory over the club he skippered to the League One title in 2014. Ricketts has already made plenty of headlines in this year’s competition, having first been told to stay away from Wrexham’s defeat at the hands of Newport County after being approached by the Shrews while still manager of the Welsh club. Upon taking up his new role, he watched from the technical area as they came from 2-0 down to dispatch Stoke City in a third-round replay. With former Wolves and Wales teammate Dave Edwards now on his playing staff but nursing a minor groin injury, Ricketts has a big decision to make. A player with Wolves for nine years, Edwards is desperate to be involved on Saturday but for his manager it could be a case of ruling with his head rather than his heart. BG While Millwall are battling to stay in the Championship, it would be a mistake for Everton to underestimate Neil Harris’s side. The south Londoners have been on a good run since the festive period and will relish the opportunity to make an evening at the Den as uncomfortable as possible for their Premier League opponents, just as they did when they knocked Bournemouth and Leicester out of the FA Cup two years ago. The banana-skin potential is high. It will be loud and intimidating and Everton will be in trouble if they start with the wrong attitude. Marco Silva, who is under scrutiny after a few disappointing results and toothless displays, must make sure his stars understand what Millwall are about. JS It might look like Newcastle have had Watford’s number this season – they beat Javi Gracia’s team at St James’ Park in November and then held them to a draw at Vicarage Road the following month – but a key feature of each of those games was Watford’s wastefulness. Gerard Deulofeu was the main culprit, repeatedly goofing in front of goal in both matches. If he plays on Saturday, he can expect to get opportunities to atone because Watford are the better team, much happier and far more likely than Newcastle to win a trophy in the foreseeable future, facts that are always worth mentioning to anyone who whines about the nefarious influence of foreign owners in English football. PD Having been thrashed 4-1 at home by Preston last weekend, QPR will hope to avoid further embarrassment on Saturday when League One leaders Portsmouth visit Loftus Road. While Steve McClaren may well give fringe players such as Matt Ingram, Osman Kakay and Bright Osayi-Samuel a game, the QPR player fans would probably most like to see lining up against Pompey is Grant Hall. The defender, once a first-team staple, has completed 90 minutes just twice this season following a 2017 diagnosis of tendonitis which left him sidelined for the best part of two years. Hall has revealed the injury led to him struggling with a bout of depression he felt unable to talk about until QPR director of football Les Ferdinand pointed him in the right direction. The player received a rapturous welcome when he completed the duration of his side’s third-round win against Leeds. He has not played since but fitness permitting should start against Portsmouth. BG Newport County’s punishment for their third-round victory over Leicester City is a 540-mile round trip to the Riverside Stadium, where on Saturday they will take on a Middlesbrough side 56 places above them in the league. Having made almost £500,000 already from this year’s FA Cup, Michael Flynn’s men treated themselves to a night of luxury at The Belfry on Thursday and were due to train at St George’s Park before continuing their journey to Teesside. Despite this pampering, their players would almost certainly prefer to be playing at Rodney Parade, an inhospitable, hostile environment that both Tottenham and Leicester have struggled to deal with in the past year. Getting a result against whatever side Tony Pulis fields will be a tall order, but the prospect of a money-spinning home replay you’d give them every chance of winning will be all the motivation this battling Welsh side needs. BG Barnet are the only remaining non-league club in the FA Cup and their most recent match was a 4-0 spanking by Braintree Town, the worst team in the National League. But we should not read too much into a result skewed by a red card shown to their goalkeeper, Mark Cousins, in the third minute. Their form prior to that game was decent, with six wins in nine matches, including that splendid counterattacking triumph at Sheffield United in the third round. They will no doubt aim to do something similar against Brentford on Monday but the Championship side will arrive with ominous momentum. Thomas Frank struggled after replacing Dean Smith as head coach in October, mustering just four points from his first 10 matches in charge, but he has stabilised the side in recent weeks and they are unbeaten in their last seven matches. But has the balance been upset again by the sale of key defender Chris Mepham to Bournemouth? Barnet hope so. PDThornton Wilder, having seen Carol Channing in Hello Dolly!, the 1964 Broadway musical adapted from his play The Matchmaker, proposed rewriting his peculiar 1942 success The Skin of Our Teeth. His idea was that Channing could play the maid, Sabina (who is also a vamp), while doubling as the everywoman housewife Mrs Antrobus. It was her voice he wanted, the way it could flip from husk to squeak to a honk so basso that it became a plot point in the 1967 film Thoroughly Modern Millie, in which Channing starred opposite Julie Andrews. Channing had her own number in Millie: Jazz Baby, a 1919 hit that opens “My daddy was a ragtime trombone player”, which perfectly showcased her genius for the comedy slide – a gift of her vocal range – and even more her delivery. Listen to her stretch and rasp the “a” and the “zz” in “jazz”, a vocalisation so wild that the film’s scriptwriters gave her the word “raspberry” as a dialogue keynote – she drawls it across many frames. You wonder what 1940s Broadway made of Channing, who wasn’t going to turn out a steam-powered belter in the manner of Ethel Merman, real-homespun like Mary Martin or cool-funny like Eve Arden, whom she understudied. (All three later took stints as post-Channing Dollies.) Her lollipop head and muscular arms were unusual for the period, as was her voice for Broadway, with its often black-edged styling – one of Channing’s grandmothers was African American, although the influence was more perhaps her favourite performers, especially Ethel Waters’s mix of sexuality with energetic absurdity. She was a character-player trying for lead roles. In her first Broadway success, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), she used the comedy of her growled vowels to keep her jazz age gold-digger (well, diamond-collector) Lorelei Lee on the sweet side of sleaze. If sugar daddies happened by, it wasn’t the fault of just a little girl from Little Rock. Playing Dolly, she barely descended into boom, even in When the Parade Passes By, written for Merman-level foghorn delivery. Channing, instead, worked a sadness in her husky middle voice. Want a real treat? Listen to Channing as Mehitabel the Shinbone Alley cat, muse to Eddie Bracken’s Archy the poetic cockroach, on a 1954 musical concept LP take on the writings of the humourist Don Marquis, titled Archy and Mehitabel. Her mog enters to muted trumpet with a honky-tonk intonation; she trumpets herself with a nasal jazz delivery when Archy thwarts her intention that her kittens should drown. But also: “I’m a lady still” she purrs, then miaows “Toujours gai.” What a one-off.We talk incessantly about how to make children more “resilient”, but whatever we’re doing, it’s not working. Rates of anxiety disorders and depression are rising rapidly among teenagers, and in the US universities can’t hire therapists fast enough to keep up with the demand. What are we doing wrong? Nassim Taleb invented the word “antifragile” and used it in his book by the same name to describe a small but very important class of systems that gain from shocks, challenges, and disorder. Bones and the banking system are two examples; both get weaker – and more prone to catastrophic failure – if they go for a long time without any stressors and then face a major challenge. The immune system is an even better example: it requires exposure to certain kinds of germs and potential allergens in childhood in order to develop to its full capacity. Parents who treat their children as if they are fragile (for example, by keeping them away from dirt and potential allergens, such as peanuts) are depriving their children’s immature immune systems of the learning experiences those systems need to develop their maximum protective capacity. Children’s social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them “safe” from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions, we deprive them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong. Such children are likely to suffer more when exposed later to other unpleasant but ordinary life events, such as teasing and social exclusion. Some caveats are needed: kids need friends and a loving and reliable attachment figure. Children raised with high levels of fear in unpredictable or violent environments experience elevated levels of stress hormones for extended periods of time. Such long-term exposure can permanently alter brain development and increase stress reactivity, with lifelong ramifications for mental and physical health. But brief periods of normal stress are not harmful; they are essential. A 2013 review of stress research titled “Understanding resilience” made the analogy to the immune system explicit: “Stress inoculation is a form of immunity against later stressors, much in the same way that vaccines induce immunity against disease.” What, then, would happen if we suddenly stopped immunising children with this kind of stress? We recently co-wrote a book, with Greg Lukianoff, titled The Coddling of the American Mind, about the culture that erupted on American university campuses around 2014, and has spread to some campuses in the UK and Canada. In the book we describe how they began using the language of safety and danger to describe ideas and speakers, and to demand policies based on the premise that some students are fragile (or “vulnerable”). Terms such as “safe space”, “trigger warning” and “microaggression” entered the language. These, we believe, are requests made by a generation that was deprived of the necessary quantity of social immunisations. Students now react with a kind of emotional allergic response (often referred to as being “triggered”) to things that previous generations would have either brushed off or argued against. It’s not the kids’ fault. In the UK, as in the US, parents became much more fearful in the 1980s and 1990s as cable TV and later the internet exposed everyone, more and more, to those rare occurrences of brutal crimes and freak accidents that, as we report in our book, now occur less and less. Outdoor play and independent mobility went down; screen time and adult-supervised activities went up. Yet free play in which kids work out their own rules of engagement, take small risks, and learn to master small dangers (such as having a snowball fight) turns out to be crucial for the development of adult social and even physical competence. Depriving them of free play stunts their social-emotional growth. Norwegian play researchers Ellen Sandseter and Leif Kennair wrote about the “anti-phobic effects of thrilling experiences.” They noted that children spontaneously seek to add risk to their play, which then extends their coping abilities, which then empowers them to take on even greater challenges. They warned: “We may observe an increased neuroticism or psychopathology in society if children are hindered from partaking in age adequate risky play.” They wrote those words in 2011. Over the following few years, their prediction came true. Mental health statistics in the US and UK tell the same awful story: kids born after 1994 – now known as “iGen” or “Gen-Z” – are suffering from much higher rates of anxiety disorders and depression than did the previous generation (millennials), born between 1982 and 1994. The upward trends for depression among teenage boys and girls are happening in the UK too. Yearly measures of major depression are not available in the UK, but the NHS reports extensive mental health statistics for England from 2004 and 2017 that allow us to make a direct comparison for the same time period. Using a stricter criterion, which finds lower overall rates, the pattern is similar: up slightly for boys, nearly double for girls. This alarming rise does not just reflect an increase in teenagers’ willingness to talk about mental health; it is showing up in their behaviour too, particularly in the rising rates at which teenage girls are admitted to hospital for deliberately harming themselves, mostly by intentionally cutting themselves. Large studies In the US and UK using data through to 2014 show sharply rising curves in the years after 2009, with increases of more than 60% in both countries. A 2017 Guardian study of more recent NHS data found a 68% rise in hospital admissions for self-harm by English teenage girls, over the previous decade. Even more tragically, we also see this trend in the rate of teenage suicide, which is rising for both sexes in the US and the UK. The suicide rate is up 34% for teenage boys in the US (in 2016, compared with the average rate from 2006-2010). For girls, it is up an astonishing 82%. In the UK, the corresponding increase for teenage boys through to 2017 is 17%, while the increase for girls is 46%. Nobody knows for certain why recent years have seen so much more of a change for girls than boys, but the leading explanation is the arrival of smartphones and social media. Girls use social media more than boys, and they seem to be more affected by the chronic social comparison, focus on physical appearance, awareness of being left out, and social or relational aggression that social media facilitates. What can we do to reverse these trends? How can we raise kids strong enough to handle the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of life? There’s a powerful piece of folk wisdom: prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. As soon as you grasp the concept of antifragility, you understand why that folk saying is true. Of course, we should work to make life safer by removing physical dangers from the environment, such as drunk drivers and paedophiles. And of course we should teach children to treat each other with kindness and respect. But we also have to let our kids out to roam the road without us. It’s what most of us over the age of 40 did (even in much more crime-prone decades) and it’s what most kids want to do. At first, it’s scary for parents to let go. But when a seven-year-old jumps up and down with excitement and pride after running an errand on her own, it gets easier to let her go and play in a nearby park with her friends – where they all learn to look out for each other and settle their own disputes. We can’t guarantee that giving primary school children more independence today will bring down the rate of teenage suicide tomorrow. The links between childhood overprotection and teenage mental illness are suggestive but not definitive, and there are other likely causal threads. Yet there are good reasons to suspect that by depriving our innately antifragile kids of the wide range of experiences they need to become strong, we are systematically stunting their growth. We should let go – and let them grow. • Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and the co-author (with Greg Lukianoff) of The Coddling of the American Mind. Pamela Paresky is senior scholar in human development and psychology at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. She was the lead researcher on The Coddling of the American Mind. In a jam like this, when parliamentary discipline has broken down, No 10 has two last-ditch tactics up its sleeve. The first is to try to pull off the psychological trick of persuading MPs that the mood is changing, and that they had better fall in line before they miss the bus. The second is to blackmail them by painting a picture of how awful the alternative to the prime minister’s deal is, underlining that the responsibility for the ensuing chaos will lie with MPs who vote against her. Unfortunately for Theresa May, neither of these ruses is likely to work this time. No 10 has been briefing since before Christmas that it is making progress with the European Union on the backstop and will soon be able to unveil changes that will make the plan acceptable to the rebels. Downing St also says it is in talks with the Democratic Unionist party – and if the DUP changes position on her deal, so will most pro-Brexit Tory rebels. This is either whistling in the wind or, more likely, deliberately misleading. The DUP’s demands that the backstop be made time limited, or that the UK should be able to end it unilaterally, are impossible because they defy logic. The backstop cannot be time limited exactly because it is a backstop. Any end to the backstop needs to be conditions-based, not time-based, when an alternative way has been found to preserve the open border between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland. Despite two years of looking, neither the government nor the Brexiteers have found an even remotely satisfactory alternative. This means that it is impossible to amend the backstop as the DUP wants, without destroying it, even if Brussels were willing to do so. So the best that May can hope for is some warm words from an anxious-to-help Brussels suggesting the EU does not want the backstop to be permanent. The prime minister may hope this will somehow be enough to persuade the DUP to change its position and support her. In my experience of dealing with the DUP over many years, she is likely to be disappointed. When its leaders say something, it should be taken literally. Getting them to back down is usually not an option, as she discovered to her cost a year ago. A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal. As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government. That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit. “The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs. Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added. So she has little chance of persuading the DUP – and by extension the mass of Brexiteer Tory MPs – to back her deal. That leaves her with the final tool, of blackmail. The reason why the government is now upping the rhetoric on how awful a no-deal Brexit will be is perfectly transparent. No deal is no longer better than a bad deal: it is her deal or Armageddon. And she wants to make MPs believe that if they vote her deal down, they will be held personally responsible by their constituents for the impact on voters’ lives. I find this threat entirely incredible. The reason why a no-deal Brexit is not going to happen has nothing to do with there being a majority in parliament against it. Parliament has no say in stopping the inexorable progress of article 50, which will take us out of the EU at the end of March this year. Rather, it is the instinct for self-preservation that will make the government pull the emergency brake in the end and ask Brussels for more time – as it can do at any moment up until the end of March. It will do so because is knows how grave the impact would be on day-to-day life in Britain, and it knows that the people will blame No 10 for the chaos – not Brussels or rebel backbench MPs. If there remain those in No 10 who do not know this to be true, they can take it from me: I lived through the fuel crisis in 2000, when tanker drivers blockaded the fuel depots and we came within hours of having to invoke emergency powers to keep hospitals operating and money in cash machines. Labour’s opinion poll ratings fell through the floor, and we trailed substantially behind the Tories for the first and only time. Luckily we broke the blockade quickly, but I learned that there is one thing the public expects above all else, and that is that the government governs. That is its job, and it is why people elect it. If it presides over chaos, as Edward Heath did with the three-day week, the government will be out on its ear in short order. May will not want to risk that ignominious fate. Neither happy talk about imminent breakthroughs nor blackmail will save May’s deal. Once again, the government is wasting time on delusions. The only way out of this mess is for the government to reach for the emergency brake and ask the EU to extend article 50. The sooner it does so, the better. • Jonathan Powell was chief of staff to Tony Blair from 1995 to 2007The results are in for the Guardian Australia’s best beaches poll. There were 19,533 votes cast in the survey to find Australia’s best regional, remote and metropolitan beaches. • Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning There’s nothing better than a sunset over the ocean and Guardian readers voted Cottesloe in Western Australia as their favourite metropolitan beach. Affectionately known as Cott, the suburban Perth beach polled more than 1,000 votes. Its crystal clear waters are brimming with swimmers, snorkelers and surfers alike on lazy summer days. Although you’ve got to keep your wits about you – sharks are sometimes lurking in the water. Heading east, Noosa Main Beach on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast came in second place with 674 votes. It’s beloved by families seeking fun in the sun with gentle waves and beach patrols. A grassroots campaign to stop Yarra Bay Beach in New South Wales being turned into a cruise ship terminal saw it climb to third spot on the best metropolian beach rankings. It’s a great place for kids to learn to sail and the last scene in Rake was filmed here. South Australia’s Port Noarlunga with its red sandstone beach cliffs and long jetty ranked fourth. It’s a haven for people who like to fish, kayak and dive. Rounding out the rankings in fifth place is Freshwater Beach north of Sydney which is credited with helping to kick off a surfing craze in Australia. In 1915, Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku dropped a board in he’d made from a local sugar pine. 1. Cottesloe, Perth, Western Australia 2. Noosa Main Beach, Sunshine Coast, Queensland 3. Yarra Bay, Sydney, New South Wales 4. Port Noarlunga, Adelaide, South Australia 5. Freshwater, Sydney, New South Wales 6. Portsea, Mornington peninsula, Victoria 7. Bondi, Sydney, New South Wales 8. Balmoral, Sydney, New South Wales 9. Port Willunga beach, Fleurieu peninsula, South Australia 10. Bronte, Sydney, New South Wales The rankings for best regional beach were a closer contest. Hyams Beach at Jervis Bay on the NSW South Coast, which is billed as having the world’s whitest sand, took out top spot. It’s not surprising really. Shoalhaven city council has recently appointed traffic controllers to redirect visitors from the beach because of over-popularity. The carpark only has capacity for 400 but up to 5,000 vehicles are showing up each day during peak season. Elephant Rocks in southern WA ranked second. As the name suggests it’s home to huge granite boulders resembling elephants cooling off in the surf. 1. Hyams beach, south coast, New South Wales 2. Elephant Rocks, south coast, Western Australia 3. Refuge Cove, Wilsons promontory, Victoria 4. Wategos Beach, Byron Bay, New South Wales 5. Horseshoe Bay, Bowen, Queensland 6. Ninety Mile beach, Gippsland, Victoria 7. Meelup, Margaret River, Western Australia 8. Greenpatch, Jervis Bay, New South Wales 9. Greens Pool, Denmark, Western Australia 10. Horseshoe Bay, Port Elliott, South Australia The spectacularly curved Wineglass Bay beach in Tasmania took out the best remote beach category with 1,013 votes. Nestled in the Freycinet national park and with stunning pink granite peaks, this beach is a popular spot for sailing and hiking adventurers. 1. Wineglass Bay, Freycinet peninsula, Tasmania 2. Whitehaven, Whitsundays, Queensland 3. Cable beach, Broome, Western Australia 4. Turquoise Bay, Exmouth, Western Australia 5. Lucky Bay, Cape le Grande, Western Australia 6. Neds Beach, Lord Howe Island, New South Wales 7. Seventy-five Mile Beach, Fraser Island, Queensland 8. Twilight Beach, Esperance, Western Australia 9. Emu Bay, Kangaroo Island, South Australia 10. Vivonne Bay, Kangaroo Island, South Australia See the full list of beaches and their rankings hereIn 1956, the then chancellor of the exchequer Harold Macmillan commissioned his officials to suggest the best way for Britain to integrate itself into the rapidly growing western European economy. Their plan, soon adopted as official policy, was that Britain and the emerging European Community would both join a new free trade area for industrial goods. In this perfect world, Britain would not be in the EC, would not have to pool any of its sovereignty with the other European powers, would maintain its preferential trade with the Commonwealth, would enjoy frictionless trade with Europe but would still be free to do whatever deals it wanted with the rest of the world. It could, in other words, have its cake and eat it. And why would the other Europeans agree to this? Because, as the Board of Trade explained: “The possibility of UK cooperation would be so welcome [to the Europeans] that we should be able to enter the plan more or less on our own terms.” If this sounds familiar even to those of us who are not historians of British economic policy in the 1950s, it’s because it is the vision for Brexit that was advertised 60 years later. Plan G, as it was known in 1956, is now Plan A for the true believers: we can have all the benefits of being in the EU without the burdens and compromises of actual membership. And the other Europeans will be so glad that we have condescended to deal with them that we can dictate our own terms. It didn’t work in 1956, not least because, as Kevin O’Rourke states in his crisp, clear and quietly devastating history, “UK policymakers had been focused on what was required in order to achieve a domestic consensus in Britain. Not surprisingly, they had produced a blueprint that was indeed a very good deal for Britain – but in so doing they had paid insufficient attention to other countries’ interests.” And of course it has not worked since 2016 for precisely the same reasons. Here, as in so much else, we see that if Brexit has a history, it is not a linear one – it loops back not just to an imagined past but to assumptions about Britain’s place in the world that were untenable even in the 1950s. Brexit's history loops back to assumptions about Britain’s place in the world that were untenable even in the 1950s O’Rourke is all too aware that, as titles go, A Short History of Brexit is problematic. For one thing, as the defeat of the withdrawal agreement has confirmed, this tale, however it turns out, will not be short. For another, the story is rapidly unfolding: the proofs of the book sent out to reviewers had empty space at the end for last-minute updates – the finished book takes events up to Christmas. It might indeed be questioned whether such a project is worth doing while the outcome is so uncertain. But O’Rourke’s book provides a bracing and absorbing answer. As he puts it towards the end, Brexit has already been “a hugely informative, if costly, civics lesson for the people of Britain, Ireland, and the rest of Europe” and he is superbly well fitted to draw out that lesson for the general reader. Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke, to give him his full name, has been Chichele professor of economic history at Oxford since 2011. His father was Ireland’s permanent representative to the EU in the 1980s, his mother is Danish, he was born in Switzerland and is a municipal councillor in the small French village of Saint-Pierre-d’Entremont. This mixture of expertise and life experience gives him both a sure grasp of the fine details and a wider human perspective. He is excellent on the realities of trade regimes: if you want the truth about what World Trade Organisation rules actually mean, or why hard borders cannot be avoided even if post-Brexit Britain merely ends up with different rules on VAT, he is a reliable guide. Some of these “civics lesson” aspects of O’Rourke’s book have an urgency that is shaped by the sheer mendacity of the Brexiters. It should not, for example, be a great revelation that freedom of movement isn’t a cunning trap devised after an innocent Britain had been lured into what it thought was merely a trading bloc: it is right there in the 1957 treaty of Rome. Yet it matters that such things are laid out with such clarity. O’Rourke is also acute on the very different ways in which first world war centenaries were commemorated in Britain and France. One memo to David Cameron as prime minister issued instructions that “we must ensure that our commemoration does not give any support to the myth that European integration was the result of the two World Wars”. By contrast, the French prime minister Édouard Philippe, speaking in 2017 at the armistice site at Compiègne, did exactly that, evoking the idea of “a Europe that reminds us of the eternal values that unite us, and the disasters we mourn”. While O’Rourke’s cool account of the Brexit negotiations is valuable, it is his overview that is most important. He explains why the habit of setting the claims of Europe against those of the nation state is simply wrong. The European Union was the answer to a very real and urgent question: how can we enjoy the economic benefits of free trade while limiting the known ability of free trade to undermine national governments and the welfare states they had put in place? The dilemma, as he so neatly summarises it, is that “economic prosperity required trade but political stability required welfare states. In order to achieve both prosperity and stability a free trade area was not enough: you needed European integration to set a common regulatory framework so as to prevent destructive races to the bottom. In this way Europe would come to the rescue of the European nation state.” Perhaps this thought might be taken a little further: if the EU was about rescuing the nation state, might the great structural problem of Britain’s attitudes to it be precisely that the UK is not a nation state? It was, in the early days of European postwar unification, still an imperial power, and its official suspicion of the idea of a continental customs union was shaped by the belief that it could and should continue to prioritise its trade with its soon-to-be-former colonies. (The excruciating contradictions that this involved are perfectly captured by the conclusion of a British expert committee appointed in 1947: “A continental customs union had little economically in its favour other than the damage which would be caused by being excluded from it.”) And of course, the UK contains four different nations that would come over time to take very different views both of the nature of the welfare state and of the relevance of Europe to their sense of identity. The great limitation of historians is generally that they know too much. They cannot share the great ignorance of the people they are writing about: the condition, in which we are all still held after the stalemate at Westminster, of not knowing how it is all going to turn out. Though it is scant consolation for the pain it inflicts, Brexit does rather poignantly bring together the knowledge provided by a long-term historical perspective with the sheer terrifying unknowability of the outcome. O’Rourke may not have known the result of the vote on the withdrawal agreement, but his guess turns out to be a well-educated one. He predicts, accurately, that alongside that deal, “the only logical alternatives would appear to be no deal and no Brexit”. And he points to a hard fact that some of those suggesting other plans at this very late stage seem not to grasp: “The Labour party hopes that a general election might in such circumstances return it to power, but even if that happened the country would still face the same three alternatives; the ‘Norway plus’ option requires leaving on the basis of the existing Withdrawal Agreement.” As O’Rourke acknowledges: “This is what history feels like when it is being made.” It feels simultaneously like reliving the past and forgetting everything that might have been learned from it. • A Short History of Brexit: A Pelican Book by Kevin O’Rourke is published by Pelican (RRP £20). To order a copy for £17.60, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.It is often difficult to get in the mindset of an era other than our own. To understand why certain events happened, you have to accept that cultural values, which might seem shocking by today’s standards, were once commonplace. With this in mind, cast your mind back to 1999, a time in which Travis were both popular and relevant. It was this summer, when the band were at the height of their powers, that they started adding a cover to their setlist. Travis were – I know this is hard to believe now, but trust me – at the time a coolish rock band who played what was then considered real music. The choice was a shock: Britney Spears’s … Baby One More Time. “We did it for a laugh the first time,” said Fran Healy in an interview in 2005. “And as we played it, the irony slipped from my smile. It’s a very well-crafted song. It has that magic thing.” Travis’s cover began a bizarre part of musical history. It was a time in which bearded menage the Magic Numbers took on Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, replacing its searing horns with contrite melodicas. Keane performed a mash-up of Christina Aguilera’s Dirrrty and Destiny Child’s Bootylicious (they adapted the lyrics to namecheck the members of the band so the opening lines became: “Tim, can you handle this? Richard, can you handle this?”). Inherent in these performances is a horrible indie smugness. Like a supply teacher telling an English class that Shakespeare, was, in a way, the first rapper, guitar boys truly believed that this was the way to reveal that pop had some artistic merit, but it could only be discovered by removing all the nuance and having it performed by a strummer from the home counties. Things reached a particular apex when Ryan Adams, the patron saint of slamming your bedroom door and crying into your pillow, covered Taylor Swift’s entire 1989 album. The record was a perfectly reasonable thing to have on the background during a shiva but, as the New York Times wrote at the time, it’s “remarkable only if you feel more comfortable taking your shots of pain from a tortured middle-aged man than an in-control young woman”. However, Ryan Adams is now something of an anomaly in the musical landscape, a man so identifiably indie that hearing him cover pop songs felt novel. When guitar band the 1975 covered Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next last month it sounded no more or less earthy than their own pop-indebted sound. With the lines permanently smudged between pop and alternative, we might be witnessing the death of one of the defining musical art forms of the past couple of decades. But, thanks to YouTube, we will always have a record of crimes that were committed by, say, the Automatic’s screamo version of Kanye West’s Gold Digger.If estimates are correct, Kamala Harris drew a bigger crowd at her presidential campaign launch in Oakland than Barack Obama did when he announced his run for president in Illinois in 2007. Harris, the second African-American woman elected to the US senate, has drawn comparisons to Obama since early in her political career. And on Sunday, at least 20,000 people flooded the streets of downtown Oakland to hear the California senator outline her plan for winning the White House in 2020, according to an estimate from local police. Obama’s 2007 campaign launch attracted an estimated 15,000 people. Standing in front of seven large American flags, Harris on Sunday afternoon portrayed herself as a fighter, willing to stand up at “an inflection point,” with American democracy under attack “like never before.” “My whole life, I’ve only had one client: the people,” Harris said, while invoking a career as a prosecutor which started nearly 30 years ago in Oakland. Harris, who was elected to the senate in 2016, announced her run for president last week, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. She would be both the first African American woman and first South Asian American to be chosen as a presidential nominee. Her campaign logo pays tribute to Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress who in 1972 became the first woman and African American to seek the presidential nomination of a major political party. Harris’ platform includes Medicare for All, criminal justice reform, and the need to respond to the opioid crisis as a public health emergency. “What we don’t need is another war on drugs,” she said. She pledged to act “on science fact, not science fiction” in response to climate change. Harris assailed Donald Trump’s policies, criticized “the arrogance of power” she saw in wealthy bank executives after the foreclosure crisis, and said that Americans needed to be honest about the country’s problems with racism, sexism, anti-semitism and transphobia. She also emphasized unity, praising “the amazing spirit of the American people” and pledging her desire to be a president, echoing Lincoln, “Of the people, by the people, and for all people.” “People are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other,” Harris said. “But that is not our story. That is not who we are.” “Who are we as Americans?” she asked. Her answer: “We are better than this.” At one point early in her speech, a heckler repeatedly shouted over Harris. The crowd erupted in cheers and chants of “Ka-ma-la! Ka-ma-la!” until the disruption stopped. “We’ve got you, Kamala,” a man yelled as the cheers died down. In the hours before her speech, potential Harris voters waited in long lines that snaked up and down multiple Oakland city blocks. Many said that they were only just getting to know the senator’s past and present policy positions, but that it was easy to see the former prosecutor as a formidable opponent to Donald Trump in presidential debates. Among the tens of thousands who waited in line to hear Harris speak were tech workers and school administrators; doctors from Berkeley and members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Harris’ sorority; an Oakland high school student preparing to vote for the first time, and an IT worker who had been shaken by the resurgence of racism during Obama’s second term. Harris “sounds like another version of Obama,” said Mark Olford, 46, who spent more than a decade working in IT in Australia, and said he was troubled on his return to find America seemed to have taken several steps backward on racism. Electing a candidate of color would help, Olford said, arguing that white political candidates seemed less invested in the struggles of minorities in America. Bahja Johnson, 29 and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historic black sorority Harris joined in college, said she would have questions about how well Harris lives up to that campaign slogan: “For the People.” But Johnson also said she wanted to focus for a day on the historic nature of the campaign. “This is a black woman running for president,” Johnson said, adding that the Harris campaign was tremendously important for women of color even if they do not end up choosing her as their candidate. “You can’t be it until you see it,” Johnson said her mother had always told her. Her friend Lauren Zabel, who works in tech, said: “Kamala is an intersectional candidate. She has an Indian mother and a black father. Her husband is Jewish. She’s a stepmother. I think a lot of people can relate to that.” Both women said Harris’ tough questioning of Trump supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh last October made them feel she was representing them in a room of powerful men determined to secure the appointment. “If she can hold her own there,” Johnson said, “she can hold her own anywhere.” But both had questions about Harris’ record as a prosecutor, and her choices when as Zabel put it, it came to “putting people of color in jail”. In a new book, Harris embraces the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for swift action on police brutality. But she is facing scrutiny for the tensions between her progressive rhetoric as a senator and her record as San Francisco district attorney and attorney general of California, particularly on policing, sex work, trans rights and prisons. Activists in San Francisco and Oakland say she ignored calls to use her office to hold police accountable for the killings of black and Latino men. Johnson on Sunday said she wanted to give Harris a chance to speak to her own record, “before I start to tear apart her platform”. Taylor Nelson, 17, a high-schooler from Oakland, said the rally was her first step in preparing to vote for the first time. Harris’ positions on gun reform, birth control and the border would be important, she said. “I am happy it’s a lot of women running,” Nelson added. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard have also declared their candidacies. There were dissenting voices on Sunday, too. Dina Asfaha, 20, from Berkeley, stood in the street wearing two posters attacking Harris’ record and arguing that Harris was “for the ruling class” and not “for the people”. Harris “hijacks leftist language language” and “weaponizes her identity”, said Asfaha, who noted she herself was a black woman. A member of the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, she said she supported the independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders for president in 2020. With her announcement a week ago, Harris joined a crowded Democratic primary field. Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former Republican mayor of New York City, former vice-president Joe Biden and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke are also considering runs, as are senators including Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sherrod Brown of Ohioand Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Former housing secretary Julián Castro and South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg have declared campaigns. Controversy continued on Sunday over the former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz’s apparent plan to run as an independent.Brazil’s new environment minister, Ricardo Salles, has suspended all partnerships and agreements with non-governmental organizations for 90 days, in a move that was described as “a war against NGOs”. Announcing the move, Salles said the three-month suspension was to allow a re-evaluation of such partnerships, but civil society organizations described the move as a blatant and illegal attack on the environment and those working to protect it. Salles, appointed by the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and hand-picked by the agro-business caucus, has previously described global warming as a “secondary issue” and dismissed fines for environmental crimes as “ideological”. A group of eight networks of environmental organizations said there was “no justification” for the measure, which they described as unconstitutional, because contracts between the government and NGOs can only be suspended through a formal process after irregularities have been found. The newspaper O Globosaid the move “sounded like a declaration of war on NGOs dedicated to conservation”. Carlos Rittl, the executive director of the Observatory on Climate, argued that because NGO and government partnerships were subject to long approval processes and periodical progress reports, the minister already had the information needed to evaluate current contracts. “The minister has shown much more interest in attacking organizations that protect the environment than fighting environmental crimes,” said Rittl. According to data released late last year, deforestation in Brazil increased by 13.7% – the largest increase in nearly a decade. Indigenous people and other environmental defenders live under precarious circumstances in rural areas with little rule of law – 46 environmental defenders were killed in 2017 in Brazil. Many environmental projects are supported by money that comes from outside Brazil. But included in Salles’s announcement of the suspensions was the Amazon Fund, which is administered by Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, and is funded through donations mostly from the Norwegian and German governments. Throughout his campaign, Bolsonaro jeered at NGOs: “You can be sure, if I get [to the presidency], there will no money for NGOs. Those useless people will have to go work.” Bolsonaro’s supporters celebrated Salles’s decision. “The spending spree with government money is over!” wrote one Twitter user. “Brilliant! Many NGOs benefit from public money to practice political-ideological activism.” But Rittl said the damage done from a three-month suspension could be irreversible. He and many in the environmental protection community see a grim outlook for the next four years under the Bolsonaro administration. “The environment is under attack,” he said. “All indications say that deforestation and violence against indigenous people will go up.”The vote arrived in time for editors to fashion their front pages and the results are not good for Theresa May. The Sun has gone all-out, delivering a classic. “Brextinct”, is its headline and they have pasted May’s face onto a dodo. Presumably the headline intends to speak to the prime minister’s tenure as much as her deal. Tomorrow's front page: Theresa May's EU deal is dead after she suffered the largest Commons defeat in history https://t.co/v42ielZThE pic.twitter.com/T7o7VoQKgS The Guardian features a rare picture of the No lobby, which is packed with MPs walking through it to vote against May’s Brexit deal. The headline is “May suffers historic defeat as Tories turn against her” and the paper paints a picture of how the remarkable day unfolded, saying: “On a day of extraordinary drama at Westminster, the House of Commons delivered a devastating verdict on May’s deal, voting against it by 432 to 202. The scale of the defeat, by a majority of 230, was unprecedented in the modern parliamentary era and saw ardent Brexiters such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson walk through a packed division lobby cheek-by-jowl with passionate remainers.” The Guardian front page, Wednesday 16 January 2019: May suffers historic defeat as Tories turn against her pic.twitter.com/CFcSyQeL4k The Daily Mirror focuses on the no-confidence motion launched by Jeremy Corbyn, with the splash: “No deal, no hope, no clue, no confidence.” Wednesday’s Daily MIRROR: “No deal.. No hope.. No clue.. No confidence “ #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/Lf5tUGh3jU “A complete humiliation,” says the Telegraph, which reports her Brexit deal has “turned to dust”. The paper is happily sticking the knife in to May, running a front page comment piece saying “It takes a special kind of skill to get that many people to unite against you”. The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph 'A complete humiliation' #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/KiMQDCy2Xa “May suffers historic defeat,” is the Times’ headline. Its front page story says “Theresa May was under mounting pressure last night to delay Brexit after she suffered the largest Commons defeat in political history”. Wednesday’s TIMES: “May suffers historic defeat” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/NgGX7cTIGs The Daily Express’s splash is “Dismay”. But the paper, which is pro-Brexit, is not angry with May, whom the paper says “valiantly fought for her deal”. The Express also has a lengthy directive to MPs on its front page: “This nation is crying out for unity, but all Jeremy Corbyn wants is to oust the PM. Now it’s time for the MPs to do their duty and work with Theresa May for a deal that satisfies the 17.4m who voted Brexit … Don’t fail us!” After a day of Brexit chaos, here's tomorrow's Daily Express front page. pic.twitter.com/NknHcyHzYQ Even the Daily Mail, which is usually incredibly supportive of the prime minister, can only muster: “Fighting for her life”. Still keen to show its support for May, the Mail says: “The prime minister called on mutinous Tory MPs to back her in a confidence vote tonight. Another defeat could trigger an election and put Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.” Wednesday’s Daily MAIL: “Fighting For Her Life” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/1UNiCOj8dC The Financial Times’ headline is “May’s Brexit deal crushed by Commons” and its story tries to convey the scale of the defeat, saying “Theresa May’s Brexit deal, the product of two years of torturous negotiations in Brussels, was last night overwhelmingly rejected by the House of Commons.” Just published: front page of the Financial Times, UK edition, Wednesday 16 January https://t.co/UOUnhWap6i pic.twitter.com/xYLndUCO3H The i calls the day’s events a “historic humiliation”, pointing out that Tory backbenchers voted “six to one against her Brexit deal” and the Scotsman runs the simple headline “Crushed”. Wednesday’s i - “Historic humiliation” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/uyNDB7UGbi Wednesday’s SCOTSMAN: “Crushed” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/GfNIPrMOI7Indonesian forces have raided and allegedly destroyed the offices of the West Papuan liberation group, taking over one site in what lawyers for the group claim is an “illegal occupation”. The raids, which have prompted threats of legal action, as well as several arrests and three treason charges, come amid an increased crackdown on the separatist movement and continuing violence in the decades-long insurgency against Indonesia. Three headquarters of the West Papuan National Committee (KNPB) – the domestic arm of the liberation campaign – were raided by Indonesia police and military (TNI) in recent weeks, with two destroyed and the Timika office taken over for use as a joint military-police outpost on New Year’s Eve. The Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua share an island with Papua New Guinea, and its indigenous population has been engaged with a low-level insurgency with Indonesia for about half a century. After the departure of Dutch colonisers, and disagreement between Papuans, the Netherlands, and Indonesia, the United Nations sponsored a treaty appointing Indonesia as temporary administrator. In 1969 a UN resolution affirmed the so-called “Act of Free Choice”– a referendum which saw 1,026 hand-picked West Papuans vote to remain with Indonesia, but which has been repeatedly dismissed by international observers as unrepresentative and coerced. Indonesia maintains the regions have always been Indonesian and the resolution simply affirmed its sovereignty. A guerrilla separatist movement grew and violence has continued ever since, with claims more than half a million West Papuan people have been killed, as well as countless arrested and injured, and villages destroyed. Indonesia is regularly accused of human rights abuses, which it denies. In recent years the West Papua cause has gained increased support from regional neighbours, including Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands, but a 2017 independence petition – signed by 1.8 million West Papuans and smuggled out of the country to the UN’s decolonisation committee – was rebuffed as outside its mandate. A letter sent to Mimika police by KNPB lawyers demanded authorities withdraw from its ongoing “illegal occupation” by Tuesday or face legal action. “We are seeing a new chapter of persecution against KNPB by unlawfully arresting them and now arbitrarily destroying their properties,” KNPB lawyer Veronica Koman said. The letter accused officers of trespassing and of coercion in the arrests and detaining eight activists who allegedly signed letters that they were “forever Indonesian” and promising not to take part in any further campaigns. Among those arrested was Yanto Awerkion, who was released in April last year after spending 10 months in prison for his involvement in an independence petition. The KNPB legal letter said the organisation had given authorities notice on 29 December, as an act of good faith, that it intended to hold a prayer event marking their fifth anniversary. “On 31 December 2018, the prayer and traditional cooking pit feast ‘bakar batu’ event which was planned to be held at 9am was forcibly cancelled by the arrival of more than a hundred police and military personnels,” the letter alleged. “They failed to present letter of assignment, arrest warrant, and search warrant [and] ... police conducted destruction including vandalism.” Mimika police chief Agung Marlianto confirmed to the Jakarta Post that about 80 security personnel took over the KNPB headquarters in Timika on New Year’s Eve, removing all insignia and posters, and destroying walls. “The headquarters is not allowed to operate any more and was taken over as a TNI and police post from now on,” he said. Eight KNPB members were also questioned on Saturday as part of treason investigations, the lawyers alleged. On Tuesday afternoon they said three had been flown to Jayapura and charged with treason offences over the prayer event. KNPB lawyer Veronica Koman said campaigners’ freedom of assembly was guaranteed by the constitution, and claims that the organisation was illegal were incorrect in law. “Even if KNPB was illegal, police still does not have the right or authority to destroy or vandalize their property, let alone trespassing and illegally occupying land and building owned by KNPB.” The takeover of the Timika office followed the alleged destruction of headquarters in Asmat and Jayapura in December. In a video purported to show the Asmat site, a man films the smoking ruins of a building. “Today, Free Papua office was burnt down by police and military,” he says, according to a translation obtained by Guardian Australia. “We are full of tears, we are full of misery, but we will continue the fight. Wherever you are, please support us and be in solidarity with us, because we will continue the fight for now and forever.” Indonesian authorities launched a crackdown on West Papuan separatists last month following the killing of at least 17 construction workers in the Ndagu province of West Papua by the liberation army, which claimed the workers were all members of the Indonesian military. The attack came just days after Indonesia arrested more than 500 people, reportedly including Indonesians, at West Papuan independence rallies across the country. Indonesia was later accused of using white phosphorus on civilians – against international law – in a report by the Saturday Paper, a report Indonesia said was “totally baseless, non-factual, and gravely misleading”. Following the attack on the construction workers, the exiled leader of the West Papuan independence movement, Benny Wenda called for calm on all sides. In an interview with the Guardian, Wenda said Indonesia had a history of “creating violence” and using it to justify increases to its military presence and harsh crackdowns on West Papuans.When British photographer Paul Trevor was travelling around the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico in the 1980s, he stayed at a hotel where guests had to bring their own hammocks. “You went into the bedroom and there were just two hooks,” he recalls. “So you needed to provide your own, otherwise you slept on the floor.” He headed out to buy one, but found the owner of the local shop asleep in front of his folded-up hammocks. Careful not to disturb the slumbering shopkeeper, Paul Trevor quietly photographed the scene and left. (He returned to buy a hammock later.) This photo joined a growing collection he’d been putting together since he started out in photography a decade earlier. In an ongoing project, brought together in his new book Sleeper, he photographs people – and sometimes animals – napping. “It’s something I’m drawn to: there’s something very serene, very peaceful about it,” he says. Sleeping is something everyone does. “These pictures observe nappers all over the world – we can all relate to it, it’s such a universal thing,” he says. “We’re dealing with people of different age groups, races, classes. It’s an interesting way of creating a visual narrative that deals with these things in an implicit way.” And, he adds, naps are healthy: “I’m on my way to Barcelona at the moment, and in Spain people have a siesta and they live longer than all the other people in Europe.” The man in the shop never saw the picture of himself having a snooze. “I think if he saw it he would have a bit of a chuckle,” Paul Trevor says. “He’d probably complain that it was supposed to be his siesta and they forced him into the shop, so he decided to have his siesta anyway.” Sleeper is out now (Cafe Royal, £6)Jeremy Corbyn has always been a unilateralist. He wanted to scrap our nuclear deterrent against the Soviet Union at the height of the cold war. So it should be no surprise that he insists Britain should unilaterally disarm in its negotiations with the EU. That is what his demand that Theresa May take no deal off the table means. If we rule out leaving with no withdrawal agreement, we would have to accept whatever terms the EU dictates. Whatever the price tag (£39bn is just for starters), whatever the loss of control over our borders and laws, however great the humiliation – we would have to accept it to avoid no deal. What is surprising is that the CBI apparently agrees with Corbyn’s unilateralism. It, too, wants to abandon the option of leaving with no withdrawal agreement on 29 March. Yet would a single successful business in this country enter into negotiations with a customer or merger partner without being prepared to walk away without a deal if it could not get a satisfactory one? Moreover, if a director publicly said during negotiations that the firm could not walk away without an agreement, they would be sacked for undermining the firm’s bargaining position. Yet that is what the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and Greg Clark have done – most recently in their briefing of 300 business leaders – thereby weakening May’s bargaining position. Of course, the CBI (to which so few businesses belong that it refuses to reveal how many direct members it has) is led by bureaucrats, most of whom have never run a business in their lives and whose track record on policy is lamentable. It warned that it would be a disaster not to join the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM), a disaster to leave the ERM and a disaster not to join the euro. A real businessman I spoke to recently was despairing of the CBI approach. He gave a vivid example of how essential it was to be ready – and seen by your negotiating partner to be ready – to walk away with no deal. Having discovered an offshore oilfield, he had to negotiate a contract with the only nearby pipeline company to bring the oil ashore. The company thought he had no alternative so demanded an exorbitant fee. He therefore not only declared that he was prepared to build his own pipeline but hired headhunters to recruit people to build it. Word reached the pipeline company and a reasonable deal was negotiated. The businessman said: “The £20k we spent on headhunters was the best investment I ever made – it showed I was prepared to walk away.” So, let’s not begrudge a few million spent on preparing to leave with no withdrawal agreement. Those preparations may prove unnecessary – but only because they persuade the EU to agree a last-minute withdrawal agreement shorn of the intolerable backstop and commitment to pay £39bn for nothing in return. Of course, it would be best to agree a Canada-style free trade deal (which Donald Tusk offered in March and again in October) so that we can continue to trade with the EU with zero tariffs. But we must be prepared to leave on WTO terms if the EU will not revert to a free trade deal immediately. Leaving on WTO terms has three big positives. First, we keep £39bn – we would be cashing in not crashing out. Second, we would end the corrosive economic and political uncertainty that would otherwise grind on for more than two years. Third, we would force Ireland, the UK and the EU to resolve the Irish border issue by administrative means, without checks at the border – as all have said they will do if we leave without a withdrawal agreement. This would clear the way for a Canada-style deal covering the whole of the UK. Moreover, it is increasingly obvious that the supposed downsides of leaving with no withdrawal agreement have been exaggerated or eliminated. Most of the scares about shortages of medicines, food etc assumed there would be delays at Dover or Calais. But HMRC says it will carry out roughly the same number of checks as at present because checks relate to the risk of smuggling drugs and cigarettes, and illegal immigrants – none of which will increase post Brexit. Moreover, it will “prioritise flow over compliance” and wave vehicles through even if their customs declarations are incomplete. Now the Calais port chairman has claimed that Calais will have no more checks than at present. He says he is confident that traffic will flow freely. The port is installing three extra lorry lanes, an inspection post for animals away from the port, and a scanner for trains moving at 30km/h. And it is indignant that the British government is – unnecessarily in its view – hiring ferries to take trade to other ports. The EU itself has removed other fears. It is legislating that planes will fly, lorries will get licences, Airbus can export its wings, and that live animals and animal products will be “swiftly” allowed entry. This is all subject to the UK reciprocating. It could be described as a “managed no deal”. Many of those urging us to reject the option of leaving with no withdrawal agreement know it would, as Aneurin Bevan warned of unilateral nuclear disarmament, mean sending British ministers “naked into the conference chamber”. But they want us to be forced to accept such humiliating terms that Britain might choose to return with its tail between its legs to beg to be allowed to stay in the EU. They misjudge the resolve of the British people. • Lord Lilley is a former Conservative MP who was trade and industry secretary from 1990 to 1992The Saudi woman who barricaded herself in a Thai hotel room in a desperate attempt to flee abuse landed in Canada on Saturday, capping a tumultuous and uncertain journey towards safety. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun arrived in Toronto, the country’s largest city. As she entered the airport’s arrivals area, she was accompanied by Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, who has been a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s jailing of female dissidents. “This is Rahaf al-Qunun, a very brave new Canadian,” Freeland told reporters, holding on to al-Qunun, who was wearing a “Canada” sweatshirt. The 18-year-old’s fight against deportation from Thailand as she tried to claim asylum captivated a global audience through her Twitter account, which had 157,000 followers as of Saturday. A number of countries had expressed interest in resettling al-Qunun, including Australia, which was her first choice – but it was Canada that acted quickly. “That is something that we are pleased to do because Canada is a country that understands how important it is to stand up for human rights, to stand up for women’s rights around the world,” the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said on Friday. The head of Canada’s United Nations refugee office, Jean-Nicolas Beuze, tweeted his thanks to the country for “having acted swiftly in providing a long-term solution”. “Women refugees at risk because of their gender are prioritised for resettlement & we know they can count on Canada,” he wrote. Trudeau downplayed the symbolism of Canada’s offer to resettle the young woman; Canada and Saudi Arabia have been at odds over the past year over the conservative kingdom’s human rights record. Last summer, a tweet in Arabic, sent by Global Affairs Canada, set off a diplomatic row between the two nations, in which Canadian diplomats were expelled from the kingdom, Saudi students in Canada were recalled and the Saudi government sold numerous Canadian equities and currency holdings.The Russian government has denied that it has sent mercenaries to protect the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, after an opposition leader with backing from the United States declared himself the country’s president. Russia has thrown its diplomatic weight behind Maduro in recent days, criticising the US for violating Venezuela’s sovereignty by supporting the leadership claim of opposition leader Juan Guaidó. Reports emerged earlier this week that dozens or hundreds of Russian mercenaries, who have been active in Ukraine and Syria, had been sent to protect Maduro from a possible coup attempt. The move would suggest that Russia was willing to raise the stakes to protect its investment in its closest ally in the western hemisphere. On a political news show on Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia had sent military personnel to the country. “Fear has a hundred eyes,” he said. He did not make a direct denial, however, because private military contractors do not work for the government. Russia has spent billions to build up its influence in Venezuela and there are concerns that regime change could erase that investment. The country has invested an estimated $17bn (£13bn) in cash-strapped South American nation, much of that in loans. In 2017, Russia agreed to restructure more than $3bn of Venezuelan debt and the Russian oil giant Rosneft has loaned a similar amount to PDVSA, the state-owned oil company. Rosneft also holds shares in Venezuelan oil production. Another $3bn loan from Russia was used to buy weapons, including assault rifles, warplanes and helicopters, making Venezuela the largest operator of Russian military equipment in South America. Kalashnikov, the maker of the AK47, is building a factory in Venezuela, although its opening has been repeatedly delayed. Estimates of how much Russia has invested in Venezuela vary. David Rozental, a researcher from the Institute of Latin America at the Russian Academy of Sciences, estimated the amount to be more than $20bn. Vladimir Davydov, the academic director at the Institute of Latin America, said that Russia views Venezuela as its beachhead in Latin America and that the country’s large oil reserves made it a top priority for Russia. “What role will Russia play in the control of strategic resources? That is what is being decided in Venezuela,” Davydov said. The man leading the charge has been Igor Sechin, the former military translator who now heads the Russian oil firm Rosneft. A fluent Spanish speaker, Sechin has met with Maduro regularly and has increased the Rosneft’s investment in Venezuelan oil production and its state-owned producer. “[Sechin] knows Latin America quite well, he is very influential,” said Davydov. “He wants to maintain Rosneft’s position in Venezuela and there are different ways to do that.” For now, Davydov and his colleagues said they did not expect Russia to involve itself militarily in the Venezuelan crisis, even in the event of American-backed intervention. It would primarily seek a role as an intermediary, they said, as a means to project Russian power and to protect its investment. Even in the case of a transfer of power, Russia may not stand to lose everything. “We didn’t conclude deals with [Hugo] Chávez or Maduro, we concluded deals with the parliament of Venezuela,” said Rozental, during a radio broadcast on Vesti FM this week. “In this sense, I don’t think that there’s a serious threat to Russian assets.”Apple’s shock downgrade has sent shares in European-listed companies with exposure to China – from Burberry and the Gucci owner, Kering, to chipmakers and miners – tumbling over fears the slowdown that has hit the Silicon Valley giant is set to spread. The luxury clothing and accessories maker Burberry, which generates substantial sales from Chinese shoppers, was among the biggest early fallers in the FTSE 100, losing more than 3% as the contagion of Apple’s surprise profit warning citing the “magnitude” of the economic slowdown in China spreads to European markets. Kering, the Paris-based owner of brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, fell 2.7%, while the Swiss watchmaker Swatch tumbled 3.5%. The stock value of mining and steel companies, many of which are heavily influenced by the Chinese market, took a major hit. Roman Abramovich’s steel and mining business Evraz was the biggest faller in early trading on the FTSE 100, down 4.3%. Antofagasta Holdings fell 2.3% while Anglo American dropped 1.3%, Rio Tinto 1.6%, Glencore 1.2% and BHP 1.5%. European suppliers to Apple have been hit hard, with the London-listed, Cardiff-based chip manufacturer IQE down 4%. The Newcastle-based software firm Sage fell 1.6%. Across Europe, Dialog Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics and BE Semiconductor fell 8%, 7% and 3% respectively. The Austrian chipmaker AMS had more than a fifth wiped off its stock value. On Wednesday Apple downgraded its sales forecast for the final three months of 2018, its most important period of the year, by up to 10% compared to previous guidance. The company, which temporarily halted trading in its shares as the chief executive, Tim Cook, issued a letter to shareholders explaining the situation, has not issued a profit warning since 2002. The company’s shares fell 8% in after hours trading on Wall Street. The move came the same day it was reported that factory activity in China contracted for the first time in 19 months in December. China’s economy has also been pinched by the trade war with the US, which is spilling over into other Asian economies. China is Apple’s third-largest market after the US and Europe.If there has been one defining trait in the foreign policy of the Trump era, it is confusion – not only in the frequent gaps between the paths taken by the president and his own administration, but also in the morass of contradictions and U-turns in his own impulses. Trump has insisted on bringing back US troops from Syria and Afghanistan, but has at times shocked his advisers with a bellicosity, towards Iran in particular, that risks starting new wars. While demonising the government in Tehran, Trump has decided not to directly contest Iranian influence in Syria with US troops. He threatened “fire and fury” against North Korea, but has since claimed to have “fallen in love” with Kim Jong-un, although the young dictator has yet to show any inclination to dismantle his nuclear arsenal. He is reluctant to criticise Vladimir Putin, boosting suspicions that he is under the sway of the Kremlin. But his administration has arguably taken a tougher line against Russia than its predecessor, piling on more sanctions and supplying lethal weaponry to Ukraine. There are some themes, however, that make foreign policy in the age of Trump quite different in character from any previous administration. One of them is the personalisation of relations with foreign governments. Trump evidently trusts his gut instincts more than the advice of the US foreign policy and security establishment, and those instincts have drawn him towards autocrats and away from traditional democratic allies, whom he often views as freeloaders, taking advantage of US might. Another constant in the Trumpian approach to the world is the drive to erase the legacy of Barack Obama and his other predecessors. Almost everything Obama was for, Trump has been overwhelmingly against, from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran to trade deals in the Pacific or with Europe, or the Paris climate accord. The distrust of multilateral agreements and institutions is a third persistent theme. Trump’s template for making deals is two powerful men facing off across a table. Round tables with a variety of voices frustrate him, forcing him to listen to foreigners with less power or with different points of view. He chose John Bolton as national security adviser primarily to build a bonfire of US international obligations. Trump has yet to be tested by an international crisis not of his own making. In the two years to come, we will see whether his (and the world’s) luck will continue to hold. “This is the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Donald Trump told reporters last year. Two years into his presidency he has plenty to brag about but also some big problems. Many of his own making. Unemployment is close to levels unseen since the first moon landing. It ticked up last month but even that rise came as more workers came off the sidelines and started looking for work. So far about 5m jobs have been created under Trump. It is pretty dubious to claim presidents “create” jobs but they all take the credit when things are good; unsurprisingly Trump is no exception. The current recovery clearly began under the previous president, Barack Obama. Even with the unarguably impressive improvements under Trump, he has a way to go before he can fulfil his promise of being “the greatest jobs president that God ever created”. Bill Clinton holds the record for largest numeric increase in the workforce, 23m jobs over his two terms. Obama, who was elected in the teeth of the worst recession in living memory, added 10m jobs over his two terms. Trump is off to a great start, but it’s just that. The US has experienced 99 months of consecutive jobs growth and a slowdown seems inevitable. Trump does, however, already have one over on Obama. Wage growth is finally picking up – a bit – after years of stagnation. In other areas, Trump’s economic record is more discordant. Trump’s single biggest policy achievement is the $1.5tn tax cut he pushed through in November 2017. Slammed by critics on the left and right as a giveaway for corporations and the 1%, it helped Democrats win in November’s midterm elections. And then, of course, there’s Trump’s other most notable economic policy – trade wars. Trump has effectively torn up decades of trade agreements and antagonised his largest trading partners. The impact of the rancor he has sown is still being assessed but it has already triggered dramatic sell-offs on stock markets and may have contributed to a slowdown in the Chinese economy. Apple issued its first profits warning since 2002 earlier this month, blaming slowing business in China. There will be more warnings to come. Trump’s economic populism helped get him elected. Whether he gets a second term will probably depend on whether he can keep the promises he made in the first, or whether the moves he made in the last two years come back to haunt him. Call it Operation Patriarchy. Old white men are fighting a losing battle against changing demographics in the United States, but the 72-year-old president and 76-year-old Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, are doing their utmost to safeguard the supremacy of white men in American courts. For two years, they have been packing the courts with predominantly white male conservative judges, whose lifetime appointments will mean the federal benches look a lot less like the country they preside over. That may sound like business as usual for a party in power but it is actually the product of McConnell’s long-term strategy. He blocked dozens of Obama nominees for the federal courts by refusing to hold Senate votes, gambling that in 2016 a Republican might win the presidency and present a roster of more conservative judges. After the 2016 death of the supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, McConnell used his control of the Senate to keep the seat vacant for 293 days by refusing a hearing for Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. For white evangelical Christians, a vacant seat on the supreme court was the most compelling reason to vote for Trump, the thrice-married serial adulterer and self-described sexual predator. After winning the presidency, Trump nominated a conservative in Neil Gorsuch. In 2018, Brett Kavanaugh’s supreme court nomination was forced through after a vitriolic and incomplete examination of past sexual assault allegations, which he denied. Trump and McConnell delivered a conservative majority on the court, which could now last decades and gives hopes of of overturning the the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, which enshrined the right to abortion. McConnell and Trump have also been moving rapidly to shift the appeal and district courts to the right. So far, 85 judges have been appointed by Trump – two to the supreme court, 30 for the US courts of appeal and 53 to district courts. That is a faster pace than Obama who, in eight years, appointed two supreme court justices, 55 appeal judges and 268 district judges. Trump has 70 more nominations in the pipeline which can be approved by a simple majority vote in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 advantage. Dominated by white men, many under 50, Trump’s appointments are already the least diverse crop of new judges for a generation. The House, newly controlled by the Democrats under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, can stop Republican legislation. But Democrats on Capitol Hill are helpless against Trump’s determination to install as many judges as possible. Trump’s stewardship of the environment is perhaps best known for the president’s dismissal of climate change as a Chinese hoax, or the allegations of flamboyant levels of corruption by Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, the now former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and interior department, respectively. But it’s the more mundane unspooling of arcane regulations by the administration that is most likely to leave a tangible mark on the health of Americans and the world around them. This work is ploddingly tenacious. For example, during the somnambulant period between Christmas and the New Year, the EPA decided that rules curbing emissions of mercury, linked to neurological disorders, heart and lung problems and compromised immune systems, are too onerous on coal plants and should be scrapped. The proposed reversal is just the latest in a list of about 80 environmental rules either dismantled or slated for abolition by the Trump administration. They include the destruction of the main Obama-era policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy, the halting of a planned ban of a pesticide deemed harmful to infants’ development and a weakening of fuel efficiency standards for cars. The new vehicles regime sets up a bitter fight with California, which has stricter pollution rules for cars and trucks than the federal standards. A cavalcade of legal action on other issues is also expected to play out this year as environmental groups attempt to strike down the Trumpian rollbacks. However, unlike many other areas of life, any sort of delay is almost as harmful as active worsening, with the world’s climate swiftly heating up to an unbearable point for many Americans, who already face increasingly punishing hurricanes, rising seas and apocalyptic wildfires. In October, a landmark report by UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned there is only a dozen years left to prevent global temperatures tipping beyond a point where droughts, floods, extreme heat and poverty become horrendously worse. In response, Trump claimed to have a “natural instinct for science” because his uncle, John Trump, was a professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The president added that the climate “goes back and forth, back and forth” before delivering his verdict on the IPCC report itself. “I don’t believe it,” he said. It took global condemnation and sustained bipartisan criticism at home for Donald Trump to show he had limits on how much suffering immigrants should endure for his own political gain. For three months in 2018 Trump admitted forcibly separated migrant children from their families, provoking scenes of desperation in border courtrooms and detention centres as mothers and fathers begged to have their children returned. In fact it had been separating thousands of children since 2017. Trump’s daughter and senior adviser Ivanka described those months as “a low point” for the administration, which formally abandoned the policy in June. And yet, a single U-turn aside, the administration continues to pursue an extremist agenda on immigration, keeping families separated in different, more insidious, ways. Trump’s travel ban, targeting a number of Muslim-majority countries, has stopped family members in some of the world’s most unstable regions from visiting their loved ones in America. Most recently a woman from Yemen was temporarily prevented from visiting her terminally ill two-year-old son, an American citizen. The administration, having supercharged the powers immigration enforcement agents’ power, continues to drive up the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented people – most with no serious criminal history. Now a record 44,000 people are held in immigration detention as the immigration court backlog swells to a record high. Thousands of those facing deportation have lived in America for decades, building families and new lives here. Meanwhile the administration has cut the number of refugees allowed into the country to a record low of 30,000. It has slashed the number of successful green card applications. And Trump has personally threatened to try to end birthright citizenship. Of course, there is also Trump’s infamous campaign pledge to build a wall along the US’s southern border, which he concedes will not now be funded by Mexico, or made of concrete. Despite a government shutdown over wall funding crippling parts of the federal government, it is those most vulnerable, namely asylum seekers forced to languish just outside the US, who endure the most as a consequence of Trump’s relentless pursuit of an ineffective solution to a complex problem on the border.Considering the anticipation attached to this gig, which has been talked up as a significant event for Davido – he’s nearly sold out the O2, a considerable leap toward the mainstream – and for Afrobeat itself, it’s poor form for the Lagos-based singer to turn up 65 minutes late. It’s remarkable how quickly that ceases to matter, however, when Idris Elba arrives to introduce him. Having the stature to corral the actor into serving as his hypeman and, a bit later, to inveigle dancehall superstar Popcaan on stage for two songs, hints that Davido’s transition from Nigerian pop’s favourite son to global commodity is under way. Seconds later, there’s David Adeleke himself, making a rock star’s entrance on a platform that emits sparks as it travels overhead. Encased in sequins and shades, he would be a considerable presence even if his keening voice were less compelling. He allows the audience to sing most of the opening Aye for him, jumping in on the choruses; the indomitably uplifting music, played by backing band the Compozers, contrasts strikingly with his downtempo voice. He takes over on Back When, whipping through its playful boasts with the confidence of a man who’s just telling his truth as he sees it. Many of his mannerisms are influenced by the American rappers with whom he has worked, including Young Thug and Swae Lee; as he strides through the show, framed by gusts of fire and steam, he’s incredibly alpha. That could help his prospects in the US, but his real selling point, illustrated by this strong show, is his ability to slip between cultures, at home in both. At the Birdcage, Manchester, 3 February.Roma and The Favourite will go head to head at the Oscars after they received 10 Academy Award nominations each. Roma, Alfonso Cuarón’s memoir of childhood in 1970s Mexico City, topped many critics’ lists of 2018 (including the Guardian’s) and has scored 10 nominations, including best film and best director for Cuarón. Roma’s success demonstrates the Oscars’ acceptance of streaming giant Netflix, which it had had hitherto treated with suspicion. Netflix has launched an expensive awards campaign which appears to be have paid off. Scabrous period comedy The Favourite, about political power games at the 18th century court of Queen Anne, also received 10 nominations, including best actress for Olivia Colman. With 12 Bafta nominations, and a single Golden Globe win for Colman (for the best actress, musical or comedy), The Favourite emerged as much liked contender as awards season has progressed, and a powerful vehicle for its cast which includes Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, who were both nominated for best supporting actress. A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut about a waning country icon and the unknown singer (played by Lady Gaga) he mentors, picked up eight nominations. The film, which premiered at the Venice film festival last August, began awards season as frontrunner, before losing momentum. Also on eight nominations is Vice, the comedy about Dick Cheney, vice president to George W Bush and architect of the war on terror. Christian Bale is nominated for best actor. Black Panther, the Marvel superhero film starring Chadwick Boseman, clocked up a surprise seven nominations, including best picture. Green Book, the early Oscar frontrunner about the burgeoning friendship between African American pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his Italian-American driver Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) scored five nominations, including best picture and best supporting actor for Ali. Its awards campaign has become dogged by controversy, after the film’s director Peter Farrelly apologised for sexual harassment and co-writer Nick Vallelonga apologised for an anti-Muslim tweet he sent in 2015. However, Green Book remains a strong contender, especially after winning the key Producers’ Guild award. Bohemian Rhapsody, the hit biopic of Freddie Mercury and Queen, emerged unexpectedly strongly from the Golden Globes, where it won best drama and best actor, drama, for Rami Malek. It has continued its successful streak at the Oscars, with five nominations, including best picture and Malek up for best actor. Its credited director Bryan Singer, who left the production in controversial circumstances before the end of filming, has not been nominated. First Man, which stars Ryan Gosling as astronaut Neil Armstrong, was considered a safe bet for Oscar success when it was first premiered at Venice, with La La Land director Damien Chazelle behind the camera and support from The Crown’s Claire Foy as Armstrong’s wife Janet. It came up short at the Golden Globes with two nominations (one of which was for Foy) and one win, for its score. It now receives four nominations for the Oscars. Black Sheep, a short film commissioned by the Guardian, received a nomination for best short documentary. Free to view on the Guardian website, it describes the lengths that a black 11 year old, Cornelius Walker, went to fit in with a racist gang after his family moved away from London. For only the second time in their 91 year history, the Academy Awards will not have a host, after the resignation last December of Kevin Hart, following a backlash to re-emerged homophobic comments. Speculation had been rife that Hart would return to the role; after he declared himself uninterested earlier this month, the Academy opted not to replace him and instead opt for a rolling cast of A-list presenters. Key awards ceremonies still to come before the Oscars include the Screen Actors Guild awards on 27 January and the Baftas on 10 February. This year’s ceremony will take place on 24 February in the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. • More details to follow …Hundreds of activists remain in hiding in Zimbabwe, on the fifth day of the worst government crackdown since the ousting of Robert Mugabe. Soldiers and unidentified armed men conducted door-to-door searches in poor areas of cities on Friday, dragging “random” residents out of homes to be beaten and often detained, activists said. The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said it had treated 68 cases of gunshot wounds and 100-plus other cases of “assaults with sharp objects, booted feet, baton sticks” and more in recent days. Security forces have arrested between 400 and 600 suspects since Monday, the start of a national “stay-at-home” protest called by unions after a massive increase in the price of fuel began on Monday, well-informed NGOs estimate. Twelve people are thought to have died after being shot. “I’m just moving from house to house every day, trying to limit my contacts, telling no one where I am. I’m trying to keep ahead of the intelligence services and the spies … It’s a very tough period,” said one activist who publicly backed the protests, speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location in Zimbabwe on Friday evening. Many of those detained are being held without charge in overcrowded prisons and police cells. Some may face new fast-track trials, ordered earlier this week, on charges that could bring long prison sentences. Four hundred detainees, largely charged with public order offences, were produced in batches of 50 before magistrates in Harare on Friday afternoon and denied bail. Though some are leading trade unionists and organisers in the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), many are ordinary people swept up in the biggest security operation seen in Zimbabwe for many years. Pastor Evan Marawire, a high-profile social media activist arrested on Wednesday, told reporters as he was brought to magistrates court that the crackdown was reminiscent of the Mugabe era. Mugabe’s authoritarian 37-year rule was ended in November 2017 by a military takeover, prompting widespread optimism that the repression of previous decades was over. But any faint hopes of political reform under Emmerson Mnangagwa, the ruling Zanu-PF party stalwart who took power and won elections in July, have been extinguished. The crisis has attracted fierce criticism from western powers, and will undermine Zimbabwe’s efforts to rejoin the international community after decades as a pariah. Mnangagwa is currently travelling in central Asia, Russia and Europe in an attempt to rally international support and investment that might stave off the total collapse of the country’s economy. Vice-president Constantino Chiwenga, a hardliner who is blamed for the shooting of six civilians during protests days after last year’s elections, is in charge. “They must have anticipated what was going to happen so the suspicion is that this is part of a good cop, bad cop routine. Chiwenga can deal with [the protests] with a very heavy hand and then Mnangagwa can say: ‘Very sorry, we’ll have an investigation,’ and still seem to be Mr Nice Guy,” said Derek Matyszak, an analyst in Harare. Marawire, denied bail on Friday, faces the same charges of incitement to violence and subversion now as he did two years ago before Mugabe’s resignation. He said he was innocent. He announced the protest on Sunday in a video clip alongside Peter Mutasa, the president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). Mutasa, an outspoken critic of the new government, has not been heard from since Tuesday, when he contacted colleagues to tell them his house had been raided. “We are worried about Peter and we hope he hasn’t been arrested,” said Tiri Marimo, a senior official of the ZCTU. Marawire’s sister, Telda, said she had discussed the possible consequences of her brother’s actions with him at the weekend. “The conditions in prison are deplorable and can break even the strongest man. That is a frightening thing for him to go through. He was very worried about how this would go but resolute that there was no way he could keep quiet,” she said. Energy Mutodi, the deputy information minister, said the police had “initially applied minimal force to disperse marauding crowds” before escalating their response to stop “a looting spree by hooligans”. Mugabe’s rule left Zimbabwe with vast debts, a crumbling infrastructure and soaring unemployment, especially among young people. Most of its 16 million people live hand-to-mouth, or survive on remittances from the extensive diaspora. The fuel price rise, of about 250%, is the latest blow to millions of citizens who are increasingly unable to buy basics such as fuel, food and medicines. Inflation is running at 40% – its highest rate since hyperinflation forced Zimbabwe to abandon its own currency 10 years ago in favour of dollars, electronic cash and so-called “bond notes” issued by the central bank. “People came on to the streets spontaneously, and in anger, which is rare for Zimbabwe. What then appears to have happened was that activists got together to try to challenge that anger,” said Matyszak. The response “was a continuation of the Mugabe style of dealing with dissent”. The southern city of Bulawayo was badly hit by looting and rioting earlier in the week. Though there has been limited public disorder since Wednesday, few inhabitants are venturing on to the streets patrolled by armed soldiers unless desperate. “It is getting very complicated. People are running out of food but there have been almost no deliveries of bread. There are very long queues to just get anything. There is a huge number of people who need medicine too. So everyone is afraid,” said one activist in the city. In Harare, the atmosphere was calmer than on previous days, but police still controlled queues for food and fuel while injured people streamed into a private hospital in the capital. Joelson Mugari, an MDC organiser, said a group of 10 men, including two soldiers, had assaulted him after banging on his door at 7.30am on Friday morning in Ngwenya, an outlying district of Harare. “They told me: ‘You are the ones organising the stay-away and we will teach you a lesson.’ Then they started hitting me on the head and all over,” said Mugari, who was treated secretly at a clinic in Harare. Mainstream opposition politicians appear to have been caught unprepared by the crisis. Mutodi said the government had temporarily blocked the internet to stop protesters making organised movements and inflammatory statements encouraging the looting and burning of police stations. “We advised them not to take part in the protests but the youth, because of drug abuse, were coerced into it … and the consequences have been serious,” he said. Officials have described those responsible for looting and blocking roads in major cities with makeshift barricades earlier in the week as “terrorists”. Activists say responsibility for the crisis lies with authorities. “Those who took to the streets during the shutdown were young people who don’t see any hope for their future,” said Samm Farai Monro. “The government can switch off the internet but not the frustrations of millions of people.”One of the more dizzying aspects of internet life is the the surreal experience of digital adjacency – present but not in person, you help narrativize an event, in real time, through engagement. You see Kanye West’s breakdown devolve tweet by refreshed tweet, or live Coachella through your cousin’s boyfriend’s Instagram stories. And in April 2017, many on social media reveled in the collapse of Fyre festival, a supermodel-touted luxury music festival that spectacularly imploded into memes of drunk, concert-less millennials stranded in the Bahamas. The saga of Fyre festival – examined in Netflix’s documentary Fyre – is, on one level, a classic tale of hubris in 2017 internet speak: a charismatic man, Billy McFarland, recruits the world’s most-liked models to convince people to drop thousands for a fantasy in the Bahamas. Ambitious promotion far outpaces production. Entitled young people who paid thousands to see Blink-182 with sushi live-stream their disappointment. A photo of cheese on bread in a styrofoam container, instead of the promised high-class meal, goes viral. Schadenfreude, memes, cable news. McFarland is sentenced to six years in prison for fraud. It’s all very funny, because it’s not us. That would be an easy story to tell. But Fyre, directed by Chris Smith of American Movie and Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond, smartly digs into why so many bought into, as one journalist said, “this very slick production”, and who, ultimately, paid for it. “Slick” would be the word for Fyre, which fuses crisply lit cutaway interviews with clips from its promotional video starring Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratajkowski and other Instagram-dominant models. But the film’s ace is how it contrasts the “official” high-resolution material with salvaged social media content and genuinely startling behind-the-scenes footage. It’s one thing to know that social media is a game, a performance. It’s another to watch a marketing manager fret over getting enough supermodels posted and tagged by 5pm. One of Fyre’s best revelations isn’t the scale of McFarland’s fraud – a federal court ordered him to pay back $26m – but the Fyre executive team’s impunity caught on camera. And then there’s the footage of the festival itself, a distinctly 2017 horror show almost too ripe for parody: wealthy and young music enthusiasts, chasing tequila shots and the best light, reduced to looting mattresses while carrying a selfie stick. It’s a testament to the film’s grasp on its subject that watching it feels like scrolling through Instagram or Twitter – an internet outrage cycle in containment. First you get the hook (hot models), then the snippets that draw out snark, glee, derision and some genuine anger over the gulf between manufactured expectation and reality (always a thing, but in the case of Fyre, so stark as to be stratospheric). Emotions, in short, that burn up and off easily, like wildfire. The film pulls at these reflexes as if it’s a newsfeed, adopting the template of Instagram tiles and toggling between images of vastly different production quality and truth value. A conventional interview, for example, cuts to a Snapchat Story of maybe-paid influencers processing their repurposed Fema tent “luxury bungalows”. Later, of course, the sobering truth of who and what were overlooked in the hot takes emerges – that the lack of water and profuse alcohol could have actually killed someone. That the many, many Bahamians – whose island Fyre festival rudely commandeered, and who worked furiously to help McFarland meet the deadline only to get screwed over – were forgotten. The most affecting footage of Fyre belongs to Maryann Rolle, a Bahamian restaurateur who fed bewildered attendees to the tune of thousands of dollars, and for whom Fyre remains not a joke, but a “painful” experience. Fyre offers plenty of room for blame. So it’s curious that for all the strands of culpability it weaves – the supermodels who promoted the festival, the organizers who repeatedly ignored basic infrastructure concerns, the culture of celebrity and performative wealth that made Fyre tickets so attractive in the first place – the film gives the last word to a series of meditations on McFarland’s charisma and possible redemption. The documentary doesn’t not consider McFarland’s associates (though co-founder Ja Rule notably escapes much attention), but the final frames muddle the message. For a documentary that so purposefully diffuses blame between both Fyre’s organizers and audience, the parting focus on one person – as if he is the main subject to interrogate – feels off-key. But it’s a weak note in an otherwise comprehensive look at what, exactly, happened with Fyre festival. Fyre allows you to marvel, and to feel – how spectacular the hubris, how gross the unfairness – while reminding that whether you bought a ticket or not, you were the audience the whole time. Fyre will be available on Netflix from 18 JanuaryWhen the Senate select committee on electric cars released its long-awaited report on Wednesday, it announced Australia was “on the cusp” of a change not seen since the advent of the internal combustion engine. It’s not the first time public figures have claimed an electric car revolution is imminent and while the report did not recommend brash action, it offered a moment of bipartisan recognition that a lack of government action to date has left Australia lagging behind the rest of the world. Despite fewer cars selling around the world last year, electric cars have kept rolling out of showrooms. More than 2m electric cars were sold in 2018, with China alone accounting for 1.26m sales. But while the rest of the world has been transitioning to the new technology, in 2017 Australians bought just 2,284 vehicles, according to the Electric Vehicle Council. Numbers are not currently available for 2018. The organisation’s CEO, Behyad Jafari, says the good news is that this represents a 68% increase from 2016, a trend he expects to continue into 2019 as lower-cost cars like the Hyundai Ionic and new-model Nissan Leaf hit the market for under $50,000. The bad news is that under the most conservative projections by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, it will take until 2027 for the uptake of electric cars to become significant. “The entire world is moving in this direction,” says Jafari. “It’s like Steve Jobs telling you that in 20 years’ time he’s going to create an iPhone and you do nothing about it. “At the moment we are nine to 10 years behind the rest of the world in the take-up of electric vehicles. Do we want cleaner roads? Do we want safer roads? A better environment? And the other thing is, do we want to get a slice of the pie? “We have to ask ourselves: do we continue to remain behind?” There are currently 17m registered cars on Australian roads which the Climate Council says represent the second biggest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the country. Each year Australian cars collectively produce roughly the same emissions as Queensland’s entire coal and gas-fired electricity supply, making decarbonising Australia’s vehicle fleet a must to combat climate change. There is no other national government that doesn’t bother having a plan, or consider knowing what to do next. Governments elsewhere have generally addressed the issue by encouraging more cars on the road to run off electricity and then working to “green” the power sources which provide that electricity. In Australia, work around managing the transition towards electric cars has been marred by inaction despite high-level support for electric cars from some among the current government. At the start of 2018, the now treasurer Josh Frydenberg penned an opinion piece as the environment minister arguing that “a global revolution in electric vehicles is under way”. His enthusiasm was not matched by conservative backbenchers. The division at a federal level has so far meant little has been done to introduce a cohesive plan or national strategy, leaving state governments, local authorities and industry to go it alone amid a lack of resources, limited authority and deep uncertainty. Sometimes this has made for big headlines that end in a whimper. Early last year, Sanjeev Gupta, the British billionaire investor, announced he wanted to take over the former Holden factory at Elizabeth, South Australia and cannibalise its old machinery to build electric cars. When Gupta failed to get traction, he said he would instead look to Victoria. There have been no updates since. Dr Mark Dean, a research associate with the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute at Flinders University, is not surprised. It is extremely risky and expensive to build a car factory capable of producing a whole car from scratch, as each plant relies on a vast network of suppliers and must produce in large volumes to turn a profit. “Automotive manufacturing is not a Lego kit,” Dean said. “You don’t just disassemble the factories and reassemble them when you need to use them again.” With Australia now wholly reliant on imports, the country is at the mercy of global markets. And as there are currently only a finite number of electric cars manufactured worldwide each year, car companies must think carefully about where to sell their cars, how many to send and how to price them. This means Australia must compete for a share of global production against countries that have clear policy positions on climate change and electric cars. Around the world, China, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, New Zealand and the UK have all acted with various degrees of intervention to encourage their take-up. Norway is currently the world leader, with almost two in five cars on its roads either electric or hybrid-electric vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency. Closer to home, New Zealand has set a target to have 64,000 electric cars by 2021. Though New Zealand has had issues with imported used electric cars, as of December 2018, 11,748 electric cars were on its roads in a country of 4.7 million. By contrast, on EVC figures, just 7,341 electric cars had sold in Australia as of 2017. The introduction of a similar aspirational target for Australia’s road fleet was among the 17 recommendations made by the Senate committee’s report. The committee may have shied away from committing to changes to the luxury car tax, but other recommendations included targets for including electric cars in the government fleet and even a Formula E championship race to encourage consumer interest. The first recommendation, however, was the most critical. Though it offered no specifics, it recognised an urgent need for a clear, national plan, a point which Jafari says is an acknowledgement at least that the status quo is unsustainable. “There is no other national government that doesn’t bother having a plan or consider knowing what to do next,” Jafari says. “If you come into the conversation saying ‘we can’t do it’, then it isn’t going to happen. “If you come in saying that we’re going to work hard, we may not achieve 100% of what we do, but we’ll still try, you’re going to get somewhere.”I used to think I was pretty great at French: I could handle a subjunctive and disdained the myriad mangled pronunciations of “millefeuille” on Masterchef. I lived in French-speaking Brussels for 12 years and have a French husband who still tolerates me misgendering the dishwasher after 24 years. My inflated sense of my abilities was bolstered over the years by compliments from surprised French people. Admittedly, the bar is pitifully low for Brits speaking a foreign language: like Samuel Johnson’s dog walking on its hind legs, it’s not done well but people are surprised it’s done at all. In recent years, however, I have let things slide. My French has become trashy: it’s the language of reality and cooking shows (my staple French televisual diet) and easy chat with indulgent friends. I fear I speak French like Joey Essex speaks English, and since we moved back to the UK this year things have got worse. My only French conversation here is with my husband and it runs a well-worn course: who should empty the bin; why we have no money; which of our teenage sons hates us more. When I try to express something complex, I get stuck mid-sentence, unable to express my thoughts clearly. Words that used to be there, waiting to be used, are awol and I have developed a horrible habit of just saying them in English. My husband understands, so who cares? But I care. I can’t bear to lose my French; it’s part of who I am. I even wrote a book about it, for God’s sake. I want to speak the language of Molière, if not like Molière then at least like a reasonably articulate adult. So I resolve to not just stop the rot but reverse it. This will involve a multi-pronged approach: online lessons plus conversation classes, supplemented by a diet of French podcasts and reading, including my third attempt at Les Misérables. Au boulot – to work! I take the Institut Français’s online test to check my level. It doesn’t seem difficult but my result – “first step to C1” – is mortifying. I assumed I had C1 (the second-highest level of European official language qualification) in the bag, but if this test could talk it would be saying: “Bof.” My first online lessons cheer me up: Frantastique (a learning platform developed with the Institut Français, tagline: “Surrender to French”) is a riot. In my first session, I watch a short cartoon in which anarchic aliens incomprehensibly revive a naked, frozen Victor Hugo (beard preserving his modesty), after which I answer grammar and vocabulary questions about it. I enjoy it so much, I do seven lessons in one sitting: Victor visits the alien canteen, but the lack of mustard makes everyone so angry they head to Earth to find more. I’m not sure what I’ve learned – aliens love mustard? – but I’m keen for more. One-to-one conversation classes at the Alliance Française (which has the mission of promoting French language and culture abroad) are a more serious affair. Christine Grimaud-Brown, my teacher and the director of the York branch, sends me an article on the 21st-century perception of time, no less, to prepare for our first session. It starts off as a relaxed chat and Christine doesn’t correct my mistakes (I secretly yearn for this), but we soon get into fairly abstract territory and speaking to a stranger makes me raise my game. I can tell this will be useful. For extra speaking practice, I try the Alliance Française’s Café Conversation, a twice-weekly chat for French speakers, with a native facilitator. Anything goes, topic wise: on my first session, we cover cricket (including whether French has a word for “wicket”), pantomimes and green energy; later discussions range from Alzheimer’s to cemeteries and Christmas cake. Levels vary although, broadly, the demographic is at the upper end of the scale: my French is tested explaining “piñata” (“a paper animal in which sweets are placed. One strikes the animal with a stick”) and “Hamilton” (“a popular musical of the American revolution utilising le rap”) to other attendees and to universal confusion. I love it, though, and show off dreadfully. On my morning dog walks, I plunge into the rigorous world of Le Nouvel Esprit Public, a geopolitics podcast featuring the kind of French intellectuals who would dip Melvyn Bragg in their café au lait and eat him for breakfast. They speak in fluid, impassioned sentences about the US midterms or the Italian budget. It’s exactly the kind of French I aspire to. I also enjoy Passions Médiévistes, in which medievalists describe their esoteric research, but it precipitates a minor existential crisis: why aren’t I researching dragons in medieval prayer books? “J’ai raté ma vie,” (my life is a failure) I mutter, Frenchly. Frantastique continues to entertain: Victor Hugo throws a wild party and the aliens hold a pro-mustard demo (“Liberté, Fraternité, Moutarde,” reads one placard). Regrettably but predictably, I have become obsessed with my marks. The questions aren’t difficult but I keep making stupid mistakes, to my own fury. Occasionally I feel hard done by: one afternoon my husband comes home to find me incandescent, brandishing a screengrab of a wood-burning stove. “What’s this?” I hiss angrily. “Er, un poêle?” “It’s not a four is it? I lost a mark for not calling it an oven!” My conversation class with Christine is about art, so I read the heap of articles she provides, then write an excruciatingly bad essay. It reads like the work of a pretentious but dim 12-year old. “What is art?” I say clunkily, before attempting to describe a Marina Abramović performance (“She washes the bloody bones of a cow for three days”), giving myself the giggles. In class, though, I really enjoy our discussion, and occasionally feel my lazy synapses creak into action, finding the right word or expression. My reading is patchy. Gaël Faye’s excellent novel Petit Pays, about the genocide in Burundi, teaches me “threadbare”, “calabash” and “serval” (admittedly, I don’t know what the last two actually are). Les Misérables, however, induces instant deep sleep and – now that Frantastique has transformed Victor Hugo into a tiny, naked sex god in my mind – floridly peculiar dreams. I test some new podcasts, including Vieille Branche, a series of interviews with older, outspoken and fascinating French public figures (I especially enjoy 88-year-old S&M mistress Catherine Robbe-Grillet). At the other end of the spectrum, I fall in love with Entre: tender, funny conversations with Justine, a sparky and delightful 11-year-old grappling with school, friendships and family. Each episode is five to 10 minutes long, perfect for learners. In class, we discuss fake news. I feel relaxed talking to Christine, but I notice she has a skilful way of pushing me into expressing more complex ideas with her questions. “Does society still care about truth?” she asks. Or: “Is national character a product of language or vice versa?” Sometimes I answer fluently; sometimes I end up stumbling and stuck. There are signs of progress. I finally stagger up a level on Frantastique, despite my constant blunders. At Café Conversation, in my capacity as class swot (fayot), I am asked to translate “pick your brain”, “quirky” and “allotment” and as I slalom between shoals of tourists when I leave, a hissed “Pardon” comes to my lips rather than the usual Yorkshire tut. My Frantastique experience draws to an ignominious close as I cravenly resort to cheating on the spelling of “environnemental”. Worse, I get 47% one day, due to my apparent inability to follow simple instructions conjugating the imperfect. I will miss Victor, and Gérard, a drooling, mustard-crazed alien blob on whom I have a bit of a crush. Has my French improved? My general knowledge certainly has: I know more about Breton medieval government, the artist Paul Sérusier and Armenian politics than I ever anticipated. On one glorious occasion in class, I supplied a word Christine had forgotten (“légiférer”, legislate). I have barely started Les Misérables, but already have some vocabulary that would be handy if I were a low-ranking cleric in Restoration France. Even so, when I retake the Institut Français test, I get that maddening “first step to C1” again. J’suis dég, as I would say in Joey Essex French. I’m gutted, but I shouldn’t be. “At your level, progress is much more subtle,” Christine reassures me. I do think something has started to shift: now when my husband and I watch the news, I find myself moved to launch into fluent sentences of Gallic vitriol at the sight of Jacob Rees-Mogg rather than Anglo-Saxon expletives. Better still, I have been powerfully reminded what I love about France and French: that fiercely cerebral public culture and the sheer beauty of its words. In one podcast someone casually uses “lacustre” (lacustrine, meaning of or relating to lakes); it’s so lovely I have to stop and write it down. By Victor Hugo’s beard, I will rise above my trash French and become the kind of person who says lacustre. From vloggeuse to startupeur or swag, most “hip” French words are English ones: chatbot, queer and cosplay all entered the Petit Robert dictionary this year. But here are a few that keep a Gallic flavour. Mecspliquer To mansplain. A mot-valise (portmanteau word) composed of mec (guy) and expliquer (to explain). Lourd Literally “heavy”, and generally used to mean tiresome, but now, in an adult-bamboozling plot twist, it means good, pleasing. C’est du lourd or ça envoie du lourd = it is impressive. The verlan (backwards slang) version, relou, is still used to mean annoying, or a pain. All clear? Clair comme de l’eau de boudin (as clear as black pudding water, another great expression). PTDR Pété de rire, literally “broken with mirth”, the French LOL. Although, of course, most French people use “LOL”. Pécho To seduce, get together with, hook up. Verlan of choper (to seize or get). J’ai le seum I am displeased/angry/disappointed. J’ai failli pécho ce gars, mais il a commencé à me mecspliquer ma propre thèse doctorale. C’est archi-relou, j’ai le seum. I nearly hooked up with this guy, but he started to mansplain my own PhD thesis to me. It’s such a pain, I’m gutted. Give your conversation a soupçon of Left Bank va-va-voom. Langage épicène Also known as écriture inclusive, this controversial but increasingly popular typography style uses a point médian, a sort of decimal point, to create gender-neutral nouns. So a person reading this would be un·e lecteur·rice and the person writing it would be be un·e journaliste (or un·e idiot·e). Last year the French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, banned the point médian in official documents with an inflammatory declaration that “the masculine is a neutral form”. Jupitérien From Jupiter, king of the gods. Applied to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential style (he used the term to contrast with the more down-to-earth approach of his predecessor, François Hollande), it implies a degree of deliberate distance and grandeur and is now used by his critics to suggest he is haughty or arrogant. Telling a teenager to call you “Monsieur le Président” = jupitérien. Cartésien My go-to word to sound intelligent in French. Derived from philosopher René Descartes, it’s used generically to mean “logical” or “rational”. Du point de vue purement cartésien (from a purely rational perspective) is a good (inflammatory) start to a sentence in a French argument. Charge mentale Mental load or burden. A hot topic of feminist debate following the publication last year of cartoonist Emma’s Fallait Demander – You Should Have Asked – on women’s experience of continually having to anticipate and meet their families’ myriad needs. The Twitter account @chargementale collates some of the most egregious examples of paternal ineptitude encountered by doctors in French paediatrics. J’ai commencé à voir tout le temps des crabes autour de moi I started to see crabs around me all the time. Not an everyday expression, but handy if you wish to reproduce Jean-Paul Sartre’s ill-advised 1970s experiment with mescaline. Life as a French intellectual is a dangerous business.One of the BBC’s longest-serving weather presenters has died suddenly after a short illness. Dianne Oxberry, who had presented the weather on BBC North West Tonight for 24 years, died on Thursday in the Christie, Manchester’s cancer hospital, the broadcaster said. She was 51 and was last on air in mid-December. Colleagues only found out in the new year that she was ill and said they were “heartbroken” to hear of her death. Sunderland-born Oxberry joined North West Tonight in 1994 after a stint on Radio 1 as Simon Mayo’s sidekick and quickly became a favourite for regional viewers. She had originally moved back to her native north to present Saturday morning children’s TV show The 8:15 From Manchester, alongside Ross King. As well as presenting the weather she went on to front Inside Out North West, the BBC’s regional current affairs programme. She also presented programmes on BBC Radio Manchester including the Breakfast Show. Oxberry had two children with her husband Ian Hindle, a camera operator. He said: “Dianne was an amazing wife and mother who embraced life to the full. She was an inspiration to all who knew and loved her but also to the people who watched and welcomed her into their homes each night as if she were part of their family too. “She will leave a massive void in our lives but, because of the remarkable person she was, she will forever live on in our hearts. The children and I will miss her more than anyone can imagine.” Roger Johnson, North West Tonight presenter, said: “We are heartbroken by Dianne’s death. It is almost impossible to comprehend. Dianne was North West Tonight. It’s hard to imagine the programme without her. “Our thoughts are with Ian and all of Dianne’s family. We hope they will find some comfort in the knowledge so many people loved Dianne and will miss her terribly.” Annabel Tiffin, Johnson’s co-presenter, said: “Di was so talented, so beautiful, so funny and so full of life. On screen she was a star, radiating warmth and good humour. Off screen, she was a wonderful colleague, a loyal friend and I will miss her terribly.” Aziz Rashid, the head of BBC North West, said: “For more than 20 years, viewers invited Dianne into their homes every night. She was a part of their lives. Just last November during our Plod for Pudsey challenge for Children in Need, Di was out meeting viewers around the region. I saw for myself the incredible reaction she got from the public, which showed how much people cared for her.” Helen Thomas, the director of BBC England, said: “Dianne had a remarkable career. For more than two decades, she was a key part of one of the most watched regional news programmes in the country. Prior to that, she’d had a successful stint working on air at Radio 1. “She was a brilliant weather presenter, showed she could do serious journalism with Inside Out and could do the lighter end of broadcasting brilliantly whenever it was needed. “Above all she was a lovely woman whose sudden and shocking death has robbed the BBC of one of our brightest stars. I’m thinking of all her family and friends at this awful time.”Changes in levels of a protein in the blood could help shed light on damage in the brain more than a decade before symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease develop, researchers have revealed. While there is no drug to stop the progression of Alzheimer’s, or cure it, the researchers said the study findings could be used by doctors to help anticipate when patients might start to show symptoms of the disease. They also said it showed that measuring changes in levels of this protein in the blood was a useful way to test whether new Alzheimer’s drugs show promise – something researchers have already begun to embrace. “We know Alzheimer’s disease starts [in the brain] one or two decades before you have any symptoms,” said Prof Mathias Jucker, a co-author of the study from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Tübingen. “We also know any therapy has to interfere 10 years [before symptoms] or even earlier to be successful if you want to target the cause of Alzheimer’s disease.” The blood test, he said, would allow researchers to test whether drugs were having an effect. Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, the team described how they looked at levels of a protein called neurofilament light chain (NfL) in participants’ blood and spinal fluid. This protein occurs inside neurons: previous research has shown increased levels of NfL in such fluids of mice to be linked to greater levels of damage to the brain, while Jucker added studies in humans had previously suggested NfL could be a useful marker for the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological conditions. In total the team looked at NfL levels for 243 people carrying a genetic mutation that predisposed them to Alzheimer’s, and 162 people without such a mutation. Jucker noted people with these mutations developed symptoms of Alzheimer’s at well-defined ages, allowing the team to measure levels of NfL a known number of years before symptoms were expected to become apparent. The team found about 6.8 years before symptoms developed, levels of NfL in the fluids began to markedly differ, with higher levels seen among those with a mutation of interest than those without, both in the blood and spinal fluid. The team then looked at data from a smaller group of participants to see how levels of this protein in the blood changed over a period of about three years. The results show the rate of increase in levels of NfL was higher for people genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s than those without a mutation of interest, with differences apparent more than 16 years before symptoms were expected to be seen. What is more, the rise in NfL was steepest in the years prior to the onset of symptoms, before levelling off as symptoms emerged. “It is not necessarily the absolute levels which tell you your neurodegeneration is ongoing, it is the rate of change,” said Jucker. “This rate of change [is] really sensitive very, very early – and that is exactly what we need for clinical studies.” Further work suggests a higher level of NfL in the blood, and a steeper rise in NfL, might both be linked to faster levels of thinning of a region of the brains’ cortex known to be affected by Alzheimer’s, as well as faster decline in memory and cognition. However, Dr James Pickett, the head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, noted the study had limitations, including that it only looked at those who had a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s – which only affects 1% of those with the condition. Many other conditions can also increase levels of NfL, including traumatic brain injury and multiple sclerosis, meaning it is not clear how useful the measure would be among individuals living with multiple health problems. Even so, Pickett, said the research was helpful. “We have done much to improve diagnosis rates but still only two-thirds of the 850,000 people across the UK living with dementia have a diagnosis, so any progress we can make to more accurately and quickly detect who has the condition is very welcome.”The Department of Health has signed two contracts for warehouse space to store drugs in case of a no-deal Brexit. With 10 weeks to go before the UK officially leaves the EU, officials are still planning on trying to secure another warehouse for storage. With the government also suggesting there could be a rise in food prices and supermarkets stockpiling tinned food and warning that supplying fresh food could be an issue under a no-deal Brexit, we asked you to tell us what, if any, actions you were taking. Several readers said they were stockpiling store cupboard items such as tinned food and dried milk. Families with concerns about medicine supplies said they were doing what they could to get more information, but that in some cases actual stockpiling would be impossible. We also heard from many readers who were pragmatic about actions necessary at home but increasingly frustrated by perceived lack of a unified “plan” from the government. You can read some of your stories below. I’m already stockpiling. I’ve got a healthy backlog of legumes and dry goods. Closer to the time I’ll get some proteins (European cheeses and meat substitutes mostly) and some high demand groceries we don’t grow much of – onions and tomatoes, for example. I started hormone replacement therapy in September as a trans person. I had to do this myself; ‘DIY’d’ without a prescription so I’ve also started stockpiling medicine. I’m sitting on the worse side of a 16+ month waiting list (which I’m told usually looks more like 24, once all the tests and paperwork have sat on someones desk for long enough). I also have very bad anxiety and I can’t really wait another two years. It’s such a helpless feeling – watching your life and body and years go in the wrong direction. I have about four months left of medication at this point. I’ve no idea how much I should order to stockpile. There is the possibility of a bridging prescription; a harm reduction prescription that goes between ‘DIYing’ and a gender identity clinic prescription. Whether my GP in particular will issue one is doubtful. I’m so happy to be on HRT at last, but having to do it in this way, in the current climate, it’s a scary thing to do. Lilidh, Aberdeen We have been buying extra tins of food alongside pasta, rice, water and other goods and we have a specific cupboard in our tiny kitchen that we call the ‘Brexit cupboard’. Everyone, including myself, jokes about it but I feel a responsibility to make sure we have a months supply of food in the event of worst case scenario. We have a food budget each week of £50 for four people. Inevitably we end up buying own brand supermarket goods, including a lot of tinned goods and dry pasta and we cook from scratch, but it’s unclear what supply chain changes will have for these. I’m also buying cheap medicine such as liquid paracetamol for the children. I have faith that a deal will be done, but I think it’s prudent to make sure we can survive in a worst case scenario. I don’t understand how people find this laughable because to me it just seems like common sense. We live in unprecedented times so unprecedented things can happen! Preparing for Brexit by stockpiling is the only way I feel I can have any control over what happens to my family in the event of a no-deal situation. Louise, Cotswolds My wife is disabled with secondary progressive MS. It has many effects but one of the most depressing is urinary incontinence. To deal with this, she has to perform intermittent catheterisation when she goes to the lavatory. She uses about six catheters a day. The catheters are manufactured by a Danish company, Coloplast, whose factory is in Hungary. We are naturally concerned that these could be in short supply in the event of a no-deal Brexit so we are asking our GP for a three month supply ahead of 29 March. We voted remain and the irresponsibility, mendacity and selfishness of those pressing for a no-deal is breathtaking, frightening and makes us ashamed to be British. Nigel, Oxfordshire One of my adult children has type one diabetes. We do not trust the government to ensure the availability after a no-deal Brexit of the two types of insulin he requires every day in order to survive. Very little insulin is manufactured in the UK and not the types that he uses. Daily insulin doses are variable, depending on various factors; carbohydrate intake, activity levels etc. For the last five months we have been ordering the maximum amount of insulin allowed on his repeat prescription, which is about double the amount he typically uses. By March we should have enough insulin to last up to eight months. I hope this will be sufficient. We do not feel selfish about this. At the moment insulin is freely imported into the UK, so the fact that we are stockpiling does not make less available to others. We will not waste any of the insulin as it has a long shelf life. Jane, Derbyshire I started stockpiling a few months ago, buying tinned and long life products each week when they were on offer. I am treating it like a sensible insurance, although I have been accused of acting irresponsibly, which I thought was slightly odd? I am planning to buy a chest freezer and to start building up a supply of frozen meals I have made. My plan is to have three months food supply by the end of March. I decided to become vegan two years ago as a direct consequence of Brexit. That may sound odd, but my thinking was if it does go pear-shaped I better do everything I can to remain healthy as long as possible. Who knows what the state of the health service and social care will be in 20 years time? I am hopeful Brexit can be stopped. If it can’t I am lucky I could just about manage financially. Longer term I don’t see a future for myself in the UK if we eventually leave. David Ivory, Wymeswold We have a ‘Brexit shelf’ which we’ve slowly been adding to over the last couple of months. This is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but my partner and I have made a conscious decision to buy extra groceries and we now have a good stock of all the essentials. Newspaper headlines become self fulfilling very quickly: I foresee panic buying once no deal is the most likely outcome and so it is good to be prepared. My main worry is about my youngest son, who has to have regular medication after being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. It is not however something we could buy or store, it’s an infusion the hospital administers. A drug called Infliximab is successfully keeping his symptoms at bay – but we just have to hope for the best. Nigel, 56, Twickenham How can you prepare for Brexit when the politicians seem to have no idea what it entails? I run my own joinery business and have asked suppliers about what happens to the timber imports etc in March next year and they can’t say. What use is HMRC in sending letters out so recently: surely this should have been thought about a little bit sooner? At home we will probably stockpile formula for our toddler (he has a milk protein allergy so needs specific formula and food). The fearmongering is starting again, with Michael Gove saying food prices will rise in event of no deal etc, all to get MPs scared to vote through May’s deal, but we are not going full scale prepper yet. John, Wales Financially, we’ve fixed our mortgage for five years. I’m splitting all our cash savings between four bank accounts, each under different banking licences to mitigate against online banking outages, failure of banks or runs on the banks. We’ll also be holding a larger than normal amount of cash at home. Power and heat is another major thing for our rural lives. We’ve stocked up on firewood and are considering options for a back-up power supply in the event of power outages. Finally, fuel shortages (which we have seen before) – we will keep our cars filled up with fuel, though we are not planning to stockpile. In the next few weeks I’ll be building a three month supply of ambient food (tins, pasta, dried milk etc) and bottled water plus six-months-worth of common medicines and first aid items. Rachel, Wiltshire As I am living on my small pensions I quickly realised post-Brexit vote that money may become an issue. I have had an allotment for many years growing both vegetables and flowers. In June 2016 I started reorganising things to incorporate both a polytunnel and greenhouse, with the hope that I can become close to self-sufficiency in most fruit and vegetables for much of the year. I have only recently been diagnosed with high blood pressure and have concerns that my treatment regime will not be settled in time for me to start stockpiling at the moment. Although I rarely use painkillers, I will be buying some just in case, along with ointments and anti-histamine creams and aiming to have a good selection of first aid dressings etc. Pam, 68, Isle of WightThere is a bear in the woods. Vladimir Putin is the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin. He has crushed dissent at home and wreaked havoc abroad, propping up a dictator in Syria, allegedly poisoning people in the UK and helping elect Donald Trump as the American president. No wonder he has been described as the most powerful man in the world. Now Putin, judo black belt and former KGB agent, is to be portrayed on the Washington DC stage, just two miles from the White House. On 18 January, Kleptocracy, directed by Jackson Gay and penned by Kenneth Lin, a former writer on House of Cards, will receive its world premiere at the Arena Stage theatre. The play, written before the US election in 2016, is inspired by the power struggle between Putin and the wealthy oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a crossroads in history when it was hoped Russia would embrace western liberal capitalism and become “more like us”. It did not quite work out that way. The play is also an undeniably timely exploration of US-Russia relations after the cold war. The man who will play Putin is Christopher Geary, 30, previously seen in the Geffen Playhouse’s These Paper Bullets! Although the Russian president is parodied by a bare-chested Beck Bennett on Saturday Night Live, neither Geary nor Lin is aware of him having been portrayed in American theatre before. “He’s utterly enigmatic and fascinating and very disciplined in some manners and then selfish and can be cruel,” Geary says. “But I think what I’m trying to focus on is I have to find the humanity in him because it does exist, and trying to find what he wants deep down is really essential.” Putin is not the kind of person you would want to encounter on a dark night. To take one example, in 2007 he brought his big black pet labrador in to meet the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who looked distinctly uncomfortable – she has reportedly been fearful of dogs since one attacked her in 1995. But the Putin presented to Washington audiences will not be a pantomime villain. Geary continues: “Putin goes home at night and goes to bed with thoughts and concerns, just like everybody else. So it’s that headspace that I’m more interested in. My job as an actor is to employ empathy, every character that I play. You hear in training: don’t judge your character, don’t judge your character. Empathy, I think, is one of the most powerful tools that an actor can use.” Some of the Russian autocrat’s public posturing will be recreated on stage, but so will his mysterious interior life. “You do see flashes of his public persona but you also see a private Putin, moments where he is talking directly to the audience. While the public image of Vladimir Putin has been so crafted by him and other people, moments of him alone with his thoughts and worries are opportunities to find maybe idiosyncrasies that we don’t see in his interviews or in documentaries.” A 1984 election campaign ad for Ronald Reagan began with the words “There is a bear in the woods”, interpreted by some as a reference to the Soviet threat. The new bear is Putin, identified by US intelligence agencies for interfering in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump and hurt his opponent Hillary Clinton. Special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate whether there was direct collusion with Trump, whose warm relationship with the Russian leader is an enduring puzzle. Geary comments: “It’s timely right now. The timeline of the play is not current but I think you see what’s coming down the line, and you see seeds that are being sown and you see America as a character in the play. You see some deal making. Nobody’s innocent.” Lin, an Asian American playwright whose works include Warrior Class, Po Boy Tango, Eric Carle’s Pancakes, Pancakes!, said Saïd and The Lynching of a White Man in Rural, CA, was commissioned to write the play in late 2015 by producer Robert Ahrens. The 40-year-old, who has never been to Russia, observes: “Considering it looms so large in the American cultural consciousness coming out of the second world war and the cold war, it’s amazing how little Americans really know about Russia. Quite frankly, I’d heard the name Khodorkovsky but I didn’t really know much about him and did not realise his significance in the grand political landscape. “I’m a person who wrote for House of Cards, and we had Russia storylines and we were definitely doing quite a bit of research into Putin. So I said: ‘Of course I’ll write this play for you, it’s very interesting, I’m not sure that people are going to want to see a Broadway play about Vladimir Putin.’” He laughs. “But the world has changed a lot since then.” When Lin consulted Putin experts, their general advice was: “Don’t get too poetic with him, he’s not this grand figure, he is a bureaucrat.” But that hardly makes for good theatre. The playwright says: “He certainly doesn’t have that influence on the world so if you’re dramatising that character, since he is a public figure that looms so large, you’re not necessarily trying to create a facsimile of the man, you’re trying to create a facsimile of what he does to the world. “There’s the danger of what might happen if he allowed this oligarch to become the most powerful and popular and wealthiest and beloved person in Russia. These are the things that Putin has to grapple with. He’s not only this kind of cipher that American media has presented him to be. He’s a person who has to grapple with very real problems of being the leader of Russia, and these are problems that are baked into Russia in a lot of ways because of what’s transpired before.” This is also Khodorkovsky’s play. He was the richest and arguably most ruthless oligarch during the wild west capitalism that filled the Soviet vacuum. He owned the country’s biggest oil company, Yukos, and sought to open Russia’s markets to the world, only to find Putin blocking his path. Khodorkovsky spent a decade in prison on fraud and embezzlement charges that many analysts believe to have been politically motivated. He was released in 2013 after Putin pardoned him and since lived in exile in Switzerland and the UK. Lin reflects: “It’s very much a story about an outsider. The fact that Khodorkovsky was Jewish in Russia is a very big deal. There were lots of constraints that were put on his life because of his heritage. For me, as a Chinese man living in America and feeling like the other and always on the hunt for opportunities to get into the cracks, to entrench myself, to root myself even more in this country, I really understood that character. Here we have the privatisation of a world superpower: this is the greatest opportunity any outsider can have to get inside.” Khodorkovsky found himself in a struggle with Putin for the soul of Russia. “Khodorkovsky could have sold his oil company to an American oil company, and a Russian oil company would have been able to be traded on the stock exchange. Russia could have been opened up to the west as per what it seems like Khodorkovsky’s plans were. Who knows how things would have really happened. It’s a battle of wills for who’s going to win at the end and be the top dog, certainly, but also which direction is this country going to be taken in.” Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, has described Kleptocracy, with its depiction of capitalist greed, corruption and chaos, as “the most dangerous play” it will mount this season. Lin asks: “When does capitalism turn into kleptocracy? When does democracy fall prey to manipulation? What is our greater impact on the world stage? I feel like a lot of those themes that we struggle with as Americans are the same themes that Russians are struggling with.”Until last week, Juan Guaidó, the 35-year-old leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, was an unknown figure on the international stage. That changed on Thursday as the country’s president Nicolás Maduro began his second term of office following elections last summer that were widely denounced as fraudulent. The inauguration was met with a chorus of international disapproval, and Guaidó, just six days into his post, told the world he was ready to assume the presidency until free and fair elections could be held – provided he had the vital support of the military. His announcement – a rare open challenge to Maduro’s rule – won support from the head of the Organisation of American States, but also prompted fears it could provoke a fresh crackdown on the opposition. Maduro, who has overseen deepening economic and political turmoil, made light of his relatively inexperienced challenger. “A lot of people in Venezuela are going to ask what is this ‘Guaidó’?” he joked in a Friday night TV address. But on Sunday,Guaidó was briefly detained by the intelligence services – something Maduro’s administration blamed on rogue operatives. “Look what they are doing,” Guaidó told a rally of supporters following his release. “They are desperate in [the presidential palace] Miraflores … We are survivors, not victims!” Raised in La Guaira, a port city 20 miles from Caracas, Guaidó cut his political teeth during 2007 student protests against Maduro’s late predecessor Hugo Chávez, who was then seeking to consolidate power. Chávez put various constitutional amendments, including the abolition of presidential term limits and the ability to unilaterally declare a national emergency, to a public referendum. But the vote handed Chávez his only electoral defeat in a nine-year presidency, and emboldened a nascent opposition movement, including Guaidó’s charismatic but divisive mentor Leopoldo López, who has been under house arrest and barred from political office since early 2014. It was López who tapped Guaidó, 12 years his junior, to lead his Popular Will party’s coalition in the National Assembly when its mandate began on January 5th. Guaidó had just finished his first full term as a legislator, having been elected in 2015. “Guaidó is a fighter and an eternal optimist … he’s humble and sincere,” said Freddy Guevara, an opposition leader and friend of Guaidó, in a telephone call from the Chilean ambassador’s residence in Caracas, where is seeking asylum. “He gets along with everyone and doesn’t have the typical profile of a politician.” Many in Venezuela thought Maduro had successfully neutered the assembly in 2017, when he sidelined it in favour of a more pliant Constituent Assembly via elections which were also widely labelled a sham. López, was one of the opposition’s most radical and confrontational leaders, but few had expected his protege Guaidó to mount such a brazen challenge to Maduro. “He was incredibly brave and now runs risks that he’ll be jailed, tortured, or need to go into exile,” said David Smolansky, an opposition leader, who was also forced to flee Venezuela and is now living in the US. “However, he decided to go ahead. He’s part of my generation; a brave generation that grew up under a dictatorship.” Guaidó is no stranger to adversity. His family survived a devastating landslide in his hometown in 1999 that killed as many as 30,000 people, and he claims to wear scars on his neck from rubber bullets fired at protesters in 2017 in Caracas. Guaidó has called on Venezuelans to take to the streets on 23 January, the anniversary of a popular uprising that overthrew military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958. Additional reporting by Mariana Zuñiga in CaracasOne of my earliest childhood memories is of a circling red light motioning cars to stop near the border, silencing all who encountered its fiery glare. That red light filled my young heart with fear. I didn’t know if the gloved hand holding the torch was that of the RUC, the British army, the IRA or the UVF. I grew up during the Troubles in the shadow of Cloghogue, one of the largest British army bases in Northern Ireland. Having to make detours to avoid customs and security checks along “bomb alley” – an atrocity-laden eight-mile stretch of road between Newry and Dundalk – was as frightening as it was familiar. It still is: to this day there are some back roads in South Armagh that I will not drive on alone after dark. It’s hard to explain to those who have not lived through a conflict that claimed more than 3,500 lives, in a region with a smaller population than most large UK cities, how the border permeated every aspect of our lives. Backtracking on the backstop is a mistake and a risky one at that It’s also hard to explain why the Brexit backstop – an insurance policy proposed between the EU and the UK to avoid a hard border, and extended to the whole of the UK at the latter’s insistence – is so critical. As the business editor of the largest media group in Ireland, I can give you chapter and verse about the economic threats a hard or no-deal Brexit poses for the Irish, Northern Irish and British economies. But you know about those already. The reality is that no amount of economic modelling can capture the unquantifiable human and psychological costs of the return of a hard border. Many argue that technological solutions – drones and suchlike – will do the trick. This is farcical: you only eliminate physical checks between two territories separated by a border when they share a customs union and have broad regulatory alignment. Everything else is infrastructure. As a journalist, I have been staggered by the scale and speed at which dangerous stereotypes and vituperative tropes – in some cases barely concealed racism – surrounding Ireland’s supposed intransigence have resurfaced in the UK’s political and media discourse. This process has been accompanied by astonishment in some quarters that Ireland, arguably England’s oldest colony, is a saboteur, reprobate or badly behaved underling for refusing to fall into line with the UK’s demands, if we knew what they were. When the BBC’s John Humphrys, one of the most prominent public broadcasters in Britain, asked Ireland’s Europe minister, Helen McEntee, why “Dublin” didn’t just leave the EU and “throw in their lot with this country”, Ireland uttered a collective gasp of incredulity verging on despair. What’s more alarming is that Anglo-Irish political relations, having warmed to a zenith of sorts in recent years, have plunged into a rapid freeze in a matter of months. I’ve worked hard to understand the rationale of those who voted to leave. But I’m saddened and alarmed at how the lives of those who will be most affected by Brexit have been callously cast aside; how the heartfelt and evidence-basedfears about the border have been mocked and derided. Brexiteers tell us that the customs union and the single market have nothing to do with the Good Friday agreement, the nearly 21-year-old, consent-based international peace deal that placed the constitutional destiny of the divided communities of Northern Ireland – 56% of whom voted to remain in 2016 – in our own hands. They are wrong. Those who want to tear up the backstop, or feel gleeful at the prospect of no deal, should recall that the first shots of the Troubles were fired at customs posts such as Newry, requiring the RUC, and later the British army, to protect officials, civilians and military alike. These incidents paved the way for the installation of those mammoth watchtowers, helicopter bases and checkpoints – the hard border – that blighted our landscape. Just as the first shots were fired over customs posts, it was our membership of the customs union and the single market – the free movement of goods and people – that allowed us to tear down the physical borders and begin the task of demolishing the walls in our hearts and minds. Is a return to violence – the recent car bomb in Derry felt like a terrifying foreshock – inevitable? Not necessarily. But the return of a border, even one that starts out as soft and virtual, will – like the customs posts of old – invite a regulatory and security mission creep that will disrupt lives and livelihoods and prove tempting for some who are intent on taking us back to darker times. It’s a gamble we can’t afford to take. The Brexit backstop – this fundamental need to avoid a border, rightly articulatedin stark, if belated and obvious terms at Davos by the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar – is about so much more than tariffs and trade. It is about our identity. Brexit tears at the heart of the Good Friday agreement, which allows people like me, a Catholic who grew up in Newry, or a loyalist from east Belfast, to identify as British, Irish or both – and to celebrate our different allegiances. I can say, as an Irish woman from Northern Ireland, that I am Irish-British: in another time, I would have been tarred and feathered for saying so. Brexit strips away at those coveted birthrights. A border will force us, once again, to choose sides. As we stare down the barrel of Brexit, Theresa May has opened another front, securing parliamentary support to reopen the withdrawal agreement and demand significant and legally binding changes to the backstop that she vigorously defended for months. The prime minister may have scored a short-term pyrrhic victory in the internecine wars that have divided her party and the UK parliament. But backtracking on the backstop is a mistake, and a dangerous one at that. Placing party politics and political survival above the peace process is a risk we cannot afford to take. • Dearbhail McDonald is group business editor, Independent Newspapers (Ireland)Artists in Rio de Janeiro have staged a pop-up street show to protest against the closure by the new far-right state government of an exhibition because of a performance attacking dictatorship-era torture. Álvaro Figueiredo, the curator of Literatura Exposta (Literature Exposed), accused authorities of censorship after the exhibition was ordered to close a day early to prevent a performance by the Rio collective És Uma Maluca that featured nudity and plastic cockroaches. This is not the first time art has been targeted in Brazil as the country has swung to the right. In 2017, a gay art exhibition was shut down in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, after online protests and picketing, while the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art held firm in the face of similar protests after a child was filmed touching the foot of naked artist in a prone position as part of a performance. On Sunday, Figueiredo announced on Facebook that Literatura Exposta had been shut down on orders from Wilson Witzel, the far-right governor of Rio state. Witzel is a close ally of President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office on 1 January and whose administration runs the France-Brazil House cultural centre that hosted the exhibition. És Uma Maluca’s performance piece had already been toned down for the exhibition, Figueiredo added. The work featured swarms of plastic cockroaches around a manhole – a reference to a torture tactic employed sometimes by the military dictatorship that controlled Brazil from 1964-1985. Electric shocks, beatings and an excruciating “parrot’s perch” device were common torture techniques, but female survivors have also described being tortured with cockroaches, snakes and even alligators. The installation originally included a speaker playing speeches by Bolsonaro – who has defended and praised the military dictatorship. This was replaced by a voice reading out a cake recipe after the France-Brazil House complained, Figueiredo said. During the dictatorship newspapers printed recipes when stories were censored. In a statement, Rio’s secretary of culture and creative economy, Ruan Lira, said he had learned via an email exchange that a performance “containing nudity between two women as well as cockroaches” was due to take place. He told Witzel and both decided this was not in the contract. “Nudity itself would not be problematic,” Lira said, but dialogue with the culture secretariat and children’s court were needed first, as well as a legal clause in the contract. “I’m not against freedom of expression and even less in favour of censorship,” Lira added. In reply, Figueiredo posted an email from the France-Brazil House on Instagram about only allowing over-18s into the show. The email was from Thursday – three days before the performance was scheduled to take place. “It’s very strange,” he said. On Monday, after És Una Maluca announced they would stage the banned performance in front of the France-Brazil House at 6pm, a crowd of several hundred gathered. Five armed police stood guard to ensure that no nudity took place. The crowd chanted leftist and anti-fascist slogans as they waited for the performance to begin. “Art should never be censored,” said Sebastiana Cesario, 68-year-old chemist, as she waited in the hot sun. “It is an unnecessary provocation.”Ole Gunnar Solskjær is preparing Manchester United for next season “with or without” the interim manager still being in charge. The Norwegian has won his opening eight games as caretaker, with United having never fallen behind under him yet his status currently remains as the temporary No 1. Solskjær, though, is still considering the long-term development of the side. “What Manchester United are going to look like next season with or without me, it doesn’t matter, I’m here to prepare for next season.” Part of this will be to play homegrown players Mason Greenwood, Jimmy Garner and Ethan Hamilton. “We have quite a few talents in that youth team that you’d like to see [in the side] and [you] will see at some point before next season to put the club and team in a good position [for] how will we look like next season: Mason, Jimmy, Ethan – it’s just about the right time. “But we’ve got Alexis [Sánchez], Juan Mata, and Romelu Lukaku who haven’t played so much lately, they’re three players you have to jump ahead of.” Solskjær reiterated that he currently does not think any players will leave in the transfer window. “At the moment I can see everyone staying at the club,” he said. “No deals have been done with anyone but there are still a few more days but I’m not too involved in the negotiations so whatever happens happens. But it’ll be good to get the window closed and improving the players in the squad still here.” Asked specifically about Andreas Pereira, Solskjær said: “No. I can’t see him going out on loan because Andreas has done fantastic in training ever since I come back. He’s a player I can see playing quite a few games for us towards the end of the season.”An opposition politician in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has called on his millions of followers to conduct a peaceful campaign of civil disobedience following the rejection of his appeal against election results by the country’s highest court. Martin Fayulu said he considered himself the “sole legitimate president-elect” of the country and urged the Congolese people not to recognise “any individual who would claim this authority illegally”. I now consider myself as the sole legitimate President-elect of the #DRC. Therefore, I ask the Congolese people not to recognize any individual who would claim this authority illegally nor to obey orders that would emanate from such a person. #RDCVote #DRCElections pic.twitter.com/V2UaHm3A8L The DRC’s constitutional court confirmed early on Sunday morning that Felix Tshisekedi, the leader of the country’s main opposition party, was the winner of the polls that were held after more than two years of delays in December. Fayulu, who was placed a close second, rejected the provisional official tally released last week, saying it was the product of a secret deal between Tshisekedi and the outgoing president, Joseph Kabila, to cheat him out of a clear win. Leaked internal data seen by the Guardian from the electoral commission in the DRC and from the influential Catholic church, which deployed more than 40,000 monitors on polling day, appears to indicate that Fayulu won convincingly with about 60% of the votes cast. Aides to Kabila and Tshisekedi have denied making any deal, though they have confirmed a dialogue. The influential African Union broke with a long tradition of backing governments in power to implicitly question the results. Experts have described the usually conservative AU’s appeal for the final results to be delayed as “incredible”. On Sunday, the Southern African Development Community, which had previously appeared sceptical of the results, issued a statement to congratulate Tshisekedi on his victory. Officials in Kinshasa suggested that Tshisekedi, who inherited the leadership of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress when his father died in 2017 and has not previously held senior office, may be inaugurated as president as early as Tuesday. Such a swift inauguration would be a gamble that might further destabilise the DRC, intensifying the sporadic unrest in which 34 people have already been killed, 59 wounded and 241 “arbitrary arrests” made in the past week, according to the UN human rights office. However, it is unclear whether Fayulu, who has tapped into a deep anger among ordinary people at the behaviour of a corrupt and incompetent elite, can mobilise a broad-based campaign of civil resistance. Though respected, the former business executive turned parliamentarian lacks the nationwide organisation of Tshisekedi. Analysts say most of the security establishment remain loyal to Kabila. Tshisekedi said on Sunday the court’s decision confirming him as the winner of the presidential election was a victory for the entire country. “It is Congo that won,” he said, speaking to his supporters. “It is not the victory of one camp against another. I am engaged in a campaign to reconcile all Congolese ... The Congo that we are going to form will not be a Congo of division, hatred or tribalism. It will be a reconciled Congo, a strong Congo that will be focused on development, peace and security.” The poll was meant to enable DRC’s first democratic transfer of power in 59 years of independence from Belgium. The government spokesman Lambert Mende said by telephone that the ruling party had “taken note” of the court decision. “Felix Tshisekedi will become the fifth president of the republic,” Mende said. Senior officials known as loyal to Kabila have indicated their willingness to work with Tshisekedi. “I reiterate my congratulations ... and ask the population to allow this first transition of power to take place in peace. Long live democracy,” Julien Paluku, the governor of the restive eastern province of North Kivu, said on Twitter. DRC’s constitutional court is widely seen as loyal to Kabila, who has been in power since his father was assassinated in 2001. Reports suggest that internet service in the DRC has returned, 20 days after it was cut off following the elections in what appeared to be an attempt to dampen speculation about the presidential election results and hinder organisation of protests. Fayulu has called on the international community to reject the poll results. “I ask the entire international community not to recognise a power that has neither legitimacy nor legal standing to represent the Congolese people,” he said.As usual, Tom Brady knew something we didn’t. As the alarm bells rang this season – Brady doesn’t look right; he doesn’t have enough weapons; the defense isn’t quick enough – the New England Patriots kept chugging along, clinching a playoff bye and a home playoff game. And, lo and behold, the quarterback was at his methodical best against the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday, completing 34/44 for 343 yards, and a touchdown. Brady’s tendency to throw quick and short helped negate the impact of the Chargers pass rush, who had zero sacks and rarely applied pressure on Brady in the pocket. Indeed, LA were outclassed and bullied as they went down to a 41-28 defeat. You have to be near-perfect in the postseason to beat the Patriots, particularly in Foxborough, and LA looked out of sorts from the opening kickoff. There were no schematic or personnel changes they could make to slow down Brady and Co. And they continued to stub their own toes, with multiple delay of game penalties, and a muffed punt return that was recovered by the Patriots. Patriots coach Bill Belichick is the master of morphing his gameplan week-to-week to suit an opponent, and the Patriots beat the Chargers by doing what they do best: adapting to an opponent’s weakness. Belichick has also made his reputation out of shutting down historical offenses in big moments. As defensive coordinator for the Giants, he stifled Buffalo’s infamous (and ahead of its time) K-Gun offense in Super Bowl XXV. His first championship with the Patriots came after he slowed down the self-proclaimed Greatest Show on Turf. Belichick has rarely seen anything like what awaits next week though, when the Patriots face the Kansas City Chiefs for a place in the Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes’ arm; Tyreek Hill’s pace; Travis Kelce’s size and speed; an utterly overwhelming offensive line; and a creative scheme that takes advantage of all of the modern rules. Mahomes’ exploits this season are well known. He’s able to make throws others can’t even imagine, let alone attempt. It’s not inconceivable that he was at Hogwarts before he starred at Texas Tech. Take this doozy from KC’s beatdown of the Colts on Saturday: Patrick Mahomes is one crafty dude with the football.pic.twitter.com/Ggv4detqFN It’s almost impossible to defend a throw like that. The gap between the Chiefs offense at the top of weighted DVOA (opponent-adjusted down-to-down efficiency that weights recent performance) and the second-placed Rams – themselves considered a historic unit – is the same as the gap between the Rams and Atlanta in 11th. The Chiefs’ offense is that much better than everyone else’s. Worryingly for the Patriots, not even Belichick could contain that Chiefs offense when the sides met for an epic 43-40 shootout in Week Six. But the coach was able to confuse Mahomes a couple of times in just his sixth outing as a starter. Baiting him into a pair of mistakes would likely prove decisive in a winner-take-all playoff scenario. The game will be billed as a matchup between Mahomes and Brady. It’s the MVP v the GOAT. The upstart v the legend. It will also be the biggest age difference between starting quarterbacks in NFL postseason history, Brady at 41 and Mahomes at 23. Prepare for hours of passing-the-torch conversations. Ordinarily, that kind of coverage obscures the nuances that decide such big games. But given that one offensive mistake may be the difference between the two teams (both have holes on defense), pitting it as a quarterback v quarterback match-up isn’t unreasonable. This will be the juiciest conference championship game in recent years. Kansas City are the best team in the AFC; the Patriots are the Patriots. Can Belichick outwit Mahomes? Can Brady keep up? Is either defense for real? Any outcome is plausible. Now this is a nice fake punt!*sassy look at Nick Saban*pic.twitter.com/60dbi1n32L Earlier this week, we were treated to one of the best stories of the season. Saints head coach Sean Payton brought the Lombardi Trophy and the $225,000 each player would earn by winning the Super Bowl into a meeting room and told the team, “You want this? Win three fucking games.” It was a move of supreme hubris. Yet the coach backed up that Big Payton Energy with a pair of huge calls in the second quarter of the Saints’ victory over the Eagles on Sunday. Down 14-0, and unable to get much going on offense, it felt like the game was slipping away. Payton went to his bag of tricks, calling on do-everything QB/return-man/H-back Taysom Hill. Hill promptly picked up a fourth-down conversion on a fake punt from the Saints’ 30-yard line, kickstarting a drive that led to the team’s first touchdown. Payton had another gutsy fourth-and-goal call, which helped spark a 20-to-nothing run and secured the Saints’ come-from-behind victory. Todd Gurley/CJ Anderson, RBs, Los Angeles Rams. The Rams one-two punch carved open the Cowboys defense on Saturday night. LA took it to Dallas early and often, totaling 273 yards rushing and three touchdowns on 48 carries. Gurley is the superstar, with a decent claim to the title of best running back in the league, but it’s Anderson who is quickly becoming one of the stories of the postseason. This season, Anderson was cut by the Broncos then waived by the Panthers and the Raiders, before signing with the Rams in December. He has averaged 149.6 yards per game since arriving in LA, and was crucial in the Rams’ victory over the Cowboys. The Patriots have now reached their eighth-straight AFC Championship game. Only three other AFC teams have been to eight Championship games in league history, let alone in succession. Brady’s eight appearances since 2010 are also more than any other quarterback in history. We will never see this kind of postseason dominance again. I know everybody thinks we suck and, you know, we can’t win any games, so we’ll see. It’ll be fun” -- Tom Brady to CBS. This. pic.twitter.com/9xosabF1V6 Tom Brady is trying to make the Patriots this year’s nobody-believes-in-us team. Amazing. -- Sarah Thomas made history on Sunday in the Patriots-Chargers game. She became the first woman to work an NFL playoff game as an on-the-field official. Terri Valenti was the replay official in Saturday’s playoff game between the Colts and Chiefs, also a first. -- In Sean McVay, Andy Reid, Sean Payton and Josh McDaniels we have four of the league’s five-best offensive play callers. We’re going to get some barnburners over the next few weeks. -- Led by a career night from Damien Williams, the Chiefs rushed for 180 yards against the Colts, their fourth-highest total in franchise postseason history. Williams, who took over starting back responsibilities after Kareem Hunt was released midseason and Spencer Ware sustained an injury, racked up a career-best 129 yards on 30 touches. -- Michael Thomas continues to make a compelling case for being the top wide receiver in the league. Thomas, who leads the league in catches over the past three seasons, caught 12 balls for 171 yards and a touchdown against the Eagles. He’s reached the rarest level of wide receiver play: everyone in the building knows the ball is going to him, yet the defense is still powerless to stop him. -- The Cowboys are ready to offer Jason Garrett a new, long-term contract, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. Keeping Garrett is an acceptance of mediocrity. He is the longest tenured coach to not reach a conference Championship game. Garrett isn’t the Cowboys’ biggest problem, but he’s not the solution either. In his eight seasons as coach, the Cowboys have averaged one playoff win every four years. See you in 2022, Dallas. -- Reportedly, Patriots defensive coordinator Brian Flores is the Dolphins’ top target for their head coaching vacancy. Flores is expected to be announced as the team’s new coach once the Patriots’ season ends. If Miami buck the trend this hiring cycle, the NFL would finish the season with only four minority head coaches, including three who are black, down from eight at the start. -- Group think is alive and well in the NFL. The league’s infatuation with finding “the next Sean McVay” has now reached comedic heights. The Cardinals hired Kliff Kingsbury late last week, a coach who was fired from his collegiate alma mater (Texas Tech) with a sub .500 record, despite a trio of seasons with Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield as his quarterbacks. Kingsbury was hired because he’s cool: he’s young, runs a fun offense, looks good, and is liked by everyone in the football world. He may wind up being great, but nothing on his CV suggests he is qualified for the position. Hot-shot, so-called innovative coaches are all the range, thanks to the success of McVay and Matt Nagy. And teams are going to laugh-out-loud lengths to draw some similarity between their young coach and the NFL’s wunderkind. “Kingsbury is friends with Rams coach Sean McVay,” the release announcing the hire on AZCardinals.com originally stated, without irony.Temperature records have tumbled across South Australia, with the city of Adelaide experiencing its hottest day on record, as the second heatwave in as many weeks hit southern parts of Australia. Adelaide hit 46.6C on Thursday afternoon, the hottest temperature recording in any Australian state capital city since records began 80 years ago. The Red Lion, a pub in the city’s Elizabeth North suburb, promised to hand out free beers if the mercury rose above 45C. By 1pm, there was a line out the door and round the block. This guy, Muoi Pham, 60, is a legend. Brought free water to those waiting in line at The Red Lion without shade. Gave me a bottle for free too. This is the Elizabeth I know. #adelaide #heatwave pic.twitter.com/t5aGdU2ejk In Port Augusta, 300km north-west, an all-time record was also set, as the city hit 49.5C. Last week, temperatures in Adelaide, home to 1.3 million people, hit 45C, sending homelessness shelters into a “code red”, and sparking fears of another mass fish death in the Menindee Lakes in the neighbouring state of New South Wales. In central and western Australia, local authorities were forced to carry out an emergency animal cull, shooting 2,500 camels – and potentially a further hundred feral horses – who were dying of thirst. Just so we're clear, being the hottest place on Earth is not the way that I had hoped Australia would be leading the world re. #climatechange when I started working on this thing ... but it's probably what our current level of policy ambition deserves.#climatecrisis #auspol pic.twitter.com/oPnEilRpcv The hottest places in the world right now: https://t.co/IZVNXXi28R pic.twitter.com/y6D2h1FGEV On Thursday, 17 records were broken across South Australia, either of all-time temperatures or January records. Sternhouse Bay (45.6C), Port Lincoln (47C), Minnipa (47.3), and Snowtown (47.3C) were among the hottest, with Snowtown beating its previous record by 1.3C. RECORDS: Stenhouse Bay has easily surpassed its previous record of 44.0C (on 16 Jan & and 2 Feb 2014), and is now 45.6C. Adelaide Airport is also a record at 44.3C (previous record 44.1C 4th Jan 2013). Roseworthy is at 46.9 (prev record 46.7 on 28 Jan 2009). Thursday’s heat is set to spread across the states of Victoria and New South Wales, just days after an earlier record-breaking heatwave passed across the country. Last week, a dozen heat records fell, with nine alone in NSW. The small NSW outpost of Noona, around 800km west of Sydney, recorded the country’s highest ever overnight minimum temperature of 35.9C. The back-to-back heatwaves are part of a summer that the Bureau of Meteorology predicted as being hotter and drier than average, partially as a result of climate change. On Friday, Victoria will become the “hottest place in Australia”, according to Jonathan How from the bureau. The cities of Mildura, Swan Hill and Echuca are set for 46C, which could break records. In Melbourne, as Novak Djokovic and Lucas Pouille settle in for the semi-finals of the Australian Open, the maximum temperature will be 43C, with 44C in some suburbs.It requires little imagination to guess what England can expect in Dublin this Saturday. The Aviva Stadium will be chilly and raucous, the Irish pack will be fired up and the contest both on the floor and in the air will be ferocious. Any similarities with the quiet, sunny and mellow Algarve where England are preparing are not immediately obvious. Of course there are benefits to be had from training in warmer temperatures – it was a pleasant 18C in the Algarve on Monday – but England’s modern history is littered with examples of being caught cold by highly motivated Celts away from Twickenham. Almost eight years have passed since their last Six Nations try in Dublin, a consolation effort from the hooker Steve Thompson in a 25-8 defeat during the Martin Johnson era. England, in fact, have won only once in Dublin since Johnson led England to their grand slam‑clinching victory there in 2003. Since the Five Nations became Six in 2000 every team trailing at half-time in this fixture on Irish soil has subsequently lost the match, a statistic clearly exercising the minds of England’s management. “This is going to be a brutal Test match and you’ve got to get in first,” said John Mitchell, the former All Black head coach now in charge of England’s pack. “I’ve always said to friends that it is a very emotive tournament. We are representing a nation that is not well liked by other countries so that adds its own little spice. We have got to walk towards that challenge and embrace it.” Mitchell knows more than a little about this particular subject, having also coached Ireland’s forwards back in the distant days of Murray Kidd’s stewardship. These days the Irish pack is as tough as anyone’s, not least at the breakdown where England have suffered in the past. While highly respectful of the opposition’s capacity for hard work – “They come again and again and again” – Mitchell has also suggested the home team “will look to bore the shit out of us” tactically. “Ultimately it will come down to a small piece of possession; when you’re not focused that can hurt you in a contest like this.” The visitors, consequently, will have to be tooled up physically and mentally braced. Walking towards the challenge might not be enough; England’s back row will need rather more in the way of forward momentum. “We’ve got to come out of the blocks quick,” said Northampton’s Courtney Lawes, aware of the noise that will wash over England should they start sluggishly and allow Ireland to take an early lead. “Especially in such a stadium with such passionate fans, you definitely need to come out firing and set the tone for the game. They’re a great team on very good form, so it’s a big challenge for us but I’m 100% sure we’re ready for it.” With England not due to confirm their XV until Thursday it remains to be seen what role Lawes will end up playing. With Brad Shields not having played lately because of a side strain and Jack Clifford having returned home after sustaining a bang to the head during training, it would be little surprise to see a starting back row of Tom Curry at openside, Billy Vunipola at number eight and Newcastle’s Mark Wilson, one of the success stories of the autumn Tests, on the blindside flank. If so, Wilson would be required to get the better of the Munster captain Peter O’Mahony, among others, having never previously sampled a top-level contest in Ireland. With Curry still only 20 and Vunipola still working his way back to full throttle, much could rest on Wilson’s willing shoulders. “I’ve played a pre-season game in Dublin but I don’t pay too much attention to where I am playing,” the Falcons forward said. “As soon as you start to take in the occasion and the environment, that’s when people start to lose focus. I imagine it’s a great place to play and people will bang on about the atmosphere but I’ll be very much focused on what goes on on the pitch.” Should Lawes be involved, either as a starter or off the bench, Ireland will also encounter an opponent feeling stronger again now his previously sore back has healed. “I couldn’t do weights for six weeks because of my back and it wasn’t good – I’d got pretty thin. I’ve put on just over a stone since the autumn but I’m around the right weight now. I don’t really count calories, I just shovel food down my throat.” Such are the realties of modern professional rugby, where getting smaller is not a wise career move. The experienced Ireland wing Keith Earls, for one, is expecting another heavy-duty contest but does not anticipate England bringing anything beyond what is now commonplace at Test level. “Every game we play in is brutal and physical because it’s 15 men trying to kill another 15 men within the rules of the game,” Earls said. “I wouldn’t get too bogged down in it. They are expected to be brutally physical against the Scots, the Italians and the Welsh as well.”The Brexit process has become almost unspeakably awful. Like a foul smell that nobody really wants to deal with, without action it will only get worse. As party unity collapses in parliament, how we find consensus on the greatest issue of our time will determine what the outcome is – whether that turns out to be a second referendum or the next stage of negotiation. We believe the best path to such a consensus involves setting up a citizens’ assembly. Just like the Labour party, we represent contrasting communities that nevertheless have much in common. Wigan voted 60%-40% to leave the EU, Walthamstow 60%-40% to remain. One is a northern town fighting to regain the good jobs and dignity that were once commonplace. The other is an inner-city area fighting an epidemic of knife crime and the rise of gentrification. Separated by 200 miles, in both places people are angry, deeply affected by poverty and disempowered by a system that does not respond to their needs. Like our constituents, we hold competing views on how to resolve the Brexit stalemate. But we are united in respecting the causes of that fury, and in our belief that only a Labour government can resolve it. Without a serious attempt to bring our communities together, we will not address any of these concerns. Yet we have lost the ability to listen to one another, and our political discourse has been poisoned by anger and arrogance. Our constituents are not stupid or racist, any more than they belong to “liberal elites”. But politics has become about the box you put someone in to dismiss them, not the bridges you build to find shared solutions. This shock-jock culture thrives on extremes. People are encouraged to resign from political parties, to antagonise and abuse opponents for effect, for a YouTube hit while wearing a yellow vest, rather than to take the harder path of building support for a different approach. Throughout history, politics has had to find a path through huge and fundamental disagreements. As President John F Kennedy wrote in Profiles in Courage, it very rarely happens that “all the truth, and all the right, and all the angels are on one side”. Our refusal to acknowledge this is breaking our democracy. As sitting parliamentarians, we feel the disconnect every day, working in expensive, dilapidated buildings where there is fatuous debate about the bumper-sticker on the Speaker’s car while children go without food to eat and mental healthcare when they are in crisis. This isn’t what either of us signed up for. This momentous week, and the massive rejection of Theresa May’s Brexit deal by MPs night, will not change this state of affairs. In the days and weeks ahead, MPs will continue to perform for social media, medicines will be stockpiled, and many more jobs will be tragically lost. There may be a majority to prevent no deal but there is no majority for an outcome – and, crucially, no process that can get us there. We are nearly three years on from the referendum, and yet we are still arguing about the “will of the people”. Opinion polls and focus groups are conflicted. As has been made abundantly clear, referendums alone, like elections, are blunt instruments that remove complexity in pursuit of simple propositions. Other countries have seen their democracies strengthened by involving the public alongside parliamentarians in meaningful decision-making. It hasn’t just been in Ireland, where decades of intransigence on abortion and same-sex marriage gave way to a new consensus. It has also happened in Iceland (after the banking crisis), and in Canada and Australia, on issues such as nuclear waste and constitutional reform. President Macron, responding to widespread unrest in France, has recently embraced this approach, understanding its value in reuniting a divided country. Like a circuit-breaker, citizens’ assemblies can disrupt the bad habits that have come to characterise Brexit: kicking issues into the long grass, placing party interests over the national interest and assuming the public are unable to cope with hard choices. They don’t replace parliaments or offer politicians an escape from difficult decisions. Instead they reject binary choices – remain or leave, no deal or Norway – and allow randomly selected groups of citizens to explore options in an open forum and make recommendations about priorities to elected MPs, who retain the final say. In a deadlocked parliament, this could be the one approach that could retain the trust of us all that the answers were fair, thoughtful and not predetermined. If, for instance, a citizens’ assembly recommended a referendum, it could also consider what the question should be, providing confidence that there was no attempt by politicians to game the system. None of this need delay progress. Citizens’ assemblies can be completed in seven weeks, in contrast to the three months of Electoral Commission consultation needed to move to a second referendum. Some might sneer that we already have a citizens’ assembly, in the shape of parliament itself, failing to acknowledge the inability to make progress without meaningful public engagement. Critics might reject the idea for fear of the new. Yet anyone looking at politics right now can see new thinking is urgently required. This will be another week where Westminster repeats the same tired old conversations. No one is winning, but even as the prospect of no deal approaches, few will be honest that we are stuck. As other nations have found, involving citizens in discussions doesn’t diminish politics or politicians – it enhances the value of the conversation for both. With little evidence that more delay will resolve this situation, the public are desperate for us to change our tune. It’s time we let them help choose the music. • Lisa Nandy is Labour MP for Wigan; Stella Creasy is Labour MP for WalthamstowIn the wake of Tuesday’s night’s crushing defeat in the House of Commons for Theresa May’s Brexit deal, we spoke to voters in three places that voted very differently in the 2016 referendum. 2016 referendum result: leave 66.6%, remain 33.4% With Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement in tatters after an overwhelming rejection by MPs and a cabinet which remains deeply divided, it would seem that the rest of the country is also consumed by this division. Yet in Burnley, the morning after the night before, people on both sides of the fence are united. Remainers and leavers speak of their overwhelming disappointment in May and her government. They all agree that democracy should be allowed to play out as intended: the public voted to leave, therefore the government should see to this. Burnley proved a Brexit stronghold at the referendum, with people saying that they felt hopeless and neglected by politicians. The vote was seen as a way of getting their voices heard. Leisure worker Hazel Allen, 64, voted to leave. She says she voted to protect the NHS; 10 years ago Burnley A&E was closed and, despite a long-running campaign, there are no plans to reopen it. “I have not changed my mind and I don’t want another vote,” says Allen. “I am deeply disappointed with the government. They could have worked together to achieve what the people wanted, could have been stronger. What we have seen is just weakness and fighting. We voted for something but it doesn’t feel like we’re going to get it. What is the point?” She adds: “If we don’t see this through I will never vote again.” Jhangir Miah, 25, voted to remain. The financial sector worker wanted to keep a strong connection with EU businesses. But he agrees with Allen. “Yes, I voted to stay because I felt that was the better option from all sorts of standpoints, but the result that we ended up with was to leave, so that’s what we should do,” he says. “We should uphold what the people want. It would be harder for me in many ways if we left the EU, but May and her government need to show better leadership. They seem to have no clear idea about where we’re headed.” Miah does believe that the Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, could do a better job. “They all have agendas, we saw that from what happened last night, but May hasn’t been able to achieve what the people want and maybe Corbyn can. We should at least give him a chance.” Warehouse worker Chris Payne, 35, did not vote and says he feels completely removed from the process. However, if there were to be a second referendum he would vote to remain as it has been “nothing but trouble”. He says: “I didn’t really understand it at the time, but since it started it has been a mess.” He adds that one thing has been made clear by this process: “It has not been about the public. It is all about power – who stands to gain the most – politicians playing games and not listening to people.” 2016 result: leave 32.4%, remain: 66.6% Standing at the cab rank by Queen Street station in Glasgow, taxi drivers James Sinclair and Billy Crilley are in agreement on one thing at least: “Nobody has a clue what’s going on.” For Sinclair, who voted to leave the EU but now regrets the decision, May’s historic Commons defeat ought to force the government to end the endless rounds of negotiations. “What they ought to do is go to a no deal and walk away. This is dragging on too long and creating too much uncertainty for everyone,” he says. Crilley, who voted to remain, wants a second referendum. “I think the majority would swing to stay this time,” he says. But Sinclair argues that another referendum will not settle the matter: “When do you stop voting? Because then the people who voted leave will want another one.” Corbyn’s no-confidence motion and the prospect of another general election does not appeal to Sinclair. “I think we’d still end up with another Tory government. The English voters are so hellbent on not having Corbyn, because they’ve been sold this idea he’s an out and out red.” Priyanka Mohapatra, crossing George Square on her way to work, believes that momentum is building around a second EU referendum. “It was an uninformed referendum the first time and we should be given the chance to correct it when it’s going to harm our economy and we’re living with such uncertainty about the future. “I do think it’s time to have a second vote. It would be the most sensible way now, because no deal is going to harm a lot of people. It’s sensible because it doesn’t look like the government is going against the people, but voters will be more informed this time.” She is another who is sceptical about the prospects for the Labour leader’s confidence motion: “It might get Theresa May off the prime minister’s seat but I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn has very good ideas about what to do next either.” Drinking her morning coffee outside the station, Lorne Bourhill says that while momentum around holding a second vote appears to be building she is against it herself. “I didn’t want to leave the EU, but people have made their choice. The government should get on with it and find a deal that has enough support. How can I tell my children to vote in a general election if they see decisions being overturned like that?” 2016 result (Cotswold): leave 48.9%, remain 51.1% At the Market Garden fruit and veg shop in Cirencester co-workers Carole Reeves and Pete Blunden are as divided as the House of Commons. “They should just hurry up and get us out,” says Reeves who voted leave and has not changed her mind. “I’m frustrated that the politicians are too busy squabbling to get it sorted. I don’t care if it’s no deal in the end. Let’s just go for it.” Blunden, 21, tells his more senior colleague that leaving the EU would make life more difficult – even in the shop. “We get our flowers from Holland, some of our fruit from Spain and Italy. It’s going to affect every aspect of our lives.” He voted remain but is reluctant to call for a second referendum. “It doesn’t matter how a second vote goes, it would cause problems.” The problem is that he cannot think of a way out of the impasse. “I haven’t got a clue how this ends. I don’t think anyone really has. That’s the frightening thing.” The idea that tracts of the country may be disengaged from the Brexit process is not borne out in this corner of Gloucestershire. Parked outside the King’s Head hotel in the grand market place, taxi driver Kevin Mace is reading the reports of May’s troubles in the Sun. He didn’t vote in the referendum but is concerned the uncertainty could damage Cirencester. “It’s already a ghost town – just coffee shops, charity shops and phone shops. I do worry it’s going to get worse.” Alex Johnson, watching the world go by from a coffee shop window, dismisses the Commons as a “bunch of arguing wankers”. He is a staunch leaver. “We’ll have a difficult 24 or 36 months but we’ve got to tough it out,” he said. The political conversation rages on the number 51 bus. “It’s a shambles,” says Jamie McTavish, a restorer of vintage cars. He says he thinks many people voted leave because of concerns about immigration. “I think a lot of people jumped without thinking through the consequences.” Bus driver Graham Camburn says he voted to leave. “I’m having my doubts,” he said. “But I don’t fancy another referendum. I don’t think the country wants that.” Remain voter Mark Mitchell, who owns Crocodile Toys, says he was frustrated by events in the Commons. “It’s time for the politicians to let go of party gamesmanship and be more pragmatic,” he says. “They are wasting an awful lot of time.” Joe Harris, the Liberal Democrat group leader on Cotswold district council – and formerly the country’s youngest mayor at the age of 21 – describes what is unfolding in Westminster as tragic. “It’s a reflection of wider society. Brexit is an issue on which we are genuinely divided. I think it’s a 50-50 split. Like most people, I sometimes wish it would just go away. But I have to think of my constituents. In a no-deal Brexit, middle-class people will probably be all right. People who work in manufacturing will suffer. We have Mitsubishi here, we have Honda down the road in Swindon. We’re playing with fire if there’s a no-deal Brexit. “I’m coming across a lot of people who voted leave and think they were conned but also a lot who voted remain but are now saying: ‘Let’s get on with it.’ The country is divided.”Being a royal secures unfathomable perks. Whether it’s getting a £1m home refurbishment gifted by the taxpayer, ownership of all the swans or a lifetime of inherited privilege for you and your descendants, royal status shields the bestowed from life’s mundane troubles. But even a five-metre Givenchy wedding veil couldn’t save Meghan, Duchess of Sussex from misogynoir and a barrage of trolling. This week, Kensington Palace had to reach out for help from Twitter and Instagram, as staff members were spending hours each week reporting sexist and racist comments and threats aimed at Meghan and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge. The diatribe is so dire that Hello! magazine has started a campaign #HelloToKindness. Meghan is subjected to the same racially coded and straight-up racist abuse faced by all black women in public life Being a woman in public life is not without challenge. Female MPs, athletes and actors are subjected to abuse on and offline. And both Kate and Meghan have been the targets of sexist criticism on the Kensington Palace platforms and in tabloid comment sections. But it should surprise no one that there has been a spike in hateful comments in October and November, following the announcement of Meghan’s pregnancy. Although a strongly worded letter from Prince Harry in 2016 had put the tabloid media on pause, the reality of a more-melanin-infused royal baby joining the House of Windsor has unleashed the hounds once more. Meghan’s crimes since have been numerous; travesties that include cupping her baby bump in public and painting her fingernails. Kate cupped her bump on numerous occasions to no comment. “Sources” also claim Meghan is “high maintenance”, “demanding” and “made Kate cry”. Meghan isn’t the first royal to be hounded by the press and criticised frequently. Diana, Princess of Wales was never far away from a front page and faced intense scrutiny. She was also read as a rebel who didn’t follow protocol. But Meghan has the added bonus of being biracial, which brings with it a different type and intensity of abuse. Social media doesn’t cause online abuse but it is a conduit for societies’ baser beliefs. Online trolling of Meghan and Harry has included six knife emojis and claims that Meghan has bleached her skin to look whiter. A Daily Mail headline referred to her as being from a “gang-scarred” home and “(almost) straight outta Compton”. Comments on the Kensington Palace Instagram called her “trashy” and “ghetto”. Like the recent Sunday Times article that referred to the two schools in “gangland” – known to the rest of us as Newham, east London, where the 2012 Olympics were held – that got a number of black teenagers Oxbridge places, the media, and the trolls that follow them, will associate black people with gangs and crime for the most tenuous of reasons. Meghan is still subjected to the same racially coded and straight-up racist abuse faced by all black women in public life. Research by Amnesty International found that black women were 84% more likely to be mentioned in abusive tweets than white women. The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the run-up to the 2017 general election. Race and gender are a potent mix. So when will social media companies finally take some action? Racism and sexism are social problems. But social media companies could do more to help protect their users. Celebrities and charities such as Amnesty and Glitch UK are left to campaign for change. After a fortnight of news on self-harm, suicides and Katie Price taking a stand for her disabled son, it’s high time they responded seriously to the abuse perpetuated on their platforms. Otherwise, they risk putting off a generation of women, particularly minority women, from entering public life. All communities need some norms, values and standards to make them safe. Online ones are no exception. • Kimberly McIntosh is a writer specialising in race and genderThere are dals to comfort and dals to revive. Rasam is a reviver, the kind of thing I want to eat when I’m feeling sluggish. It’s thinner than your average dal, brothy and buzzing with spices, with a defined, sour edge. Here, I serve it with my current addiction, roast red cabbage, whose leaves sweeten, soften and char in the heat of the oven. It’s perfect on its own for a light meal, or with rice for something more substantial. Rasam is a hot and sour south Indian soup, sometimes with lentils added. Tamarind and cabbage make good partners. Prep 10 minCook 1 hrServes 4 1 red cabbage, quarteredRapeseed oilSalt6 tsp tamarind paste1 ½ tsp cumin seeds1 ½ tsp coriander seeds10 curry leaves1 ½ tsp black mustard seeds1 tsp kashmiri chilli powder½ tsp ground black pepper5 garlic cloves, peeled and minced400g tin chopped tomatoes250g split red lentils Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Put the quartered cabbage on a lined roasting tray, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with a pinch or two of salt, and roast for 35 minutes. While the cabbage is cooking, make a tamarind dressing. In a small bowl, mix two teaspoons each of tamarind paste and water with a teaspoon of rapeseed oil. When the cabbage is tender to the core and starting to crisp and burn at the edges, remove and brush the cut sides generously with the dressing. Return to the oven for 10 minutes, then set aside. To make the rasam, coarsely grind the cumin and coriander seeds in a mortar. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and, when hot, add the curry leaves, let them crackle for 10 seconds, then add the mustard seeds and let them do the same. Add the ground spices, toast in the hot oil for 30 seconds, then add the garlic and stir-fry until it’s sticky and golden – around three minutes. Now add the tinned tomatoes and all their juices, breaking up any lumps with the back of a spoon. Bring to a simmer, then add the lentils and 1.3 litres water, bring up to a boil and turn down the heat to a gentle simmer. Cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure the lentils don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Once cooked, add a teaspoon and a quarter of salt and the remaining four teaspoons of tamarind paste, and simmer for a minute more. The texture of the rasam should be somewhere between a soup and a dal. Cut each cabbage quarter into two or three slices. Ladle the rasam into shallow bowls, place a couple of slices of cabbage on top and serve with rice or bread, if you like.Some see Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Others choose to wear nothing at all, and many companies turn bedroom antics into big cash at this time of year. But if you’re planning to spice up 14 February with a bespoke risque card to your significant other, or others, spare a thought for the staff at Moonpig who have to make the thing. Guernsey is the home of Moonpig’s printing and delivery HQ, which doubles as the frontline for the company’s photo upload greeting card service. It allows customers to personalise their cards with (almost) any image imaginable. Nudity is not prohibited, it’s more actions and contraptions that are monitored Family portraits or evidence of drunken embarrassments are the standard fare for Moonpig workers, but around Valentine’s Day there’s an influx of nudes and amateur erotica that would make even the most open-minded blush. “Nudity is not prohibited, it’s more actions and contraptions that are monitored. Penetration is when things have gone too far,” says Mick Perry, Moonpig production manager. Take that how you will. Perry heads the team who spend their nine-to-fives wading through the thousands of images that land in their inboxes each week. “Most of our customers are well behaved, but the odd one does try to push the boundaries,” Perry says. “We have people who are particularly adept at spotting racy images.” In 2018, 368 orders were cancelled by the company. As algorithms and face recognition technology grow more sophisticated, Moonpig’s system is unique. Software such as Microsoft’s PhotoDNA, used by Facebook, marks images with digital thumbprints to fight the spread of terrorist propaganda and revenge porn. Instagram’s nipple policy, which blocks images showing female (but not male) nipples, uses algorithms. At Moonpig, ensuring images adhere to company guidelines is a 100% human process. Real people make decisions on the photographs that are submitted. “We do see all sorts,” says Perry. “I’m not going to be specific – these are people’s memories – but let’s say there are things I wouldn’t want my wife or mum to see.” Today, your intimate moments are not entirely intimate. “Life is short. Have an affair,” declares the infidelity dating site Ashley Madison which, in 2015, was hacked – with the details of its 32 million purportedly married or partnered members leaked. At Moonpig, all images are kept in secure cloud storage and deleted after 30 days, regardless of whether they relate to completed or cancelled orders. Handing the staff at Clintons or Paperchase a nude photo to turn into a greetings card would, in all likelihood, trigger considerable embarrassment, but our attitudes toward “faceless” online companies are different. “I think some people believe their greeting cards are manufactured without human intervention,” says Perry. This doesn’t mean romance is dead, but maybe you should cover up slightly. “But,” says Perry, “if it makes you and your loved one happy, it can’t be that bad, can it?”Political and economic problems loom heavily over the global elite as they gather at Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF). But is there any political will to fix them? The WEF sees its role as “improving the state of the world”. But the political analyst and author Anand Giridharadas speaks for many critics when he calls Davos “a family reunion for the people who broke the world”. After decades championing globalisation, the WEF now fears that rising inequality, protectionism and nationalist politics could send the world economy “sleepwalking” into another crisis. As the WEF’s founder, Klaus Schwab, puts it: “Globalisation produces winners and losers and there are many more winners in the last 24, 25, 30 years – but now we have to look after the losers, after those who have been left behind.” Schwab will be pushing politicians and business chiefs towards a new “inclusive” globalisation to fix the gap between the “precariat” many and the privileged few. But will this address the concerns of the many millions who feel the current system is rigged against them, and who will never make the trek to Davos? Realistically, the WEF will be wrestling with the same problems in 2020 … and 2021 … and beyond. After years of warnings, most business leaders, politicians and economists seem to have got the message. Climate change and extreme weather events have rocketed to the top of the list of dangers facing the world economy, according to the WEF’s annual survey of global risks. Unfortunately, worsening international relations and rising nationalism means it’s even harder to get global agreement to address the problem, even though California’s wildfires and Europe’s recent floods have shown the human and economic cost of inaction. Fortunately, the WEF can turn to Sir David Attenborough to drive the message home. The broadcaster and naturalist (at 92, the oldest delegate risking Davos’s treacherously icy pavements) will address delegates – and warn them: “Never has an understanding of the natural world been so important to ensure a safe future for our planet.” The WEF has made mental health a key theme at Davos this year. The forum will address fears that depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems are rising, and being neither measured correctly nor properly addressed. Prince William will be challenging business leaders to improve emotional and mental wellbeing in their own workplaces. He is appearing on a “mental health matters” panel alongside the New Zealand PM, Jacinda Ardern. Kensington Palace says the Duke of Cambridge will “use the opportunity to highlight his belief that the world’s major employers have a vital role to play in promoting mentally healthy societies and workplaces”. Thrilled the Duke of Cambridge is taking part in the first ever plenary panel on global mental health @Davos later this month. Thank you @wef for making mental health a priority in 2019. Looking forward to being there for @UnitedGMH asking leaders to make sure 2019 is #timetoact https://t.co/WtSDoF2kah Hopes that Davos might deliver a breakthrough in the US-China trade war were dashed when Donald Trump benched the entire White House delegation last Friday. In their absence, Wang Qishan, the vice-president of China, will give a special address. Behind the scenes, Wang will be pressed about how much damage the US trade war is causing, and whether China’s economy is slowing as quickly as some economists fear. It’s just a shame that the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, the secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross, and the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer will not be there too. The new wave of populist leaders will be rubbing padded snow jackets with more mainstream politicians this year. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new rightwing president, will fill Trump’s snowboots by giving a special address on Tuesday, letting him set the agenda on the first day of the forum. Bolsonaro says he will be presenting “a different Brazil, free of ideological ties and widespread corruption”. His tax cuts and privatisations are popular with investors, so Davos will probably give the retired military officer a rousing reception. Human rights groups, though, would like to challenge Bolsonaro on his autocratic policies and recent loosening of gun laws. Mostrarei nosso desejo de fazer comércio com o mundo todo, prezando pela liberdade econômica, acordos bilaterais e saúde fiscal. Com esses pilares, o Brasil caminhará na direção do pleno emprego e da prosperidade. Espero trazer boas experiências e avanços ao nosso país! George Soros, scourge of populists, will also be in Davos, and probably taking a few potshots at the absent Trump. The French president Emmanuel Macon won’t catch them in person, though – he’s remaining in Paris to hold a national debate in response to the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) crisis. Theresa May is another Davos no-show this year, choosing to stay with the Brexit crisis in Westminster. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, is expected to attend and will get his ear bent by increasingly anxious UK business leaders worried about a no-deal Brexit. The WEF is planning to hold a session on Brexit; wisely, it has held it back until the end of the week. As of Friday, no speakers had been named either. The PM might not mind missing out, given her distaste for the “citizens of the world” who flock to Davos each year. she doesn't want to hang out with the *citizens of snow wear* https://t.co/TVRFXO0JXFBritish cultural figures including Vivienne Westwood, Peter Gabriel and Mike Leigh have signed a letter calling on the BBC to cancel coverage of this year’s Eurovision song contest because it is taking place in Israel. The letter, published in the Guardian, criticises Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories. “Eurovision may be light entertainment, but it is not exempt from human rights considerations – and we cannot ignore Israel’s systematic violation of Palestinian human rights,” it reads. “The BBC is bound by its charter to ‘champion freedom of expression’. It should act on its principles and press for Eurovision to be relocated to a country where crimes against that freedom are not being committed.” The letter comes as the UK prepares to select its entry for the annual song competition in a public vote on a BBC2 show entitled Eurovision: You Decide, to be aired on 8 February. “For any artist of conscience, this would be a dubious honour,” the letter says. “They and the BBC should consider that You Decide is not a principle extended to the Palestinians, who cannot ‘decide’ to remove Israel’s military occupation and live free of apartheid.” Other signatories of the letter include actors Julie Christie and Maxine Peake; musicians Wolf Alice and Roger Waters; and writers Caryl Churchill and AL Kennedy. Their letter follows another in September 2018 in which cultural figures from across Europe called on Eurovision’s organisers to “cancel Israel’s hosting of the contest altogether and move it to another country with a better human rights record”. The contest is being held in Israel following the country’s win in 2018, for pop singer Netta’s track Toy. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had wanted the contest to be staged in Jerusalem, but the nationality of the city is disputed, with Palestinians claiming an Israeli-occupied area as a potential future capital city. Instead, Tel Aviv will host the contest, which is scheduled for 18 May. The letter’s authors say the decision “does nothing to protect Palestinians from land theft, evictions, shootings, beatings and more by Israel’s security forces”. Many of the signatories have protested the staging of other cultural events in Israel. Nick Cave and Radiohead are among the musicians criticised for performing in the country in recent years, with others, such as Lana Del Rey and Lorde, cancelling concerts following pressure to do so.Leicester have completed the loan signing of Youri Tielemans from Monaco in a deal that sees Adrien Silva move in the opposite direction. Tielemans, who is 21, joined Monaco from Anderlecht in May 2017 for £21.5m and is regarded as one of Belgium’s brightest young talents. He signed a five-year contract with Monaco and this season has started all but two of their Ligue 1 games in what has been a turbulent campaign. Claude Puel will hope that Tielemans can bring craft and guile to a midfield that has looked pedestrian and prosaic at times. Silva has endured an extremely difficult time at Leicester, going back to the farce that surrounded his arrival. The Portugal international joined from Sporting Lisbon for £22m in the summer of August 2017 but was prevented from playing until the following January because his transfer went through 14 seconds after the deadline. By the time Silva returned, Puel had replaced Craig Shakespeare as the Leicester manager. The 29-year-old is clearly not part of Puel’s plans, having made only five appearances this season. He informed Leicester before deadline day that he wanted to leave, whether on loan or on a permanent basis. Wolves have equalled their club record transfer fee of £18m to make Jonny Otto’s loan switch from Atlético Madrid permanent. The 24-year-old Spain left-back, who has signed a contract until 2023, said: “I’m really happy to continue to be involved with the team. I am very happy here. The truth is that it was very easy to decide.” Reece Oxford has joined Augsburg on loan from West Ham for the remainder of the season. The 20-year-old defender spent part of last season in Germany with Borussia Mönchengladbach during two loan spells. He has not played in the Premier League for West Ham this season. Following the club record deal for Miguel Almirón, Newcastle reinforced their squad with the signing of the Monaco full-back Antonio Barreca, on loan for the rest of the season with the option of a permanent deal. Fulham’s Aboubakar Kamara has moved to the Turkish side Yeni Malatyaspor on loan. The 23-year-old has been suspended by Fulham pending internal disciplinary proceedings after a training ground incident. Georges-Kevin Nkoudou has joined Monaco on loan from Tottenham. Nkoudou has moved until the end of the season. The 23-year-old winger has made three appearances for Spurs this season. The Everton defender Cuco Martina has joined Feyenoord on loan for the remainder of the season after his stint at Stoke was cancelled. The Curacao international, who move to Merseyside from Southampton in July 2017 on a free transfer, was supposed to spend the entire season with Stoke. The Bournemouth defender Tyrone Mings has joined Aston Villa on loan for the rest of the season. Mings joined Bournemouth from Ipswich for around £8m in 2015 but has found first-team chances limited after suffering a serious knee injury. Cardiff have signed Leandro Bacuna from Reading subject to international clearance. The 27-year-old has signed a four-and-a-half-year contract that will run until the summer of 2023, and the deal is expected to cost Premier League strugglers around £3m.Freida Pinto’s role in her new film Love Sonia is shocking. She plays a desperate sex worker in a brutal tale of trafficking. Rashmi is complex, edgy and selfish – everything you wouldn’t expect of a Pinto character. After all, the Indian actor, who made her name in Danny Boyle’s phenomenally successful Slumdog Millionaire, has spent much of her career playing eye candy. And she is sick of it. Love Sonia is relentless. A debt-ridden father sells his teenage daughter Preeti to a landlord, who then trafficks her to a brothel in Mumbai. Her sister Sonia, brilliantly played by newcomer Mrunal Thakur, goes in search of her, and is also ensnared in the trafficking web. She is anally raped to preserve her value as a virgin. Having lost her virginity, she is stitched so she can once again be sold as untouched. Just when you think things can’t get worse, they do. Pinto’s older sex worker appears to befriend Sonia, but ultimately betrays her to protect herself. This is a world without love or loyalty and reflects a stark reality. Last year, India was named the most dangerous country for women in terms of human trafficking, by a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of 550 experts on women’s issues. Love Sonia has been 10 years in the making. Pinto was first shown an early version of the script by director Tabrez Noorani the day after she finished shooting Slumdog Millionaire. Noorani, a line producer on Slumdog Millionaire, wrote Love Sonia after helping to rescue trafficked women from brothels. But it took another decade to finesse the script, get financial backing and find the right Sonia. After Slumdog Millionaire, in which Pinto played Latika, a street kid described as “the most beautiful girl in the world”, she was keen for a more demanding role. But in hindsight, she says she wasn’t ready for Love Sonia. She was too unworldly. “I thought it was exaggerated when I read the script. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.” Later, when she met trafficked sex workers advising on the film, she began to think that, if anything, the story had been understated. She winces when she recalls a question she asked one of them. “I said: ‘Hypothetically speaking, if you had a chance to leave this world, let’s say you fell in love and found somebody who’d treat you right for once, would you escape?’ And she said to me: ‘Madam, love only exists in your world. In my world, there is just betrayal.’” The trajectory of Pinto’s career in the years after Slumdog certainly didn’t suggest she would ever make a hard-hitting film about sex trafficking. Time after time, she played the vapid love interest, characters so underwritten that they struggled to be one-dimensional. So in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Josh Brolin’s author, Roy, spends his time staring longingly out of the window at Pinto’s Dia in the flat opposite. When he confesses this to her, she says: “I’ve always wanted to be someone’s muse.” In Terence Mallick’s Knight of Cups, she is a pouting femme fatale who states: “I don’t want to wreak havoc in men’s lives any more.” In Miral, directed by Julian Schnabel, she plays a Palestinian heroine whose boyfriend tells her she has “beautiful eyes”, while an Israeli interrogator tells her: “You have a beautiful face … you won’t recognise it when you get out of here.” Some of the world’s best-known directors have been so fixated on her looks that they forgot to create a character for her. “They couldn’t go past what they saw on the outside,” Pinto says. “And that’s their problem, not mine, right, because I know what I can bring to the table as talent.” It has been a strange, decade-long career, including an unexplained extended break. Meanwhile, off-screen she has been an assertive force for good, consistently campaigning for the rights of women. Does she see a contradiction between her feminism and the films she has made? “Completely! There was no way I agreed with so much that I did in my early career.” Pinto takes me through some of her experiences, with jaw-dropping honesty. She loved working with Brolin on the Allen film (“Josh taught me to relax because I would get really worked up before each take – I was too nervous to breathe and my body would stiffen”), but has nothing positive to say of her part. “I was just the muse, the ingenue.” Would she work again with Allen, who has been accused by his daughter Dylan of sexual assault (an allegation he denies)? “No. Absolutely not. I wouldn’t work with him because I’m in solidarity with women who have come out with their stories, whether they are proven or not. I’m just going to stick to what my gut instinct tells me. I’m 34 years old, I’ve worked for 11 years in this industry, I’m not desperate and I will never be desperate.” Then it is on to another unhappy experience, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, made in 2011. Pinto was looking forward to playing a smart, independent-minded primatologist. But it didn’t work out that way. “I felt completely undermined as the only female perfomer in the film who wasn’t given a task other than to be a primatologist in frickin’ high heels and follow the men around. Have you seen Jane Goodall wearing high heels and running on the Golden Gate Bridge? I don’t think so. I spoke to one of the producers and asked why I was put in high heels because it didn’t make sense for my character – if she was so hands-on with animals, she needed freedom of movement and her body language needed to be different. I wish I’d been more confident in putting my case forward back then, but I remember asking him what his reference was and I was told Megan Fox from Transformers and I was like – that is a completely different film.” Again, she doesn’t write off the experience – she got to work with some of her favourite actors, including Andy Serkis and John Lithgow – but she does write off her role in the film. Pinto is not finished yet. Now we are on to Black Gold, a historical epic about the scramble for oil in the Arabian desert in the 1920s. “In Black Gold, what was I? Like a princess who had no say, who was just in love … I can’t even remember the story, that’s how bad it is.” And she is really trying hard to remember her character now. “Oh my God! What was my role? I have no frickin clue! Oh my God, that’s terrible.” In 30 years of interviewing, I have never heard somebody trash their career so comprehensively – or honestly. Pinto is on a brief visit to Britain from Los Angeles, where she now lives, to promote Love Sonia. We meet at the central London hotel where she is staying. She arrives quietly, orders a camomile tea and gets on with it. Pinto is, of course, gorgeous; slightly built, but strong-looking. She is also bright, intense and combative. In her tracksuit top and bottoms and surprisingly large trainers (size eight and a half), she resembles a Hollywood action hero. Her accent is a weird global confection – cut-glass English, Indian, American, with an upward Aussie inflection. She says people tell her she sounds South African. Pinto was born in Mumbai (then still Bombay) to Mangalorean Catholics – her mother was a school principal, her father a bank manager. She went to convent school and was a confident, outspoken girl. She says she soon felt stymied by the dogma of the church. “I was 13 or 14 when I heard a priest talk about homosexuality in a sermon. He asked us to pray for them through this illness, this sickness, what they’re going through, hoping that they would come out the other side, finding the answer in Jesus. After mass, I questioned him. I said: ‘What makes you think it’s an illness?’” Her parents worried that she was too opinionated, and she admits at times she was. “I was very candid; a bit too honest. When I was six or seven years old, there was this young boy, probably about 16, who sang a Christmas carol during Sunday mass, and he was terrible. He came over to wish the family happy Christmas and I said: ‘Hey, you sang terribly at mass today, you shouldn’t sing.’ And my mum was like: ‘Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed, I’m so sorry that my daughter is so rude.’” Would she do that now? “Of course not because I’ve been told not to do it, or I’ll find a better way of putting it, but I was a bit too blunt as a child, and that was terrible. I hurt the poor boy’s feelings.” How did he react? “Apparently he was very upset. My mum told me he never sang again after that.” She studied English literature, and after graduating in 2005 went into modelling. Two years later, she was cast in Slumdog Millionaire, despite having no acting experience. The film won eight Oscars, including best picture and director. She and her co-star, British actor Dev Patel, were suddenly world famous. Everybody wanted a share of their fairytale – they became a couple in real life, and were together for six years. Pinto found herself in demand across the world – not just as an actor, but also to flog products. In 2009, she signed a lucrative contract to became the face of L’Oréal. Life really was amazing. “I was riding the waves and going to all the fashion weeks on the front row. And travelling first class, and holidays and blah blah blah. And every director I wanted to meet wanted to meet me too.” And then they offered her parts. And time after time they disappointed. For the first time in her life, she lost confidence. Did she feel exposed because she hadn’t trained as an actor? “Yes, I felt like people around me knew more how to do things. All I had was instinct. I lost the innocence that comes with confidence. The blind faith. Spontaneity.” Even the films she was proud of prompted uncomfortable questions – in Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna, based on Tess of the D’urbervilles, she wanted to know why she had to be so passive. When she was cast as the eponymous Palestinian heroine of Miral, she wondered why. “I worried that I wasn’t Arab enough to play the role, so how were they going to convince the audience?” Again, she stresses the positives – Schnabel treated her with respect and she learned about the politics of the Middle East. In Desert Dancer, she was cast as an Iranian, and again asked why. But she knew the answer really. “It’s the same reason Ridley Scott was questioned on why they had non-Egyptian actors playing Egyptian roles in Gods of Egypt. To get the film financed and sold, they came to the person they thought was closest to that culture. Having said that, Iran and India have nothing in common. We’re two different parts of the world.” Did she ever think of sticking two fingers up at the film industry and walking way? “Yeah, I did. And it cost me two and a half years. I didn’t work for two and a half years.” At 28, she says, she had an existential crisis. “I thought: is this something I really want to do, or am I just doing it because I got this amazing start to my career and now this is all I know how to do?” So she waited for a good job to come along. And waited. “I didn’t know if I’d ever get a job again because out of sight could be so out of mind.” Was she offered lots of roles? “Yes, but – trust me – they were not worth my time.” Does she regret turning any of them down? “No. The films were big, but the roles were not good enough to regret.” I ask if she ever struggled for money. “No, no. That was the saving grace. I had a lucrative brand endorsement deal – a seven-year contract that kept me afloat. I’m grateful to L’Oréal for ever.” In 2011, her L’Oréal contract came under scrutiny when it was suggested that the company had lightened her skin in a campaign. Had they Photoshopped the image? L’Oréal denies altering her skin tone but she says: “I’m sure they did, because that’s not the colour of my skin you saw in a few of the campaigns.” Did she complain? “I said to my agent after the first controversy that I would like to see the pictures before, and I would like to be able to question them on colour correction.” She also insisted on having a clause written into her contract. “All the brands, including L’Oréal, have a skin-lightening range that they sell in India and I made them put it in my contract that I would not touch that with a barge pole. If you don’t put it in your contract before you sign on, they can come and you will be compelled to do it.” After she protested about the skin-lightening, she says, it never happened again. (L’Oréal has been approached for a comment.) Pinto has lived in Los Angeles for nine years, and says she feels at home there; her boyfriend, adventure photographer Cory Tran, is also LA-based. She often spends time in Mumbai, where her parents and sister still live. In 2017, she returned to the screen with Guerrilla, a TV drama about Britain’s black power movement. Pinto’s underground activist Jas Mitra was a formidable character, leading from the front. She says this was the start of her reinvention as an actor. At one point Jas says to one of the men in her life: “The first chance you get, you reduce me to my looks.” I tell her it feels personal – that it could be aimed at directors such as Allen or Mallick. “Yep!” she says, with a broad smile. She says that bit of dialogue was the result of a conversation she had with Guerrilla director John Ridley. “I talked to John about looks and how they hold people back and I told him how crazy it is to be a little fed up to be told you’re beautiful. I know I sound ungrateful, but I’m not. I’m very grateful for what I have, but I’m fed up of hearing other people tell me that or remind me of that.” As for now, Pinto could not be happier that nobody is likely to come out of Love Sonia discussing her looks. On its release in India, the film was not been warmly received. “People haven’t welcomed a film that exposes the underbelly of the country. It hasn’t done well.” But she says she is not going to judge the film’s success by its box-office takings – highlighting the trafficking scandal is far more important. In many ways, Pinto is just starting out as an actor – and still has much to prove. But despite everything she has said today, she insists there is nothing she would change. If she hadn’t done all the naff work, she says, she wouldn’t be where she is now – and it’s great to have got her existential crisis out of the way. “I’m glad the reality check happened. Now I think I can finally say I’ve figured things out for myself.” Love Sonia is on general releaseI once heard a story about a couple in a restaurant who ate in total silence for over an hour. When coffee came, the husband whispered something to the wife, who hissed back: “It’s not the coffee, it’s the last 25 years.” A slow crumbling like that would be pretty appalling. But when you’re given the surprise approach, the moment of impact feels brutally physical. Someone stands across from you, looks directly into your eyes and tells you they are leaving you, they no longer love you, they have found someone else, you are not enough, and you think: “Oh, so this is the moment I am going to die. I can’t possibly get through this.” As I lay on the floor of my own sitting room, watching my husband’s feet walking quickly towards the door, I knew that the end of my marriage, after less than a year, would bring unbearable sadness, awkward questions, terrible embarrassment. I even knew that, with the right coping skills, it might be OK in the end. But I also knew something else: at 29, unlike most adults, I had no coping skills. Anxious even as a very small child, I had let my worries fester, take control, and dominate my life. Mental health problems had stunted my own growth, leaving me too scared to take on challenges. I quit things when they got hard. I turned down opportunities that would push me, or give me independence. I preferred being small. From a young age, I had been agoraphobic, prone to panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, hysteria and depression. By the time my husband walked out on me, I’d had years of this. Often I couldn’t make it to the supermarket on my own (honestly), much less navigate my way through a breakup of this magnitude. I knew I had to get off the floor, but I didn’t know what to do next. Everything was draped in fear. If ever there is a trigger to make you try to change something, it’s the shock of your marriage collapsing. Given that people who get divorced in the UK have usually managed about 11 and a half years before they pull the plug, tanking your vows as spectacularly as I did felt like quite the feat. Any longer and it might just have been seen as sad, unavoidable, or chalked up to “young people not sticking at anything any more”; but eight months? It would be unwise not to question your life just a little bit after that. I went back to work, alternately crying in the toilets (my husband worked for the same company; that was fun) and sitting mute at my desk, listening to bagpipe music on my headphones in a strange attempt to find some mettle whenever I saw him walk by. (As an aside, this was strangely effective and I would recommend it to anyone needing to feel strong. Start with Highland Laddie.) I felt stagnant, aware that I had to endure these painful emotions, but also worried I might never feel truly better. Life continues around you, no matter how much your own world has been shattered. I could see normality heave into view and I didn’t want it. I suspected that, within a few months, I might be over the breakup but still locked in my small space, anxiety and depression my only bedfellows. It’s easy to behave as if nothing is wrong, even when you have a mental illness. I was good at holding down my job, cracking jokes, going out just enough that I wasn’t seen as a hermit. I could probably have gone on like this for ever, living half a life, pretending I was OK with it. But something had broken, and I couldn’t do it any more. I still don’t know why running was the tool I opted for in the midst of misery. I’d never done strenuous exercise before I saw myself exposed as a fraud – a cowardly kid play-acting as an adult, with no business being there. JK Rowling has said that when her own short-lived marriage imploded, leaving her an unemployed single parent, rock bottom became the foundation upon which she built her life: because her worst fears had been realised, she had nowhere to go but up. As it’s her, I can allow the cliche and even grudgingly admit it fits. In Rowling’s case, she went on to create a magical world of wizards that helped her become one of the richest women in the world. In mine, rock bottom spurred me on to go for a jog. I still don’t know why running was the tool I opted for in the midst of misery. I’d never done strenuous exercise before. But I had spent a lifetime holding at bay the need to run away – from my mind, from my negative thoughts; from the worries that built up and calcified, layer upon layer, until they were too strong to chip away at. Maybe the sudden urge to run was a physical manifestation of this desire to escape my own brain. I guess I just wanted to do it for real. I was about to turn 30, and terrified I would use the breakup as an excuse to retreat, to be scared of life itself. I was not ready to run across a playing field. So I put on some old leggings and a T-shirt and walked to a dark alleyway 30 seconds from my flat. It fitted two important criteria: near enough to the safety of home, and quiet enough that nobody would laugh at me. I felt absurd and slightly ashamed – as if I was doing something perverse that shouldn’t be seen. With my headphones in, I settled on a song called She Fucking Hates Me by a band called Puddle Of Mudd. Not to my usual taste, but the lyrics were suitably angry and I didn’t want anything that might make me cry (everything was making me cry). I managed 30 seconds of jogging before I had to stop, calves screaming and lungs burning. I rested for a minute, and then started again. I somehow managed to keep time with the shouting singer, mouthing the words as I screwed up my face and lumbered down the path. I ran an incredible three minutes, in stages, before I gave up and went home. Did I feel better? No. Did I enjoy it? Also no, but I hadn’t cried for at least 15 minutes and that was good enough for me. To my surprise, I didn’t leave it there. I went back to that same alley the next day. And the day after that. Those first few attempts were all pathetic, really. A few seconds, shuffle, stop. Wait. Go again. Freeze if a person emerged from the shadows. Feel ridiculous. Carry on anyway. Always in the dark, always in secret, as if I was somehow transgressing. I got shin splints, which hurt like hell. I ran too fast and had to stop after wheezing uncontrollably. I tried to go up a hill and had to admit defeat and get on a bus; I had a panic attack in a dark part of the local park when I mistimed sunset and realised I was all alone. I fell over and cried like a child. Running felt like a language I couldn’t speak, and not only because I was hugely unfit. It seemed to be something only happy, healthy, bouncy people did – not neurotic smokers who were scared of everything. When you run, your body takes your brain along for the ride. Your mind is no longer in the driving seat Throughout my life, if I couldn’t do something well on the first attempt, I was prone to quit. It was embarrassingly clear to me that I was not running well, or getting better at it. And yet, much to my own quiet disbelief, I carried on. For the first couple of months, I stuck to the roads closest to my flat, looping around quiet streets. I was slow, sad and angry. But two things were becoming clear. The first was that when I ran I didn’t feel quite so sad. My mind would quieten down; some part of my brain seemed to switch off, or at least cede control for a few minutes. I wouldn’t think about my marriage, or my part in its failure. I wouldn’t wonder if my husband was happy, or out on a great date, or just not thinking about me at all. The relief this gave me was immense. The second thing, which was even more valuable, was that I noticed I wasn’t feeling so anxious. Soon enough, I was reaching parts of the city I hadn’t been able to visit in years, especially alone. Within a month I was able to run through the markets of Camden without feeling I would faint or break down. When your brain has denied you the chance to take the mundane excursions most people do every day, being able to pass through stalls selling “Nobody knows I’m a lesbian” T-shirts suddenly feels like a red-letter day. By concentrating on the rhythm of my feet striking the pavement, I wasn’t obsessing over my breathing, or the crowds, or how far I was from home. It was miraculous to me. When you run, your body takes your brain along for the ride. Your mind is no longer in the driving seat. You’re concentrating on the burn in your legs, the swing of your arms. You notice your heartbeat, the sweat dripping into your ears, the way your torso twists as you stride. Once you’re in a rhythm, you start to notice obstacles in your way, or people to avoid. You see details on buildings you’d never noticed before. You anticipate the weather ahead of you. Your brain has a role in all of this, but not the role it is used to. My mind, accustomed to frightening me with endless “what if” thoughts, or happy to torment me with repeated flashbacks to my worst experiences, simply could not compete with the need to concentrate while moving fast. I’d tricked it, or exhausted it, or just given it something new to deal with. Anxiety has been with me for as long as I can remember, but it’s ebbed and flowed over the years. At 11, I went to secondary school and the change sent me into a tailspin. I cried every day, like many other kids who hate moving to a new place and making new friends; but I didn’t stop there. I developed OCD tics – swallowing whenever I had a bad or negative thought, blinking, even more disgustingly, spitting – as if to rid bad feelings from my body as quickly as possible. I had no idea what this meant – I just knew I “had” to do them. I remember missing my bus stop in the mornings many times because I hadn’t blinked in the correct way. There was no winning; the goalposts would shift all the time. If it wasn’t blinking, it was avoiding cracks in the pavement – small things that paralysed me. These routines would take up hours of my time, partly in the doing and partly in the concealing; those around me must not know. I also found myself disassociating for the first time – detaching from my surroundings when it all got too much. This remains my most terrifying anxiety symptom, and the one I can’t totally shake; though it’s believed that your brain does this in an attempt to protect you, it only makes me feel much worse, as though I’m drowning but my legs don’t work. Colour gets too bright, sounds are jarring and it feels like I’m cocooned in bubblewrap, unable to get back to reality. At worst, I’ve looked in the mirror at my own face and not recognised it to be me, and not just because I had terrible hair and bad skin that morning. It’s a strange and awful experience. When I was trapped in a fug of anxiety and depression in my early 20s, disassociation made it feel as though the people around me were actors in a bad reality show. I couldn’t connect with loved ones; everything felt fake and staged. What else? Well, I would scratch and pick at my skin, until it bled and scarred, pull out hairs (a mild form of trichotillomania, where sufferers have an intense urge to pull their hair out and feel a strong sense of relief when they do). I’d chew my lips until they bled. All fun scars to have as an adult: “Why do you have scars all up your legs, Bella?” “Oh just because I pull and pluck my leg hair until I bleed when I feel like I’m losing control – who wants another drink?” Having managed to leave school with most of my childish worries fairly dormant, I was knocked off my feet one day at university, when, out of the blue, I had a terrible panic attack. The clever (not a compliment) thing about anxiety is that the moment you’ve got a handle on one thing (night sweats, panic attacks, dizziness, nausea, headaches), it’ll throw you another one, and you better believe it’ll be worse. Running is not a cure-all for severe mental illness, or anything else for that matter. But I often think of the girl I was in my 20s and wish I could go back and try putting on some trainers. Instead, I dropped out of uni, went to a psychiatrist and took the antidepressants that I was swiftly prescribed. What else could I do? At this point, suicidal thoughts were creeping in. Despite all of this, I was extremely fortunate. I had a family who, while not fully understanding why their daughter was crying hysterically all the time and refusing to go out, had the resources to pay for me to see a professional. (My NHS GP was kind, but could only put me on the waiting list for therapy.) The pills helped, and I was able to look at myself in a mirror again without wondering who was looking back at me. After quitting my degree, I got a job, was able to go out again, and managed a few relationships. I was patched up, in the most basic sense. I say all this, not to give you a small insight into my not-particularly-special mind, but to show how easy it is to accept the most pallid imitations of existence when you’ve got a mental illness. To paint on a small canvas, and to pretend that you’re happy with the narrow perimeters you’re able to move within. Not a life wasted by any means, but a life limited. So to find something that breaks you free of this can feel miraculous. For some that may mean medication, for others meditation. My mother does yoga whenever she feels low. A colleague lifts weights, and one friend boxes because he feels far too angry and it helps keep those thoughts under control. Somehow, in the wreckage of my marriage, after a decade of settling for merely “managing”, I’d found the thing that broke me out of it: I’d found running. Weeks after my marriage collapsed, I was still sick with it all. At work, I would regularly go into the toilets and cry quietly. At home, I would put on my pyjamas the moment I got in and mindlessly watch TV. When I went out, I drank too much and would cry again. While I was running, nobody could give me the dreaded sympathy head tilt or an excruciating hug. Nobody even looked at me. I soon found I was setting myself little challenges: go two minutes farther today, run down that busy road you’ve avoided for years. I discovered old railway lines that ran like arteries through built-up estates, hidden from plain sight. I ran along the canal and found an expanse of brambles, wild flowers and ducklings swimming along next to me. The panic attacks were fading away. One day, I decided to go farther. I ran into the heart of the city, towards one of the bridges that traverse the Thames and beckon you over with the promise of light and air, and I headed across without a backwards glance. I crossed another bridge, intoxicated by the sunshine on my skin, and I ran into Parliament Square, thronging with tourists and vendors and honking cars. I passed through Soho, marvelling at the noise and rickshaws and sex shops. I kept going, like a neurotic Forrest Gump, until I physically couldn’t go any farther. And when I stopped, I wandered around. The pit in my stomach wasn’t raw, I wasn’t checking my breathing – I didn’t notice my body. I was able to take in my surroundings and enjoy them. I felt triumphant. I felt… happy. Running is not magic beans. Life is tricky and gets diverted constantly, and we all stumble. There have been crappy times. There have been brilliant times. But the main difference between my life before I ran and my life since is that I have hope. And I have a life that is not always dictated by worry, panic, doom and depression. You can do so much more when those things don’t sit on your chest and slowly squash you. Some people might take my (small) achievements as proof that I simply grew out of my anxiety, or that I was never affected by it too much in the first place. I assure you neither is true. Anxiety rarely “leaves” you. Some people might be lucky and feel it float away one day; but for most of us it’s a lifelong companion we must learn to live with. That doesn’t mean enduring it, or giving in to it. It means finding ways to negate it, to push it back. Since that first short and sad run I took over four years ago, I have lived alone, travelled, changed jobs and begun a new relationship. Knowing I could do a 10K meant I knew I could fly to New York for a job interview, and that I could step outside my door alone without hyperventilating. It’s a measure of how over the whole “starter marriage” I am that I sat across from my boyfriend at dinner last year and proposed to him (he said yes, thank the lord). Running has given me a new identity, one that no longer sees danger and fear first. I ran myself out of misery. Take water Most experts say you don’t need to, on short runs, but it might help if you get panicky and need to stop. Take sips, wait for your breathing to get back to normal. I have a bottle that moulds to my hand and makes me feel I’m carrying a neon weapon. Podcasts and music help They distract me when I get bored, or tired. More importantly, at the beginning, they made my brain concentrate on something other than worry. Start small If leaving your safe places makes you feel vulnerable, do a loop of your road. Run that road until you feel confident you can go to the next one. It all counts, and it’s important you don’t push yourself too fast. Listen to your body. Nobody is looking at you Running feels incredibly exposing, overwhelming and scary to begin with. I assumed people would mock me, honk from vans. But nobody batted an eyelid. I fell over at the feet of a man on the canal path and he carried on eating his sandwich. Enjoy the beauty around you Your anxiety can make you introverted, forcing your brain to see negative, scary things instead of your surroundings. Nearly every time I go for a run, I stop to take a longer look at a building, a poster, a sunset. My phone is full of photos of weird street names, beautiful views, and dogs I see along the way. Be kind to yourself Buy an ice-cream after a run; have a glass of wine. Never berate yourself if you have a panic attack and need to go home abruptly. Running is not always a straight line (that would be boring). • Jog On, by Bella Mackie, is published by Harper Collins, priced £12.99. To order a copy for £11.43, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).MPs in Greece are preparing to ratify a historic pact that will allow Macedonia, the country’s northern neighbour, to change its name. The accord has sparked mass protests on the eve of the vote to resolve one of the world’s most abstruse diplomatic rows. While a vote in favour of the Prespa agreement on Friday afternoon is considered highly likely, the atmosphere both in and outside Athens’s parliament was tense on Thursday evening. Demonstrators railed against an accord described as a national sellout by opponents demanding a referendum. Officers fired tear gas to disperse crowds as protesters waved Greek flags and chanted “Hands off, Macedonia”. A small number of people launched Molotov cocktails, rocks and flares. Under the agreement, the former Yugoslav republic will be renamed North Macedonia, paving the way to membership of Nato and ending a dispute that has divided the two Balkan nations for decades. But the backlash is fierce. “This treason has to stop,” said Dimitris Orfanoudakis, a farmer who travelled to the capital from Crete to shout himself hoarse at the demonstration with his teenage son, Giorgos, draped in a blue and white Greek flag. “We are the only people in the world who have to defend our borders from our own politicians because what they are doing is a national crime. Macedonia is one, and it is Greek.” Indicative of the mood ahead of Friday’s ballot, more than 1,500 police threw a security cordon around central Athens as black-clad youths chanted “traitors” at lawmakers. “We feel betrayed,” Zografos Stathakopoulos, a 47-year-old protester, said on Thursday. “Most Greeks don’t want this deal, but politicians are betraying us.” Police said they arrested 10 people and detained another 133 on suspicion of committing or planning acts of violence before the protest broke up. A new demonstration has been called outside parliament for Friday. The government had originally called the vote for Thursday night but was forced to delay it after parliamentarians across the board demanded to address the chamber as four days of stormy debate climaxed over the issue. “You have surrendered the monopoly of the name Macedonia,” fumed the socialist party leader Fofi Gennimata giving voice to long-held Greek fears of irredentist claims over the country’s own province of Macedonia. “You have given up Greece’s geostrategic position.” Earlier in the day the KKE communist party, which had also called on followers to protest against the landmark name-change deal, unfurled a giant banner across the great walls of the ancient Acropolis deploring it as a plot of the “US, Nato and the EU”. A similar rally that drew tens of thousands on Sunday turned violent when rock and crowbar-wielding protestors attempted to storm parliament, prompting police to respond by firing copious rounds of teargas. Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Greece has argued that use of the name Macedonia would unleash territorial ambitions over its own province of the same name in a part of the world where borders are prone to shifting. Concerns had been fuelled by the landlocked republic appropriating figures and symbols from ancient Greek history including the erection of a gargantuan statue with an uncanny likeness to Alexander the Great – the most famous Macedonian of all – in Skopje’s central square. For Greece’s leftist prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, and his Macedonian counterpart, Zoran Zaev, adding the geographical qualifier of “north” to the state’s new name was an honourable compromise that, once accepted, could normalise ties in the otherwise volatile western Balkans. Greece had vetoed the state’s membership of both Nato and the EU since 2008 because of the name row. Friday’s vote followed a similar endorsement of the accord by the Skopje parliament earlier this month. Under the treaty, Athens also has to vote for the pact before it can pass into law. Internationally, both leaders have been praised for the courage they have displayed defying nationalist sentiment on the ground. But what European officials see as “a unique and historic opportunity” to settle a dispute that has defied a solution for decades has tested the two politicians at home. “Tsipras submitted to pressure from the Europeans, especially [Angela] Merkel,” said Panos Kammenos, who heads the populist rightwing Independent Greeks party, the ruling leftists’ junior partner in government until it pulled out in protest over the accord. In northern Greece, which abuts the ex republic and bears the same name, nationalist fervour was at a high pitch on Thursday, with hundreds of farmers and local residents blocking the main border crossing between the two states. MPs from the region who signalled they will vote in favour of the accord have received death threats. Late on Wednesday arsonists set fire to the home of a female lawmaker representing Tsipras’s Syriza party in the northern town of Yiannitsa. Many deputies have confessed privately to being in fear of confronting constituents. Successive surveys show around 70% of Greeks are opposed to the agreement. “Greeks have vivid memories of Macedonia being fought over four times in the past century alone,” said Angelos Syrigos, professor of law and foreign policy at Athens’ Panteion University. “This agreement would have been a fair compromise if the new name applied to everything and by that I mean language, citizenship and nationality. Right now we have something in between. If our neighbours are known as ‘Macedonians’ who speak the ‘Macedonian’ language that in the future could be the basis for territorial claims.” Tsipras’s minority administration, which controls 145 MPs in the 300-seat house following Kammenos’s departure, needs the support of six opposition deputies to pass the draft bill into law and with the backing of centrists and Independent Greek party defectors is expected to win the vote. But the response could be combustible and unexpected in a country that that has become increasingly polarised as general elections loom. “We will take to the streets as they have done in France,” said Orfanoudakis, the Cretan farmer. “There’s going to be chaos. After eight years of financial crisis, of having foreigners pauperise us, they are not going to take our Macedonia away too.”The daughter of a pregnant woman who was cured of Ebola has survived and tested negative for the virus, in a case that has been described as a medical miracle. Sylvana, born on 6 January and weighing 3.7kg, is the second baby in the world known to have survived after being born to a woman who had Ebola. It is the first case in which both mother and baby have survived. In December, Sylvana’s mother was admitted to the Ebola treatment centre in Beni, in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the response to the Ebola outbreak has been hampered by violence. The mother was cured and discharged, and her baby’s development was monitored before she returned to the centre to give birth. Across the country, there have been 577 confirmed cases of Ebola and 377 deaths since an outbreak was declared in August last year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr Séverine Caluwaerts, a referent gynaecologist with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said Sylvana’s birth offered a message of hope to other women. “Before, the message was that your baby will always get Ebola. Now we can say we have had cases where the baby has survived, is healthy and without problems,” she said. Caluwaerts was part of the team who treated Nubia, the only other baby known to have survived after being born to a mother with Ebola. Nubia was born in an Ebola treatment centre in Guinea in 2015, after receiving three experimental drugs, including remdesivir, which MSF now gives to pregnant women in DRC. Her mother died hours after she was born. Sylvana has been tested twice for the disease and the results have been negative. However, there is a 21-day incubation period for Ebola, and her progress will continue to be monitored. In another recent case in DRC, a baby born to a mother cured of Ebola is understood to have tested negative at birth only to become positive six days later. The child subsequently died. Pregnant women who are treated in MSF clinics in DRC are given remdesivir, one of several experimental drugs used in the current epidemic. “It’s a very small molecule and we assume that it will transfer more easily to the placenta,” said Caluwaert, who added that it is believed the virus accumulates in amniotic fluid. It is not clear what treatment was given to Sylvana, who was treated by staff from the NGO Alima. The survival rate for children aged one year and under is 17%, according to data collected in MSF during the west Africa epidemic. The survival rate for pregnant women was roughly 45%. However, this figure should be treated with caution, since pregnancy tests were not routinely carried out in the early stages of the outbreak or where women were at immediate risk of death. Another study suggested a mortality rate of 80-90% for pregnant women. Women who are pregnant or lactating are currently denied the experimental vaccine for Ebola, a policy described as “utterly indefensible” by health experts. The decision, which was made by the DRC health ministry and echoes WHO recommendations, is based on concerns that the vaccine may cause complications in unborn children and babies. So far in DRC, more than 56,866 people have been vaccinated. The vaccine, made by Merck, is used to immunise a “ring” of contacts of any person who becomes ill.WhatsApp users will be blocked from forwarding messages to more than five individuals or groups under new rules the messaging service is rolling out worldwide to fight the spread of misinformation. The company’s vice-president for policy and communications, Victoria Grand, announced the policy at an event in Jakarta on Monday, Reuters reported. The five-recipient limit was initially put in place in India last July after the messaging service was blamed for a spate of vigilante killings triggered by misinformation spread through networks of friends and families. A larger limit, of 20 recipients, was put in place globally at the same time. In a blogpost last July, WhatsApp said the limits would “help keep WhatsApp the way it was designed to be: a private messaging app”. WhatsApp’s message forwarding mechanics have been blamed for helping the spread of fake news, in part because of the way the app displays forwarded messages. A text message that has been forwarded to a new recipient is marked as forwarded in light grey text, but otherwise appears indistinguishable from an original message sent by the contact. Critics say the design “strips away the identity of the sender and allows messages to spread virally with little accountability”. Others had called on Facebook, which bought WhatsApp for $18bn in 2014, to limit forwarding globally. In an opinion piece published in the New York Times in the run-up to the 2018 Brazilian election, in which WhatsApp-powered misinformation was widely thought to have affected the result, three academics called on the company to introduce the five-recipient limit globally. They said Facebook should restrict broadcasts so that a single user cannot text hundreds of others at once, and limit the size of new groups during the electoral period. WhatsApp did not reply to a request for comment.Life at Manchester United under Ole Gunnar Solskjær is going swimmingly, with the caretaker manager’s latest grand plan to massage the ego of his squad with a warm-weather training camp in Dubai. But the Norwegian may have to prevent one of his stand-in captains from hot-footing it to another city break favourite first, for Ashley Young has caught the eye of Internazionale, with the San Siro club acutely aware that time is almost up on the 33-year-old’s current deal. Inter are supposedly among a throng of Serie A clubs battling it for the signature of the full-back, who is out of contract this summer. If that does not get the pulses racing, then how about this? Another England old boy, Gary Cahill, is so desperate for a loan move away from Chelsea that he has hired a personal trainer to help get into peak condition. Fulham are determined to smooth over the edges of a six-month loan move, while Arsenal are said to be monitoring the defender’s situation. Arsenal are light on numbers, with injuries and suspensions totting up, though Unai Emery is not expected to recall Reiss Nelson or Calum Chambers from their respective season-long stints at Hoffenheim and Fulham. Chelsea will be fighting off interest left, right and centre this window. Not only is Callum Hudson-Odoi attracting admiring glances from the Bundesliga and Ruben Loftus-Cheek from Premier League rivals, but Tammy Abraham’s Midas touch in the Championship has got the juices of various chief executives flowing across the country. Wolves, Burnley and Huddersfield are all keen on making a move for the young striker, who has scored 16 goals on loan at Aston Villa this season. Villa, meanwhile, are closing on a £2m deal for Wolves centre-back Kortney Hause. After already snapping up Samir Nasri on a free, West Ham have the appetite for more moves and fancy James McCarthy from Everton. The 28-year-old midfielder is out-of-favour under Marco Silva and could depart on loan. Elsewhere, Thierry Henry wants to sign his former Arsenal teammate Cesc Fàbregas with Monaco confident of sealing a deal for the Spanish midfielder, while Tottenham are willing to flog Georges-Kévin Nkoudou on loan and Southampton have given Steven Davis the green light to return to Rangers.Cesare Battisti, a former leftwing guerrilla wanted by the Italian authorities for four murders carried out in the late 1970s, has been arrested in Bolivia and is likely to be extradited to Italy. The prime minister of Italy, Giuseppe Conte, said a government aircraft was on its way to bring Battisti, 63, back to Rome. Conte praised the Bolivian and Brazilian authorities for the overnight capture of Battisti, who has been on the run for almost four decades, in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and said that he would begin his life sentences as soon as he lands on Italian soil. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported he was wearing sunglasses and a fake beard at the time of his capture. Battisti was convicted in Italy in 1979 of belonging to the outlawed Armed Proletarians for Communism, and in 1981 he escaped from prison. He was subsequently convicted in absentia of killing two police officers, taking part in the murder of a butcher and helping to plan the killing of a jeweller. Battisti admitted to being part of the group but denied responsibility for any deaths. Italian authorities had been seeking his extradition for years, but the case was given fresh impetus due to the friendly relations between far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, and Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro. Shortly after Bolsonaro was elected in October, he promised Salvini that he would send Battisti back to Italy in order to serve his prison term. He also said that the extradition of Battisti, whom he described as a figure “adored by the Brazilian left”, would reflect to the world his government’s commitment to fighting terrorism. A Brazilian court ordered the arrest in December. Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, wrote on Twitter: “Salvini, a small gift for you is on its way.” Salvini celebrated by posting a photo of Battisti on his Facebook page, captioned “the good times are over”. He added: “My heartfelt thanks to president Jair Messias Bolsonaro and to the new Brazilian government for the changed political climate which, together with a positive international scenario in which Italy has become a protagonist, enabled this triumph.” Salvini went on to remember the victims of a “murderer who for too long enjoyed a life that was cowardly taken away from others and who was pampered by the left”. Battisti had been living in Cananéia, the southernmost city in the state of São Paulo, for years. Before that, he spent almost two decades on the run in Mexico and France, where he was protected by the Mitterrand doctrine, a 1985 law that offered asylum to about 100 former Italian guerrillas “on the condition that they withdrew from politics.” In 2004, Battisti skipped bail in France and took refuge in Brazil, where he lived clandestinely for three years until he was arrested in in 2007 in Rio de Janeiro. After four years in custody, Brazil’s departing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, issued a decree refusing Battisti’s extradition to Italy, and he was freed. Battisti was originally from the central Italian hilltop town of Sermoneta. He first joined leftwing militants in Milan in the mid-1970s. The Armed Proletarians for Communism had sought to bring down the Italian government during the “years of lead”, a period of social and political turmoil between the late 1960s and early 1980s that was marked by leftwing and rightwing terrorism. The former leftwing prime minister Matteo Renzi also welcomed news of Battisti’s arrest: “All Italians, regardless of their political distinction, want a murderer of this kind to be brought back to our country as soon as possible in order to serve his sentence in an Italian prison.”To the United States, where the crisis in Oscars hosting continues to rage, reminding us that one of the major advantages of late-stage capitalism is the sheer volume of attention it can afford to lavish on debates over who will or won’t be reading prepared joke-effect lines come 24 February. As is only right, the Academy Awards host is given similar attention to a supreme court pick, even though the Oscars is essentially a ceremony where an on-set accountant can’t even hand the right best picture winner envelope to Warren Beatty. Oscars organisers traditionally claim their telecast is watched by more than a billion people – “They keep reminding you, like, every two seconds,” Cate Blanchett once revealed – though last year’s was in fact watched by 26.5 million Americans. I guess the other 973,500,000 ratings are global viewers coming home from a day down the Congolese copper mine or in the Chinese battery factory to debate whether you really can simply whitewash fired director Bryan Singer out of the Bohemian Rhapsody story. Anyhow, as you may know, this year’s Oscars had a host all lined up in the form of Kevin Hart, but he failed a series of public hearings over past homophobic tweets. Since Kevin’s decision to be stepped down, the talk of who might replace him has been feverish. According to reports, if he had only apologised in a much-billed appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show last week, Kevin would have been right back in. But he seems to have been unable to – indeed, he has since cast the row as an opportunity for growth for others. “You can’t change without a understanding of what GROWTH means,” he Instagrammed huffily. “Please grasp this and use it in 2019.” Clearly, the true growth in this situation would be Kevin’s critics growing beyond the need to require growth from him. The upshot of all this is that the Oscars are reportedly considering having no host. Thank goodness the Academy refuses to be put off taking themselves seriously, no matter what. If literally no one can do it, it’s clear this culturally sacred role must be more important than we even realised.Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right interior minister, has asked his government to deny prosecutors the right to try him on potential kidnapping charges over his order to prevent 177 people from disembarking a migrant boat. The move is a stark reversal from Salvini’s previous position that he was ready to be tried and proud of “having defended the country from illegal migrants”. In August, prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily, placed Salvini under investigation after he prevented people from leaving the Italian coastguard ship Ubaldo Diciotti. The ship had been docked for six days at the Sicilian port of Catania as Salvini maintained a standoff with the EU in an attempt to push other member states to take in its mostly Eritrean passengers. The Catholic church, Ireland and Albania, which is not an EU state, eventually agreed to host the migrants. But the breakthrough did not stop the investigation into Salvini and the minister is a step away from facing court after a surprise ruling last week determined that he be tried. “I could face up to 15 years of jail because I have stopped the disembarking of illegals in Italy,” Salvini wrote on Facebook. “I’m speechless. Am I afraid? Not at all.” Nevertheless, in a letter to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published on Tuesday, Salvini, the leader of the far-right League party, said he was no longer sure he was ready to face a trial. “After reflecting on the whole affair, I believe the authorisation to try me must be denied,” he wrote. “My judicial case is closely linked to my activities as interior minister and my strong will to keep the commitments made in the election campaign. I’m convinced that I acted in the supreme interest of the country and within the full respect of my mandate. “I would do it all again. And I won’t give up,” he wrote, but added: “The judges should be denied authorisation.” The investigation of Salvini poses a political risk to Italy’s governing coalition as well as a personal risk to his criminal record. The accusations against him will pass now through the senate, whose members will decide whether to proceed with a trial or halt the proceedings altogether. One of the founding principles of the League’s coalition partner, the Five Star Movement (M5S), is that politicians under investigation should be asked to resign. Until two years ago, this principle was written into M5S’s statutes as part of an attempt to present a clean image and distance itself from corruption in Italian politics. On one hand, should M5S senators vote against criminal proceedings, thereby rescuing Salvini from a possible conviction, the party would lose credibility among its supporters. On the other, if it supports the investigation against Salvini, then it risks losing him and the political alliance, causing the government to fall. M5S had seemed willing to vote in favour of authorising a trial but after the publication of Salvini’s letter, Luigi Di Maio, the M5S deputy prime minister, filed a document with the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, formally defending him. “If Salvini is responsible for the [migrant boat] seizure then the whole government is responsible,” the document said. A senate commission will meet to begin examining the papers on the investigation into Salvini on Wednesday. The vote on whether to proceed is expected in late February. Conte said on Wednesday that 47 people kept at sea for over a week on the Sea-Watch 3 migrant rescue ship could finally disembark after six countries came forward to take them in. The people were rescued on 19 January off the coast of Libya and have been waiting off Sicily since Friday. As in the Ubaldo Diciotti case, Salvini denied Sea-Watch 3 the right to dock, drawing the ire of the UN and prompting an emergency appeal to the European court of human rights by the German NGO that operates the boat.Apple reported its first decline in revenues and profits in over a decade on Tuesday. Weak iPhone sales and a downturn in China reduced the tech company’s revenue by 4.5% to $84.3bn in the three months ending 29 December compared with the same period last year. Profits fell slightly to $19.97bn. Revenues from China were $13.17bn during the quarter, a drop of nearly $5bn from a year ago. The results came three weeks after Apple shocked investors with its first profits warning since 2002. It has been a trying month for Apple. On 3 January Apple cut its sales forecasts for the key end of year period citing the “magnitude” of the economic slowdown in China. It was the first profits warning Apple has made since it launched the iPhone, a product that propelled the company into the top tier of tech companies and briefly made it the most valuable company in history. The warning wiped $55bn (£44bn) off the company’s value, led to its shares being briefly suspended and rattled investors worldwide as analysts began to worry about how other companies might be hit by China’s slowing growth. Apple’s share price has since recovered but remains $266bn less than the record-breaking $1tn the company was valued at in August, the first company ever to be valued that high. The results also come a day after Apple scrambled to fix a glitch with iPhone’s FaceTime, a video chat application, that allowed users to listen in on the people they were calling when they did not pick up the call. The company was forced to disable its Group FaceTime feature after it was revealed the bug allowed people to listen to the people they were calling before they answered their phone. Apple’s share price rose over 6% in after hours trading following the release of its latest financials. The numbers were broadly in line with analysts’ expectations and iPhone revenues were higher than expected. Leading Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted that the worst may be over for Apple. The TF International Securities analyst expects shipments of iPhones to beat market expectations in the next quarter.Donald Trump’s frenzied preoccupation with expanding the wall on the US-Mexico border that, two years into his presidency has yet to materialize, often eclipses the very real “invisible wall” he has constructed to exclude immigrants. Trump has taken the extreme step of threatening to declare a national emergency if Democrats will not approve his $5.7bn demand for the project. At the same time, his administration has successfully made it more difficult for immigrants to enter the country to work, visit family and flee violence and poverty. As Trump continues to demand an expansion of the barrier with Mexico, rightwing anti-immigrant groups that advocate harsh restrictions on immigration , such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (Fair), are looking back on two years of what they consider significant progress. At least six current and former advisers to Donald Trump, including Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Miller, have ties to Fair, which for decades has been working to drastically curb immigration. “A lot of his [Trump’s] accomplishments are more granular, more in the weeds, than build the wall,” RJ Hauman, Fair’s head lobbyist, told the Guardian. Last year, radical changes to US immigration policy included separating 2,654 migrant children from their parents at the border, slashing the refugee limit to a historic low of 30,000 people allowed to settle in the US, and adding a citizenship question to the population census, a move that is being challenged in court. These high-profile maneuvers happened in concert with many less headline-grabbing but key administrative changes to the legal immigration process. These toughened rules for immigrants and increased visa processing times, such as a proposal to make it more difficult for people to get green cards if they use public benefits. For groups such as Fair, these changes are exactly why Trump has been a success. “Those legal immigration changes are just as important, or even more important, than building the wall right now and we wish they were more of a focus in this current negotiation,” Hauman said. The Fairwebsite lists 10 campaign promises Trump made and information on whether or not he has completed them. As of this week, Trump had completed one promise: the travel ban, ordered days into his presidency, which was affirmed by the supreme court after being amended twice. Five of the other promises are in progress, three have been initiated and one has been stalled, according to the Fair website. Hauman said he expects the Trump administration will keep making administrative changes that do not require congressional approval, but have a significant impact on immigration. This year, for instance, the government plans to cancel a regulation that allows spouses of people with H-1B temporary specialist work visas to obtain work permits themselves. This would revoke more than 100,000 people’s ability to work legally in the US, unless a court intervenes. With Democrats seizing control of the House after strong gains in the midterm election in November, it is more difficult for immigration hardliners to push legislation through Congress. So, the most expedient route to restrict immigration is by working with government agencies to change administrative policies or forcing policies through by presidential executive orders, such as the attempt in November to stop people from seeking asylum when entering the US outside the official ports of entry dotted along the southern border. Each change is being closely monitored by immigrant and civil rights groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has led dozens of legal campaigns against Trump policies. A day after the administration announced the so-called asylum ban, the ACLU had filed a lawsuit against it. One month later, the supreme court upheld a lower court’s decision to block the ban. “There are legal constraints to what the government can do and those constraints have stopped many things from moving forward,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “But that hasn’t stopped them from trying.” Jadwat said even immigration experts struggle to keep track of the government’s endless stream of policy changes, directives and behind-the-scenes maneuvers to reshape immigration policy. “It is all really part of one campaign to target immigrants and immigration,” said Jadwat. “To do everything they can, and many things they can’t legally do, to try to vilify immigrants, to make their lives harder, both people who are in status and people who are seeking legal status.” The ACLU’s legal challenges have stopped, or slowed, several Trump policies from continuing, including forcing the government to reunify families it separated at the border last summer – months before mass separations began. Despite this, they are bracing for another two years of Trump administration anti-immigration policies, which could include another form of family separation. In November, Trump’s nominee to run US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), Ronald Vitiello, declined to rule out the possibility that the US could again separate families at the border. And the Trump administration has reportedly weighed family separation alternatives including a “binary choice” plan that would give parents the option to separate voluntarily or be detained together for years. Jadwat concluded: “They have doubled and tripled down on these policies that are illegal and unconscionable. And done it in ways, and repeatedly, that are extremely sloppy [and] lack the basic competence you would expect from the government.”One of the more idiotic, if not wholly surprising, byproducts of the #MeToo era is how men who have been exposed as misogynists and abusers have recast themselves as victims. Lost livelihoods and broken reputations are, they tell us, an excessive price to pay for their transgressions. Lately, though, going hand in hand with this victim status, is a new hardened persona, one that comes bathed in fury and self-righteousness. “You thought that was bad,” they seem to say. “You ain’t seen the half of it.” Take Louis CK, the comedian who, in November 2017, admitted to repeatedly exposing himself to and masturbating in front of unconsenting women and, on being found out, declared: “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.” For CK, “a long time” meant nine months, after which he was back on stage at the Comedy Cellar in New York doing what comics tend to do: talking and saying what he wanted. Now, new audio has emerged from a fortnight ago, featuring a lengthy Louis CK rant – I would call it a comedy set but that would give it a credence it doesn’t deserve – recorded at a Long Island club. It finds him “jokingly” bemoaning the money he has lost in the past year, mocking the survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 students and staff members were killed, and lamenting the new political correctness that champions gender neutral pronouns and frowns on the use of words like “retarded”. Presumably sensing disapproval from his audience, he says: “What, are you going to take away my birthday? My life is over, I don’t give a shit. You can ... be offended, it’s OK. You can get mad at me. Anyway. So why do black guys have big dicks? Let’s talk about that for a minute.” It’s possible that this is a calculated career move, an attempt on the part of Louis CK – a one-time liberal comic hero – to restyle himself as a rightwing hatemonger expostulating about snowflakes, virtue signallers and ethnic minorities, though he might want to look at Milo Yiannopoulos’ credit rating before he sets out on a full-blown tour. A more likely story is that this is just a howl of self-pity. Poor Louis has lost everything – top of the list being his ability to write a smart gag – yet he is still able to pull a crowd after a year in the supposed wilderness. Perhaps most revealing in his hour-long whine-a-thon is the assertion, “My life is over, I don’t give a shit.” Not only does it reveal him as entirely unchastened by the experience of being outed as a literal wanker, it also suggests he believes his self-inflicted downfall now allows him to do and say exactly what he likes. He’s like the party host who, after eight solid hours of drinking, has decided to deliver some drunken truth bombs to his guests. Louis CK isn’t the only man in the public eye who, rather than choosing to reflect or, at the very least, keep a low profile, has become a wronged party bubbling with wrath. Last week the actor Kevin Spacey released a sinister video called Let Me Be Frank, in which he fleetingly reprised his role as Frank Underwood from House of Cards seemingly to address the repercussions of the sexual misconduct allegations against him. This despite having previously apologised to one of his victims, the actor Anthony Rapp, and pledging to “[examine] my own behaviour”. As with Louis CK’s latest outing, a critical assessment of Spacey’s video would be pointless, but, suffice to say, it could prove a useful showreel for next year’s panto season. Is this what the fightback against #MeToo looks like? We all know that unproven accusations can ruin lives, though you’ll note that James Franco, Johnny Depp and Casey Affleck are all still in gainful employment. But what of those men who have admitted their misdemeanours? Perhaps it was naive for their victims to expect meaningful contrition. There was no Damascene moment with these men and no confession; as the voices of #MeToo gathered in number and urgency, they were simply found out. Still, for all their early expressions of remorse, rage rather than regret has proved to be their default setting. As far as they are concerned, an apology and/or a few months’ soul-searching is a fitting punishment, but the threat of losing their power – the power that allowed them to do what they did for so long – is a step too far. Just ask Louis CK. Hell hath no fury like a celebrity scorned. • Fiona Sturges is a freelance arts writer specialising in books, music, podcasting and TVUntil recently I was a committed remainer and wedded to the belief that the best way out of this Brexit mess for the EU was simply to try to ensure it didn’t happen. But the events of the past month illustrate why there is, rightly, a growing mood in Brussels for a completely different outcome: for the EU to prosper, Britain must leave. The rationale is simple, Brexit is – either now or in the not-so-distant future – inevitable. That is because Britain continues to demand impossible conditions for its membership of the community-based, compromise-led, multinational organisation the modern EU represents. Even in trying to exit, Britain is still arguing about “red lines” of its own making. This approach would only amplify if it somehow ended up remaining a member.  Britain already enjoys a privileged position in the EU, much to the chagrin of many other member states. Opt-outs from the euro, the Schengen agreement on passport-free travel, the charter of fundamental rights and on any European legislation related to freedom, justice and security have all been negotiated by successive British prime ministers. European diplomats are exasperated at how this situation is still portrayed in Britain as the creep of an EU super-state. The Luxembourg prime minister, Xavier Bettel, put it best when he said the British “were in with a lot of opt-outs, now they are out and want a lot of opt-ins”. This situation is untenable for the future cohesiveness of the EU; it slows decision making, makes the setting of meaningful objectives difficult to achieve and acts as a brake on meaningful reform. From a historical and political economy perspective, Brexit is an inevitability. Since Margaret Thatcher’s famous Bruges speech of 1988, where she set out a vision of a Europe based on “willing cooperation between sovereign states”, Britain and the EU have been like a married couple living increasingly separate lives. And the fault here is shared. Britain – most noticeably under Labour from 1997 to 2010 – lived the myth that the UK could have its EU membership but stand aloof from its development. Brussels refused to acknowledge that all the real love had long since passed. British attitudes towards the Irish border question are a good example of the UK misunderstanding the EU at a most fundamental level. The backstop, which is designed to prevent the reimposition of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, is neither about trapping the UK in a permanent arrangement nor seeking to break it up. The widespread British view of the backstop shows a deep distrust of EU institutions and their role in protecting the interests of member states and maintaining a level playing field. Another example is Britain’s famous “rebate” from its budget contributions to the EU. Were Brexit somehow to be reversed, there would be no support among other member states for these rebates to continue. Although unreported in Britain, the current negotiations in Brussels for the next budgetary period (2021-27) are progressing at pace. The shortfall (€12bn-15bn) caused by Britain’s exit will be met with higher contributions from other member states. Much more money will be allocated to emerging priority areas such as border control, research and development and climate change. Britain never understood that contributing to the EU’s budget is not a commercial transaction, it is about investing in peace, stability and growth right on your doorstep. The fact is, without Britain, the internal functioning of the EU, including agreeing what to spend money on, becomes easier. But here lies the crux of the problem for Britain. The sovereignty-sharing, legalistic model of integration embodied by the EU only succeeds because member states see the bigger, sometimes almost incalculable, benefits of membership. Raging arguments over migration, Russia and populism may be a feature of European council summits in Brussels. The European commission might take Hungary or Poland to task over reforms which threaten democracy. But none of these debates question the wider integrity of the EU project. Britain today – from the gleaming towers of the City of London to the rusting coalfields of the Welsh valleys – is a microcosm of the challenges facing all post-colonial powers. But while France and Germany see European integration as the mechanism to secure peace and maximise their global role, Britain’s failing relationship with the EU shows that it is still searching for the right expression of its place in the world. The future remains to be written, but for Britain and Europe one solution is obvious: a no-blame divorce followed by respect and friendship. After all, families are complicated, friends with benefits less so. Eoin Drea is a senior research officer with the Brussels-based Martens Centre, a thinktank dedicated to promoting European integrationFor the US it was a wake-up call. Convinced that it was a world leader in the knowledge economy, the US was shaken out of its complacency when its communist rival announced a breakthrough in space exploration. More than six decades separates the launch in 1957 by the Soviet Union of Sputnik – the first artificial satellite – and China’s success last week in being the first country to land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, but the same question is posed by the two events: is US economic hegemony at risk? In the late 1950s the answer was no, although many Americans thought otherwise. Congress declared a national education emergency, federal funding for science was tripled and President Dwight Eisenhower paved the way for the Apollo moon landings by setting up the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – better known as Nasa. Eventually, the US stopped panicking. The Soviet Union had a good, basic education system, excellent scientists, and was globally competitive in some specific manufacturing sectors but its command economy was incapable of delivering the living standards enjoyed in the capitalist west. Economic sluggishness brought about its collapse little more than 30 years after the launch of Sputnik. China poses a much more realistic threat. For a start, it has posted four decades of staggeringly high growth, which has resulted in rapid improvements in living standards and victory in the battle against extreme poverty. What’s more, the caricature of China as a country that just makes cheap goods for the west is out of date. In some areas of the digital economy – e-commerce and mobile payments for example – China is a world leader. The authorities in Beijing have ambitious plans for artificial intelligence and the use of big data. While the US still leads the way in the knowledge economy, China comes second in terms of research and development spending and, mindful of the pollution affecting its cities, has been investing impressively large sums into green technologies. China has also developed in its own way. Liberalisation has been slow and careful. The state is firmly in charge of economic management. The overall approach is top down, authoritarian and target driven. One reason that the country is making progress in big data is that little heed is paid to the rights of the individual to privacy when collecting information. Sooner or later China was bound to lock horns with the US. It is a fast-growing country; it wants to compete in cutting-edge technologies; it has a rival ideology; and, despite regular predictions of impending doom, it shows no sign of a Soviet Union-style collapse. Washington has long seen Beijing as an economic, political and military rival, but it has taken the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House to bring those fears to the surface. The tit-for-tat tariff war launched by the US last year is about far more than trade. China badly wants to de-escalate the tension. Its economy has clearly been slowing and it is only able to hit official growth targets of 6%-plus by counting wasteful investment. Stripped of the creative accounting, the economy’s trend growth rate is around 3%. The aim is to steer the economy away from its dependency on investment and exports, but this is proving hard to achieve. China’s fast growth over the past four decades has been based on moving the population out of low-productivity jobs in agriculture into higher productivity jobs in manufacturing – a process that can only happen once and is now over. Transition to a consumer-led, service-driven economy requires some short-term pain: unprofitable enterprises going bust, factories closing down and unemployment rising. Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader, certainly does not want his authoritarian rule threatened by economic and social unrest, so every time growth slows down Beijing tightens political control while simultaneously using lower interest rates, easier credit, tax cuts and higher public investment to boost growth. This helps stabilise the economy but at the cost of keeping alive an economic model that the authorities know has to change. In his book on China*, the economist George Magnus questions whether it is possible for a one-party state like China to make the switch from an economy where the government makes all the key decisions to one that encourages the development of new ideas. “Behind a wall of censorship, a surveillance state is developing rapidly that may be very effective at gathering information but also quite stifling in terms of creativity and disruption – phenomena in which the west has traditionally enjoyed strong advantages.” The monetary stimulus provided in 2018 had little effect and exports growth is sagging as a result of slower global growth and US protectionism. That explains why high-level talks to end the US-China trade conflict are taking place in Beijing this week. Xi has blinked first in the standoff with Trump by offering easier access to the Chinese market for US exporters, because the US is a much more important market for China than China is for the US. Ultimately, the US can get the goods it currently sources in China from elsewhere. For its part, China simply cannot afford to be frozen out of the US market. That said, Trump also seems keen that this week’s talks succeed and not just because protectionism hurts the US as well as China. It is also because China matters in a way that the Soviet Union never did. The recession in Russia that followed the collapse of communism was deep but essentially a regional affair. A full-blown recession in China, as Trump is aware, would have profound implications for the US and the rest of the global economy. * Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is in Jeopardy, by George Magnus; Yale University PressThree years ago, I stopped eating sugar. My plan was to have a sugar-free month, just to see if it made a difference. I had done similar experiments before – a month without caffeine, or alcohol, or reading news online. Aside from chocolate, I wasn’t a big eater of sugar, I thought, so I didn’t expect to notice any change. But I did. Giving up sugar set me free. And so, what began as an experiment has become my new life. I have changed in ways that I had not thought possible. I used to get “hangry” – that grumpy, urgent craving that demands prompt attention. To stave it off, I carried bags of almonds or dried fruit. Back when I ate sugar, I couldn’t go running in the morning – if I tried, I would get dizzy, and anyway, my legs felt as if they were made of stone. I would have slumps in the afternoon – my head would get foggy – so if I was working from home, I would take a nap. I had mood swings, joy alternating with despair. I had assumed that all of these things were simply part of life, of how I was, a frustrating aspect of my makeup. And now all of them are gone. For the first two weeks of my unsweetened life, though, I was in a foul temper. At first, I attributed this to the darkness and gloom of the winter days. But as I started to feel better – calmer, happier, more even-keeled – a more sinister thought began to nag at me. Had I been in withdrawal? My decision to stop sugar was taken on a whim. Back then, aside from its role in tooth decay, I knew little about its possible effects on health. But when I discovered how much better I felt without it, I became curious – and began to read. To a chemist, sugar refers to a class of molecules made of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen; some of these serve particular biological roles. Lactose, for example, is found in milk; deoxyribose gives the “D” to DNA. But in daily life, the main sugars one meets are glucose, fructose and sucrose – which is a marriage of the other two. That is, each molecule of sucrose is one glucose linked to one fructose. Interestingly, the two simple sugars have the same chemical formula – 6 atoms of carbon, 12 of hydrogen, 6 of oxygen – but different chemical structures. The human tongue detects this: fructose tastes sweeter. Glucose is synonymous with blood sugar, since it is transported in the blood and delivered to cells to fuel their energetic needs. But you can also find it, along with fructose, in fruits and vegetables. Sucrose is extracted from sugar cane or beets, and is usually encountered as the white crystals of table sugar. When most people speak of “sugar”, they mean sucrose. High-fructose corn syrup, the most common sweetener of non-diet soft-drinks, is a mixture of glucose and fructose. So is honey– though honey is a complex concoction that contains many other compounds. The history of sugar is full of darkness. The European appetite for sweetness drove the slave trade; according to one estimate, in the Americas, two-thirds of enslaved Africans worked on sugar cane plantations. Sugar is also implicated in lung cancer. How? Because the tobacco in blended cigarettes has typically been soaked in sugar syrups; this makes the smoke easier to take into the lungs. The grim harvest does not stop there. A growing number of doctors blame sugar consumption for a long list of medical woes. These include diabetes, obesity, hypertension, heart disease, gout, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, many cancers, and perhaps even Alzheimer’s. Some researchers have even linked the eating of sugar in childhood to the development of myopia, arguing that the spikes in insulin secretion caused by sugar consumption interfere with the normal development of the eyes. In short: the recent medical literature about sugar makes alarming reading. Such connections are, of course, disputed. But as an evolutionary biologist, as well as someone who has felt the immediate benefits of a sugar-free lifestyle, I find the claims persuasive. For most of human history, after all, milk, honey and fruits have been the main sources of sweetness. When cane sugar first made its way to Europe around 1,000 years ago, it was treated as a spice, a medicine and a preservative. In 1700, the average sugar consumption in the United Kingdom was around two kilograms per person per year. Today, the figure is 10 times that amount. Over the past 300 years, sugars have thus gone from an occasional luxury to a substantial component of the average western diet. The present sugar glut is an anomaly in human experience. We have changed the world to suit our appetites; but our bodies cannot accommodate the change. Different foods have different effects on the body. To see this, look no further than sugars. Intake of glucose directly stimulates the production of the hormone insulin; that of fructose does not. Fructose, instead, is metabolised in the liver, where it is turned into fat. Indeed, evidence is mounting that fructose is a major player in metabolic illness. When you consume table sugar, you get both fructose and glucose, because the sucrose is chopped into its component parts. Repeatedly consuming vast quantities of these substances – as when you eat lots of sugary food or drink lots of sodas – could thus cause a double whammy of metabolic disturbance. In my new life, I don’t eat foods with added sugar. Some of these are obvious: cakes, cookies, ice creams, doughnuts, muffins, candies. Some are less so. Vinegar, weirdly, often has added sugar. So do pickles. I no longer eat sushi – the rice has usually been sweetened. I steer clear of maple syrup. I also avoid super-sweet fruits – grapes, persimmons, dates. Fruit juice? No thanks. I don’t substitute other sweeteners; I just eat differently. Chocolate is still on the menu – but only if it is 100% cacao. This can be hard to find – but luckily, a small shop around the corner from where I live has a large variety. With the sugar gone, the taste of the chocolate itself is revealed. And just as coffee grown in different places and handled in different ways can have different flavors, so too with chocolate. Abstaining from sugar has also made me more sensitive to notes of sweetness in otherwise savory foods, such as cashews. The social pressure to eat sugar is enormous; whole meals are geared around the stuff In abandoning sugar, I’ve become aware how ubiquitous it is. Want to eat something on the go? Almost everything for sale contains sugar. Even recipes for vegetables often call for adding it. In fact, until three years ago, I was guilty of such practices myself, often adding a spoonful of sugar to the cooking water of green beans, peas, and sweetcorn (sweetcorn!), a practice I now look back on with astonishment. The social pressure to eat sugar is enormous; whole meals are geared around the stuff. In many countries, breakfast is an orgy of sugar; cake at tea time was a fixture of my childhood. I still attend meetings where someone is always designated to bring sweet food for everyone. Halloween has become a festival of candy. Then there’s the sugar propaganda. It’s everywhere. Clothes for little girls covered with pictures of lollipops. Giant knitted ice cream cones as cuddly toys. Soaps formed to resemble cup cakes. Candlesticks in the form of ceramic doughnuts, complete with icing. Cut-out books of paper desserts. I’m not so militant in my avoidance that I interrogate restaurant chefs about which vinegar they use, or whether they add sugar to the cooking water. On special occasions – an anniversary, perhaps, or a birthday – I will eat a mouthful of, say, lemon meringue pie. But only as a rare treat, perhaps five or six times a year. Always in the past, after one of my experiments, I would take up the old habits. But not with sugar. It’s not just the long shadow of possible illness. It’s that – like others I know who have stopped – I feel so much better without it. I like knowing that, if I need to, I can hike all day without eating. I enjoy being free of rampaging hunger. Running in the mornings has become a delight. I prefer feeling more serene, less prone to mood swings or afternoon fatigue. My mind feels clearer. I can’t imagine going back. Life is more savory this way. Olivia Judson is an evolutionary biologist and writerThey’re back but nothing has changed, so happy 2019 Groundhog Day. Ahead lies more perpetual Brexit hell, so get used to it. Don’t imagine the next fortnight of high parliamentary drama will lead to an ending where we can all return to politics as usual. This won’t end with the 15 January vote on the prime minister’s deal, nor with reprised attempts to revive it soon after. It won’t end by the supposed 21 January deadline either, nor will it all be over on 29 March, exit day. Barring extraordinary and dangerous shocks (yes, dreadful things are possible), Brexitry will go on and on for the foreseeable future. Awful prospect? Yes, but all alternatives are frighteningly worse than extending the process as we back off the precipice. For now this push-me-pull-you directionless government is leading us to the very edge. They want us to take a good look at the no-deal Tarpeian rock below which we will be dashed to pieces by the likes of Boris Johnson, who on Monday ditched his old Canada deal to back a naked no deal as soon as he saw the Tory membership swing that way. Now we are treated to a no-deal charade, as those 89 lorries travel from a disused airport simulating the gridlock of 10,000 driving daily through Dover. No-deal preparations reveal epilepsy drugs at risk; medicine refrigerators full; chillers overbooked for food warehousing; stockpiling of just-in-time manufacturing parts; and import-export accountants expensively hired to face mountainous red tape. Phone roaming charges are ready to be reimposed, drivers are warned about international licences, and road hauliers are panicking over only 4,000 permits available for our 40,000 lorry drivers – while useless ports are needlessly dredged. Every day new no-deal problems emerge. Soon the total cost of this absurdity will be totted up – the Treasury’s £4bn set aside, with shed loads more spent by companies urged to prepare by ads on the airwaves, as if warning of incoming air raids. But this is all phoney war, Maginot lines and gas masks for a “managed no deal” that will never happen. In the midst of year nine of austerity, each sector whimpers at the sight of so much squandered on a mirage. Hauliers could use this money on much‑needed roadside lorry driver facilities and state aid to train drivers in desperately short supply. The Nautilus mariners’ union protests at the state hiring non-UK crews, wasting money needed to train our own. All this was done due to the self-defeating stupidity of cabinet Brexiteers protesting that Theresa May was deliberately leaving us unprepared for their “clean-break” exit. Show the EU we mean business, they cried! So that’s what she’s doing, but now she has led everyone to peer over the edge, the Brexiteers don’t like it after all. What they thought would be reassuring is, of course, petrifying. Johnson fulminates in his Telegraph column at these “downright apocalyptic” forecasts, claiming no-deal is “closest to what people actually voted for”. What Mrs ‘No Plan B’ does next, no one knows. But if her deal fails and fails again, then extending article 50 looks certain How tempting to wish revenge on prime minister Johnson, by watching him take chaotic charge of a No Deal Britain. Queen Mary and Sussex University’s party polling shows Tory members strongly back no deal. Paul Waugh of Huffington Post reports a no-deal former cabinet minister blithely predicting: “We won’t be able to get certain foods like bananas or tomatoes but it’s not like we won’t be able to eat.” Oh, the war-time nostalgia. Bring on the Woolton pie and dried egg! Let’s all Dig for Brexit! Given the chance, these lemmings would choose Johnson to lead them charging over the white cliffs of Dover: he who was our most embarrassingly inept foreign secretary truly deserves to go down with them. But the rest of the country doesn’t. Nor will it be allowed to happen. Britain may have lost its bearings, but not all of its marbles. As May told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, this is “uncharted territory” when her deal is voted down; and Labour seems certain to lose its no confidence motion, leaving no hope of a general election. She can reprise many versions of her deal until the last second – but if neither her MPs nor the EU swerve, what then? To call May sphynx-like makes her too interesting – but this is when her opaque character is revealed. If she lets time run out, by law we fall into no deal. From all we know of her, I do not think she will lead her country into that hell. A higher sense of duty would stop her. She is no David Cameron, nor has she anything more to gain by listening to her extremists. Johnson likes to ape Churchill, but the wartime leader defied his party to stand alone for his beliefs. May will prove the real Churchillian, ignoring party to put her country first. Backing her would be the great majority of MPs appalled at the prospect. She may be assisted today by the passing of Yvette Cooper’s amendment to the finance bill (as she sets out here) – making no deal impossible without the command of parliament. The 200 MPs and business people, led by the MPs Jack Dromey and Caroline Spelman – begging her on Monday not to allow a no deal to wreck industry – will strengthen May’s arm, as will other anti-no deal amendments. Whatever it takes, with MPs breaking party ranks, parliament will express its overwhelming will in ways no prime minister could ignore. On Monday her grandly announced “powerful” new Brexit no-deal preparedness committee was just more fraud, feint and cardboard scenery for an event that, mercifully, cannot happen. What Mrs “No Plan B” does next, no one knows. But if her deal fails and fails again, then extending article 50 looks certain. The EU might allow it – but probably only for an election or referendum. By then, enough MPs may be ready to hand over this mayhem to the people, as they mull the remarkable shift in public opinion. YouGov finds a 6% swing towards remain. Doesn’t sound much? That’s a greater swing than for any postwar election bar Tony Blair’s 1997 victory. Most people don’t change their minds – do we? So this is a big switch. What’s more that’s just on the old question – leave or remain. If voters are given a defined leave option the swing is even greater. Remain v no deal gives remain a stonking 16-point lead. Remain v May’s deal gives an even more gigantic 26 points to remain. Is it a risk? Yes, times are volatile and once another Dominic Cummings/Arron Banks/Nigel Farage racist fear poster campaign spews its poison, no outcome can be certain. But one certainty is any Brexit means national decline. Whatever else her grievous failings as a leader, whatever damage done by her relentless austerity and her Go Home van cruelty to migrants, I detect in Theresa May a core patriotism that would stop her leading the country over the no-deal brink.Tuesday’s vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal is one of the most keenly anticipated Commons events in years. The result, and the scale of it, will trigger one or several of a series of outcomes. The precise choreography of what will happen is anyone’s guess, but here are some of the possible scenarios. The most straightforward, if unlikely, result of the vote. Should May somehow tempt enough rebels back to her view and prevail, there would be an agreed departure deal with which the EU could work, and it would be full steam ahead to 29 March. Yes, there would be more fierce and endless arguments on everything from the backstop to the future trade deal, but the basics would be there. Likelihood rating: 1/5 Barring a particularly big defeat for the prime minister, this is what many MPs believe will come next: May makes a rapid statement saying she will go back to Brussels and seek more concessions, notably on the backstop. The thinking is that once the EU has seen the concrete evidence of MPs’ views, it will be more likely to come up with something genuinely new, to try to avoid a no-deal departure. Those being most targeted for a change of heart would be the Democratic Unionist party, Tory waverers and Labour MPs from leave-minded seats. Likelihood rating: 3/5 Perhaps the most contentious issue. In order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, a backstop arrangement that keeps the UK in the customs union and requires Northern Ireland to follow single market rules would prevail until a free-trade agreement is reached that avoids such a frontier. The UK and EU negotiators have agreed the former should honour those commitments it made while a member of the bloc – finally settling on a figure of £39bn. The deal would secure a status quo transition period to negotiate the nature of the future relationship, and during which the UK could begin to make trade deals with third countries. A fraught issue at the outset, an agreement was reached relatively quickly that would see the UK respect the rights of EU citizens who arrive before the end of the transition period, which could be in 2022, and vice versa. The document is accompanied by a political declaration that sketches out the future relationship between the two parties – focusing primarily on trade and security. Seen as a necessary adjunct to the above tactic – and perhaps needed in just about any scenario – this has now been unofficially promised by the EU. The most likely variant would be a “technical” extension until July or thereabouts, to allow more time for a second vote, and to pass other Brexit-related legislation. But if there was something new afoot, whether an election or a second referendum, a longer timetable could be offered. Likelihood rating: 4/5 Some Conservative MPs predict that if the margin of defeat is heavy, May could finally decide – or be persuaded – to drop her long-held plan, seek an extension to article 50 and embark on a cross-party push for a more consensual Brexit, perhaps based on a Norway model. Given how vehemently and how often the PM has rejected such a course, it seems unlikely. More possible, though still marginal, would be the idea of backbenchers using parliamentary procedure to effectively take control. Likelihood rating: 2/5 Some speculation centres around the idea of a particularly heavy defeat seeing May pledging to plough on, at which point her colleagues act. They cannot formally remove her until December, as her win in the Tory MPs’ confidence vote before Christmas keeps her safe for a year, so instead the scenario has a delegation of cabinet ministers going to No 10 and telling the PM her time is up. She could well send them packing. Likelihood rating: 1/5 This has been the favoured Labour approach if May loses her Brexit vote. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, a specifically worded no-confidence motion against the government would be debated and voted on, for or against, relatively soon. If lost, there would be a 14-day period for a new government to be formed, but if this could not happen then an election would be called. However, while a number of Tories are likely to vote against May’s deal, it is another matter to ask them to vote down their government. Another option, which some Labour MPs are privately wary about, is May deciding to call an election herself, gambling that she could be able to present a more coherent Brexit approach than Jeremy Corbyn. Likelihood rating: 2/5 This has been the hope of a good number of Conservative and Labour MPs, supported by the energetic People’s Vote campaign, but has been vehemently opposed by May and others in parliament. Many argue that the most likely way to bring about a second referendum would be if Labour formally threw its weight behind the idea. However, Corbyn has made it plain that his preferred route would be to negotiate a different Brexit deal. Likelihood rating: 2/5 This has been simultaneously the default option – if May’s deal is lost and nothing is put forward in its place, then a no-deal departure would happen automatically on 29 March – and also something discounted as impossible by many MPs. The decision of the Commons last week to back an amendment to the finance bill tabled by Labour’s Yvette Cooper seeking to block no-deal has relatively little power but shows the arithmetic in parliament supports such an approach. Several Tories have vowed to quit ministerial jobs or even the party whip if no-deal becomes policy. All that said, as many commentators have noted, many events in history not actively sought by the majority have still happened because not enough people took action to prevent them. Likelihood rating: 2/5Did you feel the inevitability? Tom Brady in overtime, needing to put together a drive to win the game and send the New England Patriots to their ninth Super Bowl. And, of course, he delivered, because Brady always delivers. He marched his team down the field with the confidence and presence of the greatest to ever play quarterback. It wasn’t an easy night for Brady, Bill Belichick and the Patriots. The Kansas City Chiefs pushed them to the brink in a game that took more twists than a dodgy M Night Shyamalan flick: there was a muffed punt controversy; a catch-no catch; an abysmal roughing the passer penalty, when Chris Jones dared to touch Brady’s shoulder pads; a blatant illegal interception leading to a score; and it was all capped with a bone-headed neutral zone infraction to extend the game. Chiefs pass-rusher Dee Ford lined up in the neutral zone as time wound down in the fourth quarter, negating what would have been a game-clinching interception. And then there was Kansas City’s young quarterback Patrick Mahomes, that delightful magician, who went toe-to-toe with Belichick, the greatest defensive mind in league history, and kept producing haymakers. The 23-year-old, in his first full season, unleashed some of those rare, dimension-altering throws that only he appears capable of conjuring: Mahomes drills the sidearm with pressure in his face 💪(via @thecheckdown) pic.twitter.com/uaMVvk4MgS The final two minutes of the fourth quarter were a masterclass in quarterback play from both sides. Brady and Mahomes exchanged clutch drives. First, Brady led one of his classic two-minute drills, putting the Patriots up 31-28 with under a minute to go. Then Mahomes led his team to a field goal with seconds left to force overtime. What was incredible was that neither man showed nerves with the season on the line. And if either Brady or Mahomes did have nerves, they were channeled into making them play even better. The NFL’s overtime rules dictate that if the first team who possesses the ball scores a touchdown, the game is over. When Brady was given the ball after New England won the toss, he obliged. Three third-down conversions thrown to his most reliable lieutenants – Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski – helped seal victory. Brady led the team to the four-yard line before Rex Burkhead plunged into the end zone to set up a date with the Los Angeles Rams in Atlanta in two weeks. Already recognized as the greatest player to play the position, Brady is now rubbing it in. His ninth Super Bowl trip is more than the Steelers, Cowboys, 49ers, Broncos, and Packers have had in their entire histories. It is hard to overstate how absurd that is. These are not run-of-the-mill franchises. It’s a who’s who of sporting institutions. They are the founding fathers of the game, and Brady’s history bests them all. New England haven’t been at their clinical best this season. They have struggled on the road and been fortunate to play in a poor division – posting a +100-point differential in the AFC East and +1 out of it. But the team aren’t ready to relinquish the throne just yet. Belichick remains the league’s greatest difference-maker. And even at 41, Brady can muster a heroic drive or three when a season is on the line. “I felt pretty good about our chances,” team captain Matthew Slater said postgame. “Because we have Tom Brady as a teammate.” It wouldn’t be a high-stakes NFL game without an officiating debacle: Another look at that no-flag callpic.twitter.com/PQIMkvrMHX On one play, the officials in the Saints-Rams game missed two egregious penalties: a pass interference call; and a blatant helmet-to-helmet hit. Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman didn’t just arrive a beat early, he obliterated Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis. The right call would have given New Orleans a 98% chance to win, per ESPN Stats & Info. Instead, the Saints were forced to kick a field-goal to tie the game. The Rams marched down the field on the subsequent drive, with kicker Greg Zuerlein hitting a 57-yard game-winning field goal in overtime. “Just getting off the phone with the league office. They blew the call,” Saints coach Sean Payton said after the game. “I don’t know if there was ever a more obvious pass interference call.” The NFL has resisted expanding replay to so-called judgment calls – like pass interference. Technology is improving and we have better looks available, faster than ever before. More calls should be challengeable/reviewable. The Canadian Football League adopted challenges for pass interference back in 2015. The NFL should be a leader on this subject, not a follower. “Listen, it’s tough to get over it,” Payton concluded. “We’ll probably never get over it.” For the first time in the Super Bowl era, both Conference Championship games went to overtime. The Drake curse appears to be alive and well. With the Rams and Patriots triumphing, we will now get our second LA v Boston match-up for a championship in four months, after the Dodgers and Red Sox played for the World Series. “I’m a bad motherfucker” – Tom Brady. What did Tom Brady say? Trust me, it is gold #Patriots pic.twitter.com/zHnh7ZwrUY Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time. He knows it. Every player in the league knows it. Give me this Brady at a podium, dripping with arrogance, and unafraid who knows it, rather than the cliché spewing robot we’ve become accustomed too. Tony Romo, CBS Sports. The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback may be the biggest winner from Championship Sunday. He owned the AFC title broadcast, cementing himself as the very best analyst in the NFL, and possibly all of sports. The beauty of Romo’s analysis is that it feels like he’s in on the fun with you. He’s not an outsider who spends 60 minutes reminding you of his past glories. He’s here to inform and entertain and watch great football. Romo often knows what’s going to happen based on formations and motions and pre-snap hand gestures, minute details only someone with his experience at quarterback could possibly comprehend. Then he gets as excited as a kid. It’s the perfect combination. • The NFL’s outdated overtime rules cost us an exhilarating end to the Chiefs-Patriots game. Winning a coin toss should not be such a decisive factor in a game of such importance. The argument that a team should just “play defense” is a valid one. Yet as football continues to favor offense, not allowing both sides an opportunity to possess the ball becomes more nonsensical. Instead, the league should adopt college football’s overtime rules. They are fairer and more exciting. • Saints super fan The Whistle Monsta (yes, that’s a real person) dominated the Saints-Rams broadcast. He drew complaints online during Sunday’s game for his piercing whistle, which was picked up throughout by Fox’s in-stadium microphones. Quick note: if you ever find yourself, in any situation, sporting or otherwise, wondering if whistling can improve it, the answer is no. • Is there a greater gap at a position between the best and second best than Aaron Donald at defensive tackle? No other player is even close. • The Cowboys fired offensive coordinator Scott Linehan over the weekend, a week after saying his job was safe. Former Dallas backup quarterback Kellen Moore is in line for the gig after spending the year as the Cowboys’ QB coach. • Bill Belichick will compete in his 11th Super Bowl as a coach in Atlanta against the Rams, nine as a head coach and two as a defensive coordinator. Dare I say: it may be time to consider renaming the Lombardi trophy.Another busy week for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: she won a seat on the powerful House oversight committee and a documentary about her election premiered at the Sundance film festival. But she still made time to keep up her skincare routine. “How does she do it?” wondered many. On Sunday evening, apparently after receiving many requests that she reveal her beauty secrets, she posted her daily habits on Instagram. Ocasio-Cortez said skincare is a “straight-up hobby of mine” and admitted she is “a science nerd” who had always enjoyed “the science of it, reading about compounds and studies”. She went on to provide her step-by-step guide for her skin – but did not reveal specific products to avoid being “too product-placementy”. Her routine starts out with double cleansing to remove makeup and impurities, followed by the simplified track of toner, then serums with active ingredients. She finishes with moisturizer and sunscreen. Ocasio-Cortez claims her regimen is just a short three steps, but a closer glance reveals a more involved process, with some measures mimicking the 10-step Korean skincare routine that has become popular on beauty blogs. K-beauty has been making its way into the American consciousness since about 2015. It involves exotic ingredients such as snail mucus and an emphasis on knowledge of active ingredients. The approach has infiltrated the mass market, giving rise to sheet masks, serums, essences and other Korean-inspired skincare products. The style is popular with stars such as Chrissy Teigen, Emma Stone and Lady Gaga. 8hrs yesterday and still going. Oh the glamours of sleep deprivation. More cigarettes please, and get me my hoes. We haven't even touched the bleach yet. 💀 A post shared by  Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) on May 21, 2015 at 7:11am PDT Ocasio-Cortez’s routine overlaps with staples associated with Korean skincare such as double cleansing and using serums with active ingredients, as well as the emphasis on hydration and sunscreen. Ocasio-Cortez described her approach as “a blend between K-beauty & scientific consensus”. There’s no word yet if Mitch McConnell might follow suit. But Ocasio-Cortez appears to be the first congressional member ever to put a cult beauty trend up for discussion.At the beginning of the year, the UK government appointed a waste tsar. The idea would be for this chap – businessman Ben Elliott who happens to be a nephew of the Duchess of Cornwall – to end any waste going to landfills by 2030, manage the government’s £15m food waste fund and redistribute any surplus food. We waste a stunning 10.2m tonnes of food each year, so it’s a fine idea on paper. Don’t hold your breath, though. In 2010, the then Tory-led coalition government made the ironic choice of appointing Philip Green as its efficiency tsar. We’re probably better off having a go ourselves. Upcycling wasted food is an excellent place to start, and, thankfully, a small but steady movement of chefs is already having a go, turning kitchen waste into something new, the most appealing of which is uneaten bread made into ice-cream. Savoury ice-creams are not new – I started this column a year ago with a paean to stilton and Twiglet ice-cream, and AB Marshall, author of The Book of Ices, was making asparagus ice-cream in the late 19th century – but the focus here is more on the environment than anything culinary. Alex Bond runs Alchemilla, a restaurant in Nottingham. The clue is in the name; Alex, I’m told, hates waste, and has started mixing chunks of stale sourdough with butter molasses (made with leftover homemade churned butter) and a little coffee, and then freezing it. You can imagine the colour, but taste-wise it’s memorably creamy, with a malty base and a sweet and slightly yeasty finish. At the Oriental Club in London, chef Wesley Smalley has a similar trick, soaking leftover peshwari naan in milk, and turning it into ice-cream. It’s a little low on spice, but otherwise straddles the sweet and the savoury, and is equally great. Neither ice-cream is pretty, but, given almost every food trend is hinged around Instagram, it’s an ugly relief. Upcycling food waste on a micro scale is hardly an act of guerrilla activism, but it is worth pointing out that ethical consumption can be expensive. Caring has a tax (ask any vegan) and freeganism – dumpster diving which has an anti-capitalist, environmental edge – can be dangerous. By contrast, turning stale, uneaten bread into ice-cream, is doable and safe. Mrs Beeton made it, and so did my mum. Generally speaking, I go to great lengths to avoid wasting food. I once wrote about all the food I had frozen and forgotten, and just now rustled up a soup using all the old root veg in my fridge, the remnants of Friday’s curry, half a gyoza and a pot of anchovies, which I quickly scooped back out using my fingers because they went off before Christmas. If I die after eating this, at least I’ll die an environmental hero.The existence in Britain of a flourishing private-school sector not only limits the life chances of those who attend state schools but also damages society at large, and it should be possible to have a sustained and fully inclusive national conversation about the subject. Whether one has been privately educated, or has sent or is sending one’s children to private schools, or even if one teaches at a private school, there should be no barriers to taking part in that conversation. Everyone has to live – and make their choices – in the world as it is, not as one might wish it to be. That seems an obvious enough proposition. Yet in a name-calling culture, ever ready with the charge of hypocrisy, this reality is all too often ignored. For the sake of avoiding misunderstanding, we should state briefly our own backgrounds and choices. One of our fathers was a solicitor in Brighton, the other was an army officer rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel; we were both privately educated; we both went to Oxford University; our children have all been educated at state grammar schools; in neither case did we move to the areas (Kent and south-west London) because of the existence of those schools; and in recent years we have become increasingly preoccupied with the private-school issue, partly as citizens concerned with Britain’s social and democratic wellbeing, partly as an aspect of our professional work (one as an economist, the other as a historian). In Britain, private schools – including their fundamental unfairness – remain the elephant in the room. It would be an almost immeasurable benefit if this were no longer the case. Education is different. Its effects are deep, long-term and run from one generation to the next. Those with enough money are free to purchase and enjoy expensive holidays, cars, houses and meals. But education is not just another material asset: it is fundamental to creating who we are. What particularly defines British private education is its extreme social exclusivity. Only about 6% of the UK’s school population attend such schools, and the families accessing private education are highly concentrated among the affluent. At every rung of the income ladder there are a small number of private-school attenders; but it is only at the very top, above the 95th rung of the ladder – where families have an income of at least £120,000 – that there are appreciable numbers of private-school children. At the 99th rung – families with incomes upwards of £300,000 – six out of every 10 children are at private school. A glance at the annual fees is relevant here. The press focus tends to be on the great and historic boarding schools – such as Eton (basic fee £40,668 in 2018–19), Harrow (£40,050) and Winchester (£39,912) – but it is important to see the private sector in the less glamorous round, and stripped of the extra cost of boarding. In 2018 the average day fees at prep schools were, at £13,026, around half the income of a family on the middle rung of the income ladder. For secondary school, and even more so sixth forms, the fees are appreciably higher. In short, access to private schooling is, for the most part, available only to wealthy households. Indeed, the small number of income-poor families going private can only do so through other sources: typically, grandparents’ assets and/or endowment-supported bursaries from some of the richest schools. Overwhelmingly, pupils at private schools are rubbing shoulders with those from similarly well-off backgrounds. They arrange things somewhat differently elsewhere: among affluent countries, Britain’s private‑school participation is especially exclusive to the rich. In Germany, for instance, it is also low, but unlike in Britain is generously state-funded, more strongly regulated and comes with modest fees. In France, private schools are mainly Catholic schools permitted to teach religion: the state pays the teachers and the fees are very low. In the US there is a very small sector of non-sectarian private schools with high fees, but most private schools are, again, religious, with much lower fees than here. Britain’s private-school configuration is, in short, distinctive. And so what, accordingly, does Britain look like in the 21st century? A brief but expensive history, 1997–2018, offers some guide. As the millennium approaches, New Labour under Tony Blair (Fettes) sweeps to power. The Bank of England under Eddie George (Dulwich) gets independence. The chronicles of Hogwarts school begin. A nation grieves for Diana (West Heath); Charles (Gordonstoun) retrieves her body; her brother (Eton) tells it as it is. Martha Lane Fox (Oxford High) blows a dotcom bubble. Charlie Falconer (Glenalmond) masterminds the Millennium Dome. Will Young (Wellington) becomes the first Pop Idol. The Wire’s Jimmy McNulty (Eton) sorts out Baltimore. James Blunt (Harrow) releases the bestselling album of the decade. Northern Rock collapses under the chairmanship of Matt Ridley (Eton). Boris Johnson (Eton) enters City Hall in London. The Cameron-Osborne (Eton-St Paul’s) axis takes over the country; Nick Clegg (Westminster) runs errands. Life staggers on in austerity Britain mark two. Jeremy Clarkson (Repton) can’t stop revving up; Jeremy Paxman (Malvern) still has an attitude problem; Alexandra Shulman (St Paul’s Girls) dictates fashion; Paul Dacre (University College School) makes middle England ever more Mail-centric; Alan Rusbridger (Cranleigh) makes non-middle England ever more Guardian-centric; judge Brian Leveson (Liverpool College) fails to nail the press barons; Justin Welby (Eton) becomes top mitre man; Frank Lampard (Brentwood) becomes a Chelsea legend; Joe Root (Worksop) takes guard; Henry Blofeld (Eton) spots a passing bus. The Cameron-Osborne axis sees off Labour, but not Boris Johnson+Nigel Farage (Dulwich)+Arron Banks (Crookham Court). Ed Balls (Nottingham High) takes to the dance floor. Theresa May (St Juliana’s) and Jeremy Corbyn (Castle House prep school) face off. Prince George (Thomas’s Battersea) and Princess Charlotte (Willcocks) start school. The statistics also tell a story. The proportion of prominent people in every area who have been educated privately is striking, in some cases grotesque. From judges (74% privately educated) through to MPs (32%), the numbers tell us of a society where bought educational privilege also buys lifetime privilege and influence. “The dogged persistence of the British ‘old boy”’ is how a 2017 study describes the traditional dominance of private-school alumni in British society. This reveals the fruits of exploring well over a century of biographical data in Who’s Who, that indispensable annual guide to the composition of the British elite. For those born between the 1830s and 1920s, roughly 50-60% went to private schools; for those born between the 1930s and 1960s, the proportion was roughly 45-50%. Among the new entrants to Who’s Who in the 21st century, the proportion of the privately educated has remained constant at around 45%. Going to one of the schools in the prestigious Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) still gives a 35 times better chance of entering Who’s Who than if one has not attended an HMC school; while those attending the historic crème de la crème, the so-called Clarendon Schools (Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Merchant Taylors’, Rugby, St Paul’s, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Winchester), are 94 times more likely to join the elite than any ordinary British-educated person. Even if one’s child never achieves celebrity, sending him or her to a private school is usually a shrewd investment – indeed, increasingly so, to judge by the relevant longitudinal studies of two different generations. Take first the cohort born in 1958: in terms of those with comparable social backgrounds, demographic characteristics and early tested skills, and different only in what type of school they attended when they were 11, by the time they were in their early 30s (around 1990) the privately educated were earning 7% more than the state-educated. Compare that with those born in 1970: by the same stage (the early 2000s), the gap between the two categories – again, similar in all other respects – had risen to 21% in favour of the privately educated. The only realistic starting point for an analysis lies with the assertion that, in the modern era, most of these schools are of high quality, offering a good educational environment. They deploy very substantial resources; respect the need for a disciplined environment for learning; and give copious attention to generating a positive and therefore motivating experience. This argument – the resources point aside – is not an altogether easy one for the left to accept, against a background of it having historically been undecided whether (in the words of one Labour education minister’s senior civil servant in the 1960s) “these schools are so bloody they ought to be abolished, or so marvellous they ought to be made available to everyone”. We do not necessarily accept that all private schools are “marvellous”; but by and large we recognise that, in their own terms of fulfilling what their customers demand, they deliver the goods. Above all, private schools succeed when it comes to preparing their pupils for public exams – the gateways to universities. In 2018 the proportion of private-school students achieving A*s and As at A-level was 48%, compared with a national average of 26%; while for GCSEs, in terms of achieving an A or grade seven or above, the respective figures were 63% and 23%. At both stages, GCSE and A-level, the gap is invariably huge. There are, of course, some very real contextual factors to these bald and striking figures. Any study must take account of where the children are coming from. Nevertheless, the picture presented by several studies is one of relatively small but still significant effects at every stage of education; and over the course of a school career, the cumulative effects build up to a notable gain in academic achievements. Yet academic learning and exam results are not all there is to a quality education, and indeed there is more on offer from private schools. At Harrow, for example, its vision is that the school “prepares boys… for a life of learning, leadership, service and personal fulfilment”. It offers “a wide range of high-level extracurricular activities, through which boys discover latent talent, develop individual character and gain skills in leadership and teamwork”. Lesser-known schools trumpet something similar. Cumbria’s Austin Friars, for example, highlights a well-rounded education, proclaiming that its alumni will be “creative problem-solvers… effective communicators… and confident, modest and articulate members of society who embody the Augustinian values of unity, truth and love...” If, on the whole, Britain’s private schools provide a quality education in both academic and broader terms, how do they deliver that? Four areas stand out. First, especially small class sizes are a major boon for pupils and teachers alike. Second, the range of extracurricular activities and the intensive cultivation of “character” and “confidence” are important. Third, the high – and therefore exclusive – price tag sustains a peer group of children mainly drawn from supportive and affluent families. And fourth, to achieve the best possible exam results and the highest rate of admission to the top universities, “working the system” comes into play. Far greater resources are available for diagnosing special needs, challenging exam results and guiding university applications. Underpinning all these areas of advantage are the high revenues from fees: Britain’s private schools can deploy resources whose order of magnitude for each child is approximately three times what is available at the average state school. The relevant figures for university admissions are thus almost entirely predictable. Perhaps inevitably, by far the highest-profile stats concern Oxbridge, where between 2010 and 2015 an average of 43% of offers from Oxford and 37% from Cambridge were made to privately educated students, and there has been no sign since of any significant opening up. Top schools, top universities: the pattern of privilege is systemic, and not just confined to the dreaming spires. Going to a top university, it hardly needs adding, signals a material difference, especially in Britain where universities are quite severely ranked in a hierarchy. Ultimately, does any of this matter? Why can one not simply accept that these are high-quality schools that provide our future leaders with a high-quality education? Given the thorniness – and often invidiousness – of the issue, it is a tempting proposition. Yet for a mixture of reasons – political and economic, as well as social – we believe that the issue represents in contemporary Britain an unignorable problem that urgently needs to be addressed and, if possible, resolved. The words of Alan Bennett reverberate still. Private education is not fair, he famously declared in June 2014 during a sermon at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. “Those who provide it know it. Those who pay for it know it. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. And those who receive it know it, or should.” Consider these three fundamental facts: one in every 16 pupils goes to a private school; one in every seven teachers works at a private school; one pound in every six of all school expenditure in England is for the benefit of private-school pupils. The crucial point to make here is that although extra resources for each school (whether private or state) are always valuable, that value is at a diminishing rate the wealthier the school is. Each extra teacher or assistant helps, but if you already have two assistants in a class, a third one adds less value than the second. Given the very unequal distribution of academic resources entailed by the British private school system, it is unarguable that a more egalitarian distribution of the same resources would enhance the total educational achievement. There is, moreover, the sheer extravagance. Multiple theatres, large swimming pools and beautiful surroundings with expensive upkeep are, of course, nice to have and look suitably seductive on sales brochures – but add relatively little educational value. Further inefficiency arises from education’s “positional” aspect. The resources lift up children in areas where their rank position on the ladder of success matters, such as access to scarce places at top universities. To the considerable extent this happens, the privately educated child benefits but the state-educated child loses out. This lethal combination of private benefit and public waste is nowhere more apparent than in the time and effort that private schools devote to working the system, to ease access to those scarce places. What about the implications for our polity? The way the privately educated have sustained semi-monopolistic positions of prominence and influence in the modern era has created a serious democratic deficit. The unavoidable truth is that, by and large, the increasingly privileged and entitled products of an elite private education have – almost inevitably – only a limited and partial understanding of, and empathy with, the realities of everyday life as lived by most people. One of those realities is, of course, state education. It marked some kind of apotheosis when in July 2014 the appointment of Nicky Morgan (Surbiton High) as education secretary meant that every minister in her department at that time was privately educated. On social mobility, there has been in recent years an abundance of apparently sincere, well-meaning rhetoric, not least from our leading politicians. “Britain has the lowest social mobility in the developed world,” laments David Cameron in 2015. “Here, the salary you earn is more linked to what your father got paid than in any other major country. We cannot accept that.” In 2016 Jeremy Corbyn declares his movement will “ensure every young person has the opportunities to maximise their talents”, while Theresa May follows on: “I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit not privilege; where it’s your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like.” Rather like corporate social responsibility in the business world, social mobility has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie causes that it is almost rude not to utter warm words about. Yet the mismatch between such sentiments and policymakers’ practical intentions is palpable. The Social Mobility Commission, with cross-party representation, reported regularly on what government should do, but in December 2017 all sitting members resigned in frustration at the lack of policy action in response to their recommendations. The underlying reality of our private-school problem is stark. Through a highly resourced combination of social exclusiveness and academic excellence, the private-school system has in our lifetimes powered an enduring cycle of privilege. It is hard to imagine a notable improvement in our social mobility while private schooling continues to play such an important role. Allowing, as Britain still does, an unfettered expenditure on high-quality education for only a small minority of the population condemns our society in seeming perpetuity to a damaging degree of social segregation and inequality. This hands-off approach to private schools has come to matter ever more, given over the past half-century the vastly increased importance in our society of educational credentials. Perhaps once it might have been conceivable to argue that private education was a symptom rather than a cause of how privilege in Britain was transferred from one generation to the next, but that day is long gone: the centrality of schooling in both social and economic life – and the Noah’s flood of resources channelled into private schools for the few – are seemingly permanent features of the modern era. The reproduction of privilege is now tied in inextricably with the way we organise our formal education. Ineluctably, as we look ahead, the question of fairness returns. If private schooling in Britain remains fundamentally unreconstructed, it will remain predominantly intended and destined for the advantage of the already privileged children who attend. We need to talk openly about this problem, and it is time to find some answers. Some call for the “abolition” of private schools – whatever that might mean. We do not call for that, because we think it is better – and feasible – to harness for all the good qualities of private schools. Feasible reforms are available; these do not require excessive commitments from the Treasury, but do require a political commitment. We are, however, under no illusions about the task of reform. The schools’ links with powerful vested interests are close and continuous. London’s main clubs (dominated by privately educated men) would be one example; the Church of England (closely connected with many private schools, from Westminster downwards) would be another. Or take the City of London, where in that historic and massively wealthy square mile not only do individual livery companies have an intimate involvement with a range of private schools, but the City corporation itself supports an elite trio in Surrey and London (City of London, City of London school for girls, City of London Freemen’s school). While as for the many hundreds of individual links between “top people” and private schools, often in the form of sitting on governing bodies, it only needs a glance at Who’s Who to get the gist. The term “the establishment” can be a tiresome one, too often loosely and inaccurately used, but in the sense of complementary networks of people at or close to the centres of power and wealth, it actually does mean something. All of which leaves the private schools almost uniquely well placed to make their case and protect their corner. They have ready access to prominent public voices speaking on their behalf, especially in the House of Lords; they enjoy the passive support of the Church of England, which is distinctly reluctant to draw attention to the moral gulf between the aims of ancient founders and the socioeconomic realities of the present; and of course, they have no qualms about utilising all possible firepower, human as well as media and institutional, to block anything they find threatening. The great historian EP Thompson wrote more than half a century ago about The Peculiarities of the English. Historically, those peculiarities have been various, but the most important – and pervasive in its consequences – has been social class. Of course, things to a degree have changed since Thompson’s time. The visible distinctions of dress and speech have been somewhat eroded, if far from obliterated; the obvious social manifestations of a manufacturing economy have been replaced by the more fluid forms of a service economy; the increasing emphasis of reformers and activists has been on issues of gender and ethnicity; and a series of politicians and others have sought to assure us that we are moving into “a classless society”. Yet the fundamental social reality remains profoundly and obstinately otherwise. Britain is still a place where more often than not it matters crucially not only to whom one has been born, but where and in what circumstances one has grown up. It would be manifestly absurd to pin the blame entirely on the existence over the past few centuries of a flourishing private-school sector. Even so, given that these schools have been and still are places that – when the feelgood verbiage is stripped away – ensure that their already advantaged pupils retain and extend their socio‑economic advantages in later life, common sense places them squarely in the centre of the frame. Is it possible in Britain over the next 10 or 20 years to build a sufficiently widespread consensus for reform?Or, at the very least, to begin to have a serious, sustained, non-name-calling, non-guilt-ridden national conversation on the subject of private education? A poll we commissioned from Populus shows a virtually landslide majority for a perception of unfairness about private education, indicating that public opinion is potentially receptive to grappling with the issue and what to do about it. The poll reveals, moreover, that even those who have been privately educated, or have chosen to educate their own children privately, are more likely than not to have a perception of unfairness. The question of what to do about a sector educating only some 6% of our school population might seem relatively trifling, and difficult to prioritise (especially in challenging economic circumstances), compared with say the challenges of quality teacher recruitment across the state sector or the whole vital area of early-years learning. Yet it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the seriously negative educational aspects of the current dispensation and to continue to marginalise the private-school question. The private schools’ reach is very much broader than their minority share of school pupils implies. Unless some radical reform is set in train, an unreconstructed private-school system, with its enormous resource superiority and exclusiveness hanging over the state system as a beacon for unequal treatment and privilege, would make it hard to sustain a fully comprehensive and fair state education system. Ultimately, the issue is at least as much about what kind of society one might hope the Britain of the 2020s and 2030s to be. A more open society in which upward social mobility starts to become a real possibility for many children, not just a few lucky ones? A society in which the affluent are not educated in enclaves, and in which schooling for the affluent is not funded at something like three times the level of schooling for the less affluent? A society in which the pursuit through education of greater equality of life chances, seeking to harness the talents of all our children, is a matter of real and rigorous intent? A society in which there is a just relationship between the competing demands of liberty and equity, and in which we are, to coin a phrase, all in it together? For the building of such a society, or anything even remotely close, the issue of private education is pivotal, both symbolically and substantively. The reform of private schools will not alone be sufficient to achieve a good education system for all, let alone the good society; but it surely is a necessary condition. At this particular moment in our island story, the future seems peculiarly a blank sheet. Everything is potentially on the table. And for once, that has to include the engines of privilege. For if not now, when? • Engines of Privilege: Britain’s Private School Problem by Francis Green and David Kynaston is published by Bloomsbury on 7 February (£20). To order a copy for £17.60 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99 There are broadly two types of option: those that handicap private schools, making them less attractive to parents, and those that envisage “crossing the tracks” – some form of integration with the state-school sector. Some reforms would have much more of an impact than others. 1. HandicapsContextual admissions to universities Where universities, especially the high-status ones, make substantial allowances for candidates’ school background; alternatively, as another method of positive discrimination, some form of a quota system. Upping the cost Where the fees are substantially raised, making some parents switch away from the private-school sector and opt for state schools. Even though tax subsidies are not huge, the government could reduce them, for example by taking away charitable status (from those schools that are charities) or by requiring that all schools pay business rates in full (as in Scotland from 2020). Alternatively, something that would “hurt” a bit more, government could directly tax school fees (as in Labour’s manifesto pledge to impose VAT or in Andrew Adonis’s proposed 25% “educational opportunity tax”). 2. Crossing the tracksThere are several proposed schemes for enabling children from low-income families to attend private schools. Mainly, these would leave it to schools to choose how they select their pupils. Some are relatively small in scope, including a proposal from the Independent Schools Council that would involve no more than 2% of the private-school population. Others are more ambitious: the Sutton Trust’s Open Access Scheme proposes that all places at about 80 top private secondary day schools would be competed for on academic merit. The government would subsidise those who could not afford the fees. In another type of partial integration, schools would select a proportion of state-funded pupils according to the Schools Admissions Code, meaning that the government or local government would set the principles for selection and the extra places would become an extension to the state system. We suggest a Fair Access Scheme, where the schools would be obliged initially to recruit one-third of their pupils in this way, with a view to the proportion rising significantly over time.I cannot deal with the cold weather. Please, save me.Me, my desk I don’t know if I have made it clear enough in my several thousand other columns on this subject, but I really, really hate winter. Some people get apple cheeks and cosy knitwear; I have a permanent cold and am permanently cold. If I have a cinematic alter ego, it’s Sanka Coffie (Doug E Doug), the dreadlocked bobsledder in the 90s classic, Cool Runnings (all movies with John Candy are classic, don’t @ me), when he comes out of the ice-cream truck in which he has been locked so as to acclimatise to cold weather. The camera pans to him shivering miserably, his dreadlocks so frozen they snap off. I’ve had 40 winters – a biblically long time – of living in London and the even more unacceptably cold New York City, so I’ve had time to come up with coping strategies. Handy tip No 1: don’t leave your house. I don’t leave my home from November to March (April, if I’m entirely honest) and never once have I felt I have missed anything, as I spend another evening in hugging my radiator, carpe-ing the heck out of the diem. So now we can skip past all expectations you might have that I might be about to share coat tips because a) you shouldn’t be going outside anyway and b) it’s nearly February; if you don’t already have a coat, you’re beyond my help. Instead, let’s go to my speciality subject: winter beauty products. Obviously, this begins with the most sacred spot in your house in winter: the bathtub. If you’re not having a bath every day in winter, you’re doing it wrong. One of the many reasons I refuse all social invitations in winter is because I don’t have time to go out in the evening, what with my very packed bathing schedule. There are two essential ingredients for a winter bath: bath oil and bubble bath, because, while most bubble baths will dry out your already dried-out winter skin, bath oil counteracts the drying. I don’t have any science to back up that theory, but it sounds good to me, so that makes it true – that’s how facts work today. The ultimate bath products come from Jo Malone, Cowshed, Elemis and Laura Mercier; feel free to justify the cost of these by telling yourself you’re saving money by not going out for the next five months. Dr Hauschka, Neal’s Yard and This Works are slightly cheaper, and the high street can be pretty decent, too; try Soap & Glory and, of course, Radox, the king of bubbles. For extra heat – and there can never be enough heat in winter – give yourself a salt scrub before getting in the tub. My favourites (see here and here) are from Ren, which are expensive but last for ages. There are only two brands that have ever been able to deal with my flaky skin without running away in horror, and they are Neutrogena and Kiehl’s. Admittedly, the latter’s Crème de Corps does turn your palms orange, although I see that as a rather amusing plus. You have to get your kicks where you can in winter. Speaking of hands, there is only one acceptable hand moisturiser and that is l’Occitane, because it works and because it doesn’t make your hands greasy and gross. Finally, the face. Now, some of these products are a bit spendy but, as I said before: I don’t go out and, as Jennifer Aniston told me many times, I’m worth it. The only way I can get through a winter’s day without looking like Old Mother Hubbard by the end of it is if I put on a serum, a moisturiser and some face oil. The best serum for dehydrated skin such as mine is Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair, which I wear in the day, because I’m a rebel like that. The only moisturisers that make my face feel moisturised in winter are No7 Protect & Perfect and Charlotte Tilbury’s Magic Cream, with some added SPF mixed in, and I add a drop of The Ordinary’s facial oil to that. At night, it’s the same except for a serum I use, Elizabeth Arden’s Retinol Ceramide Capsules, which a friend recommended and are actual miracle magic capsules. Then it’s No7 for moisturiser and more facial oil. So that’s how you get through the winter as beautifully as me. Admittedly, no one actually sees me because – and I don’t know if I have made this clear enough – I don’t go outside. But trust me: I look AMAZING. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.He travelled the world studying exotic creatures in dangerous lands, but the disease that marred Charles Darwin’s life may have been caught closer to home as he trudged around Britain collecting insects, shooting birds, and picking up stones, researchers say. The Victorian naturalist who gave the world the theory of evolution is a strong contender for the most famously ill scientist in history. His diaries, notebooks and letters brim with despair over ailments ranging from diarrhoea, rashes and heart palpitations, to vomiting, muscle pain and incessant flatulence. While hypochondria undoubtedly played a part in Darwin’s misery, researchers have failed to agree on what illness or illnesses, lay behind his poor health. Medical historians have proposed everything from the insect-borne Chagas disease or panic disorder with agoraphobia to lactose intolerance and recurrent vomiting brought on by an unusual genetic mutation. Now researchers in the Netherlands have come up with their own explanation for Darwin’s many afflictions. Rather than some exotic infection contracted overseas, they suspect he picked up Lyme disease from an infected tick while on field work in Britain as a young man. “He had a lot of different symptoms: involuntary twitching of muscles, swimming of the head, a shortness of breath, trembling hands, and all of them came and went, and that is quite typical of Lyme disease,” said Erwin Kompanje, a clinical researcher at the Erasmus University medical centre in Rotterdam. Kompanje and his colleague Jelle Reumer at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam searched online databases of Darwin’s notes and correspondence for any mention of symptoms that might betray his underlying illness. When Darwin was in Argentina in 1835, he described being bitten by the “great black bug of the Pampas”, an inch-long blood-sucking insect that can transmit Chagas disease, which can damage the heart, oesophagus and colon. But the Dutch researchers believe his mild fluctuating symptoms, which started to appear before he reached South America, are more consistent with Lyme disease. The infection is caused by Borrelia bacteria which are carried by certain ticks. “Exposure to a tick carrying Borrelia in Great Britain is much more plausible than exposure to Chagas disease during his travel in South America,” the researchers write in Deinsea, the journal of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. “Darwin travelled around England and Wales, collecting insects, shooting birds, picking up stones and thus being exposed to ticks,” the authors add. “There must thus have been ample time during the first three decades of his life to get infected.” In the 1990s, the US researchers Thomas Barloon and Russell Noyes concluded that Darwin’s symptoms pointed to panic disorder with agoraphobia. But Darwin travelled widely in his life and rode a horse until the age of 60. According to Kompanje and Reumer, the panic-like symptoms may themselves have been a product of Lyme disease, which can lead to attacks lasting not minutes but hours and days. On top of Lyme disease, the Dutch researchers agree with a 2005 diagnosis by the British researchers Anthony Campbell and Stephanie Matthews that Darwin was lactose intolerant despite his fondness for sweet, milky puddings. The condition could explain his stomach pains, vomiting and flatulence, they write. But other scientists may not be convinced by the Lyme disease hypothesis. The condition is known as “the great imitator” because the symptoms mimic so many other diseases. One common sign of being bitten by an infected tick is a red bullseye-type rash, but such a mark is never described in Darwin’s writing. Richard Wall, a specialist in ticks at the University of Bristol, said: “Borreliosis is a particularly difficult infection to diagnose symptomatically even when the patient is available because of the diffuse and highly variable nature of the clinical signs; some researchers even question the existence of a chronic form of the disease. So, retrospective diagnosis at a historical distance of 200 years, while interesting, must be considered as highly speculative.” Stuart Carter, professor of veterinary pathology at Liverpool University, said: “Darwin was keener on riding and shooting when he was supposed to be studying medicine at Edinburgh and so would have been likely to come into contact with potentially disease-carrying ticks. Hence it is possible that he was a chronic Lyme disease carrier, though such a condition is still not generally recognised. “Darwin’s well-documented hypochondria is not an unusual finding in very gifted biomedical people who are constantly searching for links between cause and effect,” he added. “Considering he was alive in the pre-antibiotic era, if he had a chronic bacterial infection, he did remarkably well to live to 73.”Writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green, 36, grew up on Staten Island. He took a master’s degree in education, then worked on Wall Street before studying film at NYU. His debut feature, Monsters and Men, which last year won a special jury prize at Sundance, is about the repercussions of the shooting by police of an unarmed black man in Brooklyn. It’s in cinemas and streaming from Friday. Green is currently directing episodes of season 3 of the London-set Netflix series Top Boy. Monsters and Men is not so much about a shooting as about three different characters’ responses to it.I had the title before I had the film. It was a question I was asking myself: if I do nothing, am I a monster, am I complicit in not being actively involved? In my short film Stop, I cast a friend of mine who’s a police officer, and we started talking about Eric Garner [who died while being arrested in Staten Island in 2014]. Here’s someone I thought was liberal-progressive [defending the police position], and what ended up becoming the dinner party scene in Monsters and Men [a debate about whether US police should have the right to shoot someone resisting arrest] was the discussion we had that night at Sundance. I didn’t agree with him, but he was bringing up his point of view, as much as it pained me. That was really the start of this film. The storyline about Zyrick, a young baseball player facing a moral choice, makes us think of recent protests by American athletes, most famously Colin Kaepernick. Was that story happening when you were making the film?At the start, it wasn’t. Then, reading the news, I asked myself, how would Colin Kaepernick have responded at 17? He’s a grown man, he has a platform. When you’re 17, you have no following. Colin was doing his thing and it was great to see someone come out so boldly. A key scene has the character Dennis talk about how often, as a black man, he’s stopped by police – and he’s a cop himself.My father worked for the Department of Investigation. It’s non-uniform; he was an attorney by trade, he had a gun, he had a shield. He looked like a normal black man in New York, so he would get stopped like a normal black man. There were many times when the gun would be in the glove compartment – he’s legally allowed to carry it, but it was scary to think that with the wrong person seeing him reach for something, anything could happen in that moment. You were taught film by Spike Lee at NYU. What was that like?Spike is a man of very few words. He’ll answer you with a question – “Why’d you do that?” – but doesn’t offer a response. He’s not going to go and do it for you: “No, I’m not gonna call Denzel! You’re not gonna get Denzel! Go make a movie so you can get Denzel!” That’s his way of saying, “I like you” – by pushing you to help yourself. Dennis the police officer in your film is played by John David Washington, son of Denzel Washington, recently seen in Lee’s BlacKkKlansman.John is from California, he wears an earring, he’s got long hair – I thought, “Can he transform? I can’t have one false note in this film.” But I think he’d been around some police officers, so I got this sense he had a real deep connection with the character. The guy gave me a month of prep, unpaid. For a Hollywood actor to do that, you know they’re committed to the craft. You’ve been working in London on Top Boy, with Drake involved as executive producer.His business partner Future saw Monsters and Men in Sundance. They’ve promoted the film, they’ve said, “This film’s important, you should see it.” There are a lot of things in Top Boy that are similar to what I grew up with. In terms of the crime, it’s a little different; there’s way more knife crime here rather than guns, but the estate life is quite similar. Ronan Bennett is an incredible writer – he knows that world really well. And you’re planning a movie about the boxer Jack Johnson.…He was an incredible human being – and I get to do a boxing movie and a period piece. He’s Ali before Ali. A lot of people don’t know who he is – and Trump pardoned him recently [Johnson was sentenced to prison in 1913 on a racially motivated charge]. Sylvester Stallone has a project in the works about him – there might be several Jack Johnson projects now. John David would be great in the role.The British high commission in Malaysia gave tens of thousands of pounds to a local thinktank while it argued against tobacco controls already enacted in the UK. At the same time it was funded by the British foreign office, the thinktank received substantial funding from three multinational tobacco companies. The conduct of the high commission raises questions about whether diplomats went against guidelines to “limit interactions” with the tobacco industry, following previous criticism of diplomatic support for the tobacco industry abroad. British and American diplomatic missions funded the thinktank, the Kuala Lumpur-based Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas), while it argued against tobacco taxes and plain packaging. The UK enacted plain packaging in 2014. The news follows a Guardian analysis of free-market thinktanks around the world that have taken positions aligned with the tobacco industry. Many thinktanks argued that they recognize the risks of smoking, were independent and opposed ineffective regulation rather than all tobacco regulation. The analysis revealed at least 106 free-market thinktanks around the world took positions aligned with the tobacco industry in the past decade, accepted donations from the tobacco industry or both. Reporting by the Observer last year has also shown how how the Foreign Office championed British American Tobacco’s interests abroad. A spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) told the Guardian: “The British high commission in Malaysia has not and does not co-finance or partner in any way with tobacco companies, or support projects which promote tobacco use. “All FCO-led programmes follow the standards set out by HM Treasury. They receive robust scrutiny to ensure that all spend represents value for money for UK taxpayers and advances the UN’s sustainable development goals and our foreign policy objectives.” Mary Assunta, a senior policy adviser at the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (Seatca), said: “Ideas jumped into tobacco control only recently and was making policy statements that echoed the tobacco industry’s position. “When a group or a consultant uses certain familiar buzz words and pushes anti-health proposals, look deeper, and you will find the link to the tobacco industry.” In response to questions from the Guardian, Ideas said it followed “a strict policy of editorial independence”, and “thus no donations influence our research and analytical outputs”. “Less than 15% of our annual funding from the tobacco industry,” Ideas said, noting that it publicly disclosed donations by tobacco companies. “Ideas is perhaps the only civil society organization in Malaysia which maintains this level of transparency. In these financial records, the names of tobacco firms are clearly mentioned and we have never denied this.” In 2016, Ideas started commenting on tobacco control in Malaysia. In one example, the group’s then executive director, Wan Saiful Wan Jan, wrote a column in the national newspaper the Star criticizing the Malaysian health department’s push for plain packaging. “I don’t smoke and I get annoyed if people smoke near me,” he wrote. “But notwithstanding my attitude towards smoking, paternalistic government behaviour is more dangerous and must be rejected when we see it.” Plain packaging laws remove advertising from cigarette packs to encourage smokers to quit and deter young people from starting. The laws are part of a broader movement to control tobacco use. Australia first enacted plain packaging in 2012 and immediately found itself in the crosshairs of the tobacco industry, which argued plain packaging violated international trade agreements, infringed on commercial speech and is ineffective at reducing smoking. This analysis shows tobacco companies also funded free-market thinktanks, many of which opposed plain packaging. It cost $38m to defend Australia’s laws against the tobacco industry, but Australia triumphed. Now, Australia also has the best evidence plain packaging works. Government data has found a 0.5% reduction in smoking rates. However, researchers concede data is difficult to parse from other tactics such as graphic warnings, enacted around the same time. Tobacco taxes increase the price of cigarettes, meant to encourage smokers to quit and make cigarettes unaffordable to young people. Taxes are the most effective, yet least utilized, tobacco control tool. The biggest hurdle to enacting taxes, experts say, is the industry’s well-funded opposition. Cigarette makers argue taxes fuel black market smuggling and counterfeit production. In turn, cigarette companies and their allies say increased taxes cause violence, revenue loss and lead to more harmful cigarettes. Tobacco control experts have found companies exaggerate smuggling evidence, and groups such as the Fraser Institute often echo those concerns. In one study, an International Agency for Research in Cancer expert panel found tax avoidance does not wipe out the public health benefits of increased tobacco taxes. Researchers from the International Union Against Cancer also suggested “tobacco manufacturers are the chief beneficiaries of smuggling". The World Bank, World Health Organization and US National Bureau of Economic Research all agree increasing tobacco taxes reduces smoking. The US surgeon general, in a report which marked 50 years since it declared smoking causes lung cancer, described taxes as “one of the most powerful interventions we can make to prevent smoking and reduce prevalence”. Clean indoor air laws ban smoking inside, because secondhand smoke can cause smoking-related illnesses. Tobacco companies oppose these laws on the grounds they negatively impact businesses, infringe on individual rights and are based on junk science. Although bars, restaurants and workplaces ban smoking indoors in the US and Europe, many developing countries have not. The Guardian found several thinktanks used these arguments to oppose clean indoor air laws in places such as Ghana and Hong Kong. In June 2016, Seatca warned the British high commission in Malaysia that Ideas was “mouthing the same arguments used by the tobacco industry in the UK”. Nevertheless, the high commission increased funding in 2017. The British government’s contribution grew from £46,552 ($60,299) in 2016 to £72,820 ($94,324) in 2017. That nearly made the British high commission the group’s largest funder, second only to the philanthropic arm of the Malaysian transportation conglomerate Sime Darby. At the same time, Ideas received donations from Philip Morris Singapore, Philip Morris Malaysia and Japan Tobacco International. Between 2016 and 2017, the three tobacco companies donated £42,411. British American Tobacco also said it “supports” Ideas. The British high commission provided funding to Ideas just a few years after British diplomats were criticized for aiding BAT in Pakistan and Panama, according to the Financial Times. As a result, rules established in 2013 forbade diplomats from lobbying “against any local administration’s policies that are aimed at improving public health, or engage with foreign governments on behalf of the tobacco industry”. The new rules stated diplomats “should limit interactions with the tobacco industry, including any person or organization that is likely to be working to further the interests of the tobacco industry”. Ideas received donations from the US National Endowment for Democracy (Ned) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), both groups which receive most of their funding from the American government. Ned, which gave Ideas $80,000, said it was “unaware of the funding from tobacco groups” or Ideas’s “comments on tobacco related policy in local Malaysian media”. Ned no longer funds Ideas. Ned said it provided funding to a number of other free-market focused thinktanks as recently as this year. At least four opposed plain packaging of cigarettes, including the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy in Pakistan, the Samriddhi Foundation of Nepal, the Libertarian Club Libek in Serbia and the Free Market Foundation of South Africa. Ned and IRI said its donations were not related to tobacco policy. There’s a thin line between lobbying for vested interests and acting in the public interest In the US, foreign donations to American thinktanks have come under scrutiny as a form of potential lobbying. While Ideas disclosed its donors, many free-market thinktanks do not, including some which received funding from western diplomats. For example, the influential Ghanaian thinktank Imani Centre for Policy and Education argued so vociferously against tobacco control that the nation’s health department quoted local activists as saying Imani was an organization which “fronts for the tobacco industry” in an official report to the WHO. Imani told the Guardian the last tobacco industry donation it received was roughly four years ago. In one 2012 editorial, Imani’s leader argued the link between lung cancer and smoking has “yet to be empirically established”. Imani told the Guardian it no longer denies smoking causes lung cancer. Nevertheless, the Danish embassy made Imani a key partner in an effort to modernize the Ghana Revenue Authority, providing it with more than £656,000 ($849,716). The authority of thinktanks, Barrington said, “lies in, ‘You can believe me, because I have independent research here.’ If that is compromised, people stop listening to you. You might as well go straight to the tobacco company.” In large part, tobacco companies told the Guardian they supported like-minded organizations, like many other businesses. A spokesperson for Philip Morris International said: “We have worked, and will continue to work, with carefully selected organizations around the world who share our desire to promote policies that produce meaningful public health improvements. It is absolutely ridiculous to imply that supporting an organization would result in a group taking action they otherwise would fundamentally oppose.” Sam Cleverly, group head of corporate affairs at BAT, said: “Like many other companies, we support like-minded organizations on issues that are important to our business and our consumers. “We believe publicly elected officials should be allowed to hear all sides of any debate when formulating policy and should be trusted to make informed decisions once they have heard and considered all the arguments.” Jonathan Duce, head of external affairs for Japan Tobacco, said: “It is clear to everyone that there are health risks associated with smoking – we are fully transparent about this.” He continued: “We are not alone in our thinking and various groups across the world share our view that any regulation, tobacco-related or not, if untested and unproven, could have seriously negative knock-on effects.”Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She has contributed to more than 125 scientific papers and won numerous prizes for her science communication work. In 2018 she was a contributor to the US National Climate Assessment and was awarded the Stephen H Schneider award for outstanding climate science communication. In 2018, we have seen forest fires in the Arctic circle; record high temperatures in parts of Australia, Africa and the US; floods in India; and devastating droughts in South Africa and Argentina. Is this a turning point? This year has hit home how climate change loads the dice against us by taking naturally occurring weather events and amplifying them. We now have attribution studies that show how much more likely or stronger extreme weather events have become as a result of human emissions. For example, wildfires in the western US now burn nearly twice the area they would without climate change, and almost 40% more rain fell during Hurricane Harvey than would have otherwise. So we are really feeling the impacts and know how much humanity is responsible. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its 1.5C report in October. A month later, the US federal government’s climate assessment – to which you contributed – came out. How did these two massive studies move our understanding along? These assessments are important because there is a Schrödinger’s Cat element to studying climate impacts. The act of observing affects the outcome. If people aren’t aware of what is happening, why would anyone change? Assessments like these provide us with a vision of the future if we continue on our current pathway, and by doing so they address the most widespread and dangerous myth that the largest number of us have bought into: not that the science isn’t real, but rather that climate change doesn’t matter to me personally. Compared to past studies, how much media attention did these reports receive?There was significant coverage but a lot of media survive by generating controversy so they bring on opposing voices rather than explaining the scientific facts. Climate change shouldn’t be fodder for commentators who represent the interests of the fossil fuel industry by muddying the science. As a human and a scientist, this focus on controversy is frustrating. A thermometer is not liberal or conservative. Fossil fuels have brought us many benefits ... but the solution to our current crisis is to stop using them. That is scary Are there any signs that public opinion is shifting in the US and elsewhere? We haven’t yet reached the tipping point to motivate sufficient action. But there has been a change. Ten years ago, few people felt personally affected by climate change. It seemed very distant. Today, most people can point to a specific way climate affects their daily lives. This is important because the three key steps to action are accepting that climate change is real, recognising it affects us, and being motivated to do something to fix it. Opinion polls in the US show 70% of people agree the climate is changing, but a majority still say it won’t affect them. Trump was dismissive of these reports and has repeatedly tried to deny any link between climate change and extreme weather. What are the politics behind this denial? It’s a vicious cycle. The more doom-filled reports the scientists release, the stronger the pushback from politicians whose power, ideology and funding depends on maintaining the status quo, and who are supported by those who fear the solutions to climate change more than they fear its impacts. Opposition to climate change is a symptom of a society that is politically polarised between those who cling to the past and those who recognise the need for a better future. Fossil fuels have brought us many benefits – and I’m grateful for their contribution to my life – but the solution to our current crisis is to stop using them. That change can be scary, especially for those with most to lose financially from this shift. If you feel threatened, the instinctive reaction is to push back. Progress of sorts was made at the UN climate talks in Poland, though many scientists say global society is not moving fast enough. What is your take? Progress was made in Poland as the world agreed on a rule book to implement the Paris agreement. The agreement is like a global pot luck in which every nation brings something different to the party. For some it’s soil conservation, for another wind power or carbon pricing. Poland gave us an agreed common standard on how to measure these contributions. That was progress. As scientists, we are like physicians for the planet who have been monitoring its rising fever for 80 years. We know that our lifestyle, specifically our dependence on fossil fuels is the cause of a problem that is rapidly becoming serious and in some cases even dangerous. So when we see the world dragging its heels and carbon emissions continuing to grow, we become concerned, anxious, and even frustrated. We know we aren’t changing fast enough. On current trends, if you had to give a percentage breakdown of the likelihood of the following three outcomes by 2100, what would you give: a) keeping to 1.5C; b) keeping to 2C; c) rising above 3C; and d) overshooting 4C?I’d put my money on a gradual bend away from a higher scenario, which is where we are now, until accumulating and worsening climate disasters eventually lead to a collective “oh shit!” moment, when people finally realise climate impacts do pose a far greater threat than the solutions. At that point, I would hope the world would suddenly ramp up its carbon reduction to the scale of a Manhattan Project or a moon race and we would finally be able to make serious progress. The multitrillion-dollar question is simply when that tipping point in opinion will come, and whether it will be too late for civilisation as we know it. I hope with all my heart that we stay under 1.5C, but my cynical brain says 3C. Perhaps the reality will be somewhere between my head and my heart at 2C. What is the best way out of the climate crisis? What policies would make a difference? The most important thing is to accelerate the realisation that we have to act. This means connecting the dots to show that the impacts are not distant any more: they are here and they affect our lives. It also means talking about solutions. The technology and knowledge are there. The economics already make sense. In Texas, where I live, the biggest military base, Fort Hood, switched last year to renewables because they were cheaper than natural gas. And finally, it means weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, which is challenged by the fact that the majority of the world’s richest companies have made their money from the fossil fuel economy – so the majority of the wealth and power remains in their hands. Are there any climate engineering schemes or trials that have potential? One solution being discussed is the idea of deliberately geoengineering the planet to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and/or cool the planet. I believe it is important to discuss and study these technologies very thoroughly, because implementing some of them, like solar radiation management [spraying particles into the air to simulate a volcanic eruption and block some of the sunlight reaching Earth], is extremely risky. It would be like giving an experimental drug to every human on the planet before it had been tested. I’m more hopeful about smaller scale, less risky geoengineering projects that suck carbon dioxide out of the air, such as those being trialled by Climeworks to turn carbon into stone or fuel: or even massive tree-planting efforts, as in Bhutan. What’s the role of global finance? Can money managers, shareholders and multinationals exert pressure and take positive action in ways that short-termist, vote-hungry politicians seem unable to do? Yes! In the world we live in, money speaks loudly. Thanks to the growing divestment movement, we have seen cities, universities and entire countries, in the case of Ireland, withdrawing investments from fossil fuel assets. This isn’t only happening for ethical reasons but for practical ones as well. As clean energy continues to expand, those assets could become stranded. When money talks the world listens. What are the most positive developments you have seen in the past year in the climate field? I’m asked what gives me hope on a daily basis, and my answer is, I don’t find hope in my science, I find it in people. Over the last few years, the number of people who want to talk about and do something about climate has increased exponentially. Then, there is the unexpected leadership of organisations such as Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, RepublicEN, the Iron and Earth group – young professionals in the oil and construction industries who want to be part of the move from fossil fuels; and the take-up of renewables even in conservative states like Texas, which now gets 20% of its energy from wind and solar power. Finally, there’s the encouraging news such as solar being the fastest-growing power source around the world, clean energy jobs growing from India to the US, and new technology being developed every year that drops the price and increases the accessibility of fossil fuel alternatives. This year has also seen the rise of disruptive campaigning, for example Extinction Rebellion in the UK; the student strikes led by Greta Thunberg; and direct action in the US and Canada against oil pipelines. Is there a point when scientists also have to speak out more forcefully? We are moving in that direction. Scientists are not just disembodied brains floating in a glass jar, we are humans who want the same thing every other human wants, a safe place to live on this planet we call home. So while our work must continue to be unbiased and objective, increasingly we are raising our voices, adding to the clear message that climate change is real and humans are responsible, the impacts are serious and we must act now, if we want to avoid the worst of them.  What are the key political moments in 2019 for climate policy in the US and the world? International talks are important but we should be looking at subnational actors because there is a lot going on at the city and corporate level. Across the US a hundred cities have committed to going 100% clean energy. Companies like Apple have already achieved that goal. In the US there’s a new climate bill with bipartisan sponsors, which is essential for legislation to succeed long-term. Are we likely to get any respite from climate change? (Sighs.) Climate change is a long-term trend superimposed over natural variability. There’ll be good and bad years, just like there are for a patient with a long-term illness, but it isn’t going away. To stabilise climate change, we have to eliminate our carbon emissions. And we’re still a long way away from that.As if it’s not enough for famous people to have better skin, better bodies and better houses than the rest of us, it seems these days they are also liable to demonstrate how much better they are at getting in and out of relationships. “Conscious uncoupling” is a celebrity-endorsed attitude towards separation, made famous by Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. The aim is to be as generous and reasonable as possible about the end of the affair, in both public and private. The current queen of gracious divorcees is Anna Faris, who poured out her happiness about ex-husband Chris Pratt’s engagement to Katherine Schwarzenegger on Instagram this week, saying, “I’m so happy for you both!!” before offering to perform the wedding ceremony herself (ostensibly a genuine proposition, given that she is an ordained minister). My sweet love. Wouldn’t want to live this life with anyone but you ♥️💍 A post shared by  Katherine Schwarzenegger (@katherineschwarzenegger) on Jan 14, 2019 at 9:23am PST This perhaps takes things one step beyond even the hypercivilised efforts of Paltrow and Martin, who recently revealed that things had gone so well post-breakup that he had accompanied Paltrow on her honeymoon with new love, Brad Falchuck. Are there no heights of internal and external perfection that people in the public eye won’t aim to scale? “Conscious uncoupling”, and its counterpart “conscious coupling”, are phrases that suggest the possibility of a certain level of control over the emotionally volatile matters of love, sex and attachment. At its worst, the implication is that, if you are a clever, decent person, you should be able to manage your relationships in such a way as neither to cause, nor suffer, extremes of pain, and to preserve the dignity of both parties at every point in the romantic or sexual encounter. A brief flick through literary history might suggest that this is a tall order, but Shakespeare, Stendhal and the Brontës didn’t know what it was like to contend with the constant, baleful gaze of social media. In the old days people could have tantrums, wreak revenge and die of heartbreak when their love stories didn’t go according to plan. Now it is de rigueur to retain a consistent appearance of sentimental hygiene given that everything you do or say needs to be fed into the like-machine. It’s become a competitive sport. What would people think of you if they knew you felt hurt, rejected, brimming with envy or rage? Perhaps it would seem at odds with your job as guarantor of the possibility of the charmed life. Still, is conscious uncoupling simply another unrealistic, persecutory ideal? (If Paltrow can do it, why can’t I?) Or might there be things you can do on the journey in and out of love that can truly make life easier for everyone? The term itself was coined by the American writer and psychotherapist Katherine Woodward Thomas, and the process she describes is one of radical generosity coupled with fearless introspection. In practice, this means refraining from doing most of the things people are liable to do in the aftermath of a serious emotional letdown. For instance, don’t blame the other person and badmouth them around town. Even if they really did do something terrible to you, don’t be deflected from thinking about your own role in the situation. The point isn’t to “win”, but to learn. Allow yourself truly to mourn and recover. Don’t pay heed to that hideous old adage, “happiness is the best revenge”; if you want to feel better in real life, the best way is to be honest with yourself about what you’ve lost, and to be frank about any hopes you have for the future. In short, Woodward Thomas is describing an authentic grieving process, some of which is liable to be very painful, and might not look nice from the outside. The problem, it would seem, isn’t in the phrase itself, but in the cheesy public enactment of “good” behaviour. Of course it may be the case that Anna Faris is truly and unreservedly delighted at her ex-husband’s good fortune – although, to a cynic, the offer to get among the actual moment of knot-tying smacks a little of hyperbole – but one can’t help wondering about the unspoken sadomasochistic pacts between celebrities and audiences. We hold them to impossible standards, which they then attempt to demonstrate for us at goodness knows what cost to themselves, and we punish them when they let us down. We, in turn, risk finding ourselves feeling terrible when we are unable to adhere to the ideals of perfect social grace we see constantly enacted in front of us. In this alienating hall of mirrors, one must attempt to look good at all times. Losing love, and being replaced, can be terrible narcissistic blows. What better way to cover your tracks than to make it look like you’re delighted? • Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and the author of No More Silly Love Songs, a realist’s guide to romanceRussian private security contractors have travelled to Venezuela to provide security to the embattled president Nicolás Maduro, the Reuters news agency has reported. Citing three sources, the news agency said that the mercenaries are linked to the Wagner group, which has carried out missions in Ukraine and Syria and is now reportedly active in countries in Africa, too. If it is confirmed that contractors from the group traveled to Venezuela, this would be their first known deployment in the western hemisphere. “The order came down on Monday to form a group to go to Venezuela. They are there to protect those at the highest levels of the government,” Yevgeny Shabaev, a Cossack leader with ties to military contractors, told the Guardian by telephone. Shabaev, one of the sources cited by Reuters, is a campaigner for the rights of veterans, a group that overlaps heavily with those who join mercenary groups in Russia. He said he had been told about the trip by the relatives of the military contractors. A government spokesman did not immediately respond for comment about the report, although he had earlier told Reuters that the Kremlin had “no such information”. The report comes after the US threw its support behind opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who declared himself president on Wednesday. Russia and China, both of which have invested heavily in the country, have attacked the US for encroaching on Venezuela’s sovereignty. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Thursday accused the US of “destructive interference from abroad.” The Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, called it a “quasi-coup”. The crisis has produced a familiar standoff, with a US-led coalition on one side and Russia and China on the other. But the distances involved have made the conventional wisdom here that Russia is unlikely to provide direct military support to Maduro’s government to avert a US military intervention. Russia is an important source of financial support to the Venezuelan government, providing billions of dollars in loans, some as pre-payment for future deliveries of oil. Last month Russia dispatched two nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers to the country in a further show of support. While Shabaev said that the deployment of military contractors could be as large as 400 people, other sources cited by Reuters suggested the groups were smaller. There were conflicting reports about when the mercenaries may have arrived as well. One of Reuters’ two anonymous Russian sources, who the news agency said is close to the Wagner group, said the contractors first arrived in advance of the May 2018 presidential election, but another group arrived “recently”.We are a charity based in Cambridge offering free flights to children who are ill and need treatment. In addition to our local work, we currently financially support 60 children with cancer in Myanmar, and later this month we start operations in Ghana. Our international work is done in partnership with another UK charity. It took us over a year to source an aeroplane we could afford for our work in the UK. Our specially prepared aircraft has a Czech Republic registration and is flown by our volunteer pilots in the UK. In the case of a no-deal Brexit, according to the Civil Aviation Authority, from 29 March our pilots won’t be able to legally fly the plane. This means our charity will stop operations and the provision of services to our beneficiaries. Fernando Pinho, CEO of Please Take Me There, founded in 2016 Wentworth Jones is a UK company that provides tourism and hospitality consultancy services internationally. AktivExperience was a French registered branch of Wentworth Jones which we have decided to close after trading successfully for 10 years. We were a small ski operating company offering fully catered accommodation in five chalets in Meribel. We sought government advice on the legal status of our business model and of our temporarily posted English staff in France post-Brexit. We were unable to get any assurances that our model, the legal status of our company operating in France or the status of our staff would be protected post-Brexit. The only assurance from the Department for Exiting the EU was that we can legally operate up to the 29 March, just over halfway through the ski season! As we were about to take up new five-year leases on our chalets we decided that the potential liability and risk was too high and therefore reluctantly closed that operation. Peter Jones, director of Wentworth Jones We are still cautious but from what we can see a no-deal Brexit will be good for our business. Most of our sales are to overseas advertisers, and most of those to EU-based companies. Firstly, a no-deal Brexit will probably mean the pound falls lower than it is now, which will be a huge benefit. Secondly, we will not have to charge our EU customers VAT any more. While almost all of them can claim this back, it still means a cashflow saving for them, and a reduction in admin for them. This helps us to be marginally more competitive. We will also benefit from not having to file an ESL return to the EU every month. This is an onerous administrative task, akin to doing a VAT return. Anonymous, founder of a publishing company dealing with information and communication We design bike frames in the UK and work with factories outside the EU to have them produced. Around 25% of our orders are exported within the EU. The uncertainty we have had to endure since the referendum has been severely disruptive already. The volatility in foreign currency exchange rates has hurt us significantly. We launched just prior to the referendum and our first batch of frames were bought at 1.46 USD. The rate today? 1.23 USD.We can’t talk about Brexit publicly as a business. We can’t have an open conversation about it with our customers and we can’t be clear with them about what the implications actually are. Firstly because we don’t know for sure – just that it will be bad. And secondly because any mention of Brexit is met with vitriol and ridicule. We’re “complaining” or “making excuses”. Building a new business from scratch is difficult at the best of times but in this environment, it has been extremely challenging. Ed Brazier, founder of Airdrop Bikes, founded in 2016 As an engineer I have not worked in the UK since graduating in 1982. Nimbyism (referring to residents who oppose proposed developments near where they live) on local, regional, and national scales means that greenfield plant investments in the US and Europe are virtually non-existent. All my revenue comes from French-speaking countries, the Middle East and North Africa, China, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Brazil etc. Therefore a no-deal Brexit would increase my GBP income since I invoice in US dollars. There might be a temporary glitch if the KLM shuttle flights from Manchester to Schiphol airport in the Netherlands are grounded for a week or three, otherwise, no-deal = no problem. Anonymous, consultant in heavy mineral processing and cement for a private contractor I own a cleaning company in London and the main issue for me is the supply of new, good-quality, low-cost labour. For EU migrants cleaning is often a stepping stone to a better job and a better life compared to where they have come from. Several good workers have left to go back to their countries but there are none to take their place because far fewer people are coming to the UK to work. Because of the low value society as a whole puts on cleaning, it is low-paid, physically demanding, unglamorous work. Brits and younger generations simply don’t want to do it. After Brexit the reality will hit. Many small businesses will suffer because they simply can’t supply good people to do the dirty jobs no one wants to do, and don’t want to pay a lot for. With Brexit we’re really shooting ourselves in the foot. Anonymous, owner of a cleaning company founded in 2008 The lack of a “deal” could theoretically reduce the ease of invoicing EU-based companies so we do not look forward to that, although we manage to deal with customers in other regions, including some particularly complex regions like South America. Otherwise we expect no real impact; exchange rate fluctuations (with the pound going down against the dollar) have so far been profitable for us but in the long-term I expect this to be neutral. I find the intense pessimism of many in my industry (the IT channel) to be quite ludicrous at times; all the more so as the more vocal execs seem to have very little understanding of the EU in any meaningful sense. Paul Mason, CTO of an information and communication company We design and sell software products worldwide, and EU nations represent about a third of our market. We’ve been trading since 2004, and are well-known in our field. Trading in software products is classified as trading in services, and, as such, tariffs don’t affect us, but non-tariff barriers (eg VAT regulations) very much do.Any changes to the relationship between the UK and EU internal market (or single market) could affect us greatly – especially any changes to VAT or regulations relating to selling technical services into the EU internal market (eg VAT MOSS). This effect is magnified by the fact that our online store merchant is based in Germany (there are no UK-based online store merchants in our sector), so virtually everything we sell – even to the USA and India – happens via an EU27-based reseller.Unfortunately the UK government no longer seems to be interested in companies trading in services, and we can’t make any real contingency plans until we know what is going to happen. The worst case is that we close our doors. All in all, we feel we’re about to be thrown under a (big, red and lying) Boris bus. Anonymous, founder of a company dealing in scientific and technical activitiesGood morning – Warren Murray with the news summary that you can slip into like a comfortable pair of shoes. Donald Trump was immediately rebuked by Democrats overnight after he went on national television appealing to Congress to fund his Mexico wall in return for ending the government shutdown. The president did not offer fresh ideas to break the current political impasse and did not declare a national emergency so that he could bypass Congress, as had been speculated. In a string of dubious claims, Trump blamed criminal gangs and “vast quantities of illegal drugs” for “thousands of deaths” and faulted Democrats for failing to end the shutdown, now in its 18th day. He told primetime viewers: “This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It’s also what our professionals at the border want and need … The wall will also be paid for indirectly by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico.” (Fact-checkers have scorned Trump’s assertion that the post-Nafta deal means Mexico would somehow bear the cost.) “This situation could be solved in a 45-minute meeting,” the president said. “I have invited congressional leadership to the White House tomorrow to get this done.” The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, delivered a live rebuttal. “Sadly, much of what we have heard from President Trump throughout this senseless shutdown has been full of misinformation and even malice,” Pelosi said. Delivering the soundbite of the day, Schumer added: “We don’t govern by temper tantrum. No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down, hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage.” Guardian US columnist Richard Wolffe characterises it as Trump staring himself down in the mirror and losing – “This is a very real crisis inside one man’s cranium and it’s playing out in the living rooms of a weary nation.” MPs deal blow to May – In the House of Commons a cross-party alliance has set up a shutdown of sorts, by curbing the government’s powers to spend money on a no-deal Brexit. Their amendment means new tax administration measures will only be allowed to come into force if there is a deal, a decision to extend article 50, or a vote in the Commons specifically approving a no-deal Brexit. The successful passage of the amendment with Labour’s backing has galvanised opponents of a hard Brexit: “We will not allow a no-deal exit to occur at the end of March,” said Conservative former staunch loyalist Sir Oliver Letwin. May has conceded to senior ministers that she is on course to lose next week’s historic Brexit vote. At a cabinet meeting, Michael Gove was said to have likened MPs holding out for a better deal to “mid-50s swingers” wishing Scarlett Johansson would turn up to one of their parties (felt a bit nauseated typing that). This morning, political correspondent Jess Elgot answers key questions on how things play out from here; while our editorial says it is clear the government has failed on Brexit and advocates taking it back to the people. Midweek catch-up – The first one of 2019, not counting that new year catch-up last Thursday … > Flights at Heathrow were halted between 5-6pm yesterday when a drone was sighted over the airfield. The military was called in to provide protection and police have opened a criminal investigation. > Protesters who have been harassing and abusing MPs outside parliament have put away their yellow vests because “the police are after all of us”. Facebook has deleted the page of James Goddard, the group’s most prominent member, for spreading hate speech. > The largest opposition party in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has claimed its leader is the “presumed” winner of the 30 December presidential election. Electoral authorities missed a deadline of last Sunday to release the result. > Kate Bush has announced that despite praising Theresa May in an interview, she is not a Conservative supporter. The musician said she liked having a woman in power and had disliked David Cameron. Hand of Moscow – In the Trump-Russia investigation, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort allegedly shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian contact of Moscow’s intelligence agencies. And a mystery foreign government-owned company is paying a daily US$50,000 fine for refusing to comply with a subpoena that may be linked to Russia’s interference in the election. Court proceedings surrounding the matter are being kept under wraps. Paradise Papers journalist jailed – Pelin Ünker, a journalist in Turkey, has been given more than a year’s jail for “defamation and insult” over her Paradise Papers reporting, which detailed the Maltese business activities of the country’s now-former prime minister Binali Yıldırım and his sons. Ünker has told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) she intends to appeal, pointing out that the Yıldırım family admitted articles about their Maltese businesses were accurate. Turkey has the world’s worst record for jailing journalists, with 68 in prison at the end of 2018. The ICIJ’s director, Gerard Ryle, condemned Ünker’s jailing as “the latest assault on journalistic freedom under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic rule”. Vote leaf, vote romaine – Here’s a lovely “and finally” piece … how to grow your own veg even if you don’t have the space. “Microgreens are ideal,” writes Alys Fowler. “These are the first flush of a seedling’s leaves and are harvested at about 5-10cm tall.” Raid the bin for takeaway containers that will fit on the windowsill; poke holes in the bottom for drainage and use the lid to catch it. Nearly fill the tray with peat-free compost, sow your seeds 1cm apart, water them in, and you can usually start harvesting a week or two later, Fowler writes. “Lettuce, herbs such as basil, mint, coriander and parsley, peas, celery, chard, any cabbage, watercress, mustards, rocket, chives, radishes and spinach are all ideal.” As Theresa May prepares for the showdown Brexit vote on Tuesday, the government is stepping up its contingency planning for crashing out of the EU without a deal. The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour sets out the routes available to the government as the exit date fast approaches. Plus in opinion: Owen Jones on responding to increasing abuse on the streets and online. Addiction was once viewed as tethered to substances like alcohol and opium. But now it seems to have snowballed, from sugar to sex to shopping to social media. The NHS opens its first internet addiction clinic this year and the World Health Organization (WHO) now lists gaming disorder as an official addiction. Experts say compulsions can flit between different vices – a young man seeking refuge from family problems might toggle between gaming and porn. “I saw [a gaming disorder patient] yesterday who then went on to spending money on objects and clothes,” says Henrietta Bowden-Jones, psychiatrist behind that forthcoming NHS clinic. “You can somehow shift the behaviour but it’s an illness we don’t yet know enough about.” Amy Fleming delves into the many forms of addiction. Maurizio Sarri complained bitterly about the Harry Kane goal that decided the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final at Wembley last night in Tottenham’s favour, suggesting that English referees are unable to use the VAR system. London’s 2012 clean Games boast is in ruins as the IOC’s decision to keep samples for 10 years has led to a steady drip of retrospective failed doping tests. Padraig Harrington admitted upon his unveiling as Europe’s Ryder Cup leader for 2020 that the thought of failure left him with a sense of trepidation to the point where accepting the European Tour’s overtures was far from the formality the rest of us assumed. Pep Guardiola is hopeful Vincent Kompany, who is in discussions with the club, will sign a contract extension. And Leigh Halfpenny is expected to miss at least the first two Six Nations matches after being told by a specialist he is at least three weeks away from a return from concussion. US and Chinese envoys have extended trade talks into a third day, with Asian stock markets rising to their highest in nearly four weeks on the news. The FTSE is headed for a higher open. Sterling has been trading at $1.273 and €1.111 overnight. A number of front pages have pictures of Anna Soubry. The i’s lead story is: “MPs reveal death threats and vile abuse” and the Mail focuses on the man accused of threatening Anna Soubry: “Ukip and the hatemonger”. The Telegraph plays it down, captioning a picture of a face-off between pro and anti-Brexit protesters “Friendly rivals”. But their main story is: “Rebels draw first blood in battle to stop no deal”. The same topic also leads the Times: “Rebel Tory MPs inflict historic defeat on May”, the Guardian: “We will end threat of no-deal Brexit, cross-party alliance of MPs tells May” and the unhappy Express: “They really do want to steal your Brexit”. The Sun has an interview with a people-smuggler: “I’ve smuggled 300 migrants into UK”. The FT has “IAG faces loss of flying rights as Brussels balks at Brexit plan” and the Mirror reports on how a TV drama led to women coming forward with accusations against a serial killer: “Bellfield attacked us too”. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comThe EU has confirmed it will enforce a hard border on the island of Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit, despite the risk it would pose to peace. In comments that will be highly uncomfortable for Dublin, Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief spokesman told reporters it was “pretty obvious” that border infrastructure would be necessary if the UK were to leave without deal. Both the Irish and British governments have been wary about speculating on the repercussions of the UK leaving the EU without a deal. Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, was caught on tape last week indicating that his fellow ministers should not talk about the resumption of checks publicly for fear of a backlash. In a private conversation, he had told the Irish transport minister, Shane Ross, that “once you start talking about checks anywhere near the border, people will start delving into that and all of a sudden we’ll be the government that reintroduced a physical border on the island of Ireland”. But the EU’s chief spokesman said on Tuesday that the likely enforcement of border checks could not be avoided. The spokesman said: “If you were to push me to speculate on what might happen in a no-deal scenario in Ireland, I think it is pretty obvious you will have a hard border, and our commitments to the Good Friday agreement and everything we have been doing for years with our tools, instruments and programmes will have to take inevitably into account this fact. So of course we are for peace. Of course we stand behind the Good Friday agreement but that is what a no-deal scenario would entail.” The European commission spokesman also echoed the complaints of many in the House of Commons about Theresa May’s statement on Monday by claiming that “at this stage we have nothing new to say from Brussels because there is nothing new from London”. “We continue to follow very closely the ongoing parliamentary debate in the UK. We urge the UK to clarify its intentions as soon as possible,” the spokesman said. During her appearance in the Commons, May insisted that she had listened to the MPs who had voted down her deal but was subsequently accused of failing to offer any new ideas to win round parliament. May’s deal was rejected last week by 230 votes, the heaviest defeat ever for a sitting government. Juncker’s spokesman said Brussels welcomed May’s announcement, in her statement, that the UK would waive the £65 fee for those seeking settled status in the country as the “only new element” in her update to parliament. However, he added: “This … doesn’t provide the sort of clarity of intentions that we are expecting as soon as possible on the broader picture of the orderly withdrawal of the UK from the European Union.” Of May’s plans to return to seek further concessions on the Irish backstop, which would keep the UK in a customs union to avoid a hard border, the spokesman said the deal agreed was “not open to negotiation”.Will Poulter, the Bafta-winning actor and star of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, has decided to “step back” from Twitter for the sake of his mental health, in the light of “recent experiences”. Poulter, who plays hotshot video game designer Colin Ritman in Charlie Brooker’s interactive episode that launched on Netflix on 28 December 2018, released a statement on Twitter, saying “I accept all criticisms” but that he felt it best for him to avoid the “inevitable negatives” that come from social media engagements. The actor was subjected to offensive comments about his appearance on social media in the week since the episode appeared. Poulter said: “I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to everybody who has watched Bandersnatch and for their responses (whatever they may be) to the material we created. I accept all criticisms and it’s been a delight to learn that so many of you enjoyed what many people worked very hard to produce! He continued: “As we all know, there is a balance to be struck in our engagements with social media. There are positives to enjoy and inevitable negatives that are best avoided. It’s a balance that I have struggled with for a while now and in the interest of my mental health I feel the time has come to change my relationship with social media.” With love... pic.twitter.com/JSm7oNLTsV Poulter confirmed that he would continue to be an advocate for organisations such as the Anti Bullying Programme. Bandersnatch has been met with mixed responses from TV, film and gaming fans and critics. The Guardian’s TV critic, Lucy Mangan, hailed it the birth of a new genre, though one which “rarely deviated from the expected deviance, rarely landed in an unexpected place or – and this was where it most resembled its videogaming ancestry – had energy to spare to make the characters much more than ciphers.”Poulter chose to close his Twitter statement by riffing on the show’s new style of storytelling: “This is not the end. Consider it an alternative path.”Hakeem al-Araibi’s life is not under threat and he could appeal his conviction if he returned to Bahrain, the Bahraini government has said in its first significant response to the international outrage at its efforts to reclaim the dissident refugee. Al-Araibi, who is a permanent resident of Australia, has been detained in Bangkok for almost two months while Thai authorities process an extradition request from Bahrain. The 25-year-old has said he fears Bahrain authorities will imprison and torture or possibly kill him if he is returned. • Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning In response to an opinion piece published on Thursday, the Bahrain government told the Guardian there was “no threat to his life”. “Activists claiming to speak on his behalf suggest his life is in danger if he returns to Bahrain, but he has only been sentenced to imprisonment,” a spokesman said. “Had Al-Araibi remained in Bahrain, he would also have had the chance to appeal alongside his co-accused. Instead he fled Bahrain after being released on bail to play professional football.” Al-Araibi has been granted refugee status by Australia, which determined he had a well-founded fear of persecution in his country of origin, and travelled to Thailand with his wife intending to honeymoon. He claims he received Australian government advice that he was safe to travel. He was arrested in Bangkok after Interpol erroneously approved Bahrain’s request for a red notice warrant, against its own protocols to protect refugees from the countries they fled. The 2014 conviction, delivered in absentia and with a 10-year jail sentence, was based on the alleged coerced confession of his co-defendant and brother, that they committed an act of vandalism against a police station. The act occurred at the same time, or very soon after, Al-Araibi was playing in a televised football match, and the trial judge – a member of the royal family – has been accused of ignoring key evidence. Human Rights Watch’s deputy south-east Asia director, Phil Robertson, described the conviction as “bogus”. The government spokesman, who described the vandalism as “terrorism-related”, said all Bahraini individuals were entitled to legitimate legal representation and appeals, and convictions in Bahrain’s criminal court related to the penal code and “do not in any way relate to political views or the right to expression”. “In all cases brought by the public prosecutor, litigants are accorded their full legal rights and guaranteed an independent and transparent trial in line with international standards that insure fair and equal treatment for all,” he said. Amnesty International Australia said it had repeatedly recorded and exposed repressive tactics by the Bahraini government against civil society including travel bans, dissolution of opposition groups and media, and arbitrary detention of human rights defenders. “As recently as December, the conviction and sentencing of prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab has demonstrated Bahrain’s farcical justice system,” Amnesty’s national director, Claire Mallinson, told the Guardian. “To assert that he ‘has only been sentenced to imprisonment’ does not reflect the real danger of torture that Hakeem will face if returned, and that he himself has previously attested to.” In 2016 Al-Araibi detailed his previous imprisonment and torture in a Bahrain prison. Bahrain’s spokesman said the kingdom took allegations of mistreatment “very seriously” and had established a special investigations unit and ombudsman which he claimed had received “international recognition”. “Bahrain remains committed to upholding the rule of law and safeguarding individual rights protected by the kingdom’s constitution.” However according to the Gulf Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, Al-Araibi’s claims of abuse and torture were never investigated and no security personnel were held accountable. “The Bahraini government are trading on the legal procedures to distract the international public opinion,” Yahya Alhadid, president of the GIDHR, told the Guardian. “If Hakeem is extradited back to Bahrain, he will face continuous electric shocks, because he dared to criticise a member of the royal family. “We had previous experience with the political detainee the athlete Hamad Al-Fahed, whose sentence was [increased] from 15 years in prison to a life sentence after speaking out about the torture he was subjected to: electric shocks, and stripping him naked.” GIDHR’s Fatima Yazbek said security forces were considered infallible in Bahrain, the UN special rapporteur was still banned from entering the country, and the ombudsman was essentially a public relations exercise. The Australian government, international NGOs, and football player associations are among countless groups lobbying for the release of Al-Araibi back to Australia, particularly in light of Thailand’s decision not to return 18-year-old Rahaf Al-Qunun back to Saudi Arabia last week. Key questions about the complicated case remain unanswered, including the actions of the Australian federal police and its officers seconded to the country’s Interpol bureau, which alerted Thailand to Al-Araibi’s travel plans because of the red notice against him.I flew back to the US from London last week, and after waiting for two hours at immigration I stood by as the officer frowned at my documents. My children’s US passports had been scanned without a problem. But looking at my green card, the officer asked: “Was this lost or stolen in the last year?” As it happens, it was. “Then I’m sorry,” he said, glancing down at my three-year-olds. After a seven-hour flight and all that waiting in line, they were doing breaststroke across the JFK floor. “You’ll have to step this way.” I have heard about the Congratulations, You Have Problems With Your Paperwork room at JFK, but until that moment had never actually seen it. It is a small, windowless room dominated by a raised bank of desks, behind which six or so officers sit, with several more patrolling the room. “No cellphones,” snapped a woman as I knelt on the floor, restraining a child with one hand while trying to text the cab driver waiting for us outside with the other. “OK, I’m just – .” It took her two seconds to cross the floor and rip the mobile phone from my hand, an act so surprising I laughed. “Wow,” I said. “As if I couldn’t hate this frigging country any more.” This was a childish thing to say. Most of the time I quite like the US. But more obviously, it was the purest expression I will probably ever make of the confidence that comes from being a white woman in possession of a British passport. “Now sit down,” yelled the woman. I stood up and looked around the room. The only empty seats were two rows at the back that had been pushed too close together to use. Alongside, a group of Hispanic men hovered uncertainly. Now we joined them. “Sit down!” yelled another officer. When nothing happened, he jutted his chin at the men, directing them to push apart the seats. “See what can be done when you work together?” he said sarcastically. This facetiousness seemed to me the most shocking aspect of the situation: engineering people into a position of powerlessness, then mocking them for failing to show enterprise. There was no time to dwell on it, however, because just then my phone went off. “Whoever’s phone this is, come turn it off!” bellowed the woman. As I approached her desk, she was momentarily distracted, and once again I started texting the driver. Her scream was so loud – “Are you TEXTING? And are you on MY SIDE OF THE DESK?” (I had inadvertently drifted) – I thought for a moment she would actually restrain me. “Did you go the full Poppins?” a British friend asked me afterwards. But the fact is, I didn’t. I was suddenly frightened. There was no bathroom access in this room, and both my children were wailing they needed a wee. The officers were completely implacable. A Middle Eastern woman holding a tiny baby sent me sympathetic glances, and after an hour my paperwork was returned – no explanation, no apology – and we left. I am still furious and indignant about the authoritarianism of that room, but more than that, of course, at the awareness that we got off very lightly. • Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnistA Saudi prosecutor has asked for the death penalty for five of 11 suspects held over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the country’s consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, the state news agency SPA reported on Thursday. The call came during the first court hearing in the Khashoggi case, which has shredded the kingdom’s international reputation and strained its relations with Turkey, the US and many other western governments. In a trial that is likely to have major international diplomatic consequences, the 11 defendants appeared in court on Thursday in a session closed to the public. In late October the Saudis said they had detained 18 suspects in relation to the murder, but the names have not been shared with Turkish authorities. The Saudi general prosecution said the interrogation of a number of the accused would continue, adding that two requests asking for further evidence had been sent to Turkey but had not received any response. The Saudi prosecution said that following the hearing in the case the defendants asked for a copy from the prosecutors and sought time to make their defence. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has asked for the accused to be extradited to Turkey to stand trial, a request that has been rejected. Erdoğan has effectively accused the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, of ordering the killing of Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, and has run a persistent campaign revealing details of the Turkish police investigation into the murder that has kept Saudi Arabia on the diplomatic back foot. The CIA has also told US Congress that it believes the crown prince ordered the killing. The episode has already led to a Saudi cabinet reshuffle, involving the partial demotion of the foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, and a reordering of the Saudi intelligence service seen to be at the heart of Khashoggi murder. Jubeir was replaced by Ibrahim al-Assaf, an experienced figure who had previously served as finance minister. In response to Khashoggi’s murder, Britain has asked that the Saudis reassure the world that such an event cannot be repeated, seen as a code that the crown prince will not be able to use the intelligence service as a personal tool to suppress dissent abroad. The trial will be notable for the degree to which the defendants are able to set out in open court whether they were instructed by the state to carry out the murder, or instead had been instructed to repatriate Khashoggi, but on meeting resistance from the journalist chose to kill him. Trials in Saudi Arabia are normally held behind closed doors so it is likely no claim that the hit team were acting on orders of the royal court will ever be aired. The human rights group Reprieve estimates there have been nearly 700 executions in Saudi Arabia since 2014. Saudi Arabia has provided sharply contrasting accounts of how Khashoggi came to die. On New Year’s Eve, Turkish police released new footage purporting to show bags containing Khashoggi’s body parts being carried into the home of the Saudi consul general in Istanbul. Turkish authorities have carried out numerous body searches in Turkey since the murder, but without success. The Turkish network A Haber broadcast video showing the entrance to the gated residence of Saudi Arabia’s consul general in Istanbul, not far from the Saudi consulate. The footage shows men, their faces obscured by shadow, carrying several large suitcases or bags into the building. The Saudis have not allowed the garden’s well to be fully searched, or dried. The footage purportedly hows Maj Gen Mahir Abdul Aziz Muhammad Mutrib, an associate of the crown prince, helping with the movement of the bags. The consul, Mohammed al-Otaibi, has returned to Riyadh, and has not been seen. Turkey has also released a sound recording inside the consul general’s office in which Khashoggi resists suffocation. Subsequently a member of the Saudi team can be heard telling a superior over the phone to “tell your boss” that the mission had been achieved. That is believed to be a reference to the Saudi crown prince.A sweltering, windowless room in an old district of Dubai, no more than 5 metres by 3 metres in size, is home to nine people from the Philippines. Eight are adults, working long hours in low-paid jobs so they can send money home to their families. The ninth is a six-year-old boy. His name is Jerry and he shares a tiny bed with his mother, Neng. Jerry loves dancing, Peppa Pig and doughnuts. This small dark room is the only home he has known, as he’s spent his life in hiding as a stateless child. Growing up without a birth certificate or any other identification means he has no access to education and has never visited a doctor. Officially, this little boy does not exist. Of the UAE’s 9.4 million inhabitants, about 70% are low-paid migrant labourers. As a vital part of the economy, they normally work in construction or retail, or as maids and taxi drivers. Neng was one of them. A decade ago she came to the UAE from the Philippines to work as a domestic maid but ran away because her employers were abusive, she says. Having no job meant losing her visa and living in the country illegally. She got involved with a man who took her into his home but then he threw her out after she got pregnant. Now pregnant outside of marriage, Neng knew she had broken the law in the UAE for a second time. Having sex outside of marriage is a crime under the country’s Islamic laws, with convictions resulting in prison terms of up to one year. “The moment that you get pregnant, and you cannot tell anyone and you don’t know what to do, it’s a very big torture,” says Neng. The legislation prohibiting sex outside marriage in the UAE is known as the Zina law and is often rigorously enforced. In some cases, even reporting a rape has been regarded by the authorities as illicit sex, and has led to victims being jailed. Doctors in the country who diagnose an unmarried woman as pregnant are obliged to turn them over to the police. They can then face jail and deportation. Some women opt to leave the UAE before the pregnancy becomes visible and backstreet abortions are also common. Figures supplied by the Philippines Consulate in Dubai indicate several hundred migrant workers a year like Neng make the decision to go into hiding after they become pregnant outside of marriage. “They are afraid of losing their jobs because that’s the only means to support their family back home. To them, deportation is like the end of their life,” says Barney Almazar, a lawyer at Gulf Law, who provides legal aid to migrant workers in UAE. After carrying her baby to term having accessed no healthcare services, Neng gave birth to Jerry in a friend’s apartment with the help of an informal midwife and without any pain relief. Unable to find a job through official channels, Neng eventually managed to find work as a housekeeper and nanny for a fellow Filipino family, who live in a house 10 minutes’ walk from her home. Her employers know she’s illegal and can therefore get away with paying her just AED 1,000 per month (£216) for working 10 hours a day, five days a week. Often she is not paid on time. But she has no rights and cannot complain to the authorities. With rent for their bed costing AED 500, the mother and son struggle to make ends meet. When she can, Neng tries to send AED 190 home to her family, who live in Zamboanga Sibugay, one of the Philippines’ poorest provinces. This small amount of money is enough to compel her to stay in Dubai. Neng and Jerry’s bed is a lower bunk, just under a metre wide. Makeshift curtains made of bedsheets hang over the front of the bunks to provide a little privacy. Meals are eaten in the room, and cockroaches and other bugs scuttle across the floor. These living conditions have blighted Jerry’s childhood. He is often overwhelmed with worry, which makes him ill. “I don’t feel anything. I’m sick but I can’t get better,” he says. Neng is preparing to surrender to the authorities, which will allow her to leave after serving a jail sentence, and obtain exit visas for herself and Jerry. Despite her difficult life in Dubai, she is reluctant to return home. The future there seems even more bleak to her. Her extended family don’t have room to accommodate them and extreme poverty in her province will make life difficult. Fearful of being caught by the police and unable to look after their children while working, many of these unmarried new mothers resort to abandoning their babies, leaving others in the community to look after them. One such informal adoptive mother is Joanna*. She is a Filipina nurse and has been living in Dubai for 10 years. For the past 15 months she’s been bringing up a baby girl called Rosamie*. Joanna lives in a room with five other women in the Al-Karama area of Dubai. A year-and-a-half ago a newborn baby girl appeared in the room. The mother was a friend of her roommate and, after leaving the baby, she became uncontactable. “It was 1am and [the baby] was crying and had been left alone,” says Joanna. The baby was gone the next day, but she reappeared one month later and then again the next month, Joanna says. “During that time she had been passed around to other houses. The third time I saw her she was covered in a rash.” Joanna started to look after the child, expecting her mother to collect her soon. “It was difficult that the baby is with us without documents. After two weeks I asked the Philippines Consulate what to do. I was told, ‘Just wait, the mother will come,’” she says. “At this point, I decided that maybe this baby is for us.” Through Joanna’s work, Rosamie has access to medical care. She is also very well looked after. The talkative little girl can sing her ABCs and speak English in sentences. She loves wearing dresses and her favourite toy is a doll that she calls Baby Princess. Each night Rosamie and Joanna sing You Are My Sunshine to each other before going to sleep. “I’m proud of being her mother. I always tell her that I love her very much,” Joanna says. “She’s so very sweet, she’s lovely. I want her to have a normal future, not like this.” Joanna is very aware she could be jailed for keeping a baby that is not legally hers. She is desperate to find a way to legally adopt Rosamie but only Emirati nationals are permitted to adopt children in the UAE. Other women looking after abandoned children in Dubai have approached Joanna, looking for advice. “So many kids here don’t have documents,” she says. It is almost impossible to know how many parents and children are in the same position as Neng and Jerry across the country. Each month, about 40 mothers with children born out of wedlock seek advice and assistance from the Philippines Consulate in Dubai and the embassy in Abu Dhabi, according to a spokesperson for the consulate. This figure is likely to be a fraction of the number of mothers who are living in hiding in the country with their children, Almazar says. At present, child and baby facilities in Dubai’s jails are full, because of the high number of mothers who have come forward to surrender, so that they could leave the country after completing a custodial sentence. This has created a backlog of cases, the spokesperson says. Yet there are signs of hope for these families. The Dubai Foundation for Women and Children is a government-run charity and shelter, which, in addition to rehabilitating human trafficking victims and caring for abandoned or orphaned children, deals with “tens” of cases of mothers who have had babies out of wedlock a year, says Ghanima Hassan Al-Bahri, its care and social services director. In all of the cases the foundation has worked on, the courts have been flexible and the mother has not served a jail term. This approach could be rolled out for wider implementation, she adds. “I cannot speak about the police or the prosecution about whether they arrested women, I don’t know. But from our experience, at the foundation, whenever a woman has called us, it is not like that,” says Al-Bahri. “I do believe there is room for improvement … What’s the point of putting them in jail?” *Names changed to protect identitiesSir James Dyson, the British billionaire inventor and outspoken Brexiter who called on the government to walk away from the EU without a deal, is moving the headquarters of his vacuum cleaner and hair dryer technology company to Singapore. The Dyson chief executive, Jim Rowan, said the move from Wiltshire to Singapore had “nothing to do with Brexit” but was about “future-proofing” the business. The move of Dyson’s legal entity from the UK to Singapore “will happen over the coming months”, meaning it could take place before Brexit. Sir James, who owns 100% of the company and has built up a £9.5bn personal fortune, did not comment on the move. Rowan said the decision to leave the UK was made by Sir James together with “the executive team”. Dyson’s top executives – including Rowan and the finance director, Jørn Jensen – will be based in Singapore. A spokeswoman for the 71-year-old billionaire said Sir James would “continue to divide his time between Singapore and the UK as the business requires it”. Rowan said moving to Singapore was part of “the evolution” of the company. When asked whether Dyson could still be referred to as one of Britain’s best success stories, he said the firm should now be referred to as a “global technology company”. In 2014, when Dyson promised £1.5bn of invesment in the UK, the then prime minister, David Cameron, described the company as a “great British success story”. There was no comment from Number 10 on Tuesday. Rebecca Long Bailey, Labour shadow business secretary, said: “For too long this government has allowed a culture of short termism to work its way into some of our greatest British businesses, whilst those businesses doing the right thing and investing in their communities and workforce for the long term are left wanting, with little government support.” Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran said: ‘This is staggering hypocrisy for Brexit-backing businessman James Dyson. It is utterly unbelievable that the business face of Brexit is moving yet another part of his business out of the UK. “James Dyson can say whatever he wants but he is ditching Britain. This can only be seen as a vote of no confidence in the idea of Brexit Britain.” The company said the decision to move to Singapore was not made for tax reasons. The corporate tax rate in Singapore is 17%, compared with 19% in the UK. There is no capital gains or inheritance tax in Singapore. In the UK inheritance tax is charged at 40% on anything above £450,000. Rowan said Dyson would “continue to pay tax in the UK”. Weybourne Group, through which Sir James holds his business interests including Dyson plc, paid £185m of tax in 2017, according to accounts filed at Companies House. Dyson, which reported record annual profits of £1.1bn for 2018 on Tuesday, has already shifted the vast majority of its production to Singapore, and has announced plans to build a new electric vehicle plant in the city state. The factory is scheduled for completion in 2020 and is part of a £2.5bn investment in new technology. The company said some of the investment money would be spent in theUK, where it employs 4,500 people and has a research and developmentcampus. Dyson employs a total of 12,000 people worldwide. Relocatingthe HQ will not lead to job cuts in the UK, the firm insisted. Dyson’s announcement comes shortly after Singapore and the EU agreed a landmark free trade agreement. Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, said the deal, signed in October, was: “an ambitious trade deal, it is a high-quality arrangement, and it is one which will fly the flag and encourage others, I hope, to do the same.” Sir James has previously urged ministers to walk away from talks with the EU without a deal – he has said “they’ll come to us”, arguing that European firms would want to sell their goods in Britain rather than lose market access. He is not the first Brexit-backing billionaire to pull back from the UK since the Brexit vote. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s richest person with a £21bn fortune, was revealed last year to be planning to leave Britain for tax-free Monaco. The plans for Ratcliffe, the founder and chief executive of petrochemicals company Ineos, to leave the UK came just months after he was knighted by the Queen for services to business and investment.The answer to the question “Who’s afraid of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?” is establishment Democrats in Congress, apparently. A recent Politico report says that fellow House members are worried she will “unleash a tweet at them”, and are “afraid” of her stinging public criticisms of Democrats. Their fear is not irrational. Ocasio-Cortez has been using Twitter masterfully, as a way of directing the national political conversation. The Politico article compares her technique to that of Donald Trump, and this isn’t completely wrong: the president has long used his Twitter account to keep the media talking about whatever he wants them to be talking about. Democrats have long failed to keep pace – they end up reacting to whatever Trump says, rather than setting the agenda themselves. In Ocasio-Cortez we see (at last!) what it might look like for lefties to retake control – to begin talking about what we want to talk about rather than whatever nonsense Trump is spewing this week. To see what a “game-changer” Ocasio-Cortez is, you need only look at this front page: It's clear that newly sworn-in Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez intends to make good on her campaign promises https://t.co/ndsWH7aXO1Take an early look at Saturday's front cover... pic.twitter.com/5VKtT6r3dU It’s incredible: Ocasio-Cortez’s remark about 70% marginal tax rates on the rich was delivered offhand in an interview. It immediately sparked a national political debate about taxes. Paul Krugman weighed in to say that taxing extremely high incomes made sound economic sense. Jeff Stein of the Washington Post laid out some of the ways that this money could be used: It could come close to funding the entirety of Sanders’s free college tuition plan ($800bn), fund President Barack Obama’s plan to get close to universal prekindergarten ($75bn  over a decade), forgive more than half the student debt in America ($1.4tn), cover Democratic leaders’ plan for boosting teacher pay and school funding ($100bn), or come close to funding a $1tn  infrastructure plan. If Ocasio-Cortez hadn’t made the remark, there would be no discussion. But she did, and so now there’s a discussion! Now Nobel prize winners are publicly pointing out that high taxes are good, and moderate Democrats are being pressured to endorse “radical” ideas. As the New York Times reported, she is pushing the Democrats to the left whether they like it or not. She has realized what Republicans have known for a long time: if people are talking about your agenda, even if they’re talking about how bad and silly it is, you are making that agenda more plausible. (It’s often called “shifting the Overton window”.) Yes, the National Review will squeal that X tax hike won’t be enough to pay for Y program. But you have got them on the defensive. I’ll admit, when Ocasio-Cortez was elected, I was worried. In 2008, a lot of people my age fell in love with Barack Obama, and suffered bitter disappointment when he started listening to Larry Summers instead of Cornel West. Many of us became cynical: we learned not to put much faith in dynamic young leaders, because as soon as they get into power, they will inevitably become just like all the others: they will start issuing excuses for why political constraints make it simply impossible to change anything, and while you won’t be able to prove they’re wrong, you will come to suspect that they aren’t really trying very hard. But so far, thank God, Ocasio-Cortez has been an inspiring exception to this. She made it clear that her loyalties weren’t with the Democratic leadership but rather the protesters occupying the offices of the Democratic leadership. She told us what really goes on in Congress: when Harvard’s Institute of Politics held a seminar for incoming congresspeople, in which business leaders told them not to rock the boat, Ocasio-Cortez revealed all. You’re not supposed to do that – you’re supposed to handle your concerns quietly within the House, not open up to your constituents about them. They say that she “doesn’t understand how the place works”. But it seems more like they’re the ones who don’t understand how building power works. The Politico report offers a useful insight into how insider Democratic politics work – the article is full of long-serving Democrats grousing that the upstart Ocasio-Cortez has dared to suggest that some of them aren’t doing a very good job. Apparently they keep trying to take her aside and give her that age-old speech: It’s very well for you to be a radical on the campaign trail, but now that you’re in Congress you need to stop making waves and let us show you how things are done. As one said: “I think she needs to give herself an opportunity to know her colleagues and to give herself a sense of the chemistry of the body before passing judgment on anyone or anything.” You can see, then, why the Democratic party ends up being so disappointing. You shouldn’t pass judgment on anyone or anything when you get to Congress. Even though the congressional Democratic party has utterly failed to grapple with climate change, the great existential problem of our time! Politico reports that “when House majority leader Steny Hoyer told reporters that a new climate committee that Ocasio-Cortez championed would not have subpoena power, she retweeted the news and chastised Democratic leadership”. She said: “Our goal is to treat climate change like the serious, existential threat it is by drafting an ambitious solution on the scale necessary – AKA a “Green New Deal” – to get it done. A weak committee misses the point and endangers people.” This is absolutely true. She is right. Climate action has to be serious, and if Democrats in Congress won’t be serious, they need to be called on it! Arguments in defense of the status quo are usually presented pragmatically: don’t push too hard because it will hurt your goals. We’re on your side, we’re looking out for your interests, we just have a better way of getting things done. You can see exactly this in how House Democrats are trying to keep Ocasio-Cortez from endorsing their primary opponents: In private conversations with Ocasio-Cortez over the past few months, [Representative Nydia] Velázquez counseled Ocasio-Cortez against targeting her Democratic colleagues in future elections. The two had a ‘long, long conversation’ about the dynamics of Congress and Washington, and how there shouldn’t be a ‘litmus test’ for every district. Velázquez told Ocasio-Cortez she should think twice in the future before backing primaries against her colleagues. [Stephanie] Murphy, the first Vietnamese woman elected to Congress, represents a swing district and could lose her seat if she’s forced to move left in a primary, Velázquez said during the talk. This is concerning, of course. In order to get Democrats in Congress to move left, there have to be primary threats. This, historically, is one way socialists have won victories in the United States: they have forced the major political parties to move leftward in order to neutralize the socialist threat. It’s not surprising that Ocasio-Cortez is being asked not to “undermine” fellow Democrats, but it’s encouraging that so far she seems to be going her own way. Politico says that while she is cordial to her fellow party members, she does not give in: She’s very friendly in person, chatting up fellow lawmakers and security workers in the Capitol as she’s tailed by admirers and reporters. Then they see the Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter, where she frequently snaps at critics and occasionally at fellow Democrats. What the reporter calls “snapping”, I call “being frank and honest about what is actually going on in Washington”. And I dearly hope she keeps doing it, and isn’t intimidated by colleagues who think she needs to be more meek and deferential. There is a lot of dismissal of Ocasio-Cortez for her bluntness on Twitter, but I have to say, among the young lefties I know, many adore her for being witty, smart and combative on social media. She does not take crap, and we have spent so long waiting for someone who “gives as good as she gets”. The tweets may be snarky, but they get to the point, and they finally make us feel as if we’re on the side doing the “dunking” rather than the side being “dunked on”. When Chris Cillizza of CNN lied about manipulating a quote from her, she demanded accountability. When PolitiFact disproportionately focuses on her over the president’s propagandists, she calls them on it. Her remarks are keeping her in the news, but more importantly, they’re keeping her agenda in the news. Conservatives cannot stop talking about Ocasio-Cortez. Sean Hannity literally repeats her agenda on live television and then thinks he’s the one winning! She drives them up the wall, and it’s fantastic. But there’s one person who never mentions her: Donald Trump. Strange, isn’t it? Trump mocks everyone on Twitter. But he has never once sent a tweet about her, even though they both have major presences on the platform. I suspect I know exactly why: he realizes that she’s better at this than him. He may be able to make jokes at the expense of Elizabeth Warren, but Ocasio-Cortez is better at online repartee than almost anyone else. He is wise to keep away from tangling with her. Just recently, when Joe Lieberman made a patronizing comment about Ocasio-Cortez not representing the future of the party, she gave a brief but devastating retort that made him look like an out-of-touch fogey. (I doubt he even understood it.) There are other reasons people my age have truly been enjoying watching Ocasio-Cortez in action. For one thing, she’s capable of talking about immigration without making arguments about how Democrats are the real party of border security. She bluntly sticks up for progressive values, rather than timidly using conservative premises. She’s not always perfectly polished, but I feel as if she’s on my side and won’t back down, which is something millennial leftists really need right now. My desperate, pleading hope is that instead of succumbing to the inevitable pressure from congressional peers – moderate your rhetoric, “get serious”, don’t criticize the party – she doubles down and keeps kicking ass. She’s already showing how we can successfully change the conversation: the Green New Deal, like Medicare for All, has gone from marginal to mainstream within a matter of months. Politico makes it clear: fellow Democrats are scared, and that’s exactly how it should be. Now we need Ocasio-Cortezes everywhere, young Democratic Socialists of America lefties in office who will not be intimidated by the advice of the wise elders to slow down, calm down, shut up. We will remember what Martin Luther King said: when the pragmatic liberals say “wait”, they almost always mean “never”. This piece originally ran in Current Affairs, which is edited by Nathan RobinsonGlobal warming has heated the oceans by the equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years, according to analysis of new research. More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the seas, with just a few per cent heating the air, land and ice caps respectively. The vast amount of energy being added to the oceans drives sea-level rise and enables hurricanes and typhoons to become more intense. Much of the heat has been stored in the ocean depths but measurements here only began in recent decades and existing estimates of the total heat the oceans have absorbed stretch back only to about 1950. The new work extends that back to 1871. Scientists have said that understanding past changes in ocean heat was critical for predicting the future impact of climate change. A Guardian calculation found the average heating across that 150-year period was equivalent to about 1.5 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs per second. But the heating has accelerated over that time as carbon emissions have risen, and was now the equivalent of between three and six atomic bombs per second. “I try not to make this type of calculation, simply because I find it worrisome,” said Prof Laure Zanna, at the University of Oxford, who led the new research. “We usually try to compare the heating to [human] energy use, to make it less scary.” She added: “But obviously, we are putting a lot of excess energy into the climate system and a lot of that ends up in the ocean,. There is no doubt.” The total heat taken up by the oceans over the past 150 years was about 1,000 times the annual energy use of the entire global population. The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and combined measurements of the surface temperature of the ocean since 1871 with computer models of ocean circulation. Prof Samar Khatiwala, also at the University of Oxford and part of the team, said: “Our approach is akin to ‘painting’ different bits of the ocean surface with dyes of different colours and monitoring how they spread into the interior over time. If we know what the sea surface temperature anomaly was in 1871 in the North Atlantic Ocean we can figure out how much it contributes to the warming in, say, the deep Indian Ocean in 2018.” Rising sea level has been among the most dangerous long-term impacts of climate change, threatening billions of people living in coastal cities, and estimating future rises is vital in preparing defences. Some of the rise comes from the melting of land-bound ice in Greenland and elsewhere, but another major factor has been the physical expansion of water as it gets warmer. However, the seas do not warm uniformly as ocean currents transport heat around the world. Reconstructing the amount of heat absorbed by the oceans over the past 150 years is important as it provides a baseline. In the Atlantic, for example, the team found that half the rise seen since 1971 at low and middle latitudes resulted from heat transported into the region by currents. The new work would help researchers make better predictions of sea-level rise for different regions in the future. “Future changes in ocean transport could have severe consequences for regional sea-level rise and the risk of coastal flooding,” the researchers said. “Understanding ocean heat change and the role of circulation in shaping the patterns of warming remain key to predicting global and regional climate change and sea-level rise.” Dana Nuccitelli, an environmental scientist who was not involved in the new research, said: “The ocean heating rate has increased as global warming has accelerated, and the value is somewhere between roughly three to six Hiroshima bombs per second in recent decades, depending on which dataset and which timeframe is used. This new study estimates the ocean heating rate at about three Hiroshima bombs per second for the period of 1990 to 2015, which is on the low end of other estimates.”It’s impossible to overstate the sense of shock that swept across Scotland when it was revealed what charges Alex Salmond is facing after his appearance on petition at Edinburgh sheriff court last Thursday. Scotland’s former first minister has been charged with two counts of attempted rape and multiple counts of sexual assault. He immediately said that he was “innocent of any criminality whatsoever” and would defend himself in court “to the utmost”. In Holyrood a little while later, Nicola Sturgeon cut a weary figure as she talked about how shocked “many people” would be at this news. Scotland is weeks away from being dragged out of the European Union against its overwhelmingly settled will, while even the most fervently rightwing publications have stopped pretending that all will be well across the nation following a possible no-deal Brexit. And yet this most profoundly damaging event will be submerged in terms of importance by the long list of very serious charges that Salmond must face. It’s highly unlikely that this case will be heard in court before another 12 months have elapsed. Already, some predictable voices have begun to assess what “damage” the Salmond case will inflict on the SNP and the wider independence movement. Some of these will require to exercise a degree more caution in discussing this in public forums than has been apparent until now. To talk about “scandals” and “damage” in the case of an individual who remains innocent until proved guilty risks prejudicing the integrity of future proceedings. Drawing parallels with events in history that bear some of the imprints of this case is not a wise course to follow either. The time to assess how much this case has affected the movement that Salmond once led will come at the end of the case. Very little of the way that this case has been reported so far has spared the feelings of the women who have made these allegations. Much has been said about creating a safe space for people in all walks of life to come forward and seek to have their concerns about possible misconduct heard. The way this case unfolds and how it is reported will have a profound bearing on the willingness of many women to place their trust in the process. Thus far, the mental welfare of those at the centre of the media frenzy has not been a consideration. What can be permitted is some analysis of how much the due processes of the law in this case will affect any timetable for a second referendum on Scottish independence. It now seems unthinkable that Sturgeon will make any moves towards a referendum in the near future and certainly not before the case arrives in court. Effectively, the question of a second referendum is off the table until the autumn of 2020 at the earliest. This will play to Sturgeon’s political instincts. She had been coming under increasing pressure from some in her own party to signal an early referendum as the prospect of a no-deal Brexit begins to form. The absence of anything remotely approaching good leadership by either Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn over Brexit had once more cast Sturgeon’s adroit interventions from a Scottish perspective in a favourable light. The trickle of UK companies seeking to relocate elsewhere now resembles a wave and each week seems to reveal the perfidy of another hard Brexiter in accepting cash payments and plum directorships from interested firms. Last week, just days after May had promised an enhanced role for the devolved governments in Brexit negotiations, yet another meeting of the joint ministerial committee was cancelled. This all seemed to be providing a favourable wind for those in the SNP who advocate an early referendum. The developments in the Salmond case render any such thoughts redundant. Moreover, the sheer number and scope of the charges he faces make it likely that several key personnel involved in the SNP’s rise to the pinnacle of Scottish politics may consider that they have more pressing issues to contend with in the coming months. Since the news of the impending police investigation into allegations of misconduct was broken last August, some have sought to make political capital by claiming that the SNP is grievously split between Salmond supporters and Sturgeon supporters. In the light of the charge sheet that followed Salmond’s arrest, such talk has become facile and not a little callous. There has never been any evidence of a split along these lines among the ordinary members of the party, the overwhelming majority of whom hold each in high esteem. Following publication of the charges against Salmond, there was barely disguised glee being expressed across social media, including by some experienced observers who ought to know better. Again, little of this was expressed with any thought to the feelings of those making the accusations, who are also facing the distressing prospect of a trial. Senior SNP figures who have professed surprise at the seriousness of the charges facing Salmond may now be discussing historic timelines and consulting old diaries. As they do so, they should be advised to keep a lid on the scarecrow wing of the party, who, even now, are loudly proclaiming a Westminster stitch-up of their former leader and MI5 plots. Such sentiments are delusional and risk undermining the credibility of the independence case. • Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnistRoma were thrashed 7-1 at Fiorentina and had forward Edin Dzeko sent off after apparently spitting at the referee, while the defending champions Juventus also lost in the Coppa Italia quarter-finals on Wednesday. Federico Chiesa scored his first career hat-trick as Fiorentina raced into a 4-1 lead before Dzeko was shown a straight red card in the 72nd minute after arguing with referee Gianluca Manganiello and then appearing to spit at him. The Bosnian could face a lengthy ban if Manganiello confirms he was spat at in his official match report. There was still time for substitute Giovanni Simeone to score twice, meaning it was the first time Roma had conceded six goals or more in an Italian Cup match since May 1961, also against Fiorentina. However, Roma coach Eusebio Di Francesco said he will not resign. “In my head there is never that thought,” he said. Atalanta are also into the semi-finals after they surprised Serie A leaders Juventus with a 3-0 win, with in-form striker Duván Zapata scoring twice. Both teams lost key players to injury in the 27th minute, as Josip Ilicic and Giorgio Chiellini limped off. Ten minutes later Chiellini’s replacement, João Cancelo, was caught in possession by Timothy Castagne, who sprinted forward and smashed the ball into the bottom corner to give Atalanta the lead. Zapata doubled Atalanta’s lead two minutes later with his 16th goal in his past 10 games, before Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri was sent to the stands for dissent after throwing his coat to the floor in anger. The Bianconeri tried to fight back after the break but couldn’t find a way past a determined Atalanta defence, and Zapata sealed the result with his second of the match four minutes from time. Milan 2-0 NapoliFiorentina 7-1 RomaAtalanta 3-0 JuventusThursday: Internazionale v Lazio Valencia 3-1 Getafe (agg 3-1)Real Betis 3-1 Espanyol (agg 4-2)Barcelona 6-1 Sevilla (agg 6-3)Thursday: Girona v Real Madrid (first leg: 2-4) Guingamp 2-2 Monaco (5-4 on pens)Strasbourg 3-2 Bordeaux [pictured] Meanwhile, Barcelona overturned a two-goal first-leg deficit to put six past Sevilla and move into the Copa del Rey semi-finals. Philippe Coutinho scored twice with Sergi Roberto, Ivan Rakitic and Luis Suárez also on target before a superb team goal was finished off by Lionel Messi to round off the 6-1 rout.Apple cut its sales forecasts for its key end of year period on Wednesday, citing the unforeseen “magnitude” of the economic slowdown in China. Trading in the company’s shares was temporarily halted as Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, issued a letter to shareholders explaining the reason for the change. When selling started again, Apple shares fell by 7.45%, wiping $55bn (£44bn) off its value. “While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in greater China,” he said. He cited falling sales of iPhones, Mac computers and iPads. The statement is Apple’s first profit warning since 2002 and its first of the smartphone age. It is also one that will further rattle investors already worried about the slowing Chinese economy. The unusual move came on a day when it was reported that factory activity in China contracted for the first time in 19 months in December. China’s economy has been pinched by the ongoing trade war with the US, which is spilling over into other Asian economies. China is Apple’s third largest market after the US and Europe. “China’s economy began to slow in the second half of 2018. The government-reported GDP growth during the September quarter was the second lowest in the last 25 years,” wrote Cook. “We believe the economic environment in China has been further impacted by rising trade tensions with the United States. As the climate of mounting uncertainty weighed on financial markets, the effects appeared to reach consumers as well, with traffic to our retail stores and our channel partners in China declining as the quarter progressed. And market data has shown that the contraction in Greater China’s smartphone market has been particularly sharp.” Donald Trump and China’s president Xi Jingping agreed to a 90-day temporary ceasefire in their bitter trade war last month but as yet no long-term resolution appears close. Despite these challenges, Cook said: “We believe that our business in China has a bright future.” However, the company’s woes in the country have been exacerbated by a court decision that could potentially ban iPhone sales there. Chip maker Qualcomm won a preliminary injunction in December that would ban sales of older models that it claims violated its patents. Apple is appealing against the decision. Apple said it now expects sales revenue of around $84bn, down from an earlier estimate of between $89bn and $93bn. Analysts had been expecting revenues of around $91bn, according to market analyst FactSet. Apple endured a bumpy 2018. In August it was the world’s biggest firm and became the first publicly traded company to be valued at $1tn. But it ended the year with its market value down close to 7% – its worst performance since the 2008 financial crisis. Apple is now the third largest public company behind Microsoft and Amazon. Apple remains hugely profitable and is sitting on $237bn in cash. In November the company announced record sales and profits but iPhone sales were flat, heightening investor fears that its glory days are coming to an end. Sales of iPhones have so far failed to pick up despite Apple launching more variations of the device and analysts have worried that the market has become saturated and cheaper rivals are taking market share. The price of a new iPhone can now exceed $1,000 in the US and £999 in the UK. Last year, Apple temporarily cut the price of replacement batteries for older models and more customers chose that option instead of upgrading their phones. The iPhone, which launched in June 2007, has been an extraordinary success for Apple. More than one billion were sold between 2007 and 2017. While sales of its other devices and services such as iTunes and Apple Pay are growing sharply, the iPhone is still its most important product, accounting for 59% of its revenue in its previous quarter. Apple’s poor performance was echoed by its fellow Faang companies – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google – which all performed poorly in 2018. Their collective stumble helped drag down US stock markets, which had been driven to new highs by their rise. Slowing iPhone sales have also compounded fears that Apple’s record-breaking run is coming to an end and China’s weakening economy worried investors that international markets would not pick up the slack.A Buddhist poker player has said he will give away more than $600,000 of his winnings to charity. Scott Wellenbach’s third place finish in the Bahamas scooped him $671,240 (£521,384), more than nine times his previous total. The Canadian player said the only way he could rationalise playing a game that could leave others in strife was to donate to those in need. He told PokerNews.com: “I hope that somehow a wise decision happens and the money goes to good purposes and certain human beings or other sentient beings, animals or whatever, beings with feelings, [so] that their lives are eased in some way.” The 67-year-old from Halifax, Nova Scotia, translates Buddhist teachings from Sanskrit and Tibetan when he is not at the poker table. He told the BBC that he reconciles the teachings of his faith with the adrenaline of a straight flush “with great difficulty”. His previous biggest win was $72,176 in 2017, which, like all of his winnings, went to charity. Beneficiaries of his generosity have included Buddhist nuns in Nepal and Tibet, Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders. Last year, he told CBC News: ““A significant amount of your money is won from people who are too addicted, too drunk, too unstudied or too masochistic to play well – and we all have those features within us. “In any case, I feel there’s a tension about winning money under those circumstances and I guess I rationalise my addiction by giving away the winnings, saying, ‘Well, at least I’m doing good things with it.’” Wellenbach said he did not travel to poker rooms unless he happened to be in the area for work or won an online qualifying tournament (as he did for the Bahamas). He revealed that he meditates for about an hour every day but more so during a tournament to retain his personal discipline.In the midst of the civil war, when the battle was not going well, Abraham Lincoln wrote that “[w]e must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save the country”. Harvard professor Jill Lepore chooses to begin her history of the United States with that quotation, and much of the worst of America, from lynching to brutality to Native Americans, is rightly here. But her true purpose is much broader: as she writes, the constitution adopted in 1787 was meant to determine whether government could rule “not by accident and force but by reason and choice”. In America’s other founding document, the declaration of independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Can this be true, for everyone of whatever race and for women too? Is it possible for the US – or any nation – to be ruled by reason and choice? For Lepore, these are the essential questions. This is a history of political equality which necessarily becomes primarily a political history The “constitution cannot be made easy”, she writes, because “it was never meant to be easy”. Moreover, she notes that though the United States was “founded on a set of ideas … Americans have become so divided that they no longer agree, if they ever did, about what those ideas are, or were”. This is, therefore, a history of political equality which necessarily becomes primarily a political history. It is also, very largely and appropriately, a history of race in America, of the attempts of many to realize “these truths” and the heartbreaking struggles of those who have been oppressed. This began at the beginning. From 1619, “liberty and slavery became the American Abel and Cain”. The question nearly sundered the colonies from all government. When George Washington died in 1799, Lepore writes, “the black people in that room outnumbered the white people”. But his will, published throughout the country, delayed emancipation of his slaves until after the death of his wife. In a nation devoted to freedom, why were some free and others not? Like so many Americans, Lepore asks that question and another: “By what right are we ruled?” Her aims are ambitious. This is also a history of journalism, including what may be the first real history of the internet in a political context. It is also a history of technology and a history of religion, which has influenced so much American life and thought. Finally, “this book aims to be something else, too – an explanation of the nature of the past.” “History isn’t only a subject,” Lepore writes. “It’s also a method. My method is, generally, to let the dead speak for themselves.” Lepore therefore gives prominence to figures such as Caesar, a slave hanged for rebellion in colonial New York; David Walker, a ship chandler who founded the first African American political organization; Mary Lease, a leading figure in the populist movement of the 19th century; and Ivy Lee, a pioneer in public relations, for good or ill. She tells new stories, such as that of Harry Washington, an escaped slave from Mount Vernon who went to Canada and then to the new colony of Sierra Leone, or of southern women rioting for bread during the civil war who thereby helped lay the foundation of a public welfare system. It is the story of a nation, multiracial at its founding, and those who sought to find ways to realize “these truths”. In the 1800s, Frederick Douglass admired the new art of photography because it represented faces perfectly rather than through the subtle distortions of painting, and could therefore help African Americans speak for themselves. A century later Dr Martin Luther King Jr realized that the constitution could be on his side, because “the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right”. Lepore offers an unabashedly liberal perspective, but seeks to be scrupulously fair to the modern conservative movement American politics has always been robust, but technology and better methods of analysis have magnified the impact. Lepore entitles her section on recent history “The Machine”: a double entendre for the political “machines” of the past. She introduces Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, the founders of Campaigns Inc, one of the first modern consulting firms. Its successes were vast, from the defeat of health insurance proposals in California to the election of Richard Nixon, and its influence on future campaigns even more profound. As Lepore writes: “The Like Factor … came to drive American political communication, decades before the rise of Facebook … in effect, the Like Factor replaced the Fairness Doctrine.” Polling undercut the views of minorities and overweighted majority views. Democrats also played a role, as in the Kennedy campaign’s use of new “data science” in 1960, an election which Lepore notes “may have been rigged”. Lepore also shows how liberal public opinion shifted in the 1950s to become “contemptuous” of mass culture, just as conservatives had been in the 30s. Franklin D Roosevelt was the last leader truly to unite rural populism and urban activism. Given all this, Lepore acknowledges that the US “had endured eras of heightened partisanship before … beginning in the 1990s [it] started a long fall into an epistemological abyss.” Even Leone Baxter, towards the end of her life, decided she was “worried about men like [Roger] Ailes”. It’s not quite accurate to say that this book is Lepore’s response to or explanation of the election of Donald Trump, but that event constantly lurks in the background, from a discussion of Joseph Pulitzer’s quest for accurate journalism based on facts to meditations on the forces of populism, reaction and nativism throughout American history. Lepore also links Trump firmly to the deleterious – and often anti-democratic – technological and campaigning innovations of the last 50 years: “Polls admitted Trump into the GOP debates, polls placed him at center stage, and polls declared him the winner … Time posted this warning: ‘The results of this poll are not scientific.’ Less reputable websites did not bother with disclaimers.” There is always a debate about where politics ends and history begins. Lepore draws the line generously in favour of history. The book is a first draft of the 21st century – nearly 100 pages consider America after 1992. It is hard to reach judgments about that period, though Lepore links current events to their origins in the distant past: the populism of Andrew Jackson, how the populist William Jennings Bryan strongly opposed social Darwinism. She offers an unabashedly liberal perspective, but seeks to be scrupulously fair to the modern conservative movement, devoting numerous pages to its intellectual origins as well as to its nativist and conspiratorial elements. Ideas do have consequences, as wrote Richard Weaver, a conservative intellectual for whom Lepore has sympathy. This is a history for the 21st century, far more inclusive than the standard histories of the past. Is Lepore hopeful? Recall the quote with which she opened. Lincoln did not say merely that we “can” save the country, but that we “shall”. The Lincolnian spirit – and a fair dose of civics – will do much to restore the values of the American republic.Amazon’s drone delivery service may be missing in action but the company has not given up on its dream of robots delivering parcels. It is launching Amazon Scout, a service employing six squat six-wheeled delivery robots, across Snohomish County, Washington, just north of its Seattle HQ. “These devices were created by Amazon, are the size of a small cooler and roll along sidewalks at a walking pace,” the head of the Scout project, Sean Scott, wrote in a blogpost. “The devices will autonomously follow their delivery route but will initially be accompanied by an Amazon employee. “We developed Amazon Scout at our research and development lab in Seattle, ensuring the devices can safely and efficiently navigate around pets, pedestrians and anything else in their path.” In 2013 Amazon’s boss, Jeff Bezos, launched Amazon Prime Air and announced an intention to begin offering flying deliveries direct to the home within five years. Prime Air was widely dismissed as a publicity stunt, with commentators noting that it was announced the day before the biggest online shopping day the year, Cyber Monday. Sure enough, by the end of that five-year timeline the company had announced just one successful trial – with two customers in UK who had huge gardens, lived close to an Amazon depot and were happy to order items that weighed less than 2.6kg. In the meantime, a number of startups have pursued the less ambitious target of putting small autonomous vehicles on pavements to deliver small parcels and food orders. These projects have been controversial in their own right, accused of clogging pavements and privatising public space, as well as leading to a loss of income for delivery workers. But they have progressed nonetheless. Starship Technologies, one of the leading companies in the sector, launched its first commercial business in April 2018 and is currently running trials in Milton Keynes in the UK. A Starship spokesperson gave Amazon’s project a cold welcome, saying: “We created this space four years ago and have since seen many other companies join, Amazon being the latest.”Freedom of movement for EU workers has been front and centre in the Brexit debate. Fear of foreign workers undercutting the wages and working conditions of locals helped to fuel the leave campaign. Now EU nationals – Poles and others – who have called Britain home for years, sometimes decades, face an uncertain future in the UK. But while attitudes to migrant workers in Brexit Britain are often seen as a case apart, free movement of people evokes hostility in other EU countries too. The belief that foreigners take away jobs from local workers is – and has long been – a textbook example of false information. Research has proved again and again that the belief is ill-founded. Yet to some, it feels true no matter how many studies show that it is not. Proposed new EU rules aim to grant posted workers with the same pay and conditions as local staff The Dutch Freedom party, for example, created a website a few years ago where Dutch citizens could report suspected undercutting in the labour market by workers from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. The problem of unfair competition and “social dumping” also loomed large in the most recent French presidential election, with accusations of Polish workers bypassing French labour market regulation. Brexit is not a standalone manifestation of a malaise – it is simply the most extreme. Much of the problem relates to inadequate EU labour market legislation and – ironically, given the discourse – the negative consequences are experienced mostly by the workers who move about themselves. Especially troubling is the exploitation of “posted workers”, employees from one EU state who are temporarily seconded by their employer (sometimes based in a third EU country) to carry out a service elsewhere in the EU, while remaining tied to the social security system of their country of origin. Out-of-date EU regulation has allowed the consistent undercutting of wages and working conditions, and the exploitation of these foreign nationals. While this form of labour mobility and its problems is well known in expert circles, it has not received the attention it deserves owing to its complicated and often opaque nature. EU rules on posted workers were originally intended to strengthen the rights of EU citizens moving from one member state to another. The assumption was that highly skilled workers would provide short-term expertise where it was needed. After the service wascompleted, the workers would return to their permanent employment relationship in their country of origin. But European labour markets today look radically different from when this legislation emerged in the 1990s. Large parts of the population are in temporary, short-term and insecure employment contracts. Moreover, the 28 member states now have radically different welfare states and wage levels. It is in this context that “posting” turned into a mechanism that subcontractors based in the lower-wage countries began exploiting to offer cheaper services abroad. Setting up scaffolding or laying the floor at a construction site, for example, are services that can be offered more cheaply if subcontractors pay the national insurance contributions of workers in their country of origin. Employers can then make further savings by keeping the wages and bonuses of posted workers lower than those of local workers. For example, at the Severn power plant construction site in Uskmouth, the GMB trade union exposed how posted workers from Poland received incorrect overtime payments, were not granted due annual leave, and faced illegal deductions for lodging. As I have detailed in my recent book, Workers Without Borders, there are several reasons why it is easier for employers to exploit posted workers than even temporary agency workers. For a start they are sent abroad for a limited period and are not automatically entitled to equal treatment with nationals. They feel detached from the country and the trade unions where the job is carried out, and will seek to claim their rights only in the most dire cases. Because of the temporary nature of the work, they often endure mistreatment in order to earn a target wage before moving on to another employment opportunity. Third, labour inspection in the UK, as in other EU countries, cannot adequately enforce the rights of posted workers because subcontractors posting workers abroad can easily de- and re-register from one country to the next. Though these workers are performing vital tasks in fields such as construction, nursing and transport, they do not enjoy the same rights and benefits as others doing the same jobs. At the same time, they face hostility owing to their willingness to work for lower wages and with fewer social rights, primarily along east-west and south-north axes, sincewages are higher in northern and western Europe. One of the biggest receiving countries is Germany, where foreign workers are especially in demand in the construction industry. In the course of my research I conducted more than 100 interviews with such workers and found that they were particularly vulnerable to exploitation, even in advanced industrial economies with strong employment protection. For instance, a posted Polish construction worker on a German building site does not enjoy the same rights as German or even Polish colleagues working for a German subcontractor, because the employment relationship is partially regulated from Poland. Thus, popular, derogatory stereotypes of the “Polish plumber” might well have emerged not because of individual tradespeople offering cheaper services; but because EU regulation does not adequately protect EU citizens who move for work to another country. My research shows that, in today’s economy, many posted workers are forced to accept just about any job, with no permanent employment; do not get their minimum rights enforced in the host state; and are afraid to voice their rights in fear of employer retaliation and unemployment. This is a particularly distressing paradox in the modern European welfare states: how can a country like Germany, with such powerful employers’ associations and trade unions, allow for a precarious labour market segment composed of EU migrants? An overlooked piece of the puzzle is the re-regulatory politics at the workplace level. The debate around Brexit and the rise of nationalism in the EU is closely connected to populist discourse about, unsurprisingly, broad movements and vague numbers of workers. Yet the lived experiences of individual EU citizens who make use of freedom of movement should allow a more nuanced picture of the internal market and its labour market rules – and who knows, a little more sympathy and understanding. Political divisions among EU states over posted workers break along the aforementioned east-west axis. Eastern European states lobby for deregulation, while western states support stricter regulations. Proposed new EU rules aim to promote de facto equal treatment between local and posted workers. A new directive would ensure that posted workers receive the same pay and conditions as local staff. But Hungary and Poland are challenging the reform in the European court of justice and trying to get the new directive annulled. These actions have again opened up intense political debate, and threaten to curtail the rights of more than 2 million EU workers posted abroad. Countries such as  France, Germany and the Netherlands favour the new directive  because they are under the impression that these new rules will stop service companies from employing foreign EU workers below the local minimum wage. Hungary and Poland want to preserve their competitive advantage in the EU labour market A key part of the new law would involved increased cooperation between national labour inspectorates. This is a step in the right directionbut labour inspectorates will still largely be unable to properly collect fines across borders. But there is also a need to better inform EU citizens – in the UK and elsewhere – about their rights, how to enforce them, and where to go for help, especially when they have limited language skills. This would make workers less vulnerable to exploitation and therefore possibly lead to better integration into the workforce and mutual understanding. If other countries are not to follow Britain’s lead, freedom of movement will have to be considered. Europe is only as strong as its solidarity. While Hungary and Poland still argue for the right of their workers to move freely within the EU, increasingly hostile anti-immigrant sentiment can be found in both countries. Support for freedom of movement may well wane if it is not as profitable to Hungarian or Polish citizens. Brexit will certainly complicate how freedom of movement of workers and services will be regulated and practised in the EU. Regardless, the issue of posted work has already revealed significant tensions. • Ines Wagner is senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Social Research, and the author of Workers Without Borders: Posted Work and Precarity in the EUIt’s not hard to see why someone might fall in love with Jameela Jamil – the star around which James Blake’s fourth album, Assume Form, orbits. The character Jamil plays on NBC’s The Good Place gets called things like “sexy skyscraper” (and “sexy giraffe”, and “a hot rich fraud with legs for days”). Jamil’s penthouse suite is well furnished too. The British radio DJ turned screenwriter turned actor recently made a documentary for Radio 4 about sexual consent. Her Instagram campaign #iweigh encourages women to consider their true substance: their strengths and achievements, rather than their vital statistics. Last year she called the Kardashians “unwitting double-agents for the patriarchy”. Jamil is very much in a relationship, though – with Blake, the British dubstep producer turned singer-songwriter. Two sensitive Brits who made it big on their own terms in Los Angeles, the pair have been dating since 2015 but gradually made their relationship status more public last year. If one were to pitch Blake’s latest album in a Hollywood elevator, it would be that Assume Form is a soundtrack to that slow reveal: a loved-up paean to finding oneself in another. In that respect, it’s like Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear, stripped of its cynicism and soft porn. (“I’ll use both hands,” is about as far as Blake goes here.) It’s Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call – the Bad Seeds’ thinly disguised suite of love songs to PJ Harvey – with way more guest rappers. One song, Can’t Believe the Way We Flow, gives a flavour of exactly how cock-a-hoop Blake is. Awash with cascading, multitracked soul harmonies, the track finds Blake’s warble verging on the ecstatic rather than wounded. “You waive my fear of self,” he croons. I’ll Come Too (minds out of the gutter, Misty fans) is about gambolling about with your inamorata, no matter where she happens to be going. New York? Sure. “The brink”? Yes again. Blake’s production is still uneasily abstract – the track’s rolling-marble beat still bears a token resemblance to trap hip-hop. But swelling Disney strings and Blake’s blithe melody pack a vintage swoon. It barely needs saying that Blake is not a natural candidate to tiptoe through tulips. Known for his austere late-night digitals, parched angst and extensive collaborations with A-list superstars such as Beyoncé, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean, the 30-year-old north Londoner first came to renown by combining vulnerable male vocals with cutting-edge production. With his 2011 self-titled debut and its Mercury prize-winning sequel, 2013’s Overgrown, Blake kicked off an entire subgenre of popular music. Some rain-curdled British wags labelled it “blubstep”. Wisconsin’s Bon Iver was of a similar falsetto-and-digital mind on 2016’s 22, a Million, however. More recently, artists like Moses Sumney have brought this racked hyper-modern sound full circle back to its point of origin in the ache of African American soul, refracted through a 21st-century filter. Blake acknowledges his synchronicity with Sumney: the two have toured together, and Sumney guests on one track here, Tell Them. Deliciously, Sumney’s witchy falsetto weaves in and out of Blake’s own in a game of spot-the-difference. This album does get a bit crowded, however. Because Blake is thick with hip-hop artists and producers, his work leads naturally to a kind of quid pro quo. So just as the listener is falling hard for Assume Form’s title track – elegiac piano, percussive skitter, heartfelt sentiments such as “This is the first time I connect motion to feeling” – up pops Kylie Jenner’s baby-daddy, Travis Scott, on the next track. Hip-hop super-producer Metro Boomin is another superfluous third wheel who drops in twice. We are definitely not in north London any more, Toto: this deeply personal, intimate album by a formerly stiff-upper-lipped British introvert is sited firmly on the west coast and deep in the belly of the music industry. Is that the hottest new artist of 2019, the forward-flamenco singer Rosalía, on another tune? So it is. Her collaboration with Blake – Barefoot in the Park – is, however, far more pleasing to the ear than the hook-ups with hip-hop’s flushest. The two conjoin on a humid and haunted thermal whose only downside is how Blake’s more front-and-centre singing voice has started resembling that of Chris Martin from Coldplay. An older rapper, Outkast’s André 3000, weighs in on Where’s the Catch – the one moment on this deeply committed album where Blake expresses a little trepidation about this newfound bliss. Lest we forget, André 3000 is a man so evolved he penned a letter of apology to his ex-mother-in-law: Ms Jackson. He proves a sage, wry presence. “All my pessimistic keeps me in my cage,” he testifies – a line that points to a deeper reading of Assume Form. This album is, without a doubt, a big, glitchy, swooning, hyper-modern declaration of love. “We delayed the show we kissed so long,” Blake sighs. “Let’s go home and talk shit about everyone,” he flirts. Blake and Jamil are not married, but Blake says “I do” so often on Can’t Believe the Way We Flow as to make the ceremony superfluous. Assume Form is not without its problems – the incipient echo of Martin (another nice boy from England who now hangs with Beyoncé) and an inveterate itchiness to the production that ill suits the considered joy on show. Its true resonance, though, might be as a document of recovery: from the depression, lifelong isolation and “cyclical thoughts” (Don’t Miss It) of making music, often alone. It’s not just Blake: as bands increasingly gave way to solo bedroom artists more than a decade ago, the tortured singer-songwriter at the front of traditional bass-drums-guitar set-ups became the tortured solo-operating DIY troubadour. Although Blake, neck-deep in the underground, played well with others – running club nights at university, remixing, collaborating – the success of his intimate music inevitably propelled him into being a kind of poster boy for the night-steeped solipsism of the age. Blake is now “out of his head”, as the title track has it – not off his face but “touchable, reachable”. The more attentive listener will spot that Blake’s last album, 2016’s The Colour in Anything, also dates from a period when Jamil was in the picture. But that record remained almost as cloistered and spartan as Blake’s previous works – like a clench before a release, it feels now. With sustained love has come liberation. If the pitch-shifted interpolation from performance poet Rage Almighty on the title track were not enough to nail Blake’s subplot to the mast (depression, it goes, “feels like a thousand pound weight holding your body down in a pool of water barely reaching your chin”), Power On states things pretty baldly: “I thought I might be better dead/ But I was wrong,” Blake drawls. The sparse, but comforting Don’t Miss It finds Blake’s heavily digitised vocal itemising how far has he come. Love happens, Blake avers on Assume Form. But more than that: change is possible.Late-night hosts translated Donald Trump’s words, wheels and walls at the southern border. Thursday marked the 20th day of the government shutdown, and the US government is “so broke that they have to start renting out the Lincoln Memorial to Airbnb”, joked Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. But while more than 800,000 federal workers remain without pay – a point The Daily Show illustrated with a sketch about a free-for-all TSA check-in – the president was philosophizing about wheels and walls in Texas. It’s funny how whenever Trump needs a win, a big scary caravan begins its journey to kill us all. pic.twitter.com/mUHWpLuYbP “The wheel is older than the wall, you know that?” Trump told press near the southern border. “There are some things that work. You now that? A wheel works, and a wall works.” Noah didn’t miss a beat. “You know, if a football player got up after a tackle and started talking like that,” he joked, “the trainer would be like: ‘Uh, we need to get you to the locker room now. Your brain is not OK.’” To clarify, Noah continued: “Walls are actually much older than the wheel. Six thousand years older than the wheel. So I guess people should stop calling Trump a Neanderthal because a Neanderthal would know that.” More seriously, Noah said, Trump appears to be invoking another caravan-as-fear tactic to distract from what could become the country’s longest government shutdown on Saturday. “Wow, another caravan,” Noah remarked. “It’s so convenient how whenever Trump needs to win something, a big, scary caravan is always coming to kill us all.” On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert also acted as a translator for Trump’s trip to the southern border yesterday, in which he visited border patrol agents while his “mouth continued to do words”. Trump suggested that he would declare a national emergency to authorize $5.7bn in wall funding without congressional approval, but stopped short of committing to it. In other words: “I may probably, definitely, certainly, for sure, though perhaps not” declare a national emergency, said Colbert. That’s just how emergencies are, Colbert said – “you never know if they’re urgent or not”. Trump’s answer may well have translated to: “Hello, 911? Can you send a fire truck right away? My house might be on fire. Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. But if you are sending a truck, please bring a pizza,” joked Colbert. Back at the border, Trump asserted to reporters that, according to his lawyers, declaring a national emergency for his political fight was legal. “Mr President, if you want to know what is or is not legal, I don’t know if I’d ask your lawyers,” Colbert advised. “One of them is unreachable for the next three years.” Trump also expressed discontent with the youngest class of congressmen this year, who he called “crazy”. Colbert’s translation was a bit more detailed. “These young people have gone crazy,” he said in mock Trump voice. “They’re ’gramming their brunches, they’re fidgeting their spinners, they’re avocado-ing their toast. Dancing should be illegal. They’re all crazy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to smearing my face with tanning cream and screaming about the people who are coming over the border to live in our lake houses.” And on Late Night, Seth Meyers addressed the government shutdown plainly. “The reality is that Trump is subjecting millions of people to unnecessary pain and suffering to get his wall and hoping Democrats will blink first,” Meyers said. “Reporters asked him if he could empathize with people who are right now literally having to choose between food and medicine, and he insisted that he could.” Meyers referred to a clip in which Trump told a reporter that unpaid federal employees will find a way to make things work – they always do – and that “many of those people that won’t be receiving a paycheck, many of those people agree 100% with what I’m doing”, said Trump. “I don’t know, it’s hard to imagine someone sitting at their kitchen table choosing between food and insulin saying: ‘I’m just glad Trump is getting his wall, now off to take a dump in the park,’” mused Meyers, referencing the human waste now gathering in unstaffed national parks. Acknowledging Trump’s visit to the border on Thursday, Meyers claimed: “All he has is his delusions, and those delusions keep getting weirder and weirder.” One of those delusions is Trump’s false claim that other living presidents had expressed regret to him for not building a wall. “Now that’s an obvious lie, and every living president has denied it,” Meyers said. “But here’s what’s so weird to me: why didn’t he just pick a president who was dead? It would’ve been so much easier to get away with.”Moeen Ali has made peace with his role in this England Test team, insisting it is time to stop hiding behind the tag of second spinner and accept he is No 1. The 31-year-old all-rounder has long held ambitions to play as a batsman first, while England have also tried to ease the pressure on his bowling by selecting a another spinner in the side where possible. While a final XI for Wednesday’s first Test against West Indies is yet to be decided, and a mottled pitch left to bake on Monday has been the subject of much debate, the Dukes ball is leaning England towards four seamers. It would see Adil Rashid and Jack Leach miss out from Sri Lanka but Moeen, fresh from claiming 18 wickets in that 3-0 win, and having been set the goal by the spin coach Saqlain Mushtaq to bowl even better, feels ready. Moeen said: “To be honest I’m not too fussed [about being the only spinner] any more. Before I was but now I just try and focus on myself. The three of us worked well together in Sri Lanka but if the responsibility was on me, I’d happily do it. “I’d be fine with it. I can’t hide behind saying I’m the second spinner. I need to face it, deal with it. I’ve done it plenty of times before and I feel like I’m getting better.” Moeen, who claims the Kensington Oval witnessed his worst bowling performance in an England shirt during the five-wicket defeat in 2015, averages 42 with the ball when on his own, compared to 31 with specialist support. It is a statistic that must be couched by the pitches which dictate such selections. Indeed 55 Test caps into his career he appears as confident in his bowling now as he ever has been, such that despite a recent and aborted spell batting at No 3 his top-order batting ambitions now have been parked a touch. Moeen said: “At this particular time, in this moment, I don’t have the patience. I have tried to bat longer and it doesn’t mean I can’t, but I feel more useful to the side coming in down the order. We need a proper No 3 in the Ashes and that’s more important.”Hundreds of Central American migrants have continued their march towards the United States, crossing from Honduras into Guatemala, as Donald Trump again demanded the construction of a border wall he claims would keep such groups out. “We’re leaving because there’s no work here in Honduras,” said Carlos Maldonado, a 35-year-old from the city of La Ceiba, as he led a 200-strong column of migrants towards the Guatemalan border while waving his country’s blue and white flag in the air. Maldonado is a member of the latest “migrant caravan” which set off from the notoriously violent Honduran city of San Pedro Sula at the start of this week and is expected to enter southern Mexico this weekend before heading north to the United States. He said not all of the caravan’s estimated 1,500-2,000 members planned to reach “El Norte”. “We don’t know what our destination is yet. Some are going to stay in Mexico and others are heading for the United States,” he said. Most of those interviewed by the Guardian this week, however, said they were set on entering the US. Julio Oyuela, 42, said he was heading for New Orleans with his brother and cousin. “There are no opportunities for anyone here,” Oyuela complained as he queued to leave Hondruas under the gaze of dozens of police officers equipped with riot shields, helmets and assault rifles. “Just look at how many young people are leaving,” Oyuela added, pointing to the crowd of migrants around him, made up largely of exhausted-looking young men and families who had spent the last 36 hours trekking through the mountains of western Honduras. As the caravan’s stragglers hiked the final stretch to the Guatemalan border, Donald Trump returned to Twitter to muse about the “nice, powerful wall” he has claimed would keep such people out and solve what he alleges is a crisis on the US-Mexico border. “The are now 77 major or significant Walls built around the world, with 45 countries planning or building walls. Over 800 miles of Walls have been built in Europe since only 2015. They have all been recognised as close to 100% successful,” Trump claimed, concluding: “Stop the crime at our Southern Border!” Pablo García, a 38-year-old migrant who said he had spent most of his life living in the US, said caravan members were crystal clear how Trump felt about them. “He doesn’t like Hispanic people,” he said in heavily-accented American English, before adding: “I don’t like him … I like Bill Clinton – and John Kennedy.” Bartolo Fuentes, a Honduran activist and journalist who was at the border crossing on Wednesday afternoon, said he was worried that under pressure from Washington, his government would implement tougher border measures aimed at making life more difficult for caravans heading north. On Tuesday, he claimed three buses containing perhaps 200 mostly young migrants had been sent back from the border by police. “What they want to do is stop the flow and show to the US government: ‘Look, we are doing something.’” But Fuentes – who was accused but strenuously denies leading last October’s headline-making caravan – said such tactics would only expose Central American migrants to greater dangers by forcing them to use illegal crossings where they might face violence or be robbed. “People are leaving [Honduras] every single day and if they don’t allow people like this, they will go hidden. And that’s worse.” As he prepared to say bid farewell to his homeland on Wednesday afternoon, Christian Sori, a 20-year-old migrant, admitted he was not sure where he would end up, nor what he would do. But like thousands of fellow northbound travellers, he was determined to build a new life. “I’m going wherever God takes me.”Conservative MPs voiced shock and concern at the scale of the defeat  of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, as cabinet ministers split over whether the prime minister should prioritise her overtures towards the Democratic Unionist party or Labour MPs. “I hoped for less than 100,” one minister said. “The numbers really are unbelievable. But it does show that is the absolute limit to the hard Brexiter support.” Should the prime minister win her no-confidence vote on Wednesday, May said she would seek to find a consensus across the house by speaking to various factions in the Tory party, as well as senior opposition politicians. “We want to leave with a deal and we want to work with others who share that,” May’s spokesman said. Shell-shocked cabinet ministers were expected to renew a push for May to hold a series of indicative votes on the options before parliament, which one No 10 source said May instinctively opposed. Others would push for her to prioritise getting new and firm commitments from her confidence and supply partners, the DUP. Other senior Conservative sources voiced strong reservations as to whether May’s red lines, including on a customs union and free movement, would be able to hold in her discussions with opposition MPs. “We have to go over to Labour on the customs union,” one minister said. “That’s the irony – the result could effectively be a permanent backstop. How can the red lines still stand? She is going to have to choose.” Opinion among backbenchers was sharply divided in the hours after the vote, with Brexiters arguing that a majority could be found for a free trade agreement without the backstop and others said May would need to soften her deal to bring Labour MPs onboard. “No one can predict anything, it’s like ‘choose your own adventure’ from now on – ‘oh no, we’ve fallen off a cliff’,” one MP joked. The Tory MP and former attorney general Dominic Grieve said the staggering defeat meant there was no majority anywhere in the House of Commons for any version of Brexit. “Parliament now needs to come together for the sake of the country,” he said. “Crucially we must bring the people back into this discussion, by legislating for a final say, giving the British public the option to stay and lead with our European partners.” Tory MPs seeking a second referendum have been exploring a number of options for the coming days, but were cautious about moving too quickly before the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had called a no confidence vote in the government. Pro-European Tory MPs were also hoping that the death of May’s deal could open the door for soft Conservative support for a referendum. “There will come a time when we need to push it in parliament, but you have to allow Labour to exhaust the option of a general election,” one said. “There are a lot of Conservative MPs who feel duty bound to vote for the deal first time round. In some ways, this makes it easier for them to start to come over to us.” The former Tory minister Nick Boles, who has gathered some support for his plans for a Norway-style option with a new negotiated customs union, was blunt about his approach to the talks May has offered to seek a compromise. It must be the prime minister who makes the approach, he told the Guardian. “She serves parliament – does she come to the people in parliament who have ideas and a substantial body of support?” he said. Before the vote, May holed up in her Commons office behind the Speaker’s chair to speak to Conservative MPs throughout the day. Sources said she focused on backbenchers and Brexiter “ringleaders”, such as the former Brexit minister Steve Baker. “The whipping was purely focused on minimising the margin of defeat, trying to get abstentions,” one Brexiter MP said. One European Research Group (ERG) source said the scale of the defeat had been obvious for months and blamed the whips for their slowness to realise what was coming. “It might be helpful to remember that when the chief whip came to the weekly ERG meeting the week Chequers was unveiled, he breezily said that if colleagues didn’t like the ‘deal’, they need not vote for it. And here we all are,” the source said. During the debate the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, hinted he expected May to put a very similar version of the deal to parliament again. “Whatever solution may be fashioned, if this motion were defeated and this deal defeated, this withdrawal agreement will have to return, in much the same form, with much the same content,” he said. Cox, in an impassioned opening to the debate, said he was deeply disturbed by those MPs who had embraced no deal as the best way forward. “What are you playing at? What are you doing? You are not children in the playground, you are legislators. We are playing with people’s lives,” he said. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the hard Brexiter who chairs the ERG, speaking earlier, suggested the Commons defeat would give May a clear mandate to seek a new deal, rather than insisting on no deal. He said the prime minister could “go back with a clear mandate to the EU and say: ‘Look, if you want a deal, which is in your interest and for which you get £39bn, let’s do something simpler and easier that means we genuinely leave.’” Ben Bradley, the Tory MP for Mansfield, who was among the hard-Brexit rebels, said May had the option of reaching out to her own colleagues or to Labour. “I hope it would be her own colleagues first. When she talks about senior members of the house, she must mean people like Steve Baker and Iain Duncan Smith,” he said. “There’s a majority in there, for a free trade agreement and no backstop. That would deliver most Tories who rebelled and Labour leavers,” Bradley said. “She has ruled out a referendum, ruled out Norway, ruled out a customs union. So she does not have much room with anyone who wants a softer Brexit.”Tensions continue to mount in Thailand as the ruling military junta has signalled that the long postponed elections will be delayed yet again, the fifth delay in less than five years. On Sunday, in one of the biggest pro-democracy protests in Thailand in over four years, hundreds of people took to the streets for the third time in a week to criticise the military government for appearing to renege on assurances the election would finally happen on 24 February. It is the fifth time the military junta, which took over in a bloodless coup in 2014, has delayed elections and prevented the country’s return to democracy. Known as the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), it has repeatedly declared the country is “not ready” for elections but the most recent delay has been attributed to concerns it would interfere with the upcoming coronation of the new king. Over the weekend about 200 demonstrators gathered at Bangkok’s Ratchaprasong Intersection – the symbolic spot where dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed in an army assault in 2010 – carrying banners demanding an election by next month, while smaller groups gathered in other cities across Thailand. The army’s commander in chief, General Apirat Kongsompong, publicly condemned the protesters, saying they were “bent on causing trouble”. “They are being told to think this way, ordered to behave this way, thinking in one single mode without taking into consideration other factors which are reasonable and without looking at the constitution,” Aparit, who is also secretary general of the NCPO, told a media conference. While many in Thailand are sceptical about the promised elections ever taking place, the February date seemed almost secure after a promising announcement by the election commission late last year. The ban on political activity and gatherings of more than five people was also lifted in late December, the strongest indicator that elections would go ahead. But election hopes were dashed again in early January when the military failed to issue the awaited official decree, which formalises the election date. Days later, deputy prime minister Wissanu Krea-ngam indicated the poll would be postponed because it could interfere with rituals and preparations for the coronation of Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn, which will be held on 4-6 May. The election commission has not yet formally announced the postponement but the ongoing delay in the decree now makes it highly likely. Thailand’s last official election was eight years ago, in 2011, and occurred following months of pro-democracy protests by activists known as the “red shirts”, and saw the election of Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand’s first female prime minister and the sister of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Another poll was held again in 2014, but it was later invalidated by the constitutional court, and the military took power in a coup shortly after. According to Thailand’s new constitution, which skews the political system heavily in favour of maintaining military power, an election must happen by 9 May.As Mark Twain never said: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you think you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Over the course of this year and next, the biggest economic risks will emerge in those areas where investors think recent patterns are unlikely to change. They will include a growth recession in China, a rise in global long-term real interest rates and a crescendo of populist economic policies that undermine the credibility of central bank independence, resulting in higher interest rates on “safe” advanced-country government bonds. A significant Chinese slowdown may already be unfolding. The US president Donald Trump’s trade war has shaken confidence but this is only a downward shove to an economy that was already slowing as it makes the transition from export- and investment-led growth to more sustainable domestic consumption-led growth. How much the Chinese economy will slow is an open question; but, given the inherent contradiction between an ever-more centralised Party-led political system and the need for a more decentralised consumer-led economic system, long-term growth could fall quite dramatically. Unfortunately, the option of avoiding the transition to consumer-led growth and continuing to promote exports and real-estate investment is not very attractive either. China is already a dominant global exporter and there is neither market space nor political tolerance to allow it to maintain its previous pace of export expansion. Bolstering growth through investment, particularly in residential real estate (which accounts for the lion’s share of Chinese construction output) – is also ever more challenging. Downward pressure on prices, especially outside Tier-1 cities, is making it increasingly difficult to induce families to invest an even larger share of their wealth into housing. Although China may be much better positioned than any western economy to socialise losses that hit the banking sector, a sharp contraction in housing prices and construction could prove extremely painful to absorb. Any significant growth recession in China would hit the rest of Asia hard, along with commodity-exporting developing and emerging economies. Nor would Europe – and especially Germany – be spared. Although the US is less dependent on China, the trauma to financial markets and politically sensitive exports would make a Chinese slowdown much more painful than US leaders seem to realise. A less likely but even more traumatic outside risk would materialise if, after many years of trend decline, global long-term real interest rates reversed course and rose significantly. I am not speaking merely of a significant overtightening by the US Federal Reserve in 2019. This would be problematic but it would mainly affect short-term real interest rates and in principle could be reversed in time. The far more serious risk is a shock to very long-term real interest rates, which are lower than at any point during the modern era (except for the period of financial repression after the second world war, when markets were much less developed than today). While a sustained rise in the long-term real interest rate is a low-probability event, it is far from impossible. Although there are many explanations of the long-term trend decline, some factors could be temporary and it is difficult to establish the magnitude of different possible effects empirically. One factor that could cause global rates to rise, on the benign side, would be a spurt in productivity, for example, if the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution starts to affect growth much faster than is currently anticipated. This would of course be good overall for the global economy but it might greatly strain lagging regions and groups. But upward pressure on global rates could stem from a less benign factor: a sharp trend decline in Asian growth (for example, from a long-term slowdown in China) that causes the region’s longstanding external surpluses to swing into deficits. The notion that additional debt is a free lunch is foolish But perhaps the most likely cause of higher global real interest is the explosion of populism across much of the world. To the extent that populists can overturn the market-friendly economic policies of the past several decades, they may sow doubt in global markets about just how “safe” advanced-country debt really is. This could raise risk premia and interest rates, and if governments were slow to adjust, budget deficits would rise, markets would doubt governments even more and events could spiral. Most economists agree that today’s lower long-term interest rates allow advanced economies to sustain significantly more debt than they might otherwise. But the notion that additional debt is a free lunch is foolish. High debt levels make it more difficult for governments to respond aggressively to shocks. The inability to respond aggressively to a financial crisis, a cyber attack, a pandemic or a trade war significantly heightens the risk of long-term stagnation and is an important explanation of why most serious academic studies find that very high debt levels are associated with slower long-term growth. If policymakers rely too much on debt (as opposed to higher taxation on the wealthy) in order to pursue progressive policies that redistribute income, it is easy to imagine markets coming to doubt that countries will grow their way out of very high debt levels. Investors’ scepticism could well push up interest rates to uncomfortable levels. Of course, there are many other risks to global growth, including ever-increasing political chaos in the US, a messy Brexit, Italy’s shaky banks and heightened geopolitical tensions. But these outside risks do not make the outlook for global growth necessarily grim. The baseline scenario for the US is still strong growth. Europe’s growth could be above trend as well, as it continues its long, slow recovery from the debt crisis at the beginning of the decade. And China’s economy has been proving doubters wrong for many years. So 2019 could turn out to be another year of solid global growth. Unfortunately, it is likely to be a nerve-racking one as well. • Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. He was the IMF’s chief economist from 2001-03. © Project Syndicate    The US embassy in Havana more than halved its staff in 2017 when diplomats complained of headaches, nausea and other ailments after hearing penetrating noises in their homes and nearby hotels. The mysterious wave of illness fuelled speculation that the staff had been targeted by an acoustic weapon. It was an explanation that appeared to gain weight when an audio recording of a persistent, high-pitched drone made by US personnel in Cuba was released to the Associated Press. But a fresh analysis of the audio recording has revealed what scientists in the UK and the US now believe is the true source of the piercing din: it is the song of the Indies short-tailed cricket, known formally as Anurogryllus celerinictus. “The recording is definitively a cricket that belongs to the same group,” said Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, a professor of sensory biology at the University of Lincoln. “The call of this Caribbean species is about 7 kHz, and is delivered at an unusually high rate, which gives humans the sensation of a continuous sharp trill.” As a child growing up in South America, Montealegre-Zapata recalls collecting crickets of a similar species and keeping them in cages in his room. One night he woke to a penetrating sharp sound. The culprit was one of the males calling out for mates. The offender was banned from the room but Montealegre-Zapata could still hear the cricket singing for females. “I am not surprised that this call could disturb people who are not familiar with insect sounds,” he said. The identification of the sound source does not mean that an attack of some sort did not happen, but it casts doubt over the sound being responsible for the diplomats’ health problems. The cause and nature of their illnesses remains unclear. The spate of unexplained health problems among the US diplomats led doctors at the University of Pennsylvania to run tests on almost two dozen embassy staff. In March last year, the team concluded the diplomats had suffered concussion-like injuries, but other medical professionals have challenged the conclusions, claiming the doctors misinterpreted the test results. Not all of the affected diplomats reported unusual sounds when they fell ill, and descriptions of any noises differed from person to person. Some recalled grinding or cicada-like sounds, while others experienced buffeting like that caused by an open car window. In the new study, Montealegre-Zapata and Alexander Stubbs at the University of California searched a scientific database for insect sounds that matched the Cuban recording. The call of the Indies short-tailed cricket turned out to be remarkably similar, they found, with acoustic pulses repeated at the same rate, and specific frequencies being louder than others. But the cricket’s mating call and the Cuban recording did not match up perfectly. The sound recorded in Havana had an uneven pulse structure which is not seen in calling insects. Stubbs and Montealegre-Zapata realised that the discrepancy might be down to the environments in which the recordings were made. Scientists tend to record insect calls outside in the wild, while the diplomats complained of unpleasant sounds indoors. If the Cuban recording had been made in a room, the odd pulse structure might be explained by echoes off the walls, floor and ceiling. The researchers tested the idea by playing the call of the Indies short-tailed cricket in a room through a single loudspeaker. Recordings from the room show that the sound gained the same uneven pulse structure seen in the Cuban recording. The two sounds matched even more closely. Gerald Pollack, who studies how animals detect and discriminate sensory signals at McGill University in Montreal, said: “The paper shows how the cricket’s song could, when echoes to be expected in an indoor setting are taken into account, produce sounds strikingly, and quantitatively, similar to that provided by the AP. I find this a completely plausible explanation.” He added that while he had no personal experience with the Indies short-tailed cricket, he had not heard of their calls ever having caused harm. “So far as I am aware,” he said, “except perhaps for an occasional sleepless night, no-one has suffered ill health as a result of cricket calls.”“I have the absolute right to do national emergency if I want,” Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday. The wonderful thing about Trump’s presidency (I never thought I’d begin a sentence this way), is he brings us back to basics. The basic difference between a democracy and a dictatorship comes down to means and ends. Democracy is about means, not ends. If we all agreed on the ends (such as whether to build a wall along the Mexican border) there’d be no need for democracy. But of course we don’t agree, which is why the means by which we resolve our differences are so important. Those means include a constitution, a system of government based on the rule of law, and an independent judiciary. A dictatorship, by contrast, is only about ends. Those ends are the goals of the dictator – at a minimum, preserving and accumulating personal power. To achieve those ends, a dictator will use any means necessary. Which brings us back to Trump. The conventional criticism of Trump is that he is unfit to be president because he continuously breaks the norms of how a president should behave. Trump’s norm-breaking is unsettling, to be sure, but his more fundamental offense is he continuously sacrifices means in order to preserve and accumulate personal power. He thereby violates a US president’s core responsibility to protect American democracy. He is asserting power by any means possible. This is the method of a dictator A president who shuts down government in order to get his way on a controversial issue, such as building a wall along the border with Mexico, offering to reopen it as a concession when his opponents give in, is not protecting the means of democracy. He is treating the government of the United States as a bargaining chip. He is asserting power by any means possible. This is the method of a dictator. A president who claims he has an absolute right to order the military to take actions in the US that are the subject of intense political debate, and do so without congressional approval, is not acting as the head of government of a democracy; he is assuming the role of a dictator. A president who spouts lies during a primetime national television address over what he terms an “undeniable crisis” at the southern US border, which is in fact no crisis at all, is not protecting democracy. He is using whatever means available to him to preserve and build his base of power. The real international threat to the US is not coming from the southern border. It is coming from a foreign government intent on undermining our democracy by propagating lies, turning Americans against each other, and electing a puppet president. We do not know yet whether Trump colluded with Russian president Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election. What we do know so far is that Trump’s aides and campaign manager worked with Putin’s emissaries during the 2016 election, and that Putin sought to swing the election in favor of Trump. We also know that since he was elected, Trump has done little or nothing to stop Putin from continuing to try to undermine our democracy. To the contrary, Trump has obstructed inquiries into Russian meddling. The overall pattern is clear to anyone who cares to see it. Trump’s entire presidency to date has sacrificed the means of democracy to the end of preserving his personal power. He has lied about the results of votes and established a commission to investigate bogus claims of fraudulent voting; attacked judges who have ruled against him, with the goal of stirring up the public against them; encouraged followers to believe that his opponent in the 2016 election should be imprisoned; and condemned as “enemies of the people” journalists who report unfavorably about him, in an effort to fuel public resentment – perhaps even violence – against them. To argue, as some Trump apologists do, that whatever Trump does is justified because voters put Trump in power, is to claim that voters can decide to elect a dictator. They cannot. Even if a majority of Americans were to attempt such thing (and, remember, Trump received 3m fewer votes than his opponent in 2016), the constitution prohibits it. The choice could not be clearer. Democracy is about means. Dictatorship is about ends. Trump uses any means available to achieve his own ends. We can preserve our democracy and force Trump out of office. Or we can continue to struggle against someone who strives to thwart democracy for his own benefit. In the months ahead, that choice will be made, one way or the other. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common GoodEx-Pixar head John Lasseter has scored a top new position in Hollywood, leading to a backlash from within the industry. Lasseter took a leave of absence from Pixar and Disney after admitting “missteps” related to his treatment of female colleagues. The cofounder of Pixar Animation Studios and the animation chief of Walt Disney Company apologised for anyone upset by an “unwanted hug” or “any other gesture” that was perceived as crossing the line. The Hollywood Reporter has cited Lasseter’s misbehaviour as “grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes” and his original leave of absence was later extended to a resignation. His new position sees him heading up Skydance Animation, a strand within Skydance Media, a production company run by David Ellison, who founded the company with inheritance money from his billionaire father Larry Ellison. The company, affiliated with Paramount Pictures, has released a string of hit films from World War Z to Star Trek Beyond. “Let me be clear: we have not entered into this decision lightly,” Ellison wrote in a company memo. “While we would never minimize anyone’s subjective views on behavior, we are confident after many substantive conversations with John, and as the investigation has affirmed, that his mistakes have been recognised. We are certain that John has learned valuable lessons and is ready to prove his capabilities as a leader and a colleague.” According to Variety, a town hall meeting is planned at Skydance for concerns while Lasseter is set to meet with staff this week. The news has led to anger from some within the industry, including Time’s Up, the organisation founded to stand up against sexual harassment after the rise of the #MeToo movement. In a statement, Time’s Up claims the decision “endorses and perpetuates a broken system that allows powerful men to act without consequence” while sharing concerns over what impact it will have. “At a moment when we should be uplifting the many talented voices who are consistently underrepresented, Skydance Media is providing another position of power, prominence and privilege to a man who has repeatedly been accused of sexual harassment in the workplace,” it reads. Melissa Silverstein, who founded Women in Hollywood, also shared her frustration. “This is a horrible message to the women at Pixar who stood up and told their truths about their experiences,” she said. “This is also a message to all that the bro culture is alive and well and thriving in Hollywood.”Cut 300g of smoked pancetta into small dice, each piece measuring roughly 2cm. Warm 2 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan, add the pancetta and let it cook over a moderate heat, stirring regularly, until the fat starts to turn a translucent gold. Pull the leaves from 3 sprigs of thyme or lemon thyme and add them to the pancetta. Cut 2 large tomatoes (not beefsteak) into small dice and add to the pancetta. Continue cooking, stirring regularly, and then add 400g of cod cheeks. Roughly chop the leaves from 3 or 4 sprigs of parsley and stir in together with a light seasoning of salt and black pepper. Continue cooking for 3 or 4 minutes until the cheeks are cooked and the sauce is thick and brick red. Serve immediately. Enough for 2. Cod cheeks need very little cooking. Trim any silvery skin from them and cut them into spoon-sized pieces if they are particularly large. Use large tomatoes, but not beefsteak as they have a tendency to be watery. The dish is on the table in 10 minutes and is at its best served immediately. If cod cheeks remain elusive, you can use prawns, either shelled, or, if you are happy to get your fingers deliciously messy, in their shells. The cooking time will be the same, the cost considerably more. The Observer aims to publish recipes for fish rated as sustainable by the Marine Conservation Society’s Good Fish Guide Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@NigelSlaterA UK foreign office minister has suggested that the Bank of England grant access to £1.2bn in Venezuelan gold reserves to the self-proclaimed interim leader Juan Guaidó rather than Nicolás Maduro. In a statement to British MPs, Sir Alan Duncan said the decision was a matter for the Bank and its governor, Mark Carney, and not the government. But he added: “It is they who have to make a decision on this, but no doubt when they do so they will take into account there are now a large number of countries across the world questioning the legitimacy of Nicolás Maduro and recognising that of Juan Guaidó.” Guaidó has already written to Theresa May asking for the funds to be sent to him. The young face of the opposition is almost unknown both inside and outside Venezuela, and was thrust on to centre stage by chance. Guaidó was made chairman of the national assembly on 5 January because it was the turn of his party, Voluntad Popular (People’s Will). At 35, he is a junior member of the party but its leaders are either under house arrest, in hiding or in exile. His relative obscurity has been an advantage in a country where the opposition has generally failed to distinguish itself, losing its nerve at critical moments, succumbing to infighting, and getting involved in a failed coup against Hugo Chávez in 2002. Guaidó stakes his claim to the presidency on a clause in the constitution that states that the chair of the national assembly is allowed to assume interim power and declare new elections in 30 days if the legislature deems the president to be failing to fulfil basic duties or to have vacated the post. Questions have been raised about the bedfellows Guaidó has chosen in what he calls his bid to rescue Venezuela. His main international backer is Donald Trump. Another key regional supporter is Brazil’s far-right firebrand president, Jair Bolsonaro, known for his hostility to human rights and his fondness for dictatorship. Despite these characteristics, Guaidó has praised what he called Bolsonaro’s “commitment to and for democracy [and] human rights”. The former chair of the foreign affairs select committee Crispin Blunt said the current Venezuelan central bank president was not legitimate, since he had not been appointed by the country’s national assembly. Blunt has sent letters to the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, urging a decision. Duncan said Hunt would be discussing the next steps in the European Union’s efforts to support Guaidó in Bucharest on Thursday. Key EU states including France, Germany, Spain and the UK on Saturday urged Maduro to call free and fair elections within eight days or else see Guaidó recognised as interim president by the international community. The EU stance was backed by the SNP and the Liberal Democrats in the Commons. For all the international criticism of the Maduro government, there are concerns that Guaidó’s main regional backers are Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, said democracy had ceased to function in any meaningful way in Venezuela and that its people needed a government that respected the rule of law and upheld human rights and democracy, but she cautioned against a rush to oust Maduro. “Judging by its record in recent years, the Maduro government fits none of those descriptions, but I would also believe that it is a mistake in situations like this simply to think that changing the leader will automatically solve every problem, let alone the kind of US-led intervention being threatened by Donald Trump and [the US national security adviser] John Bolton.” She said Britain’s chief priority should ultimately be to allow the Venezuelan people to decide the way forward through free and fair elections. Thornberry’s remarks appeared to distance Labour from the eight-day deadline set by the EU. Maduro has rejected the deadline, insisting that his government will not fall to a coup. The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokeswoman, Jo Swinson, said an interventionist approach was justified given the humanitarian crisis and the rigged elections conducted by Maduro. Duncan repeatedly pointed out that Maduro’s neighbouring countries had referred Venezuela to the international criminal court. But the former Conservative cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke advised against opposing further economic sanctions and confessed his trepidation about what the US was seeking to achieve. He recommended economic sanctions to force the military to withdraw its support for Maduro. Duncan said he recognised the need for caution. “The narrative of US interference in Latin America can stir up counterproductive voices when what we want to do is solve the problem, rather than relive some of the difficulties of a few decades ago,” he said.The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has said the UK and Ireland would have to negotiate a bilateral agreement on “full alignment” of customs to avoid a hard border with Northern Ireland in a no-deal scenario. It is the first time the taoiseach has mentioned the possibility of a separate deal with the UK to mitigate against a hard border. He was speaking after the European commission spokesman said it was “pretty obvious” border infrastructure would be necessary if the UK were to leave without an agreement. Ireland has avoided talking about what it would do in the event of the UK crashing out of the EU, but experts say controls would be mandatory under European and WTO rules on both sides of the Northern Ireland border if the UK left the bloc. On Tuesday, Varadkar said a no-deal Brexit would present a “real dilemma” for Ireland. “Both the UK and Ireland will have an obligation to honour the Good Friday agreement, protect the peace process and honour our commitment to the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland, that there won’t be a hard border,” he said. “We’d have to negotiate an agreement on customs and regulations that meant full alignment, so there will be no hard border.” Varadkar’s remarks come just days after Downing Street dismissed reports that it would seek a bilateral agreement with Ireland to break the Brexit impasse. However, the idea that Northern Ireland would remain aligned to the Republic in the event of no deal is unlikely to win support of Brexiters or the Democratic Unionist party. The Irish government has admitted it would be “very difficult” to avoid border infrastructure in Ireland under a no-deal Brexit, but has refused to countenance any changes to the “backstop” arrangement in the current withdrawal agreement. Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, Simon Coveney, said his focus remained on the withdrawal agreement and the backstop insurance policy. “In the absence of the backstop and a withdrawal agreement, we have a very difficult job to do to prevent border infrastructure, but of course that would have to be our focus,” he said. The Irish government has insisted for months that, while it will prepare for a hard Brexit with the UK at the ports and airports, it will not put in place infrastructure to check goods or people at the land border with Northern Ireland. The backstop in the draft withdrawal agreement has been a central part of Dublin’s plan to avoid checks on the Irish border. “We already have that agreement, that is the backstop. Nobody who is opposed to the backstop can credibly say that they are also against a hard border,” Coveney said. “Unless they can come up with something else. Nobody else has done that yet.” Poland’s foreign minister has suggested a time-limited backstop but this has been dismissed by other EU ministers who said the “breakthrough” must come from the UK. The Irish believe a time limit would mean it was not actually a backstop, designed to prevent a hard border if no better trade deal is hammered out between the UK and the EU.A major hospital in Papua New Guinea has warned there will be a mass burial of 154 bodies held in its overflowing morgue unless family members collect the bodies in the next two weeks. Port Moresby general hospital, in the Papua New Guinean capital, has issued the call for people to claim their relatives’ remains, saying the bodies of 68 women, 64 men and 22 children were lying in the morgue awaiting collection. The mass burial will take place in two weeks at the public cemetery at Nine-Mile, a settlement in Port Moresby. Dr Paki Molumi, the hospital’s director of medical services, said the lack of capacity in the morgue meant mass burials were a common feature at the hospital, with five taking place in 2018. Molumi said up to 20% of bodies were not collected by their families, requiring the hospital to bury them and he anticipated that of the 154 bodies, the hospital would eventually bury 50 or 60 of them. “What we want to do is have people come to claim the bodies, if people don’t claim them we won’t have enough space in the morgue,” he said. “We need people to collect them to make sure that we have good turnaround times, so we don’t have bodies all over the place. We don’t want bodies in the morgue for a long time.” The hospital’s morgue is built to accommodate 150 bodies – the hospital has been required to store the additional bodies in airconditioned containers. Molumi said there was a rigorous process in place to try to ensure the body of a person who dies at the hospital is returned to the family for burial. First, the hospital contacts the deceased’s family, council and village leaders. If the body is still unclaimed after one month, the hospital applies to the court, which has to give permission for a mass burial.This month marks the 10th anniversary of the first major military assault on the 2 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. After its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Israel turned the area into the biggest open-door prison on Earth. The two hallmarks of Israel’s treatment of Gaza since then have been mendacity and the utmost brutality towards civilians. On 27 December 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, pounding the densely populated strip from the air, sea and land for 22 days. It was not a war or even “asymmetric warfare” but a one-sided massacre. Israel had 13 dead; the Gazans had 1,417 dead, including 313 children, and more than 5,500 wounded. According to one estimate 83% of the casualties were civilians. Israel claimed to be acting in self-defence, protecting its civilians against Hamas rocket attacks. The evidence, however, points to a deliberate and punitive war of aggression. Israel had a diplomatic alternative, but it chose to ignore it and to resort to brute military force. In June 2008 Egypt had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that rules Gaza. The agreement called on both sides to cease hostilities and required Israel to gradually ease the illegal blockade it had imposed on the Gaza Strip in June 2007. This ceasefire worked remarkably well – until Israel violated it by a raid on 4 November in which six Hamas fighters were killed. The monthly average of rockets fired from Gaza on Israel fell from 179 in the first half of 2008 to three between June and October. The story of the missed opportunity to avoid war was told to me by Robert Pastor, a professor of political science at the American University in Washington DC and a senior adviser on conflict resolution in the Middle East at the Carter Center NGO. Here is what Pastor told me over the phone and later confirmed in an email to Dr Mary Elizabeth King, another close associate of President Carter, on 8 December 2013, a month before Pastor’s death. Pastor met Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas politburo chief, in Damascus in December 2008. Mashaal handed him a written proposal on how to restore the ceasefire. In effect, it was a proposal to renew the June 2008 ceasefire agreement on the original terms. Pastor then travelled to Tel Aviv and met with Major General (Ret) Amos Gilad, head of the defence ministry’s political affairs bureau. Gilad promised that he would communicate the proposal directly to defence minister Ehud Barak, and expected to have an answer either that evening or the following day. The next day, Pastor phoned Gilad’s office three times and got no response. Shortly afterwards, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead. In the email he dictated to his son on his death bed, Pastor authorised me to publicise this story and to attribute it to him because “it’s an important moment in history that Israel needs to accept because Israel had an alternative to war in December 2018”. It was indeed a critical moment and it conveyed a clear message: if Israel’s real purpose was to protect its civilians, all it needed to do was to follow Hamas’s example by observing the ceasefire. Israel’s conduct during the first Gaza war was placed under an uncompromising lens by the UN Human Rights Council’s independent fact-finding mission headed by Richard Goldstone, the distinguished South African judge who happened to be both a Jew and a Zionist. Goldstone and his team found that both Hamas and the Israel Defence Forces had committed violations of the laws of war by deliberately harming civilians. The IDF received more severe strictures than Hamas on account of the bigger scale and seriousness of its violations. The Goldstone team investigated 36 incidents involving the IDF. It found 11 incidents in which Israeli soldiers launched direct attacks against civilians with lethal outcomes; seven where civilians were shot leaving their homes waving white flags; a “direct and intentional” attack on a hospital; numerous incidents where ambulances were prevented from attending to the severely injured; and nine attacks on civilian infrastructure with no military significance, such as flour mills, sewage works, and water wells – all part of a campaign to deprive civilians of basic necessities. In the words of the report, much of this extensive damage was “not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly”. In conclusion, the 575-page report noted that while the Israeli government sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of the right to self-defence, “the Mission itself considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole”. Under the circumstances “the Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” The claim that the operation was designed to “terrorise a civilian population” needs underlining. Terrorism is the use of force against civilians for political purposes. By this definition Operation Cast Lead was an act of state terrorism. The political aim was to force the population to repudiate Hamas, which had won a clear majority in the elections of January 2006. Operation Cast Lead is emblematic of everything that is wrong with Israel’s approach to Gaza. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political conflict to which there is no military solution. Yet Israel persists in shunning diplomacy and relying on brute military force – and not as a last resort but as a first resort. Force is the default setting. And there is a popular Israeli saying that goes with it: “If force doesn’t work, use more force!” Operation Cast Lead was just the first in a series of Israeli mini-wars on Gaza. It was followed by Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. The fancy names given to these operations were fraudulent, dressing up offensive attacks on defenceless civilians and civilian infrastructure in the sanctimonious language of self-defence. They are typical examples of Orwellian double-speak. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called the Israeli attack on 1 August 2014 on Rafah, in which a large number of civilians sheltering in UN schools were killed, “a moral outrage and a criminal act”. This description applies equally to Israel’s entire policy of waging war on the inmates of the Gaza prison. Israeli generals talk about their recurrent military incursions into Gaza as “mowing the lawn”. This operative metaphor implies a task that has to be performed regularly and mechanically and without end. It also alludes to the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and the inflicting of damage on civilian infrastructure that takes several years to repair. “Mowing the lawn” is a chilling euphemism but it provides a clue as to the deeper purpose behind Israel’s steadfast shunning of diplomacy and repeated resort to brute military force in response to all manifestations of lawful resistance and peaceful protest on its southern border. Under this grim rubric, there can be no lasting political solution: the next war is always just a matter of time. • Avi Shlaim is an emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab WorldThe gang stop and stare, attention spiked by our car doors slamming. Ten pairs of eyes flit between our backpacks and our faces. Is it worth mugging us? Do our bags contain bananas or useless, inedible wallets and cameras? The monkeys of Kuala Lumpur’s Ampang district decide against it and head further down the road in the hunt for victims. The morning joggers here run with sticks. “Twenty years ago this was jungle,” says Viswa Hattan, an accountant jogging in the area. Gated high-rises loom ahead of us, the roads leading to them flanked by forest too dense to enter without machetes. Four macaques, babies clinging to their chests, loiter on a metal road barrier uphill from a construction site. “This was their area,” says Hattan as a nearby male macaque begins vigorously masturbating. “We’ve taken it from them.” By 2035 another 15 cities will have populations above 10 million, according to the latest United Nations projections, taking the total number of megacities to 48. Guardian Cities is exploring these newcomers at a crucial period in their development: from car-centric Tehran to the harsh inequalities of Luanda; from the film industry of Hyderabad to the demolition of historic buildings in Ho Chi Minh City. We'll also be in Chengdu, Dar es Salaam, Nanjing, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baghdad, Kuala Lumpur, Xi'an, Seoul, Wuhan and London. Read more from the next 15 megacities series here. Nick Van Mead This was their area. We’ve taken it from them The Malaysian capital’s dramatic urban expansion over the past 30 years has shunted much wildlife, including elephants and tigers, from its boundaries. The long-tailed macaques, though, have stayed, with the city’s growing human population providing them with a tempting source of thrown-away food. In 1980 the (human) population of Kuala Lumpur was less than 1 million; it is now estimated at 7.6 million, and United Nations projections suggest it will surpass 10 million by 2032. While some of that growth has been in the central city zone, in massive structures such as the 90s-built Petronas Towers, the most rampant expansion has been at the outskirts of the city and in the surrounding lush forest. As the city eats into the forest, the relationship between human and monkey populations has become increasingly complicated. Photographs: Rahman Roslan/Dokumen Studio/the Guardian/sitriel/Getty Images/ As Kuala Lumpur eats up more and more forest, the relationship between its human residents and its monkey population has become ever more complicated. In areas like Ampang, a 15-minute drive from the city centre, macaques break into houses and locals use firecrackers to scare them off. Or, occasionally, to feed to them, with predictably explosive results. At suburban campuses such as that of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), complaints of messy monkey bin raids are rife. “They chase lecturers to the toilets,” says Prof Siti Aminah Osman, a deputy dean, as she stifles a laugh. In 2015 students mixed shrimp paste, spicy chilli and peanuts to feed the monkeys, to repel them. Now staff are working on “anti-monkey bins” with heavy lids. Opened in 1970, UKM’s campus is 70% forest area. Endangered flora has been built around and monkeys clamber trees overlooking faculty buildings. A 2014 study found that fewer than 10% of UKM students favoured the monkeys’ presence on campus, but in other peripheral areas of the city the creatures are seen as pals, not pests. In KL Forest Eco Park, a slab of city-centre rainforest protected as a reserve since 1906, the macaque population is celebrated via cartoons on information boards. At Batu Caves, a popular Hindu temple site in north Kuala Lumpur, monkeys probably attract more tourists than the site’s enormous gold-painted statues. The caves back on to jungle, and the macaques crowd the area’s garishly painted staircase, swiping bags and creating top content for vloggers. Sethu Pathy, Batu Caves’ secretary, says the monkeys here rely on tourists for food, seemingly abandoning jungle foraging for a diet of chewing gum, stolen flower necklaces and hurled fruit. He supports his claim by lobbing bananas on the ground, causing a monkey melee before a macaque tips over a full cup of coffee left on a table. On the stairs, a monkey scoops its hand into a splatter pool of brown human vomit, then licks it clean. “Now we can’t see elephants or tigers in this district,” says Pathy, as the banana supply ends and the monkeys move off to explore nearby wheelie bins. “Day by day, land is being cleared for housing and factories. Natural habitats have been disposed of, but monkeys are still around. We occupied their habitat.” It is not all happy monkey families in the caves. Pathy says locals complain about the macaques stealing from them, and that eight years ago the Malaysian government’s wildlife department relocated many monkeys from the site to the forest. Some of Kuala Lumpur’s growth has been in the city’s central zone, but the most rampant development has been on its outskirts. Photograph: Hafiez Razali/Alamy Around that time the department, reacting to complaints from the public about macaques across the peninsula, got tough. More than 57,000 long-tailed macaques were culled in Malaysia in 2010 – double the number from the year before. The figure rose above 97,000 in 2012, prompting a backlash from animal rights groups who claimed monkeys were sometimes shot out of trees, or captured in cages before being shot. The department responded that culling was “to protect human safety [and] reduce economic losses due to damage done by wildlife to commercial crops and property. We have to see the bigger picture rather than just focusing on the numbers.” With an average of 3,800 complaints from the public about long-tailed macaques made nationwide every year, the wildlife department’s culls have continued, with up to 70,000 of the animals killed annually between 2013 and 2016. The department declined to speak to the Guardian but Ahmad Ismail, a biology professor at Universiti Putra Malaysia and president of the Malaysian Nature Society, says culling has been reduced over the past couple of years. He believes the authorities are shifting focus from culling to relocating monkeys, saying: “I think they stopped [mass] culling and we encourage that – as a naturalist I prefer them to catch and move monkeys.” At Batu Caves, a popular Hindu temple site, monkeys are a major tourist draw. Photographs: Rahman Roslan/Dokumen Studio/the Guardian/Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Getty Animal rights groups such as Sahabat Alam Malaysia have called for monkeys to be sterilised rather than culled, but although the wildlife department has experimented with castrating macaques, mass sterilisation would be very expensive. Ismail believes that focusing efforts on educating humans about interacting with monkeys is the most realistic way of reducing conflict between the species. Organisations including the Malaysia Nature Society already organise talks in schools about behaving around monkeys. Prof Badrul Munir of the UKM’s School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences says that if enough people refrain from feeding macaques where they congregate, the snack association eventually fades and they harass humans less. “In Penang Botanical Gardens, they had problems with macaques chasing people,” he says. “They put signs up [telling people not to feed them] and now macaques are not a problem there.” Whether monkey handouts decline or not, with Kuala Lumpur’s population due to surpass 10 million within 15 years, its human and its monkey residents look likely to have to share more and more living space. Many people in Malaysia are hoping for a future in which slightly fewer monkeys chase lecturers into toilet blocks, harass joggers and steal confidential military documents from postmen. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, explore our archive or sign up to receive our weekly newsletterThe gentle glow of moonlight on water has moved musicians, poets and painters – and, it turns out, molluscs. Researchers have discovered the opening and shutting of oysters’ shells appears to be tied to the lunar cycle. Biological clocks have intrigued scientists for centuries, and researchers in the field won the 2017 Nobel prize for studies into the 24-hour body clock. However, organisms do not necessarily have biological processes linked only to the rhythm of day and night, the circadian clock. Other patterns that include links to the tides have been found for species including the horseshoe crab, and to the phases of the moon for creatures including the bristle worm. Some have suggested the latter may also affect humans. Now experts say they have found evidence that oysters not only have a circadian clock and a tidal clock, but are also attuned to lunar rhythms. “It was a surprise to see that there is a such an effect of the moonlight,” said Laura Payton, co-author of the research from the University of Oldenburg. Writing in the Biology Letters journal, Payton and her colleague Damien Tran from the University of Bordeaux describe how they tracked the behaviour of 12 Pacific oysters submerged off the French coast over the course of three and a half lunar cycles from the end of 2014. The team used electrodes to track the molluscs’ degree of opening every 1.6 seconds and looked at astronomical data to assess how much of the moon was illuminated. The results reveal the oysters were most open in the buildup to – and presence of – a new moon, and less open as the moon entered first quarter and full phases. The team says that suggests oysters can sense moonlight – even though it is far less intense than the sun’s rays. However, Payton said the situation was complex, noting the creatures appeared to be able to tell if the moon was waxing or waning: the oysters were generally more open during the third quarter than the first quarter. Payton said one possiblity was that the benthic bivalves may have evolved an internal lunar clock, rather than passively relying on direct cues. In that case, she added, the moonlight sensed by the oyster would help keep this clock in sync with the environment rather than directly triggering the opening and shutting of the shell – similar to how humans use daylight to keep their internal 24-hour clock on track. The team suggests the increased opening of the oysters when moonlight levels are lower might be linked to the possibility that more food is available at low light levels: previous studies have suggested the movement of plankton also appears to be influenced by light. “We know that oysters open their valves when there is food,” Payton said. However, the study did not look at the impact of the moon on oysters’ behaviour in all seasons, or take into account cloud cover – and hence the actual level of moonlight the molluscs experienced. David Wilcockson, a senior lecturer in aquatic biology at Aberystwyth University, said there were still many mysteries in the field. “We know that, for example, tidal, lunar and circadian clocks appear to have separate mechanisms, but they are to some extent linked – and we don’t know quite how and to what level,” he said. Wilcockson said human activity could cause unexpected problems in marine environments – an issue research like the latest study could help examine. “If you have coastal lighting, for example, or lighting on marine structures, then of course we don’t really know what the impacts of those might be,” he said.Temperature records have been broken in towns across parts of Australia sweltering through a heatwave, which is currently in its fourth day. Australia also recorded its hottest December on record the Bureau of Meteorology said on Thursday in a special climate statement on “the unusual extended period of heatwaves” across much of the country. December 27 was the hottest on record for nationally averaged mean maximum temperature (40.19C) and the second hottest day on record for any month. Nine places in New South Wales broke temperature records on Wednesday – including six all-time records, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Whitecliff, in the state’s north-west, recorded the highest maximum temperature in NSW of 48.2C just before 3.30pm – an all-time high for the area. Far-western towns of Wilcannia, Menindee and Ivanhoe are all tipped to reach 48C on Thursday, as the high-intensity heatwave continues. The NSW-Victoria border cities of Albury and Wodonga reached their hottest day on record, at 45.3C. According to the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, Australia has warmed by 1C since 1910, and temperatures will increase in the future. So how will climate change affect future heatwaves in Australia? The CSIRO and BoM have compiled different models for predicting the outcome of climate change in Australia to produce a guide to how different regions will likely be affected. They found that every part of Australia will continue to experience increases in average temperature, and will have a higher frequency of hot days. The duration of hot spells will increase in every region. In many areas in the northern half of Australia, the average number of days above 35C could increase by two to three times. Late in the century, towns such as Darwin, Alice Springs and Broome  may experience days with temperatures above 35C for about a third of the year. These higher temperatures will also result in higher evaporation, which will continue to make drought conditions worse. The Bureau of Meteorology on Thursday confirmed the statistics for the past 24 hours, warning there was more hot weather on the way. “The extreme heatwave across northern Victoria produced a few records yesterday: 45.3C in Albury-Wodonga was its hottest day on record, that record spanning over 30 years,” senior meteorologist Rod Dickson said. Other centres posted in the record books, with Mangalore, two hours north of Melbourne, reaching 44.8C, its hottest January day on record. And the northern township of Yarrawonga’s maximum of 45.7C was its equal hottest day. “Broadly speaking across the north yesterday temperatures ranged between 45 and 46 degrees, so some pretty extreme heat,” Dickson said. Overnight brought only slight relief, as temperatures dipped to about 27C. Over the past three days, maximum temperatures across South Australia have been running 10 to 14 degrees above average. In its climate statement for the past month, the Bom also said Christmas Day had been Australia’s warmest Christmas since records began, and Boxing Day was also the warmest on record. “Australia’s overall mean temperature for December was the highest on record, 2.13C above the 1961–1990 average and more than 0.3C warmer than the previous record from 1972,” the Bom said. “Record high State and Territory averaged mean temperatures were also seen in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory; Western Australia and South Australia were second-warmest, and Queensland was third-warmest.” The climate statement said Australia’s mean maximum and mean minimum temperatures for December were also record warm, with the mean minimum more than half a degree above the previous record from 1972. Numerous states this week have enacted health warnings related to the heatwave, which is ongoing. Sujata Allan is a member of Doctors for the Environment and works as a GP in Blacktown, where temperatures regularly exceed those in the CBD. She has spent six years working on and off in western Sydney, which can have maximum temperatures that are as much as 10C higher than in coastal areas, and sees the impact a changing climate can have on human health. “Western Sydney has a lot of people who are more at risk. Western Sydney has some of the most economically disadvantaged people in the country and higher rates of chronic illness.” Allan said she had treated one patient for heat stress this week who worked in a factory that wasn’t well-ventilated, and she regularly sees elderly patients who struggle in the heat if they don’t drive and have poor public transport connections. Some regional centres posted record highs on Tuesday, including Port Augusta and Tarcoola where the mercury climbed close to 50C. Tarcoola was among the hottest spots again on Wednesday with a top of 48.7C while Coober Pedy had 47.8C and Woomera 47.6C. SA’s State Emergency Service is maintaining an extreme heatwave emergency warning and the state government has declared a code red during the current conditions. Total fire bans are in place across much of central NSW, stretching from the Victorian border up to Queensland. Temperatures in Sydney’s west are expected to climb as high as 45C by Friday, ahead of an expected cool change on Saturday. Authorities are again warning people to take extra care in the heat by staying indoors, keeping hydrated and limiting physical activity during the extreme heat.When I was living in Yemen during the 1980s, someone gave me a battered old map. Information was scarce then, and accurate maps were extremely hard to come by. So departing expatriates tended to pass on any treasures to new arrivals. As he did so, my benefactor paused. “Be careful,” he said, “You don’t want to get caught with this.” Maps, you see, can be dangerous. I think of this when I meet Martin Greenaway, a cartographer at Stanfords in London. Martin is sitting by a couple of computer screens behind a treasure trove of maps: tables covered in vast colourful countries, wall racks groaning with continents, drawers stuffed with cities and mountain ranges. Stanfords has been making maps since the mid-1850s, and has operated from this purpose-built site on London’s Long Acre since 1901. Now it is moving on – opening new premises in nearby Mercer Walk on 10 January. Martin laughs at my Yemen story. “A customer came in and told us how, in the 1970s, he pulled out a 1:50,000 map on a bus and got into trouble with a Spanish secret policeman sitting next to him. Now we sell those same maps to walkers.” And do many still buy them, I ask. Isn’t the internet killing the paper map? “GPS and Google have certainly eaten into the market,” he says, “But I think paper is going to make a comeback. You just cannot orientate yourself as well with a handheld device.” Part of the reason for this possible comeback is that Stanfords can now print any map you need, centred on the place you choose, at a scale that suits your purpose. Martin takes me through the process. “You know how the hike you want is often at the join between two or more maps? We simply re-centre it and print it for you.” I’m reminded of the OS Explorer maps for the Lake District. Four sheets, all of which manage to fail miserably for anyone doing a walk centred on where they meet, roughly Grasmere Common. Now there’s a solution for someone like myself, a folded paper aficionado. And who buys such maps? “All sorts: a man who was researching an ancient pilgrim footpath in Italy got me to create a whole new map for it; a canoeist doing the Yukon River needed something similar. We get homeowners who are in boundary disputes, pilots – and a lot of people who can’t get maps in their own country.” That interests me. Many years ago I bought a map in Stanfords for a journey in Sudan. I knew I wouldn’t find anything like it once I was there. Repressive regimes around the world have always wanted to limit cartographic freedom. Martin nods. “We had one man who wanted a street map of Homs in Syria.” In a time when facts are to be treasured, perhaps paper maps have real significance, recording as they do a version of the truth less susceptible to tampering and fakery. Martin quickly demonstrates the opportunities and limitations of digital mapping by pulling up all the information he has on Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. It’s not a lot. “This is Open Street Map, a website that uses GPS data from contributors’ phones to build maps.” Home in on our own current location and the quality is good: every shop and alleyway in London’s Covent Garden is accurately plotted. Move to North Yorkshire and a footpath I’ve recently walked in the Howardian Hills is totally absent. Not that paper is infallible. The Ramblers is currently running a volunteer project called Don’t Lose Your Way, the purpose of which is to recover lost rights of way that somehow failed to make it on to maps. Its conservative estimate is that England and Wales are currently missing about 10,000 miles of footpaths on what are intended to be the definitive maps. These are held by all local councils and used by organisations including Ordnance Survey. Martin himself clearly delights in the new technology but his love of paper has a practical aspect. “I trained as a pilot when I was a teenager and we still need those paper maps.” He flies a lot in Canada, relishing the remote regions where many lakes remain unnamed, and where if geographical features have a name, they tend towards the bizarre. “My favourite is an escarpment in Alberta called Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump. Mind you, the UK is pretty good: you’ve got places such as Cold Christmas and Unthank.” To which I can add, from personal experience, Wetwang and Slack Bottom. We go through the process of printing a map: I choose an OS Explorer-style production with my own house bang in the middle. Handy for walks straight from the door. Martin bumps up the scale a bit. “It’s amazing how much more you see in a map when the scale is changed from 25,000 to 12,000. There’s no more information – we can’t add that – but you do spot things you’d previously missed.” We move to the formidable printing machine and load up with the paper of my choice, then watch as woods, streets and rivers roll out. Next to us is the map of London’s streets that taxi drivers use when learning The Knowledge. “People still do it?” “Oh yes. We sell a lot of these.” This formidable task is all the more fascinating at a time when the effects of the digital era on humans’ mental map abilities are becoming apparent. A recent study at the University of Montreal found that some video games that relied on non-spatial strategies could reduce growth in the hippocampus, an all-important region for mental mapping. The dangers of digital maps, it seems, could be inside your own head, rather than in the secret policeman sitting next to you. Martin keeps both options. “I always carry a GPS, a paper map and a compass.” I ask if he has a favourite map. “Stanford’s 1871 world map, showing the trade winds.” He fishes out a copy from one of the wall racks and we gaze in wonder at the colours and textures. “It’s a work of art.” It seems that paper maps will always trump digital in one important respect: beauty. • Stanfords customised OS 1:25,000 or 1:50,000 scale maps on A1 paper cost from £24.99 This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Looking over the year that has passed, it is a nice question whether human stupidity or artificial intelligence has done more to shape events. Perhaps it is the convergence of the two that we really need to fear. Artificial intelligence is a term whose meaning constantly recedes. Computers, it turns out, can do things that only the cleverest humans once could. But at the same time they fail at tasks that even the stupidest humans accomplish without conscious difficulty. At the moment the term is mostly used to refer to machine learning: the techniques that enable computer networks to discover patterns hidden in gigantic quantities of messy, real-world data. It’s something close to what parts of biological brains can do. Artificial intelligence in this sense is what enables self-driving cars, which have to be able to recognise and act appropriately towards their environment. It is what lies behind the eerie skills of face-recognition programs and what makes it possible for personal assistants such as smart speakers in the home to pick out spoken requests and act on them. And, of course, it is what powers the giant advertising and marketing industries in their relentless attempts to map and exploit our cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities. Changing the game The Chinese government’s use of machine learning for political repression has gone much further than surveillance cameras. A recent report from a government thinktank praised the software’s power to “predict the development trajectory for internet incidents … pre-emptively intervene in and guide public sentiment to avoid mass online public opinion outbreaks, and improve social governance capabilities”. Last year saw some astonishing breakthroughs, whose consequences will become clearer and more important. The first was conceptual: Google’s DeepMind subsidiary, which had already shattered the expectations of what a computer could achieve in chess, built a machine that can teach itself the rules of games of that sort and then, after two or three days of concentrated learning, beat every human and every other computer player there has ever been. AlphaZero cannot master the rules of any game. It works only for games with “perfect information”, where all the relevant facts are known to all the players. There is nothing in principle hidden on a chessboard – the blunders are all there, waiting to be made, as one grandmaster observed – but it takes a remarkable, and, as it turns out, inhuman intelligence to see what’s contained in that simple pattern. Computers that can teach themselves from scratch, as AlphaZero does, are a significant milestone in the progress of intelligent life on this planet. And there is a rather unnerving sense in which this kind of artificial intelligence seems already alive. Compared with conventional computer programs, it acts for reasons incomprehensible to the outside world. It can be trained, as a parrot can, by rewarding the desired behaviour; in fact, this describes the whole of its learning process. But it can’t be consciously designed in all its details, in the way that a passenger jet can be. If an airliner crashes, it is in theory possible to reconstruct all the little steps that led to the catastrophe and to understand why each one happened, and how each led to the next. Conventional computer programs can be debugged that way. This is true even when they interact in baroquely complicated ways. But neural networks, the kind of software used in almost everything we call AI, can’t even in principle be debugged that way. We know they work, and can by training encourage them to work better. But in their natural state it is quite impossible to reconstruct the process by which they reach their (largely correct) conclusions. Friend or foe? It is possible to make them represent their reasoning in ways that humans can understand. In fact, in the EU and Britain it may be illegal not to in certain circumstances: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives people the right to know on what grounds computer programs make decisions that affect their future, although this has not been tested in practice. This kind of safety check is not just a precaution against the propagation of bias and wrongful discrimination: it’s also needed to make the partnership between humans and their newest tools productive. One of the least controversial uses of machine learning is in the interpretation of medical data: for some kinds of cancers and other disorders computers are already better than humans at spotting the dangerous patterns in a scan. But it is possible to train them further, so that they also output a checklist of factors which, taken together, lead to their conclusions, and humans can learn from these. It’s unlikely that these are really the features that the program bases its decisions on: there is also a growing field of knowledge about how to fool image classification with tiny changes invisible to humans, so that a simple schematic picture of a fish can be specked with dots, at which point it is classified as a cat. More worryingly, the apparently random defacement of a stop sign can cause a computer vision system to suppose that it is a speed limit. Sound files can also be deliberately altered so that speech recognition systems will misinterpret them. With the growing use of voice assistants, this offers obvious targets to criminals. And, while machine learning makes fingerprint recognition possible, it also enables the construction of artificial fingerprints that act as skeleton keys to unlock devices. Power struggle The second great development of the last year makes bad outcomes much more likely. This is the much wider availability of powerful software and hardware. Although vast quantities of data and computing power are needed to train most neural nets, once trained a net can run on very cheap and simple hardware. This is often called the democratisation of technology but it is really the anarchisation of it. Democracies have means of enforcing decisions; anarchies have no means even of making them. The spread of these powers to authoritarian governments on the one hand and criminal networks on the other poses a double challenge to liberal democracies. Technology grants us new and almost unimaginable powers but at the same time it takes away some powers, and perhaps some understanding too, that we thought we would always possess.The UN’s special envoy for Yemen has given the security council a relatively positive view of the conflict there after the signing of a peace agreement – an assessment that contrasts with that of the UN-recognised government. Martin Griffiths told the UN security council there had been “a significant decrease in hostilities” in Yemen since the parties signed an outline peace agreement in Stockholm last month. His assessment that the ceasefire terms were largely being honoured by both sides follows a visit this week to Yemen, a country ravaged by civil war and repeated mass food shortages. The envoy’s optimism was balanced by a call for greater momentum in implementing the agreement and an admission that substantial progress is needed for the next stage of the peace talks to proceed. He said that overall the violence was remarkably limited compared with before the Stockholm talks. His view jars with claims by the UN-recognised government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi that Houthi rebels have refused to abide by key aspects of the deal, including the opening of vital aid routes. The Hadi government also claims that the promised unfettered humanitarian access to the Red Sea port of Hodeidah and its surrounding flour mills has not happened. The UN humanitarian co-ordinator Martin Lowcock told the security council: “Enough grain for 3.5 million people has now been sitting unused, possibly spoiling, for nearly four months in the mills. Unfortunately, over the last six weeks de facto authorities have blocked humanitarian supplies travelling from areas under their control to government-held areas. They have also recently informed humanitarian agencies that 72 hours’ notice is required ahead of any movements instead of the usual 48 hours.” Commercial food imports have fallen. That assessment is shared by the Hadi government’s backers – the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. A central aspect of the Stockholm agreement was a Houthi handover of the port to a UN-administered oversight team, the introduction of new security across the port city and a phased ceasefire across the region. A retired UN general, Patrick Cammaert, is in Hodeidah trying to implement the ceasefire, including mediating on the disagreements over the identity of the new security force. The general’s mandate expires on 20 January, requiring a further UN mandate. The UN is also looking for agreement to introduce as many as 75 observers to monitor the ceasefire for six months in Hodeidah. Griffiths said further talks on a prisoner swap agreement would be held in Amman, Jordan, next week. Agreement also remains elusive on the opening of Sana’a airport to international traffic and the future of the Central Bank of Yemen. Lowcock said the rial had slumped in value since the Stockholm talks despite a one-off cash injection. He told the 15-member security council: “I cannot yet report to you that the wider humanitarian situation in Yemen is any better. It remains catastrophic. More than 24 million people now need humanitarian assistance – that’s 80% of the population. They include 10 million people just a step away from famine. More than 3.3 million people have been displaced – over 600,000 of them in the last 12 months.” Most security council members decided to focus on the progress, but the German ambassador to the UN, Christoph Heusgen, described the position at the mills and ports as a scandal, adding: “We must do everything to stop this.”Scientists have found the remains of tiny, ancient animals in an Antarctic lake that has lain undisturbed for thousands of years beneath a kilometre-thick slab of ice. The surprise haul of dead crustaceans and tardigrades, also known as “water bears” or “moss piglets”, was made by US researchers on a rare mission to drill into the Mercer subglacial lake which lies nearly 400 miles from the south pole. David Harwood, a researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a member of the Salsa (Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access) expedition, told the journal Nature that finding carcasses of the small animals – they range in size from 0.1mm to 1.5mm – was “fully unexpected”. Scientists made the discovery when they inspected mud scraped off an instrument they had lowered into the lake’s icy waters. As expected, the mud contained remnants of photosynthetic algae that lived and died in the area millions of years ago when Antarctica was much warmer. But the mud also contained the bodies of other, more recent creatures. Researchers found eight-legged tardigrades, the speckled shell of a shrimp-like crustacean with legs dangling from it, and a second shell still bristling with delicate hairs. What at first looked like worms in the mud turned out to be the tendrils of a plant or fungus. Aware that the creatures might have contaminated other equipment, the scientists cleaned their kit and lowered it into the lake once more. When they hoisted it up and analysed the mud a second time, they found more of the same remains. It is not clear how the organisms came to be in the ice-covered lake, but scientists believe that they may have lived in nearby ponds and streams during warm periods when the glaciers retreated either 10,000 or 120,000 years ago. One possibility is that the creatures washed into the lake through rivers under the ice. Alternatively, they may have been carried in after becoming stuck to the underside of an encroaching glacier. Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College and head of the Lake Ellsworth Consortium, a UK project that aims to explore a subglacial lake under the ice of west Antarctica, said it was “a lovely finding”. He said: “It hints that life may exist in more complex forms than thought previously underneath the massive ice sheet in Antarctica.” Siegert said more work was needed to establish whether the organisms had been flushed into the lake from upstream – suggesting there was life under the middle of the Antarctic ice sheet – or from the sea, or by some other route. “Each of these would be intriguing,” he said. Sandra McInnes, an expert in tardigrades at the British Antarctic Survey, said: “If they can get DNA out of these remains, that would be fantastic.” If the tardigrade DNA perfectly matches that of species alive today, then scientists will suspect the animal was carried into the lake on contaminated drill equipment. But the DNA may be far older and indicate an ancient relative of a modern species. Genetic analysis might also confirm whether it was a marine or terrestrial creature, McInnes said. So far, nothing has been pulled alive from the Mercer subglacial lake. With so much ice overhead, too little light may reach the water to sustain organisms such as photosynthetic algae. But Byron Adams, a researcher at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, told Nature that he still hoped to find something that had set up home in the lake. “It’s possible that you could still find things that are alive,” he said.Another day, another reason to be elated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This time the newly sworn-in congresswoman – who in a matter of weeks has reshaped the political conversation in her own party and a country hit by the longest government shutdown in US history – aims squarely at CBS News. For its lack of black journalists. Tweeting to her 2.4 million followers, Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “This [White House] admin has made having a functional understanding of race in America one of the most important core competencies for a political journalist to have, yet CBS News hasn’t assigned a *single* black journalist to cover the 2020 election.” In true AOC style – bold, snappy, forthright, instantly meme-able – she added: “Unacceptable in 2019. Try again.” Before we wade into the response with the defiance of a student paying homage to The Breakfast Club on a college roof, let’s unpick this further. Ocasio-Cortez was responding to a CBS News producer revealing its team covering the 2020 US presidential campaign. Asian, Arab-American and Latino journalists were included, but no black reporter. This matters, not because of some facile quota system that says we need one of each race or it’s not true representation. It matters because a functional understanding of race is central to US (and indeed UK) politics. And when the conspicuously absent race happens to be the one discriminated against and weaponised the most, that tells us something, too. This is why we need people in power, and holding power to account, who know about the complexities of race through lived experience. And it’s why it takes someone like Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican, to notice, understand and call it out. But oh, how the establishment loathes it when such truths are spoken. Especially by a bright young woman who the right are so obsessed by (ie fear) that Fox News spent more than two hours covering her first five days in Congress. The response is always some predictable shade of defensiveness. The politics editor of the National Journal, Josh Kraushaar, wrote: “Another thing AOC has in common with Trump: media scold.” He went on: “If there aren’t strict racial quotas for every batch of hires, does it mean a company is racist?” To which Ocasio-Cortez patiently explained: “Do you understand how fundamental the black experience is to American politics? One race isn’t substitutable for another. It’s not about ‘quotas’. It’s about understanding the country you’re living in.” A recent New York Times op-ed describes Ocasio-Cortez as “a potent symbol for a diversifying Democratic party: a young woman of colour who is giving as good as she gets in a political system that has rarely rewarded people who look like her.” Like Barack Obama, Ocasio-Cortez did not choose to be a symbol, but who she is will always count as much as what she says. And, so far, what she says is thrilling.The European Union is attempting to agree on a temporary deal on the handling of migrants and refugees rescued at sea, after a push for wide-ranging reforms before the European elections failed to win support. Diplomats are studying plans from the European commission for a temporary mechanism to manage rescue boats, after a series of incidents in which vessels were unable to dock in any Mediterranean port. The latest case concerned 49 people who were at sea for almost three weeks onboard two German NGO ships, SeaWatch 3 and Sea Eye. They were allowed to disembark in Malta after a deal was struck to disperse them among eight EU member states. Speaking in the European parliament on Tuesday, the European commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said the incident was shameful and called for an end to “unorganised ad-hoc solutions”. A spokeswoman said: “The commission stands ready to work with member states in order to set up temporary arrangements that can ensure solidarity with the most exposed EU countries, which can serve as a bridge until the new Dublin regulation becomes applicable.” The Dublin regulation is a draft EU asylum law that has stalled over proposed quotas to distribute asylum seekers around the bloc. EU legislators – ministers and MEPs – have given up hope of a breakthrough before European elections in May. The latest idea for a temporary fix would not include quotas, nor prejudge decisions on the Dublin regulation, according to one EU source. Elements could include EU funds to return refused asylum claimants to their home countries. The plan has backing from around 10 member states, including France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, but has run into opposition from Hungary, which argues that the policy would encourage more people to attempt the sea crossing. The commission said it was not searching for unanimity but for a “critical mass of countries” to get the plan off the ground. Avramopoulos held separate meetings with Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, and prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, in Rome on Monday to discuss the plans. The commissioner described the meeting as constructive; the Italian government has yet to comment. Since Salvini closed Italian ports to NGO rescue boats last summer, EU countries have been scrambling to come up with ad-hoc arrangements whenever a vessel is stranded. The delays are seen as adding to the distress of those onboard and damaging to the EU’s credibility. “From a political perspective, with every crisis that occurs in the Mediterranean the political leverage of the EU is diminishing rapidly,” said Hanne Beirens, an associate director at the Migration Policy Institute in Brussels. She said the EU’s growing resistance to people coming from Syria had prompted other governments to question whether they should help. “We saw third countries that have been traditionally hosting a lot of refugees, in the Middle East or Kenya, becoming really resistant [and asking]: ‘OK, why should we continue to do this and should we not get more financial help?’” Numbers of people crossing the Mediterranean has fallen sharply since the peak of the crisis, although Spain has seen a surge in arrivals. Beirens said these relatively low numbers could reduce the incentive to reach an agreement, but that a coalition of “the usual suspects” could strike a deal. France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Malta and Ireland have typically been among the countries volunteering to take in refugees. “I expect that de facto there will be some kind of operational agreement because [officials] cannot spend days on the phone each time,” she said. “The question is how long it takes those ad-hoc arrangements to become more long-lasting.”We have all been there. In a rush to leave the house we grab our phones and head out the door, realising all too late that the battery is dead because we forgot to plug it into the tablecloth. Or perhaps we have not. But this could be the future that scientists hope to usher in with electronic sheets that charge our mobile phones, laptops and other gadgets by harvesting energy from the world around us. In a step in that direction, scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created super-thin, bendy materials that absorb wireless internet and other electromagnetic waves in the air and turn them into electricity. The lead researcher, Tomás Palacios, said the breakthrough paved the way for energy-harvesting covers ranging from tablecloths to giant wrappers for buildings that extract energy from the environment to power sensors and other electronics. Details have been published in the journal Nature. “When you have one of these energy-harvesting devices you are collecting energy 24/7 and you could be storing that in a battery to use later,” Palacios said. “You could cover your desk with an electronic tablecloth and even though you’re only at the desk for so many hours a day, it would be harvesting energy the whole time.” Palacios and his colleagues connected a bendy antenna to a flexible semiconductor layer only three atoms thick. The antenna picks up wifi and other radio-frequency signals and turns them into an alternating current. This flows into the molybdenum disulphide semiconductor, where it is converted into a direct electrical current. Ambient wifi signals can fill an office with more than 100 microwatts of power that is ripe to be scavenged by energy-harvesting devices. The MIT system has an efficiency of between 30% and 40%, producing about 40 microwatts when exposed to signals bearing 150 microwatts of power in laboratory tests. “It doesn’t sound like much compared with the 60 watts that a computer needs, but you can still do a lot with it,” Palacios said. “You can design a wide range of sensors, for environmental monitoring or chemical and biological sensing, which operate at the single microwatt level. Or you could store the electricity in a battery to use later.” Medical devices are another potential application. Because wifi and similar radio-frequency signals pass through people, energy-harvesting covers could be applied to implants to provide them with enough power to beam health data to an outside receiver. Researchers have made energy-harvesting “rectennas” before, but existing devices are made from conventional semiconductors which are rigid, fragile and practically impossible to make in large sheets. By contrast, molybdenum disulphide film can be produced in sheets on industrial roll-to-roll machines, meaning they can be made large enough to capture useful amounts of energy. “In the future, everything is going to be covered with electronic systems and sensors. The question is going to be how do we power them?” said Palacios. “This is the missing building block that we need.”It is a 100% mortgage but not, thank goodness, as we once knew them. Lloyds Bank’s new Lend a Hand mortgage offers first-time buyers the chance to borrow the entire price of their new home – but with the considerable caveat that a relative has to have a lump sum worth 10% that they are willing to tie up for three years, and have it raided if you miss any payments. So, first up: this is no use at all for anyone without a family member with a chunk of cash they don’t need, willing to help them on to the housing ladder. But nor is it the return of the bumper mortgage market we saw in the run-up to the financial crash, where loans of up to 125% were available (leaving some borrowers trapped in negative equity after the downturn). There is still careful thinking to be done before taking on a mortgage this size – and never more so than now, with uncertainty over Brexit clouding the market. Lloyds’ deal offers a mortgage of up to £500,000, which can be arranged over up to 30 years. The rate is a competitive 2.99%, fixed for three years, making it very slightly cheaper than the similar Springboard deal from Barclays. Over that same period, your family member’s cash sits in a linked account and earns interest at 1.5% above the base rate – a good deal in the current market. After three years they can take their cash, and you either move to Lloyds’ standard variable rate (SVR) or look for a new mortgage. According to Andrew Hagger of Moneycomms.co.uk, if house prices do not budge between now and then, someone who has opted for a 30-year term will have paid off 6.5% of their loan – leaving them in need of a 93.5% mortgage to switch to. Moneyfacts.co.uk figures show that there are remortgage deals available with the same rate as the Lloyds’ loan, so switching would not be too painful. But if house prices go south, you could run into problems. In the worst-case scenario you could end up in negative equity, with a mortgage debt higher than the value of your home – leaving you stuck with Lloyds and unable to move without taking a financial hit. The prospect could be enough to put you off a 100% mortgage – especially when it is far from 100% clear how Brexit will affect the housing market.He could smile, be gracious, look pleased to be there and deliver the letter U in a pleasing Scandi-Manc. He could make some of the best footballers in the world seem happy to be paid million of pounds a year to play for one of the biggest clubs in the world – a feat of psychological alchemy quite beyond his predecessor. But could Ole Gunnar Solskjær do it on a chilly Sunday evening in January, against one of the Premier League’s sharper tactical minds? It turns out, just about, that he could. When Tottenham play as they started on Sunday, with a midfield diamond, there is a vulnerability wide, behind the full-backs. Solskjær exploited that, setting Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial to peel wide and attack those areas, which meant Jesse Lingard effectively ended up as a false nine between them. Few teams go to Wembley and take on Tottenham with two up front, the result of which was the two centre-backs, Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld, repeatedly finding themselves two-on-two, a situation in which few modern defenders are comfortable. Perhaps Solskjær’s acuity shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, he made a career of sitting on the bench working out where he should best target his runs – all he’s doing now is advising others rather than his own legs where to make them. Sir Alex Ferguson always said, for that reason, that he expected Solskjær to be a successful manager. But this was also a Fergusonian strategy, in its boldness, risking losing the midfield battle, and in the fact that he always encouraged forwards to attack from out to in, something that reached its peak in 2007-08 when Cristiano Ronaldo was the central figure dropping deep and Carlos Tevez and Wayne Rooney exploited the space he created from the flanks. Solskjær’s time at Cardiff perhaps deserves reassessment: he would not be the first manager to find their competence unfairly questioned after failing to overcome enormous differentials of resources and being relegated. Perhaps it’s too easy to see evidence of Solskjær’s work in Rashford’s finish, to say there are signs he has brought technical improvement, but in that strike, driven low across Hugo Lloris into the bottom corner, and his goal at Newcastle, there is the sense of Rashford, a weight of critical inspection lifted from his shoulders, blossoming as a forward. Early in the second half at Wembley came Mauricio Pochettino’s response. Tottenham abandoned the diamond and switched to a 4-2-3-1. Son Heung-min and Christian Eriksen moved wide, Spurs’ full-backs dropped deeper. The space into which Rashford and Martial had romped was gone. It became about hanging on. Solskjær couldn’t check the shift in momentum. Only the excellence of David de Gea prevented Spurs not just levelling but winning. Pochettino called the second half the best 45 minutes Tottenham had produced under him – which may have been designed as a reminder to those who matter that he had not been tactically outwitted but was also possibly true. In terms of the battle of wits in the bench, then, a draw. But the gap from Spurs to the leaders, Liverpool, is now nine points. Six games have been lost this season. Defeat at home to United follows home reverses against Liverpool and Manchester City. They are not title challengers and probably never were. The squad is beginning to look a little threadbare: Harry Winks and Moussa Sissoko looked weary in Tuesday’s Carabao Cup semi-final but here they were again, asked to drag themselves through another game until the Frenchman suffered a muscular problem just before half-time. Winks, perhaps not surprisingly, was the only other Tottenham player substituted, withdrawn after 81 minutes. With Eric Dier and Victor Wanyama injured and Mousa Dembélé seemingly on his way to Beijing Guoan, there are few options. Attacking reserves may soon be an issue as well, depending how serious Harry Kane’s ankle injury is, particularly with Son joining up with South Korea at the Asian Cup. Perhaps this is an unusual set of circumstances. Most clubs, after all, would struggle with five first-teamers out. But it does, yet again, highlight the lack of transfer spending in the summer and raise the question of just what, realistically, is achievable at Spurs. The mood, though, seems subtly to have shifted and while it would be misleading to say there is any certainty Pochettino will stay at Tottenham in the summer, that does now seem the slight probability. That means United will have to consider their options and at least consider options beyond Pochettino. But as each week goes by, the man in possession is looking a stronger and stronger candidate. There are still questions, of course – can Solskjær devise a way of controlling a game against a top side? Does he have a mode other than firefight? Can he shut a game down? – but six successive wins is a fine way to start, and already he has demonstrated that he is more than just a mood-enhancer, that there is substance behind the smiles.The British designer Clare Waight Keller presented her first standalone menswear collection for the French fashion house Givenchy in Paris at an intimate salon show, with just 17 models and an audience of less. Waight Keller, who designed the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding dress, said Wednesday’s show was about bringing menswear to the fore. “The driving force for Givenchy has always been women’s, but now I want to bring the man into that world,” she said. “[Givenchy] was the first one to do men’s for the couture but it’s time for men’s to have its own platform.” Speaking before the show at the label’s haute couture atelier, the designer described the collection as “perverse posh”, a buzzy phrase that may ring with some irony given the gilets jaunes anti-government protests in France. But here it referred to mixing informal with formal: slim, angular suits in violet and fuchsia were followed by hyper-casual hoodies and karate trousers; boxy padded jackets and windbreakers sat alongside elegant belted trench coats, and for every bonded wool jacket there was one dusted in white sequins with a feathery shirt. On their feet, half the models wore high-top trainers, the other half brogues or Chelsea boots. There was a deliberate crossover with her women’s collections – particularly in the long lines and balloon shapes up top, borrowed from the September shows, many of which are making their debut on the red carpet this awards season. To Waight Keller, it was all deeply personal – the 1970s seen through someone whose twenties coincided with the 1990s. “I used to deliberately put a T-shirt under something chic because I didn’t want to look like my mother,” she said. “It was how I expressed myself and it’s how I see Parisian boys express themselves too.” To make the point, she wore Givenchy menswear. “The idea is that you can wear this as a woman, just in a slightly different way to men,” she said. “There is more interest, certainly this century, in blurring lines between men’s and women’s [fashion].” What sounds like a pledge to gender equality is also good business acumen. Givenchy is one of the few brands where sales are split 50/50 between womenswear and menswear and Waight Keller – a keen adopter of the co-ed show format – has the experience, having worked in menswear at Ralph Lauren and Pringle. According to insiders, the hope at Givenchy’s owners, LVMH, is that the label will reach the size of Dior, a member of the billion dollar club, and that Waight Keller is the woman for the job.The leader of Venezuela’s newly energized opposition, Juan Guaidó, has summoned fresh street protests and reached out to China and Russia as he intensified his campaign to force Nicolás Maduro and his “arrogant” dictatorship from power. In his first public appearance since declaring himself Venezuela’s interim president on Wednesday, the 35-year-old politician urged citizens to take to the streets and step up their battle against the man he dubbed “El Usurpador” (The Usurper). A new round of demonstrations would be held next week, with the exact date and locations to be announced on Sunday, Guaidó said on Friday. “In Miraflores [the presidential palace] they think this movement will deflate, that we will grow tired. But nobody here will tire, nobody will give in. Venezuela has awoken and it will never fall asleep again,” Guaidó declared. “Sí, se puede!” he crowd roared back. “Yes, we can!” During a 30-minute address to a sea of supporters who had gathered in a square in eastern Caracas, Guaidó renewed his calls for the military to abandon Maduro. “The time has come to respect the people of Venezuela … Soldiers of the homeland, put yourselves on the side of the people of Venezuela,” he said. “We are extending our hand … come with us, because there is a future. Maduro doesn’t protect anybody, not from persecution, not from hunger, not from poverty.” So far those calls have gone largely unheeded, with Venezuela’s defense minister and other senior military leaders declaring loyalty to Maduro. “There is an ancient saying: ‘If you want peace, prepare for war,’” he said. At a press conference in the presidential palace, Maduro accused the US of seeking to remove him from office with a coup and ordered his armed forces to prepare to “defeat any imperialist enemy who dares to touch our soil”. “Nobody wants [war]. But we will not surrender or betray our country if there is an armed conflict, be it localized, low-level, mid-level, high-intensity, generalized, in one region or a city,” said Maduro, promising to resist what he called efforts to transform Venezuela into a second Libya. He concluded his address with a swipe at the White House. “Trump, Pompeo, Bolton, Pence: how are you, my friends?” Maduro said sarcastically in English. During his address, Guaidó also boasted of the widespread international backing he had received, reading a long list of governments which had recognized him including those of the United States, Brazil and Colombia. “A round of applause for the EU!” Guaidó shouted, although the bloc has yet to explicitly back him as interim president. Guaidó claimed “the entire planet” was backing his movement to end Maduro’s “dictatorship”. But there are two crucial exceptions: Russia and China, which both have massive military and economic interests in Venezuela, and have thrown their weight behind Maduro. On Friday Guaidó said both countries would be welcome in the new post-Maduro Venezuela he was trying to build. However, Moisés Naím, a Venezuela specialist from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said neither Moscow nor Beijing were likely to turn on Maduro, who came to power in 2013 and has led his country into economic collapse. Russia would be loth to relinquish a “trophy” foothold in an oil-rich nation that is only a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Miami. China’s financial interests are also too great. “The moment [Beijing says] they do not think Maduro is the legitimate president of Venezuela – that phrase will cost them $65bn,” he said, referring to the vast debt racked up under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. With Donald Trump’s White House backing Guaidó, that means a clash between global powers is possible, Naím said. “My main concern is that Venezuela becomes a football in this game between powers, where the interests of Venezuelans become secondary.” In a surprise move on Friday, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, named Elliott Abrams, a veteran of Reagan-era cold war policy in Latin America, as special envoy for Venezuela, saying he would accompany Pompeo to a special UN security council session on Venezuela on Saturday, and travel to the region soon. Abrams, who noted he had last worked in the state department 30 years ago, was intimately involved in Ronald Reagan’s policies in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s. In 1991 he pleaded guilty to two counts of misleading Congress over Reagan’s secret plan to bypass the legislature and fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has said his country is prepared to mediate talks between the two sides, and on Friday, Maduro announced he was prepared to hold talks with his challenger “any place, any time”. But Guaidó rejected that invitation: “Fake dialogue is no good to anyone.”“The only solution now is an end to usurpation, a transition government and free elections,” he said. Supporters who had packed the Plaza Bolívar de Chacao to hear Guaidó speak expressed optimism about the future. “I came to see history in the making. I dropped everything I was doing to come see this,” said Morella Atencio, a 48-year-old blogger. “I am happy, afraid, nervous, expectant. Anything can happen at this point,” Atencio added. Carlos Paparoni, a lawmaker from the opposition Primero Justicia (Justice First) party, said he believed Maduro now knew he was “cornered”. “We’ve managed to pull Maduro out of his comfort zone, we have shaken the status quo and you are no longer faced with a revolution that feels entrenched in power,” Paparoni said. Human rights groups on Friday said they feared an escalation in deadly repression which has reportedly already seen 26 people killed across the country this week. “There is every reason to worry that the government’s response to these protests will follow the same pattern we have been documenting in Venezuela since 2014,” warned José Miguel Vivanco, Human Rights Watch’s Americas chief. But in his speech, Guaidó said political repression had failed in the past and would fail again now. “Here we are and here we will remain, working for the freedom of our country,” he said. Paraphrasing the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Guaidó added: “They can cut a flower but they will never stop the spring from coming.”The Abbey theatre in Dublin has staged some of Ireland’s greatest plays but it is now at the centre of an unwanted drama after it was accused of wreaking artistic “devastation” on the country’s theatrical community. In an open letter published on Monday, a roll-call of Irish talent including the actors Aidan Gillen and Ruth Negga said the country’s national theatre had gutted its domestic industry by scaling back in-house productions in order to buy in and co-produce shows. The letter – signed by more than 300 actors, directors, designers, agents and playwrights – said the Abbey’s new business model meant less work, especially for freelancers. The state-subsidised theatre had not directly employed an Ireland-based actor in almost six months, leaving the theatrical community in a critical state, it said. “The changing artistic model of producing fewer in-house productions and presenting or co-presenting more has caused devastation amongst our ranks … our theatre workers have been at the frontline of ‘brand Ireland’, only time and again to return home to live on the poverty line. The reduction in the proportion of Abbey theatre budget going to Ireland-based performers, directors and designers serves to rub further salt in the wound.” In 2016, the Abbey directly employed 123 actors, but this fell to only 56 in 2017 and about 65 last year, said the letter, which was addressed to the culture minister, Josepha Madigan. The Abbey, which receives about half of the Irish arts council’s drama budget, was staging independent productions that previously would have been staged elsewhere and making other changes that were leading to a dearth of work, the letter said, laying the blame with the theatre’s directors, Neil Murray and Graham McLaren. “Not a single national theatre contract has been given to an Irish-based set designer on the main stage in either 2017 or 2018. The abolition of the casting department has created a significant disconnect with actors.” The complaint echoed a broadside last year made by more than 200 Welsh actors against the National Theatre Wales, criticising what they saw as the paucity of its output and demanding more opportunities for homegrown performers. Founded in 1904 by WB Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory, the Abbey is a cultural powerhouse and has nurtured and produced a long line of talent from Sean O’Casey to Brian Friel. The 312 Irish signatories include Aisling O’Sullivan, Mark Huberman, Peter Coonan, Sarah Greene, Geraldine Plunkett, Gerry Stembridge, Peter Sheridan and Rosaleen Linehan. The Abbey said it took the complaints seriously and invited the signatories to a meeting. It continued to make in-house productions while pursuing diversity, it said. “We aim to ensure our programmes are driven by ambitious, big ideas by theatre-makers of all disciplines, relevant to our times and reflective of our role as a national theatre,” the Abbey said. “In this approach to theatre making, we are following patterns found in many countries with strong traditions in the theatre and we are seeking to address with urgency some of the key social, cultural and political issues of our time.”In 2014, the comedy website Funny Or Die published a patriarchy-lampooning video called “10 hours of walking around New York City as a man”. The white male subject of said video walks around city streets, being complimented, high-fived and offered everything from jobs to Starbucks gift cards. By the end, he is being carried around on a makeshift throne by adoring passersby, dressed in a crown and sceptre, while his new subjects chant: “King! King! King!” Do you think that’s what Boris Johnson’s life is like? I ask because it emerged yesterday that our former foreign secretary was given a £10,000 donation by JCB before delivering a speech at the company’s headquarters – a speech that contained four mentions of the company, was given in front of a large JCB vehicle and was plastered across the news. What exactly does he have to do to stop people giving him money? Perhaps his intermittent offensive comments and idiotic actions are attempts to dial down his level of celebrity, so that he may steal away to a rural European town, adopt the simple life and fix shoes for a living. He tried to put people off him by using a Spectator article to argue that “If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain,” and was awarded with a Telegraph column. He wrote a poem about Turkey’s prime minister having sex with a goat, only to be made foreign secretary. Poor Boris. When will we start taking these unsubtle hints he keeps dropping that he no longer wants a place in public life, and stop showering him with prestigious titles and speaking fees? Leave Boris alone! The injustices against Johnson don’t stop there, though. It turns out Anthony Bamford, the chairman of JCB, is an outspoken Brexiter, and that JCB was fined in excess of £35m by the European commission in 2000 for antitrust breaches. Bamford is joined by the likes of James Dyson, the Brexiter billionaire who is moving his headquarters to Singapore (a decision he says is “nothing to do with Brexit”), and Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s richest man, who is reportedly moving to Monaco for tax purposes. Johnson, whose speech on the eve of the referendum result argued that Brexit “is about the people, the right of people in this country to settle their own destiny”, must be mortified. His democratic project has become associated with the decision of a few wealthy members of the elite to up sticks and leave the country – without anyone, not even their own workers, having a say in it. This wasn’t what he campaigned for at all! But what’s an Old Etonian to do? Boris is just an honest guy striving for fairness in an unfair world. He’s not in it for high-status engagements or exorbitant sums of money, and it’s certainly not his fault that people keep throwing them at him. For him, Brexit is about the people, and it always has been. The question now is how we cut through all the noise and communicate that fact to the public. Perhaps we could write it on the side of a bus or something. • Ellie Mae O’Hagan is a regular contributor to the GuardianIndonesia has agreed in principle to allow the UN office of the human rights commissioner into West Papua amid continuing violence in the region. The long-running low-level insurgency violently escalated late last year, after West Papuan guerrillas attacked a construction site in Nduga, killing at least 17 people they claimed were Indonesian military but who Jakarta insists were civilian workers. In response Indonesia launched a military crackdown in the region, leading to a number of deaths and thousands of people allegedly being displaced after they fled into the jungle. The office of the high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, told the Guardian she had been engaging with Indonesian authorities on the issue of West Papua and “the prevailing human rights situation” and had requested access to the area. “Indonesia has in-principle agreed to grant the office access to Papua and we are waiting for confirmation of the arrangements,” said a spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasandi. Shamdasani has previously said the attack by the guerrillas was unacceptable violence but the Indonesian government was not addressing the root causes of the separatist conflict. West Papuan leaders were informed of the development at a Geneva meeting between the commissioner and Vanuatu representatives on Friday, during which the exiled West Papuan leader Benny Wenda handed over a petition signed by 1.8 million of his people. The UN spokeswoman said the meeting had not been arranged for the purpose of receiving the petition but was in the context of Vanuatu’s universal periodic review session before the UN human rights council. The petition, smuggled out of the region in 2017, calls for a UN investigation into allegations of human rights abuses and for an internationally supervised vote on independence. “In 2017 nearly 2 million of you risked arrest, torture and assassination to raise your voices through this historical petition,” Wenda said after the meeting. “Today, with official state-level support from the Vanuatu government, we, the people of West Papua, have presented it to the UN high commissioner for human rights. We are working day and night to approach the UN general assembly in New York.” The petition was banned in West Papua and blocked online at the time activists collected signatures. Papers were “smuggled from one end of Papua to the other”, Wenda told the Guardian at the time. In September 2017 Wenda sought to deliver the petition to the UN’s decolonisation committee but was rebuffed, with the committee saying West Papua was outside its mandate. The committee’s chair, Rafael Ramírez, said at the time the mandate extended only to the 17 states identified by the UN as “non self-governing territories”. West Papua was removed from the list in 1963 when it was annexed by Indonesia, an act many Papuans consider to be illegal and which was the start of a long-running separatist insurgency. The petition included new requests for UN investigations into the violence in Nduga, including allegations that Indonesian forces used chemical weapons against civilians – a charge Indonesia denies. Billy Wibisono, the first secretary of political affairs at Indonesia’s embassy in Canberra, said the allegations were baseless, “misleading and false news”. “Armed separatists in Papua have conducted heinous crimes including murder of innocent civilians,” he said in a letter to the Saturday Paper, which published the allegations. “As a compliant member of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Indonesia possesses no chemical agents as listed in schedule 1 of the Chemical Weapons Convention; while the schedules 2 and 3 chemical agents are used for strictly peaceful purposes. Such have been confirmed by 19 OPCW inspections since 2004. Hence, no Indonesian apparatus has ever been in possession or utilised any chemical weapons.” On Monday an Indonesian military spokesman, Muhammad Aidi, said one soldier was dead after separatists in Nduga opened fire on an aircraft. Aidi said another soldier had been injured in the attack on the light plane, which had just taken off from Kenyam airport, carrying military personnel and local government members including the chief of Nduga district. Amid the crackdown, which followed mass arrests of pro-independence protesters in early December, Indonesian authorities have also raided and destroyed a number of headquarters of the domestic movement, the West Papua National Committee. At least three people – including the activist Yanto Awerkion, who was imprisoned for his involvement with the petition – are facing “rebellion” charges after holding a prayer meeting they had notified authorities about. The Indonesian government has been contacted for comment.David Attenborough might have urged world leaders at Davos to take urgent action on climate change, but it appears no one was listening. As he spoke, experts predicted up to 1,500 individual private jets will fly to and from airfields serving the Swiss ski resort this week. Political and business leaders and lobbyists are opting for bigger, more expensive aircrafts, according to analysis by the Air Charter Service, which found the number of private jet flights grew by 11% last year. “There appears to be a trend towards larger aircraft, with expensive heavy jets the aircraft of choice, with Gulfstream GVs and Global Expresses both being used more than 100 times each last year,” said Andy Christie, private jets director at the ACS. This is partly due to the long distances travelled, he said, “but also possibly due to business rivals not wanting to be seen to be outdone by one another”. Last year, more than 1,300 aircraft flights were recorded at the conference, the highest number since ACS began recording private jet activity in 2013. Countries with the highest number of arrivals and departures out of the local airports over the past five years included Germany, France, UK, US, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, according to ACS. The World Economic Forum’s global risk report, released ahead of this week’s meeting, identified environmental challenges, including the failure to mitigate climate change, as top of the list of dangers facing the world economy. On Monday, broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough warned that “the Garden of Eden is no more”, and urged political and business leaders to make a renewed push to tackle climate change. “We have changed the world so much that scientists claim we are in a new geological age, the anthropocene, the age of humans,” he said. “What we do now, and in the next few years, will profoundly affect the next few thousand years,” added Attenborough, who received a Crystal award from the WEF for his work. Speaking to journalists after his speech, Attenborough warned that economic models needed to change. “Growth is going to come to an end, either suddenly or in a controlled way.”The EU has been strongly criticised over conditions in Greece’s largest refugee camp, where Oxfam reported women are wearing nappies at night for fear of leaving their tents to go to the toilet. The British-based NGO described the increasingly dangerous state of the EU-sponsored Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, where a 24-year-old man from Cameroon was found dead in the early hours of Tuesday as temperatures fell below freezing. Under a landmark deal agreed between the EU and Turkey in March 2016 to reduce the number of people arriving into the continent, refugees seeking asylum on Greek islands have been forbidden from leaving “hotspot” camps to travel to the mainland. Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, has hailed the deal as a success for thwarting smuggling gangs and reducing migratory flows. But as a result, about 15,000 men, women and children are stranded in Lesbos, Chios, Kos, Samos and Leros, the islands closest to Turkey. The report from Oxfam titled Vulnerable and Abandoned highlighted the failure of authorities at the Moria camp, where nearly 5,000 people live, to identify vulnerable refugees who are eligible for help. Since the resignation in November of the government-appointed doctor designated to make assessments of asylum seekers’ wellbeing, Oxfam claimed these failed to take place for at least a month at Moria, which at times last year was home to three times the number of people it was designed for. As a result, Oxfam warned “vulnerable people including survivors of torture and sexual violence are being housed in unsafe areas … Pregnant women and mothers with newborns are left sleeping in tents, and unaccompanied children, wrongly registered as adults, have been placed in detention.” Mothers are said to have been sent away from hospital to live in a tent as early as four days after giving birth by caesarian section, in a camp where fights break out regularly and two-thirds of residents say they never feel safe. “In a few extreme cases, women say they have resorted to wearing diapers at night to avoid having to go to the toilet after dark,” the report said. One woman, 36, from Cameroon, told Oxfam that people were randomly attacked at the camp. “Moria is a dangerous place for women,” she said. “Fights can start at any moment. At any moment you can expect a stone to your head, even if you’re just walking to the toilet or to your tent … I live in the closed section for women who are alone, but after 11pm the door is open, and anyone can come in because there is no security guard at night. Safety is a big issue for us.” A 24-year-old woman from Afghanistan said: “In the winter there is no warm water. We take showers over the toilet.” Renata Rendón, Oxfam’s head of mission in Greece, said: “It is irresponsible and reckless to fail to recognise the most vulnerable people and respond to their needs. “Our partners have met mothers with newborn babies sleeping in tents, and teenagers wrongly registered as adults being locked up. Surely identifying and providing for the needs of such people is the most basic duty of the Greek government and its European partners.” Rendón added: “European leaders have to face the fact that their current policy is perpetuating an inhumane reception system and putting refugees at risk. Rather than continuing to focus all their efforts on returning refugees to Turkey under the deal struck in 2016, EU member states should support Greece to improve conditions in the island camps and move people off the overcrowded islands and on to the mainland.” People seeking asylum are normally expected to undergo vulnerability assessments soon after arrival on the islands, but the medical and psychosocial screenings at Moria have been described as cursory at best due to a “severe shortage” of staff. Oxfam reported that for “many months”, there was just one doctor employed by the Greek government at the camp to assess the health conditions of as many as 2,000 new arrivals in one month, before the medic eventually quit. Even refugees identified as vulnerable and theoretically allowed to leave the islands are being trapped due to a lack of accommodation on the mainland, it is claimed. According to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, more than 4,000 people eligible for transfer were stuck in Lesbos and Samos in November. The slow asylum application process is also said to be condemning families to years in the camps, where people live in tents without hot water and electricity during winter. “Due to a lack of staff, many people who arrive now in Lesbos have their first asylum interview scheduled for 2020,” Oxfam reported. For some, open fires are reportedly the only way to keep warm in winter. The burning of plastic bags and bottles is said to create a “dangerous, smoky, acrid atmosphere”. Three asylum seekers died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the camp in January 2017 while trying to stay warm with makeshift stoves. Since September, about 11,000 asylum seekers have been transferred by ferry and coach to hotels and apartments on the mainland in an EU-funded scheme overseen by UNHCR. Stella Nanou, a spokesperson for the agency in Athens, said: “While efforts have been intensified to transfer people and Moria’s population has fallen below 5,000 for the first time since April last year, it is still twice over capacity. “There are people, vulnerable people, families and children, living in totally unsuitable conditions in the biting cold. We’re talking about human beings. The situation is very bad, very grave.” A commission spokesman said it had made €289m (£260m) available to the Greek government to “support migration management” and was following the situation on the Greek islands closely as the weather deteriorated. “We have repeatedly alerted the Greek authorities about the very challenging situation in the Greek islands and pointed to the urgency to address this situation, while always ensuring the availability of EU funds to help face those challenges,” the spokesman said. “Of course, the overall responsibility for managing migration flows in Greece, including in the hotspots, rests with the Greek administration. The commission provides support; it does not replace the Greek authorities. “There is in particular an urgent need to winterise reception capacity and to decongest the islands by accelerating asylum procedures and increasing returns in parallel to the ongoing efforts to transfer those migrants to the mainland whose geographical restrictions have been lifted.”Masked men have hijacked two vehicles in separate incidents in Derry in Northern Ireland, causing fresh security alerts and disruption two days after a car bomb exploded outside the city’s courthouse. Police established cordons and evacuated homes around both scenes on Monday at a time of widespread condemnation of what appeared to be an escalating campaign by dissident republicans opposed to the peace process. In the first incident three masked men hijacked a white Transit van on the Circular Road just before 11.30am, police said. The men threw an object into the back of the vehicle before abandoning it at Creggan estate. Two hours later four masked men, one said to be carrying a gun, hijacked a Royal Mail delivery van and ordered the two occupants to drive it to Lone Moor Road and abandon it close to where army technical officers had carried out controlled explosions on the first vehicle. In a third incident on Monday night, police responded to a report of an abandoned vehicle on Northland Road, after an Asda delivery van was left parked across the road, stopping traffic in front of St Mary’s secondary school. Elderly residents were evacuated from their homes in pyjamas as police attempted to secure the area. No group claimed responsibility but suspicion fell on the New IRA, a radical republican group that was also blamed for Saturday night’s car bomb planted in a hijacked pizza delivery vehicle. The blast shook the city centre minutes after police had evacuated hundreds of people from a nearby hotel, youth club and other sites. The area has now reopened to the public. Police arrested a 50-year-old man on Monday under the Terrorism Act in connection with the attack – the fifth such arrest. Two men in their 20s were arrested early on Sunday and another two, aged 34 and 42, were arrested on Sunday evening, but the four were released unconditionally on Monday night. Officers investigating the dissident republican bombing arrested the 50-year-old for questioning about an armed robbery in the city last Tuesday. Theresa May condemned the bombing in a speech to the House of Commons. Mark Hamilton, the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s assistant chief constable, said there was no evidence linking Brexit, which has destabilised the Good Friday agreement, to the incidents in Derry. The threat level in Northern Ireland had been severe since 2009, he told RTE. “Unfortunately there is always some expectation that attacks could happen, but on a general basis we’re not picking up any information that people want to engage in violence due to Brexit.” The Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, also dismissed the idea of such a link. “Nobody should try and draw any connection between what happened on Saturday night and any of the discussions we are having … with our friends in Europe,” she told the House of Commons. The New IRA emerged in 2012 via a merger of several groups including the Real IRA. It has been linked with at least one murder – of a prison officer – and several bomb attacks. “The goal of groups such as the New IRA is to highlight the fact that they are still here and are not going anywhere,” said Marisa McGlinchey, the author of a forthcoming book, Unfinished Business: The Politics of ‘Dissident’ Irish Republicanism. “While the campaign is low level, they are keen to demonstrate that they have the capability to strike. Their goal is to make their presence felt and to demonstrate their continued allegiance to achieving a 32-county republic.” Monday was a symbolic day for Irish republicans: the centenary of the first meeting of the Dáil – a breakaway parliament set up by Irish MPs who shunned Westminster – and of an ambush on police officers that helped launch the war of independence against Britain.Donald Trump on Saturday forged ahead and proposed a deal to end the US government shutdown, despite Democrats having rejected it before he began to speak. The president doubled down on his demand for a border wall in exchange for concessions, a stance swiftly rejected. Speaking from the White House, the president detailed a plan that would extend for three years protections for young undocumented migrants brought to the US as children, known as Dreamers, as well as individuals from some Central American and African nations, in exchange for the $5.7bn of funding for a wall along the US-Mexico border. “A wall is not immoral,” he said, adding: “The radical left can never control our borders. I will never let that happen.” But before the president even took the podium, House speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement panning the proposal, partly because the offer was not for permanent action. “Democrats were hopeful that the president was finally willing to reopen government and proceed with a much-need discussion to protect the border,” she said. “Unfortunately, … his proposal is a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives. It is unlikely that any one of these provisions alone would pass the House, and taken together, they are a non-starter.” The president’s offer was his first to Democratic leaders in Congress since the federal government partially closed in December. Roughly 800,000 federal workers remain without pay. Ahead of the speech, a Trump administration official confirmed to the Guardian that the president would not back down from his demand for $5.7bn in funding for the construction of a wall. But he would offer temporary protections for Dreamers and allowing those with “Temporary Protected Status” to remain in the country. The fate of both programs has been uncertain since Trump rescinded protections for Dreamers, and then moved to terminate the status of hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan. As he left Washington for Dover airbase in Delaware earlier in the day, Trump did not discuss his plans, merely repeating familiar talking points about “caravans” of migrants which “Mexico seems unfortunately powerless to stop” and the supposed efficacy of border walls. He repeated another White House talking point that would resurface in his address: that Pelosi is “being controlled by the radical left, which is a problem”. Before Pelosi issued her statement, a senior House Democratic aide told the Guardian Democrats had not been consulted on Trump’s offer. “Similar inadequate offers from the administration were already rejected by Democrats,” the aide said. “The president must agree to reopen government and join Democrats to negotiate on border security measures that work, and not an expensive and ineffective wall that the president promised Mexico would pay for.” The shutdown is the longest in US history. Many of the nearly 800,000 federal workers either furloughed or forced to work without pay have said they are struggling to pay the cost of everyday living. Hundreds of thousands of contractors are also affected. Key government services including air travel security and nutritional assistance are inoperative or facing mounting problems. Democrats, backed by most public polling, have repeated that they will not give Trump wall funding and will not negotiate until the government reopens. Trump’s offer on Saturday was described by various media outlets citing White House sources as an attempt to restart talks. According to multiple reports, Democrats do have an offer: hundreds of millions of dollars for new immigration judges and improvements to ports of entry but nothing for the wall, as House aide described it to the Associated Press. The aide said about $1bn of such spending would be added to bills to be voted on next week. Democrats have passed bills to reopen government but Senate Republicans will not pass them because Trump will not sign them. Democrats have been seeking to increase pressure on moderates or those facing re-election in swing states. Amid revelation and counter-revelation in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, the mood in Washington has grown febrile. Pelosi suggested Trump postpone his annual trip to Congress to deliver the State of the Union address. Trump retaliated by stopping Pelosi using military transport for a visit to troops in Afghanistan. Adam Schiff of California, the influential Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, denounced Trump for revealing Pelosi’s closely held travel plan, calling it “completely and utterly irresponsible in every way”. Even the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump friend and ally, criticized the president, saying: “One sophomoric response does not deserve another.” Calling Pelosi’s State of the Union gambit “very irresponsible and blatantly political”, he said Trump’s reaction was “also inappropriate”. None of that solved the government shutdown. Nor did Trump’s first address on the subject, on 8 January. Trump campaigned on a promise to build the wall, and to have Mexico pay for it. He claims that will still happen due to a new trade deal. That claim is widely contested. He has recently threatened to declare a national emergency, which would nominally allow the president to bypass Congress and secure funds for the wall from military, disaster preparedness, the Department of Justice and other budgets. While few would argue that a humanitarian crisis exists at the US-Mexico border, as the demand for people who want to enter the US and the Trump administration’s hardline response overwhelm resources, critics say the president has dramatically exaggerated the security risks, particularly with talk about groups of migrants who gather in so-called caravans and leave Central America in mostly fruitless attempts to gain asylum in the US. Such critics argue a wall would do little to solve existing problems. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Trump indicated his unwillingness to budge when he said: “Everybody knows that walls work. You look at different places, they put up a wall, no problems.”Iranian state TV has for the first time broadcast images of the April 2016 arrest of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe at Tehran airport. The pictures of her shocked face were shown during a lengthy TV documentary on what it claimed were the BBC’s efforts to undermine the Iranian state by training reporters opposed to the regime. The broadcast comes as Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British dual national, is in dispute with prison authorities in Tehran over her access to doctors and medicine and says she will go on a three-day hunger strike. Some of her access to make phone calls to her husband, Richard, in London has also been restricted. In the Commons this week, the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, warned that Tehran was “digging its own diplomatic grave” by refusing to release her. She pointed out that Iran needed Europe’s diplomatic support as it faced a growing challenge from the US, including economic actions, and even the threat of a direct military challenge. The UK government has been a stalwart backer of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, along with France and Germany, despite the opposition of Donald Trump. In the footage, part of a documentary accusing the UK of trying to infiltrate Iran through the BBC Persian television channel, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is told she is not permitted to leave Iran and must go to a prosecutor’s office. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was found guilty of espionage charges and sentenced to five years in jail. She has sporadic access to her daughter, Gabriella, who was with her on a visit to her family at the time of her arrest. She spent her 40th birthday, on Boxing Day, in prison. Iran has already published 2010 BBC payslips for Zaghari-Ratcliffe and claims she trained journalists through a secure online platform. Her family and the BBC have said that she worked briefly for the BBC’s international development charity in an administrative position, and never had a role training journalists. The BBC has also said that she never had a role at BBC Persian. The documentary also shows footage of the former foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, telling the foreign affairs select committee that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists, remarks he later clarified and withdrew. It is significant that Iranian authorities still believe Johnson let slip the truth in his committee appearance, underlining the diplomatic damage he inflicted. Both the Iranian foreign ministry and justice ministry issued tough statements at the weekend, urging the UK not to try to interfere in the internal affairs of the Iranian judiciary.Matt Goss is talking about rectangles. Rectangles, you may recall, were among a succession of unlikely topics that got him exercised in the documentary Bros: After the Screaming Stops, the saga of the 80s pop idols’ attempts to stage a 2017 reunion gig at the O2 Arena. That became Christmas’s most improbable television hit: an alternately hilarious, painful and moving riot of fraternal dysfunction, fallout from fame and gnomic, homespun wisdom. The thing is, says Matt, he had a valid point about two rectangles making a square, which in turn makes a fortress. “It’s not a defensive thing, but geometry. Two metres across, four metres down, two metres across, four metres down, what is that?” “A square,” offers his twin brother, Luke. “No,” Matt frowns. “It’s two rectangles. And if you put them together – side by side, I didn’t mean lying next to each other – it’s a square: four by four. And most fortresses, in my research, are square. I actually want to do a T-shirt with two rectangles on it, with the measurements, in a funny way.” He says he was right, too, about refusing to be superstitious as a result of Stevie Wonder’s lyrics. “We really were a superstitious family. Imprisoned by superstition. My literature was album sleeves, reading the lyrics and liner notes. And when I read: ‘When you believe in things that you don’t understand then you suffer,’ that was impactful to me. It sounds funny, but I’m not going to look at it and say I didn’t mean it. I abso-fucking-lutely did mean it.” Matt says all this, not in the exasperated tones of a man who feels he has been mocked and misrepresented, but with a good-humoured smile. Indeed, if you were Matt or Luke Goss, you would probably be in a good mood, too. They say they knew After the Screaming Stops was a good film. They declined editorial control (“I think that was fairly courageous,” says Luke) and at its first screening in the US endured the “uncomfortable” results, before the audience erupted into wild applause at the end. Even so, the reaction in Britain seems to have taken them completely by surprise. They spent Christmas together in the US, the appalling rows that punctuate the documentary long since passed (“The cameras didn’t exacerbate them,” says Matt. “Without the cameras, there would have been blood”), watching in amazement as Matt’s views on rectangles, conkers and how CNN is the thinking man’s reality TV became memes. Some people compared it to Spinal Tap. Others said it had reduced them to tears, victims of the film-makers’ brilliant bait-and-switch tactics. You spend the first part of the documentary laughing at their loftier pronouncements, before it hit you with the heavy stuff about the cost of fame, their mother’s death and fraternal bonds. By the end, you’re rooting for them. Some viewers were hit so hard, they tweeted about being inspired to repair broken relationships with siblings. In one of the documentary’s more perceptive moments, Luke noted: “Britain has never been proud of Bros.” Their 1988 debut album, Push, sold 10m copies and spawned five Top 5 singles, but Bros seemed to come and go without leaving a trace, except in the hearts of their notoriously banzai fanbase, the Brosettes. Almost uniquely among big stars of the era, the 80s revival never quite got around to Bros. There has been no attempt to critically rehabilitate their music, ironically or otherwise; you seldom hear their hits, even on radio stations predicated on nostalgia; their brief but dazzling flash of fame was apparently sealed in a box marked Things We Would Rather Forget. Until, it appears, now. They tell me they went to the National Television awards on Tuesday and were besieged by well-wishers. Dermot O’Leary introduced them onstage with the words: “They’re ours, and we love them.” When I tell people I’m interviewing Bros, they express delight and envy, a reaction it is hard to imagine their name provoking a few weeks ago. Perhaps, suggests Luke, it has something to do with the film’s honesty. “We’re in a world at the moment where fake perfection is being presented in all different mediums, so that degree of candour is refreshing, I think.” Certainly, if they seem slightly different in person to on camera 18 months ago – Matt more self-aware, Luke less fragile – they are nevertheless very similar. Matt is in a bespoke three-piece suit and hat, and remains fond of an extended metaphor (“Matt’s a great lyricist, and basically thinks that way after 30 years of doing it,” offers his brother); Luke is more softly spoken, in regulation designer rock star garb, albeit with his seemingly fathomless supply of grunge T-shirts exchanged for a plain black one. Like the crystal-owning meditators of After the Screaming Stops, both are occasionally given to talking in spiritual terms, something I assumed was a reaction to fame’s excesses, but apparently isn’t. “We’ve always been like that,” says Matt. “Our grandfather was a faith healer, our granny was a Romany gypsy, a clairvoyant. We’re not afraid of that conversation now.” Or perhaps it’s linked to the Goss brothers’ ability to take a joke. They seem blithely unconcerned that people were laughing at them. “Of course they were,” says Luke. “It’s inevitable.” “We made a conscious decision that we knew there were going to be some uncomfortable moments,” adds Matt. “In life, there are. It isn’t contrived.” Or maybe it has something to do with the film giving people a better understanding of what it was like to be in Bros. On arrival in 1987, they seemed like the perfect teen-pop confection: beautiful boys with a gimmick, who furthermore seemed of the moment. You would never have confused their music with acid house, but their image at least was cannily based on the clothes you would have seen at an illegal warehouse party of the era: ripped 501s, bandanas, quiff-y hair by London’s hippest salon, Cuts. Linking them, albeit tangentially, to a youth culture the police were actively trying to stop might have given them the faintest hint of rebellion in teenage eyes. “People don’t speak about how rebellious our fans were,” says Matt. “They would bunk off school to see us, they would turn up in their thousands, you had this mania.” Their lyrics made them seem cocky and hungry for success at all costs: “Drop the boy – I’m the man”; “When will I see my picture in the papers?” But then, the twins hadn’t written the lyrics – they were the handiwork of their manager, Tom Watkins, and a songwriter called Nicky Graham, who muddied the waters by crediting themselves as “the Brothers”. The people who sang their words seem to have been desperately ill-equipped to cope with vertiginous success, their woes compounded by the fact that at the time the British tabloid press was running riot. It was the era of headlines such as “Freddie Starr ate my hamster”, and “Pop idols sneer at dying kids”, when showbiz reporting and demented fiction seemed to be interchangeable. “We were continuously on our back foot, because we were constantly having to rectify what had been said,” says Matt. “Today, if a journalist writes a piece you can go online and dissect it immediately. Back then, if a journalist said something about me and Luke, we would have to wait until the next interview to correct it. If you’re constantly defending yourself, you can’t be yourself.” In fairness, there were positives to their fame. They both loved playing live. “Touring was attractive for me because the [record company] execs didn’t know how to fuck with it, they didn’t know how to play,” says Luke. “It was our zone. I was with my brother, playing and singing. It was as real as it can be, it was legit.” Also, they couldn’t help but enjoy some aspects of the mania. “It wasn’t a pop band with a couple of hits, it was a global phenomenon, it personified what rock’n’roll is,” says Matt. “Tens of thousands of fans everywhere, helicopters and bodyguards and craziness, being shoved into the back of meat wagons by police. We’re still the youngest men to headline Wembley stadium. That belongs to Bros. Whether it matters to anyone else, that’s OK, but it’s deeply important to us.” Nevertheless, watching After the Screaming Stops, it is hard to avoid the feeling that the traumatic aspects of Bros’s success might have outweighed the positives. In the documentary’s most disturbing moment, the brothers recall appearing on TV chatshow Wogan, performing and taking delivery of platinum discs, hours after being told that their sister had been killed by a drunken driver. “I think if someone had said: ‘Do you need a second after your big sister was killed?’, we would have probably said: ‘Yeah, that would be nice.’ We were 17-, 18-year-old boys. But at the end of the day, I’m enjoying this, and it’s taken a long time for us to have that. We have our own lives and we understand business and have good acumen. But I think back then … we lost the love of it, we lost each other, and in the end it did supersede the desire to get onstage.” The pair are keen to emphasise that the damage wreaked by their rise and fall as teen idols is in the past. Matt has a successful career as a Las Vegas entertainer, packing them in at the Mirage. Luke has reinvented himself as an actor, largely in action thrillers. And these are high times for Bros. They are playing another reunion gig at Brixton Academy in July; they seem to have missed a trick billing it as Bros Coming Home rather than Bros Coming HOME – four letters, as Matt says in After the Screaming Stops, that personify home – but it looks like a guaranteed sell-out. There’s talk of a new album, more TV, even – perhaps jokingly – of merchandise that reads MAKE CONKERS GREAT AGAIN. “How do I feel about it?” frowns Matt when the latter is mentioned. “I think it’s … you shouldn’t get me started on this,” he says, then gets started on it anyway. “I think Britain is known for its sense of humour. We’re cheeky, flirtatious, sadistic, sarcastic, there’s a sense of humour ingrained in all of us, and I think it’s important we don’t lose that. Talking about having to wear goggles when you play conkers is a way of saying let’s not become too careful. We’re meant to smash our knuckles with conkers, we’re meant to fall out of trees and break our wrists. Do you know what I mean? I think people get it when I go on about not wearing goggles.” “I think it could be a suggestion,” offers Luke. “But to insist that we do things …” “No,” interrupts Matt. “I don’t even want a suggestion. Goggles in chemistry lessons, fair enough, you might blow yourself up, but conkers …” He shakes his head. “I think you understand. I just want to say that I’m more concerned about North Korea than I am about conkers,” he says, then smiles. “But conkers are right up there.” Bros: After the Screaming Stops is on BBC2, Saturday, 10.45pm. Bros play the O2 Academy Brixton on 5 JulyTo many, the decision announced last week to launch Scala Radio, a major new station founded on the belief that classical music can appeal to younger audiences, will have come as a surprise. But research has shown clear indications of new listening trends, with almost half (45%) of young people saying they see classical music as an escape from the noise of modern life. The new digital radio station will have DJ Simon Mayo at the forefront of its presenting team when it launches in March. Mayo, who left BBC Radio 2 last year, will be joined at Scala by the unorthodox orchestral music lover Goldie and Observer film critic Mark Kermode, who will play many of his favourite film scores. The launch of a new classical entertainment station aimed at younger listeners is based on more than a hunch. Research found that a new generation of listeners was switching on to classical music through different sources, with 48% of under-35s exposed to it through classical versions of popular songs, such as the Brooklyn Duo version of Taylor Swift’s Blank. And 74% of people in the same age group had experienced classical music via a live orchestral performance at a film screening, according to analysts at Insight working for Bauer Media, owner of the new station. “Our research shows film screenings, experiential events such as Secret Cinema and themed performances such as Pete Tong Ibiza Classics are key drivers in exposing under-44s to classical music,” they said. Jack Pepper, Britain’s youngest commissioned composer, will also be joining Scala. The 19-year-old said: “Classical music is surrounded by the misconception that it’s irrelevant, sterile and inaccessible. What many people don’t realise is there is an authentic modern-day narrative to accompany classical music which is really connecting with people.” Citing the appeal of soundtracks for video games as well as for primetime TV dramas and the cinema that “make your heart race”, Pepper said that even the greats of the conventional repertoire still had something to say. “Even the classical masters have shocking, entertaining, humorous and sometimes tragic life stories. A classical composer is a normal human being with the same ups and downs we can all relate to.” The growing popularity of classical music among young people follows recent survey results highlighting young people’s use of art galleries and museums as sanctuaries and figures released last week showing rising sales of poetry among younger readers.Once the empty feeling subsides and the lump at the back of his throat stops threatening to leap from his mouth, perhaps it will console Andy Murray to consider how much he means to people from all walks of life. Even at this early stage of the healing process, with the emotions swirling and his heart shattered as he contemplates how brutally his body has given up on him in the past two years, it might raise his spirits to know he is showered with affection not only for his achievements on a tennis court but also for what he represents on a human level. In an era of ugly public debate it is important to remember that Murray’s most endearing qualities – his sense of morality, his ability to separate right and wrong, his sensitivity and intelligence – have made him more than a tennis player. To appreciate him fully, to get to the root of why it hurts to see one of Britain’s sporting greats announce that his career is all but over, you have to understand that the connection many feel with him is explained by more than admiration for his skill and grit. It runs deeper than Wimbledon titles and Olympic golds, because Murray belongs to a select group of athletes who have managed to transcend their sport through their integrity away from the heat of competition. Above all it is the unapologetic feminism that has turned the 31-year-old into an unlikely global icon. The Scot’s championing of female athletes has elevated him above his peers – witness the American comedian Sarah Silverman raving about him on the Ellen DeGeneres Show – and makes him a fine example of what masculinity should be in 2019. Many bad judges of character have sought to portray Murray as a misery guts down the years. Yet criticisms of his supposed surliness could not be wider of the mark. In reality he is funny and kind, thoughtful and brave, scarily resilient with a racket in his right hand but never reluctant to weep in public. Watching him struggle to blink back the tears during that painful press conference in Melbourne, the thought occurred that the phrase “man up” should be replaced by “Murray up”. Even though it was the lowest moment of his professional life, there was something quintessentially Andy about this ferocious competitor’s lack of self-consciousness. Along with quashing the idea that big boys don’t cry, Murray has led the way in showing how men can stand up for women. Influenced by his mother, Judy, another tireless force of nature, he has used his position of power to start difficult and vital conversations. He has argued for equal pay in tennis and refused to listen to the sniffy comments that greeted his decision to hire a female coach, Amélie Mauresmo, in 2014. He has said Wimbledon should schedule more women’s matches on Centre Court and his comments have been a breath of fresh air, promoting inclusivity and equality, demonstrating that emotional maturity does not equate to weakness. At 6ft 3in Murray is physically imposing but there is nothing macho about the way he carries himself. He has gone to war against the misogynistic attitudes that still thrive in the tennis world and has also not hesitated to challenge casual sexism. Two years ago he was praised for correcting a journalist who said Sam Querrey was the first American to reach a grand slam semi-final since 2009. “Male player,” Murray said, highlighting the fact that Serena Williams had won a fair few women’s titles in that period at SW19. “I do not think there is a woman player who is not totally supportive of Andy Murray,” Serena Williams said. “He has spoken up for women’s rights, especially in tennis, forever. He has such a wonderful mother, who has been such a strong figure in his life and he has done so much for us on our tour. We love Andy Murray.” That episode followed a familiar pattern, as John Inverdale knows all too well after declaring in 2016 that Murray was the first person to win two Olympic gold medals in tennis. “Well, to defend the singles title,” Murray told the BBC host. “I think Venus and Serena have won about four each.” No wonder he has a fan in Billie Jean King, the former grand slam champion and a relentless defender of women’s rights, who used Twitter to urge Murray to remember that his “greatest impact on the world may be yet to come”. King’s words are a reminder that while Murray does not deserve to endure such a cruel ending, another story could be about to begin. The world needs more men like the shy boy from Dunblane.The UK government’s decision to swing behind calls by the EU and US for the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro to call elections within a week, and to join efforts to switch off Maduro’s finances, is evidence of a three-fold strategy. The government wants to maximise pressure on Maduro to allow elections while keeping the EU united; protect its remaining UK diplomats in Venezuela; and repeatedly point out the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s associations with the governments of Maduro and of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. Following consultations on Friday in Brussels and meetings in Washington between the UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, European leaders toughened their position by setting an eight-day deadline for Maduro to call fresh elections. Spain, the European country with the closest links to Venezuela as its former colonial power, was the first out of the blocks, followed by France, Germany, the UK and Portugal. The Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, had been hardening his position since Thursday, when he called the opposition leader Juan Guaidó after he claimed to be the legitimate Venezuelan president. Sánchez held an impromptu summit with Latin American leaders at Davos to discuss the crisis. The official EU statement, issued by its foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, did not go quite so far, calling for fresh elections and threatening “further actions, including on the issue of recognition of the country’s leadership” if Maduro did not comply. Her caution reflects doubts in Austria, Greece and Italy. Some of the doubters support Maduro. Others question a US strategy that could lead to further violence, and even support for a military coup. A joint statement can be vetoed by just one EU country. By Saturday afternoon, the hawkish Pompeo, speaking at the special UN security council discussion on Venezuela, spelled out how little time the US had for fence-sitters. “Now it is time for every other nation to pick a side,” he said. “No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem.” Sir Alan Duncan, the British minister for Europe and Americas, was unambiguous when he flew to New York to give the British message personally at the UN: “Maduro is no longer the legitimate president of Venezuela,” he said as he endorsed the eight-day deadline. Until Saturday, the UK had said Guaidó enjoyed widespread support. The caution was in part because as a matter of policy the UK recognises states, not governments. But efforts were under way to unite Europe and think through the consequences of delegitimising Maduro. The eight-day pause also gives European diplomats time to bring doubters into line. Leading players, such as Spain, have no illusions that Maduro will call transparent elections, but believe the emphasis on elections shows Europe is backing democracy and not regime change. British diplomats are determined to show how many chances at reconciliation Maduro has spurned. As long ago as May 2016, for instance, the Union of South American Nations tried to bring the two sides together with the help of the former presidents of the Dominican Republic, Panama and Spain. Hunt’s support for Guaidó also has a domestic political dimension, because his team see Venezuela as a test case of how a Corbyn-led government would treat leftwing governments with dubious human rights records.Ireland has launched a last-minute attempt to warn Theresa May off any attempt to unravel the backstop, two days before a crucial Commons debate that may decide the next move for the UK’s rudderless Brexit policy. Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister and deputy prime minister, insisted the backstop was “part of a balanced package that isn’t going to change” and, in a forceful interview, insisted it was only part of the withdrawal agreement because of the UK’s red lines. On Tuesday Tory Brexiters may get the chance to vote for amendments that would signal their willingness to back May’s Brexit deal subject to the backstop – the mechanism to ensure there will be no hard border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland if Britain and the EU fail to strike a free trade deal – from either being removed or time-limited. Ministers have not formally backed any of the anti-backstop amendments, which are incompatible with the deal that May agreed with UK leaders, but if one were to pass by a majority, she would be able to present the EU with a firm idea of what changes might get her deal through parliament – something that as yet remains unclear to Brussels. MPs pushing the anti-backstop amendments will be competing against a rival bloc of parliamentarians hoping to get a majority for an amendment intended to prevent the government taking the UK out of the EU without a deal. Various versions of this are on the order paper, including some viewed with alarm by ministers because they cede control of the parliamentary timetable to backbenchers. In an interview with BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, Coveney said he did not see the need for further compromise because “the backstop is already a compromise”. Although originally Northern Ireland-specific, it was made UK-wide at the request of May, he said. “And the very need for the backstop in the first place was because of British red lines that they wanted to leave the customs union and single market,” he said. “So the Irish position is, look, we have already agreed to a series of compromises here, and that has resulted in what is proposed in the withdrawal agreement. Ireland has the same position as the European Union now, when we say that the backstop, as part of the withdrawal agreement, is part of a balanced package that isn’t going to change.” Ireland has repeatedly stressed its commitment to retaining the backstop. But since May’s deal was rejected earlier this month in the Commons by an unprecedented majority of 230, some ministers claim to have picked up signs that other members of the EU may be inclined to compromise on this in order to avert a no-deal Brexit. Responding to Coveney’s interview, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, dismissed suggestions it had sabotaged May’s Brexit strategy for the coming week, saying all sides were looking for “pragmatic solutions” to the Irish border problem. Hancock also played down a report claiming that, as part of government planning for a no-deal Brexit, officials had been looking at the possible need to introduce martial law to cope with civil disorder. Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, sweeping powers are available to the government for use in emergencies, but Hancock said that, while governments have to look at all options, martial law was “not specifically” being looked at.The other day, I got to thinking about the matter of luxury in food, and for a few moments all I could picture was fish and chips in some lovely but out-of-season seaside town. The batter would be crisp, the peas would be mushy, and afterwards I wouldn’t want for anything - save, perhaps, for a pontefract cake pulled from a paper bag in my pocket and chewed on the way home. But, of course, there are other things, too. To me, homemade mayonnaise is about as luxurious it gets. So is cheese on toast with Worcestershire sauce – though only late at night after a concert or the theatre when, perched at the kitchen table in your best frock, you might imagine yourself a character in a Nancy Mitford novel. I love lobster, but since the advent of various high-profile lobster-based restaurants, I only consider it truly luxurious if it has come from the fishmonger or, even better, a quayside. Caviar is delicious, but it’s expensive rather than luxurious. All that loot, but you’re still only opening a tin. Then again, if someone made me scrambled eggs that were laced with caviar, and brought them to me on buttered toast in bed, I would certainly consider that luxurious. I would also refuse ever to allow them to leave my side. Caviar is delicious, but all that loot and you’re still only opening a tin Move on to restaurants, and things get even more contradictory. My idea of a luxurious restaurant certainly has to do with exclusivity, but by this I don’t mean that you might see Gillian Anderson there; rather, that it’s hard to get into because it induces a particularly fierce kind of passion in its regulars. Price is irrelevant. Brasserie Zédel, the vast, ersatz French restaurant in Piccadilly, always manages to seem luxurious in spite of the fact that, by London standards, it’s almost preposterously reasonable. This has to do with the glory of the room, all marble and brass; with the convivial buzz that rises from the crowd; and with the nostalgia that inevitably accompanies the eating of dishes I once thought the height of sophistication (snails, celeriac remoulade, steak haché). It is Paris as you imagined it before you ever went there, and a Paris from which it’s possible to travel home on the bus to boot. What is not luxurious to me is the idea of a chain, even (or perhaps especially) an upmarket one – which brings me to why I was thinking about all this in the first place. Early in the new year, Richard Caring’s Caprice Holdings announced that it had (to use the macho language beloved of the business pages) “shrugged off” the tough conditions that have lately decimated many other restaurant businesses; in 2017, its pre-tax profits were up slightly, to £9.2m. It will now follow its Ivy Cafes (the 30 restaurants that function as a diffusion line of the original Ivy in Covent Garden) with Caprice Cafes (inspired by Le Caprice in St James, a restaurant once frequented by Princess Diana). Sexy Fish in Mayfair may also, apparently, go forth and multiply. Get ready for Sexy Elephant and, um, Sexy Dragon. The only time I ate in an Ivy Cafe, I wondered at how synthetic it seemed; an approximation rather than a heady reality. The leather bar stools were the colour of fish fingers, the chicken milanese was the texture of a leather bar stool, and, no, it was absolutely not possible to turn a duck starter into a main course. Looking at the bill, I could not see how it could succeed where other, cheaper places had failed. But the figures tell their own story, and I realise now that I was missing the point. The Ivy Cafe combines a certain reliability (the prawn cocktail will always be the same, by which I mean too cold) with the fizzled glamour that comes from an association, however distant, with a grand old place where the paparazzi once did their best work. For those who can afford it, the prices are in themselves doubtless reassuring (£14 for a hamburger). Is it luxurious? Personally, that isn’t the word I would use. But then, I’m a weirdo. All I’m saying is: at the Ivy the peas are mashed, not mushy. rachel.cooke@observer.co.uk“Pink Floyd rescues Trinidadian boys born to Isis dad”: it reads like a headline from US satirical outlet the Onion. But the information is real, and the issue it highlights is no laughing matter. On 21 January, Roger Waters, co-founder of the British rock band Pink Floyd, helped rescue two young brothers from a camp in Syria that was holding wives and children of foreign Islamic State members. Mahmud Ferreira, 11, and his brother Ayyub, 7, have been reunited with their mother and are poised to return to their native Trinidad. The boys were taken to Syria by their father – reportedly now dead – in 2014. A few years later they were found abandoned on a roadside, and put in the camp run by the Kurdish-Arab forces controlling northeast Syria. About 1,250 children from 46 countries have been held for up to two years in camps in Syria with no end in sight Waters pulled off Mahmud and Ayyub’s rescue with UK-based human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. If only the dozens of governments whose nationals are trapped in Syria because they are children of Isis members would show similar concern. About 1,250 children from 46 countries – including at least 12 from Britain – have been held for up to two years in camps in northeast Syria with no end in sight. Many are toddlers. The children have not been charged with any crime, and the local authorities have repeatedly called on their countries to take them. Yet most governments balk at bringing them back, claiming they may be security threats. Conditions in these camps, which Human Rights Watch has visited, are often squalid, with inadequate food, shelter, healthcare, and education provided. Many children are traumatised and several need surgery, family members and activists told me. In most cases the children are held with their mothers, but their fathers are imprisoned, missing, or dead. Some, like Mahmud and Ayyub before their rescue, are on their own. To be sure, Mahmud and Ayyub’s case is clearer than most: their mother in Trinidad never joined their father in Syria and had been trying to bring them home. Many children lack identity papers – particularly those born in Isis-held territory – and some are orphans. Several were born to parents of two different nationalities. All of this makes it difficult to establish citizenship or legal guardianship. Further complicating matters, many mothers detained in the camps say they don’t want their sons and daughters sent home without them, but governments are even more reluctant to repatriate adult relatives of Isis members. What’s more, many countries have no diplomatic ties with Syria or the Kurdish-majority coalition controlling northeast Syria. While the challenges and security concerns are legitimate, they are no reason for countries to remain, in the words of a Pink Floyd song, comfortably numb. Indeed, Russia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Sudan and the United States have taken back some wives and children of Isis members from Syria. France on Tuesday announced it would accept – but prosecute – any adult French Isis members who are deported or otherwise return from camps in northeast Syria, and in October said it was planning to repatriate French children. Birth certificates are on file for many children in their home countries. Other children’s identities can be established through DNA tests with grandparents or other family members. The children, along with their mothers, can be evaluated on returning home – monitored, and, if necessary, prosecuted in line with international fair trial and juvenile justice standards. In such cases, children should be prosecuted only as an exceptional measure and not for membership of groups such as Isis in the absence of evidence of violent acts. Left in limbo by their governments, these children face indefinite arbitrary detention and potential statelessness. It shouldn’t have to take Pink Floyd to bring them home. • Letta Tayler is the senior terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights WatchTheir names stand high among the roll call of British men of letters of the modern age: both revered authors with an international following, but publishing in very different corners of the literary world. One, John le Carré, is the creator of a succession of brilliant spy thrillers, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Little Drummer Girl, the other, the late Eric Hobsbawm, was a leading exponent of leftwing historical thought, a man who was also the subject of state surveillance for many years. Now the first biography of Hobsbawm, A Life in History, due out early next month, is to reveal an unlikely correspondence between the two men that centred on the name of a character in one Le Carré novel. In the 1986 book A Perfect Spy, later made into a BBC television series, Le Carré makes reference to a character called “Hobsbawn” who was under the control of the British security services. The real man, Professor Hobsbawm, was not pleased. Speaking this weekend, Le Carré told the Observer he imagines that back in the early 1980s he had simply reached for a name that would have the right political associations for those familiar with leftwing theory. “I can’t imagine from this distance that I was unaware of Hobsbawm’s distinction or his politics,” Le Carré said. “I suspect that what I did in midstream was picture a Marxist intellectual under MI5 control, and then give him an analogous name that would resonate with the knowing.” The written exchange between the two in the mid-1980s was cordial, but there were glimpses of steel underneath. The Marxist historian requested the name be changed in all subsequent editions of the thriller. No such change was made. Today Le Carré recalls writing Hobsbawm “an appropriately humble disclaimer” and receiving a courteous reply. “He acted with grace. I was grateful for his forbearance,” the novelist said. Hobsbawm, who died in 2012 at the age of 95, had been alerted to the offending page in A Perfect Spy by a reviewer. “The name is I can assure you more consistently misspelt than any other I know. It is also entirely identifiable with a fairly limited number of real persons,” his first letter argued. Hobsbawm went on to concede that his legal case was shaky. “I don’t suppose anyone will regard a fictional membership of MI5 as actual defamation, though speaking as one who has had a file since at least 1942 it makes me slightly uneasy,” he wrote. The academic was also curious, he added, to hear how it had happened. “My question is simply this: how on earth did you hit on the name? Is it an esoteric joke, something dredged up from among subconscious associations, or what?” Le Carré, now 87, whose real name is David Cornwell and who was an intelligence agent for both security services in the 1950s and early 1960s, wrote back quickly to reassure him. “I’ve no idea why I chose a name similar to yours, since I have never consciously heard of you, or your namesakes. There was no coy joke and I certainly wouldn’t risk some wasteful court action by doing such a thing. I choose names for their musical contrast & impact: yours (or mine) stuck out as a sort of optical and aural loner in the pack, something to set the fellow apart.” Hobsbawm’s biographer, Richard J Evans, suggests, in contradiction, that it is “perfectly possible” that Le Carré had “picked up the name from a half-remembered file he had seen while working for the intelligence services”. The matter did not end there. The professor wrote back to the author once again requesting a name change. His identification with the name in the book had already been made by a critic in the New York Review, he pointed out. “I am not pleased at the prospect of jokey conversations on the subject of my putative relations with MI5. We shall never find out whether it is actionable to put someone who sounds like me into your novel as a security official, because it would be both pompous and ridiculous to try to find out. But it is mildly uncomfortable to figure as such for someone who, like myself, has an old-established track record on the Marxist left.” Nevertheless, the correspondence ended on a conciliatory note, with the professor revealing he was an admirer of Le Carré’s fiction. A Perfect Spy, the author has since said publicly, in fact drew heavily on his own difficult private life. It told partly of Le Carré’s troubled relationship with his father and writing it had been a cathartic exercise. “I cried and cried when it was over,” he has said.Jeremy Corbyn has said his priority is to vote down Theresa May’s Brexit deal and secure a new deal with the EU, a day after it was revealed an overwhelming majority of party members want the Labour leader to back a second referendum. Corbyn said Labour’s Brexit policy was “sequential” and suggested no decision could be made about backing a second referendum until parliament voted down the deal on offer. MPs are expected to hold the delayed vote on the deal in the second week of January. The Labour leader said May should return to Brussels to find a deal Labour could support once her version was voted down, including a full customs union. “What we will do is vote against having no deal, we’ll vote against Theresa May’s deal; at that point she should go back to Brussels and say this is not acceptable to Britain and renegotiate a customs union, form a customs union with the European Union to secure trade,” he said. MPs are due to vote on the negotiated withdrawal agreement as well as a political declaration on the future relationship, which is not legally binding. Negotiations for any future permanent customs union with the EU would be likely to form part of the next stage of talks, once UK has agreed the terms to leave in March. A study of Labour members found 72% believe their leader should back a second referendum. The research, part of the Party Members Project led by Prof Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London, found that while Labour members still strongly supported their leader overall, they appeared to be sceptical about his reasons for refusing to support a referendum. The party’s policy is that there is a priority to force a general election and only afterwards a second referendum could be considered. Corbyn and several of his closest allies have been both publicly and privately sceptical of the policy and the Labour leader has said the party would pursue a Brexit deal even if it won a snap general election. “The issue of another referendum was of course one of the options, but that was very much after the votes have taken place in parliament,” Corbyn said on Wednesday. “We haven’t yet had a vote and I think the government really should be ashamed of itself. This vote has been delayed and delayed and delayed. This government is just trying to run down the clock and create a sense of fear between either no deal or May’s deal.” MPs are due to return to the debate on May’s negotiated withdrawal agreement after they return to Parliament on Monday. May has said she is seeking further legal reassurances from EU leaders about the permanence of the backstop agreement, which would keep the whole UK in a single customs territory with the EU until both sides agree on an alternative solution to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who is in Singapore, said May would will find a way to get her Brexit deal approved by parliament “When Theresa May comes back with those reassurances that she has been seeking from the EU that the deal that is on the table is not going to lead to us being permanently trapped in the customs union … she will find a way to get this deal through parliament,” Hunt said during a question-and-answer session following a speech in Singapore. Asked about the prospect of holding a second referendum on the deal, Hunt said it would be damaging to democracy and the social consequences of not leaving the EU would be “devastating”.I’ve had a terrible relationship with my family my whole life and relied on men for support and comfort. I was sexually assaulted and told myself it didn’t mean anything. As a result, I’ve been cheating on my long-term boyfriend because, in doing so, I remind myself that intimacy has no meaning any more. I even stripped in a club just to feel as if I had control over my sexuality again. Now I only feel capable of intimacy with men I don’t care about. It feels wrong while I am with someone that I love so much. I know what I’m doing is wrong. Help me please. You seem to have reached a very detailed understanding of why you do the things you do, and this is commendable. But gaining self-knowledge doesn’t always lead to change or to greater peace or happiness. Even with this knowledge, you are continuing to act in a way that makes you feel guilty and sad – while hoping for a different outcome. For people who are led to act a certain way as a result of trauma, change is more likely to occur not through merely understanding the reasons, but through doing the hard work of healing. It might take time, but facing the original pain and working through the deep feelings could release you from this repetitive pattern. But no amount of therapy will change the fact that monogamy is hard. Commitment is hard. All people in our human society who are sexually alive struggle with these constant challenges. • Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders. • If you would like advice from Pamela Stephenson Connolly on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions: see gu.com/letters-terms.Britain has rarely been in more desperate need of courage and direction from the leader of the opposition. In just under 11 weeks, unless MPs have coalesced around another option, the country will crash out of the European Union, with catastrophic consequences for the union, the economy and its global influence. There is, however, a window of opportunity, created by a cabinet and Tory party more riven than ever by divisions over Europe, for Labour to shape the UK’s future from the opposition benches. Seldom do opposition parties have as much power to prevent damage to the lives of millions of their voters. Even more seldom do they squander it in the way Jeremy Corbyn has so far. Five weeks have passed since Theresa May postponed the parliamentary vote on her withdrawal deal. That’s five valuable weeks during which MPs could have shaped what happens next. In fact, the only thing that has changed in that time is that May’s chances of getting her deal through have increased. Her strategy is clear: to leave no deal, despite all its ruinous effects, on the table and let the clock run down until the only choice MPs face is a binary one between her deal and no deal. The truth is that Labour’s current approach is just as irresponsible as the government’s The person with the greatest power to thwart May is Corbyn. In recent weeks, we have seen backbench leadership from both sides of the Commons, which, together with a Speaker who has championed the rights of MPs over the executive, has resulted in some important procedural wins in terms of how the next few weeks will unfold. But there remains no parliamentary majority in favour of any one option. While these procedural wins are not insignificant, they are not sufficient to push the government on to a different course. It is difficult to envisage how a group of cross-party MPs, led by backbenchers, could hold together a Commons majority outside the party system for the weeks, if not months, that would be required. This is why opposition leadership, in the face of a weak and divided cabinet, has never been so critical: the only way to force the government to change direction is through party leadership and whipping MPs behind an alternative position. Yet the truth is that Labour’s current approach – that it wants a mandate via a general election to negotiate a better withdrawal deal – is just as irresponsible as the government’s. There is no realistic route to a general election; May’s DUP coalition partners and her Eurosceptic MPs may not support her deal, but neither will they vote to trigger a general election. The Labour leadership’s pretence that they can negotiate a Brexit that maintains the “exact same” benefits of EU membership while curtailing freedom of movement is sheer fantasy. Labour must move to support a referendum as soon as she loses the vote on her deal this week, if necessary via the no confidence vote it will surely lose. As we have long argued, a referendum on the deal versus the status quo is right in principle; the 2016 referendum provided a narrow mandate for the government to negotiate the best deal it could, not a blank cheque for it to take Britain out of the EU any way it saw fit, regardless of the costs. The withdrawal agreement that May has negotiated perfectly highlights the Brexit conundrum: there is no deal that lives up to the illusory unicorn the Leave campaign promised voters. There are painful trade-offs and it is up to voters to decide if they want to make them. Principle aside, a referendum is the only practical alternative Labour can swing behind. The gridlock in parliament only strengthens a pragmatic case for putting the deal to voters. A “Norway plus” Brexit, the other option being talked up, may be the best of all the Brexit options, but it involves Britain sacrificing any say over the rules of the club in which we will effectively remain a member. It will not settle the European question; if anything, having to live by rules set by Europe that we have no influence over will give succour to those Eurosceptics who will campaign to take us further out of Europe and will heighten public hostility to the EU. Moreover, it is difficult to see how Labour can ensure this outcome before Brexit happens on a practical level. Even if the political declaration were redrafted to indicate a Norway-style final destination, it would not be binding on any British prime minister. The longer Corbyn puts off backing a referendum, the more he creates the impression that he too is simply letting the clock run down in order to avoid making a decision, in the hope that voters will blame Conservatives for any Brexit fiasco. But if Labour enables May’s Brexit, history will not forgive the party. Voters will rightly hold the whole political establishment accountable for a withdrawal deal that will inevitably make Britain into a rule-taker, jeopardise the union and make people poorer. Both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition are engaged in a dangerous game of brinkmanship Some have made the case that we should avoid another referendum as it will be divisive, but we should be wary of these arguments. There are indeed risks associated with another referendum, but every path facing Britain at this juncture involves considerable risk of popular backlash. Our political discourse has already deteriorated and a tiny minority with hateful views has become emboldened to the extent that MPs going about their daily jobs now get intimidated, harassed and called “Nazi” by thugs in the street. But what sort of response is it for a cabinet minister to warn MPs they must back the prime minister or risk unleashing a wave of neo-Nazi extremism, as Chris Grayling did? Since when has it been acceptable for the government to imply extremist violence is an effective way to bring about change, by publicly telling MPs they should vote out of fear of neo-Nazis rather than based on what is right for their constituents? Grayling’s insinuation that Britain cannot bear another referendum without descending into civil conflict is irresponsible and patronising. Both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition are engaged in a dangerous game of brinkmanship. The longer it goes on, the more certain its conclusion becomes: a Brexit that could split the union and sharpen the inequalities and resentments between the richest and poorest parts of the country. Corbyn faces a choice: he can help prevent it or he can go down in history as having been entirely complicit in making this tragedy happen.More than 140 former diplomats and leading China experts have called on Xi Jinping to release two Canadian citizens detained last month as a diplomatic stand-off between Ottawa and Beijing escalates. In an open letter to the Chinese president, former envoys to China from Canada, the UK, the US, Australia, Germany, Sweden and Mexico described how the arrests of Michael Kovrig, a Canadian diplomat on leave, and Michael Spavor, a businessman, have sent a chill through the diplomatic community. “We who share Kovrig and Spavor’s enthusiasm for building genuine, productive, and lasting relationships must now be more cautious about travelling and working in China and engaging our Chinese counterparts,” the statement said. “That will lead to less dialogue and greater distrust, and undermine efforts to manage disagreements and identify common ground. Both China and the rest of the world will be worse off as a result.” Kovrig and Spavor were detained on 10 December, in a move widely seen as retaliation following the arrest by Canadian authorities on 1 December of a senior Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, for extradition to the US where she faces accusations of fraud and violations of sanctions on Iran. The detention of the two Canadians on unspecified allegations of endangering national security has caused heightened concerns for foreigners about their safety. Like Kovrig, many ex-diplomats go into academia, consulting or business related to the country of their former posting. “It has people looking over their shoulders, because in China there is always real ambiguity in terms of what the government will and will not tolerate,” said David Mulroney, Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012. Jorge Guajardo, Mexico’s ambassador to China from 2007 to 2013, said he consistently received questions about the safety of visiting China. “There have been ongoing queries. ‘Should I go, should I not go?’ People living there are saying: ‘Should I leave now?’ It’s an issue of concern,” he said. Some worry a new normal is emerging in which China will behave more aggressively toward current and former diplomats. Those who try to meet prisoners of conscience, travel to sensitive areas such as Xinjiang or Tibet or attend the trials of dissidents often encounter obstacles set up by Chinese authorities. Their diplomatic immunity means they have been able to push back against government restrictions but they may begin censuring themselves if they fear their work could jeopardise them. “In the past, diplomats could push that envelope more than most,” said Mulroney. “What might happen is diplomats themselves might think twice. Countries may say: ‘Let’s not rock the boat because we don’t want an incident involving you.’ What that does is it really cuts off an important source of information,” he said. Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has said China is “not respecting the principles of diplomatic immunity” in connection with Kovrig. Under the Vienna convention, immunity extends to the work done while serving on a mission even afterdiplomatic status has ended. Canada claims that Kovrig’s interrogations have focused on his work as a diplomat, but China’s foreign ministry denies Kovrig should be granted immunity. Canada’s ambassador to China, John McCallum, told parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Friday that Spavor and Kovrig continued to endure abuse at the hands of Chinese officials, according to the Globe and Mail. They are subjected to daily interrogations that last up to four hours and face sleep deprivation techniques, including having lights left on 24 hours a day. They are only allowed one consular visit per month and are forbidden from speaking French to prevent the passing of secret messages, according to the Globe. Last week, Robert Schellenberg, another Canadian, was sentenced to death for drug smuggling after a sudden retrial. A Canadian woman, Ti-Anna Wang, the daughter of a Chinese democracy activist who has been imprisoned for life, was barred from entering China last week when she attempted to visit her father. She was later detained at Beijing airport when she tried to transit through China to return home and was forced to leave the country. “My guess is this is the new status quo. China is crossing a line deliberately and they are now on the other side of the line,” said Guajardo. In the latest contribution to the debate in Canada, a former spy chief said the country should ban Huawei from supplying equipment to Canadian 5G networks because the security risk is too great. Richard Fadden, who served as the head of the security intelligence service spy from 2009 to 2013, cited what he said was mounting evidence for blocking Huawei. “Canada’s government should ignore the threats and ban Huawei from Canada’s 5G networks to protect the security of Canadians,” he wrote in the Globe and Mail.The super-rich are going on sabbatical. It turns out having bucket-loads of money can be stressful, leading some of the world’s richest people to take a break for a month or so, or even a year, to escape the pressure of managing their businesses or personal fortunes. Tom Barber, the founder of the London-based travel agency Original Travel, said so many super-rich customers had asked his firm to arrange bespoke trips ranging in duration from one to 12 months that his firm was launching a special division dedicated to sabbaticals for the 1%. “It’s a huge trend,” Barber said. “The wealthy are looking for an escape. Often they want to get some sense of a back-to-basics lifestyle and learn the skills of our ancestors, like how to hunt and cook their own food. “For others, it’s ‘braggability’. They want to use their money to open doors that normal people can’t and to tell their friends all about it,” he said. “If you’re in the 0.01%, you are going to be a competitive type of person.” These are no ordinary holidays. Recent trips Barber’s firm has arranged include snow leopard spotting in India, living with the Sān people in Botswana and diving with sharks in the “sardine run” off the coast of South Africa. Barber said his company had arranged 80 sabbatical trips lasting at least a month over the past six years, with a significant jump in bookings last year. High-end travel agents in the US have reported a similar trend and also launched sabbatical booking services. Barber said most of the bookings were for a month or two, but he had arranged a year-long break for a 45-year-old billionaire who had sold his startup and wanted “some time to reconnect with this family”. The trip cost well in excess of £1m. The family visited 65 countries – from Mauritius to Bhutan, Antarcticaand Greenland. “The guy was burnt out,” Barber said. “He wanted to see the world, get back to basics a bit and most importantly see more of his kids, who he hadn’t seen so much of when he was working to sell his company.” A team of agents helped arrange the trip for the billionaire, including applying for visas and fixing up local guides in each country. Flights were the one thing Barber’s team did not need to worry about, as the family’s pilot flew them on their private jet. Included on the family’s itinerary was tracking snow leopards in Ladakh, north-west India. “They really wanted to see them, but didn’t want to wait there for 10 days and not actually see a snow leopard,” Barber said. So his firm hired a team of local spotters and a helicopter to whisk the family from their luxury encampment the minute the elusive big cats were spotted. The family also spent time with the Sān indigenous hunter-gatherers in Botswana, where they learned how to hunt and cook their own food, and live without money. They also dived the sardine run off South Africa, where billions of sardines migrate up the east coast attracting huge numbers of predators, including sharks and dolphins. They were joined in the dive by a professional documentary team, who helped the family film their experience. “They then showed them how to edit the rushes and make their own mini-film,” Barber said. “An overwhelming element is the super-rich want to learn new skills. Sitting on a super-yacht in the sun is pretty old-school these days – people want to have adventures and learn new things.” As well as arranging the visas, logistics, guides and activities, Barber’s firm also built a website for the family so that their friends back home could keep tabs on them. Barber said planning for the trip started with: “A big map of the world in our conference room in Battersea [south London]. Our experts put pins in where they thought some of the best options were and we put a list of suggestions to the family.” He said the super-rich often take their families on sabbatical in order to show them “how real people live” and to learn the power and importance of money. “They want their children to see some real life, but in a safe and secure way,” he said. In the US, the number of super-rich sabbaticals had “grown exponentially in the last couple of years”, said Jack Ezon, the president of Ovation Travel Group in New York. He said each year his firm arranged 50-60 sabbaticals lasting a month a month and five-10 lasting 12 months. “It’s a way to restart or refresh your life,” he said. Ezon said many of his clients booking long sabbaticals were entrepreneurs who had sold their businesses and were looking for a proper break. “It is often tech guys who have floated or sold their companies and are thinking ‘I have a two-year non-compete clause, what am I going to do with my time?’ For others it is often when their kids are about to go on to college or high school, and they suddenly think ‘I need to really be spending time with them.’” A US executive living in Mexico, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Guardian he was setting off on a seven-month sabbatical with his wife and two children next month. The family are planning on driving from Punta Arenas, at the very southerly tip of Chile, back to their home in Mexico. “We’ve shipped our vehicle down to the very south of Chile, and fitted it out for an extreme adventure, with a tent on the roof and full suspension,” he said. First the family will head to Antarctica, before driving up the Andes, stopping off to trek to Machu Picchu in Peru and to dive the Galápagos Islands. “My wife and I decided that we had to do this now, to spend some intensive time with our kids before it was too late,” he said. “My eldest is about to turn 13 and the youngest is nearly 10.” The kids will miss more than half a year’s schooling. The executive and his wife, who both have experience teaching, plan to home school or – “van school”, as he puts it – the children. Children’s education is often a stumbling block in people’s sabbatical plans, but there are a number of ways around the problem if you have the money, said Ezon. “We have a roster of teachers and retired teachers that we can suggest to families to take with them on their trips,” he said. He said long trips can easily become very expensive, but “these are very, very wealthy people and they can afford it. It could be a couple of million dollars to take your family around the world with a teacher in tow.”In the dusty squatter settlement where she spent her short life, Victoria Martínez is remembered as a vivacious, dance-loving child who showered “buenos días” on all those she met. “Wherever she went this girl was an explosion of love,” says her father, Misael. In August, just a few days short of her fourth birthday, her life was brought to a sudden and premature end. “Papi, get me out of here,” Misael recalls his daughter begging as she was rushed to intensive care, vomiting blood, having contracted what would prove a deadly bacterial infection. Hours later, Victoria had died: yet another victim of the political and economic tsunami engulfing what was once one of Latin America’s most developed nations. “As parents we still haven’t overcome this,” admits her 28-year-old father, who believes she was infected while being treated for leukemia at the paediatric hospital in Barquisimeto, Venezuela’s fourth largest city. “It was devastating for us.” Victoria is one of at least 25 children who activists say have died since late 2016 because of the serratia marcescens bacterium – fatalities they blame on a “perfect storm” of unhygienic, resource-starved hospitals that lack even soap to clean their wards, malnourished patients who are susceptible to infection, and chronic shortages of antibiotics. Her death provides a chilling snapshot of a healthcare system experts warn is heading for total collapse. “We want the whole world to hear us,” said Carmen Padilla, a haemodialysis patient and campaigner for chronic patients in Barquisimeto. “Venezuela is not suffering a humanitarian crisis. Venezuela is in a complete humanitarian emergency.” Even as Venezuela disintegrates, state media continue to paint a rosy picture of the country’s health service. Officials take to the airwaves each day to wax lyrical about Socialist party support schemes for expectant mothers and the poor. One recent propaganda video boasted: “If there is one area where you feel and live the achievements of the Bolivarian revolution, it’s precisely in the field of healthcare, from which Venezuelan men and women were excluded for so many decades.” President Nicolás Maduro claimed earlier this year: “The people’s health is our priority.” A visit to the hospital where Victoria Martínez spent her final days suggests otherwise. The burns unit is filled with bandaged toddlers who have stumbled into wood fires or been burned by kerosene lamps – increasingly common sources of fuel and light. In the paediatric ward upstairs, mothers nurse emaciated babies – socks dangling from their tiny ankles, bones protruding through their flesh – who cannot be hydrated because the hospital cannot even provide a catheter. One doctor asked: “What blame do these children have for having been born into the wrong era?” Misael Martínez said he did not fault the hospital’s overstretched doctors for his daughter’s premature death: they had treated her “like a princess”. But he described hospital conditions so precarious that his family had been asked to provide not only their own medicines, latex gloves and syringes, but also the cleaning products and water used to scrub down Victoria’s ward. Experts say Venezuela’s health service improved in the first decade of Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution, which started 20 years ago this month. Life expectancy rose and infant mortality rates fell as high oil prices allowed the country with the world’s greatest crude reserves to hurl resources at public healthcare, the Lancet medical journal noted earlier this year. Tens of thousands of Cuban doctors arrived to staff community “missions” that the government said were bringing free healthcare to the masses. But that flagship programme has reportedly been brought to its knees by Venezuela’s economic collapse, placing even greater strain on the country’s already buckling hospital network. In November Human Rights Watch warned of Venezuela’s “devastating health crisis”, pointing to increasing rates of maternal and infant mortality and a spike in cases of measles, diphtheria, tuberculosis and malaria. Another recent report noted that 53% of Venezuelan operating theatres were now closed, 71% of emergency rooms could not provide regular services and 79% of hospitals lacked a reliable water supply. Meanwhile, medical professionals were joining a historic exodus overseas: at least 22,000 Venezuelan doctors – 55% of the total – reportedly abandoned the country between 2012 and 2017. Lesbia Cortez, a healthcare worker at the Catholic charity Cáritas, said: “There are virtually no specialists left.” She estimated that 70% of those she studied with at medical school now practised in Colombia, Argentina or Chile. She said: “You can’t find a endocrinologist because they’ve gone; a dermatologist because they’ve gone; an oncologist because they’ve gone. The people who work in the dialysis units aren’t there because they’ve left the country too.” You can’t find a endocrinologist because they’ve gone; a dermatologist because they’ve gone; an oncologist because they’ve gone Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi, a doctor who recently returned to Venezuela from the United States to form a research group that studies the resurgence of vaccine-preventable and endemic diseases caused by the crisis, said: “I predict there is a moment when you are just going to be left without healthcare personnel in this country. “If a medical school faculty member earns $20 a month, what can you expect?” Padilla, the campaigner for chronic patients, said she believed Venezuela’s leaders should be jailed “for the crimes against humanity being committed” because of a breakdown critics blame partly on the chavista “missions” that channeled resources away from public hospitals. Padilla, 45, whose kidneys failed from hypertension, said she had spent three years on a transplant list but was now waiting to die since a lack of doctors and equipment meant operations were not possible: “My life is in danger in Venezuela.” Susana Mújica, who also suffers from kidney disease, grew angry as she considered Maduro’s cheery depiction of Venezuelan health. She said: “He says in his broadcasts that nothing’s going on: that everything’s fine; that there is medicine; that there are doctors; that I-don’t-know-how-many-millions are being invested in healthcare. That this is [the result of] an economic war. “We know the reality. It is crystal clear to us because we are the ones living this reality every day … Whether we live or die isn’t important to them. Their priority is staying in power.” Martínez, Victoria’s grieving father, said he was still struggling to accept his daughter’s death but was determined to speak out in the hope of avoiding more needless deaths. He said: “I know that no one can bring back my daughter. But I know I have neighbours in this hospital, and cousins. I have friends who go to this hospital because they have nowhere else to go and so this is my struggle.” He added: “I’m going to fight because I believe justice will come. And because I still believe that something will happen, that Venezuela will change, and that all this will pass.” Additional reporting Patricia Torres and Clavel RangelMirpur, 2016, England need 273 to beat Bangladesh. Alastair Cook and his new young opening partner Ben Duckett have been batting for 90 minutes and their hundred partnership has just come up. First ball after tea, Duckett’s done, bowled by a quicker, straighter delivery from the off-spinner Mehidy Hasan. Then Joe Root goes, lbw, and Gary Ballance slaps a long hop to mid-off. Moeen Ali lasts four balls. Then Cook falls, caught at silly point. An hour later, it’s all over, England have lost all 10 wickets for 64 runs in the space of 134 balls. Cook explains later that he thinks the problem was his team didn’t have enough experience in the conditions. “There’s a lot to work on.” Auckland, 2018. The first morning of the series, New Zealand have won the toss and put the tourists in. The pitch is green, but the skies are clear. England reach six for none before Trent Boult has Cook caught at second slip. In Boult’s next over he bowls Root through the gap between bat and pad, and in the over after that he has Dawid Malan caught behind. Cook has another new opening partner, Mark Stoneman, and he’s out the same way. Then Ben Stokes is bowled too. In an hour-and-a-half of batting, England lose all 10, again, for 52 runs from 124 balls. Trevor Bayliss says it is a contagious technical problem. “We made a lot of mistakes today with our footwork”. Trent Bridge, 2018. The second day of the Test. Cook is batting again. He has got another new partner in Keaton Jennings, and just after lunch they bring up their 50 partnership. Then Cook is caught behind off Ishant Sharma. Jennings falls to the next ball, poking at something he shouldn’t have played. Sharma gets England’s new kid, Ollie Pope, soon after. India bring on their medium pacer Hardik Pandya, and Joe Root slices a catch to slip. Pandya has never taken a five-for in a Test match before. That changes in the next 30 balls. When he’s done, England are too. Their 10 wickets fall in 158 balls, for 107 runs. This time Jos Buttler didn’t even try to explain it. “There’s no magic answer.” In 78 years of Test cricket, from 1938 onwards, through 743 games, England lost in every which way you can imagine but weren’t once bowled out in a single session. Now it has happened three times in three years. Of the 70 shortest completed innings in Test history, 17 of them, just under a quarter, were played in the past decade There have been other collapses around it, of course, ones that aren’t so neatly compartmentalised. Six for 43 and 10 for 83 and five for 51 and six for 15 and 10 for 104 in their away series against India in 2016. Nine for 94 and seven for 62 against South Africa in 2017. Six for 56 and seven for 64 and six for 35 and six for 85 and seven for 87 in Australia. Five for 16 and six for 35 at home against Pakistan. Anyone who has been following England for long knows they’ve always been partial to a batting collapse, but these days they seem predisposed to them. It happens so often their new tour rider requires a chaise longue and a crate of sal volatile ready in the dressing room. The last came in Barbados last week, from 23 for none to 77 all out, 10 wickets for 54 runs in 129 balls, including nine in the space of a session, undone, this time, by four West Indian quicks on a fast pitch. Which means that England have been spun out in Bangladesh and swung out in New Zealand, seamed out in England and blasted out in the West Indies. There’s no pattern to it. It’s happened in the first, second, third, and fourth innings, in the first, second, third, fourth and fifth Test of a series, whether they’ve played warm-up games or not, on every type of pitch against every stripe of bowler. Which suggests that there’s a bigger problem here, something more complicated than Bayliss’s suggestion that the batsmen weren’t moving their feet, or Cook’s argument that they hadn’t spent enough hours playing on spinning wickets. Some will say it’s the coaches. And it is true that, between them, Trevor Bayliss and Mark Ramprakash have overseen more collapses than a couple of catering college instructors running the beginner’s class in souffle cookery. But there’s always a question about exactly how much influence coaches have over players. And besides, England’s problems seem to be part of a bigger trend in the game. Since the start of 2010, the world’s eight best teams (if we strip out Bangladesh, who had such a rough time of it in the 2000s, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Ireland) have been bowled out for 100 or less 28 times in 391 Tests. In the 2000s it was 25 in 456. In the 1990s it was 15 in 347. It’s a crude measure, but it suggests collapses are becoming more common. Indeed, of the 70 shortest completed innings in Test history, 17 of them, just under a quarter, were played in the past decade. Which is why this feels like an epochal shift. This is a generation of batsmen who feel they need to succeed in Twenty20 if they are going to have fulfilling careers. They have to juggle the demands, the schedules, strategies and tactics of all three formats. It’s not easy. Root’s response has been to allow England’s white-ball style to bleed over into Test cricket. He’s still talking now about how he wants the team to be “bold” and “aggressive” in their batting. Which is why they play such entertaining cricket. And on balance, it’s working for them, too, since they have won eight out of their last 10 Tests. Only, don’t expect those batting collapses to stop any time soon.Dolce & Gabbana has proved that the show does go on after the label held its autumn 2019/winter 2020 menswear collection in Milan. It was the first ready-to-wear event for the brand since it was forced to cancel a show in China after a racism and cultural appropriation storm blew up in November – it rejected the claims and apologised for any misunderstanding. On Saturday D&G sought to control the narrative around the collection, adopting the format of classic salon show complete with a narrator explaining the ideas behind every section of the show. The theme of Elegance, meanwhile, afforded D&G the chance to try to remind the world of its original USPs. Velvet jacquards and brocades paid tribute to the Sicilian aristocracy of the company’s birthplace; rainbow-hued sequins were reminiscent of the pyrotechnics that light up Italian festivals; and the suiting honoured Dolce’s family tailors. The designers said that they want to show a new generation what elegance is, and will be hoping that the debacle in China won’t alienate the lucrative millennial market in the region, where consumers are responsible for nearly a third of the annual luxury spend. Backstage, Steffano Gabbana – considered by some to have been the main provocateur of the China show – said that he would like to “turn the page” and teach the new generation about timeless elegance. “I don’t know if it’s wrong or good but this is our point of view ... fashion is the mirror of the times [reflecting] what is outside – sometimes we get it right, sometimes not.”At about the age of 10, I fell down a reading rabbit hole. I would like to tell you that the reason for this was that I was bookish beyond my years, but the truth is that there was nothing else to do. It was Sudan in the 90s. There was only one TV channel, which offered military parades and propaganda. Most of the time there was no electricity available to watch it anyway. I had no friends or relatives my age who lived nearby, and so to come home from school was to enter a black hole of inactivity. So I read anything I could get my hands on, escaping from what was in hindsight a sort of airless, inert unhappiness. One day, as I was trying discreetly to read a book under the dinner table, my parents snapped. Unnerved by my addiction and how unsociable it made me, they banned me from reading at home and ordered that I collect all the books I had hoarded from the library and return them. I remember fishing them out of different nooks and crannies I had cultivated around the house and piling them up, with a growing terror of the impending boredom once they were gone. Only those who are so fortunate that they can take or leave the utility of modern gadgets can afford to moralise I thought back to this traumatic moment during the latest outbreak of mass anxiety about children and “screen time”. Alarm bells always ring for me when a child’s leisure preoccupations are judged to be suspect. The latest bout of panic about screens has its source in a study by the journal EClinicalmedicine, which collated data from 11,000 children aged 14 taking part in the Millennium Cohort Study research project. The recommendation from doctors was that parents should cut social media use for children, as evidence suggests that it interferes with sleep and is linked to depression, particularly in young girls. Intuitively, this makes sense. The anxiety about screens is probably triggered because we adults are forced to spend more time than we would wish to looking at them, so we naturally fear for what it is doing to a child’s brain. We’re all trying to get off our screens, taking hiatuses from social media and deleting accounts. Cafes (obnoxiously) advise us: “There is no wifi! Talk to each other!” There is even a growing cottage industry of literature on the topic. Books such as the hugely popular Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, How to Break Up With Your Phone, and You Are Not a Gadget warn us about all the ways connectivity is damaging us. Reports began to emerge last year of how Silicon Valley technologists are banning screens from their own homes. The New York Times says a “dark consensus” is beginning to emerge. An ex-Facebook employee told the paper that he is “convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children”. But in truth, there is no consensus, dark or otherwise. Even the University College London experts who led the study on screen time are reluctant to issue guidelines on where to set the threshold. Setting daily limits, they say, is “not the right focus”. Instead parents should be thinking: “Are you getting enough sleep, enough exercise, are you spending enough time with your family?” All the hand-wringing also seems to miss another important dimension to the debate: limiting screen time assumes a certain degree of economic stability and social capital in the households that enforce the rules. For single parents who cannot afford childcare, for families isolated from friends or support networks, for children and adolescents caught in the middle of domestic dramas, and for women stifled by oppressive relationships or parents, screens are a boon. They are a window on to the outside world. A screen is not only a distraction: it is a rolling, cushioning conversation with the best friend of a teenage girl who has moved to a new country. Screens can liberate. They can, as books did for me, give blessed relief in a world where there is a poverty of leisure options. My parents’ actions seem cruel when retold, but they saw my reading habits as an extreme diversion from what they considered normal. By that, I assume they meant communal family interaction and, in its absence, literally staring into space. This was how they grew up, with little literature and no electricity, counting stars to fall asleep. It should be a good and welcome thing that I had, and today’s children have, many other possibilities. There is a whiff of elitist asceticism about the panic over screen time. Having acquired what was previously exclusive technology, now available to the masses, some people seem impelled to grandstand by forswearing it. But only those who are so fortunate that they can take or leave the utility of modern gadgets can afford to moralise. Yes, extreme screen fixation and social media addiction are troubling phenomena. But temper that with a thought for those for whom the devil isn’t living in our phones, but banished by them. • Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnistIt’s just gone midday at Canterbury University and Professor Anne-Marie Brady is rock-hopping across a crystal clear stream. The life-long academic takes an overgrown bush track to reach the Okeover community gardens, her eyes scanning the sky for native birds.. It’s the height of summer in Christchurch and the garden is filled with rhubarb plants, clumps of chewy spinach and spring onions whose tips have turned white in the sun. “I used to spend a lot of time here,” says Brady, 52, examining the beds, ploughed by academic staff and students wanting to unwind. “I don’t any more.” Brady has spent more than 25 years researching the Chinese Communist party (CCP), using her base in New Zealand as a refuge to work on her books, cook elaborate meals for her family and tend her vegetable and flower gardens. But since the publication of her 2017 paper Magic Weapons, which details the extent of Chinese influence in New Zealand, Brady’s life has been turned upside down, becoming the target of a campaign of intimidation and “psy-ops” she believes is directed by Beijing towards her and her family. The Chinese government has not responded to requests for comment. Beginning in late 2017, Brady has had her home burgled and her office broken into twice. Her family car has been tampered with, she has received a threatening letter (“You are the next”) and answered numerous, anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night, despite having an unlisted number. The latest came at 3am on the day her family returned home after a Christmas break. “I’m being watched”, she says. A self-described “stoic”, Brady has had to draw on her experience of PTSD after the 2010 Christchurch earthquakes to help her handle the harassment. “I have already protected myself in terms of all my information, and the rest is a mind game. It is meant to scare me… to cause mental illness or inhibit the kinds of things I write on – to silence me,” says Brady, her voice quavering slightly. “So I win by not being afraid.” Close associates of Brady’s have also been visited by the Ministry of State Security in China. Brady’s employer, Canterbury University, recently hired a security consultant to protect her office. New locks were fitted, CCTV introduced, and encryption software installed. Despite three requests for expert government assistance, Brady and her husband – an artist from Beijing – have had to learn on the hoof how to protect their home, a suburban spot where they raise three teenage children, whose unease about the situation occasionally “manifests”, Brady says. “New Zealanders have a deep sense of complacency about their security and feel that they’re very far away from the problems that we are seeing unfold in other parts of the world – that’s just not true any more,” says Brady, sitting on a bench in the gardens, where her interview with the Guardian cannot be overheard. “We are part of the international environment too, and what happened to me – having my home and workplace invaded – is a wake-up call for people.” In the past few months Brady has begun using humour to counter the fear, has seen a counsellor on police advice, and consciously “lives in the moment”. Brady has studied the Chinese government’s propaganda and intimidation tactics for decades, so there is a level of irony to seeing it in her own life. The watcher has become the watched. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China academics around the world are experiencing increasing intimidation, say Brady and other experts. Some refuse to speak publicly for fear of reprisals or being refused visas to China. “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey” – Brady says, quoting a Chinese idiom. Dr Kevin Carrico, a lecturer at Macquarie University, has had sensitive segments of his lectures in Australian classrooms reported back to Beijing, whose officials have then visited the China-based parents of some students. “People have come to realise that there’s no longer any kind of great firewall between academic practice in China and academic practice outside of China,” Carrico told Inside Higher Ed. Brady and her husband rejected overseas job offers to stay in New Zealand and raise their children in a “high-trust society”. That belief is slowly souring. “We are so proud that we punch above our weight internationally, that we have a moral authority on the world stage.But in the last year I have really wondered about that,” says Brady. “Here is an actual challenge to our sovereignty – and a New Zealand family who have had their safety threatened – and our government is not defending them.” New Zealand police say they continue to investigate the malicious acts against Brady and that the case remained of “strong interest”. A spokesperson for prime minister Jacinda Ardern said she “absolutely defends” the right of academics to work freely but she “has not received any reports that there is an issue attributable to China or any other country”. Since the intimidation started, Brady has pinned an image of New Zealand world war two spy Nancy Wake above her desk, and sought courage in the writings of George Orwell. “My main job is to look after myself and keep doing what I’m doing, because it must surely matter if so much attention has been directed at me” she says, chuckling. Brady says she has repeatedly been encouraged by government insiders to keep reading, digging, and publishing. “I know the research I do is valued by our government, and my courage in speaking up is valued as well,,” says Brady. “But I am part of a changing geopolitical situation and my family is, too. And I have to handle that at the same time as be a mum, an academic, a colleague, a person who is at the supermarket … I have to be normal as well.”Members of the EU27 have expressed their frustration with Theresa May while rejecting a game-changing renegotiation of the Irish backstop and calling for a convincing ‘plan B’ that could win round parliament to a Brexit deal. In a shot across Theresa May’s bows, Peter Altmaier, Germany’s economics minister and a key ally of Angela Merkel, appeared to warn both Labour and the Conservatives against abandoning their cross-party talks. “Sympathy, patience and readiness to wait until the UK’s position will be clarified are of utmost important to avoid the worst,” he tweeted. “They should not be misused for party politics. Large majority wants to exclude hard Brexit – in the interest of the UK and beyond.” The prime minister is expected to tell the Commons on Monday afternoon that she plans to return to Brussels to seek a substantive shift from the EU on the Irish backstop in order to win round pro-Brexit MPs to her deal. The move has been widely seen as May giving up on the cross-party talks that were aimed at breaking the parliamentary logjam, and instead going back to placating the Democratic Unionist party and the Brexiters in her own party. Arriving in Brussels for a meeting on Monday, EU27 foreign ministers expressed varying degrees of openness to making changes to the withdrawal agreement, but were sceptical of being able to offer anywhere near enough for May to secure the support of rebel MPs. Spain’s foreign minister, Josep Borrell, said the scale of defeat for May’s Brexit deal last Tuesday – by 230 votes – suggested she would need to rethink her strategy of ploughing on with the current withdrawal agreement and political declaration on the future relationship. “I do not think she can convince MPs by presenting the same agreement with some tweaks,” he said. “She has to bring something substantially different, but of course that would have to be approved by the EU, so we have to wait until this afternoon to see what she says.” Borrell said parliamentary support was essential. “We cannot continue negotiating something, as it has happened this time, and when everything is negotiated, the parliament rejects it. We have to have the guarantee that she has enough political support so that what is negotiated is not rejected at the last moment.” Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s minister of foreign affairs, said he hoped Downing Street could still move towards a permanent customs union, as backed by Labour. Heiko Maas, Germany’s foreign minister, said that with fewer than 70 days until the UK was due to leave the bloc it was “about time” Downing Street offered a new plan that could get through parliament. “We know what London doesn’t want,” he said. “We finally need to know what London does want, what they have a majority for in parliament, so that we can sit together with the colleagues from London and discuss how a … Brexit without a deal can be prevented. Because it seems like everyone wants this and therefore it has to be possible.” Maas said “nerves are raw” about the threat posed by Brexit to peace on the island of Ireland, after a car bomb exploded outside a Londonderry police station on Saturday. He said the Irish backstop, which would guarantee the avoidance of a hard border by keeping the whole of the UK in a customs union until a satisfactory arrangement was in place, was “a topic where I can only see little changes being made during the negotiations and talks”. “For the German government this border issue is – we are a country that also had a border running through it – one of special sensitivity and we will closely cooperate with our Irish colleagues,” he said. The comments came as Ireland’s EU affairs minister, Helen McEntee, ruled out bilateral talks with the British government, and the Irish deputy leader, Simon Coveney, held talks with the bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. Miroslav Lajčák, the Slovakian foreign affairs minister, said his country would not support any renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement. “I don’t think it is feasible, I don’t think it is good,” he said. “I think the agreement is very good, 27 member states support it very strongly and I don’t see any reason to open it. “It is not up to us, it is up to the Brits to express themselves. A hard Brexit would be hard but we are getting closer and closer to it. I hope for wisdom to prevail.” Lithuania’s foreign minister, Linas Linkevicius, said of the withdrawal agreement that there was “no willingness to open the Pandora’s box”, signalling broader concerns that any further negotiation would result in some member states pushing for their own changes, and the deal swiftly unravelling.Kim Jong-un has told Xi Jinping he wants a second meeting with Donald Trump and is committed to “achieving results” amid an impasse over denuclearisation, according to state media reports of their meeting in Beijing this week. Kim told Xi that North Korea would “continue sticking to the stance of denuclearisation” and “make efforts for the second summit between the [North Korean] and US leaders to achieve results”, Chinese state media reported. The comments by Kim, who has just ended his fourth visit to China in the past 10 months, echo those he made in his New Year’s Day address, when he said he was ready to meet Trump “at any time”, but warned that the North could be forced to take a “new path” unless the US eased sanctions and made security guarantees. China’s Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying that he supported further dialogue and hoped Pyongyang and Washington would “meet each other halfway”. The report did not elaborate, but North Korea-US talks have stalled over disagreements about which side should be the first to make concessions. Mintaro Oba, a former US diplomat who focused on the Koreas, said Kim’s visit to Beijing “was one of a few recent signs that progress toward a second US-North Korea summit is getting serious. “It clearly leaves both leaders, but especially Kim, in a stronger position. He can now negotiate with Washington having demonstrated that China supports his approach. And he will probably want to secure another US-North Korea summit even more now to offset the visit to China and show he is an independent actor with options, not a Chinese vassal. “The Trump administration probably wasn’t surprised or annoyed by this visit given that there’s now a clear pattern of Kim Jong-un visiting China at critical moments. But there is a danger in the administration’s tendency to overestimate China’s power over North Korea and assume China influences all of the negative things Pyongyang does.” North Korea has warned that denuclearisation could be put at risk unless the US eases sanctions, while the US insists the North must first demonstrate its commitment to abandoning nuclear weapons. Details of Kim’s trip to China emerged as the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, predicted that a second summit between Kim and Trump would take place “soon”. But in comments that could irritate Washington, Moon suggested he would push for sanctions exemptions to restore inter-Korean economic cooperation, including the reopening of the Kaesong industrial park. In his New Year’s address, Kim said he was ready to reopen the complex, which Seoul closed in 2016 in response to a North Korean rocket launch. Moon said: “My administration will cooperate with the international community, including the United States, to resolve the remaining issues such as international sanctions as soon as possible.” Kim’s visit to China – a permanent member of the UN security council – is also being seen as part of an effort to win Chinese support for reducing sanctions that were strengthened in response to a string of ballistic missile launches and a nuclear test in 2017. Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Korea national diplomatic academy in Seoul, said China was unlikely to drop its “firm” support for international sanctions. Instead, he said, the focus of the Kim-Xi meeting was likely to have been on how China could facilitate economic reforms in North Korea. Nevertheless, Kim Jong-un had used the meeting “to add to the pressure on Trump [to reduce sanctions] and to use China as back-up,” he added. “China is the only country that will be able to support economic reforms in North Korea once sanctions are lifted,” he said. “Kim will need Chinese support before he finally begins denuclearising North Korea. I think he will take some initial measures to denuclearise North Korea, after which the US will reciprocate with initial measures to lift sanctions.” South Korea’s ambassador to the US, Cho Yoon-je, said Kim’s trip to China was “quite a good sign” that he and Trump would hold a second summit. Trump said at the weekend negotiations were underway on the location of his next meeting. Speaking at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Wednesday, Cho said “the train is already on the move”. While the timing was unclear, he added: “But I don’t think it can be stopped or reversed, at least in the near future.” Lu Chao, director of the Korea Research Center at the Liaoning Academy of Social Science, said the visit “shows the relationship is improving” and that North Korea views ties with Beijing as “one of its most significant diplomatic relationships”. Using North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Lu added: “The only barrier is the nuclear issue. If the DPRK does not do as it has promised, then the disagreement continues.”Oh my goodness, what have they done to The Cherry Orchard? The grand ball has become a beach party. Madame Ranevskaya has a noose around her neck. The entire ensemble are receiving blood transfusions. And Lopakhin has become a sex maniac who begins the play in bed with the maid. There isn’t a samovar in sight – or even a cherry orchard, for that matter. This is the Pushkin Drama Theatre’s production, which is on its way to Britain. I caught it in Moscow just before Christmas – and was somewhat taken aback. It is Chekhov as absurdist drama, played on a raked stage with minimal props. In this portrait of a dysfunctional family and a neurotic society, Lopakhin is a youthful oligarch in love with money – and with the glamorous Madame Ranevskaya. Both are much younger than we are used to seeing them in the UK, but the two leads – Viktoriya Isakova and Alexander Petrov – insist this is faithful to Chekhov. I meet them just before curtain-up and ask if they are playing The Cherry Orchard as tragedy or comedy, such ambiguity being the defining characteristic of Chekhov. “Tragedy,” says Isakova emphatically. “Comedy,” says Petrov with a laugh. “The comedy and the tragedy are always there,” adds Isakova. “I see this in my own life. But Ranevskaya is a tragic figure.” The director is Vladimir Mirzoev, a gnarled, bearded veteran who emigrated to Canada in 1989 but has continued to work extensively in Russia. He thinks the comedy v tragedy question is irrelevant. “You can’t pick one genre to define a whole life,” he says. “It contains elements of comedy, tragedy and farce.” He also rejects any suggestion that his take on Chekhov is radical. “For the more radically attuned part of the audience, this production may not be radical enough. But for the conservative part, it may be quite irritating. So we end up causing irritation to both sides.” Mirzoev, who has never directed The Cherry Orchard before, wanted to make it relevant to the “problems, situations and fears” of people today. He says the “inevitable catastrophe” society faces, the “feeling that everyone is on the edge of a precipice”, will connect with the audience, even the well-heeled one in Moscow, where international sanctions are biting, inflation is rising and the nationalistic certainties of the Putin era are not as settled as they seem. So yes, it is a comedy, but one that Mirzoev calls a “comedy of catastrophes”. The dilemma of how to play The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov’s final play, has been there from the beginning. Konstantin Stanislavski, the founder of modern Russian theatre, directed the premiere in 1904. He was firmly in the tragedy camp, whereas Chekhov insisted on calling it a comedy. They had had similar battles over Three Sisters in 1901, when Chekhov complained that Stanislavski’s “exuberance” was undermining his intentions. Chekhov is the dramatist of the throwaway. He brings to mind John Lennon’s famous lyric: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Schemes are concocted only to collapse. In Uncle Vanya, the title character tries to shoot the parasitical Serebryakov, but inevitably misses – and life goes on. Stanislavski would have played up the drama of the attempt, while Chekhov would have enjoyed its futility. In a sense, Chekhov is temperamentally more English than Russian – or at least more obviously suited to audiences in the UK where, with the possible exception of Brexit, muddling through is a way of life. “Despite all the interesting innovations and themes in Russian avant-garde theatre today, they are still stuck in social issues,” says the Russian-born Katya Rogatchevskaia, curator of east European collections at the British Library. “They are not dealing with existential questions in the way British theatre does.” She recently saw a London production of Harold Pinter’s The Room and thinks a Russian company would struggle with it. “You cannot interpret it,” she says. “You have to understand that you don’t understand it.” But in Russia, she says, theatre and audience want resolution. Chekhov, because he is true to the messiness and self-deceptions of life, offers none. Chekhov brings to mind John Lennon’s lyric, ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’ Julie Curtis, professor of Russian literature at Oxford University, regards this as a simplification, but accepts that radicalism in the big Russian theatres is often directed at style rather than content. “In a way,” she says, “the easiest thing is to take a classic play – who can object to the content of The Cherry Orchard? – and then turn it into a directorial or design experiment.” Mirzoev’s production may be an effort to rethink Chekhov, but where are the new plays that rethink the world? Concentrated in Moscow, St Petersburg and the Siberian cities, the principal theatres in Russia depend on state subsidy. The Russian Orthodox church and social conservatives are becoming ever-more censorious, while the trial of avant-garde director Kirill Serebrennikov for alleged fraud has suggested to some that artistic freedoms are increasingly under attack. Is it then so surprising that the main stages tend to concentrate on aesthetic challenges, leaving more highly charged new work to the burgeoning fringe? Theatrical innovation has a chequered history in Russia. The irony of the 1917 revolution, Professor Curtis points out, was that the leading revolutionaries were deeply conservative, at least artistically. Bizarrely, their models were the 19th-century tsars, who loathed innovative, free-thinking writers such as Mikhail Lermontov (Nicholas I called his A Hero of Our Time “odious and debauched”). In the 1920s, directors sought to introduce a radical new artistic dawn which they believed to be in keeping with the ideals of the revolution, only to be attacked in the following decade for “bourgeois formalism”. Several of the leading experimentalists, notably Vsevolod Meyerhold, met brutal ends in Stalin’s purges. So, at the height of Stalinism, theatre settled into a socialist-realist rut. The Cherry Orchard was played – at a time when Chekhov’s other plays were largely neglected – as a political fable describing the downfall of an effete landed class. The nouveau riche Lopakhin (who wants to save Madame Ranevskaya from bankruptcy by turning her cherry orchard into holiday homes) and Trofimov (an unworldly, radical student) were seen as heralds of the new revolutionary age. Then, in the 1960s, in the post-Stalin thaw, bourgeois formalism came back into vogue. Chekhov was revisited in a host of innovative new productions that mined the plays for metaphorical meaning. Suddenly Russian theatre was boundlessly exciting – and energised by friction with the authorities. Has that revisionism now run its course? Perhaps the socialist realists had a point: aesthetic experimentation on its own – noisy, exuberant art for art’s sake – is of limited value. The British approach to Chekhov can sometimes be unduly literal, genteel and cloying, but it is possible to err in the opposite direction: overinterpreting, striving for effect at the expense of the text, privileging metaphor over the notion that the author is portraying something approximating to real life. “A lot of Russian directors of Chekhov seek to make a statement or present a view of the world,” says Sergei Ostrovsky, co-chair of the London-based Russian cultural centre Pushkin House and a one-time theatre critic turned corporate lawyer. “Very few productions actually want to read the play.” In part, he says, it is because the texts are so well known that directors feel obliged to turn them upside down, but he finds such self-consciousness off-putting. “It’s a very easy way out. You have a wonderful box of tricks and you just pull these things out.” Mainstream Russian theatre, with its emphasis on directorial ego and gorgeous picture-making on stage, strikes me as similar to regietheater (the German term for “director’s theatre”) in opera, where making a splash by rethinking, perhaps even subverting, the author’s intentions is central. It could be that Russian audiences know their Chekhov so well they have to be confronted with it in this way. But it may also be true that, faced with an endless diet of “radical” reinterpretation, true radicalism would consist in returning to the text and concentrating on the interplay of the characters. The Pushkin troupe is bringing two other works to London’s Barbican: Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan; and a piece of physical theatre called Mother’s Field, adapted from a novella by Soviet-era Kyrgyz writer Chinghiz Aitmatov. Good Person has become the Pushkin’s signature show. The billionaire businessman Roman Abramovich watched a performance in Moscow, loved it, and has been instrumental in bringing it to London. His deep pockets are crucial – housing a 100-strong Russian company at the Barbican for a week does not come cheap. Good Person, which I also saw in Moscow, is better suited to the Pushkin’s high-energy ensemble style. Brecht poses a social and moral problem – how to lead a good life in a corrupt society – with which the company can engage. Chekhov evades such didacticism: everything may be collapsing, but shouldn’t we just sit down and have a cup of tea? Provided someone has remembered the samovar, of course. • The Pushkin Drama Theatre’s season at the Barbican, London, runs 5-9 February.“We knew that something was amiss in the first couple days,” said Brad Lister. “We were driving into the forest and at the same time both Andres and I said: ‘Where are all the birds?’ There was nothing.” His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming. “It was just astonishing,” Lister said. “Before, both the sticky ground plates and canopy plates would be covered with insects. You’d be there for hours picking them off the plates at night. But now the plates would come down after 12 hours in the tropical forest with a couple of lonely insects trapped or none at all.” “It was a true collapse of the insect populations in that rainforest,” he said. “We began to realise this is terrible – a very, very disturbing result.” Earth’s bugs outweigh humans 17 times over and are such a fundamental foundation of the food chain that scientists say a crash in insect numbers risks “ecological Armageddon”. When Lister’s study was published in October, one expert called the findings “hyper-alarming”. The Puerto Rico work is one of just a handful of studies assessing this vital issue, but those that do exist are deeply worrying. Flying insect numbers in Germany’s natural reserves have plunged 75% in just 25 years. The virtual disappearance of birds in an Australian eucalyptus forest was blamed on a lack of insects caused by drought and heat. Lister and his colleague Andrés García also found that insect numbers in a dry forest in Mexico had fallen 80% since the 1980s. “We are essentially destroying the very life support systems that allow us to sustain our existence on the planet, along with all the other life on the planet,” Lister said. “It is just horrifying to watch us decimate the natural world like this.” It was not insects that drew Lister to the Luquillo rainforest for the first time in the mid-1970s. “I was interested in competition among the anoles lizards,” he said. “They’re the most diverse group of vertebrates in the world and even by that time had become a paradigm for ecology and evolutionary studies.” The forest immediately captivated Lister, a lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic University in the US. “It was and still is the most beautiful forest I have ever been in. It’s almost enchanted. There’s the lush verdant forest and cascading waterfalls, and along the roadsides there are carpets of multicoloured flowers. It’s a phantasmagoric landscape.” It was important to measure insect numbers, as these are the lizards’ main food, but at the time he thought nothing more of it. Returning to the national park decades later, however, the difference was startling. “One of the things I noticed in the forest was a lack of butterflies,” he said. “They used to be all along the roadside, especially after the rain stopped, hundreds upon hundreds of them. But we couldn’t see one butterfly.” Since Lister’s first visits to Luquillo, other scientists had predicted that tropical insects, having evolved in a very stable climate, would be much more sensitive to climate warming. “If you go a little bit past the thermal optimum for tropical insects, their fitness just plummets,” he said. As the data came in, the predictions were confirmed in startling fashion. “The number of hot spells, temperatures above 29C, have increased tremendously,” he said. “It went from zero in the 1970s up to something like 44% of the days.” Factors important elsewhere in the world, such as destruction of habitat and pesticide use, could not explain the plummeting insect populations in Luquillo, which has long been a protected area. Data on other animals that feed on bugs backed up the findings. “The frogs and birds had also declined simultaneously by about 50% to 65%,” Lister said. The population of one dazzling green bird that eats almost nothing but insects, the Puerto Rican tody, dropped by 90%. Lister calls these impacts a “bottom-up trophic cascade”, in which the knock-on effects of the insect collapse surge up through the food chain. “I don’t think most people have a systems view of the natural world,” he said. “But it’s all connected and when the invertebrates are declining the entire food web is going to suffer and degrade. It is a system-wide effect.” To understand the global scale of an insect collapse that has so far only been glimpsed, Lister says, there is an urgent need for much more research in many more habitats. “More data, that is my mantra,” he said. The problem is that there were very few studies of insect numbers in past decades to serve as a baseline, but Lister is undeterred: “There’s no time like the present to start asking what’s going on.”Dozens of MPs have written to the UK’s most senior police officer to raise concerns about safety outside parliament after the Conservative MP Anna Soubry faced chants from protesters on Monday calling her a “Nazi”. At least 55 parliamentarians signed the letter to the Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, after the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, urged officers to do more to protect MPs and Soubry criticised the lack of police response to the abuse. Scotland Yard later confirmed it had opened an investigation into whether any offences had been committed when chants of “Soubry is a Nazi” could clearly be heard while the pro-remain MP was being interviewed by BBC News on Abingdon Green, a grassed area outside parliament used by broadcasters. It is the second time in recent weeks that Soubry has been targeted by a small group of pro-Brexit protesters wearing yellow vests, some of whom have links to the far right. On the earlier occasion, she was surrounded by shouting men calling her a traitor. The MPs’ letter to Dick reads: “After months of peaceful and calm protests by groups representing a range of political views on Brexit, an ugly element of individuals with strong far-right and extreme-right connections, which your officers are well aware of, have increasingly engaged in intimidatory and potentially criminal acts targeting members of parliament, journalists, activists and members of the public. “We understand there are ongoing investigations but there appears to be an ongoing lack of coordination in the response from the police and appropriate authorities including with Westminster borough policing, and despite clear assurances this would be dealt with following incidents before Christmas, there have been a number of further serious and well publicised incidents today.” In the letter, the MPs said they wanted to ensure that people retained the right to protest peacefully outside parliament. “It is, however, utterly unacceptable for members of parliament, journalists, activists and members of the public to be subject to abuse, intimidation and threatening behaviour and indeed potentially serious offences while they go about their work.” After the latest incident against Soubry, the Conservative MP Nick Boles raised the issue with Bercow, asking what could be done to end the harassment. Bercow said safety off the parliamentary estate was not part of his remit, but he took the issue very seriously and had been in touch with police, “who have been made very well aware of our concerns”. The Speaker told MPs: “Peaceful protest is a vital democratic freedom, but so is the right of elected members to go about their business without being threatened or abused, and that includes access to and from the media stands in Abingdon Green. I am concerned at this stage about what seem to be a pattern of protest targeted in particular – I don’t say exclusively – at women.” He was backed by other MPs, among them Labour’s Mary Creagh, who said such “vile, misogynist thuggery, abuse and harassment” raised particular worries following the murder of her colleague Jo Cox in 2016 by a far-right terrorist. The small but highly visible and noisy band of yellow-vested activists harassing MPs and journalists outside parliament are ostensibly protesting in favour of Brexit, but have links to wider far-right activism of the sort carried out by Tommy Robinson. Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has built both a huge social media following and a handsome living from anti-Muslim protests. He has recently tried to latch on to pro-Brexit activism, co-organising a so-called Brexit Betrayal march in London in December. The group outside parliament, almost all of whom are men, are not formally linked to Robinson, or his new political partners in Ukip, but have similar roots. They have modelled their outfits on the French gilets jaunes protests. James Goddard, a self-styled “political activist” who filmed Tory MP Anna Soubry being abused and harassed in December, is the most prominent of the group, and has appeared at many of their small-scale protests, including blockades of Westminster bridge. He gave a speech at a rally in the summer in support of the then-jailed Yaxley-Lennon, and has posted anti-Islam comments on Gab, a niche Twitter-mimicking social media site popular with far-right users. Goddard has also been involved in protests connected to an anti-Muslim conspiracy theory which claims that claims an incident in which three teenage boys were killed by a speeding drunk driver as they walked to a party in west London was in fact a terror attack. Like Robinson, Goddard has been seeking to make such protests his full-time job by soliciting donations from supporters online. Bercow said he was aware of incidents “involving aggressive and threatening behaviour towards members and others by assorted protesters who have donned the yellow vests used in France”. He said it was a matter for the Met rather than parliamentary authorities as it had happened in the street, but added: “Female members, and in a number of cases I’m advised, female journalists have been subjected to aggressive protest and what many would regard as harassment. I can assure the House that I am keeping a close eye on events and I will speak to those who advise me about these matters.” During the BBC interview, Soubry broke off from answering questions to tell the presenter Simon McCoy: “I do object to being called a Nazi actually. I’m sorry but I just think this is astonishing.” The abuse continued as Soubry was interviewed by the Sky News presenter Kay Burley, with chants of “liar, liar” heard throughout the live broadcast. Soubry told Burley: “I don’t have a problem with people demonstrating and making their views heard. I have a real problem with people who call me a traitor, or ‘Soubry, you Nazi’. That is a criminal offence and I’m a criminal barrister. “I’m told that we should get used to it, but we shouldn’t have to. Apparently it’s democracy in action and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] believe that no offences are being committed.” In a later tweet, Soubry said: “Apparently MPs and politicians are meant to accept it as part of the democratic process. I fail to see why journalists and technicians should be subjected to the same abuse & intimidation as the police stand by and do nothing. They tried to stop me getting into parliament.” The political commentator Owen Jones was accosted by a group outside parliament earlier on Monday, with some wearing union flags. He shared a video of his encounter on Twitter, where they could be heard calling him a “traitor” a “horrible little man” and accusing him of writing “fake news”. Many of the incidents have been carried out by the same small group of protesters wearing yellow hi-vis jackets, modelled on the French gilets jaunes movements, who like to livestream their actions on Facebook. They have also blocked Westminster Bridge and harassed other politicians and journalists, including shouting racist and sexist abuse at a Sky News team. A key member of the group is James Goddard, who identified himself as the person filming the first abuse of Soubry. Goddard is a supporter of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson and has posted anti-Muslim messages on the social media site Gab, which is popular with far-right users.A rift has opened within Italy’s populist coalition government over the fate of 49 people who remain stranded at sea in the Mediterranean onboard two private rescue ships. Thirty-two of them are onboard the German NGO rescue vessel Sea-Watch 3, which has been at sea for 17 days after Italy and Malta refused it permission to dock. An additional 17 people were rescued off the coast of Libya on 29 December by a second vessel, which is operated by another German humanitarian group, Sea-Eye. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people rescued in the Mediterranean have been denied entry into Italy in similar standoffs since Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and leader of the far-right League, started a clampdown on immigration within days of coming to power last June. As the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, tries to reach an agreement with other EU states to take in some of the stranded, Salvini has refused to relent, writing on Facebook that Italy’s ports “will remain closed to those who don’t respect the rules”. Salvini ignored a plea from Pope Francis on Sunday for European leaders to “show solidarity” and offer a safe port to the 49 people onboard the Sea-Watch 3 and the Sea-Eye. Salvini also appears to be at odds with his coalition partner Luigi Di Maio, deputy prime minister and leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S). On Saturday Di Maio insisted Malta take responsibility for those onboard but that Italy would welcome the 10 women and their children who were among them. Malta allowed the two ships to shelter from bad weather near its coast and for them to be resupplied with fresh food and water, but refused to let those onboard disembark, arguing that they were rescued beyond the country’s search-and-rescue zone. In response to Di Maio, Salvini, who is also interior minister, struck a dismissive tone, saying: “Migrants? I’m the one who decides.” Di Maio said on Monday he supported his government’s tough immigration line but that he believed that the women and children ought to be taken in. But clashes with the League has caused ruptures within Di Maio’s own ranks. The M5S expelled two senators, including Gregorio De Falco, for voting against a security bill drafted by Salvini that targets asylum rights. Two MEPs were also expelled for failing to follow party rules. “I voted against the security bill because it is abnormal, unconstitutional and will produce a greater number of illegal [immigrants] and insecurity,” De Falco told the Guardian. “There are others in opposition - the far-right policies of the League are not the policies of the M5S.” Dozens of mayors across Italy have also refused to implement the security bill. De Falco said the closure of sea ports was not an official government measure and that Di Maio and Salvini were simply giving the impression of a united front. “There are splits on many aspects. The two sides are not united nor, to tell the truth, is that the intention,” he said. Rino Marinello, an M5S senatorr, said that while Italy should take in women and children from the two ships, other EU states needed to play their part. “These migrants need medical assistance as soon as possible … but it is time that Europe makes new agreements for the resettlement of migrants,” he said. “It also time for Europe to invest in Africa and improve peoples’ conditions there. We can’t just stare at Africa while human traffickers are making millions out of migrants.” As the sparring continues, Frank Dörner, a doctor on the Sea-watch 3, said the rescued people were in a “dire situation”. A few days ago, one jumped into the sea in an attempt to reach Malta and was quickly brought back onboard. “The situation is getting more and more unstable,” he said. “People were already traumatised when they reached our boat but every day the stress level is increasing.”“Where are George Clooney and co now that Sudan needs them?” asked an Opinion article in the Guardian this week. The oped assumed that a lack of public statements by us and others with a long association with Darfur, Sudan more broadly, and South Sudan meant that we were doing nothing in response to the Sudanese regime’s brutal crackdown of escalating protests throughout the country. This is indeed a critical moment in Sudan’s fraught history. The people of Sudan are rightly leading demands for change, and we believe our role is to support the cause of human rights for Sudanese people by using strategic and tactical advocacy in Europe, the US, and Africa focused on key points of leverage. As the demonstrations have unfolded this past month, our entire team has continuously engaged officials in governments around the world to take measures to hold the Bashir regime accountable. Much of this advocacy is not done in public. To support Sudanese efforts for change we have been working assiduously behind the scenes to suspend the US government’s process for removing president Omar al-Bashir’s regime from its state sponsors of terrorism list. Such a move would lift remaining sanctions and make the Sudanese government eligible for massive debt relief; one of the few points of leverage the international community has over the Khartoum regime. We have been engaging the Trump administration and the US Congress to suspend the process of normalising relations with Bashir’s regime, whose human rights abuses go far beyond killing protesters. And we have dispatched staff to to engage governments in Europe and to the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa. Over more than a dozen years, we’ve invested millions of dollars into efforts to address Sudan’s – and South Sudan’s – crises. We launched the Satellite Sentinel Project to monitor the regime’s mass atrocities using satellite technology and teams of imagery analysts. We were able to uncover evidence of mass graves, Chinese-made rockets, hidden troop movements in violations of ceasefires, and many other destabilising actions of the Sudan regime. 1956 Independence Sudan – including the area that will later become South Sudan - attains independence after being under Anglo-Egyptian rule since 1899. 1962 First civil war In a pattern that will later re-establish itself, civil war breaks out in 1962  with a rebellion led by southern separatists, leading to limited autonomy being granted by Khartoum following a peace agreement signed in Addis Ababa in 1972. 1983 Second civil war War between Khartoum and the south breaks out again when ​President Jaafar Numeiri abolishes southern autonomy, leading to almost two decades of conflict. 2005 Peace and autonomy for the south The Comprehensive Peace Agreement is signed between ​John Garang​’s southern Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement and Khartoum which sees a new constitution and autonomy in the south whose administration is dominated by Garang’s former guerilla colleagues, foremost among them Salva Kiir. 2011 South Sudan formed After an uneasy period punctuated by outbreaks of violence, political leaders in the north and south agree to an independence referendum which sees the birth of the state of South Sudan 2013 War in the south ​Peace is short lived, however, with new conflict breaking out in 2013 when pPresident Salva Kiir​ dismisses his cabinet and vice-president Riek Machar in a power struggle within the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movementleading to conflict with Uganda which supports Kiir’s government forces. An attempted mediation for which Machar returns to Juba in 2016 breaks down amid more fighting, including accusations from the UN against Kiir of ethnic cleansing. Famine is declared a year later. Despite peace talks the conflict and atrocities continue, creating the continent’s largest refugee crisis. But over time, we realised that naming and shaming the regime and exposing its complicity in mass atrocities were not having sufficient impact on the policies of governments in Europe, America and Africa, so we decided on a new approach. We assessed the most significant point of vulnerability of this unshamable regime to be all the money it has been stealing from its people and squirrelling out of the country into hidden accounts, real estate, and shell companies, funnelling the rest of the funds into the machinery of state repression now responsible for killing and arresting protesters. So we decided to go after the regime’s massive corruption and illicit financial flows by creating an organisation called The Sentry, aimed at making it harder for them to loot the natural resources of the country to line their pockets and finance their repression. Our financial forensic investigative team is gathering evidence and we hope to have our first reports on Sudan in the coming year, just as we have already done in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic. The Sentry has also undertaken an assessment of Sudan’s anti-money laundering framework, and our report coming in the near future will show that the system is barely sufficient to meet international standards on paper, and far more concerning in practice. Bashir’s theft has taken longer to crack because his regime has been more sophisticated in obscuring its illicit money trails, including through manipulating and abusing their own flawed systems. It is our belief that exposing the Bashir regime’s massive theft of resources from its people, and the complicity of the international financial system in this effort, constitutes the most critical way in which we can support Sudanese activists on the ground as they lead the campaign for justice and human rights. Much of our work in this regard is not public. We provide evidence directly to global banks to help them guard against money laundering through the international financial system, and we provide dossiers to governments, including to the US Treasury recently to support sanctions under the new Global Magnitsky authorities. This work has gone hand-in-hand with our ongoing efforts in South Sudan. We’ve worked to expose the vast corruption in the Juba regime, and to successfully advocate for network sanctions and anti-money laundering measures imposed against key regime officials and financiers. The networks of looting are transnational, so many of the vultures feeding on South Sudan are also doing the same to Sudan. There is much money to be made in war, and the deliberate absence of the rule of law has supported the efforts of the thieves of state in Khartoum and Juba. We’ve also supported the restoration of coffee farming in areas of South Sudan to help create incomes for the hard-working people there. Unfortunately, the conflict has overwhelmed these efforts, but we will continue to look for opportunities. We certainly support the work of journalists to ask questions about the activities of those working to address the world’s problems. But the Guardian and other publications with a history of important investigative journalism should be asking questions of the UK and other European governments, which continue to pursue favourable trade and investment opportunities with Sudan, and which are providing funds to the Sudan regime to contain migration, not fully understanding that those funds are going to the most violent paramilitary forces associated with the regime, ironically causing further out-migration from Sudan to Europe. And journalists should be asking the US government how it can consider normalising relations with a government that is killing protesters, looting the country’s natural resources, failing to combat money laundering through its own system, maintaining ties with extremists inside and outside Sudan, and undermining basic religious freedoms. This is a catalytic moment for the people of Sudan. We and our team – which includes Sudanese experts – are working in every way we can to support the aspirations of the people of Sudan for a peaceful transition from three decades of violent, kleptocratic dictatorship. • Actor George Clooney and activist John Prendergast are co-founders of The Sentry.  The World Anti-Doping Agency has been warned by its own athlete committee that if it does not ban Russia again it will have failed clean athletes. Wada was left with egg on its face after the Russian authorities allowed a 31 December deadline to hand over doping data from its Moscow lab to lapse – the key condition of a controversial deal to lift the three-year suspension on the Russian Anti-Doping Agency in September. To make matters worse for Wada, its president, Sir Craig Reedie, had offered a “100%” guarantee the Russians would comply in November. Wada’s compliance review committee will now meet on 14 January to make a recommendation to Wada’s executive committee on how to proceed but Wada’s athlete committee said the only option is for Russia to be suspended again. “We are extremely disappointed that the Dec 31 deadline imposed on Russia by Wada has not been adhered to by the Russian authorities,” the committee said in a statement. “We now expect that following the process recommended by the CRC that Russia will be declared non-compliant. Only this action will be suitable and appropriate in the view of the athletes. Anything less will be considered a failure by Wada to act on behalf of clean athletes.” Wada also faced mounting pressure from national anti-doping organisations, including from the United States and Germany, who called for an immediate review and recommendation from the CRC. “We recognise Rusada has been working with Wada in an effort to resolves these issues, but the conditions … were unequivocal and without data there can be only one outcome,” Nado leaders said in a statement. “The importance of this situation does not warrant providing a further two weeks for Russia to comply.” UK Anti-Doping, which did not add its name to the statement, nonetheless said it was “deeply concerned” by Russia’s behaviour. “Uninhibited access to the Moscow laboratory and the athletes data was the first condition of Wada’s reinstatement of Rusada in September 2018,” a statement said. “At the same time the process to be followed once the 31 December deadline passed was set out. “The CRC must now complete its work and Ukad keenly awaits its recommendation to Wada’s executive committee.”Over the past week, Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to declare a national emergency if he does not get funding for his US-Mexico border wall. As the president set off for Texas on a visit to the border, he made a series of typically garbled statements on border security, but the message was clear: if Democrats don’t agree to give Trump $5bn for the wall as part of a deal to end the partial government shutdown, he could invoke emergency powers. It is typically described as a crisis, such as a national security issue, which threatens the safety of the country. The National Emergencies Act of 1976 allows presidents to redirect government money without approval from Congress. The act also allows a president to circumnavigate some laws while the emergency is addressed. If Trump does declare a national emergency he would have to specify exactly which powers he intends to use, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. He has threatened to declare the national emergency to build a wall along a stretch of the US-Mexico border, and has provided no further detail. Currently the president and Democratic leaders are at a standoff over funding for the wall, which has shut down 25% of the government for 20 days. More than 800,000 federal workers have either gone without pay or been put on unpaid leave. Trump says he will not sign a congressional budget proposal to reopen the government unless it includes $5bn for the wall. In his first televised address to the nation from the Oval Office this week, Trump gave a speech full of false claims and misleading statistics to paint a portrait of a crisis at the US-Mexico border, even as the rate of illegal immigration has steadily fallen over the years and in 2018 reached its lowest point in more than a decade. The president says the wall is needed to prevent drug trafficking and undocumented immigration, but most drug trafficking and migration into the US occurs at legal points of entry – not across unwalled parts of the border. Democrats say the wall is a waste of money, and have accused Trump of using rhetoric “full of misinformation and even malice”. Probably from funding set aside for military construction projects – such as building army barracks and other improvements to bases used by the armed forces. Bruce Ackerman, a Yale law professor, wrote in the New York Times that Trump would probably use money from the military budget for the wall, and use military personnel to build it. Possibly not. There is widespread doubt over whether the situation at the border can be classified as an emergency. That means any declaration could become mired in months-long court proceedings. Both Democrats and Republicans have expressed skepticism about whether it would work. The House armed services committee’s Democratic chairman, Adam Smith, told ABC that the president “would be wide open to a court challenge saying, where’s the emergency?’” The Republican senator John Thune echoed that on CNN. Congress would also be able to pass a resolution blocking the emergency declaration. Yes. There are actually 30 national emergencies currently in effect. But the national emergencies have not been used for what some would say is a politically motivated wall. George W Bush declared a national emergency after the 9/11 attacks, and Barack Obama did the same during the swine flu outbreak in 2009. The majority of the other emergencies suspend or withhold money from foreign nationals or countries.The Premier League are braced for their hunt to find a new chief executive to take until the end of the year after being rebuffed by a second candidate to fill the vacancy left by Richard Scudamore. Tim Davie, the chief executive of BBC Studios, turned down the Premier League’s advances on Wednesday, forcing the governing body to turn once again to their shortlist of candidates after first choice, Susanna Dinnage, also pulled out of replacing Scudamore at the end of last year just weeks before she was meant to start the job. The five-person recruitment panel chaired by the Chelsea chairman, Bruce Buck, which is working with the executive search firm Spencer Stuart, has now widened the search and has accepted it could take many months for them to get a new chief executive in place. With the broadening of the search it is not clear whether Tom Betts, ITV’s director of strategy who was also on the original shortlist, is still in the Premier League’s sights or even still interested in the job following the recruitment debacle. The hunt has become embarrassing for the Premier League, albeit not its fault. Dinnage was praised by Buck as the “outstanding choice” when her appointment was announced in November but then pulled out at the end of December. In broadening the search industry sources point to potential candidates including Dawn Airey, one of the UK’s most experienced media executives who recently returned to the UK after running Getty Images in New York for three years. Airey built her career on a string of high-profile TV roles – including two stints at Channel 5 where she was famously quoted as saying its strategy was based on the three Fs, “films, football and fucking” – and top roles at ITV and Sky. The 58-year old also spent two years at Yahoo! as its top European executive. It is not known if Airey has been approached about the role. Some major Premier League clubs had urged Gavin Patterson, the chief executive of BT who steps down at the end of the month, to throw his hat in the ring but he did not apply for the role. Having not been involved in the process to date the 51-year old is not tainted by the politics of not being the first-choice candidate – offering an elegant solution for the Premier League – if he were persuaded to change his mind about the position. However, candidates will be aware that following in the footsteps of Scudamore, who ran the Premier League as his own fiefdom for 20 years, will be a difficult task as the economics of football change in the digital age. The Scudamore era has been marked by massive increases in the value of Premier League rights in the UK, and more latterly around the world. When he took over in 1999 the division earned £25m a year, it now stands at about £1.1bn annually. However, a new chief executive cannot rely on such revenue growth as the value of the multibillion UK rights appears to have peaked, although selling Premier League rights overseas continues to grow by double digit percentages each three-year auction cycle. Last year, Sky paid £3.57bn to retain the lion’s share of the rights for Premier League matches from 2019-2022, a 14% discount per game on its current deal. The deal marked the end of hyperinflation in the UK market with the rivalry between Sky and BT pushing the Premier League’s take up 70% at each of the previous two auctions. The total cost of the rights has rocketed from £1.78bn for 2010-13 to £5.13bn for 2018-19. The Premier League’s attempts to draw deep-pocketed Silicon Valley giants into bidding, to continue to drive rights inflation in the face of a dearth of new competition from traditional TV broadcasters, has not been considered overly successful. The restructuring of the auction to include two live streaming packages, a first for the Premier League, failed to achieve the price it was seeking. In the end Amazon did pick up a package, as part of its wider experiment with exclusive live sport streaming in the UK, with BT eventually adding the other outstanding package to its portfolio. Another factor for candidates to consider is the complex politics of factions within the 20-club Premier League with the big six – Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham – pushing for a bigger share of the rights revenues in recognition of their star power. Richard Masters, the league’s managing director, is acting as interim chief executive until a permanent successor can be found. Last June, Scudamore stepped down, although he retains an advisory role, with a widely-criticised £5m golden leaving present over three years signed off by the clubs “in recognition of the outstanding work he has carried out”. Scudamore is estimated to have earned more than £26m from his salary since taking over the role in 1999.Born Donald John Trump in New York, 14 June 1946, the son of Fred Trump, a property developer, and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro in Baltimore, Maryland, 26 March 1940, the daughter of Thomas D’Alesandro Jr, a US congressman and Baltimore mayor, and Anunciata D’Alesandro. Proud children Donald Trump Jr is a cheerleader for the president on the campaign trail and could be in hot water over alleged collusion with Russia. Alexandra Pelosi is a documentary film-maker who said of her mother this week: “She’ll cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding.” Claim to political fame  Trump: First person without political or military experience to be elected US president. Pelosi: First woman to become speaker of the US House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011, re-elected in 2019. Claim to infamy Trump: Rich man hated by Democrats (“We’re going to impeach the motherfucker,” said newly elected congresswoman Rashida Tlaib). Pelosi: Rich woman hated by Republicans (Republican David Brat mentioned Pelosi and her “liberal agenda” 21 times at a debate). Blowing your own trumpet Trump: “I would give myself an A+, is that enough?” Pelosi: “I am a master legislator. I just love it.” Daily schedule Trump: Reportedly wakes at 5.30am and watches news in the White House master bedroom, then stays up beyond midnight. Pelosi: Reportedly wakes at 5.30am and works late into the night. Political acumen Trump responds to flattery from cabinet members and dictators and has no other discernible tactics or strategy. Pelosi played a blinder to quell a party rebellion – more than 60 Democratic candidates campaigned on a pledge to oppose her speakership bid – and ensure that she would reclaim the gavel. Oratory skills Trump: Incoherent, rambling, self-contradictory, zig-zagging, nonsensical. “Pelosi’s speaking style is less tangential than cubist, full of unexpected angles,” says the New York Times Magazine. “At times, she seems to be carrying on three or four different conversations at once.” Gaffes Trump: All the time, every day. Pelosi: Not quite so often, although her remark about Obamacare – “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy” – was described by the New York Times Magazine as the most memorable gaffe of her political career. Where they stood on the 2003 Iraq war Trump was for it and then against it. Pelosi, then in Congress, spoke out against it. Where they stood on Obamacare Trump admitted in February 2017: “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.” Pelosi did know, having worked Congress with Lyndon B Johnson-like craft to get the Affordable Care Act passed. Where they stand on the media Trump: “The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People.” Pelosi: “I think the press loves him [Trump] … Mussolini, he didn’t care what they said about him, as long as they were talking about him.” Where they stand on impeachment Trump: You can’t impeach a great president but let’s talk about it and rally my base. Pelosi: I’m secretly all for it but let’s not talk about it so we don’t rally his base. Romantic life Thrice married Trump was caught on video explaining his approaching to wooing: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy.” Pelosi married financier Paul Pelosi and moved to New York, then San Francisco, where they had five children in six years. Religion Trump is a self-described Presbyterian who enjoys the backing of conservative evangelicals. Pelosi, of Italian descent, is a devout Catholic. Fashion taste Trump favours a red tie, usually worn too long. Last month Pelosi walked out of the White House in a bright red coat and put on sunglasses to address reporters. Food taste Trump: Cheeseburgers. Pelosi: Chocolate. (“I don’t know what it is. But some call it dedication, some call it an addiction, others call it an affliction. I knew I loved my husband when I said I would give up chocolate for him. But I also knew he loved me because he’d never ask me to do such a thing.”) Most likely to watch Trump: Fox News. Pelosi: MSNBC. Twitter followers Trump: 56.9m. Pelosi: 1.85m A recent tweet Trump: “GREAT JOBS NUMBERS JUST ANNOUNCED!” Pelosi: “Always a pleasure to chat with @JoyAnnReid – and such a treat to have it happen at my alma mater, @TrinityDC. Be sure to watch tonight at 10 pm ET! #MSNBCTownHall.”Ten or so years ago the Evening Standard ran the billboard headline “London Fashion Week Cocaine Shock”. Presumably the twist was that there was someone alive surprised to find it was going on, since the revelation seemed just about as startling as the fact they were playing baccarat in Rick’s place. Over Christmas, the International Weightlifting Federation dropped another bombshell when it announced that five Olympics weightlifters have just been provisionally suspended because some “adverse analytical findings” were discovered when the International Olympic Committee recently retested samples provided in 2012. There were 260 weightlifters at London 2012. So far, 24 have failed tests. The IOC is keeping the London 2012 samples for 10 years, so it can take advantage of the new testing technology developed since. The retest results have been coming in an insistent drip, drip, drip, like a leaking tap no one has bothered to fix. It’s left quite a puddle of mess. A Kazakh hurdler, Natalia Ivoninskaya, failed a test in October, the Latvian long jumper Ineta Radevica failed a test in November, now these five weightlifters – Oleksiy Torokhtiy, from Ukraine, Ruslan Nurudinov, from Uzbekistan, Melanie Daluzyan, from Armenia, Mikalai Novikau, from Belarus, and Valentin Hristov, from Azerbaijan – failed tests last month. Torokhtiy and Nurudinov are Olympic champions. Torokhtiy, who won the men’s 105kg title in 2012, is an interesting case. His win was such an upset even he seemed surprised (“In sport you can never be sure in anything,” he wrote, “except drug tests.”). He parlayed his success into a second career as a strength and fitness coach. He has a YouTube channel with 83,000 subscribers, an Instagram account that is three times as popular, and his own clothing line, Warm Blood, Cold Mind. He comes across as a likable guy, who has done a lot for the sport. On 23 December he addressed the failed test in an Instagram post. “A few days ago I received an official letter from the International Testing Agency which notified me that after the retesting of my six and a half year old samples for the 2012 Olympic Games they found a banned substance. At this time I have more questions than answers. All test, before, during and after the Olympic Games didn’t show anything! More than that, I literally trained for almost a year with a torn meniscus and didn’t allow myself to take painkillers. I urge all athletes of all ranks, from beginner to professional to personally check the antidoping rules of IWF, the Wada list of banned substances, and EVERYTHING that is ingested by you, especially your supplements, the ingredients of which are the only factor which you can’t truly control.” Presumably that includes the supplements he is flogging on his website, too. But anyway, another week, another failed test. The record books are rewritten, asterisks added, results struck through, runners-up bumped up, and everyone who cares grows a little less certain about what they can really believe. Life goes on. A couple of days later, Torokhtiy was posting happy snaps of his family wishing his followers a merry Christmas, and pitching them a new idea for a weightlifting camp – “10 days together, first part of the day we’ll be training and then volleyball, swimming pool, BBQ and a lot of socialising! What do you think?” Radevica says she is not sure how she failed her test either. She was the European champion in 2010 and won silver at the world championships in Daegu in 2011 after the Russian athlete who finished ahead of her, Olga Kucherenko, was disqualified because she tested positive. Radevica received that silver only last year. Now she has lost it again. “Throughout my career, I have always been against the use of unauthorised substances and I am firmly opposed to illegal substances in sport at the moment,” Radevica said, “which is why I have been particularly unlucky.” She has just stepped down from her job as the head of the Latvian athletics federation. Altogether, then, the London 2012 list of failed tests runs 116 long, which is an Olympic record, beating the mark of 86 set at Beijing. There are three years of testing left, so the final figure will be higher. London, which was supposed to be the cleanest Games in history, turned into the dirtiest. Of course, those are two different sides of the same coin. The IAAF president, Sebastian Coe, argues that the reason so many dopers have been exposed is because the authorities were so determined to catch them. If they had been so willing, and the technology so able, in the 1970s, 80s or 90s, the mark might be as far out of reach as one of those fossilised athletics records such as Flo Jo’s 10.49sec 100m. Perhaps. Though anyone who is paying attention must suspect Lord Coe is underestimating the size of the problem. One piece of research into the prevalence of doping in athletics, an academic paper called Doping in Two Elite Athletics Competitions Assessed by Randomised Response Surveys, which was conducted in 2011 and published in 2018, suggests the problem was likely a lot more widespread than that tally of failed tests suggests. In an anonymous survey of athletes at that Daegu world championships in 2011, a year out from London, 43.6% of the respondents admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs in the previous year.Social media is often accused of presenting an airbrushed fantasy rather than a slice of realism, so it is refreshing to see the likes of Kate Beckinsale and Nicky Campbell embrace the “hospital selfie”, which involves tweeting photos from their hospital beds. (Alas, the Daily Mail’s Sarah Vine isn’t a fan, writing in her latest column: “Why the rest of us have to suffer I don’t know.”) In the past two months, I have spent four days in hospital, and tweeted selfies on both occasions. There were many reasons: I tweet and post on Instagram a lot; I enjoy it; my friends interact with me; it’s how we keep abreast of each other’s lives. It helps us feel connected. They know how I’m feeling and, because I am juvenile, they also know when my blood pressure is 69/100 – nice. Illness, especially chronic illness, can be very isolating. Not only does it limit how and when you can socialise, it causes you to feel unattractive. There’s more to life than being considered sexually desirable, but while there have been plenty of campaigns about weight, few – bar the #hospitalglam hashtag – challenge the idea that only healthy is sexy. I’m learning to believe that my epilepsy doesn’t disbar me from being considered attractive, so if I think I look palatable in A&E I’ll damn well Instagram it. But most importantly, hospital selfies demystify disability and illness. I’ve had grateful messages from people thanking me for being open about health on social media: from others with epilepsy who feel less alone; from a man who shows his daughter my tweets and Instagram pictures, and says she feels much less of a pariah knowing others are in the same boat; and from people asking for coping mechanisms and tips. I want to know when my friends need help, as well as when they’re happy; when they’re vulnerable, as well as when they feel strong. And they want to know I’m on the mend. Plus, I look like Hellraiser when I’m having an EEG: it’s funny.Martin Luther King Jr is useful to just about everyone nowadays. For President Donald Trump, celebrating King is a chance to tell everyone that he shares “his dream of equality, freedom, justice, and peace”. For Ram trucks, it’s a chance to, well, sell trucks. This wasn’t always the case. In 1983, 15 years after King’s death, 22 senators voted against an official holiday honoring him on the third Monday in January. The North Carolina senator Jesse Helms undertook a 16-day filibuster of the bill, claiming that King’s “action-oriented Marxism” was “not compatible with the concepts of this country”. He was joined in his opposition by Senators John McCain, Orrin Hatch, and Chuck Grassley, among others. Reagan reluctantly signed the legislation, all the while grumbling that he would have preferred “a day similar to Lincoln’s birthday, which is not technically a national holiday”. And guess what? He had a reason to be hesitant. The real Martin Luther King Jr stood for a radical vision of equality, justice, and anti-militarism that rebelled against Reagan’s entire agenda. Today more than ever, we need to rediscover that champion of working people. The Disneyified version of Dr King begins and ends with his role as a civil rights leader, who summoned Christian teachings, as well as Gandhian tactics, and told us of his dream that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” But in that same oft-quoted I Have a Dream speech from 1963, King celebrated the “marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community” and spoke of the “fierce urgency of now”. For his own militancy, King was hounded by the FBI, denounced as a communist, and bombarded with death threats. Only 22% of Americans approved of the Freedom Rides fighting segregated transportation. By the mid-1960s, 63% of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of King, according to polls. Martin Luther King Jr was a part of a much wider movement, standing alongside socialists such as Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and A Philip Randolph in not just attempting to dismantle the Jim Crow system, but replacing it with an egalitarian social democracy. Despite President Lyndon Johnson’s shepherding of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, ending legal apartheid in the United States, King became even more radical as the decade went on. As he put it in 1967: “We aren’t merely struggling to integrate a lunch counter now. We’re struggling to get some money to be able to buy a hamburger or a steak when we get to the counter.” King wasn’t willing to drop his internationalist commitments in to achieve this change. He had long been a supporter of anti-colonial struggles in developing countries and in an April 1967 address at Riverside church in Harlem, he alienated his liberal allies by challenging the slaughter in Vietnam and the broader system of imperialism that made poor people, black and white alike, “kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools”. Despite rebukes from more than 160 newspaper editorials the next day and his permanent alienation from liberal allies in the Democratic party, he pressed on. Now calling himself a democratic socialist, through his Poor People’s Campaign, King was set to create the kind of movement that could fight for not just political but economic freedom for all. He wasn’t just a civil rights activist, he was a tribune for a multiracial working class – people who faced poverty, racism, and joblessness, but who when banded together could wield tremendous power. King traveled to Memphis in April 1968, where he was assassinated by the white supremacist James Earl Ray, to support striking sanitation workers. His advisors warned against the trip. There were the threats of his life, and there were other campaigns and commitments too. But King knew he had to be there. He knew what side he was on. Martin Luther King Jr wasn’t a prophet of unity. He was a champion of the poor and oppressed. And if we want to truly honor his legacy, we’ll struggle to finish his work.“You’re an oncologist, isn’t that depressing?” Answering this question, posed with equal parts dread and fascination, is an occupational hazard. I often reply no, I don’t find it depressing but the job is taxing in a way that many other areas of medicine are not. A cancer diagnosis is obviously frightening for the patient but each time, it also signals the start of a new journey for the oncologist. It means getting to know a patient intimately, breathing someone’s hopes and dreams, helping navigate a tightrope between hope and reality, wondering all the while what “average overall survival” will look like for that individual. It means accepting that although all death is inevitable, the patients one grows to like and admire might die sooner than seems fair. More so than other medical encounters, if the journey requires resilience of the patient, it also demands that the oncologist be emotionally agile to stay the course that even in the smoothest of instances is destined to leave a person fundamentally altered. Apart from intellectual breadth, every cancer patient deserves emotional depth: getting this balance right is the perennial challenge of being an oncologist. Nonetheless, it’s obvious that patients are willing to tolerate a lot and excuse much more in order to feel well again, but more of that later. Last week, the American Cancer Society released its annual report with the striking news that overall cancer mortality in the United States fell by 27% in the past 25 years, mirroring figures in other developed countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea. In many countries now, more than two-thirds of patients diagnosed with cancer are alive five years post diagnosis. Lest this figure sound pedestrian, cancer remains one of the world’s largest killers and every year of survival gained buys time for even better treatments to emerge, something that I have been gratified to see in my own relatively short career. As a trainee, I remember seeing a 60-year old man with metastatic prostate cancer and after consulting my boss, telling him there was no good drug for his disease. How could it be, he asked. I am sorry, I sympathised. Some time later, we met his wife dying from colon cancer. Someone else pleaded to know if his young friend with melanoma that had spread to the brain really did not have long to live. Sad but true, I had to say. A refugee sobbingly cursed her fate at having survived the rough seas only to end up with advanced breast cancer that had few effective treatments. And one of my first patients as a consultant was a young mother with advanced lung cancer, dying at the same time as I was pregnant. This juxtaposition of life and death was disturbing enough but to not have the ability to treat her beyond the few failed therapies felt like an indictment of the profession. How could the caring profession care without the right tools? In just over 10 years, the landscape of cancer treatment has changed unrecognisably. Oncologists are spoilt for choice in giving patients real options that extend life and maintain quality. We used to console disheartened patients that no two cancers were the same but now we say it triumphantly because the differences are being harnessed into solutions. And what a gift it is to turn up in clinic and witness the human face of change. A father seeing his son graduate, a grandmother holding her first granddaughter, careers getting back on track, lives mending slowly but surely. And perhaps the most poignant gift of all: a healthy baby, blissfully oblivious to the miracle that modern cancer medicine and sophisticated obstetrics saw him safely into the world where once he and his mother may not have survived. The good news is not limited to the fall in mortality; there is also the reminder that we are not completely helpless in the face of cancer. Cancer risk is modifiable through lifestyle changes that include curtailing smoking, drinking and eating processed foods, maintaining a healthy weight and taking regular exercise. Early detection through proven screening programs is a key contributor to better survival. For oncologists and patients fortunate to live in a few developed countries, the news about cancer really does keep getting better although even there, minority status, socioeconomic disadvantage and illiteracy are associated with poorer outcomes that we cannot ignore. But the real tragedy of cancer continues to unfold beyond the borders of the developed world. Of the more than nine million deaths from cancer each year, a staggering 70% are in the developing world due to the lack of effective prevention, screening and treatment. The survival rate for children is particularly dismal – 20% in comparison with 90% in the developed world. To add to this injustice, most cancer patients are forced to die raw, painful deaths because they lack access to a drug as vital as morphine. It is a cruel irony that while select countries groan under an opioid epidemic, the rest of the world is crying out for pain relief due to restrictive government policies and misunderstanding about the use of opioids in palliative care. Declaring any kind of victory over cancer would be to ignore the plight of our fellow citizens. Returning to the countries that can welcome progress, what more can we do to make life better for cancer patients? For a start, better communication between oncologists and patients. Cancer patients put up with a lot in order to get well, but compassion, empathy and respect for the individual should not be optional extras, indeed patients regard them as therapeutic as the drugs they are prescribed. A good relationship with an oncologist provides the strongest basis to have difficult conversations about serious illness and mortality, an inescapable part of the oncology lexicon. Effective communication must be elevated to the same importance as proper treatment. My most troubled patients are those who have survived cancer but lost their way in life. They can’t find a job, have broken relationships and can’t afford rent. They cannot concentrate, they hate the way they look and feel hopeless about the future. Their family can’t always understand why they aren’t just happy to be alive. They are my constant reminder that holistic cancer treatment must promise more than five-year survival. In 20 years, Australia expects to double the number of people with a personal history of cancer to nearly two million. The UK expects to add a million survivors per decade. The US, with its much larger population, will have more than 20 million survivors within the next few years. The next challenge will be to diagnose the real challenges faced by these survivors and find ways to address the physical, emotional and personal toll of cancer which manifest long past the diagnosis. Oncologists are not the best-placed people to deliver all survivorship care, but they must advocate for its seamless integration with cancer care. As a new year dawns, oncologists and patients everywhere can have reason for hope. Hope that good treatments unaffordable or inaccessible to many will inch their way closer to needy patients around the world through a combination of better policy and targeted philanthropy. Hope that the right to die with dignity and pain relief will be recognised as a basic human right. And hope that one day, it will no longer be relevant to wonder aloud if being an oncologist is depressing. • Ranjana Srivastava is is an oncologist and Guardian Australia columnistAmid the hoopla of Tuesday’s Oscar nominations (which saw numerous nods for this week’s other big release, Vice), it was depressing to be faced with yet another all-male list in the best director category. The Oscars have always been skewed towards men (to date, Kathryn Bigelow remains the only woman to have won), although it’s been argued in the past that the awards merely reflected the gender bias of the film industry itself. Yet this year, potential contenders included such diverse film-makers as Chloé Zhao for The Rider, Marielle Heller for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really Here, Josie Rourke for Mary Queen of Scots, and Debra Granik for Leave No Trace – the last of which, my favourite film of 2018, received no Academy recognition whatsoever. To that impressive list I’d add Karyn Kusama for Destroyer, another female-led feature which has flown entirely under the Oscars’ radar. Boasting a powerhouse performance by Nicole Kidman in her best role since To Die For, this angst-ridden thriller is described by Kusama as a “woman-against-herself” story in which a tortured cop is forced to confront the guilty ghosts of the past while becoming accountable for the actions of the present. There’s a clear thematic debt to such character-driven 1970s classics as Serpico or The French Connection, but Destroyer also feels profoundly contemporary in its flipping of traditional gender roles. As the spectacularly addled Erin Bell, Kidman gives Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant a run for his money in the decrepit antihero stakes, her awful admission that “I’m not good” echoing Keitel’s infamous howl: “I did so many bad things…” Destroyer opens like a sand-blasted remake of Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin, as a bedraggled Erin wakes up in her car. Her face is ravaged, as if it has been drowned in an ocean of pain, then left to dry in the scorching sun of self-loathing. Her eyes are vacant and translucent, her lips are parched, her countenance almost catatonic. When Erin rolls up at a crime scene, her colleagues treat her with disdain, advising her to “take care of your own personal shit”, even when she slurringly tells them that she knows who killed the man now lying in a pool of blood. From here, the narrative (by regular writing collaborators Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi) flips back and forth between past and present, with ink-stained dollars found on the dead body apparently tying this case back to an FBI sting in which Erin worked undercover, many years ago. Now she sees the chance to settle a score with her criminal nemesis Silas, played with a snake-like sneer by the ever-versatile Toby Kebbell. But Erin also needs to address problems closer to home, with teenage daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn) showing signs of repeating the mistakes that apparently derailed her mother. Since making a splash in 2000 with her Sundance hit Girlfight, Kusama has earned plaudits among genre fans for directing the satirical 2009 high-school nightmare Jennifer’s Body (from a script by Oscar winner Diablo Cody) and the 2015 psychological chiller The Invitation, alongside a segment of the female-directed frightfest anthology XX. Throughout, she’s proved a dab hand at blending pulp convention with character insight, so it’s no surprise that Destroyer gets under the skin of its key players; a low-key confessional scene between Erin and Shelby is spellbindingly played, with Theodore Shapiro’s eerie score adding to our emotional investment. But Kusama also proves herself equally adept at action, scoring a bull’s-eye with a breathless shoot-out that reminded me of the acclaimed set-piece showdown from Michael Mann’s Heat. Cinematographer Julie Kirkwood’s widescreen images lend an epic edge to Erin’s internalised traumas, shifting between the washed-out hues of the present and the more vibrant saturations of the past. While the smart use of LA locations grounds the drama in a tangible world, Kirkwood also injects an air of dreamy unreality into sequences which reflect the shattered state of Erin’s psyche – broken, yet strangely beautiful. At the centre of it all is Kidman, bringing an impressive physicality to her performance that says more about Erin than words ever could. We learn so much from simply watching her walk, her gait combining an air of stroppiness with an overriding sense of being weighed down or crushed, like a packhorse hobbled by years of abuse. It’s a terrific turn that (like the rest of the movie) reminds us that awards often offer little indication of what’s really worth watching in cinemas.On Wednesday night last week, Nicholas Hada slept at Rome’s Termini train station, along with about 10 others hastily evicted from a refugee reception centre in a town close to the Italian capital earlier in the day. Originally from Guinea, he returned to the centre in Castelnuovo di Porto, the second-largest of its kind in Italy, the following morning to collect the belongings he had left behind, fearing they would be stolen in the train station. After an anxious 24 hours, he received good news: a local resident had offered him a room in her home. “I feel so grateful – thanks to God,” said Hada, who had been at the shelter since March 2017. “I don’t understand why they threw us on to the street. But there are those who throw you away, and those who take you in. That’s life.” Riccardo Travaglini, the mayor of Castelnuovo di Porto, said 20 of the 305 people evicted from the centre had been left homeless, owing to a measure contained within the rightwing populist government’s recently enacted hardline immigration law that scrapped humanitarian protection permits, which were granted to those not eligible for refugee status but who for various reasons could not be sent home. The remaining 200 residents, the majority of whom are awaiting the outcome of asylum requests, will be removed before 31 January after Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and interior minister, ordered the centre to be closed. The interior ministry said on Thursday that nobody was “forced out” and that people were simply being transferred to “equivalent structures” in Italy. A spokesperson declined to reveal where these were, citing “security reasons”. As those waiting to leave fret about their future, Travaglini and his staff are working to rehouse others and have been touched by the overwhelming response from people offering shelter. “At the end of the day, this shows that in Italy welfare is done by citizens, not the government,” said one of the staff members as she waded through dozens of emails from across Italy, as well as London and Brussels. “This government has demonstrated that it has no humanity.” Compassion towards refugees irks Salvini, who often belittles “do-gooder” humanitarians, as he pushes forward with a ruthless strategy that will soon result in similar-sized centres being shut down. The new immigration law, named after the minister, who also leads the far-right League, the party ruling in coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, will suspend the refugee application process for those considered “socially dangerous” or who have been convicted of a crime, as well as strip naturalised foreigners convicted of terrorism charges of Italian citizenship. Salvini claimed the sprawling Castelnuovo di Porto structure, where Pope Francis washed residents’ feet as part of his Easter ritual in 2016, was a den for “drug-dealing and crime” and that he acted as “any good father would” when the first group of migrants were rounded up at short notice and transported by bus to destinations unknown. Travaglini, who is hosting a woman from Somalia and her two children, described the method by which the evictions were enacted as “brutal”, while Roberto Morassut, a parliamentarian with the opposition Democratic party, compared the removals to “deportations to Nazi concentration camps”. “This situation has been handled really badly,” said Travaglini. “They should have given us more time to organise things; these are vulnerable people.” José Manuel Torres, a priest protesting outside the centre, said: “This shouldn’t have been done in this manner – these people aren’t cattle.” The interior ministry also denied that children had been “torn away from school and their friends”, despite pupils at Guido Pitocco elementary school writing a letter to the president, Sergio Mattarella, that included the line: “For me peace means playing together regardless of differences in colour or race.” As well as causing homelessness, Travaglini said the centre’s closure will dismantle an integration project that had seen some of the migrants find jobs in the community and others thrive in the sporting realm, particularly Ansou Cisse, a 19-year-old from Senegal who was picked for the Vatican’s athletics team. “When I first heard about the evictions, it hurt me very much,” said Cisse, who arrived in Italy in 2017 after surviving the treacherous Mediterranean crossing from Libya. “I don’t know where they’ll send me or whether the Vatican will help. After seeing so many horrendous things in Libya, my life changed for the better. Now it feels as if the good experiences I’ve had will be wasted.” Cisse was among those outside the ministry of labour and economic development in Rome on Thursday protesting against the closure and the 120 jobs that would be lost as a result. Salvini said the move would save the government €6m (£5.2m) a year, money that would instead be spent “helping Italians”. “These [people losing their jobs] are people managing the centres, cleaners, caterers, social assistants … they [the government] want to get rid of these structures but by doing so another group of people will be stranded,” said Aldo Galli, a representative of the SPI-CGIL workers’ union. While Travaglini, who was elected mayor in June 2017, acknowledges there were issues with the centre in the past – migrants protested over poor conditions in 2014 – he denied there was an issue with crime. “We have focused so much on security,” he said. “The protests happened before I came and we worked with the prefect [the government’s local representative] to improve things. But since this government came there has been no more coherence regarding integration.” He said immigration should be removed from the political debate and no longer treated as an emergency but a “phenomenon that is with us”.In a rare public remark, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller disputed a bombshell report alleging that Donald Trump had directed his former attorney to lie to congress. BuzzFeed News reported Thursday evening that Trump had personally directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a real estate project in Moscow. The report cited two federal law enforcement sources and said the special counsel’s office had learned of Trump’s alleged directive from multiple witnesses, Trump Organization emails, text messages and other documents. But a spokesman for the special counsel’s office issued a rare comment on Friday evening disputing the report. “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” the spokesman said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. The special counsel’s office had previously declined to comment on the report, according to BuzzFeed’s original article. The BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, wrote on Twitter: “We stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the Special Counsel to make clear what he’s disputing.” The statement from the special counsel’s office is notable for its very existence. Since he was appointed in May 2017, Mueller has rarely been seen or heard from in public, communicating instead through a steady stream of indictments. In the hours after the statement emerged, Trump tweeted two of of his popular references to the media: Fake News is truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! Trump’s longtime personal attorney and “fixer”, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in December, after pleading guilty to crimes that included lying to Congress about the Moscow real estate deal. At the time of the sentencing, Mueller’s office asked the judge to give consideration to the fact that Cohen was cooperating with the special counsel’s investigation. The allegation that Trump had directed Cohen to lie to Congress – a potential felony – highlighted the significance of the Republican party’s loss of the House in the midterm elections. The newly installed Democratic chairmen of the House judiciary and intelligence committees, representatives Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler, both declared their intent to investigate, and some elected officials raised the specter of impeachment. Trump was active on Twitter on Friday evening, retweeting two posts calling the BuzzFeed report “fake news” and “nonsense”. He subsequently tweeted an attack on BuzzFeed. Remember it was Buzzfeed that released the totally discredited “Dossier,” paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats (as opposition research), on which the entire Russian probe is based! A very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our Country! Cohen is scheduled to testify before Congress on 7 February.“He was a bit of a challenging boy, but there was a nice side to him,” says Andy Walker, founder of Southside Young Leaders’ Academy in Camberwell, south London, of Latwaan Griffiths. Griffiths joined Southside when he was seven years old; 11 years later he was dead – the 16th teenager, and 88th person, murdered in London last year. He was seen slumped while riding pillion on the back of a moped as it careered down Denmark Road, just streets away from Southside. After he slipped off at a junction, passersby heard the driver shout “Help him, he’s been stabbed” before speeding off. Residents emerged from their homes and attempted CPR, but Griffiths could not be saved. I don’t think kids in London feared to cross from one neighbourhood to another a decade ago – not the way they do now The teenager was “jokey and lively” but didn’t do well in school, recalls Walker. “Quite what happened after he left Southside, I don’t know. There are more and more families grieving: I went to his funeral, there was a crowd of 200 people there, and the message that came out loud and clear was ‘This community is suffering’.” A week after Griffiths was killed, his friend Siddique Kamara, 23, was found stabbed to death 10 minutes’ walk away on Warham Street. Another of their friends, 17-year-old Rhyhiem Barton, had been found shot dead on the exact same street in May. Violent crime is a constant in any big city, and crime statistics can be misleading shorn of context or recording methods. But as London approaches megacity status (its population is projected to pass 10 million in 2027), pressure on resources is increasing, as are certain types of violent crime. Last year was a grim one for the city: 135 people were murdered, which, although well short of of the 221 murders recorded in 2003, was the highest murder rate in a decade. Knife crime in particular is up. By 2035 another 15 cities will have populations above 10 million, according to the latest United Nations projections, taking the total number of megacities to 48. Guardian Cities is exploring these newcomers at a crucial period in their development: from car-centric Tehran to the harsh inequalities of Luanda; from the film industry of Hyderabad to the demolition of historic buildings in Ho Chi Minh City. We'll also be in Chengdu, Dar es Salaam, Nanjing, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baghdad, Kuala Lumpur, Xi'an, Seoul, Wuhan and London. Read more from the next 15 megacities series here. Nick Van Mead After 18 murders were recorded in February alone, London’s murder rate briefly eclipsed that of New York City. The US president, Donald Trump, declared London was “as bad as a military war zone hospital”. He mimed stabbing someone. “Knives, knives, knives, knives,” Trump said. “London hasn’t been used to that. They’re getting used to it. It’s pretty tough.” (He said nothing when New York’s murder rate once again overtook London’s.) Clockwise from top: Siddique Kamara, Latwaan Griffiths and Rhyhiem Barton. Much of the media coverage of the deaths of Griffiths, Kamara and Barton zeroed in on one thing they had in common. Griffiths was a member of the drill rap group Harlem Spartans, performing as SA, or Splash Addict (“splashing” is slang for stabbing). Barton and Kamara were members of an allied drill group, Moscow17, based a five-minute walk away. Drill music was barely familiar even to most music journalists a year ago. For the last 12 months it has dominated headlines. News bulletins, politicians, judges and senior police officers condemned it for inciting youth violence: “the brutal rap that fuels gang murder”, said a headline in the Spectator; “disturbing”, said the Daily Mail; the Times called it “demonic”. In May, the chief of the Metropolitan police, Cressida Dick, condemned “gangs who make drill videos” with “lyrics which are about glamorising violence, serious violence – murder, stabbings”, and said social media companies had a “social responsibility” to stop this virus spreading. That same month, the Met announced that it had successfully lobbied YouTube to remove 30 rap videos because of their violent content. The police continue to maintain and forensically scrutinise a database of thousands of music videos and YouTube comments for clues about the groups who make drill music: their changing local alliances, tensions and threats to kill. There are deeper problems going on in the communities, and until those problems are solved, the violence is going to keep going on Three days after Barton’s death in May, his grieving friends and family marched in his memory from Camberwell through to neighbouring Peckham. Some of the younger marchers chanted the lyrics to Moscow17’s anthem Moscow March, a track on which Barton raps about “chinging”, “blading”, “drenching” and “slashing” his enemy, the rival Peckham drill crew Zone 2. It is those highly specific references to hyper-local, real-world violence that marks drill out from its predecessors. In addition to the routine removal of drill videos from YouTube, with no oversight or right of reply, the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service have taken to issuing criminal behaviour orders to drill musicians: these extra-judicial instruments ban rappers from mentioning particular rival neighbourhoods or individuals in their songs. The threats make it harder for liberal voices to defend the genre, and in 2018 drill became London’s new bete noire, to match historical moral panics over video nasties and 90s gangster rap. Pretana Morgan, Rhyhiem Barton’s mother, walks with her daughter at the start of a solidarity march in May 2018. And yet the scapegoating of the genre has come at the expense of any concerted attempt to address the myriad problems at the roots of the violence. The marginal status of the working-class black boys and young men who make drill means there has been little high-profile opposition to the Met’s new experiments in censorship. “There are deeper problems going on in the communities, and until those problems are solved, the violence is going to keep going on,” the south London drill rapper AM said when I spoke to him in 2018. He pointed to the longstanding causes of gang crime and violence in working-class areas in London. For him, drill was finally documenting some brutal realities that had been ignored for too long: it was an act of catharsis and a cry for help as much as anything. “The media, the government – the people at the top – they don’t want public attention on those negative externalities of the economy, they don’t want people to see what’s going on,” he said. “But the public can see those problems right now, because drill music is drawing attention to it. Their attitude is, ‘If we can shut down the music, everyone will feel safer’, but that doesn’t mean [the violence] is not going to still go on.” It is easy to forget, with Brexit dominating the headlines and the Olympic summer of 2012 held up as the “good times”, that only one year before the Olympics the city was ablaze. Though the rioting and looting of early August 2011 began in north London, it quickly spread south: Camberwell saw similar scenes, and a fight broke out in King’s College hospital between rival gangs visiting stabbing victims. It is striking how much the London riots have been erased from political memory, especially as the marginalisation of the poor neighbourhoods where the riots took place has only intensified since. Austerity and gentrification have stretched the longstanding inequality between London’s rich and poor to grim new extremes. To keep cutting youth services after the London riots in 2011 is wrong. The underlying causes have not been addressed “When you think there were riots in 2011, to keep cutting youth services after that is just obviously going to be wrong,” says the Green London assembly member Sian Berry. “The underlying causes of the riots have not been addressed at all. Especially in work and housing, things have actually got a lot worse.” The city has transformed at a bewildering rate in those eight years. Even Brexit fears have only dampened London house prices a bit, and have done little to halt gentrification. A two-bedroom flat in a new-build block on Denmark Road, where Griffiths died, goes for £600,000, more than double the national average price of a home – despite the fact that the section of the Herne Hill ward in which it sits, alongside the Thorlands and Lilford estates, ranks in the highest 10% for deprivation in the country. When you Google those estates, the first photo that comes up is of a wall covered with black mould. In nearby Elephant and Castle, Southwark council has joined forces with two of the world’s biggest property developers, Lendlease and Delancey, to demolish the Heygate and Aylesbury estates and Elephant’s “town centre” to make way for luxury flats, sending working-class and ethnic minority communities scattering to the outer zones of London. Along the river to the west, a “major new cultural quarter” is promised in Vauxhall and Nine Elms – perhaps most effectively symbolised by the 50-storey St George Wharf Tower, home to 214 flats costing up to £51m, not one of them qualifying as the government’s definition of “affordable” (which itself is only 80% of market rate), and where most of the lights are never on. St George Wharf Tower at night in 2016. In the “pretty new blocks” described by the Harlem Spartans rapper Bis, out of 11,863 new homes in Southwark, only 456 (3.8%) were made available at social rent, according to the 35% Campaign, despite the fact that Southwark council’s own planning guidelines stipulate that 35% of new homes should be affordable. This is the world the violence came from: council estates rendered fortresses of poverty and social problems, where so-called postcode wars break out between groups of young people “caught slipping” outside of their turf, against the backdrop of pretty new apartment blocks and branches of Le Pain Quotidien. Southside Young Leaders’ Academy (Syla) was set up in Camberwell in 2007 by Andy Walker, a TV producer. The intention, then as now, was to pre-empt trouble between groups of young boys and men rather than trying to mop it up afterwards. “The thing that has really changed in the last decade is the level of security,” Walker says of the state of the city at the beginning of 2019. “It has really deteriorated for young people in London. I don’t think kids feared to cross from one neighbourhood to another – not in the same way they do now.” The degradation of the safety net has made matters worse. It has been a decade of ever more severe bureaucratisation and privatisation – and, above all, of harsh cuts to youth services. “Everybody’s struggling now,” says Walker. Syla provides mentorship and training to boys who are facing difficulties at school, helping them to acquire leadership qualities, self-discipline and practical skills in the hope of stemming a drift towards social exclusion – but there’s no money. “We’ve replaced what state-funded youth clubs used to do,” he says, “and we’re having to fight for every penny. We get no government grant, or council grant.” Instead, he chases short-term funds from groups such as Comic Relief or the Big Lottery, which have huge demands on them already and often have specific ideas about how the money should be spent. “The danger is you are pushed into doing the very specific work and programmes that the funders want you to do, and want to pay for,” he says. “There are very few funds that say, ‘Look, here’s the money, we approve of what you’re doing, get on with it.’” “The gentrification of the area means you can get a nice cup of coffee, and that’s nice, but I doubt any of our young people have been in any of the fancy new businesses here,” says Katie Worthington, who runs the Westminster House Youth Club in nearby Nunhead. “They’re excluded from classes at other centres aimed at the middle-class kids, which cost £7 or £8 a pop.” As we speak, a troupe of kids from the after-school homework club file past us – and past a substantial food bank collection, piled up on the pool table – for the evening’s “reward” activity: dodgeball in a small sports hall. Many of the families of the members have been uprooted from private rented accommodation when landlords decided to sell, and told to leave London entirely because there’s no affordable housing nearby. “You don’t feel like a citizen of your own city: it’s all so prohibitively expensive,” Worthington says. “Why would you feel like a Londoner if you’re excluded from all this?” The Westminster House Youth Club. Several people told me that good youth workers were being driven away from the profession altogether by the lack of funding and sustainable employment. Now, with data showing the highest proportion of teen stabbings takes place in the two hours after school finishes, some media attention has finally turned to the drastic cuts to youth work provision in the capital. Since the riots, London has seen 81 youth clubs close, and a 44% cut to the youth service budget at council level, following austerity measures handed down from central government. “Youth clubs are not a panacea,” says Sian Berry, who published the 2018 report that highlighted those cuts. “But they save a lot of young people from getting into trouble – and they also help others to thrive. It gives them new horizons, makes them feel like they’re worth investing in – all those things that create disaffection and alienation when they’re suddenly not there any more.” She wants something done about London’s extraordinarily high levels of rent (consistently the highest in Europe), including rent control, and about the badly paid jobs and zero-hours contracts that further drive young people towards petty crime, selling drugs, and, by extension, violence. “You can see how for a poor teenager, watching their older siblings and parents struggling with work and rent, the money pulled in by drug-dealing, organised criminals might be tempting,” she says. Above all, Berry wants money for youth services ringfenced from central government, and the cuts reversed. “It’s not an add-on, it’s not a bonus, it’s not an emergency service,” she says. “All this stuff about putting youth workers into A&E – that’s the last line of defence! That’s not building up the resilience of young people from the start.” When the next iteration of the London Plan, a projection of London’s future published by City Hall, comes out in 2019, most of its recommendations will be infrastructural, as usual. Major developments such as Crossrail and HS2 are uppermost in the planners’ minds, along with ideas to support environmental sustainability and attracting investment through boosting London’s enterprise and skills – a particular concern given the uncertainty of Brexit. As ever, the challenge for the mayor’s office will be to do what it can within its own budget. Westminster holds most of the purse strings and continues to fret over Brexit. Regardless, City Hall is working to a 20- to 25-year forecast; the problems of youth violence and social exclusion need addressing rather more rapidly. Among the 81 youth clubs that have shuttered since 2011 is Grove Park in Lewisham, south-east London, which closed in 2013 when the local council implemented central government cuts that have slashed 34% (almost £1.5m) from its youth services budget since 2011. Another £200,000 will go in this year’s budget. (Neighbouring Southwark and Lambeth have experienced cuts of more than 50%.) Property developers swooped in with plans to knock it down and build new flats. “It was built in 1966, and it’s served the community for almost five decades,” says Rob Clayton, chairman of the youth centre’s building preservation trust, which has been campaigning to get it reopened since 2015. “Nobody wants it demolished. All the locals are saying there’s a need for a youth club here – but all of a sudden it was gone, and the Labour MP Heidi Alexander was standing there, next to property developers, giving the local community this ‘There’s no magic money tree’ type of lecture.” Clayton refused to give up, helping organise tireless voluntary campaigning by the community, from public meetings and lobbying the council to working with architects and establishing its importance as a Bauhaus-inspired building. He and his fellow campaigners fitted the work around full-time jobs. “I put in about 40 hours a month on this,” he says. “I come from a working-class background, grew up on a council estate, and I’m not massive about youth clubs – but it’s just the general fabric of our society being broken down and asset-stripped. And I thought if I can’t do something nationally, I can do something on my doorstep.” The building was saved from demolition in August 2017. The party was attended by Alexander’s replacement as local MP, Janet Daby, who has been much more supportive, and although a lot of work remains to get the centre open again, it felt like something of a turning point, Clayton says. “It was just fantastic seeing the building come to life again that day, after all those years closed,” he says. “We had singers, rap artists, dancers, someone cooking jerk chicken – it was a sunny day and it was just a wonderful atmosphere. It was a taste of the future, and what we’re trying to get back. “And I think some of the local politicians have realised it’s not a good look closing youth clubs while young people are killing each other right, left and centre.” Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereThe World Jewish Congress and the Board of Deputies of British Jews have condemned Tottenham Hotspur supporters’ use of the nickname “Yids” and called for fans to take a stand against using the term during matches. Three Spurs fans were arrested in 2014 for using the word during a Europa League game, with the Football Association and anti-racism group Kick It Out having repeatedly urged supporters not to use it. But after reports of antisemitic chanting after Chelsea’s fixture at Brighton before Christmas and at Arsenal’s defeat to Tottenham in the Carabao Cup, the WJC and BOD urged supporters to “take a stand” against abusive language. “Contrary to the protests of many fans, there is no grey area when it comes to slurs that target a particular religious, racial or ethnic group,” said the WJC CEO and executive vice-president, Robert Singer. “The word ‘Yid’ has for years been reappropriated from its original Yiddish to carry a distinctly pejorative and antisemitic message, and its use by fans in the stands, either as a self-designated nickname or as a slogan against rivals must not be tolerated in any way. “There has sadly been a long history of hooliganism and extremist behaviour within football, particularly in England, and we hope that the actions being taken in good faith by Chelsea’s leadership to take punitive measures against any supporters that violate this code of conduct will help establish the groundwork for more tolerance among fans of all teams. “We would also ask Tottenham Hotspur to take a stand against the use of ‘Yid Army’, ‘Yid’ and ‘Yiddos’ by their fans. Such a long overdue action is important to kick antisemitism off the pitch and create a welcoming environment for all.” A supporter was ejected from the Emirates Stadium following a physical altercation in the North Bank after being accused of making numerous antisemitic references during Spurs’ 2-0 win at Arsenal in December.The dirt road which once led to the Nova Estância guesthouse and a handful of nearby farms now ends in a slew of sticky, acrid sludge that stretches as far as the eye can see, a deep red gash across the green of the rolling Brazilian countryside. The road, a small bridge it once crossed, the guesthouse and hundreds of people were all swallowed by mud when a tailings dam at the Córrego de Feijão mine collapsed on Friday, unleashing a torrent of liquid waste. As the last of the daylight slipped away, a Red Cross team lugged another body in a bag across the devastated landscape and deposited it gently at the roadside for collection. Three days after what seems likely to become Brazil’s worst ever environmental catastrophe, Red Cross rescue worker Walter Moraes said the victim was “apparently” a man. “It is already decomposing,” he said. Hundreds more bodies remain buried. But finding the missing victims poses an almost impossible challenge for the recovery crews: the disaster sent 11.7 m cubic meters (413 m cubic ft) of mining waste thundering through the valley, swamping houses and leaving a sea of clotting mud up to 8m (26ft) deep in some places. So far, 60 bodies have been found near Brumadinho in Minas Gerais state. But, as of Monday afternoon, 292 people were still missing – and hopes were fading fast that there will be any survivors. Nobody has been brought out of the disaster area alive since Saturday. Frustrated with official rescue efforts, some locals have started searching for bodies themselves, said Petterson Chaves, 23, who stood watching nearby. “The people can’t stand there waiting for friends and relatives,” he said. “They’re out there hunting [for them].” Among the missing is Chaves’s aunt Elisabeth Reis, 49, a cook at the opencast mining complex where the 86-metre-high tailings dam collapsed on Friday afternoon, releasing the devastating red wave. Reis worked at the site’s canteen, which was full of workers having lunch when the disaster struck. Just last week, she had told relatives she wanted to leave her job at the end of the year, after paying off a car loan and finishing off her roof. “She was scared the dam would fail,” he said. The Brumadinho disaster came just three years after the collapse of another tailings dam, near the town of Mariana, also in Minas Gerais. That disaster killed 19 people, polluted the drinking water to hundreds of thousands, and sent mud hundreds of kilometres downriver to the sea. Nobody has ever been convicted of any responsibility for the Mariana disaster. The Mariana dam was owned by a joint venture between BHP Billiton and the Brazilian mining company Vale, which also owns the Brumadinho dam. Locals simply cannot believe that the same thing has happened again: another tailings dam, in the same state. Jane Luzzi, 51, escaped by the skin of her teeth when the mud roared past her rural community of Parque de Cachoeira, taking the house where she made snacks to sell with it. No siren sounded to warn her: instead she got a breathless voice message via WhatsApp from her landlady. “Jane,” her landlady shouted. “The dam has burst. Get out of there quick, in the name of Jesus!” Luzzi grabbed her husband, Nilton de Freitas, 64, and they fled, shouting at neighbours as they went. Now, all she has left was in a plastic bag at her feet. Under the hot afternoon sun, Luzzi’s anger boiled over. “They think the people under that dam are insects,” she said. “Where is the United Nations? Where are the people who work with human rights?” Officials have not yet concluded why the dam failed, but the attorney general, Raquel Dodge, has promised to launch an investigation. “Someone is definitely at fault,” she said. Before the disaster, the river which ran through Parque de Cachoeira ran with crystalline water – clear enough to see fish swimming, said Adriano Souza, 36, a local builder and painter who has been helping hunt for bodies. His cellphone was filled with grim videos and pictures of broken bodies in the mud, along with a mud-caked child who had been rescued alive. Souza stood watching a rescue helicopter hovering above the acrid sludge. “If we have any contact with it we have to wash ourselves and wipe down with alcohol,” said Souza. As the sun dipped over the trees, three young men waded into the mud to point out a human leg they had found. A police helicopter descended and an officer in green overalls marked its location with a striped pole. “We found two bodies today,” said Afonso Ferreira, 20, as he waded out, his bare legs caked in red filth. “You can’t recognise them.” Up close, the mud irritates the eyes and throat due to the high pH levels in iron ore mining waste, said Mark Macklin, a professor of physical geography at the University of Lincoln who has studied tailings dam disasters for decades and is director of the university’s new Water and Planetary Health centre. Residents have described fish dying in the nearby Paraopeba river while others circulated cellphone videos of fish leaping out of the water to flap on its banks. “The fish will be choking because of the very high sediment loads in the river that simply stops the fish from breathing. They die from lack of oxygen,” Macklin said. “There were many dead fish, fish suffocating, fish jumping out of the water. I have lived here 58 years and I have never seen a scene like this,” said Ouvido Gomes, 68, a carpenter. Compounding the anger building in the region is the fact that some locals had already protested against the dams which they feared could collapse. Bruna Coelho, 23, an unemployed biologist who grew up in the region, took part in some of the protests. “We were very worried, especially after Mariana. Everyone who lives near tailings dams was worried,” she said. So far, Vale has denied any suggestion that the company might bear some responsibility for the Brumadinho disaster. In interviews, Vale’s CEO, Fábio Schvartsman, has referred to the tragedy as an “accident”. “Vale does not see any decisive reasons for its responsibility. There was no negligence, recklessness, malpractice,” Sérgio Bermudes, a lawyer for Vale, told the Folha de São Paulo newspaper. Vale soon moved to distance themselves from the comments. “Vale clarifies that it did not authorise third parties, including contracted lawyers, to talk in its name,” the company said in a statement on Monday, insisting that it will continue contributing to investigations and supporting affected families. Marina Silva, the former environmental minister and presidential candidate, said congress should bear part of the blame for not toughening regulations and enforcement. “All the warnings have been given. We are repeating history with this tragedy,” she told the Associated Press. “Brazil can’t become a specialist in rescuing victims and consoling widows. Measures need to be taken to avoid prevent this from happening again.”The eighth album by Deerhunter comes with a lot of words attached, of varying degrees of usefulness. There is a prose poem by frontman Bradford Cox every bit as incomprehensible as the stuff Bob Dylan used to append to the back covers of his 60s albums, evidently written while Dylan was speeding his nuts off. There are simple descriptors of the themes in each song: genuinely illuminating when dealing with a writer such as Cox, whose lyrics are famously made up on the spot, stream-of-consciousness style. But most telling of all might be the press release trumpeting the arrival of Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? to the world, unmistakably also Cox’s handiwork. No “it’s our best album yet and we’re psyched for you to hear it” for the Atlanta band. Instead, it’s largely concerned with glumly pondering what the point of making albums is at all: “In an era when attention spans have been reduced to next to nothing, and the tactile grains of making music have been further reduced to algorithms and projected playlist placement.” He asks: “Is it needed now? Is it relevant? Perhaps only to a small audience.” Announcing your new album with an existential crisis is an intriguing promotional tactic, but doing things the straightforward way isn’t Deerhunter’s thing. In any other band, you suspect Cox’s sexuality would be a major talking point – he identifies as a queer asexual, and two years ago informed an interviewer he was still a virgin – but it barely gets a look in, dwarfed by his reputation as an unpredictable contrarian. His interviews veer between alarmingly frank confessions about his physical and mental health and arch pronouncements he’s described as “performance art”. They come littered with bon mots you might describe as Morrissey-esque – “I’m proud to be hideous”, “Love is a populist construction” – were it not for the fact that he spent one interview turning every answer around to the subject of how much he hates Morrissey (“he makes me want to wear fur”). Deerhunter’s musical output veers wildly, too. Much of 2013’s Monomania sounded as if it was recorded in a bin; 2015’s Fading Frontier was lavishly appointed with 80s synthesisers and filled with conventionally commercial melodies; its follow-up, Double-Dream of Spring, was largely instrumental and released only on cassette in a limited edition of 300, apparently in protest at both the long lead times for vinyl and the flood of freely available content online. Unpredictability is a rare and rather valuable commodity in a world of media-trained personalities and music dictated by the metrics of streaming services, and it’s something Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? has in abundance. Far less aesthetically cohesive than Monomania or Fading Frontier, it never settles, skipping without warning from harpsichord-bedecked psych-pop to icy Tubeway Army-ish synth instrumentals, from elegiac alt-rock ballads to stuff that sounds like a lo-fi take on 80s Japanese environmental music, its disparate strands just about held together by Cox’s drawling voice and the hazy quality of the production. Much has been made of the fact that it was partly recorded in the sparsely populated Texan desert city of Marfa, and it’s not hard to work out how the environment influenced its sound: there’s a layer of echo suggestive of distance and empty space, while the rhythms have something of the sandstorm about them, distorted and gritty. Moreover, if there are moments where the album overplays its hand – a warped spoken-word track titled Detournement perhaps lays it on a bit thick – there’s a confidence about its stylistic leaps that means it feels like the expression of an authentically idiosyncratic imagination rather than someone being weird and eclectic for the sake of it. The lyrics are similarly scattered: if the title somehow suggests another despairing broadside against the evils of Trump’s America from the US alt-rock fraternity, the reality is more intriguing and complex. You could certainly divine the overall mood of prickly unease and the references to pollution and toxicity in Element as having some basis in America’s current upheavals: “may God’s will be done in these poisoned hills and let the devil be cast out on his tail,” snaps opener Death in Midsummer, in the language of the Christian right. But they come amid a gush of disparate and fascinating ideas: Futurism rails against nostalgia as a “cage”, Plains depicts James Dean filming Giant in Marfa, the town’s isolation filling him with foreboding. Indeed, the most expressly political thing here refers not to America, but the UK. No One’s Sleeping is an anguished response to the murder of MP Jo Cox, viewed from across the Atlantic. The music carries a distinct echo of the acoustic guitar-driven sound found on the Kinks’ Days or Picture Book; the lyrics mention village greens fading into darkness. It’s as if a stylised, quaint, distant view of England learned through Ray Davies’ songs is warping and fracturing. It is unexpected and strange, and, like the rest of the album, beautifully done. Phil Cordell: LondonderryExcavated on Ace’s superb forthcoming compilation Three Day Week, a bizarre, haunting attempt to turn the Troubles into echoing, glammy pop: musical archeology at its most compelling. • Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is released on 18 January• Leave No Trace • BlacKkKlansman • Cold War • If Beale Street Could Talk • You Were Never Really HereAs always, several of the best films that played here in 2018 (Andrew Kötting’s brilliant oddity Lek and the Dogs, Léonor Serraille’s Jeune Femme) aren’t among the 347 titles eligible at the 91st Oscars. Yet my favourite film is up for consideration, although it may well end up being overlooked – Debra Granik’s quietly overwhelming Leave No Trace, a perfect example of “show don’t tell” film-making. • Debra Granik (Leave No Trace) • Paweł Pawlikowski (Cold War) • Steve McQueen (Widows) • Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) • Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) The Oscars now allow up to 10 nominees in this category, and if our lists did too I’d have included Widows in my best film selection. Instead, I’ve opted to nominate its director, Steve McQueen, for his vibrant adaptation of Lynda La Plante’s TV series. Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here is similarly poetic, while Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace cements the promise of 2010’s Winter’s Bone. • Tomasz Kot (Cold War) • Ben Foster (Leave No Trace) • Stephan James (If Beale Street Could Talk) • Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) • John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman)Tomasz Kot was Danny Boyle’s choice for the next Bond villain, and it’s easy to see why – his performance in Cold War blends charisma with vulnerability, subtlety and strength. John David Washington gets the balance between humour and horror just right in BlacKkKlansman, while Rami Malek is uncanny as Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. • Viola Davis (Widows) • Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace)• Yalitza Aparicio (Roma) • Olivia Colman (The Favourite) • KiKi Layne (If Beale Street Could Talk) An astonishing field this year, from Oscar hopefuls Glenn Close (The Wife) and Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born) to personal favourites such as Jessie Buckley (Beast), Joanna Kulig (Cold War), Keira Knightley (Colette) and Toni Collette (Hereditary). I’d also include Yalitza Aparicio, who makes an amazingly natural debut in Roma, while Viola Davis is the lightning rod at the centre of Widows. • Mahershala Ali (Green Book) • Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) • Richard E Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) • Jason Isaacs (The Death of Stalin) • Tom Waits (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs)Mahershala Ali, an Oscar-winner for Moonlight, looks set to repeat that victory as pianist Dr Don Shirley in Peter Farrelly’s Green Book. He and Viggo Mortensen make a marvellous double act in a film that rests squarely upon their shoulders. And it’s great to see musician turned underrated actor Tom Waits excelling in the Coen brothers’ western portmanteau. • Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) • Salura Andô (Shoplifters) • Cynthia Erivo (Bad Times at the El Royale) • Michelle Rodriguez (Widows) • Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place)2018 was a good year for Cynthia Erivo, who stole Bad Times at the El Royale and co-starred in Widows. Millicent Simmonds was dynamite in A Quiet Place. Honourable mentions to Jennifer Ehle (The Miseducation of Cameron Post), Rachel Weisz (The Favourite) and Claire Foy (First Man), but Regina King is hard to beat in If Beale Street Could Talk. • Nicholas Britell (If Beale Street Could Talk) • Anna Meredith (Eighth Grade) • Jóhan Jóhannsson (Mandy) • Terence Blanchard (BlacKkKlansman) • Justin Hurwitz (First Man)I’d like to include Max Richter(Mary Queen of Scots), Jonny Greenwood (You Were Never Really Here) and Ludwig Göransson (Black Panther), all worthy contenders. But Britell once again proves the perfect musical foil for Barry Jenkins’s cinematic vision, with his superbly counterintuitive score for If Beale Street Could Talk. • Roma • The Favourite • You Were Never Really Here • Cold War • Leave No TraceWith the big flashing neon caveat that the Academy voters almost always conspire to annoy me, I see cause for cautious optimism this year. There’s a decent intersection between awards contenders and films that are rather good. But what thrills me is the very real possibility that the best picture prize might go to Alfonso Cuarón’s masterly Roma, a Spanish-language film from Mexico. What a message that would send: cinema builds bridges, not walls. • Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) • Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) • Debra Granik (Leave No Trace) • Paweł Pawlikowski (Cold War) • Chloé Zhao (The Rider)I was blown away by Chloé Zhao’s direction of The Rider – her deft blend of real-life and fiction excited me anew for the possibilities of hybrid cinema. But I would hand the statuette to Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really Here, a film that immerses us so thoroughly in the mind of her troubled protagonist that you almost fear you won’t escape. • Jakob Cedergren (The Guilty) • Paul Giamatti (Private Life) • Ben Foster (Leave No Trace) • Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting) • Ethan Hawke (First Reformed)It’s unlikely the Academy will even nominate Jakob Cedergren for Danish thriller The Guilty (although watch this space when Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the English remake). But he’d get my vote because he is the film, which plays out almost entirely in his face. While the voters tend to favour impersonations, Cedergren not only creates his character, he forges our journey through the story. • Olivia Colman (The Favourite) • Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) • Joanna Kulig (Cold War) • Viola Davis (Widows) • Julia Roberts (Ben Is Back)I could have filled this list three times over, such was the quality of female lead performances this year. Joanna Kulig’s magnetic turn in Cold War burns phosphorus bright. Julia Roberts, every fibre tense with hope as the mother of an addict in Ben Is Back, has been curiously overlooked. But Olivia Colman gets the crown this year for The Favourite and a performance effortlessly ranging from riotous comedy to aching pathos. • Daniel Kaluuya (Widows) • Richard E Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) • Simon Russell Beale (The Death of Stalin) • Mamoudou Athie (The Front Runner) • Tom Waits (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs)The supporting performances are often where we discover the talents of the future – and I would hazard a guess that Mamoudou Athie, so quietly impressive in The Front Runner, is one such name. But I would hand the prize to the always impressive Daniel Kaluuya for a forceful, fearsome performance which chilled me to the core in Widows. • Zoe Kazan (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) • Rachel Weisz (The Favourite) • Claire Foy (First Man) • Elizabeth Debicki (Widows) • Letitia Wright (Black Panther)I loved Letitia Wright in Black Panther – it was a scene-stealing, irreverent turn full of zest and mischief. And the malevolent charm of Rachel Weisz in The Favourite is hard to resist. But my choice for supporting actress would be Zoe Kazan, who crammed a whole feature’s worth of gauche, cautious dreams into a perfectly crafted short segment in the Coens’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. • Cold War (Poland) • Roma (Mexico) • Birds of Passage (Colombia) • The Guilty (Denmark) • Burning (South Korea)Since I have already handed out best picture to Roma in my fantasy film awards, I’ll spread the love and award best foreign language film to another intensely personal period piece shot in black and white. I adored the elegance and economy of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War – there is not a frame in the film that seems wasted. The exquisite cinematography is a crystalline miracle; the performances superb throughout. • A Star Is Born • Leave No Trace • First Reformed • The Rider • Sorry to Bother YouEither the Academy Awards are cursed, or I am. If I deem a film my secret winner, it will be fated to lose (my previous upsets include Phantom Thread (2017), Selma (2014), The Social Network (2010) and Brokeback Mountain (2005), but I’m hoping A Star Is Born breaks the spell. It’s a big, ballsy, crowd-pleasing melodrama; old-fashioned, serious, designed to provoke an emotional reaction – it’s Oscar bait. • Debra Granik (Leave No Trace) • Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) • Sandi Tan (Shirkers) • Chloé Zhao (The Rider) • Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) Judging by the Academy’s track record, we’ll be lucky if even one woman receives a best director nomination. Still, precedent aside, I see no reason why there shouldn’t be an all-female shortlist. All five of the above display fierce assurance, authority and originality of vision, and none more than Granik, whose exquisite mystery-thriller has the rare confidence to show its story rather than tell. • Brady Jandreau (The Rider) • Stephan James (If Beale Street Could Talk) • Ethan Hawke (First Reformed) • Joaquin Phoenix (You Were Never Really Here) • Lakeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You)A cowboy grapples with his identity following a serious trauma? The story of Chloé Zhao’s innovative real-life/fiction blend could make it an “Oscar” film. Zhao turns non-professional actor Brady Jandreau into a movie star; if she’s the magician, he’s the trick worth applauding. The transformation is subtle but precise; sadly the Academy usually rewards the opposite. • Olivia Colman (The Favourite) • Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born) • Regina Hall (Support the Girls) • Helena Howard (Madeline’s Madeline) • Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade)I loved Regina Hall’s fraying optimism as the beleaguered manager of a sports bar; Elsie Fisher’s awkward wannabe YouTuber Kayla in Eighth Grade, Helena Howard’s performance artist with mental health issues in Madeline’s Madeline, that a pop star could make me believe she waited tables in A Star Is Born. Best of all, though, is Olivia Colman’s hilarious turn as a selfish, ribald, grumbling Queen Anne. • Richard E Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) • Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) • Daniel Kaluuya (Widows) • Alessandro Nivola (Disobedience) • Steven Yeun (Burning)Worryingly, I found myself racking my brains to come up with five memorable supporting performances from men this year. Then I remembered Richard E Grant, whose witty turn as the prankish accomplice to writer Lee Israel in Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? threatens to to steal the show from Melissa McCarthy’s fraudster. Optimistic to hope that the Academy will agree. • Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace) • Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) • Cynthia Erivo (Bad Times at the El Royale) • Rachel Weisz (The Favourite) • Elizabeth Debicki (Widows)It seems unfair to put McKenzie in this category – her role in Debra Granik’s two-hander is more like a lead. Granik’s Winter’s Bone was Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout role and she provides similar conditions for the 18-year-old New Zealander to shine. Her performance (inquiring, liquid eyes, soft-spoken intelligence) remain lodged in my brain. • Shallow (A Star Is Born) • When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) • Treasure (Beautiful Boy) • Girl in the Movies (Dumplin’) • Suspirium (Suspiria)There hasn’t been a contender of Shallow’s calibre in this category in decades. The soaring power ballad is a proper pop song – and a proper earworm – written by a proper songwriter, plus at least half of it is sung by a proper pop star. With time I’ve no doubt Gaga’s hallowed warble will become as iconic as the flute that opens Celine Dion’s 1999 winner, My Heart Will Go On. • Zama • Leave No Trace • If Beale Street Could Talk • Vox Lux • You Were Never Really HereIt looks increasingly likely that history will be made at the Oscars this year, with Alfonso Cuarón’s gorgeous Mexico City memory piece Roma becoming the first non-English-language film ever to win the best picture prize. After 91 years, it’s an embarrassment it hasn’t happened already. So I’ll be cheering if it does, but a different Spanish-language film, Lucrecia Martel’s fevered, ingenious, no-chance-in-hell colonial nightmare Zama, takes my top vote. • Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) • Lee Chang-dong (Burning) • Debra Granik (Leave No Trace) • Lucrecia Martel (Zama) • Chloé Zhao (The Rider)After Greta Gerwig’s Oscar run with Lady Bird, the odds suggest we’re back to the status quo of an all-male best director race – despite a wealth of exciting options from established and up-and-coming female auteurs. Chloé Zhao won best film from the National Society of Film Critics, while Debra Granik took best director from the LA Film Critics Association: there’s no excuse for them to be frozen out. • Yoo Ah-in (Burning) • Joaquin Phoenix (You Were Never Really Here)• Zain Al-Rafeea (Capernaum) • Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) • Matthieu Lucci (The Workshop) Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury impression undeservedly won the Globe, but I suspect Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of an emotionally ravaged rock star will take the Oscar – on the strength of the performance and as a reward for his achievement in writing, directing and producing A Star Is Born. I’d be happy with that, but Korean star Yoo Ah-in gave the year’s most complex, mystery-riven male performance. • Toni Collette (Hereditary) • Juliette Binoche (Let the Sunshine In) • Olivia Colman (The Favourite) • Regina Hall (Support the Girls) • Ruth Wilson (The Little Stranger)It may be cold comfort in the face of a woman-free best director lineup, but at least there’s broad agreement that this year’s best actress field is infinitely deeper and richer than its male counterpart. I struggled to pick a winner: Olivia Colman’s astonishing tragicomic Queen Anne has many critics’ vote, but Toni Collette was ferocious and emotionally wrenching in a genre – horror – that Oscar voters rarely touch. • Brian Tyree Henry (If Beale Street Could Talk) • Daniel Kaluuya (Widows) • Alex Wolff (Hereditary)• Michael B Jordan (Black Panther) • Hugh Grant (Paddington 2) The Academy will avoid the #OscarsSoWhite trap this year with BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther and If Beale Street Could Talk all in the best picture frame. Mahershala Ali is widely tipped to take this prize again for elevating the civil rights drama Green Book, but it should be Henry’s turn: with stunning work in Beale Street, Widows and TV’s Atlanta, he was one of 2018’s hardest-working actors. • Dolly Wells (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) • Sakura Ando (Shoplifters) • Nina Arianda (Stan & Ollie) • Elizabeth Debicki (Widows) • Jennifer Garner (Love, Simon)Add Marielle Heller’s wry, lovely literary biopic Can You Ever Forgive Me? to the list of female-directed films that have received less than their due this season – though Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant are set to score Oscar nominations for their work (both came close to my ballot).Yet my favourite performance in the film, Dolly Wells’s subtle study in bookish loneliness, has gone entirely uncelebrated. • Bradford Young (Where Is Kyra?) • Rui Pocas (Zama) • Łukasz Żal (Cold War) • James Laxton (If Beale Street Could Talk) • Warwick Thornton (Sweet Country)If you haven’t heard of Where Is Kyra? don’t blame yourself. Andrew Dosunmu’s striking poverty-line drama, featuring Michelle Pfeiffer’s best performance in aeons, took long enough to reach US screens; it’s still awaiting a UK distributor. Here’s hoping we eventually get to see Bradford Young’s ingenious games of light and shadow on a big screen here.Joe Root has ordered his players to forget about jostling for Ashes places as they look to become only the second England team in 51 years to win a Caribbean Test series. Speaking before Wednesday’s first Test against West Indies at the Kensington Oval, where around 9,000 travelling fans will be in full voice, the message from the England captain was to focus on the present and back up their 3-0 win in Sri Lanka earlier in the winter. Root said: “Their job and their responsibility is not to worry about this summer’s Ashes, their job is to perform well for three Tests here. I don’t want the guys to be playing for stuff that’s going to be happening in six months’ time. “We have to look after here and now. We’re going to have to play well for long periods of time and know exactly what our roles are individually, not be distracted by other things.” This diktat came in response to a question about Keaton Jennings and Rory Burns, who are looking to cement their opening partnership before the summer visit of Australia and now face a significantly spicier challenge to that in Sri Lanka when Shannon Gabriel and Kemar Roach are thundering in with the new ball. The selection debate here surrounds the makeup of the bowling attack given a patchy surface that was being watered 24 hours before the start of the match. Stuart Broad or Sam Curran could make way to accommodate either Jack Leach or Adil Rashid from the previously expected XI, should spin be the way to go. If Broad is not selected, then so be it. Root said: “[It would not] be because of lack of form or ability or because his career is coming to an end. Far from it. He’s actually looking like he’s improving all the time: his action is getting stronger, he’s taking hat-tricks in warm-up games and looking a very serious threat. “If anything it shows we’re going to balance the team to suit conditions, we’re not necessarily going to play our 11 best players. From that we’ll hopefully become more consistent away from home. “We’re coming off the back of three brilliant Test matches, we work very well as a group and we’re all in a good place coming into the game. Whoever misses out is going to be very unfortunate but I am sure they’ll be ready for the second one if they’re not required here.” The International Cricket Council named its World XI for 2018 on Tuesday and of the two teams on show only the West Indies captain, Jason Holder, made the cut. After 12 months in which England beat India, the world’s No 1 side, at home and whitewashed a team in the subcontinent, Root views the snub as positive. “We have some wonderful players but for me as captain it is very pleasing because it shows that we are not reliant on one or two players. Everyone at some point is chipping in and performing. And the more consistent individually we can become, the more we will see this team develop.” Tradition seems to dictate that a forthright Yorkshireman writes off West Indies before a series. In 2015 the incoming chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Colin Graves, called the hosts “mediocre” before they went on to claim a 1-1 series draw on this ground, and this time Geoffrey Boycott has called Holder’s side “average, ordinary cricketers” in his Telegraph column. Like four years ago, this may soon become the latest wallpaper on the walls of the Windies’ dressing room in the Sir Garfield Sobers Pavilion, something Holder reminded Graves of when the pair crossed paths at the British High Commission on Sunday evening. Holder said: “I saw Colin a few days ago and we had a good giggle about that. I’ve not seen or heard the comments by Boycott but it’s normal. We expect this sort of thing. It gets us going.”Have you ever visited Northern Ireland? You should go – it’s a fascinating place. In fact, if it were less fascinating – that is to say, less complicated – then the UK’s departure from the EU would have been easier. You have that to thank us, or resent us, for. Before you visit you should familiarise yourself with some of the basic geography. First of all, where is Northern Ireland? Obviously it’s in Ireland, but only in one version of Ireland. It is on the island of Ireland, but not in the political state legally named Ireland. So it’s in Britain? Not quite, it is not on the island of Britain but it is in the United Kingdom – the state often referred to as Britain. It can therefore be described as being in both Britain and Ireland, one politically and the other physically. But unpack that sentence further: it is not on the island of Britain or in the state of Ireland. It is neither and both at the same time. It seems likely the UK-wide elements of the backstop are what bothers Brexiteers, rather than Northern Ireland diverging Northern Ireland is defined by its wanting to be in two places at once but not really being in either. Which is fitting, because while Northern Ireland is the defining issue of Brexit, it is also strangely absent from the debate. It is the elephant in the room, but other than the elephantine DUP and their unsubtle supporting turn in this fiasco, ministers, MPs, journalists, and assorted pundits (remainers and leavers alike), spend a vanishingly small amount of time actually trying to understand it. Or why the EU, at its philosophical core a peace project, might feel emboldened to act on behalf of a region that is only relatively recently at peace, and still without true reconciliation. That brings us to the backstop, a noun now invariably prefaced with “controversial” or even “hated”. But hated by whom? Certainly by the DUP and the European Research Group, but for different reasons: the DUP because the backstop countenances the prospect of Northern Ireland being treated differently from Britain in certain ways. The ERG says it, too, is greatly affronted by this, but some people – particularly people actually from Northern Ireland – take this claim with large portions of salt. It seems likely that the UK-wide elements of the backstop, keeping the UK in a near-customs union, are what really bothers Brexiteers, rather than the principle of Northern Ireland diverging. But the backstop only covers the whole UK at the British government’s request, an attempt to salve the fears of the DUP. An attempt that has not worked. Again, we arrive at the question: where is Northern Ireland? It may be in the UK, but that fact is remarkably easy to forget in London, where most parts of the establishment struggle to locate it in their mental conception of the place they govern. Some see that obliviousness as malign, but if it is, it is sort of understandable. None of the major UK parties organise in Northern Ireland in a significant way (the Tories stand but get a derisory vote). Its obscure concerns and tribal psychology are baffling. A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal. As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government. That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit. “The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs. Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added. I worked on Brexit in Downing Street before and after the EU referendum. I droned on about Northern Ireland’s predicament, but it was impossible to place it at the front of anyone’s mind until it was forced there by the EU. This obliviousness is not limited to politicians, but extends to the media and broader commentariat. In late 2016, the Stormont executive began falling apart over renewables subsidies, but also because of the toxic effect of Brexit on relations between the parties. At the time I had a bet with a colleague about how long it would take for Downing Street to be questioned about power-sharing falling apart at the daily lobby briefing of journalists. If the DUP hadn’t found itself holding the balance of power after the 2017 election, we might still be waiting. Even now, Northern Ireland is not so much discussed in the media or parliament as referred to: “backstop” and “border” being code for “problem”, with limited discussion of what the problem is, or why it requires a solution. Again, some of this is understandable, Northern Ireland’s complexity is wearying. But wearying too is the repeated failure in London to note something fundamental: that the majority of people in Northern Ireland appear to support the backstop, despite the opposition of the DUP. Northern Ireland Screen maintains a digital archive of old film, one of which is a tourist promotion feature from the 1950s, the halcyon days of the old Unionist-controlled Stormont parliament. Aimed at the English market, an upper-class young woman named Anne tells viewers of the beauty of the Giant’s Causeway and the Mourne mountains. And of the warmth of the people of “Ulster”, or “Alsta”, as she pronounces it in her clipped RP accent. As the camera pans out over the Irish sea, she bids her unnamed correspondent a final thought on Northern Ireland: “A place which is strangely different, almost a foreign country.” Almost. • Matthew O’Toole is a former No 10 Brexit spokesperson; he works for Powerscourt communications groupBritish politics now follows the tortured pattern of addiction. Inside the addict’s head the most important thing is getting to the next Brexit fix, scoring the best deal. But from the outside, to our European friends and family, it is obvious that the problem is the compulsive pursuit of a product that does us only harm. On Tuesday night Theresa May thought she had scored: a slender majority in parliament voted for an imaginary agreement in Brussels, stripped of the hated “backstop”. Tory Eurosceptic ultras and the DUP pledged conditional allegiance to the prime minister if she delivers “alternative arrangements” for a seamless border on Northern Ireland. But no one has any idea what those might be and the EU has already ruled out a renegotiation on terms that might satisfy the hardliners. The transient buzz of Tory unity will yield to the chilly comedown of Brexit reality, as it always does. Some MPs can see the situation spiralling out of control. Today 298 lined up to demand an intervention. They backed a cross-party bid to seize control of the Brexit agenda from the government and delay the day of departure if necessary. But the move failed. There is ample horror of the no-deal scenario across the Commons (a vaguer condemnation of that option won a narrow majority), but clearly the greater fear is association with anything that looks like an active plot to thwart Brexit. Yvette Cooper and Nick Boles, sponsors of the more controversial amendment, insisted their aim was only to guarantee an orderly departure, and there is no reason to doubt them. Parliament is packed with pro-Europeans who say no to the hard junk peddled by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg but are still hooked on softer strains of the leave drug. There is a booming trade in legal Brexit highs for MPs. The newest variant to hit the Westminster street is a confection put together by Kit Malthouse, a leave-voting Tory. His product has been endorsed by a remarkable spread of Conservative MPs, from former remainers to hardline Brexiteers. They grandiosely call it the “Malthouse compromise” – as if it were a magisterial vision for peace among nations and not a ragged stitch-up to postpone Tory civil war. The idea has two parts: first, renegotiate the backstop that promises a frictionless Northern Irish border; second, if renegotiation fails, scrap the deal but salvage the transition period contained within in it. Then aim for an exit on WTO terms. It is a strange kind of compromise plan that offers no compromise. The backstop only exists because May’s Brexit red lines could not be bent around the Good Friday agreement any other way. As for the transition period, it is a condition of the current deal. The idea that it can be cut and pasted into some other deal presumes that the past two years have just been a warm-up before the real match starts. This new Malthouse doctrine is really the old hardline Brexit delusions in shinier shoes. It is the bluff that Britain holds all the cards, and that if we show enough contempt for treaties and economic logic, Brussels will be intimidated into granting favours that could not be won by conventional diplomacy. There are two possible reasons for pursuing that strategy. One is stupidity: failure to grasp what the negotiations so far have actually been about and how May’s deal was their logical outcome. The second is cynical vandalism: knowing that the plan will fail and hoping, when it does, to pin blame for a chaotic no-deal Brexit on Brussels intransigence. In truth it would be the fruition of Eurosceptic zealotry. It is sad to see self-styled Tory “moderates” taken in by such a con and alarming to hear May indulge it in the Commons as a “serious proposal”. Her next move is to Brussels, in a quest for something that two years of negotiation have already failed to uncover. But it seems the way to unite Tories these days is to expunge the period 2017 to 2018 from memory. May still acts as if Brexit is something that must be settled to the satisfaction of the Conservative party first, and only then shared with the rest of Europe. The British public is at the very back of the queue. Such obtuseness infuriates continental leaders more than the intent to quit their club. It was not a secret that Britain had a Eurosceptic political culture, even if the referendum result was shocking and upsetting. But what was also obvious in Brussels, Berlin and Paris was the gap between the idea of Brexit advertised by the leave campaign – the narcotic rush of words such as “freedom” and “sovereignty” – and the practical business of extricating Britain from EU structures. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and others presumed this yawning chasm would be recognised by their British counterpart as a hazard. They expected May to start building bridges from the leavers’ fantasy island to the reality of what was available in negotiations with a bloc of 27 countries – the imbalance of power and the calculus of damage limitation. But May never confronted that logic. When she took the referendum result as her personal mission she also anointed herself with sacred oils of Brexiteer mythology. Her inscrutable demeanour and robotic speeches conceal a fervour that would be instantly identifiable as demagogy in a more expressive politician. At first, the prime minister’s rigid mask tricked Europeans into thinking she was a reasonable and capable person. It had a similar effect on the domestic audience. May’s bland style flattered a collective belief in the innate moderation of our politics. Her parochial mediocrity has nurtured the complacent assumption that the worst cannot happen here, that we are, at heart, a pragmatic nation not given to fanatical lurches. MPs imagine parliament as a political equivalent to the Greenwich meridian – the zero line from which other countries’ deviations are measured. We are slow to notice when the whole enterprise drifts wildly off course. Yet no one watching from the outside retains that romantic view of Britain as a bastion of political sobriety. They see instead a weird, stubborn refusal to talk about the crisis in plain English. MPs do battle over amendments to motions that change standing orders to permit bills to insist on extensions to a negotiating period, without saying what they think the outcome of that negotiation should be. Meanwhile, the prime minister invites her backbenchers to vote against something she has agreed in Brussels so she can go back and ask for something that she knows will be rejected. It is obvious that Brexit is a disaster, yet still so many MPs observe a taboo against saying that it should be stopped. To our continental friends and neighbours it is scarcely comprehensible. It looks like British social awkwardness elevated to the scale of a constitutional meltdown. It is the stiff upper lip chewing itself to pieces rather than name the cause of our suffering: not the deal, not the backstop, not the timetable, not Brussels, but Brexit. The poison in our system is Brexit. We need a path to recovery, not May’s frantic hunt for a stronger, purer dose. • Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnistIt was a case of when, not if, Padraig Harrington would enjoy a Ryder Cup captaincy coronation in the minds of everyone but the man himself. Harrington admitted upon his unveiling as Europe’s leader for 2020 at Whistling Straits that the thought of failure left him with a sense of trepidation to the point where accepting the European Tour’s overtures was far from the formality the rest of us assumed. This proved an endearing nod towards the self-doubt which consumes even – or perhaps more so – sportspeople at the highest level. Harrington raised a smile when contemplating how his fellow Irishman Paul McGinley has made all subsequent captains work harder given how he prepared for 2014 at Gleneagles. “Everything was lining up,” Harrington explained. “But I had to be confident that I wanted to do it. “I didn’t want to walk into this and be halfway through going: ‘I don’t know about this.’ It’s a job – and I have to blame McGinley, not thank him – that you have to be committed to. It is a two-year job, 20-month job and I had to sit down and say: ‘Am I prepared to do this?’ If it ever was, this is no longer a jolly.” There then followed what will widely be interpreted as a dig at Nick Faldo, a decorated player but hapless captain of Europe in 2008. “We have seen once or twice in the past, once, anyway, where your captain has done a half-hearted job and it doesn’t end well,” Harrington said. “I’m good at hitting a little white golf ball. Does that mean I’m good at managing? I had to ask myself these questions, am I prepared to do this, and I was. That’s basically it. “I love playing golf, I really do. I enjoy it. This is what I love doing, is playing golf, but I’m prepared to put my golfing legacy on the line here. I could easily have just walked away from this and said: ‘Oh, it’s not for me, I’ve had a successful golf career.’ “I don’t want to be a winning captain at all costs but I want to be a winning captain. These are the things that you have to sit down and think: ‘Can I do the job.’” In truth, it seems fanciful to suggest Harrington’s standing within the game – having won 30 tournaments worldwide, including three major championships – would be seriously diminished in defeat next year. The 47-year-old conceded Whistling Straits itself, semi-European in style, formed part of his thought process for a biennial event which has become home-team dominated in recent times. “I’ve never taken on anything where I haven’t tried to give it 100% and win,” Harrington added. “I am committed, and yes, it [the result] will have an effect [on me]. Hopefully a more positive effect than a negative effect, if I win. But it’s something that you’d better embrace, because it will have that asterisk, if you don’t win it. “You could be a great captain and lose and people will find fault in it. You could be a poor captain and win and people will think you did a great job. So I have to get over that. “I came home from the Ryder Cup after Darren Clarke’s loss [in 2016] and I remember some guy coming up to me and starting to explain to me all that went wrong. He wanted me to throw my captain under the bus and I just turned around and said: ‘I was part of all those decisions. I was there.’ But it’s amazing, he wanted it to be black and white and it’s not.” Harrington suggested he will cut by one the four wildcard selections utilised by Thomas Bjørn before success at Le Golf National last year. The double Open champion also issued a staunch and timely defence of Rory McIlroy, who was criticised for branding the European Tour a “stepping stone” before kicking off his season in Hawaii last weekend. Harrington has no doubts whatsoever regarding the Northern Irishman’s commitment to his home continent. “I can only look at his actions,” Harrington said. “That man loves the Ryder Cup. He has become a leader in the team room. He gives so much to the Ryder Cup. “He’s 30 years of age [in May] and he gets to be a leader. He will be 100% behind and in that Ryder Cup team, there’s no doubt about it. You just have to know the man behind the scenes.”The high court has been told that phone hacking was widespread at the Sun, despite strong denials from Rupert Murdoch’s News UK that the daily tabloid newspaper was involved in any illegal activity. A lawyer representing alleged phone-hacking victims also requested the historic expenses receipts of serving Sun reporter Nick Parker, in order to investigate whether his purchase of top-up vouchers for a burner mobile phone was related to the interception of voicemails. News UK has always strongly denied that any illegal activities took place at the Sun and declined to comment on the claims against Parker. The newspaper has always denied any involvement in phone hacking or wrongdoing by senior executives and said the illegality was confined to the News of the World, its defunct sister title, which was closed down in 2011 at the height of the scandal. Parker, who is the Sun’s chief foreign correspondent, was handed a suspended sentence in 2014 after being convicted of handling a Labour MP’s stolen mobile phone but was welcomed back to the newspaper the following year. The high court also heard that Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, were close to settling a phone-hacking claim with the publisher of the Sun and the News Of The World, just weeks before the case was due to go to trial. The court was told that the couple were close to reaching an agreement with News Group Newspapers, part of the wider News UK group, in a move that could avoid a high-profile trial over claims journalists at the Sun were involved in illegally obtaining voicemails, allegations the newspaper has always denied. The singer’s solicitor did not return a request for comment on whether a deal had been reached. News UK has settled settled dozens of cases in recent years with confidential settlements thought to be worth millions of pounds, with agreements often reached on the eve of trial. The settlements do not accept any wrongdoing on the part of the Sun relating to the interception of voicemails. Barrister David Sherborne told the court that two other “big ticket” claims have still yet to settle and are still due to go to trial on 4 February, which could potentially force senior Murdoch executives to appear in court. One case involves Liz Hurley and the other involves Heather Mills, who is the ex-wife of Paul McCartney, and her sister Fiona Mills. Sherborne also claimed at a pre-trial hearing that News Group Newspapers frustrated attempts to obtain material relevant to the case. The legal proceedings are still ongoing more than seven-and-a-half years after the News of the World closed following Guardian revelations about phone hacking that led to the conviction of Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor and Downing Street communications chief. Many of the claims of phone hacking still winding their way through the legal system relate to the sources of news stories published in the mid-2000s, with Murdoch’s company having settled more than 1,000 civil claims for phone hacking. Last year another group of claimants, including the former boxer Frank Bruno, settled their cases against the newspaper group. News Group Newspapers recorded a loss of £91m in the 2017 financial year, with the accounts stating that one-off costs included significant legal fees in relation to ongoing legal issues. The publisher of the Mirror has also made multiple settlements with celebrities over alleged phone hacking, including with the actor and press reform campaigner Hugh Grant. The publisher admitted last year it “actively turned a blind eye” to the practice over many years.Roger Federer, who was the oldest player left in the men’s draw at 37, gave his blessing to the youngest, 20-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas, after the Greek prodigy beat him to reach his first quarter-final of a slam. The victor declared himself “the happiest man on earth”. The eminent loser – a six-times Australian champion reaching for his third here in a row – was happy for him too, although he later riled at John McEnroe’s on-court suggestion that Tsitsipas’s 6-7 (11), 7-6 (3), 7-5, 7-6 (5) win in three hours and 45 minutes represented a changing of the guard. “Yeah, sure,” Federer said, mustering as much disdain as he regarded as reasonable. “He’s in front of the mic a lot. He’s always going to say stuff. I love John. I’ve heard that story the last 10 years. From that standpoint, nothing new there.” On a more upbeat note, Federer said of Tsitsipas, “He’s done a really nice job, the last year and a half – before that, too. Beating Novak [Djokovic] in Toronto, the likes of [Kevin] Anderson and [Alexander] Zverev, now me here: that’s what you need to do to get to the next level. “He’s doing that. I see him definitely being high up in the game for a long time. That was a good night for him tonight.” Tsitsipas, a deep thinker maybe not quite in the class of Socrates, agreed. He has always said that this is where he belongs – on the big stage. With a single-handed backhand, hot serve, sublime volleying skills and rock-solid self-belief, he slowly deconstructed the game of his mirror image across the net, and becomes the first Greek to reach the quarter-finals of a slam. On Tuesday he will play Roberto Bautista Agut, who beat Andy Murray here last Monday in what might have been the Scot’s last match, and outlasted the 2018 finalist Marin Cilic 6-7 (6), 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 on Sunday. Tsitsipas felt very much at home in front of a supportive audience in the city where more Greek is spoken than in any city outside Greece. There have even been suggestions he could emigrate – as Federer’s father contemplated when the family lived here briefly during the Swiss’s teenage years. “Nothing I can compare it to,” Tsitsipas said courtside, “I’m the happiest man on earth right now. I cannot describe it. I truly believed I was going to win, from the very beginning. It’s important to keep that mindset, to believe in yourself.” He said of Federer: “I have so much respect for him. He showed such good tennis over the years. It was a dream come true for me just being on Rod Laver facing him.” Tsitsipas, who was fined for swearing and docked a point for slow serving in his previous match, ran into trouble with the clock again in the first game of this match, when the British chair umpire, James Keothavong, handed him a time violation. “I just felt weird,” Tsitsipas said. “I thought I was on time. Later, I broke a shoelace. It’s very common for me.” Clearly, he will do things his own way – and maybe philosophise about them on social media, where he is among the most active in the locker room. Although Federer had reached the first weekend without dropping a set, he has had to fight occasionally, and the energy expended in a tight three-setter with Dan Evans in the second round, where they played two tie-breaks, might have caught up with him. He was in three shoot-outs here, losing the one that mattered most. He also failed to convert one of 12 break points. “It definitely didn’t go the way I was hoping on the break points,” Federer conceded. “I also didn’t break him at the Hopman Cup, so clearly something is wrong. He’s doing a good job to defend them. It’s very frustrating.” After two hours and 40 minutes, Tsitsipas got his first break points, and Federer saved both to level at 4-4, before fading to go 2-1 down. He was struggling in most exchanges – until Tsitsipas called for the trainer after five games of the fourth to check for cramp. A quick massage of the thighs, and he was back in the groove. Federer forced a third tie-break. At 5-5, he faltered, and Tsitsipas ripped a withering forehand to cap the best day of his career. Earlier, the effervescent Frances Tiafoe celebrated his 21st birthday by dumping the dangerous but inconsistent Grigor Dimitrov out of the tournament in four sets. The Bulgarian put 21 aces on his younger opponent, but could not crack his indomitable spirit, and said of Tiafoe: “It’s so nice to see somebody new, somebody fresh. Everybody in the locker room likes him, everybody is laughing. He’s going to be amazing. He can only get better.” Tiafoe, the son of immigrants who fled war-torn Sierra Leone before he was born, lived for the first 11 years of his life on the premises of the tennis centre outside Washington DC where his father worked – and where he found tennis. He acknowledges the game has changed his life, and that of his family. “It’s crazy, man. The beginning of my career, I was playing for them, trying to do everything for my family. I have put them in a great place. Now I’m trying to do it for me. In March, 2017, I bought a house in Maryland for my mom. My dad is in an apartment in Orlando. I didn’t want to go to college. I knew that from a young age. I wanted it and I’m doing it.” He gets to do it again on Tuesday, against Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals of a slam. The Spaniard threatened to blow Tomas Berdych away in record time before settling for a grinding finish, to win 6-0, 6-1, 7-6 (4), and said later of Tiafoe: “He has everything. He’s quick. He serves well. Very quick forehand. He’s a very dynamic player, aggressive, dangerous. He’s in the quarter-finals. He has won some great matches. It’s going to be a tough one.” Federer later told French reporters he would play the French Open this year, a departure from his recent pared-down schedule. “I am in a phase where I want to please me. I also had the feeling it was not necessary to take a long break. I will play Roland-Garros.”Sitting in a Camden Town pub with a glass of water, immaculately turned out in a style he describes as “dressing casual, dressing like a millionaire, dressing a bit like an American dad” – neatly tucked-in polo shirt, Burberry jacket, spotless trainers – Timothy Gonzales is insisting that what he does is not a joke. “It pisses me off when people say that, because it’s like … this is something, in a way, that’s not really been done before which is: self-taught; directs his own videos; does his own instrumentals; doesn’t use samples; gets his friends to do this and do that; puts work into it – and then someone says it’s just a joke. So that really, really offends me when people say that.” He thinks for a moment: “But if people think that, I’m not going to be upset with them, it’s fine to think that, do you know what I mean?” In fairness, you can see how people have jumped to that conclusion in the 18 months since Gonzales posted a video on YouTube for a song called Getting Busy!, as Jimothy Lacoste (a name he adopted because “I always want to be unique and it just sounded nice to my ears”; he has subsequently dropped the Lacoste). It was the first of a succession of viral hits, followed, in short order, by FUTURE BAE, Subway System, DRUGS, Fashion and I Can Speak Spanish. Their online success has led to media attention, European tours and a record deal with Black Butter, home to Rudimental, DJ Khaled, Zara Larsson and J Hus. Everyone seems to agree that Jimothy is now, officially, A Thing, although precisely what kind of thing has been the subject of much debate. His tunes – created at home, although the equipment he uses is “a secret” – are infernally, inescapably catchy, clearly the product of someone with an intuitive understanding of how pop works. If his music doesn’t really sound like anything else, the fact that a recent Spotify playlist he curated featured lushly melodic 80s soul by the Jones Girls and Loose Ends among the hip-hop tracks seems to give an indication of his inspiration. Over the top, he sings and raps in a soft, guileless tone that’s more or less the same as his speaking voice, dispensing idiosyncratic homespun wisdom and positivity – “You can’t be doing more drugs than Kate Moss”; “I’d rather know a language than learn boring maths”; “Let’s make some money, let’s make mum happy” – and outlining his vision for his future, in which he becomes hugely successful, makes money and shops “at Waitrose almost every single day”. “Life,” runs his deadpan catchphrase, “is getting quite exciting.” In his self-directed videos, meanwhile, he wanders around London, dancing with gleeful abandon on the top of bus shelters and with pensioners in an Ikea car park. “Those dance moves come from the same thing that the music comes from, where it’s like: I’ve got no rules, I’ve not been taught anything so I’m just going to make up my own thing,” he says. “A lot of the moves that you see in the videos, I really can’t do again, because it was just freestyling, done in one take.” There is also a lot of perilous-looking messing around on tube trains, something that caused Transport for London to intervene and have the video for Subway System (“Damn, yes, my Northern Line is running / Peng little line, goes far to Morden, man – that’s something”) taken down. “The first thing to say is: I do not encourage that,” frowns Gonzales, when subway surfing is mentioned. “That was in the past, and I only did it to, you know, release tension, relieve stress. It’s something from my culture that I was doing, so I put that in the video.” Reading the comments underneath them, you get the full range of opinions about what he may or may not be doing. Some people think he’s a witty, autodidactic pop genius. Some people think he’s an outsider artist. Some people think his videos are one of those wearyingly self-conscious millennial jokes, where irony is piled on to irony until it’s unclear whether it’s meant to be funny or not. Some people think that, with his clear diction and smart clothes, he’s a posh kid parodying UK rap, which particularly infuriates him. “When someone says: ‘Oh, he’s just a rich kid, he got money from a budget.’ And it’s just like: it’s the complete opposite of that.” You can certainly see why the latter accusation might rankle. Gonzales was born not far from the pub we are sitting in. His dad left the family early on “because he had issues and whatnot … big weed smoker, never had a job in his life, lots of paranoia, a bit angry”. You could infer a lot about this from songs such as FUTURE BAE, in which Gonzales approaches the decidedly un-hip-hop subjects of monogamy and settling down with a wistful earnestness. Certainly, he attributes his insistence on being in control of everything he does to his father’s absence. “When you don’t have a father, you kind of make yourself. I’ve not got a dad to say to me: ‘I’m proud of you, son,’ so I’ve got to make myself proud. I’ve got to make sure this song was all produced by me, the video was all directed by me, just because I’ve never had that thing of: ‘Yeah, well done.’ Of course, my mum says that, but, you know, there’s not the father figure there.” His mum worked as a cleaner and an upholsterer, before becoming his young brother’s full-time carer. Gonzales was so profoundly dyslexic he was sent to a special-needs school, surrounded by kids with “severe, severe” behavioural and social difficulties. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it – “That’s a story for another day”– but ends up discussing it anyway, with an intriguing equanimity. On one hand, he says, it was a nightmare: he found it impossible to make friends. On the other, “if you’re in that environment, you’re not in an environment where you get bullied if you dress this way or that way; there’s no phones, no social media. You’re kind of in a place where you’ve got more freedom. If I went to a mainstream school, I think I would have probably ended up selling drugs, because I’ve got an entrepreneurial mind. If I saw someone making money in that way, I’d be like: ‘I can do that myself; my mum’s clearly not making money, I’ve got no GCSEs, I’m not doing well in school with my dyslexia, I’m either going to be on benefits – which is kind of like prison – so if I do sell drugs and go to prison, same thing.’ But I didn’t get that mindset, because I didn’t go to a normal school.” When not at school, he “fell into graffiti culture”. It provided him with “mentors: when I was 13 or 14 I was hanging around with 25-year-old graffiti writers” and left him with both his look (which, as he points out, isn’t far removed from the way the kids dressed in the 1983 documentary Style Wars or the book Subway Art) and, presumably, his now-abandoned penchant for fooling around on tube trains. Outside of graffiti, all his other friends were rich and privately educated. His mum “was given a council flat in a very, very rich area in London”, and he met them in the local playground, reconnecting years later, when a parent asked his mum to re-upholster a chair. “I went along with her, and I said to this guy Tayo: ‘How’s private school? It must be mad, do you go to loads of house parties?’ He was like: ‘Bro, we’ve got one every weekend.’ So I went along with him and I just thought to myself: ‘Wow, this is fun; private school kids know how to party.’ I was really social and within three months all my friends were private school kids: big houses, loads of GCSEs. I don’t have any friends that are in my situation. Sometimes I do feel quite isolated because sometimes they can’t relate, which is fine. At the same time, we’re all humans, we’re all the same.” He says he started making music as “literally for me to listen to myself in my room”: he was more interested in melodies and arrangements than lyrics because “I used to listen to rap songs, and because of my dyslexia, I wouldn’t know a thing that they were saying, but I’d just love the sound of his or her voice, that kind of melody; I’m more of a sound man, you know?” The videos, meanwhile, were initially made just to show his friends: he enlisted a mate to shoot them, startled him by announcing that the results weren’t right and needed to be completely re-shot, and edited them himself “on Movie Maker, this weird free program I downloaded on Google”. “The music came out of shyness, having a bad time at school, finding a way to express myself and experiment with my emotions and stuff but, at the same time, there was a confidence there that made me put it out: ‘I think this is amazing, I’m sure other people will find it amazing.’ In my group of friends I was always seen as the dumb one, you know?” he says. “They would always have this joke, if they saw something a bit amateur, they’d say: ‘That’s so BTec’. At school at the time, I wasn’t even able to do a BTec, I wasn’t on that level. So when I started doing music, I put it out there and I was kind of like: ‘This is going to shock people, I bet they didn’t know I could do this.’” He starts talking about his ambitions, which, for all the stuff in his songs about “counting your stacks and making them bounce”, he says are “basically small”. He recently modelled in a campaign for Adidas, but says he has turned down “like 10 grand” from other companies because he didn’t like the clothes: you can’t sing about looking like a million pounds if you’ll wear any old tat. He has rebuffed attempts by his new label to get him to work with outside songwriters and producers. “I was like: ‘No, no, no, no!’ I have to focus on making sure they don’t change who I am.” He thinks people who believe his music is a joke are going to be disappointed when they eventually hear his album – “There’s songs there for my pure fans that just like my voice and especially my instrumentals, so those other people probably won’t enjoy it; ‘Oh, he’s not saying anything funny’” – and seems genuinely nonplussed when I tell him I’d assumed Jimothy Lacoste was a kind of character he’d invented. He shakes his head: no, he says, it’s him. “I’m just there being me, really. In the videos and the live shows, it’s literally like … my most powerful me, coming out.” Jimothy performs at KOKO, NW1, 14 FebruaryThe persecution of Christians in China is the worst it has been for more than a decade, with at least 50 million people expected to experience some form of repression this year as the government tightens its controls over religious worship, according to a global monitoring body. The crackdown on religion in China is part of a pattern of increasing Christian persecution across Asia over the past five years, Open Doors said in its 2019 World Watch List, which ranks 50 countries. One in three Christians face high levels of persecution in Asia, with India entering the top 10 for the first time. Open Doors estimates that 245 million Christians worldwide face high levels of persecution this year, up from 215 million last year. The publication of its annual league table comes three weeks after Jeremy Hunt, the UK foreign secretary, ordered an independent, global review of the persecution of Christians of all nationalities. The review will make recommendations on the practical steps the UK government can take to support those under threat. North Korea tops the World Watch List for the 18th year in a row, with 10 other countries categorised as having “extreme” levels of persecution. Countries that have moved up more than 10 places in the list in the past year include China, Algeria, Central African Republic, Mali and Mauritania. China has risen from no 43 on last year’s list to 27 in 2019. Henrietta Blyth, the chief executive of Open Doors UK and Ireland, said: “In China, our figures indicate persecution is the worst it’s been in more than a decade – alarmingly, some church leaders are saying it’s the worst since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976.” There are an estimated 93 million to 115 million Protestants in China and about 10 million to 12 million Catholics. Most belong to unregistered churches. If the rate of growth continues, China is expected to have the world’s largest Christian population by 2030. In the past year, the Chinese government has tightened its control on religious worship, shutting down hundreds of unofficial churches, detaining pastors and worshippers, removing crosses from buildings, banning the online sale of bibles and increasing the surveillance of congregations. Last month, the celebration of Christmas was banned in some schools and cities. “There is a very strong control agenda combined with a new era of digital surveillance,” said Ronald Boyd-Macmillan, the head of strategy and research at Open Doors. He said persecution was being driven by three factors: the strong ideological leadership of China’s president, Xi Jinping, the government’s unease over the growth of Christianity, and the harnessing of technology as a repressive tool. In September, the Vatican signed a provisional deal with Beijing on the appointment of Catholic bishops, aimed at a rapprochement in diplomatic relations. However, critics denounced it as a betrayal, with Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former archbishop of Hong Kong, saying the consequences would be “tragic and long lasting, not only for the church in China but for the whole church because it damages credibility”. India, the world’s largest democracy, rose to 10th place on the list, having been 28th five years ago. Open Doors said ultra-nationalism was behind the increase in violent attacks by Hindu extremists on Christians and churches. “It’s shocking that India – the country which taught the world the way of ‘non-violence’ – now sits alongside the likes of Iran on our World Watch List. For many Christians in India, daily life is now full of fear – totally different from just four or five years ago,” Blyth said. The report also highlights the rise in gender-specific persecution, saying Christian women are subjected to sexual violence, rape and forced marriage in the top five countries on the list.Greenland is melting faster than scientists previously thought, with the pace of ice loss increasing four-fold since 2003, new research has found. Enormous glaciers in Greenland are depositing ever larger chunks of ice into the Atlantic ocean, where it melts. But scientists have found that the largest ice loss in the decade from 2003 actually occurred in the southwest region of the island, which is largely glacier-free. This suggests surface ice is simply melting as global temperatures rise, causing gushing rivers of meltwater to flow into the ocean and push up sea levels. South-west Greenland, not previously thought of as a source of woe for coastal cities, is set to “become a major future contributor to sea level rise,” the research states. “We knew we had one big problem with increasing rates of ice discharge by some large outlet glaciers,” said Michael Bevis, lead author of the paper and a professor of geodynamics at Ohio State University. “But now we recognize a second serious problem: increasingly, large amounts of ice mass are going to leave as meltwater, as rivers that flow into the sea.” The research provides fresh evidence of the dangers posed to vulnerable coastal places as diverse as Miami, Shanghai, Bangladesh and various Pacific islands as climate change shrinks the world’s land-based ice. “The only thing we can do is adapt and mitigate further global warming – it’s too late for there to be no effect,” Bevis said. “This is going to cause additional sea level rise. We are watching the ice sheet hit a tipping point. “We’re going to see faster and faster sea level rise for the foreseeable future. Once you hit that tipping point, the only question is: How severe does it get?” The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used data from Nasa’s gravity recovery and climate experiment (known as Grace) and GPS stations scattered across Greenland to analyze changes in ice mass. This showed that Greenland lost around 280bn tons of ice per year between 2002 and 2016, enough to raise the worldwide sea level by 0.03 inches annually. If all of Greenland’s vast ice sheet, 3km thick in places, was to melt, global sea levels would rise by seven meters, or more than 20ft, drowning most coastal settlements. The rate of loss hasn’t been even, however, with the ice melting four times faster in 2013 compared to 2003. Researchers said this was driven by rising global temperatures from human-induced climate change as well as the North Atlantic Oscillation, a periodic weather phenomenon that brings warmer air to western Greenland. The fate of Greenland’s huge glaciers in the south-east and north-west has long been viewed as a key factor in global sea level rise but the Ohio State-led research suggests the ice fields of the island’s southwest may prove an unexpectedly large source of meltwater. Scientists have been gaining a greater understanding of how the two massive ice masses on the planet, in Greenland and Antarctica, are reacting to a warming ocean and atmosphere. Arctic ice loss has tripled since the 1980s, with melting in places such as Greenland and Alaska providing the greatest instigator of sea level rise while destabilizing the very ground underneath four million people’s feet. Antarctica is becoming an increasing concern, however, with ice vanishing at its fastest rate in recorded history. The world’s largest expanse of ice is now losing around 219bn tonnes of ice a year, a trajectory that would contribute more than 25cm to total global sea level rise by 2070. Should the entire west Antarctic ice sheet collapse, sea levels would balloon by around 3.5m, albeit over a lengthy timeframe. “We are warming the planet, this is melting ice, and that is raising sea level,” said Richard Alley, a geologist and glacier expert at Pennsylvania State University. Alley added that while there are uncertainties over future sea level rise “if the big ice sheets change more rapidly than expected, they could drive faster or much faster rise than expected”.When Theresa May addressed the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers on Monday night, she was still undecided whether to throw the government’s weight behind an amendment that effectively demolished her own negotiated deal. Downing Street had been caught unawares by the reaction of the core group of hard Brexiters who had decided the amendment by Sir Graham Brady, seeking “alternative arrangements” to the Irish backstop, was too woolly. May entered the packed room of Tory MPs blind, but while on her feet in the room for more than an hour, the prime minister herself made the decision that the support in the room was strong enough to whip in favour of Brady’s amendment and announced the decision there and then, sources said. It was a gamble but the amendment passed comfortably, by today’s standards. Less than 24-hours after rejecting the amendment, almost all of the European Research Group of hard Brexiters MPs came in behind the government. It was one of those rare nights for May where the whipping fell into place as rebel Labour MPs also saw off Yvette Cooper’s plan for a bill to extend article 50. If the government was to have a chance at success on the Brady amendment, the prime minister decided she needed to switch places with her Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, and open the debate on Tuesday to give sceptical Brexiters the chance to digest her pledges before the vote . It was clear Brexiters needed to hear May was prepared to reopen the negotiated text of the withdrawal agreement – something explicitly rejected by Brussels. There was also a push to hear May countenance the so-called “Malthouse compromise.” That plan, which had emerged overnight, was brokered by housing minister Kit Malthouse, ex-remainer Nicky Morgan and Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg, and would see a replacement for the backstop and an extended transition period, or a three-year managed no deal. May began on Tuesday with a political cabinet meeting at 8.30am, where the environment secretary Michael Gove was first to speak up in favour of Malthouse. Gove encouraged the prime minister to be warm about the prospect of compromise when she spoke at the despatch box and stress that it was constructive to see MPs working together. “The feeling was that if she could pull off any kind of majority after such a crushing defeat, that’s extraordinary,” one source said. Soft Brexit cabinet ministers mainly kept their reservations to themselves, though some harbour significant doubts about the workability of the Malthouse proposal. “The mood was we just have to get through the day,” one cabinet source said. Some did voice concern that May could have been taken for a ride by the ERG if they backed the plan, keeping them onside for now but whose real interests were running down the clock. May gave no ground when pressed by cabinet ministers of what she would do if her efforts failed. “The question was asked but not entertained,” the source said. After leaving her cabinet, May spoke to the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, who bluntly told her it would be fruitless to come to Brussels intending to reopen the text. Yet May came to parliament and directly said what the ERG needed to hear – she intended to reopen the text of the withdrawal agreement and rewrite the backstop. Still, Brexiters like Rees-Mogg and Peter Bone demanded more conditions while May stood at the despatch box. Their support for change should not be seen as a guarantee that they will approve whatever is agreed next. May was forced to accept that MPs could indeed vote for changes and still reject them when the deal came back again for ratification. The ERG met an hour before the vote – with a surprise guest. Brady, not normally an attendee, popped into the committee room. “Thought I’d have a look,” he smiled. Inside, Brady insisted again that by supporting his amendment, MPs were not committing to eventually back May’s deal. Eurosceptic Andrew Rosindell said he thought Brady’s chances were “50-50” but Steve Double put the number of those still objecting in “single figures”. It was even lower in the end, just one Brexiter rebel – Anne Marie Morris. Rees-Mogg said the prime minister had given the necessary assurances but underlined that the group was not approving the deal by backing Brady. “This is not taken as approval come-what-may,” he said. Almost simultaneously in the chamber, soft Brexiters were sounding deeply sceptical, including Sarah Wollaston and Anna Soubry. Tory remainers were seven of the eight of their rebels. Yet there had been palpable frustration during the course of Tuesday about the splintering of the soft Brexit and remainer gang of MPs who sit high up in the so-called naughty corner of the Tory benches. “I’m off to my first People’s Front of Judea meeting of the day,” one of them quipped as they walked through Portcullis House. The animosity was evident even in the chamber. As Morgan stood to thank the prime minister for giving her plan a hearing, Soubry grumbled beside herthat it “would have been nice to have been told that”. In the corridors before the vote, Morgan’s backing for the Malthouse compromise was met by incredulity by some of her party allies. “It’s bonkers, it’s not even a clever version of a hard Brexit, if that isn’t an oxymoron,” one said. “Do they even understand it? Everyone is asking them that question – why?” The Tory MPs sitting in the naughty corner above the Speaker’s right shoulder now have a mirror image in a row on the opposition benches, diametrically opposite. In the top left corner of the chamber, the Labour MPs implacably opposed to a second referendum have begun to congregate, among them Gareth Snell, Mel Onn and Gloria De Piero. It was with those MPs who the fate of Cooper’s amendment rested and their scepticism about how a delay to Brexit would be perceived by their pro-leave constituents. Fourteen of them sank Cooper’s amendment. Yet those MPs were firmly against a no-deal Brexit, leading most to decide to vote for Dame Caroline Spelman’s amendment – the only other to pass. Though not legally binding, it explicitly rejects the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. “There’s been a lot of soul-searching but we now have some clarity,” Snell said. “My constituents made it very clear what they want. We want a deal and we don’t want diversions. The amendments tonight reminded me of a student essay crisis where you do everything but start your actual essay.” The marathon number of votes – seven in total – saw several MPs show off their pedometers to hovering journalists as they walked round and round the Commons lobbies. One MP was furtively carrying an iPad under his arm, watching the football. The outbreak of Tory unity, and the renewed support of the DUP, led one beaming cabinet minister to break out into a rendition of Lord of the Dance on his way to the lobbies. “Vote, vote, wherever you may be, vote vote vote with the DUP!” he sang. By the time May returns from Brussels, it remains to be seen whether the party will still be singing the same tune.The politician spearheading efforts to force Nicolás Maduro from power has vowed to step up his “fight for freedom” amid reports Venezuelan special forces had visited his home in the capital Caracas. Addressing a packed theatre at the city’s Central University of Venezuela on Thursday lunchtime, Juan Guaidó said the opposition was determined to end Venezuela’s “tragedy” and lead the country into a new era of stability and prosperity. The 35-year-old former student leader – at the centre of a growing political storm since declaring himself Venezuela’s interim president last week – summoned new protests for Saturday in an effort to increase pressure on Maduro’s embattled regime. Venezuela’s current plight can be traced to a revolution that went terribly wrong. When Hugo Chávez, a former military officer, was elected president in 1998, he inherited a middle-income country plagued by deep inequality. Chávez had led an abortive coup attempt in 1992 and after winning power through the ballot box he set about transforming society. Chávez drove through a wide range of social reforms as part of his Bolivarian revolution, financed with the help of high oil profits – but he also bypassed parliament with a new constitution in 1999. The muzzling of parliamentary democracy – and the spread of corruption and mismanagement in state-run enterprises – intensified after 2010 amid falling oil prices. Chávez’s “economic war” against shortages led to hyperinflation and the collapse of private sector industry. The implosion in the economy between 2013 and 2017 was worse than the US in the Great Depression. In an attempt to stabilise the economy and control prices of essential goods, Chávez introduced strict controls on foreign currency exchange, but the mechanism soon became a tool for corruption. When Chávez died of cancer, his place was taken by his foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, who has intensified his mentor’s approach of responding to the economic downward spiral by concentrating power, ruling by decree and political repression. “The dictatorship believes it can scare us,” Guaidó told an audience of supporters, announcing that he had received reports of his home being visited by members of the Special Actions Force (FAES) police unit. His baby daughter and grandmother were reportedly at home at the time. Guaidó insisted Venezuelan citizens would fail to be intimidated and had grown tired of the humanitarian emergency into which their country has fallen under Maduro. “It isn’t through … repression that they will manage to tame a brave people that seeks freedom, democracy, food, medicine and above all a better future for their children,” Guaidó said, to loud cheers from the crowd. “We are in the streets and we will remain in the streets until the usurpation ends.” As the opposition leader spoke the crowd erupted in cheers of “¡Sí se puede!” (“Yes we can) – the Obama-era slogan the young politician has sought to adopt in his struggle to bring down Maduro. One woman shouted: “You’re not alone Guaidó! We’re all with you!” Guaidó was speaking at the launch of Plan País (Plan for the Country) a wide-ranging opposition blueprint that claims it can rescue Venezuela’s economy and end a humanitarian crisis that has seen around a tenth of the population flee overseas. The plan – a direct challenge to Maduro’s six-year Plan de la Patria (Homeland Plan) – includes projects to revive the country’s once great oil company PDVSA, fix Venezuela’s broken health service and feed its starving people by guaranteeing them access to basic food stuffs and offering grants to the poorest 48% of families. “[The plan is] a joint effort. There is no one spokesperson. There is no messianic leader. This is a team, a big team of leaders who are committed to [Venezuela’s development],” said Guaidó, who had been a little-known politician until the crisis catapulted him to national and international prominence this month. “People say that this is a problem of left or right in Venezuela. No. It’s a problem of humanity,” he added. Elizabeth Guerrero, a 59-year-old retired teacher, had come to watch with a poster that read: ‘Juan Guaidó. Thank you for giving us hope and faith’. “I’m here because Juan Guaidó has given us back hope and filled us with faith that, yes, we can get out of this chaos. The people were resigned because it seemed like there was neither a plan, nor a strategy. But [the opposition] are showing that [they can] … help us out of this disaster.” The young face of the opposition is almost unknown both inside and outside Venezuela, and was thrust on to centre stage by chance. Guaidó was made chairman of the national assembly on 5 January because it was the turn of his party, Voluntad Popular (People’s Will). At 35, he is a junior member of the party but its leaders are either under house arrest, in hiding or in exile. His relative obscurity has been an advantage in a country where the opposition has generally failed to distinguish itself, losing its nerve at critical moments, succumbing to infighting, and getting involved in a failed coup against Hugo Chávez in 2002. Guaidó stakes his claim to the presidency on a clause in the constitution that states that the chair of the national assembly is allowed to assume interim power and declare new elections in 30 days if the legislature deems the president to be failing to fulfil basic duties or to have vacated the post. Questions have been raised about the bedfellows Guaidó has chosen in what he calls his bid to rescue Venezuela. His main international backer is Donald Trump. Another key regional supporter is Brazil’s far-right firebrand president, Jair Bolsonaro, known for his hostility to human rights and his fondness for dictatorship. Despite these characteristics, Guaidó has praised what he called Bolsonaro’s “commitment to and for democracy [and] human rights”. Yon Goicoechea, a prominent opposition leader, said: “We are closer to democracy than ever before.” Guaidó urged the Venezuelan security forces to throw their weight behind his bid to unseat Maduro, which has received backing from the United States, and regional heavyweights including Brazil and Colombia. Leading European states including France, Germany and Britain have declared Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate interim leader. “I say to FAES [Venezuela’s special forces] and I say to the armed forces: you still have time to put yourselves on the right side of history and to respect the constitution,” Guaidó said. Outside the university’s tree-lined entrance, hundreds of riot police had gathered and students chanted anti-Maduro songs. Pro-Guaidó graffiti artists had taken to the nearby walls with red paint. “The dictatorship is hunger and terror,” read one message. “Enough misery and repression,” said another. Maduro, crucially, continues to enjoy the backing of both Beijing and Moscow. But on Thursday Guaidó urged them to cut loose his political rival – who came to power following Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013 and was returned to office in disputed elections last year – and embrace a new government he claimed would reintroduce the rule-of-law and stabilise Venezuela’s collapsed economy. “China and Russia would also benefit from a change in government in this country,” he argued. Maduro has accused Guaidó of being a puppet in a US-backed coup attempt. In a video released on Tuesday morning he accused Donald Trump and the “group of extremists around him” of plotting to topple him in order to seize Venezuela’s oil. Trump risked transforming the South American country into a new Vietnam, Maduro claimed. “We will not allow a Vietnam in Latin America. If the US intends to intervene against us they will get a Vietnam worse than they could have imagined,” he said. Additional reporting by Patricia Torres in CaracasThere are two chants that everyone remembers from Donald Trump’s campaign rallies. One is “Lock her up!”, aimed at Hillary Clinton, a demand not likely to be met unless America becomes a banana republic. The other is “build that wall!” It is now crunch time for this central, defining promise of the Trump candidacy and “make America great again” movement. The US president says he will not support a bill to fully fund the government until he secures $5.6bn for a wall on the US-Mexico border. So quarter of the US government has been shut down for two weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers without pay. After Friday’s talks with congressional Democrats at the White House, there is still no end in sight. Indeed, no one should assume Trump was bluffing when he said he was willing to keep the government closed for months or even years, or that he would consider using emergency powers – an ominous phrase in any democracy under strain - to bypass Congress and get the wall built. It has come to this because there is no political incentive for Trump or his nemesis, the newly re-elected House speaker Nancy Pelosi, to blink first. Both are under intense pressure from their respective bases to hold firm and resist concessions. The system has delivered divided government with no common ground. On Thursday, Vice-President Mike Pence told Fox News: “Bottom line, if there’s no wall, there’s no deal.” Pelosi, meanwhile, told reporters on Capitol Hill: “We’re not doing a wall. Does anybody have any doubt that we are not doing a wall?” A foreign visitor to the US might not immediately spot the signs of malaise. In grey and chilly Washington, traffic still rolls, trains still run, the shows goes on. The current shutdown has not affected three quarters of the government, including the Pentagon and the postal service, which have secure funding. But there is a gradual sense of things grinding to a standstill, small but telling harbingers of imperial decline. The Smithsonian Institution’s 17 museums and zoo are closed (although the animals are still getting fed). Couples in Washington cannot get marriage licences. Nationally, 800,000 employees from the departments of homeland security and transportation and other agencies have been furloughed or are working without pay. Even as China lands a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, most employees at Nasa are on furlough, with the small percentage who remain working without pay. With bitter irony given the issue at hand, the shutdown has reached America’s 62 immigration courts. Hundreds of judges are on furlough, and only cases of immigrants in detention are being heard. The National Park Service is operating with a skeleton staff. Some parks may be accessible, others closed completely. The National Park Service is providing no visitor services such as toilets, facility and road maintenance and trash collection. Campgrounds have begun closing due to sanitation concerns. As the shutdown drags on, there will be a creeping paralysis, affecting everything from the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to pay out tax refunds to rental assistance payments in public housing to whether the interior department can pay out treaty rights obligations to Indian tribes. The fact it is a partial, not total, government shutdown has perhaps tempted Trump to make a political calculation that the pain is preferable to giving in – or being seen to give in – on his promise to build the wall. It is worth remembering how fundamental this was to his campaign, his political identity, perhaps even his psyche. On the day he launched his unlikely run for president, descending an escalator at Trump Tower in New York, Trump declared: “I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.” Mexico rejected the idea but Trump repeated the promise in almost every speech and interview, insisting the estimated $23bn barrier is necessary to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the US. For supporters and detractors alike, it became the ultimate symbol of his xenophobic vision of America. Democrats’ victory in the House in the midterms election means the dream has probably slipped away, but Trump cannot afford to admit it. When, last month, the Republican-controlled Senate approved a stopgap measure to keep the government open, he was poised to sign it until rightwing talking heads complained that he was capitulating. In that sense, it is not a Trump shutdown or Pelosi shutdown. It is a Rush Limbaugh shutdown, an Ann Coulter shutdown. Rightwing minority rule is now holding the country to ransom. For their part, Pelosi and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, see no reason to impose a medieval solution on a 21st century problem. They are also aware that Democrats were elected in 2018 by voters eager to resist Trump in general and the wall in particular. To give an inch would be seen as a betrayal. Pelosi declared this week: “How many more times can we say no? Nothing for the wall.” On Friday, Trump and the Democratic leaders could not even agree whether their talks had gone well. Trump insisted the meeting had been “very productive”, whereas Pelosi described the conversation as “sometimes contentious”. And where, in all this, is Mitch McConnell? The Senate majority leader has been lurking on the sidelines, saying little other than that measures approved by the House are non-starters in the Senate without the president’s support. The New York Times noted: “By absenting himself, Mr McConnell had hoped to push the blame for a prolonged shutdown on to Democrats while protecting Republicans running for re-election in 2020 – including himself.” But with some Republicans becoming restless, it is not clear whether the strategy is sustainable. For now, Trump has designated a working group led by Pence, and including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, to conduct more negotiations. But the stalemate looks set to overtake the longest shutdown on record: 21 days under Bill Clinton in 1996. The president’s best hope now is to turn the dispute to his advantage by using Democrats as a foil in the 2020 presidential election. The line of argument will be along the lines of: I wanted to give you a wall, but the Democrats denied me – and you. That is why, in the White House Rose Garden on Friday, he reiterated: “I’m very proud of doing what I’m doing.”The risk to global civilisation from nuclear weapons and climate change remains at an all-time high, according to a group of prominent US scientists and former officials, who said the world’s predicament had become the “new abnormal”. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its symbolic “doomsday clock”, unveiled every year, was stuck at two minutes to midnight, the same as last January. The only other time the Bulletin has judged the world as being this close to catastrophe was 1953, in the early volatile stages of the cold war. The reasons given by the Bulletin’s panel of experts included the collapse of arms control treaties, and the emphasis in Washington and Moscow on modernising nuclear arsenals rather than dismantling them, and the lack of political will to reverse climate change. “We are like passengers on the Titanic, ignoring the iceberg ahead, enjoying the fine food and music,” said Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, said. Since leaving office this month, Brown has become the Bulletin’s executive chairman, citing the imminent threats to humanity. “It’s late and it’s getting later. We have to wake people up. And that’s what I intend to do!” The former US defence secretary William Perry said that the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore last June, succeeded in calming some of the “hysteria” in the standoff between the two countries, but had not led to any North Korean moves to dismantle its nuclear arsenals. Perry pointed to Trump’s declared intention to suspend compliance with the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty on 2 February, and serve notice of US withdrawal, as a sign of the erosion of contacts between the world’s most heavily armed nuclear weapons powers. “When you withdraw from treaties you are losing this important vehicle of dialogue,” Perry said. “We will have only one [arms control] treaty left, the New Start treaty, which could very well go away when it expires in another two years.” “My own judgment is, relative to a year ago, we are slightly worse off,” Perry said. Rachel Bronson, the Bulletin’s president, said there should be no comfort taken from the fact that the clock did not move forward over the past year. “This new abnormal is a pernicious and dangerous departure from the time when the United States sought a leadership role in designing and supporting global agreements that advanced a safer and healthier planet,” Bronson said. “The new abnormal describes a moment in which fact is becoming indistinguishable from fiction, undermining our very abilities to develop and apply solutions to the big problems of our time.” As governor of California, Brown introduced emissions controls and other regulations aimed in part at mitigating the impact of Trump’s decision to walk out of the Paris Climate accord, but he said that states and businesses could not combat climate change effectively without support from the White House. “I find that the political response is alarming. It’s akin to sleepwalking,” Brown told reporters on Wednesday night. “We’re headed toward a very bad situation on the climate front and it will drive many more migrants to the border and create more political instability politically. So all the problems we have are going to be made worse and we may have passed a tipping point where we can’t make them better in any reasonable time and so that will undermine the entire basis of democratic governance.”Labour MPs have been told to prepare for Jeremy Corbyn to table a dramatic and immediate vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government as early as Tuesday evening in an attempt to force a general election if – as expected – she suffers a heavy defeat this week on her Brexit deal. Messages have been sent to Labour MPs, even those who are unwell, to ensure their presence both for the “meaningful vote” on the prime minister’s Brexit blueprint on Tuesday and the following day. Labour whips have told MPs the no-confidence vote is likely to be tabled within hours of a government loss, with the actual vote taking place on Wednesday. The news comes before what promises to be one of the most tumultuous 24 hours in recent parliamentary history in which, barring another delay, May will put her Brexit deal to parliament despite deep and widespread opposition across the Commons, including from many MPs inside her own party. A senior shadow cabinet member said: “There is now recognition that we cannot wait any longer. If May goes down to defeat and she does not resign and call an election, this is the moment we have to act.” Senior Tories said on Saturday that they could not see how the prime minister could win the meaningful vote “in any circumstances” and that a defeat by less than 100 would now be regarded as the best she could hope for. But even if she suffered a loss of closer to 200, which many Tories fear could be the case, Conservative MPs and ministers still expect her to stagger on and seek to bring an improved offer back to the Commons for a further vote within weeks. Although senior Labour figures accept they are unlikely to win a no-confidence vote, as the 10 Democratic Unionist MPs have said they will back the government, the move will highlight the fragility of May’s hold on power as the Brexit crisis deepens. Yet should Corbyn fail to force an election, it will place the Labour leader under greater pressure from many of his own MPs, as well as party members and supporters, to throw his weight behind a second referendum as the way to break the Brexit impasse. Labour’s current policy is to seek to force an election, and if it wins, to renegotiate a new Brexit deal. Senior shadow cabinet figures said any further delay in tabling a no-confidence motion will make that position untenable, as there will be insufficient time before Britain’s exit from the EU on 29 March to hold an election. The Observer understands that if Corbyn were to delay tabling a vote of no confidence, senior Labour MPs would table one themselves in the hope of forcing the leadership to back a second referendum. Angela Smith, Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, said: “The time for prevarication is over. If May’s deal fails we have to test the will of the house and if we fail, we must consider all options including campaigning for a second referendum as this is party policy.” A Labour spokesman, while not confirming a vote on Tuesday, said that while the timing of a no-confidence vote had not been fixed, MPs had been told to be ready. Barry Gardiner, the shadow trade minister, said last week that a vote of no confidence would “obviously” have to follow immediately after a defeat for May’s deal. A Momentum activist, Michael Chessum, spokesman for the leftwing anti-Brexit campaign Another Europe is Possible, said that if Labour won the confidence vote, it would be time for Corbyn to back a second referendum as part of the Labour manifesto. If it lost, it should campaign for one as the official opposition. He said: “Proposing a no-confidence motion is the first step for either scenario, and we need to get on with it.” Labour campaigners for a second referendum claim that the party’s policy forum has received more than 13,000 emails and letters urging Corbyn to oppose Brexit. Writing in the Observer, London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan said that he will step up his campaign for another referendum if an election is not called immediately: “A public vote would not only allow us to move beyond the current stalemate but would actually start the desperately needed process of healing the deep divisions that have opened within our society.” Roy Hattersley, the veteran Labour politician, also threw his weight behind a second referendum on Saturday, saying the British people had “a right to cast a vote on the merits” of May’s deal. Meanwhile, pro-remain cabinet ministers are preparing to push for a softer Brexit this week. In the event of a defeat for May, they are poised to back a plan B that would prevent Britain from signing its own trade deals. It is understood some believe that joining a permanent customs union with the EU could be enough to secure a Commons majority for May’s deal. This could be one option put forward in a series of indicative votes to test the views of MPs on alternatives if her plan is thrown out. Such a move would potentially attract a bloc of Labour MPs. With a critical week ahead, Tory rebels are already plotting a series of measures designed to hand more power to parliament over Brexit. One senior figure said that a “legally copper-bottomed” plan had already been drawn up to “give parliament control of the Brexit negotiation and stop a no-deal Brexit” should May’s deal be voted down. A vote to show there is a Commons majority in favour of delaying Brexit is also being plotted by a cross-party group of MPs. “If we are not crashing out and we are not going for the PM’s deal, I cannot believe that article 50 does not have to be extended,” said one of those involved. The business secretary, Greg Clark, also writing in the Observer, has appealed to pro-Brexit Labour MPs to back May’s deal, insisting that the government would protect workers’ rights when the UK is outside the EU. He pledged to back an amendment proposed by Labour MPs on the issue.The experience of bereavement is one of the most intense that life has to offer. To be present when someone dies is to be consumed by thoughts of love, loss, sadness and even a degree of wonder. To witness when someone is with you, fully alive, and the next minute no longer exists is beyond mystery. How terrible, then, when the world in all its practicality, its routines of order and procedure intrudes upon that precious moment. And yet that is what happens after as many as half of deaths happening in this country. It is the law of the land that an “unexplained” death must be referred to the coroner. In making a programme for the BBC Radio 4 series We Need to Talk About Death, we have found how coroners, inquests and postmortems can arrive in the lives of the recently bereaved. Before a death certificate can be issued, four questions must be answered: who, when, where and how. The same degree of scrutiny that is ascribed to public acts of violence must be applied to domestic deaths in intimate family settings. We encountered several stories in making our programme. Bridget’s mother, 92-year-old Mel, was not feeling well one evening. Bridget tried to get her to bed but found she couldn’t lift her. Mel collapsed on the bathroom floor so Bridget called an ambulance. Paramedics confirmed that Mel had died and that the death would have to be referred to the coroner. In practice that meant Mel’s body had to remain under continuous supervision, lying there on the bathroom floor. Police arrived later that night and stayed until the body was collected by the undertaker next day. Bridget felt like a suspect, but she also missed those final intimate moments to say goodbye to her mother. The same happened to Caroline. Her husband, Robin, had had heart trouble for many years and been in and out of hospital. On a morning visit their GP decided Robin should again go to hospital and called an ambulance. The couple were both Catholics and Caroline called ahead to make sure a priest was at the hospital. Soon after Caroline arrived, a nurse explained that Robin had died. The priest administered the last rites. Then to Caroline’s surprise and horror two policemen burst into the room where Robin lay and ordered her to “stand away from the body”, one of them adding, “You are disturbing forensic evidence.” As a Catholic, Caroline believes that while the body is still warm the soul is still present and that her tender leave-taking of Robin’s presence was brutally disrupted. Worse, she even felt she was being implicated in his death. Even now, two years later, she is haunted by these unhappy final memories. How many people are affected by such procedures? The chief coroner of England and Wales, Mark Lucraft QC, explained to us that of 533,000 deaths in 2017, 229,700 were referred to a coroner. About 30% of such referrals go to postmortem: an opening up of the body familiar to viewers of television dramas about forensics. This is only done when the coroner has failed to establish a clear cause of death – for the bereaved, such matters can be very traumatic. Some alternatives are emerging: in Leicester, for example, there is a cadre of medical examiners who can be called in on the spot to verify the cause of death. A recent, small-scale development is the use of scanning to trace the cause of death without procedures as invasive as a postmortem. Of more personal comfort is the establishment of the Coroners’ Courts Support Service, an organisation of trained volunteers who are there to give comfort and information to families attending an inquest. As is often the case, such an organisation has sprung from the initiative of an individual who herself went through a bad experience. Roey Burden went to the inquest of her cousin’s son, David, who had died in a traffic accident abroad. Roey was appalled by how chaotic and impersonal it was. So she set about creating a network of people now trained and available at coroners’ courts to explain and comfort those who don’t know what to expect and feel pushed around by the officials. Not everyone knows about all this, but these are among the many ways in which we need to expand how we talk about death. • Joan Bakewell is a broadcaster, writer and Labour peer. BBC Radio 4’s We Need to Talk About Death airs on Wednesday 23 January at 8pm. Earlier episodes are also available to listen to on BBC SoundsDonald Trump has used the first Oval Office address of his presidency to stoke fears of illegal immigration, repeat dubious claims about his border wall and offer no new solutions to the partial government shutdown. In the type of made-for-TV-moment he relishes, the US president blamed criminal gangs and “vast quantities of illegal drugs” for “thousands of deaths” and faulted Democrats for failing to end the shutdown, now in its 18th day. Democrats accused him of fear-mongering. “This is a humanitarian crisis – a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul,” Trump told primetime viewers, describing at the situation at the border. He argued that the current immigration system allows “vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs” to prey on immigrants, especially women and children. Trump wore a red, white and blue tie, with a US flag pin in his suit jacket. Photos of his mother and father sat on a table behind him. The Oval Office has typically been a projection of power used by presidents before him to address the nation at times of crisis or tragedy. In remarks lasting 10 minutes, the president sought to make the case for a border wall – arguably the central promise of his short political career – and tried to imply the proposal had broad public support. “Law enforcement professionals have requested $5.7bn for a physical barrier,” he said. “At the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier rather than a concrete wall. This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It’s also what our professionals at the border want and need. “This is just common sense. The border wall would very quickly pay for itself. The cost of illegal drugs exceeds $500bn a year, vastly more than the $5.7bn we have requested from Congress. The wall will also be paid for indirectly by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico.” Fact-checkers have poured scorn on Trump’s assertion that the trade deal, a successor to Nafta, means that Mexico is paying for the wall. The Mexican government has always refused to do so. And following the address, critics were quick to point out that Democrats are against money for a border wall – whether steel or concrete. Nearly three weeks into the shutdown, Trump did not offer fresh ideas to break the current political impasse and did not declare a national emergency so that he could bypass Congress, as had been speculated. Instead he said: “The federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only: because Democrats will not fund border security.” Calling on Democrats to pass a spending bill, he added: “This situation could be solved in a 45-minute meeting … Hopefully we can rise above partisan politics in order to support national security.” On an extraordinary night for US politics, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, delivered a live rebuttal from the House speaker’s balcony hallway. Both adamantly oppose the construction of a wall and have urged Trump to reopen the government while talks continue. “Sadly, much of what we have heard from President Trump throughout this senseless shutdown has been full of misinformation and even malice,” Pelosi said. “President Trump must stop holding the American people hostage, must stop manufacturing a crisis, and must reopen the government.” Schumer added: “We don’t govern by temper tantrum. No president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down, hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage. “Tonight – and throughout this debate and his presidency – President Trump has appealed to fear, not facts. Division, not unity.” The senator said: “Most presidents have used Oval Office addresses for noble purposes. This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear, and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration.” In the run-up to the address, the White House had been caught in a series of falsehoods. At the weekend, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, claimed that 4,000 known or suspected terrorists had been apprehended at the southern border. On Monday, Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, admitted that this was “an unfortunate misstatement” as most of the individuals had been stopped at airports. Meanwhile, Pence was questioned by NBC News on Monday about Trump’s claim that some former presidents told him a wall should be built (all four living presidents have denied it). The vice-president replied: “I know the president has said that that was his impression from previous administrations, previous presidents.” The president, who has threatened to keep the government closed for months or even years, will attend a Senate Republican lunch meeting on Wednesday, then visit the southern border on Thursday as he continues to wage a public relations offensive. The partial government shutdown is now the second-longest in history and there is no end in sight. On Tuesday night, immigrants’ right groups again condemned Trump’s message. Lorella Praeli, deputy political director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “With tonight’s speech, President Trump chose to compound the chaos because he can’t convince the majority of Americans that their taxpayer dollars should fund his bogus campaign promise ... The president appears to be more focused on procuring his xenophobic symbol than running the government and upholding democratic norms.” Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International, added: “Nobody questions the importance of border security. But this evening, the president recklessly mischaracterised the situation at the border as a national security and law enforcement crisis. Evidence indicates that immigrants – documented or undocumented – commit crimes at rates lower than American citizens. “In his unfortunate remarks, the president ignored a genuine crisis: his administration’s vilification of vulnerable people fleeing persecution and violence in Central America.”It comes to something when the perfect way to demonstrate wealth and status is by “slumming it” with junk food. First up, President Donald Trump. Finding himself without catering staff (oh, you know, the shutdown unpleasantness) for a visit from the Clemson University football team, Trump piled tables with his beloved takeaway burgers (various brands). Or, as he initially tweeted, “hamberders”, stinking and steaming away in polystyrene cartons, presumably, after so many hours, giving off the kind of whiff you’d associate with an unregulated abattoir in a heatwave. Other delights included fries, “salad”, chicken nuggets and individual packets of dips. The Gatsbyesque splendour was, one hopes, accompanied by scissors so that guests could cut out the money-off coupons and make a night of it. Trump looked in his element as the self-styled Willy Wonka of junk food. All that was missing was mayo-induced belching, to stop him floating rapturously up to the White House ceiling, perchance accompanied by a burst of that heartwarming song: “Come with me and you’ll be in a world of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.” In the same week, Microsoft multibillionaire Bill Gates was snapped queueing for a drive-in burger in Seattle, inspiring a cloying social media frenzy along the lines of: “Hark, he walks among us, eating the same crap.” Then again, why shouldn’t Gates (or even Trump) enjoy a burger? No reason at all. The problems lie in the hypocritical and cynical self-promotion of the first scene and the misplaced mass-fawning over the second. Product placement isn’t always about selling the product – it can be about selling the man. As much as Trump genuinely enjoys burgers, this born-and-bred member of the elite knows this kind of absurd “man of the people” posturing endears him to a certain US demographic. The same demographic most likely to be afflicted by the out-of-control global obesity epidemic, leading to potentially life-threatening conditions, most of which won’t be covered by their healthcare plans and which the likes of Trump would condemn as self-inflicted. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem quite so charming that Trump served junk food at the White House. As for Gates (in fairness, just quietly queueing), is it really that interesting that he buys a burger – surely a badly off person eating a Michelin-star meal would be more unusual? There’s a skewed system of food perception, where wealthy, powerful people eating junk because they want to are perceived as down to earth and relatable. Meanwhile, poor, powerless people eating the exact same food because they have little choice (it’s the cheapest, most available option) are somehow disgusting, stupid and shameful. Perhaps that’s why less well-off people don’t brandish their food choices or lack of them, nor do you tend to see people showing off about, say, using food banks. In food as in life, “slumming it” is only acceptable from rich people who could afford better. I wouldn’t be the first to ponder on the identity of this mysterious “Don’t Know” figure who keeps doing so well in political opinion polls. In a recent YouGov poll on the best choice for prime minister, “Don’t Know” beat both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, with 41%. Or was that “Not Sure”? I suppose “Don’t Know” and “Not Sure” are effectively the same, in that they both represent the ground-down, stomach-churning horror of the average Briton, as it becomes increasingly apparent that the combined cross-party power of the wisdom of Westminster wouldn’t even be enough to get a Duracell bunny to lift its ears off the floor. As someone who spent part of her misguided youth working the phones in a market research call centre, I can confirm that “Don’t Know”, “Not Sure” and “Please stop asking me hard stuff” are the frustrating staples of a pollster’s life. However, what if this were taken further? I have never been a fan of refusing to vote. (People fought and died for the right to vote, not for dim-witted hipsters to spoil ballot papers with felt-tipped anarchy signs.) Still, it might make the next general election (referendum… wotevs!) more interesting if “Don’t Know” made it on to the ballot paper. An audience member is reported to have fainted during a preview of the National Theatre play, When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, written by Martin Crimp, directed by Katie Mitchell. The production, starring Cate Blanchett and Stephen Dillane, is said to be full of S&M sex and violence, including a foursome in a car. How wonderfully Noël Coward – to swoon at a play. And not even in the queue for drinks at the interval. Does this prove that theatre audiences need to toughen up a bit? If they’re shocked to the point of fainting by on-stage sex and violence, what would they make of 90% of Netflix or every gangsta rap video made? You don’t hear of Luther fans reaching for the smelling salts. Sex and violence are everywhere in popular culture, so what makes them uniquely shocking to theatregoers? Elsewhere, however tough audiences for the film Dau are going to have to be, the cast had to be tougher. The hundreds of participants in the (15 years in the making) “art happening”, featuring celebrity appearances from the likes of performance artist Marina Abramovićh and US theatre director Peter Sellars, spent three years living in a replica of a 1950s Soviet-era research institute. As if that doesn’t already sound like the best fun you could possibly have, the director, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, insisted on being addressed as “head of the institute” or “the boss”. Which may have been funny the first few times, but was probably a bit wearying, say 27 months in. Three years! It seems that these days you get more “time” for arty method acting than you do for real-life crimes. Take heed, National Theatre audiences and, indeed, casts – you all got off lightly. If there are degrees to cultural toughness, Dau has set a new benchmark. • Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnistThis week, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie announced that they are divorcing. Each is one-half of the world’s richest couple, thanks to Amazon, making their divorce potentially one of the most complicated. It needn’t be: MacKenzie should walk away with a clean half. This is already the law in Washington state, where the couple lives (they have other residences as well, but Amazon is headquartered in Seattle). In “community property” states like Washington, any assets accumulated during the marriage are communal and divided 50-50 if the marriage ends. The Bezoses have been married for 25 years, before Jeff Bezos started Amazon, making most of the family wealth communal. But we can predict now that it won’t be so simple. What divorces like these show us is how little we value the often invisible and unpaid labor that so many women do to enable their husbands to build wealth and find professional success. We live in a capitalist country, and so we measure value with dollar figures. By that measure, Jeff Bezos is the more valuable member of the Bezos pair, and the one whose contributions to the family, which total in the billions, are more significant. It’s true that financially, Jeff contributed more than a 50% share. But would he have been able to have a stable, happy family and build a prosperous company without the work of his wife? MacKenzie is a writer who studied at Princeton under Toni Morrison, and was, Morrison said, “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative-writing classes”. She has done well, publishing novels and winning an American Book Award. But as the Vogue writer Rebecca Johnson put it in a 2013 profile, MacKenzie’s first book took 10 years to finish, because “she was doing other things during that time – moving cross-country, giving birth to four children (three boys and a girl, ranging in age from seven to 12), helping her husband start a fledgling business called Amazon.com”. She met Jeff because they worked in neighboring offices at a Manhattan hedge fund – the kind of job usually staffed by ambitious people who either are or go on to be very wealthy. They were married within six months, when she was just 23, and moved to Seattle soon after. MacKenzie, in other words, made significant sacrifices to make Amazon work. Bezos’s friend Danny Hills told Vogue, “Family is very important to Jeff, and he absolutely relies on her to create that stable home life.” That meant giving up writing for a decade or so in order to raise the couple’s children. She took charge of homeschooling for a while, and coordinated travel, lessons, social calendars and various enrichment activities – a full-time job when you have four children. Her own career was stymied so that her husband’s could flourish. This is often framed as a personal choice, but for many heterosexual couples, it’s more of a foregone conclusion. It’s rare that you see men making the “choice” to scale back their ambitions and radically decrease their earnings so that they can be home with their kids; women are much more likely to take on that role, and men are much more likely to expect their wives to do just that. That creates a nuclear family economic unit that gives men the ability to focus nearly all of their efforts on their work for pay. Their wives worry about everything else. That means the husbands in the equation can make more and become ever more successful – and then take all of the credit for doing it themselves. Women agree out of trust that their husbands will do the right thing and support the family unit. If marriage is a team effort and couples make work choices in order to keep the unit running smoothly, then that should apply in divorce as well. But when it’s time to file divorce papers, it seems nearly every man who once said “being a mom is the most important job in the world” suddenly sees his contributions as more valuable. And it’s not just the soon-to-be ex-husband whose tune changes: we live in a culture that glorifies motherhood without actually supporting mothers and is harsh on moms who work demanding jobs; we are also quick to attack divorcing women who seek family assets they didn’t “earn”. Just watch: if she goes for half, MacKenzie Bezos will be swiftly branded a gold digger. The Bezoses will probably settle their divorce quietly. But I hope MacKenzie fights for a share of their assets that is consonant with her quarter-century of work, and I hope Jeff is a fair enough person to recognize her contributions – which amount to half of what the couple has.Jess Varnish insists she has emerged as a winner despite losing her landmark employment case against British Cycling and UK Sport because both bodies have made significant changes since she exposed what she described as the “culture of fear and lack of athlete welfare in the British world class performance system”. The former track cyclist was left disappointed on Wednesday when a judge dismissed her claim that she should have been regarded as an employee of British Cycling and UK Sport and thus subject to sick pay, a pension, and the right to sue for unfair dismissal. However Varnish insisted that she could hold her head up high despite the result. “When I first spoke out, these organisations said I was wrong and there wasn’t a problem,” she added. “I’m happy that I and other athletes could show them otherwise, and enable them to change their structure, their policies and their personnel. To change so significantly in the past three years can only be proof that a problem originally existed.” Varnish also insisted that she had no regrets at mounting a legal challenge because there was no other avenue open to British athletes. “It took two leading barristers, a team of eight lawyers, a seven-day tribunal, close to £1m in legal fees and a proclamation that the ‘skies would fall in’ if the system was changed for British Cycling and UK Sport, to answer some simple questions posed by one athlete about the set-up of the world class performance system,” she said. “The defence and tactics used against me at times were aggressive, my character was repeatedly called into question, my motives challenged,” she added. “This wasn’t a defence that upheld the Olympic ideals rather one that embraced the win-at-all-costs mentality for which they’d recently been criticised. The irony for me is, right at the beginning of this process, when I met with British Cycling, all I asked for was an apology and commitment to improve athlete welfare. Neither were given.” In a 42-page verdict released on Thursday, Judge Ross said Varnish could not be regarded as an employee of British Cycling because “she was not performing work provided by the respondent – rather she was personally performing a commitment to train in accordance with the individual rider agreement in the hope of achieving success at international competitions.” Judge Ross also dismissed Varnish’s claims that she worked for UK Sport, adding: “She was receiving a non-repayable publicly funded grant to enable her to pay her living expenses so she could have the best chance of focussing on her training, without the need to take a job.”Novak Djokovic is the best tennis player in the world: now, and for the foreseeable future, perhaps until he chooses to retire, which looks to be a few years away yet, he hinted on Sunday night. What the 31-year-old Serb can achieve in the remaining days of a career that began more than a thousand matches and 72 titles ago is difficult to gauge but less so than it was before the final of the Australian Open. What he did to Rafael Nadal in the Rod Laver Arena turned what had been a keen debating point about their relative merits, along with speculation about Roger Federer’s longevity, into a confident assertion that Djokovic has moved into another area of excellence. As Pat Cash, working in Melbourne for Eurosport, said: “I’ve run in to a few tennis players today and they’ve all said they’ve never seen a tennis ball hit like that in their lives. Novak can do that. It was absolutely mind-blowing tennis.” His colleague and former champion, Mats Wilander, described Djokovic’s performance as, “absolute perfection”. If Nadal could not stay with Djokovic for more than a few scattered moments of a final that lasted only two hours and four minutes, winning a mere eight games and failing to take a point off his serve 56 times in 69 attempts, there is little chance for anyone else to inconvenience a player who has won three majors in a row and this year may even do the calendar grand slam for the first time since Rod Laver in 1969. Nadal took his licks honestly. “It was unbelievable the way that he played, no doubt about that,” he said. “I didn’t suffer much during both weeks. But, five months without competing, having that big challenge in front of me, I needed something else. I don’t have it yet, to compete at this super high level. It would have been difficult to beat him even if I was at 100%. When a player does almost everything better than you, you can’t complain.” It was, curiously, a towering anti-climax of a final. It was not just that the world No 1 destroyed the world No 2 in every department. It was that this was supposed to be a high point, a grand conclusion to a fascinating tournament, one in which John McEnroe prematurely announced, “a changing of the guard”. There were few secrets between the finalists. It should have been much tighter than this. Only Fred Perry and Ellsworth Vines knew each other better on a tennis court than do Djokovic and Nadal; they played 162 times in the late 30s, barnstorming around the United States, the UK, Caribbean and South America in high-grade exhibition matches, with the American winning 88-74. All of which makes the Djokovic-Nadal series of 53 matches seem tame – until you look closely at the intensity of their exchanges, as well as the length and importance of the occasions. This was their 15th best-of-five contest, taking in all the biggest cathedrals of the sport, the most memorable of which, famously, was the final in Melbourne in 2012, which lasted longer than any other decider of a major in history, five hours and 53 minutes. Nadal was the first to “arrive”, winning his first major at the sixth attempt, 14 years ago – so he was slam-savvy when they first clashed in 2006, and dominated Djokovic pretty much until 2011, winning 16 of their first 25 matches. The second half of their story swings the other way, however. Nadal has beaten Djokovic only three times in 16 meetings since the second of his US Open final victories over him in 2013. It looks as if the only place he can stop him is Roland Garros, and even that is not the good bet it once was. If Djokovic were to beat Nadal to win the French Open, there would not be a T-shirt to house the Serb’s pride. As for winning on the clay of Paris, Djokovic said: “The ultimate challenge is to win there against Nadal. Then you have [Dominic] Thiem and [Alexander] Zverev, Roger [Federer] is probably going to play. You have a lot of great players that on clay can challenge me or anybody else.” Djokovic says the hunger has not left him. “The tennis court is a place where I’m naked, where I’m exposed to my both extremes in terms of emotions and character. That’s where I have the opportunity to learn about myself. The hunger is always there.”Paleontologists are begging the New Zealand government to immediately halt the trade in the priceless bones of the extinct moa bird, fearing that millions of years of science is disappearing as entire skeletons are broken up and sold over the internet or smuggled overseas. Moa, giant flightless birds which stood up to 3.6m tall, were endemic to New Zealand and became extinct about 500-600 years ago. When they were first discovered by Europeans they were considered a scientific marvel and kickstarted a global frenzy, as museums competed to acquire specimens. Under New Zealand law it is legal to sell moa bones and egg shells found on private land. There is no requirements for experts to sample or study the bones, or survey the site, as is standard practice in the UK and many other countries. In November a private collector in Britain purchased an entire moa skeleton for $34,000 in West Sussex. Although it is illegal to sell or collect moa bones from public conservation land, experts and the department of conservation say looters routinely plunder caves and swamps for remains, which in their entirety can fetch between $20,000 and $50,000, or between $70 and $350 per bone. There have been incidents of entire skeletons appearing in European auction houses with suspect or unknown origins, according to the moa expert Trevor Worthy. Trade Me, New Zealand’s version of eBay, has hosted hundreds of moa bone and egg sales over the last five years, and requires no evidence or documentation from sellers that their bones were collected legally. In 2018, 27 sales of moa bones were recorded on the website. In a blogpost responding to complaints about the sales, the company said: “We are OK with the sale of moa bones, due to the fact they are now extinct.” “As such, sellers of moa bones are no longer contributing to their decline … there are some genuine collectors out there and this sort of stuff is pretty cool for them.” The Department of Conservation’s principal compliance officer, Toni Twyford, said his office was aware of looters selling bones and egg shells illegally online, but evidence was “extremely difficult” to obtain and no prosecutions had occurred. Concerned museum curators and palaeontologists say bones sold to private collectors are essentially “garbage”, as without the correct handling and storage they will disintegrate in a matter of decades. When moa bones are lost so too is the rich DNA and scientific data they hold, says paleontologist Richard Holdaway, including climate and temperature records, soil and environmental information and clues to evolutionary history. “I feel desperately sad that New Zealand hasn’t grown up enough past the pioneer stage and accepted that when you have a piece of land you have responsibility rather than lordship,” says Holdaway. “Private sales should be banned. Moa bones do not belong to individuals, they belong to the country. “It should be deeply concerning because they are a finite resource. There are never going to be any more Moa – every bone sold and destroyed is one less than there will ever be.” The minister of conservation, Eugenie Sage, said she was awaiting advice from DoC on how to tighten the legislation as she was aware that illegal trading was common and had “increased” with the rise of internet trading websites. “New regulations that prohibited the sale of moa bones, egg shells and the remains of other extinct species, except with the consent of the minister of conservation, are one potential option,” said Sage. The Department of Conservation had been instructed to provide advice to the minister on the most effective policy response by early next year.At the end of a tight, scoreless, 120 minutes in Al Ain it took penalties to split Australia and Uzbekistan with Mathews Ryan and Leckie standing up when it most counted to send the Socceroos into the Asian Cup quarter-finals. Keeper Ryan made two superb saves and the returning Leckie coolly slotted home the decisive spot kick as Australia edged the Uzbeks 4-2 in the shootout to book their place in Saturday’s last-eight game against hosts UAE. But the euphoria of the win might gloss over the fact that Australia had a mountain of trouble in breaking down tightly-packed opposition. Equally, though, the Uzbeks rarely threatened at the other end and remarkably Ryan made the same number of saves in the shootout (two) that he did in the preceding two hours of action. Losing Tom Rogic to suspension for the next match won’t help with the UAE also expected to sit deep and look to frustrate the Socceroos, but with such a steady presence at the back Australia will always be a hard side to beat. Along with Iran’s Alireza Beiranvand, Ryan has been the best keeper in the tournament and it was the 26-year-old’s initial save that helped keep Australia level in the shootout after Aziz Behich had seen his effort, the team’s second, saved. Having lightheartedly declared that he’s not a “mind reader” when asked if he had an idea of which way to dive during the shootout, Ryan did admit that his late heroics were a mixture of preparation and luck. “There’s a lot of technology available in this day and age that you take advantage of and just before the game there are some clips we look at [of previous Uzbekistan penalties] and you see if you can pick up anything off it,” he said. “As a goalkeeper you need a bit of luck though with the decision you make in terms of if you go one side or stay up the middle and also luck in terms of the shooter making the same decision and then you can make the save and thankfully it happened twice today.” His teammates were indebted to him and as the Brighton & Hove Albion player stood talking with the assembled press post-match, a collection of Socceroos delivered a series of what can be construed as compliments – including “king”, “tiger” and “champ” – on their way past. So too Leckie, who made a telling contribution in his first action of the tournament after finally overcoming a hamstring injury. Introduced in the 68th minute, the forward immediately provided a sharper cutting edge to an Australian attack that had struggled to break down a well-organised Uzbek side. His performance will give coach Graham Arnold food for thought as he weighs up whether to throw him in from the start against the UAE. The most telling contribution from the Hertha Berlin man, though, came at the most important juncture as he stepped up as Australia’s fifth penalty taker, knowing a successful effort would secure their spot in the final eight. “A few of the boys that had taken penalties before me noticed that their keeper stood up and held his feet for a very long time,” Leckie said. “When I went up I thought if I hit it hard and in a corner even if he chooses the right way then he waits so long he won’t be able to save it and in the end I ended up hitting it really, really hard and it was the perfect penalty at the perfect time.” It was also a vindication of the gamble that the Socceroos staff took in including a player in the final 23-man squad who they knew might not be able to feature at all in the tournament due to an injury suffered with his Bundesliga side. “When I sat down with the medical staff at the start of the tournament they said there’s a small chance that something could go wrong along the way and I said I’m ready to take the risk because any chance to play at the Asian Cup I wanted to take,” the 27-year-old said. “Then Arnie had to take a decision as well whether he wanted to take the risk on a spot on a player who isn’t going to play in the group stage and in the end so far I guess it’s worked out well but there’s still a long way to go in the tournament.” Three matches to be precise are what now stand between the Socceroos and a successful defence of their Asian Cup crown. Improvement is needed – Andrew Nabbout’s expected return to fitness should provide a further boost – but in a tournament where no nation has yet laid down a real marker, Australian hopes remain alive.Hundreds of people are feared dead after a dam operated by the mining company Vale collapsed in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, releasing a wave of red iron ore waste and causing the worst environmental catastrophe in the country’s recent history. Ten bodies have already been found and more than 300 people remain missing, according to the company. The disaster comes only three years after a similar failure of the Fundão tailings dam near Mariana – co-owned by Vale – which killed 19 people. Speaking after the latest disaster, the local fire chief Col Edgar Estevão said 100 people had been rescued from the sea of mud released by the dam. However, Vale later released a list of 412 employees and contractors whom it had still been unable to contact, and the state governor, Romeu Zema, said he did not expect many more survivors. “We know now that the chances of having survivors are minimal and that we will probably rescue bodies,” he said. Brazilian television showed images of survivors being winched to safety by a helicopter after the disaster at the Feijão mine near Brumadinho, less than two hours from the state capital, Belo Horizonte. “I saw a gigantic cloud of dust and a wave of mud. It was one wave on top of another,” one contractor, Mayke Ferreira, told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. Ferreira said he had been sleeping in a nearby dormitory when he was woken by an enormous crash. It is not yet clear what caused the tailings dam to burst. However, the Brazilian environmental agency Ibama has already slapped a 250m reais (£50m) fine on Vale for violations related to the tragedy. The company has caused pollution, made the area unfit for habitation and committed other regulatory violations, Ibama said. State prosecutors have also filed a request to freeze 5bn reais in Vale’s accounts to help fund recovery works. Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, visited Minas Gerais and flew over the disaster area. “We will do what is within our reach to attend the victims, minimise damages, investigate the facts, demand justice and prevent new tragedies like Mariana and Brumadinho,” he tweeted. But locals and environmentalist had argued that the tailings dam at the Corrego de Feijão iron ore mining complex presented risks as Vale sought licensing to continue and expand operations at this and another nearby mine. Bolsonaro has attacked the “fines industry” of environmental agencies like Ibama for holding up development. “This tragedy was only a matter of time,” said Carlos Eduardo Pinto, a prosecutor who worked on the Mariana case. “Since the Fundão tailings dam, nothing has been done to increase control of this activity.” Most of the victims of the disaster were Vale employees or subcontractors, around 100 of whom were having lunch in a canteen on the mine complex when the torrent of mud swept over them. A busload of workers was also killed, it was reported. Maicon Vitor, 22, an electro-mechanic technician, told O Globo newspaper that he had just left the canteen when he heard the roar of the tailings dam breaking. “It came down dragging workshops, offices; the whole canteen which was in front of me went,” he said. Fabio Schvartsman, the chief executive of Vale, said he was devastated by the tragedy. “Most of those affected were Vale employees,” he said. “I’m completely torn apart by what happened.” Vale said the 86-metre-high tailings dam at the Corrego de Feijão open-cast, iron ore mining complex was built in 1976 and held 11.7m litres of mining waste. It was being decommissioned and had been pronounced safe in inspections. But the National Civil Society Forum for Hydrographic Basins, a network of civil society groups, said that it had urged the authorities not to grant Vale a licence to continue operations there. “The population of Casa Branca is very worried, with good reason,” Julio Grillo from Ibama, told a meeting on 11 December, according to minutes obtained by the Observer. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official at the state environment agency asked why the company had built a canteen at the foot of the dam. “How can you approve a dam like this with the guy building an administrative centre with canteen at the foot of the tailings dam?” It cost billions to clean up after the Mariana disaster in 2015, which polluted the drinking water of hundreds of thousands. Yet no individual was ever held responsible. “Cases like these are not accidents but environmental crimes,” Greenpeace Brazil said in a statement. “I hope now they will create a new way to mine that doesn’t mount up waste, a safe way of working that does not leave widows,” said Sandra Quintao, a survivor of the Mariana disaster. The Mariana dam was operated by Samarco, a joint venture between Vale and BHP Billiton, an Anglo-Australian mining giant.The new series of The Grand Tour marks the end of an era. Amazon has recommissioned the show, but only as a series of travelogue specials. This means that the new series, which starts this Friday, will be the last to have a studio audience. And, well, good. The studio audience has been an integral part of Jeremy Clarkson’s, Richard Hammond’s and James May’s brand ever since Top Gear reemerged from the wilderness in 2002. It offered the viewer the clearest possible indication of who the show was pitched at; stumpy middle-aged men who only wore clothing that had the Porsche logo embroidered on to it, plus three attractive young women who were always pushed to the front to make the whole thing look less like a ridiculous sausage factory. The Top Gear (and Grand Tour) studio audience was always so uniformly, hilariously specific. Their on-camera placement was weird, with everyone idly standing around staring at the back of Clarkson’s head like a listless zombie plague. Their noises were weird; the only sound they ever collectively summoned was the “Weeey” noise that people in crap pubs make whenever someone accidentally smashes a glass. Their idea of crowd participation was always weird, with every member living for the moment when they could self-consciously shout out “I like Vauxhall Mokkas!” from the back of the room so that Clarkson could point at them and call them a fat vegan homosexual. The only books they ever bought were ones where Clarkson got to pull an imperceptibly different bewildered face on the cover. The only music they listened to was Phil Collins-era Genesis. They only referred to their wives, all of them, as “the wife”. And soon they’ll be gone. And I am thrilled. Because all the worst bits of any Clarkson, Hammond and May shows always happened in the studio. The celebrity interviews that seemed to drag on for several thousand eternities. The “news” segments that quickly congealed into a stale performance of someone using a picture of a car as a launchpad for a rant about foreigners and millennials. The bit where they blew up a dummy every week. “Conversation Street”, for the love of all that’s holy. Every one of these segments became repetitive and joyless, and it’s why I – for one – started to drift away from the shows. Cutting loose and hitting the road is exactly what The Grand Tour should do. The road trips are the only thing about these programmes that are actually any fun. Liberated from the droning hive mind of the studio audience, the hosts get to stretch themselves. They automatically become less performative, even embracing the occasional moment of reflection. And the settings are beautiful, too. There’s an argument that the Clarkson, Hammond and May road trips are the best travelogues being made anywhere in the world at the moment. The studio audience was a relatively recent invention anyway. Top Gear managed perfectly well for 24 years without one, back when it was a painfully dry magazine show presented by cut-glass stick-in-the-muds so invested in the idea of exploring the practical implications of boot capacity that it was like watching the Open University on wheels, so I’m sure The Grand Tour will manage without one as well. Besides, the studio audience still has a place to go, and that’s on the BBC’s continued experiments with prolonging the life of Top Gear. Its newest incarnation – the third since Clarkson, Hammond and May left – sounds as if it’s going to cater exclusively to a blokey, whooping studio audience. It will be presented by Andrew Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness, for God’s sake, the pair of them adrift on an undulating sea of Jacamo and Lynx. If people still want to go “Weeey” at a picture of a Volvo, this will be their most obvious outlet. Meanwhile, The Grand Tour has moved on. I’m actually excited to watch all the travelogue specials. Much, much more than anything they will produce in this final studio-bound series, in fact.Is English football in danger of losing Mohamed Salah to Real Madrid or Barcelona because he is now simply too good to stay? Mido certainly thinks so. Yes: that Mido. The same Mido who once issued a formal apology to Middlesbrough fans for being too fat. The same Mido who is, it turns out, a very good pundit these days and who raised a doubly interesting point this week about Salah’s trajectory in this, his second season of outright Premier League supremacy. No doubt there are Liverpool supporters who might question how well-qualified Mido is to talk about these wider matters. But then there is also probably a detailed academic paper to be written on the way the punditry prospects of retired footballers are linked inexorably to the rise and fall of various features of their own background. For two decades the market was dominated by pinched, Scottish-accented Liverpool players of the mid- to late-1980s, a culture maintained to this day by Graeme Souness who approaches each commentary stint in a state of spleen-crippling horror at the decadence of modern life, while also remaining apparently convinced during his on-screen appearances that everyone in the room is secretly laughing at his shoes. In this game of snakes and ladders, otherwise overlooked retired footballers find a second life as “ex-Manchester City” or “six seasons at Chelsea”, even though Chelsea weren’t very good at the time. Anyone who played for Alex Ferguson or Arsène Wenger, for example, is still deemed a vital and necessary voice. Not that this is a bad thing. There may be no obvious reason why, say, Martin Keown should be such a high-profile public figure, but he has become an agreeably intense presence, dispensing his views with an angry, whispering urgency, like the haunted whistleblower in a grimly authentic spy drama who grabs your arm and snarls into your face on a bench in St James’s Park about – for some reason – the inherent flaws in zonal marking, before being found strangled in a phone box six hours later. And so on to Salah and Mido, who has been prominent on the football-opinion circuit in the past year or so. Mido on the radio. Mido having opinions about transfers. For a while this seemed like an anomaly. Wait, you felt like saying, but what does Yakubu think about this? Or Corrado Grabbi? Except, of course, Mido is in his own way riding the Salah train, using his status as the Egyptian football man we in Britain know best. And happily he’s a good pundit too, unafraid to simply say stuff. A while back I heard Mido talking about the way footballers present a part of their own character on the pitch, that a player can be at his best only when he allows some vital, empowering part of his character to be present and visible in his play, and I thought, yeah, Mido, excellent point. It was a point that came back this week as Mido suggested Salah’s move to Spain was now a near-inevitability, that his continuing success will become “a problem” for Liverpool as the super clubs of La Liga look to fill imminent or existing star vacuums. Mido is right too. Salah would be the obvious candidate for such a role, barring the relocation of the Neymar-industrial complex, a deal that would involve remortgaging the moon and presenting Neymar himself with a sold gold bowler hat handmade by angelic supernatural sex mermaids. It has been the pattern of the past 10 years. Any Premier League attacker who can maintain an A-list run over consecutive seasons tends to become a target. And while Salah was relatively quiet in the defeat by Manchester City on Thursday night, he has been consistently excellent, throwing off his early season rustiness to become even better: more central, more creative and just as prolific. And yet, this would still be a terrible idea – and for more reasons than one. Most obviously, is Salah really the right player for all that? He’s not a machine-attacker at the ludicrously sustained levels set by the Messi-Ronaldo godhead for the past 10 years. Salah is human, a little in and out at times, and all the more endearing for it. He hasn’t scored a goal against the Premier League top four since April. He is a delicate rather than steamrollering talent, at a club where he has been nurtured in exactly the right way. Why change this? Why expose yourself to that impossible star vacuum? Why run the risk of becoming Messi’s “Moyes”? Salah may or may not be good enough and relentless enough for this. But the fact is the old galáctico system feels a little broken and jaded, another example of the unquestioned idea that “progress” and “ambition” – more, bigger, richer – is always good, even when we already have quite enough. There are other ways the world can work. Just as the defining note of this Liverpool team isn’t hunger for victory at all costs but its sense of heart and spirit, that fleeing of fraternal collectivism. In part this is to do with Jürgen Klopp’s ideas about nurture and steady improvement. Salah has been an obvious beneficiary of this human touch, to the extent the idea he must now leave seems not just odd but illogical. No doubt Mido has his own insight into how this might pan out in the cold hard reality. But it doesn’t mean the machine can’t be resisted. Or that success will naturally follow for a player who seems to be in a place where he makes perfect sense, is operating at his own outer limits, and is above all happy.Hugh McIlvanney’s life as a sports journalist resembled one of his perfectly crafted sentences: long, lyrical and rich with surprises. He was a scrupulous and perceptive witness to what he regarded with reverence as the “magnificent triviality” of sport, and his death, at the age of 84, will be the more keenly felt in a climate of concern about the dwindling integrity of the printed word. He leaves behind a fading image of an era that was more forgiving of boisterous behaviour than the one from which he retired in 2016 after nearly 60 years of excellence. There might be dissenting, scattered voices, but the consensus among his peers was that McIlvanney was the best sportswriter of his era. It is hard to find argument with that conclusion. His friend and rival, Ian Wooldridge, pushed him close – and was probably more willing to cede first place to him than McIlvanney was the other way around – while near contemporaries such as Dudley Doust and James Lawton kept him honest. Now they are all gone, Lawton only last September. During 30 years at the Observer and a concluding stint of 23 years at the Sunday Times, McIlvanney accumulated a swag of accolades at home and abroad: journalist of the year on a brief sabbatical from sport, when he returned to hard news for the Daily Express at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland; sports journalist of the year seven times; made OBE in 1996; a lifetime achievement award at the Scottish Press Awards in 2004; and induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2009. Sport and journalism in the UK could not have asked for a better champion than the man who insisted he was a reporter rather than a “writer”, a title he felt conveyed too much grandiloquence in the circles in which he moved easily, from ringside to the track and, when the mood took him, the bar. His searing intelligence and an old-fashioned regard for accuracy, embroidered by a gift for verbal musicality, lifted his work to sometimes operatic heights. Others might have been more concise; none was more precise. He cared with monk-like zeal about the layered subtext of his narrative, as well as hitting the right tone and rhythm in his prose, and packaged it all as Beethoven might put together a symphony. If his work was too labyrinthine for some tastes, perhaps the fault lay with the listener rather than the composer. Always at the forefront of his thinking was accuracy, and he would not compromise the truth for a soft landing with celebrity athletes. He once wrote of an underwhelming performance by the British heavyweight Frank Bruno: “[He] was no more competitive than a sheep in an abattoir.” Cruel, certainly – but, in context, on the money. Honesty was his shotgun, and he fired it without fear or favour. “How many caps have you got?” the venerated England manager Sir Alf Ramsey asked him after he had criticised the team’s performance. “None,” McIlvanney replied, adding, “but if I send a turnip around the world, it doesn’t return an expert on geography.” The boxing promoter Harry Levene once demanded to know why McIlvanney was “flogging a dead horse” by complaining about the quality of a useless Canadian heavyweight imported to stand politely in front of local hero Billy Walker. “Why put a dead horse under starter’s orders?” came the counterpunch. Anyone who sat alongside McIlvanney at the multitude of world title fights he covered would confirm he suffered over facts to the point of maddening intrusion. “Excuse me for interrupting, wee man,” he began one such whispered inquiry while Mike Tyson was telling us how he was going to rip Bruno’s head from his shoulders in their world title rematch in Las Vegas in 1996, “but Ingemar Johansson, is it with one S or two?” McIlvanney brought a breathtaking level of comprehension and expertise to his work without the benefit – or encumbrance, he might say – of a university education. He did not need paper to lend weight to his words. He was his own toughest examiner. It became obvious watching him at close quarters that the perfection he admired in others who strove for it, from Gabriel García Márquez to Muhammad Ali, was buried in his own soul from a young age. He was born in the Ayrshire town of Kilmarnock to William, a miner, and his wife, Helen (nee Montgomery), parents who gave him and his three brothers, one of whom was the future crime writer William McIlvanney, a priceless grounding in the arts of expression. Hugh began on his hometown paper, the Kilmarnock Standard, after impressing during a debate at his school, the Kilmarnock academy, and moved briefly to the Scottish office of the Daily Express before joining the Scotsman. That newspaper’s outstanding editor, Alastair Dunnett, introduced him to the collected essays of AJ Liebling, perhaps the pivotal intervention in his long career. McIlvanney had not even considered becoming a sportswriter, but that moment fixed the path of his calling. To his surprise McIlvanney loved Liebling’s defining book on boxing, The Sweet Science. Like the New Yorker with the Sorbonne education, he was originally an accidental tourist in the under-lit suburb of sport. “I was a bit reluctant at the start,” he admitted. He was petrified of ending up “a fitba writer” obsessing about Celtic and Rangers. Self-doubt did not often haunt him thereafter. While his heart never left Scotland, the core of McIlvanney’s working life was played out on the pages of the Observer, where he began work in 1962 as deputy sports editor. In surroundings that were unremittingly Dickensian, peopled by literary mavericks to whom he would quickly cleave, McIlvanney impressed. But he knew that his editing and subediting work was no more than an entree to a more fulfilling line as a writer. He had a piece in the paper within a fortnight and there was no doubt he had found his metier. His style, he accepted, had an undeniable Scottish flavour to it. “I think it can be said without pomposity,” he wrote, while straying in that very direction, “that I have a recognisable voice in my writing. I would be surprised if there wasn’t some Scottishness there, and certainly an attitude to language. The feeling that you could be quite strongly expressive and still very accurate relates in a way to how I was brought up, listening to a lot of people who were very eloquent – although they might not have been very well educated, but who had a great respect for language, especially in the west of Scotland.” Allied to his great style was McIlvanney’s huge admiration for the characters of sport, and he never lost faith in his heroes, however flawed. Nobody gave George Best more rope. And Ali stood tallest for him, even when palsied after a boxing career that lingered too long. There was no doubt in McIlvanney’s mind that Muhammad (as he insisted on calling him) was The Greatest, as a human being and an athlete. “His boxing was totally idiosyncratic,” he said, “and technically at a level much lower than that of Sugar Ray Robinson. Muhammad was in a sense the eternal amateur, but he was God’s amateur, because the will was so magical, the imagination so magical, that he found a way to beat people.” It was the perfect metaphor for McIlvanney’s career: the raw yet refined genius from the north who invariably finished in front, sometimes despite himself. His writing – his reporting, as he would have it – was a triumph of the imagination. He is survived by his third wife, Caroline (nee North), whom he married in 2014, and by two children, Conn and Elizabeth, from his first marriage, to Sarah Kenmuir. It ended in divorce, as did his second marriage, to Sophie. • Hugh McIlvanney, journalist, born 2 February 1934; died 24 January 2019Philip Brook, who retires in December after nearly 10 years as Wimbledon chairman, has made a rare foray into tennis politics, describing as, “nonsense” scheduling that will pit the Davis Cup against the new ATP world team competition. The competitions have already divided loyalties, with most of the leading players abandoning the 119-year-old Davis Cup – relaunched by the ITF in a fortnight-long team format in November in Madrid - in favour of more money, as well as ranking points, in the ATP’s World Team Cup, which will be held in Perth, Brisbane and Sydney ahead of the 2020 Australian Open. “What we have seen in recent years has been quite a lot of turmoil, quite a lot of change,” Brook said in an interview on the Two Barrys Tennis Takeaway podcast, run by former player Barry Cowan, and broadcaster, Barry Millns. “It makes no sense organising the tennis calendar in the way that tennis is going about it. Probably both events won’t do very well because of it. What seems to be missing is enough goodwill in the system to enable that to change. “It’s better for the sport as a whole for some of things at the heart of the sport to be owned by everybody and not by individual parts of it. The calendar would be a good example, but the ranking system would be right up there as well. It cannot be right that the Davis Cup will not have ranking points and yet this new tournament that is part owned by ATP will. The reason is because of who owns the ranking system [the ATP] - and that’s a nonsense.” Brook had more upbeat views about what will be regarded as a legacy after he steps down: the acquisition and development of the 73 acres of the Wimbledon Park Golf Club, directly opposite the home of tennis. He said it would give both players and fans greater access to the championships. “Most of the people who play in the qualifying lose and don’t step inside the grounds of SW19,” he said. “I think that’s a shame and something we would like to change. Church Road [which runs between the golf and tennis venues] will always be there, but imagine if it was either sunk or somehow you bridged over it. Imagine it being one site rather than two. “With a secure boundary at the edge of the site, you can then start to imagine how we could make the queueing experience so much better. At the moment we rush it, because we have a week to do it. In the future we can build permanent queueing facilities into the grounds. Imagine a second Henman Hill, another area where people can come in, and there may be some extra championship courts. Whatever we do, we will do with the agreement of Merton Council, but we would like to do it very much in sympathy with the park and its heritage.” Brook said the All England Club are also considering changes to the ballot system for tickets. “It is hard work,” he said. “You have to send in a form with a stamped addressed envelope. We have for the last three or four years put our overseas ballot online. This is a bit of a test to see what happens. We are looking closely at the whole question of the ballot and whether we might move it online. We are a bit worried about that, [as] we might be completely swamped with demand. Secondly, we think with a paper-based system it is harder for people to cheat.”I’m delighted that commercial meatless burgers have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years. You can’t beat a homemade bean burger, whether or not you follow a plant-based diet. The Mexican-inspired spicing of this squidgy black-bean version means it’s lovely with some ripe avocado, but I like a dollop of burger sauce and a slice of cheese, too. Both vegan, naturally. Prep 40 minChill At least 1 hrCook 20 minServes 4 200g peeled and diced potato50g podded broad beans (frozen are fine)400g cooked black beans (drained weight)Vegetable oil, for frying1 onion, peeled and finely diced½ red pepper, deseeded and finely diced2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped½ jalapeño or other mild chilli, finely chopped1 tsp cumin seeds1 tsp coriander seeds1 chipotle chilli in adobo, finely chopped (or 2 tsp smoked paprika)Juice of ½ lime1 small bunch coriander, roughly choppedSalt and black pepper3 tbsp cornmeal, to coat For the burger sauce12 cooked chickpeas3 tbsp chickpea water (ie, the liquid in the tin or the cooking water)150ml neutral oil2 tbsp tomato ketchup2 tbsp American mustard To serve4 burger buns, to serve (optional)4 iceberg lettuce leaves, to serve (optional)1 ripe avocado, halved, stoned, peeled and sliced, to serve (optional)4 slices vegan cheese, to serve (optional) Bring a pan of salted water to a boil and cook the diced potato until tender. Scoop out with a slotted spoon, then cook the broad beans in the same water for five minutes. Drain, and then, when cool enough to handle, slip off the tough outer skins to reveal the tender green bean beneath. Drain the black beans, if necessary, then put half of them in a bowl with the potatoes and mash together until fairly smooth; it doesn’t need to be a puree, but you shouldn’t be able to see any significant lumps. Add the remaining black beans and the skinned broad beans, and mash again, more roughly this time, leaving some intact. Heat the oil in a small frying pan on a low-medium heat and saute the onion and pepper until soft but not browned. Stir in the garlic and jalapeño, if using, and cook for another couple of minutes, stirring until the garlic loses its raw smell. Add to the bowl with the bean and potato mixture. Put a dry pan on a high heat, then dry-fry the cumin and coriander seeds for a minute or so, until fragrant. Grind to a powder with a pinch of salt in a mortar or spice grinder, then add to the bean mixture. Add the chopped chipotle or smoked paprika. Squeeze in the lime juice and add the fresh coriander. Season and mix to combine. Taste the burger mixture and adjust the seasoning if you think it needs a bit more lime, salt or chilli. Using damp hands, form the mixture into four chunky burgers, put them on a plate and refrigerate for at least an hour. While the burgers are chilling, make the burger sauce. Put the chickpeas and their water in a narrow, flat‑bottomed jug or bowl slightly larger than the head of a stick blender, and whizz until smooth. Continue to whizz as you mix in the oil in a steady stream. (Alternatively, use the small bowl of a food processor.) Once you have a loose, mayonnaise-like consistency (it won’t be as stiff as an egg mayonnaise, but more like a thick yoghurt), fold in the ketchup and mustard, then season to taste, adding more of either if you so desire. Chill until ready to serve; the sauce will firm up a bit in the fridge. Heat the oven to 160C (140C fan)/325F/gas 3, and spread out the cornmeal on a plate. Roll the chilled burgers in the cornmeal, to coat all over. Heat two tablespoons of neutral oil in a ovenproof frying pan over a medium-high flame, then fry the burgers for three minutes on one side, or until the cornmeal is well browned. Carefully flip and repeat on the other side. Transfer the burgers to the oven for 10-15 minutes, until heated all the way through. Cut the rolls in half (if using) and toast the cut sides in a hot dry pan. Put a lettuce leaf and a few slices of avocado on the bottom half of each bun, then add a burger, a slice of vegan cheese, if using, and a good dollop of the burger sauce. Clamp on the tops of the buns and eat at once. You’ll need a napkin.Even as he announced an end to the longest government shutdown in US history, Donald Trump warned that a new shutdown could begin in just three weeks “if we don’t get a fair deal from Congress”. That threat meant that clouds of uncertainty still remain in place for hundreds of thousands of government workers and unknown others whose lives were interrupted or derailed by a shutdown precipitated and prolonged by the president’s demand for a border wall, which he redoubled on Friday. From the National Park Service to Nasa, the Coast Guard to border patrol, the Internal Revenue Service to the Transportation Security Administration – federal agencies are now filled with workers with damaged credit ratings, missed mortgage payments, new debts and, especially, new doubts about their basic job security and the future. “I have the luxury that friends have loaned me one paycheck,” said Leisyka Parrott, 47, a furloughed employee with the Bureau of Land Management who is paying off a car loan. “The thing is when you get back pay, all the fees that you incur by missing payments – you don’t get paid back for those. If you are late for a payment and have a $25 fee, the government doesn’t pay for that.” Trump presented his announcement on Friday as a return to business as usual for federal employees. “I will make sure that all employees receive their back pay very quickly – or as soon as possible,” Trump said. “It’ll happen fast.” But even if the president makes good on his word, a quick return to normalcy was not likely for many federal employees, and especially for government contractors not entitled to back pay, union representatives warned. “There’s all kinds of issues with raising families, just buying gasoline,” said Franco DiCroce, a US army corps of engineers employee speaking in his capacity as president of Local 98 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. “Most of these people, their salaries are not skyrocketing. They’re suffering even more, because some of them live check-to-check, so if they don’t have money coming in, they’re going to have difficulty meeting their needs, to even buy groceries.” The number of federal employees filing for unemployment more than doubled in the second week of January to reach 25,000, up from 10,500 the week before, according to Labor Department figures. Last year the figure was 1,700. In announcing an end to the shutdown, Trump made only passing reference to the “recent hardship” workers had endured, and Trump claimed that federal employees did not want the shutdown to end. Then the president mentioned that the shutdown might come back as soon as 15 February, after temporary spending legislation runs out. “If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on February 15, again,” Trump said, or he would take unspecified action to divert funding for a wall, which could include declaring a national emergency at the border. As pressure to end the shutdown grew to a crisis point over the last week, Trump administration figures began to dole out free advice to government employees about how to cover their domestic needs without the benefit of an income. Trump suggested that employees could arrange with grocers to shop for food on credit. The president’s daughter-in-law said, “It is a little bit of pain but it’s going to be for the future of our country.” The president’s top economic adviser called the shutdown a “glitch”. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Washington, detected a trend. “This Marie Antoinette attitude of ‘let them eat cake’ is pervasive in the administration,” Pelosi said. “The president thinks, I guess, they can call their dads for money.” The billionaire commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, who collects Magrittes and in 2017 wore a pair of $600 velvet slippers customized with his department’s emblem to a Trump address to Congress, admitted on Thursday he did “not really quite understand why” federal employees have had to turn to food banks, recommending instead that they take out a bank loan against future income. “It’s obvious that he’s woefully out of touch,” said Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which has about 110,000 members. “He clearly does not understand the reality of being a middle-class worker in this country. First, people do not necessarily have access to the credit the way that he describes. And secondly with the shutdown, there are some very real logistical burdens in being able to access credit even if you would be able to under normal circumstances.” After calling the shutdown a “glitch”, the White House economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said employees working without pay were “volunteering”. Challenged on the term, given that employees who do not “volunteer” face losing their jobs, Kudlow said, “I’m not even going to go there. You know what I’m saying. It’s very clear … “They do it because of their love for the country, the office of the presidency, and, uh, presumably their allegiance to President Trump, but whatever: they’re doing it.” “I have no idea what this guy is talking about, and you can quote me,” said Erwin, the union president. “First, federal employees declare an oath to protect the constitution. They work for the American people. They absolutely do not work for any one person, regardless of who it is. “And about them being volunteers – these are not volunteers. This is compelled servitude. These people do not have a choice. They are absolutely being forced to work without pay indefinitely.” Parrott, the BLM employee, said the pause in the shutdown was “great news” but added, “at the end of three weeks, what will we do when we are back at the same place? Not allowed to work and no income. The lack of leadership is scary. I hope they find a path forward.”If Kevin De Bruyne was a surprise omission for Manchester City, this was an evening when Rúben Neves could illustrate why Pep Guardiola rates him highly enough to be a potential replacement for the near-peerless Fernandinho. The lead-up to this contest of second-versus-11th featured the Catalan calling Neves excellent while insisting his club would never pay the “£100m” price he has read the 21-year-old will cost. Neves is a specialist in the one position Guardiola has no natural competition for: defensive midfield, where time ticks loudly for the 33-year-old Fernandinho. Guardiola offered no official word that the club would actually like to sign Neves but a player who is the Champions League’s youngest captain is of interest and has impressed in his first campaign in England’s top tier. As the game kicked off, Neves’ vital statistics were similar, in some areas, to Fernandinho’s. Each had featured 19 times, playing 1,637 and 1,679 Premier League minutes respectively. Neves had scored once to the Brazilian’s three strikes, made one to his three assists, and both were on 15 chances created. Neves had executed 44 tackles to Fernandinho’s 41. The latter, though, had a tackle success rate of 80.5% to 47.7% and Fernandinho’s pass count was 1,397 to Neves’s 1,059. The senior man, of course, should have finer numbers as he is a couple of classes above Neves and plays for a better side. To help him in the duel Neves lined up against Fernandinho with a dedicated partner alongside, the 23-year-old Leander Dendoncker, an advantage erased when Willy Boly was sent off on 19 minutes. Yet if Guardiola wants his holding player to stymie attacks as well as launch them, then the manner in which Neves was left a spectator when City scored on 10 minutes was hardly the requisite calling card. Neves was still trailing back, outside Wolves’s area, when City applied a classic one-two via a Leroy Sané cross and Gabriel Jesus finish. Moments later Fernandinho showed the younger man how to destroy. After a Kyle Walker error allowed Diogo Jota to set off down the left, the No 25 raced across and scythed him down, willing to take a booking to ensure the forward and Wolves were halted. Despite the defensive part of Fernandinho’s job description Guardiola admires his man for his supreme all-round game. This is why Ilkay Gundogan remains a deputy only – he possesses the artistry of the schemer but is less of a natural at the darker midfield arts. Yet, if Neves wanted to show how he can create, Boly’s sending-off limited the scope to do so. With Wolves a goal and a man down the Portuguese’s night became harder. Now he had to try to squeeze the space that City’s dizzying pass-and-move game opens up, while looking for a moment where the match could be wrested back his team’s way. The corollary here was that this challenge also handed Neves opportunity to shine: pass the audition of performing in even more trying circumstances and he might influence Guardiola’s thinking when deciding whom to pursue as Fernandinho’s successor. But when Raheem Sterling was able to turn in yards of space inside the area Neves was one of the visiting men who slumbered. Seconds later he did hassle Jesus enough to distract him but his part in City’s second goal disappointed. This came from a penalty won by Sterling (converted coolly by Jesus) that was possible after Neves was unable to stop David Silva making the pass into the England man. From this juncture the night was a relative stroll for Fernandinho – and City – though Neves did keep going for his manager, Nuno Espírito Santo as an own goal gave City their third. There was a flash of quality when setting Adama Traoré free along the right and he continued to snap at the heels of Fernandinho, David and Bernardo Silva: a midfield to rank among the world’s best – even before De Bruyne’s 61st-minute introduction. Beforehand Guardiola had pointed to how Neves is often one of a holding two for Wolves. How he might perform as the lone man in City’s stellar side remains moot. Whether he will ever have a chance to do so should become clearer in the future.A nine-term Republican congressman and close ally of Donald Trump known for making racially provocative statements said in an interview published Thursday that he did not understand why the phrases “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” had “become offensive”. Congressman Steve King, who has represented his rural Iowa district in Washington since 2003, made the remarks in an interview with the New York Times. “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King said. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” In the same interview, King expressed a sense of racial alienation at the swearing-in of the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, which includes a record number of women and people of color, as well as the first Muslim American and Native American women elected to Congress. “You could look over there and think the Democratic party is no country for white men,” King said. King, who has forged personal alliances with far-right, anti-immigration groups across Europe, has a long track record of making statements widely perceived as racist, although he denies the charge. “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” he has tweeted. He has called illegal immigration a “slow-rolling, slow-motion terrorist attack on the United States” and a “slow-motion Holocaust” and tweeted: “Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.” King has amassed national political power as a conservative gatekeeper in a state that votes first in the presidential primary process and can give Republican candidates a crucial early boost – or sink a candidacy. When Trump began visiting Iowa as a candidate, he found an ideological ally, particularly on issues such as immigration. King has long advocated building a wall on the Mexican border, authored legislation to make English the official language of Iowa and has said of immigrants: “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130lb and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75lb of marijuana across the desert.” “He may be the world’s most conservative human being,” Trump approvingly said of King at a rally in Iowa before the recent midterm elections. The congressman replied on Twitter: “I do my best to pull President Trump to the right:-)” But King’s repeated provocations appear to have made him freshly vulnerable to political challengers. He beat a Democratic opponent in his most recent election only narrowly, in a district Trump won by 27 points. A Republican challenger, Randy Feenstra, an assistant majority leader in the state senate, has announced he will take on King in the 2020 primary race, saying King’s “distractions” had robbed Iowans of “a seat at the table”.The thick eyebrows were familiar from another era, even if the crown was balder, and the state department’s new hire admitted he had not worked there for 30 years. Elliott Abrams was appointed US special envoy for Venezuela on Friday, as Donald Trump’s administration and European leaders on Saturday further increase the pressure on socialist president Nicolás Maduro to step aside from leading the country he has taken into a deepening crisis. Abrams will accompany the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to a meeting of the UN security council in New York on Saturday, during which the Pompeo will urge members to join the US in declaring Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate head of state. Abrams, a neoconservative, has returned to the centre of the political action over the region like the ghost of administrations past. Even if he was not chosen expressly to haunt Latin America and Congress, the Trump White House clearly does not care if they are spooked. Abrams is widely remembered in Central America, but particularly from his time in the Reagan administration, when he tried to whitewash a massacre of a thousand men, women and children by US-funded death squads in El Salvador, when he was assistant secretary of state for human rights. He shrugged off the reports as communist propaganda, and insisted: “The administration’s record in El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement.” Abrams also helped organise the covert financing of Contra rebels in Nicaragua behind the back of Congress, which had cut off funding. He then lied to Congress about his role, twice. He pleaded guilty to both counts in 1991 but was pardoned by George HW Bush. More than a decade later, working as special Middle East adviser to former president George W Bush, Abrams was an enthusiastic advocate of the Iraq invasion. He was in the White House at the time of the abortive coup in 2002 against Hugo Chavez. The Observer reported that Abrams gave the green light to the putsch, another an inspector general enquiry found no “wrongdoing” by US officials. That was not enough to erase his reputation as the assistant secretary of dirty wars. The message sent by his return to the front rank of US diplomacy will not missed in Caracas. As an instinctive isolationist and “America Firster”, Donald Trump mostly abhors foreign entanglements but he is clearly willing to make exceptions. Both the vice-president, Mike Pence, and the national security adviser, John Bolton, have recently echoed the idea of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, that Latin America, being on the US’s doorstep, is not covered by the administration’s general non-interventionist approach. In the case of the Americas, Pence suggested earlier this week, Trump was prepared to intervene for the right reasons. “President Trump has always had a very different view of our hemisphere,” Pence told Fox News. “He’s long understood that the United States has a special responsibility to support and nurture democracy and freedom in this hemisphere and that’s a longstanding tradition.” That approach has opened the door to a veteran neoconservative like Abrams, now aged 70. He had already come close to joining the administration at its very beginnings. He was about to be named deputy to Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, when Trump got wind of what Abrams had said about him during the presidential campaign and vetoed the appointment. Abrams wrote a commentary in the summer of 2016 warning that the Republican party “has nominated someone who cannot win and should not be president of the United States”. The article in the Weekly Standard was titled “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate”. Yesterday, all that was forgotten and Abrams, standing alongside of Tillerson’s successor Mike Pompeo, declared: “It’s very nice to be back. “This crisis in Venezuela is deep and difficult and dangerous,” he added. “And I can’t wait to get to work on it.”Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has yet to discuss any potential transfer targets for Manchester United in the current window but will offer an opinion when required. While the interim manager also suggested Paul Pogba might not be fit for Saturday’s FA Cup third round tie with Reading Solskjaer indicated that if any players are recruited in January this will be a product of a longterm strategy. “The club’s probably had a plan - you don’t just plan the next day and next month but this transfer window has probably been planned since the summer and year before. The structure [here] is phenomenal. I’m sure they’ve got their targets,” said the 45-year-old. “I’m here to voice my opinion on that and I’m sure we’ll sit down, me and Ed [Woodward, executive vice-chairman] if we’ve got anything in the pipeline. “I’m here to work with the ones I’ve got, they’ve all performed and as long as they perform they should get a chance but that’s my job to improve players and individuals.” While it is understood the club retain the view that January is a difficult month strengthen, of Pogba Solskjaer said: “I’m not sure if Paul’s going to be ready - he got a knock against Newcastle. [Marcus] Rojo, [Chris] Smalling out. If [Maraoune] Fellaini gets through the session today [Friday] it’s more or less a full squad.” Alexis Sánchez and Romelu Lukaku will start against Reading, which will kick-off at 12.30 on Saturday. “Lukaku, Sánchez will start - that’s important for them because they need more game time,” he said. “Definitely, there’ll be a few changes and some of them - they’ll get a chance - some are itching now to play of course.” Solskjaer is aiming for a fifth consecutive win. After Reading his squad fly to Dubai for warm-weather training ahead of the trip to Tottenham Hotspur on 13 January. Solskjaer warned the break is not one for relaxation. “If any of the players think it’s a holiday they’re wrong, we’re there to stick together, to work hard on the physical part of it ahead of the Tottenham game.”Ole Gunnar Solskjær believes Marouane Fellaini has an “X-factor” for Manchester United and has indicated the midfielder will not be sold in this transfer window. Fellaini, who is injured, has played only 31 minutes of the interim manager’s six games yet Solskjær believes the 31-year-old can have an important role under him. “There’s X-factor in different players and we all know Felli’s X-factor,” he said. “He’ll probably be at least three or four weeks [out] – he’s got a calf problem and that’s sad. But he’ll be working hard to get back in when all the big games are coming.” Brighton & Hove Albion are at Old Trafford on Saturday as Solskjær aims for a seventh consecutive win. “You cannot be too confident,” he said. “Confidence is one thing, complacency is the other side of it, that you think it’s going to be easy. “I want players to be confident but I don’t want them to be complacent and take their foot off the pedal because that’s a big difference for me. I want them going into the games full of confidence, taking people on, playing, running, passing forward, getting the crowd with them because that’s what it’s about.” Scott McTominay has hardly featured under Solskjær but the 22-year-old midfielder, who signed a new deal last season, may not go on loan. “Scott is working hard, he’s a young boy I still believe in, and we’re working on his contract. With the injuries of Felli as well and the squad we have I’m not too sure we’re going to see any movement at all.”The French president, Emmanuel Macron, may have brushed off the recent spate of verbal attacks by Italy’s two deputy prime ministers, Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, but analysts predict relations between the two countries will deteriorate further in the run-up to the European elections in late May. Salvini, who heads the far-right League, said Macron was a “terrible” French president and urged French voters not to back his En Marche party in the European parliamentary ballot, while Di Maio, the leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, last week accused France of impoverishing Africa and bringing on the migration crisis. Speaking to reporters during a visit to Egypt on Sunday, Macron said the taunts were “of no importance” and that his only counterpart was the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, not his two outspoken deputies. He went on to say that “Italy deserves leaders worthy of its history”. Over the past decade, relations between the neighbours have often been tetchy, with France’s role in the 2011 military intervention in Libya, persistent migrant issues at the shared border, and a shopping spree under which French firms snapped up prized Italian rivals stoking animosity. Relations took a turn for the worse after Italy’s populist government came to power last June. Immigration was the first major catalyst as insults were traded over the handling of migrants: Macron blasted Italy for turning away a migrant rescue ship and Italy responded by accusing him of hypocrisy over the thousands of people rejected by France and sent back to Italy. France’s ambassador to Rome, Christian Masset, has twice been summoned over immigration spats. “There have always been problematic dossiers that tended to be managed diplomatically,” said Jean-Pierre Darnis, a scientific adviser at the Institute of International Affairs in Rome. “But that changed in 2018, especially with the pressure of the League, which takes explicitly anti-French positions, and Salvini, who is trying to establish Macron as a political adversary.” Hostility resurfaced more recently when Di Maio threw his support behind the anti-government gilets jaunes (yellow vests), who have held protests in France since early December, urging them to “not give up”. His accusation last week that France “hasn’t stopped colonising African states” led to France’s foreign ministry summoning the Italian ambassador, Teresa Castaldo. Meanwhile, Salvini has tried to bait Macron by parading his friendship with his French far-right counterpart, Marine Le Pen, who was defeated by Macron in the French 2017 elections, and calling on him to “show the same good sense” as the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, in returning 14 Italian fugitives living in France. Cesare Battisti, a former leftwing guerrilla fighter, was returned to Italy earlier this month after having taken refuge in Brazil. Mattia Diletti, a politics professor at Rome’s Sapienza University, believes the taunts are more about gaining popularity than anything else, particularly with the impending EU elections. “They are taking the typical populist approach to politics, in that they need to find an enemy,” he said. “France is a very easy target because of the challenges – on Libya, the economy and even football. Macron is also the kind of elite person they like to attack as he’s exactly the reverse of what they are.” In his onslaught last week, Di Maio also accused France of manipulating the economies of African countries that use the West African CFA franc as their currency, thus stifling their development and prompting mass migration to Europe. “It’s a very weak argument because if you take the first eight countries of origin of immigration to Italy, none of them use the CFA,” added Diletti. The renewal of a friendship pact between France and Germany last week is another potential catalyst for worsening relations. Salvini has promised to break “the France-Germany axis” in the EU ballot as he forges alliances with other European far-right groups, including Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party. “You can make the point that, substance-wise, nothing much has changed [in the France-Germany relationship], but the symbol [of friendship renewal] is not a minor detail,” said Francesco Galietti, the founder of Policy Sonar, a consultancy in Rome. “You are taking away from Rome, and not giving it to a supranational entity but to Paris, and this is when Italians get really mad.” There may also be fears of France seeking to replace Italy as a prime supplier to Germany of automotive parts and accessories. “Business-wise there is this idea that France is working very hard to replace Italy in Germany’s economic engine,” added Galietti. “Italian suppliers of car parts and producers of heavy machinery are deeply integrated in the German market.” Franco Pavoncello, a political science professor and president of the John Cabot University in Rome, said that as the EU elections approach, more differences between the two countries will likely be aired. “I believe that both governments use each other to vent their dissatisfaction and certainly the EU elections are very important as everyone tries to carve a position,” he added. “But I don’t think things are going to get better. And after the vote we’ll likely have a very different political scenario.”Gilets jaunes protesters engaged in a ninth weekend of protests all over France on Saturday as the president, Emmanuel Macron, prepared to stake his political future on an open letter to the French people and a national debate. Officials said that at least 84,000 demonstrators turned out across France, thousands more than last weekend, with about 8,000 of those in Paris where protests passed “without serious incident”. Gilets jaunes – named after the hi-vis yellow vests French motorists must carry in their vehicles – said the number was higher but did not give a figure. After the violence of previous weeks, the government put on a show of strength, deploying 80,000 police officers nationwide and about 7,000 in Paris. As night fell, security forces used teargas and water cannon against gilets jaunes at the Arc de Triomphe. In Bourges, a town of 66,000 people – chosen because of its central location – about 6,700 gilets jaunes gathered despite a ban on protests in its historical centre. There were 4,500 gilets jaunes demonstrators at Bordeaux and 5,500 in Toulouse, according to officials. Police said 156 people were arrested in Paris, 108 of whom were remanded in custody. Nationwide, 244 people were arrested, of whom 201 remained in custody. The latest opinion polls showed a slight reduction in the high level of public support for the gilets jaunes following last weekend’s violence, and a slight increase in popularity for Macron, whose approval rating remains at a low of 30%. Bruno Cautrès, of the elite Sciences Po political research unit CEVIPOF, said the gilets jaunes movement was at a “crossroads”. “We are beginning to see in our research that the question of violence will polarise the movement between those, like members of the France Insoumise [far left] and the Rassemblement Nationale [far right], who feel this violence might be justified and others who feel it’s gone too far. “Having said that the level of support for the gilets jaunes remains high.” The gilets jaunes movement began in November as a protest against a new eco-tax on petrol and diesel. Although the government dropped the tax and made certain concessions to protesters, the movement has grown to encompass a wide range of demands, including giving people a greater say in policy via citizens’ referenda. Macron has attempted to take the sting out of the protests by announcing a “great national debate” to sound out the public on four themes: taxation, state institutions, democracy and citizenship, but just days before the consultation is due to begin on Tuesday, there is still confusion over how it will be carried out. The president will publish an open letter to the French people on Monday to “explain what I intend to do”. He said the debate was “a vital and very useful moment for our country”. “It’s a great opportunity and everyone must take it … I want a real debate,” he said. Cautrès added: “There is a situation of extreme tension and frustration in the country. Our research shows an rejection of politics, politicians and political parties to the point of disgust and distrust. The level of this is really incredible. “At the moment we don’t know the position Macron will take: will it be, ‘I have heard the people but I’m continuing my reforms’, or ‘I have heard the people and will adapt my programme’? That’s the unknown element,” Cautrès said. “If he and the government can show it is taking people’s hopes and views into account it might be one positive thing to come out of this and lighten the very dark place that France is in right now.” Eddy Fougier, a political researcher with the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, said the national debate was the government’s only option for “getting out of this crisis”.At a minutes-long arraignment on the ritzy Massachusetts island of Nantucket on Monday, Kevin Spacey did not appear to utter a word as he appeared before a judge alongside his lawyers. The 59-year-old Oscar-winning actor is accused of groping a then 18-year-old man at the Club Car restaurant and bar on the island, in 2016. The charge, of indecent assault and battery, is a felony. If convicted, Spacey would face a maximum of five years in prison. He would also have to register as a sex offender. His lawyers entered a not guilty plea on his behalf and a pre-trial hearing was set for 4 March. Judge Thomas S Barrett said Spacey would not have to appear at that hearing, but that he must be available by phone during it. Spacey was also ordered to stay away from the alleged victim and his family. The judge granted a request by Spacey’s attorneys to preserve the alleged victim’s cellphone data for six months after the date of the alleged assault. Spacey attorney Alan Jackson said there was data within that would be “likely exculpatory”. The arraignment brought a media frenzy to an island some of the world’s richest and most famous people retreat to in part because of the invisibility and anonymity it offers. Media trucks lined the street outside the courthouse before dawn and locals on the island, which teems with tourists in the summer but quiets down in the winter, drove by slowly, taking photos of reporters standing in line in the cold. It was standing-room only inside the island’s only courthouse as journalists and curious locals crowded into the small room. After the short hearing, as he left, Spacey ignored questions shouted by the media and entered an SUV parked outside the courthouse. As he got into the vehicle, an onlooker shouted “Underwood 2020!” – a reference to the American president Spacey played on the Netflix series House of Cards. After the charge was announced last month, Spacey released a video in which he said, in the voice of Frank Underwood: “I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn’t do.” It was unclear whether he was referring to the Nantucket charge. Spacey has also faced other allegations. Spacey had asked to skip the arraignment, saying his “presence [would] amplify the negative publicity already generated in connection with this case”. That request was denied. Sexual assault allegations were first publicly raised against Spacey in October 2017, amid the first growth of the #MeToo movement, which then centered around allegations against former film producer Harvey Weinstein. Heather Unruh, formerly a prominent Boston TV news anchor, tweeted then: “The #weinsteinscandal has emboldened me – #truth time. I was a Kevin Spacey fan until he assaulted a loved one. Time the dominoes fell.” After that, the actor Anthony Rapp said that when he was 14 and Spacey was 26, the older man made a sexual advance. Spacey said he did not remember the alleged incident, but apologised for “deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour”. A month later Unruh told reporters her son had been groped by Spacey while working as a busboy at the Club Car restaurant. Unruh said Spacey got her son drunk and then grabbed his genitals during the incident. She said her son left the restaurant when Spacey went to the bathroom. On Monday Mitchell Garabedian, the civil attorney representing the young man, said in a statement emailed to the Guardian: “By reporting the sexual assault, my client is a determined and encouraging voice for those victims not yet ready to report being sexually assaulted. My client is leading by example.” Some Nantucketers interviewed by reporters arrived on the island have been expressing their displeasure. To Bruce Percelay, publisher of Nantucket Magazine, the alleged incident involving Spacey and the young man was a violation of what Nantucket is all about. “There’s a presumed safeness to this island unlike many places,” he told the Guardian on Saturday, two days before the court hearing and its attendant media circus. “You don’t expect violations like the one that was [allegedly] perpetrated by Kevin Spacey. It just doesn’t happen on Nantucket. “This type of celebrity just doesn’t fit the ethos of Nantucket.”The UK’s largest airports are set to spend millions of pounds on anti-drone equipment, the Guardian understands, as they seek to protect themselves from future attacks like that which grounded about 1,000 flights into and out of Gatwick airport during the Christmas period. The country’s two busiest hubs – London’s Heathrow and Gatwick – have brought in their own military-grade anti-drone apparatus. The owners of both airports invested millions of pounds in the equipment after about 140,000 passengers were affected by the unprecedented disruption to Gatwick. The military had to be called amid a series of reported drone sightings over the course of three days, and it is believed that the Israeli-developed Drone Dome system, which can detect and jam communications between a drone and its operator, was deployed. While it would not say exactly what equipment had been installed since then, a spokeswoman for Gatwick said the airport’s owners had bought a system that provided a similar level of protection and had installed it about a week ago. Heathrow’s spokeswoman also confirmed that the reports of investment in military-grade anti-drone equipment at that airport, which first appeared in the Times on Thursday, were accurate. On Wednesday, the Ministry of Defence confirmed that it had withdrawn its resources from Gatwick, though a spokesman said the armed forces “stand ever ready to assist should a request for support be received”. It is understood that the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, chaired a meeting on Thursday morning at which defence chiefs, the police and Home Office officials discussed future plans for dealing with the threat of drones to vital infrastructure. The parliamentary undersecretary of state for transport, Liz Sugg, is also due to meet the heads of the UK’s major airports next week to discuss the states of their own defences, as well as what they plan to put in place in future, the Guardian understands. The airports are expected to announce significant investment in further anti-drone systems, though not all will necessarily be in the form or on the scale of those deployed at the two London airports. The Drone Dome system is capable of tracking the devices from as far as six miles away. As well as being able to sever communications with the operator, some models can also destroy the drones using a laser beam. The model reportedly procured by the UK military does not have such a capability. According to the Times, a spokesman for the system’s manufacturer, Rafael, confirmed that there had been significant interest in the product from various authorities in the UK and in other nations, but declined to confirm whether Gatwick had bought one. A spokeswoman for Heathrow airport said: “The safety of our passengers and colleagues remains our top priority. Working closely with relevant authorities including the Met police, we are constantly looking at the best technologies that help remove the threat of drones.” Referring to the disruption at Gatwick, the chief constable of Sussex police, Giles York, said last week that officers had received 115 reports of sightings in the area, including 93 that had been confirmed as coming from “credible people” including a pilot and airport staff. Some reports of drones in the area may have involved the police’s own craft, he said, but he added that he was “absolutely certain” that a drone was flying near the airport’s runways during the three-day disruption. Police are still searching for those responsible.Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro’s dwindling band of foreign supporters like to claim, is a theatre in a new cold war. Donald Trump’s administration and his hawkish foreign policy advisers, with their occasional threats of military intervention, provide the perfect props. So does Jair Bolsonaro, the new far-right president in Brazil. But the real contest in Venezuela is between democracy and dictatorship. Maduro leads a corrupt authoritarian regime that has stolen and broken a once-prosperous country, staging a coup against its own constitution. On Saturday 12 January, a power cut at the University Hospital in Caracas caused the deaths of six patients, according to a union representative. It was not an isolated incident: in the two months from mid-November, 40 hospitals in Venezuela monitored by a local doctors group suffered power cuts lasting an average of three hours a day. But the deaths at the University Hospital were a particular embarrassment to Maduro, Venezuela’s ruler since 2013. Highlighting his country’s descent into criminal public mismanagement, they happened just after he was inaugurated for a second six-year term as president, in a sparsely attended ceremony at the supreme court and not the national assembly, as the constitution requires. For most governments in the Americas, for the European Union and for many Venezuelan people, that ceremony was bogus. For them, Maduro is no longer a legitimate president, but simply a dictator who staged his re-election last year in a fraudulent poll from which the main opposition parties were barred. Over the past fortnight, Venezuela has seen nationwide protests, including in poor neighbourhoods traditionally loyal to Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor. They culminated in massive marches last Wednesday, during which Juan Guaidó, the new, young speaker of the opposition-controlled national assembly, proclaimed himself to be the country’s interim president. In a co-ordinated move, the United States and a dozen other countries in the Americas recognised Guaidó. For several hours, power seemed to hang in the balance. Then senior military commanders reaffirmed their support for Maduro and rejected what they claimed was a “coup”. Guaidó has gone into hiding. After the police killed two dozen demonstrators last week, the protests are likely to die down. But the battle for power in Venezuela is not over. Maduro has broken off relations with the US. He can count on support from Cuba and Russia and the quiescence of China. But his relative international isolation is evident. He presides over a broken economy and a country from which around 10% of the population have fled in the past three years in search of the subsistence, safety and opportunity they are denied at home. Polls show that most Venezuelans have little time for the opposition, long racked by opportunist internal squabbles. But they also show that the vast majority want change. And in Guaidó, who is the nominee of Leopoldo López, an opposition leader under house arrest, it has at least found a fresh face. The date of last week’s marches, 23 January, is significant in Venezuela. On that day in 1958, a popular uprising overthrew a military dictatorship, ushering in a stable two-party democracy. Fuelled by oil exports, Venezuela became the wealthiest country in South America and a haven for political exiles from military dictatorships elsewhere on the continent in the 1970s. Then the oil price collapsed and popular discontent at austerity and corruption saw the election in 1998 of Chávez, a charismatic army officer who had led a failed coup. Chávez had the good fortune to preside over the biggest oil boom in the country’s history. He is still revered by half the population, who recall his social programmes and popular touch. But by the time he died of cancer in 2013 he had bankrupted his country, running up debt and strangling the private sector with controls while replacing its output with imports. He replaced a flawed social democracy with a clientelist society, in which benefits and food rations are handed out in return for political loyalty. The state has been hollowed out into corrupt fiefs, controlled by armed groups, legal or not. In an emblematic case, Chávez’s former treasurer admitted in a New York court to taking $1bn in bribes, a sum greater than all the bribes paid by Odebrecht, Brazil’s notoriously corrupt construction company. Venezuela is suffering one of the worst peacetime economic collapses, akin only to that of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The economy has shrunk by almost half since 2014, while hyperinflation destroys the value of wages. This collapse is not the result of low oil prices, still less of sanctions imposed by the US (which mainly affect individual leaders of the regime). Other oil producers have weathered lower prices, but in Venezuela the regime’s mismanagement has seen oil output fall by almost two-thirds since Chávez took office. Venezuelans turned against Maduro in a legislative election in December 2015, when an opposition coalition won 56% of the vote and a two-thirds majority in the national assembly. That prompted Maduro to rule as a dictator; the assembly has been reduced to an impotent NGO, stripped of its constitutional powers. Most of the opposition’s leaders are in jail, in exile or intimidated. Torture of prisoners is common, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. Maduro and his cronies cling on thanks partly to hundreds of Cuban spies, who have foiled several coup plots in the past two years. Cuba’s leadership could at least point to past achievements, to world-class health, education and hurricane-defence programmes. In return for cheap oil, Cuba is propping up a feral regime that rules a country in which the vast majority have fallen into poverty and child mortality is rising sharply. As South American countries suddenly face absorbing 3 million Venezuelan immigrants, Maduro’s regime has become a regional problem. In Caracas, the military offers Maduro the loyalty of a partner in crime. The generals fear that Guaidó’s offer of an amnesty for the billions they have stolen will not be honoured. Maduro will no doubt try to limp on through further repression, but he may run out of money. The US is unlikely to attempt a military invasion but it is looking at ways to channel payment to Guaidó and the assembly for the oil it still imports. A swift negotiation in which Maduro departs and a free election is called is the best hope for Venezuela. This route has been offered to Maduro before and he has rejected it. Things may get worse for Venezuelans before they get a chance to recover their country. Michael Reid is the author of Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America. He is a columnist and senior editor at the Economist.A Syrian activist has died after a brutal attack in Hamburg, raising questions over whether he was targeted for political reasons. Mohamed Joune, 48, collapsed on the street on Tuesday night after stumbling out of a building. He was bleeding from a severe head wound but still conscious when paramedics rushed him to hospital. He later died from his injuries. Joune sustained multiple strikes to the head from what appeared to have been an axe, according to German media reports, which also said one of his fingers had been cut off. Joune, a longtime resident in Germany, worked as a pharmacist and owned several properties in Harburg, a neighbourhood in the south of Hamburg. He ran a non-profit organisation called the Union of Syrians Abroad, which provided humanitarian aid to victims of the war in Syria. The website of the organisation, founded in 2011, states its goal is “to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people, especially women and children, both in Syria and in neighbouring countries”. Kazim Abaci, a local Social Democratic party politician, who knew Joune, said: “He was not just engaged in humanitarian aid for Syria, but also supported the integration of refugees in Harburg.” Joune’s involvement in the Syria-focused organisation and his opposition to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, may have been the reason he was targeted, a friend told the German tabloid Bild. “The likelihood is that Mohamed was killed for his political activities,” said the friend, who added that he had spoken with Joune earlier that day in his pharmacy. The friend also noted that shortly before his death, Joune had discussed the possibility of holding a demonstration to mark the anniversary of the uprising against Assad in Syria. Police are investigating the killing and said they are looking into all possibilities. On Thursday, officers discovered discarded clothes and shoes not far from where Joune was found, local media reported, although it is not known if they are related to the attack.Police in eastern India say a teenager who was found dead this week with her body dismembered and mutilated was murdered by her family in a so-called “honour” killing. The body of the 16-year old from Gaya, a city in Bihar state, was discovered on Sunday. Pictures of her mutilated remains were widely shared on social media along with claims she had been doused in acid, sparking protests and candlelit vigils in the city. The brutal killing in a remote pocket of one of India’s poorest states is being compared to the 2012 gang rape and murder of a Delhi student that galvanised women’s movements and led to a national reckoning over sexual violence. In Bihar, the girl’s family had claimed she was raped and murdered and that police had been slow in searching for her since she was reported missing on 28 December. But on Thursday authorities said they believed the girl’s family were responsible for her death. “It’s a case of honour killing,” Gaya’s police chief, Rajiv Kumar Mishra, said. “The girl eloped with someone on December 28 from her home in Patwa Panchayat but returned after three days. This angered the parents, who plotted the cold-blooded murder with the help of a butcher friend.” He said a post-mortem had ruled out rape and that the girl’s sister had told police she had last seen her with the butcher on 31 December. “After the recovery of the body, we called the parents to the police station several times to record their statements, but they made lame excuses and didn’t show up,” Mishra said, according to the Hindustan Times. “Their dubious attempt to escape interrogation further confirmed our suspicions. In the meantime we picked up the butcher who narrated the entire incident.” Mishra said elopement was severely punished in the area and locals froze out anyone who married without the sanction of their families and community. Indian media reports a regular stream of high-profile killings each year of men and women who marry in defiance of their family or community’s caste, religion or customs. There were 69 “honour” killings in India in 2016 according to the country’s National Crime Records Bureau, the most recent year for which data is available. But activists say the true rate is much higher, exacerbated by deeply patriarchal values and a lingering attachment to caste.Cut 2 medium-sized leeks into 2cm-thick rounds. Rinse thoroughly in cold water. Put the still-wet leeks into a pan with 30g of butter and cover loosely with a disc of greaseproof paper and a lid, then set over a moderate heat. Steam the leeks for 7-8 minutes, making sure they don’t colour. Grate 250g of beetroot into the leeks, then pour in 150ml of double cream, season with salt and black pepper then simmer for 8 minutes, or until thick and the leeks are thoroughly soft. Set aside. Take 2 chicken breasts, each weighing approximately 100g and place them on a piece of baking parchment. Fold the paper over the meat and bat out with a rolling pin or cutlet bat until the size of a small dinner plate. Break a large egg into a shallow bowl and beat lightly to mix yolks and whites. Scatter 100g of breadcrumbs over a shallow bowl or plate. Dip the pieces of meat into the beaten egg and then on to the crumbs, pressing firmly so the crumbs form an even crust. Warm 3 tbsp of sunflower or olive oil in a shallow pan. Lower in the “schnitzels” and cook until golden. Serve with the beetroot and leek cream. Enough for 2. A heavy cutlet bat is best for flattening the chicken breasts, but a rolling pin will do. Protect the chicken by covering the meat with a piece of greaseproof or waxed paper. Use slices of turkey breast instead of the chicken. Season the breadcrumbs with grated pecorino and very finely chopped rosemary. Serve with wide buttered noodles, perhaps with a few crushed green peppercorns or capers. Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater“When you’ve lived a busy life, it really is like stepping into another world,” said Fiona Wright, who moved off-grid with her daughter and five dogs when she traded in her Wiltshire home for a 45-foot narrowboat last summer. Wright’s love of the canals is shared by tens of thousands of people who are taking to the water, and the towpath, in ever greater numbers in a waterways renaissance. There are now 38,000 narrowboats – one quarter of them are homes – on 3,000 miles of navigable waterways, and the number of people enjoying barge holidays has doubled in recent years. Membership of the Friends of the Canal and River Trust (CRT), the waterways’ version of the National Trust, hit 28,000 this year. Towpaths are teeming with walkers, anglers and cyclists, and there are thousands of volunteers working on 98 canal restoration projects from Devon to West Sussex to Cumbria. The Inland Waterways Association (IWA), the charity that champions canal restoration, is working towards reopening 2,500 miles of “dead” canals which lie derelict. Wright’s 11-year-old daughter, Emma, who is home-educated, is an ardent advocate of barge life. Her YouTube channel, Narrowboat Girl, which documents their slow journey along the canals, stopping for a while here and there, has attracted more than 100,000 views. “It’s so cool,” said Emma. “I’m learning all the time on the water and the towpath, about birds, animals and plants.” Due to be published early this year, a report by the restoration hub of the IWA will emphasise the benefits of canal restoration in terms of economic regeneration, wildlife and plant diversity, architectural heritage, tourism and education. Putting freight back on the canals is also viable, which is why an inland port is being planned in Leeds. Mike Palmer, the report’s main author, said the canal network was “a huge linear national park – a leisure park, a vital wildlife sanctuary, an important industrial heritage site and an environment-friendly transport system all rolled into one”. While the report is being digested, the IWA volunteers will be hard at work on projects, which include: • De-silting work on an abandoned stretch of the Wey and Arun navigation near the Surrey-West Sussex border. • The completion of a two-year restoration of a hopelessly derelict lock on the Grantham canal in the east Midlands, bringing the Lincolnshire town a step closer to returning to the national network it left more than 80 years ago. • A redoubling of fundraising efforts by the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust, which raised the money to build an aqueduct over the M6 toll road 16 years ago despite the fact that there is no canal there (there will be, eventually). Unless work on a tunnel under a railway and a new roundabout starts within a year or so costs will increase enormously. The trust must raise £1m by the end of this year in a campaign led by the actor and canals supporter David Suchet: it has just passed £530,000. • Taking the next step on one of the most daunting challenges faced by any of the nation’s restoration projects, the Missing Mile on the Cotswold canals, a stretch that was more or less obliterated when the M5 was built. Motorists on the A419 will see narrowboats crossing the middle of a roundabout; there is also junction 13 of the M5 to deal with, plus a major gas pipeline and two more roundabouts. It should be finished by 2023, bringing Stroud back on to the national network. The IWA’s report aims to change the attitude of funders, politicians, government departments, local authorities, restoration groups and even health professionals. As well as the economic and environmental benefits of canals, it will stress the effects on health, a point made by Philippa Moreton, a retired doctor who advised many of her patients to take towpath walks in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, where she worked. Moreton said: “Regular exercise in a beautiful, peaceful natural environment with water has an added bonus. It gives a sense of wellbeing, reduces stress and helps depression. Walking beside a canal not only helps patients with diabetes, hypertension, lung disease and arthritis but also patients with mental health problems.” The report will recommend focusing on micro-projects rather than the entire length of a canal. Restoration should be seen by government agencies and volunteers as a national issue, rather than as a hotch-potch of local groups working in isolation. “There was a big gap in terms of looking at things strategically,” said Palmer, who chairs the waterways recovery group, the IWA’s volunteer taskforce. There are long-running disputes with road builders and planners in Swindon; on the route of the abandoned Berkshire and Wiltshire canal; on the new Bedford and Milton Keynes waterway; and on the Lichfield and Hatherton canal. “Everybody is struggling with planning permission, with highway crossings, with water abstraction rights,” said Palmer. “This report will say to the government, to the Environment Agency, ‘you need to do better on this’. It’s quite likely that even the bosses of any ministry don’t actually understand that it’s a major issue. They just think it’s dozens of little local issues and don’t spot that they’re joined up.” Despite this lack of political will, Britain’s canals have had their advocates. In the 1960s, the Queen Mother and the transport minister, Barbara Castle, were among those who spoke up for canals at a time when the attitude of many, especially in local politics, was that they were dirty, dangerous and of no value. John Dodwell, who has been active in restoring the waterways since 1961 and who chairs the Montgomery Canal Partnership, said that a 1970 conference in Oxford on the urban future of canals “was instrumental in turning the tide with town planners and highway engineers”. He said: “We need something similar now, especially with road builders.” Dodwell welcomed the IWA report and pointed out that there were no national planning guidelines covering the restoration of canals. One of the best examples of a self-contained, landlocked restoration that has improved life is in Stroud. The Cotswold canals restoration, a big project that will eventually reconnect the Severn and the Thames, has been heavily supported for 10 years by Stroud district council. Several miles have been reopened, and the council has moved its offices to Ebley Mill, which was a moribund part of town a few years ago. David Marshall, the council’s canal project manager, said: “The canal used to be a place to avoid – rubbish, derelict, broken locks – and now it’s a place to come to. What we’ve done so far stands on its own two feet.” The Cotswold project has more than 7,000 members, more than any other canal trust. Palmer, whose main aim is to generate more externally-funded projects on the waterways, said: “We want more people to be involved in the waterways. “The purpose of our report is to show that you don’t need to fully restore a canal in order to gain all the benefits. If you start with a small piece of restoration and plan it well you will get the benefits right from day one. It might be restoring a kilometre here, restoring a canalside warehouse that becomes a community centre. A lot of people just want somewhere safe to walk, or a cycle path. And when people see one kilometre restored they want the next, and the next…” One day it will be possible, as it was 150 years ago, to travel by inland waterways from Littlehampton in West Sussex to the Lake District. By road, on a good day, that would take six hours. At the more sedate pace of the canals, where the speed limit is 4mph, it would take weeks. But what’s the rush? The yearning for a slower life, revealed to millions of television viewers by Timothy West and Prunella Scales in the nine series of Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys, is one of the big attractions of the inland waterways. The most popular writer on canals was Tom Rolt, the godfather of canal restoration who helped found the IWA. In his hugely popular and still in-print 1944 book, Narrow Boat, he said that canal travel “seemed to me to fulfil in the fullest sense the meaning of travel as opposed to a mere blind hurrying from place to place”. He wrote: “To step down from some busy thoroughfare on to the quiet towpath of a canal, even in the heart of a town, is to step backward a hundred years or more and to see things in a different, and perhaps more balanced, perspective.” Fiona and Emma Wright could not agree more.Thursday morning in Caracas dawned much like any other day in the slow decline of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution: sparsely stocked shops were open, commuters boarded decaying metro trains and clapped-out buses to get to work. Schools were half-empty, buses were harder to find, but apart from that, the capital was mostly calm, and there was little indication of the previous day’s extraordinary events – or that two men now claim to be the country’s rightful ruler. To roars of approval from thousands of supporters – and the enthusiastic support of the Trump administration – Juan Guaidó, the former head of the national assembly, declared himself interim president on Wednesday. It was the most brazen challenge so far to the government of Nicolás Maduro who immediately dismissed the move as a coup attempt orchestrated by an alliance of the “fascist right” and “the coup-mongering, interventionist gringo empire”. Overnight, security forces clashed with protesters in the working-class neighborhood of Petare in eastern Caracas, and isolated incidents of looting occurred. Guaidó’s bold gamble set the scene for a political standoff: neither side seems willing to budge, and each leader can count on international support. What that means for Venezuelans remains far from clear, said Alejandro Rondón a 24-year-old management student who joined a pro-Maduro rally on Wednesday. “What Mr Guaidó did seems irresponsible to me: he is deceiving people – and he’s leading us into a constitutional labyrinth it will be hard for us to get out of.” Rondón allowed that there were frustrations with the government but he was confident that the people would stick with Maduro – if only out of loyalty to his late mentor and predecessor. “In moments like this we close ranks because of our respect for Hugo Chávez.” And despite growing uncertainty over the country’s future, life continued more or less as normal for Venezuelans on both sides of the political divide. “I almost didn’t get to work,” said Simara Romero a 35-year-old waitress, who crosses Caracas twice a day for her job at a coffee shop in the east of the city. “It took me an hour to find a bus that would bring me to work. And now that I’m here, we’ve only had two clients.” Venezuela has seen two previous attempts to unseat Maduro through mass street protests – both of which failed, prompting government crackdowns which left scores dead on both sides, and thousands jailed. So for many Caraqueños the latest unrest had an air of deja vu. “I can’t keep grinding my life to a halt every time there is trouble – it’s endless here. And besides, you kind of know the drill,” said Cristina Fernández, a graphics designer, as she carried her shopping to her car . “I didn’t take my kids to school, but other than that life must go on. It’s not like me stopping is going to bring down the government,” she said. “And I need to work because I need the money.” Nearly 90% of Venezuelans live in poverty, so it was perhaps understandable that for many, the daily struggle to get by should take priority over political theatre. “My president is Juan Guaidó – not because the US says so, but because I want him: I want a change. The country can’t go on as it is,” said Caty Aguilar, 54, as she headed out from home in Petare. She works three jobs as a house cleaner, and sells phone cards and individual cigarettes – but even that is barely enough to get by. Aguilar’s daughter is one of the 3 million Venezuelans who has fled the country, and occasionally sends remittances back home from Peru, but Aguilar also relies on the occasional box of subsidized food handed out by the government. She said a local official had warned her she would lose the subsidy if she attended anti-government protests, but she shrugged off the threat. “I just don’t care any more. I don’t think the government has the money to keep buying them much longer anyway,” she said. Across the country, Venezuelans turned to the strategies they have relied on in previous outbreaks of political drama. “I’ve stocked up on food – although there is hardly anything to buy in the shops,” said Victoria Daboin, 26, from the Andean city of Mérida in the west. “This [unrest] is typical, it always happens in the country when there’s uncertainty.” Fernández said that many Venezuelan families have come up with methods to get through periods of turmoil: “You stock up on food a couple of days when you see it coming. You keep kids home. You obsessively check Twitter and WhatsApp – but you no longer forward every post because most videos of burning cities or wounded people are fake or from Nicaragua,” she said. But this week’s developments have added a new element of uncertainty to familiar rituals: since Guaidó took his oath of office, neither he nor Maduro have made any significant public appearance or official indication of their plans. Internationally, supporters of the two men have lined up on familiar geopolitical lines: Russia, China, Cuba, Turkey and Nicaragua have backed Maduro; the US, the UK and most of Venezuela’s Latin American neighbours have backed Guaidó. But how that support plays out on the ground remains unclear. When Donald Trump official recognized Guaidó as president, Maduro responded quickly by giving all US diplomatic staff 72 hours to leave the country. However, Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said that US diplomats would remain in Venezuela because Maduro – who he described as an “ex-president” – lacks the legal authority to break off diplomatic relations”. An email sent by the US embassy to its citizens in Venezuela emphasised they “are keeping regular hours” and on Thursday morning the street outside the embassy was quiet, with no sign that Venezuelan security forces were preparing to enforce Maduro’s deadline. Additional reporting by Mariana ZúñigaThe nagging fear among the coterie of British officials most intimately involved in Brexit at Tuesday lunchtime in Whitehall had been that none of the amendments up in front of the Commons that evening would be backed by MPs. Some hard thinking went on throughout the day over how Theresa May could possibly persuade Brussels in such a scenario that there was a deal that parliament could support if the very same parliament showed no inclination of supporting anything. The passing of Sir Graham Brady’s amendment, sending the prime minister back to Brussels to replace the Irish backstop with an “alternative arrangement” was, to that extent, a relief. May had after all said the Commons would be sending a message to the EU that the Irish backstop was the problem – and that reopening the deal could save the day. Sadly for Downing Street – in the dialogue of the deaf that passes for the Brexit negotiations – a frustratingly garbled message is being received in Brussels. On Wednesday morning, EU officials were riffling through Hansard, the official record of parliament, to try to pin down what the prime minister was looking for, tearing their hair out at the sheer range of demands from the MPs who made up May’s majority on Tuesday evening. In Berlin, Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters that the British government needed to provide “concrete indications” of a way forward on the Irish border question, adding: “The opening of the exit deal is not on the table.” “Let’s wait and see how the UK government interprets yesterday’s vote,” said Poland’s minister for European affairs, Konrad Szymański. “What does ‘alternative arrangements’ mean?” In her statement to the Commons, May said she could seek “significant” changes to the Irish backstop to avoid a hard border, including a time limit on the UK being kept in a customs union, a unilateral exit clause, or an alternative plan known as the Malthouse compromise put forward by an unlikely group of Tory MPs, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former education secretary Nicky Morgan, and a former deputy mayor of London, Kit Malthouse. The Malthouse option is regarded as laughable in Brussels, and is unlikely to be pushed hard if at all by British negotiators. The backstop would be replaced by a free trade agreement with as-yet-unknown technology to avoid customs checks on the Irish border. It would also involve extending the transition period for an extra year until December 2021 to allow more time to agree a new trading relationship while reducing the size of the UK’s Brexit bill. It is dead in the water. The two other options – a time limit and a unilateral exit mechanism – have the distinct advantage of not being the Malthouse compromise, EU diplomats and officials say. But they too have both been resolutely rejected by the heads of state and government in the past. The hope in London is that as the clock runs down and the pressure in the cooker is increased, attitudes will change. The suggestion last week by the Polish foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, that a five-year time limit could be the solution is being seen by British optimists as one such straw in an allegedly favourable wind. The claim from the European commission’s chief spokesman that a hard border would be required in the event of a no-deal Brexit, and the subsequent insistence from the Irish government that a solution would be sought to avoid such a dangerous scenario, is seen as a further crack in the EU’s unity, although sources instead insist that it was more about Brussels trying to usher Dublin along in making its no-deal preparations. To an extent, however, the British government is right about nerves being on edge. EU diplomats admit that there is chatter in the corridors about time limits and exit mechanisms. “Something like a five-year limit would be the magic key to solve the whole issue; one would have to look at it,” one EU diplomat said. “At the end Ireland would need to think: do we want a definite problem on 30 March or do we want a possible problem in 2025? That is a choice they have to make.” But diplomats say it is not the member states who will need to make that call. “It depends very much on how the European commission and European council act,” the source said. “It is incredibly difficult for another member state to do these things. We saw that very well with the issue of Gibraltar and the Spanish. It is so hard for the member states to criticise their demands. When you don’t have the council or commission to rein those guys in it is very difficult. Same with Ireland. Germany is never going to do it. Tusk and Juncker have to say it. Or Martin Selmayr.” Selmayr, Juncker’s former chef de cabinet and the commission’s current secretary general, is now centre stage, a fact that makes some in London nervous. A German national who has had many scrapes with the British along the Brexit process, not least being accused of leaking discussions held between the prime minister and Juncker over dinner at Downing Street, Selmayr is pulling the strings now. He recently let it be known that he could see little point in offering anything before a vote made it crystal clear what could win round parliament. That clarity remains lacking. It would appear that Downing Street is in for a distinctly uncomfortable few weeks. The US health secretary sat for an interview with a man experts say is the leader of a hate group known for “defaming gays and lesbians”, just two days after Karen Pence, the US second lady, was criticized for teaching at a Christian school that bans homosexuality. Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, was interviewed by the Family Research Council President, Tony Perkins, at an anti-abortion event called ProLifeCon in mid-January. “We are the department of life,” Azar told Perkins, “from conception until natural death, through all of our programs.” He then rattled off victories – new policies that make it difficult to obtain an abortion, including allowing healthcare workers to refuse to treat patients based on moral objections. “The right of conscience is as foundational as the right to life.” Perkins has falsely claimed homosexuality is linked with pedophilia, advocated for parents’ rights to send children to harmful conversion therapy, and said about transgender people: “I mean, what’s to keep you from saying that you’re an animal?” The interview is the latest example of how a narrow slice of the American right has gained unprecedented access to the White House, as defining Trump statements have emboldened the antisemitic far right and Trump administration policies put the brakes on Muslim immigration. The access “has been remarkable, and candidly it has gone back to the campaign”, said Ralph Reed, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. While Reed and other evangelicals have celebrated the Trump administration’s hunger for their views and policies in line with them, critics argue it is running a de facto advisory committee in violation of federal law. “This is part of a story about the emboldened religious right that has a partnership at the highest level of government with the Trump and Pence administration,” said Rachel Laser, CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Together, they’re co-opting the term ‘religious freedom’ to advance their political agenda.” Paula White, a televangelist from Florida cited as the president’s chief spiritual adviser, told Charisma News she was able to make calls to the White House following Hurricane Maria. “You can do that because you have a seat there,” she said. Johnnie Moore, a Southern Baptist minister and former co-chair of the Trump campaign’s evangelical advisory board, estimated he’d visited the White House 20 times by early last year. Roughly 100 evangelical leaders were invited to the White House for a meal with all the trappings of an official state dinner. At the same time, Reed said many of the top priorities of evangelicals had been supported by the administration. He included “repeal of the Johnson amendment”, which prohibited nonprofits and houses of worship from endorsing political candidates, “Christian persecution around the world, the Obamacare conscience mandate … the pro-life issue, judicial nominations and judicial appointments, especially to the supreme court.” This summer, Trump successfully appointed the conservative Catholic Brett Kavanaugh to the US supreme court. The former attorney general Jeff Sessions announced a religious liberty taskforce, but the names of its members are not public. In the summer of 2017, Trump unexpectedly announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military. Last week, Azar’s health department exempted South Carolina from anti-discrimination statutes that protect same-sex couples from discrimination while adopting from faith-based agencies. Trump tweeted support for Bible study classes in state schools. In each instance, the Trump policy was widely supported by evangelical leaders, even as some were barely on the radar for traditional conservatives. At the same time, some evangelical leaders have provided cover for the Trump administration during moments of crisis. When Trump shut the government down over a border wall, the Faith and Freedom Coalition wrote a letter calling on Democrats to fund the wall. “We think that’s a Biblical principle,” said Reed. “There’s nothing in scripture anywhere about a barrier or a wall being immoral.” When the Trump administration separated children from their families at the border, White rejected arguments that Jesus was a refugee, Christian Today reported. White said: “Yes, he did live in Egypt for three and a half years. But it was not illegal. If he had broken the law then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah.” Members of the Trump family have also donated to leading evangelicals. Ivanka Trump gave $50,000 to the Texas megachurch leader Jack Graham to help reunite migrant families after her father’s administration separated them from their parents at the border. Ivanka remains a senier advisor to the president. In 2013, Graham’s church described nontraditional gender identity as “sexual identity confusion”. “It’s an ugly story about the politicization about one of America’s most sacred symbols: religious freedom,” said Laser. “It’s also a story about one narrow slice of America, the religious right, trying to hold on to their power in a country that is quickly becoming less white and less Christian. It is a true religious threat to Americans.” For evangelical leaders, however, the president’s interest in their views has been thrilling. “If you talk to enough of these leaders, they’re not only thrilled by the unprecedented access, and he’s so solicitous of their views as is the rest of the team at the White House, but also the decisions he makes,” said Reed. Trump, he said, “dances with the one he brought”.The Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón has attacked Netflix’s decision to offer Iberian Spanish subtitles for his Mexico City-set film Roma, calling it “parochial, ignorant and offensive to Spaniards themselves”. The semi-autobiographical film, which tells the story of Cleo, a maid to a middle-class Mexican family in the 1970s, has already won a string of awards and is nominated for a best film Bafta. It is also heavily tipped as an Oscars frontrunner. But while Cuarón has thanked Netflix for its support as the film’s distributor, he has questioned the streaming firm’s wisdom in offering Iberian Spanish subtitles when the film’s Mexican Spanish dialogue would hardly flummox viewers in Spain. “I think it’s very offensive to the Spanish public that they’ve given Roma Iberian Spanish subtitles,” the director told the Spanish news agency Efe on Tuesday. He went further the following day, telling El País: “It’s parochial, ignorant and offensive to Spaniards themselves. One of the things I most enjoy is the colour and texture of other accents.” The decision, he added, was akin to providing non-Iberian Spanish subtitles for a Pedro Almodóvar film. Cuarón’s concerns echoed those expressed last month by the Mexican writer Jordi Soler. The author called it “paternalistic, offensive and profoundly provincial”, and questioned the need to change perfectly obvious second-person plurals for a peninsular Spanish audience. “To top it all off,” he wrote on Twitter, “when they say ‘mamá’ [mum], the subtitles say ‘madre’ [mother].” On a more technical level, El País’s report also quibbled over the decision to change the Mexican chocolate snack gansito to the Spanish ganchito, which is a savoury relative of the Wotsit. Netflix have been approached for comment.The first budget proposal of California’s freshly sworn-in governor Gavin Newsom seeks to “make the California dream available to all”. It’s also a clear rebuke of Donald Trump’s national agenda. The budget includes six months of paid parental leave. Two years of free community college. Major funding for early childhood education programs. Healthcare expansion that includes more access for undocumented immigrants. “This is a reflection of our values,” Newsom said in his two-hour address unveiling the budget Thursday. Many of Newsom’s budgetary priorities are solidly progressive. Of the $209-bn budget, 53% goes toward education, from kindergarten through public state-funded higher education, and 28% goes toward health and human services. In addition to allocating $80.7bn for K-12 schools and community colleges, the governor’s budget includes $500m to encourage local governments to build emergency shelters and navigation centers for the homeless, and $25m to assist homeless disabled individuals in applying for disability benefits. It also includes $25m for an immigration rapid response program to assist community-based organizations and not-for-profits, and $75m for other immigration-related services such as assistance with naturalization and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals applications. At times, Newsom flat-out challenged the president in his Thursday address, whether it was over Trump’s debunked claims about California’s wildfire management, or individually mandated healthcare. “With all due respect to the president of the United States, he’s wrong,” Newsom said about healthcare. “California is right.” Some are already speculating that Newsom may be the most progressive governor in state history. But Jason McDaniel, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, said he sees Newsom’s push toward the left as less a personal evolution and more of one of the entire Democratic party. “Gavin Newsom used to position himself as liberal but somewhat moderate and acceptable to independent voters, so to speak, but that’s not necessarily where the Democratic party’s energy is right now,” McDaniel said. “I think he recognizes that. I think that shows he’s understanding the evolution of the Democratic party.” McDaniel said he believes the California Democratic party is entering into a era of “muscular liberalism”. “It’s not just about defending existing programs and maintaining them,” he said. “It’s about establishing new programs and new services that are responsive to modern needs. Paid family leave for six months is an example of that. Extending healthcare benefits to undocumented immigrants – that idea would have been hugely controversial 10, 15 years ago and now that’s barely generating a ripple.” This era of muscular liberalism was made possible, McDaniel said, in large part because of the state’s response to the longtime Republican rule of Congress. The flexing is only heightened now because of Trump. Tom Ammiano, a progressive former state assemblymember who served on San Francisco’s board of supervisors with Newsom says he’s seen the Democrats over his long political career skew to the left a number of times, only for party leadership to ultimately continue on a more risk-averse path. But Ammiano says he’s cautiously optimistic about what Newsom’s budget reveals about the party’s priorities. “Even with Newsom’s faults, it’s still a signal that, particularly in California, the party can stop being so nervous about issues,” Ammiano said.The US does not believe the official Saudi version of the murder of the Washington Post columnist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi is credible, a senior administration official has said. The official was speaking to the press before the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, embarks next week on an tour of eight Arab capitals, seeking to shore up support for US policy, and to reassure allies that the US is not abandoning the region despite Donald Trump’s order for the withdrawal of American troops from Syria. In Riyadh, Pompeo will talk to the Saudi leadership about the Khashoggi murder and the war in Yemen, urging support for the peace process begun in Stockholm last month. The Saudi authorities have charged 12 men for the killing on 2 October in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate. Five of the defendants face the death penalty if convicted. “The Saudis should have a credible narrative of what happens in the consulate and afterwards,” the senior official said. “I don’t think from our point of view, the narrative emerging from the Saudis or the legal process there has yet hit that threshold of credibility and accountability.” He added: “We have continued to work this issue with the Saudis, underscoring that it’s in their interest to pursue this as aggressively as they can to get this albatross off their backs and to get out from under the shadow of this incident which has caused such an outcry.” The CIA has assessed that the killing was ordered by the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a conclusion endorsed by the US Senate, but Trump and his senior officials, including Pompeo, have continued to insist the evidence against the prince, a key partner in the administration’s Middle East policy, is inconclusive. A spokeswoman for the UN’s top human rights official, Michelle Bachelet, said that the trial in Riyadh does not meet the requirements of an independent and international enquiry. “We, as you know, have been pressing for justice in the Khashoggi case for months now. We have been calling for an investigation, an independent investigation, with international involvement, and this has not happened yet,” the spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, said on Friday. Pompeo’s tour of the region will also include stops in Jordan, Egypt (where he will make a speech on US policy), Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait. Another senior official briefing the press before the trip, said that the secretary of state aimed to debunk a “false narrative” that the US was leaving the region, in the wake of Trump’s order for the withdrawal of an estimated 2,000 US troops in Syria. He said there was no timeline for the withdraw and that it would be “heavily coordinated” with US allies in the region so as not to let up pressure on Isis, or leave a vacuum in areas of northern and southern Syria where US troops have been operating. Asked about reports of plans to raise an Arab force to take over from US troops, the official said that the US is “exploring a variety of options ... but we don’t have any plans right now to facilitate Arab forces going into Syria”We don’t have to politicise every act of violence against a woman. It may relieve the anger and sadness to cry “this must stop”, or to blame the patriarchy, or to, as writer Clementine Ford did after the horrific murder of Aiia Maasarwe last week, demand men “pick a side” because “you are all implicated”. But it doesn’t help. Barely a day after Maasarwe’s body was found in Bundoora in Melbourne’s north, allegedly the victim of a random killer (a 20-year-old man has been charged with her rape and murder), the 21-year-old Palestinian’s death was grist for the gender culture wars, a pointless loop of generalisation, accusation and defensiveness. A few days before, there was a flurry about the Gillette’s “the best men can be” advertisement and what it said about masculinity in the age of #metoo. That was all good fun – and there were some important points made, too – but this was about a murder of a young exchange student. Some things are too serious for a hot take, too heart-breaking to be seized upon as evidence for well-worn positions. As he did after the murder of comedian Eurydice Dixon six months ago, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews spoke nonsense when he sent condolences to the family of Maasarwe. This crime was really about the “culture of violence against women”, he said. We have to stop “blaming ‘bad men’ for these crimes, while ignoring the sexist attitudes in our society that created them”. There is no evidence that I’m aware of that the extremely rare instances of random rape and murder of women – two or three a year nationwide according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, with little change in 30 years – has anything to do with casual sexist attitudes. There is no causal link between men refusing to “call out” a sexist joke and the rape and murder of a stranger. Some things are too serious for a hot take, too heart-breaking to be seized upon as evidence for well-worn positions. To suggest, as Ford did, that while not all men are responsible for such crimes (big of her), that “as you exist in a class of people who maintain these rights and privileges over others it is up to you to be active in destroying that”, is about as valid as suggesting Muslims have collective responsibility for a terrorist act committed in the name of Islam. The loop of fury is endless. Journalist and broadcaster Mike Carlton tweeted that Ford’s view was “bullshit” and I had some sympathy for his position. There are ugly trolling men out there, to be sure, but it is all but impossible for any man to express his distaste for trite accusations that unless men speak up against sexism – a good thing – they are collectively responsible for a horrific rape and murder. To do so proves the accuser’s point. Men are such snowflakes! How can the poor things be offended when WOMEN ARE BEING RAPED AND MURDERED IN OUR STREETS? Is this a culture war win-win, or lose-lose? To step back, we have a serious male violence problem (and it would be terrific if Andrews and others would discuss that more, although that doesn’t take away from the domestic violence crisis, undoubtedly gendered). Almost 90% of those who commit homicide (murder and manslaughter) are men. Men make up 64% of homicide victims too. Even in stranger homicides – much less common than murders of family members or acquaintances – 92% of victims are men. Why men are so overrepresented in violent crime is contested and horribly complicated. Some argue evolution, some biology (blame testosterone), but few would argue against culture playing a role. Generalisations on masculinity can stretch credulity – Ryan Gosling is nothing like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the American Psychological Association’s new guidelines that “traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression - is, on the whole, harmful” to boys are hardly radical. I worry about some of the assumptions. Most of the traits we tend to admire – leadership, protection of those who are vulnerable, kindness – we honour in women as much as men. And it’s not always bad for a woman to display a touch of aggression, either. But to generalise, men pay a high price for the strait jackets we put them in as boys – don’t show emotion, don’t be a sissy. They avoid going to the doctor, including when they need mental health treatment. They suicide at alarming levels. They abuse drug and alcohol more and they fill our jails. #Notallmen of course, but too many of them. All this is overlaid with race and sexual preference – Asian men are considered not sufficiently “masculine” and gay men turned into caricatures. Who would insist that this has nothing to do with the way boys are raised? Male violence is linked to all this, especially domestic violence where women are far more likely to be victims than men, and where there is evidence that those who hold stereotyped views of gender more readily tolerate violence against women. But with stranger homicide, there are more vital questions we need to ask. The majority of perpetrators and victims are men. For the tiny number of men who rape and kill women they don’t know, the evidence appears to be that they are likely to have been traumatised as children, physically, psychologically or sexually. They are likely to have been neglected. They are emotionally lonely and socially isolated. They may have a sadistic fantasy life. It could be a combination of those things, coupled with substance abuse and mental illness. Most men who have those experiences will never rape and murder, but a few will, with serious early intervention one possible answer. Are we picking up these kids early, intervening when we notice boys (and a few girls) with extreme violent tendencies? What does that intervention look like? Are we doing enough to protect children from ongoing abuse, knowing its consequences for the men they will become and for their potential victims? Are we treating serious mental illness as seriously as it warrants? Psychologist Professor James Ogloff has said that it is naïve to suggest that respectful relationship programs and calling out sexism – as worthy as they are – have anything to do with preventing such terrible crimes. Ogloff has studied these kinds of cases, including Adrian Bayley, who raped and killed Jill Meagher, and Scott Miller, who murdered and raped Yuk Ling Lau. Ogloff told a Melbourne court it was hard to draw any comparisons between the cases – Bayley had a history of violent rape, while Miller’s crime was out of character. There was evidence of ongoing physical abuse against Bayley when he was a child, and the accusations of sexual abuse. His borderline personality disorder was made worse by alcohol abuse. Professor Ogloff said Miller was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which had contributed to his offending, but had not caused it. He was remorseful and had attempted suicide in jail. Sometimes we fall back on calling people “evil”, and there is some comfort in that when a crime seems unfathomable. To make it fathomable by insisting such crimes are at one end of everyday sexism, might give us comfort, too. But it’s false comfort because it isn’t true. We owe the victims at least that. • Gay Alcorn is a Guardian Australia columnist.In a different political moment, Cardi B would probably be playing the biggest gig of her career next weekend, at the Super Bowl half-time show performing with – and probably upstaging – Maroon 5. But in December she made clear that although an official invitation had not yet been extended, she would be unmoved by the opportunity. A spokesperson said she wouldn’t perform because of how she felt about “Colin Kaepernick and the whole movement”. Cardi has been a vocal supporter of Kaepernick and has repeatedly called on NFL teams to hire him. Her Super Bowl refusal began a flurry of political activity. Last week, as the federal shutdown dragged on, she posted a video in which she said: “I just want to remind y’all because it’s been a little bit over three weeks, Trump is now ordering, as in summoning, federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid.” Cardi B just posted this on Instagram #CardiB2020 pic.twitter.com/zg4prRUfdG She dismissed comparisons to the 2013 shutdown, which took place under the Obama administration. “I don’t want to hear y’all motherfuckers talking about, ‘Oh, but Obama shutdown the government for 17 days.’ Yeah, bitch. For healthcare,” she said, going on to argue that allowing grandmas to get their blood pressure checked and ensuring the availability of gynaecological screenings was not comparable to Donald Trump’s border wall. A number of Democratic senators including Brian Schatz, Chris Murphy and Chuck Schumer tweeted that they wanted to share Cardi’s message but were concerned about its many expletives. Schatz eventually concluded that it “wouldn’t be senatorial”. Days later, the Fox News host Tomi Lahren mocked Cardi’s participation in the debate. Looks like @iamcardib is the latest genius political mind to endorse the Democrats. HA! Keep it up, guys! #MAGA2020 Cardi was quick to respond, tweeting: “Leave me alone I will dog walk you.” In response, Lahren said her “political rambling” was “moronic”, to which Cardi also replied. You’re so blinded with racism that you don’t even realize the decisions the president you root for is destroying the country you claim to love so much .You are a perfect example on no matter how educated or smart you think you are you still a SHEEP! https://t.co/khRpoOt16B It’s common for rightwing pundits like Lahren to attack entertainment stars for getting involved in politics, often complaining that they’re not informed enough to be involved in serious debate. It’s true that when Cardi came to fame she wasn’t known for her political activism. The press tended to focus on her idiosyncratic speaking style and start as an exotic dancer. But she has also been outspoken on a number of political issues. She has a clear stance on gun control, in favour of mental evaluations for gun purchasers. She thinks the minimum age to own a gun should be raised above 21. She supported Bernie Sanders in the presidential primaries – “Vote for Daddy Bernie, bitch” were her exact words – and has spoken about the ways “America is a scam”, saying: “If there’s a Republican president the only people who benefit are the ‘rich rich’, corporation owners.” Bernie returned the favour last year, tweeting: “Cardi B is right.” Cardi B is right. If we are really going to make America great we need to strengthen Social Security so that seniors are able to retire with the dignity they deserve. https://t.co/B8cOkoOdLc Once Trump took office she questioned his lack of a focus on Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria she tweeted: “Puerto Rico in crisis right now and Donald has not yet visited or talk about it. PR is part of the USA you know. Don’t forget about the island.” Cardi’s politics are not straightforwardly progressive. In an Instagram Live video last year she said the government gives handouts to the poor in order for them to remain poor – an idea that has often been voiced by Republican politicians. But her political hero is a Democrat. In April last year she told GQ about why she loves Franklin D Roosevelt. “He helped us get over the Depression, all while he was in a wheelchair. Like, this man was suffering from polio at the time of his presidency, and yet all he was worried about was trying to make America great – make America great again for real … if it wasn’t for him, old people wouldn’t even get social security.” But if Lahren needs further proof of Cardi’s credentials for commenting on politics perhaps she could give her a pop quiz. In the same GQ interview, Cardi bragged about being able to recite all the US presidents in order and her ability to provide trivia on any president on demand. When the GQ interviewer randomly selected James Buchanan, Cardi responded without a pause that he was the 15th president and the only president to be a bachelor. So far, she has managed to hold her own in any political skirmish. Today, the Daily Caller’s Stephanie Hamill attacked her for her twerking-heavy new video. In response, Cardi tweeted: “All these conservatives been harassing me and telling me the most disgusting things these past few days. Listen I’m not telling ya to turn liberal all I’m saying is to admit that your president is fuckin up this country right now!” Hamill had no response.Thirteen people applied online to divorce their partners on Christmas Day, according to government figures. During the period between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, 455 applications were lodged in England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said. The figures have been recorded for the first time as part of statistics showing 150,000 people accessed digital justice platforms in the past year. More than 300,000 people have registered with online justice services since 2015. The first full week of the new year is one of the busiest periods for initiating divorce proceedings, as unhappy couples, having failed to resolve their differences over Christmas, resort to specialist lawyers. The MoJ launched its online divorce petition service in May 2018. The department said it had reduced errors in application forms from 40% to less than 1%. More than 23,000 applications have been made since then. An online civil money claims service launched in March last year has received more than 39,000 applications. The MoJ said more than 85% of users reported being satisfied with both services. The initiatives are part of a £1bn court modernisation programme largely funded by the sale of courthouses across England and Wales, which the MoJ said were underused. The justice minister, Lucy Frazer, said: “These online services are already making a difference to people who use the justice system. As we reach this milestone, it’s encouraging to see people are reporting these services work well for them and are a better fit around their busy lives.” During 2018, more than 81,000 online pleas were registered for low-level motoring offences via the make-a-plea service, which was first introduced in 2014. The MoJ expects about 100 justice services to be available digitally by next year. Online services do not replace existing paper-based applications, but provide what the department said were quicker, easier routes for many claimants.No doubt someone somewhere will bring up Napoleon’s line about a good general being a lucky one, in the wake of this fun, helter-skelter, ultimately rather frantic 1-0 defeat of Tottenham. Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s limber-looking Manchester United did have their share of fortune too, in the course of a game that saw United attack with elan for an hour and collapse into a state of dogged near-exhaustion by the end. But this was not really luck – or at least not entirely. It was also a moment of quiet triumph for Solskjær, who came to Wembley not just with a plan but with a plan that worked while his team still had the lungs to put it into action, allowing Paul Pogba to pull himself up to his full height and make the game look small and easy and fun, something made just for him; and offering Jesse Lingard an unexpected forward-forager role that won the tactical battle in the period that won the game. The plan worked for about an hour. Steadily it ran out of steam. By the end it had gone out of the window. At which point: enter gloveman. Happily for both Solskjær and The Plan, David de Gea also happens to be a line-hogging, genius-level lime green octopus of a goalkeeper. He was hilariously good here, and good in that sui generis way, a style he has concocted out of his own brilliantly limber physical gifts. De Gea saved United at least four times with his feet, adopting that strange leg-wobbling Elvis move whereby he seems to lose all tension in his body, to collapse like a papier- mâché doll, feet flopping into just the right spot to block some goal-bound bullet. Hands? Who needs hands? De Gea can probably tile a floor with those toes. Spurs had 20 shots at Wembley but somehow none of them ever really looked like going in. De Gea may or may not be the best goalkeeper in the world. But on days like this he is surely the most compelling, most original and most thrillingly ice-cold. Lucky old Ole then. Or perhaps not entirely. Three weeks on from the departure of the king of pain United had come here with a kind of lightness about them. This is a patchwork team still but it is also demob happy and playing for the first time in five years with an adrenal sense of freedom. But this was also a first real glimpse of that baby-faced tactical brain at work. United had spent the last few days easing their mid-season muscles under the Gulf sun and working for the first time on some more intricate details. And so here we had it: pure, uncut Ole-ball, with an attack based around speed and mobility, and with a cute tactical jink at its heart. United kicked off in a 4-3-3, with Lingard stationed centrally between Rashford and Anthony Martial. Before long Lingard in the middle began to make sense as he ferreted about closing down Spurs’ central midfield. This was Lingard-as-Firmino, pressing and moving and stealing the ball while a pair of inside-forwards bombed on past him. It worked too, Lingard successfully disrupting the rhythms of this well-drilled Spurs machine. The opening goal, when it came, was one Solskjær might have dreamt of, tossing and turning beneath the air-conditioned chill of some seven-star Dubai palace. Lingard dropped deep, as was the plan, and stole the ball, as was the plan. Pogba took the ball, looked up early, as was the plan, and floated the most delicious pass over the top, with enough drift and curl to dawdle right into Rashford’s path. At moments like these Rashford is not just quick; he is exhilarating, leaving Jan Vertonghen looking like a man walking the wrong way down an airport travelator before sending the ball skimming low and hard into the far corner. United were lucky there again. Moments before the goal Moussa Sissoko had limped off, leaving a lack of tension in exactly the same place where Pogba was able to pause and pick out that pass. Spurs have no real replacement with Eric Dier out too. The squad is brittle behind the first eleven. But this is also design, resources, playing power in reserve. With United the job is how to arrange most effectively the talent at Solskjær’s disposal. It is not luck that Pogba should be playing like this. He is, lest we forget, the world’s most expensive midfielder, up against a team that cannot afford a midfield fill-in to cover a couple of injuries. And undoubtedly Solskjær has benefited in the last few weeks from United’s sheer latent scale, from the fact this is a ship too big ever to sink completely, a body so large it is never really stopped, just placed on pause, waiting for the next upward tide. The players did tire in the second half at Wembley. It is a gamble to press so hard early on, like a boxer putting in big early rounds in the hope of landing a decisive blow. Solskjær’s recklessness in going at Spurs like this was a thrilling thing in itself; and befitting too of a club so powerful it has always seemed to make its own luck and in exactly this kind of way.The Golden Globes red carpet featured its share of scene-stealers: Lady Gaga in a dress with a train several metres long , Timothee Chalamet in a sequin holster, Melissa McCarthy dressed like a gorgeous, purple wizard, and Billy Porter in an embellished silk cape with a hot pink lining. But all of them were arguably outshone by the consistent appearance of a woman in a violet dress handing out bottles of Fiji water. The “Fiji Water Girl” concept quickly caught the eye of viewers following the awards ceremony, as she appeared in the background of a variety of celebrity shots, photobombing Nicole Kidman, Dakota Fanning, Jim Carrey, Richard Madden, Emmy Rossum, Idris Elba and Judy Greer, among others. She was immediately noticed on Twitter, where some people called for her to be given the award for best supporting role. This woman holding FIJI Water at the #GoldenGlobes truly came to SERVE. pic.twitter.com/Aln54zOhKY She got mad because I got all the attention... Chillax, Nics. #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/R2lvKYsrdS Fiji Water is the official bottled water partner for the Golden Globes, supplying water for the event since 2015 and the brand was quick to capitalise on people’s interest, writing on Twitter: “We’re so glad everyone is talking about our water! *senses ominous presence* She’s right behind us, isn’t she?” “Richard looked handsome but hot in his velvet suit. Luckily, my Fiji tray provided him with the sweet relief he desperately needed 😉” pic.twitter.com/HAEHwTaBeu But people’s fascination had nothing to do with the water. It was the Fiji Water Girl herself who had captured people. There she was, standing behind Cody Fern. As Fern was photographed, instead of looking away demurely, the Fiji Water Girl stared directly down the lens with an arched eyebrow and a half-smile, daring the camera to consider her a less worthy subject than the actor in front of her. She did the same, again and again throughout the evening, with an unerring sense of where the camera is and her best angles. There are two kinds of people in the world: the ones who desperately tries to shine and the ones who shine bright like a diamond. #GoldenGlobes #fijiwatergirl pic.twitter.com/E67OeuBqcr It did not take long for a parody Twitter account to start, with someone tweeting on behalf of Fiji Water Girl. Please meet my cousins: Moet & Chandon Guy. Family first. #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/qQhPmYdsn4 As well as the water girl’s imagined response to claims she had “photobombed” celebrities. I've photobombed nobody. I was actually the only one there working. #BillsDontStopComing #GoldenGlobes https://t.co/TK1eaOkcaFI have had it up to here with the Conservative party. Not, perhaps, an unusual sentiment to find expressed in the Guardian. But, as a centre-right columnist, I do not start from the proposition that all Tories are inherently evil champions of “neoliberalism” (whatever that means), intent on maximising suffering and despair. I don’t express this contempt for the party blithely or to prove a point. This is not an exercise in rhetoric. I mean it. By way of explanation: I used to edit the Spectator. I am proud to chair a centre-right thinktank, Bright Blue. I wrote a book about the Conservative-led coalition. And if you think that’s bad, I was one of the few people in the world who applauded aspects of Theresa May’s 2017 manifesto (that’s a really select club). True, I have never been a Conservative member – on the whole, I don’t think journalists should join parties, though many excellent ones do so. But, as a believer in fiscal discipline, strong defence, robust anti-terrorism measures, the Atlantic alliance and the social liberalism of those who live in the here and now, I ought to be at ease with modern Conservatism. And I really am not. Brexit has tested that broad affinity to destruction – and in this respect I know that I speak for many on the centre-right. Yes, Jeremy Corbyn’s vacillation has been pathetic. But he is the leader of the opposition. It was a Conservative government that called the referendum, and a Conservative prime minister who – having squandered her party’s majority in the 2017 general election – bought the support of the Democratic Unionist party with taxpayers’ money so she could stay in power and finish the job. Brexit is a Tory gig. And it has brought out the very, very worst in the party. The attack on “Teutonic arrogance” by Mark Francois MP – in response to the warning by Airbus boss Tom Enders of the consequences of a no-deal withdrawal – would be easy to dismiss were it not the tip of a nativist iceberg. It is uniquely dispiriting to see intelligent Conservatives cheerleading or appeasing this drive towards disaster Brexit has summoned the very worst demons that lurk in the Conservative psyche, liberating Tories to bellow nonsense about the second world war, the blitz spirit and pseudo-Churchillian defiance. It has fatally compounded the party’s demented fixation with immigration and distracted it from the true challenges of the 21st century. Parliament used to be the crucible of the Conservative ethos: the place where history met contemporary discourse. Now, we have MP Jacob Rees-Mogg – a man still spoken of by supposedly serious colleagues as a leadership contender – urging Theresa May to suspend the legislature if it seeks to thwart a no-deal Brexit. In the cabinet, we have the trade secretary, Liam Fox, saying that government can be the servant of the people or the servant of parliament, but it cannot be both. A chilling populism is now creeping into the language of mainstream Toryism: the language of treachery, snarling tribalism and impatience with anything that smacks of prudence, compromise or caution. In the Conservative stockade, emotion has toppled fact. This, in the end, is the unforgivable act of intellectual surrender. By tradition, the strongest claim the Tories have had to office is a belief that ideology should be subordinated to reality. Even Margaret Thatcher – the most explicitly ideological of Conservative prime ministers – was ousted to stop the poll tax and to salvage Britain’s relations with Europe. As Michael Portillo put it a few months after he had lost his seat in 1997: “It is extremely important for the Conservative party to deal with the world as it now is.” This was the animating idea behind what became Tory modernisation and the basis of David Cameron’s leadership campaign in 2005: the notion that a centre-right party should, on principle, celebrate the diversity of contemporary life and the plurality of modern society. Alas, that project – which reached its high point in Cameron’s legislation for marriage equality in 2013 – now lies in ashes. The whole point of Conservatism is not to submit to the siren call of teleology: the belief that history has an implacable direction. In a crisis of this nature, the proper role of Tories should be to cut through the infantile rhetoric, robotic platitudes and Vogon insistence that “resistance is useless!”, and show true statesmanship. Instead, we see – with some outstanding exceptions – a party cravenly fetishising the 2016 referendum as if no further expression of popular opinion on Brexit were possible; behaving as if the only thing that matters is to get out of the EU by 29 March, regardless of the overwhelming empirical evidence that there is no viable deal, and that a no-deal exit would be a total catastrophe (necessitating, among many other unpleasant measures, a framework for martial law). Look at them all: fiddling with the backstop while the treaty of Rome burns (or at least the page that bears Edward Heath’s signature). It is uniquely dispiriting to see intelligent Conservatives cheerleading or appeasing this drive towards disaster. Politicians always tell me that the demands of the life are worth it because of the agency you get to exercise. Well, where is that agency right now? Where are the Tories prepared to risk their careers and to say that the instruction given by the electorate in 2016 cannot be delivered in a way that does not do terrible harm to those same voters and their children? To be clear: I haven’t undergone a conversion. My values have not changed. But the Conservative party is morphing into something I find alien and repellent. Like a listing galleon, holed below the waterline, it sails away stubbornly; dragging the nation towards a storm of unknown adversity, peril and pain. • Matthew d’Ancona is a Guardian columnistWith the majority of sports people what you see is essentially what you get. With Maro Itoje it is more complicated. “Are you asking about Maro the person or Maro the rugby player?” he says, more than once. Not everyone would draw a major distinction but, in Itoje’s mind, there is clearly a sizeable gap. That familiar terrace refrain – “There’s only one Maro Itoje!” – is not really applicable in his case. This is no identikit jock, thinking only of his next training session. He may be a multitalented athlete, potentially the standout player of his generation, but talk too much about rugby and his eyes glaze over. He is far more animated when discussing his favourite political podcasts – “My political persuasion is centre-left so I have a natural leaning towards that side of things” – the writing of Afua Hirsch and Simon Sinek or the West End shows – “I love Les Misérables!” – he has enjoyed most. It makes him the most multifaceted member of England’s squad heading into the Six Nations. Should England enjoy an outstanding 2019, culminating in a successful World Cup in Japan, the 24-year-old could begin to be mentioned in the same breath as his friend Anthony Joshua, the world heavyweight champion. Both grew up in north London and share a similarly proud Nigerian heritage; both could be national sporting icons by Christmas. English rugby has not always been great at inspiring black inner-city youth but Itoje could change all that. As anyone who saw him play for Saracens against Glasgow recently will testify, there is little this versatile octopus cannot do. At one point he stole a lineout ball, shaped to kick before dummying instead and then rampaged away upfield, a dazzling medley not normally the preserve of 6ft 5in tall, 18st English forwards. It is probably just a matter of time before he relieves Owen Farrell of the kicking tee. Up high, down low, no northern hemisphere second-row has such a ridiculously broad skill palate. To date it has delivered him 26 England caps, a starting Test role for the Lions and an impressive stack of domestic and European trophies with Saracens. Last week he finalised a hefty new club contract until 2022, prompting a resigned sigh from everyone else in Europe. His enforced six-week injury layoff over Christmas has, if anything, refreshed him and sharpened his appetite for the challenges ahead. Maybe that is why he is in such a good mood at a Land Rover off-road driving day near Luton. In many ways he has the ideal level of celebrity; famous enough to be highly paid and asked to grace the front cover of the October edition of Tatler with his shirt off but not such public property that he is hassled in the street. “I’m not saying I go unrecognised but I reckon some of the guys in Leicester, Exeter or Gloucester – proper rugby towns – might be disturbed a bit more than I am. I’ve got a little bit of a profile but in London there are so many other things going on.” He lives with his brother Jeremy in Mill Hill, not far from Allianz Park, and is so laid back on occasions that even holding a book open can be a struggle. “I like reading but books put me to sleep. I read them, it makes me feel a bit tired and I end up napping. I’ve started listening to audio books instead.” Can this really be the same relentlessly energised competitor who drives opponents, particularly Glaswegians, to distraction? Does he sometimes even recognise the guy wearing No 4? “I’m the same person but the characteristics are different. On the pitch I just want to win and do my thing to help the team succeed. That’s my main driver most of the time. As much as possible – and it’s not always possible – I try to direct my energy towards my team. Sometimes, though, it does spill over towards the opposition.” He emits a throaty chuckle. “I suppose it’s just part of me.” Does that perhaps suggest a sizeable ego? “If you don’t have a little bit of ego you’re not going to get very far. All top players have a bit of an ego. It’s about making sure it’s not detrimental to the team or blocking your ability to learn. You need a growth mindset.” Rugby union, and England, can consider themselves lucky to have him, given his parents were not remotely rugby people. Despite attending a school just 150 yards from Bramley Road, Saracens’ old amateur base, he recalls “only touching a rugby ball once when we played tag. We used to do our PE sessions there but I didn’t really know what was going on. A lot of England players started at four or five years old. I never played mini rugby.” How much other black or immigrant talent never even makes it to a rugby pitch, let alone Twickenham? Plenty, Itoje reckons. “I definitely think there is untapped potential within that community. It’s just about enticing them to join their local club. And playing more rugby in state secondary schools. There’s a lot of rugby played in London but it very much depends what school you go to.” Itoje went to Harrow on a sports scholarship and his parents, Efe and Florence, now cannot get enough of rugby. “They are superfans. When they are in the country they come to every Saracens game. They even come to second-team games when I’m not playing. They live for England games.” It was different back in the day. “They just saw it as a hobby. They’d say: ‘As long as you get good grades we’ll support you.’ Luckily I was able to do that.” Now, though, some daunting physical tests await, starting in Dublin on Saturday. Last year England trailed in fifth in the Six Nations while Ireland completed a famous grand slam. From an English perspective, no further incentive is required. “We want to win the Six Nations – and to do that we need to beat these guys. There’s no two ways about it, we need to beat them. It won’t be easy but we’ll be ready.” And the World Cup? If Joshua is ready for some big world title challenges this year, so is Itoje. “The equivalent for me is winning the World Cup. That’s definitely the goal. I’d be lying if I said there was anything else I’m aiming for in 2019. There will be a lot of big moments for club and country this year but we need to make sure we get the job done.” He may occasionally feel like two different people but, right now, both share the same objective. Maro Itoje is a Land Rover ambassador. Land Rover has a heritage in rugby, sharing and understanding the values of the sport. @LandRoverRugbyMy walk to work is not a long one – 15 minutes at a decent clip. Nor is it a particularly lovely one, as it largely involves trudging down Caledonian Road, a London high street so tatty, it features in the next series of The Crown as a stand-in for grim 70s Britain. The TV crew didn’t even have to add dated shop signs or abandoned store fronts, since they all still come as standard. But the great advantage of my commute is that it’s above ground. On the tube, all you notice is how delayed your train is and how badly it smells. Overground, you watch your neighbourhood changing around you, and the biggest change this past year has been the number of homeless people I pass on my way to work. Along Regent’s Canal, which runs through the £3bn King’s Cross development, in the course of which derelict buildings and nightclubs were pushed out for Google HQ, luxury apartments and, yes, the Guardian offices, there is now a row of pop-up tents that weren’t there this time last year. King’s Cross train station has also had a fancy makeover, with a pretty piazza where photogenic stalls sell artisanal bread. But the most noticeable new feature is the bank of mattresses that lies in front of it, where homeless people sit quietly, watching commuters drink £3 coffees. When my family drove past the station during the Christmas break, I watched two men approaching cars stopped at red lights to beg for change, something I hadn’t seen since I lived in the US. Up on Caledonian Road, public phone booths are filled by day with flattened cardboard boxes, waiting to be used as mattresses at night. Before Christmas, the housing secretary James Brokenshire insisted that the fact the number of people sleeping rough has more than doubled since 2010 has nothing to do with Tory policies. Rather, he said, it was due to drug addiction, family breakdown and the number of foreigners. Brokenshire has since rowed back from this palpably ludicrous claim, admitting that Tories “need to ask ourselves some very hard questions”. Anyone who has seen this for themselves – which is to say, everyone who lives in a British city – could have told him that, because what has really changed is not just the number of homeless people, but who these homeless people are. At Shelter from the Storm, my local shelter, the co-founder Sheila Scott told me last week that, when she started a decade ago, the people who stayed were “town-square drinkers” and foreign itinerants. Now, half the inhabitants have regular jobs and three-quarters are British. Some leave every night at 2am to work at Amazon factories; some are Uber drivers who took out too many loans to buy their car to do their job. Most have been driven out of their properties by private landlords – and you have only to look at Caledonian Road to see the damage such landlords can do. Many of the shopkeepers have been driven out by what one described to me as “deliberately high rents”, their stores turned into expensive flats. One private landlord, Andrew Panayi, owns 200 properties in the area, and even though he has been fined for renting substandard properties (one tenant called them “worse than prison cells”), he still keeps a tight grip on the street. These landlords exploit the real problem, which is a lack of social housing and the decimation of social services. Scott says councils now send people directly to her, as they have nowhere else to put them. But they will soon have to send them to a new address: Shelter from the Storm is moving, because a property developer has bought the lot they currently stand on; like so many of the people the charity helps, it is being pushed out of the area. Down the road is the Copenhagen Street food bank, founded last year by Joan Sampson, a single mother, after she noticed what she describes as “the desperate need” in the area. That need has worsened since: more than 200 people are registered with the bank and the number is constantly rising. The day I stopped by, visitors were patiently queueing to pick up their seven items (10 if they have children). But these items have to last even longer now: a lack of funds means the food bank, once weekly, can open only every other week. My walk to work is a march along the raggedy seam of Britain’s unspooling social fabric, another thread coming loose every day. But people such as Scott and Sampson are stepping in where the government has so roundly failed, trying – against enormous odds – to help people who could so easily be us. They shouldn’t have to do this, and yet they do. So while the government-caused need for it is heartbreaking, my neighbours’ response is heartening. And in 2019, that is something to cling to.I wouldn’t say that I’m a hoarder, exactly, but I will admit that there is no shelf in my flat left unadorned with photographs or trinkets or slightly pathetic miniature plants that could do with a good drink. As someone who moves house more often than I buy a new winter coat, this is not a practical trait, but still, I can find ledges where you would not believe. That flat part on top of the mirror? Perfect for postcards. Weird bit along the stairs that doesn’t seem to have any structural purpose? Exactly the right place for an exhibition of the exhibitions I’ve seen over the last couple of years, perked up with some holiday snaps and another plant. While it’s not quite at Channel 4 documentary intervention levels yet, I unashamedly love stuff. Two words, then, strike fear in my heart: “Marie” and “Kondo”. At this time of year, it’s very difficult to avoid any mention of the Japanese guru’s minimalist philosophies, but I have a pathological aversion to advice on cutting back on stuff. But now that she has her own show on Netflix, and my algorithm thinks I need to watch it, she has become impossible to avoid. Kondo is taking the tips she developed in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying and guiding real people through the process, in a series that comes off as a cross between Queer Eye, Supernanny and How Clean Is Your House?, which, come to think of it, explains why that algorithm is so insistent that it’s for me. So, persuaded by constant exposure, I gave in and watched Kondo do her thing. It is exactly the kind of television I enjoy: it’s a nose around other people’s lives, with an uplifting feelgood message to boot. But I am yet to be converted by the pull of less stuff (on a separate note, David Attenborough might have something to say about all those bin bags full of rubbish and plastic boxes for “organising”). While I understand that having three separate “crap drawers” in different rooms may not be bringing me joy, I blench at the idea of neat boxes and bare shelves. My grandparents had houses brimming with photographs and ornaments, essentially memories made physical. They were happy places to be, for many reasons, and their homes were so distinctively theirs, in part because of all the stuff they had. Having said that, I’m only a couple of episodes in and I am starting to wonder if a cupboard full of Nokia chargers has quite the same emotional pull. Perhaps Marie Kondo will bring me joy after all. Mid-January seems too soon to stake a claim on the most 2019 news story of 2019, but a strong candidate has emerged. The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, has faced significant scrutiny during the first few days of taking her seat, for calling for a 70% tax rate (not across the board, as was wilfully misunderstood, but for earnings beyond $10m) and for daring to dance on camera before she was a public figure. Last week, an unexpected pocket of the internet came to her rescue by helping to debunk a fake nude picture that has been circulating online. The photograph, of a woman in a bath with a candle, vaping, was published on a rightwing news site, having been captioned as an Instagram post by the congresswoman from 2016. In fact, as reported by Motherboard, the picture had been discredited by a foot fetish website called wikiFeet, whose users cross-referenced existing pictures of Ocasio-Cortez’s feet and concluded that these were, in fact, not the same ones. “I’ve sucked enough toes in my life to recognise when something doesn’t look right,” one user told the reporter. Those who claim that civil discourse is disintegrating may be surprised to learn of Wikifeet’s contribution to righting these wrongs, but we live in confusing times. “Women in leadership face more scrutiny. Period,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez, condemning the news site that published the picture, while adding that tabloids had offered her boyfriend’s family money for stories about her. This is not scrutiny. This is a red flag, a warning, an attempt to dissuade others like her. “If they want to make an example out of me, I will gladly be one,” she later wrote. “Hopefully, we can be an example of dedication, courage and persistence under fire.” Not since Alfie Deyes has a famous person’s denial that she is a Tory been so headline-worthy. While YouTuber Deyes filmed his bewilderment that Twitter kept calling him one – “I just want to 100% clear that up right now that I am not a Tory,” he said, after a brief backlash against a video of him living on £1 a day for entertainment – Kate Bush has felt the need to make a rare public statement in order to clarify comments she made in 2016 about Theresa May. “With no response from me to the latest resurfacing of this article, it could make it seem like I am a Tory supporter which I want to make it clear I am not,” she explained. She added that she spoke about May only because she “greatly disliked the behaviour of the previous PM, who at that point I felt had abandoned us”. You just know that David Cameron has got a Kate Bush playlist that he wheels out for dinner parties. I know it’s adolescent to find it as satisfying as I do, but the idea that Bush might have just ruined the soundtrack to Cameron’s summer soirees is one I quite enjoy. • Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnistIt would be wrong to suggest a club with Liverpool’s proud history will be completely unmoved by a third-round elimination from a competition they have won seven times. They do, however, clearly have other priorities and it was certainly difficult to remember the last time a team from Anfield has seemed as indifferent, blasé even, about the FA Cup as Jürgen Klopp’s team did during this defeat. The best time to judge whether Klopp was right to take such a risk will come at the end of the season, when we know whether the current Premier League leaders have held their position at the top of the table. For now, however, all that really can be said is they were obliging opponents for a Wolves side that fully took advantage of Klopp’s team selection and won a rather dishevelled tie with a firecracker of a shot from Rúben Neves. In truth Wolves made it into the fourth round despite their own performance that seldom rated above six out of ten. Equally, it was never likely they would have to reach their peak levels on a night when Liverpool’s approach could be accurately gauged by the fact Klopp started with two teenage debutants, Curtis Jones and Rafael Camacho, and a 16-year-old, Ki-Jana Hoever, was brought on after six minutes because of a hamstring injury to Dejan Lovren. Hoever, recruited from the Ajax academy, became only the third man – or, rather, boy – of that age to appear for Liverpool in the club’s entire history and their youngest ever player in the FA Cup. Klopp would still be entitled to point out his starting XI included nine full internationals and, in a prickly press conference afterwards, he insisted he had taken the game seriously. “We’re not here to make a record for the world’s youngest team,” he said. “The boys train with us and the reason they train with us is because they are good enough. We train ten v ten and, believe me, they do much better than they did tonight.” He went on to say the principal reason why Liverpool struggled to make better use of the ball was the swirling wind and mentioned it again when summarising the winning goal. Was he disappointed with the senior players? “They can do much better,” he concluded. All the same there could be little doubt about his priorities, with Alisson, Virgil van Dijk and Andy Robertson among those given the night off. Liverpool managed only nine touches inside the opposition penalty area. Divock Origi’s goal to make it 1-1, after Raul Jiménez had opened the scoring for Wolves, was one of only two shots on target from the away side and, to put it another way, Lovren’s early departure meant Klopp experimenting with a back four comprising one player who is not old enough to start driving lessons, an 18-year-old at right-back, a reserve left-back in the shape of Alberto Moreno and Fabinho, who would usually be found in midfield, operating as a centre-half. For Wolves it was a golden opportunity to reach the fourth round and, if anything, they could conceivably have made it an easier night. As it was, it took a while before Nuno Espírito Santo’s players took heed of the “Cup Inspiration” headline on the back of the Wolverhampton Express & Star, urging them to win for the recently deceased Bill Slater, who captained the side to their last FA Cup triumph in 1960. The tempo was far too slow early on, from both sides, and it was surprising perhaps that it was not until Jiménez’s 38th-minute goal that the home side exerted any real control. James Milner lost possession just inside the opposition half. Diogo Jota slipped the ball to Jiménez and he simply kept running, avoiding Fabinho, cutting in diagonally from the right and beating Simon Mignolet with a diagonal finish just inside the post. Liverpool had to improve in the second half and, six minutes after the restart, they were level. Milner had the first attempt and, when the ball rebounded to Origi, he adjusted his feet before sending a left-footed shot past John Ruddy in the home goal. It was a splendid strike but the game’s outstanding moment came four minutes later when Neves collected the ball almost 30 yards out. As soon as his first touch created the shooting angle, there was no doubt he was going to let fly. His shot was powerfully struck but it was the precision, just inside the near post, and the way the ball moved in midair, with so much late dip, that deceived Mignolet. “Such a beautiful goal,” Santo said afterwards. “It’s something he does and we encourage him to do.” Klopp responded by bringing on Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino in the 70th minute and, finally, Liverpool started to play with a bit more urgency. The closest they came to another equaliser was Xherdan Shaqiri curling a free-kick against the woodwork, via Ruddy’s fingertips, and Hoever in particular showed glimpses of his talent for the future. Yet Klopp must have been disappointed that his understudies, Daniel Sturridge in particular, could not make a more favourable impact and the reward for Wolves is a fourth-round tie at either Shrewsbury Town or Stoke City.Donald Trump is a master at manufacturing faux crises. He is not a master at faking humanitarian concern. He thought that speaking from the Oval Office and sitting behind the Resolute desk would help him invoke a grave national crisis. It’s the setting that JFK used to tell the country about life-threatening Cuban missiles. It’s where George W Bush tried to calm the country after 9/11. Speaking robotically and looking isolated and lonely, the president tried to sell his unnecessary and inhumane $5bn border wall using stale arguments we have heard many times before. The speech sounded like campaign rhetoric and contained nothing new. In a fundraising letter I received by email in the afternoon, the president’s naked political aims were obvious. “I want to know who stood with me when it mattered most so I’ve asked my team to send me a list of EVERY AMERICAN PATRIOT who donates to the Official Secure the Border Fund.” Then came the tin cup. Mainly the speech was the same litany of lies Trump has told to try to strong-arm Congress into paying for his wall “Please make a special contribution of $5 by 9PM EST to our Official Secure the Border Fund to have your name sent to me after my speech.” After the short speech, another fundraising plea arrived, extending the deadline. In the speech, he unsuccessfully argued (as he has all along) that the Democrats are to blame for the government shutdown that has already lasted 19 days, the second longest ever. The only reason the government is shut down is because of Trump’s stubborn demand that his wall be funded. There was some criticism of the television networks for agreeing to forgo regular programming to carry the president’s first Oval Office address live. While it’s normal to grant such presidential requests, this is not a normal presidency and the musty, blatantly partisan speech the president gave creates a strong case for turning him down next time. Mainly the speech was the same litany of lies the president has told to try to strong-arm Congress into paying for his wall. He actually dropped one of his administration’s lies – that 4,000 terrorists have crossed into the country from the porous southern border. His press secretary, Sarah Sanders, got demolished on Fox News over the weekend when anchor Chris Wallace revealed the claim to be nonsense. The State Department has said that no terrorists have been found crossing the southern border from Mexico into the US, and said in a 2017 report that there was “no credible evidence” indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico or sent operatives into the US. He also added a couple of new whoppers. The first was that Democrats want the wall to be steel, not concrete. The second was a pathetic attempt to fulfil his promise that Mexico would pay for his wall by claiming that a new trade deal with Mexico will generate the equivalent of the cost of the wall. He did a little shape-shifting. Instead of framing his faux crisis mainly as a national security crisis that requires the involvement of American troops, he called it a humanitarian crisis. He invoked a “crisis of the soul”, and the suffering of children in detention, but he looked uncomfortable even saying the word soul. He spoke of a “cycle of human suffering that I am determined to end”. The only time the president seemed revved-up was during the gory part of his script, when he recited a litany of brutal murders of Americans by “illegal aliens”. The cheapest line in the speech was asking, “How much more American blood must be shed for Congress to do its job?”. Even the lies were stale. There is no flood of illegal immigrants coming across the 1,900-mile border with Mexico. Numbers are down from a peak in 2000. What’s different and more tragic now is the number of migrants traveling with children. In November, the number of migrant families with children exceeded 25,000 – the highest number ever recorded. The heroin and fentanyl that the president used as an ingredient of his crisis do not come across the southern border. According to drug threat assessments from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the majority of the drugs that cross the border are brought in through official ports of entry. This has been the case for years. There are certainly grave humanitarian problems at the border, but they are almost all caused by the Trump administration’s cruel arrest, detention and asylum policies. Many of the new Trump immigration edicts, unsurprisingly, have been struck down by federal courts. Two children have already died. Children are being housed in detention centers built for single male adults that were never intended for children. Then there are the hundreds of migrants for whom there is no adequate shelter who are being literally dumped by Trump administration officials on to the streets of cities like El Paso. “We’re dealing with the symptoms of the root cause, which is the lack of a rational immigration policy from Washington, and both sides are culpable,” Dee Margo, the mayor of El Paso, told the New York Times. By making asylum requests nearly impossible to process, the people waiting to file are being detained for much lengthier periods. They are arriving sicker. The number of detainees at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities has reached its highest point ever, with an average daily population of 45,200 single adults and family units. The presidential address was so lame that it seemed to have taken the steam out of the rebuttal delivered by the Democratic leaders, too. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who spoke first, said the government could easily re-open if the shutdown and border security were decoupled. That’s common sense, and even Republicans are growing impatient with the shutdown. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of appealing “to fear not facts” and governing by “temper tantrum”. The politically inspired crisis is a familiar Trump ploy. In the weeks leading up to the November election, Trump used the “caravan invasion” to declare a grave national security threat. Then he lost the House to the Democrats and suddenly there were no more presidential tweets about the so-called invasion. This speech was such a nothing that it left some in the audience wondering whether the urgency the White House claimed was intended to distract from the raft of new revelations from Mueller’s Russia investigation. For Donald Trump, that’s a real crisis. • Jill Abramson is a Guardian columnistThere are tiny blue mussels on the fishmonger’s slab, their shells shut tight, glistening among the hills and valleys of crushed ice. I buy 1kg. Half will be steamed and shelled, their orange and ivory flesh tossed with crisp shavings of fennel and segments of something citrus; the others will be baked in a vegetable-crusted pie with smoked fish and tarragon. I am ruthless when it comes to cleaning mussels I am not the most meticulous of cooks, but I am ruthless when it comes to cleaning mussels. They clatter into the sink then get an inspection worthy of CSI. Each one is checked for signs of vibrant life, by which I mean tightly clamped shells or, if they are open, hinges that snap shut swiftly when tapped on the side of the sink. Any pesky wisps of beard are tugged from the closed shells and anything broken or cracked gets the heave-ho. Casting session over, the mussels are thoroughly washed in freezing water and hastily thrown into a deep pan and steamed for a minute or two until their shells open. The temptation to serve them as they are is almost irresistible, perhaps with nothing more than a pot of butter-yellow garlic mayonnaise and some crisp-crusted bread. But I resist, there is more than just myself to feed. I want salad and they want pie. You could use potatoes, blanched for 5 minutes, in place of the celeriac. Serves 4 smoked haddock fillet 350gmilk 500mlwater 100mlbay leaves 3black peppercorns 6mussels 500gleeks 2, large (600g)butter 90gtarragon 5 stemsplain flour 2 tbspceleriac 700g Put the fish in a pan, pour in the milk and water, bay leaves and peppercorns and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat, cover with a lid and leave for 20 minutes. Wash, check and remove the beards of the mussels as before, then tip them into a deep pan with a wine glass of water and bring to the boil. Cover with a lid and cook for 2 or 3 minutes until the shells have opened. Remove from the heat, pull out the mussels from their shells and discard the shells. Strain the liquor into the haddock pan. Discard the thick, dark green part of the leeks. Cut the leeks into pencil-thick rounds and rinse in cold water. Melt 50g of the butter in the empty mussel pan, add the leeks and cook on a low heat for 10 minutes or so, turning regularly so they do not brown. Remove the haddock from the pan and break into large flakes, discarding the skin as you go. Remove the leaves from the tarragon, discard the stems and roughly chop the leaves. Stir the flour into the leeks and cook for 2 minutes. Ladle in 300ml of the liquid from the haddock pan. Mix well and leave to cook for 5 minutes over a low heat, stirring regularly. Gently fold the haddock, mussels and tarragon into the leeks and season with salt and black pepper, then transfer to a 24cm pie dish. Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. Peel the celeriac and cut into slices no thicker than a £1 coin. Cut discs from the slices using a 5cm round cutter (save trimmings for the stockpot). Melt the remaining butter in a small pan, season with black pepper then add the discs of celeriac and toss to coat in the butter. Place the celeriac on top of the pie and bake for 45 minutes or until golden. There is something curiously appealing about a refreshing salad on a cold day. The crispness of fennel, the citrus notes of grapefruit and the clean, aniseed notes of fresh dill contrast with the rest of the carb-heavy winter offerings. Serves 3 mussels 500gpink grapefruit 2, chilledfennel 1 bulbcucumber half a large oneparsley leaves a handfuldill fronds a handfulFor the dressing:reserved grapefruit juice 3 tbspolive oil 5 tbspsmall capers 2 tsp Wash, check and remove the beards of the mussels. Tip the mussels into a large, deep pan. Pour in a cupful of water and place over a high heat, cover the pan with a tightly fitting lid. Bring to the boil then leave to steam for 2 or 3 minutes until the shells have opened. Remove from the heat, leaving them in the pan. The crispness of the fennel and the citrus notes of grapefruit are a contrast to many winter offerings Remove the skin from the grapefruit with a sharp knife then remove the segments, saving as much juice as possible. Cut the fennel in half from tip to base and then into paper-thin slices and add to the grapefruit, tossing the fennel with the grapefruit juice to prevent it discolouring. Peel the cucumber, cut it in half lengthways then remove the seeds and core with a teaspoon. Cut into 1cm thick pieces and add to the grapefruit. Pull the parsley leaves from their stalks, add to the salad then roughly chop the dill and fold that in, too. In a small bowl mix together 3 tbsp of the reserved grapefruit juice (you can drink the rest), the olive oil, a grinding of salt and black pepper and the capers. Remove the mussels from their shells and add them to the dressing, then fold through the fennel and grapefruit, and serve. The Observer aims to publish recipes for fish rated as sustainable by the Marine Conservation Society’s Good Fish Guide Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlaterThe dilemma I’m 28 and was born and raised in a northern mining town. I went to university quite late in life, trained to be a social worker and now work in child protection, which I love. When I went to university, I left that old life completely and had a few great years. I now don’t have anything to do with my family. My current job makes me realise the effect my childhood experiences have had on me, and the impact of some really awful things that were going on in my family. Nothing specifically bad happened to me, but our lives are so different now. I live in the south and love my life. But I feel guilty that I haven’t spoken to my mum or siblings for years, that anything could have happened to them and I wouldn’t even know. I feel bad for not wanting to get in touch, and I know I’ll regret it if I don’t. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I tell people all the time about the importance of family on our identity and sense of belonging, but I don’t get any of that myself. I don’t know what I’m scared of. Mariella replies Me neither. Not specifically, anyway, but that’s because you don’t offer up any details. Not that I need them in order to respond, but if crimes were committed or behaviour occurred that emotionally or physically remain a present danger for you or family members, you have a responsibility to address that. It goes without saying that you would certainly benefit from seeking the support and advice of a professional. You’ve clearly been drawn to your job for a reason and I’m sure your commitment to it and pleasure in it are in some way attached to what you’ve lived through. How clever you were to seek out a profession that might help you translate or at least filter your own experiences. I’m intrigued by why you haven’t sought to delve a bit deeper into your own domestic past as you seek to help others survive theirs. It could well be because the trauma you endured is nonspecific, but it could also be because forgetting is so much easier than recounting. You’ve clearly travelled an enormous distance, literally as well as emotionally, from those dark days, but the human psyche is no respecter of years past or distance travelled. My children are positively shocked when I describe my own 70s school days where corporal punishment was rife and we lived in the full awareness that violence happened within homes more often than it did out on the street. Make sure the patterns you learned back then aren’t still lurking There are people from that period I’d be happy never to encounter again and have no curiosity about their fates as a result of their behaviour. That sort of emphatic shutdown is harder to achieve with immediate family and not necessarily the healthiest response to life experiences. “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there,” wrote LP Hartley, and as you allude to in your letter, those were times with unrecognisable social and behavioural expectations. Your letter doesn’t make it clear who the victims and oppressors were in this not-so-long-past childhood. I’m guessing you were let down by those who should have been protecting you and, although putting distance between you relieves you of the everyday reminders of their failures, it doesn’t alter the way it has hardwired you emotionally. Unchecked, it will impact on how you deal with your own emotional life. There is no escape from past experiences, only ways to better understand and utilise the legacy you have inherited to avoid repeating it yourself. I’m older than you but the societal changes that have occurred in the past decade or so and the location of our childhoods mean we have, I suspect, a lot in common. Those were dark days shaped by unrepressed anger, alcohol and traumatised adults whose way of coping with their own inheritance was to hand down the damage to the next generation. That’s still happening, as you are well placed to know, but what we have now are proper channels through which to express ourselves and to share our experiences. Doing so with honesty and application not only helps us but also others in the process. Cutting off from your family may have been exactly what you needed to do for your own survival and it may well be something you are better off continuing. But to do something so radical does suggest that what you have lived through was damaging and that’s what I would urge you to confront. You work in an arena where finding someone to talk to should not be a problem and while, in the short-term, revisiting darker days may seen like a punishment, in the long run I sense it’s where liberation lies. We are living through tumultuous times and there has been plenty of positive change when it comes to what is considered acceptable for a child to have to tolerate. You don’t have to cast yourself as an avenging angel, returning to the crimes of the past breathing fire and damnation. You might, however, want to make sure the patterns you learned back then aren’t lurking somewhere, ready to take you hostage when you find yourself in heightened emotional waters. Examining the past doesn’t mean you have to go back there. If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1Ugh January. How am I supposed to get through this hellish month? Tanya, by email Two words, Tanya: chunky boots. If the 1990s was the decade that the phrase “fuck-me shoes” was coined, we are now very much in the era of “fuck-you boots”, the bigger and stompier the better. Because, let’s be honest, that is pretty much the mood we are all in these days, and all this energy has to go somewhere, and surely it is better siphoning it down to your feet than spewing it all over social media. After all, what would make you feel better in the morning – waking up exhausted because you stayed up until 2am fighting about Trump with a stranger on Facebook, or waking up happily refreshed, slipping on a pair of chunky ankle boots and stomping out the door? I have loved chunky boots since I was 14 and bought my first pair of DMs from Shellys on Kensington High Street. Not a confident teenager by nature, I realised my boots gave me that confidence; you can’t walk in DM’s apologetically – you can only march defiantly, and it felt freaking great. As soon as I had paid for them, I marched straight across the road to the much-missed Kensington Market, a place I had always feared as being way too cool for me, largely because it wasn’t Kookai. I headed straight to the body-piercing booth and demanded that the punk who worked there pierce my ears. Five times: three in one ear, two in the other. And for added measure, I got my belly button done, too. OK, so it turned out the punk wasn’t that great at piercing, and to this day I have a weird grey lump in my earlobe caused by a bit of nickel that broke off from the back of an earring, mid-pierce, and I nearly passed out in pain when he drove a literal wooden stake through my tummy to pierce it. But still, as I left Ken Market that day, my ears nearly bleeding off my head, barely able to see straight because of the pain, but my feet still stomping, I had never felt so cool in my life. And the truth is, I was never that cool again. So I was delighted when my esteemed colleague Scarlett Conlon wrote on these pages at the end of last year that chunky boots are back this season, because it meant the stores would be full of chunky boots, and I would have more chance of finding my perfect pair. And over Christmas, find them I did. Part-ski boot, part-hiking boot, they are so chunky and stompy I gain at least three jolts of testosterone every time I put them on, and I love it. I wear them with shorts and tights, with miniskirts, with party dresses. I would wear them to bed but I would probably end up accidentally assaulting myself. They are the kind of boots that make you want to put on your headphones, turn up World Destruction by Time Zone and raise your fist to the sky. And really, that is all I have ever wanted from a pair of shoes. Part of being a grownup means accepting other people think differently from you, and I have slowly learned to recognise that not everyone feels the same way as me – about everything, but also about shoes, and that women who claim to love high heels (the polar opposite to stompy boots) aren’t just lying to make themselves sound glamorous. They really mean it. In this month’s Vogue, fashion editor Sophia Neophitou describes in genuinely fascinating detail her lifelong obsession with high heels, and how they made her feel “empowered”, even though “in a heel, you are always looking for danger areas – cobbles, paving stone cracks, grates – and conscious of where you are planting each foot”. Now, I try to be understanding, but, seriously, who has the time for this any more? Not even Sophia, who has had to switch to flats after an accident, and has discovered: “Now, I’m able to get up and out.” Damn right, and with stompy boots you get out and up even more quickly and with more energy. That is why I genuinely believe shoes are a feminist issue – women need shoes that give them energy and leave their minds free to dismantle the patriarchy, not worry about cobblestones. It is a dark and cold world out there at the moment, people, but don’t fear it: stomp on it.“I’m so sorry,” people often say to me. “I’m not very good at funerals.” “You’re not supposed to be,” I tell them. “It’s a funeral.” The existing £2bn-a-year UK funeral industry is under serious pressure. It’s being investigated by government watchdogs who believe that considerable price rises for funeral services do not appear to be justified by cost increases or quality improvements. Co-op Funeralcare is the UK’s largest funeral director, conducting almost 100,000 funerals every year from 1,000 funeral homes. Last year, it launched a large-scale national study looking into British attitudes around death and dying. The survey revealed that 41% wanted their funeral to be a celebration of life rather than a sad occasion. As a progressive funeral director in London, I am appointed by clients who feel the existing funeral industry’s approach doesn’t work for them. That doesn’t mean I’m the wedding planner of funerals, and it doesn’t mean I think funerals should be turned into parties. In my experience, “putting the fun into funerals” very rarely helps anyone to deal with the devastation of death and the complexity of grief. As a society, we’ve kept our grief suppressed for far too long. Britain’s stiff upper lip is no longer serving us. Most of our popular funeral poetry tells us not to feel what we’re really feeling. We’re told not to cry, but to smile. We’re taught to forget our sadness and to continue as though absolutely nothing has changed. But when someone has died, everything changes. Bereavement is what happens to us. Grief is what we feel. Mourning is what we do. Unless we find a way to express our grief – to mourn – it may eventually leak out in other ways; cue an increase in anger, alcoholism, addiction and depression. As a society, we need to find a modern way of mourning. One that says it’s OK to cry, with helpful and supportive funerals that let us mourn. We need funeral poetry that encourages us to feel whatever it is we’re feeling. I’m one of a new breed of funeral directors all over the UK, almost exclusively women, doing death differently by offering a highly personalised, emotionally intelligent, sensitive and creative funeral service. We believe that personalising a funeral involves so much more than changing the colour of our ties. It might be that a multicoloured coffin, fireworks and champagne are relevant and meaningful to the person who has died, as well as suitable for the circumstances of their death. But it might be that a funeral that allows people to express the extent of their sadness while acknowledging the wonderful life the person may have lived is more helpful. A good funeral is created with the belief that funerals are about the dead but for the benefit of the living. Grief is complicated – a mix of sadness, regret, confusion, longing, anger, resentment, guilt and gratitude with no set timeline or structure. The work we do as modern funeral directors is underpinned by the importance of allowing space at a funeral for all those emotions to be present. Death is often described as the last taboo. But lots of people want to talk about it. As a new generation of people begin to address their emotions, the desire to explore our mortality increases. As a society, we’re now going to therapy, spending time on the yoga mat, meditating, embracing sobriety and caring about our mental health. In London, I host events exploring a new approach to death and dying. The events always sell out, because people really want to talk. They just don’t know how. From this comes a more hopeful future. Emotionally bold, brave and honest funerals might help us to deal with ourselves and our feelings. We need an emotionally literate funeral profession too, to create the kind of event we really need. Until we change the way we deal with difficult emotions as a society, our funerals will stay the same. Changing the colour of the coffin is not the progress we need. There should be less emphasis on the personalisation of funeral hardware (coffins and cars) and more emphasis on funeral software (how we deal with how we feel). Funerals can play an important role in our grief. We can’t deny our grief, and we can’t allow the avoidance of it to be turned into a business ploy for funeralcare providers. So yes, celebrate a life, but don’t forget to mourn a death. • Louise Winter is a progressive funeral director and the founder of Poetic Endings @poetic_endingsPerhaps the quintessential box-set show. 24 was so propulsive and relentless, swinging from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, that you’d almost always feast on more episodes than you intended and wind up groggy and unresponsive the following day. This even goes for the years when it became a carnival sideshow version of itself. This saga of two Russian agents posing as a married couple in 1980s Washington, DC is the thinking person’s spy thriller, elegant and cerebral but with tense jeopardy in every scene. A precisely judged blend of jittery espionage action and the timeless drama of everyone living their own lie. The Easter egg-filled US sitcom, cancelled by Fox back in 2006, got a second wind via DVDs (remember those?) and a little website called Netflix. With its frantic, reality TV-inspired pace, constant callbacks and bizarro bit-parts for everyone from Liza Minnelli to Ben Stiller, it gave the family comedy an injection of meta weirdness. Donald Glover’s dramedy about a wannabe rapper and his drifter cousin is a rare thing, mixing malleable realism with smart pop culture references to everything from former child stars (Teddy Perkins) to Rachel Dolezal-in-reverse transracialism (B.A.N). Its scattergun approach to genre makes for a superficially easy watch, but its themes will rattle around in your head long after the credits roll. He was a former British soldier with PTSD, she was the home secretary – can we make it any more obvious? The show that marked the return of appointment viewing spliced together terrorism, political intrigue, mental illness and a “will they/won’t they” tension to create disarmingly brilliant TV with a deeper message. Forget its cultural significance, and forget about its presence on Netflix; there was once a time when Breaking Bad was the best-kept secret on television. Not for too long, however: the show ended up winning 16 Emmys and spawning surprisingly successful spin-off Better Call Saul, and is a pivotal series in the history of TV. It was one of the first to be credited as inflicting the “bingeable” box-set curse on its viewers. The post-Friends spotlight was on Matt LeBlanc’s Joey and the offscreen romances of Jennifer Aniston. But Lisa Kudrow stole a march on both as Valerie Cherish, the washed-up comedy actor given a second bite at the entertainment cherry with an unforgiving reality vehicle. Cherish is so scintillatingly close to nervous breakdown, so in love with the diminishing returns of the old star system that, by the time she gets to record I Will Survive for the show’s theme song, there is nothing but lunacy left in her eyes. Twenty-five years after Robert De Niro found the profound sadness of becoming the King of Comedy, Kudrow immortalised its hollow Queen. Seinfeld co-creator Larry David played his misanthropic personality for laughs in Curb, which began life as a one-off mockumentary in 1999. While its 2017 comeback received patchy reviews, its outrageous, largely improvised misunderstandings on everything from paedophilia to the Holocaust remain some of the most brilliantly wince-worthy TV ever made. Based on the 2014 film of the same name, this dramedy centres on race relations and intersectionality at a fictional US Ivy League college. It also boasts a teen soapiness and references to everything from Stacey Dash’s career missteps to Scandal that remind us that this is a show about the black millennial experience as well as activism. Swathe your sofa in plastic: this is the perfect sinful binge, with Michael C Hall as the emotionless forensics guy who kills the killers his cop colleagues can’t catch. The cliffhangers, the crimson-black humour and the stream of richly satisfying antagonists (most memorably John Lithgow in season four) make resistance impossible. You know the drill. What begins as dragony hoodoo quickly becomes an arena for smart dialogue and some of the most seductive performances on TV. The women and men are equally appalling/murderous/incestuous. And sometimes naked, yes. Society would rather watch Westeros descend into petty, horny tribalism than the real world any day. Lena Dunham’s crass public behaviour makes it more miraculous that she is the master of the modern half-hour dramedy. So many young TV auteurs have failed to emulate Dunham’s knack for elliptical, off-kilter scripts that tell you everything you need about characters who don’t fit any stereotype. With the stories artfully leaving gaps for online debate to fill, the reaction to Girls at times made it feel like a modish provocation, but beneath the observations about the alien world of pampered millennial Brooklyn is a rare emotional intelligence and humour. Set in a pastel-hued afterlife populated by virtuous, philanthropic sorts who can’t even swear and, er, someone who got in by accident, The Good Place was Parks and Recreation co-creator Michael Schur’s attempt at channelling Lost, via the great philosophers and, presumably, The Sims. The result is a meta comedy that’s forking great. Margaret Atwood’s tale of near-future oppression was never going to make for a sunshine-and-rainbows kind of show. However, the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale – packed with forced labour, sexual violence and even a suicide bombing – was particularly demanding. Stick to the first run, however, and the scares are among the most prescient of recent times. The work room’s running out of bias binding and Miss Evie’s sleeping with that married man again. This 1920s-set drama about a pair of fashion-pioneer sisters in roaring London takes the inconsequential and elevates it to high drama. Love among the mannequins, stolen designs, horny aristos. Its own French and Saunders parody, but joyful escapism. Return to Britain’s south coast in the mid-1980s and relish the salty thrill of hobnobbing with the Hampshire yachting set. Huge hair and piratical fashions swamp the senses as the Howard family win yacht races, the women glisten like sexy dolphins and the men take their seduction tips from coffee adverts. Delicious. Back in the golden age of the webseries, an aspiring actor named Issa Rae created The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (“The awkward white girl is nothing new. It’s time for a change,” she noted at the time). It went viral, with Rae collaborating with HBO to bring the story to TV. Focusing on the lives of messy, weird and ordinary characters, Insecure brought the black sitcom into the mainstream without compromising its integrity. Its third season was more watchable yet bleaker than ever, with fictional Issa in a sea of ghosting and breakups. Based on Israeli series BeTipul, this is drama in its purest form, starring Gabriel Byrne as a therapist, working on a roster of four clients per season and slowly revealing each one to be a complex, painfully relatable human. It rarely deviates from two people talking in a room: with dialogue this finely crafted, nothing else is needed. A murder mystery so strong it inspired an entire genre. Budget demands meant that Danish producer DR had to go low and grainy while attempting to meet the new watermark for tension TV, 24. In its first season, Detective Sarah Lund rewired the police procedural with the deft plot twists of a prize-winning novel in a Faroese knit. Scandi-noir was born. When Phoebe “Fleabag” Waller-Bridge announced that she was working on a thriller about an assassin (Jodie Comer) and her MI5 agent foe (Sandra Oh), few knew what to expect. What we got was a series as darkly funny as it was compelling, with a comic book-style pace, gore that never felt too gory and a queer subtext to boot. Nothing can fully replicate the experience of watching the broadcast run of Lost – back when online recaps and deep-dive Easter egg analyses were in their infancy – but the box sets run a close second, not least because they allow you to pummel your way through the hellish third series in a single weekend. Julia Davis has been funnier and more disgusting since, but Nighty Night still stands out as her best work. It is a comedy of relentless, almost irredeemable depravity, and yet there is something very recognisably human about each of the characters. Deep down, we are all two bad decisions away from becoming Jill Tyrrell. The Office took the mockumentary genre and turned it into something funnier, cringier and more tender than it had been before. Without “chilled-out entertainer” David Brent we may never had a generation of deluded Apprentice contestants who thought they were also “the reflection of perfection”, or indeed the “sadcom” trend that has dominated the past decade. When an old college frenemy goes missing, four Brooklyn stooges step in to sketch the story out. Like Scooby Doo-conceived by the cast of Girls, the drama wide-frames out in inch-perfect pincer movements to become a satire on the vainglorious inflate/deflate culture of social media. The chasm between what we say we are and what we really are in the digital age presides like the hangman’s arch over two seasons of drama and wit. The Sopranos is still a top-five-of-all-time television series. Imbibe it via box set and you can watch the thing expand in real time, from a drama about a mob boss in therapy to a genuinely poetic meditation on life and death. Where the hell was Jesse Armstrong’s resplendent family saga at the Emmys? This contender for best show of 2018 stars Brian Cox as an irascible Murdoch-alike, keeping the ambitious teeth of his offspring from his ankles as his health fails. King Lear in New York with Armstrong’s trademark The Thick of It smart talk and ugly truth. Pure gold. Chris Lilley essays the Australian school system through three malfunctioning antiheroes: Ja’mie King, the monstrous private school girl going public; Mr G, the egomaniacal musical theatre darling; and Jonah Takalua, the aggro boy for whom education has failed. These dissonant character sketches bring class warfare, horror, humour, occasional warmth and all the raw terrors of being a teenager. Fleshed out from Shane Meadows’s stunning film, the director spans the late 80s with a bunch of friends negotiating adulthood. In every graffitied strip-mall there are echoes of This Is England’s casually destitute braying youth who learned survival from one another while successive governments looked purposefully away. The “Is” in the title was always its pertinent masterstroke. Although it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as much as many other shows – even before Aaron Sorkin left, it often functioned as a wheelbarrow for his hubris – The West Wing was nevertheless capable of hitting extraordinary heights. And, you know, why not wallow in a show with an American president whom people actually like? Artfully fleshed-out characters, institutional corruption, skilful story arcs … the Baltimore-set series was likened to a Greek tragedy by its creator David Simon, a comparison that perfectly encapsulates the themes of fate and futility at its core. As well as seriously upping expectations for cop shows, it also introduced the world to one Idris Elba as Adam Smith-reading gangster Stringer Bell.The scale of no-deal panic gripping major companies has been thrown into sharp focus by a series of damage-limitation announcements, as corporate Britain signalled it is running out of patience with Westminster gridlock. Sir James Dyson, the Brexit-backing billionaire, dealt a further blow to the government by revealing he is shifting his company headquarters to Singapore in a move that drew sharp criticism. Dyson’s decision to move his HQ out of the UK came on a day in which a series of high-profile names revealed measures to mitigate the impact of a disorderly departure from the EU: • P&O announced that its entire fleet of cross-Channel ferries will be re-registered under the Cypriot flag, as the 182-year-old British maritime operator activated its Brexit plans. • Sony confirmed it is moving its European headquarters from London to Amsterdam. • The chief executive of luxury carmaker Bentley said the company was stockpiling parts and described Brexit as a “killer” threatening his firm’s profitability. • Retailers Dixons Carphone and Pets at Home announced plans to shore up supplies in the event of chaos at British ports. P&O, which began life as the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation company in 1837, said all six of its cross-Channel ferries will be re-registered from the UK registry in Cyprus to keep EU tax benefits. The ferries include, the Spirit of Britain, the Pride of Kent and the Pride of Canterbury. Sony confirmed it was merging its London-based European unit with a new entity based in Amsterdam that would become the new continental HQ. Sony said: “In this way we can continue our business as usual without disruption once the UK leaves the EU.” The boss of Pets at Home, the nation’s biggest pet supplier, said his company had started stockpiling essentials – including cat food – as “we don’t want families to run out of food for their pets” after Brexit day on 29 March. Sir James Dyson failed to appear at a media event at which his company announced the relocation of its corporate base from Wiltshire to Singapore. Dyson, who was a leading supporter of the leave campaign who urged ministers to walk away without a deal saying “they’ll come to us”, did not explain why he is taking the HQ of the firm he founded in 1991 out of the UK. The chief executive of Dyson, Jim Rowan, said the move from Wiltshire to Singapore had “nothing to do with Brexit” but was about “future-proofing” the business. The move of Dyson’s legal entity from the UK to Singapore “will happen over the coming months”, meaning it could take place before Brexit. The decision to leave the UK was made by Sir James together with “the executive team”, Dyson said. Sir James, who owns 100% of the company, has built up a £9.5bn personal fortune making him the 12th richest person in Britain according to the Sunday Times rich list. A spokeswoman for the 71-year-old billionaire said he would “continue to divide his time between Singapore and the UK as the business requires it”. His company employs 4,500 people in the UK out of a global workforce of 12,000. It said the HQ move would not affect British jobs Rowan said moving to Singapore was part of “the evolution” of the company. When asked whether Dyson could still be referred to as one of Britain’s best success stories, he said the firm should now be referred to as a “global technology company”. When he was prime minister David Cameron hailed Dyson as a “great British success story”. Sir James is not the first pro-Brexit billionaire to pull back from the UK since the referendum. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s richest person with a £21bn fortune, was reported last year to be planning to leave Britain for Monaco. Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, said the litany of business announcements should send politicians a clear and simple message. “A March no-deal must be ruled out immediately,” she said. “This is the only way to halt irreversible damage and restore business confidence.” Theresa May told business lobby groups on Tuesday that she was refusing to rule out a no deal as she tries to persuade reluctant MPs to back her Brexit plan by arguing that the only way to avoid crashing out of the EU is to sign up to her proposals. That amounted to a rebuke to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, who suggested last week that a no-deal Brexit would be taken off the table in another conference call with 330 corporate executives. Like “cliff edge”, except worse. No deal implies slamming the door on the article 50 divorce talks, which would make the prospect of a future FTA extremely remote. The chaos that would ensue is difficult to exaggerate. See our full Brexit phrasebook. Claire Walker, co-executive policy director at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said it was a significant concern that businesses have been left “in the dark” about Brexit and are being forced to activate emergency plans for 29 March. Adrian Hallmark, the chief executive of Bentley, said the luxury carmaker was on track to return to profit this year, but will fail to do so in the event of a hard Brexit. He said stopping production at the company’s Crewe plant would cost the Volkswagen-owned business millions of pounds a day. “It’s Brexit that’s the killer,” he told Reuters. “If we ended up with a hard Brexit ... that would hit us this year because we do have a potential to get beyond break-even to do the turnaround. It would put at fundamental risk our chance of becoming profitable.” Dixons Carphone revealed on Tuesday it had been working with suppliers on a back up plan that would shore up its stocks of TVs and laptops. “We can’t rule out that there might be some form of interruption,” said Dixons finance chief Jonny Mason. “If there is, we are as well prepared as we can possibly be. Some suppliers have brought stock into the country so that it’s closer to where it needs to be for us.”Madi Rosevear, 27, PhD student, works in Antarctica and lives in Hobart, Tasmania I’m about to go on my third research trip to Antarctica. For my first, we flew in from New Zealand to our base. From the air it’s just blue and white: icebergs and sea ice, and valleys full of high-glaciated mountains. You don’t see any wildlife and even seeing exposed rock is a rarity. It’s stunning. The runway at the research base is ice, no tarmac. Stepping off the plane, the air is so cold and dry (it’s often around -25C) that it instantly sucks the moisture out of everything. It can be hard to breathe. I’m doing a PhD looking at how the oceans are melting Antarctic ice shelves. An ice shelf is like a cork in a bottle – if you pull out the cork, grounded ice starts to flow more rapidly into the ocean. The work I’m doing is measuring the Totten Glacier, which is in quite a vulnerable region. We go in the summer months – December and January. There’s daylight 24 hours a day. For maybe an hour the sun dips below the horizon and it gets a little dusky. The research base is a small, closed community of scientists and base staff. I struggle with the danger of the cold and that it keeps you confined to the base a lot of the time. If you want to get out and have time on your own, you have to jump through a lot of hoops. With the remote location, I find the loss of personal freedom hard. I miss feeling in control of my own life. I work in a team of four and our trips are 10 weeks long. We are flown to the glacier. The first time we got dropped off, and the helicopter flew away, I was overwhelmed to be in such an isolated place. I felt like a tiny person in a huge expanse and it was quiet, quiet, quiet like you couldn’t believe. It was emotionally intense. Our priority is to find six equipment towers in the snow that were placed on the glacier the previous year. They’re light aluminium frames that house our monitoring equipment. Year to year the towers move up to 1km due to the flow of the glacier. We only have the last known GPS positions to try to locate them. The biggest challenge is keeping my hands warm, because I need good dexterity. I work with them bare and then ball them up quickly in big mittens. I don’t use gloves, because as soon as my fingers are separate they’re gone. I’m also never without my Thermos. I quite happily immerse myself in my new little community and don’t miss my friends and family too much. But when I return to Hobart I’m happy to no longer have to always tell someone where I’m going, or have to take someone else along with me. Matt Bennett, 26, industrial freezer team leader, Chiltern Cold Storage, Peterborough There are three doors to get into the freezer. They’re sealed and air-locked to keep the cold in. When you enter, you get a big waft of cold air in your face. The temperature’s between -18C and -25C. But if you’re working at the back when the fans kick in, it feels like -30C. Sometimes you find snowflakes hanging about. If I’m doing a morning shift I get up at 4am, but I have to be quiet as I have a missus and three children. I’ll put on my thermal socks, thermal vest, T-shirt, sweatshirt and jacket. And then a woolly jacket. When I get to work I put on a pair of overalls, a freezer jacket, freezer boots and woolly hat. Over that I wear a hard hat that has a neck wrap and ear muffs. The warehouse is quite dark, like a cave. It’s filled with long aisles and pallets stacked high. We mainly store meat: there’s beef, lamb, chicken and turkeys for Christmas. It comes from all over: Spain, Italy, Brazil. Tesco stores salmon here, also Greggs, Wetherspoon’s. We have other bits and bobs, too. Last year we had big ice sculptures and ice glasses for an ice bar in London, and we’ve had ice samples from the Antarctic for scientists. After about half an hour my goatee starts to frost up. After two hours I look like Santa Claus. My beard goes hard and when I breathe I feel it melt and run, and then it’ll refreeze. Sometimes my lips get stuck together. The summer months are the weirdest, because first you come out of the warehouse and get blinded by the sun and then after a few minutes of warming up you start sweating, so you take all your gear off. When I leave, I stay away from heat to let my fingers defrost by themselves, otherwise you get a horrible burning feeling. I’ve done this job for five years and I enjoy it. The day goes fast, as there’s so much to do. I started as a warehouse operative and worked my way up. I now introduce new staff to the freezer. After 20 minutes some will say: “Nah, not for me, far too cold.” The more you think about it, the more you get cold. If you just focus on the job, you crack on and get it done. Jimmy Tart, 41, ski patroller and avalanche educator, Utah I experienced hypothermia while working once. In 2005 I was in Vail, Colorado, and was standing on a ridgeline for more than an hour in 60mph winds that created a -40C wind-chill zone. It was the day after a big storm and the visibility was low. It’s an understatement to say I felt cold. It was awful. It became difficult to move. When your body temperature drops below a certain point, blood stops being sent to your appendages in an effort to keep your brain warm. I stopped shivering. My hands and feet felt like ice blocks. I’ve been working in snow safety for 16 years. I’m trained to forecast, avoid and mitigate avalanches and to educate the public on them. On a morning with new snow, I go with a team up to ski areas and we plan out and cause controlled avalanches while the area is closed. We use our knowledge of the terrain and watch weather patterns, because that drives everything. For example, winds can transport snow to a sheltered slope and force the top layer of snow grains together, creating a hard slab to form over soft, older snow. The effect is like putting a textbook on top of potato chips; it becomes vulnerable to collapse. To make areas like that safe, we throw 2lb hand explosives into the snow to create pressure that can trigger an avalanche. Our work makes the danger of avalanches to the public minimal. But to us it can still be very real. On that morning in 2005 it was all well planned, as it always is – multiple teams working their way down the ridgeline, coordinating on radio so we don’t get underneath somebody who’s about to create an avalanche. But small delays here and there, and the next thing we knew, my route partner and I were standing out for longer than we should have been. Our supervisor, Colin, had skied down to a safe spot about 500ft below us to assess the conditions in the bowl. We told him we had one explosive left, and, to avoid the hazard of taking it back to our cache, he told us to throw it. We threw it into the bowl where we’d already put multiple charges, but it created an unexpected mid-size avalanche above where Colin was standing. The avalanche was large enough to bury people and trees. It must have taken between 10 to 15 seconds for the avalanche to run its path and the powder cloud to settle. I was looking down and knew something wasn’t right, but my brain was working so slowly I couldn’t tell what it was. We tried to call Colin, but he didn’t respond. I wasn’t panicking, because I couldn’t think properly. The powder cloud following the avalanche had knocked Colin off his feet and he had nearly been buried. Luckily the debris flow missed him and he was OK. Not being able to think during something so dangerous was a strange sensation. The job involves a lot of standing around in snow. We also forecast for avalanches by digging deep pits that we climb into and analyse the stratigraphy, which are the layers of snow caused by different weather. The avalanche danger can be determined by studying the layers and how they relate to each other. I’ve found it’s always better to carry more layers than you think you’re going to need – the extra weight is worth it. And I always tell people to wear warmer gloves than they think they need, too. When I really feel it, push-ups are my go-to to get the blood flowing. I grew up in Texas, where everything is unbearably hot. I remember being eight and riding to a friend’s house on summer break and thinking my brain was melting. Maybe, subconsciously, that’s why I ended up doing this work. Mikhail Etigelow, 56, Oymyakon, Russia After the fall of the Soviet Union there was no work for me. I had to think of a way to provide for my family, so I decided to create my own smallholding. I have 100 horses and work with my son and brother-in-law. Our horses are bred to grow extra fur in time for winter and to get a layer of fat for warmth. It enables them to live outside when it’s incredibly cold. Here it ranges from -20C to -50C in the winter. It’s important for us to dress warmly because you don’t want to lose an ear or a finger. It’s not uncommon for that to happen to people; the trauma centre in Yakutsk, the nearest city, conducts dozens of amputations every year of fingers and toes due to frostbite. I’ve experienced -67C, but I have to work outside every day. I don’t mind. We’re in the mountains and being in nature is the best way to spend time. Oymyakon is 1,000km from Yakutsk. It takes 30 hours to get here by car when the roads are frozen. About 1,000 people live here. Homes are wooden and heated with wood or coal fire. Our toilets have to be outside because it’s too cold for plumbing. We don’t use our fridges in winter – we just keep things outside. There are only four hours of daylight then, so in the evenings the streets are empty. Most people stay inside and watch TV. I like the news and talk shows, and I also like to read, especially historical fiction. This weather is normal to us. Nothing really stops here, we drive (if our cars don’t freeze) or walk to work. The school only closes when it goes below -52C outside. When it’s very cold the little children are often taken on a sleigh. No one really complains about the cold; for us, this is natural. We live 3,000m above sea level and it’s beautiful and wild. We’re so used to it that it’s actually difficult for us to travel anywhere south and acclimatise. It’s so cold here that there are few diseases and we can easily get sick when we go somewhere warmer. Renae Zackar, 40, Iguigig, Alaska I’ve always liked the cold. It means we can travel and hunt – and the things that I make sell better. We live at the mouth of a river on Lake Iliamna in Alaska. There are about 60 people in our village. When the lake freezes from December to around May, we use the ice as a highway to get from village to village. A week at -35C is enough to freeze it solid. This year it was late to freeze. Subsistence has been part of my life since I was young. At least half of our family’s diet comes from indigenous fish, plants and animals that we hunt, gather and preserve ourselves. I work really hard. The older of my five children help whenever they can, and my husband works, too. We hunt caribou and moose in the winter, and also trap fur animals such as wolverines, wolves, beavers, otters and lynxes. We use the fur for our warm winter gear. We travel out and bury the traps in the snow. Most of the time the men skin the animals, but my husband cut himself deeply once while skinning a wolverine and, as I didn’t want the coat to go bad, I took over and finished it off. Now I always do it because I’m better and more careful. It’s coldest in March. The lowest temperature I’ve known is -45C. As long as you have the right gear to deal with it, the cold is good. I wear fur hats made from seal and sea otter and gauntlet-style mittens over gloves – my daughter and I make them for the whole family. We also make gumukluks, which is the local dialect for shoes made out of skins. But most of us wear bunny boots now: they’re military shoes made from rubber with air pockets in them that trap heat. They’re awesome and last forever. We also ice-fish in the winter. We make a hole with an ice pick and use a pole made from a skinny tree branch with a small amount of fishing line, and salmon eggs as bait. We mainly catch trout. Ice fishing only gives us enough for one night’s meal though. The summer months are when we catch most fish. For my size of family, I have to catch and smoke about 700 salmon to last a year. We used to store them outdoors in caches, which are tiny houses on high stilts, but now that we have freezers. I put them in there. In winter, we have about five hours of daylight. Things slow down, it’s not quite hibernating, but almost. Electricity changed how we live. With TV and artificial light we stay up longer and I sew. But we don’t use too much electricity, because it’s expensive. They have to fly diesel into our village for the generator. It used to come by barge, but the water level dropped and they can’t get up the river now. In the past 16 years the lake hasn’t frozen for two or three winters, which scares me. We can’t hunt, trap, ice-fish or travel to see people. It’s harder to live. We don’t get berries in the spring. It makes me worry the permafrost will melt under our house and it will slide into the river; some of the banks are already eroding around us. I put a lot of my life savings into building this house. I think it will be OK here for about 20 years, but over time it will turn into a desert, as we don’t get much rain and now we’re getting less snow.I have a love-hate relationship with porridge. It’s easy, it’s warming on cold days and it’s a nourishing family staple. But I struggle with its blandness. These two recipes, though, are on pretty heavy rotation at home. The cherry-topped porridge has serious hits of flavour, texture and an almost white-chocolate creaminess thanks to the cashew butter. The other, a quick fix on a rushed morning, is coconut-laced instant porridge: think gourmet Ready Brek. Hands down my favourite bowl of porridge. Frozen cherries are a great freezer staple during winter – cooked this way, they are also good on pancakes, waffles, and granola and yoghurt. If you have time, soak the oats in the milk and 250ml cold water overnight. Prep 10 minCook 10 minServes 2 For the cherries150g frozen cherries1 tbsp maple syrup For the porridge100g rolled oats250ml oat or nut milk1 tsp vanilla paste or extractZest of 1 lemon2 tbsp mixed seeds (I use a mixture of poppy, flax and linseed)2 heaped tsp cashew butter Put the cherries into a pan with one tablespoon of water and the maple syrup, and heat gently. Cook for 10 minutes until the cherries are soft and you have a thick, deep‑purple cherry juice syrup. To another saucepan, add the oats, milk and 100ml water with the vanilla, lemon and seeds, bring to a gentle simmer and cook for five minutes, stirring from time to time, until you have creamy porridge. You may need to add a splash more water to thin out the porridge to your desired consistency. Spoon the porridge into a bowl, top with the cherries, cashew butter, a few more seeds and a little lemon juice, if you like. This is a quick morning option for our family, bridging the gap between porridge and muesli. It’s good with cold milk in summer, too. Grind the oats well if you’d like a smooth porridge – I like to keep a little texture, so grind it until about half the oats are powdered. Some of my favourite serving suggestions are: ground linseeds, toasted sesame or pumpkin seeds, toasted coconut, shaved apple or pear, slices of citrus, toasted coconut flakes, nut butter or berries. Prep 2 minCook 2 minServes 4-6 250g rolled oats30g coconut milk powderSalt1 tsp ground cardamom ½ tsp ground cinnamon750ml warm almond or oat milk, or waterSeeds from a vanilla pod (optional) Blitz the oats, coconut milk powder and a pinch of salt briefly in a food processor, to grind the oats down a little. Fold the ground spices through evenly. Distribute 40g-70g into each bowl, or keep the oats in a sealed jar until ready to serve. Heat the milk or water with the vanilla pod (or without it if you aren’t a huge fan of vanilla). Pour over the porridge and stir quickly to thicken. Serve with any toppings you love (see ideas above). You can also cook this in the usual way, slowly, on the hob. • The creamy porridge with cherries and cashew butter is one of the recipes included in Anna Jones’ 7 Day Reset for January.The latest TV series by charming, tidy-up guru Marie Kondo has landed on Netflix and while we are all in love with the vibrant folk featured in her show, last week I accidentally entered the damning territory of disagreeing with Kondo’s philosophy – in a tweet that went viral. For while I’d heed Kondo’s “Konmari method” for habits such as folding T-shirts, she is woefully misguided when she says we should get rid of books that don’t give us “joy”. Do NOT listen to Marie Kondo or Konmari in relation to books. Fill your apartment & world with them. I don’t give a shite if you throw out your knickers and Tupperware but the woman is very misguided about BOOKS. Every human needs a v extensive library not clean, boring shelves Present tally among the 25,000-plus tweets replying to mine: 65% agree with me, 20% disagree, 3% think we are fighting over a football team and 5% insist Kondo’s position is way more nuanced than I give credit for. The rest insist I am a joyless frump. But be assured that this joyless frump will not be following Kondo’s advice, to essentially hold my books against my teats and left ventricle to see if they spark joy. If my own novels are anything to go by, I should be slightly concerned if the most recent, Martin John, sparked joy in anyone other than a convicted sex offender or a forensic psychiatrist. In one video, Kondo helps a woman declutter her books by “waking them up”. Surely the way to wake up any book is to open it up and read it aloud, not tap it with fairy finger motions – but this is the woo-woo, nonsense territory we are in. Once the books are split into keep and get-gone piles, Marie and the woman thank the books for serving their purpose. The metric of objects only “sparking joy” is deeply problematic when applied to books. The definition of joy (for the many people yelling at me on Twitter, who appear to have Konmari’d their dictionaries) is: “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness, a thing that causes joy, success or satisfaction.” This is a ludicrous suggestion for books. Literature does not exist only to provoke feelings of happiness or to placate us with its pleasure; art should also challenge and perturb us. We live in a frantic, goal-obsessed, myopic time. Everything undertaken has to have a purpose, outcome or a destination, or it’s invalid. But art doesn’t care a noodle about your Apple watch, your fitness goals, active lifestyle, right swipes, career and surrender on black pudding. Art will be around far longer than Kondo’s books remain in print. Art exists on its own terms and untidy timeline. Books are not a reflection of our thoughts and values, because more often than not they reflect someone else’s As for culling one’s unread books – while that may be essential for reducing fire and tripping hazards, it is certainly not a satisfying engagement with the possibilities of literature. (Unless it’s self-help or golf, in which case, toss it.) Success is, eventually, actually reading your unread books, or at least holding on to them long enough that they have the chance to satisfy, dissatisfy or dement you. Unread books are imagined reading futures, not an indication of failure. In one episode of her Netflix series, Kondo helps two male writers declutter their very tidy home. When it comes to the books, the advice is grim. “Books are a reflection of our thoughts and values,” Kondo says to the viewer. “Will these books be beneficial to your life moving forward?” Books are not a reflection of our thoughts and values, because more often than not they reflect someone else’s, whether it is Lolita, Mrs Dalloway or Snoopy. Most of us don’t share the values of Adolf Hitler, but we may own many books about the second world war. The question of whether my books will be beneficial to my life moving forward requires a biblio-telepathy I do not possess. Our book collections record the narrative of expansion, diversion, regression, terror and yet-to-be-discovered possibilities of our reading life. This is why, on entering your living space, people immediately migrate to examine your bookshelves, rather than rummage in your cutlery or sock drawers. I read in a variety of ways – ebooks, audiobooks – and never mind donating or sharing books. But I can’t imagine what a blank collection of physical books I’d be left with if they had to spark joy. (Goodbye Jelinek, Bernhard and Kafka, hello books with photos of hippo feet.) When I look at my shelves, I marvel at how random books have ended up beside each other. Some are on my shelf on the strength of just one line or a paragraph. Some are gifts, others I found discarded in the street. But every purchase of a book is a gesture of faith in the writer who wrote it. Writers are nothing without readers. Rather than following Kondo’s rules, I’d like to suggest another: it should be obligatory that all living spaces come with built-in bookshelves. (And a hammock.)After all the talk beforehand about this being a possible six-pointer, Southampton and Crystal Palace were forced to settle for one apiece on a night that ended amid acrimony and no little anger as Wilfried Zaha was sent off after being shown two yellow cards in quick succession. Zaha, who had earlier scored his first goal in more than four months to put Palace ahead, gave Andre Marriner little option but to dismiss him when he sarcastically applauded the referee’s decision to book him, after he had squared up to James Ward-Prowse. Sure enough a second yellow card followed and even then Zaha, who allowed his frustration to get the better of him, carried on clapping Marriner as well as the Southampton supporters. That reaction to the red card – Zaha took some time to leave the pitch and had to be encouraged to do so by teammates – means he now runs the risk of his mandatory one-match ban being extended. The flashpoint happened in the 87th minute and was prompted by a Ward-Prowse tackle close to the touchline. Zaha, who had already been fouled on plenty of occasions, clearly felt that he should have been awarded a free-kick. Marriner decided otherwise and Zaha ended up squaring up to Ward-Prowse moments later. That confrontation earned Zaha his first booking and within the blink of an eye Marriner was brandishing a red card. Although Roy Hodgson felt that Zaha was the victim of persistent fouling, the Palace manager accepted that the forward’s response to Marriner was only going to lead to one outcome. “It’s disappointing that the player who perhaps provided some of the best entertainment during the 90 minutes with his performance, and who was consistently fouled throughout the game, wasn’t able to contain his frustration with that consistent fouling and protests over a foul which is not given – and maybe should have been. But then once he applauds the referee’s decision to give him a yellow card, under the rules of the game the referee has got no option but to send him off.” Hodgson, who said that he did not believe Zaha was deliberately targeted by Southampton, added: “Of course it’s not a good evening for me here knowing that he’s going to be suspended for the next game. We need him playing. He will be very contrite, I’m sure, especially about the reaction to the yellow card. “But as someone who has been in football a long time, it’s sometimes disappointing that the people who are the ones we most want to see are the ones who are often being taken out of games, either by fouls, or on this occasion because unfortunately they haven’t shown the saint-like behaviour which is required in this situation not to react to fouls.” It was a strange end to what had been a fairly uneventful evening up until then. Ralph Hasenhüttl has re-energised Southampton since taking over as manager but his team looked flat and devoid of ideas here. Although Hasenhüttl felt the absence of a game for 10 days contributed to their lack of “rhythm” in the first half, the truth is that it was not much better after the interval and hard to see where an equaliser was going to come from. Ward-Prowse eventually provided it when he dispatched Matt Targett’s cross with a first-time shot from close-range after a flowing move down the left flank. Rather ironically Zaha’s goal, which was drilled home at the near post, owed much to Marriner’s excellent decision to play advantage after Andros Townsend was fouled by Oriol Romeu on the edge of the area. Although both teams had chances to win the game late on, it was Zaha’s red card, rather than spurned opportunities, that provided the only talking point.In 1973, Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés set out to test a hypothesis. He had been researching the connection between violence and sexuality in monkeys. “Most conflicts,” he noted, “are about sexual access to ovulating females.” But would this apply to humans, too? To find out, Genovés asked a British boat builder to make a 12x7 metre raft called the Acali on which he planned to sail with 10 sexually attractive young people across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to Mexico. It was like a prototype for the glut of reality TV shows since, a Floating Love Island or Big Brother at Sea, but with a twist – the participants were so isolated from the rest of the world that it would have been futile to cry: “Get me out of here!” The only ways out were drowning or getting eaten by sharks. Genovés was a veteran of extreme rafting. A few years earlier he had been one of the seven-strong multinational crew on Thor Heyerdahl’s two Ra expeditions to sail reed rafts, like those used in ancient Egypt, across the Atlantic. The Norwegian adventurer wanted to show how people of different races could cooperate effectively. Genovés had even grander motives in planning his voyage: he sought to diagnose and cure world violence. To that end, he placed ads in international newspapers and made his selection from respondents, choosing a crew of strangers from different races and religions so that he could create a microcosm of the world. Among the five women and five men were a Japanese photographer, an Angolan priest, a French scuba diver, a Swedish ship’s captain, an Israeli doctor and an Alaskan waitress who was fleeing an abusive husband. Genovés called his boat the Peace Project, but it rapidly became known in the world’s press as the Sex Raft. To spur conflict onboard, Genovés minimised opportunities for privacy. His human guinea pigs were allowed no reading material. When they wanted to use the loo, they had to sit on a hole perched above the waves in full view of the other 10 and hope that the sea would wash their bottoms. Sex was logistically tricky. Either you would have to do it in full view of the others, or wait until the opportunity offered by night-time. Even then, two people were on duty, one keeping lookout and the other steering. If you were quick about it, crew members related, you could have it off – so long as one of you kept a hand on the helm throughout. The boat would have no engines and would sail towards the Caribbean, just in time for hurricane season. Genovés knew that the Acali was sailing into danger but thought science justified the risk. “I believe that in a dangerous situation people will act on their instincts and I will be able to study them.” He put women in charge, in part to reflect what he thought was growing gender equality. The raft was captained by Maria Björnstam and Edna Reves was ship doctor; men were given menial tasks. “I wonder if having women in power will lead to less violence or more,” mused Genovés. “Maybe men will become more frustrated when women are in charge, and try to take over power.” Armed with questionnaires and spreadsheets that matched up rises in aggression and sexual activity with phases of the moon and wave height, he yearned to discover what humanity must do to live in peace. It didn’t quite work out that way. What happened in the next 101 days is now chronicled in Marcus Lindeen’s documentary The Raft. Using 16mm film from the journey spliced with new footage in which surviving crew members recall their experiences 43 years after the Acali’s voyage, Lindeen recreates one of the weirdest social experiments of all time. “I suspect that if Santiago were alive today, he would be working in reality TV,” says the Swedish artist, theatre director, playwright and documentary maker. Over Skype from Stockholm, Lindeen tells me he was looking for material to make a film akin to his debut documentary The Regretters. That 2010 film was about two Swedish men, both of whom had gone through sexual reassignment surgery to become women, regretted it, and transitioned back. “I was looking for another project that would involve a group coming back together and reflecting what had happened to them. I thought about a queer commune.” Then he read a book called Mad Science: 100 Amazing Experiments from the History of Science, which contained an account of Santiago Genovés’s Peace Project. “I felt, ‘Oh my God. This is it!’” It was Homer’s Odyssey, an adult Lord of the Flies, with a hint of Fitzcarraldo and, fingers crossed, a rerun of 120 Days of Sodom. So he started to track down the crew, only to find many had died in the interim, including Genovés. “Maria, the captain, was Swedish so I got in touch with her quite quickly. But she was shy, and ashamed about her role on what had become called the Sex Raft, and initially didn’t want to take part.” Then, having seen Lindeen’s earlier work, she changed her mind. “She produced a box from her attic in Gothenburg that she had never opened before and we started looking thorough it.” Inside were photographs and blueprints for the construction of the raft, but most importantly a contacts book that set Lindeen off on the trail of the other crew members. Once he had tracked down five women and one man and secured their agreement to take part, he commissioned a full-size replica raft to put on the soundstage where he would film them reminiscing. They had not met since the Peace Project docked in Mexico 43 years earlier, so the reunion was poignant. In one of The Raft’s most powerful moments, Fé Seymour, an African American engineer, tells her white compatriot Mary Gidley of the strange dreamy sense she had of making the same journey across the Atlantic as her African ancestors on slave ships. “I would sit on the starboard side and look into the water. I would start to hear voices coming from down there … I would hear my ancestors call me. They could feel my flying over their bodies and their tragedies. It was one of the best things that happened to me.” Mary had a secret, too. She was fleeing a husband who had tried to murder her because he’d overheard her planning a divorce while talking to a friend on a boat. “I believed he was going to strangle me and so I ran and jumped off the boat.” On this new boat, Genovés’ raft, she felt safe and protected. Not that Genovés’ raft was an antidote to the patriarchy. With a Caribbean hurricane brewing, Maria, the experienced ship’s captain, recommended they pull into a port to sit out the storm. Genovés, fearing the ruin of his experiment if they did so, mutinied and took control of the raft. “He wants to be very progressive and radical giving power to the women,” says Lindeen, “but when it comes to the crisis of the captaincy he’s very macho.” But Genovés was symbolically castrated later, on the Atlantic crossing. A huge container ship bore down on the little raft and he panicked. Only Maria kept a cool head and organised flares to ward off the looming ship. After that, the guinea pigs turned on the scientist: Maria became captain again. Others on the raft even contemplated killing Genovés. Fé recalled imagining that everybody would put their hands on a knife and “plunge it into him so everybody was guilty. We would wrap him in a sheet, carry him over the railing and drop him.” Overthrown, Genovés retreated below deck and collapsed into depression, made worse by news on the radio that his university wanted to be dissociated from the scandalous Sex Raft headlines. While lying there he started to cry for the first time since childhood and had an existential epiphany, writing: “Only one has shown any kind of aggression and that is me, a man trying to control everyone else, including himself.” The detached scientist had gone on a Conradian journey, ultimately realising that the heart of darkness was inside him. After the crew rebelled, Linden argues, “he finds some kind of humbleness. I admire him.” Why? “For making this crazy experiment happen!” Was the Peace Project a failure? Fé argues it was a great success, even though the anthropologist couldn’t see it: “He was so focused on the violence and conflict, but he had it right in his hands. We started out as them and us and we became us.” For Lindeen, it’s poignant that Fé praises the experiment. “If only [Genovés] had listened to why people were on the raft – Mary escaping an abusive husband, the racism Fé had suffered – he would have learned about the consequences of violence and how sometimes we can overcome it by overcoming our differences.” And, just as Genovés learned a lot about himself through his supposedly detached scientific experiment, so Lindeen had an epiphany in making the film. “I was raising the money, making a full-size model of the raft, getting the crew back together, all the filming, a year editing the film – a really crazy project. It was painful to realise this, but I see something of myself in him. He was a master of manipulation, a control freak and a dictator. I am like him more than I want to admit.” The Raft released in UK cinemas on 18 JanuaryAspirin has long been believed to help prevent heart attacks and strokes, and some studies have shown it to have a protective effect against some cancers. As a result, some people religiously pop a low-dose aspirin after breakfast every day (never take one on an empty stomach). But now its status as a wonder drug has dipped somewhat, following a major review of the trial evidence. The Journal of the American Medical Association has just published a meta-analysis (a review of the results of a large number of trials, which can therefore come to more certain conclusions) of the association of aspirin use with cardiovascular and bleeding events. It found that the well-known risk that aspirin can cause internal bleeding is as great – or sometimes higher – than the benefits of preventing heart attacks and strokes. Aspirin thins the blood, helping to prevent blood clots, and is unquestionably a really good drug for protecting people who have already had a heart attack or stroke from having another. However, the 1,000 or so people in these trials had no history of cardiovascular disease. They were monitored for about a year, during which time they took a daily aspirin or placebo.Among those who took aspirin, there were about 11% fewer heart attacks and strokes but a 43% higher likelihood of a major bleeding episode in the stomach, brain or intestine. (The researchers found no effect on cancer.) Dr Sean Zheng, academic clinical fellow in cardiology at King’s College London, said that taking a daily aspirin couldn’t be recommended for healthy people, but that there might still be a case for people with a higher risk of a heart attack or stroke, including those with type 2 diabetes. However, it would be important to consider the bleeding risk. “Aspirin use requires discussion between the patient and their physician, with the knowledge that any small potential cardiovascular benefits are weighed up against the real risk of severe bleeding,” he said. The findings reflect the average likelihood of bleeds or heart attacks among the patients in all the trials. There will be people among them who would be better off taking aspirin and those who will be worse. We’re not all the same. It’s yet another situation where we need to weigh up our individual risk and benefit – maybe with the help of an understanding GP.Democrats have vowed to investigate a report that Donald Trump personally directed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about an effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, which could leave the president open to accusations of suborning perjury and obstruction of justice. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about the Moscow project. He told the House and Senate intelligence committees that the project was scrapped by January 2016, but Cohen has now said planning actually continued through June, while Trump was a candidate for president. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the US 2016 election and ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Cohen has told Mueller that Trump personally instructed him to lie by claiming the negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did, BuzzFeed reported on Thursday, citing two federal law enforcement sources. It is the first known allegation that Trump told a subordinate to lie about his dealings with Russia. “The allegation that the president of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date,” said the California representative Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee. “We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.” Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic chair of the House Judiciary committee tweeted: “We know that the President has engaged in a long pattern of obstruction. Directing a subordinate to lie to Congress is a federal crime. The @HouseJudiciary Committee’s job is to get to the bottom of it, and we will do that work.” Mueller’s investigators learned that Trump told Cohen to lie through interviews with multiple witnesses who worked for the Trump Organization and internal company emails, texts and documents, according to BuzzFeed. Cohen then confirmed to investigators that his former boss told him to lie. In a response on Twitter on Friday, Trump did not deny the allegations in the report, but instead accused Cohen of “lying to reduce his jail time”. Trump’s current personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, also did not deny the report, and instead cast doubt over Cohen’s credibility. “If you believe Cohen I can get you a good all-cash deal on the Brooklyn Bridge,” Giuliani told the Wall Street Journal. The sources told BuzzFeed that Trump also supported a plan, suggested by Cohen, that he travel to Russia during the presidential campaign and meet with President Vladimir Putin in order to lock down a deal to build the tower. “Make it happen,” Trump reportedly told Cohen. The meeting with Putin never took place. But the two law enforcement sources told BuzzFeed that Trump met Cohen face to face at least 10 times during the campaign to talk about the Moscow tower project. The Guardian has not independently verified the report. “I mean everything feels like a bombshell and we are all numb but I’m pretty sure if this story is true it’s – I’m going to be careful with my words here – something that Congress must investigate thoroughly,” Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, said on Twitter. Representative Ted Lieu of California said if the report is true, Trump may have committed “so many felonies” and it could be grounds for impeachment. “This stunning Trump Tower Moscow story establishes a clear case of Obstruction of Justice, a felony. I’ve lost count now how many times @realDonaldTrump has engaged in Obstruction of Justice. Oh, fyi the first Article of Impeachment for Richard Nixon was Obstruction of Justice,” he said on Twitter. “Based on the Buzzfeed report and numerous other articles showing @realDonaldTrump committed Obstruction of Justice and other possible felonies, it is time for the House Judiciary Committee to start holding hearings to establish a record of whether @POTUS committed high crimes.” Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen paid a technology company to rig early online polls in Trump’s favor, including a CNBC poll identifying the country’s top business leaders and a Drudge Report poll on potential Republican presidential candidates. “What I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump,” Cohen said in a tweet. “I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.”The European parliament has backed plans to cut EU funds to member states that undermine the rule of law or allow corruption to fester – a move that could raise tensions with the governments in Hungary and Poland, which are accused of weakening judicial independence. MEPs voted 397 to 158 for a draft law to freeze EU cash if a government was found to be eroding democratic values. The proposals will come into force if backed by EU member states and could lead to a fierce battle between national governments when they discuss the bloc’s €1tn post-Brexit budget later this year. “Respecting the rule of law is a fundamental prerequisite for democracy, stability, prosperity and mutual trust,” said Petri Sarvamaa, a Finnish centre-right MEP, who co-authored the parliament’s proposals. “Without the rule of law, the European Union loses its credibility in the eyes of the citizens and in the eyes of the world.” He added: “Taxpayers’ money has to be respected and spent according to the same rules and principles in all member states. We never know in which member state the rule of law will be questioned next.” The draft law is the latest attempt by EU politicians to get to grips with countries seen to be flouting the rule of law. While the EU has opened disciplinary procedures against Poland and Hungary, officials have been looking for a better way of dealing with the issue. Critics have said the current process is slow and cumbersome, with some governments, including the UK, reluctant to condemn a fellow member state. British Conservative MEPs were among the 69 who abstained on the proposals, citing the fact they related to the EU’s post-Brexit budget. Labour MEPs voted in favour. Creating a link between the rule of law and EU funds would have a big impact on some national budgets, especially in central and eastern Europe, where European money makes up a large proportion of infrastructure spending. In Poland EU funds make up 61% of public investment, in Hungary 55% and Romania 45%. According to the parliament’s proposals, countries would lose EU funds for “generalised deficiencies in the rule of law”, such as failure to investigate fraud, absence of independent courts or failure to cooperate with EU anti-fraud inspectors. The plans would empower Brussels, aided by independent experts, to judge whether a government was breaking the rule of law, although parliament and EU governments would have four weeks to stop funds being frozen. In an attempt not to isolate the local population, EU funds for NGOs and academic researchers would continue to flow. The final outcome will not be known for months, as the proposal is tied to an agreement on the EU’s next €1tn budget, a seven-year plan for 2021-2028 that will not be agreed until after European elections. The rule of law plan adds another layer of complexity to the future budget debate, already fraught due to Brexit and the end of the UK’s annual net €10-11bn contribution. Member states have been weighing up less ambitious proposals, but will not make their next move until EU leaders take a view. Countries in central and eastern Europe have already made their opposition plain, but Europe’s paymasters, notably Germany, France and the Netherlands, want tougher action against governments that flout basic values while reaping EU funds.Bring a large, deep pot of water to the boil and salt it generously. While the water comes to the boil, finely grate 200g of pecorino. Trim 400g of chicken livers, then cut them into small lobes about the size of a brazil nut. Cook 200g of bucatini in the boiling water until tender but firm. A matter of 9 minutes or so. Meanwhile, melt 50g of butter in a frying pan over a moderately high heat, then add the chicken livers and fry for 3 or 4 minutes, turning once they are golden brown on the underside. Season with salt and ground black pepper. Keep the pepper coarse, the flecks should be clearly visible. Drain the bucatini, tip it back into the pan in which you cooked it, then toss in the chicken livers, their hot butter and then the grated pecorino. Shake the pan back and forth to bring the ingredients together. Enough for 2. Take care when cooking the livers that they don’t scald you. They have a nasty habit of spluttering in the hot butter. This recipe, simple, frugal and quick, will be improved vastly by generous use of the salt and pepper mills. The chicken livers could be swapped for mushrooms. Choose the large field or plump chestnut variety, slice them thickly, and fry them in a little more butter than above – they soak it up. To preserve the simplicity of the dish, nothing more than a palmful of tarragon leaves and a twist of pepper is needed to be added as the mushrooms cook. Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@NigelSlaterIn a stark departure from its allies, the New Zealand government is refusing to take sides in the escalating Venezuelan leadership crisis, declining to give official recognition to either leader. Last week opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself Venezuela’s interim president, and quickly won the support of the US, the UK, Canada and some Latin American countries, who issued strong public statements recognising his authority. On Monday New Zealand’s closest neighbour, Australia, recognised Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has also urged countries to “pick a side” in the crisis. Oil-rich Venezuela is wracked with hyperinflation, rendering the bolivar currency practically worthless. Shortages in food staples and basic medicines are rampant and crime is widespread. More than 3 million Venezuelans have fled, causing consternation across the continent. However, New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, has refused to add New Zealand’s name to the list backing Guaidó. “It is not New Zealand’s practice to make statements of recognition of governments,” Peters said. “Venezuela needs to decide its future through free and fair elections. This government expressed concerns about Venezuela’s elections in 2018, and these concerns remain.” Prime minister Jacinda Ardern later justified her stance, saying that on her recent trip to Europe “absolutely no one expressed concern” that New Zealand’s decision differed from that of its allies. “What we do do as a country, and rightly so, is call out human rights abuses … it is absolutely clear that people are suffering under the current regime and that they deserve access to their democratic rights and freedoms.” Maduro retains the support of Russia, China, Cuba, Bolivia and Turkey and still has the backing of the military, although his defence attache to the Venezuelan embassy in Washington defected to Guaidó on Saturday. In May last year Peters said he was “extremely concerned” about “the continuing erosion of democratic norms and institutions,” in the country following the presidential elections, including widespread reports of election irregularities and Nicolás Maduro’s banning of the main opposition leaders from participating in the poll. At the time, Peters, who is also deputy prime minister, said New Zealand supported “any regional and international efforts to facilitate a national dialogue in Venezuela that would allow truly free and fair elections to be held”. “It is essential that the Venezuelan government respects democratic norms and institutions and protects the human rights of its citizens. This includes releasing all political prisoners.”“Just try,” Francis says. “No.” I dangle listlessly from the monkey bar. “Just one,” he tries again, his palm flat to my mid-back. “I’ll help you.” I imagine him employing the same tone with his toddler. “I don’t want to!” I spit out, petulantly. I jiggle my legs impatiently, “I want to get down.” Francis smiles. “OK, no worries.” He steps back and I jump to the floor. Later, at the end of our workout session, he tilts his head sympathetically. “Why wouldn’t you have a go earlier?” I explain that I knew, categorically, that I wouldn’t be able to “heave my bulk over that stupid bar”. That I didn’t have the necessary strength to perform a chin-up, and that I already felt like an idiot – so why add fuel to that fire? He gives me homework. “Tonight, when you’re in bed about to sleep, close your eyes and breathe through your nose; spend 10 minutes just breathing – lengthening your inhales and exhales – and thinking about which muscles are involved in a chin-up. Imagine those muscles working.” Francis is a trainer at The Foundry, a swanky gym in London, where I’ve been a member (semi-committedly) for about two years. We are three weeks into my “holistic transformation”, an eight-week programme that is meant to start me on a path towards not just better physical health, but stronger emotional and mental health. As the gym’s cofounder Dave Thomas explains: “Improving your physique can improve your health, both mentally and physically, but it can also have the opposite effect. Being healthy is a much more complex state than having a six-pack.” Embracing that complexity is about to become one of the biggest trends in the fitness industry. Jessica Harman of forecasting agency WGSN, tells me that in the past year, “the fitness industry has shifted focus from the performance, strength and shape of our bodies to our wellbeing and mental health”. Last year, Re:Mind became London’s first meditation studio – where for £22 a time, dedicated “calmers” guide you through sessions of “energising breathwork”, or encourage you to “focus on good intentions”. In the summer, boutique studio Frame launched an initiative to educate its members about how different styles of movement impact on mood; new gym Mindset opened with an express focus on mental health, and the aim of helping gym-goers overcome “emotional barriers” through fitness; while Barry’s Bootcamp partnered with HUMEN, a charity that works to improve men’s mental health. Feeling positive and excited about what you’re doing is just as important as results “Brands like Equinox fitness club have integrated mindfulness practices into classes as well as employing sleep coaches for members,” says Victoria Buchanan, a researcher at trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory. High-street gyms like Fitness First have taken up the mantle; last year they partnered with grassroots athletics organisation RunTogether, working to support initiatives such as #RunAndTalk – which aims to improve mental health through running. The programme I’ve signed up for promises to “transform my body and mind” – leaving me fitter, more motivated, less stressed. In real terms, this means I get personal-trainer-guided workouts (“We’d like you to train five times a week,” Francis says, at which I snort with laughter), nutritional advice (the first piece of which is to cut out one cup of coffee a day) and talks on managing stress. As well as creating a fitness programme for me, Francis checks in on my emotional and mental wellbeing at each session. It’s much cosier than the “abs first, questions later” approach that used to be the norm. The course is not cheap, but it’s easy to apply the same approach to your own regime (see panels below). To start with, I often feel frazzled – tired, overwhelmed, distracted. As Francis points out, I have a tendency to lose focus halfway through an exercise (or even a sentence). “These are all things we can work on,” he says, soothingly. We discuss goals; I tell him I want to look like a Kardashian – curvaceous but thin, toned but grabbable. “That’s great,” he says and then disregards completely. “I think our first goal is to do a chin-up.” He points out that looking like a Kardashian is counterproductive, as “it’s not an action you can physically take”. Which is how I end up lying in bed three weeks later, meditatively focusing on my biceps and latissimus dorsi (the back muscles used in a chin-up). Our workouts consist of three sessions of resistance training a week, with increasingly heavy weights, mixed with one or two cardio sessions. They’re always group-based (for the weights sessions, there are just three or four of us; for cardio, it’s more like a class, with around 12 others). Despite the group element, after the first week or so, each resistance workout is tailored to my mood or tiredness level. This is “nourishing movement”. “There has to be an element of enjoyment,” Thomas says. “Feeling positive and excited about what you’re doing is just as important as results. If you’re slogging through, you’re not getting the emotional benefit of exercise.” Francis doesn’t take every session, but WhatsApps me most days – often about fitness and food, or sometimes just to ask how I am. The cynic in me knows that it’s all part of a service, but it’s encouraging to have the attention. The idea is to offer an impartial and nonjudgmental ear; he’s not a therapist and doesn’t purport to give me solutions to my personal problems, just the opportunity to chat if I want to. In fact, some therapists argue that talking while moving can foster a greater sense of openness – it’s less confronting than sitting opposite someone (whether therapist or friend) – while the endorphin rush and self-esteem boost you get from achieving a fitness goal could make it more likely you reach your emotional epiphanies. Well, that’s the theory. I don’t love discussing my feelings at the best of times, but especially not when I’m halfway through a squat. Even walking for 10 minutes is better than nothing, especially if you’re outside Instead, through the weeks, Francis concentrates on correcting “negative self-talk” (“let’s not say ‘heave my bulk’ any more, shall we?”) and thought patterns that, he theorises, are holding me back. “You focus on all the possible negative outcomes. From now on, when you’re in the gym I don’t want you to think about whether something might go wrong.” As well as meditative tasks, he sets homework for me, which includes talking to some of the other people who have signed up for the transformation (“a sense of community will help to keep you motivated,” he explains) and “spending some time on grass”. (“Like running?” I ask. “Yeah, or just walking, or hanging around. Just be outside on the grass for an hour if you can.”) Being in a natural environment, even if it is just a local park, he points out, may help me feel more clear-headed and less stressed. I work on that chin-up until my arms become sore and my hands are calloused, but often get frustrated. “It’s not a ‘limiting belief’, it’s just a fact of nature,” I say at the end of my first month, no closer to getting my chin over the bar. I find it difficult to do five sessions each week, but do manage three – and I go outside every day, regardless. As Francis points out, “Even walking for 10 minutes is better than nothing, especially if you’re outside.” As the weeks go on, I find I’m drinking less alcohol (an unconscious choice, but since I’m committing to 7am gym sessions, a few wines seem masochistic). My quasi sobriety, combined with the exercise, means I’m also sleeping better. One morning, around six weeks in, I reach over to stop my 5.50am alarm and realise I’m actually looking forward to the session. In the past, I had always thought of exercise as correcting a mistake: “I’m going to run because I ate five doughnuts yesterday.” Today, I want to exercise because I know it’ll be fun and because moving feels good. It’s a much gentler way to transform than any I’ve tackled before, and by the end of the eight weeks, I feel less frazzled. I’m not a whole new person, but I do feel good; optimistic, even. I can deadlift more than my body weight, and – as of just a few days ago, I can do one chin-up. Jumping down from the monkey bars, I feel a frisson of pride. I look back on the work it took to get here (the early mornings, the hours of training, the meditative breathing) and allow myself to bask in the achievement. I turn and grin at Francis, who smiles and says: “OK, let’s try for two.” Start small In his book Stick With It: The Science Of Lasting Behaviour, psychologist Dr Sean Young breaks lifestyle changes down into dreams (long term), goals (medium term) and steps (short term). If the dream is to get fitter, then the goal might be to run 10k in the next three months, and the first step to get off the bus a stop early and walk the rest of the way. Each step should be small enough that it takes fewer than two days to accomplish. Stimulating the brain’s reward system every two days has been shown to keep us motivated over a longer period. Reframe anxiety Dealing with chronically high cortisol levels might be the single most impactful thing you can do to improve mental and brain health. From altering our emotional responses, to impairing memory and decision-making abilities, chronic stress physically ages brain tissue. Next time you’re feeling stressed, try telling yourself you’re actually excited. Physically, excitement and stress are very similar (sweaty palms, butterflies, pounding heart) and, according to researchers at Harvard Business School, this simple linguistic switch could be more effective than consciously trying to “calm down”. Sit up straight Research shows that adopting an upright posture (back straight, shoulders pulled back but relaxed) can, over a day, make someone with mild depressive symptoms feel significantly more positive, less tired and less introspective. The University of Auckland study looked at 61 people with mild to moderate depression and found that good posture was associated with higher self-esteem. Exercise with others A 2017 study by the New England College of Osteopathic Medicine found that group exercise over 12 weeks improved emotional wellbeing by a quarter and reduced stress levels by the same amount. The same psychological benefits were not seen in those who exercised alone. Piggyback on other habits According to a study from University College London, it takes 66 days to form a habit. Behaviour-change psychologist Dr Aria Campbell-Danesh, who goes by Dr Aria, recommends tagging your first small steps on to things you already do each day. “If your ritual is to make a cup of tea at 3pm, go for a five-minute walk beforehand. That’s 25 minutes more movement each week – an amazing start if your resolution is to get fitter.” Cycle to improve memory As Dr Aria explains: “Analysis of four decades of studies found that cycling improves our brain’s ability to store and retrieve memories, both during and after cycling, whereas only a small improvement was found after running.” Results lasted well after the exercise was completed – the cumulative effect of a weekly bike ride could be impressive. Take up resistance training to protect your brain This could mean deadlifts and squats in the gym, 10 press-ups at the end of a run or even carrying bags of heavy shopping – just make sure your muscles are moving against resistance at some point each day. Researchers from Rush University Alzheimer’s Disease Center followed 900 people in a Chicago retirement community over four years. They found that those with greater muscle strength were significantly less likely to experience cognitive decline. Eat Greek The Mediterranean diet has been consistently linked to a lowered risk of everything from coronary heart disease to numerous types of cancer. Recently, it has also been used to treat people with depression. “In one Australian study, a dietician encouraged people to eat Mediterranean-style,” explains Dr Brendon Stubbs, a clinical lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. “Half of the 67 participants switched to this diet, alongside their regular treatment [of psychotherapy, antidepressants or both] while the other half continued with their normal diet and antidepressant treatment. At the end of 12 weeks, those who’d switched their diets had a bigger reduction in depression symptoms.” Be kind to yourself Helen West is one of the dieticians behind The Rooted Project, a website that aims to dispel myths around food and nutrition. She recommends focusing on the positive steps taken, and not on the things we want to change. “Weight is not a behaviour – so it’s counterproductive to focus on it. Focus on actionable things, like eating more fruits and vegetables, finding a way to sneak more movement into your days, and trying to get more sleep.” Try HIIT As we get older, our cells’ ability to create energy declines. However, a study by doctors at the Mayo Clinic (a US-based medical centre) involving 72 participants across two age groups, found that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) not only halted but reversed this trend, boosting cells’ ability to generate energy by 69% in those between 65 and 80 years of age, and by 49% in younger individuals (18-30 years). You could start by alternating three minutes of fast walking and three minutes of slow walking for 30 minutes or more, four times a week. Make time for recovery If you do decide to start a new, intensive gym regime, remember the importance of recovery. “Overtraining can cause inflammation, which has been linked to everything from cancer to depression,” says The Foundry’s Dave Thomas. He advises wearing a tracker such as a Fitbit when you sleep, to work out your average resting heart rate. “If, the morning after you’ve trained, your resting heart rate is noticeably above normal – by 10-15bpm or more – it means you haven’t yet recovered and shouldn’t train that day.” Move like a centenarian Turns out, though, that the secret to long life might not be down to how much you exercise, but to how much you move. In his study of what he called the world’s Blue Zones (areas such as Ikaria in Greece where inhabitants regularly live past 100), writer Dan Buettner found that those who were healthiest in old age “live in environments that nudge them into moving every 20 minutes or so”. Walking, gardening or even just getting up at regular intervals were enough to keep Blue Zone-dwellers healthy throughout their lives. According to researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, low- to moderate-intensity movement spread throughout the day is associated with significantly improved insulin levels, compared with doing just an hour of intense exercise. Hack your circadian rhythm “There are some fairly basic steps you can take to make sure that you’re not delaying the production of melatonin – the hormone that makes us sleep,” says Dr Mithu Storoni, author of Stress Proof. “Having a big breakfast and an early, light dinner can help you sleep better, because food and digestion delays the onset of melatonin.” Equally, exercising in the morning rather than the evening, and making sure that your bedroom is between 18 and 21C will mean you’re more likely to drift off – warmer temperatures may disrupt our ability to fall into an REM sleep. Cut down your eating hours Restricting meals to an eight-hour period (and having 16 hours of “fasting”) will help lower insulin levels and cause your body to start burning its fat stores. “This whole process is excellent news for brain health,” explains dementia specialist Dr Jamie Wilson. “Reducing insulin levels can have an impact on your generation of amyloid beta, one of the harmful proteins that have been linked to Alzheimer’s. 10am to 6pm are the usual hours, but it’s flexible.” Add ferments to every meal A healthy and diverse microbiome (the ecosystem of bacteria in our intestinal tract) is thought to improve our immune system and guard against everything from heart disease to depression. “Adding probiotic foods such as natural yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir and miso to every meal has been shown to increase the diversity of our gut bacteria,” says Storoni. “And, according to a meta-analysis of data published last year, this not only helps with general wellbeing, but also reduces feelings of anxiety.” Experience something awesome In his studies into the impact of psychedelics on patients with depression, Dr Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial College London noticed an interesting phenomenon. “After the treatment, people became more appreciative of nature and reported feeling more ‘connected’. They no longer felt isolated.” If half a tab of acid all seems a little too 1969, Carhart-Harris argues that just experiencing awe could have a similar effect – “by challenging our self-involved viewpoints and giving us a sense of perspective on our problems”. One way to do this is to write the story of a time you felt in awe of nature – according to a study at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, this quick task increased participants’ sense of wellbeing, as well as their willingness to give to charity; it even made them feel like they had fewer time pressures. The key is to understand yourself as a small part of a vast, living system – for that, nothing beats being outside in nature. A day trip to a forest, or an evening gazing at the vast night sky at a local observatory may be more effective than an indoor writing task. Be grateful The words “gratitude journal” may make you cringe, but regularly writing a list of things you’re grateful for has, in one randomised control trial , been shown to foster a deep and lasting sense of contentment. “The act of writing with a pen seems to be important,” says Dr Aria. “But this weekly 20-minute task saw participants’ moods improve.” In fact, eliciting the emotion of gratitude, even just once a week, led to a 28% reduction in perceived stress. Each entry should be specific – “I’m grateful that my partner brought me tea in bed this morning,” rather than “I’m grateful for my partner” – and you should reflect on what it was about that moment that made you feel particularly good. During the task, participants reported falling asleep more easily and sleeping, on average, for 30 minutes longer each night. Join a tennis club According to a study of more than 800 people (who were followed for the first six years after they retired by researchers at the University of Queensland), being a member of a club (of any kind) is associated with an increase in reported quality of life. Another study, by US researchers, who followed more than 8,000 people in Denmark for a period of 25 years, found that being a member of a tennis club was particularly beneficial; it conferred almost an extra 10 years of life, compared with people who did not exercise (in comparison, indoor exercises like running on a treadmill conferred only one and a half extra years). The difference, the researchers theorised, was the element of “play”. Find your meaning A sense of purpose, a passion or a thing, person or place that gives our life meaning has been shown to help guard against a number of health conditions. One wide-ranging Japanese study followed 3,000 people for an average of 13 years and found that men who reported having a greater sense of purpose were significantly less likely to die of a stroke or cardiovascular disease. One study asked participants to spend a week taking photographs of all the most meaningful things, places and people in their lives. At the end of the week, they compiled all the photographs, and reflected on them. The result was that each participant had a stronger idea of their life’s purpose and reported a greater feeling of meaning and contentment. • If you would like to make a comment on this piece, and be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication). This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Sergei Polunin, the Royal Ballet-trained dancer who revels in a “bad boy of ballet” reputation, has been dropped from a production in Paris after a series of homophobic and sexist social media posts. It was revealed last week that Polunin had been invited to play Prince Siegfried in Paris Opera Ballet’s February production of Swan Lake. By the weekend the invitation was withdrawn. In a series of offensive posts on Instagram Polunin called for men to “man up” and realise they are wolves, lions and leaders of their family who are supposed to take care of everything. On 29 December he wrote: “Man up to all men who is doing ballet there is already ballerina on stage don’t need to be two. Man should be a man and woman should be a woman. Masculine and Feminine energies creates balance. That’s a reason you got balls. Same think Outside ballet, Man what’s wrong with you? Females now trying take on the man role because you don’t fuck them and because you are an embarrassment.” Ukraine-born Polunin is a fervent admirer of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – he has a tattoo of him on his chest – and a supporter of the US president telling people “you don’t like Donald Trump because he speaks the truth and speaks his mind!!!” On Friday, in a now deleted post, Polunin directed his attention to overweight people, writing: “Let’s slap fat people when you see them. It will help them and encourage them to lose some fat. No respect for laziness!” The Paris Ballet dancer Adrien Couvez last week called Polunin an “embarrassment” on Twitter. “Our company advocates values ​​of respect and tolerance! This man has nothing to do with us.” Paris Opera Ballet’s artistic director, Aurélie Dupont, wrote to the company’s dancers at the weekend about her decision to drop him. She called him a “talented artist” but said that his public pronouncements were not in keeping with the company’s values. Polunin picked up his bad boy reputation after walking out on the Royal Ballet six years ago this month. He had trained at its school from the age of 13 and became its youngest principal at 19, compared to Rudolf Nureyev or Mikhail Baryshnikov. At the time he tweeted about “living fast and dying young” and in one interview said he often performed after taking cocaine. The dancer appeared to overcome his self-destructive urges and worked hard to re-establish himself as a star of the ballet world. Polunin often seems to enjoy his punk, bad boy reputation but he is also seen by people who have worked with him as a young man who is sweet and polite. He has managed to break out of the world of classical ballet thanks largely to a video that went viral of him dancing to Hozier’s Take Me To the Church, made by David LaChapelle. He made his screen acting debut playing a Russian count and dancer in Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express and followed that up in the poorly received 2018 spy thriller Red Sparrow. Polunin is due to present a mixed programme at the London Palladium over six nights at the end of May. Representatives of Polunin and the London Palladium have been approached for comment.Writer and editor Diana Athill, whose clear eye on life and literature inspired authors and readers alike, has died aged 101. The news was confirmed by the publisher Granta. Athill combined a glittering career in publishing, where she worked with writers including Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, Jean Rhys and VS Naipaul, with award-winning success as an author herself, turning her flinty gaze on love, work and approaching death in memoirs including Instead of a Letter, Stet and the Costa biography prize-winning Somewhere Towards the End. Born during a Zeppelin raid on London in 1917, Athill studied English at Oxford and worked for the BBC Overseas Service during the second world war, before helping André Deutsch found Allan Wingate in 1946, and five years later the publishing house that bore his name. For the next five decades, the imprint gathered acclaim and struggled for cash as Athill worked with writers including Marilyn French and John Updike. Being an editor was for the most part “a simple thing”, Athill told the New Statesman in 2012. “We would not have published a novel if we couldn’t have published it as it came in … Then, I just worked to polish it up a bit.” As for the writers such as Naipaul or Updike who brought her praise as an editor, she continued, “I didn’t do a thing to that text. I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing anything. You were a nanny.” As a “writer manqué”, Athill could see what writers were trying to achieve and help them to achieve it, citing Rhys’s aspiration to “get it like it had really been” as justification for getting out the editor’s red pencil. “Jean used to say, ‘Cut, cut, cut, cut,’ and she was right,” Athill explained. “Accurate writing means accurate thinking.” It was “a good deal more satisfying” to deal with writers whose prose required more attention – a process Athill once compared to “removing layers of crumpled brown paper from an awkwardly shaped parcel, and revealing the attractive present that it contained”. But an editor must never expect thanks, Athill continued, remembering a grouchy author who once sent her a positive review of his extensively reworked book with a note suggesting the reviewer’s kind words about his style proved “none of that fuss about it was necessary”. After mistaking the driver of a passing car for an old friend in January 1958, Athill found a story “bubbling up inside”. She later recalled: “That story came straight out, with no pause, exactly as I meant it to, and I was perfectly happy all the time it was coming.” As soon as it was finished, another story came, until by the end of the year she had assembled a collection of nine. Her friends encouraged Athill to submit one to a fiction competition in the Observer and, in a moment of delicious surprise, she discovered that she had won first prize. “Bury me, dear friends,” she wrote, “with a copy of the Observer folded under my head, for it was the Observer’s prize that woke me up to the fact that I could write and had become happy.” Athill turned next to her own life, recounting in her 1962 memoir, Instead of a Letter, the humiliation of a relationship that blighted her early years. Tony Irvine won her heart at 15, proposed to her while she was studying at Oxford and he was serving in the RAF in Egypt, and then fell silent. For two years she waited for an answer to her letters in “a swamp of incredulous misery”, the pain like “a finger crushed under the door, or a tooth under a drill”. But in 1941 he wrote briefly to ask that she release him from the engagement so he could marry someone else, pitching Athill into “a long flat, unhappiness” that drained her, substituting her blood with “some thin, acid fluid with a disagreeable smell”. The Guardian hailed Instead of a Letter as “the kind of detergent autobiography that scours out the soul”. A short novel, Don’t Look at Me Like That, followed in 1967, but for the next 20 years Athill ducked behind the scenes. She “nannied” Jean Rhys as she completed Wide Sargasso Sea, straightened out Molly Keane’s chronology and boosted VS Naipaul out of his depressions after delivering a manuscript – a chore that Athill remembered whenever she needed cheering up, consoling herself that “At least I’m not married to Vidia.” Meanwhile she conducted a series of affairs, including a liaison with the Jamaican playwright Barry Reckord that lasted for 40 years. In a 2017 Guardian webchat, Athill advised all young women to “have a very good love affair”. Athill returned to memoir in 1986 with an exploration of her complicated relationship with the Egyptian novelist Waguih Ghali, who killed himself in Athill’s flat in 1968, and examined another friend and lover, the activist Hakim Jamal, in 1993’s Make Believe. But her retirement from André Deutsch in the same year signalled the beginning of a new phase in Athill’s life as she grew into a literary celebrity in her own right. An astute account of her 50 years in publishing, Stet, was published in 2000, with a volume revisiting her comfortable Norfolk childhood, Yesterday Morning, appearing two years later. In 2008, the 89-year-old Athill tackled mortality, arguing that although “book after book has been written about being young, and even more about the elaborate and testing experiences that cluster around procreation … there is not much on record about falling away.” The Guardian hailed a memoir that begins as a book about death, but is written “with such verve that it becomes, triumphantly, a book about life”. Somewhere Towards the End took the 2008 Costa prize for biography. A further dispatch from the “high plateau” of old age, Alive, Alive Oh!, was published in 2015, comparing her life in a home for older people to a return to boarding school and declaring the most important lessons of life to “avoid romanticism and abhor possessiveness”. Speaking to the Guardian in 2017 as her 100th birthday approached, Athill said she had been lucky in her life, adding that “things have come out so well for me that I’ve been able to have a very relaxed philosophy, which is enjoy yourself as much as you can without doing any damage to other people … I can’t think many centenarians are still living by their pen.”Dan Snyder, the American billionaire owner of the Washington National Football League (NFL) team, is taking delivery of a new superyacht, complete with the world’s first floating private Imax movie theatre – at an additional $3m (£2.3m) cost. You may think that sailing a 93-metre (305ft) yacht to the world’s most extraordinary locations would be the ultimate luxury experience. However, up-close encounters with penguins on the Galápagos Islands or sharks off the coast of South Africa do not appear to be immersive enough for Snyder. Snyder, a former marketing boss who bought the Washington NFL team in 1999, made a “special and unusual request” when ordering his latest superyacht – called Lady S – from the Dutch boatbuilder Feadship. “He wanted an Imax, that was his main request,” Jan-Bart Verkuyl, the chief executive of Feadship’s Royal Van Lent shipyard, told the Guardian this week. Verkuyl refused to identify the owner, describing him only as a “US billionaire”. The Guardian has since established, via several sources, that the buyers of the yacht, which is understood to have cost more than $100m, are Snyder, 54, and his wife Tanya. A spokesperson for Snyder declined to comment. The couple, who also owned a smaller $70m (£54m), 68-metre superyacht called Lady Anne, were present when Lady S was launched in the Dutch village of Kaag (between Amsterdam and the Hague) in October. “We would like to thank Feadship director Jan-Bart Verkuyl and everyone at the yard for taking us on such an amazing journey,” the Snyders said in unattributed quotes provided to Feadship, which is part-owned by the luxury conglomerate LVMH. Nearly every superyacht launched by shipyards across the world now comes with at least one cinema suite or facility to screen movies on deck as the sun goes down. However, Lady S, which is also known by its codename, Project 814, is the first to have an Imax. Verkuyl said the 12-seat, two-level Imax is so big “the vessel had to be built around the Imax”. Lady S also features a pair of 8K HD TVs, a helipad, four VIP suites and facilities that “cater to a wide range of sports, including golf, basketball, volleyball and football”. The interior of the vessel is described as “akin to a beautiful and contemporary jewellery box”. Snyder, who will take delivery of the yacht in spring, following its sea trials and finishing touches, made his fortune in marketing. He sold his company Snyder Communications to French billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s Havas for $2bn in 2000. He bought the Washington NFL team for $800m in 1999 and remains the majority shareholder. Snyder has come under pressure to change the name of team from Washington Redskins, which is offensive to Native Americans. Despite calls from the then president, Barack Obama, for the name to be changed, Snyder told USA Today in 2013: “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.” (It is Guardian policy to refer to the team as the Washington NFL team). Ed Beckett, a naval architect at Burgess, the British yacht firm that helped design Lady S, said including the Imax made the build process “much more complicated and expensive” because the rest of the ship had to be designed to be as quiet as possible, so as to not to interfere with the movie experience. “You couldn’t have sound from the Imax drifting into the cabins next door and, more importantly, you couldn’t have the sound of the engines or vibrations coming into the Imax. If they did we would not get the certification from Imax – and that was the most important thing for the owner,” he said. Beckett said the extra costs of having an Imax on board were “into the millions”. A spokesman for Imax declined to comment on its work on the yacht, citing client confidentiality. The company has reported such strong demand for private Imaxs that it set up a specialised division – Imax Private Theatre – to target super-rich clients. It describes having a private Imax as: “The entertainment solution so all-encompassing it transcends reality, maximising your sensory immersion and taking you to heights never before attained. Imax Private Theatre is for those who embrace the future, and who want to live it today.” The first private Imax was installed in a new wing of a movie star’s home in Beverly Hills in 2016 and others have been built across the US, London and India. The land-based versions cost from $2m (£1.6m). The server supplied is preloaded with 200 Imax feature films and documentaries. The Canadian company, which debuted the super-high-definition system at the Montreal World Expo in 1967, has installed more than 1,300 Imax screens across the world.Celebrities and environmentalists are demanding Japan reverse its decision to resume whaling, condemning the “cruel and archaic practice which has no place in the 21st century”. An open letter to the Japanese prime minister, Shinzō Abe, criticises Tokyo’s decision to leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC), as campaigners plan a peaceful protest march on the Japanese embassy in London on Saturday. The actors Ricky Gervais and Joanna Lumley, the broadcasters Stephen Fry and Ben Fogle, and the naturalist Chris Packham are among signatories. Packham said: “To the utter disgust of the rest of the world, Japan intends to resume killing whales. We don’t need statements of disgust, we need sanctions that will hurt. If shame won’t turn the Japanese then economic pain might.” Japan is facing international condemnation after confirming in December it will resume commercial whaling in July for the first time in more than 30 years. Greenpeace has disputed Japan’s view that whale stocks have recovered. Japan has killed 8,201 minke whales in the Antarctic since 1986, say campaigners. The protest march to the Japanese embassy in London is planned for noon on Saturday and organised by the London Committee for the Abolition of Whaling. Fogle, UN patron of the wilderness, said: “Whaling is a despicable practice that offends our most basic humanity. I call on Japan to heed the wealth of global voices calling for an end to the senseless killing of whales once and for all.” The open letter calls on Abe to halt whaling and rejoin the IWC. “There is no humane way to kill a whale. Whales die in agony when harpooned, often taking a long time to die in bloody and gory conditions,” it says. “There really is no justification or need for resuming commercial whaling on cultural, commercial, scientific or ethical grounds,” adds the letter, published in the Daily Telegraph. In Japan, where the amount of whale meat consumed has dropped from 233,000 tonnes in 1962 to 3,000 tonnes in 2016, there is “clearly no longer a great demand for this meat”, the letter says. It adds that it is “critical” the protection of the international whaling ban remains and that some whale species, almost exterminated due to commercial whaling, are slowly recovering. Signatories also include the primatologist Jane Goodall, the actor Virginia McKenna and Will Travers from the Born Free Foundation, the TV and radio presenter Nicky Campbell, the naturalist Steve Backshall and the broadcaster Selina Scott.This is the time of year when trainers are mined from under beds and gym kits are disinterred from the bottom drawer. Google searches relating to physical fitness peak in January. Many people even trawl the web to find out about “desk exercises” and “workouts on the go” in case they are too busy to use their new gym memberships. Our relationship with exercise is complicated. Reports from the UK and the US show it is something we persistently struggle with. As the new year rolls around, we anticipate having the drive to behave differently and become regular exercisers, even in the knowledge that we will probably fail to do so. Why do we want to exercise? What do we expect it to do for us? We all know we are supposed to be exercising, but hundreds of millions of us can’t face actually doing it. It is just possible the problem lies at the heart of the idea of exercise itself. Exercise is movement of the muscles and limbs for a specific outcome, usually to enhance physical fitness. As such, for most of us, it is an optional addition to the working day – yet another item on a long list of responsibilities alongside the fulfilment of parental duties or earning money to put food on the table. But because the principal beneficiary of exercise is ourselves, it is one of the easiest chores to shirk. At the end of the working day, millions of us prefer to indulge in sedentary leisure activities instead of what we all think is good for us: a workout. Fitness crazes are like diets: if any of them worked, there wouldn’t be so many. CrossFit, the intensely physical, communal workout incorporating free weights, squats, pull-ups and so forth, is still less than 20 years old. Spin classes – vigorous group workouts on stationary bikes – have only been around for about 30. Aerobics was a craze about a decade before that, although many of its high-energy routines had already been around for a while. (The pastel horror of 1970s Jazzercise is probably best forgotten.) Before that, there was the jogging revolution, which began in the US in the early 1960s. The Joggers Manual, published in 1963 by the Oregon Heart Foundation, was a leaflet of about 200 words that sought to address the postwar panic about sedentary lifestyles by encouraging an accessible form of physical activity, explaining that “jogging is a bit more than a walk”. The jogging boom took a few years to get traction, hitting its stride in the mid- to late-80s, but it remains one of the most popular forms of exercise, now also in groups. The exercise craze that dominated the 1950s was, oddly, not even an exercise. The vibrating exercise belt promised users could achieve effortless weight loss by having their midriffs violently jiggled. It didn’t work, but you can still find similar machines available for purchase today. These fads even came with their own particular fashions – legwarmers, leotards, Lycra. So is our obsession with fitness doomed to be the stuff of embarrassing passing “phases”? Is exercise itself a fad? It is not news that we are becoming more sedentary as a species. The problem has been creeping up on us for generations. As industry and technology solved the physical demands of manual labour, they created new challenges for the human body. Evidence about bone strength and density gleaned from fossils of early humans suggests that, for hundreds of thousands of years, normal levels of movement were much higher than ours today. And the range of work required of the human body to subsist was sizeable: everything from foraging for food and finding water to hunting, constructing basic shelters, manufacturing tools and evading predators. The fossil record tells us that many prehistoric humans were stronger and fitter than today’s Olympians. A hundred years ago, while life was easier than it had been for our hunter-gatherer forebears, it was still required that shopping was fetched, floors scrubbed, wood chopped and washing done by hand. Modern urban environments do not invite anything like the same kinds of work from the body. It is not easy to clock up those miles when cities are built to prioritise cars and treat pedestrians as secondary. We are not assisted by our environments to move like we used to, for reasons tied up with motivation, safety and accessibility. Technological innovations have led to countless minor reductions of movement. To clean a rug in the 1940s, most people took it into their yard and whacked the bejeezus out of it for 20 minutes. Fast-forward a few decades and we can set robot vacuum cleaners to wander about our living rooms as we order up some shopping to be delivered, put on the dishwasher, cram a load into the washer-dryer, admire the self-cleaning oven, stack some machine-cut logs in the grate, pour a glass of milk from the frost-free fridge or thumb a capsule into the coffee maker. Each of these devices and behaviours is making it a bit more difficult for us to keep moving regularly throughout our day. As we step through various innovations, we tend to think of the work that is no longer required as “saved”. Cleaning a rug once burned about 200 calories, while activating a robo-vac uses about 0.2 – an activity drop of a thousandfold, with nothing to replace it. Nobody, when they buy a labour-saving device, thinks: “How am I going to replace that movement I have saved?” A great deal of energy is also saved in the kinds of work that we now do. Towards the end of the 19th century, the labour market began to change radically. Office clerks were the fastest-growing occupational group in the latter half of the period. The UK census of 1841 suggests that 0.1% of working people performed administrative or office work at that time. By 1891, the number had increased twentyfold, and only kept increasing. One recent US survey estimated that 86% of today’s workforce is in sedentary employment. As a result of our leisurely lifestyles, our bones are thinner and our muscles weaker, and while these are not problems in themselves, they are part of the larger, fleshier story whereby the diminution of movement is shackling humans to the very biggest global killers. Heart disease and strokes are responsible for about 17 million deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization. All-day activity trackers like the Apple Watch and the Fitbit (which is only a decade old this year) have attempted to make an intervention into this sandpit of sedentariness. Widespread use of wearables may be helping people to move more, but technology created this problem of sedentary work and leisure, and cannot solve it alone. A 2015 report by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges called Exercise – the Miracle Cure said that regular exercise can assist in the prevention of strokes, some cancers, depression, heart disease and dementia, reducing risk by at least 30%. With regular exercise, the risk of bowel cancer drops by 45%, and of osteoarthritis, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes by a whopping 50%. Exercise, in these terms, is not a fad, or an option, or an add-on to our busy lifestyles: it is keeping us alive. But before it can work for us, our whole approach needs to change. As a result of the Miracle Cure report, doctors were urged to promote regular exercise among their patients. Humans obviously need regular activity, but the modern world strives to take exertion out of our lives. Modernity is characterised by imperatives to simplify, improve and maximise efficiency. In much the same way, medical bodies trying to motivate the population to exercise promise big results with the absolute minimum of disruption to our busy, seated lives. Anyone researching exercise strategies this new year will find that the government recommends “at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity such as cycling or brisk walking every week and strength exercises on 2 or more days a week that work all the major muscles (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms)”. If 150 minutes – or half an hour five times a week – is too much for you, and the data suggests that for most of us it is, another public health strategy promotes the efficacy of being active for just 10 minutes a day. Public Health England launched its Active10 campaign on the grounds that just 10 minutes’ brisk walking each day “counts as exercise” and “can reduce your risk of serious illnesses like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia and some cancers”. Even less time is required for high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which can involve bouts of just 20 seconds of intense effort a few times a week. It seems there is good evidence for the efficacy of very short bursts of strenuous anaerobic exercise, such as sprinting or cycling hard, followed by a brief recovery period. Interval training may improve insulin sensitivity and oxygen circulation, and increase muscle mass. But one of the early researchers into HIIT, kinesiologist Dr Martin Gibala, worried that despite its benefits, it required “an extremely high level of subject motivation”, because all-out exertion is unpleasant and can lead to dizziness, vomiting or injury. “Given the extreme nature of the exercise,” he wrote, “it is doubtful that the general population could safely or practically adopt the model.” While all of these three modes of exercise are effective in different ways, and each has its proponents and committed followers, none is an all-round solution for a “fit” human body. But the problem is not really with the exercises themselves; it is what we tend to do in between those bursts of activity. The health effects of being sedentary are as common and recognisable as they are serious. Anxiety, depression, heart disease, breast and colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and the leading cause of global disability, back pain, are all driven by sedentary behaviours. For our bodies to function properly, they operate on the assumption that we will be burning calories throughout the day, and not in short bursts. It is clear that periods of sedentariness are bad for the human body, and some exercise is always going to be better than none; the issue is not really to do with the types of exercise, but with our approach to them and what we expect them to achieve. We know from the data that the human relationship with exercise is predominantly characterised as both optional and additional to an otherwise sedentary life, which itself causes a ton of problems. As long as physical activity is divorced from the real work of our lives, we will find reasons for not doing it. No matter how low the institutional expectations for physical activity drop, more of us fail to meet them each year. A Public Health England survey last year found that people in England are becoming so inactive that 40% of those aged between 40 and 60 walk briskly for less than 10 minutes a month. The reasons are numerous, but they seem to be connected to our notion of exercise, and the difference between short bursts of running or cycling and low-level, sustained physical activity. If we go back to the beginnings of exercise, we can see why it is still so problematic for us today. The rise of exercise is synonymous with the rise of leisure. We associate this with the start of the Industrial Revolution, but in fact it dates from much earlier. Once humans settled and began to build, several thousand years ago, hierarchies began to form, particularly in cities, as did the gap between master and servant. To be one of the elite meant others were doing the physical work for you. For the masters, there was time to fill, and into this space grew the idea of leisure. Exercise also emerges here, in the imbalance created in the spread of labour performed across a population. Ever since, we have seen a powerful link between exercise and inequality. The wealthy men of ancient Greece, deprived of work by their slaves and with little else to do, invented a new place called the gymnasium, an open space in the city where they could strip off and gambol about naked, competing in made-up challenges to keep each other fit for war. Later, the Romans also celebrated the value of exercise. Cicero, the Roman politician and lawyer, said: “It is exercise alone that supports the spirits and keeps the mind in vigour.” Pliny the Younger, a writer and also a lawyer, said: “It is remarkable how one’s wits are sharpened by physical exercise.” Like their Greek gym buddies, these men were privileged and wealthy. They understood that even though the slave class did their work for them, exercise and physical activity were essential for a long and sane life. After the Greeks and Romans, exercise all but disappeared from western culture. It didn’t resurface properly until the 18th century, when inactivity became a problem for a certain class of gentleman. In 1797, the Monthly Magazine announced a new patent for Francis Lowndes’ Gymnasticon, the earliest of the static exercise machines – a frame in which the user sat, turning a spindle with his arms and operating a treadle with his feet. The article noted that “when peculiar or sedentary occupations enforce confinement to the house, it promises to be equally useful to the healthy as to the sick. The merchant, without withdrawing his attention from his accounts, and the student, while occupied in writing or reading, may have his lower limbs kept in constant motion by the slightest exertion, or, the assistance of a child.” The handle on the contraption’s lower spindle was arranged so that, if desired, a child could be employed to turn the wheel, to save the user valuable energy. In the early 20th century, calisthenics became popular among people with limited means of expending physical energy. In the opening pages of EM Forster’s Howards End, from 1910, we are introduced to the Wilcox family as they come and go in their country-house garden. They are “new money”; they see the world instrumentally, and are mostly allergic to it, too. A visitor reports the scene in a letter: “Then Evie comes out, and does some calisthenic exercises on a machine that is tacked on to a greengage tree – they put everything to use – and then she says ‘a-tissue,’ and in she goes.” Like inactivity, hay fever only seemed to afflict those higher up the social scale. In 1831 the Journal of Health defined calisthenics as “a reasonable, methodical, and regular employment of the exercises best calculated to develop the physical powers of young girls, without detriment to the perfecting of the moral faculties”. Its adoption was necessary because “young girls have not the same freedom as boys in their outdoor exercise, and their customary amusements and occupations, when not at school, are of a more sedentary nature”. Since our modern way of life denies many of us the physical exertion that kept our ancestors healthy, one way to gain social capital is to add it back in. Any kind of communal exercise gives us a sense of belonging, of shared values and endeavours, aside even from its more general physical and mental benefits. When people gather together in a gym or in an exercise class, at least one aspect of what they are doing is joining together in a civic activity that ensures their collective survival, just like the ancient Greeks before them. If being fit promotes long life, you might expect being an elite athlete to help you reach a ripe old age. It doesn’t. Olympians buy themselves an extra 2.8 years on average, according to a 2012 study. Devoting your life to sport and exercise will buy you more time, but once you factor in the Olympians’ lifelong sustained attention to diet and healthy living, as well as tens of thousands of hours spent training, 2.8 years might not really seem sufficient recompense. Instead, the fittest and healthiest people on the planet have never been to a gym. These people, who report high levels of wellbeing and live extraordinarily long lives, inhabit what have been called “blue zones” – areas where lifestyles lead to peculiar longevity. The term was coined by two demographers, Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain, who, while collecting data on clusters of centenarians on the island of Sardinia, identified places of especially high longevity on their map with a blue felt-tip pen. Because clusters of long-lived people are often found in geographically remote places (also including parts of Okinawa, Costa Rica and Greece), jackpot genes seem like a strong candidate to explain their longevity. But a famous study of Danish twins has concluded that a long life seems to be only “moderately heritable”. Over the years, many studies have looked at the lifestyles of people in “blue zones” and found that a number of their customs and habits contribute to a long life (everything from a sense of belonging and purpose to not smoking, or eating a predominantly plant-based diet). In the list of contributory factors, there is a noticeable absence of exercise. I travelled to Sardinia to meet Pes and find out more about his work. He has a vested interest in longevity. His great uncle was a supercentenarian (living beyond 110). The years that Pes is interested in finding out more about are the good ones, not those spent with 24-hour care in a nursing home (there are also none of these in Sardinia’s blue zones). A trial by a group of gerontologists based at Boston University reported that 10% of supercentenarians made it to the final three months of their lives without being troubled by major age-related diseases. In my conversation with Pes, he repeatedly stressed that while diet and environment are important components of longevity, being sedentary is the enemy, and sustained, low-level activity is the key that research by him and others has uncovered: not the intense kinds of activity we tend to associate with exercise, but energy expended throughout the day. The supercentenarians he has worked with all walked several miles each day throughout their working lives. They never spent much time, if any, seated at desks. Pes has recently been studying workers in one of the island’s regions of longevity, Seulo (population around 1,000). He discovered one group of women who had spent their working lives seated, but nonetheless reached a great age. They had been working treadles (pedal-powered sewing machines), which meant they had regularly burned sufficient calories to derive the longevity benefits of remaining active. (Lowndes’ Gymnasticon, which works like a treadle, is starting to look a little less ridiculous as a solution for sedentary workers.) For all the trillions invested in healthcare year on year, there are regions in high-income nations (such as the UK and the US) where life expectancy is still as low as it was in the mid-60s. In Tower Hamlets, one of the poorer parts of London, men can only expect an average of 61 years of good health – and women just 56. So far, researchers agree that sustained periods of low-level activity seem to work well. Aiming for 10,000 steps a day is a good idea, but 15,000 better resembles the distances likely covered by our prehistoric ancestors, and indeed by those Sardinian centenarians. For those of us who can’t move to Sardinia and become a shepherd, a review published in the Lancet in 2016 found that “high levels of moderate-intensity physical activity (ie, about 60-75 min per day) seem to eliminate the increased risk of death associated with high sitting time”. So even if we go to the gym on a Saturday morning, our absolute inactivity at other times can still be damaging to the body. Low and moderate activity for longer or sustained periods seems to produce the best results. It looks like excessive high-intensity activity (the kind we see in elite athletes) drives metabolism and cell turnover, and may even, when all factors are taken into account, accelerate the ageing process. As those all-day activity trackers continue to mature into their second decade, they will no doubt find better ways of encouraging us out of our chairs. At the moment, though, they can only count the things we have done, not the opportunities for movement we have missed. They make us more likely to be attentive to our activity than our inactivity. After two centuries of trying, we should accept that exercise is not working as a global fitness strategy while it remains an addition to the working day. In the long view, it is starting to look a lot like a fad. Government guidelines in the UK and other countries that encourage sport and exercise are failing. These strategies struggle because we are trying to get people to give up what little leisure time they have to pursue activities that require substantial additional effort. Perhaps instead we should encourage people to make the kinds of daily decisions that result in a healthier life. What is needed are the kinds of strategies that would make exercise unnecessary. Urban planning that better addresses the outdoor experience and encourages movement would be a key part of this change. But on an individual level, we can think about returning a little of the friction that technology has so subtly smoothed out for us, and make it easy to get things done. Exercise becomes physical activity when it is part of your daily life. A year ago, my car lease came up for renewal. I had been a driver for nearly 30 years, but after all the alarming research I had read about the impact of modern lifestyles, I could not possibly keep it. I now walk miles more than I used to. Without a car, getting to the gym involved a 70-minute round trip. By the time I had walked there and back, the workouts seemed less necessary, so I cancelled my membership. I tried other things, too. I experimented with a standing desk, but I knew from Pes’s research in Sardinia that it is not sitting itself that is bad, but the inactivity associated with it. Standing in one place for hours is only marginally better than sitting there. The Gymnasticon is also making a comeback. Its new incarnation is the treadmill desk, which seeks to keep office workers permanently on the move. From a health perspective it seems superb, but it is hardly practical. Getting a less comfortable office chair would probably be as effective a strategy, making it less easy to settle into for long periods of immobility. You don’t have to join a gym this year. The numbers tell us that exercise is not the solution to the problems associated with physical inactivity, for the simple reason that these two things are not opposites. The antidote is activity: to find and recover some of the movement that modern life has been taking from us for centuries. Vybarr Cregan-Reid is the author of Primate Change: How the World We Made Is Changing Us, which is available to buy at guardianbookshop.com • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.Tens of thousands of pounds are being spent on pro-Brexit Facebook adverts with little clarity on who is picking up the tab, despite the social network introducing new rules on the transparency of political adverts. The biggest UK political advertiser on Facebook during the last week is Britain’s Future, a relatively obscure pro-Brexit group, which has spent £31,000 in seven days running more than 200 different adverts, mainly urging the public to write to their local MP and urge them to back Brexit. However, there are no details on who is paying for adverts placed by the group, which is fronted by the former Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps scriptwriter Tim Dawson. Dawson did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether he is subsidising its activities himself, whether he is relying on public donations, or whether there is another financial backer. He is the only public individual associated with the group, which has spent £88,000 on pro-Brexit adverts in the last three months. Many of the adverts placed by Britain’s Future use localised targeting to a greater degree than Vote Leave did in the 2016 EU referendum campaign and are designed to encourage members of the public to send messages to politicians who are making up their mind on which side to back in Tuesday’s crunch Brexit vote in the House of Commons. Facebook introduced new rules on political advertising transparency at the end of last year after a series of scandals associated with the 2016 US presidential election and the EU referendum. They require all political advertising to be labelled, to be placed in a public archive for seven years, and for those placing the adverts to verify they are living at a UK postal address. However, the new rules do not force an advertiser to declare the ultimate source of the money for any political campaigns, meaning it is simple to place adverts with minimal transparency on who is ultimately picking up the tab. Facebook’s Richard Allan said the company had taken “an industry-leading position” on ad transparency, going beyond what was required by law. “This includes a ‘paid for by’ disclaimer that requires an advertiser to accurately represent who is running that ad, and our ad library that archives political ads for seven years. We also publish a weekly report detailing ads run and top spenders across our platforms. This information gives everyone the ability to easily find out information about the pages running political ads and direct questions to them.” He said the company welcomed the additional scrutiny. “This is exactly why we have introduced this industry-leading solution: to bring more transparency to political ads on the platform and encourage people to ask questions.” Since the rules were introduced in October, by far the biggest political advertisers on Facebook have been anti-Brexit groups. People’s Vote has spent £220,000 pushing its message to the public, while the related campaign Best for Britain spent £150,000. The anti-Brexit groups have declared only partial accounts of their funding, although many big donors – such as the financier George Soros – have gone public with their funding. Facebook records show that the UK government has spent almost £100,000 of public money promoting Theresa May’s Brexit deal in the last three months, while the Conservatives have spent tens of thousands of pounds pushing the prime minister’s vision for leaving the EU. Facebook’s attempts to introduce background checks on political advertisers have had inadvertent side-effects for organisations that are not involved in day-to-day Westminster debate. The National Theatre found its ads for David Hare’s political play I’m Not Running were flagged for failing to include enough transparency details.The Queen has called for “common ground” and “never losing sight of the bigger picture” in a speech to mark the centenary of the Sandringham Women’s Institute (WI), which is likely to be interpreted as a veiled reference to the toxic debate around Brexit. She spoke of the virtues of “respecting” the other person’s point of view, as parliament remains deeply divided over the issue of Britain leaving the EU. The Queen, who as head of state constitutionally remains publicly politically neutral, reflected in her speech on a year of change, during which it was clear the qualities of the WI endure, she said. She added: “The continued emphasis on patience, friendship, a strong community-focus and considering the needs of others are as important today as they were when the group was founded all those years ago. “Of course, every generation faces fresh challenges and opportunities. As we look for new answers in the modern age, I for one prefer the tried and tested recipes, like speaking well of each other and respecting different points of view; coming together to seek out the common ground; and never losing sight of the bigger picture. To me, these approaches are timeless, and I commend them to everyone.” It echoed her Christmas address when she touched on the same theme, telling the nation: “Even with the most deeply held differences, treating the other person with respect and as a fellow human being is always a good first step towards greater understanding.” The Queen attends a meeting of the her local WI once a year at West Newton village hall as part of her winter stay on her Norfolk estate. It is not the first time the Queen’s words have been interpreted politically with reference to a referendum. She made a rare intervention on the political stage when she expressed the hope that voters will “think very carefully about the future” before the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 while meeting a member of the public outside Crathie church near Balmoral. She was also dragged into the EU referendum campaign in 2016 when the Sun reported she told former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg she believed the EU was heading in the wrong direction. Her speech on Thursday was made as she joined members of her local WI in a live game of Pointless, hosted by Alexander Armstrong, and was on the winning team. Armstrong, host of the BBC games show, who was this year’s guest speaker, described her as “our most distinguished viewer”. The Queen’s team was victorious in a best-of-five match which finished three-one, he said, during which the Queen gave some answers herself and had “some deft, silky Pointless skills”. The Queen joined the Sandringham branch of the WI in 1943 when she was aged 17 and still Princess Elizabeth.A rare durian fruit is causing a stir in Indonesia, where the pungent delicacy is selling for the equivalent of $1,000 each, or more than three times the average monthly wage. The so-called “J-Queen” variety has gone sale at a shopping centre in Tasikmalaya, West Java – where several are on display in clear boxes atop red satin and adorned in fake flowers – with an accompanying price tag of 14m rupiah, or about £750. The average monthly wage in Indonesia is about 3.94m rupiah, according to data from the manpower ministry. News of the ostensibly rare durian has spread quickly in Indonesia, with social media users deriding its fantastical price tag, and locals flocking to the supermarket to snap a photograph alongside the spiky, pungent smelling fruit, considered a delicacy across much of south-east Asia. The brains behind the “J Queen” variety is a 32-year-old Indonesian psychology major called Aka, who claims he created a new and rare version of durian by crossbreeding two superior varieties from different regions in Indonesia. Ada Durian seharga 14jt? WoW 😱😱 Yesss, memang ada namanya Durian J-Queen👑 Konon, durian ini hanya berbuah 3th sekali loh. Setiap pohon juga buahnya ga pernah di atas 20butir. Ga ada yg benjol atau lonjong..semua bulat 6jalur!! . Research buat durian J-Queen jg membutuhkan waktu 4 tahun dan ini durian pemenang kontes di Penang, Malaysia. Pantesan saja yaaa harganya wowwww 😱😱😱 . Gek rasane cucok ro hargane pora yo gengs..?? . 📷 @realplazaasiatasik TAG TEMEN KAMU GENGS 😉 #solodelicious #exploresolo #kulinersolo #solo #durian #jqueen A post shared by  KULINER SOLO (@solodelicious) on Jan 28, 2019 at 12:59am PST The “J-Queen” tree, he says, bears fruit only once every three years and reportedly has a “peanut and butter taste”. Rather than typically oblong in shape, fruit from the J-Queen durian is round and yellow gold. “My intention is to improve the welfare of farmers by creating superior durians,” Aka told the Indonesian news website Tribunnews, before adding that he has farms across Java. “I have had durian gardens in Kendal, Pekalongan, Banyumas, Pangandaran, and Gunung Tanjung, Manonjaya, Tasikmalaya.” But local farmers in Java say they have never heard of the purportedly unique variety, arguing that the most superior and rare Indonesian durians – the Montong and Kumbokarno varieties – normally sell for about 200,000 rupiah. According to reports in the Indonesian media, two “J-Queen” durians have been sold since they were put out on display in the Plaza Asia shopping centre at the weekend.Chris Grayling has denied there is a “void” in government over Brexit amid a series of reports about supposed plots by MPs to take control of the process. But the transport secretary repeatedly refused to say what Theresa May would do if her plan is defeated next week. With the prime minister arguing it would be a “catastrophic and unforgivable breach of trust” for MPs to vote down her proposals on Tuesday, Grayling, one of May’s key allies, insisted there was a coherent plan B. “I don’t think it is a void at all,” he told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme. “The government’s coming forward with a proposal for the nation, to parliament, which says, this is what we think is the best compromise deal that enables us to leave. “It does so in a way that recognises that the nation is pretty divided on this issue.” But Grayling refused to say what might happen if, as widely expected, MPs vote heavily against May’s plan. “Let’s cross that bridge if and when it happens,” he said. “Right now her focus, my focus, the government’s focus is on convincing people that actually this is the best thing to do, it’s the right option. It’s the most likely to deliver Brexit.” Pressed again on whether a backup plan even existed, Grayling added: “I’m not going to get into will we do this, will we do that, will we do the other. The important thing is to say to fellow MPs: those concerns are out there, and they’re big concerns.” Two days ahead of the vote, May wrote in the Sunday Express that the Commons would face the “biggest and most important decision that any MP of our generation will be asked to make”. May wrote: “You, the British people, voted to leave. And then, in the 2017 general election, 80% of you voted for MPs who stood on manifestos to respect that referendum result. You have delivered your instructions. Now it is our turn to deliver for you. “When you turned out to vote in the referendum, you did so because you wanted your voice to be heard. Some of you put your trust in the political process for the first time in decades. We cannot – and must not – let you down. “Doing so would be a catastrophic and unforgivable breach of trust in our democracy. So my message to parliament this weekend is simple: it is time to forget the games and do what is right for our country.” Her plea comes ahead of a likely tumultuous week for May and her government, as speculation swirls about the plans of backbench MPs to further wrest control of the process away from the prime minister. Last week, an amendment led by the Tory former attorney general Dominic Grieve was controversially allowed through for a vote by the Speaker, John Bercow. It means May must present a new Brexit proposal within three working days if her plan is defeated. Reports in several newspapers said Grieve held talks with Bercow ahead of the Speaker’s decision, with the Sunday Times talking of a “very British coup” by anti-Brexit backbenchers to thwart the process. This idea was dismissed by the remain-backing Conservative MP Anna Soubry, who tweeted that the idea of a coup was a “nasty smear” encouraged by Downing Street. Looks like #SundayPapers @10DowningStreet has engaged in nasty smear tactics against outstanding Parliamentarian #DominicGrieve & MPs putting country before party @ChrisLeslieMP @NickBoles to scare #Conservative collegues from voting against the PMs #Brexit “deal” #FakeNews Asked about the idea of a plot by backbench MPs, the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, argued that there was a real chance it could stop the departure process. Recent events in the Commons had shown “that the uncertainty in terms of what will happen in the house has increased”, he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr show. “So those on the Brexiteer side seeking ideological purity with a deal are risking Brexit, because there is a growing risk that events could unfold in ways that mean they are leaving the door ajar to ways that increase the risk to Brexit.” In his interview, Grayling reiterated his warning that stopping Brexit could boost the far right, a view which prompted condemnation on Saturday. “My concern is that we will have, in the aftermath of a decision not to go ahead with Brexit, what we will have is the arrival in this country of the kind of populist politics on the extremes that we are seeing in most other European countries,” Grayling said. “I do not want that, the emergence of the populist parties that were are seeing in most European countries now, in this country, because we’ve turned round to the 17.4 million people who voted to leave and simply said to them: ‘Look guys, sorry, we’re not leaving after all.’”The co-founder of South Korea’s biggest pornography website has been jailed for four years over the distribution of obscene material, as the country attempts to tackle a voyeurism epidemic. The woman, referred to only by her surname Song in South Korean media reports, was sentenced this week after a court found her guilty of “aiding and abetting” the spread of obscene images on Soranet, which she allegedly set up with her husband and another couple in 1999. The file-sharing site, which used an overseas server, once had more than one million users and hosted tens of thousands of images, including “revenge porn” and videos of women recorded secretly in toilets and other public places. It was closed in 2016 following complaints from women’s rights groups. “Beyond the basic concept of pornography, the website severely violated and distorted the values and dignity of children and youths, as well as all human beings,” the Seoul central district court said in its ruling, according to the Korea Herald. “It is difficult to measure how much harm the existence of the website caused our society, visibly and invisibly.” Although it is illegal to distribute pornography in South Korea, videos featuring sexual content are widely shared via servers based overseas or through secret file-sharing sites, according to the country’s media. Molka, or secretly filmed images of a sexual nature, has reached epidemic proportions in South Korea and last summer prompted huge demonstrations by women demanding that police take action against those who film and share the material. Of the 16,201 people arrested between 2012 and 2017 for making illegal recordings, 98% were men; 84% of the 26,000 victims recorded over that period were women, according to police. Last year the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, acknowledged that the use of spycams had become “part of daily life” and called for tougher penalties for offenders. Government workers in Seoul have begun daily checks for spycams in public toilets in response to growing public outrage. Song was also fined 1.4 billion won (£980,000) and ordered to attend 80 hours of sexual violence prevention education, the Korea Herald said. The 46-year-old fled to New Zealand when the investigation into Soranet began in 2015, but handed herself in last June later after the South Korean government revoked her passport. She denied the allegations throughout her trial, claiming that her husband and the second couple – all of whom are living overseas – were responsible for running the site.Theresa May appears to be on course for a crushing defeat in the House of Commons as Britain’s bitterly divided MPs prepare to give their verdict on her Brexit deal in the “meaningful vote” on Tuesday. With Downing Street all but resigned to losing by a significant margin, Guardian analysis pointed to a majority of more than 200 MPs against the prime minister. Labour sources said that unless May made major unexpected concessions, any substantial margin against her would lead Jeremy Corbyn to call for a vote of no confidence in the government – perhaps as soon as Tuesday night. But since Conservative MPs are unlikely to offer Corbyn the backing he would need to win a no-confidence vote, he would then come under intense pressure to swing Labour’s weight behind a second referendum. Cabinet ministers have not yet been told how May plans to keep the Brexit process on track if her deal is defeated – and they remain split on how she should proceed. Leavers are convinced that the prime minister should return to Brussels and press for fresh concessions, while remainers hope she will seek a compromise with Labour. On Monday, May issued one final call to parliament to back her, urging MPs to “take a second look” at her deal and stressing that it was the only option on the table that could deliver an “orderly” exit from the EU. But there was little evidence of movement after her speech. Few MPs were convinced by clarifications of the withdrawal agreement included in an exchange of letters between the prime minister and the EU council president, Jean-Claude Juncker, published on Monday, which May conceded did not go as far as some MPs had hoped. With defeat for May all but inevitable, backbenchers led by the former Tory minister Nick Boles were hoping to seize the agenda in parliament and force the government to seek a softer, Norway-style Brexit deal. And on Monday the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, was forced to bat away questions from loyal Tory MPs suggesting he was willing to facilitate a backbench takeover. “I have no intention of taking lectures in doing right by parliament from people who have been conspicuous in denial of and, sometimes, contempt for it,” he said. “I will stand up for the rights of the Commons and I won’t be pushed around by agents of the executive.” Perhaps the most contentious issue. In order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, a backstop arrangement that keeps the UK in the customs union and requires Northern Ireland to follow single market rules would prevail until a free-trade agreement is reached that avoids such a frontier. The UK and EU negotiators have agreed the former should honour those commitments it made while a member of the bloc – finally settling on a figure of £39bn. The deal would secure a status quo transition period to negotiate the nature of the future relationship, and during which the UK could begin to make trade deals with third countries. A fraught issue at the outset, an agreement was reached relatively quickly that would see the UK respect the rights of EU citizens who arrive before the end of the transition period, which could be in 2022, and vice versa. The document is accompanied by a political declaration that sketches out the future relationship between the two parties – focusing primarily on trade and security. There is growing speculation at Westminster that whichever course May pursues, she will be forced to announce that she will ask the EU27 to extend article 50. The prime minister refused to rule out doing so categorically on Monday, saying only that she didn’t believe it should be necessary. “We’re leaving on 29 March. I’ve been clear I don’t believe we should be extending article 50 and I don’t believe we should be having a second referendum,” May said. “We have an instruction from the British people to leave and it’s our duty to deliver on that, but I want to do it in a way that is smooth and orderly and protects jobs and security.” There are increasing fears in Whitehall that time is running out to put in place all the complex legislation necessary either to implement the withdrawal agreement – or, conversely, to prepare for no deal. 11.30am The Commons begins sitting. The first item is questions to Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and his ministerial team. These are meant to last 30 minutes but can run slightly over. Then the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams briefly introduces a private member’s bill on public sector supply chains under a 10-minute rule motion. After midday If there are no urgent questions or ministerial statements to delay proceedings, the final day of debate on Theresa May’s Brexit deal – officially known as section 13(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 – begins. It will be opened for the government by the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox. Before 7pm May will make a final closing speech for the government, appealing for support for her deal. From 7pm Voting begins. However, before the crucial vote, MPs must vote on some of the dozen or so amendments tabled by Labour, the Lib Dems and SNP as well as backbenchers including Labour’s Hilary Benn and the Tory MP Andrew Murrison. It remains unclear how many of these will be put to a division. One amendment, tabled by the Tory Hugo Swire, has been accepted by the government. At some point between around 7.30pm to 9.30pm MPs finally vote on the deal, as amended. May addressed MPs of her own party on Monday night at the backbench 1922 Committee. The prime minister gave no indication of any plan B in what was described as a low-key, reflective meeting, but urged her party to support her deal to ensure that Brexit goes ahead and to keep Corbyn out of No 10. Nadhim Zahawi, a junior minister, said that Alistair Burt, a Foreign Office minister and remainer, had told MPs that he now accepted the result of the referendum and urged Brexiters in his party, who were on the winning side, to do the same. Brexiters leaving the meeting said their minds had not been changed. Steve Baker said: “She skilfully engineered her speech to ensure there were laughs in all the right places by not mentioning the deal.” Just four Labour MPs have declared publicly that they could vote for May’s Brexit deal: Ian Austin, John Mann, Jim Fitzpatrick and Kevin Barron. Corbyn urged his MPs to hold their nerve, addressing a packed meeting of the parliamentary Labour party on the eve of the vote. The Labour leader said the prime minister had comprehensively failed to scare his MPs into voting for her deal. “Theresa May has attempted to blackmail Labour MPs to vote for her botched deal by threatening the country with the chaos of no deal,” he said. “I know from conversations with colleagues that this has failed. The Labour party will not be held to ransom.” Corbyn said May would “only have herself to blame” for two years of negotiating with her divided cabinet and backbenchers, rather than opening dialogue with Brussels, trade unions, businesses and parliament. “The Tory party’s botched deal will be rejected by Parliament. We will then need an election to have the chance to vote for a government that can bring our people together and address the deep-seated issues facing our country,” he said. A Labour source said MPs “won’t have to wait very long” for a confidence vote to be called but that would be the sole decision of Corbyn rather than the shadow cabinet. “Jeremy will choose the moment,” the source said. However, the source said that should the vote be lost, it would not mean an immediate endorsement to campaign for a second referendum. “The composite identifies a public vote as one of the options; it doesn’t say it’s the preferred option or the default option. Obviously we will judge how to deal with the options and get the best result for the country on the basis of what happens in parliament,” the source said. The Brexit select committee chair, Hilary Benn, was under pressure on Monday night to withdraw a no-deal amendment, tabled before Christmas, that some MPs feared could limit the scale of the government’s defeat. Downing Street declined to say whether it could support an amendment tabled by the backbencher Andrew Murrison, chairman of the Northern Ireland select committee, aimed at putting a formal end date on the Irish backstop. Such a sunset clause would be likely to run into trouble in Brussels, with the EU27 adamant that the backstop must apply “unless and until” an alternative arrangement is in place that avoids the need for a hard border. But the amendment’s supporters believe it will strengthen the PM’s hand if she returns to Brussels in search of fresh concessions after Tuesday. They also hope that if it passes, it could help limit the scale of the government defeat. Governments have been defeated by a margin of more than 100 votes only three times in the last century, according to professor Philip Cowley, of Queen Mary University of London – all of those during the minority Labour administration of 1924. The House of Lords had its own vote on the government’s Brexit deal on Monday evening, rejecting it by a thumping 321 votes to 152 – a majority of 169. Labour’s leader in the Lords, Baroness Angela Smith, called it “a vote for common sense”.“People don’t realise what they’ve lost,” says Candy Nguyen as she peers through the locked gates of what was until recently the historic Ba Son shipyard. “Many don’t even know what was here before.” Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest and most important maritime heritage site is hidden from the street by high blue hoardings peppered with slogans such as “Never still” and “Redefine the skylines”. It is currently the largest development project in the city’s central District 1 neighbourhood, with a cluster of partly constructed 50-storey apartment blocks jutting above the fence. Volunteers for the Saigon Heritage Observatory, such as Nguyen, have not been allowed in since building work began. All believe the shipyard – founded in the 18th century by Gia Long, who would go on to become emperor – and its unique industrial architecture have been completely destroyed. Ba Son had a rich history but they have destroyed all of it. We are losing the character of Ho Chi Minh City Renders for what will replace it show rows of upmarket townhouses between the tall glass and steel towers, as well as a yachting marina on the Saigon River: luxury living for the few. “It used to be so beautiful,” says Nguyen as we walk the Ba Son perimeter, a constant stream of scooters flowing around us. “I cried when I first heard we had lost the trees. My mother used to take me this way to school and the trees used to give shade and oxygen. People used to collect tamarind and sell it … until last year when they cut the trees down.” By 2035 another 15 cities will have populations above 10 million, according to the latest United Nations projections, taking the total number of megacities to 48. Guardian Cities is exploring these newcomers at a crucial period in their development: from car-centric Tehran to the harsh inequalities of Luanda; from the film industry of Hyderabad to the demolition of historic buildings in Ho Chi Minh City. We'll also be in Chengdu, Dar es Salaam, Nanjing, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baghdad, Kuala Lumpur, Xi'an, Seoul, Wuhan and London. Read more from the next 15 megacities series here. Nick Van Mead Ho Chi Minh City (known as Saigon until reunification in 1976) has long had a reputation for being international and cosmopolitan – particularly compared with the one-party state’s political capital, Hanoi, in the north. As the economic capital of communist Vietnam it has always been the place to make money, but with a population of 8.1 million – set to rise above 10 million by 2026, according to the latest UN estimates – the pace of change in this dynamic city has accelerated. Gone, gone, gone, going …? Clockwise from top left: the Charner store, the art deco 213 Dong Khoi apartments, the navy exchange and a colonial-era government building. Photographs: Historic Vietnam/Tom Hricko Heritage experts say virtually no historic buildings are safe from the wrecking ball. Ba Son is being transformed into Golden River, an upmarket development marketed as a “city within a city”. It is a project from Vinhomes – part of the huge and ubiquitous Vingroup conglomerate, which has fingers in everything from real estate to retail and hospitality to health care. The chairman, Pham Nhat Vuong, who founded the company as an instant noodle producer in Ukraine in the 1990s, was Vietnam’s first billionaire. He remains its richest man. Among the villas, golden fences and palms of one nearly completed section of Golden River, a billboard promises a new branch of Vinschool and signs announce Vinmart convenience stores. All that is left of the former shipyard is a pair of barnacled anchors, a cannon and some planks of aged timber – now decorating the upmarket Myst hotel. “Ba Son had a rich history but they have destroyed all of it,” says Nguyen. “We are losing the character of the city.” A mile to the north-east lies another Vingroup development, Central Park, with the Landmark 81 skyscraper at its heart, surrounded by 17 apartment towers. This so-called supertall became the highest building in Vietnam, and 14th highest in the world, when it completed last year. The Central Park development, with the Landmark 81 skyscraper at its centre. Photograph: JethuynhCan/Getty Images Shoppers entering the Vincom Center mall at its base are greeted by a blast of air-con and a glitzy showroom featuring a bright yellow Lamborghini Huracán supercar and three different models of Bentley. There is a Vinmec hospital, a Vinpro electronics store and a Vinsmart phone dealer. Vinmarts are located in the base of every tower. While Central Park was largely built on reclaimed land and vacant lots, anything built in the centre is likely to lead to the demolition of a historic building. No official public records are kept, but it is estimated that more than a third of the city’s historic buildings have been destroyed over the past 20 years. In 1993 the Centre for Prospective and Urban Studies, a Franco-Vietnamese urban research agency, classified 377 buildings in the central districts 1 and 3 as heritage sites. By 2014, 207 of those had been demolished or altered beyond recognition. “For the past four years it has been continuing for sure,” says one urban planner involved in the original inventory, who did not want to be named. The People’s Committee, which runs the city, is currently dividing around 1,000 historic buildings into three classifications: class 1, which is protected; class 2, where the owner can build on the lot but cannot destroy the old building; and class 3, which can be demolished. “It is sad, but the owners of class 3 are seen as the winners,” says the planner. “Generally they are after immediate profit and people want modernity, cleanliness, air-conditioning … they’re not interested in preserving old tiles. They see that the owner next door demolished to build a 32-storey office with restaurant and luxury flats and they think, why can’t I?” Before and after: Another historic building bites the dust (left) and the park and building destroyed to make way for the Vincom Center (right). Photographs: Historic Vietnam A stroll down the elegant Dong Khoi street illustrates the scale of change. The art deco and modernist buildings of the early 20th century fell into decline during the Vietnam war, but the area has undergone a revival of late with stores by Gucci, Dior and Louis Vuitton. Destruction, however, is never far away. The once-prestigious art deco apartment building at 213 Dong Khoi (mentioned in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American) was demolished for a new government office. One block west, the 1924 Charner department store (latterly the Tax Trade Centre) was knocked down to make way for the city’s long-delayed metro. Assurances were given that its grand Moroccan-style staircase and intricate tiles were to be removed and preserved, but heritage groups believe them to have been destroyed. Next door to the 19th-century Hotel Continental, where Greene used to drink and write, the six-storey Eden Building (used as a media centre during the Vietnam war) featured the distinctive curved corner style particular to modernist buildings along Dong Khoi, and housed a colonial-era cinema and arcade – until it was demolished in 2009 for a Vincom shopping mall. Only one art deco apartment block survives on Dong Khoi, currently inhabited by a warren of small retailers and workshops, its shaky old elevator caked in dust. It, too, is slated for demolition. The city’s modernist heritage may be next, says the architectural historian Mel Schenck. The skyline from an apartment in the Golden River complex. What remains of the historic Ba Son shipyard can be seen at the bottom right of the image. Photograph: Tan Le/Getty Schenck estimates that 70-80% of the city is built in modernist style, much of it by noted Vietnamese architects such as Ngo Viet Thu, who designed the Independence Palace. If you pick a classic “shophouse” street at random and look up, the majority of the top floors are modernist. “There is so much of it that it’s become ordinary and people don’t even think about it,” he says. “When I see awnings and junk around a house, that’s good, because that means the building is being well used and isn’t in as much danger of being demolished. If the house is cleaned up, it’s not a good sign.” Even being designed by Ngo Viet Thu himself is no protection. A villa of his in District 3 is currently vacant apart from a live-in caretaker. “It’s on a hot street,” says Schenck. “There’s lots of land. It’s going to go.” Ngo Viet Thu’s son, Ngo Viet Nam Son, is also an architect, and lives and works between Ho Chi Minh City, the US and Canada. He believes his hometown must learn from the mistakes made by other fast-growing Asian cities before it is too late. “We’re not the only city to experience this growth, and we should learn from these experiences,” he says. “But this city hasn’t taken that lesson yet. In Ba Son, they could have made a very nice area, a cultural and green space for the city – something like Pier 59 in New York, or Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco – but instead they destroyed it. “Developers don’t realise that when they destroy historic buildings they are losing a potential economic gain, and if you consider tourism, then people want to see the old city to get a sense of place. Preservation can contribute to economic value.” Critics say the historic centre is increasingly filled with generic architecture which could be anywhere in Asia. Photographs: laranik/Alamy/Rwp Uk/Getty/Ngoc Nguyen Quang/Getty/EyeEm He looks to Shanghai, which shares similar geography – a historic centre facing what was mostly vacant land across the river – and political conditions. There, the historic centre is largely protected, with the Pudong marshland east of the river has been developed as the financial district. “We should preserve District 1 as our old downtown – some new building, but the priority should be to preserve,” he says. “Then Thu Thiem in District 2 over the river can be the international financial district.” Instead, Ho Chi Minh City has two separate masterplans, with the one for the historic west foreseeing a wall of skyscrapers marching down the river. The new developments are often built on raised land to protect them from flooding, while ironically blocking rainwater from flowing freely into the river and so causing more floods elsewhere. They also do not provide much in the way of public space. A new green space in the Central Park development, also built on land reclaimed from the river, is watched over by security guards who ask if users are residents. There is a ban on unaccompanied children under 12 and pets, and signs warn people to safeguard “etiquette, order, safety and aesthetics”. Amid all the concrete and glass, there appears to be a belated appreciation of heritage among the city’s younger people. “Vintage” cafes are popular, even if they are often located inside modern air-conditioned buildings, as are vintage dresses and fashions. “Heritage is trendy now, but I worry it is just a bubble,” says Nguyen. “It may be popular for a year but then I don’t know who will be with us after that. “Ultimately I am optimistic that more people will learn and become interested and get involved – but I do feel frustrated that sometimes people just don’t care.” Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereA Russian toymaker has released a board game called Our Guys in Salisbury, featuring the same cities in Europe visited by the GRU agents accused of carrying out last year’s nerve agent attack. Salisbury, the finish line in the game, is decorated with images of the city’s cathedral and two figures in hazmat suits. They are taken from photographs of the police response to the poisoning of the former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia last March. In one corner of the board is a spray bottle bearing a green skull and crossbones, seemingly a reference to the perfume bottle that British police said the Novichok nerve agent was transported in. In another corner are two illustrated figures resembling the suspected assailants, Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. The two Russian intelligence officers were placed under sanctions by the EU on Monday for their suspected role in the poisonings. The game was developed in November by the Moscow-based toymaker Igroland. The first images of it seen online were thought to be fake. “I can’t understand, is this photoshop or not?” wrote one blogger from Yekaterinburg, Dmitry Kolezev, who published an early photograph of the game in November. Another image of the box, posted online by a Reuters reporter this week, prompted new speculation over whether the game was real. But in an interview on Tuesday, two of the creators of Our Guys in Salisbury confirmed they had 5,000 copies of the game printed last year and were selling them online to retailers. Mikhail Bober said he came up with the idea for the game in part because of the scale of coverage of the Skripal poisoning by the foreign press, and western accusations that Russia was responsible. “In some way, this was an idea of our answer to western media: enough already,” said Bober, who joined Igroland last year. “To us, it’s not funny any more. It’s sad. This needs to stop.” Asked whether he thought a board game about the Salisbury attack, in which one person died and four more were taken to hospital, would offend Britons, he said: “We didn’t want to offend anyone. On the contrary, we wanted to support our countrymen who might be offended by this situation … a lot of things are said and a lot of it without any proof.” An October survey by the independent pollsters Levada Centre showed just 3% of Russian respondents firmly believed the Skripals, and later Dawn Sturgess, who died, and Charlie Rowley, were poisoned by Russian officers. The game also reflects how the response to the Salisbury poisonings in particular have been treated as something of a joke in Russia. The television station RT sent out chocolate Salisbury Cathedrals as end-of-year gifts to other news agencies this year. “If anyone died in Salisbury, then we didn’t want to offend anyone,” Bober said. “The idea of the game is a kind of joke, and a bridge of friendship. We aren’t playing around with the ideas of security forces or with poisoning.” Asked about the images of hazmat suits, Bober said: “We just saw a lot of them on TV and decided to show it here. I think if we wanted to seriously troll and offend anyone, we would have done it differently … The idea was kind, to connect Russia with Europe.” The game is one of several attempts in Russia to produce merchandise tied to the investigation and the media interest it has generated. Since December RT has been selling black T-shirts bearing the question “do you work for GRU?” for £13.50. It is a reference to a question by RT’s Margarita Simonyan during an interview with Mishkin and Chepiga, in which both appeared under pseudonyms and maintained they were travelling nutritional supplement salesmen. Ultimately, it was researchers from the online collective Bellingcat who managed to unmask the two men as graduates of military intelligence schools who had travelled widely in Europe before the March attack in Salisbury. The game involves players travelling as pairs through cities including Minsk, Tel Aviv, Geneva, London and Paris, all destinations visited by the Mishkin and Chepiga before Salisbury. The game was released shortly before Christmas. Igroland did not yet have any sales figures, but Bober said he was considering making a larger reprint. “If we rely on the PR that we’ve just gotten, we’ll make a much larger printing. We are businessmen. We’re thinking in terms of quantities and money.” Asked whether he would consider making other games about recent events in Crimea or Ukraine, he said no. “Definitely not about Ukraine, a fair number of people have died there, there are a lot of opinions and everyone has their own truth,” he said. “There are victims there, it would be stupid to use it in a commercial project.”A German politician has left the far-right Alternative for Germany to set up a new party with a logo that uses a symbol adopted as a secret sign by Austrian Nazis in the 1930s. André Poggenburg resigned from his post as the AfD’s regional leader in eastern Saxony-Anhalt state last year after labelling Turks as “camel drivers” and immigrants with dual nationality a “homeless mob we no longer want”. He announced his resignation from the party in an email sent to the leadership earlier this week. In the email he criticised the AfD for worrying too much about the possibility of being put under surveillance by German intelligence. Separately he told Welt newspaper that he was opposed to a “shift to the left” in the AfD, which has spent the last months ridding itself of extreme elements in an attempt to appear more moderate. “Unfortunately, the developments inside the AfD in the last weeks and months has shown that it isn’t really my political home any longer,” Poggenburg wrote in the email. His new party Aufbruch der deutschen Patrioten (Awakening of German Patriots) will use a cornflower against the background of a German flag. The small blue flower was used as a secret symbol by the then-banned National Socialists in 1930s Austria before the Anschluss of 1938 brought the Nazis to power in the country. Poggenburg, who has repeatedly come under fire for his use of Nazi-era vocabulary, will bring at least two AfD allies, Egbert Ermer and Benjamin Przybylla, into his fledgling party. The party is said to be planning an electoral debut at regional elections in the eastern states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg this autumn. Poggenburg told Welt that he does not want the party to compete with the AfD, and that he proposes “to stay with the successful [political] positioning of the AfD of around two years ago and not go along with the noticeable shift to the left”. The development will overshadow the AfD’s annual conference in the Saxon town of Riesa, which opened on Friday. Delegates will finalise the party’s programme for upcoming European elections and are expected to reject a proposal supporting “Deuxit” – Germany exiting the EU. Further distraction came after police released footage of Monday’s violent attack on AfD politician Frank Magnitz. The 66-second CCTV clip appears to show a man striking Magnitz in the head from behind with his bare hand. Magnitz falls to the floor and the man flees, followed by two accomplices. Police had earlier said the footage cast doubt on the AfD’s account, in which the party claimed unknown assailants knocked Magnitz to the ground with a wooden instrument before beating him around the head. Magnitz, who heads the AfD’s chapter in the city state of Bremen, spent three days in hospital after the attack.Sheltering from a sudden downpour in a parked car just off Brixton Road, London, are two of British music’s greatest new talents, and now biggest outlaws: Skengdo and AM. A fortnight ago, the Metropolitan police announced they had secured a sentence of nine months in prison for the two 21-year-old drill rappers, suspended for two years, for breaching a gang injunction issued in August last year. The nature of the breach? Performing their song Attempted 1.0 at a London concert in early December. The suppression of black music in the UK stretches back 100 years, but, according to Index on Censorship, this is first time in British legal history that a prison sentence has been issued for performing a song. The concert, at 1,400-capacity Koko, was the culmination of a sold-out nationwide tour, a celebratory homecoming gig performed in front of a diverse crowd of moshing fans. “We ended the year on such a positive note, we were so proud of what we’d achieved,” says AM. “We were just really excited about 2019.” Skengdo rolls his eyes. “And what a fucking start to this year. I just feel violated.” The backlash is already gathering pace: a forthcoming open letter signed by civil rights group Liberty and others calls the injunction “a threat to all our civil liberties”, that prevents young people from discussing “the reality of their lives with any hope of being heard.” Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship, points to the long history of the authorities targeting music by people “far removed from those in power … The law already prevents individuals from directly inciting violence, but such wide-ranging bans go well beyond this. They are not the way to handle ideas or opinions that are distasteful or disturbing, and do nothing to address the issues that lead to the creation of this kind of music.” Skengdo and AM’s suspended jail sentence marks a dramatic watershed in the young life of the controversial UK drill scene. The rap subgenre was born on the south side of Chicago in the early 2010s, built from monotone beats and glinting synths, usually with bleak, charismatically delivered lyrics. It has flourished since being discovered on YouTube by young rappers on the same London council estates that previously produced grime, and “road rap” crossover stars such as Giggs and Krept and Konan. Drill was still underground at the end of 2017, but an unholy brew of violent lyrics and music videos, rising incidences of youth violence and media fondness for a pop culture scapegoat led to negative headlines in 2018. It would be naive to deny that there are connections between drill music and real-world violence: lyrics have been cited in several court cases, and the drill MC M-Trap was among those convicted of the murder of 15-year-old Jermaine Goupall in August 2017. As with moral panics over 90s gangster rap and 00s UK garage, “video nasties”, violent Hollywood films and computer games, the controversy concerns the muddy waters between cause and correlation. The song that landed AM and Skengdo – plus TS and Blackz, two fellow members of their Brixton-based group 410 – their unprecedented sentence is a dark, disarmingly catchy tune that was one of the best rap tracks of 2018. It features AM’s trademark deep flow describing alleged historic violent clashes with several members of rival crews Moscow17 and Harlem Spartans, both based barely a mile away to the north. AM taunts their members by name and sketches out cartoonish gang violence: “My big .45, it came with fries / I keep her close, my Valentine / Her range ain’t shit, it’s kinda wide / So if you lack you’re gonna die.” Three young men from these crews were killed in the space of a few months in 2018, but there is no suggestion – from the police or anyone else – that members of 410 were involved. The Met nevertheless decided to classify 410 as a gang, with the injunction declaring that 410’s activities, “including but not limited to the production of drill music videos … have amounted to gang-related violence”. In a culture in which rival groups often call each other out on YouTube and Snapchat, the diss track was seen by the Met as unforgivably incendiary. The injunction will remain in place until January 2021, and prohibits the named 410 members from entering the SE11 postcode, 10 minutes’ walk from their homes. The Met had pushed for a ban on them entering SE1, too, which spans the South Bank area of the Thames, but the judge rejected this request. The injunction also prohibits Skengdo and AM performing or broadcasting songs with lyrics mentioning those rival crews, rappers in those crews or even describing “intrusions on to any other gang or group’s perceived territory”, including their postcodes. The Met’s claim is that in performing Attempted 1.0 at Koko, and sharing clips of the gig on social media, Skengdo and AM “incited and encouraged violence against rival gang members”, in breach of the injunction. The rappers’ management team point out that incitement to violence is a crime in itself, for which no charge has been brought – and that neither of the rappers has ever been convicted of a violent crime. Their mood is a mixture of disbelief and defiance, along with reflection on how they arrived at this point. “We don’t have a lot of power, ultimately,” AM says. “I feel like the authorities have taken advantage of that. They have imposed something that will give us a criminal record just for making music. We didn’t contest the injunction, and the breach, because we couldn’t afford it – we were forced into a corner, where we had to choose between our careers and freedom. And the only way we could choose our career is by pleading guilty and trying to move on with making music. “Our defence is that it’s not malicious, the song is already out and it’s a tour – people are expecting it, of course we’re going to perform Attempted. The police were waiting for any opportunity to say: ‘You guys are in breach.’ But there’s just no evidence that censorship is actually going to stop any crime. It’s a very, very weak argument.” If it’s not going to stop crime, then why are the police doing it? “It’s PR for them,” says AM. “If you’ve never been to this area, and you know there’s a crime problem because you read about it, it makes the police look like they’re doing something.” This case follows that of west London drill crew 1011, who in June last year, were handed a three-year criminal behaviour order (the successor to the asbo) banning them from mentioning rival crews in their music. On that occasion, the order was tacked on to a criminal conviction and sentence for carrying weapons they claimed were props for use in a video. As the human rights lawyer Elena Papamichael warned at the time, the next step could be censorship of artists who had not been charged, let alone convicted, of any crime. Indeed, as well as Skengdo and AM, there are yet more London-based rappers – who want to remain anonymous – who have been served with similar gang injunctions by the Met, explicitly specifying individuals, crews and postcodes they cannot rap about. During the tabloid brouhaha over drill and violent crime last summer, the police launched a high-profile media campaign, with the Met chief, Cressida Dick, blaming drill for fuelling the rise in violence, and announcing they had persuaded YouTube to remove 30 music videos. Det Supt Mike West says that the force had been looking at the connection between online videos and gang violence since 2015 and has developed a central database with more than 1,600 indexed videos used to gather intelligence. “The speed at which an online disagreement can escalate into violence, often very serious violence, is staggering,” West says. “Music role models and social media have a hugely powerful and positive impact, but when used in the wrong way the consequences can quite literally be deadly.” As of 30 November 2018, the Met has secured the removal of 90 such videos from the platform. “We are not seeking to suppress freedom of expression through any kind of music,” West says. “We only ask for videos to be removed from social media which we believe raise the risk of violence.” The artists take a different view. “The video censorship doesn’t make sense,” says Skengdo. “As soon as it goes down, fans will put it back up.” The official video for the offending Skengdo and AM track was removed from YouTube at the Met’s request last July – but the track is still easily available to listen to on the website. What of the violent content of Attempted 1.0, in which the rappers recount alleged stabbings and provocatively taunt rivals? “Young kids spend all night playing Fortnite, playing GTA, where you’re actively making your character shoot over and over,” says AM. “We’re just talking about violent things that have happened. It’s clear to see which one is worse.” In fact, the lurid tales of violence in Attempted 1.0, designed to humiliate 410’s musical rivals, are arguably in the long tradition of diss tracks. The BBC Radio 1Xtra DJ Kenny Allstar says drill originally came about “based on what people in the under-represented sector were going through and about showcasing stories that people in the mainstream world wouldn’t understand. If you look back to earlier times like the punk era, young people who were being backed down decided to rise up and speak their mind.” But the police interference has undoubtedly had an impact on the scene’s lyrics. “A lot of rappers are censoring their music now,” says Skengdo. “Even down to what they name their video, or what hashtag they use to promote it. They want to go under the radar. You put all that hard work into it, you gas everyone up – ‘Listen to my song!’ – and it gets taken down in 10 minutes. This is our livelihood, and it’s a serious financial loss to have a tune banned. “It’s changed the way we have to write, the way we express ourselves, the things we say – and that in itself is a problem. We have to change the way we do things to accommodate the police, which is ridiculous. And that’s literally just the music side of things – there are food shops 10 minutes away in Oval that we can’t use, because it’s in SE11. My thing now is, how can I make people understand what I want to say, without breaching? That’s the technical part. You have to find an alternative.” He smiles. “Fortunately, we’re smart guys.” Drill is now rapidly evolving, partly as a result of this pressure. Gun Lean by Russ has become the first drill track to make the top 10. With its poppy chorus and viral dance craze beloved of Premier League footballers, it marks a departure from drill’s menace and nihilism. The tune was a very deliberate attempt to reach new, mainstream audiences, Russ says. “I’m trying to be the Michael Jackson of what I do, I want to be that successful. I don’t do music to get attacked by the police or to incite crime. I want people to have a good time and dance.” Russ adds that more of this party-orientated iteration of drill seemed inevitable, with rappers faced with a choice between censorship and mainstream success. “If you want to make music to incite crime, you’re not going to get anywhere. Whereas I’m hearing more musical variety, more different flavours, than ever before.” Skengdo agrees that increasing divergence from drill’s original template can only be a good thing. “Everyone’s putting their own sauce on it – that’s how it’s evolving. It’s good that it’s getting more mainstream interest.” But these artists should still be free to lyrically reflect on the violence that also exists in their communities, free from censorship. Skengdo and AM are now having to censor Attempted 1.0 – with references to individual Harlem Spartans and Moscow members dubbed out – before submitting it to the Met for approval, hoping to perform it again. “They haven’t drawn a line to say: ‘This is where the incitement is’, so what we fear is, we might perform the censored version, so we’re not even singing the lyrics, but the crowd’s singing them, and the police turn around and say: ‘That’s a breach.’ We’re in a sticky position. It’s not the end of the world if we don’t perform it, but this is our careers.” Does it bother them that they have become poster boys for this battle for free expression? Wouldn’t it be better to just be known for their music? “Of course it would,” says Skengdo. “But we’re still making music – the grind never stops. If we stop now, then they’ve won, and that’s exactly what they want us to do: stop. We’re not going to accept our story being: ‘The police shut them down, and that was it for Skengdo and AM.’ We’re just getting started.”Nuno Espírito Santo opted to punch the air rather than risk another £8,000 fine for sprinting on to the pitch in celebration of another stoppage-time goal, but his relief was unmistakable. The pain was equally plain for Shrewsbury Town. Their manager, Sam Ricketts, convulsed with agony on the sideline. Supporters who had yelled “six” in disbelief when the amount of additional time was signalled screamed once more. It was the 93rd minute and Wolves, two down with 15 minutes left, were reprieved. Matt Doherty delivered Wolves’ latest stoppage-time goal to shatter the League One side’s dreams of a place in the fifth round. Ricketts made the strange claim that six minutes of stoppage time stemmed from ball boys being removed from a section of the ground where rival fans exchanged insults shortly after Luke Waterfall headed the home side into a two-goal lead. Shrewsbury, 18th in League One, established an advantage their second-half display merited through Greg Docherty’s emphatic finish and Waterfall’s thumping header. Wolves have made a habit of late goals this season, however, and after the Diogo Jota winner that brought his manager on to the pitch against Leicester last weekend, Doherty salvaged a replay. Shrewsbury have won two replays away from home already in this season’s competition. That will offer comfort, although it was hard for Ricketts to find in the immediate aftermath of an agonising finale. “Six minutes of injury time – I am not sure where that came from,” said the former Wales international and Wolves player. “I was told by the fourth official it was because the ball boys disappeared. They didn’t disappear, they were still on the side of the pitch. Admittedly, they weren’t in the corner where all the police were between the fans and I wouldn’t leave an eight-year-old in the corner with 100 police and fans fighting amongst themselves. That disappoints me more than anything. Six minutes was an awful long time and unfortunately we couldn’t quite hang on in the end, but I can’t be disappointed with the performance.” Docherty served notice of the trouble to come for John Ruddy with a vicious, swerving drive from 25 yards that Wolves’ stand-in keeper parried back into the danger area. Conor Coady was on hand to clear before Fejiri Okenabirhie could pounce. Docherty drove another shot wide from distance on the stroke of half-time. He found his range and spot in sensational style with his third attempt moments after the restart. Wolves were caught cold by Okenabirhie, who muscled his way clear of the visiting defence before finding the Scot in space on the right. Docherty cut inside to unleash a ferocious shot from an acute angle that flew through Ruddy’s guard into the far top corner. New Meadow erupted. Wolves almost levelled quickly when Rúben Neves’s shot from 25 yards struck Ollie Norburn and deflected just wide with Arnold wrong-footed. Neves squandered a better opportunity from the edge of the penalty area seconds later and Raúl Jiménez, seconds after his introduction for Leander Dendoncker, side-footed wide when found unmarked in the area by Ryan Giles. Shrewsbury were in dreamland after Coady conceded a corner heading Docherty’s free-kick away from the lurking Omar Beckles. The resulting set piece was delivered to perfection by Norburn and the commanding Waterfall, a member of the Lincoln City side that reached the quarter-finals as a non-league outfit two seasons ago, powered a header past Ruddy from close range. That was the cue for an ugly stand-off between rival supporters. Wolves fans were involved in scuffles with stewards and police before events on the pitch recaptured their attention. Jiménez set up a nervous finale for the home crowd when he despatched a calm finish beyond Arnold from a cross by fellow substitute Ivan Cavaleiro. Shrewsbury looked comfortable but just when a victory to savour seemed within their grasp it was ripped away by Doherty. Wolves were encamped in the home penalty area when Adama Traoré delivered an inviting cross from the right. The defender soared above the crowd and broke Shrewsbury hearts with a fine header into the bottom corner.Anti-abortion activists have struck back against Ireland’s introduction of abortion services by picketing a clinic and by launching potentially misleading websites that mimic the state’s support service for unplanned pregnancies. A group holding placards protested outside a doctor’s office in Galway on Thursday in an effort to deter women from seeking abortion pills just three days after abortion services became legal. About half a dozen people stood outside the Galvia West medical centre in Galway city with signs bearing slogans including “Say no to abortion in Galway” and “Real doctors don’t terminate their patients.” Organisers said it was a peaceful demonstration that received positive feedback from the public. However, pro-choice groups condemned the picket as intimidation and urged the government to establish exclusion zones to prevent protests outside abortion service providers. “I do find that this is public harassment, effectively, of people who are trying to access abortion services here,” Ailbhe Smyth from the Together for Yes campaign told Newstalk radio station on Friday. “It’s despicable behaviour because they are deliberately seeking to deter women from accessing an entirely lawful health service in this country.” She called on the health minister, Simon Harris, to deliver on a promise to introduce legislation for exclusion zones around medical practices offering abortion services, a call backed by Colm O’Gorman, the head of Amnesty Ireland. “Exclusion zones don’t mean people cannot protest,” he tweeted. “But they must do so in a way that doesn’t interfere with another person’s right to access a lawful health service.” Meanwhile, other anti-abortion activists are believed to be behind several websites that mimic myoptions.ie, a support site for women affected by unplanned pregnancies run by the Health Service Executive (HSE), a state agency. The site, which launched on Tuesday, directs women who seek abortions to advice and information about how to access the service, which is set to roll out across Ireland in the coming weeks and months. The HSE warned this week of websites with possible hidden agendas using similar names to its helpline. The mimic sites try to steer women away from abortions by warning of health dangers and offering ultrasounds to show an image of the foetus. “Call us now and book a free ultrasound if you are thinking about termination and need to know how far pregnant you are and all you need to know to be fully informed,” says one such site, myoptions.website. It links to research which claims to link abortions to breast cancer, an association which has been widely discredited by physicians and scientists. When the Guardian called its helpline, it was answered by Eamon Murphy, a veteran anti-abortion activist based in Dublin. “We’re flooded with phone calls and demands,” he said. He cited research purportedly connecting abortions to cancer. “We’re probably the only people telling women of the link.” Asked about misleading callers by mimicking the state’s helpline, Murphy said his site was set up last year, predating the official site. Asked for more details, he ended the call. Ireland started rolling out abortion services on 1 January in the wake of the referendum vote last year to lift a near-total ban on abortion, a landmark in the country’s social liberalisation. A total of 66.4% of voters delivered a stinging rebuke to the Roman Catholic church by voting to repeal the eighth amendment to the constitution, which gave “the unborn” equal rights to pregnant women and made abortion illegal even in cases of rape, incest or severe danger to the mother. Fast-track legislation led to the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act being signed into law on 20 December 2018, paving the way for service rollout this month. Most of the state’s 19 maternity units, plus clinics run by other organisations, are expected to start offering abortion services within weeks. About 20 women reportedly sought terminations on the first working day of the service on Wednesday. Under the new system, GPs will provide abortions to women up to nine weeks pregnant and hospitals will perform terminations at between nine and 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, abortions will be allowed only in exceptional circumstances. The service will be largely free, with the state paying GPs approximately €400 (£358) per patient.I’ve never stopped missing Detroit. I’ve lived in Essex for years and years, but Detroit is who I am. When I go back I OD on the place. I go back to the house I was born in, I knock on the door, and the owner lets me in. I’ll walk from that house to my old school. I’ll go to the Catholic church there. I might have physically left Detroit, but it’s in my heart. Elvis changed my life for ever. I saw him for the first time, on TV, when I was six. I was locked into the set. I knew right there and then that was all I wanted to do with my life. By 14 I was on the road in my first band. If I was going to do anything else, I probably would have been a psychologist. That sounds like a jump from being an entertainer, but they’re both about trying to understand people. Emotions just pass through me; I don't hold grudges Sometimes people tell me I’m too open, but I think if you’re open, you get more from life. If I’m angry, I’m angry. If I’m hurt, I’m hurt… then let’s go for a cup of coffee. Emotions just pass through me; I don’t hold grudges. I think it’s helped with my acting, too. Ron Howard once told me not to take acting lessons… we were in Happy Days together and we still keep in touch. I don’t think I act a role, I think I take it on. I’ve suffered from “empty nest syndrome”. When my son left home, then my daughter, I was lost. The house I live in is a house that should be filled with people. Suddenly it was just me. I’ve worked really hard to fill all the spaces. Where my son used to sleep is now my “Ego room”, with reminders of things I’ve done. I go in there and feel good about myself! I’m 68 and I can still go on stage and shake my ass, so I’m happy. I think I’m extremely good at reading people. It’s a gift. I can look into someone’s eyes and within about five minutes I know their entire life story. My husband gets freaked out by it. It’s like what I imagine the cave people had before they learned how to speak. Sometimes it upsets people because I see things they don’t want me to see. I don’t speak at people, I speak to them. I just don’t do facade. Younger female musicians treat me as a role model. I think they understand that I was the first to do what I did. I broke down the doors. I’ve often wondered why it was me who did it, and I think I’ve decided that it’s because I don’t do gender. I don’t think I looked like a girl on the television, I just looked like me. I think I was quite asexual and that helped break the doors down. Legends Live Tour 2019 featuring Suzi Quatro, David Essex, Les McKeown’s Bay City Rollers, Smokie and Showaddywaddy takes in 10 arena dates starting on 4 April at O2 Apollo Manchester (legendslive.org)An eight-month-old baby was locked up by the Home Office in immigration detention despite being a British citizen, it has emerged. The details of the case appear in court documents revealing that the Home Office successfully won an appeal against a ruling that the baby and his mother, a Nigerian national, had been falsely imprisoned on the grounds that the burden of proof rested on the boy to prove his citizenship. The mother, referred to in documents as TR, and her son, named as JA, were held in immigration detention for 12 days after an asylum application by TR was rejected. The Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) wrote to the Home Office saying JA was a British citizen through his father and, to prove this, efforts were being made to update his birth certificate. It was submitted that, as a British citizen, JA could not be removed and TR should be permitted to remain in the UK to care for him. The Home Office rejected the representations and detained mother and son. Ultimately, the high court granted a stay of removal and TR and JA were released. A month later, JA’s British father was added to his birth certificate. Following a trial at the central London county court, TR and JA were awarded £20,000 and £5,000 respectively for false imprisonment. However, the Home Office appealed against this decision in the high court on the grounds that the judge made an error of law by concluding that JA could not lawfully be detained because he was a British citizen. Mrs Justice Judith Farbey QC, in a ruling published on Thursday, ruled in favour of the Home Office as at the time of JA’s detention it was not proven that he was a British citizen and therefore there were reasonable grounds to suspect he could be removed. She said: “If a person’s citizenship is in question, the burden lies on him to prove that he is British in order to avoid the risk of loss of liberty under the 1971 act.” However, Farbey also allowed a cross appeal after Amanda Weston QC, representing the family, argued that if there was no power to remove JA as a British citizen and he was being breastfed there was no prospect of removing his mother. The judge directed that the case must return to a lower court and be heard again for a fresh decision. The child is now nine. His mother arrived in the UK on 6 October 2007 and was granted leave to enter until 9 January 2008. She overstayed her leave and remained in the UK. JA was born in September 2009. Initially his birth certificate showed TR as his mother but the father’s details were not registered. On 23 October 2009, TR applied for asylum and on 12 January 2010, the Home Office rejected the application and refused to grant humanitarian protection. The IAS submitted its representations in April 2010 but the mother and son were detained on 9 May 2010 until 21 May that year. The county court hearing was held in October 2017 and the appeal was held in October last year.Video has surfaced of Drake kissing a 17-year-old girl in Denver, Colorado in May 2010. In the clip, the Canadian rapper invites the girl on stage during his performance at the Ogden Theater, dances with her, kisses her neck, comments on her shampoo, then pulls her shirt down at the back of the neck to kiss her again. After reaching both hands across her chest while standing behind her, he picks up the microphone and says he is getting “carried away”. When asked her age, the unnamed girl replies: “17.” Drake responds: “I can’t go to jail yet, man!” He asks: “Why do you look like that? You thick [curvaceous]. Look at all this.” He continues: “I don’t know if I should feel guilty or not, but I had fun. I like the way your breasts feel against my chest.” He then kisses her on the cheeks and forehead. Drake would have been age 23 at the time the video was made. The age of consent in Colorado is 17. He has not responded to the video on social media and his US publicist declined to comment to USA Today. The Guardian has contacted representatives for the rapper. It is the second time Drake has faced criticism in recent days. On 3 January, he appeared to tease a forthcoming collaboration with the R&B singer Chris Brown. The pair feuded publicly in 2012 and 2015, but appeared to reconcile in 2018 when Drake invited Brown on stage in Los Angeles. Drake is nominated in seven categories at next month’s Grammy awards, including album of the year for his 2018 release, Scorpion.Apart from the rude ones, there is only one word for the fact that Theresa May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy has been made a board member of the organising committee of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Inevitable. This is simply how stuff works. I’m only sorry our denuded empire means Nick can’t be given an Indian province or something. Or at least a go on Malaya. The ways Timothy’s latest appointment were inevitable are many and various, and we’ll come to them shortly. But we must begin with a recap of how we got here. Because, of course, Nick wasn’t always the crayonner of red lines, the taxer of dementia, the shitter of the electoral bed. And, in one potential timeline, the parliamentary-maths-destroyer that ends up causing no-deal Brexit. Not really that long ago in the scheme of things, Nick was Theresa May’s special adviser in the home office, where they ran the hostile environment policy that led to the Windrush scandal. In the 2016 EU referendum campaign, he was an avowed leaver. Who knows whether it was his counsel that caused Theresa May to refuse to meaningfully surface to fight for Remain, to the point where frustrated campaign coordinators nicknamed her “Submarine May”. But fortuitously, Nick would soon be in No 10 as her joint chief of staff, where he squandered the height of May’s powers to entrench division rather than heal it, by writing her 2016 conference Citizens of Nowhere speech. Within months, Article 50 was triggered, apparently without May having a clue what she wanted, let alone the cabinet, followed by Timothy shaping the red lines which have so hamstrung her during the Brexit negotiations. He pushed her to call an election, where his dementia tax turned out to be a six-pointer. For Labour. He will spend his career walking into positions that attempt to 'harness his talents' or speak to his skillset' Having resigned after the majority was lost, Nick’s spell in the political wilderness lasted a full seven weeks, during which he devoted himself to helping the communities his balls-up might reasonably be expected to do over. No, wait – I’ve just checked, and apparently he went on his holibobs instead. On his return, he landed two national newspaper columns: one in the Telegraph (initially run under the auto-savaging banner “Ways To Win”), and one in the Sun. Despite these platforms, people began to notice a thing about Nick, which was that he was completely, sensationally, historically unable to acknowledge his role in the political shitstorm that was beginning to engulf the UK. So that’s the potted history. And I think you can see that Nick Timothy was, obviously, absolutely destined to pop up in the blazer class of British sport in due course. When asked about his qualifications, I hope he just looked at the appointments panel and went: “Turn on the rolling news.” And as they stared at the 24-hour Brexit crisis, Nick whooped: “THAT’s my CV, baby!” But the latter is just a fantasy sequence, obviously. We know how government (and sports governance) appointments work. The key question at times like this is: “Now, do we know anyone like us, but who’s from … hang on, where is it again? … Ah yes, ‘Birmingham’” But of course! There’s Nick Timothy. Blah-blah clever guy. Blah-blah could-do-something-interesting.” As for any previous pronouncements on sport Nick may have made, an archive trawl throws up the odd delight, such as: “I am not altogether comfortable with our participation in the Ryder Cup team.” He is at least a genuine Aston Villa fan, unlike David Cameron, who I once saw patronise some electrical apprentices with a suffering-fan joke about his club one day winning “the cup”. “Well, I can dream, can’t I?” he grinned ruefully, clearly unaware that Villa were in the FA Cup semi-finals at the time, and within a fortnight would have gone through to the final. The following year, alas, Villa were relegated, and Nick used that moment to pen his most far-reaching sporting thesis to date. “Their lack of commitment on the pitch has been matched only by their arrogance off it,” he observed. High praise. Nick went on to lambast the Villa players for not “showing contrition for their role in the club’s demise”. If the retrospective irony of that were not already too sledgehammer, he then inquired rhetorically: “So what can this sorry story teach us about politics?” Tell us when you find out, buddy. The real politics/sports governance lesson is that both are mostly chumocracies which find jobs for chaps who have repeatedly proved their inadequacies. Like a certain type of manager or useless administrator, Timothy will spend the rest of his career walking into positions that attempt to “harness his talents” or “speak to his skillset”. These sort of characters are somehow judged too big to fail. The Windrush scandal reminded us that if you lose one form, you can lose your cancer treatment and even your liberty. But if you lose a generation’s forms, you can end up prime minister. Nick Timothy’s journey reminds us of something similar. As one critic wrote of the relentless advance of the Widmerpool character in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time novels, he represented “what [Powell] had over the years come to consider inevitable”. More than 75 years after they were begun, he still does. When I heard the news of Timothy’s Commonwealth Games gig, I immediately began anticipating his 2023 self-exculpatory newspaper columns, in which he explained some notional administration cock-up. But then I realised that I was still thinking too small. By that stage, of course, he will have moved on to the chairmanship of the Football Association.Thailand is to hold its long-awaited general election on 24 March, its first since a military coup almost five years ago. The announcement, which came hours after King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a royal decree formalising the election, marks a significant moment in the country’s return to democracy. The military junta, which overthrew the government of Yingluck Shinawatra in a bloodless coup in May 2014, has repeatedly postponed the elections, initially claiming Thailand was “not ready”. The elections were expected to be held on 24 February, but the junta delayed again at the start of this year over concerns that the announcement of the winners could potentially clash with preparation for the coronation of the king, which is planned for 4-6 May. But speaking on Wednesday afternoon, an election commission spokesperson said: “24 March will be the election day.” At the end of last year, the junta lifted the draconian restrictions on political campaigning and protests in place since 2014, preventing all political activity and gatherings of more than five people. As the election delays dragged on, a growing number of Thais took to the streets in pro-democracy protests over the last few weeks, demanding that the junta finally declare an official election date. The last legally recognised general election in Thailand was eight years ago, when Yingluck took office. After a period of political unrest, elections were held again in 2014 but were later declared invalid by the Thai constitutional court. Previous elections have been marked by protests that often descended into violence between pro-democracy and pro-military groups. Prayut Chan-o-cha, the prime minister and leader of the military government, called for an “environment of orderliness, civility and unity” during and after the next elections. How truly democratic the elections,will be is questionable. A new constitution drawn up and passed by the junta means the system is heavily skewed in favour of maintaining the power of the military over the Thai parliament. In an unprecedented move, the military has also formed its own political party to run in the election. While Pheu Thai, the political party of Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was prime minister between 2001-2006, remains the most popular party in Thailand, many are predicting that Prayut will be returned as prime minister owing to powerful military influence and fractures in Pheu Thai’s leadership. Yingluck and Thaksin live in exile and are banned from taking part in any political activity. Under the law, the election commission has to endorse winning members of parliament within 60 days of a vote, and parliament must convene within 15 days of the results.Ole Gunnar Solskjær knows a thing or three about impact substitutions but even Manchester United’s former supersub extraordinaire must have been pleasantly surprised to see Romelu Lukaku step off the bench and score with his first touch. Until the Belgian’s game-changing intervention, Solskjær had seemed outwitted by Rafael Benítez’s contain-and-counter tactics yet by the end of a bitterly cold Tyneside night the impressive Marcus Rashford had added a second to make it four victories from four for José Mourinho’s interim successor. It makes the Norwegian the first Manchester United manager since Sir Matt Busby to win his opening quartet of games. Perhaps instructively, he acknowledged it would be “hard” for him to relinquish the role and return to his “day job” at Molde in Norway during May. “Of course I won’t want to leave,” he said, semi-teasingly. “I don’t want to.” His smile suggested he knows he will almost certainly have to – although much more of this and all bets will be off. In marked contrast, Newcastle United have won only two home games all season and are just two points above the relegation zone. If Manchester United’s flight to the warmth of Dubai on Saturday evening for a mid-season training break should be a happy one, Newcastle have no reason for similar relaxation. Benítez was left rueing the rare goalkeeping error from Martin Dubravka which prefaced Lukaku’s opener. “We have to be disappointed in the way we lost,” he said. “We were very close to getting something but then we made a mistake and we paid for it.” Solskjær’s principal success seems to have been liberating the creative imaginations of players cowed and cramped by Mourinho. Accordingly as the visiting full-backs, Antonio Valencia and Luke Shaw, pushed forward against Benítez’s five-man defence and Dubravka scrambled an awkward early Rashford shot to safety, it felt as if it might be a long night for Newcastle. Things certainly appeared to have changed since the last time Solskjær patrolled the away technical area here in the spring of 2014; back then Alan Pardew’s Newcastle won 3-0, confirming Cardiff’s relegation from the Premier League. Not that the Norwegian could afford to relax as he surveyed a backline which could easily have conceded an early goal when Phil Jones’s ill-advised back pass played Salomón Rondón onside and the hitherto noisy travelling fans congregated high in the Leazes End temporarily fell silent. Ultimately, Jones recovered to rescue the situation but Benítez had a glimmer of optimism. Granted, only Dubravka’s astute positioning prevented Rashford from scoring after Jamaal Lascelles and Fabian Schär collided in their own area and Paul Pogba regularly advanced down the inside-left channel with destructive intent, but the visiting side’s final ball was not quite coming off. Neither was Newcastle’s but at least Christian Atsu used his pace to good effect down the home left, exploiting the space often left by Valencia’s swashbuckling attacking advances. The problem was that when presented with two half chances, Atsu directed the first shot straight at David de Gea and sent the less than perfectly controlled second flashing across the face of goal. Another half chance saw Rondón connect with a decent Atsu cross but Jones’s presence seemed to restrict his leap and the resultant header flew harmlessly over the bar. The watching Alan Shearer might have scored in that situation but at least Rondón was giving Solskjær’s defenders reason to curb their attacking inclinations. That mattered, particularly as, at the other end, Lascelles’s style had also been cramped, albeit for a different reason, namely the yellow card he received for a wince-inducing challenge on Ander Herrera. If Lascelles had enjoyed gently roughing up Rashford, Jonjo Shelvey, a second-half home substitute, contributed a couple of defence-bisecting, outside-of-the-boot passes but was lucky to stay on the pitch after a high late challenge with which he caught Pogba on the back of a knee with studs raised. That incident should not detract from Benítez’s commendable gameplan. Tellingly the increasingly urgent little chats Solskjær and his assistant, Mike Phelan, had been holding with Juan Mata and company during breaks in early second half play emphasised that Newcastle had succeeded in denying their guests room for fluid attacking manoeuvre. An unlikely hero in this collective masterclass in the art of assiduous closing down was Matt Ritchie. Newcastle’s right-wing-turned-left-wing-back proved intelligence and industry personified as he worked to restrict the threat from Valencia and Mata. The moment had come for Solskjær to liberate Lukaku and Alexis Sánchez from the bench and when Dubravka uncharacteristically spilled Rashford’s dipping 25-yard free-kick Lukaku reacted with alacrity, scoring with his first touch by responding faster than Lascelles to drive the rebound over the line. Time remained for an unmarked Rashford to slide a shot through Dubravka’s legs at the end of a move he had started himself. It involved Lukaku cueing up Sánchez, who marked his return from hamstring trouble with a pass which not only picked out Rashford but also rekindled visiting hopes of a top-four finish. “Marcus has a great hit,” added Solskjær after presiding over his first clean sheet. “He must have been watching Cristiano [Ronaldo] practising. Without hitting the heights it was a very professional performance.”Good morning briefers. I’m Martin Farrer and these are the stories you need to know about this morning. Jeremy Corbyn has opened the door for MPs to vote for a second referendum as the fight over the shape of Brexit gathered pace at Westminster. After Theresa May told MPs that Britain’s social fabric could be at risk if people are asked to vote on the matter again, Labour tabled an amendment to her Brexit deal motion calling on the government to hold a vote on two options. The first would be Labour’s own alternative Brexit plan and the second would be whether to legislate “to hold a public vote on a deal or a proposition” that is supported by a majority in the Commons. It is the first time the party has asked MPs to formally consider a second poll but did not satisfy a cross-party group of MPs who fear Corbyn’s Brexit plan has “little regard for what could actually be delivered”. May’s Brexit motion faces amendments from across the Commons and our correspondent Jessica Elgot has handily summarised them here. Meanwhile, the CBI stepped up its anti-Brexit campaign with a report today on the impact of a no-deal exit on Britain’s regions. It says the north-east of England would suffer the most because its large manufacturing sector depends more than any other region on exports to the EU. Prison squalor – An inmate at Bedford prison caught and killed rats in his cell during an inspection that found shocking conditions at the jail. Inspectors discovered a litany of other problems at the facility and a report published today says cells were “filthy and decrepit”, toilets did not flush properly, and an amputee was in a cell with no adaptations and a wheelchair that he could not propel himself. Pest control work had failed to eradicate the infestation, the report said, and described a notice on a door which read: “Please ensure doors remain shut to prevent rats entering the wing!!!”. The collapse in standards at the jail was “as sad as it is inexcusable”, the report said. ‘Baby editing’ claim – A Chinese researcher who claimed to have created the world’s first genetically edited babies faces a police investigation as authorities in China confirmed that a second woman fell pregnant during the experiment. He Jiankui caused a sensation when he announced last year that he had altered the genes of twin girls to prevent them contracting HIV. He also said a second woman was carrying a gene-edited baby and state media reports on Monday appear to confirm his claim. Such gene-editing work is illegal in China, as it is in most countries, and state media said He had kept his research hidden from authorities with the intention of “pursuing personal fame”. Greenland meltdown – Alarming new research suggests that Greenland is melting four times faster than it was 15 years ago. Glaciers on the island are depositing ever larger chunks of ice into the Atlantic ocean, where it melts. But scientists have found that the largest ice loss in the decade from 2003 occurred in the south-west region, which is largely glacier-free. They believe this means that surface ice is melting as global temperatures rise, causing gushing rivers of meltwater to flow into the ocean and push up sea levels. Michael Bevis, lead author of the paper and a professor of geodynamics at Ohio State University, said: “The only thing we can do is adapt and mitigate further global warming – it’s too late for there to be no effect.” ‘You’re a feminist?’ – Victoria Derbyshire has created a stir in New Zealand by asking the country’s progressive prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, if she is a feminist. In an interview on Monday, the BBC star asked Ardern on a visit to the UK whether she had any plans to propose marriage to her partner. She said she hadn’t, to which Derbyshire said: “You’re a feminist?” Ardern, who gave birth to her first child while in office last year, replied: “Oh absolutely, absolutely I am a feminist.” The exchange questioning her credentials prompted surprise in New Zealand, where a leading political commentator said people would find the line of questioning “inappropriate”. Infra dig – A man who drove a digger into a brand new Travelodge hotel in Liverpool is being sought by police after an attack thought to be over unpaid wages. Builders were putting the final touches to the Travelodge when the man repeatedly drove the digger into the building in a rampage lasting more than 20 minutes. “We’d put the last tile in, cleaned up and made sure everything was perfect,” said Samuel White, a ceiling fixer. “Then some idiot in a mini digger decided to drive through the middle of the building.” With Brexit talks stalled and some of its supporters pushing a betrayal narrative, our political correspondent Peter Walker charts how Ukip has begun rising in the polls again. But how did the party come to fully embrace the far right in Britain? And do its supporters know how extreme it has become? Plus: Helen Pidd on what young voters in Bolsover make of the Brexit deal paralysis Rio Ferdinand has tried his hand at quite a few things since retiring from football. The former England and Manchester United defender has become a pundit, campaigned against leaving the EU and knife crime, and visited schools and prisons. He has also endured the loss of his wife and mother to cancer, prompting him to back a DNA test kit business that purports to help you live a longer life. Our interviewer, Simon Hattenstone, met the budding entrepreneur to discuss his foray into nutrigenetics and, along the way, uncovers stories about the young Ferdinand’s Peckham childhood, his wild drinking sessions, and why his England teams weren’t coached properly. Warren Gatland, who ends his 12-year association with Wales at the end of the World Cup, has held discussions about his next full-time job and has not ruled out a return to the Premiership. Wasps’ Dan Robson, one of only two scrum-halves in the Six Nations squad, says he intends to stake his England claim with a long-overdue first cap against Ireland. The language used to describe Manchester United’s Paul Pogba, including “pace and power”, highlights the importance of the debate sparked by Raheem Sterling’s Instagram post and shows a need to rethink coverage of black and minority ethnic players, writes Sachin Nakrani. Moeen Ali has made peace with his role in this England Test team, insisting it is time to stop hiding behind the tag of second spinner and accept he is No 1. And the former England women’s coach Mark Sampson has apologised unreservedly to Eni Aluko and Drew Spence for remarks he made to the players while in charge of the national team. The world economic forum is under way in Davos against a backdrop of concern about the world economy. A survey of leading global chief executives shows that pessimism has risen sharply in the past 12 months amid rising protectionism and the deteriorating relationship between the US and China. Their sense of gloom was reflected overnight in markets in Asia Pacific, which were down after IMF warnings and China’s poor growth figures. The FTSE 100 is set to open down very slightly while the pound has dipped a fraction to $1.287 and €1.137. The papers are chock-full of Brexit news again today, with most considering the prospects of a second vote. The Guardian leads on “May rules out second vote as ‘threat to social cohesion’”, while the Express has a similar concerns: “Second vote will lead to civil unrest”. The Telegraph focuses on Labour with “Corbyn backs plan for second referendum”. The Times warns “Dozens of ministers ready to quit over Brexit” and the Financial Times heralds more bad news for the PM: “May’s hopes of revising Irish backstop rebuffed by Barnier”. The Independent’s digital edition sums up the general feeling with: “Groundhog Day”. Away from Brexit, the Mail gives voice to the parents of victims of a speedboat accident: “Ramp up hunt for our girls’ killer Mr Javid.” The Mirror has an exclusive on hundreds living in a tower block covered in cladding similar to Grenfell Tower. The Guardian morning briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comSore throats are very common and usually get better by themselves within a week. Getting a good night’s sleep always helps to help fight off infection. The NHS advises those with a sore throat to stay well hydrated, although hot drinks should be avoided. Sucking on ice cubes, ice lollies or hard sweets can soothe the inflammation. If you feel uncomfortable, take paracetamol or ibuprofen. There are also medicated sore-throat lozenges and anaesthetic sprays available over the counter that claim to target pain in the throat with anti-inflammatories. The NHS cautions that “there’s little proof they help”, but a 2011 study of two different kinds of medicated lozenge found they brought relief and eased soreness and difficulty swallowing within minutes; effects lasted up to two hours post-dose. Gargling with warm salt water may help to reduce inflammation. (It is not recommended for children.) Dissolve half a teaspoon of salt in a glass of partly cooled boiled water, gargle with the solution, then spit it out. Repeat as necessary. “It’s inexpensive and everyone can do it at home – I recommend this to most patients,” says Abraham Khodadi, a prescribing pharmacist who vlogs weekly about health on YouTube as Abraham the Pharmacist. Most sore throats are caused by a virus, so they cannot be treated by antibiotics – even though in many cases they are prescribed anyway. Last year, sore throats accounted for nearly a quarter of inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions in England. Such prescriptions contribute to the global threat of antibiotic resistance. US researchers reported in 2013 that, from 1997 to 2010, about 60% of patients with sore throats received antibiotics, even though only about 10% needed them. Viral sore throats are accompanied by other cold symptoms that may include a runny nose, cough, red or watery eyes, and sneezing. The symptoms of streptococcal pharyngitis, “strep throat”, a bacterial infection, are similar, but likely to be more severe, and possibly accompanied by a high temperature or feeling hot and shivery. Smoking cigarettes can cause a sore throat by irritating the windpipe. “When an irritant is introduced in the system, the body tries to get rid of it by coughing, which can result in more inflammation,” says Khodadi. Smoking also lowers immunity, which can lead to recurrent viral and bacterial infection, and weakens the lower oesophageal sphincter between the stomach and oesophagus (or food pipe), causing acid reflux from the stomach, which can irritate the throat. Other causes of a sore throat include pollution or irritants in the air, allergies, dry air, and changes in temperature, such as going from a warm office to the icy outdoors. You can safeguard against sore throats by eating a healthy balanced diet, says Khodadi, as well as by having a flu jab. This should alleviate the need for supplements in otherwise healthy people, he says – although Public Health England has suggested taking a daily vitamin D supplement in winter, which may help to boost immunity. The NHS and PHE’s new campaign, Help Us Help You, aims to remind people this winter that pharmacists have the right clinical training to respond to the majority of sore throats. Until the end of winter, more than 200 Superdrug pharmacies in Great Britain are also providing a 10-minute, free sore-throat consultation service, which can include a swab test to determine whether the problem is viral or bacterial. Find your closest participating branch online. If your sore throat persists beyond a week or is recurring, see your GP.Almost 1,000 police officers from England and Scotland are to begin training for deployment in Northern Ireland in case of disorder from a no-deal Brexit, the Guardian has learned. The plans were put in place after Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) chiefs asked for reinforcements to deal with any trouble that arises from a hard border. The training for officers from English forces and Police Scotland is expected to begin this month. The news came on a day of growing concern that a no-deal Brexit is becoming a distinct possibility, on which: • The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said Ireland was “now preparing for no deal with the same level of seriousness that we would” Theresa May’s deal, adding that he and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had spoken and agreed that there could be no change in the offer to the UK. • EU leaders rebuffed May’s hopes that her round of phone diplomacy could prompt any movement, saying “negotiations have concluded”. • May’s attempts to woo the Democratic Unionist party were again rejected after two days of intense negotiations, making the chance of victory for the prime minister in the crucial mid-January vote on her deal still more remote. The prospect of large numbers of English and Scottish officers being deployed on the streets of Northern Ireland after 29 March could anger republicans and complicate efforts to restore the power-sharing executive at Stormont, which collapsed in 2017. The option of reinforcements is deemed necessary to cover the possibility of civil disorder arising from disquiet about border arrangements that could be put in place after a hard Brexit. The police training will require officers to be pulled from their regular duties. It is needed because some of the equipment and tactics used in Northern Ireland vary from those used in the rest of the UK. The PSNI request was made under mutual aid arrangements, which are in place to enable local police forces to help each other in times of heightened demands. A team at the National Police Chiefs’ Council are planning for a no-deal Brexit which will also see extra demands on policing across the UK. Demands for reinforcements for Northern Ireland in the event of no deal come as forces with major ports in their jurisdiction prepare for chaos, especially at Dover in Kent. Plans for a national mobilisation of police, which were devised after the 2011 riots across England, are being revised and adapted for the tensions thrown up by a no-deal Brexit. The size of PSNI’s request for reinforcements from the rest of the UK because of Brexit is roughly double those it has made in recent years for the province’s marching season, when extra officers are needed to police tensions between Protestant and Catholic communities. In remarks rejecting the government’s latest overtures to the DUP, the party’s Nigel Dodds said fears of a hard border were “nonsense propaganda”, adding: “With this clarity emerging in London, Dublin and Brussels, there is evidently no need for this aspect of the withdrawal agreement.” Sources suggested that the meetings with May and the Conservative chief whip, Julian Smith, were “Groundhog Days” for those present. Significantly, there are no scheduled plans for further meetings between the prime minister and the DUP to discuss the backstop, the fallback plan to prevent the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland. But Varadkar said the EU’s existing offer would not change. Saying he had “given up speculating” on whether the UK would leave the EU without a deal, he added that despite May’s attempts to find support in her phone calls to Merkel and others in recent days, European leaders stood united on the issue. “We’re happy to offer reassurances and guarantees to the UK, but not reassurances and guarantees that contradict or change what was agreed back in November,” he said. Irish and British government officials would be speaking by phone on Friday, Reuters reported Varadkar as saying. He added that the calls would be followed up with “direct contact” between the two prime ministers as needed. Like its counterpart in the Republic of Ireland, the UK government is stepping up plans for a no-deal scenario. The Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, said the government was to “accelerate our no-deal planning further” to include a public information campaign, using radio and social media to raise awareness about the need to prepare. With only 85 days until the Brexit deadline, the government has been pushing for further guarantees on the backstop. But a European commission spokeswoman said talks could not be reopened. “The deal that is on the table is the best and only deal possible and the EU27 leaders confirmed on 13 December in their conclusions that it will not be renegotiated,” she said. “As I understand for now, no further meetings are foreseen between the commission’s negotiators and the UK’s negotiators, as negotiations have indeed concluded.” An EU source said nothing had happened regarding Brexit over the last 10 days, although May had spoken with the president of the European council, Donald Tusk, on Wednesday. The prime minister spoke to Merkel twice during the holiday period. The EU’s reluctance to reopen talks reflects the deeply held view among officials that the bloc has gone as far as it can in offering reassurance on the backstop. “There is a general frustration with the whole process. We have worked very hard for the last 18 months,” said one EU source. “We have compromised, we have done a lot to get this nailed down on time.”The former US marine detained in Moscow has been charged with spying and faces 20 years if convicted, according to the Interfax news agency. Paul Whelan, who is head of global security for a Michigan-based car parts supplier, is being held in the Lefortovo detention facility, a former KGB prison in the Russian capital. Whelan’s lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, declined to comment on the charges but said that under the terms of the arrest order, Whelan was expected to remain in custody in Moscow until at least 28 February. “I consider his detention and arrest baseless. It’s based on investigators’ supposition that he will hinder the investigation process. We are asking for bail instead,” Zherebenkov told Reuters. On Thursday, a Russian news outlet claimed Whelan was arrested just minutes after receiving a USB drive that contained the names of people employed at a top secret state organisation. Citing a security service source, Rosbalt news agency said the 48-year-old American received the USB drive from a Russian citizen who visited him in his room at the Metropol hotel in Moscow on Friday. Officers from the FSB intelligence agency then reportedly burst into the room and arrested Whelan. The information could not be independently verified by the Guardian. Rosbalt did not say what had happened to the Russian citizen. The news agency said that according to its source Whelan began making contact with potential Russian informants on internet forums and chatrooms about 10 years ago. He would then, the source said, meet up with his online acquaintances individually in Moscow “over a bottle”. “The US citizen tried to determine if his acquaintance possessed information that could be of interest to American intelligence services, or if anyone in his close circles had access to such information,” read the Rosbalt report. The news agency often cites unnamed security service sources in its articles. Whelan’s brother, David, told the Guardian: “We have not had any details from the state department about the circumstances of Paul’s arrest.” A social media page apparently belonging to Paul Whelan on VK, or VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, contains at least one clear reference to a visit to Moscow, as well as a number of short Russian-language messages such as “Happy Victory Day” and “Forward, President Trump”. In one photograph, he is wearing a Spartak Moscow football top. The pinned message at the top of his VK page reads: “Next stop, Moscow … ” Whelan has 59 friends on his VK page, including some former students at the Military University of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation in Moscow. One of his VK “friends” said he had first been in touch with Whelan more than a decade ago, when the two exchanged contacts on a now defunct pen pals website. “When he visited Russia in 2008, I met him in person, we had a brief sightseeing tour of my city. I haven’t seen him since then,” the VK friend said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This time I was not aware that he was in Russia until I sent him my Christmas greetings on the 25th, and he responded saying that he’s in Moscow, and that he plans to go to St Petersburg next.” Zherebenkov said his client was holding up well and had a good sense of humour. The US ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, visited Whelan in prison on Wednesday, a move described as “a rookie mistake” by one Russian foreign policy analyst. “He should have sent a career consular officer,” said Vladimir Frolov. “An ambassadorial visit by a political appointee escalates the situation and raises the stakes, makes it harder to resolve the situation.” Huntsman has been US ambassador to Russia since October 2017. A state department spokesperson said: “Ambassador Huntsman expressed his support for Mr Whelan and offered the embassy’s assistance. Ambassador Huntsman subsequently spoke by telephone with Mr Whelan’s family. Due to privacy considerations for Mr Whelan and his family, we have nothing further at this time.”The world’s oceans are warming at a faster rate than previously estimated, new research has found, raising fresh concerns over the rapid progress of climate change. Warming oceans take up more space, a process known as thermal expansion, which the study says is likely to raise sea levels by about 30cm by the end of the century, on top of the rise in sea levels from melting ice and glaciers. Warmer oceans are also a major factor in increasing the severity of storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall. Oceans store heat so effectively that it would take decades for them to cool down, even in the unlikely scenario that greenhouse gas emissions were halted urgently. The report, published on Thursday in the journal Science, found that the warming of the oceans was accelerating and was matching the predictions of climate change models, which have shown global temperature rises are likely to lead to extreme weather across the world. Zeke Hausfather, co-author of the paper and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “While 2018 will be the fourth warmest year on record on the [earth’s] surface, it will most certainly be the warmest year on record in the oceans, as was 2017 and 2016 before that. The global warming signal is a lot easier to detect if it is changing in the oceans than on the surface.” Oceans absorb more than nine-tenths of the excess energy trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, and play a key role in regulating the world’s climate. But the role of oceans in the global climate system was overlooked for many years, in part because of a lack of data and the difficulty of studying the marine environment. Only in recent years have scientists come to realise the full importance of oceans, which have effectively absorbed much of the impact of climate change in recent decades, but are now understood to be reaching their capacity as a buffer. Separate recently published research extrapolated temperature estimates for the oceans for the past 150 years, and found substantial warming. Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, that research found the total heat taken up by the oceans in the last century and a half was about 1,000 times the annual energy use of the world’s population. A Guardian analysis of those findings suggested that the amount of energy absorbed by the oceans was equivalent to an atomic bomb per second for the past 150 years. Scientists said this was unsustainable in the long term without seeing further massive effects, including extreme weather, fiercer storms, and sea level rises. The heating could also affect sea currents around the world, with unpredictable consequences. Late last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world would face dire effects from global warming from 2030 unless urgent and drastic measures are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The new Science paper analysed four studies published between 2014 and 2017, which corrected for discrepancies between different types of ocean temperature measurements and gaps in measurements. Satellite monitoring, buoys and ships are all used to gather data on the effect of climate change on the oceans. In the past decade, a network of 4,000 buoys known as Argo has provided an unprecedented data set on the temperature, salinity and acidification of oceans. By taking the four studies, with different methodologies, into consideration the authors of the new analysis were able to build a fuller picture than was previously possible, with calculations extrapolated back to the 1970s.Apple has made the group functionality on its FaceTime application temporarily unavailable as it rushes to fix a glitch that allowed users to listen in on the people they were calling when they did not pick up the call. Under certain circumstances, the glitch also allowed callers to see video of the person they were calling before they picked up. The Guardian confirmed the existence of the bug, which was first reported by 9to5Mac. It turned the phone of the recipient of a FaceTime call into a microphone while the call was still ringing. If the recipient of the call pressed the power button on the side of the iPhone – an action typically used to silence or ignore an incoming call – their phone would begin broadcasting video to the initial caller. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. The company told Reuters it was aware of the problem and would release a software update “later this week”. In the meantime, the Group FaceTime feature was temporarily made unavailable, according to Apple’s system status webpage. By disabling that feature at the source, the company appears to have prevented any further exploitation of the bug. The flaw was discovered amid increasing concern over privacy by regulators around the globe and – embarrassingly for Apple – was exposed on Data Privacy Day, a global event instituted by the Council of Europe in 2007 to raise awareness among businesses and consumers about the importance of protecting privacy. Hours before the bug was first revealed to the public, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, had tweeted that “the dangers are real and the consequences are too important” to not institute “vital privacy protections”. We must keep fighting for the kind of world we want to live in. On this #DataPrivacyDay let us all insist on action and reform for vital privacy protections. The dangers are real and the consequences are too important. The bug was discovered the day before Apple’s quarterly results call, already expected to be a fraught affair due to the company’s unprecedented decision to slash its revenue forecast by at least $5bn (£3.8bn). Cook blamed a slowdown in China for the reduction in earnings, and cited a battery replacement programme, foreign exchange fluctuations, and the end of carrier subsidies for new phones as compounding factors. Apple has attempted to distinguish itself from rival technology companies such as Google and Facebook by boasting about its privacy record. In early January, the company ran a 13-floor billboard in Las Vegas stating, “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone” during the Consumer Electronics Show. While Apple’s decision to shut down Group FaceTime appears to have protected against further attempts to exploit the bug, users wishing for an extra degree of security may wish to disable FaceTime entirely in their phones’ settings (a single switch located under the FaceTime submenu). Apple’s next software update, expected to be iOS 12.2, will be released later this week, the company says, and will contain a permanent fix. Even then, it is not clear whether, or how, Apple will extend that protection to users who don’t update their phones to the latest operating system, either because they can’t, won’t, or don’t know how to. While the company keeps Group FaceTime switched off, those users are secure, but it remains uncertain whether they would be freshly exposed when the feature is restored. I just tested the FaceTime bug with @juliacarriew. It’s real. You can call someone on FaceTime and listen to their phone’s mic if they don’t pick up. In some cases, you can even observe them through the camera without their knowledge. You can go to settings and turn off FaceTime. pic.twitter.com/WmMWjRwWrt The immediate reaction to the bug has been shock on the part of privacy and security experts. Ashkan Soltani, the former chief technology officer of the US Federal Trade Commission, called it “quite possibly one of the most significant privacy/security bugs the company has had to deal with in recent years (if not ever?),” and praised the speed with which Apple had disabled Group FaceTime.For bystanders, the first clue something was wrong was a sound different from the usual thrum of the overhead train. The Boston Evening Transcript later described it as “a deep rumble.” At around 1pm on 15 January 1919, a 50ft-tall steel holding tank on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End ruptured, sending 2.3m gallons of molasses pouring into the neighborhood. Owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, the molasses had been brought to the city from the Caribbean, then piped from the harbor to the vat through 220ft of heated piping. The tank was built in 1915 to accommodate increased wartime demand. But from its inception, it leaked. On 13 January, it had been filled almost to capacity. Two days later, parts of the metal tank ripped though trusses of the elevated train track, 20ft below. Horses and people were swept away. Isaac Yetton was hauling a load of automobile inner tubes into a shed when he heard a snap. According to court transcripts, he saw an electric railway car swinging towards him, along with bottles and freight boxes. He ran toward the harbor, only to be overtaken by a wave of molasses. The molasses flood did for building construction standards what the Cocoanut Grove fire did for fire standards He was carried 35ft before slamming against a door. Injured, completely covered in molasses, he managed to grab a ladder thrown to him by a foreman. He survived the unusual disaster. Many others were not so lucky. A 15ft wave of syrup rushed over Commercial Street and against buildings at 35mph, killing 21 people and injuring 150. Seventy-eight-year-old Elizabeth O’Brien had walked out of her Commercial Street home, where she had been speaking with her sister about a tag sale, in order to do some washing. She heard a loud sound, she later testified, adding: “It knocked me down and tipped the tub over me.” Her jaw was broken. When she woke up, the entire building was gone. Her sister was found alive in hospital days later, having suffered a stroke and disfigurement. Several tradesmen were sitting at the Engine 31 firehouse playing cards and eating lunch. The firehouse was knocked off its foundation, burying the men. One firefighter was in an 18in crawl space, trying to keep his head above the molasses. He couldn’t do it. A week later, the body of a child was found behind a freight train. The Boston Evening Post described how an elderly Italian man, George Kakavis, spent days watching crews sift through the molasses, timber and debris in his “banana storage” cellar, in order to find $4,400 he had squirreled away in a cigar box. For weeks, farmers from neighboring towns carted away the molasses. More than 400 men were involved. It took months to recover all bodies. A class action lawsuit arose from the flood, Dorr v United States Industrial Alcohol Company, with 119 plaintiffs including families of victims and injured parties. They argued that the tank was too thin and poorly built. The company argued that Italian anarchist groups blew up the tank. The investigation lasted more than five years, with over a thousand witnesses testifying. In April 1925, a state auditor ruled that company’s negligence led to structural failure of the tank. Victims and their families were granted $628,000 in damages. The first class action lawsuit against a major corporation, Dorr paved the way for modern regulation. Nowadays, it’s easy to miss the plaque that stands near the former site of the molasses tank. The flood is not well known outside Boston. One local, Stephen Puleo, was working on a master’s thesis on Italian immigrants when he began to research the flood. The North End neighborhood was more than 90% Italian back then, a working class area. In 2003 Puleo published a book, Dark Tide: the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Puleo told the Guardian: “The tank itself didn’t even require a permit to be built. I liked to tell people, the molasses flood did for building construction standards what the Cocoanut Grove fire did for fire standards across the country. You have these two disasters, and long-standing positive ramifications.” On Tuesday, to commemorate the centennial, Puleo will discuss his book at 6pm in the Boston Public Library. The city parks department is planning an event for school children and city residents to mark the site of the tank.Japan’s prime minister has implored the UK not to leave the EU without an exit deal, saying it was “the wish of the whole world” to see Britain secure an agreement. The remarks from Shinzō Abe on a visit to London came as two cabinet ministers, Greg Clark and Gavin Williamson, traded blows over the viability of a no-deal. Speaking in Downing Street, Abe said Japan offered total support to Theresa May’s Brexit deal and said Japanese companies employing 150,000 people in the UK would value the stability. “It is the strong will of Japan to further develop this strong partnership with the UK, to invest more into your country and to enjoy further economic growth with the UK,” he said. “That is why we truly hope that a no-deal Brexit will be avoided, and in fact that is the wish of the whole world.” Abe, a world leader who has developed one of the closest relationships with May, praised the “strong will and hard work” of the prime minister leading up to next week’s parliamentary vote on the deal. A draft plan to sell the Brexit deal that was leaked in November even suggested that Abe might be persuaded to tweet to support May’s deal, although in person in London the Japanese prime minister went further. “Japan is in total support of the draft withdrawal agreement worked out between the EU and Prime Minister May, which provides for transition to ensure legal stability for businesses that have invested into this country,” Abe said. May said that Abe had committed to reaching an ambitious bilateral trade agreement after Brexit, and said that the UK was interested in pursuing membership of the CPTPP free trade alliance of Pacific countries. The carefully crafted remarks from Abe represent the latest attempt to try to persuade sceptical MPs to support May’s Brexit deal next Tuesday, although few believe his intervention will make much of a dent in the majority of MPs who have said they are opposed to the deal. The comments from the Japanese leader came after an impassioned intervention from Clark, the business secretary, who broke ranks with his cabinet colleagues and urged MPs to work together to block a no-deal Brexit. Clark said leaving with no deal would cause “incalculable damage” to business and the economy. The business secretary has argued for a series of “indicative votes” on options including a second referendum or a Norway-style deal, in order to establish which choice could command the backing of the most MPs. “It is my strong view that we need to come together. We need to act to avoid a no-deal because I don’t think there is anything remotely like a majority in parliament that will tolerate this,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Clark warned there was a danger the country could “fall into” a no deal unless MPs voted for an alternative. “The default is in law that unless we have a deal, then we will fall into no deal,” he said. “What parliament needs to do is recognise that we need to put differences aside and establish agreement on a deal. It is something that has to involve the whole of parliament. “It seems to me, to move from parliament being just a scrutineer, but to be active participants and that means discovering parliament’s mind,” he said. Clark hinted he would resign if the government actively pursued no deal; the justice secretary David Gauke has also suggested a similar course of action. Others who would be likely to walk include the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd. Williamson later directly contradicted Clark’s remarks and said the UK should be bullish about no deal. Asked by Sky News if he agreed with Clark’s comments, the defence secretary said: “Not at all, Britain has always been a nation that will always achieve and always deliver. We can be optimistic and confident. Whatever is our future, Britain will succeed and do incredibly well.”Half a dozen Labour MPs came out in support of a second referendum for the first time at a Westminster photocall, arguing it was the “the only logical option” if the party could not secure a general election. The timing of the demand, a couple of hours before Jeremy Corbyn was due to open the no-confidence debate, irritated the party’s leadership, who said afterwards that another national poll was “not the default option” if the Commons vote was lost. Debbie Abrahams and Lilian Greenwood, both former frontbenchers, were among 71 MPs who signed a statement saying the party must back a second referendum hours before Corbyn was due to move a vote of no confidence. The statement said: “We must try and remove this government from office as soon as possible.” However, it added: “But the removal of the government and pushing for a general election may prove impossible.” In that situation, the MPs called on Labour to “join trade unions, our members and a majority of our constituents by then unequivocally backing the only logical option to help our country move forward: putting the decision back to the people for a final say, in a public vote, with the option to stay and keep the deal that we have”. But in response, Corbyn’s spokesman said in a briefing that a second referendum was “not the default option”. When asked if the MPs’ actions were a distraction, he added: “Right now the priority is to bring about a general election; we’ve got a no-confidence motion down today.” Frustration about the timing of the MPs’ actions – some of whom want Labour to move within days to supporting a second referendum – spilled into the open when Joe Bradley, a member of staff in the leader’s office, tweeted: “Not one of these MPs cares about removing a Tory government,” in response to a picture of the photocall. Bradley, who is responsible for trade union and NEC relations, deleted his Twitter account, and Corbyn’s office said it did not comment on staffing matters. Other MPs who had not previously declared their support for another referendum included John Grogan, Graham Jones, Stephen Morgan and Matt Western, according to the organisers of the statement released on Wednesday morning. Labour MPs signing this morning's statement...71 pic.twitter.com/UkfwVkjzTR Few expect Labour to win the vote of no confidence, given that the DUP has said it will support May’s minority government. That has prompted growing pressure for the party to back a second referendum, despite the reservations of the party’s leadership. Labour’s repeatedly stated policy was to press for an election after May’s deal had been voted down, but then to consider a second referendum as an option if no election could be secured. But in his speeches in Tuesday night’s Brexit debate, Corbyn made no reference to a second referendum and his spokesman said the party would consider demanding more than a confidence vote before accepting that it could not force a general election. Stephen Doughty, one of the organisers of the declaration, said the MPs were “supporting the confidence vote – we want to get rid of the Tory government” but called on the party to act soon. The MP refused to give Corbyn a timescale, saying the leadership had “good reasons” for taking its time. But he added: “The clock is ticking, therefore we have to move forward, because it’s jobs, it’s investments, it’s our public services that are at risk.” Other Labour sources closer to the party’s leadership said there were only a handful of MPs who had supported a fresh referendum for the first time, and noted that the number who signed the declaration was well below the 100 figure that had been touted earlier. The organisers of the letter said there were a further 24 Labour MPs who supported a second referendum who had not signed the statement for administrative reasons, or because their position was already well known. Other Labour MPs called on Corbyn to act more quickly if the confidence vote was defeated. Bridget Phillipson said: “In the event we don’t succeed in securing a general election we should commit immediately to going back to the people in a fresh referendum.”Theresa May is to speak to the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, as she seeks further written reassurances that the unpopular Northern Ireland border backstop in her Brexit deal will not be used. The phone call on Friday afternoon will be one of several the prime minister is expected to make to European leaders in an attempt to secure additional clarifications before the House of Commons vote on her arrangement, currently due to take place in the week of 14 January. It is not clear what May could secure to satisfy the Brexit rebels, given the EU has repeatedly said the backstop, designed to ensure the Irish border remains open in all circumstances, cannot be removed from the draft withdrawal treaty. A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal. As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government. That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit. “The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs. Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added. Expectations are being kept deliberately low, and May is likely to begin the political year talking about the long-term future of the NHS, rather than Brexit, with a visit to Liverpool planned for Monday. Meanwhile, the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, told a group of European newspapers that EU leaders could not hope to push May into organising a second referendum because it would inflame political tensions. “The extent to which Britain is divided currently is small compared with the tensions a second vote would cause. It would continue to split our nation,” Barclay said, in remarks first reported by Germany’s Die Welt. The minister said it would not be possible to hold a referendum before EU parliamentary elections due in May, and if Britons had to vote for MEPs again, he predicted there would be “huge democratic damage, because the citizens voted to quit”. Barclay even signalled that holding European elections in such a context could lead to a surge in support for Ukip or other anti-EU populists. “Even our European colleagues cannot be interested in it because that would trigger a very populist reaction,” Barclay said. Downing Street had hoped Brexit passions would have cooled over the Christmas break as warnings mount about the potential impact of no deal, but the early signs are that rebel positions remain firm and the vote is expected to be be lost. It is believed 30-40 Tory MPs will definitely vote against May’s deal, including former cabinet ministers and veteran anti-EU campaigners, although that would be a significant reduction from the 100 who publicly declared their opposition in December. The Democratic Unionist party, whose 10 MPs help keep May in power, has been repeating its objections to the proposed Brexit arrangement over the past 24 hours, despite continuing talks with No 10 to try to resolve the impasse. Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s Brexit spokesman, said his party opposed the backstop because if it came into force, Northern Ireland “would have to treat the rest of the United Kingdom as a third country” and would not participate in any trade deals which the United Kingdom may enter into in the future. Downing Street has floated the idea of staging a second parliamentary vote almost immediately after the first in an attempt to pressure MPs to change their minds, in an atmosphere of rising public concern and jittery financial markets. The argument is helped by May’s position being more secure than it was in December, after rebel MPs failed to unseat her. Under Conservative party rules, she cannot be challenged again for nearly a year. Labour has repeatedly called for May to step aside if her deal is voted down, but she could only be forced out if she were defeated in a Commons vote of no confidence. Rebel Tories have said they would not vote with Labour in such a situation. A poll of 1,215 Conservative party members found 57% supported a no-deal Brexit if there were a three-way referendum in which May’s Brexit deal and remaining in the EU were the other two options. In comparison, 25% of voters back no deal.The FBI in May 2017 opened an inquiry into whether Donald Trump was working on behalf of Russia, the New York Times reports. Citing unnamed former law enforcement officials, the paper reported Friday that in the days after the president fired the former FBI director James Comey, law enforcement officials were so worried about Trump’s behavior that they began investigating whether the president was working against American interests and on behalf of Russia. Counterintelligence investigators were reportedly considering whether Trump’s actions constituted a national security threat, an extraordinary line of inquiry against a sitting US president. They also sought to determine whether the president was knowingly working for Russia. The White House on Friday night dismissed the New York Times report as “absurd”. “James Comey was fired because he’s a disgraced partisan hack, and his Deputy Andrew McCabe, who was in charge at the time, is a known liar fired by the FBI,” said the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said in a statement. “Unlike President Obama, who let Russia and other foreign adversaries push America around, President Trump has actually been tough on Russia,” she added. Rudolph Giuliani, one of Trump’s attorneys, also downplayed the significance of the investigation. “The fact that it goes back a year and a half and nothing came of it that showed a breach of national security means they found nothing,” Giuliani told the paper. Friday’s remarkable report is sure to ramp up the pressure for a White House already feeling the heat from months of investigations. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in August 2018 was convicted of financial crisis and later pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the US and conspiring to obstruct justice. Trump’s longtime lawyer and aide Michael Cohen is set to begin a three-year prison sentence in March after pleading guilty to fraud, campaign finance violations and lying under oath. Manafort was charged as part of the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, appointed Mueller shortly after Comey’s firing in May 2017 to lead the investigation into Russian meddling and ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Mueller is reportedly also investigating whether the president tried to impede the investigation into Russia’s role in the election. Mueller took over the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation after being appointed, the New York Times reported, just days after it was first opened. FBI spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The report may also raise new questions for congressional investigators probing Russian meddling. Newly in control of the House of Representatives, Democrats have vowed to further scrutinize Trump’s Russia ties.Sir David Attenborough has warned that “the Garden of Eden is no more”, as he urged political and business leaders from around the world to make a renewed push to tackle climate change before the damage is irreparable. Speaking at the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, the 92-year-old naturalist and broadcaster warned that human activity has taken the world into a new era, threatening to undermine civilisation. “I am quite literally from another age,” Attenborough told an audience of business leaders, politicians and other delegates. “I was born during the Holocene – the 12,000 [year] period of climatic stability that allowed humans to settle, farm, and create civilisations.” That led to trade in ideas and goods, and made us the “globally connected species we are today”. That stability allowed businesses to grow, nations to co-operate and people to share ideas, Attenborough explained, before warning sombrely: “In the space of my lifetime, all that has changed. “The Holocene has ended. The Garden of Eden is no more. We have changed the world so much that scientists say we are in a new geological age: the Anthropocene, the age of humans,” he declared. In a stark warning to the world leaders and business chiefs flocking to the WEF this week, Attenborough warned that the only conditions that humans have known are changing fast. “We need to move beyond guilt or blame, and get on with the practical tasks at hand.” A survey conducted before the WEF found that environmental threats are now the biggest danger to the global economy, and concern is mounting that co-operation between countries on the issue is breaking down. Attenborough admitted that even he has been surprised by the speed of the damage caused to the environment during his career making TV programmes showing life on earth. In response, Attenborough – recently voted Britain’s most trustworthy celebrity – said humans must use their expert problem-solving skills. “If people can truly understand what is at stake, I believe they will give permission for business and governments to get on with the practical solutions,” he told the WEF. Get it right, he argued, and humans can create a world with clean air and water, unlimited energy and sustainable fish stocks, but only if decisive action is taken now. “Over the next two years there will be United Nations decisions on climate change, sustainable development and a new deal for nature. Together these will form our species’ plan for a route through the Anthropocene. “What we do now, and in the next few years, will profoundly affect the next few thousand years,” he added. Speaking to journalists after his speech, Attenborough warned that economic models needed to change. “Growth is going to come to an end, either suddenly or in a controlled way,” he explained, citing the old joke that anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth in finite circumstances is “either a madman or an economist”. He is also hopeful that he can change hearts and minds during his trip to Davos, pointing out that some delegates have more power than a nation state. “The enormity of the problem has only just dawned on quite a lot of people ... Unless we sort ourselves out in the next decade or so we are dooming our children and our grandchildren to an appalling future.” Before he spoke, Attenborough received the Crystal award from the WEF for his work. Saudi Arabia’s first female film-maker, Haifaa al-Mansour, and conductor Marin Alsop of the Baltimore Symphony were also honoured for their work. Prince William is due to appear with Attenborough to discuss environmental issues at the WEF on Tuesday.Neymar is a doubt for the first leg of Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League tie against Manchester United in three weeks having been taken to hospital after injuring his foot in a 2-0 victory over Racing Strasbourg in the French Cup on Wednesday. The Brazil striker left the pitch after an hour after Strasbourg midfielder Moataz Zemzemi attempted to tackle him three times before referee Johan Hamel awarded a free-kick. He was later taken to hospital for precautionary tests, with manager Thomas Tuchel admitting he is worried about the forward’s condition and blaming the referee for not blowing for a foul sooner. “Neymar is worried, because it’s the same foot, the right foot, in the same area,” Tuchel said in reference to the metatarsal injury that kept the 26-year-old out for several weeks last season. “There’s no news for the moment, he’s gone to hospital. I need to wait for the doctor to give me news about Ney. It’s always complicated [with these kind of injuries]. The referee did not whistle after one tackle, then a second, then a third. After that, he has twisted his foot.” PSG travel to Old Trafford to face United for the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie on 12 February and are already sweating on the fitness of key midfielder Marco Verratti, who is suffering from an ankle injury. Tuchel’s side prevailed at the Parc des Princes thanks to a goal in each half from Edinson Cavani and Ángel Di María, although Strasbourg midfielder Anthony Goncalves expressed no sympathy for Neymar and even suggested the injury is a direct result of how he plays. “It’s his style. But if you play like that don’t complain if you take some knocks after,” Goncalves said. “He’s a great player, and I respect the player he is, but we’re not here so he has fun at our expense. If he wants to have fun, we’ll respond with the weapons we have. We have a jersey to defend. We’re not here for a laugh.” Elsewhere, Barcelona slumped to a 2-0 defeat against Sevilla in the first leg of their Copa del Rey quarter-final. Pablo Sarabia and Wissam Ben Yedder scored second-half goals to give Pablo Machín’s side the advantage. The second leg will be next week in Barcelona, when the hosts are expected to have Lionel Messi and the other regular starters who were rested in Seville. Ben Yedder celebrated his goal by showing support to Argentinian player Emiliano Sala, who is missing after officials lost contact with the small passenger plane in which he was flying two days ago. Ben Yedder showed a shirt with a phrase in Spanish saying: “To my brother. Stay strong. E. Sala.”Germany has said it stands in “full solidarity” with Ireland over the Irish backstop, saying a hard border would be unacceptable to the EU. Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, was speaking as Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, said MPs who were planning to vote against Theresa May’s deal needed to stop their “wishful thinking” that the EU would reopen Brexit negotiations. “Some people call us stubborn, but the truth is avoiding a hard border in Ireland is a fundamental concern for the EU, a union that more than anything else serves one purpose – to build and maintain peace in Europe,” said Maas. In a significant intervention, he urged British MPs to “act responsibly” and not allow the UK to crash out to a disastrous no deal. “Walls and borders can threaten peace. We believe in the peace-making powers of the European Union,” said Maas, adding that the Good Friday agreement that ended decades of bloodshed in Northern Ireland was “living proof of this principle”. “During the Brexit negotiations, all 27 member states agreed on a common position and stood by it. This unity includes full solidarity with Ireland. We insisted, and still do: a hard border dividing the Irish island is unacceptable. “Brexit is less than three months away and the final outcome is up in the air. Even a no-deal scenario is still an option despite the serious damage this would cause on both sides. “There’s too much at stake to take this lightly. We urge our British friends to act responsibly,” said Maas in a speech to Irish ambassadors in Dublin on Tuesday. Addressing the same gathering, Coveney said: “These are fateful days and weeks in British politics. I remain convinced that there is a majority in the UK parliament which will do all it can to avert a disastrous crash-out Brexit. “The time for wishful thinking is over. There is no alternative 585-page agreement waiting to be dusted off,” he said. “And it is also wishful thinking to ignore the default outcome if nothing else is agreed – that default is a crash-out.” He said it was time for MPs to be realistic and to stop holding on to the notion, expressed by the former Brexit secretary David Davis on the BBC on Tuesday morning, that the EU was playing negotiating games. “Surely now is the time in Westminster for everyone – in government and in opposition – to cast aside unrealistic options based on promises that simply cannot be delivered,” Coveney said. In an indirect appeal to the 100 or so MPs who are expected to vote against  May’s deal next week, he said reality needed to take hold in Westminster. “If that doesn’t happen quickly, in the absence of that realism, it is the hardliners who think no price is too high to pay for their version of Brexit who will win out to everyone’s cost, including Ireland’s.” Speaking later at a press conference, Coveney said Ireland would not block any British request to delay leaving the EU by extending the article 50 process. “If it is the case that at some point in the future that the British government seeks an extension of article 50, then that is something that will have to get consideration at an EU level. But certainly from an Irish perspective, if such an ask happens, we won’t be standing in the way on that.” Maas was vaguer, saying it was premature to discuss any extension request before next week’s Westminster vote. The German diplomat echoed Coveney’s warning that all sides would pay a price if “playing for time” led to a no-deal outcome. The two speeches came after the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said the EU did not want to “trap” Britain and was working hard on written assurances to help May get the withdrawal agreement ratified in Westminster next week. Coveney also appealed to the DUP and Sinn Féin to get Northern Ireland’s devolved government back up and running quickly. “With a UK decision to leave the EU about to cause unprecedented dislocation – there is simply no excuse for the parties in Northern Ireland not to find a way to work together.” Davis told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that fresh written assurances from the EU to address his concerns over the Irish border element of the deal would not be enough as they would not be “legally binding”. The assurances are expected to include a pledge that a trade deal could be signed off by 2021, thereby obviating the need for a backstop if the transition period was extended for one year. Davis expressed confidence that the EU would make a U-turn, was merely “testing the mettle” of the UK and predicted the EU would reopen negotiations. Coveney said on Tuesday morning this was impossible. “The European council provided reassurances about the backstop in December and we are ready to provide additional clarifications if these are helpful,” he said “However, we cannot reopen the withdrawal agreement text itself, which was the product of multiple compromises and highly detailed negotiations in a very wide range of areas.” Varadkar said EU leaders did not wish to trap Britain in the backstop indefinitely and had already made that clear.The idea of Europe is in peril. From all sides there are criticisms, insults and desertions from the cause. “Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry. Let’s reconnect instead with our “national soul”! Let’s rediscover our “lost identity”! This is the agenda shared by the populist forces washing over the continent. Never mind that abstractions such as “soul” and “identity” often exist only in the imagination of demagogues. Europe is being attacked by false prophets who are drunk on resentment, and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight. It has been abandoned by the two great allies who in the previous century twice saved it from suicide; one across the Channel and the other across the Atlantic. The continent is vulnerable to the increasingly brazen meddling by the occupant of the Kremlin. Europe as an idea is falling apart before our eyes. This is the noxious climate in which Europe’s parliamentary elections will take place in May. Unless something changes; unless something comes along to turn back the rising, swelling, insistent tide; unless a new spirit of resistance emerges, these elections promise to be the most calamitous that we have known. They will give a victory to the wreckers. For those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe and Comenius there will be only ignominious defeat. A politics of disdain for intelligence and culture will have triumphed. There will be explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism. Disaster will have befallen us. We, the undersigned, are among those who refuse to resign themselves to this looming catastrophe. We count ourselves among the European patriots (a group more numerous than is commonly thought, but that is often too quiet and too resigned), who understand what is at stake here. Three-quarters of a century after the defeat of fascism and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there is a new battle for civilisation. Our faith is in the great idea that we inherited, which we believe to have been the one force powerful enough to lift Europe’s peoples above themselves and their warring past. We believe it remains the one force today virtuous enough to ward off the new signs of totalitarianism that drag in their wake the old miseries of the dark ages. What is at stake forbids us from giving up. Hence this invitation to join in a new surge. Hence this appeal to action on the eve of an election that we refuse to abandon to the gravediggers of the European idea. Hence this exhortation to carry once more the torch of a Europe that, despite its mistakes, its lapses, and its occasional acts of cowardice, remains a beacon for every free man and woman on the planet. Our generation got it wrong. Like Garibaldi’s followers in the 19th century, who repeated, like a mantra, “Italia se farà da sè” (Italy will make herself by herself), we believed that the continent would come together on its own, without our needing to fight for it, or to work for it. This, we told ourselves, was “the direction of history”. We must make a clean break with that old conviction. We don’t have a choice. We must now fight for the idea of Europe or see it perish beneath the waves of populism. In response to the nationalist and identitarian onslaught, we must rediscover the spirit of activism or accept that resentment and hatred will surround and submerge us. Urgently, we need to sound the alarm against these arsonists of soul and spirit who, from Paris to Rome, with stops along the way in Barcelona, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw, want to make a bonfire of our freedoms. In this strange defeat of “Europe” that looms on the horizon; this new crisis of the European conscience that promises to tear down everything that made our societies great, honourable, and prosperous, there is a challenge greater than any since the 1930s: a challenge to liberal democracy and its values. • Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Elfriede Jelinek and Orhan Pamuk are novelists. Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher Other signatories: Vassilis Alexakis (Athens), Svetlana Alexievich (Minsk), Anne Applebaum (Warsaw), Jens Christian Grøndahl (Copenhagen), David Grossman (Jerusalem), Ágnes Heller (Budapest), Ismaïl Kadaré (Tirana), György Konrád (Debrecen), António Lobo Antunes (Lisbon), Claudio Magris (Trieste), Ian McEwan (London), Adam Michnik (Warsaw), Herta Müller (Berlin), Ludmila Oulitskaïa (Moscow), Rob Riemen (Amsterdam), Fernando Savater (San Sebastián), Roberto Saviano (Naples), Eugenio Scalfari (Rome), Simon Schama (London), Peter Schneider (Berlin), Abdulah Sidran (Sarajevo), Leïla Slimani (Paris), Colm Tóibín (Dublin), Mario Vargas Llosa (Madrid), Adam Zagajewski (Cracow)Canadian police have arrested 14 demonstrators at an indigenous protest camp in northern British Columbia, amid growing tensions over a proposed pipeline running through First Nations territory. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s national police force, said 14 people had been arrested late on Monday as officers enforced a court order to remove barriers built along a logging road. Indigenous groups are fighting the construction of a 670km (416 miles) liquified natural gas pipeline, Coastal GasLink, which would cross through Wet’suwet’en territory. On 14 December, a provincial court granted an injunction to TransCanada – the company constructing the pipeline – in order to give them access to the construction site. In response, protesters set up the Gitimd’en checkpoint to block energy company TransCanada from accessing the planned site of construction. Dozens of demonstrators have camped for weeks, braving heavy snow and temperatures that have dipped to -15C (5F). The Wet’suwet’en, made up of five clans, never signed a treaty ceding their land to the government of Canada, and retain control of who enters it. And although elected First Nations officials have signed deals with TransCanada, hereditary chiefs of the area have voiced opposition to the pipeline project. “Forces marching toward gate on Gitumt’en, they are starting to breach, they are armed,” said the protesters’ Twitter account. The Unist’ot’en are one of the clans in the Wet’suwet’en nation, along with the Gidimt’en. Videos posted to social media showed police – some in green fatigues with military-style weapons – arresting demonstrators. At least a dozen police vehicles were present, as well as a helicopter and river boats, according to people at the scene. The moment RCMP came over the gates and started making arrests to enforce the Coastal GasLink injunction. pic.twitter.com/n6Cy1RLUu4 A number of demonstrators retreated back along the logging roads, in the direction of the nearby Unist’ot’en Camp. Police have set up an “exclusionary zone” to prevent access to the area – and have told those trying to access the roads they face arrest if they attempt to enter. Organizers believe the police are headed for Unist’ot’en Camp, members of which are  listed in the court injunction. “Now going into prayer,” the camp tweeted after police cleared the Gitimd’en checkpoint. TransCanada has previously said it has no intention of dismantling the camp – which is in the path of the proposed pipeline – but just wants access to the site for construction. Unist’ot’en Camp, established on the site of a previous 2009 protest camp, has developed into a much larger facility, with a number of buildings, including a healing lodge, as well as full-time inhabitants. Rallies in solidarity with the protesters are planned in cities across the country for Tuesday. Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, tweeted: “Everyone has the right to peaceful assembly and protest. This must be respected. Enforcing Canada’s laws means upholding human rights and First Nations rights.”Six people have died in a train accident in storm-force winds on the Great Belt bridge in Denmark, police have said. The network rail authority, Banedanmark, said the accident happened when an express train on the suspension bridge, the world’s third longest, braked suddenly after being hit by a tarpaulin or flying objects from a freight train travelling in the opposite direction. The national accident investigation board has launched an investigation into the crash, which happened as heavy winds from Storm Alfreda battered large parts of Scandinavia, shutting roads and bridges and leaving more than 100,000 households in Sweden without electricity. Funen police confirmed in a statement that six people had died and a further 16 were wounded in the accident, which happened shortly before 7.35am on the bridge linking Denmark’s central islands, Funen and Zealand. Police and rescue teams were still working at the site, they said. The Funen police chief, Arne Gram, told a mid-morning press conference the incident was “a serious accident” and that an emergency reception centre had been set up in a sports centre in nearby Nyborg at the western end of the bridge, where psychological support was being offered. Several Danish bridges – including the Great Belt – were closed to road traffic early on Wednesday because of the storm, although most train services were running normally. Conditions initially made it difficult for emergency services to reach the train, which was carrying 131 passengers and three staff. “The wind is exceptionally strong and coming in almost straight from the north, blowing straight across the sound and the Great Belt, the meteorologist Henning Gisselø at the Danish meteorological institute told Politiken newspaper. Fatal accidents are rare on Denmark’s well-developed rail network. The 11-mile (18km) Great Belt bridge, hailed as a major engineering achievement when it opened fully in 1998, is part of the complex bridge-and-tunnel fixed-link system that connects Denmark and Sweden to Germany. It carries 21,000 train passengers a day, as well as more than 27,000 vehicles.As Europeans on the continent have watched the UK’s Brexit car crash, one figure offered some light relief to those new to the peculiarities of British politics. The often thunderous pronouncements of John Bercow, the verbose Speaker of the House of Commons, have become the subject of numerous profiles in newspapers, and a fair few highlights videos, shared heavily on social media. The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant headlined its profile of the Speaker: “No one on the British island can call ‘order, order’ more beautifully than John Bercow.” The article went on to suggest “the only order in British politics comes from John Bercow’s mouth in these turbulent days”. “Louder, boisterous and, yes, more animal than ever, he shouts ‘order, order’, with which the 55-year-old House of Commons Speaker tries to calm down the members of the famous parliament.” Despite his popularity abroad, at home Bercow is regarded as such an irritant to the government that speculation was swirling on Thursday night that he could be denied the customary peerage by Downing Street when his time as Speaker comes to an end. No 10 insiders said that while they were “not pretending he’s wildly popular inside cabinet” they had “better things to think about right now” – although the ally of one influential cabinet minister said “it is definitely possible to block or refuse to nominate him” to the House of Lords if Theresa May were to chose to do so. He would be the first Speaker in 230 years to have his peerage blocked. An editorial in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, which depicted the Brexit debate as a “black hole” – eating itself as it interminably chunters on – described Bercow as “impossible to live with, often unbearable, but irreplaceable”. The German TV news programme Tagesschau compiled a 58-second video for social media entitled Order! Order! Order! that evidently delighted thousands, with a string of amused comments posted below on Twitter and Facebook. “Monty Pythonesque. Glorious,” one viewer tweeted. Order! Order! Order! pic.twitter.com/WjvKZWGTPu While some attacked Bercow for allowing a vote that will force the prime minister to come to the Commons within three days of having her Brexit deal rejected, some well-known European media outlets took the opposite view. The row was enough for Radio France Internationale to name Bercow its “European of the week”. It is not known what Bercow, who even his admirers admit could not be described as publicity-shy, thinks of all the attention. In response to the criticism of his handling of MPs, Bercow, the Speaker since 2009, has been unapologetic. “I’m trying to do the right thing and make the right judgments”, he told MPs this week. “That is what I have tried to do and what I will go on doing.”You might have seen the clip floating around social media. It’s a panel discussion from the World Economic Forum at Davos, in which Michael Dell, the billionaire CEO responds to a question about a 70% marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, a proposal recently floated by US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “No, I’m not supportive of that,” Dell says, to much laughter from the assembled plutocrats. “And I don’t think it will help the growth of the US economy. Name a country where that’s worked.” At which point his co-panellist, MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson, chimes in: “The United States.” As Dell and others sputter incredulously, Brynjolfsson explains that America didn’t always allow the super-rich to pay a mere 37% in tax. “From about the 1930s to the 1960s the tax rate [on the very rich] averaged about 70%,” he says. “At times it was up as high as 95%. And those were actually pretty good years for growth … There’s actually a lot of economics to suggest that it’s not actually going to hurt growth.” The response – and, more so, the clip’s massive popularity – illustrates the success of a new style of American politics. Almost as soon as Ocasio-Cortez, running as a democratic socialist, defeated Joe Crowley, some mainstream Democrats dismissed her as a “meteor” that would soon fizzle out. Earlier this month, Republican strategist and cable fulminator Ed Rollins described AOC as a “little girl” with a big mouth. When she cast her vote for Speaker, audible boos rang out from the Republicans in the house. Yet the public approves of precisely those policies that most horrify Beltway insiders. A recent poll shows, for instance, 59% of voters liking AOC’s tax plan, including 57% of Southerners and even 45% of GOP supporters. The magnates at the WEF might be so out of touch as to still think Bono relevant. But even in Davos questions about inequality now resonate – thanks, in part, to Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals. Her success deserves consideration outside America, not least because it confounds much of the established political wisdom. In the 2000s “framing” became an almost ubiquitous preoccupation for liberals, particularly in the wake of Don’t Think of an Elephant! the bestselling book by linguist George Lakoff. Lakoff noted the political significance of certain metaphorical fames. Conservatives adopt the “strict father” metaphor in which politicians act to protect the public from a dangerous world. If liberals inadvertently use terminology associated with that metaphor they undercut their own message. Instead, the argument goes, they must reframe the debate with rhetoric that metaphorically legitimates their own values. In practice, throughout the 2000s, the obsession with framing reinforced a longstanding reliance on spin doctors, focus groups and soundbites, with many progressives convinced that reaching the public depended, first and foremost, on perfectly crafted zingers. AOC presented Trump’s billions as a signifier of inequality, rather than proof of his competence and acumen Then, of course, came 2016 and a presidential election in which Donald Trump destroyed his well-rehearsed opponents, seemingly by blurting out whatever came into his head. AOC embodies a quite different strategy. Yes, she’s articulate and charismatic, and she positively rules on social media. But the “reframing” she performs relies on message more than the metaphor, resetting the terms of debate not through spin but by politics. Traditionally Democrats react to socialism like the devil to holy water. But AOC openly embraced the label and helped set a whole generation debating what socialism might mean. Her statement on tax certainly “reframed” politics. It presented Trump’s billions as a signifier of inequality rather than, as Republicans would have it, proof of his competence and acumen. The proposal cut so deeply precisely because it wasn’t a zinger but a policy – a plan that would make a genuine difference in US society. The ensuing debate has highlighted the grotesque wealth of almost everyone at the top echelons of American governance, including the media. When, for instance, Fox’s Sean Hannity denounced increased taxation on income over $10m, many noted that, over the last year Hannity, that supposed voice of the white working man, took home, um, $36m. That’s why – irrespective of how AOC’s career plays out – her success to date offers an important lesson for progressives, in Australia as much as anywhere elsewhere. Those who want to change the world can’t shape their ideas according to the conventional wisdom about what the public will accept, whether on refugees, climate change or anything else. For too long, politicians have used the alleged backwardness of the voters to justify their own pusillanimity. But leadership – particularly progressive leadership – entails challenging, rather than simply reflecting, the status quo. It means being prepared to displease media moguls or political insiders; it means fighting to popularise ideas that might initially seem difficult or extreme. As Danton, who knew something about changing the world, put it: “We need audacity, and yet more audacity, and always audacity!” Never has that been more important than today, an era in which voters everywhere loathe the stale pieties of conventional politics and crave a strategy that might offer some hope. Under such conditions, yesterday’s radicalism can quickly become tomorrow’s common sense. We’re told that Bernie Sanders will soon announce his nomination for the 2020 presidential race. If that’s so, a possibility emerges that both America and Britain might soon be led by self-described socialists. Whatever you think of Sanders and Corbyn, their rise represents a quite remarkable shift in the political zeitgeist. Progressives in Australia should take note. Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist.Middlesbrough are set to announce the signing of Mikel John Obi on a deal until the end of the season after he passed a medical and agreed personal terms. The 31-year-old former Chelsea midfielder is a free agent after leaving China’s Tianjin Teda by mutual consent this month. A Nigeria international who played in last summer’s World Cup in Russia, Mikel spent 11 seasons at Chelsea before relocating to China two years ago. He has also been the subject of interest from Crystal Palace, along with a handful of Middlesbrough’s Championship rivals, but has chosen Tony Pulis’s promotion-chasing team. Mikel’s wife, Olga Diyachenko, and their twin daughters live in London and he has been keen to return to England. Boro are fifth in the second tier – six points behind Norwich, occupants of the second automatic promotion place, and seven behind the leaders Leeds – and Pulis has been keen to strengthen his squad. He hopes to keep Stewart Downing but the 34-year-old former England winger’s contract contains a clause dictating that, if he makes one more appearance, a new one-year deal will be triggered. Pulis has said Downing is “one of the best players I’ve worked with” and hopes talks between Steve Gibson, Boro’s owner, and the player will lead to a satisfactory conclusion. Burnley are among those monitoring the situation. Middlesbrough are one of several teams pursuing the Sunderland striker Josh Maja but he seems most likely to join West Ham, who would immediately loan him back to the League One promotion-chasers for the remainder of the season. Pulis has also taken note of Yannick Bolasie’s return to Everton after cutting short a loan at Aston Villa. Boro’s manager is interested in taking the winger for the remainder of the season but Bolasie seems minded to try to reclaim a first-team place at Goodison Park. Elsewhere, Bournemouth have signed the Wales central defender Chris Mepham from Brentford for an undisclosed fee believed to be £12m. The 21-year-old, who has four caps, has been a longstanding target for Eddie Howe. “It’s taken a while to get my signature on the dotted line but it’s been worth the wait,” Mepham told afcbTV.Every MP, when they were elected in 2017, knew that they would vote in the Commons’s most important decision since the second world war – the terms of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU and our future relationship with it. In years to come, each of us will be asked – by constituents, families and friends – how we came to the view we took, and contributed to the decision parliament made. The responsibility that we bear is why I have always believed that the whole Commons would – and must – shape and determine the nature of the Brexit we implement. This is not a decision that any MP can delegate to others. Each of us has a responsibility to participate in the decision that is to be collectively made. For so many years our parliament has been a source of strength in our international reputation. It has been viewed as robust and adversarial but also as responsible, pragmatic and decisive and has seen us safely through times of danger and contention. This is just such a time for those qualities to be exercised. In order to benefit from this, the government recognises its duty to respond willingly to what parliament, in its deliberations, requests. To address concerns raised, to seek solutions to problems uncovered and to find ways to assure those with reservations. And to recognise that attempts to establish common ground need not be a sign of weakness but an expression of a desire for national unity. There have been positive signs in this respect during the last week. One example is in the area of workers’ rights after we have left the EU. The United Kingdom – and our parliament – have a proud tradition of establishing and improving the rights of working men and women from Shaftesbury’s Factories Acts, through William Hague’s Disability Discrimination Act to the Minimum Wage introduced by a Labour government, bolstered into the national living wage by a Conservative government. While the EU sets minimum requirements in many areas of workers’ rights, time and again Britain has pre-empted them and chosen to exceed them. Indeed, the EU agency for the improvement of working conditions ranks the UK as being second strongest, behind only Sweden, of all 28 member states for wellbeing in the workplace. The UK offers 39 weeks of statutory maternity pay, compared with the 14 weeks of paid maternity leave required by the EU. We have given fathers and partners a statutory right to paternity leave and pay, something that the EU is now only just starting to consider. Our “national living wage” is at the upper end of those of other EU countries and the Low Pay Commision that advises on it is widely respected. The report of Matthew Taylor – Good Work – now being implemented shows how we can establish the quality of work, as well as the availability of jobs, as a central goal of policy. There is no reason why we should not maintain this record of leadership outside the EU. Yet it is a fact that some people fear that defending the rights of workers would not be adequately addressed. Last week in the House of Commons a number of MPs including John Mann and Caroline Flint, proposed an amendment which would ensure that parliament would decide on whether to implement in the UK any advance in workers’ rights enacted in future by the European Union. The government agrees with the intention of the amendment and the constructive spirit in which it has been proposed. We will work with its authors on how to implement it. This exchange in the Commons is an example of progress that can be made. Much can be achieved with co-operation between willing participants, helping shape how our future will be. The time for this is now. Across the country and the world there is a mounting impatience for us to settle how we will enact the decision of the referendum. I work with companies and investors to make the case for them to make investments and to create jobs in Britain. They are more than willing to do so. The strengths that we offer as a creative, scientific and entrepreneurial nation are being systematically reinforced by our industrial strategy – such as by investing more than ever before in research and development. But the same businesses and investors need also to know what our relationship will be in less than three months’ time with our most important market. They need to know we will continue to be a dependable, stable and pragmatic partner. That we will not subject ourselves – and them – to the uncertainty, disruption and cost of an unintended and deeply damaging rupture in less than 80 days. I believe that most MPs want the same. Now is the time to act. Greg Clark is the business secretaryAfter Theresa May’s huge defeat over her Brexit deal, parliament and the country face an uncertain next few days. On Wednesday, a no-confidence motion in the government will be debated. If the government loses there could be a general election. But even if she defeats the motion, the prime minister’s next steps are hazardous. Immediately after she lost the Brexit deal vote by 230 votes, May said that such was the “scale and importance” of the defeat that she would give time for such a motion if tabled by Labour, or even one tabled by a smaller opposition party. Jeremy Corbyn immediately confirmed Labour would do so. This will be the first such debate under the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which seeks to keep governments to five-year terms by removing the previous ability of prime ministers to call an election when they wanted. There are two exceptions. The first, which was used to trigger the 2017 election, happens if two-thirds or more of MPs vote for an election. The other method comes if a specifically worded no-confidence motion is passed. Section 2.4 of the act says the motion must say: “That this house has no confidence in Her Majesty’s government.” Under parliamentary convention, if the official opposition tables this, the expectation is that ministers will allow time for it promptly. When the 2017 election was called, the debate was only 90 minutes long. However, the leader of the Commons, Andrea Leadsom, said the entire day of Wednesday until 7pm would be used, after prime minister’s questions is over at about 12.45pm. There will then be a vote. There would not be an immediate election; instead, there would be a period of 14 calendar days in which the government can seek to regain the confidence of MPs, or else another government can be formed. If this does not happen, then parliament will be dissolved, with the standard 25 working-day gap needed before the election is held. The act does not state precisely what can happen in this period, and since the provision has not yet been used, it remains unclear how, if at all, this grace period could potentially be used to form a very different government, for example a coalition or a minority Labour administration. The signs point to no. However much many Conservative MPs dislike May’s Brexit plan they are not keen on an election, and even less keen on potentially allowing a Labour government into No 10. Thus very few, if any, are likely to vote with Corbyn. Just as crucially, May’s DUP coalition partners, who voted against the Brexit deal, immediately pledged they would back the PM in the confidence vote. The European Research Group of strongly pro-Brexit MPs, which opposed May’s deal, also swiftly said they would back her in the no-confidence motion. So she seems safe, at least for now. She begins to dance around some form of plan B. May said she would immediately start talks with both Tories and people in other parties “in a constructive spirit” to seek a deal that could win the support of the Commons. Any ideas must be “genuinely negotiable and have sufficient support in this house”, she said, in a warning to MPs hoping to push a personal or unrealistic Brexit vision. May must present a “motion in neutral terms” to the Commons by Monday. This could be amended, meaning in theory backbenchers with their own ideas could try to seize control of the process. Much will depend on whether the Speaker, John Bercow, allows such interventions.It’s hard to know what to make of it. Australia beating Sri Lanka in a Test match at the Gabba is exactly as the world should be: it’s the sane, expected, nine-to-five punchcard side of life. Even if the hours were one to eight as per the demands of a day-night match. But the unexpected has become the norm in Australian cricket over the past year, so an upset was never out of the frame. For this team, there is something to be said for making manifest the predictable. In the end Sri Lanka’s batting handed Australia an easy win, out for under 150 in both innings. A better showing could have put pressure on Australia’s batsmen though. They mustered 323 against a Sri Lankan attack that dwindled through injury from three seamers to two, then one. Yet Suranga Lakmal was wily and indefatigable, using the pink ball and the evening conditions to winkle out 5 for 75 and prevent a big score. The partnership of 166 between Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne was the most valuable aspect for Australia, with Labuschagne the most controlled in the team on his home ground. Head keeps showing he has raw materials worth working with, but again got away with repeated looseness. Both fell in the 80s, continuing Australia’s century drought – the team has made one hundred in over a year. Better news came on the bowling front. Patrick Cummins has shown more leadership than anyone since the team fell apart in Cape Town in March 2018. He and Tim Paine were the only ones who showed up ready to compete at Test level when a broken side played in Johannesburg a week later. He never stopped putting in while India got on top during this home season. When conditions are hard, Cummins is the one who produces extra effort and tries to find a way, including his secondary disciplines of batting and fielding. After Johannesburg, South African captain Faf du Plessis gave this glowing review. “He’s an exceptional player. We would sit on the side of the field and just admire what he does. We’d say, ‘Look at the guy, he’s still running in and bowling quick.’ Diving at balls when he’s just finished an eight-over spell, runs in the series. As a batter I definitely felt he was the biggest challenge. He’s a nice guy, Pat. You enjoy it when nice guys do well, even opposition, the good people of the game.” All this was recognised in Brisbane this week when Cummins was named vice-captain. And for once, conditions were with him. His over on the second evening was a masterpiece. Knowing he had six deliveries left, he worked over Sri Lankan opener Dimuth Karunaratne, around the wicket to the left-hander to angle the ball in, then take it away, teasing the decision-making about playing or leaving. Finally, with the last ball of the night, Cummins hit an in-between line and drew Karunaratne’s edge. A celebration more impassioned than any for a television ad was proof of Cummins’ satisfaction in realising his plan. He took another wicket in each of his first two overs the next day, and at one stage had figures of 4 for 9. That ended up as 6 for 23, his best in an innings, after a day of relentlessly hitting the seam and a length that tested the batsmen, drawing them forward but striking high on the bat to take edges into the cordon. Added to four wickets from the first innings, that made 10 in the match for Cummins. The last time an Australian fast bowler did this at home was over a decade ago: December 2008, when Mitchell Johnson smashed through South Africa with 8-61 in their first innings, only to see them chase 414 in their second. There have been a few 10-wicket matches overseas: Johnson in South Africa and New Zealand, Mitchell Starc in Sri Lanka, and for the spinners, Nathan Lyon in Bangladesh and Steve O’Keefe in India. But Lyon in Adelaide in 2014 is the only 10-for by a home bowler in that time. Not even through Johnson’s Ashes of 2013-14, when his best was nine. It’s hard to pin down why. Australia have lost a few significant series in that time, which puts a dent in the wickets column. But there have been plenty of one-sided wins that must have involved bowlers sharing the spoils. What Cummins has now shown is the ability to get on a roll. There have been times this summer when he’s looked excellent without results. To know he can crash through a side is significant. So is the work of his fast-bowling colleague Jhye Richardson, who hit a similarly disciplined length on debut while swinging the ball at pace. It marked an encouraging week for Australia’s bowling prospects in England this year. Mitchell Starc is the big unanswered question, after a season in which he has never been at his best. Starc sent down what looked like his fastest spell of the summer on the final day in Brisbane, nudging the speedometer to 150 kilometres an hour, but it was defused with little fuss by Dilruwan Perera, an off-spinning all-rounder batting at eight in a lost cause who had already had his thumb pulverised by Cummins in the first dig. But before Starc can worry about his Test form, he has to get right for a one-day World Cup after being the dominant factor in Australia’s run to the trophy in 2015. Starc with the white ball of late hasn’t looked much better than with the red, and rectifying that is key to Australia’s hopes of competing. In a year moving in fast forward, a couple of games against Sri Lanka in conditions alien to them can only tell you so much. The Senate will vote on Thursday on a pair of bills that could end the month-long partial shutdown of the federal government– if passed. The first bill, a Republican-backed measure, would meet Donald Trump’s demand for a $5.7bn wall along the southern border in exchange for temporary protections for young undocumented immigrants. The second would extend funding for the agencies that are currently closed through to 8 February. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and minority leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that they would bring the dueling bills to the floor, in the first sign of progress after a 32-day stalemate over the partial shutdown, which has left as many as 800,000 government workers without pay. They announced the compromise on the Senate floor on Tuesday, with Schumer predicting that the short-term funding proposal “could break us out of the morass we are in”. “People are saying: isn’t there a way out of this mess? Isn’t there a way to relieve the burden on the 800,000 federal workers not getting paid? Isn’t there a way to get government services open first and debate what we should do for border security later?” he said. “Well, now there is a way.” However, it is far from certain whether either bill can garner enough support to pass the chamber. Democrats, who are opposed to granting funding for a border wall, likely have the votes to block Trump’s proposal. The Democratic proposal would have to win the support of at least 13 Republicans to reach the 60-vote threshold. The Senate approved a short-term funding bill in December that would have averted a shutdown and kept the agencies running until 8 February. That measure passed the Senate without any opposition but Trump later said he would not support it because the plan did not include funding for his wall. The Republican-controlled House declined to vote on the measure. Since re-taking the majority in the House, Democrats have passed a number of bills that would reopen the shuttered agencies, but the Senate has refused to vote on them, arguing that they won’t take up legislation the president won’t sign. A union representing FBI agents warned on Tuesday that the partial federal government shutdown has “hindered” the bureau’s ability to conduct operations and pursue investigations. Thousands of union members are among hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors now without pay for a fifth week. As the FBI Agents Association released a report containing firsthand accounts of how the shutdown has affected operations, its president, Tom O’Connor, demanded Congress and Donald Trump fully fund the FBI. “The failure to fund the FBI undermines essential FBI operations, such as those designated to combat crimes against children, drug and gang crime and terrorism,” O’Connor told reporters. He declined to say whether Americans were less safe as a result of the shutdown. “I will leave that question up to you to answer,” he said. The union’s plea came as the shutdown continued to affect other government services across the country. The Transportation Security Administration said the percentage of its airport screeners missing work hit 10% on Sunday, up from 3.1% on the comparable Sunday a year ago. The screeners, who are without pay, have been citing financial hardship as the reason they cannot report to work. Even so, the agency said it screened 1.78 million passengers on Sunday with only 6.9% having to wait 15 minutes or longer to get through security. In Washington, Senate Republicans released legislation designed to meet Trump’s offer to break the impasse and end the shutdown. The measure would include temporary relief from deportation for young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers and other threatened groups, in exchange for meeting Trump’s demand for $5.7bn to build a southern border wall. But Democrats have vowed opposition to Trump’s wall, calling it an impractical, “medieval solution” to a “21st-century problem”. On Twitter, Trump wrote: “Never seen [McConnell] and Republicans so united on an issue as they are on the Humanitarian Crisis & Security on our Southern Border. If we create a Wall or Barrier which prevents Criminals and Drugs from flowing into our Country, Crime will go down by record numbers!” The status of the annual State of the Union address remains unclear, one week after House speaker Nancy Pelosi requested Trump postpone it. On Tuesday, Fox News reported that the White House sent a letter to the House sergeant-at-arms to schedule a walk-through for the address, which is due to be held on 29 January. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Trump could deliver the address from another venue if Pelosi blocks him from doing so in the House chamber. “There are many ways he can deliver the State of the Union address,” Gidley said. “I’m not going to get ahead of anything he would announce.” In his offer to Democrats on Saturday, Trump offered to extend temporary protections for Dreamers and those fleeing disaster zones. On Tuesday, the supreme court said it would not pick up a case concerning Trump’s previous attempt to end protection for Dreamers, meaning they will remain in limbo for the next few months.The world faces many challenges over the coming decades, but one of the most significant will be how to feed its expanding global population. By 2050, there will be about 10 billion of us, and how to feed us all, healthily and from sustainable food sources, is something that is already being looked at. The Norway-based thinktank Eat and the British journal the Lancet have teamed up to commission an in-depth, worldwide study, which launches at 35 different locations around the world today, into what it would take to solve this problem – and the ambition is huge. The commissioners lay out important caveats. Their solution is contingent on global efforts to stabilise population growth, the achievement of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change and stemming worldwide changes in land use, among other things. But they are clear that it depends on far more than just these basic requirements. The initial report presents a flexible daily diet for all food groups based on the best health science, which also limits the impact of food production on the planet. To anyone who has spent any time trying to figure out how to eat healthily, economically, ethically and compassionately, this might sound too good to be true. Indeed, the debate around how one should eat is so fraught as to now be dubbed the nutrition wars. Should one eat omnivorously, organic and local, or go vegan? Is dairy milk production worse than California almond milk in terms of fresh water usage and carbon miles – and what about in terms of calcium? Which is better, farmed fish, wild fish or no fish? There are times when chickpeas feel like the only safe way to go. The Eat-Lancet report posits that the global food system is broken. From the numbers quoted alone, it is hard to disagree: more than 2 billion people are micronutrient deficient, and almost 1 billion go hungry, while 2.1 billion adults are overweight or obese. Unhealthy diets are, it says, “the largest global burden of disease”, and pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than “unsafe sex, alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined”. The planet isn’t faring any better. Introducing the commission under the title Acting in the Anthropocene, the Lancet firmly places that global food system within the framework of human impact on both climate and the environment that has caused geologists to rethink how they work: we are not (yet) extinct, but we have an era named after us. And what we are eating has a lot to do with that. Food production, the report states, “is the largest source of environmental degradation”. So how does the commission propose to fix this? It has identified a daily win-win diet – good for health, good for the environment – that is loosely based on the much-lauded Mediterranean diet, but with fewer eggs, less meat and fish, and next to no sugar. Dairy is, for western populations anyway, going to be a sticking point, because the suggested diet does not include much. Crucially, it does include a range of foodstuff types that are adaptable, in theory, to the cuisines (potato or cassava; palm-oil-based, say, or soy-rich) and primary dietary restrictions (omnivore, no pork, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan) found across the world. It can most likely be made to work for other free-froms, although the list of what to eat clearly needs to be road-tested by everyone to be proved to be workable – or not. The diet also omits many things people cook with, from alcohol and seaweed to dried fruit and coconut milk (botanists call the coconut a drupe, and nutritionists, variously, a nut, a fruit and a seed, so go figure which category its milk fits into). The following, therefore, is a rough estimate of what someone in Britain might eat over a seven-day period. A full month’s diet plan would be a better illustration, given that the daily ration of red meat stands at 7g (with an allowable range of 0-14g); unless you are creative enough to make a small steak feed two football sides and their subs, you will only be eating one once a month. Similarly, you are allocated little more than two chicken breast fillets and three eggs every fortnight and two tins of tuna or 1.5 salmon fillets a week. Per day, you get 250g of full-fat milk products (milk, butter, yoghurt, cheese): the average splash of milk in not very milky tea is 30g. The diet functions on the basis of 2,500 kcal daily, which corresponds, the report says, to the average energy needs of a 70kg (11st) man and a 60kg (9½st) woman, both aged 30, with moderate to high levels of physical activity. To date, however, governmental guidelines, such as those published this week by the British Nutrition Foundation, specify 2,000 kcal for women. Of course, and to reinforce how sobering is the global perspective the study brings to the question “what’s for dinner?”, this diet isn’t even that taxing. It is still more food – way, way more – than two billion people currently have access to. If making sacrifices to eat this way brings about even a small measure of the change it is meant to, it could have a huge impact around the world. Breakfast: Porridge (made with water) with 1 tbsp honey or maple syrup, topped with nuts and seeds, and one piece of fruit; one cup of tea or coffee with milk. (Note: the milkier you like it, the more you will have to save up your allowance and have, say, one latte a week, or, alternatively, never cook with yoghurt or cheese and treat yourself to one latte a day.) Lunch: Fennel, avocado, spinach and broccoli salad with feta and mustard and plant-oil dressing with one slice of sourdough bread, plus one plain yoghurt pot with a handful of berries. The report specifies a mix of unsaturated oils – 20% each of olive, rapeseed, soybean, sunflower and peanut – which, unless you are up for making your own (or live in France, where Cauvin makes something almost like that), is impractical in the UK. I have often (but not always) also replaced the palm oil, tallow and lard allowance with plant oil. Dinner: Roast red cabbage and red lentil dahl with rice. Snack: Sugar-free ricecakes with nut butter. Breakfast: Two eggs with two slices wholemeal toast and Marmite (there is no word in the diet about yeast-based spreads, or hot sauce for that matter, so I just went for it); one cup of tea or coffee with milk. Lunch: Barley or other wholegrain salad with smoked mackerel, seeds (sunflower, pumpkin and chia seeds), radishes, celery, chickpeas, herbs, oil and lemon juice dressing; one piece of fruit. Dinner: One baked sweet potato with salsa, cavolo nero, avocado, black beans, grated cheese and a dollop of sour cream. Snack: One handful of roasted chickpeas. Breakfast: Two slices of wholemeal toast with one sliced banana and honey; one cup of tea or coffee with milk. Lunch: Spicy miso noodle soup with tofu, radishes, leafy greens and poached egg (that’s your quota for two weeks used up: no eggs for you next week); small pot of plain yoghurt. Dinner: Steamed veg (kale, broccoli and carrot) with a yoghurt and fresh herb dressing and olive oil, root veg and bean mash. Snack: Cannellini bean dip with red pepper sticks. Breakfast: Banana, spinach and nut milk smoothie with 1 tbsp nut butter and 1 tbsp maple syrup. Lunch: Lentil, potato, leek, onion and hamhock soup with two slices of wholemeal bread; one piece of fruit. Dinner: Courgette, cavolo nero and tomato gratin with breadcrumbs and almonds, and a green salad and polenta on the side. Snack: One pitta bread with 30g full-fat cream cheese. Breakfast: Bran flakes with nuts and small helping of dried fruit; one cup tea or coffee with milk. Lunch: Cheese and hummus sandwich with lettuce and tomato salad; three oatcakes with honey. Dinner: Butternut squash, carrot, cauliflower and coconut milk curry with rice. Snack: Spicy roasted chickpeas. Breakfast: Overnight oats with fresh fruit, seeds and nut milk; one tea or coffee with milk. Lunch: Salad with tuna, cucumber, avocado, fresh edamame, a handful of cashews and an oil and lemon juice dressing; one piece of fruit. Dinner: Vegetarian lasagne with butter beans. Snack: Honey almond popcorn. Breakfast: Porridge with honey or maple syrup and scattering of nuts, one piece of fruit, one cup tea or coffee with milk. Lunch: One roast chicken leg with roast potatoes, beans, peas, carrots and sprouts; plain Greek yoghurt with mixed berries compote and honey/maple syrup. Dinner: One-pot kale, tomato and lemon spaghetti with grated parmesan. Snack: Guacamole with crackers.There is a tendency for institutions that missed the warning signs before the last financial crisis to over-cook their doomsayer’s warnings as they consider the potential for another one. The International Monetary Fund leads a group of gloomy forecasters that worry about the stability of the global economy amid rising debt levels and slowing GDP growth. How long, they ask, can the expansion seen since the last crash go on before another recession hits? And if a global recession is pushed further into the future by even larger dollops of borrowed money from the financial system, will the next recession quickly become a crash of similar or even larger proportions than the one seen in 2008? Some analysts argue that such gloomy warnings ignore the precedent seen in recent years that major economies tend to start the year slowly before getting into gear later on. That was especially true in 2016, when most of the developed world saw only a small lift in GDP in the first quarter before growth took off. However, the three years from 2014 were characterised by falling oil and commodity prices, which moderated inflation. This gave the global economy a boost it desperately needed, albeit at the expense of oil- and commodity-exporting nations – and the environment. The boost faded in 2017 and left 2018 as a particularly unspectacular year – except in the US, where Donald Trump’s tax cuts more than made up for lacklustre global trade and fed a consumption boom. As 2019 gets under way, things look very different. Consumer debt has risen back to pre-crisis levels in many countries. Corporate borrowing has soared and governments, while they have reduced annual deficits, continue to sit on mountains of debt that dwarf the borrowing seen before the crisis. Jacking up rates to calm growth is straight out of the textbook. The trouble with doing it now is that growth is slowing Another similarity with the pre-2008 period is the determination of central banks to increase borrowing costs. The speeches of central bank officials are littered with references to the need for higher rates, both to bring discipline back to borrowing and, in case another credit squeeze grips the banking sector, to have the tools to prevent a full-blown economic collapse. Bank of England governor Mark Carney has said as much, though his remarks are tempered by threats of a no-deal Brexit. He has been echoed by Jerome Powell, his counterpart at the US Federal Reserve. The Swedish central bank, the Riksbank, recently increased interest rates and signalled that it planned to continue on that path now that companies were reporting the largest labour shortages since 1996. Threadneedle Street has already raised its base rate from 0.25% in 2016 to 0.75%. The Fed is even further ahead, having pushed rates to a level of 2.25%-2.5% at its December meeting. Jacking up rates to calm soaring economic growth – at least the kind of growth that can lead to inflation – is straight out of the textbooks. The trouble with doing it now is that growth is slowing: and while the UK and other countries may have full employment by traditional standards, it isn’t the kind of full employment that leads to wage rises. There are few detailed studies of today’s labour market, but the situation seems to be that it was the 2008 crash – as much as the demise of collective bargaining and the growth of flexible contracts – that has knocked the stuffing out of the average worker, who feels unable to bargain up their wages. Labour-market economists like David Blanchflower and David Bell of Stirling University argue that unemployment needs to fall towards 2% before wages start to soar, rather than the 4%-4.5% that was considered the more traditional benchmark by central banks. With only small or non-existent increases in wages above inflation, households might opt for more borrowing, or dip further into their savings to maintain consumption. Recent evidence shows they are doing neither. From the UK to China, consumers are viewing the coming year as a difficult period and not the moment to buy much, apart from life’s basics. They did the same in the years before 2008, when property prices began to stagnate as buyers reached their borrowing limits and car sales slowed. That turns the spotlight onto the IMF, which is concerned that higher loan costs and lower levels of consumer spending will mean that more corporations go bust. Its remedy has been for governments to pass reforms that allow more jobs to be created. However, the growth of flexible working has singularly failed to increase wage rates. London-based forecasters Fathom Consulting have pencilled in a global bust for 2020. Nouriel Roubini, who can claim to be one of the few economists to forecast the last crash, also nominates 2020. That’s not much time to prepare.More than 200 local branches of the Labour party are expected to renew pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to harden the party’s opposition to Brexit, debating a motion which activists hope will spread to more than half of all constituency parties. Leftwing activists from the anti-Brexit campaign Another Europe is Possible, the group behind a similar push at Labour’s conference last year, have drafted a tough motion calling on Labour to support a fresh referendum. The party’s policy cannot be changed again until its 2019 conference, but organisers hope that the sheer number of motions submitted before its member-led policy forum this Wednesday will have heavy symbolism in the crucial weeks ahead. An unprecedented 119 constituency Labour parties (CLPs) submitted pro-referendum motions before Labour’s last conference in September. The campaign was key to setting the direction for Labour’s current policy – to push for an election but then leave all options on the table, including a referendum. That number of anti-Brexit motions could almost double for Wednesday’s national policy forum; members from 201 CLPs have so far given commitments to submit pro-referendum motions for debate. The forum will be attended by Labour frontbenchers including the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, as well as party officials and union leaders. Ana Oppenheim, an organiser for Another Europe is Possible, said: “The appetite at the grassroots to take a clear stand against Brexit is overwhelming. As the sequence of events unfolds in parliament, we need to look at the reality. Brexit is an attack on working class people, dripping with imperial nostalgia and migrant-bashing. “If Labour fails to oppose it, we will lose millions of voters and, if it happens, any attempt to deliver a socialist programme will be hamstrung from day one. More and more party activists, especially on the left, are seeing this clearly. By the end of January, we reckon that a majority of CLPs could have debated a motion – and a big majority will pass it.” Dozens of Labour members behind the drive are expected to offer stories of electoral difficulties that the party could face if it does not take a more explicitly anti-Brexit stance. Sandy Paul, a Labour member in Poplar and Limehouse CLP, said: “Brexit is fundamentally the brainchild of the far right and disaster capitalists. For Labour to endorse any such project is to abandon its core socialist values of international solidarity, equality and justice.” Another activist, Ruth Milsom from Sheffield Hallam CLP, said the party had to be “the voice of internationalism”, among a number who mentioned a desire for Labour to commit to protecting free movement. “We need to lead the fight against the Tory Brexit nightmare and not lag behind,” she said. Steve Carver, a member in Bethnal Green and Bow CLP, said Brexit was not “an abstract political issue on which Labour can do any amount of tactical manoeuvring in the name of some bigger agenda”. Instead, he said, it was about “moral questions, issues of principle, and thousands of activists on the left are waking up to that.” A study of Labour members found that 72% believed Corbyn should back a second referendum. The research, part of the Party Members Project led by Prof Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London, found that while Labour members still strongly supported their leader overall, they appeared to be sceptical about his reasons for refusing to support a referendum. However, the study also found a majority of Labour members said they supported the party’s current position, with 47% in favour versus 29% who opposed it.Hugh McIlvanney, one of the most respected voices in British sports journalism, has died aged 84. McIlvanney, who was the Observer’s chief sports correspondent for 30 years until 1993, covered some of the most significant sporting events of the 20th century, including the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 and England’s World Cup win in 1966. He retired after 60 years in the profession in 2016, after spending 23 years with the Sunday Times. RIP Hugh McIlvanney, Britain's greatest sports writer, and my chum. We argued like cat and dog, but always made up. And when you were having a proper barney with Hugh, his use of language (he spoke as elegantly as he wrote) made you secretly glad you were fighting. #genius pic.twitter.com/B9wy7dmbHC Tributes poured in for the award-winning Scot, who was described as “one of the true greats of sportswriting, “a giant of journalism” and “the literary equivalent of Stein and Shankley”. McIlvanney, who was best known for his coverage of boxing and football, was awarded an OBE in 1996 and named British sports writer of the year seven times.When the American artist Kehinde Wiley – known by many for his presidential portrait of Barack Obama – walked into a Little Caesars restaurant in St Louis, he didn’t know he’d walk out with models for his next painting. He saw a group of African American women sitting at a table and was inspired to paint them for Three Girls in A Wood, a painting on view at the St Louis Art Museum. It’s part of Wiley’s exhibition Saint Louis, which runs until 10 February, where 11 paintings of St Louis locals are painted in the style of Old Masters aristocrats, a comment on the absence of black portraits in museums. “The great heroic often white male hero dominates the picture plane and becomes larger than life, historic and significant,” said Wiley over the phone from his Brooklyn studio. “That great historic storytelling of myth-making or propaganda is something we inherit as artists and I wanted to be able to weaponize and translate it into a means of celebrating female presence.” It all started last year when the museum invited Wiley to create an exhibition, which prompted the artist to visit the museum’s sprawling collection. Noticing the lack of people of color on the walls, he ventured out into the suburbs for subjects to paint, including Ferguson, a hub of the Black Lives Matter movement since the police shooting of Mike Brown (“There’s a very strong dissonance between this gilded museum on a hill and the communities in Ferguson,” Wiley recently said). He put out a public call and personally invited locals for a casting inside the museum. “From the beginning, it was about a response to the museum as it sits in the city as a strange metaphorical divide between the culture, not only in St Louis, but in America at large,” he said. “The kind of inside outside nature of museum culture can be alienating and St Louis has one of the best American collections of classical works, so I wanted to use the poses from these paintings for potential sitters from the community.” Wiley has painted St Louis natives as stately figures, wearing their day-to-day garb, even showing women in traditionally male poses. For one, Shontay Hanes from Wellston is painted in the pose of Francesco Salviati’s Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman, while her sister Ashley Cooper’s pose is similar to that of Charles I in the portrait by Dutch artist Daniel Martensz Mytens the Elder. As the models posed for him, Wiley took hundreds of photos, which he took back to his New York studio. He picked the photos that had the strongest presence and painted them. “My process is less about the original sitter, nor is it entirely about the individual,” he said. “It’s a strange middle space that is marked by a kind of anonymity, standing in for a history that is not your own. A pose that is not your own. There is a kind of complexity there that is not reducible to traditional painting.” There is also a painting in the exhibit which mimics the Dutch painter Gerard ter Borch’s portrait of Jacob de Graeff, which inspired Wiley’s portrait of Brincel Kape’li Wiggins Jr, who is wearing a Ferguson hat as a way of showing the city in a positive light. Wiley, who grew up in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s, had an aha moment when he first saw the works of Kerry James Marshall in a museum when he was young – it proved to him that African American figures belonged on museum walls, too. He studied painting in Russia at the tender age of 12, chased down his long-lost Nigerian father at 20, graduated from Yale in 2001 and has been painting African Americans – including a commissioned portrait of Michael Jackson – as Old Masters icons, since the early 2000s. “When you think of America itself and its own narratives, there are inspiring narratives and the notion of American exceptionalism,” said Wiley. “It’s the place where the world looks to for the best of human aspirations. That narrative is highly under question at this moment.” Despite becoming royalty in his own respect, as Wiley’s star-studded lifestyle has him posing for selfies alongside Naomi Campbell and Prince Charles on Instagram, he sees his country differently now, compared with when he started painting professionally. “By virtue of our strength, we’re at this point of weakness and inability to see a lot of the folly that is set in the country,” he said. “I think there is an overbuilt privilege that starts to come into play and inability to feel empathy for perceived outsiders.” Since his leafy Obama portrait was unveiled last year, his life has drastically changed. “I don’t have to explain what I do any more,” he said. “It makes it a lot easier, ‘He’s the guy who did that.’ It’s going to be on my headstone.” As for his painting of three women he found at a pizza parlor, it’s a departure from where he first began – which was classically trained painting of white women. “So much of my upbringing as an artist was painting white women often displayed nude,” he said. “When I first started painting black women, it was a return home.” While Wiley is known for choosing models that stand out to him, he can never predict what will work in the studio. But he does know one thing. “I think the starting point of my work is decidedly empathy,” he said. “All of it is a self-portrait. I never paint myself but, in the end, why am I going out of my way to choose these types of stories and narratives? “It’s about seeing yourself in other people,” he said. “People forget America itself is a stand-in for a sense of aspiration the world holds on to. It’s a really sad day when the source of light criticizes light itself.”The Premier League offices in London’s West End are located mostly underground. This fact alone does not make them exceptional in the world of football administration – Fifa’s lair in Zurich features five subterranean levels, including a sinister conference room ripped straight out of Dr Strangelove. But the Premier League isn’t going for the futuristic bunker vibe. Nothing about it exudes Bond-villain hideout or military robotics lab. What makes the place remarkable is its modesty. Premier League HQ feels more like the offices of a mid-sized legal practice. Blending into a row of elegant Georgian buildings with white fronts and black railings, the exterior of the Premier League offices at 30 Gloucester Place is marked only by a small silver plaque. Where it publishes its address, the Premier League points out that access is “by appointment only”. The few people who ever stop to take pictures are the tabloid photographers working the pavement whenever the Premier League managers gather for their league-wide meetings – think photos of middle-aged men in ill-fitting suits emerging from black cabs. When the league moved into the space in 2005, domestic TV rights had just cleared the billion-pound mark for the second successive cycle. Ratings were through the roof. Yet for the most popular league on the planet, the offices have none of the ostentation or scale of, for instance, the NFL’s, perched high above the corner of 51st Street and Park Avenue in New York, or the NBA’s, which are in a skyscraper two avenues over. In part, that’s because the Premier League has roughly 10 times fewer employees than the NFL or NBA, with a head count hovering around 110. Visitors to the home of the world’s most popular league are led downstairs to a small waiting area where the sofas are pointed at the Premier League trophy and a tea station. The atmosphere is one of quiet, businesslike efficiency. Until his resignation this winter, the chief executive, Richard Scudamore, kept a spartan office here, as do the aides who make sure that contracts are up to date, partners are kept happy, and the league’s extensive charity operations tick over smoothly. Scudamore, the Premier League’s highest-paid executive, earned a basic salary in the low seven figures – news of the £5m “golden handshake” he received on his way out caused a brief furore in December. But compare that to the $34m that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell earned in 2016, or the roughly $20m the NBA is believed to pay commissioner Adam Silver, and you wonder why the Premier League – for all of the cash flooding into its clubs – makes its brass look so unassuming. The reason is that the Premier League is a much smaller sporting government than any of its US counterparts. It is first and foremost a media-rights-selling organisation that happens to provide 20 clubs with a platform, referees and a ball. The organisation has six league-wide sponsors – no more – in obvious categories such as official timekeeper and official snack, and a ball contract with Nike that has quietly hummed along since 2000. The NFL, by contrast, had 32 league-wide sponsors in 2015, including an official soup. The most profitable sporting organisation to come out of England isn’t in the business of peddling merchandise either. It won’t sell you a baseball cap or scarf – it leaves that entirely to the clubs. The Premier League’s website does not even have an shop. That’s why the whole operation can be happily contained in a single office that almost nobody knows is there. But ever since 2005, that humble residence at Gloucester Place has served as mission control for the Premier League’s quest for global domination. By the time Scudamore was introduced chief executive in 1999, he could tell the Premier League was already on its way to becoming a domestic juggernaut. Sky had renegotiated its contract for UK TV rights a couple of years earlier, agreeing to pay £670m over four years, more than doubling the value of its previous deal. When Scudamore looked at the international revenues, though, he saw a world of untapped potential. The league’s overseas broadcast rights had sold for just £98m in 1997, a figure Scudamore regarded not merely as disappointing but borderline disrespectful. In his mind, the Premier League was the most exciting football competition on the planet. It was time it got paid like it. His first order of business was overhauling the way the league sold itself abroad. Until then, it had auctioned off its overseas rights package en bloc for a fixed fee, with the winning bidder then free to unpackage those rights and resell them in different countries and territories as they saw fit. He wanted to cut out the middleman and negotiate with broadcasters himself. Scudamore was a man who liked to be in the room. He immediately told the club owners that they stood a better chance of finally raking in what they were worth by breaking up the overseas rights into separate territorial packages and dealing face-to-face with the TV companies. Convinced by his commercial background, the owners signed off on Scudamore’s proposal to become their ambassador to the world. The scheme paid off immediately. In 2004, the league’s international rights sold for £325m, an increase of 83% over the £178m it charged in the previous cycle. In 2007, the total jumped to £625m, while in 2010 the Premier League’s overseas rights fees fetched £1.4bn, eclipsing the billion-pound mark for the first time. In just nine years, Scudamore had driven a staggering 687% increase in overseas broadcast revenue. Figures like those would have been inconceivable to the men who founded the Premier League in 1992. They had so underestimated the global appetite that, in the early years of their enterprise, they were the ones paying foreign broadcasters to carry their games, not the other way around. The clamour for rights packages from every corner of the planet now convinced them otherwise. As Scudamore gradually shaped his role into that of a globetrotting executive, making visits to key markets including India, Thailand, Singapore and the Middle East during each new season, he realised that the Premier League product was equipped with a host of built-in advantages. These factors, so obvious in retrospect, meant that fans around the world were predisposed to the Premier League even before they realised it. Best of all, those advantages were a total coincidence. The league had nothing to do with their existence. The first – and most forehead-slappingly simple – is that this whole show takes place in English. While Italy’s Serie A and Germany’s Bundesliga must first help viewers make sense of names like Sampdoria and Borussia Mönchengladbach, one-quarter of the world’s population can tune in to a Premier League and immediately understand what’s happening – even if it means occasionally wading into the absurdly tedious “soccer v football” debate. (For the record, soccer, like football, is an originally British term short for “association football”.) Beyond the language, the league also benefits from its location. As countless London firms have discovered, the fact that the British business day overlaps with both Asian and American daytime hours gave the league a leg up on rival sports organisations, including the NFL and the NBA. A Premier League match that kicks off in the early afternoon can be consumed both as primetime Saturday-night entertainment in Singapore and over a bowl of Cheerios on a Saturday morning in Brooklyn. On top of all of this, it was obvious to Scudamore that overseas viewers had a sort of natural Anglophilia – and were gravitating to the heritage and culture of English football, its authenticity. In short, they craved the Britishness of it all. “Being British is the essence of what we are,” Scudamore told the Times in 2013. “It’s a bit like being the Queen or the BBC.” By the end of his first decade as chief executive, Scudamore had parlayed that headstart into tenfold increase in the value of the league’s international TV rights. Now he had to add some creativity of his own. To keep global rights fees rising, it was no longer enough simply to cut out the middleman and deal with international broadcasters directly. He needed to sell them on the idea that the Premier League rights they had just paid through the nose for were indispensable to their business model. And to do that, Scudamore developed two clear strategies. The first relied on Scudamore’s own talents as a salesman – or, to be more specific, what one Premier League owner described as his talent for “creating tension” at the negotiating table, never letting buyers get too comfortable. If that gives the impression of Scudamore as a sales shark sniffing out weaknesses and exploiting them to push his product, the reality could not be more different. In fact, Scudamore created the most fiendish auction process in world sports by running the league’s sales department with the sort of folksy, homespun charm of a village post office. He purposely kept his sales team to roughly a half-dozen employees so that broadcasters felt a personal connection when they rang Gloucester Place. And the mantra they lived by was less “always be closing” and more “always be courteous”. Scudamore’s unshakeable sense of decorum taught him that politeness was the key to preserving customer relationships. At the end of every season, he personally emailed thank-you notes to the league’s 80 international broadcasters and sent special goodbye messages to those whose contracts with the league had expired. Scudamore also began to accompany the prime minister on trade missions, taking the Premier League trophy with him. “Everyone who sees the trophy will say, ‘Wow’, he explained. “Heads of state, prime ministers – they all want a photo with the trophy. It’s what we like to call soft power.” For two decades, Richard Scudamore’s professional life had been more or less smooth sailing. He promised the 20 owners of the Premier League that he would sell their game around the world, and for 20 years, that’s what he did. But after all of that peaceful coexistence between the clubs, during which English football’s biggest institutions had made money hand over fist, built towering new stadiums, attracted huge global fan bases and transformed themselves into billion-dollar businesses, the Premier League gravy train came to an unexpected standstill in 2018, just as Britain’s trains are wont to do. For the first time in a quarter of a century, it became apparent that England’s top flight – once a model of collective harmony and mutual benefit – was racked by division of its own; the Premier League had split into a morass of feuding factions that were each blaming somebody else for threatening to blow the whole thing up. The big six clubs wanted a larger slice of the pie. The other 14 felt left behind. And the original, 1992 formula for redistributing income – the very thing that underpinned the league’s wild growth – was being challenged. The simmering tensions were mostly kept behind closed doors, in club boardrooms, in executive boxes and in the conference rooms of swanky hotels. Outwardly, it appeared that the Premier League was a picture of strength. The league was resurgent on the European stage, qualifying a record five clubs for the Champions League’s last 16, while negotiations over the latest sale of domestic TV rights meant the clubs were in line for another windfall. But amid this outbreak of unseen hostility, there was one surprise. It turned out that the biggest agitator was the one club that seemingly had the least to worry about. Not content with laying waste to English football on the pitch, Manchester City and its Catalan-Emirati leadership were pushing to overturn the league’s way of doing business. In official league meetings and private discussions with other clubs, City railed against the league’s revenue-sharing model and repeatedly challenged the age-old Founder Members Agreement – a document handwritten in 1991 by Rick Parry, the first Premiership chief executive, that held the status of Premier League scripture. The reality is that when it was written up, no one paid much attention to the overseas income. In fact, the league was losing money on international broadcasts back then as it was paying foreign networks to carry its games. “Nobody envisaged that it would be as big as it is, so sharing those rights equally was a concession they thought wouldn’t matter,” Parry said. The way Manchester City saw it, the Founder Members Agreement was more like a relic that belonged in a glass case with acid-wash jeans, the Sega Mega Drive and other treasured artifacts of the 1990s. The league’s antique formula and its quaint, old-fashioned ideas about competitive balance had allowed the Premier League to become the richest purveyor of the world’s favourite sport. But for a club like Manchester City – whose modern history dated back to only 2008, when it was bought by the Emirati billionaire Sheikh Mansour – that was all in the distant past. In truth, no one should have been shocked to learn that City gave little thought to the overall strength of the league. The club’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, had telegraphed exactly those sentiments a decade earlier in his book about running Barcelona. Midway through a meditation on the differences between professional sport in the US and football in Europe, Soriano laid out his thoughts about the concept of competitive balance. “A well-known American sports manager once said to me, ‘I don’t understand why you don’t see that what you should be doing is boosting teams like Sevilla FC and Villarreal FC to make the Spanish league more exciting and maximise income,’” Soriano wrote. “While I was listening to him, I found it very difficult to think about maximising [the overall league’s] income … because all I wanted and cared for was for FC Barcelona to win all the matches and always win.” If anything, Soriano’s conviction was even stronger now. The Premier League’s top clubs – like his – needed a greater share of the wealth if they were ever to hope of luring the world’s best players back to England. That much had been made clear to Soriano during the previous summer’s transfer window. It wasn’t that City lacked the funds to compete at the top end of the transfer market, of course. No team in world football spent more in 2017 than the £221.5m of Sheikh Mansour’s fortune that Soriano plunked down on five new recruits for Pep Guardiola’s squad. They weren’t the only big spenders in the Premier League either. In sum, English clubs splurged more than £1.4bn in transfer fees. That was all well and good. The issue for Soriano was that the summer’s headline moves for the best players and the biggest fees had not involved Manchester City. Nor had they involved Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool or any other English club for that matter. The juiciest transfer of the summer belonged to a different superpower in a different league controlled by a different Gulf state. Paris Saint-Germain, backed by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, blew a world-record €222m on the fleet- footed, flamboyantly coiffed Brazilian Neymar from Barcelona. If that wasn’t bad enough, just a few weeks later, the French teenager widely tipped to be the game’s next global superstar, an 18-year-old forward named Kylian Mbappé, had moved from Monaco for the second-highest transfer fee on record. He had signed for PSG, too. For Soriano, this was a galling development. It was one thing if English clubs had to defer to Real Madrid or Barcelona when it came to signing the game’s most prized players. The two Spanish superclubs had their domestic championships on lockdown, as did Bayern Munich. Players who signed there knew they could spend most of the season beating up on the weaklings that made up the rest of the league, allowing them to conserve energy for the occasional big game, the later rounds of the Champions League, and the serious business of lifting a big trophy above their heads. By contrast, English football was a grind. So Soriano couldn’t blame the likes of Messi and Ronaldo if they chose to spend their careers somewhere more comfortable. But there are only so many world-class players to go around. If Paris Saint-Germain were getting in on the act now, too, that was a problem. And in football, there’s only one surefire way to solve a problem. Soriano knew that if he threw enough money at them, the world’s best players could be persuaded to move to Manchester. Premier League clubs were making more than enough cash for him to do so; he just needed to ensure a greater share of it flowed into Manchester City’s coffers at the expense of clubs at the wrong end of the table. It made perfect sense to him. If English football wanted to attract the world’s best players, then who could argue? When Manchester City reached the midpoint of the 2017/18 campaign with an insurmountable lead at the top of the table, it seemed that the rest of the season might turn into one long victory lap. But if that suggested a Premier League season devoid of suspense, the reality was far different. There was still intrigue, tension and drama out there. You just had to know where to look. For example, in the dining rooms of hip Manhattan restaurants. On a warm night in the middle of October 2017, an incongruous group of diners sat down to eat among the dark wood tables and black leather banquettes at Locanda Verde, a high-end Italian eatery in Tribeca. The group of old white guys with not much hair between them didn’t turn many heads amid the usual gaggle of well-tanned, well-Botoxed VIPs. But if anyone with a keen knowledge of English football executives had passed their table on the way to the toilet, they would have recognised that this party represented the most unlikely gathering of enemies since the heads of New York’s mafia families held their regular meetings in red-sauce joints to keep the peace. Around the table that night were Joel and Avram Glazer, the owners of Manchester Utd, along with the club’s chief executive, Ed Woodward; Liverpool’s principal owner John W Henry; and Ivan Gazidis, then the chief executive of Arsenal. That these clubs had ended up brushing off more than a century of mutual loathing to sit down to dinner together was due to an emerging crisis that concerned all of them. Over the previous 12 months, the Premier League’s “big six” had jointly reached the conclusion that the exorbitant sums the league were now raking in from the sale of overseas TV rights – currently worth £3.3bn – should no longer be distributed equally among the league’s 20 teams as they had been since the Premier League was first founded 25 years earlier. The way the big six saw it, some clubs deserved a larger share – specifically, them. After all, they were the ones responsible for the league’s explosive global popularity, weren’t they? They were the ones criss-crossing the planet every summer to raise the profile of English football, the ones who boasted of absurd global followings in the hundreds of millions, driving international viewership from Trondheim to Tierra del Fuego. It was only right that they should be compensated accordingly. Nobody in the US or Asia was wrenching themselves out of bed early or staying up late to watch bloody Bournemouth. Unfortunately for the big six, Bournemouth disagreed. So did the likes of Huddersfield, Brighton, Watford and the rest of the league’s smaller clubs. Which is why the executives around the table were slurping their pasta slightly more sombrely than the chef intended. John Henry, seated to the right of Joel Glazer, had come down from Boston to talk things through. Woodward and Gazidis, sitting opposite them, had been called to New York to add their input. But the group around the table knew that any hope of finding the 14 votes they would need to rip up the existing revenue-sharing agreement and draft a new one was all but doomed. The Premier League clubs were due to meet seven days later to discuss the matter, with a proposal on the table to ringfence 35% of future international broadcast money and divide it between clubs according to their final position in the league. But the ugly conclusion to the last meeting on the subject a few weeks earlier was a stark indication of how entrenched the divisions were. Richard Scudamore had worked around the clock to secure the necessary 14 votes on behalf of the big six. But outside of their little clique, only Leicester, Everton and West Ham seemed inclined to endorse the new formula. Newcastle were on the fence, but by no means a sure thing. Beyond that, the smaller clubs were united in opposition – and their resistance appeared to be a little stiffer than what the big six were used to steamrolling every Saturday afternoon. Within minutes of the topic being broached at the meeting earlier that month, it became obvious to the big six that they didn’t have a path to the 14-vote threshold. At least half of the league’s 20 clubs were not going to budge. The consensus was so strong that Scudamore didn’t even bother asking the clubs to go through the motions of a vote. There was no point. Instead, they had agreed to revisit the issue and try again three weeks later. But now, with seven days to go, the diners at Locanda Verde had to admit there had been no meaningful change. After years of attending Premier League meetings, Woodward and Gazidis had everyone’s voting tendencies memorised as if they were political pollsters. But when Woodward and Gazidis tallied up the two camps, even if every swing vote broke their way, they couldn’t make it work. The league was still gridlocked. Which left Henry, the Glazers and the rest of the big six owners backed into a corner. The Premier League’s revenue-sharing model, the two-thirds majority required for rule changes – these had been core tenets of the league ever since Rick Parry wrote them down on a sheet of Ernst & Young notepaper 25 years before. They were the same tenets that had allowed English football to reach its position as the world’s pre-eminent league. But now, in downtown Manhattan, those pillars began to look as if they would have to come down. If the league’s top clubs couldn’t secure a more reasonable revenue split through peaceful means, what option did they have left? Nobody at the table uttered the words “European Super League”, but then, they didn’t need to. ‘They threaten it all the time: ‘We’re going to break away,’” said one Premier League owner. “Sometimes they vaguely hint at it, sometimes they outwardly threaten it. But every time they want more money, it’s ‘Well, we’ll just go and play the big European teams.’” The spectre of a breakaway by the big six had been invoked so often during the previous decade that the Premier League now operated in a constant state of high alert, leaving even the most sober observers on edge. Which is how the Times ended up publishing a juicy front-page exclusive in March 2013 outlining secret plans for a Qatar-based “Dream Football League”, a new tournament to be played every two years and featuring 24 of Europe’s elite clubs, including Manchester United and a handful of other top Premier League teams. The DFL had the potential to “change the face of world football”, the Times story noted. Doubtless that would have been true but for one minor detail: the whole thing was a hoax dreamed up by a blogger on a satirical French website. The episode was embarrassing for Britain’s paper of record, but it got one thing right: the desire from forces inside the game to blow up the existing structures and reorganise around the most powerful clubs. In 2018, Fifa president Gianni Infantino was motivated to cook up a proposal for an expanded Club World Cup by an international consortium dangling more than $20bn. At the same time, Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli was trying to convince his fellow superclubs to back a larger Champions League that would play on the weekends and shunt domestic league play into midweek. The big six were not shy about expressing their interest. So Scudamore responded the only way he could. Two weeks after the end of the season, he gathered the clubs again at the league’s annual general meeting in Yorkshire. Scudamore had begun to think of the year-long international rights debate as a boil that needed lancing. This time, nothing was off the table. The solution they agreed on distributed roughly one-third of all future international rights fees according to each club’s finishing position, meaning that the big six were almost certainly guaranteed a raise. To assuage the other 14 teams, they agreed that the ratio between the highest earner and the lowest earner’s payments would never exceed 1.8 to 1, a minor increase on the previous ratio of 1.6 to 1. The smaller clubs could tell themselves that the Premier League was still far more equitable than La Liga or Serie A. But as far as thebig six were concerned, they were finally on their way to righting a great injustice. In the interests of peace, the 20 clubs voted for it 18-2, and left Harrogate feeling relieved. But few gave much thought to the precedent they had just set. For the first time in 26 years, they had ratified a change to the Founder Members Agreement, the document that had governed the Premier League since its creation and provided the framework for its remarkable growth. It was as if they had taken a chisel to the Ten Commandments. Scudamore didn’t think the league would need to revisit the issue any time soon, but he wasn’t about to stick around to find out. Within hours of the Premier League’s announcement about the new revenue-sharing model, it followed up with a notice that Scudamore would step down by the end of the year. His battle to quell the big six was behind him. His UK television rights were sold – he had even brought Amazon into the fold by selling them the live streaming rights to a small package of games. And his international television rights were heading for another jackpot haul. It was time to punch out before the whole edifice started to wobble. “The stronger the Premier League is, the more successful the Premier League is, the more international rights go and generate, the more the TV deals go up, the less incentive there is for any of our clubs to go ‘Well, I’m going to leave the Premier League’,” Scudamore said. “The biggest antidote to chaos is a strong Premier League, for our clubs in England. And that’s the bottom line of it.” But he knew all too well that those outside forces would keep chipping away at the Premier League’s raison d’être, that those 20 businesses had less and less in common with one another, and that they might soon wonder why they were in business together at all. Whether those outside forces were investors from the Gulf trying to reshape the game, or even Fifa and Uefa redesigning the formats of club football hardly mattered. It was now clear that the most serious existential threat to the Premier League, itself formed by a breakaway in 1992, was, improbably, another breakaway. This is an edited extract from The Club: How the Premier League Became the Richest, Most Disruptive Business in Sport, by Jonathan Clegg & Joshua Robinson, published by Hodder & Stoughton and available at guardianbookshop.co.uk • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.Theresa May has pledged to face down a vote of no confidence in her government, after her Brexit deal was shot down by MPs in the heaviest parliamentary defeat of the democratic era. On a day of extraordinary drama at Westminster, the House of Commons delivered a devastating verdict on the prime minister’s deal, voting against it by 432 to 202. The scale of defeat, by a majority of 230, was greater than any seen in the past century, with ardent Brexiters such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson walking through a packed division lobby cheek-by-jowl alongside passionate remainers. As noisy protesters from both sides of the Brexit divide massed outside in Parliament Square, the prime minister immediately rose to accept the verdict of MPs – saying she would welcome a vote of no confidence in the government. “The house has spoken and the government will listen,” she said. “It is clear that the house does not support this deal, but tonight’s vote tells us nothing about what it does support.” In a raucous Commons, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, confirmed he had tabled a formal motion of confidence in the government, backed by other opposition leaders, which MPs would vote on on Wednesday. Corbyn told MPs: “This is a catastrophic defeat. The house has delivered its verdict on her deal. Delay and denial has reached the end of the line.” The Brexit-backing European Research Group (ERG) and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) later announced that they would support the prime minister, making it unlikely Labour could succeed in triggering a general election. May said that if she survived the vote on Wednesday, she would hold meetings with senior parliamentarians from all parties to “identify what would be required to secure the backing of the house”. The prime minister’s spokesman later said May would be contacting Conservative and DUP MPs among others , but declined to say whether or not she would meet with Corbyn or the SNP leader, Ian Blackford. He cited the example of May’s meetings with Labour MPs such as Caroline Flint and Gareth Snell about an amendment on workers’ rights, although both of those MPs eventually voted against the government. “We will approach it in a constructive spirit,” the spokesman said. May had no plans to head to Brussels immediately, No 10 said, implying that the prime minister first needed to test what would be acceptable to MPs. Downing Street said May would approach the talks wanting to find a solution to deliver a Brexit deal that would honour the result of the referendum – suggesting she would not countenance talks with those pushing for a second referendum, or even a full customs union, which Labour has backed. She would then make a statement on Monday, setting out how she intended to proceed. MPs would get the chance to amend the statement, and were likely to take the opportunity to try to demonstrate support for their own favoured alternatives – including a Norway-style soft Brexit, and a second referendum. Several cabinet ministers, including Amber Rudd, Philip Hammond and Greg Clark, had pressed the prime minister at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting to pursue a cross-party solution if her deal was defeated. But Brexit-backing ministers, including Andrea Leadsom and Penny Mordaunt, urged her instead to seek revisions to the Irish backstop – and failing that, to pursue a “managed no deal”. The former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said the crushing defeat gave the prime minister a “massive mandate” to return to Brussels and seek a better deal. “We should not only be keeping the good bits of the deal, getting rid of the backstop, but we should also be actively preparing for no deal with ever more enthusiasm,” he said. On Tuesday night Johnson was joined by other prominent Brexiter MPs, including John Redwood and Bill Cash, at a champagne celebration party at Rees-Mogg’s house. Hammond moved quickly after the vote to quell business anger over the failure of May to get her deal ratified. The chancellor expressed his “disappointment” at the result in a conference call at 9pm with main business groups, including the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce, as well as dozens of chief executives. One source on the call said it was constructive and that Hammond’s tone was “realistic” about the damage prolonged uncertainty around Brexit was inflicting on the economy. However, Hammond was hammered by business leaders over parliament’s refusal to take a no-deal Brexit off the table. “This was the single biggest question he was asked,” said the source. May said any plan that emergeed from the talks would have to be “negotiable” with the EU27. She earlier rejected an amendment from the Tory backbencher Edward Leigh calling for the Irish backstop to be temporary, saying it was not compatible with the UK’s legal obligations. In Brussels, Donald Tusk, the European council president, appeared to back a second referendum soon after the crushing result for the prime minister was announced, and urged her to offer a way forward. If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is? May was expected to return to Brussels within days to consult with Tusk and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker. Officials said the EU was now in listening mode. In a statement, Juncker urged the British government to “clarify its intentions as soon as possible”, and warned that “time is almost up”. “I take note with regret the outcome of the vote in the House of Commons this evening”, he said. “On the EU side, the process of ratification of the withdrawal agreement continues”. In a defence of Brussels’ role in the negotiations, Juncker said that the EU and the bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, had shown “creativity and flexibility throughout” and “demonstrated goodwill again by offering additional clarifications and reassurances” in recent days. He said: “The risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom has increased with this evening’s vote. While we do not want this to happen, the European commission will continue its contingency work to help ensure the EU is fully prepared.” May, in Westminster earlier knowing that she faced a heavy defeat, made a heartfelt plea to MPs to support her, calling it “the most significant vote that any of us will ever be part of in our political careers”. “Together we can show the people we serve that their voices have been heard, that their trust was not misplaced,” she said. Earlier in the day, as one Conservative backbencher after another stood up to attack her painstakingly negotiated withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons, it became clear that few had changed their mind. May had embarked on a last-ditch charm offensive on Tuesday, holding meetings with MPs including the ERG’s Steve Baker, who said the pair had held a “constructive and substantial conversation about the future”. Corbyn, speaking just before the vote , saidMay had “treated Brexit as a matter for the Conservative party, rather than the good of the whole country”. He called the government’s efforts to steer Brexit through parliament “one of the most chaotic and extraordinary parliamentary processes” he had experienced in 35 years as an MP. The attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, told his colleagues that if they did not accept the prime minister’s deal, they risked condemning the UK to the chaos of a no-deal Brexit. “It would be the height of irresponsibility for any legislator to contemplate with equanimity such a situation,” he said. Corbyn would come under intense pressure to throw his weight behind a second Brexit referendum if May wins on Wednesday; but his spokesman said Labour did not rule out tabling another no-confidence motion at a later stage. Labour MPs were joined by 118 Conservative rebels in voting down the prime minister’s deal, including erstwhile loyalists such as the chair of the backbench 1922 committee, Graham Brady. That was one more than the number who had backed a no-confidence vote in May’s leadership of the Conservatives in December. Under party rules, the prime minister’s victory in that vote means she cannot be challenged for party leadership again within the next 12 months.A plan from rival Conservative factions aimed at securing a breakthrough in the Brexit impasse has been greeted with immediate scepticism from EU officials, who said the proposals were not workable. Senior Tory Brexit supporters including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker hatched the plan with leading remainers including Nicky Morgan and Stephen Hammond. The proposal involves paying the £39bn EU divorce bill, redrafting the backstop arrangements over the Irish border and extending the implementation period until December 2021. The extra time would be used to try to agree a free-trade deal, while citizens’ rights would be guaranteed. In that period, there would be no customs checks on the Irish border. EU officials dismissed the suggested compromise, which they said failed to offer Ireland any reassurance on the avoidance of a hard border. Brussels sources pointed out the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, had said technology to avoid a hard border does not exist. “What a cunning plan,” laughed one official. “This is just nonsense,” echoed an EU diplomat. Brexit-backing MPs, including Rees-Mogg, were still seeking fresh reassurances from the prime minister before they will vote for a government-backed amendment on the backstop on Tuesday evening, which could pave the way for the new plan to be put to Brussels. Rees-Mogg told journalists on Tuesday morning he would wait and see whether the government interpreted the amendment, tabled by the senior MP Graham Brady, as an instruction to try to reopen the 585-page withdrawal agreement. “Let’s see what the prime minister says at the dispatch box today and what the Brady amendment really means,” he said. Theresa May is expected to open the debate for the government, allowing her to set out her next steps for MPs. She faces conflicting pressures from rival wings of her party. As well as Rees-Mogg’s demands for a pledge to rework the backstop, pro-soft Brexit ministers are demanding a clear commitment that she will hold another vote to allow MPs to reject no deal, if attempts at renegotiation fail. The business minister Richard Harrington told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he and colleagues were demanding a promise from the prime minister that she would secure her plan B within a fortnight – or give them another chance to reject no deal. “If she is prepared to give that irrevocable undertaking – which means at the dispatch box or a similar instrument – many of us feel ‘Well, OK for the sake of everything, we will give her two weeks’. But that is it”. Iain Duncan Smith, the Eurosceptic former Conservative leader, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday the plan represented “the best hope that we’ve got” and urged the government to get behind it. The DUP said later it would also back the Malthouse plan. In a statement, the party leader, Arlene Foster, said the proposal “can unify a number of strands in the Brexit debate including the views of remainers and leavers”. She said: “If the prime minister is seeking to find a united front, both between elements in her own party and the DUP, in the negotiations which she will enter with the European Union, then this is a proposition which she should not turn her back on.” Should the hunt for a solution involving technology fail, the so-called safety net proposed by the Tory MPs would involve the EU agreeing to a three-year transition period without there being any agreement on a backstop. The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has repeatedly said it is “certain” that without the legally operable backstop, there will be no transition period for the British economy after 29 March. Morgan confirmed the proposal had been reached after days of discussion coordinated by Malthouse. “The prime minister has been aware of the discussions. At some point, there has to be compromise on all sides in order to get a deal over the line,” she said. Setting out the detail of what has become known as the “Malthouse compromise”, Morgan said: “The first part of it is to recast the backstop as a sort of free-trade-agreement-lite. That would involve a commitment by all sides to have no hard border on the island of Ireland, but allow trade to continue, while there is a slightly longer implementation period till December 2021.” In return, Brexit supporters have agreed to drop their demand that the £39bn divorce settlement be withheld, she said. The remain-supporting MP characterised the proposals as “the withdrawal agreement we have got at the moment with changes to the backstop”. “People like me want to avoid a no-deal outcome and we have to look for ways to do that, and we are all prepared to compromise on that,” she said. Steve Baker, one of the leaders of the hard Brexit European Research Group, tweeted his backing for the proposals. “The Malthouse Compromise” after @kitmalthouse, who brought us together We need to get out of the EU on time and with a functioning government. This is how. #Brexit https://t.co/mB9vmdkX90 The international trade secretary, Liam Fox, gave only muted backing to the idea. “There are all sort of ideas being put out, but parliament can’t take a decision unless that is on the order paper, and it is not on the order paper today,” he told Today. “The government is open to listening to all ideas. It is time that we actually made progress. Voters want parliament to make a decision.” It is still unclear whether the prime minister is prepared to pursue the offer of compromise. Some Conservative MPs rejected the plan, with “people’s vote” supporter Anna Soubry saying it was “a recipe for no-deal Brexit”. “The prospect of the EU ripping up the withdrawal agreement or allowing a transition period without the backstop is very remote – and for good reason given the risks to the Irish peace process. Instead, this scheme backed by Jacob Rees-Mogg is a recipe for the no-deal Brexit that the hard Brexiters have always craved. “We cannot allow our economy, vital public services and life chances of young people to be sacrificed for a last-minute gesture towards Conservative party unity,” she said.When I was a teenager in the 80s, we all had badges – “Don’t blame me, I voted Labour” badges, and “Protest and survive” badges (an anti-nuclear slogan, riffing on the government information films, Protect and Survive), and badges with a great big smiling sun on them, the beginning of climate consciousness. (My cousin once pulled a policeman in a nightclub, and when she put her coat on and he saw the badges, he wouldn’t go home with her.) Then political accessorising fell way out of fashion, until now. Anti-Trump sloganeering dominated the last New York fashion week, while we have anti-Brexit merch. It has to be sweary – a “bollocks to Brexit”, at the very least. The pithiest iteration is from the artist Jeremy Deller, whose T-shirt range (which he actually started in 2017) replaces the endings of well-known phrases and sayings with “Fuck Brexit”. Eg “Frankie say Fuck Brexit”. The beauty of them is that, once you’ve seen one, you want them all. “It’s ground us down, the whole process has left us all ground down,” says Deller, 52, whose work goes far beyond T-shirts. “Humour is important in these conversations. It was probably used during the campaign but I can’t remember anyone using it.” He ruminates on that for a second. “[Vote] Leave at least used imagery; they were cleverer with words and images, more viral. I should have really done these during the campaign.” This new appetite for Brexit merch reflects two things: first, that remainers who were happy to leave the grown-ups to make the case in 2016 are getting a lot more trenchant. This isn’t about tariffs. This is about taking an idea and puncturing it, which can only really be done with swearing, and can’t be done much more quickly than on a T-shirt. More broadly, that it is cool to care again. Political views didn’t disappear these last 30 years, but you kept them out of your wardrobe because they did not belong in your cred portfolio. And now they do. The uncool thing, this season, is to be without an opinion. Deller has a favourite T-shirt: “John&Paul&George&FuckBrexit”. “I really ought to get one to Paul McCartney,” he says. “He’s totally engaged with the world, his heart is in the right place on so many other issues. I’m sure he would wear it if needs be. That might be what it takes.”Donald Trump has announced plans for the biggest expansion in US missile defence since the Reagan-era Star Wars project, in a policy review that singles out North Korea as an “extraordinary threat” seven months after the president claimed that threat had been eliminated by his diplomacy. In the Pentagon’s missile defence review, which Trump unveiled on Thursday, his administration has called for a large-scale expansion of existing and sea-based systems, much of it designed to guard against a missile attack from North Korea. “While a possible new avenue to peace now exists with North Korea, it continues to pose an extraordinary threat and the US must remain vigilant,” the review said. In particular, Trump announced there would be 20 more ground-based interceptors in Alaska, a location aimed at countering North Korean missile. One of Kim Jong-un’s top aides, Kim Yong-chol, is expected to arrive in Washington on Friday for talks about a second summit with Trump. On Wednesday, Mike Pence admitted that the first summit – in Singapore last June – had failed to lead to any concrete steps by the Pyongyang regime to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. The new missile defence review also envisages the addition of a new layer of satellites that would be able to spot enemy missiles at launch. A study would be conducted into the feasibility of space-based interceptors and lasers. It is far from clear, however, that Congress, with Democrats now controlling the House of Representatives, will be prepared to foot the bill for a huge hike in spending on unproven technology. Tests of land- and sea-based missile interceptors have been inconclusive even in very controlled conditions. In a speech delivered in the Pentagon, Trump made claims for the planned missile defence system that went far beyond the capabilities of the systems, even according to his own administration’s review. “My upcoming budget will invest in a space-based missile defence layer,” he said. “We will terminate any missile launches from hostile powers … regardless of missile type or geographic origin,” Trump said. The Pentagon review acknowledges that the Russian and Chinese arsenals are far too large and sophisticated to be countered by missile defence, and that US strategy is reliant on its own huge arsenal to deter any attack from a major nuclear power. Before discussing the new missile defence review, Trump spent six minutes on a campaign-style speech in the Pentagon auditorium denouncing Democrats for blocking his demand for a wall on the southern border, likely to increase the reported unease of senior officers over the administration’s attempts to politicise the US military.Millions of amateur naturalists around the world have been tuning in to the secret lives of albatrosses as New Zealand rangers employ YouTube in a bid to save the mysterious giant sea birds. New Zealand conservation teams set up a 24-hour live-stream of an albatross nest at Taiaroa Head on the Otago peninsula in 2016. Three years on, the feed has become an unexpected global hit, with 2.3 million people from 190 countries tuning in to watch the endangered birds rear their chicks on a frigid peninsula at the bottom of the world. “Someone somewhere in the world is watching 24 hours a day,” says department of conservation (DoC) ranger Jim Watts. “People watch it in hospitals, in nursing homes. There’s a real intimacy to watching the chicks grow – people fall in love and become invested.” The northern royal albatross – or toroa in the Maori language te reo – is endemic to New Zealand and is under threat from climate change, fly-strike disease and heat stress. The birds have been described as “casualties on the frontline” of the war against plastic, as they mainly feed by swooping down on squid in the ocean – and often mistake brightly coloured plastic for prey. The estimated total population of northern royal albatross is 17,000, and with intensive intervention the Taiaroa Head population has doubled since 1990. But that protected colony represents only 1% of the total population, and their small New Zealand home has become “crucial” to conservation efforts as they are the only managed and quantifiable settlement of the rare and endangered birds in the world. The other 99% of toroa live on remote sub-antarctic Chatham Islands and have never been accurately counted or managed, though survey drone flights are planned in the near future. Watts says the 24/7 coverage from the camera has provided valuable insights into the lives of the elusive birds, and has the capacity to ensure more vulnerable chicks reach adulthood. Royalcam, as it is known, has captured the birds arriving at their nests in the night – which the rangers previously didn’t know they did – and also recorded dramatic scenes including the chicks first flight and predators such as cats and stoats infiltrating the protected peninsula to kill the nest-bound young. In early 2018 a mother albatross attacked her chick in an unusual and gruesome episode. The death was livestreamed around the world and viewers frantically called the department office in Dunedin, begging the rangers to intervene. The rangers were off duty and unable to help, but said if a similar incident occurred again they would react immediately. There is hope that 2019 will hold better news for the colony. More than 50 eggs have been laid this year in a record breeding season, and rangers are gearing up for the “intense” period after the eggs hatch in January. After the hatchings, the rangers will choose the annual “star” of Royalcam, taking into account the parents personality, the chick’s personality, and which family can handle the extra attention. Then the public get to vote on a name for the chick. More than 100,000 comments have been posted in the community Royalcam discussion group, including from a primary school class in the town of Napier who watch the live stream before their lessons every morning. “We watch the baby chick albatross every day,” said their teacher. “We just simply love it.” Watts said viewers’ investment in the birds’ lives had financial and conservation pay-offs, and donations to the royal albatross centre had increased since the cam went live, allowing rangers to fund a sprinkler system for the coming season to keep the birds and chicks cool and healthy. ‘When we do go home you are constantly with the birds in your mind,” says Watts. And like millions of viewers, Watts says during breeding season “you never really clock off, you never really leave them.”This is thuggishness, pure and simple. There’s no other way of characterising the ugly scenes unfolding outside parliament, where prominent remainer MPs, journalists and activists now run a daily gauntlet of intimidation. It was painful to watch an unbelievably composed Anna Soubry battle her way into her office through a crowd of protesters chanting “scum” and calling her a Nazi. Soubry is as resilient as they come and she kept her dignity, but she looked so horribly vulnerable in this situation crackling with barely repressed violence. It is even harder to see police officers stand by and do nothing as a handful of men in hi-vis costume hold public debate hostage by screeching abuse at pro-remain MPs, journalists and anyone else they recognise from the telly. (I say anyone; there’s a wearily familiar pattern emerging, and it’s that women, people of colour and other minorities get it worst. Sky TV’s Kay Burley tweeted that she now needs personal security just to get on and off College Green, where broadcasters have been conducting live interviews with MPs for decades without this kind of interruption. The anti-Brexit campaigner Femi Oluwole and my colleague Owen Jones have also been targeted.) Inevitably some will question whether this rabble is being given more latitude than the religious preachers of hate they have increasingly begun to resemble. Yet the police are in a difficult position, damned if they intervene and damned if they don’t, given what these people surely crave is martyrdom. Like their idol, the convicted English Defence League thug Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, they’d presumably turn any court appearances into Facebook feeding frenzies and fuel for conspiracy theories. Crack down, and you give them what they want. Stand back, and you not only give them the oxygen of daily publicity as they gleefully film and upload confrontations for the enjoyment of armchair thugs everywhere, but create a physically menacing new norm ignoring every lesson supposedly learned from the tragic death of Jo Cox. The life of a politician is necessarily exposed to the public, and not everywhere they go is as well policed as parliament. The Metropolitan police says it is reviewing footage to see whether criminal offences such as harassment may have been committed. But it’s the overall strategy for policing this new form of made-for-Facebook direct action, which more closely resembles stalking than conventional political protest given its daily nature and fixation on individuals, that needs reviewing in conjunction with the parliamentary authorities and arguably broadcasters, too. Parliament is a place of work, not just for politicians and reporters but for researchers and secretaries and cleaners, not to mention the hundreds of ordinary people coming in and out every day for meetings about often sensitive and distressing matters. None of them should have to run this gauntlet. And if the short-term impact is toxic, then the longer-term one is even more troubling. How many MPs watch the death threats piling up against their more outspoken colleagues and decide now is not the time to be brave? How many people, watching Soubry struggle to be heard over the chants of “traitor”, would think twice about going into elected politics as a career? These protesters surely do not represent most leave voters, but they are a logical extension of a public debate so splenetic and hate-filled that reasonable people eventually give up and leave the room. For that is the ultimate purpose of it all, the one that must be frustrated at all costs; not democracy, but the antithesis of it. The mob vigorously asserts its right to free speech, but then uses it only to intimidate other people out of exercising theirs. All those who had a hand in bringing us to this point – newspapers who ramped up sales with headlines about traitors and “enemies of the people”, high-profile leave campaigners who even now seemingly can’t bring themselves to condemn this behaviour, apologists in all parties for violence against their political opponents, social media companies which allowed the most vile bullying routinely go unpunished on their platforms – should be actively trying to undo the damage they have done. Beware the argument that people shouldn’t say online what they wouldn’t say on the street. This is what happens when they start screaming it in people’s faces instead. • Gaby Hinscliff is a Guardian columnistDuring my particular screening of Wounds at this year’s Sundance film festival, there was an added in-cinema soundtrack. Certain reactions are to be expected when watching a button-pushing horror, from gasps to screams to nervous laughter following a deviously employed jump scare, but others are less desirable, unintentional mockery or incredulity the sign of a major misstep. The audience was as audibly unsure and exhausted with what was on-screen as I was, a confused, haphazard jumble of ideas, gore and tone, a misfiring curio set to befuddle and disappoint when it finally gets released. It’s an attempt at something artful and opaque yet wrapped in a slick, glossy package, a film that thinks it has something on its mind but is actually terminally vacant. It’s a strange career swerve for British-Iranian writer-director Babak Anvari, who impressed so many with his first feature, the effectively restrained ghost story Under the Shadow, a film constructed with a careful finesse that’s sadly absent here. Based on a novella by Nathan Ballingrud, the film focuses on Will (Armie Hammer), a bartender who enjoys his job just a little too much, preferring to drink with his regulars rather than spend time with girlfriend Carrie (Dakota Johnson). One night, after a particularly violent brawl, Will finds a cellphone left on the floor. He takes it home and starts to interact with a string of unsettling messages. Strange things then start to happen, many of them involving cockroaches … Opening quite pretentiously with a Joseph Conrad quote, Anvari hints at the study of a sociopath, but it’s one of the film’s many half-thought ideas and bar one atrociously written domestic row late in the film, it doesn’t take hold in quite the way that it should. Because there’s a lot going on in Wounds yet somehow also very little. There’s a Stephen King-lite protagonist gradually losing his mind and fighting against his worst urges. There’s a Ring-esque techno-curse, complete with supposedly haunting imagery. There’s a psychodrama about alcoholism. There’s a body horror. There’s a lot. Yet in a brief 92 minutes not one of these competing elements is able to develop, the ramshackle script feeling more like a stream of consciousness than anything complete. Dialogue is stilted and awkward, as if it’s been put through Google Translate a few times while characters, if you can even call them that, act in strange, unlikely ways (much of the audience exhaustion was aimed at dim-witted 80s horror movie behaviour). The performers are left with very little to work with and while Hammer does find away of making the most of his haunted alcoholic, Johnson and Zazie Beetz, two wonderful actors, are stranded with hopelessly one-dimensional roles. Arguably the biggest mystery of the film is exactly why they would have signed on to such a thankless project in the first place. Relying quite heavily on thunderously scored jump scares, inevitably some of them do work and aside from the more manipulative moments, Anvari does also manage a handful of arresting visuals, especially during the final, nutso scene. But the unintended outcome of these glimpses is a desire for a more effective framework for them to live within. Wounds creeps and crawls and pokes and bleeds but it never really works. Wounds is showing at the Sundance film festivalGood morning briefers. I’m Martin Farrer and these are the top stories today. Some of Britain’s biggest corporate names have dealt a blow to Theresa May by pressing the panic button and reorganising their business operations in case of a no-deal Brexit. Sir James Dyson, the Brexit-backing billionaire, inflicted the biggest embarrassment for the prime minister when his company announced plans to “future-proof’” itself by moving its headquarters to Singapore. Our business columnist, Nils Pratley, says Sir James has chosen the moment of maximum Brexit pain for the PM to make the decision and must explain himself or people will think he is guilty of hypocrisy. Dyson was followed by historic cross-Channel ferry company P&O, which said its fleet would be re-registered under the Cypriot flag, and Sony said it was moving its European base from London to Amsterdam. The CBI said the corporate alarm bells showed that a no-deal Brexit “must be ruled out immediately”. Back in Westminster, there was some hope that the government could avert the dreaded no deal after some rebel MPs hinted they would back No 10’s Brexit agreement in order to make sure Britain left the EU. The snag is that ministers will still have to find some way around the equally vexed Irish backstop problem. The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said for the first time that the UK and Ireland would have to negotiate a bilateral agreement on “full alignment” of customs if a no-deal Brexit went ahead. In Davos, former chancellor George Osborne has said he thinks a delay to Brexit is now the most likely outcome. US shutdown hope – An end to the month-long partial shutdown of the US government could be in sight after Senate leaders said they would vote on two new funding measures tomorrow. A Republican-backed bill would meet Donald Trump’s demand for a $5.7bn wall along the Mexican border in exchange for temporary protections for young undocumented immigrants. The second would extend funding for the agencies that are currently closed through to 8 February. Minority leader Chuck Schumer hailed the second bill as a compromise that would allow 800,000 workers to be paid while talks continued on the wall. Court crash – A failure of the court service’s IT system has caused thousands of cases to be been disrupted or delayed across England and Wales. The repeated crashes, which started last week, come as the ministry of justice is spending millions to promote online hearings to replace the legal profession’s traditional reliance on paperwork. Staff at the ministry were unable to send emails, jurors could not be enrolled and courts were left unsure of when some defendants were due to appear, leading to prosecutions being adjourned. The ministry said staff were “working hard” to restore access to the system. Fuelling controversy – The UK gives more subsidies to fossil fuels than any other European Union country, according to a report that also shows that handouts for coal, oil and gas still far outstrip money for renewable energy. The study by the European Commission said the government gave €12bn (£10.5bn) a year to support fossil fuels in the UK, significantly more than the €8.3bn spent on renewable energy. By contrast, Germany provided €27bn for renewable energy, almost three times the €9.5bn given to fossil fuels. However, a significant part of the UK fossil fuel subsidies identified by the commission was in the form of the reduced 5% rate of VAT on domestic power bills, cut from 20%. Hacked off – Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, are close to settling a phone-hacking claim with Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group just weeks before the case was due to go to trial. An agreement with News UK could avoid a high-profile trial over claims journalists at the Sun were involved in illegally obtaining voicemails. The newspaper denies the allegations. The media group has settled dozens of claims with celebrities over phone hacking by journalists in a scandal that led to the closure of the Sun’s sister paper, the News of the World, in 2011. Two “big ticket” claims by Liz Hurley and Heather Mills are due to go to trial on 4 February. Far from Fawlty – For a town that inspired Fawlty Towers with a legendarily rude hotel owner, Torquay has come a long way. The 25, a six-bedroom B&B in the Devon town, has been voted the world’s best based on TripAdvisor ratings. Andy and Julian Banner-Price, who run the 25, said they were “absolutely thrilled” to win but it comes as no surprise to guests who helped it to the top with an array of glowing reviews. “They couldn’t do more for you. The attention to detail is just amazing,” said one. Delhi’s rickshaw drivers are on the frontline of the city’s most notorious problem: horrendous air pollution. The Guardian’s south Asia correspondent, Michael Safi, travels the city with Pandit, a driver whose exposure to the worsening air quality is affecting his health and his livelihood. Plus: Ana Adlerstein looks at the reality of life on the US-Mexico border in Arizona With the rise of populism here and in Europe, we have an interesting piece from a French political analyst who says that his detailed study of public opinion for Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! movement shows that immigration is not a major concern for disaffected voters. Guillaume Liegey worries that Macron’s suggestion that he will consider immigration quotas as part of his attempt to defuse the gilets jaunes movement risks misunderstanding voters’ main gripes. Rather, he reckons, these are job insecurity, worries about money and poor public services. Overall a sense of being left behind. It’s a strong read-across to our own troubles over Brexit, with Liegey warning that this year’s European elections will be a crucial test of whether the political classes have learned anything. Serena Williams, her movement cramped late in the match by a rolled ankle, blew a 5-1 lead in the third set and a chance to equal the 24 slam titles of Margaret Court in a dramatic Australian Open quarter-final loss to Karolina Pliskova in Melbourne. Emiliano Sala, the Argentine footballer whose plane disappeared over the Channel as he was flying to Wales after signing for Cardiff, is being remembered as a humble man who enriched everyone’s lives. Usain Bolt will long be remembered as one of the greatest runners the world has ever seen, but he has finally given up on his dream of playing professional football, saying his “sports life is over”. In cricket, a grassy pitch with bare patches means England have some difficult choices to make for the first Test against West Indies starting later today in Bridgetown. Jonathan Joseph has been added to England’s Six Nations squad despite making only one appearance in the past nine months. There was more bad news for the high street as the Patisserie Valerie cafe chain collapsed into administration yesterday, placing more than 3,000 jobs at risk. it follows revelations of a £40m hole in its accounts. The FTSE 100 is expected to slip slightly at the open this morning while the pound has dropped overnight a bit to $1.295 and €1.139. The Guardian leads on “Blow to May as companies press panic button”, taking in the decision by P&O, Dyson and Sony to relocate their businesses from Britain amid Brexit chaos. The FT also splashes on Dyson’s decision: “Outspoken Brexit backer Dyson shifts company HQ to Singapore”. Also on the front page is a plug for the paper’s editorial, which argues in favour of a second referendum if MPs can’t agree on a deal. Dyson is also on the front of the Times, but the paper leads on “Courts in chaos as trials halted by IT breakdown.” The rest of the papers take a break from Brexit. The Express urges: “Change cruel law to help the dying”. The Mirror goes with “Bulgers rage at Oscars insult”, after a film about the toddler’s murder was nominated for an Oscar. The Mail’s front page story is “Instagram helped to kill my daughter”. The Telegraph leads on the warning that “Daily dose of aspirin ‘not worth the risk’”. The Sun asks “Roo what?” in the headline for its story about American police officers saying that Wayne Rooney was speaking in “broken English” when he was arrested for drunkenness. The Guardian morning briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comThe US could become a net energy exporter by next year as oil and gas production expands, according to new projections from the Energy Information Administration. America is becoming increasingly reliant on natural gas – a fossil fuel that contributes to climate change but less so than coal. Solar power will grow rapidly too. Both will replace nuclear and coal power plants that are more expensive. But the rapid shift toward natural gas and a slow-down in weaning off coal will put the US far behind the global climate change goals scientists say are necessary to avoid the worst impacts of rising temperatures. EIA data projects that by 2050, carbon dioxide levels from energy use will decline only about 2.5%, starting at 5,147m metric tons in 2017 and ending at 5,019 in 2050. While previous presentations from the government agency have highlighted the outlook for greenhouse gases, this year’s did not. An official instead provided the figures via email. Trump administration officials have frequently downplayed and disregarded climate risks, although the EIA typically stays out of politics. The country has imported more energy than it has exported since 1953, EIA said. Donald Trump’s administration has pursued an agenda of what it calls “energy dominance”, while also rolling back climate rules. EIA administrator Linda Capuano noted that “being a net exporter does not mean the United States is independent of international trade”. In addition to using more natural gas, the US could eventually stop making gains in phasing out coal. Declines in coal use could stabilize, leaving the most competitive plants online and able to run more. The amount of coal mined in America is also likely to decrease through 2035 and then hold steady. Industry energy use and emissions are projected to surge, while transportation’s carbon footprint could decline. Colette Honorable, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and senior fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the numbers tell a positive story. “We are absolutely moving in the right direction,” she said, adding that “we absolutely have more work to do”. The growth in oil and gas drilling is not necessarily a result of Donald Trump’s efforts to open up new areas to production, according to the report. Government analysts said they still see most of the increase happening in the Permian Basin, which is in west Texas and south-eastern New Mexico. They don’t yet expect major changes from bids to open up drilling offshore on the east coast or in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. EIA only includes finalized policies in its assessments, meaning it did not consider a range of Trump proposals meant to bolster oil and gas and coal.There’s always the garbage bag shot. In Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, the Netflix series starring the Japanese decluttering expert turned bestselling author, there’s always at least one lingering shot of trash. Glossy plastic bags, bulging with rubbish and stacked precariously. The more bags, the better – one of the couples featured estimated they chucked out 150 full bags. There the bags are, neatly tied up and ready to disappear, leaving the tidiers happier, healthier and relieved of all the crap they’ve been lugging around for years. It’s the shot that screams: Success! You’ve been Kondo-d! Your life is about to get infinitely better! And it’s the shot that illustrates the problem we all have with wastefulness – which Kondo is not helping. A few years ago I followed the KonMari method, the step-by-step decluttering guide laid out in Kondo’s bestselling books. It’s pretty straightforward: go through each and every thing you own, category by category, hold it close to decide whether it “sparks joy”, then discard it if it doesn’t, or store it neatly if it does. Those three days, spent in a summery New Year haze, were an exquisite marathon purge. Clothes that I didn’t love-love, unused kitchen gadgets, mismatched crockery, reams of old documentation and countless expired skincare products all went into heavy duty garbage bags. There were bags for the charity shops, bags for the rubbish dump and boxes of books for the second-hand bookstores. The more bags I filled, the more I patted myself on the back. Then I tidied and sorted and folded whatever was left. I even mastered the dark art of folding socks and underwear. It felt great. My apartment wasn’t exactly a minimalist heaven but I got a kick out of my well organised kitchen cupboards and my smaller pile of T-shirts stacked in descending colour order. My cutlery drawer was neater and my crockery matched – that strange, unused orange cup and saucer someone gave me was now sitting in a box outside a charity shop, waiting to spark joy in someone else. That’s the thing though – what happens next? Where do all those bags go? The Konmari method emphasises getting rid of stuff, but it doesn’t all just vanish. We drop off the garbage bags, then forget about them as we return to our newly organised homes. Out of sight, out of mind. Most of those op shop bags will end up in landfill, alongside the bags of outright garbage. And it costs charities millions to send it to the dump. These days landfills around the world are overflowing with stuff that didn’t spark joy. The idea of “don’t like it, just bin it” encourages the culture of disposability. As Eiko Maruko Sinewer, author of Waste, Consuming Postwar Japan, told me once, the Konmari method is a short-term strategy. “If you go shopping and you pick up a shirt, and that shirt brings you joy, then you buy it. Then, two weeks later, it no longer brings you joy, you can throw it away and there’s no attention to [the fact that] maybe you should have thought about the end life of that shirt when you bought it.” We’re chucking out more than greying T-shirts and old tax receipts. While that cotton T-shirt only cost you $10, there were countless resources that went into it: the materials, the water, the energy, the labour, the transport and the packaging is all being wasted too. And we really can’t afford to say “yeah-nah”. According to the World Bank, we are currently producing more than 2 billion tonnes of garbage each year, with that figure set to jump to 3.4 billion in the next 30 years. Landfills around the world are overflowing, with Australians throwing out 6,000kg of clothing into landfill every 10 minutes. Recycling is not a cure-all. Last year China sparked a global recycling crisis when it closed its doors to imports of contaminated recycled material. Around the world, local councils stockpiled recycling or sent it straight to landfill. Dumping unwanted stuff at charity shops isn’t the answer either. Only a tiny percentage of clothing donated, for instance, goes on sale. The unusable junk is sent to landfill, much of the rest is exported to impoverished countries, where it is on-sold relatively cheaply to the population. That sounds good in theory but, in reality, it can have a devastating impact on local markets, given the variable quality of secondhand clothes. It can also limit the development of local industries, and can speed up the demise of traditional clothes. Why make something original when there are cheap jeans and designer knock-off tops readily available? There is another Japanese tradition that Kondo – and the rest of us – could embrace. It’s called mottainai. It has a long history but essentially it expresses regret at the idea of waste and reflects an awareness of interdependence and impermanence of things. Mottainai is all about reusing, repurposing, repairing and respecting items. How powerful it would have been to see Kondo chopping up old T-shirts for cleaning cloths to replace sponges or paper towels. Or perhaps she could have encouraged her desperate hoarders to repair their old shoes, bicycles and kitchen appliances, instead of turfing them? There are plenty of alternatives to the rubbish dump for those who really can’t stand to reuse or repurpose things that aren’t zinging with joy. In Australia, apart from selling it on eBay or Gumtree, there are local swap groups on Facebook or charity groups looking to pick up unwanted furniture and clothes for those in need. It may not deliver that instant clean apartment feeling, but the goods will end up going to a better home. Most of all, I wish Marie Kondo would just say stop! Stop buying all this stuff. The only solution to our waste crisis is to halt the consumerism clogging our landfills, polluting our oceans and overcrowding our homes. Because what would really spark joy would be a world that isn’t overflowing with garbage. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Election results in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been postponed again and officials said they did not know when they would be ready. The country’s electoral commission (Ceni) said on Sunday that tally sheets were trickling in slowly and so it would not be possible to release the results as scheduled. Corneille Nangaa, the head of Ceni, said: “We ask the nation to remain patient for the time it will take to consolidate all our data.” Opposition members and observers had said that releasing the results late could be part of a scheme by the Congolese government to rig the election. Although President Joseph Kabila could not stand again, having already served his constitutionally mandated two terms and been in power since 2001, his handpicked successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, is widely seen as a puppet, there to hold the reins until 2023 when Kabila may run again. On Friday, Donald Trump said 80 US military personnel had been deployed to Gabon “in response to the possibility that violent demonstrations may occur in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in reaction to the 30 December 2018 elections there”. In a letter to congressional leaders the US president said the personnel were there to protect US citizens and the embassy, but also “in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests”, adding that they would be there until the DRC’s security situation looked stable enough that they were not needed – and that more could be deployed if necessary. On Thursday the US threatened sanctions against those who tried to undermine democracy or threatened peace and stability. The Catholic church, a powerful body in the DRC, warned on Saturday of a possible uprising if Ceni did not release provisional results that “conformed to the truth of the polls”. The church had previously claimed that there was a clear winner of the election and called on Ceni to release the “true” results, signalling – though not saying outright – that Shadary had lost. Polling just before the election indicated that the opposition candidate Martin Fayulu was in the lead by a wide margin. A government spokesman, Lambert Mende, said the church could go to the courts if it was not satisfied with the results released by the electoral commission. “We’re not in the Vatican here, we’re in the Congo, and there’s a law that determines how things are done,” he said. On Friday, Kabila met the church’s secretary general, Donatien Nshole, and a delegation of priests. According to Nshole, Kabila said he wanted to “leave the country united and peaceful”. A host of irregularities and the suppression of voting rights were detailed in a Human Rights Watch report published on Saturday. The group pointed out that many polling stations across Kinshasa had abruptly closed, preventing people from voting, while others had opened late, and voters had had trouble using new electronic machines, thousands of which were burned shortly before the election in an alleged arson attack. The government has not denied that it has effected an internet shutdown. Observers were also blocked from many polling stations and armed men coerced people in North Kivu province to vote for Shadary, HRW said. Ida Sawyer, the deputy director of HRW’s Africa division, called on South Africa to exert serious diplomatic pressure on the DRC leadership “to ensure real election results are published”. The African Union and Southern African Development Community are on the ground but have yet to make strong statements; the latter called the election “well managed and smooth”. The eastern cities of Beni and Butembo were not allowed to vote in the election – their “poll” will take place in March, after the announcement of the winner, thus disenfranchising more than a million voters. At least 43 people were arrested in demonstrations in Beni in the past week, according to the UN radio station Radio Okapi. According to African Confidential, among the thousands of troops newly deployed to Kinshasa’s streets are many former members of the Rwanda-backed M23, a rebel group accused of committing many war crimes including rape, execution and recruiting child soldiers. Rwanda’s Paul Kagame is said to support Kabila’s choice of Shadary because he believes it the best way to control the conflict on the countries’ shared border.A South African inquest into the killing of the prominent Rwandan dissident Patrick Karegeya has opened in the suburbs of Johannesburg with a lawyer telling the court the former intelligence chief’s death was a political assassination. “We are dealing with an assassination of a Rwandan citizen in this country,” said Gerrie Nel, the lawyer for AfriForum, a South African NGO representing minority interests and a group of local Rwandan exiles in the case. “We will be arguing that this assassination is intrinsically linked to the political situation in Rwanda.” Karegeya, one of President Paul Kagame’s former closest aides and a former head of Rwanda’s external intelligence, died on New Year’s Eve 2013 after being invited to a room in the five-star Michelangelo hotel in Sandton, South Africa, by Apollo Kiririsi Gafaranga, a visiting Rwandan businessman and friend. Karegeya, who was 53 at the time of the killing, had fled into exile seven years earlier after falling out with Kagame, his former boss. Members of the opposition group he set up in exile – the Rwanda National Congress (RNC) – claim a professional hit squad was sent from Rwanda to eliminate the former spy chief. Human rights groups say Karegeya’s murder was only the most prominent of a series of murders, kidnappings, renditions and harassment targeted at Rwandan opposition members, social activists and vocal journalists both inside Rwanda and living in exile across Africa and in the west. “We’ve very happy this finally has come to court,” said Leah Karegeya, the victim’s widow, who was seated in the public gallery at the back of the court, a red-brick building in the north-west Johannesburg suburb of Randburg. “The family knows who killed him, but we want the law to do its work and the rest of the world to know.” One of the co-founders of the RNC, Gen Kayumba Nyamwasa, lives under 24-hour protection in South Africa, after four attempts on his life. After a raid on his safe house in 2010, the South African government expelled three Rwandan diplomats, and relations between the two countries have been strained ever since. After a meeting in March, both Kagame and the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said they wanted to normalise relations between their two countries. But analysts say evidence presented during what may prove to be a politically embarrassing court process could sabotage that drive. About a dozen Rwandan opposition supporters, wearing yellow T-shirts printed with Karegeya’s face, sat at the back of the courtroom listening to proceedings. The inquest is expected to last at least a fortnight. The state prosecutor, Yusuf Baba, said he intended to call at least 30 witnesses to give evidence.The high school student filmed in an apparent standoff with a Native American activist in Washington DC has said he was “not disrespectful” and “wasn’t smirking” during the interaction, as a spokesman for Donald Trump said students from Covington high school may be invited to the White House. “As far as standing there, I had every right to do so,” Nick Sandmann told NBC Today’s Savannah Guthrie. A video which was widely shared over the weekend showed Sandmann grinning inches from Nathan Phillips, an Omaha tribe leader, as Phillips sang and played a drum. “My position is I was not disrespectful to Mr Phillips. I respect him. I’d like to talk to him. In hindsight I wish we could have walked away and avoided the whole thing,” Sandmann said. On Wednesday morning White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News Trump would “certainly be open to having them here” after the government shutdown ends. Trump tweeted in support of the students on Tuesday. In the immediate aftermath of the video’s release many perceived Sandmann to have been mocking Phillips by smiling inches from the Native Americans face. Sandmann said that was not his intention. “I see it as a smile saying that this is the best you’re going to get out of me, you won’t get any further reaction or aggression,” Sandmann said. “I wasn’t smirking.” Sandmann and other students from Covington Catholic high school, in northern Kentucky, had been attending the anti-abortion March for Life in DC on Friday. Video subsequently emerged of the students chanting and shouting in front of Phillips, who has said he felt threatened by the group. After the initial video went viral, other footage emerged shedding more light on the confrontation. A small group of Black Hebrew Israelites were shown shouting at the group of Covington students, with one man appearing to call the students “incest babies”. “Our school was slandered by the African Americans who had called us all sorts of things,” Sandmann said. Aside from the Sandmann and Phillips confrontation the Covington students have also been criticized for chanting and shouting school songs or mocking Phillips and other Native Americans present. “They provoked us into a peaceful response of school spirit,” Sandmann said of the students’ response. On Monday separate footage emerged of Covington students wearing black face at a 2012 school basketball game. Sam Schroder, a Covington student who was at the March for Life, told Fox News on Wednesday that that incident was not racist. “I just explain it as showing our school spirit,” Schroder said. “We had many themes, like nerd, business, white-out, blue-out, black-out, as you’ve seen in the video.” Schroder, who was not a Covington student at the time of the basketball game, said the school has stopped students from wearing black face at sporting events. “I know the kids meant nothing by it,” Schroder said of the students shown in the basketball video.Emmanuel Macron has launched a two-month “great national debate” in France with a 2,330-word open letter to the country. The French president hopes the nationwide public consultation will take the sting out of the widespread public anger behind the rise of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement and the civil unrest across France. In the letter, Macron said he was open to ideas and suggestions but insisted the government would not go back on previous reforms or key measures in his 2017 election campaign. “No questions are banned,” Macron writes. “We won’t agree on everything, that’s normal, that’s democracy. But at least we’ll show that we are a people who are not afraid to speak, to exchange views and debate. And perhaps we’ll discover that we might even agree, despite our different persuasions, more often than we think.” Macron has been rocked by the ferocity of almost two months of angry protests by gilets jaunes. On Saturday a ninth weekend of demonstrations took place across France. The letter, to be published in French newspapers on Monday, marks the start of a nationwide consultation in which citizens are invited to give their views on four central themes: taxation; the organisation of the state and its public administration; ecological transition; and citizenship and democracy. Macron’s missive asks a number of questions, including: what taxes should be reduced?; what spending cuts might be a priority?; is there too much administration?; how can the people be given a greater say in running the country? Macron said the proposals collected during the debate would build a new “contract for the nation”, influence political policymaking and establish France’s stance on national, European and international issues. “This is how I intend, with you, to transform anger into solutions,” he wrote. Accepting that everyone wanted taxes that were “fairer and more efficient”, he warned against unrealistic expectations, adding there could be no drop in taxation without cuts in public spending. Macron and his centrist administration have been under intense pressure since November when public anger over an eco-tax on petrol and diesel sparked the gilets jaunes movement. Although the tax was dropped, protests have widened to adopt a wide range of anti-government grievances. Outside the cities, gilets jaunes continue to picket roundabouts around the country with ad hoc protests calling for a drop in taxes on food and essential goods, lower social charges and increased spending power. On Saturday there were further clashes between police and protesters in many French cities, with accusations of violence from both sides. In the letter, Macron wrote that he would accept “no form of violence” including “pressure and insults” against “elected representatives, media journalists, state institutions or public servants”. “If everyone is being aggressive to everyone else, society falls apart,” he wrote. Macron wrote that he would give his conclusions within a month of the end of the consultation process on 15 March. The letter ends: “In confidence. Emmanuel Macron”.Taiwan’s unification with China is “inevitable”, Xi Jinping has said as he warned that Beijing reserved the right to use military force to bring it into the fold. Speaking in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the 40th anniversary of a key cross-strait policy statement, the Chinese president described reunification with Taiwan as unavoidable. “Reunification is the historical trend and it is the right path,” Xi said. “Taiwan’s independence is a reversal of history and a dead-end road.” All people in Taiwan must “clearly recognise that Taiwan’s independence would only bring profound disaster to Taiwan”, he said. Taiwan, which has never been under the Chinese Communist party’s control, is China’s most sensitive issue and is claimed by Beijing as its sacred territory. Xi has stepped up pressure on the democratically governed island since Tsai Ing-wen, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive party, became president in 2016. “We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means,” Xi said, adding that the issue was an internal one and that China would permit “no external interference”. “We are willing to create broad space for peaceful reunification, but will leave no room for any form of separatist activities,” he said. Xi’s speech was conciliatory in parts, echoing China’s 1979 “message to compatriots in Taiwan”, which eventually led to a thaw in relations between the two sides. Chinese nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 and set up a rival government. In the 1990s Taiwan democratised, and it is often held up as an example of democratic reforms. Xi promised that Beijing would respect Taiwanese citizens’ private assets, their beliefs, freedom to practice religion and other “legitimate rights,” an arrangement similar to the “one country, two systems” model under which Hong Kong is governed. “After peaceful reunification, Taiwan will have lasting peace and the people will enjoy good and prosperous lives. With the great motherland’s support, Taiwan compatriots’ welfare will be even better, their development space will be even greater,” Xi said. Xi said China was willing to talk with any party in Taiwan to push the political process – stalled by China since Tsai took office – as long as they accepted the principle of “one China”. That policy maintains that Taiwan is part of China. In response to Xi’s speech on Wednesday, Tsai rejected the possibility of such an arrangement. “I call on China to bravely take step towards democracy so they can truly understand the people of Taiwan,” she posted on Twitter. A day before the address, Tsai said the two countries “must handle our differences peacefully and as equals.” “I am calling on China that it must face the reality of the existence of the Republic of China (Taiwan),” she said, using Taiwan’s formal name. Beijing “must respect the commitment of the 23 million people of Taiwan to freedom and democracy,” she added. Beijing has refused official communication with Tsai’s administration because of her refusal to agree with the One China policy. Her position has damaged her party’s position ahead of a presidential election due in a year. Tsai’s Democratic Progressive party suffered heavy losses to the Kuomintang, seen as more friendly to Beijing, in local elections in November. Beijing has regularly sent military aircraft and ships to circle the island on drills in the past few years and has heaped pressure on the island internationally, including whittling down its few remaining diplomatic allies. Reuters and AFP contributed to this reportWash Westmoreland’s Colette is A Star Is Born for the belle époque: a biopic of French literary phenomenon Colette in her early years that is invigorating, mercenary and kinky. It busies itself with sex and fame – and also something rarely acknowledged in detail in costume dramas about writers: money. This is the story of how talented young author and country mouse Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (played with wand-like grace by Keira Knightley) submits in 1893 to marriage and commercial exploitation by an older man from the big city, the mediocre and flatulent critic-slash-publisher Henri Gauthier-Villars, pen-named “Willy”. He brings out her wildly popular Claudine novels (racy autobiographical adventures of girlish yearning) under his own name, without giving his wife a smidgen of the acclaim rightly owing to her, still less any loot. Willy is played with a smirk and a goatee by Dominic West, who also importantly endows him with bullish charm. Yet West makes him a grisly and decreasingly engaging figure, especially when the philandering Willy becomes someone who needs his mistresses to dress as schoolgirls (in the modish “Claudine” garb) before he can get an erection. #CacheTonPorc? Colette (as she is to style herself) gets a sweeter revenge. She comes to reject her husband’s dishonesty, embrace her own writerly identity and leave “Willy” in the dustbin of history. But this happens after she has learned something from him about the ways of the world and the peculiarities of the literary and sexual marketplace. It is Willy who has punched up her original prim manuscripts with his own narrative gusto and swarthy romance. He encouraged her, from pervily obsessive fascination and entrepreneurial zeal, to have gay affairs that she could then write about with the names changed. She is no Proustian prisoner, but the film suggests that he has in some sense authored her. Or perhaps it is that Colette allowed herself to be authored as a temporary career move: a necessary apprenticeship and virginity loss. Knightley brings something brittle and skittish to the part of the young Colette, qualities that soften into sexiness; she is a naïf who is ordered by her mama (the dependably intelligent and complex Fiona Shaw) to take a basket on a country walk so that she can collect blackberries for the family’s tea. In fact, she is sneaking into a barn to have sex with her ageing fiance. Once they are married, Colette finds herself in Paris’s exciting world of modernity: new-fangled bicycles and electric light. More importantly, she is to discover a prototypical world of corporate branding in which individual writers can be messed with. Preposterous Willy fancies himself the head of something like a Hollywood studio churning out hot properties: pulp bestsellers. Importantly, he is fascinated by the new “talking pictures” and wonders if a “cine-play” could be made of Claudine’s adventures. But the awful truth is that he and all the other hopeless males he employs have no talent. Colette is the only one who has. She has a gift which, in a reversal of gold-mining, needs to de-refined, good writing that must be smudged and smeared with commercial prurience before it will sell. Willy sees this; Colette doesn’t. Finally, Colette is to fall for the beautiful and androgynous Mathilde De Morny (Denise Gough) with whom she stages a studiedly outrageous theatre event, greeted by the stuffed shirts of Parisian society like the Marquess of Queensberry witnessing the “somdomite” behaviour of Oscar Wilde. Knightley and West have a tremendous chemistry: two very smart and worldly performances that suggest that Colette and Willy did enjoy something like a real love affair, and that Colette is never simply a victim, nor Willy simply an exploiter. Perhaps, to extend the Hollywood analogy, he saw himself an old-style mogul running an industry in its pre-auteur state, when the assignment of authorship was not a priority. But keeping his wife’s earnings certainly was. This is a highly enjoyable and bracing piece of work from Wash Westmoreland, who with his late partner, Richard Glatzer, made the excellent Still Alice, with Julianne Moore. He co-scripted this movie with Glatzer, who died of ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 2015: the film is dedicated to him. There is a cheeky flourish in their script here, when Willy declares that Claudine “astounds us with her moxie”. This film does much the same.Are you getting enough protein? The question provides its own answer: if you are worrying about the amount of protein in your diet, then you are almost certainly eating more than enough. This is the paradox of our new protein obsession. For many people, protein has become a kind of secular unction: it instantly anoints any food with an aura of health and goodness. On the menu at the gym where I go, a salad niçoise is now repackaged as “high-protein tuna”. It comes without the usual capers or olives – those are items that merely add flavour, and who needs that? On Pinterest, the lifestyle-sharing site, you can now choose “protein” as one of your interests in life, along with “cute animals” and “inspirational quotes”. In 2017, there were 64m Google searches for “protein”. Anxiety about protein is one of the things that drives a person to drink a flask of vitamin-padded beige slurry and call it lunch. You merely need to visit a western supermarket today to see that many people regard protein as some kind of universal elixir – one food companies are profitably adding to anything they can. “When the Box Says ‘Protein’, Shoppers Say ‘I’ll take it’” was the headline of a 2013 article in the Wall Street Journal. In addition to the ubiquitous protein balls, protein bars and protein shakes, you can now buy protein noodles, protein bagels, protein cookies and – wait for it – protein coffee. Even foods that are naturally high in protein such as cheese and yoghurt are sold in protein-boosted versions. Strangest of all might be “protein water” – clear, fruit-flavoured drinks laced with whey protein, as if ordinary water was insufficiently healthy. Around half of all UK consumers are apparently seeking to add “extra protein” to their diets, according to market research from the cereal brand Weetabix – which has also cashed in on our hunger for protein. The protein version of Weetabix – a 24-pack of which costs 50p more than the same-sized pack of original Weetabix – is worth £7m in sales per year. In a way, there’s nothing strange in the fact that we see protein as valuable, because it is. Along with fat and carbohydrate, it is one of the three basic macronutrients, and arguably the most important. We could survive without carbohydrates, but fat and protein are essential. Protein is the only macronutrient to contain nitrogen, without which we cannot grow or reproduce. There are nine amino-acid proteins – the building blocks of human tissue – that we can only get from food. Without them, we could grow neither healthy hair and nails nor strong bones and muscle, and our immune system would be impaired. A child who lacks vital protein in the first five years of life will suffer from stunting and sometimes wasting, too, as the dreadful persistence of malnutrition in the developing world reminds us. So the puzzle is not that we should crave protein, but that our protein anxiety has become so acute at a time when the average person in developed countries has a surfeit of protein in their diet – at least according to official guidelines, which recommend a minimum of 0.8g of protein a day per kilogram of body weight. According to 2015 data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the average person in the US and Canada gets a full 90g a day, nearly twice the recommended amount. The average European is not far behind with 85g of protein a day, and the average Chinese person consumes 75g. When we seek out extra protein to sprinkle over our diets, most of us in rich countries are fixating on “a problem that doesn’t exist”, said David L Katz, an American doctor and public health scholar who is the director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. In his latest book, The Truth About Food, Katz notes that while the “mythology of protein tends to propagate the notion that more is better”, there are serious concerns that a very high protein intake over a lifetime can result in harm to the liver, kidneys and skeleton. The current protein mania has partly come about because so many people now regard carbohydrates or fats (and sometimes both) with suspicion. In the current nutrition wars, protein has emerged as the last macronutrient left standing. But the whole “macronutrient fixation” is a “boondoggle” that has been calamitous for public health, Katz told me. “First they told us to cut fat. But instead of wholegrains and lentils, we ate low-fat junk food.” Then food marketers heard the message about cutting carbs and sold us protein-enriched junk foods instead. “When we talk about protein,” said Katz, “we are dissociating the nutrient from its food source.” And yet still we try to get more protein. In this world of abundance, humans seem to be on an eternal quest for the one safe substance that we can consume in limitless quantities without gaining weight. Such is the appeal of Diet Coke. Our protein anxiety drives us to take diets already high in meats, soya, sugars and ultra-processed foods and dose them with yet more meats, soya, sugary bars and ultra-processed foods because they are marketed to us as “protein” – even though many of these products are not even particularly high in protein. There is something paradoxical about our collective protein worship. When we pay good money for protein-enhanced food, we hope it will lead us to better health (however that is defined). Yet our single-minded pursuit of protein – as a disembodied nutrient whose presence trumps all other considerations – can lead us to behave as if we have forgotten everything we knew about food. The intensity of our protein obsession can only be understood as part of a wider series of diet battles that go back half a century. If we now thirst for protein as if it were water, it may be because the other two macronutrients – fats and carbohydrates – have each in turn been made to seem toxic in the public mind. Official dietary guidelines in the US and UK still insist that a healthy diet is one founded on plenty of carbohydrates with limited quantities of fat, especially saturated fat. The rationale for this low-fat advice goes back to the landmark Seven Countries Study, conducted in the 1950s by the American physiologist Ancel Keys. Based on his observation of healthy, olive oil-eating Mediterranean populations, Keys argued that affluent westerners would suffer fewer cases of heart disease if they could limit consumption of saturated fats such as those found in butter, lard and meat. But as interpreted in the modern supermarket, the low-fat diet often ended up being a high-sugar and high-refined-carbohydrate diet, which was not quite what nutritionists had originally envisaged. In recent years, the low-fat, high-carb orthodoxy has come under fierce attack. In 2015, a meta-analysis conducted by a team of Canadian researchers concluded that intake of saturated fat was not associated with raised risk of stroke, type 2 diabetes or death from heart disease. Vocal anti-sugar campaigners such as Gary Taubes – author of The Case Against Sugar – have argued that the true cause of our current epidemic of diet-related ill health is not in fact saturated fat, but refined carbohydrate. While the low-fattists and the low-carbists continue to slug it out, protein comes out the winner as the one safe thing that most of the population feel they can still put their faith in, whether for weight loss or general health. We have to eat something, after all. The current protein fetish is merely the latest manifestation of a far larger phenomenon that Michael Pollan memorably referred to as “nutritionism” around 10 years ago. For decades now, there has been a tendency to think about what we eat and drink in terms of nutrients, rather than real whole ingredients in all their complexity. A combination of diet fads and clever marketing has got us here. It doesn’t matter whether we fixate on “low fat” or “low carbs” or “high protein” – we are making the same old mistakes about nutrition in a new form. For a while, on my kitchen counter, next to the jars of rice and flour, there was another canister made of black plastic, much larger than the others. Its label said “SOURCE OF HIGH QUALITY PROTEINS” in huge letters. In much smaller lettering it said “READY TO MIX PROTEIN POWDER WITH SWEETENERS” and listed three kinds of whey protein: whey protein isolate, whey protein concentrate and hydrolysed whey protein. When you opened it, a fake vanilla smell wafted into the air and you saw a whitish powder and a black plastic scoop. This soulless canister of ultra-processed whey protein was something that I, as a food writer, never thought I would see in my kitchen. The macho aesthetic of the packaging made my heart sink. I am also no fan of artificial sweeteners, which I believe do no favours either to the palate or to gut bacteria. What’s more, I believe most people should be able to get the nutrients we need from a balanced diet, rather than through supplements. But nothing forces you to bend your own principles like parenthood. I turned to whey protein in a state of mild desperation for my very tall youngest son, who plays competitive sport five or six days a week. Three square meals plus multiple snacks only scratched the surface of his appetite, and he was sometimes almost crying with hunger by dinnertime. My conversations with other sport parents suggest that it’s not uncommon to be at least a little bit obsessed with their child’s protein intake. We grumble that protein bars are a pointless rip-off – and then we buy another pack of them. Protein means different things to different people. To some, it symbolises “weight loss”, while to others it means “muscles”. To me it appeared as a magical filling substance that just might help my son to be less ravenous. I had read studies suggesting protein was the most filling – or satiating – of the three macronutrients, and wondered if more protein at breakfast could be the answer. I tried him on homemade waffles enriched with almonds and hidden eggs (at that point he wouldn’t countenance whole eggs) and the improvement in his energy levels was dramatic. It was a short step to making him occasional smoothies from half a scoop of whey protein with milk and bananas or frozen berries. Despite my unease at the powder, I could genuinely see the difference in his levels of fullness. When the canister was empty I didn’t replace it, but I still monitor my son’s protein intake. Having “enough” protein in your diet to meet your basic needs is not necessarily the same as having the right amount for optimum health. When I asked David Katz how much protein a person should consume, he said certain people may indeed require more than the minimum recommendation of 0.8g per kilo of bodyweight – including athletes like my son. The problem is that once we start thinking more protein is automatically better, it can be hard to know when to stop. The idea that protein is synonymous with healthy eating leads many people to eat in disordered ways that are far from healthy, either for body or mind. A couple of years ago, Sarah Shephard, a thirtysomething British sports journalist, realised she was obsessed with protein. On a typical day, she was eating three or four protein bars, hard-boiled eggs, meat, fish and non-starchy vegetables and a couple of protein shakes. Virtually the only carbs in her diet came from the protein bars and shakes. It reached the point where she had so little energy in the evenings because of the lack of calories in her body that she stopped going out. Shephard’s protein obsession started when injury forced her to give up running. After she started doing boxing and circuits with a new trainer, he told her she should be eating more protein to help prevent future injuries. To start with, Shephard’s new low-carb, high-protein regime felt wonderful. She lost weight, gained muscle and became one of the many people at the gym clutching their sleek flask of protein shake like an amulet. However, she noticed her thoughts about protein were becoming obsessive. Given the choice between an apple and a protein bar, she always chose the protein bar, even though at a rational level she knew that a piece of fresh fruit with its fibre and vitamins had a lot to recommend it over a processed snack. By the time she finally sought help from a sports nutritionist, he said he had never seen anyone with such an intensive fitness regime who ate so little carbohydrate. She was consuming 150g of protein a day, around 2.5g per kilo of bodyweight – far in excess of the upper limit recommended for bodybuilders by the US Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Shephard slowly weaned herself back on to a more balanced diet that included a range of complex carbohydrates such as oats and brown rice. Despite her apprehension, she did not gain weight. When I spoke to her, Shephard had been eating a balanced diet for more than two years without any ill effects, and was a bit mystified as to how she had drifted into her protein fixation. Encouraged by the marketers of high-protein foods, many people talk about whether we we have reached our daily target for “macros”, but we do not talk so much about how much is too much. Adding extra protein beyond our needs can be harmful for people with underlying kidney or liver problems, as the body can struggle to process the excess. In 2017 there were sensationalist headlines around the world when Meegan Hefford, a 25-year-old Australian bodybuilder, died after consuming high amounts of protein shakes and supplements. Hefford hadn’t realised she was suffering from a condition called urea cycle disorder, which meant that her body couldn’t metabolise protein normally. Defenders of high-protein diets immediately attacked the coverage of the story, pointing out that Hefford’s condition was rare and that her death was not caused by protein per se. This was true, but it is also true that there is a significant minority of the population for whom a high-protein diet is not advisable. For the 13% or so of people who have chronic kidney disease, a large amount of protein from red meat can damage renal function. Above and beyond its long-term effects on the body, a fixation with protein can become a form of eating disorder. Three years ago, the American psychologist Richard Achiro decided to study men in Los Angeles engaging in excessive use of protein powders as well as other supplements such as caffeine. Achiro conducted a survey of nearly 200 active men who were using workout supplements and found that, for many of them, protein use had become a “variant of disordered eating” that threatened their health. These men felt under intense pressure to achieve bodies that were not just thin, but that exhibited a supposedly ideal ratio of fat to muscle. Three per cent of the sample group had been hospitalised as a result of excessive supplement use, yet they still viewed supplements as healthy. Eating disorders have complex causes: Achiro told me the men who were overusing protein supplements also tended to be suffering from body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem and a sense of insecurity about their own masculinity. But they were not helped by the fact that the culture they lived in told them that when they replaced most of their meals with protein shakes, what they were doing was normal. Achiro found that it was hard for these men to recognise that their relationship with protein might have become a problem, “because those of us living in western society have been groomed to view a protein-rich diet as the apex of healthful eating”. By 2001, Arla Foods, a vast European dairy cooperative with Danish headquarters, had used up all of the whey in Denmark. The company realised it would have to look further afield to meet the insatiable demand for whey protein. Arla signed a contract with SanCor, an Argentinian dairy company, to build a giant whey protein plant in the town of Porteña, to the north of Buenos Aires. When you order “warm protein pancakes” with blueberries at the gym, the odds are the protein will have come from a plant such as this. It was David Jenkins, a Scottish track and field athlete and silver medallist at the Munich Olympics, who first had the idea of marketing whey protein as a “recovery optimiser” for athletes called ProOptibol. It was launched in health food stores in Southern California and Hawaii in early 1988. At first it was a niche product that found popularity among cyclists and triathletes. The formula for this original whey protein was called WPC 75. It was a byproduct from the Golden Cheese company, based in Corona, California – a giant factory that produced Monterey Jack and other American cheeses. In just a few decades, whey protein has gone from waste product to aspirational lifestyle enhancer. Whey is the watery stuff left over during cheese-making after the curds are separated off. On traditional dairy farms, it was put to good use in anything from bread-making to pickles, but in the vast American cheese factories of the postwar years it came to be seen as an unwanted nuisance. In US dairy states such as Wisconsin, cheese factories dumped thousands of litres of whey in nearby rivers. It was only in the 1970s, after local authorities placed limits on the dumping of dairy waste, that cheese manufacturers realised they had to find a way to use up this annoying whey. The quality of whey powders – known as “popcorn whey” – was poor, and it was mostly used to feed pigs. The key technology that made whey protein possible was the development of ultrafiltration techniques to pre-concentrate the whey before it was dried. This was when whey protein started to be made on an industrial scale. There is nothing on the average tub of whey protein to suggest it ever came from cheese, let alone from a cow. Whey manufacturers work on the assumption that consumers want it to be as close as possible to flavourless, to preserve the illusion that it is some kind of magic potion for humans. In its unadorned form, however, whey varies considerably in flavour. There are two kinds of whey: sweet whey made from rennet cheeses such as cheddar and mozzarella, and acid whey made from the likes of cottage cheese. Cheddar whey has a tendency to taste cardboardy, mozzarella whey is milky and whey from cottage cheese can be sour or reminiscent of cabbage broth. But in the finished product, all these flavours are evened out and disguised by the cloying scent of chocolate, artificial vanillin or salted caramel. Dairy whey protein has become a commodity that travels the world in 100kg sacks, generating vast profits, coordinated by GVCs (global value chains). Thanks to the shifting patterns of supply and demand, the protein shake a gymgoer in Tokyo drinks after lifting weights may have originated on a farm in Norway. The lowest-quality whey powder is called “permeate” and is mostly shipped to Asia, where it is made into infant formula. The higher-quality whey, called WPC 80 because it has an 80% protein content, travels the world to fuel our protein obsession. The global whey protein market is now a complex and hugely competitive global trade, forecast to reach $14.5bn by the year 2023: more than half as much as the global market in breakfast cereal. Strolling through London at lunchtime a few weeks ago, I found myself walking down Bread Street, near St Paul’s Cathedral, which in medieval times was the site of the city’s bread market. Turning off Bread Street, I came upon a branch of Protein Haus, which claims to sell the “most amazing protein shakes you will ever taste”. The shakes have names such as Strawberry Warrior and Vegan Coffee Pump and Berry-Yatric, which must be a competitor for the most offensive food name ever. Protein Haus also sells protein foods such as “bliss balls” and indiscriminate steaming portions of various meats. From Bread Street to Protein Haus – this sums up how our eating habits have changed in modern times. When I was in Protein Haus staring at the heaps of overcooked chicken, slabs of salmon and rows of whey protein shakes and vegan protein shakes, it suddenly occurred to me how crazy it is that we should treat all of these varied “protein” substances as if they were in some way identical. A scoop of ultra-processed whey is not, in fact, the same as a grilled salmon fillet, either in nutrition or in the experience of eating it. Salmon – even the farmed kind – will be high in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin B12, whereas whey protein is low in vitamins and minerals (except for calcium) and fat-free. The only thing these foods have in common is that they tend to be fuel first and pleasure later (if at all). At the same time, our reverence for protein as the one perfect nutrient tends to completely ignore how the protein we eat is produced, or what the environmental consequences of that production might be. Of the 90g of protein eaten each day by the average American, two-thirds is composed of animal products. One irony of Britain’s obsession with protein is that we don’t actually produce very much of it. In fact, only 3% of arable land in Europe is given over to protein crops such as pulses, and Europe imports more than two-thirds of its animal feed. Much of the protein consumed in Europe is meat raised on materials that actually originate in South America or the US as soybean oil or other oilseeds and have to be shipped across the world. So long as we largely consume protein from animal sources, our obsession with protein is also likely to be bad for the planet. At the end of September, at the Aldeburgh food festival in Suffolk, I had a lunch with Nick Saltmarsh, who runs Hodmedod, a company that works with British farmers to produce locally grown pulses. Saltmarsh told me he feels our mania for protein foods has gone so far that we sometimes can’t recognise real protein when it is right in front of us. Vegetable proteins such as lentils and peas tend to be regarded as “low-quality” compared with meat, eggs and dairy. But Christopher Gardner, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, has argued that this “quality” argument is misleading. His great discovery was that all plant sources of protein – from peanuts to edamame beans – contain all essential amino acids. Admittedly they contain smaller concentrations of the amino acids than meat or eggs, but in the context of a plentiful and varied diet, this doesn’t matter. The problem is partly that beans and lentils do not fit our tunnel-visioned conception of what protein is. Pulses such as lentils contain around 25% protein but also 25% carbohydrate – which makes them hard to categorise within the dogmatic categories of modern nutrition. Is the lentil a protein (good) or a carb (bad)? When Saltmarsh takes his product range to food fairs, he finds that bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts will sometimes pick up a packet of pea flour and say “ooh! Peas!” – because pea protein has become fashionable as a vegan alternative to whey. “But when they see that it also contains carbohydrate, they put it down again,” he said. Some now shun any meal or snack that can’t be categorised as a “protein” fix. But they aren’t among the millions of people for whom a lack of protein is indeed a real and pressing problem – and who don’t tend to be the ones browsing pea protein at fitness fairs. The word protein derives from the ancient Greek protos, meaning first. When a Dutch scientist called GJ Mulder first brought the term into use, in 1838, he proposed – rightly, as it turns out – that protein was a crucial substance in all animal bodies. But new research suggests protein is required not just in an absolute sense, but in a particular ratio to the other nutrients in our diets. Going by official guidelines, as we’ve seen, the average person has access to more than enough protein for general health. It turns out our perplexing protein obsession may actually be a symptom of a larger problem in our sugar-heavy modern diets: if it feels like we are not eating enough protein, it’s because we’re eating too much of everything else. In 2005, two biologists called David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson put forward the “protein leverage hypothesis”, in which they argued that protein could be the missing link in the obesity crisis. Since the 1960s, the absolute level of protein consumed by the average westerner has not changed. What has changed is the ratio of protein in our diets. Because our overall calorie consumption has risen by 14%, the ratio of protein to carbohydrate and fat has significantly dropped. In 1961, the average American got around 14-15% of calories in the form of protein, whereas today it is 12.5%. This doesn’t sound like a big drop, but Raubenheimer and Simpson’s research suggests that even a small drop in the percentage of protein can have a big impact on eating behaviour – driving us to overeat. Like many other animals, humans have what biologists call a “dominant appetite” for protein. The biological drive for protein is so strong that a cricket who feels short of protein will resort to cannibalism. When a locust is short of protein, it will explore different food sources to redress the balance. Humans are neither as ruthless as crickets nor as prudent as locusts. When given access to a diet that is low on protein and heavy in carbs and fats, humans will binge, in an attempt to extract the protein they need. If many of us overeat, it could be partly because our bodies are desperately seeking out protein in a food environment flooded with refined wheat and oils and many kinds of sugar. As Raubenheimer and Simpson wrote in their startlingly original 2012 book The Nature of Nutrition: “Dilution of protein in the diet by fat and carbohydrate drives excess consumption, perhaps more so in some individuals, life stages and populations than others.” In other words, obesity may often really be hunger hiding in plain view. The urgent question raised by this research is how we can get our protein ratios back to a healthy level. Our current protein mania – encouraged by the food business and the whey protein industry – suggests that the answer is to supercharge our diets with a flood of added protein. But eating protein to excess comes with its own costs, the main one being that it tends to shorten the lifespan. A more effective way to concentrate protein in our diets, Raubenheimer and Simpson say, would be to keep our protein levels constant (assuming we have enough) but cut down on “fat, sugar and other readily digested carbohydrates”, which would allow us to reach the protein our bodies need at a lower level of calories. But given that sugar is poured into everything from bread to stir-fry sauces, this solution would require a radical restructuring of our food environment. Our protein needs do not remain constant over the human lifespan: 0.8g per kilogram of bodyweight may be enough for a twentysomething, but not for an octogenarian. If anyone needs extra protein, it is not fit young gymgoers, but old people – particularly those on low incomes who may struggle to buy or cook meals for themselves. Instead of protein bars for the young and rich, we need omelettes and chickpea soup for the old and poor. From the age of 50 onwards we progressively lose muscle and our protein requirements become higher, just as appetite tends to decline. Rates of protein malnutrition are alarmingly high among elderly people admitted to hospital. Most of those who can afford to buy a “high-protein” tuna plate are already well nourished in amino acids. By contrast, in these austere times, many hard-pressed eaters are forced into a kind of protein hunger by the economic circumstances of their lives. Think of the families who go to the chip shop and buy chips with no fish, or the person on universal credit living on plain pasta until the next cheque comes in. This is one reason there is a huge market for savoury snacks that taste like a ghostly echo of the hearty, protein-based meals of the past while consisting of little but refined carbs and oil: roast chicken flavour crisps, barbecue tortilla chips. Raubenheimer and Simpson’s research suggests that the colossal market for these cheap snacks could be another symptom of a world in which – despite all those bars and shakes on the shelves – many are still hungry for protein. Behind the current protein hype, there is a kernel of truth. A deficit of protein is indeed part of the hugely complex puzzle of what’s wrong with modern diets. The problem is that the right question – am I getting enough protein? – is being asked by the wrong people. Bee Wilson’s next book, The Way We Eat Now: Strategies for Eating in a World of Change, will be published by Fourth Estate in March. Preorder it now at guardianbookshop.com • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.Food production around the world must rise by half in the next 30 years to sustain a global population expected to top 10 billion by 2050. Compared with 2010, an extra 7,400tn calories will be needed a year in 2050. If food production increases along current lines, that would require a landmass twice the area of India. These are the findings of a report published in December by the World Resources Institute on the “food gap” between current production and growing consumption. Bringing more land under agricultural production is one answer to filling this gap, but it cannot solve the problem alone. Finding that amount of land in suitable conditions would spell the end for many of the earth’s remaining forests, peatlands and wild areas, and release the carbon stored in them, hastening climate change. Intensive farming has already had a huge effect on biodiversity and the environment worldwide. Pesticides, which have helped boost cereal and fruit production, have also killed bees and myriad species of insects in large numbers. Fertilisers that have improved poor soils have also had unintended harmful consequences. The largest ever maritime “dead zone” was discovered in the Gulf of Mexico last year, the result of fertiliser and manure from the meat industry running off the land. Chemical fertilisers also contribute directly to climate change, through the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, and to air pollution through ammonia. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world’s leading body charged with care of our future food supply, has called this year for “transformative change in our food systems”. The most obvious alternative to industrialised intensive farming in the developed world is organic farming. The label organic, or bio, is a familiar one in many supermarkets, but makes up only 2% of food sales in the UK and about 5.5% in the US. Organic farmers must adhere to strict rules on how they grow their crops and raise their livestock. These include using antibiotics on animals only when necessary, cutting out chemical fertilisers and pesticides almost completely in favour of natural alternatives such as manure and wood ash as fertilisers and plant-derived pesticides, and managing land to provide habitats for wildlife. Rob Percival, head of policy at the Soil Association, says organic farming can feed the world, if consumption patterns are adjusted to encourage those who can afford meat to eat less of it. “We need an urgent shift in both production and consumption if we’re to avert the worst consequences of climate change, including a dietary shift towards less and better meat,” he says. “Livestock grazing on pasture can support soil health and carbon sequestration, and manure can provide soil fertility for other crops.” He adds that the productivity of organic farming is greater than previously thought, “and when the environmental and other damage caused by high energy and chemical inputs in non-organic farming are factored in, organic food is cheaper for society and better for the planet”. For many farmers, the investment and time needed to meet organic standards may be a stretch, but there are ways to move towards more sustainable farming without organic certification. Agroecology is the name given to a broad range of farming techniques that seek to minimise the environmental impact of farming. It encompasses organic farming, but is informal and does not require certification and inspection. “It is about using natural systems,” says Vicki Hird, food and farming campaigner at Sustain, an NGO. “Reducing the use of artificial chemicals, such as fertilisers and pesticides is an important part of it. Looking closely at the soil and other conditions, nourishing the soil, taking account of the natural pest cycles, natural predators and crop cycles.” She argues that agroecology could be widely adopted as an alternative to damaging industrialised farming. Farmers can sow crops such as clover as cover to suppress weeds and return organic matter to the soil, and rotate crops, including vegetables such as legumes that fix nitrogen. It requires close attention to the land itself and the crops, rather than the standard mode of farming which is to plant cash crops at the highest yield possible. “Diversity is the key,” says Hird. “Having these huge monocultures does not lend itself to being managed in a natural way, and can damage biodiversity.” Diversifying into heritage crops, such as older varieties of fruit and vegetables and a wider variety of grains than the current few strains of wheat that are the norm in intensive agriculture, can also yield benefits. These crops have their own advantages, including natural resistance to certain diseases, pests or conditions. “You might get a lower yield [by these methods],” Hird concedes, “but you get a higher level of nutrients in the food produced.” Some farmers go further, and embrace concepts such as permaculture and biodynamics. The principles of permaculture involve understanding the relationships between plants and using them in combinations, while reusing any waste products, often as fertiliser. Biodynamics takes a different approach, following the precepts of Rudolf Steiner and incorporating a spiritual aspect, for instance in some cases aligning planting and harvesting to lunar calendars. Peatlands, which around the world have been grossly degraded, can also be managed organically through paludiculture. This requires re-wetting dried-out peatlands and looking to alternative plants that grow well there, including forestry and medicinal plants such as sphagnum moss, and allowing animals to graze. Urban farming can deliver food – or at least some fresh produce – efficiently to dense populations without the greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient loss associated with transporting it across long distances. Already, urban farming produces about a fifth of the world’s food. There are currently more than 3,000 urban farming schemes in London alone. These carry an echo of the “market gardens” and dairies of the Victorian era, when small vegetable farms were sited in or near towns and cows were kept in green places in cities for fresh milk. The cows of Hyde Park, dispensing fresh milk to Londoners, were a familiar sight until the first world war; in the near future, look out for hipsters drinking smoothies from the underground farms of Shoreditch. No. There are more than 570m farms worldwide; more than 90% are run by an individual or family and rely primarily on family labour. They produce about 80% of the world’s food. Small farmers will be key to the transition, says Ronald Vargas, soil and land officer at the FAO. Many small farmers are poor and insecure, but FAO considers investment in smallholder production “the most urgent and secure and promising means of combating hunger and malnutrition, while minimising the ecological impact of agriculture”. There is no shortage of innovation and tech to help improve efficiencies and yields – on industrial farms and smallholdings. GPS, drones and fine-grained data on topography, soils and other aspects of farmland to allow farmers to target specific areas with fertilisers, pesticides and water, instead of blanket spraying. For instance, Olam, a global agribusiness that produces cocoa, coffee, sugar, cotton and other crops, uses real-time monitoring on its plantations to finely judge fertiliser quantities and avoid the need for the pre-emptive use of pesticides. Its almond trees in Australia are fitted with sensors to monitor exactly how much water each tree needs, and when. For family farmers in the developing world, mobile phones are revolutionising what is possible. They have given farmers in remote areas access to tools such as weather forecasts, market prices, yield information and practical advice. GPS is also allowing them to track their produce after it leaves the farm. Drones and robots may seem futuristic but are already in use, delivering targeted pesticides and picking out damaged or diseased crops before they can infect others around them. In parts of the world where space is at a premium, vertical farming is catching on. This refers to the practice of stacking crops, usually vegetables, in shallow containers in layers, which can reach any height available. It not only saves on space, but can also be managed to use water and energy more efficiently, as water can be pumped to the top and allowed to flow down by gravity. Some systems use hydroponics, by which the plants are immersed in water containing mineral solutions, in place of soil. Temperatures can be carefully controlled, water reused, and nutrients recycled. Software systems can control the delivery mechanisms and monitor how the plants are faring. Our new-found abilities to control light, temperature, air and other environmental factors open up new vistas for farming. Underground growing used to be reserved for mushrooms and niche crops such as forced rhubarb, grown in large warehouses. If LEDs can take the place of sunlight, a far greater variety of plants can thrive in these conditions, making not only rooftops but basements and disused underground spaces from worked-out mines to old railway lines potentially viable venues for growing short-cycle foodstuffs. Our reliance on artificial fertiliser and intensive farming techniques did not happen overnight, but took decades. Along the way, these methods revolutionised farming and enabled huge population growth and economic growth. We now have a wealth of scientific evidence that shows that continuing down the same path would risk runaway climate change, the extinction of species vital to human life, pollution of our water and air, and the death of our soils. “Industrial agriculture exploits the available natural resources of our planet to an untenable and unsustainable extent,” says Vargas of the FAO. “The basic strategy to replace human labour with farm machinery, agrochemicals and fossil energy is a dead end in times of climate change, dwindling oil reserves and over-exploited natural resources.” Experts say a second revolution is now needed, that will encompass not just our growing methods but consumption habits and our entire food economy. This would have to involve farmers, retailers, governments and consumers. In last century’s farming revolution, only one future was offered: industrialisation. For this century, there will be a plurality of alternatives, and combinations of new and ancient technology, and all have their place. “There is not one huge conceptual change where you do everything differently and everything will be OK,” says Tim Searchinger of Princeton University and the World Resources Institute. “There is not one single answer. There are lots and lots of things we can and need to do.”Virgil van Dijk said he could feel the nervousness of the Anfield crowd during Liverpool’s 1-1 draw with Leicester on Wednesday but believes it unnecessary with 14 games of the title race remaining. The restiveness of the home support was noticeable as Liverpool missed an opportunity to go seven points clear of Manchester City in dropping points against a team outside the Premier League top six for the first time this season. Van Dijk insists the atmosphere did not affect him but, with a five-point lead and four months of the campaign to go, said now is not the time for impatience. Asked whether Anfield felt nervous, he said: “It sounded like it.” Did it transmit to him? “Not to me,” he replied. “You get that feeling as well from the crowd and I think it’s not really necessary at the moment. But everyone wants to win so bad and that’s what we want as well. But sometimes you need to be very patient.” Van Dijk denied Liverpool’s desperation for a first league title in 29 years will complicate matters for Jürgen Klopp’s team as the run-in progresses. “I don’t think so. In the end it’s all about showing on the pitch and we’re not going to be affected by that. We want everyone to cheer us on and keep pushing even if we have tough moments, even if we’re 1-0 down or maybe more. We just need everyone to pull in the same direction and keep going, that’s the only way forward.”Arriving like a thunderstorm over this year’s Sundance film festival, the artist Rashid Johnson’s darkly compelling contemporary update of Native Son is a hard-boiled conversation starter. It’s a fiery, flawed, often stunningly made film that provokes uncomfortable discussion, rather like the Richard Wright novel it was based on, although purists might argue over some key changes. Its difficult nature might explain why, as the festival began, the indie mini-studio A24 sold the rights to HBO films, who also picked up the sexual abuse drama The Tale from last year’s Sundance – another film deemed to be too tough of a sell for many cinemagoers. Its route straight to the small screen is something of a loss since Johnson, in his film-making debut and working with the acclaimed cinematographer Matthew Libatique, has crafted a visually confident and distinctive film that carries a singular aesthetic which, despite his background in conceptual art, remains unfussy and avoids feeling over-stylised. Together with the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, they’ve taken Wright’s controversial 1940 text and placed it in present-day Chicago. It’s the story of Big (played by Ashton Sanders, best known for avoiding being called Little in Moonlight), a young black man buckling under the weight of the expectations and assumptions of those around him. He’s filled with ideas and ambition, determined not to fall into a path of criminality despite being urged to do otherwise by friends. He’s offered employment by a rich white family as their driver, a job that comes with considerable perks and leads Big to spend time with their wayward daughter, Mary (Margaret Qualley). Desperate to show Big how woke she is, Mary tries to integrate him into her life with tragic, horrifying results. As the film’s noirish, punk-inspired antihero, Sanders dominates the film, populating every scene and tasked with maneuvering Big through challenging territory, whether it be facing regular, galling micro-aggressions or dealing with the fallout from the film’s central act of brutality. He contorts his slender physicality into a commanding swagger and while some might find his work a tad too mannered, I found him transfixing. As he spends time around Mary and her champagne-socialist boyfriend, he’s constantly aware of how he must perform in order to keep his job, even if performing requires simply not reacting to their many ill-informed attempts to identify with him. “Aren’t you outraged?” Mary says at one point, unaware that outrage isn’t something Big is allowed to express. It’s the film’s middle section, after Big gets the job, that truly flies, an acutely observed chain of events tied together by a prickly uneasiness that becomes almost overwhelming, a foreboding cloud threatening to explode at any minute. Mary’s a beguiling, dangerous symbol of white privilege and as Big spends more time around her, even those who aren’t familiar with the source text will know something terrible is about to happen. When it does, it punches a hole right through the screen. There were groans and a few walkouts here at Sundance but Johnson avoids grisly exploitation, knowing that the sheer mechanics of the plot will prove shocking enough. By the final act, though, some of the air has been sucked out. There are substantive changes to Big’s journey on the page that will probably cause ire among fans of the book and the last sequence in particular feels disjointed and declawed. As Big’s girlfriend, the If Beale Street Could Talk breakout star Kiki Layne is excellent but their relationship, which later takes prominence, doesn’t captivate quite enough. While as a feature debut, Native Son is an inarguable accomplishment, both thematically and visually, it also lacks some connectivity between dramatic events. Big’s family appear briefly and are then ignored until the ending while the family he works for are left a few scenes short in the third act. But its flaws are easy to forgive as Johnson conjures up such an intoxicating atmosphere that both his imagery and Sanders’ spellbinding performance will haunt you regardless. Native Son is showing at the Sundance film festival and will air on HBO later this yearIt’s the same every New Year’s Eve. That momentary surge of disappointment that I’ve yet again been overlooked in the honours list. Not even a measly MBE to mark the futility of my existence. Given how little some others who have been recognised with a bauble have achieved, it doesn’t seem too much to ask. Take John Redwood, who has just been knighted. Nobody quite seems to know why. Not even Redwood. He was the Welsh secretary for a couple of years between 1993 and 1995, and a knighthood to mark the 25th anniversary of him miming badly to the Welsh national anthem seems a little far-fetched. Some believed his elevation to Sir John was a bribe to get the outspoken Eurosceptic to vote for Theresa May’s Brexit deal, but Redwood has subsequently insisted he hasn’t been bought and will vote against the deal regardless. Which leaves only one possible reason for Redwood’s preferment: that he has been the backbench Conservative MP for Wokingham, one of the safest of safe seats, for more than 30 years. In other words, he has become a knight simply because he has managed both to stay alive and avoid being implicated in any sex or financial scandals. It’s not the highest of bars for an honour that is meant to recognise an important contribution to public life. It also paves the way for Sir Chris Grayling and Sir Gavin Williamson at a later date. Imagine that. I have a problem with going to the movies. Every time I go, no matter how good or how bad the film, I invariably fall asleep. There’s something about a comfortable seat and the lights going down that catches me out every time. It happened again today when we went to see Olivia Colman in The Favourite. I haven’t drunk alcohol for nearly 32 years so I can’t have been hungover from staying up to watch the fireworks on the TV the night before – I really live the dream – but after about 10 minutes I was getting nudged in the ribs by my wife and ticked off for snoring. I must have managed to get the snoring under control because – after a short, losing battle to stay awake – I was left undisturbed as I dozed off again for my regulation half-hour. Having eventually regained consciousness, I was then left to try to work out who was who and what was going on, which always makes any movie rather more challenging than the director intended. Just as I reckoned I was about on top of the situation, I nodded off again and missed the ending. But I am assured by the three people I went with that it is a film well worth seeing, and certainly the bits I did see were great. On the plus side, I did manage to stay awake throughout the whole of Sarah Phelps’ wonderful adaptation of Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders on TV in the evening. Though I was disturbed to find I appeared to be in a minority of one for liking both John Malkovich’s and David Suchet’s portrayals of Poirot. According to Twitter, you were only allowed to like one or the other. The prime minister may have been regretting her decision to give parliament two weeks off for Christmas at a time of constitutional and political crisis. If only because it’s given so many members of her cabinet the chance to prove not just how hopeless they really are but also how anxious they are to replace her. Sajid Javid cut short his South African safari to personally deal with the “national emergency” of a few dozen refugees getting washed up on Kent beaches by talking tough on immigration to any passing TV camera. Long after his leadership bid has bitten the dust, Sajid will be getting grief from his family for ruining their holiday. Good. Not to be outdone, Gavin Williamson, the fireplace salesman also known as the defence secretary, used the break to announce he would establish new military outposts in the far east. Because the empire worked out so well last time. He then hastily diverted some warships to the Channel to crack down on rubber dinghies and was last heard of planning a pointless raid on Dieppe. For the pièce de résistance, we had Chris Grayling – who else? – awarding a ferry company that had no boats and seemed to specialise in pizza deliveries a £13m contract on the grounds that it was British. The stupidity bar has never been lower. Make no mistake, Javid, Williamson and Grayling will all be in the Lords soon. With parliament in recess, I was able to sneak off to a preview screening of James Graham’s excellent Channel 4 drama, Brexit: The Uncivil War. So much about the film was well-researched and spot-on (the look of horror on Boris Johnson’s face when the referendum result is declared was pitch perfect), but it is Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as the Vote Leave architect Dominic Cummings that really took centre stage. For most of the campaign, Cummings operated in the shadows, using Johnson and Michael Gove as figureheads for his £350m bus stunts, and he only showed his head above the parapet when he was summoned to explain his actions before the Treasury select committee. I was privileged to have a ringside seat. He began by picking a fight with the chair, Andrew Tyrie. Instead of taking his seat, Cummings strode across the room to eyeball Tyrie face to face, insisting that he had to be away by 4pm and that if proceedings overran then he would walk out. Thereafter, he appeared hellbent on proving descriptions of him as a political psychopath to be entirely accurate. It was the most memorable committee appearance since the ex-Mrs Murdoch assaulted a member for the public for throwing flour over Rupert. He refused to confirm anything, saying it was not up to Vote Leave to provide accurate information, and made a point of insulting each member of the committee in turn. It was hard to know if he was an idiot savant or an idiot complete and by the end it was impossible to tell if Cummings actually believed in the objectives of the Vote Leave campaign or was merely fuelled by contempt and disdain for the political establishment. Two years and James Graham’s film later, I’m still none the wiser. I can sense the beginnings of an old obsession being rekindled. As a 12-year-old boy I read everything I could get my hands on about Nasa’s Apollo programme and kept a detailed scrapbook of every lunar mission. I even persuaded my parents to allow me to stay up half the night watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first men to walk on the moon. The ambition, the adventure, the solitude and the sense of otherness – I’d never even been on an aeroplane – totally captivated me and I felt a huge sense of loss when the US pulled the plug on Apollo in 1972. The Americans might have got a bit bored with seeing people landing on the moon and decided the money could be better spent elsewhere, but I was still up for plenty more. By the time exploration restarted with the shuttle and the International Space Station, I had rather lost interest and only followed the missions half-heartedly. I didn’t understand the science, and orbiting the Earth for months on end seemed rather too familiar. So much so that even Richard Branson felt like he could have a go. But this week has felt like a game-changer. First we’ve had Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft taking photos of the snowman-shaped Ultima Thule 4bn miles away, and then the Chinese Chang’e 4 making the first landing on the far side of the moon. At a time when so much of the news is depressing and nationalistic, both missions feel like landmark steps into the unknown. My fingers are already twitching over a new scrapbook. Digested week, digested: the roll-on, roll-off pizza delivery service.The pretender to be French king is dead. Long live the other pretenders, all three. France might have thought it had done with monarchs, first in 1793 when it sent Louis XVI to the guillotine during the French Revolution, and again when it exiled Napoleon III in 1870. The death earlier this week of Henri d’Orléans, Count of Paris – hailed by French royalists as Henri VII – however, has again raised the question of succession to a non-existent throne. Royalists claim Henri, who died aged 85 on Monday, 226 years to the day after Louis XVI was beheaded, had most claim to be king as a direct descendant of the Duke of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIV, the Sun King. His son, Prince Jean de France, inherits the title. The legitimacy of this is contested by the rival Bourbon house, whose pretender king is Louis de Bourbon, the Duke of Anjou or Louis XX to his followers. Louis is a direct descendant via the all-important male line of Louis XIV. He is also a descendant of Queen Victoria and the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. The third candidate is Jean-Christophe Napoléon, also known as Prince Napoléon. The 33-year-old, who studied at Harvard, is the great-great-great-great-nephew of Emperor Napoleon I and the Bonapartist pretender. He also has links to the Bourbon-Anjou and Orléans royal families and several other European dynasties. The current Napoléon, who works as a banker in London, tries to keep out of the fray. Louis de Bourbon, 44, who styles himself “head of the Bourbon household”, was brought up partly in Spain and is subject to mockery from French royalists for his accent. Meanwhile, Jean d’Orléans, 53, has shown himself to be a man of the people with support for the gilets jaunes protesters. Of course, France is a republic and, as such, does not recognise those who claim to be French royalty, but for the would-be King Jean of Orléans – whose motto is “to serve France and the French” – hope springs eternal. “I think France is monarchist at heart, and republican through reason,” he said in a recent interview. The funeral of Henri d’Orléans will be held on 2 February at the royal chapel at St-Louis de Dreux, the burial place of the Orléans family.Two Russian opposition activists denied political asylum in Sweden say they fear being arrested and beaten up if they are forced to go home. “You never know when something will happen,” say Alexey Knedlyakovsky and Lusine Djanyan, who fled their home city of Krasnodar in March 2017 after what they say was a campaign of persecution by the secret police. They flew to Sweden with their two-year-old son and claimed asylum. Last month the country’s migration board turned down their request. It said the couple had provided credible information about the harassment against them but decided they would not be at risk if they were sent home. Knedlyakovsky and Djanyan are appealing the decision. “I don’t want to believe in conspiracy. But this looks like a political decision,” Knedlyakovsky says, speaking from the small Swedish village of Storå, three hours north of Stockholm, where they are living. “Our lawyer read the ruling and said: ‘It’s crazy.’ “I don’t want to think about what will happen if we go back. It’s dangerous. There will be a criminal prosecution for sure. And physical violence against me.” The pair, both artists, have been politically active since 2010. In 2014 Knedlyakovsky and Djanyan took part in a protest with the feminist collective Pussy Riot against the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Knedlyakovsky was the only male participant and wore a dress in solidarity with the LGBT movement. Ultra-nationalist Cossacks attacked the demonstrators with whips. Knedlyakovsky was hit over the head with his own guitar, arrested, pepper-sprayed and led away with blood streaming down his face. Djanyan was manhandled and left with kidney pains. The police also detained Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, both of whom were previously imprisoned for a punk performance in Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow. In 2016 Knedlyakovsky staged another protest by attaching a wooden cross to a statue in Krasnodar of Felix Dzerzhinsky, who founded the Cheka, a forerunner of the KGB, now known as the Federal Security Service (FSB). Vladimir Putin is a former head of the FSB. Knedlyakovsky says he was protesting against the merger under Putin of Russian state ideology and Orthodox Christianity. The stunt appears to have annoyed the local FSB chief; Knedlyakovsky was arrested and spent 15 days in jail, locked up in a windowless basement cell. Tolokonnikova described Sweden’s decision as “inhuman”. She said the board underestimated the genuine threat to life facing opposition figures in Russia. “It’s an unfortunate message, both to activists here and in other authoritarian countries. It says: ‘If you are in danger, nobody will help you.’” Before they escaped to Sweden, the couple were harassed on multiple occasions, Knedlyakovsky says. In 2013 Djanyan was fired from her job at a Krasnodar university for her political activities and was subsequently unable to exhibit her art in galleries and museums. At one point, when Djanyan was pregnant, a man in a cafe attacked her and accused her of “hating Putin”. On another occasion a woman struck her in a park. Unknown men turned up at the couple’s flat and warned Knedlyakovsky if he did not desist from politics he would be grievously punished. The activist says the threat was real. He points to the fate of another local activist, the environmentalist Andrey Rudomakha, who was set upon by thugs and left with a broken nose and a traumatic brain injury. Rudomakha spent two months recovering in hospital. Knedlyakovsky organised anti-government rallies for the Solidarity movement and was friends with its leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead in February 2015 a few hundred metres from the Kremlin. Nemtsov’s posthumous foundation paid for the family’s tickets to Sweden. Meanwhile, the Pussy Riot member Pyotr Verzilov – Tolokonnikova’s former husband – was poisoned in Moscow last September. He fell ill soon after appearing in court with other members of Pussy Riot following a pitch invasion at last summer’s World Cup final. Verzilov is currently living outside of Russia. Knedlyakovsky says conditions in Sweden are good. The couple have two children – Tigran, five, and Levon, who was born last summer. The village has a library, a kindergarten and a lake. They are able to make art and “can do something”, he says, unlike less fortunate fellow refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq whose situation he calls “terrible”. Sweden’s migration board said it did not comment on individual cases. Its ruling says the “applicants” will be expelled. They can either travel to Russia or to another country willing to take them. They must leave Sweden no less than four weeks after the decision becomes final and non-appealable. The ongoing appeal process is likely to last several months. The board considered letters of support for the family from four human rights organisations, including Memorial, Russia’s foremost civil rights society. The individuals who harassed him and his wife were sent by the Russian state, Knedlyakovsky says, which Swedish authorities appear not to have grasped. “If we return they [the FSB] will do something,” he said. “We can’t go back. We are optimists. We will try and find a way to live in Sweden or to move to another country.”The population of Rio de Janeiro is just over 6 million. On Saturday night, an alleged mugger managed to pick out a UFC fighter among those multitudes. UFC strawweight Polyana Viana says she was waiting for an Uber when she was approached by a man claiming to have a gun. The results weren’t pretty. “When he saw I saw him, he sat next to me,” Viana told MMAJunkie. “He asked me the time, I said it, and I saw he wasn’t going to leave. So I already moved to put my cell phone in my waist. And then he said, ‘Give me the phone. Don’t try to react, because I’m armed.’ Then he put his hand over [a gun], but I realized it was too soft. “He was really close to me. So I thought, ‘If it’s a gun, he won’t have time to draw it.’ So I stood up. I threw two punches and a kick. He fell, then I caught him in a rear-naked choke. Then I sat him down in the same place we were before and said, ‘Now we’ll wait for the police.’” Viana posted photos, which later appeared on UFC president Dana White’s Instagram feed, of her bloodied and bruised alleged attacker. She kept him in a hold until police arrived. She says the man’s wounds were treated before he was taken to the station, where Viana filed a police report. “I was fine,” Viana said. “I was fine because he didn’t even react after. Since he took the punches very quickly, I think he was scared. So he didn’t react anymore. He told me to let him go, like ‘I just asked for the time.’ I said, ‘Asked for the time my ass,’ because he saw I was very angry. I said I wouldn’t let go and that I was going to call the police. He said, ‘Call the police, then’ because he was scared I was going to beat him up more.” Viana has won 10 of her 12 professional fights, and is known for finishing off opponents quickly. Until a loss on points in August she had won five fights in succession in the first round. Amid the anti-globalist chest-thumping of Brexit, Donald Trump, and the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, it may sound like the stuff of folklore. But there was a time in the recent past when all the countries of the world moved quickly to discuss a common threat, agreed an ambitious plan of action and made it work. The Montreal protocol, which came into effect 30 years ago, was drawn up to address the alarming thinning of the ozone layer in the Earth’s stratosphere. It was the first agreement in the history of the United Nations to be ratified by all 197 countries. Since it came into effect on 1 January 1989, more than 99% of the gases responsible for the problem have been eradicated and the “ozone hole” – which, in the late 80s, vied for headline space with the cold war, Diana, Princess of Wales, and Madonna – is receding in the sky and the memory. According to the latest UN study, the “ozone holes” (there are actually two: one above each pole) are healing at the rate of 1% to 3% a decade and will have completely vanished in the northern hemisphere by the 2030s and the southern hemisphere by the 2060s. This is cause for back-slapping, but also frustration that the world has not been able to unite as effectively over the climate and biodiversity crises. Here are half a dozen lessons. The satellite animation of the changing atmosphere over the Antarctic first shown in 1985 appeared to show a growing “ozone hole”. This was a scientifically imprecise description of the thinning that was concentrated at both poles, but the metaphor – of the roof over our home planet being punctured – captured the public imagination and, most importantly, conveyed a sense of urgency. By contrast, many people feel distant from climate problems, which are usually illustrated with images of polar bears, filled with caveats and headlined with vague labels, such as “global warming”, which sounds benign (or even desirable for those living in cold countries), and “climate change”, which comes across as a statement of the obvious. When scientists raised the alarm about chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases, there was initially uncertainty about their impact on the atmosphere and the process, but the risks from sunlight weakly filtered by the ozone layer (cancer, crop failure, ocean ecosystem collapse) were so great that world leaders decided not to wait. Instead, they applied the “precautionary principle”: “If in doubt, cut it out.” Even before the science was settled, they started to act. This was also supposed to be the case with the climate, but lobbying to deny the validity of the science, particularly in the US, has stymied action. Governments temporarily put aside cold-war hostilities and united rapidly around a solution to the ozone problem. From the first research in 1973, it took just 16 years for the world to discuss, agree and put in place a solution that reversed the trend. By comparison, scientific warnings that carbon dioxide emissions could disrupt the climate date back to at least 1962 (and the risks were speculated on much earlier). Yet despite numerous international agreements on the subject since then (Rio 1992, Kyoto 1998, Copenhagen 2009, Paris 2015), emissions are still climbing. In the 80s, the environment was not yet the polarising issue it has become, but the dominant figures – including the US president, George HW Bush, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher – still had to overcome business interests, treasury doubts and political short-termism to protect the future health of the planet. They refused to accept the delaying tactics of chemical companies, some of which argued action should wait until the science was clearer. Today, Trump, Bolsonaro and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, represent fossil fuel interests, deny science and undermine international cooperation. The phased ban on CFCs and dozens of other ozone-depleting gases was an economic blow to chemical firms, refrigerator producers and aerosol-spray manufacturers. Rich countries dealt with the job losses, technology upgrades and other economic consequences internally, but also provided support for poorer nations to manage the transition. From 1991 to 2005, pledges totalled $3.1bn. Similar arrangements exist for climate accords, but the sums need to be far higher because the actions are so much more expensive, the responsibility of industrialised nations is so much greater, and the impact on poor countries is incalculably worse. The Montreal protocol has been updated numerous times as the science has sharpened and new climate goals have been incorporated. This month, the Kigali amendment added a plan to cut hydrofluorocarbons by more than 80% over the next 30 years, which would reduce global heating by 0.4C by the end of the century. Under the Paris climate agreement, governments are supposed to ratchet up the ambition of their pledges to cut emissions, but most governments are failing to meet even their current inadequate targets. Looking at this list, a millennial might be tempted to conclude that the Montreal protocol was possible because it came about in a golden age when leaders were smarter, politicians more representative and populations more amenable to scientific persuasion. But, as anyone alive in 1989 knows, that is far too simple an explanation. The reality is that environmental action was easier then because the world had more ecological breathing room, capitalism was less dominant and the corporate push-back – and control over politics – was weaker. The ozone layer was a relatively simple fix compared with the climate, which is the biggest, most complex, multidimensional challenge humanity has ever faced. It is one thing confronting a handful of chemical firms, quite another to take on the world’s fossil fuel companies, car manufacturers, cement-makers and agribusiness conglomerates, representing hundreds of millions of jobs, trillions of dollars and 200-odd years of industrial development. Bush, Thatcher, Gorbachev and the then Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, knew this in 1989, when global temperatures were already rising at an unnaturally rapid rate. A year earlier, in a US congressional testimony reported throughout the world, the then Nasa scientist Jim Hansen had declared “with 99% confidence” that this heating was a result of human activity. They also knew the problem would be easier to solve then than 30 years in the future. Initially, Bush promised to lead a determined global response to climate change, but – as the short-term costs of a long-term solution became apparent – he balked. Instead of a comprehensive response, he merely strengthened research, paved the way for a drawn-out global negotiating process and complacently put his faith in future innovation and entrepreneurship. He may well have reassured himself that his environmental legacy was secure, thanks to action on ozone. But the climate can that he and others kicked forward 30 years ago is still clanking through the corridors of global conferences. It is a lot rustier now, but still basically the same half-response to a problem that becomes bigger and harder to solve with every year that passes. So this year’s anniversary of the implementation of the Montreal protocol should not just inspire nostalgia for 1989, but a curse on the first generation of leaders to dodge climate responsibility. And as we are already suffering the consequences of their failure, it should remind us that every day of delay has a massive and imminent cost. Each fraction of a degree of global heating that can be prevented will save lives, species and money. In our lifetimes, the ozone hole will be closed in the stratosphere while the increasingly angry beast of climate rages below. How angry is up to us. Montreal reminds us that nothing in politics is inevitable, that profits do not have to come before people, that global problems can have global solutions, that we can shape our own future. That depends on how far we are willing to push. In 1989, that wasn’t far enough. Nor has it been since. In 2003, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, called the Montreal protocol “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date”. Sadly, that still applies today.Sony is terminating its relationship with R Kelly, according to reports. Sources have told Variety and Billboard that RCA Records, a subsidiary of Sony, will finish its working relationship with the singer in the wake of the documentary Surviving R Kelly. In the series, multiple women accuse him of sexual abuse, allegations that have followed him for decades. The documentary prompted protests online and outside Sony’s New York headquarters earlier this week. It also follows major names, including Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, choosing to remove their duets with the singer from streaming platforms. “I stand behind these women 1,000%, believe them, know they are suffering and in pain, and feel strongly that their voices should be heard and taken seriously,” Lady Gaga wrote on Instagram. “What I am hearing about the allegations against R Kelly is absolutely horrifying and indefensible.” Kelly has also been removed from the RCA website. The singer originally signed with Jive at the start of his career in the 90s and after it became part of Sony BMG, he soon moved over to RCA. Robert Kelly, now 52, has been the subject of sexual abuse allegations for more than 20 years. Kelly has only appeared before a judge once, in 2008, when he was accused of making child abuse images by filming sexual encounters, including one in which he allegedly urinated over an underage girl. A jury couldn’t identify the man or the girl in the video without doubt, and Kelly was acquitted. After the Lifetime series Surviving R Kelly aired, fresh investigations were launched in both Chicago and Atlanta, with prosecutors appealing for new information. Calls to the US National Sexual Assault Hotline rose by 20% and this week has also seen Kelly’s former manager Henry James Mason surrendering to authorities on charges of terrorism. Mason has been accused of making threats to Timothy Savage, the father of Jocelyn Savage, a woman living with Kelly. Savage was also allegedly threatened by R Kelly’s current manager, Don Russell. Kelly’s lawyer Steve Greenberg called the documentary “another round of stories” that were created “to fill reality TV time”. Kelly and Sony Music have both yet to release an official statement.Facebook has settled a class action lawsuit that had accused it of allowing children to run up huge bills on their parents’ credit cards as part of a concerted effort to maximise revenues. Court documents obtained by the US-based Center for Investigative Reporting, initially sealed as part of a lawsuit filed in 2012, revealed Facebook staff discussed what to do with the “whales”, as they referred to the high-spending children, before deciding to refuse refunds. Internally, the company described the problem as one of “friendly fraud”, and one staff member, who was in charge of a project to increase the company’s game revenues, said it was particularly bad with a few games, including “PetVille, Happy Aquarium, Wild Ones, Barn Buddy and any Ninja game”. Those games allowed users to buy in-game advantages with real money. But the link was frequently unclear to parents and children. Younger children just did not understand the concept, while older children and teens were unaware that their parents’ credit cards were linked to the accounts until they had run up bills in the thousands of dollars. In an effort to tackle the problem, a team of Facebook staff put together a policy that would require children to re-enter some card details before they could buy the in-game items, to prove they had their parents’ permission. But the feature was never implemented. In fact, Facebook’s explicit policy, as communicated to developers in an internal memo, was to tackle such complaints by handing out free virtual items, not by refunding the charges – because “virtual goods bear no cost”. The lack of action stands in contrast to that of other companies facing the same issue, such as Apple, which issued a series of policies in 2013 requiring apps used by children to get parental permission before engaging in any commerce. The lawsuit that led to the release of the documents was eventually settled in 2016, when Facebook agreed “to dedicate an internal queue to refund requests for in-app purchases made by US minors”. In a statement released on Friday, a Facebook spokesperson said: “We were contacted by the Center for Investigative Reporting last year, and we voluntarily unsealed documents related to a 2012 case about our refund policies for in-app purchases that parents believe were made in error by their minor children. “We have now released additional documents as instructed by the court. Facebook works with parents and experts to offer tools for families navigating Facebook and the web. As part of that work, we routinely examine our own practices, and in 2016 agreed to update our terms and provide dedicated resources for refund requests related to purchases made by minors on Facebook.”Netflix has taken down an episode of a satirical comedy show critical of Saudi Arabia in the country after officials from the kingdom complained, sparking criticism from Human Rights Watch, which said the act undermined the streaming service’s “claim to support artistic freedom”. It comes three months after the brutal killing of the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – which US senators have blamed on the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – and as the war in Yemen continues to devastate the country. The American comedian Hasan Minhaj was critical of the Saudi heir in an episode of the standup show Patriot Act, delivering a wide-ranging monologue mocking the Saudis’ evolving account of what happened inside the country’s consulate in Istanbul in October, when the journalist was killed. “The Saudis were struggling to explain his disappearance: they said he left the consulate safely, then they used a body double to make it seem like he was alive,” Minhaj, an American-born Muslim of Indian descent, said. “At one point they were saying he died in a fist fight, Jackie Chan-style. They went through so many explanations. The only one they didn’t say was that Khashoggi died in a free solo rock-climbing accident.” He went on to specifically criticise Prince Mohammed, “examining the connection” between the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen and the starvation and destruction that has unfolded in the Gulf state since 2015. Saudi Arabia has been condemned within the UN for the widespread bombing of civilian areas. Human Rights Watch said artists whose work is broadcast on Netflix should be outraged, adding that Saudi Arabia has no interest in its citizens exercising democratic rights. “Every artist whose work appears on Netflix should be outraged that the company has agreed to censor a comedy show because the thin-skinned royals in Saudi complained about it,” a spokesperson said. “Netflix’s claim to support artistic freedom means nothing if it bows to demands of government officials who believe in no freedom for their citizens – not artistic, not political, not comedic.” Minhaj, 33, became the senior correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show in 2014 and appeared as the coveted featured speaker at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2017. Netflix defended its decision, stressing that it was in response to a “valid legal request” from the kingdom’s communications and information technology commission, to which it acceded in order to “comply with local law”. “We strongly support artistic freedom worldwide and only removed this episode in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request – and to comply with local law,” the company told the Financial Times. It added that the Saudi telecoms regulator cited a cyber-crime law that states that “production, preparation, transmission, or storage of material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy, through the information network or computers” is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine not exceeding SR3m ($800,000). The episode can still be seen in other parts of the world – and in Saudi Arabia on YouTube – yet it is likely to raise pressing new questions about the limits of free online expression and the responsibility of western companies to uphold liberal values. Karen Attiah, Khashoggi’s editor at the Washington Post, said that it was outrageous that Netflix had caved to pressure from Saudi Arabia. “Hasan Minhaj of Patriot Act has been a strong, honest and (funny) voice challenging Saudi Arabia + Mohammed bin Salman in the wake of #khashoggi’s murder,” she tweeted. “He brought awareness about Yemen. Quite outrageous that Netflix has pulled one of his episodes critical of Saudi Arabia. “When Jamal Khashoggi wrote about the need for free expression in the Arab world (and everywhere), that freedom is not just about journalists. It’s about freedom for artists, comedians, cartoonists, musicians, activists and anyone who wants to express their views on society.” The NGO Reporters Without Borders in October ranked Saudi Arabia 169th out of 180 countries for press freedom, adding that “it will very probably fall even lower in the 2019 index because of the gravity of the violence and abuses of all kinds against journalists”. The Saudi information ministry and Netflix did not respond to requests for comment.One of the few comforts available to Brexit Britain is the thought that, no matter how dysfunctional we’ve become, at least we’re not Trump’s America. We may be crazy, reduced to organising fake traffic jams in a Kent airport, but at least we’re not in the third week of a government shutdown, caused by an unhinged president stamping his foot – and speaking of a “crisis of the soul” in a national TV address – just because his opponents refuse to fork out $5bn for a border wall to keep out migrants. It’s a consolation of sorts and, lord knows, we need all the comfort we can get. But I’m not sure our smugness on this score is justified. Isn’t it possible that the absurdity unfolding in the US is simply a more garish, cartoonish version of what’s happening here? Start with the notion of a shutdown. True, the UK government has not formally ceased operating in the way that one quarter of the federal bureaucracy has closed in the US: offices are still open, public employees are still getting paid. But few would claim that the British government is functioning normally. Witness the Bloomberg report that, under the headline “Brexit has Brought Britain to a Standstill,” declared starkly, “The UK – as an administrative entity – has virtually stopped working.” The leaders of local authorities and big companies make the same complaint: that they cannot get decisions out of a Whitehall paralysed by Brexit. As Bloomberg put it, “anything that doesn’t pertain to Brexit gets kicked into the long grass. Even the daily business of running the country is suffering. Ministers just don’t have the time to attend to the needs and ambitions of ordinary citizens.” Big policy implementation has either been delayed – look no further than universal credit – or seems distracted and insufficiently thought through, like Monday’s launch of a “long-term plan” for the NHS without any serious idea for its long-term funding. Those inside government speak of bandwidth – and admit there is just not enough of it both to cope with a mammoth task like Brexit and do much else. The further pressure to prepare for the catastrophic possibility of a no-deal crash-out from the EU is consuming what little energy many government departments had left. So Britain has a shutdown of its own: it’s just a bit quieter and less brash, than its American cousin. What’s more, just like America’s, it’s also – if indirectly – about migration. I’m not referring here to the so-called crisis declared by Sajid Javid over the Christmas break, when the stopping of 94 migrants in the English Channel over a five-day period was seen as so grave an emergency that the home secretary had to rush back to the UK to take charge. (Though the modesty of that number does echo the contrast between the Trump administration’s claim that “nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists” had been detained at the Mexican border with later confirmation that, in fact, only six individuals on the US security watchlist had been picked up in a six-month period.) What I have in mind is the reason why we’re in this particular Brexit mess. For what was the reddest of all of Theresa May’s red lines? It was the abolition of free movement of people. In other words, keeping migrants out. If May had been more flexible on that point, a very different Brexit might have been possible. We could have opted, for example, to stay in both the customs union and single market – thereby avoiding the entire question of a hard border in Ireland, the issue which has doomed May’s deal. But no, May would not countenance it. Sadly, the same is true of Labour: it too rejects single market membership in part because it would entail free movement. It’s one reason why Labour opposes a Norway-plus compromise. Both main parties are where they are on Brexit for the same reason Trump wants his wall: to shut people out. Indeed, it’s not a stretch to see immigration as the heart of the Brexit matter. Of course, the 2016 vote has multiple explanations, but the centrality of immigration cannot be denied. All the polling, all the evidence, points to it. As Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley, who studied data on more than 150,000 voters, wrote in Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union: “Strong public concern over the large number of migrants entering the country was front and centre to Leave securing victory.” So here we are, the UK government paralysed over an issue ultimately rooted in hostility to immigration. It’s not as lurid as Trump’s shutdown over his wall – but it’s not so very different either. • Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistThe headline was enough to make you drop your marmalade: half of young women, and 43% of young men, said that they were not “competent” when they lost their virginity, in a survey of nearly 3,000 17- to 24-year-olds released this week. If the idea of sexual competence strikes you as inherently droll, Melissa Palmer, who conducted the study as a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, helpfully subdivided it into four areas: consent, autonomy, contraceptive use and “readiness”. The study looked only at heterosexual encounters. Consent was measured by a three-option question about willingness: were you and your partner equally willing, were you more willing, were they more willing? This yielded the finding that nearly 20% of women felt less willing than their partner. Autonomy depended on the circumstances of the encounter, which ranged from “I was drunk/under the influence of drugs” and “All my friends were doing it” to “It felt like a natural follow-on” and “I was in love”. Palmer notes: “Those questions basically established whether the influencer was external to the self – peer pressure or alcohol – or internal to the self, driven by your own feelings.” Contraceptive use is straightforward, and most young people – almost 90% – had used reliable contraception. The question about readiness was: “Thinking about the first time you had sex, was it about the right time, do you wish you had waited longer or do you wish you hadn’t waited so long?” Just under 40% of women, and just over a quarter of men, did not feel they’d had sex for the first time at the right time. “Very, very few wished it had been sooner,” Palmer says. Only those respondents who answered positively in all four categories were deemed sexually competent. The report points out that there are implications beyond sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies – which have been in steady decline for the past 20 years – for young people’s wellbeing. Does this mean the age of consent is too low? By definition it must be arbitrary, for as long as human beings are different, and mature at different rates, there can be no objective standard for sexual readiness. Self-evidently, though, an age of consent that would result in a pregnancy that would be physically harmful to the mother must be prioritising something other than the woman’s wellbeing. For that reason, I would put 14 as too young, although that’s the age of consent (at least for heterosexuals) in many countries, from Germany and Macedonia to Madagascar and Malawi. Eighteen seems pretty stringent, though, and is far more common in Africa than in Europe. In South Korea, the age of consent is 20. In the US, sexual consent laws vary from state to state, tending to put consent at 16 (though sometimes 17 or 18). Many states also have “Romeo and Juliet” laws, which reduce or eliminate penalties when parties are close in age. Suffice to say, there is no direct correlation between what we would think of as the liberalism of a country and its age of consent, nor between the age of consent and the prevalence of sexual violence and/or gender discord, except at the extreme ends. Countries where the age of consent is “at marriage” tend to have extremely high levels of violence against women and girls, although in the Republic of Congo, the so-called rape capital of the world, the age of consent is 18. “The age of consent is a legal issue, which is something that we can’t talk about as public health researchers,” Palmer says. “The countries that have close-in-age type laws, so they don’t focus on the age of young people but the age difference between partners, seem to take a more nuanced approach.” Historically, the age of consent in Britain was 10 or 12 until the end of the 19th century, but the concept of consent was so different – women having no sexual agency, marriage being taken as a blanket consent – that it’s not comparable. The drive in the 1880s towards an age of consent of 16 was politically underpinned by the child labour elements of the factories acts of the previous two decades, which did more of the heavy lifting in terms of differentiating between adults and children than any moral, sexual crusade. And 16 is where the age of consent has stood since, only examined in recent memory as an equality issue when the age of gay consent was brought down from 18 to 16, in 2001. So do these laws make any difference to the lived, regular experience of sex, or is their main use for the purpose of criminalising the exploitation of children? Palmer refers to some evidence – not from her own study – that having 16 as a legal age of consent “can provide a useful safety net, in that people can say, ‘It’s not legal’, as a way of resisting pressure to have sex.” But it doesn’t always work that way. Paula Hall is a sex therapist, and clinical director of the Laurel Centre. She says: “I’ve heard a lot of young people say, ‘Rather than the age of consent, 16 is the deadline.’” In tandem with that pressure is the availability of porn. “That becomes the easier option,” Hall says. “You can have sexual experience without risk.” But there are things you could never learn from pornography. “They don’t have minor mishaps in porn. You rarely even see anyone put a condom on, and never the fiddly bit. Certainly in porn you do not see a guy losing his erection putting a condom on – it’s all so seamless.” Faced with these professional standards, some people are deferring actual sex for longer. “A lot of the guys that I’ve worked with who use porn compulsively are still virgins at 23, 24, 28,” Hall says. “The longer they’ve gone without a real-time partner, they start making out they’ve got more experience than they have, and they become absolutely terrified of it. They develop porn-induced erectile dysfunction. They worry about living up to the standards they see in pornography; they worry about losing their erection.” The idea of people having sex when they are not autonomous, or not ready, suggests immediately the world of victims and culprits, but that’s not what people describe. “They’re not necessarily a victim of someone else, but a victim of failure, a victim of their own insufficiency.” Porn also interrupts the development of emotional readiness, if only because it never mentions it. “There’s a biological readiness, knowing your body is ready,” says Hall. “But there’s the psychological and the emotional bit as well. It has the potential to be the most wonderful, most amazing, most intimate encounter in the world. But it also has the potential to be really quite soul-destroying. It can make you feel fantastic or it can make you feel like shit, and are you ready to deal with either outcome?” There’s an answer that sounds a bit glib, which is: are you ever ready to have a sexual encounter with someone who doesn’t care as much as you do? Is there any age at which that would be OK? And there’s a very 21st-century answer, which is: don’t let anyone do anything until they have hit full resilience, which is probably at about 35. Hall thinks the age of consent is a red herring. “If we lowered the age of consent to 14 or upped it to 18 or 20, it wouldn’t make the difference we think it would make. What matters is how we talk about sex to young people, and to each other.”The confusing Chelsea career of Álvaro Morata continued after he scored twice and missed an open goal from four yards out in his side’s third-round win. At times Morata looked so bereft of confidence that it was almost impossible not to feel sorry for him. But, helped out by two fine assists from the youngster Callum Hudson‑Odoi, he displayed that somewhere under that self-doubt a fine instinctive finisher still lurks. Hudson-Odoi’s excellence will not go unnoticed, either. The winger was the subject of a third bid from Bayern Munich this week, this one worth north of £30m, and he showed exactly why they are so keen. It will be fascinating to see whether this performance persuades Maurizio Sarri to pick him more frequently, and whether that will persuade him to stay. Morata’s odd day began after 15 minutes. Gianfranco Zola, the assistant first-team coach, said before the game that the pressure of being Chelsea’s centre-forward should inspire rather than inhibit him but the latter seemed closer to the truth after he headed straight at the Forest goalkeeper, Luke Steele, from inside the six‑yard box. The visiting fans launched into a song that compared him, in what we will delicately call unfavourable terms with their own forward Daryl Murphy. “For a striker, it’s difficult when you go through a spell where you don’t score,” said Sarri’s assistant, Carlo Cudicini. “Sometimes everyone can be different. Some players are more affected by the critics but what’s important is that he wants to improve.” Chelsea were absurdly dominant in the first half and should have taken the lead on the half-hour. Danny Fox blundered into a clumsy challenge on Ruben Loftus-Cheek, and Cesc Fàbregas, captaining the side on what is likely to be his last game for Chelsea, stepped up to take the narratively satisfying penalty. But, after a stutter, his weak effort was saved by Steele. Loftus-Cheek was forced off just before half-time with the back problem that has troubled him intermittently this season and he may now have to spend time on the sidelines. He was almost in tears as he went down the tunnel, and understandably so: this was a rare chance in the starting XI and Hudson-Odoi might muse on that lack of opportunities when considering his own future. For now he is at Chelsea and he created their opener just after the break. He fizzed a low cross for Morata to slam an instinctive finish past Steele, showing again that when he does not have time to think about things he can still be effective. A few minutes later he missed that open goal, somehow scooping a left-foot effort over the bar from four yards out, but he redeemed himself shortly after that, guiding a header inside the far post from another Hudson-Odoi cross. His stony reaction perhaps reflected his general mood, as did his face 15 minutes later when he was substituted for César Azpilicueta. It was quite a day. Forest had the odd moment but the gulf in class was obvious. That said, given they were without several key players, their performance might be filed under “creditable”. Their manager, Aitor Karanka, said: “This is the kind of game I can’t complain about.” Five minutes from the end Fàbregas received his send-off. He waved to all sides of Stamford Bridge and after the final whistle left the pitch in tears, on his way to Monaco after four and a half seasons and two Premier League title wins at Chelsea. “What can I say about Cesc?” said Cudicini. “He’s a one-of-a-kind player.”An explosion in central Mexico has killed at least 20 people and injured more than 70 after people carrying water jugs and fuel containers gathered at a pipeline gushing gasoline. Video footage showed people getting covered in petrol as they tried to fill their containers on Friday in the town of Tlahuelipan, Hidalgo state, to the north of Mexico City. Screams could be heard later as a fireball shot to the sky. “Hit the ground!” one person yelled at those fleeing. The origins of the explosion remain uncertain but it brought home the horrors of huachicol – stolen fuel, often siphoned from pipes belonging to the state-run oil company Pemex. "Mi garrafón, wey" circula en redes video de la fuga en #Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo antes de la explosión https://t.co/LoGFExj8cH pic.twitter.com/wCOP5XQv4a Hidalgo state governor Omar Fayad appealed to people via Twitter to avoid taking fuel, saying they were putting their lives and those of their families at risk. “What happened today in Tlahuelilpan should not be repeated,” he said. Mexico has cracked down on fuel thefts, which have mushroomed in recent years and spawned criminal gangs, whose clashes over huachicol – originally slang for poor-quality alcohol – have sent the homicide rate soaring in several states. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office on an agenda of combating corruption and calming the country, ordered the crackdown on fuel theft barely a month after taking office, on 1 December. He closed fuel pipelines running from refineries and deployed tanker trucks to supply petrol stations, arguing fuel thefts cost the country billions. He also sent the army to guard key Pemex installations, where he alleged insiders were working with fuel thieves. Sobrevolando el lugar de los hechos ocurridos en Tlahuelilpan. Estamos aplicando todas las medidas necesarias para atender a la población de la zona. pic.twitter.com/ptPGOGLbF5 Pemex pipes were tapped an average of 42 times a day in the first 10 months of 2018, according to the company. The crackdown inevitably caused shortages and long petrol lines in at least six states and the national capital – not unlike the US in the 1970s. “Don’t play these corrupt people’s game, even though they say, ‘you have gasoline, take advantage of it’,” López Obrador admonished the population earlier this week. Opponents panned the crackdown as improvised and ill-considered, while business groups have warned of a possible economic slowdown and shortages of staples in some western states. “They can’t guard the pipelines so they’re going to stop using the pipelines,” said George Baker, veteran Mexico oil industry observer. But the public is backing the president, whose predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto presided over a six-year term marred by accusations of graft and inaction on crimes such as fuel theft. A poll in the Reforma newspaper showed 73% of respondents saying they were willing to endure fuel shortages to combat huachicol. Still, a culture of stealing fuel has taken hold in some parts of the country – such as in the state of Puebla, where residents of poor corn-farming villages have blocked major highways to protest army actions against so-called huachicoleros. “Huachicol happens in poor towns and everyone there benefits,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos. “As long as that keeps happening, no power can stop huachicol.” In December 2010, authorities blamed oil thieves for a pipeline explosion in a central Mexico near the capital that killed 28 people, including 13 children. That blast scorched homes, affecting 5,000 residents in an area six miles (10km) wide in San Martin Texmelucan.“Did you know Gandhi was racist?” A white friend sits opposite me, grinning so widely I wonder if there’s going to be a punchline. “We know,” I reply, “we all know.” Her smile fades quickly and she moves on. I stop listening, the noise in the cafe dies down and the soundtrack to a sad Bollywood film fills the moment. She thought I didn’t know. Why don’t I talk about it more? I hide the trauma of black people because Gandhi was one of the few saviours we had in our toxic community. Anti-blackness was a punchline I wasn’t expecting. One thing I remember from studying A-level sociology is the idea of how you develop through your primary and then your secondary education – something that contributes greatly to social dynamics. Primary education is what you learn from your family home, secondary education is what is passed on to us from institutions. Our primary education, influenced by generational attitudes and exacerbated by class and race structures, is our base before we walk into a classroom and are told what to think. The different ideologies passed down to us are either embraced or eventually unlearned – and I’m hoping a generation of British Indians would have unlearned all the casual racism we witnessed against black people. Burnt Roti, the south Asian magazine I founded, is concentrating on this for our next print issue. There is a thirst for our community to nurture an activist movement, and our magazine would like to be at the forefront. Yet we must force ourselves to look within first. Some people feel they have the right to align themselves with black people, as if their struggle has been equal. But there were black slaves in India and Pakistan centuries ago, and today, Africans who move to India to study are regularly beaten. Yes, we have aspects of their experience in our lives, but not to the same extent; so why are we so adamant? When our mothers tell us not to speak to black people, or if they refer to someone as “dark” while grimacing, why do we not correct them? Two days ago, Arsenal supporter and Bollywood actor Esha Gupta uploaded a screenshot of a text conversation on Instagram stories. She and a friend both laughed at footballer Alex Iwobi, claiming that “evolution stopped for him”, referring to him as “gorilla-faced”, and a “neanderthal”. The criticism she faced was not just from Bollywood fans, but Arsenal supporters questioned her loyalty to the team. I wondered if she would have faced that level of criticism if it wasn’t for the football community’s devotion to their player. Her apology included that she had “been victim of racism myself”, digging herself deeper into complacency about anti-blackness. It is a stark reminder that such words are uttered so casually and sometimes without reprimand. At London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in 2015, Heems, a New York rapper of Punjabi/Indian descent, was called out for using the N-word in his live shows. Heems apologised at the talk, during which one woman said, “Your whole talk was about solidarity. It was about you being there for me, me being there for you, recognising the differences and how we’re played off against each other. And at the drop of a hat, with that word, what you do is you show me the difference … If it’s about us constantly having to remind ourselves that we need to be together to fight this, that word needs to come out of your lexicon.” The Toronto-based rapper Nav, of Punjabi descent, uses the N-word freely in his music, with apparent disregard and seemingly without awareness of any consequence. I truly hadn’t heard of him until very recently – so I suppose the consequence is a lack of success. Meanwhile, a Netflix special from the Indian actor and comedian Vir Das, Losing It, has him comfortably and repeatedly associating Africa with malaria and then competitively asking “They got Black Panther. Where is ours? Where is Brown Cow?”. India’s history of racial injustice starts as early as the 7th century, when descendants of the Bantu people of east Africa were brought to India as slaves by Arabs, followed by the Portuguese and then the British. When slavery was abolished in the 18th and 19th centuries, they fled into the country’s jungles, fearing torture. They are now known as the Siddi community and are spread across India and Pakistan. Despite being Indian for centuries, they are still largely viewed as outsiders. The ongoing caste and colourism issue in Indian culture exacerbates racism towards black people. Those at the bottom of the caste system, Dalits, tend to be of darker skin – and so connections are made with race stereotypes. A few of us in the UK were introduced to the idea of skin-lightening creams from as young as 12 (I wasn’t because I was apparently “light-skinned enough to get married”); it took me years to recognise this as colourism. A few friends at my school with darker skin didn’t have the privilege of my skin tone, and would come to school with burns from bleaching creams. The biggest-selling skin-whitening cream in India, Fair and Lovely, is promoted regularly by Bollywood actors, who essentially tell us that we won’t get jobs or men unless we lighten our skin. We’ve created a comfort blanket under terminology such as BAME and POC (people of colour), and presume we can stand beside black people, emulate them and share their experiences. But that assumption needs to be examined – we have a lot to answer for. Let’s start simple. When you’re with friends and one of them is reenacting a moment of racial stereotyping they’ve experienced with their friends, but instead of saying “the N-word” they lower their voice slightly in order to whisper the full word – say something. I’ve witnessed a lot of free passes handed to Indian friends while white counterparts are rightly admonished. It’s not just friends: the conversation needs to extend to your family. When your mother questions whether the neighbours are “druggies” because they’re black – say something. Explain to her why that racial stereotyping is harmful and then remind her that Punjab’s drug culture is so entrenched they made a Bollywood movie about it. When #BlackGirlMagic was used heavily on social media to celebrate the achievements of black women in sport, music, beauty etc, I noticed south Asians becoming defensive. So much so, that #BrownGirlMagic was started, and our bitterness became very loud. Instead of seeing a black person’s achievement as a competition, we should stand beside them, applauding and celebrating – like we would do with anyone. It starts with these moments – unlearning our past behaviour – but it’s not going to be easy. No one wants to be told that they’ve racially stereotyped before, but instead of stubbornly disregarding it we need to look past ourselves to better the lives of those around us, and in turn ourselves. • Sharan Dhaliwal is editor of Burnt RotiThe margin of victory was enormous – 381 runs – but this accurately reflects the gulf between the two sides. In terms of runs only the England defeat at Manchester in 1976 against Clive Lloyd’s side is bigger. Back then we could at least admire the ultimately futile bravery of the old, un-helmetted men, Brian Close and John Edrich, in the face of a barrage of short-pitched bowling. But here we witnessed a barren England performance on all fronts. Only Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes with the ball and Rory Burns with the bat have anything to feel proud about. Maybe England won one session of the match, the last one on Wednesday. Otherwise they were outplayed and outwitted by a side that is supposed to contain some “very ordinary, average cricketers”. Where does that assessment leave the England players? There was no atonement on the final day despite a modicum of resistance from Burns, who hit 84 – his highest Test score. Instead there was further humiliation. Somehow Roston Chase, the batting all-rounder from Barbados, contrived career-best figures of eight for 60. Now Chase is a fine cricketer, primarily because of his batting. His bowling is his second string and England’s finest found a variety of ways to succumb to him. But they were not undermined by any devious turning deliveries. There is no shame attached to this for Chase, but there is for the England batsmen, who were dismal in both innings. Chase did not take any of his eight wickets because he managed to make the ball turn, a quirk that is familiar to your correspondent. The left-handers were beaten on the inside edge; the right-handers via the outside edge or to catches somewhere on the leg side from the meat of the bat. This all serves to highlight the haplessness of England’s performance. They were all at sea from before the toss when they selected their final XI. Naivety rather than complacency led to their humiliation. Joe Root was at pains to acknowledge the threat of the West Indies and was quick to distance himself from the odd observations of fellow Yorkshiremen. Yet over the four days West Indies batted and bowled far better with the Bajan contingent, which numbers six, to the fore. The home side was pragmatic in selection rather than fancifully naive – like England, who opted for a high-risk policy that had all the efficacy of some of Baldrick’s cunning plans. Yes, all would be well if the ball swung late for Sam Curran early on or if Adil Rashid could spin his leg-spinners viciously late in the game with the comfort of runs in the bank. But these were big ifs. Neither of these bowlers can be trusted to bowl 20 overs a day in unfavourable conditions. Hence Root was left with two potential liabilities in a five-man attack, a situation that was exacerbated when the West Indian right-handers decided that they would launch an aerial attack on Moeen Ali’s off-breaks. Mind you, the tentative display of rusty batsmen on Thursday contributed mightily to England’s plight throughout the rest of the match and so did the magnificent discipline of the four-pronged West Indian attack, superbly overseen by the inspirational Jason Holder. In their second innings England were seeking to recover some form or confidence if nothing else. They did not manage that even though the opening batsmen got past the dreaded 77 without being parted. Then Jennings fell caught at second slip when driving at Alzarri Joseph. Jennings does not smell the ball when he is driving. That is not possible with such a stiff-legged technique. Unless he is in princely form, which does not seem to be the case at the moment, the cover drive becomes a dangerous shot for him. By contrast Burns’s stock has risen after his innings. Yet he will be utterly exasperated by his dismissal. He had almost batted through the morning session when he faced the first ball of the day from Chase. Somehow he allowed it to pass through a disturbingly wide gate and he was bowled. The batting became nervy after the break when Shannon Gabriel thundered in. Root, on one, fended at a short ball and was caught in the gully but the replays revealed an obvious no-ball. Meanwhile Jonny Bairstow hit half-a-dozen silky boundaries in between moments of indecision. He had reached 30 when he edged another short ball from Gabriel down the leg-side and this time the bowler’s front foot was in the right place. Root could not capitalise on his reprieve and soon became another victim for Chase. An attempted off-side glide to a good-length ball found the edge of his bat and Darren Bravo, until now an anonymous figure in his comeback game, calmly accepted the catch at slip. Now Stokes briefly took a more forthright approach. Twice he advanced down the pitch to loft drives for four or six but just before tea he was lbw to Chase, who had just switched ends. Then England subsided embarrassingly to the local off-spinner, who could not believe his luck. Moeen registered his first pair in Test cricket, Jos Buttler flicked to mid-wicket, Ben Foakes did the same to short leg, and Adil Rashid unerringly picked out the man on the leg-side boundary. Finally Shai Hope, deputising for the stiff-backed Shane Dowrich, stumped Sam Curran, the last victim of an ugly procession of forlorn England cricketers who had played spin bowling rather well in Sri Lanka a couple months ago. Perhaps Chase had cunningly duped the callowest of crews – by not turning the ball.Fears are growing over the state of the global economy after China recorded a shock plunge in exports, while European factory output slumped by the biggest margin in almost three years. In a sign of the world economy reaching a tipping point, official figures showed that Chinese exports dropped by 4.4% in December, in the largest fall since 2016, on the back of faltering demand in most of its key markets. Imports also slipped by 7.6% to reflect waning demand at home. The unexpected downturn for the biggest global exporter of manufactured products came as eurozone industrial output also tumbled in November, with the largest drop in factory activity since February 2016. The EU statistics office, Eurostat, estimated industrial production slipped by 1.7% in November compared with the previous month and by 3.3% on the year, reflecting the struggles facing several European economies in recent months. Financial markets around the world sold off sharply on Monday, with the FTSE 100 shedding about 70 points and losses on bourses across Europe. Wall Street futures – financial contracts betting on future share prices – also indicated losses in New York. Fears have been mounting over the health of the world economy for several months as the US-China trade dispute serves as a handbrake on global trade. Although there are early signs of a breakthrough between Washington and Beijing, global economic growth has already taken a knock. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that most of the world’s biggest economies are showing signs of easing growth momentum, with the biggest declines coming in France and Britain. The OECD said its composite leading indicators, gauges of economic activity that are designed to anticipate turning points relative to past performance for between six to nine months ahead, also showed easing growth momentum in the US, Germany, Canada, Italy and the euro area as a whole. Despite the disappointing economic data from China, the OECD said that its industrial sector was still showing signs of “stable growth momentum”. Although factory output declined in December, total Chinese trade last year increased by 12.6% compared with 2017 to stand at $4.6tn (£3.6tn). Exports rose by 9.9%, while imports increased by 15.8%. China also increased its trade surplus with the US – a key bone of contention for Donald Trump in the trade war – by 17% to $323.3bn, the highest since 2006.A friend recently mentioned someone she had met at a lesbian Botox party. “A what?” I asked. “A Botox party,” she repeated. “Don’t you know about Botox parties?” While her face was expressionless, her voice was incredulous. “Seriously, how have you never heard of this?” After some frantic Googling, I had no idea how I had never heard of Botox parties. Apparently, it has become all the rage to get a group of friends together at someone’s house for wine, nibbles and cosmetic injections of botulinum toxin from a medical professional. Everyone pays a set amount to attend and it is cheaper and more comfortable than going to a doctor. Because the effect of Botox wears off after a few months, these parties are regular social events. “It’s a good way to catch up with people,” my friend said. The party she goes to is all gay women and invite-only. These gatherings aren’t just favoured by middle-aged lesbians. Botox’s popularity in the US, particularly among young people, has rocketed since it was approved there for cosmetic use in 2002. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons has noted a dramatic increase in patients under 30 getting “preventative” Botox in recent years. This has been fuelled, in part, by Instagram culture. And Botox parties have been mainstreamed by reality TV shows such as Real Housewives. The rise of Botox parties is troubling for several reasons. It’s troubling that so many of us have an issue with ageing naturally. It’s troubling that people are drinking and driving needles into their face. It’s also troubling that I have never been to one of these parties when, apparently every other gay in New York has. Not that I want Botox – I am just upset I haven’t been invited. But it’s OK. I’m keeping a stiff upper lip about it.Chris Christie, who was ousted as chairman of Donald Trump’s White House transition team in 2016, has written a blistering attack on Jared Kushner, whom he accuses of having carried out a political “hit job” on him as an act of revenge for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, a decade ago. In his soon to be published book, Let Me Finish, Christie unleashes both barrels on Trump’s son-in-law, who remains a senior White House adviser with responsibilities for Middle Eastern peace, sentencing reform and “American Innovation”. Christie blames this key player in the president’s inner circle for his ignominious dismissal shortly after Trump’s election victory in November 2016. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, writes that Kushner’s role in his sacking was confirmed to him by Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief, in real time. As Bannon was carrying out the firing, at Trump Tower in New York, Christie forced him to tell him who was really behind the dismissal by threatening to go to the media and point the finger at Bannon instead. “Steve Bannon … made clear to me that one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out. Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago.” The political assassination was carried out by Kushner as a personal vendetta, Christie writes, that had its roots in his prosecution, as a then federal attorney, of Charles Kushner in 2005. The real estate tycoon was charged with witness tampering and tax evasion and served more than a year in federal prison. Even for a White House that has generated an extraordinary cornucopia of hypercritical kiss-and-tell books, Christie’s is exceptional for its excoriating description of events at which he was present. As he points out in Let Me Finish, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian ahead of publication on 29 January, none of the other authors “has known Trump for as long or as well as I have – or was right there in the room when much of this occurred”. It is also exceptional as a chronicle of the score-settling and animosity that drove key decision-making in Trump’s nascent presidency. As political scientists look for the roots of the mayhem in the current White House, the book provides new clues. At the heart of it is Christie’s desire to tell the American people that had his transition plan been adopted after Trump’s shock victory on election night in November 2016, the Trump White House would be a much more effective place today. Once he had been tossed overboard, the new transition team led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence had a “thrown-together approach” that led to appalling choices of senior personnel “over and over again”. But the emotional heart of the book is Christie’s account of the actions of Jared Kushner. In this telling, Christie was ditched by a young man who made it his business to discredit and denounce him because of what he had done to his father. “The kid’s been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here,” Bannon confessed at Christie’s dismissal. Christie was the US attorney in New Jersey when he spearheaded the prosecution of Charles Kushner for witness tampering. The case arose out of a bitter family feud. The elder Kushner hired a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law Bill Schulder, then filmed them having sex in a motel and sent the tape to his own sister, Esther. The bizarre plot was an attempt to blackmail the Schulders into keeping their silence about Bill’s knowledge of Charles’s fraudulent activities. Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 charges and served 14 months in a federal prison in Alabama. In one of the most visceral passages of the book, Christie recounts for the first time how Jared Kushner badmouthed him to Trump in April 2016, pleading with his father-in-law not to make Christie transition chairman. Remarkably, he did so while Christie was in the room. “He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up,” Christie writes. “Just a lot of feelings – very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years.” Kushner went on to tell Trump that it wasn’t fair his father spent so long in prison. He insisted the sex tape and blackmailing was a family matter that should have been kept away from federal authorities: “This was a family matter, a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis.” Trump, in an effort to settle the dispute, proposed a dinner between him, Jared and Charles Kushner, and Christie. Much to Christie’s relief, Jared didn’t acquiesce. In the end, Trump gave Christie the job. But according to Let Me Finish, Kushner had the final say. Let Me Finish bears all the hallmarks of classic, brash Chris Christie. Its language is blunt, caustic and at times self-satisfied, much like his political reputation. It has its lighter moments. At his first meeting with Trump in 2002, at a dinner in the Trump International Hotel and Tower, in New York, Trump ordered his food for him. He chose scallops, to which Christie is allergic, and lamb which he has always detested. Christie recalls wondering whether Trump took him to be “one of his chicks”. At another dinner three years later Trump told the obese Christie he had to lose weight. Addressing him like one of the contestants in Miss Universe, the beauty contest organisation that he owned, Trump said “you gotta look better to be able to win” in politics. Trump returned to the theme of girth during the 2016 presidential campaign, exhorting Christie to wear a longer tie as it would make him look thinner. Meanwhile, Kushner is not the only subject of Christie’s wrath. The author is scathing about Michael Flynn, the retired general who was briefly national security adviser before resigning over his dealings with Russia, and who is now cooperating with the special counsel and awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI. In one of the book’s more memorable put-downs, Flynn is dubbed “the Russian lackey and future federal felon”. Christie also calls the former general “a train wreck from beginning to end … a slow-motion car crash”. However, one central character escapes relatively unscathed: Trump himself. The president is utterly fearless and a unique communicator Christie writes – and his main flaw is that he speaks on impulse and surrounds himself with people he should not trust. Christie gives a detailed account of his effort to be named as Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in the summer of 2016, after his own bid for the Republican nomination for president failed. He detects yet again the hand of Kushner – and that of his wife and Trump’s beloved daughter, Ivanka Trump – working against him. An anonymous “high-ranking Trump staffer” is depicted calling to warn that “the family is very upset that he says it will be you”. A mollifying call from son Eric Trump follows but that is as close as Christie gets. Trump chooses ultra-conservative Indiana politician, Mike Pence, after a mystifying wait. Christie repeatedly says he was not disappointed. US attorney general, the other role Christie would have accepted, also eluded him. As with most appointments he is scathing about the man who got the job, Jeff Sessions, whom he calls “not-ready-for-prime-time” and whose recusal from the Russia investigation he blames for its ever-growing scale. Trump did apparently offer Christie “special assistant to the president in the White House”, which he turned down, prompting from the president-elect “an expression that said maybe he hadn’t heard me right”. Christie would have taken chair of the Republican National Committee and seemed poised to get it. But according to Christie, once again Trump’s family worked against him. In a near-comic scene, Reince Priebus, the RNC chair who would become Trump’s first chief of staff, offers him role after role in a frantic attempt to fulfil the directive from Trump to “make Chris happy”. One by one, Christie turns down labor secretary, homeland security secretary and ambassadorships in Rome and the Vatican. Christie is relatively forgiving of Kushner in the context of the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between the candidate’s son-in-law, his son Donald Jr, his campaign manager and a group of Russians, some with Kremlin ties, offering “dirt” on his Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. Bannon memorably told the author Michael Wolff the meeting was “treasonous” but Christie writes that taking the meeting was merely “dumb” or, in the case of Kushner and Trump Jr, a “sign of profound inexperience”. He faults Trump’s response to Robert Mueller’s investigation into links with Russia, but does not go into detail about the work of the special counsel. He does, however, contend that Kushner misjudged two Russia-related firings: that of Flynn in February 2017 and most famously that of the FBI director James Comey in May the same year. According to Christie, Kushner thought firing Flynn would end talk of links between the Trump campaign and Russia – it did not – and that firing Comey would not provoke “an enormous shit-storm” in Washington. It did. “Again,” Christie writes, having detailed conversations with Kushner in which he was acting in an informal capacity, “the president was ill served by poor advice.”A former police officer has been arrested on suspicion of concealing evidence in the unsolved case of the “Crazy Brabant Killers”, a gang who murdered 28 people in Belgium, including children, in a series of raids and robberies in the 1980s. During a three-year crime spree, supermarkets, jewellers, bars and hostels were raided by the group – usually comprising three disguised men wearing face paint known as “the Giant”, “the Killer” and their getaway driver, “the Old Man”. Their haul was often of limited value but the French-speaking group became known for casually shooting dead customers, staff and even children without mercy, taunting and shouting at their victims. The gang, named after the province in which they were most active, suddenly ceased their activities and disappeared in 1985, prompting countless theories about their identity and motives. A retired police officer, named only as Philippe V, was arrested on Wednesday and is reportedly expected to appear in front of an investigatory judge on Thursday. He was a member of the Belgian police’s Delta group, which had been investigating the gang in the 1980s. He has been questioned in relation to his role in the November 1986 discovery in a canal of a bulletproof vest, a firearm stolen from a police officer and ammunition. Eric Van Der Sypt from the federal prosecutor’s office said a previous search of the canal a year before had not yielded anything. Forensic research, published in 2013, suggested the items could have been thrown into the water a few weeks before the police found them. “It is clear that when you dive in 1985, you cannot find anything,” Van Der Sypt said. “When we dive again in 1986, we find a lot of objects, which is not normal.” A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said the former officer had been questioned on suspicion that he had “retained at least certain, possibly crucial, information”. Walter Damen, the former officer’s lawyer, told the Flemish TV channel VRT his client denied any allegations of wrongdoing. “He says that he did not influence the investigation at all, that he had no contact with the band of Brabant killers … In January 2019, he is asked for information on November and December 1986. It is difficult, because [to] each sentence must be added ‘I think’ or ‘I do not know’,” Damen said. Due to the killers’ proficiency in handling weapons, suspicions were raised at the time of the murders of a link with a now disbanded paramilitary police force. There were also rumours they were part of an attempt by the far left or far right to undermine the state, a theory the Belgian government recently said remained a possibility. In 2017, the brother of a retired policeman in Aalst, west of Brussels, came forward to claim his dying sibling, Christiaan Bonkoffsky, had confessed to being “the Giant”. The federal prosecutor’s office said last year they were convinced this was not the case. The gang’s final crimes took place in November 1985, when they burst into a supermarket in Aalst firing pump-action shotguns. Eight people were killed in the raid, including those cowering on the floor and a nine-year-old girl waiting in a car outside. It was believed at the time that “the Killer” was fatally wounded by police in the raid, although his body was never recovered.Minorities of the world, gather around, I’ve got bad news. The jig is up; we’ve been rumbled. While I know we’ve all been trying to keep our “minority privilege” a secret, the whitest minds in America have put their heads together and found us out. On Thursday, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham went on a rant about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and how she benefits from a widespread but little-discussed phenomenon called “minority privilege”. Fox News rants about Ocasio-Cortez every five minutes, but this particular outburst was prompted by the fact that she had posted a tweet noting that many people have recognized the network “has crossed a line beyond conservatism and into outright bigotry with their financing of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham”. Ingraham took offence at being called a bigot and, in an episode of The Laura Ingraham Show Podcast, railed against the fact that you can’t say anything racist these days without people calling you a racist. Ocasio-Cortez, she argued, was guilty of “minority privilege” in her criticism of Fox News. “How about the privilege of being a protected member of a class that you can never criticize, lest you be called racist?” she asked. The fact that conservatives are obsessed with criticizing Ocasio-Cortez appears to have passed her by; self-awareness not really being her strong suit. Now, I don’t want to boast or anything, but as a half-Palestinian lesbian I score pretty high on the Official Oppression Scale™. Nevertheless, I’m not going to use my minority privilege to call Ingraham a racist. I don’t want to be divisive by bringing up uncomfortable facts, after all. No, I want to keep things civil and remind you that nobody in America is actually racist any more. As you may have noticed, racism died out a long time ago – now people just say racially tinged or racially charged things or stumble into “race controversies”. Sometimes they make “inflammatory statements” or, if they’re Roseanne, they take Ambien and suffer unfortunate racist-like side-effects – but they’re not really racist. No, as Ingraham and her ilk have started to realize, what’s really racist is all the privileges minorities get. Like Black History Month! And Black Entertainment Television! Black people are even allowed to say the N-word when nobody else is. Why do we never talk about that? Yes, I hate to say it, but Ingraham sort of has a point with this whole minority privilege thing. Once you ignore all the facts, it’s very clear that minorities are having a grand old time in America. In fact my minority card gets me 15% off at several leading retailers – meanwhile my woman card only gets me 10% off. This is why intersectionality is so important, people. Arwa Mahdawi also writes The Week in Patriarchy, a weekly newsletter about feminism and sexism. Sign up to receive it each Saturday.The fragrant jasmine rice growing on the left side of Kreaougkra Junpeng’s five-acre field stands nearly five feet tall. Each plant has 15 or more tillers, or stalks, and the grains hang heavy from them. The Thai farmer says this will be his best-ever harvest in 30 years and he will reap it four weeks earlier than usual. It is very different on the other side of the field. Here, Junpeng planted his rice in closely spaced clumps of 20 or more seedlings in shallow water just as he, his father and millions of other small farmers across south-east Asia have always done. He used the same seeds but the conventionally grown plants are wind-battered and thin, and clearly have fewer, smaller grains. Junpeng is part of a pilot project to see if it’s possible to grow more rice with less water and fewer greenhouse gases. The dramatic difference between his two crops points a way to help the world’s 145 million small rice farmers, and could also greatly reduce global warming emissions from agriculture. The project, backed by the German and Thai governments and by some of the world’s largest rice traders and food companies, has seen 3,000 other farmers in this corner of Thailand’s “rice basket” near the Cambodian border trained to grow sustainable rice according to the principles of a revolutionary agronomical system discovered by accident in Madagascar in the 1980s. Jesuit priest Henri de Lalanié working in the highlands observed that by planting far fewer seeds than usual, using organic matter as a fertiliser and keeping the rice plants alternately wet and dry rather than flooded, resulted in yields that were increased by between 20 and 200%, while water use was halved. Giving plants more oxygen, minimising the competition between them and strictly controlling the water they receive is thought to make them stronger and more resilient to flood and drought. When it was first employed outside Madagascar in 2000, the system of rice intensification (SRI) was dismissed  by a handful of scientists who questioned the legitimacy of the reported increased yields. But since then, it has evolved and been developed by peasant farmers working in many different climates around the world. Academic criticism has since all but disappeared and the SRI system of farming has been validated in hundreds of scientific papers and adopted by up to 20 million farmers in 61 countries, according to the SRI information centre in Cornell University. “The results consistently cite yield increases, decreased use of seed, water and chemicals, and increased income,” says Norman Uphoff, professor of global agriculture at Cornell. Vietnamese, Cambodian, Nepalese, Filipino, Indian and African farmers have all reported large increases. In 2011, a young Indian farmer broke the world record for rice production, harvesting 22 tonnes from a single hectare (2.47 acres). “SRI is very positive in west Africa. It uses fewer seed and fertilisers and needs less water. Farmers saved up to 80% of the cost of seed and got increased yields and incomes. They see the advantages and they change. People are teaching each other now,” says Professor Bancy Mati, director of the water research centre at Jomo Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya. The Thai farmers who took part in the Ubon Ratchathani trial say they are delighted. Says Khampha Bunchansee from Noan Dang village: “It was very easy to learn. I will use the extra money to invest in a tractor. If I can do it, anyone can. Everyone can come and learn.” “I applied more fertiliser on my conventional crop but it produced lots more leaf but not more grain,” says Wanna Sriwila, also from Noan Dang. “Now I bring other farmers to see what can be done. Seeing is believing.” But what is now exciting some of the world’s largest food corporations and governments is that growing rice along SRI principles also greatly reduces emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, which escapes when rice, or any other crop, lies waterlogged for weeks at a time. Methane is roughly 30 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and rice emits as much as 1.5% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. With the human population in south-east Asia expected to grow by around 100m people in the next 20 years, emissions from rice growing could increase 30% or more. The urgency to act for the global good, self-interest in maintaining production and the possibility of accessing money to reduce farm emissions has now led heavy rice-using food companies like Mars and Kellogg’s, and the agri-business colossus Olam, to set up the Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP). This coalition of companies, NGOs and governments sets the world’s first voluntary sustainability standards for rice growing. It adopts the basic SRI principle of planting seedlings further apart, and keeping them moist rather than flooded, but adds targets and measurements to provide consistency. “Rice is both a victim and a cause of climate change,” says Sunny Verghese, CEO of Singapore-based Olam’s, which grows its own rice on 25,000 acres in Nigeria, owns mills and processing plants across south-east Asia and ships nearly 20% of the world’s globally traded rice. “South-east Asian rice farmers are among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change impacts such as rising sea levels, salinity, temperature rise and droughts. Yields can decrease as much as 10% for each 1C temperature increase, threatening food security for billions of people. “With another two billion people we cannot carry on the way we are. We must go beyond what is currently being done and achieve far more at greater scale. We must re-imagine the whole food supply chain if the world is to become carbon neutral by 2050,” he says. “SRI should influence everyone’s thinking. In Nigeria we saw a 70% increase in yields, albeit from a low base. SRI is revolutionary. It is a genuine change in thinking. It is difficult for scientists to understand that an amateur [like Lalanié] should have a solution. We want to partner with SRI, to scale up in Africa. “But reducing emissions from rice cannot be a trade-off that hurts farmers and communities who depend on it for their income and sustenance. We have to measure the true cost of food and dismantle the subsidy system.” Working with German development agency GIZ and south-east Asian governments, Olam now plan to roll out SRP rice to 100,000 farmers in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and India within five years, increasing yields and incomes, and reducing methane emissions by 50%. Governments and global bodies must act too, says tropical agronomist Erika Styger, director of climate-resilient farming systems at Cornell University who led a three-year World Bank study of 50,000 farmers using SRI methods in 13 west African countries. This saw a 56% rise in yields in irrigated areas, an 86% increase in rain-fed areas and an average 41% increase in income. “The SRI revolution is happening. People are changing their practices and you can see SRI in the field in many places now. There is no reason why SRI should not become normal agronomic practice,” says Styger. “But there is no long term funding. If we want to make it mainstream it needs to get to a critical mass. We are left with breadcrumbs, with only short-term project finding,” she says. “The food system is broken. Olam on its own cannot fix it, we can only change it. We can’t do it overnight but there is a new way of collaborating. Companies must change and reduce their resource intensity. The whole food sector must change,” says Verghese. “What is needed now is large retailers to brand SRP. It’s the way we can reduce emissions, use less water and grow more. Win. Win. Win.”A total lunar eclipse greets skywatchers at the end of this week. Don’t miss it, as the next one will not be until 26 May 2021. The Moon will begin to enter Earth’s shadow at 03:34 GMT on 21 January and reach mid-eclipse at 05:12 GMT. Skywatchers in the Americas will see things at earlier local times, which shift the eclipse into the evening of 20 January. The Moon will spend a total of 62 minutes in the deepest part of the Earth’s shadow, known as the umbra. During this time, the Moon will appear to turn a red colour due to atmospheric effects at Earth bending the sunlight. In total, the full eclipse will last more than three hours and twenty minutes. The eclipse takes place during the first supermoon of 2019. A supermoon is a new or full moon that takes place when the Moon is near the closest point in its orbit with Earth. By coincidence there are three supermoons this year, occurring at full moon on 21 January, 19 February and 21 March. February’s is closest at 356,846km but only January’s boasts an eclipse.As the Brexit farce proceeds, it is worth remembering that before David Cameron made his catastrophic error of calling a referendum, the EU was way down the list of British people’s concerns in almost every opinion poll. Indeed, not even in the first 11. The central point is that Brexit became the focus for all manner of discontents, many of them understandable. But leaving the EU would indubitably not be the answer to them, and would be guaranteed not to make the discontents into “glorious summer”. Indeed, it would exacerbate the sources of this discontent. Why? Surely it is becoming increasingly obvious that growing swaths of British industry – much of it foreign-owned by conglomerates that enjoy the advantages of the single market – are cutting back their investment plans and in many cases planning to relocate to mainland Europe. The prospect of the diminution of the economic base of the country has dire implications not only for employment and living standards, but also for the tax base on which living standards depend. We have spent 45 years becoming an integral region of Europe, creating an economic omelette that no one in their right mind would try to unscramble. Unfortunately there are a lot of not-so-right minds about, some of them in the cabinet, and we have the misfortune to have a prime minister who transmits but does not listen, and is fixated on a treacherous mission. They should conduct a second referendum campaign which is not only anti-Brexit but also pro-investment The past fortnight has been particularly interesting. The prime minister’s deal, a weak attempt to please Brexiters while offering half a loaf to Remainers, has satisfied – it would be an exaggeration to say no one, but manifestly very few. The size of the vote against her was so formidable, indeed overwhelming, that the honourable thing to do would have been to resign, or at the very least decide not to plough on towards the cliff edge. But, as has been obvious for some time, her “strategy” – if one can dignify it with that name – has been to frighten everyone into having to accept a bad deal, to avoid a disastrous no-deal. This is a slight change from her absurd earlier view that “a bad deal is better than no deal”. Fear of no deal has, however, had a countervailing effect on Remainers. It has strengthened the forces arguing for an extension of the deadline laid down by article 50, so that crashing out without a deal can be avoided and time gained for a second referendum. As Alexander Pope asked: “Who shall decide when doctors disagree?” Well, certainly not our eccentric trade secretary, Dr Liam Fox. In circumstances when our parliamentary representatives cannot agree on a way out of this mess, another referendum seems to more and more people I meet to be the only answer. I know one northern Labour MP whose constituency contains a preponderance of Leavers. This particular MP thinks a referendum now might well be lost (by Remainers) or at least produce too narrow a Remain margin for comfort. Now, some recent polls have indicated that opinion is moving slowly in favour of Remain, although that king of pollsters, Sir John Curtice, warned us last week that the nation is actually split 50-50. But a campaign during which the actual and potential damage of Brexit would almost certainly become clearer? That might offer hope. Which brings us back to those understandable discontents. Many well-off Brexiters have their own personal reasons for discontent, and are focusing them on “Europe”. But the not-so-well-off are often largely the victims of the accumulation of austerity measures that readers of this column will know I regard as economically unnecessary and punitive. I have quoted my friend John le Carré before: “It’s planned penury.” We have a Conservative party that is badly split and does not seem to know how to govern. We have a Labour party that ought to be taking full advantage of this but is polling very badly. There is surely an opportunity here for Labour to give its minority of Leave voters – as well as the more than 80% of party members who are Remainers – hope. They should take the austerity bull by the horns and conduct a referendum campaign which is not only anti-Brexit but also pro-investment (both public and private) and in favour of redressing regional and social inequalities. And another thing: if Corbyn and McDonnell are worried about sovereignty, vis-a-vis another referendum, they should recall the words of one of their heroes, Aneurin Bevan: “National sovereignty is a phrase that history is emptying of meaning.” Even more so all these years later!It was a night of conflicting emotions for Cardiff. Neil Warnock had admitted that “in an ideal world” his club would not have played. There have been a lot of painful questions since the disappearance last Monday of Emiliano Sala – Cardiff’s record signing from Nantes – and one of them has taken in the point of it all. How can a bunch of blokes kick a ball around with any meaning when one of their own is missing presumed dead? On the other hand, Warnock knew a game was perhaps what Cardiff needed – to get them firing again; to work up some adrenaline against all of the misery. Warnock saw his team play well, carrying the fight to Arsenal, especially during a first half that they controlled. He described it as Cardiff’s best away performance of the season and he could be pleased, even surprised, to see his players rack up 19 shots, albeit only two were on target. There was frustration when Bruno Ecuele Manga stretched into an ill-advised challenge to concede a 66th-minute penalty, which Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang converted to turn the game. Warnock called it “diabolical”. Alexandre Lacazette scored Arsenal’s second as Unai Emery’s team closed up on fourth-placed Chelsea, and the substitute Nathaniel Mendez-Laing’s stoppage-time drag back and finish was nothing more than a consolation. Yet the truth was that the football was a sideshow. Sala was in the hearts and minds of everyone and Warnock spoke with feeling afterwards. On the upside, Warnock admitted it had done him and his players the power of good to get back out there. “The first five minutes, to shout at the fourth official was fantastic,” he said, with a smile. Yet once again Warnock did not disguise the depth of the trauma. “I can’t explain how it’s been this week but you’ve not wanted to get out of bed,” he said. “Everything was really miserable and nobody could actually do anything about it. I know we’ve lost a game of football but there are other more important things. “What’s gone on has been unprecedented. We spoke about it before kick-off – that we ought to, for Emiliano, try to put in a performance. I know people would expect us to lay down but I thought they showed what they were made of tonight.” The travelling supporters held up yellow placards when the teams emerged for the kick-off, while the captains, Mesut Özil and Sol Bamba, strode to the centre circle to lay wreaths. There was one bouquet of yellow tulips – the symbol of Nantes – and another of yellow daffodils to represent Wales. It was also a nice touch from the programme editors to include Sala’s name at the bottom of the squad lists on the back cover – hauntingly, without a shirt number. There were banners in the away end. “Once a bluebird, always a bluebird,” read one. Another said: “We never saw you play, we never saw you score but Emiliano, our beautiful bluebird, we will love you forever.” What was meant to be a minute of pre-match silence turned into a period of applause. Life goes on; football goes on. But how to focus? Cardiff showed their professionalism and they ought to have led at the interval. Bobby Reid blew two clear chances while Oumar Niasse was denied a penalty when Nacho Monreal nibbled at him inside the area. Ecuele Manga made two rash penalty-box challenges on Lacazette in the first half and the Arsenal fans howled when Mike Dean refused to penalise him. Lacazette did not make a meal out of the first and, perhaps, he made too much of the second. Dean had no option but to point to the spot when Ecuele Manga erred again, lungingin on Sead Kolasinac, who had been released by the half-time substitute, Alex Iwobi. Aubameyang’s goal was his 18th of the season in all competitions. Arsenal had offered little in the first half, bar an early Lacazette shot which was blocked by Ecuele Manga and a Shkodran Mustafi header that flashed wide. But they were better after the break, when Iwobi and a switch to 4-2-3-1 brought more urgency. Iwobi was denied by Neil Etheridge before Lacazette scored when he outstripped Bamba and shot into the bottom corner. It might have been different had Mustafi not made a saving challenge on Niasse in the 65th minute. The story of the match, though, was of a club attempting to work through its grief.Donald Trump and top congressional leaders failed to resolve a partial government shutdown that has stretched well into a second week as the president refused to back off from his demands for billions of dollars for a long-promised wall along the southern US border with Mexico. Democratic and Republican leaders from both chambers were invited to the the White House’s Situation Room, the inner sanctum for classified meetings, on Wednesday for a “border security briefing”. During the meeting Trump asked Department of Homeland Security officials to “make a plea” for his wall. At a cabinet meeting prior to the briefing, Trump warned that parts of the government would could remain closed for a “a long time” without a deal. “We’re asking the president to open up government,” Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to assume the speakership of the House of Representatives on Thursday, said after the briefing with Trump. “We are giving him a Republican path to do that. Why would he not do it?” The shutdown was triggered by Trump’s demand that Congress allocate more than $5bn in taxpayer money to build a wall along the 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico – a concession Democrats refuse to make. The shutdown, which entered its 12th day on Wednesday, has affected nearly 800,000 federal workers. The incoming House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, said Trump invited leaders back to the White House on Friday. Pelosi said the Democrats will still vote on Thursday, as Congress starts its new session with the Democratic party in the majority in the House after victories in the midterm elections last November. Democrats intend to introduce a pair of funding bills that would end the shutdown, but without money for a border wall. The proposal includes $1.3bn for border security measures that can be used to repair and replace fencing and existing portions of the wall. The White House has called such a legislative package a “non-starter”. The Republican-controlled Senate passed a spending bill last month that would have funded the government through 8 February without money for a border wall. But Republican leaders in the House refused to hold a vote on the measure. “Our question to the president and to the Republicans is why don’t you accept what you have already done [in order] to open up government?” Pelosi said. On Capitol Hill after the briefing on Wednesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, told reporters that it could take “weeks” to break the stalemate and that Wednesday’s meeting did not produce “any particular progress”. “We are hopeful that somehow in the coming days or weeks we will be able to reach an agreement,” he added. The White House visit by Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer was their first since their televised showdown with Trump in the Oval Office last month. During the meeting Trump said he would be “proud” to shut down the government. Schumer said he implored Trump to reopen the government while they debated their differences over the border wall. “We asked him to give us one good reason – I asked him directly,” Schumer said. “He could not give a good answer.” He added: “To use the shutdown as hostage – which they had no argument against – is wrong.” Trump made his case for the wall during extensive comments to the press in which he made several false or misleading claims about illegal immigration and border wall. At the start of his cabinet meeting, Trump said the border was “like a sieve” and insisted the US needed a “physical barrier” to deter illegal border crossers.“Big dick energy”, “single-use” and “deepfake” have missed out on being named 2018’s word of the year, with Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary landing on “Me Too” for its annual honour. The phrase, first coined by American social activist Tarana Burke in the mid-2000s, went viral in 2017 following a tweet by actor Alyssa Milano, who – in the wake of allegations against Harvey Weinstein – encouraged victims of sexual harassment or assault to share their stories in order to show the breadth of the problem. The phrase has been added to the dictionary, where it is defined as an adjective “of or relating to the Me Too movement … [or] an accusation of sexual harassment or sexual assault”; and as a verb, which means “to accuse (someone) of having committed sexual harassment or sexual assault” – as in, “to be Me Tooed”. The Macquarie Dictionary word of the year is decided on by a committee which includes journalists, writers and academics. In a statement they said the phrase had “definitely maintained its momentum” since the movement took off in 2017. “In 2018 it started to spread its linguistic wings beyond the hashtag and the name of the movement, answering an obvious need in the discourse surrounding this social upheaval,” they continued. “So, the fact that ‘Me Too’ is now being used as a verb and an adjective, combined with the undeniable significance of the movement, made the committee’s choice … a fairly straightforward decision.” But the selection for an Australian dictionary does come with a hint of irony: while there have been many high-profile cases of men being “Me Tooed” overseas – ranging from Hollywood figures such as Weinstein and Louis CK, to politicians such as Al Franken and Roy Moore, to business executives, journalists and authors – in Australia the movement, at least as it’s played out in the media, has been relatively small. Many have blamed Australia’s defamation laws, which have been described as “the most hostile in the world”. Geoffrey Rush is claiming millions of dollars in damages, suing the Daily Telegraph over a story it published in 2017 alleging inappropriate behaviour, which Rush denies. Rush has since been subject of a second series of allegations from Australian actor Yael Stone, which he denies. In its word of the year announcement, the Macquarie Dictionary also gave honourable mentions to three other terms which have been popularised over the last 12 months. “BDE” or “big dick energy”, which appeared to have been coined by Twitter user @imbobswaget to describe food writer Anthony Bordain and was subsequently applied to Saturday Night Live comic Pete Davidson. The dictionary describes it as “a sense of self-confidence, unaccompanied by arrogance or conceit [from the supposed self-assuredness possessed by a man with a large penis]”. Pete davidson is 6’3 with dark circles, exudes big dick energy, looks evil but apparently is an angel, and loves his girl publicly the only thing wrong w him is that he’s a scorpio but anyway.....id married him within a month too The dictionary also gave honourable mentions to “single-use” as in “single-use plastic bag; single-use cup” and “deepfake” – “a video of a computer generated likeness of an individual, created using deep learning without the individual’s knowledge, often for the purpose of misinformation, vindictiveness or satire”. Last year’s Macquarie Dictionary word of the year was “milkshake duck”, another web-coined phrased which perplexed many but delighted some.The French data protection watchdog CNIL has fined Google a record €50m (£44m) for failing to provide users with transparent and understandable information on its data use policies. For the first time, the company was fined using new terms laid out in the pan-European general data protection regulation. The maximum fine for large companies under the new law is 4% of annual turnover, meaning the theoretical maximum fine for Google is almost €4bn. The fine was levied, CNIL said, because Google made it too difficult for users to find essential information, “such as the data-processing purposes, the data storage periods or the categories of personal data used for the ads personalisation”, by splitting them across multiple documents, help pages and settings screens. That lack of clarity meant that users were effectively unable to exercise their right to opt out of data-processing for personalisation of ads. Additionally, the watchdog found that even when user consent was collected, it did not meet the standards under GDPR that such consent be “specific” and “unambiguous”, since users were not asked specifically to opt in to ad targeting, but were asked simply to agree to Google’s terms and privacy policy en masse. In a statement, Google said: “People expect high standards of transparency and control from us. We’re deeply committed to meeting those expectations and the consent requirements of the GDPR. We’re studying the decision to determine our next steps.” CNIL justified the large fine by noting that the violations were continuous, and still occurring. It added that Google’s violations were aggravated by the fact that “the economic model of the company is partly based on ads personalisation”, and that it was therefore “its utmost responsibility to comply” with GDPR. Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent privacy researcher and adviser, said the ruling was the world’s largest data protection fine. “This is a milestone in privacy enforcement, and the history of privacy. The whole European Union should welcome the fine. It loudly announced the advent of GDPR decade,” he said. The fine came about following complaints in May from two European pressure groups, None Of Your Business (Noyb) and La Quadrature du Net. Both groups accused Google, as well as a number of other large internet companies including Facebook, of not having a valid legal basis to process the personal data of users of its services, “particularly for ads personalisation purposes”. At the time, Noyb, which is led by the Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems, argued that companies sought consent for advertising personalisation by offering a simple “take it or leave it” approach to the entire service, and said any such consent obtained should be considered invalid given the “powerful position these companies have”. The fine comes a month after Italy’s competition regulator fined Facebook €10m for misleading its own users over data practices. The watchdog said Facebook wrongly emphasised the free nature of the service without informing users of the fact that their data would be used to generate a profit for the company.Netflix is being sued over its recent interactive episode of Black Mirror. The streaming platform released the feature-length Bandersnatch in December which allowed viewers to make decisions at various points of the story, affecting what outcome they might then encounter. But the publishers behind the long-running Choose Your Own Adventure series of books is claiming their brand had been unfairly used. The Vermont-based Chooseco LLC has filed a complaint claiming that Netflix is using an association with the brand to increase awareness of Bandersnatch. “Chooseco and Netflix engaged in extensive negotiations that were ongoing for a number of years, but Netflix did not receive a license,” reads the complaint. “On at least one occasion before the release of Bandersnatch, Chooseco sent a written cease and desist request to Netflix asking Netflix to stop using the Choose Your Own Adventure mark in connection with its marketing efforts for another television program.” The suit also mentions that Bandersnatch contains an explicit reference to Choose Your Own Adventure with the main character telling his father about the series. Chooseco is claiming that viewers have been confused over the links between the two products and as a result, its reputation has been harmed. The suit claims infringement, dilution and unfair competition and Chooseco is seeking at least $25m in damages or profits, whichever is higher. The company had already partnered with Twentieth Century Fox for an upcoming series of interactive films based on the books, which have sold more than 265m copies worldwide. Bandersnatch isn’t the first instance of Netflix using interactivity in their content, with the platform previously including it in content aimed at children including Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale and Stretch Armstrong: The Breakout. Netflix has yet to comment.Undercover footage that appears to show extremely sick cows being smuggled into a Polish slaughterhouse and sold on with little or no veterinary inspection has raised alarm about standards in one of the EU’s largest meat exporters.Covert footage in a slaughterhouse in the central Polish region of Mazovia appears to show cows so sick that they are unable to stand up being dragged out of trucks and into the slaughterhouse using a winch, with ropes tied around their horns or legs. The slaughter of sick cows appears to take place at night with no veterinary officials on site, another contravention of basic standards. Workers at the slaughterhouse appear to remove evidence from the carcasses such as pressure sores and tumours that indicate that the cows have been sick and lying on their side for days on end. Experts who have seen the film said it raises the possibility of serious health risks, and called on the Polish government to act quickly to notify all other European states. Chris Elliott, professor of food safety at Queen’s University in Belfast and founder of the Institute for Global Food Security, who led the UK government’s independent review of food systems following the 2013 horsemeat scandal, told the Guardian: “If there is any evidence at all that some of this meat has left Poland then there will be the potential for a European-wide safety alert, with the involvement of many regulatory agencies and potentially police forces from across Europe.” In 2017, according to the most recent UN Comtrade figures available, Poland exported more than 415m kg of beef, worth more than $1.5bn. HMRC figures for that year show that the UK, one of Poland’s largest markets for meat, bought 16m kg of beef (fresh, frozen and offal), worth $64m. Reporters from Superwizjer, a Polish investigative television programme broadcast on news channel TVN24, infiltrated the Polish slaughterhouse late last year. A reporter worked undercover at the slaughterhouse for almost three weeks. According to Patryk Szczepaniak, the reporter who worked at the slaughterhouse and recorded the footage, instead of being inspected by qualified veterinarians as the law demands, the carcasses would simply be marked as safe for human consumption by staff. “I was ordered by my supervisors to mark the meat as healthy, and basically to make it prettier. It was horrible, believe me. The smell of rotting meat just makes you puke. I had to make it prettier by scrubbing it with my knife.” The slaughterhouse’s designated veterinarian would appear the following morning, said Szczepaniak, who was also expected to mark the carcasses as safe as part of his duties, and sign off on the certifications without inspecting the meat themselves. “Veterinarians are supposed to be there before, during, and after the slaughter, but in almost three weeks working in the slaughterhouse, I only saw the vet in the morning while he took care of the paperwork and briefly examined the cow’s heads,” Szczepaniak said. “He wasn’t there during the slaughter of the sick cows at the night shift either. On paper everything is fine, but in reality it was a disaster.” Once the meat receives this certification, it will not be inspected  before it is sent to suppliers and on to consumers, including in other countries. Approximately 80% of the beef produced in Poland is sent for export. During three night shifts at the slaughterhouse, Szczepaniak counted the slaughter of 28 cows that were too sick to stand. A month after he stopped working there he returned to film the slaughterhouse from a nearby field, where they saw trucks bringing sick cows for five consecutive weeknights. Vet Paul Roger, chair of the Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law Veterinary Association, said: “It’s totally unacceptable to kill animals in that state and put them into the food chain. There is no way you can tell what’s wrong with the animals. You can guess, but that’s all you can do without doing a full postmortem examination.” Szczepaniak also told the Guardian that workers at the slaughterhouse would be fed beef from the slaughterhouse during meal breaks. A vegetarian himself, he ate the meat in order to preserve his cover. Towards the end of the programme, which was broadcast on Saturday evening, reporters entered the slaughterhouse during a night shift. Confronted on camera with the allegations, both the slaughterhouse owner and the designated veterinarian, who arrived at the site later, denied any wrongdoing. This is not the first Polish slaughterhouse to be accused of involvement in the processing of sick cows. In December, the owner of a slaughterhouse near Łódź in central Poland was given a prison sentence for running a similar operation (he has appealed against his sentence). Prosecutors are also conducting an investigation into a slaughterhouse in eastern Poland. In Poland, a sick cow typically costs five to six times less than a healthy cow. According to Superwizjer’s calculations, a slaughterhouse that slaughtered 20 healthy cows a day would yield the owner an approximate annual profit of 347,000 złoty, about £70,000 a year; if it only slaughtered sick cows that would rise to almost 2.5m złoty, just over half a million pounds.Polish traders openly advertise sick cows online, using euphemisms such as “traumatised” and “damaged” for animals that typically are too sick to stand. In just one hour dialling telephone numbers published on the internet, two reporters from Superwizjer spoke to dozens of traders willing to discuss a deal. Based on their investigation, they estimated that there were approximately 300 such traders operating right across Poland. Without knowing the exact diseases being carried by the cows, it is hard to specify the precise health risks for humans. But, according to an expert medical veterinary opinion conducted during the prosecution of the owner of the slaughterhouse near Łódź, analysis of the tainted meat revealed evidence of a wide range of different bacterias. “The handling of those animals, dragging them across the floor to be slaughtered, is just totally unacceptable and there are huge potential health risks as well,” said Roger. “Without adequate surveillance there are a number of zoonotic diseases such as salmonella, E coli, and foot and mouth that can spread – the whole point of having certified meat is to identify and prevent these risks from spreading.” The allegations will raise serious concerns in a number of EU countries, including the UK, which import Polish beef. “I hear of such things going on in many different places in Europe, but it’s the scale of the information in terms of how organised it appears to be, really quite shocking,” Elliott told the Guardian, after watching the footage. “This really does seem to be well-organised, well-orchestrated criminal activity. It will be extremely difficult if not impossible to track down where all that meat has gone … In terms of whether any of this meat might have entered the UK, the answer is I have absolutely no idea. Always in the past when I’ve looked at illicit supply chains like this, they always extend incredibly far because there will be lots of intermediaries in different countries handling this meat, trying to get it into bona fide supply chains.” And in Poland itself, the question remains as to whether the allegations will lead to the kind of regulatory action that observers say was lacking the last time such a scandal broke. “We are worried that the same thing happens as always happens,” said Tomasz Patora of Superwizjer, “that the authorities will try to claim that this an isolated incident and that they were not at fault, and that things will go back to normal, as it always does.” Responding to the programme on Saturday night, Paweł Jakubczak, the head of the Mazovian region’s veterinary inspectorate, announced that the slaughterhouse’s designated veterinarian and his supervisor at the county level had both been dismissed, and that the police had already begun investigations. “I think the police, which is at this moment already engaged in this issue, will be trying step by step to explain what has been the role of the supervisory authorities in this illegal, reprehensible, and downright criminal procedure.”It is just over six weeks since Raheem Sterling caused a stir on an otherwise sleepy Sunday morning. Dogs were being walked and churches were being prepared for service when the winger grabbed people’s attention with that Instagram post. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, we were talking about race. Specifically, we were talking about how we talk about race. Sterling had homed in on the practices of certain sections of the media, claiming they helped “fuel racism”, and from the industry came an acceptance that things had to change. Chins were stroked, think pieces were written. This, we were told, was a turning point. And then everyone simply turned back to what they had previously been doing. The debate moved on, to things such as spying and who Tottenham may sign to cover Harry Kane while he’s injured, with the Guardian prone to this as much as any publication. Sadly, it’s often the way when it comes to attention on racism in this country. But that’s not to say many of the journalists who came out in support of Sterling do not care, or to overlook the fact change takes time. In that regard it is encouraging to know, as I do, that there’s a broad-ranging group of media figures working slowly but surely behind the scenes right now to improve black and minority ethnic (BAME) coverage across all sports. Whether they succeed or not is difficult to call but the will is there to change an environment in which phrases such as “crystal-encrusted sink” are allowed to enter the national lexicon, causing harm and upset. Some will argue that those responsible should know better, which is true, but what is also required is a considered, proactive stance right across the board. And that’s not just in regards to the type of stuff that leads to a 24‑year‑old elite footballer feeling compelled to use social media as a political platform. It also relates to misdemeanours that are subtle and largely unintended but, in their own way, also cause damage. Which brings me to Paul Pogba. You may have noticed he has been playing well for Manchester United recently, scoring his fifth goal in five games during the 2-1 win against Brighton on Saturday. The upturn has coincided with José Mourinho’s departure from the club, and given the Portuguese was very much the Dave Clifton to Pogba’s Alan Partridge during their time together at Old Trafford that is no great surprise. The Frenchman’s mood has lifted and improved displays have followed. In turn, that has been discussed and analysed, leading to the use of a particular thread of language. Pogba is one of the best technicians in the world, yet so much of the discussion around him is based on his athleticism Take the column Jamie Redknapp wrote for the Daily Mail following United’s 4-1 victory against Bournemouth in December, in which he spoke about Pogba’s “pace” and “power” and how the midfielder “knows he is bigger and stronger than you” in regards to his second goal of the game, a 33rd-minute header. There has been similar from others, including Graeme Souness during his punditry stint for United’s 1-0 win at Tottenham, when the Scot spoke a lot about Pogba’s hard running and muscularity during a contest in which his most telling contribution had been the pinpoint delivery that set up Marcus Rashford’s goal. It is all well intended – and, it should be noted, Redknapp and Souness both went on to praise Pogba’s technical traits – but the dominating aspect of the analysis feeds into narrative that follows black athletes around, namely that their primary attributes are physical rather than creative or intellectual. The same narrative explains why certain black players – think Patrick Vieira, Yaya Touré and Mousa Dembélé – are referred to as “beasts” and why, on a broader level, there are so few black coaches and managers. To stress, much of this is unintentional – the type of unconscious bias we’re all guilty of – but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed. That’s what the people behind the Touchline Fracas podcast have done by bringing out T-shirts with “PNP” on the front – “Pace and power”; a phrase they and many other black people are tired of hearing. “A lot of this comes down to an old-school way of thinking, that black players aren’t capable of being, or to be trusted as, the ‘orchestrator’ in important positions. It’s repeated so often that it’s become a common belief,” says Touchline Fracas contributor Ife Meedolson. “Pogba is a modern-day example of someone who’s been affected by this. He’s one of the best technicians in the world, a brilliant passer, yet so much of the discussion around him is based on his athleticism and, yes, his pace and power.” A change of language requires a change of culture, which means those involved thinking more about what they say and write. In the long term what would undeniably help is greater diversity. Quite simply, the more BAME editors, writers, producers and presenters there are the better the BAME coverage will be. That’s also required in an industry which, to be blunt, has been too white for too long and needs to do a better job of reflecting the society it represents. And anyone doubting something undesirable is going on in regards to how Pogba is covered should consider the fact that, size‑wise, he isn’t particularly big for a modern midfielder; 6ft 3in and 84kg, almost identical to André Gomes (6ft 2in and 84kg), and yet the coverage around the latter’s generally positive impact at Everton has been less about his physicality and more about his craft. All of this is difficult territory but as John Barnes, a consistently exceptional voice on football and race, says: “We need to talk openly about perceptions and not be afraid of the fact we have different views about people based on how they look.” That is especially true of the media given the influence those involved hold on public discourse. There needs to be more thought, kindness, fairness and diversity. Otherwise Sterling’s Sunday intervention really will have been for nothing. • Sachin Nakrani is an editor and writer for Guardian sportA mānuka honey company is being prosecuted by New Zealand’s food safety agency over claims it added artificial chemicals to its product. In the first case of its kind, the company is accused of adding synthetic chemicals – including one commonly used in tanning lotion – to honey it sold as “mānuka”. A total of 18 products made by Evergreen Life Ltd were recalled in 2016, after New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) announced they might contain “non-approved substances”. Now the Auckland-based health company is being prosecuted by New Zealand Food Safety on 64 charges of alleged adulteration of honey with artificial chemicals. The most serious charges carry maximum penalties of five years’ imprisonment or a NZ$500,000 (£265,000) fine. The company is expected to contest the allegations. Details of exactly which products the company is accused of tampering with are expected to emerge during the court case, which is scheduled for a hearing next month. Evergreen’s website says it sells health products internationally to countries including the United States, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and China. Mānuka honey is made from the nectar of the mānuka bush flower. Known as “liquid gold” because it sells for up to NZ$500 a jar, the honey has particular antibacterial properties and is thought to have health benefits. It is increasingly important to New Zealand’s economy, with the total value of honey exports increasing five-fold to NZ$348m in the decade to 2018 as a result of the mānuka “gold rush”. But rumours are rife of a global “fake” mānuka honey problem and the latest figures suggest up to half of honey sold as mānuka worldwide is not genuine. With New Zealand staking its international reputation on the quality of its produce, the government is keen to crack down on anyone caught undermining mānuka honey’s image. The charges in the flagship case against Evergreen Life Ltd relate to the alleged addition of two artificial chemicals, methylglyoxal (MGO) and dihydroxyacetone (DHA), to honey. Both chemicals occur naturally in an organic form in mānuka honey, because DHA comes from the mānuka flower and converts within the honey into MGO – the chemical which gives it its highly prized antibacterial properties. The more DHA in the honey, the more MGO it will create. So by adding artificial DHA, manufacturers can appear to increase the strength of weak mānuka honey and sell it for a higher price. Researchers have also found adding synthetic DHA to ordinary honey changes its colour, taste and makes it perform like genuine mānuka honey in tests. But artificial DHA is not designed to be added to food and so does not undergo the necessary safety tests to ensure it is food grade. The chemical is normally used in fake-tan lotions as the active ingredient that makes skin turn an orangey-brown colour. Scientists can differentiate between artificial and naturally occurring DHA and MGO, but the test is expensive and not routinely carried out. Last year, the MPI introduced a new definition of mānuka honey which means it must be independently proven to contain chemical and DNA markers unique to the mānuka plant before it can be exported. Bryan Wilson, the head of New Zealand Food Safety, said in a statement: “New Zealand Food Safety is prosecuting Evergreen Life Ltd and its manager for alleged adulteration of honey with synthetic MGO and DHA. “There are a total of 64 charges – the most serious carrying maximum penalties of five years’ imprisonment or $500,000 fine in the case of a body corporate.” A hearing in the case will take place on 14 February. Evergreen Life has been approached for comment.Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, the Saudi Arabian woman who fled her family and is now under UN protection in Thailand, has been sustained through the “terrifying” ordeal by thousands of online messages of support that probably saved her life, a friend has said. Nourah Alharbi, 20, told the Guardian: “Yesterday, they [social media supporters] made the difference in Rahaf’s life. You saved Rahaf’s life yesterday: the people, the media.” Speaking on Tuesday morning, Alharbi said Qunun was buoyed when she saw how many messages about her were being posted online. “She couldn’t believe it. Today when I was calling her ... [she said] she can see the thousands of messages, all of them supporting her. She’s terrified and stressed, and when she saw the messages it really made a difference for her.” Now based in Sydney, Alharbi said she fled Saudi Arabia herself after suffering abuse from her family, and is seeking asylum in Australia. She has kept in close contact with Qunun throughout her ordeal. She mentioned the case of Dina Ali Lasloom, a 24-year-old Saudi woman who in April 2017 was returned to Saudi Arabia from the Philippines against her will and whose fate is unclear. “She didn’t get that [social media] support and that’s why she’s in Saudi Arabia now – she’s disappeared,” Alharbi said. On Sunday, Qunun, 18, barricaded herself in a hotel room inside Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport to prevent her forcible return to a family she claimed would kill her, following her renouncing of Islam. She tweeted about her situation, and the Twitter hashtag #SaveRahaf soon gained support. Supporters demanded she stay in Thailand rather than be returned to Kuwait, the point of her departure, and lobbied governments to offer her asylum. Alharbi said Qunun was keen to leave the country after hearing reports her father had travelled to Thailand but that she felt safe for the time being. “She called me and said the UN were good and were protecting her,” she said. “Security keep coming and asking about her. She wants to tell everyone that she wants to go outside Thailand – to any safe country.” Alharbi claimed Australia had cancelled the tourist visa on which Qunun was originally travelling. “I don’t know [the reason] because they’re not answering,” she said. The Australian government is yet to respond to the claim. Urging people to keep posting messages about Qunun, Alharbi said: “Yesterday we won, but this is not the big winning. We got her out [of the airport] but we win when we get her out from Thailand. And we will, properly.” The Australian government said on Monday night Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun’s situation was “deeply concerning” and it had lobbied the Thai government and the UNHCR to allow her to formally claim asylum. UNHCR staff were interviewing her on Tuesday after meeting her the day before. “It could take several days to process the case and determine next steps,” UNHCR’s Thailand representative Giuseppe de Vincentiis said in a statement. “We are very grateful that the Thai authorities did not send back (Qunun) against her will and are extending protection to her,” he said. Qunun was detained on arrival at Bangkok and denied entry to Thailand while en route to Australia, where she said she intended to seek asylum. The Guardian confirmed on Monday Qunun had a valid three-month tourist visa for Australia, issued to her Saudi passport. Qunun said she was abducted after arriving in Bangkok and had her passport confiscated by Saudi Arabian diplomatic staff. She demanded access to the UNHCR and barricaded herself inside her hotel room in fear she would be forced on to a plane after Kuwait Airways officials had come to her door, but Monday’s 11.15am flight departed without her. Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Thailand has denied reports that Riyadh had requested her extradition, the embassy said on Twitter. The head of Thailand’s immigration police, General Surachate Hakparn, had previously said Qunun would be sent back to Saudi Arabia because she was “unsafe” without a guardian in Thailand, and claimed she did not have the documentation to go on to Australia. But late on Monday he promised she would not be deported and agreed to consult the UNCHR. He later said she had been taken to a safe house for her asylum claim to be processed. “If she goes home it will be dangerous for her so Thailand is ready to help,” he told media. “We are working with the foreign affairs ministry and UNHCR and today we will allow her entry to Thailand. UNHCR is now taking care of her and working on her asylum claim.” Surachate said Qunun’s father was due to arrive in Bangkok on Monday night and that officials would establish whether she wanted to return to the Middle East with him. “As of now, she does not wish to go back and we will not force her. She won’t be sent anywhere tonight,” he told reporters. “Thailand is a land of smiles. We will not send anyone to die.” Qunun confirmed on Twitter she was under the protection of the UNHCR and her passport had been returned. Hey I'm Rahaf. My father just arrived as I heard witch worried and scared me a lot and I want to go to another country that I seek asylum inBut at least I feel save now under UNHCR protection with the agreement of Thailand authorities. And I finally got my passport back🙏🏻❤️ pic.twitter.com/pQER7HDVi7 The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs said it was monitoring the case closely. “The claims made by Ms Al-Qunun that she may be harmed if returned to Saudi Arabia are deeply concerning,” a spokesman said on Monday night. “The Australian embassy in Thailand has made representations to both the Thai government and the Bangkok office of the UNHCR to seek assurances that Ms Al-Qunun can access the UNHCR’s refugee status determination process in Thailand.” Qunun said in a video posted on social media from inside the airport that she was trying to escape from her family because they subjected her to physical and psychological abuse. She has appealed for help from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia. Her case has brought international attention to the obstacles women face in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom also faces intense scrutiny over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which has renewed criticism of its human rights record.As a woman who talks about video games on television, radio and elsewhere for a living, I’m often asked how I got into games, and I reply – truthfully – that I have been playing them my whole life. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that owned every major game console. But when I reached adolescence, something (besides the obvious) changed. My varied video game diet narrowed dramatically. I skipped the entire console generation that included the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox in favour of my bedroom PC and two worlds it allowed me to access: The Sims and Neopets. The Neopets website was launched in 1999, and I’m pretty sure I was introduced to it by my uncle, though it’s known for its popularity among girls. It fits with the idea of femininity as nurturing: a virtual world that allows you to care for cute pets, play games to earn a currency called Neopoints, shop for clothes for your pets, build and furnish houses, and chat on the forums. In 2005, by which time I had stopped playing, Neopets was sold for $160m to Viacom, which changed the advertising and introduced Neocash, a new form of currency that can be bought only with real money. Interestingly, as explained by YouTube series People Make Games, it was also once owned by Scientologists. In 2014, Viacom sold the site to edutainment company Knowledge Adventure, which is owned by Chinese publisher NetDragon. This month sees the release of a mobile puzzle game called Neopets Legends & Letters – but, later this year, it will release an app that promises to contain all of Neopia. The original Neopets website still exists, and this 20-year-old online world is a strange relic. In some ways it has moved with the times: there’s an active Reddit community and a fairly popular Twitter account. But revisiting the website after so many years was a gut punch for me. In so many ways it looks exactly the same: the same banner with the same logo, the same pets with the same visual design, the same mini-games. The familiar graphics tugged me straight back to my adolescence, which was incredibly uncomfortable because that was not a good time for me. Neopets fitted perfectly into my young life. It appeared when I was changing schools, trying and failing to make friends, exploring interests that baffled the people around me. I found purpose in earning Neopoints and collecting avatars. Like the protagonist in Nina Freeman’s semi-autobiographical game Lost Memories Dot Net, I learned basic HTML so that I could customise my user page. I worried the adults in my life by befriending people I met on the forums. I discovered aspects of internet culture that remain today: fan art, wikis, trolls. I buried myself in Neopets when I barely belonged anywhere else. Then I got older, and when I didn’t need it any more I let it go. A lot of millennial women with fond memories of Neopets are excited about this forthcoming mobile app that will let them visit Neopia on the go. Perhaps some of them have continued to care for their pets for the last two decades. But, for me, Neopets is inextricably linked to a period in my own life and in the history of the internet. I don’t want want to see it modernised with in-app purchases and push notifications. Nor, selfishly, do I want to see a resurgence in popularity for something that immediately transports me back to a time I’d rather forget.Marta Tejedor’s first match in charge of Birmingham turned out to be a memorable one, as they came from behind to win 3-2 at Chelsea thanks to Ellen White’s stoppage-time goal. Tejedor has said that she hopes to make significant technical improvements to her players, whose success this season has been built on defensive solidity and tactical discipline. It has been very effective, but to move to the next level they need to add creativity and it is quite exciting that they have brought in someone who makes these things the central point of what she does. If Tejedor can add some flair to an already outstanding Birmingham machine it could be the catalyst for the title-challenging season the club has been after. All three goals were scored on the counterattack, and the winner showed the best of this team’s attacking: getting numbers forward, even in the 93rd minute away at Chelsea, and making chances. It’s a very effective way of playing – I just think it has a ceiling. White’s goal was her first of an injury-affected season, and with Rachel Williams out for the season after ACL surgery in September Birmingham have had to find a way of being effective without their two recognised strikers. • Marc Skinner interview: ‘Orlando is mesmerising’ Wow! Welcome back @ellsbells89#FAWSL @BCFCwomen pic.twitter.com/uW0QcRWQxo Chelsea’s 11-game winning streak came to an emphatic end, and a defence that hadn’t conceded a league goal at home since October looked vulnerable without the injured Millie Bright. Of the three goals they conceded, Birmingham’s second – scored by Lucy Quinn – was a pretty decent strike. That said, I’d have liked the keeper to at least go for it, and see how close she got – but for the first and third the defending was lackadaisical. They seemed to be playing with heavy legs and heavy heads. Of course they missed Bright, a big centre-half who pulls the strings at the back, but they just didn’t seem to be working as a unit, which is unacceptable. Carly Telford started in goal for the first time in the WSL since November, with the new signing Ann-Katrin Berger on the bench and the normal first-choice Hedvig Lindahl not in the squad. There is incredible competition for that place at the moment and Carly will be disappointed to have been part of a back five that let in three goals. On the plus side Erin Cuthbert, who scored both the goals in Chelsea’s 2-1 win over Arsenal, continued her scoring form with another brace, the first a diving header and the second a cross-shot that crept in at the far post. Oh @erincuthbert_ 👏#FAWSL @ChelseaFCW pic.twitter.com/RxrtuxObfE After losing their last game to Chelsea, Arsenal got back to winning ways with a straightforward victory over Reading. The big difference between the two matches was Daniëlle van de Donk: she has been the key-holder for Arsenal this season, unlocking opposition defences and creating opportunities for Vivianne Miedema. Without her Arsenal lost, and Miedema was feeding off scraps. With her back in the team Miedema scored her 16th league goal – the most ever by a player in a WSL season, and it’s still only January – with less than two minutes on the clock, and from that point on there was little doubt about the outcome. Reading only had one shot on target. Kim Little, who has had an injury-disrupted season, scored her fifth goal in seven league appearances from the penalty spot – I’m sure I remember her putting at least five penalties past me – while a left-footed beauty from Katie McCabe put the sparkle on a convincing win. Lauren Hemp and Nikita Parris haven’t often played in the same team this season, with Manchester City tending to field just one central attacker in a 4-3-3 formation. Against Brighton they started together and in the second minute Parris fed Hemp, who was fouled inside the penalty area. Parris took the penalty: textbook, right foot, top bin, left side, nobody’s stopping that. It was nice to see two young English strikers up front together and Hemp, who is only 18 and has spent most of her first season in Manchester as Parris’s understudy, put in an excellent performance. There was another lesser-spotted English player in goal, where Karen Bardsley returned to the team with Ellie Roebuck presumably injured. It was a first start since September for the 34-year-old, who would have expected to be England’s No1 in the World Cup but can no longer take anything for granted. With Telford only occasionally playing for Chelsea and Mary Earps only playing once all season at Wolfsburg, it might be a straight fight between Roebuck and Bardsley for the No 1 jersey for both club and country – and given the competition for places, whoever comes off second-best might not even make the England squad. Double header! @JillScottJS8 tees up @lilkeets #FAWSL @ManCityWomen pic.twitter.com/KfxQxwAzSQ Another 2-1 defeat for Yeovil, their second in a row and seventh of this WSL season. It’s strange for a team to have so many close matches and lose them all (though they did beat Everton 1-0 in November). In these games they have tended to concede the decisive goals late: only once before the 72nd minute, but four times between the 70th minute and the 80th, once in the 87th minute and once in the 90th. Is this just coincidence, or an indication that they are not fit enough to compete until the end of a match? Bottom of the league with just three points from their 13 games, Yeovil have been outplayed often enough and cannot allow fitness to become yet another area in which they are not quite up to scratch. Bristol City scored their winner pretty early – in the 72nd minute – through Rosella Ayane’s deflected shot, having equalised 16 minutes earlier via a Lucy Graham penalty. They are in good form, unbeaten in all competitions since November with three wins and a draw against Manchester City in their last four league matches. BT Sport has coverage of women’s football all season. Watch Manchester City v Chelsea on BT Sport 1 and 4K UHD (KO 12.30pm) on Sunday, 10 FebruaryCombine yoga and Greek sunshine with a holiday on Santorini, the southernmost of the Cyclades islands, staying in whitewashed houses at a boutique hotel with pool outside the village of Oia. There are two daily classes for all levels with warm, encouraging teacher Louise Gillespie-Smith, who balances creative, breath-led flow with gentle, mindful yin. An optional 10-mile hike is included, and guests are also able to enjoy sailing, sea kayaking and wine-tasting if they wish. Louise also leads holidays in the UK and French Alps.• From £795, with breakfast and three evening meals, 29 June-6 July, adventureyogi.com Splash out on a special Stillness and Alignment retreat on the White Isle with Lara Stapleton, who teaches gentle but powerful classes, designed to bring guests back to balance. Based in two villas surrounded by olive groves and pine trees, not far from Santa Gertrudis, the beautiful location is complemented by delicious, nourishing vegetarian meals. As well as twice daily yoga, massages, wellbeing workshops, guided walks and healing sound baths are also included. Other Ibiza options with Chaya Retreats include an organic detox retreat in May and a “sacred sexuality” week in September.• From £1,331, 5-12 October,  chayayogaretreats.com On the Wild Atlantic Way, the Cliffs of Moher Retreat has views of the Atlantic from the glass-fronted yoga studio, alfresco hot tubs, a sauna and great vegetarian food from its organic gardens. Options include yoga and hiking weekends, with 14km of walking along the dramatic cliffs. There are four yoga and meditation classes with teacher Michelle Moroney, as well as massages and time to explore the area. Shannon is the closest airport.• Connect to Nature Yoga and Hiking weekends run regularly, dates include 8-10 March 2019, from €390 all-inclusive, cliffsofmoherretreat.com Nineteenth-century manor house in the foothills of the Algarve’s Serra do Caldeirão has been converted into the brand new Wild View Retreat by yogi and nutritionist Andrew Finlay and his wife Erika. Guests can expect yoga and mindfulness classes, guided walks and nutrition talks and demos, as well as three nutritious vegetarian meals a day. Or they can opt for a juice fast and nutrition detox retreat to rest the digestive system and boost the immune system, with a juice and soup diet (plus all the usual activities). Faro is the nearest airport.• Various dates year-round, seven nights’ from €850 in a triple room, wildviewretreat.com On the edge of Cabo de Gata national park in Almeria and close to its wild coast, Huzur Vadisi Yoga Retreats is now hosting holidays in what was a stylish, bohemian family home. The main house is strikingly modernist while the outlying farm offers more traditional accommodation, and there are two natural swimming pools fed by springs. Among several options in 2019 is Gerry Kielty’s week of dynamic and restorative yoga (7-14 June). Expect great food too – and a dazzling landscape of mountains and semi-desert. It’s wonderfully isolated but within walking distance of a traditional village.• Various dates, a week from £895, huzurvadisi.com Practise yoga in a beautiful villa surrounded by vineyards and mountains 20 minutes from St Tropez in the south of France, with Value Your Mind. Run by former mental health nurse and wellbeing guru Nathalie Kealy, there are two yoga classes a day, plus guided walks to hilltop villages, excursions to the beach and wine-tasting sessions. Groups are small so there’s plenty of personal attention – plus there’s a swimming pool and hammocks for downtime and three healthy Mediterranean meals a day included. Weekend retreats are also offered in the UK.• 13-17 June, from £500, valueyourmind.com Nova Milesko’s yoga retreats – held regularly in a converted barn on a farm near Lymington in the New Forest – offer expert tuition and value for money. Over a weekend she packs in 10 yoga, workshop and meditation sessions, with a focus on flowing vinyasa complemented by slow yin (all optional). Vegetarian meals use organic fare from the gardens. Accommodation ranges from basic dorms for four to kingsize doubles.• Various dates, two nights from £290 in a dorm, novamilesko.com Yoga is the perfect compliment to running – stretching and strengthening key muscles – and the Yoga and Wild Running Retreat hosts three-night breaks that combine the two at beautiful locations in Devon. Stay in a secluded farmhouse on the edge of Dartmoor (1-4 February) or at the High Nature Centre on cliffs overlooking Gara Rocks near East Portlemouth (5-8 July). Expect three guided runs and two daily yoga classes, plus talks on running and training with expert Ceri Rees (who’s worked with athletes including Paula Radcliffe).• Three night breaks from £290, wildrunning.co.uk The Alpino Atlantico, a boutique clifftop hotel in the south of Madeira, 14km from the capital, Funchal, specialises in Ayurveda treatments and has daily yoga classes. The hotel is set amid tropical gardens and all 24 rooms (and three suites) have balconies with sea views. It is part of the Galo Resort, which has saltwater pools, watersports and a spa.• DIY retreats can be booked through the Healthy Holiday Company, from about £625 a week for yoga, plus £250 for optional Ayurveda programme. Alternatively, Destination Yoga is running two retreats there this year with two yoga classes a day. From £995pp for a week full board, 6 August (intermediate and advanced yogis) and 13 August (all levels), destinationyoga.co.uk Sardinia Yoga runs yoga breaks at four-star beachfront hotels in Sardinia, Croatia and Mallorca – the Hotel Mlini in Croatia has a yoga deck right on the beach. The company is based at each hotel for several weeks, so guests can arrive on any day and stay for as long as they like (minimum three nights). There are two teachers at each venue, leading gentle and more dynamic classes. A two-hour class each morning is included in the price, and there are optional afternoon classes (€10 each), but this is more of a holiday than a full-on retreat, with plenty of time to relax by the pool and in the spa, or go out exploring.• From £330pp for three nights B&B, dates vary: Mallorca 30 March-28 May and 28 Sept-3 Nov, Sardinia 17 May-28 July and 23 Aug-29 Sept, Croatia 24 May-21 July and 23 Aug-13 Oct, sardiniayoga.comTens of thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets of the country’s capital in what opponents of Nicolás Maduro hope will prove a turning point for the country’s slide into authoritarianism and economic ruin. Venezuela’s president, who started his second term on 11 January after disputed elections, is facing a reinvigorated opposition as well as increasing international hostility from the right-wing governments of the US, Brazil and Colombia. Wednesday’s march follow two nights of violent protests in working class neighbourhoods of Caracas – once bastions of support for the government – and the apparent foiling of an armed uprising by members of the national guard. Early on Wednesday, protesters in eastern Caracas braved an early morning downpour, shouting in unison, “Who are we? Venezuela! What do we want? Freedom!” In the centre of the capital, riot police flanked by water tanks and lightly armored vehicles had already been deployed to the central Plaza Venezuela square. Other protests were planned across the country and outside embassies around the world. Government supporters will hold their own rival march in downtown Caracas. Juan Guaido, the new leader of the opposition-held national assembly, repeated calls for members of the security forces to withdraw their support for Maduro. “The world’s eyes are on our homeland today,” he said in an early-morning tweet. Relatively unknown until this month, Guaido appears to have reinvigorated Venezeuela’s opposition which has long been wracked by in-fighting. Ahead of Madruo’s inauguration, Guaidó described Maduro as a “usurper” and declared himself ready to assume the presidency until open elections could be held. Wednesday also marks the anniversary of the 1958 uprising that overthrew military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez – a symbolism that was not lost on María de Jesus, a social worker from Caracas who was born on the day of the 1958 . “I was born in democracy,” she said on her way to the march in Caracas. “I want my freedom; this is a dictatorship.” Oil-rich Venezuela is mired in economic and political turmoil, with hyperinflation rendering the bolivar currency practically worthless. Shortages in food staples and basic medicines are rampant, while crime is widespread. More than three million Venezuelans have fled, causing consternation across the continent. In Ciudad Guayana, a north eastern city, a statue of Hugo Chávez – Maduro’s late predecessor and the figurehead of Venezuelan socialism – was burnt, cut in half, and the bust hung from a bridge on Tuesday night. Maduro has accused the opposition of fomenting violence. “I demand the full rigor of the law against the fascists,” he said on Tuesday night. His allies have also threatened the use of armed pro-government militias – known as colectivos – to quell disturbances. The United States, long fiercely opposed to Maduro, has thrown its support behind the opposition. “President Trump and the US stand resolutely with the Venezuelan people as they seek to regain their liberty from dictator Nicolás Maduro,” vice-president Mike Pence wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. A previous spate of protests in 2017 left at least 120 dead and hundreds more injured, after Maduro dispatched the national guard. Human rights watchdogs and international observers are readying for a similar crackdown on Wednesday. Foro Penal, a local watchdog, reported on Wednesday morning that 30 protestors had been arrested overnight. Local journalists alleged that authorities in Caracas had attempted to confiscate their equipment.India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been accused of being afraid of the media, after consenting to a rare interview – just one of a handful in four years as PM – on New Year’s Day in which he answered a range of questions that critics compared to “free-hit deliveries” in cricket. The interview, to news agency Asian News International – or ANI, attracted widespread comment and a fair amount of ridicule. Some journalists called it “manufactured”, “scripted” and a “monologue” . The Congress party called it “fixed”. One MP said the questions put to Modi “were more in the nature of feeding rather than grilling the prime minister”. A cartoon showed Modi interviewing himself. The Indian media have been fretting about lack of access to Modi ever since he assumed office in 2014. He has not held a single press conference. The handful of interviews have been mostly set pieces in which the interviewer has failed to put difficult questions or challenged Modi on his answers. While Modi has never made any secret of his disdain for the press, other members of his Bharatiya Janata party have compounded the testy relationship with the press by variously abusing journalists as “presstitutes”, “dalals” (pimps) or “bazaru” (for sale). But the latest interview has attracted criticism beyond media circles with the opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, joining the fray. Gandhi questioned Modi’s refusal to subject himself to random questioning, pointing out how he, by contrast, is more accessible and willing to take difficult and impromptu questions. Gandhi called the ANI interview staged, and the interviewer “pliable”. “[Modi] does not have the guts to come and sit in front of you,” he said at a press conference. In fact, some analysts believe that Modi gave the interview to ANI precisely because he has been stung by recent criticism for failing to meet the press. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh – who had been repeatedly attacked by Modi for not meeting the press when Modi was in the opposition – remarked last month that, while he had been dubbed the silent PM by Modi, at least he had never been afraid of speaking to the press. “I met the press regularly and on every foreign trip I undertook, I had a press conference on return,” said Singh. Journalists have pointed out that while Modi is not the first Indian prime minister to give the media a wide berth, most other prime ministers, including Singh, took journalists with them on overseas visits. Travelling in the same plane allowed journalists to have unscripted conversations. Modi travels abroad without any journalists in his entourage. For the media, the inability to question Modi represents a malfunctioning of democracy. “His behaviour is typical of strong leaders with mass appeal who are intolerant of the press. Modi believes he has no need to be interrogated, called to account or to answer difficult questions,” said political analyst and author Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr. The prime minister’s supporters defend his aversion to the media, arguing that Modi has more than enough “direct” contact with Indians through rallies and meetings, that he prefers to let his work speak for itself, and that his monthly chats on state-run radio are heard by infinitely more Indians than a mere bunch of journalists at a press conference. “The problem, however, with all these forms of communication is that they are one-way. In the radio chats, he replies to written questions sent in by the public and the ones chosen are invariably innocuous,” said Rao Jr.A farmer was recently on the road to the abattoir when he changed direction and drove his trailer full of lambs 200 miles to an animal sanctuary instead. Sivalingam Vasanthakumar, 60, from Devon, now plans to grow vegetables. Vasanthakumar is not the only farmer to perform this kind of reversal. In 2017, Jay Wilde, of Bradley Nook farm in Derbyshire, took his cattle to a sanctuary and decided to become a vegan farmer (the film telling this story, 73 Cows, has been nominated for a Bafta). In the US, the Illinois-based charity Free From Harm has gathered tales of many farmers who have had epiphanies and switched to veganism. Farmers know the job when they start it – so what brings about such a major turnaround? “What you are looking at is basic cognitive dissonance,” says Fiona Buckland, a life coach. This occurs when “the way you are living your life is no longer fully in line with the way that you feel”, and personal values slip out of alignment with personal performance. Cognitive dissonance builds until an individual can no longer sustain the resultant unease and instigates change. “It’s the reason someone sits at their desk and thinks: ‘I can’t do this any more,’ or walks out of a marriage,” Buckland says. “The cognitive dissonance is too great. They have to get themselves into alignment.” Even apparently snap decisions – changing destination mid-journey, as Vasanthakumar did – “percolate in our unconscious” for weeks, months or years. “Maybe he had taken himself to the abattoir too many times,” Buckland adds wryly. She describes Vasanthakumar’s rerouting as “a moment of creative problem-solving”: here are some sheep I would like to keep alive, here is a sanctuary that will take them. Stephen Palmer, a member of the British Psychological Society, points out that the year is still fairly new, and such decisions may be the result of some January stock-taking. Midlife, he says, is a classic time when people “search out a new purpose and meaning”. But often these reflections don’t come when humans sit and think, but ambush them while they fill the washing machine or queue in the supermarket. “Your life perspective can take a sudden leap,” psychologist Mike Hughesman explains. A person who had been inured to what they do suddenly realises they don’t want to do it any more. (Hughesman himself temporarily switched to vegetarianism when he couldn’t face the fact that he was eating something sentient.) “People need to think more and not get trammelled into routines. If something doesn’t feel right, give it thought,” he says. “Sometimes you have to ask those pivotal questions.”Scandal sells, or so it’s said, but few have captured the zeitgeist with quite the velocity as the rise and fall, in April 2017, of Fyre. The luxury music festival – a Bahamas-set Coachella with villas and supermodels, it promised – collapsed into financial fraud and memes of drunk twentysomethings scrambling for Fema tents and styrofoam tray meals, all direct to our screens. Now a lifetime in the online newscycle later, the interest in Fyre still simmers. The festival is investigated in two separate, competing documentaries released this week: Netflix’s Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened, announced last December and released Friday, and Hulu’s Fyre Fraud, which dropped unannounced on Monday. Seen by many as a savage play by Hulu in the ongoing streaming wars – Fyre Fraud launched the day Netflix’s review embargo lifted, effectively tying the two films together in search results – the release of Fyre Fraud, directed by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason, has redirected the drama of the original scam back off the screen. And while both companies have found rich source material (and sources) from Fyre festival, does more footage bring more insight? To refresh the memory of those on a social media break two years prior, now convicted entrepreneur-cum-con artist Billy McFarland, age 25, and his business partner, rapper Ja Rule, promised a luxury music festival in the Bahamas, replete with cabanas, catered food and, if you believed the lush promotional videos, a bikini-clad Bella Hadid. Moneyed millennials bought tickets, which were heavily promoted on Instagram, only to find upon arrival an unfinished camp site, plain cheese on bread rather than high-end cuisine, and no performers. Panic, Snapchat stories and internet outrage ensues; the festival is canceled, and McFarland is sentenced to six years in prison and $26m in fines for fraud. Both documentaries acknowledge the hilarity in that story while also examining the subject soberly. But since the release of Fyre Fraud, what started as an amusing example of corporate one-upmanship has morphed into a larger referendum on the ethics of both films. A source for Hulu told Entertainment Weekly that the company surprise-released their film ahead of Netflix because it “was felt that Fyre Fraud provides context that may color viewers’ feelings about Netflix’s Fyre”. Specifically, Fyre Fraud – the only of the two films to acknowledge the other’s existence – criticizes its competitor’s conflicts of interest. The Netflix documentary, directed by Chris Smith, is produced in part by Jerry Media (AKA FuckJerry) and Matte Projects, two companies behind the supermodel-filled promotion of the actual Fyre festival. Hulu’s Fyre Fraud takes shots in particular at Jerry Media, suggesting that the company continued to promote Fyre festival despite knowing months in advance that it would fail. In response to criticism over Jerry Media’s involvement in the film, Netflix released the following statement Tuesday: “We were happy to work with Jerry Media and a number of others on the film. At no time did they, or any others we worked with, request favorable coverage in our film, which would be against our ethics. We stand behind our film, believe it is an unbiased and illuminating look at what happened, and look forward to sharing it with audiences around the world.” In turn, Chris Smith, the director of Netflix’s film, has called foul on one of Fyre Fraud’s aces: an exclusive interview with Billy McFarland, for which he was compensated (though you wouldn’t know it from watching the film). Speaking to the Ringer on Tuesday, Smith revealed that when the Netflix team approached McFarland for an interview, he requested $125,000 because “[the Hulu team] were offering $250,000 for an interview”. Smith declined the interview because “after spending time with so many people who had such a negative impact on their lives from their experience on Fyre, it felt particularly wrong to us for him to be benefiting”. When contacted by the Ringer for comment, Furst confirmed that the Hulu production paid McFarland, but disputed McFarland’s figure. “I can’t tell you the amount,” Furst said, “but what I can tell you is that if you printed [$250,000], that would be a lie. That was not the amount. It was less than that. I don’t know why Chris [Smith] is quoting him that way. We both made a film about the same person. We know the person is a compulsive liar.” Furst then defended his and Willoughby-Nason’s decision to feature McFarland as part of the effort to provide the fullest picture possible of Fyre festival. According to Furst, the Fyre Fraud team began production in July 2017 to make “not just a comedy, not just ‘Look at these millennials who got caught on an island’, but a bigger thinkpiece about our generation that was a cautionary tale with deep implications that relate to our political system, to our current president.” On that front – situating Fyre festival amid a thousand other narratives about millennials and the world they inhabit, from job precarity to climate change to fear of missing out – Fyre Fraud proves more compelling than Netflix’s alternative. For the most part, the documentaries align in their depiction of what led up to the Fyre debacle, though the Hulu film plays its cards tighter, dropping footage reveals, its McFarland interview and acknowledgement of the other documentary like well-paced reality TV. Fyre Fraud cannily splices from touchstones of pop culture (Family Guy, Chappelle’s Show) and more effectively replicates the experience of scrolling through Instagram on-screen – pins drop through old posts to identify who’s having more fun than you – while capturing the frenetic, pastiched quality of millennial media (images of McFarland, plastered on top of each other, to the intro of the Black Eyed Peas’ Pump It, for example, or the video game-esque spinning head of a disgraced McFarland acolyte). It also draws from a wider and more distinguished array of legal and cultural experts – New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, psychology expert Maria Konnikova, lawyers involved in a civil suit against Fyre and McFarland’s former employees. Ultimately, the Hulu film digs deeper into the burning pit of Fyre, weaving strands of politics, generational history, con artistry, music festival culture, and social media into the mix. (It also digs deeper into the culpability of Ja Rule, who left the Netflix film largely unscathed). But as the rival movie drops have revealed, each film has strategically filtered out potentially unflattering information, decisions refracted through each other into questions of what’s outside the frame. The effect of watching two films on one of the most spectacular scams in recent years, is to feel … a bit scammed. Who to believe, in this dizzying jigsaw of cons, performances and people trying to present themselves in the best light? Only in conversation do they reveal which pieces are left out. In other words, to watch both documentaries, coupled as they are with the offscreen drama, is to feel the vertigo of too much screen time – you’re more informed, but without reliable ground to view it clearly. Two movies about smoke and mirrors, about the pretense of self-presentation and the foil of millennial “authenticity” end up exposing what’s potentially misleading about each other. Two movies depicting the excesses of demonstrative wealth and the compulsion to one-up your social media friends, released by two media titans fighting for your streams. Two movies on an event that poured gasoline on social media’s combustible snark and schadenfreude, now the subjects of an online tit-for-tat. Like a circle, a federal judge said of Billy McFarland’s compulsion to lie, there’s no end. Which isn’t to say that the documentaries aren’t intriguing, or light on the task at hand, or scintillating in their positioning of Fyre festival as the allegory of millennial adulthood. They may be self-serving, but does that discount them? We’re still entertained. Fyre Fraud is now available on Hulu and Fyre will be available on Netflix on 18 JanuaryIn a few months time, as winter begins to bite in the southern hemisphere, the African National Congress will face its biggest challenge since it took power in South Africa’s first free elections a quarter of a century ago. The 25-year milestone will be loudly celebrated. There will be rallies and speeches. The liberation songs that motivated ANC activists during the long, dark decades of its struggle to free South Africa from the racist, repressive apartheid regime will ring out. The memory of Nelson Mandela, Nobel prize laureate, freedom fighter and the country’s secular saint, will be invoked. But none of this will disguise the harsh reality that 2019 could be the year that will be seen by historians as the beginning of the end for the ANC. “Twenty-five years is the time when the clock really starts ticking for liberation movements. The ANC is on the defensive now. It is just trying to stop the losses,” said Ralph Mathekga, a South African commentator and analyst. The general election likely in May or June will be the litmus test for the party. Last December, Cyril Ramaphosa, 66, won a close-run internal party election. Three months later, he ousted Jacob Zuma to take power as president of the country. Zuma was accused of presiding over an immense system of corruption and patronage that drained billions from the exchequer and damaged the reputation of the ANC beyond repair. Ramaphosa served as deputy president under Zuma. Details of alleged graft are surfacing every week as journalists and a judicial inquiry unpick his era. Though Ramaphosa told reporters in November there was “a new confidence, a new hope in the ANC” and insisted “the shine that had been tarnished is coming back”, the former trade union activist turned tycoon turned politician has struggled to overcome the toxic legacy of Zuma’s nine-year rule. The economy is weak, expectations are high and Ramaphosa’s broadly centrist market-oriented policies face strong opposition from within his own party. Entrenched networks of government and ANC officials still loyal to Zuma remain powerful, while international investors, though interested by South Africa’s undoubted potential, are wary. Successive ANC governments have made huge efforts to build homes and supply basic services to millions of people, but they have been unable to meet expectations. Many people still live without electricity or sanitation. Schooling and healthcare are often rudimentary. One recent survey found eight out of 10 nine-year-olds in South Africa are functionally illiterate. Levels of violent crime are among the highest in the world, with poor South Africans suffering most. Ramaphosa’s long stint in office under Zuma, and his failure to enact dramatic reform since taking power, leaves him and the ANC vulnerable to the charge from opposition parties that nothing has changed from the bad days before. South Africa remains a country with enormous resources and great wealth but also vast inequality. Much of the focus in the last year was on the possible redistribution of farmland – largely owned by white people, who constitute fewer than 10% of the population. “The ANC is basically buying time. If you want to continue for another 30 years by fair not foul means you do need structural reform and land is one of those,” said Alex Vines, the head of the Africa programme at the Chatham House thinktank in London. The coming elections could see the ANC share of the vote fall close to 50% for the first time. “The ANC should get a weak majority but this may be the last election it wins,” said Mathekga. However, the party will be helped by the relative weakness of the opposition. Ramaphosa’s relative moderation has squeezed the political space once occupied by the Democratic Alliance, a centre-right, business-friendly party that is the ANC’s main competitor. The belligerent rhetoric and populist policies of the radical Economic Freedom Fighters plays well with its core constituency but makes further expansion difficult. Leaders of the EFF have also been hit by damaging allegations that they benefited from the corrupt looting of a bank which held savings of some of the poorest members of society. South Africa, with its particularly traumatic history of racial repression and its high level of industrialisation, has always been something of an exception on the continent. But the country of 55 million people still follows many trends that are evident elsewhere. Last year the strength of a new wave of young politicians and activists challenging ageing leaders across much of Africa became evident. The new generation of politicians are in their mid-30s and can barely remember the cold war or the conflicts that brought many autocrats or ruling parties – including the ANC – to power. Often educated and urban, they and their supporters are at the intersection of seismic demographic, social and economic shifts. More than 10 million eligible voters in South Africa – about a quarter of the electorate – will be under 30 and thus too young to remember the ANC’s role in the struggle against apartheid. A rising proportion live in towns and cities, not the rural zones that are the bedrock of ANC support. “All over … Africa, urban areas are in the forefront of moving away from the established parties, said Vines.The world is at risk of losing the battle against HIV due to a backlash against aid triggered by a sense that western governments need to solve problems in their own countries, the musician and development campaigner Bono has said. Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the U2 singer said populism in the rich north was the result of people being chewed up by capitalism. Bono said 7,000 women a week were being infected by HIV/Aids and called for fresh funding for global health initiatives. “We could lose this thing,” he said. “We were winning. We have been somewhat put on the back foot by the understandable concern in northern economies that we have problems in our own cities. If there are people on the streets in our own cities, why should we care about what’s going on over there? “The answer is that what is going on ‘over there’ affects us. If Africa loses, Europe can’t win. But we have got to get back into the conversation. We need a response to what is going on in our own cities.” Bono, who helped set up the campaign group One, said capitalism had lifted more people out of poverty than “any other ism”, but warned: “It is a wild beast. If it is not tamed it can chew up a lot of people along the way.” Populism was the result of people being chewed up, he added. Failure on the part of governments and businesses to invest in Africa would leave the way open for China to fill the void, Bono said. “China is the elephant in the room.” Young people were asking a question of business and political leaders: “Are you a firefighter or are you an arsonist?” Davos is a Swiss ski resort now more famous for hosting the annual four-day conference for the World Economic Forum. For participants it is a festival of networking. Getting an invitation is a sign you have made it – and the elaborate system of badges reveals your place in the Davos hierarchy. For critics, “Davos man” is shorthand for the globe-trotting elite, disconnected from their home countries after spending too much time in the club-class lounge. Others just wonder if it is all a big waste of time.Who is there? More than 2,500 people – business leaders, world leaders, diplomats and the odd celebrity, such as Matt Damon – will fly in for the 49th annual Davos meeting. Most delegates are men, and although the forum boasts delegates from more than 100 countries, most hail from western Europe, followed by the US. Sir David Attenborough is one of the most notable attendees in 2019, while Donald Trump, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron all pulled out at short notice to focus on more pressing issues at home. Speaking at the same event, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said it was simply impossible for poor countries to mobilise enough resources domestically to meet basic development goals for sectors such as health, education, roads and water. To meet UN sustainable development goals by 2030 would mean investment worth an additional 15% of GDP for low income countries. Lagarde said: “That’s monumental. No way can that be done by domestic resource mobilisation. Business has to be part of it.” The IMF said that achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals (SDG) set by the UN would require strong partnerships between the public and the private sectors. Countries needed to take a lead by improving the running of their economies, boosting the capacity to collect taxes, making public spending more efficient and creating business-friendly environments. But hitting the SDG goals also required the support of the private sector, donors, philanthropists, and international financial institutions. Lagarde told developing country leaders that combatting corruption was vital to prevent international investors from being scared off. Bono added that he had once seen the IMF as a “great Satan”, due to its emphasis on structural reforms and bullying of junior economies.Now, though, he says the development community “really values” the tough-mindedness shown by Lagarde – but he’ll still be “on her case”.There was a time when an online scam was easy to spot: there would be a Nigerian prince, and the promise of a fortune, and an email address that was just a long string of numbers. Now, though, things have got a little more sophisticated. One such scam that recently made the news targeted travel photographers and Instagram influencers. They claim to have received a personalised, and legitimate-looking, invitation to work on a luxurious Indonesian campaign for Wendi Murdoch. When they flew to Indonesia, they were forced to pay thousands of dollars upfront for various nonexistent permits, and never heard from “Wendi” again. It is by no means an isolated case. As the internet has grown more sophisticated, so too has the level of scammery. Just look at the disaster that was the Fyre festival, for instance. The company behind the proposed music festival in the Bahamas managed to prise piles of money from people by offering the promise of an influencer lifestyle. The festival was meant to be luxurious and exclusive. People signed up to it in their droves, only to discover miserable accommodation, barely any food and what some have described as a Lord of the Flies mentality. Fyre’s co-creator Billy McFarland was given six years in prison after he admitted fraud, although he insisted he had intended to organise a legitimate festival. But don’t feel too sorry for the influencers, because many of them are just as bad. Last June, Unilever expressed dismay at the murkiness of the influencer economy. Theoretically it’s a simple transaction: you pay money (ranging from hundreds to millions of pounds) to someone with a popular Instagram account, and they leverage their idyllic, aspirational lifestyle to push a brand to their army of followers. Except the scene is awash with fake followers, bought by some influencers specifically to bump up their fees. In 2017 anti-fraud company Swap Ops discovered that posts tagged #sponsored or #ad contained more than 50% fake engagements. And then there’s Caroline Calloway, the 26-year-old blogger with 831,000 Instagram followers who recently organised a $165-a-head “creativity workshop” tour that quickly ran into disrepair. Tickets were sold before venues were booked. Catering fell through, so Calloway asked ticketholders to bring a packed lunch. The shows that did take place were widely ridiculed, and in the end Calloway was forced to cancel the tour and issue full refunds. The thing all these all have in common? They all promise untold, unearned luxury, and people fall head over heels for them. There are still plenty of Nigerian princes around, but now they all have Instagram accounts.The world’s most densely betwatted space at the best of times, Westminster became even more wantonly apocalyptic in the days and hours leading up to the historic defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal. Behold, a bell-tolling, haute remainer, yellow-vested, journalist-infested, shitbird-MP-crawling, flashmobbed performance art piece entitled: HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT THEOCRACY INSTEAD? If not, don’t rule it out. An awful lot of things are apparently back on the table after May’s flame-out, including – but not limited to – default no deal, extending article 50, a Norway-style arrangement, second referendum, and return to absolute monarchy, by either the Queen or David Attenborough. The scale of the task of unbreaking Britain is jointly summed up by the vote result, and by each of the polar-opposite factions outside parliament being convinced they’d won. Everyone celebrated maniacally. As far as the UK’s lo-viz yellow vest movement goes, Westminster pavements are now a great place to get hooked up with the right militia for you in the event of no deal. As for the more provisional wing of the People’s Vote, we no longer need to computer-model the answer to the question: what would happen if you gave everyone on Henman Hill crystal meth? At the heart of this scene, a physically crumbling parliament building, half propped up by scaffolding. Unfolding inside on Tuesday night, a parliamentary procedural of quite staggering plotholes and continuity errors. Welcome to the Blunderdome. After Stanley Baldwin, then prime minister, had made the abdication announcement in the House in 1936, the MP Harold Nicolson bumped into him in a corridor outside the chamber. The moment was obviously one of electrifying historic drama, yet Nicolson’s diary entry archly conveys Baldwin’s self-centric take on it. “I detected in [Baldwin] that intoxication which comes to a man, even a tired man, after a triumphant success … ‘I had a success, my dear Nicolson, at the moment I most needed it …’ No man has dominated the House as Baldwin did tonight,” Nicolson concluded, “and he knows it.” The same could not be said of Theresa May, who rose to the occasion like a replicant Anglepoise lamp. Basic shambles model. Indeed, speaking of the abdication, it’s grimly amusing to consider that Theresa May’s big intervention in the 2015 general election campaign was to warn that “if we saw a Labour government propped up by the SNP, it could be the biggest constitutional crisis since the abdication”. As it turned out, madam would have something rather bigger up her own sleeve. So what now? Well, there’s a motion of no confidence to while away today, and 72 days left on the Brexit clock. May’s serial dishonesty throughout this entire process saw jeers greet her post-vote claims of a new “constructive spirit” in which “the government will work harder at taking parliament with us”. The jeers were well founded, given it took barely hours for it to become clear that this wouldn’t extend to even speaking to Jeremy Corbyn. Which might well suit Labour’s leader, the High Triangulator, who is reportedly going to keep calling no confidence motions until one produces the answer he likes. An irony that will doubtless be appreciated by those of his supporters angling in vain for a second referendum. As for May, her clinical standoffishness is entirely of a piece with the way she has behaved for the best part of the two and a half years since the vote, and certainly since the 2017 election. One of the most remarkable, and indeed excruciating, things about May has been her insistence on governing like she’s got a landslide majority. Why has no one told her? She’s the Florence Foster Jenkins of politics, insulated from the realities of her situation by weird or venal enablers. Never has the intervention of a candid best mate been more needed. At some point in July 2017, surely Amber Rudd or whoever should have gone round and given May “The Talk”. Along the lines of: “Babe, true friends tell you the truth, amirite? Because if no one else is going to say this, then I will: the referendum vote was problematically close anyway, and then you totally spaffed your majority. Like, you literally have no majority. So … you need to stop acting like Mariah Carey, OK? On the plus side, you look great in that trouser suit and I’ve brought round two bottles of cava. Let’s get pissed and watch Working Girl again.” Alas, at no point since the election does this essential public service appear to have been performed. Somehow even less appealing than May’s performance, though, was the spectacle of politicians rushing to the telly cameras in its wake. Here comes Chris Grayling, the least appealing ferryman since Charon, who’s going to rule out a customs union right off the bat. Here comes voluminously overcoated Jacob Rees-Mogg, who still resembles an 11-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg sitting on Nanny’s shoulders for a nursery game called Disaster Capitalist’s Bluff. Here come a lot of Tories claiming this all-systems clusterfuck is an “opportunity” to “go back to the EU”. And say what? “Look, if you’ll just give me three cosmetic concessions, then I feel sure I can get those elusive last 230 Infinity Stones.” And here comes the affectedly shambling figure of Boris Johnson – not so much a statesman as an Oxfam donation bag torn open by a fox – who could conceivably still end up prime minister of no-deal Britain. May needed to go again to the EU “with a high heart, fortified by the massive rejection of the House of Commons”, judged Johnson, speaking as always like a Taiwanese news animation of Winston Churchill. In the meantime, “we should be actively preparing for no deal with ever more enthusiasm”. As for Dominic Raab … dear dear. Show me someone who is trying harder than Dominic to make himself happen. OK, you’ve shown me The Saj and Gavin Williamson, and even cub health secretary Matt Hancock. One of the things you really have to admire about the Tory males is the time they make for self-care. Even at moments of really cataclysmically pressing national business, they insist on carving out the sort of me-time that is, say, a thinly disguised leadership speech at the Centre for Policy Studies. Yes, let the historical records show that on the eve of the vote, Dominic Raab was trying to look like tomorrow’s man in an address that, among other things, floated the idea of “Asbos for business”. Not now, mate, yeah? We’re a bit busy. Yet Dominic did a second lectern event in the hours before the vote, this time teaming up with David Davis and Arlene Foster, who still has all the warmth of the matriarch of a remote farm who retains the passports of her labourers. As for Davis, we’ll play out with an interview the former Brexit secretary gave a German magazine last weekend, in which he handpicked two mindboggling examples of situations in which Britain was Definitely Not Wrong. “Oh, I’m certain that Brexit will be a success,” Davis breezed. “Remember, every single major issue in our history is one where you might be right or wrong. Appeasement before the second world war, we might be right or wrong. Suez, we might be right or wrong.” Well. I for one can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next. • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistWarren Gatland, who ends his 12-year association with Wales at the end of the World Cup, has held discussions about his next full-time job and has not ruled out a return to the Premiership where he enjoyed a trophy-rich period with Wasps in the 2000s. Gatland is preparing for his final Six Nations as Wales head coach. He had intended to take a few months off after the World Cup before deciding his future but, as a coach with a winning record at Wasps, Waikato and Wales, he was always going to be sounded out early. As one of the highest paid coaches in the world, he will not come cheap but Premiership clubs come armed with cash from a private equity company. “I have had a couple of discussions with some people at the moment but there is definitely nothing concrete,” said Gatland. “Maybe at the end of the World Cup I’ll be unemployed. I was considering taking a few months off and then start looking in the middle of 2020, seeing if there was an opportunity do so some Super Rugby in New Zealand. If there was, I would probably go back there and do that. “There are not a lot of jobs in New Zealand so the option could be in club rugby in the Premiership or France or Japan. There is a lot to come before I have to decide and I am really excited about my last Six Nations with Wales. It is a big year and you have got to be up for it. I think we will do well and I am really looking forward to it.” Should he be appointed in the Premiership or Top 14, he would not be released to the Lions as head coach, with reports over the weekend suggesting he is in the frame to reprise the role for a third time. Having overseen a victorious series in Australia and historic draw in New Zealand. Gatland was quoted as saying he had held “informal conversations” over the tour to South Africa in 2021, when what were supposed to be off-the-record remarks at a dinner found their way into the public domain. Gatland has been coaching full-time for 25 years but only four of those were spent in his native New Zealand, with Thames Valley at the outside and Waikato in between his time with Wasps and Wales. He spent five years in Ireland from 1996 on top of his 12 in Wales. “I am really excited about this year because in the 2015 World Cup we struggled with depth,” he said. “We have worked on that and there is now so much more competition that players are more on edge about being selected with youngsters coming through. We are in a healthy spot. I feel very privileged to have coached Wales and had the Principality Stadium as a home ground. There is no better place to play rugby.”Gillette is under fire from men’s rights activists and rightwing publications for a new advertisement that engages with the #MeToo movement and plays on its 30-year tagline “The Best A Man Can Get”, asking instead: “Is this the best a man can get?” The advertisement features news clips of reporting on the #MeToo movement, as well as images showing sexism in films, in boardrooms, and of violence between boys, with a voice over saying: “Bullying, the MeToo movement against sexual harassment, toxic masculinity, is this the best a man can get?” The film has generated heated debate and plenty of criticism. Far-right magazine The New American attacked the advertisement’s message, saying it “reflects many false suppositions”, adding that: “Men are the wilder sex, which accounts for their dangerousness – but also their dynamism.” Among the objections were that the video implied most men were sexual harassers or violent thugs, that it was “virtue-signalling” by a company that doesn’t care about the issue, and that the advertisement was emasculating. I've used @Gillette razors my entire adult life but this absurd virtue-signalling PC guff may drive me away to a company less eager to fuel the current pathetic global assault on masculinity. Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men. https://t.co/Hm66OD5lA4 The advertisement, which runs for nearly two minutes, shows men intervening to stop fights between boys and calling other men out when they say sexually inappropriate things to women in the streets. “We believe in the best in men: To say the right thing, to act the right way. Some already are in ways big and small. But some is not enough. Because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow,” the voiceover says. Released on Sunday, the film’s YouTube page has had 83,000 dislikes and 8,500 likes with many commenters saying they will never buy a Gillette razor again. Insulting most of your own customers by insinuating they're all would-be sexual abusers & creeps has to be one of the most original marketing campaigns in decades. https://t.co/IIXzqEcn3u The ad was directed by Kim Gehrig at the UK-basedproduction agency, Somesuch. Gehrig was behind the 2015 This Girl Can advertising campaign for Sport England and “Viva La Vulva”, an advertisement for Swedish feminine hygiene brand Libresse. Some people took issue with the advertisement because it was directed by a woman. The Conservative Canadian political commentator Ezra Levant wrote: “A shaving ad written by pink-haired feminist scolds is about as effective as a tampon ad written by middle aged men … Count this 30-year customer out.” We don’t need politics with our shave gel. pic.twitter.com/erZowlhdz8 Others have praised the campaign, saying the backlash has shown how necessary a campaign against toxic masculinity is. The comments under the @Gillette toxic masculinity ad is a living document of how desperately society needs things like the Gillette toxic masculinity ad.Seriously: if your masculinity is THAT threatened by an ad that says we should be nicer then you're doing masculinity wrong. The campaign follows other campaigns by major international brands that have dealt with social and political issues. In 2018 Nike ran a campaign featuring NFL star Colin Kaepernick, who drew criticism from Donald Trump for kneeling during the national anthem to protest against racism. Gillette, which is owned by Procter & Gamble, said the advertisement was part of a broader initiative for the company to promote “positive, attainable, inclusive and healthy versions of what it means to be a man”. Gillette wrote on their website: “From today on, we pledge to actively challenge the stereotypes and expectations of what it means to be a man everywhere you see Gillette. In the ads we run, the images we publish to social media, the words we choose, and so much more.” Gillette has also promised to donated $1m per year for three years to non-profit organisations with programs “designed to inspire, educate and help men of all ages achieve their personal “best” and become role models for the next generation”.Priyanka Gandhi, a scion of India’s most powerful dynasty who has rebuffed calls to enter politics for years, has been appointed as an official in the Congress party just months before India’s national polls. The elevation of Gandhi, 47, is the latest chapter for the Nehru-Gandhi family that helped lead India to independence 71 years ago and which has ruled the country for much of the time since. Less than three months before Indians are expected to begin voting in the world’s largest elections, commentators said her formal entry into politics could boost Congress party momentum and refresh a dynasty that some commentators have said is exhausted. Gandhi, who also goes by the surname Vadra since her marriage, has been appointed as the party’s general-secretary for eastern Uttar Pradesh, overseeing an area containing one of the constituencies of the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, in a state of more than 200 million people with the most parliamentary seats on offer. She is considered a more charismatic campaigner than her brother, the current Congress party chief, Rahul Gandhi, with presence and an appearance that are often compared to that of her grandmother Indira Gandhi, a formidable and controversial prime minister, who was assassinated in 1984. Shortly after the announcement on Wednesday, Congress party workers in the Uttar Pradesh capital, Lucknow, held up posters reading: “Indira is back.” “We’re fired up & ready to go!” the party said on its Twitter account under a list of the new appointments, including Gandhi’s. Gandhi, the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Indian prime ministers, has campaigned informally in the family’s ancestral homelands in eastern Uttar Pradesh but has resisted entering politics herself for more than two decades. “Frankly, I’m not sure I’ve figured out why myself,” she said of her reluctance in a 2009 interview. “But I’m very clear I don’t want to be in politics. I’m very happy living my life the way I am. I think there are certain aspects of politics which I’m just not suited to.” Author and journalist Sagarika Ghose, a biographer of Indira Gandhi who has interviewed Priyanka several times, said she had the potential to command voters’ attention in Uttar Pradesh and had particular appeal among women. “A woman Gandhi is a very powerful symbol and Indira Gandhi’s mystique lives on,” she said. “It’s a ballsy move. Let’s face it: she’s striking and photogenic and this is the politics of spectacle.” But she said the next months would also be an unprecedented test of Gandhi’s political skills. “So far she’s been able to just dip her toe in politics and then come out of it and go on holidays,” Ghose said. “Now she has actually taken the plunge and will really have to prove herself.” The ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is likely to use the appointment to sharpen its attack on Congress as a party of nepotism. Modi told party workers after the announcement that for Congress, a family was the party, unlike the BJP, for which the party was family. “The Congress has basically publicly announced that Rahul Gandhi has failed and needs crutches from within the family,” said BJP spokesman Sambit Patra. He said the announcement was intended to boost party morale after the Congress party appeared to be sidelined from an alliance of opposition parties that has formed in recent weeks to take on Modi. “Because of his rejection by grand alliance parties, he has opted for a family alliance,” Patra said. Gandhi’s husband, Robert Vadra, has also been accused of engaging in corrupt land deals by political opponents, allegations he says are baseless but which could be given a fresh airing after Wednesday’s announcement. Modi enters India’s election season appearing as weak as he has ever been while in power after losing three state elections in December and amid wide discontent with an economy that is growing quickly but failing to create enough good jobs to match the aspirations of a young and restless country. But his personal popularity is still thought to be high and no other figure, either within his party or among his opponents, has emerged as a strong alternative leader.Hobbling out to the team bus on crutches with his right foot in a protective boot after a limp defeat to Wolves was hardly the return to action Marko Arnautovic, or West Ham, had hoped for. The striker, anonymous from start to finish for a team who failed to register a shot on target, was helped down the tunnel by coaching staff with 15 minutes left to play with what his manager, Manuel Pellegrini, described as “not an easy injury”. Arnautovic will undergo a scan on Wednesday to determine the extent of the problem. By the time Arnautovic was forced off, Wolves were already cruising courtesy of a Romain Saïss header, before a double by the brilliant Raúl Jiménez put the gloss on a superb performance that lifts Nuno Espírito Santo’s side to seventh. For West Ham, this was another meek display four days after crashing out of the FA Cup to League One’s bottom club, AFC Wimbledon. Gareth Southgate was in attendance, presumably to cast his eye over the Wolves captain, Conor Coady, and Declan Rice, the midfielder undecided over his international future, but West Ham had nothing to shout about with a third consecutive defeat. After two weeks in hiding, Arnautovic, who supposedly had his heart set on playing in Guangzhou until performing a dramatic U-turn and signing a contract extension last weekend, found himself in the harsh surrounds of the Black Country. Arnautovic – ineffective up front alongside Michail Antonio – was one of five West Ham changes with Rice and Felipe Anderson restored to the starting lineup. Arthur Masuaku, Angelo Ogbonna and Issa Diop, who were given the runaround by League One’s lowest scorers on Saturday, all retained their places but were pulled from pillar to post, as Wolves wiped the floor with West Ham. “No shots on target and we conceded three goals, so it was impossible to play worse,” Pellegrini said. “It was the moment to try to find a reaction. We couldn’t do it and we have to review all we are doing, because something we are doing is bad.” Asked about the seriousness of Arnautovic’s injury, sustained following a second-half challenge by Rúben Neves, he added: “I think it will not be an easy injury. I hope he hasn’t any problems but we must review him with an examination. I’m disappointed about that and disappointed because we have just 15 fit players. We don’t have any creative midfielders in this moment with Lanzini, Yarmolenko, Wilshere and Nasri out, so it’s difficult playing so many games with the same 15 players.” Wolves’s wafer-thin squad – they have used just 18 in the Premier League this season, the lowest in the division – continue to deliver, however. It always felt like just a matter of time before they found the net, the only surprise being that rather than a slick opener, their first goal came from a routine corner by João Moutinho. His delivery picked out Saïss, who brushed aside his marker Robert Snodgrass before powering home a bullet header. Jonny – who is set to join Wolves permanently from Atlético Madrid for £18m before Thursday’s transfer deadline – was equally influential on his return to the team. Pellegrini predictably summoned Andy Carroll in response to going a goal behind but things quickly went from bad to worse. Arnautovic headed down the tunnel, seconds before a busy Lukasz Fabianski collided with Matt Doherty, who caught the West Ham goalkeeper attempting to turn home Jiménez’s cross. Fabianski continued but Wolves, who thoroughly outclassed a listless West Ham, deservedly added to their tally, with Jiménez striking home another Moutinho corner before his deft chip over Fabianski sealed victory four minutes from time. As West Ham restarted, the home faithful made it clear to the Wolves hierarchy they would also like Jiménez, on loan from Benfica, to stick around. “These decisions will be made when they have to be made,” Nuno said. “Raul is doing a fantastic job, which goes beyond the goals he scores. The way he plays, his combinations, the way he works, he doesn’t stop he is always giving us our first reaction to losing the ball. But he has to keep on going.”For a man who had just been un-masked as a spy master running a series of agents embroiled in the murky world of “dark-ops”, Marcelo Bielsa cut a remarkably unconcerned technical area figure. The former Argentina manager sees little wrong with snooping on opponents and right now this combination of coaching and reconnaissance seems unbeatable. Bielsa has led Leeds to the top of the Championship where they stand five points clear of second-placed Norwich and 11 ahead of sixth-placed Derby County. To say Frank Lampard’s side were well beaten would be an understatement as goals from Kemar Roofe and Jack Harrison erased memories of a mid-winter blip featuring two successive league defeats. “We lost to the better team,” said Lampard. “There’s no doubt about that but.....” It was a big but too. This will forever be a fixture haunted by memories of the bitter rivalry between Don Revie and Brian Clough and revived some of the dirty tricks detailed in David Peace’s The Damned United. Earlier in the day Derby announced that police had been called to their training ground on Thursday following reports of a man equipped with binoculars, wire cutters and camouflage clothing hovering suspiciously on its boundaries. Bielsa admitted he had sent a member of his backroom staff to spy on Lampard’s preparations, revealing it was a ploy he had deployed ever since his days in charge of Argentina and Chile. Unimpressed, Lampard indicated that he believed it was no coincidence that, shortly before his side lost 4-1 to Leeds at home earlier in the season, a man was spotted lurking in the bushes beside their training complex. “I don’t think that, at any level of sport, it’s right to send men to break into private property,” said Derby’s manager afterwards. “It’s a cultural thing but I was very surprised by it – and by the frank admission he’s done it before. Cheating is a big word but this is over the line. I spent 15 hours watching tapes of Leeds game this week and that’s what the best managers do. I was a fan of Bielsa’s from afar but I’d rather not coach than send people undercover on their hands and knees in the undergrowth.” If MI6 are unlikely to be poaching the “agent” Bielsa dispatched to Derby any time soon, it rather begs the question as to how many other Championship rivals have been spied on since August? Not that Lampard’s defence could use such dubious tactics as an excuse. That quartet should have conceded a penalty following Andre Wisdom’s foul on Ezgjan Alioski but, although the referee pointed to the spot, a linesman had already flagged – controversially – for an offside against Alioski. It was, though, merely a stay of execution. When Scott Carson could only punch Pablo Hernández’s corner towards Jack Clarke, the latter proceeded to sweep beyond Craig Bryson and deliver a superb right-wing cross. It found Roofe in the right place at the right time to lash a first-time volley home. Lampard stared at the ground. His players could barely get out of their own half and frequently seemed overwhelmed by the relentless tempo of Leeds’ high pressing game. At times it was easy to imagine that Bielsa’s team had a couple of extra players on the pitch. Derby were failing to work out the home side’s highly fluid formation – one minute 4-1-4-1 and 3-3-3-1 the next – and kaleidoscopic, opponent perplexing, positional rotation. Alioski not only alternated between left-back and midfield but occasionally centre forward too. His side doubled their advantage at the outset of the second half. Once again Clarke provoked panic on the right and, once again, Carson made less than perfect contact as he misread his looping cross. The goalkeeper’s weak punch travelled only as far as Alioski who played it back in for Harrison to score from close range. Spy-gate may be boiling up but Leeds show few signs of burning out. “I would accept any sanction the club or federation make against me,” said an unrepentant Bielsa. “I respect the morals of the country where I work but I won’t say I won’t do it again. I don’t think I’m a person that cheats. I have done this practice for many years. It’s legal in South America – and England, too, but it doesn’t provoke indignation in South America.”Portugal plans to open dedicated corridors in its airports so British tourists continue to get fast-track access after Brexit whether the UK leaves with or without a deal, the prime minister, António Costa, has said. “Millions of Britons visit Portugal as tourists every year – we have to ensure the flow is not interrupted,” Costa said on Thursday. Faro airport in the Algarve and Funchal on the island of Madeira will operate special lanes for UK visitors similar to those for EU nationals, he said. The prime minister was announcing a package of contingency measures to help the country cope with the consequences of a no-deal Brexit, seen as more likely after MPs decisively rejected Theresa May’s deal this week. He said €50m (£43m) of credit would also be made available to about 2,800 export-focused companies likely to suffer most should Britain crash out of the EU on 29 March, and 60 extra customs officers were to be hired for post-Brexit border checks. The estimated 400,000 Portuguese citizens living in Britain will also be offered improved consular assistance to ease any residence, work or labour problems arising from no deal, he said. Even without a Brexit deal, the estimated 45,000-50,000 British citizens living in Portugal – only 23,000 of whom are officially registered – will be able to retain their residence and other rights, including access to state healthcare and recognition of UK academic qualifications, Costa added. The economy minister, Pedro Siza Vieira, said Portugal was ready to do this unilaterally. “At this moment we do not even know what the UK wants,” he told Reuters. “What every EU member state is doing is adopting measures that allow them to react to a unilateral circumstance.” A record 13 million tourists visited Portugal last year, with Britons the largest single group, but the number of UK visitors fell by almost 10% in the first 10 months of last year as the pound has fallen against the euro amid Brexit concerns. Portugal aims to launch a major promotional campaign targeting Britain in an effort to offset the decline, Siza Vieira said.Studies have suggested that being active can help prevent respiratory infections, but cutting out smoking, reducing alcohol intake and keeping to a healthy diet also help. “Plenty of exercise, good nutrition – keep yourself fit and healthy – and that will keep your immune system strong,” says Peter Barlow, associate professor of immunology and infection at Edinburgh Napier University. Sleep is critical for health, says Aric Prather, associate professor in psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. In a study published in 2013, Prather and colleagues provided 164 individuals with sleep trackers and sleep diaries, exposed them to the common cold and then quarantined them in a hotel for monitoring. After taking into account factors including age, sex, smoking habits and alcohol consumption, the team found that sleep was a factor in who fell ill. “We found that people who get less than six hours of sleep on average are about four times more likely to get the cold than people who sleep more than seven hours,” says Prather. There are about 160 types of rhinovirus, which are behind the majority of common colds, says Barlow: “Anything you can do to avoid exposing yourself to that virus will reduce your chances of catching it.” He says many health agencies advise people to wash hands frequently with soap and water, to avoid touching nose, eyes and mouth with dirty hands, and to stay away from people who are sick. Prof Mieke van Driel, head of primary care and general practice at the University of Queensland, says children get several colds a year because their immune systems are still developing – and they tend to pass the colds on. “Parents of young children are at higher risk than people who don’t get in touch with children a lot, and so staying away from them is probably a good thing.” Presenteeism is on the rise – but if you are oozing snot you may want to consider having a duvet day. “If you are constantly coughing and sneezing, it is probably a good idea not to be around other people, spreading the cold,” says Van Driel. In a recent study, Van Driel and colleagues looked at whether there are any remedies that help with nasal symptoms. For many treatments, the results were inconclusive, but decongestants – either on their own, or with painkillers or antihistamines – appear to help adults. (For young children, nasal irrigation is better.) However, there is little evidence that many popular remedies, such as echinacea and vitamin C, can prevent or treat a cold – plus they can be expensive. “You might as well just take a hot toddy, or a hot lemon and a bit of honey,” says Van Driel. One medicine to avoid, she adds, are antibiotics, which “really don’t work”. Unnecessary prescription is one of the factors fuelling the current antibiotic-resistance crisis. “The immune system in a healthy person is perfectly capable of dealing with colds and most viruses,” says Van Driel. “The cold virus is a benign, self-limiting disease. It is annoying, but it is self-limiting.” She adds that we should have confidence in our bodies to manage pathogens – in the vast majority of cases, even if we do nothing, we will get better.Iran’s merciless persecution of Nazanin Zaghari‑Ratcliffe, the Iranian-British woman held in Tehran’s Evin prison on spurious charges of spying, is deeply disturbing. What possible purpose was served by the airing this week on state television of a video showing her arrest in April 2016, as she prepared to board a plane to London? When accosted by security men, Zaghari-Ratcliffe does not for a moment act guilty. She is not concealing anything. She does not try to run away. She looked then like the person she still is today: frightened, alarmed, uncomprehending and, above all, innocent. Showing this video was the regime’s latest, pathetic effort to justify the unjustifiable. Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not alone, figuratively at least. Her incarceration is part of Iran’s wider war on women’s rights – a war waged with fluctuating intensity by the exclusively male clerical establishment since the 1979 revolution, using legalised gender discrimination, fear and brute force. What of Nasrin Sotoudeh, for example, the valiant human rights lawyer awarded Europe’s 2012 Sakharov prize while locked inside Evin? Sotoudeh helped defend women arrested for defying rules on the wearing of hijab in public, some of whom were attacked with acid. She was jailed again last year and began a hunger strike in November. Or what of Narges Mohammadi, with whom Zaghari‑Ratcliffe also intends to stage a hunger strike inside Evin, beginning on Monday? Mohammadi, originally jailed for “propaganda against the state”, was handed an additional 16-year term in May for campaigning to abolish the death penalty. Like Zaghari‑Ratcliffe, her health has deteriorated and she has been denied adequate medical treatment. Their fate, and that of uncounted other activists, female and male, is uncertain. The regime’s ultra-harsh treatment of dissent breaches Iran’s own laws and its legal obligations under UN covenants. Human Rights Watch reported last month that a crackdown on independent lawyers is escalating. “Now Iran is not only arresting dissidents, human rights defenders and labour leaders, but their lawyers as well,” it said. What the Zaghari-Ratcliffe scandal, and cases involving Iranian nationals such as Sotoudeh, have vividly demonstrated is the willingness of hardline clerics to use any means, however immoral and unjust, to validate their belief that the Islamic Republic is besieged by malevolent western governments scheming counter-revolution. What this unrepresentative yet powerful minority fails to grasp is that they themselves, not women’s rights campaigners or states such as Britain, are the real threat to Iran’s security, prosperity and independence alongside the US. The systemic abuses endured by Zaghari-Ratcliffe confirm all the worst prejudices and stereotypes about Iran peddled by enemies in the Arab Gulf states, Israel and Washington. They invite ostracism and reciprocal bigotry. They open the way to greater violence. It’s plain that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, though old, ailing and underqualified, still casts a reactionary shadow over the regime’s external dealings Every time Donald Trump traduces Iran’s government as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and urges its people to revolt, somebody, somewhere will think of Zaghari‑Ratcliffe or the many other innocents languishing in Iran’s jails, and conclude the US is right to go after the mullahs. Every time the EU defends the breakthrough 2015 nuclear pact against American opposition, the more once supportive western politicians dismayed by regime abuses will question the strategy. The more the public hears of the suffering of those terrorised and tortured in Tehran, the more they may question the policy of engagement, supporting instead a policy of attrition. Sadly, a showdown with the Great Satan and chums is exactly what some hardliners want. If for no other reason, such a catastrophe should be resisted by all means. The real danger Iran now faces emanates not from people such as Zaghari‑Ratcliffe, or the BBC, or even from those within Iran who seek reform, a freer society and a more open politics. It comes from the west’s own fundamentalists: people such as the Iraq war-hawk John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser; Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s bellicose premier; and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. And who in Tehran would give the west’s hardliners the justification they seek to foment regime change? Answer: the very same people whose personal ambition, nationalist rhetoric and heedless cruelty leads them to penalise the likes of Zaghari-Ratcliffe. It’s hard to penetrate the clouds of Tehran’s factional rivalries. But it seems clear that Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s twice‑elected president, the foreign minister Javad Zarif, and like‑minded centrists and “moderates”, are on the back foot – their tentative western outreach torpedoed by American bad faith and sanctions. It’s plain too that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, though old, ailing and underqualified, still casts a reactionary shadow over the regime’s external dealings. It’s unarguably the case that the Revolutionary Guard Corps, personified by the Quds Force general, Qasem Soleimani, wields enhanced influence, in part due to its success in Syria. But it is also evident that Sadegh Amoli Larijani, head of Iran’s powerful judiciary, protege and confidant of Khamenei, and younger brother of the speaker of parliament, is among those principally responsible for Iran’s regressive slide into confrontation. Last week he moved closer to the top of the pile, taking the chairmanship of the expediency council, which advises the supreme leader. An arch-conservative, Larijani is escalating a self‑interested battle with the west. He recently portentously declared Iran to be surrounded by “enemies outside the borders”. He maintains close ties with the security and intelligence agencies. And it is he, more than any other, who controls the fate of Zaghari‑Ratcliffe and other judicial victims, as he showed last month when he dismissed the concerns of Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s foreign secretary. Iran needs saving from men such as Larijani, just as Zaghari-Ratcliffe needs saving from Iran. But, for all our sakes, it is up to Iranians to make the change, calmly, in their own fashion and without outside interference. Let’s hope they act with urgency. • Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentatorOpen Colette’s Wikipedia entry and – just as with one of her novels – you’re hooked right away. “She was a French author and woman of letters, also known as a mime, actress and journalist, nominated for the Nobel prize in literature in 1948.” She wrote more than 30 novels and was called “the greatest living French writer of fiction” by the New York Times, just before her death in 1954. That’s not to mention her status as the ultimate cat lover. Thanks to Colette, feline fans on Instagram have an almost endless supply of quotes for captions (“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet” is a personal favourite). The other accolade missing from that impressive CV? Style icon. Colette, born in 1873, came of age as photography became popularised. When the cheap and easy-to-use Kodak Brownie became available in 1900, she was 27 and already a personality in Paris. She was photographed in thinker’s pose at her desk in a polka dot blouse; lounging with two cats and matching feline eye makeup; smoking in a man’s suit; in black stockings and dancewear backstage before a performance … In almost every picture, her kohl-rimmed eyes meet the viewer’s (and the photographer’s, more than likely a man) with confidence. Colette offers a lesson in how a woman can use style to take ownership of her image – ensuring that she always has the last word. Colette famously drew on her colourful life for her novels, including her experience of being a dancer in music halls (The Vagabond) and having an affair with a much younger man (Chéri and The Last of Chéri); the breakthrough Claudine series was inspired by her school days. The expressive “this is me” shrug of her attitude is just as refreshing today as it was more than a century ago. It cuts through the decades much like her way of wearing men’s tailoring – in soft velvet with lashings of eye makeup and jaunty neckscarves. Colette, the new biopic in cinemas this week with Keira Knightley in the title role, focuses on the author’s formative years. Growing up in the Burgundy countryside, she met Henry Gauthier-Villars AKA Willy, a controversial author and socialite who was an acquaintance of her father’s. He was 14 years her senior; they married in 1893. As the film tells it, Colette used fashion as a way to express her transformation from a country girl in frills and long plaits to Parisian It-girl with a bob and a trouser suit (sidenote: Knightley’s leg of mutton blouses and cropped boleros could also work in 2019). Andrea Flesch, the film’s costume designer, says Colette’s style reflected not only her journey, but also the shifts in society at the turn of the century. “This period changed quite often; the shapes changed every two or three years,” says Flesch. “It was a very interesting time in fashion, the 1890s-1910s.” Colette, however, had her own style. “She was as free [with clothes] as she was in everything.”This was the era when Colette was busy writing down the memories of her school days as the Claudine novels. While these were credited as being by Willy, they were bestsellers – spawning everything from Claudine-branded soap to dolls of the character and a a proto-Britney Spears fashion for grown-up women to wear the black-and-white schoolgirl uniforms of the era. Colette wrote the words but Willy saw the commercial opportunities. “He was a huge marketing man, really amazing,” says Flesch. “It seems so modern for such a long time ago.” The author herself was no slouch when it came to branding, either. Born Sidonie-Gabrielle, she became known by only her surname while she was still at school, recognising way before Madonna that a single moniker announces your importance from the get-go. After she separated from Willy, who famously plagiarised his wife, in 1906, this approach helped her as she became a giant of French literature. Those taking style inspiration from novelists such as Colette reflect a wider, more highbrow trend in fashion: US novelist Joan Didion featured in a Celine campaign in 2015; French New Wave director Agnès Varda is the cover star of The Gentlewoman autumn edition, while painter Georgia O’Keefe’s personal style was featured in the New Yorker last year. Terry Newman, in the coffee table book Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore, describes how Colette used clothes to “radiate character, both in her own life and in the lives of the characters she created in her writing”. That influence has endured in some surprising ways, from retail to Hollywood: she lent her name to Colette, the cult Parisian boutique that became an industry favourite before closing after 20 years in 2017. And Colette discovered Givenchy muse Audrey Hepburn, casting the almost-unknown actor in the stage version of her novel Gigi in 1951. Always in the avant garde, Colette was also a pioneer in her acceptance of androgyny and sexuality that was, then, taboo: the film shows the author’s relationship with aristocrat Mathilde de Morny, or Missy, who was gay and wore men’s clothes. Flesch says Missy changed Colette’s style – a moment dramatised in the biopic when Knightley wears a pair of cycling culottes to stroll around a Parisian park. “Wearing trousers was a statement from Missy,” says Flesch. “She was scandalous, and she was accepted because she was a noblewoman and rich. Colette wanted to show she was on the same level. She wanted to shock as well.” Style isn’t a footnote of Colette’s legacy, it’s a central part of it. Sixty-five years after her death, her influence extends beyond your bookshelf, Instagram captions and cinema: Colette’s free spirit is inspiring our wardrobes, too. Colette is released in the UK this weekIn the summer of 2015 Charly Clive started to feel faint. Not ill, never ill, but odd. Wrong. Her periods had stopped, and she lived in New York in a fog of pregnancy scares – finishing drama school and working as a nanny, she was putting off an expensive medical bill. So it wasn’t until she was home in her parents’ Oxfordshire village for Christmas that she finally decided to investigate – first with a trip to the optician, to ask about the blind spot in her peripheral vision, and then a blood test with her GP. By the time she was admitted to hospital, aged 23, her brain tumour was the size of a golf ball. Her blind spot was a pituitary adenoma, and she’d been staring at it for five months. “I’d never been sick,” she says. “I was fine. Except, that whole year I’d felt numb. More sarcastic than usual, quite cynical, rather than my usual irritating optimism. Turns out, because the tumour was on my pituitary gland, I couldn’t regulate emotion. I didn’t crack a single joke in 2015.” We are meeting three years later, and a redirected plane means Charly’s return home from New York this time has already involved a taxi to London from Liverpool and the misplacing of all her luggage. Nevertheless, she’s chirpy and delightful, ordering wine in her only clothes this side of the Atlantic. She talks about waking up on an intensive care ward in the tone of a bawdy anecdote. “I asked the nurse: ‘Where’s Britney?’ And she was like, ‘Is that your sister?’” She thought Charly was talking about her best friend Ellen Robertson, who’d moved in with Charly’s family upon diagnosis, and was responsible, in hospital, for serving tea and high spirits. “But I explained: ‘No, that’s the name of my tumour.’” At which the nurse, “the very sweet nurse”, smiled kindly and moved on. As she recovered from her operation (and, after Britney’s return, the subsequent radiotherapy), she and Ellen contemplated alternative diagnoses. What if instead of a tumour, she’d gone into the doctor’s and he’d told her there was a small Welsh village living on her pituitary gland, and unfortunately it would disrupt too many lives and traditions to displace it? What if when she walked into the room, it was a detective agency, and she was being sent on a secret mission? What if it was a Hollywood office, with two producers pitching a sitcom called Tumour Humour? She was laughing for the first time in months. Her parents were delighted. So, when she and Ellen started writing it up into a sketch show (“We played every part including the tumour”), her dad suggested they take it to Edinburgh that summer. At home, they started rehearsing Britney, the dark and life-changing story of Charly’s tumour. But, funny? At that point, she didn’t know that Britney would change her life twice. Last year, casting for a lead to play a girl with OCD in Channel 4’s drama Pure, producer Jen Kenwood auditioned hundreds of actors. Nobody was right. Handling the complex disorder – “pure O”, a controversial term used to describe patterns of repetitive thoughts and disturbing mental images – the actors all veered towards melodrama. And then she happened upon a clip of Charly online, an unagented, unknown comedian describing Britney, which was now touring the UK after selling out Edinburgh. “When Charly auditioned we knew she was the one,” says Kenwood, partly because “her own personal experience of being ill was a resource that she could tap into.” Pure is inspired by Rose Cartwright’s memoir – Rose cried when she saw Charly’s audition tape: “She connected with the suffering and the humour in a natural way.” The first episode opens in Scotland at an anniversary party while, mid-speech, she tries to fight the images that swell inside her head. The hall becomes a writhing mass of bodies: her mother, her father, her grandma, her friends, no longer politely sipping white wine in their best cardigans, instead heaving into each other in a sweaty orgy. She needs to escape. Moving the next day to London, into a school friend’s cupboard, she fumbles through a series of crises to gather a ragged new gang around her, including a porn addict and deceptively cheery HR manager, and tries to work out what’s wrong with her. Even in the most stressful of situations, she must try not to imagine the room naked. Charly's experience of being ill was a resource she could tap into. Since she was 15, Rose had been consumed by violent sexual thoughts, self-harming and becoming suicidal, questioning, at times, whether she was a paedophile. After self-diagnosing with OCD, she launched into a journey of therapies, first with a counsellor who tried to get her to come to terms with a presumed latent homosexuality, then with psychodynamic therapy, where she was encouraged to analyse the root of her thoughts. It made her worse. Eventually she received cognitive restructuring therapy, and found an OCD specialist in New York who gave her therapy on Skype, in which she was exposed to explicit sexual images. “I was a studious patient,” Rose writes, “diligently watching porn three times a day for months and months. I watched so much porn I could identify the production company by the luxuriance of pubic muffs.” Gradually, her life became more manageable, though unlike the narrative arc of a TV series, Rose’s story has no clear happy ending. “The global story bias has no truck with the grinding tenacity of mental illness,” she writes in Pure. “When was the last time you saw a drawn-out soap opera storyline in which someone spent years bottling something up before finally mustering the strength to confide in a loved one, and then literally NOTHING CHANGED?” And yet as an account of the terrifying slog of OCD, her memoir was welcomed as a valuable reminder of how tightly mental illness is sewn into the human experience, and how getting better can mean many things. “I was apprehensive,” admits Charly. “It was my first job. And I was worried about getting it wrong – I’d always thought OCD was washing your hands a lot, I didn’t understand the weight of it. It was only when I talked to Rose about her intrusive thoughts that I had any real concept of what she’d been going through.” Charly has always had a tic, of sorts: she has always grinned when she’s uncomfortable. She did it when the doctor told her she was sick; she did it when rehearsing a therapy scene in Pure. She’s grinning now. “Sometimes I get a look from my mum that says, ‘Please don’t do another joke.’ But when the humour goes away, that’s when you’re asking someone for help. It’s very British to open with a joke, isn’t it? And I could relate to that with my tumour stuff – you want it to be easy for everyone else, so you don’t tell the whole truth. I didn’t want anyone to worry, or treat me differently… Deflecting with goofiness.” Rose did the same with her own OCD. “I acted a character most of my 20s, to hide what was inside,” she tells me. “Anyone who’s concealed a mental health problem will relate to that. Charly acts a girl acting her way through life, acting within acting. It takes real subtlety and emotional intelligence to do that.” ‘This is not a crazy, hectic sexual rollercoaster. It’s horrible insecurity’ Watching her pain revisited has had an unexpected effect on Rose, largely because of Charly’s empathic portrayal. “It’s been curiously healing to see Charly reimagining familiar emotions on set. She’s brought so much likability and nuance to such a fucked-up character; she’s helped me see myself with more objectivity and kindness. She’ll do that for many others, too.” As Charly has discovered, pure O (a term which OCD UK avoids, saying it’s imprecise as no forms of OCD are “purely obsessional”) is difficult to talk about without making people panic. “People suffering just think they’re a deviant and often never discover how to manage it.” And if they do start to describe the wetlands of their minds, the violent sexual thoughts upon the sight of somebody eating a banana, the images that flash through their minds upon meeting a friend’s new baby, it’s another jump to explain: “This is not a crazy, hectic sexual rollercoaster, it’s horrible insecurity and obsessive compulsive disorder. Even when you take those words individually they’re horrifying. Put them together and combine them with the sexual thoughts, it’s an awful taboo cocktail. How can that be funny?” She pauses, finishing her drink. “Because people are funny.” And then, of course, she grins. Pure starts on Channel 4 on 30 January at 10pmThe NFL’s annual Black Monday, when teams routinely fire coaches as the regular season ends, left the league with a dwindling number of minority coaches. Of the eight coaches who left their position this season, five were minorities: Steve Wilks, Marvin Lewis, Vance Joseph, Hue Jackson and Todd Bowles. One, Wilks, was fired after only one year on the job.While some of those five may well be replaced by other minority coaches, the firings put the league in a difficult position. Roger Goodell, to his credit, has made the advancement of minority coaches one of the crucial issues during his run as NFL commissioner. The Rooney Rule, which requires all teams to interview a minority candidate for its openings at head coach and general manager, has been tweaked and improved. Several teams have adopted internship programs for ex-players looking to start a coaching career, and the league itself has plowed more resources into the development of minority coaches. Still: in a sport where a majority – close to 70% – of the players are black, the NFL now has only three minority head coaches: Mike Tomlin and Anthony Lynn, who are African American, and Ron Rivera, who is Hispanic.Two things can be true at once: there are not enough minority coaches in the NFL, and each of the firings on Monday was justified and reasonable given what we know about job security in football. Joseph strung together back-to-back losing seasons, the first time the Broncos have suffered that ignominy since the early 1970s. Bowles led the Jets to a 24-40 record in his four seasons in New York. Jackson went 3-36-1 in 40 games with the Cleveland Browns. Lewis spent 16 years in Cincinnati, failing to advance the Bengals beyond the opening round of the playoffs, an almost impressively bad accomplishment.Without context, Wilks’ firing may seem the harshest: plenty of teams struggle in a coach’s debut season. They’re often afforded more time, even if only for team leadership to save some face. But Wilks’ Cardinals weren’t just bad, they were historically awful. Besides, impatience rules in the NFL: the Titans fired Mike Munchak after just one season and a lackluster playoff run. The bigger issue at hand is who is making the hiring-firing decisions, and why that puts minority coaches at a disadvantage when they attempt to jump to head coaching gigs. As of now, there will be only one minority general manager heading into the 2019 coaching cycle, and it is general managers who play a huge part in hiring head coaches. Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie was fired last month, and legendary Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome is retiring at the end of the season, handing the reins to his longtime assistant Eric DeCosta, who is white. That leaves Chris Grier as the minority general manager in the NFL: he was promoted by the Miami Dolphins on Monday.Diversity at the decision-making level is what will ultimately lead to diversity on the sidelines. “Hiring is more than just a process of skills sorting,” wrote Kellogg School of Management professor Lauren Rivera in a 2014 study. “It is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms. Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but culturally similar to themselves.” Decision-makers are more likely to hire those who look like them, sound like them, run in the same social circles, or have the same social experiences. The NFL currently has two minority owners. When a person of color walks into a job interview in the NFL, there is a very good chance that they will see a bunch of white faces who have lived different social experiences.So much of this industry revolves around close, personal relationships. Twenty-two of the league’s 32 teams have been owned by the same person or family for at least 20 years. They all have coaches and executives they are particularly connected to. Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis didn’t hire Jon Gruden because he was the best person for the job. He did so because he liked him. And Gruden didn’t oust McKenzie and hire Mike Mayock as his GM because Mayock has a more illustrious track record as a team builder. He did it because he and Mayock share the same sensibilities. In the past, this has worked to aid some minority candidates, too. Tony Dungy, who became the first black head-coach to win the Super Bowl when the Colts beat the Bears in 2007, has long been an advocate for fellow minorities. Dungy populated his own staffs with minority coaches and has consistently used his profile in the game to bring attention to the issue of diversity. And it’s worked. Dungy and his former assistants account for a staggering 43% of minority head coaching hires over the past two decades and 39% since the Rooney Rule took effect. That is both sad and encouraging – the same nepotism rules seem to apply to all. Dungy empowered minority assistants, who subsequently went on to become head honchos and empower their own assistants. But there aren’t too many minority coaches with Dungy’s prestige walking around. The NFL tweaked its rules last year in a bid to prevent the kind of Gruden-Davis backroom deal. Owners are now required to sit in on all head coaching interviews. And gone are the days of the sham, in-house interviews with a person of color, meant only to satisfy the logistics of the Rooney Rule and not the spirit. Goodell and the league office, in a rare moment of leadership, understood the difficult position they were putting such minority coaches in. “You are really stuck between a rock and a hard place,” a former African American NFL head coach told CBS Sports in 2016. “You have the pressure from the Fritz Pollard Alliance to take any interview you are offered ‘for the good of the cause,’ even if you felt like you are just being used. So you don’t want to let them down.” The league changed the language of the rule. Now owners and decision-makers are required to interview an out-of-house candidate or someone from the league’s pre-approved list: the NFL’s Career Developmental List. It is a far from perfect solution. But it is a start. One additional issue is the profile of head coaches teams are hiring. More and more they are hiring offensive assistants and quarterback coaches: 15 of the last 20 head coaching hires have had an offensive background. And coaches specializing in offense are overwhelmingly white. In 2018, there were 14 minority coordinators in the NFL, and only two were offensive coordinators. As such, this becomes a fairly simple equation: owners want flashy, exciting hires. An explosive offense is considered more exciting than a feisty defense. There are more white offensive coaches than minority ones. There are more white executives than minorities. People hire candidates with similar backgrounds. Therefore, more white coaches are hired than minority ones, regardless of the make-up of the league generally. All minority candidates have asked for is a fair chance to compete for the top jobs in their sport. To get there, the NFL needs to rethink its model. The Rooney Rule has helped progress, but it remains a flawed rule. Improving diversity at the executive level, and getting more minority coaches into offensive coaching positions is the only way forward.Just over a week ago, the Indonesian volcano Anak Krakatau blew its top, losing about two-thirds of its height. Most of this 150m cubic metres of rock is thought to have slid into the sea in one go, generating a tsunami that killed more than 400 people. Tsunami warning systems are in place around Indonesia, but they are tailored to earthquake tsunamis, triggering only if an earthquake and large wave are detected. “Recognising a landslide tsunami is much harder. The time between detection and the tsunami coming ashore is likely to be very short, so it is hard to make the system effective,” says Dave Petley, a landslide expert at the University of Sheffield. Volcano flank collapses are common and can be gigantic: prehistoric landslides from the Canary Islands have been over 100bn cubic metres. They probably didn’t slide in one go, but there will still have been very large tsunami waves locally. All active volcanoes near the sea – of which there are many – present a potential landslide tsunami risk. Sadly it is too late for Anak Krakatau, but installing movement sensors on other vulnerable volcanoes, and monitoring with satellite, could help give warning and save lives in future.Remember when Boris Johnson was telling you that Germany would force the EU to accept almost any conditions for Brexit – basically, Britain having its cake and eating it, too – because “they need us more than we need them”? Didn’t happen. But, in desperate Brexit times the hope for a deus ex machina to solve the whole damn thing persists. Recently, there have been more suggestions that Angela Merkel will somehow rescue Theresa May by offering Britain a new and better deal. That isn’t going to happen either. Here’s why. First, back to Johnson. He argued that Germany wanted to export cars to Britain, so it would make sure that Britain and Europe had free access to each other’s markets no matter what. True, Britons bought 768,896 German cars in 2017, almost every fifth car Germany exported. But car exports to Britain were down by 3%, whereas exports to China and Japan were up by 11% and 14% respectively. May talks about “global Britain”, but Germany thinks globally, too, and in the scheme of things, Asia and the US are more important. And by the way, while British politicians were bickering about whether the country should belong to a customs union, which supposedly stops Britain from striking free trade deals with “global partners”, the EU signed a free trade agreement with Japan which should bring Germany export gains of €8.6bn a year. And talking about cars, German carmakers may not be happy about the prospect of Britain crashing out of the EU on 29 March or leaving the customs union in a couple of years, but those are blips compared to their real preoccupations: the diesel crisis and the rise of self-driving and interconnected electric cars. VW’s CEO Matthias Müller wants to transform Volkswagen “from an automaker into a globally leading mobility provider”, and other German carmakers are following suit. Just a couple of days ago, Donald Trump announced proudly that VW would be building a state-of-the-art plant for electric cars in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Not in Crewe. VW has a European supply chain: your “German engineered” car might have a Polish engine, a Spanish body, Italian seats and other components from Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. European integration and just-on-time delivery is essential for VW’s competition with Toyota. Selling cars to Britain isn’t. But it’s about so much more than cars. Take a look at the map, and you’ll see why German politicians – except for a few on the far right and the far left – are integrationists. Germany has land borders with nine countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland and Denmark – and they are all open. (Switzerland is not an EU member, but belongs to the Schengen passport-free area.) With populist parties in power or on the rise in many of these countries, Merkel’s government has zero incentive to offer Britain the kind of deal-sweetener that populists could point to as proof that leaving the EU needn’t be so bad after all. Germany doesn’t want to punish Britain, although there is a certain amount of schadenfreude floating about in Berlin. But the prospect of nine different border regimes subject to the whims of nationalist parties is much more frightening than anything coming out of London. It wasn’t pure bleeding-heart whimsy that led Merkel to keep the borders open at the height of the refugee crisis. Trucks piling up at border crossings while factories send workers home is something no German leader wants to see on TV. Merkel has far more existential worries than Brexit, something she has resigned herself to. Internationally, there’s the rise of China, Russian military aggression in the Ukraine and cyber-attacks on Europe, the trade war with the US and Trump’s isolationism and volatility. Within the EU, Merkel’s main ally, French president Emmanuel Macron, has been weakened, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is stirring up trouble, and there’s an unlikely but vocal Polish-Italian axis of Brussels-bashers. At home, 2019 will see the Eurosceptic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) challenge Merkel’s Christian Democrats in three regional elections and the election to the European parliament. The AfD is demanding “Dexit” if the EU won’t devolve itself back into a loose club of free-trading nations. The chancellor is not going to help the British achieve a status that might look like the AfD’s model for Europe, especially as the feeling is growing in Berlin that “they need us more than we need them” and that Europe can afford to wait. And this is precisely what Merkel is saying. “There is still time for negotiations,” she told the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee after the Commons voted down May’s deal, “but it’s up to the prime minister to tell us how things are going to move forward.” Meanwhile, her finance minister, Olaf Scholz from the Social Democrats, tweeted that a hard Brexit would be the worst option, but: “We are well prepared.” Brexiteers should take him at his word. • Alan Posener, a German blogger, writes for Die Welt and Welt am SonntagFor progressives, there are good reasons to be suspicious of the idea that former prosecutors make good politicians. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and its criminal punishment system disproportionately punishes poor people and people of color. Prosecutors have a leading role in sustaining this injustice, in part because they tend to view prisons as solutions to social problems. That worldview is fully on display in recently-unearthed video footage of Kamala Harris, defending her decision to criminally prosecute parents for their children’s truancy. In the video, taken at the Commonwealth Club in 2010 when Harris was District Attorney of San Francisco, Harris says that because “a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime,” she decided to treat parents with absentee children as criminals. Kamala Harris at an event hosted by the Commonwealth Club in 2010, explaining her decision as San Francisco DA to get tough on truancy. Critics of truancy crackdowns say such efforts unfairly target poor parents and children without actually helping students. pic.twitter.com/GKkDpayxuv Harris cheerfully recounts the story of sending an attorney from her office to intimidate a homeless single mother whose children were missing school. She smiles as she recalls how she instructed her subordinates to “look really mean” so that the mother would take the threat of jail seriously. In separate footage, Harris mocks those on the left who say things like “build schools, not jails” and “put more money into education, not prisons,” suggesting they are naive sloganeers who do not understand crime prevention. Here we see the limits of the “prosecutorial mindset.” Like the old slogan “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” when all you have is the ability to bring criminal charges, everything looks like a crime. Harris looked at the problem of perpetual truancy and believed she ought to start locking up parents. A humane progressive looks at the problem and asks: why do absences actually occur? Truancy occurs disproportionately among children whose parents are poor and less-educated, and among children who don’t feel safe at school, who have to work or support their families, who have mental and physical health issues, and who are in unstable living situations. Given the social reality, the idea of fining or jailing parents over student absences is both cruel and unwise. It targets the poorest and most desperate parents, and it doesn’t actually address the root causes. Even if it succeeds in reducing truancy rates, it inflicts yet more burdens on the most vulnerable people in society. But it’s not even clear that it succeeds even by its own standard, with research suggesting that “although truancy proceedings can increase a child’s school attendance in the short term, answering to a judge for school absence does not help students graduate from high school or avoid crime.” What’s striking about Harris’ talk is that she doesn’t seem at all aware of the socioeconomic implications of her policy. She admits that when she proposed jailing parents, members of her staff thought it was a terrible idea. But she laughs about it. In a 2009 op-ed about her efforts, Harris brags about the reductions in truancy rates she achieved through harsher “accountability” practices, but she doesn’t discuss the potential downsides to a child’s development of putting their parents in jail for up to a year, nor does she think much about who the likely targets of her policy would be. The human consequences here can be truly devastating. In 2014, a mother in Pennsylvania named Eileen DeNino died in jail, having been imprisoned for failing to pay fines for her children’s truancy. According to the lawsuit filed by DeNino’s family, jail staff knew DeNino had uncontrolled high blood pressure but denied her access to medication. The policy that Harris championed can literally kill mothers. Harris’ record as a prosecutor has already been criticized heavily. As Lara Bazelon wrote in the New York Times, “when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms... Ms Harris opposed them or stayed silent,” and she “fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct.” But the new videos show something even more disturbing: Harris has no awareness of what the criminal justice system truly means in the lives of the poor, and she believes that jail has an important place in education policy. She speaks proudly of using the “big stick” that prosecutors have, but doesn’t realize that this “big stick” is used to beat people into submission through threatening them with being caged and even killed. It is an inhumane approach to social policy, and it’s not the sort of thinking that any progressive who cares about criminal justice reform should be willing to stomach. Nathan Robinson is the editor of Current AffairsThe origin of this dish is a tapas bar in Barcelona’s Boqueria food market, Pinotxo (named after its twinkly-eyed owner). For me, it epitomises the kind of peasant-style food I love, using humble ingredients of the best quality. Pinotxo uses wonderful dried chickpeas from a neighbouring stall, which are plump and succulent when cooked. As for the sauce, the black pudding melts into a silky, mineral-rich ragu. If you can, buy dried chickpeas from a specialist supplier – you will be amazed at their quality. Ditto the black pudding. This recipe is at least thrice the sum of its parts. Soak OvernightPrep 15 minCook 1 hr 30 minServes 4 300g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight75ml extra-virgin olive oil2 red onions, peeled and finely sliced1 leek, finely slicedSalt and black pepper3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped2-3 fresh bay leaves1 x 400g tin plum tomatoes150g black pudding, roughly chopped¾ tsp ground cinnamon1 heaped tsp smoked paprika2-3 tbsp sherry vinegar150g baby spinachLemon wedges, to serve Drain the soaked chickpeas, then cover with plenty of cold water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 40‑50 minutes, until tender, then add half a teaspoon of salt to the water, stir and leave to cool. (If you haven’t had time to soak them overnight, add one teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to their cooking water, and simmer for approximately 80 minutes, until tender.) Warm the oil in a wide, deep pan over a medium-high heat, and add the onions and leek. Season generously, and fry gently for a few minutes before turning the heat down to medium and cooking until the vegetables soften, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and bay, and cook for another few minutes, then add the tomatoes, black pudding, cinnamon, paprika and two tablespoons of vinegar. Break up the black pudding with a spoon, then cook for 15 minutes, leaving the ingredients to bubble away together gently. Drain the chickpeas, reserving a cup of the cooking water, then fold into the sauce. Taste, and adjust the seasoning, then continue to simmer for another five to 10 minutes, allowing the flavours to mingle. Add a little cooking water if the sauce looks too dry, and the remaining vinegar if it needs more sparkle. When you are ready to eat, stir in the spinach and cook for a few minutes, until it has wilted into the sauce. Serve in bowls with lemon wedges, a slosh of extra-virgin olive oil and bread to mop up the sauce. This ragu is also good with rice, pasta (I like pappardelle), a green salad or, best of all, homemade patatas bravas. Consider cooking double the amount of chickpeas and freezing half, ready to whip out of the freezer for a midweek fix. Fry any leftover black pudding until golden, and toss in a salad of bitter leaves and crisp bacon, topped with a poached egg.Over the last few years, an unusual and conspicuous sight has become commonplace in the cafes and eateries of Sydney’s inner suburbs: Frequency H20 Alkaline Spring Water. The water, which costs AUD$3.30 per 1 litre bottle, proclaims to be infused with the sound, light and literal frequencies of three very abstract “flavours”: Love (528Hz), Lunar (210.42Hz) and Rainbow (430-770THz). Last year, Love became the first Australian water in nearly three decades to place first in the best bottled water category of the prestigious Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting. Its creator, Sturt Hinton (not a typo; he’s ironically named after the desert), meets me in his local vegan fish and chip shop. It’s one of 400 stores he personally delivers his product to whenever stocks run low. “It’s about lifting the spirits of the world, you know what I mean? And lifting my spirits,” he says. He was inspired to create Frequency H20 after a lengthy bout of crippling depression. “Just bringing delight to people, and it delivers this promise to consumers through having something so high quality and people can taste it. They can feel the difference. It’s clean, it’s light, they just love it. They love the idea. What a wonderful concept. Beautiful water.” The story of Frequency H20 was enough to pique the interest of Katy Perry (whose management requested it during her recent Witness tour), Paris Hilton (now following @frequencyh2o) and the Veronicas, who share their appreciation online with such vigour they could be unofficial brand ambassadors. Following this year’s Berkeley Springs victory, the Australian government at large even took note, with Austrade selecting it for the official Commonwealth Games showcase. Though he claims to have invested $100,000 in its development, Hinton is unwilling to discuss the unique device he claims he designed (“It’s not like Coke is going to give up their trade secret.”) that produces his water by harnessing “the incredible natural alchemy of energised molecules”. He does acknowledge this nebulous air of naturopathy is central to its appeal. That and the trending but increasingly dubious belief that alkaline water is better for you than regular tap water. In the luxury water business, a free good is repackaged and resold as aspirational. “I think it’s like the most marketable thing ever invented,” Hinton says. The core of this concept of “fine water” might seem like a new phenomenon, but in fact it dates back to the Roman empire, where certain aqueducts were preferred, or even considered divine, and natural carbonated water was imported from Germania in earthen jars. The industrial revolution would literally poison the well, as drinking water became a vector for diseases like typhus and cholera. The rich could afford to have unspoiled water delivered from remote sources; poor people simply died until municipal chlorination in the early 20th century helped people live longer. Bottled or otherwise, there are now more people on earth consuming more water than ever before, and climate change just might be contributing to an increasing dearth of it with longer and more intense droughts. The story of water, then, is the story of the world – and the luxury industry is cashing in. Hinton’s frequency-infused industry darlings are just the tip of the iceberg. Some premium waters such as Svalbarði, sold locally for A$115 per 750ml bottle, are literally made from icebergs harvested on expeditions to the Arctic Ocean. Water bottles with crystals in them and crystal-infused water like that of Australia’s Madam Dry (A$49.99 per 12 pack) are trends within a trend, inspired by Instagram’s wilderness of “wellness”, the regimens of Miranda Kerr and there’s that naturopathy again: Madam Dry lists what astrological sign the moon was traveling through when “brewing” commenced. Premium, luxury or fine water has even co-opted much of the wine industry’s terminology – “varietal”, “mouthfeel” “terroir” – as well as introducing some of its own. “Total dissolved solids”, for instance, is a measurement scale unique to understanding why and how a water tastes and even feels the way it does. Water from the Fiji Islands, with its TDS of 222, is said to be smooth and velvety. Water like Vichy Catalan from Spain, with its TDS of 3054, is said to be extremely salty and complex. The phenomenon isn’t particularly new. In 2005, “water sommelier” Martin Riese caught the attention of the media when he created a water menu at Berlin’s First Floor restaurant after a guest complained about the taste of the water on offer. By 2008 he’d published Die Welt des Wassers (The World of Water); in 2010 he was certified by the German water trade association; and in 2013 he landed in Los Angeles, after receiving an O-1 visa for his “extraordinary knowledge of water”. As the country’s first certified water sommelier, he launched a 45-page water menu at Ray’s & Stark Bar. Two days later, he was a national curiosity, covered on Good Morning America, Fox News and CNN, and even interviewed by television science presenter Bill Nye. He opened a $100,000 bottle of water for a tasting with Diplo and 2Chainz. He appeared on late night host Conan O’Brien’s show in September 2013. “Pretty much every day, I have people rolling their eyes when they hear the words ‘water sommelier,’ and when I even tell them that I can match water to food, more eye-rolling starts,” Reiss says. But, he stresses, he is driven by a loftier goal. “I want to give value to water. When people understand that water is not just water, they might rethink their use of water. “Here in America, people do not even know anymore where the water is coming from. They think that a purified water is the same as spring water. Purified water finds mostly its origin in the municipal water system, so it’s actually tap water, which is already processed then filtered and with very small amounts of minerals added. The end product is a highly processed beverage from a factory. On the other hand, you have waters which are coming from a natural occurring source, like a spring, glacial, aquifer and so on. These waters are barely treated and you can actually taste the water’s origin. In wine terms, you would call it terroir.” There had been five schools around the world where it was possible to become a certified water sommelier: two in Germany (one being the prestigious and original Doemens), one in Italy, one in China and one in South Korea. On 1 August last year, Riese established a sixth in the United States with his business partner and Fine Water Society founder, Michael Mascha. They recently certified their first water sommelier in Myanmar after three months of online courses, a verbal examination and a final project. Mascha says most people in the industry would consider him an early catalyst for what the market now considers fine water. His own origin story has a familiar flavour: like Hinton, water saved him. In 2002, he says, his doctor told him “you can live or continue drinking alcohol”. He founded the Fine Water Society that same year, a sprawling, invite-only index of fine water from around the world that serves to define, explain and promote the ever-swelling industry. Here in America, people do not even know anymore where the water is coming from “The water we are drinking is actually older than our planet,” Mascha says – and that in-built cosmic intrigue lends itself to all kinds of stories. “We see a lot of claims around water. Microstructured, wetter, smaller molecules, alkalinity, frequency … those are all marketing messages created as there is no other story to tell,” he says. “There is no source or history to the water. It comes from a factory and the stories are made up to confuse. “Michael Pollan, a USA-based food writer, famously believes: ‘When it says “healthy” on the package, it is probably not.’ Great water,” Mascha continues, “comes from unspoiled sources and they are usually remote.” Jamal Qureshi’s Svalbarði water, for instance, is made of ice gathered from the glaciers in Kongsfjorden, part of the titular Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. That A$115 bottle might seem exorbitant to the layperson but it is far from the most expensive fine water on the market. That honour goes to Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani, a bottle of which sold for the jawdropping sum of £39,357 for 750ml in 2010, making it the most expensive bottle of water in the world according to Guinness, thanks in no small part to the bottle itself being 24-carat gold. Svalbarði, meanwhile, has drawn an incredible amount of attention to itself with a fable of production the envy of any winemaker. Qureshi stumbled over the Svalbard region when he was young and travelling; obtaining water from it is “an extreme logistical and cost challenge” which he saw as marketing potential for a “brand that stands out to consumers”. “Having a bottle that could match the story and be worth a purchase almost in and of itself was also critical. People have a ‘wow’ moment when they see it. Then when they see pictures of the ice gathering it is always a second ‘wow’ moment.” Qureshi, who holds regular water tastings, explains that as with anything we put in our mouths, smell, taste and feel are vital. “Proper water should generally not have smell, which tends to be a sign of taint that is not good. Odourless is best. Mouthfeel is the other major component. From super light, airy, and smooth like Svalbarði, to creamy textures, to very mineral-heavy waters that start to almost have a tangible, ‘solid’ feel in the mouth. Carbonation obviously has a huge impact on mouthfeel as well, from very gentle bubbles to big and bold ones.” Qureshi sees a social responsibility in his work too. “We aren’t gathering sea ice,” he says of Svalbarði. “The icebergs are carved off of freshwater glaciers. Obviously we are gathering them from the sea and as such we are constantly reminded of the problems of rising sea levels and plastic pollution in particular.” Because of the latter, they use glass bottles; because of the former, they are carbon neutral, and are “now going carbon negative, so that each bottle will help actually preserve a piece of the Arctic ice cap.” Qureshi recently moved his family from the States to Svalbard, close to where the whales now sing more deeply to hear each other over the noise of melting icebergs. “Living in Svalbard these issues have become very personal. I walk on the beach here in the middle-of-nowhere Arctic and pass by discarded plastic fishing nets that have washed in from the middle of the Atlantic. We live daily with freakishly warm temperatures, for this part of the world anyway, and I watch how the glacier fronts are retreating. I talk to old-timers and see their pictures of how the fjords used to freeze and no one could get a ship in here for five months in the winter. Now the local fjord hasn’t frozen in a decade and it rained this past January when it should have been -20C.” Water sommelier Reise also sees himself as an advocate for a vital resource. “By promoting fine water, I hope I can do my part to protect areas around the world and open people’s mind that water is so much more than just a commodity.” He cites his involvement with Viva Con Agua, a charity in Hamburg that seeks to improve drinking water in developing nations. “I fight for people who don’t have access to clean and safe drinking water. I hope I can spark conversations with my water menu about the topic of water in general. The more we know about water the more we will protect it.”Four years into his trying second stint at McLaren, Fernando Alonso might have lacked the machinery to win but the desire was patently as strong as ever. Now, having bid farewell to Formula One at the end of last season, the double world champion has no intention of going quietly into the night. By winning the Daytona 24 Hours last weekend the Spaniard proved to be as driven as ever. His talent remains beyond doubt and he could take it to a level unmatched by any other driver. Speaking to him at last year’s Australian Grand Prix, Alonso dismissed any suggestion that his motivation had diminished. “Every day, every year, every new season is a reset from the last and you are still hungry for success, to do things better and better,” he said. Last weekend at the endurance classic in Florida, he proved it emphatically. He won this mighty challenge on the banking alongside teammates Kamui Kobayashi, Renger van der Zande and Jordan Taylor for Wayne Taylor Racing. The race was interrupted and then curtailed due to heavy rain but Alonso had without doubt earned his winner’s Rolex. On his first stint he went from sixth to the lead in the space of 13 laps, in only his third 24-hour race. More was to come – he was soon running two seconds a lap quicker than the opposition, a field of experienced sportscar drivers. When he returned for his second stint in wet conditions, he was a class apart. As the rest of the field struggled for grip, Alonso took just 16 laps to open up a 40-second lead. Breathtaking stuff, but no less than what might have been expected. He did similar on his way to winning the Le Mans 24 hours at his first attempt last year. At La Sarthe Alonso had put in a stint for Toyota through the night where he was consistently between two and four seconds quicker than anyone else on track. He was untouchable. That victory, alongside his F1 world championship (or Monaco victory, Alonso meets either criteria) has set him up for the chance to go for motor racing’s triple crown, with a win at the Indy 500 this year. If he does so he will join Graham Hill as the only driver to have achieved the feat but more is within his grasp. Immediately after Daytona, that fierce competitiveness was already looking for a new outlet. “Right now my full focus is on the Indy 500, but I’m thinking. I’m trying to do something more in different disciplines that are not only circuits,” he told Racer magazine. “But I need to think, I need to plan, I need to make sure that I’m competitive. So I need to be very calm and clever with the decisions with the future. The aim is to do something unprecedented in motorsport.” Something he could realistically achieve. In the next month Alonso is expected to test the Dakar rally-wining Toyota team car that Nasser al-Attiyah drove to victory for the team in the off-road classic earlier this month. Toyota are understood to be putting plans in place to support him should he choose to enter the rally raid event and Attiyah will help and conduct the test with Alonso. It is an entirely different discipline and a huge challenge but Alonso is fired up like never before. He is in a position to notch up achievements that will set him apart. The Daytona win makes him only the third F1 champion, after Phil Hill and Mario Andretti, to win an endurance race there – and the first to do so in its 24-hour format. With Le Mans he now has two of endurance racing’s triple crown, and although he will not compete at the Sebring 12 hours this year, which is on the same track and weekend as his World Endurance Championship (WEC) commitments, a win at the race on the old airfield in future is easily within his compass. As is another world championship. He leads the WEC drivers’ championship with three rounds to go. He could clinch it at the finale with another Le Mans 24 Hours win in June. Then there might be Formula E, which would be ecstatic to take on a driver of his calibre and profile, while at 37 there is still ample time to master more one-offs such as the Nürburgring and Spa 24s. If his spirt of adventure and desire to prove himself remains, why not the classic Pikes Peak hill climb in Colorado or mastering Mount Panorama in Australia’s Bathurst 1000? Alonso wants to do something unprecedented. Right now he is the only driver of the modern era genuinely in a position to do so and still hungry enough to make it happen.Scott Morrison has said 26 January 1788 was “pretty miserable” for his ancestor, in a speech defending the celebration of Australia Day, while tens of thousands of people joined Invasion Day marches around the country calling for the public holiday to be abolished. Morrison told a citizenship ceremony in Canberra that his fifth great grandfather, William Roberts, arrived with the first fleet in a group that was “wretched, naked, filthy, dirty, lousy, and many of them utterly unable to stand, or even to stir hand or foot”. Six hundred kilometres away, in Melbourne, his comments were echoed to a crowd of more than 40,000 people who congregated on Spring Street outside Parliament House before the Invasion Day march. “Those poor people were in chains, they were suffering we pitied them,” a speaker said. “What are you defending?” The rally in Melbourne followed a dawn service at the memorial marking the burial site of 38 Aboriginal people from across Victoria, who represented those killed in the frontier wars. “If this country has any conscience, it will start a healing process that starts with truth-telling,” the former Greens MP Lidia Thorpe, a Gunnai-Gunditjmara woman, told the rally. “You fellas come out one day of the year, which is fantastic, but we feel this every day. And we need you every day … it is upon you from today to decide whether you want to come out once a year and protest or you act every single day to change what this country is about.” The crowd estimates ranged from 5,000, an early figure given by Victoria Police, and 80,000, cited by organisers. At its longest point, it stretched two blocks down Swanston Street, from Bourke Street to Flinders Street station. Large protests were also held in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart and Perth, and survival day events in Adelaide and Darwin. The academic and activist Gary Foley told the crowd, the majority of whom were non-Indigenous, not to go away feeling “self-satisfied”. Difficult to capture the masses of people at Brisbane #InvasionDay rally, starting from new location to accommodate crowds. #AlwaysWillBe pic.twitter.com/2lhRi18eQN He said that if everyone at the march read up on the history of Australia and then told 10 more people, “next year we would have half of Melbourne on our side”. The march organiser Meriki Onus urged the crowd to stay behind strict marshal lines and not engage with a reported counter-protest run by far-right groups in Federation Square. Hobart #InvasionDay pic.twitter.com/ZpY53gCvtm That protest had about 10 participants and was dispersed by police before the main march turned down Swanston Street. Two people, a man draped in an Australian flag and a woman holding a sign that said “To defend my country was once called patriotism; now it’s called racism” remained at the Flinders Street station steps. These two were also moved on from the #InvasionDay rally. Her sign reads “To defend my country was once called patriotism now it’s called racism” pic.twitter.com/60IS2kfnvV They were surrounded for about 20 minutes by marchers chanting “go home, fascists”, before the police had them move on on. A spokeswoman for Victoria Police said it was too early to comment on whether any charges were being laid. Tens of thousands of people also attended a rally in Sydney, where the early crowd estimates were put at up to 50,000, while thousands more marched in Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart, and Perth. Can't see beginning or end of Sydney's #InvasionDay march pic.twitter.com/FoocmvhlVZ The protest numbers in all capital cities were reported to be the largest yet. In London, activists hung a banner from Westminster Bridge, which said “Abolish Australia Day”; in Berlin a protest was planned. Activists in London hang 25m #AbolishAustraliaDay banner from Westminster Bridge ahead of mass rallies in Australia to mark #InvasionDay2019 #changethedate #changethenation #AustraliaDay2019 📷: @veripix pic.twitter.com/NS1zXk8OQbBack when Anna Gryta and Elżbieta Wąs started a local campaign to preserve a town square in south-east Poland, they had no idea it would turn them into potent symbols of democratic revival. But almost 10 years since their success in Lubartów, the sisters have become figureheads for thousands of Poles determined to secure the clean, democratic governance promised to them in the wake of the collapse of communism 30 years ago. It’s a surprising revelation. Poland has become a byword for nationalist populism in recent years as the ruling Law and Justice party defies European democratic norms with its assault on the media and the courts. But away from the limelight, there is a flourishing grassroots movement against the flaws in the country’s democratic culture on which the populists feed. Tight groups of civic activists are notching up success after success across the country on a vast range of different issues – from sex education to air quality and the rule of law, from cycle lanes and public spaces to transparency and participation in local decision-making processes. News doesn't always have to be bad – indeed, the relentless focus on confrontation, disaster, antagonism and blame risks convincing the public that the world is hopeless and there is nothing we can do. This series is an antidote, an attempt to show that there is plenty of hope, as our journalists scour the planet looking for pioneers, trailblazers, best practice, unsung heroes, ideas that work, ideas that might and innovations whose time might have come. Readers can recommend other projects, people and progress that we should report on by contacting us at theupside@theguardian.com “Something is happening, something has changed,” says Patryk Białas, an environmental campaigner recently elected to the city council in the south-western city of Katowice. In the eastern region of Podlasie, local activists recently ran a disciplined, sophisticated and ultimately successful campaign against illegal state-sanctioned logging in the Białowieża forest. In Silesia, Poland’s industrial south-west, residents forced the closure of a toxic coking plant last year. In Poznań, in the north-west, citizens are campaigning to publicise allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. In Warsaw, a group of parents are running a campaign to put pressure on local authorities to combat the city’s terrible air quality. In Gdańsk, Pawel Adamowicz presided over numerous civic innovations before his brutal murder earlier this month. In 2016, Gdańsk established Poland’s first “civic panel” in order to develop policies on flood prevention in the city, with 63 residents drawn at random from the local electoral register to “raise the level of civic engagement in the areas most challenging to the city”. Gdańsk also runs an “open data programme”, publishing daily data on its expenses. “Civil society is not about enlightened absolutism imposed from the top,” Adamowicz said at the time. “It takes place through the activism of different entrepreneurs and people of different professions and ideas, as well as through public disputes and conflicts. That is how civil society is created.” The rise of these movements is threatening to reshape the country’s politics. In urban areas, there has been a growth of so-called city movements, networks of campaigners challenging traditional political parties on questions of governance, corruption, planning and the environment. Some local authorities have responded to this growth in demand for accountability by introducing innovative new consultation mechanisms such as citizens’ panels, where groups of volunteers and randomly selected citizens participate in the city’s decision-making process, and participatory budgets, where citizens apply for financing for projects that they have drawn up themselves. In smaller towns across the country, long-entrenched local political leaders have found themselves under pressure or thrown out of office altogether by new candidates with no party-political affiliations. “In the 1990s and 2000s, the local mayor was like a kind of wizard, a kind of local god,” says Białas. “Just because he was elected, he had great wisdom, like a light from the sky, and he had no need to consult anyone because he knew better than the rest of society. “But nowadays we know that the citizens have expertise, that they often know much better than their leaders. Instead of being local prophets, politicians are learning that they need to build links with society – not to ‘manage’ the people, but to serve them.” Observers note the significance of these grassroots actions not just in the liberal opposition bastions of Poland’s larger cities, but in places like Lubartów, a small town of just over 20,000 people in the conservative heartland of the ruling Law and Justice party. Having killed off the council’s proposal to sell the town square to private developers in 2010, the following year Wąs and Gryta organised a town-wide opinion poll that forced the authorities to abandon a plan to build a waste-processing plant in a residential area near the centre of town. They soon came to realise, however, that protesting against individual decisions was insufficient. The authorities were making poor decisions because they were not consulting local residents, but they did not consult them because they appeared to be under no obligation or pressure to do so; even when the sisters were able to convince the council to hold a public consultation, they struggled to convince their neighbours to attend. Unless this lack of engagement could be addressed, this vicious circle – poor decisions, leading to anger and disillusionment, leading to lack of engagement in the decision-making process, leading to more poor decisions – would never be broken. “We realised that it isn’t just the fault of the authorities,” says Wąs. “If society doesn’t demand it, if they don’t participate in the consultation process, if they are not present when the decision is made, then the authorities will see no point in asking us in the first place.” The sisters started to shift their focus. Setting up a small local foundation, their activities range from submitting freedom of information requests, to a successful campaign for council sessions to be filmed and broadcast online, to pushing councillors to publish more information about their views and decisions. Ahead of October’s local elections, they set up a stall in the town centre where residents could peruse the election materials of all the different candidates, including from past elections, so as to be able to hold them to their promises. They also run civic engagement workshops and have an initiative monitoring and publicising whether councillors turn up to their scheduled consultation surgeries. Gryta and Wąs’s relentlessness has won them awards and admirers – all at a cost. Labelled as busybodies and troublemakers by their opponents, they have endured a form of social ostracism from those whose jobs depend on local authorities. “Many people don’t know they have the right to demand information, and those that do know are often afraid to do so because the authorities often perceive it as an attack,” says Wąs. A cancer survivor with a physical disability that makes driving difficult, for years she has commuted to work in a different town so as not to have to rely on the authorities she has been challenging. “It can be unforgiving work, because we still don’t have a culture of discussion. We will keep on drumming away because people need to know, people need to participate. But are we popular? No.” Activists argue that they are addressing fundamental flaws in Poland’s democratic transition that has facilitated the rise of populist authoritarianism. Decades after the institution of free and fair elections, the relationship between citizens and the authorities in many parts of Poland remains tarnished by a culture of secrecy and mutual suspicion, with important decisions at local level often made with little, if any, public consultation. Many fear crossing powerful local officials, who oversee vast investments of European development funds and enjoy extensive networks of patronage. “When you don’t know your rights, you would rather wait for orders from someone else, and assume that you can’t do something,” says Katarzyna Batko-Tołuć, director of Watchdog Polska, a Warsaw-based NGO. “People in Poland are free, but they don’t know they are free, they still don’t realise that they have the power to shape their own future. In my experience, once people start to know their rights, they start to be very self-confident.” These flaws in Poland’s democratic governance were overlooked by many as the economy boomed, creating jobs and a sharp rise in living standards. But as material conditions have improved, and as more and more Poles return from long spells living and working in western Europe, so expectations of public institutions to deliver on the promise of western European standards of living have grown. This shift in expectations was illustrated by last year’s massive environmental protests in Mielec, a town of 60,000 in the south-east ringed by factories that have been accused of polluting air and waterways with toxic discharge. “The city was able to grow economically, but it seemed like there was always a closed circle of people on the border of business and politics who dominated the council,” says Mikolaj Skrzypiec, who moved back to Mielec in 2010 after 10 years living in London. “We could see that what was happening wasn’t right and that the government was doing nothing, so we started to take photos and gathered samples for analysis by a scientist in Kraków in such a way that the evidence would be admissible in court. One of the carcinogenic substances in one of the samples we found was a million times – I mean literally, a million times – higher than the legally accepted level.” Public anger boiled over in March last year and 15,000 people – a quarter of the city – took to the streets, the biggest environmental protest in Poland since the disaster Chernobyl. “It was spontaneous, grassroots, organised over social media by people with no experience of campaigning. I was absolutely head over heels, really happy and proud at the number of people you could see there,” says Skrzypiec. “There were manual workers, middle-class people, leftwing people, rightwing people, football fans, families – even employees of the factory we were protesting against. I will never forget it.” In the capital, democracy activists are taking on very different threats. In southern Warsaw, Jan Lawrynowicz and Piotr Przytula set up a local activist group that uncovered digital skulduggery in which a spray of fake online accounts were used to cheerlead for local officials. “We saw at the micro-level of local politics the kinds of mechanisms that are going on at the geopolitical level around the world,” says Lawrynowicz. “It is really scary how easy it is to manipulate people using these tricks.” Activists said that while they are focused on a wide range of different issues and operate in very different parts of the country, each with their own set of challenges, some challenges are common to all of them. The first is the difficulty in bridging the gap between citizens and officialdom – especially at the local level – in a society that remains in the shadow of communist authoritarianism even decades after the fall of communism itself. “So much of local government still works in the same way as it did in the communist era – it is a Soviet style of social relations, where officials use their patronage to keep power, where only the obedient are rewarded,” says Lawrynowicz. “The only difference is the fact that we have elections – but when the elections are over, no one listens to the citizens.” The second is the personal cost endured by many activists. Almost all of them said that their work has led them to come under pressure either from local authorities, employers, or their neighbours – sometimes even all three. “A lot of people end up disappointed because despite their best intentions, other people can be suspicious of their activities and accuse them of being in it for themselves,” says Batko-Tołuć. “Someone who thinks differently, who asks questions, who has a different opinion, can feel isolated and unpopular. There is a lot of fear of upsetting the people in charge.” The third is that although they see themselves as compensating for the existing weaknesses in Poland’s democratic culture and state institutions, some activists note that they will not be able to realise their aims at the national and local levels if the populists in government get there first. Their campaigns rely on independent courts to defend their rights, prosecute corruption, and enforce freedom of information requests – none of which will be possible if the judiciary is fully subjugated to Poland’s ruling party. Some argue, however, that Law and Justice’s rightwing authoritarianism has only served to electrify the grassroots democracy movement, shaking Poland’s liberals and many others from their EU-induced complacency. In time, they say, the movement’s small victories have the potential not only to transform Polish democracy for the better, but also to inspire their counterparts in western Europe to take the fight to the populists in their own countries. “The irony is that with Law and Justice in power, people are starting to wake up to the importance of rights and functioning institutions, they understand how much is left to be done,” says Batko-Tołuć. “After we joined the EU, a lot of our problems started to be solved, and so we started to become complacent and passive. Now that people see that democracy is at risk, they realise how precious it is and what needs to be done to protect it I am actually very positive about what is going on in Poland.” “Overall, it is a positive story,” says Lawrynowicz. “We don’t win every battle, but we are making progress. People are becoming more aware, people are starting to fight. Eventually we will change this country.” “Maybe there is something in the Polish soul telling us to fight when we see bad things going on, even if we are in a losing position,” says Przytula. “We don’t want to raise the white flag, we won’t accept that we don’t have influence over the process.” This article is part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world’s most stubborn problems. What else should we cover? Email us at theupside@theguardian.comThe Derry bombing this weekend is a stark reminder of what is at stake in Northern Ireland with Brexit: decades of peace where arguments are settled with words not weapons. In reopening the question of whether the physical border between the North and South of Ireland might return, Brexit threatens to turn back the clock to a far more dangerous era. That past, where symbols summon deadly emotions, has been revived by English nationalists in the Tory party who appear comfortably ignorant of the Troubles. Erasing the border in Ireland, once dotted with watchtowers and checkpoints, was necessary. But Brexit put the deadly issues of the Irish border and sovereignty back into mainstream debate. Dissident republicans have been blamed by the police for the van bomb attack on a Derry courthouse. Their ideological patrons have long recognised Brexit’s potential to reignite the conflict, with one quoted in academic Marisa McGlinchey’s new study Unfinished Business as saying it was “the best chance we’ve had since 1916”. That is why Theresa May and the European Union committed to avoiding the return of a “hard border” – physical checks or infrastructure – after Brexit. The UK and Ireland are currently part of the EU single market and customs union, so products do not need to be inspected. To maintain an open border on the island of Ireland in the event that the UK leaves the EU without securing an all-encompassing deal, Mrs May and the EU said it was necessary to have a backstop arrangement that will allow for frictionless trade. The trouble is that the Democratic Unionist party is divided over how to deal with this insurance policy. The party’s “blood red line” of no border down the Irish Sea means it could accept only the hardest or softest of Brexits. Hence Mrs May continues to talk to the DUP in the hope that the party will make up its mind. The prime minister ought to have realised months ago that the hard Brexit faction within the DUP has its power base in Westminster. It first asserted itself after power-sharing in Northern Ireland collapsed. It became dominant after Mrs May sought DUP support for her parliamentary majority in Westminster in the wake of the 2017 election. The suspended Stormont assembly provided a forum for sane debate: in August 2016 the DUP’s Arlene Foster signed a joint letter with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness on safeguarding the gains of the peace process and the need to protect “the border [issue], the all-island energy market, EU peace funding and the need to maintain tariff- and barrier-free trade with the EU”. To win support for her deal, Mrs May must seek to revive such sentiments not just within Ms Foster’s party but also within the wider nationalist community. Efforts in this direction won’t be helped by former cabinet ministers ludicrously suggesting that Brexit would have been resolved if not for splits in the Irish government, or that the UK government should simply wait for the EU to dump Dublin in favour of London. The withdrawal agreement already has a provision for Britain to choose whether to enter the backstop or extend the transition. What Mrs May also needs to do urgently is win back the nationalist community and the growing band of Northern Irish non-tribal voters. Departing the EU could see Brexit become synonymous with defending the province’s place within the UK. The risk to unionism is voters could then reassess their constitutional preference. Few want a hard border; they should not block ways to avoid one. Electoral contingency and political expediency cannot be allowed to break up the UK.Even Barbara Stanwyck struggled to pin down her appeal. “What the hell,” she blustered at critic Rex Reed, when he asked her to take a stab. “Whatever I had, it worked, didn’t it?” She was right, of course, and you can forgive her inarticulacy. Stanwyck – who is the subject of a BFI season, Starring Barbara Stanwyck – was not just unusually streetsmart and independent for a Hollywood star of the golden age, but superbly versatile, too. Many of her directors tried to put the magic into words. “Stanwyck doesn’t act a scene. She lives it,” said Frank Capra, who directed her in the early 1930s breathtaking emotional films such as The Miracle Woman and Forbidden. For Billy Wilder, who directed her in ice-cold noir Double Indemnity, it was simple: “She was the best.” Perhaps Sam Fuller, who gave her a memorable late film role as a fearsome rancher in Forty Guns, summed up the Stanwyck touch most completely as “the happy pertinence of professionalism and emotion”. She could summon performances that were as still and steady as Bogart or Mitchum. Born Ruby Stevens in Brooklyn in 1907 and raised first by her big sister and then in a series of foster homes after her mother died and her father left, Stanwyck consistently downplayed the privations of her childhood. “Foster homes in those days weren’t cruel,” she said, “just impersonal.” But she did eventually admit that her background influenced her work. “I’m a product of crowded places and jammed-up emotions,” she said, “where right and wrong weren’t always clearly defined and life wasn’t always sweet, but it was life.” After a stint dancing on Broadway, Stanwyck headed for Hollywood. The first Stanwyck role that made the critics sit up and take notice was 1930’s Ladies of Leisure, a Capra romance in which she plays a gold-digging good-time girl who falls for a rich artist but resolves to give him up for the sake of his family. You haven’t seen the full force of her early talent, however, until you have seen her in the jawdropping 1933 pre-Hays code Baby Face. Stanwyck plays Lily Powers, a young woman who takes revenge on a cruel world by hustling to the top of New York society using raw sex appeal and a ruthless, Nietzschean philosophy. Stanwyck’s best role of the 30s came in maternal melodrama Stella Dallas (1937), adapted from Olive Higgins Prouty’s popular novel. It’s a magnificent film, closely modelled on the silent version starring Belle Bennett, and featured Anne Shirley as Stanwyck’s daughter, who is increasingly mortified by her brash, working-class mother. Stanwyck had never been vain about her looks (“average nice-looking” was the most she would allow) and she wasn’t afraid to embrace the padded, gaudy frocks, cotton-wool jowls and floozy manners that made Stella unattractive, before tearing the audience’s hearts to pieces in the rain-soaked finale. “Stella had to appear loud and flamboyant – with a touch of vulgarity,” Stanwyck said. Stella Dallas was a triumph, and earned Stanwyck her first best actress Oscar nomination. She would be nominated three times more, but would never get her hands on a statuette until she was given an honorary prize in 1982, eight years before her death. Stanwyck’s next Oscar nod came for Ball of Fire (1941), directed by Howard Hawks and inspired by Disney’s seven dwarfs, in which she played Sugarpuss O’Shea, a slangy cabaret singer caught between the mob and a gaggle of bewildered professors. That wasn’t even the best comedy she released that year. It’s a tough call, but Preston Sturges’s witty and outrageous The Lady Eve, which pitted Stanwyck’s con artist against Henry Fonda’s scientifically inclined brewery heir, just edges it. Stanwyck’s final Oscar-nominations came for two noir roles. The last was for playing the tormented and bedridden Leona in 1944’s Sorry, Wrong Number, but first came Double Indemnity, and her lethally captivating femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson. She gave Phyllis – bedecked with lacquer-hardened platinum waves and that infamous slinky ankle bracelet – shameless sex appeal as she traded peerless innuendo with co-star Fred MacMurray. Having proved she could turn villain, and that she was tough enough for the most brutal or cynical of thrillers, Stanwyck’s range grew. There were more noirs, more of her beloved westerns (including 1950’s The Furies and 1955’s The Violent Men), and a brace of lesser-sung Douglas Sirk melodramas that make hay out of Stanwyck’s increasingly starry, glamorous persona. In All I Desire (1953), she plays a famous actor, in There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) a ritzy fashion designer, but in both films the plot allows her and her charisma to breeze back into a small town and cause emotional havoc by rekindling old flames and sparking old rivalries. The final 20 minutes of There’s Always Tomorrow in particular are a masterclass in melodramatic acting, as raw as anything she did for Capra, but powerfully restrained. As Stanwyck grew older, and her growl of a voice grew deeper, she would collect Emmys for her TV work, from her own anthology show to western series The Big Valley and later The Thorn Birds and The Colbys. Femme fatale, cattle rancher, screwball comedian or melodrama queen: Stanwyck inhabited them all, but her best characters were always fighters who had tasted the bitterness of life. It’s that sense of hard-won authenticity that defines the Stanwyck brand, too. “I’m a tough old broad from Brooklyn,” she said. “Don’t try and make me into something I’m not.” Starring Barbara Stanwyck runs at BFI Southbank in February and March. The Lady Eve is on limited release from 15 February. Barbara Stanwyck in the Spotlight, a day of talks and discussions, takes place at BFI Southbank on 2 FebruaryAs if battered post-Christmas finances, a looming disorderly Brexit and the prospect of a fresh nuclear arms race were not enough to dampen spirits, astronomers have declared that a nearby galaxy will slam into the Milky Way and could knock our solar system far into the cosmic void. The unfortunate discovery was made after scientists ran computer simulations on the movement of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the many satellite galaxies that orbits the Milky Way. Rather than circling at a safe distance, or breaking free of the Milky Way’s gravitational pull, the researchers found the LMC is destined to clatter into the galaxy we call home. At the moment, the LMC is estimated to be about 163,000 light years from the Milky Way and speeding away at 250 miles per second. But simulations by astrophysicists at Durham University show that the LMC will eventually slow down and turn back towards us, ultimately smashing into the Milky Way in about 2.5 billion years’ time. While individual stars and planets are unlikely to collide, the arrival of a galaxy weighing as much as 250 billion suns will still wreak havoc. “The whole of the Milky Way will be shaken and the entire solar system could be ejected into outer space,” said Carlos Frenk, director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham. “If that happens, I don’t see how our descendants, if we have any, will be able to withstand it.” It is not all doom and gloom though. The odds of the collision casting the solar system into a more rarefied region of space are slim, the researchers report in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Marius Cautun, the first author on the paper, said the chances of cosmic exile were about 1-3%. In one sense, the collision with the LMC is long overdue. The Milky Way is an oddball among spiral galaxies. The halo of stars that surrounds its galactic disc contains far fewer stars than comparable galaxies. But that is not all. The supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s centre is paltry, only one-tenth as massive as those found at the hearts of similar galaxies. The galactic merger will change all of this. “Once the LMC gets gobbled up by the Milky Way, our galaxy will become a beautiful, normal spiral,” said Frenk. “Most of the halo will become stars from the LMC and the black hole will gorge on this sudden unexpected abundance of fuel and it will go berserk.” The LMC holds vast amounts of gas that will be devoured by the supermassive black hole until it reaches up to 10 times its present mass. As it feeds, the black hole will become “active” and send out powerful jets of high-energy radiation. While intense beams of gamma radiation may potentially spark mass extinctions, the radiation driven by the black hole is unlikely to pose a threat to any life that may exist on Earth, the authors write. In the past, astronomers who concerned themselves with the demise of the Milky Way focused their attention on the upcoming collision with the Andromeda galaxy. At five times the mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud, Andromeda could completely destroy the Milky Way when the two collide. That cosmic catastrophe is expected in about four billion years’ time. But the merger with the LMC could postpone the cataclysm, said Frenk. “One of the by-products of the collision with the LMC is it will delay armageddon,” he said. “It will move the Milky Way a bit and that may buy us a couple of billion years. “The LMC is big but it won’t completely destroy our galaxy,” he said. “It’ll produce these amazing fireworks, but it doesn’t have the mass to create a huge disturbance. The collision with Andromeda really will be armageddon. That really will be the end of the Milky Way as we know it.”The Royal Academy of Engineering Africa prize, now in its fifth year, has shortlisted 16 African inventors from six countries to receive funding, training and mentoring for projects intended to revolutionise sectors from agriculture and science to women’s health. The winner will be awarded £25,000 and the three runners up will receive £10,000 each. From smart gloves that turn sign language into audio speech, to water harvesting systems that change air into drinking water, five inventors on course to transform the continent for the better spoke to the Guardian about their innovations. Roy Allela’s six-year-old niece was born deaf. She found it difficult to communicate with her family, none of whom knew sign language. So Allela – a 25-year-old Kenyan technology evangelist who works for Intel and tutors data science at Oxford University – invented smart gloves that convert sign language movements into audio speech. The gloves – named Sign-IO – have flex sensors stitched on to each finger. The sensors quantify the bend of the fingers and process the letter being signed. The gloves are paired via Bluetooth to a mobile phone application that Allela also developed, which then vocalises the letters. “My niece wears the gloves, pairs them to her phone or mine, then starts signing and I’m able to understand what she’s saying,” says Allela. “Like all sign language users, she’s very good at lip reading, so she doesn’t need me to sign back.” Allela piloted the gloves at a special needs school in rural Migori county, south-west Kenya, where feedback helped inform one of the most important aspects of the gloves: the speed at which the language is converted into audio. “People speak at different speeds and it’s the same with people who sign: some are really fast, others are slow, so we integrated that into the mobile application so that it’s comfortable for anyone to use it.” Users can also set the language, gender and pitch of the vocalisation through the app, with accuracy results averaging 93%, says Allela. Perhaps most importantly, the gloves can be packaged in any style the user wants, whether that’s a princess glove or a Spider-Man one, he says. “It fights the stigma associated with being deaf and having a speech impediment. If the gloves look cool, every kid will want to know why you have them on.” The gloves recently won the hardware trailblazer award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Allela is using the prize money to land more accurate vocal predictions. His goal is to place at least two pairs of gloves in every special needs school in Kenya, and believes they could be used to help the 34 million children worldwide who suffer disabling hearing loss. “I was trying to envision how my niece’s life would be if she had the same opportunities as everyone else in education, employment, all aspects of life,” says Allela. “The general public in Kenya doesn’t understand sign language so when she goes out, she always needs a translator. Picture over the long term that dependency, how much that plagues or impairs her progress in life … when it affects you personally, you see how hard people have it in life. That’s why I’ve really strived to develop this project to completion.” When Neo Hutiri was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2014, the South African engineer was forced to spend three hours every two weeks waiting at his local clinic just to collect his medication. Queuing alongside patients requiring chronic therapy for health issues ranging from cancer to Aids, Hutiri wondered how he could apply technology to the problem and ease the burden for South Africa’s overrun public hospitals. “We have the biggest antiretroviral [ARV] therapy programme in the world: over 4.6m patients receive ARVs and with chronic therapy treatments like this you have to visit the facility every month to receive medication,” says Hutiri. “It dawned on me that patients are spending a lot of time – 4.3m man hours in total every month – just waiting in queues. So my initial hypothesis was to take patients’ waiting time from three hours to under two minutes.” Hutiri’s first move was to automate the filing system as much as possible by designing the Pelebox (pele for fast in Setswana), a smart locker that acts as a self-service kiosk. The locker is stocked by health workers, who scan a patient’s medication into a specialised cubicle. The number of the locker and a one-time pin are sent directly to the patient’s mobile phone, with the pin allowing the user to open the locker. South Africa’s pharmaceutical council was intrigued by the Pelebox, but needed reassurance that the right medications would be delivered to the right patients, every single time. Hutiri piloted the project in Pretoria last year and was overjoyed at the results: 4,700 medications were delivered at a 100% success rate – and with an average collection time of under 36 seconds, says Hutiri. The 30-year-old entrepreneur has now signed a contract with the department of health to roll the lockers out in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces, a feat he is hugely proud of. “Eighty-three percent of the South African population relies on state-funded care – my parents are within that population and on long-term medication – but they get short-handed because there isn’t enough of an incentive for entrepreneurs in my sector to serve them as they tend to be low-income,” says Hutiri. “I wanted to design something that you could place as easily in [the affluent area of] Sandton as in a township. I wanted the product to stand out because then the patients feel a high degree of pride, they think: ‘This product was designed for me’. When you treat people with respect, they pass that respect on to others.” More than two-thirds of Uganda’s population engages in farming, but rapid population growth in the capital, Kampala, means that not everyone who would like to grow their own fruit and veg has the space or land to do so. This was the issue faced by Paul Matovu, who was born into a family of 20 children and raised for a short time by his grandparents in rural Uganda, where he learned all about growing crops. After returning to Kampala as a cash-strapped university student, he began looking for space-saving ways to grow his own food. His solution was the “farm in a box”, a sustainably sourced timber box measuring 90cm wide by 90cm high that can hold up to 200 plants. The farms currently retail at 300,000 shillings (£64), a high price for the average Ugandan, says Matovu, but as the boxes produce food worth 1.29m shillings (£275) every year, costs can be quickly recouped. The farms also have a wormery in their middle to compost household waste, the castings of which can then be used to fertilise the crops, helping to keep inputs low but still organic, he says. “Our goal is to roll out the farms to the wealthy, because they do not mind how expensive the boxes are, and to produce three to five farms per day,” says Matovu. “Then we can subsidise sales to the poor.” In 2015, Kenyan Collince Oluoch was working as a community health worker in Nairobi, knocking door-to-door to register children for a national immunisation drive. The work was tedious and difficult: every volunteer was required to register 200 children, but because some families were at work or out shopping or had simply moved away, the targets couldn’t always be met. Oluoch, 27, was faced with a choice: to invent names of children to meet the target (as many other health workers were doing), or to modify the existing pen-and-paper registration system into a digital database. He opted for the latter, and in 2016 built Chanjo Plus, an online vaccination platform that could be accessed by health clinics and hospitals across the country. “The initial plan was to have an accountable platform to put the faces behind the numbers,” says Oluoch. “We have universal health coverage in Kenya and the aim is that by 2030 we will leave no one behind. But how do you leave no one behind if you don’t even know who everyone is?” The database uses information compiled by community health workers to build a digital identity for each child, with details on which vaccinations were given and when and where they were given. These records can then be pulled up by any public health clinic anywhere, making it easy to identify which children are falling through the immunisation gaps and provide real-time data on vaccination drives. Chanjo Plus has so far enrolled 10,000 children at three clinics in Nairobi, and aims to scale up with the ministry of health to target the 1.5 million children born in Kenya every year, says Oluoch. He then hopes it can be a platform used across sub-Saharan Africa, where one in five children still don’t have access to life-saving vaccines. “People are still dying because of measles, polio, diarrhoea, and pneumonia – diseases that can be prevented and should not be causing deaths now. Getting every child access to vaccines translates into healthy lives for families: it means poverty reduction and greater access to education.” When Beth Koigi moved into her university dormitory in eastern Kenya, she was horrified that the water coming out of the tap was filthy and laden with bacteria. Within months, she had built her first filter and was soon selling filters to others. When drought hit in 2016 and water restrictions saw Koigi’s water supply turned off entirely, she began thinking about water scarcity and its relation to climate change. “Going for months without any tap water became a very bad situation,” she says. “Where I used to live, we didn’t get any tap water at all, so even doing simple things like going to the toilet – I would go to the mall instead. Having no water at all is worse than just having unpurified water, so I started thinking about a way to not have to rely on the council.” While on a four-month programme at the Silicon Valley-based thinktank Singularity University, Koigi, 27, joined up with two other women – American environmental scientist Anastasia Kaschenko and British economist Clare Sewell – to create Majik Water, which captures water from the air and converts it into drinking water using solar technology. The device – which won first prize this year at the EDF Africa awards – could provide a solution for the 1.8 billion people predicted to have a shortage of water by 2025, according to the UN, says Kaschenko. “There’s an interesting relationship between climate change and the water in the atmosphere,” she says. “There’s six times more water in the air than in all the rivers in the world. With every 1F increase in temperature, water begins to evaporate on the ground but increases by about 4% in the atmosphere, and that’s water that’s not being tapped.” Majik Water – from the Swahili maji for water and “k” for kuna (harvest) – uses desiccants such as silica gels to draw water from the air. The gels are then heated up with solar power to release the water. The current system can generate up to 10 litres of filtered water per day, with the team looking to scale up to 100-litre systems at a cost of only £0.08 per 10 litres. The solar panels used for the prototype are the most expensive input on the device, says Koigi, who is looking for ways to drive those costs down.Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general has said the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference may not be made public. On the first day of his US Senate confirmation hearing, William Barr indicated that his own summary of Mueller’s findings would be released. “Under the current regulations, the special counsel report is confidential, and the report that goes public would be a report by the attorney general,” Barr told the Senate judiciary committee. Pressed by the Democrat Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Barr said: “I don’t know, at the end of the day, what will be releasable. I don’t know what Bob Mueller is writing.” Barr, 68, is expected to win confirmation in the Republican-controlled Senate to serve as America’s top law enforcement officer, putting him in charge of Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign. In his opening statement, Barr, who was attorney general under the Republican president George HW Bush in the 1990s, promised “as much transparency as I can” on the Mueller report, but added that the degree of transparency would be “consistent with the law”. Later he stopped short of guaranteeing that the Mueller report would be submitted to Congress. The White House could try to assert executive privilege to block parts of the Mueller report. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told the Hill website last week: “As a matter of fairness, they should show it to you – so we can correct it if they’re wrong. They’re not God, after all. They could be wrong.” At at other points in Tuesday’s hearing, Barr went out of the way to signal his independence. He told senators that he would protect the Mueller investigation from political pressure and would break ranks with the administration when necessary. “I will not be bullied into doing anything that I think is wrong – by anybody, whether it be editorial boards or Congress or the president,” he said. “I’m going to do what I think is right.” He continued: “President Trump has sought no assurances, promises or commitments from me of any kind, either express or implied, and I have not given him any, other than that I would run the department with professionalism and integrity.” He said he described Mueller, a longtime friend, as a “straight shooter” when Trump asked about him. He added: “On my watch, Bob will be allowed to complete his work.” And if the president asked him to fire Mueller without good cause, Barr told the Democratic senator Chris Coons: “I would not carry out that instruction.” Directly contradicting a claim Trump has made many times, Barr said: “I don’t believe Mr Mueller would be involved in a witch-hunt.” He also endorsed the view of intelligence agencies, often questioned by Trump, by testifying: “I believe the Russians interfered or attempted to interfere with the election, and I think we have to get to the bottom of it.” Barr even took issue with one of the lines chanted at Trump’s rallies, saying that he does not “subscribe to this ‘lock her up’ stuff” as he distanced himself from politically motivated prosecutions. Nevertheless, Barr was not able to allay all the concerns of Democrats and other critics. He was questioned about an unsolicited memo he wrote last year that called Mueller’s case “fatally misconceived” for examining whether Trump obstructed justice by firing the FBI director James Comey. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the committee, told Barr the memo showed “a determined effort, I thought, to undermine Bob Mueller”. Barr replied his memo did not question the legitimacy of the investigation as a whole but merely expressed concerns that the special counsel might be improperly interpreting one aspect of the law. He repeatedly refused to commit to recusing himself from an investigation, even if recommended by ethics officials. “At the end of the day I would make a decision,” he said. “I am not going to surrender the responsibilities of the attorney general.” This contrasted with the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who said he would defer to the recommendation of ethics officials after it emerged he had met with Russian officials while working on Trump’s election campaign. But Barr said Sessions “did the right thing” because he faced a conflict due to his political activities. Barr also spoke in favour of many of the hardline immigration policies ushered in by the Trump administration. He said he believed in the use of border walls and condemned “sanctuary cities” that shield unauthorised immigrants from deportation. “We need money right now for border security, including walls and barriers,” he said. And he raised eyebrows on the issue of freedom of the press. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a potential candidate in the 2020 election, asked: “If you’re confirmed, will the justice department jail reporters for doing their jobs?” Barr answered: “I know there are guidelines in place, and I can conceive of situations where as a last resort and where a news organization has run through a red flag or something like that, knows that they’re putting out stuff that will hurt the country, there might be a – there could be a situation where someone would be held in contempt.”As freezing rain poured down on Virginia last week, a student dressed in only a light red sweater made a mad 40-yard dash from her modular trailer classroom across the parking lot into the warmth of McLean high school in Fairfax county. Due to overcrowding, more than 22,000 students in Fairfax county receive their education in cheaply constructed plywood trailers, often with visible signs of green mold, like those parked next to the baseball fields next to McClean high school. Those trailers, the poor state of school funding in general, low teacher pay and now the huge tax breaks the state is giving to lure in Amazon have led the teachers to strike on Monday, the start of the latest in a series of strikes by educators across the US. In Fairfax county, the third richest county in America, there are over 800 trailers serving as temporary classrooms because the school district cannot afford to build new classrooms. “Our staff often likes to say that Fairfax county public schools is the biggest trailer dealer on the east coast of the United States” joked school board member Ryan McElveen. “We own 820 trailers, more than any other entity on the entire east coast”. Throughout Virginia, school districts own thousands of cheaply constructed trailers that present health and safety risks. The trailers are often poorly heated, their plywood construction makes them susceptible to mold, and in some schools, students have even reported accidentally falling through their floors. To get to the trailers, students are often forced to walk outside of their schools to nearby parking lots; often arriving to class cold and wet, sometimes even getting sick. “In this era of school shootings, having our children in trailers, which is open to the public without any of the security that we have for the buildings is dangerous, anyone can walk in at any second – that’s not safe and that’s not a good learning environment” said Rachna Sizemore, whose autistic son was forced to transfer to a school nearly a half hour away because of the overcrowding in northern Virginia’s schools. Just a few miles away from the moldy trailers of McLean high school is the proposed site of on Amazon’s new headquarters in Crystal City, Virginia, right across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial. The influx of new residents to northern Virginia attracted by Amazon is only likely to expand the trailer parks sitting outside of many northern Virginia schools. While Virginia’s Democratic governor Ralph Northam is proposing to increase education funding by $269m, he has proposed to spend nearly three times as much, $750m, to lure Amazon to northern Virginia. The offer was made to secure Amazon’s “HQ2” – the tech company’s second headquarters which it split between Virginia and a second – equally controversial – site in Long Island City, New York. Teachers are pushing back and now are going out in the first statewide teachers’ strikes in Virginia’s history. Inspired by a wave of #RedforEd strikes that have swept the nation, teachers in Virginia, who make $9,000 less than the national average, are calling on Northam to nix the tax cuts and instead invest the money into eliminating trailer parks outside of so many of Virginia’s schools. “Like the shortfalls for education West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and Los Angeles, Virginia would need to invest $1bn in order to return to its pre-recession funding levels” said Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teacher president. Virginia “is prepared to prioritize corporate tax breaks for Amazon over the needs of public schools”, she said. “That’s not right.” In a statement the governor’s press secretary, Alena Yarmosky, said: “Governor Northam is well aware Virginia teacher salaries are below the national average, which is why his proposed budget includes the largest single-year teacher pay raise in 15 years.” She said the governor’s proposed budget “outlines significant investments in Virginia’s K-12 education system”. Many argue that constructing new schools could actually create more jobs than bringing in Amazon. “It’s not just that we would create more construction jobs, but more classrooms means more teachers, it means a lower teacher-to-student ratio and better schools are a draw for everyone,” said Lee Carter, a construction worker turned democratic socialist state representative from northern Virginia. Teachers’ union leaders and their allies say hope that public support generated by the strike pushes Northam to go bold on education spending. The strike in Virginia comes a week after Weingarten’s union reached a tentative deal to end a landmark strike in Los Angeles against the Democratic school superintendent. While previous strikes took on Republican administrations in Oklahoma and West Virginia, now the teachers’ are increasingly turning their attention to Democratic administrations like Northam’s in an increasingly Democratic-trending state like Virginia. Currently, Republicans narrowly control the Virginia House of Delegates by only one vote and the senate of Virginia by two votes. With elections for the state legislature set for this fall, many teachers are hoping they can push Northam to go bold in standing up for teachers. “Teachers have been disempowered in this state for a long time,” said Carter. “You’ve got legislators in Richmond, who are faced with [the choice] ‘do we spend money on our schools or do we spend money to try to help these massive political contributions?’ And time and time again those dollars go to the donors, but now that is beginning to change.” Back in the trailer infested school system of northern Virginia, many parents hope something does change. “The other day, I drove by a construction site and my kid spotted a trailer and pointed to the trailer and said look, “Mommy, I see your school” and I said “no sweetheart that’s a trailer,” said Fairfax county school teacher Carla Okouchi. “It’s heartbreaking that any child would see such a structure as a school.”When Dominic Cummings found out he was to be the central character in a high-profile TV thriller about the Brexit campaign, he was suspicious. James Graham, the playwright behind the Channel 4 drama, said he “understandably had to persuade him it wasn’t a stitch-up job.” Others might have been delighted to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch. But then, Cummings has always followed his own path. Graham chose the man seen as the mastermind of the Vote Leave campaign as the central character in his drama about the referendum because, he said at a screening this week, “he is different, and different is fun … He doesn’t speak or talk or behave like other political strategists I have met.” Brexit: The Uncivil War, which is to air on Channel 4 on Monday night, shows Cummings as he and his team build the campaign that dismayed the political establishment. His reticence about being portrayed is seen by some as evidence of why he is so interesting. He is the opposite of the egotistical politico cliche, argues Prof Tim Bale, the author of a modern history of the Conservative party. “This is someone who really believes in what he believes in,” he said. “He believes that what he wants to do will actually improve society. He’s in it for that, rather than any glory or status.” And yet, at the same time, many observers see a lust for recognition in Cummings’ behaviour. He has hardly shied from controversy over the course of his career. He has derided Westminster figures in eye-catching media interviews and published rambling blogposts that are obsessed over by Westminster insiders. In July 2017, the former adviser to Michael Gove tweeted that the then Brexit secretary, David Davis, was as “thick as mince”, as “lazy as a toad” and as “vain as Narcissus”. He has variously been described by people who know him as mad, eccentric and brilliant. He is known for his comparatively scruffy appearance – it is apparently not unusual for him to be seen wearing a jumper inside out – and his sharp tongue. And yet others see an overrated political operative and nothing more. The conundrum that fixated so many of his allies and opponents is summarised in the film by Rory Kinnear, playing his opposite number in the remain campaign, Craig Oliver: “He’s not the Messiah. He’s just a fucking arsehole.” None of this bothers Cummings. “I don’t think he minds a lot of the stuff that is said about him,” one friend said. “Because in a weird way, it’s not unhelpful if people think you’re an evil genius.” Cummings, the son of an oil rig project manager and a special needs teacher, was born in Durham in 1971. He attended a state primary school followed by the fee-paying Durham School and, in 1994, Oxford University, where he studied ancient and modern history. After three years living in Russia, where he attempted to set up an airline connecting Samara in the south with Vienna, the then 28-year-old Cummings became campaign director of Business for Sterling, which worked to prevent Britain from joining the euro. Although he has never, as far as anyone knows, been a member of a political party – he said in 2014 that he saw them more as “vehicles of convenience” – Cummings was headhunted to be director of strategy for the then Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, in 2002, following a second easy victory by Labour in the 2001 general election. While he was seen as a “young, thrusting moderniser”, according to Bale, Cummings quickly offended party traditionalists. On one notable occasion, he argued the Conservatives should not attempt to lead the campaign against British adoption of the euro, because “just about the only thing less popular than the euro is the Tory party”. He quit the job after only eight months, describing Duncan Smith as incompetent. Following the 2010 general election, the then education secretary, Michael Gove, appointed Cummings as his chief of staff – an appointment that was initially blocked by David Cameron’s then director of communications, Andy Coulson, until his resignation. Many in Whitehall found Cummings as difficult as he found them. In 2013, civil servants in the Department for Education complained to the Independent of an “us-and-them, aggressive, intimidating culture” created by Cummings and Gove. In an internal grievance report, the events surrounding the attempted removal of a senior civil servant were described as being reminiscent of an episode of The Thick of It. He never hid his disdain for the workings of Whitehall and the Palace of Westminster. In 2014, after leaving the DfE, Cummings told the Times: “Everyone thinks there’s some moment, like in a James Bond movie, where you open the door and that’s where the really good people are, but there is no door.” In the same interview, he let loose on Cameron, describing the prime minister as “a sphinx without a riddle”, and Cameron’s chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, as a “classic third-rate, suck-up-kick-down sycophant”. The remark prompted a thinly veiled retaliation from the then prime minister, who told an audience a few days later that there seemed to be a path from special adviser to “career psychopath”. Cummings similarly lashed out at the Liberal Democrats, using his blog to accuse the Tories’ coalition partners of “stupid gimmicks”. The then deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, responded by telling broadcasters that Cummings was “a rather peculiar former Conservative adviser” who had allowed his former role to go to his head. In 2015, Cummings and the political strategist Matthew Elliott founded Vote Leave, which was designated by the Electoral Commission as the official EU referendum leave campaign in April of the following year. Speaking to Newsnight in July 2016, Elliott described the “genius moment” that Cummings came up with the campaign’s slogan. “The message has to be ‘vote leave, take control’,” Cummings reportedly said. “And that developed into ‘vote leave, take back control’,” said Elliott. The message stuck. In a TV debate in June 2016, Boris Johnson used the phrase “take control” seven times in his one-minute opening statement. The former Labour MP Gisela Stuart, who became chairman of the Vote Leave campaign in March 2016, said despite differing from him in many areas of politics, she liked Cummings. “I liked working with him because he makes up his mind about what he wants to do and then focuses quite strategically and relentlessly on what needs to be done in order to achieve it,” she said. Since the campaign’s success, its tactics have been the subject of a series of high-profile scandals. Vote Leave’s use of data analytics has been scrutinised after the Observer reported that the controversial data-mining company Cambridge Analytica had links to the Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ, on which Vote Leave spent 40% of its campaign budget. In July 2018, the Electoral Commission announced Vote Leave had been found guilty of breaking electoral law by overspending, following testimony from whistleblowers. The group was fined £61,000 and referred to the police. Cummings has used his blog to furiously defend himself and the Vote Leave campaign in the face of the allegations. “Hardcore remainers are similar,” he wrote in July last year. “They want a second referendum and this requires delegitimising the first. They therefore hysterically spread false memes while shouting ‘liars’ at leavers.” While Cummings has not given any media interviews since the referendum, he told the Guardian he had not seen the film and had nothing to say about it. But his family seem content with Cumberbatch’s performance. Writing in the Spectator last month, his wife, Mary Wakefield, detailed an evening in the summer of 2018 when Cumberbatch came round for a dinner of “vegan pie”. She spoke of the relief that he had not come to judge her husband but “to become him”. “He looks so like him in the trailer,” she said. “His mannerisms are so perfect that it’s hard not to imagine he’s having Dom-ish thoughts.”France’s gilets jaunes movement has continued its national action for an eighth successive weekend with demonstrations across the country. In Paris, there were violent clashes between police and protesters attempting to reach the Assemblée Nationale, the lower house of parliament on Saturday. Riot police forced demonstrators back using teargas after coming under a hail of projectiles. A restaurant boat on the Seine was set alight along with dozens of scooters and motorbikes. On the Boulevard Saint Germain in the centre of Paris, tourists looked on as a group of protesters, most of whom were not wearing the eponymous yellow vests, blocked the street with a barricade made of rubbish bins, barriers and Christmas trees from a nearby market, which they set alight. Police said there were about 4,000 protesters in the city and a total of 25,000 across France. The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, called for “responsibility” and for protesters to respect the law. Outside the French capital there were demonstrations in other cities including Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen, Montpellier and Marseille. Several thousands gilets jaunes blocked the A7 motorway at Lyon causing traffic jams for people returning from their Christmas holidays. Gilets jaunes protests began in November to oppose proposed hikes in fuel taxes. The movement has since enlarged to encompass wider grievances against President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist government. Protesters have rejected concessions announced by Macron aimed at responding to public anger, prompting the government spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, to accuse them of insurrection. “The gilets jaunes movement for those who are still mobilised have become agitators who want insurrection and, basically, to overthrow the government,” Griveaux said. “They have engaged in a political battle to contest the legitimacy of the government and president. These people who call for debate don’t want to take part in our national debate. I call on them to participate.” He said Macron had called on ministers to be “more radical” in their attempt to reform the country. Griveaux was evacuated from his office on Saturday afternoon after “several individuals” used a mechanical digger to break down the door. The government spokesman was taken out of a back door after the intruders reportedly smashed through a grille into the courtyard of an annex to the finance and economy ministry where he has his office. Afterwards Griveaux said it was not a personal attack, but one on the republic. It is not known if the intruders are linked to the gilets jaunes movement. The group has turned down the president’s invitation to take part in a national debate, due to begin this month, describing it as a “political trap”. In an open letter read outside Paris city hall on Saturday, they warned Macron: “Anger will turn into hate if from your pedestal, you and your like treat ordinary people like beggars, the toothless, those who are nothing.” This is a direct reference to Macron’s televised new year message in which he targeted those who “claim to speak in the name of the people” but who are “nothing but the voice of a hate-crowd”. The letter demanded a “significant reduction in all taxes on essential goods” and a reduction of the privileges enjoyed by high-ranking civil servants and elected representatives. The gilets jaunes are also demanding the president name a “respectable person” to act as mediator. “We come together, we can do better and we will do better. And, yes, we will go further,” the letter concluded.Maurizio Sarri complained bitterly about the Harry Kane goal that decided the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final at Wembley last night in Tottenham’s favour, suggesting that English referees are unable to use the VAR system. Kane was upended by the Chelsea goalkeeper, Kepa Arrizabalaga, as he ran through in what was a clear foul inside the area, but there was controversy when the assistant referee raised his flag – for offside against Kane. After VAR review, Kane was deemed to have been onside, the penalty was duly awarded and the Tottenham striker scored. His team would hold on to win 1-0. But Sarri argued the assistant referee had stopped when he flagged and, in the process, unnerved his defenders, who presumed Kane was offside. The Chelsea manager did not dwell on the old adage about playing to the whistle. In a further twist, Sarri suggested the technology had got it wrong. Having watched the replays on Chelsea’s feed, he insisted Kane was offside. “Our camera was in line with Harry Kane and he was offside with the head and the knee,” Sarri said. “I saw only our video from our camera. Maybe the VAR camera was in a different position. But from our position, he was clearly offside. “It was also really important that the linesman stopped running with play – he had a big impact on our defenders. I don’t think English referees are able to use the VAR system. If you are not sure with the system, you have to follow the ball and at the end of the action decide. But he stopped and didn’t follow the ball – for our defenders it was clearly offside. I don’t know about the goalkeeper but sure, the defenders. “In Italy, there is VAR and in the first season, it was a disaster. The referees did not know how to use the system. I think at the moment the referees [here] are not ready to use the system in the right way. It’s also strange for everybody that in the Premier League, there isn’t VAR, and in the Carabao, there is.” The Spurs manager, Mauricio Pochettino, said Kane’s winner had left a sour taste. “To get the benefit is nice but I am unhappy to win the game like this,” he said. “I am pro technology because you cannot stop evolution but we are waiting so long [for the decision] – it is not clear what are the rules. “I don’t like VAR and after watching it at the World Cup and in another league like La Liga, I see nobody is happy from day one that they started to use it. It is a system that sometimes kills the emotions. I didn’t celebrate tonight because we were waiting five minutes.” Kane said: “I played to the whistle and nicked it round the keeper. It was a clear penalty. VAR is there for a reason and they got it right. I’m used to it after the World Cup, it’s a big part of football going forwards. From our point of view it doesn’t change much [waiting to hear if it was a penalty].”The singer-songwriter Steve Gunn is too low-key for anything as gauche as a personal brand, but if his ruminative music espouses one idea, it can be found in Ancient Jules, a song from his 2016 album Eyes on the Lines: “Take your time, ease up, look around and waste the day.” It’s an inviting outlook in an era where it’s easy to feel squeezed for every last drop of human efficiency. But the financial realities of operating at Gunn’s level – feted as a successor to Jerry Garcia and John Fahey, gigging modestly – have made his ethos near impossible for him to live by. He used to try to cram in writing while he was travelling, or in the studio. He would “go on autopilot and rush without having time to think,” he says, calling from his New York home. “And I think that sorta shows. To have five or six people in a studio for a week … we gotta get this done or I’m gonna be completely broke with no album.” As well as his solo work he’s played on at least 20 releases in the past 12 years, including collaborations with Kurt Vile, Sun City Girls and British cult folk hero Mike Cooper. But Gunn’s new album, The Unseen in Between (technically his fifth “proper” album), comes after a period of relative quiet. It’s his best album, balancing a shimmering quality – one that recalls Johnny Marr at his most transcendent – with Gunn’s backing band’s reassuring depth; moments of compelling rigour dissolve into wilderness. His label, Matador, encouraged him to take his time, giving him space to dig deep into the arrangements, but that slowing down also follows a period of introspection that prompted Gunn, now 41, to spend time figuring out what he wanted the record to say. He had previously denounced personal writing as something that can be “a shallow and selfish undertaking”. This time, he felt he had something worth sharing. His father died of cancer two weeks after he released Eyes on the Lines. Five months later, Trump was elected. “I think when you experience certain levels of shock, it can be a really isolating feeling,” he says, haltingly, seeming uncomfortable talking about himself. “And I think there’s hope in knowing that almost everyone around you is going through similar things. A lot of the songs are addressing that.” New Familiar details post-Trump paranoia. “After it happened, you’d stand in the train station, look around and think, ‘Who the fuck made this happen?’ You feel so separated from the general consensus.” But the songs are rarely that explicit. The starkest, Stonehurst Cowboy, reveals the necessity of community and empathy. The first verses are sung from the perspective of Gunn’s late father, a Vietnam veteran, and describe the psychological effects of war on a generation never taught to process it: “Found ways to hide the pain / Stole your car / Drove real far / No one can explain.” Gunn’s uncles also fought in Vietnam. “It was a nightmare that I think continues to haunt them,” he says. “And, as a friend of my father’s, rather than son (and father), I wanted to know more about that time. When I was younger, I wasn’t exploring any of my parents’ history. I realised that as my father’s life was ending, I wanted to complete the circle and really understand the whole story.” Still, Gunn says his youthful awareness of his father’s unspoken pain may have pushed him towards the artistic, gently adventurous spirit that defines his songwriting. He recalls his family coming to a show a couple of years ago. “One of my uncles said: ‘This is so funny, we’re all Vietnam vets and now our kids are artists.’ And they were just so proud of us and happy. The fact that I pursued music, it wasn’t easy.” As a teenager and young adult growing up in Philadelphia, “there was a cloud over me,” Gunn says with a chuckle. “I had this ability to become complacent, go to the bar every night and become bitter, and listen to great music but not do anything, not practice, not travel.” Meeting the American primitive guitarist Jack Rose when Gunn was in his early 20s shifted his outlook. After Rose was fired from a cafe for refusing to give a police officer a free coffee, he dedicated himself to his craft. “I was always picking his brains,” says Gunn. “When I saw him come into his practice, it inspired me to follow a bit of his path.” Then 22, Gunn moved to New York and worked in construction, driving and artwork delivery to sustain his music career. He continued such work until well after the release of his third album, Way Out Weather, which offered opportunities to tour Europe that he couldn’t turn down. “You have to trust your ability of a journey and where it takes you, and know that it doesn’t necessarily have the outcome that you might predict,” he says. “That’s part of life, and certainly a part of my musical life. Understanding that is important in being able to work with it.” That openness to experience also informs the burnished Lightning Field, which stands among Gunn’s finest songwriting. It’s named after Walter De Maria’s 1977 land art: 400 polished stainless steel poles arranged in a grid in the New Mexico desert, designed to draw lightning bolts to the earth. Visitors are picked up by a guide and taken to a small, shared house to watch the field. Often, lightning doesn’t strike, “and when it doesn’t, the experience changes, and the experience is then you sitting in a room with these other people”, says Gunn. The song suggests his desire for art as a reciprocal experience, rather than a passive one, a relationship that took him a long time to work out. “I listened to a lot of esoteric music when I was younger; I was trying to read poetry and it just didn’t make sense, it was too far-fetched,” he says. “But over the years, I’ve learned how to read things, let my guard down and let them mean something to me.” The pressure to sustain a career as an independent musician entails compromises that often aren’t geared towards these holistic experiences. “It’s not just this comfy cushion,” says Gunn of Matador’s support. “The music business can now be very unforgiving and confusing as someone who is very interested in tradition.” He has had to come to terms with the demand to churn out content to please streaming services and radio stations, an issue he says has grown worse since his last album. “You have to clog the stream to push through and get people to notice it. I had to let a part of my own psychosis go a little bit in that respect,” he laughs. “It’s almost like this existential crisis: it’s not my style but I totally understand.” Gunn’s prolificacy is gearing up again: he has produced Michael Chapman’s new album, True North (he also did his last one, 2017’s brilliant 50), recorded in Wales, with appearances from pedal steel guitar player BJ Cole and legendary folk singer Bridget St John. He praises Chapman, 78, for his enduring dedication to art, performance and travel, and cites him as a role model: “People who work hard and have been on the road for a really long time and have this longstanding career is inspiring to me. There’s such an immediacy with the business – and I obviously am extremely grateful to be able to do it – that is crazy and hard. In my dream mind, I just wanna be this guy with my guitar, travelling around,” he says. “But it’s not that easy.”Donald Trump is losing the battle to avoid blame for the government shutdown, according to a new poll. The president has reportedly told advisers he thinks the 23-day partial closure of the federal government, the longest ever, is a win for him. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Sunday followed trends in previous polling when it showed 53% of respondents saying Trump and Republicans in Congress were to blame for the shutdown, with 29% blaming Democrats and 13% a combination. Support for building a border wall, the issue at the heart of the shutdown, increased in the Post-ABC poll to 42%, from 34% in January 2018. Among Republicans, 87% support a wall. On Saturday night, Trump spoke to Fox News host Jeannine Pirro by phone from a drastically understaffed White House. Asked why he had yet to declare a national emergency, to build the wall with funds from military, disaster relief or other budgets, a step Democrats oppose but may be unable to stop, he said he was giving Congress a chance to “act responsibly”. Trump also said he has “no idea” whether he could get a deal with Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who opposes spending money on an “ineffective, wasteful wall” she has also called “immoral”. Trump promised a wall on the southern border throughout his presidential campaign. He also promised Mexico would pay for it, a vow he now says he will meet through savings from a new trade deal. He has demanded $5.7bn from Congress. Through weeks of fruitless talks and tactical switches, the Democrats have refused to give it. Senate Republicans, however, will not pass legislation sent to them by House Democrats to reopen the government without wall funding, as Trump would not sign it. The president spent Saturday tweeting at Democrats from the White House, repeatedly claiming they were on “vacation”. In fact Congress was out for the weekend and many legislators left Washington ahead of an incoming snowstorm. On Fox News, Trump said: “I’m in the White House, and most of them are in different locations. They’re watching a certain musical in a very nice location.” Host Jeannine Pirro said: “Of course, in Puerto Rico watching Hamilton.”“Frankly,” Trump said, “It’s ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous.” Around 30 congressional Democrats, Pelosi among them, are expected to visit Puerto Rico as its star and creator, Lin Manuel Miranda, opens the show there. The trip has a political dimension: highlighting recovery work after Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017 and to which Trump’s response is a continuing source of controversy. Miranda’s father Luis Miranda, a Democratic consultant, told CBS News the politicians would “get to experience first hand the needs of the island, so that they go back and sort of fight Trump and the Republicans.” Luis Miranda also told the Guardian: “I hate Trump and anything I could do to defeat Republicans, even now my friends who are Republicans, I would do because they have allowed the party to be hijacked by this orange nut.” Around the US, about 800,000 federal workers are without pay and key government departments and services are increasingly underfunded and threatened. On Saturday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, traveling in Abu Dhabi, claimed morale is good among diplomats even as many work without pay. “We’re doing our best to make sure it doesn’t impact our diplomacy,” he said. Almost half of state department employees in the US and about a quarter abroad have been furloughed. With the exception of certain local employees overseas, the rest are working without pay, like those supporting Pompeo’s trip, which has taken him to Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Bahrain and has more stops to come. Regarding the declaration of a national emergency, administration officials explored diverting money from accounts including $13.9bn given to the Army Corps of Engineers after last year’s hurricanes and floods. That appeared to lose steam following an outcry. Other possibilities included asset forfeiture funds, such as money seized from criminals. Senior adviser Jared Kushner was among those opposed to the declaration, arguing to his father-in-law that pursuing a broader immigration deal was a better option. But some outside advisers to the president say a national emergency would allow Trump to claim he was the one to act to reopen the government. Also, legal challenges would send the matter to court, allowing Trump to continue to excite his supporters while not actually closing the government or starting construction. Some Republicans, however, believe such a declaration would usurp congressional power and could lead future Democratic presidents to make similar moves to advance liberal priorities. Pelosi has argued that Trump is merely trying to steer attention away from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and links between the president and Russia, and other White House problems. “This is a big diversion, and he’s a master of diversion,” she told reporters. Trump’s volcanic reaction to a report about Trump and Russia in the New York Times suggested he might be losing that mastery.Comedy is in a period of extraordinary flux. The past two years have witnessed the reputations of revered comics, such as Louis CK and Aziz Ansari, implode in the wake of #MeToo allegations. Then there is the culture of unearthing old tweets, with standups being held to account for problematic “jokes” they’ve made online (for Kevin Hart, it even cost him his most high-profile gig to date, hosting the Oscars). There are also increasing fears around political comedy and censorship. This month, Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix special was pulled because he criticised the Saudi regime over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, while Michelle Wolf’s searing political set at the White House Correspondents Association dinner in 2018 led to the board announcing that 2019 will be the first time in 15 years that a comic would not be presenting the event. Elsewhere, Jim Davidson, a man once so vile he was almost immune to judgment, was reported for hate speech, at his own birthday party no less (although no action was taken). The comedy goalposts are shifting and there is a demand that the art form gets more socially conscious. But can you be woke and funny? And are we living in a time of such change and heightened awareness that the two can now never be mutually exclusive? “When comedians say: ‘Oh you can’t say ANYTHING these days!’, what they are actually saying is, ‘I don’t know how to be funny without stomping on people.’ Which is fair enough: not everyone has those skills,” says Danish standup and podcaster Sofie Hagen. “But a lot of comedians do and they’re doing well based on that. Hannah Gadsby, Nish Kumar, Sara Pascoe, Mark Watson, Sophie Duker, Mae Martin: there are loads who manage to say a lot of things without repercussions; who are really, really funny while doing it. It sometimes takes a bit of extra work; you have to be aware of your own privilege and you have to educate yourself so you don’t use damaging language.” Comic James Meehan agrees. “The thing about standup is you can joke about absolutely anything. Nothing is off limits. It’s just how well you can write and frame the joke. I know lazy comics who only complain about political correctness because they don’t want to update their material. The other people who complain are those who want a platform to spout hateful rhetoric.” But it is not just about laziness; sometimes there is a deliberate attempt to rile. Before the allegations, Louis CK’s comedy was subversive: poking fun at the inequalities of American society, while simultaneously acknowledging the ways they benefited him. After allegations of sexual misconduct appeared last year, however, the comic seemed to react with horror at a new world that threatened his unexamined patriarchal mindset. According to reports, at a recent New York show CK made jokes about survivors of gun violence and minorities such as non-binary teens. When some listeners appeared shocked, he allegedly responded: “Fuck it, what are you going to take away, my birthday? My life is over, I don’t give a shit.” It was as if CK had reacted to the new wave of wokeness by indicting political correctness; he became an almost Trump-like figure, amplifying for shock value and catering to an audience who probably felt as if accusations about him were false or insignificant. However, there is a new generation of comics retaliating against the old template of comedy. Nights such as The LOL Word (for queer women and non-binary performers) and FOC It Up!, standing for “femmes of colour”, have emerged, along with the new comic voices including Chloe Petts, Jodie Mitchell, Kemah Bob and Sara Barron. Hagen is also emblematic of this new kind of comedian. Last year, she demanded that every venue on her Dead Baby Frog tour was “anxiety safe” (meaning audience members with anxiety could be allowed into the venue before others arrived, or be warned of any words or topics that might be triggering for them), had gender-neutral bathrooms and were wheelchair accessible. She had a positive response from fans, but faced an inevitable backlash online. “The people who come to my shows, the people who enjoy my standup and my podcasts, they’re on the right side of history. They get it,” she says. “And I know that a lot appreciated it. The negativity I got was mostly online: loads and loads of hateful tweets and comments from people who were never going to go see my show anyway.” Is this the future of funny? Perhaps it is the only way to survive. Comic Dane Baptiste thinks it could be detrimental to a comic’s career to plough on with problematic humour: “It’s not an obligation for comedians to be socially aware in their narrative but I feel that if you have no commentary on the mechanics that affect your life and lives of others, you might find yourself rather detached, and eventually irrelevant.” When it comes to how people balance freedom of speech versus social responsibility in their comedy, there is, perhaps, a generational divide. “The received wisdom would probably be that there is,” says comedy writer and actor Liam Williams. “Though it would be complacent just to assume that any backlash to increased nuance, consideration, and empathy in comedy is just coming from nearly-dead Daily Mail readers. There’s a new sense of panic about tolerance and not just among older people.” As if to clinch that point, just before Christmas, Russian-British comedian Konstantin Kisin pulled out of a gig for the Unicef on Campus society at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies after refusing to sign a “behavioural agreement form”. The form stated: “By signing this contract, you are agreeing to our no-tolerance policy with regards to racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia or anti-religion or anti-atheism.” Kisin told the Daily Mail: “I grew up under the Soviet Union. When I saw this letter, basically telling me what I could and couldn’t say, I thought this was precisely the kind of letter a comic would have been sent there.” “As far as I could see, the bulk of the outrage – coagulating around the idea that this represented a threat to free expression – came from older comedians and rightwing broadcasters, whereas younger people in the industry seemed to struggle to apprehend what the fuss was about,” Williams says of the Kisin incident. “Most decent comedy clubs offer some kind of disclaimer on their websites that abuse or discrimination will not be tolerated, from either audience members or acts. That’s not a new thing, but maybe the intensity of the hysteria surrounding it is,” he adds. Amid such intense hysteria, perhaps it’s not surprising that there is a sense of caution around humour, especially jokes being made at major, highly scrutinised showbiz events. Take the recent Golden Globes awards. The comedy routines were curiously vapid, as though no one dared to risk saying anything challenging in the post-Harvey Weinstein Hollywood era, for fear of a Twitter backlash. Co-hosts Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg set the tone. “Now we know what you guys are thinking,” said Samberg. “Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh, the two nicest people in Hollywood? This is gonna be a snooze!” Samberg said, threatening to “roast” them “Ricky Gervais-style”. But, of course, the duo didn’t. The gentle tone of the hosting was in marked contrast to the sparky Tina Fey/Amy Poehler hosting years of 2013 to 2015. In 2019, the concept of mocking your peers is definitely out. Next up come the Oscars, already mired in Envelopegate, the #OscarsSoWhite campaign and the scrapping of a proposed popular film award category. Earlier this month, Kevin Hart plunged the Academy Awards into chaos when he decided he would rather film Jumanji than host the event, not least because of the backlash he had been experiencing for homophobic tweets from 2009 and 2010 that had been unearthed. Because of the furore that surrounded Hart’s tweets and his subsequent reaction to the outrage, this year’s award show will be hostless. Was Hart right to stand down? British comedian Stephen Bailey has an intriguing perspective. “I obviously, as a gay man, don’t agree with what he said. But it was a something he put out 10 years ago, others have had the same derogatory views,” he says. “He has apologised, he seemed sincere, we have to hope he learns from it and grows and we should give him that chance; we shouldn’t want to destroy him. We are in such a time where instead of educating and allowing growth, we love to create a villain out of someone so that we can play the hero – and that’s not on.” Rather, Bailey suggests, there should be more attention and urgency paid to acts of homophobia happening to people right now. “A couple were attacked in the last few days for holding hands by three thugs … shall we shine a light on that? That’s helpful!” Perhaps the death of traditional comedy has also been ushered in because, as Hannah Gadsby has put it, the format suspends its practitioners in “a permanent state of adolescence”. Gadsby, the most thoughtful comedian of recent times, deconstructed comedy at Sydney Opera House in her standup show Nanette on Netflix last year. What was Gadsby’s problem with comedy? In order to succeed at standup, the comedian said she had to be self-deprecating: “I had to put myself down in order to speak.” She described how, years ago, she would do a gag about an experience she had in which a man who threatened her for flirting with his girlfriend outside a pub eventually backed off when he realised that she was a woman. The punchline was about the man’s ignorance. In Nanette, however, Gadsby revealed she had distorted what happened for comic effect. The reality was far more disturbing. After walking away, the man said: “I get it. You’re a lady faggot. I’m allowed to beat the shit out of you.” No one stopped his subsequent attack on her, nor did she ever report the assault to police or get hospital treatment. Her point was that comedy made her distort her experience of a homophobic hate crime. Effectively, she was internalising the hate. “That’s not humility, it’s humiliation,” she said. Comedy was akin to an abusive partner – something she needed to escape. While Gadsby expressed a concern that comedy could be harmful to minorities, the hope, in the era of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and other struggles against oppression, is that comedy can help by being a vehicle for radical thought. Nanette arrived at a pivotal moment of reassessment in the industry. That it was on Netflix and watched by a mainstream audience at home held significance. Many of its viewers probably would have never seen the show live otherwise. Its success and Gadsby’s visibility was a sign that systemic change is afoot. “I know that a lot of fat people, for example, stay away from comedy clubs because they just assume that they’re going to be made fun of,” says Hagen. “Maybe the people who felt victimised or attacked or marginalised by comedy now see that there is a whole other scene, where they’re not the butt of the joke. I don’t know, but I hope so.” So what is the purpose of comedy in 2019? Baptiste thinks its role is the same as it has always been. “[It’s] to provide the balance to tragedy in the theatre that is art and life,” he says. “To rationalise trauma; one of the most effective coping methods humans have in this crazy world. It’s the best alternative to politics and its censored, sycophantic, dishonest nature. And,” he says, “it’s to help me pay bills and never ever ever get a real job. This is the most important one for me.”At drinks on the second afternoon, as England’s batting lineup sat in flaming ruins on 49 for seven, the DJ in the Kensington Oval’s party stand flicked through his record collection and plumped, rather predictably, for David Rudder’s Rally Round The West Indies. This was not the slow and slightly mournful brass version used as the region’s de facto anthem before games, however, but rather the full-blown calypso mix; the one that implores the people of the Caribbean to “rise again like a raging fire”. Kemar Roach had been that raging fire, completing a breathtaking spell of five for four in 27 balls and bringing forward the refreshments with a snorter that left Jos Buttler nowhere to go bar the Sir Garfield Sobers pavilion. This art deco building could easily pass for the bridge of a jolly Caribbean cruise ship, or a swanky eatery on Miami’s South Beach but one fancies the England dressing room inside was a touch less upbeat. Joe Root’s tourists, rolled for 77 in 30.2 overs, will lament another woeful start to an away trip with the bat. Less than 12 months ago it was New Zealand’s Trent Boult and Tim Southee who had ridiculed them for 58 all out in Auckland. Bar a couple of dismissals – an errant drive from Keaton Jennings and a lame pull/fend from Moeen Ali – this was as much about the sheer will and skill of the West Indies fast bowlers, however. The travelling supporters may outnumber the locals these days but as Roach and his captain, Jason Holder, tore through England’s top seven, ably backed up by Shannon Gabriel and Alzarri Joseph’s snuffing out of the tail, there was fair old whiff of nostalgia. “It’s just good old-fashioned fast bowling, man,” beamed one home fan ensconced in the sea of sunburned Brits. Jimmy Anderson, whose 27th five-wicket haul in the morning was soured by the need to strap on his bowling boots less than two hours later, had warned that an extra desire to beat England can be seen in the eyes of the hosts. In the case of Roach, this can certainly be said to apply. Now 30, and having found his body rebellious in recent years, he is no longer the tearaway quick who once sent Ricky Ponting to the infirmary with a busted arm. A car crash in 2014, in which his BMW rolled multiple times and two wheels flew off, is often viewed as the before-and-after moment of the Bajan’s career even though he incredibly emerged with only a minor head injury. His bowling speeds have since dropped from 90mph to (a still lively) 85mph but the right-armer with the chunky gold chain has compensated by making devilish accuracy his calling card. Here he was like an angry hornet, repeatedly swooping in to inflict stings of far greater potency than Stuart Broad’s reported recent battle with bed bugs. There was a certain irony that Roach, standing only 5ft 8in, should be whizzing in from the Joel Garner end, while the 6ft 7in Holder had deployed himself from that named after the more diminutive Malcolm Marshall. Both men call this ground home, of course, and know how crosswinds complement their differing styles. For Holder, coping with the expectation those legendary forebears created has been a way of life. There is a case to say that, even with such broad shoulders, the captaincy came too soon in his career, aged 23, and it hindered his development. Four years on and this has been overcome. He may never be an express – a bend, rather than brace, of the knee on delivery makes this so – but the steepling bounce he generates, as well as the proudly upright seam that accounted for Jennings and Root, makes him a rising force. To pinch another line from Rudder, this impressive young captain could well come to represent the sunbeam cutting through a clouded recent past.What is not in dispute is who came first. On the French side of the channel lie the original gilets jaunes (yellow vests), a grassroots, social media-based citizens’ movement with no formal structure, recognised leader or party or union backing, named after the hi-visibility jackets that French drivers are required by law to carry in their vehicles. As French yellow vests kicked off their ninth straight weekend of protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s economic policies, a battle for ownership of what has become an symbol of anti-government agitation across Europe has broken out in Britain as leftwing anti-austerity activists donned yellow in a bid to wrestle it from the far-right. The phenomenon began in France in mid-November to oppose proposed rises in fuel taxes, but has since widened to a range of grievances against Macron (who the demonstrators see as arrogant and out of touch) and his centrist, pro-business government and the establishment in general. The numbers involved – in France hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets – are the most visible difference between the two countries. In Britain, yellow vest protests have ranged from involving a few dozen – including those who blocked Westminster bridge in December – through to the thousands in London on Saturday who joined an anti-austerity protest addressed by figures including the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, and which included French jaunes. Tom Griffiths, an organiser of the People’s Assembly event, said it was not too late for the left to be the dominant force in Britain’s yellow vest movement. He insisted that thousands who rallied in Trafalgar Square – while welcoming both remain and Brexit supporters – vastly outnumbered the hundred who rallied outside St James’s Park tube station under a pro-Brexit banner. Time to get the Tories Out!! Britain is Broken - General Election Now! Saturday 12 January #GeneralElectionNow #YellowVest #GTTOdetails here:https://t.co/almaRTdyvs pic.twitter.com/YudTVkJixh But for others such as Mike Stuchbery, a historian and writer who has been monitoring far-right cooption of yellow vests, “the well has already been poisoned” by pro-Brexit and far-right figures such as James Goddard, who was at the centre of controversy over the harassment of MPs and journalists outside parliament. At one point on Saturday, there were clashes in Trafalgar Square between rival yellow vest wearers, with known far-right supporters involved. As in France, the picture in the UK is muddied by the battle for ideological ownership unfolding on social media platforms including two rival Facebook pages. One, “liked” by more than 2,300 people, is badged around opposing austerity and describes itself as the “official branch of the yellow vests”, while another with 14,000 likes is promoting a “great British betrayal rally” about Brexit and hosts anti-immigration videos. Causes promoted by some yellow vests have included a campaign mounted by Tracy Blackwell, the mother of one of three teenage boys killed by a hit-and-run driver, along with others including suicide among veterans and child abuse. In France, protesters’ diverse social and financial demands have ranged from the scrapping of the planned fuel tax increase and a hike in the minimum wage (on both of which Macron has conceded, as well as agreeing to a “great national debate” on their concerns) to increased purchasing power, improved public services, the president’s resignation and more direct democracy. At root, the movement is a protest by France’s forgotten periphery, many living in rural areas or in small and medium-sized towns far from the cities’ wealth. Outside the big cities, they have mainly gathered peacefully on roundabouts and at partial roadblocks to air their grievances. In Paris and other urban centres, however, protests have taken the form of Saturday demonstrations. According to the interior ministry, the protests mobilised 285,000 people across the country on 17 November, the gilets jaunes’ first nationwide day of action, declining steadily to 50,000 last weekend. These are not big numbers for French protests: the mass demonstrations of 1995 against former the prime minister Alain Juppé’s liberal reforms drew more than 2 million. While dismissive of all established political parties, the movement has attracted the tacit and sometimes overt support of France’s far right and far left. And as often in France, the demonstrations have also attracted not just radicalised supporters of the movement itself, but also violent “casseurs”: extreme rightwing sympathisers, anarchists, vandals and rioters interested mainly in fighting running battles with the police and looting shops. This explains the sometimes extreme violence seen in the Saturday gilets jaunes protests seen so far, which according to the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, who this week announced measures to crack down on the violence (though not legitimate protest), have so far seen 5,600 people arrested and 1,000 convicted. A woman was rescued on Monday after being trapped in the elevator of a billionaire’s Manhattan townhouse for an entire weekend. She is now in the hospital in stable condition. The house is owned by Warren Stephens, the chief executive of the investment bank Stephens. He has an estimated net worth of $2.4bn. Stephens was away with his family over the weekend, leaving 53-year-old housekeeper Marites Fortaliza alone in the townhouse. She entered the elevator on Friday evening and got stuck. At 10am on Monday morning, a member of the Stephens family and a delivery worker called 911 when they found the elevator wasn’t working. When firefighters arrived they were shocked to find Fortaliza inside. “We went for a stuck elevator,” a fire department of New York (FDNY) official said. “Not for a person stuck in an elevator.” Firefighters forced their way into the elevator to find Fortaliza stuck between the second and third floors. After being rescued she was taken to Weill Cornell medical center. Authorities say she is dehydrated but in a stable condition. According to city records, the elevator was inspected in July and had no violations. It is not known whether Fortaliza had a mobile phone or if the emergency call button was working. A spokesperson for Stephens said Fortaliza has worked for the family for 18 years and described her as “extended family”. The spokesperson said: “The Stephens family is relieved and thankful that she is doing well in the hospital. The cause of this unfortunate incident is being investigated and appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that something like this never happens again.” It is rare for an elevator malfunction to cause such a serious risk, but over the same weekend there was a major elevator problem in the UK, with shoppers “thrown up and down” for 40 minutes in a Cardiff shopping centre.Union leaders representing air traffic controllers, pilots and flight attendants issued an urgent warning on Wednesday that the month-long government shutdown was threatening the safety and security of the nation’s air travel system. “We cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break,” the union leaders wrote. “It is unprecedented.” In the joint statement, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association president, Paul Rinaldi, the Air Line Pilots Association president, Joe DePete, and the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA president, Sara Nelson, described a “growing concern for the safety and security of our members, our airlines, and the traveling public due to the government shutdown”. They said staffing at air traffic control facilities was at a “30-year low” as the rate of employee callouts continued to rise. To compensate for the staffing shortages, the union leaders said controllers were working overtime, including 10-hour shifts, six days a week. The Federal Aviation Administration has frozen hiring as a result of the shutdown, meaning they are unable to fill staffing requirements, the statement says. It warns that 20% of current controllers are eligible to retire, and if they did because they are no longer able to financially support their families without a paycheck, “the National Airspace System (NAS) will be crippled”. “As union leaders, we find it unconscionable that aviation professionals are being asked to work without pay and in an air safety environment that is deteriorating by the day,” the statement said. “To avoid disruption to our aviation system, we urge Congress and the White House to take all necessary steps to end this shutdown immediately.” The shutdown has strained the entirety of the air travel system. As many as 50,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers are among the 420,000 federal employees working without pay as the shutdown reaches a 33rd day over Donald Trump’s insistence that Congress fund a wall along the south-west border. According to the TSA, the rate of unscheduled absences was 7.4% on Tuesday, compared with a 3.2% rate on the same weekday one year ago. With reduced staffing, some airports have had to close security checkpoints or appeal for additional screeners to help with the long lines at checkpoints. Meanwhile, airlines are reporting tens of millions in lost revenue. The partial shutdown, which began on 22 December, is the longest in American history. The Senate will vote on Thursday on two proposals that would re-open the shuttered agencies, but neither is expected to pass.A rejection of Theresa May’s deal could lead to “Brexit paralysis” and prevent the UK from leaving the EU at all, Jeremy Hunt has said. Such an outcome would be “enormously damaging” for politicians’ relationships with voters and Britain’s global reputation, the foreign secretary said. “If we were, as a political class, not to deliver Brexit that would be a fundamental breach of trust between the people and the politicians and I think that would be something that we would regret for many, many generations,” Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He said if MPs voted down the deal the prime minister had negotiated with the European Union, it might not lead to a different type of departure, but rather a process by which Brexit might never happen. “If this deal is rejected, ultimately what we may end up with is not a different type of Brexit, but Brexit paralysis. And Brexit paralysis ultimately could lead to no Brexit. “I’m saying this would be [an] incredibly damaging breach of trust and it would also be very bad for Britain’s reputation abroad, having decided to leave the EU, if we in the end for whatever reasons found we weren’t able to do.” Hunt insisted there was only one issue causing the deadlock over May’s deal and that was the backstop mechanism, designed to ensure there was no return to a hard border on the island of Ireland. He said the deadlock could be broken if the UK gained legally binding assurances from the EU that the backstop would be a temporary arrangement. “Theresa May has said she doesn’t just want words. She want something with legal force.” Hunt joined other senior Conservatives in criticising the Speaker, John Bercow, for allowing MPs to vote on Dominic Grieve’s Brexit amendment in what could ultimately change the course of Brexit. Bercow had been “willing to frustrate the government at every opportunity”, he said. Hunt was speaking after his cabinet colleague, Amber Rudd, said she was committed to ensuring the UK did not leave the EU without a deal. The work and pensions secretary declined three times to say whether she would remain a member of the government if it opted for a no-deal Brexit. Rudd was speaking as MPs prepared for the third day of debate in the House of Commons before the vote on the withdrawal agreement next Tuesday. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, will open proceedings, which are expected to be dominated by the issue of migration. Asked whether she believed the UK could thrive after a no-deal Brexit, Rudd said: “This is a strong and great country, we will find a way to succeed, but I do not think that no deal would be good for this country and I’m committed to making sure we find an alternative.” She said it was right for the government to make preparations for no deal, comparing it with wearing a seatbelt when driving a fast car. But, she said: “I intend to work with colleagues to make sure we avoid it. I am committed to getting the best outcome for this country, which is supporting the prime minister’s deal.”Vanina went to work in tears every morning last week. Monday was meant to resolve two-and-a-half years of anxiety, when she and the 3.5 million EU citizens in Britain could finally apply for the right to continue living in their own homes. Yet the app that the Home Office is using to help decide whether people such as Vanina are entitled to “settled status” after Brexit simply added to her turmoil. “I tried everything but I get to a certain point, and on the screen there is just a wheel going round and round. I can’t make my application,” Vanina, who did not want her surname published, told the Observer. The 46-year-old languages teacher, who was born in France but has lived in Yorkshire for 20 years, has called the helpline every day. “I have tried 12 different PCs, my phone, another friend’s. None of these work.” However much friends and colleagues have tried to reassure Vanina, the fear that she might not be able to stay, that the computer might say no, has come to dominate her life. “It’s humiliating. To have to go through all this feels like a punch in the face,” she said. She has a son, a job, a mortgage. “If it doesn’t work and I overnight become illegal, what’s going to happen? “This morning I just could not stop crying when I was at work. I can’t plan anything – my career, my home. It’s become unbearable. There isn’t a day I can push it away. You can’t stop thinking about it. That’s why I cry every morning on my way to work because I’m thinking, ‘What’s going to happen, what if this doesn’t work?’ This is my life.” By the reckoning of Sajid Javid, the home secretary, the app has been a success. He told MPs this week that 90% of decisions had been made “as expected”. But the assertion has been met with scepticism by the3million, a group campaigning for EU citizens, which believes the only way the Home Office could arrive at this figure would be from the number of people challenging the app’s recommendation. And if 10% of decisions are challenged, that means more uncertainty for 350,000 people. A Home Office spokesman said a “tiny percentage” of people had been having problems and they were continuing to improve the system. To apply for settled status, people need to use an Android app to confirm their identity using their passport, then go to the gov.uk website to provide evidence they have lived continuously in the UK for five years. Those who have an iPhone or other device, or aren’t online because they are elderly or disabled, can get help at one of 13 centres around the UK. The only one in Scotland is in Edinburgh, while anyone in Cornwall will need to make a trip to Bath. Even then, they will still need to go online to complete their application. In theory, all the 3.5 million should be granted settled status, except those with serious criminal records. Politicians have generally said they want EU citizens to stay, but EU citizens hear other things, too: Theresa May’s “citizens of nowhere” and “queue jumpers”. When Brexiter MP Mark Francois attacked Airbus boss Tom Enders last week, he invoked his father, a D-day veteran, saying he “never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son”. Words like that, they say, amplify their fears. “We’ve been given verbal reassurances with nothing to back them up,” said Philippe Auclair, a musician and sports writer who has lived in London since 1987. He believes the process may lead to injustices similar to those experienced by some of the Windrush generation. “I’m not saying that we have suffered the same indignities and appalling behaviour by the Home Office that some people have gone through,” he said. “But let’s wait and see.” The uncertainty has also taken a physical toll. “I’ve woken at 2am worrying and not been able to go back to sleep,” said Auclair. “I’m not exaggerating – that’s happened a dozen times. I know other people who have been far more affected than I have been. I can’t face it any more. We’re an invisible minority, the largest minority in the country, and yet nobody seems to think that we matter a jot.” Dr Zain Sikafi, a GP who runs an online therapy platform called Mynurva.com, deals “day in, day out” with people affected by anxiety caused by their immigration status. “The key one that everyone talks about is insomnia,” he said, with other symptoms being panic attacks, anxiety, eating problems, heart palpitations. “That leads to a deep sense of hopelessness, that there is no end in sight. That’s the worst place anyone could be in.” The bland reassurances of politicians are matched by misunderstandings of friends and acquaintances. Cor Roest, who was born in Holland but went to an English boarding school and studied agriculture at the University of Reading, often hears friends say “but surely you’ll be all right”. “All my mates are in England,” he said. “Most of them wouldn’t even know that I had a Dutch passport. My Dutch is pretty poor now – it’s not as good as my English. Okay, I couldn’t vote, but I like to think I know a lot more about British politics and history than most people. And suddenly there’s this feeling that you no longer belong.” For Roest, it’s an urgent dilemma, as he now lives in Kenya, working for an agriculture development company set up by the Department for International Development. He has a British wife and two British teenage children, but at the age of 52 faces giving up his career to return to the UK before the deadline, although what date that is may depend on having a deal. “I’ve got a statement from the DWP which lays out all my national insurance contributions. I’m hoping with clear evidence I’ve lived in the UK in the past for more than five years, someone at the Home Office will take a look and give me settled status.” If he can’t get settled status, the only alternative would be to rely on his wife’s British passport. But she would need a job earning at least £18,600 a year and that threshold may rise. “The problem is, we just don’t know.”It is no secret Rafael Benítez is infinitely more concerned with avoiding relegation from the Premier League than winning the FA Cup but his decision to field a weakened team backfired. A draw leaves Newcastle’s manager contemplating a draining replay at Ewood Park, where Tony Mowbray’s Blackburn will be anxious to finish off a tie they very nearly won here. It took a late Matt Ritchie penalty to rescue Newcastle, who have not progressed beyond the fourth round since 2006, after the excellent Bradley Dack had given the Championship side a deserved lead. “The dressing room’s very quiet and disappointed,” said Mowbray, painfully aware his side had contributed the more intelligent football. “We couldn’t see them scoring.” Benítez appeared to have mixed feelings about Ritchie’s leveller. “I’m not happy with another game,” he said after making eight changes from the side that lost to Manchester United last Wednesday. “I’m disappointed we face a replay. It’s more minutes, more risk. We were trying but Blackburn were pushing hard for every single ball - and we didn’t play at the level I was expecting.” Indeed with Dack’s sharp movement between Newcastle’s midfield and defence frequently discomfiting Sean Longstaff and Isaac Hayden, and Craig Conway fazing Javier Manquillo down the visitors’ left, Mowbray’s players regularly forced Newcastle to retreat deep into their own half. Although they struggled to conjure final balls inventive enough to test the reflexes of young Freddie Woodman – making a rare, and not entirely convincing, appearance in the home goal – Blackburn did win a series of dangerous set pieces. To Benítez’s evident disappointment, his team looked distinctly leggy, often lingering too long in possession. Where Newcastle did occasionally menace was in exploiting the space created by Blackburn’s high pressing and breaking fast on the counterattack. The best of those forays saw Fabian Schär direct a long ball forward for Ritchie to control before stretching David Raya with a low shot. Joselu’s close-range follow-up was deflected to safety by Elliott Bennett. From the subsequent corner Florian Lejeune – making a very decent central defensive comeback following a speedy recovery from a ruptured cruciate ligament – headed wide. Yet it was Mowbray’s players who might easily have been celebrating when, on the stroke of half-time, Charlie Mulgrew’s inswinging corner deceived Benítez’s defence. When Dack could not quite make the necessary contact to squeeze it past Woodman it represented a reprieve for the Tynesiders, who needed to be mindful of Mulgrew’s impressive dead-ball deliveries. It was his short free-kick to Bennett that prefaced Dack’s 13th goal of the season. Given that Dack was the most creative player on view it seemed thoroughly appropriate that the former Gillingham attacking midfielder headed Blackburn into the lead after dodging Jamie Sterry on his way to meeting Bennett’s superb cross. With several potentially influential individuals struggling, most notably the Chelsea loanee Kenedy and the £12m winger Jacob Murphy, Newcastle were up against it and needed Manquillo to somehow clear Mulgrew’s acrobatic shot off the line. Meanwhile Woodman did well to palm a capriciously swerving Mulgrew free-kick round a post. It was easy to see how a Newcastle team increasingly devoid of self-belief have won only twice at home all season and Shelvey – one player not lacking confidence – was required to step off the bench belatedly to raise the tone. “They brought quality on,” said Mowbray. “Shelvey’s passing made a difference.” Sure enough Mulgrew, increasingly involved at both ends, was soon to be found scooping a shot off the line at the conclusion of a desperate goalmouth scramble but Newcastle still looked set for their seventh third-round exit in the 11 years since Mike Ashley bought the club. That fate was avoided – or at least postponed – when Corry Evans brought Ayoze Pérez down in the box and Ritchie converted the penalty.British military investigators are to carry out an underwater search for the plane that vanished with the Argentinian footballer Emiliano Sala on board after his country’s government asked the UK to extend the hunt. The development came as it emerged that two cushions believed to have come from the missing plane have washed up on the coast of France, about 20 miles from the last known location of the aircraft. Ministry of Defence salvage experts are to work alongside shipwreck specialists hired privately by Sala’s family to search for the plane, which vanished above the Channel Islands on Monday last week en route from France to Cardiff. The UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has identified a “priority search area” of about four sq nautical miles (14 sq km) where it believes the wreckage of the plane may lie. It has commissioned an MoD salvage and marine operations team to try to locate it. The start of this operation is being delayed by poor weather. The AAIB said it had been investigating the possibility of searching the seabed since the plane vanished. The active search for the Cardiff City striker Sala and the pilot, David Ibbotson, was halted last Thursday by the Guernsey harbourmaster, causing an outcry from Sala’s family and a series of Argentinian footballers including Lionel Messi. On Wednesday evening the Argentinian embassy in London suggested the search had been ramped up again after its intervention. In a statement it said: “UK Foreign Affairs Secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed today that the British government has agreed to the Argentinian government’s request to extend the search for the missing aircraft. “In a letter addressed to his Argentine counterpart, Jorge Faurie, Jeremy Hunt informed that as soon as the weather conditions allow, the AAIB (Air Accidents Investigation Branch) will start the underwater search. He also expressed his solidarity with Emiliano’s family.” Earlier on Wednesday it emerged that two blue seat cushions believed to be from the plane had washed up on a French beach. The AAIB said: “On the morning of Monday 28 January, we were advised by the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses, the French safety investigation authority, that part of a seat cushion had been found on a beach near Surtainville on the Cotentin peninsula. “A second cushion was found in the same area later that day. From a preliminary examination, we have concluded that it is likely that the cushions are from the missing aircraft.” It added: “Since we opened our safety investigation, we have been gathering evidence such as flight, aircraft and personnel records, and have been analysing radar data and air traffic tapes. “From the moment we were notified of the missing aircraft, we have been looking at the feasibility of conducting an underwater seabed search for aircraft wreckage. Based on a detailed assessment of the flight path and last known radar position, we have now identified a priority search area of approximately four square nautical miles. Through the Ministry of Defence’s salvage and marine operations project team, we have commissioned a specialist survey vessel to carry out an underwater survey of the seabed to try to locate and identify possible aircraft wreckage. “Due to the weather and sea conditions, we currently expect our underwater seabed search to start at the end of this weekend and to take up to three days. Side-scan sonar equipment will be used to try to locate the wreckage on the seabed. If the wreckage is found, a remotely operated vehicle will be used to visually examine the wreckage.” Shipwreck experts hired by Sala’s family with the help of hundreds of thousands of pounds of donations have been preparing to launch their own search. This week they revealed they were planning to use a remotely operated vehicle to comb an area of about 25 sq nautical miles and they believed there was a good chance of finding the plane. Both Sala’s experts and the AAIB have said they will be able to work together.It looked like a burger from the cartoon Scooby-Doo: frilly green lettuce, neon-red slices of tomato, a yellow square of melted cheese, darkly caramelised onions, homemade ranch sauce and thick pieces of roasted portobello mushroom. The bun was as puffy as a pillow. The whole comforting edifice was so tall it needed to be held in place with a wooden skewer. There was so much savouriness going on in this burger – all of it good – that I hardly noticed the thick brown patty at the centre. I was having dinner with my family at a hip new burger place in Cambridge called DoppleGanger. You order your food on touch screens as if you were at McDonald’s. From the thin fries to the craft beers and homemade ketchup, you could be in a cool West Coast burger shack. The difference is that everything at DoppleGanger – from the hoisin “duck” strewn over a plate of fries to the rashers of “bacon” – is vegan. Taking the first juicy bite of burger, my nose and mouth were telling me “beef”, even though I knew that I was eating textured soy protein. As a meat eater, I have never been especially interested in fake vegetarian burgers. When I am trying to eat less meat (which is often) I’d rather have a grilled flat mushroom in a bun, which is delicious in its own right, than some weird slab of fakery. But this burger at DoppleGanger made me think again. If my senses could be fooled into thinking that I was eating a meat burger – and a very delicious one at that – then why should I ever need to eat a “real” burger again? Alfy Fowler, the chef and owner of DoppleGanger, is a 28-year-old former art designer who sees vegan burgers as one way to rethink our relationship with food. And he is not alone. His is one of a new wave of eateries not only marketing themselves as vegan but doing so via “fake meat” offerings. These are part of a wider, rapidly growing fake-meat sector, driven by a population that is increasingly turning to veganism for both health reasons and ethical ones. The takeaway service Just Eat reported that demand for vegetarian options among its customers grew by 987% in 2017. When Greggs launched its mass-market vegan sausage roll – containing a “bespoke” Quorn filling – at the start of January (or Veganuary), it created such a stir that for a few days there seemed to be something that people on social media cared about more than Brexit. The Greggs vegan roll achieved the distinction of being spat out by Piers Morgan on breakfast TV. Walk into the average supermarket and you will now see a bizarre array of processed vegan products that never used to be there – from pasties to imitation “chorizo” sausages. Quorn – a fake meat made from mycoprotein – has been sold in Britain since 1985, but only in the past few years has it started to be sold in such a gallimaufry of versions, from vegetarian “ham” to nuggets, from fake turkey and stuffing to steak and gravy pies. In the chilled vegetarian aisle there are now plant-based “meatballs”, “burgers” and “goujons”. You could wear your hands out making all the air quotes required to cover these vegan “meats”. Quorn has also replaced the meat versions of nuggets and hot dogs on many school dinner menus. It’s not that the concept of imitation meat is anything new. For as long as there have been vegetarians – or people too poor to buy meat – there have been mock meats of one kind or another. For centuries in Russia cooks have made an aubergine puree that goes by the name of “caviar”. Or consider the Welsh Glamorgan sausage made from cheese, leeks and bread crumbs, which became popular during the second world war when meat was rationed. The difference with the new fake meats is that, thanks to developments in food technology, many of them have become uncannily realistic in both texture and appearance. All the major supermarkets are now pushing increasingly plausible meat-free versions of animal proteins, from “flaky’” fish to burgers oozing with beetroot juice. Advocates of the new fake meats such as the Beyond Burger – and its main rival in the US, the Impossible Burger – claim they are a boon for the environment and for human health. One of the founders of Impossible Foods, Dr Patrick Brown, has said that his vision is to eliminate the inefficient and cruel demand for animals as food. “We now know how to make meat better – by making it directly from plants,” Brown has said. Indeed, for some consumers, these fake meats are what they have long been craving – a sustainable answer to our meat-obsessed food culture that simultaneously offers different flavours and textures other than lentils and vegetables. The existence of realistic fake meat products raises interesting questions about what meat really is. When we say we love meat are we really talking about a set of nutrients? A certain flavour or texture? Or a set of cultural memories of shared meals such as Christmas turkey and Easter lamb? A culture that is much more advanced along the fake meat route is China, where for centuries Buddhist cooks have made ingenious “roast goose” and “duck” and even “intestines” from layers of wheat gluten and tofu. Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop tells me that the “bleeding’ burgers” of modern-day Britain “have the same purpose as Chinese Buddhist imitation meats”, of enabling people to eat vegan food without making dramatic changes to their eating habits. The difference, she notes, is that traditional Chinese fake meats tend to be made from tofu, mushrooms and other ordinary ingredients, whereas some of the new fake meats of the west “are manufactured with possibly unhealthy additives”. And this is where the huge and ever-growing enthusiasm for fake meat becomes somewhat tricky. Concern for our health is one of the main reasons we are now buying vegetarian sausages and burgers in such quantities, according to survey data. The catch is that there is not necessarily anything particularly healthy about a vegan hotdog. Many see them as just another set of overly processed industrial foods in a world that is already awash with what food writer Michael Pollan calls “food-like substances”. Jenny Rosborough is a registered nutritionist who worries that vegan “meats” are perceived as automatically being healthier. Rosborough points out that meat-free burgers contain on average even more salt than meat burgers: 0.89g per serving as against 0.75g. Rosborough also notes that when switching to these products you also need to consider what nutrients might then be missing from your diet, such as iron and B vitamins. “A vegan hotdog is probably no better for you than a meat one,” says Renee McGregor, a registered dietitian who works with athletes and is the author of Training Food. As a vegetarian, McGregor sometimes uses tofu sausages but feels they do not deserve the “health halo effect” they sometimes get, just on account of being vegan. “The key thing is that any food that has been highly processed should be eaten mindfully – so not necessarily avoided completely, but I wouldn’t recommend a vegan sausage weekly due to the high salt content and most likely list of additives and preservatives,” says McGregor. I started to question the healthiness of some of the new generation of vegan burgers after I ate a Beyond Burger, as served at the Honest Burger chain. While eating the burger – which came with guacamole and “pulled” barbecued jackfruit – I was stunned by how close it felt to meat in my mouth, with its rosy pink hue and fragile flesh-like texture. But it felt nothing like meat to my digestive system. Half an hour after lunch, I started to have griping stomach pains and a horrible junk-food aftertaste. When I looked up the ingredients, it occurred to me that had they not been marketed as quasi-meat I would never have chosen to lunch on “pea protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, water, yeast extract, maltodextrin, natural flavours, gum Arabic …” Clearly not everyone reacts to the Beyond Burger this way. Plenty of vegans will have enjoyed it without any ill-effects. But I can’t help feeling that the novelty of these products means that their effects on human digestion are relatively untested. Quorn products warn you on the packet that the mycoprotein “may cause intolerance” in some people. So can we actually say whether these fake meat products are healthier than meat? I consult Dr Fumiaki Imamura, an epidemiologist at the MRC Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge. He notes that there is “no evidence” from large-scale studies that specifically looks at such products. He directed me to a Harvard study from 2016 which suggested that people who ate more plant protein and less animal protein had lower overall risk of death, but the plant protein in the study was mostly beans, pulses and nuts rather than Quorn “bacon” strips. Then again, maybe the consumers of fake meats do not expect them to be particularly healthy, any more than I am prioritising health on those hurried nights when I sling fish fingers in the oven for my children. My sister, who lives in the US, is a big fan of frozen vegan nuggets of various kinds, but for her they are mostly about convenience (and animal rights). She is one of the busiest people I know and has three kids, two of whom are vegetarian, as is she. If health were her only consideration, she would make wholesome dinners of lentil dal or vegetable chilli. But her younger girls won’t eat most cooked vegetables and she would find it exhausting to cook different meals to suit their different preferences every night alongside homework. “So I give them raw veg with whatever quick thing, and that’s often vegan hotdog.” Maybe the most pressing question raised by vegan fake meats is not why they aren’t better or healthier, but why the meat that they are choosing to ape is itself so highly processed and poor in quality. Faced with the choice between a “regular” frankfurter and a vegan one, can we really say which one is “real” and which is not? Herta, the leading brand of pork frankfurters boasts that it is 74.5% pork. The rest of it includes wheat fibre, pea protein and dextrose – the same kind of industrial ingredients you would find in many fake meat products. Back at DoppleGanger, Alfy Fowler tells me that he feels that the soy patties he serves are more authentic in their way than most of what is consumed as “meat” in modern Britain. In one of the bars where Fowler used to cook, they served a bar snack of “chicken goujons”. He could see on the packet that these goujons were only 50% chicken with the rest made up of wheat gluten and various additives, yet the customers who bought them believed they were eating meat. “Meat has become so cheap that it isn’t really meat any more,” Fowler observes. Defenders of meat will say – with good reason – that an unprocessed home-cooked grass-fed leg of lamb is a far more “natural” and nourishing thing than a Quorn burger. But the question is what to do if you lack the cash for grass-fed lamb. In the developed countries of the world, including Britain, about half of all meat consumed is now made up of processed meat products, from pork pies to kebabs, because this is the kind of meat the average person can afford. If your idea of “meat” is a nugget, I increasingly agree with my sister that it might as well be a vegetarian one. The bigger question is why we remain so hung up on this thing – “meat” as the yardstick for our meals. Given that most meat is so highly processed and cruelly produced, why do we still prize its flavours and textures? The rise of fake meat is not yet a true food revolution because it leaves our preferences untouched. The real change to our food culture will come the day that someone designs a steak that tastes like a carrot. Bee Wilson is the author of The Way We Eat Now: Strategies for Eating in a World of Change, to be published by Fourth Estate in March Bee Wilson tried a range of products with her daughter and her daughter’s friend, both aged 15, plus her nine-year-old son. Fry’s Vegan Artisan Smoked Hot Dogs (£2.50 for six from Sainsbury’s) v Herta Frankfurter hot dogs (£2 for 10 from Sainsbury’s) HEALTH The vegan hotdogs are lower in fat. TASTE There wasn’t much in it. The teenagers loved the pork hot dogs but agreed that if they were smothered in fried onions and mustard in a bun, the vegan ones would be fine, even if the skin was a bit thick and the texture a tiny bit grainy. Cauldron Lincolnshire Sausages (£2.50 for six) v Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Lincolnshire Pork Sausages (£2.50 for six) HEALTH The pork was markedly higher in saturated fat (8.4g as against 0.8g per 100g) and also high in salt. TASTE We all preferred the pork ones, but only just. “The veggie one tastes like stuffing,” said one of the teenagers. The nine-year-old couldn’t tell which was which at first. The Cauldron ones had a pleasant sagey quality but lacked the sticky mouthfeel of pork. Quorn Crispy Nuggets (£2 for 300g) v Birds Eye Wholegrain Crumb Chicken Nuggets (£2 for 458g) HEALTH The Quorn nuggets were much higher in salt, which may explain why they were tastier. TASTE The Quorn nuggets were a revelation. All four of us preferred them to the chicken ones both for texture and flavour. “It’s nice and moist,” said one of the teenagers. The chicken nuggets tasted dry and bland by comparison.Venezuela’s political crisis was turned on its head on Wednesday as a succession of world powers declared they were recognizing the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the South American country’s rightful interim president. “The citizens of Venezuela have suffered for too long at the hands of the illegitimate Maduro regime,” Donald Trump tweeted as he announced what some believe could prove a game-changing decision. Soon after, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Paraguay and Costa Rica said they would follow suit – although Mexico’s left-leaning government said there would be no change of policy for now and Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, attacked what he called an imperialist assault on South America’s right to democracy and self-determination. “Brazil will politically and economically support the transition process so that democracy and social peace return to Venezuela,” tweeted Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. A senior US administration official said the move meant “Maduro and his cronies” now needed to understand they had no future and had no choice but to accept “a peaceful transition” and “an exit solution” from the country. But as the dramatic news sunk in, Venezuela specialists said they were unsure what the immediate impact might be – and how Maduro might react. Eric Farnsworth, a former US diplomat and vice-president of the Council of the Americas, said Guaidó’s move – and Trump’s swift recognition – which came on a day of rare mass protests in Venezuela – was “a clear inflection point” that could prove the tipping point for Maduro’s embattled regime. “I don’t think we can automatically assume he is on the way out. But I do think today is the most serious threat he has faced,” said Farnsworth. Yet it was also a moment fraught with danger, both for the regime and the country. “Maduro can’t acquiesce to this shift – he is going to have to react in some way,” Farnsworth predicted. Maduro wasted no time in launching his counter-attack. From the presidential palace’s “people’s balcony” he announced he was breaking diplomatic relations with the US and gave US diplomatic personnel 72 hours to leave the country. Maduro claimed an attempted coup backed by the “gringo empire” was under way and urged supporters – and crucially the armed forces – to resist it “at all costs”. “We are defending the right to the very existence of our Bolivarian Republic,” Maduro said, accusing his foes of trying to steal Venezuela’s oil, gas and gold: “They intend to govern Venezuela from Washington. Do you want a puppet government controlled by Washington?” Beyond breaking ties with the US, many now expect Maduro to order the arrest of Guaidó or other opposition leaders. Farnsworth said Maduro might also “turn sharpshooters on crowds and try to scare everybody back home”. If that happened, the US and the international community would be forced to react. The US official said it had “a host of options” if such a crackdown occurred: “Everything is on the table – all options.” Ratcheting up oil sanctions in an attempt to economically strangle Maduro’s regime would be the most likely step, with the official warning “we haven’t even scratched the surface” with sanctions. But David Smilde, a Venezuela expert from the Washington Office on Latin America advocacy group, said the US in fact had few good options were Maduro to respond with violence or political repression. “The US and other countries have really upped the ante … but it’s not clear that it breaks new ground,” he said. Increased economic sanctions could exacerbate an already severe humanitarian emergency that the UN says has created the biggest migration crisis in recent Latin American history. A military intervention that would potentially lead to massive destruction and great loss of life and could drag the US into a messy and protracted occupation and reconstruction process was also undesirable. Smilde said: “Look at Somalia, look at Afghanistan, look at Iraq: all of those cases were supposed to be short military actions and actually what they do is end up generating enormous costs in terms of loss of life and infrastructure.” The US official said Trump hoped Maduro and those around him would understand they now had no “immediate future” and had to seek a peaceful exit route that would see democracy restored to Venezuela. “Let’s remain optimistic and hope Maduro and his cronies saw the magnitude of the message [from today’s protests],” he said. Farnsworth said he saw turbulence ahead and warned of a possible breakdown of civil authority and “chaos on the ground”. “This is going to be a very important date which portends some very volatile and uncertain days and weeks ahead,” he predicted. “There is no question in my mind about that.”The theft of food aid in Yemen by Houthi rebels might be only the tip of the iceberg, officials believe, as questions multiply over international relief efforts in the famine-ravaged country. It has emerged that aid officials have been aware for months that armed groups – most prominently Houthi rebels in the capital, Sana’a – have been diverting food aid into the key areas they control, including by manipulating data in malnutrition surveys used by the UN. Officials concede that difficulties with access to many areas in Yemen under Houthi control, and aid agencies’ reliance on Houthi officials to collect much of the hunger data, have left them vulnerable to falsification. Houthi officials have vociferously denied the allegations of food theft in Sana’a, disclosed on Monday. Aid workers who spoke to the Guardian anonymously in December detailed similar concerns about food diversion. The allegations come in the midst of a fragile ceasefire between the Saudi-led coalition, which backs the official government, and Houthi rebels, in a conflict that has left 16 million people facing severe food insecurity. The World Food Programme is supplying about eight million of them with monthly aid. The latest claims go a long way towards explaining the stark disparities in the UN’s official famine data for Yemen in comparison to assessments provided by other international aid groups, which have been warning of a much more serious crisis facing the country. Following an investigation by the Associated Press, the admission by the World Food Programme this week that food aid was being stolen has led to the UN food agency admitting that in other areas hungry people “had been denied full rations”. In a statement, the UN agency said: “The misappropriation of food relief came to light in a WFP review conducted during recent months. It was prompted by an increasing number of reports of humanitarian food for sale on the open market in the capital. What the checks unearthed was fraud being perpetrated by at least one local partner organisation tasked by WFP with handling and distributing its food assistance.” David Beasley, WFP’s executive director, said: “At a time when children are dying in Yemen because they haven’t enough food to eat, that is an outrage. This criminal behaviour must stop immediately.” Even as the theft of food aid was being reported, other agencies operating in Yemen were warning privately that they believed a more widespread diversion of aid might be taking place, raising serious questions over the effectiveness and vulnerability of the UN’s famine early-warning mechanism known as the Integrated Phase Classification system [IPC]. One senior aid official told the Guardian they believed that the IPC itself could have been manipulated to the benefit of Houthi-controlled areas and to the detriment of starving civilians in other parts of the country. The official, who did not want to be named, said: “The reason I don’t believe the IPC figures is because they have been manipulated by political parties. And we have been a party to it. The [food security] surveys have been limited or only done by certain entities. “If you look at the data, we have certain governorates [administrative divisions] that belong to a specific party to the conflict [that have the most need]. The data collection on acute malnutrition in Yemen is a disaster. Even if the UN agencies say it is under control, it is not.” The scathing assessment follows repeatedly voiced concerns over the manipulation of food delivery to starving Yemenis by both of the main parties to the conflict. Commenting on the latest claims of the diversion of food aid, a spokesman for WFP said: “So far, our monitoring has identified seven food distribution centres which we believe have been engaging in the misappropriation of our food stocks. These centres, located in Sana’a, are overseen by one of our local partner organisations affiliated with the Houthi administration in the capital. “Our interviews with beneficiaries entitled to collect food from the seven centres indicated that nearly 60% of people had not received the assistance to which they were entitled. “Records indicate that, during the months of August and September, about 1,200 metric tonnes of food were illicitly removed from storage and distributed or sold to people not entitled to receive the commodities. This amounts to about 1% of WFP food distributed per month nationwide. “Other inquiries conducted by WFP in the Saada governorate showed only one-third of the intended ration was being provided to registered beneficiaries there. “For now, we cannot confirm the exact amount of relief food that is being diverted in Yemen. Our monitoring – by WFP personnel and by third-party monitors – is as rigorous as possible in the circumstances, but we have not been permitted to implement an accountable beneficiary selection process in Houthi-controlled areas.”Chris Grayling’s claim that blocking Brexit could lead to a rise in far-right extremism is dangerous scaremongering and a desperate attempt to shore up the prime minister’s Brexit deal, campaigners and MPs have said. The transport secretary told the Daily Mail that Britain would become a less tolerant and more nationalistic society if it failed to leave the EU. He said reversing the referendum result would result in the 17 million people who voted to leave feeling cheated and urged colleagues to support Theresa May’s deal. “People should not underestimate this,” he said. “We would see a different tone in our politics. A less tolerant society, a more nationalistic nation. It will open the door to extremist populist political forces in this country of the kind we see in other countries in Europe. “If MPs who represent seats that voted 70% to leave say, ‘Sorry guys, we’re still going to have freedom of movement’, they will turn against the political mainstream.” The Labour MP David Lammy described Grayling’s comments as “a desperate attempt by a government minister to use a tiny far-right minority to hold our democracy to ransom. It is gutter politics. “History shows us appeasement only emboldens the far right and impoverishing the country through Brexit will only increase resentment. To heal our nation, we need to provide a positive narrative that actually addresses the inequalities that have been allowed to ferment over recent years, rather than follow through with bogus solutions that worsens them.” The Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesperson, Tom Brake, said: “Chris Grayling has lost the plot. This kind of scaremongering is not only dangerous, but it is embarrassing.“Politicians should be focused on healing the divisions in our country, not shamefully stoking the fire in order to secure support for Theresa May’s botched deal.” Nick Ryan, a spokesperson for the campaign group Hope Not Hate, said: “If the headlines are to be believed, this looks like a dangerous attempt to save the PM’s Brexit deal, based on No 10’s panic, rather than a careful analysis of the true far-right threat. Government ministers should be more careful, and less cynical, with their language. “Chris Grayling has done a disservice to the cause of all those fighting back against the far right by seeking to weaponise the issue in support of a scramble to shore up support for the PM’s deal. In doing so, he simply plays into the hands of those extremists seeking to use Brexit as a platform to boost their profile.” Luciana Berger, a Labour MP and leading supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said: “Chris Grayling is now cowering behind the small threat of far-right extremism as an excuse for refusing to give the British people a democratic final say on Brexit. “These remarks are not only grossly irresponsible but also show just how desperate supporters of this proposed withdrawal agreement have become. We absolutely need to heal divisions in our society but we will not do so with a Brexit that makes us poorer and offers less control. And the answer to a small band of far-right thugs roaming the streets must never be to capitulate and restrict our democratic engagement – it must be more democracy.” The Tory MP Anna Soubry, who was called a “Nazi” and a “liar” by a mob which targeted her during live television interviews outside parliament on Monday, described Grayling’s comments as “irresponsible nonsense”. She tweeted: “The 15 yobs who have been roaming outside parliament do not represent anyone but themselves. It’s shameful to validate them in this way. Rightwing extremists have always existed, Brexit is just an excuse – this is their real agenda.”If you have upped your training routine, returned to exercise after some time off or given a new activity a go, the chances are you have felt the characteristic ache of delayed onset muscle soreness (Doms). Usually kicking in around 24 to 48 hours after exercise, muscles feel tender and sore as a result of microscopic damage to the muscle fibres, which occurs when you force your muscles to work harder than they are used to, or use muscle groups that you don’t often reach in your regular workout. It can leave you feeling achy and stiff, with a walk around the office taking on a John Wayne feel. Any exercise to which you’re unaccustomed can result in a bout of Doms, says Dr Mark Wotherspoon, a consultant in sport, exercise and musculoskeletal medicine. Simply put, he says, it suggests you are “doing too much too soon”. “If you look [at a normal muscle] under an electron microscope, you see that there’s a normal architecture and normal structure to the muscle fibre,” he says. “When you look under the electron microscope with Doms, the whole architecture is disrupted. Essentially, it is true muscle damage, but it’s at the muscle fibre level as opposed to a muscle tear that you would get when you’re running and your hamstring goes.” Doms can last up to five days, with the effects usually worst on day two or three, then gradually improving without treatment. It is a normal part of building muscle strength and stamina, but coach Nick Anderson warns that it could be telling you it’s time to review your workout. “A lot of people like [Doms] because it means they’ve worked really hard and it’s a great feeling, but if it’s excessive and you’re getting it all the time then I would be questioning either your recovery strategies or your training plan.” Any changes should be gradual to allow muscles to adapt. “If you don’t get rid of that tightness and allow the muscle fibres to repair, you are more susceptible to injury for a period afterwards.” In the days following the onset of Doms, Anderson says, “don’t hammer the same muscle group again”. Instead, he suggests using other muscle groups for a few days at the gym or, if you’re a runner, simply lessening the intensity. He also suggests incorporating a progressive warm-up, in which movements become gradually more intense, and not to skimp on the warm down. Good quality sleep also plays a factor, when it comes to recovery. Although you will want to go easy on tender muscles, Wotherspoon doesn’t recommend completely abandoning your fitness routine. Instead, he advises incorporating light exercises. “If I ran on Monday and then on Tuesday was sore, I might go for a light bike ride or a little jog on Wednesday,” he says “So, exercising through it isn’t a bad thing, but exercising and ignoring it, and exercising hard, probably is not the best thing.” Do avoid any hard workouts and the temptation to “push through it” when muscles are vulnerable, he says. “Your muscle capability is reduced, your muscle power is reduced and your muscles are tender.” While nutrition can’t prevent Doms as “a natural part of the training adaptation process”, it may help reduce the effects, says sports dietitian and ultrarunner Alexandra Cook. “Most nutritional interventions to reduce Doms are closely related to inflammatory response and aiding the rebuilding of damaged muscles.” She recommends a portion of protein – the main nutrient needed for muscular repair – at each meal as well as snacks to support the recovery and muscle adaptation process. “Regular intake of carbohydrate is vital to replace muscle glycogen depleted during exercise. If you skimp on the carbohydrate, you run the risk of excessive protein (muscle) breakdown, which won’t contribute positively to the training process.” Ted Munson, a performance nutritionist at Science in Sport, agrees that carbohydrate intake is key, although the amount to consume “depends on what you’re doing. If you’re undertaking high-intensity, prolonged-duration exercise like a half-marathon, you may need to consume 8-10g of carbs per kg of body mass per day. For shorter-duration, lower-intensity exercise, the demand may be reduced.” Both Munson and Cook agree that eating something as soon as you can post-exercise is beneficial, with muscles primed to take on nutrients within 30 minutes of finishing exercise. Cook advises a simple carbohydrate and protein-based snack, while Munson suggests preparing a shake in advance; both recommend following this with a balanced meal within the next hour. Water is, as usual, key, says Cook. Because muscles are made up of a high percentage of water, “even mild dehydration can make your Doms worse”. But although staying hydrated may reduce symptoms, it won’t speed up repair from muscle damage. Besides nutrition, elite athletes and novices alike swear by a number of recovery techniques, such as wearing compression clothing, using a foam roller and taking ice baths (who remembers the image of Andy Murray in an ice bath, clutching his Wimbledon trophy?) – but their effectiveness is debatable. Anderson is a fan of compression clothing and massage, but advises caution when it comes to foam rollers, which he believes can be “massively overvalued by people ... It’s a very personal thing: some people get on with it very well, some people don’t, some people do too much of it and actually cause more bruising through the foam rolling than they would have caused through the exercise.” Wotherspoon – currently lead medical officer at Southampton FC, and a medical officer for the England cricket team for more than a decade – says that, while compression stockings, ice baths, light exercises and sports massage play a part in the recovery programmes of elite athletes, it may be all in the mind. “There’s some evidence that it doesn’t matter which one of them you use, because the most effective recovery component is psychological,” he explains. “So, in other words, whatever makes you feel better, do. If you’re absolutely convinced that recovery stockings are the thing that helps you, crack on and use them; if you want to get in an ice bath, happy days. There’s no good scientific evidence that any one of those is any better.” The best way to deal with Doms is to avoid it in the first place, he says. “If you do a very slow, graduated exercise programme, you’re much less likely to get Doms. It’s all about trying to ease people into exercise at a slow, steady pace.”The billionaire philanthropist George Soros has delivered a stinging attack on China with a warning that Xi Jinping’s regime is using breakthroughs in machine learning and artificial intelligence to repress its people. Soros used his annual dinner at the World Economic Forum to say Xi was the most dangerous opponent of open societies and to call on the west to crack down on Chinese tech companies that he said were being used as a means of authoritarian control. “I want to call attention to the mortal danger facing open societies from the instruments of control that machine learning and artificial intelligence can put in the hands of repressive regimes. I’ll focus on China, where Xi Jinping wants a one-party state to reign supreme,” Soros said. 'The reality is that we are in a cold war that threatens to turn into a hot one' In the past, Soros has used his keynote Davos address to attack Donald Trump, and he again criticised the US president for his handling of China. There was a risk, Soros said, of a cold war between the world’s two biggest economies turning into a hot one. The former hedge fund dealer said that in China all “the rapidly expanding information available about a person is going to be consolidated in a centralised database to create a ‘social credit system’. “Based on that data, people will be evaluated by algorithms that will determine whether they pose a threat to the one-party state. People will then be treated accordingly.” China, he added, was not the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it was the wealthiest, strongest and most developed in machine learning and AI. Soros said there was an undeclared struggle between the west and China over governance of the internet. China wanted to dictate rules and procedures that governed the digital economy by dominating the developing world with its new platforms and technologies. “Last year I still believed that China ought to be more deeply embedded in the institutions of global governance, but since then Xi Jinping’s behaviour has changed my opinion,” he said. “My present view is that instead of waging a trade war with practically the whole world, the US should focus on China. Instead of letting [the Chinese tech companies] ZTE and Huawei off lightly, it needs to crack down on them. “If these companies came to dominate the 5G market, they would present an unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world.” Soros said Trump was taking the wrong approach to China: making concessions to Beijing and declaring victory while renewing his attacks on US allies. “This is liable to undermine the US policy objective of curbing China’s abuses and excesses. The reality is that we are in a cold war that threatens to turn into a hot one.”A new report that a White House official appointed by Donald Trump overruled the advice of two specialist adjudicators to award top security clearance to the president’s son-in-law has raised fresh questions about the way the White House is conducting top security matters. Jared Kushner was awarded top security clearance giving him access to highly sensitive national security intelligence last May after a prolonged delay in his FBI background checks. Kushner had lost his full clearance a few months before, after it emerged that he had failed to disclose adequate information. The NBC News report, published on Thursday night, suggests new intrigue within the White House over the clearance process. Two career White House officials specializing in assessing individuals for their security risk turned Kushner down for the sensitive “top secret” category, the report states. Unnamed sources told NBC News that the adjudicators based their rejection of Kushner on FBI background checks that raised red flags over Kushner’s family’s businesses as well as his foreign contacts. Having rejected Kushner for the clearance, the decision was reversed by Trump appointee Carl Kline, a former official in the department of defense who was put in charge of the personnel security office at the White House four months after Trump took office. Kushner is married to Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter. He holds the role of special adviser in the White House with responsibility over the Middle East, criminal justice reform and innovation in government. The NBC News report is likely to generate fury over the way the White House is conducted because it suggests a drastic reduction in security standards in order to benefit members of Trump’s entourage. NBC News reports that not only did Kline grant Kushner a top secret pass, he also overruled security specialists and approved clearance for other Trump appointees in at least another 30 cases – vastly more than the norm in recent presidencies. Reaction to the news on Thursday night was swift and sharp. “This would be a major scandal for any other White House”, said Chris Lu, a former White House cabinet secretary. Kushner’s foreign links have long been a source of anxiety in national security circles. During the transition period, after Trump had won the presidential election but before he entered the White House, Kushner had private discussions with a Russian ambassador about opening a secret “back channel” with Moscow to discuss policy. Last February, the Washington Post reported that at least four countries had discussed the president’s son-in-law as a possible target of manipulation given his financial straits – the paper named the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico. News of the irregular way in which Kushner procured access to very sensitive intelligence could prove difficult for the White House special adviser. On Wednesday the powerful oversight committee of the House of Representatives, now controlled by the Democrats, opened in-depth an investigation into what it said were “grave breaches of national security at the highest levels of the Trump administration”.It’s exactly what he would have wanted, surely? Ted Bundy would have loved to be played by an ex-Disney heart-throb. In a new film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Zac Efron takes his shirt off, and winks to the camera, as he wins over Liz, his longtime partner – and all the other women in the film. This charming man. He won over a lot of women who continued to support him even though he confessed to murdering at least 30 women and may have been responsible for up to 100 deaths. Women flocked to the courtroom while he was being tried, slipping him love notes. They were fascinated. Bundy, who turned women into pieces of meat, killed at a time when the young were freeing themselves from being simply meat – hitchhiking, and getting educated. Bundy would bludgeon or strangle attractive young women to death, he would rape them, often returning to their dead bodies, dressing and undressing their corpses, sometimes decapitating them, in order to bring their skulls home. “His eyes went from blue to black” when he talked about his crimes, said a detective in the new Netflix series based on Bundy’s self-aggrandising tapes. Did they really? Bundy once again resurfaces as the unlikely serial killer on the basis of his looks and apparent cleverness. Hang on. In the same way that juries won’t convict young men of rape because they don’t “need to” rape, isn’t there something perverse here in turning Bundy into a compelling anti-hero? Would anyone romanticise Fred West or Jeffrey Dahmer like this? To listen to Bundy’s tapes is to strive for meaning, something beyond good and evil, and yet that “something” is entirely missing. He likes to talk of himself in the third person – of course he does. He feels somehow cheated and insecure around women. His answer to this is deeply ordinary: violence, control and possession. Towards the end of his life, this Republican would blame his evil deeds on pornography. There is no deep and complex pathology here. His mediocrity is sociopathic. Women are the collateral damage. His killing is all that made him special. Yet serial killers are compelling to us, as if somehow this is a primal breaking of a taboo. But it’s the same old taboo, the killing and dismemberment of women and gay men. Each of them says the same thing as Bundy: “I thought I would be fulfilled.” But they are not. Until the next murder. What can we say about the women who flock to these killers? Carole Ann Boone brought in drugs for Bundy and conceived a chid with him. Hybristophilia is the name given to the sexual arousal that comes from a partner who has committed a crime: the fantasy that you are special enough to give the love that would stop such a man doing the things he does. Your own narcissism works as long as the man is incarcerated, I guess. Lately, we have seen women kill in the TV series Killing Eve and Luther as a kind of sexual release. Is this a step forward? God knows. I abhor this worshipping at the shrine of a mediocre rapist that much true crime and fiction consists of. No one is making these men heroes, some bright spark will argue. Really? Bundy is long gone, executed in 1989, and here he is again alive in our minds, immortal and sexualised. No longer ordinary. It is still all about him. Again. Can you name me one, just one of the young women whose lives he took?There are moments in life when your heart sinks. I had one last night, right at the start of my terrifying debut on Question Time. Isabel Oakeshott had just said we should leave the EU with no deal. And the audience cheered. Not a subdued, start-of-the-evening, not-quite-warmed-up cheer. But a roar. A loud one. Shit, I thought. Do I dare point out the problems with this? Because there are problems aplenty. Metaphors matter. And Brexit has become a metaphorical cornucopia (if you see what I mean). Perhaps nowhere is this more true, and more damagingly and misleadingly so, than when it comes to the question of “no deal”. When you hear the phrase, it’s natural to think of some kind of commercial exchange. So, for example, I’ve decided to trade my old car in. I take it to the garage to part-exchange it, and the person makes me an offer I can easily refuse. So I drive the old car home. That’s a no deal, but it is absolutely not a good analogy for Brexit. In commerce, as a rule, the default outcome – the situation if no transaction takes place – is the status quo ante. No deal, no change. With Brexit, if we leave the European Union with no deal, we don’t simply carry on as before. Far from it. What will happen instead is that a whole swathe of rules governing all manner of transactions with the EU – covering, among other things, travel, security cooperation and trade – will cease to apply. Losing chunks of law isn’t easy; pointing this out isn’t “Project Fear”. This will be disruptive, and there’s no point claiming otherwise. Thinking, “Sod it, it’s been almost three years, let’s just leave” is fair enough, but be aware of what it means. And, yes, the government is trying to put in place plans to minimise disruption. But let’s be clear about these. The fact we’re planning to park lorries that previously would have been moving is not avoiding disruption, it’s managing it. And there is simply not enough time for the government to make all the preparations – infrastructure, hiring staff etc – it needs to. Insofar as no deal is something that can be planned for, moreover, it’s not enough for us to do it alone. The EU member states have to do it, too. And, yes, the EU has put in place some contingency plans. But again, not only are these limited, but they are designed, not unreasonably, to minimise upheaval on the other side of the Channel. Plans to keep planes in the air make sense, but don’t be surprised that these don’t include provisions to allow British Airways the same rights as before. And the EU 27 have reserved the right to withdraw these measures at any time. Which brings us to another, possibly more important, limitation of the deal metaphor. This is politics, not commerce. And politics is, sometimes, about more than the bottom line. Yes, no deal will hurt the EU, too. But not only do they know it will hurt us more, but they seem willing (not keen, just willing) to tolerate whatever harm it does them. The EU has pledged to ensure the rights of EU citizens here, and to make sure Brexit does not lead to a border in Ireland. Those priorities remain the same. So, if we leave with no deal, don’t expect them to sit down with us to chat about trade. They will say: “Get back to us when you’re ready to sort the issues we thought we’d resolved with the deal you’ve rejected.” All the more so because that deal includes us paying them nearly £40bn. All this being said, and contrary to my worst fears, when I tried, nervously, to explain all of this to the audience in Derby, they didn’t heckle. They didn’t shout me down. They paid attention. Some caricature leavers as a bunch of ignorant oiks waiting to drown out arguments they don’t like; that’s certainly not a view I have any time for. I’m not kidding myself that I changed any minds. There’s plenty of evidence out there to suggest there’s not much mind changing at all going on around Brexit. But I’m grateful to the audience, an audience that obviously had strong feelings, for having the decency to at least listen. • Anand Menon is director of The UK in a Changing Europe, and professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London. He is the co-author of Brexit and British Politics (Polity Press)Late-night hosts interpreted the end of the government shutdown and the arrest of Roger Stone. On Monday’s Late Night, Seth Meyers addressed what he saw as a particularly symbolic weekend of news for the White House. Between Trump’s capitulation on the government shutdown and the arrest of his close associate Roger Stone, Meyers said, “it’s not often that a single event sums up an entire presidency but on Friday, we got one that came pretty close. “Remember, Trump brags that he only hires the best people, calls the Russian investigation a hoax, calls CNN fake news, and his government shutdown left FBI agents without pay,” Meyers explained. “So it was especially ironic when one of Trump’s closest associates was arrested by unpaid FBI agents working for the special counsel on the Russia investigation, and the whole thing was caught on tape by CNN. “The only way that could’ve been more humiliating for Trump,” Meyers said, “is if Robert Mueller celebrated by eating a Happy Meal at McDonald’s on a date with Stormy Daniels.” The indictment against Stone may seem damning – he allegedly told a radio host that he should “pull a Frank Pentangeli”, in reference to a Godfather character who lied to a congressional committee – but Stone left his house in high spirits, imitating his hero Richard Nixon’s victory pose. “Now you might be thinking to yourself: didn’t Nixon resign in disgrace? Maybe that’s not the best pose to show your innocence? But Stone doesn’t remember that, because he spent most of the 70s traveling around in a glass elevator that he stole from Willy Wonka,” Meyers joked about Stone and his off-kilter, retro-formal outfits. “This guy was basically begging to be arrested,” Meyers said. “I mean, he imitates Richard Nixon, he quotes from The Godfather, and he dresses like Hannibal Lecter.” Stephen Colbert also poked fun at the braggadocio of the Trump team in the face of seeming defeat. Trump compromised his harsh position on his signature campaign promise on Friday, agreeing to not veto a Senate bill to appropriate funding as long as a Senate committee looked into border funding. However, “not everyone thought Donald Trump folded like an origami swan,” said Colbert. “For instance, Donald Trump.” The president tweeted that the reopening was “in no way a concession”, and that if there’s no border security deal with wall funding in 21 days, then “it’s off to the races!” “And believe me, folks, I know races,” Colbert continued in the president’s voice. “Many people call me a racist.” “So, just to be clear,” Colbert said of the new situation, “he’s making the exact same offer, backed by the exact same threat, but somehow he expects different results. Well, you know what they say: the definition of insanity is Donald Trump.” On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah examined the Fox News response to Roger Stone’s arrest. “It was really interesting to see how his supporters and Trump’s supporters on the right reacted to the way he was arrested,” Noah said in reference to footage of Sean Hannity and Roger Stone decrying the use of armed FBI agents and excessive force in the arrest of Trump’s surrogate. Stone said in a news interview that more force was used in his arrest than in the raid on Osama bin Laden, El Chapo or Pablo Escobar. “Calm down, fourth blind mouse, calm down,” Noah exhorted, with a poke at Stone’s signature dark, circular sunglasses. “It wasn’t more force than Bin Laden - Bin Laden is at the bottom of the ocean right now.” Basically, Noah continued, “you have Trump and his people lambasting the police for what they did … and for how many years have black people been saying police in America are extreme – the way they arrest people, the way they interact with citizens when they take them away.” When those concerns are raised, Noah said, the same people calling foul for the treatment of Roger Stone always say “blue lives matter”, “respect the police” or “that’s the law”. In an interview with Fox, Stone even compared the FBI approach to that of the Gestapo. “Really? When the cops arrest you, they’re Nazis?” Noah said. “And when they go after black people, you’re like, ‘Well, that’s the law.’ “Look, I’ll be honest with you: I agree with Roger Stone,” Noah continued. “I think the amount of force when that the police used to arrest him seemed excessive … but I also don’t blame the cops. They were just following orders from the top.” Noah then cut to footage from a July 2017 speech Trump gave to law enforcement officers, in which he encouraged them to be rougher when putting suspects in police cars. “Yeah, poor Trump, he thought rough policing would only apply to MS-13,” joked Noah. “Who knew they would also be using it on the Maga 6.”In “College”, the fifth episode of The Sopranos, the double life of troubled mobster Tony Soprano comes into sharp focus. Tony has to perform two tasks – take his daughter Meadow to a college admissions interview and knock off fugitive informant Febby Petrulio – without letting his worlds collide. Showrunner David Chase wanted Tony to garrotte Febby but HBO CEO, Chris Albrecht, blenched. Although HBO had been bold enough to pick up the show after every network had rejected it, Albrecht feared that viewers wouldn’t root for a protagonist who strangled a man in cold blood. That didn’t happen in 1999. Chase responded that if Tony didn’t do it, “he’s full of shit and therefore the show’s full of shit”. He got his way. Viewers loved it. RIP Febby. RIP received wisdom. The Sopranos is such an acknowledged landmark in television history that the 20th-anniversary celebrations already feel exhausting. But when thinking about any cultural big bang, from the Beatles to Star Wars, it’s essential to crack the shell of overfamiliarity and remember a time when it was new, risky and had a fight on its hands. Chase’s argument with Albrecht was one such turning point. To Chase and showrunning peers such as David Simon (The Wire) and David Milch (Deadwood), most TV drama, however well crafted, was full of shit, too restrained by moral simplicity and pat resolutions to tap the form’s full potential. The Sopranos generation gambled on viewers’ ability to handle far more complex and ambiguous narratives than the networks were giving them, demonstrating that television could equal, if not surpass, cinema and literature as a forum for audacious, multilayered storytelling. In the pilot episode, Tony Soprano says of the mafia: “Lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” For television, the opposite was true. As happened with the Beatles and Star Wars, The Sopranos’ innovations eventually froze into cliches. A few years after “College”, viewers had become so acclimatised to charismatic antiheroes that they would have been surprised if a protagonist didn’t make the worst choice. The Sopranos had no shortage of fine female characters – conflicted Carmela, monstrous Livia, poor Adriana – but the first wave of what became known as prestige TV was dominated by shows by and about “difficult men”, to quote the title of Brett Martin’s excellent book about the creative revolution: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Shield. However, when you consider the most acclaimed recent shows, The Sopranos’ overt influence appears to be at a low ebb. Surly crimelords can be found in the likes of Narcos but they’re no longer front and centre. Killing Eve’s mesmerising sociopath is a young woman. Mrs Maisel has never watched the life drain from the eyes of a rival comedian, although that would certainly shake things up in season three. The real legacy of The Sopranos is more subtle and diffuse. With all those memorable scenes of wiseguys getting whacked, it’s easy to forget how daringly strange the show could be: the cryptic dream sequences, the perversely long detours into the private lives of secondary characters, that infamous Schrodinger’s cat ending that epitomised Chase’s commitment to living with ambiguity. That experimental spirit can be detected in shows as diverse as Noah Hawley’s Fargo and Donald Glover’s Atlanta, which regularly scramble expectations in ways that, with the honourable exception of Twin Peaks, were inconceivable before The Sopranos. The fact that it feels natural to refer to Hawley and Glover (or Jill Soloway or Lena Dunham) as authors illustrates The Sopranos’ greatest achievement: convincing the television industry to wean itself off tried-and-tested formulas and trust maverick showrunners with peculiar ideas. Twenty years on, prestige TV has attained overwhelming dimensions, empowering scores of creators who couldn’t have thrived in the rule-bound world of pre-Sopranos television. While the success of The Sopranos was made possible by the economics of cable channels, DVD binge viewing and episode-by-episode TV criticism, affluent streaming platforms such as Netflix have opened the floodgates. The vast amount of brilliant, idiosyncratic television that we now enjoy is due in no small part to David Chase’s refusal to be full of shit.The death of Paweł Adamowicz, the popular liberal mayor of Gdańsk, has sent shockwaves across Poland and elsewhere in Europe. Silent marches have been held in Warsaw, Gdańsk and other cities to pay tribute to him – and tens of thousands of Poles participated. Saturday, the day of his burial, will be a day of national mourning. The alleged assailant, a 27-year-old man from Gdańsk, was released from prison last month, it emerged on Monday. After the stabbing, the assailant told the crowd he blamed Adamowicz’s former political party Civic Platform for his jailing in 2014 for a series of violent attacks. Beyond the specifics of the crime, Adamowicz’s death will likely bring further polarisation in a country already torn apart by years of reckless political bickering. In Poland there has also been heated debate as to whether there is any analogy between this traumatic event and the 1922 assassination of Gabriel Narutowicz, the first president of the independent Polish Republic. Narutowicz was shot at the opening of an art exhibition in Warsaw, following a fierce antisemitic campaign run by nationalists. That tragedy proved to be a lasting burden on Polish political culture. Adamowicz was 53 years old, and had been mayor for more than 20 years. He was widely seen as the father of Gdańsk’s spectacular transformation into an open, modern and prosperous metropolis. Under his leadership the city became a laboratory of innovative forms of civic participation. As a liberal and European he did not hesitate to declare Gdańsk as a city open to refugees – against the dominating mood in the country. He was one of the key political figures of the liberal opposition against the populist Law and Justice party voted into national government in 2015. His death is a human tragedy and a political earthquake. Political discourse in Poland has for years been shaped by the battle between the opposing rightwing Law and Justice party and the liberal Civic Platform. This includes conspiracy theories about the 2010 Smolensk plane crash as well as the dismantling of rule of law by the current government. Historical reminiscences are natural but also misleading. In 1922 Narutowicz was killed after days of street riots aimed at preventing him taking office. A ruthless campaign by the nationalist party depicted him as a candidate of “the Jews” and a “disgrace” to Poland. And his assailant was a political radical. Polarisation in today’s Poland has not – yet – come so far. We may never know what exactly led to this particular crime – psychiatric problems, personal grievances, or political factors. But extremists such as Anders Breivik in Norway, Eligiusz Niewiadomski (who shot Narutowicz), or the assassin of Jo Cox, may have been drawn to acts of violence by conspiracy theories, polarised debates and radical ideologies. There is little doubt that any attempt to bridge the Polish divide will be doomed to fail if it stops short of addressing the backdrop to this tragedy. Public debate in Poland is filled with toxic content – spread so actively by the ruling party that it makes it impossible to speak of any kind of balance. State television has been turned into an instrument of brutal propaganda, spewing out hate speech and xenophobia on a daily basis. Just three days before the murder in Gdańsk, an antisemitic satire was broadcast on prime-time TV. In it, the charity organisation whose event Adamowicz was planning to speak at – and where he would be stabbed – was cast as something dubious, run by opaque forces. This well-known charity event raises money to help sick children but it’s long been under attack from rightwing media and those in the ruling party, making the ridiculous claim that it promotes low or decadent morality. Adamowicz himself had been the target of numerous verbal attacks, including when government officials suggested he was serving German, not Polish, interests. In 2017 a nationalist youth organisation published a fake “public death certificate” of Adamowicz and other city mayors who had welcomed refugees. The public prosecutor’s office controlled directly by the minister of justice chose not to react – as in many other cases of hate speech. Hatred, contempt and intolerance, if stirred up, promoted or even just passively accepted by political elites and the media, can and does lead to violent acts and terrifying results. It will happen, sooner or later. The murder of Adamowicz may have been influenced by what we all were exposed to for years – this suspicion is by no means far-fetched. No amount of condolences and days of national mourning will be able to erase that fact. Calls for silence and moderation have poured in from all sides, as tributes are paid to Adamowicz. But silence is not an answer to this tragedy. There will be no relief, no reconciliation and no hope of fixing our national politics if we don’t come to grips with what this frightful event says about the state of our country. Can we go back to normal after this? It would surely require a degree of self-restraint on behalf of the liberal opposition and an especially large dose of self-criticism from the Law and Justice government and its supporters. But these actions are in short supply at the moment – and unlikely when the European Union and Poland are both heading towards elections this year. Accusations from both sides and hate speech in the government-controlled TV did not stop after the tragedy. Europeans everywhere should take note: what happened in Gdańsk isn’t just a Polish problem. We are all sitting in a room filling up with toxic fumes – all over Europe. We need to act before someone enters it and lights a match. • Piotr Buras is head of the Warsaw office and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign RelationsThe North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said he hopes to continue denuclearisation talks with Donald Trump in 2019 but used his New Year’s address to warn that he could be forced to take a “new path” if the US persists with sanctions against his regime. Wearing a dark suit and seated on a leather armchair in front of portraits of his predecessors – his father, Kim Jong-il, and grandfather Kim Il-sung – Kim said he was willing to meet the US president “at any time” to produce an outcome that would be “welcomed by the international community”. But he added that North Korea would have “no option but to explore a new path in order to protect our sovereignty” if Washington “continues to break its promises and misjudges our patience by unilaterally demanding certain things and pushes ahead with sanctions and pressure”. He did not give details on what that “new path” might entail. Kim and Trump signed a vaguely worded statement committing the North to “denuclearisation” during their first meeting in Singapore last June, but negotiations have since stalled over disagreements on the definition of denuclearisation and which side should be the first to make concessions. Pyongyang has demanded that Washington lift sanctions and declare an official end to the 1950-53 Korean war, while the US has urged the regime to demonstrate its commitment to denuclearisation. In Tuesday’s televised address, which was also broadcast live in South Korea for the first time, Kim called on South Korea to end its joint military drills with the US – which have largely been halted since his summit with Trump – and not deploy strategic military assets to the South. Reflecting on a year of inter-Korean rapprochement during which he held three summits with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, Kim said: “Now that North and South Korea decided on the path of peace and prosperity, we insist that joint military exercises with outside forces should no longer be allowed and deployment of war weapons such as outside strategic assets should be completely stopped.” Harry Kazianis, director of defence studies at the Center for the National Interest in Washington, said Kim’s speech showed Pyongyang was “clearly willing to engage in dialogue while working towards denuclearisation with Washington and Seoul – but on its terms”.Police have seized a Cartier diamond ring worth more than £1m bought by a jailed Azerbaijani banker in Harrods, the latest move in the UK’s first McMafia-style “dirty money” investigation. A district judge on Monday granted the confiscation of the ring worth £1,190,000, plus VAT, that Jahangir Hajiyev obtained from at the department store in London’s Knightsbridge in 2011. The National Crime Agency (NCA) seized the ring from a high-end London jewellers, where it had been taken for repairs. The ring is presumed to have been bought for Hajiyev’s wife, Zamira Hajiyeva, who is the subject of the NCA’s first unexplained wealth order (UWO). Hajiyeva has refused requests to explain the source of her extraordinary wealth. If she continues to fail to reveal the origin of her fortune, the courts could seize her properties including a £11.5m five-bedroom home in Knightsbridge and a £10.5m golf and country club in Ascot. It was revealed in the high court last year that Hajiyeva, whose main home is less than 100 yards from the doors of Harrods, had spent £16,309,077.87 there in over a decade. The NCA said she used 35 credit cards issued by her husband’s bank to fund the spending spree at the shop. The court also heard that she had access to a $42m (£33m) Gulfstream G550 jet and had a wine cellar stocked with some of the world’s most expensive bottles. The 8.9-carat Cartier diamond ring was seized under the “listed assets” provisions introduced by the Criminal Finances Act 2017. The NCA said: “The source of the funds to purchase the jewellery requires further investigation.” The NCA seized £400,000 worth of Hajiyeva’s jewellery in November from Christie’s auction house in central London, where they had been brought to be valued by Hajiyeva’s daughter, Leyla Mahmudova. The agency said the source of funds used to purchase the jewellery, including a £120,000 Boucheron sapphire and ruby necklace, “requires further investigation”. The NCA claims Hajiyeva is wanted by Azerbaijani authorities in connection with avoiding the investigation into fraud at her husband’s former bank. She is one of several family members whom the authorities claim were used by Jahangir to take money out of the country. The family denies the allegations. In October, Hajiyeva’s lawyer said: “The decision of the high court upholding the grant of an [UWO] against Zamira Hajiyeva does not and should not be taken to imply any wrongdoing, whether on her part or that of her husband. The NCA’s case is that the UWO is part of an investigative process, not a criminal procedure, and it does not involve the finding of any criminal offence.”Jonas Mekas, who has died aged 96, was one of the most important and influential figures in American underground cinema. The term underground as a film genre originated in the US towards the end of the 1950s, boosted by the magazine Film Culture, of which Mekas was founder and editor-in-chief. The magazine, Mekas’s iconoclastic answer to Cahiers du Cinéma, became the mouthpiece of the American avant garde – rooted in the European avant garde but strongly connected to the Beat movement that emerged at the same time. In 1958, Mekas became the first film critic of the Village Voice, spotlighting the newest and most radical film-makers in New York City. “I had to protect all the beautiful things that I saw happening in the cinema and that were either butchered or ignored by my colleague writers and by the public.” Although he was a key player in American film history, Mekas’s early life in Lithuania played a significant part in his own film-making. He was born in the Lithuanian village of Semeniškiai, and in 1944, during the Nazi occupation, he and his younger brother, Adolfas, were arrested and taken to a labour camp in Elmshorn, Hamburg. They escaped eight months later, hiding on a farm near the Danish border for two months until the war ended. Thereafter, they lived in a series of displaced persons’ camps for almost four years. It was during this time that Mekas’s interest in cinema bloomed. The US army showed movies, one of which, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, made the greatest impression on him. “Especially I remember liking the ending, and the desert, the sense of something crawling. Visually it was interesting. Then I saw another movie, Fred Zinnemann’s The Search, about displaced persons, made immediately after the war. I saw it with my brother and we got very angry about how little understanding of the real situation there was in this film, about what it means to be displaced. So we started writing scripts. That’s when we decided to make our own films.” After studying philosophy at the University of Mainz, where he also edited a Lithuanian émigré magazine and wrote short stories and poetry, he was sent, with Adolfas, to the US by the UN refugee organisation when the displaced person camps in Germany were dissolved. Weeks after his arrival in Brooklyn, at the end of 1949, Mekas borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex 16mm camera and began to record moments of his life, a practice he continued into the next century. His first 35mm feature, which he wrote, directed, produced, edited and photographed, was Guns of the Trees (1961), made under the influence of John Cassavetes’ Shadows and Robert Frank and Albert Leslie’s film Pull My Daisy. A real period piece, Guns of the Trees describes aspects of Beat culture in New York through the lives of four fictional characters, one of whom was played by Adolfas. There are discussions of Caryl Chessman’s execution, Nixon’s 1960 campaign, and US hostility towards Fidel Castro. Allen Ginsberg narrates and reads his poems, and there are folk songs on the soundtrack. Mekas followed this with The Brig (1964), a cinéma vérité record of life in a Marine corps jail in Japan. However, by this time he had decided that his talent lay outside the feature film tradition and he shifted to creating a cinematic diary, Diaries, Notes and Sketches, inspired mainly by the example of Stan Brakhage and Marie Menken. Meanwhile he had co-founded the New American Cinema Group and the Filmmakers’ Cooperative in 1962, prompted by the dearth of interest in his work from existing distributors. It was also a reaction against “the official cinema”, which he claimed was “morally corrupt, aesthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, temperamentally boring … The very slickness of their execution has become a perversion covering the falsity of their themes, their lack of sensibility, their lack of style.” Mekas screened avant garde, no-budget independent films at a number of venues, principally the Bleecker Street cinema in Greenwich Village. “We don’t want rosy films, we want them the colour of blood,” he proclaimed. In 1964, he was arrested on obscenity charges and given a six-month suspended sentence for showing a “queer double bill” of Jack Smith’s outrageously camp Flaming Creatures and Jean Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour. Undeterred, he launched a campaign against the censor board. The first chapter of his film diary was the three-hour Walden (1969), depicting four years in his life, which he called “just images for myself”. This is no ego trip, but a record of the world and the people surrounding him, with Mekas often breaking in to offer his private reflections. The staccato, single-frame flashes, edited directly in the camera, are balanced by longer sequences of dinners, weddings and meetings with a who’s who of counterculture personalities including Timothy Leary, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The main section of Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) describes the emotional reunion of the Mekas brothers with their 90-year-old mother when they returned home for their first visit since the war. The film opens with a summary of Mekas’s initial experiences in the US and ends with a recognition of the difficulty of recovering the past or returning “home”. Lost, Lost, Lost (1976) records, over three hours, his early life in the US and his feeling of being an exile. Every few years, Mekas released more of his “home movies”, a phrase he embraced, using much archive material and featuring his friends, many of whom were fellow avant garde film-makers. He had married Hollis Melton in 1974 and became the father of Oona and Sebastian, in them finding a new subject. Paradise Not Yet Lost (1980) is a memoir of his family’s life in New York and travels abroad. According to Mekas, As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000), was “the ultimate Dogme movie, before the birth of [the Danish film movement] Dogme”. During almost five hours, Mekas invites the viewer to share his family life, although its true subject is the very act of filming itself. Mekas’s obsession with reclaiming the past took another turn when, in 1969, he led a team to establish the Anthology Film Archives. Over the last 50 years, this has grown into one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant garde films. Mekas called himself a filmer rather than a film-maker (“I don’t really make films; I only keep filming”) or director (“I direct nothing”). He preferred to capture the essence of the moment rather than stage an event. As a perceptive film critic, he was very adept at describing his work, referring to his films as “personal little celebrations and joy … miracles of every day, little moments of paradise … awkward footage that will suddenly sing with an unexpected rapture”. He continued to film his life almost up to the end of it, one of his last films being Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man (2012). Adolfas died in 2011. Mekas’s marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his children. • Jonas Mekas, film-maker and critic, born 24 December 1922; died 23 January 2019In a small bookshop in Suan Phlu, a lively district of Bangkok, an unusual conversation is taking place. Men and women crammed into the nooks and crannies between the books listen intently as Wipaphan Wongsawang picks up a microphone and gestures around her. “Women in Thailand should not have to be silent about rape and assault any longer,” she says. “It’s time people started talking about consent.” Wongsawang is the founder of Thaiconsent, a project that began as a series of articles explaining the concept of sexual consent to her friends. In the past 12 months it has grown into an online platform containing hundreds of stories of rape and assault, and inspired an exhibition of artworks designed to challenge Thailand’s culture of misunderstanding over sexual assault. “Before, in Thailand we never spoke about this concept of ‘consent’ in sex,” Wongsawang tells the Guardian. “And when it comes to news about assault, or rape, particularly rape by someone you know, the first questions that anyone asks the woman are: ‘How did you let this happen?’, ‘What were you wearing? or ‘Were you drinking?’ The first instinct is always to blame the women. And there’s a damaging assumption here by men in Thailand that if women don’t say anything, that means yes.” Wongsawang is one of a growing number of Thai women who, after years of silence, are forming a unified movement vocalising frustration at how sexual assault, rape and gender-based violence are treated, or even ignored, in Thailand. A UN study published last year revealed that almost 90% of rape cases in Thailand go unreported to authorities. Activists agree that it is premature to call this Thailand’s #MeToo moment – there has been no naming and shaming of public figures, and the subject is only slowly filtering into public discourse. But the Thaiconsent project and recent hashtag #donttellmehowtodress, which went viral in Thailand this year, have revealed a desire to change the perceptions and handling of sexual assault. One of the first to speak out was Thararat Panya, a law student at Thailand’s Thammasat University, who last year posted an uncompromising account of her sexual assault by a fellow student on social media. Then in April, Thai model Cindy Sirinya Bishop began the popular #donttellmehowtodress hashtag after hearing that Thai authorities told women to “not dress sexy” to avoid sexual assault. “Our culture is not one that is so confrontational, and it’s going to be a while until a woman comes out and names names or points a finger in the media,” says Bishop. “But over the last few months, I’ve seen women in Thailand begin to collectively speak out, sharing their stories and pushing back on this victim-blaming which previously has gone completely unchecked here.” Panya agrees. “Society here really misunderstands sexual assault – everyone told me to keep quiet – and the justice system works against the victim,” she says. “But this year I’ve started to see a real change in attitudes.” Our attackers would go on as normal around us, as if nothing wrong had happened. Wongsawang experienced an attempted rape when she was 20 by a friend while at university. “At that time I didn’t understand what had happened to me,” she says. “So for a year I kept quiet, with this eating away at my heart.” But over the course of a year, the same thing happened to eight of her friends, who were all raped, harassed or sexually assaulted by people they knew but had no idea how to handle it or who to go to. Those who did report it were rarely taken seriously. “I kept thinking: was this normal in our society?” says Wongsawang. “Especially as our attackers would go on as normal, as if nothing wrong had happened.” For Wongsawang, learning about sexual consent was “like a light went on”. She began writing articles and, after graduating, opened the Thaiconsent Facebook page in late 2017. She encouraged people to share stories, anonymously, of incidents where they had been forced into sex without their consent, be it through violence or emotional coercion. The response was overwhelming. “People had never been given a platform like this to tell these stories before and feel like they were valid and not judged.” Over the course of this year, more than 400 stories have flooded in. Most have been from women, but three have been from men. Most had never taken their accounts to the authorities. It proved so successful, she now intends to make Thaiconsent into a formal organisation. There is still a long way to go. Both Bishop and Wongsawang railed against the way rape and assault were normalised in Thai popular culture, particularly in TV soap operas. It is so pervasive that since she began started #donttellmehowtodress and organised the Social Power Exhibition Against Sexual Assault, which will continue to tour Thailand in 2019, Bishop has had to turn down several TV roles that she felt compromised her activism. “The biggest problem I see in Thailand is the dangerous gap in conversations about sex, where men don’t ask what women want, they just take it,” says Wongsawang. “And for women, often they don’t dare to express what they want or don’t want. Thai women are taught to say yes – we are groomed to please others – and not empowered to say, ‘No, I don’t want this,’ especially to someone she knows. It’s these attitudes we want to change.” Navaon Siradapuvadol contributed to the reporting on this storyJean-Claude Juncker has signalled that he will offer a last-minute helping hand to Theresa May in her bid to get her Brexit deal passed by MPs – but hinted at deep scepticism in Brussels at her chances of success. A letter from the European commission president is expected on Monday offering further reassurances to MPs that, should it be triggered, the Irish backstop would keep the UK in a customs union only temporarily. Speaking in Bucharest, Juncker said talks with Downing Street over the content were ongoing. But he said every effort would be made to find a way to convince parliament to support the withdrawal agreement when it votes on Tuesday. May’s Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, has been in Brussels this week to try to secure a meaningful document that could unlock some votes in parliament, but has been faced with officials on the other side of the table who are doubtful anything can be done. Juncker stressed the limitations the member states had imposed on him at the last summit in November, when they insisted they would not even provide a legal interpretation of the deal to help May, let alone unpick any of the terms of the backstop. Under the withdrawal agreement, to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, the UK would stay in a customs union with the EU unless there was an alternative arrangement, such as a trade deal, that could solve the problem. Juncker, who was in Romania for the start of the country’s six-month presidency of the European council, called for space to allow him to work out a formula that would suit the prime minister, saying: “Laissez-moi faire.” or “Let me do it.” “We, the commission and I, are in touch on a constant basis with No 10 Downing Street and we will see what happens between now and Tuesday,” he said. “We will see what the British legislature decides to do with the texts that have been put forward. I still hope that here will be a deal. I do not like the prospect of a no deal, which would be a disaster, I think, for our British friends and for the continent of Europeans. And every effort needs to be made between now and Tuesday afternoon perhaps to ensure that this important issue can be resolved satisfactorily.” Asked about the substance of the letter that is expected to emerge from Brussels, Juncker played down expectations of a game-changing intervention. He said: “What we have said very clearly in council and commission, in full harmony, was that there can be no renegotiation, there can be clarification. But that’s all we are discussing with Downing Street what these clarifications might amount to, that should not confused with a renegotiation with regards to the backstop. Aside from these remarks I think it would be unwise to go into the ongoing discussions.” In a sign of the sensitivity of the moment, Juncker added: “I could become highly prominent from one hour to the next if I were to enter into the detail of your question – and it is not your concern to have me become less popular on different islands. I will resist the temptation.” At his weekly press conference in The Hague, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, voiced the concerns of leaders of countries that would be most affected by the UK leaving the EU without a deal. “The ball is rolling towards the ravine and everyone is watching it without putting their foot in the way,” Rutte said. There has been speculation in Brussels of a Brexit summit in late January should the deal be voted down, to see if leaders can offer May a way out of her predicament. EU officials did not deny that this could be a next step, but suggested they would be led by Downing Street should the deal be voted down. Officials declined to comment on the substance of the assurances, simply reiterating that the deal could not be cut across, but adding: “There is something.”Denis Suárez has completed his loan move from Barcelona to Arsenal for the remainder of the season, the Catalan club have confirmed. Arsenal, who will take on the 25-year-old midfielder’s salary in full, will have an option to make the deal permanent in the summer, although that is non-compulsory. Barcelona have protected the value of their player by extending his contract by 12 months until June 2021 so that, if he was to return to them at the end of the season, he would not then enter the final year on his deal. Unai Emery, the Arsenal manager, who worked with Suárez at Sevilla in 2014-15, has said that he wants fresh options on the wing. He believes that Suárez can give him that, even if his lack of pace means that he is perhaps not a pure winger. Suárez is a highly technical player, who has good touch and positional sense. “We are very happy that Denis is joining us,” said Emery. “He is a player we know well and I have worked with him at Sevilla. He brings us quality and options in many different attacking positions, so he’ll be able to help the team.” Suárez spent two seasons at Manchester City, Arsenal’s opponents on Sunday, from the age of 17, when he made two appearances in the League Cup. He has barely featured for Barcelona this season, making just eight appearances – two of them as a starter in the Copa Del Rey. Arsenal are also interested in a loan for the Belgium winger Yannick Carrasco, who is at Dalian Yifang in China. They had explored the possibility of taking Ivan Perisic on loan from Internazionale only to be rebuffed and Carrasco, previously of Monaco and Atlético Madrid, was next on their list. Carrasco would be open to a move from China but Arsenal face competition from clubs in Italy, chief among them Milan. Meanwhile, teenagers Emile Smith-Rowe and Eddie Nketiah are set to join RB Leipzig and Augsburg on loan respectively.There is one complaint about Tom Enders’ latest warning about Brexit. The chief executive of Airbus would do himself a favour if he sounded vaguely grateful for the huge subsidies his company has received from the UK government, and thus British taxpayers, over the decades. The corporate sense of entitlement is one reason why we’re in the current mess. But let’s save that one for another day. When Enders warns that a no-deal Brexit could force “potentially very harmful decisions” for Airbus’ operations in the UK, it’s time we listened to him and ignored what he called “the Brexiteers’ madness”. This is about the politics and economics of aircraft production and three points are important. First, Enders – or, since he’s on his way out, his successor – is in a position to pull investment from the UK. If that happened the jolt to the entire UK aerospace industry could be enormous. As Airbus regularly points out, there are 110,000 jobs in its UK supply chain, on top of the 14,000 people it employs directly, and this is an industry that runs on multinational lines. Second, it is naive to think Airbus is engaged in elaborate scaremongering in its analysis of Brexit. The company’s “risk impact assessment” last June was not, as some Brexiters tried to pretend, an argument about tariffs that would not apply. The worries were about the movement of employees between the UK and the EU, supply logjams and the harmonisation of aircraft regulations on parts and components. If those factors create costs and disruption they will inevitably enter calculations on where to invest. Third – and perhaps most importantly – one can be very confident that other countries would try to exploit a no-deal outcome to bag more Airbus work for themselves. “Make no mistake there are plenty of countries out there who would love to build the wings for Airbus aircraft,” Enders said – a lofty statement but one that is also plainly true. It’s an open secret that the German and Spanish governments, even before the 2016 referendum, were lobbying to get the wing-manufacturing work currently done at Broughton in north Wales. China might also want to pitch. That’s the aerospace industry – it is political. So, when Enders says Airbus is not dependent on the UK for its future, take him seriously. It would be expensive and time-consuming for Airbus to dump its sole supplier of wings and establish another facility from scratch, as he acknowledged. And one suspects, even after a no-deal Brexit, Airbus would first want to see what extra incentives were on offer from the UK. But the threat to redirect investment – with strong encouragement from EU capitals – is credible. Gratitude, you can be sure, will not form part of the thinking in the Airbus boardroom.There is, of course, no such thing as a sure thing. No guarantees, no certainties. Except, now and then, when there is. As Harry Kane stepped back from the penalty spot with 26 minutes gone at a chilly, boisterous Wembley Stadium he didn’t bother to frown or compose himself. He didn’t take a deep breath and look troubled, as he might have just for form’s sake. Instead he stood for a second, stepped forward and spanked the ball with the top of his boot into the corner past Kepa Arrizabalaga, who made a token flinch with his right arm, reduced to a piece of scenery in another man’s five-second short movie (working title The Centre Forward’s Complete Absence Of Fear Of The Penalty). Kane wheeled away, remembering to look overjoyed, or at least vaguely surprised at this turn of events, his seventh goal in his last six games for Tottenham. Kane has been described as a star player without any obviously extreme qualities. Watch him warm up before a game and you realise this overlooks the fact that when it comes to spanking a ball at goal he is prodigious, hypnotic, utterly thrilling in his power and accuracy. Some players waft the ball into the crowd during those drills. Kane simply murders it into the corners over and over again. It isn’t luck, or a coincidence or goal-hanging that means this keeps happening. He has just worked away at the margins, made it so the percentages will always favour him; become, in effect, a sure thing. This was the only real lesson to be drawn from what was at times a strange Carabao Cup semi-final. Chelsea had 17 shots to Tottenham’s six. Eden Hazard was mesmerising in the second half, sniping constantly into space, gliding past the white shirts like a ghost in blue. And yet for all their pressure, their 57% possession, the closest Chelsea got to scoring was a deflected first-half cross. But then, they didn’t have Kane. Or, indeed, any kind of centre-forward at all, lining up with a three-man front line of Willian, Eden Hazard and Callum Hudson-Odoi: three fine players full of craft and cleverness who between them have five goals in Chelsea’s last 20 matches. For all its complexities, its deep theory, so much of football’s narrative is reverse-engineered out of the finest details: choosing the right centre-forward, for example, and then playing him the right way. Besides scoring the only goal, Kane was quietly brilliant at Wembley, playing in his slightly adjusted role with Son Heung-min so high up the pitch. It is a semi-10 position that brings out his ability to spin and pass in deeper spaces. Kane had spent a part of the autumn looking drained, reduced to walking backwards through the centre circle, hands groping out for a defender to wrestle. He has recovered his mobility, found the freedom to make those veering sprints that drag opponents into horrible places. Midway through the first half he ambled back into his own half, took the ball on his chest with an agreeable thud and volleyed a spectacular crossfield Harry Hollywood pass into the path of Son on the far side. The run for the goal was the best part. When Kane can sprint behind the defence from halfway then he has the whole quiver of arrows at his back, good enough to hold the ball there, but also to hare away from Antonio Rüdiger before being bumped to the ground by Arrizabalaga. Kane had been flagged offside. VAR suggested he was on, or on enough. The rest was a formality, a tick in the box, and a lesson too in the importance of that simple cutting edge. Hudson-Odoi played well without ever looking totally settled. It isn’t hard to see what so many have seen in him already. With 20 minutes gone he took the ball by the touchline, rolled his foot over the ball and just glided past Harry Winks with an easy little surge of speed. Hudson-Odoi may yet be off to Bayern Munich in search of game time. At the same age Kane was sharpening his teeth at Millwall, but then not everyone can be quite so fortunate. And for all their second-half pressure Chelsea’s edge was elsewhere at Wembley: sitting on the bench to the 79th minute in the shape of Olivier Giroud, or absent completely in the form of the injured Álvaro Morata, a £60m, quadruple league-winner, double Champions League-winning centre-forward who may or may not be any good, nobody really knows for sure. For now they are all some way short of Harry, the greatest hunch any modern-day Spurs manager ever had, the gift that has kept this Poch-era team rolling along through the turbulence of the stadium years – and the edge that makes all the difference on nights like these.Jean-Claude Juncker has told Theresa May in a private phone call that shifting her red lines in favour of a permanent customs union is the price she will need to pay for the EU revising the Irish backstop. Without a major shift in the prime minister’s position, the European commission president told May that the current terms of the withdrawal agreement were non-negotiable. Details of the call, contained in a leaked diplomatic note, emerged as Juncker’s deputy, Frans Timmermans, said there had been no weakening of the resolve in Brussels in support of Ireland, and accused the Tory Brexiters of a “cavalier” approach to peace. “Let me be extremely clear: there is no way I could live in a situation where we throw Ireland under the bus,” Timmermans said. “As far as the European commission is concerned, the backstop is an essential element for showing to Ireland and to the rest of Europe that we are in this together.” On Tuesday, the Commons will vote on a series of amendments that might variously force the prime minister to delay Brexit or go back to Brussels to demand the ditching of the Irish backstop or a time limit on its enforcement. Critics of May’s deal believe that the backstop, an “all-weather” solution for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland, could trap the UK in an indefinite customs union, limiting the country’s ability to pursue an independent trade policy. May’s deal was rejected this month by a historic 230 votes. At a confidential meeting of the ambassadors in Brussels last week, EU officials said there had been no back-channel talks in recent days with Downing Street nor talks between May and other heads of state and government. The European council’s Danish secretary general, Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, told the ambassadors he believed the impasse could continue into February. “Next week there is a vote,” he said. “There have been no talks in the last week. I do not expect any clarity or any position in the course of next week. This will take time. In the meantime, pressure will increase. On our end we will need to find ways to deal with that.” A commission official said: “Yes, difficult, and President Juncker told Mrs May that the backstop was non-negotiable and only if May changed red lines then we can move on the backstop.” It is understood that one solution discussed by senior officials would be for the backstop to be downgraded to be Northern Ireland specific, as was originally proposed by the EU, should there be a commitment from the British government to negotiate a permanent customs union with the whole of the UK. But Timmermans said attempts to rip out the backstop from the withdrawal agreement or put a time limit on it were doomed to fail. Delaying Brexit, he added, did not solve the problem of finding an agreement that could avoid a no-deal scenario. “The problem is that the House of Commons can say they don’t want a no-deal Brexit but if they don’t say what they want there will be a no-deal Brexit on the 29th,” Timmermans said. “The thing with Europe is that if you know our history so many things have happened in our history that nobody wanted that I think we need to be well prepared for a no-deal Brexit.” “Come together around an idea, and we will listen,” Timmermans told MPs. “Mind you, a backstop is called a backstop because it doesn’t have a time limit. If it has a time limit it is no longer a backstop, so that backstop for the European Union is very important. And there can be no uncertainty about that.” Asked whether May should respond to Juncker’s advice and move to support a permanent customs union, Timmermans said: “Well, that is an internal debate in the UK. I am just looking at the number 230. Yeah. “I don’t know what [Juncker] has been saying privately, I am not privy to that. I am just observing the debate and she will have to command a majority in the House if she wants something done.” Brexiters were given hope in recent days by the EU’s prevarication over whether a hard border would be enforced in the event of a no-deal Brexit, and by the suggestion from Poland’s foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, that a five-year time limit could solve the problem of the backstop. “I am not quite sure minister Czaputowicz was speaking on behalf of the Polish government,” Timmermans said. “I have not seen the Polish government repeat that.” The commission’s first vice-president added he would expect the EU’s leaders to have an open mind towards an extension of the negotiating period beyond 29 March. “One of the things that irks me most in all of this is this image that has been created of this vindictive unfriendly European union,” he said. “I think, from where I stand, we have been bending over backwards. Mrs May’s red lines are Mrs May’s red lines ... I also hear people in the UK always saying, ‘oh God, they have been treating us so badly.’ Frankly, I really don’t understand how you can say that.”A 17-year-old has caused a highway collision after driving blindfolded as part of the Bird Box challenge. Based on the hit Netflix horror starring Sandra Bullock, the social media challenge involves participants taking part in tasks while wearing a blindfold, emulating characters in the film who must evade sight-targeting monsters. On Monday afternoon, the unnamed teen drove on the highway with her beanie hat pulled over her eyes. According to KUTV and the Layton police department, she soon careered into the other lane and hit another car, a light pole and a sound wall. Police are recommending charges of reckless driving. Bird Box Challenge while driving...predictable result. This happened on Monday as a result of the driver covering her eyes while driving on Layton Parkway. Luckily no injuries. pic.twitter.com/4DvYzrmDA2 “Honestly, I’m almost embarrassed to have to say ‘Don’t drive with your eyes covered’, but you know apparently we do have to say that,” Travis Lyman of the Layton police said. “The stakes are just so high and it’s just such a potentially dangerous thing as it is: to try and do it in that way is inexcusable. It really puts everybody at risk.” No one was injured in the crash – a relief to Netflix, which earlier this month issued a warning to fans of the film to lay off the blindfold stunts. “Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE,” Netflix tweeted from its primary account. “We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl” – a reference to the two unnamed children of Bullock’s character – “have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.” Despite largely mediocre reviews, Bird Box has become one of Netflix’s biggest hits with an outsized impact on social media. The streaming platform claims that 45m accounts watched Bird Box in its first seven days – the biggest first week for an original film to date. Though Netflix’s streaming numbers cannot be independently verified, Variety reports that according to the ratings measurement company Nielsen, Bird Box had 26 unduplicated streams in the US during its first week, making it second only to Stranger Things 2 in reach among Netflix originals.Business leaders have suggested the UK resembles a “supertanker heading for the rocks” that will not be saved unless factions in the Conservative party drop their own “red lines” for a Brexit deal. As the prime minister, Theresa May, ruled out staying in a customs union despite pledging to reach out to her opponents after her historic defeat on Tuesday in the Commons, the Confederation of British Industry launched yet another appeal asking MPs to shift position and compromise. The CBI’s deputy director general, Josh Hardie, said it was “very very, concerning” that the divisions in the Tory party had hardened so much. Unless MPs woke up to reality and shifted their position, Britain would be hurtling towards an “historic act of self harm” in the shape of a no dealover Brexit, he claimed. Hardie said: “Our competitive advantage is being eroded already. The majority of contingency plans are already being executed. Companies have contingencies to be triggered at three months, two months, one month to go. It is not that contingencies will all happen in one fell sweep, but every week the deadlock continues the more contingencies plans will be enacted. “That’s all to the detriment to the UK, to the economy, to jobs. It’s in the form of relocating, cancelling investment plans, stockpiling. These are all unproductive sunk costs.” He said the CBI’s analysis was that there were five different groupings in parliament, with each rigidly expecting the other to come to their point of view. “If that mindset doesn’t change, there will never be a majority for anything. We are a supertanker heading for the rocks and unless the crew gets together to change the destination we will be on the rocks,” he said. The CBI did not consider May’s Brexit deal perfect but last week had urged MPs to back it to ensure a transition period and negotiation towards an ultimate trade deal that would minimise friction and barriers for importers and exporters. Hardie said he thought MPs did listen to business leaders across the board – including those at Jaguar Land Rover, which last week announced 4,500 redundancies, mostly in the UK. But he said he was despondent about a group of MPs, including the Tories Jacob Ree Mogg and Suella Braverman, who have said that the consequences of a no-deal outcome had been exaggerated. Hardie added: “I believe there is not a majority for no deal, and business can take credit for that, but there are still a significant number of MPs who do not understand that, who do not want to accept the evidence because it would contradict their own philosophy. People can still put their fingers in their ears. Capital has already been diverted from the UK to Europe. There is no question that significant sums of money have already been lost.”In the years following the composer John Joubert’s arrival in Britain from South Africa, he produced such staples of the Anglican choral repertoire as the carols Torches (1951) and There is No Rose of Such Virtue (1954), and the anthem O Lorde, the Maker of Al Thing (1952). But he did not forget his roots, whether in his abortive operatic project based on Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country; his powerful single-movement Symphony No 2 (1970), inscribed to the memory of the victims of the Sharpeville massacre of a decade earlier; or the suite South of the Line (1985), where he set five anti-Boer war poems by Thomas Hardy for chorus and percussion. In his orchestral fantasia Déploration (1978), marking the death of Benjamin Britten two years earlier, he commemorated a composer similarly taken up with war and cruelty, with the Last Post hauntingly stalking the closing pages. Joubert, who has died aged 91, once commented: “I’ve never really wanted to be pigeonholed as a composer. I’ve always wanted to write anything that I was either asked to, or wanted to write.” With nearly 200 works to his credit, covering every genre, his catalogue was far from limited, with oratorios – including Wings of Faith (2003), An English Requiem (for the 2010 Three Choirs festival) and St Mark Passion (2016) – songs, and song cycles. Instrumental works included organ music, three symphonies, a sinfonietta and five concertos (one apiece for violin, piano, bassoon, cello and oboe). He also produced other orchestral works, four string quartets, a string trio, piano trio, octet and three piano sonatas, recorded by his friend John McCabe. Every composition was impeccably crafted and easily assimilated by virtue of his expert writing for voices or instruments. There were also eight operas, or nine counting the two distinct versions of his last, Jane Eyre. Composed in 1987-97 in three acts, it was recast in 2014-15, with much of the discarded music reworked as his Symphony No 3, completed in 2017. Of the more than 80 recordings devoted to Joubert, or featuring at least one of his works, the most celebrated is of the revised opera premiere in Birmingham in October 2016. It features April Fredrick as Jane and the English Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Woods. Joubert’s third opera, Silas Marner, based on the novel by George Eliot, was intended to form part of the 50th anniversary celebrations in 1960 for the Union of South Africa. After the festival organisers found it to be unsuitable – presumably because of its subject matter – it was mounted at the University of Cape Town and hailed by the press as the first full-length opera by a South African composer. But although Joubert is the most distinguished classical composer to have come out of the country, he took British citizenship when he left after this first return visit. Born in Cape Town, John had Huguenot ancestry on the side of his father, a clerk, and Dutch on his mother’s side. She had studied the piano with Harriet Cohen in London. His own outlook was English by virtue of his education, at the Anglican Diocesan college, Bishops, in Cape Town, run on English public school lines. While still a schoolboy he studied at the South African College of Music, part of the University of Cape Town, with its retired principal WH Bell, a pupil in Britain of Frederick Corder, who also taught Arnold Bax and Granville Bantock. Joubert graduated from both school and the SACM in 1944, and continued to study with Bell privately, having flirted with the idea of becoming a writer or an artist. The Cape Town municipal orchestra played some of his earliest compositions, and in 1946 he was given a Performing Rights Society scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London. There his teachers included Alan Bush, Howard Ferguson and Theodore Holland. In 1950 he graduated with a BMus from Durham University, started lecturing at Hull and had his First String Quartet published by Novello, which remained his principal publishers. In 1962 he moved to Birmingham University as a senior lecturer, later reader, in music, retiring in 1986 to devote himself to composition. He was appointed visiting professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand (1979), and was composer-in-residence at the Peterborough Cathedral (1990) and Presteigne (1997) festivals. In 1951 he married Mary Litherland, having met her as a piano student at the Royal Academy. She became a music teacher, and Torches, based on a Galician carol, was written for her pupils. She survives him along with their daughter, Anna, a cellist, son, Pierre, a violinist, and four grandchildren, Matthew, John, Naomi and Alexander. • John Pierre Herman Joubert, composer, born 20 March 1927; died 7 January 2019In 1993, Sandra Oh, who plays the eponymous MI6 agent in the hit TV show Killing Eve, went to the cinema to see The Joy Luck Club. Wayne Wang’s film about four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters had a big impact on the young Canadian-Korean actor. An adaptation of Amy Tan’s 1989 novel, it left her “shuddering, weeping … weeping more than really the film deserved”, Oh has recalled, so emotional was she about finally watching the experience of Asian immigrants on the screen. Later today, Oh’s place in the entertainment industry is to be recognised twice over, as she co-hosts the Golden Globe awards at a Beverly Hills ceremony in which she is also the first Asian nominee for “best actress in a drama series”. According to Owen McDonnell, the Irish actor who plays Oh’s husband in Killing Eve, she is the perfect choice as compere. “Sandra is a great champion of actors,” McDonnell said. “She believes we need to be consulted, just like the art department. We need to have a voice and, if we have done our work, that we can really help.” At 47, Oh already has one Globe, for her longstanding role in the medical show Grey’s Anatomy, but the chance to present the 76th awards alongside comedian Andy Samberg with an estimated audience of 19 million is a significant coup. And if she fails to put a cherry on the cake by winning the acting award – over Elisabeth Moss from The Handmaid’s Tale, The Crown’s Claire Foy and Westworld’s Evan Rachel Wood, Samberg has a plan. “I’m going to make you a crappy little tinfoil fake Globe, just in case you don’t win, and I’m going to bring it out and give it to you and be like, ‘You’re always a winner to me’,” he has said. Broadcaster NBC was looking for an eyecatching duo to launch its new deal to cover the ceremony, so the choice of Oh reflects the continued “surprise factor” that comes with being an Asian star. Oh describes her selection as “crazy-pants in a great way”, and admits she is terrified. She agreed to do it, she told Hollywood Reporter, to point to real change: “I want to focus on that, ’cause people can pooh-pooh Hollywood all they want – and there is a lot to pooh-pooh, sure – but we also make culture. How many gazillions of people have seen Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians? That changes things.” Oh suspects that, like many others in her Asian-descended community, she has been in denial about a personal burden of “so much grief” that comes from not being portrayed on screen. And in the 25 years since The Joy Luck Club, the shift towards diverse casting has been slow. “There aren’t enough – not anywhere near – Asian-American faces up there to represent our population,” Oh says. The actor had low expectations when BBC America sent her the screenplay for Killing Eve and didn’t guess she was up for a lead role “[I remember] quickly scrolling through my phone, trying to find my part, and I’m talking to my agent like, ‘I don’t get it. What’s the part?’.” Born in Nepean, a small town outside Ottawa, Oh is the middle child of strict, high-achieving parents who had come to North America after the Korean war. Her father is an economist and her mother a biochemist, while her older sister is now an attorney and her brother a medical geneticist.She remembers a “typical Korean upbringing” with “lots of church, lots of golf”. Entering Canadian showbusiness on a low rung, Oh was aided, she now recognises, by a “mandate for diversity”. “I ticked all their boxes,” she has said. “You could always feel that you were the quota … But I benefited a lot and took it with the correct outlook, which is just that I’m going to gain as much experience as I can and I will transform it in the way I want to transform it.” A lead part in the 1994 film Double Happiness helped establish her in Canada, but it was playing Cristina Yang in ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy for 10 seasons that set her up with a vociferous fan base. When she left Seattle Grace Mercy West hospital for ever in 2014 many viewers groaned with pain. Her role in Alexander Payne’s 2004 film Sideways had been crucial to its success. As biker Stephanie, she has one notably violent outburst, and was encouraged by Payne, her then husband, to call on all her suppressed Korean anger. Last year as Eve, an everyday MI6 operative and assassin hunter, Oh became an international celebrity. She initially signed up, she has said, because she liked the idea of playing a woman “who is undone” yet “the undoing gives her life”. Devotees now eagerly await a second series in the spring, this time scripted by actor-writer Emerald Fennell.. The show is based on the novellas of Luke Jennings, the Observer’s recently departed dance critic, and he is delighted with Oh’s performance. “Eve is a difficult role. She has to be completely and relatably ordinary, she has to be funny, and she has to be alluring, all at the same time. Sandra carries this off stylishly and apparently effortlessly because, as an actor, she’s without ego,” he said this weekend. “She’ll be almost invisible, and then she’ll throw a switch and illuminate.” On set, co-star Fiona Shaw has characterised Oh as “fantastically focused on the craft of the thing”, while McDonnell praises her determination to make each scene work. “She is very collaborative and didn’t come to it with an agenda,” he says. “We thought it out together. There was no blocking of my ideas. We created a couple who are very tight but starting to fail each other slightly because of the different things they are doing.” Whatever happens tonight, Oh will need fresh ways to cope with the Hollywood hoopla – something she has always quietly avoided. Although she is believed to be dating Russian-born artist Lev Rukhin, she took her parents to the Emmy awards last summer. She is also unlikely to read this: she steers clear of her own press in an effort to stay real. “While rationally you might know it’s ridiculous, it can hurt your feelings. It can knock me off from being my authentic self,” she has said. 1971 Born in Nepean, Ontario, Oh learns to dance before moving into acting 1994 Stars in Canadian film Double Happiness 2004 A role in Sideways showcases her skill 2005 Begins 10 seasons of TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, playing surgeon Cristina Yang 2018 Sharing top billing with Jodie Comer in Killing Eve, Oh becomes the UK’s favourite secret agent 2019 Co-host of the Golden Globes with Andy SambergChina has expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with Justin Trudeau after he criticised the death sentence passed on a Canadian man convicted of drug trafficking, as the two countries continued to spar over detained citizens. The Canadian prime minister should “respect the rule of law, respect China’s judicial sovereignty, correct mistakes and stop making irresponsible remarks”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Tuesday. A day earlier, Trudeau said that the death sentence had been applied “arbitrarily” in the case of Robert Lloyd Schellenberg when it was upped from a 15-year prison sentence on appeal. “We express our strong dissatisfaction with this,” Hua said. But on Tuesday, Canada showed little sign of backing away from its condemnation of the verdict. “Canada’s position when it comes to the death penalty is consistent and very long-standing,” the foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, told reporters. “We believe it is inhumane and inappropriate, and wherever the death penalty is considered with regard to a Canadian we speak out against it.” She said Canada’s ambassador, John McCallum, had petitioned China for clemency on behalf of Schellenberg. Schellenberg has 10 days to appeal the death penalty. If he doesn’t, or if the appeal is rejected, then the court’s verdict would go to the supreme people’s court in Beijing. If they approve it, the execution could happen within seven days, but the court could also reduce the sentence. Relations between the two countries – which only months before had been in pursuit of a large free trade agreement – turned icy in early December when Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou, a senior Huawei executive and Chinese citizen, for extradition to the US. Critics say Beijing is using Schellenberg’s case to exert pressure on Ottawa. But analysts have been confounded by the dramatic deterioration in relations. “I’m mystified by the lack of restraint in the Chinese response. It’s not what I would expect to have from such a serious strategic country, and the Chinese are highly strategic,” said Michael Byers, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia. “In this instance it seems that are allowing anger to get the better of their strategic foresight.” While China has been vocal about Canada’s arrest of Meng on 1 December, Trudeau’s comments in recent days have also been “unhelpful”, said Byers. “He suggested a few days ago that one of the Canadians who has been detained has diplomatic immunity, which is patently false,” he said, adding that Trudeau’s comments that Schellenberg’s detention was “arbitrary” did little to remedy a fraught situation. “This public posturing on both sides is therefore misguided by both governments.” Domestically, Trudeau has faced growing criticism from opposition parties for his reluctance to speak directly with Chinese president Xi Jinping. Said Byers: “I think the avoidance of direct leader-to-leader is a good policy. We have diplomats for a reason and our embassy enables us to communicate messages – outside of the public spotlight.”What does it mean to be human? That question sits at the core of human rights. To be human has specific implications: human self-awareness and the actions taken to uphold human dignity – these are what gives the concept of humanity a special meaning. Human self-awareness and human actions determine the interplay between individual thought and language and the wider society. It is our actions as humans that deliver economic security, the right to education, the right to free association and free expression; and which create the conditions for protecting expression and encouraging bold thinking. When we abandon efforts to uphold human dignity, we forfeit the essential meaning of being human, and when we waver in our commitment to the idea of human rights, we abandon our moral principles. What follows is duplicity and folly, corruption and tyranny, and the endless stream of humanitarian crises that we see in the world today. More than two centuries have passed since the concept of human rights was first developed. During that time humanity has gone through various stages of history and the world has seen enormous changes. In Europe, what was once a collection of colonialist, autocratic states has transformed into a democratic society with a capitalist orientation, establishing a mechanism that protects individual rights. Other societies are also seeing structural changes, and the concept of human rights is facing grave challenges. In part these challenges stem from the disparate demands of countries in different stages of development, with contrasting economic situations and competing interests. But challenges also come from divergent conceptions and understandings of human rights, human dignity, morality and responsibility, and from different interpretations and applications of the core principles of human rights. In the contemporary world, as our grasp of the fundamental values and principles of human rights and humanitarianism weakens, we risk losing our rights, responsibilities and our power to uphold human dignity. History shows that a moral failure is always accompanied by painful realities, visible everywhere. The global refugee crisis is worsening daily, and 70 million refugees have been forced to leave their homes by war and poverty. Our living environment is constantly being degraded, and the ecological balance is ever more fragile. Armed conflicts persist and potential political crises lurk; regional instabilities grow more acute; autocratic regimes brutally impose their will, while democratic governance is in decline. Unreasoning and unrestrained expansion under a nationalist, capitalist order is exacerbating the global gap between rich and poor. Our views of the world have become more divided and more conflicted than ever. Individuals in many countries and regions lack the opportunity to receive an education, to access information or communicate freely. They have no chance to exercise their imagination and creativity or fulfil their ideals; no chance to enjoy freedom of belief and freedom of association. Such rights and freedoms pose a fatal threat to autocracy and authoritarianism. This is why, in so many places, lawyers have been imprisoned, journalists have been disappeared and murdered, why censorship has become so pervasive, why religious and non-governmental organisations have been ruthlessly suppressed. Today, dictatorships and corrupt regimes continue to benefit from reckless arms sales, and enjoy the quiet support of capitalist nations. Religious divisions, ethnic contradictions and regional disputes all feed into primitive power plays. Their logic is simple: to weaken individual freedoms and strengthen the controls imposed by governments and dominant elites. The end result is that individuals are deprived of the right to live, denied freedom from fear, and freedom of expression, or denied the rights to maintain their living environment and develop. The concept of human rights needs to be revised. Discussions of human rights used to focus on the one-dimensional relationship between the state’s rights and individual rights, but now human rights involve a variety of relationships. Today, whether demands are framed in terms of the rights of the individual or the goals pursued by political entities and interest groups, none of these agendas exists in isolation. Historically, the conditions governing human existence have never been more globally interdependent. The right of children to grow up and be educated, the right of women to receive protection, the right to conserve nature, the right to survival of other lives intimately connected with the survival of the human race – all these have now become major elements in the concept of human rights. As science and technology develop, authoritarian states invade privacy and limit personal freedom in the name of counter-terrorism and maintaining stability, intensifying psychological manipulation at all levels. Through control of the internet and command of facial recognition technology, authoritarian states tighten their grip on people’s thoughts and actions, threatening and even eliminating freedoms and political rights. Similar kinds of controls are being imposed to varying degrees within the global context. From this we can see that under these new conditions human rights have not gained a common understanding, and if discussion of human rights becomes narrow and shortsighted, it is bound to become nothing more than outdated, empty talk. Today, Europe, the US, Russia, China and other governments manufacture, possess and sell arms. Pontificating about human rights is simply self-deluding if we fail to curb the dangerous practices that make armed conflict all the more likely. Likewise, if no limits are placed on capitalist global expansion and the pervasive penetration of capital power, if there is no effort to curb the sustained assault by authoritarian governments on natural human impulses, a discussion of human rights is just idle chatter. Such a blatant abdication of responsibility can lead to no good outcome. Human rights are shared values. Human rights are our common possession. When abuses are committed against anyone in any society, the dignity of humanity as a whole is compromised. By the same token, it is only when the rights of any individual and rights of the people of any region receive our care and protection that humanity can achieve a shared redemption. Such is the principle of human rights, in all its stark simplicity. But a shared understanding of that truth still eludes us. Why so? Could it be that we are too selfish, too benighted, too lacking in courage? Or, perhaps, we are insincere, we don’t really love life enough: we con ourselves into imagining we can get away without discharging our obligation to institute fairness and justice, we fool ourselves into thinking that chaos is acceptable, we entertain the idea that the world may well collapse in ruin, all hopes and dreams shattered. If we truly believe in values that we can all identify with and aspire to – a recognition of truth, an understanding of science, an appreciation of the self, a respect for life and a faith in society – then we need to eliminate obstacles to understanding, uphold the fundamental definition of humanity, affirm the shared value of human lives and other lives, and acknowledge the symbiotic interdependency of human beings and the environment. A belief in ourselves and a belief in others, a trust in humanitarianism’s power to do good, and an earnest recognition of the value of life – these form the foundation for all human values and all human efforts. • Ai Weiwei is a leading contemporary artist, activist and advocate of political reform in ChinaIt is a storyline worthy of a Hercule Poirot whodunnit. After confiding in just 20 trusted people of his suspicion that a painting in his church was a lost masterpiece, a priest in the small Flemish town of Zele, 45 miles north of Brussels, has had to call in the local police over its sudden disappearance. Pastor Jan Van Raemdonck, 61, turned to the detectives after two women laying flowers in the nave of the Sint-Ludgerus church last Friday morning discovered that the 16th-century painting, known as the Holy Family, had gone missing from its usual position by the altar. The work, depicting Mary, Joseph and a sleeping baby Jesus, was due to be assessed within days by the respected Michelangelo expert Maria Forcellino, after Van Raemdonck alerted her to the startling similarity to a drawing by the Renaissance master in the collection of the Duke of Portland. Instead, Van Raemdonck, who has been a pastor at the church for five years, has been left to suffer an anxious wait. He estimates that the painting, donated to the church 16 years ago by the former Belgian senator Etienne Cooreman, could be worth €100m (£89m), but the police are yet to offer any updates. “A lady living nearby saw a young man, around 20 years old, near the church around 5am on Thursday morning, but he went away when she put her light on,” said Van Raemdonck. “On Friday morning at 9am, two ladies who were putting flowers on the altar noticed the external door was open and the painting was missing. “I didn’t talk about my suspicion about the painting in the church,” he added. “I wanted to wait for the experts and if they said it was a Michelangelo I would have improved the security of the building. I only told some family, friends and the church’s council. I told about 20 people, and never in public.” Van Raemdonck added that he had emailed a number of museums as part of his research into the painting, but had not received a reply. “Maybe someone picked up the information from my emails,” he said. “I hope the police can check cameras in the area and find out what happened. The church believes it was a targeted burglary, involving more than one thief. The painting, which is mounted in wood, is said to weigh about 100kg. “They were only interested in that one painting,” Johan Anthuenis, the chairman of the church council, told the Flemish newspaper Het Nieusblad. “They have not even looked at all other valuable items.” The mayor of Zele, Hans Knop, said a link between the theft and the pastor’s theory about the painting was plausible. Van Raemdonck, an amateur write of history and children’s books, who was writing a fictional novel about the painting before it disappeared, added: “It is a beautiful painting – I just hope we can get it back.”After their worst year in close to a decade US stocks started the new year with a more than 1% decline on Wednesday before inching their way back into the black as Donald Trump blamed a “glitch” for last year’s losses. Markets wobbled between gains and losses all day on Wednesday as weak data in Asia and Europe confirmed fears of a global economic slowdown while the US government shutdown dragged on. In the White House Trump told reporters that equities should recover when the US completes trade deals with countries like China. “Our country is doing better by far than any other country in the world. We’re the talk of the world,” Trump said. “We had a little glitch in the stock market last month, but we’re still up about 30% from the time I got elected. “It’s going to go up once we settle trade issues and a couple of other things happen,” Trump said. “It’s got a long way to go.” All 11 major S&P sectors were lower in early trading but by noon markets appeared to be recovering. US investors have witnessed wild daily swings at the end of 2018 and the first day of trading in the new year looked little different. China’s factory activity contracted for the first time in 19 months in December, hit by the Sino-US trade war, with the weakness spilling over to other Asian economies. Eurozone manufacturing activity dropped for the fifth month and barely avoided contraction. That news led to sell offs across Asia earlier in the day. The grim readings come ahead of the closely watched US manufacturing survey on Thursday, payrolls data on Friday and the US earnings season later this month, which is expected to show corporate profit shrank in the October-December quarter. “Increasing evidence of China’s economy weakening further has sent chills throughout global markets. This fear has been a depressing factor for the markets,” Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities, said in a client note. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up 0.08%, ; the S&P 500 was up 0.13%, and the technology led Nasdaq Composite was up 0.46%. The tech index – which suffered last year’s biggest losses – had earlier slipped 1.15%, with Microsoft Corp and Apple down nearly 2% and Amazon and Netflix down over 1%. Market volatility is also being stoked by developments in Washington where the US Congress is set to reconvene with no signs of a workable plan to end a 12-day-old partial shutdown and Trump not budging on his demand for $5bn to fund a border wall.John Malkovich is to star in a “farce” inspired by the Harvey Weinstein scandal and written by David Mamet. The play, Bitter Wheat, will have its world premiere in London this summer. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, Malkovich described the play as “a black farce about a very badly behaved movie mogul”. The actor said “a lot of people may not like” the play but that he felt it was “a terrific piece of writing”. Asked how comedy could be used to respond to the serious nature of the scandal – which includes allegations of rape, harassment and sexual assault, all of which Weinstein has denied – Malkovich said: “A lot of great plays elicit the question: do I laugh or do I cry? I think a lot of great comedy exists at the crossroads between pain and farce.” In promotional material, Malkovich’s character, Barney Fein, is described as “a bloated monster – a studio head who, like his predecessor, the minotaur, devours the young he has lured into his cave”. Bitter Wheat is “written and directed by David Mamet in a good mood” and “rips the pashmina off the suppurating wound which is show business, and leaves us better human beings, and fitter to once more confront the horror of life”. Malkovich, who worked with Weinstein on the film Rounders, said: “They say everyone in Hollywood knew [about Weinstein’s alleged behaviour] … That’s not true. It was never a topic of conversation any time the name Harvey Weinstein came around with me.” Asked if Barney Fein is supposed to directly represent Weinstein, Malkovich said: “No, it’s not particularly Harvey Weinstein. It’s a great deal about that business and a great deal about how people in that business in positions, say, as studio heads have behaved really for more or less a century now. If the idea maybe started as a reaction to all the news that came out in particular about Harvey Weinstein, I think David took the idea from there and went with it.” Bitter Wheat is Mamet’s first new play since China Doll, which opened on Broadway in 2015 and starred Al Pacino. Malkovich will be joined on stage by Doon Mackichan, who will play Fein’s assistant, Sondra, and by Ioanna Kimbook in her debut theatre performance. The rest of the cast for the production, which Mamet will direct himself, has not yet been announced. The play will be at the Garrick theatre, London, from 7 June to 14 September. Next month, Steven Berkoff will direct himself in Harvey, a one-man show he has written about Weinstein, at the Playground theatre, London.For the last five years I’ve kept a list of dream locations to photograph and this was one of them. It’s an underground house in Las Vegas that has its own garden with fake trees, fake sunrises and fake scenery. It went on the market in 2014, and when I spotted it it had been sold for $1m to a “mystery group”. I managed to track down the owners to ask if they’d let me shoot there. Luckily, they were up for it. The house was built as a bomb shelter in 1978 by Girard Henderson, a director of Avon cosmetics, and his wife, Mary, who was a hairdresser to the stars. They were both in their 70s at the time. It was the age of nuclear terror and the cold war. Maybe they wanted to go out in style? I knew from photos that the house would fit my aesthetic: my locations tend to be pink, quite kitsch, with a sense of the 60s and 70s being preserved. When I got there, though, it was so much bigger than I imagined. You can get lost in it. There are lots of different entrances and exits and it took me a while to work out my bearings. It’s also really quiet. You can hear the swimming pool trickling in the background and these occasional strange, creaky noises … but there’s no sound at all from the real world above ground. I like the way the pose matches the curtains opening. It also has a Hitchcock Rear Window element, as if I'm peeking in on myself from the garden I really had to push myself to stay for three nights because it was quite a scary place to be on your own. It felt like an empty museum – or a mausoleum! But I always work alone on my projects. If anyone else is there, I’d just be thinking and worrying: “Are they bored? What do they think of me?” I need to remove from the situation anything that makes me self-conscious. The way I work is to set up the camera for each shot first, to make everything perfect composition-wise. Then I get in front of the camera and shoot myself with an infrared remote control. This picture, of my legs, came after I’d tried a million different poses. I ended up lying down because I was so frustrated and getting to the point of giving up. I was thinking: “What am I doing taking stupid pictures of myself in this house when all my friends are back in the UK having fun?” But this pose worked. It’s kind of ambiguous. It could be looked at as highly sexual, but it also reminds me of someone giving birth. I like the way the pose matches the curtains opening – I’m into cliches like that. It also has a Hitchcock Rear Window element, as if I’m peeking in on myself from the garden. It turned out the “mystery group” who bought the house was a society of people who wanted to live for ever. They have all signed up to be frozen cryogenically when they die and I think they just wanted a quirky place for their headquarters. I explained to one of them what I was doing and they said it was fine as long as I made a donation. They’d left a whole archive library of cryonics magazines in the house and I think that influenced these images. They ended up being snapshots of a woman trapped underground, a Stepford Wives type trying to preserve everything perfectly and slowly going mad and morphing into an alien. That wasn’t the plan when I got there, because I never arrive with a plan – it all just happens on instinct. Girard died of a heart attack in 1983. As soon as that happened, his wife thought: “I can’t do this any more” and moved back above ground. I don’t blame her. When I returned to the house to finish the project I booked into the hotel down the road. Juno Calypso is at Studio Giangaleazzo Visconti, Milan, until 11 January Juno Calypso’s CV Born: Hackney, London. Studied: London College of Communication. Influences: Stanley Kubrick, The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, 1000 Extraordinary Objects. High point: “My two projects, The Honeymoon and What to Do With a Million Years. Low point: “Having nothing to do after I graduated and staring into the abyss!” Top tip: “Don’t feel like you have to overproduce. Less is more.”Black Sheep, a film commissioned by the Guardian, has been nominated for best short documentary at the 2019 Oscars. Directed by Ed Perkins, Black Sheep tells the story of Cornelius Walker, a black 11-year-old from London who moves with his family to a housing estate in St Albans after the murder of schoolboy Damilola Taylor in 2000. Walker, the same age as Taylor and of similar background, found himself confronting a gang of local racists and, after first fighting back, went to extraordinary lengths to fit in and gain their friendship. The film features interviews with Walker looking back 15 years on from the events he describes, which are re-enacted in the locations where they took place, with Kai Francis Lewis playing Walker. The film was produced by Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn of Lightbox (collaborator on the Whitney Huston documentary Whitney). Simon Chinn has previously won best documentary Oscars in 2013 for Searching for Sugar Man and in 2009 for Man on Wire. Black Sheep is executive produced by the Guardian’s head of documentaries, Charlie Phillips, and Lindsay Poulton, executive producer, documentaries. Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media, said: “It’s wonderful to see such an important and personal story resonate with so many people and I’m delighted that the Guardian helped to tell it.” Phillips added: “Thanks to [Cornelius’s] bravery in speaking with such candour, combined with Ed Perkins’ beautiful filmmaking, this film will resonate with anyone who’s struggled with their identity as a teenager, and it says something profound and relevant about race in today’s world.” Black Sheep has already won a string of awards, including best short at Sheffield Doc/Fest and the grand jury prize at the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin British Shorts film festival. The Academy Awards will take place on 24 February at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Rendezvous Bay is billed as Montserrat’s only white-sand beach; all the others are volcanic black. When we reached it, the secluded cove was deserted. We followed huge, tractor-like tracks left in the sand by green turtles, and floated in the warm, crystal-clear water as pelicans dived for sprats overhead. Then we dried off – and pulled on our walking boots. This beach doesn’t get crowded because it can only be reached after a stiff hour’s hike. The Caribbean is not an obvious hiking destination but one company is trying to change that. Hike Caribbean launched last September to offer “holidays with hikes” to people who don’t want to just laze on a beach all day. It is not a full-on hiking trip: most walks take a maximum of half a day, so there is still plenty of time to relax with a rum punch. And there is no roughing it with a backpack and a tent – the accommodation is luxurious by the standards of most hiking holidays. Our hotel in Antigua, Sugar Ridge, had three pools, two restaurants, a spa and free shuttles to the beach. My sister and I started our trip in Antigua, where Hike Caribbean is based. We had a week-long, two-island itinerary; those with more days could fit in three islands. Really keen hikers can tackle the five-peak challenge: 21 days of hiking to the highest points on Antigua, St Lucia, Guadeloupe, St Kitts and Nevis. More islands will be added in future, such as Dominica, which has some of the best hiking in the region but is still recovering from Hurricane Maria in 2017. Our first hike in Antigua sounded idyllic: through the rainforest in the south-west of the island, down to a string of hidden beaches. Unfortunately, the weather was against us: three weeks of freak rain had made the route too treacherous to attempt. Instead, our larger-than-life guide, Vorn, took us up Boggy Peak, aka Mount Obama, one of the aforementioned five peaks. Usually this hike starts from Sugar Ridge, but the rain forced us to reroute and set off by Jeep. We began knee-deep in water. I had climbed Mount Obama on a previous visit to Antigua with no problems, but torrential rain and squelching mud made it a completely different proposition. Vorn kept our spirits up with his tall tales and encyclopaedic knowledge of the island’s flora and fauna; we seemed to pass a plant to cure every ailment under the sun. Thankfully, the next day the sun came out as we drove to Galleon Beach. From here, we followed a gorgeous coastal trail up to Shirley Heights, a former military lookout. We stopped at the Mermaid Gardens, where the sea has carved out a natural swimming pool – though the usually flat water was raging due to the recent rains, so we couldn’t take a dip. We walked through cacti and clouds of butterflies to the summit, with its views over Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbour and far beyond. Back at the hotel, we stretched out our sore muscles in a sunset yoga class – Hike Caribbean also offers trips combining hiking with yoga, swimming or birdwatching. Sugar Ridge is built into the hillside and the outdoor yoga terrace is right at the top, a stunning setting for a few sun salutations. From Antigua, it is a thrilling 20-minute flight in an eight-seater plane or a stomach-churning 90-minute boat trip to neighbouring Montserrat (we took the plane there and the boat back). Here, the hiking stepped up a gear. As well as the beach trip, our new guide, Scriber, took us on a five-hour trek along a challenging new trail in the Centre Hills. It was seriously steep going, but the tropical forest was enchanting. Halfway up, Scriber stopped to call the Montserrat oriole, the island’s national bird. As if by magic, a pair appeared: an olive-green female and a bright yellow-and-black male. The species was critically endangered until 2016 and is still classed as vulnerable, but conservation efforts are bearing fruit. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the mountain chicken, a much-loved giant frog that has been decimated by disease and habitat loss. Officially, it is critically endangered in Montserrat and Dominica, its two surviving relative strongholds, but Scriber thinks it is now extinct on his island. He becomes visibly emotional: “The forest used to be a symphony – the male could call from dusk till dawn.” The species is being bred in captivity, and Scriber hopes it will be reintroduced successfully. As we climbed higher, we reached an elfin forest, a rare ecosystem featuring miniature trees. At the top, the thick cloud parted for a precious few minutes before swallowing up the hills again. After the hike, we headed to the Attic restaurant in Olveston, which specialises in chicken roti and fresh juices made from tropical fruits, such as soursop and starfruit. The must-try dish in Montserrat is goat water, a thick, clove-scented stew generally eaten at weddings and funerals. I tried it at a local family’s house, but it is also served at the People’s Place in St Peter’s district on Fridays. Life in Montserrat changed irrevocably for humans and wildlife alike in 1995, when the Soufrières Hills volcano began erupting; further eruptions in 1997 killed 19 people. The capital, Plymouth, was destroyed, two-thirds of the population emigrated and more than half the island is still an exclusion zone. Islanders had to start from scratch, relocating everything from homes and hospitals to the airport. The volcano is still considered active but hasn’t erupted since 2010 and is extremely closely monitored. Visitors can watch a documentary on the eruptions at the Hilltop Coffee House, an excellent cafe-cum-museum. Prior to 1995, Montserrat was an upmarket tourist destination. The Beatles producer George Martin opened a recording studio there in 1979, and stars such as the Rolling Stones made albums in the sunshine. (We stayed in Martin’s former home, Olveston House, which is now a guesthouse.) Today, the tourist board is marketing “the buried city”, Plymouth, as a modern-day Pompeii. As it is so close to the volcano, you still need a government permit and a police guard to visit – which Hike Caribbean can organise – and it is an astonishing, unsettling, sobering sight. I wandered around the abandoned streets, past a school, a hotel and a supermarket, all of which were buried under volcanic mud and ash. Photographs reveal a two-storey office building that once stood five storeys high; the spire is all that remains of the church. But beyond buried Plymouth, life is returning to the island – ash is a good fertiliser and the hills are lush and green once more. Montserratians hope the tourists will return, too, and hiking is just another good reason to do so. The trip was provided by Hike Caribbean, which has a seven-night trip to Antigua and Montserrat from £1,395, including B&B, four guided hikes and internal flights or ferries. BA has return flights from Gatwick to Antigua from £420 This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Police searching for the footballer Emiliano Sala will consider calling off the operation later on Wednesday after failing to find any sign of the aircraft he was travelling in despite scouring 280 sq miles of the Channel. In a lunchtime update, Guernsey police “multiple aircraft” have been involved in the search operation over five hours, but “no trace” of the missing light aircraft had been found. It added: “A decision whether to continue will be taken later today.” Earlier, rescuers said they were basing the operation on the premise that Sala made it into a life raft after the plane he was in disappeared over the sea. The pilot of the plane is reported to be Dave Ibbotson, an experience flyer and member of the British Parachute Association. A woman at the family home in Crowle, 10-miles west of Scunthorpe, told Grimsby Live that she did not wish to comment. Sala’s travel arrangements are understood to have been arranged by football agent Willie MacKay, who was reported involved in the Argentinian footballer’s transfer from the French side Nante to Cardiff City. Asked to confirm whether he was involved in Sala’s travel, MacKay told the Guardian he could not discuss the matter. L’Equipe reported that the head of the rescue operation said that if Sala and the pilot landed on water and made it on to a life raft, there was still a chance they were alive. “Nobody here, including me, is giving up. We are determined to find the two men alive,” the newspaper quoted Capt David Barker as saying. Guernsey police said they were working on four possibilities: Sala and the pilot have landed elsewhere but not made contact. They landed on water, have been picked up by a passing ship but not made contact. They landed on water and made it into the life raft police know was on board. The aircraft broke up on contact with the water, leaving them in the sea. The police added: “Our search area is prioritised on the life raft option. More updates as information becomes available.” A spokesperson for the force said: “There are currently three planes and one helicopter in the air. We are also reviewing satellite imagery and mobile phone data to see if they can be of any assistance in the search. So far today nothing spotted can be attributed to the missing plane.” The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch said the plane was unlikely to have been fitted with a flight recorder, or black box, which are mandatory on airliners and business jets, and are a vital tool for crash investigators. A black box is not mandatory on light aircraft such as the Piper PA-46 Malibu that Sala was travelling in. It is a legal requirement for European aircraft to carry an emergency transmitter to aid search and rescue operations. The AAIB said it was working closely with authorities in the US, France and Argentina. A spokesman said: “We will be gathering all the available evidence to conduct a thorough investigation. However, if the aircraft is not found it is likely to limit the scope of the investigation.” The remarks came as Sala’s former girlfriend Berenice Schkair, 27, made an emotional appeal on social media, writing: “I want to wake up and all of this to be a lie. Please investigate because I cannot believe this accident. Don’t suspend the search for bad weather when you only just found objects floating. I need to read that you have shown up.” She added: “Emi, my heart is broken. I still cannot understand it. I’m destroyed, I feel pain, fear, anger and impotence for not being able to do anything. I know you’re strong. We are waiting for you.” In a separate post, Buenos Aires-born Schkair wrote: “Investigate the football mafia because I don’t believe this was an accident.” When asked by the Argentinian media outlet Infobae for a comment, she said: “The only thing I want is for him to show up. Out of respect for the family I prefer to wait, I’m going to say what I need to say in a few days.” The aircraft, carrying Sala and the pilot, disappeared off Alderney on Monday night. The 28-year-old footballer reportedly sent a voicemail message to his father saying he was frightened the plane was about to break up. He was flying to Wales from Nantes, France, after signing for Cardiff City for a club record fee of £13m. In a transcript of the call, quoted by the Mirror, he said: “I’m here on a plane that looks like it’s about to fall apart, and I’m going to Cardiff … If in an hour and a half you have no news from me, I don’t know if they are going to send someone to look for me because they cannot find me, but you know … Dad, how scared am I!” The search and rescue operation – which included help from the Channel Islands, UK and France – was suspended for the day at 5pm on Tuesday. According to Guernsey police, the Piper PA-46 departed at 7.15pm on Monday and was flying at an altitude of 5,000ft (1,500 metres). On passing Guernsey it “requested descent”, but Jersey air traffic control (ATC) lost contact with the plane while the plane was flying at 2,300ft. After a 15-hour search from rescue teams, which covered an area of 1,155 sq miles (2,990 sq km), police said “a number of floating objects” had been seen in the water, but they were unable to confirm whether any were from the missing aircraft”. Earlier on Tuesday, Cardiff City’s executive director, Ken Choo, expressed his shock and distress at the news. Choo described Sala as a “great person” and said he had been “so happy” to sign for Cardiff. Its chairman, Mehmet Dalman, told BBC Radio Wales: “We spoke to the player and asked him if he wanted us to make arrangements for his flight, which would have been commercial. He declined and made his own arrangements. “I can’t tell you who arranged the flight because I don’t know at this stage – but it certainly wasn’t Cardiff City.” Investigators say the pilot had checked in with air traffic control in Nantes and Brest, then was transferred to London. He had requested to descend to 5,000ft. Last readings show the plane was flying at an altitude of 2,300 feet, it was reported. Le Point magazine claimed the aircraft was registered in the United States. Dalman said the club’s manager, Neil Warnock, was “in a state of shock”. He said: “Neil is human and he’s affected as much as we all are. We need to get on and do the right things but at the moment there’s a vacuum of information – it’s very unsettling.” Dalman said the reaction from the football world and beyond had been overwhelming, adding: “I even had a text message from a prime minister to wish us well.” He added: “Cardiff City will be involved with the investigation. We won’t leave a single stone unturned until we have all the facts … It’s a tragedy that I have never faced before. It has affected the club enormously. Our hearts go out to his family, especially those very far away. It’s a distressing time. We feel very saddened by it.” Hundreds of fans, many in tears, gathered in Nantes city centre on Tuesday evening for an emotional tribute to the missing player. Many laid bouquets of yellow flowers – Nantes are known as the Canaries because of their bright yellow kit – and chanted Sala’s name. Nantes FC said in a statement the tribute was “a spontaneous initiative by fans … The club thanks its supporters and the entire football family for the numerous expressions of support”. The message concluded: #PrayForSala. Claudio Ranieri, the Fulham manager who was at Nantes last season, said he was “devastated” to hear the news. “Emiliano was a marvellous person, a fighter. The football world is united in hoping for positive news. I pray for Emiliano and his family,” Ranieri tweeted.Plan B? No, just B for Back to Brussels to Beg a Better Backstop, not even Botoxing her old plan A. Theresa May does not surprise. Wild rumours that she might dash for another election or resign mid-crisis fooled no one. Why expect better? If she pretended to listen to flotillas of visitors imploring her to see sense, change course, stop the madness, then she wore earplugs. Of course nothing changed. However, she has every reason for intransigence, strapped to her pilot seat, clamped in irons. Move an inch on the customs union, soften a red line and she would haemorrhage Tory MPs, winning few from Labour. Kate Hoey may cavort at Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Bollinger bash at his home to celebrate May’s 230-vote defeat, but entices no fellow Labour MPs. As the captive prime-minister-in-name-only runs the clock down closer to a nuclear no deal, how terrified should we be? Pay attention when her own business minister, Richard Harrington MP, warns that it would be such an “absolute disaster” that he would resign, warning of car industry collapse if supply chains were cut. Some cabinet ministers would walk, too, rather than take the blame for needless carnage. Every day brings more bad news: the International Air Transport Association warns that 5m sold airline tickets could be cancelled: no deal means no extra flights above last year’s quota. Rule out no deal and MPs can heave a sigh of relief – except the ERG revolutionaries clamouring to tear the country up by the roots Contrary to Brexit myths, Calais is not ready for extra checks: read the Guardian’s hair-raising report from lorry drivers. Think how unprepared we are to replicate EU agencies – atomic, medicines, chemicals and scores more. Some 10,000 extra civil servants are at work in Whitehall already: a crash-out needs a permanently bigger (but pointless) state, no small-state nirvana. Promises were made to replicate all EU grants to farmers and deprived areas: but for how long? Tariffs will cost business £6bn, while growth falls sharply and the pound is still weak, so far with zero benefit to export/import trade balances. Refusing to pay that £39bn will make us debt-defaulting pariahs. Leaked documents show that the National Crime Agency is ready to declare no-deal day a “critical incident”. Cobra will meet, civil servants work 24/7, police leave cancelled, army reservists called up, the “agency responding to any threats” from “protest and public disorder, disruption at ports, transport blockages, food and fuel shortages”. Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, says blandly: “Yes, we might risk up to six months of significant – but manageable – disruption.” That almost makes it worth putting him in charge to cope with public outrage. Remember in 2000 how a short blockade of fuel depots by a few brought the country to a halt and government to its knees, plunging in the polls. Don’t trust the “out now!” Brexiters not to lead the protests at fuel and food rationing. It doesn’t take much. Do you believe this self-inflicted Dad’s Army parody will actually happen? No, me neither: I’m not stockpiling. No deal means chaos. But I am confident that forces of good government will prevent it. Not because of Downing Street’s alarmingly unconvincing claim that it is “putting in place mitigations”, but because enough wise people will refuse. Start with MPs: a large majority know it can’t happen. They will surely back Yvette Cooper’s modest amendment delaying article 50 and EU withdrawal until the end of 2019, if parliament hasn’t set a deal by the end of February – and back Dominic Grieve’s motion for indicative votes on all options. If no-deal Brexit looms, will Mark Sedwill, the head of the civil service, do nothing? He should at least warn his permanent secretaries to demand from their ministers “letters of direction” to absolve them from having authorised shocking sums – £4.2bn so far, with no deal costing far more – for an entirely destructive act. No such letters are yet demanded by this pusillanimous generation of civil servants. Amyas Morse, comptroller general of the National Audit Office, should be blasting this wastage. Rule out no deal and MPs can heave a deep sigh of relief – except for the ERG Tory revolutionaries clamouring to tear the country up by the roots and the 28% of voters the Guardian/ICM poll finds wanting a no deal. Don’t blame them for saying what I hear on my travels all the time, “Let’s just go!” and “Why didn’t we go the day after?” Instead, blame the fanatics still pumping out untruths: that it’s simple, just quit, no harm done, World Trade Organization terms will be fine (they won’t be). Look how Brexiteer Bernard Jenkin dumbfounded Mark Mardell on The World at One last week: after listening to a polite but deadly exposition by the Japanese ambassador on why no deal would cripple Japanese industries here, Jenkin simply denied the ambassador had said it at all. What can you do when no klaxons reach the ears of the wilfully deaf? You turn to the two thirds of people who are not adamantine, to MPs and ministers who take their job seriously – and to Labour whose leader today repeated his commitment to stopping no deal, staying open to a referendum. High time, too, that business made more noise, including the big supermarkets and household names hiding behind the CBI for fear of offending anyone. There is no easy healing of this miserable national rift. Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer rightly says there are just two options now: a Norway soft Brexit or a referendum. With Norway we pay, leave borders open, obey each new EU edict with no voice, no veto. How long would that survive Brexit outrage at the first controversial EU directive imposed on us? I dread a referendum, but believe remain would probably win. Now people have seen the darker shades of Brexit never revealed for the first ballot, let them decide. Incidentally, focus groups show the so-called magic slogan, “Tell them again!”, only works with die-hard no dealers: those thinking again flinch at its aggressive tone. Simplistic slogans won’t swing it this time. What will win is a Labour campaign promising to change the country with a shift of power, wealth and well-paid work out of London and the south, understanding what the Brexit vote really meant. • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnistJürgen Klopp claimed Liverpool were refused a clear penalty and Harry Maguire should not have been on the pitch to deny his Premier League leaders a seven-point advantage in the title race as Leicester secured a 1-1 draw at Anfield. Liverpool extended their lead over Manchester City to five points but missed the opportunity to capitalise fully on the champions’ defeat at Newcastle United as they failed to beat a team outside the top six for the first time this season. Sadio Mané gave the hosts an early lead only for Maguire to equalise in first half stoppage time. The England defender had earlier been booked for tripping Mané as he turned towards goal, an offence that Klopp believed should have been red for denying a clear goalscoring opportunity. Martin Atkinson’s refusal to penalise Ricardo Pereira for clipping Naby Keïta inside the penalty area in the second half added to the Liverpool manager’s frustration although, given the chances Leicester squandered, he accepted the draw. “I think everybody agrees there could have been a penalty,” said Klopp. “It maybe should have been a penalty. I don’t know why it wasn’t a penalty. Have I spoken to the referee about it? No. I don’t think it will change anything. I don’t know what he thought at that moment. I think he had the best position. Usually I’m here to explain penalties that were penalties, whether it was a soft penalty, all that stuff. A penalty is a penalty. This today was no blood involved again, but it was a penalty. “Then there was the situation with Maguire. Is it smart what he is doing? I would say it is a 100% [goalscoring] chance at least that is something … a situation where there is a goalscoring chance that tells the ref he has to give a red card. Because not only is Sadio through, but I am pretty sure Mo [Salah] was on the other side which gives you two against one against Schmeichel. But the ref thought it was not a red card, he gave a yellow card and that was it. We can do nothing about that now.”New evidence has emerged linking an RAF veteran to the death in 1961 of the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld in a mysterious plane crash in southern Africa. Jan van Risseghem has been named as a possible attacker before, but has always been described simply as a Belgian pilot. The Observer can now reveal that he had extensive ties to Britain, including a British mother and wife, trained with the RAF and was decorated by Britain for his service in the second world war. Film-makers investigating the 1961 crash for a documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, have found a friend of Van Risseghem who claimed the pilot confessed to shooting down the UN plane. They also gathered testimony from another pilot that undermines one of his alibis for that night. Van Risseghem, whose father was Belgian, escaped occupied Europe at the start of the war to join the resistance in England. He trained with the RAF and flew missions over Nazi-held areas. During this period he met and married his British wife, cementing a lifelong connection. At the end of the war the couple returned to Belgium, but by 1961 Van Risseghem was in the Congo, flying for separatist rebels who had declared independence for the breakaway province of Katanga. There, the documentary claims, he was ordered to shoot down a plane carrying Hammarskjöld, who was on a secret midnight journey to try to broker peace. The film will premiere at the Sundance festival in two weeks. It was not clear at the time of the crash, which also killed all 15 people travelling with the secretary general, if it had been caused by sabotage or was a tragic accident. More than half a century later the UN is still investigating what happened on 18 September 1961. But as news of Hammarskjöld’s death emerged, the RAF veteran was apparently an obvious suspect. He was named as the possible attacker by the US ambassador to the Congo, in a secret cable sent the day of Hammarskjöld’s death and only recently declassified. For decades, Van Risseghem appeared to have proof that he wasn’t flying in the region on the night Hammarskjöld’s plane, the Albertina, came down outside Ndola in Zambia, then called Northern Rhodesia. Flight logs – meticulous records of where and when he flew – appear to show Van Risseghem was not flying for most of that month, returning to duty only on 20 September. However, Roger Bracco, another mercenary flying for the Katangese, told filmmakers that his colleague’s logbooks are dotted with apparent forgeries. He does not believe that Van Risseghem shot down Hammarskjöld. But when asked in an interview for the film if he considered the logbook a fake, he responds: “I won’t say so, but … I didn’t recognise the story [it told].” Leafing through the book, he later directly accuses Van Risseghem of forgery. “This is fake,” Bracco says bluntly of one flight destination, and goes on to add that some of the names listed for co-pilots are not real. A friend has also come forward to claim that, less than a decade after Hammarskjöld’s death, Van Risseghem told him he had attacked the plane. Pierre Coppens met Van Risseghem in 1965, when he was flying for a parachute training centre in Belgium. Over several conversations, he claimed, the pilot detailed how he overcame various technical challenges to down the plane, unaware of who was travelling inside. “He didn’t know,” Coppens said. “He said ‘I made the mission’ and that’s all. And then I had to go back and save my life’.” Van Risseghem died in 2007. Surviving relatives, including his widow and niece, say he was not involved in any attack. His widow told the Observer that he was in Rhodesia negotiating the purchase of a plane for Congolese rebels and the logbooks provide proof that he was not flying for Katanga at the time. Van Risseghem was never interviewed by the authorities or journalists directly about the death of Hammarskjöld, but it is clear that he followed news about it closely. In an interview with an aviation historian Leif Hellström in the 1990s, he returns to discuss the crash and details of an official enquiry repeatedly. He emphasises that he was not in southern Africa at the time it happened, and describes the idea of an attack as “fairy stories”.Indigenous protesters in Canada have called a growing police presence near their makeshift checkpoint “an act of war”, as tensions mount over a stalled pipeline project in northern British Columbia. In defiance of a court order, dozens of protesters have gathered on a logging road nearly 700km (430 miles) north-west of Vancouver, to block the construction of a natural gas pipeline. “We want them right off Wet’suwet’en territory,” Chief Madeek, a hereditary leader, told reporters at the gates of the checkpoint, where temperatures have dipped to -15C (5F). On Monday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced they would enforce a court order to remove the demonstrators from the area, and at least 10 police cars and a helicopter arrived at the protest camp. “The conflict between the oil and gas industries, indigenous communities, and governments all across the province has been ongoing for a number of years. This has never been a police issue. In fact, the BC RCMP is impartial and we respect the rights of individuals to peaceful, lawful and safe protest,” they said in a statement. Energy company TransCanada is attempting to build the Coastal GasLink, a 670km line stretching from Dawson Creek to the coastal city of Kitimat. The C$6.2bn (US$4.6bn) project is part of a broader plan to ramp up natural gas exports in the province. The company has previously said it has the support of all elected indigenous leaders along the proposed route, but Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have signaled they do not support the project – and argue that elected band leaders are not in the position to negotiate with the company. “They’re not the title-holders or the caretakers of the land. The hereditary chiefs are,” said Madeek. The pipeline project has previously faced numerous delays, after a group of protesters constructed a blockade – named Unist’ot’en Camp – in order to prevent construction vehicles from accessing the area. On 14 December, a British Columbia court granted TransCanada an injunction permitting them access to the construction site and ordering the removal of the blockade. Within days, activists erected the new barrier, named the Gidimt’en checkpoint. On Sunday, Unist’ot’en Camp issued a statement of support for the Gidimt’en checkpoint: “The RCMP’s ultimatum, to allow TransCanada access to unceded Wet’suwet’en territory or face police invasion, is an act of war. Canada is now attempting to do what it has always done – criminalize and use violence against indigenous people so that their unceded homelands can be exploited for profit.” Both the Unist’ot’en and Gitimd’en are part of the five clans which make up the Wet’suwet’en. In recent years, British Columbia has been the site of a number of high-profile legal cases surrounding the issue of land title. Because few of the province’s First Nations signed treaties with colonial governments, the courts have often been the arbiters of land rights disputes. The Delgamuukw v British Columbia case – which covers part of the Wet’suwet’en territory – previously found that indigenous rights to their historical territory are not “extinguished” for lack of a treaty. Wet’suwet’en claim they retain title to the land and as a result, have sole authority to deny or grant access to the territory. The pipeline feud comes as energy companies in Canada are facing numerous delays and barriers to their infrastructure projects, including environmental assessments and adequate consultations with indigenous communities on whose territory the projects would pass through. Another high-profile pipeline project, Trans Mountain, was halted over the summer after a federal court determined indigenous communities had not been adequately consulted during the approvals process. British Columbia premier John Horgan, who made headlines for his fight against the Trans Mountain pipeline, has cheered on the liquid natural gas project – of which the pipeline is a critical piece – citing the large number of jobs and revenue that will result from its completion. While the provincial government has said the facility will be the cleanest of its kind in the world, a report from the Pembina Institute found that the project would increase the province’s emissions by 8.6 megatonnes by 2030. Protesters at the Gitimd’en checkpoint have vowed to prevent the project from being built on their territory. “This is what we’re here for, is to protect the 22,000 sq km and this section of the territory for our grandchildren and our great-great-grandchildren that aren’t even born yet so they can enjoy what we enjoy today out on the territory,” said Madeek.Military planners have been deployed to the Department for Transport, the Home Office and the Foreign Office as officials desperately try to avoid backlogs and chaos at the border in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the Observer can disclose. Details released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that 14 military planners have been dispatched by the Ministry of Defence to key ministries, which also include the Cabinet Office, the hub of the government’s Brexit planning, in a sign of concerns inside Whitehall at the prospect of Britain crashing out of the EU with no agreement in place. In a ramping up of no-deal preparations in recent weeks, one planner is in place at Chris Grayling’s beleaguered DfT, which has already been criticised for awarding a £14m contract to run ferries in the event of a no-deal Brexit to a company that does not have any ships. The transport secretary has also been criticised for a live rehearsal of emergency traffic measures that will be put in place to prevent logjams around Dover in such a scenario. Some drivers taking part in the event described it as a waste of time, while haulage campaigners said it was “too little, too late”. Four planners have been posted in the Border Force, which is facing the challenge of keeping passengers and goods flowing to and from Britain should no EU agreement be signed. Three are operating in the Foreign Office, while six are working from the Cabinet Office. The departments involved refused to comment on why they had requested a military planner, or what projects they were assisting. A Defence ministry spokesman said: “The MoD routinely works with other government departments on planning for a range of contingency scenarios.” Insiders said some departments had asked for assistance on no-deal planning, “recognising the unique skills and operational planning experience the military can offer”. Exercise planning and overall “command and control” advice are understood to be their main duties. Cabinet ministers were in open disagreement last week over the consequences of leaving the bloc with no deal in place, with business secretary Greg Clark saying such an outcome would be disastrous, but defence secretary Gavin Williamson insisting that Britain could succeed under any Brexit scenario. Contingency no-deal preparation has been taking place under the codename Operation Yellowhammer, with plans being drawn up on the assumption that critical trade between Calais and Dover will face disruption. It has been suggested that Michael Gove, the environment secretary, was preparing to request the help of a military planner to help ensure food supplies were not disrupted. However, details passed to the Observer suggest he has not yet done so. Speaking in the Commons last week, Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said he had been told by civil servants of contingency plans to slaughter a third of all British sheep in the event of no deal. World Trade Organisation tariffs would hit exports so hard that there would be too many sheep, causing domestic prices to plummet, he said. “We have the problem that if we leave the European Union with no deal, on WTO terms, the European Union’s tariffs on dairy products, lamb and various other items, which are quite high, immediately kick in,” Cable said. “The problem with that, as we discovered when we had the foot and mouth epidemic, is that if we cannot export, prices crash. The only logical response from the farming industry, in order to maintain the value of the stock, is to slaughter large herds. This will happen. “We know there is a paper at the moment in the agriculture department – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – setting out a plan for slaughtering a third of all British sheep in order to maintain the integrity of the market. That is an inevitable consequence of a high tariff obstructing British exports.” But a Defra spokesman played down the suggestions that a mass slaughter was on the cards in the event of a no-deal. “As the environment secretary has made very clear, a widespread cull of sheep, as has been suggested by some, is not something that government anticipates or is planning for.” Government sources said “significant work” was under way to ensure UK exporters could maintain access to EU markets after 29 March. “As part of this we are in close contact with the sheep sector,” one said. Fraught no-deal planning is also taking place in the corporate world, with wildly different problems facing different sectors. Brexit consultants said the food and textile sectors would face the highest increase in potential customs duty. Several companies are said to be looking at potentially paying tens of millions extra in duties and administrative costs each year. Meanwhile industry sources said supermarkets are building up a couple of months’ stock, locking up several hundred million pounds. Big pharmaceutical companies are generally spending in the range of £5m to £20m on preparation, with banks spending even more. Some companies are being warned that they are stockpiling too much and that they may be better off ensuring they have cash in the bank to deal with an unpredictable market. James Stewart, head of Brexit at the accountancy firm KPMG, said: “Confidence is thinning and we continue to see heavy client activity on no-deal planning. We think everyone should be looking at contracts, supply chain security and workforce planning. Even at this stage we are still seeing massive variations in preparedness. “Companies who sell in sterling and buy in dollars could be in real trouble if they haven’t hedged correctly. A raft of businesses in automotive, retail and hospitality remain very exposed.”Brussels is to warn EU member states that the “golden visa” schemes used by Britain and others to attract the wealthy have exposed the continent to corruption and organised crime. A report from the the European commission, expected to be published on Wednesday, claims the schemes designed to encourage the super-rich to invest in return for residency rights or citizenship pose a danger to the continent’s security. The 28 EU member states have earned about €25bn (£22bn) of foreign direct investment in the last decade from a variety of different offers to wealthy people under which investors can secure the right to free movement in the bloc. Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta sell citizenship in return for investments ranging between approximately £800,000 and £1.6m, while 20 member states, including those three, offer residence permits for cash. Before her murder, the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating an alleged abuse of the scheme in Malta. Following the poisoning of the former spy Sergei Skripal, the UK Home Office announced it would review 700 golden visas issued to wealthy Russians under its scheme. The commission, according to a report obtained by Reuters, is to say the cash-for-status offers pose “risks to security, including the possibility of infiltration of non-EU organised crime groups, as well as risks of money laundering, corruption and tax evasion”. In December, the British government announced it would suspend its tier 1 visa, which provides a fast-track route to settlement for people willing to invest millions in the UK, while new rules were being formulated. But the government failed to follow through on that pledge, and has not offered any updates on its commitment to reform the system. Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch member of the European parliament, who is the vice-chair of its committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs, said the EU had been slow to respond to the abuse. She said: “I welcome the fact the European commission is, albeit belatedly, sounding the alarm. We need a ban on these schemes, which are exploited by organised criminals who often receive limited background checks, and to align rules for acquiring citizenship. “After all, by acquiring citizenship of an EU member state, you get EU citizenship automatically. Golden visas and passports are essentially state-facilitated corruption and money-laundering schemes. “While some governments are busy building up a fortress Europe, they are cynically rolling out the red carpet for wealthy foreign criminals, who are then free to circulate freely in our single market. Golden visa schemes are essentially incompatible with free movement within the Schengen area.” The commission’s report is said to highlight the varying standards across the EU in terms of the background checks on applicants The EU does not have any competence in the field of investor schemes but it is set to urge governments to adopt common approval criteria and be more transparent about their internal processes. A long-running court case in Portugal on the alleged abuse of the government’s golden visa scheme led to two people being given suspended sentences and two Chinese nationals fined earlier this month. Visas had been offered by the government since 2012 to wealthy foreigners willing to invest €500,000 in property, make a capital transfer of €1m or create 10 jobs. Miguel Macedo, who resigned as interior minister from the then government in November 2014, was among those acquitted of bribery charges.Kevin-Prince Boateng has joined Barcelona in a shock move from the Italian side Sassuolo. The La Liga leaders have announced the arrival of Boateng on an initial loan deal with the option for an €8m (£7.05m) permanent move in the summer. Barcelona confirmed the forward’s arrival shortly after Boateng told reporters in Italy that the transfer was complete. The 31-year-old will sign his contract on Tuesday before a photo session and press conference at Camp Nou. “FC Barcelona and US Sassuolo have arrived at an agreement for the loan of the player Kevin-Prince Boateng for the remainder of the 2018/19 season,” a statement on Barcelona’s website read. “The agreement includes an €8m purchase option.” “Barça, I’m coming!” Boateng told Sky Sport earlier on Monday. “I’m sad to leave Sassuolo but it’s a great chance.” Boateng also brushed off newspaper reports that he was a Real Madrid fan when growing up. “Don’t ask me about Real Madrid … it’s just the past,” he said. “I only want to focus on Barcelona, and I hope to score at the Bernabéu [in] the next Clásico.” While at Eintracht Frankfurt last year, Boateng told Rheinische Post: “I know – without sounding arrogant – that I could’ve played at Real Madrid … but I didn’t work hard enough for that.” 🔥 @KPBofficial 🔥 pic.twitter.com/GSZl8aNK3D The former Ghana international signed for Sassuolo on a free transfer last summer and has starred for Roberto De Zerbi’s side as they have cemented a mid-table position in Serie A.The 31-year-old has scored five goals in 15 appearances, making an impact despite missing several weeks of the season with a pelvic injury. Barcelona are understood to have been impressed with Boateng’s performances in a false nine role in Italy. The Spanish league leaders are short of cover in attacking positions following the departures of Paco Alcácer to Borussia Dortmund and Munir El Haddadi to Sevilla. The Camp Nou will be the most high-profile destination so far in Boateng’s nomadic career since leaving his hometown club, Hertha Berlin, to join Spurs in 2007. In an interview with the Guardian in 2017, Boateng admitted he struggled to adapt to life in London, but that he “grew up” after losing his way. Boateng left White Hart Lane for Dortmund in 2009, where he played under Jürgen Klopp – “the best coach in the world” – before a move to a crisis‑hit Portsmouth. The forward scored at Wembley against Spurs in an FA Cup semi-final, but ended his time in England with relegation. “It was crazy, beautiful,” Boateng said of his time at Fratton Park. “I loved playing there.” A successful World Cup with Ghana in 2010 led to a move to Milan – via a complex loan arrangement with Genoa. Boateng has subsequently played for Schalke and Frankfurt in Germany, with his only La Liga experience coming in a single season at Las Palmas.A cross-party amendment to push for a second EU referendum will not be tabled in the Commons as it would have little chance of being passed without formal support from Labour, the MPs organising it have announced. Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP who has led efforts on a so-called “people’s vote” amendment, said that without the backing of Jeremy Corbyn, “at the moment we would not have the numbers”. However, the Liberal Democrats have tabled a similar amendment and have called for Labour to back the idea. Speaking outside parliament alongside the Labour MPs Luciana Berger and Chuka Umunna, Wollaston urged Corbyn to think again. “We would like to appeal again to him to give his unequivocal backing to a people’s vote, in which case we could make progress,” she said. Labour has not ruled out supporting a second referendum and the party is keeping its options open. There is disquiet among some of its MPs and shadow ministers that backing such an option could anger leave-backing Labour voters. Wollaston argued that a second referendum was still the best option to end the Brexit deadlock. “People have a right to change their minds, and the mandate from the first referendum – over two years ago and based on entirely unrealistic promises and outright lies – has expired.” But without Labour backing, she said, “that amendment could not pass, and so with great regret we will not be laying that amendment”. Berger said that with 30 scheduled Commons sittings left before the current Brexit date, there was “an urgent need for leadership”. “Regrettably, the Labour leadership won’t commit to an achievable policy,” she said. “And yet we know that the majority of Labour voters, supporters and members want a final say on any Brexit deal. At a time when Labour should be championing a people’s vote, the leadership avoids answering that call.” More than a dozen amendments have been tabled so far to be potentially voted on next Tuesday, covering areas including extending article 50, holding non-binding, indicative votes in the Commons on the way forward, and dictating an end date for the Irish backstop. Among these is one signed by all of the Liberal Democrat MPs to back a second referendum. The party’s Brexit spokesman, Tom Brake, said: “There is still time to act in the national interest. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership must stop dreaming up more and more creative excuses for refusing to support a people’s vote, which their members and supporters want.” Not all the amendments will be selected for a vote. The choice will be made by the Commons Speaker, John Bercow. They are officially amendments to the statement made to the Commons by Theresa May on Monday following the overwhelming defeat of the PM’s Brexit plan. Such a statement, officially titled a motion in neutral terms, cannot normally be amended. However, the procedures of the house were changed after an earlier amendment by the Tory MP Dominic Grieve.Surrounded by brown hills close to the Ethiopian border, the town of El-Gadarif is an unremarkable place. A centre for the trade in sorghum and sesame, it is dominated by its huge Russian-built grain silos. Four weeks ago, however, the eastern Sudanese town was thrust into the spotlight when it became a centre for protests against the regime of President Omar al-Bashir. Locals say those initial protests comprised largely of secondary school pupils who converged on one of the town’s main markets to voice their anger over a sharp cut to the subsidy for bread. “Hungry people!” they chanted, and “You dancer!”– a mocking reference to Bashir, who often dances at public occasions. The hubbub of voices was soon drowned out by the crack of gunfire as security forces gunned down 10 protesters, three of them children. What followed would be significant not only for El-Gadarif, but for the entire country. The next day, townspeople inflamed by the regime’s vicious response turned their fury on offices of the ruling National Congress party and the intelligence services. In less than a week, the protests had spread from rural centres like El-Gadarif to Sudan’s major cities, exposing a widespread desire for an end to 75-year-old Bashir’s harsh rule. “The murder of innocent people and children turned the anger against the government,” said Jaafar Khidir, a long-time member of the Sudanese opposition in El-Gadarif. “People came out to protest spontaneously.” “There was change in people’s hearts,” added Khidir, who has been arrested four times since the beginning of the protests. “Now I expect to be taken into custody at any time.” Since those initial protests in December, more than 40 demonstrators have been killed nationwide, right groups say, some reportedly shot by the Rapid Support Forces, a government militia. Hundreds more have been injured. Activists have also been detained in towns and cities across this vast country, often by the intelligence and security services, notorious for their documented abuses and use of torture. On Thursday, security forces deployed in numbers in the capital, Khartoum, as demonstrators marched on Bashir’s palace to deliver a written request that Bashir step down. Simultaneous protests were called in 11 other towns and cities, including Atbara, another cradle of the current movement. The protests may appear to have come from nowhere, but in reality Sudan’s instability has long been prefigured. Bashir, who took power after leading a military coup in 1989, has survived conflict, protests, years of US-led sanctions and even pursuit by the international criminal court for alleged genocide in Darfur. What is different this time is that the constellation of problems facing the country is having an impact even on the elites who have long supported him. Two million people are internally displaced, corruption is widespread and mismanagement rife. The country is in the grip of a long-running economic crisis that has its roots in the secession of South Sudan in 2011 and the loss of oil reserves to the new and troubled southern state. Spiralling inflation has hit Sudan’s embattled middle-classes. A cut in the subsidy for bread - the proximate cause of protests in place like El-Gadarif – was merely the spark that ignited deep-seated anger and desperation. Cracks have appeared on the political front. Bashir faces mounting discontent within his ruling party as well as dissatisfaction in areas in the country’s riverine north, once considered his stronghold. Another feature is the use of social media. Activists have actively documented confrontations and flooded social media with footage that they claim is “exposing” Bashir’s government. Observers say the protests have united people from different tribes and ethnicities. Women have joined in, even as the protests escalated into bloody confrontations. Dressed in headscarves, they can be seen in nearly all the footage shared on social media, which in turn has helped to convince even more women to take to the streets. All of which has led some, including Hafiz Ismail, an analyst at Justice Africa Sudan, to argue that the demonstrations are likely to have sustained momentum. “The protests won’t stop,” Ismail said, “because the regime doesn’t have any solution for the problem, which is as much political as economic”. Ismail expects the regime to offer concessions – as happened after protests in 2013 – but said they may not go far enough for Bashir’s opponents. Particularly problematic for the regime has been the involvement of the Sudanese Professionals Association, a new and broad movement, representing middle-class professions, that has spearheaded the protests, stepping into the vacuum created by the arrest of many opposition leaders. Mohammed Yousif al-Mustafa, a spokesman for the association and professor at Khartoum University, and a relative of the president, described the moment he realised that the burgeoning protest movement had created a new reality. “We can’t be behind the people,” he said. “People would laugh at us if we stuck to our position of handing a memorandum to the parliament and asking for a raise in the minimum wage. Our position is opposing the regime and its policies.” Which raises the question: what next? “The longer the protests go on, the more violence and abuses we might see the Sudanese government use,” said Jehanne Henry, of Human Rights Watch. “The government uses the same sorts of tactics every time there are protests. The risk is that it will get bloodier.” Experts are divided about likely outcomes. The International Crisis Group suggested three potential scenarios in a recent briefing paper. “One is that the president survives, though without funds to offer protesters significant reforms, he will likely have to subdue them by force,” said the group. “A second scenario could see protests gathering pace and prompting the president’s ousting by elements within his party or security elites … A third scenario would see Bashir resign. This would allow for a leadership change that could mollify protesters.” For Henry, the outcome hinges on the regime’s response. “The key question is how much the government feels it is facing an existential threat, and that is hard to predict.”The British ultrarunner Jasmin Paris is celebrating after becoming the first woman to win the gruelling 268-mile Montane Spine Race along the Pennine Way. What made the performance even more extraordinary was that she shattered the course record by 12 hours – while also expressing breast milk for her baby at aid stations along the route. Paris, a 35-year-old vet who works at the University of Edinburgh studying acute myeloid leukaemia, is well known in British endurance running circles having won the British women’s fell running championships last year as well as a series of leading ultraraces. However, her performance at the Montane Spine race was undoubtedly the best in her career as she beat all her male and female rivals in completing the course from the Edale in the Peak District to the Kirk Yetholm in the Scottish borders in 83 hours, 12 minutes and 23 seconds. That time shattered the previous best of 95hrs 17mins set by Eoin Keith in 2016 as Paris became the first woman to win the race outright. The previous female race record was 109hr 54min set by Carol Morgan in 2017. After the race, in which runners carry their own kit throughout and rest only when essential, Paris admitted to having hallucinations in the later stages. “It is really tough,” said Paris after running along the full Pennine Way through the Peak District, Yorkshire Dales, North Pennines and over Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland to the Cheviots. “Two thirds of the time it is dark and it is completely different from any race I’ve run before because it is non-stop. You have the whole challenge of when to sleep and that becomes very tactical, and then you’re sleep-deprived. “When I was on the final section I kept seeing animals appearing out of every rock and kept forgetting what I was doing – hallucinations. Every so often I’d come to with a start. On top of that it’s very cold and I was wearing all of my clothes by the time I finished.” Paris’s performance was hailed by Jo Pavey and the British 2016 and 2017 marathon champion Aly Dixon, who tweeted: “I don’t understand why anyone would want to race 268 miles across the Pennine Way, in the winter. But I do know how enormous a woman winning the Spine Race overall and SMASHING the outright record is. It’s HUGE!!!”Good morning, Warren Murray here with the news brought to order. A controversial amendment allowed by the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, has left Theresa May boxed in over her Brexit deal. The prime minister was again defied by Conservative rebel MPs who voted with Labour in a cross-party alliance to adopt the amendment, which requires May to set out a “plan B” within three working days if her EU-endorsed deal is defeated next Tuesday. The motion setting out the government’s plan can be amended by MPs hoping to push their own alternative proposals, from a second referendum to a harder Brexit. An accelerated timetable will also pile the pressure on Labour to decide which to back. Jeremy Corbyn will today repeat his calls for a general election. Downing Street sought to play down the significance of the amendment – a spokesman said: “Our intention has always been to respond quickly and provide certainty on the way forward in the event that we lose the meaningful vote.” Bercow was accused of being biased against Brexit after he allowed the amendment, put forward by Dominic Grieve, to go forward. But he insisted: “I am clear in the mind that I have taken the right course.” Jessica Elgot writes that Bercow’s judgment – and his determination to side with the will of parliament over the government – is likely to be pivotal in the coming days. Job cuts at Jaguar – In news just breaking this morning, Jaguar Land Rover is poised to announce up to 5,000 job losses. The carmaker is reportedly set to embark on a savings programme amid falling sales in China, Brexit and a drop in demand for diesel cars. We’ll have more on that story on the site during the day. Congo election result announced – Riot police are on the streets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where authorities have belatedly declared Felix Tshisekedi winner of the presidential election. Pre-election polls had given opposition frontrunner Martin Fayulu, a respected former business executive, a healthy lead. Fayulu’s supporters believe outgoing President Joseph Kabila may have done a power-sharing deal to put Tshisekedi in power if his own anointed successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, did not win. Vote tallies compiled by the DRC’s Catholic church found Fayulu clearly won the election, diplomatic officials told the Reuters news agency. Security forces took up positions outside the offices of the DRC’s election commission and elsewhere in the capital, Kinshasa, amid fears of a violent response to the result. Trump gets the hump – Donald Trump has stalked out of a meeting with Democrats over the federal shutdown, gifting them the chance to reiterate that he is seeking to govern by “temper tantrum”. Senator Chuck Schumer told reporters afterwards: “The president just got up and walked out … He asked Speaker Pelosi: ‘Will you agree to my wall?’ She said no, and he just got up and said we have nothing to discuss and walked out.” The shutdown is nearing three weeks long. Elsewhere in US politics, the newly minted congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has hit out over “disgusting” fake photos published by conservative media that depicted her naked in a bathtub. “This was just a matter of time … Women in leadership face more scrutiny. Period.” Bad breath – It might seem a tad slow off the mark that officialdom is just realising even a fairly short ride on the tube makes your snot go black. Researchers have found air pollution in London’s underground stations is up to 30 times higher than beside busy roads in the capital. Passengers breathe in the same concentration of particulates in an hour on the tube as they do in a full day above ground. The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) has warned Transport for London (TfL) it is “likely there is some health risk”. Tests singled out the Northern Line and Hampstead station as particularly bad for hazardous PM2.5 particles. TfL says it has accepted the recommendations in the report and will carry out further monitoring and testing of dust samples. Space oddity – Possibly alien starship exhaust, but probably stars crashing into each other in a galaxy far, far away – the verdict on “fast radio bursts” (FRBs) coming in from outer space. A new, repeating source of origin for the millisecond-long pulses has been detected by a Canadian-led team with a new kind of radio telescope. In our more immediate cosmic neighbourhood, the Hubble space telescope is in a bit of trouble after its wide-field camera broke down. Nasa hopes to get it working again, and it did manage to discover the brightest ever quasar, with the intensity of about a trillion suns, before going offline. Resolute in the new year – If you feel like your new year’s resolutions are already slipping away, we’ve got nine ways to boost your willpower, or at least make the most of your existing reserves, to get fit, write that book, or stay off the drink. Remember that experiment with the children and the marshmallows, where they could eat one now, or two later? “The ‘high delayers’ went on to achieve greater academic success, better health and lower divorce rates,” Anita Chaudhuri reminds us. “So there is more at stake than whether or not you make it to the end of Dry January.” (The Briefing wonders, though, whether they factored in that some kids probably like marshmallows more than others.) The shocking case of Imelda Cortez has put El Salvador’s strict abortion laws in the spotlight. Human rights lawyer Paula Avila-Guillen and reporter Nina Lakhani describe how a surprise verdict has given fresh hope to women in El Salvador. Plus, in opinion, Randeep Ramesh on the Guardian’s call for a citizens’ assembly to break the Brexit deadlock. The sister of an inmate who killed himself while serving an unlimited jail term is campaigning for other sentences under the now-defunct “imprisonment for public protection” (IPP) regime to be commuted. Tommy Nicol was jailed in 2009 after breaking a man’s arm while trying to steal a car. His four-year minimum tariff was up in 2013 but he was repeatedly refused parole, while the system failed to deliver promised therapeutic measures to help his prospects of release. Nicol protested that it was “psychological torture” and after a number of cries for help, increasingly disturbed behaviour and eventually ending up in restraints, he was found unresponsive and died in hospital aged 37. IPP sentences were scrapped in 2011 after being applied far too widely, sometimes for low-level crimes. But nearly 2,600 people are still serving them. “I can just see how much this sentence has impacted him – it’s made my brother take his life,” said Nicol’s sister, Donna Mooney. “He had a complete loss of hope.” She believes that, had Nicol known he had a fixed release date, he would still be alive. Mooney is calling for the remaining IPP prisoners on minimum tariffs of four years or less to be immediately switched to determinate sentences. She is seeking to meet with the justice secretary, David Gauke, about the matter. Aaron Ramsey has agreed a five-year deal with Juventus worth £36m and will join the Italian champions on a free transfer at the end of the season. Nigel Clough managed to retain his sense of humour after Burton’s 9-0 trouncing by Manchester City by stating he hoped Pep Guardiola had “more than one glass” of wine on offer for the post-match drink. Billy Vunipola has warned that rugby union is more brutal than ever but admits he does not know how the sport can fix the problem. Ashley Giles, England’s new director of cricket, has said he is not bitter about his 2014 sacking and will not be afraid to make the difficult decisions in pursuit of success. And the International Cricket Council has announced an unprecedented 15-day amnesty for anyone who has failed to report a corrupt approach in Sri Lanka. Asian markets have been mostly lower as US and Chinese officials wrapped up three days of talks in Beijing without significant breakthroughs. The FTSE is tracking towards a lower open as well. Sterling has been trading at $1.278 and €1.155 overnight. Front pages are focused on the vote in parliament that requires May to present a “plan B” for Brexit if (when?) she loses the vote next week. John Bercow’s role in the process naturally comes in for scrutiny: “Mr Speaker takes control” says the Telegraph and “Out of order!” cries the Mail, which calls Bercow an “egotistical preening popinjay”. The Sun’s headline is: “Speaker of the devil” and the Express says: “You’re so out of order!” The Times reports: “Tory rebels join forces with Labour over Brexit”, while the Mirror claims it as a victory for Labour and its constituency: “May caves in on workers’ rights to save Brexit deal”. The Guardian’s splash is “May’s power ebbing away as she suffers another humiliating defeat” and the i has a similar focus, writing: “May losing control of Brexit”. The FT goes with “May offers MPs ‘backstop’ veto after second Commons defeat”. You can take a closer look at today’s front pages here. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comThe Catholic church is urging its priests, schools and voluntary bodies to tell EU citizens in the UK that they must register under the government’s settlement scheme in order to remain in the country after Brexit. The church is thought to have unrivalled access to EU citizens in the UK, many of whom come from Catholic-majority countries. Of the 3.7 million EU citizens living and working in the UK, the biggest group come from Poland, estimated at 1 million. There are also 350,000 Irish citizens in the UK. Although the church has described the scheme as “unjust and divisive” and said the fee of £65 per adult and £32.50 per child was “unprincipled”, it has nevertheless asked Catholic bodies to bring it to “the attention of all those who need to avail of it”. Paul McAleenan, the lead bishop for migration and asylum, said the issue was of “special pastoral concern for us” as the majority of EU citizens in the UK were Catholic. Since the 2016 referendum, many had “faced profound uncertainty and insecurity about their future”, he added. Under the scheme, EU citizens who wish to remain in the UK are required to register by 30 June 2021. Citizens’ rights are the rights and protections offered to all EU citizens, including free movement and residence, equal treatment and a wide range of other rights under EU law regarding work, education, social security and health. They are held by some 3.5 million citizens from other member states in the UK and about 1.2 million British nationals on the continent, and are a key part of the  negotiations that are taking Britain out of Europe. Read more on citizens' rights More from the Brexit phrasebook “While this is an important step we understand that, especially for people who have contributed to our society over many years, it may feel unjust and divisive that they are now require to apply for permission to stay,” said McAleenan. Nevertheless, “we think it’s imperative that people are given the opportunity to remain legally in the country. We want to make sure the message goes out to EU citizens to apply. We have asked diocese to circulate [my statement] to priests, schools, social action organisations and so on. We do have means of contacting people.” The church had not received any of the £9m the government has offered in grants to voluntary and community organisations to inform and support vulnerable EU citizens regarding the settlement scheme, McAleean said. “I’m not aware of any Catholic organisation which has received money.” According to the Catholic broadcaster and author Clifford Longley, the church should refuse to cooperate with the scheme “in the hope of rendering [it] unworkable”. He wrote in the Tablet: “The very least that the church could do is to demand the dropping of the fee as the price of its cooperation. Otherwise the church is virtually branding itself as a tax collector, while knowing full well that the tax in question is unconscionable.” Meanwhile, the restaurant chain Carluccio’s has said it will pay the £65 fee for all its 1,550 staff in the UK who are EU citizens, saying it was what its founder, the late Antonio Carluccio, would have wanted. “There would be no Carluccio’s without one man making the journey from Europe to London,” said its chief executive, Mark Jones. “Today we employ over 2,300 people from over 80 countries. “A large number, just like Antonio, decided to travel from mainland Europe and make their home in the UK. We are passionate about the value that they bring to our business and it is something which we are keen to protect.”The Gabonese government has put down a coup attempt after a group of soldiers briefly took over state radio and broadcast a statement calling on people to “rise up” while the president, Ali Bongo, is in Morocco recovering from a stroke. Authorities have regained control of the state broadcasting offices and a major thoroughfare in the capital, Libreville, which were the only areas taken by the plotters, the government spokesman Guy-Bertrand Mapangou told Radio France International. At 4.30am (0530 GMT) on Monday a man identifying himself as Lt Kelly Ondo Obiang read out a message on state radio that was simultaneously filmed for social media. Obiang was flanked by two armed men, all in the uniform and green berets of the powerful Republican Guard, which is usually tasked with protecting the president. “The eagerly awaited day has arrived when the army has decided to put itself on the side of the people in order to save Gabon from chaos,” he said. “If you are eating, stop; if you are having a drink, stop; if you are sleeping, wake up. Wake up your neighbours … rise up as one and take control of the street,” he added, calling on Gabonese to occupy the country’s airports, public buildings and media organisations. A witness told Reuters a crowd of about 300 people had gathered in support of the attempted coup at the state broadcasting headquarters, where the military fired teargas to disperse them. The Bongo family has ruled Gabon since 1967, except for four months in 2009 after Ali Bongo’s father, Omar, died. Four of the five plotters were taken into custody on Monday morning, Mapangou told France 24. The fifth was caught in the afternoon, reportedly hiding under a bed in a house. “The government is in place. The institutions are in place,” Mapangou said. The communications minister said the men were “a group of jokers and the military hierarchy does not recognise them”. Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chair of the African Union, said he strongly condemned the coup attempt. A spokeswoman for the French foreign ministry also criticised the action in its former colony. “Gabon’s stability can only be ensured in strict compliance with the provisions of its constitution,” she said. Bongo became ill in October while on a visit to Saudi Arabia. Rather than going home, he went to recuperate in Morocco, from where he gave a New Year’s Day statement in which he admitted he had been “through a difficult period, as sometimes happens in life”. He said he was preparing to return home soon. Obiang said Bongo’s speech, in which he slurred some words and appeared unable to move his right arm, had “reinforced doubts about the president’s ability to continue to carry out the responsibilities of his office”. Omar Bongo squandered much of Gabon’s vast oil wealth and kept close ties with France in a system known as Françafrique. Ali Bongo tried to set himself apart from his father but lost any moral high ground at the last presidential vote. He was the beneficiary of an election in 2016 that was widely acknowledged to have been rigged amid violence from the country’s security forces. Ostensibly he won 49.8% of the vote to his rival Jean Ping’s 48.23%. Ping had looked set to win until results from Haut-Ogooué, Bongo’s home region, were announced. The electoral commission claimed a 99.98% turnout in Haut-Ogooué, compared with 59% everywhere else, and said 95% of those who cast votes there did so for the president. The opposition accused the Republican Guard of bombing its headquarters in the aftermath. On Friday, Donald Trump sent 80 troops to Gabon to defend US interests and “further foreign policy” in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the Catholic church has warned of an uprising if the result of an election on 30 December is not respected.World Cups always feel like watersheds. Eddie Jones has reminded us often enough that everything else is just sparring; that all that matters is the date of the final – 2 November – and ensuring England are at their peak when the latest four-year cycle comes to an end. Except 2019 seems different, not least because there is so much uncertainty as to what will come next. Put simply, no one really knows what the international landscape beyond Japan 2019 will look like and that only adds to the intrigue. There is plenty of intrigue already surrounding the first World Cup to be staged in Asia, away from the sport’s traditional strongholds. Throw in the fact that Ireland have mounted a genuine challenge to New Zealand, the creeping sense that the balance of power is shifting from south to north and the narrative of Jones’s return to Japan – sure to follow England’s campaign every step of the way – and it is quite the melting pot. If it is too strong to say a new world order was established last year, it was certainly shaken. Consider that there were no northern hemisphere teams involved in the final two weeks of the 2015 World Cup and then that three of the top four positions in the world rankings are currently occupied by Ireland, Wales and England. New Zealand remain the team to beat but there was a wobble towards the end of 2018, raising questions as to whether the All Blacks are in decline, or at least approaching that stage. Which brings us back to the rugby landscape post-2019 and all its uncertainty. Four of the top six teams in the world will have a new head coach – including New Zealand – and there is a fair chance England and Australia will join them. The San Francisco agreement – hammered out in January last year – is due to begin in 2020 but precisely what the longer-term global calendar will look like remains unclear as talk of a World League continues. The argument in favour of it is financial, a response to the centralisation of power in the hands of the Premiership and French clubs. For it is naive to think that the rise in player salaries is going to slow down, as much as the Premiership claims its £230m windfall will not go on wages, and that will only weaken the southern hemisphere nations. The most fascinating subplot of the World Cup is whether New Zealand, South Africa and Australia can still prevail over market forces. Even if they do you wonder if they are just holding back the tide. But if there is uncertainty as to what will happen on the field, it is matched by the sense of a step into the unknown off it. The tournament’s director, Alan Gilpin, has described this year’s World Cup as the most challenging and it is easy to see why. To put it mildly the climate in Japan in September is changeable and the threat of earthquakes is only too apparent, not to mention that of typhoons that would also cause major disruption. There are a number of cultural differences too for players, coaches and spectators to overcome, including the need for tattoos to be covered up in public swimming pools and baths. When is it happening?The action kicks off on 20 September with the hosts, Japan, taking on surprise package Russia in Tokyo. The holders, New Zealand, begin their campaign against their main pool rivals South Africa the following day while England’s first match is against Tonga on 22 September in Sapporo. The final takes place on 2 November at the 72,327-capacity International Stadium in Yokohoma. What is the format?There are four pools of five teams with the top two advancing to the quarter-finals:Pool A: Ireland, Scotland, Japan, Russia, SamoaPool B: New Zealand, South Africa, Italy, Namibia, Canada Pool C: England, France, Argentina, USA, TongaPool D: Australia, Wales, Georgia, Fiji, Uruguay How do you get a seat?Tickets go on general sale on first-come, first-served basis on 19 January via www.rugbyworldcup.com/tickets. Applicants will need to create a registration page in advance. There are 1.8m tickets available across the tournament and so far more than 4.5m applications for tickets have been received via the respective ballot phases, making Japan 2019 the most popular Rugby World Cup to date. Japan, England, Ireland and New Zealand matches are in most demand. Such is the structure of the sales, there are still tickets available in every category across every match in the next phase. Fans are advised to check the availability indicator before applying. There are also official supporter tour and hospitality options available for fans around the world – see www.rugbyworldcup.com/supportertours and www.rugbyworldcup.com/hospitality. Overall, 400,000 international visitors are anticipated over the six-week period, delivering a record economic impact for an event in Japan, and a Rugby World Cup, of £2.97bn. Infrastructure is no longer the problem it once was and while Gilpin, concerned by the lack of progress with training facilities, was forced to give the organising committee a few reminders in late 2017, he is satisfied they are again on track. Problems with the host venues have been surpassed too, after the final was moved from Tokyo to Yokohama because the showpiece new stadium would not be ready in time. Instead it will be opened for the 2020 Olympics, which has the potential to act as either a distraction or added motivation to impress. Meanwhile, ticket sales are always a concern when major events enter new territory and the worry is that there will be plenty of empty seats at the less glamorous fixtures, hence the drive to encourage the 400,000-plus visitors to mix tourist pursuits with matches – come for rugby, stay for the ryokan. “We like to think of it as the most challenging because of the extent of the opportunity it gives us,” said Gilpin. “Going somewhere as different in rugby terms as Japan, using this as we are trying to grow rugby in Asia, creates challenges we have not faced before.” Much will depend on the success of the host nation and ultimately the Japanese public loves to get behind a winner. Women’s football briefly soared in popularity when Japan won the World Cup in 2011 and success this year – which would mean getting out of their pool – would eclipse the feat of 2015, in which Jones masterminded the victory over South Africa. His homecoming certainly helps in building the profile of the tournament too, but what of his England side’s chances of success? Jones’s familiarity with the host nation is an advantage but it cannot be ignored that despite all his efforts, he has failed to arrange a trip for his players to acclimatise, even if he and his coaches have been on countless recces. It is significant because practically all of England’s rivals will have had some experience before the tournament starts but his players will be in uncharted territory. As with so much else, uncertainty abounds.Police are trying to trace a group of men, whom they believe to be Chelsea fans, in connection with alleged sexual assaults and racist chanting on a train. The incidents are alleged to have taken place on 22 December, after Chelsea’s home defeat by Leicester, on a train travelling from London to Worcester. British Transport Police said in a statement: “A group of around 20 football fans boarded the 6.22pm Great Western Service from London Paddington and began to chant racially abusive comments in front of families and children. “They were also seen to sexually assault a number of women on board the train. It is believed they were Chelsea fans. The group, who were all men, left the train at Worcester. “Officers are appealing for anyone who witnessed what happened to get in touch so they can assist the investigation. In particular, they believe a number of women who were sexually assaulted are yet to come forward and they would like to encourage them to do so.” In December Chelsea vowed not to rest “until we have eliminated all forms of discrimination from our club” after incidents including fans singing an antisemitic chant at a Europa League match and alleged racist abuse of Raheem Sterling by supporters. Three Chelsea supporters were spoken to by police after officers received reports of antisemitic chanting on a train carrying fans after the club’s game at Brighton in December. Eden Hazard and Maurizio Sarri have urged Chelsea fans not to step out of line at Tuesday’s Carabao Cup semi-final 1st leg against Tottenham at Wembley.Tinned corned beef* is a product that resists reinvention. Slouched on bright yellow beanbags in the “ideas hub” at an east London branding agency, the bright marketing sparks charged with this task must look on in despair as a cornucopia of 1970s processed foods, from the Arctic roll to Findus crispy pancakes, take on an ironic halo of #noshtalgia, while corned beef remains beyond the pale. Indelibly linked with the grey Britain of postwar rationing, corned beef suffers from ugly snobbery. “So stigmatised, it is deemed only fit for pensioners or the unemployed,” as one fan once wrote in the Guardian (note: Essex’s Becontree Estate was nicknamed Corned Beef City as a dig at the poverty of its residents). Today, corned beef is most likely to crop up, not in recipes in glossy magazine (high-quality traditional makers are incredibly rare), but in inescapably demoralising lists of what you should donate to food banks or stockpile in the event of a chaotic no-deal Brexit. It is a food dogged by an aura of crisis, deprivation and controversy. Over the centuries, it has been blamed for exacerbating everything from the Irish potato famine to obesity levels in Tonga. In recent years, it has been embroiled in scandals about deforestation and slave labour in South America, and the contamination of beef supplies with horsemeat and veterinary painkillers. Look past that dread PR and find a corned beef brand that reports a firm commitment to sustainability, and, even then, you have to wrestle your shopping into submission due to a bizarre insistence among manufacturers on using those weird tapered tins, opened with tiny keys that frequently do not work. Dogged consumers are left digging meat out from between razor-sharp edges with a kitchen knife, having finally prised open that obtusely shaped can with a tin opener … or a hammer and chisel. Yet, despite all that baggage, say the words: corned beef hash, and, immediately, a significant proportion of Britain will begin to drool – transported by a meal that can provide comfort in even the bleakest of mid-winters. Corned beef hash satisfies something deep in the freezing northern European soul. But only if it is done right, which is where How to Eat [HTE] – the series examining how best to eat Britain’s favourite foods – comes in. * Not to be confused with what Americans (and, historically, the Irish) call “corned beef”, known in Britain as salt beef. That is a very different food to canned corned beef: salted beef offcuts, minced and suspended in their own fat, sterilised and shipped to Europe from South America. Talking of transatlantic confusion (nay, cultural imperialism), in the aftermath of Britain’s early-2010s obsession with trashy US diner food, be careful when ordering corned beef hash. It is now frequently rendered as a mess of hard-fried potatoes, onions and salt beef. Objectively, at its best, this US interloper may be a tastier dish, a superior creation, but it is not what we commonly expect of corned beef hash. It is unfamiliar and, in its lack of density and heft, gravy and soothing mash, the comforting qualities of the UK original are absent. It is a gastronomic elevation of a dish that, instead, should be the simplest of reassuring nursery foods. Metaphorically and psychologically speaking, it is a stiff pat on the back from a confident, stylish New Yorker, when, deep down, what you really want is a soft, all-enveloping hug from mummy (AKA the mashed potato). There is some intermediate (con)fusion of the US-UK methods. Some people simmer the potatoes and other ingredients in stock until soft or layer the potatoes like a hotpot and, variously, oven bake them (and even cover the hash with cheese and grill it; this is not a shepherd’s pie!). But, to be blunt, all those methods are wrong. This dish is a mashed potato-based meal. There is some suggestion that the basic, classic form of hash – fried onions, mash, chopped corned beef – is most prevalent in the north-west of England. If this is true, it confirms that region’s leadership in this field. If you wish (it is a bit of a faff), you can cook then fry off the mash mixture in patties and break those up before serving – in order to build a little welcome crunch into the hash – but, at root, the corned beef hash should be a huge, soft hill that you can smoothly motor through with a spoon. Fundamentally, corned beef hash is all about the gravy. The gravy is the mighty meaty wave, the savoury tsunami, the rip current that should wash over and drown this otherwise bland dish in flavour. It should sweep you off your feet. Start with a butter, garlic, onion and beef stock base, and then freestyle with whatever you have to hand: old red wine, brown sauce, soy, Worcestershire sauce, to broaden and add 3D depth to that canvas. A gentle tingle at the fringes of your hash is not unwelcome (tabasco, grain mustard etc), but cook it in as you fry your initial onions. That will take the edge of it. This is not a dish to enliven with fresh chillies or hot sauce. Both would clash horribly with the gravy. Any heat should shimmer in the distance, way behind the gravy’s savoury thwack. A little spicy kick, a gentle underlying heat is fine, anything palpably chilli hot is not. Yes, yes and thrice yes. Fried not poached, please. This is not a dish in which concern for your arteries should figure. Be in no doubt, we are troughing here. This is a meal that should immobilise you. Leave you bloated and beached. Clear your diary. But that egg is not mere gluttony, it makes culinary sense, too. The soft yolk adds a layer of richness and the texture of that fried white is a creamy counterpoint to the starchy potato. Does corned beef hash need any? Arguably, no. Add a condiment [see, sauces], and you have a complete meal. However, there are certain vegetables that will bring a new mineral dimension to the dish. It is rather like putting a conservatory on a perfectly liveable suburban semi. It might be nice. But it is not essential. Good: Shredded, buttered cabbage, sprouts or other veg (eg broccoli) that offers a pointed iron-rich tang. A little scattered crispy bacon or crispy onions: both of which add a some textural va va voom and, respectively, complementary layers of salty or sweet flavour. Pickled red cabbage or beetroot; their vinegary sharpness is a kind of fastidious punctuation of this otherwise overly verbose, long-winded paragraph. Each brings definition and clarity to the dish, periodically clearing your palate (and mind) before the next meat ’n’ potatoes assault. Bad: Peas, like carrots, are ineffectual in a corned beef hash, unless you add them by the bucket (turning it into a very different dish). The hint of sweetness they provide is too meek to assert itself. Fresh or fried bell peppers have no place in this dish … or in food generally (see also, oven-roasted tomatoes). Sweetcorn: no. Baked beans: is that middling, juvenile sweetness really sufficient yin to the yang of the hash? In HTE’s opinion, it is not. Asparagus is probably the most overrated vegetable on Earth and, in a dish that you are going to tackle with a spoon and fork, is a logistical minefield. If you need to get a knife out to cut anything in a corned beef hash, you have failed at the dish. Creamed spinach (or any creamed vegetable) will make an unholy, murky mess of your gravy; think: Exxon Valdez-style pollution. The fallback of middling pub chefs and pretentious home cooks, this dish does not require any titivation with twee, tied bundles of chives or fronds of flat-leaf parsley. Neither adds anything to a hash, other than an unpleasant sense that someone has emptied their lawnmower over your tea. Bread: ordinarily, HTE is firmly in the bread-with-everything, carbs-on-carbs camp. But, c’mon, this is an unusually filling meal. Serving it with buttered sourdough or soda bread is overkill. You will occasionally see people (Scandinavians, mostly), arguing that a hash should be served with a dollop of hollandaise or béarnaise, but that seems an unnecessarily rich addition to such a gutsy dish. An egg yolk is as far as you should go down that path. Otherwise, stick to tomato sauce. Its piquant sweetness is just the pick-me-up, the periodic pep, you need when tackling this mountain range of meat and potatoes. Spoon, fork and a large, deep (to retain all that gravy) wide-rimmed bowl. That wide-rim is a useful ledge on which you can splodge your ketchup and then conveniently dip in-and-out of it, as you see fit. There is a hardcore who regard hash as a hangover restorative, but, for HTE, it is too heavy for that role. This is not a dish to get you moving, but one that, on a filthy winter’s night, after warming the marrow of your bones should lull you into a carb-coma such that you are pleasantly incapable of doing anything more strenuous than reaching for the remote control. Corned beef hash is your tea, not your dinner and – rare lazy brunches apart – certainly not a breakfast dish. Nothing too fizzy: a glass of red, tea, water, a pale cask ale. You need all available stomach space. Taking on unnecessary carbon dioxide will only lead to indigestion. So, corned beef hash, how do you eat yours?This month the FTSE 100 is 35 years old. When it launched in 1984 it was a true barometer of UK commercial and industrial talent, but now only 30 of the original names remain intact. Courtaulds, which in the 1970s was the world’s largest textile manufacturer, was an early casualty. Gone, too, are ICI, Plessey, Ferranti and Pilkington. Other countries have maintained industrial giants and developed technological powerhouses. The DAX index in Germany contains Bayer, BASF, Continental, Siemens, ThyssenKrupp and Volkswagen. The S&P 500 in the US includes Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Boeing. What has been the UK’s most successful stock market company, in the country that was the birthplace of the industrial revolution? Step forward British American Tobacco. Its product kills customers, but hey, they have been great for investment portfolios in our dividend-driven financialised economy. Over the past year BAT has actually been a poor performer – knocked by commendable attempts by regulators in the US to ban menthol cigarettes, which make up around a quarter of BAT’s profits. BAT’s shares have tumbled from a high of £55 in 2017 to about £24, but even after halving they have made an astonishing gain since 1984. An analysis by brokers AJ Bell reveals that if you bought £100 worth of BAT shares in 1984 and reinvested the dividends, by the beginning of 2019 they were worth £33,123. Nothing else comes close. Second-best performer Unilever has turned £1,000 into £13,215, while Whitbread has made £12,195. The worst performer? Barring companies that went bankrupt (such as Ferranti), the wooden spoon goes to Royal Bank of Scotland. In 1984 it entered the FTSE 100 at a price of 216p. Its price 35 years later? 216p. How did big tobacco do so well? The threat of catastrophic litigation payouts in the US went away after a settlement in the mid-1990s with the US authorities. Cashflows were magnificent, as nobody new entered the market, while territories such as Russia, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia have proved highly profitable. In 2017 BAT made £6.5bn profits on turnover of £20.3bn, and in 2018 became one of the top-five dividend payers in the UK stock market. You have to go down to 16th in the list of top stocks since 1984 to find a manufacturer that has done well. It’s BAE Systems, maker of military hardware and warships. Making stuff that can kill people seems, sadly, to be what Britain’s rather good at. Do remember that when you are buying a UK index tracker, this is what you are investing in. What else do we learn from the data? According to AJ Bell, the standout performers are firms that had long spells of consecutive increases in their annual dividend, such as ABF, Johnson Matthey, Legal & General and Whitbread. And the next 35 years? Probably just 10 of the 30 names from 1984 will still be in the index. And maybe by then cigarettes will be history too. p.collinson@theguardian.comPat Haskins steers his tanker towards the river Blackwater, a murky waterway that in theory will soon mark the frontier between the United Kingdom and the European Union. A narrow sliver separating rolling hills in County Monaghan in the Irish Republic  from rolling hills in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, it is not much to look at. Blink and you miss the drive across the short two-lane bridge. On Haskins’s left, two donkeys graze in a field. On his right, trucks roll south. His 46-tonne rig is headed north. The only indication he has entered the UK is a road sign giving the speed limit in miles rather than kilometres. “I remember what it was like before the border went,” says Haskins, 61. “You had to go to Dundalk to get clearance from the south to go north. Then you had to go to Newry to get clearance to go into the north. It was a bloody nightmare.” The tanker carries 27,500 litres of milk from southern farms for Strathroy dairy in Omagh, 20 miles inside Northern Ireland, which will process and bottle the milk before sending it back to the Republic – a frictionless criss-crossing to use Brexit terminology. That may all change on 29 March when the UK is due to leave the EU. Or it may not change at all. Or change just a bit. It depends on whether the UK actually leaves, whether there is a deal and what sort of deal plus technical questions about customs, taxes and currencies, all currently unanswerable. For Strathroy, one of the biggest dairies on the island of Ireland with 220 employees and an £80m annual turnover, the uncertainty could add up to a sense of looming disaster. It is not just about economics. A bomb killed 29 people and wounded more than 200 in Omagh in 1998, one of the last and worst atrocities of the Troubles. Brexit has destabilised the Good Friday agreement which has since kept the peace. Ruairi Cunningham, a managing director of Strathroy, thinks Brexit is a colossal mistake. He echoes his tanker driver’s bad dream analogy, saying: “Forward planning is a nightmare. It stops you doing your day to day work and growing the business.” The family-owned company has a fleet of trucks that crosses the border dozens of times a day, taking milk from 250 Irish and Northern Irish farms that ends up in about 2,400 retailers on both sides of the border. Last week’s Brexit headlines included warnings that, in the event of no-deal, vehicles would need insurance “green cards” to cross the border, there would be mandatory EU and World Trade Organization (WTO) border checks and that Ireland could, according to the head of the Irish Exporters Association, be “screwed”. At the Blackwater border crossing. it is easy to envisage a dark surge thundering towards the island of Ireland’s agri-food sector. Many of those who produce and transport cheese and beef may indeed be swept away. But whatever happens in the Brexit lottery, Cunningham is quietly confident that his dairy will adapt. “We may take a financial hit in the short to medium term but we’re fairly content that it’s manageable,” he says. While Westminster has lurched from drama to drama, leaving Brexit in limbo, Cunningham has been busy devising a survival strategy, the result of swotting up on trade rule arcana, lobbying officials, soothing skittish suppliers and customers and scouting locations for a potential new dairy in the Republic. The strategy may not be needed. If Westminster ends up passing a version of Theresa May’s deal or delaying or cancelling the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, Strathroy’s trucks will continue trundling over the river unimpeded. A hard border or crashing out without a deal, however, could trigger checkpoints and stiff tariffs. But probably not overnight, giving time for plan A: apply for inward processing relief from customs duty and import VAT to avoid making Strathroy’s milk uncompetitive in the Republic. The scheme would require a bilateral accord between Britain and Ireland, so Cunningham has been lobbying officials in Dublin and Belfast. “It’s looking positive but we need to make sure all our ducks are lined up in a row,” he says. If that falls through the milk will be subject to a 30% WTO dairy tariff. “No way we could absorb that. It’d be lights out.” Enter plan B: persuade officials to levy the tariff just on value added – the processing of the milk rather than the product’s full value. Instead of a 30 cent tariff on every €1 of milk. the company would pay 3 cents. “Not lights out, manageable.” In the Alice-in-Wonderland realm that is Brexit planning, Cunningham is receiving reassuring feedback from Dublin officials who say the tariff would be just on the value added, but that theycannot put that in writing. Officials in Belfast think he might have to pay the full tariff, but admit they do not really know. If so, plan C is to open a dairy in the Republic to process milk from the south while the dairy in Tyrone processes milk from the north. It would take several years to build, cost about €10m and duplicate resources in the highly efficient, automated Omagh dairy, so it would be a last resort. “We hope it doesn’t come to this, but I’ve scoped out some greenfield sites,” Cunningham says. “It’s a tight game that we’re in. And the goalposts are moving all the time.” In Brexit’s turbulent swirl is he losing sleeping, pulling out hair? The dairy manager smiles and rubs his chin. “Nope. You just do what you can do.” 100m – the number of litres of milk that Strathroy imports from the Irish Republic. £10m – estimated cost of building a new dairy in the Irish Republic. £662m – gross output of Northern Ireland dairy in 2017. 30% – WTO tariffs on dairy.While these have been a troubled few weeks for Arsenal, with Sven Mislintat’s impending exit set to leave a big hole in their recruitment department, their victory over Chelsea was a reminder there have been plenty of positives during Unai Emery’s first season. The Spaniard has had to muddle along with an imbalanced squad but has shown he can make important tactical interventions on several occasions. He certainly got the better of Maurizio Sarri, disrupting the Chelsea manager’s attempts to build from the back by using an energetic high press, and his switch to a midfield diamond demonstrated Arsenal have become more flexible since parting company with Arsène Wenger. Emery’s side played with snap and bite from the start, with the tone set by Lucas Torreira’s waspish performance, and the impressive Aaron Ramsey. Jacob Steinberg Lacazette shows Chelsea the value of a no-nonsense No 9 “Exceptional achievement from a world-class player,” was Jürgen Klopp’s verdict on Mohamed Salah reaching the milestone of 50 Premier League goals. The Egypt international hit the half-century in 72 games. Only out-and-out strikers Ruud van Nistelrooy, Alan Shearer and Andy Cole got there in fewer games. “Maybe he would have scored more and earlier if I hadn’t played him on the right wing so often,” Klopp added. “My fault.” The forward’s anticipation, awareness and improvisation earned the reward but rather less appetising was his theatrical attempt to win a first-half penalty under pressure from Mamadou Sakho. Salah was affronted by Luka Milivojevic’s angry reaction to the tumble but didn’t have a leg to stand on. Theoretically and literally. The slight on Salah’s reputation was self-inflicted. Andy Hunter ‘Liverpool had to dig deep,’ says relieved Klopp after thrilling win “Tactical” was the explanation from Pep Guardiola when he was asked about Riyad Mahrez, Manchester City’s record signing, not even warranting a place among their substitutes for the 3-0 win at Huddersfield Town. Others might see it as perplexing that the £60m man has drifted out of the squad and was an unused substitute in their previous two Premier League games against Wolves or Liverpool. For Mahrez, who was bought from Leicester, it must clearly be a worry. More than anything, however, it is probably a reminder of City’s immense resources rather than anything the player has particularly done wrong. And there can be no guarantees, with Kevin De Bruyne fit again, Leroy Sané and Raheem Sterling excelling on the wings and the two Silvas, David and Bernardo, also to factor in, that it was only a one-off. Daniel Taylor Guardiola says City must improve to win the league Fulham scored first for the third match in succession but all three of those games ended in defeat. That their defending is hapless is one of the 2018-19 season’s leading statements of the bleeding obvious. It was in painful evidence during one of their most organised displays since being promoted and what should have been one of their better results; this was the squandering of a golden chance to take points off a tired, diminished Tottenham. Tim Ream’s disorientated swinging at fresh air created the chance for Dele Alli to equalise just as it seemed a frustrated visiting side could be kept at bay and then Joe Bryan lost Harry Winks for the injury-time winner. As someone who honed his managerial art in the Serie A of the 1990s, Claudio Ranieri’s instinct is to sit back on leads but he does not have the players for that to be viable at Fulham. John Brewin Pochettino says Alli’s hamstring injury does ‘not look great’ Diogo Jota became the first Wolves player to score a top-flight hat-trick since John Richards in 1977 but it was his all-round game, bouncing off Raúl Jiménez, that brought his rewards against Leicester. Jota is perhaps the most unheralded of the club’s sizeable Portuguese contingent, operating in the shadows of midfield pair Rúben Neves and João Moutinho but he undoubtedly plays a key role in helping Wolves tick. After enjoying a prolific debut season in England, Jota had, until now, struggled to replicate that form but there is evidence there is plenty more to come from the talented forward, who turned 22 in December. “Pre-season was not the best for many reasons,” Jota said. “I was struggling to feel good on the pitch and [did not] feel fast and quick. Now is a good moment. I am able to do what I always want to do.” Ben Fisher Jota completes Wolves hat-trick to break Leicester hearts With 15 games remaining Chris Hughton’s Brighton are seven points clear of the drop zone. The next three league outings are all winnable as the manager looks to ensure safety for another season. “I think if you’d asked me at this stage if I would be happy on the back of two positive performances against United and Liverpool and be seven points clear, then I would say yes,” he said. “But the pressure is always to get the points when you need to. The pleasing bit is we have lost 1-0 to Liverpool who are top and 2-1 at Old Trafford to a United team that’s in really good form. We’re going into a series of games now [against Fulham, Watford and Burnley] where the pressure will be on us to make sure that we get points from these.” Given how awkward Brighton are to play against it would be some surprise if they do not retain their top-flight status. Jamie Jackson Pogba and Rashford strike to keep winning run intact Success for Everton is finishing seventh but despite being just three points off their Valhalla, they look a long way from being the best of the rest. Marco Silva’s side have come under heavy scrutiny following a summer of investment, which has failed to provide a stable defence or regular goals. This defeat means they have won back-to-back Premier League games once this season. A battling win over Bournemouth will have given fans hope but losing to Southampton again proved their inability to put together two good performances consecutively. Failing to recover from going behind does not help; James Ward-Prowse’s opener was the 10th time this season Everton have conceded first and they have only procured two points from those games, a sign of their inability to fight back, a problem management rather than money will need to resolve soon. Will Unwin Ward-Prowse hits stunner to seal win for Saints The last time Newcastle had beaten Cardiff 3-0 on Tyneside in the Premier League, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s side were relegated and the home manager, Alan Pardew, was subjected to such sustained abuse from fans he remained, cowering, in his dug-out throughout. On Saturday Mike Ashley, Newcastle’s owner, proved the target of hostile chants but he merely sat smiling as the ground echoed to “Stand up if you hate Ashley.” With suggestions that a mooted takeover had collapsed, the mood was ugly but did not inhibit Rafael Benítez’s players. Instead, Fabian Schär showed he is a centre-half with show-stopping technical benefits and midfielder Sean Longstaff shone. “The players, especially the foreign players, aren’t bothered [about the possible takeover],” said Newcastle’s manager. Louise Taylor Newcastle out of bottom three as Schär sinks Cardiff Andy Carroll’s jaw-dropping miss against Bournemouth sparked derision although, at some level, one could be forgiven sympathy for a player who badly needs something to go his way. Saturday’s game was only his 61st league start since joining West Ham permanently five and a half years ago and, while there was the odd glimpse of the intelligent hold-up play and aerial power he can provide, the way forward seems unclear. Carroll is 30 now and the chances of things getting much better are receding. Assuming Marko Arnautovic departs there will surely remain a role in Manuel Pellegrini’s squad between now and the end of the season, even if a regular starting place seems unthinkable. Carroll is out of contract in June and it is hard to see who would bank on him these days as an option to count on at the top level. Nick Ames Wilson’s blistering strike sets up Cherries win Javi Gracia is not a man who is prone to hyperbole. But as he celebrates the first anniversary of his appointment today, the Watford manager has every reason to feel proud of his efforts since replacing Marco Silva. Despite failing to find a way past Burnley on Saturday, Watford have created a strong identity under the Spaniard and now look strong contenders to finish seventh. The reward for that could be the Europa League, and their squad could be better suited to handling the extra workload that brings than Sean Dyche’s men – they failed to reach the group stages last August, losing in the play-off round. “I’m very pleased but not only for me,” Gracia reflected on his first year in charge. “When I arrived it was because the owners trusted me and after one year I can say they are happy with our work and the position we are in.” Ed Aarons Heaton is Burnley’s hero as Dyche enjoys homecomingShortly after getting off the phone to me, the two-Michelin-star chef Sat Bains texts a PS: “One guy rang 450 times today as our March diary opened. He was pissed off. That means when he comes it better be amazing.” That was one of 670 individual booking inquiries at Nottingham’s Restaurant Sat Bains that day. It is not an extraordinary number for a top-end restaurant. At one time, Copenhagen’s Noma was fielding 100,000 emails a month. But it illustrates how, in an increasingly globalised world, hot restaurants and bars have become stand-alone tourist destinations – sites of pilgrimage for national and international food obsessives. When many restaurants are struggling to survive, that clamour for tables is a nice problem to have. But, particularly in smaller, neighbourhood venues, such acclaim can be disruptive. It also puts pressure on chefs who, suddenly, find themselves stars of the show. A recent University of Lleida study, published in the journal Intangible Capital, identified a group of food tourists who travel explicitly to eat at Michelin-starred restaurants. They want to meet the chef, visit the kitchen and love the “status” this confers on them. Unabashed show-offs, the majority relay all of this on social media. Bains handles this by remaining “authentic”. “If people save to come here, it’d be rude for me not to say hello. It’s called hospitality. But I’m a working chef. By 11.30pm on Saturday night, I’m drained. I’ve spilled shit over my jacket. I might be bollocking someone. It’s a working kitchen. I hope you enjoyed yourself. Here’s a menu. But I don’t pretend to be a host. I’m a chef.” Bains’s profile built gradually, between 2003 and 2011, as he accumulated stars and won the 2007 Great British Menu with his slow-cooked duck egg, ham and pea sorbet: “That egg filled our restaurant for a year.” But for others, sudden attention can be bewildering. When the Lima-born chef Jose Luis de Cossio opened Paiche in Portland, Oregon, he intended it to be an affordable, neighbourhood breakfast-lunch joint in Lair Hill, a part of the city described by Portland Monthly as a “foodie desert”. De Cossio had worked in celebrated restaurants but, by 2016, he wanted to do something less intense to make time for his family and his other great love, surfing. Immediately, Paiche went stratospheric. Named restaurant of the year in the Willamette Week, trend-hunting foodies flocked from across Portland to try the ceviche. Queues grew, as did customer expectations. De Cossio felt compelled to open for dinner, and gussy-up the menu. Prices rose accordingly. “I was putting too much luxury there. Paying $32 for a grouper from Tokyo, it’s not sustainable. I think the press made me feel like a false hero, and it affected my ego – a chef’s worst enemy. I should never have changed for recognition.” Soon de Cossio was grumbling about the “narrow customer” his 32-seat restaurant was attracting. “I don’t want to focus on fine dining. I don’t want to be a superstar chef in town,” he told Willamette Week. Radically, in 2017, he abandoned dinner service, turned Paiche vegan and began serving $6 dishes. “Why not make a humble place, man?” the 46-year-old asks. Paiche closed late in 2018 (“I need a break, new air to build my energy”), but: “I really love that, at the last, it was counter-service and open to people who have a lower budget.” Paiche is not alone in being overwhelmed by a crowd. From the Kernel brewery, in London, which closed its brew-tap after Bermondsey’s “beer mile” became wildly popular, to Raan Jay Fai, a backstreet kitchen in Bangkok that gained a Michelin star, many have found it to be logistically problematic. Raan Jay Fai had to drop complex dishes to cope with an influx of 200 diners a day. “I wish I could give the star back,” the exhausted 72-year-old chef-owner, Supinya Junsuta, told reporters. A high demand for seats can damage your reputation, too. In no-bookings venues, regulars get upset they can no longer get in easily, while those travelling for hours to eat there complain about queues. When the award-winning Altrincham Market House food hub opened in 2014, the co-owner Nick Johnson had to hold his nerve and ignore any critical TripAdvisor reviews. “I don’t put great store in TripAdvisor because you don’t know who it is has left that review and you can’t trust their value judgments,” he says. “I would no sooner ask my father where to eat than I would an alsatian dog, but he’s allowed to leave a TripAdvisor review – therefore it has no value.” Market House relies on an element of chaos for its “energy”, Johnson insists. “It’s not for everybody. But if you enjoy busy-ness and that atmosphere, you’ll tough it out.” Similarly, he thinks local people adapted. “You want busy places in your community. The locals know when it’s busiest and work around that.” John Pybus is a more interventionist operator. Landlord of the Blue Bell, one of tourist-mobbed York’s most famous pubs, he loves “nice, Camra-type” (Campaign for Real Ale) visitors, but won’t serve the large gangs of “shitfaced, rowdy knobheads” that “make the city centre a bit of a no-go area on Saturday afternoons”. Signs outside the pub state: no stags, no hens, no groups. Policing that, says Pybus, is an inexact science: “If it’s Tuesday afternoon and I’ve got 10 70-year-old blokes in reminiscing, fine. If it’s Saturday and it’s three lads in fancy dress, you’re a group.” But in a city centre where, Pybus claims, some older people don’t feel safe at weekends, he thinks it is “imperative we have local pubs run by and for local people, where those people take precedence. The tourists who come in appreciate that sense of community.” At Michelin-starred restaurants, the problems that tourists present tend to be more abstract. Bains is dismayed by diners who collect Michelin-starred meals like “football cards. Do you appreciate it? Are you mindful of what you’re eating?” Others are conflicted about serving dishes made famous by MasterChef, Great British Menu or even Instagram, which a significant minority of diners will travel hundreds of miles to taste. Birmingham’s Glynn Purnell told Restaurant magazine: “Sometimes you feel like Elton John must when people ask him to sing Rocket Man. There is a lot more to his work, but some people are only interested in the hits.” Purnell still serves his GBM-winning burnt English egg surprise. Like Bains, who finally took his winning dish off in 2018, it felt churlish to refuse to – and daft, financially. “I was taking £65,000 a year on it. Have two eggs!” laughs Bains. A lingering misconception that a Michelin star signifies gilded, old-school luxury can also be an issue. Restaurant Sat Bains is on a suburban croft under a flyover. “You wouldn’t come down unless you were going dogging,” Bains says. “One guy left because there’s a pylon nearby. I can’t move it, chief.” The Irish restaurant Bon Appétit closed its Michelin-starred fine-dining arm in 2014 for similar reasons. “[Michelin] is not about amuse bouches, dickie bows, cloches and all of that. But people expect that and we’ve had comments over the years about the table linen, plates, staff hairstyles. It’s frustrating trying to live up to people’s inaccurate expectations,” the chef-owner, Oliver Dunne, told the Irish Independent. Such expectations do not come higher than when you have been named the world’s best restaurant, as the Black Swan, in Olstead, North Yorkshire, was in 2017 by TripAdvisor. “There have been people who’re like: ‘We’ve been to Noma and Eleven Madison Park and we don’t think you compare.’ Well … fine. It’s a tiny pub. We never claimed to be the world’s best,” says chef and co-owner Tommy Banks. Ultimately, Banks could only react with bluff northern humour: “People were flying from America to eat here, spending thousands. It’s incredibly humbling, but I’d joke: ‘Frankly, it’s not worth that.’” When the foodie tourists descend, a little laughter – and perspective – goes a long way.The twin criminal indictments against Huawei unveiled by US authorities on Monday are packed with emails and financial transactions allegedly showing how the Chinese technology giant carried out criminal conspiracies. But the finer points of the 23 charges are less important than the overall shot they deliver across China’s bows. The US considers Huawei to be an arm of the Chinese state – and their devices to be potential spying equipment for Beijing. Charges that Huawei illegally violated US sanctions on Iran hold the most symbolic significance. They allowed Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, to stress the company’s activities had been “detrimental to the security of the United States”. But many US officials and analysts also see the prosecutions as proxies for America’s response to other Chinese threats – against US cybersecurity and economic pre-eminence. As the race to dominate the world’s next-generation 5G networks intensifies, the Trump administration is seeking to stop Huawei equipment making its way into the communications infrastructure – and to give its American competitors a leg-up. Earlier this month, Huawei’s reclusive founder, Ren Zhengfei, broke years of silence to say the company has never engaged in espionage on behalf of Beijing. The 13 charges against Huawei in Brooklyn allege an elaborate fraud to get around US sanctions on Iran. The US says that in 2007, Huawei pretended to sell its Iran subsidiary, Skycom, but actually just transferred it to another branch of Huawei. Conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)   – two countsIEEPA violations  – two countsMoney-laundering conspiracyHuawei is accused of running a scheme to violate American sanctions on Iran in two separate ways. Prosecutors say the company broke US sanctions by using American banks for operations in Iran without the special permission this would require. It also provided telecommunications services to Iran, the indictment says. In January 2013, Reuters reported Skycom sold embargoed Hewlett-Packard equipment to Iran’s biggest phone company.Prosecutors say that by moving funds in and out of the US to carry out this sanctions-busting conspiracy, Huawei was also money laundering. Conspiracy to defraud the USIt is a crime to use deception to intentionally impede the operations of a US government agency. Prosecutors allege that in addition to lying to their bankers in the US, senior Huawei executives lied to FBI investigators and Congress about the company’s activities relating to Iran. This, the indictment says, amounted to a conspiracy to obstruct the operations of the US treasury’s office of foreign assets control, which oversees economic sanctions against Iran. Conspiracy to commit bank fraud  – two countsBank fraud x  twoHuawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, are accused of devising a scheme to defraud two banks in the US – and carrying it out. Prosecutors said the firm promised not to use the banks to process transactions related to Iran, which would violate US sanctions. In fact, the indictment says, it ran more than $100m of Iranian-related transactions through one bank in 2010-14. Even after media reports said Huawei still owned Skycom, prosecutors say, Meng delivered a bogus PowerPoint presentation to one bank, claiming Skycom was merely a trading partner. After this bank ended their relationship in 2017, Huawei allegedly moved to another bank in the US by making similar false claims on Iran. Conspiracy to commit wire fraudWire fraudProsecutors allege Huawei and Meng used wire communications – telephone calls, emails and other electronic messages – as part of their fraud conspiracy. This is a crime in itself, as is conspiring to do it. Conspiracy to obstruct justiceThe US says that after discovering it was under criminal investigation in 2017, Huawei began destroying evidence, and moving witnesses with knowledge of the Iran scheme back to China. The charges filed in Seattle focus on Huawei’s alleged theft of robotic technology from T-Mobile, whose US headquarters is in the region. The indictment says Huawei aggressively tried to steal secrets, even setting up a bonus system rewarding employees who emailed them home to China. Theft of trade secrets conspiracyAttempted theft of trade secretsHuawei began supplying phones to T-Mobile in 2010 and agreed not to disclose confidential information that it learned, according to prosecutors. But from 2012, Huawei engineers allegedly began stealing information on Tappy, T-Mobile’s robot for testing touchscreens. Prosecutors say Huawei needed a robot like Tappy because the phones it supplied to T-Mobile “generally were not of high quality” and kept breaking. T-Mobile declined to sell or license the Tappy system to Huawei, partly because Huawei also supplied competitors such as AT&T. So Huawei dispatched an engineer from China, identified as FW, to Seattle. He allegedly accessed a T-Mobile laboratory, took measurements and photographs of Tappy, and sent them back to China. Another Huawei engineer, AX, later tried to steal one of Tappy’s robotic arms but was caught, the indictment says. He claimed he “found it in his bag”. Wire fraud   – seven countsThe indictment quotes extensively from emails between Huawei staff in the US and China. Chinese bosses repeatedly pressured those in the US to steal data on Tappy, prosecutors say. By devising the conspiracy over email, the company allegedly repeatedly committed wire fraud. Obstruction of justiceAfter being caught stealing trade secrets, Huawei allegedly misled T-Mobile by carrying out a sham internal investigation and producing a 23-page report containing false information on what happened. The report falsely claimed that FW and AX were rogue employees acting without permission. The company is accused of obstructing justice by using this report to defend itself against a civil lawsuit that T-Mobile brought against it over the trade secrets theft.“Just take it away and let me start a new beginning … it really pains me when I have to talk about it.” MaryAnn Rolle sits outside her restaurant on Great Exuma in the Bahamas, holding back the tears as she looks towards the camera. Like many other Bahamians, she believed that a new luxury music festival organised by rapper Ja Rule and serial entrepreneur Billy McFarland would bring money and attention to the island. Instead, Fyre – which had been promoted by top models including Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, and promised acts including Migos, Drake and Major Lazer – became one of the most talked-about flops of the decade. In place of an opulent beach party, attendees at the April 2017 event were greeted with a barren, unfinished site, leftover hurricane tents and conditions that lawyers would later describe as “closer to The Hunger Games … than Coachella”, with ticket holders stranded on the island without food or water. Meanwhile, workers such as Rolle – who had spent $50,000 drafting in extra staff – were left high and dry. Although the event was swiftly cancelled, its dystopian scenes became a source of entertainment on social media, with umpteen jokes about its supposed rich-kid clientele. However, the dark side of the festival quickly emerged, with a fraud case brought against McFarland, who was sentenced to six years in prison last October. It is this reality – away from the memes, lols and claims that the event was “Darwinism at its finest” – that’s explored in a new Netflix doc, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, revealing a stranger, and sadder, story. For director Chris Smith, the unanswered questions around Fyre were a source of intrigue. Smith was finishing work on Jim Carrey and Andy Kaufman doc The Great Beyond when he remembered having heard about the festival months before. “It felt like it had been a sort of footnote that people had forgot about,” he explains down the line from New York. “It felt very one-dimensional, like no one really had much information about what had actually happened. It was a punchline on talkshows.” He quickly worked out that this was more than just a story of social media schadenfreude when a preliminary meeting with festival consultant Marc Weinstein ran on for three-and-a-half hours, and so set about investigating the story alongside the likes of Vice and Jerry Media, a company hired to work on social media for the festival. The resulting doc works both as horror film and a striking study in human psychology. “I think that the coverage to date portrayed the situation in a way that you kind of thought everyone associated with Fyre was bad or unsavoury,” says Smith. “And as we got into it, and met the people that actually were doing the work, from the contractors to the Fyre media team, I was surprised at how many earnest, thoughtful, caring, hardworking people were brought into this project, and really did give everything they had, even though it was an impossible task.” Indeed, a common misconception about the festival – fuelled by Twitter jokes and clickbait – was that it had been a long con, with the organisers never intending to actually put on an event. Instead, we learn that Fyre was the work of an extravagant grifter (McFarland) in way over his head, whose team could never have accomplished his original vision. As we see throughout the film, alternately desperate and inexperienced staff stepped in to complete a number of inconceivable tasks. Among them: finding a new location for the festival, securing high-end accommodation for guests on a packed island and even agreeing to engage in a sex act with a customs official to secure a vital shipment of drinking water. “Billy called and said: ‘You have to take one big thing for the team … will you suck dick to fix this water problem?’”, recalls event producer Andy King in the doc. For Smith, getting people to open up about their involvement was “very challenging, just because it was something that obviously a lot of people wanted to forget”. However, he says it ultimately offered them a sense of catharsis, away from the negativity and stigma that had built up around the event. As well as interviews with those who worked on the festival, the film also introduces us to some attendees to get their side of the story. They include Seth Crossno, a 34-year-old media entrepreneur who attended the festival under his satirical blogging alias William Needham Finley IV. Crossno’s Twitter posts were among the first to be picked up by media outlets, and he has been retelling the story of his trip to Great Exuma ever since, with plans to launch a “Dumpster Fyre” podcast. While he wasn’t the “average loser” McFarland and Ja Rule glibly described as their target market for the festival, Crossno wasn’t a rich kid, either. Rather, he was a low-level influencer looking for content. “I thought it would be funny to my followers, which was three or four thousand followers on Instagram and Twitter at the time,” he explains from his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. “And they’d be like: ‘Wait, he’s really doing this?’ We didn’t pay $12,000 to go, it wasn’t some crazy thing. I mean, I heard people there saying: ‘I got my ticket for $500 on Groupon.’” After enduring “dangerous” conditions at Fyre, Crossno and a friend were awarded $5m as part of a class action lawsuit against McFarland, although he now adds that this remains a mere IOU to the founder, who fraudulently secured $26m from investors. As well as contrasting the expectations and realities of Fyre, we also see how crucial the promo video with the likes of Jenner and Hadid was to the festival’s buzz and initial mythos. The turquoise sea and the models’ bronzed bodies take on an eerie quality when we’re reminded that they were part of a reality that never quite existed. “It wasn’t just like: ‘Oh you’re an idiot for falling for that,’” adds Crossno. “You can really see that a lot of work went into creating this illusion.” It’s a liminal space that Fyre exploited but one that, really, is a far bigger problem than the festival itself, constantly shifting as the ethics of online culture evolve. Towards the end of the film, Weinstein – who was tasked with much of the logistics of the festival – questions his own complicity, having shared idyllic photos of the island on Instagram while operations were faltering. It’s a thought he also discusses in a Medium post, regretfully suggesting that “if we embrace reality, at the very least it won’t be disastrous when people discover that we aren’t what we seem”. This fascination with creating a saleable concept makes for a film-within-a-film feel, with much of the footage derived from “behind-the-scenes” videos shot by the Fyre founders. As Brett Kincaid – who worked with McFarland on the original promo shoots and serves as an executive producer on the documentary – explains in the film, McFarland’s philosophy was to “capture everything”. This makes for cringe-making viewing in places, with clips of McFarland and Ja Rule toasting to “living like movie stars, partying like rock stars and fucking like porn stars” juxtaposed with bumpy, Blair Witch-type clips filmed by attendees such as Crossno. The moment when Ja Rule describes McFarland as his “partner in crime” now offers a new irony, while their lavish behaviour – hanging out on yachts, flying drones, ordering models to join them in the sea at night – seems to verge on parody. The documentary does explore a further scam McFarland masterminded following the festival and then his eventual imprisonment but it allows its audience to make their own conclusions about the figure at its centre. Overall, though, the picture we get is one of sort of a naive, shameless Jay Gatsby for the Instagram generation. “[McFarland] definitely acted in ways that were not above board throughout,” says Smith. “But the question is what the intent was … I think [it] was to live this lifestyle and be this person that was at the centre of everything. Maybe [he is] a product of our times.” Crossno, meanwhile, takes a less even-handed view. “While I was watching the film, someone said: ‘You know, he could have been the next Steve Jobs.’ And I was like: ‘No, he couldn’t.’ That’s not the next Steve Jobs; that’s like the next Bernie Madoff.” Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is on Netflix from Friday 18 JanuaryVladimir Putin has weighed into the row over Macedonia’s name-change, accusing the US and its allies of destabilising the Balkans by “asserting their dominant role” in the region. The Russian president criticised what he described as deliberate efforts to increase western influence in a part of the world Moscow has long regarded as falling within its own orbit. “The policy of the United States and some other western nations in the Balkans, who seek to assert their dominance in the region, has been a serious destabilising factor,” he was quoting as telling Serbia’s Večernje Novosti and Politika newspapers, according to remarks released by the Kremlin. “This will eventually increase mistrust and tension in Europe, rather than improve stability.” Putin, who made the comments before a visit to Belgrade, Moscow’s staunchest regional ally, deplored Nato’s “destructive” policy of expansion in the historically volatile Balkan peninsula. “We have repeatedly said that we see Nato expansion as a relic of the cold war, an ill-informed and destructive military and political strategy,” he told the papers. Last week, Macedonian MPs endorsed a landmark accord that will rename the strategic Balkan nation the Republic of North Macedonia in a move that now opens the way to Nato membership. The name-change deal, reached after almost 30 years of dispute with Greece, is expected to be ratified by lawmakers in Athens within days following a vote of confidence in the Greek parliament at midnight on Wednesday. The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, called the vote after the nationalist Independent Greeks party, the junior partner in his leftist-led coalition, pulled out of the government in protest over the agreement. Tsipras is expected to win the motion, with officials telling the Guardian he would probably bring the Macedonia name-change accord to parliament immediately after. Athens has blocked Skopje’s entry to Nato and the EU in opposition to a name it has long argued implied territorial ambitions against Greece’s own province of Macedonia.  Putin, who begins his visit to Belgrade on Thursday, singled out Montenegro, saying its decision to join the western alliance in April 2017 had resulted in the country “now going through a period of political instability”. On Wednesday, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov also voiced concerns over perceived western meddling in the Balkans, saying Moscow had credible grounds to question the legitimacy of the process by which Macedonia had changed its name. Earlier, the Russian foreign ministry had described the deal, known as the Prespes accord, as a western plot to draw the tiny state into Nato in comments that elicited a furious response from Athens. Skopje’s foreign ministry also responded saying: “The Prespes agreement does not interfere with the interests of third countries.” In stark contrast to Putin’s claims, Moscow has been accused by the west of rampant meddling in the region, including supporting an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 to thwart it becoming the alliance’s 29th member. Similar assertions of Russian interference in Macedonia have also been made by the US and EU, with both insisting that Moscow has waged a concerted campaign to stop the ex-Yugoslav republic joining Nato. Last year, the US then defence secretary James Mattis accused Russia of using money and influence to create opposition to changing the country’s name in a landmark referendum. Washington, he said, had decided to step up cooperation with Macedonia “to thwart malicious cyber activity that threatens both our democracies”.The former president of Ivory Coast is to be released and charges of crimes against humanity dropped after the international criminal court ruled he had no case to answer. The court in The Hague acquitted Laurent Gbagbo and his former youth minister of all charges and ordered their immediate release. The charges, which included ordering murder and gang-rape, related to post-election violence in the west African country in 2011. Gbagbo refused to hand over power to Alassane Ouattara, the current president, and about 3,000 people died in the aftermath. After French troops and the UN intervened, Gbagbo was prised out of the bunker where he was hiding with his wife, Simone. The judges ruled that Gbagbo and his then youth minister, Charles Blé Goudé, had no plan to keep Gbagbo in power, and so there was “no need for defence to submit further defence, as the prosecutor has not satisfied the burden of proof”. The decision will be a severe blow for the ICC prosecutor, for whom it was a landmark case. The court will resume on Wednesday, where the prosecution will say whether it intends to appeal, and if it does, what conditions it wants to impose on Gbagbo’s release. The ICC has been accused of being one-sided as it did not bring any charges against pro-Ouattara commanders who were also accused of abuses. Ouattara, who was re-elected in 2015, has been accused by his opponents of using the ICC to silence opposition. There has been little justice for the victims of the post-electoral violence: although Ivorian judges investigated many of the crimes and charged military and political officials from both sides, last year Ouattara announced a controversial amnesty for 800 implicated people. It is unclear whether the ICC will continue its investigation into the massacre at Duékoué of March 2011, in which at least 800 people died. Human rights organisations said the acquittal was “disastrous” for the victims. “While the acquittal of Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Blé Goudé shows that the rights of the defence are respected at the ICC, it is at the same time disastrous news for the victims who are left with no possible remedy,” said Pierre Adjoumani Kouamé, the president of the Ivorian Human Rights League. Drissa Traoré of the International Federation of Human Rights said the court ruling could lead to further violence. “Between the amnesty decree issued by President Ouattara and the acquittal of Laurent Gbagbo and Blé Goudé at the ICC, there is a risk of wholesale impunity for the 2010-11 crimes. The Ivorian government and the international community are leaving 3,000 victims and their families with no recourse to justice,” he said. “Eight years after the tragic crisis experienced by our country, those same actors risk fuelling the antagonism of the past and the political violence which ensued.” A former university professor turned activist, Gbagbo spent much of the 1980s in exile in France. After returning, he lost the 1990 presidential vote and spent six months in prison in 1992 for his role in student protests. He came to power in 2000 in a flawed vote that he himself described as “calamitous”, but he then put off holding another election for a decade. In the 2010 race, Gbagbo came top in the first round with 38% of the vote before losing to Ouattara in the runoff. The 17-year-old ICC has long been criticised for disproportionately going after Africans. The current prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, a Gambian, has worked to change that, opening investigations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and the Ukraine. The Gbagbo decision was “yet another major blow” for the ICC prosecution, which has yet to show that it is up to the task of sustaining charges against powerful people accused of the most serious crimes, said James Goldston, the director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. “The acquittal underscores how important it is that the process to select the next prosecutor yields a person of integrity and sound judgment who is highly skilled at criminal investigation,” he said.Ireland has dismissed the suggestion that the best solution to the Brexit impasse might be for the country to quit the EU and join the UK. Questioned about the possibility by the BBC Today presenter John Humphrys, Ireland’s Europe minister, Helen McEntee, said it was not contemplating quitting the EU, that polls showed 92% of the population wanted to remain in the bloc, and “Irexit” was not plausible. She told the Radio 4 programme on Saturday that, in the event of no deal, Ireland was “not planning for the reintroduction of a border”, and urged the UK to honour its commitment to ensure the border remained invisible, as it had since the Good Friday peace deal was signed nearly 21 years ago. Humphrys said: “There has to be an argument, doesn’t there, that says instead of Dublin telling this country that we have to stay in the single market etc within the customs union, why doesn’t Dublin, why doesn’t the Republic of Ireland, leave the EU and throw in their lot with this country?” McEntee replied: “To suggest that we should leave? Ninety-two per cent of Irish people last year said they wanted Ireland to remain part of the European Union and in fact since Brexit that figure has gotten only bigger.” The interview came hours before hundreds of people gathered on the border to protest against Brexit. The Border Communities Against Brexit group, which placed a mock concrete wall and army inspection post on the border just south of Newry, said they were taking “a stand against Brexit, against borders, against division”. “We never want to see a border on this island again,” they said. The Labour MP Ben Bradshaw tweeted he was “gobsmacked” to hear the BBC suggest “that the solution to #Brexitshambles is for Ireland to leave the EU & rejoin the UK! Such woeful ignorance of history & of modern day Ireland.” The Irish senator Neale Richmond said this was what Ireland “was dealing with” in commentary in the UK. McEntee appeared on Today just hours after the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, raised the prospect of police or soldiers being deployed on the border with Northern Ireland in the event of no deal. A sterling #brexit performance form @HMcEntee as ever, revealing Ireland leaving the EU was somehow seen as a credible solution by Humphrys in his final questions. For the domestic commentators, this is what we’re dealing with...... https://t.co/EOFg0PgQKo Varadkar’s statement was criticised by rival politicians, including the leader of Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin, who said it was entirely inconsistent with Ireland’s stance on the border to date. “When the taoiseach tells an audience in Davos that the army may have to be sent to the border, he is contradicting everything that we have been told (by him and the tánaiste [deputy leader]) about preparations. It is hard to see how this helps our case,” he tweeted. Aides later said Varadkar raised the possibility out of frustration that Ireland was being blamed for the impasse in Westminster, where opposition to Theresa May’s deal was not exclusively about the Irish backstop. In an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Varadkar said Ireland had already compromised, but Britain was looking for more while offering nothing in the way of solutions itself. McEntee stuck to that line on the Today programme, saying the UK had given undertakings to ensure there was no return to the borders of the past. In addition, she said, Ireland would hold the UK to its role as co-guarantor of the Good Friday agreement. “For some reason the onus [in Brexit] … has been shifted back on to Ireland, that we should compromise, that we are the ones trying to be awkward or difficult. “We did not vote for Brexit. We don’t believe in it. We respect that it was a democratic decision. We are protecting a peace process. This is not just from an Irish point of view, there is an obligation on the UK to ensure the peace process, the Good Friday agreement is protected and any suggesting that they can walk away from that we simply won’t accept.”When the Qatar 2022 World Cup was announced in Zurich by a sweating, slightly fevered Sepp Blatter, the idea was floated almost immediately that this could become a regional tournament; that Qatar’s gulf neighbours might share the burden and the riches, bringing them together in one great happy football-stinking embrace. It is a theme Fifa has returned to even as the Gulf itself has atomised in the eight years since, with the suggestion still out there that an expanded 42-team tournament could bring Qatar’s neighbours on board. Last month Blatter’s successor as Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, announced during a speech to – for some reason – the G20 world leaders’ forum: “Football can bring us together and make the world a more prosperous, educated, equal and perhaps even peaceful place.” The only sensible response to which is, of course, a sardonically raised set of eyebrows, the real-world equivalent of the chin-stroking-puzzled-face emoji. But then football has always liked to sell itself as an intangible global force for good, as opposed to a highly successful global force for merchandising, sponsorship and soft power. From the branding of Qatar 2022 as an underdog “new frontier” to Sven-Göran Eriksson’s famous “ball of peace” – a Fifa-backed plan that saw Sven travelling the world getting assorted embattled groups to kick the same football, thereby bringing about, er, world peace – there is a general doublespeak about football’s ever more complex place in the tides of geopolitics. It is a process laid out in the most fascinating way at the current Asian Cup. The tournament has already entered its endgame. Japan beat Iran 3-0 in the first semi-final on Monday. In the second, scheduled for 6pm local time on Tuesday in the Mohamed bin Zayed stadium in Abu Dhabi, Qatar will face the hosts, the UAE, in the second of the tournament’s “Blockade Derbies”. For Qatar this represents real footballing progress and a shot at a first ever final in this competition. Football aside, it is also perhaps the most fascinating fixture in world football’s calendar right now, a meeting of the sport’s two most aggressively expansionist states – Manchester City versus Paris Saint-Germain by proxy – and a primer on exactly how Fifa, football and Gulf state politics remain irrevocably tangled. Qatar is, of course, in a state of blockade by the UAE and its immediate neighbours. The current stand-off reached a nadir last summer when the Saudis announced plans to build a trench along the shared border filled with sewerage, effectively turning Qatar into an island cut off from the rest of the world by a river of radioactive human excrement. Quick, Sven! The ball of peace! None of this has stopped the current tournament rolling on well enough. There has already been one Blockade Derby – Qatar beating Saudi Arabia 2-0 in the group stages. Some booing aside, the game passed off without rancour, although it is this lack of obvious fire, and indeed any overwhelming public interest, that has been a concern. Crowds have been spare to middling. Five thousand watched Iran play their opening game against Yemen in the 40,000-capacity Bin Zayed. Some fans have reported being asked by officials to move to seats directly in line with the TV cameras, while there have been unconfirmed reports of mass ticket giveaways. Otherwise, as a regional dry run for Qatar 2022 – and consumed at one remove – it has looked to be a fun and occasionally sparky tournament. Temperatures have hovered manageably between 25 and 30 degrees. The success of the Qatari team will come as a huge relief back home after a series of painstaking false starts. The semi-finalists have been a potent counter-attacking force under the former Barcelona youth coach Félix Sánchez Bas, with five wins from five, 12 goals scored and none conceded. Of more concern is the way this has all bubbled away largely unnoticed beneath Europe’s steamrollering winter club programme. As the clock ticks down there is as yet no solution to the logistical problem of what happens to all this scheduled football during the World Cup winter of November and December 2022. What is certain is leagues will be suspended. Broadcasters will be miffed. Revenues will be interrupted. Deals will be cut. As Fifa and Uefa continue their power struggle over football’s hyper-lucrative future, it all feels a bit like a game of global power-Jenga, with interests and influence stacked up over one another in a teetering superstructure. Its point of gravity will continue to linger over the Gulf, a source of heat and light that draws every part of the modern footballing world into its orbit. Even as its national team was battling through to the last four, Qatar released pictures of a glowering José Mourinho being led around half-built World Cup sites, Mourinho trying hard to smile and look interested but resembling instead a furiously indignant minor Soviet despot dragged from his bed and forced at gunpoint to wear a hard hat and frown over architects’ plans as part of his presidential captivity deal. The same day it was reported that the well-known human rights campaigner David Beckham would be providing his football services to Saudi Arabia as part of the Saudi’s National Transformation Programme, a £60bn entertainment power-play also featuring Broadway-style musical productions, a monster truck rally, a Pamplona-style bull run and “hologram performances by dead musicians”. As things stand, Fifa will meet in Rio in February to discuss the next steps in its Gulf-centred four-year cycle. It is a conference some had previously suggested Uefa executives might boycott over Fifa’s Saudi-backed plans for a new global competition. In the meantime, as Qatar and the UAE prepare to face each other on the pitch, the notion of football as a tool for cohesion rather than just another carpetbagger in the middle of blockade and vested interests continues to look mildly delusional.I am a seasonal Forest Service employee and making plans for next season and beyond. As long as the shutdown continues, I will not hear back from government jobs and I continue to question my faith in the federal government being a stable career option. The president runs the country like a mob boss and currently is holding part of the federal government on ransom. I have little hope he’ll do what’s right. This sets a precedent for Democrats shutting down government to fulfill any campaign promise as well. You may agree on this issue, but will you always? Brendan, forestry technician, Davenport, Iowa I am a federal law enforcement officer. I have been forced to work without pay. I have now been sent to the United States-Mexico border for 21 days on a program called “Border Surge”. Every 21 days a group of federal law enforcement officers are being taken away from their families and normal duty stations and sent to the border to supplement border patrol operations. This is costing the American taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and requiring officers to be away from their families for extended periods of time with more financial burden due to the fact they’re in travel status. I’m not a border patrol agent and I’m working as if I am. I am most likely going to have to request a furlough to get a second job in order to pay my bills. I pay rent to the government in the house they require me to live in. This is a terrible situation that’s putting a great deal of stress on myself and family. I feel like I’m being held hostage by my employer requiring me to work without pay. Anon, federal law enforcement officer, Florida I am two weeks away from closing on my first home, something I have been saving for years to do. Now without a paycheck during the biggest purchase of my life, my finances are dire. I live on the border and see firsthand that a wall is not what we need, it is a huge waste of money and such a foolish idea. I do not support the wall but I need my job back. Anon, biologist, Arizona Our national historical park has been closed since 21 December and this has resulted in a closed museum, closed cultural center, closed visitor center, cancelled school field trips and educational programs, cancelled events by community organizations that were to be held at the park. About 80 park staff were furloughed (without pay). Our role as steward of irreplaceable cultural and natural heritage is in abeyance – with all that entails regarding potential damage, deprived use and delayed preservation and community engagement. Anon, National Park Service supervisory ranger, Lowell, Massachusetts My wife works at the IRS and has been furloughed due to the most recent shutdown. This means she is not working and will not receive her mid-month paycheck on 11 January, something we depend on. I am a teacher for students with disabilities and do not make a lot of money. We have three children of our own to support at home and this sudden removal of half our combined income has caused a great deal of unneeded stress on our lives. My wife has filed for unemployment and taken out a loan from her 401(k). We’ve taken my son out of daycare to save money and we will need to use all of our savings if that check doesn’t come. I tried to become a Lyft driver but my car will not pass inspection due to a busted tailgate panel that will cost $800 to fix. If we don’t get paid by February, I will need to sell my car. Tyler, teacher, Austin, Texas I work at the Nasa Kennedy Space Center and was furloughed a couple weeks ago. My last paycheck is running out and I only have a few hundred in savings, so I took out a loan at the credit union to cover bills. While I take responsibility for not having more in savings, which would have greatly reduced my stress, I seriously resent that my paycheck is a pawn in this political game. My fear is that if this goes on too long, I will start missing mortgage payments and risk losing my house that I just bought a year ago. I was homeless once and don’t ever want to go back to that. Rachel Cox, mechanical engineer, Florida I’m considered an essential IRS employee – I work in Remittance, where tax payments are received – so although I’ve not been furloughed, I saw my last paycheck before the Christmas holiday, while I continue to report for work each day. Much of the building I work in is empty, as most of my colleagues have been on furlough for the past three weeks. As you would expect, morale has taken a nosedive, as we were all expecting this to resolve soon after the beginning of the year. People here are professionals, and so are still getting the job done despite the circumstances. You cannot call in sick or take any time off for any reason, or you will be considered awol and risk losing your job. As a result, people here are coming to work ill. Oddly enough, there are some here that are behind Trump all the way – they remain a very vocal minority, but I would seriously doubt the number that support his “views” is anywhere near 100%, at least in this facility. Chip, IRS worker, Kentucky My farm’s operation is suffering due to the FSA [Farm Service Agency] not being open: I cannot get my commodity checks signed by them. Since I have loans with the FSA their name is on every check and with government shutdown I can’t get my money. I was down to $175 in all of my accounts because of past bills just now going through. I’m not the only farmer affected! The USDA/FSA does not need to be shut down over his darn wall. I fear now that I’ll lose everything. Anon, rancher/farmer, Nebraska I am in the same boat as my 800,000 government brethren. I am a single mom with two kids, I am not getting paid, I am still expected to show up for work. I have bills and a mortgage and am expected to continue to pay them. How? I am also expected to feed my family and pets. Without money, how am I to do that? How will I get to work if my car is impounded? Where will I live when my house is foreclosed? Does anyone out there care that 800,000 people are held hostage by the US government? Morale is at an all-time low at work. Everyone walks around with worried faces. How can Congress (both parties) sleep at night? Oh, that’s right, they received a $10,000 raise and continue to get paid on schedule! I have written my congressmen and women urging them to put a stop to this nonsense. If this continues another day, I will be unable to pay my bills. Rose Anne, federal aviation airway transportation systems specialist, Poway, CaliforniaNetflix has announced that Martin Scorsese will direct a documentary about Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story will feature new on-camera interviews with the legendary songwriter. The streaming platform says the film “captures the troubled spirit of America in 1975 and the joyous music that Dylan performed during the fall of that year.” It is due later this year. Variety reports that the film will be less straightforward than Scorsese’s 2005 Dylan documentary, No Direction Home, which focused on the songwriter’s rise to fame, his move to New York and temporary retirement following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. “Scorsese provides the master vision,” wrote critic Roger Ebert on that film’s release, “and his factual footage unfolds with the narrative power of fiction.” The Rolling Thunder Revue was a freewheeling multi-artist caravan that began in October 1975 and concluded in May 1976. Artists including Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Mick Ronson, Bette Midler, Roger McGuinn, Emmylou Harris and Allen Ginsberg joined Dylan on the autumn leg of the tour, which is said to be the focus of Scorsese’s film. Dylan’s mother also appeared. Dylan frequently performed in white face paint. It is one of the most noteworthy tours in rock history: “The Rolling Thunder Revue shows remain some of the finest music Dylan ever made with a live band,” wrote critic Clinton Heylin in his 1991 Dylan biography Behind the Shades. In 2002, an official recording of the tour was released in Dylan’s Bootleg Series. Dylan engaged Sam Shepard as a screenwriter for a film about the tour, although the result was largely improvised. Released in 1978, Renaldo and Clara featured live footage, interviews and dramatised fictional portions about Dylan’s life. He was billed as Renaldo and his first wife, Sara Dylan, as Clara. It clocked in at almost four hours and was panned by critics. Scorsese’s film is not the only Dylan feature in the works. Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino has said he is directing a film based on Dylan’s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks, to be written by The Fisher King and The Bridges of Madison County screenwriter Richard LaGravenese. Dylan will perform a rare UK concert this summer, sharing the bill with Neil Young at London’s Hyde Park on 12 July. Scorsese’s next slated feature film is another Netflix production, The Irishman, about the mafia-union wars of the 70s.It was the news that Arsenal supporters had longed to hear and it was delivered with an uncharacteristic flourish by Ivan Gazidis. The date was 6 June 2013 and the club’s then chief executive told a group of journalists that Arsenal’s austerity era – necessitated by the move to Emirates Stadium in 2006 – was over. The long-term commercial deals that Arsenal had felt compelled to lock into so they could secure money up front for the stadium were expiring and the result, according to Gazidis, was an “escalation” in the club’s “financial firepower”. Anything was possible on the transfer market, he suggested, including the signing of A-list players. “We are moving into a new phase where, if we make our decisions well, we can compete with any club in the world,” Gazidis said. At the end of that summer, Arsenal would sign Mesut Özil and there have since been a smattering of other statement purchases – namely Alexis Sánchez, Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. But as the club prepare for Saturday’s pivotal Premier League game at home to Chelsea, the mood is edgy and not only because defeat could leave them nine points adrift of the Champions League places by the end of the weekend. This month Arsenal cannot compete with any club for any permanent signing because, quite simply, the money is not there. It will be a loan or two, at best – perhaps, with a built-in option to buy in the summer, when the new sponsorship arrangements with Emirates and Adidas kick in – and there is bewilderment, to say the least, among some fans. The club’s most recently published accounts, for the six months ended November 2017, showed a profit before tax of £25.1m and cash reserves of £160.7m – including debt service reserves of £23m, which are not available for football purposes. This time last year Arsenal were listed at No 6 on Deloitte’s world football money league. What is going on? The sense of unease has been swelled by the looming loss of Aaron Ramsey to Juventus as a free agent at the end of the season for reasons that are impossible to disconnect from finance. Then, there is Sven Mislintat, the head of recruitment, who arrived from Borussia Dortmund in November 2017. He has grown so frustrated that he has decided to quit; he is expected to leave after the closure of the January window. Mislintat was one of the three decision-makers who appointed Unai Emery as the managerial successor to Arsène Wenger last May. Gazidis was another but he walked out last October to join Milan, which means that Raúl Sanllehí, the director of football, is set to be the last man standing. The impression is one of behind-the-scenes turmoil. Arsenal’s financial freeze can be explained by a number of factors. According to the club, the cash reserves in the bank are not merely savings, they are to help with the annual running costs. Large sums of money routinely move in and out of the accounts – such as the instalments on transfer fees or commercial deals – and they might do so after the cut-off for a specific financial period. The analogy is to a family’s monthly budget. In some months, it is necessary to dip into the overdraft. It is not as simple as looking at Arsenal’s year-to-year numbers. As for the half-yearly profits, they were heavily influenced by player sales in the summer of 2017 and that of a development site near the Emirates Stadium on Holloway Road. A more convincing point takes in the fundamental reality under Stan Kroenke, who has been the majority shareholder since April 2011 – the club are wedded to a self-financing business model. What comes out must first have been generated from within. The statistics show that since the summer of 2011, Arsenal have a net spend on permanent transfer fees of £239.9m, which works out at £30m per season. Since the summer of 2013, when Gazidis talked the talk and the shackles came off, it has been £265.8m or £44.3m per season. In other words, not enough to buy a Kyle Walker and significantly short of a Virgil van Dijk. A club’s net spend is not the perfect barometer of its financial health; player wages are also a massive part of it and Arsenal’s investment in this area has soared from year to year. But it is nevertheless a decent one. There have been seasons under Kroenke in which Arsenal have pushed the boat out by this measure, namely 2014-15, 2016-17 and the current one. They have invariably been followed by a levelling-off. This season illustrates the point in microcosm. Last summer the club spent £71.4m on five players, including Bernd Leno, Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Lucas Torreira, and recouped only £7.6m in sales. It added up to a net spend that was significantly above the mean but it meant the cupboard was always going to be bare come January. Emery knew it would be the case. When he accepted the job, he knew what he was signing up for. Arsenal’s headache is that they have a squad on Champions League wages in year two of a Europa League cycle. The push last summer was an attempt to catapult them back to the elite level and it has increased the jeopardy. The Champions League resembles an express train and when teams fall off it they have to work even harder to reboard – and that can equate to spending. When Manchester United slipped out of the Champions League for 2016-17, they spent over the odds to persuade Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Eric Bailly and Henrikh Mkhitaryan to join up for a Europa League campaign with the promise of clawing back to the top level. In the end, they won the Europa League to regain their Champions League status. Each year a club is out of the competition, it becomes harder to get back in. Liverpool could attest to that. Arsenal’s self-sustaining model has been squeezed by Europa League revenues and the circle can, in time, become vicious. “The reduction in distributions from Uefa for Arsenal last season when they reached the Europa League semi-final, which reflect broadcast revenues, was €26.8m – compared to the amount they received from being in the Champions League the season before,” said Tim Bridge, a director in Deloitte’s sports business group. “But any club in the Europa League will also likely see an impact on match-day and commercial revenues compared with those in the Champions League.” Have Arsenal made their decisions well, as Gazidis hoped they would? The one to give Özil a new £350,000-a-week contract last February to run until 2021 (total value: £62.2m) was based on how it might cost them more to sign a replacement and the nightmare prospect of him leaving on a Bosman, so soon after Sánchez had forced his way to United. One of the consequences has been the withdrawal of the contract offer to Ramsey but Emery has come to doubt Özil’s worth. The manager has integrated the summer signings and those on Mislintat’s watch – chief among them Aubameyang – have generally been positive. But further surgery is required and while money is not everything – witness the work of Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham – it is certainly something. Emery has brought stirring home performances, tactical variety and genuine excitement, at times. The scale of his challenge, and how delicately it is poised, remains clear.I am a musician and software developer who wants to get into live coding and electronica using software like Sonic Pi and maybe, in the future, Max/MSP from Cycling 74. Most people seem to use Apple’s MacBook Pros, but I have always been a Windows user, and develop software on Windows using Visual Studio, so I am reluctant to switch to a Mac. However, every time I have tried to get a good music-making setup on Windows, I have been beset by latency problems. From what I have read online, it seems the Windows audio drivers, though improved with Windows 10, are still way behind those on MacOS. I have a Roland Duo-Capture EX and an older Novation X-Station, and I am happy to use one of these as part of my set-up, but I would like a system that is sufficiently portable to make performing with it straightforward. Finally, a touch screen would make a lot of sense for less code-based interactions – ideally one where the screen can be laid flat, such as the Lenovo Yoga series or Microsoft Surface Pro. Miles Your best bet would be to find and cultivate some of the people who compose and/or perform using Windows laptops – there are some! – and ask for advice. Areas like this usually involve tacit knowledge that you only learn by doing stuff for some time, and I have not done it at all. Failing that, there are probably some websites or online communities that specialise in this topic. I didn’t find any, but people who are heavily involved in the field will know where they are. It’s another question that readers may be able to answer in the comments below … However, perhaps you should think about your overall strategy. As I understand it, you want to do everything on one laptop, which could mean taking your work machine into hazardous nightclub-style environments. This gives you the worst of both worlds. Laptops are not the best choice for sustained work such as coding, because they have poor ergonomics. You should be using a desktop – which will run faster and last longer for less money – with an ergonomic keyboard and a big screen. For the price of a MacBook Pro with a suitable specification, you could probably buy a desktop PC for programming and a second-hand MacBook for performances. Using a desktop PC would enable you to add a suitable soundcard and avoid most if not all of the Windows driver problems by using kernel streaming, or Steinberg’s ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) as supplied with some devices, or ASIO4ALL. Of course, you could also replace your old Roland with an external USB sound card. This should provide better audio quality with a laptop, as well as – I hope – reduce the risk of latency problems. Sam Aaron’s open source Sonic Pi program was written for the Raspberry Pi, so any PC or Mac ought to be able to run it well enough. It’s a very simple system where you specify a note just by typing a number, but it becomes very powerful when the “note” is a sample. It reminds me of the Logo language where you can loop simple instructions to create attractive patterns. I bet Terry Riley would have loved it. Max/MSP (Max Signal Processing, and/or Miller Smith Puckette) from Cycling 74, which is now owned by Ableton, is a different kettle of bouillabaisse. It’s a visual programming language where you can connect objects (program routines) together to create giant data-flow diagrams. Cycling 74’s website recommends an Intel Core i5 or faster processor and 8GB or more memory for running Max 8, which “includes MSP, Jitter, Gen and support for Max for Live”. (Interestingly, the “ASIO-compatible sound card recommended for optimum audio performance” with Max 6 has been dropped.) Most DAWs (digital audio workstation programs) really require 16GB of RAM, and some work best with 32GB (Pro Tools). However, Max 8’s Jitter graphics seem to be the main challenge, and Cycling 74’s helpful user forum has at least one example of someone running Max on a tiny 4GB Core m3-based Intel Compute Stick. You haven’t mentioned a budget, but the best value MacBook option at the moment is the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a seventh-generation 2.3GHz Core i5, 8GB of memory and either 128GB (£1,249) or 256GB (£1,449) of SSD storage. A system with 16GB of memory and a 256GB SSD would therefore cost £1,629. Adding three years of AppleCare – a good idea in view of previous keyboard failures – bumps that up to £1,878. One of the major problems with current MacBook Pros is that you can’t upgrade them: you have to buy everything you will need at the beginning, and pay Apple prices. If you buy a Windows laptop, you can choose one with more configuration options that you can also upgrade later. My current pick is the 14in Lenovo ThinkPad T480S with an eighth-generation 3.4GHz Core i5-8250U processor. A basic system with 8GB of memory, a 128GB SSD, Windows 10 and three years of carry-in service would cost £1,189.99. Expanding that to 16GB of memory and a 256GB SSD pushes the price up to £1,279.59, but there are many more options. In fact, you have a choice of four processors, going up to a Core i7-8650U, four RAM capacities going up to 24GB, four sizes of SSD going up to 1TB, and four different displays, going up to WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels). If you want a touch screen, that’s an extra £46.80. One option I would definitely take is to upgrade the warranty to three years of on-site service for an extra £63.60. Lenovo offers up to five years on-site service for £225.60. There’s also a slightly cheaper, slightly larger version, the ThinkPad T480, which starts at £949.99. This offers even more options. It has a traditional 3.5in drive bay – the base model has a 500GB hard drive – so you can have two drives. It also has two memory slots instead of one, so you can have up to 32GB of memory. These are real advantages when you can take the back off and upgrade parts later. The T480 and T480S do not have 360-degree hinges to work as tablets, but they do rotate to 180 degrees, so you can lie them flat. The Lenovo Yoga range is not built or tested to the same standards as the ThinkPad T range, but then, prices start at £199.99. However, the top-of-the-range Yoga 920, currently on offer at £999, only has 8GB of memory and it isn’t expandable. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 only lets you have 16GB of memory if you buy a 512GB SSD and a Core i7, which comes to £1,723.99 including Type Cover keyboard. That would be silly. You can check a PC for latency problems by running Resplendence’s Latency Monitor for at least 15 minutes. This can help you identify what’s causing problems, though running SiSoftware’s Sandra Lite will provide more helpful advice for optimising your system. However, the fact is that Windows is a general-purpose program, not a real-time operating system. Leave it running long enough and it will eventually find something that, for a few milliseconds, is more important than delivering your audio bits. You can reduce the odds by not running other software, stopping non-essential background tasks, disconnecting from networks and so on, but you can’t eliminate the risk entirely. How much any transient glitches matter is another question. Only you can decide. Have you got a question? Email it to Ask.Jack@theguardian.com This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Bedlam. The only word to describe the scenes here as, three minutes into stoppage time, Murray Wallace sent a low shot into the back of Everton’s net, sealing a shock victory for Millwall and one that will be spoken about in these parts for some time to come. Twice the hosts were behind and twice they came back thanks to a display brimming with togetherness and defiance. They appeared to have earned a draw against esteemed opponents and that in itself would have been cause for celebration in this corner of south London, but then, with time almost up, came the winner. Shaun Williams sent a free-kick into Everton’s area, Shaun Hutchinson headed the ball down and there was Wallace to send a crowd that was in great voice throughout into raptures. Millwall are in to the fifth round for the second time in three seasons For Everton this was a thoroughly miserable evening in what is becoming an increasingly miserable season. As reported by the Guardian last week, Millwall are close to reaching an agreement with Lewisham Council over their long-term future at the Den after fears they could be forced out by a compulsory purchase order. Great news for everyone associated with the club and something which no doubt helped fuel a fervent atmosphere that Marco Silva admitted prior to kick-off would test the character and quality of his players. The initial signs were not positive. Having been greeted by a wall of noise, the visitors quickly found themselves being harried by a Millwall side missing eight players through either injury or being cup-tied. The hosts were clearly not in the mood to feel sorry for themselves. Twice in the opening 13 minutes, Shane Ferguson, whose two goals sealed victory over Hull in the third round, tested Everton’s vulnerability at set-pieces with right-sided free-kicks. The first was headed wide by Jake Cooper while the second was headed across the area by Millwall’s other centre-back, and captain, Hutchinson. It could have well led to a goal had Lucas Digne not been on hand to clear the ball from underneath his crossbar. Everton were rattled as the rain lashed down in south London. Their attacks were sporadic and largely from the right-hand side where Séamus Coleman was able to fire in a few decent crosses. He picked out Richarlison with one on 10 minutes only for the Brazilian, having been moved from centre-forward to left-wing by Silva, to miss the ball completely. The Brazilian made amends a couple of minutes before the interval. Collecting the ball from André Gomes, he hit a powerful drive that took a deflection off Hutchinson before squirming underneath Jordan Archer. It was Everton’s first shot on target and a moment to forget for the Millwall keeper. Archer breathed a sigh of relief in first-half stoppage time, however, when Lee Gregory equalised with a looping header following Jake Cooper’s flick on from another Ferguson free-kick. It was the least the hosts deserved. The goal was also the 11th Everton have conceded from set-pieces this season and that may, in part, explain why Silva brought on Kurt Zouma in place of Yerry Mina. The visitors had their recognised centre-backs – Zouma and Michael Keane – back together again and a platform from which they were able to dominate the opening stages of the second half. In an ever-intensifying downpour the men in white were now dominating possession as well as territory, forcing Millwall back and earning a couple of corners in quick succession. Neither, however, led to anything. Silva made a second substitution on 65 minutes, bringing on Cenk Tosun for Dominic Calvert-Lewin. That suggested a more direct approach and a couple of minutes later Digne delivered a cross with the intention of picking out the striker. The delivery was overhit, however. The Turkey international was found by Gylfi Sigurdsson on 72 minutes, however, and sent a curling left-footed shot past Archer to restore Everton’s lead and score only his third goal of the season. The 2,000-plus away supporters behind the goal erupted with joy only to be brought back down to earth three minutes later when Millwall again equalised, and again from a set-piece. Another right-sided free-kick caused panic inside Everton’s area with the ball eventually being turned in by Cooper. Everton’s players protested to the referee Michael Oliver, presumably in the belief that the Millwall defender had used his arm, but after checking with the nearside assistant, the goal was given.For a man whose position is strictly non-partisan, the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, has provoked more fear, anger and adoration than any other in the role in recent history. His critics, who suspect he is an opponent of Brexit, have tried many tactics to oust him from the Speaker’s chair. More seriously, he has been the subject of multiple allegations of bullying, which he denies. A report by Dame Laura Cox suggested he should quit over the culture of “deference and silence” concerning bullying in parliament whereby senior management “actively … cover up abusive conduct”. Yet he has escaped serious sanction because of the allies, many of them in Labour, who see him as one of the most reforming Speakers in a generation – one who prioritises the will of MPs over any deference to the government. Bercow provoked fury from ministers and Brexit supporters on Wednesday by accepting an amendment which radically curtails the timetable for Theresa May to prepare a “plan B” to present to parliament should she lose the vote next week on her Brexit deal. Tory backbenchers were visibly enraged during the points of order after Bercow permitted the controversial amendment. Crispin Blunt, a Brexiter, told Bercow: “Many of us will now have an unshakeable conviction that the referee of our affairs, not least because you made public your opinion and your vote on the issue of Brexit, is no longer neutral.” Despite the visceral dislike from many in the Conservative party, Bercow has the firm support of many Labour MPs, precisely because of his willingness to hold the government’s feet to the fire over significant Brexit legislation. He has dramatically increased the number of urgent questions which he grants to allow backbenchers to call cabinet ministers to the Commons. May has regularly been kept on her feet for up to three hours during statements until the Speaker has been certain that every backbencher wanting to speak has had the opportunity. Though Bercow has long been a thorn in the side of the government, it was his admission to a group of students in early 2017 that he had voted remain which set him at odds with mainstream Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers. “Personally, I voted to remain. I thought it was better to stay in the European Union than not,” he told students at Reading University. He also referred to untruths during the Brexit campaign, when “promises were made that could not be kept”. Bercow was at the time already facing a vote of no confidence after describing the US president, Donald Trump, as racist and sexist, effectively banning him from addressing parliament during his state visit. That attempt was unsuccessful, gathering little steam among the majority of Tories or getting any backing from Labour. Though Bercow was elected for the Speaker’s position while a Conservative, the historic role is non-political – a Speaker is intended to be a representative and servant of the will of parliament. Yet the Speaker also has extraordinary influence, deciding which amendments submitted by backbenchers to government motions and legislation are chosen to be put to a vote. In a hung parliament, Bercow’s role has become one of the most important in the country. In choosing amendments he has appeared to give preference to ones which command significant cross-party support. Examples include Dominic Grieve’s amendments to the EU withdrawal bill, which gave parliament a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal, as well as the latest amendment to the business motion which instructs ministers to return with a plan B within three days of the deal’s defeat. That preference has often made Bercow an asset to Labour – though Eurosceptic Tories insist that his is a personal anti-Brexit agenda. His relationship with the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, is at rock bottom. She has challenged him publicly for calling her “stupid” and on Wednesday insinuated that he had made his call about the amendment against the advice of senior House of Commons clerks, which he denies. Some Downing Street aides are convinced that Bercow has regularly let at least one hour go past when May has been in the chamber without calling a single Tory MP who would back the prime minister’s Brexit deal – which they privately argue makes the deal look even more unpopular than it was. Bercow’s judgment is likely to be crucial in the coming days. May must return to put a motion to the Commons on the way ahead, and that motion can also be amendable. MPs could, for example, attempt to amend it to mandate a second referendum or a Norway-style Brexit deal. It is because of this power to shape the future of Brexit that some MPs have protected Bercow after the damning criticism in the Cox report. Labour’s Margaret Beckett put it starkly: “If it comes to the constitutional future of this country, the most difficult decision we have made … it trumps bad behaviour.”The 1975’s progress from cult status to platinum-selling stadium-fillers has looked swift and straightforward, at least from the outside, but it hasn’t come at the expense of their desire to experiment. New album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships teems with ideas from cool jazz to glitchy electronica, brash 80s pop to Drake-ish Auto-Tune, house music to the kind of ballads designed to raise the roof at venues like these.Tour begins 9 January, SSE Arena, Belfast The line up of this year’s Celtic Connections festival is impressively eclectic – everyone from traditional folk acts to Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier to Graham Nash. World music is strongly represented too: a collaboration between Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita and harpist Catrin Finch, Portugese fado singer Mariza, Malian ngoni virtuoso Bassekou Kouyate and Basque accordionist Kepa Junkera.Various venues, Glasgow, 17 January to 3 February Canada’s Fucked Up have spent years exploring the parameters of punk rock to vast acclaim. Their last album, Dose Your Dreams, was an 18-track conceptual work that returned to the character of David, from 2011’s similarly sprawling David Comes to Life, and took in everything from prog rock and psychedelia to industrial music and disco. Cerebral, inventive and unpredictable on record, they’re reliably ferocious live.Tour begins 20 January, Ruby Lounge, Manchester Azealia Banks is such a constant, controversy-generating presence on social media (and apparently she is launching her own social media platform, called Cheapy XO) that it’s easy for her abilities as a rapper to get overlooked. Whatever you make of her trolling on Twitter, her music has been sporadically fantastic, and the sense that anything could happen when she performs live adds a certain piquancy.Tour begins 24 January, O2 Ritz, Manchester Frontman Ben Gibbard and his hardy US indie perennials return to the UK in the wake of their ninth album, Thank You for Today, a more autumnal, fortysomething take on their trademark melancholy sound. New ground remains unbroken, but Death Cab are the stuff of which undying, rabid cult followings are made of, and a certain familiarity is part of the appeal.Tour begins 25 January, Albert Hall, Manchester Massive Attack’s third album may well have been dance music’s answer to Radiohead’s OK Computer. Both seemed out of step with the mood of the times: islands of bleak paranoia and darkness amid of a sea of perky Britpop, and beatifically stoned (and indeed Massive Attack-inspired) trip-hop, respectively. Twenty-one years on, the band take it on tour, apparently reimagined “using custom audio reconstructed from the original samples and influences”. The question of whether the “special guests” will include elusive vocalist Liz Fraser looms large.Tour begins 28 January, SSE Arena, Glasgow There is something deeply improbable about a band releasing their masterpiece 25 years into their career, but that was what Low did with 2018’s Double Negative, a claustrophobic, experimental and brilliant examination of life in Trump’s America that pushed at the boundaries of their long-established “slowcore” sound. It is not the easiest listen but it is an exceptionally moving and rewarding one, evidence of a rare artistic fearlessness.Tour begins 29 January, Tramway, Glasgow A profoundly unlikely turn of events: 11 years after they reconvened without leader and chief songwriter Jerry Dammers, the Specials release a new album. In the intervening period, drummer John Bradbury has died, guitarist Roddy Byers and vocalist Neville Staple have left. How the remaining trio – vocalist Terry Hall, guitarist Lynval Golding and bassist Horace Panter – will fare without them is an intriguing question, although early reports are promising.Released 1 February The videos Jimothy Lacoste has uploaded to YouTube have become something of a talking point in recent months: are his optimistic lyrics, guileless rapping style and exuberant dancing for real, or one of those impenetrable millennial gags where irony is piled on irony? He insists it’s the former; whatever the answer, there is something undeniably charming and catchy about his music.Tour begins 6 February, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow Expectations are high for the debut album by the rapper formerly known as Looney. Last year, his self-released single Butterflies made the Top 20, and its dancefloor inflections provide a clue to his eponymously titled album’s sound. Keen for his brand of grime to reflect his Trinidadian roots, he has said the album also features a soca influence and, perhaps a little unexpectedly, tracks inspired by country and western.Released 8 February A rare UK tour from a genuine soul legend – both as part of Motown’s world-beating Holland-Dozier-Holland writing team and as a solo artist whose 70s oeuvre, not least the oft-covered Going Back to My Roots, should not be overshadowed by the songs he wrote for others. The tour promises “reimagined” versions of his umpteen hits in an intimate, “unplugged” format, interspersed with Dozier telling the stories behind the songs.Tour begins 13 February, Old Market, Hove Should you ever wonder about precisely how much power critics exert over public taste, consider the case of Post Malone, the face-tattoo-bedecked Texan rapper. Released to a widespread yell of horror from reviewers, his second album, Beerbongs and Bentleys, went on to break streaming records on Spotify and reached No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, making this forthcoming arena tour look not unlike a victory lap.Tour begins 14 February, 3Arena, Dublin As pop stars who rose to fame on television talent shows go, Troye Sivan cuts a pleasingly irregular figure. His second album, Bloom, put his queerness front and centre, quoted Smiths lyrics, featured songs about Grindr and losing one’s virginity as a bottom, and was noticeably influenced by ethereal gothic collective This Mortal Coil. The world could use more pop stars like him.Tour begins 23 February, O2 Academy, Glasgow Trench, the darker, more intense 2018 follow-up to Twenty One Pilots’ multi-platinum breakthrough album Blurryface – home to ubiquitous millennial moping anthem Stressed Out – attracted surprisingly strong reviews. The inevitable subsequent arena tour reaches Britain this year: apparently their live show tends towards the spectacular and comes packed with stunts, including something called “vertical crowd surfing”.Tour begins 27 February, Genting Arena, Birmingham Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has been talking about the US alt-rock quartet’s 12th studio album since before their 11th studio album came out. Intended as a darker counterpart to 2016’s Weezer (The White Album), it was briefly put on hold in favour of the electronically inclined Pacific Daydream. It will be seeing the light of day in March, produced by Dave Sitek and apparently sounding like “the Beach Boys gone bad”.Released 1 March These are not the best of times for what would once have been called indie rock, but Brighton based Our Girl – another project from Soph Nathan of the Mercury-nominated Big Moon – bucked the trend with Stranger Today, an atmospheric, potent album packed with great songs recalling the kind of thing 4AD would have released in the late 80s. You can catch glimpses of Pixies and shoegazing about their sound, but there’s a uniqueness and character to it that transcends their influences.Tour begins 4 March, Jacaranda Records Phase One, Liverpool It’s perhaps unfair to lay a resurgence of mainstream interest in jazz at the door of one artist, but there is no doubting the impact of Kamasi Washington’s two sprawling albums, The Epic and Heaven and Earth, and his collaborations with Kendrick Lamar and Run the Jewels. The proof that he draws in a far wider audience than usual without compromising his sound or ambition is that he’s playing a venue the size of Brixton Academy.Brixton Academy, London, 5 March Of all the fresh-faced, gravel-voiced, acoustic-guitar-toting singer-songwriters who emerged in Ed Sheeran’s wake, George Ezra, perhaps unexpectedly, has proved the most successful. His second album, Staying at Tamara’s, spawned last summer’s most ubiquitous single, Shotgun, and sold half a million copies – evidence of his ability to unite a section of the market that would once have been called teenyboppers with a more mature, Radio 2-friendly audience. So the crowd at these gigs should be intriguing.Tour begins 7 March, Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle A one-off date from Larry Cummings Kiala, yet another east London rapper who has stormed the charts without the aid of a record label. His career kicked off with a dancehall remake of Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You; his sound juggles trap and drill, afro swing and bashment; the screams from the crowd evident at his 2018 gigs suggest pin-up status is upon him. This London show will be his biggest British solo gig to date.Brixton Academy, London, 15 March Nao’s second album, Saturn, was among 2018’s most charming. Less synth-based than her debut, beautifully poised between mainstream R&B, funk, heartstring-tugging ballads and something more psychedelic and leftfield, it avoided the obvious in favour of forging a gently eccentric individual path.Tour begins 20 March, Albert Hall, Manchester Of all the artists to emerge from the sprawling Odd Future collective, the Internet are, by some distance, the most musically intriguing. While Tyler, the Creator is still capable of grabbing the headlines through his lyrics, Syd and Matt Martian’s band have taken a less controversial route, releasing a string of hugely inventive and futuristic funk/soul albums: last year’s Hive Mind was typically great.Tour begins 21 March, Brixton Academy, London Idles’ second album, Joy As An Act of Resistance, made a big enough impact to warrant some writers dubbing them “the most important band in Britain”. Certainly, their arty, jagged take on punk carries a ferocious power, while Joe Talbot’s lyrics hold up a mirror to contemporary Britain with slashing wit and a real tenderness. But they’re a band who are really best experienced live in all their chaotic, tumultuous glory.Tour begins 26 March, Leadmill, Sheffield Julia Jacklin’s 2016 album Don’t Let the Kids Win was a minor masterpiece of off-kilter singer-songwriter quirkiness, its idiosyncrasies charming rather than irritating: witty songs about drugged-out boyfriends and wishing Zach Braff and Catherine Deneuve were her parents, with a country-ish lilt to the music. The forthcoming follow-up, Crushing, promises a “rejection of expectations” – starker, more personal, fewer laughs – but the single Body was still spine-tingling, and a handful of UK dates last November sold out.Tour begins 26 March, Haunt, Brighton Ray BLK won the BBC’s Sound of 2017 poll, the first unsigned artist to do so. As perhaps should have been expected from an artist whose debut release was an EP based on Miss Havisham from Dickens’s Great Expectations, the path she has followed since has been intriguingly serpentine, some distance from the standard pop-R&B approach. Last year’s Empress, an eight-track project that featured Stormzy, offered ample evidence of her talent.Kentish Town Forum, London, 28 March This sounds compellingly bizarre: the 78-year-old electronic pioneer heads out on his first tour, in which he will “conduct, play the vocoder, electronic effects and sounds, play the piano” and “share personal stories that have never left the walls of his studio before”. Titled A Celebration of the 80s, it will also feature a tribute to his most famous collaborator, Donna Summer.Tour begins 1 April, Birmingham Symphony Hall Stefflon Don is one of the few British MCs who appear to be making headway in the US, thanks partly to her collaborations with Demi Lovato, Future and French Montana, and partly, one suspects, because her flow is less obviously London-accented than her grime peers. She is the first UK artist ever to be included in hip-hop magazine XXL’s prestigious Freshman Class guide to future stars. Her live performances, too, are more spectacular and pop-facing than her grimier peers.Tour begins 13 April, Stylus, LeedsIt is a rare and special privilege to be seen. Not simply noticed or even admired, but assessed and appreciated as you really are, flaws and all. It takes a particularly powerful and kind observer to see truly and in her 101 years Diana Athill saw everything and missed nothing. “Looking at things is never time wasted,” she wrote. “Beady” is how she described her eyes. They were the exact blue of the Delft hyacinths she loved. She couldn’t have them in her cosy nook at the old people’s home because they made her sneeze, so in spring I’d take her miniature blue irises instead. Growing up in Ditchingham Hall in Norfolk with nannies and ponies and her own secret garden could have led to a very narrow view. Children then were barely seen and certainly not heard. “It might have been inscribed over the nursery door ‘you are not the only pebble on the beach’,” she wrote in her Costa-winning memoir, Somewhere Towards the End – one of several volumes that make up a masterclass in revealing without flaunting. She did that thing on the page that Brits do on the beach: stripping under a towel. You knew she was naked, but never glimpsed anything, nothing she didn’t want you to. Ours was the least likely of her many friendships: her from the country house, me from a council house; she at Oxford and me the first in my family to go to university. Then there was the age difference. But we both liked men. I was far more conventional – not for me the affairs in mansion flats. Our friendship was possible because she never glossed over our vast differences. She wanted to know what she didn’t know, and bridged chasms with the right questions. Diana would listen sagely as I shared a problem – after all, what had she not already seen? But she couldn’t bear needless unburdening and had no time for the tell-all. Always willing to see the best but unafraid to briskly correct, she demanded the same rigorous honesty of herself. In her memoirs she followed Jean Rhys when she said a writer should “tell it just as it was”. There is no simpler, or tougher, advice. It’s what she told me when I was writing Maggie and Me. She was the clearest of voices, sharpest of wits and finest of friends. A cool pioneer for women in publishing and a passionate advocate for outsider voices – as well as Rhys she brought us Molly Keane and Gitta Sereny. Her unfailing pen passed over the pages of Margaret Atwood, Phillip Roth and Simone de Beauvoir. A product of empire but passionately anti-colonial, she nurtured VS Naipaul, respecting the words if not always the man. Stet, her memoir of her 30 years with André Deutsch, is the naked truth about publishing – literally, when she sleeps with Deutsch: “After the theatre, we ate an omelette and went to bed together, without – as I remember it – much excitement on either side.” Typical of her to understate her input. Nobody who has been edited by Diana doubts the value of her contribution – I’d wait in terror for her notes. Steel is more yielding. She’s at my shoulder as I write now: “More here, less there, stop being sentimental.” Diana was reading and writing and laughing and loving until the very end. She was 101 but her real triumph was not living long, it was living gloriously. Her eyes are closed now but to see as clearly as she did we need only read her words.Our family got a Google Home Hub for Christmas. As comparative lifestyle Neanderthals, we have so far only used it as a glorified digital picture frame and music player, though this is clearly not what it was built for. Say “Hey, Google”, tell it what you want, and a whole universe of entertainment, advice and help can be supplied – up to and including instant control of internet-connected doorbells, thermostats and more. Contrary to their branding as “assistants”, the primary purpose of these devices is not to devotedly help the people who use them. At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, once we have paid for the hardware, we get the services they can deliver largely for free, in return for limitless access to the small details of our lives. Big tech is therefore able to carry on making advertising more and more precisely targeted, and vastly increase the mountains of data that power its development of artificial intelligence. Smartphones, tablets and computers have been helpful, but evidently not helpful enough. Build data-gathering machines into the domestic sphere, and you break open whole streams of personal information. Facebook’s influence is undoubtedly scary, partly because its senior management seems to have no clue about the responsibilities that should come with such power. But Google’s range of activities and penetration of our lives represents something else entirely. Its systems have soaked up and mastered the planet’s topography and most of its languages. In the UK, it has a presence in the NHS. Thanks to the range of offshoots and acquisitions now grouped with Google under the banner of Alphabet Inc, it is centrally involved in biotech, the development of driverless transport – and, through its artificial intelligence subsidiary, DeepMind, the pursuit of even more incredible technologies that will, sooner or later, transform everything from work to education. Google expertise is also driving the idea of surveillance-heavy “smart cities”, which are beginning to capture the imagination of powerful interests across the world. As all its other activities grind on, it sustains its domination of the most mundane parts of our lives via Gmail, YouTube, the android smartphone system and its monopoly on online search. Its new assistants represent a step into unprecedentedly intimate spaces. So, to use a very 20th-century phrase, what is to be done? The “techlash” of the last couple of years has left Google remarkably untroubled. But even so, you do not have to look too far for ideas. Perhaps both Alphabet and Google might be broken up, and their advertising operations would become standalone companies, with YouTube and Gmail similarly cut adrift. Maybe Google could be belatedly classified as a utility, and forced to allow open access to both its key algorithms and data sets, just as the US telecoms giant AT&T once gave up a range of its precious patents in return for its monopoly. All of these things would be worthwhile. But as solutions they fall short in one fundamental sense: they deal with the manifestations of Google’s power rather than the root cause. One glaring truth about the modern internet should be at the core of any meaningful conversation about it. From pluralistic, egalitarian beginnings, it has been transformed into a top-down system dominated by a few big players whose power is based on their control of data, with Google as the king. So perhaps something truly radical is required: a reconceptualisation of what the internet is, and what happens to the data that determines who controls it. As the year unfolds, pay attention to the people who are talking about a new, decentralised internet – AKA Web 3.0 – and the possibility of data being returned to the control of the people who generate it. In Boston, the worldwide web’s founder, Tim Berners-Lee, is working on a new way of using the internet. Called Solid, it is based around personal online data stores, or Pods, that contain the wealth of information people generate, and are their exclusive property. This means they can allow access to particular elements of their data from particular services as they see fit, and move their data from app to app instead of surrendering it (imagine, for example, being able to move between social networks, taking your lists of friends and followers with you). Berners-Lee and his people are also working on a new kind of digital assistant they have named Charlie, the raison d’être of which is the careful use of personal information, to make individual lives easier and better, rather than the idea of using it to sell us things (“Charlie works for you; Charlie doesn’t work for Google or Amazon”). Then there are the possibilities bound up with the blockchain, the system of verification that sits under so-called cryptocurrencies. For instance, the blockchain offers a means of independently verified personal identity, which respects privacy far better than the Google and Facebook accounts do we are now encouraged to use across the internet. Blockchain technology has also opened the way to new models whereby endless micropayments can be made in return for particular online services or content; and, if people voluntarily allow elements of their data to be used, rewards can flow the other way. Here perhaps lies the key to a system beyond the current, Google-led model, in which services appear to be free but the letting-go of personal data is the actual price. Just before Christmas I spoke to one of the founders of a Cambridge-based startup called Fetch, which is developing what it calls decentralised artificial intelligence, something that seems to represent a much more egalitarian vision than the one embodied by Google-style “assistance”. In their system, using the internet to satisfy particular wants would not involve indiscriminately surrendering data but judiciously sending out digitised “autonomous economic agents” to get help as and when we needed it. If we wanted a ride to work, or minute-by-minute access to the cheapest electricity, this is how we would do it: via a system that repeatedly connected different permutations of buyers and sellers, rather than by privileging huge platforms that render the rest of us digital serfs. These ideas and models have the disadvantage of sounding offputtingly complicated, which could foster a certain fatalism. Maybe Google’s offer to its users is too simple, and the company’s dimensions now far too big to allow any space for alternatives. Besides, if anyone began to make headway by offering us greater privacy and control, we would hear plenty of protests about how severing the connection between huge data sets and the growth of artificial intelligence would be to hand the dominance of AI to China, where the twin forces of surveillance and innovation are stampeding on. I only know this: that tangled up in all this stuff are elemental questions about how we are going to live. And, even if it can play me my favourite song and tell me who’s at the door, Google does not have the answers. • John Harris is a Guardian columnistIt feels appropriate to start with that night at the Allianz Arena almost seven years ago when, one by one, players of considerable reputation in Bayern Munich’s ranks withered in Petr Cech’s presence. Six different opponents strode up to take a penalty and, on each occasion, the Chelsea goalkeeper dived the right way. The three saves he conjured would effectively secure his club’s first European Cup. Cech, like his victorious teammates, did not sleep much after that giddy triumph in Bavaria with the celebrations rightly raucous and prolonged. But, on the morning after the night before, he offered an insight into the scale of the planning which had made that success possible. In his possession, as he sat in a small meeting room at the team hotel, was a two-hour DVD detailing every penalty Bayern had been awarded over the previous five years. He and his confidante, the goalkeeping coach Christophe Lollichon, had studied each in meticulous detail, learning the takers’ habits and routines. He knew what was coming. Only Arjen Robben, a former teammate whose penalty technique showed “no pattern whatsoever”, had unnerved him after grabbing the ball in extra-time following Didier Drogba’s trip on Franck Ribéry. But, even then, common sense kicked in. “When you’re tired having played 105 minutes, players choose power rather than technique, rather than placing it,” Cech said. “I thought he’d smash it somewhere near the corner and he’s left-footed. If I’m left-footed, I’d go across goal [to the right], which is why I went that way.” The attempt was pushed aside and parity preserved, with Cech going on to turn away Ivica Olic’s shot and flick Bastian Schweinsteiger’s attempt against the post in the shootout. Of all his performances over a glittering 20-year professional career, which he has announced will conclude at the end of the current campaign, that Champions League success in Munich was surely his finest. His efforts that night summed Cech up: a display of nerve and character, strength and concentration, all evidence he was one of the best goalkeepers in world football. The Czech Republic’s most-capped player with 124 appearances, who had signed for Chelsea from Rennes in 2004 in preparation for José Mourinho’s arrival, invariably oozed calm authority but allied it with presence, quality, anticipation and excellent technique. In his pomp, he was utterly reliable. No one comes close to matching the 202 clean sheets he has kept in the Premier League, a tally almost a full season – 33 games – higher than his nearest challenger. There were 13 major honours over his 11-year stint at Stamford Bridge – a haul which included “every single trophy possible”, as he acknowledged in his statement confirming retirement plans – where he was among a core of senior players alongside John Terry, Frank Lampard and Drogba who, regardless of the identity of the manager, drove that team to silverware. It is testimony to his strength of character that he achieved so much of his success after suffering such a dreadful skull fracture in collision with Reading’s Stephen Hunt back in October 2006. The injuries he sustained that day were life-threatening, and yet he was back playing again after three months. The protective skullcap he still wears in matches has almost become a badge of honour, a reminder of his bravery but, also, underlying good sense. Cech’s time at Chelsea had ended in 2015, when Thibaut Courtois established himself as first choice in his stead, after 228 clean sheets in 494 games and with Roman Abramovich personally sanctioning his departure to an immediate rival out of respect for his contribution. His time at Arsenal has yielded an FA Cup and a further 40 league shutouts, his standards still high behind a far less secure backline, though since October his appearances have come only in cups as Bernd Leno has established himself as the preferred option. Cech told the club and his teammates of his decision on Tuesday morning. Arsenal praised an “exemplary professional on and off the pitch” and “fantastic ambassador”. Those at Chelsea will recognise the contribution he made to foundation events. He still runs the summer soccer schools which attract children from around the world to Sparta Prague’s academy complex. Throw in his appearances drumming for the indie-rock band, Eddie Stoilow, and it is easy to see why Cech has endeared himself to all over the years. “I feel like I have achieved everything I set out to achieve,” he concluded in his statement on Twitter. “I will continue to work hard at Arsenal to hopefully win one more trophy this season, then I am looking forward to seeing what life holds for me off the pitch.” He will be missed.Novak Djokovic is still the player to beat at this Australian Open. In a routine three-set workout against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the world No 1 looked as fit and lean as the first time he played the Frenchman here – in 2008, when he broke through for the first of his six Melbourne titles – although he will need to stay sharp to deter the hungry teenager Denis Shapovalov in the third round on Saturday. The Serb has a relatively straightforward passage to the final, with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal likely to meet in the semis on the other side of the draw, and, in a little over two hours on Rod Laver Arena on day four, there was not much Tsonga could do to stop him winning 6-3, 7-5, 6-4. “I played pretty well for a set and a half, and I gained confidence in the third,” Djokovic said. “It’s tough for Jo, who’s struggled with injuries the past year. But he’s always been a top player.” Shapovalov, No 27 in the world, had to put the work in to get past the unseeded Japanese Taro Daniel in three competitive sets. The Canadian with the big game and towering self-confidence said: “It’s going to be awesome, just awesome, to play against Novak, to see how my game matches up against his. Honestly, there’s no pressure on me. He’s the favourite. I’m just going to give it my best shot and see what happens. I’ve been playing really good tennis so, if that continues, I could make it a tough match for him – even try to win it.” Earlier, the outstanding young Australian wildcard Alexei Popyrin – who beat Andy Murray’s shock 2017 conqueror here, Mischa Zverev, on day two – ground down the injured French Open finalist Dominic Thiem, seeded seven, 7-5, 6-4, 2-0 (ret) in an hour and 44 minutes. The Sydney teenager next plays Lucas Pouille, who beat Max Marterer in a tough four-setter. As a junior, Popyrin won 22 matches in a row, collecting four titles, including the French Open boys championship, the first Australian to reign there since Phil Dent in 1968. Ranked the No 2 junior in the world, he immediately joined the full Tour, and is already ranked 149. Like Alex de Minaur, who is leading the youthful Australian charge and plays the 2009 champion, Rafael Nadal on Friday evening, Popyrin lives part-time in Spain. He has also trained with Patrick Mouratoglou and has hit with Serena Williams. “Alex had an unbelievable week last week [when he won two matches in a day to become Sydney International champion], and is carrying it on this week,” Popyrin said. “It’s great to have two players the same age, who grew up together, playing some of the best tennis.” Popyrin and De Minaur will be joined by Alex Bolt, the world No 155 from Murray Bridge in South Australia – who quit the Tour a few years ago to rediscover his enthusiasm for the game – against the buzzing Alexander Zverev. Bolt came through qualifying here and on Thursday beat the 29th seed, Gilles Simon, in five sets spread over four hours. He is relishing the challenge of moving into the third round, alongside compatriots who clearly have bonded well. “Three Alexes through to the third round,” he said. “That’s pretty cool.” However, it is the other Alex – Zverev – who is Djokovic’s main threat before the final. The world No 4 came through some difficult patches before beating Jérémy Chardy in five sets and said: “What an amazing match. Jérémy fought so hard. He’s an unbelievable player. He showed again he’s a great fighter. It was always going to be an insane match.” On playing Bolt, he said: “He’s going to be the hometown favourite. He quit tennis a few years ago and now he’s in the third round of the Open. It’s a great story.” On a day that threw up the usual surprises, Kei Nishikori absorbed 59 aces to beat Ivo Karlovic – who also lost at Wimbledon last year, when putting 61 serves past Jan-Lennard Struff. The tournament leader here is the 6ft 11in American Reilly Opelka, who left Melbourne despite putting 67 aces on Thomas Fabbiano to bring his total to 107 in two matches.Tens of thousands of pounds have been raised for Bahamian restaurant workers whose life savings were wiped out in a multimillion-pound fraud by the organisers of the Fyre festival. Maryann Rolle said her team worked round the clock preparing 1,000 meals a day for festival staff but went unpaid when it imploded in April 2017. In an interview for a Netflix documentary on how the “party of the decade” fell into chaos, Rolle said she lost $50,000 (£39,000) of her life savings. Since the film’s release last week, nearly $80,000 has been raised in online donations for Rolle after she said her life had been changed forever by the fiasco. The festival, fronted by the serial fraudster Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, was promoted as an ultra-luxurious event on the Bahamian island of Exuma in April and May of 2017. It was promoted on social media by supermodels and Instagram “influencers”, including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski, coaxing people into buying ticket packages ranging from $1,200 to more than $100,000. Yet when ticket-holders arrived on the island they found their “villas” were in fact leaky hurricane disaster tents, the gourmet food consisted of cheese sandwiches, and music acts including Blink-182, Migos and Drake were either not booked or had cancelled. The documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, carried interviews with a number of Fyre festival insiders who said they had warned McFarland multiple times that customers were being misled and they would not be able to stage the event. In October, McFarland was jailed for six years after admitting defrauding investors of $26m. He pleaded guilty to a separate $100,000 fraudulent ticket-selling scheme orchestrated after his arrest for the festival scam. McFarland’s scheme left hundreds of customers stranded on the island for hours with little food, water or shelter. Their plight initially provoked an outpouring of schadenfreude on social media. There was, however, sympathy for the unpaid Bahamian workers who featured in the Netflix documentary. In six days, more than 2,400 people have donated to Rolle and her staff on the GoFundMe page, which has been verified by the online fundraiser and endorsed by the film’s producers. Rolle, who runs a restaurant called Exuma Point on Great Exuma island, wrote on the page: “It has been an unforgettable experience catering to the organizers of Fyre Festival. Back in April 2017 I pushed myself to the limits catering no less than a 1,000 meals per day. “Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all prepared and delivered by Exuma Point to Coco Plum Beach, and Rokers Point where the main events were scheduled to take place. Organizers would also visit my Exuma Point location to enjoy the prepared meals. “Fyre Fest organizers were also checked into all the rooms at Exuma Point. As I make this plea it’s hard to believe and embarrassing to admit that I was not paid … I was left in a big hole! My life was changed forever, and my credit was ruined by Fyre Fest. My only resource today is to appeal for help.” She added: “There is an old saying that goes ‘bad publicity is better than no publicity’ and I pray that whoever reads this plea is able to assist.” McFarland said last March that he deeply regretted his actions and had “grossly underestimated the resources that would be necessary to hold an event of this magnitude”. Sentencing him in October, the judge, Naomi Reice Buchwald, called him a “serial fraudster”.Crucial talks on the future of European club rugby are about to commence with Heineken Champions Cup organisers seeking assurances that all parties are fully committed to the tournament beyond 2022. The Guardian understands a range of related issues will also be discussed, including cutting the length of the tournament to assist player welfare. Against a backdrop of uncertain economic forecasts, the recent sizeable private equity investment in English club rugby and the assorted different priorities of unions across Europe, all stakeholders will be asked to confirm their desire to remain in the tournament before June 2020 when, technically, a participant has the right to give two years’ notice should it wish to leave. As thing stand, European officials say there is no imminent danger of the competition ending but with talks ongoing about easing the congested global fixture list and the Guinness Pro14 now featuring clubs from South Africa the landscape is an increasingly volatile one and the Champions Cup’s existing television and sponsorship deals are due to expire in three years’ time. European club rugby’s flagship tournament has been among the biggest success stories of the professional era since it was launched in 1995-96 and this season’s final in Newcastle in May is already a sell-out. With increasing calls for top players to play fewer matches, however, it is understood that a proposal to cut the number of European weekends from nine to seven or eight is set to be aired. One possibility is for the pool stages to be reduced from six to four matches per team, with the semi-finals possibly being played over two home and away legs as happens in football. This might well involve reducing the number of competing teams from 20 to 16, which would not go down well among those potentially excluded. Whatever happens Simon Halliday, chairman of European Professional Club Rugby, is among those who firmly believe that safeguarding player welfare is crucial to the game’s future. “If we’re only going to pay lip service to player welfare, we don’t deserve to have a leadership position in our sport,” said Halliday, uncomfortably aware that next season’s cup is due to start 12 days after the World Cup final. The former Bath, Harlequins and England centre is equally keen to ensure the tournament retains its lustre. “There is no longer term as we currently sit here,” he said. “The facts are that everything – the heads of agreement, television and sponsorship revenues – is due to unwind at the same time in 2022. Theoretically at the end of the 2020 season people can declare their wish to continue or not. I think the competition is absolutely safe but you can’t sleepwalk into the next cycle. That’s just irresponsible.” EPCR is also keeping a close eye on Brexit developments, with the United Kingdom due to leave the European Union on 29 March, the same weekend as the European quarter-finals are scheduled. In the event of widespread travel disruption, there would be numerous potential issues for fans, players and officials to overcome. “We’ve got a board meeting within the next month and it’ll be on the agenda but I would like to think there will be an outbreak of commonsense,” said Halliday. “I don’t think anyone sees an Armageddon scenario. I think the practicalities will win out eventually because I don’t believe anyone, least of all the EU, are going to want to create chaos.” Sale have confirmed the signing of the Wasps tighthead prop Jake Cooper-Woolley. The 29-year-old will join the Sharks on a three-year deal this summer after six years with Wasps. “Sale looks like a great opportunity for me to challenge myself in a new environment,” said Cooper-Woolley. “The club are on the up and hopefully I can play a big part in them having a successful future both domestically and in Europe.”Collusion, according to the world’s finest dictionaries, is defined as “secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy in order to deceive others”. There are many ways to describe the reason an FBI swat team raided a home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, before sunrise on Friday. But there’s only one realistic definition of the conduct outlined in such entertaining length in the grand jury’s indictment known as the United States of America versus Roger Jason Stone Jr. In addition to several counts of obstructing congressional investigations, lying to Congress, and witness tampering, special counsel Robert Mueller details a pretty straightforward story about Stone’s activities. Clue: it rhymes with delusion. Collusion may or may not be a crime, as Rudy Giuliani (speaking on behalf of one Donald Trump) has often pointed out. But then again, Giuliani may or may not be a competent lawyer, given his astonishingly shabby record in fact-free musings that he later has to retract. It seems churlish to point out to Trump, Giuliani et al that Mueller has already indicted several Russian persons in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s emails, as well as those of the chairman of the Clinton campaign. Churlish because Mueller’s follow-up on Friday presented evidence of how the Trump campaign, through Roger Stone, was involved in the secret coordination of the release of those emails. Stone – himself the longest-serving of Trump’s political advisers – reported to Trump campaign officials on the impending and frequent email dumps from WikiLeaks, otherwise known in the indictment as “Organization 1”. As the Mueller team explained: “Shortly after Organization 1’s release, an associate of the high-ranking Trump Campaign official sent a text message to STONE that read ‘well done.’” Like Trump’s favorite steaks, Stone himself is now well and truly done. He appears to have lied to Congress about those contacts with the Trump campaign. And he botched his efforts to cover up the conspiracy by apparently asking his co-conspirators to lie for him. When one of them refused, Stone started acting out his wildest mob movie fantasies, urging him to lie to Congress by doing a “Frank Pentangeli” from The Godfather: Part II. At least Stone dreamed he was starring in the best of the Godfather series. When not attempting to direct scenes in mob movies, Stone was writing a miserably low-grade pastiche of the movie script. “You are a rat. A stoolie,” he wrote in so many garbled phrases to his naturally incredulous friend, a part-time comedian, part-time candidate called Randy Credico. “You backstab your friends – run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.” He threatened to hurt Credico’s pet dog and told him to “Prepare to die [expletive].” Instead of preparing to die, Stone’s former friend told him “you’ve opened yourself up to perjury charges like an idiot.” There’s nothing more churlish than pointing out to someone that they are not in fact Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro, but rather Peter Sellers or Rowan Atkinson. Credico also took his pet dog Bianca to his grand jury testimony, which is a scene that somehow didn’t make it to the final cut of The Godfather: Part II. Faced with such cartoonish buffoonery, the response from the Trump White House was implausibly vacuous. Even for a White House that regularly sets new Olympic records in implausible vacuity. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the president,” said the press secretary, Sarah Sanders. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the White House.” This is a bit like saying that the pool of vomit outside your front door has nothing to do with you, the 12 beers you drank last night, or that fateful choice of burrito. Even under the most generous use of the present tense, and the most elastic concept of the time-space continuum, Donald Trump really does have something to do with that pile of vomit outside the West Wing. The endless irony of Donald Trump and his brazen hacks is that they are so fantastically incompetent at deceiving the world about their own deception. Here’s the man pretending to be president tweeting about Stone’s arrest: “Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?” Never mind the ALL CAPS defense. Or the Awkward Capitalization. The greatest outrage of all is that CNN captured the FBI arrest on camera. When your family business is deception, the media exposure can be really, truly annoying. Fortunately Stone seems to be such a natural liar that he apparently feels compelled to lie about lying. “There is no circumstance whatsoever under which I will bear false witness against the president, nor will I make up lies to ease the pressure on myself,” Stone told the cameras, just hours after he was indicted for telling multiple lies. Not since Russian assassins left a trail of polonium across Europe have we seen such stupendously stupid puppets of Putin “After a two-year inquisition, the charges today relate in no way to Russian collusion,” he helpfully explained. Not since Russian assassins left a trail of polonium across Europe have we seen such stupendously stupid puppets of Vladimir Putin. It’s hard to decide who is the more outlandishly incompetent: Team Trump or the Brexiteers who are moving to Singapore. Then again, Trump has somehow contrived to cave repeatedly on a government shutdown that was designed to avoid looking like he was an easy cave. So perhaps there’s no contest. Stupid criminals may be a cliche, but recent world affairs suggest they exist nonetheless. One retired DC police officer liked to tell the story of his favorite dumb felons. His favorite was the idiot who robbed a Home Depot store after posing as a job applicant. The moron used his real name and address on the job form before he pulled out his gun. The Trumpsters have taken the stupid criminal genre to a new level of stupid criminality. They wrote their own confessions in so many texts, emails and meetings with Russian agents. As their godfather considers his splendid future behind bars, he might want to revisit his best-known work. Because it won’t be long before he needs to contemplate the Art of the Plea Deal.I’d often felt the markets had failed to live up to their promise. There’s a scene in Julie & Julia, where Meryl Streep, embodying food writer Julia Child, breezes through a row of Parisian street stalls. Overwhelmed by the offerings – cured pigs heads hanging from hooks, a literal tower of cheeses – she holds her hand to her chest, before clutching a pile of fresh parsley and getting high off the herbaceous supply. The produce is bountiful, spilling from wicker baskets, and the stallholders are all in good spirits, throwing their arms up with delight whenever Meryl so much as glances in their direction. The scene is pure Hollywood, a Nora Ephron fairytale and yet, to me, always represented the quintessential market experience – simple yet pretentious, indulgent yet wholesome. Growing up, the only markets I encountered were the sort you might find in a beachy tourist town. Targeting the seasick and sunburnt, they hawked jars of coloured bath salts, knitted coathangers and other gifts you give to people you love but don’t care enough about to really get to know. I’d heard about farmers markets, but they seemed to only exist in other places, for other people. For the longest time, I knew two things to be true – markets were largely glorified carboot sales, and try as you might, you could not buy asparagus outside of a tin. It all changed a year ago, when I moved to Brisbane’s West End and discovered the bustling markets at Davies Park. Where some markets feel akin to a hedge maze, these border a football oval and follow a comforting L-shape. Aside from the secondhand book stall and the man selling holistic healing from a card table, the markets are occupied by fruit and vegetable growers, bakers and buskers. One busker belts Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols at the exact same time each Saturday, while another has taken to playing John Williams’ Indiana Jones theme on the flute. Toddlers scream and dogs yelp as they come nose-to-nose in the crowd. It’s nothing like harmony, but it’s a pleasant punk chaos. As I stumble toward my 30s, the whole experience feels suitably grownup Going to the markets has become part of my Saturday routine. And like any good ritual demands, I sacrifice for it, drinking less the night before to ensure I’m an early riser. As I stumble toward my 30s, the whole experience feels suitably grownup. The markets have taught me patience. They operate at their own speed. One minute, as if pulled into a rip, there is a phenomenal rush and sense of urgency. You are holding up a line, you sort through your wallet looking for exact change. You’ve become your worst nightmare, one of those people. Then, the next minute, you are merely treading water, stuck between two pensioners rigorously fingering a custard apple. I love the stalls that can exist by selling just one product – only blueberries or just roasted almonds. I suspect everyone you meet thinks they could be a similar market success. I remember my mum once calling to ask if I thought people might want to buy potted succulent cuttings from her yard. I don’t think she’d ever touched soil in her life. But that’s how the markets make us feel. The next big hit could be anything and belong to anyone. Each week I set myself a budget of $20 and, like one of those drab Poms in a blue fleece on Bargain Hunt, I see how far my dollar can stretch. Still, I never haggle, as bartering seems like a concept Australians have never really embraced outside of Kuta. Occasionally a man selling stone fruit will ask if I want to play “fruit lotto” – guess the weight of a bag of nectarines within 100 grams and get the bag for free. Using the same skill I bring to my bathroom scales, my estimations are only out by several kilograms. I’ve learnt the markets aren’t for any one type of person. In West End, you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with older Greek couples, hipsters, Dilfs, broke students and yes, even wankers like me. I’ve joked that I feel most myself cradling a loaf of bread while walking through the markets, but it’s not really a joke. At least I feel most like the person I wish I was – some terribly virtuous and chic man with thick hair, carrying a tote overflowing with fresh, seasonal produce. He’s accomplished, he clearly has it all together and he probably even knows what a “bouquet garni” is. Does such a man exist? I’m not sure, but I play him on a Saturday. Sometimes I see others playing him too. And while they might look more the part, I’m confident my performance is more nuanced. When I reach home and unpack, the reality of the day soon creeps in and the fantasy dissolves. It isn’t entirely victimless. Too often the more adventurous fruit and veg, purchased on a whim to be baked or pickled by my other, more capable self, are abandoned in the crisper. But then again, it’s not really my fault – it’s his. • Peter Taggart is a writer and podcaster from Brisbane, AustraliaJeremy Hunt admitted that article 50 may have to be extended to avoid the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal on 29 March, earning him a rebuke from Downing Street even though his comments were technically correct. The foreign secretary, speaking to the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, conceded that a delay might be necessary if an agreement with the EU was reached just days before the March deadline – although the prime minister has consistently ruled out seeking any extension. Asked if a technical delay would be necessary, Hunt said: “That depends on how long this process takes. It is true that if we ended up approving a deal in the days before the 29 March, then we might need some extra time to pass critical legislation. But if we are able to make progress sooner then that might not be necessary.” At a Downing Street briefing, when asked about Hunt’s remarks, the prime minister’s spokesman asserted: “The prime minister’s position on this is unchanged. We will be leaving on 29 March.” The prime minister’s spokesman added that ministers were “absolutely determined” the Brexit deal be completed on time, which was why MPs had been told that the February half term recess would almost certainly be cancelled. Insiders suggested that the foreign secretary’s remarks were unhelpful, although they appeared to be accurate because there will come a point in March where it will no longer be possible to ratify a deal in time for the end of the month. Any Brexit deal has to be approved by MPs in a future meaningful vote, and ratified by the passing of a withdrawal agreement bill. There is no firm date for a second Brexit vote, although May is currently aiming for 14 February – but that could slip further. Downing Street estimates suggest that the ultimate deadline for striking a Brexit deal with the European Union could be as late as mid March, which would be in line with Hunt’s comments. Whitehall sources say they believe the complex legislation could be got through parliament in around a fortnight, while some of the six other Brexit-related bills going through parliament could be delayed until after 29 March. Speaking ahead of an informal summit with his EU27 counterparts in Romania, Hunt described the Brexit impasse as “a very challenging situation”. Hunt claimed changes to the withdrawal agreement could be made if the UK could allay Irish fears about a possible hard border and those of the wider EU about the integrity of the single market. He said: “Provided we can meet these very reasonable concerns from our friends in Ireland about not having a hard border and concerns in the EU about access to the single market – provided we can do that, which I think we can, then I think there is a way through.” He played down the insistence in Dublin and Brussels that negotiations on the withdrawal agreement would not be reopened. Hunt said: “These are negotiations. People’s first reaction when you make some new proposal to break a deadlock is to say ‘no, no, no that’s completely impossible’, but in reality the EU said to us: ‘Tell us what parliament can unite behind’ – we’ve done that. Secondly, we will now put together some proposal that makes sure we don’t breach these two very important principles for the EU.” May has no plans to travel to Brussels or elsewhere in Europe until early next week at the earliest. Senior ministers expected the initial reaction of the EU and its member states to be hostile, but hope that once the mood has calmed somewhat it will be possible to negotiate. Hunt also said Crawford Falconer, the chief trade negotiator at the Department for International Trade, would not be added to the team leading the negotiations with Brussels, despite assurances given to Brexiter MPs. Hunt said: “To my knowledge there has not been a change in the team.” But he added: “I’m sure we are going to tap into his brilliance. He’s an extraordinary man and a very, very experienced trade negotiator … I would be very surprised if he wasn’t feeding into the process.” He also admitted that the business secretary, Greg Clark, was wary of technical alternatives to the Irish backstop put forward in the so-called Malthouse compromise. “We are not looking at one particular solution which is the only way forward,” said Hunt. “There was a consensus in the Conservative parliament party around a technology solution put together by Kit Malthouse. That is one of the things we are looking at. He [Clark] had some scepticism about it.” Pressed on what “alternative arrangements” the government would be proposing to the EU, Hunt said: “We have put these proposals together, we have to work them up, we have to go through them in detail with our partners in the EU … It is going to take a few days to do that, but we are not going to spell those out on air.”The 116th Congress, sworn in on Thursday, made history. It included the first Muslim and Native American women elected to Congress, two of the youngest women, a record number of women overall, and becomes the most racially diverse lawmaking body ever in America. And the incoming class has shown they’re unlike establishment Democrats in recent years in another important way: they’re willing and capable of fighting Trump’s fire with fire. Among them has been the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who had some strong words for the president. Speaking at an event shortly after being sworn in, Tlaib, the first Palestinian American elected to Congress, recalled a conversation she had after she won. She said: “And when your son looks at you and says, ‘Mama, look, you won. Bullies don’t win,’ and I said, ‘Baby, they don’t’ – because we’re gonna go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.” Tlaib had been clear about her intentions in impeaching Trump throughout her campaign. She tweeted in March: “Why am I running? Because this is about electing the jury to impeach (POTUS) and I will make a heck of juror.” Tlaib came under swift criticism from Republicans and what the new Democratic party rebels often see as the old brand of milquetoast Democrats, for so-called incivility, but for supporters on the left it’s exactly the type of opposition to Trump they have been waiting for. I will always speak truth to power. #unapologeticallyMe Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, spent four years in a refugee camp and became the first member of Congress to wear a hijab, was, like Tlaib, sworn in on a copy of the Qur’an. She sounded a spirited tone on Thursday when she tweeted: “Sworn in and ready to throw down for the people.” She added an emoji of a clenched fist. Sworn in and ready to throwdown for the people ✊🏽#peopleshouse pic.twitter.com/cq7Bby1H2e Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, and already beloved for her willingness to punch back at critics and regressive Republican policies, was booed on the floor when casting her vote for Nancy Pelosi as House speaker. Like many of the new, younger members of Congress for whom social media sparring is their natural lingua franca, Ocasio-Cortez fired back a swift rebuke. Over 200 members voted for Nancy Pelosi today, yet the GOP only booed one: me.Don’t hate me cause you ain’t me, fellas 💁🏽‍♀️ https://t.co/kLor9A0TWa In a more subtle symbol of the wave of change, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, the first openly bisexual person in the Senate, was sworn in on a copy of the constitution instead of the Bible, as is most frequently done. (Sinema was sworn in by the deeply religious vice-president, Mike Pence, not exactly known for his support of LGBT people.) Of course, it wasn’t all partisan squabbling and symbolic gestures: many of the new members also set about doing the business of governing. Ocasio-Cortez has spent the week renewing her calls for single-payer Medicare for All health system, ending for-profit prisons and Ice detention, and fighting for a “Green New Deal”. Omar boasted of the Democrats’ immediate passage of two new bills to reopen the government, still in the midst of a partial shutdown. There’s a lot of legislating and more governing to be done, but for Democrats looking for reasons to get excited about the tenor of the new Congress, and hope for change yet to come, there’s plenty of reason to take heart.I’ll never forget the early hours of 1 January 2002. Crowds of Italians emerged from restaurants and clubs where they’d been celebrating the new year, and rushed to queue at cash dispensers. Families and groups of young people mingled and joked. They were all in a hurry to get their hands on banknotes of the freshly launched European single currency. It seemed like miracle money that would at last replace our old lira and its chronic devaluations, a symbol of Italy’s many woes. That night we felt we were entering a new world, a place inhabited by serious, steady people blessed with a respectable currency. Of course we would no longer be millionaires (a worker’s average monthly pay at the time was 1.4m lire) but we were delighted to trade in our millions for the prestige of being European. On that 1 January, about 2.5 million withdrawals were made. Their total value amounted to €184m, setting a record in Europe. This orgy of cash crowned a frantic rush, spun out over 10 years. In the 1990s we were so scared of not being let into this club for upstanding people that the phrase “perdere il treno dell’Europa” (to miss the bus for Europe) was repeated ad nauseam by politicians, teachers and business figures. It was like a spell, opening the doors to a dream world. All of that changed in 2018. My memories seem to be a throwback to prehistoric times. Today’s far‑right‑dominated government in Rome today represents an openly anti‑system, anti-Brussels coalition. Matteo Salvini has emerged as Italy’s new strongman. He’s been hailed by rightwing populists across Europe for closing Italian ports to migrant rescue ships, and straining relations with the European commission over his budget plans. This Italian government’s rhetoric against migrants and minorities has legitimised the worst in people. Last summer, within two months of the government being formed, more than 30 racist attacks took place. Many people no longer feel any shame at openly expressing anti-black, anti-Roma, anti-gay ideas. And as we head towards the European parliament elections in May, any thoughts of ardently pro-European pre-crisis Italy now seem unreal. Populism has spread across the west, and in Italy the current revolt resembles a love affair turned sour. The French and the Germans, who arguably have a less sentimental approach to the EU, struggle to understand our state of mind. We were once truly in love with Brussels. Our opinion-makers were inspired by the exalted faith in Europe shown by the likes of Giuseppe Mazzini (one of the prime movers of Italy’s 19th‑century unification), Altiero Spinelli (an advocate of European federalism) or Alcide De Gasperi (a founding father of the common market in the 1950s). We thought this dream could give Italy a fresh start. In particular middle-class Italians were convinced that, unlike their national institutions, the EU would deliver stability, justice, fairness and an end to corruption. I doubt that we have ever loved our own state as much as we loved the EU. Those who grew up in Italy in the 1970s will remember feeling inferior and locked up in a country doomed to be on the sidelines. In France, Germany and the UK, postwar politics allowed a reasonably healthy democratic life. In Italy, our longing for democracy was thwarted. We had the most powerful Communist party in western Europe. We had neo‑fascist violence and the Red Brigades. If we wanted to see Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones perform live we had to take the train to Zurich or Munich. Even rock stars were too frightened to venture here. In the 1980s and 90s, with the end of terror attacks, optimism surged, the economy recovered and Italians felt they could once more relate to the rest of the world. A sense of universality – the excitement of the global market – went hand-in-hand with wild enthusiasm for European integration. As teenagers, many of us spent the summer in the UK learning English. A command of the language would help us find work later, but would also enable us to converse with other Europeans. At heart we were proud to find ourselves on the same footing as young people from neighbouring countries. We were convinced our future lay entirely with the EU, making the single currency and the removal of borders inevitable. We’d enjoy the luxury of driving from Milan to Nice, for lunch on the Promenade des Anglais, without even needing to show our ID cards. But in recent years Italy has switched from being determined not to “miss the bus” to a sense of weariness; that “Europe keeps demanding things from us”. The EU gradually fell out of favour, no longer a lover full of promise after which we feverishly raced – rather, a strict, demanding stepmother, a mask many saw as concealing an austerity-obsessed Germany. Once a source of stimulus, the EU became a scapegoat. Whatever the bitter pills being meted out – higher taxes, lower public spending, or accommodating hundreds of thousands of migrants from across the Mediterranean – the complaint dredged up was always the same: Europe is making demands. The catalyst for this sea-change in public opinion was the 2008 financial crisis. After Greece, Italy was probably the country hardest hit by the recession. Admittedly, successive governments (under Mario Monti, then Enrico Letta) managed to balance the books again, but this couldn’t dispel a feeling shared by many voters that they had been taken for a ride. It sometimes feels like we’ve taken leave of our senses. The political culture of the Five Star Movement in the coalition is rooted in its late co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio’s obsessions with impending doom, as well as the craziness of the former comedian Beppe Grillo. Many of the latter’s disciples, now in power, have campaigned against vaccination, and even cast doubt on the moon landings. Conspiracy theories have spread to the Palazzo Chigi, the seat of Italian government. Brexit took hold in a country that never fully accepted the idea of European integration – but Italy stood enthusiastically at the heart of this project, perhaps the only place where a Brussels technocrat was ever seen as desirable. Our current predicament surely highlights the scale of disaffection towards elites. In France, Emmanuel Macron, who hoped to kickstart European integration, would do well to heed this warning. Matteo Renzi, in his brief time as prime minister, was just as energetic, yet the wave that submerged him in 2016 is still rising. • Stefano Montefiori is the Paris correspondent of Corriere della SeraAndy Murray, who has signalled his retirement from tennis, is a sports revolutionary. His claim in history was to be Britain’s first Wimbledon men’s singles champion in many decades, a feat he achieved in 2013 and 2016. He won two Olympic golds and is the only person to have been voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year three times. He was also the first British tennis player to be knighted. But these achievements, remarkable as they are, don’t make him a revolutionary. Three things make him a man who really shifted the dial. The first is the way he changed how he himself was seen. When he first came to notice, Mr Murray was a gifted but introverted player who found it hard to win over the public. His outsider’s awkwardness was often contrasted with the establishment entitlement of his predecessor as British number one, Tim Henman. Mr Murray was Scottish and had not risen through the system, training in France. “Tory Tim”, as some commentators dubbed him, was blazered and southern – and rose through the very traditional Lawn Tennis Association. Mr Murray didn’t try to reinvent himself. Instead he became a champion by doing it his own way. He made himself stronger and fitter, and honed his backhand into a lethal weapon. He began winning, which was a welcome change for a victory-starved British tennis public whose annual hapless shout – once dubbed the three most depressing words in the English language – was “Come on, Tim”. He took over because he was better and more ruthless, but without compromising his less privileged background, his Scottishness or his determination to succeed on his own terms. Nationalists like Alex Salmond were desperate to have his backing for independence in 2014, a tribute to his status. But after victories Mr Murray has draped himself in both the saltire and the union jack. Mr Murray didn’t just change his image. He also changed his attitudes. As he developed as a player, so he developed as a human being. He allowed his emotions to show more, as he did again with the media this week. He urged men to open up about depression. He admitted that fatherhood made tennis seem less important. He discovered an eloquence with words as well as with the racket. Above all, he has reflexively treated women as equals. His mother shaped his early training. Later he appointed Amélie Mauresmo as his coach. He supported equal prize money. He criticised Wimbledon for not scheduling enough women’s matches on show courts. All this was done with great ease and naturalness. “Your voice for equality will inspire future generations,” said Billie Jean King on Friday in a tribute. “You always fight in our corner,” tweeted Heather Watson. “Have I become a feminist?” Mr Murray wrote recently. “Well, if being a feminist is about fighting so that a woman is treated like a man then yes, I suppose I have.” Finally, Mr Murray changed British tennis. Before him, tennis in Britain was mostly played and run by posh people. Even the great Fred Perry – triple Wimbledon champion in the 1930s (and son of a Labour MP) – was kept at a distance by the LTA most of his life. Mr Murray may struggle, on his own, to reverse the calamitous decline in tennis facilities in the state school sector. But what a platform he now has. And at least his successors – the current British number one Kyle Edmund, for example – are no longer likely to end up as plucky losers in the first week of championships. For that, they will thank the determined young man from Dunblane who, for many of us, is the best British sports star of our era.The tectonic plates beneath a big mafia trial shift out of sight from the proceedings, but occasionally there is a glimpse of the bigger picture. The trial of the alleged Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – which resumes on Thursday – has been no exception. The proceedings have offered extraordinary detail of the workings of a Mexican cartel, but have been hallmarked by what is unseen – and kept that way by Judge Brian Cogan. Day-to-day testimony has been like a Netflix thriller, yet it has obscured  the nexus of top-level corruption the world’s biggest criminal organisation operated north and south of the US border. The detail from cartel “snitches” testifying for the prosecution against their old boss or partner has been riveting. Guzmán’s first employee, pilot Miguel Ángel Martínez, described a trip with Guzmán to Japan, Thailand and Macau, and a visit they made to Los Angeles to spend $6m on planes before a gambling spree in Las Vegas. Guzmán went to Switzerland, he said, for cellular anti-ageing treatment. Guzmán ran a private zoo, and distributed bonus diamond-studded Rolexes and fancy cars to favourite underlings. Cocaine was smuggled to the US in what looked like cans of jalapeño peppers. Even Guzmán – usually pensive – laughed when his lawyer William Purpura, picked up one of the cans entered in evidence, and told the court: “I’ve been dying to hold this one.” The former chief of Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel, Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía – alias La Chupeta, the Lollipop – gave enthralling evidence about one of the most important partnerships in narco-trafficking history, after Guzmán impressed the Colombian with his insistence on only the best-quality product, speed of delivery – and his demand for an extra percentage. Ramírez, his face disfigured by plastic surgery, boasted about the 400,000 kilos of cocaine he had moved, and 150 executions he had ordered – including a family in New Jersey. His testimony also traced Guzmán’s takeover of Colombian distribution networks in the US while Ramírez did a short stretch in jail. Another Colombian narco, Jorge Cifuentes, testified to having furnished rightwing Colombian paramilitaries with 5,000 AK-47 assault rifles with which to fight leftwing Farc guerrillas, but then arranging a cocaine deal between Guzmán and the Farc. The first we heard of Guzmán’s voice was on a wiretap, expertly haggling with the comrades. The narco witnesses have offered detailed, sometimes darkly funny testimony; they are proud of what they did. Asked at one point about the killing of two female Colombian police agents, Chupeta gave a thumbs-up. His only apparent remorse was at the loss of two loads to US authorities. The star turn was the Sinaloa cartel accountant Jesús Zambada García (brother of the drug lord who probably betrayed Guzmán and now leads the cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada), who testified with cool aplomb about his “investors”, “costs” and “returns”. In his coverage of the trial, David Brooks of the Mexican daily La Jornada wrote: “Chapo Guzmán was one of the successful impresarios of a Mexican neoliberal model, heading a transnational commercial and financial operation dedicated to satisfying an insatiable demand in the US, generating hundreds of millions of dollars monthly for Mexico.” But Guzmán must go down as a big-catch criminal, and that is where the riptides beneath the surface matter. Italian mafia parlance calls it “dietrologia” – “behindology”, the science of what lies behind appearances. And what lies behind the Chapo trial comprises the corruption of the Mexican state, what became of Guzmán’s money, the role of the turncoat witnesses – and that of the US government in running and recruiting them. Zambada García admitted bribing airport authorities, federal police and even Interpol, and said the cartel’s man in government, Genaro García Luna, was paid one instalment of $3m while head of the federal investigation agency, then another after being appointed minister for public security. Similar allegations against García Luna had previously been made in Mexico, including in two books by the journalist Anabel Hernández. In a statement to Mexican media, García Luna denied the allegation, which he described as “a lie, defamation and perjury”. But Zambada García also alleged that García Luna was paid $56m by Guzmán’s affiliates the Beltrán Leyva brothers, one of whom, Héctor, was responsible for paying off politicians. Héctor Beltrán Leyva died in a Mexican jail the night before Zambada García’s testimony. According to discussion during a sidebar between counsel and the judge, Zambada planned to go one better and elaborate on a $6m payment to an “incumbent” Mexican president. He was stopped from doing so by a prosecutors’ motion, upheld by Judge Cogan, “protecting individuals and entities who are not parties to this case and who would face embarrassment”, he said. The trial chamber – and the Mexican people – cannot, then, know which president was allegedly paid by Guzmán, and for what. A subsequent sidebar discussed the contents of a prosecution memorandum submitted under seal; the transcript of the sidebar was then itself sealed. When John Gotti – head of the Gambino mafia clan – went on trial in this same New York courthouse in 1992, it took just one “cooperating witness” to convict him. In Guzmán’s trial, Mexican narcos are lining up to testify: six so far, and as many as 10 more to follow. Guzmán’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman calls them “degenerates” who will say anything to get sentences commuted. During the first week of the Guzmán trial, on 9 November, Vicente Zambada Nieblo – “El Vicentillo” – pleaded guilty in Chicago to overseeing logistics for the Sinaloa cartel and trafficking vast quantities of cocaine and heroin through that city. Vicentillo is El Mayo’s son, and the accountant’s nephew. His 19-page plea was entered suddenly, a year after Vicentillo had agreed with US authorities to cooperate “in any matter” – making him conveniently available to testify against Guzmán in New York. Vicentillo does not contest a staggering $1.3bn forfeiture. But Zambada Nieblo is more than just a turncoat: a year-long investigation by the Mexican newspaper El Universal, published in October 2017, established definitively that Vicentillo had worked for the DEA while conducting his duties for the cartel. Guzmán’s lawyers may not get to pursue these relationships, which complicate the usual narrative of good, honest DEA detective work, even though an addendum to a Department of Justice audit of the agency, published in March 2017, voiced “specific concerns about how the DEA used and paid confidential sources”, with “potential implications for national security”. Also excluded was an attempt by the defence to ask prosecution witnesses about “Operation Fast and Furious”, a project run by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to allow weapons to enter Mexico illegally, through cooperating straw-buyers, in hopes of catching their final recipients. Of the 2,000 guns allowed to “walk” between 2007 and 2011, only 665 were recovered, one of them in Guzmán’s’s lair in 2014 – but none of this can feature at trial. The evidence about money has been detailed when it is “back in Mexico”, but coy when it moves beyond there. Martínez flew planes loaded with cash – between $8m and $10m from Tijuana three times a month – and hauled a Samsonite case filled with $10m to “a Mexico City bank” monthly. Cash deposits are described hidden beneath beds and even underwater. But there the money-trail ends, though the US Senate’s and Department of Justice’s own investigations have established that hundreds of millions proceeded through the Wachovia and HSBC banks north of the border – these play no part in evidence hitherto. So the Guzmán trial, as the US government and Judge Cogan conduct it, follows the focused “kingpin” strategy, which supposes that once a cartel leader is taken down, the war on drugs is being won. Yet more cocaine is leaving Colombia than ever, and last year was Mexico’s most violent since this phase of the drug wars began. As his trial resumes next week, Guzmán is old news back in Mexico: initiative is with the rising Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación and its leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho”. One day, El Chapo himself might testify against El Mencho – if he ever gets caught; that may be Guzmán’s only chance of seeing his seven-year-old twin daughters as a free man.China has accused the US of trying to suppress its tech companies, as US prosecutors reportedly investigate allegations that Huawei stole trade secrets from US businesses. Adding to pressure on the Chinese telecoms firm, US lawmakers have proposed a ban on selling US chips or components to the company. “The real intent of the United States is to employ its state apparatus in every conceivable way to suppress and block out China’s high-tech companies,” said Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the foreign affairs ministry, at a regular news briefing on Thursday. She said the reported investigation would be not only “a violation of free and fair business competition but a violation rule of law.” The state-run Global Times called the latest pressure on Huawei a form of “technological McCarthyism” aimed at politicising and blocking Chinese businesses. Hu Xijin, the editor of the paper, said he believed US attitudes toward China had reached a level of “hysteria”. “By escalating its crackdown on Huawei, the US sets a bad precedent of applying McCarthyism in high-tech fields. It deprives a high-tech company of the rights to stay away from politics, focus on technology and market. It is imposing a political label on a Chinese company,” Hu wrote on Twitter. According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited anonymous sources, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) is in the advanced stages of a criminal inquiry that could result in an indictment of Huawei. The newspaper said the DoJ was looking into allegations of theft of trade secrets from Huawei’s US business partners, including a T-Mobile robotic device used to test smartphones. Huawei and the DoJ declined to comment directly on the report. Huawei said: “Huawei and T-Mobile settled their disputes in 2017 following a US jury verdict finding neither damage, unjust enrichment nor wilful and malicious conduct by Huawei in T-Mobile’s trade secret claim.” The move would further escalate tensions between the US and China after the arrest last year in Canada of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company’s founder. The case of Meng, under house arrest awaiting proceedings, has inflamed US-China and Canada-China relations. Two Canadians have been detained in China since Meng’s arrest and a third has been sentenced to death on drug trafficking charges – moves observers have seen as attempts by Beijing to pressure Ottawa over her case. China appears to have briefly detained a third Canadian on Wednesday. Ti-Anna Wang was detained at the Beijing airport as she transited from Seoul to Toronto. Chinese police boarded the plane and removed Wang, her husband and infant daughter. “It was a shocking, terrifying and senseless ordeal with no purpose but to bully, punish and intimidate me and my family,” she told The Globe and Mail. She was reportedly separated from her family for two hours. Wang was sent back to Seoul by Chinese authorities, unable to complete her journey home to Toronto. Previously, Wang had been denied entry into China last week, despite having a visa, as she sought to visit her father, a jailed political dissident. Only months ago, Canada and China were eagerly discussing the prospects of a free trade deal. On Wednesday, following a high-level meeting of cabinet ministers and ambassadors, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs Chrystia Freeland once again rebuked China, calling its behaviour “a threat to all countries”. Canada has sought to recruit allies in its fight to win both the release of two detained Canadians and clemency for a third citizen currently facing the death penalty. “Our government has been energetically reaching out to our allies and explaining that the arbitrary detentions of Canadians are not just about Canada. They represent a way of behaving which is a threat to all countries,” said Freeland. China’s vice-premier and economic czar, Liu He, will be traveling to the US on 30 and 31 January for the next round of trade talks between the two countries, the ministry of commerce has said. Huawei, the second-largest global smartphone maker and biggest producer of telecommunications equipment, has for years been under scrutiny in the US over purported links to the Chinese government. Huawei’s reclusive founder Ren Zhengfei, in a rare media interview on Tuesday, forcefully denied accusations that his firm engaged in espionage on behalf of the Chinese government. The tensions came against a backdrop of Donald Trump’s efforts to get more manufacturing on US soil and apply hefty tariffs on Chinese goods for what the US president has claimed are unfair trade practices by Beijing. In a related move, US politicians introduced a bill to ban the export of American parts and components to Chinese telecoms companies that were in violation of US export control or sanctions laws – with Huawei and ZTE the likely targets. The Republican senator Tom Cotton, one of the bill’s sponsors, said: “Huawei is effectively an intelligence-gathering arm of the Chinese Communist party whose founder and CEO was an engineer for the People’s Liberation Army.” The Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen said in the same statement: “Huawei and ZTE are two sides of the same coin. Both companies have repeatedly violated US laws, represent a significant risk to American national security interests and need to be held accountable.” Last year Trump reached a deal with ZTE that eased tough financial penalties on the firm for helping Iran and North Korea evade American sanctions. Trump said his decision in May to spare ZTE came following an appeal by China’s president, Xi Jinping, to help save Chinese jobs.Donald Trump has signed legislation to temporarily end the longest-ever partial shutdown of the US government, which has left hundreds of thousands of federal employees without pay for more than a month. Trump announced he would sign the legislation on Friday, 35 days after the shutdown began. The decision marked a significant climbdown by the president. Less than 24 hours before he spoke in the White House Rose Garden, Trump demanded that any solution from Congress should include a “large down-payment” for his long-promised wall along the southern border. On Friday, however, intensifying delays at airports across the north-east and fresh polling that revealed mounting public frustration provided new urgency for efforts to break the impasse. “We have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government,” Trump said. However, he reminded Americans he had a “powerful alternative”, threatening to declare a national emergency if a deal for wall funding is not reached before the next deadline to fund the government. “Let me be very clear,” Trump said, “we really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier. If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on 15 February again, or I will use the powers afforded to me under the law and the constitution of the US to address this emergency.” The Senate unanimously passed a funding bill on Friday afternoon. It then went to the House, where it was unanimously approved. The deal announced on Friday will re-open shuttered federal agencies for three weeks without providing any funding for the wall, Trump’s signature campaign promise. It will enable nearly 800,000 employees have been furloughed or forced to work without pay to return to their jobs and to receive delayed payment. As part of the agreement, Congress will convene a bipartisan committee to debate funding for border security before 15 February. The agreement is consistent with Democrats’ negotiating position: that Trump should re-open the government before any new border security measures are agreed. “Hopefully it means a lesson learned for the White House,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said at a joint press conference with House speaker Nancy Pelosi. “For many of our Republican colleagues, shutting down the government over a policy difference is self-defeating. It accomplishes nothing but pain and suffering for the country and incurs an enormous political cost to the party shutting it down.” Schumer praised Pelosi’s leadership throughout the month-long saga that consumed the first several weeks of her Speakership and produced a dramatic battle between the her and the president. “No one should ever underestimate the speaker,” Schumer said, “as Donald Trump has learned.” As the shutdown went on, Pelosi rescinded an invitation for Trump to deliver the state of the union address, a move believed to be without precedent. The speech was scheduled for 29 January but Pelosi said the decades-old tradition would only take place after the government reopened. Trump toyed with the idea of delivering it in another location but eventually consented to her request. On Friday, Pelosi told reporters there were no immediate plans to reschedule the speech. The issue would be addressed, she said, after Trump signed the bill. Let me be very clear: we really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier She applauded Democrats in both chambers for remaining unified, even as many freshmen from moderate and conservative districts weathered accusations that they did not support border security. “It is very clear that we all understand the importance of securing our borders,” Pelosi said. “We have some very good ideas on how to do that.” Later on Friday, the president argued that he had not backed down in the feud over wall funding, claiming the agreement “was in no way a concession”. In the aftermath of the partial closure, a bipartisan chorus of lawmakers have called for banning shutdowns. “The final package should also end government shutdowns once and for all,” said senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa of Republicans. The shutdown began on 22 December, over the president’s insistence Congress allocate $5.7bn to build a wall along the border with Mexico. Trump and Republicans have been under mounting pressure to end the impasse. As the impact of the shutdown rippled across the economy, union leaders warned that thousands of federal employees were taking on part-time jobs and turning to charity and food banks. On Friday, employees missed a second paycheck. The same morning, federal aviation officials temporarily restricted flights in and out of New York LaGuardia, causing significant delays at Newark and Philadelphia airports. The Trump administration has come under increasing criticism for a series of comments from officials perceived as tone-deaf to the financial hardship the shutdown placed on federal workers. On Thursday, commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said he didn’t “quite understand” why workers had to visit food banks and urged them to instead apply for loans from banks and credit unions. Pelosi asked: “Is this the ‘let them eat cake’ kind of attitude? Or call your father for money?” A majority of Americans hold Trump and congressional Republicans responsible for the shutdown, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Meanwhile, public disapproval of Trump’s job performance grew by five percentage points to 58%, a clear sign that attempts to satisfy his conservative base carry significant political risk. Observers noted the timing of the announcement, which came just hours after the arrest of Trump’s longtime political ally, Roger Stone. Stone was taken into custody by the FBI in a pre-dawn raid on Friday following a seven-count indictment that revealed senior Trump campaign officials sought to benefit from the hacking and release of Democratic emails.At least 11,000 child refugees and their families are facing a weekend of freezing temperatures with no shelter, after torrential rains across Syria’s Idlib province swept away tents and belongings. Aid workers warn there is a real risk people will simply freeze to death as temperatures have already dropped to -1C, amid a shortage of blankets and heating fuel. The shelters of Syrian refugees inside Lebanon have also been battered by high winds, rain and snow this week, according to UNHCR, which says 361 sites have been affected. Camps in the border town of Arsal have been buried in snow, while settlements in the central and west Bekaa areas, where there has been heavy flooding, have experienced even worse damage. It is forecast that rains will begin again on Sunday. On Thursday, the UN confirmed an eight-year-old Syrian girl died in Lebanon after slipping and falling into a river during the storm. In north-west Syria, Save the Children is distributing plastic sheeting to displaced families. Caroline Anning, Syria advocacy and communications manager for the charity, said there were cases of babies freezing to death last year, and added that more people are vulnerable this winter. “The number of people that moved into Idlib over the last year is huge and there is always the risk there will be more,” said Anning. “We saw, a couple of months ago, there was an escalation of violence in the south and thousands of people fled northwards. It’s a very tense situation.” Outbreaks of violence between armed groups have delayed emergency relief efforts over recent weeks, she added. Though fighting has subsided, many areas remain cut off as a result of flash floods, preventing families from accessing health facilities and slowing the distribution of emergency supplies. On Wednesday, a woman in labour was carried out of a camp on the shoulders of six people because it was not possible to access roads, Anning said. Aid workers are concerned about the spread of disease in overcrowded camps, and have received anecdotal reports of respiratory illnesses. About half of the 2.9 million people living in Idlib and the surrounding areas are displaced, according to the UN. Children, who make up half of those displaced, have often been forced to move up to seven times and are already in poor health. Save the Children warned that a demilitarised zone set up by Turkey and Russia along the frontline in Idlib must be fully implemented. “Things are so fragile, any further escalation or displacement would just create a huge humanitarian crisis,” said Anning. In Lebanon, 70,000 refugees, including almost 40,000 children, are at risk of extreme weather, according to UNHCR. “It has stopped raining and snowing now but it’s still very cold and we are expecting another storm starting this Sunday,” said Lisa Abou Khaled, public information officer for UNHCR in Lebanon. “We are worried that the upcoming storm may cause more damage, especially in informal tented settlements in Bekaa and in the north,” she added.Late-night hosts assessed the “centrist independent” presidential candidacy of former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Roger Stone’s visit to Fox News. On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert acknowledged another hat tossed into the 2020 presidential ring: Howard Schultz, who announced over the weekend that he was strongly considering a run as a “centrist independent” candidate. What’s a centrist independent? It’s “the politically correct term for most obnoxious guy at the dinner party”, Colbert said – someone who would proclaim: “I think most Americans just want to find a middle ground between baby cages and not baby cages – baby handcuffs?” And if you’re wondering what a centrist independent believes, Colbert continued, you’re going to keep wondering, because in his media tour this week, Schultz has dodged policy specifics. For example, when asked what the corporate tax rate should be, Schultz responded that he didn’t “want to talk in the hypothetical about what I would do if I was president”. “That’s literally the only thing you’re supposed to be doing while running for president,” Colbert exclaimed. “What, instead of ‘Yes we can’, it’s ‘What will we?’” Schultz’s nascent presidential run illustrates a particular strain of confidence, Colbert said. “It never ceases to amaze me how money makes people think they know things they don’t know. This is a guy – maybe a nice guy, maybe a smart guy, I don’t know him – but he made his money giving confusing fancy new names to already established cup sizes, and then cake pops. Next natural step? Give me the launch codes.” So he wasn’t surprised that Schultz was encountering resistance to his presidential ambitions, such as a heckler at a New York book launch on Monday. “Nobody has ever been in a Starbucks bathroom and thought, the guy in charge of this should be in charge of everything,” Colbert said. “The presidential election is now 643 days away, which is super close,” Trevor Noah said on The Daily Show Tuesday night. That’s “barely enough time to have two babies, or three really unhealthy babies”, which means it’s high time for some shake-ups in the 2020 race. On Tuesday, Jeff Flake declined to take on Trump in the Republican primary and West Virginia Democrat Richard Ojeda dropped out of the race, but “the big news in the Democratic race isn’t even coming from a Democrat right now”, Noah said. Howard Schultz’s potential run as a “centrist independent” is “making the Democrats shit themselves, which usually only happens after you drink his coffee”, Noah joked. The sentiment is shared with potential voters, as well – at a speaking event Tuesday, attendees let Schultz “know how most people feel” by shouting: “Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire asshole!” “That’s really harsh,” Noah panned. “I mean, not for New York, that’s just how we greet each other here, but for everywhere else.” Though it seems that neither Democratic leaders nor potential voters want Schultz as a third-party candidate in the race, Noah observed that “there is one person who definitely wants him in: the make-believe billionaire in the White House”. Trump, who initially tweeted that he didn’t think Schultz had the guts to run for president, reportedly told a crowd at a Trump Hotel fundraiser Monday that he actually intended to get Schultz into the race because he believes it would help him. In other words, Noah said, “Trump is so smooth, man – tries reverse psychology on Howard Schultz, and then tells everyone he’s doing reverse psychology.” And over in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel was still processing the arrest and subsequent not guilty plea of Trump associate Roger Stone. Stone’s over-the-top, attention-seeking persona makes it “almost hard to believe he’s real”, Kimmel said. “First of all, he’s got a tattoo of Richard Nixon’s face on his back. Secondly, we know that he’s got a tattoo of Richard Nixon’s face on his back.” Even more ridiculous, Stone appeared on Sean Hannity’s show Tuesday to purport an unfounded claim that Robert Mueller’s investigation intended to do off with Trump and the vice-president, Mike Pence, so that Nancy Pelosi would become president and appoint Hillary Clinton as her vice-president. “Oh, that’s totally what’s happening,” Kimmel dead-panned before laying out the rest of the conspiracy plan: get rid of every cabinet secretary until there’s just “President Dr Ben Carson” left, “who will be so sleepy throughout the remainder of his term the diabolical bandits who planned this will be able to tip-toe in and do whatever they want”. If you don’t believe him, Kimmel joked, “check Infowars – it’s all right there.”Kevin Prince-Boateng’s move to Barcelona from Sassuolo has certainly raised a few eyebrows among those who remember his spells in England with Tottenham and Portsmouth. But as the Ghana international joins forces with Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez et al at Camp Nou, here are some other unlikely transfers from down the years. Deemed surplus to requirements when Barça signed Diego Maradona from Boca Juniors, Simonsen opted against moving to Real Madrid or Tottenham and instead decided to accept an offer from Second Division Charlton. The 1977 Ballon d’Or winner lasted five months at The Valley, scoring nine goals in 16 matches before returning to his boyhood club, Vejle BK. Prolific at Vicarage Road after coming through the ranks, Blissett’s 27 goals in Division One caught the eye of Milan’s top brass and they shelled out £1m to sign him. His time at San Siro was shortlived, however, with the Italians accepting little more than half the fee they had paid 12 months earlier following one season that yielded five goals in 30 appearances. He returned to Watford. The Denmark forward was looking to resurrect his career after a disappointing loan spell at Milan came to an end and Walter Smith was to prove his saviour. Laudrup provided two assists on his debut and even turned down the opportunity to join Barcelona six months later, much to Smith’s shock. “He looked at me and said, ‘Brian, you’ve turned down Barcelona?’ I said I would prefer to play against Falkirk.” The star product of São Paulo’s youth team, Juninho had been expected to join a European heavyweight until Middlesbrough swept him off his feet with a £4.5m offer. He stayed on Teesside for two seasons, finishing the second as runner-up to Gianfranco Zola in the Football Writers’ Player of the Year award, before returning on loan in 1999 and joining permanently two years later. After starring for Benfica, Porto and Spartak Moscow, Yuran surprisingly opted for Bermondsey as his next port of call after Mick McCarthy was tipped off about his and compatriot Vasili Kulkov’s availability by Bobby Robson. But it all ended in tears after 16 appearances when Millwall were relegated to the third tier. “Jimmy Nicholl said I was the most unprofessional player he’d ever met,” said Yuran years later. “That was true.” Not for the first time the race for two of Argentina’s best young players pitted Real Madrid and Barcelona against one another but their move to join Alan Pardew at Upton Park seemingly came out of the blue. While Mascherano was soon on his way to Liverpool, Tevez’s goal against Manchester United sent down Sheffield United instead and later led to West Ham being fined £5.5m for breaching the Football Association’s rules over third-party ownership. When Europe’s most successful club come calling, it takes a lot to say no. Despite making only eight appearances for West Ham after moving from Bordeaux in 2007, the Frenchman was identified as an alternative option for Madrid after a move for Wigan’s Antonio Valencia broke down. He ended up playing 54 minutes for the first team having missed training when he mistakenly thought he had the day off and fell asleep on the bench during a match against Villarreal. The striker’s relatively successful spell on loan at Sunderland ensured he was a wanted man in the summer of 2012, although it took until the final day of the transfer window to sign off his move to Juventus. After 339 minutes in Serie A and no goals, they probably wondered why they had bothered and decided against making his move to Turin permanent.Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has said that Italy and Poland could trigger a “European spring” that could break the dominant “Germany-France axis” as he strives to forge far-right alliances before the European parliamentary elections in May. Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and leader of the far-right League, travelled to Poland on Wednesday for strategy meetings with members of the ruling Law and Justice party. The two parties share similar anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and Eurosceptic views. He said during a press conference with the Polish interior minister, Joachim Brudziński, that the Europe that could emerge after the elections could bring about a “renaissance of European values” and “lead us away from the one that is run by bureaucrats”. Brudziński praised Salvini’s hardline immigration strategy, which has included closing off Italian ports to migrant boats, adding that the two countries shared common goals such as “strengthening borders” and helping to improve conditions in migrants’ home countries. Salvini first mooted the idea of a pan-European network of nationalist parties weeks after forming a coalition government with former arch rival, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), last June. He has already forged a partnership with the French far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, with the pair saying during a press conference in Rome in October that the EU elections would usher in a new era of “common sense” as nationalist parties rally to restore values, pride and dignity for ordinary workers. At the same time, Salvini’s coalition partner, Luigi Di Maio, announced that he was preparing an election manifesto with European populist groups that are in coherence with his M5S. He held a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday with Paweł Kukiz, a former rock star who heads up Poland’s Kukiz’15; Ivan Sincic, of Croatia’s Living Wall and Karolina Kähönen, the co-founder of Liike Nyt, which describes itself as a liberal political movement in Finland. “They are young but they have an ever-increasing consensus,” Di Maio wrote on Facebook. “They are the coolest and most beautiful energies in Europe. Our dream is a Europe with more social rights, more innovation and less privileges. A Europe that puts the needs of its citizens first.” Di Maio also sparked a row with France earlier this week after urging the yellow vests, who have held several violent anti-government protests since early December, to “not give up”. He said the protests reminded him of the spirit that gave birth to the M5S and he is planning to meet yellow vest activists over the next few days. As Italy’s two leaders’ ramp up campaigning, the League is currently tipped to emerge as the biggest Italian party in the European elections. The party is polling at around 30%, slightly higher than the M5S. “Salvini has the same slogans as the rightwing parties in Europe but essentially different strategies, so I wonder if they would be truly powerful in a new EU parliament,” said Mattia Diletti, a politics professor at Rome’s Sapienza University. “As for M5S, Di Maio knows that by saying something sympathetic about the yellow vests, they are trying to boost popularity by reminding people that ‘we were revolutionary too’. But he’s being naive – he’s interfering in French politics and is not considering how a minister should be within a European context.”That Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán – on trial in New York for heading the world’s biggest drug cartel – escaped a raid through a tunnel beneath his bath is legend; what is not known is that he did so stark naked with the mistress with whom he was abed when the Mexican marines arrived. That Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel bribed politicians and senior military officers is presumed by most Mexicans; that he bribed presidents would surprise few – what we had not heard is that he allegedly haggled down a presidential demand for $250m protection money to $100m. But this is what emerges as Guzmán’s prosecutors home in on the closing stages of their case at the US federal court in Brooklyn. When Guzmán’s former mistress Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López took the stand on Thursday, El Chapo knew it was coming: journalists had been tipped off by defence counsel last week that she might testify. Guzmán’s wife Emma Coronel – loyally present almost every day of the trial – probably braced herself too; the couple had been married for seven years – since 2007 – when the bathroom incident occurred, and their twin daughters were two years old. Sánchez told the court she was Guzmán’s lover and “housewife” for three years from 2011. And rather more: she was a scout for, and dispatcher of, marijuana from the Mexican states of Durango and Sinaloa. Guzmán “would ask me for the three Bs”, she explained, “Buena, bonita y barata” – good, pretty and cheap. The relationship was complex, with suggestions of intimidation: “I had my reasons,” she said. “First of all, so he didn’t think I would rat him out. I didn’t want him to mistrust me so he wouldn’t hurt me. Second, I didn’t want to have my siblings involved” – as Guzmán had apparently urged. She sent Guzmán a text about her business role, saying: “I like it. At least I feel useful.” That night in early 2014, the couple were in bed when a squad of marines and US DEA agents surrounded the Miramar Hotel in Mazatlán. They were spotted by Guzmán’s most trusted gatekeeper, codenamed “El Condor”, who ran into the bedroom to warn his boss. Guzmán bounded naked into the bathroom, followed by Sánchez, El Condor and another member of the inner circle, and flipped the bathtub to reveal the tunnel. “He said, ‘love, love, come in here,’” recalled Sánchez. “There was like a lid on the bathtub that came up. I was scared. I was like, ‘Do I have to go in there?’ It was very dark.” It is not clear whether voters in Sinaloa knew the story when, later that year, they elected Sánchez as a deputy to the state assembly. She served two years before being arrested in 2017 while entering the US, for drug trafficking and money laundering. Awaiting sentence, she joined the now long line of trusted confidants who have turned state’s witness against the cartel chief. But as well as unveiling such personal betrayals, the trial has also exposed shocking allegations of relations between narco-trafficking and political power in Mexico and beyond. For years journalists have charted the entwinement between cartels, police, military and politics – and many Mexican reporters have paid with their lives for doing so. Yet even so, the detail of testimony in the trial is astonishing. This week the major Colombian narco Alex Cifuentes Villa took the stand for a second time to implicate the apex of power in Mexico. Under cross-examination, Cifuentes said that Enrique Peño Nieto, president from 2012 until last year, approached Guzmán (rather than the other way round) to propose that a payment of $250m would call off the manhunt against him. Cifuentes said the two men eventually compromised on the sum of $100m, duly paid. Cifuentes said his PA, Andrea Vélez Fernández, had once sent him photographs of suitcases full of cash. When Guzmán’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman asked if they were “destined for Mr Peña Nieto”, prosecutors successfully objected on grounds of relevance. But Vélez turned out to have two jobs, the other for the Venezuelan political consultant JJ Rendón, who Peña Nieto had hired for his presidential campaign. In the trial’s early stages, the brother of the cartel’s co-founder with Guzmán, Jesús Zambada García, had been due to testify on bribes to Mexican presidents including Felipe Calderón – who governed from 2006 to 2012 – leading Lichtman to say in his opening statements that “current and former presidents of Mexico received hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes”. The prosecution had successfully argued that further information should be inadmissible. But on Wednesday, prosecutors failed to prevent the unsealing of one of their own motions which mentions bribes paid to a senior adviser to the current president, Ándres Manuel López Obrador during his unsuccessful 2006 presidential campaign. Previous court papers mention bribes also paid to an official in his administration as mayor of Mexico City. The officials have been named in Mexican media reports, but not in privileged court proceedings. All three presidents have strongly denied the allegations. Calderón and Peño Nieto dismissed Lichtman’s comments at the start of the trial, and Peña Nieto issued a fresh statement this week calling Cifuentes’s claim “false, defamatory and absurd”. López Obrador’s office told Vice News he would not comment on remarks by a protected witness in a trial outside Mexico. Mexican reporters have for years investigated the convergence of interests between Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel and the Mexican army, often in pursuit of hegemony over other, rival cartels. But never before has an insider described the army acting as a hit squad for the cartel. This week, however, Cifuentes said that Guzmán authorized payments of between $10m and $12m to military units to “either kill or capture” operatives of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, founded by brothers initially loyal to Guzmán, but who broke away – incurring his special wrath. Zambada had testified that federal and highway police escorted consignments of cocaine, and there has been testimony on Guzmán paying police commanders, but not on police trafficking drugs themselves. Cifuentes coolly testified about the time he sent federal police photographs of baggage full of cocaine being sent from Argentina to Mexico, so that they would be allowed through airport customs. But the police, he said, impounded the consignments and sold the drugs themselves. All told, Cifuentes said with a shrug of his 40-year career in the drug trade, he had led “a good life”.Our quadrennial marathon is on, and nothing says election season better than a campaign-ready memoir. Kamala Harris, who is running, and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who may well run, have each released a book to answer the make-or-break question: “Why are you running for president”, also known as WAYRFP. Make no mistake, coming up short in response can put an end to a candidacy. In 1979, Edward Kennedy struggled to respond to that query on national television, and never recovered in his bid to unseat Jimmy Carter. Lesson learned. In the run-up to the Bush 88 campaign, the then-vice-president and his staff internalized the significance of WAYRFP. The electorate rewarded their efforts. Generally, campaign books endeavor to simultaneously show enough leg and sanitize a wannabe’s ambition, aiming to make the candidate interesting without giving too much away. But a political memoir can also say and do plenty. On that score, think The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama’s profession of political faith from 2006. In his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic national convention, the Illinois senator announced: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.” He used his book to further develop the themes that would underlie his 2008 campaign, namely his life story and an ambivalent relationship with identity politics. I reject politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation or victimhood generally “I reject politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation or victimhood generally,” he wrote, words that would reassure the swing voters who helped him stitch together the largest Democratic plurality in more than 40 years. For good measure, he won an absolute majority of the popular vote each time out and, these days, comes first when it comes to who voters say is the best president in the past 40 years, a 180-degree turnabout from 2014. As for the incumbent, 44% view Donald Trump as the worst. Not all memoirs are created equal. Some are genuinely poignant, many are personal and policy rollouts, others are cut-and-paste jobs that sandwich a candidate’s recent speeches and essays between two covers, like an aging rock band’s greatest hits album. Bernie Sanders’ latest, Where We Go from Here, recapitulates his traditional themes and rightly takes credit for defining the fight for the 2016 Democratic nomination, shaping the party’s platform and upping the use of social media as a campaign tool. But he leaves too many questions unanswered. Disappointingly, Vermont’s septuagenarian junior senator essentially ignores how to pay for the vast expansion of government he expects. In 2016, Sanders backed a plan that one independent thinktank said would lead to steeply reduced growth, “10.56% lower after-tax income for all taxpayers, and a 17.91% lower after-tax income for the wealthiest Americans”. Now, Sanders chooses to rely upon systemic condemnation, confident that in the Age of Trump detail is irrelevant. We have seen that movie before and it cost Sanders dearly. In the run-up to the 2016 New York primary, he appeared before the New York Daily News editorial board and proved himself unprepared and incapable of meaningfully addressing the role of the Federal Reserve in his proposed breakup of US banks. Sanders veered and swerved but never delivered a coherent response. For good measure, he also struggled to opine on Obama’s drone-strike policy (“I don’t know the answer to that”) and where he would imprison a captured Isis militant (“Actually, I haven’t thought about it a whole lot”). The senator had served in Congress since 1991: one would have expected more. After a drubbing by Empire State Democrats, his fate was sealed. Similarly, Where We Go from Here does not explain what assistance Sanders’ campaign actually received from Russia. A February 2018 criminal indictment against 13 Russian nationals and three businesses alleged that they had “support[ed] Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump”. To be clear, Sanders has denied contemporaneous knowledge, saying: “I did not know Russian bots were promoting my campaign.” But he has also argued that Hillary Clinton could have done more to publicize interference by the Kremlin. Being a populist prophet is not the same as being ready on day one, although as Trump proved, straight answers and command of the facts are not prerequisites to electoral success. Social sentiments and grievance may propel a candidate to victory. Authenticity can carry the day. If Sanders is the Howard Beale of the Democratic field, the mad-as-hell TV commentator of the 1976 movie Network, then Joe Biden is the uncle you’re happiest to see at Thanksgiving, the one with the jokes whose kids like him and whose wife smiles through unclenched teeth. Although this won’t be enough for Biden to win the nomination if he chooses to run, it is the foundation of his latest book. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and antisemitism are real in this country, and we need to confront those forces Promise Me, Dad is a father’s story, a look back at the last year of the life of Beau Biden, the former vice-president’s oldest son who died of brain cancer in May 2015. Beau was a former Delaware attorney general and Iraq war veteran. Promise Me, Dad melds his battle with cancer with the political events that filled his father’s calendar. It is also the tale of an old-time north-east Democratic pol who understands that culture and coalitions both count. Among other things, Biden writes of paying his respects to two New York City policemen who were shot dead just for being cops. One was Latino, the other Asian American. Biden’s grief rings genuine: “The assassin’s bullet targeted not just two officers, not just a uniform. It targeted this city.” For the record, Biden “got it” far more easily than Bill de Blasio, the city’s tin-eared mayor who has also flirted with a 2020 run. As Biden put it, the mayor “seemed happy that it was me representing the administration because he knew I had a close relationship with the police and the civil rights community”. The book also covers Biden’s globetrotting. He makes resoundingly clear his disdain for Vladimir Putin. Describing a meeting in Moscow, Biden writes, “Mr Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes … I don’t think you have a soul.” To which Putin reportedly responded: “We understand each other.” America awaits the Mueller report. Last Monday, Martin Luther King Day, the California senator Kamala Harris formally announced her candidacy. Later, Bill O’Reilly, the disgraced former Fox host, tweeted that he would not vote for Harris, citing her denial of “due process” to the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh. In other words, race and gender will continue to buffet our politics. Harris’s book released earlier this month, The Truths We Hold, signals that she will be doubling down rather than backing off. Harris, who is biracial, does not triangulate when it comes to identity politics. The book’s preface proclaims: “We need to speak truth: that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and antisemitism are real in this country, and we need to confront those forces.” Pages later, she delivers a shout-out to Black Lives Matter. Further complicating Harris’s road to the White House is her apparent discomfort with Brian Buescher, a Trump nominee for district court in Nebraska, being a member of the Knights of Columbus, a traditional Catholic social organization. For conservatives and others, that will smack of anti-Catholicism and a religious litmus test. The senator bets that as a former prosecutor she can thread the needle between the demands of the Democrats’ voting core and the wider electorate, moving left in the hope she will bring the center along. While The Truths We Hold disclaims being a policy platform, it is very much that. It offers up an array of middle-class-friendly initiatives, including a call for a tax break, and examines the housing collapse and mortgage crisis. Here, Harris gets granular and demonstrates a command of her brief. Specifically, she recounts her role in negotiations in the foreclosure abuse settlement. Indeed, she delights in describing how the banks and their lawyers reacted in the course of negotiations. Beyond that, she vents her anger at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the regulators who were asleep at the switch. Or worse. Harris has had her share of scrapes with the GOP. She has been attacked for her questioning of Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Gen John Kelly, the former secretary of homeland security and second Trump chief of staff. For good measure, Harris writes about how in the administration’s early days she called Kelly at home about the initial travel ban. Kelly sounded none too happy. The latest polls show Trump beatable. Harris has buzz, Biden has doubts, Sanders has memories. Over time, what they wrote will be less remembered than the fact that they each wrote a book – except during debate prep. Election day 2020 is closer than we realize.Danny Cipriani will find out in the coming days if Owen Farrell’s thumb injury leads to an England reprieve and a place in the squad to prepare for their Six Nations opener against Ireland. Last week Cipriani was omitted from England’s 35-man squad but Eddie Jones has yet to decide whether he needs an extra fly-half for the forthcoming training camp in Portugal in light of Farrell’s injury. Jones said he was “cautiously optimistic” Farrell would be fit to face Ireland in Dublin in 13 days’ time after it emerged the fly-half underwent minor surgery which ruled him out of Saracens’ European victory over Glasgow. The Saracens director of rugby, Mark McCall, said Farrell was expected to be on the sidelines for seven to 10 days and while the Rugby Football Union on Sunday confirmed he is set to travel to Portugal as planned on Wednesday, Jones may yet choose to call another fly-half into camp. A decision is set to be made before the squad departs and if Jones is seeking an extra fly-half, Cipriani comes into contention. Jones has expressed reservations over the Gloucester No10’s ability to perform a bit-part role within his squad in the past but other than Farrell and George Ford he is the only player with game-time at fly-half under Jones. Other options include Alex Lozowski and Marcus Smith. Jones, meanwhile, has an anxious couple of days ahead after Brad Shields and Joe Launchbury became the latest members of the England squad to go down injured. Shields pulled out of Wasps’ Champions Cup defeat by Leinster shortly before kick-off with a side strain while Launchbury went off with a neck injury after just 10 minutes. The Wasps director of rugby, Dai Young, was hopeful both would recover in time to play a full part in Portugal. “[Joe] got his head in the wrong position in a tackle and his head hit one of the Leinster players’ hips,” said Young. “He went off for [head injury assessment], passed the HIA but his neck really stiffened up. We don’t see it potentially being an issue moving forward, probably 24 or 48 hours.”Of Shields, Young added: “He got a bit of a strain and was a bit sore this morning, same again really, he is going to be sore for 24 or 48 hours but we don’t see them being a concern for England moving forward.” Exeter have announced their England internationals Jack Nowell, Henry Slade, and Luke Cowan-Dickie have signed new two-year contracts at the club.Adèle is addicted to sex, with more or less any man who isn’t her husband and whom she doesn’t know too well: as soon as any hint of intimacy or routine announces itself in her liaisons, she cuts them off. Although she is easily frightened by groups of drunken men on the streets, she seeks out dangerous situations in which she has the illusion of control – on press trips she makes as a lacklustre, uninterested journalist, with guys she hires to bring drugs to her apartment, in the seedy surroundings of a sex shop in the Boulevard de Clichy. Occasionally, she will demand to be physically hurt, as when she asks the drug dealers to smash her genitals, leaving her vagina “just a shard of broken glass now, a maze of ridges and fissures”. Slimani’s slender, elegantly written and translated novel is filled with such disturbing images, and her capacity to shock will come as little surprise to readers of her previous novel, Lullaby, which opened by revealing the brutal aftermath of the murder of two small children. And in that novel, too, she took us into the painful, tumbled vortex of female subjectivity, with its complex trade-offs between obligation and appetite, its desire for liberation tussling with the question of what that liberation might yield. But Adèle is an altogether more obdurate character than Lullaby’s harassed mother or thwarted nanny, resisting interpretation and repelling empathy at every turn. She appears to care for little but satisfying the hunger and compulsions that she barely understands; not her son, not her gastroenterologist husband, not her colleagues nor friends. By way of complicating the scenario, Slimani sketches a variety of possibilities as to the cause of her behaviour: a childhood trip to Paris with her mother, who abandoned her in a hotel room while meeting a man who wasn’t her husband; the uncaring teenage boyfriend with whom she lost her virginity in a damp garage, after which she felt “simultaneously dirty and proud, humiliated and victorious”; the fug and claustrophobia of the provincial family flat in which she grew up. That Adèle’s husband is a doctor is suggestive of the world of Madame Bovary, with which the novel appears to be in dialogue. Unlike Emma, Adèle does not covet romantic fulfilment – the reverse – but she is similarly driven by restlessness and a rejection of the snares of bourgeois propriety; and similarly doomed by the absence of a space for her in the social structure (on which note, there is also an allusion to Anna Karenina’s suicide). As in both of those books, there is a comeuppance, a reckoning that implies the lack of value accorded to female lives and sexuality, and the irrepressible urge to control them. The wider world hovers at the edges: Adèle’s brief enthusiasm for her work leads to an immersion in the revolutions of north Africa, before journalism too becomes part of “the whole idiotic charade”; towards the end of the novel comes a reference to her Algerian father’s sense of dislocation from his roots and her mother’s indifference to it. But there is nothing that might add up to a thesis; explicit in so many ways, Slimani’s writing, here and in Lullaby, is coy about any greater ambitions it might have. Instead, it reads as if more interested in exploring the possibilities of extremes and reclaiming their potential as literary devices beyond that of mere shock-creation. What is the very worst thing that can happen when you ask someone to look after your children? What if you immured yourself in an utterly respectable life and then tried to fuck your way out of it? Adèle is a tough read, but a bracing one; little concerned with reader-pleasing narrative treats, but provocatively enigmatic. Appearing to adopt the conventions of realism – despite being sparely written, it is filled with physical detail, from an encounter in a freezing back alley to the “immense black-and-white photograph of derelict Cuban theatre” that decorates a fancy Parisian apartment – it eventually becomes increasingly dream-like, the compulsions of its characters (and not merely Adèle) revealed as the manifestation of suppressed desires and dysfunction. And it is not a dream from which it seems immediately possible to waken. • Adele by Leïla Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor, is published by Faber (£12.99). To order a copy for £11.43 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.991 Who described herself as “poor, obscure, plain and little”? 2 Where is the sartorius muscle, the longest in the body? 3 What animal is an Amazonian boto? 4 Which African head of state used to play for AC Milan? 5 What form of communication is BSL? 6 Which comedy scriptwriters met in a TB sanatorium near Godalming? 7 Which mining conglomerate is named after an Andalusian river? 8 Dabrowski’s Mazurka is what country’s national anthem? What links: 9 Jezebel, c 843BC; Prague councillors, 1419; Bohemian governors, 1618? 10 Chamonix (I); St Moritz (II & V); Lake Placid (III); Garmisch-Partenkirchen (IV)? 11 Woody; Leather; Chypre; Fougère; Amber; Citrus; Floral? 12 The Mud Bath; Vision Of Ezekiel; In The Hold; Ju-Jitsu; Bomb Store? 13 Hirta; Dun; Soay; Boreray? 14 Western Lowland; Cross River; Eastern Lowland; Mountain? 15 Beatrice Straight (five mins); Judi Dench (eight mins); Gloria Grahame (nine mins); Anne Hathaway (15 mins)? 1 Jane Eyre.2 Leg (thigh). 3 River dolphin. 4 George Weah (Liberian president). 5 British Sign Language. 6 Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. 7 Rio Tinto. 8 Poland. 9 Defenestrated: in Bible; first defenestration of Prague; second defenestration of Prague. 10 First five Winter Olympic hosts. 11 Traditional perfume families. 12 Paintings by David Bomberg. 13 Main islands of St Kilda. 14 Gorilla subspecies. 15 Screen time in Oscar wins: Network; Shakespeare In Love; The Bad And The Beautiful; Les Misérables.Discounting matches against Italy, there were two away wins last year, both by Ireland. Twelve months before that just one, by England. On both occasions the side best equipped to win on their travels took the title so expect away victories to be at a premium again. Take the first round of fixtures. Warren Gatland is bullish Wales can overcome France but Jacques Brunel’s side were a remarkable Johnny Sexton drop goal away from ensuring Ireland’s grand slam campaign didn’t even get off the ground last year. Such is Ireland’s form at home it is hard to see England succeeding where the All Blacks could not and it would be a fool to bet against Italy’s 17-match winless streak extending in Edinburgh. Further down the track, Ireland and Wales travel to Scotland and both lost on their last visits. Those two fixtures are likely to be pivotal. Ireland, Wales and England head into the championship ranked second, third and fourth in the world and wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air if that’s how they finished. Or, in other words, and no disrespect to Scotland, but a sustained French challenge would do wonders for the tournament. Last year they were never really in contention but the three matches they lost were by a collective margin of nine points. Take away Sexton’s drop-goal, add in Francois Trinh-Duc’s missed sitter against Wales and things could have been very different. Only France could pick a squad without a single one of the backline starters against Ireland a year ago but Toulouse’s renaissance and Racing 92’s sustained excellence give hope France can add another dimension this year. Joe Schmidt is braced for a “brutal” match against England. Eddie Jones explained last autumn how “the game is getting longer and longer. The ball in play is not changing. It is becoming a real power game, real contest game”. The absence of Ben Te’o and Joe Cokanasiga may alter England’s thinking a touch but, if Munster’s recent win against Exeter is any sort of signpost, the match on Saturday will be unremitting in its physicality. The opening fixture on Friday will not be far behind. The players’ commitment will be commendable but let’s not kid ourselves that stripped of all narrative games such as that are dull. As sure as death and taxes, there will be controversy over decisions made by officials in the coming weeks. If the autumn is anything to go by, in spades. We can but hope they will not come to define matches, as was the case for England’s victory against South Africa and defeat by New Zealand because with the Six Nations on terrestrial TV the risk is that more casual fans will be alienated. That is not to insult anyone’s intelligence but when two former referees are giving totally different opinions days after the event, the size of the muddle is clear. World Rugby’s TMO directives came about because so many referrals during the 2015 World Cup was one of the major complaints. In trying to appeal to more casual fans, the unintended consequence has been the opposite. As was the case last year the women’s Six Nations will be a two-horse race between England and France. Last year’s match in Grenoble was a thriller – France edging home by a point – and was watched by a crowd of more than 17,000. England welcome France on the second weekend to Doncaster – there will not be anywhere near that number but credit England all the same for spreading the gospel far and wide. England’s full-time contracts also add a bit of bite to the competition – only last week France were adamant their system of part-time contracts was preferable – so it will be a match not to be missed. There were two drop goals last year, two the year before that and just one in 2016. Contrast that with November when there were four in matches involving the Six Nations teams and a match-winning fifth at Twickenham to bring down the curtain on the autumn internationals. The first of last year’s two was pivotal and unforgettable, the second may well have been significant if Trinh-Duc had shown similar accuracy with his late penalty in Cardiff. It is World Cup year and as a result drop goals tend to come back into fashion so do not be surprised to see a few more.Late-night hosts marked the 27th day of the government shutdown and Rudy Giuliani’s latest turn on TV. On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah balanced the serious effects of the government shutdown with its more ridiculous elements. “Funding for low-income housing is in danger,” Noah said. “School lunches are facing cutbacks. And things have gotten so bad that Air Force One is now being operated by Spirit Airlines.” Noah turned his attention to one of the president’s most vocal critics: Cardi B. On Wednesday night, the rapper posted an Instagram video criticizing the president for summoning federal employees back to work without pay, and demanding action. “How cool would it be if Cardi B somehow ended the shutdown?” Noah marveled. “Like we find out that Trump is a major fan because Bodak Yellow is his favorite song and also the color of his hair?” TONIGHT: There is definitely no collusion between Rudy Giuliani’s brain and his mouth. pic.twitter.com/KkFtRM69BX In other viral quotes of the day, the Trump team dispatched one of its most loyal members, Rudy Giuliani, to cable news Wednesday night with … questionable results. Speaking with CNN, Giuliani falsely claimed that he never said there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. This could be a damning admission, or it could be nothing, but one thing is clear, Noah said: “One place where there’s definitely no collusion is between Rudy Giuliani’s brain and his mouth.” Perhaps the confusion is the point, he added. “Maybe the master plan is to keep creating so many new scandals that Robert Mueller can never finish his investigation.” In Los Angeles, Giuliani’s “Rudier than ever” appearance on CNN prompted an eye-roll from host Jimmy Kimmel. “Of course he never said [there was no collusion],” Kimmel said. “Nobody in the Trump administration ever said any of the things they say all the time.” Kimmel then pointed to a Fox News interview in which Giuliani did, indeed, assert that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians. “The surest sign of how deeply screwed up this administration is,” Kimmel said, “is that Rudy Giuliani is still allowed to go on TV to speak on their behalf.” The reversals and denials have become so stark, Kimmel said, that “at some point, Rudy is going to have to deny that Trump is even the president”. In other news supporting Kimmel’s theme that “literally everyone around Trump is a character from a reality show”, the Wall Street Journal reported that the former Trump fixer Michael Cohen paid an IT guy to set up a Twitter account calling him sexy. The “Women for Cohen” account, established in 2016, was billed as “Women who love and support Michael Cohen. Strong, pit bull, sex symbol, no nonsense, business oriented, and ready to make a difference!” “This is gotta be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard of in my whole life,” joked Kimmel. “We’re like a week away from finding out Michael Cohen had a burner phone he’d use to send dirty texts to himself.” And on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert hammered the government’s dysfunction. Specifically, he needled at Trump’s response to House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s request that he postpone his State of the Union address or deliver it in writing. “Now, uncharacteristically, there was no response yesterday from Donald Trump. Clearly the president considered the chaos and the dysfunction that he has brought upon our government and the solemnity of the state of the union, and cooler heads prevailed,” Colbert said. “I’m just kidding.” Instead, the president cancelled Pelosi’s trip to visit troops in Afghanistan, aboard a military aircraft, just before it was set to leave. “Although with the shutdown,” Colbert added, “there was no way she was going to get through TSA in time anyway.” The frustration of furloughed TSA agents has become a focal point of the shutdown, leaving security holes in America’s commercial aviation and, according to one news story, blasts of “explicit, uncensored versions of rap songs over the loudspeakers”. Unbelievable, Colbert said. “Just when you thought you couldn’t hear more people yelling the F-word at JFK.” Colbert ended on a positive note, though: to help those affected by the shutdown, the Late Show is selling “Don’t Even Talk To Me Until I’ve Had My Paycheck” shutdown mugs. All proceeds go to World Central Kitchen in support of chef José Andrés, who has set up a pop-up kitchen in DC to prepare 200,000 meals a day for unpaid federal workers.Theresa May is preparing to make another desperate plea to EU leaders to offer a concession on the Irish backstop as she attempts to win over Brexiters who have vowed to vote down the government’s deal. The prime minister on Sunday promised to hold the meaningful vote in parliament in the week beginning 14 January despite growing opposition from Conservative backbenchers and the Democratic Unionist party, whose votes are required to push the deal through parliament. As MPs prepare to return to Westminster with the crucial Commons vote looming on the withdrawal agreement, Downing Street insisted that new compromises could still be won from Europe that would ensure the safe passage of May’s plan. The hope of new developments came as opposition to the prime minister’s deal hardened. The hurdles facing May include: • Brexiters say the government faces a disaster if it fails to ditch the current deal, with DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds describing the Irish backstop as “toxic”. • EU sources say talks to be held in Dublin on Tuesday between Leo Varadkar and Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, will not seek to reopen negotiations over the 585-page withdrawal agreement. • Senior MPs including Yvette Cooper and Nicky Morgan are launching a parliamentary campaign to rewrite government legislation to block a no-deal Brexit. • Chris Patten, the former Conservative Party chairman, called for a second referendum on the UK’s decision to leave the EU. • More than 200 MPs have signed a letter calling for Theresa May to rule out a no-deal Brexit. Tory ex-minister Dame Caroline Spelman, who organised the letter with Labour’s Jack Dromey, said the group had been invited to see the prime minister on Tuesday. In an interview on Sunday, May said the vote, which was due to be held last month and postponed, would go ahead next week, as she sought further clarification from the EU to address MPs’ concerns. She also said she would look at giving parliament a greater say in how the UK’s future relationship would be negotiated, but refused to say exactly what that might be. Asked if there had been any changes she could offer to backbenchers who were expected to vote down her deal, she told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “What we will be setting out over the next few days are assurances in three areas: first are measures specific to Northern Ireland; the second is a greater role for parliament as we take these negotiations forward into the next stage for our future relationship; and third – and we are still working on this – is further assurances from the European Union to address the issues that have been raised.” Whitehall sources insisted that a compromise could still be found with the EU and that further planned announcements will be made this week that would win over MPs opposed to the deal. “We will be working flat out. There will be further contacts with the EU leaders. The issue of the backstop is not yet over,” the source said. In the interview, May repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether she would keep putting the deal back to MPs if it got rejected, instead saying: “If the deal is not voted on, this vote that is coming up, then actually we are going to be in uncharted territory. I don’t think anybody can say exactly what will happen in terms of the reaction we will see in parliament.” Mark Francois, the vice-chair of the hardline-Brexit European Research Group, said May’s intervention on Marr showed that the government and the EU have little to offer their critics. “As the prime minister herself once said, nothing has changed. No Conservative backbencher that I am aware of who was declared as against the deal has publicly recanted. “The PM made very clear on Marr that the vote will go ahead at this time and that is good, because if they were to pull it a second time, as well as not being in power they would effectively no longer be in office.” Conservative sources claim there are between 55 and 71 MPs who plan to vote against the deal. The DUP, whose 10 MPs are required by May to force through the deal, remain opposed. Dodds said the government must stand firm and set out a “resolute red line” to Brussels. “The coming days will show if this government is made of the right stuff,” he said. The government is also facing a serious challenge from a cross-party group of MPs seeking to block it from implementing no-deal measures without the explicit consent of parliament. Amendments tabled by Labour former cabinet minister Cooper and Tory education secretary Morgan would restrict the government’s freedom to make Brexit-related tax changes without parliamentary safeguards. The measure also has the support of Tories Sir Oliver Letwin, Nick Boles and Sarah Wollaston. The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March. May agreed her deal on the terms of the UK’s divorce and the framework of future relations with the EU but it needs to pass a vote by MPs. The Commons vote had been scheduled to take place in December but May called it off after it became clear that not enough MPs would back her deal. Maas will fly to Dublin on Tuesday for Brexit talks with Varadkar, as they seek to find a fix to help get a withdrawal agreement ratified. An informed EU source said Brexiters should not get their hopes up of a reopening of negotiations. The “fix” would be further details in the political declaration on the future relationship, and not the 585-page withdrawal agreement. “That is locked,” said the source.A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “What we are doing is focusing on getting this vote through the House of Commons and getting those extra assurances required for MPs to support this deal that delivers on the referendum result – taking back control of our money, laws and borders while protecting jobs in the UK.”Until a few years ago, every nation wanted to bring in the most tourists possible. Receiving visitors wasn’t just a means of promoting a country and its culture, but a sure-fire way to fill the coffers. Tourism offered money for old rope, or at least for old ruins. Blessed with beauty, culture and class, Italy assiduously promoted itself as a dream destination throughout the postwar period. For centuries it had welcomed aristocrats and connoisseurs on the Grand Tour, so thought coping with the less demanding masses would be simple. But many Italians now regret the Faustian pact of throwing open the gates for the most money. In an attempt to stem the rising tide of visitors, Venice last week announced a plan to charge a €10 entrance tax for day-trippers, and the mayor of Florence is considering something similar. This comes two years after the tiny Cinque Terre region in Liguria brought in a ticketing system to cap tourists at 1.5 million a year. There is a sense that Italy is a victim of its own success – it is the fifth most-visited country in the world, with 52.4 million tourists a year – and can no longer cope. The country is not alone in that, of course. Few industries have grown as fast as tourism: almost non-existent until the 1960s, it now accounts for just over 10% of global GDP. With cheap flights and increased disposable income in developing countries, tourists are proving impossible to keep out. There is a sense that the problem isn’t just the numbers, however, but the superficiality of the visitors. There are many disparaging terms for wide-eyed tourists – the Cornish call them grockles, the Spanish guiri – but that disdain has increased in recent years because in our vain, internet age tourists wander blithely about with selfie sticks, as keen to see themselves in the city as to see the city itself. The hosts are scornful because these tourists seem to spend more time looking at market-stall aprons showing David’s private parts than they do at Michelangelo’s actual sculpture. For their part, the tourists are grimly aware that they are seen simply as wallets to be emptied as fast as possible. Every week in Italy there is a story of an ice-cream seller charging credulous visitors €20 a scoop. And last autumn Florence introduced fines of €150 to €500 for eating in public, taking away one of the great attractions of a holiday – watching the world go by as you sit on some church steps with a sandwich. The sense of freedom that travel affords is being endlessly curtailed. There are, of course, deeper reasons for this newfound scorn for tourists: the environmental degradation caused by air transport and cruise ships, damage to the landscape from litter, erosion, vandalism, traffic congestion and pollution – or perhaps xenophobia stoked by far-right political groups that conflates them with migrants. Or maybe it is the opposite: that they are a painful reminder of ourselves. In our rootless age, these itinerants are, like everyone, seeking and invariably failing to find what is ancient and untouched. The trouble is that the Venetian and Florentine tourist tax will only exacerbate the problem. It won’t reduce numbers, but merely encourage the tourists’ sense that they are in a financially exploitative relationship. And if you have turnstiles at the city gates, the authenticity they so desperately seek is replaced by disappointment in a tinny confection, akin to a theme park. The Faustian pact remains: only now – as with all those dodgy ice-cream sellers – the price is inflated. Tobias Jones lives in Parma. His book on Italian Ultras will be published by Head of Zeus in the autumn. @Tobias_ItaliaThe head of Venezuela’s opposition-run parliament has thrown down the gauntlet to his country’s embattled leader, Nicolás Maduro, declaring himself ready to assume the presidency, in a rare and potentially destabilizing challenge to two decades of Bolivarian rule. Juan Guaidó told a rally in Caracas that Maduro – who began his second six-year term as president on Thursday amid a tempest of international condemnation – was an illegitimate “usurper”. The 35-year-old politician claimed that he therefore had the constitutional right to assume leadership of the country until fresh elections were held. “We are going to change things in Venezuela,” Guaidó told hundreds of cheering supporters in a speech he called his “declaration to the Venezuelan people”. “We aren’t victims. We are survivors ... and we will lead this country towards the glory it deserves,” Guaidó added, calling on the people, the international community and, crucially, Venezuela’s armed forces to support him. Guaidó, who became president of Venezuela’s national assembly last week, admitted there were no “magic solutions” to an economic crisis fuelling what the UN calls one of the greatest exoduses in Latin American history. But he called a day of nationwide demonstrations for 23 January to intensify pressure on Maduro before concluding by shouting the rallying cry: “People of Venezuela: can we, or can’t we?” “¡Sí, se puede!” the crowd roared back. “Yes we can!” The opposition took control of the national assembly in 2015 although it was effectively neutered by Maduro’s controversial creation of a constituent assembly in 2017 that sparked deadly protests. Yesiret Méndez, a 20-year-old student who was in the crowd, said she had come to hear Guaidó’s plan for the future: “And I’m ready to take to the streets again if necessary.” Carmen de Jesús, 70, said she hoped Guaidó would be able to take control. “Maduro is usurping the power and the president of the national assembly should take over as an interim president.” There was international support for the move too, with the head of the Organisation of American States tweeting: “We welcome the assumption of @jguaido as interim President of #Venezuela in accordance with Article 233 of the Political Constitution. You have our support, that of the international community and of the people of Venezuela #OEAconVzla.” But there was also apprehension Guaidó’s audacious move might backfire, triggering a renewed crackdown on regime opponents. “It’s almost certainly going to generate some sort of response from the government,” said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert from the Washington Office on Latin America advocacy group. “They could dissolve [the national assembly] … or they could try and arrest opposition leaders or Guaidó.” Addressing a sympathetic audience of Latin American leftists on Friday afternoon, Maduro mocked his challenger, claiming most Venezuelans did not even know who he was. “It is a show … a Hollywood-esque show,” Maduro said, adding: “The Venezuelan right is hopeless.” Venezuela’s chavista prison minister, María Iris Varela Rangel, tweeted a more sinister message: “Guaidó, I’ve already prepared your cell and your uniform, I hope you name your cabinet quickly so I know who is going down with you.” Smilde said Guaidó’s unexpectedly bold challenge to Maduro was a tactic the most radical members of Venezuela’s opposition had been pushing for. “But the problem with that is that they have no actual real power: they don’t control the institutions, they don’t control the guns and they don’t control the money.” One Guaidó ally told the energy news agency Argus Media he was aware of the “life-threatening” risks of his statement: “[But] keeping silent and not invoking the constitution’s authority to strip Maduro of his executive powers would have been a surrender to the dictatorial status quo and would have buried any chance of restoring democracy for years to come.”The South Yorkshire police officer in charge of the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough in 1989 was responsible for “extraordinarily bad” failures that were “a substantial cause” of 96 people dying in a crush on the Leppings Lane terrace, a court has been told. Opening the prosecution’s case against David Duckenfield for manslaughter by gross negligence, Richard Matthews QC told the jury: “David Duckenfield’s criminal responsibility for the deaths ... flows from his gross failure to discharge his personal responsibility as match commander.” Matthews told the jury it was the prosecution’s case that all of those killed at Hillsborough died “as a result of participation in the wholly innocent activity of attending a football match as a spectator”. He said Duckenfield, as the police commander of the match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground on 15 April, had “not just ultimate responsibility for the police operation … to secure the safe arrival, entry and accommodation” of 54,000 supporters to the match, “but personal responsibility to take reasonable care for the arrangements that were put in place, to take reasonable care in the command of those beneath him and to take reasonable care in the orders he gave and decisions he took”. Matthews told the jury that pressure built up at the Leppings Lane end of the Hillsborough ground designated for 24,000 Liverpool supporters, which had “limited turnstiles” for those caught in a “bottleneck”. The large exit Gate C was opened “following requests for Duckenfield to do something to alleviate the crush just outside the gates”, Matthews said, but the people allowed through the gate were “naturally drawn” down a tunnel facing them, into pens three and four, which were “already packed”. He said Duckenfield did not monitor how crowded those central pens were, and did nothing to direct people away from the tunnel that gave access to them. “In short … David Duckenfield gave no thought to the inevitable consequence of the flood of people through Gate C, nor did he make any attempt to even monitor what was occurring, let alone avert the tragedy.” Of Duckenfield’s alleged breach of his duty of care as match commander to manage the safety of the spectators, Matthews said: “This was an extraordinarily bad failure to properly consider the planning, the preparation, the roles, the responsibilities and the command of those who, in the event, were left to cope with the results of what was the ill-considered and poorly arranged, but easily identifiable, arrival of very many thousands of people a relatively short time before the scheduled kick-off, to a confined area of limited access; with the consequent uncontrolled, unsupervised and undirected, almost involuntary, forcing of far too many people into a terribly confined space.” Duckenfield is charged with manslaughter in relation to only 95 of the people who died. No charge could be brought in relation to the death of the 96th victim, Tony Bland, who was maintained on life support in hospital for four years until it was lawfully withdrawn in 1993. The names of the 95 people, in order of age from the youngest, Jon-Paul Gilhooley, 10, to the oldest, Gerard Baron, 67, were read out by the court clerk, with the manslaughter charge against Duckenfield. It took five minutes for him to read all the names. Relatives of some of those who died were sitting in the public seats in court one of Preston crown court as Matthews opened the case for the Crown Prosecution Service against Duckenfield almost 30 years after the event. Graham Mackrell, the Sheffield Wednesday club secretary and safety officer at the time of the disaster, was sitting beside Duckenfield, in the court rather than the dock, facing two counts of breaching his duties under safety legislation. Mackrell is accused of failing to agree with police the number of turnstiles to be used for the semi-final, failing to ensure they were sufficient, and to have contingency plans in place to cope if “an unduly large crowd” built up outside. “It is the prosecution’s case that Mr Mackrell effectively shrugged off all responsibility for these important aspects of the role he had taken on as safety officer,” Matthews said. Both defendants have pleaded not guilty in pre-trial hearings.In the age of online streaming, YouTube and a show for everyone, it seems that there has been a proliferation of shows about older people and ageing. As a society, western culture does not properly value the elderly and older people. This lack of regard presents itself in many ways, ranging from abuse in nursing homes, jokes, discrimination in the workplace to invisibility. Even for those of us who respect older people, we still don’t necessarily see their full humanity. We do not want to know their fears, we do not want to imagine that they have sex lives, we can’t possibly imagine that they might have desires for their lives. On screen this invisibility has meant older people have existed primarily as props or plot devices, only ever seen in relation to the primary younger characters. They are one-dimensional and usually good for the same gag. Think Marie and Frank in Everybody Loves Raymond, and Martin Crane in Frasier. Of course there are exceptions such as The Golden Girls and Ruth Fisher in Six Feet Under. Generally though, we haven’t seen enough nuanced depictions of complex older people. This however is changing, with shows such as The Wire, the aforementioned Six Feet Under and The Sopranos heralding an evolution in television. It has only been in the last few years that we have seen a shift in the depiction of older people. In 2013, the New York Times published an article called Kids These Days: They’re All Older Than 50, which lamented the representation of older people, the crux of its argument being that television showed older people as crude buffoons where it used to depict them as wise. This article misses the point – whether crude buffoons or oracles, these are still narrow imaginings. Imagining the elderly is imagining people having futures. Being Aboriginal, this can be challenging There has been serious network funding and wide viewership for shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Grace and Frankie, the Kominsky Method and Transparent. Although Transparent has been cancelled due to sexual assault claims against Jeffrey Tambor, who shouldn’t have been casted in the role of a trans woman in the first place, the success of these shows indicates that audiences are interested in the lives of older people. These shows, particularly those exploring the lives of older women, can help shift the way that we perceive growing old. It can change the way we think about ageing. Society convinces us that older people are irrelevant but television and film can shift this. This development towards having more older people as main protagonists, while obviously positive, has largely benefited white people. Some of these depictions have been harmful. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel both examine the lives of older British people in India and their colonial entitlement to it, without examining the colonialism. We focus on them and their foibles while India, the place and its people serve largely as a backdrop. It presents the nation as a site of discovery (again) by white people. They are not immigrants, they are expats. Their whiteness is presented as innocence rather than destruction. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so problematic if it didn’t represent a trend existing in reality – white people often retiring in colonised countries. The television show The Real Marigold Hotel (or as we call it in Australia, The Indian Dream Hotel) has been running for three seasons and follows the lives of “famous” older British people travelling through India. Art imitates life, life imitates art. This feedback loop is why I think we need older black people on screen. Imagining the elderly is imagining people having futures. Being Aboriginal, this can be challenging. Our parents and grandparents often die young, or spend years being unwell. I often relate to elders or my own grandparents, in their relation to younger people. I rarely imagine their intimate lives, I rarely imagine them as individuals. I position them as the elder and leave it at that. This is in part cultural, but if I am honest it is also a personal failing. I want to see older black people in all of their complexity. I want to see them make mistakes, have sex, fall in love, finally leave people they’ve been stuck with for forty years, learn new things, practice and pass on culture, buy motorbikes, start a band, keep families strong, come out, lead campaigns, maybe go to a festival and take the best pinger of their life. Except perhaps for the last point (although you never know!), these things already happen in reality. Why can’t art catch up? A few months ago I told an elder I was writing for Black Comedy. They told me they liked the show. They said a lot of people were pissed off about the elders sketches from a previous season but they loved it because there were parts of those sketches that were true. We forget that older black people are consumers of pop culture. Beyond consumption however, why can’t they also be creators? Older people have lives worth examining and understanding. They also have perspectives on the contemporary world that are worth exploring. They are our historians, and if we don’t give them creative control, we miss out on so much depth. By not including complex older characters or focusing primarily on them we miss out on understanding who we are as a people. • Nayuka Gorrie is a Kurnai/Gunai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta freelance writerIn the latest example of digital communications being difficult to parse – at least consistently – a judge has ruled that ending a text with a kiss (the letter x, that is, not an emoji) does not constitute flirting. In the case of this family court dispute, a woman’s estranged husband had tried to argue that it did. There is yet to be a universal established etiquette for digital communication, which is why people at the start of relationships screen-grab their paramour’s texts and forward them to their besties with: “BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!” Or why you might spend an entire afternoon panicking in the loos, trying to work out whether your boss was being curt in an email or was just pressed for time (to take a totally random example that definitely did not happen). Kisses are a particularly ambiguous signoff. It’s a bit like hugs and air kisses in real life: some consider them a casual, tactile greeting, while others believe them inappropriate and overfamiliar. But the judge’s ruling in the aforementioned case hits the nail on the head: it is all about putting it into the context of the individual, their consistent style and personality. If someone always signs off with a kiss, it is safe to assume that they are not IRL puckering up. But if your usually buttoned-up colleague starts ending emails with an X, it’s time to make a move – whether that be to a restaurant, or the other side of the office. The problem is with people who scatter the letter x around freely, as if they have drawn a bad hand at Scrabble. Teenagers can put so many emoji and Gossip Girl-style xoxo’s in everyday texts that when they want to express real affection, they have to use uninspiring gifs of people making a heart sign with their hands. There are whole threads online dedicated to decoding the number of kisses at the ends of messages, and even debating whether lowercase or a capital are significant. Perhaps the safest way to flirt in a message, then, is just to use old-fashioned words. “I like you,” for example. Anything but a dick pic. XMonths after he was named as the first passenger on Elon Musk’s planned rocket flight around the moon, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has entered the record books for posting the most retweeted message in Twitter’s 13-year-history. Writing in Japanese, Maezawa noted in his 5 January tweet that his online fashion retailer, Zozotown, had recorded astonishing sales, and to celebrate dangled a cash gift in front of followers who retweeted the message. To show his appreciation, he said he would “present one million yen ($9,200) in cash to 100 people to make a total of 100 million yen,” adding that he would contact the winners via direct message after the 7 January deadline. The message has since between retweeted more than four million times, beating the previous records set by a Nevada teenager’s 2017 campaign to secure a year’s supply of chicken nuggets and Ellen DeGeneres’s celebrity selfie at the 2014 Oscars. The number of people following Maezawa’s account surged from around 500,000 at the end of last week to more than 4.5 million by Monday lunchtime, according to the Japan Times. ZOZOTOWN新春セールが史上最速で取扱高100億円を先ほど突破！！日頃の感謝を込め、僕個人から100名様に100万円【総額1億円のお年玉】を現金でプレゼントします。応募方法は、僕をフォローいただいた上、このツイートをRTするだけ。受付は1/7まで。当選者には僕から直接DMします！ #月に行くならお年玉 pic.twitter.com/cKQfPPbOI3 Maezawa has amassed a personal fortune estimated at $3bn, making him Japan’s 18th richest person, according to Forbes. Last year he added to the pressure on rival fashion retailers with the launch of a made-to-measure garment service using a bodysuit called the Zozosuit. An avid art collector, Maezawa has also demonstrated a philanthropic side, founding the Tokyo-based Contemporary Art Foundation in 2012 to support up-and-coming artists. The 43-year-old founder and chief executive of Japan’s largest online fashion retailer is better known internationally as the first private passenger to make a planned trip around the moon on Musk’s Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which is under construction. When Musk named Maezawa as BFR’s first paying passenger last September, the Japanese entrepreneur said he planned to invite several artists to join him on the lunar flyby. “They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth. These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us,” he said.Amazon, the world’s largest company by market capitalisation, reported improved earnings and profits late on Thursday. The company reported its third record profit in a row, capitalizing on a strong holiday retail season and its growing, high-margin businesses such as cloud computing and advertising. The Seattle-based company reported a profit of $3.03bn, or $6.04 a share, up from $1.86bn, or $3.75 a share, on the same quarter a year earlier. Revenue grew 20% to $72.38bn. Amazon’s voice-controlled virtual assistant Alexa, and the devices which play it, helped the performance. “Alexa was very busy during her holiday season. Echo Dot was the best-selling item across all products on Amazon globally, and customers purchased millions more devices from the Echo family compared to last year,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, said in a statement. Most importantly for investors, Amazon’s cloud-computing division said revenue jumped 45% in the fourth quarter, cementing its lead over Google and Microsoft. The division has been growing at 40% per annum and is a high margin business compared to retail. The cloud business has become crucial to the success of its parent, not only for revenue but also for profits. Sales at Amazon Web Services climbed to $7.43bn from $5.11bn a year ago, topping the $7.29bn estimated by analysts. The segment makes up around 10% of total revenue. Amazon stock is up 18% over the past year. Its market cap, more than $840bn as of Thursday afternoon, is the largest of any publicly traded company in the world. Amazon stock fell almost 50 points from its closing price of $1,718 on fears of reduced margins from sales in India and increased shipping costs in the US.Who carries the weight of a global supply chain? Whose lives are bound in its fetters? There is a grotesque quality to the Guardian’s revelations of the conditions under which Bangladeshi women in the garment industry labour to make Western women feel charitable and empowered. The T-shirts made in Bangladesh will ultimately sell for £19.60, of which a little more than half, £11.60, will go to Comic Relief, to help champion equality for women. The celebrities who promote them, and whom the T-shirts in turn promote with their slogan “I wanna be a Spice Girl”, are well-paid; the women who make them are paid around 35p an hour and expected to sew up to 2,000 in the course of a working day, which is anything from eight to 16 hours long. To put it another way, a Bangladeshi seamstress would have to sew at least 7,000 T-shirts to afford the price charged for one in the west – and buying or wearing one is supposed to be a way of championing “equality and people power”. No one suggests that the westerners involved are insincere. They genuinely want to improve the lives of women around the world, and Comic Relief has done really impressive work. The people who buy the shirts will be horrified by this story. They would happily pay for their empowering T-shirts to be produced in conditions that actually empowered the workers who made them, as well as contributing to the empowerment of others elsewhere. Why is this so difficult? One answer lies in the vast gap between regulations and enforcement. The decent and generous impulses of people all around the world, and not just in the countries where the T-shirts are purchased, are expressed in political aspirations, and these in regulations and in laws. But those are completely worthless if they are not enforced, and in countries without democracy there’s no enforcement that goes against the interests of the powerful. Not even the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, when 1,134 people were killed in a factory collapse, has changed enough. Democracy is not a matter of elections. The Bangladeshi government of Sheikh Hasina has just won an election with her party, the Awami League, claiming 96% of the vote. 600,000 troops and police were deployed to oversee it, but on election day 17 people died. Few believe the results represent popular sentiment. But democracy requires more than credible elections. It needs a robust civil society – free speech and powerful trade unions. Both are hard to find in Bangladesh today. Journalists and political dissidents have been ruthlessly persecuted; Islamists have murdered atheist bloggers. The factory where the exploitation has been exposed is owned by Shahriar Alam, a Bangladeshi foreign affairs minister, who told our reporter that he didn’t think it was “right from a journalistic point of view to add [his] name to this story”. Who can doubt his sincerity? He really doesn’t want his name in the paper. Bangladesh is not alone in having a garment sector in which workers are ruthlessly exploited. An investigation before Christmas found a Chinese toy factory where women were paid on average 1p to make a doll which sells for £34.99 in the UK. So long as such factories are controlled by interests close to authoritarian governments, improvements can only be piecemeal and often cosmetic. In countries where the law means whatever the government wants, it can offer poor workers little real protection. But we are not powerless. The generous outrage of women in the rich world must be harnessed to help their sisters at the other end of the supply chain, where it weighs the heaviest.US officials arrived in China for the first face-to-face negotiations since a 90-day truce was declared in a trade war between Washington and Beijing, in the hope of ending a bruising confrontation between the world’s two largest economies. Hopes that the sixth round of negotiations between the two sides could yield a breakthrough helped Asian shares rise on Monday, combined with optimism about the state of the global economy on the back of strong US jobs figures on Friday. In Tokyo, the Nikkei soared more than 3% and there were also strong positive moves in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sydney. US and Chinese trade representatives were set to hold talks on Monday and Tuesday. After failing to reach an agreement in December when Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met, both sides agreed to suspend tariff increases while holding discussions on technology transfers, as well as intellectual property theft and cybersecurity. If no agreement is reached, US tariffs on $200bn (£160bn) of Chinese goods will increase in March to 25% from the current 10%. Trump said on Sunday that China was under pressure to do a deal amid signs of a slowdown in its economy. “I think China wants to get it resolved. Their economy’s not doing well. I think that gives them a great incentive to negotiate,” he said. Analysts believe the talks were unlikely to produce a major breakthrough but will lay important groundwork for an agreement that both sides appear increasingly eager to reach. “The situation now is that both sides are facing some economic problems. China is facing an export pressure and a likely economic downturn. The US is facing a falling stock market. Thus, both sides are willing to talk and are expecting a deal,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “I think it’s possible to reach a deal before March if both sides talk and move fast,” he said. China’s leaders in particular are under pressure to end a trade war that is exacerbating an already slowing Chinese economy in which exports, factory output, and consumer confidence have all declined. “China’s slowdown is occurring across the board, affecting almost every industry and region,” said Scott Kennedy, a trade expert focused on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Resolving the trade war or at least finding some common ground with Washington will be needed to fully restore confidence,” he said. The delegation, led by the US deputy trade representative, Jeffrey Gerrish, does not include any top US officials from the administration, a sign the talks will be a precursor to higher-level meetings. China’s economic tsar, the vice-premier Liu He, may travel to Washington in February and Trump may meet the Chinese vice-president, Wang Qishan, at the World Economic Forum in Davos near the end of this month, according to reports. The US delegation includes officials from the Treasury, and energy and agriculture departments, as well as the State Department and the White House, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. “It promises to be the first time that the core of the agenda will centre around the problems caused by Chinese industrial policy and the need to marketise China’s economy,” said Kennedy. “If they can make sufficient progress on identifying the key issues and narrowing in on the possible solutions, that will pave the way for Chinese vice-premier Liu He to visit Washington in the coming weeks,” he added. Key US exports including soya beans, corn and pork, as well as liquefied natural gas, are currently subject to retaliatory tariffs from China. China’s industrial policy, “Made in China 2025”, which the US argues violates World Trade Organization rules, is likely to be a topic of discussion. China is likely to raise the issue of the telecoms firm Huawei, whose global ambitions have been thwarted by a US ban on its products. The arrest in Canada of a senior Huawei official, Meng Wanzhou, at the request of the US has spiralled into a diplomatic incident, which includes two Canadians still detained in China. Gerrish, the head of the US delegation, is likely to follow the lead of the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, one of the most hawkish members of the Trump administration. Gerrish has previously described Lighthizer as one of his “incredible mentors”. Observers say that beyond reaching an agreement, a major sticking point will be over how to confirm that both sides uphold it. Chinese officials have reportedly indicated a willingness to establish such a mechanism. “The big issue is not just that an agreement is reached, but verifiability – that China is living up to their end of the bargain,” said Christopher Balding, a former associate professor of business and economics at the HSBC business school in Shenzhen, who writes about the Chinese economy. In recent weeks, Beijing has made some conciliatory gestures, including drafting new rules that would ban forced technology transfers. China has promised to buy more US goods as well as cut tariffs, and improve market access for foreign companies in China. Still, these concessions and economic pressures both sides face may not be enough to bring both sides to a deal. “The US is very wary of Chinese changes as simply being paper reforms that change little on the ground. That perception will be very difficult to overcome,” said Roland Rajah, the director of the international economy programme at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. He said that any agreement is likely to be framed as part of ongoing negotiations, with the threat of tariffs kept in place. He said: “The broader relationship has been deteriorating quite rapidly, meaning neither side want to cave in too much on the substantive issues as they see it as part of a broader and longer term strategic battle.”A woman, emaciated and filthy, worms her way beneath barbed wire that may be electrified. We know this scene: we’ve watched or read it scores of times. In Luce d’Eramo’s variation, the woman beneath the fence is not trying to escape from a Nazi prison camp. She is trying to get in. D’Eramo died in 2001. Deviation, her autobiographical novel, first published in Italy in 1979, covers her experiences between the summer of 1944, when she went voluntarily to join the slave labourers in the IG Farben factory in Mainz, and late 1945 when, paralysed from the waist down, she returned to Italy. The book came together by fits and starts. Two sections were written in the early 50s as autonomous stories. Twenty years later D’Eramo added two more, in a more distanced tone. In her triple role as author, narrator and protagonist, she is repeatedly at odds with herself. She adopts the third person. She gives herself different names – Lucia, Luzi, Lulu, or just l’Italiana. Repeatedly she questions her own integrity. In the fourth section, written in 1977, she performs a kind of autopsy on her own text, laying open not only its untrustworthy content, but also the circumstances in which it was written. In early passages, she says, she detects a “sexual anxiety” that belongs not to the young runaway but to the writer – the “betrayed woman in her thirties” who “views the deportees’ acts of intercourse as slimy tangles of snails with monstrous antennae”. This, with its chronology (kinked and convoluted in the book) straightened out, is D’Eramo’s story: her parents were fascist officials; in 1944, 18-year-old Luce, a member of the Fascist Students’ Association, volunteered to work in a German labour camp, expecting to find that the ugly rumours about those camps were just hostile propaganda. She was disabused, and her world view changed. She agitated for a strike. It failed. The organisers were transferred to concentration camps, all but D’Eramo, who was repatriated with the help of the Italian consul. She arrived in Verona, with instructions to take a train to Como, where her parents awaited her. Instead she wandered until she saw a group of detainees being herded towards the station by SS guards. She threw away her identifying documents, and allowed herself to be taken along to Dachau. There she was assigned to a work party clearing the sewers of nearby Munich. During an air raid she slipped away. Deviation has a fierce compelling idiosyncrasy to it – D’Eramo’s account of the camps is full of surprising nuances Perversely, she repeatedly sought refuge in the heart of the labyrinthine Nazi system, first in a labour bureau, and then in a transit camp only a few metres from Dachau. With the help of a Polish prisoner who loved her, she found work under an assumed name. The allied bombings continued. D’Eramo was trying to rescue people trapped in rubble when a wall collapsed on her. She recovered, but never walked again. In 1945, aged just 20, she returned to Italy. She had repeated surgery, becoming addicted to morphine as a result. She married and had a son, but soon divorced. She became an author and academic, making money from writing other people’s dissertations, a fraudulent practice that chimes well with the chameleon nature of this book, with its unstable viewpoints, evasive narrator and gradual uncovering of one misrepresentation after another. D’Eramo can be romantic. Her description of the thief who protected her when she was on the run in Munich has a desperate charm. She can be brutal. She can be sardonic, but she can also be self-adoring. The section in which she describes her crippling injury reads like an example of a previously unknown literary genre, auto-hagiography. She describes her younger self as prodigiously clever and resourceful, as well as being so adorable that men fall in love with her, while women weep at the pathos of the radiant girl so cruelly struck down. Her hospital room, she tells us, was known as the Good Mood Room. A far cry, this image, from the one she paints of herself in the 70s, creeping down a corridor in her wheelchair, stupefied by pain and drugs and raging with jealousy, to listen at the door of the room where her husband is making love to his research assistant. She offers various mutually inconsistent explanations for her self-destructive behaviour. Some are high-minded and political: she wanted to become one with the sufferers of the world. Some are ludicrously petty: she fled her family because her mother made her attend such tedious tea parties. She is not wise: readers are likely to wonder whether she is even sane. Her thinking is incoherent. Her story-telling is muddled. Her prose is uneven. For all that, Deviation has a fierce compelling idiosyncrasy to it. D’Eramo’s account of the camps is full of surprising nuances (it is not the Nazi guards who beat her up, but the political prisoners who disapprove of her and her fellow “Asocials”), and it explores an unfamiliar aspect of the Third Reich. She estimates that by the end of the war there were 3 million escapees from the camps within Germany. Her account, solipsistic as it is, provides glimpses into their secretive and desperate world. • Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s latest book is Peculiar Ground (4th Estate). Deviation by Luce d’Eramo, translated by Anne Milano Appel, is published by Pushkin. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com.Pop stars – especially women – are frozen at the age they become famous. Breaking the ice usually involves a bad-girl reinvention, if not a genuine breakdown. Somehow, this tension never affected Avril Lavigne, the Canadian pop-punk star who arrived in 2002 aged 17 with the brilliant Complicated, a heaving teenage sigh directed at some poseur boy. It’s not that she didn’t have an indelible look: her low-slung skate pants, tie and ramrod-straight hair are an enduring fancy-dress costume. It’s that she never seemed to want to grow up. Her alternately fun, angsty debut album, Let Go, seemed authentic enough – she played guitar! The lyrics were handwritten! – to convince a generation of teenage girls that she, and by association, they, were more credible than Britney. Then 13, I was one of them; I wore Dad’s tie to the shops and wasted hours learning how to copy her handwriting. It was music many quickly graduated from, to acts whose credits didn’t list multiple co-writers: the drug of authenticity hooks teenagers fast. But there is no shame in being a gateway artist, a role Lavigne seemed surprisingly happy to keep playing. After an emotionally intense second album, she seemed to dial back the years with 2007’s The Best Damn Thing, led by single Girlfriend, a Hey Mickey-style rager about homewrecking. Goodbye Lullaby (2011) had What the Hell (“All I want is to mess around”) and her 2013 self-titled album boasted Bitchin’ Summer (ie School’s Out with swearing) and Here’s to Never Growing Up (“We’ll be running down the street, yelling, ‘Kiss my ass’”). She was 29. A year later, she started feeling inexplicably exhausted. Doctors tried to diagnose her with anxiety and chronic fatigue, even though she was sure she had Lyme disease. Finally, she got a vindicating diagnosis and spent two years in bed on antibiotics, certain, at one point, that she would die. What happens when a teenage immortal faces death? Lavigne, now 34, doesn’t want to talk about that. “It was a relief” to get the diagnosis, she says tersely, calling from Los Angeles. “I was like: ‘OK, now I can at least start treating something.’” She was treated at home. Who cared for her? Her manager interrupts and insists we “really focus on the music”. But it is hard to separate Lavigne’s illness from her sixth album, Head Above Water, named after a song that came to her as she lay in her mother’s arms, feeling as if she was drowning. It is her best song in years, an emphatic, gothic ballad that is doing well on the US Christian singles chart and has 57m YouTube views. “It just felt really good to be singing,” she says. “The emotion was so raw.” Despite Lavigne’s illness, she says she never doubted her capacity to commit to a whole album. She started writing on guitar in bed, graduating to piano when she felt stronger. Inner strength is the prevailing theme of the eight songs I heard, which often evoke Lana Del Rey’s moody epics. Empowerment anthems like this were everywhere a few years ago, but have been replaced by stark admissions of vulnerability and nihilism. But keeping pace with pop wasn’t Lavigne’s concern. “I didn’t want to do what everyone was doing,” she says, mentioning a need for “organic musical realness” and constructing songs around her vocals “versus building this crazy loud track and just burying a vocal in it”. This is the kind of dry “focus on the music” Lavigne prefers. She keeps saying how “meaningful” the music is, but won’t go deeper. Other songs allude to a toxic relationship. All Lavigne will say is that my assumption is “obviously” correct and that they’re categorically not about her second ex-husband, Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger; they have a “great relationship” (he worked on the album). “I appreciate you trying to really get the juice,” she says mockingly, “but I’m not gonna go there.” I explain that I’m not looking for gossip, but context for her most personal album. “That’s the thing about my music,” she says, exasperated. “I write it and I put it out there, and people can interpret it the way they like.” It is hard to talk about the music when the music apparently speaks for itself. But maybe never showing vulnerability is key to Lavigne’s 17-year pop career. She has heartfelt songs – her debut album’s I’m With You is a fantastic pop-rock ballad, later sampled by Rihanna – but her exterior has swung between feckless (giving the finger on MTV’s era-defining Total Request Live in 2004) and brittle. (She regrets the tearful 2015 television interview announcing her illness.) She is publicly close to both her ex-husbands, Kroeger and Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley, whom she met aged 17, married at 21 and divorced at 25. Pop is built on female resilience, which seems to have come naturally to her. When asked whether sexist and derisory criticism affected her as a teenager, she is unimpressed: “I don’t know what you’re referring to.” The stories she told about Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst trying to sleep with her; the manufactured feud between her and Britney Spears? “Oh, that’s OK,” she says, flippantly. “It’s just because I was superpowerful and they needed gossip to talk about.” Her debut sold more than 6m copies in a year and she toured the world. Did she always feel protected as a teenage girl in a cutthroat industry? “It was a whirlwind, and it was so magical and unbelievable.” The only gruelling parts were the “different time zones and travelling”. What seemed less natural as her career progressed was Lavigne’s actual identity. The driven 15-year-old from smalltown Napanee, Ontario, was discovered singing country songs in a bookshop. A year later, she moved to New York with her older brother after a Canadian label sent footage of her singing karaoke to a producer. Two months after turning 17, she was signed by pop impresario LA Reid. In Lavigne’s telling, Arista thought they had a Sheryl Crow-style country act on their hands, but she wanted to write heavier songs. A compromise was reached: after writing rockier material with one co-writer, she was paired with LA trio the Matrix, who wrote Let Go’s three massive singles, Complicated, Sk8er Boi and I’m With You. Lavigne and Matrix disagree about the level of her input on the album. Reid maintained “whatever gets the job done” diplomacy. The first album was so successful that Lavigne says she only had six months to write 2004’s Under My Skin: “They made me put it out before I was ready.” She and co-writer Butch Walker kept writing until the last minute, producing the bittersweet grunge anthem My Happy Ending. “I called them and I said: ‘Guys, I have the first single.’ They’re like: ‘No, we’re going with Don’t Tell Me.’” Arista led with their choice but Lavigne was right: My Happy Ending peaked higher and sold almost three times as many copies. The brooding Under My Skin reflected the kind of progression that makes sense, especially for a pop star who stressed her autonomy at a time when girls weren’t afforded much of it. Which is why her third album, The Best Damn Thing, seemed so odd. Her first for a new label, RCA, it was a riotous pop record led by the deadpan cheerleader banger Girlfriend, her only US No 1 single to date. Like Gwen Stefani, Lavigne has always been conservative despite her punk image. Her family are devoutly Christian. She once described girls “having sex with a ton of boys” as “a bad thing”, a belief that informed Don’t Tell Me: “Did I not tell you that I’m not like that girl, the one who gives it all away?” By the time she released The Best Damn Thing, the Disney-pushed purity-ring craze dominated pop. But even that couldn’t explain the album’s regressive lyrics: “You left without me and now you’re somewhere out there with a bitch, slut, psycho babe,” she sang on Everything Back But You. On the title track, she moaned about how she hated it when a guy “doesn’t get the door”, “doesn’t get the tab”, “doesn’t understand why a certain time of the month I don’t wanna hold his hand”. In retrospect, it would be a relief to blame the album on its producer and co-writer, Dr Luke, who made his name creating debauched hits for the era’s female icons, and lost favour after former protegee Kesha accused him of abuse. (He denies all claims and is suing for defamation.) But Lavigne enjoyed working with him: “We wrote really great songs together.” These three albums were the only records – until now – where she didn’t have to compromise. “It was the fourth album when the tears started,” she says. “The majority of the time in my career, [RCA] want me to write another Girlfriend. They don’t want the ballads.” It seems especially tragic that on 2011’s otherwise lovelorn Goodbye Lullaby – written following her split from Whibley, although he produced half of it – she had to include What the Hell, a song about snogging a guy’s friends and going “on a million dates” that sounded unfortunately similar to the then ubiquitous Disney pop-rock she had inspired. “It’s difficult to be a woman and to be heard, and people sometimes don’t take you seriously,” she says, finally warming to a subject. “I’m highly intuitive and I’ve always got a very strong gut feeling. I’ve always felt that I’ve known what’s best for me to do and I’ve had to fight different people on this journey over those 17 years: ‘You need to do this and it needs to go Top 40.’ You make those songs cos you have to, but then the stuff that’s the best on record is the album tracks.” It sounds miserable. “I would get some songs the style I really wanted,” she says. “I always loved the pop-rock thing and it’s still who I am. I’m still proud of those songs and I wrote them. It wasn’t like people wrote them and gave it to me. It was like: ‘OK, I get it. You guys want singles that are going in this direction. Fine, I’ll work with you but I’d rather be doing something else.’ You can’t be stubborn and just do everything your own way.” If commercially inclined compromise is one of the secrets of Lavigne’s enduring career, it remains at odds with the delinquent attitude of many of her songs. That was the mood on her 2013 self-titled album, which dwelled on teenage rebellion and contained a J-pop-influenced song about Hello Kitty that many deemed racist on seeing its stereotype-laden video. (She denied the suggestion, citing the Japanese production crew.) Claims of cultural appropriation aside, its lyrics fared little better. Referencing Spin the Bottle and “roll[ing] around in our underwear”, it sounded like a middle-aged pervert’s idea of teenage sleepovers. “The label didn’t tell me what to write, lyrically,” she insists. “I’m young at heart. I’m a free spirit. I’m super-fun. I love to hang out and have fun and dance and skateboard.” She reels off the diverse types of song she can write “in my sleep”: about love, breakups, partying, dancing, rock’n’roll, friendship. “I’m a fucking rock star, bitch!” Perhaps it’s a sign of how effectively Arista marketed Lavigne’s debut that you want to believe there was a frustrated artist in there all along. Two years ago, a conspiracy theory that Lavigne had died and been replaced by a doppelganger went viral. It was absurd, and must have been extremely hurtful for Lavigne to witness people laughing about her hypothetical death when her health was so precarious. Beyond the delight of a well-reasoned crackpot theory, I don’t think people were gloating about her demise, but attempting to make sense of her jarring career: surely these artists weren’t the same person? Musically, maybe Head Above Water is what will finally kill off the teenage immortal. She switched labels, to BMG, whom she said treated her like a “legacy artist”. “That was the first time, other than my first album, that a label really just was like: ‘Take your time and write the music that you want to write.’” It would be easy, after our fairly painful encounter, to want to pin the baffling mid-portion of Lavigne’s career on her alone. But the self-evident results of a label’s overdue trust – a stronger album with real emotional stakes and sophisticated ambitions – should embarrass an industry that prefers its women powerless and pickled in aspic. The album Head Above Water is out on BMG on 15 FebruaryIt is under-fives week at Zambia’s Nyangwena health centre and, outside in the morning sunshine, women are taking turns to weigh their babies. A noisy toddler wriggles as his mum places him into the harness of a set of scales. Measurements are taken and, afterwards, ice lollies handed out to children. Reaching families in the surrounding rural communities is a major challenge for staff at the centre, and, after outreach services were stripped back, things are getting worse. It is one year since devastating cuts to family planning services, imposed by Donald Trump, took effect. Already, Esther Zulu, clinical officer at Nyangwena, worries staff are seeing more young mothers. The number of teenage pregnancies recorded at the centre has doubled, from eight in 2017 to 16 in 2018. Meanwhile, the number of people taking tests for sexually transmitted infections and HIV has slumped. “People will only come if they are not feeling well,” says Zulu. Until November 2017, a project run by Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia (PPAZ) would offer HIV testing in homes, distribute condoms in the community, and give family planning information to teenagers in schools. Such work was halted by the Mexico City policy, or “global gag rule”, signed two years ago by Trump, which blocked US funds to any organisations involved in abortion advice and care overseas. The policy has been imposed by Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan in 1984, but Trump’s measure was more wide-reaching than ever before. Campaigners estimated that 15 times more funding would be affected. Women’s rights groups and health experts warned that progress on family planning, population growth and reproductive rights would be swept away. Rural areas such as Nyangwena, which were once prioritised by US aid, are thought to have been hardest hit. Here in Rufunsa district, and across Chongwe and Livingstone, projects tackling teenage pregnancies and HIV, run by PPAZ, were all cut. The organisation, which is a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, lost almost half of its annual operating budget in 2017, with access to a $3.8m (£3m) fund cut off. More than 70 community members – who, in exchange for a small monthly stipend, provided a range of outreach care – were let go. Seventeen staff members lost their jobs. Salome Sichali, programme office at PPAZ, cried when she told the community. “There were 70-plus people whose lives were shattered, and abruptly.” Community leaders asked how people would be able to access services or condoms, which PPAZ had been making available at collection points in shops and near to bars. Today, the entire district of Rufunsa, home to 68,000 people, receives government packages of up to seven boxes, each containing 144 condoms every month. These are shared between 23 health facilities. Promises that services would be taken over by alternative partners haven’t been kept. Of the 16 sites operated by PPAZ, only three are now running. “Even today people call and ask what is happening. We just say I’m not sure,” says Sichali. The same pattern is seen elsewhere, campaigners warn. “There is this narrative from the US government that when providers they have been partnering with are cut out, other partners can come in and fill that void. That’s just not something we’re seeing,” says Jonathan Ruck, director of advocacy at Population Action International. Sichali fears progress made in parts of Zambia – where teenage pregnancy rates stand at 29% and nearly a third of girls are married before the age of 18 – is at risk of going backwards. In the past, organisations affected by the global gag rule were mostly focused on family planning. Today, services are much more integrated – which means everything from HIV treatment to child and maternal health can be affected by funding cuts. Nyangwena health centre has just two community workers delivering HIV care, and one overseeing tuberculosis cases. For a facility serving 3,270 people over a vast rural area, it isn’t enough. “People will end up dying in the community because we are not following them,” says Brenda Simakuni, who works as a counsellor for Chiyota health post, also in Rufunsa. Already, reports in Rufunsa are gravely concerning. “Last month we lost a boy aged 20,” says Simakuni. “He started taking medication and all of a sudden he just stopped. He told parents that he was tired of taking the drugs.” Health workers had tried to counsel him during follow-up visits, she adds, but he had struggled to accept that he was HIV positive. There aren’t enough resources to do comprehensive follow-ups for all patients. Simakuni is especially worried about the effect that service cuts will have on girls, whose health, safety and education is at stake. She was previously a community counsellor with PPAZ, but is now unpaid. At a local school, where she has taught about family planning, seven of the students in grade nine – where children are as young as 15 – were sitting their end-of-term exams in November while pregnant. Not far from Nyangwena health centre, Juliet Banda, 16, is sitting outside the house where she lives with her grandmothers. Three years ago, she dropped out of school because her family couldn’t afford the fees. She began a relationship with a 22-year-old man who promised he would marry her and pay for her education. When she became pregnant five months later, he disappeared. “I’m supposed to be at school,” she says through a translator, as her 18-month-old baby sleeps indoors. “Science was [my] favourite subject. I was learning a lot about human beings.” Juliet would like to be a nurse, specialising in midwifery. She isn’t working, and depends on the income her grandmothers make through crushing stones. Young women in Zambia are among those most vulnerable to HIV. Entering into “sugar daddy” relationships with older men, who are often the least likely to go to a clinic and get tested, heightens the risk. PPAZ introduced savings groups for young women who could become involved in transactional relationships, though now that services have been cut, some of the groups have become dormant. “The concern is that these young girls could be susceptible to contracting the virus,” says Sichali. “They don’t have access to income generating activities.” Zambian students are taught sex education in schools, which includes age appropriate information about sex and issues such as gender-based violence. Such efforts are hampered, however, by the variability in teaching quality. And while PPAZ previously sent peer educators into schools, this work is now much more sporadic. There are also strict rules preventing children under 16 from accessing condoms without parental consent. Even if children are able to seek their family’s permission to get them, many will only be able to access contraceptives at facilities that could require a three-hour journey on foot. “If you look at the vastness of our areas, the health services are few. These long distances are a challenge,” says Muleya Hateya, adolescent health focal point for Rufunsa district. “Some [areas] will get cut off during rainy season.” Across Rufunsa, changes to the way statistics are collected makes it hard to judge whether or not teen pregnancies are increasing. The number of pregnancies among 19-year-olds are now included and there are greater efforts to report. But the figures are worrying. During the first three-quarters of 2018, 629 teen pregnancies were recorded, compared with 227 during the whole of 2017. While statistics for teenage pregnancies are limited, even less is known about how service cuts may have affected the number of unsafe abortions, which are routinely unreported. The wider impact of the global gag rule will be impossible to measure according to Elizabeth Sully, a senior research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, who is investigating the effect of the funding cut. Where replacement funding is found, it is not known where that money would have been going otherwise in the healthcare system, she says. Nor is it possible to quantify the loss of trust in communities where services have suddenly stopped. “We are in the times of saying no one gets left behind in terms of healthcare,” says Sichali. “We had planned activities and we were monitoring what was working and what wasn’t along the way. We made progress but we needed to finish.”There is a maximum number of times a woman can get annoyed about what a French intellectual thinks about her arse. I thought I’d hit it in the 90s, when Michel Houellebecq did an elaborate, 300-odd page analogy between sexual liberation and free-market capitalism, which concluded that women were destroying men’s dignity. It was a hard-left version of Jordan Peterson that was, if you can possibly imagine such a thing, even more annoying. Yet when the novelist Yann Moix announced this week that 50-year-old women were too old to love – “The body of a 25-year-old woman is extraordinary. The body of a woman of 50 is not extraordinary at all” – I felt that old and delicious indignation. It’s not the talking-about-us-like-we’re-meat. It’s not the generalisation, or the brass neck of a guy who is 50 himself, and about as extraordinary to look at as an upturned shopping trolley in a canal. It’s just dishonest. There is nothing more contemptible than a home truth that isn’t true. Men don’t like younger women because their flesh is firmer but because their opinions are a bit less firm – or at least that’s the hope. Anyone 20 years younger than you tends to assume you’re right about most things. Some men will trade in a lot of shared cultural reference points for a bit of admiration. Likewise, the cliche is that young women date older men because they are richer, whereas nearer the truth is that they seem to know a lot of useful stuff. When I was 21, I went out with a 34-year-old Australian. He seemed impossibly mature; he wore aftershave and drank only Wolf Blass. Still, if I smell Aramis, I believe its wearer on a huge range of things, especially directions. However, during an argument about money, he tore up 250 quid and flushed it down the toilet. After that, I wondered how grown up 34 really was, and started going out with a 40-year-old. Intensely self-aware and embarrassed by the age difference, he spent a lot of time insisting that I shouldn’t take him seriously because he hadn’t changed his mind since he was 25, so we were essentially the same age. He would compare his life choices mournfully with the superior ones made by his friends. “Tony would never go out with a 25-year-old. He wants a woman who can talk about Hawkwind.” “I can talk about Hawkwind! What shall I say?” “It’s not the same.” For a while I was two-timing him with a 50-year-old, so the aggregate age of my sweethearts was 90. And they do know a thing or two, older people. They know what to order, why the washing machine is broken, how to drive, how to peel garlic. But very quickly you get used to what they know, and are often astonished by what they don’t know, and your admiration and credulity gives way to a more peer-to-peer style relationship. Shortly after that, it ends. When you’ve signed up for an admirer, the last thing you want is someone who takes the piss like everyone else and can’t pick Lemmy out of a line-up. It’s hard to admit that you don’t like a challenge, much easier to traduce a 50-year-old’s saggy body. But it’s not on our own account that we, the raddled middle-aged, deride Moix and his bogus body fascism. It’s on behalf of our younger sisters; he thinks they are pushovers, which they ain’t.Donald Trump has pushed back against the nation’s top intelligence officials after they offered international threat assessments to Congress that contrasted sharply with the US president’s own views. On Tuesday the head of US intelligence said that North Korea is “unlikely to give up” its nuclear weapons because its leadership sees them as “critical to regime survival”. Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, made his assessment in a written statement on “worldwide threats” to the Senate, which was noteworthy for the many ways it differed from the rhetoric favoured by the president and his top aides. The gaps were not only evident on North Korea, but also on Iran’s nuclear programme, the continuing threat of the Islamic State in Syria and on the importance of climate change. The distance between the White House and its intelligence agencies was highlighted further in verbal testimony to the Senate intelligence committee by Coats, alongside the heads of the CIA, DIA and NSA who also testified. In a series of early morning posts on Twitter on Wednesday, Trump said Isis “will soon be destroyed,” and that there “decent chance of denuclearization” with Pyongyang. Coats’s assessment on North Korean intentions had particular impact as it comes in the run-up to a planned second summit at the end of February between Trump and Kim Jong-un. Trump has rejected repeated reports that although Pyongyang regime halted nuclear and missile tests since the first summit in Singapore last June it has not paused its production of nuclear weapons and may have stepped it up. ...Time will tell what will happen with North Korea, but at the end of the previous administration, relationship was horrendous and very bad things were about to happen. Now a whole different story. I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un shortly. Progress being made-big difference! In his written testimony, however, Coats said: “We continue to assess that North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear weapons and production capabilities, even as it seeks to negotiate partial denuclearization steps to obtain key US and international concessions.” He said: “North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to regime survival.” Coats pointed out that Kim Jong-un’s pledge in Singapore to pursue the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” – which Trump and Pompeo portrayed as a historic breakthrough – was no more than “a formulation linked to past demands that include an end to US military deployments and exercises involving advanced US capabilities”. That assessment of North Korea was echoed by the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt Gen Robert Ashley. He told the Senate committee: “The capability and threat that existed a year ago are still there.”He is idolised as France’s biggest literary export, a controversial poet-provocateur who holds up a mirror to the grim truths of contemporary France. So when Michel Houellebecq’s long-awaited novel, Serotonin, hit French bookstores on Friday morning with a massive print run of 320,000 copies, translations in several countries, and the author for the first time staying silent and refusing any interviews or media promotion, it was proclaimed a national event. The novel’s release was accompanied by the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest national honour, being bestowed on the 62-year-old enfant terrible for his services to French literature by the president, Emmanuel Macron. Serotonin, the story of a lovesick agricultural engineer who writes trade reports for the French agriculture ministry and loathes the EU, has been hailed by the French media as scathing and visionary. The novel rails against politicians who “do not fight for the interests of their people but are ready to die to defend free trade”. Written before the current  gilets jaunes anti-government movement began blockading roundabouts and tollbooths across France, it features desperate farmers in Normandy who stage an armed blockade of roads amid police clashes. Houellebecq and his despairing, white, middle-aged, male narrators are seen as eery predictors of the national mood. His last novel, Submission, which envisioned a France subjected to sharia law after electing a Muslim president in 2022, was published on 7 January 2015 and featured on the cover of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo just before terrorists stormed the offices of the publication and shot dead 12 people. Platform, his earlier controversial novel about sex tourism and terrorism, came out a year before the Bali bombings of 2002. Serotonin “confirms [Houellebecq’s] status as a visionary and he earns his stripes as a great novelist of the people”, wrote the rightwing paper Le Figaro. The novel follows a typical Houellebecqian anti-hero: lonely, dissatisfied and ranking the sexual talents and bodies of the women he once slept with, as he returns to the Normandy countryside, remembering lost love. The narrator, an agriculture consultant, once worked for the agrochemical conglomerate Monsanto before an unsuccessful stint devising new ways of promoting Normandy cheese. He finds few joys in modern urban life, bar the array of hummus varieties in city-centre supermarkets. In a recent article for Harpers, Houellebecq lauded Donald Trump for his protectionist policies, calling him “one of the best American presidents I’ve ever seen”, and praised Brexit: “The British get on my nerves, but their courage cannot be denied.” Serotonin, which will be published in English in September, viciously criticises free trade. Houellebecq has said he does not vote in elections, only in referendums. As often is the case with Houellebecq, throwaway lines caused offence even before publication, with an MP for Macron’s La République En Marche party complaining that his narrator had called the western town of Niort the “ugliest place in France” and suggesting the novelist should “get out of his Parisian bubble” and explore the town. Indeed, being trapped in a Parisian bubble as a superstar writer is something Houellebecq has lamented. If he once embodied the anonymous, nihilistic man on the drab concrete outskirts, on France’s periphery, he has become such a wealthy figure that he complained at the last presidential election: “I’m part of the globalised elite now.” Houellebecq’s worldwide fame came from his deliberately nihilistic novels depicting men trapped in loveless existences, admiring of casual sex. This seventh novel, in which a narrator looks back in detail at past girlfriends in terms of how they dealt with his penis, caused even some of his greatest admirers, such as the critic Nelly Kaprièlian from the magazine Les Inrocks, to concede: “He’s missed the Me Too movement – that’s obvious.” Kaprièlian told French radio that his “dated” view of women was her only reservation about the new novel. A reference to bestiality and a description of a discovery of child abuse imagery on a suspect’s computer in the novel also irked some critics. Elisabeth Philippe wrote in L’Obs: “That whole aesthetic of the ‘old white male’ is dated, past its sell-by date and clearly no longer brings anything good. ‘What’s the point in trying to save a vanquished old white male?’ the narrator asks. What’s the point, indeed.” Although Houellebecq has shut himself away from the media – he recently left it to his friend Carla Bruni, the singer and supermodel married to the former president Nicolas Sarkozy, to reveal on Instagram his latest marriage – he has not given up on cinema. Houellebecq has often appeared behind and in front of the camera, and has reportedly been filming with the actor Gérard Depardieu, with the two men playing characters at a seaside spa. Meanwhile, Charlie Hebdo magazine, which in 2015 had featured Houellebecq on its cover as a haggard Nostradamus preparing to celebrate Ramadan, published a brief paragraph saying a new Houellebecq novel was about to be released. “We won’t be saying anything bad about it: the last time we did wasn’t a success for us.”On the morning of 20 January 2017, the 938 citizens of Roberts county awoke to a new era. In this flat, rural expanse in northern Texas, routine remained mostly the same. Ranchers tended to their cattle. Children went to school. The oil pump jacks continued to rotate. But 1,540 miles away, on the steps of the capitol building in Washington, DC, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. Though he did not thank the voters here in the Texas panhandle – his shock election victory was mostly down to swinging the vote in communities throughout America’s rust belt – Roberts county had already become synonymous with Trump’s outsider triumph. Here, 95% of voters backed the Republican, the highest margin of any county in America. Broadcast vans from throughout the US arrived shortly after the result, as television crews and international newspapers sought to understand the answer to one question: why? Two years later, residents recall the influx of media outsiders with disdain. “People overgeneralized who we are,” says Lindy Thompson, owner of the Sage Matt cafe, the county’s only diner, on it’s only high street, in Miami, it’s only town. “They assume we’re a bunch of uneducated hillbillies, without actually learning who we are and what our community is about.” Some here, Thompson included, now refuse to discuss politics in any real depth after the onslaught of coverage. In truth, the answer to the question is simple. Roberts county, in the heart of America’s Bible belt, has voted Republican with giant margins for decades. No Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948 has even come close to taking this area, which swung red years before the racist politics of the Southern Strategy secured Republican control of America’s south. But at the midpoint of the Trump presidency, the Texas panhandle goes some way to show the extent of unwavering loyalty that remains among his base. “It’s like a big family here, everybody knows everybody and they’d give each other the shirt off their backs if they needed to,” Thompson, 38, says as she prepares ribeyes for the lunch crowd. “We needed Trump to help us survive.” Tax cuts, deregulation and national security are the core mantras in Miami. And the president is deemed a success on all three. This is an affluent part of the state that has long reaped the rewards of big oil mining in the area. Only 7% of residents live below the poverty line, over 80% of high school graduates go on to further education. The county is 96% white. Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment, a sweeping new federal tax bill that cuts taxes across the board, most for the super wealthy, was cited almost universally as the most important work the president has done since taking office. “I love the tax plan he has,” said the county’s top official Judge Rick Tennant. “Everyone I’ve talked to says they’re making more money now.” Tennant reels off a list of attributes he admires in Trump. “I like that he gets involved in everything [on foreign policy]. That he tells you right out front what he likes, what he doesn’t like,” he says. “But I don’t like everything he’s done. I don’t like him getting on Twitter and all that other stuff.” As the county’s top jurist, perhaps Tennant is referring to the investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia? “No. To me they need to end that deal. What if he was talking to the Russians? You tell me where the United States hasn’t been involved in Russia’s politics, Britain’s politics, I mean they all do the same things. Move on. If there was something really bad, they’d have found it out by now.” The current president has not always been the county’s preferred candidate. In the 2016 Republican primary, senator Ted Cruz beat Trump by 30%. In the 2018 midterm elections, the Texas panhandle rejected an extreme rightwing insurgency that bore similarity to the brand of Republicanism embodied by the Trump presidency with its nods to white nationalism and racist politics. The region voted overwhelmingly to re-elect state senator Kel Seliger, deemed the most centrist Republican in the Texas state senate, against two primary opponents pushing an extremist platform. “This was a very conservative and Republican part of the state while Trump was still a Democrat,” Seliger said. “So did he affect things here? Yeah, he might have increased turnout among Republicans but other than that …” There are signs that Republicans are relying more heavily on this region to maintain a grasp on Texas as a whole. Cruz canvassed in the panhandle twice during his campaign for re-election in November. The region rarely attracts national politicians as the vote is so reliably red, and Cruz’s appearance was seen as testament to how close he came to losing. When you ask people in Roberts county what they expect from the Trump presidency in the next two years the answer is not really about policy but values. “I would love to see people being more accepting of people’s views and thoughts,” says Lindy Thompson. “Just agree to disagree. And that applies to both sides.” “I think term limit would be a great thing,” says Tennant. “You have some politicians in Washington – on both sides – that’s been in there 30-something years. You need new blood in there.” In a move that might appear at odds with the celebrations over Trump’s federal tax cuts, Roberts county voted for a local tax increase in 2014 to fund the construction of a modern school building. Public education is central to the county’s continued prosperity. “If we lose the school, we’d lose the town,” says Tennant. So what do educators make of the administration’s attempts to slash the federal education budget and installing Betsy DeVos, a billionaire Republican donor and ardent supporter of charter schooling, as education secretary? “I didn’t support that particular decision,” says Mark Driscoll, principle of Miami Independent School District, the county’s only school. “But I’ll be honest with you it hasn’t really impacted us.” Driscoll, 56, has never voted for a Democrat in his life, despite acknowledging that “Democrats give you raises, makes sure the schools are funded properly, all that kind of stuff.” “I’m just conservative in my values and views and a lot of the things Mr Trump believes, I agree with.” It is game night at the school’s impressive new basketball court. Celie Locke watches her 14-year-old daughter on the court and cheers with pride. Locke comes from a long line of cattle ranchers in this region and is keen to celebrate significant roll backs of environmental protection regulations that Trump instigated through his first two years. “The country needs to be run as a business not by a politician,” says Locke who backed Trump almost as soon as he announced his candidacy. “The border wall is very important. Being a Texan, we need border security. Why do you allow illegal illegal immigrants in? The word ‘illegal’ should be a red flag.” Trump has suggested he will keep the ongoing federal government shutdown for years if he is not given funds to build what became the banner promise in his campaign (albeit with the kicker that Mexico would pay for it). For Locke, despite the president saying he would “own” the shutdown last year, the blame for stasis in Washington lies squarely with Democrats. “He [Trump] is staying in there and holding on to what he believes,” she says. “They [Democrats] are just holding out because they don’t like Trump. And it’s not what’s best for the country.” And yet, there are signs that the protracted shutdown, which Trump has the power to end, is having an effect on the community here. Dozens of local farmers in both Roberts county and the neighboring Gray county have taken millions of dollars in federal loans for seed and grain over the past 10 years, according to public records. Due to the shutdown, these loans are no longer being processed as crop sowing season fast approaches. Calls to the region’s 10 largest recipients of federal money were either not returned or met with a decline to comment. “They both just need to get their houses in order,” said one farmer who hung up the phone straight after. There is, of course, little to no chance of Roberts county swinging the other way in 2020 – irrespective of how long this shutdown continues. But, that says little about Trump’s prospects at the next election. Locke already had a message for her Democratic opponents in 2020: “We lived through Obama’s administration for eight years and we didn’t like any minute of it. But we survived it. You can survive it for the next [two] years and do it with grace and dignity and common sense. “And then, you know, it’s the turning of the tide.”When the story comes to be told of the complete 2018-19 season, how vital will this game turn out to be? Liverpool have moved five points clear of Manchester City and, for that reason alone, it has been a profitable 48 hours for Jürgen Klopp’s team. Yet there was no getting away from the fact this was a missed opportunity for the Premier League leaders, with the first tell-tale signs of nerves sweeping Anfield and, most alarmingly for Klopp, perhaps getting into the minds of one or two players. This is certainly no time to get stage fright, with 14 games still to go, and it was particularly surprising given Sadio Mané, Liverpool’s most dangerous player, had given them the lead after only three minutes. Leicester were tough, obdurate opponents who refused to be cowed and demonstrated a spirit of togetherness that made it perplexing Claude Puel finds his position questioned so frequently, with four defeats from their previous five games. Liverpool, in turn, seemed to be feeling the pressure in a way that could not be said of them at any other time this season. It was rare, for example, to see Mohamed Salah so ineffective. It was not that Salah played badly, just that he did not get close to his most exhilarating levels. The same applied to the team as a whole and the crowd could not rouse themselves in the way that might have been expected. Overall, it was a strangely subdued night and, though it is important to remember Liverpool extended their advantage at the top, they did not look like a team who want to be regarded as champions-in-waiting. Nor did Manchester City at Newcastle the previous night, which makes it even more intriguing. Liverpool certainly set off as though they had been given a lift by the result at St James’ Park and there were people still taking their seats when Mané exchanged passes with Andy Robertson to conjure up the opening goal with a clever first touch and precise right-footed finish. Not one player in blue had managed a clean touch of the ball before it ended up in Kasper Schmeichel’s net and, in those early exchanges, Liverpool looked like a team in a hurry, keen to get the job done quickly. Instead, Leicester began to grow in confidence – encouraged, perhaps, by the clear suspicion Alisson might be in an unexpectedly obliging mood. The Liverpool goalkeeper’s casualness on the ball endangered his team on two occasions when the score was 1-0 and Klopp, never a manager to hide his emotions, was clearly startled by the manner in which his players were making life unnecessarily hard for themselves. The equaliser was the case in point, with Robertson giving away a needless free-kick to leave his team vulnerable. Klopp’s displeasure was clear on the touchline and, though James Maddison’s delivery was turned away, Leicester had plenty of players forward. Virgil van Dijk, who was marking Harry Maguire, had switched off and lost his man. Ben Chilwell, one of Leicester’s outstanding performers, returned the ball into the area and Maguire had the space and time to stroke his shot beyond Alisson. Liverpool’s crowd had been calling for a red card earlier in the first half when Mané shaped to run behind the Leicester defence only to be brought down by Maguire. The centre-half escaped with a booking, presumably because Robertson’s through ball was at a slight angle away from goal. Liverpool also felt aggrieved in the second half after a penalty appeal for Ricardo Pereira’s challenge on Naby Keïta. Pereira had trodden on Keïta’s left boot, just as he was taking aim with his other foot, but it happened so quickly, with so many players in close proximity, the referee, Martin Atkinson, gave Leicester the benefit of the doubt. Overall, though, the away team fully merited the draw and might even have snatched a win with some of the chances involving Maddison, Demarai Gray and, again, Maguire. The emphasis in the second half was on Liverpool to soothe the crowd’s anxieties. They could not manage it and Puel’s team have already shown this season they can raise their performance against the top sides, beating Chelsea and Manchester City since late-December. At half-time a team of groundsmen were sent on to remove flecks of snow from the penalty area that Liverpool would be attacking. The other side was left as it was , which was a bit sneaky, but understandable, perhaps, when there was so much at stake. Not that it made too much difference and, if anything, it was Leicester with the best opportunity of the second half when they broke on the counterattack and Gray decided to shoot instead of rolling the ball into Maddison’s path to leave his teammate a relatively simple finish. Maddison could also reflect on a golden chance inside the first half when he got his header horribly wrong inside the six-yard area. Liverpool had plenty of the ball but maybe the importance of the occasion restricted their performance – 29 years since their last league title. It ended in frustration and, for Manchester City, a measure of relief.The French author and television presenter who claimed he could not love any woman over the age of 50 has said he has no regrets over his remarks that caused widespread outrage. Yann Moix, 50, who is promoting his latest book, Rompre, said his personal preferences in women were his own business and he was only being honest. “I don’t see this as pride, but almost as a curse. It’s not my fault. We are not responsible for our tastes, our penchants, our inclinations. I’m not here to hold forth on this,” he told RTL radio. Moix, a prize-winning novelist, sparked a furious backlash after a question and answer interview was published in the latest edition of Marie-Claire magazine in which he claimed he was “incapable” of loving women in their 50s because they were “too, too old”. In the radio interview, he suggested it was important to face up to certain truths even if they caused offence. “We’re living in a society where it’s hard to be an individual. We have to always represent the universal citizen … someone who displeases nobody,” he said. He added that while he considered himself a victim of his preferences he did not feel obliged to apologise for “being different”. “Every individual is a prisoner of their tastes. I’m a prisoner of mine. It takes nothing away from a woman of 50 years that I don’t want to sleep with her,” he said. “I’m not responsible for my tastes; I’m trying to be honest. Of course I have a problem, I’m an adolescent, I’m a child and I don’t interest women in their 50s either. They’ve got better things to do than to drag a neurotic around who spends his time yelling and reading and likes doing things that only excite children. It’s not easy to be with me,” he said. Asked whether he thought his comments would affect sales of his book, Moix said: “The system is so perverse that sales are about to rise like an arrow. “I don’t regret saying these things because they concern only me. I love who I want and I don’t have to answer to any good taste police … for me that would be a complete lack of taste.”When populism appears in the media, which it does more and more often now, it is typically presented without explanation, as if everyone can already define it. And everyone can, sort of – at least as long as they’re allowed to simply cite the very developments that populism is supposed to explain: Brexit, Trump, Viktor Orbán’s takeover of Hungary, the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The word evokes the long-simmering resentments of the everyman, brought to a boil by charismatic politicians hawking impossible promises. Often as not, populism sounds like something from a horror film: an alien bacteria that has somehow slipped through democracy’s defences – aided, perhaps, by Steve Bannon or some other wily agent of mass manipulation – and is now poisoning political life, creating new ranks of populist voters among “us”. (Tellingly, most writing about populism presumes an audience unsympathetic to populism.) There is no shortage of prominent voices warning how dangerous populism is, and that we must take immediate steps to fight it. Tony Blair spends his days running the Institute for Global Change (IGC), an organisation founded, per its website, “to push back against the destructive approach of populism”. In its 2018 world report, Human Rights Watch warned democracies of the world against “capitulation” to the “populist challenge”. The rise of “populist movements”, Barack Obama said in a speech last summer, had helped spark a global boom for the “politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment” that pave a path to authoritarianism. “I am not being alarmist. I am just stating facts,” Obama said. When populism is framed this way, the implication is clear. All responsible citizens have a responsibility to do their part in the battle – to know populism when they see it, understand its appeal (but not fall for it), and support politics that stop populism in its tracks, thereby saving democracy as we know it. “By fighting off the current infection,” writes Yascha Mounk, until recently executive director of Blair’s IGC and a prominent anti-populist writer, “we might just build up the necessary antibodies to remain immune against new bouts of the populist disease for decades to come.” But as breathless op-eds and thinktank reports about the populist menace keep piling up, they have provoked a sceptical backlash from critics who wonder aloud if populism even exists. It is now relatively common to encounter the idea that, just as there were no real witches in Salem, there are no real populists in politics – just people, attitudes and movements that the political centre misunderstands and fears, and wants you, reader, to fear too, although without the burden of having to explain exactly why. Populism, in this framing, is a bogeyman: a nonentity invoked for the purpose of stirring up fear. This argument has even made its way to the centrist mainstream. “Let’s do away with the word ‘populist,’” wrote the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen in July. “It’s become sloppy to the point of meaninglessness, an overused epithet for multiple manifestations of political anger. Worse, it’s freighted with contempt, applied to all voters who have decided that mainstream political parties have done nothing for their static incomes or disappearing jobs or sense of national decline these past two decades.” It is hard to deny that much talk of populism obscures more than it illuminates, and tells us more about anti-populist crusaders than any real live populist parties or voters. But long before populism became an object of transatlantic media fascination – before it became a zeitgeisty one-word explanation for everything – a small group of academics was studying it, trying to figure out exactly what it is and what lessons it holds for democratic politics. The debate they have produced is, like many academic debates, knotty and self-referential – and will always live in the shadow of the muddled media and political discourse. But it helps us see that the idea of populism is something more than just a centrist fairytale. Thanks in large part to the persistent failure of governments across the west to enact anything resembling a credible vision of shared prosperity and security in the post-manufacturing era, we are now living through a time when familiar webs connecting citizens, ideologies and political parties are, if not falling apart, at least beginning to loosen and shift. As a result, the question of populism is not going away. The coming years are likely to include all of the following: more movements being labelled as populist, more movements calling themselves populist, more movements defensively insisting that they are not populist, and more conversations about the extent to which populism represents the problem or the solution. The academic debate on populism shows us that making sense of this landscape requires more than just a usable definition of the P-word. In short, it shows us that we can’t really talk about populism without talking about our conflicting conceptions of democracy – and the question of what it truly means for citizens to be sovereign. It may be telling that very little of the public discussion of the alleged populist threat to democracy has been devoted to the workings of democracy itself. Perhaps we assume, without much thought, that democracy is such a self-explanatory idea that we already know all there is to know about the subject. Or perhaps we have come to regard democracy in its existing western form – basically liberal democracy – as the only possible endpoint for the evolution of politics. Populism, though it comes in many forms, always reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth. In 2004 a young Dutch political scientist named Cas Mudde published The Populist Zeitgeist, a paper that proposed a new and concise definition of populism – one that would become the backbone of academic populism studies, a field that hardly existed at the time. Mudde was convinced that populism was a useful concept, which meant something more specific than “democracy, but practised in a way that I find distasteful”. He was especially keen to challenge two common intuitions about populism: that it is uniquely defined by “highly emotional and simplistic” rhetoric, and that it primarily consists of “opportunistic policies” that aim to “buy” the support of voters. Populism, Mudde argued, is more than just demagogy or opportunism. But it is not a fully formed political ideology like socialism or liberalism – it is instead a “thin” ideology, made up of just a few core beliefs. First: the most important division in society is an antagonistic one between “the people”, understood to be fundamentally good, and “the elite”, understood to be fundamentally corrupt and out of touch with everyday life. Second: all populists believe that politics should be an expression of the “general will” – a set of desires presumed to be shared as common sense by all “ordinary people”. (Implicit in this belief is another: that such a thing as this “general will” exists.) A populist movement, then, is one that consistently promises to channel the unified will of the people, and by doing so undercut the self-serving schemes of the elite establishment. As the National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen put it in 2007: “I will give voice to the people. Because in democracy only the people can be right, and none can be right against them.” (Note how, in this formulation, there is no disagreement among “the people”.) Or, in the more recent words of Donald Trump, speaking at his inauguration: “We are transferring power from Washington DC and giving it back to you, the people … The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.” (Note how members of “the establishment” are implicitly excluded from “the citizens”.) For decades, attempts at clear-headed conversations about populism had been stymied by the question of how it could be attributed to parties and politicians that were so obviously different: how can Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, for example, both be called populist? In what way are Occupy Wall Street and Brexit both possible examples of populist phenomena? Mudde’s simple definition caught on because it has no trouble answering this type of question. If populism is truly ideologically “thin”, then it has to attach itself to a more substantial host ideology in order to survive. But this ideology can lie anywhere along the left-right spectrum. Because, in Mudde’s definition, populism is always piggybacking on other ideologies, the wide variety of populisms isn’t a problem. It’s exactly what you would expect. “The people” and “the elite”, Mudde wrote, are groupings with no static definition from one populist movement to another. These categories are, first and foremost, moral: people good, elites bad. The question of exactly who belongs in which group, though, depends on the character of the populist movement, and which “thick” ideology the populism ends up attached to. A populist “people” can define itself by an ethnic identity it feels is under threat, but just as easily by a shared sense of being victims of economic exploitation. What matters is that it blames a perceived class of corrupt elites; in the case of rightwing populisms, it may also heap scorn on some underclass, whether immigrants or racial minorities, whom the elites are accused of favouring with special treatment as part of their plot to keep power away from “real people”. When The Populist Zeitgeist was published, populism wasn’t a hot topic: in all of 2005, Mudde’s paper was cited only nine times. But as the field of populism studies has ballooned alongside mainstream interest in the subject, the paper has become widely recognised as a classic. By a wide margin, Mudde is now the populism scholar most likely to be cited or interviewed by journalists – as often as not, for articles in which his definition intermingles with the same old sloppy generalisations he set out to overturn. Today, no academic disputes the dominance of Mudde’s definition, especially among the growing number of scholars hoping to be part of the conversation about populism as a global phenomenon. One major factor in its success, in fact, is the way that it anticipated events in world politics. The market crashes of 2008 led to the emergence of anti-austerity movements – such as Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and Occupy worldwide – motivated by rage at financial institutions and the small class of people who benefited from their profits. These movements were obviously animated by a sense of opposition between “the people” and “the elite” – but old theories of populism that defined it specifically as rightwing, racist or anti-immigrant were insufficiently capacious to describe these new developments in populist politics. The thin-ideology definition is also extremely congenial to the landscape of contemporary academic political science, which places a considerable premium on broad frameworks that enable young scholars to do empirical, quantitative work. Many new scholars of populism no longer feel the need to argue over definitions. Instead, they perform textual analyses designed to detect how often populism’s core ideas, as laid out in Mudde’s 2004 article, pop up in party platforms, political speeches, manifestos and tweets. Or they administer surveys designed to track the prevalence of the core tenets of populism in different populations, searching for profiles of archetypal populist voters. Every time another paper relying on the ideological framework is published, it becomes a little more entrenched – a matter of some frustration to the minority of academics who still think it misses the point. The rise of the thin-ideology definition, and its increasing influence in the still-ballooning public conversation about populism, has consistently provoked the objections of a small but persistent camp of dissenters within populism studies. These academics think defining populism in terms of core beliefs is a deep methodological error: many of them also think defining populism as an ideology runs the risk of making effective and worthwhile political strategies seem irresponsible, even dangerous. These academics are likely to stress the extent to which mainstream political parties in the US and Europe have converged in recent decades, narrowing the range of opinions that find real purchase in national decision-making. They take as a given that this has swelled the ranks of people who feel that what gets called democracy responds to their concerns much less than it caters to the whims of a small, wealthy, self-dealing class of elites – elites who vigorously deny their own complicity in this state of affairs, often by insisting that there is no alternative. As you might expect, these scholars tend to be most interested in challenges to the status quo that come from the left – from “the 99%” of Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders campaign, to the “many not the few” of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party – and foreground an insistence that politics is not yet serving the correct constituency. They are also instinctively alert to the possibility that the self-preserving centre will try to defang outsider challenges by making anyone who endorses them appear unreasonable, frightening and constitutionally unequipped for the sober task of governance. This makes them suspicious of any suggestion that there is an identifiable ideology called populism that has fundamental similarities no matter where on the political spectrum it appears. For this crowd, talk of an essence of populism – however thin – shades too easily into a charge of guilt by association, which inevitably has the effect of saddling leftwing populist movements (or even populist-looking movements) with the baggage of their xenophobic and racist rightwing counterparts. More specifically, they are likely to worry that the emphasis on exaggerated moralism as a defining feature of populism makes it too easy to depict legitimate opposition to elite power as irrational mobs. Most objections to the thin-ideology definition owe a substantial debt to a duo of leftist political theorists: Chantal Mouffe, a Belgian who teaches at the University of Westminster, and her late husband, the Argentine Ernesto Laclau. Both thinkers have directly informed the new European left populist movements, including Syriza, Podemos and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise. Mouffe and Laclau’s writings on Marxism and populism – some of which they produced together, and some separately – are famously dense and sometimes resistant to summary. But at their core is the idea that conflict is an inescapable and defining feature of political life. In other words, the realm of politics is one where antagonism is natural and unavoidable, in which consensus cannot ever be permanent, and there is always a “we” and a “they”. “Political questions are not mere technical issues to be solved by experts,” Mouffe insists. “Properly political questions always involve decisions which require us to make a choice between conflicting alternatives.” This emphasis on conflict produces a vision of democratic life that looks more radical than typical mainstream accounts of liberal democracy – but, Laclau and Mouffe would argue, one that more accurately describes the actual logic of politics. In this view, any existing socio-political order (or “hegemony” in Mouffe and Laclau’s preferred formation, borrowed from the Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci) is subject to challenge. Every status quo – however sturdy – is only temporary, and can always be challenged by a movement that seeks to replace it with something new. Political change, in other words, is the result of demands against the existing order, which must be fused together in a movement to change it – a movement that may look a lot like populism. When my demands and your demands and our neighbours’ demands are brought together in such a movement, they can become the basis for a new political “we”: a “people” insisting that the current arrangement of power be altered in their name. To the extent that such a movement succeeds, it creates a new hegemony – a new baseline – which itself becomes open to challenge over time. From this perspective, populism is just another word for real politics: for people (“us”) creating together, live on the ground, a sense of how our dissatisfactions relate, who is to blame (“them”), and how to force a change. But those who benefit from the status quo don’t want it to change; to this end, they might champion toothless approaches to collective decision-making: bipartisan consensus as an end in itself; the elevation of “rational” experts over hot-headed partisans; “Third Way” centrism that shuns ideological conflict in favour of “what works” or mediation by liberal institutions. These approaches (Mouffe calls them “non-politics”) may for a time become dominant, as they did in the Anglo-American 1990s and early 2000s. But nothing lasts for ever, especially when the number of people who feel politicians are making their lives more precarious is rising. And then politics – real politics, which is to say populist politics – make a return. According to Mouffe and Laclau, the only inherent connection between rightwing and leftwing populist movements is that both embrace the same fundamental truth about democracy: that it is an ever-shifting contest over how the default “we” of politics is defined and redefined, in which no one definition can be guaranteed to last. The goal, they argue, should not be placid consensus but “agonistic pluralism”: a state in which opposition and disagreement are accepted as the norm, and in which people maintain the capacity to disagree intensely without demonising each other, or descending into war. Mouffe, in particular, has in recent years argued that the political question of the immediate future is not how to fight populism, but rather which type of populist you want to be. It’s about who you’re with (who belongs in your “chain of equivalence”), who you’re against (who is causing the problem, and how), and where to take your stand. Populism isn’t the problem: instead, leftwing populism is the solution. Not all the academics who take inspiration from Mouffe and Laclau go quite this far, especially in the sober pages of peer-reviewed political science journals. But their work is palpably motivated by a sense that the real threat of “populism” is that our panic over the word will foreclose the possibility of new kinds of politics and new challenges to the status quo – and that fear of populism on the left could enable the victory of populism of the right. These scholars’ preference is for definitions in which it has no ideological essence – not even the “thin” one posited by Cas Mudde. For them, even though the thin definition readily recognises populism’s ideological portability, it is still irrevocably tainted by pejorative overtones that push participants in debates about populism to take a position “for” or “against” all populisms. With no internal essence, populism is harder to categorise as inherently good or bad. Paris Aslanidis, a Yale political scientist, calls populism a “discourse” – a mode of talking about politics, rather than a set of beliefs – one that frames politics in terms of the “supremacy of popular sovereignty”. Benjamin Moffitt, a senior lecturer in politics at the Australian Catholic University, refers to populism as a “political style”, the presence of which “tells us very little about the substantive democratic content of any political project”. Under definitions of this type, the central question is not whether a given political actor or group is or isn’t populist. It is instead whether, from moment to moment, they are “doing populism”, and how, and with what impact. Of course, these disputes aren’t really about the difference between a “thin ideology” and a “discourse.” They are about whether “populist” is always an insult, and if the project of defining populism can ever be disentangled from the concept’s pejorative baggage. Ultimately, they are disputes about which types of politics make us suspicious, and why. The current discussion of populism in the west is strongly coloured by the populist far-right parties that emerged in Europe in the late 1980s and early 90s, such as the Austrian Freedom party, the Danish People’s party and the French National Front. What most people knew about these parties, at first, was that they were openly nativist and racist. They talked about “real” citizens of their countries, and fixated on the issue of national and ethnic “purity,” demonising immigrants and minorities. Many of their party leaders flirted winkingly with antisemitism, and their electoral victories coincided with a resurgence of extreme right-wing violence in Europe, such as the 1991 attack on immigrant workers and asylum seekers in the east German town of Hoyerswerda. When journalists and politicians started calling these parties and their supporters populist, the term was an expression of alarm at a problem and, simultaneously, a euphemism that made it possible to gloss over that problem’s exact qualities. This was especially useful for journalists who feared being viewed as anything less than politically neutral. Populist was obviously not a compliment, but it sounded less alarming than “extreme right” or “radical right”. What the term seemed to communicate more than anything else was backwardness: a juvenile incapacity to bring your preferences to the political arena and engage in the complex give-and-take of rational compromise. The populist combination of immaturity, emotional resentment and intolerance was widely held to constitute a threat to postwar European democracy. In one respect, the thin-ideology definition popularised by Cas Mudde dismantled this view of things, freeing populism from its exclusively far-right connotations, and cautioning against the conflation of populism with the other -isms it was often paired to. Mudde and many other scholars who use the ideological definition have in fact repeatedly argued that neither Trump nor Brexit should be regarded primarily as populist phenomena. Of course both Trump and Brexiters used ample populist rhetoric; but in both cases, they argue, the majority of support was motivated not by passion for populism’s core ideas, but by other ideological factors. After the Cambridge Dictionary declared populism 2017’s “word of the year”, Mudde wrote a Guardian column criticising the decision. (“It has become the buzzword of the year,” he noted acidly, “mostly because it is very often poorly defined and wrongly used.”) For the radical-right parties whose electoral campaigns in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Austria raised alarms across Europe, “populism comes secondary to nativism, and within contemporary European and US politics, populism functions at best as a fuzzy blanket to camouflage the nastier nativism”, Mudde concluded. And yet, despite these caveats, the thin definition nonetheless positions populism as always posing at least something of a majoritarian threat to liberal democracy. It is this judgment, more than any other, that keeps the fight going between scholars who adopt the ideological definition, on one hand, and their Mouffe- and Laclau-inspired critics, on the other. Liberal democracy, in this context, has almost nothing to do with contemporary distinctions between left and right. It refers, instead, to the idea that government should facilitate pluralistic coexistence by balancing the never fully attainable ideal of popular sovereignty with institutions that enshrine the rule of law and civil rights, which cannot easily be overturned by a political majority. (In this regard, as Mudde writes in his original paper, liberal democracy is “therefore only partly democratic”.) Today, liberal democracy is what most people mean when they talk about democracy – and therefore, to be deemed a threat to liberal democracy is, in the context of most political discussions, a devastatingly negative judgment. Because populism, as described by the ideological definition, involves a moralised conception of an absolutely sovereign “people” – whose verdicts are regarded as practically unanimous – it is inevitable that populist movements will come into conflict with the liberal aspects of liberal democracy. If all “real” people think the same way about the things that matter most in politics, then the idea of institutional protections for a dissenting minority are are at best superfluous and at worst nefarious. For the populists, they are just another wall that the corrupt elite has built to keep real power away from the people. The same is true for the independence of judges or regulators, or checks and balances between branches of government – especially when they appear to stymie the plans of a populist leader. In this account, the most basic elements of liberal democracy become both kindling and fuel for the populist fire. No one who studies populism seriously – and not even the most opportunistic participants in the cottage industry of anti-populist alarmism – denies that populist movements can raise valid critiques of the status quo, and of the very real anti-democratic power of elites. Many take a viewpoint similar to that of the Mexican political theorist Benjamin Arditi, who described populism as a drunken guest at democracy’s dinner party, one who disrespects the rules of sociability and, along the way, brings up the failure and hypocrisies that everyone else in the room has agreed to ignore. In Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Mudde and his frequent co-author, the Chilean political scientist Cristóbal Kaltwasser, describe contemporary populism as an “illiberal democratic response to an undemocratic liberalism” – one that “asks the right questions but provides the wrong answers”. Reading critics from the left, however, one often gets the sense that for them this adds up to so much lipstick on a pig: a sprinkling of nuance and restraint that still leaves populism, no matter its ideological stripe, with an undeserved taint of inherent danger. The unhappiness of these critics is magnified by the fact that populism rarely appears in mainstream discussion as anything but an insult – often in the mouth of pundits and politicians who regard the left and the right as an equal threat. The fear in these circles is that saying anything negative about “populism” – however qualified and analytical – simply hands more ammunition to the very people who helped make politics such a hollow, undemocratic mess in the first place. Positioning any populism as fundamentally antithetical to liberal democracy, in this view, simply reinforces the association between populism and mob psychology, and stokes fears that individual rights will always be trampled by group identities. Some scholars in this camp now argue that we should be talking less about populism and more about the centrist “anti-populism” that fears and demonises it. “Just as the adulterous spouse is always the one most suspicious of their own partner,” wrote the Italian sociologist Marco d’Eramo in New Left Review in 2013, “so those who eviscerate democracy are the most inclined to see threats to it everywhere. Hence all the to-do about populism betrays a sense of uneasiness, smacks of overkill.” For each side in this debate, the obvious temptation is to simply dismiss the other – or to insist that what the other side calls “populism” isn’t really populism at all, but just something populist-ish. But to conclude that the two camps are simply talking past each other would be to miss the extent to which they are in agreement –and what, taken together, they tell us about the current political moment. In 1967, when political theorists from around the world gathered at the London School of Economics for the first ever academic conference on populism, they had a hard time figuring out exactly what they were supposed to be talking about. The word came from the “prairie populists”, an 1890s movement of US farmers who supported more robust regulation of capitalism. But in the intervening decades it had been used for a wide and varied grab bag of phenomena from around the world, from McCarthyite anti-communist witch-hunts in the US to charismatic Latin American leaders. In the end, the conference proceedings failed to clarify the matter at hand. “There can at present be no doubt about the importance of populism,” read a summary report. “But no one is clear what it is.” Over half a century later, there has been some progress. Populism, specialists now agree, is an ideologically portable way of looking at politics as a forum for opposition between “people” and “elites”. This definition creates more questions: is the conceptual “people” of populism inherently defined in a way that spells danger to pluralistic coexistence? Or, less menacingly, is the idea of “the people” a necessary but always malleable concept – simply part of what it means to do politics? But populism, whatever it is, is not a chemical: no scientist will ever come along and reveal its exact, objective composition. Populism is a lens for looking at our politics, including – down a long hall of mirrors – the politics of what gets called populist, and with what implications. The questions of populism would have little urgency were it not for the widespread agreement about the shortcomings of the political status quo: about the abyss between the shining ideals of equality and responsive government implied by our talk about democracy and the tarnished reality of life on the ground. The notion that “the people” are being poorly served by politics has vast resonance across the political spectrum, and for good reason. But what is the remedy? Among the proponents of the ideological definition, some decline to provide an answer, claiming that they are looking only to define and measure populism, not take a stance on it. Others admit that, in the case of populism, the options for producing a description without forming a judgment are basically nonexistent. The order of the day, in their view, is to convince citizens to recommit to liberal democracy and its institutions. There is, however, widespread recognition in this camp – more than they are credited with by their critics on the left – that it will no longer suffice to insist that there is no acceptable alternative to existing liberal democracy. Writing in the Guardian in 2017, Mudde argued that responding to populism required more than “purely anti-populist campaigns”; it would take, he claimed, “a return to ideological politics”. Even liberals who want some issues to be “depoliticised” – to be removed from the realm of democracy and handed over to experts – will have to, at a minimum, remake the case for those decisions. Nothing can stay depoliticised for ever; that’s politics. If you squint just a little, this looks more than a bit like what you would expect from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, with their insistence that there is no space “beyond left and right” and no way to put political decisions – decisions about our collective fate – outside the reach of politics. Arguably, you might say that the defenders of liberal democracy are being suddenly reacquainted with the need to construct a democratic “we” – a people – around their demand to protect liberal institutions and procedures, in opposition to radical rightwing parties who are happy to see them discarded. The corresponding challenge for anyone further on the left is to figure out the relationship between their long-term goals and the ideals of liberal democracy. There have always been critics for whom liberal democracy is sham democracy: a nice-sounding set of universal principles that, in practice, end up functioning as smokescreens that normalise the exploitations and inequities of capitalism. Other theorists, Mouffe included, view something like the European social democracy of the 60s and 70s as the precondition for whatever comes next – for “radical democracy” that forces liberal democracy to make good on its promises of equality. But even Mouffe is no longer optimistic about our ability to revive our democratic prospects. Two years ago she wrote: “In 1985 we said ‘we need to radicalise democracy’; now we first need to restore democracy, so we can then radicalise it; the task is far more difficult.” What that task will look like on the ground is an open question. The media framing of populism almost always sounds like a discussion about the margins: about forces from outside “normal” or “rational” politics threatening to throw off the balance of the status quo. But the scholarly discourse makes clear that this is backward: that populism is inherent to democracy, and especially to democracy as we know it in the contemporary west. It finds life in the cracks – or more lately, the chasms – between democracy’s promises and the impossibility of their full, permanent realisation. The question of populism, then, is always the question of what kind of democracy we want, and the fact that we will never stop arguing about this. Anxiety about populism can be a smokescreen for people who don’t want the world as they know it to be disturbed. But it also flows from the core insight that we can never know exactly where democracy is going to take us – not this time, nor the next, nor the time after that. • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.Jürgen Klopp believes Liverpool’s high profile has fuelled accusations of diving against Mohamed Salah and the Egypt international knows not to resort to theatrics to win penalties. Salah was roundly criticised for diving against Crystal Palace in Liverpool’s last Premier League outing and also accused of going to ground too easily for recent penalties against Newcastle United and Arsenal. Klopp admits the Palace incident should have been avoided, with Salah falling under minimal pressure from Mamadou Sakho, but the Liverpool manager insists every penalty awarded for the striker this season has been legitimate. Criticism of Salah is exaggerated by Liverpool’s stature, Klopp alleged. Asked whether he needed to speak with Salah over the Palace controversy, Klopp replied: “He knows that. If this is the first situation where he went down without [a penalty] and you speak about all the other situations as well when the other situations there is nothing to talk about – it is a penalty, done. If this is the first then why do we talk about? “Did anyone talk to Jamie Vardy when, I forget the opponent [Southampton], everybody saw. You remember the situation? That was a proper – he jumped in. Is Jamie a bad person because of that? I don’t say now he is a diver. That is another situation. “You have them [Sakho] in the back, you are there, you feel something, do you have to go down? Probably not. I don’t have to speak to players about obvious things. He knows that. Don’t go down in situations like that. But there are other situations, much more obvious situations, that we don’t talk about and nobody is talking about because it’s not City, it’s not United, it’s not Liverpool, it’s not Arsenal or it’s not Chelsea. All the others can do it from time to time and nobody really talks about it. It’s all fine. “All the penalties against him [Salah] were penalties but people handle it like it was halfway diving – it was not. We don’t need blood for a foul in football. That’s all I will say about it. No, I didn’t speak to him about it.” Liverpool will host Leicester and Vardy on Wednesday without a recognised right‑back available in the squad. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez remain out of action through injury and James Milner is suspended because of his dismissal in the 4-3 victory against Palace. Rafa Camacho, the 18-year-old winger, is in line to make his first Premier League start although Fabinho is hoping to return from a hamstring injury and could play at full‑back. Virgil van Dijk is expected to start despite missing several days’ training through illness while Dejan Lovren has also recovered from a hamstring strain.The head of Libya’s national oil company has said he wants to set up a national force armed with surveillance to protect the country’s petroleum assets after repeated seizures of oil installations by militias. Mustafa Sanalla, the chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC), said the force would require an annual budget of $10m (£7.6m) and be under the control of the UN-recognised government. But the force could include members of the Libyan National Army (LNA) headed by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the dominant figure in Libya’s east, he added. Sanalla was speaking to the Guardian as a militia continued to occupy the country’s biggest oilfield, El Sharara, in the impoverished south. The army has attempted to capture the site. “They [the militia] are criminals, demanding ransom from the government, and there will be no compromise with people that kidnap our staff,” said Sanalla. He said his plan for a national, non-tribal, oil installation protection force should start with a pilot project in El Sharara once it was secured. The force, would exclude anyone involved in previous attacks on oil installations, he continued. “It would rely on radars, cameras drones and fast satellite communications.” Sand barriers and tunnels would also be set up to protect the oil sites. Sanalla expressed his doubts about Haftar’s intervention in the south. The crisis in El Sharara, he said, had been complicated “by the launch of an international counter-terrorism mission, which has expanded into an attempt to seize control of territory, including potentially, national oil infrastructure”. He added: “It is my concern that a sequence of events has been set in motion with unknowable consequences for Libya and the National Oil Corporation. The south does not need a military solution to what is effectively a humanitarian problem.” Libya’s fractured and often corrupt politics often undermine Sanalla’s goal of defending the NOC’s independence and increasing Libyan oil production. Production reached 1.1bn barrels per day in 2018. Sanalla said 2bn a day could be reached by 2021-2 but that he had yet to reach approval for an NOC budget from the central bank, a delay that frustrates him. He called for a new generation of younger Libyan politicians to advance fresh ideas, urged foreign powers to abandon “rushed unsustainable” solutions, and accused France and Italy of sparring over Libya’s future for internal European political reasons rather than the good of the country. Sanalla said as a Libyan, rather than head of the NOC, he hoped a national reconciliation conference being organised by the UN special envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salamé, would not just focus on elections, but an integrated plans to help the economy. Without economic reform, the result would be “a democracy that will only last one round of elections”, Sanalla said. El Sharara has been closed since December when it was seized by the members of the Maghawir Brigade, a Gaddafi-era armed unit. Sanalla set the closure of the oilfield in the context of the deprivation of Libya’s south. “The east of the country has long claimed that the west does not fairly distribute oil wealth,” he said. “Yet the real gulf in living standards and development indicators is not between east and west, but between north and south. “In the north, petrol is available at the state subsidised price of 0.15 dinars a litre. By the time a series of smugglers have added their surcharge it can cost as much as 1.5 dinars in the south. The price of basic goods is the highest in Libya; there is a serious lack of economic opportunity; human development indicators are the worst in the country.” If the government in Tripoli “is not able to enforce subsidies for fuel and other essential commodities”, he said, “then it is time for us to roll back subsidies completely – giving that money directly to citizens instead, not to smugglers who are a plague on the social fabric of the country”.The heads arrive on a plate, John the Baptist-style, hot and crispy with a hint of grease. There are 10 of them, each covered in corn starch and deep fried, and stacked up in a sort of pyre. On the side, salt and sesame seeds for dipping and, if you are drinking, a beer. From a distance, they could be spiders in rigor mortis. Or facehuggers from Alien. The chef who brought the plate picks up a head. “I mean, they’re disgusting, really, that’s what they are,” he says, and with that he walks the thing across the plate to show me how “bottom feeders” eat. If you can ignore the optics, they taste a lot better than they look. Less a delicacy and more a byproduct at Koya City, in London – the brilliant Japanese fast food restaurant known for its udon noodles – the heads are offcuts, the bit you would normally chuck. But since Koya goes through hundreds of prawns every day, it made sense to save them, remove the juices – the sweet, flavoursome brainy bit that the Spanish sometimes suck out – deep fry them at 180C (356F) and turn them into an elevated bar snack. They used to be served off menu, but they could only remain there for so long. They are now served in the evenings only, with beer, and sell out pretty quickly. At £6.90, they work out at 70p per head. Nose to tail – or head to tail, whatever you call it – is a happy side-effect of a blustering economy and a vogue for turning the edible into the agreeable, for showing respect to the animals we eat by not wasting any of their parts. And while these taste great, it is really about the texture, about snapping the legs like twigs, about almost cutting your mouth because they are sharp. It is macho eating, but delicately done. Frying has a knack for rendering dull things great and, in this case, it is the corn starch that creates the crunch, says the head chef, Shuko Oda. Even as they cool down, they retain a bite, which means they are ideal as a snack with your Kirin beer at your local izakaya. The menu at Koya barrels through various parts of the prawn’s anatomy, but to keep things in the family, I order some prawn tempura. The prawns you find in tempura are misleadingly large. In fact, each of them is 20cm (8in) long, but dismembered, with the tendons cut and the cord severed, otherwise they’ll curl up when they cook. Oda thinks there is a high chance I am eating the body of one of the heads. I have tried some unusual bodies in my time: chicken feet, a scorpion flash fried and served in soy sauce, ants cooked three ways. Prawn heads are still a bit of a gimmick, but when they are cooked like this, you wonder why they are not the norm.Brandon Truaxe, the founder and former CEO of cosmetic skincare company Deciem, which is behind the cult brand The Ordinary, has died at 40. The cause of death has not yet been released. Truaxe was best known for setting up Canada-based skincare brand The Ordinary, which sells “luxury” products at affordable prices and has been endorsed by celebrities including Kim Kardashian West. “Brandon, our founder and friend. You touched our hearts, inspired our minds and made us believe that anything is possible,” Deciem said in a post on Instagram. “Whilst we can’t imagine a world without you, we promise to take care of each other and will work hard to continue your vision. May you finally be at peace.” Deciem’s acting CEO Nicola Kilner confirmed the death in an email to staff, according to Vox, saying Truaxe died over the weekend: “Heartbroken doesn’t come close to how I, and how I know many of you will be feeling. All offices, warehouses, factories and stores please close today and take the time to cry with sadness, smile at the good times we had, reflect on what his genius built and hug your loved ones that little harder.” Kilner added, “We are all in disbelief and shock.” Brandon, our founder and friend. You touched our hearts, inspired our minds and made us believe that anything is possible. Thank you for every laugh, every learning and every moment of your genius. Whilst we can’t imagine a world without you, we promise to take care of each other and will work hard to continue your vision. May you finally be at peace. Love, (forever) your DECIEM ❤ A post shared by  THE ABNORMAL BEAUTY COMPANY (@deciem) on Jan 21, 2019 at 12:44pm PST His death comes not long after he was removed from his role at the company after months of erratic online behaviour. Truaxe made headlines last year for his bizarre behavior on social media. In a video he posted in October, he said he was shutting down operations until further notice. “Please take me seriously,” he said at the time. “Almost everyone at Deciem has been involved in a major criminal activity, which includes financial crimes and much other. You have no idea what a soldier I have been for 13 years.” He also tagged Deciem investor Estée Lauder Companies Inc in the post, forcing the company to release a statement distancing itself Truaxe and his brand. He was removed from his role shortly later and Estée Lauder sued him. Truaxe created Deciem, known as “the Abnormal Beauty Company”, in 2013, growing the business to more than 10 beauty brands. The Ordinary launched in 2016 and became known for stripping back unnecessary scent and packaging, and marketing “clinical formulations with integrity” – active ingredients like retinol, vitamin C and hyaluronic acid. The products are typically less than $10. A spokesperson for Estée Lauder said in a statement, “Brandon Truaxe was a true genius, and we are incredibly saddened by the news of his passing. As the visionary behind Deciem, he positively impacted millions of people around the world with his creativity, brilliance and innovation.” Deciem did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Fifa has urged Thailand’s government to immediately release the Bahraini footballer Hakeem al-Araibi, who has been held in a Bangkok prison for nearly two months and fears he will be tortured and possibly killed if he is sent back to his home country. In a letter to Prayut Chan-o-cha, the prime minister of Thailand, Fifa warns that Araibi is “at serious risk of mistreatment in his home country”. It also stresses that Araibi should not have been arrested in Thailand while on his honeymoon because he was granted political asylum by Australia in 2017 after being tortured in Bahrain. “Mr Al-Araibi is currently being detained in prison in Thailand awaiting the outcome of extradition proceedings to Bahrain,” Fifa’s general secretary, Fatma Samoura says in the letter. “This situation should not have arisen, in particular, since Al-Arabi now lives, works and plays as a professional footballer in Australia, where he has been accorded refugee status. “When according refugee status to Mr Al-Araibi, the Australian authorities concluded that he is at serious risk of mistreatment in his home country,” she adds. “Fifa is therefore respectively urging Thailand to take the necessary steps to ensure Mr Al-Araibi is allowed to return safely to Australia at the earliest possible moment.” Fifa has also asked the Thais for a meeting with senior figures in its government and the players’ union Fifpro so the case can be resolved “in a humane manor”. In an interview with the Guardian from Bangkok Remand prison, Araibi said he was “terrified” and “losing hope” after being imprisoned since late November. “How can they keep me locked up like this?” he added. “Please help me, please. In Bahrain there are no human rights and no safety for people like me.” Araibi was arrested in Thailand on 27 November on vandalism charges because of an Interpol red notice which had erroneously been issued at the request of Bahrain – contradicting Interpol’s own regulations that notices will not be issued “if the status of refugee or asylum-seeking has been confirmed”. Despite Interpol lifting the notice on 4 December, Araibi’s detention was extended for 60 days, pending a court verdict on whether to extradite him to Bahrain. However, the footballer believes Bahrain’s determination to extradite him is connected to comments he made in Australia three years’ ago about the torture he underwent in a Bahrain jail in 2012. Araibi also accused one of Bahrain’s most powerful figures, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa – a member of Bahrain’s ruling royal family and president of Asia’s governing body for football, who at the time was in the running for Fifa president – of discriminating against Shia Muslims and using his power to punish pro-democracy athletes who had protested against the royal family during the Arab spring in 2011. “This is nothing to do with my conviction, Bahrain wants me back to punish me, because I talked to the media in 2016 about the terrible human rights and about how Sheikh Salman is a very bad man who discriminates against Shia Muslims,” said Araibi, who once played for the Bahrain national team. “I am so scared of being sent back to Bahrain, so scared because 100% they will arrest me, they will torture me again, possibly they will kill me.” Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the director of advocacy at the human rights watchdog Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, said Fifa must do more to help secure the footballer’s release. “While Fifa has reached out to the Thai authorities, they have yet to question their own senior vice-president Sheikh Salman. Why has he remained silent?” he said. “Fifa must also ensure that there will be consequences for both Bahrain and Thailand’s national teams if this persecution doesn’t end immediately. Fifa must do everything in their power to save Hakeem’s life,” he added. “Every second he spends in detention should be counted as a failure of Fifa to put its full weight behind this player.”The 16-year-old activist behind the fast-growing School Strikes 4 Climate Action has taken her campaign to the streets of Davos, to confront world leaders and business chiefs about the global emissions crisis. Greta Thunberg, whose solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament has snowballed across the globe, will join a strike by Swiss school children in the ski resort on Friday – the final day of the World Economic Forum. Thunberg travelled by train for 32 hours to reach Davos, and spent Wednesday night camped with climate scientists on the mountain slopes – where temperatures plunged to -18C. Having already addressed the UN Climate Change COP 24 conference, Thunberg is rapidly becoming the voice for a generation who are demanding urgent action to slow the rise in global temperatures. As she travelled down Davos’s funicular railway from the Arctic Base Camp – while more than 30,000 students were striking in Belgium - Thunberg said the rapid growth of her movement was “incredible”. “There have been climate strikes, involving students and also adults, on every continent except Antarctica. It has involved tens of thousands of children.” Wow! They're back and this time they're 32,000 strong! These students want #climateaction and they are not going to stop marching until they get it! Be Like Them!!!#ActOnClimate #Klimaatmars #Youth4Climate #ClimateMarch #klimatstrejk #FridaysForFuture via @Green_Europe pic.twitter.com/Jra5Zq4TLg Thunberg started her protest by striking for three weeks outside the Swedish parliament, lobbying MPs to comply with the Paris Agreement. After the Swedish election, she continued to strike every Friday, where she is now joined by hundreds of people. “This Friday I can’t be there,” she told the Guardian. “So I will have to do it here in Davos, and send a message that this is the only thing that matters.” Students around the world have been inspired by Thunberg, with thousands skipping school in Australia in November. Last Friday there were strikes in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, where more than 20,000 students skipped school. Missing gym class, geography and religion each Friday is something of a sacrifice for Thunberg, who says she loves school and can’t pick a favourite subject. “I like all subjects. I love learning, which people maybe don’t think about me.” She’s also been forced to give up her hobbies, as climate change activism has taken more of her time. “I used to play theatre, sing, dance, play an instrument, ride horses, lots of things.” She’s sanguine, though, pointing out that climate activism is much more important: “You have to see the bigger perspective.” Thunberg said she would like more students to join her strike. “That would have a huge impact, but I’m not going to force anyone to do this.” In the UK, only a small number of students have so far begun strikes, including 13-year-old Holly Gillibrand in Fort William. But plans are now being made for a big strike on 15 February. Thunberg predicts there will be protests in many locations. She believes parents should be supportive if their children tell them they’re striking on Friday. “Everyone keeps saying that the young people should be more active, and they’re so lazy, but once we do something we get criticised.” The world’s scientists warned in October that, without a dramatic ramping up of action to cut emissions, global temperatures would rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, with severe consequences for humanity. Thunberg believes the older generations need to acknowledge that they have failed to protect the environment. “We need to hold the older generations accountable for the mess they have created, and expect us to live with. It is not fair that we have to pay for what they have caused,” she says. Thunberg has also called on business leaders and politicians to commit to “real and bold climate action”, and focus on the “future living conditions of mankind” rather than economic goals and profits. In a video address for leaders attending Davos she says: “I ask you to stand on the right side of history. I ask you to pledge to do everything in your power to push your own business or government in line with a 1.5C world.” Thunberg has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which she believes helps her see the problem of climate change clearly. “My brain works a bit different and so I see things in black and white. Either we start a chain reaction with events beyond our control, or we don’t. Either we stop the emissions or we don’t. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.” The school strikes last Friday were by far the biggest to date. In Germany, an estimated 30,000 students left their schools in more than 50 cities to protest, carrying banners including: “Why learn without a future?” and “Grandpa, what is a snowman?” One 17-year-old student in Kiel, Moritz, told Deutsche Welle: “We want to help shape and secure our future so that there will be another world for us to live in in 60 years.” In Belgium, 12,500 students went on strike last Thursday and plan to strike weekly until the EU elections in May. Some teachers were tolerant of the truancy. Patrick Lancksweerdt, in Brussels, said: “Education has to turn youngsters into mature citizens. By their actions, they proved that they are.” School strikes also took place in 15 cities and towns in Switzerland. In Geneva, 12-year-old Selma Joly said: “Frankly, I would rather demand climate action than go to school. Otherwise, years from now, we may no longer be here.” Janine O’Keeffe, who helps coordinate and keep track of the school strikes from her home in Stockholm, Sweden, was surprised at the scale of last week’s actions: “I am still in shock, actually – a nice kind of shock.” Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace, says youth activism on climate change gives her hope. “The 15-year-olds just speak truth to power.”Bohemian Rhapsody director Bryan Singer has been accused of sexual misconduct by four men after an investigation published by the Atlantic magazine. All four allegations involve underage sex. Victor Valdovinos, who said he worked as an extra on Singer’s 1998 film Apt Pupil, claims that Singer sexually assaulted him when he was 13 years old, including “grabb[ing] my genitals and … masturbating it” in a locker room on the film set. Two other men – referred to pseudonymously as Eric and Andy – accuse Singer of having sex with them knowing they were under the age of consent of 18 in California, where the events allegedly took place. (They say they were 17 and 15 respectively.) Another man, named pseudonymously as Ben, said he had oral sex with Singer when he “was either 17 or 18”. Singer’s legal representative Andrew Brettler denied the allegations, and said that Singer has never been arrested for or charged with any crime and that Singer categorically denies ever having sex with, or a preference for, underage men. Brettler is described in the article as disputing a number of details, saying Valdovinos did not produce any documentation showing he had worked on Apt Pupil. In October, Singer posted a message on social media in anticipation of an article in Esquire magazine, accusing journalists of “a reckless disregard for the truth, making assumptions that are fictional and irresponsible”. In 2017, Singer denied accusations by Cesar Sanchez-Guzman, who had alleged that, as a 17-year-old in 2003, he was sexually assaulted by Singer on a yacht. Singer was fired from Bohemian Rhapsody before filming ended, but remains the sole credited director due to union regulations. Singer has consistently denied wrongdoing, and was recently reported to have been hired to direct a remake of the 1980s action flick Red Sonja.The White House denied on Sunday that Donald Trump “caved” to Democrats in reopening the federal government despite not receiving any funding for a border wall – a deal Trump had vowed he would never make. Hundreds of government facilities began to come back online following the 35-day partial closure, meanwhile, as hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees awaited back pay the administration promised would arrive by the end of the week. “You can only be so happy because you just have to know that it could happen again,” Rachel Malcom, whose husband serves in the US Coast Guard in Rhode Island, told the Associated Press. “We’re going to be playing catch-up, so I don’t want to overspend.” Federal facilities were reopening on a staggered timeline. In Washington the popular Smithsonian museums on the National Mall and the National Zoo were to remain closed until Tuesday. Facilities such as Fort McHenry national monument in Baltimore, Maryland, the defense of which in the War of 1812 inspired the American national anthem, opened at the weekend. A rash of delays at airports from understaffed security checkpoints and reported holes in the air traffic control system on the east coast had subsided, after sharpening the pressure on Trump to make a deal on Friday. Internal Revenue Service employees, border security workers, corrections officers and others required to work during the shutdown without pay were told on Sunday they would be compensated in short order, as would employees barred from their jobs during the shutdown. “Some of them could be [paid] early this week, some of them may be later this week,” the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, told CBS’s Face the Nation. “But we hope that by the end of this week all of the back pay will be made up, and of course the next payroll will go out on time.” But for some workers living paycheck-to-paycheck, the road back to normalcy is blocked by obstacles such as charges for missed debt payments, damaged credit ratings and doubts about future job security. Those doubts were stoked by Trump’s threat on Friday to shut the government down again “if we don’t get a fair deal from Congress” before temporary funding runs out on 15 February. Mulvaney said Trump was serious about the threat, despite an estimate by the economist Stephen S Fuller of George Mason University that the shutdown cost the Washington DC regional economy $1.6bn in January and that 112,500 federal contractors – as opposed to full employees – would not receive back pay. The estimate was first reported in the Washington Post. “Yeah I think he actually is,” Mulvaney told CBS, asked whether Trump was prepared to repeat the shutdown. “Keep in mind he’s willing to do whatever it takes to secure the border. He does take this very seriously.” While the US public overwhelmingly blamed Trump for the shutdown, the Republican party sought to blame Democrats, a sign of potential trouble ahead as negotiations between the sides resume. “Democrats have held our government hostage for weeks but thanks to President @realDonaldTrump‘s leadership, the government will reopen and federal workers will be paid in the next few days,” the national GOP tweeted. The message was echoed by Mulvaney, who denied that Trump had lost the shutdown showdown to Democrats. “No, I think what you’ve seen here is the president seeing an opportunity,” he told Fox News Sunday. Democrats indicated to Trump that they would agree to money for border security in the next round of budget talks now under way, Mulvaney said. The Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a key potential crossover vote for any Republican budget proposal, said Democrats were looking for a “holistic approach” to immigration reform – which could indicate room for compromise or, given the vexed history of such attempts, daunting complications ahead. “We have proven it’s hard for us because with the president and White House and the legislature, we have locked horns on this thing – no wall, all wall, halfway in between,” Manchin told CBS. “Let the professionals tell us what it takes to keep us safe.” A minority of the US public supports Trump’s plan to erect a wall on the southern border with Mexico, and Trump’s average disapproval rating spiked during the shutdown from 52% to 56%. Critics of the border wall plan say it would be a waste of money to address a problem the president grossly exaggerates and which in any case would be better addressed by spending on a combination of technology and personnel. Trump campaigned for the White House on a promise to build the wall and have Mexico pay for it. He has claimed a new trade deal will produce sufficient savings to meet the second half of his promise. Most analysts doubt it.Civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan from explosive weapons rose by more than a third last year, against a downward trend globally, according to a survey seen by the Guardian. Most of the 4,260 civilians killed or injured in explosions in the country in 2018 – up from 3,119 in 2017 – were victims of suicide attacks, found a report by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV). Globally, however, the picture was different. The report recorded a total of 22,335 civilian deaths and injuries from the use of explosive weapons in 2018, compared with 31,904 the previous year, suggesting civilian casualties fell by about a third. There was also a 26% decrease in attacks recorded on populated areas around the world. In total, 78% of civilians casualties recorded in Afghanistan were caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – 62% in suicide attacks, AOAV found. Civilian casualties caused by Isis explosives in Afghanistan rose by 90% compared with the year before. The number of civilian casualties from airstrikes almost doubled, from 238 in 2017 to 463 last year. The report attributed the increase – which the organisation said was probably underestimated, given that not all casualties are reported – to the US conducting a greater number of strikes aimed at the increased military presence. The findings follow a UN report last year that warned the killing and maiming of civilians in Afghanistan, mainly by IEDs, had reached “extreme levels”. In October, the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) expressed “serious concern” over a record number of deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians by anti-government elements in the country. “Despite such positive news globally, once again, IEDs are causing more civilian casualties than any other type of explosive weapon,” said Iain Overton, executive director of AOAV, a charity dedicated to reducing the impact of global armed violence. “For the eighth consecutive year, when explosive weapons were used in populated areas, 90% of those killed or injured were civilians.” IEDs were responsible for 42% of civilian casualties from all explosive harm, while airstrikes caused 32% of harm. Ground-launched weapons caused 15% and attacks using multiple explosive weapons 9%. “Against a fall in civilian casualties globally, we are seeing a rise in some countries, notably Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Libya,” said Overton. “Afghanistan has a record number of civilian deaths in 2018.” Other countries where civilian casualties rose were Ethiopia, Gaza, Iran, the Philippines and Malaysia. The overall decrease in civilian casualties worldwide was largely due to the short-term defeat of Isis in Iraq and Syria, Overton said, as well as the decline of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Liam McDowall, a spokesperson for UNAWA, the agency in Afghanistan that provides details of civilian casualties to the security council, said its next report was due out in February. According to the latest UN figures, 8,050 civilians died or were wounded overall between January and September 2018. The use of suicide bombs and other IEDs by anti-government elements accounted for almost half the casualties. The UN expressed grave concern over the increase in direct targeting of civilians, including ethnic and religious minorities. McDowall, who said he could not comment on AOAV figures, confirmed that 2018 had brought a “record high” in civilian casualties in Afghanistan for the past four years. Before 2014, the majority of casualties were the result of ground engagement between Afghan forces and insurgents. “The UN is concerned about the deliberate targeting of civilians and the use of suicide IEDs,” said McDowall. “Over the course of last year, because of the very high profile attacks and insurgencies, IEDs have become the largest cause of deaths.” Civilian deaths and injuries in Yemen rose from 1,670 to 1,807 last year, a rise of just over 8%. India had a 21% rise, from 267 to 322, while in Libya there was a 140% increase, from 163 in 2017 to 392 in 2018, according to AOAV. In Syria, civilian casualties dropped from 8,767 to 5,061. “While Syria remained the worst country impacted by explosive weapons last year, casualties decreased by a quarter in 2018,” Overton said. “This comes despite seeing the highest levels of civilian casualties from explosive violence in February and March 2018, when Syrian and Russian forces carried out an extensive bombardment of eastern Ghouta.” Despite the overall drop in civilian casualties in Syria last year, there was an “alarming escalation” of civilians killed and injured in US-led coalition airstrikes during the final months of 2018, the report found. This increase accounted for 65% of casualties in Syria during that three-month period. Countries in which there was a significant decrease in civilian harm from explosive violence included Somalia, with a 48% fall in civilian casualties, Pakistan (48%) and Iraq (77%). The AOAV report was compiled using data from sources including Airwars, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and reliable media sources.Poet Hannah Sullivan has won the prestigious and lucrative TS Eliot prize for her first collection Three Poems – just the third debut to land the award in its 25-year history, and a sign that the poetry world is hunting for a new generation of voices. Sullivan, a 39-year-old Londoner who won the £25,000 prize on Monday night, is the third first time poet to take the prize, with all three winning in the last five years: Vietnamese-American Ocean Vuong in 2017 and Chinese-British Sarah Howe in 2015. Before then, the prize had tended to be awarded to more established poets a few collections into their careers, among them Derek Walcott, Carol Ann Duffy, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Sullivan, who studied at Cambridge and Harvard, worked as an assistant professor at Stanford, and is now associate professor of English at New College, Oxford. She is unusual in that she had not been widely published in the lead-up to her debut. “A star is born. Where has she come from?” said chair of judges, poet and previous winner Sinéad Morrissey. “I don’t know her personally, I hadn’t read her in magazines or anywhere else before. She has not come through the usual creative-writing, pamphlet route. She has just arrived, and it is breathtaking. I couldn’t be more delighted if I had won it myself.” Sullivan’s debut is made up of three lengthy poems: You, Very Young in New York, which explores the lives of various young people, all united by their cynicism and their uncertainty, making their way through unfulfilling relationships and work in the city; Repeat Until Time is an exploration of revision in art and form, Sullivan’s PhD subject; the third, The Sandpit After Rain explores connections between the birth of her baby and the death of her father. Morrissey said the decision to award Sullivan the prize was unanimous. “Our relationship with her work only deepened on each subsequent rereading,” she said. “It is not just the formal mastery, but how that formal mastery is so well-handled as to be almost invisible. That is the height of praise. You almost don’t notice the architecture underneath because you are so compelled by what is being said.” She called Three Poems hugely ambitious: “It is taking on perennial themes such as our mortality, our sexuality, our gender and our movement through time and place, and doing it in such a fresh and observant way. It is an absolutely exhilarating collection and it is all the more surprising that it is a debut.” Sullivan was one of five new voices on a 10-book shortlist described as “intensely political” by judge and poet Clare Pollard. More established names included the US poet Terrance Hayes, nominated for his collection American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, an exploration of the modern news cycle written in immediate response to the first 200 days of Donald Trump’s presidency; the current US poet laureate Tracy K Smith for Wade in the Water, a collection that touches on slavery and black American history; former winner Sean O’Brien’s Europa, which considers the relationship between the UK and Europe; and Nick Laird’s Feel Free, which explores recent news events including Grenfell Tower and the refugee crisis. Morrissey said the presence of so many new voices was exciting. “There is such tremendous energy coming from people writing their first books right now. So many of the debuts were not only accomplished, but testing the boundaries of their fields. It is a really exciting moment for poetry, because it feels like publishers are taking more chances, and we’re now reading a more diverse and experimental field.” From The Sandpit After Rain by Hannah Sullivan 4.3Tears and liver spots on the back of the hand,The comfort again and again of writing something fictional down. All cancers were once benign,Then the DNA forgets its prosodyAnd cells divide interminably:The raddled beauty of doggerel. Stained under a microscope,An ovary is Venice at sunset,‘Too beautiful to be painted’ said Monet.Midas-touched sperm, bulging and fanning.Born in Sacramento, California, in 1985, Alex Honnold is one of the greatest rock climbers of all time. In June 2017 he became the first person to climb the famous El Capitan, a sheer 3,000ft rockface in Yosemite national park, without ropes or protective equipment of any kind, a style of climbing known as free soloing. This feat, which took him just three hours and 56 minutes, is the subject of the 2018 documentary Free Solo, which has been nominated for best documentary at both the Oscars and Baftas. In the film, you describe free soloing as a low-risk, high-consequence pursuit – you’re confident you won’t make a mistake, but if you do you die. Why do you do it?There are a lot of things about soloing that are fun. It’s faster and more free. You don’t have all the weight hanging off you – a rope weighs at least 10 pounds. Apart from that it just feels incredible, and that goes hand in hand with the challenge of it. And for me there’s certainly a component of doing things that have never been done before and feeling like I’m making my mark on climbing. What’s important about El Capitan?It’s the most inspiring wall in every possible way. It was bigger and more difficult than anything I’ve ever done. But was free soloing it possible? There are just so many places where, if you weight your foot incorrectly, you’ll slip and fall to your death. But when I thought about it rationally and broke it down into pieces, I thought it should be possible. Did you have any qualms about letting yourself be filmed?I don’t know about serious doubts. In the film, [fellow climber] Peter Croft talks about making sure you’re climbing for the right reasons, not being pressured by anything external. But the whole thing was really in secret. My close personal friends knew what was going on, and obviously my girlfriend, Sanni, did, but otherwise nobody really knew. I found the film incredibly nerve-racking to watch, even though I knew you survived. The crew didn’t have that certainty while they were filming.Yeah, watching free soloing is always harder than actually doing the climbing. I knew exactly how I felt on the day, but for the camera crew, all they could do was suppress their personal emotions and see how it unfolded. They did remarkably well in staying emotionally neutral. Because my mental state, when I’m getting ready for a climb, is such a fragile thing, you don’t want the camera crew bursting into tears every time they see you. At the same time you don’t want them to be encouraging you to do something you’re not ready to do. It’s a really delicate line. Do you ever wish you could find another pursuit that’s equally fulfilling but more forgiving of error?Not so far. I think that’ll probably naturally happen. Already there are certain types of dangerous climbing that I’m less interested in than I was 10 years ago. And I imagine if I had a family, things might change. What was your reaction when you first saw the film?Well in some ways I’d known what the film was going to be, because I’d been shooting it for two years and I knew what they’d filmed. On the other hand, I had no idea because I’d seen none of the footage, none of the photos. When I saw it I was like: “Oh yeah, it’s a really good film”, but I didn’t know how much it would affect people until I actually saw it with a full audience. It’s awesome. I love seeing people covering their eyes and shying away. Has Hollywood ever produced a decent climbing movie?If by decent you mean realistic, then not really. But I really like [the 1993 Sylvester Stallone film] Cliffhanger, even though it’s really over the top. And the sequence in Mission: Impossible 2 that opens with Tom Cruise soloing – I’ve watched that scene like 100 times, it’s totally unrealistic, but I was so into it. The only realistic climbing movie I’ve seen is The Eiger Sanction with Clint Eastwood. Are you going to the Oscars?Yeah. Somebody told me that if Free Solo won, I wouldn’t be allowed on stage because I’m not one of the film-makers. But another friend said: “Who cares, you just go up.” We’ll have to wait and see. • Free Solo is in cinemas now and is coming soon to the National Geographic channelAt least 15 children have died in Syria because of a lack of medical care and inadequate living conditions for displaced people amid freezing temperatures, the UN has said, warning that more deaths are likely to follow. Eight babies in the Rukban camp on the Jordanian border had died from hypothermia in the last month, a statement from the UN children’s fund said on Tuesday. A further seven children, mostly under one year old, had died from the cold in recent weeks as their families fled the battle for Hajin, one of the last areas held by Islamic State in eastern Syria. “Extreme cold and the lack of medical care, for mothers before and during birth and for new infants, have exacerbated already dire conditions for children and their families,” said Geert Cappelaere, Unicef’s regional director. “The lives of babies continue to be cut short by health conditions that are preventable or treatable. There are no excuses for this in the 21st century. This tragic man-made loss of life must end now.” The freezing winter weather has piled pressure on the already inadequate infrastructure for the estimated 6 million Syrians who have been displaced within the country’s borders over the last eight years of civil war, and for the estimated 4 million living in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. At least 22,000 refugees in Lebanon have lost tents and belongings in recent storms and snowfall that have flooded hundreds of informal camps. Forecasts indicate the cold snap is set to worsen, bringing more snow, strong winds and plunging temperatures. People in Rukban camp in particular have suffered. Although home to 50,000 people, 80% of whom are women and children, the area in the demilitarised zone between Syria and Jordan has fallen victim to the struggle for control of the border, becoming cut off from doctors and aid shipments. No aid supplies have reached Rukban since November, forcing residents to rely on smugglers for food and medicine. In 2018 at least 12 people died of malnutrition and complications arising from a lack of appropriate medical care. UN agencies and workers at the camp have denied reports this week that a female resident unable to feed her three children set her family and herself alight in an act of desperation. All four are in a stable condition and being treated for second-degree burns at a hospital in Jordan. Administrators said the injuries were caused by a cooking stove fire. Mahmood al-Hamil, who works at the camp, said the incident was an accident but he believed many of Rukban’s residents were desperate. “I believe if we receive no help, especially in this cold winter, we will witness suicide attempts – people are so hopeless and desperate here,” he said. “Rukban camp is a death camp with all roads blocked.” Fighting between rebel factions and an al-Qaida affiliate in Idlib province, as well as the prospect of a Turkish military operation against Kurdish forces in Syria’s north-east, have raised fears of further mass displacements. “Without reliable and accessible healthcare, protection and shelter, more children will die day in, day out in Rukban, Deir ez-Zor and elsewhere in Syria. History will judge us for these entirely avoidable deaths,” Cappelaere said.Theresa May has declined to categorically rule out an extension to article 50 on the eve of the parliamentary vote on her Brexit deal, saying she wanted to deliver a “smooth and orderly” departure from the EU. Speaking in Stoke-on-Trent as she announced an exchange of letters between the UK and the EU giving assurances on the Northern Ireland backstop arrangements, May said she did not believe the UK should delay leaving the EU, but did not say she would never accept such a delay. The Guardian reported on Sunday that EU officials were laying the groundwork for an extension to article 50 until July this year, to allow all the necessary legislation to pass. The prime minister suggested this would not be desirable, but also stressed the need for an orderly exit. “We’re leaving on 29 March, I’ve been clear I don’t believe we should be extending article 50 and I don’t believe we should be having a second referendum,” May said. “We have an instruction from the British people to leave and it’s our duty to deliver on that, but I want to do it in a way that is smooth and orderly and protects jobs and security.” In the speech at Portmeirion pottery in the heart of the leave-voting city, May also warned MPs of the consequences of being seen to defy the referendum result. “The deal honours the vote in the referendum by translating the people’s instruction into a detailed and practical plan for a better future,” she said. “No one else has put forward an alternative which does this … With no deal we would have no implementation period, no security cooperation, no guarantees for UK citizens overseas, no certainty for businesses and workers here in Stoke and across the UK, and changes to everyday life in Northern Ireland that would put the future of our union at risk. “And with no Brexit ... we would risk a subversion of the democratic process.” The speech was overshadowed on Monday morning by a blunder in the key section of the prime minister’s final plea to MPs, which said they had always respected the vote in previous referendums, including ones where there was a much narrower margin, such as the creation of the Welsh assembly. If MPs reject the deal, there are seven possible paths the country could go down next. May brings it back to MPsPerhaps with minor tweaks after a dash to Brussels. ​MPs knuckle under and vote it through. May resigns immediatelyIt is hard to imagine her surviving for long. After a rapid leadership contest, a different leader could appeal to a majority in parliament, perhaps by offering a softer deal. Tory backbenchers depose herJacob Rees-Mogg gets his way and there is a no-confidence vote. A new leader then tries to assemble a majority behind a tweaked deal. May calls a general electionMay could choose to take the ultimate gamble and hope that voters would back her deal, over the heads of squabbling MPs. Labour tries to force an electionThe opposition tables a vote of no confidence. ​If May lost​, the opposition (or a new Conservative leader) would have two weeks to form an alternative government that could win a second confidence vote. If they were unable to do so, a general election would be triggered. A second referendum gathers supportThis is most likely if Labour makes a last-ditch decision to back it. No dealThe EU (Withdrawal) Act specifies 29 March 2019 as Brexit day. Amber Rudd has said she believes parliament would stop a no deal, but it is not clear how it would do so. In fact, the creation of the assembly after the 1997 referendum was opposed by the Conservative party, including May, who voted against it in the House of Commons. The 2005 Tory manifesto also promised a rerun of that referendum with the aim of abolishing the assembly. In remarks briefed overnight, May said “the result was accepted by both sides and the popular legitimacy of that institution had never seriously been questioned”. That was changed in the speech delivered in Stoke. May said the “result was accepted by parliament”, though without mentioning that it was opposed by Conservative MPs. May’s speech came as a letter from Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk was received from Brussels, one that May insisted gave legally binding assurances on the backstop. The prime minister had promised she would secure additional “legal and political assurances” from Brussels when she delayed a vote on her deal in December. In the letter, Brussels rejected May’s demand for a 12-month time limit to the Irish backstop, but the letter emphasised that a technological solution for avoiding a hard border was possible and both sides wanted to avoid entering the arrangement. The EU also pledged to start negotiations on a trade agreement as soon as possible after the UK parliament backs the deal – meaning talks could technically begin on Wednesday – and to bring that agreement provisionally into force even before the parliaments of the 27 EU member states have fully ratified its terms. The letter also emphasised the backstop will not form the basis for the future relationship negotiations, one of the key concerns of Dominic Raab when he resigned as Brexit secretary over the deal. May conceded in her speech that she had not achieved the desired outcome – a firm date for an end to the backstop – but said there were still “valuable new clarifications and assurances”. “If the backstop were ever triggered, it would only be temporary and both sides would do all they could to bring it to an end as quickly as possible,” she said. “The letters published today have legal force and must be used to interpret the meaning of the withdrawal agreement, including in any future arbitration. The prime minister said she knew the changes “do not go as far as some MPs would like”, but the letter “make absolutely clear the backstop is not a threat or a trap”. May will return to Westminster to give a statement to the Commons before the debate on her deal resumes. Speaking in Stoke, one of the few Conservative gains from Labour in the 2017 general election, May said the vote was a chance “to move beyond division and come together”. “I ask MPs to consider the consequences of their actions on the faith of the British people in our democracy,” she said.World Anti-Doping Agency experts hope to finally get their hands on secret Russian doping data after a row over specialist IT equipment was resolved. Wada’s team will fly back to Moscow on Wednesday having been forced to abort their original trip because their equipment, which was reportedly able to extract data from wiped hard drives, was not certified under Russian law. The news was welcomed by Wada’s president, Sir Craig Reedie, who said: “If the mission is successful in acquiring the data, it will break a long impasse and will potentially lead to many cases being actioned.” However, Reedie confirmed that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency – which controversially had its ban lifted in September in the face of widespread hostility from athletes and other anti-doping agencies – could still be sanctioned for missing the deadline to hand over the data. “While Wada is obliged to give every opportunity to Rusada, we are continuing to act on the basis of the 31 December deadline having been missed, with all the consequences that failure could bring,” said Reedie, who confirmed that Wada’s independent compliance committee would discuss the case on 14 January. If Rusada is suspended it would lead to Russia being banned from hosting sporting events. However, the latest news is bound to be treated with scepticism from those in the anti-doping world who continue to believe that Wada is bending over backwards to help Russia. Last week, Travis Tygart, the chief executive of US Anti-Doping, blamed Wada for being soft on Russia and for having concocted a secret deal with the country’s authorities in September to let Rusada back in. “The situation is a total joke and an embarrassment for Wada and the global anti-doping system,” he said. Wada maintains that it needs the data to build strong cases against cheats and to exonerate other athletes suspected of having participated in state-sponsored Russian doping. According to a report published by Professor Richard McLaren more than 1,000 Russian athletes across more than 30 sports were involved in the process.New Zealanders have poked fun at health warnings issued after the country was hit by a heatwave that reached only 25C in some of the country’s main cities. Some described how they had to pause – briefly – while climbing the stairs, and open windows in 21C heat, a far cry from the temperatures of over 49C recorded in Australia as a result of the same weather system. In some parts of the country temperatures were expected to be six degrees higher than average this week, reaching more than 30C along the east coast of the country, and peaking at 35.3C in Woodbourne. But in many others parts of the country the mercury struggled to push into the mid-20s. Although the temperatures would seem fairly unremarkable in many countries during summer, health officials have advised New Zealanders to stay inside during the heatwave, avoid alcohol and check on elderly neighbours and children. Taking a cold bath or shower could also help, experts said. Fire and Emergency told New Zealanders to clear their gutters of leaves and debris, and refrain from mowing the lawn. Some people said they slept with ice-packs to keep cool, or chewed on ice cubes throughout the day, and described the weather as “like an oven” or “being blasted with a hair dryer”. The heatwave was at its weakest in the cities of Wellington, Dunedin and Invercargill, where temperatures failed to reach 25C, prompting many to have fun with the warnings. “It’s 21 degrees in Wellington, I had to open a window” said one resident on Twitter. Dr Alex Macmillan, a senior lecturer in environmental health at the University of Otago, said the warmer than usual temperatures could still cause havoc for cool-blooded Kiwis. “While New Zealand’s high temperatures are not like those being seen in Australia, it’s what our bodies are used to and our buildings are designed for that matters most,” he told Stuff. “In New Zealand, this means temperatures in the mid-30 degrees Celsius, which we are simply not prepared for.” Dunedin heatwave update.19.8 degrees.Paused, briefly, while walking up the stairs.STAY TUNED The Stuff news website had rolling coverage of the heatwave, including a report from Napier where the temperature reached 33C. “Cool breezes emanated from air-conditioned stores down Emerson Street, but they were ineffective in the bid to minimise perspiration,” the report read. Some companies reported changing their business hours to a Mediterranean schedule to cope, while the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research warned that people might lose sleep due to warm, sticky nights. “If you have multiple consecutive bad nights of sleep, I think that starts affecting your wellbeing,” Chris Brandolino, Niwa’s principal scientist, told Stuff.As a 26-year-veteran of the National Parks Service, this isn’t the first time Lora Williams has been furloughed during a government shutdown and had to make ends meet without a paycheck. But this one, she said, is the worst ever. “I don’t have cash reserves and I’m barely staying above water,” said Williams. “The uncertainty is driving me crazy.” And as the shutdown over Donald Trump’s border wall barrels into its third week, when it would become the longest in US history, the weight of that uncertainty is being disproportionately shouldered by black Americans like Williams. Black people make up 12% of the US population, but more than 18% of the federal workforce, according to a study by the Partnership for Public Service. “My mother tells me – bless her heart – there’s a bed here if you need it,” Williams said, her voice becoming emotional. “I’m 50. I’m not going back to my parents’ house.” Hiring discrimination in the private sector has long driven black Americans to government jobs (federal, state and local) for steady, gainful employment. Following the legislative civil rights gains of the 1960s, government agencies, especially federal, generally held themselves more stringently to anti-discrimination laws than private employers of the era. In turn, black Americans “saw that public service employment opened up economic opportunities for good, well-paid jobs that provide some measure of protection against discrimination,” according to Farah Ahmad, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress writing during the 2013 government shutdown. “The competitive pay scales of government employment have lifted generations of black people into the middle class,” she added. Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in the predominantly black Washington DC suburbs Prince George’s county in Maryland. The county is home to the highest concentration of middle-class black Americans in the country, largely due to public sector employment. “Around here people’s families work for the government, generationally,” said Kenneth Graves, a federal employee currently on furlough who grew up in Prince George’s. “My mom works for the government. My dad worked for the government,” Graves said. “That’s what we always heard growing up – get a good government job.” Graves, who is black, said he can probably sustain about another month of the shutdown before he depletes the last of his savings. A furloughed Federal Aviation Administration employee, Graves is currently looking for part-time work in hospitality to keep some income coming in, and stay occupied. “We’re all just sitting at home or looking for a part-time position,” Graves said. “It’s really challenging.” The profound racial wealth gap in the US makes it far more difficult for the average black American to sustain a long period without a paycheck as compared to white Americans or the US average. Median black household wealth is about $1,700 and falling, while median white wealth sits at over $116,000, according to a 2017 study by Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies. Graves said he’s already called his student loan provider to ask for a deferment while Williams told the Guardian she’s still dreading a call to her landlord to ask if she can postpone her next month’s payment. She scoffed at a letter to federal employees sent out near the beginning of the shutdown suggesting ways to ask for a “reduced payment plan” during the furlough. “They say talk to these creditors? They don’t want to hear your problems and they don’t care. They want their money,” Williams said. Like many federal workers, she’s turned to a GoFundMe campaign to try and keep afloat. As stressed as she is, Williams is even more worried about federal contractors who, unlike federal employees are not historically issued back pay once the shutdown ends. In the parks system, for example, many of the trash removal and custodial services are provided by contractors. “These are people that I work with closely, and it really bothers me that they are not going to get paid,” Williams said. Here again, the burden falls disproportionately to black Americans. According to the business analytics firm Equant, “Black-owned firms comprise 2.1% of all small businesses in the country that have one or more employees. However, such firms make up 11.7% of registered federal contractors.” When questioned about the impact the furlough is having on federal employees, Trump has suggested that many, “maybe most of those people, that really have not been – and will not be getting their money in at this moment – those people, in many cases, are the biggest fan of what we’re doing.” “When he says that, I wanna jump through my television,” Williams said. There’s no end in sight for the shutdown. On Wednesday, a meeting between Trump and congressional leadership to try and push past the impasse ended abruptly with Trump reportedly storming off, later calling it a “total waste of time”. While some Republicans have said they would support reopening the government without funding for Trump’s border wall, the president is urging Senate Republicans to “stick together”.Callum Hudson-Odoi has handed in a formal transfer request at Chelsea in a bid to force through a move to Bayern Munich before Thursday’s transfer deadline. The teenager, a product of the Premier League club’s academy at Cobham, has been the subject of a succession of bids over the last month from the Bundesliga champions, the last of which amounted to around £35m for a player who has yet to make a top-flight start and whose current contract expires in 2020. That offer remains on the table despite Chelsea having made clear it would not be sufficient to secure the 18-year-old, though another raised bid is anticipated before the cut-off at the end of the month. The England junior international, who won the under-17s World Cup two years ago, has been frustrated by a perceived lack of opportunities under Maurizio Sarri and had made clear he had no interest in signing new terms at Stamford Bridge despite suggestions the club might be willing to offer him as much as £80,000-a-week to extend his stay. Instead, Hudson-Odoi believes he will have more opportunities to play senior football at Bayern, having seen the impact Jadon Sancho and Reiss Nelson have made in the Bundesliga, with Borussia Dortmund and Hoffenheim respectively, this term. Hudson-Odoi has made nine first-team appearances this season, starting four times in the Europa League and Carabao Cup, but has yet to begin a Premier League match. He would have expected to be picked for Sunday’s FA Cup fourth-round tie against Sheffield Wednesday, but his inclusion would now seem in serious doubt in the wake of his formal request to leave. Chelsea had grown frustrated with Bayern’s very public pursuit of Hudson-Odoi, with Sarri suggesting they had shown a lack of respect after the German club’s sporting director, Hasan Salihamidzic, admitted their desire to secure the player. “I think that it’s not professional because they are talking about a player under contract at Chelsea,” said Sarri, who has consistently suggested Hudson-Odoi has improved under his tutelage while implying the youngster still has plenty to learn. It remains to be seen how Chelsea deal with the request – their desire to retain Hudson-Odoi has been steadfast up to now – though there is the chance that he joins Álvaro Morata as another high-profile departure from the club in the coming days. The Spain international forward, once a record signing, is in Madrid to complete the formalities over a loan move to Atlético following Gonzalo Higuaín’s arrival at Stamford Bridge. The move can be made permanent for around £48.5m in the summer.Donald Trump has declared that immigration and a border wall will be the centerpiece of his 2020 re-election campaign, promising us nearly two years of misery. He shut down the government over his demand for $5bn for the wall, although the billions already appropriated haven’t been spent. He has stepped up persecution of refugees properly seeking legal asylum at points of entry. When children die while in border patrol custody, the head of the Department of Homeland Security says they are bringing disease with them. Steve King, my north-west Iowa Republican congressman, referred to immigrants as dirt. This is not going to let up. There will be no resolution to the limbo of Dreamers – children brought to the US by their undocumented parents. You can’t negotiate border security versus Dreamers with Trump because he lies, has the attention span of a water bug and can’t let go of a leverage point. Nancy Pelosi may control the House, but she does not control the fearmongering Freedom Caucus of 30-plus House Republicans who have sway over the tweeter-in-chief. They are among the only people he fears. A reasonable resolution of our immigration problems does not serve their interests. Families will be chained. Petitions will be filed, federal judges will rule and border patrol will let people die to prove a point. You could wish Our Lady of Guadalupe would somehow swoop in and smite them all. She remains the only protector, in that she promises relief and justice somewhere sometime, and makes the thirsty think: “Death, where is thy sting?” When that is the best hope, that death overcomes this bondage, you wonder what liberties we are maintaining. We have been herding and ethnically cleansing indigenous people since the Ioway roamed the Raccoon river valley. It has always worked. We create a “them” to fight, who endanger our security and raid our larder and diminish the claim we stole from them. Yet the images tend to gnaw at people who know better, which is most of us. In Storm Lake, we have come to understand what our neighbors have been through and appreciate that they are here, buoying a rural community that otherwise would wither with the rest. But the main narrative is that refugees somehow erode what Storm Lake or Iowa is, when in fact they affirm the American immigration story. Just what are we about? So it is good to have that debate full-out. Republicans are embarrassed by King and Trump. We hear talk of the state GOP power apparatus looking to fund a primary challenge to King. They should consult Rick Bertrand of Sioux City, who managed about 35% support in his 2016 primary. And, they should consider that the leader of their party, the president, is in lockstep with King. How can you reject King and wave a banner for Trump? King will be out there, and so will the three-fourths of Iowans who want to see a pathway to citizenship for the strangers among us. That’s bad arithmetic for a congressman who cleared JD Scholten by three points. In the heart of King country, dairy farmers are finding that immigrants are handy help at cleaning time. Their consciences cringe just a little when King slanders Mexican teens. They would like a more orderly system, too. Secretly, they might cast a vote for Scholten. Or they might not vote for King and Trump. Immigration hence will color the Democratic presidential debate that is under way in Iowa. They should approach it as a human rights campaign, because that’s what it has become. People are dying at the border because we are changing the rules. Their hope: that they could land a job scooping manure in Amarillo or throwing turkeys on to a truck through sleet in the dead of an Iowa winter’s night. Those who make it live in constant fear, even if they have legitimate papers. There are many people of good will in Washington working on a solution. There cannot be one until this politics of hate is put down, again, as Americans have put it down before. It will get worse before it gets better. This campaign will be among the worst we have seen because the president has determined it is the best way to keep the nation divided. It won’t work. The stock market is telling him to back off. The midterm elections told him to back off. People from around the globe resettled in Denison, Storm Lake and Marshalltown, Iowa, are getting along fine cutting meat. They don’t like the uncertainty any more than Wall Street does. We all know that the problem is in Latin American poverty and oppression and our own demand for drugs, and in the fact that nobody wants to scoop manure for $10 an hour any more except for the undocumented. So let’s have that debate and vote on it, and let the Democrats answer with a fuller throat than Hillary Clinton could clear. This is liberty and humanity versus fear and intolerance. Trump loses. Bigly. Art Cullen is the Pulitzer prize-winning editor of the Storm Lake Times, a twice-a-week newspaper in Iowa. He is author of the new book, Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper (Penguin Random House)A man, “XT”, is going cold turkey. He’s withdrawing from black market Xanax, which he’s been using to self-medicate feelings of loneliness, a breakup, a traumatic childhood. In another hemisphere, many time zones away, Ginger Gorman puts aside her day’s work to distract him from his physical and mental distress. They wind up exchanging funny dating stories until XT thinks he can sleep. “Mate, when you wake up can you tell me if you’re all right?” Gorman says. It’s an example of how the internet can be a lifeline between strangers. But XT is part of a trolling syndicate and Gorman is a journalist who, after writing a story for the ABC in 2010 about gay men choosing surrogacy, in which she unknowingly profiled two people who were later convicted for paedophilia, found herself besieged by predator trolls, the kind that move in on a target like a Swat team. As well as the barrage of tweets shaming her, a family photo wound up on the fascist social network Iron March, and she was mocked by a popular American conservative blogger who denounced her as part of a paradigm that “reduces reporters to the role of propagandists, whose job is to parrot the publicity of radical gay-rights activists”. Her new book, Troll Hunting, may sound like it’s coming in swinging, but her mission, as she tells Guardian Australia, is to “try and bring a humanity to it all, to the victims and the perpetrators”. If that sounds bleeding-heart lefty to you, well it’s something she’s grappling with, too. Gorman’s a feminist, her mother’s family is Jewish, and she has a Filipino-Australian husband. She’s everything trolls love to hate. To examine the “human fallout” of trolling, Troll Hunting draws on expertise from all sides, such as Mia Garlick, Facebook’s director of policy for Australia and New Zealand, and an investigative journalist, Luke McMahon, who some call “Australia’s number-one troll hunter” and who – with an SBS journalist, Elise Potaka – provided the AFP and FBI with the identity of Joshua Goldberg. She also talks to those close to the late TV presenter Charlotte Dawson, whose trolls have mysteriously vanished since her suicide, and her own husband, Don, about his misgivings about the book. There are a couple of trolls that Gorman has interviewed regularly who remain an unknown quantity; a mystery, an imminent danger. With others, like XT, there’s a strange kind of intimacy. Don calls one her “troll husband”. A friend compares the dynamic to Stockholm syndrome. But Gorman does go in hard with her subjects. As she explains, there’s a certain liberation that comes from being a journalist interviewing a troll – “as long as you’re prepared to get threats of being sent dick pics or be called a lying whore” – because all bets are off. If you drill right down deep, a lot of these guys fell through the cracks as kids She gives the example of having once interviewed Anu Singh, who murdered her boyfriend Joe Cinque in 1997. Psyching herself up to ask direct questions made Gorman feel nauseous. By contrast, with the trolls “I could ask the most offensive, personal stuff. And they never balk at it because that’s part of their culture.” In her book, Gorman covers off the online experiences of commentators Catherine Deveny and the Guardian’s Van Badham, but she says some feminists were unimpressed that she was amplifying trolls. “They said, ‘All they want is power. Why are you engaging with them?’ I found that incredible. I’m engaging with them because I want to know what they want. I don’t condone what they do, but you have to ask the question: ‘Why are they doing this?’ ” She attempts to answer this both through a psychologist who’s a psychopathy expert and, in a chapter titled “The Internet Was My Parent”, by prodding the trolls themselves. “If you drill right down deep, a lot of these guys fell through the cracks as kids,” she says. One, “meepsheep”, put to her that white men are seen as so privileged that they don’t need help. Yet as Gorman has observed, many trolls experience mental health and substance-use problems. “That was quite confronting for me,” she says. “As journalists we need to examine our own beliefs and take them apart in the context of what we’re writing about, not just like spit stuff out hook, line and sinker.” But while empathy can be dredged for the foulest behaviour, Gorman doesn’t forget that her subjects have targeted some of the most vulnerable people on the internet. “We can’t have marginalised voices driven out of these spaces,” she says. “If you’re going to be really idealistic about it, the reason that people like Vint Cerf created the internet was so we would all have access to information and we could all use our voices. I don’t think I can leave this [subject] behind until there’s a monumental societal shift to make it fairer and less terrifying.” When Australians targeted by trolls contact Gorman in despair, she refers them to the Australian eSafety Commission, which she considers to be groundbreaking: “They’ve got limited remit but it’s a step in the right direction.” Ahead of the press cycle for her book, she started a course of specialised therapy, referred by the DART centre for trauma in journalism. Trolls have been a major part of her life for nine years, yet writing Troll Hunting was “like being skinned alive”. It’s moved her to commission a tattoo – her first – of a complex design of lines down her side. “I feel so marked by the book that I need a sign on my body,” she says. Now, there’s an uneasy wait for the reaction from all quarters – those who might take umbrage with her collaborating with trolls, and those who might spur into action at the sight of her head sticking up above the parapet. To preserve herself somewhat, Gorman discussed with the trolls which of their conversations she would use, since many of them had sent thousands of messages, not just about trolling but general, personal chat. She calls it a “no sudden movements policy”. “They had no jurisdiction on my work in any way,” she clarifies, “not least because they wouldn’t ask me to change anything when, in the universe of trolling, everything is fair game. But I needed to protect myself from any possible retribution down the track, because I know from my own experience – and those of scores of victims – that getting adequate help from law enforcement or social media companies is nearly impossible. And you’ve got to remember, some of them are genuinely dangerous.” • Troll Hunting is out now through Hardie GrantThe rain lashes down, the wind whistles and a skein of pink-footed geese fly overhead, honking in the twilight, as Erland Cooper’s concert begins. Cley Marshes nature reserve on the Norfolk coast is an unusual place for a gig, but the perfect stage for an evening of music inspired by the birds of Orkney. Cooper, known for the folk-rock of Erland and the Carnival and the more experimental soundscapes of the Magnetic North, migrated to new terrain for his debut solo album Solan Goose, released last year. With its combination of contemporary classical, ambient and electronica, it drew comparisons to Sigur Rós, Ólafur Arnalds and other music of northerly latitudes, as well as radio play and winning admirers in unexpected places, from literary figures including John Burnside and Robert Macfarlane. “We were a wee bit stressed,” says Cooper to his audience in Cley, after a four-hour drive to the coast, “and all of a sudden the geese flew over and it reminded us why we make music. We want to take you to the Orkney islands, very slowly, very gently.” For all the gentleness, Cooper’s songs are deeply emotional and given lift by three classically trained multi-instrumentalists, particularly the wordless notes delivered by the soaring soprano of Lottie Greenhow. “If it moves me close to the point of tears, I’ve probably achieved what I wanted,” says Cooper when we meet the following week on London’s South Bank, where he’s rehearsing for an appearance with a rather different collaborator, Paul Weller. I’m always trying to write the simplest thing, trying to do more with fewer notes The “release” that Cooper finds in his spare electronic and classic “ecosystem of music” is matched by the release he finds in natural landscapes: “You can feel like you’re going to sob and you don’t quite know why.” He has created the music for Nest, a light and sound installation in Waltham Forest’s Lloyd Park which this weekend will mark the opening of the first ever London borough of culture. Cooper’s compositions sample the voices of 1,076 people from local school, community and gospel choirs. One listener praised his samples of birdsong; Cooper was delighted – they were children impersonating a starling murmuration. “They pretended to be starlings, singing at random times which is exactly what you want, and very quickly they came together, and sang together, which is scary like Hitchcock,” he laughs. Solan Goose was hatched almost by accident. Cooper, born and raised on the archipelago of Orkney, was feeling increasingly stressed and claustrophobic in London. He’d arrive at his studio and turn a noise he had heard – a jackhammer perhaps – into a note, “create a drone out of it” and then improvise a piano over that. He named each recording after Orcadian dialect for island birds: solan goose (gannet), shalder (oystercatcher), tammie norie (puffin) and, most deliciously, cattie-face (short-eared owl). “It was a way to pull me home, pull me back to childhood memory. Before I knew it, I had this fully fledged thing,” he says. It wasn’t all quite that simple. In keeping with his commitment to Orkney traditions, Cooper tried putting traditional folk lyrics to his music. It didn’t work. “Imagine being on a South Ronaldsay beach and all of a sudden there’s this red balloon popping up in the middle, and you’re no longer looking at the landscape. It was so out of place, it had to go.” In fact, Cooper has found it a relief not to sing during a year of performing the album – beginning at the Walthamstow Wetlands nature reserve, in London, and taking in summer festivals that included Womad and Port Eliot. “I fell out of joy with my own voice,” he says. “It’s a habitual experience when you doubt whether you can sing in the first place.” Instead, he has embraced playing with classically trained musicians. “The classical world can be very intimidating for some, but I remind myself that music is just sounds, just patterns,” he says. “I’m always trying to write the simplest thing, trying to do more with fewer notes.” Cooper has completed the second of a trilogy of albums shaped by Orkney’s air, sea and land, as celebrated by Orkney poet George Mackay Brown. Solan Goose is the air; the sea is next; the record will be released in the spring. He returned to Orkney for inspiration, making recordings – sonic postcards – of the reverberations everywhere from beneath the pier to the inside of one of Orkney’s Neolithic chamber tombs. But he made the album in London, which provides a kind of critical distance. “I like to take it [Orkney’s landscape] away in my wee books and boxes and digital and analogue machines. When you listen to something out of context, that’s when you know what to keep and what to discard.”He couldn’t wait to escape the island as a teenager. “Now all I want to do is tell people about Orkney and go back and take people with me,” he says. “Nature and Orkney in particular is the one true reset for me. There’s something about the longitude and latitude, the air is different, the light is different. Over this nine-year period I’ve been making music in various guises, it’s the one true thing I constantly go back to.” He pauses and smiles. “I should work for the tourist board.” Nest, a light and sound installation, is in the grounds of the William Morris Gallery, London, 11-13 January. Erland Cooper is at Trades Club, Hebden Bridge, on 30 March and Milton Court, London, on 16 May. Solan Goose is out now on Phases Records.As a partial US government shutdown hit the two-week mark on Friday, Donald Trump once again invited congressional leaders to meet him at the White House, amid an impasse over his demands for taxpayers’ money for a border wall, and Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives. The president has invited leaders from both parties back to the White House just two days after a meeting on border security in the Situation Room did not resolve matters, and a day after Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House and Democrats passed legislation to reopen the government. The meeting is scheduled for 11.30am in Washington. About 800,000 federal workers have been affected by the 22 December closure of about a quarter of the federal government as Trump withheld his support for new funding until he secures $5bn to build his long-promised but unachieved wall along the US-Mexico border. Such a wall, Trump has argued, is needed to stem the flow of immigrants and drugs over the south-western border. When he ran for president in 2016, he vowed Mexico would pay for the wall, which it has refused to do. On Thursday, Trump tried to keep the pressure on Democrats, even as they gained significant new power with their takeover of the House of Representatives at the start of a new Congress. “Build the Wall,” the president demanded on Twitter. But in remarks at a surprise White House press briefing, Trump appeared to give himself negotiating space when he said: “You can call it a barrier. You can call it whatever you want. But essentially, we need protection in our country.” In a meeting at the White House in December, Trump said he would be “proud” to take responsibility for causing the government shutdown, though has since tried to blame it on Democrats. Pelosi was adamant, however. “We’re not doing a wall,” she said late on Thursday. “It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with a wall is an immorality between countries. It’s an old way of thinking. It isn’t cost effective.” Asked if she would give Trump $1 for a wall to reopen the government, Pelosi said: “One dollar? Yeah, one dollar. The fact is a wall is an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation.” Late on Thursday, the House passed two Democratic bills to immediately reopen government agencies for varying lengths of time, despite a White House veto threat. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a Republican, will not support the legislation and has pledged not to pass anything the president will not sign. But McConnell now faces increasing pressure from fellow Republicans. “We should pass a continuing resolution to get the government back open. The Senate has done it last Congress, we should do it again today,” the Republican senator Cory Gardner told the Hill on Thursday. His colleague Susan Collins also called for the Senate to pass the funding bills. Vice-President Mike Pence later suggested on Fox News that the White House could work with Democrats on so-called Dreamer immigrants who were brought to the United States unlawfully as children – an idea Trump had rejected on Wednesday. “It’s being talked about,” Pence said.It sounds like the job interview from hell. Olivia Bland ended up crying at the bus stop, after what the 22-year-old describes as being deliberately torn to shreds over everything from her writing skills to her posture (apparently even “my arms were wrong, and the way I sat was wrong”). Tech company boss Craig Dean, the man on the other side of the desk, ended up posting what he called a “sleep-deprived and anxiety-driven” apology on Twitter after her account of it all went viral. Tell me your gender, age and political leanings and I can probably guess with reasonable certainty whether your sympathies lie with her or with him. But if nothing else, the rejection email she sent, explaining where Web Applications UK could stick the job it eventually offered her, certainly demonstrates the “timely, concise and effective” communications skills stipulated in the job description. Employers forget how much they too still had to learn in their 20s and more importantly how they learned it It should be said that Dean’s board of directors later put out a statement, insisting it was confident that there had been “no bullying or intimidation”, while promising to reflect on what had happened. But whatever went on inside that interview room, it patently hasn’t ended well for anybody. Bland compares the whole thing to a conversation with an abusive ex, picking apart everything that was supposedly wrong with her; social media naming and shaming being what it is, Dean must now be experiencing something very similar. Since she must have wanted the job originally, and he evidently wanted her to have it, it should not have been impossible to put two and two together without making something that sounds like a particularly squirm-inducing episode of The Office. And yet here we are. So much for trendy management theories about “testing the resilience” of prospective employees. For Dean presumably didn’t pluck his unorthodox conversational gambits out of thin air. The so-called “stress interview”, designed to provoke, embarrass and intimidate interviewees to see how they cope in a crisis, has evidently come a long way since apocryphal stories of Oxbridge dons greeting nervous sixth-formers by putting their feet up on the desk and ordering them to “impress me”. A quick Google of US recruitment sites uncovers endless suggested comments for the would-be boss from hell, ranging from, “It doesn’t look like you accomplished much in your last position,” to, “If you were really good, you would have been promoted. Why haven’t you been?” Other techniques include asking the interviewee questions that seem inappropriately personal to put them off their stride (bizarrely, Bland says she was asked about her childhood and whether her parents were still together), or simply being deliberately rude. Sighing and rolling your eyes during answers, interrupting to take phone calls in the middle of the conversation, even turning your back on the interviewee, all come recommended. It’s the employment equivalent of “negging”, or attempting to pick up women by insulting and undermining them so that in theory they’ll be even more desperate for your approval which made for some truly grim dates during its briefly fashionable heyday. In stress interview theory, the candidate is supposed to remain emotionless throughout, thereby demonstrating that they won’t lose their cool with a difficult client and can take criticism. It says a great deal about what’s wrong with management in too many British companies that anyone would think this is how you uncover talent. Yet sadly, not many candidates would have the nerve to fight back in the current job market. Bland is trying to enter a competitive industry at a time when a lot of people aren’t hiring, at least until they know what’s happening with Brexit. She’s far from the only English graduate with an apparently glittering CV being made to jump through ridiculous hoops for jobs that almost certainly weren’t what they dreamed of in college. For those further down the pile it is, if anything, worse. A few years ago, Currys had to apologise after a man applying for a job in one of its stores was asked to do a “robot dance” in the interview. In the pub and restaurant trade, it has become all too common to be asked to work an unpaid shift by way of interview, a tactic seemingly used by some more unscrupulous managers to fill awkward gaps in the rota. The tougher the economic climate gets, the stiffer the competition, and the more brutal the efforts made to weed out a desperately overcrowded field. It’s true that some industries aren’t for shrinking violets, my own included. Newsrooms can be brutal, and so can the places in which young reporters may find themselves in pursuit of a story. But good reporters need empathy and sensitivity to deal with the people whose lives they’re invading, as well as grit. An industry staffed with human battering-rams serves nobody. And while plenty of employers doubtless have their own horror stories of snowflake graduates with ridiculously high expectations and badly spelled CVs, all too often they’re forgetting how much they still had to learn in their 20s and, more importantly, how they learned it. Nobody looks back with gratitude and affection on the bosses who had evidently watched way too many series of The Apprentice. It’s the ones with the patience to explain, and the skill to build up other people’s confidence rather than knocking it down, for whom you end up going the extra mile. Ironically, Craig Dean must have been exposed to something of a stress test himself over the past 24 hours, with half the internet now scoffing at his management techniques. Somehow, I doubt he has emerged from it convinced of the usefulness of ritual humiliation. • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistRussell Brand’s diagnosis of the contemporary human predicament, as expressed in vlogs, standup and writing, seems inarguably right – that we are deluded into thinking that getting what we want makes us happy. His 2014 book, Revolution, explored how this delusion has trapped us in an unfulfilling consumerist system, while his next, Recovery (2017), a personal take on the 12-step programme, identified that the compulsive pursuit of satisfying desires can turn into an addiction. “But what does the wanting want?”, Brand asks with his trademark playfulness in its successor, Mentors. In this compact book with a huge heart, Brand suggests that the “wanting” wants to find meaning, love and connection, and that a “chain of mentorship” can help towards a solution. He introduces us to eight of his own mentors, reviewing his relationships with them and reflecting on how they have helped him in different areas of his life. There are fellow recovering addicts, therapists, spiritual guides, a martial arts instructor, a comedian. For Brand, a mentor is someone who “can guide you to the frontiers of your self” and unlock “the potential person that we can become”. Indeed, the book is self-consciously a hero’s journey, from lost youth to mentee to mentor and father. Brand seems to have learned to slow his mind down One area in which Brand has developed in recent years is in terms of his education. Instead of writing My Booky Wook 3, Brand tried to do something important with Revolution, but it lacked focus. It was a book about everything – including, in passing, how to create a new kind of society. And it had seemingly been written by everyone: beat poet, standup comic, self-help guru, social sciences flim-flammer, Frank Butcher. Recovery was marginally tighter. But Mentors is altogether more mature. It has a more modest scope. It is written in a consistent voice. Gone are the garbled, irreverent references to canonical thinkers: Brand has outgrown the need to react to them. He seems to have learned to slow his mind down. There are occasional irritations. Vocabulary is in places needlessly obscure (“prognathic”, anyone?) or misused (“inhere” is a repeat offender), and at times the poetry is overstretched beyond sense. Some of the content alienates. Brand writes: “You know when someone says, ‘Come and stay at our ashram in southern India’?” No, actually. And with an obliviousness that was highlighted in a recent interview in which his lack of familiarity with the more hands-on aspects of childcare became apparent, he says that “all my mentors have floated into my life, like celestial beings”. But unlike Brand, you may not be able to maintain two therapists, an acupuncturist and an personal relationship with an Indian guru. Also, is Jordan Peterson really “irrefutably persuasive”? But these distractions are more than compensated for by many touching personal confessions and real, if not wholly original, insights. Among them is an acknowledgment that failure can elevate you, because it gives you a vantage point from which you can help others as a mentor, and because not getting what you want can inspire you to search for meaning. • Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped by Russell Brand is published by Pan Macmillan (£12.99). To order a copy for £11.43 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99Miuccia Prada is a designer so influential that she only has to dip her toe in the water of a new trend and the proverbial ripple effect is felt on all sides of the pond. After her menswear show in Milan on Sunday night, that means Frankenstein is about to become one of the most mined inspiration points on the fashion landscape this year. “Frankenstein is an example of a monster with a big heart, so that was the main idea,” said Prada after the show, citing author Mary Shelley’s themes of humanity, danger, chaos as central to the appeal. On the catwalk, this took the shape of intarsia knitwear that appeared to be roughly stitched together with a large red heart on the chest; shirt prints of limbs; and multicoloured shearling that appliquéd deer-hunter hats, epaulettes and knitwear that Prada said was “a part of the madness”. She said she was drawn to Shelley’s story of having to publish her work anonymously because her gender would not permit publication but, unlike Shelley, Prada is not a woman who struggles to have her voice heard. The social and political commentary she explores through her work has made her one of the most revered figures in the industry and has elicited calls for her to become a politician, she revealed tonight. Her manifesto for this collection circled ideas of reaching boiling point, anger and despair, she said, which needs little joining of the dots. “[As a designer] you have the problem of how do you translate what is happening outside in fashion without being pretentious – you can’t be pretentious in fashion. I am aware of all the problems but we are still a luxury company, so you can do a lot. But I always have to be careful of what I say.” For Prada, outfits can speak louder than words, and she mobilised her troops with the strong military vein that ran throughout the collection. Several looks comprised khaki coats and long padded bomber jackets which had plenty of practical box pockets and compartments – details which also featured on the skirts and bandeau dresses of the sprinkling of womenswear looks that were unveiled. Suiting was strict and made compact with belts that resembled regalia. Elsewhere, backpacks came strapped across the models’ chests keeping them handsfree and ready for action as they walked to a soundtrack that featured Timewarp, Tainted Love, and Dance Macabre (the Jonathan Creek soundtrack to you and me). For her autumn 2018 collection last January, Prada scored with what became a hero piece of the season, a contrast-print short-sleeved shirt with flames rising from the waistline which popped up on everyone from influencers to the actor and now style icon Jeff Goldblum. This season, the standout motif came in the form of lightning bolts, like the one that propelled a young Victor Frankenstein to start exploring the parameters of creation and destruction. The set mirrored the creator’s workshop and was designed by the architectural firm ONA to evoke a sci-fi atmosphere with experimental sponge pyramids and dimmed exposed-filament bulbs that lit the show. Prada is understandably tentative about wading into controversial waters. In December, her brand issued an apology after figurines in its Pradamalia range, which appeared to contain blackface imagery, sparked outrage after being spotted in its Soho store in Manhattan. It prompted the brand to set up an advisory council on diversity issues “to guide our efforts on diversity, inclusion and culture,” it announced in a statement, promising to “learn from this and do better”. As far as the financial side of fashion’s most influential label, it is doing better. Last August, the brand reported rising sales, profit and income in the first half of the year, bucking its previous form, which had seen it post falling profits since 2014. In addition, its digital sales had experienced double-digit growth in the same time period and are on course to reach 15% of total sales by 2020.The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas revealed what the tech world has in store for us this year. From the spectacular to the controversial – as well as some total tosh – here are 10 of the most memorable products unveiled at CES 2019 last week. After years of promises, the world’s first truly rollable telly is LG’s 65in Signature OLED TV R9. Forget the clunky name, LG finally has a TV that rolls up and out of the way when not in use. Turn it on and the TV extends upwards from the base to offer everything a top-class 4K HDR OLED TV should. There is even a “line view” mode that allows just the top of the television to peek out of the base to show a clock and other bits. The TV supports Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Apple’s AirPlay 2. Expect an eye-watering price tag later this year. Have you ever wished your toilet was able to talk to you? Probably not. But not content with a Japanese-style heated seat and auto cleaning and drying systems, the US toilet maker Kohler has shoved Amazon’s Alexa into its new loo, too. The Numi 2.0 Intelligent Toilet promises a “fully immersive experience” with fancy “dynamic and interactive multicoloured ambient and surround lighting”, built-in speakers and voice control. A snip at about $7,000 – or $9,000 if you want it in black. “Alexa, flush for me.” What could possibly go wrong? What if your smartwatch used you as a human battery so it never needs charging? That’s precisely what the Matrix PowerWatch 2 promises, sucking heat from the wearer’s skin to generate electricity, alongside a hidden solar panel for good measure. The watch is water-resistant to 200m, has a colour screen, shows notifications and will track steps, sleep and health with a heart rate monitor on the back and GPS for runners. It’s compatible with iPhone and Android, selling through the crowdfunding site Indiegogo for $199-$395, to ship in June. Electronic gadgets come in many forms, including tools for pleasure. Although not, apparently, at CES when developed by an almost all-female team using patent-pending technology in micro-robotics, biomimicry and engineering. Osé, an intimate massager that “mimics all of the sensations of a human mouth, tongue and fingers” to feel “just like a real partner”, was originally selected as a CES 2019 Innovation Award honouree but was then dumped and banned from the show for being “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane”. CES’s organisers are now facing accusations of gender bias, given sex dolls for men were launched at the event last year and pornography has been featured in its virtual reality booths for years. Apple, notorious for blocking others from using its technology, has not only started licensing its AirPlay 2 media streaming system to TV manufacturers including Sony, LG and Vizio, but has also announced that an iTunes app will be available on its arch-rival Samsung’s smart TVs. Expect an Apple TV streaming service to launch this year, then. The Korean car company Hyundai has unveiled a car that can walk. The Elevate is capable of both “mammalian and reptilian walking gaits” using four articulated robotic legs that extend out from traditional wheel arches but that can fold back down and drive like a regular car. At least that’s the theory. Experts are sceptical that Hyundai’s “limitless” design will actually work. But if it does, the car that “can climb a 5ft wall, step over a 5ft gap, walk over diverse terrain and achieve a 15ft wide track width” will apparently be brilliant for emergency services and rescue vehicles. Not everything at CES requires electricity. Impossible Food launched the second iteration of its meat-free Impossible Burger. It claims its soy-based meat substitute looks, tastes and feels like a beef patty; it even “bleeds” and was convincing enough to make one vegetarian reviewer heave. The Impossible Burger 2.0 “delivers all the taste meat lovers crave – without compromise to nutrition or the planet”, according to the company’s COO, David Lee. It is now on sale in a few fast food restaurants in Las Vegas, with a US rollout scheduled for later in the year. Have you ever wished for a Nespresso machine but for beer? LG’s HomeBrew might be the answer to your prayers. Pop in one big and three smaller Nespresso-esque capsules and hit the button. The HomeBrew will then produce five litres of beer from a choice of American IPA, American pale ale, stout, pilsner and Belgian witbier. It even cleans itself at the end. The catch? It takes two weeks to brew ... Bose, maker of world-class noise cancelling headphones, wants to make car journeys silent, using the vehicle’s speakers. Its QuietComfort Road Noise Control system aims to suppress road noise, using a series of accelerometers and microphones to cancel out unwanted sound waves using the vehicle’s sound system. Conventional systems simply pack the doors and floor with insulation but the problem is much bigger for electric cars, which lack the ambient sound of a combustion engine to mask the irritating roar of rubber on road. Science fiction has long been filled with gadgets that automatically apply makeup. At CES, Procter & Gamble turned sci-fi into reality with a wand that scans the face and then precisely applies makeup. The Opté Precision Skincare System detects the colour and pigment of skin using a camera, detects blemishes and then covers them with the exact amount of makeup needed to seamlessly erase them. The system prints makeup on to the skin using tiny inkjet-like nozzles. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Climbing is frightening. That’s part of the point. Breaking through a fear barrier, physical or mental, brings a euphoria that would take you months of running to approximate (I’m estimating, there; I’ve still never had running euphoria). In the general run of things, it’s hard to scare yourself, without incurring life-threatening risks. So climbing is a simulation exercise, really, in going to the brink. It cuts both ways: either you get the rush of a challenge met with adequate confidence and skill, or you get too scared and end up clinging, sweaty-palmed, to a wall, slightly too high up to leap off, too jessie to look down, trying to feel your way to safety with blind and jittery feet. Bouldering on an indoor wall doesn’t let you go that high. Holds that involve more dynamic moves – effectively leaping from one to another, with a split second of “holy-shit” in the middle – tend not to be at the very top of the wall. But actually, your body doesn’t listen to reason: I can get scared when I’m two feet from the ground, a height where falling off on to the padded crashmat flooring would be no more consequential than jumping into bed in a lively fashion. I can also get scared when I’m on a totally secure hold at the top of a wall, nothing but a blank brain and a thumping heart. I can get scared on a novice route (or “problem”), or on one I’ve done five times before. Obviously it’s not a competition, but your mind can do things to your body, liquefy it in a way that no muscle in the world could withstand. But remember: you don’t want never to be scared or you’ll never get your mojo. Stuart Amory has trained people in both the things that scare us the most: swimming, and heights (specifically, in his case, parachute jumping for the military). In the water, the fear can seem wholly reasonable; people who can’t swim, drown. Before you can work on technique, he says, you have to discover your natural buoyancy. You will never trust this from anyone else; you have to see for yourself how much your body doesn’t want to sink. Lie on your back in the shallow end and take a deep breath: your full lungs will help you float. Heights are more complicated, even Amory says he found his fear building rather than retreating the more parachute jumps he did. Then you berate yourself because you’re suddenly afraid of something you’ve done before. His answer (in precis, because it was too rude to print verbatim) is to think of a person you hate who you know has done the very thing you’re scared of. If they can do it, you can. Finally, you can get ahead of your fear, by constructing whatever it is as a challenge, which directs the focus of your mind differently. “I always point to my clients,” Amory said. “Point to their bodies and say, ‘What is that capable of? What’s the most it could do?’” To find out the answer is the challenge in itself. If like me, you’re most scared of developing an injury, make sure you always warm up properly.Internal Zimbabwean police documents passed to the Guardian suggest the army has been responsible for murder, rape and armed robbery during the ongoing brutal crackdown in the southern African country. At least 12 people are thought to have died when security forces opened fire on civilians during a three-day shutdown called by unions after a fuel price rise this month. One police officer is believed to have been killed. The death toll is expected to rise. The violence is the worst in Zimbabwe for at least a decade and has dashed any remaining hopes that the end of the 37-year rule of the autocratic leader Robert Mugabe 14 months ago would lead to significant political reform. In more than a dozen investigation reports shared with the Guardian by police officials frustrated at the apparent impunity of the military, a series of alleged attacks are described, including two murders and the rape of a 15-year-old girl. All were committed by men wearing army “uniforms” or “camouflage”, police investigators write – a formula that allows police to avoid making direct accusations against the powerful military. Officially, the Zimbabwe Republic police, the national police force, has blamed the violence on criminal “rogue elements” who have stolen army uniforms, and said the charges of widespread abuses by security and the armed forces have been fabricated. But in most cases described in the documents seen by the Guardian, the assailants carried automatic weapons, which few people other than soldiers and police possess. The leak of the documents suggests increasing tensions between the military and people within civilian law enforcement agencies. One report, filed by police in Glenview in the capital, Harare, on 14 January, describes how a Toyota driven by two men, including a 29-year-old named as Trymore Nachiwe, was blocked by a pickup truck without number plates or other identification. Men in civilian dress and some wearing Zimbabwe National Army uniforms then got out of the pickup armed with stones, iron bars, machetes and teargas canisters, the report says. They smashed the Toyota’s windows and ordered Nachiwe and his friend to lie down by the roadside, where they were punched and kicked repeatedly. Nachiwe managed to reach his home but died in hospital after seeking medical attention the following day. Another report details the murder – apparently by security forces – of Kudakwashe Rixon, a 22-year-old, who was seized by uniformed men at a bus terminal in central Harare on Sunday. The report, filed at Harare Central police station on 27 January, said Rixon had been driven with others to a remote “bushy area” where they were beaten with wooden clubs, whips made with metal wire and iron rods. Rixon managed to get home, where relatives tried to care for him but he died on arrival at Harare hospital a day later. A third report describes how a 15-year-old in the town of Chitungwiza, outside Harare, was forced into a park by three men wearing army camouflage and carrying rifles and made to lie on a concrete table where she was raped. Responding to earlier reports of violence, the country’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, promised that wrongdoers within the security forces would be held accountable. On Monday, he said he was “appalled” by a Sky News report showing security forces beating a handcuffed man. The army has been responsible for a series of brutal crackdowns since Zimbabwe gained its independence in 1980, and played a key role in the ousting of Mugabe. Soldiers shot six civilians dead in Harare days after Mnangagwa won contested elections last year, and have deployed in strength in cities in recent weeks. The reports also describe the alleged theft from homes and businesses of items including iPhones, computers, televisions, and even an electric iron. Twelve cans of beer were stolen in an attack on a bar. Among dozens of reports of robbery are incidents in which groups of men wearing army uniforms and carrying automatic weapons arrived in unidentified vehicles, forced their way into homes through threats and then looted property worth up to $8,000. In one incident, an eight-year-old child was threatened with a handgun to force his parents to reveal their savings. In another, a man was stopped while walking home and beaten with whips. His wallet with $235 was taken. In a shopping centre in Glenview, cash was taken from the till, along with telephones and drinks. The documents – which only apply to Harare – do not give a comprehensive view of the extent of the violence associated with the crackdown, which took place across the country. Police were so stretched during the worst of the unrest and violence between 15 and 20 January that no or few reports were filed during this period. Many crimes committed by security forces have not been reported, because victims are often fearful of detention or further violence if they complain to police. Courts are currently processing around a thousand detainees, largely picked up in a series of sweeps by security forces through poor neighbourhoods in and around Harare, as well as other cities, since the unrest began. Hundreds of activists, opposition politicians and civil society leaders are still in hiding. It now appears very unlikely that Mnangagwa will achieve his stated aim of ending Zimbabwe’s pariah status to unlock the massive financial aid necessary to avert total economic collapse. This suggests that basic commodities such as food, fuel and medicine will remain both scarce and increasingly expensive, making further protests likely. Authorities in Zimbabwe will face new pressure in coming days, as hundreds of thousands of civil servants prepare to strike after rejecting a government package to boost their income. Courts are struggling to process the huge number of detainees, who are being kept in overcrowded cells and prisons. New “fast track” trials have involved up to 60 accused being represented by five lawyers appearing at courts to face charges that could lead to lengthy prison sentences. Seven people have now been charged with subversion, an unprecedented number. On Tuesday hundreds of lawyers marched through Harare to protest against the continued deployment of the military and the new judicial procedures. “Where people have committed crimes, please deal with them in accordance with the international law [and] follow due process,” Beatrice Mtetwa, a leading human rights lawyer, said. Nelson Chamisa, leader of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said the authorities were trying to divert blame from economic failings.Western culture and society pose more health risks to migrants and refugees than they do to host nations, according to a World Health Organization study. The first report on refugee and migrant health in the west by WHO Europe suggests new arrivals are at risk of falling ill while in transit to another country, but face further dangers when they arrive in a host nation because of unhealthy living conditions, poor diet and the obesity epidemic. The report on the health of refugees and migrants in the WHO European region says they do not transmit diseases or place a disproportionate burden on healthcare systems, and calls on countries to make decisions about providing services to migrants based on facts, rather than politics or prejudice. Dr Santino Severoni, the coordinator of public health and migration for WHO Europe, said: “This report is a wonderful opportunity to diffuse false myths, misperceptions and negative narrative. “Health is very politicised and used as a tool of fear, but this report has very solid facts and data that is coming from our member states.” According to the report, international migrants make up 10% (90.7 million) of the population in the WHO European region. Just over 7% are refugees. “In some European countries, citizens estimate that there are three or four times more migrants than there really are,” it said. Evidence collected by the WHO suggests migrants and refugees are less likely to be affected by non-contagious diseases such as cancer, stroke or heart disease, but their risk of developing such illnesses increases when they move to more developed countries, particularly as they are often living in poor conditions. While refugees and migrants are more vulnerable to infectious diseases when in transit from their home countries, the proportion with tuberculosis or HIV varies widely. WHO Europe said: “Despite the widespread assumption to the contrary, there is only a very low risk of refugees and migrants transmitting communicable diseases to their host population.” The report implicitly criticises the UK and other nations that charge some migrants and refugees for healthcare by suggesting the best way to protect the health of those in host nations and new arrivals is to provide universal, free healthcare. In December, representatives of more than 70,000 doctors urged ministers to suspend regulations that force hospitals to charge overseas visitors upfront for NHS care, voicing concern about pregnant women being denied care and children missing out on treatment for serious illnesses. Rules brought in in 2015 and 2017 under the “hostile environment” immigration policy specify when overseas visitors should be charged for receiving NHS care. Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO regional director for Europe, said: “As migrants and refugees become more vulnerable than the host population to the risk of developing both noncommunicable and communicable diseases, it is necessary that they receive timely access to quality health services. “This is the best way to save lives and cut treatment costs, as well as protect the health of the resident citizens.” The report also found: Refugees and migrants are at lower risk of all forms of cancer, but are more likely to be diagnosed at an advanced stage. Depression and anxiety are more common among refugees and migrants than host populations. Unaccompanied minors are vulnerable to sexual exploitation and experience higher rates of depression and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Male migrants experience significantly more work-related injuries than non-migrant workers. The report’s authors called on European nations to provide good-quality, affordable healthcare to all migrants and refugees regardless of their legal status, and make health systems culturally and linguistically accessible. Severoni said: “Countries tend to use costs as a justification of limiting or delaying healthcare access to newcomers or providing emergency access only. But this is not cost effective, early identification costs less than delaying until absolutely necessary hospital treatment.”Donald Trump abruptly ended a critical meeting with Democratic leaders on Wednesday, calling it a “total waste of time” as the partial shutdown of the US government dragged into its 19th day with no end in sight. The further deterioration of negotiations over the funding lapse affecting nearly 800,000 federal employees came a day after the president used his first address from the Oval Office to reinforce his demands for a wall along the southern border with Mexico. “Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time,” Trump said on Twitter, referring to the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!” Schumer, offering his version of events, told reporters outside of the White House that “the president just got up and walked out”. “He asked Speaker Pelosi: ‘Will you agree to my wall?’ She said no, and he just got up and said we have nothing to discuss and walked out,” Schumer said. “Again, we saw a temper-tantrum because he couldn’t get his way.” The meeting followed a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill, during which Trump urged Republicans to “stick together”. A handful of Republicans have expressed concerns over the longevity of the shutdown. At least three Republican senators – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine – have said they would support reopening the government without funding for the wall. But emerging from the private meeting with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill, Trump showed no sign of backing down while threatening to declare a national emergency if a breakthrough is not found. “The Republicans are totally unified,” Trump said. “We talked about strategy, but they’re with us all the way.” “He gave no indication of any willingness to budge an inch,” said John Kennedy, a Republican of Louisiana. “The president – and I happen to agree with him – believes that his only sin is that for the first time in 15 or 20 years he is actually enforcing America’s immigration laws.” The shutdown, the third under Trump’s watch, is the longest since 1995 and has forced the closure of national parks, placed certain food and drug inspections on hold, and sparked concerns over air travel. Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, who were set to meet with Trump at the White House on Wednesday afternoon for the first time since last week, meanwhile, held an event with furloughed federal workers in a bid to highlight the impact of the shutdown. “To use them as hostages through a temper tantrum by the president is just so wrong, so unfair, so mean-spirited,” Schumer said. “It ought to end and it ought to end now.” Trump offered no new solutions at a nationwide televised address on Tuesday evening, but instead insisted that a wall was necessary to stem the flow of illegal immigration. In a speech full of false claims and misleading statistics, Trump painted a portrait of a crisis at the US-Mexico border even as the rate of illegal immigration has steadily fallen over the years and in 2018 reached its lowest point in more than a decade. Talks have remained at a stalemate over the president’s insistence that any government funding bill include $5.7bn toward the construction of a border wall. Democrats, newly in control of the House of Representatives, have said they will not allocate any money toward the wall, which remains a popular concept within Trump’s base but has little support from the broader American public. Although he stopped short of declaring a “national emergency” in his televised address, Trump insisted on Wednesday he had the “absolute right” to do so. “I think we might work a deal, and if we don’t, I may go that route,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.” Asked about the federal workers who were going without pay, Trump said: “They’re all going to get the money and I think they’re going to be happy. “Many of those people that you’re talking about are on my side.” There is no evidence to support the notion that federal workers support a border wall or Trump’s position amid the shutdown. It is also not clear if those who were either working or furloughed without pay would eventually be compensated. Democrats, in a bid to amplify pressure on the White House and Senate Republicans, were set to begin a series of House votes on Wednesday that would reopen the government one department at a time. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, signaled the bills would hit a dead end in the upper chamber. “We are all behind the president,” McConnell told reporters with Trump by his side. Without a resolution, the closure of several government operations could soon pose a threat to the delivery of food stamps and tax refunds for millions of Americans. Clifton Buchanan, a cook supervisor with the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Houston, is among the hundreds of thousands of federal employees who have been furloughed since 21 December 2018, when parts of the government shut down. Buchanan, who participated in the press conference with Democrats, turned 50 on Friday. But instead of celebrating the milestone, he sat around the kitchen table with his wife discussing which bills they could afford to pay without his income. He said: “Right now I’m just trying to figure out how to pay my bills and feed my family. I’m not working. I’m not getting paid. I can’t pick and choose who to blame. I just know I have no income.”Today, three puzzles from Mathigon, a remarkable maths website (about which more later). An easy one to start. Count the number of triangles in the image below. Careful though! It’s always easy to miss a few. Talking of (and walking on) triangles…here’s a probability question about random ants. Finally, a very nice logic problem based on arithmetic. If 28 out of the 30 statements in the list are correct, but the two that are wrong are consecutive, which ones do they have to be? (Consecutive meaning the two statements are next to each other in the list). Integer means whole number. I like this one since you don’t need to know the value of the large integer to work out the answer, although some of you might want to find it out. I’ll be back at 5pm UK time with the answers. Meanwhile NO SPOILERS. The puzzles – and the illustrations – are taken from Mathigon, a wonderful interactive maths ‘textbook’ that is free online. Rather than just presenting you with information, Mathigon challenges you with problems and allows you to interact with diagrams. It is one of the most accessible and engaging maths resources available on the web, a true mathematical wonderland. The text is well-written, the pages are beautifully designed and presented, and it covers a large array of topics. What’s particularly impressive about Mathigon, however, is that it has been conceived, coded, written and designed by a single person: Philipp Legner, aged 26. He has a unique combination of programming skills, a gift for exposition and an eye for design. Legner studied maths at Cambridge university. He got the idea for Mathigon when volunteering for a maths outreach project with local schools. “I always meet kids (and adults) who “hate” mathematics, so I wanted to develop a platform where every student can enjoy learning mathematics – just like I did. Rather than simply memorising equations and procedures, I want students to be able to explore, discover and be creative.” Legner has worked as a programmer for Bloomberg and Google but recently left to work on Mathigon full-time. The site has deservedly won several awards and he hopes to secure funding to keep it free for students. If you haven’t seen it before, I recommend you check it out. The URL is mathigon.org. I set a puzzle here every two weeks on a Monday. I’m always on the look-out for great puzzles. If you would like to suggest one, email me. I’m the author of several books of maths and puzzles, including Can You Solve My Problems. I also co-author Football School, a book series for kids that explains the world through football.The influence of “big food” must be curbed around the world if obesity, malnutrition and climate change are to be effectively tackled, according to a report. Overconsumption of junk food and not having enough to eat are two sides of the malnutrition coin, said a commission of experts brought together by the Lancet medical journal. A third major global problem is interlinked – climate change that is worsened by food production, waste and transportation. The commission said political leaders and civil society must step up to counter the commercial interests and lobbying of the food industry. It called for a UN treaty along the lines of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to support countries in drawing up sustainable and healthy food policies. As the FCTC does with the tobacco industry, the proposed treaty would ban food and drink companies from discussions. The commission also recommended removing subsidies for agriculture and transport that contribute to poor diet and health. It proposed a $1bn (£760m) fund for civil society organisations that want to take on the food industry and press for sugar taxes and other measures to improve diets and counter obesity. The experts cited the work of the Mexican NGO El Poder Del Consumidor, which successfully fought for taxes on soft drinks, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The food and drink industry has enormous power and the money to exert pressure on governments, said Tim Lobstein of the World Obesity Federation, one of the commissioners. In the US Congress, he pointed out, there are 294 lobbyists from food and drink companies, more than from either the tobacco or alcohol industries. “Of that, two-thirds are former Congress staff, so they know what they are doing. That level of lobbying is devoted to preserving the status quo. It is a major barrier to change and must be challenged,” he said. In the US and Australia, food industry pressure succeeded in keeping sustainability out of national dietary guidelines, the commission said. In the US, subsidies for fossil fuels keep petrol prices artificially low, encouraging car use rather than cycling, walking or taking public transport. No country has succeeded in reversing its obesity epidemic, said the experts, who argued a broader attack is needed. Prof Boyd Swinburn of the University of Auckland, the co-chair of the commission, said: “Until now, undernutrition and obesity have been seen as polar opposites of either too few or too many calories. “In reality, they are both driven by the same unhealthy, inequitable food systems, underpinned by the same political economy that is single-focused on economic growth and ignores the negative health and equity outcomes. “Climate change has the same story of profits and power ignoring the environmental damage caused by current food systems, transportation, urban design and land use.” Echoing the “planetary health diet” devised by a commission convened by the Lancet and the Eat Forum NGO, the obesity commission said there could be extensive benefits to the planet if people ate less red meat. As an example of the interconnection of obesity, malnutrition and climate change, the experts said reducing red meat consumption through taxes, redirected subsidies, health and environmental labelling, and social marketing would lead to healthier diets, prevention of cancer and obesity, more land for efficient, sustainable agriculture, opportunities to reduce undernutrition, and lower greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Sustainable food production is rising, said Lobstein. Changing the practices of large food companies, however, will not happen quickly. Making the industry pay for plastic pollution could be one way to bring about change. From a survey by Ocean Conservancy, he calculated that 70% of the 10 most common types of plastic waste in seas is from food and drink. Food wrappers, plastic bottles, bottle tops and grocery bags are in the top five items found, after cigarette butts. “All these things are interrelated,” Lobstein said. “There are compounds in plastics that are endocrine disruptors, which may be contributing to obesity. If plastics in the food chain are causing weight gain, we will need win-win solutions to improve the food supply while saving the planet.” Fiona Sing of the World Cancer Research Fund said: “We support the implementation of a global treaty to limit the political influence of big food. How we produce and consume food is possibly the most important determinant of both human and environmental health worldwide. “Obesity and undernutrition affect billions of people and are major drivers in diet-related non-communicable diseases, including cancer.”The Liberal Democrats have said they will not support Labour in future no-confidence votes unless the party backs a second referendum, making it almost impossible that Labour could force a general election. The Lib Dem leader, Vince Cable, said he did not want to participate in confidence votes that had little chance of success if the aim was to delay Labour endorsing a public vote. He suggested other parties may take a similar view. Speaking after Jeremy Corbyn’s speech in Hastings on Thursday, a day after Theresa May’s government won a confidence vote with the support of the Democratic Unionist party, Cable said Labour policy meant Corbyn should endorse a second public poll. “Since he appears to be determined to play party political games rather than acting on the wishes of his own members and MPs, he will no longer be able to rely on our support for further no-confidence motions,” he said. “I believe other parties are taking the same view. It’s time Mr Corbyn got off the fence and made his position plain.” Cable’s intervention came as the Conservative backbencher Sarah Wollaston pledged to put down an amendment to Theresa May’s Brexit plan, which would give MPs the chance to vote on whether to hold a second referendum. This amendment would be unlikely to pass the House of Commons unless it had the support of the Labour leadership. Sarah Wollaston had previously withheld her amendment because Corbyn would not support it, but she said it was time to put it to a vote of MPs when Brexit was next debated in the Commons, and called on the Labour leader to back her. Wollaston said: “I very much hope Labour will finish going through their process and Jeremy Corbyn will come out and stick to their commitment that he will back a second vote, which is what a majority of his members want.” A Lib Dem source said Cable was not ruling out ever supporting a confidence vote, but the party would not be part of an internal Labour spat. “We will support any real opportunity to take down the Tories with relish,” the source said. “We will not be party to Corbyn using spurious means to avoid Labour policy, by pursuing unwinnable no-confidence votes.” Labour has not ruled out tabling further no-confidence votes in the hope of peeling off exasperated Tory rebels and triggering a general election. An abstention by the Lib Dems would mean Labour needing about 20 DUP or Tory MPs not to vote with the government to force an election. Cable, along with the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, the Green party MP, Caroline Lucas, and Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville-Roberts wrote to Corbyn on Wednesday night, saying the parties expected him to honour his promise to back a public vote if Labour failed to secure an election. “We are now locked in a Brexit impasse, as we do not believe the prime minister will be able to come back and offer the house any deal that will secure the support of a majority of MPs,” the letter said. “This is why we believe the only way forward is to hold a people’s vote on the final Brexit deal. “We believe, as per the motion passed at your party conference, it is only correct that you now move to back a public vote.” The four leaders of the smaller parties in parliament met May for discussions after the confidence vote. A Lib Dem spokeswoman described the talks as constructive, but said they were futile without a new referendum being considered as an option. “No deal must be taken off the table and there has to be constructive discussion of [a] people’s vote,” Cable’s spokeswoman said. “We are willing to listen but just fiddling with the agreement is not sufficient.” Lucas said she had pressed May to consider a public poll. “One of her main concerns is about how it looks if parliament is unable to deliver on the result of the referendum,” she said. “I’ve been talking and listening to people across the country and can assure her that parliament is already considered to have failed – and the way to start bringing our society back together is with more democracy.” Lucas said she had also promised to send May more information about a possible role for a citizens’ assembly. “Sadly, these talks are coming far too late and there is no sign the prime minister is genuinely willing to compromise,” she added. A Labour party source said: “The Lib Dems propped up the Tories for five years, so it’s no surprise they’re still committed to keeping them in power.”The first science-based diet that tackles both the poor food eaten by billions of people and averts global environmental catastrophe has been devised. It requires huge cuts in red meat-eating in western countries and radical changes across the world. The “planetary health diet” was created by an international commission seeking to draw up guidelines that provide nutritious food to the world’s fast-growing population. At the same time, the diet addresses the major role of farming – especially livestock – in driving climate change, the destruction of wildlife and the pollution of rivers and oceans. Globally, the diet requires red meat and sugar consumption to be cut by half, while vegetables, fruit, pulses and nuts must double. But in specific places the changes are stark. North Americans need to eat 84% less red meat but six times more beans and lentils. For Europeans, eating 77% less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds meets the guidelines. The diet is a “win-win”, according to the scientists, as it would save at least 11 million people a year from deaths caused by unhealthy food, while preventing the collapse of the natural world that humanity depends upon. With 10 billion people expected to live on Earth by 2050, a continuation of today’s unsustainable diets would inevitably mean even greater health problems and severe global warming. Unhealthy diets are the leading cause of ill health worldwide, with 800 million people currently hungry, 2 billion malnourished and further 2 billion people overweight or obese. The world’s science academies recently concluded that the food system is broken. Industrial agriculture is also devastating the environment, as forests are razed and billions of cattle emit climate-warming methane. “The world’s diets must change dramatically,” said Walter Willett at Harvard University and one of the leaders of the commission convened by the Lancet medical journal and the Eat Forum NGO. The report, published in the Lancet and being launched to policymakers in 40 cities around the world, also concluded that food waste must be halved to 15%. “Humanity now poses a threat to the stability of the planet,” said Prof Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden, another author of the report. “[This requires] nothing less than a new global agricultural revolution.” Farm yields in poorer nations must be improved to create a sustainable, healthy world, the report found. The planetary health diet is largely plant-based and allows an average of 2,500 calories a day. It allows one beef burger and two servings of fish a week, but most protein comes from pulses and nuts. A glass of milk a day, or some cheese or butter, fits within the guidelines, as does an egg or two a week. Half of each plate of food under the diet is vegetables and fruit, and a third is wholegrain cereals. Willett said these provide the ingredients for a flexible and varied diet: “We are not talking about a deprivation diet here; we are talking about a way of eating that can be healthy, flavourful and enjoyable. “The numbers for red meat sound small to a lot of people in the UK or US,” he said. “But they don’t sound small to the very large part of the world’s population that already consumes about that much or even less. It is very much in line with traditional diets.” The planetary health diet resembles those already known to be healthy, such as the Mediterranean or Okinawa diets, the researchers said. “The planetary health diet is based on really hard epidemiological evidence, where researchers followed large cohorts of people for decades,” said Marco Springmann at Oxford University and part of the commission. “It so happens that if you put all that evidence together you get a diet that looks similar to some of the healthiest diets that exist in the real world.” The report acknowledges the radical change it advocates and the difficulty of achieving it: “Humanity has never aimed to change the global food system on the scale envisioned. Achieving this goal will require rapid adoption of numerous changes and unprecedented global collaboration and commitment: nothing less than a Great Food Transformation.” But it notes that major global changes have occurred before, such as the Green Revolution that hugely increased food supplies in the 1960s. Moves to tax red meat, prevent the expansion of farmland and protect swathes of ocean must all be considered, the commission said. Prof Guy Poppy, from the UK’s University of Southampton, and not part of the commission, said: “This ‘call to arms’ with its clear solutions is timely, comprehensively researched and deserves immediate attention.” “This analysis is the most advanced ever conducted,” said Prof Alan Dangour, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and also not part of the team. “But there is a major question about the ability of populations to shift to such dietary recommendations and their wider public acceptability.” Prof Nigel Scollan, at Queen’s University Belfast and part of the industry-backed Meat Advisory Panel, said: “This report tells us what we have known for millennia: an omnivorous diet is optimal. In the UK, encouraging people to eat less red meat and dairy will have little impact on the environment and is potentially damaging to people’s health.” But Richard Horton and Tamara Lucas, editors at the Lancet, said in an editorial that global changes as set out by the planetary health diet were essential: “Civilisation is in crisis. We can no longer feed our population a healthy diet while balancing planetary resources. If we can eat in a way that works for our planet as well as our bodies, the natural balance will be restored.”A senior judge has resigned from one of the UN’s international courts in The Hague citing “shocking” political interference from the White House and Turkey. Christoph Flügge, a German judge, claimed the US had threatened judges after moves were made to examine the conduct of US soldiers in Afghanistan. Turkey’s government had earlier made “baseless” allegations to end the tenure of a Turkish judge sitting on a United Nations court known as the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals with the connivance of the UN, he claimed. Aydın Sefa Akay was removed following his arrest and subsequent release over alleged links to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based cleric blamed by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for a failed coup attempt. “Turkey applied its veto against Judge Akay,” Flügge said. “We, the other judges, immediately protested. But his tenure was nevertheless not extended by the UN secretary general. And with that, he’s gone.” Flügge, who had been a permanent judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) since 2008, told the German newspaper Die Zeit that he had concluded in the wake of the developments that the “diplomatic world” saw no value in an independent judiciary. He warned that the UN’s blind eye to Turkey’s intervention had set an alarming precedent. “Every incident in which judicial independence is breached is one too many,” he said. “Now there is this case, and everyone can invoke it in the future. Everyone can say: ‘But you let Turkey get its way.’ This is an original sin. It can’t be fixed.” Flügge said the attitude of the US administration to the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague highlighted the danger. “John Bolton, the national security adviser to the US president, held a speech last September in which he wished death on the international criminal court,” he said. “If these judges ever interfere in the domestic concerns of the US or investigate an American citizen, he said the American government would do all it could to ensure that these judges would no longer be allowed to travel to the United States – and that they would perhaps even be criminally prosecuted. “The American security adviser held his speech at a time when The Hague was planning preliminary investigations into American soldiers who had been accused of torturing people in Afghanistan. The American threats against international judges clearly show the new political climate. It is shocking. I had never heard such a threat.” Flügge said the judges on the court had been “stunned” that “the US would roll out such heavy artillery”. “It is consistent with the new American line: ‘We are No 1 and we stand above the law,’” he said.A 35-year-old man from Vacaville, California, was arrested on Monday, believed to have stolen a lottery ticket worth $10m from his roommate. Adul Saosongyang was greeted by Vacaville police as he attempted to collect the jackpot from lottery officials. As heists go, Saosongyang’s was not the most foolproof plan. On 20 December 2018, his roommate, whose identity has not been revealed by police, went to a Lucky convenience store in Vacaville hoping for some holiday good fortune and spent $30 on a scratch-off lottery ticket. Against the odds, the ticket was a winner. The roommate had not played close attention to the rules and jackpot but believed he was in line to win around $10,000. He went home to share the good news with Saosongyang and their other roommate. The following morning, he headed to the closest district office of the California state lottery in Sacramento, but when he arrived he was told by officials that his ticket was worthless. Confused, the man suspected his winning ticket had been swapped for a dud by one of his roommates and reported the incident to the police. The next day, Saosongyang was in for a surprise of his own. Having purloined the ticket, he had also traveled to Sacramento to claim his winnings. There he was told that the ticket was not worth $10,000 – but $10m. The lottery office, unaware of any untoward behaviour, began normal background checks and told Saosongyang to return in a couple of weeks to collect his winnings. In the process of their inquiries, they quickly discovered the ticket had been reported stolen. After watching CCTV footage from the store where the tickets were purchased, police and lottery investigators concluded that Saosongyang had purchased a second ticket after finding out about the win, and then swapped it with his roommate’s while he was asleep. When Saosongyang returned on 9 January, expecting to pick up his winning cheque, he was instead met by local police, who arrested him on suspicion of grand theft and took him to Scaramento county jail. Presumably the original owner of the ticket will now receive his prize, although this has yet to be confirmed by the California state lottery. Saosongyang could serve up to three years in prison.Lurking below the hulking concrete cantilevers of Tbilisi’s Dinamo Arena, an Olympic-sized doughnut near the banks of the Mtkvari river, is one of the greatest nightclubs in the world. Find your way through a pitch-black maze of underground stairs and corridors, and you’ll arrive at a 21st-century techno mecca, and a potent symbol of political rupture in post-Soviet Georgia. In just a few years, Bassiani has become a catalyst for progressive politics in a conservative society. It has also helped make Tbilisi a dream destination for techno tourists, who complete their long weekends with a soak in the city’s sulphurous hot springs and a few bracing shots of chacha. The club traces its roots to 2013, when co-founders Zviad Gelbakhiani, Tato Getia and Naja Orashvili held a rave in the city’s “tubes” – two worm-like structures designed as a concert hall but left unfinished and abandoned. “It was the very first night of pure techno in town,” says Gelbakhiani, who remembers it as a “breakthrough”. He goes on: “Many [in our generation] would say that was the one. One year later, we began Bassiani.” After starting out as a warehouse party, Bassiani – meaning “one with the bass” – moved into the stadium in 2014 thanks to a chance acquaintance with the director of the national football team. Sharing certain similarities with Berlin techno destination Berghain, the club has two rooms with distinct personalities: there’s Bassiani itself, the vast concrete cavern with its striking spotlights and incredible, pin-sharp sound. Then upstairs is Horoom (the name comes from a traditional dance), a more intimate space and one that is defiantly queer in a country where Orthodox Christian values prevail. In addition to its unique setting and permissive atmosphere, Bassiani has nurtured a cadre of resident DJs – including HVL, Kancheli and NDRX – who have since broken into the European scene. A certain kind of neck-deep, full-pelt techno is prevalent, but there’s no house style; on any given night you might hear dirty ghetto house, 80s goth and roughneck breaks. Recent international bookings include Clone Records boss Serge, rising techno talent Anastasia Kristensen and scruffy house herbert Mall Grab. Diversity is a guiding principle, from the music to the individuals in the crowd. To weed out troublemakers, ticket buyers must submit their Facebook profile for vetting. “I don’t really like the concept of ‘face control’ – it really categorises people – but the reason we’re doing it is the safety of the audience,” explains Gelbakhiani. “We really support LGBTQ people and there are many of them dancing in the club, so we don’t want to see somebody being aggressive. Safety comes first.” Away from the dancefloor, there’s plenty more to explore: the warren of dark rooms that offer a rare space for sexual encounters in a country where many young people live with their parents, and a smoking area where tired clubbers can take a nap or, since last year, smoke a spliff. The decriminalisation of cannabis has been a confusing development in the standoff between Georgia’s young, progressive generation and their conservative elders. In May last year, armed police raided Bassiani and made eight drug-related arrests; in response, thousands of clubbers protested outside parliament, sparking a dramatic weekend of counter-demonstrations and riot police intervention. Through its connections with the White Noise movement, which has campaigned for a relaxation of Georgia’s harsh drug laws, Bassiani has become a flashpoint for changing attitudes to drugs. The years after the 2012 election of a pro-European government were “really confusing for all of us”, says Gelbakhiani. “One day the government is demonising the whole clubbing scene, and the next day they say that marijuana is not bad for your health and we should decriminalise it.” After the raids, Bassiani remained closed for several weeks, which nearly bankrupted the business – but the drama ultimately served to galvanise the city’s progressive factions. “Last year was really hectic and stressful,” says Gelbakhiani. “We became a really big part of the political processes in town. [The police] called us for interrogation … it’s really emotional and it really plays on your nerves.” In a commercialised, globalised scene, it’s rare to find a dancefloor whose mere existence is seen as a provocation. Bassiani has come to represent a future of acceptance and freedom, not just in Georgia but in the wider region; buses of dedicated ravers from the even more fractious Armenia and Azerbaijan frequently journey to Tbilisi. “There is a really interesting process happening,” says Gelbakhiani with clear optimism. “We are a really repressed people after the collapse of the Soviet Union. [In Azerbaijan and Armenia] they’re still authoritarian, recovering from these regimes. I hope that one day in Baku they will have a festival and invite Azerbaijanis and Armenians – even though they have this conflict. We are seeing the techno scene as a tool to unite these people.” HVL – Elegance Within the Chaos Zviad Gelbakhiani: “The very first Bassiani label release from one of the most prominent artists in today’s scene. This track has been played many times as a closing track during the morning – emotional, lucid sound from the club’s very own resident HVL.” Rhyw – Untangled Sentences “On an ordinary day in our very small office – which used to be in the club – our label A&R sent this track for checking out. There was a silence after listening to it. I still remember the moment, and how determined we were to check it out on club’s PA. All of us went straight to the main floor, sat down and listened it to many, many times.” Varg – So Many People Trying to Be Unique (But They Still Remind Me of Loke Rahbek) “There’s much to say about Northern Electronics’ Varg and his connection to Bassiani. Once we headed up to Georgia’s beautiful mountain, Kazbegi, after the party – but the road was closed and we were stuck. This track had been recorded at this very strange hotel we stayed at for one night. You can feel the momentum while to listening it. There was absolute emptiness outside of the window, with a mixture of obscure silence and soulless snow.” Berika – Arays “This is one of my favourite releases on the Bassiani label that’s not by a resident DJ. The melody and drums make it one of our greatest releases from 2018, and it’s been played many times outside of Tbilisi in different clubs.” Héctor Oaks – As We Were Saying “Héctor Oaks’ As We Were Saying was inspired by the raids on the club. There were tough times last May, but this release is kind of a symbol of unity, solidarity and of our victory over the repressive, insulting political classes. Héctor is known for his long sets in Horoom and Bassiani, and this track could be the soundtrack of those marathon closing sets.”The Uffizi Gallery in Florence has called on the German government to help return an 18th-century painting stolen by Nazi soldiers during the second world war. Vase of Flowers, a still life by the Dutch master Jan van Huysum, is being held by a Germany family. “Because of this affair, the wounds of the second world war and Nazi terror are not yet healed,” said Eike Schmidt, the museum’s director, who is German. “Germany has a moral duty to return the works to our museum and I hope this will be done as soon as possible, along with every other work of art looted by the Nazi army.” The 47x35cm painting was originally put on display in Florence in 1824 after it was bought by Grande Duke Leopoldo II for his art collection. It hung in the Pitti Palace until 1940, when it was moved to a nearby village after the outbreak of war. German soldiers seized the painting in 1944 as they retreated towards northern Italy after the Allied landings at Anzio and the liberation of Rome, and all trace of it was lost until 1991, shortly after German reunification. Schmidt said that despite many requests by the Italian state, the German family that held the painting had failed to return it. He said several “intermediaries” had tried to sell the painting back, and the most recent “outrageous offer” had prompted the Florence prosecutor to open an investigation. “The painting is already owned by the Italian state and therefore cannot be bought,” he said. Schmidt posted on social media: “An appeal to Germany for 2019: We wish that the famous Vase of Flowers by Dutch painter Jan van Huysum that was stolen by Nazi soldiers be returned to the Uffizi Gallery.” A photo of the painting was put up at the Pitti Palace on Tuesday accompanied by the word “stolen” in Italian, German and English.One rainy Saturday morning in October, several hundred people gathered at a Manchester hotel for QED, the UK’s largest convention of science and skepticism (they prefer the American spelling). Pitched towards rationalists, the event is an opportunity to hear popular science communicators discuss the issues that concern skeptics the most: the rising tide of misinformation, the peril of credulity and the urgency of evidence-based facts. The event had sold out in July and those lucky enough to nab a ticket swarmed the hotel, roving the three floors across which it was held. In the convention’s main hall there were glitzy chandeliers and mirrors, and a stage backed by large screens, in the TED talks mould. Over coffee, some guests traded tales of pseudoscience. Others denounced quackery. In her opening address the convention’s MC, Helen Arney, a ukulele player and former physicist, expressed sympathy for hotel guests unconnected to the convention, as if they had unwittingly stumbled into a lion’s den of critical thinking. “I’ve already heard some amazing conversations in lifts,” she said, “between people who have no idea what is going on.” On the event’s website, QED, which stands for “Question, Explore, Discover”, is described as “a weekend of science, reason and critical thinking”, though it might justifiably be advertised as a get-together for the skeptical community. Lately their ranks have grown. In October, QED bagged its biggest crowd yet – in recent years, delegates have begun flying in from around the world, and turnouts have been steadily increasing at smaller events: panel discussions, pub meets, village hall gatherings. At QED, speakers gave presentations on topics with which most skeptics are familiar:the fallacies of the wellness industry, the history of poltergeists. But the underlining message related more to the skeptical process: how to become a more effective critical thinker, how to use that skill to better discern whether information is true or false, and how to share that information with a wider audience. “Skepticism isn’t just about saying Bigfoot isn’t real,” one skeptic told me during a break between talks. “It’s a tool set!” In anxious times, that tool set is important. In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, a Pew Research Center study found that 23% of American adults had shared a false news story, sometimes knowingly. Shortly afterward, Oxford dictionaries selected “post-truth” as its word of the year because, following significant disinformation campaigns – Trump’s election, Brexit – the expression had evolved from “being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary”. (The Collins English Dictionary selected “fake news” for its list 12 months later.) Last year Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly told the BBC: “Truth is no longer dictated by authorities, but is networked by peers. For every fact there is a counter-fact.” What is demonstrably correct, these days, seems negligible. This should be a scary thought for all of us, though the worry can sometimes slip from the forefront of our minds. The past few years have been rough – it is tiresome to evaluate information constantly, even when there are clues to suggest it might be inaccurate or, worse, deliberately distorted. It is easier, sometimes, to believe what you prefer to believe. But for skeptics, approaching information in any way other than with rational curiosity is counter- intuitive, particularly now, when dangerous untruths seep into the culture like water into earth. “Most people are not by nature critical thinkers,” Chris French, a British psychologist, told me. “It’s not a particularly natural way of thinking. So, skeptics, we’re kind of a weird bunch. We say, ‘Really?’ We say, ‘Show us the evidence!’” For a decade, French was the editor of The Skeptic, the UK’s go-to journal. To the question, “What should we believe?”, he responds: “Find out for yourself!” “I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation where fake news and claims of conspiracy have been so much a part of our political and wider culture,” he told me. “Fake news has always been there. But it’s not had the prominence it has now, thanks partly to the internet, and partly to Donald Trump. And there’s never been a greater need for people to try to make a distinction between claims that are true and claims that are false – no greater need for critical thinking!” I don’t like it that there are people out there selling ideas that aren’t true The American skeptical movement, which emerged in the 1970s and later spawned a UK counterpart, involves several large organisations, including the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which promotes “the use of reason in examining important issues” (Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov were founding members). In contrast, British skepticism has a grassroots verve. There is no UK-wide organising body, and the community is eager and committed but haphazard. Some groups organise lectures or record podcasts. Others venture into activism, and co-ordinate stunt-like investigations to expose local charlatans: psychics, chiropractors, naturopaths (the charismatic health guru with a winning smile but no academic qualifications is the skeptic’s mortal enemy). In all cases, the aim is to debunk suspicious fringe claims: that the Earth is flat (it is not); that homeopathy is a viable treatment for cancer (untrue); that the MMR vaccine causes autism (nope); that, for a fee, a medium is able to retrieve loving messages from your childhood pet (nice idea, never proven). Skeptics often consider themselves a last line of defence against irrational beliefs. When inaccurate information has been accepted in the culture as truth and scientific agencies have brushed aside their responsibility to correct the incorrect, the skeptical community mobilises, though sometimes it can appear as if it’s using a ladle to bale out a sinking ship. In his book The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe (sold out at the QED bookstall), the American skeptic and neurologist Steven Novella describes contemporary skepticism as “a generational struggle, one that will likely never end”. QED is reflective of skepticism’s rising urgency: among long-serving rationalists, the audience was peppered with people new to the movement. The convention is run by a five-person committee that includes Michael Marshall, a 35-year-old from Liverpool. I spoke to Marshall in the lead-up to the weekend, during a brief reprieve from what he called “the maelstrom of event management”. QED has been organised annually since 2011, around the time Marshall began to pursue a career in skepticism full-time (an English graduate, he had been working in marketing). He now describes himself as a “full-time skeptical investigator”, a position that involves “travelling around the country, encouraging groups of strangers to doubt stuff”. When he is not organising QED, Marshall works for the Good Thinking Society, a non-profit organisation established by the science writer Simon Singh that promotes rational inquiry. Much of Marshall’s skeptical work is campaign-based: he and Singh mull over curious claims, and Marshall investigates, sometimes undercover, until he has enough information to raise public awareness and bring about social change. Targets can be small or large – local healers or the NHS. A few years ago, Marshall exposed a Liverpool palm reader by revealing that her predictions tended to stick to a script. In 2015, he orchestrated a campaign that challenged NHS spending on homeopathic treatments – alternative therapies without medical validation – a situation Marshall described as “unlawful, and contrary to the best interest of local patients”. One by one, clinical commissioners nationwide terminated homeopathic funding until, in August, it ceased almost entirely. Skeptics don’t always achieve such success. “The barrier to entry is your willingness to participate,” Marshall told me, as though he knew not all campaigns had similar consequences. “I just don’t like the idea that there’s someone out there selling ideas to people that aren’t true.” This is true of most skeptics, who are often as much disciples of empiricism as ethical warriors. Marshall regularly works on projects he considers morally just. “I do a lot of investigations into alternative medicine,” he told me, because “in the worst cases, you actually see people turning down lifesaving medicine, convinced the natural treatment they’re given by an alternative practitioner is going to save them.” People have died, he said, but “if we watch each other’s backs, we’ll stop each other falling into these kinds of pitfalls. That, for me, is why skepticism is hugely important.” Marshall was due to give a talk at QED. He’d been assigned the after-lunch spot, typically an attention graveyard, though he seemed confident he could energise the audience. Earlier in the year, Marshall had visited the UK’s first Flat Earth conference, in Birmingham, and he was excited to share his findings. Before the talk he said his intention was not to pillory Flat Earth beliefs, but to explain what might turn a person against conventional science, and how their beliefs can become contagious. For much of the talk, Marshall was true to his word. An accomplished speaker, he prowled from one side of the stage to the other, tall and thin, dressed all in black and wearing a wireless microphone. But every now and then a comment would slip into derision, and the room would fill with a kind of patronising bellow. In those moments, the audience appeared less like a collection of truth-seekers and more like a group of smug know-it-alls. People believe in these things because they’re comforting. Do I really want to take that away? Ask a skeptic if they enjoy their informed position and, more often than you’d imagine, they’ll demur. These days, the truth can be a burden. French told me, “If someone’s into astrology, you can say, ‘Well, there’s no science to support that.’ If they’re into alternative medicine, you can say, ‘Well, that’s rubbish.’” He added, “People stop inviting you to parties.” I heard similar stories at QED. The convention had opened with a dramatic video in which a convincing David Attenborough impersonator voiced over a wildlife documentary pastiche, which mined the struggle of skepticism for laughs. “This rare creature swims against a seemingly overwhelming tide of irrationality,” fake Attenborough said, “in a quiet and almost entirely ineffectual way.” The audience chuckled, knowingly. He went on, “These skeptics can be identified by their almost pungent air of superiority.” This is the skeptic’s struggle. How do you tell a man whose wife recently died that there’s no proof his medium can offer contact? How do you convince a woman terminally ill with cancer not to spend the last months of her life ingesting a provably ineffective miracle cure? “It’s one thing to attack alternative medicine in the abstract,” French told me. “But people believe in these things because they’re comforting. Do I really want to take that away from them?” A week before QED, I went to a talk by Jonathan Jarry, a Canadian skeptic, who at the convention took part in a panel titled “#NoFilter: Scrutinising Social Media Skepticism”. At the talk, which had been organised by French, an audience member asked how to approach sensitive subjects with family members, and a discussion broke out. Jarry advised a friendly, open approach: be cautious, present the facts, but don’t push too hard. It was a position French agreed with, and the other skeptics in the room all nodded along. When I spoke to Deborah Hyde, The Skeptic’s current editor, she said, “I don’t think you attract anybody to your way of thinking when you’re a knob about it.” Later, Jarry told me, “Perhaps the hardest job of a skeptic is to persuade people.” Some find it so difficult they give up. “But there are a lot of people out there who just don’t know where the facts lie – what is real, what isn’t. And there are interest groups that are pushing disinformation on purpose, to confuse people, to sow doubt.” Jarry considers his work a kind of “Sisyphean struggle”. Every day he encounters new forms of misinformation: inaccurate newspaper stories, fabricated videos. “But for me,” he said, “it always boils down to: if no skeptics do this, then the other side wins.” And then what are we left with? “Falsehoods and lies,” he said.Hear the words tie dye and you could be forgiven for imagining surfers, the counterculture and Jerry Garcia. But with nostalgia rarely out of fashion these days, tie-dye prints are tipped to be the throwback trend of 2019 after appearances on the spring catwalks and will soon be on sale at Asos and New Look. Ida Petersson, the womenswear buying director at Browns, describes this season’s deluge as “the biggest sighting for a long time”. Her top picks are as broad as they are colourful, and include Prada’s A-line skirts, Ambush’s Hawaiian tie-dye shirts, Stella McCartney’s soft tie-dye dresses and her personal favourite, R13’s tie-dye T-shirts paired with blazers. At the other of the price spectrum, New Look and Urban Outfitters are producing entire lines in neutral tie-dye prints. Asos, ever the yardstick, has a record-breaking number of tie-dye pieces for the new season, including jersey, sweat and underwear, and colours ranging from neon to dark, autumnal shades. “We are no longer seeing this as just a spring summer trend,” said a spokesperson for the brand. So why tie dye, and why now? The trend is driven by individuality. Owing to the way it is traditionally made – bunches of fabric are tied with waxed thread so the dye only touches the exposed areas – no two prints are the same, which is revolutionary in this world of fast fashion. Plus, it’s incredibly versatile as a print, says Petersson. Like other trends, this one might have started on a T-shirt – “and in terms of silhouettes, of course, the T-shirt will be the easy way to buy into the trend,” she says – but in 2019 you can expect to see it everywhere. “The Elder Statesman, the label which ‘owned’ high-end tie dye for a long time, used it so many different ways and this is what really makes the trend for me.” For some, the idea of a print associated with anti-commercialism being co-opted by high fashion and sold at catwalk prices might leave a bad taste. But tie dye can still be a totem for change and protest at a time when it is fashionable to wear your protest on your sleeve. From the We Should All Be Feminists T-shirts of 2017, to pink pussy hats symbolising women’s rights and political resistance, and more recently the gilets jaunes worn by French inequality protesters, fashion can have a political element. Tie dye was always one way to align with the anti-establishment movement of the late 1960s – regardless of whether the wearer had any connection to radical politics. The trend is also one of the few success stories of how high fashion can translate into what people are actually wearing. “That tie dye became a commodity that was ultimately produced using industrial techniques … demonstrates the willingness of industry insiders to turn to the street for inspiration,” writes Jennifer Grayer Moore in her book Fashion Fads Through American History. Perhaps the final element is sustainability, with tie dye a visible indicator of both artisanal printing methods and organic materials, which include 2019 favourites crochet, lace and weaving. However, most of these pieces are not produced in the traditional way, so there is an element of virtue signalling going on. Still, all for a good cause – even if you can’t name a single Grateful Dead song.Simon Wilkinson, a British lorry driver, is surveying about 1,000 lorries amassing at the “queue for the queue” about half a mile from a French port. “This is frictionless trade on a Thursday afternoon in Calais,” he said. Wilkinson runs a small haulage company in Kent that specialises in transporting frozen food. Like all hauliers, he is looking ahead to the possibility of a no-deal Brexit – and the customs and animal checks that could come with it – with some trepidation. “This is what it is like before you throw the spanner in the works,” he pointed out. About 15 minutes earlier, Wilkinson took a detour from his pickup point in Belgium to see the site earmarked by France for the new border inspection post, where food and animals coming from the UK will be subjected to mandatory health checks. But at the port’s planned border inspection post, no work has been done. It is an open field off the A16, the main road between Dunkirk and Calais, where there is no hard shoulder but there is evidence of people recently living on verges, where rain-sodden duvets and clothes are compacted into the dirt. As we head to the port of Calais, the scale of the commercial operation unfolds, with lorries grinding to a halt in the “buffer zone” ahead of the four controls before the ferry. Hard-sided refrigerated lorries are segregated from soft-sided curtain trailers, which range from small lorries carrying goods ordered the night before on Amazon and eBay to 44-tonne vehicles such as Wilkinson’s, which is carrying 24 tonnes of frozen vegetables from Belgium destined for British pubs, restaurants and schools. After one-and-a-half hours snaking through a sea of lorries, we get to the weighbridge – the first check – then the “heartbeat machine”, which checks for stowaways, followed by British and French immigration controls, and finally a shipping office to register for the next available ferry. There we will wait a further two-and-a-half hours. That we are queueing up with 11 other lorries in lane 155 – one of more than 500 lanes – illustrates how big a pinch point Calais is in the supply chain that keeps Britain’s car plants moving and supermarket shelves full. Number of ferries crossing channel a day: 50 Dove's share of UK trade: 17% or £122bn Number of lorries going through Dover per year: 2.6m Number of lorries going through Calais per year: 2m Lorries going through Dover-Calais a day: 6,000 -10,000 “I wanted to make it common knowledge how congested Calais already is. It runs smoothly, but sometimes you can wait up to nine hours,” said Wilkinson. “This is pure luck it only took an hour-and-a-half. A few hours later and it would be gridlock,” added Wilkinson, who runs a fleet of refrigerated lorries from Kent across the Channel every day, then brings food back. For tourists accustomed to rolling on and off cross-Channel ferries, this is another world. “When people complain that delays in Dover are going to impact their holiday plans, that’s small beer,” Wilkinson said. “This is my living 365 days a year.” Wilkinson runs a fleet of 18 lorries at Harrier Express, employing 25 drivers. A day’s delay costs him £400 per lorry and potentially more if frozen cargo is left to rot at the side of the road. What frustrates and angers him the most is the disconnect between Westminster and hauliers on daily business on the border – the Brexit frontline. “At Manston, what on earth were we doing?” asked Wilkinson, referring to the recent government trial at a disused airport in Kent of an emergency traffic system in the event of Brexit gridlock in Dover. “What were we doing? We were planning for failure, we are planning for walking off the plank – and why? We have really serious people like [the bank of England governor] Mark Carney, or Mr BMW or Mr JLR [Jaguar Land Rover], who employ tens of thousands of people, warning the government if you do this [leave the EU without a deal] then our business is going to relocate, but why aren’t they getting the credibility in the debate?” he asked. In the event of a no-deal Brexit, French authorities have warned a two-minute delay at the border could lead to 27,000 vehicles queuing on both sides of the Channel. With so much uncertainty, Wilkinson is making his own contingency plans, and has been trialling a new route from Zeebrugge to Purfleet with “unaccompanied” lorries – where one driver takes a lorry to the ferry and another drives it off at the other end. But he has discovered it will mean a 20% drop in his daily freight capacity because of the extra time involved. He would also have to set up a company in Belgium to run a fleet of drivers for the “unaccompanied” loads, an action that is far trickier than it is in the UK. “But I’m hoping that we won’t be sitting on any motorways anywhere, that there will be proper lorry parking with toilets,” he said. Between 6,000 and 10,000 trucks cross the Channel every day, and all checks – bar those of passports and for fraud and smuggling – are carried out on the French side because of limited space at the cliff-edged port of Dover. While Brexiters have said Britain can choose to keep checks on goods and food to a minimum, those in the business are sure this will not be the case in the long term. “We are getting ready for not just day one [of] no deal,” said a French political source. “We are working on the basis that checks might also be done on food going into Britain eventually, and because there is no space in Dover, that it might be done [on the] French side.” But the best-laid plans could be undone by language issues, with knock-on delays as haulage is now dominated by Polish and Romanian-licensed lorries, with many drivers unable to speak French or English. In time, Wilkinson and his colleagues fear, queues of 1,000 lorries may seem a lot shorter than they do today.European media and commentators were damning about the latest twist in the Brexit saga, accusing Theresa May variously of weakness, desperation and cynicism in putting party before country – and warning she could no longer be trusted. “To avoid the disintegration of her own Conservative party, Theresa May is now risking a major showdown with the EU and increasing the danger of a damaging no-deal departure,” writes Le Monde’s London correspondent, Philippe Bernard. “Two months before the divorce date, she hopes to question two years of discussions with the EU27 – ditching her own handiwork.” British MPs sent two contradictory messages, the paper says: “One majority rejected no deal; another mandated May to begin a renegotiation so hypothetical as to risk that very no deal.” As for the prime minister, she made her strategy very clear, Le Monde concludes: “As risky as it is, she intends to run down the clock so as to force the EU27 into making concessions before 29 March. And then, if necessary, blame the EU – an easy scapegoat – for eventual failure.” In Germany, Björn Finke in the Süddeutsche Zeitung says the most promising way forward for May would undoubtedly be to approach the opposition Labour party with concessions on a permanent customs union. “But that would lose her the support of hardcore Brexiteers in her own party, and risk splitting the Conservatives,” he says. “Since May lacks the courage and the leadership to take such a step, she prefers the seemingly simpler way: renegotiation. Brussels cannot trust her promise to win a majority if changes are made to the deal. May does not have her own party under control. May’s weakness is dangerous, for Britain and for the rest of the EU.” In an opinion piece for El País attacking May’s “startling disloyalty”, Xavier Vidal-Folch says bluntly the British prime minister “can no longer be trusted. Not because her judgment and arguments lack depth, but because she changes them at every step.” It is true that this “worries the Europeans”, Vidal-Folch says. “That’s why they’re drawing up contingency plans, which only remind them of the losses ahead. But those who’ll suffer the most damage are the British themselves. “The car industry, banks and technology sector are all putting the finishing touches to their own partial or total ex-Brit plans. It’s not abstract markets that will tip the balance, but real businesses, inventors, professionals and doctors. Because May can no longer be trusted.” NRC Handelsblad in the Netherlands is equally brutal. “To save her Brexit deal, avoid a split in her party and retain the minimum of control a prime minister needs, May aims to provoke a conflict with the EU,” it says. “What has not proved possible in the past two years now has to be sorted in a fortnight, before the next parliamentary vote … The job looks impossible; there is a very high risk of May returning empty-handed. In which case, a no-deal Brexit will be a real probability: the moment of truth approaches for British politics.” In Italy, La Repubblica says Tuesday’s votes in the Commons “revealed, more than anything else, the general refusal to take responsibility for the economic disaster that an exit from the EU without agreement would be. Nobody wants to be left holding the Brexit baby. Two and a half years after the referendum, we are back at the starting point. And it’s 60 days until Brexit.” Libération, France’s leftwing daily, detects a familiar British strategy behind Tuesday evening’s “utterly absurd” scenes in the Commons. “From now till mid-February, aided by the Eurosceptic press, she can deploy the classic British rhetoric: those intransigent, arrogant Europeans are refusing to give us what we want. “Then she can say, ‘I tried, but this is the only deal on the table.’ She is counting on fear of a no deal to win MPs round. It’s a very big gamble, and it could backfire, lamentably.”Many families in India still mourn the birth of a girl. But when Leena was born, people celebrated. Sagar Gram, her village in central India, is unique that way. Girls outnumber boys. When a woman marries, it is the groom’s family that pays the dowry. Women are Sagar Gram’s breadwinners. When they are deemed old enough, perhaps at the age of 11, most are expected to start doing sex work. India officially abolished caste discrimination almost 70 years ago. But millennia of tradition is not easily erased. For most Indians, caste still has a defining influence on who they marry and what they eat. It also traps millions in abusive work. The exploited and trafficked children of Sagar Gram, and dozens of other villages across India’s hinterland, are one of its most disturbing manifestations. “It is caste and gender slavery,” says Ashif Shaikh of Jan Sahas, an advocacy group that works with members of India’s lowest castes, communities that used to be called “untouchables”. “We estimate there are 100,000 women and girls in this situation. But there are likely more we haven’t identified. It’s an invisible issue.” Girls in Sagar Gram grow up hearing a story. Sometime in the misty past of Hindu myth, a king fell in love with a dancer. His enraged queen issued the woman with a challenge: if she could walk a tightrope across a river, she could join the royal family, and permanently raise the status of her caste. As the woman neared the opposite bank of the river, a step from success, the queen suddenly cut the rope. “Up until now, we lured your men through dancing,” the woman told the queen. “From now on, we will take your men from you with our bodies.” Leena, 22, remembers learning about the woman. She remembers the awe she felt when the older girls from her caste, the Bacchara, suddenly had enough money for makeup and nice clothing. She remembers what the adults in her village told her when she was 15, and her family was having money problems. “Your parents are going through such a hard time,” they told her. “How can you go to school? You need to be working.” That was when she started. “The rest of the girls in my village were doing it, so I felt like I had to do it as well,” she says. “It was my responsibility.” Girls in Sagar Gram, which lies next to a highway, are groomed for this life virtually from birth. Parents decide which of their daughters will fetch the best price. Older girls teach them how to attract customers from passing trucks and cars. The younger ones sometimes stow under beds, observing the others at work. Sex was nonetheless a mystery to Leena. “When I was young, the most important thing was seeing the money the customer was offering,” she says. “I didn’t understand what they were doing to me. I only saw that money was coming in.” Her virginity was prized. She made 5,000 rupees (£55) on the first night. Her price declined after that. Another Bacchara woman, aged 29, says the most she can make for an encounter is 200 rupees. She might see five or six men in a day. India’s preference for male children has created a deep gender imbalance. Among the Baccharas of Sagar Gram village, however, the problem cuts the other way: there are 3,595 women in the district compared with 2,770 men, according to the most recent census. Yet, visiting the village at dusk, few women or girls can be seen. “They’ve all gone to hotels or to stop cars,” an older man says, gesturing at the nearby highway. Every few hundred metres along the road, girls are reclined on rope beds, waving at any vehicle that slows. The legal age of consent in India is 18. Madhya Pradesh, the state in which Sagar Gram is situated, recently passed the death penalty for anyone who rapes a child under 12, also increasing jail terms for adults who have sex with someone under 18. Police say seven people were arrested for child sexual exploitation offences in Sagar Gram in the past year, five of them women who sold their underage daughters. The law is clear, but does little to sway social custom and economic distress. “It’s a traditional business,” says deputy superintendent Nagendra Singh Sikarwar, at the nearby Jeeran police station. “Even girls we try to rehabilitate come back to it. The main issue is we don’t have alternative jobs for them. And so their families are keen that they continue the work.” Most Bacchara men do not work. Only the lowest paid or most degrading jobs are available to them anyway. So they rely on their children. They wait on their porches with the rest of the family while their daughters are inside with customers. One villager, Balram Chauhan, should be a rich man. He has five daughters. But he is struggling: Chauhan, 52, is the only father in the village who refuses to force his children into sex work. “To be exposed to such violence and mental and physical abuse,” he mutters. “How could any parent willingly send them off?” His mother was a prostitute. Despite his efforts, so were four of his sisters. “From the moment I understood what they were doing I tried to stop them,” he says. “But my parents were against me. They said it was a culture that had been going on for years. Who was I to stop it?” Trying to break this cycle has been a lifelong struggle. His parents sabotaged his efforts to train as a health worker, Chauhan says. When he married off his two daughters to spare them from a life of prostitution, his family cut him off. He cannot move his family outside of a Bacchara village: nobody would rent property to someone from his caste. The “higher” caste communities nearby consider his very presence polluting. So he has opened a small shop in Sagar Gram selling biscuits and confectionery, trying to eke out enough to pay for his daughters’ education. “A lot of people here bad-mouth my daughters,” he says. “If they see them speaking on a cellphone, 10 people come to my shop and tell me: ‘Your daughter is chatting to so-and-so.’ They try to say they have loose characters. “If I had one daughter, I could handle it. But when there are five …” he trails off. “It’s a difficult thing.” Additional reporting by Kakoli BhattarcharyaI took the picture in the summer of 2013, in a rural part of northern Austria. I grew up in Holland. I went back there in 2012 to try to recapture my own childhood, but the farm where I was born no longer existed and the people I knew as a child no longer lived there. And then I found my childhood – or what I wished it had been – here, in the Austrian countryside. I was asked to do a documentary project about the Waldviertel region, which is how I came to meet these two local little girls, Hannah and Alena. Their mother, Sonja, asked if I would take some pictures of them. That summer, I travelled to their grandmother’s farm in a village called Waldberg, between Vienna and the Czech Republic. It’s where they always spend their holidays. We became friends and I’ve been going back ever since to photograph them. The two boys – Martin, who is on the swing with the girls, and his brother Christian, whose hands and feet peek out from behind them – are their friends who spend their summers at the farm, too. When I first met Christian, all he wanted to talk about was my camera. But, from the outset, the girls simply did their own thing. I would start our sessions with a few posted portraits, but soon they would get bored and ignore me. And that’s when I would begin to work. I think I was lying on the ground to get this shot, with my 35mm. It’s a camera I love because it allows me to be right inside the image, and I want my viewers to feel the same thing. I don’t know if I purposefully avoided showing their full faces. It wasn’t to anonymise them. Rather, it was to capture something more universal. Instead of looking into their eyes, you follow their individual gazes, and you see the social dynamics at play between them. But I’m not really interested in what they’re playing with. Here, I hate those metal pipes, they spoil my picture. And without the children, there is no picture. Alena, the older girl, is at the centre of the image, and that’s true in how they play together. It’s a role that naturally falls to her – she is in charge, she decides what they’re going to do, and where they’re going to play. The others are happy to follow her lead. And while any other adult – a parent or a grandparent – might be tempted to intervene (“Don’t do that” or “That’s too rough”), I don’t judge, I don’t comment, or direct anything. I might be present, but the kids are on their own. Wherever they go, I go. They don’t see me. They’re in their own world. It’s a nostalgic image, with a touch of magic from those disembodied feet and hands of Christian’s. The longer I live, the more I long to be a child again. This project has perhaps been more about looking not for my actual childhood, but one I might have had. When I was two, my father and older sister Anita were in a car accident. Anita was killed, and my father was left with the mental age of a child of seven. So the only father I knew, growing up, was someone who was aggressive, and of whom I was ashamed. He wasn’t a normal father. Perhaps this is why I look for the idyllic, or the romantic in the stories I shoot – to balance things out, as a coping mechanism. I think that the most important things that happen to you, in life, happen between the ages of two and 12. When I see these four children here, in their own world, what I love is that they’re in charge. They are powerful. And that’s how I choose not only to depict children in my work, but also how I want to relate to them in everyday life: as human beings, as equals. Respected, empowered, not patronised. They inspire me. • Carla Kogelman’s I Am Waldviertel is at Schilt Gallery, Amsterdam, until 9 March. The book of the same name is out now from Schilt. Born: 1961, Raalte, the Netherlands. Training: Fotoacademie, Amsterdam. Influences: August Sander, Inta Ruka, Anders Petersen, Margaret M de Lange, The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke, and Ronja by Astrid Lindgren. High point: “Winning first prize at the World Press Photo awards in 2014 for portraits – people-observed stories – and in 2018 for long-term projects.” Top tip: “Try to find your own personal story. The stories we show and tell are the reality we create.”The UK has slipped to joint-sixth in a table of the world’s most powerful passports. The Henley Passport Index ranks countries according to the number of destinations passport holders can visit without a pre-arranged visa, which decreased for the UK this year. In 2015, the UK was ranked joint-first, alongside the US, but has dropped down the listings each year since. The number of visa-free/visa-on-arrival countries UK passport holders can travel to fell from 186 to 185 last year, due to the introduction of e-visas in Turkey (now required prior to arrival). Despite this, however, the UK’s score has improved overall since the index began in 2006, when it had 126, and there are now more outbound trips from the UK than ever before with 72.8 million in 2017. The impact of Brexit on passports and visas is still hanging in the balance. However, in the event of a no-deal scenario, the European commission has confirmed that UK citizens would have to pay €7 for a travel permit at least 72 hours before travel, a similar system to the US Esta visa-waiver. Japan’s passport is ranked the strongest in the world for the second year running, allowing visa-free access to 190 countries to an estimated 17.5 million outbound Japanese travellers last year. The index uses data from the International Air Transport Association, and includes passports from 199 countries checked against 227 possible travel destinations. Asian countries dominate the index’s top spots, with Singapore and South Korea ranked second, with access to 189 destinations visa-free or visa-on-arrival. China has also jumped 16 places in the past two years, from 85th in 2017 to 69th in 2019. European countries still fare well, with Germany and France ranked third, with 188; and Denmark, Finland, Italy and Sweden fourth, with 187. The past decade has seen a marked decline in many African countries’ rankings, including Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Gambia and South Africa, which have all dropped at least 18 places since 2009. Afghanistan and Iraq hold joint-last place for the third year in a row, with a current visa-free/visa-on-arrival score of 30. Despite a rising isolationist sentiment in some regions, global mobility is improving, with an increase in visa-free access and mutually beneficial agreements overall. Historical data from the index shows that in 2006, an average passport holder could travel to 58 destinations without needing a visa; by the end of 2018 this number had almost doubled to 107. “The general spread of open-door policies has the potential to contribute billions to the global economy, as well as create significant employment opportunities around the world,” said Christian H Kälin, chairman of Henley & Partners and index founder. “South Korea and the United Arab Emirates’ recent ascent in the rankings are further examples of what happens when countries take a proactive foreign affairs approach, an attitude which significantly benefits their citizens as well as the international community.” Japan will resume commercial whaling for the first time in three decades immediately after it leaves the body responsible for protecting global whale populations. Media reports said a fleet would leave for the country’s coastal waters on 1 July, a day after its official exit from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), whose ban on commercial whaling went into effect in 1986. A ship owned by a fisheries association in Taiji – known for its annual slaughter of dolphins – will join four vessels from other whaling towns and hunt minke whales off the north-east coast, Kyodo news agency said, quoting association sources. The decision to openly hunt whales for profit comes weeks after Japan announced its withdrawal from the IWC following years of friction between Tokyo and pro-conservation IWC members such as Australia and New Zealand. The decision drew widespread condemnation, with the Australian government saying it was “extremely disappointed”. Some observers, however, have pointed out that the coastal expeditions will be much smaller than previous research hunts and would save hundreds of whales that Japan once caught in more distant waters. Japan used a clause in the moratorium to hunt a certain number of whales in the Antarctic in the name of scientific research, but grew frustrated over its repeated failure to reform the IWC to raise the prospects of a return to commercial whaling. It had argued that the ban was intended as a temporary measure and accused a “dysfunctional” IWC of abandoning its original purpose – managing the sustainable use of global whale stocks. The country’s coastal fleet will hunt minke whales off northern Japan for about a week, with the vessel from Taiji then sailing south to conduct a solo hunt of Baird’s beaked whales and other smaller species off Chiba prefecture, near Tokyo, until late August, Kyodo said. All five vessels will regroup to hunt off the northernmost island of Hokkaido through to October, it added. The fisheries agency has yet to announce how many whales the fleet plans to kill. Japanese officials claim that populations of certain types of whale – such as the minke – have recovered sufficiently to allow the resumption of “sustainable” hunting. But some in the industry have questioned whether hunting whales in coastal waters will be commercially viable. Byproduct from Japan’s expeditions to the Antarctic is sold on the domestic market, but the appetite for whale meat has declined dramatically since the postwar years, when it was an important source of protein. Japanese consumers ate 200,000 tons of whale meat a year in the 1960s, but consumption has plummeted to about 5,000 tons in recent years, according to government data. Japan will join Iceland and Norway in openly defying the ban on commercial whale hunting.A Dutch shipping company has apologised for a “very unfortunate accident” after three funeral urns filled with human ashes washed up on beaches in the Netherlands, sparking fevered speculation about how they got there. RTL News said the urns, found over the past five days by a schoolboy, a fisherman and a woman respectively on Katwijk and Noordwijk beaches north of The Hague, all came from the same German crematorium. The aluminium lids were stamped with the dates of birth, death and cremation of the deceased, and marked “For collection” from Greifswald crematorium in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, northern Germany – nearly 470 miles (750km) away. “We checked it out, because we thought it could have been a disguise for something else, drugs for example,” Maarten van Duijn, the 14-year-old who found one of the urns with his father, told the website KustNieuws. “But it turned out really to be human ashes. So we started investigating – and the more we looked, the more bizarre the whole thing appeared.” His father Leen told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper: “In 30 years of beachcombing I thought I’d seen everything, but never a full urn. You can see an empty one going overboard if ashes are scattered at sea, but three full ones?” The German news site Ostzee-Zeitung reported that it was a complete mystery how the urns had ended up in the North Sea. “Strict rules apply in Germany to the handling of deceased person’s remains,” the site said. “With rare exceptions, it is forbidden to keep ashes in the garden or inside the home, so they are almost always given to the undertaker. Burial at sea is only permitted in special biodegradable urns, which these clearly were not.” A spokesman for the Stralsund public prosecutor’s office, which covers the Greifswald area, told the paper the case was “highly unusual” and the prosecutor was considering whether a crime had been committed – such as disturbance of the dead – that warranted formal investigation. But on Wednesday the Dutch shipping company Trip Scheepvaart of Scheveningen in The Hague said a planned mass marine funeral had gone horribly wrong when the box containing the three urns “slipped from an employee’s hands over the railing”. A spokeswoman, Silvia Roos, told Germany’s DPA agency the company had now buried the contents of two of the three urns at sea and would soon do the same with the third. It was considering how to apologise to relatives for the “most uncomfortable” incident, she said.Peel and halve 1kg of butternut squash and cut into large chunks. Put the squash into a large saucepan with 1 litre of vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Cover with a lid and leave to steam for 10 minutes until soft enough to crush. Ladle the squash and its water into a blender and process until smooth and return to the pan. Remove the leaves from 3 or 4 sprigs of rosemary and finely chop. You need enough to give a full tbsp. Toast 3 tbsp of sesame seeds in a dry, shallow pan over a moderate heat until golden then add 2 tbsp of olive oil and the rosemary. Crumble 8 cooked chestnuts (I used the canned variety) into the pan and cook for a minute or so until all is warm and deeply fragrant. Bring the soup almost to the boil, checking the seasoning as you go, then ladle into soup bowls. Speckle the soup with a tablespoon of tahini to each bowl, then scatter some of the chestnut and sesame seed seasoning over the surface. Enough for 4. Some people don’t peel butternut squash before using it in a soup. Much depends on the thickness of the skin and the age of the squash. If the skin is thin, then it is fine not to peel it. If you are using a pumpkin, remove the skin. It is important to process the soup in batches rather than all at once, when it is likely to overflow. A stick blender works a treat. Use mushrooms instead of the chestnuts. I prefer small brown buttons, sliced in halves or quarters and cooked for a minute or two with the sesame oil and rosemary. A few drops of sesame oil, trickled into the soup as you serve, are worth a thought. I like to eat this soup with thick pieces of toasted sourdough bread, spread with cream cheese. Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@NigelSlaterGiven the option of beating Ireland in a fortnight’s time or winning the Rugby World Cup there is absolutely no doubt which Eddie Jones would choose. The more interesting question is to what extent will England’s prospects in Japan be shaped by the 2019 Six Nations? Forecasting imminent world domination is tougher if your team has just finished in the championship’s bottom half. That is not to say England need to show all their cards right now; Jones has played enough media poker in his career to know exactly how that game works. What is important, though, is that England display just enough of their true selves to cause their rivals disquiet. In that respect, Jones’s 35-man squad for the Ireland game unquestionably contains more aces than it did three months ago. For starters there appears to be something wrong with the ink cartridge in the Twickenham printer. How else to explain the fact the list of injured players does not extend over its usual multiple pages? Even the absence of Dylan Hartley until the Wales game at least is not, on the face of it, a grievous blow. Anyone who has watched Luke Cowan-Dickie and Jack Singleton this season will know England, finally, have legitimate hooking options beyond the faithful old family firm of Hartley and George. The Vunipolas are both back and so, too, are Maro Itoje and a fully fit Nathan Hughes. England can start Ben Te’o and Manu Tuilagi together in midfield if they so wish, with the even bigger Joe Cokanasiga (if fit) on one wing. Joe Launchbury and Dan Cole also return, bringing valuable experience and nous, and Dan Robson has finally made the cut at scrum-half. Barring the latest unfortunate setback suffered by Bath’s outstanding openside Sam Underhill, Jones would definitely have settled in advance for the hand this year’s Six Nations croupier has so far dealt him. With a few young bolters to keep everyone on their toes – Gloucester’s Ollie Thorley and Saracens’ Ben Earl have both deservedly caught Jones’s eye – it now comes down to precisely how England want to play. With every passing day the answer becomes clearer: hard, direct, relentless, ruthless. Both up front and behind England look potentially better equipped to break the gainline than at any previous stage in Jones’s tenure. Forwards: Jack Clifford (Harlequins), Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers), Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter Chiefs), Tom Curry (Sale Sharks), Ben Earl (Saracens), Ellis Genge (Leicester Tigers), Jamie George (Saracens), Nathan Hughes (Wasps), Maro Itoje (Saracens), George Kruis (Saracens), Joe Launchbury (Wasps), Courtney Lawes (Northampton Saints), Ben Moon (Exeter Chiefs), Brad Shields (Wasps), Kyle Sinckler (Harlequins), Jack Singleton (Worcester Warriors), Billy Vunipola (Saracens), Mako Vunipola (Saracens), Harry Williams (Exeter Chiefs), Mark Wilson (Newcastle Falcons) Back: Chris Ashton (Sale Sharks), Mike Brown (Harlequins), Joe Cokanasiga (Bath), Elliot Daly (Wasps), Ollie Devoto (Exeter Chiefs), Owen Farrell (Saracens), George Ford (Leicester Tigers), Jonny May (Leicester Tigers), Jack Nowell (Exeter Chiefs), Dan Robson (Wasps), Henry Slade (Exeter Chiefs), Ben Te’o (Worcester Warriors), Ollie Thorley (Gloucester), Manu Tuilagi (Leicester Tigers), Ben Youngs (Leicester Tigers) Graham Henry was once asked to nominate the No 1 priority of successful rugby teams. “Getting over the advantage line off first phase,” was his swift reply. The modern game has altered in all kinds of ways but that old tenet still holds true. While it may not sound unduly sophisticated, Jones is not too concerned with reinventing the wheel. He has long felt that what he calls “the England way” involves less in the way of morris dancing and more about urging big men to go out and smash people. It might not sound pretty but Test rugby is no beauty contest, particularly in a World Cup year. Another of coaching’s golden rules is to pick people the opposition do not fancy playing against. In this respect England are unquestionably on the rise. It still requires England to keep improving around the breakdown, to be smarter in their on-the-hoof decision-making and to be accurate and fleet-footed enough behind the scrum to unsettle even well-organised sides such as Ireland. Get the platform and the basics right and Jones reckons England will be more than competitive. “In some places we have deliberately created competition. We need players at their absolute best, chomping at the bit and for that they need to be hungry. I think this is a very strong squad and very capable of beating Ireland.” It may not be everyone’s notion of rugby poetry but the idea of Jack Nowell or Chris Ashton probing close to the rucks, with a sharp No 9 like Robson in support, and Tuilagi and Cokanasiga pawing the Aviva Stadium turf will hardly depress England supporters. Jones also looked as relaxed and content at the squad announcement as he has done in some time, perhaps because he senses his long-held red rose vision might yet materialise. He does not want England peaking prematurely but a strong, fast start in Dublin would cause the whole rugby world to sit up.It takes a certain audacity for a white male novelist to choose as his protagonist a young California woman who converts to Islam, disguises herself as a man in order to study in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, and from there joins the Taliban in Afghanistan. You almost wonder if he’s spoiling for a fight of some kind. But the author of Godsend, John Wray (6ft 3in, softly spoken and unassuming), doesn’t seem the type. The most aggressive thing about him is the ghostly wailing of the doorbell of his brownstone near Prospect Park in Brooklyn (it’s on a “Halloween setting”). A Guggenheim and Whiting award winner, best known for Lowboy and The Lost Time Accidents, Wray was anointed one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in 2007. He has been living mostly in Mexico City for the past couple of years, but I caught him while he was in town to see his mother for the holidays. The house, which he bought and fixed up several years ago when it “looked like there had been a fire”, has become a renowned haven for writers and artists, all gleaming wood and a David Bowie tribute bathroom. Friends are always in and out, often staying longer than expected, especially now that Wray is, in his late 40s, “at the age where people are getting divorced”. Current and former residents or renters of workspace there include Marlon James, Nathan Englander, Alice Sola Kim and Adrian Tomine. In US culture now there’s a lot of attention, for very good reasons, on who has the right to tell a given story As I talk to Wray, the novelist Akhil Sharma, who came to crash for a week or two, “and that was two years ago”, saunters upstairs, wearing Wray’s scarf. Wray asks if I want the football table that sits in the middle of the living room “like an enormous vase of flowers that cannot be moved” – an unsolicited gift from the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, who apparently decided the house was missing a touch of machismo. “People only play if they’re drunk,” he says. Noting affectionately that the crowd he has assembled here are “not just artists, they’re actually doing stuff that’s good”, he catches himself and laughs: “That’s a terrible thing to say.” Still, it’s true that you can get away with a lot more if you’re good. Late on in the writing of Godsend, when Wray was starting to worry about publishing such a book “at this moment in US culture where there’s a lot of attention being brought to bear, for very good reasons, on who’s telling the story, what their agenda is, who should have the right to tell a given story”, he asked Hari Kunzru for advice. “And he said: ‘You know, the real problem is not John Updike and Martin Amis, as privileged white men, writing about Islam. The problem was the books weren’t good.’ So, he just said: ‘Make it good. That’s the way to deal with that problem.’” Wray agrees: Updike’s Terrorist seems “as though his mind was made up at the beginning … He thought he had all the answers. That’s usually a mistake. Even if you’re writing a novel about a divorce, it’s probably a good idea not to feel like you have all the answers going into it.” With a delicate subject like this one, if you’re not pulling it off, Wray says, “you have to hope that someone close to you in your life will take you aside and say: ‘Listen, buddy, you’re really barking up the wrong tree here.’” I’m sure people who worked on Homeland had the best intentions. And yet it was so Islamophobic No one did, and the novel is a thrilling high-wire act – the experiences of its heroine, Aden Sawyer, renamed Suleyman, feel very real. Nonetheless, Wray was sensitive to the risk that he might inadvertently “contribute to the literature of misperception with regard to the Islamic world, with regard to aggressive views of the United States internationally, with regard to militant insurgencies, all the things that have been so cynically misrepresented in popular culture. I’m sure there are plenty of people who worked on Homeland who had the best intentions, who think of themselves as political progressives. And yet what they ended up producing was so self-serving and so Islamophobic and so juvenile in its treatment of a very complicated and nuanced issue.” Godsend was sparked by an “arresting and fascinating fragment of a story” about a young female American Taliban fighter Wray heard in Afghanistan, during the weeks he spent doing research for a non-fiction project about John Walker Lindh, the US citizen captured while serving with the Taliban in 2001. When Lindh’s story hit the headlines, Wray recalls, “many Americans were like: ‘How is this even conceivable?’ And to me it seems perfectly understandable, why a young man would be drawn to the romance of this particular type of activism, which then took on a military element.” Wray didn’t “feel confused or perturbed or perplexed or sort of conceptually out of my depth in any way” when thinking about Lindh’s story. “If you think about it, what could be more appealing to a teenager who’s grown up in comfortable upper-middle class circumstances, whose parents are separating, who’s suddenly at that age at which the entire adult world seems like really just a swamp of hypocrisy?” Whereas the American girl he kept hearing about in Aghanistan, whether or not she really existed – Wray suspects not – struck him as a more intriguingly mysterious prospect to write about, her motivation perhaps “a harder question to answer”. In a sense, though, he feels he did answer it: “I definitely don’t judge people who become passionately involved in a political struggle, even to the point of taking up weapons in the service of that struggle, in the way that I would have before beginning the book.” For him the interest was primarily psychological. “I’m sure there are very gifted writers who can begin with an idea – ‘I’m going to investigate capitalism, or I’m going to write a book that really confronts sexism in some way, so what would be a good situation for that?’” For Wray, though, “as soon as you have a point you’re trying to prove, you’re writing polemic.” There are only a couple of moments in Godsend where Wray “came close to expressing a slightly more naked kind of political view, which I really tried not to do at all if I could avoid it – but of course, if you’re writing about a drone strike, you can’t avoid it.” He did feel that there would be some “possible value” in writing “a really vivid account of a drone strike from the point of view of the people who are being hit”, when so many accounts of the ethics of drone warfare are “from the point of view of the people who are sitting at the controls … It is kind of funny; I’ve read a number of articles about the psychological toll that being a drone operator takes on the men in those little bunkers in Arizona, and that’s fine. But perhaps the toll is slightly greater on the people who are on the receiving end.” He remarks that American critics frequently noted the novel’s very brief, glancing treatment of the September 11 attacks – the only way he could think of to deal with that subject and “avoid cliche would be to talk about it almost as a kind of distant and borderline irrelevant rumour.” Wray got a lot of use out of TE Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom and was surprised that readers “brought up Yentl all the time, but they never brought up Lawrence of Arabia”. Nor did they mention Joan of Arc, one of the key figures he thought about when writing the book. He looked at other real-life examples, including two women who disguised themselves to fight in the American civil war, and is also interested in how often “that kind of legend seems to have popped up in various cultures”. In fiction, unlikely is OK but implausible is not OK. I took it as a challenge not to exoticise anything Despite the almost mythic element of Aden’s story, Wray needed it to have “an air of reality and authority” – “in fiction, unlikely is OK but implausible is not OK.” He took it as a challenge “not to present anyone in it as exotic, or the situation as exotic, not to exoticise anything”. His fixer on that first trip to Afghanistan unintentionally gave him an experience that proved useful later by dressing him in a kameez and skull cap to make him less conspicuous (hunching over to conceal his height also helped). His experiences researching Godsend were the most alarming he’s had, although preparing for Lowboy, his acclaimed 2009 thriller tracing a day in the life of a teenager with paranoid schizophrenia, comes a close second. Lowboy’s protagonist, Will, who rides the New York subway on a quest for the girl who can take his virginity and thus help slow global warming, has stopped taking his medication and escaped the clinic where he was being held. For Wray, going into psychiatric hospitals and being “introduced to people as a med student” was “in a different way as stressful” as Afghanistan: he worried that maybe he “shouldn’t even be there”. He also wrote much of Lowboy while actually travelling on the New York subway, believing in the need “to make a project fun for yourself. I don’t particularly like working. So you try to turn it into a little adventure.” It may have yielded some extra insights here and there, but mainly allowed him “to not be in my house”. When he does write in the Brooklyn house, it’s in the basement, which is full of musical instruments (as well as a ping-pong table), like “a throw-back” to the rehearsal space he lived in for a while in his mid-20s – “minus the rats”. Since giving up smoking, instead of cigarette breaks, “I’ll just nervously play the drums for a few minutes, and it works quite well as a substitute ’cos it’s that same kind of anxious energy. Much more expressive, much less carcinogenic.” Years ago, Wray “was in a bunch of mediocre bands” and also played now and then with Chan Marshall (AKA Cat Power), though he says writing was “the thing that I maybe felt I had a more realistic chance of doing well”. His next project should be “less terrifying, more fun, I suppose”: it’s about three young people growing up in South Florida’s death metal scene. Wray wasn’t a metalhead, growing up in Buffalo, New York, “a rustbelt town” that was then “a pretty depressed place, and a pretty violent place”. Iron Maiden was “the dominant paradigm”, but he preferred the Smiths. He “had a bad time” at that age. “When I think about all the times that I drove when I was drunk when I was a teenager, just terrible, idiotic things that a fully developed brain would not have been on board with – there’s just this enormous pool of insufficiently risk-averse human beings, and that’s why we have standing armies, you know, that’s why we always find people willing to parachute into the jungle in Vietnam and set a village on fire.” Half-joking, he adds,“I’m scared of teenagers. It’s a very beautiful, very pure and very dangerous age, you know, it’s a fucked up age in many ways.” You get the sense that Wray could conjure pretty much any mind he wanted on the page – all the more intriguing, then, that Aden Sawyer’s turned out not to be quite the crazy leap it seemed. • Godsend is published by Canongate. To order a copy for £10.99 (RRP £14.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.“Who owns the recipe?” This was one of the questions Yotam Ottolenghi and Adam Liaw considered on Tuesday night. The chef and the cook, both bestselling authors, were in conversation as part of An Evening with Ottolenghi at the Sydney Opera House. Cultural appropriation of food is something Ottolenghi was asked about while touring the US in October – and it’s a query he finds difficult to respond to. The Israeli-British chef, who often collaborates with the Palestinian-British chef Sami Tamimi, has given it plenty of thought because the dishes he creates are Middle Eastern-inspired. “[Cultural appropriation] deals with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and who owns recipes, and who started them. In that conflict it’s a serious question because people’s sense of self is connected with food – because they have very little else. But I find this really, really difficult because I don’t know how to answer these questions in the American context. Is it OK for a white person to cook Mexican food? How can I answer this question?” Liaw said he also found the idea of cultural appropriation of food tricky. “Food is one of the great unifiers,” he said. “Before you speak someone’s language, before you understand their history, before you walk a mile in their shoes, you eat the same food that person eats, and get some insight into how their life works, the way their culture works. So I don’t really believe in cultural appropriation in foods because it’s such a wonderful window into other aspects of the multicultural societies that we live in.” People would have these expectations that my kids would have raw preserved lemon for breakfast. That's just not the case Ottolenghi is touring Australia, talking about his latest cookbook, Simple. The appreciative Opera House audience was the largest the popular chef has faced, and the pair’s hour-long discussion ran the gamut from food photography, Ottolenghi’s grandmother’s secret Mossad past and the three ingredients he’d want if stranded on a desert island (lemon, flour and olive oil, apparently). He returned to the contradictions that cooking can often expose, pointing out that Palestinians and Jews often eat the same food yet remain divided. “They enjoy the same kind of level of spicing and the same way of eating – the informality, the chickpeas, the tahini, the olive oil, the olives. It’s insane that they can actually share that same kind of intimacy around food and they can’t have the same conversation with each other.” He added: “It’s tragic that we are so good at adapting ourselves into different cuisines and enjoying and being super international, and not being able to apply the same level of tolerance to the actual people that cook them.” Simple is Ottolenghi’s sixth cookbook, and focuses on quick and easy recipes. He says his approach to creating new recipes has evolved since his earlier cookbooks, such as Plenty and Jerusalem. Considerations like sustainability are now often top of mind. “It’s never been my first consideration, because for me it’s all about the flavour, but the next consideration would be all those issues because I don’t operate in a vacuum.” It’s why he doesn’t publish many fish recipes, either in his cookbooks or in his regular Guardian column: “Especially in the UK, the amount of sustainable, affordable fish is really minimal. In our restaurants we do the same, so I’m very aware of that conversation.” Many of his books champion vegetables – which he says he’s obsessed with – but don’t expect him to push people to eat them more often. “I really have an aversion to push people to do anything. I don’t like people telling me what to eat and I don’t like to tell people what to eat.” He believes many people are confused about what to eat because the lists of food we should and shouldn’t eat is ever-changing. “If someone hears that ... they have to eat certain vegetables or certain amount of vegetable and they feel like something else, then they start feeling guilty. Mixing food with guilt is the worst combination because food is all about pleasure. It’s really easy to get into this cycle so I just think vegetables are wonderful and people can choose whether to eat or not to eat them.” The audience was delighted to discover that Ottolenghi sometimes struggles to get his two young sons to eat the food he prepares for them. “People would have these expectations that my kids would have raw preserved lemon for breakfast. That is just not the case.” He described them as normal children with “unpredictable tastes”. “They learn the word ‘any more’ very early on, and ‘I don’t like this any more’ [comes up] when you serve] something you have fed them a million times. [They say] ‘I don’t like prawns any more.’ Since when?” He does have one fallback dish, which he thinks will work for most parents: “My comfort food is their comfort food – and that’s mejadra rice with lentils and fried onions … People should try that.”It may not be spring yet, but everybody’s cleaning. Or, at the very least, they are talking about it. It has only been a month since Tidying Up With Marie Kondo launched on Netflix, but the series, starring the Japanese organisation expert, has already become something of a phenomenon. It has sparked joy among some, and arguments about how many books you should have in your home among others (Kondo, controversially, caps her collection at about 30). It has also led to charity shops reporting a Kondo-related surge in donations as converts go on decluttering sprees. Kondo, who shot to global fame in 2014 when her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up was published in English, is probably the biggest name on the clean scene. However, she is far from the only person to have organised their way to celebrity. The past year or so has seen cleaning take on a new cultural cachet – particularly on Instagram. The social network is rife with hashtags such as #cleaningobsessed or #cleaningtime and people are amassing enormous followings with pictures of gleaming kitchen counters and sparkling floors. Fitness influencers and fashion bloggers step aside: it’s starting to look like bleach is the new black. Sophie Hinchcliffe, AKA Mrs Hinch, is one of the best known of these new Instagram “cleanfluencers”. The 28-year-old hairdresser from Essex has 1.7 million followers on the social network, where she shares pictures of her immaculate home as well as chatty videos of herself disinfecting her bins and scrubbing her sink. She has developed a whole branded vocabulary around tidying up – cleaning is “hinching”; buying products is a “hinch haul”; her followers are the #HinchArmy; and her enormous collection of cleaning paraphernalia is kept in a special wardrobe called Narnia. (CS Lewis did not respond to a request for comment.) Other prominent British cleanfluencers include Lynsey “Queen of Clean” Crombie, who has 104,000 followers, and Gemma Bray, “the Organised Mum”, with 135,000. Across the Atlantic, Toronto-based Melissa Maker has more than a million subscribers to her YouTube channel, Clean My Space, where she posts videos such as Cleaning the Kitchen Sink! and 10 Things to Toss Today. In the US, Chicago-based Becky Rapinchuk has 275,000 followers on her Clean Mama Instagram page; a typical post shows a gleaming toilet with tips on how to speed-clean your bathroom. For the uninitiated, scrolling through pictures, or watching videos, of people doing chores may seem as exciting as, well, watching surfaces dry. So what is the attraction of all these tidy toilets and spotless sinks? Dr Stephanie Baker, a sociology lecturer at University of London and the author of a forthcoming book about digital lifestyle gurus, points out that we have been obsessed with domestic goddesses for centuries. The online influencers, she says, are simply the latest evolution of “the broader self-improvement movement, which had its origins in the 19th century and achieved tremendous growth in the late 20th with the rise of lifestyle media and make-over programmes”. But why has cleaning taken off on Instagram, which is notorious for its highly filtered, aspirational content? Kate Joynes-Burgess, the managing director of BCW, a PR agency that works with digital influencers, suggests the public is tiring of photos of attractive people doing headstands on remote beaches, posing in fabulous outfits and socialising with photogenic friends. “The world of mega lifestyle influencers has been criticised as being on the cusp of an ‘authenticity crisis’ and potentially reaching a saturation point,” she says. “This has seemingly made way for more niche-focused influencers and conversations to blossom.” The Queen of Clean, who I am chatting to shortly before she sets off to do the school run, agrees that she and her peers represent a much-needed antidote to Instagram’s curated perfection. “We’re more relatable than a lot of the lifestyle bloggers out there,” Crombie says. “We’ve got our mops up, hair sticking up … I look like a right rough tramp on Instagram, but I get people writing in to say it’s refreshing.” The Organised Mum has a similar view. Bray notes that when she first started out on Instagram, “as a mum of three, a lot of the things I was seeing were out of reach”. In 2016, her son dared her to start an Instagram page where she could show off her special cleaning method; she indulged him, but didn’t think it would get much traction among all the carefully filtered pictures of avocado toast. But within 12 months she had 10,000 followers and, over the past few months, she has seen her following rocket to well over 100,000. It seems she struck a chord. After all, she says, “everyone has to maintain a home to some extent. Everyone has to do boring jobs.” Like Bray, Crombie, who joined Instagram to keep an eye on her kids’ online usage, started posting cleaning pictures without any expectations they would become so popular. “It’s surreal,” she says. She is reluctant to discuss exactly how much money she is making (“People can be very negative about these sorts of things”), but notes she is earning more than she ever has before. Instagrammers can make money from affiliate marketing, paid reviews and sponsored posts, with brands paying anywhere from a few hundred pounds to hundreds of thousands to partner with people they deem influential. And no wonder: when Mrs Hinch extolled the virtues of a Minky M Cloth antibacterial cleaning pad last year, the item promptly sold out for weeks. The Minky website even crashed because of the demand. The company says it has seen a big uplift in its profile and sales thanks to the influencer, “for which we are extremely grateful”. But not everyone is cheering the cleaning influencers’ success. There have been arguments that they reinforce existing gender stereotypes: the best-known influencers are women, as is their audience. Perpetuating the idea that cleaning is women’s work doesn’t seem particularly helpful when you think that British women still do 60% more housework than men. Bray, for her part, says she is aware of the gender dynamics at play. “I share content of my boys emptying the dishwasher,” she points out. “My husband does his own ironing. I’m vocal about the fact it’s a team effort and I want my boys to pull their weight.” Unfortunately, fewer than 10% of her followers are men, so her message about cleaning being a team effort is overwhelmingly being heard by women alone. Cleaning influencers may not be doing anything for the housework gender gap, but that isn’t to say they are not empowering. There is a lot of research that shows messy spaces can lead to depression and fatigue. Crombie is one of the most outspoken influencers when it comes to championing links between mental health and cleaning, and she speaks from personal experience. In 2003, seven months into her first marriage, its traumatic collapse sent her into premature labour; her twins were born at 28 weeks. Over the following years, she struggled to rebuild her life and found cleaning gave her structure as well as being cathartic. “If I hadn’t cleaned, I would have stayed in bed all day,” she says, grimly. She expands upon this in her new book, How to Clean Your House … And Tidy Up Your Life, which will be published in March. Crombie’s experience, of course, is extreme. But the link between cleaning your house and tidying your life seems to explain a lot about the current cultural cachet around cleaning. In fact, says Baker, you could say that the “rise of cleaning influencers is fundamentally about order. It is about more than having a clean home; it is about creating a structured environment in which to flourish.” She points out that cleaning metaphors are embedded in the “language of lifestyle gurus and psychologists. Look at Jordan Peterson, whose phrase ‘Clean up your room’ recently became a meme in popular culture.” (It’s a shame more men aren’t taking his directive literally.) A desire for order at a time of social unrest may also account, to some degree, for the popularity of Kondo. In her book Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan, Eiko Maruko Siniawer, a history professor at Williams College, Massachusetts, notes that the rise of professional declutterers in Japan coincided with the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 18,000 people in the country. This disaster, she says, may have prompted a reassessment of “stuff” and what it means to one’s life. Bearing all this in mind, it is perhaps no surprise that the rise of cleaning influencers in the UK and US comes against the background of Brexit and Donald Trump. “The preoccupation with order and self-management flourishes during uncertain times as a self-improvement strategy,” Baker claims. In other words, when the world looks increasingly like trash, cleaning becomes a lot more comforting.At first glance, it’s not immediately obvious that the toddler in the video I am watching is taking her first wobbly steps in a homeless shelter. Watching the tiny girl babble to her mother behind the camera, I am distracted by how spotless the floor looks. Yet in the eyes of Stephanie Land, the person who cleaned it, it was appalling: “Years of dirt were etched into the floor. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I could never get it clean.” People such as Land are perhaps the biggest threat to the myth of the American Dream: someone who worked hard, yet found her very country pitted against her success. Her new book, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, is both a memoir of her time working as a cleaner in middle-class households, and a dismantling of the lies the US tells itself about the poor: namely, that they don’t work. As Land puts it, she was “overwhelmed by how much work it took to prove I was poor”. “The country lives by the myth that if you work hard enough, you’ll make it,” she says. “For me, I felt like if I wasn’t making it, I wasn’t working hard enough.” Frighteningly, before she arrived at that homeless shelter, Land’s life was unremarkable. In her 20s, she wandered from low-paid to low-paid job: barista, dog daycare, stalls at farmers’ markets. She had none of the usual factors society would pick out to explain her poverty: no alcohol problems, no history of drug use, a regular, if fractured, family life. At 28, she became pregnant. But the father, she writes, flew into rages, threatened and insulted her. With no family to rely on, Land entered the welfare system, moving to the shelter – where her daughter took her first steps – to transitional housing, to a trailer parked in a driveway, always desperately clinging to stability. Subsidising her meagre income with welfare meant submitting her life to relentless scrutiny: curfews and urine tests at the shelter; welfare officers wanting proof that her car wasn’t too nice; supermarket cashiers silently judging her groceries when she used food stamps. She endured each indignity to look after her daughter, Mia. Searching for work in an economy that was still raw from the global financial crisis, Land began working as a cleaner for a private firm; $6 (£4.65) an hour for tidying up houses she could only dream of affording. If you are willing to get on your knees to scrub a toilet, you will find work. No one is as desperate as a single parent Strikingly, all her fellow cleaners were women and a huge proportion were single mums. Now 39, Land’s explanation for this is simple: “It is flexible, most of the cleaning happens during school hours, you can bring your kid, and it is a job no one wants to do. As long as you are willing to get on your knees to scrub a toilet, you will always be able to find work. And no one is as desperate as a single parent.” Eighty percent of the US’s 12m single-parent households are headed by mothers – and 40% live below the poverty line. On such low income, money became a relentless weight: every car journey had to be weighed up against the cost of petrol. Providing food for Mia often meant going without herself, bolstering her stomach with instant coffee and, on the good days, a peanut butter sandwich. She would shop for groceries at night, to avoid the gaze of fellow shoppers; one man, after seeing the food stamps in her hand, shouted: “You’re welcome,” as if he was personally paying for her to eat. In one of their homes, a tiny humid studio in Skagit valley, Washington, a relentless black mould continually resurfaced, making Mia constantly ill; kind hospital nurses tending to Mia gave her a dehumidifier. It is remarkable what a cleaner can learn about your life from the receipts on your fridge, the number of family photos on your walls, the papers on your desk. Going through middle America’s dirty laundry gave Land the time and the perspective to mull over the myth that work always means success. She scrubbed vomit, mould and blood from the homes of people who, despite their 2.5 bathrooms and nice cars, seemed just as unhappy as her. In one house she dubbed the Porn House, she tries to figure out the lives of its owners: the husband with his Hustler magazines and lube always out on display in his bedroom, the wife’s extensive collection of romance novels in hers. Popping ibuprofen to cope with the constant strain that cleaning took on her body, Land gazed longingly at the large opioid stash in the Chef’s House. Wiping down the already spotless surfaces of the Cigarette Lady’s House, she finds connection with the mysterious owner by discovering her secret: a freezer packed with Virginia Slims. After Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016, much was made of the power of the disgruntled working poor. Yet Land encountered the most aggression from those on the other side of the “welfare cliff”: those not quite poor enough to receive benefits. She straddled the line a few times: a few dollars more a month meant she could suddenly lose hundreds in benefits: “I was penalised for working more, for working harder. Why, as an example, do some states require you to have less than $1,000 [£775] in savings? They are actively discouraging people from saving. Some people work really hard and still have no food in the fridge, while the wealthy are just getting wealthier while promoting this rhetoric that poor people are the ones taking all the money. And we still think they’re the ones making the best decisions. Hell, I thought that when I went into their houses.” Later on, when Land “came out” as poor, some of her own friends told her that they were on food stamps or using Medicaid. “I had no idea how many friends were struggling. We need to have an honest conversation about the face of welfare. I think that poor people are scary for a lot of people, because they represent what could happen to them.” I was called a cockroach, vermin … People didn’t like knowing that their cleaners had opinions about them In her journalism – spoiler: Maid does have a somewhat happy ending – this anxiety is best reflected in sanctimonious comments left by readers. Strangers demand to know why she has tattoos, a smartphone, why she didn’t get an abortion. “I think they’re trying to reassure themselves that it couldn’t happen to them, that this was all the result of my bad decisions.” Her first paid piece of writing, an essay for Vox about her time working as a cleaner, went viral in the worst way. “My sleepy little website, that usually was only seen by my mum, was getting 5,000 hits an hour. People were calling me a cockroach, vermin, telling me I should be in jail. People with cleaners didn’t like knowing that their cleaners had opinions about them. It was hard for me to even go outside for a couple of weeks.” While Land’s book is set during Barack Obama’s presidency, she is watching Trump’s welfare and tax policies with trepidation. “They are making it harder to be on welfare – raising the age to qualify or allowing states to require more paperwork. They are clinging to this idea that poor people don’t work.” She cried when Trump was elected: “It felt scary. Suddenly, everyone felt emboldened to do whatever they wanted. Trump’s election gave trolls a platform to treat people horribly. That is a scary feeling for a mum of two daughters.” The book ends on a high: with Land moving to Missoula, Montana, a place she had always dreamed of living. She enrolled in university, then navigated support programmes for underprivileged writers, which helped place her pieces in papers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, as well as providing a stipend. Off paper, however, things didn’t get easier. A month after graduating, she gave birth to a second daughter, Coraline, named after one of Neil Gaiman’s heroines. (Gaiman has been a surprise source of support: “I once sent him a photo of Coraline and we’ve sort of become friends. Every time I get something published, he tweets something like, ‘I am really proud of her’, which is nice.”) She found a new balance with Jamie, Mia’s father, but then married a man who later physically abused her. While Land is no longer on welfare (although she still lives in low-income housing), money has not healed all wounds. The price of poverty – exhaustively self-evaluating herself, in welfare meetings, in supermarket queues, in the aftermath of unexpected costs – was panic attacks, a distrust of happiness and signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. “Right now, my anxiety levels are really high because things are going really well and I am just waiting for the catch.” She looks startled when I ask if she would ever take a holiday. “A vacation is airfares, hotel, food, childcare. Is it really worth it to be on a beach for a week? Exercise, hiking, showers – I don’t have time for that! I have piles of laundry, I have to pick up the kids, I have an overwhelming amount of work to do.” After seeing inside the homes of the better off, Land does not want to be rich. “I’d like to not be in debt, I’d like to own my home, but I still imagine myself living a very simple life. It would be nice to have enough money to put my kids through college, to not worry about money. But that’s about it.” She has considered one indulgence: a cleaner. “It’s been so busy, I’ve been thinking it would be nice for a couple of months. But I could never bring myself to do it. There is no way I could afford it, because I would just want to throw money at them – I’d leave $20 bills in every room.” She laughs, but it is sad. She found it such a demeaning and demoralising job, she says, quietly. “I couldn’t do it to someone else.” • Maid, by Stephanie Land, is published by Orion (£14.99 rrp). To order a copy for £13.99, with free UK p&p, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846Imagine working for an employer who, aware that you’re probably not sleeping enough at night, allows you to down tools and nap as part of your regular work duties – and not just forty winks at your desk, but a restorative snooze in a quiet room. These are some of the measures being used by a growing number of companies in Japan to counter an epidemic of sleeplessness that costs its economy an estimated $138bn (£108bn) a year. Tech startups have been quickest to address the “sleep debt” among irritable and unproductive employees. Last year, Nextbeat, an IT service provider, went as far as setting up two “strategic sleeping rooms” – one for men, the other for women – at its headquarters in Tokyo. The aroma-infused rooms feature devices that block out background noise, allowing workers to stretch out on sofas for an undisturbed kip. Mobile phones, tablets and laptops are banned. “Napping can do as much to improve someone’s efficiency as a balanced diet and exercise,” Emiko Sumikawa, a member of the Nextbeat board, told Kyodo news agency. Nextbeat also asks employees leave work by 9pm and to refrain from doing excessive overtime, which has been blamed on a rising incidence of karoshi, or death from overwork. One company even offers financial incentives to persuade its employees to shun overtime and get to bed at a reasonable hour. Crazy, a wedding planning company, awards employees who sleep at least six hours a night with points that can then be exchanged for food in the company cafeteria. Using an app to monitor their sleep, workers can accumulate points worth as much as 64,000 yen (£458) a year. Japanese workers have more reason than most to submit to the urge for a daytime snooze, whether at work or during long commutes. A survey conducted using fitness trackers in 28 countries found that Japanese men and women sleep, on average, just 6 hours and 35 minutes a night – 45 minutes less than the international average – making them the most sleep deprived of all. Finnish women, by contrast, sleep almost an hour longer, with an average of 7.45 hours. Estonians, Canadians, Belgians, Austrians, as well as the Dutch and French, all get a comparatively decent night’s sleep, according to the survey. A separate poll by the health products maker Fuji Ryoki found that 92.6% of Japanese over the age of 20 said they were not getting enough sleep. Even weary workers whose employers have yet to officially sanction power naps at least know that resting their head on their desk for a few minutes probably won’t get them into trouble. Companies generally tolerate inemuri – or “sleeping while present” – as a demonstration of their employees’ commitment rather than as a sign of sloth, although nappers should generally remain seated and avoid appearing too comfortable. The government has also come to appreciate the personal and professional benefits of a well-rested workforce, with the health ministry recommending that all working-age people take a nap of up to 30 minutes in the early afternoon – advice readily embraced by some of the country’s politicians.He’s been convicted of tax fraud, barred from public office in Italy due to his criminal record and dogged by reports of his “bunga bunga” sex parties. But, at what he described as “my lovely age of 82”, the billionaire former Italian prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi has announced his intention to stand for the European parliament. “I’ve decided out of a sense of responsibility to head for Europe, where there is a lack of deep thinking about the world,” he said in Quartu in southern Sardinia. Berlusconi served a community service order for corporate tax fraud in 2015, and has been embroiled in a long series of court cases over his career, not least having his conviction overturned on appeal for paying an underage woman for sex. It appears that Berlusconi regards the EU’s parliament as a possible way back into the corridors of power and is set to run for a seat in the 23-26 May European elections. Berlusconi, as leader of the centre-right Forza Italia party, was three times an Italian prime minister, and recently claimed to light a candle every day while praying for the UK to change its mind on Brexit. But he has been without a parliamentary seat after his 2013 election to the Senate was invalidated because of his fraud conviction. Citing his good conduct, a court last year ruled that he could once again run for public office. The Milan-born businessman has consistently sought to convince the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, to drop his coalition with the Five Star Movement (M5S) since the last Italian elections. Forza Italia and Salvini’s party have formed coalitions in the past. As he made the announcement, Berlusconi hit out at the anti-establishment M5S, currently in government with the anti-immigration League. “We need to change this government, which includes Five Star, that is led by people who have no experience and no competence,” he said. “They are like the gentlemen of the communist left of 1994, and in addition they have this big problem.” Some of Berlusconi’s most combustible moments as Italian prime minister occurred on the European stage. While leaders engaged in discussions on the location of a new EU food standards agency in 2001, he backed Parma over Finland, saying it was “synonymous with good cuisine – the Finns don’t even know what prosciutto is”. During a group photo of EU leaders in 2002 he made the horned gesture behind a Spanish minister. In 2003, he suggested that Martin Schulz, then an MEP and leader of Germany’s Social Democratic party who later became president of the European parliament, should take a film role as a Nazi concentration camp leader.Venezuela’s government has claimed to have foiled what appeared to be an attempted military insurrection, blaming the mutiny on “shadowy interests of the extreme right”. In a statement, Venezuela accused a small group of “assailants” from the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) of “betraying their oath of loyalty to the homeland” by kidnapping four officials in an attempt to steal weapons that began at about 2.50am local time (0650 GMT) on Monday. The apparent uprising appeared to have been small-scale, but it is the latest sign of resistance to Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, who took power after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013 and has led his country into an economic slump and a humanitarian crisis. Diosdado Cabello, a leading chavista (supporter of Chávez) who is widely seen as a possible successor to Maduro, said: “Our Bolivarian armed forces will respond to attacks against the homeland … wherever they come from. “The group of robbers have been neutralised, subdued and captured, in record time, and are already confessing the details.” He added that 27 guardsmen were arrested and more could be detained as the investigation unfolded. Earlier, videos circulating on social media showed a group of armed, uniformed men promising to “re-establish the constitutional order”. A man who identifies himself as 3Sgt Alexander Bandres Figueroa tells viewers: “Get out on to the streets … It is today. It’s today … People, get out, support us. “This fight is for you, for Venezuela,” he adds in a second video entitled “Message to the glorious people of Venezuela from part of its patriotic armed forces”. Exactly what unfolded overnight remained unclear on Monday. But the newspaper El Nacional said residents of San José de Cotiza, in northern Caracas, reported hearing explosions and a confrontation, apparently between members of the group and police special forces, at about 4am. Local television stations also reported clashes between protesters and security forces on Monday morning. “We want a better Venezuela … we want freedom,” one woman is filmed telling a reporter as fellow dissenters gather around her chanting “Freedom, freedom”. Luisa Ortega Díaz, Venezuela’s exiled former chief prosecutor, tweeted her support for the “young patriots” she said were behind the revolt: “The bravery of these national guard boys shows us that yes there is dignity and willpower in the barracks to get us out of tyranny … We must support military rebellion.” Maduro began his second term as president on 10 January, despite a chorus of international condemnation. But he will face renewed pressure this week, with opposition leaders calling for nationwide protests on Wednesday to mark the anniversary of a 1958 uprising that brought down the rightwing dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Juan Guaidó, an opposition leader who recently declared himself ready to assume Venezuela’s presidency, described the mutiny as an indication of widespread hostility to Maduro within Venezuela’s armed forces. He called on the military to put itself “on the side of the people, the constitution and against [Maduro’s] usurpation” of power. In recent weeks, Guaidó, the president of Venezuela’s national assembly, has emerged as a key figure in attempts to unseat Maduro, with the Brazilian, Colombian and US governments offering him their support. Writing in the Washington Post last week, Guaidó denounced Maduro as a “usurper” and called on the military – whose members are being offered amnesty by Venezuela’s opposition – to turn on him. “The chain of command has been broken and there’s no commander in chief – it’s time to get on the right side of history,” he wrote.You could call it swing Saturday or crossover day, for this Saturday, 19 January, marks an important moment. This is the day, in theory, when the country turns remain. Even if not a single person has changed their mind since the referendum, the demographic shift alone will have done the heavy lifting. Enough old leavers will have died and enough young remainers will have come on to the electoral register to turn the dial on what the country thinks about Brexit. The psephologist and founding YouGov president, Peter Kellner, calculates that the leave vote has been declining by about 1,350 a day, taking into account the differential turnout: the young turn out to vote much less often than the old. By using exactly the same proportion of every age group turning out to vote exactly as they did in 2016, demographics alone will have transformed the UK into a remainer nation. The true “will of the people” looks considerably more questionable if it turns out to be the will of dead people – not the will of those who have the most life ahead of them to face the consequences. Does this guarantee remain would win a referendum this year? Of course not. People are changing their minds, though polls show predominant movement in the pro-remain direction. But once a ferocious campaign gets under way there’s no knowing what might swing opinion. No one expected the leavers’ two toxic lies to spring out of the wicked imagination of the likes of Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove – £350m a week extra for the NHS and 70 million Turks destined for our shores. It’s right to fear how much further they might go in the case of a second referendum, always wrong-footing a painfully fact-based gentler remain campaign. I like the remain campaigners’ self-mocking and unshrill homemade placards on their upbeat Ode to Joy demonstrations: “Brexit – is it worth it?”, “This doesn’t seem very well thought through”, “Let’s call the whole thing off”, “CakeNotHate”,”I want to have my gateau and share it”, “I want my continent back”. Will the remainers be up to the bare-knuckle bloody fistfight of a bitter second round? Factual rebuttals are so much harder to explain than crude bare-faced lies. Can they ensure young fresh faces lead, and muzzle Tony Blair, whose Today programme contribution this morning was singularly unhelpful. One placard outside Westminster on Tuesday night read: “Who’s afraid of a people’s vote?” The answer, of course, is the leavers. Why would it anger them so much if they didn’t fear losing? They say another vote would “disrespect” democracy. But what a curious argument to suggest that when all else fails in parliament, asking the people to decide between options not available last time is somehow undemocratic. The long-time Eurosceptic Charles Moore writes in the Telegraph that Brexiters should boycott any such referendum: that can only be because they fear remain is on the rise. As for the first result being fixed in the firmament for all time, they never say for how long exactly. It will be three years since the last, so should it be five, 10, or “never, never, never!”, as old Ian Paisley Sr would be bellowing? Democracy is kinetic, on the move, as mercifully people do change their minds with changing circumstances – and populations change. A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal. As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government. That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit. “The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs. Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added. Theresa May’s inexplicable intransigence makes a referendum more likely as the only resolution left available. Reaching out? With her Paisleyite steel-trap mentality, she refuses to cross any of the fatal red lines that set her on the wrong course from the start: no customs union, no free movement, no European court to oversee agreements. She cleaves to her hard Brexiters, more afraid of splitting her party than sinking her country. Jeremy Corbyn has rightly laid down just one essential red line: no no-deal Brexit. That’s the only fixed point that parliament agrees is the disaster to be averted at all costs, cabinet ministers ready to resign to stop it. But a soft Brexit where Britain obeys all rules but loses its voice and its veto over them doesn’t have his party’s support. The will of his party will before long oblige him to opt for a vote: his members overwhelmingly back one, including Momentum’s great heft. His voters are in favour, and they are mainly remainers. Labour is caught between a small number of Labour leave voters, who are often swing voters in certain seats, and the overwhelming number of Labour remainers. Kellner warns that “it would be suicidal if Labour were to facilitate Brexit”, causing a stampede against it in all the metropolitan and university seats that are also Labour heartlands. Labour needs to win in both the Mansfields and its new turf in the Kensingtons and Canterburys. Brexit is an entirely Tory project: Labour must always be internationalist remainers. Corbyn and his close circle will find the only way out of the conundrum is to ask the people. Parliament will need to force this on May – and secretly, even if she doesn’t know it, it will be a relief to her, solving her dilemma too. No one sensible bets on what happens next. Parliament must seize control in parliament when there is, in effect, no government. But logic – if logic were to prevail – suggests the only answer that will rescue both party leaders is to have a great national consultation and a referendum imposed upon them. • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnistThe second Lego Movie is even better than the original: a sophisticated new adventure that gives us a new look at how the universality of the Lego universe was more gendered than we thought. There’s hilarious voice-work artistry, ceaselessly inventive pop-culture riffs (“Ooooh – reference!” says someone), eyeball-popping graphics and a 107-minute nonstop gag-storm of a screenplay from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. My favourite moment of superfluous script brilliance comes when an intensely annoying teenage vampire announces in a sensitive voice: “I also DJ on the side and wear women’s jeans.” My only qualification is that the Lego figures are permitted a supernatural ability to operate in the live-action real world of the family’s house, which is arguably a bit of a cheat – but that’s done with great wit, like everything else. We left the first movie on a note of existential anxiety. The kid in the real-world basement is informed that from now on his younger sister will be playing and the creatures of the Lego universe were horrified by the appearance of Duplo: great big blocks with new pinky-cutesy colours. The masculine world of Lego is threatened. The Duplo figures are, in fact, resident in a distant spaceship and make irregular incursions that the indigenous Lego creatures consider to be hugely aggressive. After years of bitter warfare, their hometown has been grimly renamed Apocalypseburg (“a heckish place to live”), no longer is everything awesome, and the chipper singing of Emmet (tremendously voiced by Chris Pratt) is out of joint with the times. He is increasingly considered inappropriate to what Apocalypseburg needs: a tough warrior. This is especially true of Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), a badass who not so secretly despises Emmet’s inability to master stereotypically manly mannerisms. Then the creatures of Duplo arrive with an order: Apocalypseburg’s foremost citizens must travel to the distant outpost of Sustar to attend a wedding. Their enemies’ leader Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi (voiced by Tiffany Haddish) has imperiously announced her desire to get hitched to Apocalypseburg’s most eligible unmarried man: Batman (growlingly voiced by Will Arnett) who furiously announces that he wishes to remain a “Bat-chelor”. Is this an overture of friendship or an insidious plan to undermine our heroes’ masculine toughness and self-reliance with the girly stratagem of a wedding? There is no doubt about it: some of the protagonists are beguiled by the avowedly feminised concept of a lavish wedding, but Emmet’s own crisis of masculinity appears solved by the appearance of tough, attractively stubbled adventurer Rex Dangervest (also voiced by Pratt), who keeps curtly telling everyone he doesn’t want to explain his backstory before doing just that. TLM2 is speckled with references to 2001: A Space Odyssey (the “stargate” has become the “stairgate”, which leads to the disturbing world beyond the basement), to the Toy Stories and to The Matrix. The characters are periodically besieged by worries about the reality of what they experience and by their own inevitable obsolescence. They are terrified of being banished to the exotic land of “storage”, pronounced like a French word. But the structure and themes of the film have to be perceived within a pointilliste spray of brilliant gags. Each individual joke is the point; the movie keeps delivering a dizzying rush of material. What a rush.Sometimes I think I’m the perfect person to analyse the cultural impact of music. I’m pretty sure no one else has ever thought that about me, though. And actually, even I don’t think it very often. My weakness in the role would undoubtedly be my ignorance of music. Not complete ignorance: it’s impossible, it turns out, no matter how little interest you show, to remain alive for 44 years in modern Britain without having heard of Mozart and Rihanna – though I had to check the spelling of the latter. And, come to think of it, I’m quite partial to Magic FM on a car journey and also I watched that Bros documentary everyone’s going on about. But I admit I don’t know much about music. Is that really such a problem though? The more I think about it, the more I reckon that’s actually what might make me amazing at analysing its cultural impact. I don’t have any musical tastes that could skew my judgment and confuse the analysis with thoughts of whether this bit of music, or type of music, is “better” than that bit or type. I can see what’s really going on, unencumbered by strong views on Coldplay or David Bowie or clapping at the end of movements (which Elvis Presley’s entourage were reduced to at the end). I don’t have a dog in the fight, which makes me ideal as an analyst of dog fighting. Someone who does have a dog in the fight is Mark Wigglesworth. He’s the former music director of the English National Opera so must be massively keen on music. He’s probably got all of Rihanna’s albums and a poster of Mozart in his bedroom. So I was worried, when I saw he was dabbling in some analysis of the cultural impact of music, that he might be out of his depth. Well, you be the judge. Unless you’re into music at all, in which case perhaps you’d better stay out of it. It’s not about music, it’s about a group defining itself around something from which it derives a sense of superiority It was about the ENO’s policy of performing operas in English – which means, in the majority of cases, in translation (though I’m sure that’ll change after Brexit when homegrown opera is freed from its Euro‑shackles). This is an issue in the opera world: should operas be sung with the words they were composed for or those the audience can understand? Writing on the music website Bachtrack, Wigglesworth stoutly defended the latter policy. If you’re currently struggling to care because this is a discussion of something that happens in rooms you have no intention of entering, then let me try to grab your attention by mentioning the slagging off. Alongside some reasoned argument asserting that “opera is drama first and foremost” and “beauty is not as powerful a medium as meaning” (that’s worth a fridge magnet), Wigglesworth had a tentative dig at his opponents’ motives: “A more unspoken view is one that thinks singing in a foreign language ‘keeps the riff-raff away’,” he said, adding: “I do believe a certain pleasure in cultural elitism exists, even if only by a few.” You can feel the nervousness as he wrote that. “I don’t mean you!” he’s reassuring any specific opponent of translated opera who might take offence. “You think what you think purely on artistic grounds and I respectfully disagree! It’s some other guys, who happen to have the same opinion as you but for much less wholesome reasons, who are the snobs.” This is much more interesting, because it’s not about music, it’s about “riff-raff”. Wigglesworth wants to make “opera accessible to all” and “all”, by definition, includes riff-raff. He sees this as the ENO’s mission. “Accessibility,” he writes, “is not really about the price of a ticket. For accessibility to be meaningful and long lasting it has to come from the work itself… When Mozart wanted to write for ‘the people’ he did so in their native German. He trusted that if more people understood the piece, more would enjoy it.” This makes sense, but I can’t help wondering how much riff-raff the ENO currently attracts, even with its populist policy of singing words the audience can actually understand. Obviously I don’t know – I’ve never been there because of my irrational fear of hours and hours of boredom – but I find it hard to believe that, if I did go, I’d think: “Look at the riff-raff in here! The sooner they start doing operas in Italian and get the carpets steam cleaned, the better. This English translation of La traviata they’ve put on is an absolute scum-magnet.” But I think Wigglesworth is basically right. He’s just slightly confused matters with the term “riff-raff”, because this isn’t about class, it’s about tribalism. The riff-raff here are people who see themselves as opera buffs but whom the anti‑translation opera buffs would say aren’t proper buffs because they don’t like opera enough to sit through it when the words are gobbledygook – or aren’t proper buffs because they haven’t troubled to learn Italian and German. It’s like hardcore fans of an indie band despising newer fans who only got into them once they became successful. It’s not about music, it’s not about class, it’s about a group defining itself around something from which it derives a sense of moral superiority. In the middle ages, people like that founded monastic orders. And, to be honest, most of us are a bit like that. We all need someone to look down on. The pro-accessibility opera fans are looking down on the linguistic purists – for being elitist snobs, but also for being ignorant of opera’s history as a popular art form – just as much as the purists are looking down on them. They’re all having a lovely time feeling like they’re better than other people – just as people who believe passionately in egalitarianism instinctively feel like they’re better than those who don’t believe passionately in egalitarianism. Which means that the ENO’s policy on singing opera in English must not change. The bitching it engenders is vital to both sides of the opera community’s sense of self. Disagreeing about it is enjoyable and, without it, all that’s left to entertain them is opera.The last time Serena Williams came to Melbourne, she was five weeks pregnant and went on to win the Australian Open for the seventh time. On day eight of the 2019 championships, two years older at 38, she dredged up a sliver of her old magic to hold off the robust challenge of the world No1 Simona Halep and edge closer to joining Margaret Court on the all-time record of 24 majors. It was a typically mercurial performance, that swung between brilliant and desperate. To get another shot at the prize, the remarkable American has to beat Karolina Pliskova in the quarter-final on Wednesday, and either Naomi Osaka – who famously ignored her meltdown in the final at Flushing Meadows last September to win the US Open – or the sixth seed, Elina Svitolina. But she flirted with defeat on the eighth evening of the tournament, saving three break points in the third just as Halep seemed to be taking charge. Williams, not at her best, dug deep, broke and held, and the win was hers 6-1, 4-6, 6-4 after an hour and 47 minutes on a mild evening in Rod Laver Arena. She said courtside, “It was a really intense match, with some incredible points. It’s just great to be back out playing again on this court. I really needed to elevate my game. She’s the No1 player in the world, and there’s a reason why. I’m such a fighter. I never give up. It’s definitely something that’s innate. I work so hard, and it’s just a miracle that I’m here. I keep trying, fighting for every point.‚“ Williams had given up only nine games in her three previous games – a first-week strike rate she hasn’t matched in a major since the 2013 US Open - but she had to step up in class from the likes of Dayana Yastramenska and Eugenie Bouchard. The world No1 and the real No1 exchanged breaks at the start, before the American, who brought an 8-1 lead to their ninth encounter, pulled away to 4-1 inside quarter of an hour, and polished off the first set in 20 minutes. This was a proper blitz. Then followed the grind, ending with Williams forcing one final tired forehand out of the Romanian. As happens to players involved in stamina-draining matches, Garbine Muguruza paid for her late-night marathon against Johanna Konta when Pliskova overpowered her in exactly an hour for the loss of four games. The Czech is unlikely to have as easy a time against Williams. “She makes you be on every single ball,” Muguruza said. “I struggled a bit with the heat and the conditions.” Osaka plays Svitolina in the other quarter-final on that side of the draw and on Monday she defied her own history when, for the second time in a row, she lost the first set but still went through, beating 12th seed Anastasija Sevastova 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and 47 minutes on Laver. The Japanese player invariably relies on a quick start to overwhelm her opponent and came into the this tournament comforted by the fact that she had won 57 matches in a row when taking the first set. However, she has tripped up early twice now, dropping the first set to Su-Wei Hsieh in round three and doing the same on Monday against the stubborn Latvian. People who are famous, I feel kind of bad for them, because you can never truly enjoy going outside. She put the minor statistical setback behind her in a strong finish, and said later, “Technically I’m supposed to be good at starting matches. I have a pretty good record winning the first set and then winning the match. I have played two really great players over the past few days, and, I don’t know, I just have to adjust to that feeling of being overwhelmed a little bit.” Against Svitolina, she won in straight sets here in the fourth round three years ago, but had to come from a set down in the semi-finals in Tokyo later in the year. The Ukrainian won their other three matches, two as a front-runner. On Monday, Svitolina had her own dip-then-rip, beating Shua Zhang, 6-2, 1-6, 6-1 in just over an hour and a half. Osaka said of the sixth seed, “She played well at the end of the year, won the WTA Finals. I was really happy for her, because everyone was writing her off. She wasn’t doing well leading up to that. She’s playing well again here. When she has the chance, she does like to attack.” Osaka also revealed she sometimes now wears a wig when she goes out, especially in Japan. “People who are famous, I feel kind of bad for them, because it’s, like, you can never really truly enjoy going outside and stuff. So, for me, I feel kind of lucky that I’m unknown.” In the Sahara Desert, maybe.Spice Girls T-shirts sold to raise money for Comic Relief’s “gender justice” campaign were made at a factory in Bangladesh where women earn the equivalent of 35p an hour during shifts in which they claim to be verbally abused and harassed, a Guardian investigation has found. The charity tops, bearing the message “#IWannaBeASpiceGirl”, were produced by mostly female machinists who said they were forced to work up to 16 hours a day and called “daughters of prostitutes” by managers for not hitting targets. Money raised from sales of the £19.40 T-shirts will be donated to Comic Relief’s fund to help “champion equality for women”. The charity is due to receive £11.60 for each of the T-shirts, which were commissioned and designed by the band, but said it has yet to be given any money. Announcing the partnership, the Spice Girls said the cause was important to them because “equality and the movement of people power have always been at the heart of the band”. But one of the machinists at the factory that produced the garments – modelled on social media by the TV presenter Holly Willoughby, the singers Sam Smith and Jessie J, and the Olympian Jessica Ennis-Hill – said: “We don’t get paid enough and we work in inhuman conditions.” The T-shirts, which also have the words “gender justice” on the back, were made by workers earning significantly less than a living wage. The factory is part-owned by a minister in Bangladesh’s authoritarian coalition government, which won 96% of the vote last month in an election described as “farcical” by critics. There is no suggestion any of the celebrities were aware of conditions at the factory. A spokesman for the Spice Girls said they were “deeply shocked and appalled” and would personally fund an investigation into the factory’s working conditions. Comic Relief said the charity was “shocked and concerned”. Both said they had checked the ethical sourcing credentials of Represent, the online retailer commissioned by the Spice Girls to make the T-shirts, but it had subsequently changed manufacturer without their knowledge. Represent said it took “full responsibility” and would refund customers on request. The band said Represent should donate profits to “campaigns with the intention to end such injustices”. The company behind the factory that made the T-shirts, Interstoff Apparels, said the findings would be investigated but were “simply not true”. However, a catalogue of evidence about conditions faced by the employees was uncovered, including allegations that: Some machinists are paid 8,800Tk (£82) a month, according to a recent payslip – meaning they earn the equivalent of 35p an hour for a 54-hour week. The sum is well below the 16,000Tk unions have been demanding and falls far short of living wage estimates. Employees are forced to work overtime to hit “impossible” targets of sewing thousands of garments a day, meaning they are sometimes working 16-hour shifts that finish at midnight. Factory workers who do not make the targets are verbally abused by management and reduced to tears. Some have been made to work despite ill-health. The revelations shine a light on the risks of complex supply chains and will add to longstanding concerns over conditions at manufacturers of garments sold at considerable markups by British retailers. Saying the conditions appeared to be “far beyond the normal illegalities” at factories in Bangladesh, Dominique Muller, the policy director at the campaign group Labour Behind the Label, added: “It is absolutely essential that celebrities, charities and brands ensure that their goods are made in factories which pay a decent wage and provide decent work.” The Spice Girls are “deeply shocked and appalled” by the Guardian’s findings, according to a spokesman for the band, who said they found it “heartbreaking to hear about the treatment that these women receive”. The band had sought assurances from Represent, the online retailer that sold the T-shirts, that the garments would be ethically made, and said the manufacturer was changed without their knowledge. The band pledged to personally fund an investigation into the factory’s working conditions and demanded Represent donate profits to “campaigns with the intention to end such injustices”. A Comic Relief spokesman said the charity was “shocked and concerned” and had also checked the ethical sourcing credentials of the supplier, which was then changed without its knowledge. The charity was due to receive approximately £11.60 for each £19.40 T-shirt sold but had yet to be given any money, the spokesman added. Represent said it would refund customers on request, calling the reported conditions at the factory “appalling and unacceptable”. A spokesman said: “Represent has strict ethical sourcing standards for all of our manufacturers, and we had felt confident printing on blank shirts from Stanley/Stella for this campaign due to the brand’s strong reputation and leadership within the Fair Wear Foundation. “To clarify, Comic Relief and Spice Girls did everything in their power to ensure ethical sourcing, and we take full responsibility for the choice of Stanley/Stella in this campaign, and confirm that this is something that we didn’t bring to the attention of Spice Girls or Comic Relief.” The factory's co-owner Shahriar Alam, a Bangladeshi foreign affairs minister, said he did not think it was “right from a journalistic point of view to add my name to this story”. He admitted being a part-owner and co-founder of the company behind the factory, Interstoff, but said he resigned from the board five years ago. Interstoff Apparels' director, Naimul Bashar Chowdhury, confirmed the factory produced blank T-shirts for Stanley/Stella. He said Alam was “a mere shareholder of the company” and was not involved in the management of the business. He said the company would investigate the Guardian’s findings but also described them as “simply not true”, adding that Interstoff has a “zero-tolerance policy on harassment and use of any slangs or abusive language”. However, he admitted there had been “single incidents” in the “long past where verbal abuse have resulted to employee dismissal”. He said no complaints had been received about excessive targets and the company adhered to the government’s legal minimum wages. It has a “participation committee” elected by workers to voice complaints, he said, adding that the factory is regularly audited. “The living wage is a debatable and subjective issue; we for ourselves can say our basic pay is as per the local law and we have over that different performance-based financial incentives,” Chowdhury added. He pointed out the company employs 80 disabled workers, staff are trained about harassment and abuse, and a medical centre at the factory provides healthcare. Pregnant workers are given monthly checkups, Chowdhury said. Bruno Van Sieleghem, the sustainability manager at Stanley/Stella, said the brand was investigating the findings and “strongly committed to help this country and his workers to improve their welfare”. The Fair Wear Foundation, a organisation funded by brands that works to improve standards, audits Interstoff every three years, he said, adding that the company's team is “closely monitoring” FWF’s “corrective action plan”. He said Stanley/Stella was aware that machinists at Interstoff work overtime until 9pm, but not that they stayed on until midnight. He said the brand had received no reports about employees complaining of harassment at the factory. He said the brand, which received approximately €5 (£4.40) for each T-shirt, was committed to improving standards for garment workers in Bangladesh, but admitted it used factories in the country because they offer a “competitive price”. The T-shirts were printed by a company in the Czech Republic, Van Sieleghem added. FWF said it inspected the factory in December, interviewing 30 workers off-site. The organisation said some “non-compliances” were discovered, but the interviews “did not reflect the allegations of harassment in the factory”. However, the foundation acknowledged that this “does not mean this did not happen”. It described the hours at the factory as “excessive”, but FWF said it found workers are “free to refuse overtime”. It said it supported staff being paid a living wage. The factory was employed to produce the T-shirts by the Belgian brand Stanley/Stella, which claimed to closely monitor operations. But Muller warned: “The evidence coming out of this factory clearly shows the failure of auditing and current brand monitoring. Stanley/Stella claim to have monitored all their Bangladesh factories, and yet the evidence shows gross violations of labour laws and human rights. Brands must step up their game.” Bruno Van Sieleghem, the sustainability manager at Stanley/Stella, said the company was investigating the findings and remained “strongly committed to help this country and workers to improve their welfare”. The T-shirts were produced at Interstoff’s factory in Gazipur, about three hours’ drive from the capital, Dhaka. The company is co-owned by Shahriar Alam, a Bangladeshi foreign affairs minister, and makes garments for a number of British retailers. Interstoff exported £4.3m of goods and made a £2m pre-tax profit in 2014-15, according to accounts filed with Companies House in the UK. In 2013-14, it made a £2.5m pre-tax profit. Alam, whose government has been accused of cracking down on free speech by arresting reporters, said he did not think it was “right from a journalistic point of view to add my name to this story”. He admitted being a part-owner and co-founder of Interstoff, but said he resigned from the board five years ago. Interstoff said he was not involved in the management of the business. A campaigner in Bangladesh, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from the government, said: “The women who are producing these clothes are getting poverty wages. They don’t have a dignified job. What kind of gender justice is that?” According to the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, a global coalition of trade unions, workers’ groups and human rights organisations, the monthly living wage for Bangladesh in 2017 was 37,661Tk. Another report, produced by academics for ISEAL, a non-profit group, set the living wage for Gazipur at 13,630Tk in 2016. In 2014, Comic Relief pledged to pay all its employees a living wage. But workers in Gazipur, whose ID passes were seen by the Guardian, face a different reality. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a machinist who has worked at the factory for more than five years and earned 9,080Tk a month, including an attendance bonus, said: “We hardly get anything. The wages we get are very minimum. It’s barely enough to survive.” • Machinists at the Interstoff factory in Gazipur stitch the garments together for about 35p an hour.• The T-shirts are shipped to the Czech Republic, where another company prints the #IWannaBeASpiceGirl slogan. • The Belgian brand Stanley/Stella, which oversees the production process, receives approximately €5 (£4.40) for each T-shirt from the US "crowdselling platform" Represent. • The Spice Girls, who have announced that proceeds from the T-shirts will go to Comic Relief, appear on The Jonathan Ross Show in November, with the host proudly holding up one of the garments to the camera. • Represent, which had been commissioned by the Spice Girls to get the T-shirts made, puts them on sale online for £19.40 each plus postage and packaging. • Comic Relief said about £11.60 from the sale of each T-shirt was given to the charity. The machinist, who has neck problems from being hunched over a sewing machine, struggles to get by and provide for her seven-year-old son. “Inside the production manager’s office, they use very bad, abusive language, like ‘this isn’t your father’s factory’, ‘the door is wide open, leave if you can’t meet the production goals’,” she said. “Sometimes they use more obscene language like ‘khankir baccha’ (daughter of a prostitute), and many more that I can’t even say. “Sometimes many female workers can’t bear the insults and pressure from the management, and they quit. Even last month, a few of my colleagues left because they faced very bad behaviour and they were shattered.” Machinists at the factory, which employs about 4,000 people, work from 8am until 5pm six days a week, including an hour’s paid lunch break a day, but are regularly forced to do overtime, workers claim. The overtime is understood to be paid at a higher rate to regular shifts. The mother-of-one, who lives in a small room with her husband and child, said: “If the management wants us to do overtime then we don’t have any other choice but to do it.” She estimated she has to work overtime in the evenings for half the days in the month. Last year, the machinist added, a colleague who was three months’ pregnant quit after she was forced by management to work until midnight despite vomiting. She also claimed employees often faint in the heat of the factory, while many experience neck and back problems. Another machinist, who has worked for Interstoff since 2013, said she was forced to take out loans to get by. The single mother-of-two earns 8,450Tk a month including an attendance bonus. She recently had to borrow 20,000Tk from her brother. “The amount I get paid is not enough at all. You see I am the only breadwinner of the family. I singlehandedly have to pay for my daughter’s education and also have to meet the expenses of the family as well,” she said. “Our supervisor is very intimidating and scary. We always try avoiding any confrontation with him; we don’t want to face him. They always set the target production so high that we practically could never hit them. I don’t remember when was the last time we hit the target goal.” The garment industry accounts for 80% of Bangladesh’s exports, employing more than 4 million workers. While it has aided the country’s economic growth, the industry has been beset by controversy over low wages and unsafe working conditions. In 2013, 1,134 people died when the Rana Plaza building collapsed due to structural failures. Additional reporting by Redwan AhmedBryan Singer, the credited director of Queen and Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody who was conspicuously not thanked by the film’s award winners at the Golden Globes, has posted a thank-you note on social media. What an honor. Thank you #HollywoodForeignPress A post shared by  Bryan Singer (@bryanjaysinger) on Jan 6, 2019 at 10:41pm PST Singer posted an image himself on Instagram in the director’s chair working on a scene that recreates Queen’s celebrated I Want to Break Free music video, and wrote: “What an honor. Thank you #HollywoodForeignPress.” In a surprise result, Bohemian Rhapsody won two Golden Globes at Sunday’s ceremony, taking best film (drama) and best actor (drama) for Rami Malek. However, Singer, who was fired from the production before the shoot was finished, did not attend the ceremony, and was entirely ignored in both acceptance speeches. Singer was replaced by Eddie the Eagle director Dexter Fletcher, but union rules meant only Singer received credit. While Singer’s departure from the film was rumoured to be due to a series of unexplained absences and clashes with Malek, Singer said in a statement that producers 20th Century Fox had refused to give him enough time off to deal with “pressing health matters”. Singer has also been dogged with allegations of sexual assault for a number of years. In 2014, a Los Angeles court dropped a sex abuse case against Singer by an anonymous actor on the the grounds there was no legal basis for it. In a separate lawsuit, actor Michael Egan III alleged Singer had sexually abused him as a 17-year-old. Egan dropped the suit in August 2014, while Egan’s lawyer subsequently apologised to other accused figures who had brought a legal complaint against Egan for the “untrue and provably false allegations”. In December 2017, Singer denied accusations by Cesar Sanchez-Guzman who alleged that, as a 17-year-old in 2003, he was sexually assaulted by Singer on a yacht. Singer has consistently denied wrongdoing, and was recently reported to have secured a high-profile job directing a remake of 80s action flick Red Sonja.The world was Kafkaesque before Franz Kafka; all he did was contribute the adjective. He was certainly not the first literary artist to identify the essential uncanniness of quotidian reality. From Catullus through Jonathan Swift and on to Heinrich von Kleist, ETA Hoffmann and Dostoevsky, the fictions we spin in order that life might be sustainable have been questioned, derided and upended, over and over. All the same, Kafka remains a special case. As George Steiner pointed out, no other great writer, not even Shakespeare, managed to arrogate to himself and make uniquely his own a letter of the alphabet. In the darker realm of literature, at least, K is king. The adjective “Kafkaesque” has, of course, become a cliche. Kafka’s name, according to Philip Roth, “is plastered indiscriminately on almost any baffling or unusually opaque event that is not easily translatable into the going simplifications”. Even Max Brod, his friend and the man we must thank for disregarding Kafka’s specific, written instructions that all his unpublished work should be destroyed, protested against the “repulsive expression ‘Kafkaesque’”, adding that “Kafkaesque is that which Kafka was not!” But neither was he what Brod claimed him to be, a “saint of our time”. And Theodor Adorno was right to insist that he was not “a poet of the Judaic homeland”. Indeed, one of the themes running throughout Benjamin Balint’s fascinating and forensically scrupulous account of the history of Kafka’s papers is the writer’s deeply ambiguous relationship – if it can even be called that – with Israel, or, as it still was in his time, Palestine. While Brod, a typical Mitteleuropean man of letters, “came,” according to the journalist and Zionist Robert Weltsch, “to complete identification with the Jewish people”, Kafka maintained a sceptical attitude on the “Jewish question”, both in the personal and the public spheres. “What have I in common with the Jews?” he asks in his diary, adding with typically lugubrious humour, “I have hardly anything in common with myself.” It was not until he discovered what Balint describes as “an unlikely source of vitality” in the performances of a Yiddish theatre troupe in Prague’s Cafe Savoy that he began to appreciate his Jewish inheritance. “The café was tawdry,” Balint writes, “its doorman a part-time pimp,” yet the burlesque performances had the peculiar effect of making Kafka’s “cheeks tremble”. Kafka filled more than a 100 pages of his diary, Balint tells us, with accounts of the Yiddish players and their plays. “He was impressed by their authenticity and ‘vigour’ (Urwüchsigkeit), and by the ironic idiom itself – in which high and low, biblical and vernacular rattled against each other.” Samuel Beckett must have undergone the same kind of Damascene moment when he first began to look seriously at the miniature tragicomic epics of Buster Keaton. Whether his glimpse of a shared Jewish past turned Kafka into a “Jewish” writer is doubtful. True, he did teach himself Hebrew, as his friend Georg Langer, a scholar of the Kabbalah, attested: “He, who always insisted that he was not a Zionist, learned our language at an advanced age and with great diligence.” Yet as Kafka himself wrote not long before his death: “What is Hebrew, but news from far away?” As to Palestine itself, it seems to have been for Kafka not so much the promised as the improbable land. As he scathingly remarked: “Many people prowl around Mt Sinai.” Perhaps the matter is best expressed by the Swiss critic Jean Starobinski: “In the face of Judaism, Kafka is an exile, albeit one who ceaselessly asks for news of the land he has left.” All these aspects of the extremely vexed Jewish question are pertinent to Balint’s subject, which is the battle between Germany and Israel for possession of Kafka’s literary remains, and the plight of the two women caught in the crossfire – although it must be acknowledged that Esther Hoffe and her daughter Eva exploded quite a few bombs themselves. The Israeli case was succinctly stated by Meir Heller, the hard-nosed lawyer who through eight years of intricate, sometimes bitter, and – yes, alas – Kafkaesque litigation represented the National Library of Israel: “Like many other Jews who contributed to western civilisation, we think, his legacy ... [and] his manuscripts should be placed here in the Jewish state.” The other interested party was the German Literature Archive at Marbach, under the direction of Ulrich Raulff, which, as Balint writes, “wished to add Kafka’s manuscripts to the estates of more than 1,400 writers … held in storage facilities kept at a constant 18C–19C (about 66F) and a relative humidity of 50 percent-55 percent”. So far, so German; one of the less temperate comments came from the publisher and Kafka scholar Klaus Wagenbach: “The Israelis seem to have become crazed.” The squabble – and it was a squabble, despite the many high-minded pronouncements that the affair called forth – centred not on Kafka himself, or his wishes as to the fate of his papers, running to tens of thousands of pages, but to the ambiguities of the will left behind by Brod, the original keeper of the archive. A tireless, prolific and for the most part mediocre writer and journalist, Brod was Kafka’s closest friend and confidant, and regarded him with, as he confessed, “fanatical veneration”, finding even his chronic hypochondria “inventive and entertaining”. After the second world war, Brod settled in Palestine, not without doubts and difficulties, and with less of an enthusiastic reception than he might justifiably have expected. In Israel’s defence, the new state was more in need of people of action than of another central European intellectual, even one carrying a bulging suitcase of papers left behind by one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, indeed of all the centuries. Kafka had entrusted his archive to Brod with instructions to destroy it, instructions that Brod insisted he assured Kafka he had no intention of carrying out. In Tel Aviv, Brod became friends with another German exile, Otto Hoffe, and his much younger wife, Esther. Brod, whose own wife had recently died and whose lover had left him, latched on to the Hoffes, and in time took on Esther as his secretary, and perhaps more – although Esther’s daughter Eva insisted that Esther’s relation to Brod “wasn’t carnal, it was spiritual”. Whatever the nature of the connection between the two, on his death in 1968 Brod left Esther in possession of the great bulk of Kafka’s papers, including original manuscripts of novels and stories, and a wealth of correspondence. Balint, who is a library fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, emphasises that for decades the Israeli state showed no interest in securing the papers, and did not even react when Esther put some manuscripts up for auction. In time, Esther left what remained of them – a substantial haul, despite those auctions – to Eva, still living in Tel Aviv. At once Israel, in the form of its National Library, moved to contest Esther’s will, provoking the Marbach Literature Archive to weigh in with its own case. Since it had already been in negotiation with Esther to buy Brod’s estate, including the Kafka papers, the archive’s director held that it had the right at least to make a bid against the Israeli claim. There followed no fewer than three trials in Israel, which ended with the supreme court’s decision that Eva must hand over, without recompense, the entire Brod papers, including Kafka’s legacy, to the library. Who was in the right, or could there even be a “right” decision in such a case, involving the claims of the Jewish state against a nation that had permitted the murder of 6 million Jews? The real loser was not the Marbach archive, for all the affront it suffered, but Eva, who died in August 2018. Balint, in a passage that Kafka would surely have admired, sums up the matter eloquently and movingly when he writes: “Like the man from the country in Kafka’s parable ‘Before the Law’, Eva Hoffe remained stranded and confounded outside the door of the law … Her inheritance was the trial itself. Paradoxically, she had inherited her disinheritance, inherited the impossibility of carrying out her mother’s will. She possessed only her dispossession.” • Kafka’s Last Trial is published by Picador. To order a copy for £13.19 (RRP £14.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.Unai Emery has made it clear that bringing a loan signing to Arsenal this month will be difficult, although the manager suggested the impending departure of the club’s head of recruitment, Sven Mislintat, would have no effect on their efforts in the transfer market. Emery said last week that Arsenal were exploring loan deals only – the club spent heavily by their standards last summer – and he has an interest in Barcelona’s Denis Suárez, who would bring a fresh option on the wing. Emery has other targets such as the Sevilla midfielder Éver Banega as the club look to plan for the end-of-season departure of Aaron Ramsey to Juventus on a free transfer. It has so far proved tough for Mislintat and his team to persuade potential selling clubs to part with players on loan and Arsenal would seemingly have to offer assurances that they would make any deals permanent in the summer. It is unclear whether they would be prepared to do that with Suárez. Emery sounded a little downbeat when asked for a progress update and he seemed to suggest it would be one incoming loan, at best. “This transfer window is not easy to take players that can help us with better performances than the players we have now,” Emery said. “The club is working and I spoke with Sven, with Raúl [Sanllehí, the director of football] about different possibilities with players. “They are working but it is not easy to take players that can help us with big performances now. We are looking, the club is working with the possibility to loan players and if we can take [somebody] for helping us in a different position on the team, then maybe we can.” Emery was tight-lipped on the subject of Suárez. “They are conversations between us, privately,” he said. “I don’t want to say to you this private conversation with the club.” Emery also gave nothing away with regard to Mislintat’s future, adopting his now standard feign of ignorance on weighty issues, but he maintained it had been business as usual with his colleague. Mislintat, who has grown frustrated very quickly – he joined from Borussia Dortmund in November 2017 – will continue to give his all until such time as he departs. “I was working with him over the last two weeks,” Emery said. “We had two or three meetings together and we are working normally. I don’t know another different issue to him. Is he leaving? I don’t know. When I spoke with him it was all normal. My relationship with him for transfers in the last two or three weeks – we are speaking about that. Today, for me, the normality is working with him.” Arsenal entertain Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday in a pivotal game in their battle for a Champions League finish. They trail their fourth-placed rivals by six points and, after three defeats in their last six Premier League matches, they can ill afford another loss. Emery, who described the Chelsea game as a “small final”, said that Mesut Özil was fit and available for selection after knee trouble but it was also the case at West Ham last Saturday, when Arsenal lost 1-0, and he left him out of the squad entirely. Özil has not played since the 1-1 draw at Brighton on Boxing Day and he faces an uncertain future under Emery. “I’m not thinking about that,” Emery said, when asked whether Özil could leave the club this month. “I’m thinking about how he can help us this year with good performances. He’s had injuries and not been OK to play matches but now after these two weeks maybe this Saturday will be OK for him. He’s training consistently with his work over the past two weeks and I think he can be [available]. “I want consistency. He’s had some injuries and these injuries mean that sometimes he is OK and sometimes he isn’t. I want every player to give the same work every day to be OK for every match. With Mesut, it’s the same.”The Turkish Super Lig club Yeni Malatyaspor are pressing ahead with plans to sign Aboubakar Kamara from Fulham, despite the forward’s arrest on suspicion of actual bodily harm following allegations of a fight at the club’s Motspur Park training centre. Kamara is understood to have clashed with a security guard on Monday after attempting to seek out the Fulham chief executive, Alistair Mackintosh, to discuss his future. The player had found himself marginalised after two recent incidents and banished to train with the club’s under-23s. Whereas the first-team squad were given time off this week by Claudio Ranieri before a free weekend, the 23-year-old apparently failed to attend a session with the academy group and, as a result, was due to incur a club fine. Notification of that punishment had prompted him to seek out Mackintosh. Police were called to Motspur Park shortly after 5pm on Monday following reports of a violent incident, with the player arrested on suspicion of ABH and causing criminal damage. No charges have been brought against Kamara, who has been banned indefinitely by Fulham from the training ground and “all club activities”. Yeni Malatyaspor, third in the Turkish top flight, want the Frenchman – a £5.4m signing from Amiens in July 2017 – on loan until the end of the season. Their president, Adil Gevrek, is in London negotiating with Fulham and has apparently not been put off, with an agreement having been struck in principle. Talks are ongoing to add a second Fulham player, the DR Congo international Neeskens Kebano, as part of the deal as the Turkish club seek to add to their offensive options. The pair have made only five Premier League starts, all by Kamara, this term. It remains to be seen whether either deal is now made permanent. Kamara made 30 appearances and scored seven goals in the Championship for Fulham last season. He featured initially after Ranieri’s appointment but his decision to overrule Aleksandar Mitrovic in order to take a penalty against Huddersfield last month – he went on to miss – was compounded by a run-in with the Serbia striker during a squad yoga session. The striker, contracted to 2021, was omitted from the squad for the two most recent league games, against Burnley and Tottenham.Nuno Espírito Santo will never accept a red card in sweeter circumstances. Deep into three minutes of second-half stoppage-time, he charged towards the corner flag to join the celebrations and the growing pile of delirious Wolves players after Diogo Jota added the seventh goal of this topsy-turvy match – completing a classy hat-trick after applying the finishing touches to another magnificent defence-splitting pass by the regal Rúben Neves. Jamie Vardy lightened the mood at training in the past week by dressing up as Spider-Man and Leicester thought they had found an unlikely superhero in Wes Morgan, who crashed home a headed equaliser with three minutes remaining, only for Jota to inflict one final blow, slotting home from Raúl Jiménez’s cross to add to the gloom shrouding Claude Puel. An obliging Nuno was sent to the stands by the referee Chris Kavanagh but this kind of agonising defeat – a third in a row and a fifth in the league in eight games – could well send Puel packing. Leicester’s cavalier approach at the end was even more reckless considering how valuable a point could have been given they face Liverpool, Manchester United and Spurs next. Puel could only grimace with his head in his hands as the stadium erupted, with Nuno guilty of letting the overwhelming elation get the better of him. “It’s difficult to contain your emotions,” the Wolves head coach said. “It’s a very difficult moment, especially because of the way that the game went. After all the situations that passed through the game, it is a tremendous happiness to finish like that for everybody at Molineux. As a manager it’s difficult because there are so many circumstances during the game that I think we should avoid but it was a very good game because both teams went for the game. I don’t know if it’s going to happen again. I’m so, so happy.” Puel could not have wished for a worse start. Leicester‘s porous defence was exposed throughout and they trailed inside four minutes, by which point Kasper Schmeichel had already made a magnificent left-handed save to deny Neves from adding to his impressive catalogue of long-range strikes. But when Demarai Gray lost possession just inside his own half, Jiménez fed João Moutinho, who stood up an inviting cross. Arriving at the back post, Jota was hungrier than Danny Simpson, the Leicester right-back, and stabbed home. It proved a recurring theme, with Ryan Bennett unmarked to tower above Harry Maguire and power a header in to double Wolves’ lead. “It was a crazy game,” Puel said. “We conceded all these goals in the first 15 minutes and it is not possible to accept this.” Wolves should have added a third midway through the first half but Schmeichel gathered Jota’s tame downward header, after the striker eluded a flat-footed Morgan. But whatever Puel said at the break had the desired effect and Leicester were level inside six second-half minutes. First Vardy did superbly to free Gray after Bennett misjudged a bouncing ball on halfway and the Leicester forward galloped into the box before applying a cool finish, drilling the ball across goal and in. Suddenly Leicester were in the groove and they pulled level on 51 minutes. Ben Chilwell raided down the left flank and Jonny’s interception ran into the path of Harvey Barnes, who lashed home on his Premier League debut, via a kind deflection off Conor Coady. When another sublime Neves pass – a 50-yard ball for Jota – unlocked a frail opposition defence 10 minutes later, the Wolves striker thundered home his second of the afternoon to undo Leicester’s work. But just as Morgan thought he had snatched an unlikely draw, heading home the substitute James Maddison’s free-kick, Jota had the final say, adding his third – and his side’s fourth – to leave Leicester on their haunches. Neves dispatched a raking ball into the right channel for Jiménez, who crossed for Jota to sweep in. “We were naive,” admitted Puel. “It is a big shame, a big disappointment. It is important in these moments to just run the clock down and finish the game with a fantastic feeling after a difficult game but now we have a negative feeling. We have to correct our inconsistency.”Donald Trump suffered a fresh blow on Thursday when a Democratic proposal to reopen the US government got more votes in the Republican-controlled Senate than his own – though both failed in a mood of grim inevitability. A measure backed by the president, including $5.7bn to help build a wall on the US-Mexico border, had a vote count of 50-47 in the Senate – well short of the 60 required to advance it over a Democratic filibuster. The widely predicted twin failure deepened the sense of dysfunctional government and left Washington with no obvious path out of the longest shutdown in US history. Some 800,000 federal workers are set to miss another pay cheque on Friday. At the White House, Trump sought to put a positive spin on the votes, insisting during some rambling remarks that “we won 50-47”. He was asked by reporters whether he would support any agreement reached by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and minority leader Chuck Schumer. “Well, it depends what the agreement is,” he said. “I mean, yeah - but if they come to a reasonable agreement, I would support it.” Pressed on whether it has to have money for his border wall, Trump insisted: “I have other alternatives, if I have to. And I’ll use those alternatives if I have to. But we want to go through the system. We have to have a wall in this country. We have criminals pouring into our country. “And I’m not talking about the southern border. They don’t stay there. They go through and they permeate all throughout the country, including places like Wisconsin - a lot of different places. And that’s the problem.” Democrats condemned the outcome but noted that six Republicans defied the president on their proposal. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said: “I’m encouraged that some Senate Republicans are beginning to join Democrats to back a sensible resolution to this mess. They understand that the number one priority is ending this hostage crisis. With the government open, we can consider responsible ways to boost border security. It’s time to end this nonsense now.” The $350bn-plus funding bill represented the first attempt by Republicans controlling the Senate to reopen the government since the partial shutdown began a record 34 days ago. It would have provided three years of continued protection against deportation for 700,000 immigrants brought to the US illegally as children. Then Democratic-backed clean funding bill would have reopened the government for two weeks without money for a border wall, but also fell short of the 60-vote threshold. The Senate voted 52-44, more support than for Trump’s proposal. Six Republicans voted for the measure including senators Johnny Isakson, Mitt Romney, Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Cory Gardner. Romney told reporters: “I believe a border security programme should include, as well, a barrier on our souther border. I want to see government get open and government workers get paid. It’s having an effect on our economy and it’s having an effect on the lives of workers.” The Utah senator and former presidential nominee called for further negotiations. “We’ve got to have the leaders of both parties, including the Democratic party, sit down with the president and work out a deal that includes border security and gets the government open.” Earlier, the House of Representative passed the latest in a series of measures aimed at reopening the government with a 231-180 vote to open the Homeland Security Department. It was the 11th attempt to pass a bill ending the shutdown. About 20 House Democrats marched over to the Senate during its vote in an attempt to pressure Republicans. At a press conference, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she was willing to meet Trump “any time” to discuss ending the partial shutdown. She said House Democrats are putting together a new border security package that will include money for fencing, technology, personnel and other measures, but not Trump’s long-promised wall. Apparently watching on TV, the president quickly responded on Twitter: “Nancy just said she ‘just doesn’t understand why?’ Very simply, without a Wall it all doesn’t work. Our Country has a chance to greatly reduce Crime, Human Trafficking, Gangs and Drugs. Should have been done for decades. We will not Cave!” Trump’s State of the Union address, scheduled for Tuesday, has been postponed until the end of the shutdown following an acrimonious tit-for-tat with Pelosi. Trump and his allies have been accused of a callous disregard for federal workers’ plight. Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, told CNBC that he did not understand why some are using food banks when they could take out loans. “The obligations that they would undertake – say borrowing from a bank or credit union – are in effect federally guaranteed,” he said. “So the 30 days of pay that people will be out — there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it, and we’ve seen a number of ads from the financial institutions doing that.” Pelosi told reporters: “Is this a ‘let them eat cake’ kind of attitude, or call your father for money?” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, added on Twitter: “Wilbur Ross is @realDonaldTrump’s Secretary of Commerce. Wilbur Ross is a billionaire. And this is billionaire Wilbur Ross saying he doesn’t understand why federal workers not getting paid during the #TrumpShutdown don’t just take out loans *to feed their families*. Unreal.” In an eye-catching move, Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, joined the four other former homeland security secretaries in signing a letter urging the president and his Democratic rivals to end the shutdown. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has warned of a growing threat to aviation safety.On Wednesday a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that just 34% of Americans like Trump’s performance as president and six in 10 assign a great deal of responsibility to him for the shutdown, about double the share blaming Democrats.Erykah Badu has defended R Kelly after a TV documentary series reiterated multiple allegations of sexual abuse against the R&B singer. Kelly has repeatedly denied all claims. During a performance at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on 19 January, Badu told the crowd: “I dunno how everybody else feel about it but I’m putting up a prayer right now for R. I hope he sees the light of day if he done all those things that we’ve seen on TV and heard those ladies talk about. I hope he sees the light of day and comes forward.”  Then 27, Kelly allegedly marries protegée Aaliyah, then 15, in an illegal ceremony in Cook County, Chicago. Tiffany Hawkins files lawsuit alleging injuries and emotional damage from a three-year relationship with Kelly, beginning when she was 15 - it is settled out of court. A videotape passed to Chicago Sun Times journalist Jim DeRogatis appears to show Kelly urinating on and having sex with an underage girl, which Kelly denies. Patrice Jones alleges that Kelly had a sexual relationship with her than began when she was 16, and pressured her into terminating a pregnancy. It is settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. Kelly is sued by dancer Montina Woods for secretly filming a sexual encounter between them. Kelly denies it, and settles out of court. A Chicago jury found that the identity of the girl depicted in the child video was not conclusive, acquitting Kelly of the charges. Kelly is divorced from his wife Andrea. She had previously taken out, then rescinded, a protection order against him. In 2018 she details a history of alleged domestic violence during their marriage, that she says drove her close to suicide. Three former members of Kelly's circle claimed Kelly was holding six women in properties in Chicago and Atlanta, controlling every aspect of their lives. Kelly denied the claims. Jerhonda Pace told Rolling Stone that she lost her virginity to Kelly age 16, and that she ended the relationship after he allegedly slapped, choked and spat on her. In a BBC3 documentary, former girlfriend Kitti Jones alleged that Kelly groomed an underage girl as well as her and other young women. Kelly refused to comment. An unnamed woman told Dallas police that Kelly had given her an STD and attempted to recruit her into his alleged sex "cult" after the pair initiated a sexual relationship when she was 19. Kelly "categorically" denied all allegations. Video from a private event depicts Kelly apparently describing attempts to suppress his music as "too late". Kelly releases I Admit, a 19-minute song protesting his innocence. Numerous women including Andrea Kelly, Jerhonda Pace and Kitti Jones reiterate their allegations in Lifetime docuseries Surviving R Kelly. Prosecutors appeal for any further victims to come forward – three women come forward in the days that follow. Lady Gaga and Chance the Rapper apologise for working with R Kelly, and remove their collaborations from streaming services. She responded to boos from the audience: “What y’all say, fuck him? That’s not love. That’s not unconditional love. But what if one of the people that was assaulted by R Kelly grows up to be an offender, we gonna crucify them?” Badu continued: “They ’bout to R Kelly me to death on the internet, I’m like goddamn. I just want peace and light for everybody and healing for those who are hurt because everyone involved has been hurt, victimised in some kinda way. Love for everybody.” Badu responded to criticism on Sunday. “I love you. Unconditionally,” she tweeted, in remarks apparently directed at Kelly. “That doesn’t mean I support your poor choices. I want healing for you and anyone you have hurt as a result of you being hurt. Is that strange to you?” She concluded: “That’s all I’ve ever said. Anything else has been fabricated or taken out of context.” On Instagram, she captioned a photo: “Having eyes that can see all points of view is a blessing ... and a curse in the court of public opinion.” Responding to a fan who accused her of supporting Kelly, Badu said: “Correction, love has little to do with supporting others’ bad choices. Love is wisdom.” I love you. Unconditionally. That doesn’t mean I support your poor choices. I want healing for you and anyone you have hurt as a result of you being hurt. Is that strange to you ? That’s all I’ve ever said. Anything else has been fabricated or taken out of context. - eb Badu was among a number of celebrities who declined to appear in the Lifetime documentary Surviving R Kelly, according to executive producer dream hampton. Jay-Z, Mary J Blige, Lil Kim, Dave Chappelle, Lady Gaga and Questlove allegedly turned down interviews for the six-part series, which aired in early January. At the 2015 Soul Train awards, Badu introduced Kelly and said he “has done more for black people than anyone”, Pitchfork reports. Kelly’s alleged history of sexual abuse – largely involving young black girls and women – first surfaced in 2002. In January 2018, Badu gave an interview to New York magazine in which she declared her love for Bill Cosby and said: “I see good in everybody. I saw something good in Hitler,” and praised his paintings. In a subsequent interview with the Guardian, Badu said she didn’t regret her comments. Kelly’s long-term record label, RCA, a subsidiary of Sony, this weekend announced that it was terminating its relationship with the singer. The documentary prompted protests outside Sony’s New York headquarters last week. The action followed a wave of disavowals from the embattled star. Kelly’s daughter, Buku Abi, described him as “a monster”. Stars including Lady Gaga and Céline Dion have removed their duets with Kelly from streaming platforms. The French band Phoenix apologised for inviting Kelly to perform with them at the 2013 Coachella festival. Kelly’s ex-manager, Henry James Mason, turned himself into police in Georgia after a warrant was issued for his arrest for allegedly making “terroristic threats and acts” against the family of Joycelyn Savage, whose family claim that she has been brainwashed by Kelly and is being held captive in his alleged “cult”. Prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta are appealing for new information about Kelly’s alleged abuses. Throughout 2017 and 2018, Kelly was accused of holding five women in a sex “cult”, with a former girlfriend alleging that he had sexual contact with girls as young as 14. In October, his ex-wife Andrea Kelly accused him of domestic violence. Earlier in his career, he was tried and acquitted on child pornography charges. Kelly has long denied any wrongdoing, even recording a song professing his innocence, singing: “I’m so falsely accused.”Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has said he will refuse to authorise an EU deal that would result in his country taking in some of the 49 people who spent more than two weeks stranded onboard two private rescue ships in the Mediterranean. The Maltese prime minister, Joseph Muscat, announced on Wednesday that the people, who were rescued by the German NGOs ships Sea-Watch 3 and Sea-Eye off the coast of Libya in December, would disembark in the Maltese capital of Valletta before being sent to Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Romania, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The ships, operated by two German charities, had been stranded in Maltese waters after Italy, Malta and other EU states refused to offer them a safe port. Maltese military vessels ferried the passengers to land on Wednesday as part of the deal brokered by the EU. Many of them waved and cheered at cameras recording their arrival. “The crisis wasn’t created by us. We’re not making a war against the NGOs, we’re appealing to all to respect the rules,” Muscat said after announcing the operation was to begin. Salvini, who travelled to Poland on Wednesday to meet leaders of the ruling Law and Justice party, suggested that the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, should not have negotiated the deal. “I won’t authorise migrant arrivals,” he said during a press conference in Warsaw with Polish interior minister, Joachim Brudziński. He criticised the distribution plan, arguing that the EU was “succumbing to the blackmail of [people] smugglers and NGOs. This risks becoming a huge problem.” Muscat said that the deal would also result in the eight countries taking in 249 other people brought to Malta by its military patrol boats in December. Thirty-two of the stranded people are onboard Sea-Watch 3, which has been at sea for 19 days, while an additional 17 were rescued on 29 December by Sea-Eye. Rescuers have spoken about the turmoil among the rescued people as the standoff continued, with some jumping into the sea in an attempt to reach Malta. Malta allowed the two ships to shelter from bad weather near its coast and for them to be resupplied with fresh food and water, but until now had refused to let those onboard disembark, arguing that they had been rescued beyond the country’s search-and-rescue zone. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people rescued in the Mediterranean have been denied entry into Italy in similar standoffs since Salvini, who leads the far-right League, started a clampdown on immigration within days of coming to power last June. Earlier this week he clashed with Conte and his coalition partner, Luigi Di Maio, leader of the Five Star Movement, who both said that women and their children should be taken off the boats and brought to Italy.Laptops and phones, winter coats and scarves, a hubbub of different languages. A row of cameras sits on a bench. John Roberts of Fox News has a steely expression as he clutches a mic. Jim Acosta of CNN, press pass reinstated after his run-in with the president last year, speaks simultaneously to his own viewers: “We’ll see how much time we have Sarah Sanders. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, these briefings can end very quickly.” Then a voice on the public-address system: “The press briefing will begin at 1.20pm. Thank you.” The hundred-or-so journalists crammed into the seats and aisles erupt in knowing laughs and groans. Sanders eventually enters at 1.35pm. It will be the White House press secretary’s sole briefing in the whole of November – a paltry total she will match in December. The question-and-answer session was described as must-see television in the early months of the Trump administration, gripping millions of viewers and earning the accolade of parody on the TV variety show Saturday Night Live. But now the daily press briefing is no more. It has effectively become a monthly press briefing, raising concerns that it might soon disappear altogether. “That would be a tragedy and a campaign point in 2020,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who served as White House communications director for 11 days in 2017. “I pray that that does not happen. For the president to be successful, you don’t want that to be a campaign talking point in 2020. The American people intuitively know that there needs to be an open communication between the White House and the free press.” The first official White House press secretary was George Akerson under President Herbert Hoover in 1929. In recent decades the position became best known to the outside world for the briefing, in which the press secretary stands at a podium and fields questions from reporters in a briefing room (formerly a swimming pool) in the west wing. Few have made such an explosive start as Sean Spicer, whose debut briefing in January 2017 included a tirade at the media and the now-infamous assertion about Donald Trump’s inauguration: “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe.” Spicer’s briefings became a compulsive, car-crash spectacle. There was fluster, ill-fitting suits, gaffes such as “Holocaust centres” and Melissa McCarthy’s deathless impression of him with motorised lectern on Saturday Night Live. Scaramucci said: “They were must-watch television because he made a decision that he was going to lie and so everyone knew he was lying. There was a contradiction to the press briefing. Every Spice Girl has a nickname. His was Liar Spice.” When Spicer was replaced by Sarah Sanders, the ship steadied, even though the falsehoods and acrimonious exchanges did not. Briefings became scarcer and lost the old momentum. It was like a long-running TV series that had passed its prime but did not know when to quit. Sanders gave 11 briefings in January, seven in February, eight in March, eight in April, eight in May, five in June, three in July, five in August, one in September, two in October and one in November, making a total of 59, according to a count by Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project. Each of the last three was alongside other officials, not on her own. Over the comparable period in 2010, Barack Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, held 95 briefings, Kumar’s research found. And from January to November 2002, George W Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, held a total of 85 briefings. Sanders is not only more infrequent but also terser. Her briefings were usually around 15 to 18 minutes, according to Kumar, whereas Gibbs’s were usually around an hour and Fleischer’s were about 25 minutes. The shift coincides with the press enjoying increasing access to Trump himself. It has become a ritual for the president to stop on the South Lawn and take questions from a scrum of media, albeit competing with the roar of the Marine One helicopter, before he boards and flies away. Combined with his insatiable tweeting, he has effectively rendered the press secretary close to redundant. Kumar writes: “The basic finding is that Sarah Sanders doesn’t give briefings when Trump is doing multiple interviews and Q&As. October is a clear, though somewhat extreme, example. Together, Trump gave 71 interviews and short Q&As and she gave two briefings. In January, on the other hand, she gave 11 briefings and he did a total of 15 interviews and Q&As.” The White House Correspondents Association has raised the issue with the administration. Olivier Knox, its president and author of a 2013 article headlined “Save the (terrible) White House briefing”, said: “It’s largely happened with the president of the United States being significantly more available in terms of taking questions from reporters on the South Lawn and in a series of interviews. He’s become much more his own spokesman. “I don’t know any White House reporter who thinks the president should take fewer questions. It’s a little bit messy but that’s to be expected. I don’t know if they know they can ask the marines to turn off the helicopter.” But the decline of briefings by the press secretary is concerning, Knox argues. “The people who are hurt the most are the smaller news outlets. If you’re down to one, two or three people in your Washington bureau, having a set time when the White House is available for questions is important.” Scaramucci, who during his brief tenure insisted that live TV coverage of the briefings should resume, said: “Any time that the press can talk to the principal and can talk to the principal in volume, which has been experienced in this White House, is in general a very good thing for free press. I would, however, caution that it is still necessary for the comms team to have a regular interaction with the press because there are many things that go on inside the White House and the administration that the comms team and the press secretary need to discuss that is perhaps different from the principal. “So it’s not a great excuse to use the accessibility of the principal as an alibi for having less press conferences.” Trump’s freewheeling question-and-answer sessions, interviews and tweets, along with a steady flow of White House leaks, have arguably made this the most transparent presidency in American history. Yet in other ways this administration, with its flouting of norms and lurches from crisis to crisis, is also the most opaque. Mike McCurry, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton in the pre-Twitter 1990s, said: “If you have a president who gives you his innermost thoughts by tweets, why do you need a spokesperson to amplify what the president has already told you? But there’s an accountability function where the press has an opportunity to ask about federal government and all the other things going on. “It was religious that we would do some kind of briefing every day. It was sacrosanct that someone would stand up at the White House every day and answer questions as an essential part of American democracy. The idea you could go a month without a briefing is astonishing.”Two police officers from one of France’s elite units have been sent to jail for seven years for the gang-rape of a Canadian tourist. The officers took Emily Spanton back to their headquarters at 36 Quai des Orfèvres after an alcohol-fuelled evening at an Irish bar in April 2014. Once in their fifth floor office, Spanton, 39, said their attitude completely changed. She said she was made to drink a glass of whisky before being forced to perform oral sex. She said she was raped several times afterwards. Spanton, who admitted she was very drunk, left the building about 80 minutes later. She was in tears, had lost her tights and was carrying her shoes. She said she told an officer at the entrance to the police headquarters “they raped me” in French and in English. The officers, Antoine Quirin, 40, and Nicolas Redouane, 49, both members of the prestigious anti-gang Brigade de Recherche et d’Intervention at the time, were not named during the three-week hearing under a French law protecting those working in sensitive police jobs. They had denied the accusations, claiming Spanton had consented to sex. Police found they had destroyed vital evidence including photographs and videos taken on the night. Quirin initially denied any sexual contact with the victim, but changed his story after his DNA was found on her underwear. The officers also alleged that Spanton, who is the daughter of a police officer, had initially said she was the victim of a “vol” (theft) not “viol” (rape). Spanton’s lawyers complained during the hearing that it was as if she was on trial, after she was questioned about her clothing, drinking and sexual habits. After an initial investigation, magistrates threw out the case against the officers in 2016, deciding there was no case to answer. The public prosecutor and Spanton’s lawyers appealed against the decision and succeeded in bringing the case to court. In his summing up on Thursday morning, the prosecutor, Philippe Courroye, said he was “deeply convinced” the officers were guilty of attacking Spanton. “By taking advantage of a young, drunk foreigner, by treating her as an object they have gone over to the side of those they pursue … they have lied, failed, concealed,” Courroye told the court. He demanded a seven-year jail sentence. After eight hours of deliberations, the jury agreed. As the verdict was announced, Quirin burst into tears and collapsed into the arms of his lawyer. Afterwards, Spanton’s lawyer Sophie Obadia said her client was relieved: “Women in France who have been raped don’t have to justify their private life. The court has found that Mme Spanton did not lie, she is not a liar. She was portrayed as a liar, she did not lie.” The defendants’ lawyers said they would appeal against the conviction on Friday morning and would ask for the two men to be freed awaiting another hearing. There has been widespread criticism of the handling of the case. Spanton was tested for alcohol and drugs, questioned for five hours after the attack, and had her hotel room and computer searched. Investigators later travelled to Canada to question her friends and family. The two police officers returned home in the early hours of the morning in question without being breathalysed. The crime scene was not secured and pieces of vital evidence disappeared. The officers were initially suspended but have since returned to work with the French police force. The head of the internal police investigation team had earlier told the court: “I regret we weren’t called immediately. If we had been, I could have made efforts to secure the scene. We could also have heard the officers more rapidly.” She added: “Basic investigations weren’t done.” Spanton waived her anonymity in interviews before the trial. She had claimed she was raped by three men and a third DNA sample was found on her clothing, but the third attacker was never identified. A message Redouane sent to one of his colleagues was particularly incriminating: “Hurry up, she’s a swinger,” it read. The accused had deleted it from his phone, but it was found on the recipient’s mobile.A British man who leaked financial information about one of Russia’s most powerful politicians is pleading with the Australian government to allow his family to live in the country, despite their claim for asylum having been refused. In 2014 Nicholas Stride provided secret documents to media about the financial dealings of Russia’s former deputy prime minister, Igor Shuvalov, when he was a contractor for him. Stride says he fled to the UK in 2010 with his Russian-national wife and their two children after they were allegedly threatened and told not to leave Russia. Fearing the UK was not far enough out of reach, the family moved to Australia and say they have spent years living off the grid in the remote Kimberley region in the far north of Western Australia. For several years the family lived essentially in hiding, fearing separation, with neither child able to attend school. “We travelled non-stop until we reached Broome and soon we found a safe place to live in where a kind family took care of us,” Stride’s daughter, Anya, wrote in a letter in 2017, provided to the Guardian by Stride. “We were so secluded from the rest of the world for two years that I’d forgotten how to socialise.” Anya Stride, now 18, told the ABC the family ended up “homeless on a beach” and became increasingly desperate when they ran out of money. “Mum made bread and we had packs of rice and baked beans … we lived like that for three months … off fish and rice,” she said. Stride recently authorised the journalist Michael Weiss to identify him as the source behind a series of reports in Foreign Policy about Shuvalov’s use of offshore accounts and tax havens. Weiss reported that Shuvalov, one of Russia’s richest officials had accumulated a $220m fortune and that he allegedly made extensive use of offshore schemes and a now-defunct bank in Kyrgyzstan. In a 2014 interview Shuvalov denied any wrongdoing. He said he fully complied with Russian law, with his foreign assets held in the equivalent of a ‘blind trust’. In the 1990s he worked in private business, he added. Weiss went public about Stride’s identity in a bid to find help for his former source. A former source of mine, who passed along secret documents about Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov’s unexplained wealth and expenditures, is facing, along with his family, deportation from Australia. Here’s the story he was a source for: https://t.co/NJWA6HRBl7 Stride and his family have applied for asylum in Australia but have been rejected. The Refugee Review Tribunal’s decision, sections of which have been seen by Guardian Australia, acknowledged the family had real fears, but said they could not be given protection. “The delegate found that although the applicants’ claims referred to an extremely powerful political figure in the Russian Federation, the nature of the claims against him are not political in nature,” the decision said. “It is apparent that the danger they fear, which the delegate accepted as being real, is for reasons other than those intended by the grounds laid out in the Refugees Convention.” There have been a number of cases of alleged Russian targeting of dissidents and other individuals in the UK. In March 2018 a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. The prime minister, Theresa May, has said it was almost certainly authorised by the Russian state. In 2006 the Russian critic Alexander Litvinenko was murdered with polonium, a radioactive isotope, put into tea. Stride told Guardian Australia he was under no illusion about his safety if he returned to the UK, and that the family felt Australia was far enough “out of reach” of Russian retribution. In assessing Stride’s case the Australian tribunal concluded the UK met international standards of protection in taking reasonable measures to protect citizens, and said it was not satisfied Stride’s wife, Ludmila Kovaleva, faced a real chance of persecution – as defined by the UN refugee convention – if she was sent back to Russia. “I agree with their findings that we were not part of an opposing political party, we are part of a democratic commonwealth nation and it’s a duty of everyone to expose corruption and crime if witnessed,” he said. “I am no martyr, just an everyday person with all the imperfections and problems of life like most people, sometimes you see things that are so bad you have to act. I did and I’m getting punished for it.” In a letter to the then minister for immigration, Peter Dutton, Stride’s wife asked for her and her family to be allowed to stay in Australia, alleging death threats from people in Russia. Stride said the family had exhausted all legal options and had appealed to successive immigration ministers for intervention to stop him and his three children being deported to the UK and his wife to Russia. Stride and his wife have separated, and he and his son have since fled to south-east Asia, claiming they feared the son would be deported by Australia to the UK. They both have short-term Australian travel bans for overstaying their bridging visas, which expired in September. Anya Stride is still in Australia. Stride said he was now trying to get residency in any country so the family could be reunited. “It’s a shit plan I know, and I have huge regrets, we are just living on the edge and have been for many years,” he said. “I’m a good person, with great kids. I’ll do anything to give them back a life. They have lost so much because of me.” Australia’s Department of Home Affairs said it did not comment on individual cases or matters which were before the court. Stride said he had asked the immigration department to resolve their situation many times over the years but nothing was done. Now he was again requesting residency from Australia, or otherwise another country such as New Zealand or Canada. “We want to be somewhere living safe, living normally,” he said. “Australia is everything they know.”Experts have revealed an undeclared site that reportedly serves as the headquarters of one of North Korea’s ballistic missile programmes, weeks before the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and Donald Trump are expected to meet to discuss denuclearisation. The Sino-ri site, one of 20 North Korea is suspected of failing to declare, houses medium-range Nodong missiles that could be used in nuclear or conventional attacks on South Korea, Japan and the US territory of Guam, according to the report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. “The Sino-ri missile operating base and the Nodong missiles deployed at this location fit into North Korea’s presumed nuclear military strategy by providing an operational-level nuclear or conventional first-strike capability,” said the report, co-written by analyst Victor Cha. The discovery has called into question North Korea’s intentions as officials met in Sweden this week to discuss the arrangements for Kim’s second meeting with Trump, which is expected to take place near the end of February, possibly in Vietnam. The leaders have made little progress since Kim signed a vaguely worded statement committing him to the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula in exchange for security guarantees from Washington during their first summit, in Singapore last June. The CSIS report said the base had never been declared by the North and as a result “does not appear to be the subject of denuclearisation negotiations”. Noting that missile bases would presumably have to be part of any agreement committing North Korea to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible” denuclearisation, Cha warned: “The North Koreans are not going to negotiate over things they don’t disclose. It looks like they’re playing a game. They’re still going to have all this operational capability” even if they destroy their disclosed nuclear facilities. Located 132 miles (212km) north of the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas, the Sino-ri complex is a seven-square-mile (18sq km) base that houses a regiment-sized unit equipped with Nodong-1 medium-range missiles, the report said. It might have also played a part in developing the Pukkuksong-2 ballistic missile that was first tested in February 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Satellite images of the base from 27 December last year show an entrance to an underground bunker, reinforced shelters and a headquarters, the report said. Kim Joon-rak, a spokesman for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the South Korean and US militaries had been monitoring Sino-ri and other undeclared missile bases. Sweden’s foreign ministry described talks on the forthcoming summit between representatives from North and South Korea and the US as “constructive”, adding that they had covered “developments on the Korean peninsula, including confidence building, economic development and long-term engagement”. Wire agencies contributed to this report.It was supposed to be the perfect political portrait – the smiling family man prime minister with his beaming wife and kids. But the image on Scott Morrison’s website had a rather obvious flaw – the leader of Australia had two left feet and a pair of Photoshopped shoes. The failed picture-doctoring attempt has gone viral on social media and has been dubbed #shoegate. The original photo has now been restored. #auspol story of 2019: our latest PM (ScoMo) had nice white shoes photoshopped onto his feet for his official https://t.co/eXNtcX7xTa site?! Yup. Regular bloke. Our tax dollars hard at work. #shoegate pic.twitter.com/kA0gG0yy9L A spokesman for Morrison said the prime minister did not request or authorise the Photoshopping. “The photo was doctored by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet without the knowledge of, or authorisation by, the PM or the PM’s office,” he said. Morrison tweeted a picture of his K Swiss trainers on Wednesday morning. “Message to my department (PM&C): I didn’t ask for the shoeshine, but if you must Photoshop, please focus on the hair (lack thereof), not the feet!” Message to my Department (PM&C): I didn’t ask for the shoeshine, but if you must Photoshop, please focus on the hair (lack thereof), not the feet! 😀Here they are in all their glory - my footwear of choice whenever I can get out of a suit. pic.twitter.com/hKKUstnArq Social media users have had fun with the idea. RT schnozzman: Yo did I do this right?#Shoegate pic.twitter.com/555hbcaIfb ScoMo’s media team be like... pic.twitter.com/LVVk1NF2WY Some people want even more Photoshopping. “Please tell me people are currently working on Photoshopping alternative shoes right now? Flippers, clogs, Doc Martins??? #Shoegate” Simon Mitchell wrote. Exactly. pic.twitter.com/JNgAyeFz0f In September last year, Morrison’s office deleted a video from his social media accounts after discovering the accompanying hip-hop song contained explicit and derogatory lyrics. The 11-second clip from question time showed MPs raising their hands, set to the 1999 track Be Faithful by American rapper Fatman Scoop.International Falls is known as the “Icebox of America” for good reason. The average high temperature in January is -9C, or 15F. In a typical year, the city will experience 109 days of subzero weather. But this week the nickname seems particularly appropriate. At 8am on Wednesday, the temperature in International Falls, at the very northern tip of Minnesota, was -36.4F (-38C). The windchill was -58F (-50C). The National Weather Service warned that it could get even colder here on Wednesday night – potentially down to -65C. But in this little city of 6,000 people, people were carrying on as usual, using a few tricks they’ve learned from a lifetime of frigid temperatures. “You gotta have that International Falls shuffle going on,” said Stephanie Heinle, owner of the Coffee Landing Cafe downtown. Heinle demonstrated the manoeuvre by shuffling quickly across the wooden floor of the cafe. It’s a method of walking across ice that minimizes risk, she said. “Because in this weather you can fall and break a hip and if someone doesn’t see you you freeze to death,” Heinle said. Forecasters are describing the icy influx sweeping the American midwest as the coldest weather in a generation. On Wednesday, Chicago is predicted to see its lowest “high temperature” – the warmest point of a given day – since records began, and Minneapolis could also see historic lows. The cold won’t stop there. It’s expected that 75% of the contiguous US will see sub-zero temperatures over the next week, a result of the polar vortex Arctic air pressure system bursting apart in early January. The wind system normally traps cold air at the North Pole, but its splintering has whipped frigid air far further south than normal. Few have experienced the kind of cold currently occurring in International Falls. The temperature in a commercial freezer is -18C. In New York City the all time coldest temperature was recorded as -26C, back in 1934. The record low in the United Kingdom is -27.2C, which has been reached on three occasions, each time in northern Scotland and most recently in the Highland village of Altnaharra, in 1995. On Wednesday the thermometer here never made it past -30C. Still, at midday Coffee Landing was a hive of activity. There was a birthday party going on in the back, with eight people wearing little strap-on hats, and people bundled in and out, barely mentioning the weather. “I’m not worried at all,” Heinle said. “Because I know it’ll go away. I know it’ll warm up.” When she’s walking around town or running errands, Heinle doesn’t even wear a hat and gloves. “If you’re used to wearing them when it’s only this temperature,” she said – there was a windchill of -45F at this point – “Then when you go snowmobiling or something where you really have windchill, you’re going to be really cold. I know it sounds crazy.” Heinle offered a personal tip on staying warm: “A little alcohol helps.” It was a bit early to take Heinle’s advice, so I shuffled soberly out into International Falls’ main street. International Falls is undeniably beautiful, divided from Canada by the picturesque Rainy River. The paper mill, a big local employer that looms over the city, pumps out steam as it turns wood into pulp, sending cascades of mist down the high street. It covers the trees in a crystalized frost, with the fog creating an other-wordly atmosphere. But it is preposterously cold. Within seconds of stepping outside my nostril hairs had frozen. After two minutes my moustache was covered in ice. I’d prepared well, I thought. I was wearing two pairs of long-johns, a pair of thick jeans, thick socks, insulated boots, two long-sleeved undershirts, a wool jumper, a fleece, a ski jacket, a balaclava, a “deep-winter” hat and two pairs of gloves, but still I was surprised to find my teeth literally chattering. My phone quickly stopped working, as did my voice recorder, and my pen. My hat, purchased for cycling in New York winters, started letting in the cold after about two minutes. My ski-gloves, which my dad found in the back of a rental car in 2006, lasted about 30 seconds. The winter has its upsides for the city. Tourists come to hunt and ice fish, and to drive the picturesque seven miles route around the frozen Rainy Lake. Car companies, including Kia, Hyundai and Land Rover, come too, testing new vehicles in the frozen conditions, and on Monday more than a hundred endurance athletes traveled to the area for the Arrowhead 135, a 135-mile race across northern Minnesota on cross-country skis, fat-tyre bicycles or just on foot. The winner, Jordan Wakeley, managed to set a new record in the race, on a bike, although around half of the 146 entrants dropped out in the freezing cold. It was a boon for the local taxi company, which worked through the night picking up frozen athletes along the trail. But there is no escaping the fact that it is dangerously cold. In a weather warning issued Tuesday, the National Weather Service said that the wind chill could cause frostbite on exposed skin in just five minutes. “Hypothermia can set in quickly, which may lead to death,” the NWS added. In this weather some households keep their water running non-stop, for months at a time, to prevent pipes from freezing and bursting. People leave their cars running while they eat inside bars and restaurants, to prevent doors from freezing shut and engines conking out. Extra time has to be allocated each morning to pull on layers of clothing, extra money spent on arctic-level jackets and boots. It might beg the question as to why people choose to live here. For International Falls’ mayor, Bob Anderson, the answer is easy. “I love my city,” Anderson said. “You can go ice-fishing, cross-country skiing. We have a beautiful lake that opens up every May through October, a beautiful river. “I just really enjoy the birds, the animals. We have very distinctive seasons, we also enjoy that a great deal.” Anderson, 76, was born and raised in International Falls, and has been mayor since 2012. He worked at the paper mill for 51 years before retiring in 2011, and remembers a nine-day stretch in the 1970s when the temperature never rose above -18c, and a record snowfall in 1996. When the ice descends on the the city it doesn’t thaw for months. But it doesn’t bother Anderson. “The cold is probably akin to the heat in the south. I would not want to be where it’s a 110F in the summer time. I know I would melt,” he said. “I enjoy the cold. I’m not bothered by it terribly. You take a few more precautions, do a bit more reading in the winter time, and life goes on. “And for 120, 130, 140 years it’s always been a white Christmas.”In his first televised Oval Office address on Tuesday night, Donald Trump exhorted Americans to support his demand for taxpayer funds to build a wall on the Mexican border to deter migration, which sparked the partial government shutdown that has lasted almost three weeks. But it’s not the first time Trump has offered advice on concrete walls in stark terms. In a 15-year-old commencement speech unearthed by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Trump advised graduates of Wagner College in Staten Island to overcome all barriers. “I’ll tell you, to me, the second-most important thing after love, what you do is never, ever give up,” Trump told the crowd. “Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen. If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall.” Trump attended Wagner College’s commencement ceremony in May 2004 to receive an honorary doctorate of letters. The “New York original”, said a faculty member in his introduction, was awarded the degree “not just his love affair with the tallest, the largest, the best, the most luxurious, the rich and famous”, but also “his disdain for sloppiness, indecision, incompetence and plain stupidity”. Trump delivered an eight-minute commencement speech in which he advised students to “give 100% of what you’ve got”, review yourself each day and stay disciplined. While Trump’s focus on concrete barriers has only intensified – the government shutdown over his demand for $5.7bn in border wall funding has left 800,000 federal workers without pay – Wagner’s affection for Trump has dimmed. According to Forbes, 33 Wagner professors and more than 700 alumni requested the administration rescind Trump’s degree, while a petition on Change.org has 1,920 signatures.Years of struggle have come to an end; finally, after a decade of taunting, my people’s time has come. It has not been easy, being mocked for the apps we inexplicably cannot get, and the Instagram pictures we post that look like they were taken by a drunk child, but now Android users have the upper hand. Maybe I should take the comical incompetency of the Home Office more seriously. It is, after all, somewhat bonkers that EU citizens in the UK (of which I am one) are only able to apply for residency on one type of smartphone, but if Brexit Britain has taught me anything, it is to look for the silver linings. Like an ERG member no one has ever heard of celebrating the idea of making trade deals with Tuvalu (or was it Lesotho?), I am choosing to look on the bright side. I have been taunted by my iPhone-owning so-called friends for a long time, and can now fight back. Gone are the days when Apple devotees could discuss some new feature their slick phones had that mine could only dream of; if they want to stay in this country – and yes, at this point it is unclear why any of us do – they will have to come to me. While some employers have started buying Androids for their European workers, not everyone will be so lucky – and this is where the fun will begin. As it stands, I am picturing hordes of obscenely beautiful Swedes, rugged Italians and all the rest, queuing outside my house and my office, begging me to let them use my frankly crap phone. “Please, please help me,” Sven will say, strands of his light and silky blond hair falling into his big blue eyes, wet with tears. “I didn’t meant to spend a full three months posting pictures taken in portrait mode on Facebook just to show off. I promise I’ll start liking those selfies you post that are so grainy they look like they belong on MySpace in 2007.” I will laugh and consider my options, then probably slam the door in his face. It’s too little, too late. Maybe this is what the Home Office wants; divide and conquer is a tried-and-tested method of governing, and everything else they’ve tried has failed so they might as well give it a go. The risk is that it could all turn into a Lord of the Flies situation, as we are all quite on edge anyway; it wouldn’t take much for us to strip naked, put warpaint on our chests and take to the streets. Or perhaps it is a business opportunity: let the one who has never considered walking around Kensington wearing a trenchcoat stuffed with Androids and approaching lone people at dusk cast the first stone. After all, isn’t this what Brexit is for? A time for people to reinvent themselves, find their inner steel and bravely walk into the unknown, or so we’re told by people who have never attempted any of the above. Britain is an entrepreneurial nation yearning to go it alone, and if we want to stay here we must go with the flow. Alternatively, you might argue that it is a mess of a country, stuck knee-deep in an identity crisis it refuses to acknowledge, choosing instead to focus on distant, sunlit uplands that surely must be just round the corner by now. Too busy focusing on its own denial of basic realities, it does not have the will or even the bandwidth to deal with minor, technical problems that just so happen to bring intense stress and misery to hundreds of thousands of people. Similarly, we Europeans can look at our current predicament in a number of ways. Perhaps we should be alarmed and outraged by the fact that we moved to a place that promised nothing would ever change for us, then changed it all without the courtesy of asking us, and now seemingly see us as an afterthought as opposed to people with lives, jobs, worries, a future. Or maybe this is an opportunity for us as well, buccaneering adventurers that we are, and we must grasp it with both hands and all the optimistic enthusiasm we can muster. I personally find near-pathological delusion contagious, and shall embrace that pseudo-blitz spirit Brits who weren’t born when it took place can’t shut up about. If you need me, I’ll be working on a dating app linking single European iPhone owners to their Android-using counterparts, or maybe on a street corner offering a go on my phone for a tenner per settled status application, or perhaps something else altogether. Who knows, I’ll figure something out – as long as I’m too busy to face the reality of my problems. • Marie Le Conte is a French journalist living in LondonRoger Stone, a longtime adviser to Donald Trump, said he would not testify against the president after he was arrested by the FBI on Friday morning and indicted on seven criminal charges. Stone, a veteran Republican operative, appeared in federal court in Fort Lauderdale charged by special counsel Robert Mueller with obstruction, lying to Congress and witness tampering. He was released on $250,000 bail and denies wrongdoing. Mueller alleged in a long-anticipated indictment that Stone, 66, was asked by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to get inside information about emails that were stolen from Democrats by Russian government hackers and passed to WikiLeaks. A senior campaign official “was directed” to tell Stone to find out what damaging information WikiLeaks had about Hillary Clinton even after it was reported that the material being published by the group came from Russia, the indictment said. The allegations were the first to connect Trump’s campaign to the explosive release of the emails stolen by Russian operatives. Their release disrupted Clinton’s campaign and led the Democratic party’s chairwoman to resign. US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia’s interference was aimed at damaging Clinton’s campaign and helping Trump. Mueller is investigating whether any Trump associates coordinated with the Russian effort. Appearing outside the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale after his hearing, Stone smiled and said he would resist pressure from Mueller to turn on Trump. “I will not testify against the president because I would have to bear false witness,” he said. The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, repeatedly declined to say if the order for Stone was given by Trump himself. Sanders claimed the charges against Stone, an early adviser to Trump’s campaign, had “nothing to do with the president”. But Dianne Feinstein, a senior Democratic senator, noted that the phrase “Trump campaign” appeared 24 times in Stone’s indictment. “It’s time for President Trump and his top aides to be truthful with the American people,” Feinstein said. Mark Warner, the Democratic vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the new charges showed Stone’s activities “happened at least with the full knowledge of, and appear to have been encouraged by, the highest levels of the Trump campaign”. Stone shuffled into court at 11am shackled at the waist and hands. Dressed in a blue polo shirt and jeans, he appeared disheveled after his 6am wake-up call from the FBI. Protesters gathered outside the courthouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale, some booing and waving “Impeach Trump” placards. The indictment, which was issued in Washington DC, alleged that in June or July 2016, Stone told senior Trump campaign officials that he knew WikiLeaks had damaging information on Clinton. Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, first publicly hinted that the group had information to release on Clinton on 12 June, in an interview on British television. Two days later it was first reported that Russia had hacked Democratic computer systems. Mueller said that after WikiLeaks began publishing the first leaked Democratic emails on 22 July, Stone repeatedly attempted to get to WikiLeaks through intermediaries, and then “told the Trump campaign about potential future releases of damaging material”. First he sent emails urging Jerome Corsi, a rightwing commentator, to get their mutual friend Ted Malloch, a London-based academic, to visit Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in London, where Assange has been holed up for more than six years. Corsi sent back what he said was inside information. Then Stone began messaging with Randy Credico, a friend and eccentric radio host who had his own connections to WikiLeaks. Mueller said that on 1 October 2016, Credico told Stone that there would be “big news” from WikiLeaks later that week. “Now pretend you don’t know me … Hillary’s campaign will die this week,” he said. On 7 October, WikiLeaks began publishing emails stolen from John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s campaign. Mueller said on Friday that soon after the first Podesta emails were published, an associate of Trump’s campaign boss Steve Bannon sent a text message to Stone that said: “Well done.” Stone took credit for passing on inside information in later talks with senior Trump campaign staff, Mueller said. Stone is the self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” of Republican politics and a longtime ally of Donald Trump. The 66-year-old has spent decades cultivating a reputation as a combative political operative with a penchant for making brash statements and trafficking in conspiracy theories. Raised in Lewisboro, New York, Stone’s first foray into national politics came when he was just 19. An ardent supporter of Richard Nixon, Stone was part of a scheme in 1972 to sink the president’s longshot primary challenger, Pete McCloskey. The plot, uncovered during the Watergate congressional hearings, entailed sending McCloskey donations from the “Young Socialist Alliance” and then leaking the information to the press in an attempt to damage his image. Stone remained such a Nixon devotee that he infamously got the former president’s face tattooed on his back. During the 70s, Stone also played a key role in bringing the full force of outside campaign money to negative advertising. He worked for Ronald Reagan’s unsuccessful 1976 presidential campaign and served as a political director on Reagan’s second, successful, run in 1980. Although he did not join the Reagan administration, Stone remained a key player in politics. A Washington Post profile, published in 1986, said Stone “earns a reported $450,000 a year, owns two homes and a hot tub, wears $800 designer suits and a Patek Phillipe watch”. Stone repeatedly urged Trump to run for president. When Trump ultimately threw his hat in the ring, Stone acted as an adviser. He later left his official position in the campaign, but continued to informally advise Trump. Although Stone did not hold an official position for much of Trump’s 2016 campaign, he is perhaps the president’s longest-serving informal political adviser, stemming from a close association in New York spanning more than a decade. Stone has attracted intense scrutiny from Mueller and other investigators, after a tweet and other public statements he made in the summer of 2016 indicated that he had knowledge the emails stolen from Podesta would soon be released. Late last year he predicted he would be indicted. “Robert Mueller is coming for me,” Stone wrote to supporters in August. Stone denied wrongdoing and said he faced legal peril simply because he had advised Trump for several decades. A self-proclaimed “dirty trickster”, Stone has been a controversial figure in Republican political circles stretching back to the 1970s, when he worked on Richard Nixon’s notorious committee for re-election. He has a tattoo of Nixon’s face on his back. The indictment also said Stone made false statements when questioned by the intelligence committee of the House of Representatives. When asked if he had no emails or other communications relating to WikiLeaks and the hacked Democratic documents, Stone allegedly said: “That is correct. Not to my knowledge.” In fact, the indictment said, Stone “sent and received numerous emails and text messages during the 2016 campaign in which he discussed” WikiLeaks, Assange, and their possession of hacked emails.” It was Stone who first recommended that Trump’s team hire as its campaign manager Paul Manafort, his former business partner. Manafort has since been found guilty on eight counts of financial crimes and is said to have breached a plea agreement with the special counsel. Manafort made his first court appearance in months on Friday as prosecutors and defence lawyers argue over whether he intentionally lied to investigators. Mueller’s team say Manafort repeatedly lied to them even after he began cooperating last September. Manafort’s lawyers say he simply forgot some details.Ali Motamed’s wife had become accustomed to making excuses for her 56-year-old husband. Call-outs for his work as an electrician at the Dutch firm, Eneco, gave a handy reason for missing parties or even weddings without prompting undue curiosity. A quiet, self-contained character around his colleagues, he appeared to them content to stay in watching television at the redbrick home he shared with Galina, 50, and their 17-year-old son on Hendrik Marsmanstraat in the centre of a small estate of cheap modern housing in Almere, a city east of Amsterdam. On 11 December 2015 Motamed had tested his wife’s patience by refusing to go to his brother-in-law’s funeral in France – but he had been right to watch his step that Friday. Two men who had been hired to kill him were sitting outside his home in their stolen BMW, prosecutors would later tell a court. Motamed was saved that day by a late-morning appointment which meant he broke with his usual practice of leaving the house at 6.45am. The assassins, hoping to get to him in the quiet gloom of the morning, were captured on CCTV driving out of Hendrik Marsmanstraat having missed their moment. But Motamed’s luck soon ran out. The following Tuesday, as he emerged from his house into the cold winter air, jogging the few yards from doorstep to bus stop, his killer emerged from the blue BMW to shoot him in the head at point-blank range, before returning to the car and speeding off. Two men, Anouar Aoulad-Buochea, 29, and Moreo Menso, 36, are currently on trial for the murder, an alleged contract killing the Dutch police believe was directed by notorious gangster Naoufal Fassih, known as Noffel on the street, who is already serving an 18-year sentence for arranging a murder for cash. All three men deny involvement. The men accused of the murder had no idea who or why Motamed needed to “sleep”, as it was termed in one of a cache of unencrypted BlackBerry messages, revealed in court evidence. Local police were initially baffled about the motive. But this week the Dutch state made public that they now believe what Motamed’s wife had insisted to police as she was driven to the hospital on the day of her husband’s death: the killing had been ordered by the Iranian government. The killing has opened the eyes of the world to a pattern of Iranian hit jobs, often executed through criminal gangs, that has been seized upon by critics of Iran. To them, the killings raise fresh questions about the trust placed in the country to keep to the contentious accord under which Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia agreed to lift economic sanctions in return for Tehran lowering its nuclear ambitions. The US administration, which pulled out of the deal last year, with the president, Donald Trump, labelling it “rotten”, seized on the development. The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said that the US would redouble its efforts “to put real pressure on Iran”. Motamed’s death was, according to a letter to the Dutch parliament, one of two murders of opponents of the Iranian regime on Dutch territory, alongside the 2017 shooting of Ahmad Mola Nissi, the leader of a separatist movement from the Iranian region of Ahwaz, who was found dead by his son Khaled on the doorstep of the family home in The Hague. He had been shot five times with a gun fitted with a silencer. Police are investigating whether the crime is linked to a gang in Rotterdam. Motamed’s real name was Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi, an Iranian dissident sentenced to death in absentia after fleeing the country in 1981, accused of planting a bomb at the Islamic Republic party’s headquarters, killing 73 people. Among the dead was the second-in-command to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader. Samadi had long known he was on a death list, although he only confided his real name to Galina in 2000, five years into their marriage, and he had withheld the full truth from his son, pledging to tell all when he turned 18. Samadi had avoided events organised by his Afghan wife’s family for fear of pictures of his face emerging on social media. One photograph, taken at his son’s school graduation, appeared on his niece’s Facebook page but he allowed it to be left there “because he had grown older and grey”, and “no one would recognise him any more”, according to the Dutch newspaper, Het Parool. That may have been a misjudgment. Dick Schoof, the director general of the Dutch security service, the AIVD, said that, since the revelation by the government, his intelligence agency was now involved in intense efforts with other countries to research the extent of Iranian interference in Europe. But the truth is that over four decades Iran is thought to have triggered the assassination of numerous enemies abroad, and critics say the west has been culpable in its silence. Suspected targets include dissident Kurds, leaders of the Ahwaz minority sect and members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq organisation, which allied with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. Countries in which assassinations are thought to have been carried out include France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the US. “The Iranian regime has a history of targeting the opposition abroad,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, communications director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. “From the Berlin attack to the assassination of former shah officials. This is a continuation of their previous policy. The current wave of killings follows a rise in attacks inside Iran, perhaps driven by the support of its regional adversaries.” In the wake of the Dutch revelation, ambassadors from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands visited the Iranian foreign ministry in Tehran “to convey their serious concerns” about the regime’s behaviour. Sanctions were imposed on two individuals, along with the country’s intelligence agency. Yet, as the measures were imposed, officials were quick to insist that there would be no impact on the nuclear accord with Tehran. The murder of the electrician on Hendrik Marsmanstraat, for all that it was a tragedy for his family and an infringement of Dutch sovereignty, may well prove to be merely a fleeting glimpse into the brutal world of realpolitik.Among the historic class of new congresspeople who will take the oath of office in the US House of Representatives on Thursday are the first Native American women, the first Muslim women, the first black women elected from Massachusetts and Connecticut, the first Hispanic women elected from Texas, and the youngest woman to be elected to Congress. There is a former NFL linebacker, a doctor and a climate scientist. There are a number of former members of the military and intelligence services, many of them women. There are seasoned veterans of past presidential administrations and a handful of political neophytes who never held office before running for Congress in 2018. A record 102 women will be sworn into the House on Thursday, 35 of whom were elected for the first time in November in a historic wave of success for female candidates. “We’re in the building. Swearing in tomorrow,” the congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York captioned a photograph of her and five incoming female colleagues, posing in the US Capitol. We’re in the building. Swearing in tomorrow. . 📸: @martinschoeller for @vanityfair A post shared by  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@ocasio2018) on Jan 2, 2019 at 10:27am PST The arrival of this large new group will significantly alter the balance of power in Washington, where the federal government is currently paralysed by a shutdown stretching into its 13th day. Democrats will regain control of the House on Thursday eight years after losing power. Their takeover was fuelled by 63 Democrats whose victories in the November midterm elections helped the party win by the largest margins since the Watergate scandal in 1974. Nancy Pelosi is all but assured of reclaiming her former title as speaker of the House. She made history in 2007 as the first woman to hold the position, before handing over the gavel when the GOP won the House in 2011. The Republicans will be led by Kevin McCarthy of California. “I think of it is a responsibility,” Pelosi told Today when asked how she felt about being the most powerful woman in Washington. “I don’t think of it as an accomplishment… This isn’t breaking a glass ceiling – this is breaking a marble ceiling in the Capitol of the United States.” “I think of it is a responsibility. I don’t think of it as an accomplishment… This isn’t breaking a glass ceiling – this is breaking a marble ceiling in the Capitol of the United States.” @NancyPelosi responds to being “most powerful” woman in U.S. government pic.twitter.com/l1Zfcguupd Pelosi is poised to become one of few elected officials to regain the gavel, and the first for more than 50 years. “When our new members take the oath, our Congress will be refreshed and our democracy will be strengthened by the optimism, idealism and patriotism of this transformative freshman class,” Pelosi is expected to say on Thursday, according to a preview of her remarks. “Working together, we will redeem the promise of the American dream for every family, advancing progress for every community.” As in years past, proud relatives and curious members of the public will fill the House and Senate galleries as the 116th Congress is sworn in and new leaders are elected. But this year the faces will look different – more diverse and more female. Rashida Tlaib, an incoming Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, announced on Instagram that she would wear a traditional Palestinian thobe – a long-sleeved, ankle-length garment – when being sworn in. Ilhan Omar, an incoming Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, will swear the oath of office on her grandfather’s Qur’an. In an Instagram post, her father recounted the family’s journey from a refugee camp in Kenya to the US, where they first arrived at an “airport in Washington DC”. “I could never have dreamed that 23 years later I would return to the same airport with my daughter Ilhan by my side, the day before she is to be sworn in as the first Somali-American elected to the United States Congress,” he wrote. Congressman Jim Langevin, a Democrat from Rhode Island and the first quadriplegic person elected to Congress, will preside over the chamber on the first day. After the speaker is elected, the newly empowered Democratic majority will vote on an internal rules package designed to bring more transparency to congressional governance, a measure that has already exposed ideological tensions within the party. Two prominent progressives, Ocasio-Cortez and Congressman Ro Khanna of California, said they would oppose the package, arguing that the rules would hinder liberals’ ability to advance their ambitious social agenda. Democrats will then turn to their first major order of business: a spending package that would end the government shutdown. The party is unified on the legislation but Donald Trump has said he will refuse to sign the bill, which does not include funding for his border wall. The vote will be the first test of their power – and an indication of the battles to come in a newly divided government.The European commission is facing criticism for failing to crack down on the abuse of schemes that allow wealthy families from China, Russia and other non-European states to purchase the right to live in the EU. Campaigners said a widely anticipated action plan published by the commission on Tuesday morning had fallen short of the measures needed to reduce the risk posed by the influx of new EU citizens from countries with high levels of corruption. The commission said some of the schemes used by member states posed “serious security risks”. It said so-called golden passport and golden visa programmes had undermined controls on money laundering, tax evasion and other forms of corruption. But while the problem had been clearly flagged by Brussels, critics said its proposed remedies were “half-hearted”. In the last 10 years, European states have granted citizenship to about 6,000 people and residence permits to a further 100,000, typically in exchange for investments in government bonds and property. Two member states, Malta and Cyprus, sell citizenship. A third country, Bulgaria, announced a day before the report’s release that it would be suspending its citizenship programme. A further 20 countries, including the UK, operate investor visa schemes and many of these offer a fast track to permanent residency. “The sale of civil rights poses a serious threat to our security and the fight against corruption in the EU,” said the Green MEP Sven Giegold, who has campaigned for the practice to be abolished. “The commission’s proposal is half-hearted and was presented only at the insistence of the European parliament.” The Greens want binding minimum standards and a new European law to curb abuses. “The tide is turning on the golden visa industry with the EU recognising the unacceptable security and corruption risks they create,” said Naomi Hirst of the anti-corruption group Global Witness. “However, the commission’s report tells us nothing about what member states actually need to do” The report and action plan published on Tuesday put forward proposals for an expert group to monitor how schemes are operated, aiming to develop common security checks by 2019. The European commissioner for justice, Věra Jourová, who ordered the report, said that in future, people obtaining an EU nationality must have a genuine connection to the member state. Malta, for example, does not require the buyers of its passports to have ever lived in the country. “We want more transparency on how nationalities are granted and more cooperation between member states,” she said. “There should be no weak link in the EU, where people could shop around for the most lenient scheme.” Speaking to journalists, Jourová said she hoped EU action would have “preventative power” and act as a warning to member states. Common work via the expert group would help member states “to understand what is desired and not desired”, she said. The British government announced it was suspending its golden visa scheme last month, but revealed a few days later the change had not been implemented. The tier 1 investor visa gives individuals UK residency in exchange for investing £2m in UK bonds or shares through a bank, with the right to apply for citizenship after five years. In the UK, the super-rich can pay up to £10m to convert residency into permanent leave to remain within two years. To qualify, they are required to spend six months of the year in Britain. Brussels is likely to pay attention to UK rules for foreign investors after Brexit. The EU and UK have yet to negotiate future arrangements on immigration and travel, although both agree on visa-free travel for short-term visits. Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU commissioner for home affairs, said he would not speculate on Brexit. The commission rejected suggestions it had not consulted companies running the schemes. Jourová said she had spoken personally to representatives in Malta of Henley & Partners, one of the firms that specialises in obtaining residency and passports for tycoons. The report flags concerns about countries outside the EU whose citizens have visa-free travel rights for short stays in Europe. Caribbean states including St Kitts and Nevis and St Lucia have raised millions by selling citizenship and easy access to Europe, combined with zero or low tax on personal incomes, have made their passports popular with foreign buyers. St Kitts and Nevis passports have also been acquired by corrupt businessmen and Iranians seeking to evade sanctions. The commission vowed to monitor visa-free countries “as part of the visa suspension mechanism”. Countries that fail to make proper checks, and so endanger public policy and internal security within the EU, could see their travel privileges revoked.With the most high profile Democratic contenders for the 2020 presidential campaign all women – so far, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kirsten Gillibrand have all announced or strongly hinted their intentions to seek the nomination – the rhetoric of the Democratic party being the “party of women” has returned. Coming off the historic 2018 midterm elections, with 102 women elected to the House of Representatives, 14 women elected to the Senate, and nine women elected governor, it appears the Democratic party is looking to ride the women’s wave all the way to the White House. But there are difficulties in trying to claim a cohesive political ideology across 51% of the population. Say it with me now, I know you all know it by heart: a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump for president. Appeals to gender are cheap, and not always effective, as recent history proves. A majority of white women voted for Donald Trump for president Gillibrand, the most recent addition to the list of women who will run, has made her name on decidedly “pro-women” matters, focusing much of her attention on sexual harassment and sexual assault. In her announcement, she pointed to her ability to cross partisan lines on issues like reforming the procedure for handling sexual assault accusations in the military, but she also emphasized that she is running as a “mom”. (This seemed to be connected to her heralding her “empathy”, but studies have consistently shown that women start to vote more conservatively once they marry, and move further to the right still after having children. Motherhood may build empathy, but it also possibly limits its targets.) But Gillibrand’s historical positions highlight the absurdity of trying to pin down what women as a group will stand for or believe in: Gillibrand has been in her career pro-gun and anti-gun, pro-immigration and anti-immigration, pro-corporate interests and ... well, she made headlines for courting Wall Street dollars before the announcement of her intention to run, so it’s unlikely the anti-corporate interest Gillibrand will emerge any time soon. None of these stances can be demonstrably shown to be specifically pro-woman or anti-woman. Each position was supported by a certain segment of the female population, and fought against by another segment of the female population. This also raises another important question: which women count as women? Harris, during her long career as public prosecutor in California, took a tough approach on crime, despite growing public support for prison reform and the end to mass incarceration. As journalists like Melissa Gira Grant and Branko Marcetic have pointed out, Harris took a hard stance against sex workers throughout her career, as well as prosecuting women for their children’s truancy and fighting against a transgender prisoner’s request for gender reassignment. When the media speculates, then, on Harris’s pro-woman career in the lead-up to the primaries, we might be able to assume sex workers, the trans community, prisoners and the family of prisoners are not considered to be women. Gabbard has an even rockier history, having worked for an anti-LGBT organization in the past, supported the pro-life movement, and been anti-gay marriage. Like Gillibrand, as she took to the national stage, her positions moved leftward, and it’s unclear whether this was the result of a political awakening or a craven attempt at playing to the changing mood of Democratic voters. Possibly more damning, though, are her ties to the far right Hindu Nationalist movement in India, whose leader, Narendra Modi, has been connected to a massacre of Indian Muslims. This leaves lesbians, trans women, pro-choice women and Muslim women out of the “women” demographic. When politicians talk about women as a whole, they mean “decent” women. White women. Middle class women. There are those in politics and in the media who have not learned from the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. In Clinton’s and her feminist friends’ appeals to women, they overlooked just how many women’s lives had been damaged by Clinton’s policies: women around the world where Clinton advocated for military intervention, poor women affected by her support for gutting social welfare programs, and so on. Their pleas for solidarity only served to highlight the fact that when politicians talk about women as a whole, they mean “decent” women. White women. Middle class women. Everyone who doesn’t fit that category might as well be invisible. The question remains: what is the value of solidarity when it’s only coming from one side? We’ll hear the appeals for women’s support as the election draws ever nearer, but it won’t be the politicians themselves participating. Solidarity is something we, the women voters, must perform. Women politicians are free to ignore our rights and needs whenever it suits them. Despite being scapegoated, ignored, politically thwarted, prosecuted, and shamed, we’re meant to put all of that aside for the good of the gender. But it’s time to have a real conversation about who women really are, what our interests are, and how politicians can help us live with dignity. It should not be a surprise if the most “pro-woman” candidate, whatever that means, actually turns out to be a man.For three decades, the Canadian city of Moose Jaw took pride in its status as the home of the world’s largest moose statute. Standing at a majestic 10 meters tall, Mac the Moose has weathered brutal winters, graffiti and even the inglorious loss of his jaw. His recognition was so great that in 2013, he was named the city’s most popular celebrity. But status and renown can be fleeting. In 2015, Norway responded with its own moose sculpture – Storelgen, or “Big Elk” – a glitzy stainless steel bull, erected with the explicit aim of surpassing Mac’s height and stealing his place in the record books. Now, however, the Canadians are fighting back, after a pair of comedians called Norway’s statue “an egregious offence” and pleaded with Moose Jaw residents to restore the city’s stolen glory. “You are a city famous around the world for the glorious name of Moose Jaw,” Justin Reves told residents in a video posted to Facebook. “And everyone that comes by, knows that this should be the world’s tallest moose.” Standing in front of a forlorn Mac, Reves and colleague Greg Moore implored the residents to act quickly by adding 31cm to Mac, to “stick it to Oslo”. The city’s mayor, Fraser Tolmie, answered the call to arms. “You may not know this, but it’s personal for me,” he said in a Facebook video in which he divulged that the moose was named after his wife’s great uncle. “Mac the Moose was the tallest in the world, and the people of Norway have taken that from us. I’m not going to stand for it.” The Norwegian moose, which stands midway between Oslo and Trondheim, measures a full 30cm taller than Mac. And Stor-Elvdal, the Norwegian municipality where it stands, has shown little appetite for backing away from the fight. “We’re not letting this one go. Not a chance. We’re going to do whatever we can to make sure this is the world’s tallest moose – or biggest moose in the future, as well,” said Linda Otnes Henriksen, Stor-Elvdal’s deputy mayor, in a video posted to Facebook. Staff in the municipality have said their moose – with the artist’s permission – could be doubled in size if needed, to a full 20 meters. “[The Norwegians] purposely built a moose bigger than ours, but we’re going to be dignified and we’re going to win,” Tolmie told the National Post on Thursday. Reves and Moore have set up a GoFundMe page to help hire an engineer to increase Mac’s size, hoping to raise $50,000. So far, proposals include increasing the size of his antlers or putting a helmet on him. This is not the first tim Mac has required intervention: in 2007, the statue was repaired at the cost of $30,000 after holes caused by vandalism and neglect opened up in its jaw. Potentially creating more headaches for Moose Jaw residents, Henriksen said she was open to crowdfunding for their sculpture, but the Norwegians were waiting to see Canadian plans for “enlarging their moose”. This isn’t the first time Canadians have been in battle about an oversized work of public art. For two decades, the city of Duncan in British Columbia has feuded with the US town of Eveleth, Minnesota, over which is home to the world’s largest hockey stick. Residents of Eveleth argue that their stick, erected in 1995, is the world’s largest. But in 2008 Guinness World Records sided with Canada, handing the title to Duncan. The Minnesota town continues the fight, arguing that theirs is a real hockey stick whereas the Canadian version was merely a sculpture. To this day, they still call it the “world’s largest free-standing hockey stick”. The New Brunswick town of Shediac – home of an outsized concrete sculpture of a lobster – was likely asking for trouble when they named their tourist attraction “‘the World’s Largest Lobster”. In a surprise to few, it was also overtaken in 2015 by Rosetown, Australia. Their contribution, only 10% larger, was named “Big Lobster”.Donald Trump’s commerce secretary is facing criticism for saying he doesn’t “understand why” unpaid government workers are turning to food banks, suggesting that they should take out loans instead. Wilbur Ross – a self-proclaimed billionaire and one of the richest members of Trump’s cabinet – was asked about federal workers turning to places like homeless shelters for food donations as the partial government shutdown drags on into its second month. “I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why,” he said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “The obligations that they would undertake, say borrowing from a bank or a credit union, are in effect federally guaranteed. So the 30 days of pay that some people will be out, there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it.” Some 800,000 federal workers have not been paid since a partial government shutdown began on 22 December, after Donald Trump refused to authorize government funding unless Congress agrees to his demands for funds to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. “The banks and credit unions should be making credit available to them. When you think about it, these are basically government-guaranteed loans, because the government has committed these folks will get back pay once this whole thing gets settled down,” Ross said. “Now, true, the people might have to pay a little bit of interest. But the idea that it’s paycheck or zero is not a really valid idea. There’s no reason why some institution wouldn’t be willing to lend.” His comments quickly drew fire from critics who called him out of touch. “Is this the ‘let them eat cake’ kind of attitude?” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said at a weekly press conference. “Or call your daddy for money?” “This is billionaire Wilbur Ross saying he doesn’t understand why federal workers not getting paid during the #TrumpShutdown don’t just take out loans *to feed their families*. Unreal,” the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a tweet. The Consumer Federation of America executive director, Jack Gillis, said the commerce secretary’s comments were out of sync with the reality of consumer lending. “One of the challenges the workers are going to face in getting loans is they have zero income right now. Your income is the most important driver of your ability to get a loan,” he said. A number of local banks and credit unions around the country have in fact offered interest-free loans to affected federal workers, but Gillis said that is not something all workers can count on. “At this point, it’s few and far between in terms of availability, he said. Getting a loan is not as simple as walking into a bank and asking for one, even for people with once-steady incomes. “For virtually every loan, you need some collateral. The concept of walking into a financial institution and saying, ‘I need a loan for 30 days to carry me through’ is a ludicrous concept,” Gillis said. “You have to have collateral, which is why some people may tap into second mortgages on their homes.” He warned that federal workers may be ensnared by notorious payday loan operations, which charge sky-high interest rates. “It’s going to be very easy for some of these folks to become victims of payday lenders, and end up paying 200%, 300% interest because they need the money fast and they may not have the credit rating necessary to get a personal loan,” he said. “This is the perfect environment for payday lenders to wreak havoc.” Ross later sought to clarify his comments, telling Bloomberg TV that he was just trying to make sure that “workers who are experiencing liquidity crises” know that government employee credit unions are offering low-interest loans. “We’re aware, painfully aware, that there are hardships inflicted on the individual workers,” he said. In the CNBC interview, Ross also played down the importance of the 800,000 unpaid workers in a broader economic context. “I think that’s a great deal of hyperbole,” he said of predictions that the shutdown would hurt the country’s image. “You’re talking about 800,000 workers, and while I feel sorry for the individuals that have hardship cases, 800,000 workers. If they never got their pay – which is not the case, they will eventually get it, but if they never got it, you’re talking about a third of a percent on our GDP. So it’s not like it’s a gigantic number overall.” Trump, too, sought to downplay the comments. Ross was probably trying to suggest that supermarkets and banks would be willing to float customers unable to pay, Trump said in rambling remarks at the White House. “They know the people, they’ve been dealing with them for years, and they work along,” Trump said.During her youth, Maya* travelled the world. She collected exotic scarves from wide-ranging places, crafted postcards to loved ones, and explored the alleyways of exciting new cities. She loved her freedom and lived her life to the fullest. How then, in her 80s, did she find herself asking staff at her aged care facility for money to buy shampoo? Hopefully most of us will find ourselves supported by caring families, friends and professionals as we age. Sadly, this is not the case for everyone. As a Justice Connect lawyer, I work with older people like Maya, who are at risk of isolation and abuse as they age. I’ve witnessed the strength of older people facing life’s difficulties – managing complex family relationships, caring for ageing partners as well as children with a disability or mental health condition, even regaining their independence after periods of being judged incapable. Countless inquiries have shown there are deep flaws in the way our society treats us as we age. Too often we are taken advantage of by those we’re supposed to trust. Too many of us are falling through the gaps. Royal commissions into family violence, banking, and the latest into aged care, which starts today, are steps in the right direction, but they’re not the solution. The same goes for proposed changes to the guardianship laws in Victoria and the national power of attorney register. They’re promising developments, but they don’t work for everyone. While laws are changing to elevate our wishes as we age, and make it easier to hold attorneys, guardians and administrators to account, we need ensure these changes also improve the lives of isolated older people – those without a trusted next of kin, those who are most vulnerable to abuse. Recognised elder abuse risk factors include isolation, loneliness, incapacity and being in a minority culture. Strategies to end elder abuse need to consider those who grow old alone. Currently, 10% of Victorians over 60 experience chronic loneliness. If we don’t have a trusted next of kin, it’s likely a professional guardian or administrator will be appointed to help us as we age. Someone we have never met may decide deeply personal decisions – ones we always think we will be able to make on our own, like where we live and how we spend our money. Bringing in a trained, impartial person at this time can be useful, if not an essential safeguard, so long as they can understand what’s important to us. And they can be held to account. In the course of helping us, even the most experienced guardian or administrator may find it difficult to understand our history and long-standing values, especially if we have diminishing capacity. The best solution is to create a society where we all feel respected, heard and connected. One way to achieve this is through laws that preserve our basic rights as we age, especially if we are at risk of isolation and abuse. We may take our autonomy for granted, but we still need laws that ensure we have a say in how we live our lives, no matter our age or who we can call on to help us. To realise these rights, we must invest in systems or technologies that maintain and track our wishes and values over time. These things certainly would have helped Maya. Without a trusted next of kin, it is still difficult for us to record all our wishes – while we have capacity – in a way that is useful for a professional guardian. Laws on end of life planning and any power of attorney register need to go further. We need to make sure they work for everyone, especially those who are isolated. If the law had allowed Maya to legally record all her wishes, and the technology was in place to ensure supporting professionals and services could access it, her wishes would have been respected. She would have been given food that aligned with her religious beliefs. She would have been afforded the spending money she needed for everyday basics. Her wishes would have been understood and respected, regardless of who was managing her affairs. Ageing is inevitable. How we age is not. • Faith Hawthorne is the manager and principal lawyer at Justice Connect with the Seniors Law service * Not her real nameThe moment on Tuesday when Fernandinho dawdled in his own box at St James’s Park like a lost tourist checking a map was the prelude to raucous celebrations not only in Newcastle but also in Liverpool, including, perhaps, the home of Idrissa Gueye. Because that moment may have reminded Manchester City that they could do with another holding midfielder sooner rather than later and thus intensified their interest in the Senegalese player. The good news for Everton is that interest could drive up Gueye’s price, prompting a bidding war between City and Paris Saint-Germain before Thursday’s deadline. Arsenal are also interested but their offer of a loan deal plus a photo with Gunnersaurus is not considered to be a genuine contribution to said war, more like a request for a slap. If PSG do get their Gueye, at least that will improve Arsenal’s chances of prising Christopher Nkunku from the French club, who will only let the 21-year-old go if another midfielder arrives first. Leicester are on the verge of striking a blow for the bartering economy by swapping one barely used 29-year-old central midfielder, Adrien Silva, for a highly promising but somewhat inconsistent 21-year-old one, Youri Tielemans. Arsenal are trying to muscle in on that deal, too, as are West Ham and Newcastle, but word is Monaco prefer what their old stalwart Claude Puel has to offer. In a development even more sensational than their victory over Manchester City, Newcastle are to complete two major signings, with the left-back Antonio Barreca arriving from Milan on the same day that Miguel Almirón is expected to land from Atlanta. Chelsea are being linked with a £40m bid for Nathan Aké, whom they sold to Bournemouth for half that fee less than two years ago. But they’re going to have to widen their search because Bournemouth are not minded to sell. West Ham’s hope of signing Maxi Gómez have taken a dive after Celta Vigo decided they want to hang on to the Uruguayan striker, after all, but will listen to offers again in the summer. One deal that West Ham look poised to completing is for Mesaque Dju, a 19-year-old winger from Benfica. Aston Villa do not seem to think that Scott Hogan can contribute much to their promotion push but Sheffield United reckon the striker could help theirs, so a loan deal is in the offing. Real Madrid think that Benfica’s 21-year-old striker Luka Jovic, currently on loan at Eintracht Frankfurt, might just be the new Karim Benzema. Southampton are having a deep conversation with Olympiakos about the meaning and, more pertinently, the price of the Norwegian defender Omar Elabdellaoui. Martin O’Neill wants to hook up again with James McClean, who he is proposing to bringing from Stoke to Nottingham Forest in exchange for Ben Osborn. Finally, if Spurs want to sign the winger Jack Clarke, then they’re going to have to wait until after he has helped return Leeds United to the top-flight. If Mauricio Pochettino tries to force the issue before the summer – for Leeds will be back by then, you can count on it – then Marcelo Bielsa mighty just invite the nation’s media to a PowerPoint presentation about the shortcomings of his former charge Mauricio Pochettino, which, at least, would be a fine way to keep the younger Argentinian’s ego in check.Just because today marijuana is widely regarded as safer than alcohol doesn’t mean that’s the final word. A bestselling anti-marijuana book is making waves for suggesting that the drug may be far more dangerous than the industry would have us believe. But how much credence should we give it? Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence, by the former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, reminds readers that when it comes to health, we never know as much as we think we do. The most demonstrable health risk associated with marijuana is that for a small portion of users, largely men in their teens and early 20s, the drug may induce psychosis and schizophrenia, sometimes after only short-term use. By highlighting this real, and terrifying, risk of marijuana use, Berenson has done an important public service. But as others have pointed out, the book overreaches in trying to establish a causal link between cannabis use and violence. And it suffers from Berenson’s refusal to consider marijuana as anything other than a serious threat to a relatively small segment of the population. Science takes time and is not immune to the dogmas of its era. Today doctors universally recognize the dangers of cigarette smoking, but it took decades – and millions of early, agonizing deaths – before the consensus solidified. The best parts of Tell Your Children document the connection between pot smoking and psychosis, from 19th century Mexico and India to the present day. The connection hadn’t been a secret. According to a 2013 statement from the American Psychiatric Association, “current evidence supports, at minimum, a strong association of cannabis use with the onset of psychiatric disorders. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to harm, given the effects of cannabis on neurological development”. But Berenson has amplified it more effectively than anyone else. It isn’t a fashionable argument right now. The for-profit cannabis industry promotes the drug as a nearly harmless “medicine” and it seems to be working. Last year, Canada became the first large country to legalize recreational cannabis. About 90% of Americans favor access to medical marijuana and roughly two-thirds favor full legalization. The rapid shift in US public opinion towards legalization has been fueled by disgust with the war on drugs and mass incarceration, as well as the largely unproven hopes that medical marijuana can mitigate complex health crises such as the opioid epidemic. According to Berenson, “the great majority” of teenagers who smoke weed will not be affected by psychosis. But young people who are at greatest risk deserve the best available information. By describing numerous psychotic breakdowns in excruciating detail, the book’s scare tactics could save a few lives. Berenson is also not the first person to soundly argue that the high-potency pot products available now are likely to make the problem worse. The second part of Berenson’s argument, however, has attracted more criticism. He attempts to show that because marijuana can cause psychosis and psychosis can cause violence, marijuana causes users to commit senseless, nightmarish acts of violence. (For rebuttals see here, here, here and here. For a discussion of the issues involved see here.) Tell Your Children opens with an Australian woman who knifed eight children to death, seven of them hers. Later it tells the story of Jared Loughner, a 22-year-old Arizona man who in 2011 shot six people to death and nearly killed then congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords; Loughner also smoked pot. There’s lots more. Yet legal marijuana markets don’t seem to have witnessed an uptick in ultraviolence. Berenson suggests the crimes are out there but have not been well-publicized, and that the problem is gestating. Maybe, but the argument suffers from a definition of psychosis which seems to encompass everything from low-level paranoia to fits of homicidal rage. And while Berenson focuses on questionable concerns over violence, he misses a number of less cinematic, but perhaps more dangerous threats. He could have looked, for example, into the little studied question of whether cannabis use by pregnant women can impair fetal brain development. Every adult in America, meanwhile, knows someone they think smokes too much weed, not because the user mutilated someone, but because it seemed to diminish their emotional or intellectual capacities. By some estimates, 10% of marijuana users develop a dependency on the drug. Under any legalization scenario, it’s this population, the anonymous problem user, who will weigh most heavily on society. A better anti-weed book would tell their stories. But this would force questions Berenson has no interest in answering. If 20% of marijuana users have a problem, 80% don’t. Berenson doesn’t want to come off as a prig. He gets that people like to get high and tries not to hold it against them. But he’s uninterested in why people get high, much less able to acknowledge the possibility that there’s any good reason for it. Like a lot of weed opponents, he says only a small fraction of marijuana users use it to treat a clinical medical need. That’s true. Much about weed invites this kind of easy contempt. But the great bulk of users feel it’s beneficial, because it helps them relax, it improves their sex life or makes it more fun to play with their kids. Maybe it helps them drink less alcohol, which they find more destructive. And at the other end of the spectrum from the problem users is a population who consider weed something like a performance-enhancing drug. They can be found, among other places, throughout the ranks of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The last century of music, one might argue, was brought to us by weed. The book would have been better if Berenson had some understanding of, or curiosity about, the drug’s allure and complexity, or even could put its dangers in context. “By some criteria, I am dependent,” the journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote in 2017. “Weed most definitely isn’t for everyone. But compared with all the other substances available, and most other avenues to chill and friendship, it remains, it seems to me, a no-brainer to legalize it, and for many sane adults, one of God’s great gifts to humankind.”Diana Athill, who has died aged 101, was one of book publishing’s most remarkable editors, but in the latter part of her life it was her own writing that brought her much-enjoyed literary success. First there was Stet (2000), which described her long career at André Deutsch, and then, over the next decade, forgotten books were reprinted and new writing emerged, in particular Somewhere Towards the End, which won the 2008 Costa prize for biography, and became a bestseller. In 2009, four volumes of her memoirs (including Stet and Somewhere Towards the End) were republished as Life Class. In all her work, observations were clear-sighted and seemed truthful, even when they exposed her own emotional frailties. She rose to the challenge, as Ian Jack wrote in the introduction to Life Class, of Jean Rhys’s phrase to “get it as it was, as it really was”. Athill’s first memoir, Instead of a Letter (1963), was written when she was in her 40s. The blurb on the original flyleaf said that Athill had “written this autobiography in order to discover the truth about herself and about what her life has been for. Her book is uncompromisingly honest. Yet although she discusses with unusual frankness matters not usually discussed by conventionally reared daughters of British colonels, she is never embarrassing because nothing embarrasses her.” Those were to remain her traits – she talked of herself as “a beady-eyed watcher”. In 2004, when she was 87, she wrote – in the third person – of her own miscarriage at the age of 43. Unmarried, she had come to cherish the pregnancy. Then she miscarried, the loss being graphically described in an intimate manner but without sentiment. Having nearly died, Athill concluded that “not having died was more important to her than losing the child”. The piece later formed a chapter of her 2015 memoir, Alive, Alive-Oh! and Other Things That Matter. Although she often wrote about tragedy, she was far from a tragic figure. Softly pink-skinned, warm-hearted but never cuddly, she remained, in elegant old age, an optimistic, inquiring woman. She was an entertaining conversationalist – her talk, which had the same searching tone as her writing, was delivered in a crisp upper-class timbre. Athill was born in Kensington, west London, during a first world war zeppelin raid. Her father, Lawrence Athill, was an army officer, her mother, Alice (nee Carr), the daughter of a family with a large estate, Ditchingham Hall, in Norfolk, where Diana spent much of her childhood – 20 bedrooms, landscaped park and lake, but also many books. There, with her younger brother, Andrew, and sister, Patience, she experienced a carefree life of ponies and hunting, but, above all, reading, encouraged by her much-loved grandmother. As she wrote in Stet, “Reading was what one did indoors as riding was what one did out of doors.” This childhood was explored in Yesterday Morning (2002) – a book that shines in its Englishness of a privileged time Athill considered blessed despite the submerged unhappiness that underpinned her parents’ marriage. Until she was 14, she was educated at home by governesses – before a spell at boarding school, and on to read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 1936. Then she discovered – somewhat to her alarm – that she had to earn her own living. She wanted to be a librarian; it was wartime and she joined the BBC, where she worked in its information department. It was a meeting with André Deutsch, a Hungarian émigré, at a dinner party in 1943, which changed her life. She joined him as an editor at the end of the war in his first publishing venture, Allan Wingate, and then became founding director of his new company, André Deutsch. She remained there from 1952 until her retirement, aged 75, in 1993. Publishing was then a career where women were usually in the publicity department rather than the boardroom. Indeed, she was not much concerned that women were not on equal pay. But Athill, an initial shyness overcome, had found her niche: in her gift for discovering new authors and for her dealings with them and their writing she would become known as “the best editor in London”. She loved the job. The sense of being a midwife to books was its essential pleasure. She once described a heavy rewrite on a badly written book as “like removing layers of crumpled brown paper from an awkwardly shaped parcel, and revealing the attractive present which it contained”. Among Athill’s authors were Molly Keane, VS Naipaul, Mordecai Richler, Brian Moore and Jean Rhys, all of whom feature in Stet. Her dedication to her authors was legendary. She was responsible for coaxing Rhys’s great novel Wide Sargasso Sea out of her. Athill’s efforts, over many years, to nurture Rhys and her work are described with great understanding and sympathy in Stet. Of Rhys, she wrote of “the existence within a person so incompetent and so given to muddle and disaster – even to destruction – of an artist as strong as steel”. Athill, too, showed certain mettle in dealing with her writers. Naipaul, for example, walked out after Athill had suggested that two characters in a new novel, Guerrillas, did not convince. If Stet contains literary gossip, it certainly is not from a smugly exclusive point of view, and is packed with insight as to how editors and writers relate. Athill wrote: “All this book is, is the story of one old ex-editor who imagines that she will feel a little less dead if a few people read it.” In fact, it was, to her great pleasure, amazingly successful, as were all her other books, and she became a sought-after speaker on the literary festival circuit. Athill’s own writing life had begun in 1958, when she won an Observer short-story competition (Muriel Spark had done the same seven years earlier). She had entered the competition under the pseudonym Mr Watt, the name of that spring’s Grand National winner. Her own win did more than enrich her by £500; more importantly, it unlocked the possibility of happiness. It smoothed, as she wrote, the “lumpy presence” of failure. For, despite a flourishing career, a longstanding sense of failure had menaced Athill’s life. This, indeed, is the story at the heart of Instead of a Letter. The book begins with a loving description of her childhood and then plunges into an emotional pilgrimage. Athill’s fiance, a young pilot, goes off to war to serve in Egypt. She plans to join him – and have four children. Letters arrive every day. Then suddenly, they stop. After two years, there is a numbingly offhand request that he be released from his engagement. He has found someone else. The narrative of Athill’s pain, the insight into that rejection, is fervent. On Desert Island Discs, in 2004, she said that it was not until she wrote Instead of a Letter – 20 years after being jilted – that she completely recovered. Writing about yourself was pointless, she believed, unless it was true. “I write to get to the bottom of things,” she told a journalist. This included a no-nonsense approach to writing about sex. Her one novel, Don’t Look at Me Like That (1967), feels semi-autobiographical with its tale of a young woman in bohemian London in the 1950s who has an affair with a married man. A collection of short stories, An Unavoidable Delay, appeared in 1962. As well as Instead of a Letter, there were memoirs that in different ways dealt with Athill’s relationships, occasionally curiously masochistic, with difficult men. After a Funeral (1986) tells the story of an Egyptian writer called “Didi”, who comes to live in Athill’s spare room. He makes her life a misery, and exploits her friendship and generosity. She reads his diary. It is full of insults and wounding remarks about her. Yet she does not cast him out. In the end, he takes his own life in her flat. A similarly flawed and exploitative man, Hakim Jamal, who was later murdered, was at the centre of her book Make Believe (1993). The much younger Jamal, an African-American activist and associate of Malcolm X whose book André Deutsch had published, also spent time at her flat, and became her lover. This flat, which had seen so much drama, was at the top of a house owned by her cousin Barbara Smith in Primrose Hill, north London. For more than 40 years Athill lived in this cosy space, full of books, her own embroidered cushions, with the playwright Barry Reckord, until he returned to Jamaica to be cared for by his family, where he died in 2011. At one point in this long relationship, Athill had welcomed Reckord’s new, much younger girlfriend to live with them, although by then Athill and Reckord were no longer lovers. She finally gave up her flat at the end of 2009 when she moved to a residential home in Highgate. She also shared a country cottage in Norfolk with Barbara, on the estate where she had grown up. She drove there, until her mid-80s, nearly every weekend to tend a half-acre of much-loved garden. Somewhere Towards the End touched readers because she dealt with old age and death in a forthright way, musing on subjects that if no longer taboo are rarely written about, at least not with such aplomb. In her mid-80s she listed what she could no longer do: “Drink alcohol, walk fast or far, enjoy music, and make love. Hideous deprivations, you might think – indeed, if someone had listed them 20 years ago I would have been too appalled to go on reading, so I must quickly add that they are less hideous than they sound.” Explaining this loss, in relation to sex, she explained: “My body began slowly to lose responsiveness in my 60s, long before my mind did. For a while it could be restored by novelty, which allowed me an enjoyable little Indian summer, but when it became a real effort, and then a mockery, it made me sad: being forced to fake something which had been such an important pleasure was far more depressing than doing without it.” Another later book was Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend (2011), which featured the letters, over 30 year, from Athill to the New York poet Edward Field. Field had kept Athill’s letters, whereas Athill threw his away (as she had done those from Rhys). Her last book, A Florence Diary (2016), was created out of a 1947 account of a visit to Florence. Athill’s work as an editor will remain in the books she shaped, the writers she supported and wrote about. Her own writing too showed that editor’s clarity of judgment. The success of her books boosted her modest finances and this helped contribute to her last, agreeable and extraordinarily productive years. She had never had, she said, so much uncomplicated fun. On the eve of her 100th birthday she mused: “I can’t think many centenarians are still living by their pen.” She wrote, at the end of Yesterday Morning: “It is not entirely impossible that I might, like my mother, come to the end of my days murmuring about some random memory: ‘It was absolutely divine.’” She was made OBE in 2009. She is survived by six nephews and two nieces. • Diana Athill, editor and writer, born 21 December 1917; died 23 January 2019Tehran’s traffic jams have spawned a curious social phenomenon. The affluent car-driving youth of the northern districts have turned gridlock into a way of meeting members of the opposite sex. Known as “dor-dor” (“turn-turn” in Farsi), separate groups of young men and women drive around, pulling up alongside each other in congested traffic so they can flirt and pass phone numbers through the window. The cars are either all-girl or all-boy to avoid censorship by the Islamic morality police. If the police do show up they can make a (slow) getaway. By 2035 another 15 cities will have populations above 10 million, according to the latest United Nations projections, taking the total number of megacities to 48. Guardian Cities is exploring these newcomers at a crucial period in their development: from car-centric Tehran to the harsh inequalities of Luanda; from the film industry of Hyderabad to the demolition of historic buildings in Ho Chi Minh City. We'll also be in Chengdu, Dar es Salaam, Nanjing, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baghdad, Kuala Lumpur, Xi'an, Seoul, Wuhan and London. Read more from the next 15 megacities series here. Nick Van Mead This furtive car-cruising is just one of the signs of youthful rebellion against draconian moral codes, and an indication that the Iranian capital might be becoming gradually more relaxed. In Ab-o-Atash park, a teenage girl in skinny jeans and rollerblades allows her headscarf to drop briefly as she coasts past a group of gawping boys. Nearby, a tape of religious music is drowned out by the blaring hip-hop coming from the skatepark. Gaggles of families pose for selfies, while black-cloaked women shuffle past on their way to the mosque. If we’d been seen out with a boy like this, we would have been forced to marry them “We never had spaces like this when we were growing up here,” says a middle-aged woman visiting from Canada with her sister, where they have both lived for the past 20 years after moving from Iran. “Even a few years ago, a scene like this would have been unthinkable.” These visions of tolerance and mutual co-existence are a far cry from most foreigners’ preconceived images of Tehran – a place where religious law still forbids women from riding bicycles. On the new Tabiat pedestrian bridge, whose futuristic tendrils wind their way across the valley, young couples sit arm-in-arm, while groups of girls saunter past, their headscarves pulled so far back they seem to defy gravity. “If we’d been seen out with a boy like this,” adds one of the sisters, “we would have been forced to marry them.” This scene of apparent social freedom turns out to be precariously balanced. In 2011, a couple of years after the park opened, 10 people were arrested by the morality police after holding a water fight in the fountains. Two years ago, an extra 7,000 morality police were introduced in Tehran, specifically to monitor the strict hijab rules, targeting everything from loose-fitting headscarves and shortened trousers for women, to glamorous hairstyles and necklaces for men. Given the capital’s population explosion the authorities face an uphill struggle. From the decks of Tabiat bridge, evening crowds – suspended above the bumper-to-bumper traffic of an eight-lane highway – admire the sunset through a thick haze of smog. Cranes stretch to the horizon, conjuring ever taller concrete towers which march incessantly into the surrounding hills. Tehran’s population now numbers around 8.4 million people in the city proper, swelling to 14 million in the wider metropolitan region, making it the most populous city in western Asia. It is set to join the global ranks of megacities by 2035, according to forecasts from the UN, with its residents passing the 10 million mark in 2028. But Tehran is a city on the brink. With some of the world’s highest levels of congestion, air pollution, water shortages, land subsidence and eye-watering costs of living, headscarves should be the least of the authorities’ worries. Stuck in traffic on one of Tehran’s interminable freeways, the city can feel like Los Angeles with minarets. The similarity is no coincidence: its modern urban structure was laid out by America’s own doyen of postwar sprawl, Victor Gruen. The godfather of the suburban shopping mall was hired by the Iranian government in 1966 to masterplan the future of the capital, and plotted a web of highways that would thread their way through the undulating topography, connecting a dispersed network of neighbourhoods separated by lush green valleys. The model was typical of American new towns – only adapted to the foothills of the Alborz mountains. Anyone can pay a fine and build a high-rise. You see highways where they shouldn’t be, shopping malls where they shouldn’t be It was part of a wave of projects resulting from the American government’s deep engagement with the ruling Pahlavi dynasty. Come the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the masterplan embodied everything that the new regime stood against: it was the detestable legacy of the Shah writ large across the city. Attempts to make a new plan were rejected by the city, so a decision was made to go on with the Gruen scheme, while gleefully rejecting many of its key principles. The idea of incremental five-year phasing was abandoned in favour expanding the city boundary to its ultimate limits in one go, enabling more land to be developed more quickly to cope with the sudden influx of people. Between 1976 and 1982 Tehran’s population mushroomed by 3 million as families flooded in from the countryside, many fleeing the perilous border regions during the Iran-Iraq war. Inward migration has continued, with internal migrants constituting as much as 88% of the rise in Tehran’s population over the past five years. There has been a financial incentive behind the city’s expansion too. In the years following the revolution, the municipality realised that a handsome stream of income could be generated by allowing developers to breach the density limits set out in the masterplan in exchange for a substantial fee. Zoning laws were bent and construction permits issued. Revenues collected were then invested in major urban development projects, which in turn increased the value of real estate. The urban form of Tehran was built around a system of institutionalised bribery, which continues to this day. “Anyone can pay a fine and build a high-rise,” says Masoud Taghavi, former editor of Iranian architecture magazine Hamshahri Memari. “There are some plans, but in most cases they’re being ignored. You see highways where they shouldn’t be, buildings where they shouldn’t be, shopping malls where they shouldn’t be.” The practice of selling density has led to an identikit form of residential development, with plots simply filled to their limits and extruded to maximise the saleable floor area. Most are designed without terraces or balconies and with minimal open space around them. The policy has also seen a proliferation of huge commercial buildings with little regard to their wider impact. As chairman of Tehran city council’s health and environment committee, Mohammad Haqqani, put it: “Tehran municipality is granting permits to almost all applicants wishing to construct commercial buildings like shopping malls and office buildings, without paying attention to the real needs of each district and the worsening traffic congestion in the sprawling capital.” Following a spate of high-end malls, a district in northern Tehran finally banned their construction last year. But it is too little too late. Many point the finger at Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s former chief of police and several-time failed presidential candidate, who served as the mayor of Tehran from 2005 until 2017. He presided over a wealth of impressive-looking trophy projects which introduced a glossy image of modernity – but did little to tackle the city’s real problems. If you making more room for cars, you get more cars on the street. More cars means more congestion and more pollution The expansion of the Sadr expressway was one of his most publicised achievements, seeing a three-mile long double-decker concrete highway erected in the north-east of the city. Articles on the project were greeted with comments such as “Long live Tehran’s master builder, the humble accomplisher, Dr Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf,” and “May the eyes of the envious and extremist burst in jealousy.” Those eyes are now watering at the vast expense and unintended consequences of the grand plan, which has had the effect of increasing traffic and further cementing car as king. Members of the Tehran city council conceded last year that adequate research was not conducted before construction began, and that the elevated highway has failed to achieve its main purpose. “It is a disastrous project,” says architect and urbanist Ahmadreza Hakiminejad. “It was hailed as a way of reducing Tehran’s congestion, but it has had the opposite result. If you make more room for cars, you get more cars on the street. More cars means more congestion and more pollution.” All schools in the capital were forced to close one day last year due to the dangerous levels of toxic particles in the air. Pollution causes an annual 20,000 deaths, according to deputy health minister Alireza Raeisi, a statistic that has even prompted the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to weigh in: it is now religiously forbidden to drive vehicles in such high levels of pollution without valid rationale. Ghalibaf put his efforts into applying a thin layer of decoration across Tehran in an attempt to divert people’s attention from its day-to-day dysfunction. The Bureau of Beautification was established to oversee a campaign of murals, bollard paintings and curious sculptures. A stretch of Valiasr Street now has a sculpture garden along one side, where a number of dead trees have been adorned with artwork to disguise the fact they’re stricken due to lack of water. Bus stops have been decorated and novelty benches commissioned – but nothing has changed beneath the surface. Hakiminejad says the beautification campaign and the Sadr expressway are just two of innumerable ill-conceived schemes conducted over the last decade, along with policies that have seen the trampling of the city’s little remaining green space. Over the past decade, around 4,000 hectares of Tehran’s former gardens have been destroyed by the so-called “garden tower” act, which allows people to build high-rises on garden land. Other grand visions, like the satellite development around the artificial Chitgar Lake to the north-west of Tehran, have similarly backfired. The lake has been accused of diverting much-needed flows of water from the city, while the surrounding plots have been sold off in the usual fashion, spawning a grim forest of high-rise towers and malls. There are few of the facilities such as schools that a functioning new urban centre needs. “It’s yet another ‘wow’ project, designed more as a tourist attraction than an extension of the city,” says Hakiminejad. “It’s going to end up being a vertical slum.” Chitgar is one of a number of new satellite towns planned across the country in a bid to ease pressure on the capital. Last year the government announced it would build 11 new towns by 2041, a declaration that raised eyebrows given that most of the new towns built after the 1979 revolution remain grossly under-occupied. A total of 17 satellite towns were built on the periphery of Iran’s eight biggest cities in the 1980s and 90s, but most still stand as ghostly dormitories, their vacancy rates at 80%. And all the time, people keep flocking to Tehran. The Iran Urban Economics Scientific Association estimates that the city’s population now exceeds its capacity by more than 70% – meaning it can only provide 2.3 million of its 8 million residents with decent living conditions. Without wholesale reform of the planning system, real investment in public transport, and an end to the cash-for-towers culture, that statistic stands little chance of improving. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereHow do you respond when a principle that forms part of the bedrock of your society is used to undermine it? This is the question facing liberal democracies across the world as Russia and others exploit free speech and its institutions – especially traditional and social media – through misinformation and electoral interference. Russia’s information manipulation strategies are many and varied, and far more sophisticated than simply pushing out pro-Putin messages. It uses a mix of Russian-owned media outlets, most notably RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik, sympathetic talking heads, social media “bot” accounts and state-sponsored hackers to influence western politics and media coverage. The aim is rarely to push out one single message, but rather to diminish trust in western institutions, destabilise countries or counter narratives that would be unhelpful to Russia. When a Russian-backed militia group shot down the Malaysia Airlines passenger plane MH17, killing 298 people, its media offered numerous different – and contradictory – explanations. When the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, Russian-backed outlets and supporters threw question after question to cast doubt on the official narrative and muddy it up. Such tactics only work in free societies, where doubt and debate are encouraged, and in which mainstream outlets encourage a broad range of voices: arguably the most successful information operation Russia has ever launched was the hacking of John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee’s emails. This operation relied on WikiLeaks to publish the emails, and on mainstream outlets to find them irresistible and bring them to a much larger audience – which they did: Fox News ran them for weeks. Like a virus that turns its host’s immune system against itself, Russia’s information strategy works by turning free media and free speech against its own society. This makes countering such information warfare an especially difficult and delicate task. A cautionary tale in just how difficult this can be, and how easily it can backfire, can be found in a pan-European effort called the Integrity Initiative. On the surface, the effort – run by a not-for-profit – seems laudable and uncontroversial. “We are a network of people and organisations from across Europe dedicated to revealing and combating propaganda and disinformation,” its website states. “Our broader aim is also to educate on how to spot disinformation and verify sources.” The statement says: “This kind of work attracts the extremely hostile and aggressive attention of disinformation actors, like the Kremlin and its various proxies, so we hope you understand that our members mostly prefer to remain anonymous.” It adds: “We are not a government body but we do work with government departments and agencies who share our aims.” In practice, the Integrity Initiative receives considerable funding from the UK Foreign Office and other national governments, and is primarily focused on countering Russian misinformation – and this effort, plus its slightly mysterious mission statement and unwillingness to name its contributors, have made it the perfect target for conspiracy. The trouble began when fringe UK leftwing blogs, soon followed by Sputnik and RT, noticed the group’s Twitter account had retweeted a small number of articles critical of Jeremy Corbyn. Given the organisation receives funding from the UK government, this kind of political attack was inappropriate and ill-advised. But soon it had morphed into something much more sinister: Labour politician Chris Williamson called for a parliamentary inquiry into the group, saying its agenda appeared to include the “denigration of the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn”. What happened next would surprise few Russia watchers. As with so many others who might oppose Russia’s agenda, the Integrity Initiative found itself the victim of a hacking attack, and had its internal documents anonymously posted online. As I landed after a six-hour flight with no internet during a December weekend, I discovered a number of British leftwing activists and then WikiLeaks (where I briefly worked from 2010 to 2011), with its 5.4 million Twitter followers, had discovered my name among a group of journalists named in the leaked files. My name was present as I had given a one-hour training talk on verifying online information to a group of international journalists at the Frontline Club in London, for which I was paid £225. As the talk had been co-organised by the Integrity Initiative, its agenda was published online, with the names of everyone who had spoken there. Journalists often give training talks, and this was a routine one. But in the world of Twitter conspiracists, I was a “presstitute” working with “dodgy state actors” – a “paid propagandist” and “smear artist” engaged in “conscious subversion of domestic politics”. Never mind that the documents show nothing of the sort – that is now the narrative that will mark any future efforts by the Integrity Initiative. The group’s very structure, and its effort to at least partially mask its identity and its funders, doomed it from the beginning. Rather than serve as a counter to misinformation, its very existence appeared to confirm the suspicions of several groups that are most susceptible to information operations: the UK left, who distrust the mainstream media as anti-Corbyn; those already sympathetic to Russia; and WikiLeaks and its supporters. Russia is the master of blurring the boundaries between the state, the media and outriders. By being seen trying to do the same – even, as seems likely, with far clearer rules of engagement – European governments have found themselves engaging in a mudfight with a pig. That’s a situation in which there will only be one winner, and a contest only one participant will enjoy. If we are to tackle Russian-backed misinformation – and to restore trust in our institutions, we must – we can’t do it by trying to beat them at their own game. If efforts involve government funding, this should be openly declared, and every penny publicly accounted for. Every participant in the efforts should be named. Each tactic should be publicly declared. Wherever something happens behind the scenes, it will be exploited as a secret, or a “psyop”, once it is inevitably exposed months later in a hack. Working largely from the shadows, Russia has co-opted our information ecosystem. Confronting it will have to be done in the open. • James Ball is the author of Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the WorldEddie Jones has been warned he faces a struggle to keep his England squad fresh given the demands placed on some players by the Champions Cup. Saracens and Exeter are still in contention for qualification and Gloucester’s head coach, Johan Ackermann, believes fatigue could impact on the national team’s prospects at the Six Nations. In the wake of Gloucester’s home thumping by Munster Ackermann also suggested the ultra-competitive Premiership may yet affect England’s World Cup planning. “I can just imagine what Eddie thinks,” he said. “He must flinch every time the English teams play because he knows his England side are going to have players who have been through tough Premiership games and then another tough European block. To get them back freshened up is going to be quite a challenge but that’s the system you have got here. “I think the Premiership is what makes English rugby strong but it is quite challenging if your squad is limited because of injuries and you go into the Heineken Cup taking on these top-quality sides. I don’t want to take anything away from Munster – they were so clinical – but it is a bit of a juggling act at the moment. Irish sides had the luxury to rest players and get players fresh and obviously there are games they can afford to do that in their league. You can’t afford to rest players against one team in the Premiership because you will lose.” Nevertheless the England winger Jack Nowell believes Exeter can buck the prevailing trend by upsetting Munster in Limerick this weekend and qualifying from Pool Two. “I think if you’re going to back any team to do it, a lot of people would probably back us,” said Nowell, who enjoyed a try-scoring return in the Chiefs’ 34-12 win over Castres on Sunday. “We’ve got nothing to lose now,” Nowell went on. “If we go out and are shy to play and afraid of what might happen, we’ll probably lose. If we go out with a nothing-to-lose mentality and play the way we can, we’ll hopefully come away with it. This is make or break for us and we want to go and attack it. It’s going to be a big test but we want to enjoy it. If we’re not enjoying ourselves, what’s the point in doing it?” Ireland’s fly-half Johnny Sexton has been voted the Rugby Union Writers’ Club personality of the year for 2018. Sexton received the prestigious Pat Marshall award following a remarkable 12 months that also saw him crowned world player of the year. The 33-year-old was a key figure in Ireland’s historic first victory over New Zealand on Irish soil in November and was instrumental in Leinster’s march to a fourth European title last May. Sexton succeeds the England fly-half Owen Farrell as the Pat Marshall winner, a trophy previously lifted by such illustrious names as Gareth Edwards, Jonah Lomu, Martin Johnson and Jonny Wilkinson.Pat Lambie retired from rugby this week at the age of 28, the latest player done too soon after suffering repeated concussions. The South Africa fly-half stood out for his relative lack of weight, little more than 13st, and was a target for bulky ball-carriers. It was a collision with the Ireland No 8 CJ Stander, a player nearly 5st heavier, in 2016 that started the countdown for Lambie’s retirement. The following year, he spent six months out after colliding with a teammate in training and suffered another concussion that December playing for Racing 92 against Oyonnax. “I followed the advice of two neurologists who advised me to stop playing rugby,” Lambie said. “I have not been able to do any weight sessions in the last 10 weeks, because I have been suffering from headaches, migraines, eye irritations and trembling legs. I am bitterly disappointed because I still had some dreams on the rugby field but I am relieved to know I will not be at risk of further, more serious head injuries. I have to avoid any sport that requires contact.” Rugby union at the top level is, just, still a sport for all shapes and sizes but Michelin-man props have had to flatten their tyres, beanpoles are required to do far more than chug from lineout to lineout and players with the playing weight of their forebears 50 years ago tend to be confined to scrum-halves, distributors who rarely offer themselves as a target, the game’s version of a quarterback. When fly-halves of the stature of Lambie take to the pitch, how often do coaches refer to playing down their channel, rugbyspeak for getting a big ball-carrier to run at them hard and use the weight imbalance to knock them out of the way? Some 10s relish the physical challenge: Jonny Wilkinson was one but how it cost him when his body eventually rebelled against repeated hits. If a player throws a punch, a red card is likely to follow. Charge into an opponent to exploit weight advantage and it is not only legitimate but encouraged. How many more players like Lambie need to have their careers ended early – and only time will tell whether he has suffered one serious head injury too many – before anything meaningful is done? There is a contradiction at the heart of this. Take Munster’s European Champions Cup match against Exeter at Thomond Park last weekend, close to a winner-takes-all with a quarter-final place at stake. From the first minute to last, it was unremitting confrontation. It was minimalist, with no one able to find space, compelling yet a turn-off, an extreme example of how the sport at the top is shedding the nuances that made it unique. The commitment was admirable, the uniformity repellent. The contradiction is that while World Rugby says player welfare is at the heart of changes to its laws and regulations, it is at the same time driven by a commercial interest that sees time taken to reset scrums or form lineouts as a deterrent to sponsors and broadcasters. It has detonated an explosion of breakdowns at the expense of set pieces: the ball in play time is more than double what it was in the amateur era, and as the majority of injuries occur in the tackle, it has significantly increased their number. Take the law change that banned kicking directly to touch from inside a player’s 22 if the ball was originally played by him or her, or a teammate, from outside the 22. The intention was to deter direct kicking to touch, so that the ball was kept in play: aside from the question of who kicks directly for touch now anyway, unless they have been awarded a penalty, what is wrong with periods when the frenzy is paused for a breather? Set pieces have the advantage of allowing backs to attack backs. With so few players committed to a breakdown, forwards fan across the field to form a rugby league-style defensive line. Unless there is a missed tackle, a players goes to ground for the cycle to continue. In its way it is no more entertaining than a reset scrum, often drearily repetitive – rugby league with, in some competitions, a contested tackle area. The desire is to keep increasing the ball-in-play time, never mind the quality of play, to help attract a new audience. World Rugby has approved radical law changes in Australia for a new competition that seems to want to turn a union scrum into a league one. Even more ball-in-play time, more action, more injuries, lip service paid to careers ended prematurely with no one bold enough to say the point has been reached where less rugby is required, not more. Otherwise it will be a return to the early days of the game where the first three forwards when a scrum was called formed the front row and specialisation was just a long word. A report in the British Medical Journal, which found the average weight of international players had increased by 25% since the 1950s, called on World Rugby to change the laws to encourage speed and skill at the expense of mass. The authors noted that, while ability and speed were innate and therefore not coachable, players could be bulked up to increase their mass. Gym monkeys, the strenuous yet easy option. Why is Danny Cipriani not in the England squad? May it have something to do with his defence where, at his most effective, he is a mere speed bump? Imagine Barry John, Phil Bennett and Tony Ward being canned for the same reason. Think what the game would have lost and what it is now forfeiting. Time to go back to a few basics and give future Lambies a chance. • This is an extract from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To subscribe just visit this page and follow the instructions.There was a buzz of anticipation mingled with a little confusion at the Kensington Oval on the eve of the first Test. The ground, arguably the best in the Caribbean and the only old fortress that the England cricket team ever visit – since Sabina Park and the Queen’s Park Oval now seem to be off limits when England are here – was full of activity. The mowers mowed a verdant outfield, the groundsman sprinkled water on the heavy roller as it made its ponderous way up and down the chosen strip – two had been prepared and it appears the groundsman has opted for the flattest one available. The wise men from both sides stared at the surface and stroked their chins. The players caught their catches and kicked their footballs – though Jonny Bairstow has withdrawn from this particular form of warmup. The tour photo was taken, which had us noting who now sits in the front row. A sign of evolution has Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler there alongside Joe Root. Everyone on the island seems to be eagerly anticipating 10am on Wednesday, and to add to the intrigue not even the captains quite know what to expect or which XI to choose. Root recognised that he was spoilt on the tour to Sri Lanka. “We had a lot more knowledge of the pitches,” he said, “and about their players because Trevor [Bayliss] and Farby [Paul Farbrace] had worked with a lot of the guys out there. We haven’t got the same information out here but the one thing we picked up in Sri Lanka is that we have become a lot more adaptable.” Jason Holder, the immensely impressive West Indies captain who seems so indispensable even though his side tends to lose more than they win, is from Barbados and was asked what the pitch was going to so. “Absolutely no idea,” he said with a smile. So what does the strip look like? There are a few patches of green grass in between larger areas of bare, brown turf. Both captains explained that they would wait until morning before announcing their XIs. Then they must decide the balance of their teams, which boils down – in the case of West Indies – to whether to play their left-arm spinner, Jomel Warrican, alongside the all-round off-spinners Royston Chase and their new opener, John Campbell. For England the conundrum might be two-pronged. Do they augment the off‑breaks of Moeen Ali with another spinner? If so do they opt for Adil Rashid or Jack Leach? Root remained understandably cagey. The Dukes ball has kept swinging out here for a surprisingly long time, which encourages the notion of playing four pace bowlers, yet the pitch with those bare patches suggests the need for two spinners. Oddly England may be thinking in terms of two contrasting combinations since they may not like the idea of Stuart Broad, an unfortunate victim of bed bugs at the team’s hotel, batting at No 9. This means that they could go with Sam Curran and Leach or Broad and Rashid. The former seems the likely pairing. That England have so many options – and we have not even considered the virtues of Chris Woakes – confirms what Root has been saying recently. He keeps stressing that this Test outfit now works as a squad rather than an XI; he has 14 or 15 players who could reasonably play in the team – though how long he can keep everyone happy is bound to be limited. That period is extended the longer England keep winning. Root said: “Whoever misses out here is going to be very unfortunate but I am sure they’ll be ready for the second one if they’re not required here.” As ever the cause of greatest concern is at the top of the order where England are still striving for a regular and reassuring opening pair. Here Keaton Jennings, his head shaven in order to raise money for charity, and Rory Burns resume a partnership that did little more than flicker in Sri Lanka. If they fire then the prospects of England’s powerful lower order causing damage against tiring bowlers is exciting. Likewise West Indies crave top‑order runs. Their pace attack has impressed over the past 18 months and they have managed to take 20 wickets per Test frequently. The muscular Shannon Gabriel will be the quickest bowler on view and certainly the sharpest faced by Burns in Test cricket. But the batting lineup has not been so reassuring despite the obvious talent of Shai Hope and Shimron Hetmyer. Recently, a good way to motivate West Indies has been to denigrate them from afar. And Geoffrey Boycott has duly obliged by saying in his column that their side is “full of very ordinary, average cricketers”. When asked about Boycott’s assessment, Root replied: “It is not like Geoffrey to be outspoken, is it? It doesn’t surprise me that he’s said something like that but we are very aware that’s not the case, especially in these conditions. I am sure he’s enjoyed everything that comes from saying that and the attention it’s given but ultimately it doesn’t make any difference to how we’re going to approach things.” Root is an increasingly confident captain but he also knows that England have won only one Test in their past two tours of the Caribbean. England RJ Burns, JJ Jennings, JM Bairstow, JE Root (capt), BA Stokes, JC Buttler, BT Foakes (wkt), MM Ali, SM Curran, MJ Leach, JM Anderson. West Indies KC Brathwaite, JD Campbell, DM Bravo, SD Hope, SO Hetmyer, RL Chase, SO Dowrich (wkt), JO Holder (capt), JA Warrican, KAJ Roach, ST Gabriel.Javier Hernández is wanted by Valencia and is keen to join the Spanish club but West Ham will not allow him to leave unless they can bring in another striker. Valencia want a loan deal for Hernández, whereas West Ham would prefer a sale – if they do business at all. They are facing the possibility of losing another forward, Marko Arnautovic, to an unnamed Chinese club, and regard Bournemouth’s Callum Wilson as his ideal replacement. Hernández has scored 13 goals in 49 appearances for West Ham but many of those have come from the bench and he would like to join what would be the sixth club of his professional career. Fulham have signed Ryan Babel from Besiktas until the end of the season. The 32-year-old, who made 146 appearances for Liverpool, is the first arrival of the Claudio Ranieri era. Babel, who came through the ranks at Ajax, has also had spells with Hoffenheim, the Turkish side Kasimpasa and the United Arab Emirates club Al Ain, Crystal Palace are in the process of securing the Brazilian goalkeeper Lucas Perri from São Paulo on loan with a view to a permanent deal. The youngster is considered a player of considerable potential, but will initially arrive to provide cover for the injured Vicente Guaita and Wayne Hennessey. Perri, who has Italian citizenship, was first scouted by Palace back in November and will join until the end of the season so the Premier League club, who have beaten off competition from Fiorentina to secure the 21-year-old, can assess him first-hand. However, they have already negotiated an option with São Paulo to secure him on a more long-term basis for around £3.3m in the summer. The paperwork around the deal will most likely not be concluded until next week, with the 39-year-old Julián Speroni expected to make his first appearance since December 2017, and his 404th for Palace, in Saturday’s trip to Liverpool. Meanwhile the former England defender Steven Caulker has signed for the Turkish Super League club Alanyaspor after a period training there. The 27-year-old centre-half has been without a team since leaving Dundee at the end of last summer and has joined initially for six months, with an option to extend to 2021, as he seeks to revive his career. The former Tottenham Hotspur, Cardiff City and Queens Park Rangers player gained his only cap under Roy Hodgson in a defeat in Sweden in November 2012.As the wrangling over how Britain should leave the EU reaches fever pitch, one country is already experiencing a Brexit dividend: Bulgaria. Resorts in the south-eastern European country have seen a surge in bookings from British holidaymakers as families seek out alternative summer destinations. Traditionally popular tourist spots in the eurozone have become pricier as the pound has slumped against the euro since the vote to leave the EU in 2016. Now families are taking action to guard against future fluctuations in the event of no deal. During the busiest holiday booking period of the year, travel agents report that more people are opting for all-inclusive deals, in effect locking in costs for food, drink and accommodation. Banks currently give about €1.11 to the pound, a sharp drop from just before the referendum, when £1 bought €1.30. In December, travellers at some UK airports were receiving only €0.90 for every £1 they changed as Brexit turmoil pushed sterling to fresh lows. Expectations are that a no-deal will result in a further drop in the value of sterling, making this summer even more expensive for anyone travelling to Europe. But Bulgaria, a low-cost destination for both sun and skiing holidays, has seen the benefit of the currency uncertainty. The Association of British Travel Agents (Abta) said there had been an increase of almost one third in the number of holiday bookings to the country this year compared with 2018, when there had already been a rise on the previous year. “People are looking at different destinations and the length of time that they go in order to make sure that they can get the best value for money when they are being increasingly cost-conscious,” said Abta. Dire warnings have been made about what would happen to sterling on the currency markets under a no-deal. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said last summer that it was likely there would be a drop in value, while the Bank of England said in November that a disorderly exit from the EU could result in a fall of 25% – lowering the pound to below parity with the dollar. Last weekend was one of the busiest periods of the year for travel agents as people sought to offset the January blues by booking a summer holiday. Travel agents reported strong sales despite the Brexit uncertainty, with travel firm Tui saying summer 2019 was ahead of last year. But if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal the outlook could change. For example, the consumer group Which? has warned that, even if people have bought and paid for their holiday already, they are not fully protected from price increases that may come into effect in the case of a no-deal. Holiday companies have the right to raise the price of a holiday by up to 8% if they incur additional costs as a result of new taxes and fees imposed by third parties, it said. Beyond the currency fluctuations, a no-deal could result in a series of administrative headaches for travellers. Abta has warned that UK-issued European health insurance cards, which allow EU citizens access to state healthcare in other EU countries, would no longer be valid. Drivers may need to apply for an international driving permit and also carry a physical card issued by their insurance company to show their cover is applicable while abroad. There would also probably be changes to the documents and health checks required for pets. Rules around roaming for mobile phones would probably change, although some companies have said they will continue to offer the same prices after a no-deal. Insecurity around the future of Brexit has also affected the housing market, with sellers and buyers sitting tight because of the uncertainty over the future. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors last month reported that the market was at its weakest level in more than six years. David Hollingworth of mortgage brokers London & Country said the uncertainty had contributed to the slow market and that it was unlikely to change now that the new year was here, as people adopt a “wait and see” approach.This was the performance that earned Nicole Kidman her Oscar for best actress – playing Virginia Woolf in an agonised spiritual state, somewhere between paralysis and a trance, grappling with the possibilities of fiction and her own depression. It is a good, if somewhat overrated performance, with Kidman playing to her queenly, statuesque qualities, but not quite tapping into the inner fire of her better performances. For some reason, she had to play the part with a silly prosthetic nose that made her look like Big Bird. Opinions are divided on this most conspicuous of Kidman’s castings-against-type (I prefer The Paperboy in this vein), but she brings a tough, stolid, plausible presence to her uglied-up role as the undercover cop, physically and psychologically scarred by her experiences embedded in a robbery crew. Years after the events that brutalised her, she becomes convinced that she can finally take down the culprit; her bitterness and anguish are forcefully portrayed. Kidman had the distinction of working with Stanley Kubrick on his final film: hers is an intelligent and well-judged contribution to a minor, but interesting and overpoweringly atmospheric film, an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella Dream Story, updated to late-20th-century New York. Kidman plays the wife of Tom Cruise’s sexually tortured high-society doctor and she is frank and open about sexuality in a way that he is not. It is she who will keep this film from sliding down the posterity rankings. No film and no performance of Kidman’s has been more misunderstood on first release. She was cast against type in this brash, uproarious Florida noir, giving a cracking performance as Charlotte Bless, the needy, dysfunctional peroxide blonde who starts up a pen-pal romance with a killer on death row. Kidman has some truly outrageous scenes, sending up her own image and getting stuck into every luridly horrible moment. Terrific stuff. Kidman’s aura of sophisticated mystery and desire is perfect for this daring experiment in filmed theatre from master auteur/prankster Lars von Trier. She plays Grace, a woman apparently on the run from criminals, who is taken in by the uptight provincial folk of Dogville, Colorado, and becomes the focus of their obsessively repressed moralism and desire. Without Kidman, this would be nothing. Kidman had her breakthrough with this terrific suspense thriller that has something of Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski. She and Sam Neill play a couple alone on a yacht, who encounter a disturbing young man (Billy Zane) who begs to come aboard. This is Kidman in her early, frizzy-haired incarnation, a more natural, earthy performance than any she has since been known for, but this is great stuff as her character, left all alone, has to outwit and outmanoeuvre the creepy stranger. This is Kidman in rarefied form. Director Jane Campion creates for her, or from her, a shimmering haze of mystery in this adaptation of Henry James’s novel in which she plays the beautiful American Isabel Archer who finds herself attracted to John Malkovich’s louche and cynical artist. For many, the exquisiteness of her appearance here makes it peak Kidman. She goes into her distinctive trance, which also mesmerises the audience. This was the key early role for Kidman, a barnstorming lead turn in which, interestingly, it was director Gus Van Sant who divined that her star quality lay not in ordinariness, but in something more fabricated and unearthly. She is the sinister and ruthless weather presenter on local cable TV who is desperate to become a star at all costs. Nowadays, she would be an Instagram influencer. This is a film that grows with each rewatching and no one but Kidman could have carried it off with such dignity and flair. She plays Anna, a beautiful, wealthy Manhattan widow who is astonished when a 10-year-old boy walks into her life and announces he is the reincarnation of her dead husband. And he does this, citing details that only her late husband could possibly know. The single, extended shot of Kidman’s stricken face as we and she realise that she now believes it, is incredible, and so is her scene with the boy when they discuss how they will marry, or remarry, in 10 or so years, when he comes of age. This is the perfect Kidman film, a ghost story in the style of Henry James that, more than any other, elicits her almost spiritual aura of beauty and mystery with its occult trace of sexiness. In this movie, she is part Grace Kelly, part Deborah Kerr, with a touch of Kathleen Byron. (I should also say she was once cast as Grace Kelly in the terrible Grace of Monaco, which managed to misunderstand both Kelly and Kidman). Here, she plays the statuesque chatelaine of a grand but oppressively gloomy country house. Her husband has gone off to fight in the second world war, leaving her to deal with the children and what few servants they can afford. They are terrified by what appear to be ghosts. Kidman’s beautiful face, lit by candlelight, seems in this film to have been painted by John Everett Millais. She has a sheen of tragedy, and a kind of eroticised but refined victimhood. This is classic Kidman.France and Germany have renewed their vows of postwar friendship, aiming to show that the traditional engine powering the EU project is still strong but drawing fierce criticism from the nationalist and populist parties advancing across the continent. President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel signed the 16-page update to the 1963 Elysée treaty on Tuesday in the German border city of Aachen, residence of Charlemagne, the “father of Europe” who managed to unite much of western the continent in the ninth century. “Populism and nationalism are strengthening in all of our countries,” Merkel told French, German and EU officials at the ceremony. “Seventy-four years – a single human lifetime – after the end of the second world war, what seems self-evident is being called into question once more.” Macron said those “who forget the value of Franco-German reconciliation are making themselves accomplices of the crimes of the past. Those who ... spread lies are hurting the same people they are pretending to defend, by seeking to repeat history.” The two countries’ “friendship, common project and ambition for Europe are what really protect us, and what allow us really to take back control of our lives and to build our destiny”, the French president added. With the EU under unprecedented pressure from Brexit, Donald Trump and strident, nationalist governments in Italy, Poland and Hungary, Macron and Merkel sought to renew their nations’ commitment to bloc and limit the gains eurosceptic parties are expected to make in European parliamentary elections in May. But the text, promising enhances security, economic and practical cooperation, was heavily criticised by domestic far-right opponents in France and Germany as signing away national sovereignty, and derided by eurosceptics abroad as a symbolic and irrelevant gesture by two significantly weakened leaders. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Rally, accused Macron of “an act that borders on treason”, while Alexander Gauland of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) said Paris and Berlin were trying to create a “super EU” within the bloc. “As populists, we insist that one first takes care of one’s own country,” he said. “We don’t want Macron to renovate his country with German money … The EU is deeply divided. A special Franco-German relationship will alienate us even further.” Eurosceptic leaders abroad have been similarly critical. Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, said earlier this month that he intended to challenge the text’s pro-European message, and indeed the whole idea of a “Franco-German motor”, with a eurosceptic “Italian-Polish axis”. Far-right opposition to the treaty has spawned a raft of conspiracy theories online, including the claim that Macron plans to cede control of Alsace and Lorraine, partially annexed by Germany in 1871 and returned to France after the first world war. Other false rumours circulating online include the claim that France aims to share its permanent seat on the UN security council with Germany, part of broader accusations that the centrist president – as the far-right leader Marine Le Pen alleged – is determined to “dismantle the power of our country”. Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, who attended the ceremony, said he would “like to believe” the new Franco-German treaty would “revive faith in the meaning of solidarity and unity”, but Judy Dempsey of the thinktank Carnegie Europe said it “lacked strategic depth” and was a shadow of its 1963 forerunner. “Maybe the expectations for France and Germany continuing to shape Europe have become too high,” Dempsey said. “Maybe new groupings of countries, big and small, are needed to galvanise support for setting a strategic course for Europe.” Macron came to power in May 2017 promising to win Merkel’s backing for major EU reform in an effort to restore confidence in the European project, but has made little progress, partly because the chancellor was herself weakened by poor election results. Merkel has since announced she will step down as chancellor in 2021. The French president, meanwhile, has come under fierce domestic pressure in the form of the anti-establishment, grassroots gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protest movement and plummeting approval ratings. The text provides for closer security cooperation, with France and Germany pledging to come to each other’s defence in case of military attack, create a joint defence and security council, harmonise their rules for military equipment exports and work together on procurement. The pact aims to build a Franco-German “common military culture”, Merkel said. “By doing so, we want to contributes to the creation of a European army.” Macron last year urged the EU to reduce its military dependence on the US, calling also for a “real European army”. The treaty also promises a commitment to economic convergence, aiming to form “a German-French economic area with common rules”, set up a panel of experts to give economic recommendations to each government and boost research cooperation in the digital economy and renewable energies. Finally, the treaty seeks to strengthen concrete ties across the 280-mile Franco-German border, supporting city partnerships and bi-national initiatives in culture, health, transport and language-learning, with some cross-border regions to be granted greater autonomy to cut through rules and red tape.I like the idea of a small amount of full-flavoured cheese used more as a seasoning than a principal ingredient. A recipe where the cheese plays a supporting role to vegetables, cured meat or fruits. A vegetable tart perhaps, where sautéed roots – swede or parsnip – are layered with gruyere in a crumbly pastry crust; a fruit loaf made especially for eating not with butter, but with blue cheese; or possibly a buttery roast onion with a mild taleggio sauce trickling over its golden layers. The recipes that follow make use of mature, soft and fresh cheeses, working quietly in the background. I hold much store by cheesy-things-on-toast, especially those that are spiked with the heat of mustard or horseradish. Beetroot likes horseradish too, which is how this little delight came to be. A substantial snack, though, rather than full-blown dinner. Makes 2 roundscooked beetroot 150gcider vinegar 2 tspcornichons 6horseradish 2 tsp, finely gratedrosemary sprigs 1caerphilly 100g, coarsely gratedsourdough 2 large, thick slicesHeat the oven grill. Coarsely grate the beetroot into a bowl. Sprinkle over the cider vinegar and toss gently together. Slice the cornichons in half lengthways and add to the beetroot, then stir in the grated horseradish. Finely chop the rosemary needles and stir through the grated cheese. Place the slices of bread side by side on a baking sheet and brown lightly on one side under the heated grill. Remove from the heat, turn the bread over and divide the grated, seasoned beetroot between the slices of toast, then scatter over the grated cheese, partially covering the beetroot. Grill till the cheese is bubbling and serve immediately. You could make all manner of complicated cheese sauces and use every pot, sieve and whisk in the kitchen, but I don’t think they come much better than those made by simply melting soft cheese in warm cream. OK, I have seasoned it with thyme and a little black pepper, but this is nevertheless a fine cheese sauce for spooning over soft, golden baked onions. Serves 4onions 8 medium bay leaves 3black peppercorns 12olive oil 3 tbspbutter 60gthyme 8 sprigsdouble cream 250mltaleggio 200g Bring a large, deep pan of water to the boil. Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. Peel the onions, keeping them whole. Add the bay leaves and peppercorns to the boiling water, then lower in the peeled onions. Leave them at a brisk simmer for about 30 minutes, until they are soft and yielding. Lift out the softened onions with a draining spoon and place them in a baking dish. Pour a little olive oil over the onions, add the butter, the leaves from half of the thyme sprigs and a little black pepper, then bake for about 40 minutes, basting once or twice as they cook. Warm the double cream in a small saucepan over a low heat. Cut the taleggio into small pieces, then leave to melt, without stirring, in the cream, adding the remaining sprigs of thyme. Serve two onions per person together with some of the taleggio thyme sauce. I like the informality of a free-form tart, baked without the restriction of a tart tin. It only works when the filling is firm rather than custard based, as in this case, where sautéed swede is layered with gruyere and bacon. Serves 6For the pastryplain flour 200grye or wholemeal flour 100gbutter 150gsalt a pinchthyme leaves 1 tbsp For the fillingswede 450gsmoked streaky bacon 250golive oil 4 tbspgruyere 250g To make the pastry, put all the flour in a large bowl, add the butter in small pieces and the salt, then rub the butter and flour together with your fingertips until you have a breadcrumb-like consistency. Introduce enough water to produce a soft, rollable dough. Turn out onto a floured work surface, pat into a ball, flatten the top then wrap in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes. For the filling, peel the swede, cut in half lengthways and then each half into quarters. Cut each piece into thin slices. Chop the bacon into roughly 3cm x 3cm squares, removing the rind as you go. Pour two tablespoons of the oil into a frying pan, add the bacon and cook till lightly crisp before removing to kitchen paper to drain. Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. Place an upturned baking sheet or pizza stone in the oven to heat up. Cook the pieces of swede in the bacon fat, turning them as they brighten and soften, adding a little more oil as necessary. Grate the gruyere into a large bowl, then add the bacon and swede. Season generously with black pepper. On the floured board, roll the pastry out into a large, rough-edged circle approximately 30cm in diameter, and transfer to a parchment-lined or flour-dusted baking sheet. Pile the filling in the centre of the pastry, leaving a wide gap of bare pastry around the edge. Fold the edges of the pastry over the filling leaving the middle open. Brush the edges of the pastry with beaten egg then place the whole baking sheet on top of the hot sheet or stone in the oven. Cook for 25 minutes till the pastry is pale gold and the filling has crisped on top. Leave to settle for 10 minutes before slicing. A cold winter’s afternoon, almost dusk, is the time I need a slice of malt loaf. Cut thick and buttered, it is deliciously nostalgic. It occurred to me that the basic loaf could be embellished with seeds and more dried fruits, to give a treacly, almost cake-like bread suitable for eating with cheese, in the way fruit cake can be eaten with cheddar. Makes 1 loafmalt extract 150glight muscovado sugar 100gblack treacle 2 tbspplain flour 250gbaking powder 1 tspsalt a pinchrolled oats 50gprunes 100g, stoned weight eggs 2black tea 125mlsultanas or raisins 100gpumpkin seeds 5 tbsplinseeds 4 tbsp To finishmalt extract a little more pumpkin seeds 1 tbsplinseeds 1 tbspfull-flavoured blue cheese to serve You will need a deep, rectangular cake tin measuring 20cm x 9cm lined with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 160C/gas mark 3. Gently warm the malt extract, muscovado sugar and black treacle in a small saucepan, without stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and oats in a large mixing bowl. Cut the prunes into small pieces and stir them in. Make the tea. Break the eggs into a small bowl, beat lightly with a fork. Pour the warm malt and sugar mixture into the flour together with the tea and the beaten eggs. Then fold the sultanas, pumpkin seeds and linseeds into the batter. Scoop the mixture, which will be soft and runny, like a gingerbread batter, into the lined cake tin. Bake for 60-75 minutes until risen and lightly springy. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin. While the cake cools, brush the surface with a little more malt extract and sprinkle with the extra pumpkin seeds and linseeds. Leave to thoroughly cool before slicing and serving with blue cheese. One of the joys of living near an Italian deli is the almost year-round supply of panettone. I adore its soft vanilla scent and the jewels of candied peel. Good though it is on its own, I like the soft, open-textured loaf spread with a mixture of ricotta and chopped candied fruits, of which there are still a few left from Christmas. A little melted chocolate adds a certain decadence that we deserve on a grey January afternoon. Serves 4crystalised or candied fruit 250gdouble cream 250mlricotta 125gicing sugar 2 tbspdark chocolate 50gpanettone 4 thick wedges Roughly chop the crystalised fruits – I prefer the pieces quite small, no bigger than ½cm. Put the cream in a mixing bowl and beat till thick. Stop beating while it is still soft, like Mr Whippy ice-cream, long before it is thick enough to stand in peaks. Gently fold the ricotta and then the icing sugar into the whipped cream. Scatter over the chopped fruit and lightly fold in. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in a small bowl suspended over simmering water. Toast the wedges of panettone, place a generous mound of the ricotta cream on each of four plates together a piece of toasted panettone, then spoon a little of the melted chocolate over the cream. It should set on contact.John Dalyop Dangyang hid in the toilet while the gunmen set fire to his house. As it burned down around him, he soaked his underwear in the toilet water to bind around his face against the smoke. He was trapped for seven hours before police came and broke the wall down. Two months later, homeless and traumatised, he was invited to meet the leaders of the group he blamed for his attempted murder. On the other side of the table was Idris Gidado, a powerful leader of Fulani herdsmen, the nomadic cowboys who have trodden the Sahelian countryside for centuries. At the dialogue, something extraordinary happened. After the two sides had had it out, Dangyang offered a rare commodity in this bitter feud: forgiveness. News doesn't always have to be bad – indeed, the relentless focus on confrontation, disaster, antagonism and blame risks convincing the public that the world is hopeless and there is nothing we can do. This series is an antidote, an attempt to show that there is plenty of hope, as our journalists scour the planet looking for pioneers, trailblazers, best practice, unsung heroes, ideas that work, ideas that might and innovations whose time might have come. Readers can recommend other projects, people and progress that we should report on by contacting us at theupside@theguardian.com Attacks on cattle herders by farmers and vice versa may seem trifling alongside the problems of poverty, terrorism, corruption and climate change facing Africa. But a recent escalation in this centuries-old deadly conflict is causing massive social upheaval across west Africa. In Nigeria’s middle belt, it has claimed nearly 4,000 lives in the past three years – more, according to some tallies – than the deadly Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east. Both groups need land, but for very different reasons. Fulani herding families are always on the move, looking for food and water for their animals; they cannot and do not want to own the vast landscapes they pass through every year. For farmers, who live and work in one place, land ownership is essential. As families grow and grazing lands turn to fields of rice, ancient livestock migration routes close up and herders’ cattle trample farmers’ fields. Farmers kill the cattle, herdsmen take revenge; the reprisals go back and forth. Ethnicity, religion and political affiliation play into the divisions. Some of the suggestions to solve the crisis include fencing off fields, drilling more boreholes so cattle and humans do not have to share water, microchipping cattle to prevent rustling and mapping traditional cattle grazing routes. Cattle ranching is a more drastic route. It would necessitate a complete change in the nomadic Fulanis’ way of life, and one that requires specific expertise, expensive animal feed, access to enough water, and – that increasingly rare commodity – land. It would also mean the end of an ancient culture. Adamu Ibrahim’s family were pioneers. His father sold cows to buy land in the 1980s. These days, he owns around 10,000 cattle and is a millionaire (though you wouldn’t know it from his well-worn sandals and plain robe) “I was so upset,” Ibrahim said. But now, with their former grazing lands off limits, his father’s foresight is obvious. “If our dad hadn’t done that, where would we be now?” The piece of land he bought is a safe place for the family to retreat to, but it has nowhere near enough grazing for their herds, and so the Ibrahims are thinking of taking their father’s approach even further. “We’re thinking of sending our children to school and selling some cows to buy more land,” he said. Not everyone can afford to buy land, and not every herder is ready to give up their way of life. In the meantime, the main approach for those trying to stop the killing is rather less complex: talking. Defusing tension has always required that herders and farmers build relationships, but the mistrust that the constant attacks have engendered in the past few years has made this extremely difficult. “It’s more about managing the conflict than solving it,” said Tog Gang, of Mercy Corps, a humanitarian organisation working to create peace in central Nigeria by organising meetings like the one Dangyang was persuaded to attend, to meet the men he held responsible for trying to kill him. At their meeting place, a hotel on neutral ground in Plateau state, the men and women began to take off their dark glasses, put down their mobiles, and talk. They discussed the theft of huge herds, sometimes with the involvement of outside criminals, the slaughter of women, children and older people, the recent abundance of guns, the problems of unemployment and drug abuse among the young and the lack of intermarriage between communities. Dangyang, an influential leader in the Berom community, often used to meet and talk with the herdsmen before the attack. Now, surrounded by those he considers his enemies, he stared at the table with a pronounced frown, fiddling with a toothpick. Gidado got up to speak. “We should learn to forgive each other. We have all suffered enough and can’t move forward. We need to put an end to this,” he said in Hausa. But then he began to blame the Beroms for the whole conflict. “You can’t discipline your children,” he said. A Berom leader got up and threw the blame back. “Whenever someone steals or kills a cow, you respond by killing a person.” Dangyang rose to his feet. He told the group how it had felt to be almost burned alive, and the indignity of losing everything. Then his tone suddenly changed. He said: “I forgive the people who did this to me.” Readiness to forgive is something Saleh Momale, the development geographer who was leading the dialogue, has often seen in his peace-building work between herder and farmer communities. “This is typical Nigerians. People forgive and forget very easily,” he said. “What is difficult to resolve is political malice and mismanagement.” Nigeria’s security forces are slow to respond to calls for help, so communities arm and defend themselves. President Muhammadu Buhari’s critics say that because he is an ethnic Fulani, he turns a blind eye to his marauding kinsmen, and with Nigeria’s presidential election looming in February, tensions are even higher than usual. Mercy Corps spends time getting to know the various players intimately to ensure they are inviting the right people to their meetings. The point is not to get the participants to sign agreements they are unlikely to stick to, but to make them sit next to each other, eat together, talk honestly about the killings and the factors behind them, and, ideally, take each others’ phone numbers and plan future meetings. “Small interventions like this have done a lot of good,” said Momale. “This is the best hope – building these community institutions. I see hope in these guys. I don’t think we can count on our technocrats.” This article is part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world’s most stubborn problems. What else should we cover? Email us at theupside@theguardian.comThe Trump administration has stopped cooperating with UN investigators over potential human rights violations occurring inside America, in a move that delivers a major blow to vulnerable US communities and sends a dangerous signal to authoritarian regimes around the world. Quietly and unnoticed, the state department has ceased to respond to official complaints from UN special rapporteurs, the network of independent experts who act as global watchdogs on fundamental issues such as poverty, migration, freedom of expression and justice. There has been no response to any such formal query since 7 May 2018, with at least 13 requests going unanswered. Nor has the Trump administration extended any invitation to a UN monitor to visit the US to investigate human rights inside the country since the start of Donald Trump’s term two years ago in January 2017. Two UN experts have made official fact-finding visits under his watch – the special rapporteurs on extreme poverty and privacy – but both were invited initially by Barack Obama, who hosted 16 such visits during his presidency. The silent treatment being meted out to key players in the UN’s system for advancing human rights marks a stark break with US practice going back decades. Though some areas of American public life have consistently been ruled out of bounds to UN investigators – US prisons and the detention camp on Guantánamo Bay are deemed off-limits – Washington has in general welcomed monitors into the US as part of a wider commitment to upholding international norms. Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s human rights program, said the shift gave the impression the US was no longer serious about honoring its own human rights obligations. The ripple effect around the world would be dire. “They are sending a very dangerous message to other countries: that if you don’t cooperate with UN experts they will just go away. That’s a serious setback to the system created after World War II to ensure that domestic human rights violations could no longer be seen as an internal matter,” Dakwar said. Among the formal approaches that have failed to receive a response from the US over the past several months are queries about family separation of Central Americans  at the US border with Mexico, death threats against a transgender activist in Seattle and allegations of anti-gay bias in the sentencing to death of a prisoner in South Dakota. The new breach with international experts comes at a perilous moment for the US, both externally and within its own borders. Externally, Trump has forged an increasingly unilateral path on foreign policy: in June he shocked the world by pulling the US out of the UN human rights council, complaining it was a “cesspool of political bias”, and he has caused further consternation by siding with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, despite evidence linking Prince Mohammed to the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Domestically, Trump has run roughshod over the constitutional rights of asylum seekers at the US border, attempted to deny the legal existence of transgender people and introduced tax cuts that have greatly exacerbated income inequality in a country in which 40 million people live in poverty, among many other controversies. The timing of the break in relations with UN investigators coincides with the publication in June of the official findings of Philip Alston’s visit to the US to research poverty. As UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Alston castigated the Trump administration for aggravating levels of inequality that were already the most glaring in the western world. Alston’s robust criticism was received badly by Nikki Haley, then US ambassador, who accused him of biased reporting. She hinted that the administration was minded to turn its back on international accountability by saying it was “patently ridiculous” that the UN should focus on America’s internal human rights standards when it could be looking into countries like Burundi. It is not known whether the decision to sever cooperation with the UN monitors was directly related to the spat over Alston’s report. But emails seen by the Guardian involving top US state department officials in Geneva show that by July they were rebuffing contact with international agencies on grounds that they were “considering how best to engage with special procedures”, the blanket term for the network of UN special rapporteurs. In a statement to the Guardian, the state department declined to explain why it was no longer responding to UN experts or to say whether non-cooperation was now permanent policy. A spokesman said the US remained “deeply committed to the promotion and defense of human rights around the globe”, but pointedly omitted any reference to US compliance domestically. Similarly, the spokesman expressed “strong support” for UN special rapporteurs, but only in the context of their investigations into other countries. The US backs those mandates “that have proven effective in illuminating the most grave human rights environments, including in Iran and DPRK [North Korea]”, he said. Paradoxically, the Trump administration’s decision to shun the UN’s independent watchdogs places the US among a tiny minority of uncooperative states. There are very few countries that resist international oversight from UN special rapporteurs – one of them is North Korea. Individual UN experts expressed dismay at the US cold shoulder they are now receiving. Alston said the move would set “the most unfortunate precedent as the US has always tried to press other countries to be accountable. This sends a message that you can opt out of routine scrutiny if you don’t like what is being said about your record on human rights.” Felipe González Morales, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, has twice approached the US government requesting a formal visit to inspect how the country is handling immigration including the crisis at the Mexican border – once in March and then in July. He has yet to receive a reply. “In the absence of an official visit, we cannot publish a country report to be presented to the UN human rights council,” he said. The UN expert on adequate housing, Leilani Farha, told the Guardian that she was concerned about the silence emanating from the US state department. Having been appointed to the post in 2014, she made five official complaints to the Obama administration and in each case received “timely, thoughtful and constructive responses, even if we continued to disagree”. Farha expressed unease at the new lack of engagement at a time when so many human rights problems were cropping up in the US, including a homelessness crisis in many cities. “This suggests the US has abandoned even the most rudimentary forms of human rights accountability, and a whittling away of access to justice for those in the US whose human rights may have been violated,” Farha said. “It also demonstrates a rather inappropriate arrogance, at a time when human rights in the US are particularly fragile.” The US government will not be able to avoid international scrutiny entirely. In 2020 it will face a routine “universal periodic review” undertaken by the human rights council – an obligation Trump cannot escape despite having withdrawn US membership.Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has signed a decree making it easier for citizens to keep a firearm at home in a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates and a record 63,880 intentional violent deaths a year. The move was criticised by public security experts and lauded by his supporters. “It is a gateway to violence and terrible news for public security,” said Renato Lima, president of the Brazilian Public Security Forum, a non-government body that co-produces the annual Violence Atlas of murder rates. At a ceremony in Brasília, Bolsonaro said the decree had been drafted “so that good citizens can at this first moment have peace inside their homes.” More measures could follow, he said. Sgt Anderson Valentim, a Rio police officer, said he supported the measure. “I prefer to have a good citizen armed than an armed bum,” he said. Freeing up gun ownership was a key campaign promise for Bolsonaro, who campaigned to victory on a tough, anti-crime platform and whose supporters imitate his finger pistol campaign gesture. Rules were tightened in Brazil following a 2003 decree and subsequent national amnesty where thousands of guns were handed in for destruction. “Mission accomplished, now it’s not just bandits who can have weapons in Brazil,” tweeted businessman Luciano Hang, a prominent Bolsonaro supporter, to his 166,000 followers. The new decree makes it easier for Brazilians to keep weapons at home, waiving the requirement for an interview with a federal police officer to demonstrate the need for a firearm at home. It also increases gun licences’ validity from five years to 10. Instead, people living in rural areas and in states where the 2016 homicide rate was more than 10 deaths per 100,000 – as was the case for every single state in Brazil – can apply to keep weapons at home. If there are children or anyone with mental deficiency living in the home, citizens applying to possess weapons need to declare they have a safe. Bolsonaro is “letting everyone who wants to have a weapon at home have one independently of the need”, said Lima. Legal ownership of weapons has soared over the last decade in Brazil. In 2007, 3,900 new weapons were registered by federal police in Brazil. Ten years later that had risen to 33,000, according to official data obtained by Sou da Paz (I’m From Peace), a São Paulo-based non-profit group. Sgt Elisandro Lotin, head of a national association of non-commissioned police officers, said the decree would increase deaths in domestic arguments, burglaries and after disputes in bars. He noted that about 400 police officers are killed each year, many of whom were armed. “If having a weapon was protection, we wouldn’t have these police being killed,” he said.Fake editions of the Washington Post with a large headline announcing Donald Trump’s departure from the White House were passed around Washington DC early Wednesday morning by a group of activists. The paper, which was printed on a broadsheet eerily similar to the real Washington Post, was dated 1 May 2019 and included a series of anti-Trump and women empowerment stories. The stories and a PDF of the spoof newspaper were also published on a website that imitated the Washington Post’s homepage. .@washingtonpost you might want to deal with the lady handing out fake copies of the Post outside Union Station. I tried to explain why this is problematic but she wasn’t having it. pic.twitter.com/pjohcCFSx7 “Trickster activist collective” the Yes Men revealed they were the organization behind the prank newspaper later Wednesday following initial confusion on who was behind the paper. MoveOn, a liberal activist group, was initially thought to be behind the fake papers, but the group denied involvement. “While we love the headline, we didn’t produce today’s satirical Washington Post,” the group wrote on Twitter. Women’s group Code Pink was also thought to be behind the distributions. The Yes Men have conducted similar stunts before, passing out a satirical edition of the New York Times in 2008 with the headline “Iraq War Ends” and a similar fake edition of the New York Post in 2009 about climate change around New York City. While Washington Post journalists have been reporting on the story, it is unclear whether it will take action against the group. The newspaper’s public relations department tweeted: “There are fake print editions of The Washington Post being distributed around downtown DC, and we are aware of a website attempting to mimic The Post’s. They are not Post products, and we are looking into this.” Actual #FakeNews being spread around D.C. today. People handing out these fake @washingtonpost papers justify it by pointing to the date on the papers. They say they’re allowed to dream. pic.twitter.com/xY0eyD98pl The newspaper’s public relations team did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. Long-time grassroots organizer LA Kauffman told the Guardian that she and fellow activist Onnesha Roychoudhuri directed the creation of the spoof newspaper. The idea sprouted from meetings and conversations with the Yes Men that began in spring 2018. “It was designed as a creative intervention to help spread hope and joy,” Kauffman said. “The element of surprise was important for that goal.” While under all-female fictional bylines, the paper’s stories are actually excerpts of writings from authors and activists like George Lakey and Mark and Paul Engler, Kauffman said, who gave “enthusiastic permission” to the group to use their work. Twelve people helped with the design and printing of the newspaper, while about 25 people distributed printed papers in DC, Kauffman said. Andy Bichlbaum, cofounder of the Yes Men, told Washington Post reporters that printing 25,000 papers cost $40,000, most of which was raised from the group’s mailing list. Kauffman, who spent three hours helping to distribute the paper herself, said that there was a “lot of laughter, a lot of smiles” from those who were handed a copy. At least two people who identified themselves as White House staffers said they would bring the paper into the White House with them, Kauffman added. Distributing actual fake newspapers during a time when the president calls media outlets like the Washington Post “fake news” may be a sensitive form of activism, but Kauffman said Trump’s comments on the media did not deter them. “The fact that (Trump) has a steady drumbeat of attacks on fake news should not keep us from dreaming and imagining a different future, and using a vehicle of a newspaper to communicate that,” Kauffman said. “It is dreaming, it is not deception.”Karl Lagerfeld was absent from Chanel’s haute couture shows in Paris, fuelling speculation over the 85-year-old designer’s health. Shortly before 11am on Tuesday, when the first of the two shows had ended without an appearance from Lagerfeld, an announcement was made that he was expected at the noon show, but this proved not to be the case. “Mr Lagerfeld, artistic director of Chanel, who was feeling tired, asked Virginie Viard, director of the creative studio of the house, to represent him,” said a statement after the second show. For the past year, Lagerfeld has made most of his catwalk appearances jointly with Viard, prompting talk of a succession. This was the first occasion on which Lagerfeld, who was well enough to travel to New York where he appeared on stage after a show in December, has missed a catwalk bow. Even by the blockbuster standards of a Chanel show, this was a dramatic morning in Paris. Not content with creating a summer garden in January for the interior of the show, Lagerfeld and his team had dialled up the contrast by organising a picturesque snowfall to descend with perfect timing outside, carpeting the steps of the Grand Palais in white, heightening the impact of the summery oasis built inside. Like a Marvel blockbuster, Chanel combines creativity with technical brilliance to make the impossible become possible. There was a party dress on this catwalk embroidered in real flowers preserved in resin to last forever. (The price tag of a dress such is this simply does not exist, although a six figure bill would follow.) The blue sky of the trompe l’oeil cyclorama that transformed the Grand Palais into an Italianate villa was painted, but the orange trees dotted around the swimming pool were the real thing; rented from nurseries in the countryside outside Paris, they will return to their original state after the show, like Cinderella’s carriage turning back into a pumpkin.The Villa Chanel, as it was called on invitations, was an opulent setting based on La Vigie, a Monte Carlo house at which Lagerfeld summered in the 1980s. Not that these were clothes much suited for lazing on sunloungers – the show opened with a series of pale tweed suits with long pencil skirts. The height of the models emphasised by piled-up beehives, the silhouette was as elegant and imposing as the cypress trees lining the pool. After a detour into Jay Gatsby’s West Egg mansion via feathered boleros and daisy-strewn gowns, the show wound its way into a 1950s mood. The boleros were replaced by cropped leather jackets, the feathers by Pink Lady satins. Lace dresses in the classic Corolla shape of 1950s couture, with a minimal corseted bustier and a full, slightly tulip-shaped skirt were stitched from lace so airy and light that the models seemed to float along the catwalk. The bridal outfit, which traditionally closes every haute couture show, was a sequinned swimsuit with a sweeping veil attached to an embroidered swimcap. Lagerfeld, who began his career as an assistant to Pierre Balmain in 1955, joined Chanel in 1983. In his first season, he was reported to be “working 16 hours a day and delighted to do it”. In a record-breaking 36 years at the house, he has succeeded in making Coco Chanel an even more famous and more central character in the story of fashion than she was during her lifetime. Chanel has two upcoming catwalk shows: one during the ready-to-wear collections in early March and another on 3 May. All eyes will be on who takes the end bow.Edinburgh remain on course for their first Champions Cup quarter-final since 2012, beating Toulon 28-17 to become only the third team to win at Stade Felix Mayol in the competition. Richard Cockerill’s side hit back after conceding a try in the second minute of the game and dominated territory and possession throughout to make it four wins in a row and set up a winner-takes-all encounter in the Scottish capital with Montpellier. Cockerill had challenged his players to make a piece of history by becoming the first Scottish team to win at Stade Mayol and a stunning second-half display earned them only their third victory on French soil in 18 games. Scarlets avenged their Pool 4 defeat at Welford Road earlier in the season with a convincing 33-10 victory over Leicester at Parc-y-Scarlets. With both sides already out of the competition, Leicester chose to field a weakened team with no sign of George Ford, Jonny May and Manu Tuilagi in their lineup and they were made to pay as the hosts ran in five tries. The prop Rob Evans scored two of them, Ken Owens, Steff Evans and Johnny McNicholl the others with Dan Jones adding four conversions. Will Evans and Mike Fitzgerald scored consolation tries for Leicester. Newcastle, struggling at the foot of the Premiership, made a meek exit from Europe with a Champions Cup defeat at Montpellier, the French side hammering the Falcons 45-8. Jacob Stockdale gave Eddie Jones another reminder of the danger he will pose to England next month with two more tries in Ulster’s pulsating 26-22 win over Racing 92 in Belfast. The Ireland wing scored in each half, his second a memorable solo effort.Marks & Spencer Oat Drink1l, £1.55, marksandspencer.comA slightly creamy colour. There’s very little smell. My fear always with these types of milks is that they’re bland and this is not. I have a very sweet tooth and this is just right. There’s enough oat in there to keep me happy. ★★★★ Innocent Oat Dairy Free750ml, £1.49, innocentdrinks.co.ukI think this is the oatiest. Is there such a word? It lacks a sweetness. There’s a slight grittiness … it could be that it’s got more oats in it ... which could be a good thing.★★★ Provame Organic Oat Drink1l, £1.89, ocado.comA bit boring. It’s not quite as oaty as I would like. There seems to be something else … a flavour that I can’t quite describe. It’s quite creamy. Average.★★★ Oatly Oat Drink Semi1l, £1.80, oatly.comThis is real, isn’t it? You’re setting me up! I don’t know what real milk tastes like but this tastes creamy to me. I can’t taste the oat… it’s is overwhelmed by the creaminess.★★ Rebel Kitchen Original Dairy Free Organic Coconut Yogurt400g, £4.49, ocado.comThis one’s not bad actually … It’s light, I can taste coconut, and there’s enough sweetness in there for me.★★★★ The Coconut Collaborative Dairy Free Natural Coconut Yogurt Alternative350g, £2.75, coconutco.co.ukThis one is not as light as some, but it’s filling … thicker. There is an OK hit of coconut.★★★ Pudology Dairy Free Natural Coconut Yogurt 350g, £3.55, ocado.comThis is the runniest yogurt of the four. And I would like to taste more coconut in it.★★ CO YO Organic Natural Dairy Free Coconut Milk Yogurt Alternative400g, £4.99, coyo.comThis has a thick consistency. But the coconut has not hit me … I want to taste coconut! It’s just not coconutty enough.★★  Naturli Vegan Spreadable225g, £1.80, sainsburys.comIt’s spreadable and on its own more edible … there is the poet in me coming out now. I like this one … really light and melty. ★★★ Tesco Light Olive Spread500g, 95p, tesco.comThis is so alien to me. It’s not particularly salty … it disappears on my tongue. But I don’t really taste anything. ★★ Naturli Vegan Block200g, £2, sainsburys.comI guess I could see myself putting this in a cake, but I can’t see myself eating it on bread. I don’t want to taste it too much.★★ Pure Dairy Free Sunflower Spread500g, £1.50, purefreefrom.co.ukI don’t want to be too harsh because it probably does a really good job in cakes and stuff, but if someone was going to give me that on bread, I would say don’t bother.★  Pip & Nut Smooth Almond Butter225g, £4.20, pipandnut.comMmmmmmmm … I could just sit and eat this. It’s nutty, it’s got the right texture … it feels very homemade in a good way. ★★★★★ Meridian Smooth Almond Butter170g, £3.29, ocado.comIt tastes almost chocolatey? Maybe it has a hazelnutty taste and that’s why. It’s got a good consistency, it would spread well.★★★ Sainsbury’s 100% Smooth Almond Butter340g, £4.50, sainsburys.comIt’s rich. To me this one feels a bit less nutty than the others. It’s not that I don’t like it, though. I can taste almond and it has a good consistency. ★★★ Raw Health Organic Almond Butter170g, £6.19, ocado.comReminds me of the nut butters hippies would give me. I’ve got a feeling this is the healthiest one but it’s not as tasty.★★  Asda Free From Mature Cheddar Alternative200g, £2, asda.com I don’t really know what cheese tastes like – I was vegan at 13 – but I like this the most. Smells cheesy to me … nice texture.★★★★ Tesco Free From Mature Cheddar Alternative200g, £2.25, tesco.comNot bad. It’s chewable. It’s probably, from the descriptions I’ve heard, a good imitation of cheese. It doesn’t taste particularly salty – there’s a flavouring I can’t quite pinpoint. ★★★ Violife Non-Dairy Cheese Alternative200g, £2.30, ocado.comWhen I first put it into my mouth, it tasted plastic, but when I chew into it, it’s not too bad … I could imagine this melted on toast.★★★ Morrisons Vegan Cheddar200g, £2.25, morrisons.comI don’t like the way it looks that much, I don’t like the way it cuts, it’s quite salty and there’s not much texture to it. It is just like … a block of something.★★  Eat Your Hat Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa91g, £3.95, eatyourhat.comThis one is bitter, but not too bitter. It doesn’t cling to my teeth. Quite fruity and the sweetness is just about right. Smooth.★★★★ Marks & Spencer Plain Chocolate80g, £1.50, marksandspencer.comI like that … mmm. Slightly bitter but in a nice way. Because of its bitterness, it’s not a type I would eat all of the time … it doesn’t feel too decadent. ★★★ Raw Halo Pure Dark Bar70g, £3.99, ocado.comThis one seems pretty average. Doesn’t taste sweet enough to me. It’s staying in my mouth, strong aftertaste.★★★ kAAKAO Original Chocolate40g, £3.59, ocado.comIt’s really clinging to my teeth! A bit bland. I probably would prefer something sweeter. It’s a bit boring.★★  This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Theresa May has sparked hopes among senior Labour figures that she is laying the groundwork to compromise on her Brexit deal after next week’s meaningful vote, following a flurry of contacts with union leaders and MPs in recent days. Conservative ministers were calling around Labour MPs on Thursday – including at least one member of the shadow cabinet – to gauge support for May’s deal if she beefs up pledges on workers’ rights. May spoke directly to Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary who is a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, and Tim Roache, the GMB general secretary. The calls – the first time she has spoken to either of the union leaders – were one demand made by a group of Labour MPs, including Gareth Snell and Caroline Flint, who met her in Downing Street earlier this week. The MPs pushed for fresh assurances on workers’ rights. One of those present said they were then given advice from officials to help them draw up an amendment to the meaningful vote motion – which the government has since said it would consider accepting. It is understood May opened her conversations with union leaders proffering the amendment as her “opening gambit”. No 10 described the calls as “constructive”. Allies of McCluskey said he would be keen to keep channels open with Downing Street; but there were raised eyebrows at the timing of the call and an assumption that the prime minister was using it to send a signal to the Labour leadership. Roache said: “I represent 620,000 working people and it’s about time their voices were heard. After nearly three years I’m glad the prime minister finally picked up the phone. As you would expect, I was very clear about GMB’s position – the deal on the table isn’t good enough and non-binding assurances on workers’ rights won’t cut it. “If the deal genuinely did the job for GMB members, our union would support it, but it doesn’t. It’s clear more time is required, we need to extend article 50 and ultimately give the final say on Brexit to the public.” In his September conference speech, Corbyn offered to support the prime minister’s deal if she toughened up workers’ rights and environmental standards and offered a permanent customs union. She has flatly rejected the idea of a customs union, and did so again on Wednesday at a public meeting with a cross-party group of dozens of MPs. But Downing Street has warned Brexiters who plan to reject May’s deal on Tuesday that there is probably a majority for a customs union in the House of Commons. Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, has said he believes parliament must decide the way forward if May’s deal is rejected on Tuesday. Starmer reacted angrily on Thursday, after Downing Street suggested there would be just 90 minutes of debate on whatever Plan B May brings back after next week’s vote. The prime minister’s spokesman told reporters at Thursday morning’s lobby briefing that No 10’s understanding of the Dominic Grieve amendment, which requires May to outline a plan B in three working days if she is defeated, was that only a limited debate would then be allowed. The spokesman said: “[In relation to] the motion that would follow from the Grieve amendment, there would only be 90 minutes of debate on the motion, is our understanding, and only one amendment could be selected.” MPs were quick to voice concern, with Yvette Cooper raising a point of order a few hours later in the Commons, asking the speaker, John Bercow, to clarify that the government could allow more time for any plan B Brexit debate if it so wished. Unusually, Julian Smith, the chief whip, intervened, to insist that no final decision had been made by the government on how to handle the plan B debate – and even claimed, despite the earlier on-the-record briefing by May’s spokesman, that “the information is not correct”. Starmer accused the prime minister of “seeking to shut down debate” and said Number 10 was “simply wrong”. The shadow cabinet discussed how they will approach next week’s historic vote and its aftermath at their meeting this week, but no firm decisions were taken – for example, about whether to back any amendment calling for a second referendum. “We need to wait and see what May comes back with,” said one shadow cabinet minister, adding that it was not inevitable a “crunch-point” on a second referendum would ever come, if the prime minister is willing to compromise. The Labour party chair, Ian Lavery, made a passionate intervention at the meeting, rejecting the idea of a fresh poll, two people present said. Lavery, shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon and Corbyn’s close ally Jon Trickett are the strongest opponents of supporting a second vote, fearing that it would alienate Leave voters. But the overwhelming majority of Labour’s members favour a referendum, putting the leadership under intense pressure to support one. Corbyn stepped up his call for his preferred solution of a general election to “break the deadlock” at Westminster, in a speech in Wakefield on Thursday, and conceded that Labour might support extending article 50, to allow it to negotiate its own Brexit deal. “Any political leader who wants to bring the country together cannot wish away the votes of 17 million who wanted to leave, any more than they can ignore the concerns of the 16 million who voted to remain,” he said. He said Labour’s own Brexit plan, which included negotiating a customs deal and what the party has described as a “strong single market relationship”, would bring both sides together and allow Labour to enact its manifesto promises. “The alternative plan that Labour has set out for a sensible Brexit deal that could win broad support is designed to enable us to fulfil those ambitions while respecting the democratic result of the referendum,” Corbyn said. MPs will continue discussing the Brexit deal on Friday, with the home secretary, Sajid Javid, opening the third day of debate. There will be two more days of debate next week, culminating in the vote on Tuesday evening.Felix Tshisekedi, the leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s main opposition party, has been declared the surprise winner of the 30 December presidential election in the vast central African country. The result, announced early on Thursday, means the first electoral transfer of power in 59 years of independence in the DRC. It will come as a shock to many observers who believed authorities would ensure that the government candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, would be the victor in the polls, the third since the end of a bloody civil war in 2002. Shadary was hand-picked by outgoing president Joseph Kabila to succeed him. In addition, pre-election polls had given outspoken opposition frontrunner Martin Fayulu, a respected former business executive, a healthy lead. The Democratic Republic of the Congo's sheer size, its political history and its myriad problems are all reasons why observers have followed its election so closely. DRC is a vast, resource-rich country, its population of 80 million spread over an area the size of western Europe. But it remains one of the poorest places in the world, racked by war and disease and with massive inequality. In the east, where scores of militia commanders battle for control of mines, an outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 300. Across the country, aid agencies estimate that 4.3 million people are displaced. It is still recovering from a civil war triggered by the fall of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, in which 4 million people died. Joseph Kabila has been in power as president since his father, the victor of that conflict, was shot dead in 2001. The country’s problems have been exacerbated by the refusal of Kabila to leave power after the end of his second mandate two years ago, which is why December’s much-delayed election was invested with so much hope and trepidation. DRC has never known a peaceful transition of power since its hasty independence from Belgium in 1960. Chaos at polling stations on the day of the vote and a block on internet connections and SMS services since have severely dampened hopes that the election would bring a measure of political stability. Barnabe Kikaya Bin Karubi, one of Kabila’s top advisers, said he accepted the loss on Thursday. “Of course we are not happy as our candidate [Shadary] lost, but the Congolese people have chosen and democracy has triumphed,” Kikaya told Reuters. Tshisekedi paid his respects to Kabila, whom he described as “an important partner … in democratic transition in our country”. Speaking to thousands of cheering supporters in the capital Kinshasa, Tshisekedi said he would be the president “of all Congolese”. Polls had put Fayulu on 47%, at least 20 points ahead of Tshisekedi. Vote tallies compiled by the DRC’s Catholic church found Fayulu clearly won the election, two diplomats told Reuters, raising the spectre of protests that many fear could lead to violence. Fayulu’s supporters feared Kabila would rig the vote in favour of his hand-picked candidate, or do a power-sharing deal with Tshisekedi, head of the DRC’s main opposition party. Fayulu immediately rejected the result, which he called an “electoral coup”. “Where did the extra seven million votes come from [for Tshisekedi’s victory]? In 2019, we refuse that the victory of the people be stolen once more,” he said. “These results have nothing to do with the truth at the ballot box,” he told Radio France International. Riot police were deployed outside the offices of the DRC’s election commission and elsewhere in the capital, Kinshasa. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said he “takes note” of the announcement and urged all parties to “refrain from violence and … to channel any electoral disputes through the established institutional mechanisms.” The opposition was weakened by internal arguments and the exclusion by the electoral commission of two political heavyweights: Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former warlord, and Moïse Katumbi, a popular tycoon. Tshisekedi’s father, Etienne, was a famous opposition leader under Mobutu. He died last year and his son has inherited his party, and with it a chance of winning power. Critics say Tshisekedi, 55, is unproven, inexperienced and lacks the charisma of his father. “His father was a man of the country. The son is very limited,” Valentin Mubake, a former secretary-general of Tshisekedi’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress told the Guardian last month. Already delayed by two years, the announcement of results was postponed by a further week to allow more time to overcome logistical challenges in a country of 80 million inhabitants spread over an area the size of western Europe with almost no paved roads. Kabila’s second electoral mandate expired in 2016 and he only reluctantly called new elections under pressure from regional powers. The constitution forbade him from standing again and critics claimed he hoped to rule through Shadary, who has no political base of his own. The Roman Catholic church is a powerful institution in this devout country, and in a joint declaration with a group of Protestant churches and election observer mission Symocel, the Catholic bishops’ conference called for calm and demanded that the DRC’s election board, CENI, publish “only results that come from the ballot box”. Domestic election observers say they witnessed serious irregularities on election day and during vote tallying, although a regional observer mission said the election went “relatively well”. Kabila, 47, has ruled since the 2001 assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, who overthrew long-serving dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. Tshisekedi will be the first leader to takes power via the ballot box in the DRC since prime minister Patrice Lumumba shortly after the DRC won its independence from Belgium in 1960. Lumumba was toppled in a coup and killed four months later. The DRC suffers from widespread corruption, continuing conflict, endemic disease, and some of the world’s highest levels of sexual violence and malnutrition. It is also rich in minerals, including those crucial to the world’s smartphones and electric cars.Theresa May will make one final appeal to the Commons to pass her Brexit deal, amid speculation among many Conservative MPs that the expected defeat could spark a cross-party plan or moves to oust the prime minister. May is to start her most crucial week as prime minister with a speech at a factory in Stoke-on-Trent, where more than two-thirds of people voted to leave the EU. Reiterating her recent pleas, May will tell MPs that voting down her proposals on Tuesday would destroy faith in politics, and could mean that Brexit does not happen. “I ask MPs to consider the consequences of their actions on the faith of the British people in our democracy,” she is due to say. “What if we found ourselves in a situation where parliament tried to take the UK out of the EU in opposition to a remain vote? People’s faith in the democratic process and their politicians would suffer catastrophic harm. We all have a duty to implement the result of the referendum. “There are some in Westminster who would wish to delay or even stop Brexit and who will use every device available to them to do so,” May will say in her speech. But with less than 48 hours to go before the vote, there were few signs of the shift in opinion May hoped for when she postponed the vote before Christmas. A series of Conservative MPs have said that, while the margin of defeat remained unclear, a loss appeared inevitable. “I don’t think the defeat will go into three figures – I’d expect between 50 and 100,” said one pro-Brexit MP who strongly supports May’s plan. “It depends in part how many Labour MPs are willing to vote for the deal.” It is understood three Labour MPs, Caroline Flint, Gareth Snell and Lisa Nandy, who ministers had hoped would support the plan after the government adopted their amendment on workers’ rights, will vote against it. Conservative backbencher Andrew Mitchell said nothing that had happened in recent days to change his mind, and the former chief whip said he was going to vote against May’s deal. “I think it creates more problems than it solves,” he said. A heavy defeat could jeopardise May’s position just a month after she won a no-confidence vote. One usually loyal MP said: “If the loss is large there will be some pressure on her to go. There is a sense she has reached the end of the road.” Another well-connected Tory MP said: “In parliament, the prime minister is basically there as the person who can deliver votes most of the time. If you can no longer do that on a sustained basis, it makes a mockery of the post. That doesn’t mean that she can’t carry on. What it does mean is the job becomes almost ceremonial.” MPs and cabinet sources said that, if May loses, she would be expected to make a statement to the nation saying that she will seek new concessions from Brussels before putting her revised plan back to parliament. While there is much speculation that she could try a different tack, such as seeking cross-party consensus for a softer Brexit, this has not been publicly acknowledged. On Sunday, Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay and transport secretary Chris Grayling both declined to discuss an alternative. “Let’s cross that bridge if and when it happens,” Grayling told Sky News. “Right now her focus, my focus, the government’s focus is on convincing people that actually this is the best thing to do.” Cabinet sources said that while some ministers, such as Amber Rudd and David Gauke, had urged May to consider a backup approach, little concrete work had been done. One source said: “The view is that there’s still a little bit of steam left in the PM’s deal. If someone is coming up with a brand new plan B, like Norway, then they’re doing it very quietly in a dark room.” MPs will next week attempt again to seize control of the process, with groups pushing for a Norway-style soft Brexit and a second referendum. One Conservative MP said the Norway plan – to keep the UK inside the EU’s single market – was gaining traction: “It is the only plan B with a measure of cross-party support. It would get you 80 or 90 Labour votes.” Separately, a cross-party group of MPs from the Lib Dems, Labour, Conservatives and SNP will on Monday publish two draft bills designed to pave the way for a new referendum. One of these would give voters the option of voting for the government’s deal or staying in the EU. Among those behind the plan is the Tory former attorney general Dominic Grieve, who was accused by some newspapers on Sunday of leading a coup against Brexit in alliance with the Commons Speaker, John Bercow. Grieve, whose amendment obliging May to respond to the defeat of her plan within three days was passed by MPs last week, told the Guardian the reports were “rubbish”, and had seen him receive death threats. “I can emphatically say it is totally untrue that I am in a conspiracy with the Speaker either to stop Brexit or to change the standing orders of the house,” he said.Carlos Ghosn could remain in detention for several months after prosecutors indicted him on two new charges of financial misconduct, days after the former Nissan chairman insisted he had been wrongly accused. Ghosn was charged with aggravated breach of trust and for understating his pay by 4.3 billion yen for three years through March 2018, the Tokyo district court said. He had already been charged for underreporting his earnings by around 5 billion yen ($46m million) between 2010-15. The third charge, of aggravated breach of trust, relates to allegations that he transferred 1.85 billion yen in personal investment losses to Nissan in 2008. Ghosn is also alleged to have used company funds to make unnecessary payments to a Saudi businessman. Ghosn has repeatedly denied the allegations. His lawyers said they would apply for their client to be released on bail, but conceded he was likely to remain in detention. The 64-year-old, who led Nissan from near-bankruptcy two decades ago and transformed it into one of the world’s most successful automakers, reportedly came down with a fever on Wednesday evening and was unable to undergo questioning, a day after he issued a public rebuttal of the allegations against him during a special court hearing. His wife, Carole Ghosn, said authorities in Japan were refusing to provide details about his condition or allow his family to talk to medical staff at a Tokyo detention centre, where he has been held for more than 50 days. “I recently learned that my husband is suffering from a high fever at the detention centre in Tokyo, but my information is limited to news reports as no one in his family has been allowed to contact him since 19 November,” she said in a statement from Paris. “We are fearful and very worried his recovery will be complicated while he continues to endure such harsh conditions and unfair treatment.” Reports on Friday said Ghosn was recovering. He is unlikely to be released on bail as long as he continues to proclaim his innocence, meaning he could remain in detention until his trial begins. No date has been set for the trial, but his head lawyer, Motonari Otsuru, said his client could have to wait at least six months before his case is heard in court. “Generally speaking, it’s extremely rare for a court to grant bail before a trial begins,” Otsuru told reporters. “That’s our main concern, and I think Mr Ghosn is very troubled by this.” Ghosn’s arrest, along with Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive who is alleged to have helped Ghosn underreport his salary, has cast doubt on the future of Nissan’s three-way alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi Motors. Kelly, who was released on bail on Christmas Day, has been charged with helping Ghosn underreport his pay, but not with aggravated breach of trust. He is reportedly receiving medical treatment in Japan for a chronic back problem. Nissan and Mitsubishi sacked Ghosn days after his arrest, but he has been kept on as head of Renault. On Thursday, the French carmaker said it had found no evidence of illegal or fraudulent payments to Ghosn over the past two years, adding that it was continuing its audit. Ghosn’s rapid fall from grace has captivated Japan, with more than 1,000 people queuing to secure one of the 14 seats in the public gallery at his special hearing on Tuesday. A gaunt-looking Ghosn, who was led into the courtroom in handcuffs and with a rope tied around his waist, spoke of his “genuine love and appreciation” for Nissan and insisted that he had acted “honourably, legally and with the knowledge and approval of the appropriate executives inside the company”. “I have always acted with integrity and have never been accused of any wrongdoing in my several-decade professional career,” he told a packed courtroom in his first public appearance since his arrest on 19 November. “I have been wrongly accused and unfairly detained based on meritless and unsubstantiated accusations.” The length of Ghosn’s detention has prompted criticism of Japan’s criminal justice system and the power of the country’s public prosecutors, who can rearrest suspects several times over different allegations and question them for up to eight hours a day without a lawyer present. Ghosn, who has complained about the cold and the detention centre’s rice-based diet, spends his free time reading but has reportedly been denied notepaper to write letters to his family. He was initially kept in a tiny cell and slept on a futon, but has since been moved to a bigger cell with a bed, according to his lawyers.Donald Tusk has made a thinly veiled call for the UK to stay in the EU, suggesting the prime minister’s historic loss in parliament left a deal looking “impossible”. As the scale of the defeat was announced, the president of the European council called for Theresa May to urgently clarify her next move. Brussels had expected the prime minister to lose the vote on the deal she had agreed with the EU, but the size of the majority against – 230 votes – meant there was little hope of the agreement being salvaged. Tusk tweeted: “If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?” May was expected to return to Brussels within days of the vote to consult with Tusk and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, but it is unclear now what those discussions would involve. In a statement, Juncker echoed Tusk’s remarks by urging the British government to “clarify its intentions as soon as possible” while reminding the British parliament that “time is almost up”. The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March. Juncker, in a defence of Brussels’ role in the negotiations, said the EU and its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, had shown “creativity and flexibility throughout” and that, in recent days, it had “demonstrated goodwill again by offering additional clarifications and reassurances”. “The risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom has increased with this evening’s vote,” Juncker said. “While we do not want this to happen, the European commission will continue its contingency work to help ensure the EU is fully prepared.” A senior EU official said that when May did return to Brussels, Juncker would simply ask her: “What’s next?” That call for clarity was matched by EU leaders, in their responses to the news from Westminster. In France, the president, Emmanuel Macron said the UK now had three options: a no-deal, which would be “scary for everybody”; seek to get an improved deal from the EU – to which he said “maybe we’ll make improvements on one or two things but I don’t really think so”; and finally an extension in order to “take more time to renegotiate something”, an option that he said “creates a great deal of uncertainty and worries”. Michael Roth, Germany’s EU affairs minister, tweeted in response to the vote: “Disaster. Too bad. But EU’s door remains open”. The Spanish government said it regretted “the negative result” but still hoped the deal would win approval, adding that a no-deal exit would be “catastrophic” for the UK. A statement from the office of the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, warned that a “disorderly Brexit is a bad outcome for everyone, not least in Northern Ireland”. “It is not too late to avoid this outcome and we call on the UK to set out how it proposes to resolve this impasse as a matter of urgency,” he said. Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said: “No-deal Brexit is a bad solution, both for the UK and the EU. Together with our partners in the EU we will respond to new British proposals.” Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s prime minister, called for the British government to find “solutions not problems”. “Now we need a fast and clear plan on how to proceed,” he said. From The Hague, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said: “Despite this setback, it does not mean we are in a no-deal situation. The next step is up to the UK.” Barnier was engaged in late night talks with MEPs after the vote, but sources said Brussels would wait until after the weekend, giving British MPs time to coalesce around a clear plan, before engaging in substantive talks. He told reporters: “Now it’s time for the UK to tell us the next steps. On our side we will remain united and determined to reach an agreement.” EU officials predicted the first step wiould be for MPs to tell May to request an extension of the two-year negotiating period, removing the cliff edge of 29 March and setting off a debate among the other 27 member states on the terms of a prolongation. Brussels has repeatedly insisted it would not renegotiate the 585-page withdrawal agreement and the political declaration on the future relationship. Last month the EU27 rejected a 2021 target for completing trade talks, a request May believed could break the parliamentary deadlock. Juncker reiterated in his statement that the deal was “a fair compromise and the best possible deal”. However, in a sign of growing anxiety at the prospect of the UK crashing out, earlier on Tuesday the head of the eurozone’s finance ministers, Mário Centeno, had said he believed the EU and Britain would talk further and adjust their positions to avoid a no-deal Brexit, as the latest data confirmed the 19-member bloc was moving towards a period of slower growth. “We can adjust our trajectory,” Centeno said. “We can open all the dossiers … We need to take informed decisions with total calm and avoid a no-deal exit. Practically anything is better than a no-deal exit.” Before the vote, Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, also hinted at the flexibility the EU would show in the final act of the Brexit talks. “If it goes wrong tonight, there could be further talks,” he said, while adding that he could not foresee “fundamental” changes. The European parliament’s Brexit coordinator said the British parliament had said “what it doesn’t want”, and asked MPs to tell the EU what it did want.The Trump administration may have separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border for up to a year before family separation was a publicly known practice, according to a stunning government review of the health department’s role in family separation. A report by the health department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) published on Thursday said officials at the health department estimated “thousands of separated children” were put in health department care before a court order in June 2018 ordered the reunification of 2,600 other children. “The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is unknown,” the report said. This report shows that not only did the US government probably separate thousands more children from their parents than previously thought, but it was separating families well before the policy was made public in April 2018. In the summer of 2017, one year before the general public knew mass family separations were taking place, officials at the health department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) observed a steep increase in the number of children referred to ORR care who had been separated from their parents or guardians by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to the report. Usually, children put in health department care have traveled to the border without a parent or guardian. The health department then works to place them in the home of a sponsor, usually a relative or someone close to their family. If a sponsor cannot be found, children are put in foster care. Occasionally, children would be separated from the adult who they traveled with but, the OIG report said: “Historically, these separations were rare and occurred because of circumstances such as the parent’s medical emergency or a determination that the parent was a threat to the child’s safety.” In response to the unusual increase in children whom the government separated from their families, officials began informally tracking separations using an Excel spreadsheet that was later processed into a database. This process was not formalized. This informal tracking revealed that in 2016, of all the children in ORR care, 0.3% had been separated from a parent or guardian. By August 2017, the proportion of separated children had risen to 3.6%, according to the report. “Thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017, before the accounting required by the court, and HHS has faced challenges in identifying separated children,” the report said. It was not until April 2018, however, that the Trump administration publicly announced it was changing the law to make more family separations possible. That month, the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced the “zero-tolerance” policy that would allow parents to be held in immigration detention while children were put in health department custody. Advocacy groups had been warning for months that family separations were already taking place, but widespread public outcry against the practice did not emerge until after Sessions announced the policy. Facing significant public pressure, the Trump administration on 20 June ended the family separation policy it had created. A week later, a federal judge ordered 2,600 children to be reunited with their parents in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney on the family separation case, said the civil rights group would return to court in response to the OIG report. “This policy was a cruel disaster from the start,” Gelernt said. “This report reaffirms that the government never had a clear picture of how many children it ripped from their parents.” There had not been a centralized system in place to identify, track or connect separated families, according to the report, but the government had to create a process to identify quickly and reunite families in compliance with the court order. In the OIG report, the health department said in the five months following the order, it was still identifying children who should have been considered separated but were not being clearly tracked in government systems. So far, 2,737 separated children have been identified. Those children are separate from the new estimate included in Thursday’s report, which said: “The Court did not require HHS to determine the number, identity, or status of an estimated thousands of children whom DHS separated during an influx that began in 2017.” The health department’s Administration of Children and Families (ACF), which oversaw care of separated children, emphasized its role in family separation was the care of children, not in enforcement of separations. Lynn Johnson, assistant secretary for ACF, wrote in a letter included with the report that the agency has also introduced new processes to track separated children. Despite the OIG’s findings, warnings from child advocates and public outcry, the Trump administration has not ruled out bringing family separation back in a different form. In November, Trump’s nominee to run US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), Ronald Vitiello, declined to rule out the possibility that the US could again separate families at the border. And the Trump administration has reportedly weighed family separation alternatives including a “binary choice” plan that would give parents the option to separate voluntarily or be detained together for years.The founder of a movement to unite Germany’s left wing has said it will take to the streets in 2019, inspired by the gilet jaunes protests in France. Sahra Wagenknecht, who set up Aufstehen (Get Up) in September, said the French demonstrations encouraged her to believe it was possible to effect change without being a political party. She cited growing inequality in Germany and frustration over the government’s failure to adequately tackle it as a powerful motivating force for a protest movement. The public face of Aufstehen, which has almost 170,000 signed-up members, Wagenknecht said she admired Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) and the Jeremy Corbyn-supporting Momentum in the UK and that she was effectively modelling the movement on them. “We have big plans for next year, not least because we recognise when people go on to the streets to protest – especially those who have not had a political voice for many years who rediscover their voice by protesting – then political change can happen,” Wagenknecht said, speaking to the foreign press association in Berlin. “This is what we’re seeing in France right now.” Wagenknecht was quick to stress that she did not support violence, but said she was sympathetic to those who felt the need to use it to express their anger. “I think it’s completely wrong to reduce the yellow vest movement in France to violence,” she said. “Of course there are those ready for violence amongst the protesters, but the movement is much broader than that. “I’m clear that we don’t want any violence, but at the same time you have to recognise that it is a clear expression of pent-up anger. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere.” The Marxist politician, who has risen to prominence through the Die Linke (Left) party, did not say what form Aufstehen’s protests would take, but said: “We will be visible on the street and in the public eye in 2019.” Wagenknecht said Aufstehen, whose supporters include prominent German writers, political scientists, historians and actors, hoped to galvanise support from ordinary voters across the political spectrum and unite leftwing parties – particularly Die Linke and the Social Democrats (SPD), who are struggling in the polls, as well as the Green party – in a common front against the social problems dogging the whole of Europe. “We don’t intend to compete with these parties. We want a movement that contributes to bringing these parties on the left together and instigates a new social revival,” she said. She said the examples of France and the UK proved that initiating change outside the strictures of political parties had a better chance of success. “It is of importance to us to remain above party politics and I believe that for many people who are becoming involved with us, this is part of our charm, as well as of the movements in France and the UK – that they don’t have to fall in line within a rigid party structure.” Criticism of her initiative has been most vehement from within her own party, with many accusing her of risking its destruction. Die Linke was formed in 2007 after the merger of two parties, including the descendant party of the rulers of communist East Germany. Meanwhile, the SPD, amid fears for its own political survival, has accused Wagenknecht of being “on an ego trip”. Many have voiced suspicions that Wagenknecht wants to set up her own party, a claim she has repeatedly denied. Wagenknecht said it was harder in Germany than in France to persuade ordinary people to take their protests on to the streets. “France has a completely different protest culture to that of Germany,” she said. “Repeatedly, from the storming of the Bastille to farmer protests, there are examples of the French rising up against a fatal form of politics. But quite honestly, people in Germany, in particular those who do not feel represented by German politics, will realise that they are far more able to put pressure on the government if they go out and protest.” She said Aufstehen was being advised by activists at the heart of Momentum. Wagenknecht blamed “wage dumping” – keeping wages low using cheap labour – for triggering the most dissatisfaction with the EU and said it would lead to the bloc’s “further disintegration” if not tackled. She said the British economy was one that had arguably benefited most from cheap labour from eastern Europe, as well as from low corporation tax. That had led to a low-wage economy, which in turn encouraged Brexit. “Some of those who voted for Brexit did it out of a sense of social frustration … people working in former industrial areas where the already low wages have not risen, because unlike in Germany the companies have been able to depend on east European workers.” That experience had made it hard to “sell” the EU to many of its citizens, she said. “The poorer half simply doesn’t have access to the positive things in Europe. The freedom of movement, Erasmus, the possibility to find work in other countries – these are advantages that are only enjoyed by a small proportion of society.” Adding that she was watching developments in Britain closely, she said Brexit could be viewed as an opportunity for the country if whoever was in power used it as a chance to address the growing inequalities. “How Britain continues to develop will not be just to do with Brexit, but with who the decision-makers are,” she said. “I could imagine a Britain after Brexit under a Labour government as something very different in which the poor are not the losers. But that’s a question of organisation and where the priorities lie. “The question will be whether Britain continues as the Tories under Theresa May would like it, becoming once outside the EU a special tax oasis for companies, leading to yet more inequality and more poverty, or will advantage be taken of the freedom to really introduce a new, more social [caring] policy. I like to think that’s what Corbyn and Labour will do if they win an election.”Santi Cazorla’s first La Liga goals since 2012 stunned Real Madrid and stole struggling Villarreal a 2-2 draw at Estadio de la Cerámica. The former Arsenal midfielder struck twice – including an 82nd-minute equaliser – as Real slumped to an eighth league game without victory in 17 games this season, leaving them seven points adrift of the leaders, Barcelona. Cazorla has relaunched his injury-hit career back in Spain this season, returning to his homeland after a six-year stint with the Gunners that was cut short by a terrible run of injuries. And the 34-year-old found the net in Spanish top-flight action for the first time since scoring for Málaga in a 1-1 draw at Osasuna on 23 April, 2012, when he put Villarreal ahead after four minutes on Thursday night. Cazorla bent a wonderful shot into the bottom corner to ignite a game rescheduled due to Real’s participation in last month’s Club World Cup. But the European champions struck back three minutes later with a headed goal from Karim Benzema after a sweeping attacking move. Raphaël Varane gave the visitors the lead in the 20th minute with a header from a free-kick but Cazorla had the final say when he ghosted into the box undetected to nod home at the back post and give his side a deserved point in the new coach Luis García Plaza’s first home game in charge. Gareth Bale was withdrawn at half-time in another blow to Real, having appeared to struggle with a possible left calf complaint late in the first half. “It could be said the result was fair,” Real’s coach, Santiago Solari, said. “We chased the victory and had it in our hands. We wanted to kill the game off and they put us under a lot of pressure as they were at home and they badly needed the points. When Gareth came off we lost a bit of sharpness in attack, we still had the chance to score a couple but we needed to attack with more clarity.” Villarreal, who have reached the last 32 of the Europa League despite a dire domestic season, clawed their way out of the relegation zone to 17th in the standings, level on points with 18th-placed Athletic Bilbao. “This result will give us strength,” said García, who has taken two points from two games since succeeding the sacked Javi Calleja. “I imagine that every game from now on will be a battle, a war to survive, but hopefully we’ll come through it and this point gives us a big emotional boost.”Dublin boasts a rich variety of tours – literary pub crawls, Guinness brewery tastings, Trinity College walkabouts, splashing through the Liffey dressed as a viking – but the latest one has a bleak, contemporary theme: homelessness. A homelessness crisis in Ireland’s capital has prompted the launch of a walking tour, given by a formerly homeless guide, through an inner city of gritty streets and quiet desperation that tourists seldom see. “We just don’t have the properties for the number of people that are working,” said Derek McGuire, leading a recent Secret Street Tour through the Liberties, a historical blue-collar neighbourhood. “Homelessness could become socially acceptable, become the norm.” The 0.8-mile (1.3km) route includes areas where McGuire used to sleep rough for two years after losing his home in 2014, and passes five homeless hostels, with another six hostels nearby. The tour lasts 90 minutes and costs €10 (£8.90). McGuire’s commentary includes homeless tips on staying safe, stashing possessions and blending into crowds. He mixes anecdotes about shelters – the decent, the bad, the awful – with stories about the Liberties’ eras of brothels, a heroin epidemic and “four corners of hell”, a junction of four pubs notorious for fights. “Sleeping out in the city centre, that was my worst nightmare. I had to put on my Bear Grylls head,” said McGuire. “It was going to be about survival.” The tour, which started last month, is the latest evidence of a nationwide housing crisis that has inflated rents, nudged the homeless population towards 10,000 and created a political backlash. Thousands have marched through Dublin in recent months to demand rent control and more low-cost housing, and to accuse the government of being in the pockets of landlords, developers and “vulture funds”. Activists have occupied vacant properties, in some cases leading to violent confrontations with private security teams sent to evict them. The eviction of a family in County Roscommon last month triggered especially strong retaliation: about 20 masked vigilantes with baseball bats assaulted the security guards and arsonists firebombed two Dublin branches of KBC Bank, which had sent the guards to repossess the home. Many musicians and artists are finding Dublin unaffordable. Stephen James Smith, the city’s unofficial poet laureate, is couch-surfing and considering leaving the city. Homelessness-themed tours have sprung up in Manchester, London and other cities. A tour run by homeless people in Vienna inspired Tom Austin, a Trinity College graduate student, to bring the idea to Dublin. With co-founders Pierce Dargan and Gareth Downey, he obtained support from Dublin Simon Community, a non-profit organisation, and recruited McGuire to be the first guide, with hope that the scheme will expand with more guides covering other parts of the capital. McGuire, who spent 25 years working in the voluntary sector, became homeless after a relationship ended and a property crash left him unable to pay his mortgage. In early 2014 he packed a bag and headed to the airport – and stayed there for three weeks, posing as a traveller and snaffling restaurant leftovers. It was safe but demoralising: “My spirit was broken,” he said. McGuire returned to the city and slept rough, refusing to seek assistance: “I had far too much pride. I’d sooner starve than ask people for money.” He was ragged by the time Merchants Quay Ireland, a homeless charity, offered him the temporary, shared accommodation that he now calls home. Guiding has restored McGuire’s sense of identity. “I see this as an opportunity to tell my story,” he said. He said he expected homelessness to continue rising. Too few new homes are being built across Ireland. And a tech-fuelled boom is bringing hipster cafes and other signs of rent-fuelling gentrification to the Liberties, which is within walking distance of Facebook and Google offices.The UK’s first dog food made from insects goes on sale this week, which its manufacturers say could help reduce the environmental damage caused by the massive volumes of meat routinely fed to dogs and cats. Globally, pets consume about 20% of the world’s meat and fish, a number set to rise with the trend for consumers to feed them human-grade meat. Pet food is also estimated to be responsible for a quarter of the environmental impacts of meat production in terms of use of land, water, fossil fuels, phosphates and pesticides. Insects provide a relatively high 40% of the protein in the new product from startup Yora. They are dried and ground with oats, potato and “natural botanicals”. The current version comes in the form of dried pellets, although Yora says it hopes to launch a “wet” version later in the year. Environmental experts have long recommended insects as a relatively sustainable food source that could help end world hunger and reduce the damaging environmental impact of meat production. Insects are also very nutritious, containing essential proteins, fats, minerals and amino acids, and are easy for animals to digest. “Animals and humans have been eating insects since the dawn of time” said Yora founder Tom Neish. “We have trialled 29 recipes to find the perfect combination of great tasting ingredients and are very proud of the end result. Yora enables dog owners to take the lead in giving their dog a nutritious, tasty food while having a positive impact on the environment.” In November, Sainsbury’s became the first major UK grocer to stock edible crickets – barbecued crickets sold as snacks in small bags. In total, more than 1,000 insect species are eaten around the world but hardly feature in the diets of many rich nations. The insects in Yora’s dog food are the larvae of black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) which are reared by protein nutrient company Protix in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. They can turn vegetation that would otherwise be wasted into body mass quickly and sustainably. Other dog foods made from bugs have been launched in the USA and Germany, but with a lower insect content.First it sold books. Then it added gadgetry, groceries and chipper virtual assistants. But Amazon’s latest expansion will take many shoppers by surprise. Meet Amazon, aspiring military behemoth. In the none-to-distant future, US soldiers may rely on Amazon-run systems to trade intelligence, relay orders and call for help. Drone footage might be scoured for wanted men and women by Amazon software. Defense department quartermasters would use Amazon technology to move ammunition and supplies. For Jeff Bezos, it’s not a question of whether customers will mind his company’s defense ambitions, or of complaints raised by civil liberties advocates. As Amazon’s face and founder casts it, the issue is one of patriotism. “This is a great country and it does need to be defended,” Bezos said during an October WIRED magazine summit. “If big tech companies are going to turn their back on US Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble.” Now Amazon is the leading contender for a 10-year, $10bn project to accelerate the Pentagon’s move into cloud computing. The Pentagon has said the goal of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure – widely known by its Star Wars-styled acronym, Jedi – is to increase American “lethality” by replacing its antiquated, segmented IT systems. Amazon is widely regarded as the strongest contender for the Jedi contract, which is expected to be inked in early 2019, in part because its division Amazon Web Services already dominates American cloud computing. One 2017 estimate found AWS held more than half the worldwide cloud computing market. AWS hosts top secret data for the CIA, supports federal agencies from the justice department to Nasa, powers the national immigration case management system and stores hundreds of millions of identity documents. Jedi is expected to inject modern technology into a creaky system. An audit in November found that “systemic flaws” in defense department networks invite hacking, and that the department’s finance systems were so disorganized they could not be audited. Jedi is a first step toward a system that will handle tasks as diverse as frontline communications, medical records management and scheduling. The finished system will move petabytes of data between every continent except Antarctica. Service members at the “tactical edge” will be equipped with rugged devices enabling them to check into the cloud. Modular data centers will be deployed to forward bases. The Pentagon hopes those can operate in space. If Amazon wins the Jedi contract and another contract to open a government e-commerce portal, the company will “vault from being a bit player to becoming one of the 10 most-dominant federal contractors, with potential to become one of the largest in relatively short order”, said Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University. Amazon makes no apologies for moving aggressively into the public sector in this way. “We feel strongly that the defense, intelligence and national security communities deserve access to the best technology in the world and we are committed to supporting their critical missions of protecting our citizens and defending our country,” a spokesperson for the Seattle-based company said, responding to a request for comment from the Guardian. The proposition that Amazon should defend America can be seen as a logical extension of a mission Bezos laid down in his 1997 letter to shareholders. Amazon targets dysfunctional systems that aren’t serving customers well – from book distribution to home delivery to computer networking – and leads their reinvention. “We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers,” Bezos wrote. “We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages.” Bezos is not the first in his family in the defense sector. His formative influences included his grandfather Lawrence Preston Gise, who is usually described in press accounts as Bezos would’ve known him – a semi-retired rancher showing his grandson how to castrate bulls. Yet Gise also made his living as a defense researcher and manager during the early days of the cold war and ultimately ran the New Mexico office of the Atomic Energy Commission, which was in charge of America’s civilian and military nuclear programs until the 1970s. Big tech and the defense industry have been intertwined since the second world war, when military funding financed the development of the first all-digital computers, said Margaret O’Mara, a University of Washington history professor. That connection deepened as defense money flowed to researchers developing software languages, networks, machine learning and artificial intelligence. “You name it, there’s some defense DNA in there somewhere,” O’Mara said. AWS made a splash in national security circles in 2013 when it launched a $600m cloud network for the CIA and other American intelligence agencies. John Wood, the CEO of Telos, a Virginia-based cybersecurity firm, likened the contract to the “shot heard ‘round the world”. “The CIA, arguably the most security conscious organisation in the world, decided that they were going to move to the cloud,” Wood said. “That really made the rest of the world stand up and take notice, and ask the question, ‘If it’s good enough for them, why isn’t it good enough for us?’” Dozens of agencies – from the FBI to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – are now AWS users. Critics worry both that a “cloud-industrial complex” is forming as large tech companies wade into national security and that rapidly developing technologies will be misused by the military or police. AI-assisted facial recognition software has been an early flashpoint. Amazon’s move to sell its facial recognition software, Rekognition, to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) prompted protest from the American Civil Liberties Union, a small group of shareholders and a hundred-or-so employees. Bezos was not deterred. AWS sales teams have also pitched Rekognition at defense industry events. Amazon declined to say which agencies, if any, are using Rekognition. What is clear to observers, though, is AWS’s desire to make money off defense and law enforcement customers. “They’ve been consistent in selling these technologies at trade shows,” said Shankar Narayan of the Washington state affiliate of the ACLU, which in January demanded Amazon, Google and Microsoft to stop selling artificial intelligence-assisted facial recognition to the US government. “They demo’d it to Ice. The FBI is testing it.” Amazon asserts Rekognition can spot Kalashnikovs and faces from a user-selected watchlist in near real-time. Image recognition software greatly speeds the review of surveillance footage. Speaking at an Amazon-organized conference in 2018, Christine Halvorsen, the FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, said analysts combing video of the 2017 Las Vegas massacre could have completed their work in a day if they had access to Rekognition. Instead it took weeks to track the gunman’s movements. Microsoft and Google have, to varying degrees, recognized civil liberties and human rights concerns raised by the new technology. Amazon has largely declined to address the moral dimensions of national security work. “Amazon really has distinguished themselves as being an actor that doesn’t acknowledge any responsibility and really has doubled down on selling these technologies to the government, the military as well as law enforcement,” said Narayan. The company “has largely hewed to the position that their founder has articulated, that society supposedly has this ‘immune response’ to new technologies like these and things will get sorted out on their own”, Narayan said. “That’s an attitude that rests on a great deal of privilege and doesn’t really account for the human lives that are being impacted by this technology in real time.” Amazon declined to respond to the ACLU comments. Amazon is widely regarded as the strongest contender for the Jedi contract. Competition for Jedi has been bitter. Amazon’s rivals – Oracle, IBM and Microsoft – have protested, unsuccessfully thus far, that contract requirements they claim unfairly favor Amazon. Oracle, a California tech giant, sued the federal government in December. Attorneys for Oracle suggested defense department employees with connections to AWS biased the contract in Amazon’s favor. Notably, the AWS General Manager, Deap Ubhi, spent a year as a product director for the Defense Digital Service, the Pentagon’s tech division. The Pentagon is currently reviewing Ubhi’s work developing the Jedi contract. The impact of the Jedi contract will reverberate. Neil Gordon of the Project On Government Oversight, a watchdog group examining federal contracting, said the Jedi contract may give the winner a lasting advantage in US government cloud computing – “a monopoly over this area for years to come”.On the final morning of the Paris shows, Jacquemus, the French label known for putting women in huge hats and men in tiny shorts, showed its first autumn/winter menswear collection. The show was titled Le Meunier (‘the miller’) and the invitation arrived with a loaf of bread and the promise of breakfast. Outside, rain spat down but inside the Palais de Tokyo this promise was fulfilled, with guests served buttered bread, Comté cheese, juice and croissants. There were no seats, no light change, and no starting pistol. As people ate, models snaked their way through the crowd before assembling round a table to eat their share. The inspiration was “the intersection of land and labour” but really this was about real men in real clothes. “I don’t want to show fantasy,” said the brand’s founder, Simon Porte Jacquemus, despite dealing primarily with fantasy in past collections. “It is about work, about those who wake up early, about reality and about real clothes you can wear.” On the not-catwalk, this was translated literally: workwear jackets and wide-fitting trousers came in cotton canvas and denim, and all models wore duck boots. The jackets came melded with utility vests; work shirts and fisherman jumpers came thickly knitted and in a neutral palette. The white ones were undyed; the khaki green, sunflower yellow and industrial orange versions mirrored a Provençal landscape instead of a typical winter sky. Accessories, increasingly the brand’s golden goose, were minimal – a necklace wallet, a couple of larger bags, and a stiff leather necktie. Pockets abounded. The touches of realism were present – jackets were triple stitched for durability, and two models wore spectacles – but looked elevated enough to pass as high fashion. Blink and you’d miss the wheatsheaf embroidery doubling up as stripes. With his womenswear collections (there have been 10), Jacquemus tends towards sensuality, clothes that resemble a second skin, and lots of thigh – even in winter. For his first menswear show last June, the designer followed suit, showing musclemen and more flesh on a beach near Marseille. The front row was a line of beach towels and many models went barefoot. Today, there were shorts, but they were long, “because you know workers wear shorts in winter,” he said. Though his clothes are always wearable, this collection was more obviously so. It’s worth noting too this was probably Paris’s most diverse lineup of models, and the clothes are relatively affordable for designer fashion. Yet, as with every show that reveals a flash of yellow or a line about “real people”, there were questions about whether he was piggybacking on the current situation in France. Not so. “It is not political,” he said. “There is this ‘affaires des gilets jaunes’, and workers who are suffering, but I don’t want to use their fight. This is a fashion show and everyone loves workwear in fashion.” Plus, these collections were sketched months before the protests. This fashion week, there have been a lot of firsts – the first Loewe men’s show, the first Céline menswear show – but for Jacquemus, his first Paris menswear collection was not that unusual. The designer often talks about the difference between Paris and the rest of France, once telling this newspaper his customer “is not Parisian. They are French, and there is a difference”. Before relocating to Paris and launching the label aged 19, Jacquemus grew up in Salon-de-Provence in southern France, and often refers to making clothes for “the people I grew up with”. Today, that sentiment remains. “It is my fantasy that this sort of guy is still down there, still working. But the reality is that he has probably come to the city to find work.”A Belarusian “sex trainer” who had claimed she could prove a Russian oligarch’s ties to the Trump campaign has been released from a Moscow jail, amid speculation that she may have cut a deal for her freedom. Anastasia Vashukevich, the escort and model who also calls herself Nastya Rybka, became an unlikely figure in the sprawling “Russiagate” saga after she offered to trade information about collusion with Russia in the 2016 US presidential elections for asylum in the United States. Before returning to Moscow last week, she had been held for nearly a year in a Thai prison for holding a sex workshop deemed illegal by the local authorities. She was deported from Thailand on Thursday after pleading guilty and was detained by Russian authorities “on suspicion of enticement to prostitution” when her flight arrived in Moscow. In interviews to US media last year, she had claimed to have hours of audio recordings aboard a yacht with metals magnate Oleg Deripaska and claimed she could show that he met with three Americans in 2016 who said they had “a plan for the election”. Whether she ever had any real evidence remains unclear, and she now denies it. But a 2016 Instagram video she published aboard a yacht with Deripaska and a deputy prime minister of Russia touted Vashukevich as a possible font of information about the activities of powerful Russians before the US elections. Vashukevich, who has not spoken with the press since her sudden release from a Moscow jail on Tuesday and couldn’t be reached for comment, is expected to make public remarks in Moscow on Wednesday. While she remains a suspect in a case for “enticement to prostitution” in Russia, she has not been charged and her release on Tuesday means she is free from prison for the first time in nearly a year. The revelations about Vashukevich’s proximity to Deripaska led to a year-long odyssey, which may finally be drawing to a close. After her video onboard Deripaska’s yacht was publicised by a Russian opposition leader last February, Vashukevich and several friends were arrested in Thailand for running an illegal “sex training seminar”. After 11 months in prison, she pleaded guilty and was deported back to Belarus via Russia on Friday. A video of the arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport showed officials tossing Vashukevich into a wheelchair, prompting some outrage and concerns that she would be targeted for retribution for her public remarks against Deripaska and the Russian government. Welcome или «Добровольное» пересечение российской границы Анастасией Вашукевич. #настярыбка #адвокат #москва A post shared by  Зацаринский Дмитрий (@advokat_zatsarinsky) on Jan 17, 2019 at 5:11pm PST In a court appearance on Saturday, Vashukevich offered a truce. She said she would “no longer compromise” Deripaska and that he could “relax”. “Really, I’ve had enough,” she said. Tuesday’s sudden release after four days behind bars indicated that Vashukevich’s troubles could be coming to an end, in a case that friends say was political from the very beginning. She was detained in Moscow with three others, including Alexander Kirillov, a self-described “sex guru” who was leading the Thai seminar. “It was a political case [in Thailand], that was obvious, and clearly paid for by somebody,” said Kristina Sheremetyeva, Kirillov’s partner, in an interview. “We received threats from people who were tying themselves to some big names,” she said, but said that those threats had not come from Deripaska. She was also critical of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had publicised Vashukevich’s videos as evidence of official corruption. “Let him pay our legal costs,” she said. Navalny this week publicised audio from phone calls that had been leaked to YouTube. A claimant listed as “Deripaska O. V.” from the metals magnate’s hometown of Ust-Labinsk had sought to have the audio blocked. In the leaked telephone calls, several people identified as corporate lawyers seek to extend Vashukevich’s and Kirillov’s detentions in Thailand. In an earlier investigation, Navalny had shown that Deripaska’s meeting on the yacht off the coast of Norway in August 2016 took place just days after his jet had flown between New York and Moscow. Deripaska has been a focus of the investigation because of his business relationship with Paul Manafort, the former chairman of the Trump campaign. A company tied to Deripaska had accused Manafort of taking nearly $19m in investments that were never accounted for. During the campaign, Manafort had offered Deripaska private briefings, according to the Washington Post. Deripaska’s representatives have accused Vashukevich of fabrication. A spokesperson decline to comment to the Guardian.What should have been the match of the tournament – of the young year, in fact – between the best players in the world, each of them fit, fresh and in form after barely hindered routes to the final of the Australian Open, disintegrated into an embarrassing one–man celebration for Novak Djokovic over Rafael Nadal. His 6–3, 6–2, 6–3 win on Rod Laver Arena brought his career count against the Spaniard to 28–25, but it was one of the poorest of their contests, which stretch back to 2006. It earned Djokovic a record seventh Australian Open title – and his third major in a row. That is some roll. He owns three of the four and has the chance to do another Novak slam in Paris, Nadal’s only safe harbour left. The world No 1 has 15 grand slam titles in total, moving ahead of Pete Sampras, two behind Nadal and five behind Roger Federer. It is becoming increasingly likely that the dynamic of the three–cornered hegemony of the modern era is about to change over the course of the remaining three majors this season. Djokovic was as magnificent as he has been in any of his many triumphs. He won 40 of 50 first serves, 16 of 19 on second attempt, hit eight aces and a mere nine unforced errors. Returning on and inside the baseline, he did not allow Nadal’s revamped serve to get out of second gear, and there were only a handful of rallies worthy of the occasion. Responding to the accolades of former champions such as Mats Wilander and Pat Cash who described his performance as “absolute perfection” and “absolutely mind-blowing tennis”, Djokovic said: “It ranks right at the top. Playing against Nadal, such an important match, yeah, it’s amazing. Back-to-back semi-finals and finals, I think I made 15 unforced errors in two matches.” Asked if he thought he could pass Federer’s 20 majors, he said: “Of course, it motivates me. How many seasons are to come? I don’t know. I do want to focus on continuing to improve my game and maintaining the overall well-being that I have – mental, physical, emotional – so I would be able to compete at such a high level for the years to come, and have a shot at eventually getting closer to Roger’s record.” He reflected on the fact that a year ago his career was in disarray. He needed elbow surgery and could hardly contemplate having the comeback he has had. “Yes, 12 months ago it was highly unlikely I would be holding three slams. I just have to be conscious of that and understand that I’m blessed.” As for his rivalry with Nadal, he said: “I’m sure we’re still going to have a lot of matches against each other on different surfaces.” When Djokovic cracked the Nadal serve after seven minutes, it was the first time the Spaniard had given an opponent a look in a set since James Duckworth broke him in the first round but he had regrouped so well he arrived at the final without dropping a set, keeping his court time down to a little over 12 hours in six matches. It began to look as if Djokovic was going to do to Nadal what he had done to Lucas Pouille in the semi–finals, and what Nadal had done to Tomas Berdych in the fourth round. Djokovic was racing through his service games, while Nadal was fighting to stay in the point. He was still in it at 2–4 but had not taken a point off Djokovic’s first 16 serves. It was not until the ninth game that Nadal found some rhythm and spark off the ground, grabbing a point on the Djokovic serve after 33 minutes, his only success of the set. Nadal was anxious and hurrying and it seemed his only hope of kickstarting a fightback was a Djokovic meltdown. In 224 matches in majors, Djokovic has lost only five after winning the first set. That was a brick wall that showed no sign of collapsing. At the end of a rare competitive rally, Nadal tapped a balletic lob in the fifth game of the second set he thought had saved one of two break points but it drifted long and his suffering continued. After an hour, he still had not fashioned a break point of his own. There was fight in him but none of the certainty or precision of the earlier rounds. When he dumped a backhand from the baseline to give up his serve for the third time – his 20th unforced error to Djokovic’s four in 85 points – he was a forlorn and frustrated figure. A hat–trick of Djokovic aces – each 119mph – to hold to love for a two–set lead was a dagger that went deep to the heart of Nadal’s resolve. Only three times in his career has he come back to win from such a deficit. His opponent remained in a scarily fixed zone – the same one, it seems, he spoke about when making mincemeat of Pouille in the Frenchman’s first slam semi–final. But he was doing this to one of the greatest players. It was not a pretty sight. Probably not since Nadal did the same to David Ferrer to win the French Open in 2013 has a grand slam final looked so lopsided. Nadal was being marched towards the gallows without even the benefit of a hood. As they embarked on the final stretch, the crowd indulged in the ultimate false empathy: overcheering Nadal’s occasional successes. He still punched the air, muscles rippling, but surely sensed the end was not far away. At least they were finishing in the dark. The traditional night–time final looked at one point as if it might end before the glow of day had slipped away. As a spectacle, it had become engrossing for all the wrong reasons: an argument between old friends that had gone horribly wrong. Playing for little more than dignity, Nadal was a passenger on Djokovic’s ship. When it docked, a little over two hours after they set sail, he was put ashore without ceremony, broken in his final service game.Donald Trump said on Sunday the US military has killed Jamal al-Badawi, an al-Qaida militant wanted in connection with the attack on the USS Cole. Seventeen US sailors died and at least 40 people were wounded in the October 2000 attack, in which suicide bombers almost sank the guided missile destroyer while it lay in Aden harbour. The attack on the USS Cole foreshadowed the attacks of 11 September 2001, in which 2,977 people were killed in New York City, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. Badawi was indicted in 2003 and charged with terrorism offenses including murder of US nationals and military personnel. It was reported on Friday that US defence officials were trying to confirm reports an airstrike on 1 January had killed Badawi in war-torn Yemen. On Sunday, via Twitter, the president confirmed it. “Our GREAT MILITARY has delivered justice for the heroes lost and wounded in the cowardly attack on the USS Cole,” the president wrote, while en route from the White House to Camp David. “We have just killed the leader of that attack, Jamal al-Badawi. Our work against [al-Qaida] continues. We will never stop in our fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism!” Trump’s tweet came amid further turmoil in the US defense establishment, which in the past month has digested the resignations of defense secretary Jim Mattis and envoy Brett McGurk over Trump’s abrupt decision to declare the fight against Islamic State militants won and to order the withdrawal of troops from Syria. National security adviser John Bolton seemed to be walking back that order in a visit this weekend to Israel and Turkey, but at home in Washington another key Pentagon figure, chief of staff Kevin Sweeney, announced his resignation. In a short statement on Saturday night, the retired Rear Admiral said: “After two years in the Pentagon, I’ve decided the time is right to return to the private sector. It has been an honor to serve again alongside the men and women of the Department of Defense.” Citing an anonymous source, CNN reported on Sunday that Sweeney had been “forced out” by the White House. On Saturday night, Samantha Power, ambassador to the United Nations under Barack Obama, tweeted: “We have no Secretary of Defense & now no DoD chief of staff, no Attorney General & no evident guardrails in Trump’s inner circle. The President is unhinged – even GOP zealots know it. Rs inside & outside the admin must stop enabling Trump & protect America.” Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, California Democrat and House intelligence chair Adam Schiff said of Power’s tweet: “I largely do agree that all of the adults are one by one being forced out of the room. Anyone who had the standing … to tell the president what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear, has been pushed aside.” It was not immediately clear if Trump’s announcement of the death of al-Badawi had been cleared with the acting defense secretary, former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan, or any other senior official.Unai Emery’s first taste of the FA Cup began with a disgruntled Blackpool fan sitting on top of the Arsenal team coach but ended with a comfortable journey into the fourth round. Upset shaped only the back-drop to the cup tie, not the contest itself, as the 19-year-old Joe Willock scored twice to confirm Premier League superiority. Willock, the England Under‑20 midfielder making only his third senior start of the season, gave Arsenal a comfortable interval advantage before Alex Iwobi sealed victory late on. Blackpool had their moments and staged a second-half recovery but were always chasing an insurmountable gulf in quality. “Arsenal were just too good for us on the night,” Terry McPhillips, the Blackpool manager, had to concede. For Arsenal’s goalscoring teenage midfielder this was a night to savour. For the League One club, in contrast, what should have been a showpiece occasion was sullied by the toxic ownership of Owen Oyston. Only two sides of Bloomfield Road were occupied by outnumbered Blackpool supporters as the fans’ boycott of home games held firm. Some gathered as usual outside the main reception in protest, while Arsenal’s arrival was delayed by the bus-top dissenter outside their team hotel in Preston. The interruption had no impact on the Arsenal performance, and likewise the late withdrawal from the starting lineup of Laurent Koscielny with a back problem. “There was no change for us,” said Emery of the delay. “We prepared as usual and I am proud of our work today. We had big commitment, good concentration, we were competitive and we imposed our quality little by little.” Emery’s changed team were immediately in control and could have been two goals ahead before taking the lead in the 11th minute. Eddie Nketiah had two clear openings but the 19-year‑old dragged a poor finish wide when sent clear by Ainsley Maitland-Niles and was also off-target when connecting with a low cross from Carl Jenkinson, Koscielny’s replacement, at full stretch. Despite their command, Arsenal were defensively vulnerable and Petr Cech saved well from Armand Gnanduillet when the powerful forward burst through a crowded penalty area. The visitors, however, took a merited lead after Nketiah, a quick and dangerous presence, was fouled yards outside the Blackpool area. Aaron Ramsey’s resulting free-kick struck the inside of Mark Howard’s post via a slight deflection off the Blackpool wall and Willock reacted quickest to head home the rebound. The teenager made it three goals in three senior appearances this season before the interval. Jenkinson broke down the right wing and exchanged passes with Iwobi, who appeared to handle in the buildup. Nketiah met his low cross at the near post but was unable to convert. His shot squirmed across goal for Willock who, arriving unmarked at the back post, squeezed his finish past the despairing lunges of Michael Nottingham and Howard. It should have been three before half-time but the Blackpool goalkeeper produced a fine save to deny Nketiah from close range. The young striker may have lacked a clinical touch but his tireless effort and intelligent movement earned him strong backing from the 5,218 travelling supporters. There were also chants of “Aaron Ramsey, we want you to stay”, with the Wales international seemingly headed for Juventus when his contract expires this summer. “I’m thinking about each match,” said Emery when asked about a possible U-turn on Ramsey’s contract offer. The Arsenal manager did confirm he wanted a central defender and a winger – possibly Barcelona’s Denis Suárez – in this transfer window. Blackpool improved as an attacking unit in the second half and should have reduced the deficit when their captain, the former Liverpool midfielder Jay Spearing, released Marc Bola down the left. His cross evaded everyone inside the penalty area but fell perfectly for fellow full-back Nottingham who, unmarked and with time to pick his spot, side-footed over Cech’s crossbar. Gnanduillet then almost capitalised on a slip by the Arsenal keeper, while Liam Feeney produced an air-shot when shaping to volley home and Paudie O’Connor headed well wide from a corner. Blackpool were made to pay for their profligacy. Willock was denied a memorable hat-trick by a legitimate offside call against Sead Kolasinac. Moments later the substitute goalkeeper Christoffer Mafoumbi, on for the injured Howard, saved well from Ramsey’s angled drive but the rebound fell for Iwobi to convert with ease.The entire website of Elon Musk’s private charitable foundation is shorter than many of the Tesla CEO’s contentious tweets. “Musk Foundation. Grants are made in support of: Renewable energy research and advocacy; Human space exploration research and advocacy; Pediatric research; Science and engineering education,” the site reads. Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal how the foundation has put that vague mission statement into practice. Together, the documents show that many of the organization’s donations have gone far beyond its stated scope. Some have benefited the billionaire’s own family and initiatives, others have tackled his pet peeves – the foundation has given more money to Musk’s own artificial intelligence research than to any of the more traditional charities it says it supports. As with many other of his achievements, Musk has publicly touted his charitable activities, whether during the Flint water crisis or amid international efforts to rescue a young soccer team trapped in a Thai cave. Musk has given personally to multiple causes and organizations, including multi-million dollar donations to the Sierra Club and the XPrize Foundation, and a $1m grant to the Obama Foundation. But the bulk of his charitable giving has been through this private foundation, for which he provides the entirety of its funding. The Musk Foundation has disbursed more than $54m in 15 years of operations, more than a third in direct gifts to 160 charities, according to an Internal Revenue Services analysis of its filings from its incorporation in 2001 to the middle of 2017. Most recorded awards totalled just a few thousand dollars, and many went to environmental, educational, medical, and space advocacy organizations. Others, however, landed closer to home. Recipients have included a school attended by Musk’s own children, a charity managed by his brother, a protest group fighting gridlock on Musk’s commute to SpaceX, and even an art project at Musk’s favorite festival, Burning Man. In 2012, Musk joined billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett in signing The Giving Pledge, a commitment by some of the world’s richest individuals to give away the majority of their wealth, either during their lifetimes or upon their deaths. Musk – who controls Tesla, SpaceX and The Boring Company – is worth an estimated $22bn, although almost all his wealth is tied up in his own companies. Musk had started organizing his charity givings more than a decade earlier. Musk launched his foundation in 2001, together with his younger brother Kimbal, who’d serve as the organization’s secretary and treasurer. Musk’s first big gift to the foundation came the following year, shortly after eBay bought PayPal, the payments company that Musk had an interest in. Musk gave his organization 30,000 eBay shares, worth $2.1m. In those early days, the foundation made small, uncontroversial donations to Musk’s alma maters in South Africa and the US, to other educational charities, space societies, and children’s hospitals such as the Seattle Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Between 2007 and 2014, Musk topped up the foundation’s coffers with a little over $3.1m in cash. The list of its recipients grew longer – and began to feature more organizations with links to Musk’s own family and interests. The foundation funded photovoltaic systems helping communities affected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 and the Fukushima earthquake in 2011. Musk’s solar power company Solar City (now part of Tesla) participated in both installations. Also in 2010, the foundation spent $183,000 to help launch Kitchen Community, a Colorado-based charity headed by Kimbal that used “learning gardens” in underserved areas to help children grow and prepare fresh food. Kitchen Community, now called Big Green, would receive a total of nearly half a million dollars over the next four years – one of the foundation’s largest direct awards. As executive director and chairman of the project, Kimbal received nearly $85,000 in payments by Big Green between 2010 and 2016. Between 2011 and 2013, the foundation also made two $50,000 donations to the Mirman School for gifted children in Los Angeles, a school that Elon Musk’s sons were attending at the time. Musk later started his own not-for-profit school, Ad Astra, located within SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, which his children now attend. In 2012, the year Musk signed the giving pledge, the foundation expanded its horizons and donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Los Angeles Police Foundation, and a non-profit organization for professional women in New York’s film, television and digital media industries. It also made three $25,000 payments to a tiny pressure group called Angelenos Against Gridlock. The group was lobbying for improvements to the famously congested Interstate 405 highway that Musk uses regularly to commute from his Bel-Air home to SpaceX. Angelenos Against Gridlock is now defunct, and Musk has turned his attention to building tunnels to whisk Tesla electric cars swiftly beneath the city’s traffic instead. The high point of 2012 was possibly a $10,000 donation to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps), a nonprofit that is developing medical therapies using marijuana and MDMA. That donation helped fund the Temple of Whollyness, a large wooden art structure that went up in smoke at the climax of 2013’s Burning Man festival in Nevada. By mid 2015, the Musk Foundation was down to its last $60,000. The following May, Musk donated 1.2 million shares of Tesla Motors, valued at nearly $255m at the time. The huge influx of funds came with its own issues. Tax rules state that private foundations must distribute 5% of their assets each year. The Musk Foundation suddenly had to find a home for millions of dollars. Musk turned to his passion projects, and his friends in Silicon Valley. Musk has long worried about the possibilities of superhuman, malevolent artificial intelligence, likening it to “summoning the demon”. In 2015, he had pledged $1bn to a set up a research company called OpenAI that would develop safer AI in a “way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole”. “Elon’s charitable giving has kick-started AI safety research, transforming it into what is now a vibrant and respectable research area,” said Max Tegmark, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who personally received $9m from Musk for research at the Future of Life Institute. But OpenAI’s non-profit status was still being reviewed by the IRS in 2016, making it impossible for the organization to receive charitable donations. Instead, the Musk Foundation gave $10m to another young charity, YC.org. The charity lacks a website or social media presence but its stated aim is “making grants to other 501(c)3 initiatives and activities that are trying to solve the world’s problems”. Filings show the organization is run by Sam Altman, a director of OpenAI and the president of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley accelerator that has helped to launch hundreds of technology start-ups, including Airbnb, Cruise Automation and Dropbox. Altman is also a director of OpenAI. The Musk Foundation’s grant accounted for the majority of YC.org’s revenue, and almost all of its own funding, when it passed along $10m to OpenAI later that year. Open AI’s tax filings show its top researcher alone was paid $1.9m in 2016. Though that’s not out of line with what some top AI researchers make, it’s more than the Musk Foundation handed out to all other charitable causes during its first eight years of operation. Also in 2016, the Musk Foundation made its largest disbursement to date, giving $37.8m to Vanguard Charitable. It’s a donor-advised fund – a tax-efficient giving vehicle that holds money on behalf of multiple clients and distributes it over time. This type of structure makes it difficult for the public to tell which client is making which awards, a benefit for the publicity-shy. While secrecy was not Musk’s motivation for using donor-advised funds, he does believe that true philanthropy is done for the most part anonymously, a spokesperson for the foundation told the Guardian. There are some hints that the foundation could be returning to grassroots giving. Last summer, Musk tweeted that he would help address the public health crisis in Flint, Michigan. The foundation said that it has donated more than $1m worth of water filtration equipment and laptops to causes in the city. But, if Musk continues to use Vanguard, it would make his already secretive foundation even less transparent in future years. Neither Elon nor Kimbal have ever accepted any compensation for their work with the foundation, nor are there any other salaried staff at the organization, filings indicate. None of Musk’s charitable decisions are particularly uncommon for a billionaire’s private foundation, said Harvey Dale, director of the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law at New York University. Many wealthy individuals fund their children’s schools, and support their own charities and initiatives, he explained. Even the foundation giving money to Big Green, which in turn paid Kimbal, may not be problematic. Big Green did not respond to requests for comment, but the Musk Foundation noted that Elon Musk has no involvement in Big Green and was unaware of any payments to Kimbal. It also said that those payments have now stopped. “It’s not clearly against the law,” Dale noted. “As [the brother’s] salary at the charity was relatively modest, and the charity has plenty of other resources, you might come to the conclusion that the foundation’s contribution wasn’t responsible for any special benefit for him.” On Wednesday, the foundation added aline to its website, stating its support for the “development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.”It’s hard right now to remember how hot it was last August on the long sandy beach where the Colorado River meets the Green River in southern Utah. I was a few days into a rafting trip through Cataract Canyon with a bunch of young climate activists, and one of them, Will Munger, was telling me that since his months at the Standing Rock resistance camp, he had been encountering young Native people whose experiences at the protest site had encouraged them to dream of new possibilities and take actions that might otherwise have seemed out of reach. Wandering back and forth along the edge of the water, we began to discuss how, often, the consequences of an uprising or a movement are not linear. Success and failure are often premature measures and oversimplifications; actions, interventions and conversations change beliefs and create new values, alliances and possibilities. We’d seen this dynamic from many unanticipated uprisings and movements: the indigenous movement Idle No More that began in Canada in 2012, Black Lives Matter, the feminist insurgencies since 2013 and the anti-gun movement in the hands of the Parkland youth. On a cold day this January, I was thinking again about that conversation as I contemplated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to run for office. “I first started considering running for Congress actually at Standing Rock in North Dakota,” she said late last year. “It was really from that crucible of activism where I saw people putting their lives on the line … for people they’ve never met and never known. When I saw that I knew that I had to do something more.” In 2016, when LaDonna Brave Bull Allard and others launched the camps protesting the Dakota Access pipeline, they could not have known some of the indirect consequences of their actions – including prompting a young woman from New York City to run for office. Sometimes the results that matter are not direct or intended – though four tribes continue to litigate over the pipeline, and they had a modest court victory on 8 January. Today, Ocasio-Cortez represents New York’s 14th district in Congress, and 45 congresspeople support the Green New Deal that she began promoting last fall. Significantly, the Green New Deal is not Ocasio-Cortez’s creation. As Standing Rock prompted her to run for office, the Sunrise Movement created the climate vision she carried into Congress. Founded in 2017, Sunrise is a youth-led movement that aims to “to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process”. As the movement’s co-founder Varshini Prakash recently told the Huffington Post, Sunrise is trying to “activate the millions of Americans who are ready to fight for a Green New Deal but haven’t heard of it yet”. For me, the movement’s sudden appearance in national politics this year was even more surprising and thrilling than Ocasio-Cortez’s primary victory. The Green New Deal is a much-needed response to what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and American scientists told us last fall: we probably have 12 years to transform the energy economy globally, or else. The proposal matters by setting new goals for the nation; by reminding us that climate and jobs, ecology and economies don’t have to be opposed; and by recent polls telling the congressional leadership that the majority of Americans want swift and radical action on climate. Getting there requires understanding that the process may not be straightforward. Unsurprisingly, the Green New Deal was not immediately adopted by the Democratic leadership, and if you were to tell the story thus far in the terms that we’ve learned from action movies and sports, it’s a conflict that already has a conclusion: as the news site Politico put it: “Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi 2, Ocasio-Cortez 0.” But, like the Standing Rock uprising, the work of the Sunshine Movement and Ocasio-Cortez will generate other benefits and consequences; if we are going to get to the goal it will, of course, be by a more circuitous route – though it must be a speedy one. Last Wednesday, Congressmen Jimmy Gomez and Ted Lieu of California introduced a bill, the Climate Solutions Act of 2019, with similar goals – or reintroduced it, since Lieu, (who’s also supporting the Green New Deal) has introduced a bill by that name twice before. You could not possibly catalyze a movement in the Dakotas with the intention that a woman would run for Congress in New York City and then go to the Capitol to advocate on climate. You could not assume, imagine or calculate that that would be a consequence. But you can recognize how common such indirect consequences are, and how important it is to not discount them. The course of history is full of confluences and meanders, oxbows, watersheds, dams and floods, tributaries and distributaries. Cataract Canyon is where the Colorado River pours into the reservoir of stagnant water backed up from Glen Canyon Dam. When Glen Canyon Dam was completed, a little more than 50 years ago, most people – whether they loved or hated this massive intervention in the wilderness – imagined that the reservoir would stand for centuries. But the dam is failing, thanks to overallocation of the river’s water and to the way climate change has reduced rainfall and snowfall in its watershed. At the end of my journey with Will and the other climate activists, I saw over and over how the river was cutting new channels through the silt that had built up when the reservoir was higher; how what was stagnant was now active again. This was never supposed to happen, or it was supposed to happen hundreds of years hence. “Let us never, ever, ever give up,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez the day after her swearing-in, adding “It wasn’t long ago that we felt our lives were over; that there were only so many do-overs until it was too late, or too much to take…. I honestly thought as a 28-year-old waitress I was too late; that the train of my fulfilled potential had left the station.” Climate change tells is there is no time to waste. But history tells us that social change works in indirect and unpredictable ways, and that it’s worth pressing on for what you believe in. • Rebecca Solnit is a Guadian US columnist, and author of Men Explain Things to Me and The Mother of All QuestionsAt the beginning of 2019, as at the start of 2018, Margrethe Vestager remains the most powerful woman in tech. The EU competition commissioner has the world’s biggest companies walking on tiptoe, afraid of her habit of enforcing competition law where the US authorities have refused to do so. In 2018, Google was the subject of Vestager’s cold gaze, receiving multibillion fines for its anti-competitive practices around its Android operating system, its shopping service and Chrome browser. But in 2019, it’s likely to be someone else’s turn. The only question is who. In the US, Amazon has been the odds-on favourite, thanks to a combination of a hostile president, a direct negative effect on commercial competitors and the rise of the doctrine of “hipster antitrust” (broadly arguing that monopolies can be harmful even if consumer welfare appears to be boosted). But in the EU, with a greater focus on privacy and data protection issues, Facebook looks vulnerable. The release by the UK parliament of internal Facebook emails appearing to show, among other things, Mark Zuckerberg authorising a hostile move to shut down access by Twitter’s video app Vine won’t endear the company to the competition commission. And, for many, Facebook still represents the great failure of competition commissions over the past 20 years, for rubber-stamping its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp – two of its greatest potential competitors still in their infancy. The powers of the EU are limited – it would take the US to break up Facebook – but another multibillion fine won’t go down well at the already troubled company. It isn’t just Facebook that might be feeling the hot breath of a regulator on its neck. The EU’s ruling against Google’s dominance of the Android app store could be the first domino to fall in a sweeping change that will reshape the consumer technology industry. Since the birth of the iPhone, a huge amount of digital commerce has been filtered through a few platforms, which have taken a hefty chunk of the revenue they handle. Apple takes 30% of app revenue, whether it be the purchase price of the software or the digital goods bought through it. Google, on Android, and Valve, for PC games, does similar. Each earns huge profits through being, essentially, the single point of entry for an industry. Now that’s starting to wobble. Regulators are chipping away at one corner: Google’s aforementioned fine in the EU and a court case in the US accusing Apple of abusing its monopoly over the iOS app store show the unease governments have over that centralisation of power. At the other end, slowly, power is shifting through external causes. Epic Games, maker of Fortnite, has become one of the few publishers to rival the power of the platform owners themselves and it is wielding it effectively: launching a new app store for Android devices and another for PCs and offering to take a substantially lower cut of game revenues on both. Not many brands have the following to pull off such a shift, but as many a parent will attest, Fortnite can move children where few others can. There are two schools of thought surrounding driverless cars. One is that the technology is 99.9% complete and that soon “level five” autonomy will be reached, meaning that cars can safely drive themselves in any situation. When that happens, the world will undergo rapid change, as driving jobs begin to disappear, urban spaces are reshaped and road travel becomes safer by the day. The other is that the final 0.1% is harder than all of the previous progress put together. And so we’ll remain, for years, with cars that work well enough to demonstrate, to put on the streets with safety drivers and continue being tested, funded and improved – but not quite well enough to actually build a business around. Both views may be true. In the meantime, however, a 99.9% good enough car is good enough to run a taxi service – as Google is showing in Phoenix, where Waymo One, the company’s Uber competitor, is launching. What’s most interesting about the service is how… uninteresting it is. The taxis aren’t significantly cheaper than the competition; the journeys have the occasional glitch, as overcautious algorithms get stuck at T-junctions. Maybe one day driverless cars will change the world, but not yet. Only a fool would predict the death of bitcoin, let alone the wider industry it has spawned. The community has repeatedly shown an impressive capacity for survival against gigantic crashes, crippling hacks and severe legal roadblocks, and the nature of the blockchain is such that, if even one diehard is still mining bitcoin in an attic somewhere, it can never be said to be truly over. But the price of bitcoin has been falling for months and now stands at a fifth of its all-time high. Ethereum, an even techier alternative, has fallen almost three times that. These prices are not only a vague reflection of the interest the wider world has in cryptocurrencies – at least in so far as they can be used as a speculative asset – but also a very real reduction in the amount of money knocking around the ecosystem, funding startups, paying salaries and subsidising customer acquisition. That means that the number of actually useful creations (as opposed to white papers, test networks, experimental trials or proofs of concept) to come out of the sector – a number already hovering somewhere in the region of zero – is likely to stay low for a while. Maybe this will be the year that the industry puts its head down, starts putting substance over hype, and emerges in 2020 with something to show for more than a decade of speculation; or maybe this will be the year it slowly suffocates, deprived of the attention it needs to live. Either way, at least we can take a break. Smartphone innovation has stagnated in recent years; screens have got as good as they’re going to get, battery life is hitting the limits of physics and processors have become so fast that developers are already struggling to use all the power at their fingertips. But one of the last areas of competition is in the camera on the back of the phones. For Apple, that has meant moving to two lenses on the back of its top-end phones, investing in sapphire glass to minimise scratching and putting a hardware “neural engine” inside the phone to handle some of the more complicated elements of “computational photography” – using machine learning to manipulate images. For Google, the approach has been entirely about software. Like Apple, it has focused heavily on computational photography, but it has taken it further than anyone else. Nowhere is this more evident than the stunning “night sight” feature released towards the end of 2018, which uses a neural network to brighten low-light shots, turning grainy, grey stills into stunningly bright and clear images. But what’s most interesting about night sight is that the feature doesn’t just brighten images and reduce grain. It adds in detail that was never captured by the sensor in the first place, effectively “guessing” what the image would have looked like if it were better lit. It’s less photography and more computer-aided illustration, creating an artificial image based on reality that is more real than real. And that’s only going to intensify as other companies attempt to copy Google and Apple, or surpass them with their own features. In theory, the USB-C connector is better than its predecessor. The standard has some obvious physical benefits: a smaller plug that works in any orientation; the ability to transmit more power, more data and more standards; cables that can be used in either direction, across domains. In practice, however, the transition has been exhausting. For one, there’s been the standard pain of chucking out cables, chargers and accessories built for a now obsolete format and replacing them slowly – and expensively – with new versions. Also, USB-C’s flexibility has been a weakness, not a strength. Take Apple’s laptop line, for instance. If you have a MacBook with one USB-C port, that port can transmit data using the USB 3.0 protocol. If you have the latest MacBook Pro with four USB-C ports, those identical sockets can also transmit data using the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, a significantly higher-bandwidth system that can be used to power high-resolution external monitors and graphics cards. But if that MacBook Pro was bought in 2016 or 2017, only the two ports on the left side of the computer actually had full Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth. The two ports on the righthand side – again, visually identical – didn’t deliver full bandwidth. Even the cables are baffling. Just because a piece of wire has a USB-C plug at each end doesn’t necessarily mean it can charge a device at full speed, let alone transfer data at maximum bandwidth. Over 2019, these ridiculous situations will hopefully even out a bit, allowing the promise of “one cable to rule them all” finally to be met. It’s rare for world-changing technological events to come completely by surprise. In 2017, the WannaCry cyber-attack that shut down the NHS was largely foreseeable: it exploited a vulnerability that had been patched by Microsoft months earlier to combine an example of crypto-ransomware, first seen years earlier, with so-called “worm” mechanics that allowed it to self-propagate, first seen decades earlier. But despite that, WannaCry changed the landscape permanently. Before, we all knew that a major malware attack could cause real-world harm; but Wannacry revealed that the “we” was a smaller group than it had thought, and what it “knew” was less useful than it had hoped. Just last month, we saw another example of the same sort of unsurprising surprise, as a drone was used to shut down Gatwick airport for 24 hours. Again, the ingredients had been in place for years before – as had some of the tools necessary to prevent such an attack – but the chaos that ensued proved the difference between knowing a threat exists and internalising that threat to the degree that you build useful plans to tackle it. This year will be the same. Some of the big events that subtly alter our understanding of how the world works won’t involve megadeaths and cataclysmic destruction. But they can still be horribly disruptive anyway. Perhaps a massive botnet is used to overwhelm the servers of a supermarket’s logistics division. Or a cyber-attack on the maintenance department of a big US tanker firm paralyses petrol and water distribution across a huge swath of the American south-west. Or a vulnerability in a smart speaker lets an eager prankster wake up millions with 100dB sound at 2am. The only thing we can be sure of is that, whatever it is, someone will be able to say “I told you so”.Heathrow airport was forced to ground departures for about an hour because of a reported drone sighting – less than three weeks after a series of similar reports at Gatwick affected about 1,000 flights. A spokeswoman for the UK’s busiest airport said the runway closure was undertaken as a precautionary measure shortly after 5pm, as staff worked with the Metropolitan police to investigate the report. At about 6pm, the runway had reopened. Inbound flights did not appear to be affected. While the disruption at the west of London airport on Tuesday evening was less severe than that caused in the run-up to Christmas, when 140,000 people were affected by repeated closures at Gatwick, the latest incident raises further questions about the UK authorities’ preparedness to protect vital infrastructure from the devices. The military, which helped deal with the Gatwick incident, was immediately put on standby to go to Heathrow shortly after Tuesday’s reported sighting. And the parliamentary undersecretary of state for transport, Liz Sugg, was already scheduled to meet the heads of the UK’s large airports on Thursday to discuss their plans to deal with drones. On Monday, the government announced that police were to be handed extra powers to combat drones near airports. The proposals will give police the power to land, seize and search the devices, while the Home Office is due to begin testing and evaluating the use of counter-drone technology at airports and prisons. Last week, Heathrow and Gatwick said they had invested significant sums of money in military-grade anti-drone technology. While it would not offer details on exactly what equipment had been installed, Gatwick said it had purchased a system that offered a similar level of protection to that offered by the armed forces during the pre-Christmas disruption, while Heathrow was understood to have invested in similar equipment. Also last week, Grayling chaired a meeting of defence chiefs, the police and Home Office officials to discuss the issue. The Liberal Democrats’ transport spokeswoman, Jenny Randerson, said the Heathrow incident meant “more travellers will be delayed due to the government’s incompetence”. She said: “Yesterday, the government finally conceded on introducing some legislation to regulate the drone market. However, what was proposed was scant in detail and there was little sense of urgency … The government must move swiftly to pass this drone legislation with sufficient resources behind it to avoid future disruption.” The disruption at Gatwick occurred over a three-day period in the run-up to Christmas. Sussex police faced criticism over its handling of the incident after a senior officer said there may never had been any drones. But the head of the force later said he was “absolutely certain a drone was flying throughout the period the airport was closed”. Giles York did, however, admit that the contradictory statements had “amplified the chaos”. York also apologised to two people who were arrested and detained for 36 hours before being released without charge.They dare not say it, but history will weigh heavily on the shoulders of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in Sunday’s Australian Open final – and the pressure is being applied by someone who left here several days ago: Roger Federer. Why these two wonderful players and rivals shy away from speculating about matching or overtaking his record of 20 grand slam titles is hard to fathom. Nadal has 17, Djokovic 14. And time is running out for both of them, more so the Spaniard, probably, who somehow won five singles titles last year with a body hardly fit to leave for science. Yet they pretend that winning more majors than Federer does not occupy their thoughts. It is as if they may disturb the order of things – or even inspire the 37-year-old Federer to try for even more majors. Perhaps it explains why Federer declared after losing to Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth round that he would return to Paris after four years away while resting from the rigours of clay and throw himself into the game’s toughest challenge: winning the French Open with Nadal in it. Nadal backpedalled furiously when asked if it was realistic to finish his career with more slams than the other two. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t take it like this. I always say the same: ‘I do it my way, then, when I finish my career, we’ll see where I am, where Roger is, where Novak is.’ “My goal is always the same: just be happy with what I am doing. I am more than happy, satisfied, about my career. My goal is just to keep doing the things that I am doing as long as possible. That gives me chances to compete at the highest level. If I’m able to make that happen, maybe I will keep having chances to win.” There is no triangle of rivalry like it in sport – or rectangle, if you include the sizeable contributions of Andy Murray over the years, which now sadly seem to be at or near an end. They all need each other, though. Nadal said: “All the rivals you feel are like you or better than you – Novak, Roger, Andy sometimes – I don’t say without them I will not keep improving, because I always have my personal motivation, but I say one thing: when you have rivals like this in front of you, it is easier to have a clear view about the things you have to improve. “That’s the main reason, probably, why Roger, Novak and me, we’re still here, because we pushed each other during a lot of years.” And now, one more heave. Djokovic, who has lost to Nadal on this surface seven times in 24 meetings and not at all on a hard court since the 2013 US Open final, is the favourite. The world No 1 was in astonishing form when he embarrassed Lucas Pouille in the second semi-final on Friday, for the loss of four games, two fewer than Nadal conceded in his match against Tsitsipas the previous day. They have met 52 times and Djokovic leads by two victories. In 14 encounters in slams, Nadal leads 9-5. In seven finals, the honours go Nadal’s way, 4-3. But Djokovic owns Melbourne. The only time they have played each other here, the unforgettable 2012 final, which lasted five hours and 53 minutes, Djokovic won, utterly spent – and it was all the more amazing, given he had to go four hours and 40 minutes against Murray in their semi-final 48 hours earlier. That was his third Australian Open title. On Sunday, he reaches for his seventh, more than the six Federer and Roy Emerson have won. Then he, too, will push on to Roland Garros with his constant companions in pain. If Nadal were to fall over, if Federer were to find the surface too demanding, he may win his 15th major and would go to Wimbledon as the favourite, with the prospect in New York of doing something no man has done since Rod Laver in 1969: sweep all four slams. That would put him two behind Federer, one in front of Nadal. They have thought about it alright, and Djokovic should start that particular ball rolling on Sunday.He may be lending his voice to Netflix for its forthcoming natural history show, but David Attenborough will be back on BBC screens this year with major new programmes that focus on the environmental forces reshaping our world. The veteran broadcaster is fronting One Planet, Seven Worlds, which uses cutting-edge technology to explore how the characteristics of each continent affect the animals that live there. He is also understood to be appearing in Green Planet, a series that looks at the world from the point of view of plants and highlights the part they play in the global ecosystem. Attenborough recently urged politicians and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos to tackle climate change, warning that “the Garden of Eden is no more”. Following the success of Blue Planet II and Plastics Watch, Attenborough’s new BBC1 shows are part of a drive by the corporation to put the spotlight on the environment, under the banner “Protecting Our Planet”. These include a programme called Population with Chris Packham about mankind’s expansion, Meat: A Threat to Planet Earth, which examines the impact of meat eating on the environment, and The Springwatch Year of Action, a call to action to focus on threats to British wildlife. Such is the global appeal of natural history series and Attenborough – Blue Planet II was seen by three-quarters of a billion people worldwide – that some saw his signing up to Netflix to narrate its forthcoming series Our Planet as a major blow to the BBC. Although Attenborough has worked for other broadcasters before, such as Sky, the financial clout and global reach of Netflix and its move into traditional BBC territory sparked fears last year that he might make the streaming service his main home. However, he has a long association with the BBC spanning 60 years, including a spell as BBC2 controller. Fortunately for viewers, there will be no clash between the similar-sounding Our Planet and One Planet, Seven Worlds. The Netflix show is due to be released in April, while its BBC rival is expected to air in the autumn. Announcing the Protecting Our Planet season, Alison Kirkham, BBC’s controller of factual commissioning, pointed out: “Plenty of other broadcasters are now following our lead, but we’re determined to keep moving the conversation forwards. “That’s what makes the BBC special: the desire to anticipate and stimulate the national conversation, not motivated by commercial imperatives or what’s in fashion. The BBC has a unique commitment to factual programming. I don’t believe any other broadcaster in British television has such an extraordinary breadth of output in factual.” Other shows announced by Kirkham ranged from Nadiya on Anxiety, a documentary from Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain revealing how she suffers from and copes with anxiety, and My Family, the Holocaust and Me, fronted by Robert “Judge” Rinder. In addition, Louis Theroux investigates sexual assault in US colleges, and a groundbreaking documentary executive produced by the Guardian tells the story of a gay transsexual man’s quest to have a child in Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth.A hat-trick from Fernando Llorente and two goals from Serge Aurier, the first a thumping drive from distance that Harry Kane could hardly have bettered, saw Tottenham into the FA Cup fourth round at the expense of Tranmere Rovers. The League Two side managed to live with their illustrious opponents for most of the first half but were outclassed after the interval, with Son Heung-min pulling the strings. Kane even took the field with the score at 6-0 and managed to add a seventh before the end, taking his tally for the season to 19 and bringing Spurs a 33rd goal in 33 days as well as their biggest away win ever in the FA Cup. “Maybe we are different to everyone else, we always like to be positive,” Mauricio Pochettino said. “I don’t think it was a risk at all to send Harry on for a few minutes. Strikers like to score goals and he got one. We take all the competitions we are in seriously and I also think you need to show respect to the supporters when you are away from home. Some of the people who paid money to see the game probably did so in the hope they might see Harry Kane in action.” Son had a great chance to open the scoring after eight minutes when he raced clear through the middle to take advantage of a deflection from a defender that fell into his path. He had only Scott Davies to beat but shot early and unconvincingly, allowing the goalkeeper to save with his legs. Davies made a rather better save a few minutes later when Connor Jennings lingered too long on the ball in his own half, inviting Juan Foyth to dispossess him with a crunching tackle. The ball again broke kindly for Son, who this time slipped Lucas Moura in to his left, only for the goalkeeper to leave his line quickly to smother the low shot. Spurs did not have their very best team with Kane joined on the bench by Moussa Sissoko, Christian Eriksen and Toby Alderweireld. They were in control of the game nonetheless and almost took the lead on the half-hour when Llorente volleyed narrowly over from a corner. Manny Monthe rose to meet a Liam Ridehalgh corner at the other end shortly afterwards, obliging Paulo Gazzaniga to make his first save of the game to prevent the header creeping under the crossbar. Just when Rovers must have been thinking they might reach half-time unscathed Aurier put Spurs ahead with an unstoppable screamer from 30 yards out. Aurier had merely been standing in the centre of the pitch to provide notional cover at a Tottenham corner when a series of half-clearances by Tranmere sent the ball his way. He was a long way out but his first-time shot had power and accuracy and arrowed unerringly into Davies’ top-left corner. There was very little chance for Tranmere to do anything to save the game as Tottenham increased their lead almost immediately after the break. Son made one of his irresistible charges to the goalline and might well have shot had not the angle been so narrow. Instead he looked up and picked out Llorente perfectly and the Spanish striker tucked away one of the easier goals of his Spurs career from the six-yard line. Tranmere did have an opportunity to pull a goal back when the ball broke to Harvey Gilmour a few yards out, though with the goal at his mercy the midfielder put his shot over the bar. Lucas nearly added a third for the visitors when he skipped neatly around Stephen McNulty but tripped himself up in the process of rounding the goalkeeper. It hardly mattered – Spurs were still four goals up before the hour mark. First Son set up Aurier for his second goal of the evening, a less spectacular effort than the first with the ball only just evading the Tranmere defenders’ efforts to stop it on the line, then Son popped up in space on the left and beat Davies with a low shot rolled into the far corner. When the South Korean was substituted a few minutes later he left the field to applause from all sides of the ground. Two close-range finishes in quick succession from Llorente were harsh on Tranmere, as was the sight of Kane taking the field at 6-0 to replace him and lifting a shot over Davies 10 minutes from time. Ollie Banks had a shot saved and Jake Caprice might have done better with a shooting opportunity but Tranmere were rarely far enough upfield to seek consolation. They were too busy trying to keep the score in single figures.It’s hard to convince people to take data safety seriously. Installing updates, changing passwords, refusing permissions: it can be exhausting, and it’s hard to stay motivated when the work seems endless. That’s why Taylor Swift is the information security icon the world needs. The superstar has long spoken out about her desire to stay secure. More than a typical celebrity’s fondness for the sort of privacy that involves massive propertes to defeat the long paparazzi lenses, Swift has frequently shown a keen understanding of why – and how – digital security is important to her. In a Rolling Stone interview in 2014, she revealed that she kept the only full version of her forthcoming album, 1989, on her iPhone – and would only play it on headphones, for fear of wiretaps. “Don’t even get me started on wiretaps. It’s not a good thing for me to talk about socially. I freak out … I have to stop myself from thinking about how many aspects of technology I don’t understand.” The article continues: “‘Like speakers,’ she says. ‘Speakers put sound out … so can’t they take sound in? Or’ – she holds up her cellphone – ‘they can turn this on, right? I’m just saying. We don’t even know.’” Sound familiar? It’s only Swift more or less predicting this week’s iPhone “hellbug” that briefly let anyone with your phone number call you on FaceTime and listen in via your phone’s mic before you picked up, without your knowledge or consent. Maybe we should have listened closer. In 2017, Ed Sheeran revealed that collaborating with Swift involved NSA-level security: “I was in San Francisco and they sent someone with a locked briefcase with an iPad and one song on it and they … played the song I’ve done with her,” he told the Brazilian magazine Capricho. “They asked if I like it, and I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and then they took it back, that’s how I heard it.” Swift’s extreme caution has even led to the creation of a Twitter fan account, SwiftOnSecurity. It is genuinely the most informative cybersecurity resource on the internet. But if you don’t want to follow Swift on tech security, just steer clear of her celebrity foe, Kanye West. Greatest rapper of his generation, yes, but no one whose iPhone passcode, reports say, is 000000 should be trusted with data protection advice.The singer Mariah Carey has been criticised by women’s rights campaigners, who have accused her of helping to airbrush Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record by agreeing to perform there. Carey appeared with DJ Tiesto, Sean Paul and the Yemen-born singer Balqees Fathi on Thursday in what she has claimed was an opportunity to work towards gender desegregation in the kingdom. Activists, however, have rejected that. “The Saudi government is using entertainment to distract the people from human rights abuses because it can sense the anger among the public,” said Omaima al-Najjar, a Saudi woman who sought political refuge abroad and co-founded Women for Rights in Saudi Arabia (WARSA). Najjar said the kingdom uses concerts as a diversion from the Saudi-led war in neighbouring Yemen, human rights abuses committed under the crown prince and repressive male guardianship laws that restrict women’s freedoms. WARSA launched a petition calling on the singer to boycott the country. It said it was focused on Carey because “she has power to stand for women … as an artist and as a female”. Other campaigners had urged Carey to take notice of fellow Saudi women’s rights activists who have been imprisoned in recent months, and Najjar said artists such as Carey should make their performances in Saudi Arabia conditional on the release of such people. She said a boycott would not impact ordinary Saudis because many could not afford concert tickets, which started at about £60, with VIP seats costing about £400. Carey’s publicists told the Associated Press that, when “presented with the offer to perform for an international and mixed gender audience in Saudi Arabia, Mariah accepted the opportunity as a positive step towards the dissolution of gender segregation”. They added: “As the first female international artist to perform in Saudi Arabia, Mariah recognises the cultural significance of this event and will continue to support global efforts towards equality for all.” The statement said that Carey “looks forward to bringing inspiration and encouragement to all audiences.Andy Murray has been guarding a chronic hip condition for several years, he has revealed in his first major interview since announcing his plans to retire from the game because of injury. Speaking to journalists before what could be his last public appearance on a court on Monday at the Australian Open, the three-time grand slam winner talked of his bitter regret at having to abandon competitive tennis and admitted he had “zero interest” in doing anything else. He said: “Because I’ve been in pain for a long time, it’s not as simple as, ‘My pain started at the French Open, I’ve never had hip pain before.’ I’d been in pain for quite a long time beforehand but was managing it and was able to play, so I was thinking, ‘If my hip improves I’ll be able to go back to competing.’” The 31-year-old said that he had discussed competing again with specialists. “Because of when I had the surgery and what I was told about the surgery, and the timings of when things can be beneficial, I thought, well I need to wait it out a bit and see.” He looked down, paused and added: “Obviously it didn’t help enough. That’s how difficult it was.” If the former world No 1’s match against the Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut in the first round of the Australian Open on Monday is his last public appearance on a tennis court – as he fears it might be – he will leave to rapturous applause and the gratitude of a generation. Despite beating Agut in their three previous matches, Murray does not expect to win. The Scot said he was determined to follow advice from psychologists and delay making decisions about what he does next. “I don’t want to stop playing tennis just now,” he admitted. “I don’t feel ready, the rest of my body feels perfect. “That’s the hard thing about it. It’s not like I wake up and my whole body’s sore, and just aching, and it’s too much. It’s just one problem that can’t be fixed. That’s why it’s difficult. Look, lots of things have been weird. Like, the US Open last year for me was quite odd, because I was in a lot of pain.” There he lost to Fernando Verdasco in the second round. He lost to him again in Shenzhen – and that was it for 2018 – 12 matches, seven defeats and nothing to show for it but a seemingly ineradicable limp and dwindling hopes after 15 years as a professional. “I know I’ve got no chance of winning this tournament and most likely I’m going to lose in the first round. I’m not happy about that. Because of the way the last six months of competing have gone, I could win but it’s likely that I won’t. It’s going to be uncomfortable,” he said. “If it is my last match, I want to try and enjoy it – enjoy the whole experience, which is maybe something during my career that I’ve not done. I’ve always been focused on tactics and winning and finding a way; that’s been the most important thing.” What Murray wants to do after spending nearly his entire life playing tennis is to have some fun, play five-a-side with his mates, and fit in some golf – which might have been his chosen sport, if his father, Willie, had had his way, rather than his mother, Judy, who steered him towards tennis. He could have been a footballer. But tennis, with its inbuilt frustrations and challenges, its quirks of scoring and circumstances, suited his mercurial rhythm. It gave him a canvas on which to paint his particular art. Few did it more artfully. Manufacturing a graceful departure has not been easy, though. “Coming in here, my mindset is… it feels very different. Like, the other day, I was saying to my team: ‘The thing that’s difficult – because I’m not practising anywhere near as much as I used to – is I can’t just go back on the practice court and work on my serve or whatever I’m not happy with – I can’t do that any more.’ “But it’s interesting because once I’d started thinking about stopping, that there was a possibility that I wasn’t going to be playing much longer, all of the things that I thought I would quite like to do, I have zero interest in doing right now. “I have no motivation to do anything else just now. Thinking about what I do when I finish playing and rushing into decisions – from speaking to psychologists – is the worst thing I should be doing. It’s going to take time for me to deal with it. I need time to get over it and then to know what my next steps are going to be. “I know that will be difficult. I love tennis. I love playing the game.”Bayern Munich have increased their offer for Chelsea’s Callum Hudson-Odoi to £35m, with the 18-year-old having reiterated his desire to leave Stamford Bridge this month. A bid worth £30m plus add-ons for the England youth forward was rejected, prompting Bayern to return with a deal they feel matches Chelsea’s valuation. Hudson-Odoi has refused to discuss a new contract with Chelsea, having been offered a five-year deal last summer. It is understood he is keen to establish himself as a first-team player at a time when his former England Under-17 teammates Jadon Sancho and Reiss Nelson have benefited from moves to Germany. On Monday Maurizio Sarri urged Hudson-Odoi to stay. “I don’t think a move to Germany would be good for him,” the Chelsea manager said. “He is an English player, he is very young and I think he has a very good future here; with the England team and with Chelsea. I think he is a very important player. “He is ready for the Premier League. Of course we have very important players in the same position and I can play with only two wingers. Three is difficult. But he is ready. Some times he will be on the bench but I think I can start to consider him on the same level as Willian and Pedro.”As part of our reporting on Brexit we would like to talk to British people who, in the light of the result of the referendum or status of negotiations since, have applied or are applying for citizenship of other EU countries in order to become dual nationals in order to keep their EU citizenship. These could be Britons living in the UK who have applied to specific EU countries on the grounds of birth, marriage, parents’ or grandparents’ heritage, or any other claimed citizenship qualification; Britons living in the EU who are applying to their country of residence for citizenship of that country; or people who are seeking an EU passport by any other means, perhaps by investing in another EU country. Share your story in the form below. One of our journalists may be in touch soon and we will feature some of your contribution in an upcoming article. If you’re having trouble using the form, click here. Read terms of service here.Across the road from Victoria Station is one of London’s longest-running musicals, Wicked. Walk further on, past the history-making hit Hamilton, and you’ll find a smaller theatre where a crack squad of performers are putting on their own musical. This one is guaranteed to both open and close on the same night, but it’s no flop. The idea behind the Olivier award-winning Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is that the cast creates a new, never-to-be-repeated production every evening, entirely improvised from audience suggestions. On Wednesday night, they will create their 1,000th show from scratch, more than 10 years after their debut. The Showstopper! phenomenon started with an outlandish challenge laid down by theatrical maverick Ken Campbell. Adam Meggido, who co-created the format with Dylan Emery and still performs with him in the show, recalls attending Campbell’s “workshops in eccentric performance” in a north London squat. “Ken had just come back from Canada where he’d seen a group called Die Nasty. For over 25 years now they’ve done a weekly improvised soap opera. Ken said it was better than stuff that’s scripted.” When Campbell was commissioned to create an entertainment for the Globe, to be performed on Shakespeare’s birthday, he floated the idea of a group of actors improvising Shakespeare – but he had a caveat. Meggido convincingly adopts Campbell’s nasal inflections as he remembers being told: “The thing is, it’s got to be better than the original.” The Shakespeare gig led to similar improv shows at the Royal Court and the group began to riff on the dramatic style of Pinter and Sondheim in their performances. Increasingly, Campbell would tell them: “Do it like it’s a musical. That’s a winner.” Meggido, whose parents were musical-theatre actors, already knew the art form inside out. He learned more about the craft of improvisation from Emery, who was combining an unlikely pair of careers: financial journalism and improv comedy. They built up a team called the Showstoppers; today’s company comprises 17 performers including Lucy Trodd and Pippa Evans. Several of them have been members since the early days. The show has been expanded and the formula fine-tuned since their first trip to the Edinburgh fringe. In 2008, they performed in an 89-seat Portakabin at the festival in an 11.30pm slot. It sold out from day one. “We had no idea why,” says Meggido. “There were other groups all over the world doing that kind of thing, but I don’t think anyone else was trying to make it a musical in the same way we were.” Meggido and Emery are hopelessly devoted to the art of the show tune: they genuinely want to create a great musical each night, not just pastiche the genre and have some knockabout fun. So they dress like they mean business. “A lot of improv happens in bars and improvisers generally dress very casually,” explains Emery. “But when you’re in a theatre you want the audience to know this isn’t mucking around.” Meggido adds: “I didn’t want it to look and feel like improv. I wanted it to look and feel like a musical.” For each show, a six-strong squad of Showstoppers wear colour-coded red and black outfits with matching bowling shoes. They are introduced by a sharp-suited character called The Writer (usually played by Emery). The Writer takes a call from a producer named Cameron (one of many winks to the audience) who desperately needs a new musical. The audience must help by supplying a setting, a title and assorted musical styles from which the actors will spin a story. On the night I see them at The Other Palace (for production number 998), we set the show in a funeral parlour (narrowly beating second choice Stonehenge), name it Stiff! and request songs in the key of rock musical Six, Alan Mencken’s The Little Mermaid and Sondheim (“easy to copy,” deadpans The Writer). Almost instantly, the six Showstoppers have created their characters, are singing choruses, keeping just-about-in-sync for salsa routines and finding satisfying rhymes for “formaldehyde”. Their synergy is staggering and a three-piece band onstage don’t miss a beat either. The Writer interrupts proceedings for us to add suggestions. Emery says it’s a highwire act for the cast and The Writer’s job is to wobble the wire if they ever look too comfortable: “You put them in a new situation and see what they can do.” As an audience member you can’t help but try to “solve” the show. Are those melodies pre-arranged? Are there stock characters or situations they use? How much has really been pre-prepared? Nothing, says Meggido. “Audiences want to come back to see the ‘trick’ or find secret signals. But there aren’t any. People think there are set things we fall back on but it’s harder to have something in the back of your mind to fall back on than it is to genuinely improvise the musical. It’s easier just to make it all up.” The Showstoppers, he says, are like a sports team: they train hard, communicate well and “use their skills in the moment”. In the interval, the audience is encouraged to tweet further suggestions for the second half. I wonder if this is when they map out the rest of the show between them backstage but Meggido says they concentrate on firming up the story from Act I, as it all moves so quickly. (Emery later records the title and synopsis of each show they do in an online archive.) The show uses minimal, multi-purpose props and those red-and-black outfits have been cleverly designed, by Gabriella Slade, to suit a range of musical styles and eras. Emery uses a frock coat as an example: “You put it on and you could be an American general in the civil war, a doorman at the Dorchester or an 18th-century gentleman.” The Showstoppers empire now includes a 45-minute version for kids. “We only take suggestions from the children,” explains Meggido. “It’s just a big game of ‘what happens next?’ We do whatever the kids say.” Emery says the older children are often very good at making sense of the plot and creating a structure, while the younger ones “are more likely to go somewhere fun and exciting. You need both elements to create a really satisfying story. The kids show is probably the most fun we have. We’re basically doing as little improvisation as possible. It’s so liberating and it’s good training because, in the main show, everyone is worried constantly about where the story is going. Is it making sense? Are people emotionally attached to it?” I wonder how stressed they get each night – for most of us in the audience, singing a song onstage would be bad enough, never mind making up your own lyrics and dance routines. Meggido explains the ethos: “I want us to be a bunch of naive clowns who don’t get how terrifying what they’re doing is.” The key, he says, is “to be completely present and free from tension as much as possible. Anything I’ve done in my life creatively that felt any good, it didn’t feel like I was doing it. It felt like I was a channel for something that was happening … The more relaxed I am, the more present, it becomes obvious what to do next. The more tense and less connected I am, the more I have to strain. But it’s not necessarily a better or worse result. You can create through relaxation or tension.” One day, they plan to perform a show with all 17 of the Showstoppers on stage for the full chorus-line effect. In the meantime, a handful of them will continue to turn up at the theatre in Victoria each night, arriving without a character’s name, a line of dialogue or a single lyric between them. And then these improv wizards will teach Elphaba a thing or two about defying gravity. Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is at The Other Palace, London, until 16 March 2019Before Trump, before the Kavanaugh hearings, the book tour, the “she’s running” memes, the California senator Kamala Harris sat in St Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco amid a sea of blue-uniformed police officers. The year was 2004, just a few months into Harris’s first term as San Francisco district attorney – her first elected position. A young police officer, Isaac Espinoza, had been gunned down on the job, and the city’s rank-and-file were out for blood. Harris had unseated the incumbent (albeit unpopular) district attorney in part by campaigning to not seek capital punishment. Three days before the funeral at St Mary’s, Harris announced that she intended to keep her campaign promise, much to the fury of the police. But as she sat in the cathedral, the woman who would later become her colleague, Senator Dianne Feinstein, veered from the script and called for the death penalty, prompting thousands of officers to their feet. Harris remained sitting. I’ll hand that to her. Her ambition is without equal To this day, some city police officers will still clench their teeth when Harris’s name comes up in conversation, recalling what they describe as a betrayal 15 years prior. But Harris took the political hit. She stayed the course, as she always had in her meteoric rise in San Francisco and California politics. Her career has been dotted with moments like the one in St Mary’s, but her track record shows that she has grand ambitions and a plan on how to achieve them, making both friends and enemies along the way. And now, as she eyes the highest office in the land, few doubt her ability to eventually get where she wants to go. “Nobody works harder than Kamala Harris,” said Lateefah Simon, Harris’s longtime friend. “She’s a strategist. She has a memory like nobody you’ll ever meet. But more than that, I think she cares. She cares about what happens in the lives of the people in our community.” San Francisco has long been considered a liberal bastion, but it’s taken time for the city’s power structure to reflect the diversity of the people. But until Harris was elected district attorney in 2003, only white men had held that office. Born in Oakland in 1964, at the height of the Bay Area’s anti-war and civil rights activism, she was bussed to an elementary school in Berkeley as “part of a national experiment in desegregation”, according to her political memoir, The Truths We Hold. Her parents – Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian immigrant, and Donald Harris, who was born in Jamaica – would often bring her to marches and protests at UC Berkeley. After her parents divorced, Harris and her younger sister, Maya, who would go on to become a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, were primarily raised by their mother. Harris attended high school in Montreal, where her mother had a job teaching at McGill University, and went on to study at Howard University before returning to the Bay Area for law school at UC Hastings. There, she met Jeff Adachi. Later on, as the city’s public defender, he would face off with Harris as her chief in-court adversary when she became the city’s top prosecutor. But at UC Hastings, he was just a tutor. “Even then, she was an extremely talented, charismatic person who had a very strong ambition. That was something that struck me right away,” Adachi said. “She was always a people person, as she is now, but always very focused on whatever it was that she wanted.” In her last summer in law school, she went on to intern at the Alameda county district attorney’s office, where she spent a few years after she passed the bar. She later went on to the San Francisco district attorney’s office as a line prosecutor, eventually taking over the office’s career criminal unit. “I remember asking her why she wanted to be a prosecutor,” Adachi said, “and she said, ‘That’s how I’m going to change the world.’” In 1994, Harris met then-state assembly speaker Willie Brown, a controversial figure in California politics. Back then, he was called the “Ayatollah of the Assembly”. In San Francisco, a city defined by its great wealth and even greater economic disparities in part because of its rich history of political back-scratching, he’d go on to be known by many names: “Da Mayor” (he was mayor of San Francisco from 1996 to 2004); the kingmaker; the puppetmaster. Anybody in Brown’s orbit is considered part of the Willie Brown machine – which, depending on who you ask, is either merely an influential, moderate-leaning branch of the California Democratic party, a self-serving cartel with the lobbying and fundraising skills to make or break careers, or both. Brown’s proteges soar high, but the whispers follow. This rang especially true for Harris, who dated Brown for about a year. He was 60 and she was 29. During this time, Brown appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission, both high-paying positions. Many politicians owe their success to Brown. He launched the careers of California governor Gavin Newsom, the former California state senator Mark Leno, and the former San Francisco mayor Ed Lee, but when discussing Harris, the talk gets particularly nasty, in part because of their romantic history. Harris has spent much of the past 25 years distancing herself from Brown – she doesn’t mention him once in her political memoir. But much like he did for Newsom and Leno, Brown opened doors. And when it came time for her to run for district attorney after a stint working in the city attorney’s office, she won. “In those days, when you were supported by Willie Brown, it came with all the support and money of the San Francisco establishment,” said Aaron Peskin, a current member of the San Francisco board of supervisors. In San Francisco, where only less than 7% of all registered voters are registered Republican, the political spectrum spans mostly between moderate and progressive Democrat. Peskin, a longtime progressive stalwart in city government with healthy skepticism of Willie Brown’s influence, found himself aligned with Harris, despite their political differences. “I was an early enthusiast for Kamala Harris for district attorney, even though I’m a self-professed leftie and she came from the Willie Brown moderates,” Peskin said. “All things being equal, I’d rather have a district attorney that is independent of the mayor (Brown was still mayor at the time Harris was elected). Mayors want to have influence over the legislative body, but how often do mayors call upon the district attorney?” Harris ran for district attorney at a contentious time for the office. The incumbent, Terence Hallinan, a prominent progressive, had unsuccessfully tried to indict the entire command staff of the San Francisco police department. Hallinan was unpopular, but it was still shocking for a first-time candidate to beat out not just a sitting official, but also a serial candidate for district attorney, Bill Fazio. “She had a lot of support,” said Fazio, a former prosecutor and the third candidate in the race. “She was a new face, an attractive candidate, and I don’t just mean in a physical sense. For San Francisco, she fit in well. She had connections through Willie Brown. She was introduced to a lot of moneyed people.” Harris had campaigned on the promise to repair relations between her office and the embattled police department – and then, on her 100th day in office, there she was in St Mary’s Cathedral, watching as thousands of cops cheered against her. Peskin had attended the funeral and remained seated as well, and remembered seeing her a few rows in front him, her face ashen. “It was so hard and painful,” said Lateefah Simon, Harris’s longtime friend. “She was new to the office and she had always been clear: she was anti-death penalty. But you know, I never saw Kamala bow her head down in any kind of shame. I think during this time, she began to deeply understand the power of her voice and how she could move through situations.” Kamala Harris is the toughest person that you’ll ever work for. But everybody is forever transformed A few months later, Harris called Simon up and asked her if she wanted to run her re-entry services. Simon told Harris it would be risky to hire her, “a teen mom with no college degree”. (Simon is selling herself short here – she is the youngest women to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship). But Harris refused to let Simon settle, and part of her employment agreement included the requirement to get her degree. “She made me show her my report cards!” Simon laughed. “Listen, Kamala Harris is the toughest person that you’ll ever work for,” Simon said. “She is just a zealot about public service, and it’s intense. But everybody who works for Kamala is forever transformed. I know it’s not just me. There were many others.” Harris regularly put in 12- to 14-hour days, talking to victims’ families “and promising them justice”, Simon said. She held her employees to high standards, but herself to even higher ones. “One day, she had a really bad cold,” Simon said. “It was like the flu. She had tissues, but she was still impeccably dressed, and she had a bowl of clementines on her impeccably organized desk. It was like 4.50pm pm. I said, ‘Ms Harris’ – because I always called her Ms Harris when I worked for her – ‘it’s almost quitting time, and you’re sick.’ She took a sip of water, looked at those bowls of clementines and then looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘I don’t get sick.’” Harris has received criticism for her record as district attorney, for which she was re-elected in 2007. While Harris has been outspoken about her progressive values on police reform and criminal justice, her critics say her time as district attorney does not reflect that. “In many respects, she was a traditional prosecutor, concerned with conviction rates and victims’ rights,” Adachi said. “This was before the criminal justice reform movement and Black Lives Matter had really taken hold, and she pretty much ran the office as you would expect a prosecutor to run an office. But she was also open to programs that helped individuals turn their lives around.” One of the biggest missteps of her tenure as district attorney arose as she was running for attorney general in 2010. Ahead of the primary, the San Francisco police department became embroiled in a scandal. A criminalist at the department admitted to regularly stealing cocaine from evidence. The woman also implicated other analysts in poor investigative work, resulting in the dismissal of hundreds of pending cases. A superior court judge pilloried Harris’s office in a scathing ruling on the case and essentially accused her office of violating defendants’ constitutional rights by not informing them of the issues, as prosecutors are obligated to. Entering the race with this scandal hanging overhead, the odds were against Harris. Yet she won. The race was so close that it was not until three weeks after the election and the provisional ballots were counted that the former Los Angeles county district attorney Steve Cooley conceded. “You got to remember, Kamala Harris is all politics all the time,” Cooley said. “There’s no question when it comes to being a politician, she is very committed and hardworking, whereas I was a career prosecutor. I never perceived myself as a politician.” Nine years later, Cooley still expresses some bitterness over the loss, and Harris’s criminal justice record, saying that he’s heard from “many elected DAs” around the state who believe she was “the worst attorney general ever”. But underneath the bitterness is a begrudging respect. “She looked at everything she did as DA from a political prism,” he said. “Attorney general is a pretty powerful position in California. I think when she was DA, she was already looking at it as the next step up the ladder. Watch her now. She’s in the Senate and now apparently she’s going for president.” He laughed. “I’ll hand that to her. Her ambition is without equal.” Ambitious women get a bad rep in this world, especially ambitious politicians who are women, and Harris and her supporters have heard it all. Calculating. Untrustworthy. Unlikable. “This is what happens when you have a dynamic and gifted woman of color who goes into her job and does her job,” Simon said. Bill Fazio, the attorney who Harris defeated in her first race for district attorney, still balks when he hears people describe Harris as “guarded” or “cold” because he knows that she is anything but that. In March 2009, Fazio’s wife died and out of the blue, he received a call from Harris. “Her mom passed away about the same time, and she was very close to her mom.” Fazio said. “All she wanted to do was to talk about our personal losses in a very personal way.” He continued: “People always call me up thinking I’m going to trash her. But I still feel really positive about her.” In a prime example of the insular and small-world nature of San Francisco politics, the San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin and Harris had not only attended Thousand Oaks Elementary School together in Berkeley, but were in the same class from kindergarten through third grade. “Her mother was Shyamala, from India, and my mother was Tsipora, from what was then-Palestine, now Israel,” Peskin said. “It’s a total Bay Area story.” When Peskin’s father died in April, he was surprised to get a text message from Harris containing a snapshot of a class book they had put together as kids with the message: “Thinking of you.” It’s telling that even her former adversaries are reluctant to speak too badly of her, in part because many believe that like every other goal she’s met in her life, she’s destined for higher office, whether in this race or the next. But for more, there’s an aspect of game recognizing game. No matter the criticism of Harris, no one can deny that she stayed the course, in a time when few have the necessary discipline, dedication, or political know-how to do so. “She didn’t come from a place of privilege or money,” said Adachi, the public defender. “She wasn’t a Kennedy. She had to work hard to get to where she is. A lot of people say she coasted into the Senate position. No, it was because of the political capital she built from those other races. And since then, she has been able to take the political capital, and amplify it. And she’ll do it for every office she’ll run for.”Gillette’s new advert has sharply divided the internet with its critique of toxic masculinity, after suggesting that men in 2019 could be doing better in some areas. The campaign has been met with outrage in some quarters and triggered a meltdown among so-called men’s rights activists, a typically sensitive bunch. Still, the brains behind the campaign will undoubtedly be pleased by the huge amount of attention they have generated. The ad’s success means we will likely be seeing a lot more men’s products tackling modern gender politics soon. Here’s what they should look like. Stay AWAKE and experience the CHRONICALLY UNDERVALUED PLEASURE of EQUALLY DIVIDING the RESPONSIBILITIES OF PARENTHOOD with your PARTNER. Or, if you’re a REAL MAN, PUT YOUR CAREER ON HOLD and do the MAJORITY OF THE WORK YOURSELF, like many women have done FOR MILLENNIA. Tagline: STAY WOKE. Body spray adverts tend to feature a man walking down a street while women practically fall over themselves due to the stench of his deodorant. But what if they reflected the real world for once, where not everything is homogeneously heterosexual? Not that it happens every day, but it would be nice to see a pansexual street feast for once, where a man with dry pits draws everyone’s attention, whether they’re male, female, cis, trans or gender nonconforming. Tagline: Smell good for everyone. Particularly useful for meetings, this device does all the usual things to make you a healthier person: logs your steps, monitors your heartbeat, tracks your progress. It also ensures you’re not shouting over a female colleague who has just started talking. For an extra cost you can also have one fitted with a small Taser-like node that shocks you if repeat what a woman has just said and present it as your own idea. Tagline: Just let her finish. It looks just like any other watch: big, sleek, shiny, manly. But there’s a twist: it sounds an alarm every afternoon to signal when your female colleagues have effectively stopped being paid due to the gender pay gap. By our calculations, based on a 9-5 shift and 20% gap in the US, you will be getting an alarm around 3.30pm every day. You can change the time of the alarm so it goes off later, but you will have to start speaking out first. Tagline: Because you don’t deserve it.Eddie Jones has admitted spying on opponents in the past, but says he stopped doing so a decade ago because it had become a waste of time. The England coach was speaking after listening to the Leeds United manager Marcelo Bielsa reveal that he had spied on Championship rival clubs all season. “He was telling everyone what everyone does,” said Jones. “Fifteen years ago, we used to send people out in costumes to watch training – it used to be part of the pre-match brief then. I can remember sending a coach who is now in a very senior position dressed like a swagman to watch one team train and he got chased out of there. “You do not need to do it now because you see everything now in a game. I have been coaching for 20 years and it has always been going on but I can say with a hand on my heart, we don’t do it any more. We don’t see the value of it because we can glean most of the stuff from games now.” Jones accepted spying could become an issue in the World Cup with some training grounds surrounded by high-rise buildings, adding: “We will have the security we need, but I don’t want to get to the extent where we go to the team room and we’re putting Blu Tack on the keyhole or looking under seats for tape recorders. It creates a sense of paranoia.” Jones pointed out that spying was not always covert. “I was having a coffee with [assistant] Steve Borthwick in South Africa and a bloke comes out with a camera and starts trying to take photos of all our notes. You can be too obsessed about it, just do what you can to protect what is important.”A hospital in Dublin has refused an abortion to a woman with a fatal foetal abnormality, raising questions over Ireland’s recent introduction of abortion services. The Coombe hospital, a leading maternity facility that has signed up to the service, reportedly declined to terminate the pregnancy because it did not “fall neatly” into a fatal foetal abnormality diagnosis. The woman said she planned to travel to England with her partner for an abortion next week, a journey made by generations of Irish women before her, but which was supposed to no longer be necessary. GPs and hospitals started offering abortion services on 1 January, six months after Ireland voted in a landslide to lift a constitutional ban. Two politicians revealed the case in the Dáil, the lower house of the Irish parliament, on Thursday after being contacted by the woman. “Her words to me were: ‘This is not what I voted for. I have constitutional rights,’” Bríd Smith, of the People Before Profit party, told the chamber. “She is finding it hard to sleep, knowing the condition her much-wanted child is in. She wants a termination. She is entitled to it. This country voted for it. It is the law.” The other politician, Ruth Coppinger of Solidarity, said that when the woman went for a scan at 13 weeks doctors saw that the organs of the foetus were outside the body. She returned for another scan a week later and the diagnosis was confirmed, said Coppinger. “One doctor, her consultant, and then another consultant were brought in and said, yes, it is a fatal foetal abnormality. A week later it went to the board and the board has overruled that.” The Irish Examiner, citing sources close to the woman, said hospital officials told her the pregnancy could not be terminated because it did not “fall neatly into a fatal foetal abnormality” diagnosis. Under the new system GPs provide abortions to women up to nine weeks of pregnancy and hospitals perform terminations at between nine and 12 weeks, after which abortions are allowed only in exceptional circumstances. Pro-choice activists have complained the legislation is too restrictive and vague and could make doctors unsure about whether or not to terminate pregnancies. In a statement the Coombe hospital said it did not comment on individual cases but that its board had no role in certifying abortions. Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said the law was clear and consistent with last year’s referendum. “So hospitals in Ireland have an obligation to make decisions in a way that is consistent with that new legislation.”Ellen Page was standing in a car park in Brazil as a masked man explained why he murders gay people. It was 2015, and she was filming Gaycation, the documentary series she made with her best friend Ian Daniel after coming out on Valentine’s Day a year earlier. “I’m here today because I am gay and because maybe I can make a difference,” she’d said in a speech at a Human Rights Campaign conference that has since been shared many millions of times. “I suffered for years because I was scared to be out… And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.” I never even touched a woman outside until I was 27. I was depressed… In the car park, the only sign that she’s disturbed by this ex-cop and his promise to kill again is a familiar crinkling between her eyebrows. This is a technique she deployed effectively when explaining why she was going to keep the baby in Juno (for which she received an Academy Award nomination), and talking an abuser through his castration in her breakout role in Hard Candy, and then in Inception, as the world exploded around her. Page shields her mouth from the murderer as she asks her producer whether she’ll be safe if she tells him she’s gay. “I want to,” she says, firmly. So she does. I arrive at our New York restaurant as evening settles, but the place is empty. “Are you here to meet, uh, Alan?” the waitress beams, walking me to a seemingly unoccupied booth. And there she is, slouched on a banquette, 5ft 1in under four layers of shirt, looking at her phone beneath a wide-brimmed cap. Not an inch of flesh is showing between her knuckles and chin – none of her eight homemade tattoos (including nicknames of her friends Catherine Keener and Kristen Wiig) are visible, and the light is such that her face remains in shadow. She orders me a tequila cocktail and explains why she chose this restaurant – it’s on the doorstep of her new home – in an apologetic tone. She never thought she’d live somewhere like this fancy apartment block, “but they have a composting system so…” Now 31, she has just moved to the city, in part because she loves to walk, and LA resents walkers, and in part for her wife’s work – Emma Portner, 24 and a dancer, was the youngest woman to choreograph a West End musical. Page first saw her dancing on Instagram; they married soon after. When our allotted hour is up, Portner will lope into the empty restaurant in an oversized black hoodie, her face barely visible, and slide into the homely crook of Page’s arm – “Hi sweetie” – and Page will relax for the first time. Portner will fold herself on to the seat shyly, rest her head on the table and wait for me to leave, so I will. Growing up in Nova Scotia, Page got her first acting job at 10, but found uncomfortable fame in 2007 with Juno, an indie film that eventually catapulted her into roles in huge blockbusters such as X-Men and Inception. It had such an impact that when, a year later, 17 students became pregnant at a school in Massachusetts at the same time as Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Time magazine called it “the Juno Effect”. At which point, Page decided to disappear. For a while at least. There’s a phrase that makes distinct the difference between going for a drink after work and a plan to throw yourself into a night of parties whatever the absolute hell might happen, and it’s this that I think of when looking at the decisions Page made after an entire career avoiding questions about her sexuality. In 2014 she didn’t just come out, she came “out-out” as if making up for lost time. She appeared at Ted Cruz’s barbecue with a microphone and challenged him through a cloud of pork smoke; on Twitter she mourned the death of nine-year-old Jamel Myles who took his own life as a result of homophobic bullying; her Gaycation series, travelling around the world meeting the most marginalised LGBTQ communities, was more than just a travel show. Like all her interventions since that Valentine’s Day speech, it was a statement of intent. The day before we meet, she posts a tearful photo on her Instagram, marking her first anniversary of marriage to Portner. “Beyond grateful to all those who fought to allow us to be wife & wife.” Her outness is not incidental: it’s pointed and political, and it reads as something between liberation and apology, the apology being for not coming out sooner. She has just wrapped on Netflix’s new series of Tales of the City, the most recent adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s groundbreaking novels that chart the lives of a group of friends in San Francisco. Maupin first found a mainstream sort of fame upon posthumously outing his friend Rock Hudson, and more than 30 years later he maintains the moral obligation he feels to lift the stigma of homo sexuality by being truthful. I wonder if Page, out-out as she is today, feels a similar pull? “I have a responsibility to be out now, because I have these resources. I can access therapists and security and support. But the reality is a lot of people can be in severely grave danger. I think, for instance, it would have been very harmful for me if someone had outed me earlier. When I was 20, someone wrote an article with the headline: ‘The Ellen Page Sexuality Sweepstakes’ in the Village Voice. ‘Is Juno a you know?’” it concluded. She shudders, remembering the effect it had on her to have her sexuality debated in the press before she had come to terms with it herself. “I never even touched a woman outside until I was 27. I was very depressed, and very anxious. I was not well.” After Juno’s success and the inevitable graduation to red-carpet star (with recurring appearances on FHM’s Sexiest 100 list), she needed to escape. She enrolled on a permaculture course in an eco-village in Oregon where, building giant composts and peeing in buckets, she met Ian Daniel, seemingly the only person in America that year to have no idea who she was. “I know Hollywood can be an overwhelming and toxic system at times,” he emails from India, explaining the “grace” of his friend. “She pushed back to be herself in a place that wanted her to be a more conventional feminine ideal. She wasn’t interested in that. I think she sees that the world needs to see more mainstream representations of the multitude of ways we really are. She risked a lot by coming out when she did, but she had the insight to know she could help make it easier for others in the future – and that she would be happier, too. She’s helped create a new path for LGBTQ people in Hollywood. For someone so small,” he adds, “she has huge force.” Together they embarked on Gaycation, leading with their own queerness. Page’s public coming out began with the speech, but continued through this exploration of communities. Continues, even. “Filming, I felt sadness and anger, but mixed with the most powerful inspiring moments of absolute joy, and gratitude, to be in the presence not only of activists but individuals who are brave because they are themselves every day.” Interviewing anti-gay men like Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro and a Rastafarian leader in Jamaica, did they feel like they changed any minds? She purses her lips. “There were a couple of moments where you’d see a little spark. But I’m sad to say that that was rare. I want to be like: ‘Yeah, Ted Cruz came over afterwards and we had a longer convo and he gets it now!’ But no, I mean, when you’re talking to the head of a neo-Nazi group in the Ukraine, you’re probably not going to end up hugging. But, you’re at least going to have a conversation and some kind of representation.” She takes a deep breath, resigned. This is her job now. Page has been working since she was 10 and, in a certain light, she could still pass for a kid. In the show she’s promoting today, The Umbrella Academy, she plays the only non-powerful sibling in a dysfunctional family with superpowers and, even when in dialogue with a monkey butler (long story), she moves with the haunted delicacy of a child that’s seen too much. I struggle with the film industry because it is still not changing How does her appearance affect the way she’s treated? “People are condescending. Though, it’s hard to know if it’s because I look young or because I’m a woman? It’s definitely affected how I’ve learned to express my opinion, though. I’ve become more direct in a way that’s really positive. It’s a lot to do with coming out, and the time spent figuring that out. I’m more… in my body?” In 2017 she published a long post on Facebook about her experiences of harassment at work, including a story about one of Hollywood’s most successful directors Brett Ratner. It began: “‘You should fuck her to make her realise she’s gay.’ He said this about me during a cast and crew meet and greet before we began filming X-Men: The Last Stand. I was 18.” Writing this, she found her voice: “Ratner’s comment replayed in my mind many times over the years as I encountered homophobia and coped with feelings of reluctance and uncertainty about the industry and my future in it. “Something had switched,” she remembers. “I wanted to talk about the shittiness I’d seen. I’ve dealt with these difficult things, whether it’s directors trying to sleep with me when I was 16, or stalkers. But there are people in society who deal with far, far worse and cannot access the resources I have.” She does this often – catches herself in a moment of pity, and then quickly reminds herself of her immense privilege, something she wears heavily, like another shirt, a sort of feel-bad feminism that means even when she is describing something objectively terrible that happened to her, she must contextualise it within a continent of greater suffering. It seems exhausting. But perhaps necessary, for a person so aware of the internet’s reactions to an offhand quote and, perhaps, necessary for a person so aware of the platform she has. “What changed for me after publishing that was the realisation how much crazy shit happened that was so normalised. And I internalised it. It’s disturbing. Then, talking about it does really open something in you, which is painful in many ways. But that’s what’s letting us all connect and have the conversations, about intersectional feminism, etc.” Page is constantly working to educate herself, from reading Rebecca Solnit’s The Mother of All Questions (“Which is super”) to learning geography from an app. “I’m always learning, I’m always humble, but trying to be open and grow, and also to remind myself of the times when I didn’t know all this. In order to remember not to jump on people for getting stuff wrong, you know?” Has she seen much change in the industry since sharing her #MeToo moment? She sucks up the last of her drink through a tiny straw. “After I wrote that, a producer sent me an email, like: ‘Oh, I had no idea!’ But that person had come to my trailer and told me I couldn’t talk to the director like that. I struggle with this industry because the changes don’t seem to be happening. When I was promoting Hard Candy [in 2005], I was asked the exact same questions I get asked today. ‘How do you play so many strong female roles?’ As if they would ever ask that to… I don’t know, James McAvoy!” So if she doesn’t see change happening in the industry, why does she stay? “How can I hold two things in my head at the same time? Well, we’re all doing it, aren’t we? We’re at a place where we’ve been told the world as we know it will be gone by 2030, and we’re still all just checking our email. I love working with brilliant actors, so I’m making movies. But it’s a… strange time.” One thing we need to do, she says, is change the language. “We need to stop claiming the political activists are ‘radical’. The people who are fucking radical are the people who want to keep destroying our water and our top soil and our air in order to give a few people billions more dollars.” They’re the extremists, she insists, not the people who want Americans to have universal health care. “It’s not a debate, whether Donald Trump is racist or not. Gay marriage is not a debate. And the media needs to stop claiming it is.” What does she do about this, day to day? “We just have to try and educate ourselves. And really speak up. I’m learning to worry less about what people think, and not to be afraid to say the truth. Which is: ‘What’s happening right now is wrong.’” Those “feelings of reluctance” that she wrote about on Facebook, about her future in the industry, seem to have been resolved, not by quitting, but by refocusing her lens. It’s not a debate, whether Donald Trump is racist or not. Gay marriage is not a debate Here is the biggest public change since Page came out – the product of her acting is not the film, but instead the activism. The film is just the thing she does to make strangers listen. “Yes, but, I mean, I almost feel bad agreeing, because I think of the activists I’ve met who spend decades of their lives sacrificing so much in order to create substantial change. They’re the ones who should be listened to.” In her Facebook post about sexual abuse in Hollywood she listed people who had led the fight, including Marsha P Johnson and Audre Lorde. “If I can amplify their voices,” she says, “then that’s my aim.” In Brazil, which has one of the highest murder rates of gay and transgender people in the world, Page coming out to the serial killer after enquiring after her safety caused him to pause, uncomfortable beneath his mask, before he walked out. She ended the episode explaining that, despite standing before a man who would prefer her dead, she left Brazil feeling inspired by a country where people live in such joyous celebration of who they are, especially in the face of such violence. “The spirit of love is what wins out in the end.” She tells me she’s enjoying exploring New York, having spent the day walking with her wife, discussing the Mae Martin comedy special they’d watched the night before, how amazing it would have been to see something like that as a teenager, something so honest and funny about sexuality. “Oh yeah, we did well over 10,000 steps before lunch,” she says, unboasting. Then, suddenly, Portner is there and Page is grinning with a slow sort of relief, and they hold hands over the table, and she’s safe. The Umbrella Academy launches on Netflix on 15 FebruaryThe increasing popularity of audiobooks has raised recorded narration to the level of a new art form, according to the man whose 133-hour version of an epic autobiographical novel has sealed his status as one of its foremost practitioners. The Italian-American actor Edoardo Ballerini has recorded more than 250 titles in an audiobook boom that has seen sales double in five years. Like many in the audiobook world, he believes this commercial success has coincided with a creative flourishing. He says the potential of book narration became apparent after his marathon recording of the English language version of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s acclaimed six-part book series, My Struggle. “Narrating these books was not only personally extraordinary, but at the vanguard of the evolving art of narration,” he told the Guardian. The completion of book six this year, for the New York-based Recorded Books, marks the end of a project that has taken five years to finish. The six volumes clock in at more than 133 hours, one of the the longest commercial recordings by a single narrator and almost twice as long as unabridged recordings of the Bible. Ballerini says recording My Struggle was the most difficult job in a 23-year acting career that has included roles in The Sopranos and the film Dinner Rush. Feedback from listeners highlighted how audiobooks, and the way they are consumed on smartphones, provide an intimate new way to reach audiences, he says. “The relation between narrator and listener has become much more personal. You’re in their home, lying in bed with them, in their cars, in the gym, or wherever it. It’s very one-on-one, there’s no sound or visual effects, it is just a voice in their heads.” He adds: “With the Karl Ove recordings people have written me in very personal ways about their experience of listening, which I’ve not gotten from any other project.” An artist told Ballerini she heard his voice in her paintings after listening to him reading Knausgaard as she worked. Another fan sent him pottery she said Ballerini’s recording had helped her to create. A couple who were stranded by snow for weeks said the My Struggle recordings helped them survive the winter. Some take issue with Ballerini’s description of it as a new art form. The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has run a a talking books service for more than 80 years. Daryl Chapman, the studios manager at the RNIB, says: “I wouldn’t say narration is a new art form, rather one that’s been evolving over time.” Oral storytelling dates back to the earliest days of human language. “Cultures often venerated professional story tellers even though they weren’t generating new stories so much as re-telling the old ones,” says Joseph Devlin, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London. Devlin’s research found listening to stories increased people’s emotional engagement more than watching video. “I agree with Ballerini that there is an intimacy in the audio format. As a listener you engage more by virtue of co-creating the content with the narrator.” Paul Stokes, the founder of the blog Audiobook Review, says: “In less than 10 years, the world of audiobooks has exploded. Using smartphones enables listeners, authors, and narrators to connect on many different levels.” He cites the example of Soundbooth Theatre, which runs live narrations based on YouTube requests, allowing audiences to have a say on how characters are read. Knausgaard approved the casting of Ballerini to read his books, but the two men have never met. “I was afraid meeting the man would shatter some things, and I’ve not even listened to him speak,” Ballerini says. But now that the project is complete, he is keen to meet someone he regards as “the author I was born to narrate”. Ballerini treasures a signed copy of book three of the series in which Knausgaard describes him as “my American voice”. Had the thought this was a “bad” year because I missed out on two film projects I wanted. Then realized I completed the greatest, most difficult, project of my career, narrating 3,600 pages of #KarlOveKnausgaard. Decided it was a great year. #perspective #gratitude pic.twitter.com/B9PnE8JIK8 Ballerini says he sometimes found it difficult to get out of character, when channelling Knausgaard. “I felt like it had gotten under my skin so deeply. It was like he was opening a window for me to see my own life. Maybe that’s the case with a lot of people, which is why the books are so compelling.” He says the experience of reading the 3,600 pages aloud was like “a big therapy session”, and admits to dreaming about Knausgaard and incidents in the books. Sarah Shrubb, an audio publisher at Little, Brown Book Group, says narrators often break down in tears reading aloud in the studio, especially when authors are reading their own work. “It’s incredibly difficult and you don’t have the feedback of an audience. It’s just you and the microphone creating these amazing soundscapes in your head. You have to play all of the characters and all their voices, and to be able to do them well is a real art form.” Shrubb says drama schools are beginning to take notice. “It is becoming an art form that is being taught in colleges. It is not just something actors do between jobs, it’s a career.” Ballerini acknowledges that his view of the status of audiobooks is an unusual one. “To describe an audiobook as being the largest thing of someone’s career is probably a new kind of claim,” he said. “But it is one that I stand by.”The former British Cycling and Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman will face explosive claims that he obtained banned testosterone for an unnamed rider and lied to UK Anti-Doping when he appears before an independent medical tribunal next month. The tribunal will look at claims brought by the General Medical Council that Freeman ordered 30 sachets of Testogel, which is on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list, in May 2011 to be sent to the Manchester velodrome – and then tried to cover his tracks. According to pre-hearing information from the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, which makes decisions about a doctor’s fitness to practise: “It is alleged that Dr Freeman’s conduct was dishonest. It is further alleged that his motive for placing the order was to obtain Testogel to administer to an athlete to improve their athletic performance.” Freeman, who worked for Team Sky and British Cycling between 2009 and 2015, has denied all doping charges in the past but this tribunal has the potential to throw a dark shadow over British cycling’s golden decade. According to the pre-hearing information, when Dr Freeman was first asked about the delivery by a fellow member of staff, he denied ordering the Testogel and said it must have been a mistake by the supplier, the Oldham-based Fit4Sport Limited. In October 2011 it is also alleged that he asked Fit4Sport for written confirmation it had been sent in error, returned and destroyed “knowing that this had not taken place”. It is claimed he showed this false email to others knowing it to be “untrue”. Freeman’s case, which will start in Manchester on 5 February and could run until 6 March, will also look into allegations that he lied about the Testogel delivery when questioned by the UK Anti-Doping Agency in 2017, when he claimed it was for a member of British Cycling’s staff and that it had been returned to the supplier. Freeman’s medical record-keeping, which was criticised by the UK Anti-Doping Agency when it looked into a separate case regarding a jiffy bag delivered to Bradley Wiggins at the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2011, will also be investigated. Wiggins has always denied any wrongdoing. Freeman, who resigned from British Cycling 17 months ago after telling the organisation he was too ill to face disciplinary action about his record-keeping, was unavailable for comment. However, a British Cycling spokesman said: “British Cycling suspended Dr Richard Freeman in March 2017 and subsequently initiated an investigation into his conduct as an employee of the federation. British Cycling requested that Dr Freeman be interviewed as part of the investigation: however, he declined to make himself available for interview, citing grounds of ill health. “In September 2017, he resigned from British Cycling. British Cycling has raised concerns relating to Dr Freeman’s fitness to practise with the General Medical Council and has continued to support the GMC’s investigation, in which the federation is a co-referrer.”Barcelona’s latest signing is football royalty, just not the way they expected. Late on Monday night, in the club store just across the concourse from the Camp Nou, closed to the public, he stood smiling and holding up his new shirt: “Prince, 19”. From Hertha to Tottenham, from Dortmund to Portsmouth and, five clubs and nine years later, from Sassuolo to Barcelona, Kevin-Prince Boateng’s 10th club is the biggest of them all. It was also the biggest surprise; their new centre-forward comes from leftfield, unforeseen by anyone. Boateng described this as a huge “opportunity”. It is one he did not expect, echoes of the day that his agent told him he was going to Milan and Boateng thought he was joking. Some in Spain reacted similarly when the news broke with the deal already done. Boateng joins on loan, with an €8m optional purchase clause in the summer. The headlines in the Catalan papers came with exclamation marks. Boateng, the “hidden option”, “the surprise”, ran the front pages. Barcelona had been searching for a back-up striker, someone to take some of the pressure, and the minutes, off Luis Suárez. The criteria was clear and it limited their options: they wanted a player with experience and the personality to contribute from the start, but prepared to be substitute. Someone cheap too, although the cumulative effects of hurried deals costs. And someone who could leave as easily, and fuss-free as he arrived. A short-term solution to a specific problem, which could have been foreseen in the summer. Perhaps it should have been. What they didn’t foresee then was Antoine Griezmann opting to stay at Atlético. Last year’s Champions League defeat in Rome weighs on their minds, their great regret at the end of a season in which the won a domestic double which felt almost eclipsed by European failure. Suárez later admitted that he wished he had rotated more before that night and Barcelona have made no secret of the fact that they are desperate to win the Champions League. They felt they needed numbers, but also personality. When Munir El Haddadi departed, it underlined that they felt he was not the support striker they sought and so they turned to the market. Álvaro Morata had been offered but the cost was high and they remained unsure about his mid- to long-term fit. Cristhian Stuani seemed a perfect solution but his buy-out clause is €15m. The idea of bringing Carlos Vela back from the United States was discussed. Sights were being lowered, it seemed. In the end, it was Boateng who arrived from Sassuolo. His last club in Spain was Las Palmas. Just the names of those two clubs raise questions and naturally there are some doubts about his level, even if there is a willingness to wait, an awareness that this is about resolving a specific, smaller issue. Boateng comes as a centre-forward and he has played up front, although he is not a natural No 9. His arrival, while it makes some sense, hints at a certain improvisation, an uncertainty, in Barcelona’s planning. It also underlines some of the pressures placed upon that planning. This market is not one Barcelona and Madrid can dominate any more, and the Catalan club had to confront some of the consequences of their spending. Over the summer, Barcelona’s expenditure on salaries came down by €28m – because it had to. 70% of their budget went on salaries last season; it is down to 66%, but that remains high and there is still a need to cut costs. A clear model can sometimes appear difficult to discern, and the departure of Neymar deepened that sensation, increasing the pressure on the board. Barcelona had expressed their certainty that he would stay but he did not. “If we said we had spent €270m on two players we would have to resign for [being] irresponsible,” said Albert Soler, the club’s director of sport. In total, they spent more than that on Ousmane Dembélé and on Philippe Coutinho, who they did not succeed in signing that summer. Face was lost. In the autumn, Soler departed. There have been other changes in the structure of the sporting directorate. Robert Fernández has departed. Before him, there was Andoni Zubizarreta. Raul Sanllehi left just before Soler. The sporting manager is Pep Segura, Eric Abidal is the technical secretary, and Ramon Planes his assistant. Planes is considered the most capable, but does not carry great authority. There’s the president Josep Maria Bartomeu and his direct advisors too. Ernesto Valverde is the coach, not the manager, and his own future is far from secure. Ariedo Braida is reported to have been the key man in bringing in Boateng. He has long felt unheard at Barcelona, lost amidst may voices. Robert Fernández signed Artur, one of the few players seen as a “Barcelona” style player, and at a time when fewer footballers are making it from the youth system. The signing of Paulinho surprised and didn’t exactly delight purists, seemingly a total rupture with the club’s identity, but he was successful – and then immediately returned to China. Arturo Vidal surprised too, although his signing was justified as being a player in the Paulinho mould. He is not really, just as Coutinho has not proven to be quite the “Iniesta” he was proclaimed to be. After a difficult start, Dembélé is impressing greatly. Malcom was taken off Roma at the last minute, Barcelona leaping in on Monchi’s deal. The manager, though, did not really want him and a departure in this window is a possibility. And other pursuits are ongoing, from Adrien Rabiot to Frenkie De Jong. But it would be fair to suggest that some fans are lacking faith that they will be completed. Rodri, perhaps the most natural replacement for Sergio Busquets, joined Atlético. And Griezmann of course stayed there, when Barcelona were convinced they were getting him. The Frenchman was a market opportunity: he might not have been a natural fit in the Barcelona first XI, but he was a player of the very highest level available for just €100m (£88.1m). Barcelona chased and thought they had closed a deal. They brief that it was done. But Griezmann announced that he was not going to Barcelona after all on a TV documentary, produced by the Barcelona defender Gerard Piqué. The president didn’t know and Barcelona didn’t have their striker. They do now.The Friday morning coaching sessions are in full swing at Dunblane Tennis Club, where Andy Murray and his elder brother, Jamie, began their sporting careers nearly three decades ago. Josh Thomson, 20, is punting a bucket of balls to his adult learners’ class under a leaden sky, while the news of Andy Murray’s emotional overnight announcement, that he plans to retire from tennis after Wimbledon, settles on the club and the town. Thomson, who started playing tennis at the age of six, just as the gangly teenager from Dunblane began to raise interest on the international tennis circuit, puts it simply: “He represented Scotland the way we want to be represented.” “It’s devastating news that this has happened in what should have been his peak years,” he says. “Growing up, Andy Murray was the player I wanted to be. But also look at what he’s achieved, not just the wins but the way he goes about it, his humour, his support for equality, the way he shot down reporters for their comments.” Murray’s sense of humour, most vivid in his Instagram account, is notoriously dry and, at times, has been so understated as to be missed by commentators unfamiliar with this peculiarly Scottish seam of wit. But Murray’s trademark understatement is also what endears him, especially so in Dunblane, a town too familiar with extremes. Both Murray brothers were pupils at Dunblane primary school and in class the day that Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 children and one teacher on 13 March 1996. Likewise, in a town that has come to expect some degree of misrepresentation, locals appreciate his authenticity: Murray’s passion on the court is real, as are his tears and his mammoth sulks. “He’s an idol,” says Thomson. “He’s left an amazing legacy and he’s done everything he can to help younger players.” Nicola Wishart is playing practice doubles under Josh’s instruction. Her two children, who attend Dunblane primary, also play at the club. “They found out this morning and they were really upset. It’s so sad to see him having to stop before he wants to.” For Wishart, Murray’s impact on the next generation is inestimable: “There’s a really strong coaching programme at the club here and the kids all love it. But across the country now there’s a whole generation thinking they can be great sportspeople, watching Andy and Jamie and feeling that anything is possible.” As the morning coaching sessions draw to a close, Brian Melville, a semi-professional coach who first encountered Murray as a four-year-old, describes the boy he trained regularly at the club from the age of seven: “He was just a winner. He didn’t want to be second, he wanted to win, even at that age. I called it grit and determination.” Murray’s legacy is this: “When you think about Dunblane, you think about Andy Murray.” What is unsaid is the particular resonance of this achievement for a town that was previously synonymous with tragedy. Along Dunblane high street, which curves down the hill from the golden postbox that commemorates Murray’s London 2012 Olympic victory, the affection and appreciation for Murray the man – as much as the player – is evident. “He’s got to look after his health,” says Mairi Ross, serving behind the counter at Fresh As A Daisy laundry. “He’s got to do it for himself and his family.” “He’ll have other opportunities,” says her colleague Lizanne Richards. “He can go into commentating, and there are all these other things he can do. He’s got plenty of time ahead of him.” She pauses: “We just couldn’t imagine it happening to a local boy.” Val Mutch, a volunteer at the Sue Ryder shop, is pragmatic: “Enough is enough. He looked in so much pain and he’s done everything he can. He’ll be sadly missed but I don’t see him disappearing. He still has so much to give.” “He’s been inspirational for the town,” agrees Ellen Hughes, who is organising raffle tickets. “The excitement here when he won Wimbledon, got married, had children, was incredible. He brought so much to Dunblane.” “I also like how he’s championed women in sport,” adds Mutch. “He’s such a fair, good person. He stands up for fairness because he knows he’s got a voice now.” Ellen agrees: “We’ve seen him develop from this wee shy person. He was so awkward at first, especially in front of the media. He’s had to grow up in public.” BBC Scotland’s morning phone-in show posed one question on Friday: “What is your message for Andy Murray?” Callers from Elgin to Eyemouth filled the airwaves with voices choked with emotion, offering fond iterations of the same basic message: “Thank you.”On Father’s Day last year, Marvyn Harrison sent a WhatsApp message to a handful of friends to tell them he was thinking of them, and that he appreciated what they were doing as fathers. They all replied straight away. As Harrison was showered with thanks, he understood that he had tapped into something significant. “Thanks for trying to change the ‘missing black father’ narrative,” wrote one friend. “Sometimes dads get left off the radar, and black dads don’t get credit,” wrote another. Harrison had given voice to a discontent that had been building since his son was born three years earlier, and that had come to a head a few months before with the birth of his daughter, Olivia. He felt no one was talking about what it means to be a black father today, and the lack of a positive conversation struck him as depressing. “I just wanted to wish them a happy Father’s Day and say thank you for their positive influence in the lives of their children,” says Harrison, 35, an advertising executive. As the year progressed, his small WhatsApp group grew rapidly to include fathers beyond the UK, in New York and South Africa. “We became a community built around knowledge-sharing and support,” Harrison says. Within a few months, the group needed a bigger platform. Harrison downloaded a podcasting app, invited a few friends along for a chat, and Dope Black Dads was born. Launched in October 2018 to coincide with Black History Month, the Dope Black Dads podcast now has more than 60 contributors from around the world, regularly discussing everything from co-parenting and blended families of mixed faith, to sex and race. “We wanted to give people a greater understanding of our narrative,” Harrison says. “I can’t convince someone who goes on a Tommy Robinson rally that I don’t need to go ‘home’. But I can start a conversation with those who are open-minded enough to listen about the sorts of things we are facing as we raise black children.” For the fathers themselves, the benefits have been huge. “Some of the things we talk about, like the problems dads face when they’ve split up with their child’s mum, or knife crime, are not things we could necessarily verbalise in our relationships,” he says. “We want to inform and help black fathers to make sure they can play an active part in their kids’ lives and be supportive to their partners.” As well as ‘Eat your greens’, there’s showing your children they might be judged differently The thing about being a black father, he says, is that it makes your role as a parent more complex. “The parenting part, day-to-day, is the same. But what you’re trying to teach your child is much more layered. You’re trying to show them that having a different skin tone or hair might mean they are judged differently. You’re adding that to all the other stuff, like ‘Eat your greens’ and ‘Be careful how you cross the road.’” It often takes becoming a parent to fully appreciate your own. When you’re a black dad whose own absent father was a son of the Windrush generation, with its attendant problems, Harrison says, the experience is even more intense. “When my son Blake was born, I rang my mum from the delivery room in tears. I didn’t know becoming a dad could be so life-changing. When I saw that little person we’d made, right in front of us, I started caring about so many things I’d never thought about before. I realised I’d taken Mum, who raised four kids by herself, for granted.” He also felt a flash of anger towards his father, who left when he was 18 months old and whom he has hardly seen since. “I’d never felt I lacked anything in terms of love or security. But when I had my son all those years later I did feel angry about my dad leaving,” he says. “And I decided I wasn’t going to use the fact that I never knew my dad as a get-out for being a bad father myself.” He was also able to reflect on the circumstances his own father and grandfather had faced – the circumstances that moulded them as dads. “My grandfather, and so many men like him, had to start from the absolute bottom when he arrived from Jamaica as part of the Windrush generation,” he says. “He was so disillusioned. The more stories I hear – from my gran, aunts, uncles and friends – the more I realise how soul-destroying it must have been.” The next generation, the children who grew up in Britain in the 70s, were also starting at a disadvantage, he says. “Lots of them, like my dad, had pretty terrible upbringings. Many didn’t come from two-parent families, and their fathers’ anger and resentment at feeling they didn’t belong in Britain often manifested itself as disruptive behaviour. Drinking, hanging around on the street and in betting shops, and then coming home and taking it out on their wife and kids.” It wasn’t, he believes, that his father didn’t want to be a dad; it was the ripple effect of his own childhood. “So you can start to see why some of us – their children and grandchildren – might struggle as parents.” These struggles became clear when Olivia was born and Harrison was confronted with a fresh set of concerns. “I thought about all the issues that might affect her: sexism, racial discrimination, and what it might be like growing up as a young black female. I want to skill her up to the hilt to make sure she can look after herself.” Dope Black Dads is Harrison’s way of turning the experience of being a black father into a positive force; the podcast is genuine, candid and heartfelt, and he is justifiably proud of how it has grown. “Each time we do a podcast, someone else comes forward and says, ‘Yes, I can relate to that.’ It’s a great feeling,” he says. Harrison is under no illusions that his children will experience a level playing field by the time they’ve grown up. “Racism isn’t going to have died in 20 years’ time. It’s going to take a lot longer to change prejudices and ideas.” But he hopes that his podcast will be a step in the right direction, and that it might stop black dads from feeling alone. As one Dope Black Dad puts it: “It’s about time we had a black dads’ movement, bruv.”It’s normal for politicians to pose for pictures with their spouse and children after giving a momentous speech. But on Monday night Gavin Newsom, who was being sworn in as the 40th governor of California, discovered his family was to be the main event. While Newsom was giving his inauguration speech, his two-year-old son, Dutch, wandered on to stage. Newsom swooped him up in his arms joking, “this is exactly how this was scripted,” before continuing to read from the teleprompter. He later returned Dutch to the floor, hoping he might leave the stage, but the child stayed wandering around, at one point hiding behind the lectern, to the audible delight of the audience. Newsom was able to ad-lib parts of his speech to recognise the stage invader, at one point saying: “We will support parents … and they need support, believe me.” Solo attempts by another of his sons, seven-year-old Hunter, and his wife, the documentary-maker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, to corral Dutch back to his seat were unsuccessful. In the end it required a family team effort, Dutch being lightly escorted down the steps as though as he were an errant protester. Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, has positioned himself as anti-Trump candidate and says he will use his governorship to “offer an alternative to the corruption and incompetence in the White House”. Many believe Newsom also harbours ambitions for national politics, and a charming moment with his family won’t have done those any damage.So this is what a college athlete with real leverage looks like. Oklahoma’s Kyler Murray has done a masterful job pitting two sporting giants, Major League Baseball and the National Football League, against each other. Let’s rewind for a moment to explain what’s happened. Murray was a brilliant two-sport athlete in high school, which is little surprise given that his father was once a star quarterback at Texas A&M and his uncle played professionally for the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs. Murray started off his college career playing both sports, but the Oakland A’s were excited enough by his talent that they picked Murray in the 2018 first-year player draft and signed him to a deal that guaranteed the outfielder $4.6m. This despite the fact that Murray was still playing football. The rest, as they say, is history. Murray, who had been a fringe college football player prior to the 2018 season, strolled into the Sooner’s QB-friendly offense and exploded. Murray threw for 4,361 yards, ran for another 1,001 and accounted for 54 total touchdowns (42 passing, 12 rushing), leading Oklahoma to the College Football Playoff. He capped the year off by winning the Heisman Trophy, the sport’s most prestigious individual honor. Suddenly the decision became a bit more difficult: football or baseball? On Monday, Murray revealed his choice with a simple tweet: I have declared for the NFL Draft. But that’s not the end of the discussion. Monday was the deadline for Murray to declare himself eligible for April’s NFL draft, not the fail-safe point before his final decision. He hasn’t signed a deal with an NFL team, and could still report for spring training with the A’s at the end of February. If he does choose football, he will forfeit his $4.6m bonus with the A’s. That gives Murray, his family and representatives a month to figure out how much he’s worth to an NFL team, but the general feeling is that he’s a star in the making even if, at 5ft 10in, he is very small for an NFL quarterback. For example, the new Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury said in October he would take Murray with the first overall pick in this year’s draft if he had the chance. If Murray is confident he will be a first-round selection, and his first love is football, this should be an easy decision: the NFL wins every time. Let’s start with the money. The average annual MLB salary is around $4.5m compared to $2.9m in the NFL. What’s more, baseball players’ careers are longer and every cent of their contracts are fully guaranteed. But quarterbacks selected in the first round aren’t average players. Last year’s top overall pick, Baker Mayfield, landed a $21.8m signing bonus and will earn $32m during his four-year rookie deal. Even at the tail end of the first round, NFL signal-calles do well for themselves. Lamar Jackson, selected 32nd overall in the 2018 draft, the final pick of the opening round, commanded a signing bonus a hair above $4.9m, more than Murray’s current deal with the A’s. The dynamics of long-term quarterback deals are changing, too. Many NFL contracts sound huge but much of the money is not guaranteed. That paradigm appears to be shifting. Kirk Cousins’ agent made sure the $90m contract his client signed with the Vikings last offseason was wholly guaranteed. Aaron Rodgers worked out a similar deal in which close to $100m of his new deal is non-refundable. Off the field, football has the edge, too. Cam Newton, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees all earn more money in endorsements than they do from their NFL salaries. To reach that level of fame in MLB, and therefore command that kind of money, is a long, arduous road. After all, baseball has failed spectacularly to market Mike Trout, arguably the most gifted player in the game’s rich history. Last year a market research firm told the Washington Post that only 22% of Americans know who Trout is. Only LeBron James, Lionel Messi and Aaron Rodgers compare to Trout on the field: all-time greats doing all-time great things in the social media age. But according to the Post report, Trout’s recognition level was equal with NBA bench player Kenneth Faried. Only one baseball player ranks in the 100 most followed athletes on Twitter: Tim Tebow, a former college football star, whose baseball career is stuck in the New York Mets’ minor-league system. There’s a slight chance the financial discrepancy won’t be so great if Murray does choose baseball. ESPN reported on Sunday that MLB had given the A’s approval to offer Murray a major league deal with significant guaranteed money – Murray wants $15m – in an effort to convince him to stick to baseball. MLB rules prevent teams from signing players right out of the draft to major league deals, but Murray’s situation is considered unique given his post-draft success and national relevancy. There’s a lifestyle question here, too. Murray was a superstar before he turned 18: he may have been the best high school football player in Texas history. At Oklahoma, he won the biggest award college sports has to offer. But getting to the big leagues in baseball is hard. Top draft picks are routinely sent down to the minors to develop their games: the average player spends anywhere from three to five years in the farm system, sometimes longer, and the flameout rate even among touted prospects is high. Minor-league lifers earn below a living wage thanks to a spending bill that exempts baseball teams from having to pay minor-league players minimum wage and overtime for all hours worked. A life of luxury it is not. NFL players, by contrast, are thrown directly into action. There is no minor league or developmental structure you must work through before seeing the field, since college serves that purprise. Murray may not start right away in the NFL, or have overnight success, but he’ll at least get to enjoy all the trappings of being a professional athlete, and a star one at that. MLB does have one thing going for it, however: long-term health. Baseball is unquestionably easier on the body than football. The NFL has never been safer but it is not safe. Even with all the rule changes meant to protect the health of quarterbacks, playing pro football is asking for a lifetime of health concerns, and the dangers of brain trauma in the NFL are never far from the national conversation. Retired baseball players, meanwhile, still suffer the aches of pains of anyone who has devoted their life to sports, but the incidence of serious brain injury relative to football is infinitesimal. And, besides, any MLB player who spends 41 days on a big-league roster is granted a pension and access to MLB’s healthcare program for life. Ultimately, Murray will soon be a very rich young man, whichever sport he chooses. He has played his hand perfectly so far, leveraging the NFL and MLB against one another in a way no athlete has since John Elway. Now he gets to follow his heart and pick the sport he grew up dreaming of playing. Only he knows which one that is.Anyone reading the outpouring of writing the global crisis has provoked must be prepared for anticlimax. There are hundreds of denunciations of Trump’s America, Brexit Britain and the Putinesque dictatorial “democracies” appearing everywhere from Hungary to Venezuela, Turkey to the Philippines. You turn to the final chapter expecting to hear how to fight back and… answer comes there none. The endnotes flash by, the index rolls and that’s that. You should not be surprised. The global order that developed in the 1980s has failed and to date the only replacement on offer has been authoritarian nationalism that will impoverish and diminish its supporters as much as its opponents. A politics worth having must cope instead with the failure of the old wisdom that all that societies needed to prosper was for central banks to hold inflation down. It would have to explain how 21st-century countries will live with a greying population – not just with the healthcare costs but with the electoral power of the old to impose their priorities and prejudices on the young. It would need to grapple with the impact of digital technology on the privacy of the individual and on the ability of well-funded interest groups and hostile foreign powers to use big data to subvert free elections and referendums. Hard though they are, these are mere appetisers. To say we have no answers to mass migration, which global warming is likely to accelerate, and the future of work as robotics develops is to understate the case. We don’t even know the right questions to ask. Danger lies in allowing the confusion to push you into fatalism. You see it among the British politicians and activists who say they cannot support a second referendum on Brexit. They can’t take the anger and the bitterness all over again. They do not believe that the experience of what Brexit is doing to Britain will change enough minds. How you think is as important as what you think. Slip into fatalism and you lose the essential benefit of thinking of yourself as a member of an opposition and a lucky opposition at that. In Venezuela, Turkey and Hungary, control of the media and judiciary is so extensive that effective opposition is impossible. Huge efforts have been made to delegitimise opposition in Britain. The attacks on judges and civil servants as enemies of the people and on MPs as mutineers, and the threats of violence against politicians, always female politicians, of course, are our form of Putinism. It is a compliment to this country that the assault has not worked and was never going to work. Going into opposition means a little more than combating the idea that Remainers are the “elite”, even though that notion staggers on like a blood-drenched zombie. A “people’s vote” will not be popular with everyone. Millions of real people, including people who voted Remain, will say: “We’ve already voted on this and even if we don’t like it, we must accept the result.” To which the best reply is the true reply that Brexit will have forced a second referendum on the British. Its supporters had it all in June 2016. They controlled the Conservative and Labour parties and had the popular mandate. Just as they are responsible for the near breakdown of government and the economic, diplomatic and constitutional crisis, so they will be responsible for a second referendum. If they had united, they might have had Brexit and nothing you or I said would have mattered a damn. Among the many failures of journalism in 2016, the greatest was the failure to explain that the enemies of the EU could never agree among themselves what version of Brexit Britain should follow. They never offered the public an exit plan and that dilettantish fool David Cameron failed to insist that the referendum spelt out what voting for Brexit meant. Today’s breakdown flows from yesterday’s infighting and indolence. With equal inevitability, the fight to protect Britain will generate new ways of thinking. Although we do not face state repression, the situation of the opposition in Britain is fraught in the extreme. American liberalism appears as fragmented as a smashed vase. At the end of last year, journalists counted almost 40 challengers competing to be the Democratic candidate to run against Trump in 2020. Yet, however divided they are, they are united in their opposition to Trump. Resistance to the right provides a stable point. Their counterparts in Britain must fight not only a right agitating for competing forms of Brexit that vary from the self-harming to the suicidal, but a Labour opposition that has abandoned its foundational duty to protect the working class and is willing to let it suffer the consequences of leaving the single market. The very intensity of a war on two fronts against an opposition that won’t oppose and a government that can’t govern will force through new ideas and new leaders. You can see it now, as politicians from the Greens and the Labour and Tory backbenches become more important than ministers and shadow ministers as they try to save what they can from the wreckage. It is for this reason, rather than because they have enough political baggage to fill a freight train, that Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson’s attempt to lead the People’s Vote campaign is doomed. They are not fighting in the arena against the Brexit right and far left simultaneously. They are not feeling the urgent need to develop new arguments and tactics that will eventually produce a new politics. Intellectuals like to believe that ideas emerge from a lecture hall and then converts struggle to implement them. More often, it’s the other way round and the struggle produces ideas. The fatalism of those who in their despair think the best course is to opt out and let events unfurl misses that it is in the act of fighting back that the future will be shaped. • Nick Cohen is an Observer columnistBrian Marchal isn’t afraid of a little cold weather. As the founder of the Chicago Polar Bear Club, he has been jumping into frigid Lake Michigan every January for more than 15 years now. But the polar vortex that froze much of the midwest and all but shut down Chicago and other midwest cities this week was too much to handle even for Marchal – a man who had, with about 350 other Chicagoans, taken a chilly dip in the lake just a few days earlier. “I didn’t even step outside my door yesterday,” Marchal said on Thursday, as the city’s temperatures remained well below zero. “It’s too cold for me.” The deep freeze began Wednesday, dropping air temperatures here in Chicago to more than 20 degrees below zero and around 50 below with the withering winds. At -23F (-30.5C), the arctic chill flirted with – but didn’t quite hit – the city’s lowest recorded temperature of -27F in 1985. Still, it was undoubtedly historic, plunging the city to its fourth-lowest recorded temperatures on record, temporarily closing businesses, attractions and some services, including mail delivery, and posing a significant safety risk to people here, particularly the city’s homeless population. But the extreme cold also immediately took its place in the history of this city, whose unforgiving winters are often regarded as rites of passage here. Chicagoans of a certain age are fond of reminiscing about the punishing weather of yore: the Blizzard of 1967 that buried the city in 6ft-tall snowdrifts; the crushing winter of 1979, the snowiest on record here; and even the winter of 2013-14, which was notable not for a single storm but for a seemingly interminable onslaught of cold and snow over the course of several months. To those legendary winters, add the polar vortex of 2019, which has turned Chicago into “Chiberia” and inspired in its citizens nearly as much wonder as woe. As the city endured extreme cold Wednesday and Thursday, it was also met with stunning images of steam rising off a frozen Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. For as much inconvenience the weather caused – it made a nightmare of work commutes – it also inspired solidarity among Chicagoans, who used the occasion to engage in some science experiments and to get some laughs out of the oppressive cold. While the brutal cold has kept many off the streets here, the daily grind has also continued on. Bars put out signs advertising drink deals as the “antidote to the polar vortex”. Workers on construction sites labored in the shivering air. And residents like Roberto Bonilla continued about their days. Bonilla had flown from a job interview in New York back home to Chicago on Wednesday, as the city’s temperatures plummeted below those of Antarctica and, at times, parts of Mars. He could feel the withering chill just walking through the tunnel between the airplane and the terminal, and as he took an El train back north from Midway Airport on the city’s far south side. “It was so damn cold,” he said. On Thursday, Bonilla was boarding a red line train to his eye appointment in the Loop. The freeze wasn’t as bad as it was the day before, he said, but it was still brutal. “It’s cold as hell,” he said, clad in a long black coat and his face barely visible between his scarf and hat. “It’s ungodly.” But the freeze is expected to relent, with temperatures expected in the 20s on Friday and even rising up into the mid-40s this weekend – a temperature swing that could come with its own problems, such as water main breaks. For Marchal, that means staying safely inside and embracing the tangential benefits of the historic cold while it lasts. “It is absolutely amazing what we’re seeing out there right now,” he said. “We don’t get weather days too often in Chicago, so we might as well stay in and enjoy it.”Two people have died in a new cholera outbreak in the overcrowded slums of Uganda’s capital, Kampala. The ministry of health confirmed at the weekend that there were 43 suspected cases of cholera in the city and that two people had died. It said an emergency isolation unit had been set up. “More efforts are needed to ensure that the cholera outbreak is contained. We should work more to ensure we don’t have many cases,” said Joyce Moriku Kaducu, Uganda’s state minister for primary health care. The current heavy rains are expected to exacerbate the spread of the disease. “[Cholera] kills a person within hours,” she said. “The public is urged to be vigilant and report any suspected cases to the nearest health facility.” The city suburbs affected by the outbreak are all densely populated, with poor hygiene practices, improper disposal of domestic and human waste, and high consumption of untreated water. Most slum dwellers have no toilets in their houses and the common practice is to defecate in polythene bags and dump the contents in open trenches and pools of floodwater. “The recent outbreak of cholera, mostly [affecting] some city suburbs, is mainly due to improper waste disposal and water contaminated with faecal content as the leading cause of spreading bacteria,” said Charlotte Kusemererwa, a project officer who works in Kampala with the Joy For Children organisation. “The common denominator of all slums around Kampala is the open drainage channels littered with domestic, industrial and human wastes. When the rains sweep in, running water carries all kind of waste and dumps it in open drains, causing a massive blockage and hence flooding.” Asia Russell, executive director at Health GAP, an international organisation working to improve access to medicines, said: “Refusal of government to invest in free, essential services like toilets, safe water and collection of garbage, particularly in the most densely populated communities, is to blame. “People in slums deserve to live with dignity and free from cholera,” she said. “Instead, they are being neglected and put in harm’s way. Where will they find money for treatment?”As Kamala Harris prepares to enter the competitive field of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates as a frontrunner, the California senator is presenting herself as a criminal justice reformer, an ally of Black Lives Matter, and a defender of America’s most vulnerable citizens. Clips of her sharp questioning of Trump administration officials have gone viral. The daughter of immigrants who took her in a stroller to civil rights protests, Harris has been a pathbreaker at almost every step of her political career. She was born in Oakland, where she later served on the frontlines of America’s harsh criminal justice system as a local prosecutor in the 1990s. She went on to become the first African American and the first woman elected as San Francisco district attorney in 2003 and as California attorney general in 2010. She was the second black woman and first south Asian woman elected to the US Senate in 2016. Throughout her meteoric career, she has tried to transcend “tough on crime” or “soft on crime” stereotypes, and instead labeled herself as “smart on crime” – eager to put people in prison for violent offenses, but wary of wasting taxpayer dollars, a champion of some criminal justice reforms but still tough enough to remain electable in the most punitive country on earth. Her record as a prosecutor in California, however, complicates her progressive image. Among the many policies now drawing renewed scrutiny, Harris’s approach to sex work, police reform, prisoners’ rights and truancy reveal the tensions between her record in law enforcement and her current progressive rhetoric. For decades, Harris’s law enforcement credentials were central to her appeal to voters. Now, as the Democratic party continues to reckon with its history of endorsing racist, ineffective criminal justice policies, her background has become, for some voters, a liability. As her critics on the left put it on Twitter: “Kamala Harris is a cop.” When Harris appeared on the feminist podcast Call Your Girlfriend last summer, the two hosts chatted with her warmly about what it was like being America’s only black female senator – and what it was like to constantly have people mispronounce her name. But the hosts, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow, questioned Harris on one position they said they did not understand: why had she worked to shut down Backpage.com, a website sex workers used for advertisements and that many argued had made their work more safe? Today, Harris presents herself as an advocate for victims of sexual exploitation, but her practices as prosecutor and the legislation she has supported have often conflated human “trafficking” with consensual adult sex work. Harris’s DA office participated in sting operations that used female police officers to pose as prostitutes and arrest men who interact with them. The “loitering” cases that followed disproportionally targeted Latino men. Harris was also a vocal opponent of a proposition to decriminalize prostitution. On Backpage, which Harris called the “world’s top online brothel”, she pursued pimping charges against the website operators, even after a judged tossed an initial case on free speech grounds. Harris continued her opposition to the website as a senator and supported legislation that further criminalized sex work across the internet. Backpage’s closure has left many sex workers strapped for cash to pay for housing and medicines and forced some sex workers to turn to more precarious kinds of work to make up for lost income. “It put these girls out of the safety net the internet has provided and back on the streets,” said Kiki Bryant, a 27-year-old writer and sex workers’ rights activist. Matilda Bickers, a 34-year-old sex workers’ organizer, said: “If you want to help marginalized and exploited people, you protect them, you don’t further limit their options … It’s been devastating.” Phoenix Calida, another sex worker, said Harris was a leader in a bipartisan agenda that put sex workers and victims of trafficking behind bars, championing a policy position that Calida believes will be viewed as backwards and unethical years from now, similar to the “war on drugs”: “This is absolutely tough on crime. It’s about hurting people in the name of crime reduction.” “We must speak truth about police brutality, about racial bias, about the killing of unarmed black men,” Harris writes in her new political memoir, The Truths We Hold. “Police brutality occurs in America and we have to root it out wherever we find it.” Harris lists the names of some of the most high-profile victims of police killings: Walter Scott in South Carolina, Philando Castile in Minnesota, Eric Garner in New York. But there are other names she does not add to this list, including Alan Blueford, Mario Woods, and Amilcar Perez-Lopez – all victims who were killed in the San Francisco Bay Area, and whose cases Harris could have directly addressed. Before stepping down as attorney general to become a senator, Harris took a few steps to tackle the issue of police brutality. She opened civil rights investigations into two California police departments that ranked among the deadliest in the US. She also increased access to data about the use of force by police, spoke openly about “racial disparities” the statistics revealed, and introduced statewide law enforcement training on procedural justice and implicit bias. But earlier in her career, as California’s top prosecutor, Harris frequently did not use her authority to investigate allegations of misconduct and abuse by police and prosecutors, even in the face of clear evidence of wrongdoing. She opposed legislation that would have required her office to investigate fatal shootings by police and repeatedly fought to keep people incarcerated when there was overwhelming evidence of wrongful convictions. Jeff Adachi, the public defender of San Francisco, twice urged Harris to open a civil rights investigation into the San Francisco police department, once after a police were caught sending racist and homophobic text messages and again a string of high-profile killings of young people of color by police. “I never received a response,” Adachi said in an email. In 2016, numerous male officers across the Bay Area became embroiled in a sexual exploitation scandal. The local district attorneys, which work closely with police departments, were slow to bring criminal cases, and when they did, the charges largely fell apart. A federal judge said the Oakland police department’s investigation into its own officers was “wholly inadequate”, but Harris did not launch her own investigation. The inaction was particularly shameful and hypocritical given her stated commitments on fighting trafficking and protecting exploited youth, activists said. “We pleaded with her and pressured her to at least investigate, if not prosecute, some of the local police departments who had killed African American men and Latino men,” said Anne Butterfield Weills, a local civil rights lawyer. “She ignored us.” Harris’s current spokesperson said the Oakland police scandal was handled by a local district attorney. Last May, Roxana Hernández, a 33-year-old transgender woman from Honduras who sought asylum in the United States, died while in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Harris was one of the Democratic senators who has since spotlighted her case, demanding that Ice officials provide answers about how and why she died, and calling her case “deeply troubling”. As a senator, Harris has introduced bipartisan legislation to reform the money bail system, which traps low-income Americans in jail on low-level charges, simply because they cannot pay the fee that would allow them to await trial at home. But as attorney general, Harris spent years defending malpractices in California’s troubled and overcrowded prison system. Her positions at the time are at odds with some of her policy positions as a senator. In 2015, Harris’s office fought to stop a Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, a trans woman in California’s prison system prison, from getting reassignment surgery. She had the power to take a principled stand but chose not to, the same way she refused to defend the ban on gay marriage, said Jennifer Orthwein, an attorney who represented Norsworthy, noting that allowing Norsworthy’s surgery would have put their client in a much better position to re-enter society. “If [Harris] would grapple publicly with what was going on when she was denying the rights of trans people in prison and admit that her mind has changed … I might not call her a hypocrite,” said EmilyRose Johns, a civil rights lawyer who has fought for trans rights behind bars in California. As the top lawyer for the prison system, Harris also defended the use of lengthy solitary confinement, despite evidence the practice causes long-term and severe harm to prisoners. Though a settlement ultimately led to reforms, the years-long battle means Harris’s legacy includes extreme suffering for thousands of prisoners who were stuck in isolation during the court battle, said Weills. “They are broken people – psychologically, physically damaged.” Harris’s current spokeswoman said she was obligated to defend the prison system in those cases and that she worked to change policies. As a prosecutor, she also created an intervention program to give job training to low-level drug offenders. Harris has also fought juvenile solitary confinement as a senator. Throughout her political rise, Harris has celebrated the success of one of her “smart on crime” strategies: prosecuting parents whose kids were frequently absent from school. Truancy was a criminal justice issue, she argued – 94% of San Francisco’s young homicide victims were high school dropouts. In 2008, Harris spent $20,000 on a campaign advertising a hotline San Francisco residents should call if they spotted any kids playing hooky during school hours, a local news station reported. The ad campaign targeted three historically black and Latinx neighborhoods. “If we don’t educate these kids in the classroom, they’re going to be educated in the streets,” she said in 2009, announcing an expansion of her anti-truancy strategy. She eventually championed a new statewide anti-truancy law that specified that parents of chronically truant students could face a maximum penalty of a year’s imprisonment in county jail, a fine of up to $2,000, or both. Harris has stressed that the goal of the strategy was to use the threat of prosecution to get parents of chronically truant students to meet with officials and make a plan for getting their students got to school. No parents have ever been arrested or jailed for truancy in San Francisco, during Harris’s time or after, according to a prosecutor who still works on the issue in the current district attorney’s office. By late 2010, as Harris was running for California attorney general, the total number of parents prosecuted in San Francisco was just 25, Harris said at the time. She credited the overall truancy strategy with a 33% increase in attendance at San Francisco schools. “As Senator Harris has said many times, she knows all parents love their children and many did not have the resources to get them to school, which is why her office worked with the school district and parents to get families the services they needed,” Harris’s spokeswoman, Lily Adams, said. But some advocates said that Harris’s policy got the issue backwards: student truancy was not a problem of bad or neglectful parents, but a symptom of broader problems within the school systems, including chronic underfunding of California public schools. A punitive approach to truancy threatened to fuel the school to prison pipeline and make life harder for students missing school because they were homeless or their parents were already caught up in the criminal justice system. Jyoti Nanda, a law professor who runs a youth and justice clinic at the University of California Los Angeles, said she had been “deeply disappointed” by Harris’s “fearmongering” on truancy, which she said was “completely the opposite of best practices” to help students. The way Harris had framed truancy as the individual fault of poor parents, Nanda said, fed into old, ugly stereotypes about poor families and families of color. “To the extent that she can acknowledge that it was a mistake to have that rhetoric, I think that would go a long way,” Nanda said. Bickers, the sex worker rights’ activist, said she would like to see Harris reconcile with her prosecutorial record, admit her failings and demonstrate how she has changed: “We all learn and grow.” But without that accountability, she added, “She’s not the radical option.”  Jürgen Klopp is not concerned that Liverpool’s dressing room morale might fall apart as a result of the narrow defeat at Manchester City. He intends to make a number of changes for Monday’s FA Cup tie at Wolves but is confident that after that it will be league business as usual. “All the boys in the squad are pretty experienced at dealing with defeat,” the Liverpool manager said. “We’ve had a few of them before. This was just our first in the league and we actually played quite well at the Etihad. I don’t think we need to feel insecure about losing 2-1. “We gave City a good game and it was a very tight game. We were unlucky at times but that’s absolutely OK because when City came to Anfield they missed a late penalty. That could have been a defeat for us right back in October but it wasn’t.” Klopp actually feels that by some measures Liverpool did better against City in defeat than they did on the occasions last season when they won. “There is nothing wrong with going down narrowly at the Etihad,” he said. “I regard that as the most difficult place in England to go and get a result and this time the margins were so fine that I would say the game was shared roughly 50-50. “In the past, even when we have won, it’s been more like 60-40 in City’s favour. Even when we beat them 3-0 in the Champions League last season City still had a lot of the game, we were under pressure for long periods and the reason we won was that we were quite clinical in taking our chances. “The last game was different from all the others we have played against City; there were two teams matching each other and I think that shows how much we have improved. My assessment of the game was positive – not of the result but of the game. It was not perfect because we lost but you can’t always expect perfection and we lost by the smallest difference you can get, so there’s no need to make a big fuss of it.” Liverpool are away to Brighton next in the Premier League, a game Klopp is fully aware might be tricky based on the home team’s form, but before that there is Wolves and a welcome respite from the intensity of the league programme over the holiday period. Simon Mignolet will get a game in goal, there will most likely be starts for Naby Keïta and Adam Lallana, and Klopp says he will have no problem at all in calling on Alberto Moreno, the left-back who went public at the end of last year with his dissatisfaction over a lack of game time. “I understand Alberto’s position, he has been unbelievably professional and he is a really important part of the dressing room,” the manager said. Nonetheless Liverpool have just sold Dominic Solanke to Bournemouth and allowed Nathaniel Clyne to join the same club on loan in recognition of the fact that players in their peak years need to be playing. “Football is a business and we received a good offer for Dominic but you also have to think about people and their situations,” Klopp said. “Having people in reserve is a great option for a manager but Nat Clyne, for instance, is at that age where he has to be playing. He asked me if he could go and I thought about it and said yes, because no one wants to block a career. You can always keep hold of a player but keeping him in the right shape and level of confidence is not so easy if he is not playing many games. Nat was out for a while injured and, when he came back, the situation had moved on. It’s a shame but that’s football; it’s the way things are.”When Chigozie Obioma came up with the idea of writing a novel from the point of view of a person’s “chi” – the animating spirit that, in Igbo cosmology, every living thing contains – his heart sank. It seemed to the 33-year-old that as a writing exercise it was too weird and too hard, besides which, how would he even describe it? “Really I didn’t want to do it that way at all,” he says, in the restaurant of a New York hotel. “That’s the thing with me; any time I come up with an idea for a novel, I’m drawn to a very grand, almost cosmic structure that I try to push away. But as time goes on, and as the story builds, it’s almost as if without this frame it would not make sense. So I would just go ahead, even though I knew it would be very difficult to navigate.” The result is An Orchestra of Minorities – Obioma’s second novel after his Man Booker-shortlisted debut The Fishermen – an Odyssey-like story in which a poultry farmer from Nigeria undertakes a journey to prove himself worthy of the woman he loves. Chinonso, a man whose chi dithers constantly over how much to interfere in his host’s fortunes, falls in love with a wealthy woman called Ndali, whom he saves from jumping off a bridge and in so doing aligns his destiny with hers. The novel is a study in what happens when a man loses control of his life and is subject to forces – in this case, the corrupt middlemen who persuade Chinonso to hand over lots of money for a place at university in northern Cyprus, and the racism he confronts on arrival – greater than his own. The idea for the novel, Obioma says, grew out of something he witnessed when he was himself a student in northern Cyprus. Some of the strongest parts of the book describe the hideous plight of Nigerian students, tricked into handing over large sums of money to gain access to Europe via Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, only to discover, on arrival, that from an immigration perspective the country is not even part of the EU. Obioma wasn’t subject to this scam himself; his parents were wealthy enough to avoid going through middlemen and to pay the university direct. When he arrived, however, it was clear to him that “95% of the Nigerians I met in Cyprus had been through these middlemen and had lost money.” And he says the universities are benefiting. “When I left Cyprus in 2012, there were about seven universities. Now there are about 15, because it’s so lucrative. Now I hear that Cameroonians are flocking there because of the war.” The impetus to write the novel came out of what happened to Obioma’s friend, Jay, a Nigerian man he met in the first days of starting college. Jay had been duped by the middle men both into thinking the university in Cyprus would be a springboard into Europe, and that his degree would enable him to make lots of money. Instead, he confronted the reality that not only had most of the funds he’d handed over to fixers been embezzled, but that he was now stuck in northern Cyprus, where there were no jobs and where his status as a Nigerian immigrant made him widely despised. After a heavy bout of drinking, Jay was found dead at the bottom of a lift shaft, where he was assumed to have fallen accidentally. Some of the strongest stories begin with very simple archetypes. And you work your way from that “One thing that I was always thinking about in the aftermath of the tragic death,” Obioma says, “was that Jay had mentioned, during the few days when I met him, that he had come to Cyprus in the first place because of the woman he was betrothed to – he needed to make money quickly. And I found myself often thinking about her. We had no way to contact her. The university contacted his mother, and they took his corpse back to Nigeria. But we were nobodies. And I was always thinking: what happened to her?” It is a fascinating premise for a story, along the lines of the movie An Affair to Remember, in which one half of a couple waits endlessly for the other, who will never turn up. These sorts of cliffhangers are not supposed to be possible in the age of the mobile phone, in which no one is kept in the dark about anything. But as Obioma’s novel makes clear, this assumption overlooks the vastness of these immigrant journeys, in which the silencing effect of shame, failure and poverty effectively renders technological advance almost irrelevent. As a result, An Orchestra of Minorities has about it the air of a timeless story, premised on archetypes from a much earlier age. “I believe that some of the strongest stories we can have begin with very simple archetypes,” says Obioma. “The great mother, or the great father, for example. And you work your way from that, slowly, to more complexity. The idea of this guy who wants to be with the woman he loves – you can say the same of the movie Gladiator, for instance. If you strip everything down to the basics, it’s just about Maximus wanting to go back to his wife and every other thing stopping him. Even Homer’s Odyssey; he just wants to go back and the entire universe is conspiring against that ambition.” Obioma’s own journey ended in a much happier place. He is the fifth of 12 children, the son of a banker who, as Obioma puts it, “pulled himself up by his bootstraps. His dad died when he was 10, and he funded his education by being a manservant to wealthy families.” Obioma’s father is a big reader and while his mother “had only a primary school education, she encouraged us”. Obioma was an academic stand-out in the family: “I found reading to be an escape. I was a recluse. I would always be the one hiding, and reading”. His parents were adamant that he enter a profession and, as they put it, not “waste” his promise on something like writing. “They wanted the best for me. They didn’t want me to be poor.” Under their influence, he agreed to study engineering at a university in Nigeria, but was desperately unhappy and left before graduating. He then won a place at a university in Britain, but the Home Office withdrew the offer of a visa before he could take it up. Finally his parents found the university in northern Cyprus, where, against the odds, Obioma flourished, and wound up staying on to teach. Eventually, he applied and won a place to do a writing fellowship at the University of Michigan, and it was there that he completed his first novel, The Fishermen. The success of that debut, which describes the lives of four brothers living in a small town in Nigeria and which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2015, finally put paid to his parents’ anxieties. Obioma now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he teaches at the university and occasionally struggles to remember which language to operate in. He is quadrilingual, speaking Igbo, the language of his father, as well as Yoruba, which is widely spoken in the south west of Nigeria where Obioma grew up, plus English and, thanks to his sojourn in Cyprus, Turkish. There are some advantages, he says. “There are some rhetorical moves that I wouldn’t be able to make if I didn’t know these languages. In terms of writing figurative language, I probably pull a lot from Yoruba imagery. I was reading from the book at the launch and there is a phrase I thought about afterwards. It was that to Chinonso, Ndali was the thing ‘his soul had been longing for with tears in its eyes’. And I thought, how did I come up with the idea of somebody’s soul crying? And I imagine it was from the folklore that my mum would tell me – the word soul is used a lot in the Yoruba language, more than you would find in English.” At other times, being quadrilingual becomes difficult. “After learning Turkish my English was affected, and for a while it was very difficult for me to speak in an articulate way extemporaneously. But then it got better. The languages eventually meshed and things realigned, but for a while it felt like something had gone wrong somewhere. Sometimes I wish I could divest myself of some of these languages.” One of the joys of his new novel is the way that it interweaves western religion and philosophy with Nigerian thought systems, without any obvious hierarchy. It was his intention, he says, to trace the locus of Igbo cosmology as it is vested in the idea of the “chi”. So, he says, “the idea of the chi comes from the basic principle that where one thing stands, another thing stands beside it. We believe in the duality of everything; we believe that nothing has meaning if it cannot be compared to something else. Beauty has no meaning if there is no such thing as ugliness. If you exist in a corporeal form, there must be a double in the spiritual realm. The chi is your spirit double.” In An Orchestra of Minorities, Obioma posits this theory in opposition to that of free will – the Christian idea, embedded in western political and judicial institutions, that a person is not governed by a spirit force, but is entirely responsible for their own moral choices. The resultant conflict informs the question underpinning Chinonso’s tragic arc: to what extent is he culpable in his own downfall? While there are flashes of humour, and Obioma himself is full of merriment, the novel comes to a gloomy conclusion. “People always ask me, why do your stories end this way? And honestly,” he says, “I want to write a feelgood story. But I think that because I’m fascinated with the metaphysics of existence, I keep thinking why, of all the people who came to Cyprus, was it Jay who died? Or, I read not too long ago of a nine-year-old doing her homework and there’s a drive-by shooting and a bullet comes in through the roof and kills her. She didn’t do anything to deserve that fate. When you think about these things, and you want to write fiction around that, the path it takes you to can feel inevitable and tragic.” The impulse to write in the first instance may come from a place of optimism – Obioma says that he was partly motivated by a desire to salvage Jay’s death from meaninglessness – but the bottom line remains that, whether one construes the larger forces to be spiritual or political, Jay, and so many other victims of seemingly random deaths, “didn’t do anything to deserve that fate”. Illuminating that fact honours the author’s friend as it powers his fiction. • An Orchestra of Minorities is published by Little, Brown. To order a copy for £11.49 (RRP £14.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.Rio Ferdinand has experienced terrible loss in recent years. In 2015, his wife and the mother of his three children, Rebecca Ellison, died of cancer aged 34. Then in 2017 his mother, Janice St Fort, died from cancer too, aged 58. Now, he says, he is doing anything he can to ensure he and his children are not prematurely bereaved again. So perhaps it is not surprising to find the former footballer promoting a DNA kit that claims to pinpoint the personalised exercise and nutrition needed for a longer life. Ferdinand is 40 now, and looks even stronger than he did when he was one of the best defenders in the world, an imposing, beautifully balanced ball-playing centre back who won 81 England caps and six Premier League titles with Manchester United. He is certainly bigger – 16kg (2st 7lb) heavier, a brick wall of a man, with arms like surfboards. He may have been a supremely fit athlete, but now he says that throughout his playing career he was so skinny, he often felt weak. “You could see the fibres in my body when I was walking about when I played ’cos I was so lean.” The first thing he wanted to do after he quit football was bulk up – not least because he fancied becoming a professional boxer. He was refused a licence last year and gave up on that ambition. There isn’t much that Ferdinand has not tried his hand at since he retired. He made a desperately moving documentary about life after the death of Rebecca, Being Mum and Dad; wrote an equally moving book about it with the journalist Decca Aitkenhead; started a clothing line; became a football pundit; campaigned against leaving the EU and knife crime; visited schools and prisons. As well as the campaigning side, Ferdinand has always had a touch of the Del Boy about him. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between Rio the crusader and Rio the wheeler-dealer. And today is such an occasion. He is flanked by a member of his sports management team and a publicist representing DNAFit, a nutrigenetics company that has created a simple saliva swab test it claims will transform lives. Nutrigenetics is an emerging – and as yet largely unproven – science that studies the interaction between genes and nutrition, with the hope of preventing disease. We are in a small, claustrophobic office near London Bridge. Ferdinand seems to fill the room by himself. He is long and languid, tanned, with an immaculately strimmed beard. Suddenly, the room is even more crowded, as we are joined by a verbose businessman who speaks faster than anybody I’ve ever met. “This is Avi,” says the publicist. “He’s here to explain all the technical stuff.” It suddenly feels as if I’ve been interview-bombed; I have a funny feeling that Avi is going to try to make this all about him. Avrom Lasarow is a 43-year-old entrepreneur. His fulsome Wikipedia entry states that he left South Africa for the UK “where he began his career which ultimately led to a string of multinational companies”. Last April, DNAFit was bought by a Hong Kong-based genetics company, Prenetics, for $10m (£7.8m), and it appointed Lasarow CEO of Prenetics International. But enough of Avi. For now. Ferdinand tells me of the enormous benefits he has reaped since being DNA tested. When he was trying to bulk up, he soon reached a ceiling, he says, and it was only after getting the DNAFit results that he realised he was doing everything wrong. “I wanted to gain weight, gain muscle mass and retain it. But I quickly hit a ceiling. I was knocking my head thinking: what’s going on?” So what did he discover? “I was eating huge carbs and not enough protein and now my diet is much more balanced. Now I’m 101kg (15st 13lb), but comfortable. When I was playing I was 85kg (13st 5lb).” He also started to do more power than endurance work in the gym. I’m no expert, but surely you don’t need a DNA test to tell you a protein boost and lifting weights is an effective means of muscling up? Many scientists believe we simply don’t know enough about nutrigenetics for companies such as DNAFit to deliver on its promises. Prof Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and a world leader in personalised nutrition, says: “Although this is an area of research that has potential, it is unclear whether the science is already there and thus far there is no evidence that it works.” But Ferdinand is convinced if he’d had this information when he was playing, he would have had an even more distinguished career. “Trust me, I would have been able to play longer, I would have got 100 caps.” How else has the DNA test helped him?“ Alcohol,” he says. “If you’re doing it in moderation … ” He looks at Lasarow. “What is it, a drink a day?” “A glass of wine a day is good for you,” Lasarow says. “For instance, in Rio’s case he has a certain genome type, so alcohol in moderation increases good cholesterol.” Ferdinand says that while he and his fiance, the former Towie star Kate Wright, like to set a good example to his kids by eating healthily, he has in no way become a food fascist. “I go to a kebab shop on a Friday and I like a pint of Guinness, a whisky or whatever.” How much Guinness can he get through on a good night? He grins. “I used to get through a load when I was younger.” How many pints? “I could probably do eight, nine, 10.” He pauses. “Then I’d move on to the vodkas.” He giggles. “I could go through loads. I could go all day drinking, then wake up and go again when I was younger.” Blimey, you were drinking all that as a professional footballer? He nods. “I always say to people who ask if I have any regrets about playing, I wouldn’t have drunk alcohol.” Did he drink more than most footballers? “No.” He quickly changes his mind. “When I was younger I did. I was a lunatic. When I was at West Ham … elements of my career are a blur. People talk about performances and results at certain times in them games and I just sit and nod my head. I haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about. I don’t remember.” Would he drink on a Friday night? “No, that would be after a game. Saturday or Sunday. It was a different culture. Crazy. The culture I was in at West Ham was a drinking culture. Football and drinks and nightclubs, that’s the way it was. And that’s the way I lived at that time.” When he went to Manchester United, he says, he pretty much stopped drinking during the season. But he would make up for it in the off season. “In the summers I’d drink for two weeks. Bang. Just keep drinking.” He could so easily have destroyed his health and career. Does he look back and think he was lucky? “Yes. I was lucky. I had a natural ability that could get me through that period of my life. But I got to a point where I had to make a decision to be more professional.” Ferdinand’s boozing confessions are certainly a good example of a life lived less healthily, but Lasarow is keen to get back to DNAFit. “Have you ever done preventive testing?” he asks me. I tell him I’m not proud of this, but I’m more of the less-you-know-the-better school. Ferdinand says he used to be the same. What changed him? Simple, he says – the loss of his wife and mother to cancer. “I’ve got a young family who have seen more than enough trauma for anyone’s lifetime, and I want to be best placed to help prevent anything like that happening if I can. I want all the information I can get from the DNA kit for myself so hopefully my kids won’t have to see any more trauma earlier than they should.” DNAFit and Ferdinand began their campaign in Peckham, a deprived district of south-east London where the former footballer grew up on a council estate. “We went into a couple of schools, and all the children said: I’d love my parents to do this.” (You have to be 18 or over to do the test.) I ask Ferdinand if it is affordable, but Lasarow answers on his behalf. “How much do you spend a month at the gym? You might go to the gym and pay your fees for six months but not get the right results because you’re not doing the right things. Of course, there’s a price because it’s a science; there’s a commercial aspect. There’s a small price to pay.” How much? “£99.” Ferdinand remains a hero in Peckham, where he had a fascinating childhood. As well as the football, he was a promising gymnast and ballet dancer, attending the Central School of Ballet for four years. “I went one day as an adventure, and then I was there four years – two days a week, then three days.” Could he have become a professional dancer? “No. At the end they said my hamstrings are not long enough.” Did it improve him as a footballer? “One hundred per cent yeah. Balance, fluidity in terms of my movement, 100%.” Ferdinand went to Blackheath Bluecoat, the secondary school attended by Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack at the age of 18. Did he know Lawrence? Yes, he says. He was four years younger than Lawrence, but because he was a big, confident boy he played football with him and his best friend Duwayne Brooks, who was also attacked on that night in Eltham. “It’s mad what happened. When it happened it was like your life just comes to a standstill. I’d always seen knives or people get shot or whatever, but a young boy at school getting stabbed to death … it’s like, fucking hell. When the news came the first question I had was: where was it, where was it? Then we heard it was in Eltham. The first thing all of us were saying was: what the fuck is he doing there, in that area, at that time – it’s a racist area, don’t go there at that time.” When given the chance, Ferdinand talks touchingly and honestly about his past. But even in these moments, Lasarow is keen to intervene. “Simon, sorry to deflect away from that,” he says. “You were saying you’d promise your partner you’d go for a checkup – if you don’t and, God forbid, you fell ill, the burden on her is increased because the associated costs of being ill would have to be taken take care of … ” I’m not sure how to respond, so I don’t. Did Lawrence’s murder give Ferdinand a sense of how precarious life could be? “It made me aware that if you get into a problem it could be a big problem. But I was aware of that already. I was used to seeing violence.” Maybe it was inevitable that Ferdinand would go on to campaign about knife crime, and was vocal about racism in football. (After John Terry allegedly racially abused his football player brother, Anton Ferdinand, on the pitch, Rio stopped talking to Terry, even though they were defensive partners in the England team. Terry was banned for four matches and fined by the FA.) But he says his values, his willingness to speak out, came more from his parents than his experiences. “My mum and dad are really community-driven people.” He still sometimes talks about his mother in the present tense. “That’s probably the reason me and Kate are the way we are with the kids because my mum and dad were doers. They didn’t have to tell me a lot about being part of the fabric of the community and being vocal about things. They did it, and I’ve seen it, and that’s why I am the way I am.” Ferdinand also campaigned for the UK to remain in Europe. How does he feel about Brexit now? “I don’t know man, she [Theresa May] needs a new deal man.” Lasarow jumps in. “The great thing about genetics,” he says, “and what we’re doing is it can impact anybody or anyone, anywhere, Brexit or no Brexit.” I look at him, gobsmacked. “Wow, Avi,” I say, “that is the most random intervention I’ve ever heard.” Even Ferdinand’s agents can’t help laughing at his attempt to steer the conversation back to DNA. Look, I say, we’ve talked loads about DNA, but an interview with Rio also involves talking to Rio about Rio. I ask Ferdinand if he would fancy going into politics. “No.” Why not? “It’s a murky world. I’ve got no faith or trust in politicians so to be one – I’d find it difficult.” Has there ever been a politician he has trusted? “I like Gordon Brown. I’ve met him a few times. There was a sincerity about him I really liked.” “Simon, we’ve got a couple of minutes left,” says his publicist. Ferdinand was part of an England squad known as the golden generation – supremely gifted individuals who underachieved as a team. How did he feel when he saw a more prosaic England team reach the semi-final of the World Cup last year? “There’s no sour grapes, if that’s what you’re alluding to.” No, I say, I’m just interested that they achieved more with less ability. “It doesn’t matter how good you are. You look at our team, we had probably the best bunch of midfielders in the world at the time – Scholes, Gerrard, Lampard, Beckham, Hargreaves, Carrick etc – but we didn’t have a manager who could find the formation that could fit them in and get the best out of each and every one of them. We played a very rigid 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1, and that was the most intricate it got after Glenn Hoddle. Then we got beat by teams with not as good players, specially in tournaments. So you’ve got to be coached right, and the players have got to believe in what they’re being coached, which this group of players do.” “We helped the Egyptian team to get to the World Cup for the first time in 28 years,” Lasarow says proudly. “I’m not saying genetics is everything, it certainly isn’t … ” Egypt lost all three games they played at the 2018 World Cup. In the past, Ferdinand has said that as a player he prided himself on his iciness. Does he think he has changed since retiring? “I’m still quite an intense person but I’m a lot more open. I had the blinkers on. I didn’t see a lot of things emotionally to do with relationships, with friends or family.” I tell him how refreshing it was to see him weeping openly about Rebecca in the documentary and talking about panic attacks – a good example to all the boys and men who suppress their feelings. “Yes, that’s a big thing that came out of it. Everyone’s had a mental health problem in some shape or form, it’s just identifying it and then hitting it head on and meeting it, but again, it’s a cultural shift.” I ask Ferdinand what he thinks of himself as now, primarily – a football pundit, entrepreneur or campaigner? “I’ve never been anyone who’s wanted to be pigeon-holed. So, for instance, when I did ballet, all my mates from the estate took the piss. But I wasn’t fazed by stuff like that. I’ve been comfortable in my own skin since I was young so I never really cared about what anyone had to say. That’s why, as a footballer, I was comfortable creating a digital magazine, getting a restaurant, going into different fields.” You were also one of the few footballers prepared to say what you think. “Well, you’re taught not to, that’s the problem.” Was he pleased that the England international Raheem Sterling recently talked about the racism he has experienced. “Yes, it’s been hard work for him but he’s hitting the right notes, not only on the pitch … ” But Lasarow has had enough of the football talk. “My mission today is to make sure you leave with a DNA test,” he tells me. He turns to Ferdinand. “I think you want to wrap up now, don’t you?”Ole Gunnar Solskjær has always loved the FA Cup – he rates walking out at Wembley in 1999 as highly as all the other memories from that year because the Cup final on television was always an event when growing up in Norway – and he is equally happy to be renewing a rivalry with Arsenal that is just as fondly remembered. “The games against Arsenal were the fiercest battles we had during my time in England,” Manchester United’s caretaker manager said. “They won the double, we won the treble and the games were just fantastic because they were the two top teams. We had a great team and they had a very good one. It was a special rivalry and I’m not sure the Premier League has seen anything like it since, although perhaps Manchester City and Liverpool at the moment are close. “We’ll have to wait and see how long that lasts, because we are hoping to get up to that level again soon. Twenty years ago it was just us and Arsenal for a long time, going at each other, going for the title. It was just between the two of us until José came along with Chelsea, I can’t remember any other challengers. Maybe one year Liverpool were half close but that was it.” So intense was the rivalry that Solskjær was astonished to see Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira make a television programme together a few years ago, when in their playing days they were more famous for being at each other’s throats. “I couldn’t believe that,” he said. “They used to be fighting all the time. There was a nice little fight in the tunnel in that 4-2 game where John O’Shea scored the winning goal [February 2005], but whenever we played Arsenal in those days there were fights in the tunnels and on the pitch. It was just everything I loved about football, that passion is part of the game. I’m sure the fans could feel it as well, that’s what makes it so interesting. I hope the next game is as good as some of the ones we have had in the past.” In terms of FA Cup meetings the one everyone remembers most vividly is the semi-final in 1999, with its replay, Peter Schmeichel penalty save and Ryan Giggs’s stunning winner. Solskjær played in both, though had been substituted by the time Giggs went on his slaloming run in extra-time at Villa Park. “I watched that goal from the sidelines, but the two sides were so evenly matched we all knew it was such an important game,” he recalled. “I firmly believe that Peter saving that penalty from Dennis Bergkamp gave us the impetus to go on and win the treble. If Bergkamp had scored I think Arsenal would have won the double. That’s how small the margins were, and that is why it is still a standout memory for me.” While Solskjær would go on to make his own indelible contribution to the treble and Manchester United history with his stoppage-time winner against Bayern Munich in Barcelona, a slightly less celebrated fact is that he did the same thing against Liverpool in a fourth‑round tie at Old Trafford almost exactly 20 years ago this weekend. United had trailed to a Michael Owen goal for most of the game, but two goals in the last three minutes from Dwight Yorke and Solskjær saw them through. Newspapers at the time produced the same “smash and grab” headlines they would later use for the jaw-dropping conclusion to the Champions League final, and when Solskjær’s winner went in there were even pictures of Liverpool players dropping to the ground as if poleaxed in exactly the manner made famous by Sammy Kuffour and his fellow defenders in the Camp Nou. Solskjær’s interventions from the substitutes’ bench deservedly earned him renown; a month after the Liverpool game he came on in a league match at Nottingham Forest and scored four goals in 12 minutes, but without his lesser known last‑gasp winner the dreams of a treble might have been stifled at an early stage. Solskjær is presently making a name for himself all over again in a different capacity at Old Trafford. Seven wins in succession is impressive whatever the calibre of opposition, and after beating Tottenham at Wembley this month there is no reason for United and their engaging young manager to fear a trip to the Emirates Stadium. Already proving an inspired managerial solution if the object of the exercise is to provide an antidote to José Mourinho’s suspicion and sarcasm, Solskjær gives the impression of positively relishing the challenge. “Let’s make sure it’s a good game of football,” he said, after confirming Alexis Sánchez will come in to play against his old club. Is he not worried about the Chilean being mocked by the Arsenal crowd on account of his stuttering form in Manchester? “I think he’ll love it,” Solskjær said. “As a player, pride kicks in if the crowd turns against you. You think: ‘I’ll show all of you.’ I have no worries at all about Alexis being involved. He’s been fantastic in training, his attitude has been spot on, so hopefully he’ll enjoy the game.”“Yo, Pac!” You can almost feel the spittle as Gary Oldman launches into his soliloquy. It is 2012, and he is performing in a skit on Jimmy Kimmel’s US talkshow, reciting from R Kelly’s autobiography with the plummy majesty he later brought to the role of Churchill. “What up, baby?” he utters as the audience collapses in giggles. The joke is twofold: English people are so white! But also: R Kelly is so ridiculous! For years, Robert Kelly, now aged 52, was seen, as Kimmel put it that night, as “great and inexplicable”. He was one of the US’s most brilliant entertainers, beloved for his uproariously carnal R&B tracks and stratospheric ballads. But there was something that set him apart from his musical peers: a knowing ridiculousness, which would prompt him to cast himself in a 33-part television opera centering around a well-endowed dwarf, describe himself as a “sexasaurus”, and make Same Girl, his duet with Usher, so hammy it would inevitably be spoofed by Flight of the Conchords in a song called We’re Both in Love With a Sexy Lady. This sense of self-mockery gained him a new, white hipster audience – Pitchfork booked him to play its festival in 2013 – and also helped insulate him from criticism. Until now.  Then 27, Kelly allegedly marries protegée Aaliyah, then 15, in an illegal ceremony in Cook County, Chicago. Tiffany Hawkins files lawsuit alleging injuries and emotional damage from a three-year relationship with Kelly, beginning when she was 15 - it is settled out of court. A videotape passed to Chicago Sun Times journalist Jim DeRogatis appears to show Kelly urinating on and having sex with an underage girl, which Kelly denies. Patrice Jones alleges that Kelly had a sexual relationship with her than began when she was 16, and pressured her into terminating a pregnancy. It is settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. Kelly is sued by dancer Montina Woods for secretly filming a sexual encounter between them. Kelly denies it, and settles out of court. A Chicago jury found that the identity of the girl depicted in the child video was not conclusive, acquitting Kelly of the charges. Kelly is divorced from his wife Andrea. She had previously taken out, then rescinded, a protection order against him. In 2018 she details a history of alleged domestic violence during their marriage, that she says drove her close to suicide. Three former members of Kelly's circle claimed Kelly was holding six women in properties in Chicago and Atlanta, controlling every aspect of their lives. Kelly denied the claims. Jerhonda Pace told Rolling Stone that she lost her virginity to Kelly age 16, and that she ended the relationship after he allegedly slapped, choked and spat on her. In a BBC3 documentary, former girlfriend Kitti Jones alleged that Kelly groomed an underage girl as well as her and other young women. Kelly refused to comment. An unnamed woman told Dallas police that Kelly had given her an STD and attempted to recruit her into his alleged sex "cult" after the pair initiated a sexual relationship when she was 19. Kelly "categorically" denied all allegations. Video from a private event depicts Kelly apparently describing attempts to suppress his music as "too late". Kelly releases I Admit, a 19-minute song protesting his innocence. Numerous women including Andrea Kelly, Jerhonda Pace and Kitti Jones reiterate their allegations in Lifetime docuseries Surviving R Kelly. Prosecutors appeal for any further victims to come forward – three women come forward in the days that follow. Lady Gaga and Chance the Rapper apologise for working with R Kelly, and remove their collaborations from streaming services. It has been alleged for more than 20 years that Kelly has had abusive relationships with women. He wrote and produced Aaliyah’s debut album, then was reported to have married the R&B star illegally when she was 15. The album was titled – chillingly, in retrospect – Age Ain’t Nothin’ But a Number. In 1996, Tiffany Hawkins sued Kelly for “personal injuries and emotional distress” during a three-year relationship that began when she was 15 and he was 24. That suit, and three others since, were settled out of court. Kelly has only appeared before a judge once, in 2008, when he was accused of making child abuse images by filming sexual encounters, including one in which he urinated over an underage girl. A jury couldn’t identify the man or the girl in the video without doubt, and Kelly was acquitted. Throughout all this, Kelly’s career flourished. Mark Anthony Neal, professor of black popular culture at Duke University, calls him “the most visible R&B star of the 1990s … we haven’t seen an R&B figure emerge post-R Kelly that has the kind of gravitas that he or Luther Vandross or Marvin Gaye had.” Kelly created radio hits that united races and generations, and wrote commercially blockbusting albums such as R, which in 1998 sold 216,000 copies in a single week in the US alone, and boasted duets with both Jay-Z and Celine Dion. “He had a really good ear,” Neal says. “He couldn’t read or write music, but he was able to mimic these larger traditions: R&B, soul and gospel, adding a contemporary feel so that it felt urgent and vital. And he knew how to record raunch.” Over the past two years, that success has been replaced with a flood of fresh accusations, including claims that he had sex with girls as young as 14 while running a cult-like harem. His ex-wife claimed that he choked her almost to death, part of a campaign of violence that made her suicidal. A social media campaign, #MuteRKelly, gained traction as the #MeToo movement caught fire. Then, earlier this month, the documentary Surviving R Kelly aired on Lifetime TV in the US. In it, to devastating effect, numerous women accused the singer of sexual, physical and psychological abuse. After it screened, Kelly’s daughter Joann (who goes by the name Buku Abi) described him as a “monster”, adding: “I am well aware of who and what he is. I grew up in that house.” Activist group UltraViolet flew a banner over the offices of Kelly’s record label, demanding that it drop him. Following fresh appeals from prosecutors in Atlanta and Chicago, where Kelly has residences, three more women have come forward alleging abuse, along with two other families who say their daughters have gone to live with Kelly. Lady Gaga, Phoenix and Chance the Rapper expressed contrition for working with Kelly, while John Legend, Ne-Yo and Common condemned him. What took them so long? Kelly denies all the accusations of abuse. His lawyer, Steven Greenberg, has threatened to sue Lifetime, and says that Kelly’s sexual relationships have all been “perfectly consensual”. Kelly’s denials include statements through his lawyers, plus a 19-minute song, I Admit, in which he sings that he has been “so falsely accused”, and that his accusers were financially motivated. Complicating the accusations, one young woman has told police, who made a visit to one of Kelly’s homes, that she was living with Kelly consensually, and was “fine and did not want to be bothered with her parents”. Another told her parents – who said she appeared “brainwashed” – that “she’s in love, and [Kelly] is the one who cares for her.” A further police visit to a Kelly residence reported by TMZ this week saw two women repeatedly profess that they were safe and free to come and go. But they are outnumbered by women who do accuse Kelly of abuse. The sheer frequency – and pattern – of the accusations now means that even fans, and collaborators such Gaga, now believe the accusers. What if Kelly’s alleged victims had been white? Jim DeRogatis, the Chicago-based journalist who has doggedly reported on Kelly for 17 years, has said that the saga has taught him: “Nobody matters less in society than young black women.” Or, as Mikki Kendall put it in Surviving R Kelly: “No one cared because we were black girls.” “These black girls and women were not ‘ideal victims’,” says Treva Lindsey, a professor at Ohio State University whose research focuses on violence against black women. She has found “a particular kind of venom that is relatively normalised” towards them, which starts from the top: “Some of Trump’s most vicious attacks on individuals have come at the expense of black women, whether that’s [congresswoman] Maxine Waters or [journalist] April Ryan.” The Kelly case itself, she says, is compounded by “a narrative around black women and girls being hypersexual. It’s such a fraught, racist history, specifically around sexual violence – black men being accused of raping white women being one of the primary factors in lynching, and black women being seen, legally, as unrapeable.” Lindsey believes that these ideas have become internalised by some African Americans: “‘Oh, those girls knew what they were doing.’ And that is part of why it becomes difficult to see a 14-year-old girl on a child abuse sex tape as wholly a victim.” Chance the Rapper pointed to another reason why some have been slow to condemn R Kelly, saying: “We’re programmed to really be hypersensitive to black male oppression.” Lindsey adds: “There’s definitely black folks of all genders defending Kelly, who are fearful of what this means for this larger historical narrative of black men being inherently criminal and aggressive. In the context of a racist country, one black person’s actions become illustrative of the depravity of an entire community. Harvey Weinstein isn’t an indictment of white men. But R Kelly can be used by some as an indictment of black men.” Although the rapper French Montana later said he supported the alleged victims, when asked about Kelly, he grumbled that “they don’t let nobody have their legendary moments” – a sentiment shared by another rapper, Waka Flocka Flame, who, in the wake of the Bill Cosby scandal, said: “Every time a famous minority make it, they throw salt in the game.” Kelly has tried to leverage this sentiment – a representative described the #MuteRKelly campaign as the “attempted public lynching of a black man who has made extraordinary contributions to our culture”. It is precisely these contributions that are Kelly’s most potent weapon. Listening to him can feel like a struggle between two impulses – to condemn the abuser but adore the artist whose best work touches greatness. She’s Got That Vibe, his debut single from 1992, roared joyously out of the New Jack Swing scene and immediately established a core part of his appeal: the ability to sing lecherous lines (“The tight miniskirt you wear … I can’t help but stare”) with such earnestness that they almost appeared romantic. That earnestness was intensified on his biggest hit, I Believe I Can Fly, a ballad of self-determination so structurally perfect that the words didn’t feel outlandish or silly. Kelly’s first US No 1, Bump N’ Grind, acknowledged the moral wrongness of his desires, but framed himself as helplessly in thrall to them – a cornily manipulative trick that the excellence of the songwriting makes seductive. Kelly had to present himself as defined and ruled by his sexuality, both to enhance his sex appeal and to absolve him of his problematic libido. Ignition (Remix) was one of the greatest pop songs of the 00s, its double entendres, car horns and atmosphere of three-drink tipsiness so potent that it became a global hit a mere four months after Kelly was indicted on 10 counts of child pornography. Fans don’t want Kelly to be a paedophile or rapist because that would ruin the music. As Common said in the wake of the documentary: “Instead of trying to be like, ‘Let’s go and try to resolve this situation and free these young ladies and stop this thing that’s going on,’ we were just like, ‘Man, we rocking to the music’.” That effect has endured even now – streams of Kelly’s music have increased since Surviving R Kelly aired. The love for Kelly’s songs such as these is intensified by their communal appeal: they are the soundtrack to joyful memories of dancefloors and karaoke. As Lindsey says: “His music signals so many moments for us, whether it’s weddings or graduations or your first kiss.” Neal agrees: “He knew how to make songs that a black community would find value in, in black social life,” he says. “Step in the Name of Love at weddings; I Believe I Can Fly – if you’re at a kindergarten graduation, you’re singing this song.” Less successful singles were still touched with brilliance. One lyric on I’m a Flirt, “like a dog on the prowl when I’m walking through the mall”, is even more sinister when you consider, as Lindsey says: “Any of my black girlfriends from Chicago had an R Kelly story, and most of them involved a high school, or mall, these spaces where he clearly is finding vulnerable black girls.” But the line is – perhaps deliberately – given a spectacularly carefree, beautiful melody. Listening now to songs such as I’m a Flirt, it feels as if Kelly was getting a kick out of hiding in plain sight. Many of his songs express a desire for control through marriage and impregnation in the starkest terms, such as Marry the Pussy and Pregnant. Songs such as It Seems Like You’re Ready are excruciating given what we know about Kelly’s penchant for underage girls. Kelly also leveraged the very iconography of R&B. By brazenly embracing a cartoonishly horny image, from 1993’s I Like the Crotch On You to the faceless, naked women on the cover of his 2013 album Black Panties, he made the stories of “sex cults” seem like a joke. “This virility, sexually assertive to the point of aggressive, is a part of a particular R&B persona, and R Kelly is in tradition with that,” Lindsey says. Was Kelly really an abuser, audiences might wonder, or just participating in a tradition of playful lechery going back to 70s soulmen such as Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes and Teddy Pendergrass? Then there are Kelly’s experiences as a victim of sexual assault: in his autobiography, he wrote that, growing up, he was repeatedly sexually abused by a family member. Was this the wellspring of his sexually aggressive lyrics, and his own alleged abusiveness as an adult? Kelly’s case is complex: a knot of tensions around race, gender, sex and artistry that must be unravelled in order to ask hard questions about how it might have been allowed to flourish, and to bring justice to his alleged victims. “What would it mean to hold R Kelly accountable now?” Lindsey wonders aloud. It will surely take far more than removing his duets from Spotify, as Lady Gaga has done, in penance but also as a means of erasing the historical record. As Lindsey says: “There’s too much at stake for us not to figure it out.” • Surviving R Kelly airs in the UK on 5 February, 10pm, on Crime and Investigation.The criminal indictment of Roger Stone is packed with the kind of colourful details one might expect from the flamboyant rogue, who has been dealing in dirty tricks for more than 40 years. Between threatening an associate’s therapy dog and quoting his political hero Richard Nixon, the indictment also described Stone urging a witness to “do a Frank Pentangeli” – the mobster who lied to Congress in The Godfather Part II. But it is the dry prose of Robert Mueller’s 12th paragraph that is most likely to have Donald Trump sweating on Friday, after his government’s FBI agents arrested his longtime friend and adviser in a dramatic pre-dawn raid in Florida with guns drawn. It states that after WikiLeaks had begun releasing hacked Democratic emails, “a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton campaign”. This direction was given to the senior Trump campaign official after 22 July 2016 – more than a month after it was reported that it was Russian government hackers who had broken into the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems. Several questions naturally follow: who was the senior campaign official? Who gave the order? And could it have been candidate Trump himself? Mueller’s primary task as special counsel was to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” on the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election campaign. Since then, Trump has repeatedly said there was “no collusion”. His loyalists have worked to raise the bar in the public’s mind, so that anything short of Mueller finding a secret deal with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will clear Trump of wrongdoing. But running through Mueller’s indictment of Stone and his charges against Russian hackers last July is the makings of a case that there was, in fact, coordination. In short, Mueller said on Friday, Trump, or his most senior aides, ordered a trusted associate to bring them into the loop on the fruits of what they knew to be a Russian government hack of American victims – and on the schedule for its publication. Trump’s team could then shape their campaign tactics around this calendar. And last July, Mueller hinted at evidence of coordination in the other direction. His indictment of the Russian hackers said they attempted “for the first time” to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office “after hours” on 27 July 2016. “At or around the same time, they also targeted 76 email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign,” Mueller wrote. That day, at an event in Florida, Trump urged Russia to search for the approximately 30,000 emails that Clinton was found to have deleted from her private server on the grounds that they were not related to government work. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said, in now notorious remarks. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” The full extent of the coordination remains unclear. Mueller, who tends to release only what he needs when he needs to, may have emails, text messages and testimony shedding more light on how the Trump campaign capitalised. We may never know. It is possible that, unlike Stone and many of his hapless associates, at least some people involved managed to avoid, in the memorable phrase of Stringer Bell from HBO’s The Wire, “taking notes on a criminal conspiracy”. But Mueller on Friday hinted that there was more to come. Stone, he said, “spoke to senior Trump campaign officials” – plural – about what information WikiLeaks had on Clinton and “was contacted by senior Trump campaign officials” to find out the release schedule. Certainly, people around Trump seemed particularly pleased with Stone’s activities on a day when they needed help the most. On 7 October 2016, one month before election day, a recording was leaked in which Trump boasted about grabbing women by the genitals. Within a couple of hours, WikiLeaks began publishing emails stolen by Russian operatives from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman. The documents caused further disruption in the Democratic camp and took some heat off Trump. Shortly afterwards, the indictment says, an associate of Trump’s campaign chief, Steve Bannon, sent Stone a text message. “Well done,” it read.The face is a greenish sock of sickly flesh stretched tight over the skull. Its features have been burned away by pain. All that remain in the elongated mask are two wide round eyes with dots for pupils, a pair of black nostrils and a mouth open in an oval scream. We’ve all been there. The Scream was created by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893 but it has become a masterpiece – the masterpiece – for our time. There are comparably “iconic” works of art – the Mona Lisa, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers – but they exist in a world of art and beauty. The Scream is ugly and brutal and belongs in the here and now. It is a symbol we reach for as we might for a strong word, to express what we’re feeling this minute. The cartoonist Peter Brookes called on it to sum up what so many were feeling when Donald J Trump was elected president of the United States. In Brookes’s depiction of Trump’s inauguration, every single person in the crowd has metamorphosed into the wraith-like figure from The Scream. They sway in unison, hands to their hollowed faces, clad in black smocks. You don’t have to be a professional cartoonist to express yourself with The Scream – you just need to text. The emoji sign “face screaming in fear” neatly sums up Munch’s image as a yellow face turning blue as it opens its mouth to scream, with eyes wide open, hands pressed to its cheeks in shock. It’s a handy emoji if you’re traumatised by Brexit … or climate change, or plastic in the oceans, or emojis. There are plenty of reasons to scream, says Hugo Chapman, the keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum. “Is that not the feeling of our time?” he asks of Munch’s image. Chapman’s department is usually where scholars fill out forms to study Rubens drawings or old maps of Somerset, but its announcement of a new exhibition has sent headlines spinning simply because Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, which opens in April, will include the 1895 lithographic version of The Scream. Chapman says the museum has not been surprised by the shrieks of excitement. “We have hit at a time of maximum anxiety that all of us feel incredibly strongly,” he told me on the eve of the meaningful vote in the House of Commons on Theresa May’s Brexit deal. It is also a time of sardonic laughter, and surely part of the resonance of The Scream in these strange times is its comic hyperbole. A huge part of the global population was transfixed in the silent pose of Munch’s screamer on Trump’s inauguration day – and we still are – but there is also a blackly comic release in recognising our plight in this late-Romantic image. In fact, many appropriations of The Scream by popular culture are a howl. A chain of self-consciously youthful and riotous pubs called It’s A Scream used Munch’s painting as an advert for booze and bad behaviour. An artist called Robert Fishbone found a new sideline when he created an inflatable version of The Scream that became a must-have novelty for art students and existentialists everywhere. And in Wes Craven’s 1996 film Scream, which is at once a satire on slasher horror movies and a highly effective resurrection of the genre, the killer wears a white Halloween mask version of Munch’s screaming face. It is both ridiculous and gruesome. These examples of The Scream’s irresistible rise in the shattered modern mind originated in the 1990s, which seems to have been the decade that saw Munch’s picture start its final ascent from a famous masterpiece of modern art to the most recognised, quoted and gazed-at icon of all. As a matter of fact, its triumph can be dated exactly. Today’s cult of The Scream started 25 years ago, on 12 February 1994. That was when thieves stole the original 1893 painting from Norway’s National Gallery. Detective Charles Hill, who was sent to Oslo from Scotland Yard’s specialist art squad to help get it back, remembers that it was not a very impressive heist: “It was two men and a ladder.” Detectives got in touch with the criminals and, astonishingly, convinced them that California’s Getty Museum was prepared to buy this piece of toxic contraband. “I appeared as the man from the Getty,” says Hill. He negotiated with the crooks, refusing an offer to go somewhere unspecified with them, purportedly to see it, by dead of night, and ultimately helping to secure it just three months after it was stolen. Art crime may be ugly, but it is also popular recognition of a kind. You know you’ve made it when the criminal community rates your works theft-worthy. Although the Mona Lisa was always renowned, its theft from the Louvre in 1911 and recovery two years later catapulted it from genteel totem to pop icon. The theft of The Scream had a similar electrifying effect. It even started a gangland fashion. In 2004, masked gunmen seized Munch’s second painted version of The Scream, which dates from 1910, from the Munch Museum in Oslo. This time it took longer to get back, and suffered some nasty damage. The 1990s also saw The Scream mirror a wider cultural mood. The end of the brash yuppy era brought a new emotional openness. Munch’s fin-de-siècle masterpiece suited another fin de siècle a century after its creation. Contemporary artists were returning to his themes of inner darkness with installations that used thick black crude oil, preserved animal bodies or a cast of a house. One Young British Artist, Tracey Emin, was consciously inspired by Munch in her confessional work My Bed, which is a kind of scream expressed through full ashtrays and empty bottles. Emin is now working on a seven-metre nude statue in homage to Munch that has been commissioned for the new Munch Museum in Oslo harbour, due to open next year. If The Scream spoke in a new key to the late 20th century, the anxieties of this century, which started on 11 September 2001, have made it seem the most contemporary of all masterpieces. Its translation into an emoji is truly significant. The Scream emoji makes explicit the striking fact that it is getting hard to say the word “scream” without seeing The Scream. This painting is becoming part of the language. The Scream has become part of a shift to reconnect idea and images, to express ourselves in the internet age by direct visual icons. It is not just a painting that makes a good emoji. It is the original emoji. To see the revolutionary nature of Munch’s achievement, you only have to see how he first rendered into art the experience that The Scream records. In 1892, he painted Sick Mood at Sunset: Despair. It shows a man leaning on the wooden railing of a bridge, looking out on to a darkling blot of a fjord beneath a yellow sky smeared with red clouds of apocalyptic fire. Two other figures parade the boardwalk, leaving him to his depressed thoughts. The railings and walkway rushing away in steep perspective to the left of the scene, the paranoia-inducing figures walking away, the curve of the fjord – this is unmistakably the landscape of The Scream. For both paintings depict a real experience, a transforming, unforgettable moment of revelation. Was it an artistic ecstasy, like the visions of Romantic poets including Blake and Coleridge, or an episode of mental illness? In 1908, Munch wrote it down. He tells of how he was walking with two friends near Kristiania – as Oslo was then called – when the sun went down over the fjord. At the time, he writes, “life had ripped open my soul”. Born in Ådalsbruk in 1863, Munch grew up in Kristiania amid poverty, puritanism and illness. One of his first paintings, The Sick Child, is a memory of seeing his sister die. As a young artist, he had to struggle with frequent illnesses, rejection, alcoholism and a tempestuous relationship in which he got shot. He was also witness to a murderous love affair among his bohemian friends. So as he looked at the sunset that evening, the sky split open not just in clouds of red but a bloody, volcanic, atomic rupture in the fabric of reality itself: “Then it seemed as if a flaming sword of blood slashed through the heavens’ vault – The air became like blood – with piercing strands of fire – The fjord – glared in cold blue – yellow and red colours – bloody red screeched – on the road – and on the railing – My friends’ faces turned glaring yellow-white … ” This is the moment he depicts in Sick Mood at Sunset: Despair. In this painting, we see his anguish from the outside. The sky is gory, but it is in the closed mind of the man brooding with his face turned away from us that it feels like the end of the world. We see his despair, but it is not ours. We are like the audience watching Hamlet: involved yet outside his tragedy. The following year, Munch obliterated that gap between actor and audience, artwork and onlooker. In 1893, he created his first two versions of The Scream. The one that is in Oslo’s National Gallery is done with tempera, that is, egg-based paints and crayon on cardboard. The other, in crayon alone, also on cardboard, belongs to the Munch Museum. In both of them, he simplifies his vision of the nightmare sunset into bands and nodules of colour, almost like the flow of woodgrain. More radically, he replaces his brooding man with a figure who has no identifiable sex and may even be a ghost or ghoul. Clad in a dark dress or tight robe, its face reduced to that caricature of dread beyond words, the screamer does not look at the mad sky but directly at us. It is us. By removing all individuality from this being, Munch allows anyone to inhabit it. He draws a glove puppet for the soul. Absurd and empty, it is filled by the scream its mouth shapes – and that scream, claimed Munch, comes from the landscape itself. He testified that he truly heard a scream pierce the sky and fjord as he gazed on the terrible fiery sunset: “I felt a great scream – and I actually heard a great scream – The colours of nature broke up – the lines of nature – the lines and the colours – quivered in motion – These oscillations of light not only caused my eye to vibrate – they also brought my ear into vibration – so that I truly heard a scream – I then painted the picture Scream.” In Norwegian it is “skrik”, whose jarring note sounds more like the English “shriek” than “scream”. The resemblance is no coincidence but clearly reflects the Viking infuence on our language. So Munch felt nature shriek. The imagery he uses is telling: as he watched, the light seemed to shake, the colours of nature to warp before or, rather, within his eyes. As his visual sense shook, it set off something in his ears. This is an instance of synesthesia, when experiences ramify through more than one of our senses. Munch was undergoing the kind of hallucinatory, multi-sensory, almost out-of-body adventure associated with visionary episodes from shamanism to psychedelia. It was part of a dangerous descent to the edge of madness that would eventually lead to him being hospitalised. And in The Scream, by creating a figure anyone can identify with, a pure embodiment of feeling, he lets us enter that same extreme state. The Scream is so much more than a receptacle for the anxiety we’re feeling right now. It can rescue us. It offers a means of release from the grind and banality of politics, money and work. The true purpose of the greatest modern art is to reconnect us with demonic, ecstatic experiences that defy the boredom of modern industrial capitalism. Maybe Munch was possessed by the Vikings when he heard the world scream. For The Scream seems pagan and primitive in its shudder at the iciness of the empty north. It is a painting of Ragnarök – the Norse apocalypse. Which makes it even more the masterpiece for our time. Play Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song and stare at The Scream. You’ll soon forget all about the things that make you want to … you know. Edvard Munch: Love and Angst is at the British Museum from 11 April to 21 July, britishmuseum.orgAn anonymous Manhattan lawyer tells us in Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener of a perplexing turning point in the short story, where Bartleby one day stops following orders and instead responds: “I would prefer not to.” The action is unconscionable, both disobeying orders but also having no clear prompt or reasoning for the sudden change of heart. The phrase has become famous and, in the modern way, sloganised. A friend of mine has it on a tote bag and T-shirt. It can be found in many saleable formats for millennials. In many ways it characterises the millennial condition, as a viral Buzzfeed essay set out this week: those born between the early 1980s and 2000s are beset by “errand paralysis”, its author Anne Helen Petersen claims. The line between work and life is so blurred that for millennials, the idea of a work-life balance has never been an aspiration, let alone a reality. Your entire life is an extension of you as a brand, a marketable concept that extends far beyond the quality of the work you put in at the office, or what you write in emails and on the page. Your Instagram photos must show you as fun and cultured enough to maintain interest but not drunk enough to appear a lout; your Twitter should show your connection to current affairs but not alienate people of a slightly different political persuasion, and show your pithy sayings have garnered enough of a following to show you’re a somebody. Our emails follow us home and our social media footprint is with us 24/7, and yet still millennials are struggling with basic chores. The term “adulting” is common parlance – personally I find it loathsome, conjuring up deliberate infantilisation. It is also a particularly middle-class preoccupation; safety nets are there for some and not others. But the essay hit a nerve because work has filled all corners of millennial life, and there is no hope for your own life outside of work because social media has become another arm of the surveillance state. Any job you apply for, your employer will look at your Twitter, Instagram, Facebook presence if they can, and anything they can trawl through on Google. Even if you do get hired, you’ll be monitored outside work too. As Malcolm Harris writes in his book, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, young people have been primed to be employable almost from birth – not just in the classroom, but in the playground, social clubs and even friendship circles at schools. You can characterise it as a generational issue, when really it is one of capitalism. With each shift in technology, employers and big corporations swiftly worked out how each new website, app, or function could serve them. If it makes you depressed, they can monetise that too: Instagram, Facebook and public transport are full of adverts for new apps that let you see a doctor privately, or book online therapy courses and virtual doctors’ appointments if you’re too busy to see your family doctor, or can’t get the time off work. Our governments help them too: with increasingly lax rules on employment, and trade unions finding hostile laws passed to try to defang workers’ rights, it’s harder than ever to fight back. If you’re paid very little, and don’t know when you’ll be paid, it makes it very difficult to subscribe to your monthly union subscription rates. Our labour is carved up into ever smaller units, leaving us with little emotional connection to our work and no control over our working lives. We pay more for our rent than in living memory and, without family help, have no hope of ever owning a home. My father died in debt; I struggle to pay the billsand recently had to carry on working through two days in hospital after a life-threatening seizure. My family at least had sick pay and permanent contracts, even though I’ve apparently risen several social classes above them. For my generation, we’re working harder than ever, for less and less. What’s the outcome? A generation that absolutely detests the status quo and fails to see how the financial industry works for more than a small handful. Solutions tend to focus on individual wellbeing: therapy through nutrition, diet, “sleep hygiene” and organisation. The success of Jordan Peterson and Marie Kondo speaks to this: theirs are self-help books essentially, that promise greater happiness by focusing inwards rather than accepting that widespread unhappiness is down to a society which prizes economic success and consumerism. You can fold your clothes however you like, but that won’t spark as much joy as knowing you have a pension and can afford your rent. There is often a feeling that our current political moment is temporary and unstable - that Brexit, the election of Trump, the rise of Momentum and Corbynism, and the collapse in faith of the British establishment are fleeting and unexplained phenomena, rather than clear symptoms of an old order limping to an inevitable death. But millennial unhappiness and exhaustion spur on political unrest in all our lives. Any political settlement that seeks more security and less volatility has to promise a more equitable life for all and job security, affordable homes and decent living standards for all; not just for one generation. Burnout is more than an individual malaise: it’s a symptom of a crisis of capitalism that upsets the whole order, and the answer is collective, not individual change. • Dawn Foster is a Guardian columnistImagine that you could buy, in thousands of shops across the country, canisters containing toxic gas. Imagine that some people walked the streets, squirting this gas into the face of every child they passed. Imagine that it became a craze, so that a child couldn’t walk a metre without receiving a faceful. Imagine that, while a single dose was unlikely to cause serious harm, repeated doses damaged their hearts, lungs and brains, affecting their health, their intelligence and their life chances. It would be treated as a national emergency. Sales of the canisters would immediately be banned. The police would be mobilised. If existing laws against poisoning children were deemed insufficient, new legislation would be rushed through parliament. It’s not hard to picture this response, is it? Yet the mass poisoning is happening. And nothing changes. According to a paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, burning fossil fuels is now “the world’s most significant threat to children’s health”. Their life chances are compromised before they are born. Toxic particles from exhaust fumes pass through the lungs of pregnant women and accumulate in the placenta. The risk of premature birth and low birthrate this causes is described in the British Medical Journal as “something approaching a public health catastrophe”. Among the likely impacts of repeated poisoning, researchers now believe, is a “huge reduction” in intelligence. A paper published last year found that “long-term exposure to air pollution impedes cognitive performance in verbal and math tests”. Pollution stunts the growth of lungs as well as minds, raising the risk of asthma, cancer, stroke and heart failure. How will this affect the Diesel Generation: in other words, those born since 2001? This was the year in which Tony Blair’s government, rather than delivering the integrated public transport it had long promised, sought to tweak the carbon emissions from cars by taxing diesel engines at a lower rate than petrol engines. Diesel cars might produce a little less carbon dioxide, but they release more nitrogen oxides and particulates, a tendency exacerbated by the manufacturers’ cheating. An entire generation – 18 years of births – has been exposed to the results of this folly. Given that researchers have found an association between air pollution and childhood mental illness, could this help explain the rising prevalence of psychiatric disorders among English children since the first major survey, in 1999? A study conducted in London suggests that people with the highest exposure to pollution also have a greater risk of developing dementia. Might we have triggered a dementia timebomb, that could explode in 40 or 50 years? The only difference between the absurd scenario with which this article began and reality is intent: no one means to poison children with their exhaust fumes. But the absence of a mens rea makes no difference to their health. The one-tonne metal canisters are still on sale (though the number bought has dipped slightly in the past year) and toxic gas is pumped into our children’s faces with every step they take. Especially on the way to and from school. These are the times at which children inhale the most particulates (especially if they are driven – exposure is much greater inside a car than on the pavement). Horrifying recent data also reveals that pollutants from nearby roads accumulate in classrooms, leading to higher levels inside than out. Due to the continued failure of successive governments to address this crisis, taking children to school damages their minds. This is a national emergency. As 90% of the world’s children are now exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution, it is an international emergency. So why don’t we react as we would if the poisoning were deliberate, and ban the sale of toxic gas canisters? In the UK, the government says it will end the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans (though not buses and lorries) by 2040. Another generation poisoned. In the latest budget, it exacerbated the problem, announcing a further £30bn for roads, creating more space for toxic gas flasks. When the government won’t act, only palliatives remain. In desperation, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has started installing air filters in nurseries and classrooms. It’s as if, rather than vaccinating children against diphtheria, they were issued with face masks. After the Lancet commission on pollution and health reported, in 2017, that pollution kills more people than tobacco – and three times as many as Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined – you might have hoped that governments, development agencies and health charities would have made it a priority. But they remain focused on communicable disease, while ignoring the greater, manmade threat. Where is Save the Children? Where is Médecins Sans Frontières? Where are the philanthropists seeking to eliminate deaths from ambient air pollution, as Bill and Melinda Gates and others seek to wipe out malaria? When the World Heart Federation built a global coalition to conquer heart disease and stroke, and when the charity Vital Strategies launched a similar initiative on cardiovascular illness – with Gates, Bloomberg and Zuckerberg money – they overlooked air pollution, even though it kills more people than the factors they emphasised (such as salt and trans fats). The same weird silence afflicts the UN taskforce on noncommunicable diseases and the World Health Organization’s global action plan. Pollution is off the agenda. Why? I think there may be three reasons. The first is that there is no heroic narrative built around tackling air pollution, while there are plenty (Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming, John Snow) surrounding the fight against infection. The second is that the necessary interventions are not discrete but systemic. Rather than distributing mosquito nets or reducing the salt in processed food, you must change entire transport and industrial systems. The third is that, while no one has a commercial interest in spreading tuberculosis or polio, there is a massive global lobby, comprised of fossil fuel, motor and infrastructure companies, blocking effective action against pollution and the technologies that cause it. If you take on pollution, you take on the combined might of some of the world’s most powerful industries. Pollution is the tangible manifestation of corruption. The solution is political: confronting the power of this lobby and overturning the governments it has captured, then replacing private cars and ever-expanding roads with electric mass transit, walking and cycling, and imposing stringent conditions on dirty industries. We have been abandoned by those who claim to defend our children from disease. So we must mobilise. • George Monbiot is a Guardian columnistJeremy Corbyn has said he will not hold talks with Theresa May until the prime minister agrees to remove the threat of a no-deal Brexit, ruling out any meeting with the prime minister in the immediate aftermath of the no-confidence vote. Responding to May’s offer of swift talks to break the Brexit impasse, the Labour leader told MPs that before he would entertain “positive discussions about the way forward” she had to agree to his precondition. “The government must remove clearly once and for all the catastrophe of a no-deal exit from the European Union and all the chaos that would result from that,” Corbyn said minutes after the opposition party was defeated in the confidence vote. Minutes after the exchanges in the Commons, with Downing Street refusing to take no deal off the table, Corbyn’s spokesman said that as things stood, the Labour leader would not take up May’s offer of an evening Brexit meeting. The two sides were still in discussions, but in light of such a fundamental difference, appeared unlikely to come to an agreement to speak in the immediate future – even though only 10 weeks remain until the UK’s planned departure date. When asked directly if Corbyn was going to No10, the spokesman added: “As I understand it that is not going to take place.” Labour is willing to support a Brexit deal if May will accept a customs union, a close relationship with the single market and enhanced protections for workers and consumers rights. However, this would represent a massive shift for the prime minister and risk splits in her own party, making it hard to see how a deal could be agreed. Corbyn’s spokesman acknowledged this, saying, “Any change in the government red lines will cause them internal splits.” With the Brexit impasse no closer to being resolved, Corbyn is also under growing pressure from second referendum campaigners to embrace a fresh vote as a way forward. Earlier on Wednesday, half a dozen Labour MPs came out in support of a second referendum for the first time at a Westminster photocall, arguing that it was the “the only logical option” if the party could not secure a general election. But the timing of their demand, a couple of hours before Jeremy Corbyn opened the no-confidence debate, irritated the party’s leadership, who said afterwards that another national poll was “not the default option” if the Commons vote was lost. Debbie Abrahams and Lilian Greenwood, both former frontbenchers, were among 71 MPs who signed a statement saying the party must back a second referendum hours before Corbyn was due to move a vote of no confidence. The statement said: “We must try and remove this government from office as soon as possible … But the removal of the government and pushing for a general election may prove impossible.” In that situation, the MPs called on Labour to “join trade unions, our members and a majority of our constituents by then unequivocally backing the only logical option to help our country move forward: putting the decision back to the people for a final say, in a public vote, with the option to stay and keep the deal that we have”. But at lunchtime, when Corbyn’s spokesman was asked if the MPs’ actions were a distraction, he replied: “Right now the priority is to bring about a general election; we’ve got a no-confidence motion down today.” Frustration about the timing of the MPs’ actions – some of whom want Labour to move to supporting a second referendum within days – spilled into the open when Joe Bradley, a member of staff in the leader’s office, tweeted: “Not one of these MPs cares about removing a Tory government” in response to a picture of the photocall. Bradley, who is responsible for trade union and NEC relations, subsequently deleted the tweet, and then his Twitter account, and Corbyn’s office said it did not comment on staffing matters. Other MPs who had not previously declared their support for another referendum included John Grogan, Graham Jones, Stephen Morgan and Matt Western, according to the organisers of the statement released on Wednesday morning. The expectation that Labour would lose the vote of no confidence had added to pressure for the party to back a second referendum, despite the reservations of the party’s leadership. Labour’s repeatedly stated policy was to press for an election after May’s deal was voted down, but then to consider a second referendum as an option if no election could be secured. Stephen Doughty, one of the organisers of the declaration, said Labour’s leadership had “good reasons” for taking its time. But he added: “The clock is ticking, therefore we have to move forward, because it’s jobs, it’s investments, it’s our public services that are at risk.” Other Labour sources closer to the party’s leadership said only a handful of MPs had supported a fresh referendum for the first time, and noted that the number who signed the declaration was well below the 100 figure that had been touted earlier. The organisers of the letter said there were a further 24 Labour MPs who supported a second referendum who had not signed the statement for administrative reasons, or because their position was already well known. Other Labour MPs called on Corbyn to act more quickly if the confidence vote was defeated. Bridget Phillipson said: “In the event we don’t succeed in securing a general election, we should commit immediately to going back to the people in a fresh referendum.”Guatemala’s President Jimmy Morales is facing international condemnation after announcing the expulsion of a United Nations-backed anti-corruption mission in what critics suspect is a calculated bid to shield the country’s ruling elite – and himself – from investigation. Addressing journalists in Guatemala City on Monday afternoon, Morales claimed the decision to eject members of the corruption-busting Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig) group was a result of its “severe violation” of national and international laws. “Cicig has put at risk the security of the nation, public order, governance, respect for human rights and above all the sovereignty of the state of Guatemala,” the former television comic – who was elected partly thanks to a populist pledge to root out corruption – told reporters. However, regional specialists believe Morales’s move – which follows a long-running effort to neuter the anti-crime initiative – is in fact intended to help corrupt members of Guatemala’s ruling economic and political elite escape scrutiny. “What’s driving this is the fact that the person sitting in the president’s office is himself corrupt and is surrounded by a series of other corrupt individuals for whom the Cicig represents an existential threat,” said Jo-Marie Burt, a Guatemala expert from the Washington Office on Latin America advocacy group. Burt added: “The president has been investigated and accused by Cicig of illicit campaign contributions … he is backed by a corrupt business elite – and I think they are willing to go to any lengths to protect their interests and prevent themselves from being investigated and possibly going to jail.” Mike Allison, a Central America specialist from the University of Scranton, agreed the move looked like an attempt “to stop Cicig investigating the political and economic elite in the country, including Morales”. There was no immediate evidence the commission was “about to drop some bombshell against the president”. But it was clear Morales had grown uneasy that his political party, family members and he himself were now in the group’s crosshairs, Allison added. There was criticism too from Democratic party politicians in the United States, which helped create the commission just over a decade ago and had, until recently, been a crucial supporter of its work against organized crime and corruption. Senator Patrick Leahy accused Morales of seeking to “cripple” the group’s work with what he called a “flagrant abuse of power”. “It is a choice of self-interest over the public interest. Of impunity over justice. Of lies over truth. And it squarely contradicts the will of the Guatemalan people,” Leahy said in a statement. Congresswoman Norma Torres said Morales had spurned a historic opportunity to promote clean governance choosing instead “to destroy the rule of law in order to save himself”. Torres called the decision a victory for powerful criminals and corrupt politicians and attacked the Trump administration for failing to challenge Morales’s attack on the anti-corruption body. “[The US] has abandoned the Guatemalan people at the moment when they needed us most.” Morales rode to power just over three years ago promising to battle corruption after a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal that the UN-backed panel had itself helped uncover. That scandal toppled former president General Otto Pérez Molina and paved the way for Morales’ landslide victory in October 2015. His campaign slogan was “ni corrupto ni ladrón” – neither corrupt, nor a crook. Allison said that during Barack Obama’s presidency, Cicig – founded in 2006 to root out shadowy organized crime groups embedded within the Guatemalan state – had flourished. “Cicig grew into one of the most effective arsenals in the fight against corruption and impunity in the region … It was often talked about as a model that could perhaps be exported to Honduras or El Salvador.” But under Donald Trump its work had been allowed to wither. “The Trump administration I don’t think had any interest in the effort that it needed to defend Cicig … and at the same time are taking their signals from important Republicans” who saw the group as part of a “tool of the left”. Burt said she was shocked at the White House’s failure to challenge Morales over this week’s move which she feared pushed the Central American country one step closer to becoming “a full-on autocracy”. “The reaction of the White House has been abysmal … for the US to go from being a major support of Cicig to having no opinion about this latest arbitrary move by the state of Guatemala is astonishing … Ideology is trumping pragmatic politics.”Democrats reclaimed power in the House on Thursday and officially elected Nancy Pelosi to be the next speaker, returning her to a position for which she made history as the first woman elected to the office. The California Democrat earned 220 votes from a total of 430 members present, while Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, won 192. Pelosi overcame an internal Democratic rebellion from members calling for generational change at the top, among other hurdles, to win the gavel but on Thursday the opposition was nominal. In total, she suffered 15 Democratic defections, mostly from new members who pledged to oppose her during their campaigns and from old foes who have long called for new leadership. When the tally was announced, Democrats erupted in applause. Several members embraced Pelosi as her grandchildren, who were seated on the chamber floor, bounced up and down with excitement. In reclaiming the gavel, Pelosi, who had previously served as speaker from 2007-2011, became the first former speaker to win re-election since Sam Rayburn in 1955. She then swore into office the 116th Congress, which includes a record 102 women. The incoming freshman class is the youngest and most racially diverse in history, with a number of outspoken members prepared to take on Donald Trump. “Our nation is at a historic moment,” Pelosi said in her remarks on the House floor. “Two months ago, the American people spoke and demanded a new dawn.” Among the special guests watching from the audience were singer Tony Bennett, Mickey Hart, drummer of the Grateful Dead and fashion consultant Tim Gunn. Pelosi’s supporters wore pins that said “Madame Speaker”. To secure her ascent, Pelosi defused an attempt to block her nomination with a series of concessions to opponents, including pledging to support term limits for serving as speaker. In doing so, she won over key dissenters such as Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Tim Ryan of Ohio, who challenged her in 2016. Others took a different tack. Andy Kim, a newly elected Democrat from New Jersey who said he would not support Pelosi on the campaign trail but flipped on Thursday, told reporters: “I’m approaching every vote on what I think is going to be best for people of Burlington and Ocean county. So when I approach the vote, I think about what I can get for that vote for my people either way.” The opposition to Pelosi manifested itself in different ways. Three Democrats voted present (including the newly elected Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who first attempted to vote “no”, which was not an option). Others backed a variety of candidates. There were three votes for the incoming Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chair, Cheri Bustos of Illinois, two for Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and other votes cast for politicians such as the former vice-president Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams, the losing Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia. But for the most part, she received enthusiastic endorsements from the Democrats. Several congresswomen dedicated their vote for Pelosi to the young women who will come after them. Congresswoman Lucy McBath said she would vote for Pelosi in honor of her son Jordan, who was fatally shot in Florida. A new member from Texas, Veronica Escobar, enthusiastically voted for “Nancy ‘No Wall’ Pelosi” while others cheered for “NDP” – the initials for Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi. One Democratic aide hailed Pelosi as a “mastermind” for her comfortable win and said: “All of us are amazed by how easy today’s vote will be for her.” The aide noted, however, that unlike Pelosi’s first stint as speaker, “managing this caucus will be more difficult than back in 2007”. In their first act after officially taking control of the House of Representatives on Thursday, Democrats intend to test their power in a newly divided Washington by passing legislation to end a partial government shutdown that is entering its 13th day. Though the vote on the proposed funding legislation is unlikely to break the impasse over the shutdown – Trump formally pledged to veto it in an official White House statement Thursday – it sets the tone for what is expected to be a tumultuous final two years of the president’s first term. The 2019-20 Congress begins work on Thursday with roughly a quarter of the federal government closed, affecting 800,000 employees, in a shutdown triggered by Trump’s demand last month for the money for a wall along the US-Mexican border – opposed by Democrats – as part of any legislation to fund government agencies. Trump started Thursday by blaming Democrats for the impasse, calling their opposition to a wall “strictly politics”. He wrote on Twitter: “The Shutdown is only because of the 2020 Presidential Election. The Democrats know they can’t win based on all of the achievements of ‘Trump,’ so they are going all out on the desperately needed Wall and Border Security – and Presidential Harassment. For them, strictly politics!” Trump had previously said he would be “proud” to shut down the government to secure funding to build a physical barrier along America’s southern border. During a contentious meeting with top congressional leaders in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday, Trump said the shutdown could last “a long time” and promised to reject any offer that did not include billions in taxpayer dollars for a wall, despite the fact that he has repeatedly stated Mexico would be forced to pay for it. Pelosi’s spending package would fund most of the federal government through the end of September and the Department of Homeland Security until 8 February. The bill would allocate $1.3bn for border security measures, such as increased surveillance and fencing, but would deny Trump’s demand for $5.6bn to build 200 miles of fencing along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. At a press conference on Thursday, Pelosi implored Trump to take “yes for an answer”, noting that the bills had previously drawn overwhelming support from Senate Republicans. However, she insisted “we’re not doing a wall” and described Trump’s signature proposal as “an immorality”. If the House sends the bills to the Senate, which remains under Republican control, it will need 60 votes to advance. Last month, the Senate easily passed legislation that would have funded the government through 8 February without money for Trump’s border wall. However the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has pledged not to put the legislation on the floor, describing it as “political theater not productive policymaking”. The Associated Press contributed to this reportIf the festive season can sometimes involve trolling relatives with different political views, Sadiq Khan has arguably taken the tradition to a grand scale with a New Year’s Eve fireworks display which has prompted apoplexy among Brexiters with its pro-EU message. The mayor hailed the event, in which the London Eye was lit up in the blue-and-yellow colours of the EU flag, as part of a wider message to Europe that the capital would stay “open-minded” and “outward looking” after Brexit. As the fireworks went off along the Thames, the words “London is open” were said in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Spanish just after midnight. The phrase is often used by the Labour mayor, who opposes Brexit and has called for a second referendum. The event also featured musical performances by European artists. “We, in my opinion, are one of the greatest cities in the world; one of the reasons we are one of the greatest cities in the world is because of the contribution made by Europeans,” Khan said before the display. “I think diversity is a strength and I think what tonight is about is celebrating that diversity. “I hope that members of parliament, members of the government will see the fireworks tonight, will listen to the soundtrack and will reflect on what sort of country they want to live in post-March.” He said the display was about “showing the world, while they’re watching us, that we’re going to carry on being open-minded, outward looking, pluralistic”. In a tweet afterwards, the mayor said: “Our 1 million EU citizens are Londoners, they make a huge contribution, and no matter the outcome of Brexit, they will always be welcome.” While the sentiment might be popular with many Londoners, given the capital voted strongly in favour of staying in the EU, the display brought condemnation from the more militant Brexiters. Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative MP with an occasional sideline in Brexit-based hyperbole, said the message had been “a betrayal of democracy”, telling the Sun: “It’s low, it’s very low to politicise what is an international public event.” Roger Helmer, a former Conservative MEP who defected to Ukip, tweeted: “While the UK is locked in critical negotiations with Brussels, Sadiq Khan chooses to display the other side’s flag on the London Eye. Would he have shown an Argentinian flag during the Falklands war?” The anti-Brexit message is in keeping with Khan’s wider views on Brexit, where his public expressions are notably different from the pledges to respect the verdict of the 2016 referendum made regularly by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Khan, who took over the mayoralty from Boris Johnson and plans to stand for another four-year term in 2020, has argued for a special Brexit deal for London, to protect both the contribution of its high population of EU nationals, and the financial institutions of the City. In September, Khan said the time wasted by Theresa May and the risk posed by a no-deal Brexit meant he was supporting a second referendum, which should include the option of staying in the EU. The mayor has previously annoyed political opponents with symbolic gestures, most notably his decision to allow protesters against the visit of Donald Trump in July to fly a “Trump baby” balloon mocking the US president, with whom he has previously clashed over Trump’s response to terror attacks in London. A large-scale fireworks display on the Thames has gradually become a regular part of London’s New Year’s Eve celebrations since one was organised for the millennium celebrations. The 2018 display, involving eight tonnes of fireworks, was paid for by £2.3m in funding from the Greater London authority, offset by revenue from 100,000 ticket sales.How is your girl band knowledge? You can probably tell your Spice Girls from your Girls Alouds, your Pussycat Dolls from your Destiny’s Childs, and, if pushed, you could name all six former Sugababes employees and possibly hum a Little Mix album track, right? To be honest, it doesn’t matter because you’ll never know as much about the glorious pop staple that is a good girl band as Peter Loraine. Remember Sporty, Posh, Baby, Ginger and Scary? Loraine helped create those iconic nicknames as editor of Top of the Pops magazine in 1996. Then, once he’d finished accidentally branding one of pop’s biggest phenomenons, he helped create Girls Aloud, working with them from Popstars: The Rivals in 2002 to that fateful breakup tweet in 2013. He also auditioned and later managed the Saturdays, before working on the recent All Saints and Bananarama reunions. He currently manages new girl band, Four of Diamonds. So who better to ask for advice about what makes the perfect girl band than a man who has dedicated his life to them? Here’s Peter Loraine’s five-point guide to pop perfection … 1. You need a gobby one“You need a mouth, as in a ringleader, a spokesperson, somebody who’s happy to say: ‘Shut the fuck up, Lily Allen.’ Good humour. Really important not to take yourselves too seriously, especially in a world of social media because it really doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, there’s always a handful of people that are haters. So you’ve got to have a thick skin and ideally have a laugh at the comments if you can. I think where it’s particularly successful is if they have an idea in their own heads of how’d they like to be perceived and how they’d like to look, because when it comes from them it makes a difference. People can tell.” 2. Not everyone has to sing like Mariah“The voices need to work together and sound unique. By that, I mean, you knew when Nadine [Coyle, Girls Aloud] sang. You knew when Keisha and Mutya [from Sugababes] sang together. These days, you have to sing live on stuff; you can’t go on TV and mime. You have to be able to say yes if you’re lucky enough to get the phone call from Radio 1 to say they want you in the Live Lounge, or All Saints going on Jools Holland. You can’t fake it now; you could, but you can’t now. That’s not to say that they all have to be Mariah Carey. You need voices that blend together and if there’s someone who doesn’t sing the lead but can bring a specific tone then that can be really important as well.” 3. Get a good stylist, please“A bad stylist can kill it. You’d never get away with a Spice Girls thing now because no one would believe it. If you’ve got one that likes to dress really girly, and another who only wears jeans and tracksuit tops, that’s just going to look like a mess now. But you don’t want them all to look the same either because then it looks manufactured. It’s about how you can take what’s in the individual girls’ heads, find a continuity, but then make it more than what you could buy if you just went into River Island.” 4. You need chemistry, not competition winners“Chemistry is so important. I use this analogy often: if you have a day job and you work in Marks & Spencer, you don’t get to choose who you work with, but you can take it or leave it. There will be some people you like and some you don’t like. For a band that have been auditioned and put together, like Girls Aloud were, the chances of finding girls that are all going to get on to the point where they can spend 24 hours a day with each other for years is rare. There have been cases where it’s like: ‘She’s amazing, but this group won’t see it past the end of year one if we put her in because she will cause so much trouble with the others.’ We’ve had to say no before, because we couldn’t risk it. The Spice Girls were auditioned and lived together and very cleverly hand-picked, and by the time they were presented to the world they had bonded and very fortunately it did work for them. All Saints is more of a Bananarama template of ‘me and my mates are going to form a group’. With Four of Diamonds, they’ve lived together for two years and we’ve struck gold because they’ve formed a really strong bond together, because had they not got on we’d have been screwed. The investment [in girl bands] is so massive financially and it takes years before you make it back so you can’t have a situation where they self-combust after 18 months. Fifth Harmony: awesome songs, bad personnel. They’re a good example of how, if you don’t get the right people and they don’t get on, it’s just a massive waste of money and time. They looked like competition winners. All those photos of them on red carpets glaring at each other like they hated each other. Them being interviewed saying the thing they’re most excited about doing is going solo. An absolute car crash.” 5. You need a properly amazing tune“If you’ve got a good song you get the opportunity for the rest to cut through. There’s so much music out there now, but there are fewer TV shows, fewer pop mags, it’s harder to get radio’s attention. The volume of what is out there is colossal so it’s about making an impact with the song and then it’s: ‘Hey, they look great’; and, ‘Hey, I read a bit about them and they’re really interesting.’ It’s not about selling 10,000 singles in the shops and getting in the charts and then getting on the telly. If we were to release a new song with the Saturdays now it would be weird because everything’s changed. There’s no six-week lead-in times. Now, you start putting a song up on streaming and then you take it from there.” Four of Diamonds’ new single Blind is out nowThe International Cricket Council has announced an unprecedented 15-day amnesty for anyone who has failed to report a corrupt approach in Sri Lanka. While failure to disclose contact from would-be match-fixers is punishable by up to five years’ suspension, between 16 and 31 January any player, coach or administrator can pass on details of any such incident without facing a sanction themselves. Alex Marshall, the former British police chief constable who now heads the ICC’s anti-corruption unit, said: “This is the first time the ICC has held an amnesty and it is in response to the very specific challenges we face in Sri Lanka. Allowing retrospective reporting of alleged approaches to engage in corrupt conduct will assist in our ongoing and wide-ranging investigations, as well as enabling us to continue to develop a comprehensive picture of the situation there. “If any player or participant has any information concerning corrupt conduct they should come forward and share it with us now without fear of any repercussions. “We would urge any participant with any information that may demonstrate corrupt conduct affecting cricket in Sri Lanka to come forward in the strictest of confidence.” The move comes after the Sri Lanka sports minister, Harin Fernando, recently disclosed that during a meeting with the ICC in Dubai he was informed that the country is considered the most corrupt in world cricket, with links to the criminal underworld throughout. Three former Sri Lanka internationals – Sanath Jayasuriya, Nuwan Zoysa and Dilhara Lokuhettige – have been charged with different offences in the past few months in what are understood to be separate ICC investigations. Jayasuriya, who was previously the chairman of selectors, has been charged with failure to cooperate with the ICC – chiefly a refusal to pass on electronic devices – while Zoysa and Lokuhetti are alleged to have approached players to fix matches.For a team sucked deep into the frozen depths of relegation, what could warm the cockles more than a feverish comeback? At half-time, trailing 2-0 as sleet turned to snow Claudio Ranieri looked on grimly from beneath the hood of his coat. After that Fulham became the embodiment of the adage that attack is the best form of defence – just as well, really, to breathe new hope into the challenge of Premier League survival. “These three points mean we are alive,” Ranieri said. “We could see a little light in front of us.” This was the latest in a series of must-win games for Ranieri’s team and until now fans had been watching through their fingers with a gnawing sense of dread in their gut. All that gloom was transformed into euphoria as Fulham’s avalanche of second-half goals had a reviving effect. In a blazing second period Aleksandar Mitrovic was in one of his unplayable moods, winning aerial balls like a kid reaching into the sky to catch bubbles. Luciano Vietto came on, made a nuisance of himself and scored his first goal for the club. Tom Cairney orchestrated with a classy touch. Ryan Babel earned particular praise from his manager for the way he used his experience to show his teammates how to find their forward momentum. It was, as Ranieri explained, “a very strange game” in that dominance swung in such an extreme way. Brighton were so comfortably in front early on there seemed no obvious way back for the hosts. Fulham’s plight has not been helped by the worrying number of goals conceded this season – they went into this game with the worst defensive record of any team in Europe’s five major leagues – and they haemorrhaged two more in the opening 17 minutes. Both were snaffled by the evergreen Glenn Murray, who even had the chance to grab a first half hat-trick, such was Brighton’s supremacy. The gravity of the situation called for a tactical substitution midway through the first half, Cairney introduced as part of a reshuffle. For a team incapable of defending, there was no option than to engage in a shooting match. “Believe me, in that moment I said it’s much better at the beginning than at the end like [Sunday’s last-minute defeat] against Tottenham when you don’t have time to react. We reacted immediately.” They seized a lifeline early in the second half when Calum Chambers connected with Mitrovic’s knock-down and smacked the ball low past Ryan. The Craven Cottage crowd dug deep into their well of optimism and allowed themselves to believe in something. Anything. The chances came in a flurry and when a long ball fell in the vicinity of Mitrovic, the hulking striker beat two markers and Ryan to make sure he won the ball and nodded into the net. This critical game hung in the balance and though Fulham rode their luck when Rico saved a header from the unmarked Murray, the keeper’s teammates took it as the signal to come on strong again. Joe Bryan did the sensible thing by standing his cross up for Mitrovic, who again won the aerial battle to seal a remarkable turnaround. They are used to seeing defenders at odds with one another here but this time it was Brighton’s pair of Shane Duffy and Lewis Dunk arguing as their team fell apart, put under pressure by Fulham’s commitment to attack. “It was not like us,” said Chris Hughton, who was surprised and not a little angered by an uncharacteristic implosion. “As good as we were in the first half we were as poor in second. We found it hard to cope and needed to work harder. Of course I was angry to be leading 2-0 and concede four goals in one half.” The roar when Vietto gave Fulham breathing space after Cairney struck the bar was visceral, immense. They have not had too many moments like that at Fulham this season. Now they need a few more.Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” has become the trademark of his presidency. It is the promise that more than any other has energized his base, and riled his opponents, and his dogged attachment to it has now brought a large part of the US government to a historic 25 days of partial shutdown. The potency of Trump’s wall – for his supporters and his detractors – stems from its simplicity. Build it tall, build it wide – he has pledged 1,000 miles of it – and America will be safe again. But how does that uncomplicated notion compare to the complexity of the border itself? Taken as a whole, the 1,954 miles of US-Mexican border is a place of astounding diversity – of terrain, of land-use, of city and countryside, of ethnicity. It traverses desert, river, mountain and sea. There is diversity, too, of political view among the 7.5 million people who live in US border counties. Some are ardent backers of Trump’s wall. Others see their future, and the future of America, as being inextricably linked to that of their neighbor to the south. Hike 45 minutes past salt marshes and sand dunes, down a lonely beach empty but for occasional tourists on horseback, and you arrive at a steel fence that juts out into the Pacific Ocean. This is where Trump would like to start building his wall should he find the billions of dollars necessary. With the impasse over funding, which prompted the shutdown, administration officials have started to describe what’s already here, as well as repairs to a two-mile stretch of fence in Calexico 100 miles to the east, as Trump’s wall. They are not. The length of wall that has been built by Trump since he entered the White House in January 2017 is zero. This is the westernmost point of the US-Mexico border, on the outskirts of San Ysidro, California, a suburb of San Diego that is home to one of the busiest border crossings in the world. Here, the hopes of thousands of migrants who try to make it to the US every year are often dashed. The fence stretches out just to where the waves break, and reaches 15 or 20ft, not the looming 30ft the president has demanded. Adjacent to this stretch of fence is Friendship Park, a patch of bi-national ground where loved ones from both sides of the border are allowed to meet. The name is paradoxical given the hostility Trump has engendered since he began his wall obsession. Outside Friendship Park – which only takes 10 visitors at a time – separated families and friends must make do with waving at each other from a distance. Today the US side is unpopulated save for a lone American, and on the Mexican side a father and young boy are looking northwards. “USA!” the man says, pointing through a slot for his son’s benefit. From San Ysidro, the fence runs unbroken for 46 miles to the east until it gives way to the unforgiving desert. That’s 46 out of a total of 654 miles of fencing that already exists, much of it in various stages of disrepair. Those hundreds of miles of double reinforced fencing and wire meshing were the product of a different era in politics where some degree of bipartisan consensus was possible. They were largely funded by the Secure Fence Act, an immigration compromise reached in 2006 under former president George W Bush. Compromise seems unthinkable these days. Trump has laid out a vision of the border that is harshly binary: on his side of the territorial line there is the rule of law, hard work and freedom; on the other side there is criminality, gangs and drug smuggling. The purpose of the wall, in Trump’s dystopia, is to prevent America being overrun by the dark forces billowing out of its neighbor. In his Oval Office address to the nation last week he said: “Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now.” But talk to people in San Ysidro on the American side of the border, and they will tell you about fear and intimidation inflicted on them by the US government. In this town, where 90% of residents speak Spanish at home, the land south of the border is not equated with lawlessness and evil, but with family, friends and affordable healthcare. If there’s a dystopia, its not the Mexican one of Trump’s imagining but the hardened militarism that is fast emerging on the US side replete with helicopters, barricades and armed border patrol. “The feeling like you’re in a war zone is so dramatic the last couple months,” said Lisa Cuestas, head of Casa Familiar, a nonprofit that provides social services to San Ysidro. Militarisation sped up after the arrival in Tijuana, on the Mexican side, of the caravan of Central American migrants which Trump made so much of during the November midterm elections, calling it an “immigration invasion”. Now members of the caravan are stuck in Mexico and barbed wire has proliferated everywhere like a mutant weed. Estrella Flores has family and a job in San Ysidro, working with youth at Casa Familiar, but she lives in Tijuana with her husband and 18-month-old child. Her commute has become hellish since Trump’s border crackdown. “The first time I went across the border where they had the barricades and the barbed wire and the helicopters I was like: ‘Am I in a war zone? What’s going on here? I’m just trying to get to work.’ This isn’t just a friendly crossing, it could turn very bad, very quickly.” Such views are commonplace across California. A poll conducted by the San Diego Union-Tribune after Trump’s Oval Office speech found that 56% of Californians opposed the idea of the wall, compared with 34% in favor. That’s not surprising for a state that is a leading force of progressive politics in the US. But California is also significant for having more undocumented migrants than any other state – 2.4 million to Texas’s 1.7 million. Close by is the site of Trump’s eight wall prototypes. He came here last March to pose for photos in front of the giant slabs of concrete and steel. Now they languish and rust. According to a later report by the Government Accountability Office, the eight model sections were riddled with design and construction flaws. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tested the slabs and found they can be breached. The first light glistens off the frosted spines of the cholla cacti as 30 volunteers in neon yellow shirts fan out to comb the desert under a pale pink sky. Ely Ortiz, the leader of the Aguilas del desierto (Eagles of the desert) rallies his team who have driven through the night from San Diego to Ajo, Arizona. He tells them the last time they searched this area they found 11 sets of remains. The volunteers are joined by a team of cadaver dogs to help in the grim search. A dog called Zabra, whose last job was looking for victims of the California wildfires, is unaccustomed to the desert terrain and has to stop every couple of hundred yards to have barbed spines yanked from her paws. Unexploded ordinance dropped by the US military in training is one element of danger for migrants. Trump can already count on a metaphorical wall here. This is the most frequently travelled, but also most deadly, migrant corridor across the Sonoran desert. Water is scarce and temperatures rise above 120F (49C) in the summer months. The official CBP count records 7,209 deaths along the south-western border in the past 20 years, but that is almost certainly a gross underestimate. Despite the human tragedy, federal prosecutors have seen fit to prosecute nine volunteers with the humanitarian group No More Deaths. Their offence: “littering” and driving on restricted roads in the Cabeza Prieta reserve when responding to search and rescue calls. The nine will face trial on Tuesday in a federal district court in Tucson. “The irony is that they tell us we can’t drive here or leave water because it’s protected wilderness, but meanwhile border patrol drives their trucks and ATVs off road, and fly helicopters and drones wherever they want,” one of the nine, Parker Deighan, told the Guardian. Trump’s policy of “prevention through deterrence” is forcing migrants to take greater risks. As legal admission to the US through official ports of entry becomes ever more restricted, migrants are being “funneled” away from fenced sections of the border towards the desert. One of the only towns in the area is Ajo. Today it’s a ghost town, as its copper mine closed in the 1980s. Since then most residents have switched to the main local job-provider: border security. Ajo Samaritans recently gathered in the plaza for a vigil to honor the lives of the people who succumbed in the surrounding wilderness. They laid out 118 white crosses, one for each of those lost in 2018. Those whose bones had yet to be identified were called desconocido – unknown. Before Trump decided to throw a bone to his voter base during the midterm election campaign last year by sending more than 5,000 active-duty military troops to the border, the gate at Lukeville port of entry in Arizona was almost always open. American tourists, seeking to flee the winter, would blithely pour through heading for the beach at Rocky Point, an hour’s drive south on the Mexican coast. Trump’s border clampdown hasn’t only cramped the style of beach-lovers as they pass through the now half-closed gate. Over the past two months, the US military have brought with them concertina wire and a double stack of shipping containers, ready to be used to block the entry as an impenetrable barricade should another caravan – or “immigrant invasion” – arise. Not that there’s any sign of that. Most of the traffic through Lukeville is commercial and passenger, and the main concern of federal agents is not migrants but drugs. It is one of the myths propagated by the Trump administration that America is awash with drugs that have flooded into the country through lack of a wall. In his Oval Office address last week, Trump said that “the border wall would very quickly pay for itself” by halting the flow of illicit drugs – implying that narcotics came into the US through sections of open border. Not true. In fact, most illegal drugs are hidden away in cars and tractor-trailers as they pass over international bridges and through small ports of entry like Lukeville. The 2018 annual drug threat assessment of the Drug Enforcement Administration points out that for drugs like heroin, up to 90% enters the country through ports of entry. Another contradiction is that Trump insists on immigrants showing up legally at border crossings, yet for those who do so he has made it increasingly difficult for them to claim asylum. In November the Trump administration announced it would deny asylum to anyone who tries to cross the border illegally, though a federal court has since temporarily blocked the new regulation. Meanwhile, a new system of “metering” has been introduced that amounts to a federal slow-down at legal entry points. As a result, growing numbers of increasingly desperate families, most coming from the trio of violence-ridden Central American countries – Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – have been left stranded in Mexico. At Lukeville, asylum seekers following Trump’s orders and showing up legally at the port of entry have simply been turned away. The Guardian spoke to Alberto (not his real name) in a shelter on the Mexican side. In November, he presented himself at the Lukeville and asked for asylum. The supervising agent there told him to leave, claiming it was out of hours. Alberto was left on the streets where, days before, mafia members had told him they would kill him if they saw him again. Volunteer groups working with immigrants protested, and CBP apologized. Now when asked if they accept claims, Lukeville agents repeat the official mantra: “Asylum seekers are being accepted at all ports of entry.” That doesn’t mean claims will be successful. Alberto did try a second time to have his claim heard. He will testify before an immigration judge in two weeks’ time. There is no place along the border that more strongly rebuts Trump’s dystopian vision than El Paso. The Texas city is so intertwined with Ciudad Juarez across the Rio Grande to the south that they are virtually inseparable. Between them they are home to almost 3 million people – roughly the size of Chicago. About 20,000 pedestrians and more than 35,000 vehicles cross into El Paso from Mexico every day, many to work, others to go to school or shop. It’s two-way traffic: Americans in El Paso also regularly cross into Juarez to visit family or experience the nightlife. Eighty per cent of El Paso’s residents are of Hispanic origin, and a quarter of the city’s population was born outside the US. Mary Gonzalez, the Democratic representative for El Paso in the Texas house, said: “It’s a very generous, diverse, multi-national, welcoming and loving community. That human component is left out when the border is discussed.” Retail sales in the US side of the twin cities is estimated to generate $10bn a year, with a fifth attributed to Mexican shoppers. Against that reality, Trump has painted a picture of rampant crime and the threat of violence being imported into the US. That’s a particularly loaded argument for El Paso, given the historically high murder rate in neighboring Juarez. Last year saw it rise again to almost 200 people killed each month. Yet crime in El Paso on the US side of the border remains relatively low. Violent crimes have fallen sharply from about 6,500 in 1993 to around 3,000 today. That’s why Beto O’Rourke, the rising star of the Democratic party and former Congress representative for this strongly left-leaning city, lauded El Paso as the “safest city in America” as part of his senatorial election campaign in November. (His claim wasn’t entirely accurate – fact-checkers found it was only “half true”.) O’Rourke failed in his bid to unseat Ted Cruz in the midterm elections, but the fact that he came within three points of doing so suggests that Texans might be more open to his liberal stance on immigration and less in step with Trump than is often assumed. Opinion polls show that while most Texans are concerned about immigrants entering the country illegally, most are also opposed to Trump’s wall. Some people go as far as to suggest that El Paso could be a harbinger of things to come for the whole of America. As Josiah Heyman, director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, put it: “El Paso is a place where there is a vision of the future, where people, instead of being part of a closed defensive community, are able to find the joy of relating to others.” Travel 40 miles east from El Paso along the Rio Grande to Tornillo, and it feels a world away from the big city. Vast open areas are filled with orchards, and pecan nut and dairy farms. US border patrol vehicles keep a watchful eye. Of the 1,317 miles of border with no fence or human barrier, much of it lies along the 1,248 miles of Rio Grande. The river serves as the demarcation line between the two countries all the way from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico. Powerful currents, towering canyons and cliffs that in the Big Bend section rise to 50ft and reduce the need for a solid barrier through much of the river’s trajectory. Still, Trump has his eye on the Rio Grande for his wall. Of the $5.7bn he is demanding from Congress, a sizable chunk would go towards building more than 100 miles of wall along the river. Here just outside Tornillo, the existing fence that runs west to Sunland Park in New Mexico has a 10-mile gap in it. Despite the lack of an artificial barrier, most locals go about their daily routine without fuss. Miguel Alvarez, who has lived close to the border for 25 years, said the arrival of the fence has made precious little difference. “You still see small groups of people passing through just like they did before any fencing,” he said. A farmer who didn’t want to reveal his name said he would feel more comfortable if the gap in the fencing were closed. “I haven’t had any issues with people coming across, but you never know,” he said. Tornillo itself fell under the national spotlight after the Trump administration chose the Marcelino Serna port of entry south of the town to house thousands of unaccompanied minors in a tent-like facility. It was meant to be temporary, designed to help deal with hundreds of children who had been separated from their families as a result of Trump’s crackdown on border crossers. But it rapidly grew, to up to 2,400 beds, becoming the face of the brutality of Trump’s policy of tearing families apart as a form of deterrent. In November, a government watchdog warned that conditions in the tent city were putting children at risk, and since then the numbers have been reduced until the last teenager was transferred out of the facility last week. As far as locals are concerned, its closure couldn’t happen fast enough. They are eager for things to get back to normal. Or at least as close to what passes as normal these days.Jeremy Corbyn has pledged Labour will call a no-confidence motion in Theresa May’s government “soon”, while again indicating that if he became prime minister he would prefer to negotiate his own Brexit deal rather than call a second referendum. The Labour leader again refused to confirm that an immediate challenge to the government would take place if May, as expected, loses Tuesday’s key vote on her Brexit plan. “We will table a motion of no confidence in the government at a time of our choosing, but it’s going to be soon, don’t worry about that,” Corbyn told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show. Pressed on the timing he added: “We’ll have the vote and then you’ll see.” Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, Labour can call a no-confidence motion which would most likely prompt a general election if May lost it. Labour’s plan on Brexit, as decided at the party’s conference, is to seek a general election first, and only if this cannot happen then look at the possibility of a second Brexit referendum. While a large majority of party members, according to polling, want Corbyn to actively seek a new referendum, the Labour leader has previously said it is more likely he would push to take the UK out of Europe with a different deal. Corbyn declined to say whether a Labour manifesto for a snap election would promise to deliver Brexit, arguing that this would be up to party processes, but strongly indicated his preference would be to depart with a deal that keeps the UK in a customs union and with access to the single market. Asked what he would want to deliver on Brexit if there was an election and he became prime minister, Corbyn said: ”At the very minimum, a customs arrangement with the European Union that gives us a say of what goes on but also avoids the whole issue of the problems of Northern Ireland, which this deal does.” Corbyn said: “What I’m saying is we’re campaigning for a country that is brought together by investment,” adding that people were “very, very angry about the way they’ve been treated in their different communities around the country”. Pressed on whether he was campaigning to leave, Corbyn added: “We’re campaigning for a customs union.” Asked later whether Labour would push for a second referendum if there was no general election, Corbyn said: “We’re then into that consideration at that point.” He added: “My own view is that I would rather get a negotiated deal now if we can to stop the danger of a no-deal exit from the EU on 29 March which would be catastrophic for industry, catastrophic for trade.” The Labour leader insisted his Brexit plan, condemned by some critics as unrealistic as it would contravene basic EU internal rules, was viable. “The EU is well known for its ability to be flexible, for its ability to delay things,” he said. He rejected the idea that one of Labour’s “six tests” for Brexit – that a deal should replicate the benefits of membership – went against the EU’s basic tenets. ”We’re not tearing up the treaty of Rome any more than the EU wants to tear up the treaty of Rome,” he said. “What we’re saying to the EU is: this is the political situation in Britain, where we have a country that’s divided on this issue. We want to bring them together, a trade relationship helps to bring people together. I think they understand that.” Corbyn added: “I think you will find that when you get into serious negotiations as a government, determined to have that good relationship with Europe, that there will be an ability to negotiate.”Sol Bamba has said some of his Cardiff City teammates are scared to fly after the disappearance of Emiliano Sala. The captain laid bare the depth of anguish that has gripped the club and community, describing it as having affected everyone. Sala, who signed for Cardiff in a club-record £15m deal from Nantes, was on board a single-engined private jet that has been missing in the English Channel since Monday of last week. A crowdfunded search operation continues for him and the pilot David Ibbotson. Cardiff returned to action in the Premier League at Arsenal on Tuesday night, playing well but losing 2-1 after a buildup that was shaped by sessions with a psychologist as much as anything on the training pitch. “It’s very difficult to even describe the emotions,” Bamba said. “It’s something unusual, a big tragedy, and we’ve all been affected by it – the lads and the city, the whole club. I think we needed this game to get back to normal but it’s been a very, very difficult week. “We travel with planes and everything and some of the lads were maybe thinking they don’t want to go on it anymore. It was that deep. The gaffer and the club have been good in terms of bringing someone in to talk to if we need it and a few of the lads have needed that to get it off their chests. “Obviously before the game, there was a feeling of ’let’s do it for Sala’. The gaffer said if anyone didn’t feel like playing, just say it and he wouldn’t hold it against them. But the lads all wanted to play for him and for the club. Credit to everyone.” Bamba shares an agent with Sala and had told the 28-year-old all about the club and the challenge that awaited him in England. “I spoke to him before he signed,” Bamba said. “He asked about the club, the dressing room, would he fit into the team, what the gaffer and the city are like. I told him only good things and he was looking forward to it. “He came to visit the stadium and the training ground. He’s been talking to the lads to say hello and he was definitely part of us. We feel like we’re missing him. Obviously I have a personal connection with him through my agent but I can’t say I feel more sad than the other lads. The fans never met him but what they did for him was remarkable. We’re sure we’ll never forget that. “We said back home that where there’s life, there’s hope and you never know what is going to happen. The search continues and hopefully we can find something good for the family, in particular. I’ve got kids myself so I can imagine how the family feel.” Cardiff, who are third from bottom in the table, return to their home stadium on Saturday to face Bournemouth. “Our home form has been better and we fancy ourselves against anyone there,” Bamba said. “It’s going to be very emotional but as soon as the game starts we’ll be professional and try to do a job and make sure we win because it’s going to be a very important game for us.”Nicolás Maduro was re-elected Venezuela’s president last May by fraudulent means, as regional governments and independent observers noted at the time, and his leadership lacks legitimate authority. Maduro, in office if not in power since 2013, has proved himself an incompetent and unimpressive successor to the late socialist president, Hugo Chávez, on whose name and reputation he shamelessly trades. Maduro has disastrously mismanaged Venezuela’s potentially wealthy economy, overseeing severe shortages of food and medicine and hyperinflation. His authoritarian rule, enforced by violence, has exacerbated social divisions, undermined democratic institutions and free media, caused millions to flee abroad and alienated neighbouring countries. Given this grim record, Venezuela would be well rid of him and the sooner the better. If Maduro truly has the people’s best interests at heart, he should recognise that he has become an obstacle to national renewal – and step aside. If he will not go voluntarily, there are legitimate, constitutional and peaceful options for propelling him towards the exit. These options emphatically do not include US intervention in Venezuela. Given Washington’s long record of calamitous meddling in Latin America, the motives of the most benign White House would rightly be suspect. Donald Trump’s gang of rightwing zealots, crooks and opportunists is not benign. Everywhere they intrude, they make matters worse. For them, altruism is an alien concept. Trump’s involvement allowed Maduro to denounce Guaidó as a puppet dancing to the tune of the 'gringo empire' Opinions will differ over whether Juan Guaidó, the inexperienced opposition leader, was well advised last week in declaring himself president in Maduro’s stead. Guaidó appears to enjoy considerable support among the middle classes and, in a significant shift, among disillusioned working-class Chavistas. He is young, charismatic, energetic and free from ideological dogmas – everything Maduro is not. But Guaidó’s bid to usurp the usurper, as he calls Maduro, does not seem to have been fully thought through. By creating a rival power centre and challenging the regime to do its worst, he risks further dividing the country, even to the point of possible civil war. As the UN has warned, the risk of spiralling violence is very real. Guaidó appears to have acted before he was sure of support from the Venezuelan military. On the contrary, on the day following his unilateral declaration, the top brass turned out in force to express continued confidence in Maduro. Guaidó has offered an amnesty to officers who defect and private talks are reportedly continuing. But as of now, he lacks crucial army backing. Potentially most damaging to Guaidó’s cause is his evident, prior collusion not only with rightwing regional governments such as Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, which instantly recognised him as president, but also with Trump’s White House, which did likewise. Allying with Trump at any time is a risky undertaking. To seek his endorsement, and appear to welcome his implicit threat of direct US military intervention in the affairs of a sovereign Latin American country, is decidedly unwise. Phrases such as supping with the devil come to mind. Trump’s self-serving, boastful and, above all, undependable involvement immediately allowed Maduro and his ministers to denounce Guaidó as a US puppet dancing to the tune of the “gringo empire”. That is unfair, but it will give pause to many Venezuelans with no cause to love the US. Letting in Trump also let in the Russians, who swiftly rallied to Maduro’s side, including dispatching armed mercenaries to protect him. Trump's national security adviser more or less admitted that the US has no joined-up strategy for what comes next The emergency UN security council debate called by the US on Saturday and the future of the Maduro regime are now inextricably caught up in the wider geopolitical contest between a resurgent Russia and the US. This will hinder, not help, a resolution of the crisis. China, with its cold-eyed interest in Venezuelan oil and debt, has also pitched in unhelpfully. Once again, the UN is stymied along east-west lines. These echoes of old cold war proxy conflicts have grown stronger with the appointment of Elliott Abrams, a notorious Reagan-era neoconservative, as US “special envoy” to Venezuela. It’s true that Trump lacks sensible, expert advice, but he won’t get it from Abrams. If anything is guaranteed to revive bloody memories of 1980s US neocolonialist machinations across Latin America, it is Abrams’s return to the fray. Trump’s decision to back Guaidó was typically impulsive. His national security adviser, John Bolton, another superannuated hawk, more or less admitted in subsequent briefings that the US has no joined-up strategy for what comes next. There is talk of more sanctions, but this being Trump, there will be no Iran-style embargo on Venezuelan oil imports, since that would hurt US businesses. To all practical intents and purposes, Guaidó may soon find himself out on his own. Yet in truth, the less the US is involved, the better. Both sides must admit their vulnerabilities. There can be no outright winners here. Both Guaidó and Maduro would be well advised to lower their fists, build on tentative weekend overtures for talks and launch a broad-based dialogue without unrealistic preconditions, ideally mediated by the UN. The primary aims must be to map a consensual, peaceful way forward, promote national reconciliation – and swiftly alleviate the people’s grievous suffering.A court in Montengro has sentenced an investigative journalist to 18 months in prison, on charges that press freedom advocates have described as bogus and intended as a warning to others in the Balkan country. The court in Podgorica handed down the sentence to Jovo Martinović on Monday, finding him guilty of drug trafficking and criminal associations, despite overwhelming evidence that his contacts with criminal figures were maintained for journalistic purposes. Martinović was arrested in October 2015 while undertaking an investigation for a French production company on arms trafficking in the Balkans. He spent 15 months in jail before being released on bail before the trial. “There was no evidence whatsoever against me and overwhelming evidence in my favour,” Martinović said in a telephone interview. He remains free pending an appeal, but if the sentence is confirmed he will spend another three months in jail, taking into account the time he has already spent behind bars. Martinović believes the case against him was brought after irritation about a number of investigative stories he worked on, as well as a refusal to cooperate with security services, who he says approached him several times and asked him to inform on foreign journalists and diplomats in Montenegro. “I refused to collaborate and spy for them,” he said. Montenegro gained independence from Serbia in 2006 and joined Nato in 2017. The country hopes to join the EU by 2025. Although many western countries have courted its leaders due to their pro-western rhetoric, critics say the government has been unable to root out corruption and organised crime links, including among its own ranks. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Montenegro 103rd out of 180 countries in its annual press freedom index. “We condemn this iniquitous verdict and sentence and regret that, during the three years of proceedings against this journalist, the judges took no account of evidence and testimony demonstrating his innocence,” said Pauline Adès-Mével, the head of RSF’s European Union and Balkans desk. She said the sentence was “yet another sign of the decline in respect for media freedom and the rule of law in a country that says it wants to join the European Union”. Last year, Željko Ivanović, the executive editor of the newspaper Vijesti, said there had been more than 25 attacks on Vijesti journalists or premises in the past decade. Milka Tadić Mijović, the president of the Centre for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro, for whom Martinović has been a contributor, said the case would be felt by all Montenegrin journalists. “This verdict will affect not only Jovo but other journalists in their work, and further deteriorate the country’s already bad record in terms of freedom of expression and media.”An attempt to humiliate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the day she was sworn in as the youngest ever US Congresswoman has backfired impressively, prompting a huge outpouring of support for her. On Thursday a 30-second video was posted by a Twitter user called AnonymousQ, showing Ocasio-Cortez dancing on the roof of a building while in college. “Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is,” read the post, with the user claiming it was a “high school video of ‘Sandy’ Ocasio-Cortez”. In fact, the short clip was part of a longer video, made while she was an undergraduate at Boston University. In it, she and several other students dance on the rooftop of a university building to the song Lisztomania by Phoenix, in a mash-up of a dance from the Breakfast Club. Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is......High School video of “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortezpic.twitter.com/s723Vga9zF But instead of humiliating Ocasio-Cortez, who was elected to represent New York’s 14th congressional district in November, the video has bolstered her popularity, with many people on social media praising her for being joyful and having fun. Comedian Patton Oswald joked: “She’ll never recover from the world seeing her … (watches video) … dancing adorably and having fun with her friends in high school?” Well, @AOC is officially done. She’ll never recover from the world seeing her... (watches video) ...dancing adorably and having fun with her friends in high school? https://t.co/0zENCzBinA Actor Russell Crowe said the dance was “fantastic”. “The more politicians we have like AOC the sooner we’ll all be dancing,” he wrote. Ally Sheedy, the actor who played Allison Reynolds in The Breakfast Club, and whose dance moves Ocasio-Cortez was imitating, said she was: “pretty happy ‘bout it”, later writing “I love this #teamAOC”. Imagine what a major ass-head one would have to be to think that video of @AOC dancing is anything but adorable and endearing and charming. Since her election, Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly been the target of criticism from the right, including for her clothing choices. Fox News also attacked her for claiming she wouldn’t be able to afford an apartment in Washington DC until her Congress salary started, saying Ocasio-Cortez was stretching the truth about how poor she was when she had $15,000 in savings. Her communications director later confirmed that Ocasio-Cortez, a former Bernie Sanders staffer who earned about $27,000 in 2017, had less than $7,000 in savings. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in the Democratic primary against incumbent Joe Crowley, was one of the biggest upsets of the primary season. Ocasio-Cortez ran on a platform of Medicare for All and abolishing Ice and has already begun a campaign to make climate change a defining issue for Congress. She is also an adept social media user and has 1.74 million followers on Twitter and 1.2 million on Instagram, and regularly engages with them, such as posting a video diary on Instagram documenting her first week in Washington. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s team demonstrated a slightly less deft touch with social media on Thursday, posting a picture on Instagram of his face looming over the phrase: “The wall is coming”, written in the Game of Thrones font. This is the second time this week the president has misappropriated the tagline from the hit television show to refer to his policies. On Wednesday, Trump posted a photograph of himself in a cabinet meeting with a poster on the table reading “Sanctions are coming … November 5”. While it is clear that someone on Trump’s team knows enough about Game of Thrones to know that there is, indeed, a wall in it, perhaps his team should watch a little more of the series before drawing any further parallels between Trump’s desired border wall and the ice wall in the HBO series.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has hit back at Aaron Sorkin after the Oscar-winning screenwriter said on Sunday that the young Democrats needed to “stop acting like young people.” Sorkin, 57, told Fareed Zakaria in an interview on CNN on Sunday morning: “I really like the new crop of young people who were just elected to Congress. They now need to stop acting like young people, OK? It’s time to do that.” “I think that there’s a great opportunity here, now more than ever, for Democrats to be the non-stupid party, to point out the difference,” Sorkin said. “That it’s not just about transgender bathrooms. That’s a Republican talking point they’re trying to distract you with. That we haven’t forgotten the economic anxiety of the middle class, but we’re going to be smart about this; we’re not going to be mean about it.” Sorkin then talked about his father, a second world war veteran, who remembered a time when the US would be welcomed in other parts of the world and would greet refugees with “a hand and a hot meal and say, ‘welcome to the new world’.” “That’s who we are, that’s who we should be,” Sorkin said. But Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most popular of that new and notably diverse cohort of Democrats, took issue with Sorkin’s characterisation of equality as a political distraction. “News Flash: Medicare for All and equal rights aren’t trends,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Sunday afternoon. Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest Democrat congresswoman, at 29, and a vocal left-wing figure in the party. “When people complain about low turnout in some demos, it’s not because communities are apathetic, it’s because they don’t see you fighting for them. If we don’t show up for people, why should you feel entitled to their vote?” News Flash: Medicare for All & equal rights aren’t trends.When people complain about low turnout in some demos, it’s not because communities are apathetic, it’s bc they don’t see you fighting for them.If we don’t show up for people, why should you feel entitled to their vote? https://t.co/oGRsG9NZV3 Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, an acclaimed and entirely fictional prestige TV drama about the two terms of a Democratic president, was responding to a question about whether he felt Democrats were “speaking the way that they should” and if he felt the urge to dive in and write speeches for them. “There are better speechwriters than me but … it depends which Democrats,” said Sorkin. “I like Kamala Harris a lot, I like Joe Biden a lot.” In a long thread responding to a tweet on the topic from LGBT activist Charlotte Clymer, Ocasio-Cortez suggested acting “like adults” in this context had deeper implications. “Let’s dig into ‘gravitas,’ because it’s an ambiguous word, selectively applied,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Ever wonder how expression that’s feminine, working-class, queer, or POC isn’t deemed as having ‘gravitas’, but talking like an Aaron Sorkin character does? Men have ‘gravitas,’ women get ‘likeable.’” Let’s dig into “gravitas,” bc it’s an ambiguous word, selectively applied.Ever wonder how expression that’s feminine, working-class, queer, or poc isn’t deemed as having “gravitas,” but talking like an Aaron Sorkin character does? 🤔Men have “gravitas,” women get “likeable.” https://t.co/0g9FNpExAl She continued: “We wouldn’t need to talk about bathrooms at all if we acted like adults, washed our hands and minded our own business instead of trying to clock others. Going by track record, I’d feel safer in a bathroom with a trans woman than a powerful male executive any day of the week.” Sorkin was on Fareed Zakaria GPS to promote his new Broadway production of To Kill a Mockingbird.The British army’s much-derided, Lord Kitchener-inspired recruitment campaign (reportedly costing £1.5m) could be more symptomatic of desperation than of insight into a young person’s mindset. (Since starting work with Capita in 2012, the army has never reached recruitment targets.) Perhaps there are those who self-identify as a “snowflake” (“The army needs YOU and your compassion”), “Me, me, me Millennial” (self-belief), “phone zombie” (focus), “binge gamer” (drive), “swinger” (team spirit). That last one was a spoof, but there’s the problem – they all come across as spoofs. At best, it’s all a bit trendy teacher – accentuating the positive taken to absurdity. Yet still, this isn’t an example of an army recruitment drive at its worst. The real story here is waning recruitment numbers – the army has 77,000 trained troops compared with a target of 82,500, with almost half of applicants dropping out of the lengthy process in 2017-18. There’s also the question of what the besieged, underfunded army can offer recruits. Don’t be a hippy and simply answer “nothing” because, hey man, war is bad. (I imagine that those who have experienced combat have a clearer-eyed view of war than politicians sitting on their derrieres in parliament.) Like the RAF and navy, the army can offer a great deal – from employment, education and training to teamwork, purpose and confidence. It’s also a job that could get someone killed or leave them with appalling physical and psychological disabilities. This is the problem of modern forces recruitment – how do you get young people to sign up for that? To be more precise, which young people and how young are they? And this is where recruitment drives truly go awry. In September 2018, around the army’s “This is belonging” campaign, a briefing document emerged showing the “target audience” was “16-24, primarily C2DE”, attracted to risk, easily influenced and money-driven, but not good at money management. That’s a fair number of wayward, adrenaline-fuelled kids in the lowest socioeconomic brackets with limited education and prospects. It also emerged that the campaign is targeted during exam periods, when the young are most anxious about their future. It’s also little known that the UK is the only European country to recruit soldiers at 16. The UN committee on child rights is among organisations to challenge the UK about this. Perhaps this is recruitment’s true dark side – not some bungled campaign aimed at personality types who wouldn’t consider joining up even if you offered them a spliff and free latte every time they drove a tank in the right direction. Rather, that it has been known to target very young hotheads, who may not fully comprehend what they’re signing up for. When it comes to deriding army recruitment techniques, let’s focus on that. • Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnistMy name is Jack Monroe, and I am an alcoholic. I said those words out loud to myself 10 days ago, waking up after yet another binge with a friend, watching Richard Curtis films until 4am, mixing cocktails and bitching about work until we passed out on the sofa. My life can be defined by a kind of alcoholic bulimia. I either binged on it, or deprived myself of it out of misplaced puritanism and later, unaffordability. My parents did not drink in front of me as a child. I had no fake ID and looked 14 until my first grey hairs came in a couple of years ago. I had my first taste of alcohol at a friend’s house party, aged 14 or 15, drinking alcopops in their living room while their parents were away, with some other kids from our church youth group. I enjoyed the feeling it gave me. I was shy, I stammered, I didn’t have many close friends. At the next party I was drinking neat vodka from the bottle until I was sick. At the next, a barbecue with some friends from my local karate club, I was carried to a cab by a burly, furious male driver with my trousers falling down, covered in my own vomit, having downed an entire litre bottle of Southern Comfort. I was 16. I was also lucky that the cabbie dropped me back to my nan’s – I was too frightened to present myself at home in such a state at four o’clock in the afternoon – and saw me safely inside. My nan cleaned me up and put me to bed. I spent my late teens working in a nightclub, back in the good old days when club nights ran from Wednesdays through to Mondays and the drug of choice was WKD rather than today’s MDMA and GHB . Working behind the cocktail bar was a different kind of escapism, a creative outlet with a newfound respect for alcohol. I didn’t drink as I was also working day shifts in a coffee shop and, later, the fire service, and needed my wits about me to pull off my 60-hour working weeks. I left the nightclub when I was pregnant (needless to say, I was sober throughout), and the fire service two years later. I was on the dole, which led to a period of extreme poverty. Needless to say, I did not drink when I could not afford to feed myself and my son. I used the odd can of Sainsbury’s Basics lager in a stew or casserole, but I didn’t drink it. I want to be absolutely clear about that. I fell into a permanent habit of problematic drinking when I moved to London in 2014. I had my first book out, my second on the way, and had been uncomfortably catapulted into the public eye. It started with a glass of wine in the evenings. Every evening. Then two. Then a bottle. Then I started at lunchtime. I had a drink before I did any public talks, to calm my nerves. I joked with a runner at the Observer Festival of Ideas when he asked if I needed anything, “a whisky would be great”. He returned with two doubles. I laughed it off at the time, but it became a habit. I turned up on the BBC’s This Week with Michael Portillo, after a Pride party at the US ambassador’s residence. It was 11pm. I needed six double espressos before I could go in front of a camera. My friends waited for me in a car outside to take me back to the party. I was unhappy, but smiling for the cameras. I was drinking slugs of whisky before going on breakfast television. I was drinking slugs of whisky before going on breakfast television. I was going wrong I was a disaster, screaming at the top of my lungs in plain sight, surrounded by enablers and bad choices, and I was going wrong. But I was functional, and so it didn’t look like a problem. Not to me. I moved back home to Southend in 2015 for a quieter life. I didn’t want to be having boozy lunch interviews with journalists any more. I couldn’t stand the parties I needed to get smashed at to feel like I fitted in. I longed for my simple life back, standing at the stove, scrawling recipes in notebooks, blogging, reading, going for walks. I moved to a house a few roads away from my parents, back into my childhood neighbourhood, and started to request that journalists come to me, rather than meet me in a pub in the City. I started turning down party invitations. I lost a lot of friends. But the one that never left my side, stuck by me unwaveringly, came in a 40% abv bottle. It took a long time for me to recognise the extent of my problem, and longer still to do something about it. I would love to say I had a great awakening, one last bender, some voice from the heavens but, in truth, I am just tired of being tired. I have a chronic illness that is in the process of diagnosis, and sobriety won’t cure me, but alcoholism certainly fogs the waters when it comes to separating what can be treated and what I’m making worse. I’m furious with myself about the jobs I’ve turned down, the potential opportunities I’ve lost, the deadlines I’ve missed. I hope that this year the bridges I soaked in whisky and watched burn down will begin to be rebuilt. This is my mea culpa. I’m sorry I was unreliable. I’m sorry I swore on television. I’m sorry I missed so many of my son’s class assemblies. I’m sorry my manuscript was late. I’m sorry to my ever-patient agent and her assistants for having to pick up the pieces every time I disappear on a three-day binge. I’m sorry to every editor I ghosted, every friend I’ve flaked out on, every person I’ve verbally lashed out at in a paranoid and depressive comedown. I’ve been a fucking atrocious, ghastly mess for a very long time, but I’m out of excuses. Yes, I’ve had a difficult road to here. Violence, sexual abuse, trauma, PTSD, poverty, low self-esteem. But I know that trying to black out my past with oblivion will just damage my future. I made the decision to stop running from my fears, and to walk slowly and deliberately towards self-nurture, self-respect, and better mental and physical health. I’m out of excuses... I know that trying to black out my past with oblivion will just damage my future It hasn’t been easy. At the time of writing this, I have been sober for exactly a week. The change has been remarkable. My house is tidier than it has ever been. I have reclaimed my evenings, and my early mornings, free from mental fog and headaches and grumps. My creativity has kicked back into action: in a bid to keep busy, I wrote, created, tested and photographed 50 new recipes last week – that’s half a book! I spent new year at two parties: one with my friends Vix and Rhys and their friends, who filled their fridge with iced coffees and flavoured waters; and the other with my partner and her friends, who had got cinnamon Coca-Cola in and didn’t comment once on my not drinking. I found a little new self-confidence, standing in rooms of old and new friends, making conversations I would remember, cracking jokes, not being too loud or boorish or inappropriate. This, incidentally, is how to be a friend to a newly sober person. Get options in. Put the booze out of their sight and reach. Make them feel included. Don’t offer them a drink, not even jokingly. I almost failed last week, a hundred times. Walking past the pub on the way to the supermarket, I felt as though a hook had landed in my breastbone and an invisible fishing line was reeling me towards the door. The pain was physical. I was shaking. My back was sweating. I put my shopping down. “Just one,” it whispered. “Nobody would know.” I must have stood there for 10 minutes before, with an almighty heave of resolve, I picked my shopping up and marched home. I didn’t look back. My shoulders and my arms and my heart were aching, but I didn’t look back. Last Thursday evening, my son, eight years old, crawled into bed with me at 3am. “I can’t breathe, Mama,” he wheezed. He was having a severe asthma attack. I bolted upright, grabbed Vaporub and an inhaler, sat him up, folded his arms across his chest the way paramedics had taught me, leaned him forward to open his airways, and listened to his breathing. I was wide awake, lucid, and this was an emergency. I know from my own childhood that asthma attacks can be fatal. I was poised to call 999 if there was even the slightest worsening in his chest. I lay awake beside him for the rest of the night, listening intently. I whispered to my partner on the other side of the bed, again and again, “Thank fuck I’m sober”. And that’s why I’ll stick at it. Because this week, I’m a better writer, a better cook, a better girlfriend, a better mother, than I have been in the last five years. I have been tracking what I spent on alcohol last year by going through old receipts and bank statements. I will be moving the equivalent amount to a savings account for every week I stay sober. By the end of the year I should have a lump sum, a gift of security for my future, and forgiveness for my past. This is my mea culpa. This is a new beginning. My name is Jack Monroe. I’m an alcoholic. And I am recovering, one day at a time.The cosmic collision that made the moon left a host of elements behind on Earth that were crucial for life to emerge, US scientists have claimed. The impact 4.4bn years ago is thought to have occurred when an itinerant planet the size of Mars slammed into the fledgling Earth, scattering a shower of rocks into space. The debris later coalesced into the moon. Beyond an act that shaped the sky, the smash-up transferred essential elements to the Earth’s surface, meaning that most of the carbon and nitrogen that makes up our bodies probably came from the passing planet, the researchers believe. Petrologists at Rice University in Texas reached their conclusions after running experiments on geochemical reactions under the high temperatures and pressures found deep inside a planet. They wanted to understand whether Earth acquired key elements from meteorites that slammed into Earth or through some other ancient route. Lead author Damanveer Grewal found that a planet with a sulphur-rich core would have large fractions of carbon and nitrogen on its surface. Such a planet could transfer that volatile material to Earth in just the right proportions if it happened to clatter into it, the researchers found, after modelling a billion different cosmic scenarios in a computer and comparing them to conditions seen in the solar system today. “From the study of primitive meteorites, scientists have long known that Earth and other rocky planets in the inner solar system are volatile-depleted. But the timing and mechanism of volatile delivery has been hotly debated,” said Rajdeep Dasgupta, who worked on the project. “Ours is the first scenario that can explain the timing and delivery in a way that is consistent with all the geochemical evidence.” The research is published in Science Advances. “This study suggests that a rocky, Earth-like planet gets more chances to acquire life-essential elements if it forms and grows from giant impacts with planets that have sampled different building blocks, perhaps from different parts of a protoplanetary disc,” he added. The disc is the doughnut of material from which the planets form. Earlier this month, an international team of researchers discovered that the rate of asteroid strikes on the moon, and by extension the Earth, shot up nearly threefold 290m years ago, probably after two or more giant bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter crashed together and sent a barrage of space rocks into the inner solar system. On Monday astronomers captured a meteorite striking the moon during the total lunar eclipse. It is not yet clear whether the peak strike rate is over.Liverpool did not sparkle here but, more importantly, nor did they wobble. After losing their unbeaten record to Manchester City they returned to winning ways thanks to a second-half penalty by Mohamed Salah. It was a narrow victory but one that restores Liverpool’s seven-point lead at the top of the Premier League and challenges City to close the gap again when they host Wolves . Defeats in their two previous matches led to this being billed as a particularly revealing interrogation of Liverpool, with a team aspiring to be champions required to give persuasive answers. The questions ranged from the elementary to the tricky. Could Liverpool’s confidence really be so brittle that a narrow loss at City and a practically invited one at Wolves in the FA Cup would cause it to crumble despite half a season of domestic invincibility prior to that? Answer: No. What about their ability to cope with the pressure of a title race when their closest rivals have undoubted pedigree? Their response was positive. They will be asked it again over the remaining 16 matches of the campaign. And what of their depleted defence, which, owing to a spate of injuries, included the midfielder Fabinho here alongside Virgil van Dijk? When Trent Alexander-Arnold collapsed during the warm-up it looked like Jürgen Klopp would be forced into further improvisation but, after having his ankle strapped up, the right-back declared himself fit enough to play. He played well, as did Fabinho despite a lapse in the 15th minute that allowed Glenn Murray a free header from 12 yards. The striker sent his effort over the bar. That was Brighton’s only chance in a first half when they spent most of the time entrenched behind the ball in a rigid 4-5-1 formation. This, then, was not a test of Liverpool’s makeshift defence as much as of their creativity. They flunked it in the first period but never lost patience. Their play from the start was slow and predictable, almost entirely in front of the hosts. Many times this season there has been a disconnect between their defence and attack and usually Xherdan Shaqiri has helped bridge the gap, with Jordan Henderson and Georginio Wijnaldum industrious but not ingenious. Shaqiri started in a role that allowed him to flit about but he struggled to get involved, although he did have the visitors’ best chance in the first half, nodding wide from 10 yards after a cross from the right by Alexander-Arnold. Liverpool’s full-backs were their most penetrative players, as Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané tended to get bogged down in overly intricate moves in congested central areas. It would have been interesting to see at what stage Klopp might have varied the approach but, as it turned out, there was no need for him to do so because Brighton suddenly played into Liverpool’s hands. A mistake by Martin Montoya early in the second half presented them with an opportunity to launch the sort of rapid counterattack at which they excel. Salah needed no second invitation, hurtling into the box and letting fly with a low shot that David Button did well to hold. Two minutes later, Pascal Gross made an even more costly blunder, oafishly fouling Salah in the box. “I feel for Pascal because Salah is probably the most dangerous player when he gets into those situations,” said Chris Hughton, who had no quibble with the decision to award a penalty. Salah’s conversion left no room for doubt, either, the Egyptian ramming the spot-kick beyond Button and into the corner of the net to claim his 14th league goal of the season. The onus was on Brighton to vary their approach and subject Liverpool’s defence to a more vigorous test. Hughton made a double substitution in the 65th minute in an effort to give his team more attacking impetus, though the hosts never committed fully to attack. “Brighton defended like they defended because they knew that one mistake from us and they were back in the game and not making a mistake is difficult,” said Klopp. “But we did it.” With 20 minutes to go Jürgen Locadia cut in from the left to unload a 20-yard shot, possibly going wide, that Alisson pushed around the post. But that was as dangerous as Brighton got. Liverpool found more vibrancy as the game loosened up and had chances to make their lead more comfortable in the 75th minute but Button batted away his swerving long-range shot. Wijnaldum then flashed a low shot inches wide from the edge of the box after a nimble build-up involving Salah, who missed a much better chance in the 87th minute, dragging a shot wide from seven yards after a pull-back by James Milner.Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen are two excellent actors outclassing their material in this amiable, feelgood entertainment, inspired by a true story. Mortensen plays Tony Vallelonga, a 1960s nightclub bouncer from New York who got a job as personal driver and minder to African-American jazz musician Don Shirley (Ali) on a tour through the Jim Crow south – armed with the “green book”, a guide to hotels and restaurants hospitable to black people. The movie, in fact, has its own green book, negotiating subjects and areas where it needs to tread carefully. Class and race aren’t the only issues – there is also sexual identity, which the film touches on once and then moves on without the principals ever saying a word about it. In real life, Tony became a show business figure, acting in Goodfellas and The Sopranos; he died in 2013 and his son Nick is this film’s producer and co-screenwriter, with Peter Farrelly directing. It’s a standard-issue heartwarmer, a liberal white/black tale like Driving Miss Daisy or the recent The Upside. (There are some eerily close resemblances to the latter film, including a moment in which the servant must teach the master about Aretha Franklin.) Tony’s job is to cure Don of his snobbery and emotional frigidity, and Don must cure Tony of his racism and ignorance – although this half of the equation is fudged. In an initial scene, Tony puts a couple of glasses in the bin because his wife has let two black workmen drink out of them. But the level of fanatical racism that this implies pretty much vanishes when Tony meets Don. So their road trip to self-discovery begins, and we hold our breath for when the white good-ol’-boy racists inevitably show up, or for when Shirley wishes to use the white bathroom at those grand places where he has been booked to play. Vallelonga’s nickname is “Tony Lip”; he tells Shirley this is because of his reputation as a bullshitter. Shirley’s surviving relatives have evidently suspected some “lip” in this film, which appears to erase them from the story in the service of exaggerating his redemptive friendship with Tony. Well, it’s a handsomely made and watchable picture and there is a real warmth in Ali and Mortensen’s performances.Dylan Hartley has been omitted from England’s Six Nations squad due to injury and will miss their opening fixture against Ireland next month. Hartley has not played for Northampton since 21 December because of a knee problem and Eddie Jones has revealed he will not travel to England’s training camp in Portugal next week as a result. In his place Luke Cowan-Dickie is included in a 35-man squad, as is Jack Singleton, who is one of four uncapped call-ups along with Ollie Thorley, Dan Robson and Ben Earl. There are also recalls for Jack Clifford and Ollie Devoto while Billy Vunipola, Mako Vunipola, Ellis Genge and Joe Launchbury all return having missed the autumn internationals through injury. There is no place for Chris Robshaw, who is listed as unavailable due injury, nor Danny Care who is not. Jonathan Joseph and Anthony Watson are also still out with injury but Joe Cokanasiga has recovered from a knee injury to take his place after winning his first two caps during the autumn. Mike Brown and Dan Cole are also included despite falling out of favour last year, as is Manu Tuilagi who is set for his first Six Nations appearance since 2016. In Hartley’s absence, Owen Farrell has been named as captain, as was the case during last summer’s tour of South Africa. Northampton have not put a time frame on Hartley’s return, with the director of rugby, Chris Boyd, describing the injury as a “grumbling knee” but Jones is hopeful the hooker does still play some part in England’s campaign. He said: “Unfortunately, Dylan won’t be available for the Ireland game so we won’t take him to Portugal but we are hopeful he will be back later in the Championship. Owen will be captain by himself and he will certainly have great support from a number of players.” The winger Thorley, 22, is rewarded for his fine season with Gloucester while Robson is now finally set for his first cap as one of just two scrum-halves in the squad. Earl has caught the eye in Saracens’ back row this season and also toured South Africa last summer while Singleton has been included by Jones before, as a non-playing member of the squad that travelled to Argentina in 2017. It is the returns of the Vunipola brothers as well as Launchbury and Cole, who has looked back to his best in recent weeks for Leicester, and the 223 caps worth of experience they bring that will please Jones most however as he prepares for the trip to Dublin on 2 February. “Ireland are the best side in the world. They are a very well coached and drilled side and have particular things they do well in the game. To beat Ireland, we need to compete brutally in all the contest areas of the game.” Clifford’s recall is somewhat of a surprise but Jones identified him early in his tenure and the Harlequins back-row has been blighted by injury problems since then. He has not featured for England since February 2017 but has a 100% winning record from his 10 caps. Exeter’s Devoto meanwhile, has won only one cap, against Wales, in 2016. Zach Mercer meanwhile, is among the players who featured during the autumn to miss out, as is Alex Lozowski while there is still no place for Danny Cipriani. Forwards: Jack Clifford (Harlequins), Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers), Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter Chiefs), Tom Curry (Sale Sharks), Ben Earl (Saracens), Ellis Genge (Leicester Tigers), Jamie George (Saracens), Nathan Hughes (Wasps), Maro Itoje (Saracens), George Kruis (Saracens), Joe Launchbury (Wasps), Courtney Lawes (Northampton Saints), Ben Moon (Exeter Chiefs), Brad Shields (Wasps), Kyle Sinckler (Harlequins), Jack Singleton (Worcester Warriors), Billy Vunipola (Saracens), Mako Vunipola (Saracens), Harry Williams (Exeter Chiefs), Mark Wilson (Newcastle Falcons) Back: Chris Ashton (Sale Sharks), Mike Brown (Harlequins), Joe Cokanasiga (Bath), Elliot Daly (Wasps), Ollie Devoto (Exeter Chiefs), Owen Farrell (Saracens), George Ford (Leicester Tigers), Jonny May (Leicester Tigers), Jack Nowell (Exeter Chiefs), Dan Robson (Wasps), Henry Slade (Exeter Chiefs), Ben Te’o (Worcester Warriors), Ollie Thorley (Gloucester), Manu Tuilagi (Leicester Tigers), Ben Youngs (Leicester Tigers)Just two years after leading the largest recorded protest in US history, the third annual Women’s March on Saturday is set to proceed under a cloud of controversy. This year’s march is shaping up to be smaller and more splintered than before, after several major sponsors withdrew and local chapters disaffiliated from the central organization which leads it, following allegations of antisemitism. Leaders were slow to deny and condemn allegations they had made antisemitic comments, and recent reporting has revealed deep ties between top officials and the Nation of Islam, whose leader, Louis Farrakhan, is a notorious antisemite. Major progressive groups which sponsored the first march in 2017 have quietly withdrawn, including leading unions, environmental groups and women’s organizations. Of the many Jewish groups listed as partners in previous years, only a few remain. The Democratic National Committee, which had previously appeared on a list of 2019 Women’s March sponsors, recently disappeared too. It’s a major blow for the movement that marked the beginning of the “resistance” in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential upset, when hundreds of thousands descended on the National Mall in Washington DC, a mass demonstration roughly three times the size of Trump’s own inauguration. Experts called the 2017 Women’s March the largest single-day protest in recorded US history, with turnout around the country estimated in the millions, and top celebrities and politicians lending their star power to the event. It also presaged the coming of the powerful #MeToo movement which would reshape the culture around the treatment of women at work. This year, however, the showing is expected to be fractured. Following a protracted fight over the organization’s leadership, Vanessa Wruble, a Brooklyn-based activist who was pushed out of the organization in 2017, went on to help found another organization called March On, which emphasizes supporting local activists and denouncing antisemitism. The result is that there will be two major women’s marches taking place on the streets of New York and many other cities around the country on Saturday – the original one, which emphasizes leadership by women of color, and another – March On – formed in opposition to antisemitism. “Founded by the leaders of many of the marches across the country, March On is women-led, but open to all, and will employ a sophisticated political strategy to coordinate concrete actions at the federal, state, and local level through the joint efforts of millions of marchers,” the March On website states. Lee Weal, an activist based in New York City, told the Guardian that while she went to the second Women’s March and had been planning to go to the third this year, the group’s ties to Farrakhan put her off. “If we insist that Trump disavow people like David Duke, you can’t have a different rule for those on the left,” she said, adding she thought leaders were “hurting the movement” by aligning with him. Even without the infighting, turnout for the main Women’s March – which kicks off on Saturday on the National Mall in Washington DC – was expected to be lower than in previous years. Crowds in 2017 came in part as a response to Trump’s presidential inauguration. But this year’s rally takes place on the heels of a successful midterm election for Democrats, and at a time when options for civic involvement extend well beyond donning a pussy hat. Washington DC has turned into a veritable ghost town amid the longest government shutdown in US history, with shuttered museums and tourist attractions. Earlier this month the National Park Service clarified that the Women’s March would take place despite the setbacks. Many of the biggest stars of the Democratic party, including those who are running for president and were prominently featured at the march in 2017 will not be making appearances this year. They include Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, who once called the women’s march the “most inspiring and transformational moment I’ve ever witnessed in politics”. The developments come following claims, described at length in stories in the New York Times and Tablet magazine, that at a private meeting members of leadership said Jews bore some special collective responsibility for the oppression of people of color, according to multiple sources in attendance, allegations those leaders have denied. The stories also highlight the leadership’s ties to the teachings of Farrakhan. While the Women’s March has issued multiple statements claiming it does not support Farrakhan’s comments and rejects antisemitism, the Women’s March co-president Tamika Mallory has continued to defend her connection to him.This week, in an interview on The View, she failed to explicitly denounce his defamatory statements about Jews. Another member of leadership, Bob Bland, told ABC News the Women’s March “unequivocally condemns antisemitism” as well as “any statements of hate”. The Tablet story also outlined other internal disputes, such as concerns around the organization’s financial transparency and a lack of LGBT representation on its board. Top organizers, including Women’s March founder Teresa Shook, have called for Women’s March leadership to step down, arguing that the small cadre of women in charge have “steered the movement away from its true course” and become an unwelcome distraction. Such calls have gone unheeded. In a November conference call, top Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour sought to dismiss the tensions as idle scuttlebutt. “It just happens often with women, unfortunate gossip and rumors and it’s very hurtful to us as our families are watching these conversation online,” she said, according to Tablet’s report. Sarsour’s comment appears to cater to damaging stereotypes about women being catty. But there is a long history of destructive fragmentation within the women’s movement and social and progressive movements more generally. Women’s suffrage leaders infamously excluded black women. And the Equal Rights Amendment introduced in 1923 went down to defeat, after the middle-class women who championed it were pitted against working-class women who feared the erosion of labor protections. When it re-emerged later in the 1970s, it was brought down by a group of staunchly conservative housewives led by Phyllis Schlafly. From its earliest days the Women’s March has been fraught with racial tensions, with minority women concerned that white participants had ignored their needs. Some women feel the current fracas around antisemitism is just one more way for women to be divided from one another. That’s why sponsors such as Planned Parenthood are sticking with the march, even as they “unequivocally reaffirm that there is no place for antisemitism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any kind of bigotry in our communities”. Planned Parenthood’s Angela Ferrell-Zabala wrote in a lengthy Medium post defending the decision: “We know our work fighting for equity and justice for all people cannot happen if we don’t face difficult conversations within our community head on.” The American Federation of Teachers – one of the largest unions in the country whose president, Randi Weingarten, is Jewish – is also sticking with the Women’s March. “I come down on the side of of course we must engage,” she wrote on Facebook, “and work together to create a country and a world that deeply believes and honors the inalienable rights of all.”On a bewildering second day there was a stampede of batsmen returning to the Garfield Sobers pavilion shaking their heads in exasperation. In all, 18 wickets fell and amid the carnage England will be left with a huge victory target in the context of this match. The tourists’ batsmen came and went more rapidly than those from West Indies. On a deceptively serene afternoon England were bowled out for 77, a deficit of 212 runs after the completion of two innings. The hordes of travelling fans looked on in a state of silent shock. After all, this was the 21st century and such a procession of disconsolate England players against West Indies pacemen was no longer meant to be around every corner. Then the home batsmen were infected as they lost five wickets for nine runs in the final session against the combination of Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali. But powered by the irrepressible Shimron Hetmyer with spirited assistance from Shane Dowrich in a 59-run partnership, once again West Indies held a mighty lead of 339, though Hetmyer fell to Sam Curran late in the day. Seventy-seven was not the lowest score cobbled together by an England team touring the Caribbean yet this capitulation was certainly more shocking than the 46 all out in Trinidad in 1994, an experience that may not have been forgotten by England’s batting coach, Mark Ramprakash. Then the predictable tormentors were Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. In 2009 at Sabina Park England were dispatched for 51 at the hands of Jerome Taylor and Sulieman Benn, a less likely source of humiliation. Here Kemar Roach, in a devastating spell after lunch of five for 13 from eight overs, was the architect of England’s hapless downfall. Jason Holder supported him brilliantly, yielding nothing and picking up two vital wickets. Then at the end of the innings West Indies’ two fastest bowlers, Alzarri Joseph and Shannon Gabriel, chipped in with three scalps just to ensure their confidence is high when they start bowling again. To no one’s surprise West Indies declined to enforce the follow-on, not a decision that would have been taxing Holder overnight even though his side had been in the field for only 30.2 overs. So despite that flurry of wickets in West Indies’ second innings this represents a horror scenario for the tourists and the unsmiling visage of Jimmy Anderson provided vivid confirmation. He and Stokes had finished off West Indies’ first innings in the morning, albeit after more exhilarating strokeplay from Hetmyer. As he left the field Anderson might have been quietly content with figures of five for 46 from 30 overs, his 27th five-wicket haul, which equals Ian Botham’s record. Now at last he could put his feet up – for about two hours as it happened. Before the lunch there was no sign of the mayhem to follow. Keaton Jennings departed for 17 slicing a catch to Shai Hope in the gully off Holder, an occupational hazard perhaps and no great surprise. It transpired Jennings would be the highest scorer in the innings. With England 30 for one there seemed to be all to play for but the batsmen were mesmerised by the unrelenting discipline of Roach and Holder allied to some uneven bounce. There was no catalogue of rash strokes, though Moeen Ali’s instinctive hoick against a first-ball bouncer was a vivid encapsulation of England’s ineptitude, which will remain a painful memory of a chaotic afternoon. Roach bowled Rory Burns and Jonny Bairstow, the ball ricocheting from the former’s bat and the latter’s elbow. Then Holder snatched the wicket of Joe Root, who was lbw to a delivery that jagged into his pads, a familiar mode of dismissal for the England captain and one which was so plumb that it was not worth reviewing. The West Indies’ celebrations now started in earnest for Root is the most coveted wicket. Now they sensed a golden opportunity. Even so it was surprising that no one could hinder them. Stokes was strokeless against the relentless Roach and lbw for a duck to his 17th delivery; Jos Buttler was stunned by a lifter before Joseph and Gabriel mopped up in time for an early tea. No matter how many of their lineup could boast first-class centuries, which applies to everyone except the forlorn Anderson, England had exhibited the solidity of a marshmallow at the crease. Moreover the raised eyebrows at some of their decisions before the match had given way to raised voices. Now it was hard to avoid the conclusion that some of those tough “gut” calls taken by Root had not worked out. For West Indies the four pacemen had prevailed with staggering ease. All four ran in rhythmically and hit the wicket hard and they found enough movement to defeat tentative batsmen. All except Roach exploited their height and Gabriel, in particular, caused some consternation with his short deliveries, especially the one that dismissed Curran. England had put so much faith in the capacity of the Duke ball to swing they preferred Curran and Rashid to Broad, who may well be of the opinion that he might have bowled quite effectively on this track. And he may well be right. Broad – and Chris Woakes – would not have witnessed their team’s collapse since they were not at the ground. There is an enlightened policy of giving squad players time off on a rotational basis on what was optimistically described as “batting days”. Well, they had a couple of hours off.At 7pm this evening, we as MPs will be asked to take the single most important decision that any of us have faced during our time in parliament. The outcome will affect the future of our country, our economy and the lives of the people we represent. The Brexit referendum showed us to be divided, and those of us who campaigned for remain have to accept that we lost. But that does not mean that we have to agree to the deal the prime minister has brought back – a deal that satisfies no one. I will be voting against it because it completely fails to give us clarity and certainty about our future economic relationship with our biggest, nearest and most important trading partners – the rest of the EU. People have been looking for clear direction so we know where we are heading. Instead we have vague language that is not legally binding. Why does this matter? Because businesses, and the people who rely on them for a job, need certainty about how trade will work in future, what access there will be to EU markets for our service industries (which make up 80% of our economy) and what workers’ rights and environmental protections we will have. And for all of us, what will happen to co-operation on security that helps to keep us safe? Perhaps the most contentious issue. In order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, a backstop arrangement that keeps the UK in the customs union and requires Northern Ireland to follow single market rules would prevail until a free-trade agreement is reached that avoids such a frontier. The UK and EU negotiators have agreed the former should honour those commitments it made while a member of the bloc – finally settling on a figure of £39bn. The deal would secure a status quo transition period to negotiate the nature of the future relationship, and during which the UK could begin to make trade deals with third countries. A fraught issue at the outset, an agreement was reached relatively quickly that would see the UK respect the rights of EU citizens who arrive before the end of the transition period, which could be in 2022, and vice versa. The document is accompanied by a political declaration that sketches out the future relationship between the two parties – focusing primarily on trade and security. These, and many others, are all perfectly reasonable questions for us to ask about what will happen after we leave. The problem is we have no idea what the answers are. And by putting off decisions now about the choices we will eventually have to make, the government has put the country in a weak position because any future deal with the EU will require the unanimous approval of all of the other member states. It is also not true that there are only two possible alternatives – the prime minister’s deal or leaving the EU with no deal (which would be very damaging). There is an alternative of a much closer economic relationship with the EU. I happen to support joining the European Economic Area (EEA) while remaining in a customs union – this would solve the problem of the border in Northern Ireland and maintain friction-free trade which is so important to many businesses – but other MPs have different views about what they would like to see. The only reason why a different approach has not been proposed is because the prime minister’s “red lines” have boxed her in and resulted in this profoundly unsatisfactory deal. Now is the time for all of us to be honest with each other about the choices and the trade-offs that we have to make. We need to find a way of bringing our divided country together. We must recognise that not everyone will be happy with the final outcome. And all of us are going to have to compromise. 11.30am The Commons begins sitting. The first item is questions to Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and his ministerial team. These are meant to last 30 minutes but can run slightly over. Then the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams briefly introduces a private member’s bill on public sector supply chains under a 10-minute rule motion. After midday If there are no urgent questions or ministerial statements to delay proceedings, the final day of debate on Theresa May’s Brexit deal – officially known as section 13(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 – begins. It will be opened for the government by the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox. Before 7pm May will make a final closing speech for the government, appealing for support for her deal. From 7pm Voting begins. However, before the crucial vote, MPs must vote on the four amendments accepted by the Speaker. One amendment, tabled by the Tory Hugo Swire, has been accepted by the government. At some point between around 7.30pm to 9.30pm MPs finally vote on the deal, as amended. I had tabled an amendment for today that sought to do two things – reject the prime minister’s deal and rule out no deal. I have, however, decided to withdraw it because we must get the clearest expression of the view from the House on the single issue of the government’s deal, which I hope will be a resounding rejection. I do however intend to pursue ways of ruling out no deal at the earliest opportunity. Since I tabled my proposal in December, the House has voted for Yvette Cooper’s no-deal amendment to the finance bill which was a clear and welcome indication of members’ opposition to no deal, and other significant procedural developments – technical though they seem – are fundamentally about enabling parliament to take back control. And now there is a proposal for a bill that would allow the House of Commons to instruct the government in law to seek an extension to article 50, if needed, in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit and to enable parliament to consider various alternative ways forward. All of this means that the House will have the opportunity to make it clear that it rejects no deal and so offer much-needed reassurance to businesses and others who are very worried about the disaster that a no-deal Brexit would be. If the deal is voted down by parliament tonight, I hope the government will change its approach, reach out across the parties and try to find a new plan that can win support. But if the government doesn’t do this and if parliament remains deadlocked then, then unless there is general election, it may turn out that the only way forward will be to go back to the British people and ask them to decide. •Hilary Benn is a Labour MP for Leeds Central and chair of the Brexit select committeeIn the Netherlands they say vliegschaamte; the Swedes say flygskam; and the Germans Flugscham. The words all mean “fly shame”, or the guilt that travellers experience when they fly off somewhere knowing they are contributing to climate change. In contrast, the British have little or no flight shame. We take 70 million flights a year, our aviation industry is growing fast and our government wants more runways (pdf ) for even more flights, scuppering any chance of meeting global emissions targets. So when scientists say that we must make “rapid, unprecedented change” to our lifestyles to avoid climate catastrophe, and pinpoint flying as the most destructive form of travel, the questions mount: Is there such a thing as a right to fly? Is self-sacrifice necessary? Can you fly with a conscience? Are “love miles” to see family or friends OK? Will individual action make any difference to a global problem? With tourism now thought to generate $7.6tn worldwide, or 10.2% of global GDP, and more than 250m jobs (pdf), no government is going to rock aviation. Instead, there has to be a far greater understanding of climate change and tourism’s role in it. People like me, cursed with loving travel but knowing that climate change is a death sentence for much of the world, have several choices. We can trust the aircraft manufacturers and governments to improve technology and legislate; we can pay extra to offset emissions by investing in windfarms or other renewable energy projects; or we can just fly less. The first option is useless. Planes are becoming more efficient, and biofuels and batteries may eventually reduce emissions significantly, but that is decades away and may be too late. A voluntary UN deal cobbled together by governments, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (Corsia), will launch in 2021 but has already been dismissed as weak. So that leaves it up to passengers, individually and collectively, to act. Personal and corporate carbon offsetting schemes – which allow people to balance out their carbon footprints by investing in clean energy projects such as solar or windfarms – became popular 10 years ago but have been criticised as ways for the rich to carry on polluting. Companies offering them, however, say the idea is good and still growing and could go mainstream if it were made easier to include when buying tickets. “We are seeing rapidly growing interest in compensating flight emissions,” says Kai Landwehr of Swiss NGO Myclimate, which works with Lufthansa and Swissair. “It’s still a small proportion of flights but we are finding people are happy to pay more, even up to £40 a flight.” Others say they are applying the idea of the “flexitarian” diet – where people cut back on their meat consumption drastically but not completely – to flying. “We were going away three or four times a year just because we always did,” says Sarah Jones, a marketing executive from Reading. “It was stupid. The climate thing was the last straw. We just thought, ‘this is crazy’, so now we go abroad a maximum of once a year and really look forward to it.” I personally feel intense flygskam, even vliegschaamte. My days of having both long- and short-haul passports, and reporting on climate change and ecological disasters from all corners of the world have ceased. I am now a self-styled “vleig-itarian”, committed to just one pleasure flight a year. Offsetting emissions may not be perfect, but it’s a good habit and it clearly helps people develop in better ways. Meanwhile, there are plenty of long-haul holidays that really do benefit local communities. Tourism projects that benefit communities are now thriving in Costa Rica, Ethiopia, South Africa, Bhutan and all over India and south-east Asia. A new trend is for people to pledge to give up flying for a fixed period of time. Two Swedish women, Maja Rosen and Lotta Hammar, have persuaded nearly 14,500 people to commit to going air-free in 2019, and a further 6,000 have said they are interested. Their initiative, Flygfritt (flight-free) 2019, hopes to get 100,000 pledges as a way of showing politicians what needs to be done. “Many people are concerned, but feel powerless. An air-free year can be a good way to break the habit and focus on alternatives,” says Hammar. I have been able to avoid flying for many years because what I do is not sufficiently important to justify the emissions Elsewhere, people are easing their consciences by persuading their peers to fly less and by trying to make their institutions more responsible. The US blog site Flyingless, aimed at frequent-flying academics, has a petition calling on universities and professional bodies to reduce their air travel. So far, 550 people have signed it and it is growing, says co-founder Parke Wilde, associate professor at Tufts university, Massachusetts. “Once people start to think about giving up flying, they have a momentary panic,” says Wilde. “They think their life will fall apart. But it doesn’t. I am not saying people should totally stop flying, but they could think about a radical reduction.” The idea of liberal institutions cutting back on air travel is also gaining ground. Danish daily newspaper Politiken has stopped its journalists taking domestic flights and is reducing their international flights to a bare minimum. Its travel section will, it says, now concentrate on destinations reachable by public transport. Media organisations in the UK and Ireland, for whom the European mainland is less accessible, would find this harder to follow. Many British groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the New Economics Foundation, are calling for a “frequent flyer” levy. This would aim to replace air passenger duty with a system that taxes people according to how often they fly. Everybody would be allowed one tax-free flight a year, and after that they would be taxed at increasing rates. So the first flight you took out to your villa in Spain might cost you nothing in tax, but your ninth trip would incur an extra £60. At the moment, say the scheme’s backers, just 15% of adults take 70% of all flights and the person who goes on the holiday of a lifetime pays the same tax as someone who flies 25 times a year. Some people on low incomes would be helped to fly for the first time, but overall it would reduce demand significantly. So far, though, the Treasury has shown no interest in the scheme, and aside from the six MPs who sponsored it as an early day motion in the House of Commons, only two more have signed up. Author and Nasa climate scientist Peter Kalmus sums up why he has quit flying: “With the world population approaching 8 billion, my reduction obviously can’t solve global warming. But by changing ourselves in more than merely incremental ways, I believe we contribute to opening social and political space for large-scale change. We tell a new story by changing how we live.” Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the Tyndall Centre in Manchester, says: “I don’t have a no-fly policy, but rather a fly-less one. I have been able to avoid flying for many years because what I do is not sufficiently important to justify the emissions. “If we are going to fly, it should be for truly extraordinary and important reasons. Otherwise, we shouldn’t go, or we should take a slower form of travel and arrange for a longer visit; thinking through the pros and cons of flying engenders a very different attitude towards travel, time, emissions and moral responsibility.”Jeremy Corbyn is likely to refrain from making fresh moves towards backing a second referendum until after the government’s Brexit plan B is voted on later this month, as he seeks to balance pressure from rival wings of his party. Labour strategists believe there is a firm majority both in the shadow cabinet and in parliament against an immediate shift towards full-throated support for a referendum, the Guardian understands. They are also keen for the focus in the coming days to remain on Theresa May’s efforts to rework the Irish backstop, after her Brexit deal was defeated by a historic margin of 230 votes last week. Labour wants to prioritise pursuing its own version of Brexit – with a customs union, a close relationship to the single market, and stronger protections for workers’ rights and environmental standards. The prime minister is due to table a motion on Monday setting out the next steps in the Brexit process, which is set to be voted on by MPs on 29 January. If an amendment calling for a people’s vote is tabled, Labour would not whip MPs to vote against it – but has not yet committed to whipping them to support it, either. Corbyn is also likely to table his own amendment, setting out Labour’s plans for a reworked Brexit deal. Labour could also support some of the backbench efforts to find a compromise that can win majority backing in parliament. Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, said: “I think a second referendum is a part of our armoury. It’s there in the party conference resolution; it’s something that we see as part of the toolkit in order to ensure that we get the kind of Brexit that can bring the 52% and the 48% back together.” Together with close Corbyn allies Jon Trickett, Richard Burgon and Ian Lavery, Gardiner is among those in the shadow cabinet who are less enthusiastic about the party pivoting immediately to wholehearted support for a referendum. Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, appeared keen to push Labour’s policy in that direction in a carefully worded speech on Saturday, and some shadow cabinet colleagues believe he is positioning himself as the champion of a people’s vote. The “composite motion” hammered out at party conference states that if Labour cannot secure a general election, “Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”. Starmer said Labour was in the “third phase” of the conference motion – after voting against the government’s deal, and trying to force a general election with a vote of no confidence. He told an audience in London that left only two options: a Labour-style Brexit deal, which would involve “tradeoffs and compromises”; or a public vote. He built on the comments on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, saying that in the event of a second referendum “I will campaign for in and I will vote for in”. Starmer also acknowledged that any deal hammered out at this stage was likely to have to include a backstop – though Labour later insisted that did not mean the party could sign up to May’s withdrawal agreement. Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, is also widely believed to be more warmly disposed to the idea of a referendum than some shadow cabinet colleagues. The MP David Lammy warned on Sunday that some Labour MPs could leave the party if it does not swing its weight behind another referendum. He accused Corbyn of “moving the goalposts” after the failure of last week’s vote of no confidence. “I think we have an open goal here and I would like the Labour party to go through the door and score the goal,” he told Sky News. Rival groups of Labour MPs are canvassing support for alternative options that could come to the fore in the days ahead. Backers of a Norway-style “single market 2.0” claim that at least 75 Labour MPs are firmly opposed to a referendum and prefer a softer Brexit; while people’s vote campaigners say they have two-thirds of the party’s 256 MPs on board. Labour strategists accept that support for a referendum is likely to increase as the risk of a no-deal Brexit is heightened in the run-up to the article 50 deadline on 29 March.Visitors to Budapest in recent weeks may have noticed the proliferation of a strange three-character code all across the city: “O1G”. Graffitied on to walls and fences: O1G. Traced into the snow on car windscreens every time a wintry flurry falls: O1G. The abbreviation is short for Orbán egy geci, a pithy phrase deriding the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, using a Hungarian expletive that literally means sperm but is used as a catch-all insult. The code has been adopted by anti-government protesters who have been holding demonstrations for the past six weeks against Orbán’s nativist government, accusing Orbán of increasing authoritarianism and a crackdown on the media. Causing particular anger is a so-called “slave law” that increases the overtime employers can demand from workers and allows them to delay pay for up to three years. With the exception of a few scuffles, neither side has shown any appetite for violence. Orbán, whose Fidesz party won a third successive term in office last April on a far-right anti-migration platform, appears secure. But the rhetorical aggression is certainly rising. At the latest anti-government protest, held by the Danube in central Budapest on Saturday, those in attendance could purchase slices of bread with O1G drawn on in blood-red spicy paprika paste. Later in the evening, a group of women were scrawling O1G repeatedly in chalk on the tiled walls of the 1850s tunnel that runs underneath Buda Castle. Hungarian politics has hardly been a place of polite decorum for some time. For a number of years, government-linked media outlets have spewed out a diet of hatred and fear-mongering when it comes to migrants and refugees. Orbán’s media machine has painted opposition politicians and other critics as anti-patriotic puppets of the billionaire George Soros. A recent questionnaire on the Hungarian website 444.hu offered readers a series of quotes and invited them to guess if they were from Hungarian media outlets talking about migrants, or from Radio Rwanda on the eve of the country’s genocide in the 1990s. With Hungarian examples referencing “filthy rats” and “inevitable bloodshed”, it was difficult to correctly guess which quote was from which country. Perhaps the most illustrative example of the recent escalation in the war of words is the case of Blanka Nagy, a 19-year-old in her final year of high school in the town of Kiskunfélegyháza. A speech she gave from the stage to a small crowd at a December protest in the town of Kecskemét went viral recently, a month after the event. “There is a disgusting, contagious epidemic in this country. It is not plague, Ebola or mad cow disease, though it is a bit similar to the latter. The name of this epidemic is Fidesz,” she said in the video. She also referred to the president, János Áder, an Orbán ally, as “the dick with the moustache”. In response, government-linked media have gone on the offensive, launching deeply personal attacks on Nagy over the past week. “Dear Blanka! The thing is that you are not a hero but a miserable, wretched, vile little prole,” said Zsolt Bayer, a controversial pro-Orbán television host. “Those who speak like street hookers should not be surprised at being talked to like street hookers,” wrote András Bencsik, the editor of the pro-government magazine Demokrata, in a Facebook post he later deleted. Other outlets have questioned her grades and insinuated she could be kicked out of school. “It was strange to wake up one day and see my face all over the internet, but it hasn’t affected me negatively. A lot of people have stopped me in the street to offer their support,” said Nagy, who spoke at Saturday’s protest in Budapest. “It expresses an increasing frustration. The biggest fear of authoritarian politicians is being ridiculed, and they can’t handle it,” said Péter Krekó, a Budapest-based political analyst. The most recent protests have been different to previous rounds of anti-Orbán demonstrations over the years, gaining traction in smaller towns as well as among Budapest liberals. Opposition figures hope anger over the slave law could galvanise a broader spectrum of protesters. However, plans for a general strike look unlikely to succeed, and there is little sense of what the end goal of the protests may be. At this weekend’s rally in Budapest, the crowd of a few thousand was less than those in December, and already there was a sense that the protest mood could be beginning to drift. One speaker attempted to get a chant of “We are not going home” going in the crowd, but the response was half-hearted. Nagy admitted that among her generation, there were few politically active individuals but said she had hope that the protests would achieve some kind of change, starting with the European parliament elections in May. “There are many options. More and more towns are getting involved. Hopefully we’ll see the opposition do much better at the European elections.”How did you start writing about food? My first review was in about 1998 for Marie Claire magazine. The restaurant is still there and I loved it. I wanted to write about food and have a column from that point but they’re not the kind of jobs you come across easily. You have to pretty much wait for someone to die or give up because they’ve got gout. People carry on as long as they can because it’s the greatest job in the world. Before I started reviewing for the London Evening Standard in 2012, I spent years wanting to be a critic so that I could purge all the things in my head about bad restaurants and good restaurants, but mainly bad ones. Do you eat out every night? No. I tend to hit restaurants in batches over two to three days, and eat and take notes. Last night, I was at a place in north London. Today, I’m going to write my column about a restaurant in Edinburgh, then go to one in Covent Garden and a brasserie in the West End. I have a space where I really eat and then I try to counteract it by living really cleanly for, say, 48 hours, 72 hours. It’s the only way that works for me. During the down period, I exercise a lot and I live, try to be as good as I can. In London alone, there are about 230 openings a year and I am invited to all of them. If I wanted to go and eat the food there for free, I could although that’s an ethical problem. I book anonymously everywhere I go, which is hard because they find out the names all the time, I pay for the meal myself then claim it back from the Guardian. I spend as much as an average person would at dinner - I don’t go mad. It’s a normal experience, so far as it can be. You have to be really strategic in eating as a critic because your body doesn’t really belong to you any more: it belongs to the newspaper. You’ve got to get the food into you at some time to write the column but if you were to eat everything that came your way, it would be the end of you. Is it impossible to eat without mentally reviewing the food? Yes. It’s impossible even when I’m really trying. My mind is always subconsciously trying to work out why this food isn’t up to standard. Is it stale? Has it been made without love and without the right seasoning? And why is a restaurant not staffed properly? It takes over your life so I enjoy eating at home because there’s a calmness about that. I took my mother for afternoon tea at a hotel in the Lake District the other day and I just wanted to treat her to a lovely experience but I was writing a furious column in my head from the moment we walked in. The greeting, the lack of greeting, the general atmosphere from the staff, that they’re bored to see me and so on. It’s difficult to go out eating with me socially because once I’ve noticed things, my antennae are on. My friends never cook for me. When they’re tipsy, they invite me to dinner then, in the cold light of day, they panic and always book a restaurant. I’m rarely ever invited to people’s houses to eat. It’s a lovely idea until they wake up then they wriggle out of it. What have been your best dinner? I always remember the bad experiences because I have hundreds of great dinners. I once went on a hot date with a hot actor to what was one of London’s hottest restaurants and once we’d ordered he announced that he was actually seeing someone else but of course then I couldn’t stand up and leave. I had to eat about seven courses of incredible world-class Indian food through absolute gritted teeth. And I remember thinking there are thousands of people across London who would kill for this bespoke naan and I am bloody going to eat it. You’re pretty much vegan. How does that affect your reviewing? When I was a little girl I always enjoyed the roast potatoes and the vegetables at Sunday dinner more than the meat. I was always incredibly aware what meat is. I’m a massive animal lover so the glorification of meat doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t get upset if people eat it around me. When I’m reviewing, I always have someone with me who eats meat. I don’t generally ever order meat; they always do. I will have a bit of theirs and I can tell straightaway if it’s good or rubbish. I don’t have to force myself – I’m not gagging when I eat it - because I don’t think meat tastes horrible. One of the cruellest tricks is how absolutely delicious lamb is. In my own time, I eat vegan or vegetarian. I really abhor factory farming and its byproducts so I live a vegan lifestyle as much as I can. If you come to my house you are getting oat milk, vegan cheeses and things like that. I am always walking into restaurants and making them paranoid that they are not catering to people of different appetites and I think that I am a force for good in that way. What would be your desert island dish? It would be something carb-laden and full of calories because I’m going to finally put on as much weight as I’d like to if I wasn’t on HDTV in people’s living rooms. It would be chef Romy Gill’s samosa chaat – fried, chopped-up samosas with chickpeas, sweet chutneys and yoghurt. It’s a big, crunchy, chunky bowl. It’s delicious. She would just keep bringing me that. What’s the most important thing you try to convey in reviews? Is the restaurant worth going to? That’s it for me. I’m not writing for a small number of London food-scene tastemakers. I write my Guardian column for people all over Britain who may go out two or three times a year because they have families and a limited budget, and I want that experience to be amazing for them and not a rip-off. I write for people who are looking for places to take their spouse for an anniversary or somewhere to propose or somewhere to save their relationship. I also want to convey what restaurants are like for people who may never get to go to them. I think those people want to know what it feels like to be in there. The food world is very funny – unintentionally often – and I want to make people laugh or cheer them up every Saturday morning. What’s the best thing about your job? When I review a rural pub, say, outside London for Feast, then I hear that they have been booked out for months ahead and they’ve had to take on more staff from the local area. You realise that you’ve really made an impact on that community and you can change people’s lives. It feels amazing but you’ve got a massive responsibility sometimes. Are you ever wrong? Looking back at reviews I sometimes know that I was in an incredibly bad mood and taking my horrible day with me, so the fact that the service and the food were terrible meant that I was probably harsher than I could have been. However, was I wrong? No, you’re never wrong. I don’t make up that things are bad. When I’ve given a stinking review, it’s because those things happened. I don’t look back at any place that I have annihilated and go, actually now I think about it, that was a wonderful meal. How do you think of the restaurants around Britain? Before Feast, when I wrote about restaurants at the London Evening Standard for five years, I definitely became convinced that the only good food in Britain was in the capital. When I came to the Guardian, I was determined to spend half my time going right through Britain, to prove myself wrong and to take up the advice of readers and of people that I met along the way. After my first year, I admit I was a complete idiot to think there wasn’t great food outside London. It does new and trend-setting but there are incredible places across the country. My greatest meals in 2018 have been in places like Moseley, Edinburgh and the Lake District. One of my favourite places to be at the moment is Bristol and I love Manchester - it’s really exciting. What do you think of food crazes? Food fads are the bane of the critic’s life because you’re served the same thing again and again. Food predictions are arbitrary things that people have decided will be cool next year, like some super seed is in and another one is out. They’re just ridiculous. But as a writer who likes to make people laugh, they’re an absolute gift. A food trend I’d like to see the back of is the never-ending tasting menu. I looked at the menu of a restaurant near Brighton recently and they do a 19-course tasting menu for £180 or something. I think there may be a 14-course one if you beg for clemency. It said that to enjoy the full experience please allow three to four hours for dinner, we seat everyone at 7 but meet us at 6 o’clock at the bar for a drink. I’ve had relationships that haven’t lasted as long as that. You’re literally moving in with all your fellow diners and the staff for an entire evening. No. Maurizio Sarri claimed progress beyond Tottenham on penalties into the first major final of his coaching career will breathe new “enthusiasm” into Chelsea’s season. The hosts overcame a first-leg deficit to set up a meeting with Manchester City at Wembley next month with Sarri’s players reacting impressively after the head coach suggested they had lacked motivation and fight in losing meekly at Arsenal on Saturday. Sarri stressed he had not been seeking to criticise his team, but pointed to this victory as potentially being restorative in terms of Chelsea’s progress this season. “In the last three or four matches, we had problems,” he said. “One was the motivation, and the other problem was that the players stopped having fun on the pitch. “So I think that now, with this performance and the result, we can find enthusiasm again. So it’s very important. My players reacted really well tonight, but we need to have motivation with continuity now. We played with another mind. With another motivation. With another determination.” Eden Hazard, restored on the left, had inspired the home side to a 2-0 half-time lead with Sarri having suggested in the build-up that, while a wonderfully gifted player, the Belgium captain is far from a natural leader in this squad. “I don’t care,” said Hazard when asked about his head coach’s assessment. “I just play my football. It doesn’t matter what the manager said. I just focus on my football and want to do my best for this team.” Spurs, already without the injured Harry Kane and Dele Alli, and absent Son Heung-min, ended up restoring parity in the tie only for Eric Dier and Lucas Moura, the latter denied by Kepa Arrizabalaga, to miss in the shootout. This was the first year that the away goal rule has not applied in the semi-finals of this competition since 1980. “We made an unbelievable effort,” said Mauricio Pochettino, whose side have now lost domestic semi-finals in each of the last three seasons. “This season we are fighting not only with the opponents but with everything that’s happened. That is not an excuse. It’ll make us stronger. We have three more competitions, still, and I can only feel proud of the performance and the way we competed.” Tottenham, who travel to Crystal Palace in the fourth round of the FA Cup on Sunday, lost Ben Davies to a slight groin injury and Moussa Sissoko to fatigue.Prep 10 minCook 15 minServes 4 50g walnuts1 tbsp cumin seeds15g stale bread, crusts cut off200g cooked beetroot (not pickled), cut into cubes1 tbsp tahini (or nut butter, if that’s handier)A scrap of garlic (no more than half a clove), peeled and crushed or gratedJuice of 1 lemonA little rapeseed or olive oilSalt and black pepper Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas 4. Put the walnuts on a baking tray and toast in the oven for five to seven minutes, until fragrant, then remove and leave to cool. Toast the cumin in a small frying pan on a medium heat for a minute or two, just until they start to darken and release their aroma, then tip into a mortar or spice grinder, and crush. Break the bread into small chunks, put it in a food processor or blender with the walnuts, and blitz to fine crumbs. Add the beetroot, tahini (or nut butter), garlic, a good pinch of the ground cumin, half the lemon juice, half a tablespoon of oil, a little salt and a good grinding of pepper, then blend to a thick paste. Taste the mixture, and adjust the flavour by adding a little more cumin, lemon and seasoning, blending again, until you are happy with it. Loosen with a dash more oil, if you think it needs it. Refrigerate the hummus until required (it will keep for a few days), but serve at room temperature with hot flatbread or pitta and raw crudités. Prep 5 minCook 15 minServes 4 500g frozen peas or petits pois300g macaroni (or penne or fusilli)50g butter1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped25g mature hard cheese, such as parmesan or a vegetarian alternative, gratedChopped parsley, to serve (optional)Salt and black pepper Put a large pan of salted water on to boil for the pasta. Put the peas in a second pan, cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer for a couple of minutes, until tender. When the peas are almost cooked, add the pasta to the large pan of boiling water and cook until al dente. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small pan over a low heat, then add the garlic and let it simmer very gently for just a couple of minutes, without colouring, then turn off the heat. Drain the peas, reserving their cooking water. Put about half the peas in a blender with six tablespoons of the cooking water, the butter and garlic mix, and the cheese. Blitz to a smooth, loose puree, adding a little more water to loosen, if you like. Combine with the whole peas and season to taste. Drain the pasta and toss immediately with the hot pea sauce. Serve with ground black pepper and a little more grated cheese. Finish with chopped parsley, if you like. Prep 10 minCook 50 minServes 4 1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for frying1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped1 pinch dried chilli flakes (optional)1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary leaves150g quick-cook polenta100g mature hard cheese, such as cheddar, gratedSalt and black pepper For the sauce1 tbsp olive oil2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped2 x 400g tins whole plum tomatoes1 bay leaf (optional)1 pinch sugar Heat a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan on a medium-low heat, then gently sweat the garlic and chilli (if using) for two minutes; don’t let it colour. Add the rosemary and turn off the heat. Put 800ml water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the polenta in a thin, steady stream, stirring all the time. Bring the polenta to a simmer, then cook, stirring often, for four to five minutes. Off the heat, stir in the garlic mix and cheese, and season. Tip out on to a cold surface (a plate or marble slab) and smooth out into an even, 2cm-deep disc or rectangle, and leave to cool. Once cold, cut into wedges or fingers. For the sauce, heat the oil in a wide frying pan on a medium-low heat, then sweat the garlic gently for a couple of minutes; don’t let it colour. Put the tomatoes and their juices into a bowl, then crush with your hands; remove any tough, stalky ends. Tip into the hot pan, add the bay leaf, if using, bring to a simmer, and cook for 20-30 minutes, stirring often and crushing the tomatoes with a fork, until you have a thick, pulpy sauce. Season with salt, pepper and the sugar. Heat a trickle of oil in a nonstick pan on a medium-high heat and fry the polenta wedges/fingers for two to three minutes a side, until they have a light, golden-brown crust all over. Serve topped with the hot tomato sauce. Prep 10 minCook 1 hr 15 minServes 4-6 About 600g mixed winter veg – onions, carrots, squash, parsnips, celeriac, beetroot, potatoes etc1 large garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped2 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil8 medium eggs1 tbsp finely chopped mixed herbs, such as curly parsley, chives and thymeSalt and black pepperAbout 25g mature hard cheese, grated Heat the oven to 190C (170C fan)/375F/gas 5. Prepare your chosen veg: peel onions and thickly slice; peel carrots and cut into 5mm-thick slices; peel and deseed squash, then cut into 2-3cm cubes; peel parsnip, celeriac and beetroot, and cut into 1-2cm cubes; cut potatoes into 1-2cm cubes. Put all the vegetables in an oven dish about 23cm square. Add the garlic and oil, season, then toss to coat. Roast for about 40 minutes, stirring once halfway, until all the veg is tender and just starting to caramelise in places. Meanwhile, beat the eggs with the chopped herbs and some salt and pepper. Remove the vegetable dish from the oven, pour the whisked eggs all over the top and scatter the cheese over the surface. Return to the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the egg is set and the top is starting to colour. (If your oven has a grill setting, you can use it to accelerate the browning of the top.) Leave to cool slightly, then slide the frittata out on to a plate or board, and serve warm or cold. • Recipes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg Every Day! and River Cottage Much More Veg (both Bloomsbury)This weekend sees the release of M Night Shyamalan’s Glass, the long-awaited follow-up to his 2000 superhero drama Unbreakable and his 2017 thriller Split. Like Unbreakable, Glass is interested in deconstructing the figure of the comic book superhero (and supervillain), calling attention to the tropes of its own genre while placing them in a larger historical and pseudo-scientific context. But whereas this meta-narrative examination felt fresh and exciting in Unbreakable, it now proves to be an utter bore. That’s because deconstructionism – the form of philosophical and literary analysis that seeks to understand the relationship between a text and its meaning, often by acknowledging and/or subverting pre-existing conceptions or structural expectations – has become the modus operandi of superhero movies. The argument could be made that such has been the case since 1989’s Batman. Tim Burton’s gothic vision, alongside Michael Keaton’s neurotic interpretation of the character, may not have comprised a full-on deconstruction, but they both leaned heavily in that direction. (Burton’s second installment, Batman Returns, went one step further, bringing to the fore the heavy undercurrent of kink intrinsic to the superhero mythos.) While this new, darker version of Batman took moviegoing audiences by surprise, loyal comic readers were already well acquainted with him. Starting three years earlier, two ingenious comic scribes had turned the industry upside down with their bold, complex revisionist masterworks. Frank Miller and Alan Moore plucked their heroes from out of the sky and brought them down to street level, in the process placing them in a political context that examined their role in shaping rightwing power fantasies. The revolutionary effect of these books, combined with the success of Burton’s Batman films, might have kicked off a golden age of comic books and comic book movies, but it was not to be. Publishers and artists learned all the wrong lessons from Moore and Miller’s example, focusing primarily on their prurient qualities (graphic violence, sexual explicitness, and a grimy aesthetic), while ignoring their deeper thematic and formalist resonance. In their attempt to appeal to more mature audiences, the industry devolved into puerile adolescence, the effect of which still lingers today. The movies, meanwhile, went hard in the opposite direction. Batman’s crossover success didn’t translate to other characters and properties and, minus one or two notable exceptions, the adaptations that followed were uniformly awful, so awful that even their core audience of children and teens (never the most discerning of demographics) rejected them. By the time Joel Schumacher drove the Batman franchise into the ground, comic book movies seemed destined to be regulated to the same dung-heap of forgotten schlock as video game movies and softcore porn. Then, in 2000, things changed. Riding the coattails of The Matrix’s CGI spectacle (as well as the sleeper success of fellow Marvel adaptation, Blade), Bryan Singer’s X-Men kicked open the doors of the mainstream and ushered in the era of box office supremacy that comic book and superhero movies hold to this day. If, during those initial years, there was a reluctance on the part of these films to fully embrace their glossy-paged origins, they expressed it by way of ironic signaling – “What would you prefer, yellow spandex?” – rather than serious metatextual consideration. Yet 2000 was also the year of Unbreakable, which is centered entirely around the latter. Viewed today, Unbreakable displays a remarkable prescience, especially in the way it connects to a growing public appetite for heroic spectacle in the wake of violent national trauma (stemming, in the film as it would shortly in real life, from a horrific act of terrorism). While the superhero boom predates the 9/11 attacks by a little over a year, it shouldn’t strain credulity to suggest a direct link between their preponderance in the years that followed and the state of the national psyche during that same period. Regardless, the fact remains that as soon as superhero films rose to a new prominence they were already busy dissecting themselves, with a number of high-profile examples following Unbreakable’s lead: Ang Lee’s Hulk psychoanalyzed its atomic gods, while Pixar’s The Incredibles domesticated theirs. Christopher Nolan revived the dormant Batman franchise and used it as a framework on which to hang a number of hefty moral and legal considerations brought to bear by the “war on terror” – domestic surveillance, enhanced interrogation, the symbiotic relationship between martial authority and violent insurgency. Bryan Singer moved on to Superman and considered (poorly) what would happen if a god-like protector wished to abandon his post, while Hancock, Kick-Ass and Super all attempted – to varying degrees of success – to show us how a superhero would fare in the “real” world. Then there are the films of Zack Snyder, arguably the pre-eminent (though by no means universally acclaimed) auteur of superhero deconstruction. His run of comic book adaptations (300, Watchmen, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League) acknowledge the dreadful existential implications of “metahumans” living in – and tearing their way across – a vulnerable human world, even as they ultimately revel in the wanton carnage on display (it was this cognitive dissonance that made Snyder a good choice to bring Frank Miller’s crypto-fascist vision to the screen, and such a terrible choice to adapt Alan Moore’s scholarly, cosmically minded work). Meanwhile, Marvel became the biggest player in the game by carefully threading the needle between earnestness and irony. The company’s focus on world building didn’t leave much room for deconstruction at the outset, but the films did eventually get around to it. Like Nolan’s Bat films, Avengers: Age of Ultron highlights the self-perpetuating cycle of destruction superheroes bring upon themselves and the world. Captain America: Civil War picks up on this thread, looking at the collateral damage wrought by its heroes’ good intentions, while weighing their right to use unilateral force. All of these films coat themselves in layers of moral ambiguity … right up to their third acts, at which point they drop whatever philosophical and moral quandaries they have introduced (the most egregious example being Batman’s one-time-only use of warrantless wiretapping in The Dark Knight), to focus on the final, very expensive set piece. Good ultimately triumphs (unless it’s the middle entry of a franchise, in which case it might end on a cliffhanger), and any ambiguity is traded in for an easily digestible lesson, usually about sacrifice or humility, or something along those lines. Critics like to compare superhero films to westerns, mostly as a wishful invocation of momento mori (whereas once westerns were the most popular genre of film, they barely get made today; if we’re lucky perhaps the same fate could soon befall superhero films), but while this comparison doesn’t quite bear itself out – the number of superhero films released during any given year can’t begin to match the number of westerns produced at the height of their popularity – there is another way in which they are similar. What we tend to think of as classic westerns, the John Wayne/John Ford/Howard Hawks movies, were actually deconstructions of the genre as audiences had come to recognize it up to that point. Films such as Stagecoach, High Noon and The Searchers took the white-hatted cowboy hero of our national myth and dusted him up a fair amount. They imbued their characters and stories with a heavy dose of noir-ish cynicism and psychological complexity absent from the original oaters of the silent and early sound era. That about sums up where comic book movies are at the moment, although it’s hard to imagine any corporate-owned, brand name tentpole closing the door on its hero in the same manner that John Ford closes the door on John Wayne at the end of The Searchers (Logan gave a send-off to its protagonist, but that was only due to Hugh Jackman retiring from the role, and it’s only a matter of time before Disney reintroduces the character with a different actor playing him). But then, even ignoring the obvious profit motive, why should they? Audiences aren’t demanding any radical revisionism; they’re satisfied with things as they are (the box office numbers bear this out) and are more than happy to watch film-makers take apart their favorite IPs … so long as they put them back together by the time the credits roll. It’s only when film-makers don’t fully oblige them in this that a vocal contingency rises up in protest (see Iron Man 3 and Star Wars: The Last Jedi). Ultimately, deconstructionist superhero films almost always revert to the same basic message: we all need to believe in heroes, no matter how flawed they may be. However enjoyable their other qualities (and many of them are enjoyable, even excellent), it’s time to close the door on this form of empty intellectual posturing. These films have shown, time and again, that it’s not self-examination they’re interested in, but self-affirmation. There’s something sadly neurotic about that. Perhaps superhero movies have never gotten over the shame of their yellow spandex-ed origins after all.Mungau Dain, who starred in the Oscar-nominated Australian-Vanuatu film Tanna – his first acting role – has died in Port Vila following an untreated infection in his leg. The film’s co-directors, Bentley Dean and Martin Butler, and script editor Janita Suter, spoke to Guardian Australia after conversations with people on the island about Dain’s death. Dain was in his late 20s when he died a few days ago, and left behind his wife, Nancy, and two young children. Tanna was the first feature film shot entirely in Vanuatu. Filmed in collaboration with the Yakel people of Tanna, it tells the forbidden love story of a young girl, Wawa (Marie Wawa), who falls for the grandson of her chief, Dain (Mungau Dain). The movie, which won two major prizes at Venice film festival in 2015 and was nominated for the best foreign language Oscar, was acclaimed for its Romeo and Juliet-style storytelling, its picturesque cinematography and its cast: first-time actors pulled from the real-life village in which it is set. Dain was put forward as the lead by the village chief, chosen largely for his good looks. “They called him Vanuatu’s Brad Pitt,” Suter said. Dean and Suter, who are married, moved to Vanuatu from Australia with their children, and lived there for seven months to make the film. Along with the rest of the crew, they were welcomed into the village and Dain’s family. “[The village] really wanted to share their culture, not just with us but with the world,” Suter said. “That was a process that unfolded on many levels, including very personal ones.” In order to promote the film, Dain and other cast members got the chance to travel outside of Vanuatu – to Venice, Los Angeles and Australia, where Dain stayed in Dean and Suter’s home. “Our young children got on really well with him; he carried them on all sorts of adventures – up waterfalls and the like. He was just a very gentle soul. Mischievous,” Dean said. Dean remembers arriving to the apartment they were staying at Venice, for the Venice film festival. “I said, ‘OK, well let’s get ready and go [to the premiere],’ and they zipped upstairs – Dain in the lead – and within minutes I could hear this thumping sound on the floor above us. The chandeliers were shaking! I went upstairs, and Dain had changed out of his regular clothes and was in full custom gear, in namba [penis sheath] and bare-chested, feathers in his hair, stamping on the floor. They were doing a custom dance, they were raring to go. They had no shyness [about their culture], they were extremely proud … it was just wonderful.” Dean said the last time he went back to Vanuatu, a year ago, Dain had asked him: “OK, what’s the next film?” Eager to continue acting, Dain had been talking with people from an acting group in Port Vila. Co-director Butler said after Dain won the part on Tanna, it took him some time to learn the ropes. “I don’t think he’d even seen a movie before. Let’s say he was a little rusty,” Butler says. “It took time to explain to him what was going on, how to approach acting, having the confidence to just give it ago. But he was tremendously keen and actively worked on it … and by the end, I thought he was great.” Dain named his son Martin, after the director – a tradition in the village, which Butler said now also boasted a baby named Bentley and another named Janita. Butler described Dain as a “deep family man – quite soft, gentle, not a macho type”, and said while the village had an extended family structure that supported all members, the impact on his young family would be “total devastation”. Butler also spoke of the tragedy of the death itself, so easily preventable with fast action, more education and easy access to the right medicine. “Had Dain got to the hospital a few days earlier, got some antibiotics in him, almost certainly he would have survived … He’s now dead,” he said. “There are people in the [Vanuatu medical] system who are trying to get the knowledge out as best as they can, but there’s just no resources for it … but it could just save lives.” When Dain died in Port Vila, he had been attempting, with his close friend and Tanna co-star Lingai Kowai, to arrange a fruit-picking job in Australia or New Zealand. “Dain and Lingai loved travelling. They loved experiencing and seeing the wider world,” Butler said. “What a tragedy that this young, gorgeous bloke dies merely because he didn’t get antibiotics into him quick enough.”Democratic presidential contender Julián Castro said on Sunday the former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz will give Donald Trump “his best hope of getting re-elected” if he chooses to launch an independent run for the White House. Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and federal housing secretary under Barack Obama, is part of a growing field of declared candidates for the Democratic nomination. Schulz is a long-term Democratic donor and has flirted with a run since stepping down from the coffee giant last year. He has reportedly hired experienced advisers and in an interview with CBS 60 Minutes to be broadcast on Sunday, he reportedly said that if he does jump into the race, it will be as an independent. On Monday, he will release From the Ground Up, a autobiography subtitled: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America. Interviewed on CNN’s State of the Union, Castro was asked about Schultz’s contention that Democrats and Republicans “are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics”, and are thus not acting in the interest of the American people. He said he had “tremendous respect” for the businessman, based in part on encounters while he was in government. “Obviously,” Castro said, “if he runs, it’s going to make an impression on the race. But … I have a concern that if he did run … essentially it would provide Donald Trump with his best hope of getting re-elected.” Castro cited a recent poll which said Trump would not be able to beat any one of seven Democratic candidates to run against him. “So his only hope,” he said, “if things stayed the same – and that’s a big if – is essentially to get somebody else, a third party, to siphon off those votes. And I don’t think that that would be in the best interest of our country. We need new leadership. “And so, you know, I would suggest to Mr Schultz to truly think about the negative impact that that might make.” The survey in question, from Public Policy Polling, showed Trump unable to gain more than 42% support in match-ups with Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, who have all declared runs, and against Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker, who have not formally pitched in. Castro was not mentioned. Schultz has long supported Democrats and Democratic causes but that has not shielded him from criticism within the party. Tina Podlowski, the party chair in Schultz’s home state, Washington, told the Associated Press: “For somebody who is professing to be a lifelong Democrat, I think to be running as an independent in this particular cycle is not a wise thing to do.” The former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod tweeted that a possible Schultz run was “the only good news [Trump] received in an otherwise dismal week”. Another former Obama adviser, Dan Pfeiffer, said “this half-baked idea … will pose an existential threat to a Democrat in what will likely be 2020 race decided by a few votes in a handful of states”. Recent presidential elections have been affected by strong showings from candidates outside the Democratic and Republican parties. In 1992, the conservative Ross Perot siphoned votes from President George HW Bush, who lost to Bill Clinton. In 2000, Al Gore lost the race to succeed Clinton to Bush’s son, George W Bush, because – some say, though others say not – Green candidate Ralph Nader showed strongly in Florida. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton despite losing the national popular vote by nearly 3 million. Jill Stein, the Green candidate, and Gary Johnson, Libertarian, attracted millions of supporters. Trump won in the electoral college thanks to narrow victories in key northern and midwestern states. In Pennsylvania, for example, his margin of victory over Clinton was just over 44,000 votes. Just under 50,000 Pennsylvanians voted for Stein, and nearly 150,000 for Johnson.Organisers of a crowdfunding campaign that aimed to raise $99,000 to pay off the fines of Aboriginal women jailed for fine default in Western Australia say they hope to release as many as 30 women from prison this week. The fundraising campaign expected to meet its target on Tuesday night after just two days of fundraising. By mid-afternoon it had already topped $84,000, with more than 1,900 people donating. Organisers have already identified seven women whose debts will be paid immediately, including a $3,100 debt from a mother-of-three who was unable to call police to respond to domestic violence concerns until her debt was cleared or face arrest herself, and a $2,456 debt against a 22-year-old mother pregnant with her second child. The Sisters Inside chief executive, Debbie Kilroy, who started the fundraiser, said she was overwhelmed by the response. “My heart is so warm and I am uplifted,” she said. “It’s a clear message to the WA government to lift their game and change the legislation as a matter of urgency, not in the middle of the year.” Under current WA law, the fines enforcement registrar can issue a warrant of commitment against a person who has unpaid court or criminal infringement fines, such as fines from a traffic infringement. The McGowan government promised to change the law before winning the 2017 election, after a coronial inquest into the 2014 death in custody of Yamatji woman Ms Dhu recommended the practice be abolished. Since Ms Dhu died, police procedures have changed so that people cannot serve out unpaid fines in police cells or watch houses but must be transferred to a prison. A spokesman for WA police said police did not have the option not to execute an active warrant. Gerry Georgatos, who is coordinating the fine repayments in Perth, said he had been overwhelmed with calls from people who are currently at risk of being jailed due to unpaid fines. Some of those fines were as high as $30,000. Georgatos said he was working with police to help set up a payment plan for those with the largest debts. A spokeswoman for the attorney general, John Quigley, said that legislation to change the law would be put before parliament by the middle of the year. She said the government took the issue “very seriously”. “The attorney general is committed to ensuring the quality and content of the statute book and he will introduce this comprehensive package of reforms as soon as possible,” she said. As the law currently stands, warrants may be issued if other avenues to encourage payment, such as disqualifying a person’s driver’s licence or organising a payment plan, have failed. They authorise police to immediately arrest a person and place them in custody until they have either paid off the fines or “cut them out” as time served, at a rate of $250 per day. If a person has multiple fines, the jail time is based on how long it would take to cut out the largest fine.Chelsea are close to securing the signing of Gonzalo Higuaín from Juventus after submitting a formal offer for the Argentina international. The Premier League club have proposed taking Higuaín on loan until the end of the current season, with a view to making that move permanent on a further 12-month deal. Talks progressed rapidly on Wednesday night after Juve had claimed the Italian Supercoppa with victory over Milan, where the 31-year-old striker has been on loan to date this season, in Jeddah. That temporary deal at San Siro will now be cancelled, with the player, who is on around £170,000-a-week but is keen to rejoin Maurizio Sarri, to discuss personal terms with Chelsea. Juventus are expected to formally confirm Higuain’s departure on Thursday, with the player then likely to fly to London for a medical. Once Juventus have signed off the Higuain deal, Chelsea will sanction Álvaro Morata’s long mooted departure to Atlético Madrid. The Spain striker, who moved to Stamford Bridge in July 2017 for an initial £58m, is expected to re-join the club he began his career as a youth-team player on loan. Chelsea are also in talks with AS Monaco over the sale of Michy Batshuayi, for whom they are attempting to recoup as much as £40m. The Belgium striker is keen on a return to the south of France, where he played previously at Marseille. Chelsea would not normally pursue a player of Higuaín’s age and would instinctively be more inclined to go for Internazionale’s Mauro Icardi as a longer-term solution. But Sarri, in desperate need of a striker familiar with his preferred style of play, has made clear a desire to work again with a forward who set a new Serie A goalscoring record of 36 in 35 games over the season under his stewardship at Napoli. He was subsequently sold to Juve for £79.8m, only to be squeezed out by Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival in Turin last summer. Meanwhile, Chelsea continue to resist Bayern Munich’s interest in Callum Hudson-Odoi, despite the Bundesliga club having offered £35m for the England youth international forward. Hudson-Odoi, who has yet to make a Premier League start, is keen on a move to Germany having grown frustrated at a perceived lack of senior opportunities and is expected to leave this month. Hasan Salihamidzic, Bayern’s sporting director, has admitted that they are still waiting for a response but remain determined to complete his signing. “I am fully convinced of his abilities, we are in talks with Chelsea,” he said. “We have to find a good mix between young talents and experienced leadership players.”The Trump administration has downgraded the diplomatic status of the EU mission in Washington, without informing the mission or Brussels, officials confirmed on Tuesday. The downgrade from nation state to international organisation status reverses an Obama administration decision in 2016 to grant the EU an enhanced diplomatic role in Washington, and is being seen in Brussels as a snub reflecting a general antipathy to the EU in the Trump administration. The president has supported Brexit and has described the EU as a “foe”. The change, first reported by the German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, potentially means that the EU mission would have less clout and access to US officials. “We understand that there was a recent change in the way the diplomatic precedence list is implemented by the United States’ protocol,” Maja Kocijančič, spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs and security policy, said. She added: “We were not notified of any change.” “We are discussing with the relevant services in the administration possible implications for the EU delegation in Washington,” Kocijančič said. “We expect the diplomatic practice established some years ago to be observed.” Asked for comment, the state department sent out an automatic message saying that due to the government shutdown, “communications with the media will be limited to events and issues involving the safety of human life or the protection of property, or those determined to be essential to national security”. “This is a gratuitous and entirely unreasonable swipe at the EU by the Trump administration,” said Nicholas Burns, who was under secretary of state for political affairs in the George W Bush administration. “It coincides with Trump’s campaign to depict the EU as a competitor, and not a partner, of the US It continues the administration’s delegitimization of international organizations and the supranational organization that is the EU. “Americans should remember that the EU is our largest trade partner and largest investor in our economy,” Burns added. “Trump’s entire policy toward the EU continues to be misguided and ineffective.”So, there you are, having worked your way through a crowd denser than a Brexit negotiation, standing in front of your prize. The Mona Lisa in the Louvre. What do you do? Look more closely at that enigmatic smile? Wonder at the subtle gradations of light and shadow in Leonardo’s rendering of the face? Admire the illusion of depth? No, of course not. You turn your back on the painting, whip out your phone and take a selfie. And then you move on to your next prize. You could be forgiven, amid the Brexit fracas, for not having noticed that Wednesday was Museum Selfie Day, a “fun day to encourage people to visit museums”, in the words of Mar Dixon, whose brainchild it was. A fun day? Not to the critics. “Art is serious. It is not light entertainment,” the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones wrote sternly in 2015, adding that selfies were a “spiritual menace” to museums and galleries. This might seem pompous and overwrought. For selfie enthusiasts, such critics are curmudgeonly snobs making the age-old “us and them” divide: between those who use museum collections “properly” (for education or cultural self-improvement) and those who use them “incorrectly” (for mere distraction or entertainment).’ But who’s really being snobbish here? Sure, there are some who may think that the unwashed masses should not sully the sacred spaces of a museum. What can be more snobbish, though, than the idea that “ordinary people” can only be enticed towards culture through gimmicks or by turning art into entertainment? There’s a kind of condescension that suggests that only we – the learned middle class – can truly appreciate art for what it is. Everyone else needs entertainment. Rather than allowing an extraordinary moment to infuse our spirit, we hustle to document our being there In any case, what’s the point in enticing people into museums and galleries only to ignore that which makes museums and galleries so special? A few years ago, there were reportedly six-hour queues outside the David Zwirner Gallery in New York, which was hosting an exhibition by the Japanese conceptual artist Yayoi Kusama. The crowds weren’t there as aficionados of Kusama’s work. According to that bible of art appreciation, Town & Country, one of the rooms in the show, called Infinity Mirrored Room: The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, created the illusion of an infinitude of reflections. People were queuing because the self-reflection that never ends had became the ultimate selfie pose. “You can’t say you’ve been there and did it if you don’t have the picture,” explained one visitor. It was less a case of drawing the public into art than a fashionista version of trainspotting. At least trainspotters had a profound knowledge of, and love for, trains. Nor is it a generational issue. My daughter possesses all the accoutrements of digital teenagership – the iPhone seemingly surgically attached to her thumb; the constant flick from WhatsApp to Spotify to Instagram. A couple of years ago, we visited New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). She was particularly taken by the Picassos. After studying Les Demoiselles d’Avignon intently, she stood back and noticed the crowd milling around. “Why take photos of the painting rather than look at the painting itself?” she muttered in amazement. It’s not just in museums or galleries that the selfie is transforming experience. From the Sydney Opera House to the Grand Canyon, capturing the experience has become more important than the experience itself. Rather than allowing an extraordinary moment to infuse our spirit, we hustle to document our being there. The selfie, the photo, has become the experience. There is nothing new in seeking to be a cultural show-off or in trying to bag cultural scalps. The “cabinets of curiosities” that emerged in 16th-century Europe as forerunners of modern museums were as much about public display as cultural improvement. The 18th-century Grand Tour was a rite of passage for upper-class northern European men. Nineteenth-century museums were places for the wealthy to be seen rather than sit in contemplation. From the Guggenheim to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the fabulously rich have long built grand cultural palaces as monuments to their bottomless wealth. Museum selfies are just the latest, democratised, version of this tradition of showing off. And there’s nothing wrong in that. There’s nothing wrong with having fun in a museum or a gallery. And, yes, we’re often too po-faced about culture. But we should not confuse public fun-making with immersing oneself in art. Nor should we be so snobbish as to imagine that “ordinary people” can only be enticed to art as entertainment. In Sweden, after four months of deadlock, a new minority government is formed. It’s not expected to last. In Greece, the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, survives a vote of no confidence by the narrowest of margins with the help of defectors from his former coalition partners, the radical-right Independent Greeks. How long he can cling to office is an open question. In France, gilets jaunes protests paralyse politics, and Emmanuel Macron’s plan for a “grand national debate” gets off to a bad start after he derides sections of the poor as “screwing around”. The US has endured its longest-ever government shutdown. Instead, politicians take to schoolyard tactics – Democrats trying to prevent Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, Trump banning Democrat Nancy Pelosi from using military aircraft, forcing her to cancel a trip to Afghanistan. Riots and protests rip through South Africa, where local government is virtually at a standstill. The chaos, uncertainty and failure of leadership exposed in Westminster over the past week can, from the midst of the Brexit pandemonium, seem peculiar to contemporary Britain. Yet, raise our eyes to beyond Dover and the same traits are visible. The issues are more sharply posed in Britain because Brexit has raised fundamental questions about the nation and its future with particular urgency and force. It has helped unravel the political class more publicly and more ignominiously than elsewhere. But the paralysis of the political class, and the inability to find answers, is not exceptional to Britain. It’s a feature of our age, and of the global dissolution of the old politics. Westminster politicians certainly need to be held to account for their ineptitude. But to understand their failures, and to formulate ways out, we also need to place them in a much wider context. • Kenan Malik is an Observer columnistHaving wobbled and tumbled over a challenging Christmas week, Arsenal got back on the bike on Tuesday. They did so a little gingerly but ended an afternoon freewheeling past Fulham feeling buoyed by the restorative power of points and goals. Last week’s slips at Brighton and, more punishingly, Liverpool came as a large dollop of reality for a club whose path to a new post-Wenger way was always likely to be a bumpy one. A reaction was needed – both from Unai Emery and from his players. The Premier League’s original Tinkerman, Claudio Ranieri, knows all about the benefits and perils of high-intensity squad juggling and it will not have gone unnoticed how Emery has attacked this project with a penchant for impatiently shuffling his pack before and during games. The search for his most balanced side is an ongoing one, not helped by the vulnerabilities in defence that are so hard to cure with relentless injuries in that department. But for all the angst about Arsenal’s goals conceded column, goal creation and execution also needed attention, having dipped of late. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette were granted a rare start side by side (something they experienced only once in 10 games before this fixture). It is one of Arsenal’s enduring curiosities that both Emery and his predecessor showed reluctance to play their two strongest attackers as a pair. Both had opportunities. Both got on the scoresheet. For all that it might feel risky for Arsenal to start two strikers, it does seem riskier not to. Emery pondered it afterwards and touched upon the big balance question. That was something Ranieri also had in his mind. Fulham brought a sense of adventure, even if marrying that to defensive stability was not easy. They carved out two fantastic chances for the speedy Ryan Sessegnon in the first half. Aleksandar Mitrovic’s hulking presence was another menace as defenders bounced off him and Bernd Leno had to be alert to keep out a couple of his headers. Just as Arsenal were feeling the pressure they pulled themselves together to score. Sead Kolasinac and Alex Iwobi combined all afternoon and when the ball was floated in Granit Xhaka was unmarked with enough time to chest the ball down and pass it into the net. Arsenal chances came regularly and they got a cushion early in the second half. Iwobi was involved, creating the space for a spate of quickfire passing involving Aubameyang and Kolasinac, and Lacazette was on hand to smash the ball in. Lacazette was disappointed not to be awarded a penalty when Jean Michaël Seri caught him with an outstretched leg as he burst forwards in the box. Nothing was given by the referee, Graham Scott. Seri was instrumental in Fulham cutting the deficit moments later. He bundled over Lucas Torreira and advanced to play a key role in the move that ended with Sessegnon crossing for the substitute Aboubakar Kamara to tap in. The Fulham bench was all smiles this time after the weekend penalty brouhaha. “I have no grudge,” Ranieri explained. “He apologised immediately to me, his teammates, the club and it is finished there. I need all my players. I kill but after I give oxygen to them.” The mood lurched. Briefly Fulham attacked at will and Arsenal’s anxiety gnawed. The air of discontent took a notable turn as the substitution of Lacazette for Aaron Ramsey was greeted by boos – the first time Arsenal supporters aired an audible challenge to Emery. “You need a cold mind to make a decision,” he said. “Every supporter can have a different opinion but I need to do my work.” It was not such a bad change after all, as the Welshman eased some nerves by scoring Arsenal’s third on the rebound after Aubameyang struck a post. It looked like one of those days for Arsenal’s top scorer, who went close a handful of times, but his goal came eventually, albeit aided by a deflection. He went over to the bench to celebrate with Lacazette. The Arsenal hierarchy, and where certain players fit into it, remains an intriguing conundrum in the Emery era. Again Mesut Özil was absent and the Ramsey situation – with his contract running down while he continues to contribute – adds to the complicated strands that need tidying up. Defensive imrprovement is Emery’s priority. “Today was the first time we could play with Sokratis [Papastathopoulos], [Shkodran] Mustafi and [Laurent] Koscielny,” he said. “Then came an injury from Mustafi in the first half so we changed to a back four. We are very happy with the attacking players. We need defence also to take more balance and improve. We need to work. We need to prepare for to do better for the second half of the season.” The prospect of any arrivals to bolster that department is difficult but open. “The club is working, watching different possibilities,” Emery said. “Maybe we can if the transfer market gives an opportunity to sign one or two players.” Ranieri is also on the hunt for reinforcements and refinement. “My defence improved a lot but, when you play against these type of players that are fast, skilled, that is where you have to improve more,” he said. “They have to be faster. If there will be an opportunity for us I am sure our chairman will help us to stay in the Premier League.”He trained as an artist and has found inspiration in old master paintings in making some of British cinema’s most avant-garde films. Now the director Peter Greenaway is working on perhaps his most ambitious artwork so far – an actual racetrack as a vast outdoor art installation. It will be a tribute to Jack Kerouac’s cult classic On the Road, the story of a hedonistic road trip across the US, as Greenaway seeks to recreate Kerouac’s sense of adventure for the 21st century, as well as raising questions about “the future of our roads and how we are going to use them”. Greenaway plans to build the art installation across an acre-wide site. He envisages driverless and other “very contemporary” cars speeding over a race track, as well as in and out of life-size buildings. “We’re not talking miniature models,” he said. “I was intrigued about taking the idea of adventures in a car, which you could describe as being essential to Kerouac’s novel, and taking it further. We’re now in the age of the electric car, and all sorts of experiments going on. I was intrigued about the possibility of making a presentation of the computer-driven, no-human-driver [car] as a work of art.” Asked how the installation would pay tribute to Kerouac, he said: “The adventure of the car. There’s a feeling that the great 1950s, 1960s, 1970s excitement about the car is no longer quite with us … Driverless cars mean somehow a lack [of excitement]. Not that I’m a great car driver, [but] … the excitement is actually driving the goddamn car and not … behind a wheel of which you have no control.” He wants the installation to raise questions about the way in which we are “covering the world with miles and miles of motorway”. Greenaway is known for visually sumptuous and complex films that have pushed boundaries. His feature productions include The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, starring Helen Mirren, and Prospero’s Books with John Gielgud. In 2014, Bafta honoured him with its outstanding British contribution to cinema award, noting: “His critical breakthrough came in 1982 with 17th-century drama The Draughtsman’s Contract, establishing him as one of the most important filmmakers of his time”. Now aged 76, he has never forgotten reading On the Road as a teenager. Kerouac’s name is synonymous with rebellion, after On the Road inspired a disaffected generation. The author typed it on a 120ft-long scroll in what he claimed was a three-week blast of creative energy in 1951, only to suffer rejection by publishers, despair and near-destitution, before it finally appeared in 1957. Greenaway recently reread the novel, and his planned installation was mentioned in a recent book, titled Kerouac Beat Painting, featuring 80 paintings and drawings. The On the Road installation is in the early stages of planning. Because of its scale and multimillion-pound cost, it may be built initially in Dubai, where there is already interest in funding it, before coming to Europe. “These things take a lot of organisation and a lot of money,” Greenaway said. “It’ll be very expensive. That’s probably why the name ‘Dubai’ has arisen in the minds of all the producers who are interested in the project.” Potential funders there are fascinated by the project, he said. He has produced a series of sketches, exploring ideas and showing cars speeding in and out of buildings. He expects the installation will involve film and computer-generated material, as well as “full-size, usable cars”. He said: “It would be an acre-wide large installation … It could be a spectator sport, where you sit and watch what’s going on, or maybe it’s interactive and you can as it were computer-drive a car yourself. It could be a set piece where everything is preordained on some computer programme.” On whether the race track could become a permanent attraction, he said: “Might be.” Referring to the Eiffel Tower, which was originally built as a temporary structure in 1889, he added: “It’s still there.”The rise of the gilets jaunes protest movement requires governments to prove that ordinary people and corporate elites are “in this together” in shouldering the costs of fighting climate change, a senior EU figure has said. Frans Timmermans, the European commission’s vice-president, said the movement, first triggered by a proposed rise in fuel tax in France, highlighted the need to share the burden. He was also critical of people and groups who condemned attempts by the EU and national governments to encourage changes such as dropping single-use plastics or driving cars with lower emissions. “This is the game of those who deny climate change or who deny the need for sustainability,” he said. “They say: ‘They are going to take everything away from us. They are going to take our cars away from us, they are going to take our steaks from us, they are going to take all the things that make life nice away from us. So let’s not go there.’ “It is a false contradiction. If we put our policies in the right order, we have a sustainable society without lowering but even increasing our levels of wellbeing. Is wellbeing only economic growth? Only salaries? Or is wellbeing also being able to breathe clean air and drink clean water?” Speaking before the publication on Wednesday of a “reflections paper” on the EU’s next steps in changing the way Europeans live and work in order to protect the environment, Timmermans said the challenge was to bring about reform in a way that was equitable. “The most important thing the gilets jaunes and others ask themselves is: is this fair, are people taking a fair share of the burden or are [the elites] unburdening all that on us? If you create the impression, rightly or wrongly, that this is just a burden on citizens unloaded by companies that don’t do anything, then people will just block it,” he said. “Politically speaking, one of the most important tasks will be to show that this is something we are doing together in an equitable way, a fair way.” On Monday a second French gilets jaunes leader announced she was founding a political party. Its programme calls for removing privileges from elected representatives, developing “charity houses” paid for by donations from chief executives, a reduction in VAT on essential products and higher taxes for higher earners. Timmermans said there were calls for the EU and member states to slow down in making major societal changes in favour of sustainability, but he warned: “The time is now.”Cabinet ministers involved in cross-party talks on how to break the Brexit deadlock have given the first indication that they are prepared to examine plans for a potential second referendum on the UK’s departure from the EU, according to the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Vince Cable. The offer to examine a possible timetable for a second vote drawn up by the Lib Dems was made during discussions between senior Liberal Democrats and two cabinet ministers involved in the talks, Michael Gove and David Lidington, in the Cabinet Office on Thursday morning. While Theresa May’s government remains strongly opposed to the idea of returning the issue of Brexit to the electorate, the revelation by Cable shows that ministers are determined to look at a wide range of ideas being put forward by opposition parties. The government insists that any referendum that could reverse the 2016 decision to leave the EU would be a betrayal of the will of the people. It has also suggested that a second vote would take up to a year to prepare and conduct. But the Liberal Democrats have produced draft legislation which they say would allow one to be held far sooner: before the next European elections in May. Cable spoke in the Commons to the prime minister on Wednesday evening, after Labour’s no-confidence motion was defeated and soon after May had said she was ready to open talks on a way forward with opposition MPs, including party leaders. Cable stressed in those talks with May, which were described as “polite and cordial”, that his party’s central demand was for a second referendum. While May reiterated her opposition to the idea to Cable, senior Lib Dems then repeated the demand at the subsequent meeting with Gove and Lidington on Thursday. The Lib Dems say Gove asked at the second meeting to see the detailed plans, suggesting an active interest. On Saturday night Cable released to the Observer the text of a letter he has sent to Lidington following the two rounds of discussions. It states: “Further to your meeting with my deputy Jo Swinson, chief whip Alistair Carmichael and Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake, I write – as requested – with further details as to how we consider a referendum could be brought about in May. “As you will know, we have published on a cross-party basis two bills. The first is a two-clause bill which could be enacted within a week, to enable the Electoral Commission to begin consultation on a referendum question. The second, a substantive referendum bill. Dominic Grieve tabled these in presentation bills in parliament last week. “With sufficient political will, a referendum bill could be passed in very short order – perhaps within days. However, we estimate that even without complete consensus across the house, legislation could be passed in six weeks and a referendum could be brought about within 16 weeks. This would enable a ten-week total campaign period (to include designation of campaigns). Proceeding with a people’s vote on this basis is now the only remaining lifeline for the negotiated deal between the UK and the EU27, since no parliamentary majority can be assembled for it without a referendum.” Cable told the Observer: “Where there is a will, there is a way. If the government moves quickly, as we believe it should, it will be possible to conclude the Brexit story one way or another before the scheduled European parliamentary elections. While Liberal Democrats firmly reject her deal, we have no doubt the prime minister would campaign vigorously for public approval of it. We have long believed giving the public the final say on this deal is the only way forward. This timetable paves the way.” Lord Tyler, the architect of the Lib Dem timetable, said it was wrong to suggest a referendum would take a year. While it could not take place before the scheduled exit date of 29 March, it could be conducted in a far shorter timeframe than 12 months, although this would involve delaying Brexit. Tyler said: “A referendum can be brought about quickly when parliament determines to make it happen. The process for the 1997 devolution referendums took place in 17 weeks from the bill hitting parliament to people casting their ballots.” Government sources said that any willingness to examine the plans of opposition parties did not indicate a preparedness to adopt them. Downing Street again ruled out Theresa May ever backing a second referendum.Shellshocked MPs of the sensible tendency are now seriously alarmed. You find them in a daze around Westminster and its news studio green-rooms stunned by Tuesday night’s failure of the modest Cooper amendment to prevent a no-deal crash-out. Each day the news gets worse, not forecasts, but actuality. Today it’s the UK motor manufacturers reporting a 50% drop in investment last year and Barclays whisking £166bn of assets off to Dublin, joining a torrential outflow, including Jacob Rees-Mogg’s own investment company. The Welsh assembly declared yesterday that if Westminster can’t agree, “the only option which remains is to give the decision back to the people” and “work should begin immediately on preparing for a public vote”. No sign of that sentiment in the Commons – but referendum campaigners always knew it would only be the last option when all else finally fails. Parliament begins to look like it’s on a self-destruct mission which will take the whole country down with it. But outside there are plenty of supporters egging them on waving cheery “No Deal – No Problem” placards. No bad news shifts them or the Brexit fanatics within. Certainly not the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, warning EU leaders yesterday to “prepare for the worst”. Today it looks crystal clear that delaying withdrawal beyond 29 March is utterly unavoidable, as the foreign secretary confirmed on Radio 4’s Today programme. The Institute for Government (IFG) lists six crucial bills that cannot pass in time, let alone more than 500 statutory instruments. Most haven’t begun in the Lords, where the government doesn’t control the timetable and each needs serious scrutiny. Flashing red on the IFG implementation charts is unreadiness at the borders, with 10 out of 12 border computer systems unready. There are red flashes for how farmers and fishers can sell their produce to the EU in eight weeks’ time. Red too for medicines and medical supplies. Red again for security: no swapping fingerprints, data or DNA, so will criminals escape across the channel? A legal vacuum is actual – not metaphorical – anarchy. The shock of the failure of the Cooper amendment was that it was brought down by 25 Labour MPs voting against or abstaining: no one expected many beyond the usual Eurosceptics. But they were joined by sensible people – like Jim McMahon, ex-leader of Oldham or Gloria De Piero and others who understand real-world effects of parliamentary gestures. It was shocking too that eight shadow ministers defying a vital three-line whip – the likes of Tracy Brabin, Melanie Onn, Judith Cummins – were not sacked, unlike those forced to resign in June for voting to stay close to the European Economic Area – which later became Labour policy. They were given a wink that they wouldn’t lose their posts. Jeremy Corbyn’s heart never seems 100% in the great Brexit fight – to put it politely. Why was he not rallying his troops at the parliamentary Labour party meeting on the eve of this crucial vote? Each time he does eventually get himself and his party to the right place for these votes – but if he is serious saving us from no deal, he should enforce it on his shadow team. The housing minister Kit Malthouse brokered talks between Brexiters and former remainers on a possible way out of the Brexit impasse. The resulting 'Malthouse compromise' involves redrafting the backstop arrangement for the Irish border which is so unpopular with Conservative Eurosceptic MPs and the Democratic Unionist party, which props up the government. It would also extend the transition period, set out under the previously negotiated withdrawal agreement, until the end of 2021. The extension is designed to give extra time to agree a new trading relationship. Under the plan, the backstop would be replaced with a free trade agreement with as yet unknown technology to avoid customs checks on the Irish border. If the attempt to renegotiate the backstop fails, the Malthouse compromise proposes what amounts to a managed no deal. The PM would ask the EU to honour the extended transition period, in return for agreeing the £39bn divorce bill and its commitments on EU citizens’ rights. This would give both sides time to prepare for departure on WTO terms at the end of 2021 – or to negotiate a different deal. The compromise is backed by the DUP, the European Research Group of hard Brexiters, and former remainers including Nicky Morgan. It is this unlikely coalition that helped secure Commons backing for the Brady amendment, which pledged to replace the backstop with unspecified 'alternative arrangements'. Before MPs voted for that amendment and against others, Theresa May praised the Malthouse compromise. She said these were 'serious proposals' and she would engage with them 'seriously and positively'. Although Brexit is a Tory’s disease, spread over decades by their newspapers with anti-EU myths, lies and conspiracy nonsense, at this 11th hour Labour MPs have responsibilities too. Tory leaders pandered to Eurosceptic fever – worst of all David Cameron ceding this lethal referendum – and they will be blamed if the sky falls in. They will be blamed for years of continuing Brexit bitterness. Labour need own none of it – it need back no Brexit plan of May’s. But Labour MPs will need clean hands. Some remain-voting MPs in leave-voting seats writhe under their dilemma. Lisa Nandy – who did vote for the Cooper bill – makes a good case for “respecting Brexit” for fear blocking it will lead to democratic disillusion and the rise of the non-democratic far-right. But her case is not good enough. With the country at the crossroads, this is where the mettle of every MP is tested to do what’s right even if unpopular – to lead not follow in rescuing the country from present danger. The likes of Anna Turley in leave-voting Redcar and Bridget Phillipson in Sunderland are among many taking that admirable stand. I hear Labour MPs say that if they lose their seats over this, so be it: they will have done their best to stop a Brexit cataclysm. These are the Edmund Burke-ites – though he was ejected by the voters of Bristol he famously ignored. Those Labour MPs who broke the whip did great damage. Across the floor are unknown numbers of vacillating Tories who voted to let May have one last forlorn chance at renegotiating her plan, but next time might vote to prevent a no-deal result. Richard Harrington, business minister, says he gives her two weeks, but then will vote to stop no deal. Amber Rudd, Greg Clark, Philip Hammond and other ministers might resign to vote against no deal – and others stand on that brink. But they will only break their own whip and take that plunge if they are certain the numbers are there: looking across at those Labour 25 who wrecked the Cooper amendment, they may calculate it’s not worth making a gallant gesture unless certain to succeed. They need another 12 on top of the 16 Tories who rebelled on Tuesday. Despite warnings on all sides that no deal creeps closer, I stay determined to believe it impossible the Commons will let it happen. Enough MPs will summon enough courage. The Dromey-Spelman indicative amendment – though only squeaking in – shows a majority ready to stop the worst. Besides, between gritted teeth, despite May calling Brexit her “sacred duty”, I cannot believe she wants a no-deal disaster. She will return effectively empty-handed from Brussels, needing to tell her party only a softer Norwegian-style deal stands a chance. Delay, rethink, renegotiate – or a final say for the voters – these are all more plausible than the Commons opting for no deal. Though she has badly misjudged every stage of Brexit, even she will surely pull back at the last moment. Why would she want to captain the ship when a no-deal tsunami swamps the decks? Surely not. • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnistHarry Kane was again on the receiving end of new year’s honours after helping Tottenham Hotspur turn up the heat on their title rivals by snatching back second place in the Premier League. Four days after being awarded an MBE, Kane opened the scoring after 141 seconds and, in doing so, broke his duck against Cardiff City at the fourth time of asking, having netted against every other one of the 27 top-flight teams he has faced. Kane was the catalyst in a game that was over inside half an hour, feeding Son Heung-min for Spurs’ slick third after having a hand in the buildup to a typically classy Christian Eriksen strike from the edge of the box. Jolted back into being the hunter as opposed to the hunted, Spurs seemed to enjoy themselves. Mauricio Pochettino had challenged his players to rise to the role of protagonists here and, while they remain six points off the summit having played an extra game, they issued a timely reminder to Manchester City and Liverpool, who meet on Thursday, that they are determined to make life as interesting as possible. Pochettino will be a keen observer – a neutral, he said, though victory for Pep Guardiola’s side would surely enhance Spurs’ chances in the title race. After slipping up against Wolves, a trip to south Wales had the makings of another difficult evening against a promoted team. It proved anything but as Spurs, impeccably led by Kane, blew away a desperately porous defence with three goals in 26 first-half minutes, feasting on a calamitous Cardiff collapse. Kane got the ball rolling before Eriksen’s assassin-like finish and an arrowed effort by Son sealed the most routine of victories. For Cardiff, this was yet another damning defeat against one of the league’s big-hitters, with Spurs sapping the life out of a side hoping to build on a character-building win at Leicester. Cardiff’s record against the league’s so-called “big six” was naturally a concern, having lost their previous 14 meetings, the latest of which was a 5-1 “battering”, as Neil Warnock put it, against Manchester United last month. He would have been right to fear this would go the same way when Kane struck the opener, with the ball bobbling in off his right shin after Sean Morrison’s failed clearance under pressure from Dele Alli, before Eriksen doubled Spurs’ lead on 12 minutes. Warnock had warned his players “not to breathe” on the opposition but they afforded them too much respect altogether. This was so easy for Spurs. The pained grimace on Warnock’s face said as much. Cardiff passed up their best spell before Spurs’ killer second, the returning Danny Rose leaping highest at the back post to head away Josh Murphy’s high cross with Callum Paterson, the Cardiff forward, for company, a minute after Toby Alderweireld cut out Murphy’s low ball. Kane, who started and finished the opener and had a hand in the second and third too, freed Moussa Sissoko down the right with a spearing, sweeping through-ball. Sissoko centred for Son, who fed Eriksen. Harry Arter went to ground as the Dane composed himself, teasing Bruno Ecuele Manga by dragging the ball back and forth, and giving Neil Etheridge the eyes as he shaped to bend an effort into the far corner before rolling a cunning low strike inside the near post. Any of the feelgood factor that Cardiff had fostered from that last-gasp victory at Leicester last weekend had certainly wilted by the time Son added a simple third. Kane was again involved, effortlessly pushing a first-time pass into the path of his teammate after more good running by the formidable Sissoko down Tottenham’s right. Son dispatched another rising effort over the bar moments later but it did not matter. The game was done and dusted with an hour to play. Kane would have scored a second himself but for a superb block by Morrison, the Cardiff captain, midway through the second half. When Spurs did opt to grind through the gears, with the game already out of sight, Kane was at the heart of everything. Sol Bamba ran into trouble on the halfway line, with Sissoko cutting out his hopeful pass and picking out the striker. Again Cardiff were exposed, Etheridge faced with four Spurs forwards, but back came Bamba to deflect Son’s low effort on to the Cardiff goalkeeper’s shoulder and away. Then Aron Gunnarsson acrobatically denied a probing Alli in the box. Cardiff had failed this test miserably but, with 15 minutes left to play, it was time for Spurs to experiment. Fernando Llorente made a late cameo, in place of Alli, while the 18-year-old Oliver Skipp replaced Son, the academy graduate gaining some more valuable minutes before his likely involvement against Tranmere Rovers in the FA Cup on Friday. The League Two side could do with making that match somewhat less of a stroll.As storm clouds gathered above the Cardiff City Stadium on what was a grey afternoon in south Wales in more ways than one, Robert Glaves stared at the floral tributes that had been placed in the wake of the news that Emiliano Sala, the club-record signing, was on board an aeroplane that disappeared near the Channel Islands on Monday evening. “He’s going to be remembered as the best player we never had,” said Glaves, who has been following Cardiff for more than 50 years. Sala joined Cardiff for £15m from Nantes on Saturday and had flown back to France at the weekend to say farewell to his former teammates. “La ultima ciao,” or “the last goodbye,” was the poignant message the Argentinian posted on his Instagram account prior to taking his seat on a small aircraft that departed Nantes on Monday evening. Little more than an hour after take-off, Guernsey Coastguard received an alert from Jersey air traffic control that the aircraft had gone off their radar, triggering an extensive search and rescue operation that was suspended at 5pm the following day. In truth, it had been impossible not to fear the worst long before that sobering update from the police. “Waking up this morning and hearing it on the radio alarm, you think: ‘No, this is a bad dream, this just isn’t true,” said Glaves. “And then, as the day unfolded, listening to it all … absolutely shocking, isn’t it?” Half a dozen teenagers stood only a few yards away from Glaves and the statue of Fred Keenor, Cardiff’s 1927 FA Cup-winning captain, telling their story about how Sala had happily posed for a picture with them at the end of last week, shortly after the striker had completed his medical but before his transfer had officially gone through. “On Friday night we were coming across from having food to go and play our own football game and we were wondering if he [Sala] would be in the stadium,” said Hywel Davies, a 16-year-old Cardiff fan. “We saw him in the window by the main entrance signing some [paperwork]. So we waited outside for a bit, thinking he might come out. He did in the end and he was nice enough to come and have a photo. He was asking us how we were, he just seemed like a nice guy.” It seems strange to think that Davies and his friends spent more time with Sala than some of the Cardiff players, and in many respects that explains why this tragedy is so difficult for everyone at the Premier League club to come to terms with and understand. People are mourning a footballer that they never got to see play. There are no Sala shirts for sale in the club shop because the 28-year-old had not even been allocated a number. “Obviously there weren’t any scarves made yet, but somebody has been busy with a felt pen – that’s wonderful,” adds Glaves, pointing to a scarf, bearing Sala’s name, lying at the feet of the statue of Keenor. While the emotional attachment with Sala will understandably run deeper in Nantes, where he scored 42 goals across three and a half seasons, there is no escaping the sense of loss in Cardiff and it is hard to imagine what is going through Neil Warnock’s mind. Cardiff’s manager made the same journey as Sala when he returned from Nantes last month, after watching the striker play against Marseille and was full of excitement about the prospect of signing him. Warnock and the Cardiff board took the decision to cancel training on Tuesday and nobody at the club is quite sure what to expect when the players report on Wednesday. For now all thoughts are with Sala and the pilot on board the Piper Malibu that left Nantes at 7.15pm on Monday.A red flag dropped for David Garcia-Rosen just after it was suggested he create a cricket team for his Bronx high school. Garcia-Rosen, then a dean at International Community High, wanted to start a competitive sports team – any kind of team – for his students. With a neighborhood of soccer and baseball players, those sports seemed a natural fit. The Public School Athletic League (PSAL) – the New York City department of education office that governs scholastic sports across America’s largest city – had other ideas. There was no chance Garcia-Rosen’s school would get a soccer or baseball team into the leagues, it said. Maybe try cricket, it suggested. Cricket for a school in a city hardly known for an abundance of wickets, stumps, or bails across the five boroughs. “We gave it a shot,” Garcia-Rosen recalls. “I told the Dominican kids that cricket was a bit like baseball and some Bangladeshi kids kind of led the team. We bought cricket gear and got a cricket coach and then we had a cricket team. We filed our team request for cricket … and then we got the denial.” High school sports in the United States so frequently evokes Friday Night Lights, the book, movie and TV series that popularized the particular religious fervor of Texas football to a broader audience. But a different reality exists in urban centers like New York that forces students to protest, and in some cases take legal action, for access to school sports. Garcia-Rosen, now director of athletics at the Bronx Academy of Letters, has fought a battle with the New York City department of education for equity in school sports for almost a decade. It’s a match that saw him create the Small School Sports League, a rebel confederation of sorts that was taken over and then shut down by the DOE. It’s a campaign that has won Garcia-Rosen few fans within the city’s education system; at one time he was allegedly described by a DOE executive as “Mr Fire and Brimstone” and accused of wanting a “Marxist redistribution of teams”. Garcia-Rosen was bounced into New York City’s infamous “rubber room”, a disciplinary purgatory for teachers exiled by the DOE, but has also inspired student-led protests at City Hall and, significantly, a recent lawsuit filed by four Bronx high school students against the DOE, the PSAL and its executive director Donald Douglas. The suit claims student access to school sports is a human and civil rights issue and alleges the DOE’s policy, or lack thereof, adversely impacts the city’s black and Latino population. It’s also a lawsuit that just might vindicate Garcia-Rosen’s long held concerns. “Black and Latino students experience far-reaching deprivations of key resources and opportunities,” the suit claims, with accompanying research and data showing how black and Latino high school students in New York City public schools have significantly less access to sports teams than students of other races: 17,323 black and Latino high school students in New York public schools attend high schools with zero PSAL teams. “The research results and analysis proved what we had anecdotally known,” says Melissa Iachan of the nonprofit New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, a lead attorney on the case. “The policies and procedures employed by the PSAL discriminate against black and Latino students by depriving them of equal access to resources that should be made publicly available.” New York is not the only big city with sports equity issues. Los Angeles is in the middle of what Renata Simril, president and CEO of LA84, a legacy non-profit organization from the 1984 Olympic Games charged with funding access to sports across the city, describes as “a crisis hiding in plain sight.” While New York’s challenges can be traced to a policy of downsizing failing high schools, in Los Angeles the “no child left behind” program has caused many children to be left behind when it comes to school sports. “There’s an impetus on math and science curriculum and no increase in funding,” Simril says. “So schools had to do away with something. What they’ve done away with is enrichment programs including sport, art, and dance programs.” Schools in Los Angeles now rely on outside grants from third parties like LA84 and professional sports teams to fund school sports or after-school programs. The catch is that third-party generosity is inconsistent and never a guaranteed solution to funding shortfalls. Similar cites like Oakland, across the bay from tech-rich San Francisco, are a classic example of the problem facing West Coast public education. “Oakland announced it is eliminating 50% of its sports programs in schools in a $500,000 cost-saving measure,” Simril says. “That adversely affects kids from low socio-economic settings as well as girls and kids of color. The [NFL’s] Oakland Raiders and a few others stepped in with supplemental funding so they can keep sports programs running but the Raiders are going to be moving to Las Vegas in two years.” LA84 released a report in late December that found Los Angeles families from disadvantaged socio-economic households participate in sport and physical activities at a much lower rate than those from affluent households. With schools unable to fund sports programming the only option for many families is often expensive after-school programs. Underlining the issue, the LA84 research also found lower-income households considered youth sports in Los Angeles to be too expensive. “The parents that can’t afford quality sports programs are just being left out of the game,” says Simril, adding that the underlying problem is economic rather than strictly race-based. “While the areas we have funded in Los Angeles are for communities that identify as black and brown, if you go to Ohio then the economic issue looks like white kids.” Back in New York, city councilman Antonio Reynoso has launched a bill demanding the DOE “ensure that all students have equitable access to after-school athletic activities and associated funding”, a resolution that mirrors the student lawsuit. Reynoso’s bill is considered progress but lawyer Melissa Iachan doesn’t expect the legal battle to be settled any time soon. “It could take years,” she says. Iachan is sure of one thing, however. Without David Garcia-Rosen, school sport equity would still be stuck somewhere in the back of a school closet. “He is the fire behind this locomotive,” Iachan says. Garcia-Rosen says he’s driven by his students and an obviously inequitable system. He describes his decade-long fight as “exhausting” before refocusing: “The small things matter and when they don’t matter the small things become big things.” “You have a school in [New York’s] Staten Island that has 44 teams and over a quarter of a million dollars of funding from the PSAL. Then you have schools that ask for one team and get denied. It is totally unfair. The system is totally opaque.” “It is amazing that these kids are running these campaigns and getting civics lessons and civil rights lessons through all this but on the other hand - they should just be playing sports. When I was their age I wasn’t fighting a civil rights campaign. I was playing soccer. They should just be kids at this point. This shouldn’t be something they have to fight for.”In spite of the upbeat signals that came from Jeremy Corbyn’s meeting with Theresa May on Wednesday, experience suggests that it will not prove a turning point on Brexit. Neither of them is a natural negotiator or conciliator. These gifts are not part of their skill sets. Of the friendship that can sometimes exist between rival leaders there is no sign. Corbyn’s public sanctimony towards May can make Victor Hugo’s Inspector Javert look like a libertine. May’s default mode towards Corbyn, on show again at question time this week, is to give him her full Lady Disdain. What is more, even if the two leaders wanted to patch something together, their respective Brexit positions do not allow for much common ground anyway. May’s red lines on leaving the single market and the customs union, ending free movement and escaping the jurisdiction of the European court are mostly mirror images of Corbyn’s. He wants a close relationship with the EU market and on customs, and supports his own version of free movement. The only thing that would seem to unite them is that both want Brexit to happen, preferably under a Conservative government. Tuesday’s Commons votes, where Tory MPs rallied around a policy very close to the one they demolished two weeks ago, seem to separate the two leaders still further. Having claimed hers was the only possible deal, May has now pledged to try to change the Northern Ireland backstop arrangement in order to keep her right wing on board. Corbyn, meanwhile, wants her to adopt a soft Brexit approach that would, if she embraced it, trigger a full-scale revolt from her own side and from the Democratic Unionists. For all those reasons and more, the May-Corbyn negotiations seem a sideshow. May has less need of them now. She has regained a bit of control. Her hardliners kept their swords sheathed. The chief whip and the chairman of the Tory backbenchers both played skilful hands, while pro-remain MPs overplayed theirs this time. A second referendum now looks a more distant prospect. All this has won May a reprieve. Given the stunning 230-vote defeat she suffered on 15 January, that is quite a turnaround. But it will not last long. It is not the end of the Brexit battle, and it may not even be the beginning of its end either. May’s characterisation of her majority as “substantial and sustainable” is pure wishful thinking. That is because, as others have argued since Tuesday evening, the vote for the Brady amendment was a vote for something that is both vague and unlikely to happen. The European Union has little incentive to agree to it. And, assuming that it will not happen, certainly not in the small window of time now available, it seems odds-on that May will soon be struggling to find a majority once more. May’s position is neither substantial nor sustainable. It is disjointed and delicate. It bears repeating, after Tuesday’s volte-face, that it was May herself, not the EU, who created the all-UK backstop that she is now seeking to unpick. But the deeper truth, which she must have known when she originally agreed to it in 2017, is that the backstop was an attempt to reconcile three promises that are almost impossible to fit together in one consistent policy. The first of these is May’s promise to leave the customs union, which she made because she knows that the Thatcherite right of her party, including some of the most fanatical long-term advocates of Brexit, attaches immense importance – though it was barely mentioned in 2016 – to an autonomous trade policy. The second is her promise to Ireland, which in law and by treaty she is duty bound to make, that a new trade regime would not cause the creation of a hard border of any kind. And the third is the promise she made to the DUP after the 2017 election that she would not permit customs and regulatory divergence between Britain and Northern Ireland. These three promises are mutually contradictory. That was the case before Tuesday and it is still true now. You can’t have an autonomous trade policy and an open border. That is why the backstop exists at all. It is there to ensure that the open border in Ireland remains in force in the face of May’s commitment, driven by her right wing, to a sovereign trade policy. These unavoidable truths are not going to go away just because May and Graham Brady managed to find a form of words about “alternative arrangements” that pulled the Tory party back from an outright split after the 15 January vote against the deal. Even before the Brady amendment was drafted, the former UK representative to the EU was making clear why this is a non-starter. “We remain firmly in the world of make-believe and fantasies,” Ivan Rogers said in a lecture in London last week. “The prime minister still talks as if the need for a backstop will automatically fall away the moment a full trade deal [between the UK and the EU] is struck … But that is manifestly untrue unless the deal were such as to render the backstop otiose. And that is not the sort of trade deal to which even she aspires.” This brings us back to the role that Corbyn may yet play. For most of the parliamentary Brexit process, Corbyn has been a large but inert presence. Brexit politics has happened around him, not with or through him. He remains content, it seems, to go through the motions but not to get his hands dirty. Up to a point, it has been a coherent strategy if your three priorities, like Corbyn’s, are for Brexit to happen, for the Tories to own it, and for your own pristine politics to remain unsullied by the most important argument facing the country. In the end, though, events may be propelling Corbyn to mix with the sweatier end of politics. One pressure is that backbenchers in his party – such as Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn – have emerged as de facto Labour figureheads. Another is that May has begun to engage with workplace and environmental regulatory issues that Labour cares about. Crucially, May’s defeat two weeks ago and her current turn to the Tory right are highlighting the harsh reality of the Brexiter trade autonomy dream that she has now empowered. A more adept Labour leader would have been reaching out relentlessly to Tory moderates over recent months on the customs elements of the eventual UK-EU trade deal, searching for common ground and looking for ways to ensnare them in a shared commitment to the open borders and regulatory alignment that the hard Brexiters so loathe. Such a thing may yet happen anyway. If May fails to get the changes from the EU that she seeks, and if this week’s Tory party unity comes under strain, as it may, then a space could open up for a softer Brexit deal. Such a deal has always been the least worst viable outcome to Brexit. This week’s events have underscored more than ever why May’s deal and no deal need not be the only options. Even Corbyn must see what is now at stake, and why engaging seriously with May is overwhelmingly in the country’s interest. • Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnistI was born in Turkey and am now based in Lund, on the southern tip of Sweden. Most of my life I’ve probably been the quintessential cosmopolitan, and proudly so. But I’ve also spent too many hours in the consulates and airports of various EU countries coveting a multiple-entry Schengen visa, or enduring the suspicious looks of customs officers, to believe that I could be a “citizen of nowhere” with a Turkish passport. My cosmopolitanism was more a moral ideal based on compassion, and did not preclude a yearning for belonging or roots. It simply defined them in a different way. I could have roots in many places, and I could nourish my need for belonging from a variety of sources. With this background, it is not very surprising that I took up a job offer in Sweden in 2011. To be sure, it was not easy to adapt to the notorious Nordic winter and the idiosyncrasies of the Swedish way of life, not least the obsession with moderation (“lagom”) and modesty (“jantelagen”), which manifests itself as an unwavering commitment to consensus and the need to avoid confrontation at all costs. The yearning for home, or to protect one’s home, does not entail isolation, for there are many definitions of homes Sweden has become one of my many homes, and with the birth of my son in 2013, it became the first among equals. Having a family and living in a small university town was perfectly compatible with my understanding of cosmopolitanism, which, drawing on the Stoics, regarded these affiliations as a series of concentric circles, starting with the local and extending into the societal and global. I could not imagine at that point that my cosmopolitanism would begin to crack under the pressure of several developments. First, I started to appreciate the value of Sweden’s welfare state, which for four and a half years took great care of my son after he fell seriously ill and until he passed away in July 2018. I developed a sense of loyalty to the social contract that underpinned the Swedish state – a feeling I’d never felt before, either in the country where I was born and raised, or in others where I’d spent a good chunk of my life. I wasn’t even a citizen of Sweden (though my son was), but that did not matter when it came to a child’s life, nor did the amount of taxes I paid or the type of permit I held. But I was also exposed to the more unpleasant aspects of the Swedish social contract: a token egalitarianism that trumps all notions of meritocracy, an extreme understanding of political correctness, and a corporatist alliance between employers and labour unions. These aspects are little known to outsiders, who often tend to glorify the “Swedish model”. After my son’s funeral, I travelled outside Sweden to resume a nomadic lifestyle. I was torn. I now had a better understanding of the tensions between citizenship and a borderless universalism, or the type of cosmopolitanism the likes of Theresa May or Nigel Farage have attacked. I’d witnessed the immense pressure that the refugee crisis of 2015-16 placed on the Swedish government. Then came the unstoppable rise of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party, which would soon become the third largest in parliament. I also found myself to a certain extent sympathising with the opprobrium that populist demagogues and rightwing commentators heaped on prevailing forms of political correctness. I’d become the victim of such vigilantism myself, one that pays little heed to due process or other fundamental values such as empathy. On top of that, the Europe I’d sought refuge in was not the Europe I once thought it was. Sweden was simply following in the footsteps of a host of other countries that were mutilated by the far-right juggernaut. Nationalism was – once again – the order of the day, with a slightly different script in which the lead role was given to “threatened white majorities” or “majority ethnic anxieties”. All this happened under the watchful eyes of academic snipers who did not hesitate to target any remaining sign of more universalist visions. Basically, I had two options. The easy one was to jump on the bandwagon, recant my earlier cosmopolitan convictions and start penning pieces about the virtues of the rightwing populist backlash. This would require adopting a politics of euphemism where good old nationalism is sugar-coated as “national citizen favouritism” and where racism is confined to the marginal domain of white supremacists, or the “alt-right”. This goes hand in hand with a politics of whitewashing, whereby far-right ideas and discourses are made mainstream, all with the pretext of understanding the genuine and legitimate concerns of the downtrodden. The second option was more difficult as it entailed serious, introspective reckoning. If I were to reclaim my cosmopolitan moral agenda, I would have to acknowledge the centrality of shared values to solidarity and trust. I had to understand that the central question is, as the Swedish historian Lars Trägårdh puts it, whether it is possible to resolve the fundamental tension between, on the one side, “universal moral rules founded in notions of human rights”, and on the other, “nationally bounded claims derived from the idea of citizenship in particular nation states”. My answer is yes, and the formula is simple: emphasise the connection between rights and duties; speed up the process of integration of newcomers (refugees or migrants) without demanding that they fully assimilate into the dominant culture, but asking them to respect the existing social contract; foster a sense of common destiny that does not necessarily require myths of common ancestry; and engage with the demand for recognition in a fair and equal way, without privileging either minorities or majorities. The point here is that a sense of civic duty does not entail expecting citizens to turn into cosmopolitans. And a moral concern for the refugees and migrants who risk their lives to provide their children with a better future does not require us to care less about our own children. The yearning for home, or to protect one’s home, does not entail isolation, for there are many homes and many definitions of home. “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition,” the novelist James Baldwin said. Perhaps that’s the answer: to think of cosmopolitanism as an irrevocable condition, much like love. • Umut Özkırımlı is a political scientist and professor at Lund University, Sweden, and the author of Theories of Nationalism: A Critical IntroductionIsrael’s centre-left opposition alliance has broken up in a dramatic realignment of the country’s political battleground just months from a general election. Avi Gabbay, the leader of a coalition of opposition parties, made the unexpected announcement live on television that he would no longer partner with veteran politician Tzipi Livni, even as she sat expressionless next to him. It was not clear if Livni had been told of the move. The now-defunct Zionist Union alliance, composed of Gabbay’s Labour and Livni’s Hatnuah parties, finished with the second highest number of seats in the last election in 2015. With support from the more affluent districts around Tel Aviv and from liberal voters, the partnering had focused on unseating Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud, but failed. It has since tumbled in opinion polls and Gabbay, who took over as leader in 2017, has had an uneasy relationship with Livni, a former foreign minister. “I still believe in partnership, in connections, in uniting a large camp committed to change, but successful connections necessitate friendship, upholding agreements and commitment to a course,” Gabbay told a meeting of Zionist Union parliament members. “That didn’t happen in this partnership.” Livni spoke tersely afterwards, saying: “I’m not responding. I will make my decisions. Thank you,” before leaving the room. Apparently referring to earlier rumours of a potential spilt, she later tweeted that it was “good that the doubts had been dispelled”. The disbandment follows a separate major shake-up among the ruling coalition. On Saturday, two rightwing cabinet ministers, Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, announced they were leaving their Jewish Home party to form a new one. Polls show Netanyahu, who leads what is seen as the most rightwing administration in Israel’s history, is likely to win the 9 April polls. That would give him a fifth term in office and a good chance of succeeding the Jewish state’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, as the longest-serving prime minister. Despite allegations of corruption, including police recommendations that he be indicted on charges of bribery and breach of trust in three separate cases, Netanyahu has held on to power through deals with ultra-nationalist secular and religious parties. Last month, however, he called early elections, initially set for November, after internal divisions in the ruling coalition curbed his government’s ability to pass legislation. The prime minister, 69, now intends to form new alliances. “I won’t intervene in how the left divides its votes,” he said in a statement after Gabbay’s announcement. “What’s important to me is that the right forms the next government too, and continues to lead Israel.”Davos this year will be like Hamlet without the prince. Donald Trump was all set to be the star of the show for the second year running but has decided that giving a keynote address to a hall full of billionaires is politically problematical at a time when the US government is shut down. Emmanuel Macron is giving the World Economic Forum a miss for similar reasons. If you have been dubbed the president of the rich the last place you want to be seen is at the annual gathering of the 1%. Theresa May has also decided she has better things to do with her time. But even without Trump, Macron and May, there will be plenty for the global elite to talk about. The World Economic Forum, the body that has organised the event since 1971, says this week should all be about setting a course for Globalisation 4.0. Without doubt, there is room for improvement on Globalisation 3.0, the model that has crashed and burned over the past decade. But it is a bit of a stretch to imagine that the Davos regulars are the ones to do the job. These are the people, after all, who lionised financial liberalisation, snaffled most of the proceeds of growth, salted their money away in tax havens and pressed for tax cuts for themselves while insisting on austerity for the poor. It is not hard to specify the problems. This year’s Davos comes at a time when global growth is slowing and political discontent is growing; when global problems such as climate change are becoming more pressing and yet the global cooperation needed to deal with them is at its weakest since the 1930s. The attendees at the WEF get all that. There will be plenty of talk in the conference hall and at the after-dark cocktail parties about how “something must be done” about inequality and how the economic benefits of the robot age must be shared by all. What there won’t be, at least on past form, is any action to back up the rhetoric. There is a complete disconnect between these problem-solvers and the real-world challenges they consistently fail to tackle. Let’s take one example: the battle (or, more accurately, the non-battle) against pneumonia, which is the biggest public health failure of our time. Pneumonia attracts little attention, in large part because it is assumed to be a condition that kills old people. That’s true in the west but in the developing world pneumonia is the biggest killer of children going. In 2016, it cost the lives of an estimated 880,000 children – more than for malaria and diarrhoea combined. Most of them were less than two years old. Nor is tackling pneumonia difficult or expensive. As Kevin Watkins, the chief executive of the charity Save the Children, wrote in a recent article for the Lancet: “Almost all pneumonia deaths could be prevented through vaccination or early diagnosis and treatment with antibiotics costing less than 50 US cents.” A child is dying every two minutes from something that could be easily and cheaply treated Why is there no outrage at the idea that somewhere in the world a child is dying every two minutes from something that could be easily and cheaply treated? Where are the international initiatives? Where is the coalition of rock stars, billionaire philanthropists and politicians announcing at Davos a major drive to eradicate pneumonia? The answer is that it is nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that on current trends by 2030 – the target date under the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) for ending preventable child deaths – 750,000 children a year will still be dying of pneumonia. In part, the painfully slow progress in eradicating childhood pneumonia reflects the failure to make tackling inequality central to achieving the SDGs. There is no real point in setting ambitious targets for health unless health systems are designed and funded to cater for the most marginalised people in developing countries. Poverty and pneumonia are inextricably linked. The children most at risk are invariably from the poorest families in rural regions and urban slums. They are the most likely to be malnourished and the least likely to be immunised, diagnosed and treated. What’s more, pneumonia is confined to the poor. Unlike measles, cholera or HIV/Aids, it does not readily cross social boundaries, which means that the children of those with the loudest political voices in developing countries don’t suffer from it. Health priorities are set by those with different priorities. That goes for the international community as well. If pneumonia could be transmitted across borders like, say, Ebola, western donor countries would take it a lot more seriously than they do. “Pneumonia,” Watkins says, “is a disease that can be contained in poor communities of poor countries – and this is a prescription for policy inertia.” There is one final reason pneumonia remains the world’s Cinderella disease: treating it requires long-term investment in healthcare systems skewed towards poor communities. That means trained doctors and nurses that can spot the symptoms early and have the necessary resources to respond. Insecticide-treated bed nets have helped in the fight against malaria but no magic bullet exists in the battle against pneumonia. Instead, what is required is action at all levels: higher spending on health in developing countries; specific action plans to tackle pneumonia and international initiatives to increase supplies of cheap drugs. Doubtless, there will be much hand-wringing this week about the importance of international cooperation in creating a new and better globalisation. The willingness to tackle pneumonia is a test of that commitment because it requires a global partnership, the transfer of resources and an eagerness to put the interests of the poorest and most vulnerable first. Above all, it requires a willingness to act, not only talk.In the last financial year, London-based pub company Young’s celebrated pre-tax profits of £37.6m. This week, we got an insight into how that might have been achieved with news that Young’s 148 pubs were selling a meal for two of cauliflower steak for £28: the same price as two Aberdeen Angus steaks. Whichever way you slice it, £14 for a dish with a main component that costs less than a pound feels grabby. The general rule for pricing restaurant dishes is a 70% gross profit on the ingredient costs, to cover all the associated labour and outgoings, leaving a notional 10% clear profit. This – flagged on Twitter as “properly mental” by the food writer and event creator Jamie Klingler – looked more like a 90% GP, and a blatant attempt to cash in on Veganuary. At first, Young’s defended the “premium quality” dish, but on Tuesday, “having listened to the feedback”, it pulled it from the menu. But such controversies could compound the idea that meat-free dishes should always be cheap; a prejudice that has, arguably, constrained the creativity of meat-free cooking. An absence of animal protein usually keeps costs down, says Mary-Ellen McTague of Manchester’s largely meat-free Creameries. “I wouldn’t sell [those steaks] for the same price. It’s a massive profit.” But the price of good vegetables is increasing (McTague says she pays £1.90 for organic cauliflowers), and the labour-intensive nature of modern meat-free cooking can be costly. McTague charges £6 for a relatively simple roasted cauliflower salad, but her celeriac noodle soup (the celeriac is shredded, roasted, dehydrated, then added to an equally complicated broth), takes a full day to make and costs £12. “It’s a lot cheaper to buy in pre-cut meats than vegetables you have to transform into something interesting. Anything that takes a long prep time, the price will reflect that,” says McTague. By all means be wary of rip-offs, but if we want vegetables to be taken as seriously as meat, they may not always be the cheapest option.After the Dutch parliamentary elections of March 2017, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, triumphantly declared that “good populism” had defeated “bad populism”, a claim eagerly and uncritically repeated in media around the world. It confirmed received wisdom that the best way to defeat the populist radical right, is to co-opt a moderate version of their agenda, while excluding the party itself. Few cared that Rutte’s claim rested on dubious empirical grounds: compared with the 2012 election, Rutte actually lost big (-5.2%), whereas Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom (PVV) made gains (+3.0%) and was joined by a new far-right party, Forum for Democracy (FvD), with 1.8%, making their combined scored of 14.9%. That’s less than one percentage point lower than the PVV’s high score of 15.45% in 2010. Three 2018 elections will provide more ammunition for the debate on how best to respond to the radical right. In Sweden, the rise of the Sweden Democrats was not halted in the parliamentary election in September, despite a significant turn to the right by the center-right Moderates and even the center-left Social Democrats. Both the Moderates (which lost 3.5% of their vote share) and the Social Democrats (which lost 2.8%) lost, while the Sweden Democrats were the biggest winners, coming in third with 17.5%, an increase of 4.7%. The results were fairly similar in the much-anticipated state elections in Bavaria, where the hegemonic Christian Social Union (CSU) had practically copied the agenda of the populist radical right Alternative for Germany (AfD), just as they had done with the Republicans in the early 1990s. In fact, the CSU’s regional struggle with the AfD had crippled the already troubled Grand Coalition in Berlin, with leading CSU politicians regularly defying “their” chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin and Brussels. As polls had been indicating for months, it stopped neither the ascendance of the AfD, nor the downfall of the CSU. After decades of ruling the state as a party fiefdom, the CSU lost its parliamentary majority and 10.5% of its vote share – a loss of 22% of its 2013 electorate. The AfD entered the Bavarian parliament in its first election, with 10.2% of the vote, not only less than polls had been predicting for months, but also some 2% less than the party had received in Bavaria in the 2017 federal elections. Finally, in the much less covered local elections in Belgium, the “democratic nationalist” New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) lost big, despite having veered staunchly right, and making opposition to immigration, and its tough (and popular) secretary of state for asylum, migration and administrative simplification, Theo Francken, the focus of its campaign. At the same time, the populist radical right Flemish Interest (VB) returned from the dead, after focusing its campaign on opposition to the “soft” Francken, gaining its best score in decades. While extrapolations of local elections to national elections should always be treated with extreme care, the local elections indicate a possible big loss for N-VA and win for VB in next year’s mass election year – Belgium will hold regional, national and European elections on 26 May 2019. And the recent withdrawal from the federal government of the N-VA, over the contentious but non-binding Marrakesh agreement will do little to mitigate that. Does this mean that voters prefer the original over the copy, as Jean-Marie Le Pen already declared in the 1990s? So what, if anything, can we learn from these three important elections in 2018? First, the populist radical right is still on the rise in western Europe. Second, mainstream parties that co-opt the populist radical right agenda, even if they exclude the party, still lose elections. Third, the focus on socio-cultural issues – such as immigration and, to a lesser extent, European integration – helps not just the populist radical right, but also the Greens, who were the second biggest winners in both Bavaria and Flanders. Does this mean that voters prefer the original over the copy, as Jean-Marie Le Pen already declared in the 1990s? Not necessarily so. Both AfD and SD fell well below the numbers they polled several months ago, let alone in late 2016, when the EU-Turkey deal had taken the so-called “refugee crisis” off the top of the political agenda. Some defenders of the co-option strategy therefore claim that they would have done much better if the mainstream right (and sometimes left) had not moved staunchly right. Unfortunately, this is hard to disprove. The “immigration realistic” Turkey deal has clearly lowered the salience of the immigration issue, which generally leads to lower support for populist radical right parties, whose main issue is immigration. Following the same logic, focusing election campaigns of the issues of the populist radical right, and using their frames (immigration as threat), will heighten their importance and therefore strength. Even if a more anti-immigrant position will keep some voters from abandoning the center-right for the radical right, many voters are not just nativist but also populist, distrusting the mainstream parties, and therefore not open to leaving the radical right for the mainstream right. In the end, of course, the question is, or should be, a moral one. Copying the issues and frames of the populist radical right leads to populist radical right discourses and policies, whether adopted by populist radical right parties or mainstream parties. This is also the lesson of the Netherlands, where the exclusion of the PVV has not prevented the mainstream right from even further toughening immigration and integration policies. Assuming that we (still) consider both the messenger and the message as a threat to liberal democracy, “good populism” is both empirically and normatively the wrong strategy to fight “bad populism”. A version of this essay originally ran in the November/December edition of Hope not Hate Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction and The Far Right in AmericaEmiliano Sala, the Argentinian footballer who signed for Cardiff City last Saturday, was on a private plane that disappeared near the Channel Islands on Monday evening, the French civil aviation authority has said. A small plane – a Piper Malibu – travelling from Nantes to Cardiff went missing near the Casquets lighthouse, with Sala one of two people on board. A French civil aviation authority spokeswoman said: “Mr Sala was aboard this aircraft. The search for it is continuing and that is all I can say.” Cardiff’s chairman, Mehmet Dalman, said: “We are very concerned by the latest news that a light aircraft lost contact over the Channel last night. We are awaiting confirmation before we can say anything further. We are very concerned for the safety of Emiliano Sala.” The Channel Islands air search chief officer, John Fitzgerald, told the Associated Press: “After all this time the weather’s quite cold, the water is very cold out there ... I am not expecting anyone to be alive. I don’t think the coastguard are either. We just don’t know how it disappeared at the end of yesterday.” A search and rescue operation took place in the area on Monday evening amid poor conditions and continued on Tuesday. Guernsey police said planes, helicopters and lifeboats were involved in an operation carried out across more than 1,000sq miles and that visibility, which had been good, was deteriorating in the early afternoon. “UK authorities have been calling airfields on the south coast to see if it landed there,” police said. “So far we have no confirmation it did. Search continues. Decision at sunset about overnight search.” Sala completed his move from Nantes to Cardiff on Saturday but returned to France to say goodbye to his teammates. He was set to train with Cardiff for the first time on Tuesday morning and expected to make his debut against Arsenal next week. The 28-year-old, who has scored 12 goals in Ligue 1 this season, joined Cardiff for a club-record fee, believed to be £15m. Guernsey Coastguard received an alert at 8.23pm on Monday that a light aircraft had gone missing and searches were carried out until 2am, at which point conditions forced a halt. The search resumed at 8am. Police said the aircraft had requested descent on passing Guernsey but that Jersey air traffic control lost contact with it when the plane was at 2,300ft. HM Coastguard has said that the disappearance was not in its search and rescue area but that it had sent two helicopters to assist Guernsey Coastguard. Sala played youth football in Argentina, latterly at Club Proyecto Crecer, but has spent his whole senior career in France. He joined Bordeaux in 2012 and went on loan to three clubs before signing for Nantes in 2015. Nantes’ Coupe de France match against Entente Sannois Saint Gratien, due to be played on Wednesday, has been postponed, with a new date set for Sunday. One of Sala’s former clubs, Chamois Niortais, tweeted: “Tell us it’s a joke... Emi.... All the TeamChamois thinking of you.”Eating more fibre, found in wholegrain cereals, pasta and bread as well as nuts and pulses, will cut people’s chances of heart disease and early death, according to a landmark review commissioned by the World Health Organization. The authors of the review, which will inform forthcoming WHO guidelines, say their findings are good news – but incompatible with fashionable low-carb diets. The research is led by Prof Jim Mann’s team at the University of Otago in New Zealand, who also carried out the major review that informed WHO guidance on curbing sugar in the diet, leading to sugar taxes around the world. Sugar is a “bad” carbohydrate, but fibre is found in “good” carbohydrates such as wholegrain bread and oat-based muesli. However, the overwhelming backlash against sugar has led to popular diets that reject carbohydrates, including the fibrous sort that can, say the scientists, save lives. Few people in the UK (about 9%) eat as much fibre as they need, which is at least 25g to 29g, according to analysis for the World Health Organization, with over 30g probably more beneficial still. These are foods that can help. Wholegrain cereals are an obvious choice for breakfast. Oat-based muesli is good as long as it doesn’t have a lot of added sugar. Bran flakes contain about 8g of fibre in a 40g portion. They should be a bit green, said Prof John Cummings of Dundee University, one of the study authors. At that stage it is starch with fibre-like properties, he said. “As it ripens and becomes yellow and black, it becomes sugar.” There is about 3g of fibre in a medium banana. A small apple weighing around 80g has 2-3g of fibre. Thirty grams of nuts contains about 2g of fibre. This has about 2g of fibre per slice. White bread has had most of the fibre removed. “It is a no-brainer,” said Cummings. “Eat wholemeal bread.” A medium-sized potato with the skin on contains about 4g of fibre. 75g of wholewheat spaghetti contains about 8g of fibre. Beans, peas and lentils are all good sources of fibre. There is 6.8g of fibre in 150g of baked beans; 100g of boiled lentils contains 8g. Mann told the Guardian that the research “does contribute to the debate considerably. Here we have got very strong evidence that a high-fibre diet, which for the majority of people is at least high-ish in carbohydrates, has an enormous protective effect – a wide range of diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer benefit from a high-carbohydrate diet.” But he said it would not end the “diet wars”, because there were so many vested interests involved. “It’s twofold. There is the commercial vested interest, which there is an enormous amount of from chefs and celebrity chefs and so on. And there is also the professional vested interest.” This included some doctors and scientists, he said. The review found that we should be eating at least 25g to 29g of fibre a day, with indications that over 30g is even better. Most people in the world manage less than 20g. Among those who ate the most fibre, the analysis found a 15-30% reduction in deaths from all causes, as well as those related to the heart, compared with those eating the least fibre. Coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer were reduced by 16-24%. The results mean 13 fewer deaths and six fewer cases of coronary heart disease for every 1,000 people who eat high-fibre foods compared with those who do not. Minimally processed fibrous foods can also help people lose weight. “The randomised controlled trials involving an increase in the intake of whole grains showed reduction in body weight and cholesterol,” says the paper published in the Lancet medical journal. “Fibre-rich whole foods that require chewing and retain much of their structure in the gut increase satiety and help weight control and can favourably influence lipid and glucose levels,” said Mann. It was very difficult to have high levels of fibre on a low-carbohydrate diet unless you took fibre supplements, said Mann. And “there isn’t the huge body of evidence that we’re talking about” for supplements being beneficial, he said, adding that “it’s pretty well impossible” to get enough fibre from fruit and vegetables alone. John Cummings, emeritus professor of experimental gastroenterology at the University of Dundee, one of the authors, said the study was of huge importance and the conclusions should not be thought of as “just a fad”. “This is the end of 50 years of researching dietary fibre. It is a defining moment,” he said. The research brings together population epidemiological studies and feeding studies and, he said, “we now know that fibre does things in the body which give us a credible explanation for how this works”. “We need to get this written in stone and part of people’s lives.” The review found only limited evidence that diets with a low glycaemic index and low glycaemic load protected people against stroke and type 2 diabetes. Glycaemic load is a measure of how much a food will raise blood glucose levels after eating it. Low GI foods may also contain added sugars, saturated fats, and sodium, say the scientists, which makes the link less clear. The researchers investigated 185 observational studies containing data that related to 135m person years, as well as 58 clinical trials involving 4,635 adults. For every 8g increase in dietary fibre eaten per day, total deaths and incidences of coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer decreased by 5-27%. Protection against stroke and breast cancer also increased. In a comment piece in the Lancet, Prof Gary Frost from Imperial College London said the analysis “provides compelling evidence that dietary fibre and whole grain are major determinants of numerous health outcomes and should form part of public health policy”. But only 9% of the UK population eat the large amounts of fibre outlined in the paper, he said, and “public health bodies face considerable challenges altering intake at the population level”. Other scientists backed the findings and said the public should eat more fibre. “It is a concern that the fibre consumption in the UK is on average, currently much less than [30g a day]. It is also worrying that otherwise healthy consumers who try to follow popular diets low in carbohydrate will find it very difficult to achieve a healthy level of fibre intake,” said Dr Ian Johnson, emeritus fellow at the Quadram Institute Bioscience. Prof Nita Forouhi of Cambridge University’s MRC epidemiology unit said the findings “do imply that, though increasingly popular in the community at large, any dietary regimes that recommend very low-carbohydrate diets should consider the opportunity cost of missing out on fibre from whole grains”. When it came to carbohydrates, she said, “the quality matters very much, over and above the debate on quantity. Wholegrain foods are typically high in fibre, and this research provides further evidence to highlight their importance and support a shift in our diets from processed and refined foods in the food supply chain towards more fibre-rich wholegrain foods.”Alexandria Bombach’s arresting documentary raises a significant question: has our compassion on international human rights become Malala-ised? Are the west’s media and political classes able to focus their concern only when they are gallantly scandalised by the ordeal of a young woman, such as Malala Yousafzai (shot by the Taliban in revenge for campaigning for women’s education) or Nadia Murad, the heroine of this film? If so, it is putting an intolerable strain on these women, being idolised and endlessly scrutinised and asked to be the redemptive symbols of our own well-intentioned compassion. Murad is a remarkable young Iraqi woman from the Yazidi ethnic community who survived being kidnapped, beaten and repeatedly raped by Islamic State in the course of its genocidal slaughter in 2014, which wiped out much of Murad’s family. She has since become a dignified and eloquent human rights advocate, and this year was the joint winner of the Nobel peace prize. The film shows her new life of campaigning, a kind of exiled vocational statelessness – in the UN in New York, in Canada, in Germany – making speeches, attending formal events and seminars, listening courteously to interpreters, suppressing tears and enduring unimaginably crass and clumsy questioning about her experiences from TV and radio hosts. She is accompanied and protected by Murad Ismael, the director of the Yazidi charity Yazda, who is himself often on the verge of tears, and at one stage says he cannot translate a certain question for her because it is too upsetting. Nadia’s other great ally is Amal Clooney, who speaks passionately in the UN about bringing terrorists and criminals to justice. Nadia is shown always surrounded by crowds, almost crushed by them. But her utter loneliness is heartbreaking.If you think it’s tricky finding a cafe serving oat milk in modern Britain, Mahatma Gandhi offered some perspective in the first volume of his Collected Works. His essays and letters contain some of the most endearing descriptions ever written about the trials of a person attempting to feed himself without meat or eggs in a culture fixated with meat. When he arrived in England as a law student in 1888, the young Gandhi took lodgings in Brighton, having heard there was a vegetarian restaurant there, only to find that it did not exist. He ended up cooking porridge, stewed fruit and bean soup in his rented rooms. But when Gandhi got to London, he discovered a thriving vegetarian scene. Madhur Jaffrey makes eating without animal foods seem no hardship – vegan meals have long been a normal part of life Vegetarianism had a surprising flowering in late 19th-century Britain, as Colin Spencer describes in his comprehensive Vegetarianism: A History. As he recounts, there were multiple groups of campaigners in the 1880s who saw a non-animal diet as part of wider social radicalism. Many Victorian vegetarians were also pacifists or Fabians. Some of them were what Gandhi called “vegetarian extremists”, abstaining from milk and butter and well as meat. Clearly, there have been de facto vegans for a long time, but the word itself was only invented in 1944. That year, the Vegan Society broke away from the Vegetarian Society on the grounds that, as Spencer explains: “The dairy herd is inextricably mixed up with the meat industry; three-quarters of beef production stems from it, and milk production entails the removal of the calves from their mothers when they are a few days old.” On the ethics of veganism, the ur-text remains Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. Published in 1975, this fierce and brilliant work of philosophy makes uncomfortable reading for “flexitarians” like me who declare we love vegan food before eating another dish of braised lamb. In clear, logical prose, Singer argues that the suffering of animals in factory farming is real; that humans can flourish without milk or eggs; and that a non-vegan diet is therefore part of “the tyranny of human over non-human animals”. Long before the current vogue for gourmet vegan burgers and cauliflower steaks, Singer’s text inspired a generation of British vegans to forgo roast dinners in favour of nut roasts and carob-flavoured desserts. The lentil-weaving ethos of the 1970s vegan is celebrated in Joanne O’Connell’s The Homemade Vegan. This is a charming slice of social history, which recalls the experiences and recipes of those who cooked with such ingredients as tofu and cashew cream long before they were fashionable. She has gathered together period oddities such as walnut rissoles and a sort of bechamel made with wholemeal flour and margarine. If it’s truly tempting vegan food you are after, however, I would turn to Madhur Jaffrey’s 1981 classic Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, which makes eating without animal foods seem no hardship. Jaffrey shows that vegan meals have long been a normal part of life in China, India and Japan. The book does contains a chapter on eggs – but most of the recipes are simple preparations of vegetables, grains, nuts, oils and spices, with lots of aubergine recipes, including one in white miso sauce, a dish that still seems modern 38 years on. If I ever went vegan for real, this book would be my guide. • The Way We Eat Now by Bee Wilson is published by 4th Estate on 21 March.Jeremy Corbyn is poised to back a plan to block a no-deal Brexit as pressure builds within Labour and the trade unions for a delay to Britain’s EU departure. It is understood that the leader and his shadow cabinet team are preparing to support a proposal that would force Theresa May to request an extension to Britain’s EU membership should no Brexit deal be agreed by early March. The plan would need the endorsement of the Labour frontbench to have a chance of being passed when the next round of critical votes takes place next week. While no final decision has been taken, senior figures said the move was in line with Corbyn’s demand that May take a no-deal Brexit “off the table”. The deliberations come with the Brexit options narrowing for Labour’s leadership amid an internal battle over whether it should back a second referendum. Having tried and failed to secure an election, figures in the party say the choice is now between a Norway-style soft Brexit, which would effectively have to include free-movement rules, and another public vote. The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, who has been trying to keep open the option of a second vote, repeated the demand on Saturday. “A public vote has to be an option for Labour,” he told a Fabian Society conference. “After all, deeply embedded in our values are internationalism, collaboration and cooperation with our European partners.” There are also continued efforts among Labour’s overwhelmingly pro-remain membership to push it towards backing a second referendum. In a letter in the Observer, more than 170 activists call for a special party conference on Brexit to endorse the idea. “A Norway-style deal would leave a Corbyn government with no say over laws which affect us,” they write. “We therefore call on the Labour party NEC [national executive council] to call a special one-day conference to determine Labour’s position on Brexit in light of recent events.” Labour MPs are planning to ambush the leadership at a gathering of the parliamentary party a week on Monday. MPs want to force a debate at the meeting on the party’s position on a second referendum. However, several shadow ministers have told senior party figures in the last week that they would resign should the party back another referendum. “There are an awful lot of Labour MPs, even some who backed remain, who just aren’t there yet,” said a senior party source. “It is a real political problem. They might get there, but there is some way to go.” Many figures are coalescing around a delay to article 50, the legal process that dictates that Britain will leave the EU – with or without a deal – at the end of March. Writing in the Observer, Dave Prentis, the leader of Britain’s biggest union, Unison, says the time has come for a suspension of article 50. He suggests that a so-called people’s vote should be backed only if a softer Brexit cannot be agreed. “The chances of forcing an election anytime soon are receding,” he writes. “Other options now have to come into play ... It’s vital immediate steps are taken to extend article 50. Not to stop Brexit, but to ensure there’s time to force a change of government, or find a solution parliament can back. “A customs union would minimise the risk of a hard border in Northern Ireland … A Norway-like deal, allowing the UK to participate in the single market too, would further minimise the risk to our fragile economy and to employment rights.” In a sign that there is still some way to go before Labour backs a second referendum, he says such a policy should only be adopted “if other avenues fail”. Under a plan devised by the former Tory minister Nick Boles and Corbyn’s former leadership rival Yvette Cooper, parliamentary rules would be temporarily suspended, allowing parliament to pass a law forcing May to try to delay article 50 if no deal looked likely. It would require frontbench Labour support, which is now looking likely. With anger among some members about Brexit growing, several party sources suggested that Labour’s huge membership had begun to fall. Several party sources said that the number of paying members had fallen well below 500,000 – meaning tens of thousands had left. However, the suggestions were denied by a senior Labour source, who said: “We are proud of our mass and vibrant membership and claims about this sort of drop-off are just wrong.” The union movement is also split on Brexit. Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, said remaining in the EU was the “best outcome for working people”.Earlier this month, in an open letter to French citizens, President Emmanuel Macron suggested that introducing immigration quotas might help address the gilets jaunes crisis. This predictably made many on the left cringe. It also brought to mind a Hillary Clinton interview in the Guardian last year, in which she gave her views on the root cause of rightwing populism. “I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame,” she said. Clinton argued that populists should be fought on their own ground and that liberal parties should develop a tougher line on immigration. With Europe just months away from an EU parliamentary election, the urgent task is to burst the bubbles we live in As someone who took part in Macron’s presidential campaign, I beg to differ. With Europe just a few months away from a crucial EU parliamentary election in which both left and rightwing populists will seek to make gains, the urgent task that democrats and liberals must embrace is this: bursting the bubbles we live in. Understanding public opinion is incredibly difficult. In 2016 my data analysis firm helped set up Macron’s grassroots En Marche! movement, which started with the “Grande Marche”: a huge door-to-door operation, collecting the views of thousands of citizens across France. Public opinion is like an iceberg: it is easy to know what people at the tip think, mostly because they tweet, post on social media, speak on TV or write in newspapers; but it’s far more complicated to penetrate what lies below the surface, to know what the silent majority thinks. Suggesting that a tougher line on immigration could curb the rise of populism would be convincing only if immigration really was a priority for citizens who have voted for populists, or are about to do so. Yet that’s not at all what the data bears out. To get a full picture, you need to burst the separate thought bubbles we all live in, and new technologies and large-scale data collection make that possible. It’s a cliche to say that the amount of data generated online has exploded. Offline data is just as important. Conversations with people living in neighbourhoods where the share of the populist vote has dramatically risen in recent elections can deliver surprising results. A study my company helped conduct in France and Germany relied on the following principle: the best way to get people to share what’s on their mind is to ask face-to-face, open-ended and non-expert questions which anyone can answer, such as: “What works/does not work in your city/country?”, “What would you change in politics?”, “What worries you about the future?”. This is the kind of doorstepping, listening-mode fieldwork the Grande Marche initiative was based on, and which helped Macron identify the issues that mattered most to French people ahead of the 2017 presidential campaign. The key to success would be a political message that focused on convincing citizens they’d be fully taken into account, not left by the wayside. Data collected in France and Germany reveals that the reason why citizens who are drawn to populist parties hold grudges against the “media and politics”, is because they adopt an “agenda” that doesn’t at all fit their concerns. Those main concerns are “precarious working conditions, worries about money and declining social infrastructure”. Data drawn from door-to-door conversations shows that rightwing populist parties’ central anti-immigration narrative is far less prevalent among their voter base than is generally assumed. Migrants aren’t what people spontaneously mention if they’re truly asked about their lives. Rather, they complain about a lack of attention from politicians and public institutions. Voters who lean towards populist parties, whether left or right, often say they feel “abandoned”. It is true that the 2015-16 refugee crisis in Europe exacerbated a widespread sense of abandonment. But the lessons drawn from the study are clear: a growing number of citizens feel trapped, and have lost all hope that their life, and their children’s lives, will ever improve. They want politicians to listen more to them, to better understand the challenges people are confronted with, and to offer practical solutions – not scapegoats. That’s why talk of tougher immigration policies can only be shortsighted. We all form our political views within different bubbles, and in ways that can often fuel misunderstandings and polarisation. These bubbles make it impossible to build a common vision for the future. My work analysing voters’ perceptions in different European countries has convinced me that social and political bubbles are one of the largest problems we face today. This also applies to Macron’s current difficulties. He is trying to implement emergency policy measures to end the gilets jaunes crisis that has shaken his presidency – hence his two-month national grassroots consultation, launched by his open letter. Here again, it’s easy to see only the tip of the iceberg: the popular complaint against taxes and low purchasing power that lit the initial flame. Responding with tax cuts and talk of limiting immigration may only go so far. In fact it might well be the equivalent of Clinton’s ill-conceived recipe against populism. Showing a capacity to truly listen to people is more important. Macron’s challenge now is to convince citizens his “great national debate” can deliver just that. Short-term fixes won’t solve the problem of people feeling cut off from decision-makers. Sounding out the deeper layers of society, collecting data offline by taking the time to hear out citizens in a more profound way – not just through instant polling – is a better place to start. It would also help form policies that can change people’s lives for the better in the long term. If the populist danger can be averted in Europe, a key part of the solution lies not in pandering to anti-migrant slogans, but in working to burst the bubbles people are all too often locked into. • Guillaume Liegey is CEO of LMP, a Paris-based start-up that analyses public opinionGreg Gilbert should have been having the time of his life. It was 2014 and his band, Delays, were touring the country to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut album, Faded Seaside Glamour, which had made indie stars of them in the noughties. He had also just become a father and was engaged to his partner, Stacey. But Gilbert was not having the time of his life. He was in almost constant pain – “pain I can’t even describe”. His weight had dropped to 8st and he was beset by anxiety so extreme that he could not contemplate taking medicine, let alone getting himself checked out properly. “The only thing I would take is peppermint capsules,” he says. “I realise now that I was taking peppermint capsules to try to treat bowel cancer.” By the time Gilbert arrived in hospital – a full two years later, after his family had intervened and called an ambulance – he was barely functioning. He went for an x-ray and afterwards, the surgeon drew the curtain around the bed and sat down beside him. Gilbert noticed he’d changed out of his scrubs into more formal shirt and trousers. “There’s nothing we can do,” the surgeon said. Gilbert was told that not only did he have bowel cancer, it had also spread to his lungs. He asked how long he had left, but the surgeon couldn’t say. He asked how it had happened. You’re just unlucky, he was told. “Then my mind did a bunch of strange things,” says Gilbert. “I felt an interconnectedness between everything. I turned to Stace and said, ‘Wherever I’m going, we’re all going.’ And in that moment, I went with it.” The moment you’re told you have cancer, they say, marks the end of one life and the start of another. As Gilbert puts it, in one of his written recollections of the experience, your life will “shift like a train on rails” as you watch your “other, previous life drift over there out of sight”. But these changes needn’t be completely negative: for Gilbert, his diagnosis sparked an artistic journey in which drawing, painting and poetry became an all-consuming way of coping. “I’ve got a million half-written novels I always wanted to write,” he says. “But when this happened, I realised this was the subject.” I meet Gilbert in the cafe of Southampton’s Waterstones. This is where he now spends most of his working hours. Being there, rather than at home, keeps his mind on his work and stops him “getting overwhelmed and going off down a rabbit hole”. He looks a little drawn and apologises for some chemo-related indigestion, but other than that you’d hardly guess he was sick at all. The drawings started pretty much the day after his diagnosis. Gilbert had always sketched: he studied at Winchester Art School before forming Delays and while in the band gained acclaim for his miniature Biro drawings. But now the art tumbled out of him: hospital beds, strange Henry Moore-type figures, anything to make some sort of sense out of his situation. The morphine helped to relax his brain, allowing him to experiment wildly, and the results are about to go on display at Southampton City Art Gallery, to complement its show Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing. In one scene, a man slumps on a chair, impaled by spikes, while tiny people try to sew him back together. Another shows a figure in a kitchen, unable to cope with the dishes while wolves gnaw on its hands. Yet Gilbert does not believe these images are as dark as they appear. “A lot of them were versions of dreams I had,” he says. “But even if they were nightmares, I still found great comfort in dreaming. Because time was open-ended there: it lasted for ever, which was very at odds with how I was feeling day to day.” Gilbert also began writing poems: some were stream-of-consciousness stories that mirrored the information-overload of diagnosis, others memories of his daughters condensed into short verses. As with the art – and his favourite Delays songs – they came quickly, pouring out of him while he sat by the fire one night. He was drawn to such writers as James Joyce, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, and the painter Paul Nash. “You can see that those people suffered,” he explains. “I found a weight there I wanted to access – and find my own equivalent.” Some of the art depicts Gilbert as bruised, battered and vulnerable – a direct contrast, he says, to his years in a band, where photoshoots and videos would appeal to his vanity. “In hospital, your dignity is gone. You are just undone, hoping to be somehow saved and put back together.” The GoFundMe page launched by his wife broke the site's record Not long after Gilbert was first diagnosed, a chink of light emerged. The surgeon might have been speaking honestly when he said there was nothing he could do – but there were things that oncologists could try. Gilbert underwent intense chemotherapy, losing his hair and enduring extreme fatigue. Scans showed that this had been effective, but Gilbert’s consultant warned that the cancer, which had progressed to stage four, was likely to return. A Harley Street specialist suggested he take a new drug called Avastin. But it was not available on the NHS, and was ruinously expensive. Gilbert and his family discussed how to fund it. Stacey suggested appealing for donations on social media, but Gilbert wasn’t keen. “I tried to talk her out of it,” he says, “purely because I didn’t think it would do anything. And I didn’t want her to be disappointed.” Stacey didn’t heed his advice. The GoFundMe page she created became its fastest ever campaign to reach the £100,000 mark. Today the sum stands at £213,000, meaning Gilbert has been able to treat himself with Avastin, among other things. There are three events in his life that have seemed supernatural to him: the birth of his kids, the cancer diagnosis and the flurry of goodwill for his cause that left him astounded. “I still don’t think I’ve been able to express enough gratitude,” he says. “I knew we had a wonderful core of fans. I never in a million years thought this could happen.” I remember seeing the GoFundMe page just before Christmas. The news knocked me sideways. I’d known Gilbert and the band from my days as an NME writer, and they’d always been an especially likable bunch. I’d also just had a child myself, so the picture of Gilbert, Stacey and their girls was a bit like looking directly into some grim parallel universe. The thought of having to deal with cancer at what should have been such a happy time was hard to comprehend. Yet I would soon get to comprehend it only too well. A year later, I was also diagnosed with cancer – in my case, a blood cancer. I was told my situation was critical and that I might not see 2019. Gilbert’s poetry felt eerily relatable: the stress of waiting for results; the alien environment of endless hospitals; the strange sense of detachment that can occur while watching your children during poignant moments and you find yourself wondering: will this be the last time I get to see this? I was particularly struck by A Pact With God (One Year Since Prognosis): Give me 10 yearsTo know my girls and do the thingsI’ve not yet thought of and, for my part,I’ll try not to doubt. It’s a deal Gilbert regrets ever making. Now two years into the decade, he wonders if he asked for too little. “And also – who am I having the dialogue with?” he laughs. “As much as I want to refute and deny religiosity, there’s a part of me that contemplates it.” While the physical side-effects of chemo were one thing (“Like autumn, eyelashes / Land on my sketches”), the psychological fear of flooding his body with toxins had an even more profound effect. “It’s like an alien thing pulsing around you. I had to find a way to mentally own it, to think of it as working with me.” In his poem Creating An Image to Focus On During the First Bout of Chemotherapy, he reinvents the treatment as: A silver Cossack armyWielding scimitars, the tumoursA petrified forest; the bladesBreak on it as a chiming whorlOf flashing sickle moons. Carol Ann Duffy chose Gilbert’s poems for one of her four annual laureate’s choice publications. It is due in February, around the same time as the exhibition. This leaves Gilbert in a peculiar position. It’s an exciting time for him professionally but one still fraught with anxiety. His latest scan results are due just before that date, and nobody knows what they will hold. Before his scan he will read a passage from Don Quixote, and he’ll be taking along his copy of Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov – two superstitions he’s acquired since the diagnosis. Even if Gilbert’s cancer can be kept under control, it’s possible any future chemo will cause neuropathy, damaging his hands and potentially halting his means of making art. It’s no coincidence that the wolves in the artwork were devouring his creative outlet. Yet he remains positive. The anxieties that dictated his life before cancer no longer do so. In many ways, he has become happier. He’s reading voraciously (with around 35 books on the go, many of them dense philosophical texts) and learning to enjoy life in the moment. This can be tiring: sometimes, he says, he’d like to drift away and think about what his life might be like as an old man, living by the sea. Although he struggles to sing, he says that Delays have two or three albums worth of material written and waiting for him if he can summon up the energy. Will the songs tackle what he’s been through? “They have to. Lyrically, we’ve always been a bit obscure. But I feel what I’m going through is too valuable to obscure.” When Gilbert was at his lowest, believing his cancer was terminal and that he might only have months to live, he captured the feeling in this short, beautiful poem: Death makes a crown of love,A mantle to take across the thresholdAs a sign of accomplished living:You are loved,You have loved,You have lived. It’s one I was particularly drawn to during my bleaker moments (thankfully, my own prognosis has since been revised to a far more positive one). As with all Gilbert’s work, it’s unflinching – and he admits to being nervous about his loved ones reading it. “I don’t really want them to,” he says, “because in the nicest possible way, it’s not for them.” So who is it for? He thinks for a moment. “I just wanted to be utterly raw, to present rock-bottom, and hopefully map a certain elevation that might come after. If anybody in a similar situation can get comfort from that, you can’t ask for more.” • Greg Gilbert’s drawings are at Southampton City Art Gallery from 1 February until 6 May. His poetry collection Love Makes A Mess Of Dying is available to pre-order through The Poetry BusinessThe participants of Guardian Weekend’s most recent Blind Date column, Joanne and Morgan, got more than they bargained for after a highly successful evening out propelled the pair into the public eye. Describing how they bonded over pasta and negronis at an east London restaurant before gatecrashing the “fateful house party”, Joanne said the evening’s awkward moment came for her when she had to flee the party “leaving my knickers behind”. The date, during which the pair both texted friends to say how brilliant the other was, became an internet hit, with readers tweeting in celebration. The former government minister Ed Balls tweeted: “I always love this column – especially ‘Marks out of 10’ – but this one is the BEST ONE EVER !!” The comedian Nish Kumar wrote: “Surely someone has to buy the film rights to this column … They’re the best.” Joanne said on Sunday that the pair had met since, and would continue to see each other. “We will see each other more, of course we will,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live. However, when asked whether it would lead to a blind date wedding, she said: “I don’t believe in marriage as a construct … [but] after I’ve finished my pottery course we’re going to be in a full-time relationship.” Joanne and Morgan's @guardian blind date was called 'the best date ever' by lots of you. ❤️🙌But what happened next? We caught up with one of them to find out...#5LiveBreakfast | #blinddate pic.twitter.com/ikzet1LwGv Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley, a lecturer in 20th-century British history at Southampton University, tweeted: “I spent some time reassuring someone the other day that being in your twenties is always terrible and life gets a lot better in your thirties, then read this and remembered no, actually, your twenties are HILARIOUS.” Celebrities expressed their joy after reading the article over the weekend. “This is everything,” the BBC Radio 2 DJ Sara Cox tweeted. “The funniest most joyful Blind Date ever.” The column was also the subject of an in-depth review by a GQ columnist, Justin Myers, who wrote. “And this is why, in 2019 – Plenty Nineteen? – with all those struggles ahead of us and no end in sight, we have two women out on a date who have decided, ‘fuck it, the world is a spinning dumpster and I can either be mere kindling for its fire or I can be accelerant and go out with a bang’.”Two years ago, Pisey Eng left her young son in the care of her mother-in-law and came to Japan to start a job she was told would pay her a decent wage and teach her skills that would serve her well back home in Cambodia. Despite having been told she would receive 120,000 yen ($1,100) a month – a far bigger salary than she could have expected in Cambodia – Eng, 33, found herself working punishing hours ironing and packing in a garment factory for just half of what she was promised. Months after fleeing her workplace in despair, she is jobless, homeless and unable to afford the airfare home. “I started work at 8.30am and sometimes I continued working until one, two or three o’clock in the morning,” said Eng, who was part of the Japanese government’s technical intern training programme, a scheme launched in 1993 to offer on-the-job training to young men and women from developing countries. “I didn’t have any holidays; I became ill and had no appetite.” The expected arrival of large numbers of foreign, blue-collar workers in Japan over the coming five years has raised fears of a sharp rise in incidences of exploitation of the kind experienced by Eng. In December, the country’s parliament passed legislation that will soon open the door to an estimated 345,000 thousand foreign workers, in what is being called the end of Japan’s traditional opposition to large-scale immigration. The world’s third-biggest economy is battling its tightest labour shortage in decades due to its low birthrate and rapidly ageing society. Unemployment is at its lowest level since the early 1990s, and last year job availability rose to its highest in 44 years, with 150 jobs open to every 100 people seeking work. I couldn’t take any holidays, even when my Japanese coworkers were taking them Critics say the government has not done enough to prevent employers from using the change to secure cheap labour, amid evidence that many pay existing foreign workers below the going rate and force them to work long hours. “There is a risk that the same abuse will be repeated with the new intake from next year, so there must be an acknowledgement that the existing programme has been a failure,” said Shoichi Ibusuki, a lawyer who helps abused foreign workers. “It’s vitally important to stamp out human rights violations.” A labour ministry investigation found that of the 6,000 firms that hire a total of 260,000 technical trainees, about 70% had broken labour regulations on illegal and unpaid overtime. Last year, more than 7,000 interns fled from their workplaces, with most citing low wages and long hours. Others were physically abused, while in some cases pregnant trainees were forced to choose between having an abortion or leaving their job, according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Soon after parliament approved the immigration change, the justice ministry revealed that 174 technical trainees, mostly people in their 20s and 30s from China, Vietnam and Indonesia, had died between 2010 and 2017. The majority had died in workplace accents, while 13 had committed suicide. Others had suffered heart attacks and strokes, both of which are associated with karoshi, or death from overwork. In December the Japanese government approved measures it claimed would prevent the abuse suffered by existing technical trainees. It pledged to offer “proper” working conditions to new workers, including fair pay and hours, adding that it would cooperate with other countries to prevent brokers from collecting fees from workers before they arrive in Japan. Eng’s hourly overtime rate of 300 yen to 500 yen ($2.70-$4.50) was far lower than the 800 yen minimum wage in Gifu, the central Japanese prefecture where her workplace was located. “I couldn’t take any holidays, even when my Japanese coworkers were taking them,” she said. Her plight has been worsened by the $4,000 debt she has to repay to the Cambodian company that brokered her placement in Japan, while her former employer in Japan told labour inspection officials that she had lied about her poor working conditions. According to Ibusuki, many trainees are deeply indebted to brokers in their home countries before they even set foot in Japan. “Once they’re here they are reluctant to speak out and continue to work in illegal conditions because they know they have to pay back the original sum,” he said. Eng, who now lives in a shelter with 15 other foreign trainees, is counting the days until she can be reunited with her eight-year-old son in Cambodia. “I feel very sad, because I have no work and no money, all because of the problems I had with my employer,” she said. “Now I just want to go home and take care of my son.”It has been a season to remember for the Women’s Big Bash League as the competition heads into its fourth finals series this weekend. With the state of men’s cricket in disarray and the BBL’s longer format leading to a slight downturn in crowd numbers and television ratings, the WBBL has taken the opportunity and run with it. TV ratings have been encouraging – a number of matches over Christmas have drawn viewer numbers of close to 300,000. Even matches shown only on pay television have drawn steady numbers of 50,000 per game. With the competition moving to a standalone format to be played from October to early December this year, these are promising signs for the future. This season has also marked the start of the two NSW teams – the Sixers and Thunder – charging entry fees at suburban grounds for WBBL matches. It was a fraught decision and the new direction taken could have gone either way, but Sixers general manager, Jodie Hawkins is certain it was the right one for her team. “We thought it was time for to charge for an elite level product,” she said. “There has been great interest in it as a free-of-charge product, but people expect to pay for quality entertainment and we felt that it was time that the WBBL received that recognition.” Most pleasingly for Hawkins has been the reaction of the public. “We’ve had zero negative feedback on charging for tickets,” she said. “The feedback we’ve received has all been really positive and people have shown that by their attendance. We get 1,000 most days and 3,700 for the derby at North Sydney. We choose grounds that have great wickets to play on, which is obviously really important for the game, but that are also great from a fan engagement point of view.” That engagement and creating the matchday experience is where the WBBL has really been able to set itself apart from its male counterpart. While casual fans may be driven to the excitement, pyrotechnics and loud music of a BBL match, many cricket fans prefer a more mellow vibe and the WBBL offers that. With its summer afternoon matches in suburban grounds full of picnic blankets on lush green hills, kids starting up their own mini-matches around the perimeter and old-fashioned canteens serving sausage sandwiches, it’s a far cry from the modern sporting experience. It’s a perfectly idealised version of cricket watching that older generations are delighting in introducing their children and grandchildren to. But it’s not just the atmosphere that’s turning the heads of the Australian public – the players have been in fine form as well. Sixers captain Ellyse Perry last weekend became the first Big Bash player (male or female) to reach 2,000 runs. Her achievement is incredible considering the men’s competition began four seasons before the women’s and her runs have come from only 58 innings. This season has also been the all-rounder’s best with the ball, taking nine wickets so far, four more than she did in the 2017-18 season. And while Perry’s form has been attracting the most media attention, there has been no shortage of excellence throughout the competition. Perry’s teammate Alyssa Healy, as well as the Adelaide Strikers pair of Sophie Devine and Suzie Bates, have also been piling on the runs. The Perth Scorchers’ Heather Graham has taken 22 wickets across her 14 games this season, while three wicketkeepers – Healy, the Hobart Hurricanes’ Georgia Redmayne and the Brisbane Heat’s Beth Mooney all sit at 15 dismissals. With the competition pumping out both excellence and nostalgic summer picnics in equal measures, the introduction of the standalone season looks like it will be just what is needed to boost the WBBL to new heights. Hawkins agrees, but is aware of the challenges that lay ahead with bringing the competition forward, out of the school holidays and summer break. “In Sydney we know that people don’t think really about cricket until the Test rolls around, she said. “So there’s going to be some behavioural change that we’re going to need to drive. But we’ve built some really good will around the WBBL that I think people will naturally come with us. It’s a really exciting opportunity for us to see how it builds over the next five years and what it’s going to become. We want it to be the kickstarter of the summer of cricket in this country and it’s the perfect vehicle to do it with.” It’s likely to be an uphill battle, but no doubt one this elite group of athletes is ready for. The opportunity to flourish away from the dramas of the men’s game is integral to the growth of the competition and women’s sport more broadly.Nancy Pelosi has told Donald Trump she will block him from delivering his State of the Union address in the House chamber until the government has reopened. “I am writing to inform you that the House of Representatives will not consider a concurrent resolution authorizing the president’s State of the Union address in the House chamber until government has opened,” the House speaker wrote in a letter to the US president on Wednesday. “I look forward to welcoming you to the House on a mutually agreeable date for this address when government has been opened.” Passage of a resolution is required before the president can speak in the House. The speech had been set for 29 January. The president told reporters he was “not surprised” by Pelosi’s decision not to authorize his State of the Union address during the shutdown. “It’s really a shame what’s happening with the Democrats. They’ve become radicalized,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They don’t want to see crime stopped, which we could very easily do on the southern border. He added of the shutdown: “This will go on for a while.” Trump had previously all but dared Pelosi to uninvite him in a letter released by the White House earlier on Wednesday, in which the president said he was “looking forward” to giving the speech, an annual event in American politics. “It would be so very sad for our country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!” Trump wrote. The longest shutdown in US history has now dragged on into its second month. The partial shutdown affects about 25% of the federal government, has left 800,000 government workers without pay cheques and has had a damaging effect on a range of agencies and services from the IRS to the FBI and national parks. Pelosi urged the president last week to postpone the event, citing security concerns amid the shutdown. She said Trump could otherwise deliver his speech in writing. In a tit-for-tat response, Trump cancelled a congressional delegation, led by Pelosi, to Afghanistan, marking an escalation of the standoff between the two sides. They remain locked in an increasingly personal standoff over Trump’s demand for $5.7bn in funding for his border wall, which forced the shutdown. The president cannot speak in front of a joint session of Congress without both chambers’ explicit permission. A resolution needs to be approved by both chambers specifying the date and time for receiving an address from the president. The Republican leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, said the address should be “in the House chamber as we have always done. This is not the time to play politics.” Trump said the homeland security department and the Secret Service assured him there would be “absolutely no problem regarding security” for the State of the Union and “they have since confirmed this publicly”. Officials have been considering potential alternative venues for the 29 January speech, including a rally-style event, an Oval Office address – as Pelosi previously suggested – a speech in the Senate chamber, and even a visit to the Mexican border. Multiple versions of the speech are being drafted to suit the final venue. The constitution states only that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the State of the Union”, meaning the president can speak anywhere he chooses or give his update in writing. But a joint address in the House chamber, in front of lawmakers from both parties, the supreme court justices and invited guests, provides the kind of grand backdrop that is hard to mimic and that this president, especially, enjoys.Iranian authorities arrested more than 7,000 dissidents last year in a sweeping crackdown that led to hundreds being jailed or flogged, at least 26 protesters being killed, and nine people dying in custody amid suspicious circumstances, according to Amnesty International. Those rounded up during violent dispersals of peaceful protests in what Amnesty called “a year of shame for Iran” included journalists, lawyers, minority rights activists and women who protested against being forced to wear headscarves. Iranian authorities beat unarmed protesters and used live ammunition, teargas and water cannon throughout the year – particularly in January, July and August – with thousands arbitrarily arrested and detained, new figures assert. “2018 will go down in history as a year of shame for Iran,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East research and advocacy director. “The staggering scale of arrests, imprisonments and flogging sentences reveal the extreme lengths the authorities have gone to in order to suppress peaceful dissent. “From underpaid teachers to factory workers struggling to feed their families, those who have dared to demand their rights in Iran today have paid a heavy price. Throughout 2018, the Iranian authorities waged a particularly sinister crackdown against women’s rights defenders. Governments which are engaged in dialogue with Iran must not stay silent while the net of repression rapidly widens.” At least 112 women human rights defenders were arrested or remained in detention in Iran last year following sustained protests against compulsory veiling. Women silently waved their headscarves on sticks in public, provoking a violent response and a number of “grossly unfair” trials that led to some being jailed. Shaparak Shajarizadeh fled Iran after she was released from prison on bail following her peaceful protest in January. She has since claimed that she was placed in solitary confinement and tortured during a custodial sentence that could have lasted up to 20 years. Her lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, was herself arrested in June and faces several charges related to national security for defending those protesting against forced hijab-wearing. She is already serving a five-year sentence for campaigning against the death penalty. Throughout the year, 11 lawyers, 50 media workers and 91 students were also detained arbitrarily, with at least 20 media workers sentenced to long jail sentences or flogging after unfair trials, according to Amnesty. One journalist, Mohammad Hossein Sodagar, from the Azerbaijani Turkic ethnic minority, was flogged 74 times after his conviction for “spreading lies”, Amnesty said. Another media worker, Mostafa Abdi, who works for the Majzooban-e-Noor website, which reports on human rights abuses against the Gonabadi Dervish religious minority, was sentenced to 26 years and three months in jail and 148 lashes. Amid a deepening economic crisis in the Middle East country that triggered worker-led protests that were brutally suppressed, Amnesty said Iran also intensified its discriminatory crackdown against religious and ethnic minorities, limiting their access to education, employment and other services. At least 63 environmental activists and researchers were reportedly arrested in 2018. They stand accused, without evidence, of collecting classified information about Iran’s strategic areas under the pretext of carrying out environmental and scientific projects. At least five were charged with “corruption on earth”, a crime punishable by death.Abba fans will have to wait a little longer for the group’s first new music in 35 years, with the release now scheduled for the second half of 2019. In April last year, it was announced that the superstar pop quartet had reconvened in the studio for the first time since their split in 1983, as they prepared a tour in which their music will be performed by virtual reality avatars. “It was like time had stood still and we had only been away on a short holiday,” they said in a statement. “An extremely joyful experience!” They recorded two new songs, one of which was due to air in a TV special in December 2018. But the release was pushed back initially to early 2019, with the group’s Benny Andersson saying: “I think we are talking about the beginning of next year now.” A representative for the group has now told Variety there will be “no release before the summer ... Hopefully this fall.” Andersson has recently hinted at legal troubles holding up the release, saying in an interview: “We are still trying to establish the agreement that needs to be done to be able to continue.” Hinting at the sound of the tracks, he has said: “I am very proud of both songs. One is like a pop song from the 70s. The other one is kind of timeless.” He has also said there was the possibility of the group reconvening to record a third song this year. Dates for the avatar tour have not yet been announced, though demand is likely to be high because Abba’s music continues to be hugely popular. The sequel to their jukebox musical film Mamma Mia! grossed $394m worldwide, $84m of that coming from the UK, where it was the second-highest-grossing film of 2018 after Avengers: Infinity War.This picture has actually lost me a few jobs. Plus I think I might even have lost a flat because of it. I was looking at a property and was chatting to the estate agent and told them that I’d recently shot David Cameron. We put an offer in – for the asking price – but it was turned down. So yes, I do suspect people don’t like David Cameron. But when you shoot someone like Cameron, though, you have to remain neutral. If you turn up thinking too many things then you’ll inevitably forget something, or position the lighting wrong, and the subject will get irritated. You have to go in with clarity. Whether you’re a former prime minister or a bus driver, I’ll always have the same clarity of thought. The photograph came about as part of a project I was working on, aiming to capture interesting faces in the style of artists such as Holbein and Caravaggio. It took place in Cameron’s office, almost exactly one year after his resignation. My degree is in medieval history, and so shooting people who are part of our history like this gives me an excuse to touch history. As a sitter he proved to be a darling. You have to separate the politics from the person – and he was a charming chap He arrived in his gym clothing, which was rather funny, and he was worried he looked a bit pasty. I explained my ideas, and about how I wanted to capture this sort of meditative statesman feeling. I wanted a sense of looking backwards at the current political situation. I was worried that Cameron might be a difficult person to photograph, but as a sitter he proved to be a darling. He had a lot of patience. You have to separate politics from the person, and he was a charming chap. I knew the public would be wondering, what is he thinking? That’s why I wanted him in this pose, shot in profile. There are no other pictures of Cameron like this – the others normally capture the signature “call me Dave” look. But now he’s not in power he can afford to show more emotion and try different poses. I do think the contemplation was genuine. I’ve worked with a lot of actors in Los Angeles so I know what faking it looks like. I’ve also worked with many politicians, both Conservative and Labour, and when I ask for a certain look, some of them can turn around instantly with that expression. But David seemed to me a genuine guy, a family man, who had a real sense of the seriousness of office. Did I sense any regret about the situation he’d left behind? Not really. However, I never mentioned the B-word during the half hour we had for the sitting. I decided that wouldn’t have been a good idea. But he seemed very happy to talk about other things throughout his career. He told me that the most interesting place he’d visited was Libya after Gaddafi. I went with a fading blue backdrop – you can see that as the European flag fading away, or as the blue of Conservatism I was inspired by Sir James Guthrie, the realist painter who depicted a lot of politicians straight after the first world war. They’d experienced all that horror and history, and he captured that moment. Backdrops are important for me. Guthrie painted in a muddy brown, suggestive of the trenches. I went with a fading blue backdrop. You can interpret that as the European flag fading away, or simply as the blue of Conservatism. I’m a realist photographer so I like to capture everything – the grey hairs, blotchy skin, all the details and lines. I want to say – this was the true image of David Cameron at this moment in history. He’s not the first leader I’ve photographed – I did John Major back in 2017 for another project. When I went to shoot him there was a sense of betrayal there. It was in his mouth, in his breath. But with David there was not that sense. He was energetic, almost raring to go. There was a restlessness I could really sense. I think he wants to return after this Brexit situation is resolved. I think he’ll be back. Born: Chester, 1982.Training: King’s College London.Influences: Caravaggio, Titian, Ribera, HolbeinHigh point: ‘Sir Patrick Stewart portrait sitting, New York.’Low point: ‘Not picking up a camera after I graduated.’Top tip: ‘Direction, direction, direction: break the ice with your subjects.’Not long after Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel, Donald Trump declared it would be a “violation” for the investigation to touch the Trump Organization or his family finances. Pressed on whether he would fire Mueller if that line were crossed, Trump said: “I can’t answer that question because I don’t think it’s going to happen.” Now, it looks like it is going to happen. But the public face of the investigation of Trump’s finances won’t be Mueller. Leading the charge will be someone Trump cannot fire: California congressman Adam Schiff, newly installed chairman of the House intelligence committee and a former federal prosecutor himself. With Democrats having taken over the House, Trump faces a pack of potential antagonists. Newly installed chairs are ramping up plans to scrutinize corruption inside the Trump administration, investigate alleged attempts to profit from the presidency, and to review policies such as family border separations. But most threatening for Trump personally might be the investigations led by Schiff, who has said he plans to drive directly at an area the president has sought to fence off: the details of his businesses, his lenders, and his partners in the US and abroad. “First and foremost, I would say that we need to get to the bottom of anything that could warp our national security policy in a way that is antithetical to the interest of the country,” Schiff told the Lawfare podcast. “So anything that has a continuing ability to influence the actions of the president, we need to know, as policymakers, to protect the country. “One of the issues that has continued to concern me are the persistent allegations that the Trumps, when they couldn’t get money from US banks, were laundering Russian money. If that is true, that would be more powerful compromise than any salacious video tape or any aborted Trump tower deal.” Schiff might break new ground by using his power to subpoena documents from banks, phone companies or other sources, said Andy Wright, a former counsel to the House oversight committee and founding editor of the Just Security blog. “I think that there’s actually going to be quite a bit of fruitful evidence turned up,” Wright said. “I don’t know what the evidence is, whether it’s going to be incriminating or not. But I don’t think that the sort of conventional wisdom, that Trump’s just going to drag his feet or strike a ‘warlike posture’, is going to be that effective, because the smart investigators aren’t going to go directly at him. They’re going to go to third parties first.” One of the first matters he plans to investigate, Schiff told NBC last month, is the Trump Organization’s relationship with Deutsche Bank, for a time reportedly Trump’s exclusive lender, which was fined $700m in 2017 for allowing money laundering. “The concern about Deutsche Bank is that they have a history of laundering Russian money,” Schiff said. “And this, apparently, was the one bank that was willing to do business with the Trump Organization. If this is a form of compromise, it needs to be exposed.” A graduate of Stanford and Harvard, Schiff, 58, began his career as an assistant US attorney in the Los Angeles district, where he successfully prosecuted Richard Miller, the first FBI agent to be convicted of espionage. As a young politician, Schiff was cultivated by Nancy Pelosi, then head of California’s congressional delegation, now, again, speaker of the House. Schiff is a triathlete, a screenwriter and a vegan. He also likes to go on television, where he has caught the attention of the president, who last year responded to a critique with a tweet mocking the congressman’s last name and floating a misleading notion about the statute governing the special counsel: So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate! While Schiff has shown he can fire back at Trump, he will need to steer clear of such partisan warfare to be an effective committee chairman, said Jamil N Jaffer, founder of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and a former senior counsel to the committee Schiff now leads. “Schiff has an opportunity now to try and change that tone, because as the chairman he can set the tone,” Jaffer said. “We’ll see if he’s able to do that successfully. We’re in a very nasty environment in Washington DC right now. The atmosphere is poisonous after the 2016 election. Everyone has a responsibility to get past that.” Schiff takes over a committee that has been badly tarnished in the eyes of the public and, significantly, in the regard of the intelligence community. Under Devin Nunes, a Trump confidant who served on the transition team, the committee raised hackles by releasing classified material describing scrutiny of a former Trump aide. Schiff has called the episode “a spectacular breach of a compact we have with the intelligence community” and said “we’re going to have to restore that”. “If the committee does its job in the right manner, it shouldn’t be antagonistic to any particular president or the executive branch generally,” Jaffer said. “It should be doing good, effective oversight.” Under Nunes, the committee ended conversations with the special counsel’s office about what witnesses might be called and other matters. Schiff has said he will restore that communication. On Sunday, he told CNN the committee would be handing over transcripts of closed-door testimony, something Republican leaders did not do. Schiff did not name names but such a move could place in jeopardy Trump aides including Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Roger Stone. But the role of Congress is fundamentally different from the special counsel’s job, Schiff told Lawfare, especially given concerns that a report issued by Mueller might in some way be suppressed in a justice department run by Whitaker, apparently a staunch Trump loyalist. “I think ultimately it will fall on Congress to make sure that the American people will get to hear the full story,” Schiff said. “Either through our own investigation or Bob Mueller’s or a combination of both. “The American people have the right to know, and I think in many cases the need to know, what happened.”The countdown to the US 2020 election has only just begun, but it’s already starting to look like a hellish repeat of 2016. On Monday, senator Elizabeth Warren became the first major Democrat to announce her intention to run for president. As you may be aware, Warren is a woman, which means that it is basically illegal not to compare her with Hillary Clinton, despite the two being very different politicians. It is also mandatory to analyse her “likability”, which we all know is the most important issue when it comes to female candidates. Indeed, less than 24 hours after Warren had announced her bid, Politico published a story headlined “Warren battles the ghosts of Hillary”. They publicised the story with a widely derided tweet, asking: “How does Elizabeth Warren avoid a Clinton redux – written off as too unlikable before her campaign gets off the ground?” I’ll tell you how Warren avoids a Clinton redux. It’s actually very simple: the media focuses on the issues the Massachusetts senator stands for instead of fixating on her “likability”. The media stops using “likability” as lazy shorthand for: “Is the US too misogynistic to vote in a female president?” The media stops perpetuating the narrative that powerful women are unlikable. The media starts treating her as a candidate, rather than a female candidate. This isn’t to say that Warren’s gender doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But there are ways to write about that without perpetuating sexist tropes. There are ways to address that without making her gender overshadow her policies. And there are ways to talk about that without making her gender more of an issue than it actually is. Let’s not forget, after all, that despite Clinton’s supposed unlikability, she won the popular vote. She got almost 3m more votes than Donald Trump; the largest ever total among a losing candidate. Despite her supposed unlikability, more Americans wanted her to be president than Trump. Let’s also not forget that a record number of women and minorities were elected in last year’s midterms. On Thursday, the first day of congress, the halls of power in DC became more diverse than they have ever been. A record 102 women are now in the House of Representatives, and more than a third of these are serving for the first time. US voters have shown they are very capable of finding women likable enough to vote for; the media, on the other hand, seems to have a hard time coming to terms with this. I know it’s fun to blame all the ills of the world on Russia, but it wasn’t just Russia that put Trump in the White House. The media played a significant part; one I don’t think it takes enough responsibility for. Trump got billions of dollars in free coverage, with the press obsessing about his every inconsequential word. The press helped turned him from a joke into a viable candidate. At the same time, the media helped stoke vitriol towards Clinton. They helped turn her from a viable candidate into a caricature of a nasty woman. The way in which the media is already seizing on Warren’s likability suggests that, unfortunately, we might not have learned very much from 2016. The Politico article, by the way, didn’t go unnoticed by Warren’s campaign team, who quickly leveraged it for a fundraising email. “If you get frustrated when commentators spend more time covering Elizabeth or any woman’s ‘likability’ than her plans ... do something productive about it,” the email read. It would be productive, I think, for the media to take that advice to heart. • Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnistGood morning, I’m Warren Murray – here’s some news to quickly wolf down with your jam on toast. Theresa May has set herself the improbable task of renegotiating the Irish border backstop with the European Union after MPs narrowly passed a government-backed amendment promising to replace it with unspecified “alternative arrangements”. One other amendment was passed – rejecting a no-deal Brexit, but only in principle – while a string of others were either voted down, withdrawn or not selected, including motions to delay Brexit, kill off the threat of no deal, or call a second referendum. May insisted: “It is now clear that there is a route that can secure a substantial and sustainable majority in this house for leaving the EU, with a deal.” But within minutes of the Commons result the European council president, Donald Tusk, declared: “The backstop is part of the withdrawal agreement, and the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” May’s acceptance of the “Brady amendment” to replace the backstop is being criticised as an appeasement of Tory hardliners rather than a tactical masterstroke. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said he would meet May, having refused to do so for a fortnight, because “parliament has voted to remove the immediate threat of crashing out without a deal on 29 March”. May told MPs she would try to bring back a renegotiated deal for a “meaningful vote” on or before 13 February, but if she does not manage to do so, the government will table a statement about what it plans to do next and allow MPs to vote on it on Valentine’s Day. On financial markets, the pound fell as traders took fright at parliament failing to neutralise the threat of no deal. You can keep following all the latest movements in today’s Politics Live blog. ‘A moment of reflection’ – The children’s commissioner for England has criticised social media companies for hosting the kind of “horrific” content implicated in the suicide of Molly Russell, 14. “I would appeal to you to accept there are problems and to commit to tackling them – or admit publicly that you are unable to,” wrote Anne Longfield in an open letter to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Pinterest and Snapchat. Longfield has called for an independent “digital ombudsman” to ensure companies protect young children and speed up the removal of disturbing material. Midweek catch-up – Let’s get you up to speed on some rolling stories of the week. > Fiona Onasanya, the MP given three months’ jail for lying to avoid a speeding ticket, is resisting calls to resign her Commons seat. It may be possible for constituents to remove her with a recall petition. > The French government faces calls to ban police from using explosive weapons after lawyers said gilets jaunes protesters have lost eyes and sustained other lifelong injuries from handheld rubber-bullet launchers and so-called “sting-ball” grenades. > Venezuela’s supreme court has placed self-declared interim president Juan Guaidó under a travel ban and frozen his bank accounts. Demonstrations are expected today against President Nicolás Maduro, whose rule has brought the country to crisis. > A court case is under way that could overturn Northern Ireland’s abortion ban. It is being brought by Sarah Ewart, who had to get a loan for a termination in England after finding out her unborn child had a fatal defect. > Apple took days to respond to the FaceTime eavesdropping flaw after a mother and son discovered the bug and alerted the company, it has been revealed. One expert called the case a “black eye” for a company that prides itself on privacy and security. North Sea gas find – A Chinese-led consortium has discovered the UK’s biggest gasfield in more than a decade – the equivalent of about 250m barrels of oil in the Glengorm reservoir in the central North Sea. Britain’s Oil and Gas Authority says the UK continental shelf still holds an estimated 10bn-20bn barrels of oil and gas. But Friends of the Earth has called on the government to put the brakes on exploration, given fossil fuels’ contribution to climate change. “It’s a disgrace that oil and gas exploration is still going ahead in the seas off Scotland,” said campaigner Caroline Rance. Yawning as you read this? – People who are naturally early risers are happier and less likely to develop mental health problems than night owls, according to genetic researchers. One hypothesis is that evening types have to fight their natural body clock in the daytime world of work and study. But another possibility is that genes linked to the body clock simply coincide with vulnerability to certain conditions such as schizophrenia and depression. The University of Exeter study examined the DNA of 700,000 people and asked them about their sleep habits. Separately, a study has suggested that people are more likely to develop depression by the age of 18 if exposed to air pollution while growing up. The opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, has declared himself Venezuela’s interim president after mass protests against Nicolás Maduro. But the military has so far stayed loyal to Maduro, who has called the attempt to remove him a coup. Virginia Lopez reports from Caracas. Plus: Jessica Elgot on what we learned from another night of Brexit votes in the House of Commons From the blue-tiled mosques of Bukhara and the Tashkent metro, to desert landscapes and remote regions, Uzbekistan offers ancient culture and ample opportunity for adventure. With newly relaxed visa policies, the former Soviet republic’s attractions are open to tourists as never before. Caroline Eden offers an itinerary. Manchester City’s title aspirations have taken a dent away to Newcastle, after former Liverpool boss Rafa Benítez’s men came from 1-0 down to shock the reigning champions. Coach Pep Guardiola was left keenly aware of his rivals’ seven-point lead, stating it wasn’t his side’s “best night”, writes Louise Taylor. Elsewhere, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s run of wins ended at home to Burnley, but late heroics helped maintain his nine-game unbeaten start. Khabib Nurmagomedov has accused the UFC of “politics” after he and rival Conor McGregor were handed lengthy bans and heavy fines, with the Russian handed a fine 10 times that of his opponent. And, England’s 10-wicket collapse inside just 129 balls against West Indies may have been humiliating, writes Andy Bull, but it’s in keeping with a wider global trend in cricket lately. Someone once famously said “follow the money” and that might work as a way to understand what is happening with Brexit after the pound fell sharply in the wake of MPs voting for the Brady amendment. The reaction shows financial markets have weighed the likely position in Brussels and think a no deal is now more likely, which is generally seen as bad for UK plc and the pound. Conversely, a falling pound is good for the large number of multinational companies that make up the FTSE100, which is duly set to rise 0.5% this morning. Sterling was sitting on $1.309 and €1.144 at time of writing. Several of the papers emphasise the problems Theresa May faces in backstop renegotiations with the EU. The Guardian’s front page: “May goes back to Brussels but EU says: nothing has changed.” Saith the Mirror: “May’s deal back from the dead … for now”, while the FT goes with “May’s move to rewrite Brexit deal sets collision course with Brussels”. Others are more laudatory. “Theresa’s triumph”, lionises the Mail, while the Express trumpets: “She did it!”. As usual they’re having pun in the Sun: “Backstop from the brink”, while the Times focuses on party unity – “May unites Tories behind fresh talks with Brussels” – and the Telegraph leaves a trail of alliteration: “May takes the Brexit battle back to Brussels”. Here is a closer look at today’s front pages. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comOnce upon a time there was a Tumblr account called Nick Clegg Looking Sad, which consisted almost entirely of pictures of the then deputy prime minister looking miserable. It doesn’t seem to have been updated since the 2015 general election, presumably because that represented peak misery, but I was reminded of it on Tuesday when Clegg made his first outing as spin doctor for Facebook. He had been given some happy news to impart, including the creation of a centre for electoral integrity to try to fight political disinformation campaigns aimed at skewing elections. But the pained expression crept in when confronted on TV with examples of the kind of graphic Instagram posts that 14-year-old Molly Russell’s bereaved parents believe had a bearing on their daughter’s suicide, and asked whether he would want his own children to see them. There is something horribly familiar about the sight of Clegg publicly squirming over the consequences of things he doesn’t quite have the power to stop, as if the coalition years were happening all over again in slow motion. Former party leaders have to do something with the rest of their lives, obviously. Like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before him, Clegg is far too young to retire, and it seems he has said all he wants to say about Brexit. A corporate gig does at least beat making expensive speeches to bankers or offering private advice to foreign governments with murky human rights records. But the sight of a former deputy prime minister spinning for Mark Zuckerberg feels nonetheless symbolic of everything that is wrong with the relationship between big tech and politics. Clegg used to help run the country, and now Facebook seems to be running him. Is that really the way it’s meant to work? There has been a revolving door between Whitehall and Silicon Valley for many years now, with a steady stream of former special advisers being snapped up by the Googles and the Ubers and the Facebooks. It makes sense on one level – both politics and tech are bewilderingly fast-moving, complex environments with significant impact on ordinary lives and people who have worked in one are perhaps unusually suited to working in the other – but it also illustrates the problem. The single biggest threat to the seemingly unstoppable rise of the tech oligarchs would be a government with teeth, prepared either to regulate platforms more strictly or to tax them more heavily. These companies, like any company, will naturally seek to anticipate and where possible frustrate any political threat to their business model. The obvious way of doing that is hiring people with understanding of, and preferably influence over, the political process. But the Facebook empire (which also includes Whatsapp and Instagram among other platforms) now has a broader reputational problem, too. Even if it could square off the politicians, its own users don’t like what they are hearing about everything from invasions of their personal privacy to the toxification of public debate and the role of social media in fuelling the rise of far-right movements. By hiring a politician rather than an anonymous former special adviser, Facebook seems to be trying to engage directly with the public. It’s a risk for both sides. Politicians are used to articulating their own views, not parroting other people’s, and it may take Clegg a while to get used to answering questions about the limits of regulation in Zuckerberg’s voice rather than his own. But the bigger reputational risk is perhaps to Clegg personally, and, by association, the Liberal Democrats in general, whose members care more than most about questions of privacy, freedom of speech and civil liberties. He has presumably gone in believing that Facebook really does want to be a force for good now; that it’s better to be in the room when the decisions are taken than outside railing hopelessly against them, and that whatever concessions he can extract are worth the awkward compromises that will sometimes need to be made. And yes, all that may sound a bit familiar to Liberal Democrats who lived through the coalition years. Let’s hope that’s not an omen. • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistPaul Manafort and an alleged Russian intelligence operative hatched a plan for the future of Ukraine during the 2016 presidential election campaign that continued even after Manafort was criminally charged, prosecutors indicated on Tuesday. The office of Robert Mueller, the special counsel, said in a court filing that Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, communicated with Konstantin Kilimnik between August 2016 and March 2018 about a topic that was blacked out from public view. But an exhibit included with the heavily redacted court filing showed that Manafort worked on a Microsoft Word document titled “new initiative for peace” in February 2018 as part of his continuing discussions with Kilimnik. Attorneys for Manafort, 69, revealed in a separate court filing last week that he is accused by Mueller of discussing a “Ukraine peace plan” with Kilimnik “on more than one occasion” – and then lying about it when questioned by investigators. The allegations, if confirmed, would mean that Trump’s campaign chief was working on a plan to settle Russia’s conflict with Ukraine on terms favourable for the Kremlin while the Russian government was interfering in the 2016 US election to help Trump. US intelligence chiefs concluded that the Russian interference operation was ordered by Vladimir Putin to benefit Trump’s campaign and harm Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. Mueller is investigating whether Trump associates were involved in the Russian activities. Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which allegedly spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the 2016 election. Mueller has said Kilimnik was described as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU” by Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign. Kilimnik denies that he worked for Russian intelligence. Manafort and Gates were indicted on financial crimes in October 2017 in Washington and for further offences in Virginia in February 2018. Gates struck a plea deal with Mueller’s team. Manafort was convicted in Virginia on eight counts and later pleaded guilty to charges in Washington. The filing by Mueller’s team on Tuesday was intended to support its allegations that Manafort lied about several subjects even after he pleaded guilty and began cooperating with the investigation. The alleged lies prompted Mueller to tear up a deal that promised Manafort favourable treatment when he is sentenced. Manafort’s attorneys deny that he intentionally lied. They blamed his false statements on a failure to recall certain details and his lack of access in jail to records that could jog his memory. Mueller alleges that Manafort lied when he said he had no communication with members of Trump’s administration after they entered office in January 2017. Tuesday’s filing said Gates told investigators Manafort boasted that month that he was getting people “appointed in the administration” via an intermediary. On 28 May 2018, according to Tuesday’s filing, Manafort was sent a text message by an associate, who asked: “If I see POTUS one on one next week am I ok to remind him of our relationship?” Manafort allegedly replied: “Yes” and “even if not one on one”. Manafort joined Trump’s campaign at the end of March 2016 and was promoted to campaign chairman that May. Following revelations that he received millions of dollars in illicit funds from Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin former president, the campaign announced on 19 August 2016 that Manafort was leaving. Mueller’s team said on Tuesday that Manafort and Kilimnik discussed the Ukraine peace plan in person and in messages from 2 August 2016. Kilimnik has previously said the pair met in New York around that date.Here is one statistic you won’t find in the official game book from Sunday’s AFC Championship Game: it took 59 minutes in real time to complete the last eight minutes and 39 seconds of the fourth quarter. All the more time for ad breaks selling pickup trucks and building drama with men who have become central to NFL broadcasts, the “rules analysts.” The Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots combined to score 31 points in that span, but the game was also stopped four times so critical plays could be reviewed by the replay official. The longest stretch came when play grinded to a halt for seven minutes while officials reviewed New England receiver Justin Edelman’s apparent muffed handling of a punt, which the Chiefs, trailing 17-14 at the time, recovered at the New England 28-yard line. Needing to dissect the play in microscopic detail, but also maybe to fill air time, CBS showed no fewer than 12 replays of that play in those seven minutes, trying to determine if the ball had glanced off Edelman’s gloved thumb, or his shoulder, or maybe even his forearm. Just then Clete Blakeman, the referee, popped onto the TV screen and announced that the ruling on the field was a muff, with Kansas City regaining possession. To the delight of the Arrowhead Stadium crowd, Gehrig Dieter had scooped up the ball after it hit, or did not hit, and ran with it into the end zone, but a muff can’t be advanced, so there would be no touchdown. Summoning Gene Steratore, the former NFL official who is in his first season as CBS’s NFL rules analyst, the play-by-play man Jim Nantz said, “There’s got to be enough visual evidence to overturn it!” “Most definitely, Jim, the point is well-taken,” Steratore said, sounding like he was on a witness stand. “The ruling on the field is that he did touch it. So something must be clear and obvious” to overturn the call. Five commercials followed. Blakeman finally announced that the ball had not touched Edelman. After all that, it was New England’s ball. Because instant replay, reintroduced in 1999, had become such a vital part of officiating a game – a football field covers 57,600 square feet, and seven officials can’t be expected to cover every inch – Fox hired a former official, Mike Pereira, as the first NFL rules analyst in 2010. Pereira’s first tough call involved a game in which he said on the air that an apparent last-minute touchdown catch by Detroit’s Calvin Johnson would be overturned by replay officials, which it was. The referee in that game was none other than Steratore. Each of the three networks that carries NFL games now has a rules analyst. Pereira even has a helper in Dean Blandino, another former official. The rules analyst’s job is to explain succinctly why the refs made the call they did, sometimes softly suggesting that the refs messed up. For the heightened scrutiny they are under, the refs do a pretty good job. Coaches have challenged 10 calls in 10 playoff games this year, and six calls have been upheld after video review. The calls on only six other plays in 10 games have been reversed by the replay official. According to the NFL, replay reversals dropped to 172 in the 2018 regular season from 196 in the 2017 regular season, with challenges falling to 349 to 429 in that span, suggesting that coaches might have more confidence that the officials are making the right tough calls. But coaches – like Saints coach Sean Payton, to use a recent example – still think officials miss tough judgment calls. The most consequential play in Sunday’s NFC Championship game, won by the Rams, is memorialized in the game book simply like this: 3-10-LA 13 (1:49) (Shotgun) D.Brees pass incomplete short right to T.Lewis. What was not noted was that Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis was barreled into by Nickell Robey-Coleman of the Rams as Lewis turned to make the catch. It was clearly a defensive pass-interference penalty that would have resulted in a first down with less than two minutes left that could have essentially led to a victory for New Orleans. “That should have been a penalty!” analyst Troy Aikman hollered on Fox. “Sean Payton is justifiably upset!” Pereira was on referee-analysis duty for Fox on Sunday. No penalty was called on a pass that was ruled incomplete, and coaches are not allowed to challenge a judgment call, nor can they be reviewed by a replay official. The Washington Post reported Monday that the NFL is considering adding pass-interference calls subject to replay review. Pereira said he agreed with Aikman, then added, “I know it’s easy in slow-motion. They’re close to bang-bang, but that’s way early enough – even high contact on the receiver. You could have had a foul either way,” either pass interference or illegal contact. Wil Lutz gave the Saints a 23-20 lead with a field goal, but the Rams would have been forced to spend their last time out had New Orleans been awarded a first down, making a game-tying drive substantially more difficult. The Rams tied the game and won in overtime. The Saints-Rams game was not bogged down by either a coach’s challenge or a replay reversal. Pereira had much less to talk about Sunday than Steratore. The fact that these “rules analysts” have become a cottage industry, though, suggests that the NFL has a problem. Referees are people, and even seven of the sharpest people in the business can’t see everything that unfolds on a 1.32-acre football field. Perhaps just scoring plays should be reviewed by a replay official, and the refs can be left to figure everything else out. Or maybe there should be no refs, and everything would be judged on cameras. But that would leave Gene Steratore and Mike Pereira out of a job, and no extra time to sell more beer.Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman imprisoned in Tehran on espionage charges, is to go on hunger strike in protest against being denied access to medical care. The British-Iranian dual national is asking for access to a doctor. She announced the hunger strike from Tehran’s Evin prison in a joint letter with a fellow prisoner, the human rights activist Narges Mohammadi. The women said they have planned an initial three-day hunger strike, which will be extended until their demands are met. In a letter published by the Tehran-based charity Defenders of Human Rights Centre, Zaghari-Ratcliffe said she and Mohammadi were banned from accessing medical care. “In protest to this illegal, inhuman and unlawful behaviour, and to express our concerns for our health and survival at this denial of specialist treatment, despite taking daily medicines, we will go on hunger strike from 14.01.2019 to 16.01.2019,” the letter said. “We announce that in the event of the authority’s failure to address these concerns and them further endangering our health, we will take further action.” Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, told HuffPost UK: “She has felt she has to do something to show enough is enough, this has gone on too long. And this time I have not been able to talk her out of it.” Ratcliffe said his wife was not receiving medical treatment for lumps in her breasts, or neurological and psychiatric care. He said he hoped the hunger strike would not last longer than three days. Saturday marked 1,000 days since Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport on 3 April 2016. She spent her 40th birthday, on Boxing Day, in prison despite renewed calls for her release. Her four-year-old daughter, Gabriella, has been staying with family in Iran. Richard Ratcliffe said she feared her continued imprisonment meant she would be unable to have a longer-for second child. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, from Hampsted, north London, was sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying, a charge she vehemently denies. Her husband is campaigning for her release and has called her continued detention a travesty of justice. The UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has been unable to persuade Tehran to release her. Mohammadi, 46, is serving a 16-year sentence after being found guilty of “establishing and running the illegal splinter group Legam”, a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty.That the British political and media establishment is engrossed by this week’s edition of that long-running psychodrama called Brexit is forgivable; it is their country, and the episode promises to be an action-packed one. But for many Europeans, the meaningful vote is just more of the same: the Brits still don’t know what they want, so the politicians go round and round and round, and then round some more. It is clear that, for political British journalists and commentators around Westminster, each of these circles is immensely exciting – witness their breathless buildup to this week. But from the distance that being in the EU affords, none of this is new. For beyond all the noise, precious little has moved in Britain politically for the past two and a half years. This is not chaos. This is paralysis. The country still refuses to face the consequences of its decision to leave, again and again deferring a choice from the post-Brexit options available to it. And the reason is simple: each of these options involve economic or electoral pain that would rip apart either party, comprised as they are with both remainers, soft-Brexiteers and hard ones. This refusal to live in the real world made the victory for the leave camp possible in the first place, and it has continued to be the state of affairs in Britain in September 2016, or in July 2017 or indeed in January 2019. So forgive Europeans for suppressing a yawn when they are asked once again to take an interest in a vote that will not bring any further clarity in the only question that matters: have the Brits made up their minds? Yes, this week’s events may lead to the fall of Theresa May’s pathetically inept and casually mendacious government. So what? The alternative is a Labour party whose leader stopped talking straight the moment he got to power. Neither he nor May have ever levelled with their voters, and the British people generally about all the pain and trade-offs that any form of Brexit is going to bring. Meanwhile the billionaire-owned and -controlled Brexit press continues to spread its lies, distortions and fantasies, building up the politicians who echo them. So another circle is drawn, and another, and then another. It looks increasingly as if Britain needs the mayhem of a no-deal exit to wake up from its delusions – in much the same way that the increasing death toll in Iraq after the 2003 invasion forced an earlier generation of British politicians to own up to the mess they had made. As for the EU and the governments of its 27 member states, they have played their side of the Brexit drama very well so far, combining the German talent for Gründlichkeit (thoroughness) with the kind of Cartesian precision that embodies the best of France. All through Brexit, the European side has been radically transparent and admirably disciplined while staying unfailingly polite. As the European council president, Donald Tusk, put it right after the referendum result: “We miss you already.” Back then, he meant that Europeans would miss Britain as a member state. Two and a half years later, what Europeans miss even more is something much deeper that they had always taken for granted: British common sense. • Joris Luyendijk is an author, and wrote the Guardian’s banking blogThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has taken the unusual measure of advising Americans not to kiss or snuggle their pet hedgehogs. It comes after a CDC investigation found that 11 people in the United States had contracted a rare strain of salmonella, known as Salmonella typhimurium, since October. It’s emerged that 10 out of the 11 were in close contact with hedgehogs before becoming ill. The 11 people were in eight different states, including three in Missouri and two in Minnesota. The CDC said it was unclear if the pet hedgehogs came from “a common supplier”. Officials have warned hedgehog owners not to “kiss or snuggle hedgehogs, because this can spread salmonella germs to your face and mouth and make you sick”. Owners are also advised not to “let hedgehogs roam freely in areas where food is prepared or stored, such as kitchen”. One person has been hospitalised and no deaths have been reported. In 2012 there was another major outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium in which most people affected had come into contact with a hedgehog. During that outbreak there were a total of 26 cases and eight people were hospitalised. Some hedgehogs have become social media stars in the past few years, and their cute photos have racked up thousands of likes. Darcy the hedgehog, named after the former Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’arcy Wretzky, has more than 294,000 followers. He was a Sk8ter Hog🦔🛹🎶✨ ・ ・ ・ #なりきりショパン シリーズ、今日はスケーター🦔🛹✨ @5by5chihiro さんのキャップ🧢✨ A post shared by  Shota Tsukamoto (@darcytheflyinghedgehog) on Jan 26, 2019 at 5:51am PST The humanisation of celebrity hedgehogs perhaps explains why people feel more compelled to kiss them, but having one as a pet remains illegal in many US states including Georgia, California and Hawaii, as well as Washington DC and New York City. These bans are mostly in place because of fears around disease.The tiny, fish-hook shaped island of Nantucket feels like a place separated from America by place and time. There are no traffic lights. You won’t find a McDonalds, CVS or any other chain store ubiquitous across the US. In its quiet and partially cobblestoned downtown, some leave their cars running while they go into shops. In winter, the silence is only broken by church bells and the sound of a foghorn. In the 1800s the island was the centre of the whaling industry but it has left its gritty past behind. It now attracts the richest of the rich, among them scions of business, owners of sports teams and faces familiar from TV: former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Tommy Hilfiger, Chris Matthews, John Kerry, Charles Schwab and Ben Stiller come here, among many others. Among those who have everything and can go anywhere, many choose to live – or at least summer – here. The actor Kevin Spacey visited the island in recent years. On Monday, he is due in the island’s lone courtroom to be arraigned on felony charges for an alleged sexual assault against a busboy at a restaurant in 2016. If convicted, the actor could face five years in prison. He would also have to register as a sex offender. The saga has brought the #MeToo movement, and all the attention it generates, to an island where many go to get out of the spotlight. “Extremely wealthy people or famous people or high-level politicians are attracted to Nantucket for a variety of reasons,” said Bruce Percelay, publisher of Nantucket Magazine and the chairman and founder of the Mount Vernon Company, a New England real estate firm. “But one of them is that people don’t care. If a celebrity comes to Nantucket and is hoping to be fawned over, they will be very disappointed. This is not the kind of place where people go to genuflect over sightings of the rich and famous. We leave that kind of behaviour to the Hamptons.” On Nantucket, the rich and famous 'can be themselves' There appears to be truth to this. On Friday evening Bill Belichick – coach of the New England Patriots football team, practically a deity to many in Massachusetts, particularly at playoff time – was having a quiet dinner in the corner of a dimly lit restaurant where this writer was enjoying a beer. Nobody appeared to be paying him much attention, save for perhaps this writer, who couldn’t help but steal glances at the man with five Super Bowl rings. “Enjoy your evening coach,” a hostess said casually as Belichick walked out into the cold winter night. “Good luck next Sunday!” “You could be sitting on a bench on Main Street next to a billionaire and you wouldn’t know it because everybody is just casual and in their happy place,” said Jeneane Life, owner of the Carlisle Inn. “Nantucket just gets in your blood. It’s just a peaceful, serene, beautiful place.” On Nantucket, Percelay said, the rich and famous “can be themselves. That is something increasingly difficult to find. “You can pick up the phone book and find the names of Fortune 100 CEOs and their home phone numbers.” For those who want to make a home here, the entry barrier is set forbiddingly high. According to the Inquirer and Mirror, the island’s weekly newspaper, the median home price on the island last year was $1.8m. The average price sat at $2.7m. “We like to jokingly say that this is where the millionaires have to mow the lawns for the billionaires,” said Renee Ceely, executive director of the Nantucket Housing Authority. “Because if you do own real estate, more than likely it’s worth more than a million dollars.” Even visiting the island is out of reach for many: during the summer, rooms at inns run to many hundreds of dollars a night. There is one hostel, but visitors won’t find any motels or popular chain hotels. The exclusivity of Nantucket is enhanced by its seclusion, 30 miles off the Massachusetts coast. The only way on or off is by ferry or plane, though both of those options can be delayed by poor weather. The attention brought by the Spacey case is unwelcome, a breach of presumed safety and serenity The island has about 10,000 year-round residents, but that number can go up more than five-fold in the summer. With most of the island zoned as conservation land and unavailable for development, land and housing stocks are limited. That means that finding housing for the workers who make the island tick – school teachers, postal workers, cops, restaurant and hotel staff – presents significant challenges. Ceely, the Nantucket Housing Authority director, calls it a “critical problem” and is working on creative solutions. On land deeded to the housing authority by the town, a small development of homes priced between $300,000 and $500,000 was recently built. A lottery chose prospective buyers who made less than 50% of Nantucket’s median income. “Affordable housing affects everyone, even the wealthy,” Ceely said. “They get their meals, who takes care of them behind the register at the supermarket, who’s cleaning the floors at the hospital? Who’s your nurse?” On such an island, where invisibility and seclusion are main draws, the attention brought by the Spacey case is unwelcome, a breach of presumed safety and serenity. Spacey was an outsider, just visiting, when the sexual assault is alleged to have occurred. His accuser, however, is from a family with Nantucket ties. He is the son of Heather Unruh, a former Boston news anchor and a fixture on the island. In October 2017, as the #MeToo movement was born with sexual abuse allegations surfacing against film producer Harvey Weinstein, Unruh used Twitter. “The #weinsteinscandal has emboldened me – #truth time,” she wrote. “I was a Kevin Spacey fan until he assaulted a loved one. Time the dominoes fell.” Days later, actor Anthony Rapp came forward with allegations against Spacey, saying that when he was a 14-year-old child actor in New York, a 26-year-old Spacey tried to force himself on him. Spacey said he did not remember the alleged incident, but apologised for “deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour”. In November that year, Unruh held a press conference where she said her then 18-year-old son had been star-struck when Spacey showed up at the Club Car restaurant, where he worked. She alleged the actor bought her son alcohol and later stuck his hands in his pants, grabbing his genitals. She said her son fled the restaurant when Spacey excused himself to go to the bathroom. Spacey will plead not guilty. But to Percelay, the alleged incident was a violation of what Nantucket is about. “There’s a presumed safeness to this island unlike many places,” he said. “You don’t expect violations like the one that was [allegedly] perpetrated by Kevin Spacey. It just doesn’t happen on Nantucket. “This type of celebrity just doesn’t fit the ethos of Nantucket.”People used to call Anika the Snap Queen. Between the ages of 19 and 21, she was “obsessed with Snapchat, to the point where I had 4,000 followers”. At the peak of her “tragic” behaviour, she reckons now – a year after quitting the image-sharing app – she was taking 25 selfies a day. She liked the sense of having a platform, she says, with the average selfie getting 300 replies. “It was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so popular – I’ve gotta show my face.’” But the filters were also part of the appeal. The Londoner had long been insecure about the slight bump in her nose. Snapchat’s fun effects, which let you embellish your selfies with dog ears, flower crowns and the like, would also erase the bump entirely. “I’d think, ‘I’d like to look how I look with this filter that makes my nose look slimmer.’” Socialising in the real world, she would choose her seat to avoid being seen in profile. She recognises that this was irrational – “but it happens. I feel like we’re in a world where a lot of people are seen to be perfect, and so we try and reach that peak.” Sometimes her followers would suggest meeting in person. “Then it would be like, ‘I have to look like my selfie.’” It was around this time, the height of her Snapchat obsession, that Anika started contacting cosmetic doctors on Instagram. The phenomenon of people requesting procedures to resemble their digital image has been referred to – sometimes flippantly, sometimes as a harbinger of end times – as “Snapchat dysmorphia”. The term was coined by the cosmetic doctor Tijion Esho, founder of the Esho clinics in London and Newcastle. He had noticed that where patients had once brought in pictures of celebrities with their ideal nose or jaw, they were now pointing to photos of themselves. While some used their selfies – typically edited with Snapchat or the airbrushing app Facetune – as a guide, others would say, “‘I want to actually look like this’, with the large eyes and the pixel-perfect skin,” says Esho. “And that’s an unrealistic, unattainable thing.” A recent report in the US medical journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery suggested that filtered images’ “blurring the line of reality and fantasy” could be triggering body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a mental health condition where people become fixated on imagined defects in their appearance. Like Esho, Dr Wassim Taktouk uses non-surgical, non-permanent “injectables” such as Botox and dermal fillers to enlarge lips or smooth a bumpy nose. He recalls a client coming to see him in his cream-carpeted Kensington clinic, upset after a date made through an app had gone south. “When she’d met the man, he had been quite disparaging: ‘You don’t look anything like your picture.’” The woman showed Taktouk the heavily filtered image on her profile and said: “I want to look like that.” It was flawless, he says – “without a single marking of a normal human face”. He told her he couldn’t help. “If that’s the picture you’re going to put out of yourself, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.” Why do we take so many photos of ourselves? A 2017 study into “selfitis”, as the obsessive taking of selfies has been called, found a range of motivations, from seeking social status to shaking off depressive thoughts and – of course – capturing a memorable moment. Another study suggested that selfies served “a private and internal purpose”, with the majority never shared with anyone or posted anywhere – terabytes, even petabytes of photographs never to be seen by anyone other than their subject. With so much of life now lived online, from dating to job-hunting, recent, quality images of yourself are also a necessity – it is no wonder that Facetune (Apple’s most popular paid-for app of 2017) and the free follow-up Facetune2 have more than 55m users between them. Stav Tishler of Lightricks, the company behind them, says making airbrushing accessible has challenged “that illusion that ‘a perfect body’ exists … and levelled out the playing field”: “Everyone knows everyone is using it, supermodels and ‘everyday’ people alike.” However, a 2017 study in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications found that people only recognised manipulated images 60%-65% of the time. Esho says the pervasiveness of airbrushing on social media means it can create “unrealistic expectations of what is normal” and lower the self-esteem of those who don’t use it: “It’s a vicious cycle.” When the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery surveyed its members in 2017, 55% of surgeons said patients’ motivation was to look better in selfies, up from just 13% in 2016. Even novelty filters such as Snapchat and Instagram’s, as well as adding bunny ears or specs to your selfie, plump your lips, erase your pores and lift your jowls while they are at it. (Snapchat declined to respond on the record.) “The first thing that any of these filters do is give you a beautiful complexion,” says Taktouk. “Your naso-labial [laugh] lines, from the nose to mouth, aren’t existent – but that’s not a human face. No one doesn’t have those. You can see them in children.” Clients still request their removal, and of “the tear trough” – the groove down from the inner corners of the eyes. “People wanting bigger eyes is another one – it’s just not possible.” The filtered-selfie look is also reflected in demand for bigger lips and taut jawlines. Such so-called “tweakments” have exploded in recent years, thanks to their relative affordability and convenience. A “liquid nose job” using fillers might cost a few hundred pounds and takes instant effect, compared with the slow, painful recovery from a surgical rhinoplasty. Marla, 29, from New York, got her “perfect nose” last year while on her lunch break. “I went back to work feeling just so much more polished and confident – like I was even writing my emails better.” Like Anika, she had always been bothered by the bump in her nose, religiously removing it from selfies; but she began exploring real-world options after a painful breakup. A list of pros and cons revealed that the potential risks – of her parents’ disapproval and “necrosis of the face” (“It’s very rare, but it’s definitely a thing”) – did not outweigh the benefits of having “the nose I create for myself on Facetune”. The rise of fillers – anything from collagen and hyaluronic acid, which break down in a matter of months, to the permanent but riskier polymethyl methacrylate beads – has been accelerated by celebrity endorsements from the likes of the Kardashian clan. The removal and subsequent return of Kylie Jenner’s lip fillers have been followed with particular interest. ) Some doctors try to capitalise on this with “the Kylie package” for nose, jaw and lips, says Taktouk, disapprovingly. Ten years ago, his clients were deeply concerned with patient confidentiality; “Now, it’s ‘Do you mind if I Insta-story this?’ It’s not taboo any more.” He has seen lips advertised for £150 and noses for £200-£300. “And that’s one of the trickiest procedures of the lot.” Fillers may be less invasive than surgery, but they are not without their risks, which range from uneven results and infection to vascular blockages and even blindness. Save Face, the UK’s largest register of accredited practitioners of non-surgical treatments, says almost 1,000 complaints were made in the year to October. Yet there is little regulation and no minimum age. “We have more protections for houses than we do children’s faces,” says Esho, who has campaigned for crackdowns. “It’s crazy.” Even Marla – who documented her follow-up nose job in a short film for Vice, and does paid promotional work for cosmetic surgeons – says she would not encourage a young girl to do as she did. “I know that I love myself – that’s why I let myself get little tweaks – but it would really bother me if a young girl told me that she didn’t.” Taktouk refuses to treat anyone younger than early 20s, but he says he has been contacted by 16- and 17-year-olds, sometimes for “preventative Botox” (“They haven’t even done A-levels yet”). Invariably it is via Instagram, where a reported 60% of users are aged between 18 and 24. The platform has become a marketplace for cosmetic procedures, with doctors showcasing their before-and-afters. The process is as easy as “click-click-click, look at 10 bits of his work in the space of a minute, wow, let’s contact him”, says Anika. At the age of 20, she turned up at Taktouk’s clinic with photos of noses he had done and a video of herself with a Snapchat filter. “You know the one that kind of makes your face look like an alien’s? I was like, ‘This looks great – my nose looks so much smaller.’ Dr Taktouk was like: ‘This is not what is going to happen with filler.’” She laughs. “He told me to come back with my mum.” Instead, Anika took a year out to consider her decision, weighing up fillers’ merits against surgical rhinoplasty. “Actually, I went through a phase of thinking, ‘No, I should try and love myself.’” How did that go? “I didn’t do rhinoplasty,” she says drily. “I guess that’s as far as I got.” By the time she returned to Taktouk’s clinic, aged 21, she had been brought “back down to earth”. He injected filler into the tip of her nose, evening out its line. She loved it instantly. “I feel like I just needed that to change me inside, so I could stop looking for perfection.” When the filler eventually breaks down after about a year, she will repeat the procedure. “The most beautiful thing is when someone is happy from within,” she says; “as ironic as it sounds”, her new nose helped her to attain it. “I’m not itching to get anything else.” There was a moment just after the procedure, though, as she was admiring her new profile, when she wondered aloud if her lips needed filling, too. They were one of her most prominent features; she had been called Fish Lips at school. Taktouk told her to stop being silly. “When you’re in that seat, it’s quite tempting,” she says. “Like, ‘What else can I do?’” There is an obvious danger in trying to measure up to images when they are so far from reality – or even consistency. Non-filtered selfies are flipped, front cameras produce different results from back cameras, and there are even marked differences between models of phone. Just the distance from which we typically take selfies has a huge effect. A 2018 study found that a portrait taken from 30cm (12in) away rather than 1.5m (5ft) increases perceived nose size by about 30%. And that’s without the distorting effects of lighting and even makeup. It prompts the question: which are you trying to correct, the image or the reality? Anna, 40, from Malvern – another patient of Taktouk’s – admits to having once been “fixated” on her laugh lines. “The photos exacerbate it, making it look worse, then a filter can make it look amazing. You’re unsure of what you look like.” Ever since she was young, she has struggled with the discrepancy between how she sees herself in the mirror, and how others see her. Once, she downloaded an app that claimed “to show you how you really look”. “It used to horrify me, and make me feel terrible about myself. But these are conversations you can’t really have, because you do sound self-absorbed and you’re leaving yourself vulnerable.” She is more self-confident now, which she attributes both to age and the occasional self-esteem boost of Botox or filler. “I’m quite realistic now, whereas in the past I’ve driven myself crazy.” For Taktouk, referrals from social media make it harder to safeguard patients’ mental health. His background as a GP has helped him to spot red flags, such as badmouthing other doctors, insisting on flaws that aren’t there, and in-depth knowledge of treatments: “I’ve had someone come in here and draw the lines on their face themselves.” But, he adds, “I’m sure some will have slipped past without me realising” – and even if Taktouk refuses to treat them, someone else will. Over the weekend it was reported that Superdrug (which began offering Botox late last year) has agreed to introduce mental health screening for people seeking Botox, following criticism from the NHS for not conducting “medically responsible” checks. Taktouk says far more industry-wide regulation is needed, before there is a headline-grabbing tragedy and apps become even more transformative. He points to one called Retouch Me, which superimposes six-packs on to swimsuit pictures. “I saw it and thought, this is the new wave of what we’re going to get in: ‘Make me look like this.’” Seeking unnecessary and unrealistic cosmetic procedures in fact supports a diagnosis of BDD, present in 2% of the population (and equally common in men and women). Dr Neelam Vashi, co-author of the American article that linked BDD to selfie dysmorphia, says further study is needed to establish whether intensive selfie-taking could trigger BDD – but it does resemble one of the main four diagnostic criteria: compulsive mirror-checking and other repetitive behaviours and thoughts. The onset tends to occur in adolescence, though people with the condition may not seek help until 10 years later. The general rule, says Professor David Veale, a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley hospital in south London, is that you can “think about your appearance for an hour a day before it becomes a disorder” – but for a diagnosis, it must be accompanied by significant distress or inability to function normally. People with BDD take selfies because they are convinced “that they are hideous”. In 2014, then 19-year-old Danny Bowman from Northumberland was reported to be “Britain’s first selfie addict” after being interviewed about his experience of BDD. His problems had begun four years before, when he was rejected by a modelling agency at the same time as he was being bullied at his new school and on Facebook. “For me, it was confirmation that I did look ugly.” Bowman was soon spending hours before the mirror, slathering himself in acne cream and moisturiser and monitoring a steady stream of selfies for real-time improvement. After three months he dropped out of school, and the selfie-taking increased to hundreds a day. “I was trying to see some gradual improvement, and take that photo that I was pleased with. I was just trying to get that relief, and I couldn’t get it. There wasn’t a perfect photo. There isn’t a perfect photo.” After six months of being housebound, consumed by his daily rituals, he tried to kill himself. “A lot of people say looking at themselves in the mirror probably makes them feel insecure, but imagine scanning through 200 pictures a day. I was just exhausted. I felt like there was no way out.” His mother – like his father, a mental health professional – found him in time and he was diagnosed with BDD. Part of his 12-week treatment involved restricting access to his phone. Now 24, Bowman is studying at the University of York and campaigns on issues related to mental health and positive body image. He has raised concerns about the impact of Instagram with friends he sees “posting photographs of themselves every other day, Facetuning themselves, making themselves look unlike the way they look. That was me, but on an amplified scale.” They have reacted defensively, he says. “It has become such a normal thing that people don’t see what they’re doing as abnormal.” He very rarely takes selfies now. “I just don’t feel the need to do it.” • The Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation can be found at bddfoundation.org • In the UK the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.Holidays are over, and the nastiness of work, traffic and negotiating life in a big city are creeping back in. But sitting down to watch three episodes of Rosehaven in a row, all the troubles of urban life seem to fall away. Premiering on 30 January, season three of the Australian comedy takes viewers back to the bucolic Tasmanian town where people say hello on the main street; where the hills are green and life unfolds at a slower pace. Speaking with Guardian Australia from Melbourne, the creators and stars Luke McGregor and Celia Pacquola say they didn’t anticipate how successful the show would be. “I remember when we first started doing the show, I thought two [seasons], if we were lucky,” McGregor says. “Three is a something I hadn’t even planned on.” “He’s generally not excited enough,” says Pacquola. The pair finish each other’s sentences and have an easygoing camaraderie that carries over to their on-screen characters: the bubbly Emma, which sparks off McGregor’s more nervy and anxious Daniel. The premise of the show is simple enough: Daniel moves back to his hometown in Tasmania to help his mother with her real-estate business. He is joined by his best friend from the mainland, Emma, who was abandoned by her husband in Bali on their honeymoon. It’s a gentle comedy that focuses on the oddballs in the town, and the relatable, warm and refreshing dynamics of Emma and Daniel’s friendship. Plus, there’s an air of authenticity: not only do McGregor’s parents run a real-estate agency in Tasmania, but Pacquola and McGregor are best friends in real life. Since its debut in 2016, the show has become hugely popular and a critical success, and has been sold into US markets via SundanceTV. (The New York Times called it “Charming, gentle” – “brace yourself to fall completely in love”.) So what is it about Rosehaven that audiences love? “People need stuff to watch when they hungover,” says Pacquola. “The next time you are hungover, you should watch it and see if you feel better.” “It’s the best thing to watch when you’re hungover,” McGregor concurs. “No one is really mean, the world doesn’t get in – there’s no Brexit or Donald Trump.” This isolation from the big bad world has been part of its appeal with American critics. “It makes you feel like you’re a million miles away in a very special place,” said one review in the Washington Post. That special place is Geeveston: a tiny town, population 616 in the Huon Valley, where many of the exterior scenes are shot. “Geeveston has really embraced the show … the visitors’ centre has asked for life-sized cutouts of us,” says McGregor. Pacquola adds: “Part of the point of it being a small town is that it’s enclosed. It’s an escape for our characters as well.” We did have a storyline that had reference to a president in it. We removed that McGregor says the town’s insularity is entirely intentional. “We don’t think about current events when we’re writing. There’s an episode when they go on a road trip, they go in a car together and get lost – and that’s enough of a set-up,” says McGregor. “We did have a storyline that had reference to a president in it. We removed that – we did not want our audience to think about that.” Pacquola concurs: “What we’re good at, and what we’re interested in, is the mundane and the humour in small, silly things.” The pair, who are also gigging standup comics, first worked together on the ABC satire Utopia. Their on-set banter was so good they wondered if they could make a show out of it. “The original idea was me and Luke talking shit in between scenes in Utopia. But we would have to build a storyline around it. The banter is the easiest part. What is time intensive is getting the structure and story right,” says Pacquola. Initially their characters were a married couple. “Then we realised it didn’t work and it wasn’t funny,” says McGregor, before Pacquola continues: “And then we thought, ‘Why are we trying to do this?’ It was forced.” One of the refreshing things about Rosehaven is how it depicts male/female friendships. Most television shows – Moonlighting, Friends, Cheers – would ultimately have the characters eventually end up in bed together. “I think it’s settled that men and women can be friends, but it’s weird you don’t see it depicted much. I have found, though, that platonic friendships when you are in your 30s are increasingly rare. When people are coupling up, these friendships can fall by the wayside. So is there any temptation to get the two characters to fall in love? “If you see Daniel and Emma in a wedding then it’s season 10 and we’ve definitely jumped the shark,” says McGregor. • Rosehaven’s third season premieres on the ABC on 30 January. Seasons one and two are streaming on iView Earlier this week, astronomers announced that they had observed repeated bursts of radio waves coming from deep space, with some experts suggesting this could be evidence of alien life. Is this it? Could extraterrestrials finally be trying to contact us? I hope not. Let me provide an analogy, and I think you’ll see what I mean. A few years ago I was celebrating landing a new job. After a long string of terrible events, this was to be a glorious new chapter in my life. I rang my girlfriend and told her I had a surprise for her when she got home. I started to cook a celebratory curry. At some point I forgot that I had just been chopping chillies and went to the toilet without washing my hands first. This involved the transfer of chilli to what a medical professional would later describe as the remains of my genitals. Drunk on success and alcohol, I’d made a poor decision, and now my penis and balls were on fire. The next bad decision came moments later, when I remembered that yoghurt helps cool down your mouth when you’ve been eating hot food. I was urgently easing the affected area into a family-sized tub of natural yoghurt when my girlfriend and several of her colleagues walked in. This was supposed to be my night of triumph, and now here was my girlfriend giving me that withering “I left you alone for 10 minutes, why are your balls in the Yeo Valley” look. Reader, that is what it would be like for humanity if aliens, thus far the aloof bastards of the universe, chose the current moment to get “chatty”. There’s Brexit, there’s Trump, there’s Ed Sheeran. Couldn’t they have shown up during the 2012 Olympics or when Britpop was at its height? Better yet, when Shrek 2 was first released. Apparently not. They want a chinwag with humanity right when we’ve collectively decided to dip our testicles in the Müller Light. Humanity is at its lowest, most embarrassing ebb. Sure, it’s not like we’ve got a brilliant track record. War. Pollution. Finding a new species of exotic animal and twatting it to death on the offchance that it’s tasty. But right now we’re in a place where we’ve reviewed all those past mistakes, learned from them, and decided to do a live-action remake of every last pratfall on humanity’s blooper reel. We’re a species that has realised we’re going to die of global warming – and have decided to burn the old fossil fuels more than ever. Radio waves take time to travel through space, I understand. Who knows, maybe watchful aliens did see us turn a corner during the 1950s and decided to send out a message of friendship, not realising that the message would be answered 70 years later by President Trump: a man we can’t trust not to try and phone-bang the aliens during first contact. Here’s hoping those mysterious bursts are just noise. Even so, we need to figure a way out of our various messes pronto, before aliens do contact us for real. Because at some point they’re going to ask scientists to “take me to your leader”, and there’s only so many times we can pretend we’ve lost the signal because Jupiter’s in the way. If they end up talking to Trump they’ll think they’ve found a planet devoid of intelligent life; if it’s Theresa May, there’s a risk they’ll do whatever the alien equivalent of nuking the crap out of us is, in an attempt to destroy the most patently evil artificial intelligence they’ve ever seen. The timing of this potential message is so suspiciously bad, in fact, that if it is aliens I’m questioning their motives. It’s pretty obvious at this point their only aim is to point and laugh at the Earthlings during our worst moment of humiliation in some sort of horrible interdimensional version of You’ve Been Framed. In short: if they have shown up , then as far as I’m concerned, they can sod off again. Sorry lads, you’re breaking up. • James Felton is a TV and radio comedy writerBritain has issued the embattled Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, a stark ultimatum, warning him it would throw its weight behind the country’s self-declared interim leader unless he called an election within the next eight days. Echoing calls from Berlin, Paris and Madrid, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, said it was clear Maduro was no longer the legitimate leader of the Latin American country after last year’s “deeply flawed” election. The coordinated move by western powers to boost the opposition challenger Juan Guaidó came as the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, told the United Nations security council that it was now time for countries to “pick a side” on Venezuela after Washington recognised Guaidó as the nation’s head of state. Pompeo said: “Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem. Now it is time for every other nation to pick a side. No more delays, no more games.” Hunt tweeted that Britain would join a growing number of countries in backing 35-year-old Guaidó as the country’s rightful leader unless Maduro called a snap election. He said: “After banning opposition candidates, ballot box stuffing and counting irregularities in a deeply flawed election it is clear Nicolás Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. “@jguaido is the right person to take Venezuela forward. If there are not fresh & fair elections announced within 8 days UK will recognise him as interim president to take forward the political process towards democracy. Time for a new start for the suffering ppl of Venezuela.” The foreign secretary’s comments came shortly before the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, also spoke out in favour of new elections in Venezuela, echoing similar comments from France’s president, Emmanuel Macron; the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. The interventions reinforced a clear split in the international community, where Maduro has continuing support from two key members of the UN security council, Moscow and Beijing. On Friday, a Labour spokesman called for a negotiated settlement and warned against British intervention. “We oppose outside interference in Venezuela, whether from the US or anywhere else,” he said. “The future of Venezuela is a matter for Venezuelans.” Jeremy Corbyn has strongly criticised foreign attempts to undermine Maduro. The bid for power by Guaidó, head of the country’s national assembly, is the most direct challenge to Maduro’s rule following years of protests at home and international efforts to isolate his regime which has presided over a growing humanitarian crisis fuelled by falling oil prices and government mismanagement. Maduro has vowed to defend his socialist rule and accused his opponent of working with the US to overthrow him and install a “puppet government”. The president, who faced rare mass protests last week, still has the support of the military. Pompeo, who was expected to address a security council meeting last night that was also due to be attended by the Venezuelan foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, said he hoped the “international community will disconnect their financial systems from the Maduro regime.” Russia had objected to the council’s focus on Venezuela, according to UN diplomats. The country’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said US actions were an “obvious call for a coup d’etat” which would threaten peace. The meeting came a day after Guaidó vowed to remain on the streets until his country had secured a transitional government. “They can cut a flower, but they will never keep spring from coming,” Guaidó told supporters on Friday, alluding to a similar phrase from the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. Both sides attempted dialogue last year, but talks collapsed as Maduro called an early election that excluded the country’s most popular opposition leaders. Analysts fear the standoff between both men could set the scene for further violence after days of political turmoil that human rights groups say has left more than two dozen dead. The office of the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, has said it has called for an investigation after receiving credible reports that security forces, or members of pro-government armed groups, shot at least 20 people during protests on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict said 21 people were killed by gunfire in protests and looting on Wednesday and Thursday, on top of five deaths confirmed by authorities on Tuesday. According to the Penal Forum human rights group, 369 people have been detained since Monday. On Wednesday, Maduro gave US diplomats 72 hours to leave the country, an order Washington said it would defy by keeping the embassy open, though it told non-essential staff to leave.Whenever I hear about a couple over a certain age enjoying an active sex life, I marvel about one aspect that is never talked about. The menopause is now a “woke” topic. Celebrities are making a cause of it. Men in offices are advised to say “menopause” three times a day to develop empathy for female co-workers. Hot flushes and night sweats are discussed in newspapers. But the worst symptom is never mentioned: there’s a post-menopausal elephant in the bedroom and its name is Dry Vagina. Dear younger women, do not underestimate this. I breezed through all other aspects of the menopause. Hot flushes? Wear layers. Night sweats? Drink water. But a desiccating vagina? A person can apply only so much lubrication. Even then, penetration is excruciating, second only to the stinging afterwards when you need to urinate and have to steel yourself not to cry out loud. So, what are all those other post-menopausal, sexually active women doing? Have they miraculously escaped? I like sex. My husband likes sex. I don’t want to give it up. But I now dread the final moments. I didn’t want to tell my husband, and make him feel anxious and guilty. It’s not his fault. Finally, I developed a vaginal infection, which revealed the problem. The relief of sharing my secret was enormous. After a week of antibiotics, I was prescribed oestrogen, applied vaginally. So far, it seems to have helped. The health risks are “infinitesimal”, according to my GP – and, for the benefit of a happy sex life, I think it’s a price worth paying. Wish us luck! • Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure the discussion remains on the topics raised by the article. Each week, a reader tells us about their sex life. Want to share yours? Email sex@theguardian.comThe stage was set, a tentative announcement had been made, and the foreign minister was already claiming credit for it. Breaking news alerts had been sent by the major media outlets and liveblogs prepared to transmit Ikea’s vision for New Zealand to the people. Even Sweden’s ambassador, Par Ahlberger, told those assembled that he was an ambassador for Ikea, according to Stuff. But on Friday, as the tension reached fever pitch, reality came crashing down like a set of badly assembled drawers. The vision was more a back-of-envelope sketch showing Auckland would get a store and some point in a few years’ time, plus there would be another, smaller one, in the South Island. The company’s global chief executive, Jesper Brodin, and Ahlberger revealed the scant details at a press conference in a mock-up Ikea living room. But to the chagrin of New Zealand furniture fans, the assembled team confirmed only that a pop-up store in Auckland would come first, followed by a full-size store which needed to be built from scratch, followed by a South Island store at some point in the future. On the upside up to 400 new jobs will be created when Ikea does eventually arrive, and the furniture giant would offer affordable options for New Zealanders who pay significantly more for everyday goods, including basic household furniture. “Such an excellent start of 2019 when we commemorate 250 years of friendship between Sweden and the Pacific region,” claimed Ahlberger in the build-up. From the #IKEA launch today in New Zealand! Such an excellent start of 2019 when we commemorate 250 years of friendship between Sweden and the Pacific Region. @MFATinAuckland @MFATgovtNZ @DavidTaylorNZ @AndrewJenksNZ @SwedeninOZ pic.twitter.com/4SOh6KpFPL Will Edwards, Ikea’s New Zealand manager, said the company would move as “swiftly and as quickly as we can” to bring containers of flat-packs to the country. “We’d like to give a piece of Ikea before the full meal comes along,” said Edwards, possibly with his mind lingering on its famous meatball offering. “That’s the very least the New Zealand people can get after waiting all this time.” As the hourly news bulletins rattled out the news, and #Ikea did tremendous business on Twitter, some felt let down. The New Zealand Herald dubbed the event the “Ikea anti-climax”, and ran a poll on its website asking “Were you disappointed by Ikea news today?” to which 75% of respondents said “yes”. Justin Flitter, who runs the Facebook page Ikea New Zealand and attended the launch said some fans were disappointed by the lack of specific detail announced, but said the expansion of Ikea was still “a big deal” to New Zealanders. “We had live video feeds and dozens of reporters at the launch event...It was breaking headline news in nz for the last two weeks” said Flitter. Earlier, Brodin called the New Zealand market “irresistible”, after dedicated fans has campaigned for close to a decade. “The dream we have is to reach everybody in New Zealand,” said Brodin, when interviewed by a super-fan who has run an Ikea New Zealand fan page for nine years The wait continues.President Trump closed the US government over a fabricated border crisis, and in doing so has sparked a real national security emergency. By shutting down the government, Trump has disabled America’s defenses against threats to national security. Trump decided to shut down the government over the claim that America needs a wall to deal with a crisis at the border with Mexico. But there is no crisis on the border other than the humanitarian crisis of his own making, best illustrated by the thousands of children separated from their parents and the two children who died in Customs and Border Protection custody. Trump’s claims of more terrorists and crime flowing across the border are lies and the vast majority of hard drugs coming across the border come through official ports of entry, not between ports of entry where a wall might stand. The trumped-up shutdown is Trump’s doing. Just days before reversing course, Trump was ready to fund the government without funding for the wall and supported the bill the Senate passed without wall funding. And despite trying to blame others since then, Trump claimed responsibility: “I am proud to shut down the government … I will be the one to shut it down.” The impacts on the economic wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, the economy, and the image of a broken American political system are very real and grave. Equally grave are the ways in which Trump’s shutdown is endangering US national security. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been forced to furlough roughly 5,000 people including special agents, intelligence analysts and attorneys, according to Tom O’Connor, a special agent and president of the FBI Agents Association. While the exact duties of these furloughed employees are unclear, this many people not working could be affecting any range of critical FBI functions from fighting terrorism to organized crime. While America’s government is shut down, America’s adversaries are not As of early January, 42% of US-based state department personnel and 26% of state’s personnel abroad had been furloughed, with the department making clear to foreign interlocutors that it is closed for business. With furloughed staff, American efforts to stop countries from trying to sell weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or terrorists from attacking America could be hindered. Diplomats not allowed to come to work are diplomats that are not working with allies to defeat Isis or support efforts to strengthen security in Central America – efforts that might actually be effective in reducing the need for refugees and migrants to flee to the United States. While state is calling back employees for a short period of paid work, weeks of damage already done and an uncertain future continue to create dangers. In all of the agencies affected by the shutdown there are national security functions being hit hard, with cyber-security being one of the most vulnerable. Repeated breaches of US systems over the years have made clear the regular stream of attacks against US government systems and that strong and vigilant cybersecurity efforts are essential to protecting everything the US government does. CNBC reported that “close to half of the employees within the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) – which works to help secure the nation’s critical infrastructure industries like banking, water, energy and nuclear – are furloughed”. With IT and cybersecurity professionals furloughed across the government, critical functions are being ignored. As one furloughed government IT professional put it: “We’ve never tested the limits like this before and I don’t know if they’re equipped to handle it.” Economic strains on US government workers not being paid create additional risks. Thousands of public servants are working without pay, from the employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) who ensure that air travel is safe to the members of the coast guard who protect America’s borders to the Secret Service, the very people who protect the president of the United States. Employees working without pay are already being forced to find additional work elsewhere and some are quitting. As patriotic as these professionals are – thousands upon thousands continue to work without pay to protect our country – the strains that the shutdown place on these professionals makes it more difficult to do their jobs, which has a direct impact on US national security. On top of it all, the longest-ever shutdown of the US government is sending terrifying shudders through the capitals of America’s friends and allies around the world. If Trump’s reckless and erratic conduct wasn’t enough, the shutdown is providing yet another powerful reason for countries that depend on American leadership and partnership to question whether America has lost its collective mind. While America’s government is shut down, America’s adversaries are not. Russia continues to sow discord in America and destabilize Europe. China continues cyber-attacks while trying to undermine US alliances in Asia. Climate change has not slowed down to meet the new US staffing patterns. And Isis terrorists are not furloughed, as evidenced by the American service members killed in a recent attack. There is no national emergency at the border. But the shutdown is making America vulnerable to threats, sparking a grave national security crisis that will only grow more dangerous as the shutdown continues. And the cause of the national security crisis is in the Oval Office.One of the more gratifying trends in modern beauty has been a newfound appreciation for old-fashioned but highly effective ingredients that should never have fallen from favour. While companies were aggressively marketing newfangled, often unproven advances in technology, beauty professionals continued to use unbeatable classics such as hyaluronic acid, retinol, vitamin C and oil. Squalane oil has been among my go-tos for decades, and I’m delighted it’s finally enjoying a big moment and wider availability. Squalane (created by adding hydrogen to squalene, a substance traditionally sourced from sharks’ livers – and naturally occurring in humans, too – but now almost always derived from olives or sugarcane) is the perfect oil if you think you hate oil. Light and ungreasy, it adds heaps of moisture, suppleness and visible glow without causing spots or greasiness, even on problem and congested skin, making it suitable for all skin types. Like most saturated oils, it has a long shelf life, so won’t start to smell or spoil. Its unadulterated nature makes it wonderful on sensitive skins and easy to mix with other products without clashing (I frequently add a drop of squalane to my night cream for extra moisture, or to my foundation for added glow). I particularly love it when deployed to give product slip and blendability, as in Charlotte Tilbury’s superlative Hollywood Flawless Filter (worn by me daily; £30 for 30ml), because it doesn’t cause the pilling and peeling common with silicones used for the same purpose. Best of all, squalane is pretty cheap. An unfussy commodity whose abundant availability is reflected in a price much lower than one now expects from a high-quality facial oil. Performance among the 100% pure varieties doesn’t vary much. My most-used is Garden of Wisdom’s version (£9, 30ml) but mainly because I prefer a pump bottle to a dropper. Also wonderful is Indie Lee’s 100% olive-derived squalane oil (£14, 10ml) and The Inkey List’s squalane (£8.99, 30ml). All are cruelty-free. There are more expensive versions, but with little tangible difference. Glycerin, another beloved old ingredient, for the next big comeback, please. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.When the final kick was delivered it was the Chelsea players running forward from the halfway line for the victory scrum. David Luiz had scored the decisive penalty. The players of Tottenham were on their knees and it will be Maurizio Sarri’s team who will be trying to face down Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final. Over the two legs, they will feel they deserved nothing less. Chelsea certainly responded with great vigour to Sarri’s criticism after their defeat by Arsenal on Saturday. They led 2-0 at half-time only for Fernando Llorente’s goal to take the game to its dramatic finale, when it boiled down to which group of players could hold their nerve from 12 yards. Christian Eriksen went first for Spurs and put his shot into the bottom right-hand corner of Kepa Arrizabalaga’s net. Érik Lamela, the team’s next penalty-taker, went to the other side and beat Chelsea’s goalkeeper again. Yet Willian, with a feinting run, had scored for Chelsea in between. César Azpilicueta’s effort was a beauty, picking out the top corner after a long run-up, and then it was Eric Dier breaking free from the line of Spurs players to start the long walk from the centre-circle, hoping for some of the joy he encountered during England’s penalty shootout against Colombia in the World Cup. Dier’s decisive penalty in Moscow was not particularly well taken. It was better, however, than the one he hit over the crossbar here and Chelsea never looked back once they had that advantage. Jorginho rolled in their next penalty, with an unorthodox little skip, and when Luca Moura’s kick was saved that cleared the way for David Luiz to confirm Chelsea’s place at Wembley on 24 February, by which time Gonzalo Higuaín, ineligible to make his debut against Spurs, should be fully integrated into a team who on this evidence, can take criticism from their manager better than many people anticipated. Against Arsenal, Sarri thought his players had lacked conviction and did not have the strength of personality to do anything about it. Yet the idea Chelsea could be so passive in this semi-final, given all their conflict with Spurs over recent years, was never realistic. David Luiz played through pain for most of the match after taking an early bang from Dier. Or just consider, perhaps, the moment when N’Golo Kanté’s low, spinning shot went through the legs of Moussa Sissoko to deceive the Spurs goalkeeper, Paulo Gazzaniga, to make it 1-1 on aggregate. There was no pumping of fists from the scorer. His teammates were rushing to embrace him but he was looking past them all. Kanté was pointing to the ball, making the point that he wanted someone to retrieve it – and quickly. He wanted the game to restart, with Spurs in retreat, and in those moments it felt almost like a trick of the imagination that Sarri could question the competitive courage of his players. Along the way, Eden Hazard might feel he proved his point, too. Sarri is right if he considers Hazard is not the classic leader, in terms of rolling up his sleeves, the old-fashioned way, and rousing his teammates, John Terry-style. There are different forms of leadership, however, and Hazard’s performance was a reminder why he is still the player who carries Chelsea’s greatest hopes. Playing on the left, with a licence to roam, he was in his strongest position, eluding opponents, cutting infield and making it his business to get into the penalty area. For Chelsea’s second goal, the ball went left to right, from Hazard to Pedro and then the overlapping Azpilicueta. The cross came in low and Hazard made an awkward shot look easy to give Chelsea an aggregate lead for the first time. For Spurs, that opening 45 minutes was an ordeal and a stark reminder about their reduction in performance when Harry Kane is missing from Mauricio Pochettino’s side. Dele Alli and Son Heung-min were other absentees and there can be no doubt Chelsea, trying to claw back a 1-0 first-leg deficit, must have been encouraged by the fact their opponents were deprived of key performers, especially when Pochettino had also left out Hugo Lloris, his first-choice goalkeeper. Spurs could have done with Kane, in particular, during the penalties. Spurs still had the incentive of trying to rid themselves of the one thing that is always held against them: that they have never won a trophy in the Pochettino era. It made for a compelling match, two of the Premier League’s leading sides slugging it out, under the floodlights, with the volume turned high and the underlying sense, in the stands and on the pitch, that these teams and their supporters are really not too fond of one another. Spurs were reeling until, five minutes into the second half, Llorente’s goal changed the complexion. Danny Rose, who had replaced the injured Ben Davies, supplied the cross from the left. Llorente had David Luiz in proximity but the Brazilian’s body position was entirely wrong. Llorente kept his eyes on the ball, six yards out, and headed in the goal that levelled the match again. After that, both sides went hunting for a winner and, for the first time, Spurs threatened to get on top. Giroud could have restored Chelsea’s lead within a minute and put a header wide in stoppage time. Hazard, of all people, squandered another decent opportunity but, with Spurs becoming increasingly dangerous, Llorente wasted a good chance from Eriksen’s brilliant right-sided delivery. Llorente apologised to Pochettino when he was substituted and, once again, Tottenham were left to reflect on what could have been.Juventus are confident of signing Aaron Ramsey when his Arsenal contract expires at the end of the season after holding productive talks with the Wales midfielder’s representatives. The Italian champions, whose sporting director Fabio Paratici admitted this week that Ramsey is on their radar, have already offered the 28-year-old a five-year contract worth €6.5m (£5.87m) a season in a bid to see of interest from several other European clubs including Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain. Arsenal withdrew their offer of a new deal last September meaning he is now free to negotiate with overseas clubs and sign a pre-contract. It is understood that Juventus are now in pole position to sign him and have even enquired over the possibility of signing Ramsey during the January transfer window, although Arsenal are at this stage reluctant to sanction that move. Reports in Italy have stated that Germany international Sami Khedira could be allowed to leave as part of any deal. Internazionale, Real Madrid and an unnamed Chinese club have also been linked with an approach for Ramsey. He joined Arsenal from Cardiff in 2008 for £5m and is the club’s longest-serving player. He has won three FA Cups with them, scoring the winning goals in the 2014 and 2017 finals against Hull and Chelsea respectively.The plot allegedly involved three Polish extremists and a German journalist with ties to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, as well as to a number of Kremlin-friendly Russian news outlets. Their alleged task was to carry out a “false flag” operation in western Ukraine: burn down a Hungarian cultural centre, and make it look as though Ukrainian nationalists were responsible. The main beneficiary of the ensuing recriminations would be Russia. If this was the idea, the fire last February in the town of Uzhhorod had the desired effect. There were no casualties, but tensions were inflamed in the Ukrainian region, which has a sizeable ethnic Hungarian minority. Hungarian authorities were quick to blame Ukrainian nationalists and the anger contributed to the increasingly fraught relationship between Budapest and Kiev over the past year, which has caused cracks in EU and Nato solidarity in support of Ukraine. Now, a year later in a Kraków courtroom, new details of what happened in Uzhhorod last year have been emerging. Michał Prokopowicz, a Polish far-right activist, told the court last week that he was paid €1,500 (£1,300) to organise the attack by Manuel Ochsenreiter, a German journalist with multiple links to Russia, who works as an adviser to AfD MP Markus Frohnmaier. Prokopowicz told the court he hired two associates, who are standing trial with him, to carry out the attack: Tomasz Szymkowiak and Adrian Marglewski, who are charged with promoting fascism and endangering lives or property with fire. They are yet to give testimony and have not yet entered pleas. The men allegedly returned to Poland via Slovakia shortly after the fire at the cultural centre and were identified by Ukrainian authorities through images from security cameras. Prokopowicz reported the success of the mission to Ochsenreiter, he told the court. Prokopowicz faces up to 12 years in prison for inciting terrorism when the case continues in March, but the Polish court has so far declined to charge Ochsenreiter, who denies involvement. If Prokopowicz’s testimony is true, however, it raises the question: what or who prompted Ochsenreiter to set up the attack? Ochsenreiter edits the far-right Zuerst! magazine, and become an adviser last September to Frohnmaier, who was elected to the Bundestag from the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg in 2017. Attention, however, is likely to focus on the journalist’s numerous ties to Russia. He has been a regular guest on the Kremlin-backed news channel RT. Usually introduced simply as a “German journalist”, he would often agree with Kremlin talking points on the war in Ukraine or give a far-right viewpoint on tensions in Germany over migration. He has also travelled to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in east Ukraine, where he was an “observer” for elections the international community regarded as illegitimate. He had a regular column on the website of Katehon, a thinktank run by Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian financier who has been accused of supporting the pro-Russia insurgency. Malofeev has denied accusations of funding the far right in Europe. A spokeswoman for Malofeev said Ochsenreiter was never paid for his columns or for any other work by the Russian financier or structures controlled by him. The Berlin prosecutors’ office said a preliminary investigation was under way against “an employee of a Bundestag parliamentarian”, but would not say whether this was Ochsenreiter. Earlier, German media reported that prosecutors had opened an investigation into the case. The AfD declined to comment on the allegations or news of the preliminary investigation. Neither Ochsenreiter nor Frohnmaier’s office responded to requests for comment from the Guardian. Frohnmaier wrote on Facebook last week that Ochsenreiter had denied the allegations. He later told German media that Ochsenreiter had resigned from his position after the allegations emerged. The journalist also had longstanding links to the Polish far right. An undated photograph unearthed by Anton Shekhovtsov, who researches European far-right movements, shows Ochsenreiter together with Prokopowicz and Mateusz Piskorski, the leader of the pro-Russia Zmiana party. Ochsenreiter and Piskorski were directors of the European Centre for Geopolitical Analysis, which specialises in organising Russia-backed election missions with the participation of far-right and far-left actors from across Europe, as well as publishing literature pushing the Kremlin line on a wide range of issues. In May 2016, Piskorski was detained by Polish authorities on suspicion of espionage for foreign powers, including Russia and China. He was not charged for another two years, making him a cause célèbre for the European far right, which claims his arrest is politically motivated. He has been in detention for two years, but the case has not yet been brought to trial. In east Ukraine, Russia has funnelled cash, weapons and occasionally troops across the border to support and control the separatist territories that split away from Ukrainian government control in 2014. The fire in western Ukraine was much lower key. It would appear to fit a pattern of low-grade, low-cost and deniable cultivation of a number of European far-right activists by Russian intelligence or Kremlin-friendly figures. It also represents an escalation from mere cultivation. Shekhovtsov compared the fire to historical “false flag” cases, such as when the KGB and the Stasi used agents to paint swastikas in West Germany in the 1950s in an attempt to emphasise the country’s failure to break fully from Nazism. He cautioned against drawing a direct link to the Kremlin, claiming that Ochsenreiter could be freelancing in the hope of impressing his contacts in Moscow. “He knew what kind of things can be rewarded by the Russians, and for this he would have been rewarded,” Shekhovtsov claimed. As in many other cases across Europe, the claims would suggest that pro-Russia actors have seized on genuine grievances and attempted to exploit them. The incident worsened already delicate relations between Ukraine and Viktor Orbán’s nationalist government in Hungary. Hungary has complained about a restrictive language law meant primarily to tackle the dominance of Russian in Ukraine, but which has also worried the Hungarian minority in the west of the country. For months, Hungary has blocked Ukraine’s efforts to move closer to Nato owing to disagreements over the language issue. This is despite strong warnings from the US that the Hungarian policy was playing into the Kremlin’s hands. In a post on Facebook, the Ukrainian foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, said the evidence emerging in court in Kraków showed “the complexity and scale of Russian hybrid methods”. He said: “It’s time for Europe to think systemically of how they could counter Moscow, which is doing everything it wants in the territory of the free world.”Having asked those of you living outside the UK if you were confused by the latest news from Brexitland, I got so many responses (thank you all) that I have grouped and paraphrased the most common ones so as to be able answer, at least approximately, as many as possible. And I’ve mostly stuck to factual questions on the Brexit process. “Will Brexit finally teach Britain it no longer rules the world?” from (among others) Steve Norman in Canada, Ferdy in Dublin and Thijs in the Netherlands, warrants a book-length response, but not now. Also, I’m not going into great detail explaining Brexit terminology: if you want answers to that I recommend the Guardian’s handy Brexit phrasebook which hopefully has most of it covered. What are the ground rules of Brexit? I’m seriously confused (Danni, US) Brexit is the process of the UK leaving the EU, which it narrowly voted in favour of in a referendum in June 2016. The process is governed by article 50 of the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon and is happening in two stages: first, the two sides negotiate their divorce deal (the “withdrawal agreement”), and after this they will sort out their future trading relationship. It’s proving problematic because the UK voted for a departure but not a destination: some think Britain should remain in a close relationship with the EU, with privileged access to its vast single market but having to obey its rules; others think its should strike out on its own, with greater control but less smooth trade. It’s complicated by the red lines set down by the prime minister, Theresa May, (ending the automatic right of EU citizens to settle in the UK, and leaving the EU’s single market and customs union) which exclude a lot of potential options. Can you explain the Irish backstop? (Diane Dalton, US, with related questions from Ton Pasman and Leonie, Netherlands; Shona, Ireland; Dietmar Homberg, Germany; Elisabeth Sanfuchs, Belgium; Ayaz Ramji, Canada) When the UK leaves the EU, the border between Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland, which is currently invisible, will become the EU’s only land border with the UK. Such a border normally requires customs and other controls. Nobody wants that, partly because nobody wants a return to the violence of the period before the Good Friday agreement, which removed border checks. In theory, the post-Brexit trading arrangements between the EU and the UK will avoid a “hard” border, but they could take years to negotiate so the EU has insisted on a “backstop” guaranteeing the absence of a hard border until those arrangements are in place. The backstop leaves the whole of the UK in a customs union with the EU “unless and until” the EU agrees it can leave. Brexiters do not like this at all. Why is the deadline 29 March 2019 and what’s the problem with extending it? (Dawn, Canada; Jean Vigoureux, France) Article 50 provides for two years of talks; the UK triggered it on 29 March 2017 so in principle it leaves automatically two years later. It can ask the EU27 for an extension, which they have said they would grant for a valid reason, such as sorting out the final details of a deal that has the support of a majority in the UK parliament. This now looks quite likely, but it may only last for a few months because a new European parliament is sworn in in July and EU rules require all member states to be represented – a problem if the UK is still a member. Experts think this could be resolved with a temporary fix, but the EU would rather avoid the hassle. Can article 50 be revoked and how would the EU respond? (Benjamin Willumsen, Chile) The European court of justice has ruled that the UK can revoke article 50 unilaterally at any time without the permission of the EU27 (who would be delighted, if annoyed by all the UK has put them through). There’s disagreement in the UK about whether it could be done by a simple vote by MPs or would need an act of parliament, but in any case it looks like the last thing the government would do. Is there any chance of another referendum? (Michael Kerr, California; Johannes Meigen, Germany; David French, New Zealand; Laurent, France) There isn’t a majority in parliament for a “people’s vote”, or second referendum, which both the Tory and Labour leaderships argue would undermine people’s faith in democracy. That could change, but one of the problems is the time it could take to organise another vote: the government says it would take a year, which is an exaggeration, but it would almost certainly take longer than the UK has left, and possibly longer than the relatively short extension likely to be favoured by the EU. What is Labour’s position and why? Why does Jeremy Corbyn think he can negotiate a different or better deal with the EU than Theresa May? (Fernando Hervas, Belgium; Antje, Switzerland) Labour’s position is complicated by the fact that under the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, many of its MPs represent constituencies that voted to leave while most of its members and voters are pro-remain. Corbyn himself is also far from being a convinced pro-European. The party has sat on the fence until now – favouring a general election before all other options – but will soon have to come off it. If the EU agrees to rewrite parts of the withdrawal agreement, Labour could get a better deal than May if it dropped (some of) her red lines, but it has been as guilty as the Conservatives of pretending that Britain can leave the EU while retaining all the advantages of membership. Have any trade deals been approved with non-EU nations? What are World Trade Organization terms, and why are they a bad thing? (Patrick Speer, Scotland and Liam, Australia) Britain is not formally allowed to negotiate new trade deals while still an EU member. It has signed off on a text said to replicate current trading arrangements with Switzerland. Other than that, hardly any of the 68 trade deals from which the UK benefits as an EU member, and which it said it would have replicated by the time of departure, are near, and none will be ready by 29 March, according to the FT. Brexiters talk about “trading on WTO terms” as if it is what the world does, but it does not: it may trade under WTO rules, but all 164 members of the WTO have also agreed bilateral or regional trade deals that allow them to trade on much better terms than the WTO baselines. No sensible nation would leave the world’s largest single market, the EU, to trade with it on WTO terms, as would happen in the event of no deal. What might happen in the the first weeks and months after a no-deal Brexit? I’m travelling to Britain in April – will my trip be disrupted, might there be food shortages? (Mark Singer and Gerry Patey, Canada; Francois Bry, Munich; Jean Ballanco, US) As far as food shortages go, it’s anyone’s guess. Major British supermarket chains have started stockpiling tinned goods and MPs have said Britons may need to adopt a different diet, which does not sound promising, but it’s hard to imagine it coming to that. No deal would certainly be likely to cause disruption at airports; the European commission last month unveiled a temporary nine-month plan to keep planes in the air and goods and money flowing should the UK crash out, and Britain has the army standing by, but an awful lot of things we take for granted could change very suddenly if Britain leaves without a deal. British visitors to Europe will need to apply for an online visa waiver, similar to the the US Esta programme, once it comes into operation in 2020; if the UK crashes out before then, they may – depending on how the UK decides to treat EU visitors – require a Schengen area visa. Does the Queen have any powers to intervene? (Vincent, Netherlands; Isabel Pitta, Brazil) The monarch is not meant to get involved in politics. But she is the only person who can invite someone to form a government, and if Theresa May loses another no-confidence vote, she might have to. She would have 14 days to ask someone to form a new administration (including a cross-party option) providing it was clear they could command a majority in parliament. If no majority exists, new elections would automatically follow. The Queen, however, cannot dissolve parliament, having lost this power in the 2011 Fixed-term Parliament Act. Will my daughter, who is French, need to apply for a visa to study in the UK? Will we need international driver’s licences? (K Joubert, France; Michael Lea, Spain) European students currently studying in the UK or applying to start courses in 2019 will not face any additional restrictions because of Brexit, the government has said. It has warned, however, that UK drivers living in the EU should exchange their licence for a local one – and if possible get an international driving permit – as soon as possible in case of a no-deal Brexit, which might invalidate their UK licence, or mean they have to take a new driving test. How do you get out of this mess? When will all the turmoil be over – aren’t you going insane? (Remo Casale, New Zealand; Georg Beck, Germany) In order: By the British government softening its red lines to allow it to arrive at a form of Brexit that is acceptable to both the EU27 and the UK parliament – something it should have done a long time ago – or, possibly, by holding a second referendum. Not for quite a while yet. Yes.Manchester City are relaxed about potentially losing a third young player of potential in two years, with Rabbi Matondo expected to move to Schalke for around £12m. If the 18-year-old does join the German club, he will follow Jadon Sancho, who signed for Borussia Dortmund in summer 2017, and Brahim Díaz, who left for Real Madrid this month. However it is understood City are not worried that this represents a concerning trend of promising youngsters departing, instead believing each player has a unique set of circumstances. There is a confidence at the club that City’s youth setup is producing a number of potential first-team players who are bound to attract attention from outside and bids. Matondo made his Wales debut in a friendly against Albania in November but has never played for City’s first team and the club are thought to be privately delighted with the fee agreed with Schalke. If they receive £12m, that would be £3m less than Real paid for Díaz and £4m more than was received for Sancho two summers ago. Although Matondo is considered a prospect, coaches at City do not rate him in the same bracket as Díaz or Sancho. While the winger is particularly quick, ranking as fast as Leroy Sané and Raheem Sterling, the view at City is that Matondo would have only a slim chance of dislodging either of these wide players, with Riyad Mahrez and Bernardo Silva also ahead of him. Díaz was widely considered to be more of first-team quality than Matondo and the 19-year-old’s decision to move to Real represents a different set of circumstances. City’s view is that Díaz, as a Spaniard, was understandably attracted by a move to his homeland’s most successful club and given the ages of Sterling, 24, and Sané, 23, in particular, felt his pathway to a starting berth was blocked. City wanted to retain Díaz, as they did Sancho, who left when he was 17, but a transfer which could rise to £22m with add-ons was viewed as a success for all parties. The champions were adequately remunerated, the player and Real are content and relations between the two clubs have proved mutually beneficial, which bodes well for future deals. Phil Foden, unlike Matondo, is considered to be at the same level as Díaz and Sancho. One of the players ahead of the 18-year-old midfielder in Pep Guardiola’s team is David Silva. In contrast to Sterling and Sané, Silva turned 33 this month and he has previously said his current contract may be his last in the Premier League. This expires in summer 2020. So, if Silva does leave then, Foden will just have celebrated his 20th birthday, his integration into the senior squad this season upping his first-team minutes and preparing him for a potential starting berth. Whereas Sancho never played for the first team, Díaz was being eased into the squad, making 14 appearances while Foden has made 28. The closest Matondo has got to senior football was on last summer’s pre-season tour of the US; he was never selected by Guardiola in the squad for a competitive match. Guardiola, asked on Monday about Matondo’s prospective move to Schalke, whom City play in the Champions League last-16 tie next month, was hardly effusive in his assessment of the player. “Yeah, I have some comments – I know how good he is, incredibly fast winger, and a young talent,” the manager said. “This club is working so good. All the players in the academy, we trust them. If they want to be patient and stay; if they want to leave, they leave.” A host of other clubs were interested in Matondo, whose contract expires next summer, but Schalke met City’s valuation. Once this occurred the club decided not to make a concerted play to retain him, as they did with Sancho and Díaz, who were each offered contracts competitive with, respectively, Dortmund and Real. Tues 29 Jan Newcastle Utd v Man City 8pm (BT Sport 1)Wed 30 JanLiverpool v Leicester City 8pm (BT Sport 1)Sat 2 Feb Tottenham v Newcastle Utd 12.30pm (Sky Sports Main Event)Cardiff City v Bournemouth 5.30pm (BT Sport 1)Sun 3 Feb Leicester City v Man Utd 2.05pm (Sky Sports Main Event)Man City v Arsenal 4.30pm (Sky Sports Main Event)  It was the summer of 2013 when Gavin Thomas made his breakout appearance on the internet. He was two and half years old. His grandfather had just passed away after a long battle with cancer, and his extended family gathered every Sunday to share a meal. Gavin was the only grandchild, the center of attention. The adults doted over him and shared photos of his early life via a joint iCloud account. One Sunday, Gavin’s uncle, Nick Mastodon, took a video of Gavin putting stickers on his face and uploaded it to Vine, a recently launched video sharing platform. Mastodon was an early adopter and had gained a decent following making mash-ups of Disney movies and pop songs. Gavin’s happy spontaneity struck a chord with Mastodon’s followers, who demanded more toddler content. Gavin’s mother, Kate Thomas, gave Mastodon permission to spend 20 minutes making videos with Gavin during their Sunday visits. The format was simple: Mastodon would act, and Gavin would react. In one video, Mastodon asks Gavin: “What was your favorite part about going to the doctor today?” Gavin responds: “When I throwed up on my jacket.” In another, Mastodon puts a gecko on Gavin’s head and his face oscillates rapidly between anxiety and astonishment. By 2014, Mastodon’s follower count had grown to just under 1 million. Mastodon and Kate thought the videos would be a brief internet craze and then fade into irrelevance. But then they started to notice people taking screenshots of Gavin’s face to make reaction memes, such as a picture of Gavin with his arms crossed accompanied by the caption: “How ya mom be looking when you get home too late.” Soon, the Gavin meme had taken on a life of its own. The people of the internet adopted Gavin and started to refer to him as “our son”. Gavin’s dad, Adam, remained mostly oblivious to his son’s fame until late 2017, when one of his colleagues noticed a framed picture of Gavin on his desk. “Oh my God, this is hilarious,” he announced to the office. “Adam has a picture of the meme kid on his desk.” Confused, Adam responded that the boy in the picture was his child. “Yeah, I get the joke,” his colleague said. “He’s all of our kid. He’s the internet’s son.” “No,” Adam replied. “That’s actually my child – he is my physical son.” Gavin is now eight – a second-grader from a middle-class family in Minneapolis. His astonishing online fame led to opportunities his parents never imagined possible. The trade-off is a childhood played out in front of millions of strangers, the cost of which remains to be seen. I recently spent a weekend with Gavin, eager to learn how a seemingly normal family are dealing with the memeification of their only son. When Kate picked me up from my hotel in downtown Minneapolis on a Friday afternoon, she had just collected Gavin from school. “Say hello to Oscar, Gavs,” Kate said. Reluctantly, Gavin gave me a high five, and then told Kate that he wanted to play Fortnite. “My phone doesn’t have enough battery,” she said. “But why don’t we stop off and get you some Wendy’s. You’re probably just a bit tired and hungry.” We were headed to the Winter Lights festival at the Arboretum, a botanical garden and function center on the outskirts of the city. Kate, who is 35, told me that her husband wouldn’t be able to join us – he is in the military and was away for work. The plan for the evening was to shoot a video of Gavin making cookies with Kate’s sister, who works as head chef at the Arboretum. Over the past few months, Gavin had started making regular vlogs to keep his fans updated about his life. Making these is part of a new content strategy developed by Gavin’s manager, Byron Austen Ashley, who Kate began working with in December 2017. Previously, her strategy for managing Gavin’s online following was haphazard. She had her own social media accounts where she uploaded pictures and videos of Gavin, but most Gavin content was being created by unaffiliated meme accounts, some of which were using his face to sell merchandise. Ashley began by telling Kate to start new social media accounts on Gavin’s behalf and then hire a legal team to shut down the other meme accounts. Kate’s accounts now have millions of followers across multiple online platforms and far greater control over the content that gets disseminated. At the Arboretum, Kate’s sister said that she wouldn’t have time to make a video with Gavin making cookies. “That’s OK,” Kate said, handing Gavin a digital camera attached to a small tripod. “Why don’t we go outside and make a video of the lights instead.” “What people seem to love about Gav is that he’s just a normal kid,” Kate said. “So, we just take videos of us out and about. And then I go through the footage later and decide what to upload, just like any proud mom.” Once outside, Gavin, who had perked up since his Wendy’s cheeseburger, hit record and took off into a field of snow with illuminated hay-barrels and barns, swinging the camera by his side. When I caught up, he asked if I wanted to play hide and go seek. “Sure,” I said. “OK, I’ll hide first,” he said. “Take the camera.” “Why do I need to take the camera?” I asked. “Because then no one can see me.” Last year was huge for Gavin. He travelled to China twice, headed to New York to appear on Good Morning America, and in November, he made an appearance at the premier of Ralph Breaks the Internet in Los Angeles. “That was really amazing,” Kate told me. “They invited other meme kids, like David After Dentist and Side Eye Chloe and Backpack Kid, so I got to meet their families and trade stories.” I had reached out to several of these “meme kids” and their families before meeting Gavin. For most, the experience of internet fame was a meteoric, short-lived experience. Such was the case for David Devore, better known as David After Dentist, whose dad shot a video of him while he was still high on pain medication after dental surgery when he was seven. The video went viral and Devore was briefly famous. “Now I’m a senior in high school and applying for college,” he told me. “I’m just a regular kid who plays lacrosse and works out. The whole thing is just kind of like a cool memory.” But not all experiences of unwitting internet fame are so benign. The forebear of this type of celebrity was Ghyslain Raza, who in 2002, at the age of 14, filmed himself fighting imaginary sentries with a golf ball retriever in the media room at his high school. The footage was discovered by three classmates who uploaded it to Kazaa, a file-sharing network. The video was then discovered by blogger Andy Baio, who posted a copy on his popular blog, along with a remixed version that superimposed Star Wars graphics on to the footage. For 14-year-old Raza, the non-consensual online fame was horrifying. He was mercilessly bullied, lost the few friends he had, and ended up completing his final exams at a hospital psychiatric unit. While Baio retrospectively tried to cast Raza as an “internet hero”, Raza felt like the internet was laughing at him, not with him. “Having your 15 minutes of fame, when you’ve done something truly worthwhile, is one thing. When you earn it for something humiliating, that’s entirely different,” Raza said in 2013. “I couldn’t help but feel worthless, like my life wasn’t worth living.” Kate says she is aware of the risks involved with Gavin being so young and so exposed. Someone once superimposed a Clorox label on a picture of Gavin drinking from a mug, making reference to a morbid suicide meme. Another time, a group of teenagers drove to Kate’s mother’s house and made a Vine outside. Since then, the Thomas’s have taken steps to ensure their privacy and Gavin’s safety. They don’t reveal their surname publicly (“Thomas” is an alias), never give out their address, and they have asked the school not to identify Gavin to anyone outside of the family. “We keep a close eye on everything,” Kate told me. “But mostly, our followers are very nice and often protective. It really does feel like the whole internet is looking out for him, making sure he is drinking his milk, doing his homework. It feels special to see your boy loved by so many strangers.” The next morning, I met Gavin and Kate at the Mall of America, which has an indoor theme park, a mini-golf course, and movie cinemas. “Gav knows the social media team here,” Kate told me. “They love it when he comes and hangs out, so they’ve given us free passes to go on all the rides.” Gavin was dressed in a yellow hoodie with a big picture of his own face on it, which would be available to buy via their new online shop in a few months. Kate is candid about how Gavin’s internet fame could lead him to a career online. If making a living as an internet celebrity was inconceivable a decade ago, it is now a profession that many aspire to. At this stage, Kate told me, Gavin wants to be a YouTube gamer. The most successful ones – Markiplier, PewDiePie, Fernanfloo – earn millions of dollars each year and have more cultural influence among young people than traditional celebrities. To do this, Kate is taking direction from Ashley. They have enrolled him in acting classes and started teaching him how to edit video. They have also set up a Coogan account, a type of trust established in the 1930s to safeguard the money earned by child performers into adulthood. Arden Rose, one of Ashley’s other clients, got her start making beauty-focused YouTube videos on her dad’s laptop when she was 14 out of their suburban Arkansas home. She accumulated a devoted following online and leveraged this to become the lead actor in two successful TV series: Mr Student Body President and Guidance. She has since designed a jewelry collection, signed big product endorsements with Calvin Klein, authored a book published by HarperCollins, and splits her time between Los Angeles and London. Part of what makes internet celebrity so appealing is this sense of accessibility. Whereas being a movie star once required living in a certain place and having certain connections, being a YouTube star ostensibly only requires a camera and the internet. But this democratic access to fame that the internet affords comes at a cost. Last year, a number of high-profile YouTubers talked publicly about the pressure of constant online engagement. Elle Mills, a YouTuber who rose to fame in 2017 after posting a hugely popular “coming out” video, uploaded a video to her channel in May entitled “burnt out at 19”. She confessed that the grind of producing new content and the emotional labor of interacting with her fans had left her anxious and depressed. Because Kate still runs Gavin’s accounts on his behalf, his engagement with fans is carefully moderated. Yet occasionally, his celebrity spills out into the real world. As we walked around the mall, a number of teenagers took pictures of him from a distance. At one point, Gavin dropped his packet of caramel popcorn on the ground. “Oh no! What have you done, Gavin,” said a young woman walking past. “Do you think I can take a selfie with you?” Gavin, popcornless and crestfallen, shook his head. Kate whispered something in his ear. He relinquished and went to stand next to the stranger, producing one of his signature faces, which sits ambiguously between a smile and a grimace. “That’s pretty normal for us,” Kate said as we made our way to the arcade. “He’s been recognized in public since he was three. Here in Minnesota, people are pretty reserved and generally keep their distance. “But in China, it was a different story.” Name: Gavin Thomas Age: 8Occupation: Internet celebrity/meme icon in ChinaWeibo followers: 2.1 million (!)Famous in China why: his "fake smile" speaks to people familiar with awkward social situations, hence nickname "Fake Smile Boy" #假笑男孩. Gavin's uncle is: @nickmastodon pic.twitter.com/STlHArNu6S Gavin and Kate made their first trip to China in August 2018, after the successful launch of Gavin’s Weibo account – they gained over 1 million followers in the first day. A media team from GQ China followed him around Beijing and Chengdu, taking pictures of Gavin with his fans. Gavin and Kate returned to China in September after being invited to a technology conference hosted by Tencent, the biggest social network and gaming company in the country. This pivot to a Chinese audience started after Ashley was tipped off that Gavin’s face was being used to sell mugs, posters, and clothing on Chinese e-commerce sites. Ashley’s hunch, in his words, was to “lean in and capitalize”. When I spoke to Ashley over the phone, he told me that the digital entertainment industry is far more advanced in China than it is in the US. He has been working on forging a number of brand deals for Gavin, including appearing in a hair product advertisement alongside his dad. It is this Chinese fanbase that now distinguishes Gavin from other meme kids. He is becoming less gimmick, more media personality. “There’s a universe where he’s the most relevant American celebrity in China,” Byron told me. “Some people would say he is already.” I asked Kate what made her son so popular in China. “I think it’s his face,” she said. “I think there’s something about it that is very relatable.” Ashley also believes that Gavin’s face is his most valuable asset in China – more specifically, the signature smile/grimace face. On Chinese social media, it is used as a meme to connote forced positivity in an otherwise uncomfortable situation. For example, people will post a picture of Gavin’s smile with text that reads: “I can’t wait for school on Monday.” So widespread is this meme that Gavin has become known by the Chinese media as “the boy with the fake smile”. “We’re currently working on a strategy to protect this face,” Ashley told me. “The case we’re making is that the way that Gavin is shared is not so much as a person, but more as an emoji.” Gavin’s uncle is now working as a creative at an advertising firm – a job he got in part because of his social media presence – so he has little time to make videos with Gavin. But they’re still close and Mastodon feels a sense of responsibility for how Gavin’s life is now unfolding. “I think that social media makes being a kid and a parent a lot more complicated than it used to be,” he told me. “When we were kids, we used to make videos with our neighbors – I think we recreated the show Friends at one point – but this was on an old videotape recorder, and I don’t even think my parents watched them.” With Gavin, they have this vast record of his life online and on iCloud accounts. “I think this makes growing up a whole different experience.” In my family, my older sisters share a lot of photos and videos of their children via our family WhatsApp group. We live in different countries, so photo sharing is a good way to stay in touch. I have seen my nephews and nieces take first steps and sing the alphabet for the first time, to which I respond with heart emojis. But my eldest sister has misgivings about putting her children on more public forums. She and her husband have a rule not to post content on social media that shows their children’s face. They want their children to be able to choose how they depict themselves online, to have agency over their digital record, rather than it being forged by their parents without consultation or consent. They also worry that if they posted content of their children, they might start analyzing their interactions with them through the lens of what gets more engagement. “If you’re conditioned to feel your relationships are somehow improved by the number of likes you get, you’re setting yourself up for difficult times ahead,” my brother-in-law told me. While they feel that these rules have been useful so far, they still have questions and anxieties about the future. When is the right age to let children start posting their own content? What do they do if their friends post things about them online? “These are uncharted waters,” my sister told me. “And we’re all just bumbling through.” Like my sister, the Thomases are navigating their way through the ramifications of sharing a Truman Show-like record of their child. But the Thomases, like many other families, have allowed the world into their private photo album. In return, they experience an intensified version of what all proud families feel when they receive praise about their children. The trade-off for Gavin’s life and how it unfolds is yet to be seen. What will growing up be like after the come down from a dopamine-rush childhood? What will be compromised in order sustain the high? “He’s only eight, but internet fame has just kind of been the norm for him his whole life,” Mastodon said. “I don’t think he fully understands what that means, and I don’t think we do either. What I’ve always kept in mind is what he will think in, like, 15 years. Will he be grateful? Will he say I wish my uncle hadn’t have done that? I sometimes feel like we’ve handed our kids a reality they didn’t sign up for.”The mother of a medical student facing more than 20 years in prison for protesting against the Nicaraguan government is appealing to the international community to put pressure on president Daniel Ortega’s regime. Amaya Eva Coppens, a Belgian-Nicaraguan dual national, is due to stand trial in the capital Managua after being “abducted” in a raid by more than 30 riot police and paramilitaries on 10 September. The 24-year-old activist, who had been studying in the city of León, is among more than 600 political prisoners detained since April when the state reacted with violence to demonstrations against planned social security reforms. In an emotional appeal, her mother Tamara Zamora told the Guardian: “Amaya is a citizen of both Belgium and the European Union so I’m calling on the international community to use their powers to apply political pressure. “We want to draw attention not only to Amaya’s case, but to those of others who are less visible. We want other governments to demand an end to this dictatorship to stop the repression.” Described by her family as “passionate and tenacious” with a “strong social conscience”, Coppens is facing charges of terrorism, possession of firearms and being an accomplice to the kidnapping of police officers. Others facing similar charges have been handed sentences of up to 30 years, according to human rights groups. Coppens was involved in the first protest on 18 April against Ortega’s plan to reduce benefits for pensioners. The following day she was beaten by police but saved by her peers. She went on to become a key figure in the student movement, attending to the injured and bringing food to protesters amid a violent clampdown during which snipers targeted demonstrators under what Amnesty International described as Ortega’s shoot to kill strategy. Since May, Coppens had been moving between addresses. Her two brothers moved to Belgium amid fears for their safety, but she insisted on staying. Zamora broke down in tears as she described the day her daughter was eventually tracked down. “She was at a safe house but someone had betrayed [her], reporting her location. About 30 men arrived in trucks and one put a gun to her head, saying: ‘We’ve finally got you’.” Coppens was taken to the El Chipote maximum security jail in Managua and held for eight days before being transferred to the La Esperanza prison for women. “The first time I was allowed to see her I felt completely heartbroken,” said Zamora. “I knew she was sad and could see the realisation in her face this was not going to be a short-term thing.” The parents’ second visit was on their daughter’s 24th birthday on 31 October. “She was in much better shape and told us she had been exercising and staying strong so she could continue the fight,” her mother recalled. More than 152,000 people have signed a petition to free Coppens and other political prisoners. Zamora, whose husband is Belgian, said she thinks her daughter’s status as a dual national has prevented her from being tortured like other detainees. But she added: “The Belgian authorities haven’t done much as there is no embassy in Nicaragua.” The family was told by the consulate that assistance would be limited because only one parent is Belgian. Lawyers for the family have warned them to expect a sentence “in excess of 20 years” when Coppens stands trial this year. “These are political trials,” said Zamora. “Even if you have the best lawyer in the world our kids will be found guilty and sentenced. The only way out of this is a change in government.” The husband of another detainee, 37-year-old dentist Irlanda Jerez, agreed. Daniel Esquivel said: “In terms of justice we have very little hope. The regime controls the judges and the legal system – it’s a political issue and the only solution will be a political one.” He explained how charges brought against his wife were a smokescreen designed to silence her. “She did not have any trouble with the government prior to the protests but she’s always had strong political opinions and started sharing these widely [on social media] after we became involved in the protests,” said Esquivel. The authorities soon began digging into her past to see what they could use to attack her, claims Esquivel. They found details of a property dispute in 2016 which Jerez won on appeal in the supreme court. Six vehicles surrounded her car in Managua on 18 July and Jerez was seized by armed police and subsequently charged in relation to the 2016 case. She was sentenced to five years in jail. Esquivel said the inmates continue the resistance from behind bars by singing the Nicaraguan national anthem and weaving blue and white wrist bands. But he fears for his wife’s safety. She was allegedly attacked on 26 October when 20 to 25 men wielding AK47s stormed the prison. It is understood they beat her after she refused to be taken for interrogation and many of her cellmates who tried to protect her were injured. “When I saw her she had bruises on her back and limbs,” said Esquivel. “She is usually optimistic but she’s heard rumours they want to move her and says she is worried they want to ‘make her disappear for good’.” Coppens’ family, meanwhile, remain defiant as they await news of her trial which has been postponed until February. A Belgian foreign ministry spokesman said they were doing everything possible to support her case. “Our embassy based in Panama has provided consular assistance from the beginning. We have been there at each stage of her case but because she is a dual national the assistance we can provide under international law is limited,” said Matthieu Branders. “We cannot intervene on judicial matters but our minister met with the Nicaraguan minister for national affairs in September at the general assembly in New York, and asked that the investigation was conducted properly to ensure a speedy release.” The Nicaraguan government has not responded to a request for comment.Claims that a senior employee at the World Health Organization misused Ebola funds to fly his girlfriend to west Africa are among a tide of allegations under investigation by the agency. An internal inquiry has been launched by the WHO following a series of anonymous whistleblower emails that alleged widespread racism, sexism and misspending. The emails, sent to senior management last year, claimed there was systematic discrimination against African staff and that recruitment processes are corrupt. Whistleblowers have also alleged that staff misused money intended to fight the Ebola outbreaks in west Africa that began in 2013, as well as an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The author of one email wrote that “corruption stories about logisticians and procurement in WHO [health emergencies department] are legendary”. The WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former health minister of Ethiopia, has instructed the agency’s office of internal oversight to investigate the claims. The allegations, some of which were reported by the Associated Press on Thursday, were raised in a series emails, the first of which was sent in April. The Guardian has learned that the allegations include claims that funds intended for the Ebola outbreak in west Africa were misused, with staff fabricating a mission so that a senior employee’s girlfriend, a junior professional, could join him during the Ebola response. It has also been claimed that, during an Ebola outbreak in DRC last year, a plane was hired to transport three vehicles from a warehouse in Dubai at the cost of $1m (£773,000). Tarik Jašarević, a spokesperson for the WHO, rebutted the claim, and said the agency had shipped 10 vehicles from Dubai in May because “there were no vehicles available for sale in DRC that met minimum UN safety standards at the time”. Jašarević said the cost of transporting the vehicles was $237,801. In a statement, the WHO added that the allegations had been “addressed openly by Dr Tedros in global meetings with staff in which he stressed that WHO has zero tolerance for misconduct or discrimination of any kind”. The statement added that the WHO’s senior management team is “one of the most diverse and gender-balanced of any United Nations agency”. However, whistleblowers reported pervasive racism, and cited a recent example in which a senior staff member had allegedly “humiliated, disgraced and belittled” a colleague from the Middle East. In one email seen by the Associated Press, employees claimed there was “systematic racial discrimination against Africans at WHO” and that African staff were being “abused, sworn at [and] shown contempt to” by colleagues based in Geneva. Emails also alleged the recruitment processes for senior staff were unfair and risked damaging the organisation’s reputation as it responds to the current Ebola outbreak in DRC. The WHO said it had recently strengthened its internal oversight mechanisms, adding that it has “proven processes for reporting and dealing with allegations of misconduct”. The organisation pointed to an independently run hotline for staff to raise concerns, and said it regularly reports the outcome of substantiated allegations. However, Edward Flaherty, a lawyer who specialises in international litigation, said the claims should be subject to an external inquiry. IOS, the WHO’s Office of Internal Oversight Service, was condemned by a recent independent report into the culture at UNAids, the health agency that spearheads the fight against HIV. The report warned that investigation processes at UNAids, which fall under the remit of WHO, were “susceptible to charges of bias and influence”. “I have no confidence in IOS, based on my extensive experience with them, that they will come up with the right answers,” Flaherty said. “The people who run [the investigations] depend on senior officials for maintaining their positions.” The UNAids report stated that IOS employs an “erroneous and misplaced high standard of proof” when investigating claims. The report was fiercely critical of Michel Sidibé, UNAids’ executive director, warning that he had set a tone of “favouritism, preferment, opaqueness, license for wrongdoing, and retaliation against those who speak up against such practices”. Over the past year, the UN and international charities have come under increased scrutiny over their handling of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct claims. On Wednesday, a UN survey found that one-third of staff and contractors had experienced sexual harassment in the past two years. Only 17% of those eligible responded, a rate that the organisation’s secretary general, António Guterres, described as “moderately low”. In a letter to staff, Guterres wrote: “This tells me two things: first – that we still have a long way to go before we are able to fully and openly discuss sexual harassment; and second – that there may also be an ongoing sense of mistrust, perceptions of inaction and lack of accountability.” According to the survey, fewer than half of all respondents agreed or strongly agreed that personnel who sexually harass others will be held accountable.“As I’ve grown older I’ve really got to understand how powerful one voice can be, my voice can be, or the team’s voice can be. So to hold that back or not to use that just seems selfish in a way.” If that is the case, Megan Rapinoe is anything but selfish. A World Cup winner and Olympic champion with the US women’s national team, Rapinoe coul easily be satisfied with her lot. But just enjoying the spoils of her success is not enough. Rapinoe has been a vocal advocate for LGBT rights groups since coming out before the 2012 Olympics. She set out to raise $100,000 for those affected by the Carr fire that ripped through her home county, Shasta, last summer, destroying 1,604 buildings as it became the sixth most destructive fire in California history. And, on 4 September, 2016, before kick-off against Chicago Red Stars, the Seattle Reign midfielder went down on one knee during the playing of the national anthem in solidarity with the protest of the San Francisco 49ers player Colin Kaepernick. “I think I want the same for myself,” says the 33-year-old, who 11 days later knelt again before USA played Thailand. “Being a white, female, gay athlete. Obviously not everybody is that but it doesn’t mean I don’t want the support for everyone in all of the things I’m fighting for. “We understand that athletes are idolised and glorified in our culture and it was about using that platform to just support and give support to what he was saying. It became a very racialised issue, a black versus white thing, but it’s not. “We all should be supporting what he’s saying. The statistics don’t lie – people of colour in prison, people of colour that are disproportionately arrested, monitored by police, police brutality against people of colour. “It’s not really an issue of whether police brutality exists or not, or whether racism is still an issue or not. It very much is and I think it’s foolish to say it’s not. “The more we reckon with that quickly, recognise that these things are happening and believe the people that are standing up and telling their stories, then the quicker we can find solutions and start to make progress in breaking down those barriers that are so harmful to so many people.” You never know where people come from, or what their situation is. So you shouldn’t judge people Did she ever fear for her career? Kaepernick has not thrown a football professionally since his release by the 49ers and has a case pending alleging NFL bosses have colluded to keep him out of the game for his stance. “Yeah, I mean as soon as I kneeled they made a rule that you had to stand,” says the creative midfielder nicknamed Rapinho or Rapinodinho. “I don’t know what would have happened if I had continued to kneel, maybe the same thing that happened to Colin. I kind of feel like that’s sort of what they were after. They made it very clear that they were not going to respect my free speech or my decision to peacefully protest in that way and made it very clear that it was unacceptable and that I should be privileged or feel privileged to play for the country. I personally thought it was a very patriotic thing that Colin started.” Despite growing up in the small conservative northern Californian town of Redding, Rapinoe’s social conscience was a natural progression of values ingrained from an early age. “It wasn’t like I grew up in a super liberal household or anything,” she says. “But you never know where people come from, or what their situation is. So you shouldn’t judge people. Give them the benefit of the doubt and be willing to extend yourself and stand up for people who maybe can’t stand up for themselves and just stand up for the right thing. It was never explicitly spoken about in our household but that was just how we were raised.” Rapinoe was a natural fit for Juan Mata’s Common Goal. The organisation which encourages those around football to donate 1% of their earnings to organisations using the social weight of the sport to make real changes to communities and lives. She and her teammate Alex Morgan were the first women footballers to sign up. “I just really love the whole concept. It’s first of all really simple. It’s 1% of your salary, so whether you make a dollar or a million you can do something that’s impactful. It can also be hard to research charities and vet different organisations and they do that for you which makes it really easy for the player. And it’s about being part of the bigger team of players all around the world. ”Obviously we’re at the highest level of this game and it’s given us so much, so to be able to harness that and give back to all these organisations that are already doing the work, already have boots on the ground, is just really cool to be a part of.” The number of female players signing up, despite earning significantly less than their male counterparts, she believes, has its roots in the constant battle for equality at every level of the women’s game. “Women are always at the forefront of all this kind of stuff, racial inequality or pay inequality, maybe because we’re always having to fight for something and we truly understand what gender discrimination looks like and pay inequity looks like. It’s very close to home for us. “We very much understand that it takes bold voices and bold steps to make things change. Our game is changing so much but it also has so much room to grow and we want to be a part of that and we really feel a responsibility to ensure we leave the game in a better place than where we found it. So, I don’t know what it is but maybe women are just better than men in that way. “It’s like men have run the world for all these years, maybe they should just take a few hundred years off,” she laughs. “And we can just take it for a few hundred years and we’ll see where we are.” Has having football in perspective made her a better player? “Yeah, it definitely has.” • A number of deals were announced after the transfer window closed last Thursday. Birmingham have recruited goalkeeper Alex Brooks from Sheffield United; Brighton have signed 21-year-old midfielder Megan Connolly following her return to Europe from Florida State University; and Reading took Iceland’s Rakel Honnudottir from Swedish side IF Limhamn Bunkeflo 07. • Vivienne Miedema’s second-minute strike against Reading saw her overtake Ellen White’s 15-goal record for a single WSL season with seven games to play. • A Jennifer Hermoso hat-trick helped Atlético Madrid to a 4-1 win over Malaga to maintain their three-point lead over Barcelona, who beat Athletic Club 2-1.In his book This One’s On Me Jimmy Greaves describes the pre-match meals of his playing days in the 1960s. At West Ham it was all down to Moody’s cafe for a full roast dinner and apple crumble for pudding. As an England player Greaves records, with some reverence, the pre-match habits of Gordon Banks, who in line with the sports science of the day would prepare himself for a game with a huge steak served with both boiled and roast potatoes, all washed down with “a large bowl of rice pudding”. Looking back now it is probably a good thing social media wasn’t around in the mid-60s. It isn’t hard to imagine the wider response to such wanton displays of starch-based excess. Banks Flaunts Roast Riches. Soccer Ace in Boiled AND Roasted Shame. Potato Bae: Gloveman Rocked By Double-Spud storm. But then, there has always been an obsession with footballers’ consumption, from the days of Scampi dinners and Ford Cortinas, to the obsession with Cristiano Ronaldo’s £2.5m Bugatti, Raheem Sterling’s kitchen sink, Neymar’s fur-lined helicopter gunship, his emerald-studded rocket-unicycle, his ocean-going sex yacht powered entirely by the tears of Martian slaves. In the last few days it has been the turn of Franck Ribéry, who has spent the last few days on a winter sun training camp in Qatar with Bayern Munich. On a night off last week Ribéry travelled to Dubai for dinner at Nusr-Et, a restaurant run by celebrity butcher Nusret Gokce – also known as Salt Bae in tribute to his “iconic” method of sprinkling seasoning on meat. Ribéry ate a Tomahawk steak covered in gold dust. We know this because he published a film on Instagram that shows the vast chop being plonked in front of him, gleaming like a prime cut of Aslan-shank. Salt Bae is in shot too, sunglasses on, dressed in his muscle-shirt butcher’s tunic. On cue he drops into an urgent, constipated crouch and begins to slice the Tomahawk, revolving his hands in a series of sensual gestures, gyrating his hips, a man not so much carving meat as energetically feeling it up in the VIP section of an elite celebrity disco. No better way to start the year than with a dash of salt and a visit to my Turkish brother 🇹🇷👌🏼 #SaltBae #fr7👑 #ELHAMDOULILLAH🤲🏽♥️ pic.twitter.com/O5ztj4mueq On this occasion Ribéry himself is allowed to perform the ritual of the sprinkling, as Salt Bae crowds close by in voyeuristic approval before finally planting his quivering meat-scimitar into the steak board with a flick of the wrist. Smiles all round and gangster fingers into the camera. And that’s a scene. At which point, the whole thing pretty much fell apart. “Let’s start with the jealous, the haters, those only born because a condom had a hole in: fuck your mothers, your grandmothers and even your family tree,” Ribéry posted on his social media page at the start of this week, response to a great spurting geyser of personal abuse over his choice of venue, style of steak, lifestyle, religion, and basic extinction as a unit of extreme consumption within the nexus of professional sport. Ribéry has since been hit with a “substantial” fine by Bayern for his reaction. Wider reporting of the incident has created a vague, semi-processed picture of just another footballing imbecile waving his underserved millions in the face of consumptive nurses everywhere. As an anatomy of idiocy on so many levels it is a fairly complete picture, from the inanity of the original tableau, to the confected outrage, to the undeniable weirdness of the basic spectacle. The first thing to say is, of course, lay off Franck. Overseasoned, overpriced cuts of gold-leaf meat exist because there are sufficient people in the world willing to buy them (Ribéry’s, incidentally, was a gift). Robert Lewandowski did the same thing a few days earlier, producing his own video with Salt Bae frowning down at his meat as though solving some deep maths algorithm, salt bearer offering up his platter as though presenting his own quivering ohmic soul to those gloved fingers. Nobody seemed to care much on that occasion, but then Lewandowski looks like a super-Aryan James Bond rejected from auditions for the next super-Aryan James Bond for looking too much like a super-Aryan James Bond. He isn’t from the Chemin-Vert sink estate in Boulogne, isn’t a Muslim convert, doesn’t wear street-style fashions, isn’t a convenient piñata for all the rage, the confused material longing that the wider digital public like to hurl at the right kind of footballer on such occasions. And really if Ribéry’s gold steak tells us anything it is that the key relationship between those who play and those who watch has become fundamentally skewed and toxic. Star footballers tend to be either venerated with a sickly and sensual kind of piety, or relentlessly abused as a cartoon embodiment of all human failings. All of which is justified on the grounds that they’re rich and therefore impossibly blessed, immune to all human anguish, an attitude that says a great deal more about the craven, depressingly deluded veneration of money and celebrity generally. Alienation, anger, loss of that shared human touch: this is of course just another casualty of football’s decision to turn itself inside out in the name of money, just another gold-leaf chop to be carved apart on the salted board. Bayern’s presence in Qatar is in itself a cause of some discomfort to the fan base. But then money has done such strange things to this dear old sport, created a peculiar drowned world where you fall at the first hurdle just trying to find the correct moral response, from the political hijacking of the world’s favourite spectacle to the fact any person anywhere can be paid a million pounds a month. Hate the gold-leaf butchery. Hate the grabbing hands at the edges of the game. But don’t hate the player.If you are looking forward to your first stiff drink after a dry January, be warned: it may feel bittersweet. You may feel you deserve an alcoholic beverage after toughing it out all month – but have you forgotten what it feels like to wake up haunted by worries about what you said or did the night before? These post-drinking feelings of guilt and stress have come to be known colloquially as “hangxiety”. But what causes them? David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, London, is the scientist who was fired in 2009 as the government’s chief drug adviser for saying alcohol is more dangerous than ecstasy and LSD. I tell him I have always assumed my morning-after mood was a result of my brain having shrivelled like a raisin through alcohol-induced dehydration. When Nutt explains the mechanics of how alcohol causes crippling anxiety, he paints an even more offputting picture. Alcohol, he says, targets the Gaba (gamma-aminobutyric acid) receptor, which sends chemical messages through the brain and central nervous system to inhibit the activity of nerve cells. Put simply, it calms the brain, reducing excitement by making fewer neurons fire. “Alcohol stimulates Gaba, which is why you get relaxed and cheerful when you drink,” explains Nutt. The first two drinks lull you into a blissful Gaba-induced state of chill. When you get to the third or fourth drink, another brain-slackening effect kicks in: you start blocking glutamate, the main excitatory transmitter in the brain. “More glutamate means more anxiety,” says Nutt. “Less glutamate means less anxiety.” This is why, he says, “when people get very drunk, they’re even less anxious than when they’re a bit drunk” – not only does alcohol reduce the chatter in your brain by stimulating Gaba, but it further reduces your anxiety by blocking glutamate. In your blissed-out state, you will probably feel that this is all good – but you will be wrong. The body registers this new imbalance in brain chemicals and attempts to put things right. It is a little like when you eat a lot of sweets and your body goes into insulin-producing overdrive to get the blood sugar levels down to normal; as soon as the sweets have been digested, all that insulin causes your blood sugar to crash. When you are drunk, your body goes on a mission to bring Gaba levels down to normal and turn glutamate back up. When you stop drinking, therefore, you end up with unnaturally low Gaba function and a spike in glutamate – a situation that leads to anxiety, says Nutt. “It leads to seizures as well, which is why people have fits in withdrawal.” It can take the brain a day or two to return to the status quo, which is why a hair of the dog is so enticing. “If you drank an awful lot for a long time,” says Nutt, “it might take weeks for the brain to readapt. In alcoholics, we’ve found changes in Gaba for years.” To add to the misery, the anxiety usually kicks in while you are trying to sleep off the booze. “If you measure sleep when people are drunk, they go off to sleep fast. They go into a deeper sleep than normal, which is why they sometimes wet the bed or have night terrors. Then, after about four hours, the withdrawal kicks in – that’s when you wake up all shaky and jittery.” Imbalances in Gaba and glutamate are not the only problem. Alcohol also causes a small rise in noradrenaline – known as the fight-or-flight hormone. “Noradrenaline suppresses stress when you first take it, and increases it in withdrawal,” says Nutt. “Severe anxiety can be considered a surge of noradrenaline in the brain.” Another key cause of hangxiety is being unable to remember the mortifying things you are sure you must have said or done while inebriated – another result of your compromised glutamate levels. “You need glutamate to lay down memories,” says Nutt, “and once you’re on the sixth or seventh drink, the glutamate system is blocked, which is why you can’t remember things.” If this isn’t ringing any bells, it may be because hangxiety does not affect us all equally, as revealed by a study published  in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. Researchers quizzed healthy young people about their levels of anxiety before, during and the morning after drinking alcohol. According to one of the authors, Celia Morgan, professor of psychopharmacology at the University of Exeter: “The people who were more shy had much higher levels of anxiety [the following day] than the people who weren’t shy.” The team also found a correlation between having bad hangxiety and the chance of having an alcohol use disorder. “Maybe it’s playing a role in keeping problematic drinking going,” says Morgan. One theory as to why very shy people might be more at risk of hangxiety and alcoholism is the possibility that alcohol’s seesaw effect on Gaba levels is more pronounced in them. Their baseline Gaba levels may be lower to start with, says Morgan. “It could also be a psychological effect – people who are more highly anxious are more prone to rumination, going over thoughts about the night before, so that’s another potential mechanism.” However, the study’s findings have wider implications – after all, most drinkers lean on alcohol as social lubrication to some degree. The bad news is that there seems to be little you can do to avoid hangxiety other than to drink less, and perhaps take painkillers – they will at least ease your headache. “Theoretically, ibuprofen would be better than paracetamol,” says Nutt, “because it’s more anti-inflammatory – but we don’t know how much of the hangover is caused by inflammation. It’s something we’re working on, trying to measure that.” Morgan suggests trying to break the cycle. “Before drinking in a social situation you feel anxious in, try fast-forwarding to the next day when you’ll have much higher anxiety levels. If you can’t ride that out without drinking, the worry is that you will get stuck in this cycle of problematic drinking where your hangxiety is building and building over time. Drinking might fix social anxiety in the short term, but in the long term it might have pretty detrimental consequences.” Exposure therapy is a common treatment for phobias, where you sit with your fear in order to help you overcome it. “By drinking alcohol, people aren’t giving themselves a chance to do that,” says Morgan. But there might be hope for the future. Nutt is involved in a project to develop a drink that takes the good bits of alcohol and discards the damaging or detrimental effects. “Alcosynth”, as it is currently called, drowns your sorrows in the same way as alcohol, but without knocking the Gaba and glutamate out of kilter. “We’re in the second stage of fundraising to take it through to a product,” he says. “The industry knows [alcohol] is a toxic substance. If it was discovered today, it would be illegal as a foodstuff.” Until Alcosynth reaches the market, Nutt says his “strong” message is: “Never treat hangxiety with a hair of the dog. When people start drinking in the mornings to get over their hangxiety, then they’re in the cycle of dependence. It’s a very slippery slope.”Jacob Rees-Mogg hosted a champagne party for Brexiter colleagues on Tuesday night following the Commons vote that inflicted the worst defeat in modern history upon a UK prime minister. David Davis, the minister in charge of the Brexit deal for two years until July, the Labour MP Kate Hoey, the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, and Boris Johnson were among more than 30 MPs invited to the grade II-listed home of Rees-Mogg, who chairs the hardline European Research Group (ERG). The gathering was held less than two hours after members of the group helped reject Theresa May’s deal by a majority of 230. Some MPs questioned whether it was appropriate to hold such a party while Britain still had no clear plan for dealing with Brexit. The Conservative MP Rees-Mogg and the ERG have been instrumental in coordinating pro-Brexit MPs against the prime minister’s deal. Members opposed the deal for a number of reasons, including the Irish backstop agreement and the continued role of the European court of justice. The party was organised on Tuesday, with invitations sent via a WhatsApp group and by text, one source said. MPs were invited to Rees-Mogg’s six-bedroom family home, which is a five-minute walk from the Palace of Westminster. Those who attended were greeted with a flute of champagne at the door, and said they felt a “wave of relief” following the rejection of May’s deal. One person said: “Jacob has held quite a few events at his home following big votes because it is a convenient venue not far from the Palace of Westminster. It was organised at the last minute so there were were no canapes or nibbles, but his wife was a wonderful host. “Of course the people there were pleased to have rejected the deal, and some were enjoying a drink, but they were mostly relieved to have done the deed of voting down the PM’s deal. In life you sometimes have to do the difficult thing even if it is hard.” The party occasionally spilled out on to the street, onlookers said. When asked to identify what they were drinking, one partygoer said: “Champagne, of course.” While Rees-Mogg and the former Welsh secretary Sir John Redwood denied the event was a celebration, the veteran Brexiter Sir Bill Cash did not. “It was a party and a celebration,” he said. Another partygoer said Hoey, who would be banned from joining the ERG for not being a Tory, was the only Labour MP spotted at the event. Members of the Democratic Unionist party were not present but had attended other Rees-Mogg parties, sources said. Johnson, who resigned as foreign secretary in July over May’s deal, arrived at the party on a bicycle with the lights turned off and his head bowed. The former foreign secretary left the party after an hour, saying to a waiting journalist that he had not had a drink at the event. On Wednesday, the ERG pledged to support May to vote down Labour’s vote of no confidence. Privately, some of its members expressed anger at May’s reluctance to move towards a hard Brexit. The former Tory minister Mark Francois, who briefly attended the event, told the BBC the mood at gathering was positive after the vote. “Obviously we were pleased because we had worked for a long while to defeat this document. The British people voted clearly to leave the European Union so we are trying to honour the instruction that they gave us as members of parliament.” The UK government is taking part in a pioneering international aid project which could see consignments of maggots sent to crisis zones such as Syria as a simple and effective way to clean wounds, it has been announced. So-called maggot therapy was been used in the first world war, when their efficacy in helping wounds heal was discovered by accident, and it is sometimes used in the NHS, for example to clean ulcers. The initiative, co-sponsored by the Department for International Development (DfID), will develop techniques to help people in conflict zones or areas affected by humanitarian crises to use maggots where other medical facilities might not be available, such as Syria and South Sudan. The project, also supported by the US government aid agency USAID, is intended to provide “do it yourself” maggot laboratories to send to such areas. The treatment uses disinfected larvae of greenbottle blowfly, which are applied to wounds in mesh bags. This keeps the maggots in one place, but allows them to clean the dead tissue and disinfect the area. DfID said the hope was each field laboratory could treat 250 wounds a day. The idea came from a project called the Humanitarian Grand Challenge fund, financed by the UK, US and the Dutch government. Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, has been awarded US$250,000 (£196,000) to develop the maggot project. Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, said: “People living through conflict and humanitarian crisis are still dying from wounds that could so easily be healed with the right access to care. “This innovative update on a simple treatment used in the first world war trenches is already saving lives and has the potential to save so many more. “I am proud that through the Humanitarian Grand Challenges and with the support of USAID, UK aid is nurturing pioneering ideas that will allow us to deliver aid more effectively now and in the future.” A DfID statement on the plan notes that secondary infections from wounds kill many people and others lose limbs. The use of maggots to clean wounds has existed for centuries, and they were used for this purpose in the US civil war. An American surgeon who witnessed their use, William S Baer, later carried out experiments on the use of blowfly maggots to clean away dead tissue.The two Reuters journalists imprisoned in Myanmar for their reporting on the violence against the Rohingya in Rahkine state have lost their appeal, with the court upholding their guilty verdict and lengthy prison sentences. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had each been handed prison sentences of seven years in September after they were found guilty of breaching the country’s Official Secrets Act after it was claimed they were in possession of classified documents. The trial of the pair was widely criticised, with human rights groups and international governments accusing the Myanmar regime of using the courts to target the two reporters for their reporting on the military-led massacre of Rohingya muslims in the village of Inn Din in Rahkine. Both Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who are both Burmese, have continued to stress their innocence, alleging they were handed classified documents, which was used as evidence they had breached secrecy laws, without their knowledge in a police set-up. The appeal against the verdict, which was filed in November, argued that “compelling evidence” of the arrest being a set-up by the police, as well as violations in due process and key holes in the prosecution’s case, had been ignored. However, in a further blow to freedom of expression in Myanmar, on Friday afternoon a judge at the high court in Yangon rejected the appeal and upheld their guilty verdict. The judge described the seven year jail sentence as a “suitable ruling”. Stephen J Adler, the editor-in-chief of Reuters, said the rejection of the appeal was “yet another injustice among many inflicted upon Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo”. “They remain behind bars for one reason: those in power sought to silence the truth,” said Adler. “Reporting is not a crime, and until Myanmar rights this terrible wrong, the press in Myanmar is not free, and Myanmar’s commitment to rule of law and democracy remains in doubt.” A statement issued by the EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs, Maja Kocijancic, said the appeal rejection was a “missed opportunity to right a wrong” adding that the ruling “casts serious doubt over the independence of Myanmar’s justice system.” The appeal was also condemned by Amnesty International, who said the ruling “perpetuates an appalling injustice” while the chief executive of PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, said that “yet again Myanmar’s justice system has turned its backs on the principles of rule of law and respect for rights that are the litmus test of democracy”. Since they were jailed in September, there has been a groundswell of support for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo internationally, with the pair handed awards for their journalism. They were also among the persecuted journalists named as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2018. However, within Myanmar, where there is little sympathy for the plight of the Rohingya, condemnation of the jailing of the journalists has been more muted. The Myanmar state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace prize winner who was once a leading human rights advocate, has resisted calls to pardon Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, the most recent of which came from the US vice-president, Mike Pence, during a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi in November. The conviction could still be appealed in Myanmar’s Supreme Court, the highest court of appeal in the country.When Mark Zuckerberg began his annual “personal challenges” in 2009, he set the bar pretty low: he dressed like an adult every day for a year. Subsequent challenges were squarely in the realm of achievable New Year’s resolutions, from reading a book every two weeks and running a mile a day to starting to learn Mandarin and sending thank you notes. But as Zuckerberg has transitioned his public image from the kid cosplaying as a business executive to the no-longer-quite-a-kid cosplaying as a statesman, his personal challenges have become something of a bellwether for how he is thinking about Facebook’s future. In 2016, when it seemed that Facebook’s challenges were still largely technological, he set out to build his own smart home system. In 2017, when political polarization was still being chalked up to filter bubbles, he embarked on a road trip around the US. And in 2018, when fake news and foreign interference were dominating headlines, he promised to buckle down and “focus on fixing” all of the various “issues” that had left the one-time prodigy looking more and more like a pariah. Twelve months later, it seems that for the first time, Zuckerberg has failed to meet his goal. Not only has he not fixed Facebook, the list of problems with the social network has grown so long that it’s getting harder to find people who think the company is even fixable. So this year, we asked a number of writers, technologists, politicians, activists and comedians to answer two questions: What do you predict Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 personal challenge will be? What do you think Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 personal challenge should be? Here’s what they said … Will be: Spend time with people he wants to connect with, perhaps employees or maybe his family. Should be: Hire more people of color at the executive level, reporting directly to him. Bring more people of color, especially women of color, on to the Facebook board … Learn about the history of harassment on the internet over the past decade and a half from people targeted, from Pizzagate to Gamergate – and pay them for their time. Meet with the people in Myanmar and in India who have been victims of harassment from Facebook and WhatsApp. Will be: Continue to evade parliamentary scrutiny and personal responsibility for Facebook’s problems. Should be: Have a productive life having resigned from the company he founded to leave a new leadership team to clean up his mess. Will be: Some trivial act of personal development that gives him an aura of moral growth without actually reforming the troubled mind and soul of his that helped put a demagogue in charge of America. Should be: Resigning from Facebook – and bringing Sheryl Sandberg with him, so she can spend all her time convincing women that patriarchy is really just a posture problem. Then he should reorient his charitable foundation. It should stop trying to end all disease and refocus on healing the plague that Facebook has become. It should stop trying to transform education and refocus on educating billionaire techies with huge power but limited moral imaginations. Visit 50 people who were personally affected by bullying, hate speech and ethnic cleansing Will be: A further commitment this year to improving the platform. Should be: Mark would have an easier time tackling Facebook’s problems if he could better understand them on a human level – not as data points. Just as he set off two years ago to visit all 50 states, he should set out to visit 50 people who were personally affected by all the bullying, hate speech, ethnic cleansing and live-streamed suicides that have occurred on his platform. Will be: Being more willing to admit error. Should be: Building social media tools that will strengthen democracy. Will be: Trying to learn yet another language in 2019. If he’s self-aware in any way he will choose to master Burmese so he can better understand the genocide his platforms amplify. Should be: Understanding his own company. I could send him a substantial reading list of scholarship that assesses the influence of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in the world. Zuckerberg could take a three-month sabbatical to digest all that work. Better than that, Zuckerberg could take a two-year sabbatical from Facebook, enroll at the University of Virginia, and finish his bachelor’s degree under my direction. That would serve him – and his company and all its users – better than just about anything else he could do. Spend the year as an outsourced contractor who has to look at violent images Will be: To finally leave Facebook: “It’s just not fun here any more, at first Facebook was about hanging out with my friends and sharing cool stuff. But now, most of my friends have quit and the ones that haven’t are, no offense, just the most narcissistic crazy ones addicted to the fake positive reinforcement they get. I think about all the people in my life who I actually respect and I’m like ‘I never see those people at Facebook any more.” Should be: Spend the entire next year as one of those poor outsourced contractors who has to sit there for 10 hours a day looking at all the violent and pedophilic images people report. He should feel the trauma of being on the ground level of his giant editor-less libertarian media dystopia. Will be: Something vague that won’t require any real accountability, like “do better”. Should be: Speaking for myself? Find a new job. Should be: Take local contexts into account when shaping global policies to regulate content. This will require a more meaningful engagement with civil society around the world: understanding their issues and listening to their concerns is the only way to make Facebook a safer and better place. Zuckerberg should listen to an activist every day. Will be: Working out how artificial intelligence can safeguard democracy. Should be: Breaking up Facebook into at least three smaller companies, while he steps away from the computer and focuses on learning something more low risk for the rest of humanity, like falconry maybe, or macramé. Will be: Work more closely with news organizations and public policy orgs to better understand the reach, scope and impact of Facebook’s machinations. Should be: Resign and find a pursuit that will teach him humility and help him find his moral compass. Will be: Something humble, modest, and quantifiable – like maybe “spend a day in the shoes of a frontline employee in every major team at Facebook”. Should be: Commit to building better tools to empower users. There is no top-down fix Facebook could provide that would make all 2.2 billion-ish of us happy, so it’s time to put more meaningful choices – especially about content and privacy – in our hands. Should be: Aggressively addressing the systemic problems in his company … He desperately needs to begin implementing systemic solutions, in a way that is transparent, rebuilds the public trust and provides a safer platform for all people. Will be: Pretending he has even a passing interest in how other people might feel. Should be: Working in retail. Waiting tables at the Olive Garden – a place with rules about flare and scripted upselling. Will be: Some other, similarly broad, challenge that relates to making Facebook a force for good in the world. Should be: Take personal responsibility for turning Facebook around as a company. That means publicly committing to creating an ethical and principled company that respects civil society, and ensuring that at every level Facebook makes decisions based on human rights instead of market forces. It means personally committing to a Facebook that doesn’t accidentally make decisions that aid violent regimes, white supremacists and other bad actors. Above all, it means simply being honest about Facebook’s largely detrimental role in global society. That would be the biggest challenge of all. Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.Last August the American Psychological Association (APA) released its first-ever guidelines for therapists working with men and boys. Nobody paid much attention to these for several months, but they went viral this week. This was largely due to the APA condensing its academic report into a tweet explaining that the key takeaway is that traditional masculinity is harmful and socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage. Suddenly everyone on the internet was an armchair psychologist and conservatives were up in arms about war on men. Traditional notions of masculinity, marked by stoicism, competitiveness and aggression, are clearly toxic to both men and women. As the APA write in an article accompanying the study: “Men commit 90% of homicides in the United States and represent 77% of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide.” They also point to research that found men who bought into traditional notions of masculinity were less likely to seek mental health support than those who had more open gender attitudes. The guidelines advise psychologists to understand “how power, privilege and sexism work both by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in narrow roles”. While all that sounds eminently sensible to me, certain intellectuals on the right have predictably interpreted it as meaning the APA has it out for men. The Fox News host Laura Ingraham, for example, made the compelling argument that toxic masculinity is actually great because she “loves James Bond”. (Please can someone explain to Ingraham that Bond is a fictional character?) Meanwhile Tucker Carlson, that bastion of reason, asked: “What would happen if you told girls the qualities that make you feel female are poison and you must suppress them?” I don’t think he quite understands that feminists have been fighting against poisonous gender stereotypes for a very long time. And, by the way, the APA has a set of guidelines for women. Despite the right using the APA guidelines as an opportunity for outrage, we should all be highly encouraged by the new guidelines. It’s a great sign that toxic gender norms are being gradually interrogated and dismantled and it will literally save lives. Twitter can be a hellhole, but it can also be a powerful force for good. This week it may well have saved the life of 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, who fled her Saudi family and pleaded for help on Twitter from an airport hotel in Bangkok. When she first tweeted about being worried her family would kill her for renouncing Islam (which is punishable by death in Saudia Arabia), Rahaf only had a handful of followers. But, thanks to the Egyptian American feminist Mona Eltahawy translating her tweets from Arabic and sending them out to her large follower base, she quickly caught the world’s attention. On Friday, Rahaf was granted asylum in Canada. It is wonderful that Rahaf is now safe, but let us remember that many women in Saudi Arabia’s repressive regime are not. The kingdom has locked up a number of women’s rights activists, and there are worries they are being tortured. Let’s not stop paying attention to the plight of women in Saudi Arabia when Rahaf has faded from the headlines. Republicans aren’t the only ones having a meltdown over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Politico published an article on Friday titled Exasperated Democrats try to rein in Ocasio-Cortez, in which her various colleagues gripe about the politician daring to take on the establishment. Yet another example that there is nothing that scares people more than a strong young woman who knows her mind and won’t toe the line. Every month needs a neologism and a hashtag now, didn’t you know? If you missed the memo then Januhairy is a new campaign encouraging women to grow and love their body hair. Good for you if you’re not shaving for the month – but also good for you if you are. It’s important to challenge and interrogate sexist beauty ideals, of course. But I’m growing somewhat tired of these campaigns that would purport to turn hairy armpits into #empowering #emblems of hashtag feminism. Last year Spa!, a Japanese tabloid, published a ranking of universities, based on how willing its female students were to have sex at drinking parties. More than 38,000 people signed a petition condemning this gross list, and the magazine apologized on Tuesday. The overdose rate among women 30-64 rose by more than 260% between 1999 and 2017, according to troubling new data from the CDC. A woman in China can’t hear men’s voices due to a rare but temporary hearing condition. Don’t worry, though, she’s expected to make a full recovery, and I’m sure a helpful dude will explain to her exactly what happened.Once again, the mysterious consensus-accretion of awards season has done its work and the Oscar nomination list has a big showing for Alfonso Cuarón’s magnificent Roma, with 10 nominations — and, notably, just as big a score for critics’ darling and perennial talking point Yorgos Lanthimos’s bizarre Restoration comedy The Favourite. This also has 10 nominations, including of course a best actress nomination for Olivia Colman, who this year has become (justly) catapulted to international treasure status. (An upgrade from national to international treasure status might also be due for Richard E Grant, who has a best supporting actor nomination for his venal Brit boozehound in Can You Ever Forgive Me?) These are the prestige products, the blue-chip movies that the Academy hivemind has decided are the headline successes. As for the snubs, complaining about these has evolved to such an extent in recent years that they have become the pundits’ alternative refusenik fantasy league. But the lack of women directors in the best picture and best director lists is woeful, at least partly because they exclude one of the very best films: Debra Granik’s superb Leave No Trace. There is also the exclusion of Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, her excellent variation on the Taxi Driver theme starring Joaquin Phoenix. Barry Jenkins’s fine If Beale Street Could Talk has been largely overlooked, although I am confident that Regina King will win best supporting actress for her delicate, intelligently judged performance in that movie. Nicole Kidman deserved a shot at an Oscar for her very interesting performance in Destroyer, and Steve McQueen’s terrific thriller Widows is turning into this awards season’s Cinderella, bafflingly excluded from ball after ball. The biggest and most deplorable snub was however that Ari Aster’s brilliant scary movie Hereditary received nothing: with a lead performance from the wonderful Toni Collette which could go toe-to-toe with any of the current contenders. Bubbling under the big two are the more middleweight/commercial contenders: eight nominations for Adam McKay’s flashy satire Vice, with its entertaining latexed turn from Christian Bale as Bush-era vice-president Dick Cheney. Eight nominations also for Bradley Cooper’s terrific new sugar-rush version of A Star Is Born, which I continue to think is one of the very best films of the year, despite some medium-sized reservations raised elsewhere; more of a sidelash than a backlash. But I should now concede a minor fault in this film which I should have spotted from the beginning. It is of course — I admit it — highly implausible that Lady Gaga’s character should be so against taking pictures of celebs on mobile phones; in the real world, an ambitious singer-songwriter like her would be selfie-ing, Instagramming, SoundClouding etc non-stop. The 91st Academy awards take place on 24 February at the Dolby theatre in Los Angeles. It is broadcast live on ABC in the US, on Sky in the UK, and on Channel Nine in Australia. The red carpet portion of the show is broadcast live by the E! network. The Oscars are voted for by members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (aka Ampas), which currently numbers just under 8,000 voting members, divided into 17 separate branches, including actors, directors, costume designers, etc. (To join, names have to be proposed and approved by individual branches.) The Academy has received considerable criticism in recent years for the perceived white/male/elderly bias of its voters – and a drive to create a more diverse membership was instituted after the #OscarsSoWhite campaign in 2016.  There are 24 categories – ranging from best picture to best sound mixing – presented on Oscar night. The Academy also gives out a bunch of Scientific and Technical awards: this year, for example, it will honour the people behind Adobe Photoshop and the Medusa Performance Capture System. Also there are the honorary Oscars: this year they are going to actor Cicely Tyson, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, Steven Spielberg's PR flack Marvin Levy and composer Lalo Schifrin (of Mission: Impossible renown). Each of the main awards has its own rules and regulations for slimming down all the eligible entries – first to a longlist, then a shortlist, then the final nomination list. In most categories, to be eligible a film must have been released for seven days in Los Angeles before 31 December, and a specialist committee makes the selection for the nomination – which is then voted on by the full membership. For the best foreign language film award, each country can submit one film (89 were put forward this year), before a committee boils them down to a final five. The Oscar statuette isn't solid gold: it's gold-plated bronze on a black metal base. It is 34 cm tall and weighs 3.8 kg. While the Academy doesn't own it once it is handed over, its acceptance is conditional that recipients won't sell them unless they have offered them back to the Academy for $1. Just behind with seven nods, Marvel makes its Academy Awards debut with the highly entertaining Afro-futurist extravaganza Black Panther: an entirely justified nomination for an excellent film which has demonstrated extraordinary popularity and resounding box-office clout. There’s five for Green Book, the true-ish story of African-American pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) being ferried around in the 60s by a “goombah” Italian-American white driver (Viggo Mortensen). The liberal white/black balance narrative has not found universal favour, Don Shirley’s surviving relatives have complained about inaccuracies contrived, evidently, in the services of this fifty-fifty approach, and nominee Ali was reported to have remarked: “I did the best I could with the material I had” — which has to be the most self-deprecating personal publicity campaign in the history of the Academy awards. Hilariously, the Freddie Mercury feelgood biopic Bohemian Rhapsody continues on its triumphal progress with five nods, including one for its undeniably impressive turn from Rami Malek – and very much none for its disgraced credited director Bryan Singer, who unrepentantly posted a “thank you” message on Instagram after its Golden Globes success in which he, again, did not personally participate. There is an excellent chance of Bohemian Rhapsody converting some of these nominations into wins and indeed of Singer embarrassing the industry again with another pointed thankbrag on social media. And what of the wunderkind Damien Chazelle? His First Man, a very stirring, if conservative account of Neil Armstrong and the moon landing, starring Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy, has picked up four nominations, but is not predicted to trouble the scorer much, or at all, on the night. There’s no doubt about it: First Man somehow hasn’t got the momentum. Can this really be because of a dirty-tricks social media campaign to signal-boost Republican complaints about Chazelle failing to show the American flag being planted on the moon? Stranger things have happened. The best actor race is anyone’s guess. Almost any of the contenders could win: and it could even be Willem Dafoe’s year for his straightforwardly earnest portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate. Christian Bale could pinch it for his Dick Cheney, perhaps because the Hollywood establishment is nostalgically/masochistically yearning for a rightwing Republican bad guy of the pre-Trump old school. Bradley Cooper is great in A Star Is Born. Only snobs deny it. As for lead actress, this has to be Glenn Close’s year. Her performance, in The Wife, as the enigmatically reserved wife of the conceited Saul Bellow-style Nobel laureate novelist is a high-IQ treat. But every one of the other nominees (including Colman, Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio, Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born and most interestingly the outstanding Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me?) is entirely plausible. Elsewhere, the director’s list is interesting. Spike Lee actually makes his debut as a director for BlacKkKlansman (his 1990 nomination for Do the Right Thing was as a screenwriter). Lee is an extremely popular nominee and he could well win this category, despite the heavy-hitter competition from Paweł Pawlikowski, Cuarón, McKay and Lanthimos. The nearest thing to a shoo-in of this Oscar season, apart from Regina King, has to be Free Solo in the documentary list, a gasp-inducing study of Alex Honnold who climbs terrifyingly high rock faces without a rope. It is, however, disappointing that Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers didn’t make it on to this list, or indeed Peter Jackson’s marvellous first world war film They Shall Not Grow Old. Also, many will have been hoping that Joe Pearlman and David Soutar’s Bros: After the Screaming Stops might have got a nomination. If that had won, the Goss brothers could have got up on the Oscar stage and sentimentally demonstrated their boyhood “dart-throwing” game. The other clear shoo-in is Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse for animation — a film which is witty, freaky and mind-bending and probably the best superhero film of all time. An intriguing, and wide-open Oscar race. The UN’s increasingly fraught attempt to salvage a ceasefire in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah that could lead to a wider peace across the war-torn country is to be shored up by extra money from the UK to support the civilian administration of the city. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced an initial extra £2.5m funding on Tuesday amid signs that the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, is struggling to gain agreement even on basic confidence-building measures such as prisoner swaps. Griffiths flew to Yemen on Monday to assess the logjam, but privately UN officials admit the ceasefire might collapse within weeks unless the UN capacity improves and there is a significant change of heart on both sides. The extra £2.5m UK funding will go to the UN’s civilian co-ordinator’s office that is due to provide all the civilian functions that sit alongside the military ceasefire monitoring. Its functions will include management of the main ports, de-mining operations in Hodeida city and port, and establishing a new civilian protection police. Yemen’s civil war is largely a dispute between Houthi rebels that seized the capital, Sana’a, in 2015 and the UN-backed government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Hadi’s government is openly backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates while the Houthis are receiving some military equipment, probably including drones, from the Iranians. In common with other Middle East wars, such as Syria, the presence of outside regional powers complicates the search for peace. The UK has become increasingly invested in the UN process, with Hunt personally attending the peace talks in Stockholm in December, and piloting the new UN security council resolution in New York. Hunt has also held difficult meetings with leaders in UAE and Saudi Arabia, urging them to give the UN route a chance. The UK is the “pen holder” for Yemen at the UN, which gives it a special responsibility for drafting resolutions and initiating debate. But both sides in the civil war are now regularly accusing the other of hundreds of ceasefire breaches, and a major Saudi airstrike at the weekend killed civilians in Sana’a. The Saudis said the airstrike was aimed at wiping out facilities built by the Houthis to send drones aimed at killing UAE and Saudi targets both in Yemen and outside. A recent Houthi drone attack in the south of the country killed a senior intelligence officer. Houthis are also said to be firing missiles at Saudi coalition forces in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan province, which borders Yemen. Yemen’s information minister, Muammar Al Iryani, has also accused the rebels of failing to withdraw their forces from Hodeidah and its ports, more than a month after the truce came into effect. Hopes for a large-scale prisoner swap – seen as one of the easiest achievables from the Stockholm agreement – have also been dashed when three days of talks in Jordan collapsed with both sides accusing the other of a lack of faith, or providing bogus lists of political prisoners. Griffiths put a brave face on the failure saying he had witnessed “positive, constructive and frank discussions. The two parties took the first step in implementing the agreement by exchanging the lists of prisoners and detainees and providing responses on the exchanged lists.” The ceasefire, agreed in haste in Stockholm after mediators made unexpected progress, has many inherent flaws, notably a limited geographical range, allowing military actions between both sides to continue throughout the rest of the country. Clarity was also not provided about the composition of the new civilian security force that is due to take over the running of Hodeidah.Anne Hathaway has given up drinking. Not for ever, just for 18 years, while her son – now two – is under her roof. She doesn’t want him to see her drunk, because “I don’t like the way I do it” and she doesn’t want to do nursery drop-offs hungover, which will make it difficult for her to make friends, but she is American and they do things differently there. An elaborate architecture of absolutism has built up around parenting, with alcohol as its core scaffolding. You might think: “Wait a second, it’s not the end of the world for a child to see its parent being raucous or even just sitting on the sofa rather than tidying.” But the arguments marshalled against you would be severe: figures on the negative psycho-social impact of an alcoholic parent; analysis of addiction and how it interrupts attachment; figures on what counts as a binge; how people who think they are social drinkers are actually functioning alcoholics. One of the arguments used in favour of abstinence is that people underestimate how much they drink or how much counts as a unit; they cannot be trusted. You can use up a lot of life battling this, but the interesting thing is what happens to the noncombatants. The absolute harm of alcohol abuse is so self-evident that your reasonable parent, standing at the sidelines, who used to like having a skinful every third Friday, would prefer not to be anywhere near the contested zone. This makes collective parenting – the principles we all agree on – overly altruistic and idealised, while actual parenting – the stuff we do – goes underground, becomes individual and atomised. It is nothing short of a disaster – not for children, but for social cohesion. Parenting, including drunk parenting, is a tremendous bond, a leveller, a source of shared amusement; you fail, you try again, you fail better. Kids notice every shortcoming. I was reading my son a book the other day in which someone drinks themselves to death on a bottle of whisky (Day of the Triffids, thanks for asking). He asked me: “Can you die from too much alcohol?” I said: “Sure, but you’d have to drink a hell of a lot.” And he replied: “How come you’re still alive?” But child rearing is a solitary business if you do it in the Hathaway style, and only perfection can speak its name. It’s not Hathaway’s fault, by the way. I blame late capitalism, for reasons I will explain another day.Indonesia, the world’s largest tuna fishing nation, has pulled out all the stops in recent years to transform the health of an industry blighted by depleted stocks and illegal poaching.Measures by the government – which have even included the bombing of foreign vessels fishing illegally in Indonesian waters – have helped fish stocks more than double in the last five years. But now the industry has reached another important milestone: one of Indonesia’s tuna fisheries has become the first in the country – and second in south-east Asia – to achieve the gold standard for sustainable practices. The PT Crac Sorong pole and line skipjack and yellowfin tuna fishery, based in the province of West Papua, has been certified by the internationally recognised Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard for sustainable fishing. The fishery, which has become a beacon of best practice in the region, runs 35 pole and line fishing vessels and employs 750 local fishers. “The efforts made by the fishery to achieve MSC certification will help safeguard livelihoods, seafood supplies and healthy oceans for future generations,” said Patrick Caleo, Asia Pacific director at the MSC. “We hope to see other fisheries follow their lead by joining the global movement for seafood sustainability.” PT Crac’s new status will create fresh opportunities within the export market. The UK’s Sainsbury’s and Switzerland’s largest retailer, Migros, are among companies that have already committed to the preferential sourcing of certified Indonesian pole and line products. “We work hard to provide our customers with sustainable seafood products, which is why Migros has committed to preferentially sourcing MSC-certified one-by-one tuna from Indonesia,” said Adrian Lehmann, one of the company’s buyers. Traditional pole and line fishing has been carried out in Indonesia for many generations. Ali Wibisono, the CEO at PT Crac, said the fishery had employed sustainable practices since it was founded in 1975. However, to meet the international standard it was necessary to collect extensive data, implementing an observer programme on the vessels to report on tuna and baitfish catches and interaction with vulnerable species. Wibisono told the Guardian: “Having that first certification – hopefully, the first of many for Indonesia – is a proud moment and really puts us on the map. It is an important milestone for the country but the sustainability of our resources goes beyond the certification. “Our fisheries also have great importance for the people of Indonesia, providing many jobs, food and supporting livelihoods.” He said 25% of the fishery’s tuna goes to the local market while each of the 750 fishermen will take some of the catch home to their family. The certification will boost the reputation of the Sorong product on the export market as well as having a positive impact on the labour market locally. “There will be work opportunities for fishermen in the pole and line fleets and also the workers in Sorong’s fish factory,” said Wibisono. “This will attract non-pole and line fisheries to follow our lead and improve the economic turnover in the region.” Globally, tuna fisheries have an annual value of more than $40bn (£31bn), making improved conservation of the species critical to sustaining marine ecosystems and coastal communities who rely on the industry for food and income. Indonesia produces more tuna than any other country in the world with total landings of more than 620,000 metric tonnes in 2014, according to the latest data published by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The majority of tuna landed worldwide is taken by fishing vessels using large purse seine nets to encircle schools of fish, primarily targeting skipjack and yellowfin tuna. While purse seiners operating in the Indonesian economic zone are responsible for the biggest catches, their environmental impact is much greater than pole and line fisheries, which account for 50,000 metric tonnes a year, according to government estimates. “The purse seiners are responsible for a higher bycatch and are not as well regulated as what we refer to as the one-by-one tuna fisheries,” explained Martin Purves, managing director of UK-based charity the International Pole & Line Foundation (IPNLF), which has supported fisheries in Indonesia and worldwide. “Our philosophy of one hook, one line, one fish at a time – using pole and line, handline or troll line behind the boat – is recognised as being the most sustainable model,” he said. The IPNLF has this week released a film about sustainable tuna fishing. Following its work with PT Crac, the organisation is supporting a further six fisheries in Indonesia to help them achieve MSC certification by mid-2020. Purves said: “We have had support from 12 of our supply chain members which have signed a joint letter urging fisheries they will switch from any non-MSC tuna to one-by-one tuna from those fisheries in Indonesia reaching MSC certification. That is quite a strong commitment from the market.” In the past, Indonesia has been seen as a country with lots of small vessels operating without proper management, but steps taken by the ministry of maritime affairs and fisheries (MMAF) have started to bear fruit, said Purves. “The fisheries minister Susi Pudjiastuti has taken a worldwide lead in terms of addressing illegal fishing in a country that has had major issues in this area,” he said. “A lot of it has been quite public campaigns where vessels have been confiscated or set alight at sea and bombed. But in addition to publicity-grabbing efforts there has been a lot done to improve the legislative framework and great work on transparency.” Indonesia was the first country in the world to publicly share the positions of its fishing fleets on the public online platform Global Fishing Watch, which uses satellite technology to give real-time tracking information for 70,000 of the world’s largest fishing boats. In 2014 the MMAF introduced a raft of changes to manage Indonesia’s marine resources, including banning fishing using foreign capital and the use of destructive fishing gear, including trawl nets. Trian Yunanda, deputy director at the ministry, told the Guardian the policies had led to increased fish stocks and and improvement in the prosperity of fishermen and coastal communities, according to figures for 2016 and 2017. “The data shows that our traditional and small-scale fisheries have benefited, and their catch has double, from the implemented policy,” explained Yunanda. He added: “The MSC certification of PT Crac has motivated other tuna fisheries in Indonesia to develop fish improvement projects to address their negative environmental impacts and look at ways to improve.”As New Year’s Day broke in the Hawaiian Islands, one rare creature was not there to emerge from his shell and greet it: George, the last snail of his kind and a local celebrity, was dead at age 14. The passing of George, a member of the Achatinella apexfulva species and a tree snail who fed on tree fungus, algae and bacteria, epitomizes the decline of biodiversity on the Hawaiian islands, where climate change and invasive predators have taken a heavy toll on native animals and insects. Snails like George also played a part in the songs and stories of native Hawaiian culture, which holds that snails make sounds and are “the voice of the forest”. George, who never lived in an actual forest, was still a mascot for endangered Hawaiian snails. After a pathogen outbreak in the lab where he lived, he became the only surviving member of his species and was visited by hundreds, if not thousands, of schoolchildren. Despite his celebrity status, George wasn’t the prettiest snail to look at. David Sischo, the snail extinction prevention program coordinator for the Hawaii Invertebrate Program, described him as “old and grizzled” and said that George was also “bit of a hermit”, who would stay in his shell at times when most other nocturnal snails emerge. Although scientists had hoped that George, a hermaphrodite, would have offspring, his solitary life ruled out that possibility. Snails like George used to be ubiquitous throughout the Hawaiian islands. In fact, the Achatinella apexfulva was the very first snail species to be written about by non-native scientists, said Sischo. In the 1780s, when British captain George Dickson arrived in Hawaii, he was given a lei made with the shells of George’s ancestors. Back then, the snails hung from trees in giant clusters, easy pickings for scientists and collectors. “In a few minutes I collected several hundred specimens, picking them from trees and low bushes as rapidly as one would gather huckleberries from a prolific field,” a collector named DD Baldwin wrote in 1887. At that time, Hawaiian land snails existed in a mind-boggling 752 varieties – about as many as exist in the mainland US and Canada combined. The snails likely arrived by hitchhiking on sea birds that came to the islands millions of years ago, where they thrived and developed into different species – many of which are only found in a single area of one forest on one island. They had no natural predators, and even after the Polynesians brought rats to the island, still lived in abundance. But when Europeans began arriving, that all changed. By the early 1900s, many of the species were “collected” to extinction. Then came the wolfsnail. Like numerous other destructive invasive species, the rosy wolfsnail was introduced to Hawaii on purpose. In 1955, it was brought to the islands in hopes of controlling populations of the giant African snail, a foot-long, “sex-crazed” species with shells that can pierce tires and which had been released there by accident. It didn’t. Instead it binged on native snails. Unlike Hawaiian snails, which eat decomposing leaves or the fungus that grows on trees, the wolfsnail eats other snails by tracking their slime and attacking with brutal efficiency. When Michael G Hadfield, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Hawaii, began studying Hawaiian snails in the 1970s, he was stunned by their incredible diversity. He and other scientists began making trips into forests on Oahu and other islands where they would mark out a five by five-meter patch of forest, study and label the population of snails with a fine-pointed pen and some waterproof lacquer. They would return a month or so later to see how the snails were doing, and soon amassed information about the snails’ lifespans, behaviors and the role in the ecosystem, where before they had only been appreciated for their attractive shells. Notably, Hadfield studied a population of Achatinella apexfulva – the same species as George – living in the Waianae forest on Oahu for years. The snails were unusual in that they gave birth to large offspring measuring 4 to 5mm in length, but didn’t begin reproducing until they reached the age of five, and then only a handful of times a year. On trips to visit the Achatinella apexfulva and other snails, Hadfield often witnessed a foreboding site: rosy wolfsnails hunting for prey. The longer Hadfield worked, the more destruction he saw. He and other scientists would often arrive at a study site to find a scattering of empty shells, like little tombstones. “We were just watching snails disappear, disappear, disappear,” Hadfield said. “We could see them vanishing before our eyes.” By the early 1980s, Hadfield and his colleagues had begun bringing snails into their laboratory to preserve preserving them. In 1997, a group of about 10 Achatinella apexfulva was brought to the lab. Two of them were George’s parents. Despite the sad fate of the Achatinella apexfulva, Sischo said that the Oahu lab he works in now has thousands of native snails in residence, and that scientists have begun re-introducing some of the adults into remote forests where they hope they will thrive. So far, the locations have been kept secret, in part, Sischo said, so that humans don’t go trampling around looking for them. As for George, his shell and body are being preserved, along with a two millimeter live sample of his “foot” which was sent to San Diego’s Frozen Zoo with the goal of one day cloning him and reviving the species. No funeral will be held, scientists said.Carlos Ghosn has proclaimed his innocence in his first public appearance since the former Nissan chairman was arrested in November for alleged financial misconduct. Dressed in a dark suit, but without a tie, Ghosn, who appeared to have lost weight during his 50 days in detention, told the Tokyo district court in a special hearing on Tuesday that he had been “wrongly accused” of under-reporting his salary for several years. He had been led into the courtroom in handcuffs, which were later removed. “I have always acted with integrity and have never been accused of any wrongdoing in my several-decade professional career. I have been wrongly accused and unfairly detained based on meritless and unsubstantiated accusations,” the 64-year-old, whose hair was greying at the roots, told a packed courtroom. He added: “Contrary to the accusations made by the prosecutors, I never received any compensation from Nissan that was not disclosed, nor did I ever enter into any binding contract with Nissan to be paid a fixed amount that was not disclosed.” His lawyer had demanded the court justify his client’s continued detention in connection with a case that has shaken the Japanese carmaker’s alliance with Renault and prompted criticism of Japan’s treatment of suspects. Ghosn was first arrested on 19 November and later charged on suspicion of under-reporting his salary by 5bn yen ($44m) over five years until 2016 – allegedly to avoid accusations from Nissan staff that he was overpaid. He has consistently denied the allegations. He has since been twice rearrested – but not charged – over allegations that he continued to file false pay reports and had transferred personal investment losses of 1.85bn yen to Nissan. Tuesday’s hearing, a right granted to suspects by Japan’s postwar constitution, does not mark the official start of Ghosn’s trial, nor will it have an impact on his case, according to legal experts. His lengthy stay in a tiny, freezing cell at the Tokyo detention centre has drawn international criticism of Japan’s “hostage justice”, which allows prosecutors to re-arrest suspects several times over different allegations and to question them for up to eight hours a day without a lawyer present. Ghosn’s courtroom appearance attracted huge media attention, with cameras ranged along the streets to capture his departure from the detention centre and arrival at court. More than 1,000 people had queued outside the courtroom to draw lots for the 14 seats in the public gallery. His latest period of detention expires on Friday. The Frenchman, who was born in Brazil and is of Lebanese descent, was once hailed as Nissan’s saviour for masterminding its stunning turnaround in the late 1990s and for forging a three-way alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi Motors. He was sacked as chairman of Nissan – which has yet to appoint a permanent replacement – soon after his arrest but kept on as head of Renault. The scandal has exposed differences between the French carmaker and its partners in Japan over Ghosn’s alleged conduct that some industry observers say could threaten the alliance. But in an interview with Agence France-Presse on the eve of the hearing, Nissan’s chief executive, Hiroto Saikawa, dismissed speculation that the scandal risked destroying the alliance. “I don’t think it’s in danger at all,” he said.Antonio Carlos da Silva was returning home to the Lagoa Redonda district of Fortaleza when two armed men drove past in a black car, ordering businesses to shut and residents to go inside and turn off the lights. Da Silva spent the next day indoors with no drinking water as a wave of unrest engulfed the north-eastern Brazilian city. “There’s a climate of panic and people are terrified to go out. It’s like you’re a prisoner in your home and even then not safe,” says Da Silva. “These attacks are worse than in the past; they’re attacking shopping centres, bridges. No one knows how it will end.” Now in its third week, the wave of bomb and fire attacks on bridges, banks and other infrastructure across Ceará state shows no sign of letting up, with two bridges blown up and a school bus set on fire during at least eight attacks on Sunday. It is seen not just as a direct challenge to the new president, Jair Bolsonaro, but also as stark evidence that Brazil urgently needs penal reform and alternatives to the tough-on-crime policies he is promising. “This crisis was entirely predictable. This is the fourth year we’ve had such attacks. We were sitting on a barrel of gunpowder and it just needed someone to light the fuse,” says Renato Roseno, congressman for the Socialism and Liberty party (PSOL), adding that poverty, “medieval prisons”, the war on drugs, and non-existent policies for marginalised young people make the state “fertile recruiting ground” for criminal gangs. This time the fuse was lit by an announcement on 1 January from Ceará’s new secretary of penitentiary administration, Luís Mauro Albuquerque, that he didn’t “recognise” different criminal factions in the prison system and would end the practice of dividing them based on gang allegiances, as part of new hardline measures. The ensuing backlash has seen more than 180 attacks on public property as two of Brazil’s largest gangs, the First Capital Command (PCC) and Red Command (CV), operate a pact against the “common enemy” – the state. Reports say local rivals the Guardians of the State (GDE) and Family of the North (FDN), from Amazonas, have joined in – potentially setting up a dangerous wider alliance against authorities. Fortaleza, the state capital, has seen the worst unrest. O Povo news site reported that gangs were paying young people in poorer areas to commit crimes, with 1,000 reais (£210) to set fire to a bus and 5,000 reais for “a fire of great proportions”. Others are settling personal drug debts with acts of violence. Four hundred national guard have been sent to Fortaleza to restore order, the graduation of military police recruits has been speeded up and prisoners suspected of leading the unrest have been transferred out of the state. Police have taken more than 400 mobile phones from prisoners across Ceará, and there have been 358 arrests. But, say critics, none of this will solve the structural crisis in Ceará’s overcrowded prisons, where the insistence on criminalisation and mass incarceration have left around 29,000 inmates occupying spaces for about 11,000 people. Overcrowding makes it harder to uphold even basic rights for inmates, handing control to gangs. These gangs then feed a crime epidemic among young people who lack alternatives. “We haven’t changed the prison policy for 30 years, and we just repeat the same mistakes,” says Roseno, who heads a campaign to stop murders of adolescents. “The government needs a policy of penal reform but it doesn’t have one. A prison should aim to [reintegrate] the criminal into society, but only 5% of inmates are studying and only 7% are working – they need skills and education.” Without investment and reform of the prison system, the cycle of violence and crime continues. “It is right for the state to re-engage with command of the prisons but [Albuquerque] made a mistake by saying he would not respect gangs without [having] a plan.” Criminologist Sacha Darke, author of a new book on Brazilian prisons, points out that Brazil’s gangs originated in jails as inmates banded together for protection, and the practice of housing inmates with the local faction was started to stop them killing each other. “It is hard to see how they could run prisons without this system since prisoners protect each other, and there are far too few staff. Guards don’t even go into cells so it would be an absolute nightmare to throw all [the inmates] in together.” As well as providing more staff and resources for prisons, judicial practice must change in order to reduce mass incarceration, he says. Despite a law in 2006 decriminalising possession of a small amount of drugs for personal consumption, “they began prosecuting anyone found with drugs, [even] a small quantity at home, as if they were serious traffickers”. This has contributed to a sharp rise in Brazil’s prison population to 700,489 – the world’s third largest. Of all inmates nationwide, 34.2% are on remand and Ceará holds the record for most prisoners who have not been convicted of a crime. As drug gangs have migrated from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to a region offering an easy route to Europe, Ceará has become one of the most violent states in a country that in 2017 broke its own record for homicides. But, say critics, authorities haven’t taken this seriously enough or come up with smart, innovative policies to counter it. The current crisis is now a perfect storm as gang leaders in overstuffed jails prey on young people with “no exit door from gangs”, says Roseno, while Ceará’s governor, Camilo Santana, from the leftwing Workers’ Party (PT), is “worried about not looking weak”. So far the response of Santana has echoed the tough rhetoric of Bolsonaro, calling for military reinforcements and promising stern action in his Facebook posts. Meanwhile, the unrest has spread to 40 cities and on the streets of Fortaleza, there is little sign that either side is ready to back down. Local media have shown graffiti in Fortaleza with the warning: “We will not stop until Albuquerque quits.” Da Silva, a social worker with young people at risk of joining gangs, says many areas are now too dangerous for him and co-workers to enter. “The authorities cannot step back for fear of looking weak, but this is going to lead to more serious problems,” Da Silva says. “Where is the intelligent response to these problems in Brazil? We have a super-ministry of security but where’s the super-ministry of education?” Luiz Fábio Paiva, a sociologist at the federal university of Ceará and researcher with the Laboratory for the Study of Violence (LEV), says the assertions from the state government, which is “preoccupied excessively with manifesting and demonstrating a hyper-masculine show of fighting violence with violence”, are reckless. “It’s irresponsible to put these [factions] in the same prisons. You are going to have to deal with the burden of deaths that already happen and are going to increase,” he says. Roseno says: “The question is: how can we reduce the power of the gangs? How can we not just get rid of the weapons and cut off financial resources but offer young people a different life? These gangs operate by offering a sense of brotherhood, self-esteem, money. They are filling the space where there are no public policies.”“What’s your edge?” the actor playing Craig Oliver asked Dominic Cummings in Monday night’s TV drama Brexit: The Uncivil War. The programme does a decent job of demonstrating how Vote Leave used a superior slogan (“Take back control”) and false claims (on money for the NHS, and Turkey joining the EU) to capture the public mood. Sadly it brushes over the illegality of their overspending and overplays the role of their data wizards – who are now common in politics. But rather than looking backwards at 2016, the question posed by Oliver – David Cameron’s then spin doctor – is perhaps more pertinent with regard to the prospect of a new referendum. Some bookmakers have slashed the odds of a people’s vote to virtually evens as Theresa May’s deal looks destined to fail. Although my part in the TV drama was blink-and-you-miss-it, in reality I was part of the remain campaign from the start. My job was to build an organisation – Britain Stronger in Europe – from scratch, which ultimately employed 200 people around the country. I was there in 2015 when Oliver and the rest of Cameron’s team wanted nothing to do with us as they pursued their hopeless renegotiation of EU membership. And I was there when, despite cordial relations, the No 10 team focused the campaign increasingly narrowly on economic risk. So what are the lessons if another referendum becomes the only route out of the current mess? First, a new campaign will need an emotionally resonant message rather than relying solely on the “facts”. The former prime minister Gordon Brown came closest to finding this tone when he argued that Britain should “lead not leave”. His video from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral making this case was the most shared remain video on Facebook during the referendum. Unfortunately, greater use of this slogan was dismissed by our pollsters. They insisted that voters simply wanted facts on the economic impact. “Tell them again” is likely to be the leave slogan if there is a new vote. Something appropriately patriotic and uplifting will be needed on the remain side to compete. Second, political leadership must come from all major parties. Labour’s refusal to join the official campaign meant that remain was dominated by David Cameron and George Osborne. Labour’s logic was that sharing a platform with the Tories in the 2014 Scottish referendum had been fatal for the party, which was all but wiped out in Scotland at the next election. The consequences were that neither Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell nor even Alan Johnson, who led the independent “Labour In” campaign, were part of remain’s central command. All the key decisions were taken by a small group close to the then-prime minister, and relayed back to campaign staff. Indeed, Peter Mandelson denies that the call with David Cameron portrayed in the TV drama ever took place. The No 10 team were full of hubris from their surprise (but narrow) general election victory, and thought they had all the answers. Having Labour at the top table would have forced a more balanced campaign and prevented groupthink. Third, the campaign must be prepared to take on its opponents’ arguments. Immigration was the dominant theme in the final month, but No 10 wanted to focus purely on the economy. Instead, we should have made the case for free movement’s role in supporting the NHS and providing opportunities for Britons, especially young people, to travel, study and work abroad. Fourth, it doesn’t take a brainbox in a broom cupboard to know that the campaign will need the ability to frame its opponents. Leave did a superb job of painting remain as the establishment “Project Fear” campaign. This was patently absurd given the scare stories on Turkey and the backgrounds of Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and even Cummings (the Vote Leave campaign director), who married the daughter of a baronet. But it stuck. Remain’s creative agencies produced a series of eye-catching adverts that would have nailed leading leavers in the public’s imagination. This included one of Boris Johnson in the pocket of Nigel Farage, mimicking the successful poster of Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond the year before. Sadly, No 10 banned the images because, as Oliver’s character reveals in the drama, they had one eye on putting the Tory party back together following the vote, rather than both eyes on the prize. Finally, it is critical to use every available resource to make your case to voters. The leading leave and remain campaigns were each able to spend £7m. We know now that Vote Leave broke electoral law by channelling an extra £625,000 to one of its offshoots. But leave also managed to spend twice as much as remain on digital adverts. It did so because remain wasted money on unnecessary vanity items like the daily tracker poll that Cameron wanted, and on inflated fees for American consultants. Discipline is critical in any campaign, and remain was bloated. After watching Monday night’s drama, a new referendum may be the last thing that many people want. But if it does happen, it must be leave and not remain asking who has the edge. • Will Straw was executive director of Britain Stronger in Europe, and is on the board for Open BritainDonald Trump’s speech on the Mexican “border crisis”, delivered live from the Oval Office last week, marked a milestone in his brief but historically chaotic presidency; it revealed serious errors of judgment that weren’t simply down to him. Unfortunately for commercial media outlets, it was their shortcomings that attracted almost as much attention and criticism as the scaremongering speech itself. It is the hallmark of many non-Democratic countries that tinpot dictators appear, at the drop of a hat, on national broadcast outlets. Even in functioning democracies you can measure the importance of a national moment by whether the head of state or government pops up in prime time. For this reason appearances by US presidents on all TV networks were traditionally a relatively rare occurrence. When they do happen, the decision to run them is made on an ad hoc basis by the heads of those networks. Until Trump, the establishment organisations of US public life – which include the president and the major television stations – were so closely aligned on the circumstances for accessing the airwaves that clear rules seemed unnecessary, at least in the age of media deference to the presidency; Richard Nixon managed nine live addresses to the nation. The last time an American president requested airtime and was refused was when Barack Obama wanted to address the nation on immigration policy in 2014. The networks’ reasoning included the fact that Obama had been allowed Oval Office addresses before, and this seemed to not be as big a deal. This time, the danger that Trump would use the platform to spread nonsense and untruth in a thinly veiled campaign for a personal policy was weighed carefully against the fact that Trump had not yet had an Oval Office address and that it would be “newsworthy”, on account of the ongoing impasse over funding the government. In fact, Trump has already made 17 presidential addresses, but only the latest was given seated behind his desk in the White House. Obama only gave 20 such speeches in the whole of his eight-year tenure. The policy background is the punishing government shutdown that threatens the wages of 800,000 workers over the insistence by Trump that Congress give him $5.7bn (£4.5bn) to build a border wall with Mexico. The centrepiece of his xenophobic campaign platform, his dream of building the wall, has been stymied by both cost concerns and the laws of physics (large stretches of the US-Mexican border are not wall friendly). His request that public funds be made available to erect a fence – a cheaper, if no less ridiculous, option – has met with Democratic opposition, and ultimately a failure to fund many government activities. The inability of 11 separate network heads to say “no” to Trump caused frustration on a number of levels. It was yet another sign, said some commentators, of the networks not “getting it”, following the normal rules of engagement with a presidency that is abnormal to the point of dysfunction. A more nuanced point is that journalists employed by the same networks are often subject to abuse and even physical danger because of Trump’s hostility to the press: CNN correspondent Jim Acosta had his press credentials withdrawn for upsetting the president, and Katy Tur of NBC had to be given secret service protection at Trump rallies during his campaign. Allowing a president noted for his untruthfulness access to their networks arguably put protocol above national interest, or perhaps, more honestly, prioritised ratings over principle. Brian Stelter, CNN’s media editor, told the New Yorker he thought the decision was driven by tradition: “It is not that television networks are unaware or uninterested in the president’s mendacity,” he said. “But I think that tradition, that custom, of broadcasting the president simply outweighs the concerns.” Given the refusal to allow Obama airtime, this argument looks a trifle disingenuous, made more so by the attendant ratings. The speech and an accompanying rebuttal by Democrat leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were seen by more than 43 million viewers. Trump remains strong box office. The viewing figures are, however, only one aspect of a series of coordinated events. There was the prelude to the speech, in which Trump invited network bosses to lunch and told them he didn’t, in fact, want to be on TV at all, but his advisers were making him. There was the Democratic rebuttal and the subsequent memes. There was the discussion about the speech (see above) and there was the fact checking which has now become a media event in itself. The assumption that the speech might be false and misleading opened up the opportunity for a fact-checked meta-narrative to run alongside the event. The (non-profit) Associated Press won the prize for worst use of fact checking with a tweet that read: “AP fact check: Democrats put the blame for the shutdown on Trump. But it takes two to tango. Trump’s demand for $5.7bn for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The Democrats’ refusal to approve the money is another.” In a move that strayed beyond satire, AP then adjusted its own fact check to better conform to the facts. The Trump Show is a live experiment in what happens when the complete fusion of politics, technology and public entertainment occurs. Journalists and politicians alike struggle to find a footing that keeps them simultaneously relevant and rational. As Trump was sniffing uncomfortably behind his desk on Tuesday, potential contenders for 2020 were popping up on Instagram using the platform’s fleeting Stories function, frolicking with their dogs or having their teeth cleaned. Meanwhile, on the southern border, where the real policy story is playing out, there was scant coverage of fringe groups harassing asylum seekers sheltered by churches. And the wider story about the growing crisis in processing immigration cases was eclipsed. This time next year we will be in full-on primary season as part of the run up to the 2020 election, and the era of Trump might be drawing to a close. The television networks and press corps might imagine there will then be a return to normality. But this heightened environment of mediated and unmediated communications is the new reality. Interaction between politicians, the public and the press has been permanently altered. The fourth wall has come down far faster than the border wall could ever be constructed. As yet it is not entirely clear that the commercial media has decided what role it could – or should – play in this changed world.Some psychologists are upset at the deployment of purported scientific techniques in magic tricks, according to the Times. The newspaper cites a study (paywall) co-authored by Gustav Kuhn, a reader in psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, in which a group of people watched a magic trick. Those who knew that the performer was a magician were as likely to believe his false claims about being able to read a person’s mind as those who were told he was a psychologist. Yet according to Kuhn, the neurolinguistic programming (NLP) techniques claimed by some magicians – in which facial cues and body language can be read – is “complete pseudoscience”. So how do magicians feel about this? Tom MacKay is a mentalist, magician and NLP trainer who also has a master’s in psychology. “When NLP is claimed as a pseudoscience, it is really a misunderstanding of what it is,” he says. “NLP was developed as a way to model successful thinking.” He works with athletes, for instance, to improve performance. The confusion arises, MacKay says, because “a lot of people who say they are doing mentalism claim to read body language and facial cues. Which hand is the coin in? That’s a classic magic trick. I might be able to predict which hand it is in through observing physiology with quite a few people, but it wouldn’t work 100%. In magic, you want things to be 100%. Magicians say it’s NLP when it isn’t.” Hugh Shields, a magician also known as Hughdini, trained under NLP co-creator Richard Bandler (who also taught NLP to Derren Brown and Paul McKenna). “Do [tricks] work because of NLP or for some other reason?” he asks. He points out that magicians mix up their devices, and that creating confusion is part of the performance. Magic relies on a lack of understanding, after all, and if NLP obfuscates a magician’s technique, maybe it is simply a modern silk handkerchief. “Some magicians want to give the impression of being a mind reader. I have a problem with that. I’m not reading people’s minds,” MacKay says. But audience members still congratulate him on his mind-reading. They want to believe. “People come away with false impressions. There’s disillusionment.” Which, of course, is the opposite of the effect that magic intends to create.The head of US intelligence has said that North Korea is “unlikely to give up” its nuclear weapons because its leadership sees them as “critical to regime survival” – in comments which contrasted sharply with Donald Trump’s own assessment. Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, made his assessment in a written statement on “worldwide threats” to the Senate on Tuesday, which was noteworthy for the many ways it differed from the rhetoric favoured by the president and his top aides. The gaps were not only evident on North Korea, but also on Iran’s nuclear programme, the continuing threat of the Islamic State in Syria and on the importance of climate change. The distance between the White House and its intelligence agencies was highlighted further in verbal testimony to the Senate intelligence committee by Coats, alongside the heads of the CIA, DIA and NSA who also testified. Coats’s assessment on North Korean intentions had particular impact as it comes in the run-up to a planned second summit at the end of February between Trump and Kim Jong-un. Trump has rejected repeated reports that – while the Pyongyang regime has halted nuclear and missile tests since the first summit in Singapore last June – it has not paused its production of nuclear weapons and may have stepped it up. “The media is not giving us credit for the tremendous progress we have made with North Korea,” Trump complained in a tweet last week. The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has insisted that the diplomatic effort was aimed at complete North Korean disarmament. In his written testimony, however, Coats said: “We continue to assess that North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear weapons and production capabilities, even as it seeks to negotiate partial denuclearization steps to obtain key US and international concessions.” “North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to regime survival,” Coats argued. He went on to point out that Kim Jong-un’s pledge in Singapore to pursue the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” – which Trump and Pompeo portrayed as a historic breakthrough – was no more than “a formulation linked to past demands that include an end to US military deployments and exercises involving advanced US capabilities”. That assessment of North Korea was echoed by the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt Gen Robert Ashley. He told the Senate committee: “The capability and threat that existed a year ago are still there.” In contrast, Coats said that US intelligence “continue to assess that Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device”. He noted that Iran’s activities are limited by the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but as Iran derives ever fewer benefits from the deal, hardliners are pressing for the state to break free of those constraints. Trump abrogated the JCPOA in May last year and his administration has threatened sanctions against anyone doing business with Iran. Pompeo and the national security adviser, John Bolton, have described Iran as the biggest terrorist threat in the world, but the intelligence community’s worldwide threats assessment does not echo that view. It lists Iran below Isis and al-Qaida and homegrown extremists. The intelligence report also represented a rejoinder to Trump’s claims of victory over Isis in Syria. Coats’s written testimony said: “Isis still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria, and it maintains eight branches, more than a dozen networks, and thousands of dispersed supporters around the world, despite significant leadership and territorial losses.” On a day that Trump ridiculed concern about climate change because of the current blast of arctic weather in the midwest, the intelligence report also includes sombre predictions of the repercussions of global warming. Trump has dismissed climate change as a hoax, and on Tuesday tweeted: “What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!” The administration has scrubbed references to climate science from government websites, but Coats’s report presented it as a major threat. “Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security,” Coats warned.Paris St-Germain have won the race to sign the highly rated Argentinian midfielder Leandro Paredes for €40m (£34.7m) plus €5m in potential add-ons. The 24-year-old has been playing for Zenit St Petersburg since the summer of 2017, having previously represented Boca Juniors, Chievo, Roma and Empoli. The central midfielder was one of the most sought-after players in this window and PSG will be delighted to have secured him on a long-term deal, especially after losing out on Ajax’s Frenkie De Jong, who has joined Barcelona. PSG are set to lose one of their central midfielders, Adrien Rabiot, in the summer with the Frenchman having agreed to join Barcelona on a free. The PSG manager, Thomas Tuchel, was keen to bring in Paredes, who has nine caps, to begin a squad overhaul. PSG will be without Neymar for a considerable time after he suffered a metatarsal injury in his right foot during a 2-0 victory over Racing Strasbourg in the French Cup on Wednesday. They are top of the French league and next play Rennes on Sunday night. They face Manchester United in the last 16 of the Champions League, with the first leg on 12 February.It was Friday lunchtime in Venezuela’s crumbling capital and Omar Mejías – for years a disciple of the comandante Hugo Chávez – had come to a plaza in the city’s east for what he hoped might be a glimpse of a brighter future. On stage before him stood Juan Guaidó, a fresh-faced and until recently little-known politician, catapulted into the spotlight last week by the decision of the United States – and then a succession of other world powers – to recognise him, and not the incumbent Nicolás Maduro, as the legitimate president of this oil-rich but economically ravaged South American nation. “I’m here to see what this señor has to say, what proposals he has … because things aren’t easy,” said Mejías, 53, a resident of Valles del Tuy, a traditional Chavista stronghold in south Caracas, who was considering transferring his loyalties because of his country’s collapse under Maduro. Borrowing one of the comandante’s famous expressions to describe Venezuela’s disintegration, Mejías added: “You don’t need glasses to see what’s right before your eyes.” As Venezuelans confronted the latest political upheaval to engulf their nation last week, there was widespread consensus on the capital’s streets that change was urgently needed – and possibly on the horizon. “We must have change. We’re tired of seeing children eating in the rubbish,” said Luis Torres, 34, an unemployed father-of-two from Petare, a sprawling shanty in the city’s east. But as your correspondent moved around Caracas on Friday, unease and frustration could be seen, and deep trepidation over what is now a profoundly uncertain future. “I want a change – but not through a coup or an intervention,” said Naikary Agresot, 17, a student from Gramoven, a working-class and heavily pro-Chávez community in west Caracas. “I wish Maduro could understand that things have gotten out of control and make room for someone who truly can change the country,” added Agresot, who said she often lacked the money to take the bus to school or buy food. “I think he’s had his chance and he didn’t know how to take advantage of it,” she said of Maduro, who was first elected after Chávez died in 2013 and re-elected last May in elections widely denounced as a farce. “It isn’t fair that someone works for a whole month and has to spend half their salary on a kilo of rice or meat.” Torres was among those who took to the streets last week to support Guaidó and said there were thousands of other slum-dwellers who also wanted Maduro gone. “Here the prices are like in Switzerland, but you earn like you’re in Haiti,” he said. However, while he was desperate for “freedom” Torres was alarmed at the prospect of a foreign military intervention to oust Maduro and hoped a peaceful way out could be found. The US has warned that “all options are on the table” if Maduro responds to Guaidó’s challenge with violence, while Maduro ordered his troops to prepare to defeat “any imperialist enemy who dares touch our soil”. “If there’s no food now, just imagine what it would be like in a war … we’ve seen what happened in Syria and Libya and we do not want this,” Torres said. Opposition to Maduro – who claims Guaidó’s move is part of a US-sponsored “coup” similar to the botched 2002 attempt to topple his mentor – was everywhere. But there was support, too. “I want to give him another chance,” said Yenny Cumana, a 32-year-old housewife from 24 de Julio, a community in Petare that was rocked by protests last week. “I want to believe and I want things to improve so the country goes back to being like it was.” Addressing a sea of supporters in Plaza Bolívar de Chacao on Friday, Guaidó rejected claims that he was involved in a coup and said his movement had identified “a clear path” out of Venezuela’s current nightmare: Maduro’s exit, the installation of a transitional government, and free and fair elections. On Saturday the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Spain gave Maduro an eight-day ultimatum to call a vote or they would back his challenger. But with Maduro refusing to budge and China and Russia backing his administration, Venezuela’s fate is shrouded in uncertainty. Many see the potential for violence, civil war or even a catastrophic cold war-style clash between the US, China and Russia if a peaceful resolution is not found. “I don’t think anyone can predict what is going to happen,” said Moisés Naím, a Venezuelan scholar who was the country’s trade minister during the 1990s. Naím, a vocal critic of Chavismo, said he was encouraged by recent developments, calling them the opposition’s first bit of good news since Chávez launched his ill-fated Bolivarian revolution two decades ago. “There are reasons to celebrate. The opposition has done a wonderful job of acting in a coherent and coordinated way. The international community … has rallied in very significant ways. [Last week’s] marches and demonstrations included everyone. It was no longer just the [wealthy] east of Caracas protesting. It was the barrios. Everyone was in the streets showing opposition to Maduro.” But Naím was also troubled by the potential for bloodshed if different military factions started backing different leaders. “I am worried about a country that can fragment under different chieftains and warlords and generals and narco-traffickers [and guerrilla groups] and … Venezuela becoming like a tapestry of different power centres.” So great are the uncertainties it is unclear even where Guaidó might seek to set up his parallel government if Maduro – who also has the backing of Venezuela’s military top brass – hangs on. Naím said he could imagine a situation where Caracas was politically partitioned, with Maduro in the Miraflores presidential palace and Guaidó having his headquarters in the leafy eastern district of Altamira. “It could be as granular as that,” he said. “Venezuela could evolve towards a Lebanon circa 1985 … [when] after the war it fragmented and each neighbourhood had its own militia with its own head and you needed permits to move across the neighbourhoods.” Mejías, who had never attended a political rally before Friday’s, said he hoped Venezuela’s military would step in to broker a solution that would avoid a “gringo” intervention and a bloodbath. “If we are here and there’s an invasion, they’ll fill everyone with lead, whether you’re a Chavista or from the opposition.” As Venezuela lurches towards a new, unsettled future, Mejías hoped that better times were coming “and we can go back to being what we were before”. “We can’t be pessimistic,” he insisted as the crowds poured into the square to hear from a man some hope will prove Venezuela’s saviour. “We must have faith.”I’m writing this standing up in an Apple store in New York, here in the city for 24 hours without a charger. Nobody has said a word to me, as I furtively steal their power while carefully keeping my face in neutral. The shop is busy with teenagers upgrading their iPhones and aggressively friendly staff, and the only still points are me and a man wearing three coats and broken flip-flops playing Candy Crush on an iPad. It is a quite lovely feeling to be, if not invisible, then at least translucent. A book called An Unexplained Death came out last month, and I reread it on my journey – it appears to be a true crime thriller about a man’s final days, but quickly and sneakily reveals itself to be a memoir of the writer, Mikita Brottman. Years before starting it, Brottman went to see a psychoanalyst because she’d started to feel invisible. “I appeared to be completely forgettable,” she writes. To be “invisible”, she elaborates, “feels a little like being a ghost – people don’t seem to notice or acknowledge my presence, or look right through me. This has its advantages, though. I often feel as though I can learn people’s secrets, and get away with anything.” Moix complained, 'I would like 50-year-old women to stop sending me photos of their bottoms and breasts' I have been wallowing in this idea. Walking in the night alone, I feel a frantic kind of freedom, the eyes of strangers fall off me – I’m anti-climb paint. I can travel around peacefully, eat by myself, stand for as long as I want in front of a painting – and be ignored. I’ve never been pretty, but I have been young and thin, and I’ve always been female, and in that pie chart the central shape inevitably invites interest when seated alone. Walking near Central Park I remembered being on this street as a teenager, when a stranger pointed at my jeans and whispered: “Nice pussy.” No more. Which is why I basked in 50-year-old French author Yann Moix’s comments about how women stop being attractive after the age of 25. Questioned after his initial Marie Claire interview came out, where he said it wasn’t possible to love a woman over the age of 50 – “Too, too old. The body of a 25-year-old woman is extraordinary. The body of a woman of 50 is not extraordinary at all” – he decided to double down, further explaining he was only attracted to Asian women, because they offer an “extraordinary link with another cosmos”. Outraged, thousands shared photos of Halle Berry and Jennifer Aniston, as well as their own pert bodies, leading him to plead to the Times: “I would like 50-year-old women to stop sending me photos of their bottoms and breasts.” Which seems fair. Because why should anybody attempt to change his mind? Not only should we laugh at the arrogance of his bumptious racist sexism, but we should celebrate his point – that a moment comes in woman’s lives when they no longer have to engage with men like Moix. Until you are invisible to men like this, your body is theirs. You only get it back when they no longer find you sexy – and that is a relief like no other. How wonderful to walk down the street, whether in tight dress or muumuu (recently I have been wearing a lot of corduroy boiler suits) and not be constantly reassuring yourself, stiff-backed, not turning yourself into a human shield against strange men’s judgments, a running director’s commentary on how not to be a woman. A version of this can be seen in the New York press in its nutty attempts to shame congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a confused scrabbling for conflict that exposes the single way it is possible to be a woman in public. Up to 25, you are looked at – after that, you must not be too loud or too quiet, or smile too much or too little, or be too thin or too fat, or be good at dancing or be bad at dancing. It’s no wonder so many women are put off jobs in power; it’s some wonder so many of us continue to internalise the sour taste we get of such exposure simply from walking down the street. I look at my body differently now that it is no longer being looked at. There is a dehumanising effect to being seen by men like Moix, as you stand outside yourself, considering their view. And while I understand the shock of women being ignored upon turning 50, 60, having lost the sexual capital they’d leaned into for years, surely there is a great deal of comfort for them in becoming invisible, too. Especially on hearing the limits of the alternative spelled out in French, an author saying books should be judged by their covers. Such dense bliss, this realisation that I can be invisible in a crowd, whether in this shop, where my face will be blurred in the background of two girls’ selfies, or in the street, where it should be possible to journey forward without the suspicion you’re trespassing in a stranger’s playground. Such relief to be the one looking, the one walking unseen, the person in the body that is no longer 25. It’s mine again. I have spent some time watching the video of the 64m fatberg discovered beneath the Esplanade in Sidmouth, Devon. It is grey and tripe-like with ominous holes as if it’s been burrowed into by a fellow monster. If you look closely, I swear you see eyes. Fellow Lindsay Lohan consumers will be excited to hear her explanation for the fascinating accent she’s been using for the past few years. It’s tha of a person for whom English is a second language. She revealed this week that she’s been speaking ‘Lilohan’. I saw The Favourite this week, a beautiful and hilarious film – the natural lighting of which made me understand pearls for the first time. Lines from it keep returning to me like bubbles of joy. ‘I’ve sent for some lobsters. I thought we could race them and eat them.’ And: ‘Your carriage awaits, and my maid is on her way up with something called a pineapple.’ Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter@EvaWisemanThere are plenty of Hollywood A-listers duking it out for dominance this year, from Julia Roberts to Jim Carrey, with the TV categories starting to look like they took a wrong turn at the Academy Awards. But the Golden Globes are fun because they usually defy predictions. The Emmys may have established The Americans and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel as the ones to beat, but there is usually a strong British influence here, and this could be a night for A Very English Scandal or even Bodyguard to shine. There has been considerable admiration for Ryan Murphy’s starry take on the murder of Gianni Versace, and after The People v OJ Simpson won this category two years ago, it would make a neat sequel. Though Murphy might squeak it, the divisive Sharp Objects is in with a shot, if it doesn’t end up faring better in acting categories. A Very English Scandal, though, was a class act, and could be triumphant, particularly if the Hollywood Foreign Press Association decides to show some of the love for British shows that occasionally throws up a surprise. Will win: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Should win: A Very English Scandal Unlike 2018, when Big Little Lies and Feud dominated this category to a near comical degree, there are five performances from five very different shows here. Regina King was strong in the otherwise turgid Seven Seconds, and won an Emmy to prove it, and it’s hard to better a trio as strong as Patricia Arquette, Laura Dern and Connie Britton, but Sharp Objects marked a career-best performance for Amy Adams, who has had a very, very good career already. So it seems inevitable that her complex, broken Camille Preaker will win her the prize. Will win: Amy Adams, Sharp Objects Should win: Amy Adams, Sharp Objects This is Benedict Cumberbatch’s third Golden Globes nomination, having lost out on Sherlock and The Imitation Game, and his Patrick Melrose ticks all award-worthy boxes: it’s a literary adaptation, it’s a period piece, and he has to act like he’s taken an awful lot of drugs. Darren Criss has been much hyped for The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and after the Emmys, he looks like the frontrunner, but a more likely scenario is that it comes down to a battle of the Brits. And Hugh Grant continues a fruitful period with his brilliantly unvarnished portrayal of disgraced politician Jeremy Thorpe. Will win: Benedict Cumberbatch, Patrick Melrose Should win: Hugh Grant, A Very English Scandal Surely one of the strongest and least predictable categories of the night, in which any nominee could feasibly be considered the best, particularly when comparing such different shows. Yvonne Strahovski might make up for the absence of The Handmaid’s Tale this year after an unloved second season, despite it winning best drama in 2018. Penelope Cruz and Thandie Newton were both excellent, but this could be an Emmys do-over for Alex Borstein. However, the ever-brilliant Patricia Clarkson was stunning as the ethereal mommie dearest Adora, and would be a pleasant surprise win. Will win: Alex Borstein, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel Should win: Patricia Clarkson, Sharp Objects Henry Winkler’s hapless acting coach brought heart to Barry, which could otherwise be cold, and it has already won him an Emmy (also, Ted Danson was robbed). Kieran Culkin was fantastic as the youngest son in a Murdoch-esque media empire, and this is the only nomination for Succession, which deserves more accolades than that. But Ben Whishaw’s flighty, fragile Norman Scott was a rich wonder, and it elevated the already great A Very English Scandal even further. Will win: Henry Winkler, Barry Should win: Ben Whishaw, A Very English Scandal Awards ceremony judges sure do love Mrs Maisel’s moxie, and even though the second season was more cloying and whimsical than the first, it seems to have escaped the more harsh exclusion of, say, The Handmaid’s Tale. So it’s a likely winner, though it is up against a strange and inconsistent bunch: Barry, The Kominsky Method and Kidding are all admirable, if hard to adore. The Good Place, so consistently inventive, might sneak a breakthrough win. Will win: The Marvelous Mrs Maisel Should win: The Good Place Rachel Brosnahan won it last year, so I’m ruling her out for the double. Candice Bergen and Debra Messing are great, but retreading old roles. Kristen Bell deserves a shot for making The Good Place as charming as it is, for fork’s sake, but I’d have an outside punt on Alison Brie, nominated for the second time for Glow, if only for her services to leotards. Will win: Alison Brie, Glow Should win: Kristen Bell, The Good Place This has been a year of diverse performances and almost every one of these nominees has lifted an otherwise inconsistent show, whether it’s Bill Hader’s glassy-eyed assassin in Barry, or big screen transplants Jim Carrey (Kidding) and Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method). Sacha Baron Cohen might have been too bleak in Who Is America?, but really, after his 2017 wins for best actor and best show, this has to be Donald Glover’s year once again. Will win: Donald Glover, Atlanta Should win: Donald Glover, Atlanta Here we go: this is the toughest category to call, and the most likely to throw up a surprise, particularly given the pointed exclusion of last year’s winner, The Handmaid’s Tale. The Golden Globes are fun because they can be so unpredictable, though, so if Bodyguard, Pose or Homecoming won, it would not be a tremendous shock. The most obvious outcome would be a congratulatory series finale gong for The Americans, given that it has never won anything before. I would love to see the quick and witty Killing Eve take it, but Jodie Comer being snubbed for best actress makes me wonder if it is not quite as adored as it deserves to be. Will win: The Americans Should win: Killing Eve Russell is likely to win, and deserves to, though it would be something of a catch-all for the entirety of The Americans, I think, rather than for the specific season performance. Julia Roberts was outstanding in Homecoming, another show that felt under-recognised, but Sandra Oh was utterly charming as Killing Eve’s not-so-hapless assassin-hunting spy, and she and her dowdy anorak would be worthy winners too. Will win: Keri Russell, The Americans Should win: Sandra Oh, Killing Eve Rhys’s win would wrap up a valedictorian sweep for The Americans, if it plays out as predicted, and rightly so. I would love to see Richard Madden win something for the Bodyguard, ma’am, though I’m not quite sure his performance deserves praise above its thrilling ensemble. A low-key contender might be Stephan James, who fleshed out Homecoming with his portrayal of army vet Walter Cruz. But I think it will go to Rhys. Will win: Matthew Rhys, The Americans Should win: Matthew Rhys, The AmericansAlfonso Cuarón’s nostalgic evocation of a 1970s Mexican childhood emerged as the big winner at the Critics’ Choice film awards on Sunday, picking up four awards including best film, and solidifying its place as a serious contender for the big Oscar prizes next month. As well as best picture, Roma won best director and best cinematography for Cuarón personally, and best foreign language film. The Critics’ Choice pick for best picture has coincided with the Oscars’ seven times in the last decade, and as such is seen as a vital indicator for which way the Academy will jump. Despite not being eligible for best picture at the Golden Globes, Roma’s Oscar odds shortened after its three-award performance there, currently at 6/4 for best picture. The Favourite, the scabrous black comedy of power struggles at the court of Queen Anne in the early 18th century, had led the nominations list with 14 nods, but took home only two: best actress in a comedy for Olivia Colman, who plays Anne, and best acting ensemble. Colman failed to win the best actress award, which was shared by Glenn Close for her remarkable turn as the frustrated wife of a Nobel prize-winning author in The Wife, and Lady Gaga as the newly discovered singer in A Star Is Born. Voted for by the 300-strong Broadcast Film Critics Association, the awards lineup also found room for more commercially-oriented releases. Afro-futurist superhero movie Black Panther won for best production design, best costume design and best visual effects, Singapore-set romcom Crazy Rich Asians taking best comedy, Mission Impossible – Fallout taking best action movie and dialogue-light alien thriller A Quiet Place taking best sci-fi or horror movie. In the TV section of the awards, the final series of deep-cover spy series The Americans dominated the drama categories (winning best drama series, best actor in a drama series for Matthew Rhys, and best supporting actor for Noah Emmerich) with 50s-set standup comedy series The Marvelous Mrs Maisel ruling the roost in comedy (best comedy series, best actress in a comedy series for Rachel Brosnahan, and best supporting actress in a comedy series for Alex Borstein). The TV awards also produced a tie, with Amy Adams (Sharp Objects) and Patricia Arquette (Escape at Dannemora) receiving joint best actress in a limited series or TV movie. Barry and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story won two awards each: Bill Hader and Henry Winkler took best actor and supporting actor in a comedy series, while American Crime Story won best limited series and best actor for Darren Criss. Best picture RomaBest actor Christian Bale – ViceBest actress Glenn Close – The Wife; Lady Gaga – A Star Is Born (tie)Best supporting actor Mahershala Ali – Green BookBest supporting actress Regina King – If Beale Street Could TalkBest young actor/actress Elsie Fisher – Eighth GradeBest acting ensemble The FavouriteBest director Alfonso Cuarón – RomaBest original screenplay Paul Schrader – First ReformedBest adapted screenplay Barry Jenkins – If Beale Street Could TalkBest cinematography RomaBest production design Black PantherBest editing First ManBest costume design Black PantherBest hair and makeup ViceBest visual effects Black PantherBest animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-VerseBest action movie Mission: Impossible – FalloutBest comedy Crazy Rich AsiansBest actor in a comedy Christian Bale – ViceBest actress in a comedy Olivia Colman – The FavouriteBest sci-fi or horror movie A Quiet PlaceBest foreign language film RomaBest song Shallow – A Star Is BornBest score First Man Best drama series The AmericansBest actor in a drama series Matthew Rhys – The AmericansBest actress in a drama series Sandra Oh – Killing EveBest supporting actor in a drama series Noah Emmerich – The AmericansBest supporting actress in a drama series Thandie Newton – WestworldBest comedy series The Marvelous Mrs MaiselBest actor in a comedy series Bill Hader – BarryBest actress in a comedy series Rachel Brosnahan – The Marvelous Mrs MaiselBest supporting actor in a comedy series Henry Winkler – BarryBest supporting actress in a comedy series Alex Borstein – The Marvelous Mrs MaiselBest limited series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime StoryBest TV movie Jesus Christ Superstar Live in ConcertBest actor in a limited series or TV movie Darren Criss – The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime StoryBest actress in a limited series or TV movie Amy Adams – Sharp Objects; Patricia Arquette – Escape at Dannemora (tie)Best supporting actor in a limited series or TV movie Ben Whishaw – A Very English ScandalBest supporting actress in a limited series or TV movie Patricia Clarkson – Sharp ObjectsBest animated series Bojack HorsemanI would love to see Ole Gunnar Solskjær kept on as permanent manager with an experienced team of coaches. The positivity he has brought to players is evident, with the team playing with smiles and an obvious desire to work hard. I’m desperate for a manager to be given time – I would have liked to have seen David Moyes and Louis van Gaal given more than they were allowed, though José Mourinho made his position untenable with his negativity in the press and losing the dressing room. I would like the new manager to build for the future, targeting the Premier League within the next three to five years, developing our talented crop of young footballers and continuing to bring youth players through the ranks playing the United way. Mauricio Pochettino is the best available and United should be able to attract the best. I love Solskjær and my heart says give it to him but hearts rarely make the best judges when it comes to football. Regarding those who preceded Solskjær it is easy to say, with hindsight, that they were all bad choices but, at the time, there were few dissenting voices against. All of them could have succeeded but clearly the trick was missed in not getting José Mourinho in to replace Alex Ferguson [in 2013]. Regarding whoever does replace Solskjær it is quite simple: I want my five-year-old son to stop asking me why he has to support United when his best friend supports Man City and “they win all the time”. My choice would be Mauricio Pochettino, who has worked hard to develop players at Spurs and opts for an attractive style of football. I have worries about how he will respond to the attention that comes in the Old Trafford goldfish bowl but I can’t think of a single candidate that ticks every criteria. Solskjær has overseen a reaction from the players – however I suspect that may have been the case with a number of managers considering the mood around the club since August. In hindsight, David Moyes was completely out of his depth, while Louis van Gaal had encouraging traits, particularly his tactics against top opposition and attitude towards younger players. José Mourinho had the required record to command respect but seemed a poor fit. The mood among most United supporters is they want to see attractive football, the development of players and intelligent signings. There are no clear favourites as it stands. Mauricio Pochettino is the name most bandied around and you can’t argue with how things are looking at Spurs but the question of him not winning a major trophy with a decent team needs considering. I have to admit to being surprised by the appointment of Ole but you can’t argue against how he has performed so far. On the proviso that United keep playing with the same freedom I’d be happy to see him continue. It was incredibly amateur for Ferguson and David Gill [the former chief executive] to be allowed to leave at the same time and the club has been rudderless since. We need a technical director working in harmony with the new manager/coach. The new manager doesn’t need to surround himself with faces from the Ferguson era but needs to understand the ethos of club. After the bleak midwinter where we all felt drained by José it’s just nice to have a bit of fun and start smiling. So the time for bigger decisions can wait. We expect hiccups but let’s see how the next two months go. I was advocating going back to United men a month ago: what have we got to lose? We have to start making proper title bids and from that European chances will grow. Is Ole the man to do that? Time will tell. We have tried the Scottish replica one. The one who had a great reputation. And the one who had multiple successes in the last 10 years. But a combination of their weaknesses with the club’s own failings created a hell of a mess. We didn’t learn from the history post-Busby. Whoever is the new permanent No 1 must ensure there are smiles on faces and get teams more concerned about us and players performing again.It’s a mystery to me why Nigerian food is not better known. It can only be the prejudice of poor exposure. I once took Antonio Carluccio to my favourite Nigerian restaurant in London and he raved at the revelation. But it was too late in his career to champion what might become the next great discovery in international cuisine. The moment now feels right. I was born in Minna [in Nigeria] where my earliest memory is panicking my mother for a whole day, when I was only about a year and a half old, because I headed off across the market and got lost in town. Minna is a groundnut town and I remember seeing these piles – pyramids – of groundnuts. We came to London when I was two for my dad to study law. In the 60s there were three ways of looking at English food: what we got in school, which was quite indifferent and I didn’t like; what was eaten at friends’ houses, like shepherd’s pie and peas; and then another kind, such as the immortal English fish and chips, my favourite. In Peckham they did the best in the world. I almost hate to say this, but fish and chips was one of my fondest memories when I returned to Nigeria in 1966 There was a time when there was a kind of disagreement between Mum and Dad. Mum left, for a bit. That day Dad said, and I remember it very clearly: “Your mother thinks that without her we can’t eat in this house, so let’s do some cooking.” Then he’d make rice and a stew. When he cooks it’s like theatre. Mum was by far the better cook – there’s no comparison. She’s an extraordinary cook, making every type of food in Nigeria. And later she studied baking. I talk about my parents in the present tense, because that’s what your parents remain. Hell is a place where your favourite foods drift past, uneaten. That is a very special kind of torture I was stuck in a boarding school in Nigeria when civil war was declared [in 1967]. It was one of the most horrendous wars in history and the first sign of the collapse of the African dream. Parents came and collected their children and the principals and teachers had left, so I was there alone. My mother, from the enemy tribe, came to get me, through Urhobo roadblocks, because Dad was tied down in all sorts of stuff. She was risking her neck; it was pretty much certain death. But we roasted and ate root vegetables we found outside. It was a period of shortages and real starvation in places where the war was taking place. You learned how to make a little go a long way. We used to take food down to Mum in the cellar – there was no other place for her to go where she wouldn’t be denounced. She was still cooking down there. She’d make cassava root into garri and watery stews out of tomatoes. She’d say: “Ben, I can make a feast out of anything.” I lived on the streets after I’d returned to London. I’d been at Essex University. There had been great canteens and people inviting you into their flats for dinners. Politicians back home stopped paying for my scholarship, so I was told: “You have to leave, old boy.” When you are hungry it seems all the books you’re reading are full of feasts. Food shines when you’re deprived of it. One night I was wandering around in London, starving, with manuscripts under my arm. You have to understand – I was in my early 20s, so in my mind, the writing, living on the streets, the starvation were all bound up together. It wasn’t hell to me – it was half-romantic. I stopped outside a restaurant with a glass front in Notting Hill and watched for a long time all these folks eating gorgeous steaks, chicken and pasta. That image has really stayed with me. So when I’m the one having a nice dinner and I catch a glimpse of the window and someone’s looking in, it flips me out a bit. There’s an acute relationship between the taste of food and the state of mind of the person cooking it. I asked Mum once why her omelettes taste so good and she said: “I alwaysmake them when I’m in a special state of mind.” Salman Rushdie took me out to an Indian place in Islington. He’d won the Booker prize when I was working on The Famished Road, which I then won my Booker with. He was very kind, talking about liking the lean dry writing in my Stars of the New Curfew. He’s a big foodie. At the time he was fascinated by bread cultures.He kept eating rice with his hands. That was very sweet. It touched me. There are some foods that make you carnal, some aggressive, some that calm you down, some conducive to thought or to argument. It’s not for nothing that when people start on a spiritual journey their diet changes. Food and personal spiritual development is very interesting – not least in fasting. It’s not much talked about, but fasting can cleanse the appetite and return one’s senses to zero. Astonishing The Gods was written while fasting. All meals in Nigerian restaurants should be prefixed with pepper soup. Otherwise it’s like setting off on a journey without a suitcase, or on seduction without foreplay. It awakens all the taste buds, pores and senses. You inhale differently and feel differently. So, you are ready for your main meal. Then finish off with slices of pineapple or mango. Hell is a place where your favourite foods drift past, uneaten. The fragrance of your favourite food is flooded to you for hours but you’re not allowed any food. That is a very special kind of torture. Hell can also be eating too much. There is a hell in which you are gorging yourself all the time. You can eat yourself to death. Also, a food hell would be a place, a culture, where, for nationalist reasons or whatever, there was only one kind of food – morning, afternoon, evening, day in, day out. The Freedom Artist is published on 7 Feb (Head of Zeus, £7.99) FoodI am going through a phase of simple eating. Maybe also I’m returning to the kinds of food I liked as a kid in Nigeria – fried plantain, stewed black-eyed beans, yam potage and omelettes. DrinkThe best palm wine can only be hot in Nigeria, and it’s best fresh. But I love a good wine. White in the early evening, red for dinner. Restaurant805 [on the Old Kent Road] is the best west African in London.In his office in Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital, Prof Robert MacLaren sits upright, his back as straight as a soldier’s, and tells me about the lowest point in his 20-year career. It was the rejection, many years ago, of his grant application for a project investigating how gene therapy might treat conditions causing blindness. “It was completely panned by the reviewers,” he says. “We were told ‘There’s no way it’s ever going to happen – it’s a complete waste of time funding such a ridiculously stupid project’.” In October last year, MacLaren successfully completed the world’s first gene therapy trial for one such condition, called choroideremia, as part of the largest late-stage trial ever for any genetic disease. It marks an extraordinary breakthrough in the quest of scientists and clinicians to understand why and how our own genes can make us ill, and the apparently miraculous possibility of rewriting our genetic code. But MacLaren is understated about this victory: “It’s really satisfying, when you’re given such a rebuttal, to then prove the reviewers wrong. I’d love to go back to them and say: Look what’s going on now.” MacLaren might like to introduce them to Matthew Bishop, one of the patients from that trial. He is a gardener and a world authority on snowdrops; a softly-spoken, witty man, living in “darkest Devon, where it rains 70 inches a year, with my partner John and no kids, thank God.” Bishop, now 49, was working as a head gardener when his world suddenly caved in. He was driving slowly when he turned his car into the path of another vehicle. “Because my vision had become tunnelled, I didn’t see the other car coming from the left,” he says. “Thankfully we were going at the right speed, so my rear bumper only clipped their front. John was sat next to me and suddenly had his life flashing before him.” A trip to the optician revealed that Bishop had very little peripheral vision, and he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a group of degenerative genetic disorders that affect the retina at the back of the eye. “I said, ‘What’s that?’ and the optician said, ‘Well, you’ll go blind.’ It was as blunt as that. I don’t cry much, but John found me outside the optician’s, sobbing away, a wreck.” He left his job, and he and John started to redesign their house, for a time when Bishop would need a live-in carer. “There was this massive void, the scary part, the not knowing. What will I do? How will this change my relationship with my partner, my family, my friends? How will I cope with being dependent?” he says. About two years later, Bishop was referred to MacLaren, who confirmed the optician’s diagnosis and identified the particular condition affecting Bishop as choroideremia, caused by a mutation in a gene called CHM. Suffering from that particular condition, which affects an estimated one in 50,000, he was eligible to take part in MacLaren’s groundbreaking clinical trial – and that meant hope. “Suddenly there was a possibility of no longer going blind. That’s pretty life-changing,” Bishop says. Robert MacLaren pinpoints the origin of his fascination with the science of sight to his early experiences growing up in Angmering-on-Sea, a small seaside town in West Sussex, where his father was a photographer and his mother a nursing assistant in a care home for the blind. After his PhD, he served in the British army before training in ophthalmology. He now combines NHS clinical work with academia, researching the causes of blindness as a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Oxford. What makes gene therapy so revolutionary is that it transforms how we think about medicine, MacLaren explains. “The concept is to treat a disease not with proteins or drugs – things that have a general effect on cells – but by modifying the genetics of the cell itself.” When a patient has a gene mutation – meaning a part of the DNA is missing or not functioning, as with Bishop and his CHM gene – gene therapy offers the possibility of correcting that by delivering healthy DNA-like material to replace what is missing. A virus is a biological system that has evolved to be very efficient at getting into cells and delivering its DNA Gene therapy is the mutation of medicine we need as we hurtle into a hyper-evolved age, MacLaren says: “The human race has spent the last 200,000 years evolving using Darwinian selection: our strong genes have been sustained, the weak genes have died out. These genetic changes, what we call the genetic drift, are still ongoing.” These changes sometimes are an advantage, as weak genes are lost; sometimes they are disadvantageous, causing devastating diseases, he explains – “I have three children. In each of those kids there will be at least 50 to 70 new mutations that my wife and I do not carry, because that’s how DNA evolves. And if those mutations happen to be in a specific, important gene, there will be a genetic disease, and so on for the next generation.” This has huge implications when it comes to the propagation of new genetic diseases – and for how we think about preventive treatment. “Generations from now are going to have to try to treat human disease before the disease takes place. Gene therapy is a very powerful tool to do that.” His vision of the future is mind-boggling. “We are going to take over Darwinian evolution ourselves,” he says. “We will be able to correct defective genes in people, not by letting them die but by using medicine.” The majority of diseases we suffer from in the developed world involve genetics, he explains, and we could be talking about the eradication of most of these. It sounds like science fiction; how long until it becomes reality? “Within 100 years. We’re going at a massively fast rate, from the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick in the 50s to the first approved treatment in 2017.” One of the most difficult questions scientists have faced is how to deliver the replacement genetic material to the cells that need it. They found an ingenious solution: a virus. “A virus is a biological system that has evolved over billions of years to be very efficient at getting into cells and delivering its DNA. If we tried to create a similar organism to deliver DNA in the lab, it would take years – a lifetime. But if we can use an organism that does that already, well, it’s just a case of harnessing the power of that virus,” MacLaren says. Viruses are, in this sense, the Deliveroo drivers of gene therapy. It has to be a very special kind of virus: one that will not cause any inflammation nor any other side effects. This particular one that MacLaren uses is called adeno-associated virus, or AAV, just 20 nanometres across; MacLaren describes it as “a little stealth virus that has evolved to be completely silent and not do anything”. Scientists strip the virus of its own DNA, replacing it with the therapeutic gene that is missing from the patient’s DNA – in Bishop’s case, the missing CHM gene. This is then injected into the cells behind the retina, where it behaves like a Trojan horse, releasing the gene hidden inside. The cells adopt this DNA-like material as their own, and “that DNA is expressed, as far as we know, pretty much for the lifetime of the cell,” MacLaren says. To deliver the virus-turned-Trojan horse to Bishop’s retina cells, MacLaren had to detach the retina from the back of his eye. He shows me a magnified film of an eye during this operation: I see the tip of the syringe, the blob of liquid emerging to sit in a microscopic bubble underneath the retina, the syringe withdrawing, the retina replaced. Bishop describes it vividly. “After the operation I can remember waking up, and it felt like someone had stuffed all my eyelashes inside my eyeball. It watered like hell, and it was really red.” Only one eye of each of the 14 patients in the trial was operated on: one reason MacLaren chose to focus on the condition of choroideremia is that it is a symmetrical disease, meaning he could measure the efficacy of the treatment by comparing the treated eye with the one that was not treated. The untreated eye deteriorated in three-quarters of patients; but every single one of those who received the treatment successfully, either maintained or improved their vision for up to five years after the operation. In December 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a form of the treatment for a different kind of inherited blindness. “It’s gone from being purely theoretical to a real, approved treatment with a label on the box,” MacLaren says. Bishop now describes himself as partially sighted; he has no peripheral vision, and will never get back what he has lost. If someone offers him a handshake while he is looking them in the eye, he has no idea, “and they think I’m a rude bastard for not shaking their hand,” he says. “It’s a bit bizarre, but it could be a lot worse. Just the simple knowledge that they can prevent any further deterioration has removed the spectre of future blindness. It’s amazing,” he says. “I feel incredibly lucky to happen to have the gene mutation for which they can actually do something.” There is something particularly poignant about considering yourself lucky to have the right genetic disease. MacLaren uses the same word to describe the timing of his research programme, since so many previous discoveries were necessary to make his treatment possible: the development of the human genome project’s database over the last decade (which aims to sequence and map every human gene), the evolution of virology (the study of viruses); plus the advances in retinal surgery over the last 30 years. Lucky is a word that also comes up when I speak to Rob and Alison Harding. They live in South Carolina in America, with their son Cameron, five, and daughter Emerson, three; Rob’s son from a previous relationship, Ryan, is 17. Cameron tells me over Skype that his favourite thing to do is play at the water park with his sister, and his favourite book is about space. It is hard to make out exactly what Cameron is saying, because he has spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a genetic disorder that causes progressive muscle wasting, with no treatment – at least, not until recently. There is a spectrum of severity of SMA, and Cameron has the most severe form: type 1. Without breathing support, babies born with SMA type 1 are not expected to survive beyond age two. Before speaking to him, I had watched a video on his Facebook page of Cameron dancing and spinning in his wheelchair on holiday in Disneyland, delighting the families watching him. He is a bright and charming child; after a short chat, I thank him for speaking to me and he says, “You’re welcome, have a good day.” Cameron’s health is very fragile. He uses a manual wheelchair and has a machine to help him breathe at night, as well as one to help him cough and another to help clear secretions because he has a very weak swallow; he is fed through a tube in his stomach. But his spirit, Rob says, is robust. “I love his work ethic. He won’t just sit there and whine for someone to help him. He will find a way, he will figure out how to get what he wants. If he has to scoot on his butt, roll across the floor, grab something with his toes, he buckles down and does what he has to do. That’s my favourite thing about him, because that’s the part you can’t teach.” When I ask him to describe everyday life in their home, Rob says, “Imagine three fire drills going on at the same time, inside a house full of clowns.” When Cameron was about four weeks old, Alison felt a niggling worry that he didn’t move his arms. She called the doctor and was told to bring Cameron in immediately. They were sent straight to hospital, where a couple of days later, they were told, “We think he has spinal muscular atrophy. There are no treatments, the clinical trials out there today don’t work, go home and just love your child.” “It was pretty much the worst possible thing you could hear,” Rob says. “Here is this beautiful boy, we’re holding him, he’s alive, he’s in our arms, and they’re telling us he’s going to die, and there’s absolutely nothing that they can do.” Broken by grief, the family of three did as they were told, at first. But Rob could not sit still, he says: “We were sitting at home, mourning him, and I just had to do something. It was the middle of the night, and I got up and started researching, and I came across a clinical trial, led by Dr Finkel.” Richard Finkel is a gently-spoken paediatric neurologist at Nemours children’s hospital in Orlando, Florida. He has spent the last 40 years working with children who have diseases affecting their nerves and muscles, and over that time, he has seen a breakthrough in the treatment of children with SMA. He tells me over Skype, “SMA is among the most common fatal genetic diseases of infancy and childhood, and it’s a condition that most people have never heard of.” It affects one in every 11,000 children born: they are “typically born totally normal and healthy, they go home, and the parents and paediatrician have no inkling that, lurking beneath the surface, is this deadly disease called SMA,” Finkel says. Spinraza has shown remarkable results. But it is not available on the NHS; one year of injections costs £585,000 A genetic flaw in the SMN1 gene causes certain motoneurons to deteriorate prematurely; these are cells that live in the spinal cord and the brain stem that tell the muscles to contract and relax. When the muscles stop receiving those nerve signals, they atrophy, and the child becomes progressively weaker. “It is a very cruel and hard disease to watch evolve,” Finkel says, “because these babies go from weakness to full paralysis over the course of months or years.” Until recently, there has been no good news at all for children with SMA and their families. In the early 1980s, fewer than 30% of type 1 babies like Cameron would make it to their second birthday. In the last 20 years, advances in supportive care meant 80% of these babies could survive until two years old and even beyond, but their function continued to decline. There were no breakthroughs. The first of those came in 1995, when the French geneticist Judith Melki and her colleagues found the genetic cause of SMA, discovering the SMN1 gene, and what Finkel calls the “back-up copy” – the SMN2 gene – both of which produce the protein that is deficient in babies with SMA. Although SMA does not exist naturally in any other species besides humans, researchers could now give animals the disease artificially, and they studied how it developed in mice, pigs, fruit flies and zebra fish. “None of these totally replicates the human condition, but they each give us a clue as to what the disease does to the body, particularly to these motoneurons,” Finkel says. And that meant they could start developing treatments. The first drug to be developed, known as Spinraza, is what Finkel calls “gene modulation therapy” – instead of targeting the faulty SM1 gene, it targets the SMN2 “back-up” gene, which naturally produces only about 10% of that crucial protein, attaching a strand of DNA-like material to give it a boost and make up for the deficiency. When given to mice with artificially-induced SMA, researchers found that they grew stronger, and instead of dying at 15 days of age were living to over 100 days. But would it have the same impact on humans? It would take a clinical trial to find out – one in which children would receive repeat injections into their spinal fluid via lumbar puncture. At the time Cameron received his first injection of this drug from Finkel, two weeks after his diagnosis, he had become totally paralysed. The treatment was a huge risk for the Hardings; they did not want to prolong their son’s suffering if there was no hope for a meaningful improvement; and, as it was so new, there were few other parents they could speak to. Ultimately, Rob says, “It also came down to helping to give meaning to his life if he did die, because he would be helping the next child and the next parents who have to go through this.” Taking that decision was a breakthrough in itself for Cameron and his parents. “We were no longer mourning any more, we were no longer planning a funeral – we were focused on the trial, seeing the effects, and contributing to the research,” Alison says. Even Finkel was amazed by what happened next: “It’s somewhat remarkable. The improvement in the mouse really did predict how these children responded. That’s not usually the case.” Some children did die of the disease. The overall survival rate, however, was vastly improved, and many of those children learned to roll over, hold their head steady, and in some cases even sit. Cameron is not Finkel’s strongest patient – but he’s not the weakest either. To his parents, his improvements are miraculous. In babies who are treated pre-symptomatically, where SMA has been identified through genetic testing, Finkel says there is an even more rapid and robust response to the drug; many of these babies seem to develop normally, walking and speaking as other babies do, never needing breathing support. In December 2016, Spinraza was approved by the FDA in the US, followed by the EMA in Europe, and it has now been approved in the UK for children with the most severe form of SMA. But in August, Nice decided not to recommend it for use in the NHS, for, among other reasons, cost: the injections for the first year alone cost $750,000 (£585,000). There is no treatment for SMA available in the UK. This is why Aliya Anjarwalla, when I visit her at her house in London, has started packing up her family’s belongings. The first thing she asks me, very politely, is if I would mind washing my hands. It is not just me, she says: every time anyone walks through that door, including her husband Khalil and their two-year-old son Danny, they must wash their hands. Ayden, their chatty, bright, sociable four-year-old, has SMA type 2 – the less severe but nevertheless life-limiting form of the disease – and is at constant risk of catching a bug. That he stays well now is vital, Aliya says, because she and her family are on the brink of a breakthrough of their own. They have waited long enough. When they were living in Kenya, just before the end of Ayden’s one-year health checkup, she mentioned that her son did not seem able to stand as he could before; whenever he tried to pull himself up holding on to the coffee table, his legs would buckle. After tests for rickets came back negative, the doctor told her: “I don’t know what this is, but you need to do further tests. If you have access to the UK, you should go now.” She was terrified. The next day, the Anjarwallas hosted Ayden’s first birthday party, welcoming 50 guests into their home. “We felt quite shellshocked. We kept a face on for the party, but we left the next day, flying to London to stay with my parents. That week, Ayden was diagnosed with SMA type 2, on 26 March 2015.” Like the Hardings, they were told there was no treatment. Over the following six months Ayden stopped being able to pull himself across the floor with his arms. He stopped being able to roll. He stopped being able to lift his arms. While Aliya was buried by a kind of grief, her husband buried himself in Google. He found out about the Spinraza clinical trial in the US, and the couple told Ayden’s doctor they would move anywhere if it meant that their son could get treatment. They were told they could not participate in trials in another country. They later found out that others had done so. They have not forgiven themselves for not pushing harder. “Since then we’ve almost obsessively been researching clinical trials, and trying to fight our way on to them,” Aliya says. Disappointment followed disappointment, until August 2017, when they managed to meet Finkel. Aliya speaks of him, as the Hardings do, in a voice reverberating with gratitude. “It was really nice of him to meet us. He spent a lot of time speaking directly to Ayden, explaining what he was doing while he was looking at his joints, immediately putting him at ease.” And he told them about a new gene therapy clinical trial he was leading for children with SMA type 2, like Ayden. This form of gene therapy, produced by the pharmaceutical company AveXis, works like MacLaren’s treatment, using the same viral vector to deliver replacement DNA to the faulty SMN1 gene, by injection into the spinal canal. At first my hope was that he could one day twitch a finger. Now he’s zipping around in a wheelchair – he’s blown us away The Anjarwallas spent the next year emailing and chasing, arranging meetings and tests for Ayden, and the day we meet, Aliya tells me, “We’re 95% there.” A week or so later, they will fly to Orlando for one last blood test, to check that Ayden has not caught any bugs. If he gets on to the trial, they will stay out there for at least a year; if he does not, they will be back a week later, back to square one. Although they are sad to leave their family and friends in London, they feel they have no choice. In many ways, Ayden is a typical child. “He’s really into planes, rockets, any kind of vehicle – and he loves construction sites,” Aliya says. But he needs a powered wheelchair, help with cutting up his food and a machine to clear his chest every day. He is also completely adorable – I ask what cartoon he is watching and he shouts, “It’s called Robin Hood!” at the top of his voice. When I ask what he likes drawing, he tells me, “I like to draw pictures.” He plays with my Dictaphone, charming me with a big wide grin. Since John Bishop had his operation in November 2016, he has regularly returned to Oxford to have his vision measured by MacLaren. The treated eye has remained stable: so far, it is working. Bishop says he was told at the beginning of the trial that he could withdraw any time he wanted. “I thought, ‘Well, why the hell would I do that? This is about helping other people as well – some other poor sod with my condition. If you can do anything that means someone somewhere down the line doesn’t have to go blind, you’re going to do it, aren’t you?’” Meanwhile, Cameron has grown stronger, as the weeks, months and years of regular injections have passed. His parents watched in astonished delight as he began hitting new milestones, moving his hands, then his arms, then rolling across the floor, even walking, with assistance. Rob says, “At first, my hope was that he could one day twitch a finger to be able to communicate in binary fashion. Now he’s zipping around in a manual wheelchair – he’s blown us away.” “We feel very, very lucky,” Alison adds. When Ayden and I wave goodbye, I do not know whether he will make it on to the trial – nor, if he does, what difference it will make. “Dr Finkel and others have tried to manage our expectations, saying it might not have a dramatic effect on him, and we know that. We’re under no illusion that it’s going to be some sort of miracle cure,” his mother says. “A lot of damage has already been done. But honestly, even if this treatment just stops the disease in its tracks, that’s huge for us.” Without treatment, she says, “I don’t know what state Ayden will be in in 20 years. I don’t want him to lose the ability to eat, breathe, move his hands, his head. If this treatment stops that, it will change his life, his future – it will change all our futures. There’s a lot riding on this.” • Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure the discussion remains on the topics raised by the article. If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).Cristiano Ronaldo’s lawyer has confirmed authorities in Las Vegas have issued a warrant to collect DNA from the football star in the wake of allegations he raped a woman in the city in 2009. “Mr Ronaldo has always maintained, as he does today, that what occurred in Las Vegas in 2009 was consensual in nature, so it is not surprising that DNA would be present, nor that the police would make this very standard request as part of their investigation,” Ronaldo’s lawyer, Peter S Christiansen, said in a statement to the BBC. The Wall Street Journal reports that the warrant has been sent to courts in Italy, where Ronaldo plays for Juventus. Ronaldo is the subject of a criminal investigation by Las Vegas police and a separate civil action after the allegations by Kathryn Mayorga, who came forward with her story last year. She claims the Portugal star initially used “fixers” to stop her pursuing criminal charges, including paying her $375,000 to keep quiet. In the past, Ronaldo’s lawyer has not denied his client reached an agreement with Mayorga, who says she came forward with her story in the wake of the #MeToo movement. “This agreement is by no means a confession of guilt,” Christiansen said in October 2018. Mayorga’s lawyers, Leslie Mark Stovall and Larissa Drohobyczer, said on Thursday they had previously been unaware of the DNA warrant. Ronaldo has denied Mayorga’s allegations. “I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me,” he said in October 2018. “Rape is an abominable crime that goes against everything that I am and believe in. Keen as I may be to clear my name, I refuse to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promote themselves at my expense. My clear conscious [sic] will thereby allow me to await with tranquillity the results of any and all investigations.” The 33-year-old Ronaldo is one of the most famous athletes in the world. He is a five-time winner of the Ballon d’Or, an annual award for the best footballer in the world. He is also a national hero in Portugal, and led his country to the European Championship title in 2016.A New York laboratory has cut ties with James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who helped discover DNA, over “reprehensible” comments in which he said race and intelligence are connected. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said it was revoking all titles and honors from Watson, 90, who led the lab for many years. The lab “unequivocally rejects the unsubstantiated and reckless personal opinions Dr James D Watson expressed on the subject of ethnicity and genetics”, its president, Bruce Stillman, and chair of the board of trustees Marilyn Simons said in a statement. “Dr Watson’s statements are reprehensible, unsupported by science, and in no way represent the views of CSHL, its trustees, faculty, staff, or students. The laboratory condemns the misuse of science to justify prejudice.” With Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin, the scientist was one of the researchers who discovered the double helix strucure of DNA in 1953. In 2007, the lab removed him as chancellor after he told the Sunday Times he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says, not really”. He also said that while he wished the races were equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” Watson apologized at the time but in a recent documentary he said his views have not changed. “Not at all,” he said in the PBS documentary American Masters: Decoding Watson, the New York Times reported. “I would like for them to have changed, that there be new knowledge that says that your nurture is much more important than nature. But I haven’t seen any knowledge. And there’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. I would say the difference is, it’s genetic.” The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said it was revoking Watson’s honorary titles, which include chancellor emeritus, Oliver R Grace professor emeritus, and honorary trustee. The latest comments “effectively reverse the written apology and retraction Dr Watson made in 2007”, the lab said, adding it appreciates his legacy of scientific discoveries and leadership of the institution but can no longer be associated with him. “The statements he made in the documentary are completely and utterly incompatible with our mission, values, and policies, and require the severing of any remaining vestiges of his involvement,” Simons and Stillman said. The Times reported that Watson’s family said he was unable to respond, having been in medical care since a car accident in October. The PBS interview was filmed last summer.Taliban and US negotiators have reportedly agreed parts of a potential peace deal a day after the Afghan insurgents signalled their commitment to talks by naming one of their most senior commanders as chief negotiator. News of progress in the Qatar talks, and the appointment of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, appeared to offer for the first time in nearly two decades a glimmer of real hope for a path to peace in Afghanistan. “This has the potential to start the first serious peace process to end one of the biggest wars in the world. It’s monumental news, but we’re still at the early stages,” said Graeme Smith, Afghanistan analyst with the International Crisis Group. “We know the agreement has four parts: ceasefire, counter-terrorism, troop withdrawal, and intra-Afghan negotiations. Sequencing and timelines remain tricky.” Baradar was a founding member of the movement and close aide to the first Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Once the Taliban’s military chief, he is hugely respected in the insurgent movement, but has also long sought a negotiated end to the war. He had reached out unsuccessfully to the US and the Afghan government in the past, and in 2010 he was arrested by Pakistani forces apparently angered by his unauthorised efforts to broker peace talks. “[Baradar’s new role] is good news for the peace process,” Mohammad Umer Daudzai, the Afghan president’s special envoy on peace, told the New York Times. “He is one of the top two leaders. If he is leading the negotiations, he can make decisions more quickly. He will now head the Taliban’s office in Qatar, the de facto embassy and international headquarters for the militant group, and site of recent talks with a US delegation. The US peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, arrived in the Gulf state on Monday for the week of talks, although he had met the Taliban several times before. Once the US ambassador in Kabul, he was asked this autumn by President Donald Trump to try to find an end to America’s longest war. After several days of talks, the two sides had finalised some clauses to be included in a draft peace deal. The agreement included apparent concessions from both sides, including a commitment that foreign forces would be scheduled to withdraw 18 months after a deal was signed. The departure of western troops is a core Taliban demand. In return the insurgents, who now threaten two-thirds of the country, would commit to keeping international terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and Isis, off Afghan soil or from using it to launch attacks abroad, one of Washington’s top priorities. It was not clear if the US had fully accepted the provisions, and the absence of Afghan government representatives was a reminder that not all parties were present at the table. The Taliban have said they will not talk to Kabul officials, whom they denounce as a puppet government, until a ceasefire is struck. Khalilzad is now heading to Kabul to brief President Ashraf Ghani on the talks, and while there is some scepticism in the presidential palace, there is also a growing desperation for peace among ordinary Afghans. A brief ceasefire last year was greeted with joy by both Taliban and government supporters, but since then violence has spiralled. Ghani admitted on Friday that 45,000 members of Afghanistan’s security forces had been killed since he took power in 2014, and the UN has warned fighting is taking a record toll on civilians. For years, talks were rejected by one side or another in the bitter conflict – at various times the US-led foreign forces, Afghan officials and the Taliban themselves have turned down overtures from their enemies. And there were almost farcical errors, including when a shopkeeper impersonated a Taliban leader at talks with top Afghan and Nato officials, and the Taliban delegation that claimed to represent Mullah Omar when he had actually been dead for years.Trust Kate Bush, never one to explain, to complicate the straightforward lyrics collection. She doesn’t annotate this anthology, unlike Neil Tennant’s recent Faber edition. Instead, subtler direction follows an introduction by author David Mitchell, who wrote the spoken-word parts of Bush’s 2014 Before the Dawn performances. Mitchell intermingles charming fannish detail with close textual analysis that illuminates familiar songs: it is God, he points out, not the devil, who allows the man and woman to exchange their sexual experiences on Running Up That Hill, an act of divinity rather than transgression. But Mitchell is wrong on one key point. “Kate’s the opposite of a confessional singer-songwriter in the mould of Joni Mitchell during her Blue period,” he asserts. “You don’t learn much about Kate from her songs.” Which begs the question of how we might know a songwriter. It’s true that Bush’s personal life is so opaque that an interview betraying her Netflix habits offered grounding intimacy. Another where she described Theresa May as “the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time” burst a bubble some fans were keen to preserve. More dispiriting than partisan matters was her opinion that “it is great to have a woman in charge of the country”. If Bush’s songwriting tells us anything, it’s that her understanding of gender and power is typically more complex. This understanding is one thread of How to Be Invisible, which splits selections from her catalogue across 10 newly curated sections, offering no clear framing devices. (Only Aerial’s A Sky of Honey suite and Hounds of Love’s second side, The Ninth Wave, remain intact.) Here is how we might find her, wedding Snowflake and Hounds of Love into a consideration of the perils of succumbing to love; contemplating alchemy and evolution from Cloudbusting, about a child losing faith in a parent, to Bertie, a tribute to how her son transformed her life. She addresses loss movingly: Aerial’s A Coral Room finds the memory of her late mother in “her little brown jug”; The Fog, from The Sensual World, asks how to love when its objects are transient. Houdini and Get Out of My House bookend her strident interrogation in how to remain open to pleasure but protected from deception. She applies silliness as courageously as literary seriousness, balancing spiritual insight alongside unabashed carnality Two sections dwell on gender. Joanni, her portrait of Joan of Arc, is juxtaposed with an indictment of masculine warmongering (Army Dreamers). Later, Bush explores masculine and feminine perspectives, contemplating desire (Reaching Out) and obligation (Night in the Swallow), never reaching trite conclusions. If there is one to be drawn from How to Be Invisible, it isn’t that Bush is unknowable, but that life is: how much can we ever know about love, ourselves, the things we lose? She is never cowed by the uncertainty. Her songwriting suggests the only way to weather it is with curiosity; applying silliness as courageously as literary seriousness, balancing spiritual insight alongside unabashed carnality, domestic truth alongside fantasy, never concerned by contradictions. Desire runs wild in the final section: Mrs Bartolozzi’s sexual laundry fantasia; the wily, windy Wuthering Heights. This headstrong pursuit has guided Bush. The question is not what we can learn about her, but what we might learn from following her lead. • How to Be Invisible by Kate Bush is published by Faber (£14.99). To order a copy for £10.49 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99Such was the official fuss after “yellow vest” protesters harassed and verbally abused Anna Soubry outside parliament, that a day later the few activists who had turned up again were being so low key they had not even donned their trademark garments. “They’re in that bag,” said one man, who like all those present declined to be identified. “We’ll put them on when there’s more of us. The police are after all of us, so we’ve got to be careful.” With police having promised to respond to any future incidents, six police vans were parked opposite parliament and officers greatly outnumbered the men, some of whom identified themselves instead with union flag bobble hats. The outcry has followed weeks of intermittent action by a small, varying and semi-organised group, primarily men, who have borrowed the outfit and the tactics of France’s much larger gilets jaunes movement to barrack MPs and journalists seen as opposing Brexit. In recent weeks they have also blocked Westminster Bridge, shouted sometimes sexist and racist abuse at TV crews, stormed into the offices of a radio station and the Labour party, and held small demonstrations in a series of cities. The most visible figure throughout has been James Goddard, a self-styled “political activist” with close links to the far right and a background in making anti-Muslim comments, who solicits public donations to continue his activities. Goddard, who filmed an earlier targeting of Soubry in December in which he and a group of men called the Conservative MP a traitor and “on the side of Adolf Hitler”, has routinely promoted himself by live-streaming his confrontations on Facebook. However, both of his Facebook pages disappeared on Tuesday – Goddard tweeted that the company had “silenced” him – and a link to his PayPal donations page also stopped working. He did not appear outside parliament and one of his fellow protesters said Goddard feared being arrested. The man said of Goddard: “He turned up about nine months ago. He’s a new kid in town, a normal, working-class boy. Passionate. They claim he’s our leader. But he’s not our leader. There’s no leader.” According to the men, Goddard started his protests, like several other “yellow vest” members, in response to a conspiracy theory popular with anti-Muslim activists, connected to a case in which three teenage boys were killed by a driver in west London. The driver, Jaynesh Chudasama, was found to have been speeding, drunk, and under the influence of cannabis when he ran the boys over in January last year, and was jailed for 13 years. However, Goddard and other activists have claimed, without evidence, that the deaths were a terrorist attack covered up by police. He was among a group who disrupted a court hearing in the case in December. Much like their French counterparts, the UK yellow vest group are somewhat opaque about their aims beyond securing Brexit. “I’ve never been a member of any political party. It’s about justice,” one said. Another said he was uncomfortable about the incident on Monday in which Soubry was shouted at and abused as she walked back to parliament after a TV interview nearby. “It was a bit over the top, if you ask me,” the man said. “All her ‘I was being prevented from entering parliament’ isn’t true. But if I was her I wouldn’t be happy with that sort of treatment. She was treated very harshly.” The group Hope Not Hate, which monitors far-right activity, has alleged that the UK yellow vest protesters are linked to a new far-right group called the Liberty Defenders, which is supported by Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National party. Hope Not Hate said activists were planning protests this weekend in Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, and were thinking about targeting the offices of remain-voting Labour MPs. Nick Lowles, the head of Hope Not Hate, said that amid the Brexit process, “the threat from the far right is growing and the risk of disorder and violence is on the rise”. He said: “The British far right are attempting to copy the French ‘yellow vests’ protests in order to stir up trouble and harass, threaten and attack their political opponents.” While the protesters insist they are not linked to such views, Goddard in particular is associated with the anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and shares similar views. Goddard has posted anti-Muslim messages on the social media site Gab, which is popular with far-right users. In one message he said: “Wherever Islam exists you will find murder and rape.” In a video posted last year by Goddard he filmed himself castigating a young woman taking part in a pro-Palestine demonstration. When told to go away, he responds: “Educate yourself, love. I bet you’re a feminist as well, aren’t you? Sort yourself out, you mug.”A few months after my son was born, I quit my job to write full-time. This was great news for me, my family and my old job, as they had no idea how much stationery I’d been stealing. The result has been mostly lovely, allowing me to do freelance commissions, start my book and write the gently humorous column you now hold in your riveted gaze. It’s main benefit is that I get to spend more time with my son than most dads. With their own sons I mean… most dads don’t get to spend any time with my son at all, but I digress. From 10am until 5pm, I work in the box room and my wife looks after the baby downstairs. Back in my office days, I’d entertain dreams of freelance life unencumbered by a set location; an intrepid reporter, wearing a trilby with PRESS stuck to the brim, calling in scalding hot scoops from a battered payphone in some dusty warzone. Failing that, I could at least see myself typing rapidly in a corner seat at my local Costa. In actual fact, neither has come to pass. Despite all this time and space at my disposal, I find my reasons to leave the house are, like the rollerball pens, staplers and envelopes in my old office, growing mysteriously less numerous. When I’m not writing, I steal some time with the boy and, since I don’t have a day job, I quickly panic about the next deadline, put him down, and scurry back upstairs. I tweet and text, but I don’t meet friends, or even call them. As a result, I’ve become overly fond of those social interactions I can do from the comfort of my own home. Charity knockers have stopped calling. After an interruption in my mobile service, I talked to my phone provider for nearly two hours. His name is Jayden and he has a baby, too, and he was definitely interested in hearing about mine, so long as I let him know how he could help with my query, eventually. Jayden gave me an entire month free of charge, probably because of the bond we had developed. Certainly, he seemed to regret having to return to the “quite a lot of work to do here” he kept mentioning. I’ve spoken before about how my social life has been fairly meagre since my son was born, and how I’m mostly OK with that but – while escapades in sweaty pubs and clubs aren’t much missed – I do need to reconnect with the outside world, or else my son will come to think of his dad as the smelly, rambling tramp who lives upstairs and keeps asking him what day it is. Having all the time in the world to play family isn’t worth it if you disconnect yourself from that world in the process. “Stay at home dad” should, after all, be a noun, not a command. So I shower. I shave. I walk to Morrisons. Summoning all my strength, I ring a dear friend only to find he’s busy. That’s Jayden for you, though, always burning the candle at both ends. Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeatsAfter 18 years working a housekeeper at the Sheraton Park resort in Anaheim, California, Celia Hernandez still struggles to make ends meet. “I live three blocks from Disneyland. I live in a two-bedroom apartment. I pay $1,875 a month in rent. My 23-year-old son is forced to live in the living room on the couch because we can’t afford a bigger place because the cost of living is so high,” Hernandez said. “It’s a struggle for someone like me to put food on the table for my family.” But Hernandez is now taking action. She is one of nearly 1,000 hotel workers at the Sheraton Park resort and Hilton hotel in Anaheim who are on the verge of walking off the job, continuing a wave of hotel strikes that occurred at the end of 2018 across the US. In September 2018, 6,000 union members went on strike against 26 hotels in Chicago. Nearly 8,000 Marriott hotel workers went on strike in eight US cities for nine weeks in October 2018, the largest hotel strike in US history. Hotel workers in the Los Angeles area were poised to join the wave of hotel strikes after union members at 24 hotels in Los Angeles and Orange county voted to authorize a strike in December 2018. Though several Los Angeles hotels later reached contract deals to avoid a strike, the Sheraton Park resort and Hilton are holding out in negotiations, demanding concessions. Unite Here Local 11, which represents about 1,000 workers at both hotels, said workers are “now on the brink of walking off the job”. Among concerns from hotel workers are the small wage increases being offered by the hotels in contract negotiations, as well as risks due to reduce health coverage. “If they raise the price of the medical insurance, people won’t be able to afford it any more,” Hernandez said. “A week ago I had a biopsy on one of my breasts. If I didn’t have affordable health insurance, I can’t imagine how much money I would have paid out of pocket for that.” Lorena Osegueda has worked at the Sheraton Park resort as a hostess for 12 years and struggles on her current wages and with the cost of health insurance. “A mother of three with the income I’m getting, I’m living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s very hard for me to pay for the insurance as it is,” said Osegueda. “We’re living in a two-bedroom apartment for $1,600 plus bills on top, let alone other things that come up – food, and other things.” The hotels have stood firm to demand concessions from the union. Unite Here Local 11’s organizing director in Orange county, Austin Lynch, noted cooks and stewards are being asked to work four-hour shifts, after they have historically relied on eight-hour shifts. They plan on opening a non-union restaurant in the hotel lobby to compete with the unionized restaurant operated by the hotel, and remain one of the few unionized hotels to refuse to offer their employees a pension. The Hilton is also pushing to enact a program to incentivize guests to reject room cleaning, which would result in layoffs or a reduction in hours for current housekeepers, as well as an increase their workload. “Both hotels are offering very little money, not enough for the workers to take a significant step forward in their wages or pension. Right now the cost of living is surging and the hotels have been doing fabulously, they don’t deny that,” said Lynch. “Workers can’t get small wage increases or no improvement in their pension at a time when hotels are surging and the cost of living is surging.” Workers can’t get small wage increases or no improvement in their pension at a time when hotels are surging The union has also accused both hotels of utilizing anti-union tactics, including managers intimidating and interrogating workers and distributing false information about the union negotiations. In a letter sent from the Sheraton Park resort to Unite Here Local 11, the hotel’s general manager wrote: “Union representatives continue to unnecessarily agitate the associates, causing some associates to leave work in tears, and negatively impact the guests who financially support the Hotel and provide our associates with work opportunities.” Marriott referred comment to the hospitality management company that operates the Sheraton Park hotel, Interstate Hotels & Resorts. A spokesperson for the hotel told the Guardian in an email: “We are currently in the midst of negotiations with the labor union that represents some of our employees. However, our collective bargaining agreement expired on 30 November 2018. While we continue to negotiate in good faith with the union to achieve a new agreement, we support our associates’ right to decide whether to participate in activities protected by federal labor laws.” A spokesperson for Hilton hotels said in an email: “If the union decides to call a strike, we have contingency plans in place to ensure operations run as smoothly as possible and that we continue to offer the same service and amenities that we are proud to provide our guest and clients every day.”The loss of the Oscars’ latest host is, on the one hand, just another mishap to add to the list. From 2016’s #OscarsSoWhite to 2017’s wrong delivery of the best picture award, the ceremony now seems like a particularly slow bloopers reel. Yet the loss of Kevin Hart – who quit after old homophobic tweets resurfaced – is also a sign of something else. The fact that no one has replaced him, and that it’s difficult to think of many people who could, or would, reveals a much deeper malaise: a scary loss of nerve across showbiz’s top-tier events. Within weeks, the Super Bowl half-time show will air. In the past, the American football final has been an epic showcase for the likes of Madonna, Prince and Beyoncé, a 20-minute, legacy-defining megamix. This year, though, with Rihanna and Cardi B having turned it down in solidarity with the activist NFL player Colin Kaepernick, we will be left with the hardly epochal sounds of Maroon 5. A certain blandness seems to threaten all proceedings. Earlier this month the Golden Globes made do with the anodyne pairing of Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh as hosts, while the White House correspondents’ dinner – historically a raucous roast for America’s political class – has now asked a historian to host April’s televised event after the comedian Michelle Wolf was deemed to have taken last year’s proceedings too far. And now, for the first time in 30 years, the Oscars look set to have no official host. It’s rather worrying, not least because the last time this happened, in 1989, an infamous debacle ensued – a strange opening number involving Snow White, Rob Lowe and a rendition of I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. “It feels like a failure, and an ominous sign of our inability to sustain any kind of shared stage,” says Spencer Kornhaber, a pop culture journalist for the Atlantic. “No one is able to step up to the plate and just tell some jokes and get out of the way.” This confusion is one place where the Oscars can claim a type of relevance, although not the type it wants. As its TV audience has dwindled, the Academy has tried to shake things up by hiring a variety of “edgy” hosts. Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, Seth Macfarlane, the bizarre pairing of James Franco and Anne Hathaway: you can’t say they haven’t tried. But the reception has been lukewarm. The list of potential hosts is always short, points out Seth Abramovitch of the Hollywood Reporter: “They typically struggle to find someone because there isn’t a lot of upside to it, they want someone of a certain stature, the show is on ABC so it can’t be someone from a competing network, and they want someone with a wide variety of skills – but primarily being a comedian. And there’s just so much at risk.” At first, Hart seemed the ideal host, especially as he was one of the few who had actively campaigned for it. Yet his uncovered tweets from 10 years ago – in which he called someone “fat-faced fag” – created a furore. It’s a distinctly 2019 scenario. Not that it’s unclear why Hart had to go. But there remains the fundamental problem that any compere is expected to be edgy, but not too edgy. There’s a line, but no one quite knows where it lies. Perhaps the clearest example is Ricky Gervais’s stint at the Golden Globes, which drew both cackles and gasps when he did three in a row from 2010-12 (and again, less controversially, in 2016). Gags about Angelina Jolie’s brood of kids or Robert Downey Jr’s stints in rehab delighted some and disgusted others. Oddly, that degree of brazenness now seems a relic of another time. “As much as I dislike Ricky Gervais, there was something kind of fun about his run,” says Abramovitch (who found Samberg and Oh “completely forgettable”). “I think that era is over – people are too sensitive now. But the danger of it was fun.” The loose expectation of an awards host is to act as a court jester among showbusiness royalty, poking fun at their foibles. The problem is that these events thrive on a sense of their own prestige, so it doesn’t do to jest too much. And this is the age of “wokeness”, where people – particularly that crucial younger audience – are more conscious of gags revolving around gender, sexuality and race. “I think it’s a generational thing,” says Abramovitch, who is 46. “With my generation, it was still OK to poke some things, and the millennial generation are a lot more sensitive. It’s hard for them to understand context or satire.” Not that he thinks it is all political correctness gone mad. “This reckoning that’s happening, it’s all good.” When causing offence is almost inevitable, it takes a strong stomach to want to give it a go. I spoke, on condition of anonymity, to an events organiser who helps put together an important awards ceremony in London. “I’ve found it trickier to find a host this year,” they said. “You want a big name – but they don’t need to do it.” The reasons for hosting an event have changed, the organiser suggests: comedians have other platforms to showcase their talents. Often they don’t need the money. And yes, there is the danger of saying the wrong thing. “You have to be so careful, don’t you? Because the backlash can be extreme.” In Britain, even the dependable Bafta hosts Graham Norton and Stephen Fry have landed in hot water for jokes deemed too rude. Perhaps it just shows that you can never please everyone, and possibly also that camp – such a good way of saying naughty things politely – cannot cover for every sin. Nevertheless, the UK’s culture wars still seem less savage than in America, where things have ramped up since a certain reality TV star was elected president in 2016. “Trump is trying to destroy popular culture,” Kornhaber says. The “monoculture”, that sense of all of us enjoying mainstream events together, has already been frayed by the rise of the internet. But this is something Trump has only accentuated, says Kornhaber: “He has actually gone of out of his way to play up the cultural divides.” This attitude applies to everything from the Super Bowl to the Oscars to the White House correspondents’ dinner: Trump’s persona is anti-establishment, and there’s nothing he loves more than blasting a Hollywood system that long mocked and ignored him. His disputes with the NFL, for instance, which is in dispute with the footballer Kaepernick, who in turn is regularly attacked by Trump, is a perfect storm of sports, race, showbiz and politics. Similarly, Trump has managed to toxify the issue whenever “any comedian makes a joke about him in a high-profile forum”, points out Kornhaber. “It becomes this fake debate about decorum and how to respect the president, because the president is firing back.” The Super Bowl has always had a problem when its performers get too racy – consider the vitriol around Janet Jackson’s 2004 “wardrobe malfunction”. Where awards ceremonies struggle with humour, the half-time show struggles with the typical rock’n’roll tropes of sex and rebellion. Yet it’s striking when a superstar like Rihanna decides she would rather pass on a TV potential audience of 150 million. There is a whole other fanbase she would rather speak to; and that reminds us just how fragmented the cultural conversation has become. We saw a symptom of this in 2016, when Coldplay’s bland set suddenly featured a guest spot from Beyoncé, in what seemed to be an all-black Angela Davis tribute. It was two dissonant worldviews colliding, with only an Uptown Funk finale as a kind of glue. Cardi B could have done something similar with Maroon 5’s set this year. As it is, her fellow rapper Travis Scott is now scheduled to appear alongside the band, and is being hotly criticised for it. Which leads us to the White House correspondents’ dinner, a more niche event already widely begrudged for its tuxedoed cosying-up between Washington’s political elite and the fourth estate. Yet its dilemma could be the most telling. Last year Wolf took the traditional “roast” brief of the host seriously, giving Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Sanders, a thorough going-over, as the subject sat through it stony-faced. (Trump boycotts the dinner.) Wolf got a pasting, which has left many bemused. “They threw her under a bus,” says Abramovitch. “And now, when we need this more than ever, they’re wimping out and taking the safe route.” In the Trump era, though, many feel exhausted and trapped: hit back harder and you are just entrenching yourself; don’t hit back at all and it’s a type of appeasement. What should be simple entertainment is now anything but. Perhaps the greatest story showbiz likes to tell is that we’re all one big happy family. In today’s vituperative climate, that’s a story no one wants to tell or hear.Dramatic increases in the rate at which ice on Greenland and East Antarctica is melting are, along with the heatwave gripping Australia, among the latest manifestations of the changes our planet and its atmosphere are undergoing. Concerns surrounding the risk of melting ice causing sea levels to rise were previously focused mainly on large glaciers. But scientists have discovered that the largest recent losses from Greenland’s vast ice sheet, which is two miles thick in places, have occurred in the island’s largely glacier-free south-west. Combined with recent analysis of retreating Antarctic glaciers that were previously thought to be stable, this new research makes unnerving reading. This is because of what it tells us about the extent of likely sea level rises, and warming seas linked to coral die-off and chaotic weather, but also because it highlights the difficulty of fully understanding the climate system. Last year the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urged governments to work towards the most ambitious targets in the 2015 Paris agreement, and a global temperature rise not greater than 1.5C. Many experts fear that factors including the election of Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil mean that even the more modest goal of sticking to current commitments, putting the world on course for a 3C rise, remains a huge challenge. Currently, global carbon emissions are still rising. But if people all over the world are getting used to the idea that higher temperatures and increased frequency of extreme weather events are the new normal – recent polling in the US suggests 72% of Americans believe global warming is important, the highest-ever figure – we are arguably less advanced in our understanding of warming oceans. The sea level rises that scientists expect to accompany a temperature rise of 3C would submerge cities including Shanghai, Osaka and Miami along with parts of Rio de Janeiro and Alexandria – less than a century from now. Among nations, Bangladesh will be particularly severely affected, with one estimate suggesting that 250,000 people are already forced to move each year, making them environmental refugees. Such facts on the ground, as well as predictions, are why climate activists have long linked their cause to wider concerns around social justice. Just as carbon emissions must be limited to protect the livelihoods of people already struggling in areas vulnerable to drought and desertification, sea level rises must be restricted to protect the millions of people who live on coasts and in low-lying areas. The movement of peoples around the world, including but not limited to refugees, is in some cases a direct consequence of changes to the environment. Weather and climate systems are complex, and sea levels are hard to predict confidently. Already, ice sheets and glaciers are surprising scientists by behaving in unexpected ways. But while trying to limit future emissions remains the most pressing task, these ominous findings highlight the need to address the consequences of carbon already emitted. Sea level rises will continue long after emissions have peaked. We will have to adapt to our world’s changing shape.Three and a half years ago, as Americans were still figuring out which presidential candidate to vote for in the 2016 election, the NFL’s 32 team owners voted from four finalist cities to host Super Bowl LIII. They picked Atlanta, a city that can typically handle lots of people coming and going. But the government shutdown has ruffled the town’s Super Bowl game plan. The up-to-75,000-seat Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which would open in 2017, was an obvious place to play host to its first Super Bowl, but the choice of Atlanta over Miami, New Orleans and Tampa (which were awarded the following Super Bowls) would looked smarter five weeks ago for a reason that had nothing to do with football. Atlanta is also home to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest in the world, which handles 270,000 passengers a day – nearly four times the capacity of the stadium. About 125,000 extra passengers are expected to filter into and out of the airport before and after the Super Bowl, with about 110,000 expected to leave the day after the game. With the government shutdown edging to Super Bowl Sunday on 3 February, and with the Transportation Safety Administration reporting twice as many unscheduled absences among employees who are not being paid, operations even at an airport as large as Atlanta’s could be hampered, and fans could be delayed getting out – or even in. “We are paying a lot of attention to the political situation that we have no control over,” Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport general manager John Selden said during a talk to an industry group last week, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It is very scary to us.” After TSA officers missed their first paycheck last week, the airport reported security delays of more than one hour, causing some passengers to miss their flights. A bomb threat on Wednesday caused an investigation that delayed flights for 40 minutes. According to daily figures released by the TSA, travelers at Atlanta airport had the maximum standard wait time – 41 minutes – of any major US airport on Tuesday except Boston Logan Airport, at 42 minutes. The maximum wait time for TSA pre-checked passengers at Atlanta on Tuesday was 19 minutes, longer than any other major US airport. The National Football League has declined to comment about what contingency measures it would take – if any – to help its fans handle getting in and out of town. Before the government shutdown, however, TSA had committed to sending additional resources to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to help with the Super Bowl, an airport spokeswoman told the Guardian earlier this week. Additional TSA officers, additional overtime hours and an additional K-9 teams have been dedicated to support the increased operations, the spokeswoman said. TSA sent some officers last week. Additional contract security will be used during a 10-day operational period. “Customer engagement agents” and 1,800 Super Bowl volunteers will be on hand to help passengers navigate the gigantic airport. The Visitors Bureau and Super Bowl Host Committee has already recommended that visitors check out of their hotels five hours before their flights. (Turn in your rental car four hours before the flight, check your bag three hours before the flight, go through security two hours before the flight and be at your gate one hour before the flight, they said as part of what they call an “aggressive” departure plan.) According to a spokeswoman from the Visitors Bureau, hotels in the Atlanta area are “essentially sold out,” so it would be difficult for fans holding tickets to the Super Bowl to, say, drive instead of fly to Atlanta and stay an extra night on either side of the game. She added, however, that she has not heard of many fans who have thought about doing that. It could be worse: The Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee expects about 150,000 fans from out of state will converge upon the city in the week leading up to the game, but Atlanta is one of the top convention cities in the country, routinely hosting meetings of 50,000 or more. Miami International Airport, in the city where Super Bowl LIV will be played next year, handles about 44m travelers annually, less than half the number of those that use the Atlanta airport, but Tampa International Airport handles 21m travelers, and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport handles only about 12m. Delta Air Lines, which uses the Atlanta airport as its major hub, expects it passenger traffic the day after the game to be more than 30% above normal. Delta announced Wednesday that it will go into “24-hour mode” after the game, with airport staffing, security and limited food service. Passengers with tickets for travel the Monday after the Super Bowl can arrive after the game, clear security and head to the concourses. Delta airport employees and its Peach Corps will welcome travelers at concourse “help desks” and provide blankets, pillows and amenity kits.Announcing words of the year has become a competitive sport. The season began early in November, with rival dictionary publishers pursuing social media shares and column inches by dubbing some small bit of language the epitome of 2018ish-ness. Those in the know call them WotYs. On my Separated by a Common Language blog, WotYs have a transatlantic twist. Honours are bestowed on expressions that have moved from the US to the UK and vice versa. The vice versa often surprises people – at least those convinced of the virulence of ugly Americanisms. 2018’s US-to-UK word of the year is “mainstream media” or MSM. Its UK-to-US counterpart is “whilst”. Both tell stories of how and why words travel to other nations and what happens when they get there. “Wait!” I hear some cry. “Mainstream media is two words! Disqualified!” But I ask: how do you know it’s two words? Because it has a space. How do you know where to put the space? Between the words. The reasoning is circular. When lexicographers consider what to include in dictionaries or WotY lists, they consider pieces of language that need defining – expressions that are more than the sums of their parts. “MSM” is more than the sum of “mainstream” and “media”. Before “media”, “mainstream” takes on connotations of “pre-internet” and “corporate”. The very use of the term (especially abbreviated) conveys what i columnist Mark Wallace calls “a sign of slight nuttiness”. This decades-old term gathered speed in the US in the early 2000s, with 9/11 and the rise of Fox News. In the UK, MSM has become much more common since 2016, only just meeting my WotY criterion that the word should be established in one country before having significant usage in the other. The UK-to-US WotY is far more established in its home country – dating back to Middle English. English colonists took “whilst” to America, but within a few decades of independence, their progeny had dropped it, favouring the more common and older form “while”. In the 2010s, American language commentators have been noticing “whilst” in the writing of younger Americans – first in university essays, and now on social media. These WotYs give interesting glimpses into the transatlantic word trade. In 12 years of US-to-UK WotY-choosing, I’ve mostly observed adoption of words that bring new meaning or nuance, rather than like-for-like replacement. MSM is such a case, as are bake-off (2014’s WotY), which signals more than a simple baking competition, and Black Friday (2013), which may be an abomination but poses no threat to British words. Everyday British (and non-American) words – the motorways, jumpers and aubergines – rarely budge. Britain borrows words from the US for the same reason it borrows German or Arabic words – to add to the range of meanings that can be expressed concisely in the language. When words change place, meanings often shift too. For instance, 2007’s US-to-UK WotY “cookie” has a British meaning that is far more restricted than its American namesake’s. It had to carve out its own space in a different baking culture. When MSM landed in a different political and media environment, it seemed to shift as well. In recent US usage, MSM mostly signals a rightwing belief in a leftwing bias in allegedly neutral sources. But in the UK environment, MSM is prevalent in the internet commentary of Tommy Robinson and Jeremy Corbyn supporters alike. The “we’ll all talk like Americans soon” myth depends on the belief that the trade in words is unilateral and eastward, US to UK. But the case of “whilst” demonstrates that Americans are exposed to British words enough to use them too. Some UK-to-US WotYs have added new meanings to American English, for instance “vet” (a candidate; 2008) or “gap year” (2014). Others, like “ginger” (redhead; 2010), “bum” (bottom; 2013) and “gutted” (2016), express meanings that already have words in the US. It’s tempting to think of this as the Harry-Potterification of American English, with younger Americans exposed to words that their parents don’t use, and then adopting them – either because they don’t perceive them as foreign or because they have British cultural cachet. Transatlantic WotYs differ from dictionary WotYs in that they are typically less “of the year”. Occasionally a transatlantic word parachutes on to new shores with a splash, but mostly they swim in quietly, building up usage. It’s when people start to complain about them that you know they’ll probably stay for a while. • Lynne Murphy is professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex and author of The Prodigal Tongue: the Love–Hate Relationship between British and American EnglishPolice in Northern Ireland have arrested four men in connection with Saturday night’s car bomb in Derry city. Two suspects, both in their 20s, were detained early on Sunday after what police called an “unbelievably reckless” attack outside a courthouse in the heart of the city. Two more men, aged 34 and 42 years, were arrested in Derry on Sunday evening. The New IRA, a dissident republican group, was the main line of inquiry, the assistant chief constable, Mark Hamilton, told a media briefing near the scene. Police release CCTV footage of explosion outside courthouse on Bishops Street in Derry/Londonderry last night. pic.twitter.com/tqzqBdCZnv Authorities have released CCTV footage of the car stopping outside the courthouse, the driver running away from the vehicle, and the subsequent explosion. Police said they received approximately 10 minutes’ warning before the bomb exploded outside a courthouse on Bishop Street at 8.10pm, giving little time to evacuate hundreds of people from a nearby hotel, the Freemasons’ hall, youth club and other sites. There were no casualties. A pizza delivery vehicle hijacked a short time earlier is believed to have been used in the attack. Witnesses said they heard a loud bang and saw a large plume of smoke. Police release CCTV footage of car stopping outside courthouse on Bishops Street in Derry/Londonderry last night. pic.twitter.com/CLfXEyip4c Police release CCTV footage of driver running away from car outside courthouse on Bishops Street in Derry/Londonderry last night. pic.twitter.com/0nXw7qzDt9 A police forensics team was examining the scene on Sunday, with cordons sealing off access to the charred wreckage of the vehicle. “At around 7.55pm last night officers on patrol in Bishop Street spotted a suspicious vehicle and were making checks when, around five minutes later, information was received that a device had been left at the courthouse,” Hamilton said in a statement released earlier on Sunday. “We moved immediately to begin evacuating people from nearby buildings, including hundreds of hotel guests, 150 people from the Masonic Hall and a large number of children from a church youth club. The device detonated at 8.10pm.” The attackers failed to kill or injure anyone, said Hamilton. “The people responsible for this attack have shown no regard for the community or local businesses. They care little about the damage to the area and the disruption they have caused,” he added. No one claimed responsibility but suspicion fell on dissident Irish republicans opposed to the peace process. A spate of bomb attacks in Derry in 2015, including a device found under a police officer’s car, was blamed on dissident republicans. They caused no casualties. The Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, expressed concern and urged anyone with information about the attack to contact the police or Crimestoppers. Bradley said: “This attempt to disrupt progress in Northern Ireland has rightly been met with utter condemnation from all parts of the community. The small number of people responsible have absolutely nothing to offer Northern Ireland’s future and will not prevail. “Our voices across the political spectrum are united. This is intolerable violence and we want to look forward and build a peaceful future for all in Northern Ireland. ” Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, said the attack was an attempt to drag Northern Ireland back into violence and conflict. Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, called it a “pointless act of terror” perpetrated by people with no regard for life. The Foyle Sinn Féin MP, Elisha McCallion, also condemned the blast. She said: “Derry is a city moving forward and no one wants this type of incident. It is not representative of the city. I would encourage anyone with information about this incident to bring it to the police.” A handful of small, radical republican groups reject power-sharing in Northern Ireland and accuse Sinn Féin of selling out by accepting the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which drew a line under the Troubles. Saoradh, a fringe political party backed by New IRA prisoners, attributed the attack to “republican revolutionaries” and linked it to the centenary of the Soloheadbeg ambush on police in Tipperary, widely seen as the start of Ireland’s war of independence against Britain. “It seems 100 years later Volunteer Sean Tracey’s comrades continue the unfinished revolution,” said the party’s website. The attack bore all the hallmarks of the New IRA, which has made a point of targeting police and courts, said Marisa McGlinchey, the author of a forthcoming book, Unfinished Business: the Politics of ‘Dissident’ Irish Republicanism. The group rejected the term dissident and sought to link itself to the IRA, which fought the war of independence a century ago, said McGlinchey, a professor at Coventry University. “It’s a very deliberate strike to try to underline continuity.” Ireland’s culture minister, Josepha Madigan, is due on Monday to lay a remembrance wreath at the Solohead memorial. Monday is also the 100th anniversary of the first meeting of the Dáil, a breakaway parliament set up by Irish MPs who shunned Westminster. Northern Ireland has drifted in a political vacuum since a row between Sinn Féin and the DUP collapsed the power-sharing executive at Stormont in 2017. Brexit has compounded the instability by reviving contention over the border and and Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. Andrew Adonis, the Labour peer, accused Brexiters of playing fast and loose with the region’s peace and stability. “The prime minister should be in Derry-Londonderry today discussing the state of the city and security – & then go Belfast to meet all the parties & break the deadlock to set up a Northern Ireland Assembly & Government. Instead, Brexit, Brexit, Brexit,” he tweeted.“People have heard my story already,” says Malala Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel laureate, in something of an understatement. “I thought it was time for people to listen to other girls’ stories as well.” Her new book, We Are Displaced is a collection of harrowing, heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring first-person accounts of the lives of girls Yousafzai has met in her travels to refugee camps and settlements across the world. “We hear about refugees in the newspapers, on TV, and it is just in numbers, and it’s usually in a negative way. But we do not hear from them, especially when it comes to young women and girls. So I wrote the book.” Yousafzai’s story – shot by the Taliban in Peshawar in 2012, when she was 15, for speaking out for the rights of girls to go to school – is surely one of the best known in the world today, and was recounted in the international bestseller I Am Malala, written with the journalist Christina Lamb. As she tells it, in the comfort of a discreetly guarded London hotel room, one minute she was on the school bus with her friends talking about the following day’s exams, the next she was “opening my eyes in this hospital in Birmingham and people were speaking in English”. She was deaf in one ear and the left side of her face was badly damaged where the bullet had narrowly missed her eye, but she was lucky to be alive. After she recovered, rather than retreating into anonymity and GCSEs, she stepped up to a role as a global ambassador for female education. On her 16th birthday in July 2013 she gave an address to the UN, which declared the event “Malala Day”, and she appeared on the cover of that year’s Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World issue (she was on the list three years running). She has joined the ranks of those so famous they are called only by their first names, and is herself on first-name terms with politicians and celebrities (“Angelina was the highlight”). Not to mention being awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2014. Here was a remarkable story and a young woman the world could celebrate – Malala, a sort of modern-day saint. But, on the dull January morning that we meet, this chatty 21-year-old Oxford undergraduate, in a bright pink headscarf and tunic, seems to have her feet firmly on the ground, albeit in a pair of impressively high heels for 10am. The only external sign of her injuries is a slightly lopsided smile, which she gives often. If there has been criticism, or cynicism, directed towards Yousafzai (in Pakistan there has been a great deal, even including theories suggesting she faked being shot), it is in the idea that she is in some way a creation – of the west, of her father, the education activist Ziauddin Yousafzai, of the media. Others complain that she has been absorbing too much attention (she was accused on social media, she says in I Am Malala, of having “a teen lust for fame”) when so many young Pakistanis, and children around the world, have suffered. So it is fitting that in her first big project since receiving the Nobel (which she likens to being “in a car, rather than a bike” in terms of the reach of her activism), she uses her name to make known those of others – Zaynab, Muzoon, Najla – who might otherwise have been ignored. With the US government in shutdown over Donald Trump’s wall, the ongoing “migrant crisis” in Europe and the endless Brexit debates, the issue of immigration is rarely out of the headlines. But, as Yousafzai says, it is all too easy to forget the individual suffering, something that was brought tragically into focus after the body of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi washed up on the Greek island of Cos in 2015. Yet as migration figures have grown higher, the ugly rhetoric both in the UK and the US has hardened. As Yousafzai points out, “90% of the refugees” are hosted by developing countries. “So we need to realise who is actually carrying the burden.” We Are Displaced, co-written with New York journalist Liz Welch, is intended “as a reminder to the world”. She began work on it more than five years ago in the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, which she was visiting as part of her Malala Fund for girls’ education. It was not possible for Yousafzai to meet all of the women in person, such as Ajida, a young mother from Rohingya, but she felt it was important to include the crisis in Myanmar. While we are sadly all too familiar with the humanitarian catastrophes of Syria and Iraq, she wanted to draw attention to the fact “that this is happening literally in every corner of the world. It’s happening in Latin America, it’s happening in south-east Asia, it’s happening in south Asia, it’s happening in most parts of Africa.” She wanted to show “how big and broad this issue is”. While she says it is hard to single out one story, the ordeal endured by Marie Claire – whose family fled the Democratic Republic of Congo when she was nine, only for her mother to be murdered in front of her by an anti-refugee hate mob in Zambia – is impossible to forget. When she was 16, Marie Claire received news that the visa for which her mother had applied 10 years earlier had finally been accepted: the family were moving to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, “the refugee capital” of the United States. On 16 June 2016, when she was 19, she graduated from high school, the first person in her family ever to do so. “My heart was full and cracked at once,” she writes. “This was my mother’s dream, too. She should have been here to experience it with me.” In the story of 16-year-old Sabreen, forced to leave Yemen and then Egypt, we learn what it really means to try to cross the Mediterranean in an overcrowded fishing boat, and in the plight of Guatemalan orphan Analisa, held in the detention centres, known as the “ice box” and the “dog pound”, on the Mexican border, the cruelty of Trump’s immigration policy becomes all too real. These girls walk for days and nights, all on their own, some in buses with strangers, not knowing if they will be safe “We can’t imagine being in a car and going from Birmingham to London on our own when we are 14 or 15,” Yousafzai says. “Our parents would be worried about us. And these girls walk for days and nights, all on their own, some are getting in buses with strangers, going through all the security things, not knowing if they will be safe or not.” As the book makes clear, even after surviving perilous journeys, girls are too often greeted with hostility (“We were truly being treated like animals” is a common refrain), their futures far from certain. “They are putting their lives at risk and I think this is actual courage and bravery,” says Yousafzai, herself often called “the bravest girl in the world”. She is keen to stress the distinction between being displaced, forced to move within your own country, and becoming a refugee, hence the book’s title: “I called it ‘displaced’ because the majority of people are internally displaced rather than refugees. In total there are 68.5 million people who are displaced and only around 24 million are refugees. And I myself became displaced in Pakistan, plus 2 million other people.” In May 2009, several months after the Taliban forbade girls from going to school in Peshawar, Yousafzai’s family left their home in Mingora: it “felt like having my heart ripped out”, she writes. Although they were able to return after three months, their greatest fear was that they “would be displaced for ever”. Even as a 12-year-old, Yousafzai says she knew that the home she was returning to “no longer existed except in my dreams” – a feeling echoed by Maria in the book, who has moved eight times within Colombia, from one makeshift camp to another, but has “never felt ‘at home’ in any other place than the one I keep alive in my head from when I was a child”. Then, after the shooting in 2012, Yousafzai’s family had to leave their country for ever. “We were plucked from our mountain valley in Swat, Pakistan, and transported to a brick house in Birmingham,” she writes in the preface to I Am Malala. Technically, she explains, they are not refugees, but residents in the UK: “For me it is more than becoming a refugee, it is about displacement, losing your home.” The “paradox” of the immigrant experience, as the Pennsylvania volunteer who becomes Marie Claire’s “American mom” describes it, is to be “grateful for a new life that is based on the painful loss of an old one”. “Oftentime” Yousafzai observes, in a quaint expression she uses frequently, “we forget about how the refugees also want to go back to their home. Every girl has this dream – they want to see their home, they feel this kind of incompletion in their life.” For her, “home has this sense of belonging. When you become a refugee you feel like you are a stranger to the land, an outsider. But as soon as you feel like you belong you are an insider and you deserve an equal right to it as anyone else. This becomes your home. And you can have many homes.” With its snow-capped mountains and pine forests, the Swat valley is known as “the Switzerland of the east” – “We think it is better than Switzerland,” she says. While Yousafzai is “very proud of Birmingham”, which she now regards as her second home, she still misses the sounds and smells and tastes of Peshawar: sweet tea boiled on the stove, her mother’s chicken and rice, somehow “tastier” back home, sharing jokes with her friends – “The English sense of humour is different,” she says diplomatically. And she will never get used to the weather (although she ruefully concedes that “summers are getting better, probably because of global warming”) or the fact that drivers don’t honk their horns all the time: before she came to the UK she “had never seen people following traffic rules”. Of course it is not just Malala, but her parents and younger brothers Atal and Khushal who have been uprooted. It has been particularly difficult for her mother, Toor Peksi, whose homesickness was “horrible” at first. It is getting better, Yousafzai says. “She is happier”, and has made friends with her English teacher, with whom she enjoys a cup of tea. For her mother, getting the lift to the ninth floor of their first Birmingham flat was as terrifying “as boarding a space ship”; she was bothered by the nightclubs on the street where they lived and the fact that the girls didn’t seem to wear many clothes, even in winter. “It didn’t make sense to her – it’s snowing and these girls are not covering their legs. My mum used to say, ‘I wish I had the same legs as them’,” she laughs. Yousafzai was lonely at school, the unfamiliar woolly tights not the only thing making her uncomfortable: “I used to just look at everybody who was talking and laughing and think, should I go and talk to them or not, should I join their gossip or not? Sometimes I thought, OK, I should just go to the library and read a book.” On the day her Nobel was announced she was in a chemistry lesson. The deputy head teacher called her out of the class to tell her she had won. Then she went back to her desk. Last March the family made their first trip back to Pakistan since the shooting, her father always worried that elections or other political events would make it dangerous. “I realised we would never find the right time, there’s always something happening,” she says. “So it is just better to go now. I was quite stubborn.” They met hundreds of their extended family and friends – “lots of selfies and lots of hugs and prayers and kisses” – including her childhood best friend and academic rival Moniba, who is now studying medicine. They visited Swat, “the weather was nice”, and returned to their old home, where the family who now live there have kept her room just as it was: “my school trophies and drawings and books and cupboard and bed and everything. It was such a beautiful time.” Now she is in her second year studying philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, something she dreamed of back in Pakistan as a child. She is at Lady Margaret Hall, founded as one of the first female colleges, where her hero Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated in 2007, also studied PPE. She is having fun and “just living a bit of normal life”. Is that possible? “In Oxford there are a few famous people already there, so we don’t feel very famous,” she says (she’s too diplomatic to name names). She has made good friends: “They don’t treat me as ‘the Malala’, but just their friend Malala.” She was given a hard time after someone posted a photo of her wearing a pair of skinny jeans online but, “It’s just jeans, what’s wrong with jeans?” she asks breezily, “I just don’t care about those things.” Does she never suffer from self-doubt or anxiety? “It depends what we are talking about,” she says. “It is a challenge for girls to believe in themselves and to believe that they can do anything, oftentime they become a hurdle to themselves. There are external challenges, but there are also internal challenges, we give up at the external ones and we say, ‘OK fine, maybe I’m not capable of becoming a scientist or prime minister or an astronaut or something.’ I think it is important that at first girls develop that confidence in themselves and then together we will fight the external challenges.” She was “surprised” to discover that sexism can still be found in the UK. “We consider the west as the perfect world where there is equality and democracy,” she says. “When you talk about the so-called developing countries, the issues are more visible and people talk about them openly. But in the west this is something that is happening, but is often not talked about.” The fact that women are speaking out about sexual harassment with the #MeToo movement, and against the gender pay gap, sends a message to “women working in Pakistan or India or Brazil. It is empowering for everyone to see that women in the west are also joining them.” Does she still want to become the next prime minister of Pakistan? “I was very little!” she says, in the way of someone who is often asked the same thing (anyone who has watched the 2009 New York Times documentary Class Dismissed can’t help but wonder if perhaps this preternaturally articulate child might one day fulfil her ambition). And PPE students do have a habit of going on to run the world. “People always focus on the politics. It’s also philosophy and it’s also economics,” she reminds me. No, she doesn’t have any plans or interest in politics, right now, she says. But who knows in 15 or 20 years? If one girl with an education can change the world, what can 130 million do? She feels she can make more of a difference through the Malala Fund, which she wants to “make even bigger”, setting her sights on more than 1 million girls, most of them refugees or displaced, who are out of school. Like a true politician, she will not be drawn on which of the prime ministers or presidents that she has met, from Gordon Brown to Barack Obama, has most impressed her. “It’s not that I don’t like them or anything. But it is politics and you do not agree with everything they say.” She is currently reading Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming. And though she hasn’t met Trump, she hopes he will read her book. “It’s an easy read,” she shoots back, when I point out he’s not a big reader. “He could tweet it,” she laughs. More seriously, she says she would invite him to visit a refugee camp. “I could help him to organise that.” On the day we meet, she is taking part in a GuardianLive event at the Barbican in London. All her family are gathered in the green room – her teenage brothers presiding over snacks and pastries. The event has sold out, yet still feels lively and intimate, with teachers and friends from Oxford in the audience. When the chair asks if Yousafzai ever felt too afraid to speak out, she replies that she was more scared about what would happen if nobody did. But she does admit to being frightened of animals: “I hope things will be better one day,” she jokes, and she brings the house down with her best Brummie accent. Questions from the floor come from fans, girls and boys, one as young as nine. At the end she gets a standing ovation. “Sometimes we think about refugees as the victims,” she tells me. “That they must have sad stories, and they are sad indeed, but they also show us how much courage they have and how brave they are.” Despite the horrors, We Are Displaced is also hopeful: many of the girls featured are now studying for degrees. “These young girls are activists. They have dreams for their futures.” As she says, “If one girl with an education can change the world, what can 130 million do?” • We Are Displaced is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. To order a copy for £13.99 (RRP £16.99) got to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.The plantain at the Nyamming “explorative dining” experience, held in the belly of TT Liquor in Shoreditch in London, has a lightly fried crust, a starchy bite and is finished with a smear of corn custard and the hot tang of scotch-bonnet chilli jam. It is, as with everything on the four-course menu, evocative of more than just good cooking. Nyamming, which takes its name from Jamaican patois for eating, is investigating Caribbean food and culture beyond jerk chicken and rice and peas; and this first iteration is taking me right back to my roots by combining Caribbean and West African cuisine. Against the backdrop of the Windrush scandal, it feels as though more British people of Caribbean descent are taking pains to learn about their history but, in general, the rich narrative of British-Caribbean food is not as widely known as it ought to be. Twelve years ago, Jamaican food entrepreneur Wade Lyn declared in the Guardian that it was “still difficult to find a Caribbean restaurant in most of our major cities, let alone some of our smaller towns”. Interest has grown since then, with the expansion of chains such as Cottons and Rum Kitchen, plus the arrival of McDonald’s jerk burger and Jamie Oliver’s jerk rice: Caribbean food is, for better or sometimes worse, part of the mainstream. My jerk seasoning spice I keep quite close to my chest … everyone has their own style It’s also moving forwards, propelled by up and coming chefs and an older generation of connoisseurs. From restaurants such as Raggas in Liverpool, Maureen’s in Leeds, Healthy Eaters in Brixton, JB’s Soul Food in Peckham, to new ventures such as Nyamming, most people I know have a favourite Caribbean food outlet that challenges lingering stereotypes. Author Riaz Phillips has done more than most to document British-Caribbean food. His book Belly Full, self-published in 2017, charted his journey around the UK interviewing and photographing chefs and owners of dozens of restaurants from Moss Side in Manchester to Hartley Road in Nottingham. He notes that Caribbean food and drink establishments in the UK date back to the 1920s, with the Caribbean Cafe in Cardiff and Florence Mills Social Parlour at 50 Carnaby Street in London. “I was going to every library I could, looking for social history books, scouring for any mention of food and social events,” says Phillips. “A few mentioned curry and rice and peas.” Later, came restaurants such as the widely loved Mangrove in Notting Hill, which was at the forefront of black activism in the 1970s and 80s (the site is now a branch of Rum Kitchen). Nyamming, conceived by Joseph Pilgrim and chef Marie Mitchell of Island Social Club, represents the voices of many second- and third-generation British people of Caribbean descent like Phillips who are reclaiming a culture and a history they haven’t had full access to. “I felt like my heritage wasn’t just Caribbean, even though it’s enough and it’s rich and it’s brilliant, I still felt like there was something missing,” says Pilgrim. “This was an opportunity to find out some of those things.” The first Nyamming menu, put together by Mitchell and Nigerian fusion star Lopè Ariyo, drew attention to the similarities between the diasporas’ cuisines – ingredients such as plantain, goat, corn and sorrel are cross-continental – as well as differences; the tactile nature of using pounded yam to sup up egusi (pounded melon seeds) was less familiar. Projects such as Nyamming offer clues to what Caribbean food in the UK might look like in the near future, as do the current prominence of vegetarian and vegan food, both of which nod to the vast repertoire of Caribbean chefs beyond the familiar meat-based staples. Ital Fresh, a “plant-based” Caribbean pop-up run by two Rastafarians in Liverpool, who “ditched meat before it was cool” as part of their spiritual and political beliefs, began as a supper club in 2015. Owners Poppy and Dan Thompson invited a handful of diners to secret locations. “Vegan Caribbean is an ancient thing,” explains Poppy. “It’s definitely not new but it’s now coming to the forefront as veganism as a whole is growing.” The ital way of eating, which the pair adhere to, is essentially organically grown vegetarian and vegan food, developed hand in hand with Rastafarianism in 1930s Jamaica. Buster Mantis, a moodily lit Caribbean bar and food joint tucked away under the arches in south-east London’s Deptford, explored veganism at the end of last year in collaboration with Denai Moore of supper club Dee’s Table. Moore, who was born in Jamaica before moving to the UK when she was nine, also stresses that vegan Jamaican food isn’t new. She says she started by recreating dishes she craved and could no longer eat. “Even just ackee, most places would serve it with saltfish,” she says. Her take on the Jamaican national dish uses seaweed, something she passed on to the menu at Buster Mantis, where she served delicious “saltfish” fritters with ackee crema and smokey onions. She’s also “obsessed” with the idea of making a dessert pattie. “I grew up eating beef patties, and then having chocolate milk straight afterwards,” she says. Alongside its impact on vegan culture, Caribbean food is beginning to make an impression in more traditional areas. At 1251, his recently opened restaurant in Islington, James Cochran, a chef with St Lucian heritage, sits languidly across from me, dressed in his whites. He was champion of champions on the most recent series of The Great British Menu, cooking his dish Under the Knife (five cuts of goat) as the main course in the final banquet. There are only a handful of other chefs in the country working with Caribbean flavours at a similar level and when I sit down to try his hot and flaky jerk-spiced hake – with a bitingly fresh seaweed coconut yogurt, watermelon and coriander – his Caribbean confidence shines through. The dish tastes similar to a meal of mahi mahi I had sitting on a beach in St Kitts. Within Caribbean culture, you come together, you eat, and you celebrate with food He seems unfazed by the idea of being one of the few chefs bringing Caribbean cooking into more upmarket dining. “Long may it continue,” he says, going on to tell me about his plans to open a jerk chicken and hip-hop restaurant somewhere in central London. “My jerk seasoning spice I keep quite close to my chest … everyone has their own style with it.” Moore believes a new generation will be inspired by people like Cochran. “He had scotch-bonnet jam and all these cool ideas,” she says of his appearance on The Great British Menu. Cochran stresses the importance of his family history on his blended-culture cooking. “My mum’s from St Vincent then worked on Mustique, where she was a nanny for Princess Margaret and Mick Jagger,” he says. When she moved to London she met Cochran’s British dad. For the Cochrans, “A roast was never just a roast. You’d have your leg of lamb with lots of West Indian seasoning, with plantain, roast potatoes, breadfruit, suet pudding … It was like, wow, this is an explosion of flavours in my mouth!” The thread that draws the work of a lot of contemporary Caribbean chefs together is that they are grounded in family. In some ways, the evening at Nyamming was in honour of Pilgrim’s grandmother, who had died the night before. “She was called the Queen of Ridley,” he says, referring to Hackney’s Ridley Road market, which has long been a hub for the Caribbean community. “My first investigation into my heritage was through her; I’d go over and she would teach me how to cook. Although,of course, she wouldn’t teach me because there’s no teaching to be done.” “No – no! You watch – you observe,” Mitchell chimes in. “I would always make my nan bake and watch my dad cook in the kitchen.” Peter Innes, the chef behind Bristol restaurant Caribbean Croft, was adopted into a Caribbean family as a child, and his wife is of Jamaican heritage. He has been “cooking and joking and laughing in the kitchen for the last 25 years” with his mother-in-law, Ms Cat. Her influence is found throughout the menu which includes peppered Appleton coconut steak and marinated aubergines with a chilli okra, bean and tomato sauce. Innes’s take on the future of Caribbean food is grounded in his belief that cooking from a wider range of islands will become more influential. Jamaica has tended to dominate perceptions of Caribbean food, though places in London such as the Trinidadian Roti Joupa and Limin’, and the Guyanan Umana Yana have built up a following. “We have three staff here who are from Trinidad and they’re always giving me ideas from the Indian connection they have,” Innes explains. One of their most popular dishes is a trini (also known as a double), a flat festival-style dumpling. Slit open to reveal a fluffy centre, it’s filled with mackerel, jerk chicken, pork or curried chickpeas. It has its origins in the food of the indentured labourers brought from India to Trinidad, post-slave trade, and is similar to the Indian dish chana bhatura. “There are so many different islands and each one of them has their own offerings,” says Chris Singam of Cottons, who has been running Caribbean outlets since 1985. Cottons’ menu has featured Guyanese pepperpot and will soon be adding a vegan section. Much like his current contemporaries, he is offering a fresh taste of Caribbean cuisine grounded in family values. The struggle, Singam says, is retaining authenticity while reaching a wider audience. Singam is not of Caribbean heritage but has thought carefully about how to bring the taste to the UK and makes a point of hiring Caribbean chefs. “What we see at the moment is a lot of pseudo-Caribbean places opening up and pseudo-Caribbean food being served,” he says. “ It’s very hard for a non-Caribbean person to develop the taste that is necessary to produce a good, good Caribbean meal.” As Nyamming’s Pilgrim says: “The thing with gentrification is that a business is often inexperienced, so they get told they have to think of a customer who would be the most valuable to them. That person is always the ABC1 white, middle-class person.” Vegan dishes and cuisine that takes in influences of islands beyond Jamaica is the future of the style in the UK at the moment – but hopefully, even as it penetrates fine-dining culture, it will remain grounded in its authentic family values and home cooking. As Mitchell says: “Within Caribbean culture, you come together, you eat and you celebrate with food.” A wider understanding of the differences between the islands seems to be brewing, rather than them being seen as a homogenous mass. What is undoubtedly true is that rather than being the next big thing, Caribbean food is already here. Nyamming episode 3: From the Ground is on 1 February. For tickets, go to island-social-club.eventcube.io; Island Social Club is at Curio Cabal, Kingsland Road, London N1, from 15 FebruaryMexico’s murder rate broke a new record in 2018 as the country’s drug war dragged on and criminal groups fought for control of an increasingly diversified range of illegal activities. Figures released this week by the country’s public safety secretariat show that 28,816 homicide case files were opened in 2018, a 15% increase over the previous year. In recent years, violence has exploded in previously peaceful areas of the country such as Quintana Roo state, which registered 763 homicides in 2018 – double the 2017 figure. Conflict in Quintana Roo – home of the Caribbean resort cities of the “Mexican Riviera” – has been attributed to a struggle for smuggling routes and local drug markets, but in other regions, violence has been driven by other illegal markets. In the western state of Guanajuato, homicide rates have been sent soaring by an epidemic of fuel theft – in which gasoline is siphoned from pipelines. Guanajuato, the country’s conservative, Catholic heartland recorded 2,609 homicides in 2018, making it the most murderous state in Mexico. The new murder figures underline the scale of the challenge facing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office on 1 December promising to calm the country after 12 years of a militarised crackdown on drug cartels and organised crime. On 10 December 2006, president Felipe Calderón, launched Mexico’s war on drugs by sending 6,500 troops into his home state of Michoacán, where rival cartels were engaged in tit-for-tat massacres. Calderón declared war eight days after taking power – a move widely seen as an attempt to boost his own legitimacy after a bitterly contested election victory. Within two months, around 20,000 troops were involved in operations across the country. The US has donated at least $1.5bn through the Merida Initiative since 2008, while Mexico has spent at least $54bn on security and defence since 2007. Critics say that this influx of cash has helped create an opaque security industry open to corruption at every level. But the biggest costs have been human: since 2007, around 230,000 people have been murdered and more than 28,000 reported as disappeared. Human rights groups have also detailed a vast rise in human rights abuses by security forces. As the cartels have fractured and diversified, other violent crimes such as kidnapping and extortion have also surged. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by violence. Improved collaboration between the US and Mexico has resulted in numerous high-profile arrests and drug busts. Officials say 25 of the 37 drug traffickers on Calderón’s most-wanted list have been jailed, extradited to the US or killed, although not all of these actions have been independently corroborated. The biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – under Peña Nieto’s leadership was the recapture, escape and another recapture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel. While the crackdown and capture of kingpins has won praise from the media and US, it has done little to reduce the violence. Mexico’s decade-long war on drugs would never have been possible without the huge injection of American cash and military cooperation under the Merida Initiative. The funds have continued to flow despite growing evidence of serious human rights violations. López Obrador, known as Amlo, campaigned on a promise to tackle what he considered the root causes of crime such as poverty and a lack of opportunity, but has caused some disquiet by announcing plans for creating a militarised police force despite accusations that the country’s armed forces have themselves contributed to the rising violence. “The creation of the [national guard] is popular among the political class and society in general. But the fuel that feeds it [is] political opportunism and social desperation in the face of violence,” wrote Ernesto Portillo, technical secretary of the Mexican Forum for Democratic Security, in Animal Político. López Obrador has so far focused efforts on an attempt to stamp out fuel theft, which he said costs the country $3bn annually. The crackdown has caused long fuel lines in at least six states and prompted accusations that the crackdown had been improvised. The seriousness of the problem was brought home last Friday, when at least 93 people died after a tapped fuel pipeline exploded in central Hidalgo state. On Monday, the government reported that 14,894 such illegal taps had been found in 2018 – an average of about 41 a day nationwide.The leader of Ukip has formally written to the Queen, asking her to suspend parliament until after 29 March to ensure MPs cannot thwart Brexit. Gerard Batten’s letter also informed the monarch that she should never have approved the 1992 Maastricht treaty as it made her, and everyone else in the UK, citizens of the EU, and was thus unlawful and treasonous. “Your Majesty’s ministers were gravely in error and wrongly advised you,” the letter tells the Queen. Released publicly by Ukip, Batten’s letter begins by saying he is formally petitioning the Queen under the 1689 Bill of Rights, which established the notion of parliamentary supremacy. MPs were elected to uphold the 2016 referendum, and thus take the UK out of the EU, he argues. “It is evident that these same members of parliament are attempting by all and any means to thwart this result,” he writes. “They are accordingly in breach of their pledges to you and us, your citizens, and of a long-standing constitutional convention whereby parliament must implement the will of the people expressed in a popular vote and are bound by electoral manifestos which have received popular assent at general elections. “Therefore, I ask Your Majesty to thwart their efforts and to prorogue parliament from now until after 29 March 2019, which is the agreed date set aside in the Withdrawal Act of Parliament of 2018 when the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.” Batten is not the first politician to raise the idea but is the only one to have done so seriously. During a Brexit debate last week the Conservative backbencher Desmond Swayne proposed it to Theresa May, but as an apparent joke. In his letter to the monarch Batten also warned her about the Maastricht treaty, which brought closer integration to the EU, which was passed into UK statute in 1992. “This treaty and statute purport to make Your Majesty a ‘citizen of the European Union’,” he wrote. “The treaty states that Your Majesty as a ‘citizen of the Union’ will ‘enjoy the rights conferred by this treaty and shall be subject to the duties imposed thereby’. “To presume to convey rights on, or to impose duties on Your Majesty was, and remains, unlawful and treasonous under the Bill of Rights, and the Coronation Oath. Your Majesty’s ministers were gravely in error and wrongly advised you.” Batten, who took over as Ukip leader following the brief and disastrous tenure of Henry Bolton, has financially steadied the party but has also seen a series of leading members, among them Nigel Farage, quit due to his increasingly hard-right direction. Batten has repeatedly focused on Islam, which he refers to as a “death cult”, and has proposed policies including special checks on immigrants from Islamic countries and the possibility of Muslim-only prisons. He has also appointed Tommy Robinson, founder of the far-right English Defence League anti-Islam group as an adviser, which prompted Farage and others to quit.Jürgen Klopp was left in disbelief that Vincent Kompany was not sent off in the first half of Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat at Manchester City for a tackle on Mo Salah which the manager believed could have ended the forward’s season. City’s captain was booked for the two-footed lunge yet Salah would have had a clear goal scoring opportunity if he had not been scythed down. Klopp said: “I really like Vincent Kompany but how on earth is that not a red card? He is last man and he goes in. If he hits Mo [Salah] more, he is out for the season. It is not easy for the ref and he may not see it how I see it. “I like him, he’s a fantastic and outstanding player. I loved Kompany at Hamburg – what a career, but situations like this happen. A player makes a decision and makes a sliding tackle. He took the risk, Mo is on his feet and, if he is not in the moment where he jumps over him, then we all talk differently. Still a nice guy but a really bad decision [from the referee, Anthony Taylor]. “Do we need to open something [a limb]? In that situation everybody knows if Mo can go through what happens then? I don’t blame anybody but in a situation like that – make a decision. When we were here in the summer there was a red card [for Sadio Mané last season]. Nobody thought about it. Was it a red card? Probably yes. Did Sadio want it? No, he didn’t want it for a second. He didn’t see him [Ederson] but he hit him. “Here [Kompany] saw him and he hit him but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. That’s all .You can make of it what you want, look at it and make your own opinion.” Pep Guardiola did not offer an opinion. “It is the decision of the referee - you have to ask to the referee,” he said. “If one day in my life I speak quite well about the referee and I understand you can be banned.” City took the lead through Sergio Agüero’s 40th-minute goal from an almost impossible angle before Roberto Firmino responded just after the hour. Leroy Sané struck the winner 18 minutes from time. It was City’s first victory over Liverpool in five attempts and it cut the deficit to the leaders to four points. Guardiola said: “We reduce the gap – still four points is enough points to be calm [about]. But it is a good moment to congratulate and say thank you to these incredible players. Today they show how good they are, they play against an incredible team. “I am proud of them but not just today. We lost two games in four days but you can’t forget what they have done for 16 months. It was a good spectacle and both teams play to win. It was a final for us, because lose and it was almost over – the title defence. If we lose it is almost done, it would be so difficult. But we are four points behind them and they are the leaders. We have to fight a lot but this gives us a lot of confidence. “The game was a real game for both sides. We beat an incredible team. We were outstanding from the first minute. We are happy for this victory to reduce the gap. Everything is open. Now it is tight again. Now we can rest and relax. I don’t remember a league so tough, there are so many huge contenders fighting for the title. Every game is a final.” Klopp believes City rode their luck. “We were unlucky in our finishing moments,” he said. “Unluckier than City I would say. Sané scores [off the post] and the situation with Sadio when he hit the post [and misses]. “They had periods where they dominated the game and everybody felt the intensity but we came back and had big chances. It is always like this. You have to score in those moments. When Agüero scores there is no angle. In similar situations we didn’t score. “It was not our or City’s best game, because we both made it difficult for the other team. I have already said to the boys this is OK. We lost it but it will happen. Tonight it is not nice but it is not the biggest problem.”Wading through Paraguayan wetlands last year, the CSIRO scientist Raghu Sathyamurthy was on the lookout for an aquatic plant called cabomba. Or more specifically, for the eggs of a tiny weevil known to feast on this underwater legume. Cabomba isn’t particularly conspicuous in the wetlands around Asunción, but back in Australia, it’s choking waterways along the east coast and is one of 32 weeds classed as nationally significant. It has spread around the globe, thanks mainly to the aquarium industry, and causes big problems wherever it takes hold – clogging watercourses and invading reservoirs. “It forms an underwater carpet so nothing else can grow and it blocks the light that should be getting to other species,” says Sathyamurthy. Today he is back in the labs and rooftop greenhouses in CSIRO’s Ecosciences precinct in Brisbane. Here, a weevil colony is being maintained behind two-centimetre thick glass inside a double-air locked quarantine laboratory. Inside, scientists are testing the tiny weevil as a possible “biocontrol agent” that could be released into waterways to keep cabomba in check. They are also testing the weevil’s impact on related native Australian plants. “Australia has lots of legumes, so we are testing the weevils on about 70 species. If the weevil feeds on other Australian plants, then we’d stop right there, because it would present a risk,” says Sathyamurthy. It is one of the latest examples of a continuing CSIRO strategy to manage invasive species using foreign bugs. One of the earliest biocontrol success stories – and one that has taken on legendary status – is that of the invasive prickly pear cactus. By 1920, it had infested 24m hectares, mostly in Queensland. Bulldozing, burning, crushing and the use of a highly toxic chemical did little to halt its rapid spread. But a joint program between the commonwealth and the Queensland and New South Wales governments marked a turn of fortunes. Between 1927 and 1931, more than 2bn cactoblastis moth eggs were released. By 1932, the cactus was in retreat, enabling almost 7m hectares of previously infested land to go to settlers. These days, identifying foreign bugs for biocontrol and then carrying out the testing can take several years, sometimes a decade or more, says Sathyamurthy. More than a dozen invasive weeds are being worked on at the CSIRO facility. It is also collaborating with US government scientists on native Australian plants that have become pests across the Pacific, such as the earleaf acacia that is causing problems in Florida’s Everglades. A bright green native Australian beetle with a distinctive red stripe on its back is being tested as a possible agent for release in Florida, where the fast-growing acacia is managing to outcompete native species in southern areas. In another greenhouse, Sathyamurthy is surrounded by another “weed of national significance” called Parkinsonia – a prickly bush that is well-established in Queensland, the Northern Territory and parts of Western Australia, and that gets in the way of livestock accessing water and outcompetes native species. After four years of testing and then government approvals, CSIRO released millions of larvae of the Eupithecia moth – known at CSIRO as UU – two years ago at affected sites. While it’s too early to be sure of the success, Sathyamurthy says the moths are surviving and will now be stripping the leaves off the weeds, holding back their progress. A common response when the public hears about biocontrol programs, says Sathyamurthy, is to point to one introduction that went badly wrong – the cane toad. Cane toads were deliberately introduced in Queensland in 1935 by the state government’s Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations – a group set up to support the industry and part-financed by a levy paid by growers – to help the industry deal with cane beetles attacking sugar cane roots. No tests were carried out beforehand to find out what impact the toad might have on the environment, or even if it would actually eat the beetles. The release was enthusiastically supported by the industry, despite some early warnings. Sathyamurthy says: “It’s always a relevant question, but if cane toads had gone through this process then it would have been cut off at the first hurdle. The sugar cane industry just went ahead. “We’re incredibly cognisant of the risks of getting this wrong. We want a safe fix and we’re incredibly mindful of what we do.” One review of all 512 known global releases of biocontrol agents found that only four had significant adverse impacts on species away from their targets. Two major impacts from releases in 1969 and 1974 came, the study said, when biosafety standards were lower than today. While biocontrol agents can never totally wipe out invasive weeds, Sathyamurthy believes they can offer a long-lasting remedy to stop them from becoming a problem. He claims that for every $1 invested in biocontrol, “we think we get about $23 back in productivity gains”. Other control methods, such as burning, chemical spraying or simple bulldozing, can be costly, and in some cases, seeds of invasives can survive in the soil for decades. In and around Brisbane, the regional water authority Seqwater spends about $170,000 a year on commercial divers who manually remove cabomba. “In rangelands, you can go and just bulldoze a huge patch of weeds, and that does happen. For other weeds, you can spray them or put fire through them - and all those control tactics have costs and benefits,” Sathyamurthy says. “If you find a safe biocontrol agent, then it becomes a part of the natural environment and remains a pest for the weed, and then natives can compete with them.”Extreme temperatures are persisting – and even peaking – in Victoria and New South Wales on the fifth day of Australia’s extraordinary, record-breaking heatwave with Noona in western NSW recording a minimum temperature of 35.9C, a new Australian heat record. On Friday, parts of NSW and the ACT were again forecast to soar above 40C – for the fifth day in a row. Nine records were broken in NSW on Wednesday, and more are forecast to fall on Friday. In Penrith in Sydney’s west, temperatures will hit 45C, up from 42C on Thursday. In Menindee – the site of mass fish kills in the Murray river – another 45C day is on the cards. It reached 47C on Wednesday and Thursday, and the maximum temperature hasn’t been below 45C since Monday. Australia has a new heat record! Overnight, #Noona in the #NSW west recorded a 35.9C MINIMUM temperature. It's the latest in a series of broken records in this #heatwave Heatwaves are dangerous - stay hydrated & look out for others! #beattheheatForecast: https://t.co/nTTbM3WZEP Rebecca Farr, a forecaster for the Bureau of Meteorology, said Canberra would break the record for the longest stretch of over-40C days since records began in 1939. “For Canberra, today we are forecasting 40C and, if we reach that, it will the the first time on record that we will have four consecutive days of 40C or more,” she said. “Broken Hill is forecast to hit four consecutive days of 45C, and that also hasn’t happened before. Records there started in 1957.” The northern regions of Victoria, including Mildura, Shepparton and the border towns of Albury-Wodonga, will also stay above 40C. According to the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, Australia has warmed by 1C since 1910, and temperatures will increase in the future. So how will climate change affect future heatwaves in Australia? The CSIRO and BoM have compiled different models for predicting the outcome of climate change in Australia to produce a guide to how different regions will likely be affected. They found that every part of Australia will continue to experience increases in average temperature, and will have a higher frequency of hot days. The duration of hot spells will increase in every region. In many areas in the northern half of Australia, the average number of days above 35C could increase by two to three times. Late in the century, towns such as Darwin, Alice Springs and Broome  may experience days with temperatures above 35C for about a third of the year. These higher temperatures will also result in higher evaporation, which will continue to make drought conditions worse. But southern and coastal regions will experience the welcome relief of sub-30 temperatures and even rain. Melbourne is set for a maximum of 28C, Geelong 26C and Warrnambool 21C. It will also cool in South Australia, at least compared with the record-breaking 48.9C recorded in Port Augusta on Tuesday. Temperatures will still hover in the 30s but the stretch of nearly-50C temperatures looks to be over. Port Augusta is set for 32C (down from 48.9C), Tarcoola 31C (down from 48.7C), Coober Pedy 38C (down from 47.8C) and Woomera 37C (down from 47.6C). But central Australia will remain scorching. Oodnadatta – one of the hottest 15 places in the Earth this week – will still sit at 46C. In NSW, the towns of Ivanhoe, Bourke and Wilcannia are all facing 46C. Gundagai will swelter through 44C, which is only slightly down on the 45C experienced on Wednesday. Farr said the summer had smashed records across the state. “Yesterday we saw some January records broken,” Farr said. “Cobar (47.2C), Parkes (44.5C), Wagga (45.2C) and Tuggeranong (40.8C) all had their hottest January day since records began. “On Wednesday, we even saw some annual records broken. It was the hottest day since records began at Broken Hill airport (46.3C), Whitecliff (48.2C), Wilcannia (47.9C) and Albury (45.6C).” Temperatures in NSW are expected to drop over the weekend. Menindee is set for 36C with some cloud cover and Penrith 32C. Wilcannia and Ivanhoe will drop to 40C, but Bourke is set to stay hot at 45C on Saturday, and hold at over 40C through all of next week.Just outside Venezuela’s borders its refugees are under few illusions that they will be able to return home any time soon. Tensions may be rising between Washington and Caracas, with talk of regime change on everyone’s lips, but for ordinary Venezuelans, leaving their country remains the most attractive option. Tens of thousands cross into Cúcuta, a punishingly hot city of 600,000 people on Colombia’s eastern border with Venezuela, every day. Most come to briefly work or shop for goods unavailable or prohibitively expensive in Venezuela, others for hospital visits. But for about 5,000 a day, the Simón Bolívar bridge that divides the two countries is the last they will see of their homeland for the foreseeable future. Siblings Antonio and Gabriela Yany have fled Maracay in northern Venezuela, and are heading to Bogotá to join their parents who left last year. “We have nothing to eat, we go hungry for days and our salaries buy us nothing,” Antonio said, as he waited outside a bus terminal in Cúcuta, a city on Colombia’s eastern border with Venezuela. “Things aren’t changing anytime soon there.” Oil-rich Venezuela is mired in economic and political turmoil, with severe shortages of staple foods and basic medicines. Hyperinflation has rendered the currency practically worthless, and crime is widespread. The dire situation has triggered an exodus of Venezuelans, arguably the largest mass migration in Latin America’s history. More than 3 million have now fled, with more than a million in Colombia. The UNHCR has projected that 2 million more people could leave Venezuela this year. Meanwhile, there is uncertainty around who leads the country. President Nicolás Maduro sits in the presidential palace but his leadership is no longer recognised by the United States, Canada and a dozen Latin American countries. They favour Juan Guaidó, the young leader of the opposition-held congress who last Wednesday declared himself interim president until free and fair elections are held. “Maduro is a dictator and a clown, he laughs away while his people are starving,” said Alfonso Castro, who fled Venezuela last year. He now lives in Cúcuta and helps other migrants cart their luggage across the bridge for coins. “Guaidó is a blessing. If he takes power I’ll go home to my family tomorrow.” When Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that “all options are on the table” should Maduro not cede power, implying the possibility of US military intervention, Castro was joyous. “I pray overnight that Uncle Sam’s soldiers come,” he said, grinning widely. However, discussions of who will emerge victorious in the battle for the presidency remain largely academic for many Venezuelans struggling to get by in Colombia. “There may be discussions about new leaders but all of that is going on in Caracas,” said Felipe Muñoz, the Colombian government’s border tsar who was in Cúcuta to cut the ribbon on a new health centre set up by international NGOs. “You ask anyone here, they’ll tell you that all they care about is feeding their families.” It is that desperation that led Keymar Luna make the journey to Cúcuta, where she is waiting to catch a bus to the nearby town Málaga, where her husband moved last year. “It’s no secret how difficult life is there,” the young woman said. “It’s horrible to have to leave your own country, and to leave your family. Nobody wants that.” Analysts see no end in sight to the misery, despite the possibility of regime change in Caracas. “I see it getting worse before it gets better,” said Trisha Brury, the International Rescue Committee’s deputy director for Colombia. “The only good thing to come out of the chaos in Caracas is that more attention is being brought to this humanitarian crisis.” It is not only Colombia receiving refugees and migrants, with Brazil – which borders Venezuela to the south – another destination for those fleeing the crisis. Migrants who have fled to the troubled Brazilian border town of Pacaraima express fear, cynicism, confusion and cautious optimism over the possibility their country’s spiralling crisis could lead to change. But there was no consensus that Guaído’s move to declare himself president would work unless the Venezuelan army did not back him. Yasmira Veliz, 50, a former teacher from Caracas now helping at a Catholic church to serve breakfasts to 700 migrants every morning, said Guaído’s self-declaration was unconstitutional. “You can’t nominate yourself president,” she said. “You know what the solution is? To kill Maduro. This is the way out.” Also helping serve the rudimentary breakfast of coffee with milk, bread and fruit to hundreds of migrants early on Friday morning was Delia Párica, 41, a former nurse. She agreed with Veliz: “Maduro will not deliver up power. He prefers to die,” she said. “If the US goes to war against Venezuela Russia will support it [the regime].” Both women welcomed the confrontational stance of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, towards Maduro. “We feel safe in Brazil,” said Párica. Others sought to find humour in the humanitarian crisis. “Venezuela has two presidents and two assemblies!” joked Helinger Cordova, 25, a shop-worker from Maturín who has been in Brazil for a year. “There will be a change. We don’t know if it will be for the better.” So far there has not been a spike in the numbers of migrants crossing the border. Numbers in recent days have varied from 500 to 900, and the Brazilian army running relief efforts said its contingency plans mean it has the capacity to handle up to 1,200 newcomers a day. “We are prepared for a possible wave from the other side,” said Col José Rinaldo, who runs the army base in Pacaraima. The northern Brazilian state of Roraima has experienced an influx of tens of thousands of migrants in Pacaraima and the state capital Boa Vista, where many sell clothes, plants or stitch shoes on the street. Roraima’s new governor, Antonio Denarium, from Bolsonaro’s right-wing Social Liberal party, has declared a state of financial emergency citing debts, salary delays and the risk of collapse of health, education and security services.Plans to subject schoolgirls in Kenya to mandatory tests for female genital mutilation and pregnancy are a violation of victims’ privacy, campaigners have warned. All girls returning to school this week in Narok, Kenya, will be examined at local health facilities as part of a countywide crackdown. Girls found to have undergone FGM, which is illegal, will be required to give a police statement. Those who are pregnant will be asked to identify the man involved, according to George Natembeya, the Narok County commissioner. Narok County has the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Kenya, while FGM is prevalent among the Maasai community. But campaigners say the tests are humiliating for girls, do not tackle the root causes of teenage pregnancy, and are unlikely to improve prosecution rates for FGM. “One of the biggest gaps in the prosecution of FGM cases is lack of evidence. It’s not [a lack of] evidence of girls being cut, but evidence of the actual act,” said Felister Gitonga, programme officer of an Equality Now team devoted to ending harmful practices. Gitonga said that the county’s efforts to tackle FGM were welcome, but added: “We need a different strategy ensuring we respect the girls’ right to privacy and also that we have a clear plan of what we do with the information. “When we find out that a girl has gone through FGM, what will be the consequences? Will there be psycho-social support? Or does this mean that she will be denied permission to go to school?” Mandatory examinations risked further victimising girls who have experienced abuse, warned Gitonga. All forms of FGM were criminalised in Kenya in 2011, as was discrimination against of women who have not undergone the procedure. Failing to report a case to the authorities was also made unlawful, together with aiding the performance of FGM or taking a Kenyan woman abroad to perform the procedure. The practice is becoming less prevalent across the country, where one in five women and girls aged 15 to 49 have undergone FGM. Campaigners say tackling FGM is crucial to stopping teenage pregnancies and child marriage. “For girls who have undergone FGM, the community believes that those girls become a woman. Therefore every other violation that happens at that point happens [after] the FGM,” said Gitonga. “If they are having sex even with older men the community does not recognise it as defilement.” In Narok, four in 10 girls become pregnant as teenagers, according to Kenya’s most recent demographic and health survey, produced in 2014. Efforts to reduce teen pregnancies will fail unless gender-based violence and poverty are addressed, added Gitonga. “For girls living in informal settlements, it is very hard; there is a risk of sexual violence. Sometimes they have to do sex work to help with educating their siblings. So you need to understand their situation,” she said. “You can’t just punish people for getting pregnant.”I was amazed to discover that it is possible to enjoy the extreme beauty of Ladakh while treading lightly and investing locally. Plastic-free co-operative shops that would be the envy of Brighton and Bristol abound in the capital, Leh. At shops like Dzomsa on Old Fort Road you can fill up your water bottles, scoop bulk fruit, nuts and herbal teas into paper bags and pick up unpackaged, locally made soap and knitted goods – the sun-dried Ladakhi apricots are wonderful. We trekked for eight days through Markha Valley. Solar-powered homestays, run by women, provide cosy accommodation and delicious home-cooked meals. All homestays (which we didn’t book in advance) had exceptionally clean compost toilets, supporting water conservation and organic agriculture.• himalayan-homestays.comBeth Friends of Orchha helps people enjoy the small town of Orchha, with 12th-century riverside cenotaphs, a 14th-century seven-storey temple, and fantastic local markets. It promotes stays in the homes of villagers, where visitors can enjoy fabulous rustic cooking, rent bicycles, take a picnic by the boulder-strewn river, and ensures that your money stays in the community with those who need it most. Given how chaotic Indian towns and cities can be, it was a pleasure to kick back and relax. Room rates are from £8 night with full meals for £2.Sujai Kumar Every week we ask our readers for recommendations from their travels. A selection of tips will be featured online and may appear in print, and the best entry each week (as chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet) wins a £200 voucher from hotels.com. To enter the latest competition visit the readers' tips homepage High in the mountains overlooking the spectacular Knuckles range, yet totally accessible by public transport, Gammaduwa bungalow employs and trains local villagers, pays fair wages and is working towards a profit-sharing business. Having come to Sri Lanka as a VSO volunteer in 2009 (at the tail end of the civil war), supporting local peace and human rights organisations, Dave and his partner Sengli renovated this former tea plantation residence. It had been a rundown guesthouse but now is an outstandingly beautiful heritage bungalow. The food, prepared from locally sourced organic products, is a delight. • Doubles from £65 B&B (discount for Amnesty members), gammaduwa-bungalow.business.siteKate In Palawan, many people are struggling economically, especially young fisherman, whose traditional way of life is in decline. Tour operator Tao is entirely staffed by fantastic locals, supporting the local economy. Part of the profits go to the Tao Kalahi foundation, which provides education and skills. There is a strong focus on sustainability, and eco-friendly practices throughout the trips. There are various trips all to remote islands and beaches: we went on a five-day expedition to Culion, Linapacan and El Nido ($605). It was blissful.• taophilippines.comMegan Kinsey Check out Bellies En Route in Cairo. Led by two Egyptian women, it’s a food tour of the city that ensures there’s no waste by asking for all leftover food to be wrapped up then given to the homeless people who are encountered along the way. • $70pp, includes all food and bottled water at seven stops and generous tips, four hours, belliesenroute.comAllison Robertshaw Black taxi tours up and down the Falls and Shankill Roads are commonplace on tourist itineraries in Belfast today, and seem rather old hat. The same can’t be said, however, for the Conflicting Stories tour, guided by people once imprisoned for their beliefs – political prisoners in short. £18pp is a small price to pay when considering the money funds work by Republican and Loyalist charities encouraging youths to coexist peacefully.• belfastfreewalkingtour.comLee P Ruddin Canute Cottages, on the shores of Chichester Harbour, is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with activities to match. In this wide-open expanse are a series of barn conversions, with energy supplied by both solar thermal, solar photovoltaics and topped up using a 100% renewable energy provider. The sustainable policy includes active land management – for example, planting trees, and hedgerow and pond restoration work. Walkers, cyclists and dinghy sailors are all welcome, and each of the four cottages is wheelchair-friendly. • Four nights from £205, canutecottages.co.ukCleland Project Asis in Costa Rica is a sanctuary for injured, sick and abandoned animals. It has a volunteering programme where visitors can stay with a Costa Rican family and be immersed in their hospitality, beautiful cooking and culture. Guests prepare food for the animals and feed them. Feeding a baby howler monkey was just magical. The centre releases as many animals as possible back into the wild and has a plethora of dedicated staff that educate guests about each of the species and impart a passion for animals. It’s a special programme and a memory-building holiday that our family will never forget.• institutoasis.comlisa anderson A Moroccan hill fort lovingly restored by a local couple, the award-winning Atlas Kasbah near Agadir is a celebration of Berber culture. Village craftsmen working on the project have their names and skills proudly recorded. Using clever irrigation techniques, the hill has been transformed into a terraced garden supplying fruit, vegetables, and herbs. The cook conjures sublime food using local culinary traditions, including imaginative vegetarian menus. Strong eco-credentials extend into commitment to the local community – developing the local economy, rather than depleting it. • Doubles from £65 a night for a double room-only, atlaskasbah.com Anne We went with G Adventures on a two-week trip to Vietnam and Cambodia starting in Hanoi then heading south via Hội An, through Ho Chi Minh City and Cambodia to Siem Reap. In both countries the group dined with local families, learning about and supporting sponsored projects to help people escape poverty, and providing much sought after English practice to our hosts. The tour was roughly £800. I really felt that my experience was much richer for this beneficial side of the trip.• gadventures.comLindsay This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.There is no place in Australia as egalitarian or as democratic as the beach. The beach doesn’t care who you are or what you wear. It doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race or religion. It says come as you are, and all over Australia we heed that call. The day after Boxing Day, at Sydney’s Bronte beach, so many different tribes are down at the water. Huge multi-generational families are having picnics next to blonde, Botoxed social media influencers, sat next to a sunburnt man with a Southern Cross tattoo on his right shoulder blade and his freckled missus under a disposable tent, near shirtless Brazilian guys drinking beers and kicking a ball around, next to a group of Tongan boys and who are running and back and forth from the baths doing bombs, while at the shore, a pregnant venture capitalist who lives up the hill stands near a hijabbed woman with her son in board shorts, all three gingerly testing the water. Young Australian backpackers abroad often have their first real culture shock when they hear about private beaches. “What do you mean you’re not allowed to swim there? What do you mean you have to pay?” We take it for granted that the beach belongs to all of us. If someone says they own it, it feels like a deep affront, the symptom of a society gone wrong somewhere along the line. It’s like trying to own the sky. We are a secular nation but if we have a spiritual place, somewhere where we might access the divine, it is in the ocean. You see swimmers at that second before they fully immerse themselves – the concentration, the intake of breath. It looks as if they are praying. After that first full-bodied contact, they emerge gasping and exultant. *** At the river mouth, near the bend before water shapeshifts into the broad wild beach, we are teaching my niece how to swim. She is two and can’t ride a bike or tie her shoelaces but we hold her in an inadvertent echo of Pentecostal baptism rites – arms under her small back as she leans her head down into the chill of the river, gasps a little, and then settles herself in our arms and the water’s gentle swell. We move her through the water, her eyes are pointed up to the sky, her heart full of trust, her belly full of air. She’s learning to float. Floating is like dreaming while you’re awake. The river is full of children learning how to be here. *** At the baths the other day a woman was telling her young son she was washing away her day. “Did you have a bad day?” “Yes I had a bad day.” And under she went, into the green water, and washed it away. It’s our own best medicine, we prescribe it to ourselves and each other for all manner of things: jetlag, heartbreak, hangovers, colds, headaches, sore muscles, fatigue. We go to the beach to feel alive again. It’s always worth it – the malarkey of the sand and sunscreen and finding a park and a clean towel and getting changed. You never regret a swim. For the most part. *** Once I had to be rescued at Bondi. It was dusk, and I had come to the beach after work to swim. I was a Victorian kid, used to long summer twilights that at their height slipped away around 10pm, like a guest regretfully leaving a dinner party. I was swimming near the Pavilion when two things happened at once: it suddenly got quite dark and a rip took me out quite deep and at speed towards Ben Buckler Point. The lifeguards had gone home. I had passed them packing up their stations as I wiggled out of my corporate clothes with eyes only for the ocean. But now I wasn’t so much drifting out as being towed as if by an invisible speedboat. It got darker still, like someone dimming the lights. I knew not to swim against the current but panic overrode this. The stronger the current, the more I pushed against it. It was like trying to move a mountain. Messy waves crashed over my head. I started freaking out. I flung my arm in the air and waved it around. A young lifesaver packing up his watch saw me and got to me fast on his board. I can still see it now, like it just happened – the two of us in the black churning ocean, the feeling of my hands curling around the yellow plastic board, deep gulps of air. I clung on the side but it was no match for the current. Now my rescuer was in trouble too, and we both continued to drift at speed. But the alarm had been raised – more lifesavers came to us on an inflatable motorised raft. When I was deposited on the sand, gasping and spent, I lay there for a long time, in the proper dark, thoroughly exhausted but also full of wonder. The sea will kill you if you’re not careful. The democracy of the ocean cuts both ways. *** More than once when travelling, I’ve sat at a table with strangers, all Australian, and we’ll spend a pleasant evening swapping stories about the ocean. Our favourite beaches, the secret spots and, of course, the times we’ve almost died. Most people I know have a story; where the ocean has sucked them out to sea, or smashed them against rocks, or slammed them hard into a sandbank, and they have to wiggle their toes to see if they’ll ever be able to walk again. Yet still we go back in; crazy in love, unable to stay away. Promising to be more careful next time. What draws us to the beach again and again and again? Why do we take our children down to the water before they can ride a bike or cross a road? Why do we go waist deep and hold their bodies partially submerged and tell them it will be OK? I sometimes think the sea is our missing element, that a bit of it should have been put in us when we were made. How else can you explain that feeling of being in the water? It’s the feeling of being whole. It’s the feeling of coming home.Donald Trump will unveil a plan on Thursday for a major expansion in US missile defence that will rely on a new generation of space-based sensors. The administration’s long-delayed missile defence review, which the president will present at the Pentagon, will call for the expansion of the US network of sensors and interceptors designed to identify and shoot down incoming projectiles from “rogue states” such as Iran and North Korea. Since the last review in 2010, a senior administration official said, “we have seen a really significant change to the threat environment”. “What the missile defence review responds to is an environment in which our potential adversaries have been rapidly developing, and fielding, a much more expanded range of new offensive missiles,” the official said. “These missiles are capable of threatening the United States, threatening our allies, our partners, and our US forces abroad.” Trump is likely to present the review as a justification for his order for the creation of a new “space force” with its own command structure. “Space is a very important point of emphasis for the president, the vice-president and the missile defence review,” the administration official said. “It is something that we want to invest in … Space is the key to the next step of missile defence.” The review would commission further study of space-based interceptors and lasers but would not direct the production or deployment “of anything specific”. “That is an area that we are studying but not one we have made a concrete decision on whether or not to deploy yet,” said the official briefing reporters ahead of the review’s launch. The official insisted the expansion of the system would not be aimed at Russia and China, and the US continued to see nuclear deterrence as the best defence against the threat from those major nuclear weapons powers. “They have very large, sophisticated arsenals and we are postured to rely on our [nuclear] deterrence to deter Russia and China in that area,” he said. Stephen Young, senior Washington representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said: “I am quite surprised that there is no terrible news there.” “These are relatively sensible choices. They are not trying to use missile defence to address Russia and China and they are not pursuing space-based interceptors.” On the other hand, he added: “They are going to spend a lot more money on things that don’t work very well, and Russia will be upset because of the expansion of the system.” Young said the review was expected to order a major expansion of the US fleet of sea-based Aegis interceptors, upgraded so they are capable – at least theoretically – of shooting down intercontinental ballistic missiles. That is likely to be seen by Russia and China as a move to blunt their own nuclear deterrent, and therefore destabilising. The deployment of missile interceptors in eastern Europe is a major and longstanding source of tension between Washington and Moscow. The senior administration official said: “With respect to relations with Russia and China, the president relies on having good relations with the leaders of those countries. “Our defence capabilities are purely defensive. The United States has been very transparent in the development of its missile defence capabilities, about what they are postured to defend against and our missile defence capabilities are primarily postured to stay ahead of rogue state threats.”Millions of EU citizens resident in the UK will be able to register for the new post-Brexit “settled status” from 21 January. The Home Office is extending its live trial to all EU citizens who hold a valid passport and any non-EU citizen family members who hold a valid biometric residence card. It is the third phase of the trial, and a large portion of the estimated 3.5 to 3.8 million EU nationals living in the UK are expected to be eligible to apply. The rollout comes weeks after a series of bugs were exposed in the phone app, which does not work on iPhones, including complaints that the passport recognition function did not work on allAndroid models. Some universities participating in the second stage of the trial in November and December resorted to buying a supply of phones that did work. The second phase was open to 250,000 people in selected universities, health and social care bodies. But only 15,500 applications were made, of which 12,400 had been concluded by 13 December. The Home Office said 71% of applicants had been granted settled status with the remainder granted pre-settled status, which is given to those who have been in the country for more fewer than five years. There was positive feedback from 77% of applicants but 10% of applicants were unable to use the identity verification function of the app, in line with reports of technical glitches. The Home Office now says it is “well on track” to deliver an easy-to-use system for universal use when it launches officially on 30 March. It stressed the next phase of the registration trial was “completely voluntary” and if a Brexit deal were struck EU nationals would have until June 2021 to apply for registered status.Carlos Robério and his colleagues were expecting an attack on their minibus co-op in Fortaleza, north-eastern Brazil. Over the previous few nights, gang members had already destroyed one of their vehicles, and torched dozens of city buses. But when the assault came, there was little Robério could do but watch the CCTV feed as a group of youths doused one of the co-op’s kiosks and set it on fire. “I was desperate,” said Robério. “That’s our property – it’s how we make a living and support our families,” he said. Authorities in the state of Ceará have been overwhelmed by more than a week of violence, which has been most intense in the capital, Fortaleza, a metropolitan region home to 4 million people. Security forces say three rival drug gangs have come together to carry out more than 150 attacks in retaliation for a proposal to end the practice of separating gang factions inside Brazil’s prisons. Buses, mail trucks and cars have been torched. Police stations, city government buildings and banks have been attacked with petrol bombs and explosives. On Sunday, criminals blew up a telephone exchange, leaving 12 cities without mobile service. Other explosions have damaged a freeway overpass and a bridge. The rash of violence is an early challenge for new president Jair Bolsonaro, who swept to power with his tough-on-crime proposals, which include military takeovers of Brazilian cities and shoot-to-kill security tactics. So far, there have been no deaths, but the outbreak has brought Fortaleza to a standstill: buses and taxis have stopped running, shops have closed for days and many frightened residents refuse to leave their homes. Five hundred national guard troops have been deployed to the region. Camilo Santana, the governor of Ceará state, said on Monday that authorities have made 148 arrests in association with the attacks. At least 20 prisoners suspecting of ordering the violence have been transferred from state to federal prisons. Despite the chaos, the government said it would not pull back on its plan to combat gang activities in prisons. Fortaleza and other cities in Brazil’s north-east have seen homicides soar in recent years, as Brazil’s most notorious gangs, the First Capital Command (known as the PCC in Portuguese) from São Paulo and the Red Command (Comando Vermelho) from Rio de Janeiro began to encroach on the region, which they are disputing with the Fortaleza-based Guardians of the State, and also the Northern Family from Amazonas state. The PCC and the Red Command are locked in a bitter fight to control Brazil’s drugs trade, and Fortaleza is seen as a strategic prize because it is the closest large port to Europe and Africa. “We used to only see this kind of savagery on television in Rio de Janeiro. Things used to be mellow here,” said Robério, who added that the mayhem had made him want to arm himself. “It’s complete chaos here and I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean without a life raft,” he said. Bolsonaro capitalized on such sentiments during the election, and proposed facilitating gun ownership and rewarding police for extrajudicial killings. “Bolsonaro promoted a war rhetoric throughout his campaign, which won’t solve Brazil’s problem with violence,” said Renato Sergio de Lima, the president of the Brazilian Forum on Public Security. Brazil’s security forces are already violent and killed 5,000 people in 2017, an average of 14 a day. De Lima said Bolsonaro, and many politicians before him, tend to propose more violence instead of more effective strategies such as investing in better intelligence capabilities for police investigations and reforming the draconian prison system. He cited promise in justice minister Sergio Moro’s proposal to investigate gangs’ money laundering to suffocate them financially, but said that Bolsonaro’s forceful proposals make violent cities like Fortaleza a “time bomb”. “It’s really the local police and institutions that have to put out the flames of these politicians’ war-like proposals,” he said.In a review into the Metropolitan police service’s secretive Gangs Matrix, the London mayor’s office has been forced to publicly acknowledge that the database disproportionately targets black males. “The representation of young black males on the matrix is disproportionate to their likelihood of criminality and victimisation,” the report, sneaked out just before Christmas, admitted. Of the almost 4,000 names on the matrix at any given time, 78% are black and 9% are other ethnic minorities. Yet the review made no attempts to explain why this shocking disproportionality exists; nor did it seek to understand, or explain, the impact of this racist policing process on the individuals targeted, their families or the communities that they come from. As a result of a number of leaks of the sensitive information the database holds, there have been several damning reports into its use. The Monitoring Group, Amnesty International and StopWatch have all cited the matrix as racial profiling, discriminatory and an ineffective tool. But probably the most damning verdict comes from the information commissioner’s office. It carried out a 12-month investigation into the legality of the gang matrix’s processes. It found that the Met’s use of the matrix has led to multiple and serious breaches of data protection, privacy and equality laws “with the potential to cause damage and distress to the disproportionate number of black men on the matrix”. As a result the Met is now effectively under “special measures”. So there now appears to be a slowly growing recognition, even among the regulators, that the matrix is, and has been used as, a discriminatory tool in the Met’s so-called war on gangs. Yet it is little understood how the matrix itself helps to fuel the violence it was set up to stop. The Met claims the matrix, informed by intelligence, helps identify and assess the most harmful gang members in each of London’s boroughs, based on violence and weapon offences. But, those of us who have witnessed the impact of the matrix know this is far from the truth. Individuals are classified – given a computer-generated harm rating of red, amber or green, meant to reflect the risk an individual poses to others. Yet 65% of those on the matrix are rated, by the Met itself, as green, which means they are officially deemed low-risk. In fact, 40% of these individuals have no record of violence; and 27% of these same greens have no criminal record whatsoever. They populate the list simply because they are the friends or acquaintances of those on the matrix who might resort to the use of violence. The regulators agree that their inclusion on the database is unjustifiable, and now the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime has demanded that the Met reconsider their inclusion. But what should be of most concern to black people in the capital is that the matrix has a significant and, according to the information commissioner, “intended impact on the rest of the public sector”, through the sharing of sensitive, untested information. In effect the entire public sector – including local authorities, housing associations and jobcentres – has become critical partners with the Met in this process, with chilling effects on the life chances, as there is little differentiation by the public servants whom the information is shared with between those of “high risk” and those who are greens. So GM “nominals” are policed not simply by Met officers but by the state, in the most oppressive manner possible. Children get excluded from schools; young people receive benefits sanctions and miss out on offers of employment or training; families are denied housing transfers; local youth provision is removed. In Haringey, north London, the Met engaged with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, which has written to nearly all the borough’s 100 “gang nominals” telling them they are suspected cannabis smokers, and therefore have to either complete a “medical” (including providing a urine sample) or return their driving licence. The anger and frustration this creates among its young targets is what risks fuelling violence. Everyone knows that kids who are bullied can often become bullies themselves. And the overzealous focus on gangs by the Met has, in all probability, left fewer resources to deal with the real issues underlying the violence on the capital’s streets. So the matrix is not only an institutionally racist process, but it is also wholly ineffective. In its review, the mayor’s office recommends that it and the Met engage with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). But this is not a mere bureaucratic error in failing to comply with equality obligations: this is institutionally racist policing in its purest form. The EHRC itself must now use its powers and conduct a full investigation, not only into the Met’s use of such a racist process but into police forces in Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham, where such lists are also in use. • Stafford Scott was a co-founder of the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign in 1985, and is now a consultant on racial equality and community engagementAfter blazing down all day, the sun slips behind a bank of clouds in the west. As we make for a bay just beyond Dondra Head, the lighthouse on this most southerly point of the country grows slowly larger against a golden sky. It’s a laid-back moment on the sundeck of the Crystal, literally: most of us are pretty much horizontal in the relative cool of the evening. But then this is the most laid-back of holidays: a week’s gentle pootle around the south coast of Sri Lanka, taking in palm-fringed beaches and the odd nature reserve or Unesco site but mostly reading, daydreaming and just ... being. When it comes to sailing holidays, most people think of Greece, Croatia or Turkey, perhaps the Caribbean in winter. But Sri Lanka, with some of the world’s most stunning beaches, lapped by warm Indian Ocean, is not a well-known sailing destination. So when I saw G Adventures had a new seven-day small-group tour sailing the south coast (between November and April; it switches to the east coast for June-October), I recruited my sun- and sea-loving daughter Laura to help me give it a go. The growth of sailing holidays in Sri Lanka dates from the terrible tsunami of 2004. In its aftermath, to provide work and prospects for local youth, Belgian diplomat Pierre Pringiers helped set up the Building a Future Foundation with a college teaching everything about sailing, from boatbuilding and sailmaking to navigation and mechanics. “Boys with no home were housed and trained for free,” skipper Anura tells me. “It’s a good opportunity.” Our cheery young first mate, Dilusha, came through this route. “Two more years and he can be a captain, too.” Now G Adventures is working with Sail Lanka, a startup aided by the foundation. G Adventures itself began as a gap-year company, and the emphasis is still on adventure travel priced for a youngish clientele. But when we pile out of a tuk-tuk at Mirissa harbour, a three-hour train ride from Colombo, to see Crystal bobbing by the jetty, it’s clear we aren’t going to be roughing it. The four cabins, two in each of the catamaran’s hulls, are small – lobbies double as wetroom and loo – but have a big comfy bed, pop-up skylights and (occasional) aircon. Electricity comes thanks partly to a solar panel on deck. The advantages of having Crystal as our base are obvious on our first morning’s whale-watching trip: instead of getting up early to crowd on to a tour boat, we’re sailing to the feeding grounds by 7.30 am, breakfasting along the way. We’re soon joined by a pod of dolphins that play in our bow wave, plunging under the boat and reappearing for, it seems, the fun of it. “Nothing between here and Antarctica,” says our guide “Nana” (full name Upul Nanayakkara), pointing out our position on the navigation screen. We’re out of sight of land and I am suddenly aware of our smallness. The British may be an island race but, what with the Channel tunnel and budget flights, few of us ever voyage across or think much about the wateriness of our “Blue” planet. Almost on cue the cry goes up: “Whale!” On our port bow a broad back breaches the water in a powerful arc, then again and again, before diving with an impressive flick of its tail flukes. It looks dark grey but this is a blue whale, the largest animal ever, dwarfing our boat with its 25-metre length. The whale surfaces several more times before we turn back – as packed two-storey excursion boats start arriving. We’re soon as fond of Crystal as the crew. Who needs a hotel pool? Arriving back sweaty after a tour of Galle Fort, we leap off her deck for a pre-dinner swim. For action there’s a kayak and stand-up paddleboards on deck, fins and snorkels in the aft lockers. Most of us take a turn at the helm and can help hauling sails – though I suspect we mostly get in the way. And there’s no wondering where to eat. Chef Indonil, who has worked on ships the world over, produces three varied meals a day, for which we gather eagerly as soon as – often before – the gong sounds. We have Sri Lankan curries one night, south Indian dosas another, but Indonil enjoys a challenge and takes requests. “Mexican!” cries Steph from Brisbane. Excellent fish tacos appear the next day. “Spaghetti bolognese,” says Nana. He’s shouted down. On our second morning I’m gazing at dozens of elegantly striped cuttlefish hanging in the clear water when the gong goes. It’s Sri Lankan new year and a celebration breakfast of new-harvest rice cooked in milk, date and onion chutney, cake and fruits is followed by a raucous game of pin the eye on the elephant. Over the week we snorkel on Kalpitiya reef, spot green bee-eaters, sea eagles and peacocks at Kalametiya bird sanctuary, and kick back on spectacular beaches such as Kudawella, which has two crescents of perfect sand either side of a rocky presqu’île. But the most memorable moments are on or around Crystal herself: taking out an SUP in a deserted bay at sunset; watching bats feed on the insects circling the boat’s lights; and a last-night barbecue on a remote beach. From its cultural triangle to its national parks, Sri Lanka has sights and marvels aplenty, and most of us also plan to “do” some of these as part of our trip, but before or after such exertions, a stay on Crystal offers what many holidaymakers crave – a chance to just “be”. • The trip was provided by G Adventures, whose Sri Lanka sailing holidays cost from £839pp including all meals and excursions. Emirates, Kuwait Airlines and Turkish Airlines have flights to Colombo (all with one stop) from £385 return This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Greek MPs have ratified a landmark accord allowing the country’s tiny northern neighbour Macedonia to change its name, in a momentous development for the stability of a region all too often riven by wars, nationalist populism and memories of blood-soaked mutual suspicion. After one of the most contentious votes in Greek history, Nikos Voutsis, the president of Athens’ 300-seat parliament, announced the result at 3.35pm local time (1335 GMT). In all, 153 MPs declared support for a deal that not only renames the strategic Balkan state North Macedonia, but ends an abstruse diplomatic dispute that has raged for almost 30 years. The result paves the way for the former Yugoslav republic to join Nato and eventually the EU – alliances hitherto blocked by Athens. Rushing to congratulate his Greek counterpart, Alexis Tsipras, the Macedonian prime minister, Zoran Zaev, tweeted: “Together with our peoples we reached a historical victory. Long Live the Prespa Agreement! For eternal peace and progress of the Balkans and in Europe.” Tsipras called it “a historic day for Greece that ends an issue that was a burden for our foreign policy”. The vote – two weeks after MPs in Skopje ratified the constitutional amendments needed to change their country’s nomenclature – followed five days of acrimonious debate in Greece, where nationalist sentiment had reached fever pitch. In and outside the parliament, opponents had deplored the pact as an act of unprecedented betrayal. Iron- and crowbar-wielding protesters attempted to storm the building during a demonstration that drew tens of thousands last week. MPs were labelled traitors and several in Tsipras’s Syriza party received death threats by text message. Surveys on the eve of the vote showed more than 60% of Greeks opposed the accord. Few believed the deal – struck between the two nations’ leftist governments last year – would get this far. Dimitris Orfanoudakis, a farmer who had travelled from Crete with his flag-draped teenage son, Giorgos, to join the protests, summed up the mood: “It is treason and it has to stop. We are the only people in the world who have to defend our borders from our own politicians because what they are doing is a national crime. Macedonia is one, and it is Greek.” No other state – with the exception of Austria after the first world war in 1919 – has been forced to change its name in modern times. For Macedonia, inhabited predominantly by Slavs but also ethnic Albanians, the dispute had become a matter of identity that, at times, bordered on existential crisis. For Greece, where most of the geographical area of Macedonia was incorporated after the Balkan war in 1912-13, sensitivity to issues of cultural heritage also run deep. When landlocked Macedonia declared independence with the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, Athens hit back, arguing that monopolisation of the name would unleash the genie of territorial ambition against Greek Macedonia, which includes the port city of Salonika. Fears had been fuelled by Skopje appropriating figures and symbols from ancient Greek history, including the erection of a gargantuan statue with an uncanny likeness to Alexander the Great – the most famous Macedonian of all – in the republic’s central square. “Greeks have vivid memories of Macedonia being fought over four times in the past century alone,” said Angelos Syrigos, a professor of law and foreign policy at Panteion University in Athens. “This agreement would have been a fair compromise if the new name applied to everything and by that I mean language, citizenship and nationality. Right now we have something in between. If our neighbours are known as ‘Macedonians’ who speak the ‘Macedonian’ language, that in the future could be the basis for territorial claims.” For Tsipras and Zaev, adding the geographical qualifier of “north” to the state’s new name was an honourable compromise that, once accepted, could normalise ties in the otherwise volatile western Balkans. Internationally, both leaders have been praised for their courage in defying nationalist sentiment on the ground. But what European officials see as “a unique and historic opportunity” to settle a dispute that has defied solution for decades, has tested the two politically. “Tsipras submitted to pressure from the Europeans, especially [Angela] Merkel,” said Panos Kammenos, who heads the populist rightwing Independent Greeks party, the ruling leftists’ junior partner in government until it pulled out in protest over the accord. Responding to the vote, the main opposition leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, described the deal as a “national retreat” that marked “a difficult and distressing” day for the EU member state. Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party has a double-digit lead in polls ahead of general elections later this year. Far too many concessions had been made, he said, adding that once in government he would veto any hopes of Skopje joining the EU. Under the agreement Macedonia must notify the United Nations, where it is known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or Fyrom, before it officially changes its name – a monumental task that requires thousands of documents being changed both at home and abroad. On both sides there is recognition that the accord’s implementation will be far from simple. Committees have been created to help cement the friendship that has eluded the two nations for the past 27 years, including supervision of history teaching in schools. “A new chapter begins of building the confidence lost between the two but it is not going to be easy,” insisted Prof Dimitris Christopoulos, a political scientist at Panteion University. “State-to-state relations have poisoned people-to-people relations.” On the ground many agree. In a country that has become increasingly polarised as general elections loom, opponents are girding for battle. “We will take to the streets as they have done in France,” said Orfanoudakis, the Cretan farmer. “There’s going to be chaos. After eight years of financial crisis, of having foreigners pauperise us, they are not going to take our Macedonia away, too.”Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has used his international debut to sound the death knell for South America’s “Bolivarian” left and proclaim a new, conservative era of clean governance and godliness in the region. But his terse and widely-panned appearance at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday was overshadowed by a snowballing scandal back home involving one of his sons, the recently-elected senator Flávio Bolsonaro. As the president – who came to power vowing to free Brazil from corruption and criminality – prepared to take to the stage in Davos, reports in one of Brazil’s leading newspapers linked his son with members of a Rio de Janeiro death squad called the Escritório do Crime (The Crime Bureau). Rio broadsheet O Globo claimed that during Flávio Bolsonaro’s time as a Rio lawmaker, he had employed both the mother and wife of the gang’s alleged leader, a former special forces agent called Adriano Magalhães da Nóbrega. Nóbrega, who is reportedly on the run after police targeted his group with an operation dubbed ‘The Untouchables’, is alleged to be a senior member of what O Globo called Rio’s “most lethal and secretive phalanx of hired guns”. Police and prosecutors reportedly suspect members of The Crime Bureau were behind the still unsolved murder of Rio councillor Marielle Franco last year. O Globo also claimed that the alleged gangster’s wife and mother had been recommended to Flávio Bolsonaro by Fabrício Queiroz, a longstanding friend of Brazil’s president who has been pictured socialising with Jair Bolsonaro in a photo where both men appear topless. Marcelo Freixo, a leftist lawmaker and friend of Marielle Franco, was among those demanding answers on Tuesday. “The Bolsonaro family owes society explanations,” he tweeted. Flávio Bolsonaro rejected the report – which follows a trickle of other damaging allegations about his financial dealings – and claimed he was the “victim of a defamation campaign” designed to hurt his father. “Those who have made mistakes must be held accountable for their acts,” he said in a statement. Celso Rocha de Barros, a political columnist for the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, said: “The Bolsonaro family must be in panic.” “It’s hard to measure the repercussions this might have … It’s a bomb – a nuclear bomb,” de Barros added. The growing scandal jarred with Jair Bolsonaro’s claims in Davos to be spearheading a crusade against corruption and organized crime. During an unusually brief six-minute address to the annual summit, Bolsonaro said he hoped the world would see his “new” cleaner Brazil with fresh eyes after a massive corruption scandal that has ravaged the country’s political elite. “I took over a Brazil in the midst of a profound ethical, moral and economic crisis. We are committed to changing our history … We want to govern by example,” Bolsonaro declared. The far-right nationalist pitched himself as a flag-bearer for Latin America’s new conservative vanguard. “We do not want a Bolivarian America,” he said, in a reference to Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez, who hoped to unite the continent with an alliance of progressive leaders. Bolsonaro said that rightwing leaders such as Argentina’s Mauricio Macri and Chile’s Sebastián Piñera were determined “the left will not prevail in this region”. The Brazilian president also painted himself as a global statesman seeking “a world of peace, liberty and democracy”. “With the slogan: ‘God above all else’, I believe our relations [with the world] will bring unending progress for all,” Bolsonaro declared. Political observers and audience members were unimpressed by Bolsonaro’s coming out on the world stage. “He scares me … Brazil is a big country and deserves someone better,” the Nobel-winning economist Robert Shiller was quoted as saying by Valor Econômico, Brazil’s top financial newspaper. Another audience member reportedly complained: “[A] disaster. I wanted to like him but he said nothing. Why did he even come?” De Barros called Bolsonaro’s short address a generic “fiasco” that had likely been cut because of the scandal unfolding back home. Speaking on the eve of Bolsonaro’s Davos speech, José Roberto de Toledo, a political journalist from the magazine Piauí, said his domestic popularity ratings remained high. “Consumer confidence is the highest in years … money is coming in from overseas. The dollar has gone down. The stock market is breaking records … No-one can bear another five years of crisis. Everyone wants to press the restart button.” But he speculated that Bolsonaro would pay a political price for the growing whiff of corruption surrounding his son. “Flávio has put a sword [of Damocles] over his father’s head that will be used to blackmail him, in congress, in the courts, on social media and in the press. It will be a weight he will always have to carry – and the likelihood is for that weight to grow with time.”Never underestimate the Brexit romance, the tug for an island nation set in a silver sea unconquered for 10 centuries, proud of its insularity. The idea of the sea wrenches at British heartstrings: you can hear it when you listen to the language of the Brexit groundswell. Normandy landings, D-day pluck, empire, sailors – leave voters use this imagery, however far from the shore. Brexit leaders rub in that seafaring imagery but here’s the paradox: these buccaneers promoting free markets on the high seas are the same deregulators who have helped destroy British shipping. What irony that P&O Ferries has announced that Brexit is forcing it to deregister from Britain, putting its entire fleet under the Cypriot flag. No red duster will now ply the channel from Dover to Calais, only foreign flags. Rule the waves? We won’t even have a British red ensign flying across the Channel. Once foreign-flagged, P&O ferries can’t be requisitioned for any no-deal Brexit crisis. The 180-year-old “Peninsular and Orient” line is steeped in the kind of British history our Brexiteers celebrate. Founded in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, it shipped the empire: profiting from the opium war, it transported 632,000 tons of opium from Bengal to China. Under royal charter it delivered the Royal Mail to India and in the postwar years it carried more than a million “£10 Poms” – British emigrants to populate Australia. It lost 85 ships in the first world war, 179 in the second. Decline began with India’s independence; in 2006 it was sold to Dubai. How perverse that Brexit – designed to bolster quintessential Britishness – has caused the final loss of P&O Ferries to the British flag. “For operational and accounting reasons, we have concluded that the best course of action is to re-flag all ships to be under the Cyprus flag,” says P&O. Registering in Cyprus will “result in fewer inspections and delays”, with “significantly more favourable tonnage tax arrangements as the ships will be flagged in an EU member state”. It will indeed be easier to operate from inside the EU. It promises no change in working conditions, for now. Yet Brexit will be a problem for British crews, who need certificates of competency. Once their certificates lapse, as with other professions and trades, it may take years before the EU recognises UK qualifications: we’ll join a long queue of countries applying; and without recognised certificates, British citizens can’t work. Those who are leading – or misleading – the country into Brexit are the very same political breed of free marketeers who allowed the cataclysmic demise of British shipping. That began in the 1980s, since when the number of British merchant navy officers has been cut by two-thirds. Though 95% of our imports and exports go by sea, we rely mainly on foreign ships to bring everything. No longer a seafaring nation, Britain now owns just 0.8% of global shipping; and of those few, only a third are still registered under a British flag. Forty years ago there were 90,000 mariners; now there are just 23,000. Some two-thirds of ratings on ships registered with the UK Chamber of Shipping come from low-paying non-EEA countries. Unlike most immigration fears, this is a genuine case of foreign labour undercutting British employees, as there’s no lack of British young people yearning for a life at sea. Nautilus, the union for professional mariners, says 10 well-qualified young people apply for every apprenticeship. Though companies are obliged to do some training, they rarely take on apprentices once trained. Why should they, when they can pay at least a third less and still comply with global minimum standards? T here was a reason why P&O chose Cyprus, out of plentiful other EU countries. Why not France, the obvious choice for plying the channel? Because France is unionised, with high standards. Cyprus is a flag of convenience, despite being in the EU. Over half the world’s ships are now registered under flags of convenience. In countries such as Panama, Liberia, Singapore and the Marshall Islands, it’s cheap to register, tax is low, and standards are the bare legal minimum. There are few inspections for safety, food, clean water, rest hours and conditions for crews. In the deregulating 1980s, British shipping joined a global free-for-all. This is exactly the behaviour the EU should prevent, with stricter rules about who uses its ports. The US has its 1920s Jones Act forbidding any but US-built, -owned and -crewed ships plying from one US port to another. Why hasn’t the EU done likewise? In the fiercely competitive global shipping market, only the EU can stop a downward plunge in pay, conditions and safety. Yet again, Britain is to blame, acting as drag-anchor on EU progress. A manning directive was proposed to keep crews of ships sailing between EU ports protected by EU pay and conditions, but Britain helped the ship-owners sabotage the plan. The UK also chooses to issue the most certificates of equivalent competency to foreign crews, less well-trained and paid, undercutting its own mariners but pleasing the shipping lobby. We even let foreign ships and crews sail to and from our ports to our own oil platforms and wind farms. Britain’s role in the EU has too often been to stop progressive employment laws: remember our shameful opting out of the social chapter, until the Labour government opted us back in. How surprising that EU citizens still say they want us to stay. Yet more surprising are the few trade unions who back Brexit. Researching the P&O story, I was called by Mick Cash, head of the RMT, representing ratings. So I asked why he backs Brexit, when it would be easier to win strong shipping regulation from within the EU. The victorious Brexiteers will be ideologically opposed to creating better British working practices: they are the ultimate deregulators. But Cash says he still reckons Britain alone will, in some future halcyon day, be more free to set its own better rules independent of the rest of Europe. Most unions and the TUC disagree – as does Nautilus, deeply alarmed at the likely damage done by Brexit. P&O is just one case of Brexit flight, as other big companies threaten disinvestment and departure. But P&O taking the opportunity to fly a flag of convenience stands as a warning for how post-Brexit Britain will try to compete by deregulating and undercutting. Today’s Westminster “battle of the amendments” may seem remote to many, but the next few weeks will settle the future for us all for decades – for better or very much worse. • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnistHave you ever noticed how we crave sugary and carb-laden foods after a wild night out? Our bodies are great at demanding the fuels they need, when they need them. As I get older, I find I crave more vegetables than I used to (whoever heard of a teenager craving vegetables?), and far less meat. How great, then, that we celebrate vegetables so much more these days, not just because we know about their many benefits for health and the environment, but because we can make so many wonderful things with them. Silky, earthy artichokes, charred, tender cabbage, sweet chestnuts and a bright, piquant sauce – this is a real feast of flavours to drive out the January chill. Prep 6 minCook 40 minServes 4 400g jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed clean with wire wool120ml extra-virgin olive oilSalt For the cabbage4 tbsp vegetable or rapeseed oil1 january king cabbage, or 2 hispi cabbages, quartered through the stems1 tbsp sherry vinegar150g cooked chestnuts, roughly chopped For the green sauce60g olive oil1 tsp smoked paprika1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped2 large handfuls parsley leaves, finely chopped3 tbsp sherry or white-wine vinegar Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Cut the artichokes into bitesize chunks and put into a steamer. Steam until tender, around 20 minutes. Put into a bowl and pour in the olive oil. Blitz smooth with a hand blender, then season and set aside somewhere warm. Heat one and a half tablespoons of the vegetable oil in a large frying pan. When hot, add two of the cabbage quarters and press down hard so they have plenty of contact with the pan. Cook them for a few minutes until dark and charred, then turn, using a pair of tongs, to fry the other cut sides until charred. When done, sprinkle over half the vinegar, leave to bubble up then transfer the cabbage to a baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining quarters. Season the charred wedges and roast in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until tender in the middle. Meanwhile, wipe the frying pan and return it to the heat. Once hot, add the final tablespoon of vegetable oil. Add the chestnuts, then season and stir-fry until crisp and golden-edged. Transfer to a piece of kitchen paper to drain. To make the green sauce, gently heat the oil and paprika in a small pan. Once it begins to bubble, take off the heat and stir in the onion, parsley and vinegar. Season and leave to cool. Spoon the warm artichoke puree on to plates, put a wedge of cabbage on top, spoon the sauce over and scatter the crisp chestnuts on top. Use leftover chestnuts to make a stuffing for crown prince squash with sauteed onion, garlic and herbs, or blitz them with cream and rum and serve topped with grated dark chocolate. Leftover artichokes can be made into an incredibly silky, comforting soup with thyme, garlic and a touch of truffle oil, or go new wave and have them for pudding in the form of ice-cream.In knee-deep snow and biting cold, 10-year-old Saleh Qarqour had almost finished shovelling a path to the tent that had been his family’s home for the past six years. Elders and children huddled around a heater inside. Chimney smoke wafted from the town of Arsal in the valley below. Over the ridge behind them was the Syrian frontier, from which the Qarqour family and nearly everyone else in this Lebanese border town had fled. Their homes ever since had been makeshift tents, their frugal lives sustained by aid and goodwill, which, on this frozen ledge above Lebanon, was fast running out. As two savage snow storms pounded Arsal and other informal camps in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley this past fortnight, huddling refugees have faced a reckoning; whether to remain in life-threatening squalor, or return home to Syria, as politicians on both sides of the border have implored them to do. Nearly all have chosen to stay behind. The risks, they say, remain too high. About a million refugees registered by the UN remain in Lebanon and only an estimated 16,000 have made the journey home in the past year, aid officials say. Those who have left were cleared to do so by Syrian officials – their departure championed by officials in Beirut, who insist that Syria is now safe and that Lebanon has been for too long overburdened by their presence. As the Syrian war has wound down, with Russia and Iran stabilising the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Damascus has been determined to project an image of stability and reconciliation. Political blocs in Lebanon aligned to Assad have echoed the same message despite the repeated statements from UN officials that the conditions for return have not been met. “No one in Damascus, Beirut, or anywhere in the world can guarantee safety from Assad,” said Aref al-Homsi, a resident of one of the Arsal camps. “The Lebanese who want to say it’s a paradise there have a reason to do so – to please their masters. This is a regional agenda, not a Lebanese one. Those who return face jail or conscription. [The regime] will not act with humility. They will act with vengeance.” Uncertainty over what might happen once back inside Syria and distrust surrounding the motives of those pushing a homecoming means refugees in Lebanon’s Bekaa are not seriously contemplating returning to their homes. Many fled from nearby border areas, such as the town of Qusair, which was seized by Hezbollah in early 2013 and remains a stronghold for the militant group. Others come from Flita – a short gasping hike across the Qalamoun mountains – and other border villages that used to be waypoints for cross-border smuggling. “Hezbollah own Qusair,” said Fatima Safadi, standing in the snow outside her mountain tent. “This roof crashed under the snow last week,” she said. “Our house [in Qusair] crashed under a bomb.” In Turkey, and Jordan, where another 4.1 million Syrian refugees remain, pressure is also mounting on them to return. Although they were once welcomed, many inside Turkey say they feel increasingly unwelcome. Jordan, once at the centre of a push to oust Assad, is now making noises about reconciliation. Last month, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain reopened embassies in the Syrian capital. Emirati officials have put pressure on other Arab League states to follow – and to readmit Syria. Such a push – and rancour over refugees – were a backdrop to a failed Arab League economic summit in Beirut over the weekend, in which only the leaders of Mauritania and Qatar turned up – the latter for barely two hours. “The Lebanese government’s call on Syrians to return home occurs amidst a wider global movement where countries are increasingly ending their protections and programmes for refugees and putting immense pressure on them to return,” said Mai El-Sadany, the legal director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “It also comes amid a wider diplomatic attempt to rehabilitate the Assad regime as a government ready to welcome its people. But these policies and these movements could not be further removed from the legal, social, and political reality on the ground. The Assad regime has demonstrated that it is neither ready, nor willing, to welcome Syrians back to their homes “The Assad regime has demonstrated that it is neither ready, nor willing, to welcome Syrians back to their homes, as evidenced by the reconciliation agreements that continue to be violated, the counter-terrorism that authorities are still applying, the housing and property legal schemes being used to deprive refugees and IDPs [internally displaced people] of their homes, and the sense of impunity with which it speaks and acts. “Reports continue to surface that Syrians who dissented against the regime and returned home face interrogations and threats, arbitrary arrests at military checkpoints, and in some cases even torture and death.” In Arsal, Farid Qarquor ducks questions about what might await him at home, preferring to focus on what he and his family are dealing with now. “We’ve been here for over five years; we fled from Flita,” he said. “It’s been the hardest winter so far. “It’s difficult to get by. We have no jobs and no residency permits. The UN also took away our welfare cards. We now have to somehow provide for our own food, gas and healthcare. The owner of the land here also charges us for rent for our tent. We are lacking basic needs. “When we first got here it was the most challenging phase: we didn’t know anyone, it’s not our country, we weren’t familiar with the Syrian faces surrounding us. It’s gotten better though. Everybody learned to cooperate out of necessity. We would love to go back to our home but we don’t have one any more and we don’t have the means to rebuild.” Paul Donohoe of the International Rescue Committee said: “Some refugees have been pushed to their limits and openly say they think life has become so hard that maybe it would be better for them to go back to Syria. However, most still say that they simply don’t think Syria is safe enough for them to return. They would rather continue to brave conditions most of us would find intolerable than risk putting their families in danger.” Down the valley in Arsal, Abdel Hakim Shaqhabi, originally from Qusair, said: “I can’t find a job anywhere. I owe the grocery store nearby $100. He threatened to stop giving me bread if I don’t start to pay him back. How can I to go back to my town with no money? I don’t even think they will allow us back. A Sunni family tried to go back and they burned down their house and kicked them out. “The Lebanese military loves to play games with us. A few weeks ago at dawn they stormed our tents, took all the men and handcuffed them for no reason. We feel unwanted here and unwanted in our town.”Pope Francis has been offering parenting advice and, sad to say, it is rubbish. It would, perhaps, be more surprising if it were sensible. The Catholic church is an institution dominated by avowedly celibate men who are not meant to have children. Then there is its – how shall we put it? – distinctly patchy recent record of prioritising the needs of children, which you would think might disqualify it from opining about anything much. Still, the pope is the pope and a lot of people take him seriously – and what he has said is that it’s fine to have a blazing row with your partner, just not in front of the children. Take your slanging match about who was supposed to have organised the dishwasher repair out of sight and earshot. Anyone who has actually had children will know this is pointless. The one thing I have learned from bringing up four children over what feels like an awfully long period of time – and which is, in fact, more than 30 years – is that they are always subtler and more sophisticated than you think. They are invariably one step ahead. You can go into the bedroom and shut the door and seethe at each other through gritted teeth, more or less inaudibly, and they can still tell that something is up. They won’t know what it is, though. They may jump to the conclusion that you’re getting a divorce when you are only having a fight about poor recycling practices. The pope was, perhaps in the way of popes, quite dogmatic. “I would like to give advice,” he said, during a baptismal mass at the Vatican. “Sorry, but I recommend this: never fight in front of the children, never.” “Never” presumably means that if you are in a confined space – the car, say – and your partner says something patently offensive, you are meant to suppress your cries of outraged ridicule until some later stage. By which time your annoyance will have curdled into disdain and left you in a thoroughly bad, unaccommodating mood. Children are like Geiger counters for their parents’ emotions, says E Mark Cummings, a psychology professor who has written a book about the effects of parental conflict on children. Yet while children are almost supernaturally attuned to parental unhappiness, they don’t necessarily possess the rational capacity to make sense of it. Pretending that you are not massively annoyed by your idiot partner when a child can tell you that you are is not, then, an act of kindness. Better an explosion of honest irritation, promptly kissed-and-made-up, than festering hostility. Emotion, like water, will always find a way out, and repressed emotion is likely to emerge as sniping or cold hostility, hours after you should have acknowledged that while idiotic, your partner may also have a point and anyway is rather lovely. Expert opinion differs wildly on the merits of arguing in front of the children, to the point of being almost comically contradictory. On the one hand, it’s the most dangerous thing you can do, raising levels of cortisol to dangerous levels, disrupting their sleep patterns, causing illness and anxiety. On the other it is a useful teachable moment, demonstrating conflict resolution and the enduring power of love. This unhelpfully conflicting advice is explained by the fact that the experts are talking about quite different things. There are disagreements about the dishwasher and the recycling, and then there are disagreements about acts of betrayal, affairs, or spending all the money: long-term, horrible things that are better described as being profoundly at odds. Clearly, if you need to debate sex or affairs or money, the place to do it is not at the kitchen table when you’re trying to get the kids off to school. But there’s a plausible case to be made for honest expressions of emotion about the small things so as not to get to the point of quarrelling about the big ones. It’s not particularly helpful for children to think that marriages are conflict-free zones. On the contrary, they need to understand that it’s possible to disagree and still be an indivisible unit, and that it’s perfectly possible to find your partner the most tiresome, inept, hopeless person on the planet and still vastly prefer them to anyone else. Children are really remarkably smart about these things. They feel what’s going on, even if they can’t begin to articulate it. As so often with questions of family harmony, of course you do have to be careful about whom you choose to do your parenting with. What you need to look for is someone who will indulge you in the venting of your (in my case, invariably justifiable) frustrations and who will, an hour later, quite rightly acknowledge that you’re adorable. • Geraldine Bedell is a journalist, author and founding editor of GransnetThe good news for Manchester City is that Liverpool suddenly look quite vulnerable. They conceded three goals here and ended up with 10 men after James Milner had, almost inevitably, picked up a second yellow card for another foul on Wilfried Zaha. The bad news is that they are still winning, even in adverse circumstances, and have reopened a seven-point gap. The home side’s 10 men managed what turned out to be the decisive goal when Sadio Mané cut in from the left to score in stoppage timeand, despite Max Meyer grabbing a last-gasp third for the visitors, Liverpool clung on for three important points. One way or another Crystal Palace have contributed to an absorbing battle at the top of the Premier League. They halted the City procession by unexpectedly winning at the Etihad before Christmas and they might have pegged Liverpool back here but for lapses of concentration that ruined a promising start. In Manchester Palace mounted a spectacular comeback after going a goal down, scoring twice in quick succession to surprise Pep Guardiola’s side. Here they seemed to grow tired of waiting for the league leaders to go in front and after half an hour of comfortably repelling everything Liverpool could throw at them they went upfield to demonstrate what a quick and incisive attack looks like. The much-anticipated contest between Milner and Zaha did not really happen in the first half because Palace did so little attacking, but when Liverpool found themselves overstretched and Patrick van Aanholt picked out the winger on the left he took full advantage. Zaha was round Milner on the outside in a flash, reaching the byline and cutting the ball back across goal, where Andros Townsend reacted quicker than Fabinho to beat Alisson from near the penalty spot. The goal was against the run of play but the run of play and a wealth of possession had not been doing Liverpool any favours. With Xherdan Shaqiri on the bench they seemed to lack ideas and penetration, constantly shuttling the ball across the pitch without coming close to breaking through Palace’s two banks of defenders. Julián Speroni made an early save from Joël Matip and Virgil van Dijk headed narrowly over the bar from a free-kick but that those two half-chances represented the closest Liverpool came to a goal in the first period told its own story. That was just the first half, though. With the sort of luck that will worry City supporters, Liverpool were back on level terms almost immediately after the interval with a goal that was more of Palace’s making than their own. First Van Aanholt and Mamadou Sakho dithered over a loose ball in the penalty area, eventually clearing unconvincingly. Jordan Henderson fed Van Dijk, whose shot from 30 yards out was hopeful in the extreme, yet the ball struck James McArthur on the way through and ended up hanging tantalisingly in front of Speroni. The goalkeeper might have been more decisive and his hesitancy was punished by Salah, who stuck out his left leg to collect one of the simplest goals of his career. Palace were unnerved after that and the defence that had stood so firm in the first half gave way again six minutes later. James Tomkins unwisely stood off Roberto Firmino in the area, allowing him to take Naby Keïta’s pass and turn almost at leisure to beat Speroni with a shot into the bottom corner. At least Tomkins was quickly able to atone for his error when he levelled the scores from a Luka Milivojevic corner, rising unchallenged at the far post to head past Alisson. That could and perhaps should have been a decisive moment in the title race but another defensive mistake steered Liverpool towards the three points. Milner did well to reach Fabinho’s diagonal pass and turn a first-time cross back into the danger area but there was no one to accept the invitation until Speroni tried to intercept and succeeded only in wafting the ball backwards towards goal. Once again Salah was on hand to profit – his knack of being in the right place is uncanny – but the ball was crossing the line anyway. There was still time for two more goals and a dismissal as the day’s second 4-3 face-off did its best to match the excitement seen earlier at Molineux, and there was more riding on the result of this match. Judging by the roar from the Kop that greeted Jürgen Klopp’s fist-pumping salute at the end, Liverpool might just feel they have dodged a bullet.It had been quite a weekend already for Callum Hudson-Odoi, what with the emergence of the story that he wanted his much-discussed move to Bayern Munich so badly he had submitted a formal transfer request. The noises around the 18-year-old Chelsea winger for much of January had been that he favours leaving over staying. This felt like confirmation – the realisation of the worst fears of the club’s support. “God’s plan is always the best,” Hudson-Odoi posted on Instagram. “Sometimes the process is painful and hard. But don’t forget that when God is silent, he’s doing something for you.” Bayern have made several offers, the biggest of which has added up to £35m, and it feels inevitable that they will be back again before Thursday’s deadline. Would Hudson-Odoi even play against Sheffield Wednesday in this FA Cup tie? The answer was yes and, with one flash of magic, he reminded everybody why he is such a coveted talent. Chelsea were one goal to the good, courtesy of Willian’s first-half penalty, but labouring to prise Wednesday apart when Andreas Christensen drifted a high ball from left to right in Hudson-Odoi’s direction. With the left-back Morgan Fox not tight enough, Hudson-Odoi’s first touch was true and his second was even better, a Cristiano Ronaldo-style chop inside that killed his marker and set up the shooting chance. He buried it with his left foot, Keiren Westwood getting his hands to the ball but unable to keep it out and, rather abruptly, the tie was over. Bayern’s scouts would have nodded their approval. Maurizio Sarri had given Gonzalo Higuaín, the loan signing from Juventus, his debut and although the striker struggled for space and opportunity, Chelsea had too much for the team that lags 17th in the Championship and will welcome Steve Bruce as their new permanent manager this week. Willian scored his second late on – a lovely finish following a one-two with the substitute Olivier Giroud – and Chelsea could enjoy a second cup tonic in four days, following their penalty shootout win over Tottenham in the Carabao Cup semi-final. Wednesday were well beaten, although they felt aggrieved when the tie turned away from them midway through the first half amid a whiff of conspiracy – certainly among the supporters who had packed the away enclosure. At one end, Wednesday thought they had a penalty to blow the game open only for the award to be overturned via VAR and, when Chelsea went straight up to the other end, the visitors conceded a penalty; their wounds well and truly salted. It should be said that the offence, committed when Sam Hutchinson, the former Chelsea midfielder, stamped in on César Azpilicueta, was crystal clear and it felt a little strange to see the decision also referred to VAR. Perhaps, it was merely in the interests of even-handedness. For a second, it felt as if the penalty might be the moment for Higuaín to open his Chelsea account. Willian had walked over to have a short conversation with him. Did he offer Higuaín the kick? In the end, it was Willian who assumed the responsibility. He stuttered as he approached the ball and side-footed confidently into the corner. Wednesday’s hearts had soared when Joey Pelupessy swapped passes with Steven Fletcher and charged into the box. Ethan Ampadu, who started in defensive midfield, came across to challenge and, in real time, he seemed to nick the ball away and connect with Pelupessy’s ankle at virtually the same time. The on-pitch referee, Andre Marriner, gave the benefit of the doubt to Pelupessy but, after the super-slow replays, it looked as though Ampadu’s tackle was fair. Just about. Tell that to the Wednesday supporters. “VAR is fucking shit,” they chorused. Chelsea dominated the ball but Wednesday’s back four were well-drilled. They were touch tight to Higuaín, who ran willingly but struggled for any space. He wriggled free on one occasion before the interval, fastening onto Mateo Kovacic’s pass, only for Tom Lees to make the block. Higuaín looked fractionally offside. Later on, he would flash a header well wide. Wednesday worked tirelessly but they could get precious little going as an attacking force. Adam Reach broke up the inside-left channel in the second minute after Barry Bannan had robbed Kovacic yet his shot from an angle was easy for Willy Caballero. That was basically it from them before half-time. Chelsea looked slicker, their touches more refined. It was always likely to be the case. But at 1-0, Wednesday knew that one break, one flicker could turn the tie upside down. They came to feel that Marriner was against them, preferring Chelsea in the 50-50s. They simply had the issue themselves. Reach sent a 50th-minute cross towards the top of the near post and watched as Caballero left it. The ball bounced away off the outside of the upright. It was risky from the goalkeeper. Reach also got in behind Marcos Alonso to win a corner. Slim pickings but they allowed Wednesday to dream. Hudson-Odoi delivered the reality check and thereafter, Chelsea coasted to the win. At full time, all eyes were on Hudson-Odoi, as he removed his shirt and made the long walk from the far touchline to the tunnel, tracked every step of the way by a TV camera. Chelsea’s FA Cup defence continues unchecked. Holding on to their starlet looks rather tougher.I have seldom seen a poll on a subject dividing the nation for which the lessons are so clear. The biggest survey yet conducted on Brexit shows that Remain would comfortably win a referendum held today – and that Labour would crash to a landslide election defeat if it helped Brexit go ahead. YouGov questioned more than 25,000 people between 21 December and last Friday. It tested two referendum scenarios. If the choice is Remain versus the government’s withdrawal agreement, Remain leads by 26 points: 63% to 37%. If the choice is Remain versus leaving the EU without a deal, Remain wins by 16 points: 58% to 42%. The difference is explained by the views of those who voted Leave in 2016. Many of them want a clean break with Brussels, but back away from an agreement that fails to redeem the promise in 2016 to “take back control”. Among all voters, only 22% support the government’s deal. Among Leave voters the figure is not much higher: 28%. The larger point is that the nature of the choice has changed since 2016 – 52% voted Leave when it was a general aspiration with little apparent downside. Today support for Brexit is significantly lower when Leave is more clearly defined. This pattern is familiar to referendums in different countries: many people support the broad idea of change, but back away when the details are laid out. They want “change”, but not “this change”. That is clearly the case today: 80% of people who voted Leave two years ago still say they want Brexit to go ahead; but the figure falls to 69% if the choice is a “no deal” Brexit, and only 55% if the referendum offers the withdrawal agreement. The rest say they don’t know, or switch to Remain. (The respective loyalty rates on the other side – Remain voters in 2016 who would stick with Remain today – are significantly higher.) In short, the electorate is increasingly polarised between a growing majority that wants the UK to stay in the EU and a much smaller, but still significant, segment of the electorate that wants a hard, “no deal” Brexit. There is little public appetite for compromise between these two positions. This polarisation poses acute problems for Jeremy Corbyn as well as Theresa May. The Labour leader fears that if his party backs a public vote and then campaigns for a Remain victory he will alienate Leave voters in Labour’s heartlands. YouGov’s figures suggest that, far from boosting Labour’s support, Corbyn’s approach could lead to electoral catastrophe. The conventional voting intention question produces a six-point Conservative lead (40% to 34%). This is bad enough for an opposition that ought to be reaping electoral dividends at a time when the government is in crisis. However, when voters are asked how they would vote if Labour failed to resist Brexit, the Conservatives open up a 17-point lead (43% to 26%). That would be an even worse result than in Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory in 1983, when Labour slumped to 209 seats, its worst result since the 1930s. The key reason for this is that, if Labour is seen to facilitate Brexit in any form, YouGov’s results indicate that the party would be deserted by millions of Remain voters – without gaining any extra support from Leave voters. Thus Labour risks losing Remain seats where the party did well in 2017 – famously Kensington and Canterbury, but also a host of other constituencies in and around London, and others with a large student population – while failing to recoup any of the ground it lost in the party’s traditional heartlands. In 2016 Labour voters divided two to one in favour of staying in the EU. Today Labour voters divide 83% to 17% if the choice is Remain versus the Withdrawal Agreement, and 80% to 20% in a Remain versus “no deal” contest. There are huge and obvious risks in being seen to thwart such huge majorities – either by resisting a referendum or, if one is held, failing to campaign against Brexit. Peter Kellner is the former president of YouGov.Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and longtime consumer protection advocate, became the first Democratic candidate to formally enter the 2020 presidential race on Monday, with a New Year’s Eve announcement that seemed timed to pre-empt the slew of candidacies from her fellow Democrats that are expected in the coming months. In a five-minute video, she stands in her kitchen and emphasizes the injustice of rising economic inequality, an issue she has focused her career on with an almost religious devotion. The Hillary Clinton comparisons followed immediately, with Politico asking just hours later: “How does Elizabeth Warren avoid a Clinton redux – written off as too unlikeable before her campaign gets off the ground?” The comparison to Clinton is an odd one, since there is considerable political daylight between the two women. Warren advocates for redistributive efforts far to the left of what Clinton campaigned for, even after her campaign was shifted into a more progressive position following the bruising 2016 primary fight against Bernie Sanders. Warren has called for an end to corporate personhood, has declared trickle-down economics “a lie” and has tentatively endorsed a “Green New Deal”. The two women can seem to have little in common besides a party affiliation and a haircut. The fact is that Elizabeth Warren is likable. She speaks frankly and in moral terms, avoiding the cajoling sliminess of politicians such as the reptilian Texas senator Ted Cruz, or her probable Democratic primary opponent, New Jersey senator Cory Booker. She is better at avoiding the air of professorial condescension that was sometimes indulged by her fellow former legal scholars Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. At times, she even achieves the unaffected folksiness that endears voters to politicians such as Beto O’Rourke or Ronald Reagan. She has an air of kindly authority that might remind you of your old school teacher – probably because she used to be one. But none of this is what we mean when we ask whether or not Elizabeth Warren is “likable”, just as it was not what was meant when that tiresome question was asked about Clinton in the 2016 election cycle. Instead, the question of “likability” as it is applied to women candidates has become a kind of cipher through which pundits, strategists and ordinary Americans discuss our collective discomfort with women in power. The claim that a woman candidate is not “likable” is a code for saying she defies our shared cultural understanding that power and authority are implicitly male, and that women who claim them are illegitimate, threatening or breaking the rules. If it were possible for Warren to be “likable”, under this rubric, it would only be if she were able to adhere to prevailing ideas of what is appropriate behavior for her sex – that is, if she were not seeking public office at all. Of course, there are reasons for committed progressives to dislike Warren. She was a registered Republican in the early 1990s, and in the past she has made enthusiastic proclamations of the virtues of the free market, statements that are likely to strike the Democratic party’s left wing as suspicious or naive. Troublingly, she recently made a stupid and unforced error when she took a DNA test to prove her Native American ancestry. The test was meant to dispel Donald Trump’s accusation that Warren fabricated her heritage – her calls her “Pocahontas” – in order to take advantage of affirmative action programs. It was a smear that was designed by the president to pique the racist enthusiasms of his base, and it worked. But by taking the test, Warren angered Native Americans, who have correctly argued that their culture is more than DNA, and she has made the rookie mistake of engaging with Trump on his own bad-faith terms. If she is to be successful against him in a general election, she will have to learn to deflect his attacks more intelligently, without playing into his hands. But the biggest obstacle to Warren’s candidacy will be sexism, and not only from the trumped-up mobs of rightwingers who are sure to start chanting “Lock her up” in reference to her at Trump’s next rally. Misogyny is alive and well in the Democratic party; it knows no political affiliation. Much of the sexism that Warren will face will be from Republicans, but it will also come from Democratic voters – men and a few women who are liberals, leftists and progressives. Many of these voters are people who esteem themselves to be feminists or otherwise free of bias, but who will nevertheless find themselves uncomfortable with a woman in power, unable to articulate what it is that bothers them about Elizabeth Warren – except for a vague sense that they just don’t like her. • Moira Donegan is a writerLast week, in the most high-profile celebrity aviation incident since Kate Moss popularised the term “basic bitch” in a row with easyJet staff about sandwiches, the American rapper Azealia Banks removed herself from an Aer Lingus flight after calling a flight attendant an “ugly Irish bitch”. According to a tearful video she posted on Instagram, Banks said a flight attendant asked her questions she couldn’t answer without checking her passport, which she had stored in the overhead locker. As she looked for her passport, the situation escalated. A fellow passenger told Mail Online they felt the crew were heavy-handed. After disembarking the flight voluntarily, Banks called the Aer Lingus staff “ugly Irish women”, threatening to throw geese into the engine of the plane. When the incident sparked a semi-serious tabloid row about the beauty or lack thereof of Irish women, Banks apologised to her Irish fans, calling herself the “Queen of Ireland” and asking that they throw baked potatoes at her if they were offended by her comments. Is there a tougher gig than being Banks’s publicist? You wonder if they get strapped into the same spinning chair they use to stress-test astronauts. Since breaking out in 2011 with 212, her fast-flowing celebration of cunnilingus, Banks’ gift for controversy would challenge even the most battle-hardened PR professional. In 2017, she accepted a plea deal after an incident in which she bit a New York City bouncer on the breast and spat on her. In 2016, she claimed that the actor Russell Crowe assaulted her during a party in a Beverly Hills hotel room. Prosecutors dropped the case after other partygoers told police that they had witnessed Banks threaten to attack a woman with broken glass. In 2015, she was removed from a Delta flight after calling an attendant a “fucking faggot”. A year later, she called Zayn Malik a “curry-scented bitch”, and asked for Sarah Palin to be gangbanged. In spite of all of her bigoted and bullying behaviour, some people continue to root for her. “I can’t wait to see her, I love her music so much,” one fan told the Irish Times after Banks, belatedly, made it to Ireland for her gig. “She is a dickhead though.” Banks is after all, superbly talented, from her blistering debut mixtape Fantasea to the sensual 2018 single Treasure Island: a fact that is often forgotten amidst gleeful media coverage of her public spats. Last year, Banks became involved in 2018’s most bizarre celebrity feud, after a recording session with electronic artist Grimes at her then-boyfriend Elon Musk’s house devolved into chaos. Banks made her text exchange with Grimes public, in which she called her a “brittleboned methhead” who smelled “like a roll of nickels”. In an age when labels pressure-hose individuality out of their artists like crime scene cleaners, and a star such as Ellie Goulding talks about female empowerment at awards ceremonies because a shampoo brand asked her to, Banks’s refusal to engage in nonsensical publicity guff is an icy blast to the face in today’s temperature-controlled PR climate. She posts cheery videos about cleaning blood out of the closet where she ritually sacrifices chickens, calls Rita Ora “Rihanna’s understudy”, and describes the VMAs a “contest of the basics”. Being a Banks fan involves a certain amount of cognitive dissonance – she embodies so many contradictory qualities In an industry that celebrates a certain type of positivist, girl-squad femininity, Banks is not “good”. Being a Banks fan involves a certain amount of cognitive dissonance, because she embodies so many contradictory qualities at once. She is a pugnacious troll who once encouraged Iggy Azalea to commit suicide, but she is also someone whose irrepressibility has paved a way into the industry for underground female rappers such as Cupcakke and her former labelmate Rico Nasty. And she is a victim too: although she has spoken publicly about her struggles with mental illness, she doesn’t get the same understanding someone like Kanye West receives, a double standard she acknowledged in a 2016 Broadly interview. Mostly, Banks rubs people up the wrong way because she refuses to be anything other than herself, even when it affects her public image by allowing the press to paint her according to the racist stereotype of the “angry black woman”. Banks acknowledges the media coverage that constantly swirls around her: after disembarking the Aer Lingus flight, she posted on Instagram criticising the people who are “addicted to Azealia Banks trauma porn”. She also told an Irish Instagram user: “Don’t you have a famine to go die in?” Her Dublin gig ended up being a riotous success, and she will now embark on a tour of medium-sized UK venues. Why isn’t an artist of Banks’s calibre playing bigger stages? Perhaps it’s because while weare addicted to the trauma, she seems to be too. The music can’t be heard through the noise.Last Friday night, Jeremy Kappell, a local weatherman with WHEC-TV in Rochester, New York, added a word to the name of a downtown ice rink. Kappell was reporting on “Martin Luther coon King Jr Park”, he said, his voice appearing to catch on “coon”. The incident went unaddressed on air, but gathered steam over the weekend online. By Sunday night, Rochester’s mayor, Lovely Warren, called for Kappell’s dismissal. By Monday, WHEC had fired Kappell, who has maintained that the word was an innocent mispronunciation. Snowballing online outrage has produced a statement in Kappell’s defense from Today show co-host Al Roker, an appearance on the Today show, and on Thursday afternoon, a statement urging caution from Martin Luther King Jr’s daughter. “I believe that when these racial slurs occur, unless there’s a situation where it’s continual, that people need an opportunity to be rehabilitated,” said Dr Bernice King, the civil rights leader’s youngest child, in a video posted on TMZ. While she said there needed to be repercussions for using a racial slur, “I don’t think it should go as far, in this particular instance, as firing an individual.” Instead, she suggested other options such as demotion, another assignment off-air, or implicit bias training. “Obviously, an apology is warranted,” she said. “And yes, he did apologize.” Earlier this week, Kappell, accompanied by his wife, posted a video to Facebook explaining the slur as a “simple misunderstanding” borne out of speaking too much, too quickly. “If you watch me regularly you know that I contain a lot of information in my weather forecasts, which forces me to speak fast,” Kappell said. “Unfortunately I spoke a little too fast when I was referencing Dr Martin Luther King Jr So fast to the point where I jumbled a couple of words.” “In my mind I knew I had mispronounced but ... I had no idea how it came across to many people,” continued Kappell. “That was not a word that I said, I promise you that. And if you did feel that it hurt you in any way, I sincerely apologize. I would never want to tarnish the reputation of such a great man, Dr Martin Luther King Jr.” Kappell also expressed disappointment in WHEC for letting him go, a decision that has come under fire this week as several television journalists defended Kappell’s explanation of events. Al Roker tweeted Wednesday that he thought Kappell “made an unfortunate flub and should be given the chance to apologize on @news10nbc Anyone who has done live tv and screwed up (google any number of ones I’ve done) understands”. Mark Taylor, a local news co-host with NBC4 in Columbus, Ohio, shared Roker’s sentiment. Well said @alroker. This is outrageous. It is shocking to me the way @news10nbc @CityRochesterNY dealt with this situation. @JeremyKappell https://t.co/e0C3VjtUCx Kappell has shared on his social media channels three other instances of on-air talent making the same mistake with Martin Luther King Jr’s name in the past, including Mike Greenberg, co-host of ESPN’s Mike & Mike. One of them, a weatherman with KTNV in Las Vegas, was fired in 2005. Greenberg and the San Antonio weatherman Mike Hernandez, who both publicly apologized, were not. In a statement posted to Facebook Thursday afternoon, as reported in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Mayor Warren quoted Martin Luther King Jr and urged empathy and forgiveness. “It is our job to recognize the divide between our beliefs and our actions and dedicate ourselves to change our actions so our intent is never called into question,” she said. Regardless of intent, Bernice King urged change. “At the end of the day, I can’t question a person’s intent when they apologize. But we’re here now. It’s viral. The world knows about it. So he’s going to have to take some actions to show that he has made some effort at trying to insure something like this doesn’t happen again.”Turmeric is as delicious as it is nourishing, bringing sunshine yellow to everything it touches. We are used to jars of the bright-yellow ground stuff, with its earthy flavour, but fresh turmeric is also starting to make regular appearances on our shelves. It looks like ginger’s little cousin, with a light, almost citrus note to it. Both make their way into my soups, stews, curries and broths in winter, not to mention teas and flavoured milks. I eat this when I feel under the weather, and also when I want something satisfyingly warm and straightforward. I love the uncomplicated simplicity of the golden broth with chewy udon noodles. You could add seasonal veg, too: shredded greens, sugar snap peas, even roast squash, if you like. Prep 15 minCook 30 minServes 4-6 1 tsp coriander seeds, toasted 5 black peppercorns 1 large onion, peeled and halved2 small carrots, halved1 small bulb garlic, halved 1 large thumb-sized knob ginger (55g), sliced1 small thumb fresh turmeric root (20g), sliced, or 1 tsp ground turmeric4 spring onions, plus extra, shredded, to serve¼ red chilli, deseeded1 litre clear vegetable stockA squeeze of lemonSoy sauce, or salt, to season600g thick udon noodles Chilli oil, to serve In a large lidded saucepan, toast the coriander seeds and peppercorns over a medium heat for two minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, apart from the lemon, soy, noodles and chilli. Pour over one litre of boiled water. Bring to a boil, then turn to a simmer for 25 minutes, to allow the flavours to infuse. Strain the broth and serve straight away, or keep with the veg and strain before reheating and serving. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, or more, if you’d like, and add soy or salt as needed. You should have a delicately flavoured, fragrant broth. When almost ready to serve, cook the noodles according to pack instructions, then drain. Place portions in bowls and ladle the broth over the noodles. Serve with extra spring onions and a little chilli oil. Less cloying and filling than those achingly trendy turmeric lattes. On writing days, I make a big pot to sit on the stove, and dip into it through the day. It’s understood in Ayurveda medicine that adding black pepper where you use turmeric activates its renowned properties. Prep 5 minMakes 2 cups 1 tbsp grated ginger1-2 lemons (depending on size)½ tsp ground turmeric or 1 tbsp grated fresh turmeric1 tiny pinch dried chilli flakesA few grinds of black pepperHoney (I use the raw stuff), to sweeten Put the ginger into a teapot. Squeeze in the juice of the lemons, add the ground or fresh turmeric, chilli flakes and black pepper, then pour 600ml just-boiled water over the mix. Leave to cool slightly, then sweeten with a little honey (this will make sure the amazing properties of the honey aren’t killed by the heat of boiling water).It’s the art fight of the year, the rumble in the museum. Who is the greatest – Rembrandt van Rijn or Leonardo da Vinci? The two geniuses both have big anniversaries this year. According to the Netherlands, 2019 is officially the Year of Rembrandt. Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Museum De Lakenhall in Leiden are all putting on shows for the 350th anniversary of his death in 1669. Yet Rembrandt isn’t getting his year to himself. This also happens to be the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo in 1519. It’s a great excuse for exhibitions by Britain’s Royal Collection and British Library as well as a grand retrospective at the Louvre. So which is the bigger anniversary? The smart bet might seem to be Rembrandt. His art is so absorbing, tragic and inward. His portraits are the painterly equivalents of King Lear. He is a painter in whose shadows the soul can linger. By contrast, Leonardo is a pop star who’s still busting the market 500 years after his death – and isn’t that a bit oppressive? It’s hard not to feel alienated among all the smartphone-touting tourists in front of the Mona Lisa. Not much room there for the meditative silent communion you can have with a Rembrandt. His paintings are absorbing, tragic and inward – but how many copies would The Rembrandt Code sell? Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait With Two Circles is unlikely to be surrounded by cameras if you seek it out at Kenwood House in London. You can gaze into the old artist’s dark eyes as they contemplate you in return. His conscious presence lurks in soft mossy gatherings of muted colour. He uses his brush to create both himself and what looks like an unfinished map of the world. Rembrandt looks noble and flawed, gazing at you as one troubled person at another. Did Leonardo ever create anything so disarmingly and rawly human? I’d reply with another question: has anyone under the age of 30 ever given a hoot about Rembrandt? Self-portraits that probe the inner self are all very well, but there’s a universality to Leonardo that puts him in a different league. I became a fan of his genius when I was about eight. I had a Ladybird book about great artists. The story of Leonardo da Vinci was like a fairytale – there was a picture of him buying birds at market just so he could release them. What’s Rembrandt got for an eight-year-old? And how many copies would The Rembrandt Code sell? As for depth, it’s a false test to compare a Rembrandt self-portrait with the Mona Lisa. To grasp the real wonder of Leonardo you need to look at his drawings. He finished very few paintings and all are commissions in which self-expression struggles with patrons’ demands. It’s in his notebooks that Leonardo truly soars. In page after page he studies nature, designs machinery, invents weapons, plans fortifications and seeks the secret of flight. The greatest of all these visual investigations are his anatomical drawings. These are his artistic answers to Rembrandt’s portraits – and they are also miracles of science. He wrote of the dread he felt when he stayed up all night in a dissection room full of cadavers, alone with the dead. Out of these experiments he produced drawings that go – literally – deeper than Rembrandt. Instead of being moved by a face, Leonardo digs and cuts in search of life’s hidden structure. The drawings that record his fleshy discoveries outdo Rembrandt’s greatest portraits as images of what it is to be human. There’s no more moving work of art on earth than his depiction of a foetus in the womb, esconced as if in a capsule bound for the stars. The quivering mystery of Leonardo’s drawings of the lungs and heart, the precision of his studies of the eye and brain – these are his most sensitive as well as mind-boggling works. His anatomical drawings belong to the Queen and many will be touring the country this year. Sure, Rembrandt is the Shakespeare of painting. But Leonardo is Shakespeare, Einstein and the Wright brothers rolled into one. Come off it, Rijksmuseum. This just isn’t Rembrandt’s year.People are almost twice as likely to succeed in quitting smoking if they use e-cigarettes than if they rely on nicotine replacement patches and gums, a new study has shown. The research, focused on nearly 900 long-term smokers seeking NHS help to quit, was hailed as a landmark by experts in public health in the UK who believe e-cigarettes have already helped bring down the smoking rate. However, there was less enthusiasm in the United States, where there is concern that vaping nicotine is addictive and may cause children to start smoking. Prof Peter Hajek from Queen Mary University of London led a randomised controlled trial to establish whether e-cigarettes were a better aid to quitting than nicotine replacement therapy. Their research is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The mostly middle-aged smokers were randomly assigned to be given an e-cigarette starter kit or nicotine replacement therapy such as patches, lozenges, sprays or gum. All were given behavioural support. At the end of the year, 18% of the vapers were no longer smoking , compared with almost 10% of the others. It is the first trial to compare the licensed quitting aids with e-cigarettes, which are not licensed for medical use. Hajek believes the results could change the advice smokers are given. “Although a large number of smokers report that they have quit smoking successfully with the help of e-cigarettes, health professionals have been reluctant to recommend their use because of the lack of clear evidence from randomised controlled trials. This is now likely to change,” he said. The early problems smokers experience when trying to give up, such as irritability and inability to concentrate, were lower in those using e-cigarettes. Vapers reported more throat and mouth irritation, but nicotine replacement therapy users reported more nausea. At the end of the year, nearly 80% – the vast majority – of those using e-cigarettes were still vaping, whereas only 9% of the other group were still using gum and other forms of nicotine replacement therapy. “I think one can see it as potentially problematic and also potentially beneficial,” said Hajek. “There are both sides to it and I think the beneficial side is stronger. The negative one is they are still using something and e-cigarettes are unlikely to be totally safe. They are unlikely to have more than about 5% of the risks of smoking but there is still some risk and if using it for one year means that they are using it for 30 years and if that generates some health risk then they would be better off not using it. “Now the positive aspect is that we know from studies of nicotine replacement therapy that some heavy smokers need that crutch for longer to protect them from relapse. “They will get quite a bit of benefit in that they will avoid feeling miserable and having urges to smoke and feeling there is something missing in their life and they will not put on weight, which these type of heavy smokers do, which puts them at risk of diabetes and so on.” Public Health England and many UK scientists involved in tobacco research have strongly supported the potential of e-cigarettes to help people quit. “This landmark research shows that switching to an e-cigarette can be one of the most effective ways to quit smoking, especially when combined with face-to-face support. All stop-smoking services should welcome smokers who want to quit with the help of an e-cigarette,” said Martin Dockrell, tobacco control lead at Public Health England. “Smokers trying to quit have been choosing e-cigarettes over other types of support for some time. The research indicates that health professionals and Stop Smoking services should reach out to smokers who want to use e-cigarettes and support them in making this life-changing step,” said Prof Ann McNeill from Kings College London. Prof Robert West from University College London said the study was “of huge significance. It provides the clearest indication yet that e-cigarettes are probably more effective than products such as nicotine gum and patches. It fits previously published trend data showing an increase in quit success rates in England and the US linked to more people using e-cigarettes.” All agreed that more research is needed into the long-term potential harms of e-cigarettes. But a comment paper on the study in the journal by US scientists takes a more cautious view. Belinda Borrelli and George T O’Connor from the Henry M. Goldman school of dental medicine at Boston University say the possibility of long-term harms – and the fear that children will learn addictive behaviours by watching adults vaping – mean that e-cigarettes should not be tried ahead of nicotine therapy products licensed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “We recommend that e-cigarettes be used only when FDA-approved treatments (combined with behavioural counselling) fail, that patients be advised to use the lowest dose needed to manage their cravings and that there be a clear timeline and ‘off ramp’ for use,” they write.A good measure of a book’s success is: are booksellers tired of being asked if they have it in stock? In one south London bookshop, the owner has put a sign in the window advising that yes, they do have copies of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the literary phenomenon of the year. This week, Rooney, 27, became the youngest novelist ever to land the Costa awards’ best novel category. Normal People is now favourite to win the prize for overall book of the year at the end of the month. Her second novel has been a surprise – not for its quality, which was assured after her confident debut Conversations with Friends – but for the response to it. There hasn’t been a literary novel that has had such an impact on conversation beyond the usual huddles of luvvies since perhaps Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, or, before that, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, or even before that, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Booksellers have said they are keeping a stash behind the counter, putting them in the hands of customers before they can even blurt: “Do you have …” Not that they mind it; Waterstones staff named it as their favourite book to recommend last year, while one Hatchards bookseller says it was the first book the chain had began to see more commonly sold in multiples, to people eager to share it with friends. I was buying three copies at the time. So why has it become the novel of the moment – and, arguably, the decade? Normal People is a quiet, literary novel – but it is a zeitgeist novel too (despite being set five years ago). It’s hard not to emerge from Rooney’s book about two young people navigating adulthood in post-crash Ireland and sense that, somehow, the author has spotted something intangible about our time and exposed it. Like other zeitgeist novels, from Gone With the Wind, when mass-fiction began booming in the 1930s, to Franzen’s post 9/11 tome Freedom, Normal People has trapped a moment – in this case, our new sense of collective precariousness – whether individual, economic or political. It is the first novel I have read that has convincingly captured what it is to be young today: often overeducated, neurotic, slightly too self-aware. So much can be read into the aspiration of the male character Connell to one day “start going to dinner parties and having conversations about the Greek bailout” – a dream for a young man with preconceived ideas about what successful adults do. Or, indeed, to fellow protagonist Marianne’s sense that “her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it”. “Hysterical realism” was the name the critic James Wood once gave to the mid-2000s boom of novels ostensibly deliberately setting out to capture the moment. He was not a fan of novels he saw as overstuffed with symbolism and real world events. But what Rooney does differently from Ian McEwan’s Saturday (the Iraq war) or Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (multiculturalism and globalisation) is to ensure it never feels like a lesson. The most compelling question the novel poses is, simply: will Marianne and Connell eventually be happy? In one scene in Normal People, Connell is so engrossed by Jane Austen’s Emma that he loses track of time and, leaving the library, he marvels: “It feels intellectually unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying one another. But there it is: literature moves him.” There it is.It was a softball question at a campaign trail press conference: what would Jair Bolsonaro do on his first day as president? Brazil’s preeminent provocateur wrestled it straight into a Trumpian whirlpool of bluster and barminess. First, Bolsonaro – then still an outsider in the race for power – savaged Beijing. “Open your eyes, because the Chinese are buying Brazil!” he warned the Guardian after the question during a trip to the Amazon last spring. Then, he pondered his own nation, declaring: “[Brazil is like] a patient whose … whole body needs amputating.” Finally, the far-right firebrand embarked on a jumbled three-minute rollick through issues including Brazilian politics (“an embarrassment!”), the country itself (“a load of rubbish!”), English NGOs (“a joke”), Donald Trump (“I’m an admirer”) and Israel (“I’ve been there … they raise fish in the desert!”) before concluding his harangue with the six-word pledge that would define his insurgent campaign: “We are going to change Brazil!” It was vintage Bolsonaro: pugnacious, largely nonsensical and yet strangely engrossing – and perhaps a good guide to how the most unlikely president in Brazilian history will govern for the next four years. Few doubt the far-right populist – who took power on Tuesday – is serious about transforming the world’s fourth largest democracy or that his presidency will be an unpredictable and ill-tempered affair. Perhaps no area faces a greater shake-up than the environment. To the horror of the environmentalists he so loathes, Bolsonaro has repeatedly signalled a desire to roll back environmental protections and make it easier to destroy the world’s biggest rainforest. Deeds have accompanied those words. Since his stunning election, Bolsonaro has ditched plans to host key UN climate talks next year and appointed a foreign minister who believes climate change is a Marxist plot. As president, he looks set to take a sledgehammer to Brazil’s hard-earned reputation as a global leader in the fight against climate change and herald a new era of wrecking in the Amazon. Foreign policy will also be upended, as Bolsonaro’s Brazil seeks a snug and historic allegiance with Donald Trump’s US and jettisons longstanding friendships with nations ruled by leftists, such as Cuba and Venezuela. “Everything we can legally and democratically do against these countries, we will do,” Bolsonaro recently vowed. Bolsonaro’s English-speaking son, Eduardo, appears poised to play a super-sized role in Brasilia’s pivot to the White House, positioning himself as South American answer to Jared Kushner. Since his father’s election, he has hobnobbed with Ted Cruz and Steve Bannon in the US and repeatedly assailed Venezuela’s “narco-dictator” president, Nicolás Maduro. Expect regional tensions to soar in 2019 as Trump and the Bolsonaros gang up on the disintegrating Bolivarian revolution and Maduro responds in increasingly bellicose fashion. On the domestic front, dramatic changes loom, too, as Bolsonaro – egged on by the powerful, ultra-conservative evangelists to whom he owes his election – strives to lead Brazil down a profoundly reactionary path. His decision to name Damares Alves, an anti-abortion evangelical preacher, as head of a new ministry overseeing Brazilian women, families, human rights and indigenous communities is a harbinger of the intolerance and conservatism ahead. The mere prospect of a Bolsonaro presidency has already sent same-sex couples rushing to the altar for fear they might lose such rights once the proud homophobe takes power. With Bolsonaro in office, expect bigotry, hate crime – and resistance from Brazil’s vibrant civil society – to increase. Brazil is already one of Latin America’s most violent societies, suffering a record 63,880 homicides in 2017, but under Brazil’s pro-gun president things are almost certain to get worse. Bolsonaro campaigned as a law and order candidate, vowing to use brute force and bullets to slay the drug traffickers behind much of that violence. But he appears to have no real plan to reduce crime beyond fighting violence with violence, and he is almost certain to fail. Instead, by legitimising the police’s use of deadly force, Bolsonaro’s pro-repression rhetoric is likely to accelerate the already rampant killing. Rio de Janeiro, whose newly elected, pro-Bolsonaro governor has called for helicopter-borne snipers to be used to execute rifle-carrying criminals – is likely to suffer particularly. More than 1,400 people were reportedly gunned down by Rio police in 2018 – a death every five-and-a-half hours. With Bolsonaro’s blessing, the body count will rise. In the final month before Tuesday’s inauguration, Brazil’s incoming president has hosted weekly Facebook Live broadcasts detailing his controversial and eccentric plans: a crackdown on immigrants who refuse to abandon their own culture and supposedly conspire to marry Brazilian children; a crusade against “unproductive” journalists and leftists who question him; doing away with indigenous reserves because he is convinced Brazil’s tribespeople no longer wish to be stuck “in the Stone Age”. “The big day is arriving – 1 January!” Bolsonaro beamed in one recent webcast. It is a date millions of progressive Brazilians have viewed with dread.Hugely portentous developments in celebronomics this week, as Victoria Beckham announced on social media she was mostly using a moisturiser created from her own blood. The product is called Sturm, and was fashioned for her by someone fashionable in Berlin. Anyway, here’s the science bit – or Victoria’s Instagram caption, which is basically the same thing. According to Victoria, this facialist “took my blood and created healing factors made by my own cells which is highly anti-inflammatory and regenerative”. And, at £1,200 a pot, you HAVE to believe that. If you’re wondering about the decision to brand the product Sturm, I should say it’s called that after the creator, Dr Barbara Sturm. But nonetheless, it feels right. I think if I did want moisturiser made by the Germans out of my own blood, I would want it to have a name like Sturm. There’s a €50m-a-year market in a spot treatment called Blitzkrieg, if Barbara’s got the balls for it. I hereby waive all intellectual property rights. Then again, I expect Dr Sturm is doing very nicely on the £1,200 moisturisers and child facial spin-off line, given that Victoria also posted a picture of her seven-year-old daughter having a treatment, accompanied by the clarion call: “We must use CLEAN products on our children!” To which the peer-reviewed rejoinder is: complete bollocks. A sponge to remove the more stubborn Haribo traces is absolutely fine. Anyway, Dr Sturm’s specialism is in what is sometimes called “the vampire facial”, which reminds us of the absolute importance of distinguishing yourself in the crowded batshit facialist market. In fact, the blood treatment market itself is becoming increasingly saturated, as late-stage capitalism moves into its banter phase, and the super-rich tire even of metaphor. Either they are treated with their own blood, which is effectively a bald statement that they are their own cure, or they are treated with the blood of poorer civilians, which is a statement too bald even to gloss. We’ll deal with the latter first. I read an article in a scientific journal last year that sketched a $195-a head “gala”/“symposium” held in a rich beachside retirement community in Florida, where a promoter was selling senior citizens the chance to be transfused with the blood of the young, in order to halt or even reverse aspects of the ageing process. Since then, a number of further articles have detailed this growing trend and, this week, the anti-ageing transfusion firm Ambrosia announced it had opened blood-swap clinics in five major US cities. Young blood is $8,000 (£6,200) a litre, or $12,000 (£9,300) for two litres. There is literally nothing boomers won’t take off young people for the thrill of feeling better for five minutes Boomers are incredible, aren’t they? They’re WILD! There is literally nothing they won’t take off young people for the cheap thrill of feeling better for about five minutes. We surely can’t be far off the logical, physical extrapolation of the policies they have pursued electorally across half the world: to wit, every single boomer being directly IV-tubed up to their own dedicated support millennial, into whose veins they can empty all the aged cells and plasma of a person who knew what a proper welfare state and well-funded free education looked like. In return, they can flood themselves with the priced-by-the-litre lifeblood of people being charged £1,600 pcm to a live in a shower cubicle with a pulldown bed and a hot tap marked “KETTLE”. Needless to say, Ambrosia has been previously linked to Peter Thiel, the creepiest pretend libertarian in Silicon Valley – tough field – who once asserted that “death is a problem that can be solved”. But, according to his publicists, Thiel is not yet relying on young blood to deliver on his threat of sticking around indefinitely. Ambrosia is clearly expanding, though, with its doctor CEO claiming that transfusions can cause things such as grey hair to be turned black again. There is, of course, absolutely no proper evidence of any of this. He also claims to see in his patients “a remarkable difference in pep”, which feels like something you probably shouldn’t be using as a science-y metric. I have a remarkable difference in pep every time I buy a new pair of earrings in H&M, but, you know what? I didn’t have to drain a teen for it. Even more ironicidal, alas, is the fact that you can’t even remunerate the young people providing the blood. According to various reports into Ambrosia, it is illegal to pay people for their blood, so they have to rely on donor facilities. Next to this, then, Beckham’s moisturiser feels quite tame. She is joined in the use-your-own-blood market by Gwyneth Paltrow, who has previously had some doctor come on her Goop website and explain something called “autoblood”, which is “injecting a person’s own venous blood into the gluteal muscle once weekly for a number of weeks to reduce autoimmunity, strengthen the immune system, and detoxify”. Mmm. Perhaps. And yet, perhaps not. As we know, Gwyneth is the high priestess of selling you shit to heal the ailments that other shit you bought off her may conceivably have caused. I always imagine the classic satisfied customer’s letter. “Dear Goop. Thank you for selling me the $66 jade egg to put up my vagina and walk around with, which I loved. In an unexpected development I have yet to ascribe to any particular cause, I began to have lower back pain shortly after the purchase. But I love the $89 fascia blaster I purchased to help with this. For whatever reason, I now have long-lasting bruising on my back, and wonder if you have anything in the $100-$200 range that might assist in the treatment of this? Yrs in wellness.” What an end-to-end service it is. Still, until they literally start harvesting our blood, perhaps the chance to boggle at their self-satirising anti-ageing treatments is what we want from our more preposterous celebrities. Consider the gaiety added to various nations by the vanity quests of Simon Cowell, whose reliance on Botox dates back almost to the start of botulism. I could never believe he broke up his love affair with his own makeup artist. It was just so perfect. I guess you’re only as good as your last contouring palette. As far as the secret of eternal youth went, Cowell was always a restless searcher. I am drawn back to a passage in Tom Bower’s biography of him, with which he collaborated heavily. At one point, Cowell is “forced to fire a half-deaf woman who had visited weekly to cover him with oil, wrap him in cellophane and squeeze him into a tube with the promise that the paralysing discomfort and itching were guaranteed to detoxify and oxygenate him”. Fair play to her. Cowell’s next obsession was spending five grand for one hour’s treatment in a “bubble”. “Three men had carried the contraption to his bedroom,” noted Bower. It promised to detox, induce weight loss and prolong life. “I hated it,” Cowell tells him. Apparently, “the German applying the treatment had spent the entire hour promoting his ideas for new TV shows, with the captive patient forced to listen”. Poor Simon. That said, he’ll be begging to go back to “the bubble” when he finds out what the afterlife has in store for him.A prominent American anchor on Iranian state television’s English-language service has been arrested in the US on undisclosed charges, according to her employers at the state-backed TV channel Press TV. Marzieh Hashemi, born Melanie Franklin of New Orleans, appears on the English-language news channel backed by the Iranian government which regularly promotes the worldview of the Middle Eastern state to an international audience. The Iranian government criticised the arrest, which comes at a time of heightened tensions with the US – and as Iran faces increasing criticism over its own arrests of dual nationals. “We condemn the illegal arrest of Marzieh Hashemi, the reporter and presenter of Press TV, and the inhumane treatment of her in jail in Washington,” said an Iranian government spokesperson, according to the country’s national news agency. Press TV said Hashemi was arrested at St Louis airport on Sunday and transferred by FBI agents to a detention centre in Washington DC, where she was held for two days before managing to contact her family. Press TV claimed that she has yet to be charged or informed of the reason for her detention, claiming that Hashemi was made to remove her hijab and expose her forearms for a photograph. The channel also claimed she has been denied halal food and was instead offered pork products to eat, leaving her malnourished. The FBI declined to comment and it is not possible to independently verify the claims made by Press TV. “Her relatives were unable to contact her, and she was allowed to contact her daughter only two days after her arrest,” the channel said in a statement. “Press TV would like to hereby express its strong protest at the recent apprehension and violent treatment of Ms Marzieh Hashemi, born Melanie Franklin in the United States, who is currently serving as an anchor for the English-language television news network.” Hashemi converted to Islam and moved to Iran after being inspired by the Iranian revolution. She was reportedly visiting family members back in the US when the arrest was made. Press TV broke into its planned broadcasting to cover the arrest and has published more than a dozen statements of support on its website, including from Lauren Booth – the sister-in-law of Tony Blair – who describes Hashemi as a “personal friend”. The channel, whose presenters included George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn, lost its licence to broadcast on television in the UK in 2012 after being found guilty of breaches of the Ofcom code. The channel had previously been fined £100,000 for broadcasting an interview conducted under duress with an imprisoned journalist. Corbyn earned £20,000 ($25,698) for various appearances on Press TV over several years, including a brief stint hosting a phone-in on the channel. However, the channel continues to be active on social media, earning attention when it covered an attempt to deselect Labour MP Joan Ryan, who is chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Last week, Iran confirmed it is holding US navy veteran Michael R White at a prison in the country, making him the first American known to be detained under Donald Trump’s administration. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman, has been held in Tehran since April 2016. She recently started a hunger strike in protest against being denied access to medical care. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told state TV that Hashemi’s arrest indicates the “apartheid and racist policy” of the Trump administration. “We hope that the innocent person will be released without any condition,” Ghasemi said.Newcastle have agreed a deal in principle to sign Miguel Almirón from Atlanta United for a club-record fee believed to be around £20m. The Paraguay midfielder is keen to move to the Premier League club, despite late interest from Napoli and Internazionale, and is expected to arrive for a medical on Wednesday or Thursday. There are problems to resolve, understood to include the structure of payment and bonuses. Personal terms have been agreed and Rafael Benítez is hopeful of making his first signing of the transfer window. Newcastle’s manager suffered the latest in a series of transfer setbacks when the transfer of the Lazio full-back Jordan Lukaku fell through. The club are reported to have held talks with Benfica and Monaco over loan moves for the midfielder Andreas Samaris and the defender Antonio Barreca. Almirón is an attacking midfielder who has 12 caps and played for clubs in his homeland and Argentina before joining Atlanta in 2016. Newcastle’s transfer record has stood since Michael Owen was signed from Real Madrid in 2005 for £16m. Benítez clearly hopes Almirón will prove Newcastle’s “missing link” – in other words the creative link player to fill the No 10 role in the Spaniard’s preferred 4-2-3-1 system. The lack of an individual able to operate between the lines and make the team a little more three dimensional, has proved horribly elusive during his St James’ Park tenure. The Paraguayan’s arrival should also help placate a manager whose contract on Tyneside runs out in May and, who as recently as Monday, refused to rule out the prospect of resignation were the transfer window close without Mike Ashley, the club’s owner, having sanctioned the recruitment of any reinforcements for an under-strength squad.Kurdish security forces in Erbil are continuing to torture children to confess their involvement with Islamic State, according to allegations in a report released by Human Rights Watch. According to the organisation, which first raised the alarm about the mistreatment of child detainees by Kurdish security forces nearly two years ago, it has collected claims of the continued regular use of beatings and electric shocks to extract confessions, often prior to trials lasting a handful of minutes. The boys interviewed by the group allege the abuse took place in a detention centre in the Iraqi Kurdistan city in 2017 and 2018, where they were being held without access to a lawyer and without being permitted to read the confessions they say security officers wrote and forced them to sign. The report, published on Tuesday, is based on interviews late last year with 20 boys, aged between 14 and 17, who have been either charged or convicted because of their alleged affiliation with Isis and are being held at the Women and Children’s Reformatory in Erbil. The group also interviewed three boys who had recently been released. At the time of the visit by HRW researchers, 63 children were being held at the facility for alleged terrorism-related offences, including 43 who had been convicted. Sixteen of the 23 children who were interviewed said that security officers known as Asayish officers had beaten them with plastic pipes, electric cables or rods, while three others said the officers had used electric shocks. Others described being tied into a painful stress position called the “scorpion” for up to two hours. Several boys said the torture continued over consecutive days, and only ended when they confessed. Four other boys said Asayish threatened them with torture during interrogation. “If you don’t tell us the truth, I will call the guys and they will beat you and break your bones,” a 17-year-old boy recalled his interrogator telling him. While several of those interviewed said they had joined and worked with Isis, or received religious or military training, only one said that he had participated in fighting against Iraqi military forces. Others, however, insisted that they had no personal involvement, while admitting family members were involved. All but one of the boys interviewed said they eventually confessed. “My confession says that I joined Isis for 16 days, but actually, I didn’t join at all,” one 16-year-old boy told researchers. “I said 16 days to stop the torture.” Another 14-year-old boy told a similar story. “First they said I should say I was with Isis, so I agreed,” he said. “Then they told me I had to say I worked for Isis for three months. I told them I was not part of Isis, but they said, ‘No, you have to say it.’” He said that after two hours of interrogation and torture, he agreed. At least five boys said they told an investigative or trial judge that their confession was produced under torture, but that the judges appeared to ignore their statements. Most of the children interviewed said they were arrested at checkpoints entering the Kurdistan region, often because their name was on a security list of Isis suspects, while others were arrested at camps for internally displaced people. Many boys believed their name appeared on a security list because a family member was affiliated with Isis, their name was similar to that of another suspect, or people from their village had reported their family because of unrelated grievances. “Samir”, whose real name, like those of other boys interviewed, has been withheld by HRW to protect his identity, said that like many others he had been arrested by military forces at a checkpoint. “There were three officers. They bound my hands behind my back, one from above and one below. They beat me with a stick and they gave me five to 10 electric shocks. They put the pads on my left shoulder and on my stomach. “And while they gave me the shocks, they were beating me with a rod. They did this three days in a row. I was in the room for hours, with them coming in and out and taking breaks. On the third day I confessed. They said to admit to two months with Isis. I did, but it was a lie. I was never with Isis.” The Kurdistan regional government, which has promised in the past to investigate claims of mistreatment, denied the allegations of torture. A spokesman for the KRG rejected the HRW report. “The KRG fully disagrees with the accusation of torture of children Isis detainees,” Dindar Zebari, the region’s coordinator for international advocacy, said in a press statement. “We have to rehabilitate them, this is the policy of the KRG.” Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at HRW, said: “Nearly two years after the Kurdistan regional government promised to investigate the torture of child detainees, it is still occurring with alarming frequency. “The Kurdistan authorities should immediately end all torture of child detainees and investigate those responsible.”The overwhelming and decisive rejection by MPs of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement to leave the European Union is a shattering blow to the authority of the prime minister. She has spent two years negotiating a deal, which in substance was the opposite of what she said she wanted in public, only to see it repudiated by parliament. Her minority government has now been defeated on no fewer than 28 occasions. Britain is leaving the EU in weeks and Mrs May leads a cabinet that is hopelessly split, a party that is riven with disagreements and a country that is deeply divided. So emphatic is the Commons historic rebuff that Mrs May’s deal is finished. Mrs May lost by 230 votes – the greatest defeat of a government ever. The scale of the opposition means it is not credible Mrs May could bring the motion back to the Commons, modified with a few tweaks from Brussels, and hope for success a second time round. We do not have to settle for the Hobson’s choice of the May deal or no deal. The trouble is the Tory party is split between those who want a deal and those who do not. Mrs May has intensified the divisions within her party, rather than resolve them. She chose to start negotiations over Brexit not with the EU but with her own hardliners. The red lines Mrs May subsequently set made it impossible for her to get a deal that would bring her fractious party together, let alone reach out to her political opponents. Her agreement ended up shaped by Mrs May’s obsession with immigration and placating Brexit extremists. The result is a “blindfold Brexit” – where almost everything about the future relationship with Europe is up in the air for two more years. It required a leap of faith to place trust in a prime minister who, the Commons wisely decided, deserved very little. In the current circumstances, there is no majority in parliament for any of the alternative Brexit deals. This could lead to a disaster: Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal. That is why MPs must remove it as an option. Labour has triggered a vote of no confidence in the government but is unlikely to win. That points to the need for a mechanism to allow a Commons majority to take control of the Brexit process. This would require innovation, of the kind seen last week, so committees can be empowered and laws brought forward. But to have other options would require asking the EU for more time. It requires parliamentary cooperation of the kind hitherto unseen. Jeremy Corbyn and Mrs May ought not to stand in the way of such dealings. Constitutional devices such as citizens’ assemblies, raised by Labour MP Lisa Nandy, and another referendum would allow leaders to hold their parties together and provide legitimacy for whatever the public decides. These are not denials of democracy but a reinforcement of it. Mrs May’s decision to put party politics ahead of national interest means this country will aimlessly drift as the government attempts to recast a withdrawal agreement. An absence of leadership can lead to a sense of panic, one inflated by a government stockpiling food and medicines as if preparing for a war. We need to end the chaos and division that have done so much to disfigure our country. The question we face is whether there can be a durable relationship between Brexit Britain and the EU, which allows both to cooperate on the basis of shared interests and values. Mrs May left it far too late to accept the costs of leaving, preferring to pander to MPs whose snake-oil sales pitch is that there will not be any cost associated with Brexit at all. “Having your cake and eating it” is the Brexiter attitude that encapsulates this inability to think in terms of costs and benefits. Yet coming clean about these things is necessary to move forward. The country now faces a situation without precedent in its constitutional history: how to reconcile the sovereignty of the people with the sovereignty of parliament. The prime minister has been humbled into admitting she needs to win her opponents over. The Brexit vote was driven by stagnant wages, regional disparities and a soulless form of capital accumulation. These were not caused by the EU, nor will they be solved by leaving it. Only policies enacted by purposeful government can do that. Mrs May has not provided either.The risk of accidentally crashing out of the EU without a deal has been described as “very high” by a key EU architect of the Brexit deal, with parliamentary backing for changes to the backstop likely to be met with a brick wall in Brussels. Senior Conservative MPs are seeking to form a majority in a Commons vote on Tuesday calling for Theresa May to demand an alternative plan to the Irish backstop for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. But on Monday, EU officials and diplomats said the amendment tabled by the Tory MP Graham Brady, and backed by Downing Street, failed to offer any clue as to what alternative arrangement parliament could support. With the votes on Tuesday unlikely to offer any clarity on what MPs can unite behind, the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, offered a sober analysis of the chances of a deal being ratified in Westminster. She said: “We need to have a majority that doesn’t just get agreement over hurdle of a meaningful vote by a narrow majority but we need to have a stable majority to ensure the ratification. That’s quite a big challenge. There’s no negotiation between the UK and EU – that’s finished. “There’s no point beating about the bush – the agreement was defeated with a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons. That’s a crushing defeat by any standards. It’s quite a challenge to see how you can construct out of the diversity of opposition a positive majority for a deal.” Weyand said of the two years of talks due to end on 29 March: “There’s a very high risk of a crash out not by design, but by accident. Perhaps by the design of article 50, but not by policymakers.” “We think we can handle it,” Weyand said. “I’m less sure about UK side. For us it’s about EU-UK trade relationship and disruption to supply chains. For the UK a no deal would mean that a part of the regulatory and supervisory structure of economy breaks away – a much bigger challenge.” In an apparent sign of the frustration in Brussels at May’s handling of the negotiations, the German EU official also contrasted the transparency in Brussels on their goals to the approach taken by Downing Street. Speaking at a thinktank event in Brussels, she said: “You cannot lead a negotiation like that in secrecy. We’ve seen on UK side the fact this was handled in a very small circle and that there was no information about all the things that were tried in the negotiations is now a big handicap.” The prime minister is set to return to Brussels in the coming days but Michel Barnier’s deputy offered little succour to those in London hoping for a renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement containing the backstop, an arrangement under which the whole of the UK could stay in a customs union in order to avoid a hard border. The amendment tabled by Brady, the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, commits MPs to backing the withdrawal agreement should the prime minister secure a replacement of some sort for the backstop. But some Brexiters have said they will only vote for the withdrawal agreement if the Irish backstop is replaced with a simple statement of intent over avoiding a hard border. Other MPs, including Brady, are in favour of drafting a separate legal document detailing how the UK might in certain circumstances extract itself from the customs union envisaged in the backstop. “We’re not going to reopen the agreement,” Weyand said at the European Policy Centre event. “The result of the negotiation has been very much shaped by the UK negotiators, much more than they actually get credit for. This is a bit like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The backstop was very much shaped by UK.” “It feels like Groundhog Day,” Weyand added of others in Westminster calling for a time limit or unilateral exit clause in the backstop. “None of this is new. This has been extensively discussed at the negotiating table amongst the EU27. EU27 were unanimous a time limit to the backstop defeats the purpose of the backstop.” Of the suggestion that there was a technological solution for avoiding a hard border, Weyand said: “We looked at every border on this earth, every border EU has with a third country – there’s simply no way you can do away with checks and controls. “The negotiators have not been able to explain them to us and that’s not their fault; it’s because they don’t exist.” She added that in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the UK and Irish governments would “lose the one operational solution to the Irish border conundrum but we’d be stuck with the same scenario”. “So you could imagine a no-deal scenario with the backstop being discussed,” she said. Weyand further warned that the debate in Westminster, in which discussions over the rival strengths and weaknesses of Norway and Canada’s relationship to the bloc have recently dominated, appeared at times to be “uninhibited by any knowledge of what is actually in the withdrawal agreement”. “Our impression is discussion is much more about the future of the country and the future of the UK-EU relationship than about the content of the withdrawal agreement,” she said. A separate amendment due to be voted on, tabled by the Labour MP Yvette Cooper, would force the prime minister to delay Brexit beyond 29 March should she have failed to ratify a deal by the end of February. Weyand said the EU’s heads of state and government would need information on “the purpose of an extension”. “The idea of going into serial extensions really isn’t very popular in the EU27,” she added.There’s troubles in doubles. The seemingly innocuous observation by Jamie Murray that the widely respected specialist coach, Louis Cayer, deserves to be made national performance director across all disciplines has broken out into a full-blown feud with Dan Evans. Evans, who does not play much doubles, entered the debate just as it was dying when he told the Daily Mail: “Who exactly has Louis Cayer ever coached apart from doubles players? Why would British tennis allow him to take charge? It’s a ludicrous comment.” He added, “Jamie thinks we should be celebrating six pairs inside the main draw of a grand slam? So we are celebrating people who didn’t make it at singles and people who didn’t have the attitude to work hard enough to make it in the singles game.” But Murray, who is through to the quarter-finals here in both the men’s doubles with Bruno Soares, and the mixed with Bethanie Mattek-Sands, hit back hard on Monday against his sometime Davis Cup partner and friend. “It is lazy comments to make. It is ill-informed and dumb really. To question the reason that we are on the doubles Tour is because we don’t work as hard as the singles guys is just total nonsense. “I’ve been playing the Tour since 2007, travelling the world, working my ass off to stay at the top of the game and make a living for myself. [For that] to come from someone who really hasn’t applied himself as much as he should and really... he has made a hash of his career with his decision making and stuff. To come out with those sort of comments is just ignorant. It’s really disappointing. We should be celebrating any success that we have in this sport, whether it’s singles, doubles, mixed doubles, wheelchairs, whatever. Everybody should be getting their recognition for the efforts that they’re putting in and the success that they’re having. “It’s not just singles that you can make a career from tennis in. It’s important for a lot of young kids to know that growing up. It’s not easy to make it in the tennis world. There are only a few people that can make a really good living from the game. The journey is incredibly long. However you get there, whether it’s singles or doubles or whatever, there’s options there for you – more than just being a singles player.” Murray acknowledged, “Of course when people start playing they want to be singles players, because if you look at the prize-money and the glory and stuff, that’s where it is. I’m playing on a tour where 80% of the prize-money goes to the singles. At the grand slams it’s even more. We’ve got a much smaller slice of the pie, but I still manage to make a good living playing tennis. Let’s be honest, [I make] a lot better living than what Dan has done in his career.” Murray has made $4,273,432 (£3.3m) in a title-littered doubles career that includes six grand slam titles – more than three times Evans’s earnings of $1,339,182 (£1.04m) in singles, as well as $75,413 (£58,720) from a handful of doubles matches. Murray added: “If he does something that’s noteworthy and deserves recognition then absolutely he should get it, along with anybody else that’s got a GBR next to their name. But just to kind of lazily trash the doubles game, it annoys me a lot.” He will not hold a grudge, though. “I’m friends with him. I like him. You know what he’s like: he’s a character. He’ll shoot from the hip, he won’t necessarily think first before speaking but, if that’s how he feels, that’s how he feels. I’m sure there’s a lot of other guys that maybe think the same but I’m not going to lose sleep over what he thinks about doubles or whatever.” It is an arcane spat that grew disproportionately when the Lawn Tennis Association chose to challenge Murray’s earlier assertion that Cayer was, “under-appreciated”. It certainly will spice up the next Great Britain Davis Cup team gathering. Soares, the Brazilian who has partnered Murray to slam titles here and at Flushing Meadows, said after they reached the quarter-finals on Monday, reiterated his praise for Cayer, a widely respected Canadian whose astute analysis is used by singles and doubles players throughout the game. “[He is good] for everyone. From what I see, the singles guys use him a lot. What he does for me is insane. I send him clips from my practice somewhere in the world and Louis spends two hours watching it and making notes. He doesn’t have to do that. He sits there for two hours watching a practice session. People know he’s amazing and a genius with that stuff.” Soares added: “The LTA has got enough cash to support everyone. In terms of the [Evans] question of working hard, it’s different skills. Everyone can try to play singles and doubles, some guys are good in singles and doubles or both. So I wouldn’t go that way: who is working and who isn’t. Everyone has got their own routine. If someone works hard and makes it, good for them. If someone is super lazy and makes it, good for them as well.”Police in Zimbabwe have fired live ammunition and teargas during running battles with groups of young people trying to enforce a nationwide shutdown to protest against the rising cost of living. The clashes were the worst outbreak of disorder in the southern African country since the aftermath of historic elections last year, when six civilians were shot dead by police. They came on the first day of a three-day general strike called by unions, amid an intensifying economic crisis. There were clashes in the capital, Harare, and in Bulawayo, a city in the south, as police attempted to disperse groups of youths who had lit fires in streets, erected barricades and, in some cases, looted shops. Others blocked highways and taxis, or tried to force companies that had remained open to comply with the shutdown. In Chitungwiza, a satellite town of the capital where anti-government feeling runs high, a police station was reportedly besieged and automatic gunfire was heard. In the poor neighbourhood of Mabvuku, witnesses said they had seen four civilians shot and injured by police. One catalyst for the discontent was the government’s decision to increase the price of fuel by 150% on Saturday. There are already acute shortages of imported goods and soaring inflation for basic foodstuffs. Legacies of the 37-year rule of Robert Mugabe, which ended with a military takeover in November 2017, include massive unemployment, huge government debts, an acute shortage of hard currency and a crumbling infrastructure. “We have suffered enough,” said the author Philani Nyoni, who was part of the protest in Bulawayo. “The government is now aware that we are not happy with their stupid policies like the fuel price increase.” President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a stalwart of the ruling Zanu-PF party who took over on Mugabe’s resignation and won contested elections in July, has been unable to bring about the economic turnaround he promised voters and investors. “We are now seeing the results of a volatility that has been building for some time and that every one has been very complacent about,” said Piers Pigou, an expert in Zimbabwe with the International Crisis Group. The main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, issued a call for calm and said it was “in solidarity with peaceful citizen action across the country today”. “We have warned this government that there is need for dialogue and … nothing has happened. This is what happens when you push people,” said Jacob Mafume, an MDC spokesperson. The government has accused the strike organisers of pushing a political “regime change” agenda and engaging in “subversive political activities”. “It has become obvious that there is deliberate plan to undermine and challenge the prevailing constitutional order,” said government spokesman Nick Mangwana in a statement late on Sunday night. He warned that government would “respond appropriately” against “all those who have been conspiring to subvert peace, law and order in the country”. The mainstream opposition in Zimbabwe appeared to have been taken by surprise by the disorder. “The opposition appears not to be in charge or leading this,” said Pigou. “The conditions are such that there is a real opportunity for violent disruptive elements, either from within the opposition ranks or some kind of destabilising operation.” Mnangagwa has struggled to revive Zimbabwe’s ailing economy, and is currently travelling in Asia and Europe in an effort to attract foreign direct investment. Although the 2018 elections were not marred by the type of violence experienced under Mugabe, alleged irregularities during the count and repression after the vote resulted in lukewarm support for Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF from major international powers. Early efforts by the government to stabilise Zimbabwe’s economy appear to have exacerbated the situation, triggering massive devaluation of its surrogate and electronic currencies. The country abandoned its own currency in 2009 after it was wrecked by hyperinflation and adopted the dollar and other currencies, such as sterling and the South African rand. But there is not enough hard currency in the country to back up the $10bn of electronic funds trapped in local bank accounts, prompting demands from businesses and civil servants for cash that can be deposited and used to make payments. Zimbabwe’s foreign reserves now provide less than two weeks cover for imports, central bank data show. Mthuli Ncube, the finance minister, told a townhall meeting on Friday a new local currency would be introduced in less than 12 months. Zimbabweans are haunted by memories of the Zimbabwean dollar, which became worthless as inflation spiralled to reach 500 billion per cent in 2008, the highest rate in the world for a country not at war, wiping out pensions and savings.The extinction of the endangered Florida panther could be hastened by a large development proposed for the state, environmental groups are warning, as a major project is expected to win approval from the Trump administration as early as April. Up to 45,000 acres of rural Collier county in south-west Florida are earmarked for housing and commercial development under the plan drawn up by a coalition of 11 major Florida landowners, as well as new sand and gravel mines. Several new cities would be created by the project, adding hundreds of thousands of new residents and hundreds of miles of new roadways. But almost half of the proposed area of construction falls within what US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) scientists recognise as “primary zone” for dwindling numbers of the Florida panther, a subspecies of puma of which barely 200 adults are believed to survive. The FWS says preservation of the entirety of the big cats’ hunting and roaming zone, which incorporates about 20,000 acres of the Collier development, is “essential for the survival of the Florida panther in the wild”. “This area was never intended for this amount of development,” said Amber Crooks, environmental policy manager of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. “These parts of Collier county contain a lot of important habitat for the Florida panther and also so many other rare species and has important public lands on each corner. The best available science tells us the panther needs all its available habitat to survive and ultimately recover,” she said. “The top concern is habitat loss, but there’s also the impact of traffic. Every year dozens of panthers are struck and killed by vehicles. What’s going to happen when you add 300,000 people to an area that is already very deadly [for them]?” The FWS must approve or reject the “habitat conservation plan” (HCP) submitted by the landowners, known collectively as Eastern Collier Property Owners, by the end of April. Under the Endangered Species Act, government approval is required when an otherwise lawful development could result in an incidental “take” of any listed species. Crooks’ group, along with the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity, submitted 20,000 signatures and a 100-page letter of objection to the FWS during a 45-day public comment period that ended last month. Crooks said the service rejected their request to extend the comment period or hold a public meeting, in a letter citing shorter Trump-era deadlines for the process. “It was a quick 45 days,” she said. “Certainly we would have liked more time.” Other environmental groups, meanwhile, have worked with the landowners on a mitigation plan that promises $150m for panther conservation and 107,000 acres of non-primary zone land for preservation in exchange for development approval. Elizabeth Fleming, the Florida representative of Defenders of Wildlife, said previous developments had won approval despite the outright opposition of environmentalists, and collaboration could provide a better outcome for wildlife. “We’re not evil people who are being conscripted by the landowners to do thus and such,” she said. “When landowners can better trust in government policies and work together with conservation groups, we can come up with a successful paradigm that can be replicated elsewhere. “And with sea level rise predictions, some of the habitat available to the panthers now will no longer be. They’re going to need to move north through private lands because there just isn’t enough public conservation land, so the willingness of private landowners to accept sharing their land with these predators is so important.” Fleming said the landowners have been mostly receptive and made changes to the plan, including widening of corridors through which panthers would travel. “We have identified areas that shouldn’t be developed that they have avoided, and helped them make some of the travel linkages wider,” she said. “At the beginning they only wanted to work with panthers and we persuaded them to incorporate other species. That’s not to say we are completely satisfied with what they have turned in to FWS. We continued to submit comments as part of the public process and hope they will take into account some of our suggestions and make this plan better.” Crooks, however, is sceptical the approach has been successful. “Even after a decade of trying both from the inside with those groups sitting at the table with the landowners, and pushing from the outside, this plan still has so many fatal flaws that we hope the service will see, and deny it,” she said. Christian Spilker, vice-president of land management for Collier Enterprises and spokesperson for Eastern Collier Property Owners, did not return several messages for comment, but in a December opinion piece in the Naples News claimed the landowners were “good stewards of the land and treasured native wildlife”. “The HCP preserves 156 sq miles of high-quality habitat forever available to the Florida panther and a vast number of other protected and native species,” he wrote. “[It] preserves the land with the highest ecological values while establishing a limited, clustered development footprint that directs growth to areas already impacted by agriculture and other activities.” The latest proposed encroachment on shrinking panther territory is far from an isolated example. Rising waters both in the ocean and the Everglades also threaten the rare animal. Its cousin, the eastern cougar, was declared extinct in 2015.Three – or was it four? – days after he shut himself in a pitch-black bathroom, Rich Alati started to hallucinate. He saw little white, bubble-like balls, floating around the room. To calm himself he imagined he was in a magical cloud, cozy and relaxed. Embracing the visions was key. “Or else,” he says, “you might get a little scared.” Alati was in the dark for a bet, which makes a little more sense once you know he is a professional poker player. On 10 September last year, the American was sitting at a poker table at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, when he was asked a question by a fellow professional player, Rory Young: how much would it take for him to spend time in complete isolation, with no light, for 30 days? An hour later a price had been agreed: $100,000. Young would hand over the money if Alati could last 30 days in a soundproofed bathroom with no light. He would be delivered food from a local restaurant, but the meals would come at irregular intervals to prevent him from keeping track of time. There would be no TV, radio, phone or access to the outside world but he would be allowed some comforts: a yoga mat, resistance band, massage ball, and, appropriately for a bathroom, lavender essential oils as well as a sugar and salt scrub. If Alati failed he would have to pay Young $100,000. Poker players are known to bet on just about anything but some thought Alati had taken things too far. “I wouldn’t do this bet for any amount of money,” professional poker player Danielle Moon Anderson noted at the time. Dr Michael Munro, a psychologist Young consulted before agreeing to the bet, told Young: “Even if he lasts for 30 days, it will be extremely taxing on his mental health for the short and potentially long term.” There’s good reason for such caution. Solitary confinement is often used as punishment, most notably in the United States, where inmates in solitary are isolated in their cells 23 hours a day. The United Nations’ Nelson Mandela Rules state that keeping someone in solitary for more than 15 days constitutes torture. Dr Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, says the bet risked trivializing solitary confinement. “Anxiety, anger and despair, often with a high risk of suicide, is the average clinical presentation of prisoners in solitary,” he says. While there would be notable differences between Alati’s experiences and those of a prisoner in solitary – most notably, he could leave at any time – Young believed the American was unlikely to last the 30 days. “It’s just so cruel to the human mind to do that,” he says. But Alati was confident. He had practiced meditation and yoga, and was certain his experiences at silent retreats would help him. On 21 November, a crowd of families and friends gathered at the house where the challenge would take place. Alati and Young’s lawyers were there as well as cameramen from a production company interested in buying television rights to the story. For that reason, as well as safety, the entire bet would be recorded. Alati’s father was given the power to pull Alati out at any time should he show signs of not being “in the right headspace,” as Alati puts it. At 8.05pm, Alati walked into the bathroom, and darkness fell. He stood for a moment, frozen. Then he lay down and fell asleep. *** The bathroom mirrors were covered to prevent any reflection, and the doors, though unlocked, were sealed to block out any light. A mattress was wedged between the sink and a countertop. In front of the sink and next to the mattress was Alati’s yoga mat. And across from that was the bathtub. “My memory is really good,” Alati says. He had examined the room before the challenge started, and when he woke up in complete darkness, he could picture his surroundings. He told himself that he should do what he normally does when he wakes up, and began his routine. He brushed his teeth. He then filled up the bathtub, adding Epsom salts and lavender oil to calm his mind, and scoured himself with the sugar and salt scrub. From the bath, he went to the shower in the corner of the room to rinse off. He then headed to the sink, where he used Q-tips on his ears, combed his hair, and lotioned his body. He got dressed and ate. He did yoga and meditated. “I was remembering where everything is, and everything goes back to that exact place,” Alati says. “That’s how I live my life anyways.” And that was his plan. He was going to live his normal life as if normal “was living in darkness for the rest of my life.” He had 720 hours and absolutely no distractions – and he’d use that time to improve himself. “How can I give myself a better sugar scrub ... how can I stretch it deeper, how can I be more calm, how can I be more patient?” he says. From the outside his life was, well, a little dull. Young, who had began watching the video stream in earnest, said “it became a bit boring after a while because it’s not like he’s doing anything different.” The biggest hurdles were mental. As well as the hallucinations, his thoughts twice started to spiral negatively, fast. “It happened so quick. It went from positive thoughts to like what if, what if, what if?” Alati says. Such thoughts were dangerous without company to distract him. In isolation, they could lead to despair. When they cropped up, Alati started doing yoga, and he refocused on his body, on his pose and stretch. Some parts were easier. With so much time and only himself for company, Alati’s thoughts were a source of entertainment and a lifeline. “The thoughts would just come to you, and if you don’t make sure that they go in a good direction, they can spiderweb out of control and lead you to a bad place,” Alati says. *** Around the 10-day mark, Young started to worry that Alati might make the 30 days, noting he looked “totally fine”. He worried he had miscalculated: Young hadn’t known Alati – a gregarious, fast talker – for long before they had made the bet. “His personality did not reflect that of someone who was proficient with meditation,” Young said. On day 15, Young’s voice came on over the loudspeaker. Alati jumped out of bed, happy to hear a voice that wasn’t his own. Young told Alati that he had been in for around two weeks and that he had an offer for him: Alati could leave if he paid out $50,000. Alati’s laughed in disbelief. “You can’t be serious,” Alati recalls telling Young. “Dude, I just sat in here for two weeks, and you want me to hand over half my money?” He laid back down discouraged. He’d spent 15 long days in the bathroom – “no walk in the park” in his words – and he had to gear up for 15 more. “It was a pretty aggressive negotiation tactic by me,” Young concedes. He waited a few days and came back with another offer. Alati was skeptical. “I don’t know, kid, your buyout offers are trash,” Alati recalls telling Young. Young offered to pay Alati $25,000 to come out. The money was finally in Alati’s favor. He considered the offer for an hour – and then declined. Alati waited for a few days until Young came back on the loudspeaker and asked if he had any offers of his own. Alati said he wouldn’t come out for less than $75,000, to which Young countered with an offer of $40,000. They settled on $62,400. Alati had had been in the silence and dark for 20 days. Young was relieved. He had come to a gradual realization that he hadn’t given enough weight to the fact that Alati was there by choice. “So if you’re in solitary confinement in prison, that’s a scary situation. You don’t know if you’re going to get out ever,” he said. “Here, if he lasts, he gets 100k, but these guys in solitary confinement get nothing – they have to do that.” Kupers says that distinction – “remembering why he is there, that it is not permanent” – is crucial. “Prisoners in solitary confinement tell me they are afraid they will never be released and they will die in solitary.” Alati, after his own taste of isolation, agrees. “[Prisoners in solitary] are not given a bathtub with sugar scrubs, and essential oil and food, and a yoga mat. They’re not given that stuff, so if I didn’t have that stuff, and I wasn’t actually free and I wasn’t being paid, that’s why [it would be a] punishment.” *** Alati was ready to leave the bathroom. He put on eclipse sunglasses, which blocked out any light, to protect his eyes. When he finally emerged, the noise and commotion was overwhelming. He was handed a phone, and Alati looked at it for a moment, remembering that life existed with phones and technology, before he began speaking into it. It was his sister. Friends and family surrounded him, and social interaction was “a bit of a culture shock”. He was surprised by the number of choices he had and that social niceties needed to be observed. “I knew how to do everything – I just forgot,” Alati says. “I can’t just start doing push-ups on a bathtub in front of people. I can’t just start walking around with no underwear.” Despite paying out $62,400, Young is happy he took the bet. “I think it is a good story of when two people want to test whether they can do something, they do it in a fair environment and can work together, and even though one of us lost a sizable chunk of money, we both feel great about it.” Alati says he is happy, too. He hopes his story serves as a positive for others about overcoming challenges in a world of bad news. He says he has learned to value patience and things we take for granted, like chairs, tables and lamps or simply being outside. “We truly go about our day to day and put up these blinders because there’s so much distraction, but if you just look at the world with a different perspective and just see it, this is something,” he says. “This is really something.”Off to the Caribbean we go. Once English cricketers went there with trepidation: quick pitches, quick-scoring West Indian batsmen and very quick, skilful bowlers easily trumped the prospect of blissful sandy beaches and a few rum punches. A tour of the West Indies was an ordeal that used to encompass visits to some of the great cricketing arenas, Sabina Park in Jamaica, the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad and Bourda in Guyana, the last of which has been replaced by another white elephant, out-of-town stadium. England no longer visit these venues since they are not so popular as tourist destinations. Instead, after their first match at the Kensington Oval in Barbados, they will play another Test in Antigua and their first ever in St Lucia. The assumption is that it will be a doddle for Joe Root’s rejuvenated team to win the series and it is easy to produce stats to support that theory. Since 1963 England and the West Indies have played for the Wisden Trophy. The West Indies took possession of that trophy between 1973 and 2000, which amounts to 13 series. Since then there have been nine more series, just one of which has been won by the West Indies and in their last match against Bangladesh in Dhaka at the beginning of December they lost by an innings and 184 runs. Of course, it is also possible to demonstrate that England face a major challenge in the next month. They have not won in the West Indies since 2004 when Michael Vaughan’s side romped to a 3-0 victory. In 2009 England lost 1-0 as Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower, the interim coach after the sacking of Peter Moores, set about rebuilding a flagging England team. Then the West Indies bowled England out for 51 at Sabina Park and managed to avoid defeat in the three other matches (four if you count the 10-ball Test at the Viv Richards Stadium in Antigua). In 2015 England surrendered a 1-0 lead in Barbados to a West Indies team described as “mediocre” by Colin Graves, the new chairman of the ECB at the time, which was the final nail for Moores. The current interim coach of the West Indies, Richard Pybus, would do well to incite some infallible Englishman to demean the Caribbean cricketers since they seem to react well to such barbs. Graves’s “mediocre” was more than matched by Mark Nicholas’s observation that they were “short of brains” just before the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in 2016, which the West Indies duly won. At least Nicholas was quick to apologise. This correspondent does not intend to help out the West Indies in this department before the forthcoming Test series. West Indies can challenge an England side buoyant after their victory in Sri Lanka but they will have to play very well to do so, spurred on by the unusual presence of big crowds at their Test grounds, even though most of them will be supporting the “away” side. Kraigg Brathwaite is arguably the most accomplished opening batsman on view; Shai Hope, as he displayed at Headingley in 2017, has a touch of class even though he still averages only 28 in Test cricket; Shimron Hetmyer has great potential, while Kemar Roach and Shannon Gabriel share 286 Test wickets between them at less than 30 runs apiece. Statistically Jason Holder, the captain, has a Test record that is not so different to that of Ben Stokes (he averages 30 with the bat and 28 with the ball). Roach and Gabriel may not be the reincarnations of Marshall and Garner but they are proven Test performers, often on surfaces far more docile than those encountered by their illustrious predecessors. At least the home side will be more accustomed to the modern pitches of the Caribbean. These tend to be disappointingly slow and lifeless, though hopefully it is still possible to generate some bounce at the Kensington Oval. We wait to see what the mood is like in the Caribbean. The recent appointment of Pybus could complicate an already fragile environment. Darren Sammy, their former captain, is not impressed and has listed 15 reasons why. Perhaps more alarming is the manner of Pybus’s appointment, which appears to have been carried out unilaterally by Dave Cameron, president of the West Indies board. This is the equivalent of Colin Graves appointing England’s next coach, which may not be a brilliant idea. This should surely be the job of the cricket director. So England begin the series as favourites. But they would be foolish to admit that they have one eye on their momentous summer of 2019. However, there will certainly be the tacit desire to cement a few positions before the Ashes series gets under way in August. What is the best opening pair? Can Jonny Bairstow and Ben Foakes consolidate their positions at three and seven? England will be fervently hoping that is the case. At least one spinner will have to be jettisoned from the team that won in Sri Lanka and there is still a debate to be had over which pacemen/all-rounders are the most appropriate to accompany Jimmy Anderson.Emily Spanton grew up with police officers – her father had been a high-ranking officer in the Toronto force – so when two French officers she met while drinking in a Paris bar invited her to see their famous headquarters, she agreed. Spanton was, she says, drunk and shaky on her feet. “I knew I wasn’t in a state to find my hotel. And I thought that going to a police station would sober me up as there would be plenty of lights and people,” the Canadian said. But after she went upstairs at the celebrated 36 Quai des Orfèvres to the fifth floor and entered room 461, Spanton said she walked into “the worst night of my life”. What allegedly happened in the next 80 minutes in the early hours of 23 April 2014 is at the centre of an ongoing court case in chamber three of the assize court in Paris’s imposing Palais de Justice, and has left France shocked. On Wednesday, Spanton, 39, cried as she told the three judges and nine members of the jury she was gang-raped by at least two men. As she tried to leave, she says, she was dragged into another office and raped again. In the dock are two members of the Brigade de Recherches et d’Intervention (BRI), an elite unit specialising in tracking down gang members and terrorists. Maj Nicolas R, 49, and Capt Antoine Q, 40, (French law prevents the names of the police officers being given) deny the charges, claiming Spanton consented to sex. The shock in France is as much over the details of the case as the idea that the allegations are not just targeted at individual officers but at the reputation of this prestigious police unit. L’Express magazine suggested the case had “poisoned” the Paris police force for almost five years and nearly signed the death warrant of the BRI. Spanton’s legal team had battled to have the officers brought to trial after investigating judges decided there was no case to answer, citing “inconsistencies” in her testimony. After the Paris public prosecutor stepped in, this decision was overturned on appeal. Police colleagues had suggested that because Spanton had allegedly been flirting and kissed the two officers during the evening, they believed she was happy to go further. “Their mistake was to have let the truth come out bit by bit because they were afraid of the consequences on their families and their careers,” one police officer told L’Express. “This has led to questions about their credibility.” Spanton’s lawyer said the judges had travelled to Canada to interview her friends and family and “dig around” in her personal life, but had not done the same for the accused. The building at 36 Quai des Orfèvres is a place of fact and fiction. Known to officers simply as “36”, its mythical reputation was immortalised by Georges Simenon’s celebrated detective Maigret and in French films. For real-life police, “36” is the top rung of the career ladder. Attached to the Palais de Justice, the building was home to the Paris police force from 1913, when officers chased criminals on horses or bicycles, until 2017, when it moved to more modern buildings. Spanton, who was working as an estate agent, said she had been drinking in Le Galway, an Irish bar near 36, when some time around midnight she agreed to go to the officers’ headquarters. “They explained the police station had been the subject of films and made it sound like something I would want to see,” she said. Even the softly spoken translator was unable to diminish the violence of the testimony of what happened after Spanton entered room 461. “Someone was forcing himself inside my mouth,” Spanton said. “Someone penetrated me. Then someone else. When it finished, I gathered up my belongings, but I couldn’t open the door. I was pulled into another office and everything happened again.” Spanton said she remembered being raped by up to three men, but said she could not identify the third. She told the jury her glasses were taken from her and she was unable to see clearly. “I just gave up; just wanted it to be over … I kept my eyes closed.” She was, she insists, in “no fit state to consent” to anything. She says when she left the building 90 minutes later, barefoot and without her tights, she told the guards at the door she had been raped and they told her to “go home”. DNA from both the accused was found on Spanton’s underwear. Her DNA was found on Antoine Q’s. No match was found for the DNA of a third man. The two accused wiped all messages and videos from the night off their mobiles, but one found on a colleague’s phone read: “She likes an orgy, hurry up.” Asked by the public prosecutor on Friday if it was “usual to take young women to your office”, Antoine Q, replied: “Not at all”. He said room 461 was his office and admitted having sex in it was “something of a fantasy”. Both men have returned to work in the police force. They face a jail sentence of up to 20 years if convicted. After reading a medical report of Spanton’s injuries, the presiding judge, Stephane Duchemin, asked Spanton what she expected from the court. “I just want to stand up and publicly confront these men. Then I want to move on, close this chapter.”Girls’ much-higher rate of depression than boys is closely linked to the greater time they spend on social media, and online bullying and poor sleep are the main culprits for their low mood, new research reveals. As many as three-quarters of 14-year-old girls who suffer from depression also have low self-esteem, are unhappy with how they look and sleep for seven hours or less each night, the study found. “Girls, it seems, are struggling with these aspects of their lives more than boys, in some cases considerably so,” said Prof Yvonne Kelly, from University College London, who led the team behind the findings. The results prompted renewed concern about the rapidly accumulating evidence that many more girls and young women exhibit a range of mental health problems than boys and young men, and about the damage these can cause, including self-harm and suicidal thoughts. The study is based on interviews with almost 11,000 14-year-olds who are taking part in the Millennium Cohort Study, a major research project into children’s lives. It found that many girls spend far more time using social media than boys, and also that they are much more likely to display signs of depression linked to their interaction on platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook. It found that two in five girls are on social media at least three hours a day compared to a fifth of their male peers. While one in 10 boys do not use social media at all, only 4% of girls said the same. “The link between social media use and depressive symptoms was stronger for girls compared with boys. For girls, greater daily hours of social media use corresponded to a stepwise increase in depressive symptoms,” explained Kelly. For example, while 7.5% of 14-year-old girls and 4.3% of 14-year-old boys have been the victim of online harassment, 35.6% of girls who are depressed have experienced that – double the 17.4% of boys who have done so. Among teenagers who had perpetrated online bullying, 32.8% of girls and 7.9% of boys were depressed. That pattern of stark gender differences was repeated when young people were quizzed about other key aspects of their feelings and behaviour, Kelly’s team found. Social media is also closely associated with poor sleeping habits, especially among 14-year-olds showing clinical signs of depression. While just 5.4% of girls and 2.7% of boys overall said they slept for seven hours or less, 48.4% of girls with low mood and 19.8% of such boys said the same. Half of depressed girls and a quarter of depressed boys said that they suffer from disrupted sleep “most of the time”. The authors say the sleep disruption is due to young people staying up late to use social media and being woken up by alerts coming in to their phones beside their beds. Their findings are published on Friday in EClinicalMedicine, a journal published by the Lancet. “Inevitably there is the chicken and egg question, as to whether more dissatisfied children, who to begin with are less pleased with their body shape and have fewer friends then spend more time on social media. Nonetheless, it is likely that excessive use of social media does lead to poorer confidence and mental health,” said Prof Stephen Scott, the director of the national academy for parenting research at the institute of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience at King’s College London. Prof Sir Simon Wessely, an ex-president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said the researchers “still cannot definitely say that social media usage causes poor mental health, although the evidence is starting to point in that direction”. Government ministers and Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, have called on social media companies to do much more to limit the amount of time young people spend using their platforms. Stevens has suggested taxing companies to help the NHS cover the costs of treating soaring numbers of under-18s suffering problems such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders and psychosis, which Theresa May has made a personal priority. Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, has warned that even some children as young as nine “are becoming almost addicted to ‘likes’ as a form of social validation that makes them happy, and many are increasingly anxious about their online image and ‘keeping up appearances’. “Their use of platforms like Instagram and Snapchat can also undermine children’s view of themselves by making them feel inferior to the people they follow,” she added. Barbara Keeley, the shadow minister for mental health, said social media firms should be forced to adopt a new duty of care to protect young users. But Dr Nihara Krause, a consultant clinical psychologist who specialises in teenagers’ mental wellbeing, cautioned against heaping too much blame on social media for the huge recent rise in mental ill-health among under-18s. “Depression and all mental ill-health conditions arise due to a range of complex factors, usually a biological, psychological and social mix,” she said. An NHS England spokesperson said: “These findings add to the growing evidence base and show precisely why the concerns that we and others have raised about the potential harmful links between social media and young people’s mental health need to be taken seriously. “Everyone must start taking responsibility, including social media giants, to help young people develop and maintain good mental health, rather than let problems build up to the point that they need specialist help from the NHS.” Shannon McLaughlin, 18, from Blackburn, has opened up about how social media has harmed her mental health. “Since being diagnosed with depression and anxiety in my early teens, my mental health has definitely been affected by social media. The sad truth is that people mostly share the positive things about life on social media, without showing the negatives. This really affected me when I was struggling with my mental health and would constantly scroll through Facebook and Instagram. Seeing that everyone was happy and enjoying life made me feel so much worse. In fact, it made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Why was I feeling so different to everyone else? “It not only affected how I was feeling about myself mentally, but also physically. I was constantly confronted by women with unattainably skinny bodies who were praised for the way they looked. Even though I was a size 10, it really affected the way I looked at my own body. This was only made worse by the abundance of diet fixes and skinny culture promoted by ‘influencers’, whose posts are broadcast to thousands of people every day.” McLaughlin does volunteer work, including putting on blind football events. She is travelling to Germany on Friday to work on one such programme and, while there, will research the provision of services for blind people in that country, as well as how those same services can possibly be improved in the UK. About two years ago, she began volunteering with the National Citizen Service. “When I was 16, I decided it was important for me to invest time in new friends and people that made me feel positive in real life. That’s when I decided to go on National Citizen Service. NCS was life-changing for me. It made me connect with real people, build my confidence and feel less alone. It’s so important for young people to make real connections without hiding behind a text message or a happy social media post. “It’s so easy to forget the importance of real connections when we constantly have hundreds of people that we’re trying to impress at our fingertips. I think it’s important for young people to look up from their phones and focus more on the world around them, and the amazing connections that they can make there.”Twenty minutes after time had elapsed, with Bath down to 11 men, Duncan Weir landed the conversion that has secured Worcester a vital edge in this insane relegation battle. Insanity is the word for this finish, Worcester overturning a 16-point half-time deficit at 5.12pm to put four points between them and Newcastle at the bottom of the table. In the end, Bath faced one final scrum with three backs and a scrum-half in defence, allowing Bryce Heem to stroll in for his second try of the match. A red card for Ross Batty in the 64th minute had been followed by a yellow for each Bath prop during an extraordinarily tense series of scrums on Bath’s five-metre line long after time was up. Another for Aled Brew for offside, with umpteen backs outside him, put Bath in their impossible position. This was reminiscent of France-Wales in Paris a couple of seasons ago, although the probity of Bath was exemplary here, their starting front row replacing the replacement front row without so much as a whiff of a hamstring strain. If only their discipline had been so. The penalty count in the second half was 14-1 against. It was the kind of agonising finish here that Worcester have so often been on the wrong side of in recent years, losing handsome leads right at the death, not least against Bath themselves. How energising it looks for that dynamic to be reversed. “I’ve never seen a game end like that,” said Alan Solomons, the Worcester director of rugby. “It does a lot to boost the confidence of the players to be down by that much at half-time and know you can turn it around.” Worcester were a side transformed after the break but by then they were 16 points adrift, curiously unable to locate the zip that has characterised their better matches this season. It is not as if the stakes were low. Without exactly tearing them up, Bath had dominated the first half. Worcester were staring at a 9-0 deficit in short order. The penalty lottery is likely to hurt you if you spend most of the time in your own half. Bath scored their only try a few minutes before the break. James Wilson was held up, missing the whitewash by a whisker in the tackle of Perry Humphreys, but Bath scored from the scrum. Zach Mercer had been the liveliest player on show, and he emerged with the game’s first try, after Jamie Roberts had battered close to the line. Battering more or less summed the game up at that point. A fourth Burns penalty left Worcester 19-3 adrift at the break. It was the last of Bath’s points. Weir’s penalty, after Francois Louw’s high tackle on Heem, edged the Warriors closer, which was their cue to find some form. Francois Venter was the game breaker. He cut Bath’s line on the right before doing it again, this time decisively, on the left. Chris Pennell’s short ball invited him to pick a great line, and Heem was on hand to score just shy of the hour. Weir could not convert but Sixways was rocking now. All the more so five minutes later when Batty was shown his red. It was not exactly a tip tackle, more a neck roll in which he pulled Lewis down head first, a combination the referee felt, probably rightly, was worth a red. Worcester set up in Bath’s 22 and when they coaxed the visitors offside, Weir landed his third to bring them back to within a score. Cue the madness of the match that would not end. Worcester had scrum after scrum, and soon the yellow cards began to flash. It was nothing if not a new way to win a game. They all count.Women’s rights campaigners in Northern Ireland have vowed to join forces with pro-choice activists in the Irish Republic and MPs at Westminster to force the UK government to address the “denial of human rights” in 2019 by supporting moves to end the region’s abortion ban. Activists urged Theresa May’s government not to sacrifice the rights and health of women at the altar of Brexit, and back potential legislation to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland. The region has one of the strictest bans in the world, with women in almost every circumstance facing up to life in prison for a termination. The 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland and an abortion cannot be performed legally even in cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormalities. But after the success of the repeal the eighth amendment campaign in helping to overturn the Republic of Ireland’s near-total ban on abortions in a landslide referendum victory, as well as polls showing strong support for a change north of the border, activists are motivated and energised in a manner not seen in decades, said Emma Campbell, who co-chairs the Alliance for Choice. “The referendum in the south was really helpful, because you can basically no longer argue that the public don’t support a change in the law,” she said. “This has been a long fight with a lot of setbacks so we are cautiously optimistic, but I would say more optimistic than we’ve ever been.” In the Irish Republic, the repeal campaign’s use of online platforms such as In Her Shoes to tell the stories of women forced to travel to other countries for an abortion also had a huge impact, said Campbell. “The public heard stories of travel that were no different to the stories here. It gave people courage … it has been such a huge open secret, but once you have broken the silence there is no putting the genie back in the bottle.” In Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist party, which props up May’s government in Westminster, has refused to budge from its hardline support for the region’s Victorian-era abortion law. Sinn Féin, however, dramatically changed its stance after the referendum in the Irish Republic and backs liberalisation of the law. Campaigners have the support of their counterparts in the Irish Republic who were ready to continue the struggle north of the border, said Ailbhe Smyth, a spokeswoman for the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment. “I think what’s maybe most important is we’ve actually managed it in the south,” she said. “If we had lost that referendum it would have set back that process, but winning it has given them great fire and determination.” A number of elements have come together over the past couple of months to add fuel to that fire. In October polling by Amnesty International suggested 65% of adults in Northern Ireland thought abortion should not be a crime. A supreme court ruling in June said that the region’s abortion laws were incompatible with human rights legislation. The decision has put further pressure on politicians to act even though the justices declined to issue a final ruling because the case brought before them did not involve an individual victim. And with the Northern Ireland assembly not sitting since the collapse of the power-sharing government almost two years ago, campaigning MPs in Westminster sense they have an unprecedented opportunity. Last July more than 170 politicians from the UK and the Irish Republic signed a letter urging the UK government to reform Northern Ireland’s abortion laws. The women and equalities select committee is carrying out an inquiry into those laws, and the minister for women and equalities, Penny Mordaunt, has told Northern Ireland’s politicians that if they did not liberalise the abortion law, Westminster would. Thank you to all MPs who took part in todays debate.With authority comes responsibility.Message from NI Secretary of State today: NI should take that responsibility.Message from the House of Commons: if you don't, we will.#trustwomen Since the referendum, the Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, has also received letters from anti-abortion campaigners, including people born with serious conditions to maintain restrictions on abortion. One asked Bradley to confirm whether she was a Christian, writing: “It would seem that the most vulnerable in our society, the unborn child, is not permitted human rights.” We can no longer stand by as women in Northern Ireland have their human rights breached But a growing number of MPs support a change in the law, with a number taking direct action. A free vote on a 10-minute rule bill, put forward by Labour’s Diana Johnson, passed 208 votes to 123 with cross-party support, bolstering confidence among campaigners and supportive MPs even if the backbencher bill will not become law because the government has signalled that it will not give it parliamentary time. “We can no longer stand by as women in Northern Ireland have their human rights breached,” Johnson told the Guardian. “It is quite clear that the Westminster parliament stands ready to deal with this.” Many campaigners are now pinning their hopes on moves by her colleague Stella Creasy who, with Labour’s Conor McGinn, successfully tabled an amendment in October forcing Bradley “to issue guidance” on how officials can continue to enforce the region’s abortion law. Creasy plans to table an amendment to the government’s long-awaited domestic abuse bill. “The lack of assembly cannot be used as an excuse not to act on this basic human rights issue,” said Creasy. “In 2019, we will be redoubling our fight against this injustice and seeking to amend legislation to decriminalise abortion across the UK including in Northern Ireland. Whatever deals the PM does with the DUP to stay in power we will not rest until abortion is free, safe, legal and local for every UK citizen.” The situation for the women seeking an abortion was an ongoing tragedy, said Ruairi Rowan, an advocacy manager at the Family Planning Association in Northern Ireland. “People are still shocked when they find out that you can go to jail for buying abortion pills, that you can’t get an abortion if you are raped,.” A woman faces prison after been embroiled in a legal battle for years after obtaining abortion pills for her underage daughter, who was in an abusive relationship. Women in Northern Ireland will be able to access services in the Irish Republic from this month. However, a three-day waiting period means women in desperate situations are likely to continue to travel to the rest of the UK where they now have access to free abortion services, said Rowan. But campaigners are more determined than ever that 2019 will bring the change they argue Northern Ireland desperately needs, sai Goretti Horgan, an activist. Horgan said it took the death of Savita Halappanavar  in 2012 after being denied an abortion during a protracted miscarriage to spark a mass movement for change south of the border, she said. “Maybe the only way we can break the stalemate is to get tens of thousands on to the streets either here [in Northern Ireland] or london,” she said. “I just hope it won’t take another tragic death to make that happen.”Despite his disdain for early 2000s choreography queens Britney and Christina, Fred Durst wasn’t immune to a dance craze. In this typically understated nu-metal video, he distinguishes his manly moves by throwing down on a helipad (very dangerous!) and inviting viewers to celebrate the size of his ... steering wheel. The classic novelty single was inspired by distant climes whose locals, one imagines, wouldn’t be seen dead dancing to it. Sure, it ruined your school disco, but consider the plight of singer Dene Michael Betteridge, who was forced to perform the song’s lumpen moves when in jail for benefit fraud. “These terrifying criminals tell you to do something, you do it,” he said. The only way to get smooth, mullet-sporting Cyrus on traditional country radio was to play up his horndog status. A choreographer taught the distinctive line dance to the female fans who turned up for the video shoot, the label organised a dance contest and the 90s line-dancing fad was born (before dying with Steps’ monstrous 5, 6, 7, 8). If my bandmates ruined my wedding, I wouldn’t be inclined to accompany them to a disco and knock out a rinky-dink dance routine, but such is life in the video for Tragedy. The hands-by-the-ears dance moves could be likened to Edvard Munch’s The Scream, if you had lost your mind and critical faculties. REM challenged themselves to write this dumb bubblegum song, which swiftly became their second US Top 10 hit. Needing a video to match, the director, Katherine Dieckmann, determined to break down Michael Stipe’s “staid” public image with this mildly aerobic, entirely charming routine that provoked much playground copycatting. A lark, but a self-aware and not-unkind one. US rap spurs global viral dances, but the UK scene isn’t too shabby at it. Following Skepta’s Rolex Sweep and KIG’s Head, Shoulders, Kneez & Toez, Gun Lean finds Russ performing his glitchy, lean-back bob in Sainsbury’s cereal aisle and moving embattled drill closer to the (snap, crackle and) pop mainstream. The Saturday Night dance didn’t originate with Whigfield, but by the time she performed the No 1 hit on Top of the Pops, the kinetic, bunny-hopping bop had become such a phenomenon that the Dane had no choice but to scowl as some talentless buffoons performed it around her. Its legacy endures in regional aqua aerobics classes. Perhaps the only video to feature Princess Diana, Gaddafi and the Statue of Liberty, whose limbs were computer-manipulated into mimicking the ancient Egyptian reliefs that inspired the song. On one hand, this two-arm movement couldn’t be easier; on the other, the video reveals dozens of uncoordinated New Yorkers making an enjoyable hash of it. Who knew that Psy’s pony-spanking dance could do so much harm? It has led to deaths, rival gang shootouts, near-fatal LSD trips, conspiracy theories, fraudster arrests, Ed Balls’ spirited jockeying and illegal firecracker production. Not to mention all the slipped discs. Most of the moves detailed in Crank That are easily replicable – punching, starting a motorbike, the robot – hence its breakout success. But one element of the song mercifully didn’t go mainstream: namely the “Superman”, which Urban Dictionary details as the emission of a certain fluid that then dries into a cape-like layer. Grisly. The first global dance craze is a softer, desexualised version of a dance that stems back to 19th-century slaves and looks incredibly gentle today. Still, it provoked endearing bafflement among commentators at the time, who likened its “piston-like motions” to “baffled bird keepers fighting off a flock of attacking blue jays”. The Macarena has fallen on hard times: macarena.com is canvassing for donations to stay up and running. But the methodical dance to one of the biggest one-hit wonders will live on, at least until the last 90s kid who can do it in their sleep passes away. Hey! The “faces” of the New York disco scene that inspired Saturday Night Fever were uniquely stylish men (at least, in Nik Cohn’s fabricated Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night feature). But the beauty of the diagonal point-and-bob, so immaculately done by John Travolta, is that any drunk slob can pull it off with aplomb. Of all the moves in Single Ladies – the Bob Fosse-inspired routine that spawned a thousand high-end exercise classes, the finger-waggy “huh oh oh”s aimed at giving nans an easy bit to follow – none is as arresting as Beyoncé’s final pose as she audibly gasps for breath after nailing it. Some of pop history’s finest moments turn on a flash of recontextualisation that sticks for ever: the interview that recast the Spice Girls as Scary, Ginger and co; an outraged Mike Read pulling Relax off air, stoking its notoriety. You can watch one happen when the Village People performed YMCA on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in January 1979. The group hadn’t choreographed a dance, but the audience, mistaking the band’s raised arms in the chorus for a Y formation, invented one on the spot. Clark, agog, made everyone do it again immediately. Forty years on, we’ve never stopped.Karen Pence is not just the wife of the US vice-president, she’s an empowered career woman in her own right. While her husband works tirelessly alongside Trump to make America white again, Karen Pence, it was announced this week, is returning to her old job teaching kids art. Or rather, she’s going to teach heterosexual kids art, and they shouldn’t expect to draw any rainbows. The Christian school in northern Virginia where Pence will be working requires its teachers to agree that they won’t engage in or condone “homosexual or lesbian sexual activity” and “transgender identity”. The school also reserves the right to expel or refuse to admit students if they or their parents participate in, support, or condone, homosexual or bisexual activity. A policy that seems to chime perfectly with the vice-president’s own bigoted worldview – Pence has a long history of homophobia and transphobia. News that the second lady of the United States is cheerfully teaching at an anti-LGBT school has sparked an unfair amount of criticism, according to Pence. On Friday the vice-president told a Catholic TV network that “see[ing] major news organizations attacking Christian education is deeply offensive to us”. I had no idea that Christian education meant teaching kids to hate thy neighbor, but what do I know! I’m just an ignorant heathen. Also, I thought it was the liberal snowflakes who were supposed to take offense at everything, not thick-skinned conservatives. Because we’re all so obsessed with Trump I don’t think we take enough time to reflect on how deeply terrifying Pence is. Trump may be a bigot, but Pence is a zealot – he believes his discriminatory views are justified by a higher power. Trump may not care about morals but Pence has a dangerous view of what morality entails. He refuses to eat alone with any woman who isn’t his wife, for example, because he apparently views women as nothing more than dangerous sexual temptations. And despite his beliefs about moral purity, he has no problem associating himself with Trump, a man who pays off porn stars. Also, he reportedly calls his wife “Mother” – which is just really creepy. The Pences, of course, should be free to believe whatever they like. What they shouldn’t be free to do, however, is impose their bigoted views on everyone else, which is exactly what they’re doing. It is not entirely improbable that Pence might be president soon. If that happens then it seems clear he’ll do his best to turn the country into a real-life version of The Handmaid’s Tale. Variety has reported that Sony music will no longer work with R Kelly. While the musician has faced allegations of sexual abusive behavior towards young women for more than 20 years, he’s managed to avoid any real repercussions – so this news is huge. Sony music haven’t commented on the story yet but it seems likely that their decision to cut ties with Kelly was heavily influenced by the recent Lifetime documentary Surviving R Kelly. The documentary prompted fresh investigations into the singer and made the allegations against him impossible to ignore. The British ultrarunner has become the first woman to win the brutal 268-mile Montane Spine Race. Not only that, she crossed the line in just over 83 hours, which is 12 hours faster than the previous record holder, Eoin Keith. As if that wasn’t badass enough, Paris, who is breastfeeding her 14-month-old daughter, also stopped to express milk during the race. I’m exhausted just thinking about all that. The third annual Women’s march will take place on Saturday. This year’s march is mired in controversy, following allegations of antisemitism among the organisation’s leaders. This has led the movement to splinter and New York will see two competing marches hit the streets. On Wednesday Citigroup revealed that its female employees earn 29% less than their male counterparts. US employees from a minority background earn 7% less than non-minorities. While this is pretty dire, Citigroup should at least be applauded for their transparency – they’re the first US bank to publish unadjusted pay gap figures. Congratulations to Mariah for having the best response to the nauseating #10YearChallenge that is currently everywhere on social media. “I don’t get this 10-year challenge, time is not something I acknowledge,” she tweeted alongside two identical pictures of herself. This will now be my go-to line for my editor every time I file copy late.It’s back on. The fierce and very public feud between Elon Musk and the rapper Azealia Banks was reignited on Friday after the tech billionaire’s lawyers attacked the rappers’ credibility in a filing in a shareholder lawsuit. “They are still slighting me like I don’t have plenty more dirt to spill on Elon,” Banks wrote on Instagram on Friday. “This is going to get extremely ugly … Elon will learn very soon who is more powerful of us two.” She has since deleted the post. The revived feud between the rapper and Musk is just the latest fallout from the Tesla’ CEO’s infamous 7 August 2018 announcement on Twitter that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 per share. Attorneys for investors, who allege Musk’s tweet was market manipulation that cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, are trying to learn more about one of the complicating factors in the case: Banks’ apparent presence in Musk’s house during the immediate fallout of the tweet. Banks had posted extensively about her time in Musk’s home on Instagram, alleging that she had been invited by Musks’ then girlfriend Claire Boucher, the electronic artist Grimes, for a recording session, only to end up waiting around the house while the musician comforted her boyfriend for “being too stupid not to go on Twitter while on acid”. According to Musk’s attorney’s filing on Friday, which was first reported by Bloomberg, the plaintiff’s have sought subpoenas for Grimes, Banks, and three media outlets (the New York Times, Gizmodo and Business Insider) that interviewed either Banks or Musk about their dispute. “It is evident that this is really more of an effort to sensationalize these proceedings than a legitimate attempt to preserve evidence,” Musk’s attorney Dean Kristy wrote in the filing. In the filing, Kristy refers to media reports describing Banks’ “history of making bold and sometimes unverified claims” to question her credibility as a witness. The filing also cites an article, in which a reporter characterized Banks calling Musk a caveman as “vaguely eugenicist”, as further evidence of her untrustworthiness. Kristy also invoked a tale resurfaced recently by Vanity Fair that Jack Dorsey, the Twitter CEO, once sent Banks hair clippings to make him a protective amulet. “This is simply not the type of witness, or actual record, that could justify the required finding of exceptional circumstances necessary” to allow the subpoenas, the filing argues. Banks appears to have taken exception to Kristy’s filing, an excerpt of which she posted as a screenshot in her now-deleted Instagram post. “I’m now even more angered by the fact that his lawyer is falsely stating I lied after being vindicated in both incidents with Russell Crowe and Jack Dorsey,” she wrote. Neither Banks nor Musk responded immediately to requests for comment.I have been using Airbnb regularly as guest and host for three years. However, when a recent guest damaged my flat I found there is absolutely no customer service from the company. Over the weeks since I raised a complaint I have been promised responses that never came and each time I message on its system my case is automatically closed. The guest had booked the flat, which is profiled as no-smoking, no parties and no extra guests, for herself, her daughter and two friends for a Christmas shopping weekend. I returned to an overpowering smell of cannabis as though dozens of people had been smoking. The flat was filthy. My towels had been used to wipe muddy floors and smelled of booze. Wineglasses were broken or missing, wine stained the floorboards, the vacuum cleaner was broken and stank of cannabis and there was some stuck to a chair cushion. A neighbour said a number of young people had been coming and going over the two days. Airbnb claimed it could not contact the guest as she’d closed her profile. If it doesn’t provide the host with compensation and enforce a fine, where is my security as a host?LT, London Satisfying as it would be to fine delinquent guests, private companies do not have the power to do so. However, the host guarantee promises cover for up to $1m for damage to property, although there are a raft of exclusions including that caused by pets or guests who overstay, excessive use of utilities and damage to communal areas. Beware, though. This is not an insurance policy. Indeed, renting your room without informing your insurer could invalidate your policy and, if you do inform them, it’s likely your premium will rise or the insurer will refuse to cover the risk. None of that excuses Airbnb’s silence when you sent the evidence. When the Observer wades in it says: “We apologise for our delay in supporting this host and are reaching out to make things right.” That translates as £300. You are asking for £789 to reflect the extra cleaning, the extra guests and compensation because the flat could not be let until you had rectified the damage. But the guarantee only includes physical loss and damage. If you let your flat regularly you should consider getting a comprehensive insurance cover from a specialised broker to fill in the many gaps of the free guarantee. If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number. Submission and publication are subject to our terms and conditionsThe story of a three-year-old boy who said he survived two nights alone in the woods due to the assistance of a friendly bear should not encourage people to seek out their own relationships with bears, a leading ursine expert has warned. Last week, rescuers in North Carolina found three-year-old Casey Hathaway crying but safe, entangled in a patch of thorny bushes, having been missing in a wooded area in freezing conditions for two nights. Casey told police he survived due to the presence of a black bear, which kept him company. The boy repeated the story to his aunt, Breanna Hathaway. “He said he hung out with a bear for two days,” Hathaway wrote in a Facebook post. “God sent him a friend to keep him safe. God is a good God. Miracles do happen.” This seemingly remarkable tale of Jungle Book-style inter-species friendship was most likely the product of Casey’s imagination, however, according to one veteran bear expert. “I’ve never known such a thing to happen, bears don’t do that,” said Chris Servheen, a bear researcher at the University of Montana. “Wild bears aren’t friends with people. I don’t want to say he’s not telling the truth, he obviously thinks he’s seen things and maybe he’s got a teddy bear at home. But I’ve seen no evidence anything like that has ever happened.” There are examples of apparent bear-human comradeship, although they typically involve captive bears that have been raised by human handlers. For example, in 2016 a video was taken of Jimbo, a bear that stands 10ft on its hind legs, cuddling Jim Kowalczik, director of a New York wildlife centre, and allowing Kowalczik to administer a back rub. A wild bear is a very different proposition, however, due to a natural aversion to dealing with humans. Bears that break into homes or attack people are usually killed themselves. With a sense of smell around seven times stronger than a bloodhound’s, a bear would have smelled Casey long before seeing him and would most likely have then left the scene. “Bears are by and large afraid of people no matter how big the person is,” Servheen said. “Bears that move towards people don’t survive long, so they get selected out. The only reason it would go near the child would be to be predatory, although black bears are very rarely predatory of humans and obviously that didn’t happen here. “In a situation where a bear is raised by a human they can become very tame, just like a dog. But a wild bear is very different. “I don’t want to cast aspersions on the child but I think the little boy had a fantasy. The bear wouldn’t feel sorry for him, thinking he’s alone. That’s ascribing human characteristics on wild animals, which is anthropomorphism. “But if the boy felt comfortable under the watch of a wild animal that’s fine. Whatever helped him get through it.”How can a charity-backed T-shirt come from a dismal factory where staff are abused and do gruelling work for low pay? The Spice Girls and Comic Relief said they had checked the ethical sourcing credentials of Represent, the online retailer commissioned to make the T-shirts that have caused a furore, but it had subsequently changed manufacturer without their knowledge. Represent said it took “full responsibility” for problems identified by a Guardian investigation this week. But it is little surprise that workers at the Bangladesh factory where the T-shirts were made were paid less than the local living wage. Countries such as Bangladesh are popular places in which to operate because they offer cheap labour alongside expertise in clothing manufacture. The legal minimum wage for garment workers in the country is 8,000 taka (£73.85) a month, slightly less than the amount received by workers spoken to by the Guardian. The amount was increased by 2,700Tk a month in December, but campaigners say workers need 16,000Tk to live a comfortable life in Bangladesh. With such low wages, employees often feel compelled to take on large amounts of overtime to make ends meet. Beyond wages, checking conditions in clothing supply chains requires considerable resources, covering a complex web of thread and fabric makers, dyeing services and stitching work, all located in distant, developing economies with poor communications infrastructure. Local laws may regulate fire safety, pay and working conditions, but enforcement is often weak because there are not enough inspectors and there is significant potential for the corruption of officials. At the same time, workers can struggle to raise awareness of issues as a result of low levels of union recognition and fear of reprisals. After the Rana Plaza clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh, in which more than 1,000 workers died, dozens of retailers and brands signed up to the accord on fire and building safety. It funded inspections and improvements to buildings, including fire doors and structural work, as well as helping inform workers of their rights and training managers to spot and respond to problems. Mary Creagh, the chairwoman of the UK parliament’s environmental audit committee, which has carried out an investigation into sustainable fashion, previously said: “The best audit [of conditions] … is taken by workers through their elected representatives in your factories.” Globally, less than 10% of garment workers are in trade unions, she added. But action to increase union representation in Bangladesh and other supplier countries has been slow, as union leaders and members can face intimidation because business owners and some governments see activists as a threat. Where local regulation and union representation is weak, retailers have traditionally tried to weed out poor factories with regular inspections carried out by their own staff or professional ethical auditors. Sedex, which has 50,000 members in more than 150 countries, enables brands to share data on ethical standards at thousands of factories around the world. But Peter McAllister, the executive director of the Ethical Trading Initiative, which brings together businesses, unions and campaign groups to try to improve conditions in clothing manufacturing, said retailers and brands could not rely solely on inspection reports and those thatdid were “either naive or wilfully ignorant”. The best retailers have teams on the ground who work closely with suppliers to monitor conditions and check details about the capacities of factories and the time needed to carry out particular work projects. Such a detailed investigation can then identify when unrealistically low price points are being quoted – prices that can prompt factory owners to cut corners by forcing staff to do unpaid overtime or outsourcing work to less reputable establishments that may not have been inspected. McAllister said price was one of the best indicators of working conditions: “If something is very cheap, you have to ask yourself, is it really possible to make it in a factory that is run properly, with a living wage?”David Kynaston is a historian who has written books on postwar Britain, the City of London and cricket. His latest book, co-written with his old school friend Francis Green, is called Engines of Privilege: Britain’s Private School Problem, and focuses on the unfair advantage offered by the independent education sector. You are known for your forensic histories of modern Britain. What inspired this book?It’s an issue I’ve become deeply interested in since my sons went to a state grammar school in 2007. They both played football for their school and standing on the touchline when they played against local private and state schools I saw the full spectrum of the unequal allocation of resources, the huge difference in the quality of facilities at state and private schools. The unfairness hit me terribly hard. A few years later in 2014 I gave the Orwell lecture, focusing on the private school question, and then at the end of that year my son George and I wrote a piece on the history and cultural significance of private schools in the New Statesman, which provoked five further articles the following week. That was the moment that made me think this was an issue that had some traction. You argue that private schools add significantly to a child’s socioeconomic opportunities. What do you think would have happened to you, had you not attended Wellington college?If one has had a very privileged education and then one achieves anything in adult life, there’s always that nagging thought – how much is down to the fact that one had good fortune and others didn’t? The academic advantages conferred by the private school are not dramatic but significant, and cumulatively over the course of a childhood they amount to quite a lot. What tangible advantages did going to private school give you?In my case, boarding school provided an escape from my parents’ divorce. I was nine when it happened and school was friendly and cosy and it was nice to have another world to go to. Later, I had three very good history teachers and they really got me flying intellectually. In some ways I had better history teaching at school than I did when I was at Oxford. But perhaps the most important thing it gave me was confidence. Private-school students are taught that they are going to do well in life. That makes a huge psychological difference growing up. There has been a discussion about reforming private schools for decades. Why has it not got anywhere?I think the liberal left find it a difficult issue because parents want to do the best for their children and if they can afford it they’ll often educate their children privately, and that’s entirely understandable. But attitudes become very entrenched when people have made a significant financial investment. And if one’s been privately educated oneself there’s the question of having advantages that others have not had, and then throwing away the ladder one’s climbed up oneself. Do you think anything will change in your or your children’s lifetime?It’s not impossible because I believe that plates shift in history in a way that is often beyond the control of individuals. There was something plate-shifting about the 1945 election, which brought in the welfare state. I think the plates shifted again at the end of the 1970s and the Thatcher/Reagan era. Now, particularly since the financial crash, we are approaching the end of free-market orthodoxy and there is an anti-privilege mood around. It is hard to see how the private schools can escape from this unscathed. Should we bring back grammar schools?It is an important question and I am a bit conflicted. When grammar schools were phased out at the end of the 1960s, something was lost. At that point, they were offering real academic competition to the private schools. But you also had the problem of selection, division within families and three quarters of the population being written off. I think overall there was a good case for abolition but it was a debatable case. I am not nearly as unsympathetic towards grammars as I am towards private schools.  What should be done now?There’s obviously the question of outright abolition, but in our view to aim at that is impractical because it would be such a difficult thing to achieve. My starting point is where we are at the moment, with these highly resourced schools for, on the whole, children of wealthy parents, entrenching already existing advantages. So anything, in a sense, is better than where we are now. We’ve put our emphasis on changing the social composition of the schools. We call for a fair access scheme in which, initially, 33% of pupils at private schools would be state-subsidised. Have you had any interesting reactions to your book so far?Not yet, but I honestly do not know what to expect when it is published next month. We have tried to write it in a moderate way, keeping it evidence-based and non-agitprop, not attacking parents or making futile accusations of hypocrisy. If a lot of personal shit and mud gets thrown then I will be very sad because that is not the spirit in which the book is written. We are a mature democracy but we are not always able to talk about this subject in a mature way.Human Rights Watch has called on Australia’s government to clarify the status of the visa of the Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun amid concerns that it had been cancelled. The 18-year-old Saudi woman who barricaded herself in a Bangkok airport hotel room to prevent her forcible return to a family she claims will kill her, has been taken under the protection of the UN high commissioner for refugees in Thailand. Qunun was detained on arrival at Bangkok and denied entry to Thailand while en route to Australia, where she said she intended to seek asylum. The Guardian confirmed on Monday Qunun had a valid three-month tourist visa for Australia, issued to her Saudi passport. But there were reports from Qunun supporters that her visa to Australia has been cancelled. I’m very interested to hear from Minister Dutton if this is correct or not? I’ve seen Rahaf’s Australian visa which was valid - but yesterday when she was trying to log into her immigration online profile that appeared to no longer be working? Keen to hear more from the Minister https://t.co/5f0gNhZyQR Sophie McNeill, an ABC journalist who was with Qunun in her hotel room on Monday, later clarified that David Coleman, not Peter Dutton, was the immigration minister. Nourah Alharbi, a 20-year-old friend of Qunun who recently moved from Saudi Arabia to Australia, said the visa had been cancelled. “We found out they cancelled the tourist visa,” she said. “It was a tourist visa and now they’ve cancelled it. I don’t know [the reason] because they’re not answering.” The minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Human Rights Watch Australian director, Elaine Pearson, urged the federal government to clarify Qunun’s visa status. “If the visa has been cancelled it would be very concerning,” she told the Guardian. “She’s not safe in Thailand … I don’t think she’ll be truly safe until she reaches a third country.” Pearson said Australia has a moral obligation to help Qunun. “Foreign governments, including Australia, that are concerned about human rights should be doubling down and offering support,” she said, adding that the response for the federal government and opposition had been disappointing so far. “The government has said that promoting women’s rights is a priority as part of its foreign policy; well here’s a concrete case where they can protect a young woman’s life, and the government should be seizing that opportunity and making its views widely known.” The Australian government said on Monday night Qunun’s situation was “deeply concerning” and it had lobbied the Thai government and the UNHCR to allow her to formally claim asylum. Labor’s immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann declined to comment on the visa. He told reporters in Brisbane on Tuesday he had been in contact with Coleman’s office and was satisfied with the level of support from the federal government. “She’s got an application she’s making with the UNHCR with refugee status. I won’t preempt the outcome of that particular process,” he said. It’s expected to take the UN about five days to assess Qunun’s application for refugee status. If successful, she will be sent to a third country. Alharbi said Qunun had been sustained throughout her “terrifying” ordeal on Monday by thousands of people who expressed support for her on social media. “Yesterday, they made the difference in Rahaf’s life. You saved Rahaf’s life yesterday: the people, the media.A discussion panel at the Davos World Economic Forum has become a sensation after a Dutch historian took billionaires to task for not paying taxes. In a video shared tens of thousands of times, Rutger Bregman, author of the book Utopia for Realists, bemoans the failure of attendees at the recent gathering in Switzerland to address the key issue in the battle for greater equality: the failure of rich people to pay their fair share of taxes. Noting that 1,500 people had travelled to Davos by private jet to hear David Attenborough talk about climate change, he said he was bewildered that no one was talking about raising taxes on the rich. Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion. “I hear people talking the language of participation, justice, equality and transparency but almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance, right? And of the rich just not paying their fair share,” Bregman tells the Time magazine panel on inequality. “It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water.” Industry had to “stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes”, he said, and cited the high tax regime of 1950s America as an example to disprove arguments by businesspeople at Davos such as Michael Dell that economies with high personal taxation could not succeed. “That’s it,” he says. “Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.” A member of the audience, former Yahoo chief financial officer Ken Goldman, challenged his comments and said it was a “one-sided panel”. He argued the fiscal settings across the global economy had been successful and had created record employment. But another panel member, Winnie Byanyima, an Oxfam executive director, took up the fight and said high employment was not a good thing in itself because many people found themselves in exploitative work. She cited the example of poultry workers in the US who had to wear nappies (diapers) because they were not allowed toilet breaks. “That’s not a dignified job,” she said. “those are the jobs we’ve been told about, that globalisation is bringing jobs. The quality of the jobs matter. In many countries workers no longer have a voice. Addressing Goldman, she said: “You’re counting the wrong things. You’re not counting dignity of people. You’re counting exploited people.” Billions of dollars were leaked by tax avoidance every year which should instead be going to alleviate poverty in the developing world, she added. After the panel Bregman tweeted a link to a opinion piece he wrote for the Guardian in 2017, saying “most wealth is not created at the top, but merely devoured there”.Chawanmushi was one of my favourite savoury egg dishes when I was a child. Its warm, silky texture and combination of simple ingredients are the perfect way to enjoy the umami flavour of dashi. The simple components of the dish mean that you can play around with seasonal ingredients. This particular recipe is a plain chawanmushi, with a thickened dashi to pour on top at the end. Makes approx 4 For the dashi (makes 750ml)bonito flakes 15ghot water 750ml For the chawanmushidashi 450ml (see above) usukuchi soy sauce 15ml (Japanese light soy sauce, available online) salt a pincheggs 3 For the toppingdashi 200ml (see above) chanterelle mushrooms a handful soy sauce 25ml mirin 10ml katakuriko 10g (potato starch, available online) citrus peel, needle-cut ginger or a twist of black pepper to serve (optional) To make a quick dashi, place the bonito flakes in a jar, pour in the hot water, put a lid on and leave for 3 minutes or until the bonito sinks to the bottom. Sieve this mixture through a piece of kitchen roll placed in a sieve. Cool and set aside the dashi until ready to use. In a bowl, mix together 450ml dashi with the usukuchi soy sauce and salt. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs until well combined – so there are no big lumps of egg white. Mix the contents of the 2 bowls together, and pour it through a fine sieve. Pour the mixture into 4 small ceramic cups, or as needed. Place this in a steamer with a lid and steam for a couple of minutes. Move the lid slightly to let some steam out, and keep steaming like this with the lid slightly off for a further 25 minutes. While the egg is steaming, prepare the sauce to go on top by pouring 200ml of dashi into a small pot, along with the chanterelle mushrooms, soy sauce, mirin and katakuriko. Place on a medium heat and keep mixing until it comes to the boil. Turn down the heat and keep mixing for a further 30 seconds. Check the egg is cooked by inserting a skewer. If the juice that rises when you pierce the chawanmushi is clear, it’s ready. You could give it a little shake to see if it’s firm enough, too. Place the chawanmushi cups on a small plate and pour over the sauce. To garnish, add either grated citrus peel, needle cut ginger or a twist of black pepper, and serve with a teaspoon.Shuko Oda is the co-founder and executive chef of Koya, London Serves 2eggs 4, poached muffins 4, toastedham 4 slices chopped chives a good pinch cayenne pepper a good pinch For the hollandaise sauce (makes about 250ml)white-wine vinegar 4 tbspshallots 2, coarsely choppedpeppercorns 10 butter 175g, cut into cubesegg yolks 3 lemon juice of ½ salt First make the sauce: put the vinegar, shallots and peppercorns in a saucepan and bring to the boil, then continue to boil until reduced by about two-thirds. Strain this reduction into a glass bowl. Clarify the butter by melting it in another heavy pan over a gentle heat. Skim the surface until only clear liquid remains. Remove from the heat and allow it to settle and cool until tepid, then carefully tip out the clarified butter into a clean bowl, leaving any solid residue behind. Place a round heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Add the egg yolks and the reduction. Beat the mixture over the heat until it forms a smooth, thick, pale mass. Remove from the heat and whisk vigorously, adding enough of the clarified butter to make a thick and creamy sauce. It is important to whisk in the same direction all the time. This technique takes muscle and commitment, probably even a few trips to the gym. The reason why is to make a lovely, fluffy hollandaise sauce. It may not happen the first time, but practice will achieve fantastic results. If the sauce should separate at any point, beat a fresh egg yolk with a spoonful of water in a clean bowl, then whisk the separated sauce into that; it should magically come back to a smooth sauce. Adjust the flavour with a little lemon juice and salt to taste. Keep warm. While the eggs are poaching, toast the muffins, first removing a thin slice from the top of each. Keep the grill on. Butter the toasted muffins and then arrange the ham on top of them. Press a good thumb- or spoon-print into the middle of each muffin to give the eggs a neat hollow. Put them back under the grill briefly to warm up. When the eggs are cooked, drain them well and season with salt. Place them in their prepared hollows and ladle over the hollandaise. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper and chives to garnish. Variations Eggs Arlington is simply a variation on eggs Benedict, in which the ham is replaced with long slices of smoked salmon formed into rings to receive the poached eggs. Eggs florentine is a vegetarian version of this type of dish, in which the ham or smoked salmon is replaced with some buttered cooked spinach.From Breakfast at the Wolseley by AA Gill (Quadrille, £12.99) I really love devilled eggs – especially these. You can quote me. Serves 4-6 as a snack or starterorganic eggs 12 large dijon mustard 1 tbsp sour cream or creme fraiche 60ml cayenne a generous pinch chives 1 tsp, snipped crab meat 225g, picked over for shells and cartilagelemon juice of ½ salt and pepper Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Carefully put the eggs into the water and cook for 10 minutes. Remove the eggs to a bowl of ice water, and when they’re cool enough, crack them gently and return to the ice water, so they’ll be easier to peel. Peel the eggs. Cut them in half, scoop out the yolks, and put them in a bowl (reserve the egg white halves). Mash the egg yolks with a fork, and fold in the dijon mustard, sour cream or creme fraiche, cayenne and half the chives. Gently fold in the crab meat and lemon juice, and season lightly with salt and pepper. Taste and adjust the seasoning, and spoon the mixture into the waiting egg-white halves. Put the eggs on a platter or two, cover, and refrigerate. Just before serving, sprinkle the eggs with the rest of the chopped chives.From Heart of the Artichoke by David Tanis (Artisan Books, £25) The Persian eggah-type omelettes called kuku are generally baked in the oven. Kukuye sabsi is particularly Persian in flavour and texture. It is made with fresh green herbs and green vegetables, and sometimes with chopped walnuts and raisins. This is a traditional Iranian New Year’s Day dish. Its greenness is believed to be a symbol of fruitfulness in the coming year, bringing prosperity and happiness. Any favoured herbs may be used in addition to the usual parsley, spring onions, spinach and leeks. (One may use either or both of the last two). Dill, chervil, tarragon, chives and fresh coriander are others. A few chopped walnuts may be included to add to the quality of the texture and flavour. Serves 6leeks 2 spinach 120g spring onions 4-5 eggs 6-8 parsley 2-3 tbsp, chopped mixed fresh herbs 3 tbsp, chopped walnuts 2 tbsp, chopped (optional)raisins 2 tbsp (optional)salt and black peppersoftened butter 2 tbsp Wash the vegetables, dry them and chop them very finely. Beat the eggs in a large bowl, add the chopped vegetables, parsley and mixed herbs, and a few chopped walnuts or raisins if liked. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and mix well. Butter an ovenproof dish and pour in the egg mixture. Bake in a slow oven (160C/gas mark 3) for 45 minutes, covering the dish for the first 30 minutes. The vegetables should be tender and the eggs set, with a golden crust on top. Alternatively, cook the kuku in a large frying pan like an omelette, and when the eggs have almost set, brown the kuku under a hot grill or turn out on a plate and slip back into the pan to colour the underside. Serve hot or cold as a starter or side dish, accompanied by yogurt.From A New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden (Penguin Books, £25) Serves 10-12For the walnut meringueswalnuts 200g egg whites 6 caster sugar 375g For the vanilla ice-creamvanilla pods 2 whole milk 600ml egg yolks 6 caster sugar 200g double cream 500ml For the blood orange sorbetcaster sugar 250g blood orange juice 500ml lemon juice of 1 small For the lemon curdunwaxed lemons 3 large unsalted butter 115g caster sugar 225g eggs 2 large, beaten For the clementine curdclementines 15 unsalted butter 110g eggs 2, beaten caster sugar 100g For the roasted rhubarbrhubarb 6 slender pink stems, trimmed orange peel 1 stripvanilla pod 1 crystallised stem ginger 1 piece caster sugar 4 tbsp To servedouble cream whipped lightly blood oranges peeled, sliced very thinlyoranges peeled, sliced very thinlywalnuts roastedicing sugar to finish Begin with the walnut meringues. Heat the oven to 140C/gas mark 1. Line 2 trays with baking parchment. Scrupulously clean the bowl and the whisk. Roughly chop the walnuts, the coarser the better. Beat the egg whites until they form a stiff peak. Gently add half the sugar and then beat till the mixture stiffens. Add in the remaining half of the sugar and the walnuts. Fold deftly and swiftly. Place spoonfuls of the meringue, evenly spaced, on the baking parchment. Place the trays in the oven and turn the heat down to 120C/gas mark ½ until they’re palest gold colour and can detach easily from the parchment. Cool and then store in an airtight container until needed. For the vanilla ice-cream, split the vanilla pods and scrape the seeds. Add the pods and seeds to a pan with the milk. Place on a moderate heat to come to a gentle simmer. Stir the egg yolks and sugar together. Pour the warmed milk onto the egg yolks and sugar, stirring all the while. Return this mixture to the pan and place once more on a moderate heat and stirring constantly. Cook until thickened, having a care not to curdle should the custard become too hot. Once cooked, pour in the cream and put to one side to cool completely. Strain the custard and then pour into an ice-cream machine and churn to manufacturer’s instructions. To make the blood orange sorbet, in a pan, dissolve the sugar and sieved blood orange juice and bring to a gentle simmer and remove from the heat. Once the syrup has cooled completely, add the lemon juice. Tip the liquid into an ice-cream machine and churn to manufacturer’s instructions. For the lemon curd, zest the lemons, avoiding any pith, then squeeze their juice. Add the zest and sieved juice to a heavy-bottomed saucepan with the butter, sugar and beaten eggs. Heat gently until the butter is melted then stir together and continue thus over a gentle heat until the curd is thickened. Make the clementine curd following the same process. Transfer the curds into bowls, cool, cover and refrigerate. For the roasted rhubarb, preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Cut the rhubarb into very small pieces and strew on a shallow baking sheet. Add a strip of orange peel, a vanilla pod, the sliced crystallised stem ginger, then the caster sugar. Tumble all this together. Cover the tray with foil and place in the oven for 25-30 minutes until tender but not too collapsed. Set aside to cool. Once all is in readiness for serving, with the elements cooled or, for the ices, frozen, clear the decks. Gather all your elements together and choose your favourite dish of epic proportions to serve. Liberally trowel a spoonful of whipped cream onto the bottom of the meringues and randomly lay on the dish. Scoop the ices and dot over the meringues, alternating with spoonfuls of cream and curds. Add more meringues, as well as the slices of oranges and the rhubarb. Bringing it all together in a riot, continue thus until you’ve used all the ingredients up and a great glorious tumble is achieved. Strew with chopped roasted walnuts and a generous dust of icing sugar.Jeremy Lee is the chef-proprietor of Quo Vadis, London W1Cate Blanchett strides into the room and plomps herself down on the sofa. In front of us – this is meant to be lunch – a table is piled high with sandwiches, fruit, salads and a copy of the script she has spent all morning rehearsing. She prods at it with a finger, hooting with laughter. “Any pointers?” she asks. I glance across at the other sofa, where Martin Crimp, the playwright, is settling himself in. He gazes back impassively. This might be a joke; it might not. We’re backstage at the National Theatre to discuss Blanchett’s appearance in Crimp’s new play – her debut here, and her first appearance on the London stage in seven years. Also squeezing on to the sofas are Blanchett’s director, Katie Mitchell, and her co-star Stephen Dillane. To call the production hotly anticipated is something of an undersell: demand for tickets was so high that the theatre was forced to introduce a Hamilton-style ballot (a few day tickets are left, if you’re able to queue). Even from the vantage point of not-quite-mid-January, this looks like being one of the biggest plays of the year. Working out what kind of play Crimp has come up with, however, is trickier, as Blanchett and her colleagues readily admit. Entitled When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, it is – at least on paper – a loose adaptation of Samuel Richardson’s 1740 proto-novel Pamela. Relating the story of a young maidservant’s relationship with her employer, the book scandalised readers when it was first published. Composed of a series of letters in which Pamela relates how she is pursued by the mysterious “Mr B”, then sexually assaulted, it ends with her finally (and apparently enthusiastically) agreeing to marry him. It’s been called everything from tawdry S&M to a set of case notes for Stockholm syndrome. “It’s an archetypal story: Beauty and the Beast,” says Crimp. “Or, to be more blunt, predator and prey.” In the play, the problems of the novel are sharpened. Although the characters played by Blanchett and Dillane often resemble Pamela and Mr B, at other times they seem to blur into each other, or transform into other people entirely. At the play’s opening, the scenario seems grimly clear: Mr B is a bullying despot, Pamela his cowering victim. A few scenes in, however – there are 12 in all, each responding to a different fragment or aspect of the novel – the ground has begun to shift. Images of voyeurism and violence proliferate: is the audience being challenged, titillated, or both? Is, in fact, the woman controlling her master, rather than the other way around? Dillane says: “There’s a line in the play, ‘I took you – against your will – was it against your will? – jury’s out.’” He pauses. “That’s the question: who’s doing what to whom?” The script reminds Blanchett of the boundary-breaking writers Rachel Cusk and Maggie Nelson: “A lot of the things the play brings up is stuff I’ve been thinking about for a long time. The boundaries of gender, how language constantly fails us and confines us, keeps us in paradigms and frameworks which are frustrating and confounding.” Mitchell doesn’t want to reveal too much about what audiences will see when the lights go down – “That’s a spoiler!” she laughs – but says the production will be set in the present day, not a periwig or petticoat in sight. “No Downton Abbey,” she adds, in case anyone was expecting it. It isn’t hard to see what might have attracted Blanchett to a part that requires such shape-shifting. Her breakthrough movie role as Elizabeth, two decades ago, showed an actor revelling in her ability to switch from vulnerability to imperiousness almost between frames. Since then, there have been epic movie franchises (Indiana Jones, a gaggle of Hobbits, Lord of the Rings) alongside independent releases; classy, elegant fare (Carol, The Aviator, Blue Jasmine – the latter two winning her Oscars) as well as kooky avant-garde shorts; and the film I’m Not There, in which she played Bob Dylan. In some recent films – such as Manifesto, in which she played no fewer than 13 different roles, among them a power-dressed newsreader and a bearded homeless man – she seems to work through her entire repertoire in a matter of minutes. As a stage actor, too, Blanchett has been eager to take chances. In 2006, she put a burgeoning movie career on ice to move back to Australia and run Sydney Theatre Company with her husband, the playwright-screenwriter Andrew Upton. Though Blanchett stepped down from the co-directorship in 2012, she appeared opposite Isabelle Huppert in STC’s production of Genet’s The Maids and made her Broadway debut in 2017 in Upton’s version of Chekhov’s Platonov. The last time she was in London, it was in another Crimp text – a translation of the German playwright Botho Strauss’s Big and Small. It offered a white-knuckle portrait of a woman disintegrating before our eyes – one second happily gossiping and flirting, the next keening and clawing the floor in anguish. You always have to risk failure. The more recognisable you are, the harder it is to carve out that space How on earth does she decide which roles will suit her? “If you read a work and you know what it is, I don’t know why you’d bother rehearsing it,” she replies crisply. “You always have to risk failure. The more recognisable you are, the more expectation there is around you, the harder it is to carve out that space. But you have to.” Being among artists who challenge her is a powerful attraction, she adds, which is partly why this particular project was a no-brainer: “I’m not going to lock myself in a room for my own enjoyment or pain. The process is really important.” I’m wondering how she and her colleagues are approaching the wider politics of this play about the relationship between a predatory, all-powerful man and a woman being employed as a sexual plaything. British theatre was quick to channel the impulses of the #MeToo movement, at least on stage. Blanchett has often spoken about the issue, and pursued it doggedly when she chaired the jury at last year’s Cannes festival. Crimp points out that he began sketching the script three years ago. But Mitchell says, for her, the play can’t really be about anything else, at least right now. “Of course we think about it. It’s a very live environment at the moment. It would be impossible not to.” Blanchett is nodding passionately. “You make a piece for the time you’re in, otherwise it’s not relevant. What’s the point of doing it?” So how do they think audiences might respond? “I always see theatre as a provocation,” she says. “You’re not up there running for office, you’re asking a series of questions. Some people might be enraged, some perplexed, some people might be excited. Hopefully it’s the conversation afterwards that’s the most important.” Behind the scenes in British theatre, there seems to be a new determination to correct age-old imbalances: gender-equal and ethnically diverse casts, more plays written and directed by women, more awareness that theatre actually needs to look like the world that surrounds it. Do they feel things are finally starting to change? Mitchell looks faintly weary. “For me, it’s hard. I feel like I’ve been telling these stories for, like, 30 years. I think the whole thing started before it started, if that makes sense.” I've been telling these stories for years. It feels like #MeToo was the boiling point. It's been simmering a long time She adds: “It’s like #MeToo was the boiling point. It’s been simmering a long time.” How about Blanchett, given that she moves so freely between the film and theatre worlds? Like Mitchell, she was talking about so many of these issues long before they became daily headlines. She looks ruminative: I sense a reluctance to give too pat an answer. “We’re still in the process where the rage is bubbling up,” she suggests eventually, then gestures around her. “But when I come to a theatre company like this, I can feel it inside the building. Inclusion isn’t just box-ticking, it’s opening new ways of making work, new types of work.” Just as everyone is packing up to leave – time is pressing and the salads are still untouched – I say I read somewhere that she was considering giving up acting altogether, that she worried it was driving her faintly insane. “Oh, totally,” she says, quick as a flash. “I think I’ve probably got about six months left.” Another joke? Impossible to tell. She’s already gone. • When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other is at the National Theatre, London, 16 January-2 MarchVenezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and his Russian ally Vladimir Putin are predictably claiming that the swearing-in of Juan Guaidó as acting president is a coup organised by Donald Trump. Those of us who want a democratic – and as peaceful as possible – end to Maduro’s dictatorship must ignore the anti-American rhetoric and throw our full support behind the president of the country’s national assembly. Guaidó must not be allowed to fail. No one within the opposition is better suited to steer Venezuela back towards democracy. Following years of seeing former president Hugo Chávez abuse the rules of democracy, an increasing number of Venezuelans has lost faith in politics and the power of the vote. They are understandably angry, and they seem to believe that the only way out is to take the fight to the streets. Guaidó, who cut his teeth in the 2007 protests against Chávez, has enough credibility to convince this group that a democratic transition is still possible. After his experience leading protests, Guaidó got into politics and ran in the 2010 and 2015 elections. Maduro and Putin can scream foul all they want, but article 233 of the constitution states that if there is no president to be sworn in at the beginning of the term, the head of the national assembly will be acting president while elections are organised. This, right here, is the democratic transition the international community had been waiting for. Guaidó is 100% working class. He grew up and still lives in Vargas, one of the most impoverished states. He worked as a computer salesman to pay his university fees. Unlike other opposition leaders, he is not a member of the upper middle class venturing into the slums to gain popular support. That gives him a huge credibility with former Chávez supporters. But he also has his youth on his side. Guaidó was 15 when Chávez was first elected president. His political party, Voluntad Popular, was created in 2009 by Leopoldo López, one of the founders of Primero Justicia – which was itself established in 2000. Guaidó’s fight is about rebuilding Venezuela, not about giving back power to the politicians who ruled the country between 1958 and 1998. Yet, he is not out for revenge. The acting president has pushed an amnesty law that will allow military and police to avoid prosecution for human rights violations. He has even suggested that Maduro and other civilians might benefit from it. He knows that proposal is very unpopular among his own supporters, but he understands, based on the experience of countries like Chile and Guatemala, that amnesty is crucial for a country to move on. Is Guaidó perfect? Most certainly not. But he is the only person who can legally replace Maduro, and there is no doubt the dictator needs to go. The Venezuelan regime is starving its citizens; it stands accused by the UN human rights commissioner of systematically murdering and torturing protesters, and it has triggered the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Americas. Will the transition be peaceful? Unfortunately, that seems unlikely. Maduro has vowed to fight to the death, the high command of the armed forces continues to be loyal to him and, according to recent polls, a little under 20% of Venezuelans still claim to support him. The worry is it could lead to some sort of American invasion. The US might respond if Maduro’s forces attack Guaidó – and according to a survey cited by the Financial Times, a third of Venezuelans support external military intervention. I do not endorse that. In 2005, working as a reporter for Venezuelan daily El Nacional, I covered the war in Afghanistan, and I got to see first-hand how “effective” the Americans can be at destroying a country and slaughtering civilians. I do not wish that for Venezuela. Of course, some think this is a coup organised by Donald Trump. That it’s all about oil. It’s impossible to know for sure, though the dissatisfaction on the streets of Venezuela is clearly very real and justified. There are probably some very excited oil executives somewhere fantasising about getting their hands on the largest crude reserves in the world. It will be up to the Venezuelans to stop them. But as things stand, those reserves are right now in the hands of Russia, China and Cuba, and those shouting about Venezuela’s sovereignty don’t seem to mind that at all. The only way to prevent the Americans, who do have a terrible history of interventionism in Latin America, from taking control of the transition is for other countries to get – and remain – involved. Some EU members, including the UK, have signalled that they are willing to back Guaidó. That support needs to be formalised and there needs to be so many people at the table, including Latin America’s democratic countries, that any negative US influence is diluted. • Reynaldo Trombetta is a Venezuelan journalistDonald Trump’s implicit threat of direct US military intervention in Venezuela is a high-risk gamble that could backfire calamitously. By publicly and aggressively backing the opposition’s bid to supplant him, Trump has presented Nicolás Maduro, the country’s incumbent president, with a very personal, existential challenge. If Maduro reacts, as he has in the past, by using violence to suppress his opponents, or if he arrests US diplomats who ignore his order to leave the country, Trump may face a daunting choice between rapid escalation, including possibly sending in US forces, and a humiliating climbdown. It seems clear that Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader, has the backing of many if not most Venezuelans. Less evident, so far, is whether military chiefs and key army units will uphold his self-declared alternative presidency. Given the history of disastrous US interventions in Latin America, Maduro’s denunciation of a coup by the “gringo empire” carries considerable weight. Then there is the added complication of strong Russian and Chinese support for the current regime. Moscow has condemned the attempted takeover. Maduro was feted in Beijing last autumn, where he was offered a financial bailout. If the military stays broadly loyal to Maduro, Trump and his hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, who has led the charge for regime change in Caracas, will have failed to meet the first, elementary requirement for successful coup-making: ensure the guys with the guns are on your side. Maybe this is no surprise. Going off half-cock in crucial matters of foreign policy and international relations is a familiar characteristic of the Trump administration. Trump himself is demonstrably clueless about such matters. And after a wave of high-level sackings and resignations during his first two years in office, he badly lacks experienced, politically savvy and level-headed advisers. That dangerous weakness may be about to be exposed. Much has been written about the so-called “adults in the room” who have supposedly restrained Trump’s worst instincts and puerile tantrums – or did so, at least, until they were fired. Less attention has been paid to the third-raters, chancers and nobodies who have replaced them in the most senior US government positions. The fact Trump sought help to break the government shutdown stalemate from his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a political greenhorn, showed the dearth of seasoned domestic policy talent in the White House. Trump’s replacement foreign policy crew likewise shares a startling ignorance of the world beyond America. Their views and prejudices are likely to have seriously negative impacts during Trump’s remaining time in the White House. As one US commentator put it, “Lincoln had a team of rivals; Trump has a team of morons”. The contention that Trump really has been reined in, until now, by wiser, more experienced advisers is itself questionable. For example, James Mattis, his former defence secretary, failed to prevent Trump’s serial assaults on Nato or his rash decision to withdraw US troops from Syria. To be fair, Mattis did stamp on some wilder Trump wheezes (those that we know about), such as his reported wish to assassinate Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Yet the Venezuela intervention suggests similar or worse decision-making may now be in the offing as an ever angrier, more volatile Trump, besieged by a hostile Congress and noisy talk of impeachment, furtively schemes and plots to salvage a second term. The more Trump is tempted to lash out, make a splash, or opportunistically create a diversion to wrest back control of the agenda – which is how he may view Venezuela – the more calm, sensible advice will be required. Yet this is what is signally lacking in an administration peopled not by the “best and the brightest” – David Halberstam’s famous, semi-ironic term for John F Kennedy’s White House team – but by the worst and the dumbest with no reputation to lose. Bolton is the scariest of the bunch – a terrier-like zealot who seizes on an issue and worries it to death, impervious to facts or reason. He acted thus over Iraq, urging George W Bush to invade on what wiser heads knew were bogus grounds. Bolton is repeating the mistake over Iran, where he has previously advocated forcible regime change regardless of the consequences. Once again, a supposed WMD threat is being exaggerated and conflated with insincere concerns about democracy and human rights. Bolton’s Iran obsession produced a massive overreaction to two minor incidents involving Tehran-backed militias in Iraq last autumn, when the National Security Council demanded the Pentagon provide immediate options for military strikes on Iran. “People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were,” a senior official said. Hopes that diplomacy might curb reckless White House tendencies have evaporated under the sacked Rex Tillerson’s state department successor, Mike Pompeo. Recent speeches by the hawkish former CIA director in Brussels and Cairo exhibited slavish subservience to his master’s voice, echoing Trump’s tunnel-vision nationalism and simplistic division of the world into friends and foes. Pompeo’s statement on Wednesday evening instructing US diplomats in Caracas to ignore Maduro’s order to leave the country was especially rash. The diplomats could become virtual hostages in any prolonged internal power struggle. Those searching for more able leadership elsewhere in the higher echelons of Trump-land will search in vain. The Pentagon, the world’s largest, nuclear-armed, war-fighting machine, is currently run by an obscure former Boeing executive, Patrick Shanahan, who, in contrast to Mattis, has zero military or policymaking experience. Not a good situation when a crisis such as Venezuela breaks. Trump’s incoming attorney-general, William Barr, seems to think his legal duty is to unquestioningly do whatever Trump tells him. Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Sanders, hates the press. And his White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, is a temp who once described his new boss as a “terrible human being”. Even if Trump and his ship of fools and knaves do not start a war in Venezuela, they could just as easily trigger new conflicts in the Middle East or with China, without even meaning to. And Venezuela’s Juan Guaidó should be aware – these people do not make reliable allies. With Trump’s “team of morons” in charge, there is no safety net, no room for error – and no telling what happens next. • Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentatorWhen Andrea Bian applied to college last year, she made a difficult decision: she chose not to talk about her race, fearing that it would hurt her chances of admission. Bian is of Chinese descent, and she knew that at many US colleges, Asian-American applicants are accepted at lower rates than others with the same grades and test scores. She was ultimately admitted to Northwestern University, where she now studies journalism. But Bian thinks there’s a bigger problem with college admissions – one “that doesn’t concern minorities at all”, she wrote in her college newspaper. “In fact, it almost exclusively applies to white people.” She was talking about legacy preferences, a widespread and increasingly controversial factor in admission to top colleges. Many US colleges admit “legacies”, or students with a family connection to the university, at dramatically higher rates than other applicants. They are widely seen as a reliable source of alumni donations. “They do tend to be white, and they do tend to be wealthier,” Bian said in an interview. “I think that’s kind of unfair.” At Harvard, the acceptance rate for legacy students is about 33%, compared with an overall acceptance rate of under 6%. Countless powerful Americans have followed their relatives to elite universities. In 1935, when John F Kennedy applied to Harvard, the first page of the application form asked where his father had graduated from college. “Harvard 1912,” he wrote. He was admitted, though his academic record was not especially strong. In 1964, George W Bush followed his father and grandfather to Yale, despite lackluster grades. A recent lawsuit has unexpectedly stoked passions around the issue of legacy applicants. In October, Harvard was taken to federal district court for allegedly discriminating against Asian Americans. The lawsuit against Harvard says that the admissions office gives lower average “personal ratings” to applicants of Asian descent. According to the group that filed the lawsuit, Students for Fair Admissions, this limits the number of Asian Americans in the student body. Though the lawsuit was meant to focus on race-conscious admissions, it has also added fuel to a fiery debate about wealth and privilege at elite institutions, and has helped to energize student demands for greater transparency in the admissions process. Students for Fair Admissions has not historically fought for the rights of Asian Americans. It is led by the conservative activist Edward Blum, who has waged a long war against laws that involve race and ethnicity. His organization’s lawsuit against Harvard has the backing of Donald Trump’s justice department. The issue of legacy admissions was brought up in court by Adam Mortara, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, who argued that universities should not give preferences to any category of students, whatever their racial or economic background. “Harvard steadfastly refuses to even contemplate giving up legacy and donor preferences,” he said in his opening remarks. He asked the dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana, “What is so special about wealthy people that Harvard needs to have them overrepresented by a factor of six on its campus?” Khurana responded, “We’re not trying to mirror the socioeconomic or income distribution of the United States. What we’re trying to do is identify talent and to make it possible for people to come to Harvard,” he said. Like the website of Harvard admissions, Khurana seemed to guide the conversation away from the number of wealthy Harvard students, and toward the opportunities afforded to low-income students. Despite the best efforts of Harvard administrators, the influence of wealthy alumni was on full display in court. At one point, lawyers shared internal emails addressed to Harvard’s director of admissions. “Once again you have done wonders,” wrote the head of Harvard’s government school, after learning that applicants connected to potential donors had been accepted. “I am simply thrilled by all the folks you were able to admit.” One donor, he added, “has already committed to a building”. According to court documents filed in support of the lawsuit, among white applicants who were accepted to Harvard, 21.5% had legacy status. Only 6.6% of accepted Asian applicants, and 4.8% of accepted African American applicants, were legacies. Similar practices exist at colleges across the US. Naviance, an education software company, recently gathered data on legacy applicants to 64 colleges. They estimated that on average, the admissions rate for legacies was around 31% higher than the official admissions rates for all applicants. (Naviance did not account for other variables, like the overall education level of parents, that may have given those students a boost.) Princeton has reported that legacy applicants are admitted at roughly four times the rate of applicants overall. Notre Dame and Georgetown have announced that their legacy admissions rates are about twice their overall admissions rates. Other universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, say that legacy status does not give applicants a meaningful boost. Legacy preferences at US colleges are as old as the modern college admissions process. In 1922, Dartmouth College took the historic step of codifying nine criteria for admission. Number seven promised to admit “all properly qualified Sons of Dartmouth Alumni and Dartmouth College Officers”. At the time, American colleges were almost exclusively white and male. Many institutions, including Harvard, used a discriminatory quota system to limit the number of Jewish students. Legacy preferences remain widespread, but they are less influential than they once were. Since the 1970s, when the supreme court eliminated racial quotas in college admissions, many colleges have adopted an admissions process they call “holistic review”. This approach aims to consider students in context, using a wide range of factors including academic record, test scores, extracurricular activities, race and ethnicity, and legacy status. Dennis Weisman, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Kansas, said that legacy policies may exist in a kind of equilibrium with race-conscious admissions policies. A few years ago, he and a colleague, Dong Li, tried to model the decision-making of college admissions offices. Their model suggested that if race-conscious admissions policies were suddenly taken off the table, that could expand the influence of legacy preferences. “A university administrator might say, ‘I have 10 more slots – and these are challenging fiscal times, so I’ll essentially sell those to alumni, and use that to fill the coffers of the university,’” Weisman said. Bian, the Northwestern student, followed the trial closely. In her article for the Daily Northwestern, she defended colleges that consider race in the admissions process, because doing so can increase student diversity. And she acknowledged that legacy preferences might boost alumni donations but questioned whether the trade-off was worth it. “I don’t necessarily think that the benefits of legacy admissions really make it fair,” she said. During the Harvard trial, Bian looked for statistics on legacy admissions at Northwestern. She couldn’t find any. “I just wish that universities would be more transparent,” she said. “I think that would build more trust between universities and the general public.” Her concerns are shared by many current students. Last year, student groups at a long list of elite colleges – including Princeton, Cornell, Brown, and Columbia – organized petitions and discussions to demand transparency in admissions. The project has had limited success. When Brown students voted in a referendum on whether the university should release legacy policies and data, 81% said that it should. Several hundred Cornell students signed a petition asking for the same information. But neither institution seems to have shared statistics. Opposition to legacy preferences has been around for years. What seems new is that such a wide range of players now seem to share it: students of color, first-generation college students, conservative activists and even legacies themselves. Ananda Martin-Caughey applied to Harvard about a decade ago, when she was attending a diverse public high school in Maryland, and was accepted into the class of 2013. Her father and grandfather were Harvard graduates, and she described her upbringing as upper middle class. But after taking a sociology course on higher education, Martin-Caughey started to question the fairness of legacy policies. “There’s a lot of students for whom going to Harvard would have made a much bigger difference in their lives,” she said. “Schools like Harvard, I believe, can be a powerful force for social mobility.” Legacy preferences appeared to influence the makeup of the student body. “It was pretty obvious to me how many of my classmates seemed to come from very wealthy, privileged backgrounds,” she said. “I thought about students I had gone to high school with, many of whom were every bit as talented as students who went to Harvard, but had fewer advantages.” Her father, retired college professor John Caughey, used to like the idea of legacy preferences, because they seemed like a way for families to gain a sense of tradition and continuity. But as he read more about it, he changed his mind. “Universities have a responsibility to fairness and equity within the society, and that’s really more important than their responsibility to their alums,” he said. Judge Allison D Burroughs has yet to issue a judgment on the Harvard case – but when she does, it will probably be appealed to a higher court. Martin-Caughey has reached her own verdict. “I benefited from Harvard’s legacy admissions policy, but I think it’s wrong.”Yvette Cooper and Dominic Grieve may have defeated the increasingly beleaguered Theresa May with their respective Brexit amendments over the last 24 hours – but each victory has been the product of months of backbench conversations. At the heart of it all is a group of Labour backbenchers – and a growing number of Conservatives – who have been campaigning for a second referendum for over a year, and who are described by one MP involved as “an executive in exile”. Key figures such as Chuka Umunna and Chris Leslie for Labour and Anna Soubry for the Conservatives meet to discuss tactics on a daily basis when parliament sits, and test and share ideas via WhatsApp. But what has changed recently is that the anti-Brexit argument has been broadened to encompass opposition to a no-deal scenario – which some see as a strategic opportunity. “It’s been obvious that you can reach quite deeply into Tory ranks once you switch the argument to ‘no’ to no deal,” one anti-Brexit campaigner said. Cooper’s amendment to restrict spending on a no-deal Brexit won the support of 20 Conservative MPs on Tuesday, including traditional party loyalists Oliver Letwin and Sir Nicolas Soames, who had previously only ever once voted against the Conservative whip between them. There have been clear signs for weeks that while there is no majority for a second referendum, May’s Brexit, or a Norway deal, there is a firm opposition to a no deal –even though the possibility that the UK could walk out represents a key part of the prime minister’s negotiating strategy with the European Union. Conservative Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour’s Jack Dromey came together to organise 209 MPs to sign a letter to May on Tuesday, telling the prime minister: “We are united in our determination that the UK must not crash out of the EU without a deal.” That followed weeks of private conversations, which began in the autumn among an informal group of MPs with Jaguar Land Rover plants in their constituencies, which then broadened out to include those with manufacturing interests in their seats. But the crucial development was, as Dromey put it, to get MPs to agree that “whatever their preferred Brexit destination, people should agree that if May’s deal goes down, we cannot plunge over a no-deal cliff”. It was an issue on which signatories and pressure could be amassed from the end of last year, which in turn helped generated support for Cooper’s amendment. A hundred of those MPs turned up on Tuesday to voice their concerns about the risks of no deal directly to the prime minister in a meeting in the Commons. A couple of hours later MPs voted in favour of Cooper’s amendment by 303 to 296. Those involved in the backbenchers’ rebellion say that trust between Labour and Conservative remainers and other anti-Brexiters in parliament has been building for months, giving MPs growing confidence to test ideas, and lay the ground for amendments that can take days or more to come together – without the Tory whips office becoming aware they are about to emerge. A succession of ministerial resignations – Justine Greening, Philip Lee, Jo Johnson and Sam Gymiah – have also boosted the number of pro-remain MPs on the Tory side, with each departure coming after weeks of discussions aimed at first persuading, then at achieving maximum impact. The result, says Leslie, is that “if there is one silver lining to this dire Brexit situation, it’s finding increasing common cause across the centre ground of British politics. MPs are beginning to show greater independence and I hope this can help save the country from some appalling mistakes”. The belief – and concern for the Conservative whips – is that rebellions can become habit forming, particularly if it is clear that there are now enough pro-remain Tory rebels that, when allied with Labour and other opposition front benches, they could form a majority in parliament. Until the last two days that majority has simply not existed. But on Wednesday, a day after Cooper’s amendment was carried, Grieve’s amendment, designed to give May only three days to respond if her deal is voted down in the Commons, attracted 17 Tory rebels. The Grieve clause was carried by 308 to 297. Complicating the picture, however, are the tense relations that exist between the Labour leadership and the Umunna/Leslie grouping who are suspected of wanting to start a new, centre party after Brexit. Intermediaries are required – Diane Abbott is seen as a route to communicating with the party’s leadership, while MPs such as Cardiff Central MP Jo Stevens are deemed able to rally round Labour backbenchers. Not all MPs who backed the Cooper amendment want a second referendum, but the argument is that by coming out against a no deal, they will ineluctably be drawn into supporting a general election or a second referendum, given that May’s deal does not appear to have the support to pass the Commons next week. According to one MP involved: “Avoiding no deal would require the UK to renegotiate Brexit, which in turn would require an extension to article 50. Well, the only way the European Union would allow that is for a really important constitutional or democratic reason: a general election or a people’s vote.”The fashion designer Joe Casely-Hayford has died aged 62. Casely-Hayford, who had had cancer for three years, was considered to be one of the great British designers of his generation. He became well known and highly sought after in the late 70s for his bespoke tailoring, which he deconstructed to give a streetwear sensibility. A graduate of St Martin’s School of Art and the Tailor and Cutter Academy, he received formal Savile Row training before establishing his eponymous fashion house in 1984 alongside his wife, Maria. It quickly gained cult status on the international fashion scene, becoming popular with many young designers, stylists and journalists, who often used their first pay packets to buy an item. “He was the first London designer to bring the cultural mix and energy of the East End together with the amazing skills of a Savile Row tailor,” said the fashion critic Sarah Mower. Casely-Hayford “could be subversive, but his work was always grounded in sartorial excellence”, said his friend, Mark C O’Flaherty, as he announced the news on Thursday. “He created suits for prime ministers and rock stars, from Lou Reed to the Clash. When Bono was the first man to appear on the cover of British Vogue, in 1992, it was wearing Joe Casely-Hayford.” His popularity and influence endured throughout the 90s, and Princess Diana took a front-row seat at his 1995 show. In 2005, he was appointed creative director of Gieves and Hawkes, a position he held for three years, during which time he was awarded an OBE. In 2009, he relaunched his business as Casely-Hayford in collaboration with his son, Charlie, 32. Together, the pair re-established the brand’s avant-garde aesthetic to appeal to a new generation, and enjoyed huge commercial success – including a collaboration with Topshop – as well as critical acclaim. In November, they hosted the opening of the brand’s first standalone shop on Chiltern Street in London. Casely-Hayford “was grounded in being classless and cosmopolitan – he fashioned an ongoing document of the London in which he grew up and worked. At the same time, he was one of the few black designers to rise to a position of global prominence,” said O’Flaherty. The fashion journalist Luke Leitchsaid Casely-Hayford had once told him: “As a black kid in Britain, I was on the outside looking in, initially. So I remember being chased down the King’s Road by rockers – and then a few years later, I was being chased up it again, but by skinheads. But I’ve always been fascinated by English society.” The designer leaves behind a large and prominent family. His second child, Alice, 29, is digital editor of British Vogue. His sister Margaret is chair of the board of Shakespeare’s Globe; his brother Peter is the producer-owner of the film company Twenty Twenty; and his other brother, Dr Gus Casely-Hayford OBE, is the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art. “Joe was a lovely man as well as a consistently inventive designer,” said Dylan Jones, the editor-in-chief of GQ. “He was one of the mainstays of the industry in the 80s, and was an inspiration to a whole generation of young designers. His name was also one of the first British brands to gain genuine global recognition. He will be greatly missed.”A woman who broke her wrist in a car crash with Prince Philip claims she has not received an apology from the royal family even though she could have been killed. Emma Fairweather, 46, was a passenger in her unnamed friend’s Kia, along with her friend’s nine-month-old baby, when the collision with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Land Rover Freelander occurred as he pulled out on to the A149 near the Queen’s Norfolk estate on Thursday. The baby was unhurt and Fairweather’s friend received minor injuries. Buckingham Palace said Philip, 97, went to the local hospital but was found to have no injuries of concern. Palace officials said contact had been made privately and “well wishes exchanged” but, in an interview with the Sunday Mirror, Fairweather said she had not received anything resembling an apology. “I love the royals but I’ve been ignored and rejected and I’m in a lot of pain,” the mother of two from King’s Lynn, Norfolk, said. “It would mean the world to me if Prince Philip said sorry but I have no idea if he’s sorry at all. What would it have taken for him and the Queen to send me a card and a bunch of flowers?” She said she had only had a cryptic message passed on via a police family liaison officer, which said: “The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh would like to be remembered to you.” Fairweather believes all parties were saved from more serious injury by the fact that her friend was driving at no more than 50mph, 10 miles below the speed limit. “We could see the Land Rover about 150 yards from us at a junction, then it started to move,” she said. “I kept thinking he was going to stop but he didn’t … My friend was braking and seemed so in control but I was terrified.” She said she was panicking after the incident as everyone flocked towards the other car and she feared she would be forgotten. She said she repeatedly screamed: “Get the baby out.” Fairweather said she knew straight away that her wrist was broken but feels that reporting of the accident has downplayed her suffering by describing her injuries as minor. She said that while the talk had focused on Philip’s loss of independence, she had lost hers as she had been signed off from her new job as a support worker for care leavers for two months and her teenage son was having to help her wash and dress. Buckingham Palace said: “A full message of support was sent to both the driver and the passenger.” Philip allegedly told onlookers that he was dazzled by the sun but Fairweather cast doubt on his explanation, claiming it was cloudy at the time. The duke was pictured on Saturday driving a new Land Rover, seemingly without a seatbelt, 48 hours after the crash. A Norfolk constabulary spokeswoman said the force was aware of the photographs and that “suitable words of advice have been given to the driver”.Germany has agreed to end its reliance on polluting coal power stations by 2038, in a long-awaited decision that will have major ramifications for Europe’s attempts to meet its Paris climate change targets. The country is the last major bastion of coal-burning in north-western Europe and the dirtiest of fossil fuels still provides nearly 40% of Germany’s power, compared with 5% in the UK, which plans to phase the fuel out entirely by 2025. After overnight talks, the German coal exit commission of 28 members from industry, politicians and NGOs, which has worked since last summer to thrash out a timetable for ditching coal power, agreed an end date of 2038. A review in 2032 will decide if the deadline can be brought forward to 2035. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a member of the commission and an adviser to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said: “This is an important step on the road to the post-fossil age – a step that also opens up new perspectives for the affected regions through innovation-driven structural change.” But he said it had been difficult to reach a consensus on how quickly to phase out coal. Stefanie Langkamp, a coal expert at the Climate Alliance Germany network, cautiously welcomed the decision. She said: “It is good that the long-overdue entry into the coal phaseout is now beginning and that new perspectives are being developed in the regions. Measured against the climate crisis, however, the coal phaseout should have been much more ambitious.” However, RWE, which runs many of the country’s coal plants, said the 2038 date was “far too early” for the company and said the 2032 review would be a chance to extend the final end date. In a statement the firm said the proposals: “would have far-reaching consequences for the German energy sector and in particular for RWE.” Rolf Martin Schmitz, RWE’s chief executive, warned the plan would have “serious consequences” for the company’s lignite, or brown coal, business. Coal union members greeted a meeting of the coal exit commission in Berlin on Friday with a demonstration urging against a hasty phaseout. Meanwhile, thousands of schoolchildren took part in a protest on the same day in the German capital, calling for the end of coal to tackle global warming. The final 336-page document agreed by the coal commission, seen by the Guardian, shows Germany plans to reduce its 42.6GW of coal power capacity to about 30GW by 2022, falling to around 17GW by 2030. The deal will be formally published next Friday. Greenpeace has called for an end date of 2030, but other environmental groups in the country supported a 2035 cut-off. Almost three quarters of Germans believe a quick exit from coal is important, according to a poll of 1,285 people by the broadcaster ZDF. Dave Jones, a power analyst at the London and Brussels-based thinktank Sandbag, said: “2035 is really the ambitious solution. The bigger question is about how quickly it happens [for example, interim goals].” The commission said that gas would become Germany’s backup power of choice, rather than coal, which would make it more similar to the UK energy system. Merkel, speaking in Davos last week, said that, as the country ditches coal and closes its last nuclear plants in 2022, “we will need more natural gas, and energy needs to be affordable.” Her government has a goal of increasing the share of renewables in electricity supply from 38% today to 65% in 2030. One of the most contentious issues has been the cost of compensating energy firms for shutting coal plants before the end of their lifetime. About €40bn will be awarded under the commission’s plans; the industry had hoped for €60bn. The German energy secretary, Thomas Bareiß, has said the move away from coal was necessary but would be a “very expensive transition”.One day in early 2017, Chris Christie was in his kitchen in New Jersey, eating dinner with his wife Mary Pat. The phone rang. It was the president. According to Christie, Donald Trump tried, not for the first time, to persuade the governor to become his labor secretary. Then talk turned to Christie’s firing as Trump’s transition chairman in November 2016. “Chris,” Trump said, “you didn’t get fired. You got made part of a larger team.” Christie gives his side of the conversation in his new book, Let Me Finish, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian two weeks before publication. He says he bristled at Trump’s claim, then rebuked the president. I’m a big boy who understands how the way this business works … don’t ever, ever tell me again that I wasn’t fired “I’m a big boy who understands how the way this business works,” he said. “But please, sir, don’t ever, ever tell me again that I wasn’t fired.” Christie was fired, by then senior aide Steve Bannon in his office at Trump Tower. Christie depicts the scene in withering detail, saying Bannon blamed the move on Jared Kushner, “the kid”, Trump’s son-in law and adviser who is portrayed as the chief villain of the piece, driven by a decade-old family feud. But the remark Christie reports Trump making brought back to attention a frequently observed feature of the billionaire’s presidency: the man whose TV catchphrase, “You’re fired!”, did much to propel him to power does not like firing people himself. Famously, Trump fired his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and chief of staff, Reince Priebus, by tweet, the same medium by which he announced the “retirement” of Jim Mattis, attempting to steal the thunder of the defense secretary’s resignation. James Comey, director of the FBI, was fired by letter. Jeff Sessions, the man who got the job Christie really wanted, attorney general, was hounded by tweet for months until he gave in and resigned. After very public power struggles with Kushner, Ivanka Trump and others, Bannon reached an exit agreement with the chief of staff, John Kelly, whose own departure turned into a drawn-out soap opera which has not yet ended with the appointment of a permanent replacement. In her own book, the former reality TV star and presidential aide Omarosa Manigault Newman reported being fired by Kelly. She then released a taped phone call in which Trump said “nobody even told me about it” and added: “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know that. Goddamn it. I don’t love you leaving at all.” Though Christie uses his book to describe his close relationship with Trump and to continually praise his leadership, the president he depicts seems in thrall to powerful family members who make the big decisions. On the day of the firing of Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, Christie says, he visited Trump in his office at Trump Tower to be told: “They fired Corey, you know. I don’t know if it’s the right thing or not.” Christie then writes that he and Trump watched the fired aide stay loyal in a TV interview. The candidate approved and suggested he and Christie should call him. This Russia thing is all over now because I fired Flynn “Didn’t we just fire him?” Christie asked. Lewandowski then called him and blamed Kushner for his downfall. Christie writes that the departure of Lewandowski’s successor, Paul Manafort, was also engineered by Kushner, in part due to a plagiarism scandal over Melania Trump’s speech to the Republican convention. The theme of Christie’s book is that if he had not been fired, the transition would have set Trump up for success. He cites the departures of the health secretary, Tom Price, the EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, and others as evidence for his claim. Regarding Comey and the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, Christie portrays protracted debates about the fate of each man, and in each case writes that Kushner’s instincts, which won out over his, proved wrong. Christie approves of the firing of Flynn, calling him a “slow-motion car crash” whose appointment was an indictment of the Christie-less transition. He also mocks Trump and Kushner’s belief that the move would stop all talk of improper links to Moscow. “This Russia thing is all over now,” he quotes Trump as saying over lunch with Kushner at the White House in February 2017, “because I fired Flynn.” “I started to laugh,” Christie writes. Of Comey, Christie says “there were lots of reasons” to fire the FBI director. “But when it was done and how it was done was abysmal and caused unnecessary grief for the president.” Trump’s chief of Oval Office operations, Keith Schiller – another no longer by Trump’s side – was sent to FBI headquarters in Washington to deliver the necessary letter. Comey, it turned out, was delivering a speech in Los Angeles. He learned his fate from TV. Christie writes that he agrees – a rare occurrence – with Bannon, who has called the firing, which led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, the worst mistake in modern political history. Describing his beef with Kushner, meanwhile, Christie cites a TV classic. Trump’s son-in-law, he says, regularly sought to undermine the governor’s work by calling it “‘a Jersey operation’, as if the Trump transition team were a wholly owned subsidiary of The Sopranos.” Despite his reluctance to personally confront those he wished to get gone, Trump seems to have liked the reference to the seminal series about a ruthless mob boss unafraid to shoot, garrotte or dismember those with whom he wished to dispense. “One day when I was speaking with Donald,” Christie writes, he used Jared’s exact phrase. ‘It’s a Jersey operation,’ Donald said to me.” “I flinched at that,” he writes.When the prime minister’s Brexit deal received its crushing defeat in parliament, European council president Donald Tusk tweeted: “If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?” This wasn’t the first time that Tusk has suggested the UK could remain in the EU. After the 2017 general election, Tusk discussed reversing Brexit. He said: “The European Union was built on dreams that seemed impossible”, and then quoted John Lennon’s Imagine, adding, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I am not the only one.” But is the EU serious about this? Have Brussels and member states really thought things through? If a new remain campaign focused on the benefits of EU membership, a new vote to leave would be a definitive rejection Stopping Brexit would almost certainly require a new referendum. Let’s put aside the fact there seems no clear parliamentary path to a second referendum at present (even if Jeremy Corbyn backed it, my Open Europe colleague Dominic Walsh believes it’s well short of a majority). Let’s assume the EU agreed to extend article 50 beyond June to make time for a referendum (something ex-European Council president Herman Van Rompuy and the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt both oppose). And let’s assume the ballot paper offers a choice of leaving the EU with Theresa May’s deal or remain (and so MPs have ensured no deal is not an option). Even if those hurdles were to be overcome, while some polls have shown small leads for remain, it’s impossible to know which way a second referendum would go – a fact often overlooked by advocates of a so-called people’s vote, who seem to forget that people voted the other way last time. Many Europeans may well be delighted if the UK voted to remain in a new referendum. Almost no one in the EU wanted Brexit, and many see in it a profound challenge to the project itself. There is a small contingent in Brussels who spied an opportunity to accelerate the path to closer union without the recalcitrant UK. But for most in EU institutions and member states, the reaction to the 2016 referendum was sorrow and disappointment. Yet there is concern among some members and in Brussels that if the UK voted to stay in after a second referendum, it could become a rather unstable member. There are worries there would be demands for yet another vote – a best of three. Or that a future government could simply take the UK out without a referendum at all (precisely what Labour’s 1983 manifesto committed to do, less than a decade after our 1975 referendum on membership). And above all there are major concerns about how the UK would behave in the EU, particularly if it was dealing with widespread domestic discord due to a perceived “establishment” betrayal of Brexit. There are already jokes in Brussels that the UK could elect 73 Nigel Farages if it took part in the European elections in May. But if the UK voted narrowly to remain in the EU, what would its ministers do in the EU council? Some member states are worried we could become very difficult partners, adding to their existing problems with Hungary, Poland and, to some extent, Italy. Of course, a second referendum could well go the same way as the first. And there’s been much less focus given to this. On the continent, the dominant narrative is that voters were lied to in 2016 and the facts about Brexit have only become clear since. As President Macron put it last September, Brexit was “a choice pushed by those who predicted easy solutions … they are liars”. He went on to warn: “It’s not so easy to leave the EU.” But if the UK voted again to leave, this argument would be holed below the waterline. And if the new remain campaign sought to focus on the benefits of EU membership rather than the economic risks of leaving, a new vote to leave would indicate a more definitive rejection. The campaign couldn’t even rely on David Cameron’s renegotiation – which fell away after the leave vote in 2016. In 2016, Cameron’s team were desperate to dissuade European figures from campaigning in Britain. Who could stop them this time? And it’s not as if the public’s image of Brussels has improved. From Jean-Claude Juncker’s bizarre hair-flicking antics to his silly comments that “English is losing importance” in Europe, it would be easy to see how personal things could turn. Since the 2016 vote, we have also seen a series of demands for more European integration – including in areas such as defence – for which there is no UK appetite. And while there are a few impressive MPs pushing for a second vote, the danger is that a new remain campaign would be dominated by its highest-profile backer, Tony Blair – with all the baggage that he brings. A new referendum still doesn’t seem likely. As a European diplomat put it to me, they are certainly “not putting their eggs” in that basket. They’re right not to – but not just because it seems unlikely. A second referendum would pose “formidable risks” for the UK, but also for the EU. The EU can clearly weather Brexit, but a second referendum campaign would likely be far more damaging, whichever way it went. It offers no safe path out of the current impasse. And so, member states should reflect carefully on how best to address the concerns of parliamentarians about the current agreement and decide what concessions can be made to get this deal over the line. • Henry Newman is the director of Open Europe. He has worked in the Cabinet Office and Ministry of JusticeThis ‘quadrupedal’ vehicle may look like a smart shopping trolley ready for a supermarket dash in some distant interstellar community. But, in fact, it’s a full-size, robotic walking car, which Hyundai believes may be helpful in rescue zones when normal vehicles, even the most robust 4x4s, just can’t hack it. It’s called the ‘Elevate’ and by blending technology found in modern electric cars with advanced robotics, it can climb up 5ft walls, straddle a 5ft hole and step across piles of debris, thanks to the addition of four fully articulated robotic legs – and all the while keeping its passengers completely level. The idea is that the Elevate could be driven by first responders to a disaster location, just like a traditional electric car, but then when the terrain became impassable it could use its highly dexterous legs to move in any direction. It can walk at 3mph and the legs are powered by the same battery that drives the car’s motor. The concept was unveiled by Hyundai in Las Vegas last week alongside a clever electric car that will be able to autonomously drive to an empty parking space, charge itself up and then return to your house, ready for the next journey. Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @MartinLove166On a dank, dreary winter afternoon, I have come to a farmyard in Essex, just outside the M25, to meet – among others – Karine, Anna, Tommy Lee and Eskimo Joe. Tommy Lee and Eskimo Joe are from Romania, and are dogs. Rescue animals, hoping (if dogs can hope) to be adopted. Tommy Lee is missing a front leg – most probably from a traffic accident in Brasov, Transylvania – but is cheerful, inquisitive and friendly. Eskimo Joe is older, a little overweight, obstinate, camera-shy, resigned. I worry that potential adopters might not fall in love with Eskimo Joe. Karine and Anna Hauser are Swiss-Finnish sisters (human) and run the charity Love Underdogs. Animal lovers, they were originally visiting a sanctuary in Romania for abused bears from all over the world. But they couldn’t ignore the dogs, and started to work with a shelter in Brasov, 100 miles north of Bucharest, and to bring to the UK for rehoming some of the most unwanted, abused and neglected ones. Love Underdogs is just one of dozens of charities in Britain importing rescue dogs from abroad – from Greece, Cyprus, Bosnia, and particularly from Romania, which has one of the biggest street-dog problems in Europe. It’s not possible to be precise about the number of rescue dogs arriving in the UK, from Romania or anywhere else. Government figures on dog imports include commercially bred puppies. But the statistics do tell a story: no dog imports from Romania in 2013, and 3,616 the following year. Last year, the figure was 15,548. Everyone I speak to agrees that since 2012 rule changes that harmonised the UK with the rest of the EU, making it easier to bring dogs into the country, the number of rescue dogs in the UK has rocketed. Look at all the charities out there (when Love Underdogs started rehoming pets in 2012, it was one of a handful of charities doing it). Look at their social media presences (it doesn’t take long to find a cute face, with sad, pick-ME eyes). Famous people tweet about their Romanian rescue dogs. Columnists write about theirs. Then there is anecdotal evidence close to home … well, work. Two adopters sit within five metres of my desk, and everyone else seems to know someone who has such an animal. Adopting Romanian rescue dogs is – to use the technical term – definitely “a thing”. As she tries to persuade Tommy Lee and Eskimo Joe to pose for photos, Anna explains that the stray-dog problem in Romania dates from the fall of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. “Countries that come out of dictatorships have a kind of shift where some things are important and others aren’t.” Dogs weren’t, so the stray population got out of control. Now it’s a political issue, and a business one – there is money to be made from keeping dogs off the street, catching them, killing them. “When it becomes a business, it becomes about cutting costs,” says Anna. They tell me about the place they found in the mountains where about 200 dogs had been left to kill each other and to starve because that’s the cheapest way to get rid of a load of dogs. And they show me pictures of public pounds where the floor is thick with compacted excrement and hair, and where carcasses are piled up on wheelbarrows. But surely bringing a few out (they import about 80 a year, in a van; some charities bring more, others less) will not solve anything? Not on its own, which is why Karine and Anna are involved in projects in Romania: neutering programmes, education, working with their partner shelter and the authorities to make the country’s public pounds less gruesome. And the few dogs they do take out tend to be the most needy. “What I say is, you go to Romania, you look at their little faces, and then you tell me to leave them,” says Karine. I can look at around 50 little – and not so little – faces here at the kennels near Waltham Abbey, just north of London. I meet Miss Babs, who is little and young; Lyra, who is neither and has just had a lump removed; Moe, with little legs and a big overbite and who might appeal to a Simpsons fan; and Winston, who is barking a lot … A lot of them are, actually enough to drown out the roar of the M25. It’s more peaceful in this room, with Petra Reiterer, an alternative therapist. Reiterer has a selection of essential oils – ginger, peppermint, valerian, hops, hemp and so forth. She just puts them out and the dogs come in and choose their own, a practice called zoopharmacognosy. “It’s self-selection,” Reiterer tells me. “So they’re healing themselves, and I offer them tools.” Hmm. Perhaps sensing my scepticism, Karine says they were surprised, too, but that they have had some very positive responses. Not everyone approves of bringing Romanian strays to Britain. Paula Boyden, veterinary director of the Dogs Trust, the UK’s largest dog charity, says there are diseases in mainland Europe that we don’t have in the UK. With the pet passport scheme, a dog coming from any EU member state has to be microchipped and vaccinated against rabies and tapeworm. That is to protect humans, but there are plenty of doggy diseases that aren’t protected against, and she mentions a few scary-sounding ones: babesiosis, which is tick-borne; ehrlichiosis, which affects platelet cells; a heart worm called Dirofilaria immitis; and leishmaniasis, which is incurable and can potentially affect humans. “It’s a huge worry because we really don’t want those diseases in the UK.” The Dogs Trust gets 30,000 calls a year from people wanting to relinquish animals. “I would encourage anyone thinking about getting a rescue dog to please consider a UK rescue organisation first,” says Boyden. “If you have been refused, think carefully about why. Think about the challenges of getting a dog from overseas, particularly if you have never met it, from a behaviour perspective, and the disease side as well.” On the behaviour side, she says that many of the street dogs will have been free-roaming, used to making their own choices, and that taking those choices away by putting them into a British domestic environment can increase their stress levels. She mentions a dog from Romania in the charity’s care that was given up for those reasons. “That dog has certain challenges; it’s not in a position to be rehomed at the moment.” For humans, it’s not easy getting accepted by the Dogs Trust. Alison Coussins describes it as “like trying to get your child into some expensive private school”, before adding: “Not that I’d ever do that.” When her previous dog died, she knew that – being in full-time work – she would have problems obtaining a dog from a UK rescue organisation. So she got one from … Romania, obviously. Via Croydon. Suki, who came from a smaller organisation than Love Underdogs, is mostly collie, “like a black-and-white Basil Brush” says Coussins, who had no problem falling in love. They went for a walk. Suki seemed a little skittish, but Coussins, who had been checked and approved, could see no reason not to adopt her, and so she did, “based on almost no knowledge, which in hindsight might have been foolhardy”. The problems started when she brought Suki back to her home, which Suki began to defend, ferociously. Anyone who visited was barked at, nipped or bitten – friends, relatives, the dog walker, Jehovah’s Witnesses … Coussins had to cancel her holiday to the Caribbean. As well as working for the housing ombudsman, she is also a magistrate. “So I’m keenly aware of things like dangerous dogs. I didn’t want to be up before myself,” she jokes. Suki, and her owner, needed help. The vet put Suki on fluoxetine (AKA Prozac). Coussins called in pet behaviour counsellor Ingrid Haskal, who came, assessed, reinforced the good behaviour, ignored the bad stuff. And then billed (it hasn’t been cheap, sorting Suki). There are no guarantees with behaviour, because you’re working with a living animal Haskal agrees that adopting rescue dogs from Romania has its risks. You know nothing of their backgrounds. They have probably been wandering the streets, abandoned. They may be aggressive towards other people, other dogs, terrified of going outside, or scared of the world in general. “Also, you have to consider the fact that every dog is an individual: some may be able to cope with change better than other dogs, in exactly the same way as people.” People often get Romanian rescue dogs because they have had their heartstrings pulled, says she adds. “You go on the internet, you go, ‘Ooh, look at the poor dog in a kennel in Romania or whatever – we’ll rescue it.’” And this could be their first dog. “So you get first-time dog owners with a dog that has got a lot of behavioural issues, and they can’t cope. A lot of people who have had dogs for years will get a dog they can’t cope with, but if you’re a first-time dog owner, that’s quite scary, particularly if the dog is aggressive.” Haskal admits that she sees the difficult cases, and that there are plenty of adorable, happy Romanian rescue dogs, but she would warn against such adoption for first-time owners. “If you’re an experienced dog owner who knows what you’re letting yourself in for and are prepared to do a lot of behavioural work, with a professional if needs be, then yes, fine,” she says. “But it’s not a bicycle with a flat tyre we can fix. There are no guarantees with behaviour because you’re working with a living animal.” Her grandfather came from Romania, and Haskal says she really upset one person when she said there were enough rescue dogs in the country without bringing any more in. “She accused me of being one of the same people who are anti-immigration, and I can understand her viewpoint.” Suki has responded well to the treatment, and Coussins finds it impossible to regret adopting her. “I used to work with refugees and with homeless people, and it just reflects what I’ve done with humans. To be honest, it doesn’t matter if you rescue a dog from Romania or Hammersmith.” She does say you should find out as much as you can. “Think of as many questions as possible and be prepared for a very serious commitment.” In Waltham Abbey, the Hauser sisters know it’s a commitment. But one that can be worthwhile. “These dogs are different,” says Karine. “They are much more mature and complex than your normal pooch, and you need a different understanding of them. English dogs go as a puppy to a home; they have not had to deal with survival. Our guys are generations of survivors: they’re complex, independent, free spirits. An English dog is more of a pet and a child; a Romanian dog is a companion and a friend.” And there’s good news for one friend. Three-legged Tommy Lee has a home to go to. The family that have adopted him are volunteers at Love Underdogs. They have another rescue dog, and they’ve had Tommy Lee home for weekends: it’s going to work. Eskimo Joe? Still waiting, I’m afraid. Maybe for you …Kristen Roupenian’s short story Cat Person was published by the New Yorker in December 2017 and, to the author’s best recollection, it went up online on a Monday. The 37-year-old was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while completing a fellowship in writing, and for three or four days after the story came out, enjoyed the world’s customary reaction to most fiction, and all short stories – complete indifference – while basking in the achievement of it having been published at all. “I was thinking, ‘Wow: that was the greatest thing to ever happen, and now it’s over.’” She smiles. “Then it was Friday.” By the standards of true global celebrity, there is only so far a piece of fiction can go; as David Foster Wallace used to say, the most famous writer in the world is about as famous as a local TV weatherman. Still, what happened with Cat Person remains singular to the extent that, for what seemed like the first time in publishing history, it slammed together two alien worlds, social media and serious fiction, in a way that stretched the boundaries of literary fame. The story of Margot, 20, and Robert, 34, and their disastrous short-lived relationship was written a few months before the #MeToo movement took off, and by the time it came out its themes – the power imbalance between older men and younger women; the dynamics of coercion; the hideous chess game of early courtship, with its currents of self-delusion and bad, bad sex – chimed with what felt like the only conversation in town. In the weeks after Cat Person was published, it was shared millions of times, inspired spoof Twitter accounts and, after being widely mistaken for memoir, was prosecuted as part of a man-hating liberal agenda. The author, meanwhile, sat in a coffee shop in Ann Arbor, where she remained largely oblivious to the fuss. It was Callie, her girlfriend, a fellow student who is better plugged in online than Roupenian, who looked up from her laptop and said, “Something’s going on with your story.” A year later, we are in the slightly ramshackle house the two women share in southern Michigan, and everything about Roupenian’s life has changed. She is still adjusting to the shock of such widespread attention – Cat Person went on to get more than 4.5m hits and become the most-read piece of online fiction the New Yorker has published – something about which, she says, “I can’t think without feeling shrunken. It’s like everyone’s talking about me, and it makes me feel small.” Roupenian is slight and soft-spoken, her rapid speech underscored with a kind of urgent levity that makes even her most critical assessments sound basically amused. For a hot second, Roupenian seemed like the world’s number one authority on heterosexual dating dynamics There are practical differences to her life these days, too: most notably, after two decades of being a student (before her master’s at the University of Michigan, Roupenian spent seven years on the PhD programme at Harvard) having more than one option at her disposal. Roupenian finished her fellowship last year and is waiting for Callie, a year behind her on the same programme, to catch up, after which they may move. “It’s an extraordinary luxury to just take a breath – the tenuous year-to-year, two- or three-year existence is so ingrained in me that I almost can’t imagine thinking, ‘Just pick a city and move!’ I’m still wrapping my head around it.” There have been other adjustments. For a hot second, Roupenian seemed like the world’s number one authority on heterosexual dating dynamics, and the news that she is now living with a woman was considered sufficiently thrilling to make the front page of the Sunday Times last year, much to Roupenian’s horror. “The private New Englander in me – ” she pulls a face. “There’s stuff about you that’s being interpreted and that feels weird. And yet, when they did it, my sense that I have to manage how other people know about [my relationship] was suddenly out of my hands. You can Google me and know my life now! And it’s actually fine.” She goes deadpan for a moment. “Woo. Fine.” The biggest change to Roupenian’s life has been financial. Cat Person appears as one of 12 short stories in You Know You Want This, a forthcoming collection that won Roupenian a reported $1.2m advance and is being adapted into an HBO series. The stories are mostly a triumph: savage, grotesque, often very funny, mostly to do with the inability of one person ever truly to know another, and the moves one makes to cover this up. After reading them in one gulp, it is hard not to conclude that everything is terrible and everyone is awful, and yet there is a weird kind of optimism in the fact that most of Roupenian’s characters are at least 30% asshole; we are none of us unimplicated. In The Good Guy, far and away the best story, an amiable man named Ted, turned bitter by female rejection – this is a common theme of Roupenian’s; the extent to which men rejected by women hate women, and women rejected by men hate themselves – sits with a girlfriend he despises and thinks, “It was almost existentially unsettling, that two people in such close physical proximity could be experiencing the same moment so differently.” In The Mirror, The Bucket, And The Old Thigh Bone, a story that seems to have sprung fresh from the 14th century, the heroine considers the possibility that “the person she was in love with didn’t exist, except in her own mind”. One of the pleasures of reading Roupenian is her drive-by assassinations – “Ellie worked in communications, which meant that she spent 90% of her time crafting emails that no one ever read” – while the big thematic plates of vanity, hubris, self-delusion, slide by underneath. “The world was pitiless,” observes Ted, with weary nihilism. “Nobody had any power over anyone else.” The question of power is at the heart of every story and it’s something about which, Roupenian believes, one’s understanding changes with age. Cat Person was inspired by a few dates she went on in her mid-30s, in a short period between the end of her relationship with a man to whom she was engaged, and meeting Callie. She hadn’t dated since her early 20s and what struck her about that experience, she says, “was how messy it was. And one of the things I thought was that at 36, I have a handle on power dynamics and gender and all of this stuff. And it just seemed to me that at 20 – which is an adult, officially, at which age it is acceptable to go on a date with someone in their mid-30s – how could you possibly engage? It seems to me, now, so young.” One of the reasons Roupenian wanted to write the story was to explore how hard it is to delineate what is going on when attraction and repulsion combine, and when – as one tends to at 20 – one is lying to oneself about being in control. In such a case, she says, “the complications of it are more subtle than just, ‘Here’s this jerk who’s hitting on me.’” At that age, says Roupenian, bad dating experiences made her feel “so alone in my head that I couldn’t articulate it”. After her story went viral, she couldn’t help thinking that “everything would’ve been different for me when I was at the age of Margot if I’d understood how collective some of these experiences are”. Certainly when she was in her teens, she says, she would have benefited from the conversation around feminism being more nuanced than “everybody shouting ‘Girl power’ and ‘Girls can do anything!’ Which was great, but also, a lie.” She shrugs. “Who can say what it’ll be like for babies born today, in 2040? But I have to think that knowing other people are thinking your strange, ugly thoughts is a good and comforting thing.” *** One of the questions Roupenian asks repeatedly in her fiction is to what extent one can ever clearly see the person to whom one is attracted. It’s a tendency among women to interpret their partners in a way that, Roupenian realised recently, is deeply gendered and completely unhelpful. “Often in relationships between men and women, there is this weird pact that it’s the women’s job to interpret their relationship for the men. That they have a right to say, ‘The problem with you is that you’re afraid of commitment, and if only you would show up at my house at an approximately reasonable time then we would be fine.’ And that is bullshit: that the men are ready to outsource their own understanding of themselves to the women, and that the women will do that job so the men will do what they want. And yet it’s a sort of agreed-upon game.” Has the dynamic been different in her current relationship? “I do think [that dynamic] can be true of two women, and maybe of two men, but I feel like the relationship that Callie and I have is one in which we recognise it’s not either person’s job to explain the other person – and that that’s actually a power grab. I think we all grab for different kinds of power, and maybe as writers you come to the world thinking, ‘I understand why people act the way they do, and that ought to give me a certain amount of power.’ But the fact is, people do what they want to do. There’s always a moment, whenever you’re having a fight, when you think, ‘Oh, I’ve solved it!’ And the other person is like, ‘Well, congratulations to you, I will continue to live my own life. Please back off.’” It is these sorts of observations, and the sexual frankness of some of the stories, that have made Roupenian’s work uncomfortable reading for some of the men in her family. Roupenian – her father is of Armenian heritage – grew up outside Boston, where her mother, a retired nurse, and her sister remain. (Her father, from whom her mother is divorced, is in Alaska with her brother.) It’s not that her dad, a doctor, isn’t supportive, she says. “But there’s such a split in my family where the women are reading the stories and loving them and we have just decided, with some of the men, that we’re not going to talk about it.” She bursts out laughing. “The book is dedicated to my mum, and when Cat Person got published I had to read it aloud for the podcast. We were all waiting for my sister’s baby to be born, so I was like, ‘Ma, I have to practise’. And I read this rabid sex scene aloud to my mum and she was just so cool with it. She has only ever been wildly supportive of my writing and seems to get it, viscerally.” *** In high school, Roupenian worked on the literary magazine, but although she knew she was good at writing, she didn’t have any particular longing to become a writer. “At that stage it felt like work,” she says. “There was some sense of obligation that was deadening. When I went to college, I felt so happy to do something new.” She studied first at Barnard, in New York, where her academic interests were health and psychology. For a while, she thought she might have a career in non-profits and, at the age of 21, went into the Peace Corps, spending a year volunteering in Kenya. It was after returning to Boston and getting an interim job as a nanny that she decided to turn her experiences in Kenya into a novel. “But the truth is, you can’t write about something if you don’t understand it. I realise now that I was exhausted, because I was being a nanny for 50 hours a week, and so I had writer’s block and couldn’t come up with anything. It became this miserable endeavour that I set aside, to go to grad school for English. I thought, ‘Oh, if I can’t write books, I’ll write about them.’” In the end, while doing her PhD at Harvard, she ended up writing a “sort of thriller” set in Kenya, which she wrote quickly and found very satisfying, drawing on “the tools of tension and dread and revulsion” she had loved reading in Stephen King as a child. The novel didn’t sell to any publisher – “rightly, I think”. But for the first time, she says, “I thought, I believe I’m close enough to do this. I have to go for it.” The dynamics of thriller and horror writing were among Roupenian’s first loves as a reader. She is superb at creating a supernatural atmosphere that, like the best horror writing, seems rooted in the creepiest aspects of the material world. In the story Scarred, a woman finds an old book of spells, magics up a vulnerable man, and proceeds to destroy him via a thousand small cuts. In Death Wish, a woman asks a man to hit her during sex, and he demurs while wondering, “Can I punch her? Not as hard as I can, but just kind of… symbolically?” The emails flooded in, friends from the deep past, creepy messages about sexual encounters, offers from media outlets Does she really believe no one has power over anyone else? “Emotionally, I do believe that’s true. But I think it requires a lifetime of learning to recognise the patterns.” For Roupenian, it has been a case of recognising a tendency to overestimate the extent to which “someone else has control over my happiness and ability to move in the world”, and, by extension, her control over others: “That if you’re unhappy it’s my fault, and my job to fix it. I do have a responsibility to make other people happy – you have to be a good person. But that is contradicted by the thing I have felt increasingly as I get older, which is that I do not have the power to make you happy; my ability to fix you is so limited; and my desire to fix you is complicated. For me, the process of getting older and seeing things more truly has been realising how little power we have over each other.” This is, to some extent, a very freeing realisation, although there’s a risk of becoming detached. One has to remain somewhat vulnerable, surely? “You can be vulnerable, it’s true – it’s an endless negotiation, and in relationships that have been difficult for me, feeling like loving someone meant trying to save them. For a long time I thought that was a critical part of loving someone, in a way that I do think codes female. It seems deeply embedded in ideas of what it means to be a good woman. Of helping people fix themselves; changing them a little, seeing the subtle violence and reaching for control.” Roupenian does not think that now; in fact, these impulses strike her as downright unhealthy. Her self-protective instincts have been sharpened by the experience of Cat Person going viral. As the emails started flooding in, she grew truly alarmed. (These ranged from the re-emergence of friends from the deep past, to creepy emails from men describing their sexual encounters, to offers from media outlets around the globe to come on their shows and explain herself.) “There is so much thoughtful, smart conversation around the story, but – and this is inherent to conversations on the internet – it is entwined with such vitriol and visceral emotion. I just have to let it be something separate that happened to the story, and happened to me, and that I can’t control. It is not my conversation. It’s too strange and disorienting.” The oddest thing about the whole experience, she says, was how it seemed simultaneously huge and, like everything else on the internet, deeply transient and trivial. “You saw both everybody suddenly giving a shit, but also not at all – it was just a trending hashtag, a piece of entertainment. That was my whole life! That’s what’s so weird about how it makes you feel wrong‑sized. You’re only ever going to be a flash in other people’s brain pans, and it’s weird to see that reflected back at yourself.” One of the funniest outcomes has been the extent to which, in book events and other public appearances, Roupenian has come to be regarded as a kind of relationship guru, something that makes her laugh, given how screwed up every single character in her book is. “It’s funny to imagine people reading the stories and thinking: ‘I should take advice from her!’” What people are responding to, in fact, is a generosity in the writing; a fundamental understanding that good, or good-ish people, can still end up causing enormous pain, powered by self-loathing and a commitment to an unworkable persona. Margot doesn’t want to sleep with Robert, but feels it’s too late to back out; Ted doesn’t want to date Rachel, but it seems absurd to break up with her out of the blue. (“If he tried to break up with Rachel right now, while she was halfway through a breadstick, surely the first thing she’d say would be, ‘If you knew you were going to break up with me, why did you literally just agree to go with me to visit my cousin on Sunday?’ and he would have no answer.”) No one is on trial in these stories, she says. “In terms of what I’m interested in, I write a character from a place of disconcerted surprise at their own behaviour – of people who can’t quite navigate where they are. Those feelings of ‘I don’t understand how I got here’, or ‘I came here with good intentions, and now I’m causing harm’ – they cross gender boundaries, and probably all boundaries.” In the end, it comes down to storytelling, she says. Looking back at her dating life, she is amazed at the times when “I have spun out in relationships where later I was like, you knew that person for a week. To me, part of the anxiety that can come in romantic relationships is, ‘I have a story that is unravelling.’ That can be really hard. It’s caught up in ego, and power, and control. Which is separate from ‘Maybe this person likes me, maybe they don’t.’” It is a great relief to be on the other side of all that, says Roupenian, and to have a tiny grain of perspective. It may be that, as per her stories, everything is terrible and everyone is awful, but the wisdom of one’s late 30s is also a wonderful thing. “I read something recently that said very straightforwardly that flirting is a management of information. As soon as you know for sure what’s going on, the flirting stage is over. The flirting is ‘I’m not sure yet.” She grins. “Put that way, I thought, ‘Oh: maybe it’s not that bad.’” • You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian is published on 7 February by Jonathan Cape at £12.99. To order a copy for £8.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Roupenian is in conversation with Hadley Freeman at a Guardian Live event in London on 7 February Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).The number of Ebola cases recorded each day in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is expected to more than double, with concern mounting that uncertainty over how the virus is being transmitted could result in it spreading to neighbouring countries. On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) reiterated its warning that there is a very high risk of the outbreak spreading not only across DRC but also to Uganda, Rwanda and even South Sudan. The heightened danger of transmission is due to extensive travel between the affected areas. Efforts to contain the DRC outbreak were hampered after violence related to December’s elections halted prevention work. About 30 health facilities were targeted by protesters in Beni, while efforts to trace anyone who has had contact with the virus were partially suspended due to security concerns. From October to December, six cases were recorded daily across all affected areas in the east, but numbers are increasing, said Jean-Philippe Marcoux, Mercy Corps’ country director for DRC. “Now it’s doubling – it’s very possible that it can double again,” said Marcoux. “If we don’t significantly increase the resources, it will keep increasing. It will spread progressively to other health areas and it will be there for a long time.” Two health centres supported by Mercy Corps are being rebuilt after they were burned to the ground by protesters over the Christmas period. Protesters were angry at a decision to postpone the presidential election in some areas of the country. Though most of Mercy Corps’ work resumed in January, activities are still hampered by instability, the presence of armed groups and shortages of trained health professionals. Alongside the Ebola crisis, DRC is also experiencing outbreaks of cholera, polio and malaria, according to the WHO, piling more pressure on the country’s overstretched health system. In some areas, approximately half of recent cases recorded were nosocomial – meaning that transmission occurred in health centres – said Marcoux. “That is an indication that much more needs to be done at the level of health centres to prevent infection from spreading,” he said. Marcoux added that greater funding is required for training and monitoring of health workers, and to do preventative community outreach work in areas where it is feared the disease could spread. There are also concerns that, in some areas, the source of transmission is unclear in up to half of recent cases. As such cases increase, there is a growing risk of unsafe burial practices among communities that have not received specialist support from contact-tracing teams. Since the outbreak began in August, the WHO has recorded 668 confirmed or probable cases and 410 deaths. Since 1 December, more than a third of cases have occurred in children under 15. Of these, 16 cases were in babies under 12 months. “If no more is done this will spread to other areas within DRC, and spread to neighbouring countries that are close to affected areas – Uganda, Rwanda, even South Sudan,” said Marcoux. It is expected the disease will be present for at least another nine to 12 months, he added. In a situation report, the WHO warned the outbreak was at a critical stage: “The persistence of insecurity threatens to reverse recent progress achieved around disease hotspots such as Beni and Butembo.”Empathy is all about imagining other minds, appreciating that different people have different perspectives, and responding to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion. After a career studying autism and the nature of empathy, I see empathy as one of our most valuable natural resources. It has particular promise as an approach to conflict resolution, one that has advantages over viewing a problem through a chiefly military, economic or legal lens. We can see this if we look at the Israel-Palestine conflict, where both communities have different views of the same historic period, both claim the same piece of land and both have valid emotional reactions to the conflict that must be acknowledged. I am not an expert in that dispute nor so naive to believe that there is a single, simple solution to it. But I do believe empathy can help. So what are the two different perspectives? If you ask Jewish Israelis why their families came to Palestine before 1948, they’ll likely refer to two major waves of antisemitism. The first included the horrific pogroms of eastern Europe in the 1880s and 90s. In the second wave in the 1930s and 40s, two out of every three European Jews were killed by the Nazis. Jonathan Freedland’s reflection on the life of Amos Oz, Israel’s greatest novelist, who died last month, mentions Oz’s metaphor: the Jews were drowning, looking for a piece of wood they could cling on to. Palestine, which for two millennia they had thought of as their ancient homeland, was that piece of wood. When you lose empathy, you can act towards others with at best lack of interest or self-interest, and at worst cruelty But what if you ask Palestinians for their perspective? They would probably refer to the fact that in 1897, there were more than half a million Arabs, Bedouins and Druze living in Palestine. They would say that the 30,000 Jews who arrived were really guests in their land. They might remind you that by 1935, the Jewish population comprised a quarter of the population of Palestine, and each year the number of Jews in Palestine rose by more than 10%. Arabs in Palestine felt, and were, displaced. When Israel declared its independence on 14 May 1948 – following a UN vote to create two states, Jewish and Arab, six months earlier – there was a reason why, the very next day, five Arab armies invaded. Although this is the war that Israel celebrates as the war of independence, Palestinians have a different name for it: the Nakba, or the catastrophe. They never agreed to the creation of Israel. They would point to acts of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli Jews against the Arabs during that war, as documented in Ari Shavit’s book My Promised Land and elsewhere. Their view will have been further shaped by Israel’s illegal occupation and settlement of Palestinian lands since 1967. What must it feel like to ordinary Palestinians to see these illegal settlements? Finally, they would likely raise the violation of their human rights, which is now well-documented in accounts of the suffering of ordinary Palestinians living under occupation. The empathic approach to conflict resolution not only recognises these two different perspectives but also acknowledges that, during a conflict, both parties can lose their empathy for the person or community they feel attacked by. And when you lose empathy, you can act towards others with at best lack of interest or self-interest, and at worst cruelty. Under conditions of conflict, each side dehumanises the other. Empathy-based approaches “treat” this psychological state by rehumanising the other. Although empathy should be a two-way process to lead to a lasting peace, in my opinion Israelis should take the initiative, because they are the stronger party. As one Palestinian friend said to me: “It’s hard to empathise with someone when you are looking up the barrel of their gun.” Oz was an Israeli who never gave up on the search for peace with his Palestinian neighbours. Because he was a novelist he had a talent for imagining other minds, understanding the back story that drives their motivations and feelings. He used this talent when looking at the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis. He also spoke about fanaticism, and argued that the antidote to it is compromise, curiosity and humour. Compromise is obvious. Curiosity encourages us to try to understand the other person’s different viewpoint, not simply to dismiss it as wrong. And humour is a wonderful response to a deadlock that ensues when each believes their own view is the only right one. Like many novelists, Oz realised that the same event can be seen through two different windows, giving rise to two different descriptions – and both are correct, relative to their own vantage point. He recognised that many Palestinians had been killed, injured or displaced during the conflict. But he also knew that many Israeli families had lost members to acts of violence during this long conflict. He searched for alternatives to the violent actions of both communities, ones that might guarantee the security of Palestinians and Israelis, and remained optimistic that the average Israeli might open their heart and mind to an empathy-based approach. I share his optimism, based on the increasing number of examples of grassroots projects trying to restore empathy between Israelis and Palestinians. One such project is the Parents Circle – Families Forum. I met two women, Siham and Robbie, when they came to Cambridge, where I live. Siham is a Palestinian, and her brother was killed by an Israeli bullet. Robbie is an Israeli, and her son was killed by a Palestinian bullet. Both women could have reacted to their grief with the very human emotions of anger and a desire for revenge. Instead they took the brave and unexpected step of forming a friendship across the political divide, with the support of the project. Robbie phoned Siham, a stranger, and said: “You lost your brother. I lost my son. We are both victims. We both feel the same awful pain of loss. I just wanted to say how sorry I am that you are suffering. Let’s meet.” The two women cried together, talked, listened, learned to trust one another, and are showing how empathy can break the cycle of violence. Although this is just one drop in a desert, it’s an example of what might allow the fragile seeds of peace to germinate. Empathy is a necessary step in rebuilding trust so that other difficult steps can follow: most importantly, the discussion about mutual security and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. Oz was one of a series of high-profile Israelis who fought in wars to defend their country. Through a lifetime of experience, they realised that military approaches led to more violence, and they gravitated towards empathy-based approaches. Amos Oz was widely tipped to be a candidate for the Nobel prize in literature, but he could equally have been a candidate for the Nobel peace prize. • Simon Baron-Cohen is director of the Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University, and author of Zero Degrees of EmpathyVladimir Putin has revealed that he commanded an artillery battalion during the Soviet period, a detail of his shadowy biography that was previously unknown. Putin made the comment during a visit on Monday to St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress, where he pulled the lever on a cannon that fires a daily salute at noon over the Neva River. “I received the rank of lieutenant as an artilleryman, as the commander of a howitzer artillery battalion… 122mm [calibre],” Putin said, according to video footage posted by the Kremlin. He gave no further details. An official at the fortress congratulated the Russian president on a “wonderful” cannon shot. Putin’s official biography makes no mention of his military rank of lieutenant or of his position as commanding officer of an artillery battalion. According to the Kremlin, Putin joined the KGB immediately after graduating from the law faculty at Leningrad State University in 1975. He spent 16 years in the Soviet security service, rising to the rank of KGB lieutenant colonel before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. However, all able-bodied students at Soviet universities were required to undergo military training, after which they received the rank of reservist officer, and it is probable that Putin was referring to this. The Russian president’s revelation comes shortly after his old East German secret police identification card was reportedly discovered in the Stasi archives. Putin served as a KGB officer in Dresden in the 1980s. The Kremlin has neither confirmed nor denied that Putin was issued a Stasi identification. There is little reliable information on Putin’s work in Dresden; one possibility is that he was tasked with entrapping and recruiting foreigners who were studying or working in the city. Putin is known to have worked in counter-intelligence during his KGB days. Some reports allege that his KGB duties included the surveillance of Soviet political dissidents, but these have never been confirmed.The Canadian diplomat who came under fire for statements about American efforts to extradite the chief financial officer of Huawei has walked back his previous remarks, saying he “misspoke”. John McCallum, Canada’s ambassador in China, appeared to provide legal advice to Meng Wanzhou, who is fighting extradition to the US over fraud allegations. Saying she had a “strong case”, McCallum outlined numerous weaknesses of the legal proceedings: political interference from Donald Trump, the extraterritorial nature of the charges and the fact that Canada is not party to American sanctions against Iran. “I regret that my comments with respect to the legal proceedings of Ms Meng have created confusion. I misspoke,” McCallum said in a statement released late on Thursday afternoon. “These comments do not accurately represent my position on the issue. As the government has consistently made clear, there has been no political involvement in this process.” McCallum’s comments, made to Chinese-language media in Canada, prompted strong criticism from opposition parties – and marked a sharp departure from previous statements from top government officials, with some experts believing they represented in a change of strategy for the government. As Ottawa navigates an increasingly fractious relationship with Beijing, diplomats and elected officials have been careful to stress the independence of Canada’s judiciary and respect for the rule of law. Opposition politicians immediately seized on McCallum’s remarks. “If I were prime minister I would fire John McCallum,” said Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, during a television interview with CBC on Wednesday evening. “To have this type of comment is completely unacceptable and he needs to be held responsible for his actions.” It is not the first time Justin Trudeau has been forced to fend off criticism of McCallum for offhand remarks. Less than a year ago, McCallum created a furore after he favourably compared aspects of Canadian policy to China, at the expense of relations with the US. On Thursday, Trudeau attempted to refocus attention on the plight of two detained Canadians, rather than discuss McCallum’s future. He said: “Making a change would not help release those Canadians a day sooner.”MHD, one of the most successful rappers in France, has been arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter alongside three other men in connection with a death in Paris. A 23-year-old named as Loïc K was killed in July 2018 in the north-east of the city, in an act described as “purely gratuitous” by French police – he was kicked, beaten and stabbed during the attack from a dozen individuals in what has been reported as a fight between gangs from the 10th and 19th arrondissements. MHD (AKA 24-year-old Mohamed Sylla) hails from the 19th arrondissement, and named an album 19. His car was allegedly witnessed at the scene. MHD was arrested on Tuesday and charged yesterday, Le Monde reports. The rapper’s lawyer, Elise Arfi, said that MHD “denies any involvement in this brawl” and added that “his presence at the scene of the crime has not been proven”. Arfi said she would appeal MHD being placed in custody, citing his “lack of a judicial record”. Arfi said that MHD had “never been involved in fights between rival gangs”. She added that the car belonging to MHD had been “used by the individuals identified by investigators as those who committed this deadly aggression”, and stated that MHD had made contact with officials in July “as soon as he became aware” of its use in the attack. MHD, was born in the Vendée region of France and worked as a pizza delivery boy in Paris before breaking into the rap scene as the self-proclaimed creator of afro-trap. His albums, MHD (2016) and 19 (2018), have reached the Top 3 in France. He has 2.4m followers on Instagram, is an ambassador for clothing brand Puma and is hugely popular in west Africa where he has played concerts to tens of thousands of people. Bella, a collaboration with Nigerian pop star Wizkid, has had 92m views on YouTube. In September 2018, he hinted at retiring from music, saying on Instagram: “I think I’m going to stop after this album, this life is not mine … nobody can know the hidden side of success”. Since his arrest, several French rappers including Naza and Black M have voiced support for MHD.The Portugal and Juventus footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has admitted committing tax fraud while playing for Real Madrid and agreed to pay an €18.8m (£16.5m) fine after striking a deal with prosecutors and tax authorities in return for a 23-month suspended prison sentence. Ronaldo, 33, had been accused of defrauding the authorities of €14.8m (£12.9m) in unpaid taxes between 2011 and 2014. In 2017, Madrid’s regional state prosecutor alleged the player had used what it deemed to be a shell company in the Virgin Islands to “create a screen in order to hide his total income from Spain’s tax office”. It said Ronaldo “intentionally” did not declare income of €28.4m (£25m) related to image rights, and declared €11.5m of earnings from 2011-14 when his real income was almost €43m. The prosecutor also alleged that the forward falsely reported income as coming from real estate, which it said had greatly reduced his tax rate. Ronaldo arrived in court in Madrid on Tuesday morning, wearing sunglasses and a black blazer and accompanied by his partner, Georgina Rodríguez. His request to be allowed to enter the Provincial court through an underground carpark was denied. The brief hearing came six months after Ronaldo agreed a deal that would see him spared jail if he paid fines totalling almost €19m. In Spain, a judge can suspend sentences for two years or less for first-time offenders. Earlier, Ronaldo’s former teammate at Real Madrid, Xabi Alonso, walked in to face his own case of tax fraud, his hands deep in his suit pockets. “Yes, all good,” was his only response to journalists’ questions. Alonso is accused of defrauding tax authorities of about €2m euros from 2010-12. He could be sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of €4m, in addition to the amount allegedly defrauded. The charges are related to Alonso’s income from image rights. The retired Spain midfielder, who has denied any wrongdoing, played for Madrid from 2009-14.I’ve been running for about five years. I started because I wanted to get fitter and I carried on because it worked. When you’re in your 50s, with a job that is mostly sitting on your arse, you have to do something. Running suits my lifestyle. I live in London, about 14km (nine miles) from work, so when I’m feeling energetic I can run all the way there in about 1hr 20min. The city being what it is, I couldn’t get there much faster by public transport. Other days, I can squeeze six or seven kilometres into my lunchbreak. In a good week, I can notch up 40km without totally neglecting my wife, stepkids, cat and dog. But lately I’ve been having doubts. One of the nicest things about doing a sport – for me, at least – is the knowledge that you’re getting better: that you’re running faster, or longer, or more elegantly. I’m not. Too many outings are just a little bit slower than the one before. I’ve got in the habit of signing up for races and then not turning up since I know I’ll disappoint myself. Which is why, one chilly October morning, I find myself on an appallingly steep hill, running up and down it as fast as I can before the sun is up. It’s why, on another pre-dawn morning, I am in a deserted park, sprinting and resting, sprinting and resting until I think my lungs will burst. And it’s why, for the first time in my life, I buy a barbell and start watching weightlifting videos. There’s a plan to all this and it comes from Jenny Tomei, the personal trainer I’ve asked to get me out of my rut. A keen runner herself, Jenny has spent more than an hour quizzing me about how I eat (OK), how much I sleep (not nearly enough) and how much I drink (the less said, the better), as well as how much and how fast I run, how I warm up and what other exercise I take. She has also watched me run, so she can look at my technique. Apparently, although it’s OK to kick up my heels as high I do – Mo Farah does it – I shouldn’t bounce quite so much. Together we come up with a tough but achievable target: that in two months I will run my fastest-ever 16km. It’s a goal that appeals because as well as being a classic distance in its own right – 10 miles in old money – it’s a bit more than my usual long runs. After that, I tell myself, going back to 14km will be a doddle. And all I will have to do is put myself through hell for eight weeks. I exaggerate. Jenny doesn’t ask me to do anything I can’t, but she does push me harder than I would have pushed myself. Which, I suppose, is the point. My new schedule features runs of 10-15km on Monday and Friday, separated by two much shorter outings that emphasise hill climbs and sprints. To stop me getting bored over the weekends, there’s that weightlifting: 50 Romanian deadlifts, which involve raising a 60kg barbell, straight-legged, from my shins to mid-thigh. This should do wonders for my hamstrings, glutes, lower back and hips. There’s a lot I don’t like the sound of – but that has been true of every running plan I’ve tried to follow. Infuriatingly, most experts insist that if you want to get faster over long distances you must first get faster over short distances. In other words, you have to do a lot of sprinting – even if, like me, you hate it – or mix it with slower running in what’s known as fartlek. Jenny’s plan has plenty of this, too, but this time I’m determined to follow the plan properly, rather than ignore the bits I don’t like. What I do like about this plan is that it has been built for me. Like all running programmes, it starts gently then ramps up, with the longer outings getting longer and faster, and the shorter ones featuring more sprinting and less resting. But having two long runs during the week is a big deviation from the standard routine of one long one on a Saturday or Sunday. It’s a great fit with my combination of chronic insomnia and runnable commute. That’s something you don’t get off the peg. My motto for the next few months comes from Nietzsche: what does not kill us makes us stronger. Although I’ll never enjoy sprinting, which is why I haven’t done it since school, I discover I can do it, and it has the great virtue of being over quickly. When I mention this to Jenny, she cuts the recovery time I’m allowed between sprints. I’m happy with this. If I have to be out in the cold and dark, I would rather be running than just standing there and shiver-sweating. There’s another thing I like about Jenny’s plan: she wants me to eat more. Although I could do with losing a few kilos (see photos), she doesn’t approve of my habit of running on an empty stomach. Even first thing in the morning, she says, I need something light and easily digested. I’m not entirely convinced, as eating shortly before exercise makes me worry about coming over all Paula Radcliffe, but on the mornings I’m running I cram in a porridge bar or a piece of toast and peanut butter the minute I’m up. It works: my long runs seem easier than they used to, presumably because I have some fuel for my muscles. And though I struggle with my speed, it’s not because I’m too slow. My target pace – which we call the “race pace”, though the only person I’ll be competing with is my old, slow self – is about 5min 10sec a kilometre, which would not be fast for many seasoned runners. It’s about 20sec quicker than my previous best over the same distance. Perhaps because of all the sprinting – when I go flat out, with no attempt to keep anything in reserve – I keep running too fast, however much I try to slow down. Soon I am averaging 5min 9sec on the long runs, then 5min 3sec and 5min 2sec. These aren’t the full 16km, and I usually feel close to collapse by the end, but I am confident that once I learn to pace myself, I will hit that 5min 10sec target for the full 16km, and probably beat it. And then it all goes bosoms-up. Three weeks before race day, I get a sharp pain in my groin. I cut that run short, have a few days off, think things are getting better … and then, as I’m starting another set of sprints, I get that stabbing pain again. It’s there whenever I lift my knee high – not just when I’m running, but also when I’m stepping in and out of my pants. A physio tells me I’ve injured my hip flexors, high up in the inner thigh, then gives me a painful massage and prescribes a lot of stretches and exercises that will eventually correct the problem and make me less injury-prone. But that’s for the long term. In the meantime, that 16km race is not going to happen. When this sinks in, I spend several hours feeling angry, frustrated and sorry for myself. Then I pull myself together. This setback is annoying, but that’s all. It’s not the first injury I’ve had, and this training has shown me that, no, I’m not doomed to get slower and slower – at least not just yet. I sign up for a half-marathon in the spring, by which time I plan to be fully healed and race-ready. And I text Jenny: “I need you to do me another plan …” Jenny Tomei is at jennytomei.co.ukDonald Trump’s tumultuous presidency has presented problems for journalists the world over. But spare a thought for the people whose job it is to keep track of his lies: the Trump factcheckers. Since taking office, the president has lied about everything from immigration figures to the number of burgers he served to the Clemson football team at the White House last week. “It takes up a lot of our time just because he is constantly talking,” said Glenn Kessler, editor and chief writer of the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column. “The pace in Washington has changed. You could wake up and the president may have already had five or six tweets that cry out for fact checks.” You could wake up and the president may have already had five or six tweets that cry out for fact checks Kessler and the Washington Post responded by creating an ongoing database tracking Trump’s lies. But that comes with its own problems. “It’s become an all-consuming task. In the month of October he said 1,200 things that were false or misleading. There’s some days where he’s topped more than 100 false or misleading claims.” Indeed, according to the Fact Checker database, Trump has made 7,645 “false or misleading claims” since taking office. The most repeated lie – 187 times and counting – is that the Russia investigation is a “witch hunt”, followed by Trump’s assertion, made 125 times, that his government passed “the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country”. The president has also made 124 false claims about the US “losing” money to Mexico under the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), and has claimed that the economy is the “greatest ever” 110 times. “It’s exhausting,” said Linda Qiu, a fact check reporter for the New York Times. “But the nice thing is President Trump repeats himself a lot. In that aspect it’s easier because it’s easy to fact check.” When Trump repeats one of his false claims, on employment for example – the president has repeatedly overstated African American and hispanic employment figures 94 times, according to the Washington Post database – Qiu said she is able to “resurface” fact checks she may have done a month before. Qiu says she tries to watch everything Trump does. She will also read transcripts, and watch all the morning TV shows, and of course, read his numerous tweets. The constant barrage takes its toll. Late nights and long weekends have become the norm among the political factchecking community. Qiu took a two-week vacation in April, and on her return Trump had churned out a new slew of untruths for her to catch up on. The pace has been relentless since Trump’s victory. “We haven’t had a break,” said Eugene Kiely, director of FactCheck.org, the non-partisan site which aims to monitor and correct “deception and confusion” in politics. The upside is that there is a clear demand for articles factchecking Trump. Since the partial government shutdown began on 22 December, through 13 January , FactCheck.org reported a 350% increase in page views compared to the previous year. “I don’t want to write about Donald Trump every day. I would like to write about some other things. But it is what it is,” Kiely said. Reporters have noticed another Trump trait: his tendency to make something up, then embellish his own lie each time he repeats it. Qiu wrote about the phenomenon in the New York Times in December, noting how Trump had gone from announcing that United States Steel Corp was opening six new plants due to his policies. That was a lie, as was his later claim that US Steel was opening seven plants. “The snowball effect of it has been pretty interesting,” Qiu said. Trump went on to claim US Steel was opening eight new plants, then nine. Kiely agrees, and pointed to Trump’s attacks on Senator Richard Blumenthal. “He started off saying [Blumental] lied about Vietnam, which was true, Blumenthal did make some inaccurate statements about his so-called service in Vietnam. He did not serve in Vietnam. “Then that became this wild tale about him fighting in Vietnam saving people’s lives.” Trump claimed Blumenthal had told stories of how “bullets whizzed” by his head in Vietnam, as well as “many battles of near death”. Blumenthal had never mentioned either of those. It’s become an all-consuming task. In the month of October he said 1,200 things that were false or misleading Speaking to these factcheckers, it is easy to detect a longing for a time when lies, mistruths and misdirections were more sophisticated, more tricky to unravel. “The biggest challenge is it’s too easy to fact check Trump,” Kessler said. “It was more difficult to fact check Obama because there was always a modicum of truth there,”. “You ended up going way down in the weeds with officials who were highly knowledgeable and wanted to defend their case. With Trump a lot of times the White House won’t defend what he’s saying because they have no defense.” Qiu has her own memories of monitoring more subtle prevaricators during the 2016 presidential election. “Someone like Ted Cruz had a lot more finesse and the fact checks would take longer because he was a much more skilled spinner,” she said. Given Trump’s prolific rate of mistruths, a key part of the job is deciding what to call him out on. Qiu decided to ignore Trump’s claim that he had ordered “over 1,000” burgers for the Clemson football team, a claim which came just hours after the president said he had order 300 burgers. Kiely spoke of trying to avoid the “bright and shiny” lies in favor of focusing on policy issues. Trump is likely the most famous liar in America. And covering him is arduous work. But the factchecking community could take some solace in that he appears to be fairly unique in his ability to churn out falsehoods at such a pace. “There’ve been some politicians that were fast and loose with the truth. But not like Trump,” Kessler said. “And the ironic thing is 30 years ago when I worked in New York covering finance. And he was exactly the same. “Nothing has changed.”The European court of human rights has ordered Italy to pay Amanda Knox €18,400 for police failures to provide her access to a lawyer and a translator during questioning over the 2007 killing of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia. The ruling opens the way for Knox’s lawyers to challenge her last remaining conviction, for malicious accusation, in the Italian courts. The court, in Strasbourg, declared that Italy must pay Knox €10,400 in damages plus €8,000 to cover costs and expenses. As well as concluding authorities had twice violated her right to a fair trial, the ECHR also found they had failed to investigate her complaints she had been subjected to degrading treatment, including being slapped on the head and deprived of sleep. The court did not, however, uphold her complaint of ill-treatment. The 31-year-old American’s convictions for murder and sexual assault were previously overturned. She was also found guilty by an Italian court of making a malicious accusation, by allegedly suggesting someone else was guilty of the murder. The killing of Kercher, a Leeds University European Studies student on a one-year exchange course in Umbria, generated global headlines for several years as charges of sexual assault and murder were fought through the courts – exposing Italy’s justice system to international criticism. Knox, a language student and Kercher’s flatmate, and Knox’s Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were initially charged with sexually assaulting and killing her. Kercher was stabbed in the neck. The following year Knox was also charged with malicious accusation for suggesting another person should be a suspect. Italian detectives alleged she was trying to hide her responsibility for the attack by blaming someone else. Knox wants to have that conviction quashed. Judges at the ECHR said the Italian government had failed to show that Knox’s restricted access to a lawyer had not “irreparably undermined the fairness of the proceedings as a whole”. “Ms Knox had been particularly vulnerable, being a foreign young woman, 20 at the time, not having been in Italy for very long and not being fluent in Italian,” the court noted. The ECHR’s decision was “not a big surprise for me because the supreme court already said there were many mistakes,” said Knox’s lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova. “That is one of the reasons that invited us to tell Amanda to go to Strasbourg. For me this is a certification of a mistake, probably the biggest legal mistake in the last years in Italy, also because the attention that this case has had.” Dalla Vedova said of the malicious accusation conviction: “It is impossible to compensate Amanda for four years in prison for a mistake. There will be no amount. We are not looking for compensation of damages. We are doing this on principal.” In 2009, Knox was convicted in an Italian court of falsifying a break-in at their Perugia flat, sexual assault, murder and defamation. She was sentenced to 26 years in prison. Sollecito was also found guilty of the attack and sentenced to 25 years. Both appealed. In 2011, the Perugia court of appeal acquitted the pair of the more serious charges, but upheld Knox’s conviction for malicious accusation. After nearly four years in custody, Knox was released and returned to the US. She appealed again to challenge the malicious accusation conviction. It was quashed but in 2014 she was re-convicted of both malicious accusation and murder. The murder conviction was again annulled by the court of cassation, the country’s highest court, the following year but the malicious accusation conviction was not removed. Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede is serving a 16-year sentence for his role in the killing. Lawyers for Knox, who lives in Seattle, then appealed to the ECHR to overturn the last remaining conviction. They argued she was denied the right to legal assistance when first interviewed by police in 2007, was not given access to a professional or independent interpreter and that she did not receive a fair hearing. Knox has always denied any involvement in the murder.The founder of a celebrated Indian NGO that provides shelter to couples in interfaith or intercaste relationships has been arrested on suspicion of extorting and confining people in his care. Love Commandos, co-founded by the activist Sanjoy Sachdev in 2010, has been the subject of international documentaries and celebrity fundraising campaigns for its work providing safe houses to Indian couples at risk of being murdered by their families in so-called “honour” killings. It is said to have rescued thousands of couples who have been threatened by their families for falling in love with someone outside their caste, religion or who are rejected by their parents for other reasons. On Tuesday, police commenced a criminal investigation against Sachdev, 58, on allegations of extortion, intimidation and confinement. He was arrested outside the organisation’s shelter in Delhi. The arrest followed a raid on the shelter by the Delhi commission for women. “Two women came to us complaining and crying,” said Swati Maliwal, chairwoman of the commission. “We visited the shelter home and found it in a horrible condition.” She said two couples in the premises had claimed their identity documents had been taken away, that they have been forced work and asked to provide money. “They were told: ‘If you leave we’ll call your parents and tell them your whereabouts’,” Maliwal said. The couples accused Sachdev of drinking alcohol on the premises and pressuring the men to join in, Maliwal added. Sachdev is yet to be presented before court. His lawyers have been approached for comment. Abuse and poor conditions have been discovered at dozens of shelter homes across India in the past year, sparking protests and calls for better regulation. Maliwal said the Love Commandos shelter was not registered under any legislation and was not subject to inspections. But neither the state nor the central governments provided any shelters for couples fleeing their families, leaving the commission in a bind, she said. “It was very complicated for us yesterday because we rescued these couples – who have been the subject of direct threats of honour killings from their families. We didn’t know where to send them,” she said. “There is no other shelter home.” There were 69 “honour” killings in India in 2016 according to the country’s National Crime Records Bureau, the most recent year for which data is available. But the true rate is thought to be much higher, exacerbated by deeply patriarchal values and strong community systems based on caste and religion.Amid the Sunday morning showers stunned Englishmen and women – players, coaches, fans and pundits – contemplated the debris after England’s thrashing at the hands of a vibrant, disciplined West Indies side galvanised by the increasingly dignified figure of Jason Holder. There is no disgrace in losing but a defeat on this scale – 381 runs – cannot be brushed away as “a bad day at the office”. Initially there is astonishment that England’s batting lineup, long rather than deep, could be bundled out for 77 in a match where West Indies’ seventh-wicket partnership could compile an unbroken stand of 295. This is a shock, but not a complete shock, as Joe Root and Trevor Bayliss have ruefully acknowledged. England have been this way before. They retain the capacity to implode spectacularly despite their recent successes. They may even have a template to deal with such a calamitous defeat. It is not all about selection. There is the challenge of restoring the confidence of bruised players and most of those playing in Barbados will be on duty in Antigua on Thursday. But not all of them. The selectors have to respond not only to a batting collapse but also to a bowling attack that became ever more toothless and untrustworthy as the match progressed. There have been a variety of responses to startling overseas collapses over the years. In 1994, when England were bowled out for 46 in Trinidad, Mike Atherton, an obstinate man, declined to change or strengthen the batting lineup – unless you regard the replacement of Ian Salisbury by Phil Tufnell as offering the promise of more runs. In the next Test in Barbados, to the consternation of the cricketing world, England beat West Indies in Bridgetown by 208 runs, the first time a visiting side had won there in 59 years. In this instance Atherton’s stubbornness was a minor stroke of genius. In 2009 England were bowled out for 51 at Sabina Park in Andy Flower’s first match as coach. He reacted differently. The long-time regulars Ian Bell and Steve Harmison were dropped and replaced by Owais Shah and Jimmy Anderson for the next match in Antigua, which was drawn. Mind you, it lasted only 10 balls because the outfield absorbed the bowlers’ feet like quicksand. In 2012 in Abu Dhabi England being bowled out for 72 by Pakistan prompted Andrew Strauss to adopt an Athertonian response. He played the same team in Dubai and lost again in what would prove to be Eoin Morgan’s last Test. In Auckland in March 2018 when England were dismissed for 58 the bowlers were the prime victims. For the next game, which was drawn in Christchurch, Moeen Ali, Craig Overton and Chris Woakes gave way to Mark Wood, Jack Leach and James Vince. This time the most likely changes also relate to the bowling attack. After his treatment in Barbados it is very hard to imagine Adil Rashid playing in Antigua, while the attributes and form of Moeen and Sam Curran will be under scrutiny. There will be much staring at the surface at North Sound but whatever the wise men see it is unlikely that Stuart Broad will be sidelined again. They need some fresh legs and minds, and Broad certainly sounds as if he is ready. This weekend he had plenty of time to devote to his newspaper column, which was brimful of confidence. “I’d have loved to bowl on that pitch. It looked like it suited taller, faster bowlers. Another source of frustration is that I’m bowling the best I’ve ever bowled. Everyone in this group knows it.” Even if they wanted to leave Broad out again, who would tell him? I suppose they could delegate the job to Ben Stokes. Depending on the conditions there may also be a case for playing Jack Leach, the most dependable of the spinners and a true enthusiast for the game, who under his big baseball cap mingled among British fans to listen to Sir Garry Sobers being interviewed on Saturday night, and Chris Woakes, who might also have been more effective than his peers at the Kensington Oval. All these are bowlers, you may have spotted, after a match when England’s batsmen have been dismissed for 77 in the first innings and by an off-spinner, Roston Chase, regarded as little more than a semi-professional 48 hours ago, who ended up with eight for 60 in the second innings.  Will all the batsmen survive after such a feeble performance? The solitary vulnerable man is Keaton Jennings, even though he was the top scorer in the first innings (albeit with 17). He is struggling and he needs to be at the top of his game to succeed at this level. Jennings’s logical replacement does not have the credentials to inspire massive confidence. Joe Denly has never played a Test match and neither has the Kent man opened the batting for a while. Yet the selectors are bound to consider finding out whether he has something to offer while noting that, in the absence of Rashid, Denly’s leg-breaks could be handy. Already four days into the series fanciful theories abound and whoever can predict the correct final XI for the second Test should buy a lottery ticket.In the cramped office of New Cairo hospital’s family planning clinic, Safah Hosny sets a box overflowing with contraceptives next to the visitors’ ledger on a small desk. There are eight condoms for one Egyptian pound, about 4p, or ampoules of injectable birth control, for just under 9p. A contraceptive implant lasting three years costs 22p, while copper IEDs – the most popular form of birth control on offer according to Dr Hosny – cost 17p. The low prices, far less than in any Egyptian pharmacy, are due to subsidies provided by Egypt’s health ministry, as clinics like Dr Hosny’s are on the frontline of Egypt’s battle against an exploding birthrate. A government programme called “two is enough” has been launched to encourage people to limit family size. From this month, the prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly recently announced, the government will cease to provide financial support to a family after their second child. The five-year, $19m (£15m) programme comprises a poster campaign as well as growing a network of mobile and fixed family planning clinics across Egypt. Posters covering the walls of Egypt’s metro show an Egyptian 50-pound note, worth about £2.20, torn into five. “Would you rather divide this into five, or into two?” it asks. But the price and availability of contraceptives at clinics like that in New Cairo hospital belie a wider issue: that Egypt has a long way to go in persuading its people. “Sometimes patients arrive here knowing absolutely nothing about contraception, so I have to explain all the different methods,” says Hosny. “Then [the woman] chooses, with her husband’s permission. Her husband is normally here for the first visit, and witnesses her signing a consent form which shows she understands, but then she is alone for the follow-up appointments.” Hosny says the clinic is happy to serve unmarried women. “For unmarried women I suggest the pill or injections,” she says, pulling out a slide of contraceptive pills. Population size is now regarded as such a crisis by the government that President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi declared at a 2017 conference: “We have two real challenges facing our country: terrorism and overpopulation.” Egypt now has more than 104 million people, including 94.8 million inside the country. A baby is born every 15 seconds in the country, meaning it ranks 13th in terms of global population. This has placed strain on already scarce resources such as water, and could amplify existing problems for families already struggling to put food on the table following a 2016 financial crisis that led Egypt to devalue its currency and sparked rising inflation. According to Egypt’s official statistics agency, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, 27.8% of Egyptians live below the poverty line. Yet “two is enough” risks failing to target the things that could make a real difference when families, particularly those from Egypt’s working class, are deciding to have children. The campaign will increase sex education for some medical professionals, but will not begin a programme of sex education in schools, currently non-existent. It also ignores options for women with unwanted pregnancies, with abortion seen as a legal grey area in Egypt. “I think it has to be multi-disciplinary thing,” says Dr Hussein S Gohar, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at the Yosri Gohar hospital in Cairo. “You have to start in schools to educate young kids about sex education, contraception and the hazards for themselves, as well as the future of the population explosion. Then they have to target people about to get married, and married people. But if you’re going to make legislation punishing them for a third child, then you have to provide an exit route for them, by allowing medical termination or even abortion clinics.” The heart of the problem, according to Gohar, means thinking about what motivates people to have large families in Egypt. “You need to change the mentality of the people and how they see things rather than just telling them what to do,” he said. “You can’t just go to people once every few months and say the population is too large and there’s not enough water so you need to have a smaller family.” Dr Ahmed Fathy, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at New Cairo hospital, agrees. “For poorer families, it’s not about whether a child is a gift from God, but rather [that] extra children are a method of income,” he explains. “If you’re a family with a farm, extra workers cost more money. But if you have more children, one can look after the animals, another can look after the machines, and another can tend to the plants.” The Egyptian government’s best efforts may also fail to reach more conservative doctors in rural areas, who are more likely to convey the message to patients that every child is a blessing, or to limit information about contraception. “The fact is that in every country, the government can’t cover the entire spectrum,” says Dr Natalia Kanem, head of the UN Population Fund, which has partnered with Egyptian ministries for the “two is enough” campaign. “Private providers can misinform, or even perform so-called medical female genital mutilation. Our job is to flood real information here to counter the myths.” A mushrooming and overwhelmingly young population disadvantages young women according to Kanem, who cites the fact that 62% of the Egyptian population is aged 29 or younger. “If you have a young population, those young people tend to have children young as their mothers were young, so you see an acceleration,” she says. “Unless women are able to make a conscious decision to have a child later, to marry later. “When girls are left behind, half the population is left behind.”Whether or not one is an active user of the social media platform Twitter, its phenomena are newsworthy because its constant feed of refreshing comment has become the chosen platform of those making media. This week, this precise point was made in the Washington Post under the headline: “Twitter is the crystal meth of newsrooms.” Veteran journalist David Von Drehle opined that in a short-attention span news cycle driven by a need for hot takes and immediate comment, the Twitter addiction of the press corps entailed a “widespread failure of political journalism”. “Too many of us covered Twitter’s reaction to Trump, instead of covering the ideas and impulses of the voters he was reaching,” writes Von Drehle, “Trump stoked the addiction by fuelling Twitter with red meat and steroids.” To consider the latest barrage of unhinged presidential tweeting is to witness both red meat gone the way of Trump steaks and steroids’ inevitable shrinkage effect on the ardor. It’s hard to imagine a time when “WITCH HUNT!” was inconceivable as a world leader’s press release, just as it’s difficult to remember a time in which trolls were just fairytale creatures who lived under bridges, not the uglier, crueler monsters who use Twitter to harass those people who dare enjoy something they do not. Like a Captain Marvel movie. Or a Ghostbusters reboot. Or a freakin’ Gillette ad. You don’t have to be a female journalist to live in the thundering rivers of Twitter hell – though it helps. You just have to be literally anyone in a political argument. Humans can only maintain stable relationships with around 150 people. In the throes of Twitter madness, I had fights with that many every day Between Von Drehle’s excoriation and Ginger Gorman’s “skin-removing” book Troll Hunting – about the social-media-abuse experience, also released this week – one might be left wondering if the “microblogging” site was more damage than brand these days. Last July, the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman announced her departure from Twitter, claiming “the viciousness, toxic partisan anger and intellectual dishonesty are at all-time highs”. She was not the first; the celebrity exodus is seemingly perpetual. A Google search for “the death of Twitter” returns 200 million hits. And yet, for all the trolls and Trumps and madness, if Twitter’s dead, the vampire’s popular. In December 2017, there were 3 million active monthly users of the site in Australia. In December 2018 there were 4.7 million. In America, there are 67 million users … and Haberman, once more, is one of them. I’m one of the harassed subjects of Gorman’s book, yet I’m still on Twitter, too. It’s not because the habit is so meth-like I can’t live without it. It’s because rather than drown in the screaming Twitter madness Haberman describes, I decided just to cut myself a break. Because Twitter isn’t just a “conversation”, as per the company slogan; it’s a 12-year-old continent inhabited entirely by recent arrivals, with a culture that’s subtle, unexplained and in rapid evolution. There are 326 million Twitter users who’ve moved into this borderless parallel world, sharing content to and from contexts and perspectives entirely foreign or unknown to their experience. Learning the protocols of a new community is onerous for anyone. Studies show it takes people up to a year to familiarise themselves with the rhythms and relationships of a new workplace – one in which they are immersed daily. Relocate an individual to an entirely new external community, and the anxiety, anger, impulsivity, irritability and helplessness of culture shock results from unfamiliarity with social cues and rules. Isolate participants even further – divorced from human speech and gesture – and gather those dislocated identities into the abstracted landscape of the internet, and you have Twitter. What looks like English here is several versions of it spoken simultaneously, all community boundaries collapsed; LOL, on fleek, gronp, noob, lewks, glowup, can haz, incel, MRA, snowflake, MAGA, auspol … When one considers that a third of a billion people have plunged into this churning confusion in an historical blink’s blink, “the viciousness” becomes much easier to understand: Twitter is barbarian country. So I’ve asserted the borders of my own Twitter republic by learning to love the block button. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Girls are socialised “from an early age not to promote their own interests and to focus instead on the needs of others”, even when those others are baying hordes of anonymous mansplainers, desperate – just desperate – to yell at a void the same gender as their mum. Twitter’s forced my reckoning with the limits of this unnatural, feminised agreeableness. The level of politeness expected at a party isn’t possible in an environment this crowded. Mona Chalabi crunched some numbers on social interactions for FiveThirtyEight.Com, citing sociological evidence that humans can only maintain stable relationships with around 150 people. In the throes of Twitter madness, I had fights with that many every day. Beyond blocking outright Nazis and haters, I’ve now permitted myself to block the petty, the hostile, nasty, monomaniacal … even the merely tiresome. “Your timeline is not a democracy,” a friend once said, and the paradox here is that the range of political views I engage on Twitter is of far greater ideological diversity now that I’ve gained the confidence to filter out emotional noise, even – maybe, especially - from my “own side”. Ten thousand accounts I’ve banished from my feed to render the medium as exciting as I once imagined that it could be. Affirmed here is not only my right to select my own company, but also to return to the standards I once applied to reading newspapers; I’ve got time to digest the op-eds because I’ve skipped the chess puzzles and car section. Moreover, I’ve noticed my own reach expanding much further beyond my own political community, as I’ve taken to Twitter with far less defensiveness. Trolls are the worst and deserve civil punishment, with Twitter’s full assistance. They don’t, however, deserve an audience, as much as they desire one. But in the era of Trumpbots, fake news and digital propaganda, any choice to eschew madness for clarity exercises a muscle that demarcates reason from unreason, good judgment from bad, leadership from mere loudness. The alternative is to allow a Twitter diet of red meat, meth and steroids to atrophy the newsrooms of our democracy, and the heart of both.With just under a week of the Guardian and Observer 2018 appeal to go, generous readers have raised more than £750,000 for five charities that helped uncover the Windrush scandal. The charities provide legal assistance, advice, advocacy – and often welfare support – for migrants and UK citizens facing injustice, homelessness and destitution caused by “hostile environment” immigration policies. The appeal charities are: Praxis Community Projects; Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI); Refugee and Migrant Centre Black Country and Birmingham (RMC); the Runnymede Trust; and Law Centres Network. Sally Daghlian, the chief executive of Praxis, said: “The generous response of Guardian and Observer readers to the appeal is truly heart-warming. It is wonderful to know that so many individuals are prepared to step in and help others, even whilst government policy condemns people to the streets. “By working together we can make the UK a more hospitable place, where people are able to live in safety, and where what brings us together is greater than what separates us.” The Guardian’s award-winning coverage of the Windrush scandal focused in many cases on individuals supported directly by our appeal charities. The charities’ work ensured their clients were not unjustly detained or deported, and in some cases meant they received the vital NHS treatment wrongly denied to them. However, the charities said, despite the government’s acknowledge of the Windrush problems the injustices are continuing. They said they anticipated similar problems arising for EU migrants after Brexit, with long-established UK residents struggling to provide documentation to prove they have a right to be in the UK. Julie Bishop, the director of Law Centres Network, said: “We can all do something to push back against the hostile environment. Law centres use their legal know-how to get justice for people who have been excluded and restore their dignity. “We are grateful that so many readers are joining the fightback through their generous donations. Together we can bring down this cruel policy.” The total raised so far includes £45,000 pledged by readers during the appeal telethon in December, and nearly £10,000 raised by Guardian and Observer staff through fundraising events. The appeal remains open until 6 January.Deadline day is here! How very exciting! Well, a bit exciting. OK, not that exciting. Fine, actually it’s a pretty tedious construct where nothing of much consequence happens other than highly organised, well-funded football clubs run around trying to grab players at the last minute and lots of Sky reporters stand around in the cold. BUT, there are still a few hours of potential transfers to come, so let’s have a look at what might still happen today. Well, while all the talk around Chelsea has been around the potential departures of Eden Hazard and Callum Hudson-Odoi, everyone’s been forgetting about lil’ ol’ Willian. Not PSG though, who are apparently mulling themselves over a bid for the Brazilian winger at the very last minute. Hmmm. And frankly it sounds like Chelsea will be providing something of a player buffet this 31 January: West Ham have nudged aside the egg & cress sandwiches and wondered if Olivier Giroud is worth loading on to their plate, while they also glanced past the cheese & pineapple on cocktail sticks to see Danny Drinkwater is there too, slightly curling up at the edges but still worthy of a nibble. And what’s that, just next to the crescent of crisps? Why, it’s Michy Batshuayi, upon whom Everton are also said to be keen. The Hammers, meanwhile, have supposedly turned their nose up at the £7million offered to them by Valencia for Javier Hernández. One incoming at Chelsea might be Abdoulaye Doucouré, which would be interesting. The Mirror reckons that the midfielder, conveniently missing from their defeat to Tottenham with a bit of a knock, is the man Maurizio Sarri wants to knit things back together again. The done thing is now for young English talent to do one Germany-wards, and Emile Smith Rowe is nothing if not fashionable: he’s off to RB Leipzig on loan, it says here. Arsenal meanwhile haven’t quite officially bagged Denis Suárez from Barcelona yet (even though Barcelona sort of confirmed it), but it sounds like just crossed ts and dotted lower-case js there. Crouchy might not be having his nachos, but he could be heading back to the Premier League. What remarkable scenes. With Stoke v v v v v keen on taking Sam Vokes from Burnley, our old friend Peter Crouch might be the grease for that particular wheel, included as a sweetener in a potential £9million deal. Naturally Tottenham aren’t going to sign anyone, because why would they do something as vulgar as that? One or two might be heading out the door, mind, including Vinny Janssen, a potential target for Cardiff. Newcastle are going absolutely berserk: not content with signing one player – Paraguay playmaker Miguel Almirón, whose move should in theory be completed today – they might be signing two. Two! Imagine. Nantes winger Anthony Limbombe is the new apple of their eye, and could come in today. The achingly unlucky Tyrone Mings, his Bournemouth career having been broadly banjaxed by injury, is on his bike: a host of Championship clubs were keen, including Derby County and Nottingham Forest, but by the sounds of things he’s off to Aston Villa on loan for the rest of the season. Speaking of loans to the Champo, Leicester’s Andy King is a wanted man, with Derby again in the frame, but Swansea also keen. Finally, this won’t be one for today, but the super soaraway Currant Bun reckons Real Madrid are raiding their piggy bank in the hope of finding £100m to spend on Marcus Rashford. In entirely unrelated news, Rashford is currently in contract negotiations with Manchester United.Jimmy Anderson acted as England’s speaker in Barbados over the weekend and, on the subject of how much West Indian desire there is to beat the tourists in their upcoming Test series, apparently the eyes have it. As the sole survivor from the last successful excursion to these parts, when an unused squad player during the 3-0 win in 2004 under Michael Vaughan, Anderson was asked why subsequent visits have returned just one Test victory from nine matches. West Indies have supposedly been lowly-ranked pushovers during this time and yet twice have left England as red-faced as some of the travelling support, inflicting a 1-0 defeat in 2009 – the catalyst for the AndrewStrauss/Andy Flower era – and rising back off the canvas in 2015 to secure a 1-1 draw on this very island. “Whenever we come here you get the feeling that West Indies really want to beat England,” said Anderson, whose own personal highlight in the Caribbean remains passing Ian Botham’s Test wickets record in Antigua four years ago. “It’s something that’s been ingrained in them, especially in the past when England have suffered heavy defeats. You can see it in the players’ eyes when you play against them and that means we’ve got to be on top form to be able to try and challenge them.” At 36 years of age and with the Kensington Oval due to witness his 146th Test, Anderson is not lacking in desire himself, of course. And having left the 3-0 win in Sri Lanka saying he felt “a bit of a spare part” due to conditions, he now has a Dukes ball back in his hand even if the expectation is for flat pitches. “At least there’s a glimmer of hope for us seam bowlers. We’re hoping for a little bit – just a little bit – through the air and it keeps you interested for the game,” said Anderson, having found this to be the case when taking four for 12 from 11 overs in his one warm-up outing. “We showed in Sri Lanka we can adapt to any conditions. Our batters batted better than they did and our spinners outbowled theirs. We’ve got to do the same again, man for man we’ve got to outplay them. We know we’ve got the talent to do it.” England’s attack leader is unsure at this stage who he will be sharing the new ball with this week. Sam Curran twice performed the role against the President’s XI – his bustling left-arm swing would certainly benefit from first dibs – but Stuart Broad will doubtless covet it too, meaning Joe Root has a decision to make. The captain has been here before, of course, having given Chris Woakes the chance in the build-up to last year’s New Zealand series only to revert to the old firm come the main event. Broad impressed the England management with his low ego, team-first attitude when a drinks carrier for two Tests in Sri Lanka and so any possible switch is unlikely to cause grumbling. Broad’s outlook was in part due to an intense focus on his own game. Having reacted to a tough Ashes series last winter by recalibrating his wrist-position, the 32-year-old has also shortened his run-up of late. Anderson, whose frictionless approach to the crease initially inspired the change (along with YouTube videos of Sir Richard Hadlee), is impressed. He said: “Since Australia, I’ve not seen anyone work as hard as he has on their game. It’s a credit to [Broad], he’s put so many hard yards in, not just on his run-up but on his action, trying to swing the ball away again.” The first outing for Broad’s shorter run-up was actually in Colombo, where a couple of drops by Root in the slips cost him an instant return on the hard graft. Six wickets last week – including a hat-trick of tailenders – offered more hope that the tinkering will pay off. Anderson added: “For me, it’s all about the last six yards, building that momentum up to the crease. He still has the same snap and can definitely have the same oomph. I do think the run-up has looked really good here. It might just get another couple of years out of him. Part of him thinks ‘why have I not done this sooner?’”A backbench Tory amendment to Theresa May’s Brexit deal that Downing Street had hoped could limit the extent of her likely losses on the key vote has not been selected by the Speaker, John Bercow, meaning MPs will not get a chance to express their view on it. The amendment, tabled by the Conservative MP Andrew Murrison and backed by 29 of his colleagues, called for the backstop solution to the Irish border to expire on 31 December 2021 if it came into force, and was seen as a sop to MPs on the issue. While the idea goes against the withdrawal agreement with Brussels, the hope was that if it drew much support it could help the prime minister if she returned to the EU to seek new concessions after losing the vote. Perhaps the most contentious issue. In order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, a backstop arrangement that keeps the UK in the customs union and requires Northern Ireland to follow single market rules would prevail until a free-trade agreement is reached that avoids such a frontier. The UK and EU negotiators have agreed the former should honour those commitments it made while a member of the bloc – finally settling on a figure of £39bn. The deal would secure a status quo transition period to negotiate the nature of the future relationship, and during which the UK could begin to make trade deals with third countries. A fraught issue at the outset, an agreement was reached relatively quickly that would see the UK respect the rights of EU citizens who arrive before the end of the transition period, which could be in 2022, and vice versa. The document is accompanied by a political declaration that sketches out the future relationship between the two parties – focusing primarily on trade and security. However, even before the amendment was not picked, its likely impact was minimised after the Democratic Unionist party said such machinations would not change its MPs’ minds. “Today’s very belated amendments are part of the internal parliamentary games and do not change the need to secure legally binding changes,” a DUP spokesman said. Murrison said he was very disappointed his amendment was not selected. “Speaker Bercow conducts himself to his own entire satisfaction,” he said. “The most decorous thing I can say about his selection or not of amendments today is it’s interesting.” Bercow, beginning the fifth and final day of debate on the plan, said he had accepted four amendments. With voting due to start at 7pm, that should push the result on May’s deal back to around 8.15pm. The amendments chosen include one tabled by Jeremy Corbyn and other Labour frontbenchers. It seeks to rule out a no-deal departure, and criticises May’s plan for not providing “a permanent UK-EU customs union and strong single market deal”. Another frontbench amendment jointly tabled by the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru was also chosen. This condemns the deal on the basis it “would be damaging for Scotland, Wales and the nations and regions of the UK as a whole”. Two backbench amendments were picked. The first, by the Tory MP Edward Leigh and backed by about a dozen colleagues, seeks to limit the scope of the backstop by saying it is temporary, and that international law decrees the UK can unilaterally end the withdrawal agreement if there is any attempt to extend the backstop beyond 2021. The final amendment, tabled by another veteran Tory MP, John Baron, is also on the backstop. This states that the UK would have the right to terminate it without the say-so of the EU. 11.30am The Commons begins sitting. The first item is questions to Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and his ministerial team. These are meant to last 30 minutes but can run slightly over. Then the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams briefly introduces a private member’s bill on public sector supply chains under a 10-minute rule motion. After midday If there are no urgent questions or ministerial statements to delay proceedings, the final day of debate on Theresa May’s Brexit deal – officially known as section 13(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 – begins. It will be opened for the government by the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox. Before 7pm May will make a final closing speech for the government, appealing for support for her deal. From 7pm Voting begins. However, before the crucial vote, MPs must vote on the four amendments accepted by the Speaker. One amendment, tabled by the Tory Hugo Swire, has been accepted by the government. At some point between around 7.30pm to 9.30pm MPs finally vote on the deal, as amended. The amendments will be taken in order – the Labour amendment, then the SNP/Plaid Cymru, Leigh and then Baron – and if one is passed by MPs then the full, amended motion will immediately be put to the vote without any subsequent amendments being considered, Bercow said. May is expected to respond quickly if she is defeated, probably immediately after the vote, but it has not yet been decided whether it will be a point of order or a full emergency statement. The prime minister was urged by pro-soft Brexit ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting to turn her overtures towards Labour should the deal fall, though others warned strongly against such a strategy. Downing Street said May opened the cabinet meeting by saying that “the government is the servant of the people” and pledging to deliver the referendum result. In a tacit acknowledgment that a defeat was highly likely, May’s spokesman said ministers had discussed “the buildup to the vote and what would happen afterwards”, but refused to give further details. The prime minister was in the Commons to see the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, open the final day of debate. She was then expected to retreat to her Commons office to speak to Tory MPs. A Downing Street source said May had spoken to more than 20 MPs over the weekend and more on Monday and planned to speak to as many as possible before Tuesday evening’s vote. Asked if May would resign if she suffered a heavy defeat, her spokesman said: “The prime minister is determined she will deliver on the vote of the British people and she will take the UK out of the European Union.”For a Briton to spend time in the US just now is a blessed relief. Whole days pass, and no talk of Brexit. It is as if a pall has lifted from the art of conversation. But the US has its own deep divide, slashing through the populist body politic. It is Donald Trump and “America first”. Trump has become a phenomenon. Like Samson in the temple, he seems able to topple the entire edifice of policy. Down crashes America’s government machine for the sake of a wall, world trade is devastated, stock markets plummet, alliances lie in ruins. It is astonishing what one man can do to the world, virtually alone. However, when an entire political establishment says a decision is mad, I tend to think something in it must be right. Thus with Trump’s announcement last month that he was pulling America’s 2,000 troops out of Syria. “They’re all coming back, and they’re coming back now,” he tweeted emphatically. That he could do this after an amiable chat with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and without telling his commanders, was staggering. Trump instantly lost his defence secretary, James Mattis, and his Islamic State expert, Brett McGurk, the former effectively accusing Trump of no longer “protecting our way of life”. Abroad, the Kurds were devastated, the Afghans unnerved, and Iran and Isis reportedly delighted. Outrage came from Democrats and Republicans alike, with the leading Republican senator Lindsey Graham pleading to reverse a decision that “threatens the safety and security of the US”. Trump has now granted a stay of 120 days and a slower withdrawal. Trump’s argument is that getting out of America’s wars was a campaign pledge. The Syrian intervention was never meant to be permanent and had already crippled Isis. “People are going to have to start doing a lot of their own work,” he added, “because the United States cannot continue to be policeman to the world.” To this, Britain’s foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, meekly retorted that the US should stay in Syria “to make sure the streets of Britain are safe”. How or why this should be, he did not explain. Years of American lives and treasure had done little beyond killing thousands of civilians and flattening some of the oldest cities on Earth. The US must be the safest country on the planet. Its home territory has never been so much as menaced by a foreign power, let alone invaded The morass in which the US is wallowing in Mesopotamia, as in Afghanistan, has indeed become indefinite. Retreat is always heartbreaking to friends, and pleasing to foes. It makes tearful, negative copy. Barack Obama tried to get out and lost his nerve. Trump is discovering why: it was through the vehemence and cynicism of pro-intervention lobbies, trumpeting national security. Now comes the paradox. Trump sits in a White House war room, preaching the same “national security” he derides in Syria to justify his $5bn Mexican wall. Migration involves appalling suffering, on which Britain has no right to be smug. Britain has Shakespeare’s “silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall”, where a few patrol boats will apparently suffice. But the issue is the same – how to honour populist election pledges to keep out migrants. Trump is entitled to put “America first” in the Middle East, and that slogan may explain his trade barriers against Canada and China. But like the Mexican wall, such policies have nothing to do with America’s national security. The US must be the safest country on the planet. Its home territory has never been so much as menaced by a foreign power, let alone invaded. Two oceans protect it east and west. 9/11 aside, terrorist incidents have been homegrown. Wars abroad, from Vietnam to Syria, have reflected some neo‑imperial hegemonic urge, similar to that which used to grip Britain. The effect has been to turn the US from policeman to random vigilante. The politics of fear has long been the default mode of the insecure statesman. The parading of military muscle still permeates the US’s public realm and has become a shop window for what President Eisenhower termed the anti-democratic “military-industrial complex”. Its endless aggrandisement boosts military spending and upholds the cause of an American presence across the globe. It worships daily at the altar of national security. American aid to Nato has long underpinned Europe’s security, but that does not undermine Trump’s challenge, that the rest of the world should start solving its own problems. The US’s current entrapment in the Middle East was precisely what it warned Britain against over Suez in 1956, that it should not cloak imperial adventure in the garment of domestic security. Remarks to this effect by Mattis, Graham and Britain’s Hunt are ridiculous, and they know it. The power of armies to dictate policy and command resources by exaggerating public fear is the downside of populism. As a lifelong admirer of the US, I have always marvelled at the good its power and wealth could do for the world. That is why its enslavement to Franklin Roosevelt’s bogey of “fear itself” is so tragic. That the quest for “stability” in the Middle East should be presented as remotely to do with the safety of the American or British state is a nonsense. For all his antics on the Mexican border, in this respect Trump’s voice is salutary. • Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistTwenty-three years after leaving a refugee camp in Kenya, Ilhan Omar on Thursday became the first member of the US Congress to wear a hijab. Rules were changed to allow Omar, a Muslim sworn in on the Qur’an, to wear a religious head covering on the floor of the House. There had been a 181-year ban on headwear of any type in the chamber. “No one puts a scarf on my head but me,” she tweeted last November. “It’s my choice – one protected by the first amendment. And this is not the last ban I’m going to work to lift.” Omar, a Democrat, was part of a historically diverse freshman class in the 116th Congress sworn in amid cheers and jubilation. The House now has a record 102 women and a new generation of Muslims, Latinos, Native Americans and African Americans, more closely resembling the US population and set to take on Donald Trump in a new era of divided government. But on the Republican side, the House still consists mostly of white men. Omar, 36, from Minnesota, tweeted: “As a kid, I acted as my grandfather’s translator at our caucuses and he was the one who first sparked my interest in politics. I wish he could be here to witness this historic moment, but he was here in spirit as I placed my hand on his Quran for the ceremonial swearing in.” The normally staid chamber also bubbled with the sound of children. Congressman Eric Swalwell rocked his infant daughter, Cricket, on the House floor. Omar stopped by to take a turn holding the baby. She was one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. The other was Rashida Tlaib, who did not wear a hijab. Tlaib took the oath on a Qur’an – a 1734 English translation that belonged to the former president Thomas Jefferson. Tlaib wore a traditional thobe stitched by her Palestinian-born mother. When she stood to cast her vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker, Tlaib’s sons, Adam, 13, and seven-year-old Yousif, were standing by her side. This really happened. I am U.S. Congresswoman. Not bad for a girl from southwest Detroit who didn't speak English, daughter of Palestinian immigrants. #13thDistrictStrong: You helped change Congress forever. Now, let's get to work to change our neighborhoods. #rootedincommunity pic.twitter.com/Xz511eIcyg “Then Adam shouted Pelosi’s name, too, and both followed that with a ‘dab’ – a move favored by tweens in which the nose is nudged inside one elbow while the opposite hand is raised overhead,” the Associated Press reported. “Bella Kaufman saw it. Pelosi’s granddaughter, nine, jumped up from her seat in the second row and returned the salute. The House’s legions of parents of both parties chuckled.” Pelosi was comfortably returned to the post of House speaker, making her once again the most powerful woman in American politics. The 78-year-old invited at least two dozen children to join her on the dais as she was sworn in, calling the House to order “on behalf of all of America’s children”.Forty wild horses have been found dead at a dry waterhole in central Australia in what is believed to be a mass death caused by extreme weather. Shocking pictures have been published of the animals, which were discovered by rangers near the remote community of Santa Teresa last week. About 40 dead feral horses were found at the Apwerte Uyerreme waterhole and another 50 were found in poor health and had to be culled by the Central Land Council. • Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning The region has had record run of 12 days exceeding 42C. The Ltyentye Arpurte ranger team discovered the animals last Thursday when they drove past the waterhole en route to another job and noticed the absence of roaming brumbies. Arrernte artist and activity engagement officer Ralph Turner, who also came across the scene and took the photographs, told the ABC he found the animals after travelling to the location to assess how the heatwave was affecting water levels. “We we found all these poor horses, all perished,” Turner said. “We’ve been having hot weather, day after day. “I just couldn’t believe something like that happened out here, first time it happened like that.” The community is meeting to determine what to do with the bodies of the horses. Like much of Australia, the red centre has been in the grip of a long-running heatwave. The Bureau of Meteorology forecast Alice Springs would reach 42C on Wednesday and 43C on Thursday.When Pita Taufatofua began the walk towards the stadium at the 2016 Rio Olympics opening ceremony, he was an unknown, unrated athlete from an obscure Pacific island. He would walk back out a global celebrity. Had it not been for a vat of coconut oil and his flair for flag bearing, he could have passed through the Olympic Games unnoticed and unreported. As it was he went rogue, flagrantly disobeying officials who said “please just wear the suit”, hid a ta’ovala (Tongan mat which is wrapped around the waist) in his backback, nipped out the back and put it on just before the show got started, covered himself in oil, and by the time he had passed the thousands of people lining the streets on the way to the stadium he was going viral. When he stepped into the lights of the stadium waving his flag, articles were already being written about the distractingly shiny Tongan flag bearer and Twitter was melting down. “The internet came to a grinding halt,” reported Entertainment Tonight. Afterwards, when he was standing on the bus “in my oil”, things “just went crazy”, he recalls. “You look at your phone and you can’t keep up with it.” He was, he says, completely unprepared. There was no management, no sponsors, no money, no products, just him and his coach, Paul Sitapa. “It was the first time I heard about what a manager is, what a publicist is, what an agent is. It was just me and my coach trying to manage all this. Two people who didn’t know anything. No one had ever heard of Tonga. We were like, how is this even possible?” Taufatofua says he was just trying to represent his country by wearing its traditional costume. “I was representing 1,000 years of history. We didn’t have suits and ties when we traversed the Pacific Ocean.” If he is being disingenuous (his ancestors probably weren’t oiled up), if he was seeking attention, he got it. He now had the eyes of the world on him for his taekwondo tournament which was right at the end of the Games. “I had to try to stay focused. That was very hard. Now there was more pressure because everyone was watching. They wanted this guy out of nowhere who had this moment to win gold.” He was knocked out in the first round – 16-1 to the Iranian Sajjad Mardani – but it didn’t really matter because he had already won. By the end of the week there would be 230 million Google searches for “where is Tonga?” “Those were the stats that were given to us by Google trends,” he says. There would be appearances on US talk shows as he became a darling of the American media. And there would be a run at the 2018 Korean winter Olympics in another sport – cross-country skiing. He had barely even seen snow when he announced this, and it involves an even more dramatic story than the taekwondo tilt. But we will get to that. We meet in Suva where Taufatofua is on duty as the Unicef Pacific ambassador. He has just spent a day with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in Tonga and is here to appear on the reality TV show Pacific Island Food Revolution, which is being filmed at the Grand Pacific hotel. Taufatofua wishes the Unicef budget stretched to this luxurious hotel, but unfortunately it doesn’t. Everything negative in my life has been fuel for me In person, Taufatofua, 34, is very far from his shirtless beefcake image. He is polite, well-spoken, an educated man with a degree in engineering from the University of Queensland, and a Christian who worked with homeless kids for 15 years at Brisbane Youth Service. The perfect teeth are fairly shiny and the now-famous torso is encased in a blue Unicef T-shirt. But man, does he have a story to tell. He had already won simply by getting to the Olympics. There was no overnight sensation about that. It had taken 15 years and a world of pain. “From memory, six broken bones, three torn ligaments, one-and-a-half years on crutches, three months in a wheelchair and just hundreds and hundreds of hours of physiotherapy,” he says. While he is humble, there is no mistaking the strength and self-belief that Taufatofua carries. That and the extraordinary perseverance comes, he says, from “getting my arse kicked for years, it gave me a whole lot of strength. Everything negative in my life has been fuel for me.” Tenacity comes, he says, “from not having anything as a kid”. His mother, who is Australian, was a nurse and is now a sanitation consultant in the South Pacific; his Tongan father has a PhD in agricultural science and worked in government research. He was born in Brisbane but went to school in Tonga. There were seven children and not much money; a one-bedroom house, scarce electricity and no hot water. “They had no money because they paid for us to have the best education. Between us there are eight degrees and two masters.” In Tonga he was seen as physically smaller than anyone else. He was benched for the entire four years he played football, even though “I never missed a training session. I trained every day,” he says, The only time he got on to the field was to give the other footballers oranges and water. “The coaches never believed in me. In my head I was the little dog that barked and no one saw the little dog.” When he was five his mother put him into taekwondo for “self-defence, to look after myself. My whole family did it. My brother got his black belt”. When he was 12 the streets from the airport to town were lined with people cheering Paea Wolfgramm, the first Tongan to win an Olympic medal, a silver in boxing at Atlanta in 1996. “That was when I thought ‘I am going to the Olympics’. And it just never left,” Taufatofua recalls. “I was working full-time, studying full-time, I was training full-time. It was always ‘you will be an Olympian’. It is quite an interesting thing.” And so began the years of pain and crushing disappointment. Every four years there is one shot at the Olympics with a qualifying tournament. “I have to be number one in Oceania to qualify for Tonga.” In 2008 he went to the qualifier in New Caledonia and left in a wheelchair. He had been up one point when he sprained an ankle and fractured a bone in his foot, but kept fighting another two rounds until it burst. He was unable to walk for six months. There are no elite sports institutes for Tongan athletes, no vast reserves of government funds for Olympic dreams. In the darkest days he would draw on the homeless kids he worked with. “I saw just what true strength was. We had kids who had been abused in every way possible but were brave enough to get good outcomes. It was just a competition, I didn’t have the right not to believe in myself.” In 2011, getting ready for the London Olympics, he went to train with the taekwondo masters in South Korea, desperately short of funds. “We slept in a preschool for six months. We slept underneath the desk. Because it was a preschool for church they let us sleep there but in the morning we had to pack up our bags before the kids came in and then go out for the day. We had no money. It was as uncomfortable as anything.” At the world championship in Azerbaijan, which was an Olympic qualifier, he tore a knee ligament, normally a six-month injury. Eight weeks later, not wanting to wait another four years, he made it through to Oceania Olympic qualifier, fighting on one leg. “We wrapped it as thick as we could. I changed my stance. I fought all the way through to the final. Then I fought against a guy from Samoa who had beaten me before. I was beating him and then in the last round his coach had seen that I was only using one leg and he got up on me and beat me.” This time Taufatofua left New Caledonia on crutches, unable to walk for another three months, while the Samoan went to the Olympics. He kept competing across the Pacific, winning and losing, injury after injury. Surely people were telling him to stop punishing himself. “Doctors, lots of people, told me not to go on. It is really hard to describe just how clear it was in my mind that I will become an Olympian. There was a confidence there that I didn’t create, I believe it was God-given. I can’t explain it other than I just knew it would happen.” And so to 2016 and Rio. “Everything was going wrong. I was running out of money, my car was breaking down, my relationship was breaking down. Paul calls up and says the [qualifying] competition is in two days we have to get to Papua New Guinea. I am ready but I have no money. Paul called up a lady he knew in Tonga and she funded my first ticket ever. We got there the day before the competition.” Up against a New Zealander who had consistently beaten him, the score was three all at the end of three rounds and went into golden points; the first to get a point wins and becomes an Olympian. And he kicked at exactly the right time. “That was my moment. It was the most emotional time. Rio, oil, that wasn’t my moment – that was the reward for all the work.” Four months before the Olympics he was broke. He and Paul did fundraisers and rented a house in Brisbane. They trained in the garage to save money, yelling a lot. “I had my coach, we had prayer, I was happy, I had qualified, I was going,” he says. Perhaps it was all the attention, perhaps that kind of energy is addictive, but a few months after Rio he announced that he would attempt the Winter Olympics at Pyeongchang as a cross-country skier. As a person who had spent his entire life in the tropics, this seemed hilariously bonkers, up there with the Jamaican bobsledders. “I chose it because it made no sense,” he chuckles. “I love these challenges.” He watched YouTube videos of professional races and at 5am every morning he would put on rollerskis and train in the park. “The amount of concrete I ate. But I had one year to qualify,” he says. But then he had to qualify on actual snow. And it got real – on rented skis. “We had to get to all these countries to try and get the races. I think it was 15 countries in eight weeks. The problem was we had to go to races which were not the hardest races where the world cup winners would be, it would be too hard. At this stage every single athlete from every country was getting ready for the Olympics. I came last in four out of nine races.” He would run up $40,000 in credit card debt. By then he had buddied up with Chilean Yonathan Jesús Fernández and Mexican Germán Madrozo, whose prospects were as farcically bad as his were. None of the ski companies wanted Taufatofua to be seen on their skis. “I was asking for a good price and they looked at me and said ‘I suggest you wear other skis’. That happened through the whole qualification process, to me and my friends from South America.” In Poland a ski fell off and went flying down a hill and into trees. “I had to go down a hill I had already climbed up, spend 20 minutes looking for it, fix and tape it back on. They were shutting off the lights when I came in,” he recalls. He wasn’t even close to a qualifying time and he was running out of races. “I get across to Armenia. I thought it would be the last race. Two or three thousand metres up. Normally you go there two weeks before to acclimatise. We got there the day before. I got destroyed in the race again. I was devastated. There wasn’t any more time left to qualify.” They found out there was a race in Croatia the next day. But it would be almost impossible to get there in time. “We looked at every country around Armenia to get a flight. Every country around Croatia. I then end up in an eight-hour taxi ride through Armenia, through the Georgia border, with no sleep. I called the race officials and said I was coming in late. They said they could put me in at the end of the race and then I would start last. I fly across to Istanbul to get a flight to Croatia, and missed the gate by five minutes. I am there pressing all the buttons in the airport, maybe I was a bit crazy by that time. And it didn’t work. I am stuck in Turkey with no money and no flight out of there. I have missed the race in Croatia.” His brother, who is a lawyer, used his points to get him on a flight to London, where he lives. With four days left in the Olympic qualification period, they found out there was one more race – in Iceland on a fjord in the Arctic Circle. The three amigos bought one-way tickets to Reykjavik, Fernández and Madrozo flying from Armenia and Taufatofua going courtesy of his brother’s air miles. “We land, snowstorm. There is no flight from Reykjavik to Eskifjörður fjord. So we rented a car. Normally a 10-hour drive. But because of the snowstorm it took us three days,” he says. If I am meant to help a million people have confidence, I don’t have the right to be depressed Then they heard that three avalanches had blocked the road. “I said, ‘Guys we are going to drive as far as we can and park the car and then hike.’ But by the time we got there they had cleared it, just.” Taufatofua went to the hotel and prayed. Tomorrow was going to be the last day to qualify. He only had one set of skis. “Norway has 40 pairs each. They have a $5m budget just for the waxing. If the conditions were hot or cold, dry or wet, you use a different ski. It just so happened that for what I had it was the perfect day. It was the one race I had where I felt the ski was the right ski. I did the race and qualified with five minutes to spare. And that is how I made my second Olympics.” Naturally he did the oiled shirtless thing at the opening ceremony, even though he risked hypothermia. This time there were no officials to stop him, he was the only athlete from Tonga. And by now the fame was not so accidental. “My goal was never to be famous because with it comes responsibilities. But what you can do with fame is another thing,” Taufatofua says. There was no question of a medal at these Olympics – “No way, not in that sport.” His main goal, he told the media, was “Finish before they turn the lights off. That’s number one. Don’t ski into a tree. That’s number two.” He didn’t even come last. He came in just under 23 minutes behind the gold medal winner Dario Cologna from Switzerland and waited at the finish line for his friends. Today there is something slightly messianic about Pita Taufatofua. “I always chose to learn from the pain and the failure,” he explains. “It is not special to me, it is something that is transferable to anyone if they have the right mindset. The alternative is to sit down and do nothing with your life and to always feel that there is something else that you should be doing. Everyone has potential. It is whether you act on it or not act on it.” He might never have won an Olympic medal, but Taufatofua has seized the constantly astonishing day. There is management, film and TV offers. He has given a speech at the United Nations general assembly and another at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Justin Trudeau. He has written a motivation book, The Motivation Station, and another one on depression. “I have my faith and I believe my purpose is bigger than myself. If I am meant to help a million people have confidence, I don’t have the right to be depressed.” Taufatofua says he is too busy to be in a relationship: “I want to make sure that everything I give has to be the best. And I can’t give a relationship the best because I am moving around.” Now a serial Olympian, in late February he will announce his third attempt at an Olympic sport. It will be a water sport this time, but for the moment it is top secret. Watch this space.Cardi B has officially weighed in on the government shutdown, and she is not happy. In a video posted to Instagram, the rapper criticized Trump and told her fans it was time for action, saying she felt bad for the federal workers who aren’t getting paid. “Hey y’all! I just want to remind you because it has been a little over three weeks,” she told her nearly 40 million Instagram followers. “Trump is now ordering, as in summoning, federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid.” I know a lot of ya do r watch the news so I’m letting ya know shit getting real .....I ain’t going to say nothing much tho I don’t want mofos to off me.....ANYWAYS TWERK VIDEO OUT NOW A post shared by  CARDIVENOM (@iamcardib) on Jan 16, 2019 at 2:41pm PST She advised commenters not to use the shutdown that occurred during the dispute over the Affordable Care Act to defend Trump. “Yeah, bitch – [that shutdown was] for healthcare,” she said. “So your grandma could go check her blood pressure.” “We really need to take this serious,” she added. “I feel like we need to take some action.”Back in the day when rugby was amateur but toying with professionalism, Wales and Ireland could usually be found scrapping for the Five Nations wooden spoon, claiming it eight times between them in the 1990s. Had there been world rankings, neither would have been on the first page. They were two countries known for their emotion rather than attention to detail, moments of brilliance only occasionally compensating for structural disrepair. Then along came two New Zealanders to lay a new foundation. When Graham Henry took over Wales in 1998, they conceded 96 points to South Africa – it would have been a century but for a late dropped pass – having shipped 60 to England and 51 to France earlier in the year. But soon they went on their best winning run for 90 years. When Warren Gatland took charge of Ireland during the 1998 Five Nations, Ireland were on their way to a third successive wooden spoon. In 2000, the first year of the Six Nations, they finished third, their highest placing for 13 years, and were runners-up the following year, an achievement that earned him the sack. Henry did not last much longer with Wales, worn down by his experience with the 2001 Lions in South Africa when some Welsh players who felt they had not been given a chance to challenge for a place in the Test side rebelled and he found on his return that his authority had been eroded. Gatland and Henry started a process of profound change that has culminated in Ireland and Wales now standing at second and third in the world rankings, respectively. Gatland has been in charge of Wales since the end of 2007 while another New Zealander, Joe Schmidt, has been Ireland coach since 2013. Two teams who a generation before were scraping along the bottom have now won the Six Nations eight times between them. With New Zealand leading the world rankings, the top three countries have a Kiwi in charge. The fourth-placed side, England, are coached by an Australian, Eddie Jones, but in the autumn he recruited a former All Blacks coach, John Mitchell, to help add discipline and a sense of direction to his side after a run of five defeats in six Tests. If Wales and Ireland win their opening matches this weekend, there is every chance they will meet in Cardiff in the last round with the title at stake. It would be a fitting final Six Nations weekend for both Gatland and Schmidt, who are moving on after the World Cup. France away and England at home were fixtures the two countries used to go long periods without winning, but now they are both favourites to start with wins in their respective fixtures. Gatland and Schmidt have been successful because while they have both brought a New Zealand approach to their teams – one based on the premise that success only comes with hard work and meticulous preparation – they have not coached as they would in New Zealand, recognising that skill levels there are the highest in the world. Instead they have focused on the possible, stripping away emotion and bringing consistency where there was volatility. Gatland’s first coaching job in Ireland was with Galwegians in the early 1990s when he still played for Waikato. His first match in charge was in Sligo, a two-hour trip, and with less than three hours to go to kick-off, the players were still in the clubhouse. Gatland ordered everyone to get on the bus and with one player in the toilet and two still to turn up, ordered the driver to get going. A few miles from the ground, he asked the driver to pull over, told the players to get out, making them run behind the coach and only letting them back on after a mile. He had shown them who was boss and within a few weeks, Galwegians started a 13-match winning run. When Schmidt took his first training session with Leinster, he bawled out Brian O’Driscoll, making the point early that there was no one bigger than he was and that he would treat the players equally. The two coaches, in different ways, exude authority and that is reflected in the disciplined way their sides play. Wales, the land of Barry John, Gerald Davies and Phil Bennett, is still a nation where romanticism lurks, and there have been rumblings about the style of play under Gatland. But the trade-off has been close-fought contests against the best teams in the world, the salvaging of respect and the team’s most successful period since the 1970s. This has been achieved against a backdrop of a struggle for Wales’s four regions in Europe and the loss of players to clubs in England and France. Schmidt only selects players based in Ireland and most of them play for two of the European game’s powerhouses, Leinster and Munster. Wales had started to decline in the 1980s after the glory of the decade before and their 1988 tour to New Zealand showed why. Wales’s training sessions often bordered on the casual with banter flying around and they could stretch on aimlessly. There was a closeness between coaches and players but in the All Blacks camp there was a distance. Before the first Test in Christchurch, the All Blacks trained early in the morning at a school. The grass was still snow-white with frost and they had a scrummaging session, eight forwards against a machine with the head coach Alex Wyllie standing watching with a whistle stashed between his lips. Steam rose into the air as if someone had lit a bonfire and it was like that for 20 intense minutes. Barely a word was spoken. Both teams played as they trained that series and the result was two 50-pointers for the All Blacks. That is how Ireland and Wales train now, no longer boats against the current borne ceaselessly back into the past; red and green coated in honest black. • This is an extract from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To subscribe just visit this page and follow the instructions. Australians, generally, do not over-react to winning against the odds, partly because the gambling culture embedded so deeply in the national psyche is the perfect tool for handling the highs and lows of sport. So Ashleigh Barty’s thrilling win over Maria Sharapova on day seven of the Australian Open to ensure a quarter-final appearance – the first by an Australian woman since Jelena Dokic 10 years ago – was acclaimed not as a shock but a deserved dividend on her backing her freewheeling tennis. Barty took the risk and reaped the reward. It is the Australian way. If she’d lost, she would have done so properly – not, it has to be repeated, with the sulking to which some of her compatriots in the men’s draw can fall prey. “Maria was never going to go away,” Barty said after beating Sharapova 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 in two hours and 22 minutes on Rod Laver Arena, shortly after her next opponent, Petra Kvitova, had taken just under an hour on the same court to beat the exciting American teenager, Amanda Animisova, in straight sets. Barty, who swapped high-level cricket for tennis three years ago, appears nerveless, although she admits the adrenaline will flow when she plays No 8 seed Kvitova so soon after losing to her in the final of the Sydney International last weekend. “It’s exciting that I get to have another chance at Petra straight away,” she said. “Not often does that happen, where you get to kind of have a replay against the same opponent.” Barty will have two nations supporting her charge to what would be the first appearance by a home player in an Australian Open semi-final since 1990, when Wendy Turnbull went on to win the title. Besides the obvious love that has flowed her way across the board in the first week, her Indigenous roots mean a lot to her, as they did to Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who won four slams here. “I try and set a good example and try and be a good role model by my actions,” Barty said. “I know the Indigenous community would be extremely proud of me. Evonne and Roger [Cawley, her British-born husband and a former junior player] are. They’re really nice accolades to get but, when I’m out on the court, I’m just trying to fight as hard as I can for every single point, trying to play the game in the right spirit, and play as hard as I can, play fairly and give it a crack.” “She’s a proven champion,” Barty said of Sharapova. “Time and time again, it proves she will fight until the last point.” So does Barty. Growing up in Ipswich, she learned the rudiments then the tricks from a local coach, Jim Joyce, who was in awe of her power and hand-eye coordination, skills that carried her briefly into cricket (after depression struck in the early days of her tennis career) and allow her to play golf to a handicap of 10 without ever having had a lesson. On court, she has the scurrying muscularity of the world No 1, Simona Halep, but adds a metronomic single-handed backhand with bags of undercut spin, a serve-and-volley game that distracts her more programmed opponents, and a killing kick serve. They are weapons that could take her all the way to the final. Sharapova went down screaming, of course, but was less vocal later when stonewalling difficult questions about her history here with Meldonium, which cost her 15 months of her career after she failed a drugs test at this event years ago. The silent death stare that greeted the inquiry about how she was coping without the banned substance would have unsettled a trained spy. Asked about what she thought when the crowd booed her after she took a toilet break before the start of the third set, she said, “What do you want me to say to that question?” The truth, her inquisitor responded. “I think that’s a silly question to ask,” she said. If Maria says it’s silly, it gets parked. From there the exchange went slowly downhill. It seems she will always be admired, respected and even feared, but not widely loved. It is her decision that it is like that. She attributed some of her 10 double-faults to serving from the end where the sun was shining directly into her eyes, which was a fair point. Barty kept hers to a manageable four. Sharapova did hit the target with one observation, one that suggests she will soldier on, despite four barren years since she won her seventh slam at Roland Garros. “I think it would be tough for me to be doing all the work and putting in all the effort if I didn’t really believe that [she could win again]. I think I’d be kidding myself.” Overall, it was a performance - uptight, anxious, dogged - theatrically at odds with Barty’s smiling acceptance of how the shots fell and the points ebbed. There was one genuine shock on Sunday: The 25-year-old American, Danielle Collins, with a game honed in college tennis, hit 29 winners in 56 minutes to put former champion Angelique Kerber out, winning 6-0, 6-2. The Floridian, more used to the backwaters of her sport but up to No 35 in the world rankings after a breakthrough year in 2018, described her run to the quarter-finals as “an incredible experience”, having never previously won a singles grand-slam match before arriving in Melbourne. A partial shutdown of the US federal government has stretched into a third week with virtually no end in sight. It is now the second-longest shutdown in US history. The closures are having an impact on 800,000 federal workers, many of whom will not receive paychecks for the first time since the standoff in Washington began just before Christmas. Standing in the way of a resolution is Donald Trump’s demand for a wall on the US-Mexico border – a central promise of his presidential campaign. Despite repeatedly vowing that Mexico would pay for it, the president is now demanding $5.7bn in taxpayer money to proceed with construction of the border wall. Democrats are standing firm against the proposal while Trump has threatened that the shutdown, which he already said he would be proud to take responsibility for, could last for “months or even years”. During a government shutdown, federal agencies must cease all operations and services deemed non-essential while essential functions such as airport security and law enforcement will continue to be performed. Laid-off workers are sent home without pay while other employees must work without being paid. The shutdown lasts until new funding is approved by Congress and signed into law by the president. On 21 December at midnight, funding expired and work ceased across nine federal departments. Many national parks are closed, immigration courts were suspended and scientific research has stalled. The sprawling federal bureaucracy that keeps many aspects of American life humming is funded by an annual budget set and approved by Congress. The president must sign – or veto – the 12 so-called appropriations bills, which lay out how federal agencies may spend their money in the next fiscal year. Appropriations bills need 60 votes in the Senate, a requirement that often forces bipartisanship depending on the party breakdown in the chamber. When Congress fails to pass – or the president refuses to sign – budget legislation before a spending deadline, whatever portion of government lacks funding “shuts down”. This process has becoming increasingly political in recent years and has been used by both parties as a way to extract concessions on legislative priorities. In October 2013, Republicans shut down the government for 16 days in an unsuccessful bid to strip funding from Barack Obama’s healthcare legislation, the Affordable Care Act. In January 2018, Democrats briefly shut down the government over an impasse on immigration legislation, as a way to demand Congress enact protections for undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children. If the shutdown continues through the weekend, it will be the longest on record. The White House on Monday directed the Internal Revenue Service to pay tax refunds. The impact of the shutdown will only worsen the longer it lasts. The nation’s food assistance program only has funding through the end of January and it probably could not meet the demand expected in February. Meanwhile, federal workers appear to be growing frustrated. Transportation Security Administration employees have been increasingly calling out sick at airports across the country while at the Environmental Protection Agency are planning a “national sick day” to protest against the shutdown. An impasse between a divided Congress and the White House is to blame. Trump’s demand for a wall is the key sticking point. Public polling suggests that Americans believe Republicans, and specifically the president, are to blame for the shutdown. Meanwhile, a majority of Americans oppose the wall, while a larger share say it should not be the priority. In December, Trump said he would be “proud” to take responsibility for shutting down the government in the face of Democratic opposition to funding his pet wall project. Negotiations between congressional leaders and the White House are at a virtual standstill. That’s despite tense meetings and the president spending the Christmas and New Year break at the White House instead of going to his club, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, alternating between threats and pleadings to Democrats via Twitter. As the repercussions of the shutdown further ripple across the country, members of Congress – including a small but vocal group of Republicans – are demanding the Senate take up legislation to end the shutdown and allow the debate over border security to resume with the government opens. Trump on Tuesday was set to address the nation to possibly declare a “national emergency” that would allow him to build a wall without congressional approval, a move fraught with legal obstacles and political peril. Alternatively, he may merely declare a “crisis” and continue his political arguments for an agreement.New year, new start! After all the exciting social upheavals last year such as #MeToo, it’s all change now, right? Diana, by email Oh, Diana. Your optimism is beautiful, shining like a beacon in the apocalyptic wasteland of cynicism in which we now find ourselves. Sadly, snuff it out I must. It was all terribly exciting this time last year, as we watched powerful people being called out for behaviours that had always been wrong but – for reasons no one can explain now – they had been able to get away with until literally last year. Sexism, racism, harassment and even flat-out rape: they were all denounced, as previously marginalised, or at least less powerful, people finally took a stand against powerful men, and – more importantly – they were believed. Even if we didn’t win all the fights, even if Brett “I didn’t write: ‘Sexually assault someone’ on my calendar; case closed!” Kavanaugh is, incredibly, on the supreme court, despite Christine Blasey-Ford’s powerful testimony that he assaulted her as a teenager, it still felt like a watershed had been reached. Truly, we thought, men had learned their lesson. Oh, brave new dawn of sexual equality! Aaaand – as they say in the movies – scene. The sequel rarely lives up to the original because there is always a sense of anticlimax seeing what happens after the original’s euphoric ending scene. And what is happening here is a definite letdown. It turns out that the men have not learned their lesson. No, in fact, they think they have been wronged. Because nothing is more unfair than being called on out on your behaviour, it seems. Kevin Hart appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’s talkshow last week, after stepping down from hosting the Oscars in December when criticism of his previous fondness for making homophobic jokes in his tweets and standup became too loud for even him to ignore. An extremely successful comedian doesn’t get to host the Oscars: as tragedies go, it isn’t exactly up there with the Rohingya refugees. And yet the normally sensible DeGeneres seems to have decided that this is a cause she needs to champion, announcing on her show that she is “praying” Hart can return to the Oscars. As for Hart, he has been engaged in serious self-reflection, considering that his routine about how his greatest fear is his son being gay and describing someone as looking like “a gay bill board [sic] for Aids” was both cruel and damaging, and he is filled with remorse. Ha ha, jk jk jk. Rather, Hart described the criticisms as “a malicious attack on my character”. He added that he is determined to host the Oscars because: “Somebody has to take a stand against the trolls.” Hi Kevin, Hadley from the Guardian here, can you clarify who are “the trolls”: the people criticising homophobia or the man who writes tweets describing someone as a “fat faced fag”? Kevin? Hart is not alone in his resistance to self-examination. Aziz Ansari is back doing standup almost a year after he was accused by a woman of … well, let’s just call it “less than ideal behaviour on a date”, note that he was “surprised and concerned” by her account and get to the matter at hand. Once Ansari styled himself as Mr Woke, writing a book called Modern Romance, wearing Time’s Up pins to red-carpet events and so on. But according to the New York Times, his latest show’s theme is “contempt for people trying to outwoke each other”. Ah, how fast the woke turn when wokeness turns against them! The same could be said of Louis CK. Once, he did brilliant routines about how men were so dangerous to women that a woman agreeing to date with one was like him having to agree to a date with “a half-bear and half-lion and thinking: ‘I hope this one’s nice!’” Alas, it has since been revealed he is less than nice, having admitted – after years of denials – to masturbating in front of horrified women. A clip of his latest routine was recently leaked in which he mocked, of all people, the survivors of the Parkland shooting, confirming that CK hasn’t quite grasped who’s who in the whole predator-victim nexus. Now, no one can dictate how someone should react to being publicly shamed and vilified. But it would be nice if at least some of these men could spend, I don’t know, two minutes examining their culpability, instead of running away from such reflections in terror and lashing out at the world, like a toddler who can’t deal with being told off for being mean to his baby sister so he hits his mother. I don’t ask for much, guys. But I will ask for adult men to be better than toddlers.The World Anti-Doping Agency has been accused of being “played by the Russians” and a “total joke” after it confirmed it had not retrieved or received crucial doping data from the Moscow laboratory by its 31 December deadline. The Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie, who had been “confident” the data would be collected a few weeks ago, admitted he was “bitterly disappointed” at the news that one of Wada’s strict conditions, set when it controversially lifted the three-year suspension on the Russian Anti-Doping Agency in September despite enormous anger from anti-doping groups and athletes, had not been met. Yet it had been on the cards since before Christmas after Wada’s team of experts, led by Dr José Antonio Pascual, left Moscow empty-handed having failed to access the underlying data from the laboratory. The sticking point was a row over the specialist IT equipment Wada was using to extract data, which some reports have suggested had been wiped. “Wada has been working diligently with the Russian authorities to meet the deadline, which was clearly in the best interest of clean sport,” added Reedie. However, Travis Tygart, the chief executive of US Anti-Doping, blamed Wada for being soft on Russia and for having concocted a secret deal with the country’s authorities in September to let Rusada back in. “The situation is a total joke and an embarrassment for Wada and the global anti-doping system,” he added. “In September Wada secretly moved the goal-posts and reinstated Russia against the wishes of athletes, governments and the public. In doing this Wada guaranteed Russia would turn over the evidence of its state-supported doping scheme.” Tygart also called for Rusada to be immediately suspended again, which would stop Russia hosting major events and also leave the country’s athletes facing other possible sanctions. “No one is surprised this deadline was ignored and it’s time for Wada to stop being played by the Russians and immediately declare them non-compliant for failing yet again to meet the deadline,” he added. Wada’s independent Compliance Review Committee will consider its options when it meets on 14 January. However the prospect of Russia being banned from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo seems slim after the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, used his new year message to say the Russia Olympic Committee had already been punished enough. “In Pyeongchang we sanctioned the systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system in Russia during the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014,” said Bach . “The IOC sanctioned those entities involved, proportional to their levels of responsibility – with its suspension from Pyeongchang 2018, the Russian Olympic Committee has served its sanction.” Many athletes, however, remain angry that Wada and the IOC has not been tougher on Russia given the country has never formally admitted to a sophisticated state-sponsored doping programme involving more than 1,000 athletes and 30 sports. That anger was reflected by a statement from the UK Anti-Doping Agency’s athlete commission, which joined Usada in calling for Russia to again be declared non-compliant. “Unfortunately the Russian government has clearly not fulfilled its promise,” it said. “The Russian state need to prove unequivocally that they have learned from the biggest doping scandal under Wada’s watch, and that they will from this date forward be committed to a drug-free, transparent regime across international sport. Otherwise the Wada compliance review committee and the Wada executive committee must now immediately declare Rusada non-compliant. “Wada’s leadership has the opportunity to stand up for the interests of athletes, their families, their fans and their sport. In the name of sport, it is time to do what is right.”I don’t remember watching it live,” says Harry Kane of the 1999 Champions League final, which took place when he was five years old. “I did see the highlights, though. When you watch it back and see how they turned it around, it shows anything is possible in football.” Not only a chastening reminder that Manchester United’s treble is now a long time ago, Kane’s remarks also show the Tottenham striker in typical form: straightforward and polite, smart enough to find the courteous way to answer most questions. When he fronts up to the media, as he often does, Kane is diplomatic not defensive and underneath, a motivational message: if anything is possible in football, what might Spurs achieve? It wasn’t just the goals that earned him that MBE. The reason for Kane playing nice about a match he cannot remember is Sunday’s big Premier League encounter: Tottenham v Manchester United at Wembley. Ole Gunnar Solskjær, he of the late, late knee-slide in Barcelona, arrives at the national stadium hoping to extend his run of five consecutive victories since taking temporary charge at Old Trafford. Spurs, meanwhile, are trying to keep a four-pronged trophy hunt running for another week. “United have been in great form and are coming off some great results,” Kane says. “They are going to be confident and they are going to have a lot of energy. They won’t have played midweek like we have. We have to bring that same energy. That’s when we’re at our best, when we’re pressing and everyone is on the front foot. That is what we are going to need on Sunday.” One way of looking at the midweek Carabao Cup match against Chelsea is that it offered a different type of challenge for Spurs in their encounters with fellow big-six clubs. Edged out of games against Liverpool and Manchester City in the Premier League, Spurs were outgunned by Arsenal in a shooting match. But Mauricio Pochettino’s side have also turned over both Chelsea and United in a manner that suggested they were the team with the experience and honours, not the other way around. So, on Tuesday evening, Chelsea reacted and set about Spurs as if they had a point to prove. Maurizio Sarri wanted to show they could match their London rivals in determination and physical commitment. Most observers would agree they achieved this. Chelsea also had the bulk of possession, much of it in Tottenham’s defensive third. Yet they created few real chances, Spurs were happy to play on the break and, most importantly, they still won the first leg of the tie. If you accept that version of events then the semi-final saw Spurs playing conservatively, but as favourites, while Chelsea were the underdogs, willing to give their all for victory. It was precisely the opposite approach to that taken by Antonio Conte in an FA Cup semi-final two seasons ago – when the then Chelsea manager drew the sting from Spurs before introducing Eden Hazard late in the game to devastating effect – and it may not be the position the teams find themselves in when they come to play again at Stamford Bridge a week on Thursday. But if it was the case, it might well be the same again for Sunday’s visit of United. What we have done with Mauricio is to change the perception of Spurs. We are at the stage now where we are a mature team “We were always the ones going into these games as the underdog but in the last few years we’ve started to turn that around,” says Kane. “Now we are going into some of these games as favourites, especially at home. It was a mature performance [against Chelsea]. We got the result and then defended as a unit. We stayed compact and tried to catch them on the counterattack. “United have an amazing history and have won so many titles, a lot more than Tottenham have. What we have done as a team with Mauricio and the staff is to change the perception of Spurs over the last three or four years. We are at the stage now where we have a mature team. We are not young any more. It’s important we keep ourselves at this high level, at the top. I know that the teams around us know it’s difficult to play us and we have to use that to our advantage. “United will come and try to play with a lot of energy. We have to make sure we match that. When we match their intensity, keep the ball and make it hard for them, that’s when we can do damage.” Kane knows full well how to do damage, of course. His arching header set Spurs on their way to victory at Old Trafford in August. That was one of just two goals in the first month of the season as he struggled to shake off the effects of a long season that bled into a the World Cup. In the past few weeks, however, he has been back to his best. Kane is once again agile enough to make defenders sweat in a sprint, strong enough to hold the ball anywhere on the field and cute enough to either draw fouls or play teammates in beyond him. He has seven goals in his last six games and his match-winning penalty against Chelsea made him the first Spurs player to score 20 goals in a season for five consecutive years. In scoring on Tuesday Kane also surpassed Cliff Jones’s career total of 159 goals for the Lilywhites. It is sometimes hard to recognise when watching players who are making history, but Kane is at that level for club and country. Pochettino said he gave Kane a cameo in the FA Cup demolition of Tranmere a week ago as an opportunity for Prenton Park regulars to see “an icon of English football”. He wasn’t exaggerating. But when asked to consider his place in Spurs history, Kane was typically gracious. “I’ve seen Cliff a few times,” he says. “I haven’t seen him recently but he mentioned something on social media [about the record] which I replied to. He’s a club legend, it’s great to have that praise from him and other pros that have played for the club as well.” And how about that all-time record, Jimmy Greaves’s 266? “We’ll see. Hopefully. That would be nice.”Theresa May is expected to reject calls to forge a cross-party consensus on Brexit when she lays out her plan B to parliament on Monday, choosing instead to back new diplomatic efforts in Brussels to renegotiate the Irish backstop. The prime minister held a conference call with her bitterly divided cabinet from the country retreat of Chequers on Sunday evening. Cabinet sources said the consensus on the 90-minute call was to renew efforts to find acceptable changes to the backstop arrangement but that the conversation was light on specifics. One said there were “no actual solutions” proposed during the call. “It is difficult to know – as ever – what she will do,” another said. “But the broad agreement is on the need to bring DUP and Tory rebels on board.” Despite her claim in the wake of last week’s significant defeat in parliament that she would speak to “senior parliamentarians” from all parties to seek a compromise, government sources insisted her overriding priority was to prevent a historic split in the Tory party. Several senior Conservative MPs have suggested they could form a breakaway party if May opted to support a customs union – one of Labour’s central demands, which is also backed by Tory supporters of a Norway-style soft Brexit. Whitehall sources said the prime minister’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, had counselled her to consider a customs union after last week’s catastrophic defeat, when her deal was rejected by an overwhelming majority of 230 votes. But when the government tables a formal statement on Monday, setting out its next steps, it is instead expected to focus on seeking changes to the Irish backstop in order to win over Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group and the DUP. The prime minister could then travel to Brussels as early as Monday evening – though Downing Street denied it would be that soon. May’s move comes as fresh polling evidence suggests the public are sanguine about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. A poll by ICM conducted after last week’s government defeat and seen by the Guardian asked voters what should happen next. The most popular option, backed by 28% of voters, was a no-deal Brexit. Demonstrating the divide in public opinion, the next most popular option, supported by 24% of the public, is to start the process of holding a second referendum. In the representative online poll of 2,046 adults between 16–18 January, just 8% thought May should press ahead with trying to win support for her deal in parliament, while 11% thought she should call a general election. Earlier on Sunday, Liam Fox said it was “the overwhelming view” among party colleagues that the prime minister’s deal was salvageable if she could get change on the backstop. “That seems to me to be the area that we’re coalescing around,” the international trade secretary said. “A lot of my colleagues in the House of Commons have said that if we make changes on the backstop we’d be willing to vote for the agreement.” However, Downing Street and Irish government sources poured cold water on reports that the government was considering the possibility of a joint UK-Irish treaty that would replace the backstop. The plan is favoured by some hard Brexiters, including the former cabinet minister Owen Paterson, and was given some weight by Fox, who said he favoured a “different mechanism” to prevent a hard border. “Of course both Ireland and the United Kingdom have both said that we don’t want to see a hard border and the Irish prime minister has said in the event of no deal, he wouldn’t want to see a hard border,” Fox said. “Now given that we’re in that same place that should be the area that we need to look to find some compromise.”However, a Downing Street source said the plan was “not one we recognise”. Irish sources said the government would reject any approach from May for a bilateral side deal, calling the idea a “non-starter” and saying the EU was very clear the withdrawal agreement could not be reopened unless May changed her red lines. A No 10 source also dismissed reports that the Good Friday agreement could be amended to add a clause pledging there would be no hard border, saying it was not under consideration and had not been discussed on the call.The Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, said: “I can assure you that the Irish government’s commitment to the entire withdrawal agreement is absolute, including the backstop to ensure, no matter what, an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the Good Friday agreement, are protected.” “The solidarity in the EU is complete there, as Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker made clear: they are waiting to see what Theresa May’s plan B is,” an Irish government source added. “From our perspective, a bilateral deal is just not a credible proposal.” Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, was sceptical on Sunday that British attempts to push Dublin to accept changes to the backstop would bear fruit for the UK. Asked by the German ZDF television about reports of talks between Britain and the Irish government, Maas said the UK’s goals were “a mystery”. He said: “We have to negotiate and also agree a withdrawal agreement with Britain. It is a bit of a mystery to me what the British government wants to negotiate with Dublin or what sort of an additional agreement it should be. It won’t have any effect on what was agreed with the [European] commission. “All 27 members must agree. In the last few days there have been relatively clear statements that there are many who are not ready to and there are some that are open to it. We have to wait to see what the Britons suggest.” No 10 has repeatedly denied that it is preparing for a general election to break the deadlock, but the Conservative MP Huw Merriman became the first Tory to admit the possibility was likely on Sunday. “When parliament can’t pass laws, not just on Brexit but on other matters, and the government cannot govern through that, then that’s normally when you have a general election,” he told the BBC. Tory chair Brandon Lewis emailed all Conservative members on Sunday asking for donations with the subject line “Corbyn wants an election,” though he later insisted the party was preparing for local elections in May. Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has stepped up his calls for article 50 to be extended for a year, so that a series of citizens’ assemblies could be held to determine what should happen next. “Parliament must inflict a second defeat on the government – by voting next Tuesday to extend article 50 for a year. Not as a delaying tactic but for a purpose: to enable a process of nationwide consultation and reflection,” he wrote in the Guardian. “Key to this would be a series of citizens’ assemblies whose thinking would then lead to constructive reconsideration by parliament of our relations with Europe, including the options of a renegotiation followed by a referendum. The direct engagement of the British people is now essential to address the triple challenge of a government defying the sovereignty of parliament, an evermore divided country, and mounting distrust between parliament and people,” he wrote.Senator Bernie Sanders has said he was not aware of allegations of sexism and pay discrimination that occurred during his insurgent campaign for president in 2016 and pledged to “do better” should he run again in 2020. “I certainly apologize to any woman who felt she was not treated appropriately and, of course, if I run we will do better next time,” Sanders told CNN on Wednesday night. His comments follow a New York Times report on Wednesday, which described one incident in which a female member of the Latino outreach team said she was told she was supposed to share a bedroom with three men she didn’t know. Another former staffer told the paper that she made $2,400 a month but that a younger male staffer whom she was supposed to manage made $5,000 a month. When she raised the issue her salary was adjusted to achieve parity. The story was published days after more than two dozen staff members from his 2016 presidential campaign signed a letter seeking a meeting with the senator and his top advisers to address the issue of “sexual violence and harassment on the 2016 campaign, for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle”, according to Politico, which obtained a copy of the letter. Asked during an interview on CNN if he was aware of the claims at the time, Sanders replied that he was not. “I was a little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case,” he said. Sen. @BernieSanders tells @andersoncooper he had no knowledge of allegations of sexual harassment and pay discrimination against women in his campaign organization during his 2016 bid for the White House, adding, "of course, if I run [again], we will do better next time." pic.twitter.com/2tPlmiYfB3 The allegations are surfacing as the Vermont senator weighs a second run for the White House. Some former female staffers say the claims raise questions about whether he is the right candidate to lead the Democrats in the era of #MeToo and after a historic number of female candidates helped propel the party to power in the House of Representatives. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we did everything right in terms of human resources, in terms of addressing the needs that I’m hearing from now that women felt disrespected, that there was sexual harassment that was not dealt with as effectively as possible,” Sanders said. He added that the early days of the campaign were chaotic, as the operation scaled rapidly from a handful of paid staffers to more than a thousand. Sanders pointed to new policies implemented during his 2018 re-election campaign for Senate that included a hotline run by an independent firm to report incidents of sexual harassment and discrimination and mandatory training for staff and volunteers – measures he described as the “gold standard for what we should be doing”.It is a poignant oddity that Andy Murray’s tennis career is ending as it began: in pain, struggle and confusion. When the thin, hairy teenager from Dunblane joined the full Tour in 2005 as the reigning 2004 US Open boys champion, he was No 407 in the world, but spent the first three months coping with a back injury that had cut him down in South Africa because, as he described it at the time, “I was growing a lot”. And how he grew. On the eve of what might well be his last match, four months shy of his 32nd birthday after tumbling to 230 in the rankings, Murray can look back on a career littered with gold and cruelly bloodied by the slings and arrows of life. His right hip, never reliable, has finally given up on him. His spirit is drained too. He is tired, finally, of the struggle. He survived back surgery towards the end of 2013 but, a year on from having his aching hip patched up by a Melbourne surgeon to help him eke out a few more moments in the sun, there is nothing left to give, nowhere else to go. To see him reveal on Friday that he could barely put on his shoes and socks without wincing was to witness a warrior laying down his shield. I watched that boys’ final at Flushing Meadows 15 years ago. Murray, under-powered but immensely gifted, was as passionate and determined on the court in beating the cerebral Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky as he was introverted away from it. It would be eight years before he returned to New York to win his first major, by which time he had acquired the bearing of a feared and confident champion, a fully grown man who knew his own worth. They were one and the same, of course. The essential Murray has not changed. There is a palpable decency about him, which several of his many friends mentioned when they learned of his impending farewell on Friday. He was and remains the owner of a particularly Scottish sense of humour – not as theatrical as, say, Billy Connolly, nor as earthy as Rab C Nesbitt. Maybe somewhere in between. He delighted in the engineered misfortune of his team members, all of whom have remained fiercely loyal to him – and not just because he was paying the cheques. Their respect for him as an athlete was deep, as it was among his peers. Dan Evans and Murray didn’t always see eye to eye but there was warmth there too, especially as Davis Cup teammates. “It’s desperately sad that his career’s had to end because of injury and not so much on his own terms,” Evans said after qualifying for the Australian Open on Friday. “But he’s had an unbelievable career, and he’s probably one of the best sportsmen Britain’s ever had, if not the best.” Kyle Edmund, who first met him when he was 14 and treasured invites to Murray’s Miami winter training camps, agreed. “He’s been my biggest role model. He’s Britain’s greatest tennis player ever, and you could say maybe Britain’s best sportsman ever.” Athletes don’t always enjoy talking about other athletes. It can be a self-centred existence. But the compliments flowed like honey. “Just to see his dreams come true and give hope to others and inspire myself as well as many others is just astonishing,” Katie Boulter said. “When I cracked the top-100 he messaged me and was very sweet and supportive. I think he’s been that for a lot of people, and every single person I know appreciates that.” Murray touched people in different ways. Heather Watson, who was a little miffed he chose to play Olympic mixed doubles with Laura Robson in London in 2012 rather than with her, recalls: “When he won Wimbledon for the first time, I was watching it in San Diego. When he started crying, I just started bawling my eyes out.” Johanna Konta put it succinctly: “He maximised everything that he has, to bring the best out of himself. Not many people can say that. That’s something, as an athlete, to look up to. It makes me quite emotional, because that’s a beautiful thing.” It didn’t always look beautiful. Murray lacked the smooth grace of Roger Federer (who doesn’t?), Novak Djokovic was more startlingly elastic a retriever of impossible “gets”, perhaps. Stan Wawrinka had more raw power, and Rafael Nadal could out-hustle him (as well as everyone else). But none of them had a bigger heart than the Scot. What most of us will remember about him on court was his extraordinary will to overcome, to repeatedly, perversely rise from the depths, leaving his opponent bewildered. The look on Djokovic’s face as Murray, close to cracking in the third set before steadying his nerves to serve out for victory in their 2013 Wimbledon final, was one of a man who’d had his pants pulled down in public. Murray could be maddening too. As he chased down the angels, his temper shortened. He sulked on a planet of his own. He had as fruity a vocabulary as any Glaswegian docker. But it was all genuine. In the many years I have been privileged to chronicle his deeds, I can’t remember him telling a lie. Perhaps in retirement he will set me straight. Above all, Murray should be remembered for what he did best: to drain the last drop of his talent in pursuit of victory. So completely did he use his reserves in the concluding months of the 2016 season to unseat the faltering Djokovic at the top of the rankings that his body screamed for him to cease. On 10 July, he won his second Wimbledon – and went out drinking with (among others) a few of the tennis writers he had previously kept at a respectable distance. He rates that day as among his favourite experiences. However, when the fun stopped, he got down to business and pushed himself to the outer limits of his physical and mental endurance. He won match after match, tournament upon tournament. He was irresistible. As Djokovic fell to pieces, Murray got to the top of the mountain and briefly stayed there, but the descent was inevitable once the adrenalin faded. His body began to give up on him and, from then until now, his has been a familiar fight against the odds. There will be no more gambling, though. On Monday, he expects to lose against Roberto Bautista Agut in the first round of the tournament he has entered 13 times now, reaching the final five times, and losing each one – to Djokovic on four occasions, and once against Federer. He will strain every muscle to prove himself wrong one last time. The Spaniard, a decent man, will not have a friend in the house.At last! Labour’s hour has come. Until now, Labour’s voice has been almost unheard in the greatest debate of our time. Jeremy Corbyn has now been obliged to call a vote of no confidence in a government whose policy has crashed in ignominy. No one predicted the monumental, breathtaking scale of this. Theresa May and her government look set to survive, as Jacob Rees-Mogg dashed out to tell the cameras he would support her against the no-confidence motion. Turkeys – even such a turkey as this Conservative administration – don’t vote for their own demise; they just lead the country to it. The chances are that May stumbles on, because there is no one else. Useless though she has been, the constitutional dilemma would be no more soluble under any of the other turkeys lining up in her party to take her place. The Commons roared its mockery at her belated pledge to reach across the House to consult on what comes next. Too late – two and a half years too late. Had she from day one announced herself prime minister of the whole nation, the defender of the 48% as well as the 52%, she might have forged an agreement to stay as close to the EU as possible. Instead she wasted her time appeasing the extremists, for whom no Brexit can ever be hard enough. She let them feel they ruled the roost – and so they did. And look how low they brought her in return. Jeremy Corbyn has no choice now but to steam ahead and at last lead the party he has always promised to obey. Labour members are remainers, overwhelmingly, and they want a vote to decide the country’s fate after these excruciating years of stasis. The majority of people who voted Labour in 2017 support another people’s vote, according the ESRC/YouGov poll and others. Whatever his own views, he has no other course but to do what Tony Benn, his mentor, always argued for – listen to his own party, who go about in T-shirts emblazoned with “Love Corbyn, Hate Brexit”. Once the mumbling and doublespeak, the prevarication and the hesitation have at last departed, a remain-supporting Labour frontbench going hell for leather for a referendum will alter the balance of this great debate utterly. The left’s voice has been missing. Whatever pundits say about the Brexit divide cutting across left and right, that’s wrong. Rightwing extreme ideology has motivated the prime movers in this – the wicked, long-term instigators of this national disaster. Labour must fearlessly expose the true nature of the Brexit enterprise throughout all those leave-voting Labour seats. Never forget, it was Tory voters – the shires, the Tory elderly – who were the backbone of the Brexit vote. Those left-behind Labour towns were a small, if worrying, part of the result. Those places can and must be won back, now that Labour has chosen to no longer be muffled. Roll on a splendid Labour campaign. • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnistVenezuela’s current plight can be traced to a revolution that went terribly wrong. When Hugo Chávez, a former military officer, was elected president in 1998, he inherited a middle-income country plagued by deep inequality. Chávez had led an abortive coup attempt in 1992 and after winning power through the ballot box he set about transforming society. Chávez drove through a wide range of social reforms as part of his Bolivarian revolution, financed with the help of high oil profits – but he also bypassed parliament with a new constitution in 1999. The muzzling of parliamentary democracy – and the spread of corruption and mismanagement in state-run enterprises – intensified after 2010 amid falling oil prices. Chávez’s “economic war” against shortages led to hyperinflation and the collapse of private sector industry. The implosion in the economy between 2013 and 2017 was worse than the US in the Great Depression. In an attempt to stabilize the economy and control prices of essential goods, Chávez introduced strict controls on foreign currency exchange, but the mechanism soon became a tool for corruption. When Chávez died of cancer, his place was taken by his foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, who has intensified his mentor’s approach of responding to the economic downward spiral by concentrating power, ruling by decree and political repression. Lacking Chavez’s charisma and personal popularity, and having been bequeathed an already crippled economy, Maduro has dealt with discontent largely by neutralising other branches of government. He has packed the country’s supreme court with loyalists who simply overturned laws passed by the national assembly that the president opposed, including a measure freeing political prisoners. Elections for provincial governors were suspended, and the court even ruled in favour of dissolving the legislature, but the decision was reversed in the face of national and international outcry. In July 2017, Maduro followed Chávez’s example by holding elections to a constituent assembly, with candidates from government-approved lists, imbued with powers to bypass or dismantle any dissenting state institution. It was a way of bypassing the opposition-led national assembly, elected in the country’s last free poll, in May 2016. Maduro’s own attorney general objected and has since fled to Colombia. Street protests against the move were crushed, with more than 110 dead. In 2018 with the economy in freefall, hunger has become epidemic, and up to a tenth of the population (an estimated 4 million people) having fled the country. Several members of Maduro’s inner circle have been implicated in drug trafficking. In an attempt to consolidate his power, Maduro called an early election in May but turnout was below 50% and the UN, EU and Organization of the American States, rejected the election as rigged. It was Maduro’s defiant inauguration on 19 January that precipitated the current showdown. The young face of the opposition is almost unknown both inside and outside Venezuela, and was thrust on to centre stage by chance. Guaidó was made chairman of the national assembly on 5 January because it was the turn of his party, Voluntad Popular (People’s Will). At 35, he is a junior member of the party but its leaders are either under house arrest, in hiding or in exile. His relative obscurity has been an advantage in a country where the opposition has generally failed to distinguish itself, losing its nerve at critical moments, succumbing to infighting, and getting involved in a failed coup against Chávez in 2002. Guaidó stakes his claim to the presidency on a clause in the constitution that states that the chair of the national assembly is allowed to assume interim power and declare new elections in 30 days if the legislature deems the president to be failing to fulfil basic duties or to have vacated the post. Donald Trump has a weakness for autocrats, but Maduro has been an exception. With little personal interest in Latin America, he has allowed policy towards Venezuela to be steered by hawks in his administration – including Vice-President Mike Pence and the national security adviser, John Bolton – and in the Senate. The Republican senator Marco Rubio, whose Florida electorate includes an increasing number of Venezuelan exiles, has been an important influence, and appears to have suspended criticism of Trump in return for hardline policies towards Cuba and Venezuela. Diplomats at the state department advocating dialogue, have been overruled in favour of a policy orientated around regime change. Trump himself has mused about a military option, and the unanswered question is how the administration hopes to follow through on its gambit to recognise Guaidó in the absence of mass defections in the armed forces. That does not seem to have been thought through. The US has already imposed significant sanctions on Maduro’s ruling circle. A full oil embargo would bring more devastation to the Venezuelan people and could backfire on the US economy. The administration could ultimately be left with the choice between abandoning Guaidó or risking armed confrontation.The former US marine who is being held in Moscow on charges of spying is a British citizen, it has emerged. Paul Whelan, who is thought to be facing 20 years in a Russian prison if convicted, was initially thought to be American, but was revealed to be a dual national on Thursday evening. The UK Foreign Office said: “Our staff have requested consular access to a British man detained in Russia after receiving a request for assistance from him.” The 48-year-old’s lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, has said he has applied for Whelan to be released on bail, though a decision is not expected soon. According to the Associated Press, Zherebenkov said he visited Whelan on Wednesday and found him in a “very hopeful” mood. The US ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, met Whelan at Lefortovo prison, the former KGB facility where he is being held, the same day. The ambassador said Washington had complained to the Russian government about the length of time it had taken to grant consular access to Whelan after his arrest. Whelan works for a Michigan-based car parts supplier and, according to the Rosbalt news agency, was arrested shortly after receiving a USB drive containing a classified list of names. The information could not be independently verified by the Guardian. His brother, David, said: “We have not had any details from the state department about the circumstances of Paul’s arrest.” David Whelan has previously said that his brother was in Moscow for the wedding of a fellow former marine. “This visit was entirely for pleasure, from what I understand,” he said. Whelan’s family added that he has been to Russia “numerous times”, as far back as 2007. The Russian authorities have said little about Whelan’s arrest, save that he had been held accused of “carrying out an act of espionage”.Q: I am interested in the way people can become morally corrupted in group scenarios. Which books best show how and why this happens?Calum Michael, 22, engineering student, Glasgow A: Lisa Appignanesi, author, visiting professor in literature at King’s College London and chair of the Royal Society of Literature: There are some gripping novels about how groups, even idealistic ones, coalesce, move through power struggles and then degenerate, engaging in moral and sometimes murderous excesses. In George Orwell’s magnificent parable about Stalinism, Animal Farm, the disparate animals come together as a group around the naming of a common enemy – man. But when their leaders – pigs who champion rebellion – fall out, they provide a new, scapegoated enemy. Scapegoats are an inevitable feature of group life. They become the instrument of togetherness. In William Golding’s allegorical Lord of the Flies a group of young boys stranded on an island descends into leadership battles and ultimate depravity. Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye provides a more realist optic, brilliantly illuminating how her heroine, something of an outsider, is victimised by a group of girls and its seductive leader, a best friend who is adept at power plays and attracts by her cruelty. The famous psychoanalyst DW Winnicott, who worked with the young and wrote a great deal about adolescence, a time of emotional excess and lability (eg Deprivation and Delinquency), talks of the group as a way of providing the identifications, and the needs for defiance and dependence, that seem essential to that time of life. And Sigmund Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) still provides some of the most interesting formulations as to why groups are needed, and go wrong – and how leaders, with whom we identify in various ways, work on our emotions. Submit your question for Book Clinic below or email bookclinic@observer.co.ukSascha Bajin, for seven years a hitting partner for Serena Williams, is the sort of tennis insider who brings weight to any conversation and, in guiding the career of Naomi Osaka, he has moved from one legend to someone who may become one herself. Osaka, who will forever be remembered for her calm when Williams self-destructed across the net from her in the 2018 US Open final, takes another step on that journey on Saturday and Bajin thinks the self-possession and focus he saw in New York will serve her well again in the Australian Open final against Petra Kvitova, who brings her own fairytale. “I want her to approach the match like she approached [Karolina] Pliskova,” the coach said, in reference to the way Osaka survived a strong fightback to break down the cultured resistance of the Czech in the semi-final, after Pliskova had taken out Williams in the quarters. “Petra’s also a big server but the opposite, because she’s a lefty. Same mindset though.” Bajin was a fringe player who became an excellent coach and he lifted an eyebrow when it was suggested he was reversing a trend in the sport for “super-coaches” – former players such as Ivan Lendl and Stefan Edberg. “They were incredible players. I have nothing but the utmost respect for them,” he said. “But I do believe if you’re a player you have to be very selfish and you have to be very selfish for a very long time. “Some players, if they do want to start coaching, they find it hard to dedicate their life, schedule and everything for someone else. Maybe that’s a difficult process for them, I don’t know. “I’m just happy I’m being successful with Naomi.” He has a variety of performances by Osaka on which to draw in planning a strategy for the final. She has not been perfect but she has been resilient, and she will need that on Saturday. “The Su-wei [Hsieh] match [which Osaka won after dropping the first set in the third round], she was down so much and came back. I think that took incredible effort. It took something else then against [Elina] Svitolina [in 72 minutes in the quarters]. She played so good.” The unknown for both finalists is how they will respond to an opponent they have never played before, and how quickly they begin to read the good and bad signals in the early moments. Bajin said: “Both of them are very dangerous off the first two, three shots, but I believe once the rally keeps going Naomi, with her current state of mind and physique, has the upper hand. “I personally like the matches where things don’t go so well and she ends up winning. But you’d have to ask Naomi. I think she can rate her matches better than I can from the outside.” There was no opportunity to ask Naomi, because she chose not to talk to the media before the final – which is her prerogative, but it does suggest her growing fame might be an issue. Bajin denies that. “She’s the same girl she was a year ago.” Osaka does have the most engaging personality but she does not have much time for small talk, finding some of the on-court post-match interviews, for instance, an inconvenience. In one exchange last week she politely interrupted her TV interrogator to inform him she’d rather be going, as it was very hot and she wanted to get out of the sun and into the locker room. Earlier, she set some sensitive souls in the media room back on their heels when she said it was odd talking to them about mundane things, “because you’re not real people”. But Osaka is very much for real, as Kvitova realises. While the 21-year-old Japanese player with the Boca Raton twang and the beguiling innocence has the weight of two countries on her shoulders (and had to endure being depicted in “white-washed” form in an anime-style cartoon in a Japanese advert last week), Kvitova, a two-times Wimbledon champion, brings the oft-told story of how she was knifed and robbed in her apartment in Prostejov just before Christmas in 2016. It could have ended her career – or worse – but she has put it behind her. As for the final, she would only say: “Naomi is on fire. She’s an aggressive player, which I am as well. I think it will be about who’s going to take the first point and push the other a little bit.”Paweł Adamowicz, the mayor of the Polish city of Gdańsk, has died after he was stabbed in the chest on stage at a charity concert on Sunday evening. The 53-year-old, who had held the post since 1998, underwent more than five hours of surgery overnight. “We couldn’t win,” said Poland’s health minister, Łukasz Szumowski, on Monday afternoon. Dr Tomasz Stefaniak, the director of the hospital in Gdańsk where Adamowicz was treated, said: “With the deepest regret we must inform that unfortunately we lost the struggle for the life of the president of the city. Honour to his memory. He died just now. The cause of his death will be investigated by prosecutors.” The alleged assailant, a 27-year-old from Gdańsk with a record of violent crime, was released from prison last month, it emerged on Monday. After the stabbing, the assailant told the crowd he blamed Adamowicz’s former political party Civic Platform for his jailing in 2014 for a series of violent attacks. Adamowicz, a popular, liberal mayor, had long been considered a hate figure in far-right circles for his vigorous defence of migrants and refugees and LGBT rights, but no evidence has emerged that the attack was politically motivated. Some in Poland are blaming the attack on a more general rise in social tensions and an increasing prevalence of hate speech. Even before his death, silent protests had been planned in a number of cities on Monday. The assassination of Adamowicz, a six-term mayor who often mingled freely with citizens of his city, sent Poland into shock. In Gdańsk, the city flag was lowered to half-mast and a mass was planned for later in the day. Politicians from across the political spectrum condemned the stabbing, including the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, the interior minister, Joachim Brudziński, and other members of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS). Adamowicz was known as an opponent of PiS. “I’m expressing great pain for the tragic death due to the criminal attack on mayor Paweł Adamowicz. We express solidarity with his family,” Jarosław Kaczyński, the PiS leader, was quoted as saying in a tweet from a party spokeswoman. Donald Tusk, the president of the European council and a former Civic Platform leader, said: “Paweł Adamowicz, mayor of Gdańsk, a man of solidarity and freedom, a European, my good friend, has been murdered. May he rest in peace.” Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, will meet party leaders later on Monday to organise a march against violence and hatred. Adamowicz was part of the democratic opposition formed in Gdańsk under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa during the 1980s. After leaving Civic Platform, he was re-elected to a sixth term as an independent candidate last autumn. As mayor he was a progressive voice, supporting sex education in schools, LGBT rights and tolerance for minorities. He showed solidarity with the Jewish community when windows at Gdańsk synagogue were broken last year, strongly denouncing the vandalism. It is understood that Adamowicz’s wife, Magdalena, was in the UK at the time of the attack. The Polish government sent a plane to London to bring her back to Poland. Associated Press contributed to this reportFor years western policymakers have tried to establish what causes individuals to be radicalised. Now a pioneering study has used medical science to gain fresh insight into the process – in the brains of potential jihadists. University College London (UCL) researchers were part of an international team that used neuroimaging techniques to map how the brains of radicalised individuals respond to being socially marginalised. The findings, they claim, confirm that exclusion is a leading factor in creating violent jihadists. The research challenges the prevailing belief among western policymakers that other variables, such as poverty, religious conservatism and even psychosis, are dominant drivers of jihadism. “This finally dispels such wrongheaded ideas,” said the study’s co-lead author, Nafees Hamid of UCL. “The first ever neuroimaging study on a radicalised population shows extreme pro-group behaviour seems to intensify after social exclusion.” The complexity of radicalisation was highlighted in the Old Bailey last week when a British Muslim convert who swore allegiance to Islamic State revealed he tolerated authorities trying to deradicalise him as he plotted an attack on Oxford Street, London. The findings also emerge after recent Islamic State-linked attacks in Strasbourg and Morocco and as British police continue to investigate a possible motive behind the New Year’s Eve stabbings in Manchester. Using ethnographic fieldwork and psychological surveys, researchers identified 535 young Muslim men in and around Barcelona, the Spanish city where in 2017 Isis supporters killed 13 and wounded about 100 people in the Las Ramblas district. Of those identified, 38 second-generation Moroccan-origin men, who had “expressed a willingness to engage in or facilitate violence associated with jihadist causes”, agreed to have their brains scanned. The results showed a striking effect when they were socially excluded by Spaniards while playing a virtual simulation called Cyberball, a ball toss game with three other players who abruptly stopped throwing them the ball. Later scans showed that the neurological impact of being excluded meant that when issues were raised that the individual had not previously considered inviolable – such as introducing Islamic teaching in schools or unrestricted construction of mosques – they became far more important and were deemed similar to “sacred” and worth fighting for. Previous research by the team on Israel-Palestinian, India-Pakistan and Kurds-Isis conflicts found that when values deemed “sacred” are violated hostility becomes intractable. “This latest research has shown how values start to become sacred and indicates that social exclusion makes non-sacred values behave like sacred values, which in turn makes people recalcitrant and prone to violence,” said Hamid. He called for the study, a multi-university project involving scientific research organisation Artis International and partly funded by the US Department of Defence, to be used to help ensure social exclusion was factored into policies to prevent radicalisation. The links between extremism, social exclusion and radicalisation corroborate some previous research with one report commissioned by Manchester mayor Andy Burnham after the Arena attack identifying a lack of social integration. “Far from needing to improve economic conditions, combat ideology, or medically treat extremists, focusing on alleviating interpersonal discrimination can keep those with extremist leanings on the non-violent and negotiable side of the fence,” said Hamid.As a rival to the Millennium Falcon or the Starship Enterprise, a proposed spacecraft from entrepreneurs Anders Cavallini and Hatem Alkhafaji is low on sophistication and rocket thrust. In fact, it would be built to carry out only one task: to produce perfectly roasted coffee beans – in outer space. Hence the craft’s name: the Coffee Roasting Capsule. The capsule – which could be launched next year – would use the heat of re-entry to roast coffee beans as they float inside it in a pressurised tank. The effect would be to roast the beans all over and produce perfect coffee, Cavallini and Alkhafaji claim in a recent issue of the space journal Room. They say that on Earth, beans tumble around, break apart and are scorched by contact with the hot surfaces of the roaster. “But if gravity is removed, the beans float around in a heated oven, giving them 360 degrees of evenly distributed heat and roasting to near perfection.” The capsule – which would initially carry around 300kg of coffee beans – would be fired on a rocket to a height of around 200km, taking the task of making the ideal cup of coffee to new heights. The beans would then be roasted in the heat generated by the craft’s 20-minute re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, with temperatures in the pressurised tank being kept to around 200C. In the interview, the two entrepreneurs claimed they were already in discussion with private rocket companies such as Rocket Lab and Blue Origins in a bid to find a suitable launcher. Once back on Earth, the planet’s first space-roasted beans would be used to make coffee that would be sold for the first time in Dubai, where the pair’s company is based. It is not clear how much they would charge for a cup. Cavallini and Alkhafaji said they hoped to blast their first coffee beans into space next year. However, calls and emails from the Observer to the Space Roasters office received no response last week. Surprisingly, the Space Roaster concept – should it go ahead – will not be the first attempt to take coffee into space. In 2015, Italian aerospace company Argotec and Italian coffee company Lavazza collaborated on the construction of the ISSpresso, the first espresso coffee machine designed for use in space. It was installed in the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a public-private partnership with the Italian Space Agency. The first espresso it produced was drunk on 3 May 2015 in a special zero-gravity cup by Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. “Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised,” she tweeted.Julie Cohen and Betsy West have made a heartfelt documentary tribute to US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by President Bill Clinton and still serving at the age of 85: a tough, old-school liberal feminist whose dissenting positions and elegant, distinctive public profile have turned her into an A-list celebrity. T-shirts, posters, gifs and memes recast her as the Notorious RBG. In response to a fan’s question about being compared to the Notorious BIG, Ginsburg humorously replies they have something in common, being both from Brooklyn. (However, she does not comment on the late rapper’s lyrics – which include lines such as “Bitches I like ’em brainless” – perhaps unwilling to be drawn into the “context” debate.) This lively film tracks Ginsburg’s brilliant legal career, fighting for women’s workplace rights while shrewdly also taking on cases where men suffered discrimination. It pays a moving tribute to the important role played in Ginsburg’s life by her devoted husband Marty, to whom she was married for over 50 years until his death. It also highlights her most compelling pronouncements, such as that in Shelby County v Holder in 2013, in which she argued that the regional protections of the Voting Rights Act in preventing race discrimination were still necessary even when they appeared to have been rendered obsolete by precisely those improved conditions they continue to maintain. Abolition was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”. But for good or ill, the film does not directly engage with Ginsburg’s views on contemporary feminism and sexual harassment and what is sometimes derisively called identity politics. It was made well before the appointment of the self-pitying and shrill Brett Kavanaugh to the bench – in comparison with whom Ginsburg looks even more like an intellectual giant – and so she could hardly be expected to comment on the Christine Blasey Ford case. But she serves alongside Clarence Thomas, whose denial of harassment allegations from Anita Hill at his own confirmation hearing in 1991 is a matter of public record. Did the film-makers consider it improper to ask Ginsburg anything at all about that? There is a strange silence – it would have been interesting, and highly relevant, to hear from Ginsburg in general terms about the legal implications of #MeToo.Keith Maxwell, the self-declared “commodore” of the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), liked to dress up on special occasions in the garish costume of a 18th-century admiral, with a three-cornered hat, brass buttons and a cutlass. Ordinary members of his organisation were expected to show up in crisp naval whites. Gathered together in upmarket restaurants, or the quiet of the Wemmer Pan naval base in south-central Johannesburg, they had the air of eccentric history buffs. Maxwell talked about the group’s roots in a Napoleonic-era treasure-hunting syndicate, and told outsiders it was still focused on deep-sea exploration. But appearances were deceptive. Beneath the bizarre trappings lurked a powerful mercenary outfit that members claim was entwined with the apartheid state and offered soldiers for hire across the continent. “It was clandestine operations. We were involved in coups, taking over countries for other leaders,” said Alexander Jones, who has detailed his years as an intelligence officer with the group. SAIMR’s leaders described themselves as “anti-communist” to him at the time but the group was underpinned by racism, he said. “We were trying to retain the white supremacy on the African continent.” And among its leaders’ most dramatic claims was that it was behind the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 other people. Last week the Observer revealed evidence linking an RAF veteran, Jan van Risseghem, to the tragedy. Now new documents and eyewitness accounts shed light on the alleged role of SAIMR, which claimed responsibility for the crash in secret papers and its own recruitment drives. It is not clear if Van Risseghem, who told a friend he had shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane without knowing who was on board, had any ties to the group. Any command could have come through an intermediary. But Jones was clear that SAIMR liked to claim ultimate responsibility for killing the UN chief. Photos of the crash site and wreckage, with purported members of the group standing nearby, featured in a presentation made to potential members when he joined three decades ago, he said. “They didn’t tell us at that point in time that it was Hammarskjöld; they just said that they had taken out a very high-profile political opponent,” Jones told filmmakers investigating the crash. Maxwell himself apparently also claimed SAIMR had brought down the plane, in a handwritten memoir about the group that ended up with the family of an SAIMR veteran. Hammarskjöld’s death came amid a post-colonial race for resources in Africa. A champion of decolonisation, he made powerful enemies with his support for newly independent states and opposition to white minority rule. On his final flight, he was heading for a secret meeting to try to broker peace in recently independent Congo. The country was on the brink of collapse after its Katanga province – key to national wealth because it held most of the country’s rich mineral deposits – declared independence. Western mining interests backed the rebels. Jones claims he answered a SAIMR advertisement in a South African newspaper three decades ago and served for several years. He decided to speak out because he felt he needed closure and because young South Africans should know the truth. “Anybody that resisted any white form of manipulation on the African continent, SAIMR was prepared to go and quell those for a price,” Jones said. “And that is one thing that Dag Hammarskjöld was totally against. He wanted every country for the people of that country. He was killed because he was going to change the way that Africa dealt with the rest of the world financially, and he was a threat.” Jones was tracked down by the makers of a new documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, who were looking into SAIMR because of documents handed to South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission by the country’s National Intelligence Agency two decades ago. Unveiled at a press conference by the commission chair, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, they purported to detail how SAIMR had masterminded the crash in coordination with UK and US intelligence services. Investigators were never able to examine the papers, though, because soon after they were returned to the archives, and the South African authorities have been unable or unwilling to retrieve the originals. The United Nations, which has reopened its investigation into Hammarskjöld’s death, has criticised South Africa for its lack of cooperation in finding the file. Investigators have been working from poor quality photocopies of just eight documents, and for years there were questions about whether SAIMR even existed. In the UK, the Foreign Office suggested the papers were hoaxes planted by Soviet agents in a disinformation campaign, and added that British spies “do not go around bumping people off”. But South Africa was a known recruiting ground for mercenaries who fought in coups and conflicts across much of Africa over the second half of the last century, from Congo and Sierra Leone to Angola and Mozambique. And over the years growing evidence of SAIMR as a real, and dangerous, entity has emerged. Investigative journalist De Wet Potgieter interviewed Maxwell for an article in the 1990s. He took the only known picture of the “commodore”, and also collected a cache of papers from Maxwell. Those papers included a section of his autobiography and purported lists of recruits for several operations, which the filmmakers used to track down former members. They called dozens, but only two agreed to talk. Clive Jansen van Vuuren said he spent two or three months training with the group, which he thought had ties to the security forces. “I know it’s linked to the intelligence bureau of South Africa, but we were never given specifics,” he said. He had kept a certificate that names him as a petty officer and carries the same slightly bizarre emblem as all other SAIMR papers – the figurehead of the British ship the Cutty Sark. But he said he never went on operations. I couldn’t prove it, but I was convinced that he was financed and directed by MI6 Jones claims to have had a more senior role, over a much longer period, and describes the group as a powerful militia. “SAIMR was not a Mickey Mouse organisation. We were not just a group of guys that got together in the weekend and decided to go do some military exercises and stuff. That was a living, breathing body,” he said. He was recruited as an intelligence officer, after serving in a similar position with the South African armed forces, and participated in several operations. “I was definitely in the frontline: operational frontline, hand-to-hand frontline, fighting frontline. Leading operations, if you want to call it that.” Asked by filmmakers if he had killed people himself, he said “yes”. Jones says he left SAIMR shortly before the advent of majority rule, and destroyed all evidence of his membership. Maxwell commanded SAIMR the whole time Jones served. A strange character, charismatic and idiosyncratic, he wore naval whites at all times unless he was in his admiral’s uniform, van Vuuren, Jones and Potgieter remember. But he was also extremely dangerous. “If he didn’t like you, and if you posed a threat, he would take you out,” Jones said. The penchant for dressing up was confirmed by a doctor, Claude Newbury, who met him through anti-abortion advocacy. He told the filmmakers Maxwell invited him to join SAIMR, describing it as a group focused mostly on hunting for lost treasure. At a private dinner, they had something “a little bit like a ceremony – he had dressed up like an admiral in the British navy from 250 years ago, with a tricorn hat, and a cutlass, and a naval uniform with lots of buttons.” He also confirmed that Maxwell was involved in violence in South Africa, forcing a doctor who was performing abortions to leave the country. “He went down and visited this Dutch abortionist and said to him, you are not welcome here, and killing of babies is an unacceptable pastime, and for the sake of your health I advise you go back to the Netherlands. Which apparently the chap did.” South Africa’s former head of military intelligence, Tienie Groenewald, appears in some of Maxwell’s papers. In an interview recorded before his death in 2015, he claimed he had never heard of SAIMR but remembered meeting the “commodore”. He described Maxwell as an intelligence operative with suspected links to foreign spies, who wanted to meet him in the dying days of apartheid to discuss an armed uprising to block the advent of democratic rule. Maxwell offered both men and arms, claiming “he had resources, to use violence, and to supply weapons, and so on and so forth”. Although Groenewald said he declined the offer, he described Maxwell as the credible leader of a mercenary group. “He appeared to be someone who was in authority … He obviously had a background in intelligence,” he told the filmmakers. “I couldn’t prove it but I was convinced that he was financed and directed by MI6.” Groenewald, who had served as air attache at the South African embassy in London, added: “After spending three and a half years in Britain, you get to know some people involved in the intelligence field. And certain of the names which are mentioned in our discussions were familiar to him.” Maxwell died in 2006, but a lurid account of his life and SAIMR ended up with relatives of an ex-recruit, who shared them with the filmmakers. The handwriting matches other documents written by Maxwell and its authenticity has been attested to by Jones. Maxwell had already handed a few dozen pages of a memoir to Potgieter around 1990, and they were repeated in the new cache, but it also included over 100 pages of new material. Some sections on SAIMR included episodes that he may not have personally witnessed – by his own account he did not join the group until 1964 – and there are some names and details are altered. Still, the episodes are described vividly, from the perspective of an eyewitness. And one details the alleged plot to bring down Hammarskjöld – an account which matches the plan laid out in the papers revealed by Tutu. “This operation has to be arranged as an accident or a heart attack,” the commodore of the time tells his team. “Without any pathologist throwing a spanner in the works and making Dag and his colleagues into martyrs.” He asks for three workable plans to take out the UN chief. Maxwell does not say what these were, but details a technician loading a bomb into the wheel well of Hammarskjöld’s plane in the Congolese capital Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) with a beating heart, and his frustration at watching it take off without the bomb exploding. The memoir switches back to SAIMR’s planners, sitting round a table later that evening, disappointed by the failure of the bomb. But according to the truth and reconciliation commission’s papers, SAIMR then dispatched an “eagle” to target Hammarskjöld. In Maxwell’s account, just as the commodore tells them to get some rest, there is a knock at the door. “A lieutenant entered, saluted and handed a slip of paper to the commodore. ‘What’s this? Oh my God, it worked’.” Göran Björkdahl and Calla Wahlquist contributed reportingWith the government shutdown entering day 34, members of the Trump administration continue to play down its effect on workers’ lives. Donald Trump himself has framed it as a patriotic sacrifice made in the name of his quixotic national security ambitions, while some of the wealthier members of the administration have characterized going without pay for a month as a minor speed bump easily overcome. WILBUR ROSS downplays 800k workers missing checks as "a third of a percent on our GDP. So it's just like it's a gigantic number."ROSS then says this about fed workers going to homeless shelters to get food: "I don't quite understand why." Says they should just go take out loans pic.twitter.com/0sOmZGEozD On Thursday the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said he “doesn’t really understand why” government workers have started going to food banks for sustenance. Appearing on CNBC, Ross, whose net worth has been reported as at least $700m , suggested furloughed workers take out bank loans instead. “The 30 days of pay that some people will be out, there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it,” he said, seemingly encouraging government workers to apply for predatory payday-style loans, uncertain when they might be able to pay them back. Some of those workers, who are set for a second missed paycheck on Friday, have taken to drastic measures to stay afloat. In Chicago, Transportation Security Administration workers have been stopping at area food pantries in uniform on their way to unpaid work, while in north Texas food pantries have said their resources have been pushed to near the breaking point. Over the weekend food banks in the Washington DC area reported being deluged. Ross also offered criticism of TSA workers who have been unable to continue to show up to work unpaid. “It’s kind of disappointing that air traffic controllers are calling in sick in pretty large numbers,” he said. Many of them cannot afford to do work for nothing, he was told by the host Andrew Ross Sorkin. 'They are eventually going to be paid. And even if they aren’t, it’s not like it’s going to be a big hit on the economy overall' “Well, remember this, they are eventually going to be paid,” Ross said. “And even if they aren’t, it’s not like it’s going to be a big hit on the economy overall. “You’re talking about 800,000 workers and while I feel sorry for the individuals that have hardship cases, 800,000 workers, if they never got their pay, which is not the case, they will eventually get it, but if they never got it, you’re talking about a third of a percent on GDP so it’s not like it’s a gigantic number overall,” he said. Very good news for the GDP. Workers might not be so lucky. While an IOU may work for a multimillionaire, I’ll pay you eventually doesn’t tend to work when it comes to rent and groceries for working families. Ross’s comments characterized a more general response to the shutdown from the wealthy right. The White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett suggested furloughed workers were “better off” over the Christmas holiday because they were getting time off without having to use vacation days. “And then they come back and then they get their back pay, then they’re, in some sense, they’re better off,” Hassett said. When asked if he could relate to the stress of economic uncertainty he had put people in a couple of weeks ago, Trump said:“I can relate. I’m sure the people that are on the receiving end will make adjustments. They always do. People understand what’s going on. Many of those people that won’t be receiving a paycheck, many of those people agree 100% with what I’m doing.” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, echoed that sacrificial sentiment and praised unpaid government workers as noble “volunteers” laboring for love of president and country. Larry Kudlow is talking about unpaid workers like they're some kind of new honorable volunteer corps we should admire instead of people facing forced labor we should be outraged about. https://t.co/wDgm6sXbzK When asked how coming to work without pay for fear of being fired counted as volunteering, Kudlow, a millionaire, bristled at the question. “They do it because of their love for the country and the office of the presidency and presumably because their allegiance to President Trump …” On Monday Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, waded into the shutdown controversy, saying going over a month without pay was a “little bit of pain”. Many government employees are continuing to work without pay, and some are not allowed to work during the #governmentshutdown. @LaraLeaTrump wants these citizens to know that their sacrifice is not in vain. pic.twitter.com/royaX1Roy0 “Listen, it’s not fair to you and we all get that,” she said on the digital news network Bold TV. “But this is so much bigger than any one person. It is a little bit of pain but it’s going to be for the future of our country. And their children and their grandchildren and generations after them will thank them for their sacrifice right now.” Meanwhile anger from unpaid staffers compelled to arrange travel for Mike Pompeo’s wife, Susan, for the pair’s eight-day trip to the Middle East, boiled within the state department. “This is BS. You don’t bring more people that need staffing, transportation, etc when embassy employees are working without being paid,” a source told CNN of the trip. Melania Trump too has been criticized for utilizing a military plane for a vacation to Florida just as the president blocked the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, from visiting troops in Afghanistan. Responding to Ross’s comments, Pelosi asked “Is this the ‘let them eat cake’ kind of attitude?”.Just before 2018 turned into 2019, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced she would be exploring a run for president in the 2020 US election. If the Massachusetts Democrat is chosen as the presidential candidate by her party, she will join a list of women who have run to be US president (though none so far have won). But how many women exactly are on that list? It’s a simple question that is surprisingly tricky to answer, but here’s an estimate: 31 women have been nominated to run as president by their respective parties. Since many of those women have run for president multiple times, the total number of times women have been nominated totals 41. Where possible, the race of the candidate has been illustrated in the chart here. The women include Charlene Mitchell, who ran for the Communist party in 1968; 54-year-old Margaret Wright, described as a grandma when she was nominated by the People’s party in 1976; and Lenora Fulani, who was the nominee of the New Alliance party in 1988 and again in 1992. The total shown here is higher than the list provided by Center for American Women and Politics, but that’s because it includes the likes of Gracie Allen, who ran for the Surprise party in 1940. Allen was a comedian who ran as a publicity stunt and says she chose the name of her party because her mother was a Democrat, her father a Republican, and she had been born a surprise (her running song included the lyric “Vote for Gracie to win the presidential racie”). She retired her candidacy before the vote took place, saying she wanted the serious campaigning to go ahead. But she still managed to gain thousands of write-in votes. However, Allen was not the first woman to run for the presidency. That accolade goes to Victoria Woodhull who, in 1872, ran for the Equal Rights party alongside Frederick Douglass. Not long before announcing her run, Woodhull gave a lecture calling for marriage laws to be completely rethought (the press covered it as a “theory of free love” and derided the idea). It took 144 years after Woodhull’s run for any woman to be considered a serious contender for the White House. When Hillary Clinton ran in 2016, she won the popular vote (gaining 2.9 million votes more than Donald Trump) but didn’t become president. She ran alongside five other women who ran for the Green party, Peace and Freedom party, Socialist Workers party, Workers World party and the Revolutionary party. Some of those parties have a long-held tradition of nominating female candidates to represent them in their presidential bids. The Workers World party has had six female candidates, while the Socialist Workers party has had three. Clinton was the first ever woman to be nominated to run as the candidate for a major political party. If chosen by the Democrats, Elizabeth Warren would be the second woman nominated by a major party to run for president – but she would be only the 32nd woman nominated by a party for a White House bid. This is a new column that illustrates numbers from the news each week. Have feedback or ideas for future columns? Write to me: mona.chalabi@theguardian.comWhen the Canadian MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette stood in the House of Commons in June 2017 to deliver a speech on the country’s epidemic of violence against indigenous women, few of his colleagues could understand him. Ouellette spoke in the Cree indigenous language, and – despite a request for English or French interpreters – no simultaneous translation was provided. His speech was only the second time an indigenous language had been officially spoken in the 151-year history of the house. “I was nervous. I didn’t know if [the speech] was going to be accepted. I didn’t know what the procedures were going to be exactly when I stood up,” said the Winnipeg-based parliamentarian. “I thought they might cut me off.” But when parliament returns on Monday, things will be different: for the first time, simultaneous translation will accompany any speeches given in indigenous languages. MPs will have to give two days’ notice to request translation, but for those seeking greater recognition for Canada’s original languages, it marks a significant victory. “It’s a beautiful moment to see that you can actually change a large institution like this,” said Ouellette. “What it’s going to do in the long term is hopefully allow a grandmother in a Cree community … to turn on the television and watch the great debates of parliament in an indigenous language.” For indigenous language activists, it is a small point of light in a gloomy landscape: nearly 2 million Canadians identify as indigenous, yet only 260,000 can speak an indigenous language, a government committee found. And of the 58 distinct indigenous languages spoken throughout the country, most are in danger of disappearing. While Cree, Ojibwe and Inuktitut have a relatively large number of speakers, others are on the brink of extinction: the Sechelt language, historically spoken in what is now British Columbia, has just four native speakers. That any of Canada’s indigenous languages survived colonization is something of a miracle, said Ryan DeCaire, an assistant professor of indigenous languages at the University of Toronto. “It’s amazing that our people even still speak the language. [Our grandparents] had to go underground and hide the language to the point where people didn’t know they were speaking it,” said DeCaire, who learned Mohawk, the language of his ancestors, as an adult. Decades of hostile government policies, including the forcible removal of indigenous children from their families, and a system of residential schools stripped many indigenous peoples of their culture and by extension, their language. For some in parliament, the new rules are also a powerful reminder of a darker history. “It will help in a very small way to lift up these languages which have been …consciously or unconsciously, through government action or not … ripped from a people,” said Marc Miller, a member of parliament from Quebec. After chastising fellow lawmakers for not knowing French, Miller, who is not indigenous, challenged himself to learn Mohawk – an experience he described as “emotional”. In June, he gave a brief speech in Mohawk in the House, probably the first time the language had been spoken by a parliamentarian. But DeCaire is skeptical the rules change in parliament will help address what he sees as a systemic problem. “At the end of the day, the people who are going to restore the languages are the ones living in the communities. They’re the ones who have a long-term investment in this in because it’s so intertwined with their identity,” he said. “People revitalize a language, but language revitalizes a people. When you speak your language, you are more likely to feel self-confident,” he said. “You’re much more likely to have a sense of understanding of who you are … and a sense of understanding and responsibility within a community.”The opposition leader who last week declared himself Venezuela’s rightful interim president has played down fears of a possible armed conflict and claimed his economically devastated nation was living through an “almost magical moment” in its newly revived quest for democracy. In one of his first interviews since last Wednesday’s surprise move, Juan Guaidó told the Guardian he was set on “getting the job done” to force Nicolás Maduro from power and ending a humanitarian emergency which has fuelled the largest exodus in modern Latin American history. Guaidó said a combination of international backing, opposition unity and a reinvigorated grassroots support meant Venezuela now had a unique chance “to leave the chaos behind”. “Frustration has turned to hope. People are daring to dream again … we have awoken from a nightmare to have new dreams, to dream of the future, to dream of our country, [to dream] not of what we were, but of what we can become,” said the 35-year-old politician. For all the optimism, questions have been raised about the bedfellows Guaidó has chosen in what he calls his bid to rescue Venezuela. His main international backer is Donald Trump, who on Friday named a neoconservative, notorious for helping organise the covert financing of Contra rebels in Nicaragua, as his special envoy to Venezuela. Another key regional supporter is Brazil’s far-right firebrand president, Jair Bolsonaro, known for his hostility to human rights and his fondness for dictatorship. A little-known opposition lawmaker until the start of this year, Guaidó has been thrust into the eye of a growing domestic and geopolitical storm by his decision to declare himself Venezuela’s legitimate interim president last Wednesday. He based that claim on Maduro’s alleged “usurpation” of power through last year’s election and an article of Venezuela’s constitution he argues permits him to claim temporary leadership if the presidency is left “vacant”. That unprecedented challenge to Maduro – who was first elected after the 2013 death of Hugo Chávez and re-elected last May in a vote widely seen as fraudulent – was endorsed by a succession of governments including those of the United States, Brazil, Canada and Colombia, although China and Russia continue to back Maduro. At a specially convened meeting of the UN security council on Saturday, US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, urged members to rally behind Guaidó. “Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem,” Pompeo said. Britain, France, Germany and Spain say they will recognise Guaidó as interim president unless fresh elections are called within eight days, with the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on Saturday calling for “a new start for the suffering [people] of Venezuela”. In an interview with CNN Türk on Sunday, Maduro rejected those demands: “No one can give us an ultimatum … Venezuela is not tied to Europe. This is complete insolence.” In an apparent attempt to project indifference to Venezuela’s latest political convulsion, Maduro also tweeted a video of himself dancing to regional joropo music with the first lady, Cilia Flores. “Nothing can stop us!” he wrote. Guaidó admitted that while international support was growing, his movement to unseat Maduro still lacked crucial backing from Venezuela’s military. Last week Venezuela’s defence minister slammed what he called Guaidó’s shameful “criminal plan” to destabilise Venezuela and pledged loyalty to Maduro. The opposition leader pointed to the defection of Venezuela’s top military envoy to the US on Saturday and the discharge of 3,600 military officials since last year as proof support was “emerging” within the armed forces. “But we have yet to consolidate these [gains] in order for us to really be able to execute the process that will lead us to a transitional government and, ultimately, to fresh elections,” Guaidó conceded. Some observers worry the intensifying political crisis has the potential to spark a civil war, if different military factions back different leaders. “I am worried about a country that can fragment under different chieftains and warlords and generals and narco-traffickers [and guerrilla groups] and … Venezuela becoming like a tapestry of different power centres,” the country’s former trade minister, Moisés Naím, told the Guardian last week. But Guaidó tried to soothe fears of conflict. “I don’t think we will reach that point. The idea is to increase pressure,” he said. Fresh anti-Maduro demonstrations have been called for this week and Guaidó said he hoped marchers would not be met with deadly repression, as happened during the last major round of demonstrations in 2017. “This is no time for more deaths or more sacrifices.” Human rights groups report that at least 26 people have been killed since the latest phase of protests began last week. Guaidó said he felt confident about the future and urged Venezuelans to trust the country was turning a corner. “There are risks … but there will be bigger rewards. “Everywhere I turn I get a smile … we all know that the situation is dire but regardless of this I have received encouragement. It’s been great to see a newfound hope,” he added. “I’ve been getting calls from childhood friends who left the country and who tell me they finally have hope that they will return, and they tell me they will use everything they have learned living abroad to rebuild the country.” However, concerns over Guaidó’s international backers – particularly in Brazil and the US – remain. Following Bolsonaro’s election last October, Guaidó, a member of the centrist Voluntad Popular party, praised what he called Bolsonaro’s “commitment to and for democracy [and] human rights”. Latin America specialist Miguel Tinker Salas said it was “astounding” to see Bolsonaro and Trump painting themselves as advocates of “democracy and fair play in Venezuela”. “The US has no moral standing on these issues and neither does Bolsonaro and Brazil,” said Salas, a signatory of an open letter attacking what it branded a US attempt to topple Maduro. Guaidó, who rejects claims that he is a pawn in a US-backed coup attempt, said his immediate priority – apart from securing a peaceful political transition – was addressing Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis: “Our focus is helping people.” Another prime concern was rescuing Venezuela’s once-great oil giant, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which oversees the world’s biggest crude reserves but whose production has collapsed under Maduro. “PDVSA is in a state of emergency,” Guaidó said. Once “the usurper” (Maduro) was gone, Guaidó said free elections needed to be held “as soon as possible” after political prisoners had been freed and members of Venezuela’s swelling diaspora could all be registered. “That takes time but we need to take care of these [things] in the shortest period of time,” he said.The US government shutdown continues, leaving 800,000 federal employees forced to take a leave of absence or working without pay. And the costs are piling up. The partial shutdown is harming the economy. CNBC reports that an anonymous official from the Trump administration said around 0.1 percentage points are subtracted from economic growth for each week of the shutdown. The impasse is the result of Donald Trump’s demand for $5.7bn in taxpayer money to go towards building a wall on the southern border with Mexico. That has been rejected by Democrats. A wall would have limited effects at best; there were 300,000 apprehensions at the southern border in 2017. That same year, twice as many people entered the US legally by air or sea and overstayed their visas. This week, the financial analysis firm S&P estimated that the shutdown, which began on 22 December, had cost the US economy $3.6bn by January 11. By that estimate, it suggests the shutdown has cost $1.2bn per week – so by the 25th day that had risen to $4.3bn, increasing by about $170m per day. If the impasse continues for another week, the shutdown would have cost about the same as Trump has demanded for the wall. This is a column that illustrates numbers from the news each week. Have feedback or ideas for future columns? Write to me: mona.chalabi@theguardian.comAndy Murray is in pain. That his right hip has been causing him profound physical discomfort for some time is no secret. In 2018, the 31-year-old patched himself up for 12 matches, winning five. But what became clear on Friday, during a press conference in advance of the Australian Open, is the emotional torment Murray has been enduring. “I’ve been in a lot of pain for probably 20 months now,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’ve pretty much done everything I could to get my hip feeling better. It hasn’t helped loads.” He pretty well conceded defeat for his first-round match on Monday against the Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut, a player to whom he has never previously surrendered a set. For a man who has built his game on fight, on bloody-minded indefatigability, this was almost as shocking as his tears. Injury seems to have ground Murray down much as he has worn out and disheartened so many opponents on the court. The truth is, though, that Murray has played through pain for much of his 14-year career, indeed even longer. It would be hard for him to remember a time when swinging a racquet has been a simple, joyful act. He was born with a bipartite patella, a split kneecap, that was first diagnosed when he was 16. “The expert delivered his final blow,” recalls Judy Murray in her memoir, Knowing the Score. “A casual: ‘Well, I’d be very surprised if he’ll ever be able to play tennis at a high level again.’ In that moment, on that sofa, I absolutely could have swung for him. Andy’s face fell on hearing the news … the dreams, the ambition, the hope, just draining from him.” Murray defied that prognosis and his mother believes that dealing with adversity back then made him a stronger competitor. Aged 18, he became the 2004 US Open boys champion. He joined the senior ranks, but immediately spent three months on the sidelines dealing with back pain. He was still growing, but his bones, especially in his spine, could not keep up with what he was asking from them. Murray certainly has pushed his body to the limit. He has had recurring problems with his ankles and back and always an ambient humming from that congenital bipartite patella: “When Andy bends his knee,” notes Judy Murray, “the bone looks like Kermit the Frog smiling.” He has tried various treatments, from strengthening the muscles around the joint to daily sessions with a portable ultrasound, but it was always containment not cure. In 2010, Murray acknowledged that pain was simply part of his life. “[My knee] was just something I was born with,” he said, “and I am going to have to deal with it for the rest of my career.” What impact must that have on an athlete – not only physically, but mentally? As armchair fans, we tend to think of sports injuries in a clinical, simplistic way. We read: “He will be out for six weeks” or “She will be back for Wimbledon” and naively trust that rehabilitation will be a straightforward and predictable process. But clearly it isn’t. The research and the anecdotal evidence all suggest that the mental scars can take even longer to heal than the physical ones. A 2017 study of professional footballers who had been out with long-term injuries found that 99% “reported experiencing some kind of psychological disruption”. This manifested itself in discombobulation, gambling addiction, even depression. So it is hardly surprising that Murray was tearful on Friday. And tennis, which runs 11-and-a-half months a year, with considerable travelling stress, is an especially attritional sport. Rafa Nadal plays many of his matches on basically one leg – and still usually wins – while Murray now hobbles between points like an old man getting up to turn on the kettle. Even Roger Federer, impervious to injury for a decade, has been dogged by his knees and back, and latterly a hand problem. In an Instagram post, hugging his mum, Murray wrote that the response to his announcement made him feel “more positive”. There has been talk of another operation called hip resurfacing – a joint replacement effectively – and he has been checking in with Bob Bryan, the great doubles player, who has recently undergone the procedure and returns to the Australian Open with his twin Mike after missing most of 2018. Andre Agassi, in his autobiography, wrote unforgettably about “The End”. He was 36, but felt 96. He was “a quasi cripple”. He also had been born with a condition – spondylolisthesis, a defect of his vertebra – that meant he should never really have been a professional athlete. But with the help of a steaming-hot shower (and cortisone shots) he could just about keep on keeping on. “Please let this be over,” he would think, as the warm water ran over him. And then, “I don’t want it to be over.”A Chinese spacecraft has become the first ever to land on the far side of the moon, according to state-run media, in a giant leap for human space exploration. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) landed the robotic probe Chang’e 4 in the unexplored South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest, oldest, deepest, crater on the moon’s surface. Early reports of a successful landing sparked confusion after state-run media China Daily and CGTN deleted tweets celebrating the mission. China Daily’s tweet said: ‘“China’s Chang’e 4 landed on the moon’s far side, inaugurating a new chapter in mankind’s lunar exploration history.” 1944: Nazi Germany’s V2 ballistic missile becomes the first manmade object to enter space 1947: a container of fruit flies become the first animals to visit space, after which they were parachuted back to Earth and found to be alive and healthy 1957: Russia’s Sputnik becomes the first artificial satellite in space. It orbited Earth for three months before burning up when it reentered the atmosphere 1957: A dog called Laika is sent to space on the second Sputnik spacecraft, but dies shortly after launch. 1959: Luna 2, another Russian spacecraft, becomes the first manmade object to reach the moon 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space, travelling in Russia’s Vostok spacecraft 1962: The American spacecraft Ranger 4 becomes the first object to reach the far side of the moon after crashing there. The mission was deemed a failure after computer problems meant it was unable to collect any scientific data 1965: Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performs the first spacewalk, leaving the Voskhod 2 spacecraft for 12 minutes 1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first people to set foot on the moon 1971: Russia becomes the first country to send a spaceship to Mars 1974: Mariner 10 makes the first flybys of Venus and Mars 1979: First flybys of Jupiter and Saturn conducted by American spacecraft Voyager 1 and Pioneer 11 1998: International Space Station launched 2014: Rosetta probe makes first landing on a comet 2019: New Horizons mission makes the most distant flyby ever, returning images of a rock known as Ultima Thule in the Kuiper belt 2019: China’s Chang’e 4 makes the first successful soft landing on the far side of the moon Official confirmation of the landing came two hours later via state broadcaster CCTV, which said the lunar explorer had touched down at 10.26am (2.26am GMT). The Communist party-owned Global Times also said the probe had “successfully made the first-ever soft landing” on the far side of the moon. An image tweeted by the English-language version of CCTV showed the first close-up shot of the far lunar surface. The mission aims to take detailed measurements of the moon’s terrain and mineral composition. The Aitken basin is thought to have been formed during a gigantic collision very early in the moon’s history. The collision is likely to have thrown up material from the moon’s interior, meaning that Chang’e 4 could provide new clues as to how the natural satellite was formed. The successful landing was touted as a “huge feather in China’s cap” by Malcolm Davis, senior analyst in defence strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “There’s a lot of geopolitics or astropolitics about this, it’s not just a scientific mission, this is all about China’s rise as a superpower,” said Davis. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm for the space program in China. There’s a lot of nationalism in China, they see China’s role in space as a key part of their rise.” The landing was greeted as “an impressive accomplishment” by Nasa administrator Jim Brindestine. A spokesperson from the Australian Space Agency said the agency did not have a comment on the mission except to offer China its congratulations on the success of the landing and to “wish them all the best”. Congratulations to China’s Chang’e-4 team for what appears to be a successful landing on the far side of the Moon. This is a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment! pic.twitter.com/JfcBVsjRC8 Davis said China’s successful landing could “set a fire under the Americans”, who may not like the idea that the next person to set foot on the moon may be a Chinese Taikonaut, as they are unofficially called. “I imagine we will see an announcement the Chinese do intend to send Taikonauts to the moon by 2030,” said Davis. Chang’e 4 entered an elliptical path around the moon at the weekend, drawing as close as 15km (9 miles) from the surface. Spacecraft have taken pictures of the moon’s far side before, but no lander has ever touched down there. The move marks a step towards China’s ambition to become a leading power in space exploration alongside the US and Russia. Davis said China’s extraterrestrial ambitions seemed to be driven by multiple factors, including a desire for military dominance of space. Other motivations include the access to vast resource wealth provided by the moon and asteroids, in particular Helium-3 which is believed to exist in great abundance on the moon, and also that dominance of the region would be a sign of China’s growing power. “China has been very clear in its understanding of this. They have compared the moon to the South China sea and Taiwan, and asteroids to the East China sea. They’re making a very clear geopolitical comparison with what’s happening with space and we need to pay attention to that.”Former R Kelly collaborators Lady Gaga and Jay-Z are among the musicians who have declined to be interviewed for a documentary series on the R&B star’s alleged history of abuse against young women. “It was incredibly difficult to get people who had collaborated with Kelly to come forward,” Surviving R Kelly executive producer dream hampton told the Detroit Free Press. Kelly has frequently denied the allegations. Kelly collaborators Erykah Badu, Céline Dion and Dave Chappelle turned down interviews, said hampton, and Questlove, drummer with the Roots, also allegedly declined to participate. “I remember Ahmir [“Questlove” Thompson] was like, ‘I would do anything for you but I can’t do this’,” said hampton. “It’s not because they support him, it’s because it’s so messy and muddy. It’s that turning away that has allowed this to go on.” In now-deleted tweets, Questlove claimed he declined an interview because he thought he was only being asked to praise Kelly and not condemn him. “I always thought Kels was trash,” he wrote. In another deleted tweet, hampton disputed Questlove’s claims, adding: “I told you I need Black male allies.” The Guardian has contacted representatives for Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Badu, Dion, Chapelle and Questlove.  Then 27, Kelly married protegée Aaliyah, then 15, in an illegal ceremony in Cook County, Chicago. A sex tape passed to Chicago Sun Times journalist Jim DeRogatis appears to show Kelly urinating on and having sex with an underage girl, which Kelly denies. Officers recovered 12 images that allegedly depicted Kelly having sex with an underage girl. The charges are dropped in March 2004. A Chicago jury found that the identity of the girl depicted in the urination video was not conclusive, acquitting Kelly of the charges. Three former members of Kelly's circle claimed Kelly was holding six women in properties in Chicago and Atlanta, controlling every aspect of their lives. Kelly denied the claims. Jerhonda Pace told Rolling Stone that she lost her virginity to Kelly age 16, and that she ended the relationship after he allegedly slapped, choked and spat on her. In a BBC3 documentary, former girlfriend Kitti Jones alleged that Kelly groomed an underage girl as well as her and other young women. Kelly refused to comment. An unnamed woman told Dallas police that Kelly had given her an STD and attempted to recruit her into his alleged sex "cult" after the pair initiated a sexual relationship when she was 19. Kelly "categorically" denied all allegations. Kelly's spokesperson Trevian Kutti, entertainment lawyer Linda Mensch and assistant Diana Copeland confirmed they were no longer working with the singer. The group published an open letter in support of the campaign to suppress Kelly's work. Kelly described the campaign as the "attempted lynching of a black man". The allegations included abusive relationships, brainwashing, forced sex, infection and pressure to have abortions. The streaming service announced that it would remove all of Kelly's music from its editorial playlists. Apple Music and Pandora followed suit. Kelly's music is still on the platforms. Video from a private event depicts Kelly apparently describing attempts to suppress his music as "too late". In the end, John Legend and US R&B artist Stephanie “Sparkle” Edwards were the only musicians interviewed in the documentary series. hampton described Legend as a “hero” for speaking out against Kelly. Legend responded on Twitter: “To everyone telling me how courageous I am for appearing in the doc, it didn’t feel risky at all. I believe these women.” He added: “These survivors deserved to be lifted up and heard. I hope it gets them closer to some kind of justice.” On Twitter, hampton said she hoped “the absence of celebrities really isn’t the takeaway today. Even if they’d said yes, the non-celebrities would’ve been featured more than them.” More than 50 people are interviewed in the documentary, including Kelly’s ex-wife, Andrea Kelly, who has accused him of numerous incidents of domestic violence, ex-girlfriend Kitti Jones, who has accused Kelly of physical and mental abuse, and Time’s Up founder Tarana Burke. In early December, the New York City premiere of the series was cancelled after an anonymous shooting threat was made to the venue. Andrea Kelly told Rolling Stone that she believes Kelly “had this shut down”. Kelly’s legal representatives had threatened to sue the US channel Lifetime if it aired the series, claiming that the documentary is littered with false allegations and that its subjects are defaming Kelly for personal gain. The first two episodes of the six-part series were shown on Lifetime on 3 January, and focus on the beginning of Kelly’s career, prior to the emergence of a 2002 sex tape that would lead to his trial and acquittal. The first episode details Kelly’s relationship with the late R&B singer Aaliyah, including allegations that Kelly, then 27, was seen having sex with the teenager on a tour bus, and that forged paperwork led to their illegal marriage when she was 15. Kelly’s former tour manager and personal assistant also alleges that Kelly impregnated the young singer, who died in a plane crash in 2001. Two women claimed that Kelly was sexually involved with girls as young as 14. Sparkle recalled Kelly grooming her niece when she was 12. The girl allegedly appeared in the sex tape that led to Kelly’s trial when she was 14. Singer Jovante Cunningham claimed that Kelly made teenage girls perform sexual acts in public, and had sex with a teenage girl in the studio with other people present. Lizzette Martinez, who claimed Kelly impregnated her while she was in high school, said that Kelly told her to “perform sexual acts while his friends were in the back seat”. Andrea Kelly claimed that her ex-husband involved her in an elaborate wedding ceremony without her prior knowledge. She described this as among the first times she realised he was “controlling”. In 2000, Chicago Sun Times reporter Jim DeRogatis was the first journalist to report on allegations that Kelly had sex with teenage girls. In 2002, Kelly was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography. He was cleared on 14 counts in 2007. It would take a decade – during which Kelly enjoyed chart success, cult acclaim for his spoof series Trapped in the Closet, and tastemaker support – for claims of Kelly’s sexual impropriety to find public traction. In July 2017, DeRogatis reported for BuzzFeed that Kelly was holding women in a “sex cult”, a story that led to more women accusing Kelly of sexual and physical abuse, and the decline of Kelly’s reputation. Kelly has broadly denied the allegations, and described as “too late” the #MuteRKelly campaign, which urges record labels, promoters and other parties with financial interests in Kelly to sever their ties with him. In July 2018, he released a 19-minute song, I Admit, in which he denied the allegations but “admitted” to sleeping with fans and having parents “push” their daughters on him “to get paid”. He also reiterated claims that he was sexually abused by a family member as a child. Lifetime will show the remaining four episodes of Surviving R Kelly on 4 and 5 January.The largest opposition party in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has claimed its leader is the “presumed” winner of last month’s presidential election, as observers identified numerous problems with the vote. The country’s electoral commission has yet to release the results of the 30 December election, despite an announcement being due last Sunday. But on Tuesday, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) called for transition talks between its candidate, Félix Tshisekedi, and the outgoing president, Joseph Kabila. The Catholic church – which has significant power in the DRC and had 40,000 observers across the country on election day – announced last week that one candidate had won decisively and it knew who that person was. Polling just before the election predicted a third candidate, Martin Fayulu, would win by a wide margin. The election was widely acknowledged to have been marred by violence and voter suppression. A local observer group, Symocel, said it witnessed 52 “major” irregularities in the 101 vote-counting centres it monitored, including people tampering with results. The group said 92% of the centres did not post tally sheets outside, as legally required. The UDPS secretary general, Marc Kabund, addressed speculation that his party and Kabila’s were considering sharing power. “As for rumours of a rapprochement between the outgoing president, Joseph Kabila, and the presumed winning candidate of the election, in this case Félix Tshisekedi Tshilombo, the UDPS wants to clarify that must be seen in the context of national reconciliation,” he said. “Kabila and Tshisekedi have an interest in meeting in order to prepare the peaceful and civilised transfer of power.” Tshisekedi’s late father, Etienne, was a stalwart of the opposition in the DRC who stood up to Kabila – who has been in power since 2001 – Kabila’s father and predecessor, Laurent, and Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator who ruled the country for more than 30 years. Only the Southern Africa Development Community and, in particular, its most powerful member, South Africa, appear to be in a position to exert sufficient pressure on Kabila to accept what appears to be the defeat of his handpicked candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. However, the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has remained silent on the matter, and Pretoria refused to back a UN security council statement that criticised the DRC government for cutting internet access and blocking some of the media. The South African ambassador to the UN said such a statement could “inflame” the situation. Ramaphosa’s predecessor, Jacob Zuma, whose supporters in the ruling African National Congress are still numerous, had close ties with the DRC.Even by the demanding standards of the 1960s, Flamingo was considered a groundbreaking magazine. Mixing glamour, sex advice, culture and international politics, it was one of the first magazines to target Britain’s African-Caribbean community. It ran from September 1961 until May 1965 and at its peak sold up to 20,000 copies in the UK and 15,000 in the US. It was also distributed in the Caribbean and West Africa, and published dedicated editions in Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia. It carried interviews with Malcolm X and advertisements for Island Records, which brought Jamaican ska music to Britain. But now it has emerged that Flamingo blazed a trail for another extraordinary reason: its founder, Peter Hornsby, was an agent for the intelligence service, MI6, which used the magazine to push an anti-communist agenda among black and West Indian communities. The revelation came to light after Hornsby’s wife, Jennifer, contacted Stephen Dorril, an author and senior lecturer in the journalism department at Huddersfield University, and told him of her husband’s exploits. “After the Notting Hill riots [in 1958] it was thought by my husband and MI6 that something had to be done with regard to helping the West Indian community,” she told Dorril, an expert on the intelligence services who later received a copy of her private memoirs from her son, which contained fascinating details of Hornsby’s life as a spy. Peter died in 2000, Jennifer in 2014. “There were people inside MI6 who saw which way Africa was going in terms of politics and nationalism, and were willing to support black students, writers and aspiring politicians who were on the left but who could be persuaded to oppose communism,” Dorril told the Observer. “They had links to centre-left politicians and student leaders in this country who were anti-racist and opposed to the white regimes in Africa. Through subtle propaganda activities such as Flamingo, support could be given to such social democrat initiatives while at the same time providing a pool of potential recruitment both here and in Africa and the Caribbean, where the CIA – MI6’s main rival – was a recent interloper.” Hornsby, whose early MI6 handler was George Blake, the Soviet agent, had been groomed by the intelligence services after being elected national treasurer of the National Union of Students in 1955. The following year he took up a post with the Coordinating Secretariat of the National Unions of Students (Cosec), an international anti-communist organisation based in the Dutch city of Leiden, which was also funded by MI6. In the mid-1960s, the Soviets leaked an internal MI6 document – which Dorril believes was “almost certainly purloined by Blake” – acknowledging that it was “of paramount importance to maintain as far as possible the illusion of Cosec’s complete independence”. The document continued: “It seems to us that, if once we attempted to sharpen Cosec as a cold war instrument, we might find it had ceased to have any point at all. Certainly it would be difficult to retain the alliance of member organisations in the uncommitted countries of Asia and Africa, if they suspect that Cosec was being ‘run’ by the Americans and ourselves.” But Cosec was only one avenue that MI6 was keen to explore with Hornsby. In 1960 another one of his handlers, Margaret Bray, who had once been Kim Philby’s secretary, discussed with Hornsby the idea of setting up a magazine aimed at Afro-Caribbean readers. In addition to pushing an anti-communist agenda, it was a means of monitoring national movements and providing access to potential recruits who could be turned into assets. “In Peter’s mind, a magazine focusing on immigrants would make them feel welcome and ease their integration into British society,” writes Jennifer Hornsby. A company, Chalton Publishing, was set up to produce the magazine and Edward Scobie, a Dominican who had published Tropic, the first major black journal in Britain, was recruited as editor. Chalton also published Feline, a soft porn magazine aimed at the black community. David Yellop, Flamingo’s art and production manager, told Dorril that Scobie’s attitude to journalism was very “relaxed” and that “attractive young West Indian party girls” were often to be found hanging around the monthly magazine’s office. Dorril said Flamingo was part of a wider programme by the intelligence services to reach out to the black community and dissidents. “In London in the early 60s, community centres were funded through CIA-approved foundations. They served as a contact point for musicians, authors and other refugees from places such as South Africa. While there is no evidence that they knew of the intelligence background, it is fairly obvious that such activity would be of great interest to MI6 and the CIA.” Shortly before he died in 2001, former senior MI6 officer Montague Woodhouse confirmed to Dorril that the service had run a number of joint operations with the CIA, including sponsorship of the literary magazine Encounter, founded by American political essayist Irving Kristol and English poet Stephen Spender. Encounter’s links to both US and British intelligence were exposed in 1967 and led to Spender’s resignation. By that stage Flamingo had closed, ostensibly because it had become financially unviable but possibly because suspicions about its covert funding were starting to emerge. When Flamingo closed, Hornsby’s work as an agent with MI6 also seems to have ceased. He started an antiques business with his wife and became an acknowledged expert on English pewter. There were changes in the magazine in 1964 when its political articles dealing with Africa and the Caribbean became more serious and often had no byline. They are similar in content and style to the material given to media outlets by the Foreign Office’s semi-secret propaganda unit, the Information Research Department.Maurizio Sarri launched a stinging attack on his Chelsea players’ mentality after a meek defeat to Arsenal, accusing them of being “extremely difficult to motivate” and lacking “ferocity” in their game. For the first time since taking over at Stamford Bridge six months ago, Sarri felt compelled to revert to his native Italian and lean on an interpreter to express his exasperation at a defeat which means Chelsea’s lead over Arsenal and Manchester United has been cut to only three points. The head coach suggested he wanted to make his “message very clear, without mistakes with my English” before ripping into his team’s shot-shy display. Chelsea’s first shot on target did not come until the 82nd minute, from Marcos Alonso. “I have to say that I’m extremely angry, very angry indeed,” he said. “This defeat was due to our mentality more than anything else, our mental approach. We played against a team which, mentally, was far more determined than we were. And this is something I can’t accept. We had a similar issue in the league game at Tottenham [a 3-1 defeat in November]. We spoke a great deal about that loss and our approach at the time, and I spoke to the players, and I thought we’d overcome this issue. “But it appears we still seem to lack sufficient motivation, being mentally solid and determination. So I’m not happy, I’m really not happy. I’d prefer to be in the changing room, speaking to the players, to talk about why we lost from a tactical point of view. But the fact of the matter is it appears this group of players are extremely difficult to motivate. When you see this kind of game, when one team is quite obviously more determined than the other, you can’t really talk about tactics. From a technical point of view both teams are pretty much on the same level, but Arsenal were more determined. Tactics don’t come into it. “Their high level of determination was obvious throughout, particularly in both penalty areas. If you think about their determination and how clinical they were when they scored the goals, in defence we stood off a lot and we were not determined and not strong enough. “Don’t get me wrong, we could have lost that game anyway, but we could have lost it for tactical reasons. We lost it because of our determination. I couldn’t possibly say I am not responsible as well, in part at least, for the mental approach. That’s something we have to share.” Sarri, who hopes to add the Juventus striker Gonzalo Higuaín to his options before the second leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final against Spurs on Thursday, has been critical of his players’ attitude at times this season, suggesting they can be guilty of complacency when ahead in matches. But the Italian remains uncertain how to instil more motivation into the group. “It seems to me that, as a group of players, they’re not particularly aggressive from a mental point of view,” he said. “They don’t have that ferocity in their mentality. That’s down to the type of players they are, their characteristics. “It’s something that is difficult to change. You have to try and influence their mentality and it could take quite a long time, or, by the same token, it could be changed with a new player coming in or one of the old heads in the team assuming more responsibility and driving the rest of the team forward.” Asked if he remains the right man to oversee Chelsea’s progression, he added: “Yes, absolutely. I’m very aware this is never going to be a team well known for its battling and fighting qualities. From a technical point of view, those aren’t the characteristics that we have. But what we need to become is a team capable of adapting, a team that can perhaps suffer for 10-15 minutes during the game but then play our own football. “Today we didn’t play our own football. Our defending ended up with us running backwards rather than pressing high up the pitch. We are a team that should be playing one or two touches. Instead at some stages we were playing with seven or eight. This is the sort of thing I don’t want to happen. We are going to have to try and change that.”Despite spending his adult life in a political system where public service is seen as a route to self-enrichment, Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has revealed that he has a little less than $23,00 in savings. In his first financial declaration since taking office on 1 December, the leftwing president also said that his wife makes slightly more than he does and owns the Mexico City apartment where the couple live. “I’ve never been interested in money,” López Obrador, 65, told reporters. “I fight for ideals, for principles.” The title to a 1.2-hectare ranch inherited from his parents in southern Chiapas state, meanwhile, is already in the names his four sons, he said. López Obrador, popularly know as Amlo, has promised to govern with frugality, and cut his own pay to about $65,000 a year – less than half of what his predecessor made. His wife, author and academic Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, makes about $72,000. He has also pledged to sell off the presidential plane, traveling instead on commercial flights and a Volkswagen Jetta. At his morning press conference on Friday, Amlo said he didn’t have a credit card and hasn’t had a checking account for years. He pulled a US $2 bill out of his wallet – given to him as a good luck token by a Mexican living in the US – insisting it and a 200 peso note was all he had with him. His display of personal austerity contrasts dramatically with other Mexican politicians. The administration of his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto was marked by a string of corruption scandals. Amlo’s allies in Congress followed up his pay cut by approving a bill forbidding public servants from earning more than the president. The supreme court, whose justices are paid £10,900 monthly plus generous benefits, later ruled against the pay cuts. “The economic logic of [high wages for politicians] has been: if you’re not generous and paying them, they’ll steal it. But they’re generous and [politicians and functionaries] are stealing anyway,” said Federico Estévez, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. Public servants have pushed back against the proposed pay cuts, which include benefits being slashed – such as private healthcare plans. The Banco de México announced Thursday it would challenge the law in court. More than 15,000 bureaucrats have obtained injunctions, protecting themselves from the pay cuts. “There’s a lot of waste in government,” said Valeria Moy, director of México ¿cómo vamos?, a thinktank. “I don’t see the waste in the wages of public servants.”1) Cody Parkey was left feeling like the loneliest man in the world after watching his last-gasp potentially game-winning field goal bounce off the upright and crossbar in the Chicago Bears’ playoff defeat by the Philadelphia Eagles (keep an eye on the mascot in the background, too). Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by Parkey’s supposed misfortune. He has a knack when it comes to finding the woodwork. Here he is clattering the goal-frame four times from four kicks in a match last November. And here are those doinks immortalised in Tecmo Super Bowl. Parkey still has some way to go before he matches this single rugby union penalty, though. It boinged off the crossbar and post a full four times! Over to you Cody. 2) The Australian Open kicks off on Monday and, as always, Roger Federer is among the favourites. Here’s his emotional journey to winning a 20th grand slam title in Melbourne last year, when Caroline Wozniacki finally won her first. Her ding-dong battle with Simona Halep was one of the matches of the year. There have been countless classic matches down the years but here are some of the best: Chris Evert Lloyd v Martina Navratilova in 1982, Boris Becker v Omar Camporese in 1991, Jennifer Capriati v Martina Hingis in 2002, Andy Roddick v Younes El Aynaoui in 2003 and Marat Safin v Roger Federer in 2005. And will Bernard Tomic have the chutzpah to try this bizarre underarm serve against an opponent at Melbourne Park? We hope so. 3) Some passes are so good you just have to watch them over and over again. Lionel Messi’s to Luis Suárez against Getafe was one such piece of creative brilliance. It took six players out of the game. And there’s a reason Bayern Munich are splashing out £31.4m on Stuttgart’s Benjamin Pavard: the full-back can drill the ball through defences with arrow-like precision. And here’s Espanyol’s David López with an entertaining long-range assist – not that he meant it. 4) Ellyse Perry was on fire for the Sydney Sixers in the Women’s Big Bash league, with brilliant batting, a couple of wickets and a superb diving catch to boot. The best catch this week though? This fan may argue otherwise. Oh, and here’s cricket with a banging donk on it. 5) Rally legend Sébastien Loeb has got off to a flying start in the 2019 Dakar Rally. Not that we should be surprised. The man can drive. See for yourself with this onboard view of him bossing the Monte Carlo course in 2015 in the snow … at night. Even on three wheels, and with the police bothering him, Loeb can make rapid progress. 6) Airport-bothering drones are giving the flying machines a bad press at the moment but they’re great for filming motocross, analysing football and capturing parkour … while drone racing looks like a lot of fun too. 1) Urban downhill mountain biking in Colombia. 2) Player gets the ball belted into his nuts – and sets up goal for opposition team. 3) When live animal mascots collide. 4) Every goal that Ole Gunnar Solskjær scored for Manchester United? Why not. Spotters’ badges: whobroughtoranges, Edgeley, BedfordBlueRaider, Giles Skerry Do subscribe if you fancy. Do subscribe if you fancy.Getting the job done by any means necessary is a trait of any title winner and it will encourage Liverpool, even after an underwhelming draw against Leicester, how skilled they have been at the art this season. “It’s this mindset of ‘finding a way’ that will be critical for us,” said Jürgen Klopp on what is required in the final four months of a tantalising campaign. For the first time this season the leaders found no way to victory over a team outside the Premier League top six, but it could have been worse. Klopp has sought a variety of internal solutions to the problematic right-back position that Leicester belatedly exploited at Anfield. On Wednesday it was Jordan Henderson’s turn to fill a role that Nathaniel Clyne, Rafael Camacho, Fabinho and James Milner have all assumed in recent months due to injuries, suspensions and illness. The England man deputised well but at cost to the control and balance of the Liverpool midfield. Klopp must hope positive medical bulletins on Joe Gomez and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who may return from knee-ligament trouble for Monday’s trip to West Ham, are accurate and that relief is on the horizon for the run-in. “We had to find a solution,” the Liverpool manager explained of Henderson’s switch. “We tried Rafa Camacho as well because Hendo couldn’t train all week but in the end I decided for a more defensive and experienced solution in that position because they go for that side. [Ben] Chilwell enjoys their offensive game, he is overlapping constantly, and I didn’t want to give Rafa, in his first game, such a big test. But Hendo did really well. It was all good from that point of view.” It may not be what the club captain wishes to hear for the long term but on the limited evidence from his Liverpool career, Henderson makes for an able full-back when need arises. You had to go back to April 2012 for the midfielder’s last extended display at right-back. That was at Blackburn Rovers when Liverpool’s stand-in goalkeeper Doni was dismissed after 25 minutes, prompting the then manager Kenny Dalglish to substitute Jon Flanagan and move Henderson into the back-line with impressive results in a 3-2 win. Klopp’s switch also paid dividends initially, although Claude Puel’s strange decision not to target Liverpool’s well-documented weakness with Demarai Gray helped the midfielder settle into an unaccustomed role. Henderson did not have a direct opponent to track for 23 minutes, with James Maddison tucked inside on the left and Gray starting on the right. That gave the 28-year-old freedom to support the attack in a dominant opening by the home side. He was so supportive as to be further forward than Mohamed Salah when Andy Robertson and Virgil van Dijk exchanged passes on the left of the home defence, putting him in position to deliver inviting crosses for Xherdan Shaqiri and Roberto Firmino during the brightest spell. The captain’s crisp passing on a difficult, icy pitch was as sharp as his crossing. It contributed to the 30-pass move that resulted in Sadio Mané’s swift breakthrough and offered Salah several opportunities to run at Chilwell and Harry Maguire. The two defenders were outstanding throughout, however, and won their individual challenges regularly. Henderson’s only problems in the early exchanges came from self-inflicted errors. An over-elaborate backheel on his part squandered possession and resulted in Joel Matip collecting a booking for a foul on Jamie Vardy. There was also a minor penalty scare when, from the first of two wayward clearances by Alisson, Maddison tumbled over the emergency full-back inside the area but his appeals for a spot-kick were rightly dismissed by the referee Martin Atkinson. Only when the Leicester manager corrected the error midway through the first half and switched Gray to the left, pinning him on Henderson, did the flow of the game and the quality of Liverpool’s performance turn. In an instant, the right-back had to abandon his attacking duties and concentrate on previously untested defensive duties. His absence from the midfield battle was felt keenly as Naby Keita and Shaqiri struggled. Gray sprinted clear when Leicester first broke after Puel’s tactical change. His dangerous low cross towards Vardy was intercepted by Van Dijk who, having missed several days training over the past week through illness, was caught out when Maguire equalised. Henderson and Van Dijk were the defenders closest to the England international when Chilwell’s header dropped back into the danger zone but Maguire was the latter’s man and was lost to damaging effect. It could and should have been worse given the quality of chances Leicester created and missed. Gray broke free on the counterattack in the 73rd minute but wastefully shot straight at Alisson instead of squaring for the unmarked Marc Albrighton. A point gained on Manchester City at the top, but Liverpool departed with regret.A recent gathering of scientists on the upper west side of Manhattan enthused about a crucial element in the formation of the surrounding city. The substance talked about in revered tones? Soil. In a fairer world, soil would be receiving reverence from people well beyond the fourth annual NYC Urban Soils Symposium, given that the slender outer layer of the planet supports the life that treads, grows and flies above it. As it is, though, it is up to soil aficionados to extol the urban importance of this crumbly manna. “Soil is a neglected resource; it can solve a lot of the environmental problems we have,” says Richard Shaw, a US Department of Agriculture soil scientist who grew up in urban New Jersey but was drawn to the outdoors and found himself fascinated by soils. For the past decade Shaw has been involved in the New York soil survey, plodding around the city’s parks and community gardens taking soil samples. This has usually involved digging a 4ft-deep pit, a process that has attracted police attention. “They’d ask what we are doing and then they’d spend half a day talking to us once we told them,” he says. “Others will say ‘sorry to hear that’, like it’s the worst job in the world.” Taking gallon-sized samples of soil from select spots helps researchers put together a soil map of an area. Layers of soil have differing amounts of sand, silt and clay: some have lots of organic matter, others hold a lot of water. Typically, in cities, the soil is contaminated. “In New York, debris and coal ash was used to fill in the wetlands, which has altered the chemical properties of the soil,” Shaw says. “Soils in cities tend to have more problems, but the situation is getting better. Still, if you want to stick a tree in the ground, you should know what’s in the soil first.” Not only is soil the basis for growing food, in urban communities that suffer from food deserts as well in rural farming areas, it also provides a crucial filter for pollution and regulates water flows. It can also help address climate change. Carbon is sequestered in both soils and the plants they support, while cities that grow plenty of trees can provide shade to residents and reduce the urban heat island effect. Coastal places can also use soils to bolster wetlands that provide a buffer from sea level rises. “Urban environments are a heat sink, so the more vegetation there is, the more liveable they are and the less energy we need to cool people down,” says Maxine Levin, who had a 40-year career as a soil scientist for the US government. “We are learning more and more all the time. Places like Detroit are bringing in urban gardening and farming. We are seeing rooftop and vertical gardens. It’s encouraging, Soil really is the basis for life, after all.” Shaw has long been fascinated by soils. “They have their own science and geology – I thought, this is the life for me,” he says. “The inclination for many scientists is to work in a beautiful pristine area – it’s a bit of a black sheep, working in an urban area. But urban ecology is fascinating, and urbanisation isn’t going to stop any time soon.” Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereThe veteran Labour politician Roy Hattersley has come out in favour of a second Brexit referendum, just days before Theresa May is expected to lose a parliamentary vote on the withdrawal agreement she reached with Brussels in November. He said the “vast majority” of Labour members wanted the party to campaign for a new referendum if Jeremy Corbyn’s calls for an early general election to break the Brexit impasse did not materialise. Hattersley, 86, who was a minister in the Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan governments, will declare his support for the People’s Vote campaign in a speech in Sheffield on Saturday. Parliamentary support for a second referendum is unlikely to be tested until after next week’s crucial vote, as campaigners weigh up the best moment to try to win over the Labour leadership. However, Hattersley’s support will be seen as a significant intervention. The former deputy Labour leader is expected to tell Corbyn to “put out of his mind all the outdated nonsense about a socialist economy being impossible in Europe”. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday morning that “sometimes, you just have to do what is right”. He said it was clear that no deal was the worst possible scenario and needed to be averted, and dismissed controversial claims by the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, that blocking Brexit could “open the door” to extremist political forces. Grayling told the Daily Mail British politics would take on a different tone if the UK failed to leave the EU, predicting a “less tolerant society” and a “more nationalistic nation”. “It will open the door to extremist populist political forces in this country of the kind we see in other countries in Europe,” Grayling said. “If MPs who represent seats that voted 70% to leave say ‘sorry guys, we’re still going to have freedom of movement’, they will turn against the political mainstream.” Hattersley said: “I don’t think many people would regard Chris Grayling as an expert on these matters or, indeed, on anything.” The transport secretary’s comments came after the Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, said a no-deal exit would create a “feeling of unrest”. She told BBC News Northern Ireland: “I have been clear that I believe no deal is bad for the United Kingdom, it’s bad for the whole United Kingdom because it does put in jeopardy some of those constitutional arrangements.” The former Irish taoiseach John Bruton told the Today programme the border backstop arrangement, which the Democratic Unionist party wants removed from the withdrawal agreement before it will support it, could not be dropped. He said it would be like Ireland cancelling its insurance policy. A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal. As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government. That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit. “The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs. Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added. While Ireland had no say in the Brexit referendum, Bruton said, the result had an impact on the Good Friday agreement, which brought peace to the island in 1998. He pointed out the agreement also involved a referendum in the Irish Republic, in which voters agreed to abandon the claim on the six counties in the written Irish constitution, which has existed since partition almost 100 years ago. This, he said, meant the constitution of the union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain was not threatened by the backstop, as has been claimed. Hattersley – due to speak alongside the former Labour cabinet minister Margaret Beckett and the Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, – will say later on Saturday that there is “no conceivable deal which is remotely as beneficial to Great Britain as full membership of the European Union”. “Jeremy Corbyn promised the party that policy would be made by the membership. Conference resolutions would, he said, be implemented. “That means he must, difficult as it may be, put out of his mind all the outdated nonsense about a socialist economy being impossible in Europe. “The vast majority of party members now expect that when the hope of an early general election is extinguished, Labour will campaign for a people’s vote,” he will say. He will warn that young people in the UK will “pay the price” of Brexit, while the elderly would be protected from the long-term “penalties”. “None of us – and that includes the leadership of the Labour party – ought to waste our time talking about another renegotiation. “Support for a people’s vote on Britain’s future grows stronger every day. If it were backed by the Labour party, and in consequence, by the progressive trade unions, the idea would be irresistible. “The people’s vote must enfranchise the young – not because they are passionately in favour of a European future, but because the Europe we build this year will belong to them. “The elderly – people like me – would be protected from the long-term penalties of leaving the union, or hovering half in, half out. “We can rely for a year or two on the prosperity which is bequeathed to us by 40 years of European membership. It is the young who will pay the price if Little England rises from the dead – reduced job opportunities, a retarded rate of economic growth and investment diverted from Britain to tariff-free markets.” The Tory former minister Anna Soubry and the Labour MP for Wakefield, Mary Creagh, will also speak at the event as part of the People’s Vote campaign’s national Day of Action.This may seem a tiny thing, but it has huge ramifications for one’s happiness – a bit like winning the cup final with a goal adjudicated by video referee to be a millimetre over the line. I am talking about recovery after a cold. Recovery from any period of ill-health, but in particular, the tentative escape from the banality of a cold, or a virus, or even just being “under the weather” – as though when we are well we soar above the clouds. Being sick is the pits. Here, I think men get a bad deal with accusations of man-flu, ie the idea that men treat a simple cold as though they are slowly dying of a flesh-eating disease at sea. The truth is, at the sniff of a sneeze, most of us turn into pathetic avatars of our usual selves. Otherwise we would not move seats the moment someone coughed. (I know there are mothers who could power through tuberculosis if it meant getting the kids to school on time, but these are superheroes, anomalous case studies). Sickness means an Alps of tissues in the bed. It’s the gripping fear that tributaries of snot, flowing like the Dart, will never stop, and that the pressure in one’s head will never shrink to normal. That the eyelids will stay puffed up, like the worst examples of surgery gone wrong found in “real-life” magazines, for ever. That it is worth it to pay £7.99 for branded paracetamol from the corner shop rather than stagger the extra half-mile to the supermarket, and pay just 99p for the generic sort – because every second not under a duvet feels like the frontline of a war. And then, just when you resign yourself to a permanently chafed nose, something magical happens: you wake in the morning, and the nostrils are crusted and a slither of air has entered, light at the end of the tunnel. As the day goes on, it’s as though you have broken to the surface, drunk with the sensation of not being weighed down by four extra pounds of mucus. You even consider going for a bite and a drink after work, because you might be able to taste again. Your deskmates, meanwhile, have stopped shooting you filthy looks; at any rate, the looks are now non-contagion related. You instantly forget how to spell echinacea and catarrh. You will never, ever, take for granted again the cilia that protect against bacterial invaders; you will always give thanks for the lungs that work so diligently on your behalf; you will never lose your reinvigorated passion for a throat that does not tickle. Of course, like a New Year’s resolution, this resolve lasts mere days. Quick enough, being well is just the baseline one doesn’t think about. But God, that first day feels like a lottery win. To your health, then.The Prince of Darkness is set to add a small corner of the Spanish city of Segovia to his temporal portfolio after a judge rejected complaints that a proposed statue of the devil was an affront to religious sensibilities that could make the city a focus of satanic worship. The local council commissioned the statue to celebrate the legend that its Roman aqueduct was built by the devil in a single night – and to get tourists into less-visited neighbourhoods. But a judge temporarily halted the statue’s installation after a local group launched an online petition claiming the paunchy, selfie-taking effigy was overly jovial and insufficiently repulsive to constitute an accurate representation of Satan. The group also expressed fears that the bronze statue could prove a magnet for people inclined towards diabolical veneration. On Thursday, however, the city council was informed that the judge had dismissed the complaint and ordered the complainants to pay €500 (£440) in legal costs. Segovia’s heritage councillor, Claudia de Santos, said the decision meant the statue could be installed as early as next week on the intended spot 200 metres from the aqueduct. “We’re living in a time when people and groups can use social media to amplify their grievances when they feel their rights are being attacked,” said De Santos. “But I think the great majority of Segovians would see what they’ve done as irrational. We don’t understand how they can claim that this statue somehow violates their religious sensibilities.” She said the council’s aim had always been to use the legend and statue to attract more visitors to other examples of the city’s Roman and medieval splendours. Asked how the council felt about suggestions that the statue could make Segovia a pilgrimage site for satanists, De Santos replied: “I don’t think there’s any possible answer to that question. I don’t have the intellectual capacity to counter it and I doubt there is such a thing as satanic tourism.” The statue’s sculptor, José Antonio Abella, said he was delighted at the judge’s decision and hoped it would end the media frenzy of the past few days. Abella said he was angry that his son had been abused online for politely asking people to sign a counter-petition to get the statue up. “What a load of nonsense,” he said. “And I’ve even ended up talking to CNN about all this.”I have been with my partner now for three months. He is 28 and I am 21. He is caring, affectionate and very respectful of women, which is important to me because my ex-boyfriend used to call me a slut. However, he only seems to care about penetrative sex, whereas my orgasms are more intense from clitoral stimulation. I have mentioned this to him lots of times, but he always shrugs it off. I love performing oral on him but he seems reluctant to do the same for me. I have always felt that sex should be devoid of any kind of obligation, and want to give my partner as much pleasure as I can without feeling as if I should get something in return, but I find it really difficult to do this when my desires don’t seem to figure very much in his idea of what sex is. You may be assuming too much. This may not be unwillingness on his part, but simply naivety and a lack of technique. Like many young men, your partner probably doesn’t really have a full understanding of exactly how to pleasure you clitorally, and you are going to have to teach him. You will have to be very specific, and let him know you expect quid pro quo. Your notion that during lovemaking you should not “expect anything in return” is problematic for two reasons. First, he will never learn to be a better lover unless you teach him. Second, he will continue to be a selfish lover unless you let him know what you want. And these deficits will only lead you to be more and more resentful. Have the courage to sweetly ask for what you need, and reward him when he gets it right. Far from instigating the “contractual obligation” you fear, this is actually a way to preserve your sexual connection – and your entire relationship. • Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders. • If you would like advice from Pamela Stephenson Connolly on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions: see gu.com/letters-terms.The sound you heard immediately after MPs’ gasps of astonishment at the scale of last night’s Commons defeat was a herd of unicorns being released from their paddock. Reality bit – and then fled the scene. According to the prime minister, some amicable discussions with senior parliamentarians, a bit of leeway from Brussels and a few tweaks to her EU deal will end the logjam. According to Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit is only a secondary issue, subordinate to the higher goal of securing a Labour government: once he is in Downing Street, everything will be fixed. The hardline Brexiteers say that a free trade agreement or a no-deal exit is the answer. Other factions call for the UK’s continued membership of the customs union, or the single market, or both. They must know that none of these constitutional configurations will command a Commons majority – mustn’t they? In principle at least, this evening’s no-confidence motion is the final obstacle to a full debate about Brexit itself rather than the prime minister’s personal merits (we know she’s useless – but, odd as it may seem, that’s not the most important issue facing the country today). The question is whether MPs have the courage and honesty to conduct this collective inquiry and to confront its inevitable conclusion: that there is no magical Brexit tree to be shaken, that the 2016 referendum was a colossal exercise in political mis-selling, and that there is no form of departure that also delivers the best features of EU membership. The only escape hatch from this horror show is a fresh public vote. But who dares lead our political tribe of unicorn-worshippers towards this inconvenient truth? • Matthew d’Ancona is a Guardian columnist After suffering the worst Commons defeat by any British prime minister in modern history, Theresa May faces an agonising choice: tack to a softer Brexit and risk fracturing her party for good – or hold firm on her Brexit red lines and risk remain Tories turning on her in a confidence vote. The prime minister has a few days at least to work out which is the least worst option. Although Jeremy Corbyn moved to table a no-confidence vote in the government after the deal was defeated by an eye-watering 230 votes, May ought to win this comfortably. The DUP, European Research Group and Tory remainers all say they are sticking with May while she plans her next move. Of that next move, May has told MPs she will move to seek consensus with figures from across the main parties on the best way forward. In truth, she has little choice in the matter. There are plenty of Conservative MPs willing to vote against the government in whatever way necessary to secure a softer exit from the EU and, crucially, avoid a no-deal Brexit. The issue is that it’s hard to see what path to a Brexit deal May can now take which doesn’t involve permanently fracturing the Tory party in two. In order to win bulk Labour votes, May could need to commit to a permanent customs union – an act that would dismay a bulk of Tory MPs. At cabinet this week, Tory party chairman Brandon Lewis warned the prime minister of the dangers of such a manoeuvre – making clear the party would not take well to the government cosying up with Labour. It’s for this reason that the chance of an early general election has increased significantly. If May can’t find a way forward for her party an election could be seen as the best way to break the deadlock. As one government aide put it last night: “Get your holidays in now.” • Katy Balls is the Spectator’s deputy political editor Amid the breathlessness and hurly-burly of the next few days, remember one essential fact: this entire fiasco was dreamed, planned and executed by the Tories. David Cameron imposed the vote in order to quell backbenchers worried that Ukip would take their seats. Peacocking around international summits, he assured other leaders that remain had it in the bag. Theresa May summarily triggered article 50, and started the clock running with neither game plan nor allies. To placate Jacob Rees-Mogg and the other headbangers, she spent two years denouncing any attempt at a Brexit compromise as a betrayal … then the last six months trying to sell a compromise. Last night’s historic, humiliating defeat is her just deserts. Nevertheless, it is a mess that the rest of us will first have to stew in and then clean up. Certainly, hardly anyone who voted leave in 2016 can be beaming into their cornflakes over the current chaos. Plunged deep into a political quagmire, the country could soon also enter a full-blown constitutional crisis from which we cannot find a way out. To avoid that, we need a complete change of mandate and plan. May’s plan is dead and if the prime minister tries to enlist Jean-Claude Juncker or Donald Tusk to resuscitate it, she will get short shrift – as both men signalled last night. The trouble is, if any prime minister had the nimbleness to change course it is certainly not the Dancing Queen. Yet she is not inching towards any exit, and the men behind her jostling to take over appear quite happy for her to do their dirty work. Hence the hypocrisy you will see later today, where Tory and DUP MPs who last night stabbed their leader in the back will vote to show they have complete confidence in her. Westminster will never so closely resemble a swamp of crocodiles. Yet as long May keeps doing the job, nothing is workable. The obvious compromises, such as a Norway agreement, were effectively shut down by her in 2016 with her red line over freedom of movement. She will not call a general election or a second referendum. On the single most important foreign policy decision made by this country in 40 years, we have a lame duck prime minister leading a government in paralysis. Whatever happens after Brexit, mark this: the Tories have blown their name as the natural party of government for at least the next decade. Against that backdrop, I believe the best thing for Labour MPs to do is calmly to point out that this mess is the Tories’ creation and that they can only try to restore some governance. The no-confidence vote fits that bill, but it is unlikely to succeed. Trying it again and again will likely be a game with diminishing returns, as Labour backbenchers and activists grow increasingly restive. Some will start muttering about working with No 10; others will come out for a second referendum. Events moving at this speed will not allow for inertia. So if today’s no-confidence vote goes then so too does the prospect of a general election. In that case, as I argued here yesterday, Labour should move towards calling for a second referendum to break the Westminster stalemate. • Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator It wasn’t just a defeat, but a humiliation. Theresa May’s Brexit deal has been so comprehensively routed that it feels like a broader judgment on her handling of the last two years. Despite lacking a majority she seeks to dictate terms, not negotiate them, as the Tory MP Nick Boles put it. She had barely even tried reaching across party lines, Labour MPs complained, seeking only narrow political advantage. Yet if so, she’s not alone. Jeremy Corbyn’s preferred Brexit strategy of trying to change the subject will also be torpedoed today, if parliament votes as expected against a general election. Will he then throw everything at working with the hated Tories and Lib Dems for something that can pass parliament, in the national interest? You can probably guess the answer. Yet that’s the only practical way out, preferably via a formal cross-party process but at a pinch perhaps in a knock-out vote between the options. The more we know about leaving with no deal, the madder it looks, but it will happen on 29 March if parliament can’t agree anything else. My heart is with advocates of resolving this via a people’s vote, but my head is worried. Never again should voters be offered choices that don’t exist in real life, so returning the decision to the people only makes sense once parliament has stress-tested the options. Yet right now only the Liberal Democrats are close to advocating that Britain remain and reform the EU from inside (which must surely be the referendum message) and no party has a watertight plan for smuggling such reforms past 27 countries expecting a returning Britain to eat humble pie. So by all means, let’s try to extend article 50 by a few months, since we’re obviously not ready. But this time let’s not squander them. • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistAn 18-year-old Saudi woman who fled her family after renouncing Islam and is being detained in Bangkok fears she will be killed if she is repatriated, as a friend close to her said the threats to her life were real. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun has barricaded herself in her hotel room in fear that Thai immigration officials, who have congregated outside her hotel room door, would force her onto a plane to leave the country. Thai immigration officials have confirmed she has been denied entry to the country. The Guardian has confirmed Qunun had a three-month multiple-entry tourist visa for Australia, where she said she was intending to seek asylum. Qunun maintains she will be killed if she is made to return to Saudi Arabia and has said she will not leave until she can see the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s Asia deputy director. Robertson said that in an “important victory” for Qunun, the Kuwait Airlines KU412 flight to Kuwait, that she feared she would be forced to board, left Bangkok without her onboard. In a video posted after the plane departed, she said: “I am Rahaf, the plane has departed, I am in the hotel, I need a country to protect me as soon as possible. I am seeking asylum.” Kuwait Air officials, #Thai Immigration officials and others are outside #Rahaf's door, demanding she open it. She is refusing, saying that she wants to see UN #Refugee Agency @Refugees & demanding #Thailand let her seek asylum. Time ticking down, flight leaves in 29 minutes. pic.twitter.com/wQ266wWFwX Qunun said she was trying to escape her family, saying they subjected her to physical and psychological abuse. She has appealed for help from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia. “My family is strict and locked me in a room for six months just for cutting my hair,” she said, adding that she was certain she would be imprisoned if sent back. “I’m sure 100% they will kill me as soon as I get out of the Saudi jail,” she said, adding that she was “scared” and “losing hope”. A 20-year-old friend of Qunun, whom the Guardian has chosen not to name and who recently moved from Saudi Arabia to Australia, told the Guardian the threats to her were real. “She’s ex-Muslim and has a very strict family, they’re using violence with her and she faced sexual harassment,” she said. “She received a threat from her cousin – he said he wants to see her blood, he wants to kill her.” Calling @KuwaitAirways - the entire world is watching you. Do not allow the deportation to Kuwait of @rahaf84427714 - you will be complicit in endangering her life. Do not allow this! #SaveRahaf https://t.co/rhvlzj7rHS She said: “If they didn’t kill her they couldn’t go [around in] public after this [Qunun renouncing the Muslim faith], so they have to do it. It’s like, ‘If you’re a man you should prove it’. If they don’t kill her they can’t go outside and see other men.” Qunun’s 20-year-old friend has lived in Australia for three months, and said she was seeking asylum there after being abused in Saudi Arabia. She said she had known Qunun for one year, after connecting with her online. “She’s an activist, she’s a feminist,” she said. “There are lots of feminist groups [in Saudi Arabia]. “They gather online to protect each other, help each other. [For example] I saw a woman giving money to shelters, food, donations. Even buying tickets for women escaping.” Georg Schmidt, Germany’s ambassador to Thailand, tweeted his support for Qunun, saying: “We share the great concern for Rahaf Mohammed and are in touch with the Thai side and the embassies of the countries she approached.” Sarah Hanson-Young, a senator from South Australia, called on Australia to act quickly to issue her with emergency travel documents. Robertson said there was “no doubt” Qunun needed refugee protection and that the UNHCR had to attend the airport hotel and be given immediate access. “Rahaf faces grave harm is she is forced back to Saudi Arabia so she should be allowed to see UNHCR and apply for asylum, and Thailand should agree to follow whatever the UN refugee agency decides,” Robertson told the Guardian. “She’s desperately fearful of her family, including her father who is a senior government official, and given Saudi Arabia’s long track record of looking the other way in so-called honour violence incidents, her worry that she could be killed if returned cannot be discounted,” he said. Video from @rahaf84427714 just sent from her hotel room at the #Bangkok airport. She has barricaded herself in the room & says she will not leave until she is able to see #UNHCR. Why is #Thailand not letting @Refugees see her for refugee status determination? @hrw #SaveRahaf pic.twitter.com/3lb2NDRsVG “She has clearly stated that she has renounced Islam which also puts her at serious risk of prosecution by the Saudi Arabian government.” Qunun, from Ha’il, a city in north-west Saudi Arabia, said she was stopped by Saudi and Kuwaiti officials when she arrived at Suvarnabhumi airport on Sunday and her travel document was forcibly taken from her, a claim backed by Human Rights Watch. The Saudi embassy in Bangkok said al-Qunun was being held for not having a return ticket, and that she still had her passport, a claim denied by Qunun on Monday. “They took my passport,” she said, adding that her male guardian had reported her for travelling “without his permission”. She spent Sunday night in a hotel in the Bangkok airport, and tweeted that officials were posted outside her door to stop her leaving. On Monday morning she said she was trying to claim asylum in Thailand. Qunun was stopped when she flew in from Kuwait on Sunday, said Thailand’s immigration chief, Surachate Hakparn. “She had no further documents such as return ticket or money,” he said. “She ran away from her family to avoid marriage and she is concerned she may be in trouble returning to Saudi Arabia. We sent officials to take care of her now.” He said Thai authorities had contacted the Saudi embassy “to coordinate”. Surachate said Qunun would be sent back to Saudi Arabia on Monday. “It’s a family problem,” he said of the case. Another Saudi woman, Dina Ali Lasloom, was stopped in transit in the Philippines in April 2017 when she attempted to flee her family. An airline security official told activists that Lasloom, who was 24 at the time, was heard “screaming and begging for help” as men carried her “with duct tape on her mouth, feet and hands” at the airport. The Saudi embassy in Thailand and officials in Riyadh could not be reached for comment. Agence France-Presse contributed to this articleAuthorities in Tokyo have launched an investigation into a work of graffiti that bears a striking resemblance to a trademark drawing by the celebrated – and so far unidentified – British street artist, Banksy. Tokyo’s metropolitan government was alerted to a drawing of a rat holding an umbrella – one of Banksy’s best-known works – on a door near a Hinode monorail station in the city centre. “We think there’s a possibility it was done by Banksy,” Koji Sugiyama, a government official said. あのバンクシーの作品かもしれないカワイイねずみの絵が都内にありました！ 東京への贈り物かも？ カバンを持っているようです。 pic.twitter.com/aPBVAq3GG3 The discovery even prompted a comment from Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, who posted photos of the work on Twitter, along with the message: “There’s a painting of cute rat in Tokyo which could be Banksy’s work! A gift to Tokyo?” The government has since removed the door, which is designed to prevent flooding during high tides, and placed it in storage to prevent damage to the work. Reports said it was unclear exactly when the drawing had appeared, but the city’s public safety bureau has reportedly known about it for a long time. Other publicly circulated photos of the image date back several years. Officials were not aware that Banksy may have been behind the drawing until they were contacted by residents in December. Sugiyama said the government hoped to establish the artist’s identity, but conceded that Japan suffered from a shortage of Banksy experts. Banksy recently hit the headlines when one of his artworks shredded itself soon after selling for £1.04m auction.Theresa May has survived as prime minister after weathering a dramatic no-confidence vote in her government, but was left scrambling to strike a Brexit compromise that could secure the backing of parliament. In a statement in Downing Street on Wednesday night, the prime minister exhorted politicians from all parties to “put aside self-interest”, and promised to consult with MPs with “the widest possible range of views” in the coming days. It followed her announcement that she would invite Jeremy Corbyn and other party leaders for immediate talks on how to secure a Brexit deal, something she had declined to do earlier in the day, although Labour later said Corbyn would decline the invitation unless no-deal was taken off the table. A day after overwhelmingly rejecting her Brexit deal, rebel Conservatives and Democratic Unionist party (DUP) MPs swung behind the prime minister to defeat Labour’s motion of no confidence by 325 votes to 306 – a majority of 19. In her late-night statement, the prime minister said: “I am disappointed that the leader of the Labour party has not so far chosen to take part – but our door remains open … It will not be an easy task, but MPs know they have a duty to act in the national interest, reach a consensus and get this done.” The Scottish National party’s leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford, met May on Wednesday night, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, also accepted her invitation. Blackford later wrote to May, urging her to make a “gesture of faith” to show that she was serious. He said the SNP would take part in cross-party talks if she was able to confirm “that the extension of article 50, a ruling out of a no-deal Brexit and the option of a second EU referendum would form the basis of those discussions”. With just five days to go before May must make a statement to parliament setting out her Brexit plan B, Downing Street continued to indicate that she was not ready to budge on her red lines, including membership of a customs union. Conservative politicians are deeply divided about how May should adapt her deal to win over hostile MPs. The South Cambridgeshire Tory MP, Heidi Allen, said: “I thought she was incredibly brave [after the Brexit defeat] and it felt like she got that we need to change. But today it was: ‘I’ll talk to people, but my red lines are still there.’ And that’s not going to work at all. “Maybe the prime minister needs a little bit longer but she has got to reflect: stop pandering to the hard right of my party and start talking to those of us who have been working across parties for months. We’re a functioning, collaborative body already. She just needs to tap into us.” Some cabinet ministers clearly indicated the need for flexibility. The justice secretary, David Gauke, warned that the government should not allow itself to be “boxed in”, and Amber Rudd suggested a customs union could not be ruled out. Labour has not ruled out tabling further no-confidence votes in the days ahead, in the hope of peeling off exasperated Tory rebels and triggering a general election. But on Wednesday night other opposition parties sent a letter to Corbyn, which said they expected him to honour his promise to back a public vote if Labour failed to get an election. A Lib Dem source suggested the party may not back future no confidence votes if it felt they were a way to evade the issue. “We will support any real opportunity to take down the Tories with relish. We will not be party to Corbyn using spurious means to avoid Labour policy, by pursuing unwinnable no-confidence votes,” the source said. The DUP was quick to stress that without its 10 MPs, the government would have lost the confidence vote, and called on May to focus on tackling their concerns with the Irish backstop. “Lessons will need to be learned from the vote in parliament. The issue of the backstop needs to be dealt with and we will continue to work to that end,” said Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader at Westminster. May’s spokesman said a no-deal Brexit could not be ruled out. However, the Daily Telegraph claimed to have got hold of a recording of Philip Hammond speaking to business leaders on Tuesday night in which the chancellor said the threat of a no-deal could be taken “off the table” within days. May’s spokesman suggested a customs union was not up for discussion: “We want to be able to do our own trade deals, and that is incompatible with either the or a customs union.” After meeting party leaders, May is expected to extend the invitation to opposition backbenchers over the coming days, as well Tory Eurosceptics. “We want to find a way forward and we are approaching this in a constructive spirit,” May’s spokesman said. “We’ve set out the principles but clearly there is an overriding aim – to leave the European Union with a good deal – and we are open-minded.” Civil servants and political staff are likely to attend the meetings, and ministers can direct civil servants to draw up more concrete plans where necessary, but the talks will not have the same formal status as coalition negotiations. Wednesday’s vote followed an ill-tempered debate in which Corbyn accused May of presiding over a “zombie government”. “It is clear that this government are not capable of winning support for their core plan on the most vital issue facing this country. The prime minister has lost control and the government have lost the ability to govern.” Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, wound up the debate for his party by saying May would for ever be known as “the nothing-has-changed prime minister”. “No one doubts her determination, which is generally of an admirable quality, but, misapplied, it can be toxic,” he said. “And the cruellest truth of all is that she doesn’t possess the necessary political skills, empathy, ability, and most crucially, the policy, to lead this country any longer.” The environment secretary, Michael Gove, responded with a robust speech widely regarded at Westminster as a leadership pitch, praising May’s “inspirational leadership” and attacking Corbyn on issues from antisemitism to foreign policy. “If he cannot protect the proud traditions of the Labour party, how can he possibly protect his country?” he asked. One former Labour MP, John Woodcock, who resigned from the party after being investigated over sexual harassment claims, abstained from the vote, saying Corbyn was “unfit to lead the country”. Had the motion passed, MPs would have had 14 days for an alternative government to emerge that could command a majority in the Commons, or a general election would have been triggered. Corbyn is now likely to come under pressure from party activists to move towards supporting a second referendum. A group of more than 70 Labour MPs announced on Wednesday morning that they were backing the call for a “people’s vote”. Labour’s formal position, adopted at its conference in Liverpool last year, commits the party to press for a general election. Failing that, all options are on the table, including that of campaigning for a second referendum.Conservationists have branded plans by the Polish government to cull almost the entire wild boar population of the country as “pointless, counterproductive and evil”. In a move to tackle an epidemic of African swine fever, the Polish government has ordered a series of hunts, beginning this weekend, with the aim of killing the vast majority of the country’s population of around 200,000 wild boar. Last year, the country’s veterinary officials approved a plan to kill 185,000 wild boars this season, and the country’s PZL hunting union said it had already killed 168,000 since last April. The government has recently decided to speed up the process by calling all licensed hunters to go out seeking wild boars, including pregnant females, over weekends this month. Opponents of the cull said it is not only cruel but pointless, or possibly even counterproductive. “The massacre of wild boar in large-scale hunts will not stop [African swine fever], it will only help the spread of the virus to western Poland,” said an appeal by environmental organisations to the government to abandon the plan. Mikołaj Golachowski, a biologist and conservationist who has been outspoken about the government’s plans, agreed that the cull was merely likely to disperse the animals rather than eradicate them entirely, risking spreading the disease further afield. Golachowski said killing the animals would also cause enormous damage to the country’s ecosystem. When wild boars forage, they aerate the soil allowing seeds to germinate and also feed on rodents and insect larvae, meaning their absence could lead to an increase in these populations. “They are a very important part of the ecosystem, and there is also the ethical question of slaughtering innocent animals for something that is not going to achieve any purpose. In every aspect it’s a terrible idea, and it’s also evil,” he said. Poland is a leading exporter of pork products, and African swine fever can prove deadly to pigs and wild boar, though it does not infect humans. It can also be spread by insects and can survive for several months in carcasses and processed meat. There are no known antidotes or vaccines. However, critics said proper biosecurity measures involving special sterilised clothing and mats at farms would be a more effective way to avoid the spread of the disease than mass slaughter. “It’s a political problem. Biosecurity is the only answer but it’s hard and costly. The government, being such a populist one, wants to fight for the votes of farmers,” he said. Environmental groups, keen to show the government that there are other voters who strongly oppose the plans, have organised a series of street demonstrations and online protests against the cull. Several thousand Poles have changed their Facebook profile picture to one of a wild boar, while an online petition to the government asking it to abandon the slaughter has received more than 300,000 signatures. On Wednesday evening, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Warsaw, some dressed as wild boar, holding signs that included “wild boar massacre” and “long live wild boars”.Chelsea started their league season with five successive victories and went unbeaten until late November. There was a lot of positive talk about the impact of Maurizio Sarri and how his successful style of football at previous club Napoli was being transferred so quickly to Chelsea. In these early weeks of the campaign Jorginho was dictating matches from a deep-lying midfield position while N’Golo Kanté scored on the opening weekend, appearing to relish a modified and less defensive role. Some cracks are starting to show and they seem to be spreading quickly. It certainly looks like Sarri’s honeymoon is now over. Performances have gone downhill, with Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at Arsenal their fourth in 11 league games and widely considered a new low. But what was surprising to me was what Sarri had to say afterwards: criticising his players’ “mental approach”, saying Arsenal were “far more determined than we were” and most eye-catchingly suggesting Chelsea’s squad is “extremely difficult to motivate”. More recently Sarri made it clear that he had said something similar in the dressing room. “Why keep it a secret?” he asked. “I want to be direct with them in private and in public.” But I think this is always dangerous ground for a coach to tread, especially so early in his tenure. I think public criticism of players can go one of two ways: either the players will want to raise a proverbial middle finger at their manager and prove them wrong, or the squad will go within themselves and performances will deteriorate. I do not have managerial experience but I think if a manager wants to get a reaction they are better off speaking to players privately. What we’ve seen in the recent past is that public criticism of players just doesn’t work. Think of Marcus Rashford, Luke Shaw and Paul Pogba at Manchester United under José Mourinho. Players are under enough pressure to perform from fans and the media without a manager complicating matters further in public. Top players will not let it affect them too much but I know it is not something they appreciate. After all, Alex Ferguson, one of the greatest managers of all time, had a golden rule never to criticise his players in public despite being famously known to give “hairdryer treatments” in private. This approach in protecting his players publicly clearly worked for Ferguson and brought him unprecedented success and the loyalty of his players. I often question why so many modern managers of top clubs depart from this approach. For Sarri to go down this path at Chelsea is even more surprising. The Blues have had three very strong characters in the dugout over the last four seasons: Mourinho, Antonio Conte and now Sarri. Of those managers, Mourinho eventually left in a huff, the players becoming fed up with his antics. Conte also left in a huff, with what seemed to be a sharp contrast to the title-winning togetherness in his previous season. This is the situation Sarri walked into in the summer, and he has got to tread very carefully or it might end as badly for him as it did for his predecessors. And both Mourinho and Conte had won the league title before their relationship with the players started to slide. Into this tricky period, Chelsea have added Gonzalo Higuaín. The Argentinian scored a lot of goals under Sarri at Napoli, and the expectation will be that he will do the same at Chelsea. His arrival will free Eden Hazard to move away from the false nine position with which he’s clearly dissatisfied. The Belgian enjoys playing with forwards who hold the ball up and bring him into play, allowing him to make those dashing runs infield from the left. It could be that this is the effect Sarri is hoping Higuaín’s arrival will have, but perhaps this is another sign that he is a manager who, in the end, prefers to play in a familiar way with familiar players. Many managers bring players they have previously worked with into a new club – but that doesn’t always mean they will continue to enjoy success together. Jorginho was the first player to follow Sarri to Chelsea from Napoli, and for a few weeks he seemed to have made the transition seamlessly. But it didn’t take very long for teams to suss out that if you press Jorginho you can stop Chelsea’s attacking supply. Jorginho, with no assists to his name, is not having the kind of impact that would justify forcing Kanté out of his preferred role. Kanté is the engine of the Chelsea team, as he was in their most recent title-winning season and Leicester’s before that, not to mention the World Cup-winning France side. For a new manager to come in and move Kanté is the equivalent of somebody taking over from Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham and shifting Harry Kane to the wing to make space for a player from his previous club. Kanté hasn’t spoken out about any frustration he might be feeling – like Hazard did, for example, when asked to play as a false nine by Conte – but despite being a humble, unassuming guy he still has a massive impact on the team. Maybe Sarri, famed for his attacking style, doesn’t necessarily value the unglamorous work that Kanté does – breaking up play, stopping counterattacks – as much as other managers have. But hopefully Sarri can look at the attributes of players such as Kanté and play them in their preferred roles, in which they have enjoyed success with Chelsea in the past.Athleisure clothing and “ugly” trainers have dominated the catwalk in recent years. Now fashion’s infatuation with sportswear is branching out into sunglasses, with sales increasing on the high street of oversized ski goggle-style eyewear, and designer labels featuring visor styles in place of last year’s hard-to-wear shades. The global fashion search platform Lyst has reported a 37% rise in searches for sports-inspired eyewear styles, including “ski sunglasses”, since the start of the year. Mirror goggles come in three neon colours at Urban Outfitters, while Asos is stocking styles from Jeepers Peepers in tortoiseshell to “clear flash” frames reminiscent of science-lab spectacles. At Farfetch, Gianfranco Ferre Vintage visor sunglasses come in “Bordeaux red”, and the Prada Sport Linea Rossa collection, relaunched last year, also includes ski-inspired frames. Crucially, the style has been given a daywear update, losing the elastic strap which makes sense on the slopes but not on the high street. “There’s a huge trend at the moment which is seeing technical brands being adopted by the fashion crowd and borrowed for collaborations in different collections,” says Thom Scherdel, menswear buyer at Browns. “Once [ski sunglasses] are styled with different outfits, they take on a new life and suddenly look quite avant garde.” The trend for sporty frames started last year when Kim Kardashian West was seen in cycling sunglasses at the Louis Vuitton show. Rita Ora, too, was photographed wearing a neon-framed pair with mirror lenses and, last week, the singer Rihanna caused a stir by first wearing orange-tinted ski goggle-style sunglasses, followed by a more opaque version. Last week the former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris, Carine Roitfeld, a long-term fan of the visor shape, demonstrated how ski sunglasses might be set apart from the athleisure trend by pairing hers with a T-shirt from the Marc Jacobs Redux Grunge collection for Heron Preston’s menswear show. “The visor mask has been popular with our customers who like a fashion point of view and something more unique,” says Chelsea Power, buyer at matchesfashion.com.England’s players believe they have no option but to match Ireland’s “fighting” qualities if they want to make a fast start to the Six Nations. They have not beaten their hosts or even scored a try in their last three visits to Dublin and the scrum-half Ben Youngs has pinpointed the breakdown and aerial contest as crucial areas on Saturday. “With Irish teams you talk about the passion but really they just love the fight,” said Youngs, set to win his 81st cap. “When I say the fight I am talking about the breakdown, the aerial stuff, the bits of the game that are no talent required, niggly stuff. They are just mad for those little fights. “I am not talking physical fights. With club or country, when we’ve come unstuck, it’s been around the breakdown. They’ve just been able to deal with it better, make it slower and frustrate you. “They’ve got a huge number of guys who can jackal and get over the ball and they’ve got a defensive system that puts you under pressure. It’s a huge strength of theirs. It’s caused us problems and it’s no surprise we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the breakdown.” Eddie Jones will announce his starting lineup on Thursday with Mike Brown hoping for a recall as England seek to defuse the threat of Johnny Sexton’s and Conor Murray’s tactical kicking. “Mike Brown’s ability to operate under the high ball is probably the best in the country,” Youngs said. “Dealing with the high ball is still a phenomenal strength of his game. You suspect Ireland will certainly test us with contestable kicks and use that as weapon as they have done in the past. Seeing someone like Mike back involved in the squad is terrific, because he adds a huge amount of experience in that area.” Youngs said it will not bother him unduly whether his Leicester teammate George Ford or Owen Farrell is standing at first receiver as England finalise their midfield in the absence of the injured Ben Te’o. “Losing someone of Benny’s qualities is never ideal this close to the game but what we do have are a lot of great players to cover centre,” Youngs said. “With Benny missing out it opens the door for others. We just have to adapt and we’ll be able to do that. “The expectation is that Ireland are the best team in the northern hemisphere but the Six Nations is such a competitive tournament. That’s why everyone gets so engrossed in it, because you never really know.”The clock might be ticking to Brexit on 29 March, but even if Britain leaves the EU on that date, a “Cornish embassy” will continue to speak out in Brussels. Cornwall council is tendering for a contract for the continued operations of an office in the city “to support our efforts to define our place within the new UK/EU relationship”. About £240,000 has been put aside to support the project, which will cover what is envisaged to be a Brexit transition period. Providing that there is a deal between the UK and the EU, and therefore a transition period, the council states on the tender contract that EU funds will continue to flow until the end of 2023 into Cornwall and Isles of Scilly (CIoS). “Having a Cornwall Brussels office in place will ensure that we have a channel through which we can engage directly with EU stakeholders on funding issues during this period,” it says. A deadline of 11 February has been set for receipt of bids to the council, which is the only local authority in England covering what qualifies under EU rules as a less developed region (LDR). Cornwall had been receiving £80m a year in EU funding, according to the council, money that has gone into jobs, local businesses, infrastructure, training and research. It had been on course to receive about £350m for the next round of funding from the years after 2020. Despite this, Cornwall registered a leave vote of 56.5% during the EU referendum, a result that has mystified some but was explained in recent research by Exeter and Plymouth University as being due to perceptions of the EU as being remote. Liberal Democrat Adam Paynter, the leader of Cornwall council, said: “The EU has been very supportive for us both in terms of infrastructure and growing our economy and our Brussels office has been instrumental in keeping up with calls fro funding. We had a recent vote to keep the office. “Unfortunately the council did not do as it could have done in the past to ensure that people understood the benefits of EU membership and what the structural funds gave us. “That will be an issue for Cornwall – if we ever leave the EU. We have a little way to go but as a council we are working on being self-sufficient because we certainly don’t get the government support that may have been there in the past.” As well as supporting the continuation of the Brussels office, the council also voted to support holding a second referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies, according to special counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort, 69, is also accused of covering up other meetings and contacts with the Russian, an elusive consultant named Konstantin Kilimnik who worked for Manafort on election campaigns for pro-Kremlin politicians in eastern Europe. Attorneys for Manafort disclosed the allegations in a court filing in Washington on Tuesday. They appeared in sections of the filing that were meant to be redacted, but where text underneath blacked-out lines could be copied and viewed. A spokesman for Manafort’s team did not respond to a message asking if the faulty redactions were accidental. Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any coordination with Trump’s team, said in a court filing last year that the FBI assesses that Kilimnik “has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016”. Kilimnik, 48, trained at a university connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, formerly known as the GRU, which allegedly spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to disrupt the US election in 2016. The US has concluded that the Russian operation was ordered by President Vladimir Putin to help Trump’s campaign. Mueller has also previously said that Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy on the Trump campaign, described Kilimnik as “a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU”, which Kilimnik denies. In the court document made public on Tuesday, Manafort’s attorneys referred to an allegation from Mueller that Manafort “lied about sharing polling data with Mr Kilimnik related to the 2016 presidential campaign”. They did not elaborate. Manafort’s attorneys did not deny that Manafort gave Kilimnik the data, instead stating that he had not lied about it but was merely “unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed”. The attorneys also confirmed that Manafort had met Kilimnik in Madrid, claiming he “had not initially remembered” the meeting but recalled it when confronted with records showing the two were in the Spanish capital at the same time. It was previously known that Kilimnik and Manafort had met twice during 2016 in the US. The date of the Madrid meeting was not stated. Manafort’s attorneys also said on Tuesday that when presented with other records by Mueller’s team, he conceded “he discussed or may have discussed a Ukraine peace plan with Mr Kilimnik on more than one occasion”. Tuesday’s filing was Manafort’s response to allegations from Mueller that he had continued to lie to investigators even after signing a cooperation agreement. The alleged lies led Mueller to tear up the deal, under which prosecutors would have recommended a reduced prison sentence for crimes Manafort has admitted. Manafort was accused last month of lying about contacts with Trump administration officials since they entered office in January 2017. His attorneys said on Tuesday he had not intentionally lied and was asked only about his contacts with two specific administration officials. In another poorly redacted section, the attorneys said Mueller specifically alleged Manafort was in contact with someone who asked him permission to use Manafort’s name “as an introduction” in the event that the person met the president. A second alleged contact with a Trump official was based on “hearsay purportedly offered by an undisclosed third party”, according to Manafort’s attorneys. They also disclosed on Tuesday that Mueller had discovered several additional contacts between Manafort and the administration, which they described as “mostly indirect”.Every five years, millions of Europeans across the continent go to the polls to elect their national members of the European parliament. This May we’ll be doing so again, in what could be a watershed election for rightwing populists. Although radical right parties won pretty big in the past two European elections, their influence within the various umbrella groups that make up the European parliament’s power blocs remained limited. This year, most rightwing populist parties may make only modest seat gains. But they also have the opportunity to create, for the first time, a serious rival to the centrist political groups that until now have dominated the EU’s governing body. Today, the right wing’s most powerful group, and the third largest in the European parliament, is the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a Eurosceptic coalition dominated by British Conservatives. Assuming Brexit goes ahead, the ECR will lose its dominant member, and so will a separate rightwing group led by Ukip. As a result, the populist right is wide open to new leaders and possibly new organisations. On Wednesday, in Warsaw, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister and the leader of its rightwing Northern League (LN), met with Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party and the true power behind the Polish government. They were there allegedly to discuss the formation of a new political group within the European parliament. Although Kaczyński is anti-Russian and Salvini is one of Putin’s biggest cheerleaders, both men share a deep distrust of the EU, an intense dislike of (especially Muslim) immigrants, and a strong support for traditional Catholic values. They also share a need to protect their countries from EU pressure. Poland is facing sanctions for its attacks on liberal democracy, while Italy has been criticised by Brussels for its fiscal and immigration policies. Salvini is currently a member of the radical right Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), the smallest group in the European parliament, which is dominated by Marine Le Pen’s renamed National Rally. As the dominant politician in one of the EU’s largest member states, Salvini has politically outgrown this group. If he can bring together the ENF’s main parties with the ECR, in which Kaczyński will become the major player, this radical right ECR-plus could end up rivalling the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), which is currently the second largest group in parliament, but is set for massive electoral losses in May. Moreover, the parties that would make up the ECR-plus would have positions in the governments of many EU member states and would even have prime ministers – including Giuseppe Conti from Italy and Mateusz Morawiecki from Poland – in the European council. Of course, it’s not a given that the Kaczyński-Salvini alliance will materialise. In the run-up to the 2014 European election, the big story on the radical right was the new alliance of Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, two electorally successful but politically marginalised politicians. The media eagerly and uncritically repeated grandiose claims that they were going to create a big political group that would “wreck the EU from inside”. In the end, it took them a year to make a small group, which remained irrelevant throughout the whole legislative period. That said, there is no doubt that radical right parties will be more prominent in the new European parliament. We are likely to see big gains from Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Vox in Spain, which will both become medium-sized parties in big countries, which means a lot of new seats in the European parliament. Moreover, radical right parties will be even more mainstreamed than before. As the largest right-wing groups, including ECR, drift farther and farther to the right, collaboration between the mainstream and radical conservatives, both within and between umbrella groups, will become the norm in the next parliament, particularly on prime issues like immigration and security. Will radical right parties succeed in fundamentally transforming the EU? Probably not. But they could block the reforms the EU desperately needs in order to address not just fundamental internal challenges – like Brexit and slow economic growth – but also an increasingly hostile world, dominated by two leaders, Putin and Trump, intent on weakening the EU further. The greatest irony of all, of course, is that they’ll be doing all this damage in Brussels – right in the heart of the European Union they are so intent on destroying. • Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction and The Far Right in AmericaNatasha Stoynoff never thought her life would be turned into a musical – and certainly not for this reason. Once as a crime reporter, Stoynoff covered a serial killer, recalling how the mugshot-like photos of his many female victims gave her shivers. But during the 2016 US presidential election, when she became one of more than a dozen women to publicly accuse Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, she came to identify with them: their lives had been flattened into a square-inch rendering of yet another female victim. Now Stoynoff says she is reclaiming her humanity by co-writing a play about Trump “forcing his tongue down my throat” and setting her experience to music and song. It comes as part of The Pussy Grabber Plays, a series of eight short plays premiering in New York City on Monday, each inspired by a different woman who came forward with allegations against Trump. In the past two years Stoynoff has shied away from press. But speaking to the Guardian from a remote cabin in northern Quebec where she’s been holed up recently finishing her latest books, including one about a cult published in August, Stoynoff was all enthusiasm. “I liked the fact that it was something I could be part of creating,” she said in her first phone interview since 2016. “I also thought it was a good way in the theater to humanize the women,” she said, “to tell a bit about the background of each woman, or something about them that would really bring them to life.” That’s precisely what playwright Sharyn Rothstein and theater agent Kate Pines hoped to do when they first dreamed up the project. The two best friends and artistic collaborators had spent countless hours discussing how they could channel everything they felt after the election – the shock, anger, grief – into real social change. “Almost a year to the day after the election, it hit me,” Rothstein said. “I called Kate and told her, ‘What if we can reach out to the women who came forward before the election and share their stories?” They had observed what Stoynoff described feeling: even in the wake of #MeToo, when sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men were finally being taken seriously, Trump’s accusers were still being, as Pines put it, “reduced to photos on a screen or a soundbite or a name”. And not for anything they want to be remembered for. “I’ve been through a lot worse in my life than a man grabbing my breast,” Karina Virginia, another woman who came forward with her Trump story in 2016, told the New Yorker recently. Virginia, a Kundalini yoga teacher who grew up in New Jersey, is one of seven women whose experiences reporting sexual misconduct by Trump inform the plays, with some women – like the actor and former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon, who spoke out about Trump’s beauty pageant harassment – even making cameos on the stage. Each piece will focus on a different aspect of the experience, from difficulties talking to family to questions around victimhood and power. A play inspired by Virginia draws out what it was like having to tell her mom what happened. Stoynoff’s play, co-written with the playwright Melissa Li, is a retelling of her original experience at Mar-a-Lago. Another looks at women who have yet to come forward. And a play inspired by Jessica Leeds, who reported in 2016 that Trump groped her on an airplane more than three decades ago, centers on an interview with Megyn Kelly in which the host repeatedly questions her political motivations. “The impression I had afterwards was like a bucket of cold water,” Leeds said. “I know it was quick and her job is to entertain her audience and whatnot but it was one of these occasions where I did not feel very comfortable.” Another play inspired by Rachel Crooks, who publicly described being forcibly kissed by Trump in her early 20s, explores Crooks’s shifting perspective as she progressed from the 22-year-old employee in Trump Tower to the woman she is today, a spin that recasts Crooks’s story as less about Trump and more about growth. “I certainly get annoyed with being referenced as ‘the Trump accuser’ – that’s not what I want to be known for in my life. But at the same time it allowed me to have a voice that ultimately did lead to the path of running for office and that’s something I probably wouldn’t have thought to do,” said Crooks, who is recently off an unsuccessful bid for the Ohio state legislature. Trump has denied allegations of sexual misconduct, and at various points accused the women bringing them of lying. But Trump’s accusers aren’t the only women turning their experiences into art. James Franco accuser Sarah Tither-Kaplan has raised tens of thousands of dollars for a collaboration with female film-makers spotlighting sexual assault within the entertainment industry. Harvey Weinstein accuser Sarah Ann Masse has redoubled her focus on films aimed at sexual violence education, throwing herself into comedy exploring feminism, misogyny and victim blaming, as part of a duo with her husband. Pines meanwhile has her own connection to Trump. She is the daughter of Tony Schwartz, whom Trump threatened with legal action in 2016 after he spoke candidly with the New Yorker about his role in and remorse over ghostwriting Trump’s myth-making book The Art of the Deal. “Part of it is just I’ve watched him speak truth to power for the last two years and I’m feeling inspired to do that in the way that I can,” Pines said of her father. “I think something my dad did is despite the legal threats and despite what are risks, he said, ‘I need to tell the truth,’” she added. “I think that’s what these women did and I’m so inspired by these women.” All proceeds of the run go to the New York Women’s Foundation.  This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Bitcoin, the Big Daddy of cryptocurrencies, which celebrates its 10th birthday today, rarely inspires temperate or informed debate. For its detractors – mostly elderly bankers and economists – it is tulip-mania, moonshine, hi-tech smoke and mirrors. For its most fanatical adherents – techies and latter-day hippies – bitcoin is not merely a viable currency, but salvation: a universal panacea, not just to combat governmental ineptitude or malevolence, and poverty, but to end them. Hallelujah and kumbaya. The sneerers cite the rampant criminality in the ranks of the cryptosphere. It is true, in the 10 years since bitcoin was born on a couple of desktop computers – becoming an entity worth more than the M1 money supply of Argentina – its retinue has accommodated an incredible rogues’ gallery. There have been old-fashioned cony-catchers, saltimbancos and bubblers who did a runner with other people’s money in the time-honoured manner, but also drug-dealers, murderers and blaggers – not to mention the lethal dreamers and false prophets. But as the stalwarts of crypto will gleefully point out, the desperados and flimflammery encountered in these new forms are but a mirror of the better-tailored dishonesty found in the City of London or any of the world’s financial centres. There is hardly a bank left that has not been caught money-laundering, market-rigging, misselling or involved in miscellaneous misdeeds. Cryptocurrencies are fiendishly complex – just a basic understanding requires a maths and IT background. And, like lawyers, even those developers who do know something rarely agree on anything. Eve if you do know something about the tech, it does not help much, because this is all new and unprecedented. When tech leaves the white paper and hits the street, no one knows what the result will be. There is a long trail of individuals and companies who have been “rekt” as the industry parlance has it because of events: for example, the Bitcoin Cash civil war last November. The most impressive feature of bitcoin is that it is still there. It has survived crash after crash and state hostility. It has truly been battle-tested in the harshest of conditions. The identity-hiding creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, wanted it to be a currency. That looks unlikely. In the near future, you won’t be buying a pint of milk with it at the corner shop. Admittedly, if you are willing to trawl the internet, and in no rush to get things, you can buy all sorts of products – but for everyday life, compared with a contactless Visa card, bitcoin is almost useless. One of the selling points of bitcoin (and other cryptos such as Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Dash) is that you can “be your own bank”. That has its attractions and advantages, but it also has a downside: it means having some understanding of the tech, and a willingness to take full responsibility when the bank robbers come. If something goes wrong, you are on your own. Again, compared with a credit card, bitcoin seems risky and hard work, unless you are really keen on buying drugs or tax evasion. On the other hand, bitcoin can be sent anonymously and fairly quickly to the other side of the world with low fees. 2017 was the year when you couldn’t lose in crypto, but 2018 was the year when you couldn’t win. If you invested at the all time-high for bitcoin in December 2017, you will have lost some three-quarters of your investment (should you choose to cash out). But whether a bitcoin is worth £2,000 or £20,000 is not so important. The get-rich-quick speculators have probably abandoned the world of crypto. What counts now is adoption. Most of the action in the first 10 years has been in the US (it appeals to both the far left and the far right) and in east Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Singapore). While I find the claims that crypto can enrich the unbanked and poor ludicrous, it is likely that the future growth of bitcoin will be in countries with ailing, corrupt or authoritarian governments and wonky currencies. Latin America, Africa and the Middle East will be the places where citizens will value something the authorities will have a hard time getting their hands on. Venezuelans have recently had a crash-course in crypto. Is there a need for bitcoin? Probably not. Government-backed currencies work, whatever their shortcomings. However, bitcoin may well succeed as a digital gold: a store of value, a savings account rather than an everyday currency. And there is certainly room for a global cryptocurrency, whether it is bitcoin or one of its spin-offs or successors. The frenzy around crypto in the last few years meant that creating a currency was almost a cottage industry, even if some were clearly meant as a joke – ponzicoin for instance – though others, such as dentacoin (for dentists), were not. Most of the hundreds of current altcoins (ie not bitcoin) will wither, probably quite soon. But still they come. In two weeks’ time a new coin is due to be launched using the Mimble Wimble protocol (the cultural spectrum of the tech world does not seem to stretch much beyond Game of Thrones or Harry Potter), a turbocharged competitor to bitcoin that aims to return “power to the people” by keeping out big crypto-mining companies. It is called Grin – which, if nothing else, surely has the best name for a currency in the history of money.In setting out the Trump administration’s Middle East policy, one of the first things Mike Pompeo made clear to his audience in Cairo is that he had come to the region as “as an evangelical Christian”. In his speech at the American University, Pompeo said that in his state department office: “I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and his word, and the truth.” The secretary of state’s primary message in Cairo was that the US was ready once more to embrace conservative Middle Eastern regimes, no matter how repressive, if they made common cause against Iran. His second message was religious. In his visit to Egypt, he came across as much as a preacher as a diplomat. He talked about “America’s innate goodness” and marveled at a newly built cathedral as “a stunning testament to the Lord’s hand”. The desire to erase Barack Obama’s legacy, Donald Trump’s instinctive embrace of autocrats, and the private interests of the Trump Organisation have all been analysed as driving forces behind the administration’s foreign policy. The gravitational pull of white evangelicals has been less visible. But it could have far-reaching policy consequences. Vice President Mike Pence and Pompeo both cite evangelical theology as a powerful motivating force. Just as he did in Cairo, Pompeo called on the congregation of a Kansan megachurch three years ago to join a fight of good against evil. “We will continue to fight these battles,” the then congressman said at the Summit church in Wichita. “It is a never-ending struggle … until the rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight.” For Pompeo’s audience, the rapture invoked an apocalyptical Christian vision of the future, a final battle between good and evil, and the second coming of Jesus Christ, when the faithful will ascend to heaven and the rest will go to hell. For many US evangelical Christians, one of the key preconditions for such a moment is the gathering of the world’s Jews in a greater Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. It is a belief, known as premillenial dispensationalism or Christian Zionism – and it has very real potential consequences for US foreign policy. It directly colours views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and indirectly, attitudes towards Iran, broader Middle East geopolitics and the primacy of protecting Christian minorities. In his Cairo visit, Pompeo heaped praise on Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, for building the new cathedral, but made no reference to the 60,000 political prisoners the regime is thought to be holding, or its routine use of torture. Pompeo is an evangelical Presbyterian, who says he was “brought to Jesus” by other cadets at the West Point military academy in the 1980s. “He knows best how his faith interacts with his political beliefs and the duties he undertakes as secretary of state,” said Stan van den Berg, senior pastor of Pompeo’s church in Wichita in an email. “Suffice to say, he is a faithful man, he has integrity, he has a compassionate heart, a humble disposition and a mind for wisdom.” As Donald Trump finds himself ever more dependent on them for his political survival, the influence of Pence, Pompeo and the ultra-conservative white Evangelicals who stand behind them is likely to grow. “Many of them relish the second coming because for them it means eternal life in heaven,” Andrew Chesnut, professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University said. “There is a palpable danger that people in high position who subscribe to these beliefs will be readier to take us into a conflict that brings on Armageddon.” Chesnut argues that Christian Zionism has become the “majority theology” among white US Evangelicals, who represent about a quarter of the adult population. In a 2015 poll, 73% of evangelical Christians said events in Israel are prophesied in the Book of Revelation. Respondents were not asked specifically whether their believed developments in Israel would actually bring forth the apocalypse. The relationship between evangelicals and the president himself is complicated. Trump himself embodies the very opposite of a pious Christian ideal. Trump is not churchgoer. He is profane, twice divorced, who has boasted of sexually assaulting women. But white evangelicals have embraced him. Eighty per cent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016, and his popularity among them is remains in the 70s. While other white voters have flaked away in the first two years of his presidency, white evangelicals have become his last solid bastion. Some leading evangelicals see Trump as a latterday King Cyrus, the sixth-century BC Persian emperor who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity. The comparison is made explicitly in The Trump Prophecy, a religious film screened in 1,200 cinemas around the country in October, depicting a retired firefighter who claims to have heard God’s voice, saying: “I’ve chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this.” Lance Wallnau, a self-proclaimed prophet who features in the film, has called Trump “God’s Chaos Candidate” and a “modern Cyrus”. “Cyrus is the model for a nonbeliever appointed by God as a vessel for the purposes of the faithful,” said Katherine Stewart, who writes extensively about the Christian right. She added that they welcome his readiness to break democratic norms to combat perceived threats to their values and way of life. “The Christian nationalist movement is characterized by feelings of persecution and, to some degree, paranoia – a clear example is the idea that there is somehow a ‘war on Christmas’,” Stewart said. “People in those positions will often go for authoritarian leaders who will do whatever is necessary to fight for their cause.” Trump was raised as a Presbyterian, but leaned increasingly towards evangelical preachers as he began contemplating a run for the presidency. Trump’s choice of Pence as a running mate was a gesture of his commitment, and four of the six preachers at his inauguration were evangelicals, including White and Franklin Graham, the eldest son of the preacher Billy Graham, who defended Trump through his many sex scandals, pointing out: “We are all sinners.” Having lost control of the House of Representatives in November, and under ever closer scrutiny for his campaign’s links to the Kremlin, Trump’s instinct has been to cleave ever closer to his most loyal supporters. Almost alone among major demographic groups, white evangelicals are overwhelmingly in favour of Trump’s border wall, which some preachers equate with fortifications in the Bible. Evangelical links have also helped shape US alliances in the Trump presidency. As secretary of state, Pompeo has been instrumental in forging link with other evangelical leaders in the hemisphere, including Guatemala’s Jimmy Morales and the new Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro. Both have undertaken to follow the US lead in moving their embassies in Israel to Jerusalem. Trump’s order to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv – over the objections of his foreign policy and national security team – is a striking example of evangelical clout. The move was also pushed by Las Vegas billionaire and Republican mega-donor, Sheldon Adelson, but the orchestration of the embassy opening ceremony last May, reflected the audience Trump was trying hardest to appease. The two pastors given the prime speaking slots were both ardent Christian Zionists: Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor on record as saying Jews, like Muslims and Mormons, are bound for hell; and John Hagee, a televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel (Cufi), who once said that Hitler and the Holocaust were part of God’s plan to get Jews back to Israel, to pave the way for the Rapture. For many evangelicals, the move cemented Trump’s status as the new Cyrus, who oversaw the Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. The tightening of the evangelical grip on the administration has also been reflected in a growing hostility to the UN, often portrayed as a sinister and godless organisation. Since the US ambassador, Nikki Haley, announced her departure in October and Pompeo took more direct control, the US mission has become increasingly combative, blocking references to gender and reproductive health in UN documents. Some theologians also see an increasingly evangelical tinge to the administration’s broader Middle East policies, in particular its fierce embrace of Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, the lack of balancing sympathy for the Palestinians – and the insistent demonisation of the Iranian government. Evangelicals, Chesnut said, “now see the United States locked into a holy war against the forces of evil who they see as embodied by Iran”. In a speech at the end of a regional tour on Thursday, Pompeo reprised the theme, describing Iran as a “cancerous influence”. This zeal for a defining struggle has thus far found common cause with more secular hawks such as the national security adviser, John Bolton, and Trump’s own drive to eliminate the legacy of Barack Obama, whose signature foreign policy achievement was the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, which Trump abrogated last May. In conversations with European leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and Theresa May, Trump has reportedly insisted he has no intention of going to war with Iran. His desire to extricate US troops from Syria marks a break with hawks, religious and secular, who want to contain Iranian influence there. But the logic of his policy of ever-increasing pressure, coupled with unstinting support for Israel and Saudi Arabia, makes confrontation with Iran ever more likely. One of the most momentous foreign policy questions of 2019 is whether Trump can veer away from the collision course he has helped set in motion – perhaps conjuring up a last minute deal, as he did with North Korea – or instead welcome conflict as a distraction from his domestic woes, and sell it the faithful as a crusade.Wanted: lighthouse keepers. Location: a tiny island with remarkable views of San Francisco. Salary: approximately $130,000. A job search sure to stoke fantasy and envy is now under way for two keepers who will be based at the East Brother Light Station, which has lit up the northern reaches of San Francisco Bay since 1873. Although they will share the salary and require qualifications that will rule out many would-be applicants, there has already been broad interest in the positions. A local group saved the station from planned demolition in the 1970s, lobbying for its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places and working to restore and manage it as a bed and breakfast. Upon arrival, guests receive champagne and hors d’oeuvres. After a tour of the little station complex – the Victorian quarters; the lighthouse, which remains operational; a centuries old-rain cistern – they enjoy a multi-course dinner and a gourmet breakfast the next morning. The job is certainly alluring, concedes Jillian Meeker, one of the outgoing lighthouse keepers. It’s also a whole lot of work. Since the keepers, usually a couple, are the station’s only workers, the necessary skillset is as unique as the place itself. Keepers must cook those gourmet meals, clean, provide spotless customer service, organize supply runs, and pilot the station’s single boat, which requires a captain’s license from the US Coast Guard. But Meeker and her partner, Che Rodgers, just so happen to fit those qualifications. Rodgers grew up working on fishing boats in Alaska, then later in fine dining and on cruise ships. Meeker ran a bed and breakfast for four years and loves baking. The East Brother schedule is grueling, often running from early morning until late night. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are spent doing laundry, completing a lengthy grocery trip, and addressing pending maintenance – and as the salt air eats away at 150-year-old structures, there’s always maintenance. Over the weekends, Rodgers and Meeker juggle ferrying guests to and from the island with preparing dinner and breakfast for and cleaning up after as many as 10 people. The job, first reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, requires a combination of meticulous planning and adaptability in the face of unexpected weather, broken appliances, and a variety of guest needs in a place where problems can’t be solved with a run to the grocery or hardware store. Meeker and Rodgers will be helping with interviews for the next keepers, with 1 May as the formal lighthouse handover date. They’re looking for a couple who have thought about how to divide the considerable workload sustainably and who understand that caring for East Brother means more than the romantic image of living in a lighthouse. They’ll miss the small moments on the island, especially sitting outside reading with the gulls for company or finding old photos during routine cleanings and repairs. That’s Meeker’s favorite part, she said: “Uncovering tiny pieces of the history. There’s so much more, too, and that’s the hard part – leaving before we’ve solved all the mysteries.”Mauricio Pochettino has defended his record at Tottenham and argued claiming silverware would serve only to “build egos” rather than maintain progress after seeing his team knocked out of a second domestic cup competition in four days. A side sporting seven changes from the Carabao Cup semi-final defeat by Chelsea on Thursday departed the FA Cup 2-0 at the hands of Crystal Palace, leaving Spurs, wounded by fatigue and injury, to concentrate on their Champions League tie against Borussia Dortmund and, realistically, a top-four finish in the Premier League. Pochettino, who has yet to claim a trophy in his managerial career, admitted disappointment at this rather meek defeat but suggested trophies would not maintain Spurs’ development as a club. “We are going to create a debate that to win a trophy is going to help the club,” he said. “I don’t agree with that. That only builds your ego. In reality the most important thing is being consistently in the top four and playing in the Champions League. That is going to help the club to achieve the last step. “The club is doing fantastically well. It’s so successful. In the last four or five years we’ve been fighting in different ways to achieve what the club needs, to be in the level of Chelsea, United, City, Arsenal or Liverpool. People wish we could win some trophies. But, being realistic, we are a team not built to win titles still.” Pochettino should have Son Heung-min, back from the Asia Cup, available for Wednesday’s game against Watford at Wembley. “It’s true, this season has been tough,” he said. “But to be a contender is always difficult for us. Now the realistic targets are trying to be in the top four, to try and be close to Manchester City and Liverpool and reduce the gap. Another is to try to beat Dortmund and be in the next round. “That will be tough. We are competing against a team who are doing fantastically well in Germany, who are top of the table and have come back off their [mid-season] holidays. They are all fresh and we are the opposite. But we have to be positive. We are still in two competitions, in a good position in the Premier League and the Champions League, which is a massive motivation for the club. We have to be strong.”Angela Merkel arrived in Greece on Thursday for a two-day visit to the country that has posed some of the greatest challenges of her time at the helm of Europe’s powerhouse economy. It is a trip heavy with symbolism for a leader whose policies have defined the continent and who has announced she will leave office at the end of her term in 2021. And, from the start when prime minister Alexis Tsipras pronounced that the visit marked “the end of a difficult cycle between our two countries,” vastly different in mood, colour and tone to her previous stopovers at the height of the euro crisis. Then, thousands took to the streets, some dressed in Nazi garb and giving the Hitler salute, in displays of protest against the woman widely deplored as the queen of economic austerity – the price of Berlin bailing out debt-stricken Athens. This time demonstrations in downtown Athens are banned and it was smiles and warm embraces that greeted the chancellor. As prime minister, Tsipras, the once fiery leftist who relished taunting “Madam Merkel” as her most trenchant critic in opposition, went out of his way to issue platitudes as Merkel, in green jacket and smiling irrepressibly, sat before him at the start of talks. Late on Monday, the Greek leader said Merkel had long wanted to visit Athens in what would amount to a victory tour as she approaches the end of her time in office. “She has wanted to come for some time because she considers it also her own success that while Greece was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2015, it has managed to recover and of course remain in the central core of the European Union,” he told the TV channel Open Beyond. Despite the animus that had initially marred ties, both had built up a “relationship of trust,” he said, using unusually warm language to applaud the leader for her handling of successive crises. “Mrs Merkel is a personality who has played a defining role in European affairs in recent years. She is one of the longest-serving chancellors … For sure, she bears responsibility,” he added, alluding to the excoriating fiscal policies demanded by Berlin, blamed for eviscerating the Greek middle class. “But there are positive things, too, that Europe has done that are to her credit. Our relationship was marked by the fact that Greece was going through a difficult time, but for Europe, and for Angela Merkel, it was a difficult time too.” Ahead of the visit, the 64-year-old chancellor also sounded a conciliatory note acknowledging that the “past few years have been very difficult for many people in Greece”. In remarks to the conservative daily, Kathimerini, she applauded the “great progress” the thrice-bailed-out country had made, insisting that Berlin would continue to stand by Athens as efforts continued to reform and modernise its economy. Greece exited its third EU-sponsored bailout programme in August, ending almost a decade of dependency on international aid. “I would like to reassure Greece that in this course it can continue to count on its partnership and friendship with Germany.” At a time when Europe is faced with new threats, including an ascendant far right and the appeal of populist demagogy, the visit is aimed as much at healing past wounds as turning a new page, officials and analysts said. “Europe has changed. There are new challenges like Donald Trump, who is completely unpredictable and has made the need for Europe to remain united greater than ever before,” said Stelios Kouloglou, an MEP with Greece’s leftist Syriza party. “There are times when you can feel a nostalgia for people who in the past you may have been totally against,” he told the Guardian. “In the face of extremism, with hardliners on the rise, this is one of them.” Merkel has repeatedly warned against the perils of resurgent nationalism, describing it as the biggest threat to global security in her New Year’s Eve address. In Tsipras she had found a staunch ally in her policies towards refugees and controversial decision to take in more than a million asylum seekers at the height of the migrant crisis in 2015. As the country on the frontline of massive migratory flows from Turkey, Greece had openly supported the EU accord reached with Ankara to limit the arrivals. “It was a time when Merkel needed the Greek government on her side and Tsipras rose to that challenge,” said Ulrich Storck, who heads the Athens office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung political institute, which has promoted Greek-German ties. “After his first months in office when Tsipras decided to change course and implement fiscal polices he had previously opposed, he took a very pragmatic path and that has played a big role in warming relations. Perhaps on the ground there is still a lot of anger but both leaders now get on very well.” Tsipras’s determined efforts to resolve the long-running row over Macedonia’s name, supporting a landmark accord that will see Greece’s northern neighbour being rechristened the Republic of Northern Macedonia, has also been welcomed by Merkel. Germany, like other EU members, says resolution of the dispute is crucial to shoring up the stability of the fragile western Balkans at a time of mounting Russian influence in the region. In contrast, the leader of Greece’s main opposition party, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a natural ally for the conservative Merkel, has strongly opposed the deal and vowed to vote against the agreement when the Greek parliament is expected to ratify it later this month.The progressive billionaire Tom Steyer will not run for the White House. Steyer announced he would not pursue a presidential bid at an event in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday afternoon. Steyer, who earned his fortune as a hedge fund manager, has appeared around the country to organize around his Need to Impeach group, an effort to encourage support for the impeachment of Donald Trump. The group built a formidable email list of more than 6 million people committed to removing Trump from office. “The impeachment question has reached an inflection point. That’s why I just announced that I will be dedicating 100% of my time and effort in 2019 towards Mr Trump’s impeachment and removal from office,” said Steyer. The news was first reported by the New York Times. He announced on Wednesday that he commit another $40m of his fortune to the group and defined success as either the House beginning impeachment proceedings or Trump resigning from office. The billionaire outlined the initial steps that his group would take including town halls in Nevada, New Hampshire and Washington DC over the next month, as well as efforts to organize in the districts of key Democratic congressional committee chairs and an “impeachment summit” to be held in late January in Washington DC. Steyer noted the unusual location for a potential candidate to announce that they would not pursue a campaign in his remarks. “Most people come to Iowa around this time to announce a campaign for president but I am proud to be here to announce that I’ll do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to remove a president,” he said. The San Francisco Democrat has poured his fortune into progressive causes in recent years. The liberal advocacy group that he founded, Next Gen America, spent heavily in the 2018 midterms to gin up turnout among young voters. He began his political involvement after the 2012 election to rally around the issue of climate change, a topic he has long been vocal about. Although Steyer had gone so far as to advertise job listings for potential staff members, he decided against a pursuing a presidential bid.Tales of recovery and of new beginnings – from Cinderella to A Christmas Carol or Matt Haig’s recent bestseller Reasons to Stay Alive – are powerfully attractive. They lead us to believe that we can make things afresh and, at the start of a new year, that is what we need. I had a baby last Christmas and subsequently much of my reading over the year has been about becoming a parent. Memoirs by Rachel Cusk, Anne Enright and Rivka Galchen all have passages of insight and identification but the best was Expecting by Scottish journalist Chitra Ramaswamy, on pregnancy, her own and in literature. She’s a beautiful writer and this book – which moves from an Edinburgh loo, through Sylvia Plath and Susan Sontag, to the Hebrides, to Anna Karenina, to the birthing pool and operating theatre – was my treasured companion in the early secretive days of pregnancy; it reassured me that you can make the move into motherhood without losing your intellect. I’ll be giving copies to expectant friends. The other excellent parenting title I read was psychologist Charles Fernyhough’s The Baby in the Mirror, in which he closely observes the first three years of his daughter’s life and combines this with what is known scientifically about child development. I particularly enjoyed a deconstruction of a game of I-spy, characteristically forensic as well as affectionate. I only came to the Patrick Melrose novels, the first of which were published in the 1990s, after watching the excellent 2018 TV adaptation, but Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn is brilliant: he has such a singular voice – terrifying and piercingly funny. I’m fascinated with the shadows that childhood can cast, explored in this case through the abuse of Melrose, a cipher for St Aubyn. It shows how the building blocks of a personality are laid and has an unbeatable ear for the particular wrong-headed attitudes and monstrous characters of its upper-class setting – laced with a complicated affection for them. Another novel, more recently published, is All Among the Barley by Melissa Harrison, set in 1933 in a rural East Anglian community, looking at what led to the beginning of the second world war. “Farming, folklore and fascism” is how the author herself flippantly describes it. It is precise and moving on agricultural practices and tradition, and the natural world, including a subplot about the endangered corncrake. Protagonist Edie is at the beginning of adulthood and negotiating her choices, with temptation from the glamorous Constance FitzAllen, a dangerously alluring character. In 2019 I will celebrate eight years sober. In The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath, Leslie Jamison, one of the most accomplished and challenging essayists around, explores the topic at (quite some) length. It is not your average recovery memoir – it takes a step back and examines dominating narratives of addiction and recovery and the myth of the tortured artist. Anyone considering using the new year as a prompt to change their drinking habits will find much to consider here. Jamison fights, as I have, to write about what comes after getting sober – not the drunken backstory but the reality of a positive new start: “I’d always been enthralled by stories of wreckage. But I wanted to know if stories about getting better could ever be as compelling as stories about falling apart. I needed to believe they could.” • Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun is published by Canongate.The celebratory biopic Stan & Ollie is attracting reviews every bit as affectionate as the film’s own treatment of Laurel and Hardy. That’s only right. The movie itself may be no great shakes, but the performances by Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C Reilly as Oliver Hardy are enough on their own to have audiences blubbing like Stan or waggling their ties in the manner of Ollie. As they shuffle around the UK in the early 1950s on what was to be their final stage tour, we get the arguments (Ollie: “You loved Laurel and Hardy but you never loved me!”) and the tenderness (Stan: “All we had was each other: it was just the way we wanted it”), as well as the occasional insight into the dynamics of duos. What it can’t explain – and shouldn’t be expected to – is why male comedy double acts endure while female ones remain an anomaly. Never underestimate the ingrained sexism of male impresarios, who must have decreed that audiences simply don’t respond to female double acts, explaining away the ones that work as exceptions to the rule. But perhaps there is some deeper reason why the sight of two women performing harmoniously together as heightened versions of themselves has never properly clicked, or never been allowed to. Laurel and Hardy were permitted to do it; so too were Morecambe and Wise, Little and Large, Cannon and Ball, the Two Ronnies, and Flanagan and Allen. Yet the most visible female double act in my own 1970s childhood was Hinge and Bracket – and they weren’t even women. Male friendship and rivalry is routinely the stuff of comedy. Does the notion of women getting along – or not – make us so uncomfortable that we can’t even bear to laugh at it? Female double acts don’t appear to be thin on the ground, but try to cite examples and you quickly find yourself naming characters rather than comics. Yes, French and Saunders are a delirious inspiration: 20 years and six series (not to mention countless live shows) in which Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were seemingly allowed to do whatever they pleased, concocting increasingly ambitious sketches, film spoofs and musical parodies. And, more unusually, playing themselves in linking scenes similar to Morecambe and Wise’s meandering intros and side-by-side bedtime conflabs. Before French and Saunders there was also Wood and Walters, though both Victoria Wood and Julia Walters found greater fame and success in their solo work. But venture beyond those examples and the disparity between male and female becomes clear. Patsy (Joanna Lumley) and Edina (Jennifer Saunders) in Absolutely Fabulous (inspired by a French and Saunders sketch) are characters. So, too, Laverne & Shirley, Kath & Kim, Ilana and Abbi from Broad City. Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine are also playing characters in their brilliant and profane agony-aunt podcast Dear Joan and Jericha. Perhaps the nearest latter-day example of women being allowed to operate by the same rules as men is the knowing comedy-drama Doll & Em, in which Dolly Wells and Emily Mortimer play warped versions of themselves à la Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip. See what I did there? I took a female achievement and explained it by way of comparison to a male-oriented precursor. And therein lies one of the problems: whatever women do, they are likely to be judged according to rules and precedents established by men. Gender imbalance in the industry means that men have always been judged on the basis of whether they are funny or not, whereas women tend to be expected to reinvent the wheel and walk on water, preferably at the same time. Or, at the very least, to bear responsibility for the future comedy prospects of their entire gender. When Mathew Horne and James Corden were savaged for their lacklustre BBC Three sketch show Horne & Corden in 2009, no one said it was the end of male comedy duos; it was just an instance of talented performers overestimating their own appeal. Yet if a show by a female couple fails to capture audiences’ imagination – think of Watson & Oliver on BBC2 in 2012, or Anna & Katy on Channel 4 the next year – it’s sometimes treated as a cautionary tale for women in comedy. The same rule persists in cinema, where any amount of male-led movies can flop without affecting adversely the chances of similar projects, while a single female-oriented failure is used as proof positive that women don’t sell. Yet if we’re complaining that there aren’t enough female double acts, perhaps we’re looking in the wrong places: the rise of YouTube and podcasts must have taught us that. And out in the world of live comedy, away from the bet-hedging and fence-sitting of TV commissioning, there are always plenty of female double acts taking risks: Lola and Jo, Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit (Sh!t Theatre) or Maddy and Marina Bye, Ruby Wax’s daughters, who perform as Siblings. And no one who has seen the peerless Beard can possibly read the last rites on women in sketch comedy. One of the most spookily deranged comedy experiences I’ve ever had was in the company of duo Matilda Wnek and Rosa Robson who began their set milling around on stage silently, draped in sheets from which elongated flowers would occasionally emerge like feelers. At some point over the course of the next hour, I was dragged on stage to help one of the performers give birth to a basketball. It owed as much to theatre company Complicité as comedy and was all the more invigorating for that. Especially pleasing in this context is the consideration given by Stan & Ollie’s screenwriter, Jeff Pope, to the women in the comics’ lives. By the time the film hits its stride, Stan is on his fourth and last wife, Ida (Nina Arianda), while Ollie is on his third, Lucille (Shirley Henderson). As the women bicker publicly at a post-show shindig, an embarrassed promoter puts a positive spin on it for the assembled guests: “Two double acts for the price of one!” And that’s exactly what the film gives us. Arianda and Henderson make Ida and Lucille every bit as interesting as Stan and Ollie. There is even an echo of Stan’s loving gesture towards Ollie (he places his hand on his partner’s during troubled times) in the eventual rapprochement of these women, who are shown to be very much more than merely the wives of famous men. • Ryan Gilbey is film critic of the New Statesman and writes on film for the GuardianIf Mauricio Pochettino could have picked one Premier League team to start playing against without his top scorer and his most in-form attacker, then he would surely have plumped for Fulham. Claudio Ranieri’s defensively chaotic side are the perfect opponents in a far-from-ideal scenario for Tottenham, who must learn to cope without Harry Kane and Son Heung-min. It will still be interesting to see how Mauricio Pochettino tries to overcome those losses. Perhaps he will ask Dele Alli or Lucas Moura to play as a shifty striker or maybe he’ll deploy Fernando Llorente, a more conventional centre-forward who netted a hat-trick in the recent annihilation of Tranmere Rovers? Or the manager might even push his faith in youth to an unprecedented extreme by giving a start to the highly promising 16-year-old Irish striker Troy Parrott, who has yet to appear for the senior team? Whatever the manager opts for, Spurs can be confident of victory given that Fulham have been so hapless this season that they even managed to concede two goals last week despite restricting Burnley to no shots on target. PD The talk of Claude Puel being on the verge of the sack at Leicester is a nonsense, or at least it should be. The Frenchman was booed during last week’s defeat to Southampton but fans and certain journalists seem to have the blinkers on to the wider picture, hungry for the next headline. Leicester sit eighth, one place and one point off their highest realistic target of seventh. In the last month they have beaten Chelsea, Manchester City and Everton. Yes, the FA Cup defeat to Newport was poor but more lasting positives – from Puel’s immaculate conduct and poise in the aftermath of their chairman’s death to his role in the development of James Maddison and Ben Chilwell – should endear him to both the board and his fans. Moreover, who would even replace Puel? Brendan Rodgers and Chris Coleman seem to be the favourites to replace him. Whatever the result against Wolves this weekend, Leicester should stick with Claude. MB One of the more interesting developments of Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s brief but eventful tenure at Manchester United has been Victor Lindelöf’s drastic improvement. The centre-back has completed 90 minutes in all five Premier League matches under Solskjær and been excellent; positionally sound, dominant in the air and with the sort of ferocious but well-timed tackles that made Nemanja Vidic such a cult figure. The visit of Brighton shouldn’t present as stern an examination as Kane and Son at Wembley last Sunday, the Seagulls have scored nine times on the road in the league this season, but holds a degree of symbolism for the Swede. The reverse fixture last August witnessed a performance the polar opposite of his current form as United lost 3-2, while a mistake against Spurs the following week, prompted Jamie Carragher to rule: “I actually feel a bit sorry for him, he should not be playing at this level.” Lindelöf is making that assessment look increasingly rash. JP Wilfried Zaha has blown hot and cold in recent months but he is still one of the last opponents a side would wish to face when shorn of their best right-backs. The injury to Trent Alexander-Arnold, on top of the absence of Joe Gomez, means that for the visit to Anfield of Crystal Palace, Jürgen Klopp will probably have to resort to the plan that he was so eager to avoid at Brighton and use James Milner at right-back. As a bona fide utility superman, Milner can be expected to do as well in the role as he did in recent wins over Wolves and Bournemouth but that will not be good enough if Zaha is on song. On the plus side for Liverpool, having to play Milner (and Fabinho) in defence practically obliges Klopp to start Xherdan Shaqiri in midfield again. The Swiss was below par at Brighton but has previously demonstrated that he has the ingenuity required to link sharply with Liverpool’s front trio. Get that connection right and Liverpool should open up a seven-point lead on Saturday before Manchester City take on Huddersfield a day later. PD Newcastle’s 4-2 victory over Championship side Blackburn in their FA Cup third round replay on Tuesday was comprehensively their biggest of the campaign (albeit inside 120 minutes) and only time the fifth time they’ve beaten an opponent by two goals or more since the start of the 2017-18 season. On just three occasions have they found the target more than once this term while Saturday’s opponents are equally as awful in the final third, Cardiff having scored one goal in their last five games in all competitions. Unsurprisingly, the two teams rank 17th and 18th in the Premier League for chances created per game (Newcastle 7.6, Cardiff 7.4) and average shots on target (Newcastle 3.2, Cardiff 3.0), which adds up to a bleak afternoon on Tyneside. That being said, if one individual – Salomón Rondón or Ayoze Pérez for the hosts and Callum Paterson or Víctor Camarasa for the Welsh side – can produce, it’s likely to be decisive and absolutely vital in the context of the relegation battle. JP It will be interesting to see if Maurizio Sarri deploys Olivier Giroud against the Frenchman’s former club, Arsenal, this weekend. The World Cup winner will be itching for his first start of 2019; not only is there a point to prove to Gunners fans but with possibly the last chance to remind those in blue of his undeniable quality before Gonzalo Higuaín’s probable arrival at Stamford Bridge. Barcelona have been linked with a move for the 32-year-old this week and if Sarri opts for a more mobile central striker at Arsenal – Hazard played there last week against Newcastle – one could forgive Giroud for dreaming of Catalonia. MB Nathaniel Clyne was last included in an England squad in May 2017 but his subsequent time in the wilderness at Liverpool, through injury and the emergence of Alexander-Arnold and Gomez, has left him firmly out of the international picture. That undoubtedly influenced the right-back decision to move to Bournemouth on loan where he has played 90 minutes in both of the Cherries’ games since his switch south. He’s set to make his first home Premier League start for his new club against West Ham in what will be a significant test, matched up against Felipe Anderson. The Brazilian presents a unique threat; whether he opts to dribble 1v1, drift inside and potentially drag his marker out of position with Aaron Cresswell overlapping, make a run behind the defence or attempt to play one of his clever inside passes. A strong performance at the Vitality Stadium can help Clyne show he deserves to still be part of the England conversation. JP Who’s the best manager outside of the top six? Eddie Howe? Nuno Espírito Santo? Manuel Pellegrini? Rafael Benítez? He’s rarely in the discussion but, on this season’s evidence, it has to be Javi Gracia. The understated Spaniard, who on Monday celebrates a year in charge of Watford, has guided his team to seventh as the “best of the rest” and, bar a run of three defeats in late November/early December, two against Liverpool and Manchester City, the expected winter slump hasn’t materialised. This is following a minimal transfer spend in the summer (approximately £26m) plus the sale of their most potent attacking player in Richarlison, highlighting the weight of Gracia’s coaching ability and the methodical squad planning behind the scenes at Vicarage Road. An encounter against a resurgent Burnley, led by Watford old boy Sean Dyche, presents its own complications but Gracia’s malleable and adaptive style has, so far, shown Watford capable of playing their way around teams or winning ugly. JP The atmosphere at the John Smith’s Stadium has been among the best in the Premier League, even during a campaign in which results and luck have gone against Huddersfield with dispiriting regularity. But the mood could be different on Sunday as there will inevitably be at least a hint of sadness at the absence from the sideline of David Wagner, who remains much loved despite the club’s position at the foot of the Premier League and his departure from the role of manager this week. Mark Hudson, temporarily promoted from his U-23 coaching job, has the mighty task of trying to pick up a team that has not won in 10 matches and getting them to stop a Manchester City side in ominous title-chasing mode. Might there still be wonders at Huddersfield after Wagner? PD Nathan Redmond was in the news for the wrong reasons on Thursday – it was his penalty miss that was decisive in Southampton’s FA Cup shootout defeat to Derby. But the 24-year-old also scored a delicious goal – dinking in a cute finish – and anyone watching Saints since the arrival of Ralph Hasenhüttl will know the forward has been a revelation of late with five goals in the past seven games. But it is also his defensive discipline that is so valued by Hasenhüttl, who this week declared “what he did [in the win over Leicester], defending his own box and clearing the ball – that is a new Nathan Redmond.” The Austrian will be hoping Redmond gets over his penalty disappointment for the visit of Everton and puts in another big performance against Everton. MBMilitary tribunal hearings against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 conspirators have been delayed after the overseeing judge was flown out of Guantánamo Bay because of an unspecified medical emergency. Pre-trial hearings, due to last for the remainder of the week, have been suspended while US Marine Colonel Keith Parrella receives medical treatment. His condition is not thought to be immediately life-threatening, but is serious and developed abruptly. On Tuesday Parrella was issuing rulings on the next day’s hearings. He had shown no outward signs of ill health, but at 7pm on Tuesday evening he summoned defence and prosecution lawyers and informed them he was being flown out of the US military base in south-east Cuba back to the mainland for urgent medical treatment. The Office of Military Commissions issued a brief statement saying: “Due to a medical issue impacting the military judge’s ability to work, the rest of the session is cancelled.” Parrella was made judge in the 9/11 case last August, taking control of a case that has been dogged by false starts, procedural delays and controversy over the military commissions themselves. The defendants, accused of having orchestrated the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon killing nearly 3,000 people, were first charged in 2008. But the case is still in its preliminary phase, with a trial not expected to begin before 2020 at the earliest. Much of the contention is testimony from the defendants obtained after long periods of torture in CIA “black sites” before they were flown to Guantánamo. Parrella’s fitness to try the case is being challenged in federal court by defence lawyers for failing to disclose the extent of prior relationships with members of the prosecution team. On Monday one of the defendants, Ramzi bin al-Shibh – a Yemeni accused of arranging for some of the hijackers to go to flight school in the US and helping finance the operation – challenged Parrella’s authority to preside over the court. The defendant had raised a similar objection before, but on this occasion Parrella appeared rattled by the challenge and said his attitude “could potentially put everyone in this room’s safety in jeopardy” – a claim that surprised defence lawyers, who interpreted it as a threat to shackle the prisoner. On the same day, defence lawyers threatened to boycott proceedings over what they said was aggressive FBI questioning of a legal assistant who had left Guantánamo in December. On Tuesday, Parrella heard opposing arguments over whether the testimony of a former defence interpreter could be heard in open court. Defendants had claimed they had seen the interpreter at a “black site” and it was confirmed he had worked for the CIA. Defence lawyers have been seeking to question him on whether he had been CIA infiltrator. Parrella ruled that the hearing would have to be held behind closed doors.Brexit did not come from nowhere. The jerry-built utopianism, the indifference to and ignorance of how the British live and what they need to keep them safe, the know-nothing pride in ignorant generalisations and the cocksure love of sweeping solutions have their roots in the right that emerged a decade ago. Before the Brexiters wrecked the country, they wrecked the lives of the poor. Universal credit was the Conservatives’ fantasy when they took power 2010. Iain Duncan Smith offered a dream so seductive that even his natural critics could not find it in their hearts to condemn him unequivocally. His grand project would remove disincentives to work. It would simplify the complicated and create a benefits system that was “a doorway to real aspiration and achievement”. If Brexit incinerated the rules of prudence, the right’s treatment of the poor provided the kindling Who could object to that? But then who could not want Vote Leave’s promise that we could find £350m a week for the NHS to come good? Or Michael Gove and Boris Johnson’s promise that Brexit would involve “no change to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic”? Or Liam Fox’s promise that the EU would grant us the “easiest trade deal” in history? Only when sadists talk to masochists do you hear promises of pain and, although the British now look like masochists led by sadists rather than lions led by donkeys, the record shows that they have been fed on a diet of apple-pie. That Duncan Smith and the Christian rightwingers who gathered around him meant well and promised inspiring changes in no way exonerates them from the misery that followed. At their best, Tories follow Edmund Burke and are suspicious of idealistic claims that the world can be transformed. “The lines of morality are not like ideal lines of mathematics,” Burke said. “They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the rules of prudence.” Duncan Smith and his fellow half-educated idealists thought they could understand poverty like a mathematical theorem If Brexit incinerated the rules of prudence, the right’s treatment of the poor provided the kindling. Universal credit brought homelessness and pushed families to beg at food banks because Duncan Smith and his fellow half-educated idealists thought they could understand poverty like a mathematical theorem. They say now that their revolution failed because the Treasury stabbed their utopian plans in the back when it failed to provide sufficient resources – and you should get used to “stab in the back” theories because you will hear little else as the disillusionment with Brexit grows and the charlatans who led us on bluster like toddlers denying they wrecked the playpen. In truth, universal credit was doomed from the start. The right failed to see the poor as they were rather than as they wanted them to be. People are losing tenancies and going without food not only because universal credit is underfunded but because it imposes delays of five weeks or more before it pays anything at all to claimants. The delays are a matter of deliberate policy. In 2010, rightwingers wanted poverty to be the result of chaotic lives, alcoholism, drug addiction and, above all, for this is was what got the religious right’s rocks off, the breakdown of traditional families. They blamed individuals, not the system. A month’s wait for money would make the feckless pull themselves together and learn to live like members of the respectable middle class, who must wait a month for their first salary cheques when they take new jobs. The bulk of the working poor are hyper-organised to a degree that their more fortunate compatriots cannot imagine Leave aside, if you can, that much casual work isn’t paid monthly but weekly or daily, and that by definition if you don’t have money you don’t have savings to fall back on, and consider the lives of the actual poor. Alcoholics and other addicts are indeed chaotic, but the bulk of the working poor are hyper-organised to a degree that their more fortunate compatriots cannot imagine. As Helen Barnard from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says, the mother who is running between childcare and serial part-time jobs, counting every penny in Aldi and watching every minute of her waking day lives a meticulously ordered existence. Brexit is a globalised version of the same failure to see the world as it is rather than how the right insists it must be. The greatest delusion is one that Burke would have laughed to scorn: the belief that we can have a wrenching economic, diplomatic and constitutional change without breaking into a sweat. Don’t laugh. Millions still believe in a Brexit without tears and their leaders are still promising they can have it. A second delusion flowed from the first: that the countries of the European Union would quail before the newly resurgent British as we awoke like lions from their slumber and scramble to meet our demands. This is what David Davis meant when he said British negotiators would be striking deals in Berlin rather than Brussels. As it is, the supposedly squabbling nations of the EU have held together, while the British political system has imploded. In 2013, when Duncan Smith was still rhapsodising about his coming utopia and no one apart from a handful of cranks was thinking about Brexit, the Conservative MP Jesse Norman published a fine study of Burke. I don’t wish to attack him or his work – it’s a relief to find a politician who can write so well. Inevitably, given the author and his subject, it read as a hymn to the Tory belief that the “proper attitude of those who aspire to power is humility, modesty and a sense of public duty”. Now Norman sits in a “Conservative” party surrounded by immodest men and women who prefer to wreck the nation’s finances and threaten the peace in Ireland and the union with Scotland rather than consider, even for a moment, that they might be wrong. Whether the Conservative party can survive the loss of its Burkean tradition is a question that will worry only Tories. Whether Britain can is the only pressing concern for the rest of us. • Nick Cohen is an Observer columnistThe defining match of the 1969 Australian Open was the first men’s singles semi-final. Over the course of four and a half hours, Rod Laver and Tony Roche traded blows in a 90-game marathon in temperatures pushing 40C. Laver’s writing collaborator Bud Collins later recalled both men keeping their cool in the punishing conditions by stuffing wet cabbage leaves underneath their cloth hats. When participants at the opening grand slam of 2019 sit down during the change of ends they are protected from the sun’s glare by a custom built shade that unfurls from bespoke chairs like a bird of paradise conducting a courtship ritual, and if conditions become too oppressive in the open air a roof can cocoon centre court within five minutes. Times have changed over the 50 years of Australia’s most prestigious sporting event. After outlasting Roche, Laver went on to collect the maiden Australian Open title, lifting the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup at Milton Courts in Brisbane in front of just 3,500 spectators. The Associated Press reported that the small crowd and $15,120 loss incurred by tournament organisers “cast a shadow on the future of open competition”. “It was a big loss, but it won’t kill us,” a spokesman for the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia said. The inaugural Australian Open remains the only time the championship has been staged in Queensland. The following year it moved to Sydney’s White City Tennis Club where it remained for two editions before finding a more permanent base amongst the wooden panels of Melbourne’s Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club. In the tournament’s earliest days, before 1969 and the dawning of professionalism, the AO was the Australian Championships and before that the Australasian Championships, even venturing across the Tasman twice between the event’s conception in 1905 and the outbreak of WWI. It was bestowed with major championship status in 1924. The 16 years the AO spent at Kooyong were its last on grass and they oversaw the transition of an event dominated by Australians to one where cheap and easy intercontinental travel has helped make it near-impossible for a local hope to win. In the men’s singles Mark Edmondson’s victory in 1976 was the 50th by an Australian in 63 stagings. The past 42 years have been barren, pockmarked by five losing finalists. The most agonising of these were the successive five-set defeats endured by Pat Cash in 1987 and 1988 to Stefan Edberg and Mats Wilander during a Swedish love affair with the Open that straddled Kooyong and Melbourne Park. Cash unwittingly gave Wilander a leg-up before the second of those losses, allowing his friend and rival practice time on the court in his family home to help him acclimatise to the Rebound Ace surface at the new venue. That new venue, once an unprepossessing jumble of concrete, has since gone on to establish itself among the premier sporting facilities in the world with three stadium courts boasting retractable roofs. “It’s amazing to think 30 years ago there was the great vision and foresight to get a stadium with a retractable roof,” Craig Tiley, CEO of Tennis Australia said last week. “It’s been the envy of the world,” beamed Davis Cup icon Neale Fraser, the man tasked with pushing the button for the first roof opening in 1988 and again just a few days ago following upgrades to slash the time it takes the roof to complete its journey. The lid was no use in 1995 though when drainage failed, the power went out, and Rod Laver Arena flooded. Three years earlier Jim Courier engaged in a hazardous watery activity entirely of his own volition, jumping into the Yarra river that flows alongside the tennis precinct. Despite Courier starting a trend continued by modern champions Life Saving Victoria advises against the celebration in such a notorious drowning blackspot. It’s also illegal to swim in that section of the river (with the risk of a fine of up to $1,000), although no tennis stars have been prosecuted. While Courier was taking a dip, the women’s champion Monica Seles was basking in the success of the second of her four Australian Open titles. Three of those arrived in quicktime – while still a teenager – before tragedy struck and her career was interrupted. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when she returned in 1996 to add one more Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup to her collection. “She’s endured something none of us can relate to,” Paul McNamee told New York Times. “We’re privileged as a tournament that this was her first victory in a major since her comeback.” The comeback narrative has provided further high points in the women’s draw in recent decades. At the turn of the 90s Jennifer Capriati was a school-age curiosity but it wasn’t until her second career was blossoming in 2001 that she satisfied her grand slam ambition. A decade later Kim Clijsters cemented her place in the hearts of Australian tennis fans by claiming the Australian Open for the first time, becoming only the third mother to achieve the feat in the open era, following in the footsteps of Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong Cawley. The Australian Open is now a fixture on the global sporting calendar and synonymous with Melbourne. “It’s a great celebration of our city,” states Tiley, an adopted Melburnian, “and it’s great for our city to be showcased around the world. Anyone that watches the Australian Open – and there’s a billion people that do during those two weeks – get an identity with Melbourne.” That identity is now recognisably blue, Australian Open True Blue, to be precise, the palate that has dominated Melbourne Park since the shift from Rebound Ace to Plexicushion Prestige in 2008. This has provided the backdrop to some of the high points of a golden age of men’s tennis, including all six of Novak Djokovic’s record-equalling titles and Rafael Nadal’s solitary championship victory in 2009, remembered as much for Roger Federer’s tears late in the summer night following a final for the ages. The contemporary Australian Open experience is now a world away from that first tournament 50 years ago, but linkages remain. Margaret Court, who swept the women’s singles, doubles and mixed doubles in Brisbane, has her own arena, as does Rod Laver, whose name continues to cast a warm glow over Australian tennis. You can even find a cabbage leaf or two, only this time on the exclusive AO Chef Series menu.Years after writing his breakout musical In the Heights in the basement of New York’s Drama Book Shop, Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda has saved it from closing by buying the shop. The actor and lyricist has teamed up with two of his colleagues from his hit musical Hamilton to purchase the Drama Book Shop, a 100-year-old script, sheet music and theatre-related bookseller currently located in Midtown Manhattan. The move is a joint effort between the three men and the city to save the cultural institution, with the hunt now on for a new location nearby. Miranda told the New York Times: “When I was in high school I would go to the old location and sit on the floor and read plays – I didn’t have the money to buy them … when we heard that the rent increase was finally too precipitous to withstand, we began hatching a plan.” It is not the first time Miranda has shown his love for the shop. In 2016, after a burst pipe wiped out a third of the shop’s stock, Miranda appealed to his fans to help with the Twitter hashtag #BuyABook, writing at length about his memories of the shop. Subsequently, the shop reported a dramatic increase in sales; manager Shawn Verrier told PIX11 that customers were ringing to place large orders without specifying any titles: “People are calling in, saying can I buy $200 worth of books, you guys pick them out and just send them to me.” However, in October 2018, the shop’s vice-president Allen Hubby announced that it would be closing its shop in midtown – the home of the shop for two decades – due to rising rents, with the current lease set to end on 31 January. The three new owners – Miranda, Hamilton director Thomas Kail and James L Nederlander, president of the Nederlander Organisation, which owns the Broadway theatre where the hit play is currently running – purchased the store from Rozanne Seelen, whose husband bought the shop in 1958. She told the New York Times that she had sold it for the cost of her remaining stock, rent support for the next few weeks and the promise that she would stay on as a consultant. “It’s the chronic problem – the rents were just too high, and I’m 84 years old – I just didn’t have the drive to find a new space and make another move,” she said. “Lin-Manuel and Tommy are my white knights.” After the purchase was announced, Miranda wrote on Twitter: “In 2002, I met with Tommy Kail in the Drama Book Shop. It gave us a place to go. Proud to be part of this next chapter. A place for you to go.” The bookshop will temporarily close on 20 January, before reopening in its new home.On day 24 of the partial government shutdown, the longest in history, Senate Republicans seemed best placed to negotiate a reopening of shuttered federal departments and threatened services and the restoration of pay to 800,000 workers. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has worked assiduously to get close to Donald Trump, said he told the president he should reopen the government temporarily, to pursue a deal. Some Democrats voiced support. Trump, however, remained attuned – critics would say hostage – to conservative media, which speaks for and to his base and on which support has not wavered for his stance on funds for a border wall. Early on Monday morning, from an understaffed White House, the president suggested via Twitter he had been “waiting all weekend” to negotiate. Trump, who said last month in a meeting with Democrat leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security”, tweeted: “Nancy and Cryin’ Chuck can end the Shutdown in 15 minutes. At this point it has become their, and the Democrats, fault!” On Sunday night, he had tweeted scattergun blasts of anger. He threatened to “devastate Turkey economically” if it sought advantage from his withdrawal from Syria; he gloated over the personal difficulties of the owner of the Washington Post, whom he called “Jeff Bozo”; and he tweeted what many attacked as a virulently racist message about Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator running to face him in 2020. Attaching an Instagram video posted by Warren, Trump wrote that if the senator, “often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!” Contention over Warren’s Native American ancestry, fed with glee by Trump, has dogged her early campaign moves. Graham strove to pull Trump round to serious politicking, even if his previous attempts to change the president’s mind, such as over Syria, have achieved uncertain success at best. Trump wants wall funding before he signs legislation to open the government. House speaker Nancy Pelosi will not pass legislation including Trump’s demand for $5.7bn. Senate Republicans will not pass legislation without it. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Graham said: “Before he pulls the plug on the legislative option, and I think we’re almost there, I would urge him to open up the government for a short period of time, like three weeks, before he pulls the plug, see if we can get a deal. If we can’t at the end of three weeks, all bets are off.” Graham said that if a temporary reopening failed, Trump should use “emergency powers” to bypass Congress, as he has threatened to do, and fund the wall from sources such as military construction budgets, money set aside for disaster relief or asset forfeiture funds taken from criminals by the justice department. Such a step would attract legal challenges as well as liberal opprobrium, but Democrats could likely not stop it and it could be a political win with Trump’s base. Some advisers say he would have acted to reopen government and exposed congressional inertia – and as a bonus, on becoming tied up in court, would not actually have to build the wall. Among congressional Republicans, some fear that such an exercise of executive authority would present a damaging precedent for future White House Democrats. Hopes of a deal involving legal status for Dreamers, undocumented migrants brought to the US as children, linger painfully on. Trump also tweeted about the border on Sunday night, seeking to portray a crisis. Quoting a column on a rightwing site by the “paleoconservative” former Nixon adviser and presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, he seemed to threaten popular violence as well as inadvertently quote Dylan Thomas when he wrote: “America’s Southern Border is eventually going to be militarized and defended or the United States, as we have known it, is going to cease to exist … And Americans will not go gentle into that good night.” In more sensible purlieus, it might just be that pressure on Senate Republicans, who can see polling sliding against Trump and their party, pays off with actual progress. Democrats are portraying themselves as receptive to dealmaking. On Sunday Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, called Graham’s idea a “great place to start”. “I do think if we reopen the government, if the president ends this shutdown crisis, we have folks who can negotiate a responsible, modern investment in technology that will actually make us safer [at the border],” Coons said, also on Fox News Sunday. Other senior Senate Democrats, among them Mark Warner of Virginia and Dick Durbin of Illinois, indicated openness to increased spending on border security. Just not the wall. If his temporary plan does not happen, Graham said, an emergency declaration will be “the last option, not the first option, but we’re pretty close to that being the only option.” Trump campaigned on a promise to build the wall, and to have Mexico pay for it. Faced with political reality – in 2017 he told Mexico’s president “we are both in a little bit of a political bind because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall, I have to” – he now says Mexico will do so through savings from a new trade deal. Analysts have undermined that claim. Congress was due back in Washington on Monday, which dawned under heavy snowfall and with key government functions, from airport security to immigration courts to environmental and food inspections, no closer to being restored. On Friday, workers affected by the shutdown missed their first paycheck of 2019. Stories of hardship, often spreading to those who live or sell services to such Americans, spread throughout the land.Giorgio Armani’s Emporio line is perhaps best known for its underwear, eyewear and fragrances which are the staples for its everyman. The designer’s ready-to-wear collections, however, have quite a specific man in mind and at the brand’s autumn/winter 2019 show in Milan on Monday, he emerged as an intrepid urban explorer of the jet-set variety. The house explained that the collection was “designed for a hybrid habitat”, which is “sporty but urban at its core”. It demonstrated this with velour tracksuit-style suiting, slouchy hoodies worn under stricter tailoring, and grounding each outfit with trainers or polished leather hiking boots. When Emporio Armani Man is not in the city in his sharp suits, he’s skiing or snowboarding, and this collection has him well kitted out for both. Designing for this guy is essentially what Armani does best and, while it may not hold the widespread appeal of those other more accessible products, it pays off. Forbes ranks the 84-year-old designer as No 174 on its list of billionaires in 2018, estimating his net worth at $7.6bn (£5.9bn). At Fendi later in the day was another hybrid of sorts as its creative director, Karl Lagerfeld, took on the roles of creator and subject for the first time. The show was a tribute to the German designer (who also heads up Chanel as well as his eponymous brand), intended to celebrate “close to a lifetime of mentorship and mutual respect” between the Fendi family and its adopted designer of more than 50 years. As such, Lagerfeld could, quite literally, be seen all over this collection. A drawing of his unmistakable ponytailed profile was one of the many doodles to adorn shirts, trenchcoats and a huge quilted puffa coat. It was an apt season-defining detail given that the 85-year-old is famed for his sketches and having his pencil case close to hand at all times. “Dualism is in the DNA of Fendi, under every form,” said his co-designer, Silvia Venturini Fendi, pointing to their long-term collaboration and the other prominent concept in this collection. It was realised in two-tone tailoring which fused wool-tweed with silk-organza, zip detailing which split knitwear and jackets down the back, and the house’s interlocking F logo, which was calligraphic on a long duster coat. The tribute is well bestowed given that Fendi and Lagerfeld have proved to be a fruitful pair. Fendi’s owner, LVMH, recently cited strong growth at the brand as a contributing factor to its €42.6bn (£37.9bn) in revenues in 2017 – an increase of 13% on the previous year.The poet and short story writer Jayant Kaikini has beaten internationally acclaimed writers including Kamila Shamsie and Mohsin Hamid to win the DSC prize for south Asian literature. Kaikini’s No Presents Please, a collection of stories set in Mumbai, was originally written in the southern Indian language of Kannada and translated into English by the award-winning translator Tejaswini Niranjana. The $25,000 (£19,100) prize, which rewards the best writing about south Asian culture from writers of any ethnicity and from all over the world, will be split equally between author and translator. The chair of the judges, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, hailed Kalkani’s “quiet voice”. “The Mumbai that came across through the pen of Kaikini was the city of ordinary people, who inhabit the bustling metropolis,” he said. “It is a view from the margins and all the more poignant because of it.” No Presents Please is the first work in translation to win the award in the prize’s eight-year history. Mukherjee also paid tribute to Niranjana’s “outstanding contribution”. According to the publisher, HarperCollins India, No Presents Please tells the stories of people from across the city of Mumbai: “[It] is not about what Mumbai is, but what it enables … From Irani cafes to chawls, old cinema houses to reform homes, Kaikini seeks out and illuminates moments of existential anxiety and of tenderness. In these 16 stories, cracks in the curtains of the ordinary open up to possibilities that might not have existed but for this city where the surreal meets the everyday.” The collection saw off novels already garlanded with success. Shamsie’s Home Fire, a modern take on Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, won the Women’s prize for fiction in 2018. Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, which explores global migration through a series of mysterious doors, made the shortlist of the 2017 Man Booker prize. Neel Mukherjee, Manu Joseph and Sujit Saraf were also nominated for the prize. The award has been won in the past by authors including Jeet Thayil and Jhumpa Lahiri. Its judging panel this year was chaired by Rudrangshu Mukherjee and included the Guardian’s Claire Armitstead.The EU is preparing to delay Brexit until at least July after concluding that Theresa May is doomed to fail in getting her deal through parliament. The country’s 29 March deadline for exiting the EU is now regarded by Brussels as highly unlikely to be met given the domestic opposition facing the prime minister and it is expecting a request from London to extend article 50 in the coming weeks. A special leaders’ summit to push back Brexit day is expected to be convened by the European council president, Donald Tusk, once a UK request is received. EU officials said the length of the prolongation of the negotiating period allowed under article 50 would be determined based on the reason put forward by May for the delay. A “technical” extension until July is a probable first step to give May extra time to revise and ratify the current deal once Downing Street has a clear idea as to what will command a majority in the Commons. An EU official said: “Should the prime minister survive and inform us that she needs more time to win round parliament to a deal, a technical extension up to July will be offered.” Senior EU sources said that a further, lengthier extension could be offered at a later date should a general election or second referendum be called although the upcoming May elections for the European parliament would create complications. One EU diplomat said: “The first session of the parliament is in July. You would need UK MEPs there if the country is still a member state. But things are not black and white in the European Union.” The European commission will publish a letter on Monday giving fresh assurances on the temporary status of the Irish backstop in a hope to win over some MPs to the deal but EU officials are downplaying expectations. The heads of state and government said at a recent summit that the withdrawal agreement, and the contentious backstop that a large number of Tory MPs fear will trap the UK in a permanent customs union, could be neither altered nor reinterpreted. But officials said Brussels would be in listening mode, and take guidance from the prime minister as to the next steps should she suffer a heavy defeat as is widely expected. May has to give parliament a statement on her next move within three parliamentary working days of the vote. EU officials believe that whatever emerges will likely require a prolongation of the two-year negotiating period. That conclusion is shared in a forecast by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a leading risk analyst, which will be published on Monday. Danielle Haralambous, a UK analyst at the EIU, said: “Time is simply running out, and we’re at a stage where Brexit can probably only happen in late March now in the unlikely event that parliament approves Mrs May’s deal on 15 January, or if parliament supports leaving without a deal. For all other options, the government will need to buy more time, and we think the EU will be willing to provide it to avoid a cliff-edge situation.” On Sunday, the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, insisted there had been “some movement” by MPs in favour of May’s deal while suggesting the prime minister would take guidance from parliament on what MPs could support should it fail. “The country does have a right to know what members of parliament are for, not just what they are against, and it’s important that the house comes to a view as to what it can back,” Barclay said. EU officials were quick to deny reports this week that discussions about extending article 50 had already begun with the UK. “The Brits have certainly not talked about this recently,” said one official. “If anything it is the last thing they want to talk about.” It has been suggested that the EU would respond generously, and even renegotiate the terms of the withdrawal agreement, should May pivot towards a permanent customs union in order to get her deal through parliament. One official said the refusal of EU leaders at a December summit to give May a 2021 deadline for the end of talks on a future trade deal was grounded in a belief that she had yet to offer a compelling vision that could get through parliament. “The leaders are much more savvy than people think – they can see what is happening in the UK, and they were left unconvinced that it would be possible to get a trade deal done quickly because the British government remains opaque on what it wants.” Mujtaba Rahman, a former Treasury and commission official and head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said: “We think the EU will be willing to go back into the withdrawal agreement and rethink the backstop if the UK can reach a credible position that leaders believe will land an orderly withdrawal. “If the UK position were, for example, to evolve towards a permanent customs union, that could alter the dynamic of thinking around the backstop.”The sleepy world of pétanque has been rocked by claims that Belgian players are turning to stronger stimulants than shots of pastis and drags of Gitanes cigarettes when bowling on the international stage. The image of the jeu de boules, in which the bowler’s feet must remain anchored to the ground, is that of elderly men in flat caps and string vests idling their days away under a fading sun. But beyond the gravel strips found on squares and summer campsites across northern continental Europe, two leading players on the game’s lively and cut-throat international stage have caused uproar by accusing their Belgian counterparts of snorting cocaine to secure a competitive edge. “I know enough Belgian players who use coke,” said Edward Vinke, 46, a top Dutch player, speaking to the Vice sports website. “They go to the toilet and do not throw a wrong ball when they come back. They really feel like the king.” “I experienced it once,” Kees Koogje, 27, told the website. “We were far ahead and had played flawlessly. Then they went to the bathroom for 10 minutes and came back with huge eyes. Everything went well for them. “The use of cannabis on pétanque tournaments also occurs in Belgium and France. When I’m playing in Belgium on a large open area, I always smell a lot of smoke. Usually it is the players who participate in such a tournament for fun, not the top players.” Gert Quetin, a champion player who is also a postman from Heusden-Zolder in eastern Belgium, said he agreed with his Dutch colleagues about the use of the class A drug in the sport. He said: “They disappear for a moment, then they come back with big eyes and play better. I have already lost matches that way.” The claims were rejected, however, by a leading Belgian bowler, Stefaan Kausse, a Flemish champion. “We know Vinke and Koogje,” he said. “Everyone who plays pétanque at a high level knows each other. They are good players and good guys. Yes, there are those who drink a good beer during a tournament. And occasionally you smell the smell of a joint. But they make it appear as if every Belgian pétanque player is sniffing coke. That is not true.” Kausse added, however, that performance-enhancing drug use was increasingly a problem and “everyone knows” it, including the governing body. “But it does nothing,” he said. “You can get them out of there with a doping check now and then.” Kausse said: “We know the image that the lay people have of pétanque. An elderly sport for camping. Or on the beach, with plastic balls. “But after years driving through Belgium and France, from championship to championship, you get a completely different picture of the sport. It is played at a very high level. And anyone who says top-level sport says doping. It is true, doping is also happening in our world.” In response to the outpouring of accusations, Reinold Borré, chairman of the Pétanque Federation Flanders, called on those making allegations in the game to name the players suspected of being on drugs. Borré, who is seeking to make pétanque an Olympic sport in 2024, said: “We do not know about that. Our players and players at the European Championships and World Championships were all checked, and all found negative. I think if you accuse people, you have to mention names. Otherwise you should be silent.” Borré added that if there were a problem outside the very top level with the use of cocaine, an injection of money and organisation into the game would clean it up. “If you are Olympic, you will have a great honour,” he said. “Watch ice-skating or archery. Many fewer practitioners than the pétanque, but much more prestige. And if you are Olympic, you get money. Then we can solve that possible problem with that cocaine.”The climate crisis is intensifying a new military buildup in the Arctic, diplomats and analysts said this week, as regional powers attempt to secure northern borders that were until recently reinforced by a continental-sized division of ice. That so-called unpaid sentry is now literally melting away, opening up shipping lanes and geo-security challenges, said delegates at the Arctic Frontiers conference, the polar circle’s biggest talking shop, who debated a series of recent escalations. Russia is reopening and strengthening cold war bases on the Kola peninsula in the far north-west of the country. Norway is beefing up its military presence in the high Arctic. Last October, Nato staged Trident Juncture with 40,000 troops, its biggest military exercise in Norway in more than a decade. A month earlier Britain announced a new “Defence Arctic Strategy” and promised a 10-year deployment of 800 commandos to Norway and four RAF Typhoons to patrol Icelandic skies. The US is also sending hundreds more marines to the region on long-term rotations and has threatened to send naval vessels through Arctic shipping lanes for the first time. While these strategic moves have echoes of the cold war, the modest buildup falls far short of that era, and there remains a strong spirit of cooperation in many areas. The current tensions are a result of a world warmed by industrial emissions. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet, shrinking sea ice and exposing more water and territory to exploitation and access. “Right now, the reasons we are seeing more military activity is that countries are worried by the spectre of open water,” one of the speakers, Klaus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London, told the Guardian. “The unique Arctic security architecture has shape and form that come from natural extremities. If the Arctic becomes just another ocean, this breaks down. It’s elemental.” The Arctic’s unique characteristics are under attack from all sides. Below, the once-frozen ocean is now mixed with warmer, more saline Atlantic waters. In the skies above, the polar vortex above is weakening, allowing intrusions of balmy air currents from the south. Sea ice is being lost at a rate of more than 10,000 tonnes per second, according to Tore Furevik, a professor at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen. “We’re heading for a new and uncertain Arctic with ramifications for nature and politics,” he said. “We should strive to be less suspicious, less hostile and more open-minded if we are to deal with a problem that we have so recklessly created.” By 2035, the Arctic is forecast to be free of ice during summer, which will allow ships to sail across the north pole. Business interest is growing. For the first time, last summer, a Maersk container ship navigated the northern sea route from Asia to Europe carrying fish and electronic goods. Energy companies are exploring new oil and gas fields. Once remote regions are becoming geopolitical hotspots. Tromsø, in Norway, which hosted the conference, was once a tiny trading post. Today, it’s a tourism hub and a gateway to the mineral-rich north. “Now we have a historically strange situation with political and economic activity in the Arctic. So many people are knocking on our door, including business and state representatives from China, Pakistan, Singapore and Morocco,” the mayor, Kristin Røymo, told the Guardian. “There is also a very obvious increased naval presence.” This concerns many conference participants, who highlight the peaceful history of cross-border cooperation in the far north. Even during the cold war, there were agreements on fishing, scientific research and reindeer herding that continue today. Norwegian politicians were at pains to downplay the significance of the current military buildup. “There is no direct link between climate change and conflict,” the former defence minister Espen Barth Eide said. “It’s not because there is an immediate threat, it’s that, as an area becomes more important, it’s natural to have a heightened military presence.” He compared the situation to the South China Sea, where China, the US and other nations compete, not by firing weapons, but by demonstrating capacity and presence. “To some extent that is happening now in the Arctic,” he said, although he stressed there were no territorial disputes to inflame passions. The build-up is portrayed almost as a form of climate adaptation – strengthening the military presence along with infrastructure affected by melting permafrost. However, there are tensions. In a keynote speech, the Norwegian foreign minister, Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide, complained about communications interference by Russia in the far north. She plans to arrange a meeting with the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, to discuss the allegation. “Most important is to open political dialogue and talk not just about what we agree on but what we do not agree on,” she said. Norway is also contributing to the climate problem and the strategic tensions. It has just approved a raft of new oil exploration licenses in the Barents Sea and one of its citizens has been caught spying in Russia. Russia is uneasy about recent Nato exercises that have pushed deep into the north, according to Teimuraz Ramishvili, the ambassador to Norway. He told the Guardian the military modernisation on the Russian side was overdue after 20 years of neglect and its significance should not be overstated. “In Europe, you have military installations that are used for peaceful purposes. Why it that OK in Europe, but not in Russia?” he asked. He said Moscow put a high priority on the northern region, where the potential was so great that some talk enthusiastically of an “Arctic age”. “For us, this is a matter of sustainable development of Russian territory. This is not open water, it is Russian territory,” said Ramishvili. “The Arctic isn’t a nature resort. It’s a place where Russians have lived for a long time.” Currently, cargo companies that use the northern shipping lanes need to pay Russia. But this will change as the sea ice recedes and Arctic routes open up in international waters. China, which has declared itself a “near-Arctic nation”, is among the countries exploring this area. Last year, it launched a second Snow Dragon ice breaker and released an Arctic white paper that explored the potential for infrastructure investments in a Polar Silk Road. The US, by comparison, is lagging behind. Although its nuclear submarines have operated under the ice for decades, its surface navy is ill-equipped for the Arctic. “Everyone’s up there but us,” the navy secretary, Richard Spencer, complained last month. “The threat is back on. This is an area … we need to focus on,” he said. Spencer has called for a strategic Arctic port in Alaska and US naval vessels to conduct navigation operations later this year in northern shipping lanes so they have the capacity to conduct emergency operations if necessary. “Can you imagine a Carnival line cruise ship having a problem, and the Russians do the search and do the extraction?” he said. The prospect of a US warship sailing near Russia’s vast northern border would certainly amplify unease, as well as highlighting the geopolitical challenges caused by global heating. Lisa Murkowski, a US senator for Alaska, did not expect the US navy to enter Russian waters, but, considering everything else that is going on, she said any freedom of navigation mission in the region would raise sensitivity. “It’s important for the US to project military strength, but there should be no intention to be unduly provocative,” she told the conference. The problem, she said, was that the White House had not updated its strategy to deal with a fast-changing region. “Under this administration, we are not assigning a significant priority to our role as an Arctic nation. There is a void,” she said. Environmentalists at the conference highlighted the dual role of oil in worsening the tension: both as a driver of climate change and of the push for more resource extraction from the still largely pristine Arctic. Norway came under fire for approving 83 new exploration licenses last week, more than a dozen of which were in the Barents Sea. “The false narrative of this conference is that Arctic countries are doing sustainable development,” said Martin Sommerkorn, head of conservation of the WWF Arctic Programme. “You can’t say that just days after you grant 83 new licenses. That’s completely wrong.”Japan’s harsh treatment of its female celebrities has again come under scrutiny following outcry over the music industry’s handling of an alleged assault on a member of a popular girl band. Social media users and TV commentators have joined the barrage of criticism targeting AKS, a music management agency, after Maho Yamaguchi, a singer with NGT48, went public this month with allegations she had been assaulted by two obsessive fans at the end of last year. Yamaguchi, 23, said on Twitter that AKS had failed to help her after the assault, which had left her deeply traumatised. At the time of her tweet, the agency representing NGT48 – a sister group to the hugely popular girl band AKB48 – had not commented on the incident. The furore intensified when Yamaguchi bowed deeply and apologised to fans for “causing trouble” – making fans worry by speaking out about her assault – during a concert earlier this month. Many questioned why she felt she should apologise while her industry handlers remained silent. Her fans responded with a petition calling for NGT48’s manager to resign that was signed by more than 53,000 people. Yamaguchi’s case has highlighted the poor treatment of young women and girls by Japan’s pop industry, particularly the insistence that they appear morally unimpeachable. Performers are subject to strict rules imposed by their management agencies, including, in many cases, a ban on having boyfriends to maintain the impression among their largely male – and, on occasion, dangerously obsessive – fan base that they are romantically available. In 2013, Minami Minegishi, then a 20-year-old member of AKB48, shaved her head – a traditional act of contrition in Japan – and issued a tearful apology after breaking her group’s strict dating ban to spend a night with her boyfriend. In a comprehensive account of the latest incident, Twitter user @katbeee said Yamaguchi’s experience highlighted the widespread mistreatment of women in Japan’s idol industry. “To the West, all this “idol drama” can easily come off as “WACKY JAPAN!” nonsense — but these incidents and lack of regulation in the idol industry are as serious as the abuses committed in the Western entertainment industry,” she said, adding that the industry was rife with “power harassment, sexual exploitation, emotional and psychological abuse and overwork”. AKS eventually apologised for its handling of the issue, claiming it had remained silent throughout Yamaguchi’s ordeal to allow the police to investigate. A spokesman said the firm had replaced the manager of the theatre in Niigata, northern Japan, regularly used by NGT48, adding that it would step up security around members of the group. The firm also admitted that a fellow NGT48 member had given the men Yamaguchi’s address and told them when she might return home. The two men suspected of grabbing Yamaguchi’s face and pinning her to the ground as she was entering her home in Niigata reportedly told police they had simply wanted to talk to her and were released without charge. NGT48 has cancelled three upcoming concerts in which Yamaguchi was to perform, according to Japanese media.Brazil’s rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro, has piled further pressure on Venezuela’s embattled leader, Nicolás Maduro, vowing to do “everything for democracy to be re-established”. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s influential son, who some describe as Brazil’s parallel foreign minister, labelled Maduro a “cancer” that needed to be “excised”. In a video message to the Venezuelan people ahead of planned anti-Maduro protests next Tuesday, Brazil’s far-right leader pledged his administration would do “everything for democracy to be re-established and so you can live in freedom”. “I believe the solution will soon come,” said Bolsonaro on Thursday, flanked by Miguel Ángel Martín, one of several exiled Venezuelan opposition leaders with whom he held talks in Brazil’s capital, Brasília. Brazil’s foreign ministry issued a blistering attack on Maduro, who began his second six-year term as president on 10 January despite a storm of criticism at home and abroad. Brazil’s foreign ministry claimed Maduro – who took power after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013 and has led his country into economic ruin – headed an “organized crime apparatus” built on “widespread corruption, narco-trafficking, the trafficking of people, the laundering of money and terrorism”. Bolsonaro’s son and close confidant Eduardo Bolsonaro tweeted: “Maduro’s narco-dictatorship is a cancer that needs to be excised.” Eduardo Bolsonaro is a longstanding critic of Maduro and has close relations with rightwing Venezuelan dissidents who seek Maduro’s military overthrow. The condemnation came as Venezuela’s opposition – suddenly reinvigorated by the ratcheting up of regional pressure by countries such as Brazil and the emergence of a potential new figurehead – prepared to hold a day of demonstrations next Tuesday. Long moribund, Maduro’s opponents have found a new voice since Juan Guaidó, the young head of Venezuela’s opposition-run national assembly, declared himself ready to assume the presidency as a result of Maduro’s illegitimate rule and received backing from rightwing governments in Brazil, Colombia and the United States. Guaidó’s profile grew further last Sunday when he was briefly detained by members of Venezuela’s security services – a headline-grabbing incident he claimed highlighted growing desperation within Maduro’s inner circle. Writing in the Washington Post this week, Guaidó denounced Maduro as a “usurper” and “de facto ruler” whose re-election last May was a “farce”. In the absence of a legitimately elected president, Guaidó argued, it was his constitutional duty to occupy the position on an interim basis until free and fair elections could be held. He also called on the military – whose members are being offered amnesty by Venezuela’s opposition – to turn on Maduro. “The chain of command has been broken, and there’s no commander in chief – it’s time to get on the right side of history,” wrote Guaidó, who has adopted Barack Obama’s famous rallying cry “¡Sí, se puede!” – “Yes we can!”Say cheese, America. No, seriously, please start saying cheese at the grocery store. The country’s dairy farmers are depending on you. Americans eat an awful lot of cheese: almost 37lb per person, per year. Yet apparently that’s still not enough. Demand for American-made cheese is seriously falling behind supply. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, we’re currently experiencing a 1.4bn-pound cheese surplus. Lucas Fuess, director of dairy market intelligence at HighGround Dairy, a consulting firm, explains that cheese is literally sitting in cold storage facilities waiting for some aspiring pizza-maker to give it a home. “It’s normal to have some cheese in warehouses, to make sure there’s enough in the pipeline,” Fuess said. “The amount that’s in there currently is, if not a record, very close to record high.” In part this can be linked to lower dairy consumption and the growing popularity of veganism. Plant-based products such as almond-milk have experienced rapid sales growth. Since 2008, milk production has surged by 13%, but domestic demand for milk has dropped sharply. As demand decreases, the price of milk drops, and farmers receive less per gallon produced. This appears to have pushed farmers to produce even more milk to make up the shortfalls in their income, exacerbating the problem. Producing American cheese helps farmers to use up milk they can’t sell and that would otherwise go off. At the end of November 2018, US cheese production had grown yet again for the 67th consecutive month. But the problem is Americans are eating less cheese, too. American diets are moving away from processed cheeses like Velveeta and Kraft, and many of the nation’s leading fast and casual restaurants are trying new things. Panera, like others, has replaced American cheese in their sandwiches with a four-cheese combo made up of fontina, cheddar, monteau and smoked gouda. According to Euromonitor International, sales of processed cheese are projected to drop 1.6% this year, the fourth year in a row. In part, that’s because many Americans now think processed cheese is gross, but also because they’re au fait with quality cheese from around the world. It’s hard to turn back to an indestructible fluorescent orange mess once you’ve tried brie de meaux. “We’re seeing increased sales of more exotic, specialty, European-style cheeses. Some of those are made in the US; a lot of them aren’t,” Andrew Novakovic, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University told NPR this week. Since imported cheese costs more than domestic, a few blocks of the good stuff might not leave much left in the old cheese budget for anything else. The cheese mountain is crushing farmers. “We’ve seen record numbers of dairy farms close because milk prices are so low that dairy farms aren’t profitable any more,” Feueff added. “This cheese that is hanging over the market is preventing prices from raising higher and it’s reaching a critical level.” Trump’s trade policy has also played a role in the cheesepocalypse. In response to his tariffs, three top importers of US milk and cheese products – Mexico, Canada and China – have instituted retaliatory tariffs that will have a significant impact on American dairy farmers’ bottom line, according to a study from Texas A&M University. “As long as the tariffs are still on in Mexico, it remains a challenge to move cheese out of the country and move those stocks lower,” Fuess explained. It’s not the end of the line. Analysts have noted large buyers of cheese increasing offerings or finding new ways to use it. McDonald’s recently launched a breakfast sandwich with two slices of American cheese. “Fast-food companies are taking this opportunity with low cheese prices to increase cheese on their dishes,” says Fuess. For now though, American dairy farmers are going to continue to look for ways to offload their cheese supplies. “I was just reading stories of cheese tea in China that have kind of gone viral,” Fuess said. “Maybe we need to look into that.”Kent & Curwen, the London brand part-owned by David Beckham, has unveiled its latest collection – including a collaboration with the BBC drama Peaky Blinders. The ex-footballer watched Sunday’s show alongside his wife, Victoria, son Brooklyn and mother, Sandra. The designs included frock coats, tailoring and that Peaky Blinders staple, the flat cap. The chef Gordon Ramsay and the Dior Homme designer, Kim Jones, were also in attendance, and both Beckham men wore the TV-show inspired headgear. After the show, David Beckham – dressed in a camel coat and cosy knit - said he was excited by the Peaky Blinders collaboration because he was “a big fan of the show and our brand has always been about the look. It keeps that authenticity.” As for the family show of support, he said: “I always think these days are celebrations everyone can be part of … It makes them very proud to have them here.” He said the flat cap had a family connection. “I got that from my grandad. I wore his from a very young age. Brooklyn has taken it on as well.” The show was the brand’s second at London fashion week men’s, the capital’s biannual menswear showcase. The collection, designed by the brand’s creative director, Daniel Kearns, continued on the theme of British classics. It was strong – and had a pre-war influence without straying into the costume department. This is a well-pitched balance that works for young men of Brooklyn’s generation, who like their retro references in Insta-friendly bites. The rugby shirts, Crombie coats, argyle sweaters and striped mod-like skinny suits, all in a prep school palette of forest green, ivory and claret, could form wardrobe staples. The bright red socks, a tribute to the brand’s founder, Eric Kent, brought the required touch of irreverence. As well as working with Kent & Curwen, Beckham has also been the ambassadorial president of the British Fashion Council since last May. “I’m really proud of my involvement,” he said. “It’s so inspiring to see these talented young designers. My role has been even more enjoyable than I expected it to be.” Kent & Curwen was founded in 1926 by Kent and Dorothy Curwen, who were Savile Row tailors. It has been in the fashion spotlight since 2015, when Beckham became majority owner. Its previous collaborations have included the photographer Perry Ogden and rock band the Stone Roses. Other highlights from the men’s shows on Sunday included Chalayan, Cottweiler and new talent at Fashion East. LFW men’s continues on Monday with shows including Craig Green and A-Cold-Wall*.The NFL is looking into reports that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was targeted with a laser pointer during his team’s victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. Pictures from Kansas City TV station KMBC appear to show a laser was pointed at Brady just before he threw an interception late in the game. KMBC’s William Joy tweeted footage of a green light around Brady’s head and upper torso. The game was played at the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium. Our photographer, Turner Twyman, caught someone pointing what appears to be a laser pointer in Tom Brady's face last night. Play between the "muff" that wasn't and Sorensen int. @NFL, @Patriots and @Chiefs all told me they weren't aware of the incident. pic.twitter.com/ejWBQ6i64C The laser was also seen during two key completions by Brady to receivers Chris Hogan and Rob Gronkowski. The Patriots said they had “no comment” on the matter but an NFL spokesman told the Boston Herald the league is “looking into the report of the laser beam”. Brady doesn’t seem to have been badly affected. He did not mention any lasers in his post-game comments and led two late drives as the Patriots won the game 37-31 to reach next month’s Super Bowl.The top House Republican promised on Sunday to take action against the Iowa representative Steve King, over his controversial comments about white supremacy and white nationalism. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy did not specify what the action would be, but said he would meet King on Monday to discuss his role in the party. “That language has no place in America,” McCarthy said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “That is not the America I know, and it’s most certainly not the party of Lincoln.” King, who has a long history of incendiary remarks and associations with white supremacist groups, came under fire over comments he made to the New York Times in a recent interview. “White nationalist, white supremacist, western civilization – how did that language become offensive?” he said. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” The Congressional Black Caucus has called for King to be stripped of his committee assignments. “Action will be taken,” McCarthy said, adding the two had a meeting scheduled on Monday. “I’m having a serious conversation with congressman Steve King on his future and role in this Republican party. “I will not stand back as a leader of this party, believing in this nation that all are created equal, that that stands or continues to stand and have any role with us.” Steve Scalise, the No2 Republican in the House, also condemned King on Sunday. “We were very quick to reject those comments” he said on ABC’s This Week. “There is no place for hate, for bigotry, or anybody who supports that ideology. It’s evil ideology. We all ought to stand up against it.” Scalise, from Louisiana, has experienced his own controversy regarding Republican links to white supremacists. In 2014, it was reported that in 2002 he addressed a conference backed by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. “I didn’t know who all of these groups were and I detest any kind of hate group,” he told the Times-Picayune newspaper then. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican senator, joined the chorus of criticism on NBC’s Meet the Press. “What Steve King said was stupid,” he said. “It was stupid. It was hurtful. It was wrong. And he needs to stop. I think all of us ought to be united, regardless of party, in saying, white supremacism, white nationalism, is hatred. It is bigotry. It is evil. It is wrong.” Could it be that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided to imitate the BBC’s Film … in its final painful incarnation? As it shuffled towards oblivion, that TV show decided in its last series not to have a single presenter, but a rolling, changing roster of guest hosts. The result was blandness and uncertainty. Now, for Oscar night, the Academy is itself pivoting towards hostlessness. Bruised by the Kevin Hart debacle – in which that planned presenter was dropped for refusing to apologise afresh for past homophobic comments – and after what was clearly a subsequent low-morale interlude in which the poisoned chalice was then refused by every comic in town, the Academy is engaging in a radical experiment with communal compering. Out goes the grinning single MC or MC pairing, in comes a phased cavalcade of stars, a terrifyingly under-rehearsed Avengers Assemble of A-listers introducing various segments. This would be in addition to the traditional, awkward, guest-presenter pairings for awarding the actual statuettes. The 91st Academy awards take place on 24 February at the Dolby theatre in Los Angeles. It is broadcast live on ABC in the US, on Sky in the UK, and on Channel Nine in Australia. The red carpet portion of the show is broadcast live by the E! network. The Oscars are voted for by members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (aka Ampas), which currently numbers just under 8,000 voting members, divided into 17 separate branches, including actors, directors, costume designers, etc. (To join, names have to be proposed and approved by individual branches.) The Academy has received considerable criticism in recent years for the perceived white/male/elderly bias of its voters – and a drive to create a more diverse membership was instituted after the #OscarsSoWhite campaign in 2016.  There are 24 categories – ranging from best picture to best sound mixing – presented on Oscar night. The Academy also gives out a bunch of Scientific and Technical awards: this year, for example, it will honour the people behind Adobe Photoshop and the Medusa Performance Capture System. Also there are the honorary Oscars: this year they are going to actor Cicely Tyson, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, Steven Spielberg's PR flack Marvin Levy and composer Lalo Schifrin (of Mission: Impossible renown). Each of the main awards has its own rules and regulations for slimming down all the eligible entries – first to a longlist, then a shortlist, then the final nomination list. In most categories, to be eligible a film must have been released for seven days in Los Angeles before 31 December, and a specialist committee makes the selection for the nomination – which is then voted on by the full membership. For the best foreign language film award, each country can submit one film (89 were put forward this year), before a committee boils them down to a final five. The Oscar statuette isn't solid gold: it's gold-plated bronze on a black metal base. It is 34 cm tall and weighs 3.8 kg. While the Academy doesn't own it once it is handed over, its acceptance is conditional that recipients won't sell them unless they have offered them back to the Academy for $1. What a nightmare it sounds: an exponential increase of audience unease and megastar self-love, slowing down the show’s momentum and pace. None of these big names will be allowed to develop audience rapport. Nor will the audience be allowed the reassurance of a single thread of continuity – what with all of these egos having to be rolled on and off stage during musical breaks, like 18-wheeler pantechnicons being negotiated in and out of a pub car park. I was in the audience at the Oscars a couple of years ago, when Warren Beatty contrived to award the best picture gong to the wrong nominee, causing dismay and consternation and creating a brand new conspiracy industry about the whole thing being deliberately cooked up to boost TV ratings. All of these segment hosts will be terrified of a similar cockup and an eternity of shame on YouTube. Of course, it could be argued that discomfort and embarrassment is part of the Oscar night tradition – cherished and amplified in the age of social media when those at home can be a snarky Joan Rivers, jeering at every limp gag and fashion fail. I myself have blogged about the tradition of the wooden award presenters, often in their weird newsreader-pairing of an older man and a younger woman. The most legendary example being Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann in 1973, exchanging stilted, scripted conversation before trying and failing to give the best actor Oscar to Marlon Brando for The Godfather. And there is also the argument that the host plummets in interest anyway after the all-important opening monologue. Once that is out of the way, the audience is sometimes irritated to see the host keep coming back, unless they have a huge stunt up their sleeves, such as Ellen DeGeneres’s famed star selfie. There’s no getting round it: group host or no group host, who’s doing the opening monologue? Who’s doing the gags about Donald Trump’s federal shutdown? About Brexit? About Putin? About Kevin Spacey’s bizarre in-character video as Frank Underwood? Or indeed the gags about Kevin Hart not doing the gags? Or is there to be no opening monologue – just an extended satirical musical spoof of this year’s movies? Either way, the hostless Oscars could be a gang show of grisliness.Jos Buttler described England’s hopes of one day topping the world rankings as having been given a reality check during the first Test in Barbados. Speaking after the wicketless third day, during which Jason Holder powered his way to a dominant double century from No 8, the England vice-captain accepted the team selection was “potentially” wrong in hindsight. But as well as praising the bowlers for their efforts, Buttler insisted the blame for England’s current predicament lies squarely at the feet of a batting unit that collapsed to 77 all out on day two and leaves them staring at defeat. “Yesterday was a poor reflection on us as a side,” said Buttler. “To get to No 1 in the world that’s nowhere near good enough. It’s a good reality check as a side, in terms of where we are at.” Holder’s unbeaten 202 in an unbroken stand of 295 with his fellow Bajan and close friend, Shane Dowrich (116 not out), represented his career highlight to date and there was a touching moment after the close when he was embraced by his mother, Denise, in the stands. Holder said: “It was a very pleasing day – best days I’ve had in Test cricket. To top it off would be 10 wickets, make sure we start this series with victory over England. “[The plan was] to grind them down – there is lots of time left and for us it was to keep them there in the heat and on their legs – credit to us.” During his four years as captain Holder has wrestled for authority over a West Indies side that has struggled results-wise and been dogged by regional politics. But now, amid a golden run of form with bat and ball, his mandate has never been stronger. Holder added: “It was a slow start to my career and very tough at first as well. It was about just finding a way to understand the dynamics of Test career. “[Former captain] Clive Lloyd is someone I hold in high regard and he always said it took him three years to learn Test cricket. “To get the performances in now that I am is very pleasing. I just want to keep pressing forward for this West Indies team.”England are prepared for a chastening defeat in the first Test of their Caribbean tour after being blown away for 77 by an inspired West Indies fast-bowling display. Kemar Roach lit up his home ground with five wickets in only 27 balls, gutting Joe Root’s side as they lost nine for 47 after lunch on the second day. The hosts, having opted not to enforce the follow-on, resume on Friday on 127 for six with their lead already at 339 runs. Moeen Ali, fresh from registering a golden duck amid the carnage, drew the short straw as the team spokesman after stumps; understandably he struggled for answers as to how the world’s eighth-ranked team could inflict such damage. “It was a disappointing day and there are always going to be a few guys who make mistakes,” Moeen said. “There are always going to be guys who played a bad shot or who took the wrong option. “Even when 40-odd for four, we always think we have the batting and that someone will put their hand up. Today wasn’t the day. They bowled fantastically well with good pace and managed to get us out.” Asked if England had made an error picking two spinners, given 22 of the 26 wickets to fall across the first two days have been to seam, Moeen replied: “That’s a tough question but as a player you go with what is selected – you can’t afford to look back. “Everyone will have their opinion. I would have played two spinners looking at that pitch. But no matter what the team is, as players you have to go out there and perform.” Roach, the leader of a four-pronged pace attack who all picked up wickets during the 30.2 overs of bedlam, said: “Today is one of those great days against a top side, so I’m proud of my achievement. I want to do that as much as possible for as long as possible for West Indies. It was a special, special feeling. “We just tried to make them uncomfortable. You never expect these days but they do happen. It’s all about doing it again in the final innings.”The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has asked Donald Trump to delay, or deliver in writing, his State of the Union address scheduled for 29 January as long as the government remains partially shut down. The request came as the record-long shutdown dragged into a 26th day with little sign of progress. In a letter to the president, Pelosi said the US Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security, both of which are responsible for coordinating and implementing security at the event, have been “hamstrung” by the funding lapses. “Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government reopens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has reopened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to Congress on January 29,” Pelosi wrote in the letter. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Republicans accused Pelosi of playing politics with the address, which, should it proceed without a funding resolution, could be the first time a president has delivered a State of the Union while parts of the government remained closed. “It’s not a security issue,” House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters. “It’s politics and she knows it.” It was unclear on Wednesday afternoon what would happen if Trump rejected Pelosi’s request to reschedule the speech or submit it in writing. The address to a joint session of Congress gathers leaders from all three branches of government in the House chamber. With so many officials in one room, the event takes weeks to coordinate and involves law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal level. Traditionally, one member of the cabinet is selected to be the “designated survivor” and does not attend in the event a catastrophe incapacitates the president, vice-president and all other officials in the line of succession. “Both the US Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been funded for 26 days now – with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs,” Pelosi wrote. Although George Washington and John Adams delivered the State of the Union in person, presidents for over a century delivered it via writing. It wasn’t until 1913 that President Woodrow Wilson began the practice of delivering a speech to Congress as a way of rallying the nation behind his agenda. The last time a president delivered the State of the Union in writing was in 1981 when Jimmy Carter did so days before Ronald Reagan took office. Hours after she was elected speaker on 3 January, Pelosi invited Trump to deliver his speech to a joint session of Congress on 29 January. Since then, the shutdown has stretched into a fourth week while the White House is warning that the funding lapse could have a sustained negative impact on economic growth as nearly 800,000 federal employees are furloughed or working without pay. Trump has demanded that Democrats, newly empowered in the House of Representatives, designate $5.7bn to build a wall along the southern border as part of legislation to fund the government. Democrats have refused and urged the president to reopen the government and allow the parties to separately negotiate their disagreements over border security. The House has passed bills that would fund parts of the government departments but the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to take up the measures. Negotiations between the White House and Democrats have stalled. The last time a State of the Union address was moved was in 1986, when President Ronald Reagan postponed the speech after the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. He instead addressed the nation from the Oval Office that evening and delivered his State of the Union speech the following week.Jon Ronson’s new podcast, The Last Days of August, is a sparing, delicate and at times harrowing series, ostensibly about the suicide of the porn star August Ames, who killed herself in December 2017, at the age of 23. Ronson first delved into the adult entertainment business with his previous podcast The Butterfly Effect, which offered a sympathetic picture of an industry that many within it argue is still little understood by the mainstream. It was a warm and compassionate investigation, and drew smart lines between the thundering pace of technological advances, the easy availability of pornography and what that all meant for the people at the heart of it. Given that Ronson is also interested in social media and its sometimes catastrophic impact on people’s lives, it’s no surprise that August Ames’s story piqued his interest. Ames – who is referred to by both her work name and her real name, Mercedes Grabowski – took her life shortly after a controversial tweet ignited the kind of pile-on that Ronson studied in his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Ames wrote that she chose not to work with men who had shot pornographic scenes with other men (“crossover talent”); the response was swift and damning, particularly from other famous figures in the industry. Her husband, Kevin Moore, an adult film producer who is interviewed extensively on the podcast, issued a statement in January 2018 blaming cyberbullies for her death. He named people who had been particularly vicious on Twitter. “I write this to make it crystal clear: bullying took her life. If the harassment had not occurred, she would be alive today,” he wrote. This is only the starting point. Over seven 30-minute-ish episodes (a lesser podcast would have taken much longer, given the amount of interviews and evidence Ronson and his producer Lina Misitzis pull together) a story unfolds that goes beyond Moore’s statement, to paint a more complete picture of Ames’s life, and what happened towards the tragic end of it. They speak to her friends, family and colleagues, and people who know and knew Moore, too. By the second episode, when it becomes clear that this will be about more than cyberbullying, Ronson puts the brakes on, clarifying that although the story unfolded in ways they did not anticipate, this will not be a true crime series, and does not purport to uncover or reveal any particular truth. What it does, instead, is open up an emotionally fraught story of damaged individuals and an industry struggling with how to manage the mental health of its participants. If The Butterfly Effect humanised an unknown industry for its listeners, this seems more willing to confront the dark side of that world. It can make for deeply unsettling listening. Moore’s character is called into question by people who knew him. At the same time, hearing a man whose wife has only recently died defending himself against accusations about how he treated her is uncomfortable in the extreme. Again, though, it is handled with care: Ronson opens up to listeners about his own ethical dilemmas in getting involved in this story – later, he and Misitzis have themselves become part of the story – and explains, convincingly, why he felt an obligation to see it through to its conclusion. In the end, everybody is interviewed with consideration and respect, no matter how stretched the circumstances for that may seem. Throughout the series, we hear snippets of an old interview with Ames by the director Holly Randall. She talks about being sexually abused, and how, when she spoke out about it, she wasn’t listened to, or believed. “Oh man, growing up,” she says, laughing, as if recalling something as trivial as being sent to her room. A crucial part of the story here, which focuses on a porn shoot that Ames said went very wrong, is also about being listened to and being heard. At its best and most sensitive moments, you get the sense that The Last Days of August goes some way toward hearing the story of August Ames – and of Mercedes Grabowski.It’s another day, and that means another slice of absurdity served up in Trump’s America, guys! Or in this particular case, slices of pizza. And some hamburgers and other assortments of fast food. This is the spread the president put on for the visiting Clemson University football team, who had won the College Football Playoff National Championship. Trump made sure to point out numerous times that he paid for the food out of his own pocket. Many federal employees are not being paid at all, given the ongoing government shutdown (now the longest ever), which is why the president had to order food in the first place, because catering staff are on furlough (which, again, he blamed on the Democrats). Where to start with this McFeast? With the miniature packets of mustard, like how everyone’s mum has that drawer full of stolen restaurant condiments? Except these ones are on a genuine silver platter? Or the beautiful way it appeared that a portrait of Abraham Lincoln was watching over the scene, distinctly unimpressed? Perhaps the juxtaposition between the napkins with emblems on and slivers of pizza slithering off plates like Dali clocks? The pyramids of burgers that were surely stone cold within minutes? We know that Trump loves his burgers, because he has been known to enjoy them in bed. (As a notorious germophobe, he also apparently likes McDonald’s because the food is pre-made and there is less chance of being poisoned, possibly by facts). But you know that scene from In the Loop when a low-profile politician is invited to a conference just as “meat in the room”? Well, this is the literal version of meat in the room; where the meat is Big Macs and the room is actually in the White House. There were also some Burger King Whoppers visible. (And, as basically everyone pointed out on social media, Trump has been feeding those to people for years.) There was more cold meat in that room than a circa 2010 Lady Gaga dress. Side note: how was that eight years ago? The apocalypse has come at lightning speed. You might think that athletes would turn their noses up at such fare, but actually, all the photographs captured them merrily chomping down. Clearly, they are as committed to healthy eating as … well, the administration’s healthy eating initiative that was rolled out literally just months ago. Nothing says “healthy and balanced” like a two-foot-high pile of chicken wings! There were however some grim-looking salads in plastic containers, which Trump tolerated. They were present but not actually involved. The truth is though, if this were a politician from the left, at least culturally speaking, they’d probably be praised for being down-to-earth. If Barack Obama had been doling out Domino’s, it would have met with Twitter approval. On this side of the pond, Jeremy Corbyn was hailed as a man of the people when he ate a single Pringle passed through the railings of a school (that was when politics was less weird, and fair play). The thing about Trump is, we know he was genuinely – as Ronald McDonald himself might put it – lovin’ it. It’s not like how George Osborne doesn’t know how to arrange his hand when holding a cup of tea, or how Zac Goldsmith puts his pinky finger out when drinking a pint. Or that weird way Theresa May ate from a cone of chips, as though she was a Dementor sucking in a soul. But, this being Trump, the authenticity didn’t last long. (Do you want lies with that?) He went from apparently saying he had bought “300” burgers to “1,000”, and we don’t think he was scrambling five minutes before midnight closing time to order more. Back in the UK, a Westminster staffer has apparently ordered a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts to survive today’s Brexit vote. Politics in 2019, it seems, is not great for the health. • Hannah Jane Parkinson is a Guardian columnistJeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon and the world’s richest man, has announced his divorce from MacKenzie, his wife of 25 years. Bezos, who married MacKenzie (née Tuttle) in 1993, a year before he started Amazon from his garage in Seattle, broke the news of the split in a tweet signed by both of them. pic.twitter.com/Gb10BDb0x0 Bezos, 54, who has built up a $137bn (£107bn) fortune, said they had decided to split up after a “long period of loving exploration and trial separation”. The couple, who have four children (three sons and a daughter), vowed to remain “a family” and “cherished friends”. If they split their assets equally, MacKenzie could become the richest woman in the world overnight. Her half-share of the combined fortune would be $68.5bn, which would put her fifth in the world rich list. The current richest woman is Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, heiress of the L’Oréal empire. In the tweet, Bezos said: “As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends. “We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other,” the couple said. “If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again.” The couple met at New York hedge fund DE Shaw when he interviewed her for a job at the firm. They got engaged within three months of meeting, and after another three months they married. Shortly afterwards Bezos told her his idea for selling books over the internet, and while admitting she had “no business sense whatsoever” MacKenzie said she could see “how excited he was” and agreed they should leave New York for Seattle to explore his idea. Until he met MacKenzie in 1993, Bezos had attempted to apply analytics to finding love. He called it “women flow” and reckoned he could increase his attractiveness to women if he took up ballroom dancing. MacKenzie, a novelist and founder of anti-bullying group Bystander Revolution, told Vogue that it was she who had chased Bezos and not the other way round. “My office was next door to his, and all day long I listened to that fabulous laugh,” she said in 2013. “How could you not fall in love with that laugh?” She said marrying Bezos definitely made her “a lottery winner of a certain kind … and it makes my life wonderful in many ways, but that’s not the lottery I feel defined by”. Bezos told Vogue his wife was “resourceful, smart, brainy and hot, but I had the good fortune of having seen her résumé before I met her, so I knew exactly what her SATs [high school exam results] were”. The announcement of their decision to divorce comes three days before Bezos’s 55th birthday, and two days after Amazon rose to become the world’s most valuable company with a stock market value of $797bn (£634bn). Bezos still owns 16% of Amazon, which together with his space exploration company Blue Origin and a large property portfolio, makes him the richest person in the world with a “net worth” of $137bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has increased by $12bn (or nearly 10%) so far this year as Amazon’s shares have rallied strongly. He has enough wealth to cover Britain’s budget deficit twice over and still have change. Washington state, where the couple and Amazon is based, is a community property state, which means all property acquired during a marriage “will be divided equitably by the court if the couple cannot negotiate an agreement”.English rugby’s leading players and administrators want stricter penalties for high tackles following the release of statistics that show the severity of injuries in top-level rugby is on the rise. The idea of a visible line being printed on jerseys is among ideas being considered to try to reduce the professional game’s worrying attrition rate. While there has been a small drop in the number of concussions, figures for the 2017-18 season have prompted calls for “significant changes” to the game from the RFU medical services director, Dr Simon Kemp, after the injury-related burden on players (a measure combining injury incidence and their severity) was found to be at its highest level since 2002. Kemp said: “There is strong evidence that while the likelihood of injury in the professional game appears to be stable, the increase in injury severity means the overall burden of injury is increasing. The data suggests that more significant changes to the game might be needed to reverse these trends.” Kemp also said that, based on the latest findings of the Professional Game Action Plan on Player Injuries, a joint collaboration between the Rugby Football Union, Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Players’ Association, there is a need for greater clarity and tougher sanctions around legal tackle height. “We believe the threshold for receiving a card for a high tackle is currently too high if we’re going to change player behaviour and reduce concussion,” Kemp said. “Currently around the world you are three times more likely to see a card for a deliberate knock-on than you are for a high tackle. We, and World Rugby, don’t believe the sanction of yellow or red cards occurs frequently enough to change player behaviour.” Overall the average severity of match injuries – ie the length of time it takes to return to play for 2017-18 – has risen to 37 days, the second consecutive season the figure has been above its expected upper limit. For the third year in a row concussion also emerged as the most common injury, followed by hamstring injuries. Concussion accounted for 18% of all injuries to the ball carrier and 37% of all injuries to the tackler, highlighting the tackle as the game’s most critical area. The 2017-18 season was the first in which there were more injuries to the tackler than the ball carrier, with 52% of all match injuries being associated with the tackle. There was, however, found to be one fewer concussion every eight games compared with last season but Kemp has described the change as “minimal” and says continuing trials in the Championship Cup may yet see a maximum tackle height line added to players’ jerseys. “Whether we need a line on the shirt is something that will be considered as part of the Championship Cup trial,” Kemp said. “At the moment the guidance we’re getting is that we don’t need it but it’s something we’ll review.” Action has already been taken to try to reduce the startlingly high rates of injury suffered by players training with England. The combination of severity and number of injuries was five times above the domestic average – Bath’s Beno Obano has still not played since being injured at an England camp last May – and Nigel Melville, the RFU’s acting chief executive, said Eddie Jones’s regime has been under the spotlight. “We did recognise a problem and we have discussed it at the Professional Game Board,” Melville said. “International players train at greater intensity, so we’re trying to manage players better as they transition from one environment to another. We think that is starting to show some positive signs.” Melville is also hoping a World Rugby seminar in France in March will produce further ways of improving the situation, either by designing better laws or reinforcing existing ones. With the game being played at increasing pace by bigger bodies who are enduring a rising number of collisions, doing nothing is clearly not an option. “This is a global problem” Melville said. “We can’t change the laws, but World Rugby can. We’re happy to help, we’ve got data and we have already been collaborating with them.” No other union in the world has collated such detailed data over such a length of time. Minimum standards for the maintenance of artificial pitches are also now set to be written into the Premiership’s minimum standards criteria following evidence that injuries sustained on an artificial surface are often longer term than those which occur on grass.If Naomi Osaka goes on to add the Australian Open title to the debut slam title she won in Flushing Meadows four months ago, she might spare a passing nod of gratitude for the player she beat there in extraordinary circumstances, Serena Williams. There were moments in her semi-final win over Karolina Pliskova on day 11 of this tournament when she was in danger of surrendering dominance to the Czech (who had come back from 1-5 in the third to beat Williams two days earlier, snuffing out an Osaka-Williams rematch), but, as in New York, it was apparent that Osaka was again sound under pressure. In the US Open final, she had the meltdown of Williams to deal with, and she handled that with the ice-cool aplomb, emerging from the unedifying episode as a dignified young champion on all fronts. This examination was more physical than mental. On a blistering hot Thursday afternoon, she turned back the cooler, more orthodox challenge of Pliskova, an elegant and dangerous foe in tight corners, who was rattled by Osaka’s astonishing onslaught in the first set and, after mounting a fightback to level, could not crack her defence in the third. Pliskova was effusive later in her praise of Osaka: “She played an unbelievable match – to be honest, maybe the best in her life. I don’t think she can repeat a match like this. I don’t think I actually did much wrong. I had some chances, of course I had. But the chances, they were not in my hands at all. There was not much I could do.” Naomi Osaka revealed sponsor Nissin has apologised to her over a cartoon depiction that sparked accusations of whitewashing. An anime-style drawing of the 21-year-old US Open champion, who has a Japanese mother and Haitian father, with pale skin and brown hair was used in an advert for the noodle company that has since been pulled. Osaka said: “I’ve talked to them. They’ve apologised. For me, it’s obvious, I’m tan. I don’t think they did it on purpose to be whitewashing or anything. But ..  the next time they try to portray me or something, I feel like they should talk to me about it.” PA Osaka, never less than candid, smiled and responded: “I don’t necessarily think I played the best I’ve ever played. What I take away from this is that I never gave up. That’s something that I’m really proud of.” If Osaka holds her resolve in the final against two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova on Saturday, she will make a statement that would lift her from precocious and interesting newcomer to recognised elite champion. When it became obvious early in their semi-final that Pliskova could not do to Osaka what she had done to Williams, the final, the tournament and the game in general took on a different complexion. Osaka is not just a lovable cross-culture kid with a vigorous, high-level game and nice line in post-match quotes. She has matured into a threat to everyone in women’s tennis, here and across the Tour. In the earlier semi-final, the first reality check of the day kicked in. Danielle Collins had served an acceptable 11 double-faults in her first five matches, but added two in the space of four games, the nerves of a big occasion strangling her best work. Kvitova, bringing bigger weapons in all departments, attacked her second serve relentlessly, but Collins found a way to stay on level terms after four games. They exchanged breaks in-mid-set, but in the clink and shift of gears that control the roof above, an outdoor tournament went indoors at four-all. The beating sun had pushed the thermometer to 35C (it would continue on to near 40C) and into the tournament’s danger zone – but there was still plenty of heat coming off both rackets. It will be hotter on Saturday, Much hotter. But the debate about use of the roof is not as simple as some would suggest. Of course, the health of the players is paramount, as is that of the officials and ballkids – although the latter live in this heat. It is not as novel to them as it might be to visitors from the northern hemisphere. If the roof is to be used, it should be to the guidelines already set, not the emotional whim of concerned onlookers. Kvitova grew up in the Czech Republic and, as they progressed in the protective enclosure created by the roof switch, she looked increasingly more comfortable against the Floridian, who is used to the sunny conditions. Collins was perfectly within her rights to insist later: “It is what it is. That’s what they do, no matter what the situation is. If it’s really hot, they need to start the match the way it’s going to finish. It certainly changed a little bit of the rhythm in the match. Honestly, I like playing in the heat. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly has its challenges. I grew up in Florida and am used to it being really hot all the time. So I embrace that very well. Indoor tennis is a different game.” Collins, who does not hide her emotions, gave the chair umpire Carlos Ramos grief over a legitimate ruling on Kvitova’s serve, but should have trained her frustration at Kvitova, who now punished her short balls to take the first set. Collins’s discipline slipped again at the start of the second, arguing an unwinnable point with Ramos, then changing rackets for no apparent reason with two break points against her. She saved the first but dumped a backhand, and Kvitova started to ease clear. Kvitova brought all her pedigree and experience to bear now on her rattled opponent, racing to then serving out the match.The first big international gathering of the year is the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Politicians, academics, businessmen and a smattering of billionaires make up the guest list, while campaigners and activists lobby on the fringes. So what have we learned from their week in the snow? Love him or hate him, Donald Trump created a buzz at the 2018 annual meeting, but this year the atmosphere was flat. Ken Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor and Davos regular, said he could not recall the mood being so muted. Without Trump, Xi Jinping of China or Vladimir Putin, Davos lacked a headline act. The format – panels of experts discussing the world’s problems – looks tired. The stars at this year’s WEF had a distinctly un-Davos feel about them. The broadcaster Sir David Attenborough (a sprightly 92) and climate activist Greta Thunberg (a resolute 16) both used the forum’s spotlight to promote climate activism (and in Sir David’s case his new Netflix documentary too). Prince William and the New Zealand PM, Jacinda Ardern, were a hot ticket and there was an unseemly scramble to get into their discussion session on mental health. The Duke of Cambridge revealed he hadn’t been able to get any celebrities to sign up to help launch the Heads Together campaign fronted by him, his wife and his brother. He criticised the British stiff-upper-lip approach of the wartime generation, and said it was partly to blame for the stigma around mental health problems. Delegates who took the trip up Davos’s funicular railway met Arctic scientists warning of a climate change catastrophe unless urgent action is taken to “bend the curve” on rising greenhouse gas emissions. Phasing out burning coal would be a good start, but environmentalists were disappointed when Angela Merkel said Germany would need coal for “a certain time” (and more Russian gas otherwise). Davos, meanwhile, was gridlocked with limos all week, suggesting that CEOs need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Or, indeed, just walk. Davos has three settings. There are years, such as 2009, when the attendees are panic-stricken. There are years, such as 2007, when they are insufferably bullish. And there are years in between, such as this one. There was concern about the recent weakness of the global economy – but not that much. If a recession is in the offing, Davos has not realised it yet. Philip Hammond stood in for Theresa May this year and the chancellor had a series of meetings with business chiefs and policymakers in an attempt to reassure them that the government was doing its utmost to avoid a no-deal Brexit on 29 March. He would have needed a tin ear not to have picked up on the growing business worries. His key message was that the vote to leave had to be respected – but that a no-deal Brexit would be a betrayal of the hopes for a better future of those who voted leave. Even the global elite like a freebie, and few giveaways are more popular than the blue Davos bobble hats, sponsored by Zurich Insurance, and available from a special hole-in-the-wall bobble dispenser outside the conference centre. So much more than a mere beanie, they have a discreet logo which can advertise the wearer’s importance on the school run or a family ski holiday. Hundreds are handed out every year and by Thursday they had to post a sign saying they’d run out – but to come back next year. While everyone who’s anyone is expected to be at Davos, few seem to really enjoy it, and the four days can be a slog. Politicians are expected to come back with some tangible deals, lest they be criticised for simply quaffing champagne. Many of the corporate elite spend their days in back-to-back meetings with clients and investors: one executive said he had attended no fewer than 17 in one day. But, as Oscar Wilde might have said: there’s only one thing worse than being invited to Davos – and that’s not being invited. Trump may have been missing out on the action, but the latest poster-boy for rightwing populism, Jair Bolsonaro, made his international debut. The new Brazilian president delivered a six-minute pro-business speech, promising to balance economic growth with preserving his country’s unique environment. That, however, prompted alarm among activists worried about the environmental threat. The first thing to learn at Davos is the tiered badge system. It gives the top boss class – who get white badges with a hologram – an easy way to decide if you’re worth talking to. Pesky journalists, for the record, are highlighted with yellow badges. There’s a hierarchy of dinners and parties too. Organisers trying to impress invite celebs and politicians to parties in swanky buildings. JP Morgan had a very popular bash at the Kirchner Museum while Aberdeen Standard set up a posh scotch whisky bar. But the best parties are often the ones you don’t know about. Carping aside, there was some good news out of Davos. Seven top businesses backed the new Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality, for example, while 25 are supporting a new recycling drive. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzō Abe, pledged action on global data governance, and the UK pushed on antimicrobial resistance. The WEF also brought leaders together to discuss “key global faultlines” including the western Balkans and Syria. All areas where progress was welcome.As winter finally begins to bite, the idea of the al-desko lunch seems increasingly alluring. No one wants to take their sandwich to the park when it’s snowing, and even the walk to the local cafe can seem too much when it is through wind and rain. But is there a right and a wrong way to eat at your desk? Should we be even doing it in the first place? We asked some experts and office workers. Absolutely not, says Henry Stewart, founder and “chief happiness officer” of the workplace consultancy Happy. “It’s madness. We’ve got to get people out of the hamster wheel of continual work. It’s not good for them and it’s not good for the organisation. All the research shows that people work more effectively if they take breaks.” Stewart banned al-desko dining at Happy several years ago, not for any lofty motive but because someone – it may even have been him – spilled hot chocolate on the carpet the day they moved in. Now his team all have lunch – and afternoon ice-cream breaks – together at the cafe next door. “I thought it would last about a week,” he says, “but it’s still going and it has [had a] hugely beneficial effect. You talk to people you might not normally talk to. It increases communication and generally improves the effectiveness of an organisation.” It’s a smart career move, adds André Spicer, professor of organisational behaviour at the Cass Business School in London. “It’s good for job satisfaction, performance, promotion … Why? Because eating is a social ritual in which people swap information.” And it’s enjoyable, says PR William Matthews. “Breaking bread with your colleagues every day is far better for team spirit than the dreaded once-in-a-blue-moon ‘organised fun’ that so many companies go in for. People are social beings and eating together is a sort of primeval thing.” He has fond memories of the boss who made everyone down tools for a “proper seated lunch with proper crockery and cutlery, so everyone could clear their heads and enjoy the food”. So, everyone agrees that eating al desko is a bad thing? Hardly. “It’s absolutely OK to eat a snack at your desk,” says Myka Meier, founder of Beaumont Etiquette. “You simply want to be cautious of eating smelly food. Etiquette is all about being kind, respectful and considerate of others.” Bruce Daisley, European vice-president at Twitter and author of The Joy of Work, has a warning for anyone tempted by a ban. “For me, this is a bit like organisations that ban you from accessing email outside work hours. The intentions are good but nannying people never has the outcome that you want. You’re turning people into infants, taking away their right to self-determination. “If people sit down to lunch together,” he adds, “they do tend to collaborate better – unless you force them to do it, in which case all that benefit tends to go. You’ve just got to let people do what they want. If you have no agency, you feel unhappy, you feel demotivated, you feel estranged from your job.” And let’s not forget that scarfing down a sandwich at your desk leaves you free to spend the rest of your break exactly as you want. A run or a visit to the gym may not give you an opportunity to bond with your colleagues, but a) not all colleagues are worth bonding with, and b) it will do wonders for your physical and mental health. Again, it depends who you talk to. It’s an “abomination”, says author Helen Jones. Etiquette expert Meier, however, thinks it “adds humour to a rather dull form of dining and makes people think of dining at their desks in a way that requires thoughtfulness”. So she’s all for it. “Unacceptable,” says Stewart. “That’s another clear rule – you don’t drink within office hours.” Spicer is less dogmatic. “In most normal offices there’s a sense of when you’re able to drink and when you’re not. In my workplace, after about 4pm on Friday it’s maybe OK to have a glass or two. “In recent years,” he notes, “there’s been a kind of blurring between workspace and non-workspace, and many organisations are beginning to design their workplaces to look like bars. Some shared workplaces provide an unlimited supply of beer as well as tea and coffee.” “I think drinking’s fine, within reason,” says Daisley. “Opening a bottle of red at your desk? Probably not OK. But there’s good evidence that a bit of moderate drinking can increase people’s affinity for one another.” Normally that’s reserved for the pub, he says, but a lot of workers don’t like them, or don’t have time to go drinking after work. A rare area of consensus: everyone agrees it’s OK to have these at your desk. But should you make your own or have some sort of round? “I think it’s a very important idea,” says Spicer. “It’s a lot like buying a round in the pub but without the alcohol. It ties the group together into a kind of formal ritual. It might seem like a pain in the butt when you have to constantly get people coffee or tea, but it binds people together and gives them a reason to speak to each other.” Or, occasionally, to shirk a few minutes’ work. “I’m against them,” says journalist Sophia Furber. “I used to have them in a previous job and whenever I got to my editor to ask if she wanted a cuppa she would snipe: ‘I’d rather you brought in some news.’” That’s not the only potential conflict: everyone who has been part of a tea or coffee round will be familiar with the colleagues who are much happier drinking than making. “There are definitely givers and takers,” is how Daisley puts it. Still, there are worse abuses of the facilities. “I once worked with a guy who made hot dogs in the coffee maker,” recalls development scientist Sarah Callens. Anything too smelly, for a start. “There used to be someone at my work who cooked fish at lunchtime,” Daisley says. “It’s just not a considerate thing to do, is it? I don’t want the office to smell of kippers. I think it’s just about respect for others.” “Never fish,” agrees City worker Rosie Johnson. As well as “microwaved cephalopod leftovers” and “collective fish and chips in a small shared space”, Callens objects to: “Chilli con carne al desko, sandwich platters that pong and curl in the centre of the table for two hours after everyone has eaten, chicken that smells like the bus …” Even nice smells can be a problem, Daisley warns. “Are you creating desires and urges in people that they would like to be free of?” But it’s not just odours you have to worry about. Callens has an aversion to “crisp bag rustling”, while HR manager Nicky Maine hates “people who eat apples. I cannot abide that tearing and wrenching sound, followed by munching. In fact, I detest the very word ‘munching’.” “I love the fact that we’re going to ban apples,” says Daisley. “What, we’re just going soft fruit only? Pears are OK because they’re a touch more giving …” Still, this leaves plenty on the menu. Or does it? Respondent after respondent complained about workmates who hog the microwave by cooking jacket potatoes from scratch, or fail to free it for the next user the moment the timer goes ping. And if you don’t offend your colleagues’ noses, ears or sense of urgency, you still have to contend with their aesthetic judgments. “I have a colleague who puts cheddar cheese on sweet things: hot cross buns, Christmas cake, malt loaf etc,” says teacher Johanna Johnston. “It’s the not-rightness that bothers me! None of these items need adornment.” Rosie Johnson, meanwhile, even objects to white bread sarnies, on the ground that white bread “is not the bread of self-care”. It’s enough to give you indigestion. • An earlier version of this article referred to Sarah Callens as Cullen. This has been corrected.Ederson Had little to do until recovering Mané’s shot from a post. From then was largely a spectator but had to stay alert. 6 Danilo Surprisingly chosen ahead of Kyle Walker he proved feisty for Mané and Robertson along his flank. 6 John Stones Saved a certain goal after mix-up with Ederson and did same again towards the end from Wijnaldum. 7 Vincent Kompany Was booked for two-footed lunge at Salah and lost Firmino too easily for Brazilian’s finish. 4 Aymeric Laporte Guardiola felt forced to play his best centre-back on the left and he struggled at times. Booked. 5 Fernandinho Was in enforcer mode, crashing into challenges and performing the dark arts with delight. 8 David Silva Was anonymous and missed a gilt-edged chance in first half. Has performed better for champions. 5 Bernardo Silva Struggled to get on the ball and offer control but snapped into the tackle and always available. 6 Raheem Sterling The top-scorer was off the pace initially but then engineered the winner with a sweet pass to Sané. 8 Leroy Sané Was as sharp as he can be, frightening the visitors before scoring the finest goal of his City career. 9 Sergio Agüero Willing to dribble and take game to opponents, finding a lethal finish just before the interval. 9 Substitutes: Ilkay Gündogan (for D Silva 65) 6, Kyle Walker (for Laporte 86) 6, Nicolás Otamendi (for Kompany 88) 6. Alisson Began with a miskick and will be upset at tight angle from which Agüero smashed past him. 4 Trent Alexander-Arnold Might he have gone with Sané’s run for the German’s finish? On plus side: his cross led to Firmino goal. 7 Dejan Lovren Was near-awful throughout. Booked for scything down Agüero and fell asleep for City forward’s strike. 2 Virgil van Dijk The Dutchman was some way below par and might have done more to wake his defence up. 5 Andrew Robertson Looked to join in when could but found Sterling elusive before his touch created side’s goal. 7 Georginio Wijnaldum Spent much of the contest chasing blue shirts and was shown a yellow. Had shot cleared off line. 6 Jordan Henderson Was unable to help his side establish a pattern as the contest largely passed the captain by. 6 James Milner Chased and pressed tirelessly but lacked the true creative schemer’s ability and was replaced. 4 Mohamed Salah Liverpool’s classiest attacker was fluid in patches, under-used in others: should have had greater impact. 6 Roberto Firmino Showed flashes of touch and artistry and was in the correct time and place to equalise. 8 Sadio Mané Hit post and was always a bright runner but should have been found more. Subbed. 6 Substitutes: Fabinho (for Milner 57) 5, Xherdan Shaqiri (for Mané 77) 6, Daniel Sturridge (for Wijnaldum 86 ) 6.The story of malbec is an epic that begins in south-west France, and takes in vine plagues, medieval trade wars and a long struggle for recognition. Then it switches gears into a classic new-world rags-to-riches tale that concludes with the variety finally securing global fame from a lofty perch in vineyards in the Andes in western Argentina. Until relatively recently I wouldn’t have said the wines made from this itinerant grape variety were quite as exciting as their origin story. The initial wave of malbecs to emerge from Argentina were certainly appealing. They had an innate plum and black cherry fleshiness, a mouthfilling plumpness and generosity that made them very easy to drink. But they lacked that extra something – complexity, longevity, depth – that would have placed them among the world’s best wines. There was an interchangeability to the rows of malbec lined up in the supermarkets. More expensive bottles tended to over-reach, ladling on the oak and over-ripening the fruit. Argentinian malbec remains the king of soft, reliable and affordable reds – which is why it is such a success in the UK. What’s changed in the past five years is the wine-making has become more sensitive, playing up what I think are the variety’s claims to greatness: an aromatic prettiness featuring floral and herbal as well as berry-fruited notes, combined with that fleshy mid-palate and a pinot-noir-like silkiness. This is the result of the efforts that leading producers – from big names such as Catena to rising stars such as the Michelini Brothers – have put in to understanding the effects of the combination of soil, exposition and different degrees of altitude on these lofty vineyards. This is at its most advanced in what is the country’s most exciting region: the Uco valley in Mendoza, where sub-zones such as Gualtallary, Paraje Altamira and Vista Flores are creating an Andean answer to Burgundy’s famously filigree patchwork of vineyards. But you can see it, too, further north in the even more extreme altitudes of Salta province, and on the lower-lying terrain of Patagonia. There has been similar progress, albeit on a smaller scale, back in the vineyards that follow the bends of the River Lot around Cahors in south-west France, while Chile is increasingly getting the hang of the grape. The wilderness years are over, then, but the malbec epic has only really just begun. Château du Cèdre Camille Malbec, France 2017 (from £9.85, josephbarneswines.com; bottleapostle.com)One of Cahors’ best and longest-established producers, Château du Cèdre here shows off malbec in its most fragrantly attractive, pretty and succulent mode, with an unoaked style that positively sings with pure cherry, plum and violets. Co-op Irresistible Bío Bío Malbec, Bío Bío, Chile 2016 (£7.95, The Co-op)Malbec came to Chile before Argentina, but has only recently started to make its presence felt on the western side of the Andes, with Viña Indomita’s textured, chocolatey, fragrant example one of the best value wines made from the variety. Domaine de la Pépière La Pépie Côt, Vin de Pays du Val de Loire, France 2017 (from £13.99, thesmilinggrape.com; lescaves.co.uk)From a producer “right on the edge of Brittany”, this is malbec grown at its most northerly limits, where south-facing slopes provide enough sun to produce a joyfully brisk and crunchy style with a red berry and currant-scented succulence. BEST BUYMatias Riccitelli Hey Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina 2017 (£12.99, or £10.99 as part of a mixed case of six bottles, majestic.co.uk)Matias Riccitelli is one of the brightest winemaking sparks in Argentina, and here he shows his skill in a classic, accessible style with full-flavoured palate-coating dark fruit and a kiss of cherry-bakewell oak and chocolate. Good value. Altos Las Hormigas Terroir Malbec, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Argentina 2016 (£15.99, Waitrose)Led by globetrotting Tuscan wine consultant Alberto Antonini, Altos Las Hormigas has been an important force in the Argentinian malbec revolution, and its wines just get better and better: this is beautifully polished, poised and plush. Familia Zuccardi Poligonos dell Valle de Uco, Mendoza, Argentina 2016 (£16, Morrisons)Young buck winemaker Sebastián Zuccardi has built on his father’s legacy to make some of the most elegant and balanced high-altitude malbecs (and other red wines) in Argentina, such as this superbly fine-grained beauty. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Good morning, I’m Warren Murray and here is today’s order of business. A flurry of amendments to Theresa May’s Brexit bill will come before the House of Commons today. The PM has urged Conservative MPs to support replacing the Irish border backstop with “alternative arrangements” via an amendment tabled by Tory chair Graham Brady. The aim is to get opponents to pass May’s amended bill, in the hope the European Union will reciprocate with concessions on the backstop. Brussels has continued to insist negotiations cannot be reopened. Overnight a surprise initiative dubbed the “Malthouse compromise” emerged. It involves drafting a new backstop that would be acceptable indefinitely, while incentivising the EU and UK to move beyond it and reach a new future relationship. In a message to Tory MPs, the remainer Nicky Morgan said: “It ensures there is no need for a hard border with Ireland.” The hardline Tory Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg was said to have backed the idea. Here is a list of Tuesday’s proposed amendments – notable among them, options to extend article 50, establish a citizens’ assembly, or hold a second referendum. There are divisions within Labour over whether Yvette Cooper’s amendment to rule out a no-deal Brexit should be supported, or whether the party’s pro-Brexit constituents would see it as a rebuff to their wishes. Labour has also performed a late U-turn over the immigration bill – after instructing its MPs to abstain, the party came in for intense criticism and eventually allowed MPs the option of voting against it. In London’s “Silicon Roundabout” tech district, John Harris finds that the implications of Brexit are emptying the ranks of talented and much-needed European staff. And Polly Toynbee writes that P&O dropping the British flag because of Brexit shows the decline of a rich seafaring tradition. Huawei’s woes worsen – A Chinese telecommunications company has been charged overnight by the US with stealing trade secrets, laundering money, obstructing justice and evading sanctions on Iran. The FBI says Huawei offered bonuses for employees to steal information from other companies. Among such instances, investigators say, engineers from Huawei copied and stole parts from a robot called “Tappy” used by T-Mobile to make smartphones. The company has denied the charges, which Beijing has called “immoral”. Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei finance chief, remains under Canadian house arrest on a US extradition warrant. Screen dims young minds – Frequent use of screens by children aged two to five has been linked to developmental delays by researchers in Canada. The more time children were reported to be spending in front of screens, the worse they did on development tests. The researchers say parents should be cautious about time spent with devices – on average, the 2,400 children they studied spent about 17 hours a week in front of screens at two years old, increasing to almost 25 hours a week at three years, before falling to 11 hours a week at five. Meanwhile the electronic bullying of young people has grown significantly worse in recent years, according to the UK’s media watchdog. Ofcom says 9% of 12- to 15-year-olds report being bullied via text messages and apps. Pressure piled on Maduro – The US government has announced sanctions against Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, as the Trump administration tries to force out President Nicolás Maduro. After the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, declared himself Venezuela’s rightful interim president, New Zealand has refused to join close allies like the US, Australia, the UK and Canada in giving him its backing. “It is not New Zealand’s practice to make statements of recognition of governments,” said Winston Peters, the NZ foreign affairs minister. Rat plague haunts man – A former inmate of Wormwood Scrubs is bringing a claim for post-traumatic stress disorder, saying he was left mentally scarred by rats swarming around the jail, running over him in bed and eating his cellmate’s smoky bacon crisps. In 2015, officers from HM Inspectorate of Prisons officers found rats “every day and night we visited the prison and a large rats’ nest was very obvious in the grounds”. The ex-prisoner, 71, says being almost always locked in his cell had meant there was no escape from the scurrying tormentors. His lawyer, Jane Ryan at Bhatt Murphy Solicitors, is suing the Ministry of Justice on his behalf. “Living conditions in prisons should be humane for the benefit of staff and prisoners,” said Ryan. No end to waste – About 1.2bn ends of bread loaves that could be eaten are being binned, according to a campaign to plough them back into meals. The North London Waste Authority has got together with chefs to come up with ways to save a crust, like the panzanella salad recipe that you can find at the bottom of our story. Better get stockpiling for 29 March … Today is the day that backbench MPs in parliament could wrestle control of the Brexit process away from the government. Overseeing proceedings is the all-powerful Speaker, John Bercow. But is he pushing an agenda from the traditionally neutral chair? Plus, in opinion: Jonathan Freedland on the Brexit-backing elite and how they will avoid the worst consequences of leaving the EU. When it comes to milk, in 2019 there is no shortage of alternatives, and alternatives to those alternatives. Supermarket aisles overflow with choice: almond, hazelnut, peanut, tiger nut, walnut, cashew, coconut, hemp, spelt, quinoa, pea. Ads abound for new plant “mylks” – EU law dictates anything promoted as “milk” must come from a lactating mammal. In New York, when coffee shops ran out of oat milk, there was mild panic. From the days when soy milk sat lonely on the shelves, the global plant milk industry is now estimated to be worth $16bn. Real milk’s reputation as a healthy food is under threat from anxieties ranging from lactose intolerance and bovine antibiotics to animal cruelty and the dairy industry’s environmental impact. But whether or not plant milks really are a healthy substitute for cow’s milk is a matter of fierce and not inconsequential debate. Eddie Jones’s England are set for a severe mental and physical examination against Ireland when they open their Six Nations campaign at the weekend in a stadium where they have enjoyed little success. Manchester United have been handed the chance to exact FA Cup revenge when they travel to face the holders Chelsea next month. Barnet, the last non-league side in this season’s competition, are still in with a chance of reaching the last 16 after a 3-3 draw forced a replay with Brentford. Jasmin Paris, the ultrarunner who became a global sensation earlier this month when she won the 268-mile Spine Race, beating her male rivals by 15 hours and the course record by over 12, has been selected to run for Britain. And Ben Foakes has said the margin of England’s defeat against West Indies in Barbados suggests something is not right. The news of charges against Huawei sparked a slide on Asian markets. The Nikkei, Kospi, Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite all fell. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200, reopening after a holiday, eased 0.6%. Stocks fell in Taiwan and Singapore but rose in Indonesia. The FTSE is forecast to open higher, and sterling has been trading at $1.315 and €1.150 overnight. It’s no surprise that Brexit is splashed across just about all of the front pages. The Guardian leads with “May supports Irish backstop changes amid Tory splits”. The FT has: “May seeks to split Tory hardliners with bid to amend Brexit backstop”. The Times says: “Tory rebels reject May’s Plan B”. The Express strikes a positive tone, carrying a picture of Boris Johnson and Theresa May with the headline: “We can do it together”. The i takes the opposite view on the former foreign secretary and one of his fellow rebel Tories: “Johnson and Rees-Mogg cut PM’s lifeline”. The Daily Mirror leads on warnings about Brexit food shortages: “No Deal, No Meal” is its headline. The Sun seems to ignore the Tory crisis, instead attacking Jeremy Corbyn: “Don’t let Labour kill Brexit”. The Telegraph devotes its splash not to Brexit but to Philip Green: “Green urged to let his accusers tell their story” is its main headline, with a smaller story noting Tory Eurosceptics are in revolt “over Brexit plan B”. And the Mail ignores Brexit altogether on its front page, instead leading with the headline “Generation of web addicts”, about children’s obsession with the internet. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comThere’s a lot of noise right now about vegan wines, as if they’re some huge new trend. In fact, these days a great many wines are already made in a way that makes them suitable, and have been for some time. The key requirement is that no animal-derived products are used in their production, ruling out isinglass (fish bladder), egg whites and milk protein during fining, a clarifying process. But how can you tell? Well, almost all supermarket own-label wines make it clear, plus an increasing number of producers put the information on their labels, and organic sites such as Vintage Roots list wines that are vegan. Yet this doesn’t guarantee that vegans will regard them favourably. Just as food can contain plenty of E numbers, it’s perfectly possible for a commercial wine that’s made in huge quantities to use additives in the winemaking process. If that concerns you, look out for natural or organic wines that are not fined or filtered. My latest find, discovered in the last days of 2018 and definitely one of my wines of the year, is a glorious Australian cabernet franc called – would you believe – Gertie, which is made in the Clare Valley and named after the winemaker Ben Marx’s great-aunt. It’s the antithesis of how most people view Australian wine: unfined, unfiltered, with vibrantly fresh, scrunchy fruit, made with natural yeasts and the minimum of sulphur. Just lovely. There’s also the question of the style of wine you might be looking for. If you’re eating a plant-based diet without vast hunks of protein, you don’t actually need a blockbuster red to set it off. Obviously, many vegan dishes have big flavours, but they don’t tend to have the effect that rare meat or dairy products, such as cream and cheese, have in taming tannin; though pulses such as lentils and beans will, to an extent, round off rough edges. Instead, it’s better to look for slightly lighter wines, particularly if you’re embarking on a post-Christmas retrenchment, eating more salads and vegetables, and cutting down on the carbs. Light red wines such as the Sicilian frappato, which is stocked by Ocado, and the same outlet’s Forte Alto Pinot Grigio Vigneti delle Dolomiti 2014, which is £9.79 and a modest 12% (it’s also stocked at the same price by Waitrose), would both make a refreshing counterpoint to healthy new year food. £8, 13%. The name exaggerates, but this organic and vegan wine is a perfectly nice, fresh, Spanish white that would be great with raw veg and dips. £5.99, Lidl, 13.5%. Incredibly well-priced, fragrant Rhône white made from muscat, but dry rather than sweet. Good aperitif. £9.79, Waitrose / £9.99, Ocado, 13%. Pale, delicate, delicious, beaujolais-like light red. Would go with Japanese food. £22, Oddbins, 13.5%. Glorious, exuberant, happy-making Aussie red that would be perfect with Tommi’s charred cabbage this week. • More at matchingfoodandwine.com This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Almost 30 years after 96 people were killed at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough football ground, the police officer who was in command of the match, David Duckenfield, will on Monday stand trial on a criminal charge of gross negligence manslaughter. Duckenfield was newly promoted by South Yorkshire police to the rank of chief superintendent when he took charge of safety at the semi-final, which was played on 15 April 1989. He is charged with failing in his duty to take reasonable care for the safety of spectators at the Leppings Lane and north stand areas of Hillsborough designated for Liverpool supporters, to protect them from overcrowding and crushing. The showpiece football occasion was attended by 54,000 people, 24,000 of them Liverpool supporters allocated those sides of the ground. The indictment alleges that Duckenfield’s breach of his duty of care, to prevent people being crushed in “pens” 3 and 4 of the Leppings Lane terrace, amounted to gross negligence, and was “a substantial cause” of the deaths. Graham Mackrell, the Sheffield Wednesday club secretary and safety officer at the time the disaster happened, will stand trial alongside Duckenfield, on two counts of breaching his duties under safety legislation. Mackrell is charged with failing to agree with the police the number of turnstiles to be used for Liverpool supporters’ admission to the Leppings Lane terrace, an alleged breach of the club’s safety certificate under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975, the first ever prosecution under that legislation. He is also charged with failing to take reasonable care of people’s safety under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, including by failing to draw up contingency plans for coping with a large build-up of spectators outside the ground. The trial at Preston crown court, which will be presided over by the judge Sir Peter Openshaw, is scheduled to last four months, due to conclude in May. The 30th anniversary of the disaster is on 15 April , while the trial is almost certain still to be proceeding. Openshaw is expected to pause the trial during the week of the anniversary, for commemorations and remembrances of the disaster and the 96 people who were killed. The Crown Prosecution Service charged Duckenfield and Mackrell in June 2017, based on a police investigation into the disaster, Operation Resolve, which was set up after the report by the Hillsborough Independent Panel in September 2012. The last Labour government set up the panel in 2009, after the 20th anniversary of the disaster, and its work continued from 2010 under the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. The criminal charges followed inquests into the 96 deaths, held in Warrington from 31 March 2014 to 26 April 2016, the longest case ever heard by a jury in British legal history. Both Duckenfield and Mackrell have already pleaded not guilty to the charges in pre-trial hearings. The maximum sentence for manslaughter by gross negligence, if Duckenfield is convicted, is life in prison. The maximum sentence for the first charge faced by Mackrell is two years in prison; for the second he faces, the maximum is an unlimited fine. Duckenfield is charged with a single count of unlawful killing, manslaughter by gross negligence, in relation to 95 of the people who died. No charge could be brought in relation to the death of the 96th victim, Tony Bland. He was 18 when he went to Hillsborough to support Liverpool at the semi-final, and suffered severe, critical brain damage due to loss of oxygen in the crush on the Leppings Lane terrace. He was taken to hospital, where he remained on life support for four years. The life support was turned off in 1993 following a court application by Airedale NHS Trust, supported by his parents, that it would not be unlawful to do so, based on medical evidence that the brain damage was irreversible and he could never recover his faculties. Duckenfield has not been charged in relation to Bland’s death because, according to the law in 1989, a criminal charge of manslaughter could not be applied if the victim died more than a year and a day after the alleged breaches of care occurred. The first day, at least, of the scheduled trial is expected to be concerned with selecting a jury of 12 people. The lead barrister for the Crown Prosecution Service, Richard Matthews QC, is expected to open the case against Duckenfield and Mackrell on Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Three other men face criminal charges in relation to the disaster in a separate trial scheduled to start in September. Donald Denton, a former South Yorkshire police chief superintendent at the time, Denton’s then deputy, former chief inspector Alan Foster, and the then South Yorkshire police solicitor, Peter Metcalf, are charged with doing acts following the disaster with intent to pervert the course of justice. They deny the charges.Campaigners for British nationals settled in the EU have called on Theresa May to guarantee health cover payments for pensioners for at least two years to help secure wider residential rights as well as medical care in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The government has indicated that it is in advanced conversations with countries including Spain, France and Ireland about continuing reciprocal arrangements, which would kick in to place if the UK crashes out of the EU. Currently pensioners who have retired in the EU can get treatment reimbursed in full or part by the NHS under a reciprocal arrangement involving what is known as an S1 certificate. But the campaign group British in Europe says the government needs to make unilateral pledges to extend the S1 beyond 29 March for all 1 million Britons in all EU states irrespective of the bilateral talks. It says the promise of a bilateral agreement is too low a threshold to give legal comfort and that there is concern that UK nationals will be required to have health insurance in order to qualify to remain in some countries as third-country nationals. “If there is no deal British in Europe calls upon Theresa May and [health secretary] Matt Hancock to guarantee to pay unilaterally for pensioners’ medical treatment under the S1 scheme until it is replaced by bilateral agreements,” said Jeremy Morgan, the campaign group’s spokesman on health issues. “It is not just a question of the affordability of treatment. The commission is talking about a piece of EU legislation for third-country nationals who were originally British citizens. One of the conditions they are talking about is a requirement to have sickness insurance. So if we become third-country nationals because of no deal then everyone has to have insurance.” This would be a big financial burden for poorer pensioners or for those who have lived without private health insurance who suddenly find the cost is prohibitive on age grounds or because they have a pre-existing condition. “If the UK does not guarantee the continuation of this scheme, many of the most vulnerable British nationals in the EU will be unable to get any medical treatment and will have to go back to the UK. Just think of the impact of this on a 75-year-old in the middle of vital cancer treatment on 30 March,” said Morgan. The Department of Health and Social Care said it was in advanced talks with Spain, where 67,000 British pensioners live, and France, where 45,000 are settled, over reciprocal arrangements for healthcare and it was confident deals would sealed. “We will not be leaving people high and dry,” said a source. A DHSC spokeswoman said British nationals should not be concerned about health cover: “Our priority is to ensure UK nationals living or working in the EU can continue to access the healthcare they need as we exit the EU.” The department also pointed out that France’s national assembly had voted through a bill that allows the government to take emergency measures to deal with a no-deal Brexit, including protecting the lives of Britons living and working in France, and that Spain was bringing forward a law giving the Spanish president the power to allow British nationals access to healthcare under the current system in the event of no deal – providing there was a reciprocal agreement based on current access.Theresa May is likely to be offered an “exchange of letters” confirming the EU’s intention to conclude trade talks with the UK by 2021, as Brussels seeks to help the prime minister in the run-up to next week’s Commons vote on her deal. The correspondence under discussion would flesh out language already included in the withdrawal agreement but it is hoped its clarity could persuade some MPs of the EU’s intention to avoid triggering the Irish backstop. Should talks on a sufficiently comprehensive and deep future trade deal be agreed and ratified by the the start of 2021, it is hoped there would be no need for the whole of the UK to fall into the customs union envisaged by that “all-weather” solution for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. The target-date cited in the mooted correspondence would not constitute a deadline for concluding the trade talks, however, and EU officials are sceptical as to whether the gambit will be sufficient to win over enough MPs to get May’s contentious deal through parliament. An EU official said: “We have to stick to what is in the withdrawal agreement. We can copy and paste – but what is the point if it is a copy and pasting exercise?” Downing Street indicated it was hopeful of securing written political and legal reassurances from the EU in the coming days, before the meaningful vote anticipated on Tuesday next week, although insiders would not say what form they expected the reassurances to take. But the all-important document is not expected before the Brexit debate begins on Wednesday, raising questions as to whether MPs will be discussing May’s deal with all the available information at the beginning of what is expected to be a five-day debate. The UK wants the EU to stress its intention that a future trade agreement would begin by the end of 2021 at the latest, so rendering the unpopular Irish backstop irrelevant, but it is unclear whether it would be enough to win rebellious Tory MPs over. No 10 recognises it will be very difficult to negotiate a free trade deal by the the time the post-Brexit transition period ends in December 2020 – but wants to see if it could get a commitment to a firm start date one year later. “If we can’t get a free trade deal agreed by the end of 2020, then what’s the next jumping off point,” a Whitehall source said. “That’s the area we are poking about in.” An appeal by Downing Street for a stronger legal commitment by the EU to finalise the deal by the later date of the end of 2021 – ensuring the backstop would be in place for a year at most – has so far been roundly rejected in private discussions before and after Christmas. “They cannot expect a legal commitment to land complicated negotiations by December 2021,” the EU official said. “We do not want to make ourselves legally culpable for a situation that we can’t control.” The prime minister insisted over the weekend that the delayed vote on the deal would take place in the Commons next Tuesday despite widespread doubts that Downing Street has any hope of success. A deadline is one of three elements of a package – along with strengthened parliamentary oversight and a commitment to keeping open trade between Northern Ireland and Britain – designed to address MPs’ concerns that commitments to avoid a hard Irish border will shackle Britain to Brussels indefinitely. A clause in the 585-page draft treaty already stipulates that the “union and the United Kingdom shall use their best endeavours to conclude, by 31 December 2020, an agreement which supersedes this protocol [the backstop] in whole or in part”. The correspondence between Brussels and London, which has become the focus of behind-the-scenes talks, would highlight and elaborate on the meaning of this clause and the arbitration process that would ensure that both sides stuck to it. “We agree with the UK – we don’t want to use the backstop and it will be temporary – but we will not reinterpret what is in the withdrawal agreement,” the EU official added. On Monday, the European commission’s chief spokesman repeated that a phonecall last Friday between May and Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission’s president, had been “friendly” and that a further conversation would be held later this week. “The deal that is on the table is the best and only deal possible,” he said. “This was confirmed by the EU27 in our December article 50 European council and this deal will not be renegotiated.” The spokesman added that Brussels would monitor developments in London and examine “the need for additional action on contingency” plans to mitigate the worst repercussions of a no-deal Brexit. “There is no negotiation because everything on the table has been established, approved, achieved, so the priority now is to await events, monitor what is happening [with] the ratification procedure on the UK side,” he said. “And, no, there will not be any meeting between the commission and our negotiating team. There will not be any meeting as such because negotiations have been completed.” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has tabled an urgent question for 3.30pm this afternoon, demanding that she tell MPs what progress she has made in the Brexit negotiations, complaining that the Commons is not being kept abreast of developments. Labour insisted that the prime minister come to the house and answer Corbyn, but there is no requirement on her to attend as long as a relevant minister is sent instead. The prime minister’s official spokesman said that in addition to May’s conversations with Juncker she had also spoken to France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, on Friday , at the conclusion of a week of high-level diplomacy in an attempt to obtain fresh language to get her deal over the line. May also spoke to Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, on Wednesday, in addition to previously disclosed calls to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Donald Tusk, the European council president. She was also “in contact” with the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, her spokesman said.Donald Trump will visit the southern border this week, as the White House and Democrats in Congress remain split – and the federal government remains partially shut down – over how to address the president’s demand for a border wall. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced that Trump would be traveling to the southern border in a tweet. The president then tweeted that he will make a primetime address on the subject at 9pm on Tuesday. The announcement of Trump’s border visit followed a weekend of fruitless meetings between the two sides on the shutdown, which entered its 17th day. The president, unmoved in his demand for $5.6bn to fund a wall, tweeted that a Sunday meeting between a White House delegation and representatives of Democrats in Congress was “productive”. But Democrats panned his idea of a concession, floated on the Sunday talk shows: to build the wall with steel, rather than concrete. The White House also offered $800m to address “urgent humanitarian needs” at the border. All the while, about 800,000 federal workers remained without pay, either at home or on the job, and key government services faced increasing strain and closure. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told NBC that if the shutdown continues into Tuesday, “then payroll will not go out as originally planned on Friday night”. Speaking to reporters as he left the White House for Camp David on Sunday, Trump claimed many workers without pay “agree 100% with what I’m doing”. Returning, he said: “They will make an adjustment because they want to see the border taken care of.” The president also floated the idea of declaring a national emergency, thereby circumventing Congress to build his wall. It may have merely been a tactic designed to push Democrats to do a deal but Trump’s opponents said in any case such a move would be, in the words of congressman Adam Schiff, a “non-starter”, subject to fierce opposition and legal challenges. On Monday morning, Trump tweeted three times complaining about the media, then quoted the new Democratic chairman of the House armed services committee, Adam Smith, as saying: “Yes, there is a provision in law that says a president can declare an emergency. It’s been done a number of times.” Congressman Adam Smith, the new Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, just stated, “Yes, there is a provision in law that says a president can declare an emergency. It’s been done a number of times.” No doubt, but let’s get our deal done in Congress! Trump omitted the rest of Smith’s comment, which came from a Sunday interview on ABC. Smith continued to say: “But primarily it’s been done to build facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. In this case, I think the president would be wide open to a court challenge saying: ‘Where is the emergency?’” New House speaker Nancy Pelosi will this week start passing bills to reopen government agencies, starting with the treasury in an attempt to ensure people receive tax refunds threatened by the government closure. The moves are meant to pressure Senate Republicans currently sitting out the fight, as leader Mitch McConnell seeks to avoid political damage. Among Senate GOP moderates, Susan Collins of Maine expressed support for the Democratic move on Sunday. “Let’s get those reopened while the negotiations continue,” she told NBC. On Monday, Senate Democrats indicated they will attempt to block the chamber from voting on any legislation until majority leader Mitch McConnell moves to allow votes on the House-passed funding bills. The gambit would not end the shutdown but it would, if successful, force Trump to veto government funding legislation if he wants the showdown over the border wall to continue. Talks remain at an impasse, following a breakdown in communication. A Democratic official said a Sunday meeting with the White House began 45 minutes late after Trump administration officials failed to produce information requested by Democrats and detailing the president’s budget justification for the border wall. “No progress was made today,” the Democratic aide said, while adding no additional meetings had been scheduled. Of the 800,000 workers directly affected, about 420,000 are estimated to be working without pay because they are considered essential. These workers typically receive back pay after a shutdown ends, but it is not guaranteed. Some of those workers, such as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screeners, have been calling out sick at higher rates than usual. Union representatives said this is because workers are being forced to take temporary jobs or cannot afford childcare. Federal workers have warned the shutdown will have long-term effects. Hundreds of immigrants court hearings have been cancelled, exacerbating an existing backlog of more than a million cases. And hundreds of government scientists say they will miss crucial opportunities to exchange research and ideas because the shutdown is stopping them from attending major scientific conferences about technology, space exploration and climate change. Outside the White House on Sunday, Trump said he could “relate” to the federal employees who aren’t being paid during the shutdown.I wonder how many times over the last 40 years someone eyed the cache of tapes containing 100 hours of interviews with Ted Bundy – conducted by the journalist Stephen G Michaud after Bundy claimed wrongful conviction and offered his story in return for a re-examination of his case – before the decision was made that they couldn’t be made public? Those days are over. Into Netflix’s gaping maw and down the gulping true-crime documentary gullet they have gone, emerging at the other end in the form of the four-part series Conversations With a Killer: the Ted Bundy Tapes. When your first thought is how much the murderer would have loved to see this day, you know you’ve got a problem. The main one is that “conversations” isn’t accurate. The tapes are, in effect, a Bundy monologue, describing first his idyllic childhood (it wasn’t), high school years (“I was one of the boys,” he says, “not a social outcast in any way”) and on through his college days and girlfriends – a stream of revisionist, self-aggrandising words anatomising everything about him. Except, quite notably, any of the murders, assaults or kidnappings he had been convicted for or the many more of which he was suspected. Until, that is, Michaud suggested he hypothesise about what happened (a gambit that OJ Simpson ran with a few decades later in his book If I Did It, about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman). Moving into the third person, Bundy “imagines”, amid much cod-philosophising and grandiosity, a man who kills in the hope of fulfilling “an appetite”. One of the tragedies (for others) of Bundy’s life is that he was never as bright as he wanted to be, never marked for greatness as he thought he should be – but he is bright enough not to be lured anywhere near to confessing. In that 100 hours he yields no ground. Unlike some of Netflix’s best true-crime TV series – such as Making a Murderer and The Keepers, or last year’s The Innocent Man – there are no narrative twists awaiting us here. No miscarriages of justice straining to be heard. No insights into the complexities of an unfolding case or scandal of corrupt policemen, judges, clergy or politicians. The tapes themselves are the USP here and that’s just Bundy revealing his inner thoughts, which are about as profound as his murderous motives. Contemporary footage of the crime scenes and mothers grieving is harrowing, but pointlessly so. Everything Bundy could teach us as a society has long been absorbed into our fabric. He taught us that serial killers exist – the term was coined around the time of his spree from 1974 to 1978 – and that they probably always have and probably always will. Shakespeare may have known that there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face, but the handsome Bundy, who charmed his victims into leaving the crowd, proved it to the world. But we know about serial killers now. The only truly chilling thing about Conversations With a Killer was how unchilling it was, so much of a callus has grown over our collective psyche since to allow us to endure such knowledge. What does massing those who knew him as a friend, as a lover or who suffered at his hands really do, except add to his mystique and the glamour of such crimes? That’s not to say there isn’t a good documentary to be made about Bundy. Any cursory reading of any of the many books, or even the Wikipedia entry, about him throws up questions and opens avenues of pursuit. Some of them are glossed here – the ineffectiveness of an investigative system that doesn’t demand that the US police share information across state lines along with the profound mental shift in a nation and curtailment of freedom that occurred in a single man’s wake – but Bundy is the focus. And, as I say, you can’t help but feel that he would, this murderer of an estimated 30-plus women, some of whose bodies have never been found, have been thrilled.From gallery spaces to Instagram, practitioners of the ancient craft of handweaving are finding new platforms for their work. This, coupled with a growing appreciation for all things handmade and an increasing awareness of the environmental impact of the textile industry, has resulted in a wave of weavers who operate at the intersection of art, craft and design. Maria Sigma’s zero-waste textiles draw on her Greek heritage: “Ariadne” is a throw that takes its name from the heroine in Homer’s Odyssey who used a thread to help her lover, while “Theseus”, who escaped the Minotaur’s labyrinth, is made on a floor loom with wool in muted shades. The edge has been hand-crocheted in Aegean blue. Sigma’s cushions, rugs, upholstered stools and handwoven garments are made from undyed, natural British wool, alpaca, linen and recycled cotton. “At every stage of design, I’m thinking about the environmental impact.” She studied textile conservation in Greece and textile design at Chelsea College of Art. Her loom in her east London studio is connected to a computer control unit where she loads her patterns, which include textured distorted diamonds and classic twills. “With a computer you can make much more complicated designs,” she says. “But the loom still puts you through a lot of limitations.”mariasigma.com Woven into Hannah Robson’s sculptural artworks are the tail hairs of Sparkle, her friend’s pony. “I pick up materials where I can find them,” Robson says. “For me, anything is ripe for weaving.” Robson, a lecturer in woven textile design at Bradford College, creates pieces that explore the idea of connection. Inspired by the wire sculptures of Ruth Asawa and Gego, her work is equally informed by time spent at a technical textile company that made looms to create carbon fibre and carbon glass for cars and trains. “The techniques I observed there filtered into my practice.” From her studio in Oxford, Robson uses a floor loom to “create opportunities for threads to break away from the surface”. Threads from her delicate pieces suddenly escape the loom as if coming up for air, before being twisted back into line. “I’m particularly interested in materials that are quite structural such as horsehair, metal, paper and monofilament nylons. You have to let them do their thing.” For Robson, weaving is an outlet for endless experimentation. “A loom is a big frame around a patch of air,” she explains. “You pull these threads through and they hang together. It’s kind of magical.”hannah-robson.com Drawing on the tradition of seat weaving, Jo Elbourne uses braided cotton to create geometric patterns, often using a piece of furniture as the frame. It was this “wrapping, layered thing” that brought her to the attention of Elle Decoration, who named her the winner of their British Design Award for Best in Craft in 2017. Her furniture pieces aren’t intended for everyday use. “They fit in a gap somewhere between utilitarian homeware and art object,” she says. Elbourne is influenced by the Bauhaus movement, and minimal artists such as Donald Judd and Ellsworth Kelly. Her colour palette includes bands of soft pink, sage green and blue, often in combination with a solid block of black or scarlet. She uses synthetic dyes to create bespoke colours, mixing the dyes “to give the pieces a painterly effect”. Working from her studio in Margate, Elbourne starts each design with a hand sketch. “I start at one corner and go all the way around, building up layers. I want the piece to feel continuous, so all the knots and joins are hidden.” Each stool takes two to three hours to weave. “It’s pretty laborious sometimes,” she admits, “but as long as there aren’t any tangles, you get into it. That’s what I’m aiming for – that elusive flow,” she continues. “I guess that’s why anyone does anything labour intensive and complicated, because that’s the reward: that state of mind.”jorobynelbourne.com London-based artist Christabel Balfour came to handweaving via a degree at Camberwell College of Art and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. Her designs are rooted in the natural landscape. “I have lived in the capital all my life, but it’s important for me to create a sense of space and tranquillity in the middle of the city. That’s what I’m trying to do in my work, using simple imagery and calm colours.” Her rugs and wall-hangings are woven from wool, cotton and linen and depict abstract shapes from nature that are open to interpretation. The course of a river, lunar halos and cloud formations can all be perceived in her work, as well as geometric forms and shapes translated from her own freehand drawings. “Mostly I just get started and see where it goes,” she says. Balfour’s colour palette comprises sludgy neutrals, taupes and nudes with mustard, rust or cerulean blue making an occasional appearance. The designs are woven on one of two looms: a 40-year old Harris floor loom, and a bespoke 2m-wide upright rug loom. “They have both needed a lot of care and work, but once you get them running smoothly it’s the best feeling in the world,” says Balfour, who runs weaving workshops in her studio.christabelbalfour.comHuawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, was on Monday criminally charged by the US with stealing trade secrets, defrauding banks and obstructing justice. Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general, said grand juries in Seattle and New York had indicted Huawei, its affiliates and its chief financial officer on 23 criminal charges. Whitaker said the criminal offending at Huawei went “all the way to the top of the company”. Huawei is accused of stealing robot technology from T-Mobile for building smartphones. The company and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, are also accused of defrauding a bank to get around US economic sanctions on Iran. Whitaker said Huawei had obstructed investigations by destroying evidence and moving potential witnesses back to China. Meng, 46, who is the daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested in Canada on 1 December following a request by the US, which will now seek to extradite her. The charges are likely to raise tensions between China and the US amid a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. Huawei has long been considered a cybersecurity risk by US authorities. The Trump administration has pressured American technology companies to not use Huawei components, and have asked allied governments to do the same. The company, which is the world’s biggest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, has consistently denied spying on behalf of the Chinese government. Sometimes there’s a man. I won’t say a hero – ’cause what’s a hero? – but sometimes there’s a man – and I’m talking about the Dude here – sometimes there’s a man who, well, he’s the man for his time and place. And over the last day or so, the Dude – AKA Jeffrey Lebowski, the iconic stoner-deadbeat-turned-understated-hero played by Jeff Bridges in the Coen brothers’ 1998 classic The Big Lebowski – well, his time and place has been on Twitter, a realm even weirder than his home turf of 90s Los Angeles. On Thursday, Bridges posted a 15-second video on Twitter, since watched more than 7m times and pored over in great detail, teasing the return of the Dude. Can’t be living in the past, man. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/zL2CLYhGAM Those familiar jelly sandals walk in on a floorful of party detritus, with smashed wine glasses, salad plates and asparagus spears suggesting somewhat classier surrounds than the Dude’s typical hangouts. The camera pans up to reveal the character’s timeless knitwear and hair. He turns toward us, all goatee and shades, gives a perfectly low-key smile and nod, and goes on his way. As in the original movie, tumbleweed drifts down the urban pavement and Bob Dylan sings The Man in Me. For Lebowski fans – or Achievers, to give us our proper title – merely seeing that the Dude abides is enough to warm the heart. It’s good knowing he’s still out there, takin’ her easy for all us sinners, and Bridges still absolutely looks the part. But a couple more things come to mind, too. The date given at the end of the video is Sunday 3 February: the day of the Superbowl, which is as famous for gimmicky high-profile commercials as it is for touchdowns. Has the Dude sold out to the Man? And, if so, why does the Man even think he’s worth buying? The bad news is that Bridges’s video looks like an ad for an ad rather than a new Lebowski movie. Bridges has said he’d be happy to revisit the role – and John Turturro has reportedly spun his character, Jesus, off into a whole new movie – but the Coens have ruled out a Lebowski sequel. We’re likely looking at a commercial, then – though given that the Coens have made Superbowl ads in the past, there’s still a chance they’re involved. Judgment should be reserved until the date rolls around but, given the Dude’s avowedly underground sensibility, the idea of him shilling for some corporate product can’t help deflate the excitement of seeing him at large once more. Well, he might shrug, you gotta feed the monkey. Yet it’s interesting to ask why the character is still deemed resonant enough to exploit. Why, more than two decades on, does the Dude still strike a chord? Call me a sap but I’d like to think it’s because he represents qualities that can seem hard to come by these days – relics of a different era, even. He’s a live-and-let-live kind of guy, a devotee of peace and love with beliefs about mutual care that are deeply held but lightly worn. He’s slow to anger or insult, abhors aggression and conflict, and happily drinks and bowls with a best bud, Walter (John Goodman), whose politics and life experience are the polar opposite of his own. At a time when division, accusation and contempt seem to be all around, the Dude offers an offbeat model of love. Here’s hoping that, on 3 February, Walter will be back to share in it too.The dilemma My father complained to my wife that the Christmas presents I bought for him and his partner weren’t good enough. He is 66. I bought them some artisan chocolate, which he described as “broken chocolate” because it came wrapped in a clear plastic bag (it was from a small local business that hand-wraps items), and a handmade candle that was called “crappy” by his partner. Given that they’re both wealthy, retired, own three houses and enjoy numerous holidays each year, should I feel bad that I don’t push the boat out in buying expensive gifts for them? Should I have bought the grumpy old git an iPad or a drone? Their presents to us were the usual haul of thoughtless jumpers and biscuits, and wrong-size clothes for the grandchildren they never see, all bought in the same supermarket. Thanks. Sorry. I’m still angry! I bet you get loads of letters like this at this time of year. Mariella replies Yes, there have been a couple! I hear you, honestly I do. But, as we both know, this whole Christmas thing is way out of control. Your father is clearly an optimist, expecting more than a token on what’s become a seasonal retail opportunity. By early January it feels as if the whole nation is waking up to the mother of all hangovers – bank accounts depleted and surrounded by piles of discarded junk. Or is that just me? The only people who can afford to be rubbing their hands with glee are the sellers, who are so busy comparing how much people squandered last season to this season that I’m not sure even they gain much pleasure out of the experience. Family members have retreated into their respective corners, licking wounds and resolving not to go through the same torture again next year, bank statements lie around unopened among tardy Christmas cards (the ones only sent in response to cards received) and turkey has disappeared overnight from every menu in the land. We’re back at work, poorer, fatter and seemingly none the wiser! For most of December we’ve rushed around, elbows out, grasping at an assortment of useless items with which to express I’m not sure what exactly, to a motley crew of friends, family, colleagues and godchildren, in celebration of an event that dwindling numbers believe in. No wonder the only Christmas tradition that still flourishes is the imbibing of copious amounts of alcohol. It’s the perfect fuel for the in-house bickering in every house as reunited adult children resume their childhood pecking order and siblings count each other’s gifts for signs of preferential treatment. No wonder many of us wake up on 2 January exhausted, ill and in the grip of a mysterious amnesia, wondering what the hell happened to the past three weeks. Admit your gifts were rubbish – and invite him to do likewise You’ve written to the wrong person if you’re expecting a pat on the back for playing your part, or an attempt to evaluate whose gifts are the least thoughtful. Surely you’ll admit that your father’s lack of imagination seems to have been passed down? Choosing between a random sweater and an impersonal bag of chocolate, no matter how impressively artisanal, is not really giving me much to work with. But that’s old news. Let’s look ahead and, in time-honoured tradition, resolve to do things better next year. You don’t have to be an agony aunt to spot the underlying resentment in your missive. There’s clearly history to your grievances and a sense you feel unappreciated and, perhaps, undervalued. I’m not going to suggest either you or your father tries harder next year but instead that you abandon the charade altogether. When you’re down to doing supermarket sweeps for ugly jumpers there really isn’t much to mourn the passing of. How about a resolution to make the festivities a period of quality rather than quarrelling time? If you start your campaign now you’ve got 12 months in which to achieve real progress. Calm ruffled feathers by admitting your presents were rubbish and invite your father and his partner to do likewise. Then suggest you all make a donation to a charity of your choice next year, except for tokens for the grandchildren, for which you’ll helpfully provide an inexpensive list of suggestions. That’s the easy part! Repairing relations and trying to achieve a less fractious family dynamic will require lashings of goodwill from all concerned. But as that’s what Christmas is meant to be about, a good place to start might be at one of their three houses on 25 December 2019. Having removed the pressure of gift-buying, they might leap at the chance to host a festive bash. You and your wife might even get to put your feet up. You may think I’m delusional, but at this point in the calendar I’m full of fervent resolutions. Right now I truly believe we can change the world and the best place to start is our own living rooms. It’s important to have a dream, especially one that elevates you above the realm of bickering about presents. Swept along on a wave of good cheer, you could achieve the idyll of increased family harmony – without it costing a penny. If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1Dir: Yorgos LanthimosOlivia Colman excels as an emotionally wounded Queen Anne in a bizarre black comedy of the English Restoration court, directed by the Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos. It is based on the true story of two noblewomen creating a horribly dysfunctional love triangle by competing for the queen’s favours: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and Abigail, Baroness Basham – played by Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone.UK release date: 1 January Dirs: Julie Cohen, Betsy West / Mimi LederThese films count as one choice! It feels like an especially fraught moment to contemplate the career of US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose forthright liberal judgments have made her a pop culture legend. RBG is a documentary directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West; On the Basis of Sex is a feature starring Felicity Jones as RBG. RBG: 4 January; On the Basis of Sex: 8 February Dir: Catherine CorsiniThe fierce and passionate direction of Catherine Corsini is applied to this French melodrama of love and sexism, adapted from an autobiographical novel by Christine Angot. In the 1950s, a young secretary (Virginie Efira) has a passionate affair with a wealthy young man (Niels Schneider); she bears a child whom he refuses to acknowledge, so she must bring up their daughter alone.4 January Dir: Jason ReitmanIt sounds so quaint in the brazen era of Donald Trump: the story of how, in 1988, the smoothly plausible Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart had all his hopes sunk by accusations of an extramarital affair. Hugh Jackman plays the presentable Hart, the estimable Vera Farmiga is his wife Oletha, and Sara Paxton is the other woman, Donna Rice, who endured the full misogynistic force of the press coverage.11 January Dir: Wash WestmorelandKeira Knightley plays the great French author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who as a young woman in belle époque Paris was married to the notorious womaniser and rackety journalist Henry Gauthier-Villars (played here by Dominic West), who insisted on putting his name on the novels she wrote at first – and getting all the money. The director is Wash Westmoreland, who directed Still Alice; he co-wrote the screenplay with his partner, the late Richard Glatzer.11 January Dir: Jon S BairdSteve Coogan and John C Reilly give wonderfully observed performances as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in this sad, sweet, true-life movie about the British tour they undertook after the second world war, in dire need of money. They endure miserable digs, second-rate theatres, terrible weather and the fact that their local promoter seems more excited about a new young comic called Norman Wisdom.11 January Dir: Felix Van GroeningenThere can hardly be anyone hotter right now than Timothée Chalamet; here he plays a teenage meth abuser, Nic, whose addiction causes agony to his dad David, played by Steve Carell. The film is based on parallel father-and-son memoirs of this same experience.18 January Dir: Josie RourkeScreenwriter Beau Willimon, an old hand at American political thrillers, transfers his skills to scripting English and Scottish history with this tale of Mary, Queen of Scots, played by Saoirse Ronan. Margot Robbie plays her nemesis, Queen Elizabeth I, and David Tennant is the gloweringly suspicious churchman John Knox. Read our interview with the film’s director, Josie Rourke.18 January Dir: Clint EastwoodAt 88 years of age, Clint Eastwood is showing no signs of slowing down. He directs this film based on a startling true-life story, and also stars as Earl, a second world war veteran who, in 2011, was discovered by astonished law enforcement officials to be the oldest drug mule in America, smuggling substances over the border into the US. Bradley Cooper plays the cop on his case.25 January Dir: Karyn KusamaNicole Kidman’s self-transformation in this brutally tough crime thriller has been much acclaimed on the festival circuit. She plays Erin Bell, an FBI agent who has lost it, psychologically and physically, after going deep undercover with mobsters, and cuts a tortured figure as her life falls apart. Now she gets the chance to reckon with the people who damaged her.25 January Dir: Adam McKayThe former US vice-president, big oil nabob and waterboarding enthusiast Dick Cheney squats like a latex-inflated toad at the ear of power in this flashy political comedy from Adam McKay about the power behind the throne of George W Bush. It’s a scarily plausible impersonation from Christian Bale, whose bald-capped head has been enlarged to the size of a pale pink, bespectacled beachball. Amy Adams is on great form as Cheney’s formidable wife Lynne, with Sam Rockwell as Dubya and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld..25 January Dir: Marielle HellerWith a screenplay by that great and underrated film-maker Nicole Holofcener, this tragicomic true-life story of fakery looks mouthwatering. Melissa McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a once bestselling biographer who fell on hard times and turned to counterfeiting literary manuscripts.1 February Dir: Lee Chang-dongThis superbly subtle mystery thriller from Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong is for many people the film of the year. It is a love triangle which turns into a fear triangle and a hate triangle, based on a short story by Haruki Murakami. A young man falls in love with a beautiful young woman who dumps him in favour of a rich smoothie who has a creepy obsession with setting things on fire. Then she disappears. What has happened?1 February Dir: Sara Colangelo Maggie Gyllenhaal plays an unhappy woman in this American indie drama, remade from a 2014 film by Israeli director Nadav Lapid. She is naggingly unfulfilled in her family life and professional career as a teacher and then becomes obsessed with the idea that one of her kids is a genius.8 February Dir: Barry JenkinsBarry Jenkins, whose Moonlight won the best picture Oscar two years ago, returns with this impassioned adaptation of the 1974 James Baldwin novel. It is a story of love and injustice in 1970s Harlem, when a young man is falsely accused of rape and his pregnant girlfriend has to prove his innocence.8 February Dir: Ali Abbasi This bizarre Swedish film, adapted from a story by horror-fiction author John Ajvide Lindqvist, has comprehensively weirded out all who have seen it. A young customs officer has what amounts to a professional superpower: she can smell fear. But when she applies that skill to a guilty-looking person who resembles her, a strange story unfolds.8 February Dir: Stephen Merchant Stephen Merchant directs this British comedy about wrestling, effectively remade from a documentary about a WWE wrestler in the US. Florence Pugh and Jack Lowden play Saraya and Zak, a brother and sister who are both talented wrestlers, but have a terrible sibling rivalry when they audition for WWE.1 March Dirs: Anna Boden, Ryan FleckThis is Marvel Studios’ first female-led superhero film and its first with a female director: Anna Boden. Brie Larson plays Carol Danvers, a former US air force fighter pilot whose DNA becomes fused with that of a Kree – a militaristic alien being – giving her superpowers.8 March Dir: Alice RohrwacherOne of the most gorgeous and beguiling films on the festival circuit now gets a release. It is a lovely magic-realist fable set among an exploited peasant community who appear to be living in the 19th century – yet this is misleading. Among them is the happy idiot boy Lazzaro, who, like his namesake, is destined to be mysteriously reborn.15 March Dir: Jordan PeeleJordan Peele’s satirical horror movie about racism, Get Out, made him a hot property, and now we have a movie about which little is known, other than that the director is calling it a “social-horror thriller”. It stars Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke and Elisabeth Moss.15 March Dir: Lukas DhontThis is a much admired Belgian movie about trans issues – though it has been criticised for using a cisgender actor in the lead. Lara, played by Victor Polster, is a 15-year-old transitioning to female, yearning to be a ballerina, and facing incomprehension and transphobia along with all the other hurdles a dancer must endure.15 March Dir: Carol MorleyHere is a movie straight out of left field: a metaphysical noir starring Patricia Clarkson as a tough New Orleans cop investigating the mysterious death of an astrophysicist – based on the Martin Amis novel Night Train. Director Carol Morley is such a restlessly creative film-maker. 22 March Dir: Ralph FiennesDavid Hare scripts this handsomely appointed drama starring Oleg Ivenko as the young Rudolf Nureyev as he prepares to defect to the west in the early 60s, while remaining enigmatic about his exact motives. Real-life dance star Sergei Polunin plays his Kirov roommate, Yuri Soloviev.22 March Dir: Adam ShankmanA cheeky gender-inverting remake of Nancy Meyers’s 2000 comedy What Women Want, which starred Mel Gibson as an adman who suddenly finds he can read women’s minds. Now it’s Taraji P Henson as a sports agent who gets the edge when she gains telepathic access to guys’ thought processes.22 March Dir: Tim BurtonJust when you’d recovered from the tearful trauma of the 1941 Disney animated classic, there comes a new live-action version. Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito star.29 March Dirs: Kevin Kölsch, Dennis WidmeyerStephen King’s brand identity in the horror world is as strong as ever, and here is the second movie version of his 1983 novel. It is the exquisitely horrible and obscene story of a doctor whose son is killed in an accident and who takes the corpse to the supernatural burial ground nearby – with grotesque results.5 April Dir: Jacques AudiardFrench director Jacques Audiard has mastered the western with terrific elan. It is 1850s Oregon, and John C Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix play quarrelsome brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters, who are on a mission to assassinate a certain individual in San Francisco, and have to work with a prissy private detective, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.5 April Dir: Paolo SorrentinoIt was only a matter of time before Paolo Sorrentino made a film about Silvio Berlusconi. Sorrentino’s longtime star Toni Servillo plays the Italian politician and media magnate, and the film is about Loro (that is: them), the group of hideously complicit businessmen and hangers-on who enabled his rule.12 April Dir: Trevor Nunn Theatrical heavyweight Trevor Nunn makes a rare sortie into the movies for this period drama inspired by the life and times of the KGB’s veteran British spy Melita Norwood. Here she is transformed into “Red” Joan Stanley, and played as a young woman by Sophie Cookson and in later years by Judi Dench.19 April Dir: Bo BurnhamA hyper-contemporary comedy-drama from first-time writer-director Bo Burnham (and veteran producer Scott Rudin) that has been much admired. It is about an eighth-grader (ie around 13 years old) who is obsessed with social media and keeps making self-help and self-esteem videos on YouTube which, by getting hardly any views, undermine her self-esteem.26 AprilThe huge stone figures of Easter Island have beguiled explorers, researchers and the wider world for centuries, but now experts say they have cracked one of the biggest mysteries: why the statues are where they are. Researchers say they have analysed the locations of the megalithic platforms, or ahu, on which many of the statues known as moai sit, as well as scrutinising sites of the island’s resources, and have discovered the structures are typically found close to sources of fresh water. They say the finding backs up the idea that aspects of the construction of the platforms and statues, such as their size, could be tied to the abundance and quality of such supplies. “What is important about it is that it demonstrates the statue locations themselves are not a weird ritual place – [the ahu and moai] represent ritual in a sense of there is symbolic meaning to them, but they are integrated into the lives of the community,” said Prof Carl Lipo from Binghamton University in New York, who was co-author of the research. Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, has more than 300 megalithic platforms, each of which might have been made by a separate community. The first of these are believed to have been constructed in the 13th century, and many are found around the coast. It is thought the monuments represent ancestors and were linked to ritual activity, forming a focal point for communities, but the reason for their locations was previously a mystery. While studies have suggested the sites might have been chosen because of a link to key resources, the team says the latest research is the first attempt to scrutinise such claims. The team focused on the east of the island, where various resources have been well mapped, and looked at the distribution of 93 megalithic platforms constructed before European sailors turned up in the 18th century. After finding no link to the proximity of rock used for tools or for the monuments, they looked at whether the ahu were found near other important resources: gardens spread with stones in which crops like sweet potatoes were grown, sites linked to fishing, and sources of fresh water. Lipo said he became interested in the latter after he and his colleagues began delving into where those living on Rapa Nui got their drinking water from. The island has no permanent streams, and there is little evidence that residents relied on the island’s lakes. However, fresh water passes through the ground into aquifers, seeping into caves as well as emerging around the coast. “It is sort of amazing at low tide when the water goes down, suddenly there are streams running off at different spots right at the coast that are just pure fresh water,” said Lipo. “We noticed this, actually, when we were doing a survey on the island, that we would see horses drinking from the ocean.” Historical records reveal islanders drank this rather brackish water, while studies suggest they also made wells to capture drinking water. The results of the new research, published in the journal Plos One, reveal proximity to freshwater sites is the best explanation for the ahu locations – and explains why they crop up inland as well as on the coast. “The exceptions to the rule about being at the coast where water comes out actually are met by the fact there is also water there – it is found through cave locations,” said Lipo, adding historic wells were found to explain some ahu locations apparently without fresh water. Lipo said the results chimed with the team’s experiences on the ground. “Every time we saw massive amounts of fresh water, we saw giant statues,” he said. “It was ridiculously predictable,” he added. The results, said Lipo, made sense, as drinking water is essential for communities and it is impractical to have to walk miles for a quick swig. “You would do stuff near the fresh water,” he said. But he says the study also adds weight to the idea that communities competed and interacted through monument building, in contrast to the idea that islanders engaged in lethal violence over scarce natural resources – something Lipo says there is little evidence for. Indeed, the team is now exploring whether various aspects of the statues such as their size or other features might be linked to the quality of the water resources, potentially offering a way in which a community could show off a competitive advantage to other groups of islanders. And community and cooperation, stresses Lipo, were crucial in construction of the monuments. “Anything that brings you together is going to make you stronger and allow you to survive,” he said. “I think that is the secret to Easter Island.” But not everyone agrees about the location of the statues. Jo Anne Val Tilburg, an Easter Island expert from the University of California, Los Angeles, said: “The existence of fresh water seeps near coastal ahu is well-known and was certainly important at European contact. However, such seeps are today, and probably always were, minor resources. It is highly unlikely, in my view, that these resources were of major importance in locating ahu during prehistory.”Air traffic controllers hold the trump card (pardon the expression) in upcoming negotiations between Donald Trump and congressional Democrats over border security. That’s because the president and the Republicans know that another shutdown would likely cause a repeat of what happened last Friday, when so many of the nation’s air traffic controllers called in sick that America’s air traffic came to a near standstill. Hours later, Trump agreed to reopen the government without funding for his wall. Never underestimate the power of airport delays to arouse the nation. Nancy Pelosi deserves credit for sticking to her guns, but the controllers brought the country to its knees. Trump is threatening another shutdown if he doesn’t get his way by 15 February, when government funding will run out again. “Does anybody really think I won’t build the WALL?” he tweeted Sunday, after his acting chief of staff said that he was prepared to shutter the government for a second time. But his threat is for the cameras. If there’s no agreement this time around, the controllers won’t work another 35 days without pay. Now that they understand their power, they will shut down the shutdown right away. Trump knows this. Ironically, it was Ronald Reagan’s audacious decision in 1981 to fire and replace more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who were then striking illegally that legitimized decades of union busting. It signaled to employers around the country that unions – both public and private-sector – were fair game. It also unleashed political forces against unions, culminating last year with the supreme court’s 5-4 decision in Janus v AFSCME, holding that government workers can’t be forced to contribute to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining. But the decision last week by thousands of controllers not to come to work wasn’t a strike, and it wasn’t initiated by a union. Beforehand, Paul Rinaldi, the president of the controller’s union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, even went so far as to announce that the union did not “condone or endorse any federal employees participating in or endorsing a coordinated activity that negatively effects the capacity of the National Airspace System”. Not all public workers can expect similar results by walking off their jobs. The walkout has to cause a major disruption Controllers simply stayed home. No federal law prohibits federal employees from getting sick or calling in sick. And who’s to say it was coordinated? Today, the internet can spread information about a voluntary walkout as quickly and efficiently as any centralized coordinator. The larger story is that public workers who lack any formal power to strike – but have the informal power not to work – are becoming a new force in American politics and labor relations. Look what teachers accomplished last year by walking out of their classrooms in the unlikeliest of places – West Virginia, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado and North Carolina. Most of these are Republican “right-to-work” states that bar strikes by public employees. In recent years, all have slashed school funding and eroded teacher pay and benefits. Like the air traffic controllers, the teachers chose not to work rather than give in to what they considered intolerable conditions. These unauthorized “wildcat” strikes won gains in teachers’ salaries and funding for schools. (Not incidentally, they also galvanized thousands of teachers to run for office in the 2018 midterm elections.) These were especially powerful because they offered elected officials no union leader or chief organizer with whom to negotiate a deal, who would then sell it to rank-and-file workers. As with the air traffic controllers last week, officials had to back down because the people they were dealing with were all rank-and-file, and public pressure was mounting rapidly. Not all public workers can expect similar results by walking off their jobs. The walkout has to cause a major and visible disruption. (A work stoppage by FDA inspectors would hardly be noticed, at least until the public begins to worrying about toxic drugs and tainted meat.) And the public has to be supportive. By the fifth week of Trump’s shutdown, polls showed the public highly sympathetic to federal workers who hadn’t been paid. Likewise, most Americans have been on the side of teachers. National polls have shown the public largely in favor of higher teacher pay and supportive of teachers’ right to strike. Finally, it’s not a weapon that can be used often because it relies for its potency on public frustration and inconvenience. If walkouts by public employees in France and other nations are any guide, public patience eventually wears thin. But when elected officials in the United States abuse their power or take actions that unnecessarily harm the public, walkouts by public workers can function as an important constraint. In the age of Trump, we need all the constraints we can get.Could it have been anything else? Gigli wasn’t just a lead balloon; it was the Hindenburg. It’s widely considered to be one of the worst films ever made. It made a 10th of its budget back. It derailed the careers of Lopez and Ben Affleck (who were engaged but split up shortly after it was made) and the director, Martin Brest, who never directed again. To quote one of the great poets, “gobble gobble”. How did Lopez bounce back from this historic flop? By making the second-worst film of her career, also with Affleck. A sludgy Kevin Smith melodrama, Lopez’s role was pruned for fear it would remind people of Gigli, which it did anyway. The best thing about it is that Lopez dies quite quickly. One of those films where every detail makes you question whether or not it even existed. It stars Robin Williams as a schoolboy who looks like a middle-aged man. The poster features the title written in crayon. Bill Cosby is in it. Francis Ford Coppola directed it, for crying out loud. Lopez isn’t bad in Jack – she has a relatively small, sweet part – but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that she’s in it. Booed at its Berlin premiere, Bordertown is a witless would-be thriller that obliterates every one of its good intentions with sheer turbo-powered boneheadedness. Lopez plays a hardbitten news reporter on investigating a spate of murders on the US-Mexico border in a film that contains a genuinely confusing musical number by the Colombian pop star Juanes for literally no reason at all. By far the worst J-Lo romcom of all time, The Back-Up Plan sees Lopez playing a woman who falls in love with an anonymous boy actor three seconds after being artificially inseminated with twins. Will they stay together? Will he raise her kids? Who decided this film was a good idea? Fun fact: Lopez vomits into a bin at the end. AKA what happens when Lopez takes a dumb swing at Oscar bait. There’s grief, there’s domestic abuse, there’s a car crash, there’s endless hokey small-town Americana, there’s a bear attack. Robert Redford is in this; if it wasn’t for Lions for Lambs, this would be his worst film. Gigli and Jersey Girl taught Lopez important lessons about the dangers of working with your romantic partner. But she clearly never listened, because in 2006 she made this entirely generic vanity project of a music biopic with her new husband, Marc Anthony. It is just as miserable as you would expect. Last year, Viola Davis railed against her unfair treatment as a black woman in Hollywood. Looking at Lila & Eve – a direct-to-VOD vigilante crime drama co-starring Lopez from 2015, in which she recites the Alcoholics Anonymous serenity prayer to avenge her son’s death – it’s hard to disagree. A mystical jazz musician-turned-hobo walks the streets of Chicago performing kind acts for strangers. One of these kind acts, inexplicably, involves stopping the world’s most beautiful cop from being shot in the head with a machine gun. Then they fall in love. I promise I am not making any of this up. Richard Gere plays Richard Gere from Pretty Woman, Jennifer Lopez plays Jennifer Lopez from 70% of all Jennifer Lopez films and Susan Sarandon slowly realises that she made a terrible mistake by agreeing to appear in such a soggy wad of a film. In which Lopez’s teenage neighbour gives her a suspiciously new-looking first-edition copy of the Iliad, sleeps with her, then goes bananas and ultimately gets stabbed in the eye with an EpiPen. Not anywhere as fun as I’ve made it sound. A film that only exists by sheer dint of J-Lo’s effort. It borrows the hacky romcom premise of her other films (low-class woman is mistaken for high-class woman), gives itself a title that’s clearly meant to be seen as a future delineation point in Lopez’s filmography, then spaffs itself raw trying and failing to justify its own existence. You will watch this on a plane and then instantly forget about it. On paper, this should have been Lopez’s nadir – playing a supporting role in a Jason Statham film, for God’s sake – and yet it isn’t completely awful. It’s a little anonymous, and entirely forgettable, but she’s made much worse. True, sequels such as Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, Anaconda 3: Offspring, Anacondas: Trail of Blood and Lake Placid vs Anaconda might have taken the shine off the original a little. However, this is still fun and stupid, especially if you like watching Owen Wilson get swallowed by a snake. A film that Lopez could only have made at the height of her fame. It’s a sort of Karate Kid remake, but about a woman who learns krav maga in order to kill her abusive husband. It’s a drama (sort of), it’s issue-led (sort of) and it’s actually quite good (sort of). A dumb – extraordinarily dumb – mid-90s Tarantino-ish thriller from Oliver Stone that wants to be Chinatown but ends up hitting Doc Hollywood. Lopez is literally the only good thing about this. One of J-Lo’s best-known roles, playing a hotel chambermaid who gets mistaken for a millionaire socialite by a clot. It’s Pretty Woman without any sex work, and only really let down by Ralph Fiennes, who bungles his potential mainstream breakout by generally coming off like a witness protection serial killer. Maligned upon release, this romcom succeeds purely for one reason: Jane Fonda. Everyone else in this film plays it straight from the J-Lo romcom rulebook, but Fonda is coming from an entirely different universe. She hadn’t made a film for 15 years before Monster-in-Law, and attacks her role like an exploding volcano. Seriously, watch it just for her. Has Lopez ever made a more visually arresting film than this? No. The Cell is a work of art. Every frame of Tarsem Singh’s debut has clearly been agonised over. But has anyone who has ever watched The Cell figured out what it’s about? Again, probably no. The definitive J-Lo romcom in a field packed with them. In fact, probably the platonic ideal of what a romcom should be. Two beautiful leads (the other is Matthew McConaughey). A love story packed with obstacles. A demented belief in the undying sanctity of marriage. Judy Greer in a supporting role that she’s clearly overqualified for. This film has everything, and in the middle of it is Lopez. The film that put Lopez on the map, and the lighter flipside to El Cantante. It’s another musical biopic, but one that plays to all of Lopez’s early strengths. She’s radiant, restless and determined here. She’s so good, in fact, that Selena gives all of her subsequent films a slightly bitter aftertaste. What could she have achieved, you wonder, if she had stayed this loose and free instead of hardening into J-Lo? Lopez’s best film by a country mile. She, George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh have never been better than in this stylish, sexy, unquestionably cool Elmore Leonard adaptation. The whole thing is like taking off your shoes and wriggling your toes in a thick carpet, and it’s propelled by the crackling chemistry between the two leads. It did badly at the box office and Lopez never went near anything like this again. Which is an extraordinary shame.Up to 100,000 Greeks converged on Athens on Sunday to demonstrate against a name-change deal with the Republic of Macedonia, days before a vote in parliament on the accord. Athens has long contended that its neighbour’s name implies territorial ambitions against its own northern province of Macedonia. Under the accord, known as the Prespes agreement and reached with Skopje last June, the Balkan republic will be renamed North Macedonia in order to resolve a row that began with the dissolution of Yugoslavia almost 30 years ago. However, many Greeks are still unhappy that the mostly Slavic state will still have Macedonia in its name. Thousands of protesters who had travelled to Athens by bus, plane and ferry packed into Syntagma Square in front of the parliament building yesterday, chanting “Macedonia is Greek”. Police fired rounds of teargas into the crowd and demonstrators, some draped in giant Greek flags, could be seen vomiting and running for cover. Greece’s leftist prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, blamed the clashes on “extremist elements” of the ultra-right Golden Dawn party out in force under the motto “resistance to treachery”. “Macedonia is one and it is Greek,” said Andreas Androutsos, a young engineer, deploying a refrain echoed by many attending the demonstration. “What the government is doing is fascistic. It is trying to pass an agreement that so many of us are against. Macedonia belongs to the Greek people, it doesn’t belong to any political party.” As part of the pact, MPs in Athens’s 300-seat House are required to ratify it after parliamentarians in Skopje endorsed the agreement earlier this month. Once passed, the renamed Balkan nation can begin accession talks with Nato and the EU – alliances Greece has blocked because of the dispute. Organisers had hoped to attract as many as 600,000 protesters to pressure the government into holding a referendum on the deal but turnout fell well short of that, according to police. Of the 3,000 buses lined up to travel to the capital, mostly from the country’s north, only 326 were recorded clocking in at tolls on national highways. Yet hostility to the accord remains visceral and deep. In a nation humiliated by the depredations of years of economic crisis, successive surveys show around 70% of Greeks are opposed to the agreement. “Millions of Greeks are, and will continue to be, against the Prespes agreement,” tweeted the country’s conservative former prime minister Antonis Samaras, a nationalist whose career was first fermented by the dispute. “Whatever provocation they come up with, however much teargas they spray, people will remain unbowed for Macedonia.” Among the most trenchant criticism is the belief that Slavic Macedonians are bent on appropriating Greek history, not least the ancient warrior king Alexander the Great. Demonstrators, who included diaspora Greeks who had flown in from as far away as the United States and monks from the monastic community of Mount Athos, were united in vehemence on Sunday that the accord amounted to cultural theft. “All the findings show that Alexander was a Greek. He spoke Greek, he thought in Greek, there was nothing Slavic about him,” said Chrysanthi Papageorgiou, a woman who had come in from Athens’s poorer western suburbs with her husband Yannis for the protest. “We are not against our neighbours but we are going to defend our rights. We are not going to submit or surrender to them.” Tsipras claims the pact protects Greece’s cultural heritage by drawing a “clear distinction” between the eponymous Greek region, its ancient civilisation and the neighbouring country. With his social democrat counterpart Zoran Zaev, the Greek leader has won international praise for the determination both have displayed ending a dispute whose settlement is regarded as a rare feel-good story for Europe. In capitals across the EU there is a consensus that the accord will shore up stability in the Balkans at a time of increased Russian interference across the volatile region. Both prime ministers have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize this year in recognition of the political courage they have been credited with exhibiting. But the scale of the opposition shows that winning over hearts and minds remains an uphill struggle. The agreement, submitted to parliament on Saturday, is expected to be put before MPs later this week. Tsipras, who narrowly won a vote of confidence last week, controls 145 seats and with the help of deputies who have defected from his coalition’s erstwhile junior partner, the Independent Greeks party, and centrists, is expected to prevail. The centre-right main opposition party, New Democracy, has been staunchly critical of the accord. But strength will lie in numbers. “If it is to have legitimacy and no one is to question the deal afterwards, it is important that it is supported by as many as possible,” said Stelios Kouloglou who represents the ruling Syriza party in the European parliament. MPs, particularly in northern Greece, have received death threats ahead of the parliamentary vote. Yet the prospect of holding a public plebiscite on such a divisive issue has also elicited dread. “It will be very polarising,” said Eleftheria Giammaki, a schoolteacher standing before a banner proclaiming “resistance to nationalism” at a counter-rally staged by anti-establishment leftists down the road. “Nationalism is a great curse. We need to move beyond this issue as quickly as possible.”Emiliano Sala made a name for himself in France, playing for Bordeaux and Nantes among other clubs, but grew up in Argentina and the shock of what has happened to him is felt as much there as it is in Europe. The 28-year-old was travelling from Nantes to Cardiff on Monday night when the plane, a Piper PA‑46, disappeared off the radar. It has not yet been found despite an extensive search, and the rescue operation – which included help from the Channel Islands, UK and France – was suspended for the day at 5pm on Wednesday. The disappearance of the aircraft has dominated the media in Argentina since the news broke, with speculation regarding dark motives behind its disappearance and stories of his early beginnings in the towns of Cululú, where he was born, and Progreso, where he grew up, both in the central province of Santa Fe. The news has deeply affected the combined population of 2,000 people in the towns, where Sala is adored as the local boy who made it to the international big leagues. In both, locals have gathered at masses dedicated to the player. “We’re in shock, we’ve held a ring of prayer all morning with much of the town taking part,” Alberto Gudiño, an official of the San Martín football club, where Sala played until age 15, told the TN television channel. “We can’t believe what’s happening.” Only last weekend, people in both towns had celebrated the announcement of Sala’s transfer to Cardiff for a fee of £15m. The love was mutual, and Sala returned often for month-long stays, eating Argentine beef at the “asados” – Argentinian-style barbecues – prepared by his brother Darío. “To us he’s family,” Gudiño said. “We’re badly affected. There’s so few of us here that we all know each other and Emiliano was just another one of us every time he came back, mixing with us. He never disconnected from us.” Daniel Rivero, a director at San Martín, added: “We’re at a loss. The town is shocked. There’s only lost faces. He came to live in Progreso when he was very little. He started his football career at San Martín. “At San Martín there’s a branch of the Proyecto Crecer [“grow-up project”], which is connected to Bordeaux in France. That’s how they spotted him and brought him and after lots of to-ing and fro-ing he ended up in French football. He wasn’t so well known in Argentina because he never played for any of the bigger clubs in our country. “We had known him all his life and we know how much he deserved this moment, a huge transfer and all the media attention. He was the first person from our club to really make it. What happened makes no sense. We’re hoping for a miracle, for him to turn up alive.” The model Berenice Schkair, 27, who had been dating Sala, made a call on social media to continue the search: “I want to wake up and for all of this to be a lie. Please investigate because I cannot believe this accident or that they suspended the search … I need to read that you’ve been found.” She posted this on Instagram below a set of photos and videos of her and Sala on Tuesday. “I feel impotent, I’m in a nightmare. I cannot stop thinking about you, Emi.” The post continued with messages of love that Schkair later deleted, leaving only: “Investigate, don’t stop looking for him please.” She had earlier said: “What I most regret is not having told you that you made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time.” In a Twitter post that has also since been taken down, Schkair suggested there could have been foul play behind the aircraft’s disappearance: “Investigate the football mafia because I don’t believe this accident.” Schkair, a model from the Buenos Aires town of Tres de Febrero who has 53,000 Instagram followers, told the Infobae online newspaper she is devastated and that she had removed the posts bearing Sala’s family in mind: “The only thing I want is for him to appear. But out of respect for the family I prefer to wait, I’m going to say what I have to say in a few days.”The brother of the Paul Whelan, the former US marine arrested in Russia on espionage charges, believes his twin is being used as “a pawn in some larger scheme”, having found himself “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. David Whelan told the Guardian his family have not been given any details of what his brother is alleged to have done. He said there has been no official confirmation of a Russian press report claiming Paul Whelan was given a USB drive containing the names of people employed at a top secret state organisation. He also said the Whelan family have not been given any new information about Paul since the US ambassador visited him in Lefortovo prison in Moscow, where he has been held since his arrest on 28 December. The lawyer assigned to the prisoner does not speak English and Paul Whelan, who runs security for a Michigan auto parts firm and who was in Moscow to attend a wedding, only speaks a few words of Russian, his brother said. There has been speculation that Whelan was arrested with the intention of exchanging him for Russians in prison in the US, such as Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to infiltrate Republican political circles. She is cooperating with federal prosecutors. On Saturday, the Russian foreign ministry said a Russian had been detained the day after Whelan’s arrest in the US Pacific territory of the Northern Mariana Islands and transferred to Florida. The Russian man, Dmitry Makarenko, had been accused in federal court in June 2017 of conspiring to export defence articles, including night-vision scopes, from the US to Russia without approval. The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, dismissed suggestions that Whelan may be part of a prisoner swap. “I see no reasons to raise this issue in context of exchanges,” Ryabkov said, according to the Interfax news agency. “We should undergo all the procedures needed in this situation.” David Whelan said no official had mentioned the possibility of an exchange to him. “The family’s focus is getting Paul home and whatever means we can use to do that I would support,” he said in a phone interview from Toronto. Paul Whelan holds four passports – US, UK, Canadian and Irish – as he was born in Canada to British parents, moved to the US and served in the marines, and has an Irish grandfather. The four governments will coordinate how to handle the case over the next few days, David Whelan said. The US has so far taken the lead as his brother entered Russia on his US passport. David Whelan welcomed remarks in support of his brother by the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on Friday, particularly his warning to Russia not to use its prisoner as a geopolitical pawn. “I think Paul is perhaps a pawn in some larger scheme,” David Whelan said. “I think he was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I think the question then becomes whether it is worth trying to dig into what the rationale is for why he was picked up.” He pointed to the coincidence that a domain name his brother once used, paulnwhelan.com, was purchased in November by an anonymous buyer using a Hong Kong IP address. “Who would be buying paulnwhelan.com right out of the blue in the middle of November 2018, six weeks before the Russians pick Paul up for spying,” David Whelan said. “So you have so many dots you can’t possibly connect without more details.” He said he did not know what to make of allegations published in the Russian media outlet, Rosbalt, that his brother had cultivated contacts from the Russian defence and security services for a decade, and had been arrested in his hotel room with a USB drive containing classified information. “I think it’s difficult to know whether it’s accurate or not,” he said. “I would feel more confident if it had come from the Russian government in an official statement. I don’t understand why, over a week since he was detained, there is no rudimentary information on what happened, why he was picked up, what he was found with. Surely if that was available that would be relatively easy to release.” He said the family have had no contact with Vladimir Zherebenkov, the lawyer assigned to represent his brother, and is unsure how he came to be hired, as the US embassy only recommends English-speaking lawyers. “It’s our understanding that he doesn’t speak English, which is a little bit of surprise,” he said. Paul Whelan speaks so little Russian that when US diplomats visited him on Wednesday he did not have his glasses, his brother said. He had not known how to ask for them in Russian and guards were not allowed to talk to him in English. The family have set up an account which will allow Whelan to buy basics like toilet roll and razors in prison but, because of the Orthodox Christmas holiday, they have not been able to transfer funds. David Whelan said he had been unaware of his brother’s interest in Russia. “When we meet at my folks’ house or when we email, Russia never comes up, so it’s not like he’s banging on about it all the time,” he said. “I don’t know I would have called him a Russophile.” Paul Whelan had been in contact with Russians with military backgrounds through the social media website Vkontakte, but his brother said he saw nothing unusual in that. “Without the context of him sitting in a Russian jail, I’m not sure that it’s really that odd,” he said. “The fact that he is on social media in touch with people with similar backgrounds, I don’t find particularly surprising.”For Tottenham this was a night of a returning hero and, potentially, a new one. Time was running out, and the home side appeared to be heading for another defeat on the backs of those which had seen them depart two cup competitions in quick succession, when the goals they required for a turnaround arrived. The first was scored by Son Heung-min on his first appearance for Spurs since arriving back from the Asian Cup and then came the winner from someone who has been at the club all the while and finally may feel he belongs. The mix of relief and joy on Fernando Llorente’s face as he celebrated his goal with three minutes of this contest remaining was as eye-catching as it was understandable. The Spaniard has found it hard going ever since he joined Tottenham from Swansea two summers ago and especially in recent weeks as he has been asked to fill in for the injured Harry Kane. Quite simply, he is not in the England captain’s class, and that has been noticeable, painfully so at times, as was the case here on 52 minutes when he missed an absolute sitter. Cue howls of fury from the majority of the 29,164 people in attendance – Tottenham’s lowest ever crowd for a Premier League fixture at Wembley – yet they were in raptures when the player finally came good. Danny Rose swung a cross from the left deep into Watford’s area and the ball hung in the air long enough for Llorente to rise above José Holebas and send a perfectly placed header into the far corner of the net for his first league goal in over 12 months. Perfect timing and, you could say in light of recent comments by Mauricio Pochettino, a perfect boost for Llorente’s ego. “Fernando works so hard for the team and today he helped the team win three points,” said the Tottenham manager. “It is a massive thing and will help build his confidence.” That will be the hope for all concerned at Spurs before Newcastle’s visit here on Saturday, when another victory for the Pochettino’s men would see them overtake Manchester City in second and find themselves just four points behind Liverpool. Not bad for a side whose sense of purpose had yet again come into question following Sunday’s FA Cup defeat at Crystal Palace. “There are still a lot of games to play,” said Pochettino when asked about the significance of this result. “But this is a fantastic way to finish a little bit of the negativity that has been around in the last few days.” The biggest encouragement Pochettino can take from this contest is the spirit his players showed. Tottenham were not at their best, during the first-half especially, when their forward play was stodgy and predictable. But the second period proved very different as they performed with greater purpose and aggression. Much of that came from Son, who put in a remarkable display given he only returned from the United Arab Emirates on Saturday. The South Korean performed with his usual energy and direct running and drove Spurs on as they searched for an equaliser following Craig Cathcart’s goal for Watford on 38 minutes, the defender sending a header into an empty net, via a deflection off Davinson Sánchez, after Hugo Lloris hesitated in his attempt to keep out Holebas’s corner. It was fitting Son should be the one who got Tottenham back into this game, thumping a close-range drive past Ben Foster on 80 minutes, as those in white and blue well and truly cranked up the pressure. “It was a great goal,” said Pochettino. “He [Son] showed massive commitment for the team.” That was the case from others in white and blue, Llorente included, and, as such, it would have been a shame if his most memorable contribution of the game had been the moment he caught the rebound to his own shot with a knee and sent the ball over a practically open net. It was a howler yet it was Watford who were ultimately left feeling sick. As Javi Gracia said, his side “missed a very good chance to get points against a very good team” and while the visitors were second best in terms of possession and territory, they arguably deserved a draw given the togetherness they showed throughout. Instead they remain ninth having lost for the first time in 2019.Labour looks set to whip its MPs to back Yvette Cooper’s amendment that would pave the way for legislation that would mandate ministers to extend article 50 if a no-deal Brexit looked imminent. The amendment, tabled by Cooper to a motion laid by the government after the defeat of its Brexit deal, would give parliamentary time for the private member’s bill to be debated, which it otherwise would not get. Labour had been cautious about the potential constitutional implications of allowing MPs to dictate time for a bill but party sources have indicated they are likely to back the amendment as a way of closing down the prospect of no deal. The motion, and any amendments selected by the Speaker, will be voted on next Tuesday. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, signalled Labour could back the plan in an interview with BBC Two’s Newsnight on Wednesday, saying it was “highly likely” and calling the plan by Cooper and the Tory MP Nick Boles a sensible option. “Yvette Cooper has put an amendment down, which I think is sensible ... so I think it’s increasingly likely already that we’ll have to take that option because the government has run the clock down,” he said. McDonnell said the party would need to go through its own process to make a final decision. “It’s highly likely but we’ll go through our normal process of consultation with our members,” he said. The eventual bill, if passed, would give parliament control over the final stages of the Brexit process if there is no parliamentary consensus on a Brexit deal by 26 February. It would give MPs a vote on preventing a no-deal Brexit and extending article 50. “We haven’t taken a final decision but are looking at it seriously,” a party source said. Should the amendment pass, it would still be a difficult route for the bill through the Commons in the face of government opposition. If it is made law, it would still need the agreement of the 27 other EU states for an extension to be allowed. The Labour peer Andrew Adonis, a prominent supporter of a second referendum, said he would introduce the bill to the House of Lords on Wednesday, a necessary step to getting the legislation though the upper house. It is possible the Lords could still derail the bill if it passes through the House of Commons, such as by filibustering the legislation. Tory Brexiters in the Commons are also attempting to derail Cooper and Boles’s plans by restricting the number of days in parliament where private members’ bills can be debated. The Tory MP Christopher Chope has put down an amendment to the Commons motion setting out the days for private members’ bills to be tabled. His motion would prevent any other days being allocated, an attempt to scupper Cooper’s bill being debated. It is unclear whether that would have an effect if Cooper’s amendment passes next Tuesday, which would mandate a day for the no-deal bill to be considered by MPs.In a 2010 speech, Kamala Harris laughed as she described the backlash to her decision to start prosecuting the parents of children who were truant from school. Now, just days after the California senator officially launched her 2020 presidential campaign, clips from that speech have gone viral on Twitter, sparking criticism of Harris’ punitive approach to truancy. As San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris had prosecuted at least 25 truancy cases as of late 2010. No parents were arrested, and none were jailed, according to a prosecutor who still works on the issue in the current district attorney’s office. Instead, the parents were issued citations to come to court, where they could avoid a fine by completing a plan to improve their child’s attendance. But in public speeches and op-eds, Harris leaned heavily on the threat of potential jail time for parents whose elementary school children were often absent from school. During her race for attorney general of California, she championed a new statewide anti-truancy law that specified that parents of chronically truant students could face a maximum penalty of a year’s imprisonment in county jail, a fine of up to $2,000, or both. Critics responding to the clips of Harris’ speech this week said they disapproved of Harris’ willingness to use what she called the “huge stick” of law enforcement as a threat to make sure struggling parents got the help they needed. Kamala Harris at an event hosted by the Commonwealth Club in 2010, explaining her decision as San Francisco DA to get tough on truancy. Critics of truancy crackdowns say such efforts unfairly target poor parents and children without actually helping students. pic.twitter.com/GKkDpayxuv In her 2010 speech, Harris noted that one of the parents prosecuted for truancy was a single mother of three, who was homeless and working two jobs. By shining the “spotlight of public safety” on her case, officials were able to get the woman services, Harris argued. Once her children’s attendance improved, “we dismissed the charges against her”. Harris’ anecdote about the homeless mother captures “the disaster of American social policy”, James Forman Jr, a scholar and critic of mass incarceration, wrote on Twitter in response to the clip. “That’s the American way: what little help we offer poor people comes under threat of prison.” The people prosecuted for the “crime” of having their children miss school are overwhelmingly poor, black and brown, Forman, the author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment Black America, wrote. “Poor parents don’t need the threat of jail to get their kids to school. They need what the wealthy take for granted: good schools, lead-free water, safe parks, healthy food, well-stocked libraries, etc.” One widely-shared tweet compared Harris’ remarks on truancy to Hillary Clinton’s racist 1996 comment about juvenile “super-predators”. Advocates have long argued that Harris’ truancy policy gets the issue backwards: student truancy is not a problem of bad or neglectful parents, but a symptom of broader problems within the school systems, including chronic underfunding of California public schools. A punitive approach to truancy, used against both parents and students themselves, threatens to fuel the school to prison pipeline and make life harder for students missing school. Since she announced her campaign for president, Harris, a prosecutor who has spend her entire career in public service, has emerged as a strong contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. Her Oakland campaign launch rally last weekend drew an estimated 20,000 people – more than Barack Obama attracted when he launched his presidential campaign in 2007. Harris is campaigning as a crusader “for the people”, a criminal justice reformer and a politician willing to “speak truth” about racism in America. But her record on truancy, as well as her record on police killings, prisons and sex work, is emerging as an early flash point for some progressive voters. The clips from Harris’ 2010 speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, as well as other clips from her criminal justice speeches, were shared on Monday by Walker Bragman, a freelance journalist who has previously written about his support for Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who may compete with Harris for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. According to a prosecutor who still works on the issue in the current district attorney’s office, San Francisco prosecutors usually issue parents of truant students a citation, equivalent to a traffic ticket, which carries no penalty of jail time. After a tumultous week, the streets of the cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are likely to be quiet on Sunday as congregations file into churches to hear priests and preachers call for the Lord’s blessing on a troubled land. Few doubt that the DRC is at a critical moment. The long-delayed elections that were finally held on 30 December could still be a turning point, leading the resource-rich nation to a better future. Or they could send the vast central African country, which has not known a peaceful transfer of power since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960, back into anarchy. Supporters of Martin Fayulu, a widely respected former business executive and parliamentarian, accuse Félix Tshisekedi, leader of the DRC’s biggest opposition party, of doing a deal with outgoing president Joseph Kabila. The announced results bear no resemblance to the real vote, Fayulu has said. Across the continent, the election and the post-poll power struggle pitting two opposition leaders against each otherhas been closely watched as almost everywhere else on the continent politics has reached a turning point. This year there will be more than 20 elections in Africa – from Algeria on the Mediterranean to the economic powerhouse of Nigeria in the west and in South Africa, on the continent’s southern tip. Younger voters are demanding change from an ageing generation of leaders, who are now seen as repressive, not liberating. New dynamics have been unleashed by rapid urbanisation, economic growth and social media. A new crop of leaders is emerging. One indicator is rising voter participation after a period of decline. “Where there is a sense that venal elites have stolen resources and are not delivering, there are strong protest votes. People sense they can really change things,” said Alex Vines, director of Chatham House’s Africa programme. In the DRC, the stakes are higher than elsewhere. The 1997-2002 civil war killed five million people, but the importance attached to ensuring stability is a double-edged sword. If it explains why the leaders of South Africa and Angola pushed Kabila, who took office in 2001, to hold elections, it also explains the absence of stronger statements voicing misgivings about possible manipulation to allow opposition leader Tshisekedi to take power. Nic Cheeseman, an expert in African politics at Birmingham University, said many international actors were pulling their punches. There was a similar reaction to the military takeover in Zimbabwe in November 2017, which ended Robert Mugabe’s 37-year rule and replaced him with ruling party stalwart Emmerson Mnangagwa, he said. “In Zimbabwe a coup was sold as a peaceful transition and that’s what everyone wanted. It seems very similar [in the DRC]. It’s a transition and relatively peaceful so far … so it is a way of making the continuity look like a change.” Comments by French and Belgian ministers on rigging allegations in the DRC rankled with African officials, said Peter Fabricius, an analyst in South Africa. “Immediately, it became us and them. The attitude was: who are these outsiders from former colonial powers to tell us our elections aren’t good enough?” Many African leaders also face difficult elections. In Algeria it is unclear if Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 81, will seek to prolong his rule but the political elite face deep anger and frustration. In Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari, 77, is seeking re-election, despite failing to deliver on promises to fight graft and defeat an Islamist insurgency. In South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the manifesto of the African National Congress (ANC)on Saturday. The party has been in power since the end of the apartheid regime 25 years ago, but corruption and economic mismanagement has undermined support.Ramaphosa needs to keep ANC’s vote share above 60% to see off internal opponents – and relaunch its political fortunes in the future. Some analysts see a shift away from democratic aspiration in Africa and a growing desire for more authoritarian government. Even as Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, surfs a wave of popular enthusiasm as he moves his huge nation away from a hybrid Chinese model, there is a fear the strategy apparently pursued by Kabila in the DRC will be attractive to some leaders. Cheeseman said few powers had criticised an election campaign during which major opposition figures were forced into exile, human rights abuses were widespread and untried voting machines were deployed. “If leaders can see that they can get away with that kind of election now … what is their motive to hold a better one in the future?” he said.Zimbabwe’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has called for a “national dialogue” and promised an investigation into widespread violence by security forces in recent days, after cutting short an overseas trip. The brutal crackdown followed protests last week against a doubling of the fuel price, which led to rioting and sporadic looting. The military and police appear to have targeted officials and supporters of mainstream opposition parties as well as union officials and high-profile civil society activists, rather than alleged thieves. At least 12 people were killed and 78 treated for gunshot wounds, according to the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, which recorded more than 240 incidents of assault and torture. About 700 people have been arrested and remain in custody, including 11 opposition MPs. The violence was the most extensive since the 37-year authoritarian rule of Robert Mugabe ended in November 2017 with a military takeover, and has dashed any hopes for political reform. Mnangagwa returned to Harare on Monday night, curtailing a visit to Europe and central Asia to drum up investment. Human rights organisations said raids were continuing in the early hours of Tuesday, though internet and social media sites appeared to be partially returning to normal after being shut down by authorities for several days. There was also more traffic in the centre of major cities, though a significant number of soldiers remained on the streets. Mnangagwa, who won contested elections in July, said insubordination among security forces was intolerable and “if required, heads will roll”. “Violence or misconduct by our security forces is unacceptable and a betrayal of the new Zimbabwe,” the 76-year-old ruling party stalwart said in a statement released on social media. “Chaos and insubordination will not be tolerated. Misconduct will be investigated.” He also criticised the protests last week. “Everyone has the right to protest, but this was not a peaceful protest. Wanton violence and cynical destruction; looting police stations, stealing guns and uniforms; incitement and threats of violence. This is not the Zimbabwean way,” said Mnangagwa, who has been advised on his communications by a team of international consultants. The president defended the raising of fuel prices, saying it was “not a decision we took lightly. But it was the right thing to do.” Fuel in Zimbabwe is heavily subsidised and officials have said the money saved by the price rise will be redirected to buying essential commodities. The protests were stoked by chronic daily shortages of banknotes, fuel, food and medicine. Mugabe’s rule left Zimbabwe with vast debts, a crumbling infrastructure and soaring unemployment, especially among young people. Most of its 16 million people live hand-to-mouth, or survive on remittances from the extensive diaspora. Inflation has hit 40%. Mnangagwa had visited Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan before cutting short his trip, which had included attending the Davos summit of world leaders this week. After Mugabe’s rule ended there was widespread optimism that the repression of previous decades was over, but any hopes of political reform have been extinguished. The crisis has attracted fierce criticism from western states, and will undermine Zimbabwe’s efforts to rejoin the international community. The US, UK, EU and the UN human rights office criticised the government’s reaction to the unrest. The army and police denied any wrongdoing, saying some of those who raided homes and beat people were impostors wearing stolen uniforms. Analysts are divided over whether the crisis provides further evidence of splits within the ruling Zanu-PF party and the government’s highest officials. The vice-president, Constantino Chiwenga, a hardline former army general, was in charge while Mnangagwa was away. He was blamed for deploying soldiers who shot six civilians in Harare two days after elections last year. Some observers believe Chiwenga is impatient with the more moderate line taken by Mnangagwa, who they say is keen to win international legitimacy. Others believe the president and his deputy have adopted a carefully coordinated “good cop, bad cop” strategy, which allows repression domestically without tarnishing Mnangagwa’s reputation overseas. The high court in Harare ruled on Monday that the government had no powers to shut down the internet and ordered it to be restored.Of all human reflexes, jingoism is the most dangerous. It was evident in the hysteria of Tuesday’s Commons vote on Theresa May’s deal. Neither MPs nor the crowds outside had any alternative to offer, so they just shouted: “How does Brussels dare?” We have been in this mess before: I can just remember Suez. My father, who opposed the intervention and hated Anthony Eden, still became emotional when listening to Land of Hope and Glory at the Proms that summer of 1956. As if bitten by some wartime patriotic bug, he shouted: “How can Nasser dare?” At school we were being fed Nazi war stories almost daily. We were thrilled to be fighting dastardly foreigners again. Suez was a classic of futile imperialism, a belief that there was still a world stage on which Britain was entitled always to get its way. America had briskly to teach Britain a lesson in 20th-century reality. Eden had lied over colluding with Israel and suffered ministerial resignations. But it was ill-health and feuding colleagues that finally drove him from office. Parliament and public opinion backed him all the way. Parliament is never happier than when defaulting to belligerence in foreign affairs. MPs supported Tony Blair over the Iraq war in 2003. In 2011, they again approved David Cameron’s Libyan intervention, before damning it in an inquiry five years later. Politics is a theatre of inconsistency, as well as of dislike of foreigners. To invert Clausewitz, we now have war by other means – that of Europolitics. There has long been a xenophobic echo to Brexit. It was audible again this week, with May cast as Neville Chamberlain, appeasing uppity Europeans. MPs had voted overwhelmingly to honour Brexit and invoke article 50 in 2016. Now that implementing it was proving complicated, all they could do was howl in frustration. The closest parallel to today’s travails is Robert Peel’s attempt to repeal the corn laws in 1846. He was faced with an Irish famine and a desperate need to cut the price of bread. He spoke for the new mercantile Tories, demanding cheap food and free trade. Since the party’s landed interests strongly disagreed, Peel could only win by securing the support of the Whig opposition. The country prospered, but the Tory party did not forgive Peel the treachery of siding with the opposition. The ambitious Benjamin Disraeli called it the “wilful destruction of a great party by its leader”. The Tories were out of power for 20 years. The irony was that in 1867, when Disraeli himself was prime minister, he was forced to concede a wider franchise, as proposed by the Liberals. Lord Salisbury in turn accused him of committing “a betrayal that has no parallel in our parliamentary annals”, and went on to succeed Disraeli as party leader. Nothing in politics beats wrecking parties as the quickest, if riskiest, route up the greasy pole. In 1922 the rising Tory star Stanley Baldwin split his party over leader Andrew Bonar Law’s support for the Lloyd George coalition. This let Labour into office in 1924, but Baldwin became leader. Accused of opportunism, Baldwin declared: “I would rather be an opportunist and float, than go to the bottom with my principles round my neck.” His most glaring imitator was Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald, prime minister in 1931. He broke with virtually his entire cabinet over austerity, after the crash of 1929, to become short-lived leader of a mostly Tory national government. Labour did not forgive him. The Commons is not and never has been a place of free-thinking individuals. It is a collective of clubs, tribes, chancers, leaders and followers, swayed like anyone by public emotion. It can be a sounding board, but what it cannot be – as some MPs are struggling to make it – is a substitute for the executive arm of government. Brexit cannot be left to backbench MPs to wander the corridors and come up with an answer behind their leaders’ backs. May has been confirmed as her party leader and has the formal confidence of the house. She is charged by what appears a parliamentary consensus to head for a “soft” departure from the European Union. Some version of a single market/customs union was suggested by the equivocal nature of the referendum and is indicated by current opinion polls. A compromise must be found. The Tory party used to pride itself on its pragmatism, but since the Maastricht treaty vote in 1993, it has lost the art of compromising on Europe, even with itself. The May deal offered a way for the Brexiters to have their Brexit, and the friction-averse to avoid their friction. But the party seems more exhilarated by fission than with fusion. The party’s traditional conduits of discipline and loyalty are clogged and corrupted. As a result, a compromise deal on Brexit again replicates Peel. It has become impossible without the collaboration of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, or at least a sufficient body of his MPs to cancel the Tory rebels. Both parties face splits. Corbyn may survive his, but those underpinning a government are more dangerous. May simply must forge a one-issue coalition, however briefly, on a proposal to be taken back to Brussels. But the evidence of Tory party history is that this may be her last act in politics. If so it would be an honourable one. We still seem miles from there. What is unique today is that both May and Corbyn are clearly suffering inner demons of inflexibility. The power of charm is a long underrated quality in British politics; that and the gift of courtesy towards those with whom one disagrees. Britain has party leaders who seem bereft of both these qualities. • Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist. His Short History of Europe will be published in paperback in SeptemberMore than 500 people are being ousted from a refugee reception centre in a town close to Rome in the first major eviction since Italy’s rightwing populist government enacted hardline immigration measures into law. Thirty people were evicted from the centre, the second-largest of its kind in Italy and the place where Pope Francis washed residents’ feet as part of his Easter ritual in 2016, in Castelnuovo di Porto on Tuesday. A further 75 were removed on Wednesday, with the remaining 430 to be evicted before the centre’s closure on 31 January. The evictions follow the approval of the “Salvini decree”, named after Matteo Salvini, the interior minister and leader of the far-right League, in late November. Salvini claimed the centre, which has hosted about 8,000 people over the last eight years, was a den for “drug-dealing and crime” and that the same fate would soon befall the 2,000 people living in the sprawling Cara di Mineo reception centre in the outskirts of Catania in Sicily and at similar structures across Italy. He said the closures would save the Italian government €6m (£5.2m) a year, money that would instead be spent “helping Italians”. “I did what any good father would have done,” he said. Riccardo Travaglini, the mayor of Castelnuovo di Porto, told reporters that no notice was given before the evictions. Men, women and children, many enrolled in local schools, were reportedly separated before the majority were taken by bus to undisclosed destinations. Some were housed by local residents, including Travaglini, who took in a woman from Somalia and her child. “In a single day, they managed to destroy years of work,” Traviglini said. “These were people who had managed to become integrated.” Travaglini protested alongside staff working at the centre and local priests, while Rossella Muroni, a politician with the small leftwing party Free and Equal, attempted to block one of the buses. Parliamentarians with the opposition Democratic party were heavily critical of the move. The party’s Roberto Morassut compared the evictions to “deportations to Nazi concentration camps”. “One of the most important structures for immigrant reception was evacuated without adequate warning … it was a real blitz,” he said. Salvini has said those who “have rights” will not be left stranded and will instead be relocated to other “beautiful structures”. “They will have the right to board and lodging,” he said. “But for the rest we will begin the deportation process.” The evictions came as Germany announced it was pulling out of the EU’s Operation Sophia, a naval mission targeting human trafficking in the Mediterranean, due to Italy’s refusal to allow migrants to disembark at its ports. The majority of residents at the Castelnuovo di Porto centre were in the process of applying for asylum. Many had received humanitarian protection, a two-year permit granted to those who are not eligible for refugee status but who for various reasons cannot be sent home. Humanitarian protection status, which enables people to work and is estimated to be held by about 100,000 people, was abolished under Salvini’s bill. “Salvini’s decree will only amplify social problems,” said Valeria Carlini, a spokesperson for the Italian Council for Refugees. “The law is forcing those who already have humanitarian protection into the social margins … instead of having the chance to work, they will end up homeless.” Unions have also protested over the thousands of jobs that will be lost as a result of the refugee centre closures. “The reality is that there more Italians will be jobless,” said Carlini. “Organisations involved in migrant integration are often accused of being in a ‘lucrative business’. It’s not like that at all, Salvini’s decree will bring many organisations to their knees.”A foiled military uprising, violent protests across the capital and planned nationwide marches led by an emboldened opposition; Venezuela’s embattled president Nicolás Maduro has survived threats to his power before, but this week is could be the most difficult yet. Maduro, who last August survived an audacious drone assassination attempt, presides over a crippling economic and social crisis, and justifiably sees threats from all sides. Early on Monday, 27 national guardsman were arrested after allegedly attempting to mount an uprising, in a sign that he may be losing the backing of the military – long regarded as the power broker in Venezuela. Hours later, violent unrest rocked working-class neighbourhoods in Caracas, once the bedrock of Maduro’s support. Angry residents set fire to barricades while security forces launched teargasto disperse demonstrators protesting against rising prices and low wages. “This situation is unbearable,” Eduardo Solano, a young computer scientist who took to the streets in his Diego Lozada neighbourhood, said. “It doesn’t matter if you earn bolivars or dollars, it’s not enough.” Solano and his fellow protesters dispersed around midnight, when armed gangs loyal to the government – known as colectivos – arrived and fired shots in the air, he said. By Tuesday morning, the neighbourhood was strewn with rubble, and roads were scorched with burn marks. Though officials made no statement on the protests, local watchdogs reported that the national guard had deployed tanks to quell a disturbance in El Valle, another neighbourhood. The foiled uprising and street violence came ahead of nationwide opposition marches against Maduro planned for Wednesday. Oil-rich Venezuela is mired in economic and political turmoil, with hyperinflation rendering the bolivar currency practically worthless. Shortages in food staples and basic medicines are rampant, while crime is widespread. More than 3 million Venezuelans have fled, causing consternation across the continent. Maduro, who assumed power when his mentor Hugo Chávez died in 2013, has long resisted calls to stand down. He sidelined the opposition-led national assembly in 2017, replacing it with a pliant constituent assembly via elections labelled fraudulent. When mass street protests broke out that year, he sent in the national guard, killing at least 120 and injuring hundreds. Though years in the making, the crisis has accelerated since Maduro – who won re-election last May in a widely criticised vote – began his new term on 11 January, rallying the once-fractured opposition against him. Juan Guaidó, the leader of the opposition-held national assembly, declared himself ready to assume the presidency until open elections could be held. Guaidó expressed support for those protesting. “We are all here in the same boat: without electricity, without water, without medicines, without gas and with an uncertain future,” he tweeted. “We are all submerged in this crisis, except the usurper,” he added, in reference to Maduro. The smaller protests that swept through western Caracas on Monday night are likely to give Maduro a particular headache as they broke out in poor neighbourhoods once loyal to his regime. “I have never agreed with this government but I could put up with it. Now it is impossible,” said Solano, who said that many protesters were former Chávez supporters. “Now they were shouting they want Nicolás [Maduro] to leave.” This week’s developments have surprised analysts, who had thought the opposition to be too fractured – and Venezuela too divided on class lines – to bring about change. “These protests are remarkable. The fact that people are coming out to protest across class lines reveals one thing: just how widespread the level of utter disgust with Maduro is in Venezuela today,” said Geoff Ramsey, the assistant director for Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America. “If any kind of democratic solution to the crisis is possible, the opposition will have to make a case for themselves among the base of the ruling party, offering them concrete proposals that reflect their interests.”Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaidó has declared himself the interim president, in a dramatic escalation of efforts to force out Nicolás Maduro, who has overseen the country’s slide into authoritarianism and economic ruin. Guaidó was quickly recognised by the US, Canada, Brazil, Colombia and other US allies in the Americas, while the European Union said the voice of the people “cannot be ignored”. Donald Trump warned that “all options are on the table” if Maduro responded with force against the opposition. Vice president Mike Pence later made clear the US would use “the full weight of our diplomatic and economic pressure. US officials said the US would look at ways to transfer Venezuelan assets and oil revenues to Guaidó and the opposition-run national assembly. Maduro responded with defiance, cutting off relations with the US and ordering all US diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours. “We are defending the right to the very existence of our Bolivarian republic,” Maduro told supporters at a rally outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas. He urged them to resist “at all costs” what he called a coup attempt being orchestrated by “the coup-mongering, interventionist gringo empire” and the “fascist right”. “They intend to govern Venezuela from Washington,” Maduro shouted from the palace’s people’s balcony. “Do you want a puppet government controlled by Washington?” Guaidó issued his own statement, urging foreign embassies to disavow Maduro’s orders and keep their diplomats in the country. A few hours later, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the US would abide by Guaidó’s directive and ignore Maduro’s order to withdraw its diplomats. MPs in Russia, a major Venezuelan ally, criticised US actions against Maduro. “The United States is trying to carry out an operation to organise the next ‘colour revolution’ in Venezuela,” Andrei Klimov, the deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of parliament, said, using a term for the popular uprisings that unseated leaders in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Another committee member, Vladimir Dzhabrailov, said: “I do not think that we can recognise this – it is, in essence, a coup.” Turkey and Cuba and Bolivia’s Evo Morales have also offered their support for Maduro. In a statement, 11 of the 14 members of regional bloc the Lima Group said they supported the start of a democratic transition in Venezuela “in order to hold new elections, in the shortest time”. The three holdouts included Mexico, which has maintained a principle of non-intervention under leftist president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as well as Guyana and Santa Lucia. The EU’s foreign affairs representative, Federica Mogherini, called for work to begin on holding free and credible elections, saying: “The people of Venezuela have massively called for democracy and the possibility to freely determine their own destiny. These voices cannot be ignored.” On Wednesday, thousands of protesters clogged the streets of the capital, Caracas, with authorities claiming seven protesters had been killed during a day of demonstrations across the country. The protests came as Guaidó, the head of the national assembly, raised his right hand and said: “I swear to assume all the powers of the presidency to secure an end to the usurpation”. The 35-year-old lawmaker, said his surprise move was the only way to rescue Venezuela from “dictatorship” and restore constitutional order. “We know that this will have consequences,” Guaidó, 35, told the cheering crowd. “To be able to achieve this task and to re-establish the constitution we need the agreement of all Venezuelans,” he shouted. Oil-rich Venezuela is mired in economic and political turmoil, with hyperinflation rendering the bolivar currency practically worthless. Shortages in food staples and basic medicines are rampant, and crime is widespread. More than 3 million Venezuelans have fled, causing consternation across the continent. The country’s opposition has struggled to find a strategy against Maduro, however, and analysis warned that Guaidó’s gutsy move was potentially dangerous: the opposition may have won international recognition, but it has no control over state bodies or the security forces. “It is absolutely clear that the strategy was decided by both the US government and the Venezuelan opposition, so they share the risk,” said Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based political analyst and consultant. “The government reaction will come shortly and it remains unclear if the people are ready to defend Guaidó with their lives” Relatively unknown until this month, Guaidó stepped into the political limelight earlier this month when he declared himself willing to assume the presidency until new elections are held. In a statement, Trump described the national assembly as the “only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people” and warned Maduro not to resort to violence. “We continue to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime directly responsible for any threats it may pose to the safety of the Venezuelan people,” he said. Asked if would consider a military option if Maduro refused to cede power, the US president said: “We’re not considering anything but all options on the table. All options, always, all options are on the table.” Pence was more specific in a television interview on Wednesday night. “The United States is going to continue to bring the full weight of our economic and diplomatic pressure until freedom and democracy and fair elections are restored for the people of Venezuela,” he told the Fox Business Network. Pence said the administration had made a distinction between US intervention in the Americas and elsewhere. “President Trump has made no secret of the fact that he is not a fan of American deployments all over the world and American entanglements,” he told Trish Regan Primetime. “And yet President Trump has always had a very different view of our hemisphere. He’s long understood that the United States has a special responsibility to support and nurture democracy and freedom in this hemisphere and that’s a longstanding tradition.” Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said Maduro’s government was “now fully entrenched as a dictatorship”, and called on him to hand power to the national assembly until new elections were held. The sudden developments came as tens of thousands joined marches across the country, which followed two nights of violent protests in working-class neighbourhoods of Caracas – once bastions of support for the government – and the apparent foiling of an armed uprising by members of the national guard. Morelia Armini, an elderly saleswoman from Caracas, could barely contain her joy at the day’s developments. “This is a wonderful thing,” she said, after watching to Guaidó take the oath. “Like a phoenix, this is the rebirth of Venezuela.” Wednesday also marked the anniversary of the 1958 uprising that overthrew the military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez – symbolism that was not lost on María de Jesús, a social worker from Caracas who was born on the day of the 1958 rebellion. “I was born in democracy,” she said on her way to the march in Caracas. “I want my freedom; this is a dictatorship.” Across town, several hundred supporters held a rival march in support of Maduro. Though it was dwarfed in size by the opposition protest, those in attendance were in a buoyant mood. “We are here to support our president and defend our resources,” said Ana Medina, who works for the state oil company PDVAs, as salsa music blasted from loudspeakers. “We know that other countries are against Maduro because they want to take over our resources.” Analysts have long held that Maduro’s survival depends on the backing of the military, who he has rewarded with senior positions in government and PDVSA. But it is unclear how solid that support is. Guaidó and the opposition-held national assembly have sought to peel away the military, offering an amnesty to members of the armed forces who help bring about a return to democracy. This week, authorities arrested 27 national guardsmen who tried to launch an uprising against Maduro.An exciting wave of innovative activism is emerging across the former Soviet Union. I work for an organisation that supports civic activists and I see a new energy, self-belief and creativity that defies the pessimism permeating western debates about civil society in the region. What’s refreshing about these Generation Z activists is that they’ve linked up with designers, tech experts and artists to test new forms of advocacy, campaigning and storytelling. This has led to a surge of online multimedia campaigns and interactive games on social issues. Some have used chatbots to offer instant support to victims of human rights abuses. In Russia, an experimental interactive online film launched by the independent news outlet Takie Dela tells the story of Katya, a young Russian girl living with the stigma of HIV. Viewers are invited to step into Katya’s shoes and are confronted with her life choices. It’s been an instant success, attracting up to 800,000 views in just a few months. Starring well-known young Russian actors, and with accessible dialogue and a slick production, the film reaches more people than a single NGO ever could. This matters immensely in a country where the government has failed to cope with one of the fastest‑growing HIV epidemics in the world. Stigmatisation and ignorance are catastrophic. Local support groups are under growing pressure. They suffer from smear campaigns, funding cuts and being disconnected from international partners. Since the introduction of a law targeting NGOs as “foreign agents”, finding new ways to act is crucial. In December, yet another local HIV prevention NGO was forced to close, bringing yet more proof of why projects like Vsyo Slozhno have taken on a new importance. It isn’t just technology to which these new activists are turning. They’re filling a vacuum created by the growing rift between the government and ordinary Russians. In a recent study, 94% of Russians said they no longer rely on the state to solve their problems. That amounts to a breakdown of the “social contract” on which Vladimir Putin’s regime has long relied. It also gives Generation Z groups a chance to expand. Takie Dela is a frontrunner, combining in-depth journalism with direct support for charities working on issues it writes about. Last year it attracted 250,000 online donations. Other recent fundraising campaigns launched by Transparency International Moscow, as well as the independent Novoe Vremie (New Times) newspaper, which had been slapped with court fines, have also been successful – surely a sign of a new willingness among Russians to defend and support independent civil society. And it’s particularly encouraging to see this apply to “harder” human rights issues such as prison conditions and torture. Studies show Russians no longer list “strong government” but “justice” as their primary demand, and rights groups are beginning to respond to this shift. Some merge activism with journalism, design, art and film. Team 29, a St Petersburg-based group defending media freedom, brings together lawyers and journalists. It runs an information platform that provides quality reporting on court cases, new legislation and human rights violations. It produces animated digital handbooks (such as “How to go to a protest and not mess it up”), as well as an online game offering advice on how to behave if you’re detained. With 75% of its users younger than 35, it manages to engage new audiences compared with more traditional human rights organisations. This civic shift isn’t happening just in Russia. In Armenia, the optimism and energy of young civil society is contagious. Anyone still convinced that all is doom and gloom in the post‑Soviet era should pay a visit. Last year, young tech-savvy activists played a key part in encouraging citizens to take to the streets – a grassroots mobilisation that led to the resignation of the prime minister. Their communication skills also ensured the protests remained peaceful. In Belarus, digital campaigners have built a website to help citizens. The response prompted the government to amend a controversial law on pension reform. Daria Sazanovich, who describes herself as a “socially engaged illustrator”, uses drawings and cartoons to raise awareness of the need for change. NGOs “are often caught in facts and figures”, she says. “We know how to better reach audiences.” In Azerbaijan, where civic space is practically closed, exiled activists are connecting with those at home. Meydan TV, an online TV channel run from Berlin, reaches an audience of more than 500,000 inside Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, a popular Azerbaijani rapper Jamal Ali, who now lives in Germany, has gone viral with hard-hitting lyrics against corruption and injustice. The new activists like to reach out to the public through art. In the southern Russian cities of Volgograd and Vladikavkaz, Anton Valkovsky, a young curator, organises “micro-interventions” in public squares and abandoned buildings as a way of prompting debate about social issues such as poor urban management, neglect of the elderly and historical memory. “Participatory art is simple, cheap and productive,” he tells me. “It involves citizens in a way that classical civic activism alone often can’t.” These groups may seem marginal in countries that are marked by rising authoritarianism, but they’re drawing attention to concrete problems such as health issues, air pollution, social stigmas and bad governance. This is the first genuinely post-Soviet generation of activists. They’re using technology and humour to connect, in ways that set them apart from their predecessors. They’re proving to be more active, dynamic and resilient than many of us expected. Theirs is probably a long struggle, but their innovative spirit gives them a fighting chance. They deserve our support. • Barbara von Ow-Freytag is a Brussels-based writer and political scientistFor Mike Kelly, a high school football coach in Manassas Park, Virginia, early August usually means anticipation and excitement. But last year, he had a problem. Practices at Manassas Park High School were drawing only 15 players – a tiny number for a sport in which rosters often exceed 50 athletes. Concluding that Kelly’s team was too undermanned to compete safely, the school cancelled its varsity football season, instead playing a junior varsity schedule. “Finding out that you are not going to have a program, that has a big impact on not just the kids [on the team], but on the school itself and the community,” said Kelly, who has coached at the the school for four seasons and played football himself at the University of Virginia. “You don’t feel good.” For many decades, high school football has been a feelgood American institution. The sport provides pride and entertainment in small towns and big cities alike, inspires films like Varsity Blues and Friday Night Lights, and produces the next generation of stars in college football and the NFL. Yet as fans prepare to gorge on beer and guacamole while watching the New England Patriots take on the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII on Sunday, the sport is eroding at its roots. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), high school football participation in the United States is down 6.1% over the last decade, falling from 1.14m players in 2008 to 1.07m in 2017. That decline has occurred even as overall high school sports participation has increased by 5.9% over the same span, rising to 7.98m athletes in 2017. In addition, youth tackle football – a feeder system for high schools – has seen a 17.4% participation drop among children ages six to 12 over the past five years, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. Coaches and others attribute the slide to a number of factors, including rising interest in other sports. First and foremost, many believe, is increased public awareness of the scientific link between football hits to the head and brain injuries, including concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease that’s been found in the brains of former players. While high school football is not yet suffering a full-blown crisis, it finds itself coping with mounting reports of merged teams, forfeited games and canceled seasons. “During the offseason, we would always have 100 kids waiting, preparing for the next year,” said Tom Green, football coach at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, at an Aspen Institute Sports and Society Program youth football forum held last year. “The last few years, we’re down to like 40, 35 kids participating in football. Our numbers have dropped.” Football remains the top high school sport overall, and the most popular among male athletes. More than a million boys played in 2017 – nearly double the number that participated in outdoor track and field (600,097) or basketball (551,373), and greater than the amount who played baseball (487,097) and soccer (456,362) combined. Spectator interest is also healthy. ESPN broadcast 18 high school football games across three of its networks last fall. In Texas, nine high school stadiums costing between $20m and $70m were built over the last decade, while another facility was renovated for $33m. Randy Trivers, who coaches at Gonzaga High School in Washington DC and last December was named USA Today’s All-USA Coach of the Year, says that overall enthusiasm for football is “as strong as it has ever been”. Trivers recently met with a college coach who had just taken his first recruiting trip to Texas, where he watched several dozen high school players conduct an offseason workout. The college coach subsequently was told that “the varsity guys will be coming later”. “It was all freshman players,” Trivers said. “The passion is still there. The quality of the football on the field is as good as it has ever been.” Quantity is another story. In the fall of 2017, University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr received an email from his son’s junior high announcing that there wasn’t enough interest from students at three nearby middle schools to form a single eighth-grade tackle football team. That got Pielke – who blogs about sports and previously wrote a book on doping –wondering: was America experiencing what he calls “Peak Football”, the moment of maximum participation in the sport? Examining NHFS data, he saw that high school football participation increased every year from 1998 to 2008, peaking at roughly 1.14m players. Since then, however, the number of athletes has dropped every year except 2014. Comparing those numbers to US Census Bureau population data for 2010 to 2016, Pielke found a similar pattern: the percentage of American boys ages 14-17 playing high school football peaked at 13.2% in 2013 and fell to 12.7% in 2016. Over the last decade, Pielke saw, participation was up in a handful of football hotbeds, including Alabama, Florida and Louisiana. But it had dropped in 40 states, sometimes by surprisingly large margins: 9.5% in California, 11.6% in New Jersey, 21.6% in Michigan, 23% in Ohio and 55% in Vermont. Since 2014 alone, high school football has lost more than 45,000 participants – roughly 600 teams’ worth of players. “Demographically, it seems pretty convincing that we are in the early part of a process that started a decade ago where football is just not was popular as it used to be among youth,” Pielke said. “Exactly why it is happening is a tricky question.” Trivers said recruiting high school athletes to play football is more challenging than when he first began coaching more than two decades ago. “Athletes are more likely to play one sport year-round, especially with so many parents trying to push their kids for college scholarships,” he said. “And football is hard. People don’t like hard. If you have a kid who likes football and basketball, going to play for two hours in the gym is different than going out in the hot sun or cold rain and practicing football.” The sport’s level of physical risk is different, too. According to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study, football has the highest injury and concussion rates of any high school sport; the Healthy Sport Index, a data-driven online tool developed by the Aspen Institute that compares 10 youth sports, ranks football last in terms of athlete safety. “Those concerns have always been there, but over my career, they certainly have increased,” Trivers said. “When you start talking about head injuries, it has trickled down from the NFL. And I think the way things have been emphasized and portrayed in the media has made for a different level of questioning for families and parents wondering what sports they should get their kids involved in.” Nathan Stiles, who died in 2010 at age 17 of a brain injury following a high school football game, subsequently became the youngest person to be diagnosed with CTE. Two years ago, Boston University researchers reported that they had found the disease in the brains of 110 of 111 former NFL players, 48 of 53 former college players, and three of 14 former high school players they posthumously examined. Meanwhile, researchers from Purdue University have found that both concussions and subconcussive blows can cause damage and changes to the brains of high school football players. In 2016, a University of Massachusetts survey found that 65% of the public considers sports concussions and head injuries to be a major problem; that 87% believe that CTE is a serious public health issue; and that 48% think the statement that “tackle football is a safe activity for children during high school” is either certainly or probably false. Pielke said that the two steepest high school football participation drops this decade came in 2012 – when Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau, later diagnosed with CTE, committed suicide – and 2015, when the Will Smith feature film Concussion, detailing the NFL’s alleged denial and dismissal of CTE research, was released in theaters. “Was that causal?” Pielke said. “I don’t know. That’s a tricky social science question. But the notion that the more people talk about head injury risk in football, the more parents and kids making decisions to play are aware of that risk isn’t outlandish.” To mitigate brain injury risk, sports governing bodies in Texas, Florida and other states have limited hitting and tackling during high school football practices. Additional reductions are likely, and the sport eventually could adopt rules changes to reduce violent collisions and helmet-to-helmet hits. But whether such measures will be enough to halt or reverse declining participation remains to be seen. As awareness of football’s dangers increases, academic administrators and policymakers may question the wisdom of schools sponsoring a sport that can damage students’ brains. Lawsuits and rising insurance costs also could force some schools to drop the sport. Football’s demographics may be shifting as well, following the path of boxing – a once-mainstream sport that largely has been abandoned by upper- and middle-class families and now draws most of its participants from poorer communities where athletes are less likely to be educated about, and more willing to accept, health risks. A story on HBO’s Real Sports airing this week found that over the last five years in Illinois, the proportion of high school rosters occupied by low-income boys has risen nearly 25% – even as the number of players in the state has fallen by 14.8% over the same period. Yet despite its current problems, high school football likely is too big to fail. Americans have been enjoying the sport for as long as they’ve been fretting about the safety of its participants: in 1907, the Journal of the American Medical Association condemned tackle football for children under age 18, calling it “no sport for boys to play”. Even if high school football continues to lose participants at its current rate, Pielke calculates, it still would boast more than 800,000 players in 2030. “A gradual erosion over time is a large concern, but I don’t think it will ever just disappear,” said Jon Solomon, editorial director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Program. “Personally, I think it will continue to be fairly popular as a whole in our country.” Kelly concurs. After Manassas Park High canceled its varsity season, its junior varsity team went undefeated – and finished the season with 31 athletes, a large enough roster that the school plans to resume varsity play this coming fall. “We are going to have a team,” Kelly said. “We will build from where we are at, and eventually build back to where it was.”It is traditional in January for newspapers to run articles about diet and health, so I thought I would write about the healthy subject of physical exercise and my long-running unhealthy relationship with it. There are two ways to be unhealthy about exercise: you can avoid it, or you can be obsessive about it. And because I’m the kind of person who likes to do things properly, in my life I’ve covered both bases. As a kid, I loathed PE, and I used to tell myself that was because I simply didn’t enjoy it. In reality, it was because I wasn’t good at it and, as a precocious perfectionist, if I couldn’t do something well, I simply wouldn’t do it. Some of my most vivid memories from school involve PE teachers singling me out and making me run/hit a ball/jump to show the rest of the class how not to do it. I was the “before” photo of PE, while my athletic best friend was invariably the “after”. Thus began the long years of increasingly elaborate lies (“A lot of 11-year-olds get three periods a month”) in order to avoid exercise. Then I turned 13 and suddenly became obsessed with being skinny. Exercise no longer seemed a problem but a solution to a problem that didn’t actually exist. I went to aerobics classes at the gym on our local high street, where I was about a third of the age of everyone else; I sometimes wonder if any of them thought it odd that a little girl who didn’t even need a bra was in a bums, tums and thighs class. Daily, I would do hundreds of sit-ups and star jumps in my room, making the whole house shake with my newfound athleticism, high on the idea of how many calories I was burning. This went on for years, and I guess you could say I was finally getting something out of exercise, though I wouldn’t describe it as beneficial. When I finally shook that in my early 20s, I reverted to my default position of avoiding exercise in the (not unreasonable) belief that a recovering anorexic couldn’t be trusted with it, any more than an alcoholic should sniff a bottle of whisky. But the real problem was I had never learned to think of exercise as something one might do simply because it’s fun: either it had to be for an end goal (being thin), or you had to be good at it. If you’re bad at something, it couldn’t ever be enjoyable, right? But at some point in my mid-20s I realised that I needed to do something other than sit in a chair all day, so I asked a friend for advice. “Have you tried yoga?” she asked. In the US and UK, yoga has an extremely annoying image – one of thin women with long, lean limbs, who subsist on seaweed salad and oat milk. It’s exercise for Gwyneth Paltrow wannabes. And precisely because of that image, I signed up immediately, because while I was no longer doing sit-ups in my bedroom, some deluded fantasies take longer to die and mental illness is tenacious. So I went to my first yoga lesson and quickly realised that I did not have a natural gift for it. I despaired at my inflexibility, my wonkily-shaped feet, my terror of going upside down. I was easily the worst in the class. Even the overweight 60-year-old men who had come on doctor’s orders were better than me. And yet I kept going, twice a week, every week. It would be a lie to claim there wasn’t, initially, an obsessive element to this. But at a certain point I realised that, actually, yoga doesn’t make you thin. Not even the dynamic classes I go to (because the slow classes literally send me to sleep). But yoga made me feel strong and flexible, two things I had never before felt in my life, physically or metaphorically. And so I continued to go. I’ve now been doing yoga for, I think, 14 years and lest any images of me doing elegant backbends are dancing through your head, let me reassure you, I am still terrible. While everyone in my class is springing effortlessly into a handstand, I remain stubbornly grounded. But I don’t care. My ludicrously patient teacher (namaste, Stewart Gilchrist at East London School of Yoga!) ensures I make just enough progress every week to stay excited (I can touch my toes! I’m basically an Olympian!). He never singles me out as an example of how not to do something, even though I am, and he reassures me that just because something is hard it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. After all, he says, you learn how to do something only by making mistakes; no one is judging you but you. These are lessons that I have – as yoga teachers say – “taken off my mat” and applied to my daily life. That I make time every week to do exercise that (a) won’t make me thinner and (b) I’m embarrassingly bad at, is as shocking to me as the fact I can now eat for pleasure. The two are linked, of course, and maybe I would have got here eventually anyway. But yoga helped me on my way. And for that reason I will always be grateful to it, Gwyneth schmyneth.The founding companies behind a self-styled alliance to end plastic waste are among the world’s biggest investors in new plastic productions plants, according to a European NGO. A majority of the firms which announced this week they were collaborating to try to help tackle plastic pollution are likely to be at the heart of a global boom in plastic production over the next 10 years. Together the companies have committed $1bn (£778m) over the next five years to reduce plastic production and improve recycling, with an aspiration to raise that to $1.5bn if more members join. But most of the founding firms have tens of billions of dollars riding on the need for global plastic production to continue growing over the next decade and more. Shell, one of the signatories, is building a multibillion-dollar plant in Pennsylvania in the eastern US, using shale gas as its fuel to produce 1.6m tonnes of polyethylene – the world’s most common plastic – each year. ExxonMobil, another leading figure in the alliance, is building a new polyethylene production line at its plant in Mont Belvieu, Texas, to increase plastic production to more than 2.5m tonnes a year. When completed it will be one of the largest plastic production units in the world. Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Saudi Aramco and the country’s chemical giant SABIC are building one of the world’s largest oil-to-petrochemicals factories as they – like other fossil fuel companies – move away from reliance on crude oil revenues. Many of the production plants are linked to fracking. Fossil fuel companies have invested more than $180bn since 2010 in new “cracking” facilities that will produce the raw material for everyday plastics for use in packaging, bottles, trays and cartons, helping to fuel a 40% rise in plastic production over the next decade. Rob Buurman, the director of environmental NGO Recycling Netwerk, said: “It is interesting to see [the plastics industry] finally acknowledge that there is a problem with their plastics. “But unfortunately, this initiative does not tackle the problem at its source: the gigantic production of 400m tonnes of plastic each year, with 60m metric tonnes produced in Europe alone.” More than 8.3bn tonnes of plastic have been produced globally since large-scale production began in the 1950s, creating almost 6bn tonnes of plastic waste. Only about 9% of this has been recycled. The rest has been burned and contributes to climate change or is still polluting the environment. Most plastics are used for the production of packaging, which is often single-use. Buurman said street, river and beach cleanups would not work as long as there was a steady stream of new plastics being produced and collected in a half-hearted way. “These kind of actions want to cure the image of plastic. But plastics don’t have an image problem – the exaggerated use of it in products with a short lifespan is a problem in itself,” he said. About 8m tonnes of plastic waste is dumped in the seas annually, according to the UN. Plastic in the seas can choke fish and other marine creatures, destroy habitats and enter the food chain. But despite increasing public awareness of the problem, highlighted by Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II programmes, there has been little sign of it abating. A spokesman for the alliance said: “Reducing the amount of plastic required to create products while preserving the benefits people rely on and making plastics easier to recycle is definitely part of the solution. Not all alliance members produce plastic. Some of the members do produce plastic, and some have announced expansions to meet the demands of a growing population. “Plastic provides many critical health, safety and sustainability benefits that help improve and maintain living standards, hygiene and nutrition around the world and replacing it could, in the end, do more harm than good.” He said a study by the firm Trucost in 2016 found that replacing plastic packaging with other materials would increase the amount of packaging generated in the US by 55m tons annually and increase energy use and carbon emissions by 82% and 130%, respectively. “Even as we work aggressively to reduce plastic waste in the environment, we must maintain the critical benefits that plastics bring to people and communities. It is not either/or. With a thoughtful, comprehensive and strategic approach, we can do both,” he said. The founding members of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste are: BASF, Berry Global, Braskem, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LLC, Clariant, Covestro, Dow Chemical, DSM, ExxonMobil, Formosa Plastics Corporation, Henkel, LyondellBasell, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings, Mitsui Chemicals, NOVA Chemicals, OxyChem, PolyOne, Procter & Gamble, Reliance Industries, SABIC, Sasol, SUEZ, Shell, SCG Chemicals, Sumitomo Chemical, Total, Veolia, and Versalis.Diane Abbott has accused BBC Question Time of legitimising racist abuse after claims that the shadow home secretary was singled out before and during Thursday night’s episode of the political discussion programme. The Labour politician claimed she had been unfairly mocked in the warm-up and had been interrupted more often than other panellists by Fiona Bruce, the programme’s new chair. “We are appalled by the treatment of Diane Abbott on BBC’s Question Time,” a spokesperson for Abbott said. “It was clear that a hostile atmosphere was whipped up, propped up by reports of inappropriate and sexist commentary in the audience warm-up session. “A public broadcaster like the BBC should be expected to be a model of impartiality and equality. The BBC cannot claim anything of the sort when analysis of the programme shows that the only black woman on the panel was jeered at and interrupted more times than any other panellist, including by the chair herself. “The media must stop legitimising mistreatment, bias and abuse against Ms Abbott as a black woman in public life. The BBC should be ashamed that their programming is complicit in such behaviour.” Audience members who attended the filming of Question Time in Derby claimed that the warm-up for the programme included innuendo about Abbott’s past relationship with Jeremy Corbyn and that the audience booed her name when it was announced. The audience loudly applauded when she was asked about Corbyn’s refusal to engage in Brexit talks with Theresa May unless the prime minister ruled out a no-deal departure from the EU. Abbott’s staff suggested the warm-up had “set the whole audience up to be quite negative” about the politician, while pointing at online viral videos suggesting Bruce had interrupted Abbott more than the other panellists. A BBC spokesperson said the corporation had been in touch with Abbott’s team but suggested some of the claims about the show’s treatment of her which went viral on social media are false. “We are sorry to hear Diane Abbott’s concerns over last night’s edition of Question Time and we have contacted her team today to reassure them that reports circulating on social media are inaccurate and misleading. Diane is a regular and important contributor to the programme … we firmly reject claims that any of the panel was treated unfairly either before or during the recording.” Question Time and other BBC current affairs programmes have become a lightning rod for claims of media bias against Labour, with the corporation repeatedly forced to defend aspects of its presentation of political topics. The Momentum campaign group launched a petition demanding the BBC apologise after Bruce backed claims that Labour was behind in the opinion polls. The Momentum petition referred to an exchange where panellist Isabel Oakeshott said that Labour were “way behind in the polls” and Abbott replied that “we are kind of level-pegging” before Bruce said that Labour were “definitely” behind. But recent polling has found the two parties roughly neck and neck. This is scandalous 😠#bbcqt #DianeAbbott pic.twitter.com/gObm5Fugq2 Abbott has appeared on Question Time at least 29 times over several decades, according to her office. In a 2017 article for the Guardian, she described her experience as one of the UK’s first black MPs, highlighting the level of abuse she received on social media. “I went into politics to create space for women and other groups who have historically been treated unfairly,” she wrote. “Once, the pushback was against the actual arguments for equality and social justice. Now the pushback is the politics of personal destruction. This is doubly effective for opponents of social progress. Not only does it tend to marginalise the female ‘offender’, but other women look at how those of us in the public space are treated and think twice about speaking up publicly, let alone getting involved in political activity.”It is rush hour on Monday morning in Hyderabad, but the city’s usual deafening soundtrack of revving engines and blaring horns is absent. The only noise comes from a woman gently sweeping the veranda of one of the large, pastel-coloured mansions nearby. The silence is even more disconcerting when you see the airport near the end of the street, and, just beyond that, a railway station. New York’s Statue of Liberty is a short walk away, as is the splendour of the ancient city of Mahishmati. In fact, Mahishmati is the first place here where I encounter any real noise – the blue special effects screens around the fibreglass throne area are rather flimsy, and a buzz from power tools carries from the adjoining parking lot, where workers are building a pirate ship. We are in Ramoji Film City, the largest film studio in the world and the beating heart of Tollywood, India’s Telugu-language film industry. And although Ramoji is technically part of Hyderabad, in reality – with its (real) hotels, workshops, soundstages, gardens, post office, banks and restaurants – it is a metropolis in and of itself. By 2035 another 15 cities will have populations above 10 million, according to the latest United Nations projections, taking the total number of megacities to 48. Guardian Cities is exploring these newcomers at a crucial period in their development: from car-centric Tehran to the harsh inequalities of Luanda; from the film industry of Hyderabad to the demolition of historic buildings in Ho Chi Minh City. We'll also be in Chengdu, Dar es Salaam, Nanjing, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baghdad, Kuala Lumpur, Xi'an, Seoul, Wuhan and London. Read more from the next 15 megacities series here. Nick Van Mead It is not Hyderabad’s only “city within a city”. To many outside India, the southern Indian metropolis is best known for Hitech City – the country’s own purpose-built Silicon Valley. Nearby is Genome Valley, which boasts manufacturing and R&D arms of some of the biotech sector’s biggest names. Every film studio is a little like a small town, but Hyderabad’s Ramoji Film City dwarfs them all Hyderabad owes much of its rapid growth to the jobs created for these companies, both directly and from the construction boom resulting from the need for offices, homes and infrastructure to accommodate the influx of labour. Its expansion has seen it swallow up its twin city of Secunderabad to become one sprawling metropolis. Sets at Ramoji Film City including a pirate ship being constructed for a forthcoming feature. Photographs: Ravi Giragani/the Guardian The latest UN projections forecast that Hyderabad will reach megacity status – having a population over 10 million – by 2020, with 14.1 million residents by 2035. But when you are caught in the inevitable snarl of the city’s legendarily bad traffic and surrounded on all sides by construction projects, it is hard not to agree with locals who say that, thanks to unofficial migrant workers, the 10 million population point has long since been passed. India has the largest film industry in the world, producing 1,903 films in 2016 compared with 200 made in Britain and 798 made in the US. The Hindi-language output of Bollywood, with its bright colours, catchy soundtracks and spectacular dance sequences, is the first – and sometimes only – thing that springs to the outsider’s mind when Indian film is mentioned, but Bollywood only accounts for a small proportion of the country’s films. Tollywood’s output is almost as large and the return for investors on each of its pictures tends to be better. The Hindi-language output of Bollywood, with its dance routines and catchy soundtracks, is what many outsiders associate with Indian film. Photograph: DreamPictures/Getty Images Every film studio is a little like a small town, with multiple catering locations, shops, backlots, transport, workshops and security. Studios need space, which is why many UK studios are built on former manor estates or Ministry of Defence airfields, while some of Hollywood’s biggest studios were based around ranches or large colonial mansions. But Hyderabad’s Ramoji Film City dwarfs them all. As well as the standard studio facilities, Ramoji also offers permanent sets including a prison, an elaborate hilltop temple, and a village with a town square. In the west, permanent sets are rare nowadays, partly because of the rise in land prices and taxation in cities like Los Angeles, but also because of their poorly disguised overuse in Hollywood films until the 1970s. (Although Ramoji’s one-stop shop model emulates golden age-era Hollywood, Ramoji was only built in 1996, the same year as Hitech City.) A view over part of Ramoji Film City – which even has a mock-up of the Hollywood sign atop one of the surrounding hills. Photograph: Ravi Giragani/the Guardian But size isn’t everything – in today’s fast-moving film industry, the ability to keep up with technical advances is also key. In central Hyderabad, Annapurna Studios, built in 1975 in the Film Nagar neighbourhood (named for its long association with Tollywood), set up a film school nearly eight years ago in order to address a perceived skills shortfall: “The [studio owners] felt that the major lack that the Telugu film industry had in comparison to Hollywood or Bollywood was technical expertise,” says Zaid Ali Khan of the school’s faculty of direction. This increasing technical competence is part of what has begun to set Tollywood apart in Indian film, exemplified by the two-part blockbuster Baahubali, filmed at Ramoji, where some of the sets remain as a tourist attraction. Baahubali: The Conclusion is the second highest-grossing Indian film in history, and both parts used visual effects (VFX) to an extent and with a complexity not previously seen in Indian film. Although a number of studios were involved, the main players were based in Hyderabad. A still from the Tollywood blockbuster Baahubali Hyderabad, as a magnet for software developers and programmers, has a swiftly growing VFX industry, but on the whole its labs currently deal with less creative and more labour-intensive work outsourced by large western and Chinese companies. Khan says this will change: “We are inculcating VFX artists and VFX supervisors to be on a par with international levels and slowly we’ll see more of work being completely outsourced here. We’re in the transformation stage from being that BT outsource call centre to being the actual customer service.” The other main reason for Tollywood’s success is linguistic flexibility. In a feat unimaginable in western cinema: Baahubali was filmed in both Telugu and Tamil, then dubbed into both Hindi and Malayalam. The film academic Prof CSHN Murthy says: “The most impressive feature of Telugu cinema is its cross-cultural approach … there is no [other] film industry in India which produces films in other languages.” Tourists pose on part of the Baahubali set at Ramoji Film City. Photograph: Ravi Giragani/the Guardian And this is key, because the domestic market is only one player. Telugu is the third-most spoken language in India, but in the US, the number of US residents speaking Telugu rose by 86% between 2010 and 2017, according to the World Economic Forum. Although the rise is from a relatively low base, last year there were more than 400,000 Telugu speakers in the US. This increase has much to do with Hyderabad and its links to the tech industry, Prasad Kunisetty, founder of the US-based nonprofit Telugu People Foundation, told the BBC in an interview last year. And as Hyderabad’s IT dominance increases, so too does the number of Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil-speaking workers heading overseas to work for major companies – and their enthusiasm for cinema does not alter with distance. “Today, every filmmaker’s target is diaspora in the US, UK and Europe besides Africa and the Gulf,” explains Murthy. With modern digital distribution methods, this means that more cinemas worldwide are now showing Tollywood’s output, while platforms such as Netflix have massively increased the potential audience. Hyderabad old and new: the Charminar, top left, is one of the oldest and most famous monuments in the city, and below a modern replica built as part of Hitech City. Photographs: Tash Reith-Banks The response to this growth in diaspora audience is increasingly to make films targeted at them. As Murthy points out, Tollywood films are “aimed at satisfying and impressing the diaspora about what they are missing in their native lands. Most of the Telugu films shoot their songs and some sequences in the US or UK or Europe background.” With wider distribution comes a demand for increasingly sophisticated offerings, acknowledges Khan: “Now when our content is going up on, say, Netflix or Amazon, if quality-wise we’re not at par with international content, an Indian viewer also will not watch what we are putting out. You know he has the option of watching Narcos if our crime series is not popular enough.” If Ramoji Film City’s studio-based vision seems old-fashioned to the Netflix generation, this does not appear to trouble owner Ramoji Rao. He is also looking to the digital future with a very real news media empire, centred on three working office blocks that sit amid the studio fakery. There, alongside his newspaper and news TV operations, is a news video app currently in the testing stages. Each Indian state is represented, with its own studio and team of editors and presenters based at Ramoji, while reporters throughout the country send back a stream of national and hyper-local news bulletins. The aim is for any app subscriber to have access to 24-hour news from their home state, in their own language – an ambitious undertaking in a country made up of 29 states with 22 different languages. If the project pays off, it could make Hyderabad not just the film capital of the south, but the media capital of India – and as it takes its place as a megacity, it seems certain to become a serious player on the global stage. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, explore our archive or sign up to receive our weekly newsletterLast autumn, Jeremy Corbyn told the Labour conference in Liverpool that he wanted to reach out to Theresa May. Brexit, he told the delegates, was about the vital interests of the country, not about partisan squabbles or posturing. Addressing the prime minister directly, he said: “If you deliver a deal that includes a customs union and no hard border in Ireland, if you protect jobs, people’s rights at work and environmental standards – then we will support that sensible deal.” It was a kind of Brexit olive branch from the Labour leader. At the time, however, it felt fairly meaningless because it was not likely to be put to the test and because the Labour rank and file is overwhelmingly opposed to Brexit. More importantly, for the whole of the previous two years, Mrs May had made no effort whatever to reach out to Labour with some kind of Brexit compromise. On the contrary. All her energies had been devoted to appeasing the Conservative party’s Brexit hardliners. Right up to late 2018, when Mrs May struck her deal with the EU and began the effort to win parliament’s backing, the prime minister took Labour’s leader, its MPs and its voters all for granted. Now, that has begun to change. As she stares defeat for her Brexit deal in the face next week, Mrs May has finally accepted that she will need some Labour support if she is to prevail. This week, she met an all-party group of MPs who want to stop a no-deal exit. In the past 48 hours, ministers have also made clear that they will accept a pro-workers’ rights amendment, put forward by four Labour MPs from predominantly leave constituencies, to next week’s motion. Some reaching out is taking place. But it is all eleventh-hour stuff. The amendment is also extremely thin. It endorses part of November’s EU-UK political declaration on future relations in favour of economic regulation. It says Brexit must not “result in any lowering” of existing common standards on environmental, employment and safety issues. And it says parliament must “consider” any subsequent measures from the EU that strengthen those rights. This is a soggy formulation for matters of such importance. The political declaration, at which this amendment is aimed, is merely aspirational at present. It will only become binding if the Brexit transition negotiations, which have not begun yet, succeed – which is far from certain. So the amendment secures no binding guarantees to maintain existing standards or to keep pace with future ones. Workplace rights deserve to be treated more seriously than this. Moreover, although Mrs May has sometimes talked a better game on workers’ rights than many of her predecessors, the Tory party’s post-Thatcher failure to treat trade unions as stakeholder partners means the foundations for trust are thin, too. Mrs May phoned some union leaders on Thursday. But she could have been doing that for two years and more. All this gave Mr Corbyn cover to dismiss the workers’ rights amendment on Thursday at the end of a generally unrevealing speech in which he reiterated that Labour will vote against the government next week. This is a strange situation. The two leaders are potential allies who refuse to cooperate. Like Mrs May, but unlike most of his party, Mr Corbyn does not want a second referendum. He says he wants to reach out to her on issues including workers’ rights. Mrs May, very belatedly, is trying to reach out, too. But unless there is more going on than is acknowledged, the two are talking at, not with, each other. Brexit is not just a potential disaster. It is a potential disaster that is being pursued with unwitting ineptitude.Its ranks include a shotgun-toting former veal exporter, a retired submarine officer and a lawyer specialising in insuring class actions. While the men behind Seaborne Freight might not have expected the level of scrutiny to which they are being subjected after landing a £14m government contract to ensure the flow of food and medical supplies in the event of a no-deal Brexit, what started life as another cross-Channel ferry service is suddenly in the spotlight. First came the revelation that the company had no ships. Next, it emerged terms and conditions on its website appeared to be intended for a food delivery business. Now, after dredging started on Thursday to prepare Ramsgate harbour for the service that Seaborne will run to the Belgian port of Ostend, the role of the self-described “old sea dogs” will be closely watched. Seaborne’s founder and chief operating officer is a veteran of the ferry industry and was involved in the controversial export of live cattle from the West Sussex port of Shoreham-by-Sea in the 1990s. Dudley, 64, a well-known figure in the Brighton area, was a director of International Trader’s Ferry, although a listing on Companies House features a different spelling of his name, Dydley. ITF, registered in 1995 in the British Virgin Islands, was formed by cattle farmers with the help of Dudley’s expertise as a “shipping consultant”, according to Companies House. Its plan was to export live calves to the continent to be slaughtered for veal. The trade was the subject of protests from animal rights campaigners, forcing local police to draft in more than 1,000 extra officers to enable the exports, which were legal, to continue. One protester was killed during clashes with police. So fraught was that period that Dudley even borrowed a shotgun to ward off protesters – and found himself imprisoned for two months for possessing it after police searched his home. A judge at Hove crown court told him: “This is not the wild west.” He told the Guardian that he acquired the shotgun after up to 900 protesters had demonstrated outside his house, leading him to fear for his family’s safety. “It [the shotgun] was what you’d call a backstop,” he said. “It was a terrible situation and the police weren’t looking after us. We were left at the mercy of lunatic gangs of animal rights activists.” He said Seaborne had no plans to carry livestock out of Ramsgate. Eventually, the police withdrew their provision of security because of the high cost of protecting ITF. The company launched a lawsuit designed to reverse the decision and ensure continued protection at taxpayers’ expense, but was unsuccessful. As protests at Shoreham continued, ITF moved its export operation to Dover, but eventually fell victim to the BSE outbreak. The crisis brought an end to the export of cows from Britain to the continent from 1996, a ban that was not lifted until 2006. Dudley, who is believed to live in Dieppe, France, subsequently worked for MyFerryLink, a small cross-Channel service that was owned by Eurotunnel, as its freight and marketing manager. Speaking to Reuters in December, Dudley said: “For us, the harder the Brexit the better. If Dover and the Channel tunnel are encumbered, our space will go quite quickly.” The chief executive of Seaborne Freight is listed on the firm’s Companies House page as John Sharp, but told the Guardian he had been known as Ben for most of his life, including by his family. He spent 10 years as a submarine officer in the Royal Navy before setting up a shipping company that ultimately ran aground. Mercator, a ship chartering company, was forced into liquidation by HM Revenue & Customs in 2014 because it was unable to pay a sizeable tax bill. It was not disclosed how much Mercator owed HMRC, but it left a total of £1.78m in unpaid debts. Sharp said Mercator collapsed after a client in the Middle East failed to pay its bills. He later set up another ship operating company, Albany Shipping, but he said this business was put to one side after he was asked to get involved with Seaborne Freight. After details of Seaborne’s contract emerged, Sharp, 61, said he was confident the company would be ready to run a ferry service from Ramsgate to Ostend by the end of March. Described in the shipping media as a veteran of the ferry industry, he began his career with the marine operations of the French state-owned rail company SNCF and was the chief executive of Seaborne before Sharp joined. According to Companies House, he remains a director of the company and lives in France. Like Dudley, he used to work for MyFerryLink. The business, which operated two ships, was sold to rival DFDS in 2017 amid a monopoly investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority into whether Eurotunnel should be allowed to run cross-Channel ships. Other directors in the company include Peter Hampton Blackmore, a solicitor, and Brian Raincock, an insurance consultant and a director in Albany Shipping alongside Sharp. Both Raincock and Blackmore work for London-based LML, which funds and insures group litigation. While Seaborne has borne the brunt of ridicule in the UK over its apparent lack of vessels, it has been reported that a Dutch entrepreneur and insurance broker, Martin Lanting, has been appointed as a ship manager. Funding to buy ships on 80% mortgages has been lined up, according to the TradeWinds journal, which also said investors had been attracted from the UK and Asia.Jürgen Klopp admitted relief was his overriding emotion at the end of a game that could prove crucial in the title race, with Liverpool only just holding on for the points in the face of spirited Crystal Palace resistance. “A game like this can go in all directions,” the Liverpool manager said. “We dominated the first half but went in 1-0 down. When Sadio Mané scored the fourth goal in stoppage time I looked at my watch and though: ‘OK that should be enough.’ But football always teaches you the game is never over until it is finished. “They came back with another goal and then Rafa Camacho wins the game in pretty much the last second [with his tackle on Wilfried Zaha]. I don’t want to think about what might have happened if he had not won that ball. Zaha had a really good game, he gave us a lot of problems. There are different ways to win games and today we had to dig in with all we had.” Liverpool finished with 10 men after James Milner picked up two yellows for fouls on Zaha, though even Roy Hodgson sympathised with the caution that saw the stand-in full-back dismissed. “I felt a bit sorry for James – Wilf was just too quick for him,” the Palace manager said. “I thought we played well in both halves, our defensive organisation in the first was excellent and to find yourself 2-1 down after two deflections was unfortunate. “Getting back to 2-2 after that was commendable, but then the cruelty of football showed itself at its most wicked when Julian Speroni’s mistake put Liverpool undeservedly back in the lead. A goalkeeper coming back after not having played for a year and a bit, there aren’t many better club servants at any clubs in the world.” Hodgson feels Liverpool are in a good place, though warned his old club that there is still a long way to go. “Maybe a game like today where they might have been expected to cruise to victory will remind them that there are very few games in this league where teams allow you to cruise to victory,” he said. Klopp knows that already. “Nobody should be surprised by the character of the boys,” he said. “They are ready to fight for it all. In the first half when we were 1-0 down I am pretty sure a lot of people would have thought this might be the day when lose it but it was not like that. “We stayed positive and changed a few things, we needed to get more men in the box and of course we had Mo Salah.” The Egyptian’s brace took him to 50 Premier League goals in 72 games, an exceptional scoring rate for a player who has not always been used as an out and out striker. “I heard the names of the players who have done it quicker,” Klopp said. “Alan Shearer, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Andy Cole are all top strikers. Maybe Mo would have scored even more if I had not kept using him on the right wing.”Brexit has tested many loyalties in parliament but broken few. The line that divides pro-Europeans and Brexiters cannot be neatly drawn between opposition and governing benches. MPs on both sides have been frustrated by their leaders and defied their whips. But, overall, party bonds have proved remarkably resilient. The slender majority that Theresa May won on Tuesday night, endorsing a theoretical variant of her Brexit deal (minus the Northern Irish backstop), was a case in point. Mrs May had some Labour votes on loan and was as reliant as ever on the DUP, but the determining factor was a Conservative craving to feel whole again after months of civil strife. Many Tory MPs know that the proposition they endorsed was a fiction. The prime minister herself conceded that there was little appetite in the EU to adjust the backstop. Ministers are unable to describe the “alternative arrangements” that are supposed to prevent any return to a hard Irish border. But those technical problems were set aside for the gratification of appearing unified at last. That pretence does not come without cost. There are 27 EU member states whose different interests have been painstakingly funnelled into one withdrawal agreement with the UK. For Mrs May to change her mind about it now, two months before departure day, is not just reckless, it is obnoxious. Governments around the world are watching for signs of what kind of actor “Brexit Britain” will be on the international stage. Previously Mrs May looked obtuse. Now she looks unreliable. The prime minister has often faced a choice between confronting an intransigent strain of Tory anti-Brussels prejudice and indulging it. Each time she has flattered the fanatics. In Brussels, Berlin and Paris it is apparent that the rightwing fringe of the Conservative party harbours nationalistic hostility to the European project, and that some Tory MPs see a purgative value in the chaos that would follow a disorderly collapse of the Brexit process. That wrecking impulse is present within the majority that swung behind Mrs May in the Commons on Tuesday. The Eurosceptic ultras do not expect satisfaction from a renegotiated deal. On the contrary, they make demands in order to mine grievance from the inevitable rejection. They backed the prime minister in preparation for the blame game that will doubtless begin when Brexit fails to deliver its advertised bounties. Mrs May’s tolerance of that faction costs her credibility and goodwill with European partners who also watched David Cameron being manipulated by the same Tory backbenchers with the same incapacity for compromise. Even if the EU27 want to help the prime minister, they know their concessions would simply provoke more demands. There is no interest for the EU side in pandering to the implacables. Mrs May has done so partly because she lacks a Commons majority but that is not a sufficient explanation. For her not once to have challenged the hardliners after all this time suggests a cultural affinity that goes beyond calculation and cowardice. It indicates a sense of belonging – an irrational loyalty that supersedes the call of serious statecraft. Most politicians imagine themselves capable of putting country before party in moments of emergency. That patriotic ambition has rarely been tested as thoroughly or as visibly as it is now with a prime minister who buys transient, worthless moments of Tory unity at a heavy price in national credibility. It is a shameful transaction and one for which Mrs May and the Conservatives will one day be held to account.The 35-day partial shutdown of the US government cost about $11bn and shaved 0.2% off the nation’s annual economic growth forecasts, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said on Monday. The shutdown triggered by a fight over funding for Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico ended on Friday and was the longest in US history. According to the CBO, the shutdown hurt economic growth because it affected roughly 800,000 workers and delayed federal spending on goods and services. Much of the money will be recouped now the government is open again but the CBO calculates $3bn will never be recovered and the full impact of the closure – which left hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors without pay – may be larger. The CBO warned “all of the estimated effects and their timing are subject to considerable uncertainty”. The five-week shutdown delayed approximately $18bn in federal discretionary spending for compensation and purchases of goods and services and suspended some federal services. As a result of the delay in wages and spending, the CBO expects the level of gross domestic product (GDP) – the broadest measure of economic growth – to fall by 0.2% in the first quarter of the year. “CBO’s estimates do not incorporate other, more indirect negative effects of the shutdown, which are more difficult to quantify but were probably becoming more significant as it continued,” the report said. “For example, some businesses could not obtain federal permits and certifications, and others faced reduced access to loans provided by the federal government. Such factors were probably beginning to lead firms to postpone investment and hiring decisions.” The impact of the shutdown may become clearer this week when the Federal Reserve meets to discuss interest rate policy and the latest jobs figures are released. The Fed is not expected to raise rates after its meeting but its chair, Jerome Powell, will hold a press conference and is expected to comment on the impact of the shutdown. On Friday the labor department releases its latest monthly jobs figures. The US has now added jobs for a record 99 months in a row. But the furloughing of so many workers may break that streak and the unemployment rate may rise.Here, with Orson Welles and Spike Lee on the walls, and James Dean and Natalie Wood on the doors to the toilets, is where Robert De Niro might have died. In October, a pipe bomb addressed to the actor was sent to the New York warehouse where his film production company hugs an atrium dotted with vintage movie posters. A security guard found the suspicious package in the mailroom at 5am and police vehicles swarmed the Tribeca neighbourhood before dawn. De Niro got a call from security early that morning telling him the pipe bomb was being removed. “Naturally you are concerned,” he says phlegmatically. “It’s just what it is. Just be careful.” Cesar Sayoc, a bodybuilder, pizza deliveryman and fanatical supporter of Donald Trump, was subsequently arrested in Florida and charged with sending a total of 13 pipe bombs to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other critics of the president. De Niro says only: “There are a lot of crazy people out there. Everybody’s got their reasons.” How did the double Oscar-winner find himself on a hit list alongside Obama and Clinton? The short answer is that De Niro has become one of the most colourful, pugnacious and unsubtle decriers of the Trump presidency. The late politicisation of De Niro is all the more remarkable because of his reputation as a man of few words, notorious for responding to journalists’ questions with terse monosyllables. He stormed out of interviews with the BBC’s Barry Norman – who rashly gave chase – and with the Radio Times, claiming he was being asked questions with a “negative inference”. The New York Times mused in 1993: “No one, perhaps, is better suited to being an actor and less suited to being a personality.” Yet when he greets the Guardian he is warm, generous with his time and even garrulous, at least on the subject of Trump. Wearing a black T-shirt, he relaxes into a chair in a personal office so full of memorabilia it resembles a Robert De Niro museum. He points out a photo of himself with Nelson Mandela, a Godfather poster signed by the cast and a prop from his upcoming film The Irishman, directed by his old friend Martin Scorsese. The brooding, saturnine artist has evolved into a genial grandfather. Perhaps it comes as a relief, at 75, to finally not be asked about himself, his method or whether his best work is behind him. “I’m older now and I’m just upset about what’s going on,” he explains. “When you see someone like [Trump] becoming president, I thought, well, OK, let’s see what he does – maybe he’ll change. But he just got worse. It showed me that he is a real racist. I thought maybe as a New Yorker he understands the diversity in the city but he’s as bad as I thought he was before – and much worse. It’s a shame. It’s a bad thing in this country.” Trump, who launched his political career by propagating conspiracy theories about Obama’s birthplace, has drawn moral equivalence between white nationalists and anti-fascist protesters and turned back the clock on racial diversity in the White House. De Niro, who has six mixed-race children, admits: “Yeah, I worry, and one of my kids is gay, and he worries about being treated a certain way. We talk about it.” Like many white liberals, he says, he was “naive” about Obama’s two election wins and their implication of a post-racial America. “I felt we were on a new thing. I didn’t realise how against him certain people were – racially against him, offended that he was there.” Would he call Trump a white supremacist? “Yes,” De Niro says instantly. And what about a fascist? “I guess that’s what it leads to. If he had his way, we’d wind up in a very bad state in this country. I mean, the way I understand it, they laughed at Hitler. They all look funny. Hitler looked funny, Mussolini looked funny and other dictators and despots look funny. What bothers me is that there will be people in the future who see him as an example but they’ll be a lot smarter “What bothers me is that there will be people in the future who see him as an example and they’ll be affected in some way, but they’ll be a lot smarter and have many more colours to their personality and be more mercurial and become someone with the same values as he has but able to get much further and do more damage as a despot. That’s my worry. There are people who look up to him: ‘I want to be like him.’ But they’ll do it much better and they’ll be more smart about it.” De Niro is speaking just after Trump has described his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, as a “rat” for cooperating with federal investigators, prompting news networks to play clips from some of the actor’s greatest mobster hits, such as Goodfellas, The Godfather Part II and The Untouchables. He muses: “I mean, a mob boss calls people ‘a rat’. That means you lied and somebody snitched on you, so you did commit the crime. So that’s interesting and he makes mobsters look bad because there are mobsters who will shake your hand and keep their word. He can’t even do that. “He’s a con artist. He’s a huckster. He’s a scam artist. And what bothers me is that people don’t see that. I think that The Apprentice had a lot to do with that, which I never saw but once, maybe. It’s all smoke and mirrors, it’s all bullshit.” Trump and De Niro have some things in common. Both are entrepreneurs who own hotels and restaurants. Both are in their 70s. And both are New Yorkers who deliver blunt insults. But they have met just once, De Niro recalls, at a baseball game. They shook hands but that was it. “I never had an interest in meeting him. He’s a buffoon.” De Niro would not go as far as banning Trump from one of the restaurants he owns but vows: “If he walked into a restaurant that I was in, I would leave. I would not want to be there.” In 2016, De Niro made a video in which he called Trump a punk, a pig and a dog, and said he would like to punch him in the face. Last June, at the Tony awards in New York, the actor took the stage and declared: “I’m gonna say one thing. Fuck Trump!” The primal scream won a standing ovation. The president responded the next day on Twitter, calling De Niro a “low IQ individual” who had taken “too many shots to the head”. There were also voices who warned that such profanity-laced outbursts were counterproductive. Frank Bruni, a New York Times columnist, responded that anger is not a strategy and spewing four-letter words is falling into a trap. “When you answer name-calling with name-calling and tantrums with tantrums, you’re not resisting him,” Bruni wrote. “You’re mirroring him. You’re not diminishing him. You’re demeaning yourselves. Many voters don’t hear your arguments or the facts, which are on your side. They just wince at the din.” De Niro is aware of the criticism but is not entirely repentant. “I won’t do it again because that’s not the way to get things done. [But] I felt that this is something I should say because it’s basic. Trump is basic. He’s just a guy who just thinks he can rattle off his mouth and say anything. Well, I want to say the same thing to him: there are people who are going to say the same thing back to you, no matter who you are.” The Democrats have to be more aggressive. You’ve got to stand up, you can’t be so gentlemanly all the time This touches on a strategic dilemma for the Democratic party. At its 2016 convention, Michelle Obama declared: “When they go low, we go high.” Others, however, prefer sledgehammer to sabre. “The things that Trump has done; if Obama had done one fiftieth, they’d be all over him,” says De Niro. “That’s why I feel that Democrats have to be more aggressive. You’ve got to stand up, you can’t be so gentlemanly all the time because you’ve just got to say: ‘Sorry, I’m nice to a point, then I’ve got to push back.’ “You have to fight fire with fire. You’ve got to say: ‘I’m sorry – let’s call a spade a spade. You are who you are and we’ve got to confront you at your own game and that’s what’s needed.’ You can do it in a nice way but you have to be hard and tough about it.” Rightwing media seized on De Niro’s Tonys outburst as a symbol of fancy New York and Hollywood elites who are out of touch with salt-of-the-earth folk in middle America (“the deplorables”) and driven insane by their loathing of the president. The 2016 election exposed divisions along lines of class, culture and educational achievement: men without university degrees overwhelmingly backed Trump. De Niro comments: “We have to really solve the problem with the country and people who are dissatisfied and are so angry that they vote for him thinking that he’d make a difference and not seeing that he in no way will make a difference. There has to be a way for people to come together and work it out and help the people who are in pain now in certain parts of the country that I, as a New Yorker living here, am not aware of. I feel that Obama tried to, at least. He made mistakes, I’m sure, but you have to try and encompass everyone and it made us aware of this schism in the country through what’s happening now.” The tribalism is continually reinforced by the media. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has become all but an extension of the White House. De Niro, a sharp critic of Trump’s anti-immigration ideology, is dismayed by the Australian-born mogul’s contribution to the US. “Rupert Murdoch became a citizen of this country; look what he’s contributed by this. This is what he’s going to leave. This is his legacy. It’s disgraceful. He’s cynical, amoral, but he has a responsibility. He came here as an immigrant, technically,  and look what he did. You cannot justify having Fox News as a mouthpiece for the government. It’s wrong. It’s beyond disgusting.” When Richard Nixon (“a boy scout compared with what’s going on now”) finally resigned the US presidency, his successor Gerald Ford declared: “Our long national nightmare is over.” De Niro is hopeful that the new nightmare can end at the ballot box in 2020. He names Beto O’Rourke, Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum – all of whom narrowly lost in the midterm elections – as Democratic candidates that have caught his eye. “You need somebody who’s strong enough to outmouth him – because that’s all he is, mouth – and smart enough and well-informed enough in a debate, say, to override all that nonsense that he does, because basically it’s just name-calling. He has no substance. I don’t know how people fall for it. He’s just a big blowhard. But it ain’t over till it’s over as far as I’m concerned with a guy like him because he’s a dirty player.” De Niro, whose life and career have spanned the second world war, the Vietnam war and 9/11, remains optimistic about the future. “I have to be. I look at it like we’re in a nightmare now and it’s going to pass. I’ll look back on this hopefully, if I’m still around” – he leans over and knocks a table – “and say, well, we knew it could happen, it will always change for the better. I have to be optimistic that we’ll have people come in with the right intentions to run this country.” One of De Niro’s greatest films, Taxi Driver, tells the story of Travis Bickle, a damaged, narcissistic, volatile sociopath from New York. The Trump presidency might be described as America’s Travis Bickle moment but it has also been the catalyst for a democratic awakening across the country. “I used to joke that Trump would shake it up and now I give him big credit, full credit: he shook it up all right, big time, made everybody including myself much more aware of our civic duty to stand up and make our voices heard about what’s happening in this country. We have a lot of problems that we have to work together to fix. It all sounds very noble and all that, but that’s the truth. Let’s start at home.” Last year, the venerable journalist Dan Rather suggested that Scorsese – a regular collaborator with De Niro – would be the ideal director of a Trump biopic. But it may be an unplayably two-dimensional part. Profiling Trump for the New Yorker magazine in 1997, journalist Mark Singer found him to be a man without a hinterland, basking in the luxury of “an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul”. De Niro, who turned down the role of Jesus in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, offers an actor’s perspective on the president’s psychology. “I don’t want to play him ever,” he says. “I always find the character’s point of view and I can of course find his, but I have so little sympathy for him, for what he’s done, the responsibility he’s been given and just thrown away. He doesn’t care. “I always say every person has a story that’s interesting. It’s how you tell it. And of course his ‘how you tell it’ would be interesting, too, but I’ve not seen one moment of reflection from him, ever. He knows what he is and everything he says negative about people or things is really a projection of himself. I don’t know how he was raised but I never thought there’d be evil people –” De Niro catches himself. “He’s not even evil,” he says. “He’s mundane.”Ian Lewis was scrolling through Facebook when he saw an image of a new Banksy artwork on a plain garage wall. He thought it looked a bit like his garage – and was shocked when it transpired that it actually was. The arrival of the work has since transformed the Welsh town into a cultural destination, prompting an influx of visitors from as far as Australia and creating a cottage industry in souvenirs devoted to the piece. But soon, Lewis, who built the garage in the 90s to protect his car, said he was having sleepless nights over the popularity of the work. Local concerns began to grow that Lewis could sell it to an out-of-town collector who might whisk it away from Port Talbot. Residents, business people and politicians have come together to campaign to save the piece, with the Welsh government on Friday saying it was paying for security to protect it and was in talks to try to secure its future. The Banksy appeared just before Christmas in Taibach, close to the Tata steelworks. From one angle, it shows a child in a bobble hat with a sled, apparently enjoying a snow shower and trying to catch the flakes on their tongue. But from another, it becomes clear that what is actually falling on the child is a shower of ash. Banksy confirmed the work was his by releasing a video of the mural accompanied by the Christmas song Little Snowflake. The camera rises above the garage and shows Port Talbot’s rooftops and the billowing chimneys of the steelworks and other industrial buildings. Lewis was amazed when visitors began arriving in their droves and realised that he had to find a way of protecting the piece. The community chipped in. A local operatic company paid for it to be protected in plastic and the actor Michael Sheen, who went to college in Port Talbot, stepped in to pay for security. Lewis was feeling the pressure and not talking on Friday, but Bethan Sayed, Plaid Cymru South Wales West assembly member, who had spoken to him, said he wanted it to remain in the town. He told her: “I want it to stay in Port Talbot, to stay in Wales. It’s brought attention to the town and I want to support that. They’re making Banksy mugs, coasters, T-shirts and stuff in the town to sell to the tourists. We’re getting 2,000 people a day visiting the garage, from as far away as Australia. I think someone wants to write a play about it. I can’t keep up with all the messages.” Sayed, who is chair of the culture committee in the Welsh assembly, said the town had had its fair share of challenges – from previous job losses at Tata to anger over plans to build a “super prison” and an ongoing row over plans to close its motorway junction. As the Banksy piece highlights, it also suffers from poor air quality. “The Banksy is very positive for the town. It’s turned into an amazing tourist attraction,” Sayed said. She suggested one solution could be that the piece is sold, loaned back to the town and set up in a more central location where it can be protected. The Welsh government said it was taking over the cost of security and looking for a long-term solution. A spokesperson said: “We support a number of organisations – including the National Museum of Wales – to preserve culturally significant artworks and keep them in Wales for the benefit of current and future generations. We are in discussions to explore what we are able to do to assist.” In the town centre, Faye Morgan and Mary Jones, who had just treated themselves to Banksy souvenirs – images of the work etched on to a piece of plastic – at the indoor shopping centre, agreed it should stay. “He’s captured the place perfectly,” said Jones. “This is a proud town, a hard, industrial place but also somewhere with a sense of humour. I think he’s summed us up brilliantly.” Morgan said: “The most important thing is that it stays here. This is its home. It makes sense here and nowhere else. I think Banksy gave it to the town, not to one person.” There is no doubt Banksy has gripped the imagination in Port Talbot. The poet Derek Davies has written an ode to it: Port Talbot’s got a Banksy. One man, Ricky Langdon, had a tattoo of the artwork on his chest. At Kickstart motorcycles in Taibach, owner Paul Reynolds had put up a “Banksy must stay” poster in his window. “I was born and bred a stone’s throw from it,” he said. “It’s been brilliant for the town. The chip shop ran out of potatoes, the baguette shop out of bread, so many people were visiting. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the town. We have to keep it.” The nature of Banksy’s work means that the long-term future of his pieces often provokes debate and causes upset. One of his most famous recent works, Spy Booth, appeared on the gable wall of a house near GCHQ in Cheltenham, home to the government’s surveillance operations. Two years later it went missing with local people not sure if had been accidentally removed or deliberately taken. The piece Art Buff – depicting a woman wearing headphones and staring at a plinth – was painted on to a wall in Folkestone, Kent. It was removed and flown to Miami but a British judge ruled it was to be returned. A work called Mobile Lovers, depicting a couple embracing while checking their phones, appeared on the wall of a youth club in Bristol. When the owner of the club, David Stinchcombe, moved the painting inside the club, asking people for optional donations to view it, he received death threats. Banksy wrote Stinchcombe a letter declaring the painting to be an original and he went on to sell it to a collector for £400,000. The money has been used to keep the youth club running.Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May of leading “a zombie government” with no hope of pushing through a Brexit deal, and urged MPs to back a motion of no confidence in the government. Speaking the day after May’s Brexit deal was defeated by 230 votes, the Labour leader said it was “the largest defeat in the history of our democracy”. “By any convention of this house, by any precedent, the loss of confidence and supply should mean they do the right thing and resign,” he said. “If a government cannot get its legislation through parliament, it must go to the country for a new mandate and that must apply when it is on the key issue of the day.” But the prime minister, who is expected to win the vote on Wednesday evening after Conservative Brexiter rebels and her Democratic Unionist partners both pledged support, said an election would cause division, uncertainty and delay and was “the worst thing we could do”. “Far from helping parliament finish the job and fulfil our promise to the people of the United Kingdom it would mean extending article 50 and delaying Brexit for who knows how long,” she said, adding that there was “no guarantee an election would deliver a parliamentary majority for any single course of action”. While the start of her speech prompted rousing cheers from many of her MPs, May faced repeated interventions to ask which of her Brexit “red lines” she might compromise on to seek wider support. During prime minister’s questions, May appeared to rule out backing membership of a customs union, something her spokesman confirmed afterwards. Labour’s Yvette Cooper intervened to say such intransigence, after May had promised to seek cross-party support, was “making this impossible. The prime minister appears to be talking as if she lost by 30 votes yesterday, and not by 230.” The no-confidence motion is being held under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, which allows the normal five-year period between elections to be broken if MPs pass a specifically worded motion saying: “That this house has no confidence in Her Majesty’s government.” Corbyn tabled the motion immediately after Tuesday night’s vote, having previously declined to confirm the timing. If passed, the motion does not automatically trigger an election, rather, a 14-day period begins during which the government can seek to gain more support, or a new administration can emerge. The Labour leader said on Wednesday that May’s government could not “command the support of parliament on the most important issue facing our country”. “Every previous prime minister in this situation would have resigned and called an election and it is the duty of this house to lead where the government has failed.” May said that rather than fight an election, the public would expect MPs to “finish the job” of Brexit, something she said must happen along the broad lines of her rejected plan. “What I am doing is setting out what the British people voted for in the referendum in 2016. That is our duty as a parliament,” she said. During PMQs, Corbyn accused May of being “in denial” over her Brexit deal, mocking her for, as he put it, seeking to press ahead with it as if the vote had not happened. He widened his criticism to lambast her record in areas such as education, the police and poverty. Corbyn began his questions by correcting his claim on Tuesday evening that May’s defeat had been the worst for a government since the 1920s; it had been the worst in history, he said. The Labour leader then asked May whether she had ruled out membership of a customs union as a plan B. May indicated that she had, saying that while she was seeking to learn “what could command the support of this house and deliver on the referendum”, any proposal must involve “opening up new opportunities to trade with the rest of the world”. Corbyn responded: “The prime minister seems to be in denial about that, just as much as she’s in denial about the decision made by the house last night.” After May also refused to rule out a no-deal departure, he said: “Can’t she understand? Yesterday the house rejected her deal. She needs to come up with something different than that. “In denial on a customs union. In denial on no deal. In denial on the amount of money being spent on no deal. In denial on last night’s result.”1) The legendary writer Hugh McIlvanney, “a giant among journalists”, died last week at the age of 84. His finest work may have been in print, but McIlvanney was also an accomplished broadcast journalist, as seen in his documentary series ‘Busby, Stein & Shankly: The Football Men – here are parts one, two, three and four. McIlvanney also wrote and narrated Goal TV – The World of Georgie Best, first shown in 1970. The Scot had a particular passion for boxing. Here he is in a 1987 interview with Mike Tyson’s manager, Jim Jacobs, and in conversation with Sugar Ray Leonard. 2) The Six Nations is back in style, with Ireland v England this Saturday. England may have labelled the defending champions “boring” this week, but both teams will go some to match this fixture in 1963, a mud-caked nightmare that ended 0-0. It was a livelier affair in 2007 at Croke Park, when Ireland thumped their old rivals 43-13 – but went on to lose the title to France on points difference thanks to Elvis Vermeulen’s last-gasp try against Scotland. Finally, something for England fans to cheer: a 42-6 thumping that sealed the grand slam in 2003. 3) Super Bowl Sunday is approaching, with the New England Patriots into their ninth Big Dance of the Bill Belichick era. The Pats’ first title came in 2002 against this weekend’s opponents, the Rams – then of St Louis. Not for the last time, second-year QB Tom Brady led his team down the field to set-up a game-winning field goal. That marked the end of the ‘Greatest Show on Turf’ – a dazzling Rams offense that won the title two years earlier – thanks to a defensive play forever known as ‘The Tackle’. 4) This week in sports stars making us feel old: 16-year-old Kelly Sildaru wins slopestyle ski gold at the X-Games in Aspen with a record score of 99, and 13-year-old figure skater Alysa Liu wins the US national championship. 5) Fun and games in Italy’s lower leagues, as Lucchese coach Giancarlo Favarin sticks one on his opposite number in a Serie C match: 6) Another skirmish that spilled off the field – or rather, the rink. Texas Tech and SMU’s college hockey match descended into the longest fight scene since They Live. If the highlight reel isn’t enough, here’s the whole thing. Our favourites from below the line last week 1) It’s blindfolded boxing! 2) We’re all in on underarm box cricket. 3) Riding the Pic d’Aret. Spotters’ badges: whobroughtoranges, GrahamClayton Do subscribe if you fancy. Do subscribe if you fancy.The organizers of a GoFundMe campaign to fund the construction of a wall along the southern US border have scrapped plans to hand $20m over to the federal government and plan to build the wall privately instead. “The federal government won’t be able to accept our donations anytime soon,” organizers said in a Friday update for the campaign which by Saturday afternoon had raised more than $20.3m from nearly 340,000 donors. Saturday was day 22 of the government shutdown arising from Donald Trump’s demand for federal funds to build a wall, the longest such closure in US history with no end in sight. “We are better equipped than our own government to use the donated funds to build an actual wall on the southern border,” the organizers said. Because organizers changed the nature of their campaign, GoFundMe said donors would have to opt-in in order to reroute their contribution to the new venture. That is likely to shrink the impressive eight-figure pot, at least in the short term. GoFundMe’s director of North America communications, Bobby Whithorne, told the Guardian: “When the campaign was created, the campaign organizer specifically stated on the campaign page, ‘If we don’t reach our goal or come significantly close we will refund every single penny.’” The original goal was $1bn. That is less than 20% of the government’s proposed price tag for the wall but, more importantly, the sum raised is just 2% of that original target. Whithorne noted that organizers had also promised that “100% of your donations will go to the Trump Wall. If for ANY reason we don’t reach our goal we will refund your donation”. “However, that did not happen,” he said. “This means all donors will receive a refund. If a donor does not want a refund, and they want their donation to go to the new organization, they must proactively elect to redirect their donation to that organization. If they do not take that step, they will automatically receive a full refund.” The GoFundMe page now contains a link to opt-in to the new project and supporters have received an email. Donors who do not act will have their money refunded. Brian Kolfage, the chief organizer of the campaign, railed against reports that the wall plan had been canceled or that all $20m was being refunded. “What an awesome 1st day,” he said in a tweet. “GoFundMe said everyone is opting in to our new plan at a rate they’ve never seen! Your donations are making all this possible!” GoFundMe did not immediately respond to a query about Kolfage’s claim about the success of the opt-in push. According to the updated page, Trump allies on the new nonprofit’s advisory board include the controversial former Wisconsin sheriff David Clarke, the Blackwater/XE/Academi founder Erik Prince, and the Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach, who confirmed his involvement in a tweet. NBC News has reported that Kolfage’s wall campaign may be aimed at a broader goal: collecting an email contact database for fundraising around other conservative issues and possibly commercial uses. In October last year, Facebook disabled several of Kolfage’s Facebook pages – along with many others on both the left and right – for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” and “spamming”. Kolfage did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The repercussions for the UK of a no-deal Brexit could be similar to the national emergency faced by Iceland during the volcanic eruptions in 2010 that brought parts of the country to a standstill, according to advice being given to civil servants. The warning comes from the Cabinet Office, which is coordinating training for thousands of staff across Whitehall to help prepare departments for a disorderly departure from the European Union on 29 March. The impact on Iceland from the volcanic ash clouds in 2010 is regarded as a useful example of the kind of escalating disruption that could face the UK this spring, according to those who have attended the closed seminars. Staff have been told to look at the example of the eruptions from Eyjafjallajökull because they caused extensive disruption within Iceland that then reverberated across Europe. In particular, air travel was thrown into turmoil, with hundreds of thousands of people left stranded by cancelled flights. The Cabinet Office believes this represents the “nearest recent example” of what government departments could have to cope with. But the potential disruption to the UK from Brexit is likely to be much broader, according to the government’s private planning assumptions. The comparisons, and the lack of detailed preparations at the heart of government, are causing immense disquiet among some rank-and-file civil servants. “The level of planning required for no-deal Brexit is the same level as war planning,” said one Whitehall source. “A no-deal Brexit will have the same systemic impact. Iceland gives us hints and clues about what might happen, but Brexit is unlike anything we have ever seen.” Though the government insists some high-level preparation for no-deal began last year, the Cabinet Office only recently considered providing training for the vast majority of civil servants, and a rolling programme began this month. The contingency planning for no-deal – codenamed Operation Yellowhammer – has so far involved hundreds of civil servants being given a three-hour introductory briefing on the potential impact on communities, trade, border crossings and regulations. The government has a running list of “reasonable worst-case scenarios”, which is constantly being amended and updated. Earlier this month it included a gamut of serious concerns. According to an internal document seen by the Guardian, these included: A reduction in certain fresh foods and increases in prices, with people on low incomes disproportionately affected. Price rises across utilities and services including fuel. Private companies “cashing in” because they will put commercial considerations first. Police forces being stretched by the likelihood of protests and counter-protests, along with an increase in public disorder. Restocking of medicines becoming problematic after the first six weeks. Disruption of supplies to vets, which could “impact the UK’s ability to prevent and control disease outbreaks” among animals. A significant reduction in the flow of goods through Dover and Eurotunnel to as low as 13% of current capacity on the day of Brexit. Another scenario is that the UK and EU will not have secured a data protection agreement before Brexit, which could prevent police from having instant access to information held by European forces on EU citizens arrested in the UK. One concern focuses on how the government’s Cobra committee, which sits during times of emergency, will be able to make decisions before and after Brexit. While local authorities, agencies and health trusts have been making no-deal preparations, there is little understanding in Whitehall about what they have done, according to a number of sources who have spoken to the Guardian. “Cobra can only take decisions if it knows what is going on at the local level,” said one. “It needs information that has been properly collected and collated. At the moment we don’t have that system in place.” Another said: “We are having meetings for the sake of having meetings. There has been no proper oversight of what has been going on on the ground. So in many areas we are flying blind. It’s appalling and incredibly frustrating.” He added: “There has been a lack of energy and a lack of urgency. The preparations for no-deal Brexit feel very unstable.” One official told the Guardian the mood in Whitehall seemed to be that no-deal would not happen, or that if it did, it wouldn’t be as bad as some predictions. “Actually, the short-term impact could be worse,” the official said. On Friday the chancellor, Philip Hammond, said there would be significant disruption to the UK economy if Britain left the EU without a deal. “We will find ways of managing things like the additional time it takes for trucks to get through the border,” he told the BBC’s Today programme. “But it might take us quite a while to sort that out. So there will be a short-term impact through disruption. There will be a long-term impact through a reduction in the size of our economy.” He added: “I clearly do not believe that making a choice to leave without a deal would be a responsible thing to do, but I recognise that that is potentially a default that we could find ourselves in.” Asked about the comparisons between Brexit and Iceland’s emergency in 2010, the Cabinet Office said it was sensible to use examples as part of its extensive training programme. A government spokesperson said: “The government remains committed to delivering an orderly withdrawal from the EU. Our high-level planning assumptions ensure we can responsibly prepare for all scenarios.”On 1 January, in one of the biggest movements for women’s rights in India, 5 million women lined up across the length of the southern state of Kerala to “uphold Renaissance values”. What they were demanding was an end to violent agitations against women trying to enter Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, a popular Hindu pilgrimage site. This followed a ruling by the Indian supreme court in September, which forced the temple’s doors open to women of all ages in a sensational blow to religious tradition. “Where a man can enter, a woman can also go. What applies to a man, applies to a woman,” the bench said in its judgment. Since 1991, the temple has accepted only men and older women, in their millions every year, to preserve the mythological celibacy of the ruling deity, Ayyappa. In theory, the court order only reinforced Indian women’s constitutional right to enter places of worship as freely as men, but in practice it wreaked mayhem. Between 17 November and 24 December, more than a dozen women of menstrual age, including reporters, tried to enter the temple but were stopped, shoved and stoned by mobs of male devotees. None of the women could make it in, despite police protection and prohibitory orders. Both sides are far from giving in. Protests have since continued, though most women who were sent back by the mobs have vowed to return. This isn’t merely a gender war, however. The tussle over the temple entry emphasises various other fractures: faith and state, government and judiciary, secular liberalism and religious populism. Consider the fact that Amit Shah, the president of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) – India’s ruling party – said the courts should desist from giving orders “that break the faith of people and cannot be implemented”. Consider also the resonating statement by his vocal opponent, the Congress party’s Shashi Tharoor, who is a member of parliament from Kerala: “For a secular institution like the court to engage in a theological exercise as to what aspect of faith or belief is an ‘essential religious practice’ is problematic.” The wider debate Sabarimala has thrown up is between the logic in granting women entry to one of India’s most popular temples at a time when they have the same rights as men in most arenas, and the dangers of a court imposing a social reform for which the intended society is far from prepared. That neither of India’s two biggest parties can openly support the women’s constitutional right to enter a temple confirms the country’s complicated realities. If the legend of Ayyappa’s celibacy is sacred to his devotees, and therefore worthy of exemption from state intervention, then similar appeals from believers of other faiths should hold equal weight – for instance some sections of India’s Muslim society have appealed against the Indian government’s continuing strikedown of “triple talaq”, which allows Muslim men to instantly divorce their wives. It’s even trickier to predict whether the courts’ interference in religion will always be a force for good. The most contentious case before the supreme court at present is the matter of Ayodhya, where the Hindu nationalist forces – including the BJP – want to build a temple on a site that the Hindus believe to be the birthplace of the deity Ram. Their belief is strong enough to have led 150,000 of them to demolish a 16th-century mosque, Babri Masjid, in 1992. As Hindu nationalist fervour peaks, ahead of 2019’s parliamentary elections, the consequences of a decision in the favour of religious belief could be climactic. Indeed the best way for women of mentrual age to enter Sabarimala would be through bottom-up social and religious reform. The most stinging critique of the supreme court order came from a survey that showed 75% of people in Kerala disagreed with the decision. Claims were also made that the interests of a handful of leftist activists trying to enter the temple were at odds with the beliefs of the majority of Kerala’s ordinary women, who preferred the status quo. But the sight of the 385 mile (620km) “women’s wall” – one of the largest ever congregations of women in the world – has rekindled hopes for a genuine movement. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder along the highways was a wide range of women – young and old, rural and urban, farmers and doctors, activists and actors – taking the pledge to fight for gender equality. Early the next morning, two women – Bindu Hariharan (42) and Kanaka Durga (44) – went to Sabarimala. They had visited the temple on 24 December, but were prevented from entering by rioting protesters. They had said they would get in – and sure enough, on this occasion, they got in. • Snigdha Poonam is a national affairs writer at the Hindustan Times and the author of Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing the WorldRussian investigators have denied reports that traces of explosives were found in the rubble of a residential building that was partially destroyed by a powerful blast on New Year’s Eve, but insisted they are considering “all possible causes”. At least 28 people were killed when an explosion tore through a 10-storey building in Magnitogorsk, an industrial city in Russia’s Ural region, at about 6am on Monday. Fifteen people are still missing as rescuers continue to scour the ruins of the building in sub-zero temperatures. Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency that answers to the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, said a gas leak was the most likely explanation for the blast, which occurred on the city’s Karl Marx Avenue. The znak.com website cited an unnamed source who said the explosion was a “terrorist act”. The source, whose comments could not be independently verified by the Guardian, said investigators had discovered the blast originated in a second-floor apartment, where an unknown man is suspected to have stored explosives for a planned attack on a local shopping centre. The man is reported to have moved into the apartment, which he was renting, on 30 December. Znak.com is a respected news website which has previously reported on the deaths of Russian military contractors in Syria. The source also said security services had killed “three terrorists” after opening fire on their vehicle late on Monday. “They tried to shoot back,” he said. “One of them escaped and is being sought.” Footage posted online by passersby showed a Gazelle minivan engulfed in flames and loud bangs that resembled gunshots. The incident took place opposite the city administration building, also located on Karl Marx Avenue, less than two miles from the site of the apartment blast. Investigators would only confirm three people had died when “gas canisters” exploded inside the minivan. Boris Dubrovsky, the regional governor, said officers from the FSB security service were at the scene of the minivan blast, but insisted there was no link between the incident and the building explosion. The Investigative Committee said: “In connection with various reports that have appeared in the media, it must be noted that at the present moment ... no traces of explosives or their components have been found. Work to establish the causes of the tragedy is being conducted around the clock.” Armed police with dogs also reportedly evacuated residents of a second tower block in Magnitogorsk late on Monday. Some residents of the building told local media that police said they were looking for a “bomb”. The blasts have rekindled memories of a series of explosions that tore through four residential buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities in 1999, killing more than 300 people. Critics accused the Russian security services of carrying out the explosions as part of a plot to ensure Putin, a former FSB chief, would secure the presidency in elections held in March 2000. A number of people from Russia’s North Caucasus region were later jailed over the blasts.The head of Italy’s national health research organisation has said he was forced to quit because of the “anti-scientific” policies of the country’s populist government. Walter Ricciardi, the president of the National Health Institute, said the government’s endorsement of unscientific positions, particularly regarding vaccinations, was putting public health at risk. The League and the Five Star Movement (M5S) came to power last June with M5S leaders pledging to change a law that made it mandatory for children enrolling in state-run schools to receive 10 vaccines. Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League and Italy’s deputy prime minister, has said 10 vaccines are “too much”. Ricciardi said in an interview with Corriere della Sera: “It’s clear that when the deputy prime minister says that he, as a father, believes there are too many obligatory, useless and dangerous vaccines, that’s not just unscientific, it’s anti-scientific.” He also said repeated claims that migrants brought diseases were “groundless”, the government’s insistence that waste-to-energy plants are obsolete was “nonsensical”, and a decision to ease restrictions on the use of contaminated soils in farming was taken without evaluating the impact on health. He likened the government’s approach to the Trump administration’s reported recommendation to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop using the term “evidence-based”. “It’s an approach taken by populists who have great difficulty interacting with science,” he said. His resignation in December came after Giulia Grillo, the M5S health minister, sacked the entire board of Italy’s higher health council, which advises the government on health policy, to “open the door to other deserving personalities”. A new committee is expected to be selected this month. M5S has in the past endorsed unproven cures for cancer, and in 2013 the party was a vociferous supporter of Stamina, a stem-cell therapy promoted by a psychologist that was later proven to be a con. Grillo has caused confusion by making several U-turns on the child vaccine policy. She first said that parents could “self-certify” that their children had been vaccinated, instead of providing a doctor’s note, causing mayhem at the start of the school year. Then in mid-November, amid a measles epidemic, the government said it would uphold the vaccines obligation and called for 800,000 infants, children and young adults to be vaccinated. The decision was made on the advice of the health committee.From Remainiacs to Pod Save America and Slow Burn, political podcasts are proving a popular genre. Further evidence of this comes in the form of Bag Man, an MSNBC podcast hosted by the news anchor Rachel Maddow. It recounts the bribery scandal that brought down the Nixon-era US vice president Spiro Agnew, a story that was major news at the time, but which has since been largely forgotten. The series has been downloaded 10m times since it launched in the autumn, according to MSNBC. From one vice president to another: the most distinctive new podcast of the week is Gay Future. This purports to be an audio adaptation of a recently discovered YA novel written by the LGBT-unfriendly US “veep” Mike Pence, but is an entirely fictional and very funny takedown of the sort of “gay panic” thinking promoted by the conservative movement. Set in 2062, it imagines a world where the “gay agenda” has overtaken the US and the future of humanity rests on the shoulders of one straight teenage boy. Listen to episode one here. Over Christmas the BBC released a host of new episodes in its Slow Radio audio strand. First broadcast on Radio 3, the languid series offers up the sounds of among many others, meditating monks and migrating reindeer. The Last Days of AugustJon Ronson’s podcast about the modern history of the porn industry, The Butterfly Effect, was an illuminating and sensitively handled hit. Now Ronson looks into the story of August Ames, an adult film star who killed herself after being shamed on Twitter for a supposedly homophobic comment. At first it sounds like perfect fodder for a true-crime podcast, but it turns out to be nothing of the sort as Ronson pieces together the reasons she died, giving an idea of the woman she was. Hannah Verdier Monster: The Zodiac KillerYour new true-crime blockbuster is a follow-up to the hugely popular Atlanta Monster podcast. This time around, Payne Lindsey and Matt Frederick shine a spotlight on the Zodiac killer, the notorious serial murderer who operated in north California in the late 1960s. Despite there being as many as 2,500 suspects, the perpetrator has never been found, so there’s a lot of mileage in an investigation that spills small-town secrets and spares no details about the grisly crimes. HV As the remnants of tinsel are swept from the nation’s floors, post-Christmas normality is marked by the return this week of our Today in Focus podcast. And with it comes the reminder of some of life’s more pressing matters, including Wednesday’s episode: Deal or no deal: where next for Brexit? Joining Anushka Asthana is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour; the pair attempt to provide a road map for the many possible routes to Brexit. The episode also features a personal account from the Guardian columnist Owen Jones on the rising levels of abuse he and others are receiving online and, worryingly, on the streets. Chosen by David Waters (freelance producer, Today in Focus and The Story) The latest episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Love Me podcast, Outside Looking In, features a piece by producer Neil Sandell that reminds me why I try to produce audio stories. In our media environment, where so much content seems to be churned out (or is that just me?), this piece has so much heart, honesty and wit. Its use of double exposure is beautiful and so much is revealed in the spaces where things are not said.The governor of Washington declared a public health emergency last week after an outbreak of measles. As of Monday, there were 36 confirmed cases in the state. The outbreak has yet again put the anti-vaccine movement under the spotlight – and especially parents who refuse to immunize their children from infectious diseases. Washington’s state legislature has introduced a bill that would ban personal exemptions from the measles vaccine. In 2014, there were 667 cases of measles recorded in the US – the highest number since 2000. And vaccination rates were high that year too; only 0.2% of kindergarten children in 2014 received medical exemptions from vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But because of the highly infectious nature of the virus, measles can spread quickly if just a small percentage of the public are not vaccinated. The role of vaccinations in preventing contagion was researched in a letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2017. The author, Nakia S Clemmons, looked at measles cases from 2001 to 2015 and how many of the patients had been vaccinated. Clemmons, who works in the viral diseases division of the CDC, concluded that failure to vaccinate is linked to the spread of measles. Of the 1,789 measles cases among US residents that were reported to the CDC during that four-year period, nearly 70%, or 1,243 individuals, were unvaccinated. The most vulnerable group was babies and toddlers; just two of the 163 infants aged six to 11 months who became sick had been vaccinated. And only 11 of the 106 toddlers aged 12 to 15 months with measles had been vaccinated. Measles is a highly contagious disease that was eliminated from the US in 2000. But the virus has since been reintroduced by travelers. A tourist visiting Disneyland is thought to have caused a significant multi-state outbreak of measles in 2015.The daughter of a notorious Sicilian mafia boss has opened a restaurant near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris called Corleone. Lucia Riina, a painter and the youngest child of the late “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Totò” Riina, named the establishment after her father’s home town and the crime family in Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning Godfather trilogy of films. ”Discover real Italian-Sicilian cuisine in a cosy and elegant place,” says the ad on a Facebook page. Nicknamed the Beast because of his cruelty, Salvatore Riina was an unrepentant criminal who not only assassinated his criminal rivals on an unprecedented scale in the 1980s and 90s, but also targeted the prosecutors, journalists, and judges who sought to stand in his way. He is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, including a 13-year-old boy who was kidnapped, strangled and dissolved in acid. Riina was serving 26 life sentences when he died of cancer in November 2017. The news of the restaurant opening drew criticism in Italy. Riina’s family was believed to be in financial difficulty after having much of their property confiscated, with his son-in-law pleading poverty and begging for money online. Yesterday, the Sicilian tax agency asked Riina’s family to pay the €2m (£1.8m) it cost to keep him in prison for 24 years until he died. '‘The law expressly excludes that the expenses for costs in prison extends to the family members of the detained. There must have been a mistake,” Riina’s family lawyer, Luca Cianferoni, told the press. It is not the first time that Riina’s family members have capitalised on Sicily’s old image as a mobster haven or their father’s name for their marketing strategy. Less than a month after Totò’s death, another of his daughters, Concetta Riina, attempted to trade on his infamy with a range of espresso products bearing his name. Concetta created an online espresso store named Uncle Totò and said she was accepting pre-orders for espresso pods in order to raise money after police seized the family’s savings. The online store disappeared soon after being exposed by Italian media. “This is totally unacceptable,” the mayor of the Sicilian town of Corleone, Nicolò Nicolosi, told the Guardian. “It is not right that members of a family who have killed the image of this city, a family which killed dozens of Corleonesi and Sicilians are using the name of our city for economic advantages and to make money.” Lucia Riina declined to comment.The distinguished medical journal The Lancet has issued not one but two apocalyptic warnings about our food in under a month. One of its special commissions reported earlier this month that civilisation itself was at risk from the effects of the current food system on both human health and the Earth’s ecosystems. This week comes the next instalment from another special Lancet commission which finds that pandemics of obesity and malnutrition are interacting with climate change in a feedback loop and represent an existential threat to humans and the planet. The modern western diet has become a highly damaging thing that needs a complete overhaul if we are to avoid potential ecological catastrophe. It concluded that we need to halve global meat consumption, and more than double the volume of whole grains, pulses, nuts, fruit and vegetables we eat. Cue howls of indignation from big food and its cheerleaders, the libertarian right. Those nanny statists have gone nuts eating their own double dose of nuts! Cue cries of distress from champions of local, low-impact agriculture who include grass-fed animals, and their meat and manure, in their sustainable mix. These self-appointed experts don’t understand farming! Cue grim food wheels with only a quarter of a rasher of bacon or a fifth of an egg a day. Those miserabilist medics want us all to go vegan! Yet the evidence that our diets are the largest cause of climate change and biodiversity loss is now overwhelming. The global food system is responsible for up to 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions, the livestock sector on its own accounting for about half of that total or 14.5%. The modern western way of eating is also making very large numbers of people fat and sick as other parts of the world adopt it. Diet-related diseases now cause roughly 11 million deaths a year as preventable cancers, heart disease and strokes, obesity and diabetes have spread along with our way of eating. More than 800 million people are estimated to be chronically undernourished, and 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, yet at the same time 2 billion are overweight or obese. In poorer counties you can even find obesity and stunting within the same family as calorie-heavy but nutrient-light processed industrialised foods are adopted. In other words, something has gone horribly wrong and we don’t have much time to fix it. The so-called “reference diet”, published in the first Lancet report, has caused uproar in some quarters. This is a theoretical attempt to answer the Malthusian question: if the global population reaches 10 billion by 2050 (as is anticipated), will there be enough food to meet everyone’s basic nutritional needs without cutting down more forest, polluting more water courses and generally destroying the planet? The answer it comes up with is yes, but only if we share things out differently, and stop feeding a quarter of the world’s grain to animals. The reference diet models each person globally having 14g of red meat a day, 29g of chicken, a fraction of an egg, 250g of dairy, a little fat or oil, very little sugar, and lots of grains and lentils, vegetables and nuts. And here’s where the trouble begins, because calculated day by day and universally these allocations make for a pretty depressing plateful. They contain some odd judgments. Why favour industrialised chicken? Why palm oil? They are plain weird if you try to interpret them as daily instructions without thinking about the diet as a whole or what’s available to people locally – hence the one-fifth of an egg, the quarter rasher of bacon. People don’t shop and eat by numbers and fractions. And the fact that nutrition epidemiology – the study of patterns in diet and disease – has got it wrong before does not help. Remember when fears about dietary cholesterol were used to condemn eggs? These instructions sound top down and, worse, appear to throw responsibility back to the individual. More than 800 million people are estimated to be chronically undernourished, yet 2 billion are overweight or obese But that is to miss the point of these instructions. They are calculations that give a sense of the scale of the problem and a science-based framework for political action. Contrary to some claims, the Lancet commission that undertook the modelling, supported by the philanthropic EAT Foundation, received no funding from industry. And the uncomfortable truth is that meat, and specifically the meat from intensively-fed livestock, processed in the way it generally is in the western diet, is a hotspot when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and ill health. Well-produced meat and dairy can have a place, but it will be a small one, and it is expensive. Our diets are out of kilter with what’s good for both us and the planet because powerful vested interests and misplaced economic incentives have driven them in that direction, and this is the thesis underlying the commission’s findings. The equivalent of $500bn in agricultural subsidies goes each year to the wrong sort of food – corn, soya, meat and dairy, as cheap raw materials for intensive livestock production and for highly processed foods. About $5tn a year goes in subsidies to the fossil fuels which industrialised agriculture uses so profligately. Big food has spent hundreds of millions advertising unhealthy food and lobbying to block the sort of measures that might help shift consumption. Although individuals can make a difference by modifying their diets, and send clear demands for action to politicians , we cannot redraw the food system on our own. That will require not just governments, but global agreement. The Lancet says the problem is so big and so urgent that we need an intergovernmental convention to agree a way forward, in the way that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control have. Expect plenty of hysterical, dark-money opposition to that. The Lancet, founded in the 19th century, caused uproar back then by publishing the unwelcomenews that food was routinely adulterated. It has once again kickstarted a vital debate about how we eat. If it all sounds too gloomy, it’s worth remembering that the modern western diet is a recent invention. The separation of livestock from the land only took off in the 1950s, thanks to cheap energy to keep animals housed, to synthetic fertilisers increasing grain production for feed, and to mass production of antibiotics to control disease. It’s not so very long since most people ate in the way we now need to rediscover. • Felicity Lawrence is a special correspondent for the Guardian and author of Not on the Label and Eat Your Heart OutAstronomers attempting to capture the first images of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way have given early hints that the ambitious project has been successful. The observations, by the Event Horizon Telescope, are expected to be unveiled in March in one of the most eagerly awaited scientific announcements of 2019. Now, a senior scientist on the project has said “spectacular” data was gathered during observations of two black holes, including Sagittarius A* at the centre of our own galaxy. “We managed to get very high-quality data at the very high resolutions necessary to observe the [black hole’s] shadow, if it’s really there,” said Sera Markoff, a professor of theoretical astrophysics and astroparticle physics at the University of Amsterdam, who co-leads the EHT’s Multiwavelength Working Group. The team is in the final phase of reviewing data that was gathered in 2017 and Markoff could not confirm yet whether the observations had produced the first direct image of a black hole’s silhouette. Prof Peter Galison, who is based at the department of the history of science at Harvard University and is also involved in the project, said that, if successful, the EHT’s first image would become one of the most significant in the past 50 years of astronomy. “If we get an image out of it, it will become one of the iconic images of science,” he said. “It’s an extraordinarily ambitious project.” There is little doubt about the existence of black holes: the phenomenally dense objects distort the fabric of space-time in their vicinity, causing objects and light to appear to swerve off course. More recently, the gravitational wave observatory Ligo has detected ripples sent out across space-time when pairs of black holes collide. Until now, though, a black hole has never been directly observed. The main barrier is that black holes are so compact that a telescope roughly the size of Earth would be required to see even the nearest one. The EHT gets around this by linking together 15-20 telescopes spanning the South Pole, Europe, South America, Africa, North America and Australia. Collectively, the array has a resolution equivalent to being able to see a drawing pin in New York from London. The EHT uses a technique known as interferometry, in which astronomers at observatories on different continents simultaneously observe the same object, then combine the collected data on a supercomputer. This requires all the telescopes in the array to swivel towards the target black hole and measure every radio wave coming from its direction. Coordinating this was a “huge accomplishment of diplomacy and organisation”, according to Galison. The EHT has two primary targets: Sagittarius A*, at the centre of the Milky Way, and a supermassive black hole called M87 in the Virgo cluster of galaxies. M87 is about 50m-60m light years away, but at more than six billion solar masses (1,000 times larger than our local black hole), astronomers hope it should be visible. No one is sure what the image will look like but theoretical predictions show a black silhouette, set against a surrounding glow of radiation, something like the depiction in the film Interstellar. “You’d imagine seeing a black shadow or depression,” said Markoff. Besides telling us what black holes look like, the EHT could also reveal whether they have properties predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity and give insights into exotic processes that occur in the extreme environment close to the event horizon. Detailed observations will also be made of dramatic jets of material that are thrown out from some black holes, including M87. It is not clear whether Sagittarius A*, a relatively small black hole, has jets – it is possible that they are too feeble to have been spotted previously – and the EHT could resolve this question. “We see these enormous jets of plasma moving almost at the speed of light,” said Markoff. “They can be hundreds of millions of times the size of the black hole itself – bigger than the galaxy.” Black hole jets are believed to play a major role in cosmology, contributing to the formation of the cosmic web, in which galaxies are strung in clusters across the universe.Donald Trump’s battle with the media intensified on Saturday after the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the US election issued an unprecedented public statement that disputed an incriminating report. The president thanked Robert Mueller and attacked both BuzzFeed, which published the story, and what he called “disgraceful” coverage of it. Mueller’s office, notoriously silent and leak-proof, intervened after BuzzFeed reported that Trump directed his lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a property deal in Moscow. The article, citing two unidentified sources, said Mueller’s investigators learned about Trump’s instruction “through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents”. The allegation was one of the gravest yet against the president. Some congressional Democrats suggested that “if true”, it would constitute a federal crime and potential grounds for impeachment. But late on Friday the special counsel spokesman, Peter Carr, released a rare statement that said: “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate.” A very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our Country! The special counsel has never before issued such a substantive rebuke to media coverage. The Washington Post reported: “Inside the justice department, the statement was viewed as a huge step, and one that would have been taken only if the special counsel’s office viewed the story as almost entirely incorrect.” Trump and his allies, who have derided Mueller’s investigation as a “witch-hunt”, sought to weaponise the dispute to build their narrative of media bias, noting that BuzzFeed’s account had been discussed on cable news channels all day. The president, who denies collusion with Russia, tweeted: “A very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our Country!” On Saturday he told reporters at the White House he appreciated “the special counsel coming out with a statement last night” and added: “I think that the Buzzfeed piece was a disgrace to our country. It was a disgrace to journalism, and I think also that the coverage by the mainstream media was disgraceful, and I think it’s going to take a long time for the mainstream media to recover its credibility.” He also tweeted on the matter, saying he had been mistreated by media “over the past 3 years (including the election lead-up)”. BuzzFeed defended its story. Ben Smith, its editor-in-chief, said: “We stand by the reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the special counsel to make clear what he’s disputing.” BuzzFeed ignited a political firestorm in January 2017 when it published a dossier compiled by the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele about the Trump election campaign and its links with Moscow. But other US media outlets raised questions over its Cohen report. Ronan Farrow, an investigative journalist at the New Yorker magazine, tweeted: “I can’t speak to Buzzfeed’s sourcing, but, for what it’s worth, I declined to run with parts of the narrative they conveyed based on a source central to the story repeatedly disputing the idea that Trump directly issued orders of that kind.” The turn of events triggered a debate about the media’s thin margin of error in the Trump era. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, gleefully tweeted: “I ask the press to take heed that their hysterical desire to destroy this President has gone too far. They pursued this without critical analysis all day. #FAKENEWS.” John Podhoretz, a columnist at the New York Post newspaper, posted: “The people who should be angriest about the BuzzFeed story are the mainstream media pursuing the Mueller story who now have a harder job when it comes to convincing Russia skeptics that they are not simply out to get Trump by any means necessary.” Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent of the New York Times, posed an intriguing question: “If this is the first story the special counsel has felt compelled to dispute, does that mean he had no objection to all the others that have come out before now?” Cohen, who once said he was so loyal to Trump that he would “take a bullet” for him, is scheduled to begin a three-year prison sentence in March after pleading guilty to charges including campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress. Cohen is also due to testify before the House oversight committee on Capitol Hill on 7 February. It is now quite possible the first question he will be asked is whether Trump told him to lie to Congress.As deep as we are into TV’s golden age, by now we are all inured to the antihero. We think nothing of rooting for a mob boss, drug kingpin or serial killer. Keep us entertained and your shortcomings are really your own business. It should therefore be no problem whatsoever for us to warm to You, now showing on Netflix. An adaptation of Caroline Kepnes’ novel of the same name, it’s a sparky, funny tale of unreliable narrator Joe wooing aspiring writer Beck by stalking her social media accounts and manipulating his way into a relationship with her. Blanch if you like, but it wasn’t so long ago you were stanning a cannibal. And this Joe is certainly a charmer. His narration is crammed with one-liners on the crass idiocies of pop culture and harsh judgments on Beck’s lovers (“if he came anywhere close to making you come, you’d have made a Broadway show out of it”) and friends (“your wealthy girlfriends have just now woken up and have nothing better to do than plan their next pointless yet Instagrammable night”). Joe knows only too well that Instagram is a lie, Twitter is a botfest and Facebook a cesspit – but he also knows that’s where the good stuff is. Knowledge is power and every self-revelatory nugget he mines tips the scales further in his favour in his pursuit of Beck. So far, so gruesome. But relating to a predator like him isn’t as hard as it sounds. The way he looks out for Paco, the lonely bookish kid in the apartment next door, shows that there is a human being somewhere beneath all the puppet mastery. He has something of Humbert Humbert about him – appalling but you want to hear more. “I am just a mirror,” that other great practitioner of the persuasive arts Charles Manson was fond of saying. “Anything you see in me is you.” Perhaps his role is to reveal some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. If so, You feels perfectly placed to explore our anxieties about social media and the dangers of distributing our identities across a series of platforms that don’t care for our lives, privacy or mental health. In this, it echoes Black Mirror which made its name fanning that particular flame. You is never quite that dystopian, but it is significantly more plausible. Could a charming psychopath harvest your online presence, hack your passwords and tailor his spiel to make you fall for him? We may think we’re too savvy for that, but the evidence suggests otherwise. It’s a miracle, frankly, it hasn’t happened already. Maybe that’s why the show has struck a nerve. While you may naturally approach You resolute to never blaming the victim, prepare to do your share of facepalming at Beck’s lax digital security, life choices and frankly feeble work ethic. Even manic pixie dream girls deserve love, though, and Joe is the handsome bookish sapiosexual she deserves. We know this because Joe tells us. But like all the best monsters, he is a product of society. It’s like he says: “You can’t tell me [it’s] crazy. It’s the stuff of a million love songs.” Valorising the obsessive pursuit of an unobtainable target is a staple of the romcom, the pop song, even the Bible story. It’s too easy to fall into the Love Actually trap of normalising erotomania, treating it as adorable, even heroic. The trick is not to lose sight of what you’re portraying. You treads a fine line, giving Joe enough humanity to make him relatable but never making his actions defensible. It is smart enough to let us know that to sympathise with Joe is to be complicit in his crimes. Every time you feel you’re being drawn in, the show pulls the rug from under you and reminds you that he is not the romantic hero you are looking for. If the show you’re watching doesn’t do that, it’s probably not love.Revenue-per-click, the business strategy that has informed digital publishers for years, was effectively pronounced DOA this week as leading players in a sector once viewed as the future of journalism announced deep cuts. In a letter to employees headlined “Difficult Changes”, the BuzzFeed founder and chief executive Jonah Peretti said the company would reduce headcount by 15%, or around 250 jobs, to around 1,100 employees globally. Buzzfeed made its numbers last year after missing them in 2017 but Peretti told employees revenue growth was not “enough to be successful in the long run”. By reducing costs, he said, “we can thrive and control our own destiny, without ever needing to raise funding again”. At the same time, Verizon said it would trim 7% of headcount, around 800 people, from its media unit, which includes HuffPost, Yahoo and AOL. Another signal of distress came on Friday when Warner Media announced it would close its digital investment arm, WarnerMedia Investments. The job losses followed sales or cuts at Mic, Refinery29 and elsewhere. But publishing as a whole had already shrunk sharply. By some estimates the shift to digital has resulted in an overall reduction in the business of 50% to 80%. Built on the expectation of fast growth in advertising sales, companies like BuzzFeed and Vox Media have instead found that Facebook and Google – “the duopoly” – have simply tightened their grip on digital advertising revenue. The two giants are expected to take more than half of global ad spending by 2020 and Analyst EMarketer anticipates their market share to grow by 75% between 2017 and 2020, compared with 15% growth for other digital media companies. The BuzzFeed cuts, which follow a round in 2017, are part of a streamlining operation to ready the company for acquisition or merger, perhaps with a direct rival like Vox or Vice. “If you are a text-based publisher in 2019 it should be quite clear that pursuing scale is not a sensible strategy, particularly if your hunting it by hiring people to write content,” said Max Willens of the digital trade publication Digiday. “If that’s your sole source of income, it’s very difficult to built a thriving business.’” The accelerating deterioration of the sector is pushing publishers to find new streams of revenue: Vice has hooked up with HBO, BuzzFeed explored a now-cancelled project with Netflix and still sells Tasty-branded homeware through Walmart. Short-form video has not produced hoped-for revenue. For many, podcasts are next. Last week, the Economist said it was expanding is audio team to eight employees; the Wall Street Journal is pursuing a similar initiative. According to one BuzzFeed employee, the office in New York was “blindsided” by the new cuts. Departments and employees, the worker said, were trying to figure out whether their positions generate revenue or are a bottom-line expense. “All these platforms are trying to figure out how to make money on short-form content,” the employee said, “because now it’s all about making deals for bigger companies, like Vice’s deal with HBO, for long-form, high-production media.” Willens says even long-form video is proving to be a mixed bag. Netflix, he points out, did not renew its news-magazine deal with BuzzFeed. “I don’t see a pot of gold in long-form video,” he says. “Digital advertising was competitive enough, but selling a show or a mini-documentary you have to compete with Warner Brothers or Anonymous Content and whole host of others with more resources and more developed expertise and relationships.” Two companies frequently held up as models of how to find diversified revenue streams by mixing lifestyle publishing, events and product hook-ups are Complex and Dot Dash, increasingly looked to by legacy publishers. That includes Condé Nast, once the gleaming tower in the kingdom of luxury advertising revenue, which this week announced it would put all its publications behind a paywall by the end of the year. “When we look at the success of The New Yorker paywall, it’s just tremendous,” Pamela Drucker Mann, the chief revenue and marketing officer, told Women’s Wear Daily. “Honestly, I wish we had done this yesterday. It’s going to be a game-changer.” The New Yorker is thought to have brought in $118m last year with its subscription model. Drucker said others publications that have tried it, including Vanity Fair and Wired, report improved audience engagement almost as soon as a paywall went up. For publications like Allure, Glamour or Brides, which are focused on lifestyle and not immediate events, the paywall model may prove less effective. Drucker warned she did not anticipate digital subscriptions raising enough to float those brands on their own. Some titles may have to change or re-emphasise their contemporary relevance. Wolfgang Blau, the president of Condé Nast International (and formerly director of digital strategy for the Guardian), said this week: “Vogue sits at two fault lines of global, cultural and political earthquakes. One is the conversation about climate change and the second is how men and women treat women in society.” In any attempt to adapt to the changing digital-publishing landscape, the temptation to look for a white knight is never far behind. Just as iTunes helped the music industry get through digital disruption by selling individual MP3s, many think Texture, an Apple subscription service for magazine and newspaper content, could offer a similar lifeline to publishers. But such hopes are not universal: for publications like the New York Times, Washington Post or Financial Times, which have successful subscription models, the idea of getting a percentage of a bundle sale is likely to stay unappealing. “There’s very little incentive for a company that has already built a business around selling only their product for $15 a month to join a product that gives all of that content away as part of a product that costs $9 a month,” says Willens. “There’s no untapped spring of enthusiasm for joining Texture among publishers that are already having success with their subscription models.” The prospect of an outright sale of Condé Nast to Apple also appears to have receded.Donald Trump treated his last attorney general like he was a dimwit defense lawyer who couldn’t understand his basic duties. That was a bit rich – a phrase that should perhaps get carved on to Trump’s tombstone – but it was at least consistent. Trump simply couldn’t understand Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the former senator from Alabama and first supporter of the Trump campaign in the Senate. Here was a man rejected for a judge’s position because of his obvious racism, who warmly embraced the demonization of immigrants at the southern border. With such fine credentials, why wouldn’t he just do what he was told? All his other lawyers followed all his other harebrained schemes – at least until he stopped paying them or they got flipped by the pesky prosecutors. “So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered AG, looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations,” tweeted Trump six long months ago. For Trump, there could only be one answer. He called his attorney general Mr Magoo, the bumbling myopic old cartoon fool, because he allowed the Mueller investigation to go forward. He sometimes got creative and conjured up some other type of idiot. “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb southerner,” Trump said, according to Bob Woodward’s reporting. “He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.” This is an unfortunate way to talk about Trump country. Especially if you sell yourself as the only man on the planet to truly understand the long-suffering inhabitants of the place: a man so in tune with southern ways that he served 300 cold burgers on silver platters to the South Carolinian football champions from Clemson. (Of course, Trump couldn’t help but lie that he personally paid for 1,000 burgers because, well, he’s a bit rich.) It’s also an unfortunate way to talk about the attorney general and the rule of law. Which begs some pretty profound questions of the man who wants to replace Mr Magoo: William Barr. Why would anyone in their right mind want this job? Especially if you happen to have served as attorney general previously for a sane and dignified president like George HW Bush, as Barr did in the early 1990s. The answer, according to Barr in his Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday, was his undying love of the Department of Justice itself. “I am in a position in life where I can provide the leadership necessary to protect the independence and reputation of the department,” he said. “I will not be bullied into doing anything I think is wrong – by anybody, whether it be editorial boards or Congress or the president. I’m going to do what I think is right.” These are fine words. Until you know what Barr thinks is right. Perhaps he won’t be bullied into all things Trumpy. Then again, perhaps he doesn’t need to be bullied. Take this extraordinary message from Barr to Peter Baker of the New York Times, which explains what Barr thinks of Trump’s demands for investigations into the Clinton Foundation and the government-approved sale of Uranium One to Russia. Uranium can cause brain damage and the Uranium One conspiracy has left a trail of radioactive nuttiness across the nether regions of the right wing for several years. For any justice department veteran, like Barr, the notion that Clinton manipulated the entire bureaucracy of foreign investment review doesn’t pass the laugh test. But Barr insisted that all is fine and dandy with Trump demanding the justice department go after Clinton for the latest wingnut wackadoodle story to air on Fox News. “There is nothing inherently wrong about a president calling for an investigation,” Barr wrote to the New York Times. “Although an investigation shouldn’t be launched just because a president wants it, the ultimate question is whether the matter warrants investigation, and I have long believed that the predicate for investigating the uranium deal, as well as the foundation, is far stronger than any basis for investigating so-called ‘collusion’. Likewise the basis for investigating various ‘national security’ activities carried out during the election, as Senator [Chuck] Grassley has been attempting to do. To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility.” Barr was writing in late 2017, and the Grassley “investigation” was one of those other radioactive rightwing ruses about the Obama administration FBI spying on the Trump campaign under the guise of all this Russia stuff. This is not an isolated case of Barr lending his considerable legal reputation to the flakiest fringes of Trump forgeries. Just seven months ago, around the time Trump was publicly flogging his attorney general, Barr wrote an unsolicited memo to the justice department explaining in detail why he thought Mueller should not be allowed to question Trump about firing James Comey as FBI director in order to halt the Russia investigation. Barr’s memo was a perfect pretzel of Trumpian delusion, claiming that obstruction of justice really just means witness tampering or destroying evidence. Nothing, Barr argued, could stop the president’s “complete authority to stop or start a law enforcement proceeding”. Ergo, nobody in law enforcement can stop Trump from blocking any legal action against himself. Brilliant! To be fair, Barr concedes in his memo that he is “in the dark about many facts” including the, um, facts about Mueller’s investigation and the legal basis for any possible case he might be building. Which is to say: everything. This is the context for Barr’s fine testimony on Tuesday, when he said he was a longtime friend of Mueller and would allow him to “complete his work”. He just wouldn’t necessarily allow the public to see all that wonderful work of his great misguided friend. “I don’t know, at the end of the day, what will be releasable,” he explained. So what does he think are the consequences for a president interfering with law enforcement to save himself, or his family? Barr helpfully outlined a hypothetical case where a president called up the justice department to do just that. “He’s the chief law enforcement officer and you could say, well, he has the power, but that would be a breach of his obligation under the constitution to faithfully execute the laws,” he told California senator Dianne Feinstein. “So in my opinion, if he attempts – if a president attempts to intervene in a matter that he has a stake in, to protect himself, that should first be looked at as a breach of his constitutional duties. Whether it also violates a statute, depends on what statute comes into play and what all the facts are.” In other words, you’re going to have to impeach Trump because a Barr justice department won’t prosecute its chief law enforcement officer. That may be Barr’s best hope for protecting his beloved justice department. It just so happens that it’s also Trump’s best hope for protecting himself, because this Senate will never vote to find him guilty in an impeachment trial. William Barr is clearly no Mr Magoo. He’s far too smart and far too accomplished a lawyer. But like James Comey before him, his day of reckoning lies ahead: that moment when his love of his institution runs headlong into a president who should be institutionalized. At that point, what’s left of Barr’s reputation will become so much depleted uranium.Saturday 3pm Venue Crown Ground Referee Dean Whitestone Odds H6-4 A2-1 D9-4 Accrington and Ipswich meet for the first time competitively with omens not looking ideal for Paul Lambert’s side. Ipswich have lost their last four Cup matches to opponents from a lower division, with three out of the four in the third round. They have not won a Cup match since 2010. Accrington miss Offrande Zanzala through suspension while Callum Elder could make his Ipswich debut. Graham Searles Bolton v WalsallMillwall v Hull CityGillingham v CardiffBrentford v Oxford UnitedSheffield Wednesday v LutonManchester United v ReadingEverton v LincolnTranmere v TottenhamPreston v Doncaster RoversNewcastle v Blackburn RoversChelsea v Nottingham ForestCrystal Palace v GrimsbyDerby v SouthamptonAccrington v IpswichBristol City v HuddersfieldNewport v Leicester CityFulham v Oldham AthleticShrewsbury v Stoke CityBlackpool v ArsenalManchester City v RotherhamBournemouth v BrightonWest Ham v BirminghamWoking v WatfordBurnley v BarnsleyQPR v Leeds UnitedSheffield United v BarnetNorwich v PortsmouthFleetwood v WimbledonWest Brom v WiganMiddlesbrough v PeterboroughWolves v LiverpoolAston Villa v Swansea Saturday 3pm Venue Villa Park Referee Gavin Ward Odds H10-11 A3-1 D5-2 Aston Villa have progressed past the third round once since losing the 2014-15 final to Arsenal. Their chances of progressing against Swansea look positive after 1-0 wins both home and away in the Championship this season. Neil Taylor and Henri Lansbury could return for Villa but Wilfried Bony, Oli McBurnie and Jefferson Montero could all miss out for Swansea because of illness. Graham Searles Saturday 5.30pm BT Sport 2 Venue Bloomfield Road Referee Mike Dean Odds H12-1 A1-4 D5-1 Arsenal are likely to rest a series of players as they take on League One Blackpool for the second time this season. Hector Bellerín, Mesut Özil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan look likely to miss out while Shkodran Mustafi continues his rehabilitation from a hamstring injury. Peter Cech will replace Bernd Leno in goal while, for Blackpool, Jordan Thompson is likely to return to midfield after suspension. Paul MacInnes Saturday 3pm Venue University of Bolton Stadium Referee Darren England Odds H9-10 A3-1 D11-5 Christian Doidge, Remi Matthews and Gary O’Neil could all be missing for Bolton because of a registration embargo resulting from money owed to an outstanding creditor. Such an outcome would serve as a further reminder of the troubles being endured by the four-times FA Cup winners and current Championship strugglers. They will hope for some respite against opponents who sit 15th in League One. Sachin Nakrani Saturday 12.30pm Venue Vitality Stadium Referee Michael Oliver Odds H4-5 A3-1 D5-2 A quick return for Brighton, who lost this one 2-0 on the Saturday before Christmas in what is now Bournemouth’s only win in nine games. “It’s the best cup competition in the world and we want to have a good run,” said Chris Hughton, who took Brighton to the quarters last season and won it twice as a player with Spurs. Eddie Howe is promising to make changes and presumably does not see it that way. Mark Tallentire Saturday 3pm Venue Griffin Park Referee Jeremy Simpson Odds H1-2 A5-1 D7-2 Wales international Chris Mepham is posed to return for Brentford having been out with injury since before Christmas. That will come as a boost to the Championship side as they look to overcome opponents who won when they last met – a League Cup first-round tie at Griffin Park in August 2015 that ended 4-0 to the visitors. New signings Mark Sykes and Jordan Graham could feature for Oxford. Sachin Nakrani Saturday 5.30pm Venue Ashton Gate Referee Peter Bankes Odds H5-4 A9-4 D2-1 On the face of it, this Cup tie is the last thing Huddersfield need right now but David Wagner has taken the opposite view and spoken about a chance to get “this winning feeling back”. November was the last time the Premier League’s bottom club enjoyed that experience. Bristol City, who are 11th in the Championship, unbeaten in eight matches and full of confidence, will be awkward opponents. Stuart James Saturday 12.30pm Venue Turf Moor Referee Simon Hooper Odds H6-4 A7-2 D11-4 Barnsley will be buoyed by the return of top scorer Kieffer Moore from injury but could be more focused on their promotion push than a deep run in the Cup. Burnley’s Nick Pope could return in goal for the first time since injury in July. Sean Dyche’s side are fresh from winning two successive games for the first time this season so spirits should have improved since their disappointing start. Graham Searles Saturday 3pm Venue Stamford Bridge Referee Andrew Madley Odds H2-9 A16-1 D11-2 The defending champions, who beat Manchester United at Wembley, start this campaign aiming to reach a third successive final. They are no strangers to a long Cup run. They host Nottingham Forest, who sit one place outside the Championship play-off places and are fresh from a rousing win against leaders Leeds. Chelsea are looking for a bounce after a goalless draw against Southampton. Amy Lawrence Saturday 5.30pm Venue Selhurst Park Referee Martin Atkinson Odds H1-7 A20-1 D6-1 It is nearly 15 years since these clubs last met, with Palace avenging their 5-2 thrashing from the previous season by winning 4-1 at Blundell Park. Back then, Grimsby were members of the top two divisions and have since recovered after spending five years in non-league. They will fancy their chances of causing an upset against Roy Hodgson’s understrength and inconsistent side. Ed Aarons Saturday 3pm Venue Pride Park Referee Oliver Langford Odds H7-4 A8-5 D2-1 Frank Lampard will be without Harry Wilson after the Liverpool loanee sustained a hip injury. Tom Lawrence returns to the squad, with Lampard hoping to balance progression in the Cup with a promotion push. For Saints, Ralph Hasenhüttl will give Angus Gunn another start in goal after an impressive debut against Chelsea in midweek. Maya Yoshida is unavailable, having departed for the Asian Cup. Paul MacInnes Saturday 3pm Venue Goodison Park Referee John Brooks Odds H1-7 A25-1 D8-1 Everton’s pursuit of a first trophy since the 1995 FA Cup begins with a third-round tie against the team who sit top of League Two and in 2017 became the first non-league club to reach the quarter-finals in over a century. Danny Cowley remains in charge but the squad has gone through significant change since then and they will hope to overcome opponents who are in poor form. Sachin Nakrani Saturday 3pm Venue Highbury Stadium Referee Ross Joyce Odds H6-5 A5-2 D9-4 The Dons won 1-0 at Fleetwood on the first day of the League One season but have struggled since, losing seven on the bounce back in the autumn. They are bottom now and Joey Barton will be confident his Fleetwood side can reach the fourth round for the first time in their history. Dean Marney returns from suspension for the home side and James Husband is also available. Graham Searles Sunday 2pm Venue Craven Cottage Referee Anthony Taylor Odds H2-7 A9-1 D5-1 Claudio Ranieri may have bigger fish to fry but he will be wary of underestimating an Oldham side that have won their last two matches since the departure of manager Frankie Bunn. Caretaker Peter Wild has a full strength squad to choose from as the Latics attempt to reach the fourth round for the first time since the 2012-13 season, while his Italian counterpart is expected to ring the changes. Ed Aarons Saturday 3pm Venue Priestfield Referee Tim Robinson Odds H3-1 A4-5 D11-4 Gillingham against Cardiff pits League One vs the Premier League but there might not be much romance at Priestfield. Neil Warnock is likely to make changes after a frantic festive period, while the Gillingham manager, Steve Lovell, said this week he will prepare “as if it is a league game”. They last beat a top-flight team in the Cup in 2004, knocking out Charlton, and they might have a sniff this time too. Nick Miller Sunday 2pm Venue Etihad Stadium Referee David Coote Odds H1-14 A50-1 D13-1 Kevin De Bruyne should start after being an unused sub for Thursday’s 2-1 league win over Liverpool. Pep Guardiola would dearly like to add the FA Cup to complete his set of domestic trophies at Manchester City. Rotherham will arrive fourth-bottom in the Championship so if they can somehow pull off a win this would be a serious act of giant-killing. Fabian Delph serves the final game of his suspension. Jamie Jackson Saturday 12.30pm BT Sport 2 Venue Old Trafford Referee Stuart Attwell Odds H1-9 A25-1 D7-1 Four wins from four is the perfect start Ole Gunnar Solskær has achieved and he is looking for another against Reading. The Norwegian’s last game as a United player was the 2007 FA Cup final loss to Chelsea so to win the trophy as manager would be doubly sweet. José Manuel Gomes’s side are second-bottom in the Championship so there will be no excuse should Manchester United be knocked out at Old Trafford. Jamie Jackson Saturday 3pm Venue Riverside Stadium Referee James Linington Odds H4-7 A9-2 D3-1 Middlesbrough’s last encounter with League One opposition, in the Carabao Cup, ended in a 1-0 home defeat by Burton Albion a week before Christmas. That humiliation came after a five-game winless run in the Championship that put a huge dent in their promotion hopes and although results have improved since then, another poor performance will only increase the pressure on Tony Pulis. Rich Flower Sunday 2pm Venue The Den Referee Andy Woolmer Odds H11-10 A12-5 D5-2 Millwall, the 2004 FA Cup finalists, came from behind to win at Ipswich last time out. It make it nine Championship points from nine over the festive period after a dreadful season to that point, although they did take a point from the visit of Hull last month. The 2014 finalists have won their last five after a similarly bad start and are 13th, six ahead of the Lions, and may feel they can be a little bolder with selection. Mark Tallentire Saturday 5.30pm Venue St James’ Park Referee Kevin Friend Odds H4-6 A9-2 D3-1 Newcastle have developed a habit of making early Cup exits and Rafael Benítez does not seem convinced this season will be any different. Tony Mowbray’s Blackburn – featuring the former Newcastle forward Adam Armstrong – will hope to take advantage. Benítez is expected to field youngsters, including the goalkeeper Freddie Woodman and the midfielder Sean Longstaff. Louise Taylor Sunday 4.30pm BBC One Venue Rodney Parade Referee Chris Kavanagh Odds H10-1 A2-7 D5-1 The fact Newport beat Leeds at this stage of the FA Cup last season and came within eight minutes of knocking out Tottenham in the following round should serve as a warning to Claude Puel and his players as they prepare for a trip to Rodney Parade. Leicester’s manager is expected to bring back Wes Morgan and make a few other changes after a hectic but successful festive period. Stuart James Saturday 5.30pm Venue Carrow Road Referee Darren Bond Odds H8-11 A4-1 D11-4 Norwich and Portsmouth are well-placed for promotion from the Championship and League One respectively. The home side could be forgiven for prioritising a lucrative step up to the Premier League rather than the Cup and Daniel Farke could be without five midfielders through injury. Portsmouth will have to wait to give cup-tied Andy Cannon his debut as they try to make the fourth round for just the second time since losing the 2010 final. Graham Searles Sunday 2pm Venue Deepdale Referee Andy Davies Odds H5-6 A7-2 D11-4 Injury-ravaged North End may have Sean Maguire, Josh Earl, Alan Browne and Brandon Barker back involved but Ben Pearson remains suspended. The home side’s three January signings are all cup-tied but Doncaster recruit Kieran Sadlier is expected to get international clearance. Preston were unlucky not to convert numerous chances in their past two games and Doncaster have been scoring for fun so expect plenty of goals. Tony Paley Sunday 2pm Venue Loftus Road Referee Geoff Eltringham Odds H9-5 A8-5 D12-5 Leeds arrive at Loftus Road on a run of two successive defeats but are still top of the table while QPR are undefeated in five, their last setback being 2-1 at Elland Road. Marco Bielsa is hinting at making changes as Leeds are back in league action against Derby five days later and enjoying their best chance of promotion in recent seasons. Fans will remember last year’s third-round defeat at Newport but care little if they win on Friday. Mark Tallentire Sunday 2pm Venue Bramall Lane Referee Tony Harrington Odds H2-7 A12-1 D5-1 Flying high in the Championship, Sheffield United host non-league Barnet looking for a fourth successive win. Chris Wilder will likely hand the Everton loanee Kieran Dowell his debut, while his captain, Billy Sharp, may be rested having created history last weekend by becoming the leading scorer in the Football League since the turn of the century after taking his tally to 220 since making his debut in 2004. Ben Fisher Saturday 12.30pm Venue Hillsborough Referee Robert Jones Odds H6-5 A2-1 D9-4 Lee Bullen takes charge of a fifth game as Sheffield Wednesday’s caretaker manager and his aim will be to maintain the unbeaten run that has returned some positivity to Hillsborough following last month’s sacking of Jos Luhukay. Victory will not be easy against opponents who sit second in League One and are the division’s top scorers with 49 goals. James Collins and Elliot Lee are the ones Wednesday need to watch. Sachin Nakrani Saturday 12.30pm Venue New Meadow Referee David Webb Odds H3-1 A10-11 D5-2 Shrewsbury have improved since winning once in 13 matches in all competitions at the beginning of the season and Stoke will be a test of just how much better the going is at the Meadow. Stoke’s first season back in the Championship is not going according to plan. Gary Rowett is under pressure and has said his focus is on winning. Stoke have the quality but will miss Ryan Shawcross and could be without Joe Allen. Graham Searles Saturday 12.30pm Venue The Hawthorns Referee Keith Stroud Odds H4-6 A9-2 D3-1 Darren Moore wants West Brom to bounce back after defeat to Blackburn on New Year’s Day but a fifth game in 15 days means that Mason Holgate, newly on loan, and Jack Fitzwater will make debuts in defence. Jake Livermore is unavailable through suspension. West Brom beat Wigan 2-0 on Boxing Day and a poor run of one win in 13 matches has left Paul Cook feeling pessimistic about his side’s chances. Graham Searles Saturday 12.30pm Venue London Stadium Referee Roger East Odds H4-9 A6-1 D7-2 West Ham’s owners, David Gold and David Sullivan, will expect a strong performance against their former club. The pair were in place at Birmingham for 16 years and will not want to be on the wrong end of an upset. Yet Birmingham, who are four points off a play-off spot in the Championship, may fancy their chances at the London Stadium. West Ham will rest players after a couple of tired league performances. Jacob Steinberg Sunday 2pm BT Sport 2 Venue Kingfield Stadium Referee Graham Scott Odds H16-1 A1-5 D11-2 Relegated from the National League last season, Woking released their entire first-team when they went from being full to part-time. Under Alan Dowson – with Martin Tyler, the commentator, his first-team coach – the club have rebuilt and are second in the National League South. Only once have Woking reached the FA Cup fourth round. Their chances of an upset? “You can’t make a shock,” Dowson said. “It’s ridiculous.” David Hytner Monday 7.45pm BBC One Venue Molineux Referee Paul Tierney Odds H3-1 A5-6 D9-4 Jürgen Klopp’s side ran out 2-0 winners at the Molineux just over a fortnight ago but may be unrecognisable, at least in terms of personnel, when they return on Monday. The pursuit of a first league title in 29 years is an all-consuming priority for Liverpool at present and that may be reflected in changes for the cup tie, with Naby Keïta, Daniel Sturridge, Alberto Moreno and several youngsters likely to be involved. Andy HunterSomebody stole my phone and changed my email password. I’ve tried to recover it, but I don’t have the phone number linked to my account because my phone was stolen. What should I do? Tay First, recover your phone number, which is much more important than the phone. When a phone is either lost or stolen, you should immediately contact your mobile network provider to tell them what’s happened. They should then suspend the current sim and send you a replacement sim with the same phone number. This service should be free but sometimes incurs a nominal charge. It won’t get your phone back, but it will make it harder for the thief to log on to your accounts and change your passwords. Some network providers can also block your handset’s IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number. This makes it harder for the thief to use your phone with a different sim. Of course, you will need to be able to show that you own your phone number, and different companies may have different systems for different types of account. My advice is to be prepared. I wasn’t, and it wasn’t fun. When I lost my phone in November – I left it on a plane in Kuala Lumpur – I phoned O2 but couldn’t pass the recovery tests, which included providing some numbers I’d dialled in the past three months. Being 6,500 miles from home, I couldn’t look up the phone number of my window cleaner, whose surname I couldn’t remember. Back in the UK three weeks later, an O2 store refused to accept any other evidence that I owned this pay-as-you-go number, which was originally supplied by BT Cellnet before O2 was launched in 2002. It was on my business cards, in ancient emails, in online media databases and so on. I could also prove I owned the bank account that paid for its minutes. O2 wouldn’t budge. Only after digging out my window cleaner’s phone number did I eventually get a replacement sim. Not carrying around a written list of the numbers I’d dialled was clearly a bad mistake on my part, but full marks to O2 for using the Data Protection Act to put my personal data at risk. If you have not yet lost your phone, or had it stolen, I strongly suggest that you find out what will happen if you do. You could easily lose a number you’ve used for 20-odd years. While trying to recover my number, I took steps to limit the damage someone could do if they were able to use my lost phone. You should likewise log on to any other accounts that hold your phone number, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and so on, including any mobile banking or payment systems. Set up and confirm an alternative email address as a way of recovering your accounts, delete the compromised phone number, and change your passwords before the thief can do the same thing. You can also try to disable or erase your phone remotely, via the web. If it’s an iPhone, log on with your Apple ID and use Lost Mode, which is part of Find My Phone. If it’s an Android phone, log on to your Google account and go to Find My Device. This does depend on certain conditions, one of which is that the lost or stolen phone must have a mobile or wifi network connection. I did try to erase my lost phone, because it was backed up to Google Drive. I failed because, as far as I could tell, it was never switched on. It may still be flying between London and KL … You didn’t mention which email service you were using, but most of them take the same approach. That is to say, you go to a web page and fill in a form to recover your email address. Forms typically ask for your email address, any passwords you remember, the answers to various security questions (the name of your first pet, or whatever), and the subject lines and email addresses of people you’ve emailed. In Microsoft’s case, you can also provide the names of three Skype contacts. You can also create unique security codes to use if you lose or forget your email password. Microsoft lets you generate a single code from its Additional security options page, while Google lets you create 10. If you are trying to recover an email address, you will usually need to provide a second email address so the company can contact you. It helps if you fill in the form with a device that you have used previously with the account you’re trying to recover, and from the same place, such as your home network. Mail services now keep records of the devices and IP addresses you use (Google, Microsoft). Indeed, they may well challenge you if you log on with a different device, or from a different country. If you normally download and answer your emails on a PC, you should not have a problem: you will have hundreds or even thousands of contact names and subject lines. If you only use email in a web browser, it may challenge your memory. One solution would be to screen-grab your inbox once a month, but it would be better to backup your emails, as explained below. Unfortunately, there are no technical tricks to recovering an email address. All you can do is provide as much information as possible, and as many different kinds of information as possible, even if some of it is slightly wrong. The real problem is that password resets and email recovery systems are usually the easiest way to hack someone’s mailbox. You have to do better than a would-be hacker to get past the automated mailbox recovery software, and hackers who have studied your social media accounts can be very convincing. If you really want to be able to recover a mailbox, you need at least three ways to verify your account, on top of any security questions. For a start, you must have an alternative email address, and two is better. You should also have a mobile phone number, and possibly a landline number. All of these have to work, and you have to keep them all updated. It’s extra work, but it’s better than losing access to your main mailbox. If you use a school, university or work address as a recovery account, you may no longer have access to it a few years later, when you need it. When it comes to security questions, people have been hacked because their answers could be found from web searches or their social media accounts. Your mother’s maiden name, past schools or the names of your pets may already be known, or easy to guess. This is an argument for providing nonsensical answers: nobody will guess that your favourite teacher was called 23o;Aif99#. But you will have to keep records of fake answers because you won’t be able to guess them either. People often recommend two-step or two-factor authentication (2FA), but if this involves your email provider sending a one-time code to your mobile phone, then you’re in trouble if you lose the phone. Also, 2FA users can still fall victim to phishing attacks. It would be better to use a YubiKey, like Facebook and Google employees. Just make sure you have a backup YubiKey in case you break or lose the first one. The risk of losing access to all your emails means you should have them backed up. For example, you could download all your emails to a PC program such as Microsoft Office Outlook, eM Client or Mozilla’s Thunderbird. You could use MailStore Home 11 for Windows, which is free for home users, or Mail Archiver X, which is $39.95 for Mac users. You could back up your Gmail with Gmvault, and restore it to a different Gmail account. For an extra backup, I’ve set my main mailbox to forward all incoming emails to my backup mailbox. The key trick is to remember, when you reply to emails, to bcc a copy to the backup account. I wouldn’t like to lose access to my main email account, but at least I wouldn’t lose any emails. Have you got a question? Email it to Ask.Jack@theguardian.comI’m going to let you in on a shocking secret: sometimes women swear. Here’s another revelation: there is generally nothing newsworthy about a woman swearing. I am eager to emphasize this because you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise: “Prominent woman says curse word” is a highly popular, highly sexist, news genre. Just look at the recent headlines about the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez appeared on The Late Show. Stephen Colbert, the host, asked the politician about the pushback she was getting from some other Democrats: “On a scale from zero to some, how many fucks do you give?” Ocasio-Cortez replied “I think it’s zero.” This led to a flurry of headlines stating AOC gives “zero f---s about pushback”, which deceptively made it look like the congresswoman had been the one to swear. The misleading coverage didn’t pass Ocasio-Cortez by. On Tuesday she tweeted the Hill’s article about her language, stating: “I actually didn’t say this, so while I know “brown women cursing” drives clicks, maybe you accurately quote the whole exchange.” She noted that other outlets had run with the false quote, and pointed out that the headlines reinforced “lazy tropes about women leaders in media” such as “passionate, but angry” and “smart, but crazy”. Ocasio-Cortez is right. When a prominent man swears, it is often taken as a sign of authority and manliness, or excused as “locker room” talk. However, there are still ridiculous double standards when it comes to women cursing; utter an expletive and you will be immediately discredited and painted as angry and uncouth. Research bears this out: a 2001 study by Robert O’Neil of Louisiana State University found that people found swearing more offensive when the speaker was a woman rather than a man. The recent treatment of the congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is another example of the gender expletive divide. A video of Tlaib saying “we’re gonna impeach the motherfucker!”, in reference to Trump, went viral and prompted lots of finger-wagging from both sides of the political divide. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, told CNN, for example: “I don’t like really like that kind of language.” I don’t know if Nadler has had a look at what sort of language the president of the United States uses, but it might make him faint. The amount of coverage Tlaib’s curse word generated also says a lot about where America’s priorities are. As Media Matters notes, Tlaib’s remarks got five times more coverage than the congressman Steve King’s comments about white supremacy. (To jog your memory, King asked when the term “white supremacist” had “become offensive”.) Fox News, for example, spent 52 minutes covering Tlaib’s cursing and 42 seconds on King’s comments about white supremacy, according to Media Matter’s calculations. From Samantha Bee causing a minor meltdown in America when she used the word “cunt” last year to outrage about Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s use of the F-word in a 2015 speech, there are countless examples that show society still considers it unladylike when a woman swears. Which, to use mild language, is complete nonsense. I’m not advocating we all curse, all the time, but a well-placed expletive can be very powerful. In any case, just take a look at what is going on in the world right now. If swear words offend you more than things like Trump’s transgender military ban, America locking immigrant children in cages, and federal workers being forced to work for free then, sorry, your priorities are completely fucked. Britain’s NHS has released new guidelines clarifying that women can take the contraceptive pill every day, rather than taking a seven-day break every 21 days. Quartz has a good piece explaining that the seven-day break, during which withdrawal bleeding takes place, was never underpinned by science but shaped by an American doctor’s beliefs that imitating a natural cycle might make the pill more acceptable to Catholics. In 2016, Khadija Siddiqi, a Pakistani student, was stabbed 23 times in broad daylight by her ex-boyfriend. Her assailant, Shah Hussain, was initially sentenced to seven years but, in 2018, had his acquittal overturned by the high court, after his defence viciously attacked Siddiqi’s character. On Wednesday Siddiqi finally got justice, with Pakistan’s supreme court overturning Hussein’s acquittal. “Today is a victory for all women,” Siddiqi said. “I think this case will serve as a steppingstone for the future cases of women in Pakistan.” The BBC raised a lot of eyebrows down under when it questioned the prime minister of New Zealand’s feminist credentials this week. Apparently she might not be a feminist because she has no plans to propose to her partner. OK, then. The Bavarian town of Eichstätt installed women-only spaces in a central car park after a woman was sexually assaulted nearby in 2016. The spaces are near the exits and well-lit. A man has now taken it upon himself to argue these spaces are discriminatory and courts agree. Really hope this guy feels proud of himself. I know I’m several months behind on this, but I just finished Believed from NPR. The podcast tells the story of how the former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s survivors won justice after decades of not being believed by the people and institutions which should have protected them. If you haven’t listened yet, then it’s well worth downloading this weekend.Proposed changes to a question about biological sex, asked in Scotland’s next census, risk undermining the reliability of the survey and set a difficult precedent for equalities protection, experts have said. The Scottish government is proposing to add two questions, posed on a voluntary basis, regarding gender identity and sexual orientation to the 2021 census, via the Census (Amendment) (Scotland) bill. Discussion has extended to the format of the sex question, which will be dealt with in secondary legislation. At present the question is a binary one, requiring a male or female answer. The Equality Network, which campaigns for LGBTI rights in Scotland, wants to see a third option to the male/female sex question, ideally offering a write-in box for individuals to define themselves using the terminology they prefer. The government is testing this formula, in part to offer clarity, following online guidance for the 2011 census which said that trans people could select how they wished to be identified, irrespective of the details on their birth certificate. The formula was recently rejected by the Office for National Statistics for the next census in England and Wales in favour of maintaining the binary male/female sex question and adding a voluntary question on gender identity for those aged over 16. But, as a Holyrood committee considers its draft report on the census changes this Thursday, policy analysts and data experts have warned that moving to a non-binary sex question puts the reliability of census data (key to policy development, research and strategic planning of public services) at risk. Lucy Hunter Blackburn, an Edinburgh University researcher and member of the policy analyst collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, said: “Our concern is that this will make census data less reliable and less easy to understand. You are taking a risk with the usefulness of the data when you bring in an unknown, because you don’t know how many people are telling you their legal sex and how many something else. It is making the data harder to interpret because it is conflating two different ideas into one data set.” And in oral evidence to the culture, tourism, Europe and external affairs committee last month, data experts from across the UK argued that the census should be collecting data on biological or legal sex (which they say refers to either an individual’s sex characteristics at birth, or as presented on their birth certificate, which can be legally changed with a gender recognition certificate) rather than self-identified sex (which can refer to a range of not necessarily static or legally recognised self definitions). They also warned that the 2021 census could end up using a different interpretation of “sex” than was present in current law, most significantly in the Equality Act 2010. Jackie Cassell, a professor and expert in public health research at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, told MSPs: “There is a real issue about precedent and the credibility of the census and, for the purposes that those many data sets are drawn on to provide sex data, it is key that we have a good representation of the definition as it currently stands in law.” Susan McVie, also a professor and chair of quantitative criminology at Edinburgh University’s law school, said: “If we are to properly understand the relationship between sex and gender identity and how that impacts on factors such as health, the likelihood of getting a job and attainment in education, we need to disentangle those things so that we can have a much clearer picture.” Blackburn said she believed that “the strongest argument is for collecting information both on legal sex and on trans people’s lived identity, without conflating or confusing the two”. She said: “Legal sex has a specific value here, as it has a clear external definition. This gives the data greater reliability, particularly when linking data from different sources. Legal sex is also the data set needed to track how public bodies are fulfilling their duties towards the protected characteristic of ‘sex’ under the Equality Act 2010.” Vic Valentine, policy officer at the Scottish Trans Alliance, a project of the Equality Network, rejected the suggestion that adding a third option would compromise census data. “We would argue that forcing people to answer male or female according to their birth certificate creates inaccurate data. It is significantly more accurate to allow people a third option, and all the evidence points to a very small number of people who are affected.” The Network also supports Scottish ministers’ plans to include a new voluntary question on whether an individual considers themselves to be trans or to have a trans history. “Taken with the third option in the sex question, this gives us a way of counting those women who are trans, for example, without forcing them to answer ‘male’ when this does not reflect how they live or identify.” A spokesperson for the National Records of Scotland, which is responsible for the census, confirmed that a change to the response options for the sex question was being considered for 2021, and that testing is continuing on a non-binary question which would allow people to record their sex as female, male or other. She added: “Although we are considering a non-binary sex question, we will still provide results on a binary basis, allowing continuity with previous censuses”.From time to time, cars of curious people drive slowly though Bairro da Jamaica, craning their necks for a peek at the neighbourhood that’s been in the headlines across Portugal for several days now. None of them step out of their vehicles. They’re here to look at the broken glass, the smashed roof tiles and the evidence of last week’s violence. The tallest of the bairro’s self-built housing towers is now derelict, fenced off with yellow tape and awaiting demolition; the others are also scheduled to be torn down, but are still occupied for now. “Most of the residents here are just regular people: they go to school, they work, they pay their bills, they pay taxes, they contribute to society like everyone else,” says Liliana Jordão, 27, a resident of this neighbourhood on the southern outskirts of greater Lisbon. “But if Bairro da Jamaica already had a really bad reputation, this week it’s been like a zoo.” It began last week with a scrap between two residents, but it was when the police arrived that the real story kicked off: officers were captured on video beating, pushing and dragging anyone who came into their path. Filmed by local residents, the video quickly went viral on social media, spreading across the estates and neighbourhoods of the city’s peripheries, where most of Portugal’s black, Afro-descendent population resides. “When I saw the video, the way they treated those women, I actually wept,” says Jordão. “It could easily have been my mother. And then I thought to myself, no, enough is enough, I have to do something”. This is where the segregation of Portuguese-speaking African immigrants and subsequent generations began The following day around 300 people, most of them young, black residents of Lisbon’s suburbs, held a spontaneous demonstration in the centre of the city chanting “Stop racist police brutality”. Police responded by firing rubber bullets towards the protesters, with the confrontations resulting in four arrests. Tensions rose from there, with police spokespeople and unions trading accusations of excessive force and institutional racism. Across the suburbs cars have been set on fire and police stations targeted, as the original call to protest – “There are many Jamaicas” – has echoed across the country, reflecting an urban reality that is rarely discussed in Portugal. . Shanty towns proliferated in Portugal from the 1960s onwards, the combined result of poor urban planning, large-scale migration from the countryside and immigration from the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Sao Tome and Principe. “African immigrants were pushed into thoroughly precarious conditions, often having to resort to building their own homes, illegally, and on the outskirts of the city,” says Antonio Brito Guterres, an urban social worker. “This is where the segregation of Portuguese-speaking African immigrants and subsequent generations began, from the rest of the city.” The structural problems in Bairro da Jamaica, approximately 30 years since it was first established, are typical of neglected self-built neighbourhoods: illegal electricity supply, improvised sewage and water arrangements, and inadequate building conditions. “It’s damn cold in the winter and boiling in the summer”, says resident Cândido Guilherme de Almeida Pedro, 29. After years of being ignored, at the end of 2017 a plan for Bairro da Jamaica was finally agreed as part the national resettlement programme, the PER (Programa Especial de Realojamento). Launched in Portugal in the 1990s to demolish the shanty towns, the PER approach has been defined by replacing self-built housing with concrete housing estates. Critics say it has replaced slums with ghettos. A 2017 report by the UN Special rapporteur on adequate housing raised concerns about the situation of the African descendent and Roma gypsy (cigano) communities in Portugal, flagging living conditions “that directly threaten a dignified life, which is at the centre of the human right to housing.” They also criticised the detrimental effects – including homelessness – of demolitions and evictions instigated by the PER. “A lot of those neighbourhoods are seen as ‘sensitive zones’ by the security forces”, says Guterres. “But that doesn’t correlate with crime rates. It’s about racial bias within the police.” We don’t want war with the police. We need to show them, however, that we have rights ... the way they behave needs to change Heavy-handed policing in the suburbs is blamed for the deaths of at least 10 people in the last 15 years – among them 14-year old Elson Sanches in 2009 – and no police officer has ever been convicted in connection with them. Then there is the high profile case, currently in court, in which 17 police agents stand accused by the public prosecutor of a litany of crimes against a number of young black men and women from the self-built neighbourhood of Cova da Moura, including aggravated kidnapping, falsifying testimonies, racial abuse and assault. Meanwhile, in 2016, a UN report from the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said it remained concerned with racism experienced in Portugal and repeated recommendations that the country adopted specific measures aimed at the African descendent population, who “remain invisible in the most significant positions” in society. For Almeida Pedro and many others, Monday’s demonstration was a long time coming. “The protest is to do with a lot of things that have been accumulating for a long time. You have lots of young people who want to be part of society but find themselves totally marginalised. What happened here in the bairro was really the last straw”, he says. “Of course we don’t want war with the police,” adds Jordão. “We need to show them, however, that we have rights - as much as we have responsibilities - and the way they behave needs to change.” With the new plan to resettle people across the local area, rather than in a purpose built estate far away, the residents of Bairro da Jamaica hope they will avoid being ghettoised like other communities before them. But with the continued perceived impunity of the police and the apparent unwillingness of Portuguese security forces to even consider the issue of institutionalised racism, the source of tension between African descent communities in the peripheries of Lisbon and the police will remain. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, catch up on our best stories or sign up for our weekly newsletterMauricio Pochettino wants to scream when he is told that he must win a trophy to validate his work at Tottenham. The manager wants supporters to see the bigger picture; how he has the club punching above their weight when it comes to things like balance sheets. Pochettino wants to win the Carabao Cup purely for the thrill of winning and his team put their noses in front at the halfway stage of the semi-final before the Stamford Bridge second leg, which has been scheduled for Thursday 24 January. It was far from the most free-flowing performance of a season that promises so much for them and Pochettino was left to enjoy the grit they showed to keep Chelsea out. The visitors were the team that pushed and they created the chances to have taken reward. But Maurizio Sarri – who is also without a trophy from his managerial career – could lament Chelsea’s lack of cutting edge. Sarri gave a start on the right wing to Callum Hudson-Odoi, the 18-year-old who is the subject of a £35m offer from Bayern Munich, and he had some nice moments, including a deflected cross in first-half stoppage time that Paulo Gazzaniga clawed against the post and to safety. Álvaro Morata had been ruled out with a slight hamstring injury and Sarri preferred Eden Hazard to the fit-again Olivier Giroud in the central attacking role. Hazard was dangerous, as always, but he could not find a way to goal. Sarri sent on Pedro for Willian and Giroud for Hudson-Odoi but, whichever way he sliced it, Chelsea were blunt where it mattered the most. There was bad finishing, particularly from the centre-half Andreas Christensen when gloriously placed on a set piece on 58 minutes, but also bad luck. N’Golo Kanté was denied in the 40th minute by the same post that would thwart Hudson-Odoi. It was Harry Kane, inevitably, who made the difference and when he banged home from the penalty spot midway through the first half it was his 160th goal in Spurs colours, lifting him above Cliff Jones into fourth place on the all-time list. A reminder: Kane is only 25. The execution was nerveless and clinical. Kane had won the kick when he fastened on to Toby Alderweireld’s long ball and touched decisively past the outrushing Kepa Arrizabalaga before being clattered by him. It was a clear foul. Yet there was confusion because the assistant referee raised his flag for offside against Kane. It was extremely tight and so we went to VAR. It took an age to clear up but Kane was deemed to have timed his run to perfection. There could surely be no arguing with the technology, or could there? The Chelsea captain, César Azpilicueta, led the protests to the referee, Michael Oliver, during the interval while Sarri would later insist that, having seen the replays on Chelsea’s feed, Kane looked offside. It was an argument that ran and ran. Wembley had been the scene of Chelsea nightmares in late November when they did not turn up for the Premier League fixture against Spurs. The 3-1 scoreline was a mercy. When Sarri reflected recently on his first season in English football, he mentioned the losses to Wolves and Leicester as his regrets. The Spurs mauling? “I don’t talk about that,” he said. Pochettino employed the same system, with Dele Alli in a roving role behind Son Heung-min and Kane; partly to construct a creative platform for him, partly to have him stifle Jorginho when Chelsea had possession. That had been the basis of the league victory. It did not work here. Alli released Son early on with a ball over the top that Christensen just about dealt with, while Kane sent an overhead kick at Arrizabalaga but Chelsea, who flickered at the other end, could feel that they made a solid start. After the goal they were the better team. Hudson-Odoi had worked Gazzaniga with a low shot on seven minutes and thought he had his moment when he crossed and watched the ball loop up off Danny Rose. Gazzaniga did well to backtrack and push against the post. Spurs tried to build from the back and that involved risking the ball as Sarri’s players pressed. There were murmurs of exasperation from the home support. Kane extended Arrizabalaga on 52 minutes but it was Chelsea who showed coherence and came to pen Spurs in. They were the team in control. Hazard, who turned sharply and probed throughout, worked Gazzaniga on two occasions from distance while Kanté also forced him into a save on 55 minutes. The moment when Chelsea’s hearts truly skipped came shortly afterwards. Ross Barkley flicked on a corner and there was Christensen, all alone at the far post. He scuffed his shot horribly.Russian emergency services have found an 11-month-old baby boy alive in the rubble of an apartment block that collapsed in a gas explosion, after a bitterly cold night in which temperatures dropped to -26C. “Rescuers heard crying. The baby was saved by being in a cradle and warmly wrapped up,” the Chelyabinsk region’s governor, Boris Dubrovsky, said. The infant was pulled carefully from the wreckage and driven to hospital. The health ministry said in a statement that the child was in a dangerous condition with serious frostbite, a head injury and leg fractures. He was due to be taken to Moscow for treatment. The recovery – about 35 hours after the block collapsed – provided some hope for rescuers, even as the search for other survivors looked increasingly futile. At least seven people were killed and 37 more remain missing after the explosion tore through the residential building in central Russia, leaving hundreds without a home on New Year’s Eve. Only six survivors have been found, including a 13-year-old boy. A large section of the 10-storey building in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, in the Ural mountains, crumbled at about 6am local time on Monday, when many people were still asleep. Powerful heaters were deployed in the hope of stopping any trapped survivors from freezing to death. Workers had scoured the crushed concrete and mangled steel throughout the night but the search was temporarily halted out of fear other sections of the structure could be unstable. On Tuesday, the head of Russia’s emergencies ministry, Yevgeny Zinichev, said there was a “real threat of part of the building collapsing … It’s impossible to continue working in such conditions.” Efforts to stabilise the walls could take up to 24 hours. The Soviet-era apartment block was home to about 1,100 people, and other residents had been evacuated to a nearby school. The blast completely destroyed 35 flats but others were left standing. Volunteers have offered money and clothing for victims, and some said they were ready to provide temporary shelter to those in need. Magnitogorsk, about 1,000 miles (1,600km) east of Moscow, is home to one of the country’s largest steel producers. Staff from Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works took part in the rescue operation and the company’s chairman said it would provide financial assistance. Dubrovsky announced a day of mourning on 2 January, with flags lowered and celebrations cancelled, after the disaster dampened spirits during the new year period, usually the country’s biggest annual festivity. Vladimir Putin rushed to the scene on Monday, with television broadcasts showing him looking concerned as he met local officials. “It is in the character of our people, despite new year’s festivities, to remember to think of the dead and wounded at this moment,” the president said. Witnesses said the explosion was strong enough to shatter the windows of nearby buildings. “I woke up and felt myself falling. The walls were gone. My mother was screaming and my son had been buried,” said one resident. Investigators have opened a criminal inquiry into the explosion.The art of the street demo has a long and venerable tradition in France, but the era of the colour wars may be only just beginning. What started with guerrilla blockades of roundabouts by the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) in opposition to French president Emmanuel Macron’s new fuel tax has led to weekly marches in Paris and across France, some ending in violent stand-offs between protesters and the police. On Saturday, for “Act XI” (the rather portentous title given to the 11th protest) the yellow vests numbered 69,000 across France and 4,500 in Paris. Although down from the previous week, with 84,000 nationwide, the figures were higher than in December. The political wing is viewed with contempt by the gilets jaunes radicals, who remain devotees of a more grassroots style The next day, it was the turn of the foulards rouges, or red scarves. Their “Republican march for the liberties” drew about 10,000 people on to the Parisian streets. The choice of red had nothing to do with the French left. Many scarf-wearers complained that the activities of the gilets jaunes prevented them from enjoying a Saturday outside or doing their shopping. Their chants were pro-police and pro-Macron. When the gilets jaunes were outnumbered on the streets of the capital by an unofficial “leave us in peace” brigade, it was a sign that the movement which started with roundabouts was at a crossroads. What were they for, what should their tactics be, and how could they keep up the levels of popular support that placed Macron so firmly on the back foot? A crunch moment is coming. Last week, controversially, a branch of the gilets jaunes announced it would run for the European elections under the label “citizen-led rally”. A list of 79 candidates will be published by mid-February. The age and professions of the 10 known candidates vary widely. They are small business owners, drivers, stay-at-home parents and civil servants. They range from 29 to 53 years old. For now they have no clear programme, but the mood music is more of the left than the right. Le Pen-style anti-immigration rhetoric is not part of their anti-elite pitch. “The citizen social movement born on 17 November shows the necessity to turn anger into a humane political project that will bring answers to the French people,” read one statement. “We, French citizens, do not want to endure the decisions of European institutions and diktats of technocrats and financial castes, who have forgotten the human factor, solidarity and the planet.” Top of the candidates’ list is Ingrid Levavasseur, a nursing assistant and single mother from Normandy. Levavasseur became a well-known gilets jaunes spokesperson after a TV show in which she detailed her everyday financial difficulties and found she had touched a chord: “I thought I was an isolated case, but I see how everyone suffers. The nurses, the sick, the unemployed, the hauliers …” She is not the only one to be enthusiastic about entering politics: Jacline Mouraud, whose Facebook video condemning the fuel tax went viral in November, is launching a party too. It won’t run for the European elections, but she has hopes for the 2020 local elections. But the would-be political wing is viewed with contempt by the gilets jaunes radicals, who remain devotees of a more grassroots democratic style combined with new types of protest designed to capture the imagination, such as the first “yellow night” at the weekend (a sit-in on Paris’s Place de la Republique). As the various factions contend, the danger is that the organised chaos of the early protests becomes just, well, chaos. Since the new year, the gilets jaunes have developed wildly divergent strategies. Some weekly marches are declared while others happen on the spot. Unions have joined in, and are calling for a general strike starting on 5 February. The gilets jaunes have successfully shaken things up, but disarray is spreading among them too. Prominent figures are starting to organise independently. Eric Drouet, a radical who has pledged to keep the struggle on the streets, organised the “yellow night”; while Priscillia Ludosky, who has stopped working with Drouet, calls instead for peaceful marches and female-only events. In Commercy, eastern France, an “assembly of local assemblies” met up last weekend. They signed a common declaration of their values: a platform that was “neither racist, nor sexist or homophobic”, aimed at coordinating the movement democratically, and, pointedly, said they had no wish to run for office. The disagreements are undoubtedly endangering the movement’s momentum, which has also been damaged by occasional outbreaks of violence. Macron and others have denounced the violence of gilets jaunes “hooligans” at protests, while ignoring that inflicted by police on the protestors. Dozens of yellow vests have been injured. On Saturday, Jérôme Rodrigues, an ally of Drouet, was injured by an object allegedly thrown from police lines. In response, Drouet posted an online call for “an unprecedented uprising by all necessary means”. Huge political opportunities remain. The “great national debate”, launched by Macron to engage with the gilets jaunes, has been a damp squib, with the president even drawing red lines around topics he didn’t wish to see debated, among them the possible reintroduction of a wealth tax. The French national debate committee, designated to arbitrate the “great debate”, quit because the government did not want to play by the rules. As spring comes, the movement, which has remained vibrant throughout the winter cold, may bring greater numbers to marches. But as some of the gilets jaunes decide to pursue more orthodox political routes and the radicals fight to keep the movement non-hierarchical, decentralised and on the streets, a battle for the soul of the gilets jaunes is on the cards. Who wins it will be crucial, and not only for a movement which came out of nowhere to frighten the life out of the occupant of the Elysée. It will also decide the future course of anti-establishment politics in France. And it’s time for the gilets jaunes to decide who and what they want to be. • Pauline Bock is a French journalist based in BrusselsI’ve been vegetarian for ages and have been considering going vegan. One reason I haven’t yet is pizza: vegan cheese is a crime against tastebuds. Another thing putting me off is Peta. The animal rights organisation seems to launch itself into the headlines every few months with an obnoxious advertising campaign that makes vegans look like pea-brains with whom no right-minded person would want to be associated. Peta’s latest act of tofu terrorism is a new ad centred around masculinity. “Traditional masculinity is DEAD,” it announces. “The secret to male sexual stamina is veggies.” It brought this thesis to life with a puerile video featuring men vigorously waving vegetable genitalia. Nothing has ever made me want to eat a carrot less. Or an aubergine. Congrats, Peta: you’ve put me off fruit and veg. I’m craving a hamberder, as I believe the meat-treats are called in the White House. Peta’s ads are so distasteful that I sometimes wonder whether the organisation is a genius invention by the meat industry, designed to make animal rights activists look ridiculous. In December, it irritated the internet with a plea to stop using phrases such as “bring home the bacon” or “flog a dead horse” because they trivialise violence against animals. Peta also has a good record of irritating feminists with misogynistic advertising that treats women like pieces of meat. It’s possible Peta’s antics were effective once, when veganism was a niche lifestyle associated with angry hippies. Recently however, veganism has undergone an image transformation and become mainstream. Peta’s chest-beating no longer just seems obnoxious, but old-fashioned and unnecessary. You could say it’s flogging a dead horse. • Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnistThe trickiest dress code to get right isn’t smart-casual, it’s smart-cold. Smart-cold doesn’t get printed in invitations, but it is an unspoken dress code with which you will almost certainly have to grapple over the next two months. One can’t neglect standards just because the mercury dips. It’s too bad for morale. It goes without saying that keeping warm is the most important issue here; smart-cold is never about shivering or wearing fewer clothes. But if you abandon all sartorial coordinates and dress only for warmth, piling on random layers and hats and scarves and gloves, you end up lumpy and bundled and chaotic. Snowman-who-got-dressed-in-the-dark is not a good look, and streamlining your outfit can help you feel more in control of your battle with the elements. So, three points. First: underwear. Uniqlo’s HeatTech under layerings do the heavy lifting invisibly, while John Lewis 150 denier fleece-lined tights get me out of bed on the coldest mornings. Second: polo necks. There is almost no outfit not improved by a sleek polo neck. This is an off-white wool one I bought from Marks & Sparks a couple of years ago. A jacket or coat that has a bulky collar looks messy worn with a scarf, and this is just as warm. White has a pleasing 1970s après-ski vibe that I enjoy (I can’t ski, but that’s irrelevant) and for a smart daytime look works well under an open-necked white shirt and a dark blazer. Third: colour. There is plenty of gloom and darkness at this time of year. Black can be chic, but when dark scarves and coats and boots are layered together, the overall effect becomes unhelpfully apocalyptic. I refer you, here, to two historic globally televised masterclasses in smart-cold dressing: both inauguration ceremonies starring the Obama family. In 2009, seven-year-old Sasha in a flamingo pink coat with coral scarf and gloves nailed smart-cold from the off. Can you do it? Yes, you can. • Jess wears jacket, £369, whistles.com. Trousers, £210, cefinn.co.uk. Boots, £95, office.co.uk. Polo neck, her own. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Samantha Cooper at Carol Hayes Management. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Santi Solari was right, but he got it so very wrong. First they attacked him for what he said, then they attacked him for what he did. Others, meanwhile, just gave up and walked away, leaving him standing where Real Madrid managers so often stand: alone. On Saturday, two days after his team had been held 2-2 at Villarreal on their return from the winter break and winning the Club World Cup, the hounds released, Solari insisted that draws shouldn’t be “underestimated”; as if to prove the point, a prisoner of his words, the next day they were beaten 2-0 by Real Sociedad at the Bernabéu, the league seeming to slip out of sight again on the first weekend of 2019 – 20 games ahead of time. The league and some of the fans too: there weren’t that many of them anyway – at 53,412, this was Madrid’s second worst attendance in a season in which they’re already averaging 6,000 fewer than last year – and when Rubén Pardo headed in a second for Real Sociedad, finally making the game safe, lots of those who were there headed for the exit. Some whistled, some waved hankies, a few even demanded resignations, but most departed in silence, resigned to it all, symbolic somehow. Others might, but they weren’t about to accept this. Solari’s remark was not entirely irrational, and he followed it up on Sunday by insisting the only people who underestimate opponents are “those who have never played the game”, but it was the kind of thing you don’t say and soon everyone was wading in. Marca had responded to the manager’s words by splashing a reminder across its front page: “Solari, you coach Real Madrid!” The problem is he coaches this Madrid in this league, where only Barcelona have won more than half their games; a Madrid who demonstrated a draw shouldn’t be underestimated by going one worse, leaving Marca to follow up with a headline that runs: “The Bernabéu empties for a reason.” And while there is more to it, part of the reason is simple: Real Madrid are not very good. Real Sociedad arrived at the Bernabéu, where they hadn’t won for 15 years, in 15th place, three points off the relegation zone, and they had just sacked their manager. Yet within three minutes, they were a goal up. It began badly and finished worse. | GOAL! | IT'S TWO FOR REAL SOCIEDAD! This is not Real Madrid's season... 😬#LaLiga pic.twitter.com/s9HGeXs84v The fastest ever penalty given against Madrid at home was put away by Willian José. In a game that became wild and wide open, that could have finished 4-4 or just about any scoreline in between, Madrid had two penalty shouts of their own – the first for Sergio Ramos, the second for Vinicius at 0-1. The Brazilian was brought down by Gero Rulli, although la Real’s goalkeeper did seem to get a slight touch on the ball and the referee, José Luis Munuera Montero waved play on. That wasn’t so strange; what was strange was that VAR didn’t intervene. “We don’t understand what it’s for,” said Emilio Butragueno, who usually doesn’t say anything. “If it doesn’t get used when it’s so evident, it loses all meaning,” Solari said. “A scandal,” Ramos called it. “I’m sure it’s not pre-meditated, but it does make you think,” he added. There are other, more important things to think about, though. Results had improved under Solari, overtaking Julen Lopetegui in terms of points gained, but while they won, they didn’t win many over. On one level, at least, that’s not surprising. He arrived 10 weeks into the season, a temporary coach formally made permanent a fortnight later yet never really backed as a fixture, always likely to be the weakest link. While it is forgotten amid their European success, he also inherited a team that finished third last season, 17 points behind Barcelona. There was a reason Zinedine Zidane left. Lots of them, in fact. And Cristiano Ronaldo departed soon after. Lopetegui lasted 138 days. Feeling the finger of blame pointing his way after Villarreal, Solari pointed out that he’d taken over the team in ninth, and led them to fourth, recovering slowly. But deeply underwhelming victories, 1-0 against Rayo, 1-0 at Huesca, 2-0 over Valencia, 4-2 at Celta, and 2-0 against Valladolid, were not exactly conclusive evidence of a significant improvement. They’d been taken apart by Eibar, defeated 3-0. And they came back and drew 2-2 at Villarreal. Now they’d been defeated by Real Sociedad, the same day he was told a draw was not acceptable. Not here. And not at Villarreal. The week that should have been about Sevilla and Atlético, became about Madrid, and for all the wrong reasons. Again. Take a look at that list again, then at the table: that’s eight games against the teams in 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th and 20th. Europe wasn’t their elixir either, not yet. CSKA Moscow came and beat them 3-0. Madrid are not even fourth any more. After a weekend in which only two of the top seven won – Barcelona at Getafe and Alavés against Valencia – and in which Sevilla and Atlético played out the kind of draw that is acceptable, a match Diego Simeone described as “exciting, hard and lovely”, Madrid are now fifth. And while Solari took over seven points off the top, the gap is now 10. Ten from Barcelona, five from Atlético, three from Sevilla and one from Alavés. They’re closer to Valladolid than they are to the top. Leo Messi and Luis Suárez scored in a tough 2-1 victory over Getafe, the kind the Uruguayan said “gives you half a league”, and in which they were fortunate that Getafe’s opening “goal” was ruled out. They’ve now scored more between them than Madrid, who haven’t reached this stage of the season with so few goals for a quarter of a century. While Ronaldo had only scored two league goals by Christmas last season, it’s natural to see a huge gap where he once stood. They have 26 goals so far; in his nine seasons there, the average at this stage was almost 50. On Saturday, with Bale, Mariano and Asensio injured, there was little on the bench and there are gaps in the stands, too: the Bernabéu is big, true, but it’s yet to fill. And if there’s been bad luck and injuries, it’s hard to recall a really good performance this season, Roma apart. Madrid were fantastic that night, but it was fleeting. So, while the penalty naturally dominated the debate, it didn’t hide Madrid’s problems, not least because they’re not new. “Adrift”, “depressed”, “rock bottom”, ran some of the headlines. “Madrid stand there exposed, in a tanga,” wrote El País, “reality is the scourge of hope.” Ramos insisted: “My legs hurt from running so much,” but Madrid are not right. Only Vinicius offered hope and in the second half it was startling how easily Real Sociedad, led by Mikel Merino, walked through them. “Almost every game, the other team scores and we don’t score many,” Luka Modric said. “That’s our problem, but not our only one. It’s repeated almost every game. We have to sit down, get together and talk, to ask what is happening to us, why things like this happen. We can’t always blame the manager. We lack goals. We lacked unity on the pitch. We have to improve and I include myself – I’m here to accept responsibility. We were 0-1 down in three minutes and we can’t always do this. We can’t have a cock-up every game.” • Jesús Navas is 33, it says here. But that can’t be right, can it? “He’s like a kid who’s just starting out, a breath of fresh air,” Sevilla coach Pablo Machín said. “Exceptional,” Simeone called him. So exceptional that Atlético changed formations – twice, in fact – to try to stop him as first and second met at the Sánchez Pizjuán. Navas tore into Atlético, like a “whirlwind”, Diario de Sevilla said. “They literally couldn’t get him down off his bike,” the paper added. Navas was unstoppable in a first half in which Sevilla dominated and should have been more than 1-0 up when Antoine Griezmann curled in a wonderful free-kick. Simeone sent Koke over to help Saúl and Atlético got control in the second half – although Navas still managed to leave both of them trailing with a nutmeg and yet another burst of acceleration – and it finished 1-1, with both goalkeepers impressing hugely. “They’re extraordinarily good,” Simeone said. And he wasn’t wrong, an ovation ringing round at the end. • “Danger here,” one Alavés player said. “We’re going to be dancing!” another added. It was 90 minutes before kick-off and the pitch at Mendizorroza was half frozen. Marcelino, the Valencia manager complained, but Alavés got on with it and so did Mendizorroza, rocking as ever. One down thanks to a lovely Dani Parejo free-kick which shouldn’t have been, they came back to win 2-1. And they did it with a sense of security. This is the best first half to a season in their first division history – and with a game to spare. They haven’t been beaten at home for a year. It’s no fluke. • Huesca won at home for the first time ever in primera – and against Betis too. It was about time, in truth: they have been much better than their position suggests. • Messi: fox in the box. Luis Suárez: volley maestro. Barcelona: refusing to say it’s over, but that’s a big step taken. | GOAL! | Take a bow, Luis Suarez 👏His fine finish has put Barcelona 2-0 up against Getafe! #LaLiga pic.twitter.com/Bo6qEDsREx Espanyol 1-0 Leganés, Levante 2-2 Girona, SD Huesca 2-1 Real Betis, Alavés 2-1 Valencia, Real Valladolid 0-1 Rayo Vallecano, Getafe 1-2 Barcelona, Real Madrid 0-2 Real Sociedad, Sevilla 1-1 Atlético Madrid, Eibar 0-0 VillarrealA group of California junior high students were caught forming a swastika with their bodies on school grounds and exchanging racist and violent messages on a group chat, administrators said. The scandal at Matilija junior high school, which culminated in an emotional meeting with parents and school officials Monday night, has sparked intense debate in a region that has experienced a sharp increase in reported antisemitic incidents. The middle school in Ojai, a small city 80 miles north-west of Los Angeles, told parents in a letter in December that officials had discovered photos showing “nine students laying on the field together to form the shape of a swastika during lunch”. Administrators said the images appeared in a group chat that was active in November and December and featured “racist, sexually inappropriate and threatening commentary”, including one student’s call “to bring knives to school”. The photos and texts have not been released. Cyndi Silverman, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who has been working with Ojai school officials, told the Guardian that there were 28 students on the group chat, which featured a wide range of hateful content: “There were a number of texts that were anti-LGBTQ, antisemitic, anti-black, anti-Latino.” Antisemitic incidents in the US have recently surged to the highest level in two decades, according to the ADL, which documented 457 cases in K-12 schools in 2017, a 94% increase from the previous year. The local ADL for Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties responded to five antisemitic incidents in 2016, followed by 19 in 2017 and 21 in the last year, Silverman said. Ventura County is a “hotbed for white supremacists and the ‘alt-right’ movement”, she added. The Ojai controversy follows numerous reports across the country of increased school bullying echoing the hateful rhetoric of Donald Trump, and a rise in harassment, abuse and offensive language by students on Instagram, Facebook and other digital platforms. Of the 28 students in the chat, 12 received a “disciplinary consequence” due to their participation in the texts or involvement in the swastika incident, the superintendent, Andy Cantwell, said in an email Tuesday. The Matilija student body is 60.6% white, 31.9% Hispanic or Latino, 1.9% Asian and .7% black. Police investigated and said there were no criminal violations, and the school told parents there was no “active threat” to students. The incident, however, inspired others to come forward with their own stories, said Silverman, who moderated this week’s public forum with the school and families. One mother who spoke at the meeting said that her son, whose father is Jewish, had received a threatening antisemitic text message that referenced the Holocaust, according to Silverman. Another speaker, a young man of color, talked about experiencing racism and being “jumped”, she said. An assistant superintendent also said at the meeting that the district had seen an increase in students with anxiety and depression, according to a reporter with the Ventura County Star. Some at the meeting voiced concerns about the culpability of the parents of the students in the chat. Silverman said she felt the problem was wider than individual families: “Biased behavior is learned from your environment. We have to look at the whole community at this point and the broader country … before we blame parents. We’re all responsible.” The local ADL has responded to recent cases involving graffiti with Nazi imagery and a swastika at a synagogue, as well as students in a different district caught making violent misogynistic comments in an online chat, she said. One particularly shocking case involved a five-year-old making violent antisemitic statements to another child, she added. In 2014, a college student in Santa Barbara went on a murderous rampage after expressing violent and misogynistic views. Brianna Moffitt, director of education and community outreach with the local ADL, said the Ojai case rippled across the region: “It’s heightening everyone’s awareness that we have hate in our community. Some of these things are being taught and being learned in our community.” Moffitt said she hoped the case would encourage other school districts to be more proactive in addressing bias and hate speech. Cantwell, the superintendent, said: “As a district we are developing strategies to promote anti-bias and culturally responsive learning environments,” adding that antisemitism was a “national problem”. “We ask the Ojai community to continue to join us in sending the message to all young people that this is wrong,” he said.Thanks to her stadium-husky voice, deployed on expansive pop full of unabashed emotion, Ellie Goulding has long been one of the UK’s biggest global pop stars. In 2019 she releases her fourth album which, judging by the excellent songs played to the Guardian, is sure to be another hit. But she also has a stack of ongoing extracurricular activities. Where has your head been at since the last album?I finished touring, moved to New York, and I was jaded, depleted of any artistic inspiration. I just started cooking, going to the dry cleaners, learning piano. New York doesn’t really have the same rock’n’roll scene it used to, and it was very lonely. I’d often book studios and there’d never be anyone else there. But it gave me a kind of freedom, because there was no one telling me to release an album. I wasn’t forcing myself to write pop songs about boys and relationships, which I used to be so obsessed with when I was younger. And you got engaged. Did you write about that?I have a terrible habit of analysing things to within an inch of their lives, so I didn’t want to overanalyse what I had with him – it’s something much more pure, and something I didn’t need to explain to myself in a song. But on one new song, Love I’m Given, maybe I was reflecting on how I finally felt I’d found this person that was loving me for the right reasons. I don’t think I ever got over being thrust into the spotlight, so I put on quite a tough exterior. I never had time to myself, and any time I did was in a hotel room somewhere – I’d probably had a few drinks, knocked myself out. I don’t know how I could have possibly given a good version of myself to anyone: friends, boyfriends, family. So I’m very grateful Caspar came along, because I feel like I was able to be myself again. What else did you write about?Flux is about thinking about the person who you almost ended up with – I’m a sucker for what could have been. Electricity is about a friend who had been cheated on quite cruelly for a couple of years. But I can’t help writing with empathy, trying to understand why a person has behaved the way they have. Somebody tried to write a song to damage me, and it was a really horrifying thing to go through. I found it really baffling, and just sad, that something that I’d built entirely by myself, my career, was somehow at risk. It had a huge effect on me. But I still didn’t feel the need to be angry – so maybe that’s a good thing. Are you talking about Ed Sheeran? [Don’t is widely believed to be about Goulding.]Er … not specifically. [Sighs] There was a period where I felt someone was trying to sabotage me. So there probably are small pieces of the songs that relate to things that frustrate me, and things that are happening in the world, but I’ve always been conscious that I want to keep songwriting as an escape. There’s a bit of a pop-rap feel to some of the new tracks – were you trying to do something new?I think it’s important to know the way pop is changing – I would never release something completely blind, without listening to any radio or Spotify, and expect people to like it; and for it to compare with what’s out there. But I still find it thrilling when people release something that doesn’t sound like anything else – I’m always fighting to work with producers coming up with whole new soundscapes. My voice doesn’t sound like anyone’s in the world, so I’ve got that to my advantage, and I can also manipulate my voice as part of the track or make it into a sample. That’s how I stay not sounding like anything else – I have that locked, for ever.Does pop ever feel frivolous compared with your climate change activism?Sometimes it does. But often I really need to just write a bloody good pop song after meeting climate scientists, or going to the climate assembly in Kenya last year. Going to Greenland and seeing glaciers collapse. It’s gone beyond facts and boring data – we’re seeing it with our own eyes. The wildfires [in California] were exacerbated by climate change, the crazy storms that have been happening: it’s very obvious. One of my motivations to have a bigger platform as a singer is so that I have more people to reach. Climate change has got to a critical point where we all need to be very active; we need to compensate for what’s going on in certain political situations. I know that “celebrities shouldn’t get involved in politics”, but it’s something we have to act on now. I can’t help but feel a bit frustrated that I’m the only one speaking out about something so important – no one else in my peer group is. The next step is electing people who take this seriously, and to trust scientists. And having a bigger consciousness of your day-to-day actions. I don’t eat that much meat; I try to use sustainable fashion brands; we’re trying to make my tour completely plastic free, and cut down on flights, with a better eco-bus situation. I think I’m probably doing more good than bad, overall.I hold great store in stopping, mid-morning, for a break. And by that I don’t mean coffee at my desk. I mean actually stopping and moving elsewhere, if only for a few minutes. The half an hour or so in which I drink coffee and eat something small and sweet probably has its heart in the communal Swedish fika, but is different in that I usually take my break alone, as I invariably write until midday. There will be coffee, a slice of cake, a spiced bun or a soft cookie. In deepest winter there may be a crumpet, its 100-plus holes full to the brim with melted butter and the merest scattering of salt flakes. Let us not kid ourselves. This is a carb break. The essential fuel for anybody who has been working since shortly after dawn. A favourite is anything that contains a freckling of chocolate chips: a warm, butterscotch-scented cookie perhaps, or a sponge cake with nibs of dark chocolate and chopped hazelnuts rippled through its crumb. I tend to prefer my chocolate chips hand-chopped rather than the perfectly round sort you can buy in cellophane bags. Size does matter. Lumps that are too generous in size will make your cookies fall to pieces. I’ve folded crumbs of chocolate into the toasted oatmeal, cream and raspberries of a cranachan (any marriage of dark chocolate and toasted oats being a thoroughly good idea), and over the surface of a tiramisu where the crisp-edged nibs introduced some welcome contrast to the layers of coffee-saturated sponge cake and mascarpone. We should never forget that tiramisu is more mid-morning pick-me-up than pudding. But I am perfectly content with a chocolate-chip cookie, or a slice of cake, bejewelled with dried fruits and little crumbs of dark chocolate, before I head back to work. The best moment to eat these soft cookies is when they are still warm, when the butterscotch notes of the brown sugar is still evident and the chocolate chips haven’t quite set. The raw dough will keep in the fridge, wrapped in greaseproof paper, for several days, so in theory you could slice and bake a batch at will. Makes about 18 butter 125glight muscovado sugar 75gcaster sugar 75gegg 1plain flour 250gbicarbonate of soda ½ tspcrystallised rose petals 20gmarzipan 200gdark chocolate 150gvanilla extract You will also need a baking sheet, lined with baking parchment Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. Cream the butter and sugars together until they are light and the colour of milky coffee. You can do it by hand, but the lightest results are to be had from using an electric mixer fitted with a flat beater. Break the egg into a small bowl, mix the white and yolk together with a fork, then combine with the butter and sugar. Fold all of the chocolate and most of the apricots and hazelnuts into the mixture Mix the flour and bicarbonate of soda together and fold into the creamed butter and sugar mixture. Finely chop the rose petals and break or cut the marzipan into small pieces and add both to the mixture. Chop the chocolate into small nuggets then fold into the cookie dough with a couple of drops of vanilla extract. Roll the mixture into spheres approximately the size of a golf ball, setting them out on the baking sheet, leaving room for them to spread. (I cook eight at a time on a 30 x 30cm baking sheet.) Bake for 10-12 minutes, until each cookie is pale and lightly risen. Remove the tray from the oven and leave to settle for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Continue with the next batch. The cookies will keep in a biscuit tin for several days. The idea came from one of those strips of thick matchsticks of chocolate-dipped candied orange peel. Serves 8-10 butter 250gdemerara sugar 250gskinned hazelnuts 200geggs 4plain flour 250gbaking powder 2 gently heaped tspespresso coffee 3 tbspsoft dried apricots 200gdark chocolate 250g Line the base of a 23cm spring-form cake tin with baking parchment. Set the oven at 180/gas mark 4. Put the butter and sugar in the bowl of a food mixer fitted with a flat paddle beater and beat until light and creamy. It is worth regularly stopping the machine and scraping the mixture down from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Scatter the hazelnuts on a baking sheet, then brown them lightly in the oven, or toast them on the hob in a dry pan, moving them so they brown evenly. Remove the nuts from the pan and chop finely. They should be the texture of grit. Break the eggs into a bowl and mix lightly with a fork. Introduce the beaten egg, a little at time, to the butter and sugar. Mix in the flour and baking powder then fold into the batter, then add the espresso. Finely chop the apricots – a food processor is good for this – then chop the chocolate into small pieces. Fold all of the chocolate and most of the apricots and hazelnuts into the mixture, leaving just enough to scatter over the surface after baking. Transfer the mixture to the lined cake tin and bake, in the centre of the oven, for about 75 minutes until the cake is lightly springy to the touch and just starting to come away from the sides of the tin. Scatter the reserved apricots and nuts over the surface. Leave to cool in its tin, slide a palette knife around the edge then remove the cake from its tin. Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@NigelSlaterHugo Lloris Fingertips could not repel Rashford’s winner and had his hands full keeping out a series of efforts. 6 Kieran Trippier His loose pass proved costly as possession was given up en route to United’s goal. 6 Toby Alderweireld Came so close to equalising with a canny near-post shot but De Gea was up to it. 6 Jan Vertonghen Not the easiest task to come back from a month out and the Belgian looked a little rusty. 6 Ben Davies Selected ahead of Danny Rose he did not show a superior performance at left-back. 6 Moussa Sissoko Pulled up mid-sprint with a muscle strain in the first half and was replaced by Érik Lamela. 5 Harry Winks In the right place for a couple of early shots but keeping track of Pogba proved a challenge. 6 Christian Eriksen Full of endeavour trying to pull strings, the arch-creator did his bit but the killer pass did not come. 7 Son Heung-min Final game before leaving for Asian Cup but he was unable to weave more magic on his farewell. 6 Dele Alli Was involved with some creative passing and movement but came up short in three key duels with De Gea. Booked. 7 Harry Kane Nudged the ball over the line in the first half but was offside and De Gea thwarted other efforts. 7 David de Gea Another day at the superhuman office. Made a compilation of stunning saves look easy. 10 Ashley Young A fine cross served up an excellent chance for Pogba when he joined United’s attack. 7 Victor Lindelöf Was not shy to make a physical challenge to try to hold his team’s defensive ground. 7 Phil Jones In a game when Spurs had an abundance of chances, he did not feel any serious discomfort. 7 Luke Shaw Renewed confidence is there for all to see and he looked comfortable and focused. 7 Ander Herrera Concentrated on tidying up in front of the back four, a job he did diligently and securely. 8 Nemanja Matic Important block to deny Kane a shot on target, helped the second-half rearguard action solidly. 7 Jesse Lingard Buzzed busily in the service of the team, he instigated the goal with an alert interception. 7 Paul Pogba Involved and influential. His assist, a precision pass upfield, was masterful. Unlucky not to score. 9 Anthony Martial Threatened with occasional high-speed runs from the flank before being substituted. 7 Marcus Rashford The leader of United’s energised attacking line scored the winner – his shot was early and deadly. 8Do you know what time it is? As far as I can tell, it’s nearly cape o’clock. Watching Billy Porter at the Golden Globes, modelling a pink-lined Randi Rahm cape in a crucifix pose, looking like a bird of paradise, I have come to the conclusion that this is the next menswear trend we need to see. We almost certainly won’t, but why not? Are they not seen as masculine? Batman wears one, for the love of all that is holy. Dracula, too, for what it’s worth. Given the ongoing saturation of superhero films, it’s strange that this classic piece of hero’s attire hasn’t filtered through to the high street already. Although nowadays not all heroes wear capes – in fact most don’t any more. The Incredibles’ supersuit designer dispensed with them because they were a propeller hazard. And there’s the clue. Capes lack functionality these days; they are purely decorative. Feminism allowed women to wear – well, not the trousers, but at least some trousers, while most men have remained largely resistant to their counter-liberation. What a shame, this cape fear. Aren’t they the most gorgeous, theatrical items? Some riding jackets and driver’s coats (the waxed Driza-Bone from Australia, for example) inch toward their elegance. But they are not the full Byronic deal: dashing and full of flair and mystery. Can anyone resist the unique physical and visual thrill of a good cape swish? I want to enjoy the textural possibilities of a cape, and its abilities. In fact, I want my friends to call me Capability Brown. I will eat only caperberries. My emotional state can be accurately described as the Cape of Good Hope. Topman, you know what to do. I believe these 18th-century garments are the future. Having said that, I might wait for David Beckham to wear one first.Some of them resemble cells while others are striking because of their lack of toys, space and privacy. All of them are children’s bedrooms, or at least the space they sleep in, exhibited in photographs displayed by the Foundling Museum, in London. More than 30 pictures by Katie Wilson expose the dispiritingly grim living conditions of families in poverty and form Bedrooms of London, an exhibition that could be one of the most challenging of 2019. “There is something very haunting about the images,” said Caro Howell, the director of the museum. “It is the absences, the absence of space for a child to walk in, or learn to walk in, or play in. The absence of toys, the absence of privacy. Because the people are not there, the environment is speaking for them, they are very haunting.” The photographs will be shown alongside first-hand narratives of the families. There is, for example, the tiny hostel bedsit of Amelie, a baby’s cot next to the mother’s sofabed and no room for the child to crawl; then there is the story of Sainey, 32, who went to London aged 15 as a domestic slave, never left, and cannot work because she is in the country illegally and cannot afford clothes for her growing children. “Bedrooms are supposed to be a place of comfort and emotional safety and love,” said Howell. “A child’s bedroom is supposed to be a physical manifestation of the love that those surrounding it feel. Seeing the images brings you up short.” The project is the outcome of two years’ engagement with families by the the Childhood Trust, a London charity that is also producing a book and report to send to policymakers. The trust’s chief executive, Laurence Guinness, said some of the hostels in which people were forced to live were like open prisons. “It’s like you’re living in a cell. You can go out whenever you like but you’ve got no money to go and do anything. You can’t really escape, people are trapped.” When they set out on the project they assumed most children would have their own bedroom. “Even a child poverty charity can be naive about child poverty,” he said. “Those at the very bottom don’t even have a bedroom any more.” The exhibition will be at the museum which is dedicated to the history of the Foundling hospital, founded by Thomas Coram in 1739 as “a hospital for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children”. It was an obviously appropriate venue, said Howell, as it put the subject in a 300-year context. “I hope visitors to the show will leave and think: ‘What am I going to do?’ It may be something as simple as donating, but it may also be about getting more deeply involved in a grassroots charity in [your] own neighbourhood. As the Foundling hospital shows, we all have the capacity to make things better.” Guinness said he hoped the photographs would be shown in parliament, where policymakers can take action. But while the families featured in the photographs were down, they were not out, he said. “We got them together recently to let people comment on the pictures and the report. They were very motivated to help. “The overriding question was: ‘How can this create any change?’ That’s all we’re interested in is change. We are not defeated yet.” • Bedrooms of London at the Foundling Museum, 8 February-5 May 2019.Brazil’s new agriculture minister has described Gisele Bündchen as a “bad Brazilian” whose environmental activism has tainted the country’s image abroad, inviting the supermodel to instead become an “ambassador” for the agricultural sector. In an interview with a conservative radio station on Monday, Tereza Cristina Dias was asked about the “PR problems” that have arisen from Bündchen’s criticism of government attempts to roll back environmental protections. “It’s absurd what they do today with the image of Brazil,” said Dias, who was the leader of the farmers’ caucus in congress before being appointed to the environment ministry by far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. “For some reason they go out and paint a picture of Brazil and its industries that is not true. “Sorry, Gisele Bündchen,” she added. “You should be an ambassador and say that your country conserves, that your country is on the global vanguard of conservation, and not go around criticizing Brazil without knowing the facts.” Bündchen – a UN environment goodwill ambassador – did not immediately respond, but seemed unlikely to take up the offer. Several days after Bolsonaro’s election, Bündchen spoke out against a proposal to merge the agriculture and environment ministries, describing the move as “potentially disastrous and a path with no return”. (The ministries have remained separate.) In 2017, she spoke out against proposed legislation to open 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) of Amazon rainforest for development on Twitter, prompting ex-president Michel Temer to veto the bill. She later accused the government of “auctioning off the Amazon” to the private sector. Bündchen, 38, has also worked on clean water and anti-deforestation initiatives and was awarded a Global Environmental Citizen award from the Harvard School of Medicine. She did not immediately respond to Dias’s comments. After her radio interview, Dias wrote on Twitter: “I said that Gisele Bündchen could be an ambassador for Brazil to show that we produce agriculture for the world while preserving the environment. The model will soon receive our invitation.” The model could potentially play a key role in the looming battle in the Brazilian Amazon between environmental activists and agro-business supporters, who hold considerable power in government after Brazil’s decisive swing to the right in October’s elections. The Bolsonaro administration has received harsh criticism from environmental defenders for its stance that the Amazon is excessively protected and should be open for development. Bolsonaro has said the he would pull Brazil out of the Paris climate accords and on his first day in office, he issued an executive order that put the regulation and creation of indigenous reserves in the hands of the agriculture ministry.Tory Brexit supporters alarmed by the prospect of a delay have hinted they could be won over in the coming weeks – if Theresa May can produce a serious concession from Brussels on the Irish backstop. The numbers may not be enough for May to win enough support for her deal, given continued opposition from a hardcore of Brexiters who also object to the £39bn financial settlement, those with personal grudges against the prime minister and Tory remainers hoping for a second referendum. However, some Brexiter MPs or those in seats which voted leave have suggested in recent days that there is a path to win their support. “There are clearly forces at work to block and frustrate Brexit and the most important thing, whether it’s good deal, no deal or whatever, is that we leave,” said Ben Bradley, the MP for Mansfield. “The public and leave voters will accept nothing less and that means that, yes, I will vote for a revised deal that doesn’t include a permanent backstop because, whilst I still have issues with it, those issues are then temporary and our leaving on 29 March is absolutely secured.” The Tory backbencher Andrew Murrison tabled an amendment to next Tuesday’s Brexit motion that insists on an expiry date to the backstop in the hope that it could allow MPs such as Bradley to demonstrate the level of parliamentary concern to both Downing Street and the EU. Downing Street said it would not comment on whether it would support Murrison’s amendment until it knew whether it had been selected by the Speaker for debate. No 10 is sympathetic in principle but it is not certain whether the EU would be antagonised by MPs demanding a time limit to the unpopular backstop. Giles Watling, the MP for the former Ukip seat of Clacton, said he would look again at the deal when it came back to the House of Commons. “I want to back this deal; so many of our colleagues do,” he said. “I voted against it because that if we are going to go through all this uncertainty, then we need to get this right. “It’s not perfect, but people are beginning to coalesce around it and I think the prime minister’s hand has been strengthened in a way by such a heavy defeat. She is bound to go back to Brussels and say: ‘Look, make these changes or it’s no deal.’ That’s one reason why no deal must not come off the table.” Another MP who voted against May’s deal is hoping the prime minister can secure some change to win over her confidence and supply partners in the Democratic Unionist party, saying: “The key for most of us is the DUP. As long as they come round, that will be enough for me.” Nadine Dorries, one of the most fervent Brexiters in the Tory party, said MPs’ minds had been focused by the efforts of remainers. “I can feel a growing consensus among a number of MPs, faced with these Europhile kamikaze MPs who really don’t care about their careers going up in flames, who want to overturn parliamentary tradition in order to stop Brexit,” she told Newsnight on Monday. “I think many people are now realising that we would support this deal to get it over the line because every day here is a dangerous day at the moment.” Other Brexiter sources warned there were a hardcore of MPs, especially those who had resigned from the government, who would be far less easily moved. “For MPs like Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab, it is a very personal opposition to the deal and to the prime minister,” one source said. “For a lot of MPs, the support of the DUP will be enough but I still don’t know if that gets her over the line.” Downing Street indicated that Tory MPs would be whipped to oppose the amendment tabled by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, which would pave the way for a bill to mandate an extension of article 50 in the event of no deal. The prime minister’s spokesman said it would “simply delay the point of decision”. But Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, is understood to have told May that some ministers could resign if they were not permitted to back efforts to stop a no-deal Brexit. The defence minister, Tobias Ellwood, and the business minister, Richard Harrington, have publicly said they are in favour of an extension to article 50, rather than allow the UK to drift towards a no-deal exit with no parliamentary consensus on the horizon. One pro-Brexit MP, Daniel Kawczynski, who is of Polish descent, said he had formally written to the Polish government asking it to block any extension. “Any attempts by Remainer MPs to delay or obstruct #Brexit must be opposed,” he tweeted.Whoever came up with the name Boyzone in 1993 – and the group being assembled from eager north Dublin wannabes has always been a key part of their origin story – was probably only thinking ahead five years or so. How else to explain that slangy, cheeky “z”? Yet after some early career highs and notably emotional lows (plus an eight-year career furlough in the 2000s), the archetypal Irish boyband have somehow endured. A sixth and apparently final Boyzone album, Thank You and Goodnight, marked their 25th anniversary last year. Now the fortysomething man-gang of Ronan Keating, Keith Duffy, Mikey Graham and Shane Lynch are selling out arenas on a sentimental goodbye tour before retiring the Boyzone marque for ever. Despite the quartet being framed by a gigantic screen beaming lyric videos and vintage footage of the band as fresh-faced youngsters, this is a refreshingly gimmick-free gig. Except for two glam back-up singers, there is no band on stage and at no point does a ’Zoner strap on an acoustic or slide behind a piano to underline their musical authenticity. They just sing, do some clomping dance moves and have a laugh. The result is a weirdly pure boyband experience, one enhanced by still deafening screams, even if the audience intensity ramps up noticeably whenever they return to their 90s heyday with songs such as Isn’t It a Wonder and their beloved (if bland) cover of Cat Stevens’ Father and Son. The centrepiece of the show is a tribute to founder member Stephen Gately, who died unexpectedly from a congenital heart defect in 2009. Dream, a new song featuring Gately vocals from a salvaged demo, is a swaying slice of clean-cut uplift that, performed from an island amid the crowd, serves as a fitting memorial. After that sombre sojourn, the rest of the gig is a scramble to pack in more material from Boyzone’s imperial phase, climaxing in the easygoing, matey Motown of Picture of You. In the end, they seem to be having so much fun that it would be foolish to rule out a sneaky 30th-anniversary reunion. • At M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool, 28 January. Then touring.YouTube will recommend fewer videos that “could misinform users in harmful ways”, the company announced on Friday, in a shift for a platform that has faced criticism for amplifying conspiracy theories and extremism. The change concerns YouTube’s recommendations feature, which automatically creates a playlist of videos for users to watch next. The recommendations are the result of complex and opaque algorithms designed to capture a user’s interest, but they have become a locus of criticism when YouTube directs people to potentially harmful and false content that they would not have otherwise sought out. The company did not provide a clear definition of what it considers to be harmful misinformation, but said that some examples were “videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the Earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11”. The changes will also affect “borderline content”, or videos that come close to violating the company’s rules for content without technically crossing the line. A YouTube spokesperson did not provide additional details on what it would consider “borderline content” and said the company did not have statistics on the extent to which users discover videos through the recommendation feature. The shift would apply to less than 1% of videos, the company said. “We think this change strikes a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech and living up to our responsibility to users,” the company said in a blogpost, noting that the shift would only impact recommendations and not which videos exist on the platform. YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms have faced growing scrutiny in recent years for their role in hosting and amplifying political propaganda and abusive content that spark real-world consequences and can lead to violence. In 2016, the conspiracy theory that became known as “Pizzagate” – a popular rightwing fake news story alleging that the Comet Ping Pong restaurant was linked to a child sex ring involving the Hillary Clinton campaign – motivated a gunman to fire a weapon inside the restaurant. Last week, YouTube also announced a ban on videos depicting “dangerous challenges and pranks” following a viral challenge that involved driving blindfolded. The recommendations feature has played a significant role in pushing damaging videos and beliefs, said Andrew Mendrala, supervising attorney of Georgetown Law’s Civil Rights Clinic. Last year, the clinic filed a lawsuit against the rightwing commentator Alex Jones and his site Infowars, alleging that Jones spread defamatory conspiracy theories that led to the abuse and in-person harassment of Brennan Gilmore, a counter-protester at the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. “It’s an echo chamber. It’s a feedback loop,” Mendrala said of YouTube’s algorithms. “It creates an insular community that is continually fed misinformation that reinforces their prejudices.” YouTube’s announcement could simply be an incremental change in a corporate policy, but given the platform’s wide reach, even small changes may have meaningful effect, Mendrala said. Mendrala noted that YouTube was the main platform that gave Jones an audience for his attacks on Gilmore: “People’s world views were poisoned to such an extent that they threatened Brennan’s life.” Last year, under significant public pressure, YouTube, Facebook and other tech companies banned Jones’s pages. Lenny Pozner, the father of a victim of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre who became the subject of rampant conspiracy theories and abuse , said on Friday that Google, which owns YouTube, was the first tech company to work with him on his concerns. He estimated that YouTube had since taken action on roughly 90% of “hoaxer content” on the platform: “Google was the first one to come around.” Experts caution that platform changes meant to reduce the audience of conspiracy theories can often fuel the false news narrativs, with believers and others claiming that censorship is further proof of the conspiracy theory. “It’s going to attract the ire of conspiracy theorists, certainly,” said Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami political science professor and conspiracy theory expert. The new shift raised questions about YouTube’s standards and policies, he added: “If it’s ‘borderline’, does it cross the line? And who sets the line? … Who gets to decide what misinformation is?”A gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrator injured in the eye at a demonstration in Paris will be disabled for life, his lawyer has said. Jérôme Rodrigues, a high-profile member of the protest movement, claims he was struck by a “flash-ball”, a launcher used by French riot police to fire large rubber pellets. They have been blamed for dozens of injuries, some serious, including the loss of an eye. Investigators are looking into the incident after police reportedly insisted Rodrigues’s injuries were caused by a crowd-control grenade that exploded near him, a version of events his lawyer “categorically” denied. Rodrigues was injured at Place de la Bastille on Saturday afternoon, during an 11th weekend of demonstrations by the gilets jaunes in Paris. Witnesses said the police used flash-balls, “sting-ball” crowd dispersal grenades and tear gas while protesters calling for the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to resign threw projectiles at them There have been calls for French police to be banned from using the flash-ball launchers, and last week the interior minister, Christophe Castaner, ordered officers carrying them to wear body cameras. Witnesses were reported to have picked up the projectile that struck Rodrigues and handed it to investigators. Internal police investigators have launched an inquiry, as has the Paris prosecutor. More than 80 similar inquiries have been launched following serious injuries or legal complaints during gilets jaunes protests. Rodrigues’s lawyer, Philippe de Veulle, told BFM television: “He will be disabled for life. It’s a tragedy for him and his family.” De Veulle said he was lodging a complaint against police for “voluntary violence by a person of public authority” because Rodrigues was allegedly struck with one of the 40mm hard rubber projectiles. On Sunday, Rodrigues, conscious and speaking to LCI television from hospital, said he was also hit by a sting-ball grenade, another controversial riot control tool used to disperse crowds. “Everything happened very quickly. They threw a grenade at me and I took a [rubber] bullet. I was attacked twice – a grenade to the foot and the bullet,” he said. He accused police of carrying out “all the violence the rules permit”. “I’m going to take legal action against Mr Macron, Mr Castaner and against the police officer who shot at me … I remain firmly pacifist whatever happens.” A “yellow night” event, organised by protesters at Place de la République in central Paris on Saturday evening, was broken up by police who used tear gas and water cannon. The gilets jaunes movement started last November in protest over a proposed eco-tax on fuel, but has since grown to embody a wider expression of grievances against Macron and his centrist administration. It is named after the hi-vis vests French motorists must carry in their vehicles, and which the protesters wear. The interior ministry estimated 69,000 people turned out for “act 11” of the protests across France on Saturday, compared with 84,000 the previous week. Protesters have not provided their own figures. Last week, a leading member of the movement, which has no official leaders or organisation behind it, announced it would field 79 candidates in May’s European parliament elections. On Sunday, an anti-gilets jaunes event was organised to “defend democracy and (republican) institutions” in Paris. The marchers, calling themselves the “red scarves”, chanted “on a rien cassé” (we’ve not smashed anything). They said they were demonstrating against the violence at recent gilets jaunes protests, including attacks on politicians and journalists. Police estimated that despite the rain about 10,500 people turned out. The previous day, 4,000 gilets jaunes protested in Paris, police estimated.Recent Mario games have been wild and freewheeling, taking the little red plumber on galaxy-spanning trips and global tours, playing with the laws of physics as he jumps between planets or possesses weird creatures with his cap. But New Super Mario Bros is more like the simpler Mario adventures remembered from an early-90s childhood. It has straightforward left-to-right levels set in castles, underwater, on top of giant mushrooms, in the clouds. A loopy overworld connects them all together, offering a couple of different routes through each themed world. You run, you jump, you try not to die. And in multiplayer, where four of you can leap around dementedly together, you help each other out. But though the running, jumping, Goomba-stomping and coin-collecting is fun, and the madcap landscapes that you tumble through are endearingly weird, the magic that animates Mario’s best adventures is missing. The music doesn’t stick around in your head for hours after you stop playing. It looks colourful, but oddly flat. After the joyfully creative Super Mario Odyssey, a game that anyone with a Nintendo Switch should own, it’s an unwelcome surprise to play a Mario game that doesn’t immediately floor you with its charm. Perhaps it’s overfamiliarity that makes New Super Mario Bros U feel a little underwhelming; this is a rerelease of a six-year-old game, after all. But even today, Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros 3 feel more exciting to play. This does, however, have the advantage of multiplayer, an experience so enjoyably chaotic that it’s impossible not to laugh. With two players bounding around, you feel like climbers holding on to each other’s safety lines. With four, everyone is pinging all over the screen, fighting over Yoshis. Much care has gone into creating these perfect 2D levels, with their secret crannies, hidden blocks and plentiful golden coins; everywhere you go, there’s a small reward waiting. It encourages the kind of playful experimentation that made early 2D Mario feel so limitless. New Super Mario Bros U – and especially the Luigi-flavoured expansion, which comes bundled with this edition – can be intensely frustrating, perhaps too much so for very young players. Death comes quickly and frequently, and with only one checkpoint in each level, it takes persistence as well as platform-hopping prowess to triumph. I ran through two or three lives on most levels past the introductory world, many more on the hardest, and I’ve been playing 2D Mario for 23 years; the sadistic challenge mode, meanwhile, is a test of sanity as much as skill. The difficulty is about right for Mario veterans, especially when you’re playing on your own and there’s nobody to rescue you, but it’s not as welcoming to less experienced players. There have been some adjustments to make it more forgiving to newcomers – two new characters make the game much easier, there’s an included stash of tips videos, and kids can be carried through in multiplayer – but it’s still not the ultra-gentle introduction to Mario that it might appear. The further you delve into New Super Mario Bros U, the more rewarding it becomes. Its final worlds hold some of its best levels, and there are plenty of fun secrets to enliven the second or third attempt at a level. But it’s hard to summon the motivation to devote that much time to it. It’s typically well-made and enjoyable, but next to the best of the Mario series, it’s unmemorable. • New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe is out 11 January; £44.99Maurizio Sarri has risked straining his relationship with Eden Hazard by suggesting the Belgian is “more an individual player than a leader,” ahead of the second leg of Chelsea’s Carabao Cup semi-final against Tottenham Hotspur, a game for which Gonzalo Higuaín will not be available. Sarri had accused his players of being “extremely difficult to motivate” after Saturday’s meek defeat at Arsenal, and has since spoken twice with his squad as a group about how to reinvigorate their approach. Higuaín’s arrival on loan from Juventus, a deal which should be announced on Wednesday afternoon after he flew to London to sign, may help but the player failed to complete the paperwork by the midday deadline to feature against Spurs. Yet, with the situation at Chelsea clearly on edge after a fourth defeat in 11 Premier League matches, Sarri’s decision to question Hazard’s leadership qualities felt untimely. The uncertainty over the 28-year-old’s contractual situation has been a recurring theme to date this season, with Real Madrid’s interest omnipresent. But, even when thrust into an uncomfortable No 9 role, he has contributed significantly in terms of goals and assists under the Italian’s stewardship. Sarri had referenced Cesar Azpilicueta, who currently wears the armband in the absence of the out of favour Gary Cahill, and David Luiz as “players with the characteristics to be leaders‚“ who could “help all the other players to get the right mentality”. Asked whether Hazard, who has captained Belgium 28 times and led them to third in last summer’s World Cup, also boasts such qualities, he said: “I don’t know in this moment ... in this moment, he’s more an individual player than a leader. He is very important for us, of course, because he is a great player. He always can win the match in two minutes. Sometimes in one minute. But, at the moment, he’s not a leader. He’s a great player. One of the best in the world. “I think he said that coaches told him that he needs to do more. I think he has to do more. Because the potential is higher than the performances. He has to respect first of all himself. He has to do more. You know very well that Eden, at the moment, is a wonderful player. But he’s an individual player. He’s an instinctive player. For him, it’s very difficult to play only in one position. He likes very much to go to the ball, in the direction of the ball. He wants the ball at his feet. So it’s very difficult for him to play as a striker, but also as a winger. We have to organise the other 10 players in the defensive phase because he needs to play everywhere on the pitch.” Hazard had given an interview to France Football in midweek in which he admitted to having frustrated all the coaches with whom he has worked. Asked if Sarri counted himself in their number, the Italian added with a chuckle: “Sometimes. I prefer him when he speaks with his feet.” Higuaín should be in attendance at Stamford Bridge as Chelsea attempt to overturn a 1-0 deficit from the first leg, and could make his debut in Sunday’s FA Cup fourth round tie against Sheffield Wednesday. “He’s a very strong striker, especially in my first season in Naples [in 2015-16],” said Sarri, who was apparently unfamiliar with the midday cut-off for the player’s signing in terms of Thursday’s match. “He did very well. He scored 36 goals in 35 matches in Serie A. That season he scored 38 goals. So he did very, very well. For sure, he is one of the best strikers in my career. He played four seasons for Real Madrid, I think. I think he has the right experience to play here. “We hope he brings goals, that he starts scoring for us. He’s also very good at other aspects, other than just goals, but that’s what we are hoping for. He has had some difficulties recently, but we’re hoping we can raise him back to his best form. He’s still scored eight goals [at Milan on loan from Juventus this season] in a team that isn’t at the same level as Juventus. “We need to react on the pitch. The rest is nothing. We discussed with the players how to try to improve the approach, the motivation, the determination. And so we are trying to change something in training, in pre-match, in everything. But I think we all have to react on the pitch. We needed to discuss our problems. The first step, if I want to improve, is to accept the mistakes. Otherwise it’s impossible to improve. It was a normal discussion for improving.”Director Karyn Kusama kickstarted her career in 2000 with the fierce Girlfight; she gives us a sense-memory of that picture with this bruisingly excellent LA crime thriller, written for the screen by Phil Kay with Matt Manfredi. The LA they imagine has a bleak, scorched, arid look in which the sunlight is always harsh, like that seen by a daytime drinker emerging from a bar, or that same drinker waking up in his car the next morning. Production designer Kay Lee and cinematographer Julie Kirkwood create the colours and textures of this hostile world, but its overall mood is down to its star, Nicole Kidman, cast against type as Erin Bell, an LAPD detective who has become prematurely haggard and brutalised by her experiences undercover 16 years before, as a cop covertly embedded in a violent and ruthless robbery crew. Its leader Silas (Toby Kebbell) is still at large after its final spectacular failed job, a bloody nightmare that led to Erin’s present state, and which is to be revealed in progressive flashbacks. Now Erin is a shambling wreck, whose appearance shocks and embarrasses her colleagues, and still deeply upsets her estranged partner Ethan (Scoot McNairy), with whom her troubled teen daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn) now lives. But Erin, like a zombie after a taste of fresh flesh, is reanimated when she barges in on some other cop’s case – a corpse bearing a certain gang tattoo on the neck: the same one that Erin once had to get to convince the bad guys she was one of them. Silas is evidently back, and Erin is convinced that she can bring him in, or bring him down, and in so doing lay to rest her own toxic guilty memories. Opinions may conceivably divide about Kidman’s appearance and style in this film. For some, given her signature elegance in other movies, this may look like Trianon casting: slumming it and uglying-up in search of awards prestige. I have to say I found Kidman’s performance superb: smart, committed, utterly absorbing. There is a horribly compelling contrast between her present state and her fresh-faced appearance in flashback, preparing to take on the job. Kidman brings something particularly disquieting to it, turning into a bleached, gaunt mask with eye sockets raw and red, possibly from long-dried tears. Kusama incidentally creates a tremendous coup, when Erin doggedly tracks down and effectively imprisons Silas’s abused girlfriend Petra (Tatiana Maslany) and we see how Petra’s face has become ravaged and coarsened in exactly the same way. So how exactly did Erin come to look like that? She’s a drinker, and could well have been using drugs, but it’s more a species of delayed shock, a physiological reaction to the terrible things that she saw, and caused, while undercover with her fellow officer, Chris (Sebastian Stan). Erin is on a mission, or journey, ranging all over the city in an agonised archaeology of pain, digging up various surviving crew members. There are moments of banality, horror and bizarre black comedy. One of the people she confronts is the gang’s high-class fence DiFranco, in his chi-chi architectural home, played by Bradley Whitford in creepily louche athleisure wear. He reminded me a little of Bernie, the character Albert Brooks played in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive – which may be an influence here. DiFranco sneeringly tells her: “You know what successful people do, Detective Bell? They get over things.” That is true, up to a point, and I like to think the line is also a reference to Nietzsche’s maxim: “The strong man forgets what he cannot master.” But not getting over stuff is the narrative drive for the whole film. Destroyer reverses the gender polarity and ethos of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant: the cop who has descended into hell and whose compulsive, addictive behaviour may be an effort to escape from hell, or simply and defiantly to enter further into hell in an attempt to cauterise the pain. Erin certainly feels that she is in an inferno, and everything she does may not really be a search for the exit, but a kind of coming-to-terms, particularly when it comes to finding some connection with her daughter. Kidman has a very interesting scene with the angry Shelby when she asks if Erin can remember once taking her on a chaotic camping trip. It is a memory that Kusama finally converts into a kind of degraded epiphany for Erin. Not redemption, but closure of a sort.Joe Denly will on Thursday be handed his first England Test cap from the country’s greatest run-scorer, Alastair Cook, and with it a golden opportunity to book a spot for this summer’s Ashes series. The Kent right-hander makes his debut at opener at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium – a straight swap for the discarded Keaton Jennings – in what is a must-win match if Joe Root’s besieged tourists are to claim a series victory over West Indies from 1-0 down. It is one of at least two changes to the XI humbled in Barbados. Stuart Broad, doubtless fired up by his omission from that 381-run defeat, replaces Adil Rashid, while Jack Leach is on standby in a trimmed down 12-man squad should the pitch require a second specialist spinner (despite looking a green-tinged batting surface 24 hours out). For Denly it represents a remarkable late chance in a career once shackled by his Test ambitions. The 32-year-old may have averaged 34 batting at No 3 in Division Two last season, and he has not opened in first-class cricket since 2015, but with nine centuries against the Dukes ball in the past 24 months, and his leg-breaks ever maturing, there is a quiet confidence about this seasoned professional. The question now, after Cook hands over England cap No 690 in his capacity as a former player turned BBC pundit, is whether this transfers to runs against a four-pronged West Indies pace attack. If it does there is every chance of facing Australia in the second half of a monumental home season that kicks off with the World Cup in May. “I think we have to keep a pretty open mind,” said Root, when asked whether Denly will get an extended Ashes audition. “He’s definitely got an opportunity to show what he’s capable of. He’s obviously worked extremely hard, impressed on the two tours he’s been on. Hopefully he can continue the fine form he had last year for Kent.” Root was keen to stress that Jennings – strong against the spinners but having struggled when facing the quicker men – remains part of England’s plans, and that Rashid’s omission, after 26 wicketless overs went for 117 runs in Barbados, was “not a reflection on how he has gone about things”. The leg-spinner has been granted an early return to Bradford, with his wife expected to give birth to their second child in the coming weeks, and he will return as one of Eoin Morgan’s key men come the one-day series that begins in Barbados on 20 February. On Rashid’s replacement, Broad, Root said: “No one likes being left out. Especially someone as experienced as him. I expect him to come back and try to prove a point. He’s someone who can be quite stubborn sometimes and likes to prove people wrong. That’s a very good strength of his and something that can work in our favour.” Root insisted he took the field in Barbados with the team he wanted amid queries about the decision-making process on tour. The captain and coach [Trevor Bayliss] usually select the team away from home but Ed Smith, the national selector who is with the squad until the end of this week, has added an extra voice in this regard. “It’s important we work together on things,” Root said. “That’s the way that’s been very successful for us in the recent past – beating the world’s No 1 team, India, at home and then winning away in Sri Lanka – and I think it would be wrong to starting questioning that after one very difficult week.” Limp batting, rather than selection, is the chief cause of England’s predicament and it is here where Root needs a response. Having been roughed up by the hostile Shannon Gabriel in England’s doomed fourth innings – not least when awkwardly gloving to slip off a no-ball – runs from the captain in Antigua would send a strong message. Root, fresh from a couple of blows in the nets on Tuesday, added: “[That spell by Gabriel] was one of those periods where the feet weren’t moving as you’d like, I wasn’t picking up the ball as quickly as I would have liked. I’m fully aware I will probably get a few more balls in that area at the start of my innings but it’s part of Test cricket.”A generation of men and women in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir who have never been inside a cinema may finally be able to watch a film on the big screen later this year if a local Indian businessman, Vijay Dhar, has his way. Dhar plans to open a cinema in the capital, Srinagar, so movies can be experienced again almost 30 years after the first cinemas were shut by Islamic separatists. “I want young people here to enjoy the same entertainment as people in the rest of India. If some object and don’t want to come, that’s fine, but for those who want to visit a cinema we need to provide that basic amenity,” said Dhar, who runs a school and a hospitality company. The campaign against cinemas in the region began in 1989 when the Allah Tigers organised an armed rebellion against Indian rule and in favour of azaadi (freedom) or merger with Pakistan. The militants denounced cinemas, bars and beauty parlours as “un-Islamic” and threatened that anyone who disobeyed would be punished with death. Kashmir used to have about two dozen cinemas with names such as the Palladium and the Regal; Dhar used to own one – the Broadway. By 1990 all had closed. At the time many Kashmiris thought this was a temporary situation, but it turned out to be permanent. Most were turned into garrisons for security forces or converted into hospitals or shopping complexes. In 1996 three cinemas reopened after their owners received government assurances. The security was formidable, but three years later two closed when militants attacked the Regal, killing one moviegoer. The Neelam limped on with few visitors. Kashmir’s snow-topped mountains and rolling meadows used to be the favourite location for Bollywood directors. For Indians used to tropical heat, a landscape of mountains and snow is a perfect fantasy. “Kashmir was the perfect backdrop for showing a romantic couple cavorting on the mountains and rolling around in the snow,” said film fan Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jnr. If you start with negativity, you will never try anything in life Despite the unrest, which has left 40,000 dead according to Indian government estimates, some directors continued to film in Kashmir. But while Indians enjoyed the scenery, Kashmiris were unable to see their own surroundings on the big screen. Not everyone has reacted well to the new cinema. Some said it hardly mattered with so many films available on the internet. Others were hesitant. “I’d love to see a film, but I’d be nervous. It’s not a good idea because the situation is not good at the moment,” said houseboat owner Nawaz Butt. A hotel owner, who did not want to be named, was hostile. “With all this bloodshed, going to the cinema is a trivial issue,” he said. Dhar is not deterred. He loves the cinema so much that he flies to Delhi once a month to gorge on films. His aim in opening a multiplex, he says, is to recover some aspects of “normalcy” that have been lost in three decades of bloodshed. Young people needed sports, the arts and entertainment, he said. Going to the cinema was just part of a normal social life. The Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani has consistently opposed the reopening of cinemas. But asked if he feared that his cinema would be targeted, Dhar said: “If you start with that kind of negativity, you will never try anything in life.”What does the EU want? This simple question has foxed Brits throughout the Brexit talks. It is alleged that Brussels is desperate to retain Britain; that it yearns to get rid of it; that German car-makers and friendly states such as the Netherlands will force Angela Merkel to let Britain cherrypick the best of membership; that Europeans want to ruin Britain, sending it on its way with a punishment beating pour encourager les autres. None of this contradictory speculation has turned out to be right, and Britain’s negotiating efforts have been the poorer for it. European mainlanders can be hard to read. The Friday before last, prominent Germans including Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Angela Merkel’s heir presumptive, wrote a saccharine letter to the Times urging Britain to stay. On Monday the Polish foreign minister broke EU ranks to suggest that the Irish backstop be limited, to get Theresa May’s deal over the line. Yet on Wednesday Merkel seemingly contradicted her own colleagues, opining fatalistically that Britain, an island, had always had “patchy” relations with the EU and suggesting that its exit is inevitable. The day after, an exasperated Emmanuel Macron told a crowd near Lyon that Brexit has “torn British society apart” and “cannot be delivered”, his tone so critical that it moved a Spectator writer to ask why the French president “hates Britain so much”. The motivations and instincts of our continental partners sometimes baffle us Brits. To un-baffle ourselves, a useful principle is that most of what the EU and its leading members say or do can be traced back to the quest for the quiet life. Brexiters can forget their theories about Teutonic desires to rule the continent. Remainers can abandon their theories about Europe as a “peace project” per se. The reality is at once more prosaic and more poetic than either side allows: the European project knows no higher ideal than calm good living. The EU and most of its states were born or reborn from the rubble of war and the traumas of totalitarianism That applies to the Brexit talks. The remaining 27 member states of the EU are fed up of the time- and energy-sapping annoyance and want it sorted, be that through the passing of May’s deal, a speedy British pivot to the “Norway” option or a decision to end Brexit altogether. In Brussels it is now wearily assumed that Britain will request an extension to the article 50 negotiating period. The officials’ nightmare is that this will drag on into the period of the new European parliament from July, which may require Britain to hold its own European election, or that Britain will withdraw article 50 only to trigger it again soon. “Stay or go, just make your minds up!” is a typical entreaty. Europe’s quest for the quiet life goes much further. The EU and most of its states were born or reborn from the rubble of war and the traumas of totalitarianism. Britons forget how deeply that affects their instincts. History is dense, present, complicated and inescapable on the mainland in a way that it is not in Britain. The pavements of German cities are studded with brass plaques bearing the names and dates of those deported to the death camps, planted outside the addresses where they once lived. Memories of flight, destruction and oppression – the 3am rap at the door, the rumble of military trucks on cobbles, the squelch of carts laden with possessions on muddy tracks – live on in continental families in a way that they do in comparatively few British ones. The opposite of horror and cataclysm is the quiet life. Voltaire wrote his novel Candide in 1759 after the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake and amid the destruction of the Seven Years’ War. The book preaches neither Panglossian optimism nor head-in-hands gloom, and rather the stoical satisfaction of a peaceful plot of land providing for its owners’ needs under the maxim: “We must cultivate our garden.” In the shadow of horror and cataclysm, the modest goal of a happily cultivated garden is the height of decency and civilisation. More than grand rhetoric about continental unity or geopolitics or European culture, this is the real objective of the EU – and what holds it together. It is also the thing that Brits most struggle to understand. The European Coal and Steel Community, the EU’s first precursor, was launched in 1952 to make the weapons-building parts of the French and German economies interdependent. The Treaty of Rome in 1957 was designed to make war between the two inconceivable. Having built peace, the next step was prosperity. The early European project underwrote the postwar boom, and with it welfare states promising material good living but also immaterial totems of the European lifestyle such as long holidays and universal healthcare. This European dream is glimpsed not in luxurious ceremonies in Paris, Brussels or Berlin but in well-heated social housing blocks in Utrecht or Vienna, in comfortable houses with gardens on the outskirts of Barcelona or Prague, in safe streets and decent hospitals. The eurozone crisis wreaked unnecessary and horrific misery on parts of southern Europe. But one can rightly fume about that and at the same time acknowledge that Europe still constitutes the largest concentration of prosperous, well-insured, long-living, safe and well-rested people in the world. Pity those Africans and Asians who would like to join in but are held back by Europe’s draconian immigration laws. The garden has high walls. The EU’s unofficial mission is to protect this comfortable, once-traumatised European garden from outside threats. When Helmut Kohl confronted sceptics in his Christian Democrat Union with the case for the euro, notes Alexander Clarkson of King’s College London, he did so primarily not with talk of peace but talk of preserving the European way of life. Today the EU is most effective when it shields its citizens from over-mighty technology firms, negotiates trade deals in a world where its population is proportionately smaller every year, and ventures tentative steps towards common defence forces independent from those of Donald Trump’s America. It lures its neighbours not with soaring rhetoric but with the promise of the quiet life for their citizens. Macedonia’s recent decision to change its name, ending a dispute with Greece and launching itself on the track to EU membership, was ultimately motivated by the desire to join the sheltered European garden. The obsession with the quiet life also explains the EU’s weaknesses. It concentrates too little on non-immediate security, demographic and industrial competitors outside its borders. It prioritises loss aversion above the uptake of opportunities. It generally values the stability of uniformity above the bracing fizz of difference. It is unremittingly defensive. Its Brexit talks with Britain have illustrated the best and worst of these traits. Shortly after the referendum, Merkel gathered German business leaders and her European counterparts to agree, in essence, that the risk of a fragmenting EU was the greatest danger to the European quiet life. The consensus she forged has held ever since. Its logic: a suburban tenant in Leipzig or Toulouse or Katowice, with his or her modest house and tidy garden, faces more risk from a collapse of the European project – in the nightmarish event that successive members attempt to replicate a successful Brexit or lose faith in the EU’s willingness to stand by member states like Ireland – than from the economic cost of a disorderly Brexit or the security cost of a Britain less militarily committed to the continent. A tour of European capitals illustrates this truth. The Dutch may sympathise with the Brits but their prime minister also uses Britain as a cautionary tale of a country whose citizens have lost their appetite for “a good life for themselves and those around them”. Poles may want to bend the rules of the Irish backstop to preserve the quiet life for their immigrant compatriots in Britain but only so far, for Warsaw knows the pain of European fragmentation better than most. Athens and Brussels dislike each other but remain committed to Greek membership of the EU because both fear a destabilising rupture. Macron may rail against Brexit but his real target is Marine Le Pen. Germans may be torn between seeking to stop Brexit by backing a second referendum and managing a messy British exit to get it over with but, like their fellow Europeans, their utmost concern is stability. Seen from Britain it is easy to spot what divides the EU and harder to identify what unites it, namely the quest for the quiet life on behalf of the citizens of a Europe tired of turmoil. Seen from the continent it is hard to understand the case for a wrenching British flounce or a daring British sally “out into the world” for trade with India and the like. If it wants to find common ground, London should pay less attention to the highfalutin European talk of prosperity, security and power and more to the EU’s underlying object. In other words: Brexit will succeed insofar as it serves the pursuit and preservation of the comfortable European garden. • Jeremy Cliffe is the Charlemagne columnist and Brussels bureau chief at the EconomistIreland is poised to roll out its first regular abortion services in the coming weeks in the wake of the referendum vote to lift the country’s near-total ban on abortion. Politicians and officials fast-tracked legislation and logistical preparations to turn last year’s landslide vote in favour of liberalisation into reality for women who wish to terminate pregnancies. About nine of the state’s 19 maternity units, plus clinics run by other organisations, have indicated they will be ready to start abortion services in January. Only 162 of Ireland’s 4,000 GPs have signed up to provide the service, but the government says that will suffice. The government plans to establish “exclusion zones” to move any protests away from clinics. The rollout will mark another milestone in the Republic of Ireland’s transformation from a conservative society in thrall to the Roman Catholic church to a liberal, secular country, and will increase the pressure to lift Northern Ireland’s abortion ban, an anomaly in the UK. “The fact it has been turned around so quickly is brilliant,” said Clare Murphy, a spokesperson for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), which catered to many of the approximately 3,000 women who travelled from Ireland to Britain last year to obtain abortions. “That number will definitely drop, without a doubt.” The referendum last May delivered a mandate for change: 66.4% of voters chose to repeal the eighth amendment to the constitution, which gave “the unborn” equal rights to pregnant women and made abortion illegal even in cases of rape, incest or severe danger to the mother. Since then, Ireland’s health minister, Simon Harris, has driven a tight timetable, steering legislation through contentious, marathon debates in parliament and negotiating with medical service providers. The Irish president, Michael Higgins, signed the regulation of termination of pregnancy bill into law on 20 December, paving the way for services to open in January. Campaigners have hailed it as an overdue breakthrough for women’s rights and equality. Under the new system, GPs will provide abortions to women up to nine weeks pregnant and hospitals will perform terminations at between nine and 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, abortions will be allowed only in exceptional circumstances. The service will be largely free, with the state paying GPs approximately €400 per patient. As the rollout nears, all sides are apprehensive. Pro-choice groups bristle at a three-day “cooling off” period for women who request abortions, calling it a sop to anti-abortion activists that lacks medical basis. They also worry about uncertainty over those seeking abortions after 12 weeks, estimated in about 17% of cases. “We expect there will be a significant cohort of women who won’t be catered for,” said Murphy. She expected hundreds of such cases to end up in British clinics this year. Pro-life advocates are dismayed, saying the referendum was not a mandate for abortion on demand. Brendan Leahy, the bishop of Limerick, said Ireland was experiencing an “inglorious watermark”. Doctors, nurses, counsellors and administrators worry about bottlenecks and confusion in a health service already creaking from dysfunction and long waiting lists. A 24-hour, seven-day helpline will direct women to local GPs who provide abortions. Concern about teething problems has deterred many GPs from signing up to abortion services. An online consultation by the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) found that 43% were unwilling because of concerns about the rollout, especially “referral pathways” to secondary care involving ultrasound and hospital services. Tony Cox, the ICGP’s medical director, said: “A small but significant group, particularly younger GPs, see the introduction of abortion services as a significant milestone for women’s health services in Ireland. “We believe the majority of members are concerned that the introduction has been rushed, that the referral pathways won’t be in place for a while, but are optimistic that it will settle down and that the media interest will subside, and the 24-hour helpline will work smoothly.”Paul Pogba has failed to make Manchester United’s flight to Dubai for a week of warm-weather training due to a leg injury, though the club expect him to join up soon. The Frenchman suffered the problem in a second-half challenge by Newcastle United’s Jonjo Shelvey in Wednesday’s 2-0 win at St James’ Park. This caused Pogba to miss Saturday’s FA Cup third round win over Reading at Old Trafford. A club statement said: “Paul Pogba has not completely recovered from the knock he sustained against Newcastle and stayed back for treatment, but he will join his Manchester United team-mates in Dubai soon in preparation for the Tottenham game. The squad travelled to Dubai after Saturday’s 2-0 FA Cup win over Reading at Old Trafford for a training camp ahead of the Reds’ next Premier League outing, against Tottenham Hotspur at Wembley Stadium next Sunday, 13 January.” Ole Gunnar Solskjær, the interim manager, is aiming for a sixth win for his opening six games in charge against Spurs.Nicaragua is closer to “total economic chaos” and a new civil war than ever before, a supreme court judge has warned in a searing resignation letter to President Daniel Ortega. In a three-page dispatch sent to the former revolutionary icon this week, Rafael Solís accused Ortega of transforming the Central American country into “a state of terror” after an uprising against him began last April. The judge – a longtime associate of the 73-year-old Sandinista – claimed peaceful protests had been repressed “with bloodshed and fire” and heavily armed paramilitaries unleashed to sow fear. An ongoing “war” on the press – which last month saw armed police seize the newsroom of one of Nicaragua’s top independent media outlets – meant journalists now faced a stark choice: exile or jail. In his letter, published on Thursday, Solís called himself “an ex-Sandinista militant” and said he was resigning because Nicaragua had become a dictatorship resembling an absolute monarchy with two kings: Ortega and his powerful first lady and vice-president, Rosario Murillo. The couple’s refusal to seek a peaceful solution to the crisis through dialogue with the opposition meant conflict now loomed: “I do not desire a civil war for Nicaragua but it’s clear to me this is the path you are going down.” Solís argued that the army’s failure to disarm pro-Ortega paramilitary groups blamed for scores of deaths meant it was “logical to expect the opposition groups will seek to arm themselves and the country will regress 40 years”. “God willing a miracle will occur,” he concluded. “God save Nicaragua.” Activists and members of Nicaragua’s opposition celebrated the defection of a member of Ortega’s inner circle as a major blow to his rule. Solís is a veteran Sandinista and Ortega confidant and was reportedly best man at Ortega’s 2005 wedding to Murillo. “Increasingly isolated, all the regime has against its people are weapons,” tweeted Amnesty International’s America’s chief, Erika Guevara-Rosas. Ortega has blamed the deadly violence that has gripped Nicaragua on “hate-sowing coup-mongers” with foreign backing. But his former loyalist rubbished those claims in his letter: “There was no such coup, nor any external aggression, just the irrational use of force.”England have kept faith with Elliot Daly at full-back and named Jack Nowell on the right wing in their starting XV to face Ireland in Dublin on Saturday. Henry Slade and Manu Tuilagi have been paired in midfield with Owen Farrell captaining the team from fly-half. Head coach Eddie Jones has also opted to kick off the Six Nations by recalling George Kruis alongside his Saracens team-mate Maro Itoje in the second-row and shifting Mark Wilson to blindside flanker in a team showing six changes and one positional switch from the starting side which beat Australia 37-18 in November. The Wasps scrum-half Dan Robson is in line to win his first cap off the bench but there is no place in the matchday 23 for Mike Brown, who had been hoping for a recall at full-back, or Joe Launchbury. Instead Jones has retained Daly at 15 and invited Tuilagi to make his first Six Nations start for six years in the absence of the sidelined Ben Te’o. Injuries have severely restricted the Leicester centre’s Test opportunities in recent times but he remains a formidable physical presence. Slade and Nowell have both been rewarded for their good recent form for Exeter, while Kruis’s specialist lineout skills have earned him the nod ahead of both Launchbury and Courtney Lawes. England have not won in Dublin since 2013 and have not scored a try at the Aviva Stadium on their last three visits. “It is well documented no one thinks we can win but I can tell you everyone inside our camp believes we can win,” said Jones. “We are hugely looking forward to the weekend. I think it is quite clear to beat Ireland you have to beat them in the contest area. They are very good at the breakdown and in the air. Both those areas are a priority for us. “Traditionally England and Ireland games are always very close, they are tough affairs, there is a lot of emotion in the games so our ability to finish the game strongly is going to be vital.”On Tuilagi’s selection Jones said: “I just felt for this game the best option was to play Owen Farrell at 10 and Manu as a like-for-like replacement for Ben Te’o. Manu has impressed us at the training camp and is right to play.” E Daly (Wasps); J Nowell (Exeter), H Slade (Exeter), M Tuilagi (Leicester), J May (Leicester); O Farrell (Saracens), B Youngs (Leicester); M Vunipola (Saracens), J George (Saracens), K Sinckler (Harlequins), M Itoje (Saracens), G Kruis (Saracens), M Wilson (Newcastle), T Curry (Sale), B Vunipola (Saracens). Replacements: L Cowan-Dickie (Exeter), E Genge (Leicester), H Williams (Exeter), J Launchbury (Wasps), C Lawes (Northampton), D Robson (Wasps), G Ford (Leicester), C Ashton (Sale).A cross-party group of British parliamentarians and international lawyers is requesting the right to visit eight female activists detained in Saudi Arabia, following allegations that they have been subjected to ill treatment, including torture. The lawmakers and advocates, who have convened a detention review panel, intend to produce a detailed document on their findings, following claims that the activists, some of whom were instrumental in securing women the right to drive in Saudi Arabia, have been maltreated in Dhahban prison and denied access to lawyers or relatives. The all-party panel includes the Conservative former chair of the foreign affairs select committee Crispin Blunt, the Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, and Paul Williams, a Labour member of the health and social care select committee. All eight women have been subjected to abuse, including threats of rape, electric shocks and beatings, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Speaking before the panel formally handed its request for visiting rights to Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi ambassador to the UK, Blunt said: “There are credible concerns that the conditions in which the Saudi women activists are being detained may have fallen significantly short of both international and Saudi Arabia’s own standards. “We make this request to the Saudi authorities so that we can assess for ourselves the conditions in which the Saudi women activists have been and are being detained today. “No person should be subjected to the type of treatment that has allegedly been inflicted upon these women activists while in detention. The implications of activists being detained and tortured for exercising their freedom of speech and conducting peaceful campaigns is concerning for all individuals seeking to exercise their human rights in Saudi Arabia.” Blunt said he was hopeful the Saudi authorities might cooperate and thereby allow the panel to report an improving situation to human rights activists. The panel includes lawmakers from ITN Solicitors, on behalf of the firm’s client, who is a Saudi citizen wishing to retain their anonymity. Tayib Ali, a partner at ITN, said: “The detention and torture of Saudi women activists between May and August 2018, the majority of whom had campaigned for the right to drive, undermines Saudi Arabia’s progress and runs contrary to its obligations under international law. “Serious allegations have been made regarding the treatment of these women in detention, including allegations of torture, death threats and denial of access to legal advice. The women have also allegedly been denied access to their families, and their families are deeply concerned about the conditions in which they are being held.”When we look up at the full moon, we only ever see one face: the “man in the moon” is always gazing back at us. Scientists believe that the far side, eternally hidden from view, may hold the key to fundamental mysteries about the moon’s formation and its earliest history. China’s Chang’e 4 mission could reveal new clues to the cataclysmic collision that created the moon and uncover the origins of the water that is unexpectedly abundant in lunar soil. The moon’s far side is sometimes known as the dark side, although it is not darker than the near side in any literal sense. It undergoes the same phases of illumination by the Sun as the side facing Earth. But because the moon spins on its axis at exactly the same rate as it orbits Earth, one side remains permanently out of view. It was only in 1959, when the first images of the far side were beamed back by the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 in 1959, that intriguing differences were revealed. The far side is pockmarked by more craters and appears almost devoid of the seas of solidified lava, known as maria, that form the shadowy shape of a face that we see from Earth. Scientists believe that as asteroids pummelled the lunar surface during the solar system’s early history, giant lava flows on the moon’s near side filled impact craters, obscuring them from view. On the far side, fewer lava flows occurred, leaving intact a pristine record of ancient impacts. The oldest, largest and deepest of these is the Aitken Basin, where Chang’e 4 is now poised for exploration. Testing the composition of the soil could help narrow down theories about how the moon formed and the beginnings of the solar system. The mission will also conduct the first astronomy observations from the moon’s far side, which is seen as a uniquely attractive site for monitoring radio waves coming from deep space. Astronomers operating Earth-bound radio telescopes have to constantly grapple with electromagnetic interference from human activity: shortwave broadcasting, maritime communication, telephone and television signals. The far side of the moon is shielded from such signals, making it far easier to pick up faint fingerprints left by the Big Bang. These traces left across the cosmos could help tell us how the universe inflated at unimaginable speed in the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Chang’e 4 could also help pave the way for China’s human spaceflight ambitions. One theory for the abundance of water in lunar soil is that it is produced by reactions between the solar wind (a flow of charged particles including hydrogen) and minerals in the soil (containing oxygen). “People are trying to reproduce this process in the lab, but it’s really difficult to do correctly,” said Martin Wieser, a researcher at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and the principal investigator on an instrument onboard Chang’e designed to measure how the solar wind interacts with the lunar surface. “The only way, really, is to go to the lunar surface and look at it there. Chang’e 4 is in the ideal place to study this process.” Understanding how water is produced and distributed in the lunar soil could be crucial for establishing a more permanent human lunar outpost. The amount in the soil is not large – an area of 10 sq metres might contain only enough water to fill a glass – but harvesting it could eventually be cheaper than bringing water from Earth. The craft is also carrying a mini-greenhouse, which will test how well plants, specifically potatoes and small flowering Arabidopsis plants, related to cabbage, grow on the moon.Pity the poor billionaire, for today he feels a new and unsettling emotion: fear. The world order he once clung to is crumbling faster than the value of the pound. In its place, he frets, will come chaos. Remember this, as the plutocrats gather this week high above us in the ski resort of Davos: they are terrified. Whatever dog-eared platitudes they may recycle for the TV cameras, what grips them is the havoc far below. Just look at the new report from the summit organisers that begins by asking plaintively, “Is the world sleepwalking into a crisis?” In the accompanying survey of a thousand bosses, money men (because finance, like wealth, is still mainly a male thing) and other “Davos decision-makers”, nine out of 10 say they fear a trade war or other “economic confrontation between major powers”. Most confess to mounting anxieties about “populist and nativist agendas” and “public anger against elites”. As the cause of this political earthquake, they identify two shifting tectonic plates: climate change and “increasing polarisation of societies”. In its pretend innocence, its barefaced blame-shifting, its sheer ruddy sauce, this is akin to arsonists wailing about the flames from their own bonfire. Populism of all stripes may be anathema to the billionaire class, but they helped create it. For decades, they inflicted insecurity on the rest of us and told us it was for our own good. They have rigged an economic system so that it paid them bonanzas and stiffed others. They have lobbied and funded politicians to give them the easiest of rides. Topped with red Maga caps and yellow vests, this backlash is uglier and more uncouth than anything you’ll see in the snow-capped Alps, but the high rollers meeting there can claim exec producer credits for the whole rotten lot. Shame it’s such a downer for dividends. This week’s report from Oxfam is just the latest to put numbers to this hoarding of wealth and power. One single minibus-load of fatcats – just 26 people – now own as much as half the planet’s population, and the collective wealth of the billionaire class swells by $2.5bn every day. This economic polarisation is far more obscene than anything detested by Davos man, and it is the root cause of the social and political divide that now makes his world so unstable. No natural force created this intense unfairness. The gulf between the super-rich and the rest of us did not gape wide open overnight. Rather, it has been decades in the widening and it was done deliberately. The UK was the frontline of the war to create greater inequality: in her first two terms as prime minister, Margaret Thatcher more than halved the top rate of income tax paid by high earners. She broke the back of the trade unions. Over their 16 years in office, Thatcher and John Major flogged off more public assets than France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia and Canada put together. Oh, shrug the Davos set, that’s ancient history. It is no such thing. Thatcher may be gone but her ideology keeps on taking cash out of your pay packets. If workers today got the same share of national income as in the 70s, we would be far better off. According to calculations from the Foundational Economy collective of researchers, a full-time employee now on the median salary of £29,574 would get a pay rise of £5,471. Meanwhile, FTSE bosses enjoy skyrocketing pay, precisely because bonus schemes give them part-ownership of the big companies they run. So Jeff Fairburn of the housebuilder Persimmon took £47m in 2018 before getting the boot, which works out at £882 for each £1 earned by an average worker at the firm. Where Thatcher’s shock troops led, the rest of the west more or less followed. Political leaders across the spectrum gave the rich what they wanted. It didn’t matter whether you voted for Tony Blair or David Cameron, Bill Clinton or George W Bush, either way you got Davos man. They cut taxes for top earners and for businesses, they uprooted the public sector to create opportunities for private firms, and they struck trade deals negotiated in secret that gave big corporations as much as they could ever dream of. At last, more than a decade after the banking crash, the regime has run out of road. Hence the popular anger, so ferocious that the political and financial elites can neither comprehend nor control it. I can think of no better metaphor for the current disarray of the Davos set than the fact that Emmanuel Macron – surely the elite’s platonic ideal of a politician, with his eyes of leporid brightness, his stint as an investment banker and his start-up party – cannot attend this week’s jamboree because he has to stay at home and deal with the gilets jaunes. It’s a bummer when the working poor spoil your holiday plans. None of this is to say that the 1% – holed up in their resort and fenced off from the world with roadblocks and men toting sharpshooters – don’t care about the immiseration of others. At Davos a couple of years ago, the New York Times reported that among the summit’s attractions was “a simulation of a refugee’s experience, where [conference] attendees crawl on their hands and knees and pretend to flee from advancing armies”. The article continued, “It is one of the most popular events every year.” They care about other people’s problems – so long as they get to define them, and it’s never acknowledged that they are a large part of the problem. Which they are. If they want capitalism to carry on, the rich will need to give up their winnings and cede some ground. That point evades them. Welcoming Donald Trump last year, Klaus Schwab, Davos’s majordomo, praised the bigot-in-chief’s tax cuts for the rich and said, “I’m aware that your strong leadership is open to misconceptions and biased interpretations.” The super-rich don’t hate all populists – just those who refuse to make them richer. Cutting the ribbon on this new economic order back in the 80s, Ronald Reagan claimed that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” A joke perhaps, but the intention was real enough. The last three decades have seen the political and economic elites hack away at our social scaffolding – rights, taxes and institutions. It proved profitable, for a while, but now it threatens their own world. And still they block the quite reasonable alternatives of more taxes on wealth, of more power for workers, of companies not run solely to enrich their owners. The solutions to this crisis will not be handed down from a mountain top to the grateful hordes: they will rely on us taking power for ourselves. Three decades after Reagan, the nine most laughable words in the English language are: “I’m from the elite and I’m here to help.” • Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnistAt the grand age of 38, Peter Crouch is back in the Premier League. The former England striker, who has been used sparingly by Championship side Stoke City this season, made the move to Burnley – on a deal until the end of the season – with Sam Vokes heading in the opposite direction. The 6ft 7in striker, whose long list of former clubs takes in Liverpool, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Portsmouth and Southampton, among others, has a record of 108 goals in 462 games in the Premier League. “I still want to achieve things. I want to get more games in the Premier League and I would love to add to the 100 Premier League goals,” Crouch said. “My game has probably changed a little bit. I’m not 25. But my attributes haven’t waned. I never really had blistering pace, so I haven’t lost that. I’ll be doing as well as I can this year, and who knows after that? I remember when Mark Hughes was manager [at Stoke]. I think he played until he was 40-odd and that was a target I had. I’d love to do that and hopefully I can do that in the Premier League with Burnley.” Announcing... 🤖@petercrouch pic.twitter.com/AsqauruKHp Burnley’s manager, Sean Dyche, does not feel Crouch’s age makes him any less of a player. “I’ve always admired that Crouchy knows what he is, and isn’t really bothered about other people’s opinions,” he said. “I’m not really too bothered about his age. We know he’s a good character and he still has a desire. The main thing for me is having motivated people.” Vokes, meanwhile, has signed a three-and-a-half-year deal at Stoke, who paid an undisclosed sum for the Wales international. Stoke manager Nathan Jones said: “Sam is a player of real pedigree, he has been promoted from this level and he’s an experienced international and Premier League player. To get it done is something totally different to anything we have and we think he’s a marquee player for this level.”Parliament must inflict a second defeat on the government – by voting next Tuesday to extend article 50 for a year. Not as a delaying tactic, but for a purpose: to enable a process of nationwide consultation and reflection. Key to this would be a series of citizens’ assemblies whose thinking would then lead to constructive reconsideration by parliament of our relations with Europe, including the option of a renegotiation followed by a referendum. The direct engagement of the British people is now essential in order to address the triple challenge of a government defying the sovereignty of parliament, an ever more divided country, and mounting distrust between parliament and people. There is much talk of uncharted waters – but that’s where Britain is just now: in a rudderless boat with no compass, map, or even life jackets. And after a weekend’s work by the prime minister there will be no Monday miracle – just the dogged repetition of the familiar promises to tweak a deal already rejected by parliament, to beg her European counterparts to finesse her deal with what they have already rejected, and to return with the delusional and economically suicidal threat that “no deal is better than a bad deal”. This is no way to deal with a political and constitutional crisis unparalleled in our history. We cannot now end the deadlock or rebuild national unity without repairing the breakdown of trust between the British people and the political establishment – and that cannot be achieved without involving the people as well as the politicians in finding solutions. In a recent poll commissioned by Hope Not Hate, almost half of those surveyed agreed with the proposition that “Politicians clearly cannot decide how to resolve the issue of Brexit and the country is deeply divided – therefore it would be better to … pause the process and seek a consensus by gathering ordinary people together to discuss the options.” Brought together in public hearings in each region, a representative sample of 2016 remain and leave voters would take time to engage, deliberate and then pronounce on all the concerns that Brexit raises: about immigration, sovereignty, the costs of membership, and other burning issues such as the state of manufacturing, the condition of our left-behind communities, and the rising child poverty austerity has imposed. They will have time to range more widely than the binary choices that the current debate has allowed; and they will, I predict, offer wiser and more imaginative answers than an inflexible government and a deadlocked parliament can now deliver. And even if, as I fear, the closed and warring minds in the cabinet refuse to sponsor such public hearings – despite the views of Keir Starmer, John Major, Rowan Williams and many others across the political spectrum – then the Commons select committees, the mayors, local authorities and the Scottish and Welsh legislatures have the powers and the budgets to do it themselves on our behalf. The handling of the Irish abortion referendum is evidence of the power and potential of citizens’ assemblies. It could have been a bitter and toxic debate dominated by extremists on both sides. But in part because a representative group – half initially pro-abortion, half against – talked the issues through, exploring differences, asking questions of experts and interacting with each other on their fears and hopes, they managed to defuse the controversies. And they found common ground between devout faith and resolute feminism in an outcome that astonished the world and that everyone accepted. Critics say Europe will accept neither an extension nor another renegotiation. My 13 years’ experience of bargaining with European leaders suggests the opposite: that if we have a plan and a timetable resulting from this process, they will come to welcome it for its openness and realism. To those who say another year of uncertainty would lie ahead and would be destabilising, I would answer that uncertainty is already sadly with us in every scenario. Even if there was a deal, we are only at the end of act one of this European drama: the withdrawal deal. Still to be addressed are act two – the transition; act three, the negotiation of our future European relationship; and act four, the renegotiation of our relations with the rest of the world. So we can approach the future either through more and more attempts at short-term fixes that fall apart under scrutiny, or by purposefully and constructively engaging in a systematic and structured national conversation to find common ground. But any plan needs to be underwritten by a vision of a Britain that is capable of inspiring patriotic pride. Brexit, it was claimed, would reveal Britain’s strength. Yet the deal on offer has simply exposed our weakness: a Britain reduced from rule-maker to rule-taker, with – paradoxically – the very defenders of British autonomy having to accept that the fate of Northern Ireland is not only underwritten by the British-Irish treaty, but ultimately by Europe too. The Brexit debate – once about what Europe is and is not – is now about who we are and what kind of country we aspire to be. And this should also now be an explicit part of the national conversation. Let the Brexiteers argue for their vision – that Britain is at its best and greatest standing alone and apart, sufficient unto itself and glorying in isolation. There is, in my view, a more powerful, patriotic vision of a Britain at our best – as an outward-looking, internationally minded country for which the Channel is not a moat defending us from the world but a highway taking us to its every corner. And there can be patriotic pride in what we have achieved for and in Europe: leading in the defeat of fascism, drafting the convention on human rights, championing democracy in eastern Europe, and helping to make Europe the world’s most generous and effective contributor to international aid. We have led before in Europe, and we can do so again. “Leading not leaving” was a slogan I suggested for the 2016 remain campaign – to remind people of the positive difference Britain makes in Europe, and Europe makes in Britain. Then, as now, people needed a hopeful vision of a patriotic future in which they could take pride. Project fear must give way now to project hope and project trust so that, having taken a more balanced view of our history, we can finally take control of our future. • Gordon Brown is the UN special envoy for global education and a former prime minister of the UKA fourth-round collision on Monday that will rip the 2019 Australian Open wide apart brings the official world No 1, Simona Halep, and the best player in the history of the game, Serena Williams, together for the ninth time. The American has an 8-1 grip on that rivalry, but the Romanian comes into the match after beating her sister, Venus, fairly convincingly on day six, 6-2, 6-3 in a little more than an hour-and-a-quarter. However, the younger Williams sister has been in equally awesome form in the first week, taking just over an hour to beat the Ukrainian teenager Dayana Yastremska for the loss of just three games. There was a touching moment at the net, when Williams comforted Yastremska, who could not hold back the tears. “I could tell she was quite upset,” said Williams. “I kind of liked that. It shows she wasn’t just there to play a good match, she was there to win. She wanted to win. That really broke my heart. I think she’s a good talent. It’s good to see that attitude. I remember one time in particular against Venus at Wimbledon, as I was walking to the net, I started bawling. I couldn’t help it.” It will be back to business against Halep, though, and a step up in levels. The Romanian, lifted after breaking through at Roland Garros last summer after years of near-misses in the majors, dropped a tie-break set in the first round against Kaia Kanepi, and another when beating the American Sofia Kenin. But she found the right gears against Venus. “She played pretty flawless tennis today – only 12 errors,” Williams said. “Unfortunately, I had almost three times as many.” So a match worthy of a final awaits. Also on that side of the draw is Serena’s conqueror in the US Open final, Naomi Osaka, who had to come from a set and 2-4 down to get past the quirky genius of Hsieh Su-wei. Madison Keys is also through and in good enough touch to beat the sixth seed, Elina Svitolina, who needed three sets to beat the unseeded Shuai Zhang in two hours and 55 minutes, the longest match in the women’s championship so far. For all that, Serena Williams seems scarily focused in pursuit of one more major to move alongside the all-time record of Margaret Court. In that mood, she can be unbeatable. The former British No 1 Annabel Croft, working here for Eurosport, said of Williams: “She looks a lot more at ease with the situation, this looming 24th grand slam – which has rather shackled her in the finals of the last two grand slams. I get the feeling she is come to terms with it and is ready to play freely, enjoy the situation and take on the challenge.”Two images captured the mood in Washington this week as excited children crowded into the normally staid House of Representatives to help the re-elected speaker, Nancy Pelosi, welcome the most diverse new intake of lawmakers in US history, while Donald Trump surrounded himself with tough guys at a surprise White House press briefing, delivering another hardline push for his wall project on the US-Mexico border. Amid the ongoing government shutdown and nearly two years into the Trump presidency, US politics looked into the abyss and saw the divide in Washington – but also glimpsed the future. The most racially diverse and most female group of representatives ever elected to the House in congressional history crowded into the traditionally white and male halls of Capitol Hill for their swearing-in on Thursday afternoon. They were joined by partners, parents and children who also better reflected the country’s patchwork of identities than Congress traditionally does, and signaled that a more diverse future is inevitable. In a perhaps intentional nod to forward thinking, Pelosi invited children to join her at the podium after she was handed the gavel and prepared to swear in the dozens of new members – mostly Democrats. But perhaps jealous of Pelosi’s spotlight, Trump then gathered his own crew to join him at a podium. This one was at the White House press briefing room, where the president took no questions, instead making a few statements of congratulations to Pelosi then continuing his pitch for a wall on the southern border. Behind him stood four bald-headed men in suits from the National Border Patrol Council, who then loudly proclaimed their support for Trump’s hard line on border security. Aaron Rupar, a journalist at the website Vox, tweeted screenshots of the Pelosi and Trump images side-by-side, calling the optics “remarkable”.Kanye West was ruled out of headlining this year’s Coachella festival because organisers said it would be impossible to build a bespoke stage that he requested at the last minute. West, who was due to be announced as a headliner on 3 January asked Coachella co-founder Paul Tollett on 1 January for a custom-built dome stage in the middle of the festival grounds. The dome was to be designed by West’s collaborator John McGuire, allowing for an in-the-round performance featuring hi-tech production and immersive video. Building the structure would have entailed rearranging the festival site and removing a large number of toilets. When Coachella parent company Goldenvoice explained the impossibility of doing so to West, he is said to have become irritated, saying that he was an artist with a creative vision who shouldn’t be spending his time discussing toilets, a source told Billboard magazine. West had complained that the festival’s main stage was not big enough for his performance. Goldenvoice reminded him that previous headliners including Lady Gaga and Beyoncé – who brought more than 100 performers to her now-legendary 2018 headline slot – had found it accommodating. The company decided to end talks with West and seek a new headliner. Ariana Grande replaced the rapper on the bill, and will headline the final night of the festival. Grande is represented by manager Scooter Braun, who also worked with West until December 2018. A headline slot by West may well have proved controversial owing to the rapper’s defiant support of Donald Trump, which has divided his fans. His last album, Ye, released in summer 2018, was critically panned. It was not the only last-minute reshuffle for the festival, which takes place in the California desert across two weekends in April. Despite a muted critical and commercial reception for his 2018 album, Man of the Woods, Justin Timberlake was due to headline one night, but had to cancel after his rescheduled tour dates – having delayed performances to treat bruised vocal cords – conflicted with the festival’s radius clause. He has been replaced by Australian psychedelic band Tame Impala, who are expected to release their fourth album this year. The controversial radius clause restricts performers from playing other North American festivals during a 100-day period, in addition to not performing in seven southern California counties during that period. Childish Gambino – AKA Donald Glover – will join Grande and Tame Impala in headlining the festival. Guardian staff and writers voted his single This Is America the best song of 2018.When the government forced all UK businesses over a certain size to publish their gender pay gap figures last year, many red-faced chief executives struggled to justify why the men they employed were earning so much more than the women. Not so at the ethical wholesaler Suma, one of the largest co-operatives in Europe. First, because it doesn’t have a CEO. And second, because all of Suma’s 190 employees, or “members” , earn exactly the same: £15.60 an hour, equating to £33,000 for a 35-hour, five-day week, plus bonuses and shares. From the 26-year-old newbie to the 65-year-old who has been with Suma since its birth as a co-op in 1977, there are no exceptions. In Suma’s home of Elland, a market town near Halifax in West Yorkshire, that salary can buy you a home (a three-bed apartment in a converted mill is currently on sale for £103,000), plus “a decent car, a good family life and a nice holiday”, according to Nathalie Spencer, 35, who has worked at Suma for 14 years. Her main job is in international sales – the business turned over £55m last year and exports 7,000 vegetarian products to 40 different countries – but like all Suma members, she multitasks, and can sometimes be seen driving a reach truck in the warehouse or loading up lorries. “It sounds a bit random, but l like the team spirit involved in loading lorries, that sense of achievement at the end of each day, rather than leaving scattered notes on your desk and forgetting half of them,” she says. News doesn't always have to be bad – indeed, the relentless focus on confrontation, disaster, antagonism and blame risks convincing the public that the world is hopeless and there is nothing we can do. This series is an antidote, an attempt to show that there is plenty of hope, as our journalists scour the planet looking for pioneers, trailblazers, best practice, unsung heroes, ideas that work, ideas that might and innovations whose time might have come. Readers can recommend other projects, people and progress that we should report on by contacting us at theupside@theguardian.com When the Guardian visits, Paul Collins, the account manager for one of Suma’s national chain customers and the brand coordinator for Suma’s Ecoleaf household range, is serving up vegetarian pizza in the free staff canteen. Jenny Carlyle, 33, who is in charge of hiring (and, only very occasionally, firing) in the personnel department, likes to go off and spend an afternoon in the deep freezer when she needs to clear her head. “Sometimes it’s nice to put on the freezer suit and pick products at -20C,” she says, and anyway, it makes her better at her main job if she understands all aspects of the business. “Working in the freezer or warehouse might be looked down on at normal companies, but actually it is such an integral part of our business as a wholesaler that we all need to understand it, and so it makes sense that our warehouse workers are paid the same as everyone else.” When she first heard of Suma, she assumed there must be a catch, but she soon realised the benefits of equal pay. “Being all paid the same is liberating,” she says. “I think I was probably overpaid when I started and now, 11 years on, with all my experience and all the courses I have done, I am probably being underpaid. But it evens out. Overall I have probably been paid more than if I had climbed the ladder at a normal business. “It takes some of that career pressure off as well. One of the great things I love about Suma is that we all have times in our life when we can’t put 100% into our working life, and at Suma you can step back for a little bit when you need to and then step back up when you can and there is no penalty for that.” Though the co-op is understanding if members need to take time out – whether to have a baby, move house, care for a relative or, like Carlyle, get a master’s degree – they are all expected to engage in big strategic issues of the business. New hires are warned: “You’re not just a worker, you’re an owner … you can’t just coast along, you need to take responsibility, taking part in the democracy and putting yourself forward to make things happen.” Between 120 and 550 people apply each time Suma has a recruitment round, in which the co-op generally hires up to 12 members. Applicants are wildly varied, says Carlyle: “In one round we might have someone with 40 years’ experience in logistics and then someone in their early 20s straight out of university.” Regardless of experience, newcomers are put on probation and spend their first three months working in the warehouse or driving – proving their ability to work safely, quickly and accurately in the less glamorous side of Suma’s operation. For a further six months, they work in a variety of departments and complete various targets. Only then, after an exhausting round of feedback, is there a vote from everyone at Suma to decide if they should be allowed to join as a member. More than 90% make it through the process, says Carlyle, who at 23 found herself on Suma’s management committee, its version of a board. “That was an experience most 23-year-olds would never be able to have. It’s that mixture of freedom and opportunity as well as the flexibility to step back when you need to without losing your place that’s really wonderful, and that’s all enabled by equal pay,” she says. Isis Carrasco, 47, a former charity manager, took a pay cut when she moved to Suma to become a project manager three years ago. “Equal pay is equal opportunities in terms of opening horizons and being able to do jobs that you would not be able to do unless you change your career,” says the cheerful Spaniard. “For example, I like DIY a lot and now I have the opportunity not just to project manage but also put shelves up. I am getting the opportunity to develop these sort of skills at work, skills you’d normally have to change career to learn.” It can take a little time to adjust to co-op life, says Carlyle. “It can be stressful at first figuring out how it works where there’s no clear hierarchy for decision-making. At a normal company you might only need to have one conversation to get something done. Here you will have to have five or six, and sometimes the whole co-op votes. Sometime people come here thinking it is a real utopia, but people are flawed and they do make mistakes.” One of Suma’s six founders, Jim Crabtree, still works a few days a week at the co-op. Carlyle says she sat next to him in the canteen once and asked whether he ever regretted the decision to turn the business into a member-owned co-operative. “It’s a £50m business now, so he would have a one-sixth share in that rather than a one in 190 share. He stopped eating and said: ‘Never.’ I feel really grateful to those six people who decided to share the company back when I wasn’t even born. It was a really generous thing they did and I am very, very proud to carry on their work.” This article is part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world’s most stubborn problems. What else should we cover? Email us at theupside@theguardian.com“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” is a quote attributed to Donald Trump, who asked this of his aides in a moment of exasperation when he was unable to make the Russia investigation disappear. Nowhere is this explained or mentioned in Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary, giving its title a weirdly philosophical air. Is the implication that everyone has a Roy Cohn? I should hope not! Roy Cohn was a corrupt lawyer, political dirty trickster, mafia associate and scumbag. He was a self-hating Jew who powered the engine of one of the worst antisemitic moments in American history, the demonization and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He was a closeted man who refused to publicly identify as gay even as he was dying of Aids. He was so famous for being a mean bastard that there were not one but two jokes at his expense on the Simpsons. There are not too many lawyers that can make such a claim. Cohn, born in New York in 1927, was heir to a number of fortunes on his mother’s side. She was considered ugly, and had trouble finding a husband. Cohn’s father agreed to an arranged marriage so long as her powerful family made him a judge. This sort of blatant, unfeeling corruption would be a hallmark of Cohn’s life. He graduated from Columbia Law School at the age of 20 and quickly found himself as one of the leading “red-baiters”, allegedly rooting out communists in government positions and the US army for the good of democracy. He was the Gríma Wormtongue to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose last name is a now a synonym for political witch-hunting. McCarthy and Cohn’s harassment of presumed communists and sympathizers has overshadowed a subsequent “lavender scare” in which the pair harassed and exposed homosexuals. (It is rumored that McCarthy, like Cohn, was also secretly gay, and the same is often said of the FBI head J Edgar Hoover, who encouraged these practices.) A series of hearings in 1954 suggested that much of McCarthy’s pressure on the US army was led by Cohn’s desire to secure a better position for a man named G David Schine, who was either Cohn’s boyfriend or someone he was infatuated with. One would think that such a blatant lack of ethics would put a cinch on Cohn’s career, but that is not, alas, the world we live in. He fueled himself off accusations and fighting. His strategy was always to deny then lie even louder. As a personal attorney he would win high-profile cases by deflection, misdirection and fear-mongering. It made for great tabloid copy, earned him powerful friends and attracted wealthy clients in New York, most notably the heads of organized crime families and the flashy, young real estate mogul Donald J Trump. Tyrnauer’s film is very standard: a collection of talking heads (including former protege Roger Stone) and news clips. What this by-the-numbers approach lacks in artistry it makes up for in an avalanche of facts. If there is a thesis to be found (other than “boy, wasn’t Roy Cohn a jerk?”) it’s in finding the seeds to Trump’s garden nurtured by Cohn’s odious work. Despite a 20-year age difference, the two were close for many years. They first bonded over a shared love of denying African Americans their civil rights. This blossomed into corruption and kickbacks during the erection of Trump Tower. Cohn loved to see his picture in the paper, and was known for his must-attend parties, so there are ample images in this documentary to turn your stomach. Barbara Walters, at long last, what is your deal? I can’t call this the most explosive film (especially for theaters) but I predict it is part of a forthcoming wave from film-makers trying to grapple with just how in the hell we got to where we are. To that end, it is an important one. Donald Trump was, for many years, a joke (though never a harmless one) but the damage he’s currently doing shames all of us for ever laughing. This film connects a direct line between Roy Cohn’s belligerent, boorish and obstructionist ways and our current, less eloquent nightmare. To answer the question “where’s my Roy Cohn?” he is, unfortunately, in the White House. Where’s my Roy Cohn? is showing at the Sundance film festivalWhen Daniel Carter joined Racing 92 after the 2015 World Cup, he was treated like rugby royalty. He arrived in Paris to a fanfare, introduced on a prime time television show not as the world’s highest paid union player, as he had become with a contract in excess of £1m a year, but one of the greatest of any generation. The expectation was that Carter would dazzle in the Top 14 as he had for the Crusaders and the All Blacks, but the environments were markedly different. The signing was condemned by the Toulon owner, Mourad Boudjellal, as a triumph of commercialism over rugby: he should know given the number of southern hemisphere pensions he has boosted since resurrecting the Mediterranean club, but the Carter effect went beyond boosting Racing’s turnover. They made two European Champions Cup finals in his three years there and won the Top 14, but Carter’s influence in a club that included five other former All Blacks was, if not muted, understated. Boudjellal’s point was not made out of mere jealousy: Carter had to adapt to Racing and French rugby, not the other way round. “One of the biggest surprises I had when joining Racing was that everyone did what the coach said,” said Carter, in an interview with The Observer last summer. “In team meetings, players would not say a word … I had to bite my tongue. There was no awareness of playing what you see. My career has been about backing my instinct and being prepared to go against the gameplan.” Boudjellal signed Carter’s fellow World Cup winner Ma’a Nonu at the end of 2015, but was soon complaining that he had expected more. The New Zealand wing Julian Savea has failed to make an impact at Toulon this season; all that is gold does not always glitter. Lima Sopoaga’s arrival at Wasps this season was intended to mitigate the loss of Danny Cipriani, but the New Zealand fly-half has taken time to adjust to the Premiership, not helped by injuries to the players inside and outside him, Dan Robson and Jimmy Gopperth. He is further proof that it is unwise to expect an instant return from pedigree players when they are exposed to a distinctly different climate. Such is the impact New Zealand have made at all levels of the game for so long that their players and coaches are always in demand. Pau thought they had signed Julian Savea’s brother, Ardie, after this year’s World Cup, only for the flanker to agree a new contract with the New Zealand Rugby Union, prompted by the neck injury suffered four months ago by the first choice All Black in his position, Sam Cane. A number of New Zealanders will be off to Europe, including the experienced Ben Smith and Kieran Read. The latter, who has been lined up by Racing, makes commercial sense, like the Carter deal: All Blacks spend their careers having their playing loads closely monitored but in France they play even when not fully fit. It is Read’s presence and all that he stands for that Racing, settled into their new stadium, will look to exploit. There have been a number of examples of New Zealand players who have successfully made the transition, notably Nick Evans at Harlequins. It is not so much how quickly they adjust but that they do. Carlos Spencer, another All Black 10, dazzled intermittently for Northampton and Gloucester, but was never going to bring the controlling influence Premiership coaches demand. The same applies to coaches. Northampton raised eyebrows last year when they announced Chris Boyd was arriving from the Hurricanes, home of the Barrett brothers. A club that for a decade had been arguably the most structured side in the Premiership had turned into risk-takers. Boyd said immediately on arriving in England that he would not look to turn the Saints into the Hurricanes, not least because the ingredients were different; evolution not revolution. New Zealand coaches who join clubs in the Premiership or Top 14 are confronted by something they have not experienced at home – a league in which there is relegation. Northampton had signed the Wales fly-half Dan Biggar before recruiting Boyd. He is a contrasting 10 to Beauden Barrett, all competitive hustle and bustle and suddenly Northampton was not the club he had joined. Wales left Biggar on the bench for their major internationals last autumn in favour of the more attacking Gareth Anscombe, but Boyd is coaxing a different side out of the former Osprey. Biggar has profited from having Piers Francis outside him, but the England international will be out for up to six weeks after suffering a shoulder injury during last Friday’s victory over Exeter. He may only miss one Premiership match with rounds of the Challenge Cup and the Premiership Cup taking up the rest of the month after this weekend, and the way the Saints are now using possession has helped them offset struggles up front. Change takes time. It was hard not to feel for Sopoaga at Twickenham last Saturday, a marquee signing struggling to make his mark. He prefers to stand deeper than most Premiership outside-halves, but unless operating off turnover ball it makes the gainline harder to breach. He remains the player Wasps recruited, but with the Premiership campaign now at the halfway point and his side tumbling down the table, he needs to start emulating the good Evans. • This is an extract from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To subscribe just visit this page and follow the instructions.Intelligence services in Kenya were warned that al-Shabaab was planning terrorist attacks on high-profile targets in the east African country around Christmas and the new year, western and regional security officials have said. Officials and other sources told the Guardian the warnings had been passed on several times in recent months, adding that they had been frustrated not to see a greater response from Kenyan authorities. Security forces cleared the hotel, restaurant and office complex in Nairobi on Wednesday morning after it was attacked the previous day by four gunmen from al-Shabaab, an Islamic extremist organisation based in neighbouring Somalia. The Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, said 14 civilians were confirmed dead. Al-Shabaab, which has said its mujahideen were responsible for the assault, has launched a series of terrorist operations in Kenya in recent years. In 2013, the al-Qaida affiliate took over a luxury mall in Nairobi, killing 67 people. The news of the warnings will embarrass authorities in Kenya, which is seen as a key local counter-terrorist player by the US, UK and other western powers. One Kenyan intelligence official said information passed on by security partners about planned attacks lacked detail but that the country had been on high alert since November. Another security source told Associated Press the extremists had confused security officials by changing target locations. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to reporters. Al-Shabaab has waged a decade-long insurgency to impose its rigorous version of Islamic law on Somalia and, though it has been forced out of major cities, controls much of the anarchic failed state’s southern and central rural areas. In October 2017, an al-Shabaab truck bomb killed more than 500 people in the capital, Mogadishu. The group often attacks restaurants and hotels, using tactics similar to those employed in Nairobi. Experts said Wednesday’s attack was designed to attract media attention. “A terror attack is … purely media theatre. The number of casualties is not the primary objective. It is to attack a high-profile target, especially where westerners are going to be so the west is interested,” said Hussein Sheikh-Ali, a former national security adviser in Somalia and chairman of the Hiraal Institute, a Mogadishu-based research centre. In the last year, al-Shabaab has been the target of an intense campaign of US airstrikes. These have inflicted significant casualties and killed several senior leaders. “This [recent] Nairobi attack is a response first and foremost to the airstrikes. They are sending a message that the US strikes have not degraded them as the US military and some media have claimed. They are saying ‘we are in business’,” Ali said. A second factor may be to influence public opinion in Kenya. Kenyan forces are deployed in Somalia as part of multinational efforts to fight al-Shabaab. The Nairobi attack took place on the third anniversary of a huge assault on a Kenyan base in Somalia by militants in which as many as 180 Kenyan soldiers may have died. Rashid Abdi, a Nairobi-based expert on al-Shabaab with the NGO International Crisis Group, said the terror group’s propaganda consistently highlighted the Kenyan presence in Somalia, but pointed out that international links meant there was a wider agenda driving the extremists too. “If the Kenyans withdrew it would remove a big reason why al-Shabaab like to strike Kenya but if you have a group like al-Shabaab which is part of a global jihad movement then they would still find another reason. They see Nairobi with its big western presence as a bastion of the west,” Abdi said. Kenyan police have foiled several similar al-Shabaab attacks over recent years, though several investigations have shown corruption has allowed extremists to move with ease across the border with Somalia. The group has some networks in Kenya itself, mainly providing logistic support and recruits. However, attackers are often brought in from Somalia. Al-Shabaab has its own internal problems, suffering from a lack of funds and manpower that have forced it to impose unpopular taxes on local communities. The movement is riven by factional feuding and faces competition from Islamic State. Earlier this week, al-Shabaab media reported the group had executed an Isis commander in Somalia.In 1982, a British insurance broker named Doug Milne set out in search of new markets. His speciality was kidnapping and ransom insurance, known in the industry as K&R. Milne enrolled in a Spanish-language course in London, and a month later, with rudimentary skills and only one or two solid contacts on the ground, he boarded a flight to Bogotá. On his first day in the Colombian capital, Milne was walking to a meeting with a potential client when, he recalled, “a guy pulled up alongside and this chap who was walking in front of me, his head just exploded”. It was a drive-by assassination. Milne cancelled the meeting and spent the afternoon in a bar near Bogotá’s entertainment district. “I missed my meeting and I think I left there about 11pm after having drunk a couple of flagons of Tres Esquinas rum,” Milne told me. He was, of course, horrified. But he also realised that he’d come to the right place. While he knew nothing about the victim or the motive, the murder drove home to him the extent to which Colombian society was at the mercy of criminals and guerillas. His clients needed what he had to offer. Kidnapping and ransom insurance was created in the 1930s, but it wasn’t until the 60s that it began to really catch on, following a spate of kidnappings in Europe by groups such as Eta in Spain, the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy. The appeal was simple: in the event of a kidnapping, the insurance would provide reimbursement for ransom payment. There were caveats to prevent fraud and to ensure that the existence of the policy did not actually increase the risk of kidnapping. The first was that the policy had to be kept secret. In fact, it could be voided if its existence became public. The concern was that if the kidnappers knew of the policy, they would demand more money. The second principle is that the policy will only reimburse the ransom once it is paid. The insurance company never fronts any money. In order to raise the cash, the victim’s family will probably have to liquidate assets – mortgage the house, sell stocks, pool money from other relatives. This process makes the negotiations credible by dragging them out. This is not just about minimising the payout by the insurance company. Quickly making good on a large ransom raises the expectations of future kidnappers. It can make hostage-taking more lucrative and more common. When K&R insurance first came on the market, the policyholders were left on their own to negotiate with the kidnappers. But in the mid-1970s, an insurance broker named Julian Radcliffe came up with an idea that would revolutionise the industry. Along with a few colleagues, Radcliffe convinced their company to set up a subsidiary focused on hostage response. The subsidiary, which they named Control Risks, would hire security experts – mostly former military and police – to handle negotiations. The cost of hiring the consultant was included in the policy and borne by the insurance company. In 1982, Control Risks became an independent company. By the early 80s, hostage-taking was on the rise in Latin America, particularly in Colombia. When Milne arrived in Bogotá, he discovered a vast, untapped market. As an insurance broker, he sold a variety of policies offered by different companies available through the Lloyd’s exchange in London. The job of the broker is to serve the client and to advocate for their interests in the event of a claim. The underwriters represent the insurance companies. Specialised, high-risk policies were placed on the Lloyd’s insurance exchange, and Milne would field offers from different underwriters. He would select the policy that best suited his client. To his South American clients, Milne was as quintessentially British as James Bond. He attended boarding school in Scotland, and dresses in tailored suits with a perfectly positioned pocket square. He enjoys a stiff drink, sometimes two. “When I went to Colombia, everyone wanted to see me,” Milne told me. “I started with a few contacts, but it grew like Topsy. All their friends at the golf club wanted to meet. It suddenly became a viable business.” Some grumble that in an industry that values discretion, Milne is a bit of self-promoter. But no one denies his success. By the time he wrapped up his stint in Latin America in the 1990s, he had sold hundreds of new policies, recruited a specialised team in London focusing on the Latin America market, and developed a new service to provide risk mitigation – a “preventative training” programme that educated clients on how to reduce the risk of kidnap and how to respond if it does happen. He then convinced insurance companies that they should foot the bill. (After all, both insurance companies and their clients have an interest in reducing the likelihood of a kidnapping.) Over the past few decades, the K&R insurance business has grown. More than 75% of Fortune 500 companies have K&R insurance policies. Today two insurers – Hiscox in the UK and AIG in the US – dominate the market, and there are also many security firms that specialise in kidnap response. Hostage negotiation has become something of an industry, with conferences, conventions and shared strategies. More than 97% of kidnappings handled by professional negotiators are successfully resolved through the payment of ransom, according to several different security consultants with access to internal industry data. A small percentage of hostages escape, and a very few are rescued through high-risk operations. Less than 1% are killed. London is the global centre for K&R insurance, but it has not always been a comfortable fit. Different countries take different approaches to dealing with the kidnapping of their nationals – and the UK, along with the US, has long been a leader of the so-called “no concessions” camp, officially refusing to negotiate with terrorists, pay ransom or make concessions. In April 1986, Jennifer Guinness, the wife of banker and member of the Guinness brewing family John Guinness, was kidnapped by a gang that demanded a ransom of £2m. She was rescued in a police raid only eight days after being abducted. But the fact that a K&R policy had been triggered and Control Risks were brought in to negotiate a possible ransom sparked outrage. “Private security firms such as the ones called in on the Guinness kidnapping are operating at the very frontiers of official tolerance,” a top police official announced. The Thatcher government charged that the insurance industry was fuelling a global kidnapping epidemic, facilitating the payment of ransom and undermining the British no-concessions policy. The logic of that policy is that paying ransom puts a target on the back of British citizens, increasing the risk of future kidnappings. It also puts money into the hands of terrorist organisations, which is used to finance their ongoing operations. In 1986, the issue of K&R insurance was debated in parliament, which passed a motion expressing concern. There was even talk of working through European institutions to impose a ban on K&R insurance throughout the European Union. Recognising that its existence was under threat, the security industry rallied, arguing that since the policies were kept secret, it was clear that people were not being kidnapped because they had insurance. Rather, they were being taken hostage because they had resources – and banning insurance would not change this. Since the policies only provided reimbursement and were always written for amounts less than the net worth of the policyholder, the industry also argued that insurance did not drive up the amount of payment. What’s more, the industry pointed out that the availability of K&R insurance helped international businesses to manage risk, which in turn allowed companies – including British and European companies – to operate in dangerous environments while exercising appropriate “duty of care” toward their employees. While the British and European debate eventually wound down without new legislation being introduced, individual countries throughout the world continued to wrestle with how best to respond to kidnapping. Italy, for example, passed a law in 1991 that banned the payment of ransom and the sale of K&R insurance. (One consequence was that the families of kidnapped Italian citizens simply stopped reporting the crimes to the authorities.) Meanwhile, Colombia banned ransom payments, then unbanned, then banned them again. Spain operates a very different policy, where its intelligence services are told to bring hostages home at all costs. Because of its willingness to pay, the country has a tremendous record of success. Through the debates and policy changes, the K&R industry not only survived but thrived. Then came September 11 2001, which changed the terms of the whole discussion. Rather than challenging the K&R industry as a whole, governments increasingly sought to draw a clearer distinction between criminal groups, to whom ransom could legally be paid, and terror groups, to whom it could not. The US and UK governments both maintained lists of Foreign Terrorist Organizations who could not receive ransom payments. In industry parlance, these groups were designated as “proscribed”. This attempt to draw distinctions between criminal and terrorist organisations raised many tricky questions. It was clear that K&R policies could not reimburse policyholders who paid a ransom to a terrorist group. But could security consultants handle negotiations? Could they help families to raise and assemble the funds? And what about the families themselves? Would they be held legally liable for paying ransom to terrorists? “It’s all a grey area,” Milne acknowledged. Further complicating the process is the fact that kidnappers often try to hide their identity. Hostage negotiators told me that some terror groups pretend to be criminal organisations so they can collect ransoms. The opposite also occurs. Criminal groups who are ignorant of the legal prohibitions sometimes pretend to be terror organisations in the hopes that the fearsome reputation of these groups will push negotiations along. Under the law, the onus is on the insurance company to demonstrate that kidnappers are “proscribed” in order to invalidate the policy. Negotiators working for the victim’s family would sometimes refrain from asking obvious questions about the group holding the hostage. They simply preferred not to know. Meanwhile, decisions about which groups were designated as terrorists were often politically determined and sometimes arbitrary. For example, a 2011 case, Masefield AG v Amlin Corporate Member, determined that the payment of ransom to Somali pirates was legal under British law. As a result, Somali pirates were presumed to be criminals rather than terrorists, even when ties to al-Shabaab militants were alleged. Meanwhile, it was illegal to pay ransom to a criminally oriented kidnapping cell in Nigeria if they were seen to have ties to proscribed groups such as Boko Haram. In effect, the collision of disparate national policies and the insurance market creates complexities that determine who lives and who dies in international kidnapping cases. In 2008, a Canadian journalist, Amanda Lindhout, was kidnapped in Somalia, along with an Australian colleague, Nigel Brennan. As young freelancers, they did not have insurance. Officially, neither Canada nor Australia pay ransom. Driven by desperation, their families found a way forward. The one factor in their favour was that the group that kidnapped the pair was a criminal and not a terror organisation. Because they were not “terrorists,” the Canadian government entered into negotiations, offering to build a school or provide development aid in exchange for Lindhout’s release. But the kidnappers wanted cash. They tortured Lindhout to put more pressure on her family, which had few resources. Realising that the negotiations were going nowhere, Lindhout’s mother, Lorinda Stewart, decided that the only hope was to pay a ransom. Canadian officials warned Stewart that paying ransom was against the law and that she could be prosecuted for doing so, but she forged ahead. Once Stewart made the decision, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which had been handling the case, withdrew all support. The hostage-negotiation team that had been camped in her living room moved out. Stewart, working with the Brennan family in Australia, eventually raised enough money to hire a security consultant from London-based firm AKE to take over the negotiations. The consultant advised the families that negotiations would take several months and they would have to pay a ransom of around $600,000 each. His prediction was spot on. Lindhout and Brennan were freed in November 2009. Their families ended up in massive debt. In some cases, US and British hostages have also been freed through dramatic rescues. On 25 January 2012, US Navy Seals dropped into Somalia and rescued kidnapped US aid worker Jessica Buchanan and her Danish colleague Poul Thisted, shooting dead nine of their kidnappers. Officials had decided to launch a rescue because Buchanan had developed a kidney infection, and they believed her life was in danger. Negotiations, which were being carried out by a security consultant and monitored by the FBI, were not progressing fast enough. Most importantly, the US had good intelligence on the hostages’ location and ideal weather conditions for a successful rescue. Despite such successes, rescuing hostages through military force is not a scalable solution to international hostage-taking. Only a handful of countries have the military capacity to pull off such a raid, and they are also extremely risky. According to industry data, either a hostage or a rescuer is killed in half of all rescue operations. One tragic example was the 2009 raid carried out by British special forces in Afghanistan that freed kidnapped New York Times reporter Steve Farrell, but led to the death of a British soldier along with two Afghan civilians. Farrell’s Afghan colleague, journalist Sultan Munadi, was also killed, possibly shot accidentally by British forces. These deaths were all the more tragic because private negotiators who were communicating with the kidnappers already had a deal for both hostages’ release. It was not clear that the British government was ever aware. In September 2011, a dramatic case tested the resolve of the British authorities’ no-concession policy, when a British couple, Judith (“Jude”) and David Tebbutt, were attacked by Somali pirates while vacationing in Kenya. Their son Ollie, a 25-year-old furniture designer, was at a job site in Glasgow when a colleague came to tell him that the police wanted to see him. “Because my parents were on holiday, I assumed something bad had happened, like maybe a car crash,” Tebbutt recalled. After a week-long safari, his parents had booked a stay in a secluded resort called the Kiwayu Safari Village on the Kenyan coast. One night, Somali kidnappers raided the property and abducted his mother. His father David was killed trying to resist. For weeks after being given the news, Ollie was in close contact with the Foreign Office. He was also visited by representatives from SO15, the counterterrorism command of the British Metropolitan police, who were investigating the possible involvement of members of al-Shabaab in the abduction. Eventually, Ollie was able to arrange a proof-of-life telephone call with his mother. The kidnappers wanted a huge sum – around $10m. But Ollie discovered that tucked into a travel insurance policy obtained through his father’s work was a clause that provided kidnapping and ransom insurance. “It was incredibly lucky, really,” Ollie said. Through the policy, two security consultants from Control Risks were assigned to the case. “That’s when the government said: ‘You have to make a choice – it’s either us or them.’” Ollie recalled. He found the security consultants to be sober professionals. They explained how the negotiations would work, and that the sole focus would on getting his mother back alive. “They were very much like, we do this every day, and this is expected in this part of the world, and this is our pattern for what a Somali kidnap looks like,” he said. Meanwhile, the government representatives explained that Britain did not pay ransom, and would not countenance any arrangement that put money in the hands of terrorists. While the identity of the kidnappers was murky, the line between al-Shabaab militants, pirates and criminals in Somalia was a fluid one. The best that British officials could offer the family was to essentially walk away – to put what they called “clear water” between the government and any negotiations. Their rather charitable interpretation was that since the kidnappers were demanding money they had to be criminals. As an only child, Ollie was the family’s point person in the negotiations. He moved into his parents’ home, and over the next six months negotiations were carried out around the kitchen table. They were surprisingly orderly. After each phone call, the kidnappers would arrange a follow-up conversation. Generally, they kept their appointments. A Control Risks consultant would brief him on what to say, and sit by his side. A representative from the Metropolitan police monitored the discussions, but did not participate or interfere. The Tebbutts were a comfortable middle-class family, but did not have millions. Ollie found the kidnappers had a pretty good sense of the value of their hostage, and over the next few months, under the guidance of the Control Risks negotiator, their demands steadily dropped. They finally agreed to accept a ransom of around £600,000. The only way Ollie was able to come up with that sum was to use the death benefits he received following his father’s murder. In March 2012, Ollie and the negotiator travelled to Nairobi to make the final arrangements. Control Risks contracted a pilot to drop the money, but there were some tense moments when the authorities that controlled the local airstrip demanded a larger cut. Once that was worked out, and the kidnappers indicated they were prepared to release their hostage, things changed. “At that point, the security consultant drove me to a crossroads in Nairobi,” he recalled. “On one side there was a jeep with the Foreign Office guys in it, and I just crossed the road and got in their car. That was the last time I saw anyone from Control Risks.” From that point on, the British government took over. British officials travelled to the Nairobi airport to collect Jude, and then took her to the British high commission, where she was reunited with her son. Eventually, the full ransom that Ollie had paid was reimbursed under the terms of the K&R policy. On the one hand, Ollie is grateful that the British government allowed him to pay a ransom despite the fact that his mother’s kidnappers may have been linked to al-Shabaab. (A British researcher told me that he visited the FCO office to discuss the case while Jude was being held, and was told the government was not interested in hearing any information about the terrorist ties of the kidnappers.) On the other hand, his experience caused him to focus on what he sees as the hypocrisy and heartlessness of the government’s position. In order to apply pressure, Jude’s kidnappers were depriving her of food, slowly starving her to death. If negotiations had dragged on for a few more months, “she would have died for sure,” Ollie believes. Ollie is soft-spoken and understated, but he told me he thinks the British government’s policy is “so crazy”. He continued: “It makes absolutely no sense. I don’t believe for a second that the kidnappers are checking passports or trying to figure out who is from where. They just grab whoever they can. I don’t think the British policy protects people in a way that they claim it does, but they are so entrenched in this idea. The idea that they get to choose who a terrorist group is based on pretty flimsy reasons sometimes. At the same time, governments sell weapons or trade with regimes that are incredibly bad.” The logic of the no-concessions policy, he believes, is that a certain number of hostages must die in order for the government to show its resolve. If the British government had designated Jude Tebbutt’s kidnappers as terrorists, he says, “my mum would not have come home.” Security consultants and private negotiators fill a critical role in hostage recovery, and have an undeniable record of success in criminal cases. They can even do some things that governments can’t, such as credibly claim limited resources as a strategy to get the price down. Governments, of course, can’t plead poverty. Yet the whole system, as imperfect as it already is, breaks down in terrorism-related cases. If the victim is from a “no-concessions” country, security consultants can offer only limited support. If the victim is from a country that negotiates, such as France or Spain, the private security consultant is generally asked to step aside while national intelligence agencies takes over. While the security consultants are pleased to see their clients come home, they are not happy about the massive payouts. “The market is now too inflated,” one experienced security consultant told me. “Governments have deep pockets and are basically unable to do what a traditional K&R consultant would do, which is to put up resistance, to claim an inability to pay, to bargain, to try and disincentivise the crime.” Such arguments may seem self-serving, but there is evidence to support them. In one case, a New York Times journalist who was captured in Afghanistan in 2008 tried to argue with his captors, who were demanding $25m and the release of 15 prisoners. He told them they were out of touch. They countered that the French had recently paid $38m for the release of an aid worker, and that an Italian journalist had been ransomed for $15m and the release of several prisoners. Quickly capitulating to high ransom demands – as some European and Asian governments have done – makes kidnapping more attractive and lucrative around the world. While governments might make a distinction between proscribed and criminal groups, kidnappers don’t. And so the markets are inextricably linked. So what should governments do? If the goal is to bring the hostages home safely while reducing the threat of future kidnapping and minimise the money flowing to terrorist groups, then there are legitimate questions about whether the no-concessions policy is achieving the desired result. First, a series of studies carried out in recent years provide little evidence that kidnapping victims are targeted according to nationality. Thus refusing to pay ransom does not appear to reduce the incidence of the crime, but does greatly increase the likelihood that the victim will be killed. Perversely, in the current environment, it may actually increase the money flowing to terrorists, because kidnappers can execute their British and American hostages, who because of the no-concessions policy have little value, as means of putting pressure on the European countries that pay multi-million-dollar ransoms. This is why the problem must be defined differently and more narrowly. How can western countries work together not to stop ransom payments to terrorist kidnappers – which is an unattainable goal – but rather to minimise their size? Clearly, the K&R industry has a key role to play. However, the benefits that security consultants provide are only available if people have access to kidnapping and ransom insurance. Governments should work with the industry to develop innovative ways to extend coverage to vulnerable groups. K&R coverage can be tucked into travel-insurance policies or provided through employers whose staff operate internationally. For high-risk groups, such as freelance journalists and volunteer aid workers in conflict zones, the challenge is more difficult. But governments can work with the industry to develop specialised products, even if these require public subsidies. Finally, the families of kidnapping victims who lack insurance should be given access to security consultants in extraordinary circumstances, such as those with national security implications. This can be done by creating an industry-wide pro bono standard, whereby security companies increase their volunteer services. It could also be done via some sort of government pool that needy families can access if certain standards are met. When I met with representatives from the Foreign Office, I found them dug in to their view that the no-concessions policy was simply not up for discussion or debate. This is a shame, because data made available in recent years does not support its central contention, namely that refusing to pay ransom reduces the risk of future crime. Moreover, as Doug Milne notes: “By refusing to allow concessions, you drive the negotiations underground, so the intelligence you might otherwise get following the case disappears. The families feel they could potentially be prosecuted. And the government becomes the enemy.” That’s a bad outcome that does not serve the hostage, or advance Britain’s national security. It’s time to consider a new approach. Adapted from We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages, and Ransom, published by Columbia Global Reports and available to buy at guardianbookshop.co.uk • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.It’s not as if he recorded Say Say Say and The Girl Is Mine, is it? He didn’t cowrite either Do They Know It’s Christmas? or We Are the World. He hasn’t been accused of abusing women or children; and at no point did he step in as a replacement lead singer for Queen, Deep Purple or INXS. So why the near universal disdain for, if not outright loathing of, Phil Collins? When his 2016 Not Dead Yet tour – his first in 13 years – was announced, it was met with collective groans, outright mockery and even a Change.org petition. The tour began as a few shows in the UK and ended up encompassing large portions of the world, including, this week, Australia. In some circles (read: almost anywhere music critics gather to sacrifice young bass players and dance naked around a copy of Pet Sounds), Collins is the apotheosis of blandness and ubiquity, the byword for the bleaching of soul music, the man who killed Genesis and gave American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman a reason, and a soundtrack, to screw and kill. But for a musician who can count (somehow, perplexingly, but nonetheless quite seriously) Kanye West, 2Pac, Nas and Ol’ Dirty Bastard as fans, how can he be considered almost terminally uncool? Since I come, if not exactly to praise then at least not to bury him, let us consider the sins attributed to Philip David Charles Collins, once of West London and Begnins, Switzerland, who at the end of this month turns 68. When chief writer and singer Peter Gabriel left Genesis, and lower middle-class drummer boy Collins stepped up to the microphone, the group of long-haired, costume-and-makeup-wearing, concept album-making, middling-selling, public schoolboys with a reading list went from being darlings of the sort of people who said “darlings of the cognoscenti” to hitmakers for the sort of people the cognoscenti looked down on. Perhaps the real problem was that he sold too much, was around too much, played everywhere and produced too much. OK, it’s not like Invisible Touch need ever be heard again, nor those baggy suits revived. The synths in Abacab grate more than a Parmesan factory, and there was something unbearably smug about it all. But the 100 million-odd albums Genesis have sold principally came post-Gabriel. So, guilty as charged, he made them popular. How very dare he. And yet that didn’t stop him playing on often little-heard albums by Brian Eno and John Cale, Robert Plant and John Martyn, and Peter Gabriel. Sure, they mostly didn’t let him sing or write but can’t you gain some cool by association? He made two post-divorce albums that were bitter, a bit twisted and very bloody angry about his ex, who supposedly heard about the impending divorce via fax (which he denies). What a bastard, right? Two names for you: Marvin Gaye (Here, My Dear – the contractually obligated, here’s-your-damn-settlement, 1978 fuck-you, whose song Anger was not kidding); and Bob Dylan (1975’s Blood On The Tracks, whose Idiot Wind was not a weather forecast). Next to them, Collins is a mere bantamweight in bastardy. What about his cover of You Can’t Hurry Love? Note perfect and reviving Motown’s profile for a new generation, but accused of draining any remnant of blackness from it. But again, he was hardly alone in the traducing of 60s classics through the 80s: Michael Bolton anyone? Naked Eyes? But yeah, fair cop, it’s as bland as boarding school tapioca pudding and a perfect companion to his blancmange take on Groovy Kind Of Love. And the film clip where he plays both Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard to his blue-suited Diana Ross can still scar. Perhaps the real problem was that he sold too much (around 150 million albums), was around too much, played everywhere, including both sides of the Atlantic for Live Aid, and produced too much. Even he has admitted his presence in seemingly anything that happened in the 1980s would have got up his nose too if he had been watching. Here’s the thing though: he didn’t force millions of us to buy his records. He didn’t demand we love him and his funny comb-forward. You might argue he actively worked against the notion, what with his film clips (don’t, I beg you, look up Two Hearts – no, I mean it, don’t), his feature films, his suits, his songs … Anyway, remember: Collins didn’t release anything as bad as Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson’s atrocious duets, and their musical reputations were eventually redeemed. Give the bloke a chance. • The Australian leg of Phil Collins’s Not Dead Yet tour kicks off in Brisbane on Saturday 19 JanuaryA popular French author and television presenter has caused outrage after claiming he was “incapable” of loving a woman aged over 50. Yann Moix, 50, told a glossy magazine: “Come on now, let’s not exaggerate! That’s not possible … too, too old.” In the interview with Marie-Claire magazine’s French edition, Moix, the author of several prize-winning novels, added that women in their 50s were “invisible” to him. “I prefer younger women’s bodies, that’s all. End of. The body of a 25-year-old woman is extraordinary. The body of a woman of 50 is not extraordinary at all,” he said, adding that he preferred to date Asian women, particularly Koreans, Chinese and Japanese. “It’s perhaps sad and reductive for the women I go out with but the Asian type is sufficiently rich, large and infinite for me not to be ashamed.” Moix has won several literary prizes including the prestigious Prix Goncourt and the Prix François Mauriac from the Académie Française for his 1996 debut work Jubilations Vers le Ciel, has directed three films and is the host of a popular TV talkshow. His comments caused outrage on social media. The journalist and writer Colombe Schneck, aged 52, published a photo of a backside on her Instagram account. “Voila, the buttocks of a woman aged 52…what an imbecile you are, you don’t know what you’re missing, you and your tiny, paunchy brain.” Feminist author Mona Chollet said Moix was a “sad sire”, while Laura Hulley, from the political section of the British Embassy in Paris, tweeted: “Happy new year, sexists everywhere!” Former first lady Valerie Trierweiler tweeted here about Moix in the context of the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attack on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. French MP Olivia Gregoire, a spokeswoman for Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) party, tweeted: “Very classy Yann Moix. Very very classy. But like stupidity and vulgarity have no age, it’s reassuring in his case as I doubt many women want (these qualities).”Javier Ortiz likes to look on the bright side in San Juan, the pretty and gritty capital of Puerto Rico. “I’m an optimist,” he says. “I’m the owner of a bookstore, so I have to be.” Ortiz has survived not only the onslaught of Amazon but also Hurricane Maria, which forced him to close for 10 days then manage the store without electricity – running a cash machine off a battery – for two months. Now, as the debt-ridden island finally gets an event to celebrate, the 50-year-old has one of the golden tickets. The mega-hit musical Hamilton opens in San Juan on Friday night. Ortiz’s wife, Huarali, queued for 10 hours to get $150 tickets for them and their Hamilton-mad sons: Alejandro, 12, and nine-year-old Nicolas. “It is expensive: we’re having to make a sacrifice,” says Ortiz. “We will keep working hard and make a better island and better country. Hamilton’s a good sign but the hard work we will have to do ourselves.” With a score mixing hip-hop, jazz, blues, rap, R&B and Broadway, the show dramatises the life of Alexander Hamilton, a Caribbean immigrant who becomes an American founding father and the first treasury secretary, only to be wounded by scandal and die in a duel. It has swept awards shows and conquered cities across the US as well as London, but its arrival in the American commonwealth of Puerto Rico was always going to be special because of its composer, lyricist and star. Lin-Manuel Miranda, born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, spent his childhood summers on the island. For the two-week San Juan run, which is raising money for arts communities on the island, the 38-year-old dynamo will reprise the title role for the first time since Broadway in July 2016. It will be a joyful and poignant homecoming; a moment to savour Miranda’s global success, and a symbol of the island’s slow return to normality after the September 2017 hurricane that killed nearly 3,000 people and caused what is thought to be the biggest  blackout in US history. And yet, this being Puerto Rico, it is also complicated, multi-layered and politically charged. There has been controversy over a last-minute change of performance venue. Some are also reluctant to regard Miranda, born and raised in New York, as one of their own. They are unhappy about his association with Barack Obama and a debt restructuring plan that imposed harsh austerity measures on the territory of 3.3 million people. About 20 miles (32km) west of San Juan, traces of Miranda are inescapable in Vega Alta, an unglamorous town of 39,000 people where his extended family still lives. Its theatre was torn down in the 1970s to make way for a car park, but a small new plaza built by his father includes a bakery, bar, cafe, souvenir shop – hats, mugs, T-shirts, postcards, lifesize cardboard cutouts of Miranda – and a small museum showing off artwork, awards, cast recordings, family photos and theatre programmes. On the walls there are colourful tile mosaics that include Miranda’s face, the Hamilton logo and the Puerto Rican flag. Salsa music plays as tourists snap photos. A short walk away, on a cul-de-sac of single-storey houses where the quiet is punctuated by squawks from tropical birds, is the home where the young Miranda and his sister would while away summers with their grandparents. He would often run over to see his neighbour Margo Rodriguez and enjoy her homemade limbers – a local treat that resembles a popsicle frozen in a plastic cup. “He spent a lot of time with me here, singing, drawing and making jokes,” says Rodriguez, now 85. “I would pretend to play guitar with a broomstick and he would sing. He was a good kid. He was priceless.” She is not alone in her pride. Elliot Knight Nater, a music director, says: “This town loves him. When they know he’s coming here, you can see 200 to 300 people waiting: people who used to see him as a kid running in the streets.” He added: “I hope he never gets into politics because people change as soon as they get in that position.” And yet Miranda’s family is steeped in politics. His great-uncle, Gilberto Concepción de Gracia, was the founder of the Puerto Rican Independence party. His father, Luis Miranda, is a Democratic party consultant who left the island at 18 to chase the American dream and, despite speaking little English, found that New York “fit like a glove”. He settled in a Latino neighbourhood in Washington Heights – the inspiration for Miranda’s breakthrough musical In the Heights, which he brought to Puerto Rico in 2010. Luis Miranda was a special adviser to the New York mayor Ed Koch in the 1980s and helped manage Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand’s successful campaigns for the US Senate. His son has taken on the baton. Accepting a Tony award in 2008 for In the Heights, he waved a small Puerto Rican flag. Hamilton, which celebrates diversity by casting people of colour as the founding fathers of the US, was hailed by New Yorker magazine as “the Obama-era musical”. Its cast delivered a pointed statement to the vice-president, Mike Pence, after one performance, while Miranda has tweeted that Donald Trump will go to hell for criticising the mayor of San Juan after the hurricane. He has also gone to Washington to plead with Congress to help Puerto Rico with its economic crisis and appeared on the comedian John Oliver’s HBO show to rap: “Paul Ryan, I’ll come sing Hamilton at your house. / I’ll do-si-do with Pelosi, I’ll wear my Hamilton blouse. / Your citizens are suffering, stop the bleeding, stop the loss. / Help Puerto Rico, it’s just a hundred miles across.” Amid the Spanish colonial buildings, cobbled streets and ornate balconies of old San Juan, where tourists disgorged by giant cruise ships wander among cats and pigeons, many are expressing their gratitude before opening night. Javier Santiago, 59, the director of the National Foundation for Popular Culture, has a small shrine to Miranda, including the red shirt he wore for the Broadway run of In the Heights, and invites young visitors to try on Miranda’s cap. Some burst into tears. “That’s something they will never forget,” he says. “We feel very proud of the work he did in In the Heights. He showed the soul of our community: the getting together, the importance of family. This is a side that West Side Story never showed. Hamilton coming here is symbolic of the Puerto Rican soul that will never die. He’s in the diaspora that left Puerto Rico to go to the United States; his parents brought him back every year and he never lost contact with his roots. The idiosyncrasy, the Latin way of being, is in him, pumping in his heart.” But in Puerto Rico, neither a nation nor a state, where people can vote in US primaries but not in presidential elections, nothing is simple or straightforward. Hamilton was due to be performed at the University of Puerto Rico, where its producers spent $1m upgrading the theatre. Then, late last month, the show was abruptly switched to the Luis A Ferré Performing Arts Center because of concerns about student protests over budget cuts enforced by Washington. The Hamilton set was taken down, shuttled across town and hastily rebuilt. Luis, 64, a former student at the university, was disappointed by the move but endorsed it. “There’s many things that you could compromise but security is not one of them,” he says. “If there is a minimum possibility that anything can happen, that should be enough for the production to move.” But Nelson Rivera, a retired art history professor at the university, accuses the producers of losing their nerve. “I think the government threw shade at the students: ‘Oh, they’re a bunch of terrorists, get out of there.’ They fell for it. They should have won over the community, the university, and nothing would have happened. We’re very nice people.” Rivera, 65, is sharply critical of Obama’s solution to Puerto Rico’s $70bn (£55bn) public debt load, a law known as Promesa that established a non-elected financial oversight and management board – supported at the time by Miranda but disparaged by many as “la junta”. He says: “We don’t really have a government of our own; we’re governed by this junta and they’re basically dismantling the country. One of the first things that they started to do was eliminate public education. A lot of public schools have been closed and the university has been really hit hard. “So Hamilton has been used to strengthen the idea that the university is a difficult place that has to be eliminated or at least toned down. That’s exactly what they did when they moved the play instead of keeping it at the university. What is interesting about Hamilton is the way it’s been used for politics.” Rivera, a supporter of Puerto Rican independence, continues: “They call it the Obama-era musical. Give me a break. If Hamilton is anti-Trump, we’re also anti-Obama. For Puerto Ricans, there’s no difference at all between Obama and Trump. So I understand that Obama looks nicer and speaks better but his policies were as terrible to Puerto Rico as Trump’s are. Obama gave us the junta and Trump sent us paper towels. What is the difference?” Ten thousand tickets are being sold for $10 each to residents of Puerto Rico via lottery but Rivera has no intention of trying to see the musical. “There’s a lot of mixed feelings for us. For artists, we have a strong theatre tradition here in Puerto Rico and American musicals are not really our thing. The subtitle of Hamilton is ‘An American musical’ and that’s as American as you can get. So for us, this is not a play that’s meaningful in terms of our culture. It really has nothing to do with us. “Lin-Manuel was raised in the United States. He identifies as an American and when he chooses to do a play it’s about the American experience, not about the Puerto Rican experience. We work with Puerto Rican history and issues and things that Lin-Manuel cannot really know about because he does not live here, he was not raised here nor educated here, so I don’t see how you can talk about something that you don’t really know.” Miranda’s father is aware of the identity politics and does not shy away from them. “The forever debate is who is Puerto Rican,” Luis Miranda says in an interview with the Guardian in the theatre foyer, hours before the first dress rehearsal. “You hear the debate among normal people: ‘But he’s not Puerto Rican, he’s from New York, he’s from Puerto Rican parents.’ But what we do know is that there is enormous pride in him, particularly since he’s so proud of being Puerto Rican. He has said many times that he is using the megaphone and the spotlight that he has gotten thanks to Hamilton to push forward things like the recovery of Puerto Rico.” Luis Miranda also appears to embrace the complexities of his son’s forays into politics, having fought many such battles himself. “I hate Trump and anything I could do to defeat Republicans, even now my friends who are Republicans, I would do because they have allowed the party to be hijacked by this orange nut. When you do that, you know people are going to be with you and people are going to be against you. It’s no different in Puerto Rico, but the important part that I hope I taught my kids is that you make decisions and you take stands and some will applaud you and some will criticise you, but you take the stand you believe is right.”When a smart café opened in his neighbourhood in New York, where he used to live, Buddhist monk and bestselling author Haemin Sunim went along to sample the delicious-looking cake. Hearing the prices, however, he balked and ordered just tea instead – but that cake stayed in his mind all afternoon. The next day, he was still thinking about it, and the day after that until, finally, he had to go back and treat himself. The verdict? “It was delicious but not extraordinarily delicious,” he writes in his new book, Love for Imperfect Things. “This must be the kind of feeling people have after winning the Nobel prize or becoming president.” This small, wry slice of everyday life – and let-down – is one of many in Sunim’s latest self-care tome, the follow-up to his first book, the wildly successful Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, published in 2012. Sunim, 45, has been dubbed a “megamonk”. He has the kind of celebrity status that can turn a short stroll through his native Seoul, South Korea, into an embarrassing round of selfie requests. With over 1m followers on Twitter and Facebook, his first book was a quiet call for calm in our insanely busy world. Translated into 30 languages, it sold in the millions. Sunim offers bite-size Buddhism – mindfulness for the modern age – mainly through short anecdotes or sparse, haiku-like verse. His writing is gentle and meandering, and often so simple as to seem quite obvious. Haemin Sunim (which means “spontaneous wisdom”) gives insight and advice we might know already, but still fail to heed. The central message in Love for Imperfect Things is the importance of loving and accepting our imperfect selves, our imperfect world – and imperfect cake – the way a mother loves her child, no matter what. The book examines the many ways expectations fall short. Our parents don’t understand us. Our children don’t appreciate us. We didn’t nail that “dream job” or, if we did, it hasn’t delivered what we dreamed it would. His celebrity status can turn a stroll into a round of selfie requests “That ‘disappointment’ is a problem of humanity, not just in the west,” says Sunim, speaking to me from New York, where he has come to meet his spiritual teacher. “One of the reasons I became interested in our relationship with imperfection was reading Sengchan, the sixth-century Chinese Zen master, who said: ‘True freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection’. I’d never thought of ‘freedom’ in those terms and I wanted to expand that idea. “Often, one of the hurdles for loving and accepting yourself is the idea of how you should be, how your life should be. But that picture of perfection resides only in your imagination,” he continues. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to be good at something or have a good life, but if you’re dissatisfied and want to change things all the time, you are going to find yourself very unhappy. So the trick is, how can you make peace with what is? That’s the recipe for happiness.” Love for Imperfect Things is packed with random advice on how to achieve this, and addresses the worries and disappointments that regularly arise during Sunim’s public talks and Q&As. If you’re worried because your spouse or child has gained weight, for example, Sunim suggests setting an example by looking after your own health with a varied diet and plenty of exercise. Pointing out a loved one’s faults is more likely to hurt them than make them change, he says. To those searching for the perfect soulmate, Sunim suggests there’s “no such thing… When you work hard to make your relationship work and stay together for a long time, then you each become the person you were meant to be with.” The book’s glimpses into Sunim’s own life as a Buddhist monk are especially enjoyable. The cake incident is one example. In another, Sunim remembers a meditation retreat where an older monk directed him to sweep the steps. Since he was already volunteering diligently in the kitchen, Sunim spent what he later saw was an embarrassing amount of time seething about the extra task, which, in reality, took less than five minutes to complete. From this, he learned to be more mindful of negative thought patterns triggered by very minor issues. Sunim also describes breakthroughs in his own family relationships. One concerns his father, who used to irritate him by always putting himself last and insisting he was “unimportant”. For this reason, when he rapidly, inexplicably lost weight, he even put off seeing a doctor. “We get the most annoyed by the people we are closest to,” says Sunim. “What helps – and what helped me – is not wishing they were different or telling them to change but instead trying to understand them better. I made the effort to talk to my father and ask him questions, not in relation to me but as a separate human being. “What I found was very surprising,” he continues. “I saw a man whose own father hadn’t shown him a lot of love and affirmation. His father had valued his oldest son – and my father, the second son, had internalised that. He saw himself as unimportant. I think understanding your parents as separate to you is a sign of maturity.” His father’s health has since recovered and in the book Sunim thanks him for raising a son with high self-esteem and a positive outlook. Sunim’s father has enjoyed the book – both parents are extremely proud of their son, though surprised by his “career path”. As a student, he left South Korea to study film at the University of California, before switching to religious studies. “I thought film would be a fun and interesting process, but it wasn’t,” he says. “Making one short film was very time-consuming, such a group effort with so many elements out of my hands. I instantly realised that was not my path. I’d always been very interested in religion, so studying that was very natural for me.” He took a master’s at Harvard, a doctorate at Princeton and then taught in an American college. ‘Sometimes I need to read my own books for my own advice’ At 25, he decided to become a monk. “I was more interested in personal, spiritual experience than being a scholar,” he says. “As an academic, you study someone else’s work not so much to inspire or deepen your practice but to prove points – it’s logical, scientific. With spiritual practice, it’s more personal; it often transcends language.” Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down was published first in South Korea, where it spent 41 weeks at number one. I wonder if its success surprised him – after all, the mindfulness message has been heard before. “I think it’s because I’m writing to help my readers,” says Sunim. “I’m not doing it as an artist, or to give myself expression. People can see that and, traditionally in Korea, people turn to Buddhist monks for advice. I’m part of that.” Sunim admits the success brought pressures. “I didn’t expect the book to become so popular, so I didn’t know what to do with it,” he says. “You get stopped in restaurants, or in a coffee shop, and asked for a photo. I try to be as gracious as I can, but it’s a little bit awkward for me; though, overall, I’m grateful.” Writing is just one way Sunim spreads his message. In South Korea he has opened – and funded – two healing centres he calls Schools for Broken Hearts. Anyone navigating difficult times – divorce, illness, loneliness, family breakdown – can come, connect, and access practical help from teachers and psychologists. “Whether you’re Christian, Buddhist, Islam… this is for everyone,” says Sunim. “That’s what my life revolves around now.” With 50 part-time teachers and 12 full-time employees, it sounds quite an undertaking. In fact, Sunim’s schedule does seem rather full-on for a monk famous for urging us all to slow down. He was in New York when we speak, he’s in London this month to promote his book, then he will be back in South Korea, where he combines work at his schools with meditation retreats, plus public Q&As across the country once or twice a day. Add to this a meditation app which he hopes to launch later this year. Is he packing a lot in? “I have reduced my engagement with social media,” says Sunim. “I spend less time on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, things like that. “Sometimes I need to read my own books for my own advice,” he admits. “Just because I said it doesn’t mean I’ve already embodied it! For me, as well as the readers, my books can be a gentle reminder of the truth we probably already know.” Love for Imperfect Things is published by Penguin at £9.99. Buy it for £7.49 at guardianbookshop.comSudan missed out on the Arab spring, but that may be changing. Protests against Omar al-Bashir, the indicted war criminal who has dominated the country for 29 years, are becoming a daily occurrence. Street-level unrest, sparked by rising bread and fuel prices, began last month and spread quickly. But the focus of demonstrators, their ranks swollen by teachers, lawyers and doctors, has switched to Bashir himself. They want him gone. Bashir’s response has been predictably repressive. And the president may succeed in battering his critics into silence, as in the past. But the causes of the unrest cannot be bludgeoned away: a struggling economy, low investment, high unemployment, corruption, bad governance and a potentially disastrous lack of opportunity for new generations of young people. In this respect, Sudan has a lot in common with other Arab countries. Recent weeks have seen protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Morocco. Once again, the political temperature is rising. Once again, the failure of governments to meet citizens’ aspirations grows critical. The question now is whether a new age of revolt – call it Arab spring #2 – is brewing. Tunisia, home of the first Arab spring, in 2010, is another case in point. It, too, was rocked by riots last month. And the unrest was once again triggered by a desperate individual, who self-immolated in protest at low living standards and political stasis. Presidential and parliamentary elections later this year could prove another flashpoint. Talk of democratic renewal in Syria and Yemen is at least premature. Attempts by citizens of these countries to dislodge entrenched regimes led to devastating civil wars. Libya, too, has never regained its balance after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. In Egypt, the Arab world’s largest country by population, the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak has been replaced by an even worse one – that of the general-turned-president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Yet despite these tragedies, or perhaps because of them, pressure for change across the Arab world is likely to continue to grow, keeping pace with the growth in populations, inequality and social injustice. Some of this energy will inevitably be misdirected into support for extremist groups that promise radical solutions, such as Islamic State. Some of it will produce increased migration, particularly into southern Europe. But most of the pressure will be directed at governments ill-equipped to respond – even if they wish to. Last Friday Egypt marked the eighth anniversary of the Tahrir Square revolution that toppled Mubarak. Thanks to Sisi’s shadow, it did so largely in silence. Public spaces are off-limits to protesters. Public media are closely regulated. Human Rights Watch says tens of thousands of opposition activists, writers and intellectuals, secular leftists and Muslim Brotherhood supporters have been locked up under regulations introduced since 2013, including anti-terrorism laws. Only this month Ahmed Douma, who helped lead the Tahrir protests, was jailed for 15 years for allegedly attacking security forces in 2011. Last autumn the Sisi regime was criticised by UN human rights experts for its use of anti-terrorism laws to detain women’s rights activists and those campaigning against torture and extrajudicial killings. Yet Sisi has failed to halt terrorist violence in Sinai and against Coptic Christians. Meanwhile, IMF-prescribed austerity measures are increasing poverty. Given these tensions, something must give. Western governments, too, are repeating the mistakes made before the first Arab spring: backing dictatorships that supposedly suit their interests while ignoring bad behaviour. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, will be in Cairo this week, hoping to flog fighter jets. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, visited this month and stepped around Egypt’s human rights black hole. And Donald Trump has become apologist-in-chief for a Saudi murder plot in Istanbul, Riyadh’s war crimes in Yemen and abuses such as the persecution of women’s rights activists. “The problems that brewed in a cauldron of discontent from the early 2000s, sparking the Arab uprisings – a massive youth bulge, high unemployment, low wages, education systems mired in the past, a lack of innovation and absence of freedoms – are still stewing, and getting worse,” said analyst Indira Lakshmanan. “The strongmen haven’t delivered a system to address the underlying problems.” This will not continue indefinitely. In Egypt, as in Sudan and elsewhere, pressure is building. A second explosion cannot be far off.What could possibly go wrong? After a series of votes that had decided almost nothing, other than that the House of Commons didn’t want a no-deal – though not enough to do anything much about it – and that she should go back to Brussels in search of a deal that wasn’t on offer, Theresa May made a short statement. She was going to phone Michel Barnier – from a withheld number, as the EU’s chief negotiator had blocked her Downing Street landline as he was sick to death of having the same, pointless conversation – and if anyone from any other party had anything constructive to add, then she’d go through the motions of listening to them. Workers’ rights? Whatever they were, she loved them. And the backstop? Bad, very bad. Nothing much had changed. We were back to almost where we had been two weeks previously. And two years before that. We were just a bit closer to a no-deal. Through inertia, as much by design. There was no hope. Only a vague sense of futility. Tumbleweed rolling, rolling, rolling. Time passing. The pound falling. Life and reason slipping away. The prime minister had opened the debate by observing she had recently consulted widely with members of all parties and come to the conclusion that doing anything to keep the Conservative party together for an extra couple of weeks was more important than the national interest. She was now urging the House to vote down the deal she had insisted only a few days ago was the best Brexit deal that could be possibly negotiated and support instead an amendment instructing her to go back and reopen the withdrawal agreement that the EU had insisted couldn’t be reopened. Even in the by-now familiar Alice in Wonderland world of Schrödinger’s Brexit, where everything can simultaneously be and not be, this was a bit of a stretch for many on the opposition benches. Chris Leslie wondered quite how she squared away her claim to be able to secure a deal by ditching the Northern Ireland backstop with her insistence that rejecting the backstop would inevitably end in a no-deal. This was a category error, as it assumed May’s mind followed sophisticated rules of logic. Her algorithms are much more basic: a 1980s Amstrad programmed merely to secure her survival to the end of the day. At which point her memory is erased. Contradicting herself was the least of her concerns. Here was the deal. She had originally intended for her plan B to be exactly the same as her plan A, but at the last minute it had come to her attention that Kit Malthouse, one of her junior ministers – along with a bit of help from the European Research Group – had done a bit of Brexit moonlighting and come up with a plan C. Or to give it its full name, plan C minus. So she was now fully signed up to plan C minus that would entail her going back to the EU on a pointless mission to waste a few more weeks and make a no-deal more likely. With that in mind, she was backing the Graham Brady amendment – a simple idea from an extremely simple man – that would instruct her to go back to Brussels and seek some alternative arrangements. She didn’t know what these arrangements might be other than they would be alternative. Possibly involving a mixture of grunge and Morris dancing. Either way she was looking forward to losing a negotiation conducted entirely with herself. This prompted predictable whoops from several of the Brexiters in her own party, with Nigel Evans declaring that Jerry didn’t like it up ’em. Nicky Morgan burst into tears. She was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and had lined up with the ERG because she could no longer tolerate the idea of remaining a backbencher. Just someone love me, she sobbed. Because she can no longer love herself. After ignoring Yvette Cooper’s suggestion that negotiating an entirely new deal before March 31 was a fantasy too far and that an extension to Article 50 was inevitable, May went into her final peroration. She was going to win because she had only been lulling the EU into a false sense of security by bringing back a deal that had been defeated by 230 votes. Now she was going to give it 110% . This time she really, really wanted it. The X Factor’s gain was the country’s loss. Her new red lines were to get the EU to move their red lines. In reply, Jeremy Corbyn had little to say. But he was damned if he was going to let anyone else get a word in edgeways, refusing to take interventions from anyone he didn’t much like. He has a small friendship group. It was unnecessarily petty and provoked a meltdown on the Tory benches. Cue a near shambles, with dozens of MPs going out of their way to embarrass themselves. Not that they generally need much invitation. Brexit continues to make fools of all those with whom it comes in contact. Especially those that were already fools. Give it time and most MPs will be only able to speak in non-verbal grunts. A rare win-win. They’d probably make more sense that way. By the close there was almost no one in the house. Had anyone from the EU been bothering to listen in to such a dismal debate, they’d probably conclude they were far better off without us anyway. This is the new UK. Bringing down the average IQ of the whole of Europe.It’s early morning in Transylvania and the sun’s shining on a group of yogis making shapes on the wooden veranda at Akasha Wellness Retreat. With pine and beech-covered hills rolling to the horizon, snow-capped mountain peaks and a soundtrack of cow bells and cockerels, it’s an idyllic spot to salute the sun. Romania may not be the first place that springs to mind for a yoga holiday: it doesn’t have the huge choice of popular destinations like Goa, Thailand, Ibiza or Portugal. But this new centre in the sleepy village of Pestera – in Piatra Craiului national park, a 2½-hour drive north of Bucharest – offers something a little different. Fields of conical haystacks and wonky wooden houses dot the landscape, horse-drawn carts wander the lanes and it feels as if the clock’s been rewound a few decades. Akasha is the phonetic spelling of acaša, which means “at home” in Romanian, and this is a true family affair: a venture between daughter Irina, who runs the yoga, her mother Daniela and aunt Elena (a UK-based doctor who advises on nutrition). After years of living and working in London, they felt their homeland calling them back and are clearly passionate about providing memorable retreats, as well as showing people their country. The nine-bedroom house has the warm vibe of a family home, and from the first night our diverse group (all women apart from one couple, with nationalities from American to German) falls into easy camaraderie. Digital detox is encouraged, so no one is on their phone. People chat instead (imagine!) or find a quiet corner in which to read. I’ve joined a nutrition and yoga retreat – other options include a fun-sounding yoga and local wine tasting retreat – and besides twice-daily yoga and meditation, there are talks on plant-based eating and wellbeing, and cookery demonstrations. Nutritional therapist Daniela Exley (a Romanian who grew up in the UK, lives in Hastings and blogs at beetspulseandthyme.co.uk) shows us how to make nut milks and patés, and gives tips on improving our diets. Akasha practises what it preaches, serving vegan meals that are gluten- and sugar-free, and made mostly of organic, seasonal local produce. It all sounds very worthy, but it’s not: mealtimes are fun and even non-veggies rave about the food, which is always colourful, plentiful and full of flavour, from buckwheat and beetroot breakfast pancakes to raw chocolate puddings (and there are three meals a day, so no one goes hungry). The roster of resident yoga teachers changes regularly. I love Mariana Dragan’s hatha flow and yin, which is gentle yet deep (geared more towards beginners and intermediates). The sun shines enough for us to practise outside – even though it’s November. There’s regular meditation, too, and a powerful sound bath session one evening, where we lie fully clothed as the sound of the gongs wash over us (no getting wet required). There’s also an outdoor hot tub, an infra-red sauna with a huge picture window overlooking the mountains, and treatments from herb-filled baths to reflexology and Swedish massage. What really sets this place apart, though, is the surroundings. We wander up to the nearby “bat cave” (we only spy one clinging to the ceiling) and into the hills beyond; sheep trundle by, their bells tinkling; and a man on horseback waves and gives us directions we don’t understand. At the top of the hill, the Sunday service is in progress in a tiny church – its interior crammed with murals and old women dressed head-to-toe in black. One afternoon I follow the river at the end of the garden through fairytale forests, passing isolated cottages and a man in a peak-cap chopping wood – all very Hansel and Gretel. There’s plenty more to do: longer mountain hikes, horse riding, visits to a bear sanctuary – and Bran Castle, of Dracula fame, is a 15-minute drive down steeply winding roads. The castle is the country’s top tourist attraction, but still bewitching, with secret passages and tales of Vlad the Impaler and Queen Marie who once lived here (Bram Stoker himself actually never visited). Retreats run for five nights, so there’s time to get out and explore without losing that chilled edge (though for the time-pressed, shorter stays are on offer too). On the penultimate day there’s a morning of silence – a way of deepening the digital detox, keeping the focus inwards and building on the sense of calm. It’s surprisingly easy to breakfast with other guests without talking and I pad around the retreat relishing the total peace. I leave with the feeling I’d like to see this remarkable landscape in different seasons. Even in early winter – too soon for snow and too late for the russet brush of autumn – it’s strikingly beautiful. Forget Dracula; Transylvania is the perfect place to step off the world for a while and let nature, good food and gentle yoga get to work. • The trip was provided by Akasha Wellness Retreat, which has three-night all-inclusive retreats from €497 or five nights from €698, flights extra. Akasha also runs retreats in Goa and Costa Rica, and 27-day yoga teacher training programmes. Flights were provided by Wizz Air, which flies to Bucharest from five UK airports from £18 one-wayThe Financial Times reported on Friday that the name of Ivanka Trump is “floating around Washington” regarding the need for a new president of the World Bank. The role will soon be open due to the surprise departure of the current president, Jim Yong Kim. But on politics Twitter, at least, the idea that his replacement might be the first daughter met with widespread derision. “Of all the people in US who could be World Bank President,” tweeted California Congressman Ted Lieu, sarcastically, “the most qualified is Ivanka Trump, who lost her fashion line & happens to be the daughter of @POTUS. I see.” The billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer, who is funding a campaign to impeach Donald Trump and until recently flirted with a White House run, chimed in: “This is among the most ridiculous proposals I have ever heard. Nepotism is just another form of corruption, so I am not surprised, but the level of absurdity is breathtaking.” The FT did not reveal its source, but stories of impending promotion for Ivanka, a senior adviser to her father, are not without precedent. Donald Trump has the power to nominate candidates to the World Bank position and has routinely considered his daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, as possible and actual candidates for all sorts of jobs for which they would not traditionally be thought qualified. Trump was reported to have considered Ivanka for US ambassador to the United Nations. In March last year, she effectively acted, if briefly, as de facto interim secretary of state, after Rex Tillerson was fired. She also sat in for her father at a G20 summit in Hamburg in July 2017, to widespread consternation. In his bombshell White House-insider bestseller Fire and Fury, the author Michael Wolff wrote that Ivanka aspires to a higher achievement than an appointment from her father: to be the first female US president. The US president does not have the final say on the World Bank appointment, which must be voted on by the bank’s board of directors. But presidential nominations have traditionally led to appointments, as in the case of Kim, who was nominated by Barack Obama in 2012. The bank, founded in 1944, works to promote economic development and poverty reduction by “providing technical and financial support to help countries reform certain sectors or implement specific projects” in fields like healthcare, education and infrastructure. Its has historically been led by figures with multiple decades of governmental, macroeconomic or academic experience. All 12 presidents to date have been men.A student called Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been invited to dinner by the dean of Harvard Law School, along with the eight other women in her year. Her wide-eyed eagerness is swiftly put in check when the dean asks each woman to stand up and say something about themselves, including “why you’re occupying a place that could have gone to a man”. This is an early moment in On the Basis of Sex, a biopic about Ginsburg, who eventually became a US Supreme Court justice. It’s a scene that Mimi Leder, the film’s director, could identify with well. In 1973, Leder became the first woman to graduate from the prestigious American Film Institute Conservatory: “I never entered the world of film-making saying, ‘I’m entering a male-dominated business.’ I entered the world of storytelling because I felt compelled to tell stories. But throughout my career, I’ve been predominantly the only the woman in the room.” On the Basis of Sex has been referred to as Ginsburg’s “superhero origin story”. With Leder, however, things were not so straightforward. This is her first movie for nearly 20 years. Like a great many female directors, she found herself prematurely and unfairly shut out of an overwhelmingly male-dominated Hollywood. But, like a great many female directors, she is now returning. Leder’s career got off to a flying start. Having seen the dynamism she put into hospital drama game-changer ER, Steven Spielberg invited her to direct the first movie from his fledgling DreamWorks studio: 1997’s The Peacemaker, starring Nicole Kidman as a nuclear expert and George Clooney as the commando who has problems taking orders from a woman. Leder’s next, Deep Impact, was a huge hit but its follow-up, the Kevin Spacey drama Pay It Forward, was not. The good scripts stopped coming and Leder began to realise she was in “movie jail” – the place directors are sent to after a commercial flop. “It’s hard coming back from that emotionally,” says Leder. “But I never stopped directing. I directed nine pilots for television and six went on to become series.” Leder’s subsequent TV credits include The West Wing, Shameless, Luck and The Leftovers, the HBO hit on which she was co-showrunner. Movie jail can be a life sentence. You could fill a whole prison with women whose careers got off to a bright start, only to falter When it comes to movie jail, sentences are far lighter for men. It is hard to think of a male director who hasn’t made a flop at some stage, then gone on to redeem themselves: David Fincher (Alien 3), Joss Whedon (Serenity), Richard Linklater (Fast Food Nation), Steven Soderbergh (Logan Lucky, Haywire), even the Coen brothers (Hail Caesar!). Some seem to have made an entire career out of failing upwards: Zack Snyder’s reward for such expensive flops as Legend of the Guardians and Sucker Punch was custodianship of Warner/DC’s superhero franchise. For women, though, movie jail can be a life sentence. You could fill a whole prison wing with similar cases to Leder’s, women whose careers got off to a bright start, only to somehow falter. But the prison breakout seems to be gaining momentum. Another escapee is on the loose right now: Karyn Kusama, who has returned with Destroyer, starring Nicole Kidman as a ravaged, world-weary, antisocial detective. Destroyer is a superior Los Angeles thriller in the hard-boiled, neo-noir tradition, but Kidman’s character is no gender-swapped male gumshoe: she carries the guilt of being a terrible mother, for one thing. And when was the last time Philip Marlowe had to give someone a hand job in exchange for information? Like Leder, Kusama is back after a long absence. She made a big impression with her 2000 debut Girlfight – another story of a woman in a man’s world, starring then newcomer Michelle Rodriguez as a spirited Latina boxer. It won prizes at Sundance and Cannes, Variety hailed it as “the arrival of a major new talent”, and Kusama was soon snapped up by Paramount for Aeon Flux, a lavish sci-fi movie starring Charlize Theron. The experience was not a happy one. Paramount wanted something like The Matrix, while Kusama envisaged a sort of dystopian Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film was taken out of her hands and edited into an incoherent, 71-minute mess. For extra humiliation, the studio then asked Kusama to return and edit its mess into something slightly less messy, which still bombed at the box office. So Kusama found herself in movie jail, too. “Maybe it’s supposed to sound like a rite of passage,” she said a few years ago, “but so few women get any opportunity to have more than just the rite of passage – which is a big part, I think, of what we really need to be talking about when it comes to women’s careers in film.” Kusama came back with 2009’s Jennifer’s Body – a sharp, feminist teen horror penned by Diablo Cody, and another commercial flop (although it is currently undergoing a well-deserved critical reappraisal). Low-budget horror The Invitation helped restore her reputation. But since Girlfight, Kusama has directed just four movies this century. In the same timespan, Richard Linklater has made 14, Steven Soderbergh 21. According to the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, of the top 1,100 Hollywood films from 2007 to 2017, a mere 53 were directed by women. That’s a lamentable 4%. And almost all of these women only made one movie (the exact figure is 84%, compared with 55% of men). When you tally up the women directors with similarly curtailed careers to Leder and Kusama’s, it starts to look like a lost generation. Many made their names in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but spent the next two decades struggling in features or switching to TV. Patty Jenkins had a dream debut with 2003’s Monster, the story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. It won Charlize Theron many awards, including the best actress Oscar. Jenkins’ reward? Fifteen years in film-development hell, supplemented by TV gigs. Kimberly Peirce directed Hilary Swank to an Oscar in 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry. It took nearly a decade until her follow-up, 2008’s Iraq war drama Stop-Loss, followed by a remake of Carrie in 2013. Tamara Jenkins’ semi-autobiographical Slums of Beverly Hills played at Cannes in 1998. Her follow-up came nearly a decade later: 2007’s The Savages, which earned her a screenwriting Oscar nomination. Playing alongside Jenkins’ film at Cannes that year was Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art. Cholodenko has made just three films since, the last being 2010’s The Kids Are All Right. It is not just about commercial failure, either. Catherine Hardwicke, who broke through with the Sundance-winning teen drama Thirteen, went on to direct the smash hit Twilight, which ought to have put Hollywood at her feet. But she was not invited back for the sequels. The good news is that almost all of these women are back behind the camera, making female-centred films. Patty Jenkins, of course, saved DC’s comic-book universe (and undid Zack Snyder’s damage) with Wonder Woman, the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman. She’s currently working on the sequel. Tamara Jenkins returned after a 10-year hiatus with last year’s excellent fertility drama Private Life. Peirce is now working on This Is Jane, about the women who provided abortion services in 1970s America. Cholodenko is directing a remake of the hit German comedy Toni Erdmann. And Hardwicke has a Tijuana-set crime thriller, Miss Bala, coming out in March. All cause for celebration, but you wonder what we might have missed. Had these women been afforded the same latitude as their male counterparts, they could be established auteurs rather than occasional directors. Some women have built such careers, of course: Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow, Ava DuVernay. But many more have either struggled or dropped out of film-making altogether. “I think you have a generation of women who will never know if they could have been successes because they never had the opportunity,” says Melissa Silverstein, founder of Women and Hollywood, which campaigns for diversity and equality. The factors preventing women from having sustained movie careers are numerous, Silverstein says. There is institutional sexism, conscious and unconscious, as well as motherhood. You can't have a conversation about women and the decisions they make without understanding how inhospitable the industry is to people with children “You can’t have a conversation about women and the decisions they make without understanding how inhospitable the industry is to people with children,” she says, pointing out that directors such as Jenkins and Hardwicke took time out to raise their children. “But once you get off, it’s very difficult to get back into this industry.” The #MeToo movement has moved opinion in a positive direction, though Silverstein points out that most films around now will have been greenlit over two years ago, before #MeToo started. And younger women are already benefiting from the changed landscape. Silverstein cites Chloé Zhao, who has gone from hailed indie The Rider to directing a big Marvel movie, The Eternals. Then again, this year’s Academy award nominations demonstrate how far there is to go: Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the only film directed by a woman to figure in any of the main categories. Silverstein says it’s about “people with juice using it for good”. Like those who have pledged to adopt an “inclusion rider”, requiring a certain proportion of staff on a project to be women, people of colour, LGBT people and people with disabilities. The list of adoptees now includes Brie Larson, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Michael B Jordan and, on a company level, Warner and HBO. Nicole Kidman has pledged to work with at least one female director every 18 months – hence Destroyer, Coppola’s The Beguiled, and Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake. And just this week at Sundance, Time’s Up and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative launched the 4% Challenge, urging actors and film-makers to improve on that depressing statistic by following Kidman’s example. The idea is gaining momentum: early accepters of the 4% Challenge include Tessa Thompson, Amy Schumer, JJ Abrams, Reese Witherspoon and, on Wednesday, a whole Hollywood studio: Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, which includes Universal Pictures, Focus Features and Dreamworks Animation. Leder has been insisting on gender parity for years. Despite her Hollywood “comeback”, she has not been yearning to make movies all this time. She’s happy in TV. “There are so many incredible, great quality stories you can’t tell on the big screen,” she says. She is now directing and co-producing a series for Apple TV, starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Again, she’s hiring as many women as men. “I see a lot of white guys out there going, ‘Gee, I’m not able to get a job any more.’ I think, ‘Now you know what it feels like.’”The L word is in the news again, this time because of Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren’s decision to run for the US presidency. “A common observation of Warren is that she’s simply not likable enough to win the presidency,” said the Daily Beast. “There have been questions about whether Ms Warren is ‘likable’, a word that tends to be used in regard to female candidates rather than men,” said the Finacial Times. And Politico tweeted: “How does Elizabeth Warren avoid a Clinton redux – written off as too unlikable before her campaign gets off the ground?” And so on. Ironically, in 2016, Warren was perceived as “infinitely more likable than Hillary”. But now she has thrown her hat into the ring, commentators are lining up to remind us how uncomfortable they are with powerful women, and also how uncomfortable they are with admitting it – since their doubts are invariably couched in terms such as “there have been questions about …” In other words: “Many people say …” It got me wondering about what makes a character in the movies likable or unlikable. After all, an entire screenwriting manual, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, is named after “the scene where we meet the hero and the hero does something – like saving a cat – that defines who he is and makes us, the audience, like him”. And no, I don’t think Lt Ellen Ripley would be nearly as popular a character if she had left Jones behind in the Nostromo to get blown up. But on GamesRadar’s list of 50 Most Likable Movie Characters, only seven are women, and of those seven, only Fargo’s Marge Gunderson strikes me as a genuinely likable person, as opposed to irritant, doormat or nanny. Yes, Mary Poppins has many fine qualities, but being likable isn’t one of them. Recently, we have been seeing a new wave of unlikable female protagonists. It kicked off with 2016’s highly divisive Nocturnal Animals, starring Amy Adams as a character who was “not easily likable”, in the words of film critic Barry Wurst. And not everyone, it turns out, is a fan of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite. Sure enough, reasons given include (and I didn’t have to dig deep for these examples) “Not liking any of the characters”; “wholly unlikable female characters”; and “everyone in this film is a varying shade of unlikable”. Yet I would contend that The Favourite’s three leading characters are likable – in small and volatile doses. None of them saves a cat, but we start off by automatically siding with Abigail (Emma Stone) because she is an underdog, and, from Oliver Twist to The Karate Kid to Harry Potter, we have learned to root for underdogs. Abigail’s likability is only confirmed when palace servants (with whom she is billeted) play a vile trick on her – we’re used to sympathising with victims. We are on safe ground here: Abigail is shaping up to be a traditional heroine. And we like her even more as she finds cunning ways to insinuate herself into the queen’s favours, because, from Elizabeth Bennett to Jo March to Hermione Granger, we are accustomed to siding with heroines who are clever. Yet that cleverness eventually curdles, until we are faced with the possibility that Abigail may not be so likable after all. Similarly, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) veers between likability (she seems genuinely fond of the Queen) and steely-eyed ambition – a quality perceived as anything but likable in a woman, as Clinton and Warren have discovered. Even Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), initially depicted as capricious, self-absorbed and ridiculous, is shown to have suffered devastating heartbreak – and just like that, we find ourselves liking her more. In the end, much of The Favourite’s deliciousness as an entertainment stems from our emotional allegiances being tugged this way and that by women who are not simply good or evil but flawed, multifaceted human beings. Just like real people. If you think Abigail, Anne and Sarah are unlikable, get a load of Erin Bell in Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer. Our first view of Bell is pink-rimmed bloodshot eyes squinting out of sun-damaged skin. She is a Los Angeles detective ravaged by alcohol, cigarettes and traumatic memories of an undercover assignment gone horribly wrong, and Nicole Kidman plays her with the sort of fearlessness (and help from makeup designer Bill Corso) that makes her Oscar-winning fake nose for The Hours look like a party trick. The days of Jane Fonda being able to pass as an alcoholic in The Morning After (1986) just by mussing her hair are long gone. “You look terrible,” says a colleague of Erin’s, and so she does. And Kidman’s transformation is more than just grandstanding – her ruined face reflects her character’s story. In Destroyer, Kidman sacrifices one of the strongest weapons in a film star’s arsenal – her good looks (deemed more essential for actresses than actors), and with it a shortcut to securing our sympathies. According to innumerable studies, including this 2011 Harvard-related one, we are conditioned to see beautiful people as more likable and for every Hunchback of Notre Dame or Small Soldiers (1998), making your good guys ugly still amounts to a subversive act. Still, we think, Bell may look like a wreck, but surely she will win us over with her caustic wit, or by saving a cat? Nope. The kindest thing she does is give a handjob to a terminally ill man, and even then it is not an act of charity but a peculiarly sordid way of wringing a name out of him. While Melissa McCarthy isn’t as conventionally glam as Kidman, she brushes up nicely for chatshows and red carpets. So it is a little disconcerting to see her in a dowdy wig and unflattering specs in Can You Ever Forgive Me? She plays the real-life writer Lee Israel, whose career had slumped so much by 1992 that she began to support herself by forging literary letters and selling them to dealers. Even before the opening credits are over, this prickly, self-pitying alcoholic has already told a work colleague to “fuck off”, and stolen an overcoat and two rolls of toilet paper at her agent’s party. While Israel doesn’t save a cat, she does share her apartment with one; her criminal career is launched when the animal gets sick and she needs money to pay the vet. This definitely makes her more relatable, and it is hard not to sneakily admire her refusal to clean up her act and play the literary game (unlike Tom Clancy, whom she dismisses as a “jackass”). McCarthy makes us feel for her without softening her anti-social abrasiveness, but likable? Hell, no. Like Destroyer, Can You Ever Forgive Me? was directed by a woman – Marielle Heller. “Lee was flawed and complicated and fascinating,” Heller told Variety. “If she were a male character, nobody would bat an eye, but because she’s female, it feels radical.” The screenplay was co-written by Nicole Holofcener, while The Favourite was co-written by Deborah Davis. Many people say (see what I did there?) that one result of getting women’s voices out there, making more movies, means that audiences will get used to seeing female characters who are less likable, more human. And who knows? Maybe one day they will stop expecting female politicians to be likable, too. Destroyer is released on 25 January; Can You Ever Forgive Me? on 1 FebruaryGood morning – this is Alison Rourke bringing you the first briefing for the week. There’s more evidence this morning of the biting austerity being felt by some communities with a report by the Centre for Cities thinktank saying local authority spending has fallen nationally by half since 2010. Areas such as Liverpool, Blackburn and Barnsley are facing average cuts twice that of their counterparts in the more affluent south. “Councils have managed as best they can but the continued singling out of local government for cuts cannot continue,” says the group’s chief executive, Andrew Carter. “Fairer funding must mean more funding for cities.” The five cities and towns that have suffered the biggest falls in spending over the past eight years are all in the north of England: Barnsley (-40%), Liverpool (-32%), Doncaster (-31%), Wakefield (-30%) and Blackburn (-27%). The British average is -14.3%. In Barnsley, 62% of the entire council budget went on social care in 2017-18, reflecting the “desperation and despair” of its residents. The Guardian’s social policy editor, Patrick Butler, has talked to residents facing crippling cuts about how they are coping ... and fighting back. Backstop impasse? – As Theresa May faces her crucial vote on Brexit tomorrow, Ireland’s last-minute effort to warn the PM off any attempt to unravel the backstop deal will be raising the temperature in Downing Street. Yesterday, the Irish foreign minster and deputy PM insisted the backstop – the mechanism to ensure there will be no hard border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland if Britain and the EU fail to strike a free-trade deal – was “part of a balanced package that isn’t going to change”. He said it was only part of the withdrawal agreement because of the UK’s red lines. As the Brexit wars continue, the UK has become “meaner and angrier” since the 2016 vote, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer, a long-established, annual survey of trust carried out across the globe. It says there is widespread unhappiness about the direction the country is heading with 40% thinking others are now more likely to take part in violent protests. One person in six says they have fallen out with friends or relatives over Brexit and 65% think the country is “on the wrong track”, the survey found. ‘Significant response’ – The US has warned that it will act if there is any violence against its diplomats in Venezuela. The White House national security adviser John Bolton warned on Twitter that “any violence and intimidation against US diplomatic personnel, Venezuela’s democratic leader, Juan Guiado (sic), or the National Assembly itself would represent a grave assault on the rule of law and will be met with a significant response”. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Guaidó said his country had a chance to leave chaos behind and claimed his economically devastated nation was living through an “almost magical moment” in its newly revived quest for democracy. “Frustration has turned to hope. People are daring to dream again,” he said ahead of further rallies planned this week to step up pressure for a change of leadership. All rise – Half of magistrates courts in England and Wales have closed since 2010, leaving defendants, witnesses, police, lawyers and JPs having to travel huge distances to court. Since the coalition government came to power in 2010, 162 of the 323 magistrates courts in England and Wales have shut – a loss of 50.2% of the estate. Most have been sold. The controversial Ministry of Justice (MOJ) efficiency exercise is directly tied to the need to generate funds for a £1.2bn digital modernisation programme, which came under the spotlight following a meltdown of court computer systems. Lending boom – Britain’s biggest lender is to offer 100% mortgages to first-time buyers in a return to lending last seen before the financial crash – but only if the buyer has family that can stand behind the loan. Under the new Lloyds Bank “Lend A Hand” deal, a first-time buyer will be able to borrow up to £500,000 for a new home, without putting down a penny of deposit. It marks a major expansion into the first-time buyer market, as most other mainstream lenders demand a minimum deposit worth 5% of the property purchase price, although Barclays has offered a similar “family springboard” deal. Lloyds has priced the mortgages to undercut the Barclays offer. Bear necessities – A little boy lost in the freezing woods of North Carolina says a bear helped him survive two nights alone before rescuers found him. The Craven county sheriff, Chip Hughes, said three-year-old Casey Hathaway, “did say that he had a friend in the woods that was a bear that was with him”. The claim was reportedly repeated by the boy’s aunt Breanna Hathaway. “He said he hung out with a bear for two days,” Hathaway wrote in a Facebook post. Whether the grizzly was real or imagined, rescuers have hailed the boy’s tenacity given he was not dressed for the cold and temperatures dipped below freezing. What is it like to be the focus of an online conspiracy theory that goes viral? Four people whose lives were upended by conspiracists tell the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington how they dealt with it – and why it could happen to anyone. Plus: Jamie Fullerton on the monkey gangs of Kuala Lumpur whose jungle habitat is being swallowed by the city. Freida Pinto’s rise to fame in Slumdog Millionaire was followed by a string of films that essentially relied on her looks. And she’s sick of it. As Simon Hattenstone writes, the Indian-born star’s newest film, Love Sonia, about a desperate sex worker in a brutal tale of trafficking is everything viewers have come not to expect: a complex, edgy and selfish character caught in a brutal world. Pinto first saw the script a decade ago. But in hindsight, she says, she wasn’t ready for Love Sonia. She was too unworldly. “I thought it was exaggerated when I read the script. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.” Later, when she met trafficked sex workers advising on the film, she began to think that, if anything, the story had been understated. Off-screen, Pinto has been a force for good, consistently campaigning for the rights of women. Does she see a contradiction between her feminism and the films she has made? “Completely! There was no way I agreed with so much that I did in my early career.” As for now, Pinto could not be happier that nobody is likely to come out of Love Sonia discussing her looks. On its release in India, the film was not been warmly received. “People haven’t welcomed a film that exposes the underbelly of the country. It hasn’t done well.” But she says she is not going to judge the film’s success by its box office takings – highlighting the trafficking scandal is far more important. Mauricio Pochettino has defended his record at Tottenham and argued claiming silverware would serve only to “build egos” rather than maintain progress after seeing his team knocked out of a second domestic cup competition in four days. Novak Djokovic is the best men’s tennis player in the world: now, and for the foreseeable future, perhaps until he chooses to retire, which looks to be a few years away yet, he hinted after the Australian Open final. At the age of 21, Naomi Osaka has two grand slam titles and, when she wakes up on Monday morning, she will also find No 1 next to her name on the world ranking list. A return to the England side for Stuart Broad is on the cards with selectors having to respond not only to a batting collapse but also to a bowling attack that became ever more toothless and untrustworthy as the first Test against West Indies progressed. And the Premier League’s renewed hunt for a new chief executive is continuing to focus on the broadcasting industry, despite knockbacks from two leading TV figures, with several other top executives of major TV companies under consideration. In this crucial Brexit week, the Confederation of British Industry has warned businesses are “praying for an extension of article 50” rather than no-deal. In a gloomy assessment, it also says companies’ reported growth prospects were at their weakest for almost six years. Asian shares gained overnight on optimism over the Trump administration’s temporary deal on ending the US government shutdown. However, the FTSE100 looks like dropping 0.3% according to futures trading, while the pound is at $1.32 and €1.155 as it looks to build on its recent strong gains. The papers With the next vital Brexit vote coming up tomorrow, it’s not surprising that many of the papers splash on the story. “Trapped in the EU for ever” is the Daily Express headline. The Telegraph quotes Boris Johnson in its headline: “Boris: May is fighting to scrap backstop”. The Times has “Loyalists threaten to desert May in push for soft Brexit” and the i has: “Gone in 60 days?”. The Guardian’s headline is “No new deal on backstop, says Ireland” but it reserves its splash for “Half of all magistrate courts axed since 2010”. The FT’s Brexit story is: “Brexit puts brake on London housing market as sales fall back to 2008 lows” but its main headline is: “Beijing’s EU envoy rails at ‘slander’ against Huawei over security fears”. The Sun blows its own trumpet with: “Egypt Brit saved by the Sun”, reporting that Laura Palmer, from Hull, who was jailed in 2017 for smuggling painkillers, has been freed after being granted a pardon. The Mail leads on its great British spring clean campaign: “What a start to our big spring clean!”. And the Mirror leads on its own investigation: “Stop online giants who help kill our kids” is its headline. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comPolitical and economic problems loom heavily over the global elite as they gather at Davos for the World Economic Forum. But is there any political will to fix them? The World Economic Forum sees its role as “improving the state of the world”. But the political analyst and author Anand Giridharadas speaks for many critics when he dubs Davos “a family reunion for the people who broke the world”. After decades championing globalisation, the WEF now fears that rising inequality, protectionism and nationalist politics could send the world economy “sleepwalking” into another crisis. As the WEF’s founder, Klaus Schwab, puts it: “Globalisation produces winners and losers and there are many more winners in the last 24, 25, 30 years – but now we have to look after the losers, those who have been left behind.” Schwab will be pushing politicians and business chiefs towards a new “inclusive” globalisation to fix the gap between the “precariat” many and the privileged few. But will this address the concerns of the many millions who feel the system is rigged against them, and who will never make the trek to Davos? Realistically, the WEF will be wrestling with the same problems in 2020 … and 2021 ... and beyond. After years of warnings, most business leaders, politicians and economists seem to have got the message. Climate change and extreme weather events have rocketed to the top of the list of dangers facing the world economy, according to the WEF’s annual survey of global risks. Unfortunately, worsening international relations and rising nationalism means it’s even harder to get global agreement to address the problem, even though California’s wildfires and Europe’s recent floods have shown the human and economic cost of inaction. Fortunately, the WEF can turn to Sir David Attenborough to drive the message home. The broadcaster and naturalist (at 92, the oldest delegate risking Davos’s treacherously icy pavements) will address delegates – and warn that “never has an understanding of the natural world been so important to ensure a safe future for our planet”. The WEF has made mental health a key theme at Davos this year. The forum will address fears that depression, anxiety and other mental health problems are rising, and being neither measured correctly nor properly addressed. Prince William will challenge business leaders to improve emotional and mental wellbeing in their workplaces. He’s appearing on a “mental health matters” panel alongside the New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. Kensington Palace says the Duke of Cambridge will “use the opportunity to highlight his belief that the world’s major employers have a vital role to play in promoting mentally healthy societies and workplaces”. Thrilled the Duke of Cambridge is taking part in the first ever plenary panel on global mental health @Davos later this month. Thank you @wef for making mental health a priority in 2019. Looking forward to being there for @UnitedGMH asking leaders to make sure 2019 is #timetoact https://t.co/WtSDoF2kah Hopes that Davos might deliver a breakthrough in the US-China trade war were dashed when Donald Trump benched the entire White House delegation on Friday. In their absence, Wang Qishan, China’s vice-president, will give a special address. Behind the scenes, Wang will be pressed about how much damage the US trade war is causing, and whether China’s economy is slowing as quickly as some economists fear. It’s just a shame that the US treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin; the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo; the secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross; and the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, will not be there. The new wave of populist leaders will be rubbing padded snow jackets with more mainstream politicians. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new right-wing president, will fill Trump’s snow boots by giving a special address on Tuesday, allowing him to set the agenda for the opening day. Bolsonaro said he would be presenting “a different Brazil, free of ideological ties and widespread corruption”. His tax cuts and privatisations are popular with investors, so Davos will probably give him a rousing reception. Human rights groups, though, would like to challenge Bolsonaro on his autocratic policies and recent loosening of gun laws. Mostrarei nosso desejo de fazer comércio com o mundo todo, prezando pela liberdade econômica, acordos bilaterais e saúde fiscal. Com esses pilares, o Brasil caminhará na direção do pleno emprego e da prosperidade. Espero trazer boas experiências e avanços ao nosso país! George Soros, scourge of the populists, will probably take a few potshots at the absent Trump. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, won’t catch them in person, though – he’s remaining in Paris to hold a national debate in response to the gilets jaunes crisis. Theresa May is another Davos no-show, choosing to stay with the Brexit crisis in Westminster. Philip Hammond is expected to attend, and will get his ear bent by increasingly anxious UK business leaders worried about no deal. The WEF will hold a session on Brexit; wisely, they’ve held it back until the end of the week. As of Friday, no speakers had been named either ... The PM might not mind missing out, given her distaste for the “citizens of the world” who flock to Davos each year. she doesn't want to hang out with the *citizens of snow wear* https://t.co/TVRFXO0JXFSeemingly harmless charity donation bins have become what advocates for the homeless are calling “death traps” following multiple incidents of people dying after getting stuck in bins. Most recently, a 35-year-old Canadian woman was found dead in a clothing donation bin in Toronto on Tuesday morning. Police cut open the donation bin in an attempt to rescue the woman, but she was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Canadian Press. Toronto’s mayor, John Tory, said the city is investigating the safety and design of the bins. Her death marks the eighth incident in Canada since 2015. While rare, similar incidents occur in the US. In November, a 30-year-old woman was found dead in a donation bin in Petaluma, California. A little more than two years earlier, a 40-year-old woman died in a donation bin in Alameda, California, just 50 miles away. Both women were believed to be homeless. People often get stuck in the bins after trying to retrieve items inside or in attempts to seek shelter in harsh weather. Jeremy Hunka, spokesman for the Canadian charity Union Gospel Mission, told the Canadian Press the bins “have inadvertently become death traps”. He said: “It boggles my mind that they’re still in operation.” Charities rely on the the bins to turn easy-to-donate items into funding, often selling the items to thrift stores. Most bins operate like a mail or a safety deposit box: an opening hatch prevents items from entering the bin until the slot is closed. While this keeps what’s inside the bin safe, it makes them especially dangerous for anyone trying to enter one. “There’s a small opening, and when you start to get in, it gets even smaller and smaller,” said Ray Taheri, a senior instructor of mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, who has formed a taskforce to try to make the bins safer. Once a person is stuck in the opening of the bin, “inside is very dark and confined, and your entire body weight is on your chest”. After the string of deaths, charities in Canada have started to rethink the design of the bins. Diabetes Canada announced they are in the process of retrofitting their bins to make them less dangerous for anyone trying to get inside. “Approximately 4,000 Diabetes clothing donation bins across Canada are in the process of being retrofitted or modified in an effort to prevent injury or death to those misusing or trying to gain entry to its clothing donation bins,” the charity said in a statement. Non-profit Inclusion BC said it will remove all 146 bins in Vancouver after a man was found dead in one of their bins on 30 December 2018. The bins will be in storage until safety modifications are made. Taheri says that getting rid of the thousands of different charity bins across Vancouver alone is probably unfeasible, given the costs and space necessary. But the recent deaths has sparked a sense of urgency to find a solution. “These donation bins could be safer,” Taheri said. “This something happening in our home, a community close to our hearts. Something has to be done.”In my house, porridge features mostly at breakfast time, as a bunch of sweet, oaty variations on a wintry theme; and because we have two little mouths to feed. In many parts of the world, however, the most wonderful savoury delicacies share a texture with our morning grub, but they are definitely not quick solutions for parents rushing to join the school run. Today’s savoury porridges hail from three different corners of the world. They take a little time and a bit of dedication, but all deliver warmth and comfort that make them perfect for a cold January night. Rayu is a Japanese chilli oil often enjoyed with rice, ramen or gyoza. My take on it includes tangerine zest, which sweetens and enriches the oil. Make it even if you’re not doing the congee and keep it in the fridge for whenever you need a bit of extra spice on your food. Prep 20 minCook 1 hrServes 4 80ml vegetable oil8 spring onions, 6 finely chopped, 2 finely sliced, to serve4cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely minced6 garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced Salt180g short-grain brown rice50g dried shiitake mushrooms, roughly chopped150g rainbow radishes, cut into thin rounds2 tbsp rice-wine vinegar½ tsp caster sugar50g crispy shallots, shop-bought or homemade For the rayu1 tsp aleppo chilli flakes (or ½ tsp if using a spicier chilli flake)1½ tbsp sweet pepper flakes1½ tbsp sesame seeds, toasted1 tbsp black sesame seeds, toasted2½ tsp grated tangerine zest2½ tbsp soy sauce Put the oil, chopped onions, ginger, garlic and a quarter-teaspoon of salt in a large, high-sided saute pan on a medium heat. Fry for 12 minutes, stirring often, until soft and very aromatic; turn down the heat if it begins to colour or sizzle too much. Strain through a sieve and reserve the oil. Return half the drained solids to the pan, and put the oil and the rest of the spring onion mixture in a small bowl. In two batches, blitz the rice in a spice grinder or pulse in a food processor, until the grains are broken up. Add the shiitake in two to three batches, and pulse until chopped into roughly 1cm pieces. Tip the rice mix into the spring onion pan and put on a medium-high heat. Add a litre and a half of water, a teaspoon and a quarter of salt, bring to a simmer, then lower the heat to medium and leave to cook for 30 minutes, stirring often, until it’s very well cooked and the consistency of wet porridge. While the rice is cooking, put the radishes in a bowl with the vinegar, sugar and a quarter-teaspoon of salt, and leave to pickle lightly. Stir all the rayu ingredients into the bowl with the reserved spring onion and oil mixture. Divide the cooked rice between four bowls and top each portion with rayu. Garnish with the pickled radishes, sliced spring onions and crispy shallots, and serve. This is an epic dish in the best sense of the word. Yes, it takes a bit of effort, both in prep and in beating the chicken and cracked wheat, but the result will surprise, delight and fill you up. The word madrooba hails from the Gulf and translates as “beaten”, after the process of making it. Jareesh is a form of ground wheat that can be found in Middle Eastern stores, but you can also use coarse bulgur wheat. Any leftovers keep well in the fridge and can be reheated another day. Prep 40 minCook 3 hr 20 minServes 8 1 whole chicken (about 1.4kg)5 onions, 1 peeled and cut into 4 wedges, 2 peeled and finely chopped and 2 peeled and thinly sliced1 head garlic, halved widthways, plus 8 cloves, peeled and crushed2 cinnamon sticksSalt and black pepper165ml olive oil2½cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated4 green chillies, 3 finely chopped seeds and all, 1 thinly sliced1 tbsp ground cinnamon1 tbsp ground cumin1 tbsp ground coriander1½ tsp turmeric7-8 plum tomatoes, coarsely grated and skins discarded (600g net weight)2½ tbsp tomato paste30g coriander leaves, roughly chopped30g parsley leaves, roughly chopped30g dill leaves, roughly chopped300g jareesh or 150g coarse bulgur wheat, washed until the water runs clear2 tbsp lemon juice500g swiss chard, stems discarded and leaves roughly shredded (320g)1½ tsp aleppo chilli flakes (or ¾ tsp if using a spicier variety), to garnish Put the chicken, onion wedges, head of garlic, cinnamon sticks, two litres of water and two teaspoons of salt in a large stockpot for which you have a lid. Bring to a boil on a medium-high heat, skimming off the froth as you go, then turn down the heat to medium-low, cover and leave to simmer gently for 80 minutes, or until the chicken is falling off the bone. Transfer the chicken to a bowl, then roughly pull the meat off the bone, shredding it as you go and discarding the skin, cartilage and bones. Strain the stock into a second pan and discard the solids. Measure out 1.7 litres if you are using jareesh or 1.2 litres if you are using bulgur (save any extra stock for another use). On a medium-high flame, heat four tablespoons of oil in a large, heavy-based cast-iron pot for which you have a lid. Add the chopped onion and fry, stirring occasionally, for 12 minutes, until softened and deeply browned. Add the ginger, chopped chillies and two-thirds of the crushed garlic, cook for another minute, then stir in the spices, tomatoes, tomato paste, two-thirds of the herbs, two and a quarter teaspoons of salt and a good grind of pepper, and cook for seven minutes, or until thickened. Add the jareesh or bulgur, shredded chicken and stock, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to its lowest setting, cover the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, for an hour, or until the liquid has been absorbed and the wheat has cooked through. Off the heat, whisk the mix vigorously for 10 minutes, until it resembles porridge, then stir in the remaining herbs and lemon juice. Meanwhile, heat three tablespoons of oil in a large saute pan on a medium heat. Fry the sliced onion, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes, or until caramelised. Turn the heat to medium-high, add the remaining crushed garlic and cook for one minute. Stir in the chard in batches, add a third of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper, and cook for three more minutes, until wilted. To serve, spoon the madrooba into a large, shallow serving bowl. Top with the chard mixture, sliced chilli, remaining four tablespoons of oil and a sprinkling of chilli flakes. Pirão is a traditional dish from the north-east of Brazil made by beating coarse cassava root flour into hot stock. It’s typically eaten alongside a fish stew called moqueca, but I believe it deserves main-dish status in its own right. You can get coarse cassava flour online, and in Brazilian and West African shops (where it’s called gari); failing that, use the same amount of quick-cook polenta. Prep 25 minCook 1 hr 25 minServes 6 12 raw head‑on, shell-on tiger prawns¼ tsp sweet paprika6 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed105ml olive oilSalt1 onion, peeled and finely chopped 3 tomatoes, finely chopped (300g net weight)1 scotch bonnet chilli, left whole but with a lengthways slit cut into it3 tbsp tomato paste5g coriander leaves, finely chopped, plus 2 tbsp whole leaves, to serve4 sea bream fillets (about 120g each), skinned and cut in half250ml shellfish or fish stock1 green chilli, finely sliced (and deseeded if you prefer less heat) 2 tsp white-wine vinegar150g coarse cassava flour or quick-cook polenta1 lime, cut into wedges, to serve For the marinated prawns, twist off the prawn heads and put them in a bowl. Leaving the tails intact, peel and discard the prawn shells, then de-vein the prawns and use a small, sharp knife to open them up so they are semi-butterflied. Put the prawns in a medium bowl with the paprika, half the garlic, two tablespoons of oil and a quarter-teaspoon of salt. Mix together and leave to marinate for 20 or minutes. Meanwhile, heat three tablespoons of oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan on a medium flame, then fry the prawn heads, stirring, for about five minutes, until crisp and bright pink. Use a potato masher (or metal whisk) to crush the heads and release their liquids and flavour into the oil. Strain through a fine sieve, reserving the oil, and discard the heads. Return the oil to the pan and put on a medium-high heat. Add another tablespoon of oil and the remaining garlic, and fry for a minute, stirring, until lightly coloured. Add the onion, fry for three minutes, then add the tomatoes, scotch bonnet, tomato paste, coriander, fish and a teaspoon and a quarter of salt, and fry for five minutes, stirring every now and then. Pour in the stock and 850ml water, turn down the heat to medium and simmer for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the green chilli and vinegar in a small bowl with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt. Lift out 120g of the fish from the stock and set aside. With the pan still on a medium heat, sprinkle the surface with a third of the cassava flour or polenta, whisking constantly as you go to avoid any lumps. Don’t worry about the fish breaking apart – that’s the intention. Slowly pour in the remaining cassava flour or polenta in two more batches, whisking constantly. Once it’s all fully incorporated into the stock, turn down the heat to low and whisk for eight minutes more, until the mix is thickened and bubbling, then turn off the heat. Put a large, nonstick frying pan on a high heat and, once very hot, lay in the prawns, spaced apart, and sear for 90 seconds on each side, until golden. Scrape the prawn marinade into the pan with the reserved fish, and warm up. Transfer the pirão to a large, shallow bowl and top with the prawns and fish. Toss the remaining coriander with the marinated green chillies, and spoon over the top. Squeeze the lime and drizzle the remaining two tablespoons of oil over, and serve. The Guardian aims to publish recipes for sustainable fish. For ratings in your region, check: UK; Australia; US.Theresa May’s EU emissary, Olly Robbins, has been working up secret contingency plans for cross-party talks aimed at testing MPs’ backing for up to six different Brexit options were the prime minister to lose Tuesday’s vote by a significant margin, the Guardian has learned. With parliament all but certain to reject her painstakingly negotiated deal in the “meaningful vote”, Robbins has been helping to scope out options for what happens next. Perhaps the most contentious issue. In order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, a backstop arrangement that keeps the UK in the customs union and requires Northern Ireland to follow single market rules would prevail until a free-trade agreement is reached that avoids such a frontier. The UK and EU negotiators have agreed the former should honour those commitments it made while a member of the bloc – finally settling on a figure of £39bn. The deal would secure a status quo transition period to negotiate the nature of the future relationship, and during which the UK could begin to make trade deals with third countries. A fraught issue at the outset, an agreement was reached relatively quickly that would see the UK respect the rights of EU citizens who arrive before the end of the transition period, which could be in 2022, and vice versa. The document is accompanied by a political declaration that sketches out the future relationship between the two parties – focusing primarily on trade and security. One approach being seriously considered is a period of negotiation that could be overseen by civil servants, with the aim of testing which of up to six options could command a majority in the Commons. “Olly has been on a mission,” said one Whitehall source. It has not yet been decided whether the government would open the door to direct talks with the Labour leadership over what should happen next – or seek to work through backbench channels, the Guardian understands. Whitehall’s role could reflect that played by senior Cabinet Office civil servants, including the then cabinet secretary, the late Jeremy Heywood, during coalition talks after the 2010 general election, which resulted in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance. 11.30am The Commons begins sitting. The first item is questions to Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and his ministerial team. These are meant to last 30 minutes but can run slightly over. Then the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams briefly introduces a private member’s bill on public sector supply chains under a 10-minute rule motion. After midday If there are no urgent questions or ministerial statements to delay proceedings, the final day of debate on Theresa May’s Brexit deal – officially known as section 13(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 – begins. It will be opened for the government by the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox. Before 7pm May will make a final closing speech for the government, appealing for support for her deal. From 7pm Voting begins. However, before the crucial vote, MPs must vote on the four amendments accepted by the Speaker. One amendment, tabled by the Tory Hugo Swire, has been accepted by the government. At some point between around 7.30pm to 9.30pm MPs finally vote on the deal, as amended. MPs could then vote on whatever Brexit plan emerged from the talks as most likely to command majority support – potentially including the Norway-style approach championed by the former Tory minister Nick Boles. However, it is not expected that the process would consider options that involve reversing the referendum result. May has given little indication even to her cabinet that she is willing to consider alternatives to her plan, and if she lost by a narrow margin could still decide to return to Brussels in a bid to tease out more concessions. Tory backbenchers, and some cabinet ministers, would also be likely to react furiously if May made any direct overtures to Labour. An amendment tabled by the Conservative backbencher Andrew Murrison is aimed at sending a signal to Brussels that MPs will only accept May’s deal with a time-limited backstop. But if it failed to secure much support, it could suggest May’s next step must be more radical than a tweak to the backstop, if she wanted to secure backing for her deal – and Robbins is helping to examine how she could proceed. May phoned trade union leaders, including Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, last week – a move that both union sources and Jeremy Corbyn’s allies regarded as an attempt to signal a willingness to compromise with Labour. Another source claimed May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, had warned the prime minister that a permanent customs union would be the Labour leader’s “red line” for entering talks – something she remains reluctant to entertain. Government strategists believe Corbyn wants to avoid being forced into supporting a second referendum – and hope he might seize on the option of helping to shape the Brexit deal instead. Labour sources said they would be wary of entering into any kind of negotiation with the prime minister. Corbyn is likely to press ahead with calling a vote of no confidence in the government immediately if May were defeated on Tuesday night. A Downing Street source said: “If we don’t win the vote tonight, we would have to make some decisions pretty quickly.”Two decades later, Phil Masinga had not forgotten the advice Howard Wilkinson gave him on his first day at Leeds United, in the summer of 1994. “He told me not be scared of anyone,” recalled Masinga when we spoke for the last time at the end of 2015. “Howard said I was as good as everyone else and told me just to do my best because I was capable of being a top player. Gordon Strachan was very friendly and tried hard to make us feel comfortable. He’s the one who helped me open a bank account.” Born and raised in the township of Khuma, outside Klerksdorp in South Africa’s remote North West Province, Masinga – whose death from cancer at the age of 49 was announced over the weekend – starred as a striker for Jomo Cosmos and Mamelodi Sundowns in his homeland before being brought to Elland Road after turning down Sir Bobby Robson’s overtures at Sporting Lisbon. As part of the £250,000 deal, defender Lucas Radebe also sign for Leeds, although “Chippa” arrived three weeks before his compatriot “Rhoo” and settled in far quicker than the man who went on to become one of the club’s greatest icons. “We weren’t used to the weather and we struggled a little bit – we kept each other warm at times,” Radebe told the BBC this week. “Phil was a big hit with the team and the players. I looked up to him and I think he inspired me the most. It was absolutely great the way he adapted to the situation.” Having made his international debut in Bafana Bafana’s historic inaugural match in 1992, Masinga became the first black South African player to play in the Premier League, a few months after Nelson Mandela had been elected president. He scored two hat-tricks in pre-season and then found the net just three minutes into the 3-2 defeat to Chelsea on 27 August 1994. Yet Radebe’s debut against Sheffield Wednesday a few weeks later – he was mysteriously deployed on the left-wing by Wilkinson – was not the first time two South Africans had featured in the same Leeds side. Gerry Francis and Albert Johannesson were selected by Don Revie for the fixture against Stoke in April 1961, with Johannesson going to become the first black player to feature in an FA Cup final four years later. Johannesson’s body was discovered in a rundown flat in Leeds almost a week after had died in September 1995 – Radebe attended the funeral, but Masinga was unable to because he was in Wilkinson’s squad for the next match. “I was a little bit sad because of the circumstances of his death,” he remembered. “I wish that I could have met him before he died because I never had an opportunity to shake hands with him.” The signing of the Ghana striker Tony Yeboah a few days after Masinga had scored a memorable hat-trick in extra-time against Walsall in the FA Cup proved to be the beginning of the end for his Leeds career. While Radebe went on to establish himself as captain under George Graham, his friend was sold to the Swiss side St Gallen in 1996 having made 31 appearances for the Yorkshire club. Masinga moved to Italy and enjoyed successful spells with Salernitana and Bari, for whom he scored more than 30 goals in four Serie A seasons, before scoring the goal against the Republic of Congo that took South Africa to their first World Cup finals. But he was relentlessly booed by home supporters in Bafana Bafana’s next match after missing some golden chances and later admitted he had come close to quitting international football ahead of the tournament in France. “It was tough, it was killing me,” he said. “I couldn’t even buy newspapers anymore because I didn’t want to see what they would be writing about me.” Masinga saw his hopes of a reunion with Strachan at Coventry ended when his work permit application was rejected in 2001 and he retired due to a knee injury after a short spell in the United Arab Emirates, returning to South Africa to coach at former club Cosmos. Within five years, he was back at his mother’s house in Khuma having been forced to sell all of his memorabilia, including his 1996 Africa Cup of Nations winners’ medal. “I made some very bad investments because of a lack of financial knowledge,” admitted Masinga. “Some people are fortunate to get financial skills through studies or careers. I had to acquire mine through the ‘university of life’.” Having left at 14, Masinga went back to school and studied management science at Nelson Mandela Bay university. But despite hoping to one day return to top-level football as an administrator, Masinga was admitted to Tshepong hospital in Klerksdorp in November before being diagnosed with cancer. “Very sad news for South African football, we lost a true football legend in Phil ‘Chippa’ Masinga,” wrote Steven Pienaar on Twitter. “He paved the way for all South African footballers in the UK. That goal at FNB Stadium that took us to our 1st World Cup will always be on my mind.”An overlooked note that may have been written by Jane Austen’s great-niece Fanny Caroline Lefroy could put an end to the long-running question mark over an oil painting its owners believe is a depiction of the novelist as a teenager – a claim that has long been disputed by art experts. Showing a young girl in a flowing white muslin dress with a cap of brown hair and a charming half-smile, the painting is owned by the Rice family, direct descendants of one of Austen’s brothers. The Rices claim it shows Austen herself, and that it was commissioned from the portrait painter Ozias Humphry in 1788, when 12-year-old Jane and her sister Cassandra were taken to visit their great-uncle Francis in Kent. According to the Rices, Humphry’s 1788 accounts, now held at the British Library, list a bill to Francis Austen for 13 guineas. But the identity of the painting has proved controversial for decades. Experts including the National Portrait Gallery, which granted the picture a licence for sale abroad because it believed it was not of Austen, have said that the style of the dress dates it to later than 1800. The doubt over the picture’s subject meant that when the Rice portrait was put up for auction by Christie’s in 2007, it failed to sell. Were the portrait authenticated, it would be the only professional likeness of one of the world’s most beloved authors. There are currently only two accepted portraits of Austen, both sketches by her sister Cassandra, although in 2011 scholar Paula Byrne claimed to have found a lost portrait of the novelist. Now the Rice family have uncovered a new piece of evidence they say adds further weight to their claim. The unsigned note believed to have been written by Lefroy has been passed to the Rices through family links. Kept in Austen’s writing desk, it had been overlooked, said John Nettlefold, son of the painting’s owner Anne Rice, until its current owner noticed the small brown envelope containing it was marked “history of the portrait of Jane Austen”. Lefroy was born three years after Austen’s death, but her mother, who was the daughter of the novelist’s brother James, knew Austen well. The note reads: “The history of the portrait of Jane Austen now in the possession of Morland Rice her Gt nephew. Old Dr Newman, fellow of Magdalen years ago told him that he had a portrait of Jane Austen the novelist, that had been in his family many years. He stated that it was done at Bath when she was about 15 & he promised to leave him (Morland Rice) the picture. A few months before Dr Newman died, he wrote to a friend of his (a Dr Bloxam) sending him a picture as a farewell present & added ‘I have another picture that I wish to go to your neighbour Morland Rice. This a portrait of Jane Austen the novelist by Zoffany. Her picture was given to my step-mother by her friend Colonel Austen of Kippendon [sic], Kent because she was a great admirer of her works.’” The note names the artist Johann Zoffany, to whom the painting has been attributed in the past. It is unsigned, but after comparing it with other documents held in the Hampshire Record Office, the Rices claim it is very likely the hand of Lefroy. “This came out of the blue,” said Nettlefold. “The first thing we wanted to find out was, was it Fanny Caroline Lefroy? So we had four people look at it. There are lots of examples of her handwriting in the Hampshire Record Office, and we believe it is … 100% certainty – an absolute match.” Kelly M McDonald, an independent scholar who is researching the letters and diaries of Emma Austen-Leigh, the wife of Jane Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, agreed. “The handwriting of the snippet is consistent with the signed (FC Lefroy) letter in the Hampshire Record Office,” said McDonald. “There is the ‘A’ with its loop at the top; the lowercase ‘g’; even the truncated downstroke to the lowercase ‘y’. The “I” is top-heavy in both. But look at the ‘S’: very consistent.” According to Nettlefold, the letter is sufficient evidence to establish the painting’s subject as Austen. “This is written before there was any kind of issue,” he said. “The problems only started in the 1930s … Unfortunately, there was then an institutional enmity towards it and it just got worse and worse. “But all I can say is, this note was written by Jane’s great-niece at a time when there was no controversy over this picture whatsoever. She’s absolutely emphatic about the fact it’s a portrait of Jane Austen. In the note she says exactly where it came from – why do we have to presume all these people are liars? If she was lying and it was a letter to someone else, fine. But why would you write a note to yourself and lie to yourself?” In 2012, digital photographic analysis revealed writing on the painting that appeared to show the novelist’s name, and also that of Humphry, as well as the date 1789. The Rice family say that there are now five pieces of primary evidence that point towards the portrait being Austen, and are pursuing a meeting with the director of the National Portrait Gallery to discuss its authenticity. The Rice family would like to sell the portrait, if and when it is officially certified as being of Austen, said Nettlefold: “My mother absolutely wants this to be recognised and loved by Jane Austen scholars and fans around the world. It just seems to me that it’s incredibly sad that this beautiful picture is not recognised for what it is.” Currently, the painting is kept in a vault, “where only we can see her”, said Nettlefold. “It will be awesome when she is on a wall where all who love her work will have access. She needs to go to a great gallery.” A statement from the National Portrait Gallery said: “We have read the latest article on the Rice portrait with interest. We will add this and any new evidence provided to the live research file which is maintained on the portrait.”“I don’t know if you want me to talk about that picture,” rugby lad Shaquille asks politics student Demi. “You’ve got something in your mouth …” His date looks mortified. And so begins Phone Swap, a new dating show in which two singletons exchange phones with potential partners. Now I know what you’re thinking: if you were going on a programme where someone had to look through your phone, wouldn’t you clean it up a little? Check your camera roll, add some things to make you look like a better person – meditation sounds, language apps? But alas, it really does appear that the show-makers stopped their charges having a quick blitz … or perhaps Demi just forgot to bin her nudes. BBC3 has been playing with this conceit for a while now, with previous shorts featuring colleagues and family members swapping phones. But it’s the dating show format which best suits this kind of close surveillance – do you really want to know that your workmates have been Googling double-ended dildos as a ‘joke’, as seen in a pilot? As a TV premise for single people, it is current (who doesn’t have their phone on them 25 hours a day?) and intimate (who doesn’t have at least one thing on their phone they wouldn’t want a relative to see?) Actually, the answer is Maisie, who only saves things that she would be ok with her dad or gran seeing; Shaquille, who has matched with half of Buckinghamshire on Tinder, is perplexed, describing her phone as “quite PG”. Interestingly, Phone Swap is actually a “twin show”. Snapchat’s series of the exact same name, also shown on Fox in the US, offers a similar window into millennial dating habits, albeit in a slightly more stylised way, with the dates taking place in a shiny bar rather than on picnic benches. Fox exec Stephen Brown has dubbed it “a profound social experiment that speaks to the need to find love, to what we hold close to us and this phone being the repository of everything in our lives”. In reality, though, this social experiment translates into rifling through porn and texts from exes, and dealing with the odd overly-sentimental date. Because, really, the phones are just another gimmick in what are effectively a set of blind dates. The fact that Shaquille and Maisie get on in the BBC series isn’t because she doesn’t have an album full of other peoples’ nudes, but because of a shared interest in musicals. If anything, trawling through each others’ phones is little more than a drawn-out icebreaker. Unlike Channel 4’s recent hit The Circle – in which contestants created their own potentially fake social media avatars, and questioned the nature of online connections – both the US and UK iterations of Phone Swap treat the content of peoples’ mobiles as an opportunity to gawp, flirt and jump to conclusions about everything from sexual preferences to drinking habits. And contrary to the likes of MTV’s Catfish – the show that gave rise to the term for creating a fake online persona – it cuts to the chase, something Shaquille appreciates. “I guess you save yourself a lot of time and grief by just having a quick look through their phone,” he says, sounding worryingly au fait with the whole thing. While these twin shows do seem perfect fodder for our constantly tech-craving times, swapping phones may well prove too repetitive a conceit to underpin a long-standing dating programme. Besides, you get the feeling that participants of such hyper-social shows are probably as motivated by finding fame as they are finding love: Shaquille repeatedly mentions his “secret” interest in performing arts, while Steven Brandon from the US Phone Swap has featured on another, equally self explanatory show named Dating Naked. However, as a short, sharp social media experiment it is charming in its way. Just don’t expect flicking through someone’s dating apps to be an efficient replacement for actually going on one yourself.Growing tension between the world’s major powers is the most urgent global risk and makes it harder to mobilise collective action to tackle climate change, according to a report prepared for next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF’s annual global risks report found that a year of extreme weather-related events meant environmental issues topped the list of concerns in a survey of around 1,000 experts and decision-makers. But with Donald Trump announcing protectionist measures aimed at China and the European Union in 2018, the report said the international cooperation needed to limit further global warming was breaking down. “Global risks are intensifying but the collective will to tackle them appears to be lacking. Instead, divisions are hardening,” the report said, noting that nine out of 10 people polled said they expected relations between the leading powers to worsen in 2019. “The world’s move into a new phase of strongly state-centred politics, noted in last year’s Global Risks Report, continued throughout 2018.” The global economy slowed in the second-half of 2018 and the report said activity this year would be held back by growing geo-economic tensions, with 88% of respondents expecting further erosion of multilateral trading rules and agreements. Børge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum, said: “With global trade and economic growth at risk in 2019, there is a more urgent need than ever to renew the architecture of international cooperation.” “We simply do not have the gunpowder to deal with the kind of slowdown that current dynamics might lead us towards. What we need now is coordinated, concerted action to sustain growth and to tackle the grave threats facing our world today,” he said. Environmental risks continued to dominate the risks report, although there were also long-term concerns about the dangers posed by cybersecurity breaches in the years ahead. The report tracks five environmental risks: biodiversity loss, extreme weather events, failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation, man-made disasters, and natural disasters. All five are thought to be in the high-impact, high-likelihood category. The risks report is a collaboration between the WEF, the Zurich Insurance Group and the professional services firm Marsh & McLennan. Alison Martin, group chief risk officer at Zurich Insurance Group, said: “2018 was sadly a year of historic wildfires, continued heavy flooding and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. “It is no surprise that in 2019, environmental risks once again dominate the list of major concerns. So, too, does the growing likelihood of environmental policy failure or a lack of timely policy implementation.” Martin said a significant increase in infrastructure was needed to effectively respond to climate change in order to adapt to the new environment and transition to a low-carbon economy. She added: “By 2040, the investment gap in global infrastructure is forecast to reach $18tn against a projected requirement of $97tn. Against this backdrop, we strongly recommend that businesses develop a climate resilience adaptation strategy and act on it now.” Trump’s “America First” agenda has involved pulling the US out of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, the introduction of tariffs on imports into the US, the announcement that American troops are being pulled out of Syria and the decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. The risks report said: “Reconfiguring the relations of deeply integrated countries is fraught with potential risks, and trade and investment relations among many of the world’s powers were difficult during 2018. “Against this backdrop, it is likely to become more difficult to make collective progress on other global challenges – from protecting the environment to responding to the ethical challenges of the fourth industrial revolution.”Darren Currie, the Barnet caretaker manager, praised the fearlessness of his side after they provided the biggest shock of the day in the FA Cup to reach the fourth round by beating Sheffield United at Bramall Lane. The National League side will be the lowest-ranked team in Monday’s draw after a famous 1-0 victory thanks to a first-half penalty by Shaquile Coulthirst and will be joined by Oldham Athletic and Newport County in the hat after both overcame Premier League opposition in the form of Fulham and Leicester respectively, with the Welsh club recording a victory over top-flight opposition for the first time since 1964. But for Currie, the nephew of the former England midfielder, Tony, who is now a director at the Championship club, it was a day to remember after he was handed the manager’s job on a temporary basis only last month. “I’ve been fortunate to have this tie and have it personal to me and now I hope the boys get something they feel is a suitable reward for their efforts,” Currie said. “As soon as I went in the changing room the boys decided to cover me with a bucket of water. I’m so proud; they’ve been brilliant for me the way they performed. I was proud of them in the two previous games but this takes it to a whole new level.” Oldham, who faced opponents who were 59 places ahead of them in the league pyramid, came from behind to defeat Fulham thanks to Callum Lang’s late winner. “It means a lot to me and my family. We’re all Oldham people,” said the caretaker manager, Pete Wild. “We’re from a small town overshadowed by big neighbours and I’m so proud to give something back.” Sheffield United came unstuck after making 10 changes for the third-round tie, while Currie named the same team that drew with Boreham Wood on New Year’s Day. “I don’t really buy into all that resting, if they are tired, they can go to bed early,” Currie added. “I’m absolutely thrilled with the result but I don’t want to get too carried away. We will become the favourite when we host Dorchester next week in the FA Trophy so it’s straight back down to earth.” A seething Chris Wilder ripped into his players after defeat, accusing them of complacency. “I’ve just said to the boys: ‘Don’t go out through the main entrance, you don’t deserve to go out of the main entrance. Try and find a door to sneak out of.’ Because that’s what the performance was. It was one of arrogance; it was off-plan, doing what they wanted to. “The support that our fans gave to the Barnet players was first-class and fully deserved, but they should have booed our own players louder. I knew Barnet would bring their A game to the table, we told the players they would be up for it and raise their game. I should imagine the Barnet players are getting back on the coach are possibly saying: ‘How the hell are they third in the division?’ And what I will say, well, we are third because none of those players that played today are going to force their way into the first team.” The Newport manager, Michael Flynn, added: “It’s almost Roy of the Rovers stuff, I can’t believe it. It’s the first time I’ve beaten a Premier League club as a manager so it’s one I’ll never forget. I’ll have a few drinks with the wife tonight. It’s about being with the people who support you and are with you when times are bad as well, and my wife does that for me.”Long before the end, it was difficult not to feel a certain amount of sympathy for the players of Burton Albion. They had desperately wanted to cherish the memories of their first semi-final and maybe, in time, they will. Not here, though. Not with Manchester City swatting them aside as if dismissing a bothersome fly. Maybe, amid this crushing demolition job, there was even a touch of empathy from the people responsible for overseeing the VAR arrangements. City might, after all, have finished with double figures but for the officials surveying the video and deciding, inexplicably, that Ben Turner did not foul Gabriel Jesus. It was, in fact, a clear penalty. Yet City were already leading 4-0 at the time and Jesus was denied the chance to score a first-half hat-trick. Ultimately, though, that was only a minor detail on a lopsided night when City racked up a record semi-final win in this competition and poor Burton were made to look what they are: a team that is ninth in League One, though closer in points to the relegation places than the playoff positions. Jesus ended up with four goals and City have now scored 16 times in their last two games. The only surprise, indeed, was that the reigning Premier League champions, 9-0 ahead after 84 minutes, stopped there against the team that currently stands 51 places – or a million light years – below them in the league ladder. To put it in perspective, Burton’s opponents in the same week ten years ago were Salisbury Town, in the second round of the FA Trophy, watched by a crowd of 1,472. Their entire squad has been assembled for £700,000 and their top earner, Liam Boyce, is on £3,000 a week – or to put it another way, roughly one hundredth of what Kevin De Bruyne, scorer of the first goal, rakes in. Nigel Clough had described it as hoping for a miracle or, from City’s perspective, the equivalent of a bye. And, sadly, it turned out he was right. Nobody should really be too surprised by the imbalance in talent. Only three teams in history – Swindon in 1968-69, Chester in 1974-75 and Bradford in 2012-13 – have eliminated five sides from higher divisions in a single cup campaign. Burton had managed four but it quickly became apparent their latest opponents had no intentions of going the same way as Burnley, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough. Some of the players in yellow had not even touched the ball when David Silva clipped a cross in to the penalty area for De Bruyne to start the rout. De Bruyne had found a gap between Ben Turner and Reece Hutchinson to score a rare header and, after that, the night became an exercise in damage limitation for Clough’s team. In truth, it probably already was. By half-time, Burton were four down and trying to avoid the kind of ordeal inflicted upon Rotherham during their 7-0 defeat here in the FA Cup on Sunday. City had also racked up seven goals on the last occasion they faced a third-tier side, Barnsley, in 2014 and the Burton fans who had made it through the chaos of the M6 had to fear the worst as the goals started flying in. Briefly, however, something rather strange and unexpected happened, as the visitors started to pass the ball around and even had the temerity to threaten an equaliser. Marcus Myers-Harness scored a hat-trick at the weekend but when a golden opportunity came his way in the 11th minute he blew it, not even hitting the target. If they were to stand any chance, Burton knew they had to be far more clinical and, sure enough, City duly took control with three goals in seven minutes. The first came on the half-hour mark when Leroy Sané played a one-two with Silva to get behind the visiting defence. Sané’s attempt to dink his shot over Bradley Collins was blocked by the goalkeeper but Jesus headed the rebound into an exposed goal. Silva was also involved when City made it 3-0, squaring the ball across the six-yard area for Jesus to angle a low shot in off the post. Burton suddenly looked very lost and soon afterwards Oleksandr Zinchenko’s swirling shot, from an angle when most observers might have anticipated a cross, soared over Collins for the game’s outstanding moment. Jesus completed his hat-trick with a fine leap to convert a Riyad Mahrez cross and his fourth goal of the night was a nicely clipped finish from Sane’s low delivery. In between, the substitute Phil Foden had made it six just a few minutes after replacing De Bruyne. Again, Jesus was prominently involved and, when the Brazilian’s shot was blocked, Foden was following up to tuck the loose ball into the net. By that stage those of us in the press box were flicking through the history books to check City’s records. As it was, they still had some way to go before emulating the 12-0 against Liverpool Stanley from 1890. Mahrez prodded in the ninth and that, thankfully for Burton, was that.A huge queue snakes around Bolton Wanderers football club, but this is no regular Saturday. These supporters are here for a political rally. It is mid-September 2018, and Leave Means Leave has just started a tour of Brexit Britain. This cross-party pressure group was formed in 2016 to ensure a “clean Brexit” – in other words, a hard one. Now, with Brexit looking anything but clean, it has decided to step things up. Half a dozen rallies have been announced, and the organisers promise this is only the start. Outside the ground, people stand next to an open-topped Leave Means Leave battle bus to take selfies. Its colour scheme echoes that of the European Union flag, but with an extra fizz – blue and orange, instead of blue and yellow. The rally is sold out and takes place in a conference centre adjoining the stadium. It is packed with more than a thousand people, most of them middle-aged and elderly. On every seat, there is a little welcome pack for those who have paid their £5.98 to attend: a Stop The Brexit Betrayal banner, a Believe In Britain pen, a union jack flag. Nigel Farage walks in and it feels as if the sea has parted. He holds his hands aloft as the faithful roar him on, a messiah without portfolio Leave Means Leave’s chairman, John Longworth, is the former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, while its founder and vice chair, Richard Tice, is CEO of the asset management group Quidnet Capital. They make for impressive frontmen – Longworth with his record in business, Tice with his Dr Kildare good looks. Longworth tells the audience that, wherever he has worked, he has had a direct link to Brussels. “I knew more than most people how the European Union worked. I knew what they were up to, and that’s why I voted to leave.” But nobody is here to listen to him. “Ladies and gentlemen, the next person needs little introduction,” Tice begins. “He is one of the original Brexiteers. He has slowly but surely changed the course of British political history, and he, without question, will go down as one of the most significant political figures in the last 50 or 60 years… He has survived plane crashes that would have killed most people because he is a true patriot, ladies and gentlemen!” Nigel Farage walks down the centre of the room and it feels as if the sea has parted. He holds his hands aloft as the faithful roar him on, a messiah without portfolio. While he has never been an MP, it is hard to argue with Tice’s proposition that he is one of Britain’s most influential politicians. At a time when rightwing politics are sweeping the world, Farage is the closest thing we have to a Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán or Jair Bolsonaro – a populist insurgent. In 2016, while the mainstream parties encouraged the British public to remain in Europe, he mobilised 17.4 million people to vote leave. Now, after two years away, Farage has returned to the frontline – and he is furious that the “political class” is trying to thwart the will of the people. If he is denied the Brexit he spent a quarter of a century battling for, where will he take the fight next? When he speaks, Farage makes it clear that his is a reluctant return. He could be making squillions in the City, or breaking bread with Trump, rather than addressing the Brexiters of Bolton. “I didn’t think we’d have to do this again,” he tells the crowd. “I thought we’d won on June 23 2016, in what was the greatest democratic exercise in the history of this nation. We voted to leave, and I thought our politicians would deliver. Well, they haven’t. So you know what, we’re back and we’ll fight them again!” Two days before the rally, Donald Tusk, president of the European council, posted a photograph on Instagram of himself offering Theresa May a selection of cakes, accompanied by the caption: “A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries.” It was a reference to an earlier speech he had given, arguing that the prime minister could not cherrypick areas of the single market as Britain leaves the EU. Farage is apoplectic about this slight, which he sees as typical of the arrogance of the EU. His message is simple: no Eurocrat has the right to ridicule a British prime minister, however inept. The EU, Farage states, is supremacist. Why should somebody from Europe have more right to live here than somebody from Africa or Asia? He takes us back to the greatest day of his life. “Let’s remind ourselves what actually happened on June 23 2016, what happened despite the big political parties, despite the big companies, despite the big banks, despite big global politics, including of course President Obama coming to our country” – “Boooo!” shout the crowd – “to tell us what we should do. Despite the threats of disaster. Do you remember? From George Osborne there was going to be an emergency budget… They almost told us that if we dared to vote leave, a plague of black locusts would descend on our land. And despite all those threats, we voted to leave. We voted, folks, for independence.” He says it is now up to Leave Means Leave supporters to ensure that Brexit is not betrayed. “The vast majority of our politicians want to dilute it, suspend it, overturn it. And one or two former senior politicians like Tony Blair” – “Boooo!” “Lock him up!” – “do not want to give us Brexit.” Farage foments the crowd with consummate skill. As he reaches a climax, every word becomes a sentence. “With Mrs May’s Chequers plan, the very best we would get is Brexit. In. Name. Only. And. That. Is. Not. Good. Enough. Is it?” It may be pantomime, but his anger is visceral. The language is clever and deliberate. Like his friend Trump, Farage is careful to distance himself from the political class. He might still be a member of the European parliament, but he is not One of Them. He is here to fight for the Everyman and the Everywoman, struggling to make themselves heard in a world dominated by globalisation and liberal elites. In June 2016, Farage was less subtle. He posed in front of that notorious Ukip poster with the slogan Breaking Point: The EU Has Failed Us All, showing hundreds of refugees, most of them non-white, crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border in 2015. The poster was reported to police for inciting racial hatred, and even Farage’s fellow Brexiter Michael Gove said it made him “shudder”. Since then, Farage’s frame of reference has become more coded. Blair, Obama, the BBC, London: he doesn’t need to say much more than this to generate a boo from his followers – just the name, the institution, the city is enough. It’s dog-whistle politics on a new level, although the crowd occasionally give him away: at a mention of London, an audience member heckles, “They’re all foreigners in London!” Now 54, Farage is in many ways a throwback to a Britannia that ruled the waves, when men and women were addressed as ladies and gentlemen, and prejudices were hidden behind tight smiles. There is a nihilistic sentimentality to his politics; his Britain is one where we still happily smoke our way to cancer and drink ourselves silly before lunch – because no bloody bureaucrat, least of all a European, is going to tell us what’s good for us. But beneath the patriot-next-door persona, Farage has changed in many ways – in his language, his alliances, his status across the world. As Ukip has become increasingly irrelevant (membership was down from 39,000 in July 2016 to 23,600 in August 2018), Farage’s global influence has grown. His friendships now cross continents, but they tend to be with white, male, rightwing populists: Trump, Steve Bannon or Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán. Last April, Farage tweeted his support for Orbán, who has been accused of Islamophobia and antisemitism, calling him “the strongest leader in Europe and the EU’s biggest nightmare”. The pair share an antipathy towards the Jewish Hungarian investor and philanthropist George Soros, who has given away much of his vast fortune through the Open Society foundation, “to build vibrant and tolerant democracies”. In June, Farage told Fox News: “Soros is actively encouraging people to come across the Mediterranean, to flood Europe… Thank goodness Viktor Orbán and Hungary have got the confidence to stand up against him… If you criticise Soros, his media friends accuse you of being an antisemite. It is quite extraordinary. I really feel that Soros in many ways is the biggest danger to the entire western world.” Today’s rally in Bolton is coming to an end, and Tice asks everybody to wave their flags and placards, and to make as big a noise as possible. “Stand up and let the world see that we believe in Britain, and we want to stop the Brexit betrayal!” The room cheers as one. “God bless Great Britain!” shouts a voice from the back of the hall. I start to feel self-conscious. “Aren’t you going to wave your flag?” says the man next to me. On the way out, I meet a woman dressed in floral pinks and purples. Joan Johnson was chair of Bolton Ukip, until she defected back to the Tories after Britain voted to leave; like many Ukip members, she felt the party had served its purpose. But she’s still a Farage fan. Is he Britain’s greatest populist politician? “Yes, I think he is.” What does it mean to be a great populist? “It means he’s a good leader. He’s very outspoken, and he tells the truth. He is popular and he is populist, in that he’s a leader of the people.” “He’s not a typical politician,” adds Diane Parkinson, Johnson’s friend and another former Ukip activist. “There’s no diplomacy, no sitting on the fence. He’s an outcast.” Farage has this in common with other successful populists – an ability to portray himself as the outsider: little David with a fag in one hand and a pint of bitter in the other, kicking out at the all-powerful Goliath. Bolton is an ethnically diverse city; in 2011, 20% of its population did not identify as white British. Yet everybody here today appears to be white. “Yes, I noticed that,” Johnson says, before adding that there is no tension between the city’s white and Asian populations. She does not believe relationships between Bolton’s Asian and European migrants are as harmonious. “A lot of the Indians and Pakistanis have their own businesses and they work hard at it. But then you’ve got your people from eastern Europe coming in, perhaps also wanting to set up businesses, and there are fights.” “Too many cultures,” Parkinson says. “The eastern Europeans saw an opportunity to come over. I’d do the same. It’s all about survival. They’re taking low-paid jobs, but the British people don’t want those low-paid jobs because they’ve got the benefits system to fall back on.” On the bus back to Manchester, I meet Alexa Michael, a Conservative councillor for Beckenham in London. “Nigel says what a lot of ordinary people are thinking but are too frightened to say,” she tells me. “He’s got the common touch, even though he’s got quite a posh background. It’s no surprise that people in Bolton, the old mill towns, what you might call working-class areas, were more inclined to vote leave than some of the more prosperous areas.” And yet the Bolton audience more closely resembled her – smartly dressed, very middle class – not the working-class voters we are often told Farage appeals to. *** It’s a week later, and the battlebus has moved on to Birmingham’s National Conference Centre. Again the event is sold out and the 1,000-strong crowd is every bit as white and grey as Bolton’s. A dozen miles away, the Conservative party is holding its annual conference. “I want you to make a big noise today,” Longworth tells the audience, “not least because we want those people down the road to hear you.” Tice takes over, to drum home the purpose of the meeting. “We know why we’re here, don’t we? We want to send a very simple message that they should just Chuck Chequers.” Chuck Chequers; No Deal? No Problem; Leave Means Leave: the leavers have both the simplest arguments and the strongest soundbites. He makes a joke about the battlebus. “We had such fun deciding how big a number we were going to put on the bus.” This is a reference to the £350m Boris Johnson emblazoned on his Vote Leave bus, the sum we were meant to be saving on EU membership and spending on the NHS every week (he had not accounted for rebates, grants and subsidies). “I was all for putting ‘Save £39bn’!” Tice says. He pauses to let the audience laugh. “Unbelievably, I was outvoted – but I believe in democracy.” Thirty nine billion pounds is now the anticipated Brexit divorce bill. Conservative MP Peter Bone takes to the stage. He talks of the horror of being at the mercy of Europe. “We didn’t fight world wars…” “No more German cars!” shouts a member of the audience. “… to be subservient,” Bone continues. “We want to make our own laws in our own countries... The thing that annoyed people enormously was, when we make laws they’re not judged by our own judges, they’re not decided in our supreme court – they’re decided somewhere in Europe by a bunch of judges, half of whom are not qualified anyway.” “No, they aren’t,” cries a woman at the back. This might be Margaret Atwood’s Gilead; you would fear for the safety of those European judges were they here today. Bone does a decent job of whipping up the anger, but he knows he’s only the warm-up act. “I think there’s someone else,” he says. “Mr Brexit!” calls a voice in the crowd. “Nigel Farage! Mr Brexit, as somebody says at the front.” Bone gets his biggest cheer, and Tice takes over for the already familiar introduction. “The vilification, abuse, threats to his family, what he’s put up with is unbelievable. His courage manifested when he was unfortunately in a very serious plane crash on one election day. It would have killed many people. Bless him: he dragged himself out, wiped away the odd bit of blood, dusted himself down and promptly lit a cigarette. He is a true patriot. He is possibly the original Brexiter.” Again the sea splits for Farage, and again he looks more spiv than saviour. There is a touch of Private Walker, the black-market wheeler-dealer in Dad’s Army, whose absence from the regular armed forces was explained by a corned-beef allergy. “Good afternoon, Birmingham,” he begins. “I’ve given the best part of my adult life, battling, fighting, campaigning for one thing – that we, the British people, should be masters of our own destiny, running our own lives, in control of our own country. And. That. Referendum. On. June. 23rd. When. We. Won. That. Vote. Was. The. Happiest. Day. Of. My Life.” Farage has an advantage over many politicians in knowing how to make his audience laugh. “We were told by the party leaders that whatever we decided they would abide by,” he says. “Indeed, do you remember Mr Cameron?” “Boooo!” comes the catcall. “That’s surprising, because most of the country has forgotten about him!” There is laughter across the room. “Mr Cameron spent £9m of taxpayers’ money putting that outrageous leaflet through every door in the land.” “Shame! Shame!” Cameron is heckled in absentia. “How I enjoyed posting mine back through the letterbox of No 10,” Farage continues, “with a few suitable annotations, but not ones I am going to share with you on a public platform.” Then he’s back on the attack. “Now we are told that we didn’t understand what we were voting for. You. Are. All. Thick. And. Pig. Ignorant. They even have the effrontery to tell us that people were lied to – despite the fact that the greatest lie of all was told back in the 1970s, when my parents’ generation were told they were joining nothing more than a common market which was about friendship and free trade. Even if Boris’s figures on the side of a bus were a bit on the high side, it is nothing to the half a century of lies we have been told by the establishment.” Farage’s argument here is straightforward. The referendum was nothing to do with the terms of leaving, and nobody thought it was; we were simply asked whether we wanted in or out. He even attempts to claim the moral high ground when it comes to the migration argument. The EU, he states, is supremacist. Why should somebody from Europe have more right to live in our country than, say, somebody from Africa or Asia? It’s the only line that is not met with a resounding cheer. But by the time he is done, calling on the audience to stop the Brexit betrayal, they are chanting for more. Lynne, a friendly, middle-aged woman who has been sharing her Polos with me, is on her feet. I ask her why she feels so strongly. She talks about the need for sovereignty, to be able to make our own laws and reclaim our pride. Is it anything to do with immigration? “No,” she says. “Not really.” She pauses. “But Birmingham isn’t as clean as it used to be. Is it? They leave their furniture in the street.” Who – the Europeans? “No, the Muslims. There are areas that are predominantly Muslim. I’m not racist. They’re not to blame. But they don’t love our country like we do. They put mattresses in the street. They all drive nice cars, mind – Mercs and BMWs. And then they’ve got their rubbish piled up.” She offers me another Polo. I look for Farage, but the man of the people has done a disappearing act. The last time we met, in 2009, he took me to his local pub for breakfast (three pints of Landlord), told me his political hero was Enoch Powell, and talked with pride of his German wife Kirsten and his love of a good lapdance club. But the more renowned this populist becomes, the less accessible he is; Farage declined to be interviewed for this article. Meanwhile, the less starry members of Leave Means Leave are happy to talk. I ask Peter Bone what populism means to him. “Doesn’t populist mean what most people want?” he says. Longworth comes up with a similar definition. “It’s to do with being popular among people, so if populism means we’re actually supporting people’s democratic rights, I’m all for it.” The language is tough and militaristic, and Farage’s delivery chilling: ‘Meet your MPs face to face. Make them feel the heat' As the audience leave, I scan the hall for somebody who looks a bit younger, and spot Jared Day. He is in his 20s, and a wheelchair-user. Day is a smart, engaging man who voted remain but has since become a leaver. Why? “The EU’s lack of respect. I thought the photo that Donald Tusk posted was very distasteful.” Unlike many politicians, Day has no problem explaining why populism means much more than being popular. “Populism is more about nationalist lines, the nation state. When you hear about populist governments, they tend to be more internal-looking, almost isolationist.” Contemporary populism is by its nature oppositional. In his 2016 book The Populist Explosion, a study of how the great recession shaped US and European politics, author John B Judis distinguishes between left- and rightwing populism as follows: “Leftwing populists champion the people against an elite or an establishment. Theirs is a vertical politics of the bottom and middle, arrayed against the top. Rightwing populists champion the people against an elite that they accuse of favouring a third group, which can consist, for instance, of immigrants, Islamists, or African-American militants. Rightwing populism is triadic: it looks upward, but also down upon an out group.” This feels very much the Leave Means Leave approach. On my way out, I catch two pairs of sisters chatting. Like Day, their youth makes them stand out. Jill and her sister, who does not give her name, are wearing Brexit sweatshirts, while two identical twins, who also won’t give their names, are formally dressed in skirts and jackets; they could be extras for a film about the suffragette movement. Jill is a chemistry teacher from Sheffield who says she wants Brexit for her pupils. She believes there will be more money for them when we leave, and they will have a better chance of getting decent jobs. One of the twins also teaches, and is looking forward to a brighter future. All four women tell me they despise the mainstream media, particularly the Guardian, because it is a purveyor of fake news. What they dislike most is the notion that they must be ignorant or bigoted to have voted leave. The twins take up Farage’s theme, finishing each other’s sentences. “They demonise us…” “… And make out we’re really stupid…” “… That we don’t know what we voted for…” “And I think that’s disgusting.” Jill, who is wearing union jack trainers, says: “Demonise is the exact word. I so object to that. I’m not far right or racist. And that, I’m afraid, is the media.” The women talk about wages being undercut by EU workers, how hard the trade unions have fought for the minimum wage, the need for controlled migration and to look after our own. As for the notion that British people don’t want many of the jobs the Europeans do, Jill is not having any of it. “Absolute rubbish,” she says. “That’s like saying the kids I teach are lazy. They’re not. They want a job and can’t get one, because it’s been taken by somebody from the European Union.” All four women sing from the same hymn sheet, despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum. “The main thing that got me into politics was the magnificent patriot Nigel Farage,” Jill says. The twins are Corbynistas, dismayed that the Labour leader has suppressed his anti-Europe instincts. The conversation leaves my head spinning; in some ways, left and right seem an irrelevance in Brexit Britain. Perhaps that’s why some Labour MPs have been happy to align themselves with Leave Means Leave. Yet look more closely and you realise that the group is not as cross-party as it would have us believe. All six members of its advisory board are white, male Conservatives. Of the 25 MPs it names as supporters on its website, 24 are Conservatives or members of the DUP. The one exception is the independent MP Kelvin Hopkins, who was suspended from the Labour party in 2017 after it was alleged he sexually harassed a local activist. (He has denied the claims.) Of the 44 prominent members pictured on Leave Means Leave’s website, all are white and 43 are men; Andrea Jenkyns, the Conservative who succeeded Ed Balls as MP for Morley and Outwood, is the only woman. *** It’s a Tuesday night in October and we’re in Bournemouth, which voted to leave Europe by a margin of 9%. Like the other events, tonight’s rally is sold out. Before the speakers start, the audience is shown a film about how intransigent the EU has been in negotiating Brexit. The narrator asks: “When we asked for cooperation on security, the boys in Brussels said Non! When Mrs May offered flexibility on Labour mobility, the boys in Brussels said Non! Mrs May even offered them more of our money, and this time the boys in Brussels said they wanted more! The UK has consistently offered the boys in Brussels huge concessions yet it is never enough for these unaccountable Eurocrats who, let’s remember, spend an awful lot of their time… drunk.” On the screen, a cartoon inebriated Eurocrat topples over, and the crowd cheer. Alcohol is a recurring theme tonight. JD Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin was due to make an appearance, but he has gone down with a tummy bug, so we are played a video of him addressing a rally in Torquay the previous week instead. “Lord Bamford, Sir James Dyson, Tim Martin… have you noticed how all the great entrepreneurs are Brexiters?” John Longworth says. “Tim set up a chain of almost 1,000 pubs.” “And Nigel’s drunk in most of them!” heckles a man in front of me affectionately. Tice has perfected his introduction over the past month. “He is possibly the original, truest Brexiteer!” he begins. “He should be prime minister!” cries a voice from the front. Tice tells the story of Farage’s helicopter crash, this time leaving a gap for the audience to applaud each heroic act. “It would have killed many people, but not our good friend. He dragged himself out of the plane, wiped away the blood from his head, from his eyes, dusted himself down… ” “Hoorah!” “Put his hand in his pocket... ” “Hoorah!” “Reached out for a packet of cigarettes and lit a fag.” “Hoooooorraaaaah!” Farage begins with a humblebrag. “Good evening, Bournemouth. I’m going to take issue with the deputy chair’s introduction. I’m not the original Brexiteer. That was Henry VIII.” He appears to be in a jovial mood. “My day started when I got off the battlebus in Christchurch. I went round Christchurch market, and I met some stallholders and members of the public, and then it all went wrong.” Pause. “We found a pub.” This is Farage the seaside standup, and the audience lap it up. “The day after the referendum, there was an emergency debate in the European parliament. I thought I’d better show up, you know, ’cos I’ve worked quite hard over there. I’ve always tried to make positive and helpful contributions. And there waiting for me was European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, who came up, put an arm round me, and said… ‘Bastard!’” The hall erupts. Then Farage flips the mood. “I said to them, ‘That morning when I came here, 17 years ago, I said I would lead a campaign to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union, and you laughed at me. Well,’ I said, ‘you’re not laughing now, are you?’” And suddenly Farage flips again; now he’s mobilising his troops. “This is the most important campaign that has ever been fought in British history. This. Campaign. Is. About. Right. And. Wrong. We are simply asking our politicians to do what they promised.” This is the first rally in the heart of remain-land – London – and the mood is darker. There’s a sense of the battle lines hardening There was a time, he says, when he trusted May when she said that no deal was better than a bad deal. “She kept on telling us Brexit means Brexit, but little did we know that she is a woman who is too weak to negotiate with the European commission.” He pauses. “I’d much rather we sent someone like Trump, personally!” The audience applauds. Now it’s time for strategy, as Farage tells supporters how to confront MPs. “I don’t want you writing letters to them. Go and visit them at their surgeries, queue around the block, meet them face to face, make them feel the heat, make them understand that being part of a customs union, being a vassal state with laws made somewhere else, is unacceptable. And that if they do this, you will never give them your vote again. Make. Them. Feel. The. Heat. We in Leave Means Leave are reactivating the people’s army.” The language is tough and militaristic, and Farage’s delivery chilling. He warns that if he is forced to fight a second referendum we’ll see a very different Farage: “This time, no more Mr Nice Guy.” I can’t help thinking back to his victory speech after the referendum, delivered at 4am on 24 June 2016. Farage boasted that Brexit had been achieved “without a single bullet being fired”. It was only eight days after the strongly pro-EU Labour MP Jo Cox had been murdered on her way to a constituency surgery. Her killer, Thomas Mair, shouted “Keep Britain independent”and “Britain first” as he shot and stabbed her. But Farage appeared to have forgotten that. *** On 13 November, Theresa May announces that the UK and the European Union have reached an agreement; the next day the Cabinet signs off on the deal. Leave Means Leave organises a protest outside Downing Street. On 15 November, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab is one of four ministers to resign amid calls for the prime minister to step down. Britain remains gridlocked; Westminster is in chaos and yet nothing changes. On 10 December, the day before the Commons is due to have its say on the deal, May announces the vote will be delayed. The following day Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, announces that the threshold has been reached for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister; at least 48 letters have been submitted by Tory MPs. Although May survives, winning by 200 votes to 117, she appears to have as little chance of getting her deal through the Commons as she did before. Meanwhile, there is a similar upheaval in Farage’s world – revolution leading to stasis. On 22 November, Ukip leader Gerard Batten announces that he has appointed far-right activist and former EDL leader Tommy Robinson as a special adviser on “rape gangs” and prison reform. In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Farage says he is “appalled”, that Ukip is becoming a party of “street activism”, and that Batten has sabotaged his own efforts to make Ukip “a non-racist, non-sectarian party”. This is the same Farage who masterminded the Breaking Point poster; the same Farage who talked only days ago about mobilising a people’s army. On 4 December, he announces that he is quitting Ukip “with a heavy heart”: he has lost his battle to “professionalise” the party he helped found in 1993. But the truth is, he has outgrown Ukip. Its once marginal voice is now mainstream, and Farage has bigger political fish to fry. *** It is 14 December, and all the big guns are out for the Leave Means Leave rally at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, opposite the Houses of Parliament. Jacob Rees-Mogg, JD Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson and, of course, Farage, line up to deliver the same message – No Deal? No Problem – only with more urgency. There is a new chant: “Let’s go bigger than Europe. Let’s go Global. Let’s Go WTO.” Inconsistency appears to be a virtue for this populist campaign; globalism is now presented as a positive rather than a negative. Tonight, the two Labour MPs who have spoken at previous rallies, Kate Hoey and Graham Stringer, are on the same bill, giving the event a more genuinely cross-party feel. But there is nothing diverse about the audience, and the whiteness is, if anything, even more stark than at previous rallies – not least because nearly every security officer on the door is black. This is the first rally held in the heart of remain-land – London – and the mood is darker, more defiant. There is a sense of the battle lines hardening: only two days ago, chancellor Philip Hammond described hard Brexiters as “extremists”. Let us be ready for that referendum – if it comes we’ll win it next time. By. A. Much. Bigger. Majority Tonight, all six speakers have the knack of being able to incite the crowd or make them laugh – even the antediluvian Rees-Mogg, dubbed the honourable member for the 18th century. Hoey asks how we can trust the government to take us out of the EU when it is led by a prime minister who is a remainer, a chancellor who regards Brexiters as extremists and a Speaker “who has a Bollocks to Brexit sticker on his car”. Tim Martin concludes his speech by quoting Paul Simon (“You just slip out the back, Jack/Make a new plan, Stan/You don’t need to be coy, Roy/Just get yourself free”). Puce-faced Sammy Wilson delivers a barnstorming unionist speech (“The EU is demanding the price for leaving is splitting the United Kingdom. Never!”) and says that not even Arthur Daley would have had the brass to flog the Chequers deal to the British public. As always, though, Farage is the star turn. He makes the familiar jokes about booze, dismisses the “jumped-up foreign bureaucrats” of Brussels, and describes the Italian government (which has scrapped humanitarian protection status for asylum seekers) as “rather splendid”. But this is a more muted, restrained Farage. He admits he is worried. “I’m afraid, folks, I don’t see the great Brexit betrayal as anywhere near finished. I’m now more fearful than at any time I have been during this process that, outrageous and monstrous though it is, we’re going to finish up being sent back for a second referendum… My message, folks, is it would be wrong of us not to get ready, not to prepare for the worst-case scenario… Let us be ready not just to fight back, not just to be ready for that referendum, but if it comes we’ll win it next time. By. A. Much. Bigger. Majority.” Back in January 2018, Farage surprised everyone by calling for a second referendum, on the grounds it would deliver a bigger leave majority. But it was a classic Farage blip, and he has never called for one since. Last August, he dismissed the idea as “not the people’s vote, but the George Soros vote”. After his speech in London, Farage is mobbed. A huddle forms around him, comprised mainly of the few young people in the audience. A woman in her 20s, draped in a union jack, asks for a selfie. Her friend, also draped in a union jack, pushes her way forward. “Excuse me, seeing as I got her these tickets, the least you can do is give me a kiss,” she says to Farage. This is the closest I’ve been to him in three months of following the Leave Means Leave campaign – within shouting distance. So I do just that. Earlier this evening, someone in the audience asked who people should vote for, now that Farage has quit Ukip. The question went unanswered, so I ask again. “Nigel, who should we vote for?” “Who asked that?” he says. “I asked that,” I bellow, deep within the bosom of the Faragistas. He looks at me. “Well, let’s find out, shall we? At the moment I couldn’t vote for anybody. But let’s see how this plays out. The cards haven’t fallen yet. I meant what I said tonight. All the Eurosceptics are hoping we’re going to get through this, but I’m actually more pessimistic.” Do we need to mobilise? “Yes. When you build an army, you don’t do it wanting to fight a war. But if a war happens, you’ve got it. And that’s what we’ve now got to do.” And with that he’s off, flanked by two security men. I shout one of his own slogans after him as he walks away. “Nigel, no more Mr Nice Guy?” He turns on his heels, walks back and looks me in the face. For once there isn’t a hint of a smile. “Oh listen. Listen. If they make us do this again, I shall be a bit tougher than last time.” • This article forms part of the Guardian’s ongoing series, The new populism; read more here. If you would like to make a comment on this piece, and be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).The trial of 11 people charged with the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi opened and was quickly adjourned in Riyadh last week. It may be that the outcome is fixed in advance. Yet that the hearing took place at all could be seen as progress of a kind. It suggests even a state as autocratic, inward-looking and undemocratic as Saudi Arabia is not immune to international opinion and can be forced, in extremis, to respect the human right to justice. The Khashoggi affair has provided a chastening lesson for Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, who is widely believed to have ordered the journalist’s slaying in Istanbul in October. Until then, Salman was riding high, courted by Donald Trump, lauded at home for modest social reform and feared, if not respected, across the Arab Middle East for his war of attrition in Yemen and determination to face down Iran. Salman’s subsequent fall from grace was swift. His reversal of fortune confounded the accepted narrative of an inexorable, global rise of like-minded, authoritarian “strongman” figures, riding waves of reviving nationalism and intolerant, rightwing populist and unilateralist sentiment. Yet there were signs elsewhere, too, that this toxic surge may be nearing its high point. While the evidence for this incipient shift can be exaggerated, the extreme political trajectories that sent some governments and leaders veering off wildly into the far-right blue yonder from 2016 to 2018 may be beginning to self-correct. In other words, the wheel is turning and a more traditional, moderating left-right cycle could reassert itself. A critical turning point approaches, at which the conduct of global affairs may begin to “normalise” – or will become yet more dangerous and chaotic. Viktor Orbán, long viewed as the standard bearer of anti-migrant, anti-EU, nationalist revanchism in Europe, is a case in point. Hungary’s prime minister remains firmly in control at home – for now. But his hard-right policies, particularly a so-called “slave law” undermining workers’ rights, are increasingly under attack. Last month saw large street protests in Budapest in support of opposition demands for the law’s repeal and the restoration of an independent judiciary and media. The enduring Europe-wide appeal of Orbán’s ideas, and those of kindred rightwing populists in Germany, Italy and France, faces a crucial test in May, when a new EU parliament will be elected. Denmark, Poland, Portugal and Greece will also hold national polls this year. Predictions of additional successes for populist parties appear to be supported by the most recent Eurobarometer survey. Overall, only 42% of Europeans trust the EU, and even fewer (35% on average) trust their national governments. But this level of voter alienation is nothing new and may actually be decreasing, according to the survey. Britain’s Brexit trauma appears to have had a cautionary effect, with fewer Europeans than previously favouring similar national action. Mainstream voters may also be more conscious that far-right politicians, even when they gain decisive power as in Italy last year, do not have better answers to their problems – and may make matters worse. Kickback against overly authoritarian or anti-democratic leaders is more problematic in states suffering extreme forms of “strongman” governance, such as Egypt under Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Sisi won a rigged presidential election last year, and there is talk of abolishing term limits so he can remain in office indefinitely. But many Egyptians have other ideas, as a predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, discovered to his cost. Rule by fear, aggravated by utter incompetence, can only last so long. Similar considerations apply to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, who finally succeeded last year in taking all the reins of power. Now the blame for numerous national problems – the economy, security, corruption, censorship, abuse of power – lies with him. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Turks are voting with their feet, taking talents, money and businesses abroad. It’s clear that in Erdoğan’s boundless hubris lie the seeds of his destruction. Downfall could come sooner rather than later. This theory of nationalist strongmen fatally faltering may also be applied to India’s Narendra Modi, who faces a tough re-election challenge this year, and even to China’s formidable Xi Jinping, who promised a better life for all and now appears clueless in the face of an economic slowdown. And there’s Trump, the ultimate strongman wannabe, who clearly believes he is entitled to do anything he wants, including building a wall with Mexico, but is slowly and painfully discovering he is not. How Trump reacts to tougher Congressional resistance and deepening legal entanglements is the story of the next two years. He may play it by the constitutional book, but that seems unlikely. If, like failing authoritarian leaders everywhere, he tries instead to impose his will by any available means – such as declaring a bogus “national emergency” – the resulting domestic and global disruption will be severe.Is there a better genre of news story than “animal loose in an unexpected place”? It’s the journalistic equivalent of a classmate running in and shouting, “There’s a dog in the school!”. You immediately assume all other news will have to be cancelled for the day while the headmaster/prime minister runs around the playground/British Isles trying to catch it with a big net. It’s a genre with a low bar for entry – as a rule of thumb, any “animal in unexpected place” story is newsworthy as long as you can imagine a Brooklyn cab driver in a live-action Disney movie doing a double-take, rubbing their eyes and saying, “Woah, an [animal] in a [unexpected place]? I better quit drinking,” upon seeing it. But every so often there comes a variation that lifts the genre into new and exciting places. This is no “monkey in Ikea”, “cat on a football pitch” or even “whale in the Thames” (RIP). No, today there was a red panda loose in Belfast. Just let that sentence sit there for a moment. A panda. Loose. In Belfast. It’s impossible to hear it and not imagine the inevitable animated DreamWorks movie that will come out of this: a pampered red panda (voiced by Liam Neeson or Jamie Dornan, whoever’s available) dreams of seeing the “real” Northern Ireland. With the help of a tapir with moxie from the Republic of Ireland (played by Sharon Horgan or Saoirse Ronan), the two bust out of their enclosure, much to the anger of the evil British zookeeper (Tom Hiddleston/Mark Rylance), and lead the police on a merry march through Belfast’s most iconic sights (the Samson and Goliath cranes, the Titanic quarter, inexplicably the Giant’s Causeway even though it’s an hour’s drive away). Eventually Red Panda and Tapir end up in the middle of an Orange Order parade, defuse an escalating argument between Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill, restore the Stormont government and solve the 250-year-old crisis of sectarianism in Northern Ireland. Red Panda and Tapir realise that they actually love each other because there’s no such thing as a platonic heterosexual relationship in these films, and their panda-pir hybrid cub ends up being elected first minister of Northern Ireland. In reality, the red panda was found a while later in a residential garden near the zoo, where we can only assume it was trying to break into a garage to hotwire a car and drive up the Causeway coastal route. According to an exceptionally sarcastic police force, the panda spent most of its few hours of freedom taking in the sights of “beautiful Glengormley”. Now I’ve been to Glengormley a few times and, while I love bowling at the sportsbowl and getting a well-priced Chinese takeaway from Antrim Road as much as the next panda, I feel like it could have got a bus into the botanical gardens and made a day of it. There are still so many questions that need to be answered. How did the red panda escape? Did it visit Shankill Road? Did it go into a Catholic church? Does this panda adhere to the theory of transubstantiation? Did the panda interact in any way with a union jack while it was free? All I know for certain is, after months of ill-informed and arrogant British politicians wading into the debate on the Irish border, this is a news story involving Northern Ireland that I can get behind. After all, if we’re going to talk uninformed bollocks about the lives of nearly two million people in the newspapers, we might as well chuck a red panda in there to make it a bit more fun. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to call up DreamWorks and pitch “Panda-monium in Norn Iron” (working title). • Jack Bernhardt is a writer and occasional performer. He has written for comedies including Horrible HistoriesA rare graphic record capturing the exact moment the first world war guns finally fell silent is to be brought to life by the Mercury prize-nominated duo Field Music for two performances as part of the armistice centenary commemorations. David and Peter Brewis have taken as their inspiration the Imperial War Museum (IWM) document The End of the War, a recording on photographic paper of the minute before and minute after the cessation of hostilities. The brothers, whose critically acclaimed albums include 2016’s Commontime and 2012’s Plumb, will perform two sets, one at IWM London and the another at IWM North in Manchester, based on their interpretation of the artefact, and exploring the echoes of the war through the century. The End of the War is an example of sound ranging, a method determining the coordinates of hostile artillery. Six microphones were placed in a curve behind the frontline and a soldier near the frontline was given a button connected to a string galvanometer, inside which each microphone was connected to a thin wire that moved when that microphone picked up a sound. As each wire cast a shadow on to a moving piece of photographic film, a record was made of the sound picked up by each microphone. The century old-technology means there is a photographic record of the guns at 11am on 11 November 1918. Modern technology has since allowed the artillery fire of the minute before to be recreated in a sound artefact at IWM London, where listeners can hear the gun’s vibrations through a special wooden elbow board. Field Music, who have a reputation for innovative and varied live performances, were commissioned by the museum to create a commemorative sound and light show. David Brewis said the sets had been inspired by the graphic record and sound artefact, which he described as “this tiny, incomplete fragment, not much more than a moment, but one which could be both the beginning and the ending of a huge story”. “What we have done is really try to capture the echoes of the first world war in all the time since,” he said. “We have taken a lot of things, both visually and sonically, from the piece,” he added, explaining the two shows would involve animation as well as songs – some funny. “We have looked at little stories, events, moments, or technological advances, which happened in the war, or immediately after, and drawn a line from there across the next 100 years.” As part of the project, the brothers researched the New Zealand-born surgeon Harold Gillies, who during the war pioneered facial cosmetic surgery and who went on to carry out one of the first gender realignment operations. The duo were also inspired by a small Wisconsin company that developed a new material for dressing wounds and then adapted it for the first modern sanitary product. The company was Kimberly-Clark, and its product called Kotex. “The spaces we will be performing in are so incredible and so intense,” said Brewis, “so we have to be respectful to the gravitas of the stories those museums are telling.” • The IWM North performance is on 24 January from 9-11pm, and at IWM London on 31 January from 9-11pm. Tickets can be booked via iwm.org.ukScarlett Johansson told recently of the difficulty, nay futility, of stopping people using artificial intelligence software to graft her head on to other people’s bodies in pornographic videos. In an interview with the Washington Post she suggested that although she finds these “deepfake” films disturbing, she knows of no legal way of preventing their spread. She partly consoles herself with the knowledge that at least most “people assume it’s not actually me in a porno, however demeaning it is”. Her main concern was to warn of the danger that such software – free and convincing, apparently – poses to more vulnerable people. It is a ghastly state of affairs. As for what might be going through the minds of people who watch computer-generated porn of fake Scarlett Johanssons, there is no need to wonder about that here. But the thought process is similar to the one that many fans have involving Wilfried Zaha. Every week supporters get their metaphorical kicks pretending they are watching Zaha acting when they know full well he is not. Usually, in fact, Zaha is receiving literal kicks, on top of verbal abuse. He will probably be subjected to both with particular relish on Saturday, when Watford visit Selhurst Park. Zaha is one of the Premier League’s most persecuted players, partly because lots of people pretend he is not persecuted at all. Eden Hazard – and only Eden Hazard – is fouled more often than Zaha, who, in the last four seasons, has been booted, shoved, pulled or whacked 387 times in the Premier League, nearly 100 times more than the next most assailed (Alexis Sánchez). And that only includes the times the referee has spotted the offence. Yet every time Zaha hits the ground he is accused of making something up, even when fans know their man has attacked him. They just pretend, for titillation or for illegitimate gain, that they are watching something other than what they are watching. At Molineux last week Zaha was booed after being taken out by Ryan Bennett, who became the 66th Premier League player since 2014 to be booked for fouling the Crystal Palace winger. Wolves fans became so fixated with jeering Zaha’s every touch that they did not seem to notice when Palace’s James McArthur perpetrated an obvious piece of theatre in the same game. Some Arsenal fans behaved even more absurdly in October, when a penalty was awarded against Granit Xhaka after Zaha tumbled in the box. At Selhurst Park the away fans cried “dive” and wretches on social media later barfed similar claims – and threats and racist cant, according to the player – even after replays and an interview in which Xhaka stated: “It was a clear penalty, I came too late and I touched him. I touched him in the knee.” Some people chose to go with their imaginations instead. That can lead to all sorts of sordid places. Now back to Watford. Their fans have a particular beef with Zaha that dates back to the 2013 Championship play-off final, when Palace beat Watford thanks to a penalty awarded after an indisputable foul on the winger by Marco Cassetti. Except “indisputable” has become an obsolete word. Zaha has been barracked by Watford fans in every meeting since then – and in two of them he was booked for diving, which accounts for half of the four bookings he has received in his career for simulation. Given the number of times he goes down, and the atmosphere of noxious farce created around him, it is surprising referees have not interpreted his falls as dives more often. There have probably been times when Zaha has gone down when it would have been possible to stay upright. But that is true of every player in the league, none of whom are subject to similar campaigns of mendacious vengeance. And there have been no occasions – even the four times when he was booked – when it can be said with certainty that Zaha dived, unlike the cases this season of, for example, James Maddison, Neeskens Kebano or Harry Kane MBE. Whether clipped or clobbered, Zaha often knows he is fouled not merely because he is too fast or skilful for opponents but as part of a deliberate strategy. Here is what Watford’s captain Troy Deeney told BBC Radio 5 Live in September about his team’s approach to dealing with Zaha in the previous month’s match at Vicarage Road, when Étienne Capoue was shown a yellow card for a foul that even the Frenchman admitted could have resulted in a red, although he insisted it was accidental: “You take it in turns kicking him. I know no one wants to hear that but you go: ‘you hit him this time, you hit him the next time’. You don’t have the same player tackle him because you know you’re going to get booked.” Nonetheless, we can be sure Watford fans will shout “dive” every time Zaha hits the grass on Saturday and the player will be jeered if he shows his anger. Maybe he will even be goaded into being sent off, as nearly happened at Huddersfield in September, when he was booked for an angry barge into Florent Hadergjonaj after a late tackle by Matthias Jørgensen went unpunished. Match of the Day pundits said earlier this season that Zaha should just get on with it and consider himself lucky he did not play in the 1980s, which is about as helpful as saying one should never complain about a bad car mechanic because back in the day people only travelled by mule. It is sadly fitting and quite funny that the only person reprimanded for making accusations against Zaha is a man dressed up as a giant insect. Harry the Hornet, the Watford mascot who stood down after being upbraided for twice making mock-dives at Zaha, will not be at Selhurst Park this weekend. But various other clowns probably will. One day Zaha will be seriously injured – on or off the pitch – and maybe then the laughter will stop and folks will accept he deserves proper protection.Films are doing drugs again. The appeal is irresistible – the pure hit of human drama that comes with the needle or the rolled-up banknote. Now, a pair of new movies find two actors at opposite ends of their careers deep in the mire. In one, Beautiful Boy, modish male lead Timothée Chalamet plays Nic Sheff, a young addict lost to methamphetamine as his father David (Steve Carell) helplessly looks on. While in The Mule, Clint Eastwood directs himself as Earl Stone, a 90-year-old horticulturalist recruited by a Mexican cartel to ferry cocaine around America. Both are based on real life, in the case of the Sheffs via parallel memoirs. Drugs are nothing if not repetitive, and so it is for the drugs movie. Artful hard work, Beautiful Boy also feels almost cosily familiar – Chalamet passing from curious kid to black-eyed wreck, tumbling through the landmarks of familial heartbreak. While his poison is crystal meth rather than heroin, the beats haven’t changed since Frank Sinatra’s hapless jazz drummer Frankie Machine shot up in 1955’s The Man With the Golden Arm. That at least partly explains why Beautiful Boy – well acted and sensitively handled – has the air of ancient history. The events it portrays took place in the 2000s, but older days are everywhere. On screen, as in life, David Sheff is a baby boomer magazine journalist, his career built on profiles of 70s rock stars for Rolling Stone. The young Nic wigs out in a Nirvana T-shirt, tipping the wink to Kurt Cobain, undone by heroin before his suicide. Despite his background, David is baffled by the world into which his son descends – the naive parent staring distraught across the generation gap. Same as it ever was. But then with drugs, it often feels that way. Almost half a century since Richard Nixon formally announced the US war on drugs, Donald Trump last week argued that his border wall would halt the flow of heroin and cocaine into America. In Britain, our drugs laws remain in the state of nervous confusion they have been for a generation. Drug movies don’t help. Maybe it would be unfair to expect otherwise. Film is not a medium built for inner space. The one place it can’t take us is where an experience with drugs actually happens – inside the mind of the person using them. Even visually, things get lost in translation. Trying to convey a meth frenzy or acid meltdown, great directors are left at the level of the episode of Neighbours in which Jim and Doug accidentally took mushrooms on a camping trip. Yet, directors still want what a drug movie offers – tapping into the heady mix of social significance, criminality and big emotions – so we don’t always get the uncut truth. In Beautiful Boy, David Sheff is a babe in the chemical woods, innocent of everything but a long-ago occasional joint. Desperate to understand the stuff killing his son, he goes so far as to actually try crystal meth. That, the film says, is the depth of his love. In fact, even before publishing his book, the real David Sheff wrote that as a student in Berkeley in the early 1970s, he had – perhaps not so unusually – seen a college roommate struggle with meth and taken it himself. But that would have spoiled the scene, of course, and added too much nuance to the relationship at the centre of the film. Ah well. Some scripts just need a little something to hit the emotional high notes. What drugs can do very efficiently is reduce life to an endless scratchy hunt for a fix. Admirable cinema has been made from exactly that – Lenny Abrahamson’s flawless Dublin tragicomedy Adam & Paul saw heroin addiction as one long frantic non-event interrupted only by bleak sudden ends. But frantic non-events and bleak sudden ends are unpopular at the box office, and junkies don’t make great heroes. For American cinema, the answer came with scripts that subtly upped the chances of redemption – and a very specific approach to casting. In July 1971, a month after Nixon called drug abuse America’s “public enemy number one”, 20th Century Fox released The Panic in Needle Park, a snapshot of Manhattan addicts that gave its grimy verité an exciting new face – Al Pacino, in his first starring role. He had the charisma of Sinatra with the tang of the counterculture, the addict as pop idol. (The film-makers had originally planned to cast Jim Morrison, singer of the Doors, dead by the time the movie was released.) The persona went mainstream. Fuelled by the rhetoric coming out of the White House, a drug habit soon passed as youthful rebellion, a death wish middle finger to the straight world. Eventually, that filtered down into a new generation of film-makers smitten with the scuzz of junkiedom. Matt Dillon, last seen as the serial killer of Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built, was a Hollywood cover star when he played the rogueish anti-hero of Drugstore Cowboy. In the first boyish flush of his celebrity, Leonardo DiCaprio starred in The Basketball Diaries as underground writer Jim Carroll, forced on to the streets by his teenage dance with heroin. It was a stellar performance – young, damned and about to star in Titanic. And yes, you’re right – these were all men. Occasionally, a woman was allowed along for the ride (Germany produced the stark Christiane F), but generally drugs on screen were declared a man’s game. A particular kind of man too. After Pacino, Dillon and DiCaprio – and we can throw in Gary Oldman in Sid and Nancy – a string of creatively ambitious pin-ups were cast as users. Jared Leto starred in the operatic Requiem for a Dream; Ryan Gosling played a crack-addicted school teacher in Half Nelson. Now there is Chalamet. The message was remarkably consistent: drugs might lay waste to male American beauty but my God, there will be some acting first. You’re right again – they were white men too. Even as crack engulfed US inner cities, big-ticket dramas of drug abuse found black and Latino faces seen, if they were seen at all, only as dealers. That queasy dynamic lives on. Amid the dated racial politics of comedy-drama The Upside, currently top of the US box office, we find Kevin Hart bringing the joy of weed to white Park Avenue society. And then there is The Mule, in which a Mexican cartel sends forth bundles of cocaine from El Paso. While students of the politics of Clint Eastwood might have expected such an intervention in the days of the presidential wall, a surprise may await. In the oddly mercurial way of Eastwood, he might actually have made a film that debunks Trump more brutally than the commentators quietly pointing out that most drugs enter the US in legal border crossings. In The Mule, however the powder gets into the country, it is then distributed by an American – as played by Clint Eastwood, with all the attendant cultural baggage. His whiteness is the centre of the story, allowing him the freedom from suspicion prized by the cartel (a point given an exclamation mark with the racial profiling of an innocent Hispanic driver). The same goes for his age. A war veteran wilfully helping destroy American lives? You might almost call it subversive. Rather than another film about a beautiful boy on self-destruct, The Mule is a film about an old man seduced by the other side of the transaction. We can surely all see a little of ourselves in that. It can’t be coincidence that two of the most essential series in modern television, The Wire and Breaking Bad, were panoramas of the drug trade as viewed by the dealers. Most of us are in it for the money now, moving parts making profits, the ethics best not dwelled on. Anyway, the more things stay the same, the more they change. The Nic Sheff of 2019 would probably no longer be in the market for meth. America has now embraced fentanyl and Xanax, the pain and anxiety medications implicated in untold dependencies and deaths. If the movies wanted to catch up with the story, they might find some interesting characters waiting – the likes of Richard Sackler, the pharmaceutical billionaire being sued for his role in creating the opioid crisis, recently revealed to have also patented a treatment for opioid addiction. If that sounds like a plot point to you, it does to me too. Let’s see if anyone calls: “Action”.Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines and pioneer of low-cost aviation, “without whom there would be no Ryanair”, has died aged 87. Kelleher set up his budget carrier in Texas more than 50 years ago and changed the face of flying, stripping back costs and inflight services, opening up air travel to a wider range of people. His biggest legacy for Europe may have been as a mentor for Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair chief executive, who flew to Dallas, where Southwest is based, in the 1980s to learn how to run a no-frills airline. Following news of Kelleher’s death on Friday, O’Leary credited the extraordinary growth of the Dublin-based carrier to the lessons of his mentor. “Herb was the grand master Yoda of the low-fare airlines. He was the leader, the visionary and the teacher: without Herb, there would be no Ryanair, and no low-fares airlines anywhere,” he said. “His passing is a sad day for low-fare airlines and sales of Wild Turkey bourbon.” Kelleher had gained publicity from the beginning by promising the lowest fares to customers, or compensating them with a bottle of whiskey if they believed they had paid more than a rival would have charged. Southwest became an industry powerhouse, a brand infused with the colourful, unconventional personality of its boss. The airline’s first flight was in June 1971, and it grew to fly more passengers around the US than any other carrier, spawning a host of imitators at home and worldwide. In a statement announcing his death, Southwest said Kelleher had “revolutionised commercial aviation and democratised the skies”. The company added: “Herb’s passion, zest for life and insatiable investment in relationships made lasting and immeasurable impressions on all who knew him, and will forever be the bedrock and esprit de corps of Southwest Airlines.” As well as his business nous, Kelleher was known for his extrovert antics and flair for a memorable marketing ploy. When executives of other airlines dismissed Southwest as cattle class for the cheap traveller, Kelleher responded with a TV advert featuring his head covered by a paper bag that he promised to give to any potential customer too embarrassed to be seen flying on his airline. On another occasion, when Southwest and a rival company were battling to use the same slogan, Kelleher challenged its chief executive to arm-wrestle for the rights. Kelleher turned up in red shorts, lost, but kept using the slogan, with his rival grateful for the publicity Kelleher hadgenerated for both airlines. Southwest’s current chief executive, Gary Kelly, described working alongside Kelleher as “one of the greatest joys of my life … He challenged people and he kept us laughing all the way”. Southwest, like the budget carriers that came to emulate it, focused on short-haul flights from point to point, rather than connecting flights and building hub-and-spoke networks as its rivals did. It pared back inflight service, in the days when airlines promoted the glamour and luxury of cabin life, and used a single model of aircraft, the Boeing 737, to cut costs. Southwest ripped up the blueprint by getting rid of assigned seats, and flew from smaller, secondary airports to minimise costs and delays. While rivals derided its model, Southwest was making a profit by 1973 and has stayed in the black ever since, an unparalleled streak in an industry known for losses and bankruptcies. Kelleher became Southwest’s chairman in 1978 and chief executive in 1982, eventually taking a back seat as emeritus chairman in 2001, two years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. But he remained on the payroll and went to the office regularly. A law graduate from New York, Kelleher’s low-cost mantra apparently did not extend to stinting on his employees’ wages. He said his people were crucial to the company’s success, to ensure friendly customer service whether the flight was budget or not. In a 2011 interview, Kelleher said his proudest achievement was that, in an industry where tens of thousands of jobs were lost after September 11, Southwest never made its workers redundant. Fly one type of planeWhile manufacturers led by Boeing and Airbus tout models for every range and route, potentially maximising the efficiency per passenger, Kelleher decided it was far simpler and more cost-effective to pick one plane and build a network around it, keeping down engineering, maintenance and pilot training costs. He chose the Boeing 737 – as did Ryanair. EasyJet went for the Airbus A320 family. Drive down costs every yearA laser-like focus on the bottom line put Southwest in pole position, and Ryanair has continued that obsession – although as both have become more established and dominant in their respective markets, Scrooge-ish excess has been downplayed. Turn around aircraft as quickly as possibleSweating the assets is crucial when a new plane costs $50m-$100m. The longer the plane is in the sky, the more it earns. Low-cost carriers will now routinely spend as little as 25 minutes on the tarmac between flights – with easyJet executives sometimes seen carrying a bin bag down the plane aisle before landing to help cut cleaning time. Concentrate on selling seats firstThe science of dynamic pricing has evolved, with fares starting as low as needed to fill the planes. Traditional loyalty schemes or air miles have been jettisoned: instead, once the passengers are booked, airlines can make money on ancillaries, from luggage to allocated seats.When Test Match Special announced that Alastair Cook would be lending his services to its non-ball-by-ball-coverage for two of the upcoming Caribbean Tests, the Spin thought immediately of another tall, reserved man whose gentle touch and warm voice anchored TMS for four decades. It seems unbelievable that it was just over six years ago (1 January 2013), that Christopher Martin-Jenkins slipped quietly away to his celestial Lord’s, at the age of 67, after suffering from cancer. His presence was always such a reassuring one that it wouldn’t be a surprise, even now, to switch on TMS and hear his sensible tones expressing some surprise at an outrageous choice of shot or an outre hairstyle. Something of the world at least would be back in its rightful place. An unfashionably old-style Englishman, slightly out of place in the late 20th century, let alone the 21st, he nevertheless treated everyone, from hotel receptionist to taxi driver, with a hundred small courtesies (always, in The Spin’s book, a pretty good signal of someone’s humanity). Way back in the 1990s I was asked by my friend the late journalist Charlie de Lisle, who had co-written a book – An Australian Summer – with CMJ, to interview him for publicity purposes. I set off on one of those sweet summer days where a breath of the morning air is enough to have you cartwheeling barefoot down the garden path, to his beautiful house in deepest Sussex where I was given coffee by his wife Judy before being invited into CMJ’s book-lined study. Probably tongue-tied and definitely overawed, I jotted down everything I could see on the shelves whenever I thought CMJ wasn’t looking. The piece never saw the light of day, I can’t now remember what was on the shelves and the dictaphone tape was lost long ago, but I hold tightly to the memory of a kind, impeccably polite man who gave thoughtful answers to what would have been rambling questions as his friendly black labrador pottered to and fro. He was the same person on TMS and a good starting-point for Cook, who has raised a few eyebrows with his pre-microphone pronouncements. “I am not going to criticise James Anderson if he has a bad day,” he said in the Sunday Times. “Broady too. There is no way around it. We have been through so much together, especially Jimmy. I have too much respect for him and I am too friendly with him.” Perhaps Cook has been scarred by the experiences of his own former captain Andrew Strauss. Strauss had thought about giving commentary a go, before he accidentally called Kevin Pietersen “a complete cunt” when he thought he was off-air during a stint at Lord’s for Sky. He soon gave up any thoughts of a media career and went on to join the England and Wales Cricket Board. CMJ shared Cook’s reluctance to engage in personal criticism but managed to find a way round it with measured tones and sometimes a little exasperation. It didn’t destroy his relationship with players, who respected his innate fairness and deep love of the game. Though not even CMJ could avoid all controversy – his biggest brush with it came in Barbados, where England’s tour proper starts on Wednesday with the first Test at Bridgetown. It was 1990 and England were, incredibly, leading the series 1-0 going into the fourth Test and West Indies were in the unfamiliar position of rubbing their heels on the ropes. CMJ was in the commentary box when late in the afternoon Rob Bailey was given out caught down the legside by the umpire Lloyd Barker after Viv Richards had embarked on an extravagant celebration. CMJ pondered on air that a very good umpire had cracked under pressure. “It wasn’t his mistake that was so sad,” he said. “It was the fact that [he] was pressurised into changing his original decision. If that is gamesmanship or professionalism, I am not quite sure what cheating is.” The local reaction was firecracker hot – with accusations of whinging, colonialism and racism. CMJ was banned from the Voice of Barbados, who held a day-long phone in on the matter, the local newspaper reported on “biased Brits” and Barker issued a writ for defamation. When play restarted after the rest day, crowds protested outside the ground, with placards suggesting that prison might be a suitable punishment. CMJ was horrified and apologised to Barker but the whole scene left an unpleasant taste on what was a tumultuous tour (which West Indies went on to win 2-1). The writ was settled two years later and bygones slowly became bygones. Barbados was also the scene of another, more amusing CMJ moment. Vic Marks remembers him being lent a rather upmarket set of golf clubs. “As he was driving through Bridgetown in a mini moke he had the bag lodged in the back. CMJ could be an erratic driver which may have contributed to the sad fact that one by one the clubs bounced out of the bag on to the road without him noticing. He was crestfallen when discovering their disappearance, and when broadcasting on the local station the following day at the Test match he made a plaintive appeal that any stray golf clubs that had been found on the streets of Bridgetown might be returned to him at the Kensington Oval. But none were forthcoming.” And it was in West Indies, though Jamaica not Barbados, that the best CMJ story of all took place. CMJ was on the golf course when he tried to phone the office with an urgent message – using the TV remote control from his room. That, at least, is a step Cook is unlikely to replicate. • This is an extract taken from the Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.     Eleven Sports, the self-styled “Netflix for Sports” controlled by the Leeds United owner, Andrea Radrizzani, has saved its UK and Ireland operation from closure after reaching deals to offload the rights to Italy’s Serie A and continue coverage of Spain’s La Liga. In December, it emerged that the service, which launched last summer, was facing the prospect of shutting its streaming operation in the UK and Ireland after being unable to attract enough subscribers. The company attempted to renegotiate rights deals at a much cheaper rate to try and avoid pulling the plug. Eleven Sports has now concluded talks with IMG, which acts as the agent for Serie A rights, with the UK and Ireland rights for the Italian league to move to pay-TV operator Premier Sports from March until 2021. Premier Sports also picked up the rights to the Dutch Eredivisie and Chinese Super League from Eleven Sports. Eleven Sports has also concluded a new agreement with La Liga giving it temporary breathing space to keep broadcasting matches in the UK and Ireland until the end of the season. In the summer, Eleven Sports will have to negotiate another deal with La Liga. “Our priorities lie with our subscribers who we hope will experience minimal disruption as a result of these developments,” said an Eleven Sports spokesman. “The strategic direction we have chosen allows us to focus on La Liga which not only drives real value for us in the UK and Ireland but is also a property which we continue to have a valued partnership with in five markets globally.” Eleven Sports said that as a result of the cutback in sports offered on its service existing and new subscribers will automatically see the price of its monthly pass reduced to £4.99 from 1 March. The company, which is thought to have attracted about 50,000 subscriptions since its UK and Ireland launch in August, was charging £5.99 a month. A statement from Eleven Sports UK & Ireland 👇If our subscribers have any further questions surrounding the service, please email us on: info@elevensports.uk pic.twitter.com/S37H3SZq1G In November, Eleven Sports struck a deal with the Scottish broadcaster STV to show two live La Liga and Serie A matches a week through its online streaming service. In October, Eleven Sports was forced to stop its controversial practice of broadcasting European games on Saturday afternoons after pressure from football stakeholders. Eleven Sports said that despite the setbacks it is still looking for new sports rights deals. Endeavour, the Hollywood talent agency which owns Ultimate Fighting Championship, the increasingly popular mixed martial arts competition, and IMG hold a minority stake in Eleven Sports UK & Ireland. Eleven Sports, which also operates in markets including Poland and Portugal, is controlled via the holding company Aser, which in turn is controlled by Radrizzani. Late last year, UFC opted to move back to previous rights holder BT with a new broadcast deal.Every morning this past week, Innocent Tinashi has set out very early from his small wood and tin home in Epworth, a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Harare, to walk the seven miles into the city centre in the hope of seeing his wife, Maria. Epworth witnessed some of the fiercest violence during a protest “shutdown” that plunged Zimbabwe into a fresh crisis 12 days ago – and some of the most brutal repression that followed. Across the country, 12 people have been shot dead, hundreds injured and more than 1,500 detained in the disorder and the subsequent crackdown, according to assessments by observers and diplomats in Harare. Every day brings reports of further beatings, assaults, abductions and arrests by the police and military. Among those picked up was Maria: 25, unemployed and a mother to a five-year-old boy and a eight-year-old girl, she was an unlikely troublemaker. Like other detainees, she has been charged with public disorder offences that could mean a lengthy prison sentence. “There was violence outside our home and rioting and problems so we stayed inside all day,” said Tinashi, a thin 36-year-old who earns a bare living selling bananas. “We are not political people. But the police came when we were sleeping. They smashed down our door. I hid in a wardrobe. They took Maria.” The immediate trigger for the shutdown – a closure of all businesses and non-essential services to demonstrate anger – was a sharp rise in fuel prices ordered by the government. Overnight, petrol went from $1.50 a litre to well over three dollars. The rise came against a background of a deteriorating economic situation that has already hit people in places like Epworth very hard. Fourteen months ago, Robert Mugabe, who had ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, was ousted by the army. The 94-year-old autocrat’s rule left the country with a crumbling infrastructure, massive debts, no currency of its own and extreme levels of unemployment. Mugabe’s successor was 76-year-old Emmerson Mnangagwa, a ruling party stalwart who immediately pledged political and economic reform. Neither has come, or at least not rapidly enough to head off crisis. In the centre of Epworth, where 160,000 people live in a sprawl of small huts, shelters and houses, lies a crossroads with a market and a row of bars where young men eat grilled offal, drink cheap beer and shoot pool. Many still bear the scars of the battles with police – and the beatings – from the week before. “A hungry man is an angry man,” said Robert, 36, who has lived in Epworth all his life. “People wanted and expected a change but things are much tougher than under the previous president. The young people are not happy … There are no schools, no jobs.” Prices of all commodities have soared in recent weeks, and a single cabbage on the battered stalls in Epworth’s market now costs a dollar. Locals describe teenage girls forced into sex work; boys addicted to homemade narcotics. Outside the small local health clinic, Mercy Mapeki, a mother of three whose husband is ill and unable to work, said the family often went without food. “Sometimes I borrow some [maize] from the neighbours, but they have nothing either these days. If the children are sick, we pray,” the 32-year-old said. The early signs following Mugabe’s fall were relatively positive. Mnangagwa’s victory in an election held in July was contested but the campaign was considerably more free than any for decades. Senior ministers spoke of previous mistakes and how Zimbabwe was now returning to the right path. The former British colony was “open for business”, they repeated. There were signs that the foreign investment desperately needed to create jobs and growth might come. But widespread scepticism at home and abroad appeared vindicated when six civilians were shot by soldiers during protests in Harare two days after the polls. Many suggested a hardline faction within the ruling party were responsible, unhappy with even the limited reforms that might have convinced investors and international multilateral institutions to provide the funds to resuscitate the economy. Today, any remaining illusions have been shattered. The crackdown of the past fortnight has been the most extensive for a decade at least, and veteran campaigners in Harare worry that it is far from over. “It could be the start of a concerted effort to destroy any opposition of any type that could last weeks, even months,” said one old hand, recalling a campaign of regime violence in 2008 that led to 270 deaths. Significantly, the targeting of the opposition, union leaders and civil society activists has continued even after Mnangagwa cut short a foreign trip to pledge dialogue and punishment for security officials who committed excesses. Diplomats in Harare admit it is almost impossible to work out where real power lies, among competing institutions, agencies, personalities and factions. The result is a sense of deep uncertainty, and fears that Zimbabwe is moving into uncharted waters where anything is possible. One innovation under Mnangagwa is “fast-track” trials for the vast numbers detained in recent days. “The rule of law has been entirely abandoned .. It’s a travesty of justice,” said Derek Matyszak, an analyst in Harare with the Institute for Security Studies. Each day last week, 56 accused men and five women from Epworth filed into court nine in at Harare’s central magistrates’ court to face trial. They are represented by just five lawyers, who managed to win a postponement of 48 hours to allow them to interview their clients. Few of the accused are likely to be freed; even those caught up by mistake like Maria. Most will face months, even years, in jail, lawyers said. Five prominent activists have been charged with subversion. They include Evan Mawarire, a preacher and activist known for his resistance to Mugabe’s rule. Nor is it clear how the government can halt the economy’s slide without external aid. Persistence Gwanyanya, an independent economist in Harare who has worked closely with the government, said Zimbabwe was “taking a painful pill at the moment” but that there were some “quick wins” possible. “We are in a transition … We can expect things to get worse before they get better but I don’t expect the suffering to be extended for a long time,” Gwanyanya said. A measure of has calm returned to much of Zimbabwe now, with traffic approaching normal levels in the cities and the internet, shut down for several days, working once more. But few are optimistic in the long term. Marion Michasa, 40, was waiting outside Harare magistrates court to see her husband, a 51-year-old car trader in Epworth who was swept up in the dragnet during last week’s riots when he tried to get to work in the centre of the city on a bicycle. “Life is so difficult,” she said. “Right now we are so confused. We are still living with fear.”Jonas Mekas tells me he’s 27 years old. Strictly speaking, he’s 95, but the avant garde film-maker, poet, critic and philosopher decided 68 years ago that he was sticking at 27. “After 27, people begin to become old, according to Melville,” he says. “They look back and repeat. After 27, you begin to think, ‘Is this the right way to do it?’ You think twice. Before that, you say, ‘Fuck you, I don’t care. I just do it.’” Is he still in his “Fuck you” period? “Yes I am. When I came to New York I was 27. I was very angry about what I had lost before 27. I always blamed the ‘civilisation’ that threw me out of my home.” Mekas still has a thick European accent. He grew up in a small village in northern Lithuania called Semeniškiai – he calls it a paradise “where nothing happened then suddenly everything happened”. He lost paradise when the Soviets invaded in 1940. That is when he took his first photograph, aged 17. A soldier snatched his camera and confiscated the film. A year later, the Germans invaded. Mekas joined the resistance, typing out news bulletins sourced from BBC broadcasts and distributing them clandestinely. One day, his typewriter went missing and he feared he’d been found out. He and his brother Adolfus fled Lithuania in 1944, but were stopped on a train in Germany and imprisoned in a Nazi labour camp in Hamburg for eight months. The brothers escaped but were caught and kept until 1946 in displaced persons’ camps. Eventually, they emigrated to America, settling in Brooklyn, New York. There, Mekas borrowed money and bought his first Bolex 16mm movie camera. His film-making days had begun. But they weren’t conventional films. Mekas eschewed narrative and plot. He didn’t have time for the artifice of Hollywood. Why did every scene have to connect to every other from start to finish? And yet there was something traditional in his film-making. He was always interested in capturing those magical moments that make up a life, moments at once prosaic and transcendent. His films often look like home movies – Proustian scraps of memories, children smiling, a day at the seaside, revisiting Lithuania, home cooking, walking through New York. Sometimes footage is speeded up so it becomes dizzying, sometimes it’s slowed down. The camera rarely stops: one continuous shot and that’s that. Lost, Lost, Lost – made in 1976 – is a gorgeous three-hour memoir about the move from Lithuania to New York. The film conveys his loss, loneliness, bewilderment – and ultimately his sense of rapture at his new homeland. It is composed of hundreds, if not thousands, of disconnected images, accompanied by Mekas in a voiceover that is both lyrical and stumbling staccato: “I was there with my camera to record conflicting passions. I was there, the chronicler, the diarist. I recorded it all. And I don’t know – am I singing or am I crying?” It is more prose-poem than conventional voiceover and, as with all his work, it is accompanied by an incredibly diverse soundtrack, ranging from Lithuanian folk to Jewish prayer, Billie Holiday to avant-garde jazz. Much of the music was taken straight from the radio. Occasionally, Mekas employed actors. His adaptation of the Kenneth H Brown play The Brig, a brutal depiction of life in a Marine Corps jail, was so realistic it won first prize in the documentary section of the 1964 Venice film festival. We meet at the hotel where he is staying, near Bloomsbury in the heart of literary London. Mekas suggests we sit at a table at the back of the lounge, where it is quiet. His son Sebastian, with whom he lives, walks over and says he has been told this table is reserved for management meetings. But Mekas isn’t having any of it. He has spent a lifetime pushing back at authority. “I don’t think we should go,” he says firmly. “The manager should be happy we are sitting here.” Mekas could almost pass as a painter-decorator. He is wearing his trademark blue cotton jacket splodged with white paint, paired with a flat cap. His face is dotted with liver spots and when he smiles – which he does a lot – his blue eyes narrow to slits. He is as busy as ever. He has come to Britain to promote a book of his conversations with film-makers, but is already talking about his next project, an anthology of his diaries. And he’s as contrary as ever. Asked what attracted him to the avant garde, he takes issue with the term. “There is nothing avant garde about what I have done and what I am doing.” He simply says he has spent his life doing what had to be done. By the time Mekas got to America in 1949, he was not interested in filming anything dark or bleak. He had already witnessed too much hell. He wanted to film the stuff that made life worth living. In 1954, he and Adolfus founded Film Culture, a magazine that explored underground cinema. By 1958, Mekas was writing a film column for the Village Voice. In the early 1960s, he co-founded what eventually became Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest repositories of avant-garde film. Perhaps most importantly, he opened up his loft to friends and fellow travellers in the avant garde. Here, any number of legendary – or soon to be legendary – artists met to watch endless films in which nothing happened, while discussing cultural possibilities. These included Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Salvador Dalí, Kenneth Anger, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs. (Although he was firmly rooted in the counterculture, he had many establishment friends. Mekas taught the children of John and Jackie Kennedy to make films.) It was at Mekas’s apartment that Warhol first became interested in film-making. “In my loft,” he says, “Andy met film-makers and was inspired by them. That’s where he got the bug. My loft was a gathering space for musicians, poets, film-makers.” Mekas helped Warhol shoot Empire, an eight-hour, slow-motion film of an unchanging view of the Empire State Building. He has little time for those who regard Warhol as merely a self-publicist. He didn’t seek out fame, says Mekas – it was the other way round. “The newspapers began to attack him and it created a kind of fame. Then the society around him began to seek him out. Then everybody began to write and say, ‘Andy is only interested in those fake people, he only wants fame.’ But it was the reverse . He was never interested in them and, the more he ignored them, the more they flocked to him. Everybody could go into the Factory – and lost souls would come in because he never said no. Whatever they said, he acted like a good father. He just never said no.” When Lennon and Ono moved to New York in 1976, the first person they called, in the middle of the night, was Mekas – to ask where they could get a decent espresso. He says Lennon was like Warhol. “He was very open and so quick. He could improvise on the spot.” He regards Yoko Ono’s early conceptual work as “unsurpassable” and he worked, or played, with Dalí. ‘“He should have been an actor. He was one of the earliest performing artists. He did everything with a sense of surprise. He would always create situations of surprise and magic. He’d tell you that life is like an apple then put his hand in his pocket and pull one out to illustrate the point.” Although Mekas has devoted his life to film, he once famously said: “Shoot all scriptwriters and we may yet have a rebirth of American cinema.” As far as he was concerned, scriptwriters were the enemy of spontaneity, the authors of control. Mekas championed such brilliant film-makers as Roberto Rossellini in Italy and John Cassavetes in the US, who made movies that looked as if they were sticking their camera in front of reality and letting it roll. He tells Susan Sontag she should stick to writing and accuses Agnès Varda of making an ‘escapist’ film His book of interviews with film-makers makes for remarkable reading. At times, he sounds like a headmaster calling pupils into his office to reprimand them for selling out or having one eye on the Hollywood leviathan. He more or less tells Susan Sontag she should stick to writing, accuses Agnès Varda of making an “escapist” film that sides with with “capitalistic cinema”, and asks Robert Downey senior: “Why do you have to resort to vulgarity?” Mekas smiles when I mention the interviews. He says he might have been critical, but he never interviewed anybody he did not admire. Nor did he always enjoy speaking his mind. “It was not easy for me to tell Susan Sontag that, particularly knowing how much she thought of herself as a film-maker. But we were friends and remained friends.” Mekas also championed the taboo. In 1964, he was charged for violating obscenity laws after screening Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures at the Bowery theatre in New York. The film, and the case, became a cause célèbre. Mekas and two others were found guilty of showing an obscene motion picture and given a suspended sentence. In recent years, he says, his taste has become a little more conservative: “I read very little that was not written before the 13th century.” When push comes to shove, he prefers going back to the third century and Saint Jerome, when society was more in touch with the the spiritual. Everything these days, he says, is about industry and productivity. “I’m now trying to get back what the civilisation took away from humanity. St Jerome was one of the most educated people of the time. He translated the Bible into Latin and taught a balance between the spiritual and the earthly needs of the community. We have lost the balance today. Technology is far ahead of humanity and ethics.” In other ways, his views are little changed. When I ask which recent films he has liked, he cites Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. “It is the only one that deals with real life and succeeds – and they ignored it at the Oscars. It was ignored because it was good, because it was intelligent, made by a woman. If that kind of a film was made by a man, it would just repeat what we always think about young women between 15 and 20. Every line was fresh.” Best of all, he says, it had no plot. “Usually, movies are full of cliches. This was based on situations, one not connected with the next. It’s not about what is happening but about what her state is. The film consists of 120 or so situations. It’s a collage.” Which is pretty much Mekas’s definition of what a film should be. Yet even here he throws me a curveball. “The best commercial cinema today is action cinema. The plots are invented on the spot. Not like Hitchcock, where every scene that follows is connected with the final scene. In the action movie, it is more like the style of The Arabian Nights.” It’s impossible to know if he is making an ideological point, amusing himself, or whether he actually means it. Mekas still gets his camera out every day. What delights him is the fact that technology has democratised film and helped to bring his vision of DIY non-narrative movies to fruition. “Cocteau wrote that cinema will become a mature art when you are able to use your camera like your pen, and that’s where we are.” He whips out a pen from his jacket pocket – and then his tiny digital camera, conjuror-like, just like Dalí would have done. “I have a pen and I have a camera,” he says. “New technology allows me to go into different areas of content that I couldn’t go into with my traditional camera.” Mekas is an impish nonagenarian. His hearing is perfect, he is not wearing glasses and he looks supremely fit. What’s his secret? “The secret of my health is to lead a normal life. Ninety-five is normal. Just don’t overdo anything. If you live normally, then it’s normal to be OK at 95, but people usually overdo things – too much sex, too much worry, too much work, too much food, too much drinking too much smoking, is no good. I do it all. But to a degree.” And with that lesson in moderation, the godfather of the avant garde heads off to Bloomsbury to find a decent bar. • Conversations with Film-Makers by Jonas Mekas is published by Spector Books.If the Marvel Cinematic Universe goes down in film history as a textbook example of how to build a perfect spider-web of interconnected movies, with each new arrival in multiplexes enriching and adding nuance to those that came before, Universal’s recently deceased “Dark Universe” will surely be remembered as the exact opposite: a cinematic end of line, full stop, dead end. The rumblings that this one might have breathed its last breath – before it ever really emerged from a thousand-year slumber to embark on a reign of terror – were there from the beginning. After the studio released a weird-looking shot of Tom Cruise (star of The Mummy) with Johnny Depp (the Invisible Man), Russell Crowe (Dr Jekyll) and Javier Bardem (Frankenstein’s monster) in 2017, it emerged that the image had in fact been put together via composite techniques. Even the A-list actors themselves clearly weren’t confident enough in the future of the franchise to find the time to be properly photographed together. Later that month, The Mummy bombed critically (though it eventually grasped its way to a not-completely terrible $410m worldwide), leading the rest of those remakes to being quietly locked back in the crypt. Until now, that is. For the Hollywood Reporter suggests Universal is resurrecting its plans for The Invisible Man – sans Depp, and with no plans to have the heavily bandaged monstrosity hang out with his monster buddies, Abbott and Costello-style, in future movies this time around. This can only be a good thing. The studio’s concoction Prodigium, a Dark Universe agency equivalent to Marvel’s SHIELD, complete with green-faced Russell Crowe presumably hamming it up in every movie as Jekyll/Hyde, always looked as clumsily stitched together as Frankenstein’s monster himself. Moreover, the star-focused model for the franchise rather ignored the fact that it is pretty difficult to create a gothic mist of suspense when the key protagonists are among Hollywood’s most famous faces … and we all know they are guaranteed to make it to the end credits. The presence of Cruise and Crowe in The Mummy unbalanced Alex Kurtzman’s film so severely that it was nearly impossible to recall that this was a film ostensibly designed to chill the spine, so comic were its hamfisted attempts at knockabout action thrills and mega-movie world-building. Perhaps Universal’s determination to throw a little star power into the mix was predicated on the studio’s own insecurities, for most of the original titles that spawned the classic monster movies of the 1930s are long out of copyright in the US. If another studio wants to make a movie version of HG Wells’s The Invisible Man, it is perfectly entitled to do so, though that studio may not be able to persuade Johnny Depp to get on board. Nobody yet knows who will be stepping into Claude Rains’s shoes in the new version, but the spirit of James Whale’s original 1933 film and Wells’s source novel surely require that it be an unknown, or at the very least not an instantly recognisable face. Universal has recruited Insidious and Saw’s Leigh Whannell to direct, and it’s clear the studio sees this as a new start with a very different approach to its ill-fated previous plans. “Throughout cinematic history, Universal’s classic monsters have been reinvented through the prism of each new film-maker who brought these characters to life,” said the studio’s president of production, Peter Cramer. “We are excited to take a more individualised approach for their return to screen, shepherded by creators who have stories they are passionate to tell with them.” Let us hope Universal really can wrap its latest efforts up in a veil of eerie enigma this time around, rather than batter us around the chops with corny action cliches. If the studio wants to bring its most infamous horror icons back from the dead, it had better make sure to inject them with some real creative electricity.It began with a knock on the door. A police officer, sombre faced, saying she had tried earlier but the bell seemed to be out of order. Natasha Abrahart, 20, daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece and friend, talented Bristol University second-year physics student, a keen musician who enjoyed indoor climbing and baking cakes, was dead. Worse – if it can be worse – she appeared to have taken her life, alone in her student room. That was eight months ago. Since then her parents, Robert and Margaret Abrahart, who live in Nottingham, have been in limbo as they wait for the inquest in May, a full year after their daughter’s death. “It was nine o’ clock in the morning on the 1st of May and Duncan, Natasha’s brother, and I were at home. My wife was in London looking after her mother. I had to call to tell her Natasha was dead,” says Robert. “The police officer gave me contact details for the policeman who had attended, and he in turn provided contact details for a coroner’s officer and the university. But you don’t know what you are doing or what you have to do; it’s your worst nightmare, and you have no direction,” he said. “When you get the news of the death of a child you go blank, you don’t know what is going on, you don’t understand the system, you can’t cope and you get thrown into the coroner’s process. We were told we had to deliver a family statement and given a deadline. What is a family statement?” The coroner will decide the cause of death and the couple have been advised to avoid making comments that might prejudge the outcome. But Natasha’s father wants to make two things clear: “First, Natasha was not a struggling student. She passed the first year with good marks and did not have a problem with the physics itself; and second, in our view, the university did not do everything it could to help her.” Universities have been urged by the government to tighten up their support for student mental health. At least 95 UK university students took their lives in 2016-17, the latest figures show, and suicide is the leading cause of death in young people, according to the Office for National Statistics. Bristol, a high-performing university, has had 12 confirmed or suspected suicides since October 2016, and Natasha’s was one of three  over a two-week period last year. On 21 April a fourth-year engineering student, Alex Elsmore, 23, took his life after handing in his MA thesis. Natasha died on 30 April and then, on 5 May, a first-year English student, Ben Murray, 19, died. Getting information about Natasha’s last months has been challenging for her parents, even though they are well placed to understand the systems involved. Robert is a retired associate professor in geospatial data analysis, from the University of Nottingham, and Margaret is a recently retired psychological wellbeing practitioner, and former occupational therapist, who has carried out clinical audits of mental health practice. At first they struggled alone, while the other three parties at the inquest – two GPs who treated Natasha, the university and the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS trust – engaged four sets of lawyers. “We thought we were capable of asking relevant questions in court but we quickly discovered we were out of our depth,” says Robert. “A friend told us about the charity Inquest and they suggested we engage a solicitor.” Although the lawyers are working for reduced fees, with legal costs mounting they turned to crowdfunding through Crowdjustice.com. So far they have raised £13,460 towards the expected £50,000 bill. “What we are going through, knowing so much and yet unable to tell it until the inquest, is an agonising process. We believe our daughter’s death was totally unnecessary and that what we have discovered could help save the lives of other students. We want the inquest to determine exactly what happened so lessons can be learned. We see it as our duty,” says Robert. The breakthrough came when he found email correspondence between his daughter and the university, in which she disclosed suicidal thoughts. “Up until that point we had been thinking that this tragedy had come about because she had not confided in anyone. But she had tried to get help,” he says. The couple hope the inquest will pay close attention to the effect of assessment methods on students with mental health conditions and look at the allowances a university should make. A pre-inquest review hearing at Avon coroner’s court last November was told Natasha died the day she was due to make an oral presentation for a physics assessment. The coroner heard the university knew she had struggled with similar, but less intimidating, assessments in the past. The court also heard that Natasha had been diagnosed as suffering from chronic social anxiety. It emerged she had told a member of the university physics staff by email: “I wanted to tell you that the past few days have been really hard, I’ve been having suicidal thoughts and to a certain degree attempted it. I want help to go to the student health clinic or wherever you think is a good place to go to help me through this, and I would like someone to go with me as I will find it very hard to talk to people about these issues,” she wrote. Despite that email, Natasha had “no direct contact” with the university’s student wellbeing service, the first pre-inquest hearing in August last year was told. Since the death of Ben Murray his father, James, has been liaising with Bristol to improve its systems and contributed to a guide on how to make universities safer for students at risk of suicide that was written by Prof Hugh Brady, Bristol’s vice-chancellor. James has constructed a prototype “student wellbeing assessment” early alert system of recording and sharing information between different parts of a university. Behaviour such as non-attendance at seminars, non-payment of fees and failure to engage in clubs and societies may look insignificant in themselves, but when taken together can build up a picture of a student at risk and trigger an alert. He has also been instrumental in the introduction last September of an “opt-in” clause that students can sign to circumvent data protection laws and enable a named family member or friend to be contacted if the university has significant concerns about their physical or mental health; 94% of students opted in. A spokesman for the University of Bristol said it was fully committed to assisting the coroner’s investigation and ensuring that any lessons learned were built into its support. “At the heart of this is a student who has tragically died, her family, and members of our community who continue to be deeply affected by this loss. Our thoughts remain with Natasha’s family and friends. The evidence submitted in advance of the pre-inquest review shows that every effort was made to assist and support Natasha, both from within her school of physics and by the university’s pastoral support services,” the spokesman said. But Margaret and Robert say they were aware that their daughter had been experiencing anxiety and low mood but thought she was under the care of professionals. “We want a full investigation into what happened with the findings used to make it safer for students in future.” Further information, including progress updates, can be found on the Abraharts’ fundraising page In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116123 or email jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an election is not a single decisive event, but just one part of a never-ending struggle to gain and keep power in which living to fight another day is as important as landing a knockout punch. Of the half dozen or so major players a year ago, only two or three remain standing. Felix Tshisekedi, named as the surprise, provisional winner of last month’s much delayed presidential vote, is the 55-year-old son of the country’s most respected opposition leader. However, he has never held high office or even a managerial role, and his Belgian professional qualifications have been questioned by opponents. Tshisekedi is the leader of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), DRC’s oldest and largest opposition party. Critics say he is unproven, inexperienced and lacks the charisma of his father. “His father was a man of the country. The son is very limited,” Valentin Mubake, former secretary-general of Tshisekedi’s party told the Guardian last month. In 2008, he became national secretary for external relations and was elected to the national assembly in 2011 as representative for Mbuji-Mayi, the country’s third city. However, he never took up his seat as he did not formally recognise his father Étienne’s 2011 election defeat to Joseph Kabila. He inherited the UDPS leadership when Étienne – who spent 35 years leading the opposition but never won office – died in 2017. Tens of thousands thronged the streets when Tshisekedi visited his political stronghold of Mbuji-Mayi, a southern city, in early elections, chanting slogans calling on the father of five to save the nation. But Tshisekedi’s apparent victory is contested – not by the outgoing president, Kabila, whose own hand-picked candidate was soundly defeated, but by the opposition rival, Martin Fayulu, who came a close second. The few reliable surveys of pre-poll voting intentions make it clear that Fayulu was the favourite by a considerable margin. The conclusions of 40,000 observers deployed by the church on the day of the election are that he won. Fayulu, who has denounced the result as an “electoral coup”, is not a “fils de” (“son of”) like Tshisekedi and many other dynastic politicians across the continent. He is a former business executive and 30-year veteran of politics who has earned a reputation as brave, honest and effective. More importantly, perhaps, he also has the backing of political heavyweights Jean-Pierre Bemba and Moise Katumbi, both forced into effective exile overseas and unable to contend the polls. “Fayulu came very fast from more or less nowhere to become this great people’s champion, but it is unclear if he has the big organisation and depth of support he needs now. We are about to find out,” said Ben Shepherd, an expert in the DRC at London’s Chatham House. The real winner may be the outgoing president. Kabila, 47, took power in 2001 on the assassination of his father Laurent, and ceded only reluctantly to regional powers’ pressure to hold elections. He was banned from standing by the constitution’s two-term limit. Kabila has made no secret of his continuing political ambitions, which is one reason why so many analysts say Fayulu’s claims that Tshisekedi has done a deal with the DRC’s former ruler may be more than sour grapes. Many noted that Fayulu’s campaign suffered significantly more harassment than Tshisekedi’s, and that the latter’s rhetoric towards erstwhile enemies underwent a dramatic change in recent days. Tshisekedi’s camp has acknowledged contact with Kabila’s representatives since the vote but denied there had been any deal and said talks were aimed at ensuring a peaceful transition “This is not a bad result at all for the ruling party,” said Stephanie Wolters, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies, in South Africa. “It will mean a very soft landing for Kabila. With Tshisekedi, they don’t have to give up anything. Kabila gets to walk away looking good and the elite gets to stick around.”Olivia Newton-John has denied recent reports in US media that she had just “weeks” to live. Appearing in a short video posted on social media, the Australian music and screen icon wished fans a happy new year, and said reports of her imminent death were off the mark. “I just want to say that the rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated, to quote a very famous quote,” she said. “I’m doing great and I want to wish all of you the happiest, healthiest 2019 that’s possible and thank you all for your wonderful support for me and for my Olivia Newton-John cancer wellness centre in Melbourne, Australia.” Happy New Year! Here’s to a wonderful 2019! Love & light, Olivia pic.twitter.com/1Nd2jIcRb1 It came after US tabloid site Radar Online had claimed the 70-year-old was “clinging on to life” amid her battle with cancer. The site said Newtown-John had been hoping she’d live long enough to see daughter Chloe Lattanzi wed fiancé James Driskill in 2019. Quoting unnamed sources, the report said Newton-John’s “bodily functions appear to be shutting down”, and quoted a “longevity expert” who said she was “almost certainly is going to die!”. The reports in the US were picked up by a number of Australian media outlets, sparking an outpouring of grief among local fans. It forced members of Newton-John’s family and friends to insist the rumours weren’t true. Her niece Tottie Goldsmith, herself a singer and actor, denied the claims in a post on Instagram overnight. “Just giving you the heads up that Livvy is in good health, so let’s leave that distressing rumour where it belongs,” she wrote. Newton-John postponed tour dates in May 2017 after revealing a second diagnosis of breast cancer. In September she revealed she had received a third diagnosis for cancer, saying her stage-four breast cancer had metastasised to her spine. In an interview on Channel Seven’s Sunday Night, she said: “I’m one of millions in this fight. I shouldn’t say fight ... in this journey.” Newton-John was catapulted to global stardom in 1978 by her co-starring role with John Travolta in the musical film Grease. She has previously spoken about her experience of surviving breast cancer and become an advocate for the importance of early detection.Four years ago when Michael Schumacher’s son, Mick, made his car racing debut, there was an unmistakable sense of anticipation and excitement in the air. It was clearly the return of the Schumacher name to racing that had brought so many people to the unostentatious Oschersleben circuit in Germany. The interest in Mick has only grown since but now he has joined the Ferrari driver academy, is set to compete in F2 and highly likely to test a Ferrari F1 car this season, Oschersleben was a bagatelle compared with the maelstrom the 19-year-old is about to enter. He had been deliberately low key when beginning racing, competing under his mother’s maiden name as Mick Betsch and later Mick Junior. In 2015, however, at that German F4 series meeting it was Schumacher on the entry sheet. There were more journalists than ever before at Oschersleben. The crowd outside Van Amersfoort Racing’s tent was five deep and the fans, in large numbers for an F4 race, proved the family name is still a draw like no other in Germany. His father raced for Ferrari between 1996 and 2006 and won five of his seven world championships between 2000 and 2004. Ferrari won the F3 title last year and on Saturday announced they had signed Mick to their academy. The family connection with the team was acknowledged by the young man after competing at the Race of Champions over the weekend. “I’m hugely proud to be able to work with Ferrari, such a great team and huge amount of history, especially combined with my dad,” he said. “I’m really proud to be able to be part of it. All our hearts are very red.” Mick was 13 when his father sustained a brain injury in a skiing accident from which he has yet to recover. He has since pursued a careful path that has put him on the brink of F1 and potentially to follow his father into the most prized seat in motorsport. He entered the European F3 Championship in 2017 and, after a season getting to grips with the series last year, won eight of the final 15 races to take the title. This year he steps up to F2 with the same Prema team and the move comes with no little expectation. The Italian team have won six of the seven European F3 championships in which they have competed. In GP2 (now F2), they have two out of three – boasting drivers’ champions in Pierre Gasly in 2016 and Charles Leclerc in 2017. Leclerc, also a member of the Ferrari academy at the time, completed a superb season for Sauber last year and will join Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari this season. Leclerc was a star in the making but even in 2017 when I interviewed him at Prema he was accompanied by a Ferrari representative. Just being on the books of the Prancing Horse comes with great responsibility before you throw the Schumacher name into the mix. The attention he will now receive will be of another level. Equally, he must come to terms with a new car and the Pirelli tyres it uses amid experienced competitors such as Nyck de Vries and Britain’s Jack Aitken. On top of which it is likely he will make his debut in an F1 car. There are two scheduled tests in 2019 and out of the four days two must be run by a driver who has competed in fewer than two F1 races, a criteria Mick meets. A Schumacher once again behind the wheel of Ferrari, even for a test, would lead to a media frenzy and he has already tasted what might be coming. In December 2014 he had a minor off in testing at the Lausitzring speedway that was reported as a “terrifying crash”. Holding it together under the harshest of spotlights is his new task but there is confidence he will be up to it. Lewis Hamilton is optimistic Mick can cope. “He has got great talent like his dad,” the world champion has said. “So I don’t think it will be a burden.” If he is feeling that weight, Mick has worn it well. At Oschersleben he went from 19th to ninth and a podium place for best rookie. The crowd filed out happy they had perhaps been there for the start of something special. Mick has gone on to prove he has every intention of living up to the Schumacher name but the real challenge lies ahead.Maurizio Sarri has admitted he may not be equipped to motivate his players after seeing Chelsea suffer the heaviest league defeat of Roman Abramovich’s ownership at Bournemouth. Sarri, who endured chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing” from Chelsea fans, kept his team in the dressing room for around an hour after the final whistle in an effort to understand why a game that had been goalless at half-time had unravelled so spectacularly. The defeat led to Chelsea dropping out of the top four on goal difference and places Sarri’s position under scrutiny six months into a three-year contract. “I think the players are good enough,” said Sarri of his Carabao Cup finalists. “Maybe we are not at the top of the Premier League at the moment but we are competitive. We cannot lose 4-0 against Bournemouth. I want to respect Bournemouth, and you know I like very much the coach Eddie [Howe] but it’s impossible to lose 4-0 here.” Asked if he was good enough, he added: “Maybe it’s my fault, maybe I’m not able to motivate them. But the team is very strong, it is also able to win without the coach.” Sarri had been critical of his players after the recent defeat by Arsenal in the hope to coax a positive reaction but, despite encouraging wins against Tottenham in the Carabao Cup semi-finals and Sheffield Wednesday in the fourth round of the FA Cup, this was a second successive league defeat. “I feel frustrated, not under pressure,” said Sarri, who asked his coaching staff to leave the dressing room post-match. “I didn’t see the signal of my work. So I am frustrated. I wanted to understand, so I spoke with the players immediately but it’s very difficult for them to say why. So I have to try again tomorrow, because I need to solve this problem. “I wanted to talk with them alone, without anybody else. It’s impossible to play in such a different way between the first and second half. I don’t understand why. I don’t know exactly. “We have only to say sorry to our fans. We can lose, of course, in every match but not in this way. We need to solve the problem. We need to understand where the problem is.”A few millennia ago, pagans in northern latitudes realised that a right old knees-up featuring roasted roadkill and proto-Jägerbombs was needed to cheer up the populace during the bleak midwinter. Christians later horned in on this annual shindig, claiming counterintuitively that our Redeemer was born at this special time. Finally, capitalists carved out a piece of the action. And so it came to pass: the season of gorging, gouging and guilting was born. God bless us, every one. But what none of these visionaries foresaw is that January, February and most likely March are at least as dismal weather-wise and otherwise as December. They couldn’t have envisaged that the need for cheering up the populace doesn’t stop at the conclusion of the three most harrowing words in the English language: Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. They couldn’t have known that, in 2019, rail prices would go up 3.1% from 2 January. Still less did the ancients foretell that Theresa May would postpone parliament’s vote on her EU withdrawal agreement until the week of 14 January, almost as if she and her lackeys had planned to maximise already rampant levels of seasonal affective disorder. In such depressing circumstances, what we need is comfort and soothing. Instead, though, we’re exhorted to jump off a dietary cliff, to go cold turkey after weeks of eating cold turkey, to submit to ye venerable ritual of self-administered punishment to atone for ye presumed seasonal sins. We’re enjoined to do ostensibly improving things: give up alcohol; strip down to our pants and get shouted at by British Military Fitness in the park; put the Hobnobs back on the supermarket shelves; enrol for grade 3 bassoon; join a book club reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I’m no doctor – but surely, just as it’s madness to stop taking antidepressants suddenly rather than weaning oneself off them, so it is folly to give up booze and biscuits in January if you were enjoying them only hours earlier. One in 10 Britons who drink alcohol, though, are expected to give it up this month, many of them having downloaded Alcohol Change UK’s Dry January app that lets you track the units, calories and money saved by not drinking. The charity’s website includes inspiring stories, such as the woman who went on a journey from boozing to dry January to running the New York marathon. If these initiatives help us save money (apparently the average Briton spends £50,000 on alcohol during a lifetime), lose weight, sleep better, reduce the strain on the NHS, improve our complexions and raise money for cancer research, that’s all good. But hold on: wouldn’t a dry December app be a better idea than a January one? It’s during that month, after all, that the average Briton drinks 67 units of alcohol a week. It’s then that we need to resist the social pressure to drink – possibly by means of an app I’m thinking of developing that will administer electric shocks of increasing intensity as your blood-alcohol ratio gets higher. Lauren Booker, author of Try Dry: The Official Guide to a Month off Booze, recommends you clear out your alcohol for January. “You don’t need to pour it down the drain,” she counsels. “Either lock it away in the shed so you’re not tempted, or ask a friend if you can leave it at their house until the end of the month.” And then what? On 1 February, after the seasonal ceasefire, you can resume the war on your liver. That’s the risk – that for all those inspired by dry January to give up binge drinking and become marathon runners, many more will undergo a short-term purge that will have negligible long-term benefits. What’s needed is not the crazy switchback from drunk December to dry January, the booze equivalent of yo-yo dieting. We need to learn not the virtue of short-term abstinence, nor to desperately hope that a month off the pop will catalyse a lifestyle revolution, but something much harder – the way of moderation. But the prevailing rhetoric goes another way. “Can you go dry this January?” asks Cancer Research. “Take on the ultimate test of willpower by going booze-free for a whole 31 days and raise vital funds to help beat cancer.” Like the bushtucker trial, it’s a gauntlet I refuse to pick up. I’ll give money to charity, but not narrow my lifestyle options. Almost a century ago, TS Eliot said, “April is the cruellest month.” Maybe it was back then, but nowadays it’s January. So it’s time to fight back, and to make this month not the time for sadomasochistic rituals like Cancer Research’s Dryathlon, but for Jaffa Cakes dunked in dessert wine. • Stuart Jeffries is a freelance feature writerThe music of the composer, singer, arranger, conductor, jazz musician and producer Michel Legrand went on glowing long after many of the 250-odd films he had written soundtracks for had fallen by the wayside. Legrand, who has died aged 86, made deadpan reference to that phenomenon when he played at Ronnie Scott’s club in London in 2011 – announcing that it was his ambition to meet “one of the 19 people who ever saw The Happy Ending”, the 1969 Hollywood film for which he wrote his classic love song What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life? But if some of the film vehicles for Legrand’s artistry were outlasted by his music, several became famous, including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), with Noel Harrison singing The Windmills of Your Mind, which won Legrand’s first Oscar, for best film theme song, in 1969. Another Oscar followed for The Summer of ’42 two years later – this time for best film music. Its theme, The Summer Knows, was performed by Barbra Streisand, whose 1983 film, Yentl, won him his third Oscar, for the theme tune. Legrand’s songwriting skills flowered in the early 1950s through intimate acquaintance with the modern chanson movement in Paris, at first as a gifted piano accompanist. After the second world war, the US was nostalgic for French culture, and when Columbia Records commissioned an English-language album of chanson classics, the young Legrand was hired to steer it – and found himself with an 8m-selling hit. By his mid-20s, Legrand was able to call the shots as a composer and arranger on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1958, he even had more than sufficient clout to hire Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans – three of the hippest and most acclaimed young jazz musicians of the decade – to play sidemen’s roles on his Legrand Jazz session. Michel was born in the Paris suburb of Bécon-les-Bruyères into a family with strong musical connections. His father, Raymond Legrand, was a composer, conductor and former pupil of Gabriel Fauré, and in his later years would go on to collaborate with Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier. His maternal uncle on his mother Marcelle’s side was the dance-band saxophonist and bandleader Jacques Hélian. But Raymond left home when Michel was three, and his mother Marcelle (nee Ter-Mikaëlian), struggled to provide for the boy and his older sister, Christiane. He found a consoling friend in the flat’s battered piano and it quickly emerged that he had a gift. Christiane also played the instrument, and she was similarly destined for a successful career in music, as a jazz singer. Michel became obsessed with the music and life of Franz Schubert, and – with Nadia Boulanger among his teachers – won a raft of prizes on a variety of instruments at the Paris Conservatoire, which he began attending as a 10-year-old in 1942. But a 1947 Paris concert by the bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and his big band thrilled him with the sound of jazz. By the time he left the conservatoire in 1949 he was a budding jazz pianist with a profound knowledge of musical theory and a working knowledge of many instruments. His resourcefulness quickly found him work with chanson stars including Juliette Gréco and Zizi Jeanmaire, and in 1954 the international popularity of chanson brought his international breakthrough. Columbia-EMI wanted an English-language version of those evocative Parisian songs, and none of the big-name American arrangers was interested. Through a contact at the record company, the unknown Legrand was commissioned to produce it – for $200 and no royalties. The result was the bestseling album I Love Paris,. Chevalier then hired Legrand as his musical director and the resulting US tours enhanced the newcomer’s stature. Legrand began a solo career, with the easy-listening but sophisticated jazz albums Holiday in Rome (1955), Michel Legrand Plays Cole Porter (1957) and Legrand in Rio (1958). He also worked with the French Caribbean singer Henri Salvador, who, under the alias of Henri Cording, made some of the first French forays into rock’n’roll, with Legrand furnishing the music and the surrealist novelist, poet and jazz critic Boris Vian the lyrics. In 1958, he returned to New York to make his celebrated Legrand Jazz album – with Ben Webster joining Coltrane, Evans and Davis in the lineup. Legrand later admitted to being anxious about Davis’s involvement. The trumpeter rarely played sessions other than his own and made a diva’s point of arriving 15 minutes late, checking out the music from the studio doorway and promptly leaving if he did not like the sound of it. But, according to Legrand, the usually taciturn Davis not only participated, but even asked the young bandleader if he had liked his contribution. By this point, Legrand was developing a parallel career as a film composer. He scored Henri Verneuil’s 1955 crime passionel movie Les Amants du Tage (The Lovers of Lisbon), and became a significant collaborator with the new wave directors Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda and François Reichenbach. He also composed for Jacques Demy, most notably on the innovative Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) – a reappraisal of the film musical, combining a realist perspective with a narrative in which songs replaced dialogue. The movie’s theme song Je Ne Pourrai Jamais Vivre Sans Toi was covered – in English as I Will Wait for You – by stars including Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Liza Minnelli. Legrand, Demy and the film’s lead, Catherine Deneuve, collaborated on the Hollywood homage Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967), with Gene Kelly. Legrand also wrote for Gilles Grangier and Yves Allégret, and for Joseph Losey – most notably in 1971 on the Palme d’Or winner The Go-Between. Through close relationships with the jazz-enthusiastic chanson singer Claude Nougaro and the Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel, Legrand not only began to develop a personal repertoire of original songs, but to consider performing them himself. He collaborated on the lyrics with other writers including Eddy Marnay and Jean Dréjac, and worked on the occasional forays into songwriting by the novelist Françoise Sagan. In 1968, Legrand moved to Los Angeles, during which time he composed the award-winning scores to The Thomas Crown Affair and then, two years later, Summer of ’42. Legrand later said that Jewison cut the highly charged seven-and-a-half-minute chess game scene between Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair to fit the music, which begins with a solo harp and ends with a big band playing a jazz waltz. As well as the Oscars, between 1971 and 1975 Legrand won five Grammy awards, and in this period was on his way to becoming one of the US’s most popular Frenchmen. A sharp and witty raconteur, he appeared on television chatshows, and for relaxation worked at Shelly’s Manne Hole club in Los Angeles with the great double bassist Ray Brown. In the next decade, he composed for Clint Eastwood and Orson Welles, for Streisand’s Yentl, and the James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983). During this time Legrand also played a lot of jazz, making three albums with a regular trio featuring the bassist Marc-Michel Le Bévillon and the drummer André Ceccarelli, and bringing together the celebrated American saxophonists Phil Woods and Zoot Sims to join him in a septet to make the 1982 album After the Rain. He released a solo vocal album, and staged his own oratorio, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of the celebrations for the bicentenary of the French Revolution, in 1989. Legrand’s search for new challenges found one that even he could not pull off when he directed the unsuccessful semi-autobiographical film Cinq Jours en Juin (1989), but leading a big band in the next decade found him on more secure ground – he toured widely, and accompanied Ray Charles, Diana Ross and Björk with it. Legrand composed for Jean Guidoni’s 1995 album Vertigo and participated in an award-winning show at the Casino de Paris with Guidoni the following year. In 1997, with the playwright Didier Van Cauwelaert, he worked on Le Passe Muraille, a quirky musical adapted from a 1943 Marcel Aymé short story about an unassuming clerk who can walk through walls. The show went to Broadway as Amour five years later, and its lead singer Melissa Errico became an important muse for Legrand. They worked together for six years on the album Legrand Affair (2011). In his later years, Legrand remained ready for surprises, even if the world was beginning to treat him as a grand old man. Stars queued up to perform his hits in a celebration at the Louvre in 2000; and the French government made him an officier de la Légion d’honneur in 2003. When his friend Nougaro died in 2004, he recorded Legrand Nougaro, where the composer and a bespoke jazz band accompanied tapes of his friend’s voice in new performances of the Toulouse singer’s songs – including the previously unheard Mon Dernier Concert. In 2009 Legrand came to Britain with a repertoire combining his biggest hits and a selection of jazz favourites, and a lineup including his longterm partner, the harpist Catherine Michel and the singer Alison Moyet. The following year, he conducted the Moscow Virtuosi chamber group in Russia, for the two-CD set The Music of Michel Legrand. And for his 80th birthday Christmas album the following year – Noël! Noël!! Noël!!! – Legrand was joined by Rufus Wainwright, Jamie Cullum and Iggy Pop. “When I hit 80,” he said, “I knew that the last chapter of my work would be classical. So I wrote a piano concerto that I recorded myself, a cello concerto, a harp concerto, some sonatas. I wrote a huge ballet. I’m very proud of that. It’s a good final chapter.” Last September, Legrand conducted orchestral arrangements of music from his soundtracks with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, against projections of the scenes they originally accompanied, at the Royal Festival Hall, in London. He lived his last years as he had lived his earliest ones as a precocious music student in Paris – guided, as he said, by the “ambition … to live completely surrounded by music. My dream is not to miss out anything. That’s why I’ve never settled on one musical discipline. I love playing, conducting, singing and writing, and in all styles. So I turn my hand to everything – not just a bit of everything. Quite the opposite, I do all these activities at once, seriously, sincerely and with deep commitment.” Legrand had three marriages. The first, to Christine Bouchard, a model, and second, to the actor and producer Isabelle Rondon, ended in divorce. In 2014, he married the actor Macha Méril. He is survived by Macha and his four children, Dominique, Hervé, Benjamin and Eugénie. • Michel Jean Legrand, composer and musician, born 24 February 1932; died 26 January 2019Downing Street has flatly ruled out customs union membership, before the cross-party Brexit talks Theresa May promised on Tuesday night have even begun. The prime minister responded to Tuesday’s historic defeat in the meaningful vote by pledging to speak to “senior parliamentarians” to identify a deal that could secure a majority. But the Labour frontbench position is for a permanent customs union, as is that of Conservative backers of a Norway-style Brexit deal, making it unlikely talks with either group would get off the ground if May stands by that red line. Speaking to journalists after prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, a spokesman for May said: “The principles that govern us as we go into these talks is that we want to be able to do our own trade deals, and that is incompatible with a customs union.” May had said at PMQs that while she was seeking to learn “what could command the support of this house and deliver on the referendum”, any proposal must involve “opening up new opportunities to trade with the rest of the world”. Committing to a customs union would trigger a furious backlash among Brexit-backing Tory MPs – and Downing Street needs their support, and that of the DUP’s 10 representatives, to survive Wednesday night’s no-confidence vote. “We have to win a vote of no-confidence this evening,” the spokesman said. “If we do that, we want to see talks with senior parliamentarians and voices in the House of Commons start quickly, and we’ve set out the approach that we’re going to take to these talks. That’s where we are.” Earlier, the justice secretary, David Gauke – one of those cabinet ministers who pressed for May to reach out to other parties after Tuesday’s vote – had appeared to suggest the government is open to compromise. “I don’t think we can today be boxing ourselves in. What we need to be doing is engaging across parliament, seeing what ideas emerge, where the support is for those particular ideas and at that point we need to make an assessment is this something negotiable with the European Union and something with majority support in the House of Commons?” he said. “Today is about making an assessment about where the numbers are. “I think the right answer would be to leave the customs union but given where we are, we have to be open to proposals that are put forward and make an assessment on the way forward. If we are going to engage, we have to engage.” Gauke did not rule out conversations with the Labour leader but suggested they would be futile. “I think there may be others who might be easier to work with,” he said. Speaking in the Commons, May said the exercise was about “wanting to understand the views of parliamentarians so that we can identify what could command the support of this House”. However, she said engagement must align with what she defined as respecting the vote to leave, citing “ending free movement, a fairer deal for farmers and fishermen, opening up new opportunities to trade with the rest of the world and keeping good ties with our neighbours in Europe”. Ken Clarke, the veteran pro-Europe Tory MP, urged May to consider that a customs union could command support. “I have had to accept the majority in the house is committed to the UK leaving the European Union; she must also accept that she must now modify her red lines that she set for herself at Lancaster House and find a cross-party majority which will be along the lines I have indicated,” he said.Manchester City have refused to give Uefa any comment on allegations that they breached financial fair play regulations and misled the governing body because the club argues the claims were based on “hacked or stolen” emails. The Uefa committee responsible for FFP wrote to City before Christmas inviting comment on allegations reported in the German magazine Der Spiegel that the club’s declarations in 2013-15 were “a web of lies”. City responded that the allegations were based on “hacked or stolen” emails, and challenged Uefa to support stronger protection against hacking. No actual investigation of the club is understood to have begun; Uefa and its club financial control body (CFCB) are understood to be considering whether to launch one. Der Spiegel based the allegations on a small number of emails it claimed had been leaked to it by an anonymous person based in Portugal, given the name John. Spiegel said that “John” denied the internal emails, from City, Uefa, Fifa and several other football clubs and organisations, were hacked, saying that he had good sources. The magazine claimed most damagingly that short extracts from four internal emails showed that City’s sponsorships, by the Abu Dhabi airline Etihad and other state-owned companies, were in fact mostly paid by City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a senior member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family. Etihad itself did deny in a public statement that the money came from Mansour, saying the airline’s “financial obligations … have always been … the sole liability and responsibility of Etihad Airways”, but City refused to engage with the substance of the allegations. When the CFCB wrote inviting comment, City are understood to have replied with a similar stance to their public position since the allegations were published: a refusal to engage with the stories because the emails were hacked or stolen, and taken out of context. The letter from City is said by informed sources to have argued that as Uefa’s own internal emails were also published, it should support City and other clubs to strengthen European football’s cyber-security. As City refused to comment but did not deny that the emails quoted were genuine, the CFCB and Uefa officials are now understood to be discussing internally how to proceed. Aleksander Ceferin, the Uefa president, and Yves Leterme, chairman of the CFCB investigatory chamber, have spoken publicly in general terms that the strongest sanction for a club found to be seriously in breach of the rules is expulsion from the Champions League. A Uefa spokesman said there was no further update on Ceferin’s brief comment on the City issues last month, when he said: “We are assessing the situation. We have an independent body [the CFCB] working on it. Very soon you will have an answer on what will happen in this concrete case.” City’s refusal to comment appears to be a determined policy in relation to perceived cyber-hacks. The club’s senior hierarchy, including the chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, are also senior political figures in Abu Dhabi, which has been subject to previous hacking or email leaks. The response in those cases has also been not to comment on the substance of what was published. City’s only statement since the allegations was: “We will not be providing any comment on out of context materials purportedly hacked or stolen from City Football Group and Manchester City personnel and associated people. The attempt to damage the club’s reputation is organised and clear.” The financial information required for FFP is collected by national leagues, which are delegated responsibility for Uefa’s licensing system. If Uefa did embark on an investigation, which it is under pressure from La Liga and other clubs to do, the Premier League would have to ask City for further confidential information, potentially including internal emails. Leterme and Uefa officials are thought to be assessing whether the potential result of any investigation warrants such an escalation, which City are likely to oppose. The CFCB did find City in breach of the permitted FFP losses in May 2014 and the club agreed to a range of sanctions, but it did not find that the Etihad sponsorship, now of the club’s shirt, stadium and new training “campus”, was overvalued. Owners can put money into clubs via sponsorships, as long as the price paid is considered fair market value.Until 29 January 2017, random motorists on the busy Chemin Sainte-Foy would sometimes pull over to the Quebec City Grand Mosque to withdraw some money. Converted from a Desjardins Bank, it still looks like one, with its rows of rectangular glass panes and a barricaded drive-through. Its only crescent and minaret are in graphic form on a small plastic sign, blocked from the road by trees. Its ordinariness must have surprised those who had only heard about the mosque on radio-poubelles, or “trash radio”, Quebec’s uniquely corrosive brand of conservative talk radio. Even after a rightwing radical, 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonette, opened fire on men and children inside – killing six, injuring 19 and traumatizing many of its 500 weekly worshippers – radio hosts continued vilifying the mosque, falsely claiming women were forced to enter it from between dumpsters “like cattle”. For a place burdened with so much tragedy, the mosque remains remarkably nondescript. Its plainness is further exaggerated by a French colonial cathedral directly across the street. Itself a beleaguered place of worship, several fires since the 18th century have reduced the historic site to an ornate stone facade. But soon, the cathedral could have a twin. Pending city government approval, the Grand Mosque will undergo a dramatic transformation more befitting of its name. The renovation reimagines the rectangular red building into a contemporary edifice with classical Islamic features: arches, arabesque designs, and a minaret inspired by the cathedral’s partial bell tower. But not all Quebec City Muslims favour the design. One group feels that they should do something beautiful to present the mosque as part of Québécois culture, like the old church, as a sign that they don’t have anything to hide, said Zied Kallel, who leads the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec’s strategic committee. Another section of the community, including Kallel, worries the architecture – especially the minaret – could provoke further attacks and undermine recent security measures. A third group disagrees with those very safety measures, especially automatically locking doors, preferring the mosque be open 24 hours a day, in the spirit of those in much of the Muslim world. But unlike those mosques, the Grand Mosque is central to the immigrant Muslim community. The Quebec Islamic Cultural Center runs a Sunday school, Arabic class, nursery and family activities inside. “Running them has been hard because families are afraid of going there,” said Amira ‪Boulmerka, the director of the Islamic School of Quebec. Several families stopped coming to the mosque, while others have left Quebec entirely. “It should be accessible 24 hours,” said ‪Boulmerka, “but in light of the upheavals and major issues of the world, I don’t think mosques should be permanently open – and they can’t be without surveillance.” Mosques all across North America are struggling to balance security with openness. “Psychologically, when people have to go through too many filters to attend [worship], they start becoming anxious about the facility itself,” said Kassem Allie, executive administrator of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan. As one of the US’s largest and most iconic mosques, it is a frequent target of threats, harassment and anti-Muslim protests. After a pastor infamous for burning Qur’ans vowed to do the same at the Michigan mosque, in 2011, they started hiring on-site personnel. Depending on the day – or headlines of the day – it’s protected by as many as three patrolmen. “We can put a barbed-wire fence, put up metal detectors, x-ray machines, but the end result is that nobody would want to come,” said Allie. The Islamic Society of Greater Houston never locked doors at its 20 mosques until a recent rash of arsons and vandalism at Texas mosques. Now they’re locked up after Isha’a, the last of five daily prayers. They also hired a sheriff’s department and security firm to audit and help implement recommendations for each temple. Others around the country report installing emergency exits, elaborate camera systems, bulletproof glass and coded keypads. Costs run as high as $200,000. In Canada, the federal government covers half the expense. The program has formally existed since 2012, but most past recipients were Jewish groups. After the armed assault on the Grand Mosque, an unprecedented number of organizations applied for the funding. Now as many as two-thirds of recipients are Muslim groups. The Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec had long invested in security enhancements before Bissonnette’s killing spree. Indeed, multi-camera footage was key evidence during at his trial. “Access was programmed according to the times of the day – 10 minutes before prayer, and 10 minutes after,” explained Aymen Derbali, whose only memory of trying to stop Bissonnette was from the video. Isha’a prayer had already finished when the assailant entered the door and started shooting. Had Bissonnette come a few minutes later, Derbali might be able to walk today. The centre now requires worshippers to apply for individual access cards and prohibits children from opening doors to outside. One survivor of the tragedy monitors the camera feeds live from his apartment a block away. More enhancements are expected with the reconstruction, but safety is only part of the goal. The main purpose was expansion. Though the renderings were only presented to worshippers last year, they were drawn up by a Muslim architect from the mosque and a local firm two years before the tragedy. They never expected to have the funds to execute the million-dollar project so soon, but an outpouring of charitable donations could make it possible this year. “It’s sad to say, but we are famous because of what happened,” said Kallel. “The problem isn’t with the money, it’s with the planning.” In the 1990s, fundraising for the mosque’s first iteration took three years to reach its $120,000 goal. The community was a few hundred Muslims then, most of them North African immigrants who had come to study. As they earned middle-class careers and the community outgrew the space, it took another three years to raise the down payment on the former bank in 2008. But the Grand Mosque has struggled to keep up with the city’s growing Muslim population, including many refugees, now estimated at 15,000. “It just gets so full, it’s so tiny, and I don’t like the fact that women are upstairs following the imam on a TV,” said Kallel’s wife, who asked to go by “Yasmin”, fearing harassment. “I wish we could have a real mosque inside, so when you go to pray you really feel like going to pray.” She has, however, some reservations about the impressive new plans. “I wouldn’t want to hide, but I wouldn’t want to attract attention either.” The Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec president, Boufeldja Benabdallah, said they hoped to “embellish the image of Islam in Quebec and definitely mark our presence with a real Great Mosque of Quebec that will enter [local] Muslim history”. The minaret, with steel spires fashioned after the neighbouring cathedral tower, was conceived as a harmonious gesture between faiths. For supporters of the aesthetic redesign, the architecture has become even more important since the tragedy. “Maybe it will be more beautiful and attractive for people who want to learn about Islam,” said Derbali. “The first message we have to give to the population is we are not afraid.” Maybe so, but Quebec is a particularly hostile environment for Muslims. Anti-Muslim hate crimes in Quebec City doubled in the year since the attack. Two of the 42 reported cases involved excrement being thrown at the mosque and the past president’s car being set on fire. In October 2017, Quebec’s Liberal government passed a bill banning women in niqabs from receiving public services as basic as transit, while a newly elected rightwing party plans to expand those laws to prohibit civil servants from wearing any religious symbol at work. Given the environment, some worshippers would prefer the mosque to relocate entirely. But for Derbali, praying at the same mosque, albeit now from a wheelchair, has been therapeutic. When he finally returned for Friday prayers, seven months later, he struggled to retain his composure. “I had some tears in my eyes, because I got a flashback of what happened and remembered the murders of all the brothers, and the ones who were injured,” he said. “But in order to pass through this tragedy, I have to face it another time.” To mitigate post-traumatic triggers, the prayer hall was repainted on the recommendations of trauma scene specialists, who also recommended replacing the carpet. The board, however, opted to replace only the damaged sections. Now, when Kallel sees the rolled-up patches of green and pink rug sitting in the mosque’s basement, he feels a sense of unease. Not because they have been marked with bullet holes and the blood of his friends, but because he fears they will soon be discarded. He feels the country has already forgotten and moved on. So just as the hollowed cathedral is maintained as a reminder of its Jesuit roots and its role in the Seven Years’ War, Zied wants these tragic artefacts to stand as reminders of the worst mass murder in a Canadian place of worship. Bullet holes remain in a ceiling above a storage area, where worshippers took refuge, and through a bathroom door, where another narrowly escaped death. And despite their efforts, there are at least two holes left in the carpet. “We cannot just wipe off everything and turn the page,” said Kallel. “You have to have something symbolic. People should remember.” Omar Mouallem is an Alberta-based journalist and author of the forthcoming book, Praying to the West, a travel memoir about Muslims in the Americas. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, explore our archive or sign up to receive our weekly newsletterOn 21 January, California senator Kamala Harris officially announced her run for the presidency. Since being first elected to office over 14 years ago, Harris has proven she’s a force to be reckoned with. Now with her bid to become president, she has been catapulted to the very fore of US politics. For me and many other black women, the presidential candidacy of a fellow black woman is more than exciting. But, only days after Harris’s announcement, I have already faced the assumption and even expectation – by people within and beyond my community – that I will automatically vote for her. No one, however, should take black women’s support for Harris for granted. Like many people of color and progressives, Harris’s previous record gives me serious pause. Any candidate for office who has been a prosecutor in a racially biased criminal justice system must account for the ways in which she minimized that system’s harm or perpetuated its failures. At various points throughout her career, Harris has supported policies that have contributed to a broken criminal justice system that harms people of color at disproportionate and alarming rates. As California’s attorney general, Harris blocked the release of non-violent offenders on the premise that they may lower the prison labor pool and threatened to enforce a one-year prison sentence for parents whose children were truant. Policies like these disproportionately harm low-income families. Truancy policies that impose jail sentences are often coupled with court fees of $300 an unexcused absence. The court fees, (and possible loss of employment due to incarceration) could prove dire for families already living below the poverty line. Equally important, there is no empirical evidence that incarcerating parents for truancy is an effective strategy for increasing school attendance. There is however, evidence that while truancy is an issue faced in many schools in America, families most affected by harsh enforcements are those with low incomes and families of color. As many Democratic candidates have proven to us in the past, when the price of our loyalty is that low, we get very little in return Furthermore, the abuse of power and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct is a glaring problem in the criminal justice system. Yet Harris defended a Kern county prosecutor who committed “outrageous government misconduct” by reportedly falsifying the confession of a defendant who was “later used to threaten a life sentence”. These are not facts that can be ignored, despite the enthusiasm around Harris, and even an innate impulse I feel to protect her. Black female candidates are poorly represented in our politics. I am worried about the inevitable sexist and racist attacks Harris will probably endure during this campaign. Simply existing as a black woman ensures that Harris is constantly under siege. America is both painfully unforgiving of our mistakes and fully committed to profiting from our success. It is a challenging intersection to navigate, and even the slightest mistake can prove fatal. Still: black women, people of color and progressives supporting Harris need to ask tough questions about this record. This may feel like unnecessary scrutiny of an already vulnerable candidate. Yet, supporting her without at least inquiring about her decisions as a prosecutor would be tantamount to pledging our allegiance to symbolism. As many Democratic candidates have proven to us in the past, when the price of our loyalty is that low, we get very little in return. And despite thinly veiled assumptions that black people are politically apathetic, our collective voting power is undeniable. The power of black people’s organizing, voices and votes have delivered historical elections for this country. We have used strategic grassroots organizing and voting to turn red states blue, as we did by unseating the Republican incumbent Ray Moore in Alabama. The brilliant campaign ran by Stacey Abrams was another example of the ways in which we can shake the table and serve as the impetus for political progress. This power is recognized by politicians, but recognition is no longer enough. Relying on our vote without earning it and developing a strong plan to address systemic inequality is no longer enough. Black women and people of color cannot afford to equate seeking accountability and strong policies with disloyalty. In fact, loyalty to our community requires us to demand the most from candidates seeking the highest office in the country. It is our duty to help them reckon with the ways they may have harmed us in the past. And it is our responsibility to demand a clear plan on how they will fight for us in the future. We deserve nothing less. Despite obvious concerns, I remain hopeful about Harris. But more importantly, I am committed to helping ensure my community is no longer courted during election season and disregarded once the votes are cast. And that means challenging candidates I might otherwise want to protect – including Kamala Harris. Shanita Hubbard is an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania.The skies over the UK and Normandy will be filled with wartime Dakota aircraft as hundreds of parachutists take part in a mass airdrop to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in June. The plans, unveiled by Imperial War Museums (IWM), are part of a programme on an “unprecedented scale” for the commemoration of the greatest seaborne invasion in history, to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation, on 6 June 1944. An official international ceremony is planned for one of the famous Normandy beaches, and is expected to be attended by many Allied heads of state, anticipated to include the US president, Donald Trump, and representatives from the royal family. Before the formal commemoration, up to 300 parachutists will jump into the historic drop zones from a fleet of Dakotas, the “winged workhorses” that supported the airborne assault on German forces. They will take off from IWM Duxford in Cambridgeshire, formerly RAF Duxford, Britain’s best preserved wartime airfield, from where US fighter aircraft flew in support of D-day operations. With more than 30 Dakotas gathering, it will be the first time since the second world war that so many of the aircraft have been assembled in the place that saw their finest hour. As part of history in the remaking, the parachutists will board the aircraft as they did 75 years ago and fly across the Channel to Normandy for the mass airdrop, organised by Daks Over Normandy. Few Normandy veterans are still living. The Royal British Legion, together with the Ministry of Defence, is taking 300 veterans to France on a specially chartered ship for the anniversary and is inviting applications. The Battle of Normandy, or Operation Overlord, was planned in huge secrecy. By midnight on 6 June, 156,000 Allied troops had arrived, with many cut down on the beaches where they landed by fierce German defences. An estimated 4,413 Allied soldiers died on the day of the invasion. By the end of D-day, the allies had established a foothold in France. Within 11 months, Nazi Germany was defeated. The amphibious assault was preceded by 24,000 troops who parachuted in or came by glider. Supporting the airborne assault were more than 800 Douglas C-47 Skytrains (Dakotas). A “Daks over Duxford” event will include air displays and mass parachute jumps at the airfield, before the Normandy airdrop, with tickets available through the IWM website. “Imperial War Museums marks the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings on an unprecedented scale this year, retelling this extraordinary story through our rich second world war collection,” said John Brown, the IWM executive director. “Daks over Duxford will be a momentous occasion with over 30 Dakota aircraft based at our historic airfield for two days of immersive activities before they fly en masse to Normandy; a poignant moment for all who witness it,” he said. Ian Kikuchi, a senior curator historian at the Imperial War Museums, said: “D-day was one of the decisive events of the second world war. The largest amphibious landings in history, D-day witnessed the culmination of years of planning and preparation. “The job of carrying out those complex plans fell to the courageous men and women of the Allied armed forces, whose effort and sacrifice paved the way for the liberation of western Europe from Nazi occupation, and for the peace enjoyed there to this day.” Other events, to be announced by IWM, will take place at the Churchill War Rooms, the Whitehall nerve centre of strategic planning, and aboard HMS Belfast on the Thames. As part of the Eastern naval taskforce, with responsibility for supporting the British and Canadian assaults on Gold and Juno beaches, HMS Belfast first opened fire at 5.27am on 6 June, targeting and suppressing a German battery near the village of Ver-sur-Mer until the position was taken by the 7th Battalion, the Green Howards. Visit IWM Duxford, Churchill War Rooms and HMS Belfast for D-day 75 in June 2019It seems the stuff of fantasy. Giant ships sail the seas burning fuel that has been extracted from water using energy provided by the winds, waves and tides. A dramatic but implausible notion, surely. Yet this grand green vision could soon be realised thanks to a remarkable technological transformation that is now under way in Orkney. Perched 10 miles beyond the northern edge of the British mainland, this archipelago of around 20 populated islands – as well as a smattering of uninhabited reefs and islets – has become the centre of a revolution in the way electricity is generated. Orkney was once utterly dependent on power that was produced by burning coal and gas on the Scottish mainland and then transmitted through an undersea cable. Today the islands are so festooned with wind turbines, they cannot find enough uses for the emission-free power they create on their own. Community-owned wind turbines generate power for local villages; islanders drive nonpolluting cars that run on electricity; devices that can turn the energy of the waves and the tides into electricity are being tested in the islands’ waters and seabed; and – in the near future – car and passenger ferries here will be fuelled not by diesel but by hydrogen, created from water that has been electrolysed using power from Orkney’s wind, wave and tide generators. “A low-carbon renewable future, which is much talked about elsewhere, is coming early to Orkney,” says ethnographer Laura Watts in her book Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga. The book, published by MIT Press next month, tells the intriguing tale of how Orcadians have begun to create their own low-carbon future against incredible odds and with only a little help from the mainland. And that may come as a surprise, says Watts, a senior lecturer at the School of GeoSciences, Edinburgh University. “When people think of future technologies or innovation, they assume it has all got to be happening in cities,” Watts told me when we met earlier this month. “But this revolution – in renewable energy – is being done in a place that lies at the very edge of the nation.” The idea that such an intellectual revolution could occur in a place closer to the Arctic Circle than it is to London may seem unexpected. But Orkney turns out to have a long history of generating ideas that are exported to the south. At the Ness of Brodgar, excavations at a recently discovered neolithic ceremonial complex show there was flourishing culture on the islands long before the construction of Stonehenge, Avebury and other giant edifices in the south. Neolithic grooved pottery and the first henges were conceived in Orkney before they were exported to the rest of ancient Britain. “We need to turn the map of Britain upside down when we consider the neolithic and shrug off our south-centric attitudes,” says Nick Card, Brodgar’s director of excavations. This process is now repeating itself, says Watts. Orkney is leading Britain’s drive toward a carbon-free future. And the critical, vital ingredient in this revolution has been the manner in which islanders have turned the energy of the winds into a reliable source of power. Low-lying and exposed to both the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, Orkney is battered by winds and gales throughout the year. Rainstorms sweep the islands with unbridled savagery, tear down sheds, rip slates from roofs, and can take out metres of coastline in a night. You don’t need an umbrella here, you need a riot shield, one islander told Watts, who has been a regular visitor to Orkney for the past decade. “Words such as wind and windy are redefined in Orkney,” says Watts. “They are no longer mild inconveniences but powerful enough to close schools.” They are also powerful enough to run more than 700 micro wind turbines – and that has been the crucial factor that has changed life on the islands, though the route to this transformation has been a rather erratic one. In the early 1980s, Britain began experiments aimed at developing turbines that could turn wind power into electricity – at a test site on Burgar Hill, on Orkney. “However, the UK pulled the plug on it and instead the Danes and Germans went ahead and developed wind turbine technology – because their governments invested in it,” says Watts. “They put in millions. The British government did not. We could have had a UK wind energy industry but we just did not invest.” The impact of wind turbine technology in Orkney was nevertheless profound and islanders took to its generation in a big way. “Orkney used to import its power but now generates, on average over the year, electricity that fulfils 120% of its own needs,” says Watts. “So you have all this energy. The question is: what are you going to do with it?” Watts outlines the three options open to islanders: build a new cable so it can export its excess renewable energy to the mainland; use more electricity on the islands; or turn its excess renewable power into another fuel – such as hydrogen – and then store it. Finding the right course is likely to have a profound impact on Britain as the nation looks to the example set by Orkney and embraces its low-carbon future. “Consider the issue of laying another cable to link the mainland and Orkney,” says Watts. “That is something that Orcadians cannot do for themselves. It is too costly. You need government help for that sort of thing and the idea of a new cable has been shunted round and round the houses for years without resolution. The islanders are having to be much more self-reliant as a result.” On the other hand, new uses for electricity are being found – by islanders who are driving increasing numbers of electric cars. “You can either pay £2 a night to charge your car or pay a fortune for a vehicle powered by diesel or petrol. It is a no-brainer. For good measure, electric cars’ main disadvantage – they need recharging every 100 miles or so – is not a problem on islands that are mostly only a few miles across.” That leaves the issue of energy storage, a particular problem when dealing with renewable power. Energy cannot be simply collected from a wind turbine and exploited later when conditions are calm and windless – because there is as yet no reliable way to store it. It is a basic drawback that Orcadians are now tackling. On the Orkney island of Eday, a device known as an electrolyser – powered by renewable energy sources – splits water into its two elemental components: hydrogen and oxygen. The former can be stored and later burnt to generate electricity when needed. Already a fuel cell – powered by locally derived hydrogen – is being used to generate electricity for berthed vessels on one Orkney pier. That is just the beginning, however. Plans are now under way to expand the use of hydrogen as a fuel for a new generation of ferries that will replace the nine ageing vessels that currently connect the various islands of the archipelago. By running these on hydrogen, massive reductions in use of diesel fuel could be made in Orkney. The first of these vessels – the world’s first hydrogen-fuelled seagoing car and passenger ferry – is scheduled for launch in 2021. “We realised that if we could use hydrogen to power our ferries, we would put another dent in our carbon addiction,” Neil Kermode, head of the European Marine Energy Centre (Emec) told the Financial Times last month. The centre – based in Stromness, Orkney’s second largest town – has become one of the key players in the transformation of Orkney as a power provider. Opened in 2003, it acts as a plug-and-play site for testing prototype wave and tide energy generators. A year after its opening, one such device – a giant 120-metre machine called a Pelamis converter – became the world’s first wave power generator to put electricity into the National Grid. Since then dozens of other different prototypes have been put through their paces there. Generators that exploit the power of the sea have advantages over wind turbines because the latter exploits a source of energy that is far less predictable than the tides. On the other hand, machines immersed in deep, fast flowing waters are not easily repaired when a fault occurs. “You cannot buy a book that tells you how to anchor a seabed generator to the sea floor in a 7-knot tide,” says Watts. “You have to go and do it yourself and people in Orkney have been doing it for 15 years now. Marine energy is an everyday topic of conversation in Orkney. “However, they have been doing it on a shoestring and a message needs to be made very clearly. If the UK wants to create a wave and tide industry to make up for the wind industry that it lost 30 years ago then it needs to put its money where its mouth is and invest more heavily.” On the other hand, when central agencies do intervene, the outcome is not necessarily plain sailing. In 2009, the Crown Estate – which owns the seabed around Britain – decided it would lease out areas around Orkney to companies seeking to develop wave and tide energy. “It was the first such leasing anywhere in the world,” says Watts. The trouble was that many of the sites it leased were good for placing power generation but also for catching lobster and crab. “No one talked to the fishermen, nor to anyone else on Orkney,” adds Watts. Instead, without consultation, the Crown Estate closed large areas of inshore fishing grounds. “Areas of sea where Orcadians fish, which is essential to their livelihoods, were threatened without warning, discussion or negotiation.” The Crown Estate has since tried hard to improve the situation and closer discussions are now occurring between its agents and local fishermen. Nevertheless, the episode shows how tricky it can be to merge new technologies with older, but still highly important industries. However, adds Watts, the story of Orkney’s marine energy revolution is important for another reason: it promises to have an encouraging outcome – and that certainly makes it worth telling. Our vision of the future is currently a very dark one. “We perhaps don’t feel outright despair but our view is still a pretty bleak one, given the threat that is posed by climate change. The great thing about Orkney is that they are now getting on with doing something about it. I find that very cheering.” • Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga by Laura Watts is published by MIT Press (£27). To order a copy for £23.99 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99The best dramas list for the Globes – to be presented on 6 January – contains something notable yet hardly noted. It puts African American-themed films in the majority: three out of five. Ryan Coogler’s colossally successful Afrofuturist Marvel superhero movie Black Panther, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Barry Jenkins’s James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk. All three are really substantial movies, though I think Lee’s is tonally uncertain in a way that Jenkins’s and Coogler’s aren’t. It could well be that Beale Street will win, and no one would quarrel with rewarding the artistry and moral seriousness of a film-maker such as Jenkins. Bohemian Rhapsody – the story of Freddie Mercury and Queen – is a surprise entry: thoroughly enjoyable but very much all about Rami Malek’s bravura performance. But I have to say that Bradley Cooper’s richly powerful and unashamedly emotional melodrama A Star Is Born gets my support — and I suspect that of Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) voters as well. Will win: A Star Is BornShould win: A Star Is BornShoulda been a contender: Roma Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite has dominated the critical conversation since its premiere at Venice this summer. I think it will have landslide success at the Baftas, but it is likely to do very well at the Globes. It is my favourite from this list, and Olivia Colman gives a great performance (see below). Having said this, the specious sugary unoriginality of Mary Poppins Returns could well beguile the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which presents the awards. Crazy Rich Asians was a very entertaining picture and it’s certainly in with a shout. The arguably liberal-pious black/white balance of Green Book might mean that it is received with respect but not excitement. Adam McKay’s Vice is the fifth film on the list: a very lively and well-acted movie about the former US vice president Dick Cheney. It has caused wrinkled critical noses here and there, and I am apparently in a minority in preferring it to his bafflingly overpraised previous film The Big Short. Will win: The FavouriteShould win: The FavouriteShoulda been a contender: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs This is a slightly conservative selection, but the inclusion of Rami Malek’s extravagant portrayal of Freddie Mercury is a shrewd move and my guess is that it will win (although gender politics is a point at issue here – singalong feelgood movies are acceptable when they are about men, but why don’t the Mamma Mia! movies get the same breaks?) John David Washington’s performance in BlacKkKlansman is impressive but the film’s quasi-Brechtian alienations and comic cartoonery arguably mean that it is more difficult to engage with his character emotionally. Willem Dafoe’s performance as Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate has all the integrity and self-possession you would expect, but it’s a rather non-envelope-pushing film. Lucas Hedges (last seen in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By the Sea) stars in the gay conversion drama Boy Erased, but this might be a fish-in-a-barrel liberal issue film that will leave the HFPA unmoved. My feeling is still that Bradley Cooper’s performance is the best. Will win: Rami Malek for Bohemian RhapsodyShould win: Bradley Cooper for A Star Is BornShoulda been a contender: Ethan Hawke for First Reformed This has to be Glenn Close’s year. I am almost at a hat-eating state of utter certainty about it. Her performance in The Wife is a fascinatingly subtle, complex and forthright portrayal that doesn’t offer itself up all at once to the viewer: the story of the “literary wife”, the spouse of the Nobel prize-winning novelist who has had to hide her own light under a bushel. Lady Gaga gives us an unexpected howitzer of a performance in A Star Is Born, but I think it doesn’t quite match what Close is doing. Melissa McCarthy is a comic performer whose pathos in Can You Ever Forgive Me? has been much admired. Nicole Kidman and Rosamund Pike, in Destroyer and A Private War, are both offering a kind of movie machismo: roles in which their natural beauty is roughened up. Bold choices, certainly, but I think they are long shots. I very much missed Viola Davis on this list. Will win: Glenn Close for The WifeShould win: Glenn Close for The WifeShoulda been a contender: Viola Davis for Widows The race is wide open here. It could be that industry sentimentality and nostalgia will gift this prize to Robert Redford for his farewell performance in The Old Man & the Gun, but the truth is that his performance is a bit waxworky. In some ways, he’s more of a lifetime-achievement candidate, but the Globes have already given him their Cecil B DeMille award in 1994. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Dick Van Dyke 2.0 performance in Mary Poppins Returns is forgettable and my feeling is that Viggo Mortensen’s contribution to Green Book, though that of a very intelligent actor, will not capture the HFPA’s imagination. Which leaves us with Christian Bale’s very exhilarating and theatrical impersonation of Dick Cheney. I like that, but I admired John C Reilly’s heartfelt portrayal of Oliver Hardy more. Really, Steve Coogan’s Stan Laurel should be there alongside him. Will win: Christian Bale for ViceShould win: John C Reilly for Stan & OllieShoulda been a contender: Steve Coogan for Stan & Ollie Fifteen-year-oldElsie Fisher might actually pinch this one for her performance in the widely enthused-over Eighth Grade, and Charlize Theron is also a serious contender for her interesting turn in the flawed Tully, scripted by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman. For me, Emily Blunt is out of the running for her unrelaxed performance in Mary Poppins, which though studied and stylish, comes close to how Kate McKinnon would play the role in an SNL sketch. No, for me the frontrunner in both the Will win and Should win categories is the glorious performance from Olivia Colman: comic, and yet tragic, a portrayal of political tyranny and emotional victimhood. Will win: Olivia Colman for The FavouriteShould win: Olivia Colman for The FavouriteShoulda been a contender: Aubrey Plaza for An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn This list was notable for its absences. I have noted Brian Tyree Henry below, but there was also his Widows co-star Daniel Kaluuya, Tim Blake Nelson from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Sam Elliott from A Star Is Born and Jonathan Pryce from The Wife. Timothée Chalamet’s performance in the father-son addiction memoir Beautiful Boy has been successful, but not in the league of his breakthrough in Call Me By Your Name; Adam Driver does solid but basically unexciting work in BlacKkKlansman; and Mahershala Ali commands respect in Green Book (and may get the prize). Sam Rockwell is amusing as Dubya in Vice, but he’s really all about the latex. I have a good feeling about Richard E Grant as Jack Hock, the somewhat pathetic friend and enabler of Melissa McCarthy’s literary forger in Can You Ever Forgive Me? It would be great to see Grant win a Globe. Will win: Richard E Grant for Can You Ever Forgive Me?Should win: Richard E Grant for Can You Ever Forgive Me?Shoulda been a contender: Brian Tyree Henry for Widows This category is also wider open than first appears. The Favourite is a great film, and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz are great in their supporting roles but it is surely all about Olivia Colman’s toweringly mad star turn. Claire Foy does an honest job with the boring role of Neil Armstrong’s wife in First Man (he’s kind of boring, too, but he gets to go to the moon). The delicacy and intelligence of Regina King as Tish’s mother in If Beale Street Could Talk is very impressive and I sense that she will inch it over Stone and Weisz, along with Amy Adams’s serio-comic barnstormer as Dick Cheney’s formidable wife, Lynne. I would have liked to see a posthumous award for the veteran Japanese actress Kirin Kiki who was wonderful in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters. Will win: Regina King for If Beale Street Could TalkShould win: Regina King for If Beale Street Could TalkShoulda been a contender: Kirin Kiki for Shoplifters Here is the big prize, and again it’s a mystery that Steve McQueen’s masterly direction of his heist thriller Widows was not rewarded in this category. Adam McKay (Vice) and Peter Farrelly (Green Book) are, interestingly, comedy people who have moved away from comedy – though I won’t say up from comedy. Spike Lee’s direction of BlacKkKlansman was eye-catching and brilliant in many ways and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get this. But Roma, which was unaccountably left off the best drama list, is a wonderful directing achievement for Alfonso Cuarón, and he really should get the award. However, Bradley Cooper’s direction of A Star Is Born is resoundingly good and that might go down easier with the HFPA. Will win: Bradley Cooper for A Star Is BornShould win: Alfonso Cuarón for RomaShoulda been a contender: Steve McQueen for Widows This is another Globe that Cuarón should get, perhaps to make up for the shame of not being nominated for best film – but Roma is a fascinatingly written movie, bearing the signs of having been crafted and developed over many years. Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara may well win for their scabrous, hilarious and very sweary script for The Favourite – clearly a labour of love. Adam McKay’s wacky, self-aware script for Vice was amusing, although would have meant less without Bale’s bravura performance. Again, this is a category where I was aware of the snubs. It would have been great to see Bart Layton rewarded here for American Animals, but I felt more intensely still the absence of Rupert Everett for his searing Oscar Wilde drama The Happy Prince. Will win: Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara for The FavouriteShould win: Alfonso Cuarón for RomaShoulda been a contender: Rupert Everett for The Happy Prince.Thailand’s immigration chief has pledged a reversal of the country’s notoriously harsh treatment of refugees following the global furore around a young Saudi woman’s attempt to seek asylum. Speaking on Wednesday, the newly appointed head of immigration, Surachate Hakparn, said refugees would no longer be returned home “involuntarily”. This would be a major shift in the long-running policy in Thailand of refusing to recognise and shelter asylum seekers and frequently returning them to countries where they are in danger. Thailand is also not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees. Surachate pledged that going forward, when it comes to asylum seekers, Thailand “will now follow international norms”. Thailand’s draconian immigration policies have been under the global spotlight over the past week, following the case of 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed from Saudi Arabia, who fled her abusive family and attempted to seek asylum in Australia. She captured headlines across the world after she was intercepted during a stopover in Bangkok and immediately prepared for deportation back to Saudi Arabia by Thai immigration authorities. It was only after Mohammed barricaded herself in a Bangkok hotel room and began tweeting her plight to the world, drawing international publicity and support, that Thailand made the rare exception to release her into the care of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and be given asylum in Canada, arriving in Toronto on Sunday. Surachate was adamant however that the Thai authorities had not caved to “pressure” in Mohammed’s case. However, inconsistencies in Surachate’s pledges to reform the Thai immigration process were already exposed in his comments on the ongoing case of Hakeem al-Araibi. Al-Araibi, a Bahraini refugee with permanent residency in Australia, was taken into detention when he arrived in Bangkok for a holiday in November, and faces deportation back to Bahrain where he says he will be at risk of torture. Al-Araibi, a former footballer for the Bahrain national team who now plays semi-professional football in Melbourne, was picked up by Thai immigration on an Interpol red notice, , despite having refugee status in Australia since 2017. Australia has made repeated calls for him to be released and returned home to Australia. Surachate said the case was “different” because there was an “outstanding warrant” for him, despite the fact that the Interpol red notice, requested by Bahrain and erroneously issued against Interpol’s own refugee-protection protocols, has since been lifted. Thailand is instead processing a formal extradition request from Bahrain, and Surachate would only say that al-Araibi would be able to make his case “in court”. Surachate’s appointment as department chief has been marked by a harsh crackdown on illegal immigrants over the past three months, which has resulted in women and children refugees, who had previously been released, rounded up again and put back into detention – described as “government shelters” – despite an earlier promise by the government to no longer detain single mothers and children. However, speaking on Wednesday, Surachate pledged that all women and children in immigration detention would be given bail ‘“tomorrow”.Kate Bush has written a statement clarifying her political beliefs, saying a magazine interview from 2016 “could make it seem like I am a Tory supporter, which I want to make clear I am not”. In the interview with the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, Bush was reported as voicing support for the British prime minister, Theresa May. Answering a question about Hillary Clinton and “the fear of women’s power”, she said: “We have a female prime minister here in the UK. I actually really like her and think she’s wonderful. I think it’s the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time. She’s a very intelligent woman but I don’t see much to fear. “I will say it is great to have a woman in charge of the country. She’s very sensible and I think that’s a good thing at this point in time.” Writing on her website, Bush says the quote was “out of context … it seemed as if the focus went on to the quote rather than the work. It was deeply frustrating.” She says she decided not to clarify her words at the time but was now moved to comment after the quote had been aired again in articles about her recently remastered back catalogue and a book of her collected lyrics. She continued: My response to the interviewer was not meant to be political but rather was in the defence of women in power. I felt he was putting a really negative slant on powerful women, referring to a witch hunt involving Hillary Clinton. In response I said that we had a woman in charge of our country, and that I felt it was a good thing to have women in power. I should have been clearer when I then said it was the best thing that had happened to us for a long time – because I greatly disliked the behaviour of the previous PM, who at that point I felt had abandoned us and everybody felt angry and let down. The latter reference is to David Cameron, who has been criticised for calling the referendum on Britain’s EU membership, which led to Brexit. Bush is still a relatively reclusive figure, and did no interviews around the recent reissues and lyric collection. In 2014, she performed her first live shows in 35 years, having not toured since her only ever run of live dates in 1979. She does write occasional messages on her website though, recently including tributes to the late recording engineer Geoff Emerick and the choreographer Lindsay Kemp. She also thanked fans this week for raising money for the homeless charity Crisis, drawn from sales at a London pop-up store set up over the Christmas period.A few years ago, I went with a friend and her family to a Jewish restaurant in New York City known for comfort food and vodka. Early in the evening, its entertainer asked everyone where they were from, and my friend’s dad announced I was Palestinian. He meant well: it was an enthusiastic “Isn’t it great we’re all getting along?” statement. The entertainer wasn’t quite so enthusiastic, and proclaimed to the room: “There’s no such thing as a Palestinian.” I left in tears. It kinda ruined dinner. While the restaurant incident was particularly unpleasant, it wasn’t the first or last time I have been told Palestinians don’t exist. It happens all the time. I am proud of being Palestinian, but it gets exhausting having to constantly prove your humanity and plead your legitimacy. It gets exhausting reiterating you don’t hate anyone, you just want to be treated with dignity. So, in the end, just to make things easier, you start erasing your identity yourself. I often vaguely say I’m half-Arab, half-English when people ask where I am from. Over time, you stop taking joy in your heritage and tiptoe warily around it instead. Which is why 3 January, when Rashida Tlaib became the first Palestinian American to be sworn into Congress, was such a momentous day for me and so many other Palestinians. Tlaib did not tiptoe around her heritage; instead she wore a traditional Palestinian thobe (gown) for the occasion, prompting hundreds of other Palestinians to share proud pictures of their own national dresses, with the hashtag #TweetYourThobe. In an article for Elle explaining why she wore her thobe, Tlaib stressed: “We should embrace who we are and not be shamed for it.” It was a shame there was a need for her to say that; a shame I needed to hear it.Coachella, the Californian festival that kicks off the summer of outdoor live music, has announced its 2019 lineup. Taking place in Indio on 12-14 and 19-21 April, the opening night is headlined by Childish Gambino, AKA rapper, singer, writer, actor and comedian Donald Glover. His track This Is America was one of the most talked-about of 2018, while his album Awaken, My Love! was a Grammy-winning US hit in 2017. Saturday night is headlined by Australian psych-rock band Tame Impala, who announced the news on Twitter promising “New year. New shows. New sounds”, suggesting a follow-up to their 2015 album Currents will be released this year. They have recently been embraced by the kind of rap and R&B stars that populate Coachella’s lineup, having been sampled by Rihanna, A$AP Rocky and Travis Scott. Closing out the festival will be Ariana Grande, the pop star who has weathered very public traumas – the Manchester arena attack, the death of former boyfriend Mac Miller, the breakdown of her engagement to comedian Pete Davidson – to become more popular than ever in 2018: her album Sweetener topped the US and UK charts in September. Other big names across the weekend are R&B singers Solange, Khalid, Janelle Monáe, H.E.R and Ella Mai; rappers Juice WRLD, Bad Bunny, Kid Cudi and Anderson .Paak; EDM stars Zedd, Diplo, Dillon Francis and DJ Snake; and British talent including the 1975, Aphex Twin and Blood Orange.Eight and a half years after it was abandoned in the middle of the Indian Ocean when 16-year-old solo sailor Abby Sunderland had to be rescued in rough seas, a yellow yacht named Wild Eyes has been found floating upside down off the coast of South Australia. The 40-foot yacht was encrusted with barnacles, the signature eyes on the hull scratched and faded. Its mast snapped off in the wild weather that forced Sunderland’s rescue midway through her world record attempt to be the youngest solo sailor to circumnavigate the globe in 2010. Sunderland, who said she saw the footage of the rediscovered yacht on the news, said she was “very emotional”. “My heart skipped a beat,” she said in a statement. “It brought back many memories – good and not so good – but it was neat to see it after so long. It looked a little creepy but that’s to be expected after so long.” The yacht was spotted from the air by a tuna spotter plane about 12.30pm on Monday, 11 nautical miles from Vivonne Bay on Kangaroo Island. The South Australian police helicopter and two commercial fishing vessels were sent to investigate and identified the yacht. It had not been seen since Sunderland was picked up and rescued by the French ship Ile de la Reunion on 12 June 2010, midway between Madagascar and Western Australia. In a blog post written on the Ile de la Reunion hours after she was picked up, Sunderland said: “The long and the short of it is, well, one long wave, and one short mast (short meaning two inch stub.) ... am still trying to get over the fact that I will never see my Wild Eyes again.” A month later, after she had returned home to California, she said it was unlikely the boat would ever be found. “A lot of people have been asking about Wild Eyes,” she wrote on 5 July, 2010. “She was still afloat when I boarded the Ile de la Reunion. She could end up on a beach in Western Australia at some point, but it’s just a guess, we don’t know for sure. “She would have to be very lucky to wash up on a beach, and not get smashed on the rocks or something like that. While I do wish that she would be found and fixed up, it’s not all that likely she will be found.” Sunderland, now 25, set sail from Marina del Rey in California on 23 January in 2010 but had to restart her world record attempt at Cabo San Lucas in Mexico 10 days later due to electrical problems and higher-than-expected fuel and power use from her navigation and communication systems. Her family had bought the Australian-built Wild Eyes and in October the year before, just months after her elder brother Zach became the first person under the age of 18 to sail solo around the world, with stops and assistance, and kitted it out specifically for her journey. She said on Thursday that she was curious to see whether any of her video equipment, which was recording her journey, had survived. She had closed the hatch of the racing yacht before disembarking, which may have protected the inside. “It would be great to try and retrieve the boat but given the costs I don’t think that will happen,” she said. “I always knew the boat was high quality and very safe so it doesn’t really surprise me that it’s still floating.” Sunderland intended to beat her brother’s record and complete a non-stop circumnavigation, but had to stop in Cape Town for repairs in May. She activated her emergency satellite beacons after being tumbled about in 60-knot winds and 50-foot waves about 2,000 miles east of Madagascar. Her parents were heavily criticised for allowing her to undertake the attempt, and Sunderland in turn criticised the media saying that her age had nothing to do with encountering a storm in the southern ocean, something she said happened to all sailors. Australian Jessica Watson, who is just five months older than Sunderland, is the youngest person ever to complete a solo non-stop circumnavigation and arrived home in Sydney on 15 May 2010, three days before her 17th birthday and six days before Sunderland departed Cape Town.Renata remembers clearly the morning after the Brexit vote in June 2016, when the Polish parents at her son’s school in Northamptonshire gathered by the school gates. Lost for words, the English parents would hurry past, avoiding eye contact. “You could tell people were in a state of deep shock. They were trying hard not to look at the group of foreigners standing there – not knowing how to take this all in. Emotions were running high that day. When September came, I realised that many Polish families had moved back home.” Now 42, Renata, who asked not to be identified by her full name, moved to London from the industrial region of Silesia in south-western Poland in 1999, five years before the country joined the EU. “I loved the freedom. I remember thinking: ‘This is it! This is my place on Earth.’” While living in London she had a son with her then partner, but moved to a small town in Northamptonshire with her son after the relationship ended. There, she set up a business, and lived what she describes as “a quiet life”, until the Brexit vote turned her world upside down. “I remember waking up in the middle of the night just as the results were coming in and the shock of hearing that people voted for Brexit. I felt sick. I couldn’t believe that people no longer wanted to be a part of something that I felt was so good to me and my friends, and to this country, which I thought was my country too.” On Thursday the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, issued a rallying cry to Poles living in the UK, urging them to return home to help Poland’s economy grow. “More and more are coming back and I’m pleased about that because there is a low level of unemployment,” Morawiecki told the BBC. “Give us our people back.” In a series of conversations with the Guardian, Poles have described their shock, dismay, and in some cases, their anger at what many perceive as a resounding rejection of their presence in Britain, and their struggle to come to terms with the uncertainty surrounding their rights and future status. “We were full of admiration for this country, and we were enjoying a fantastic life, but everything changed in 2016,” says Ewa Lewecka, a teacher who moved to the UK with her two children in 2005. “Now I feel disappointed, unhappy, unwanted. The country is not the same, the people are completely different. “The worst thing is the loneliness. I feel like everything collapsed, and I’m not alone in feeling that. This country is a nightmare at the moment. I used to love it here. Now I count the days until my next visit to Poland. If it wasn’t for my son I would be back already.” There are approximately 900,000 Polish nationals living in Britain, the largest group of foreign nationals in the UK, and Polish is the second most widely spoken language in Britain after English. But statistics suggesting a sharp downturn in net migration from central and eastern Europe and acute labour shortages in sectors such as construction and hospitality appear to support strong anecdotal evidence that thousands of Poles are on their way out. In a survey of 600 Polish business owners in the UK, 45% said they were considering moving back to Poland or to another country due to Brexit, while 30% said Brexit had already directly affected their relations with the surrounding community. Of those who said that Brexit had affected them directly, many cited a rise in hostility towards migrants in the wake of the referendum result. If people or their children experience some kind of prejudice, it affects them very deeply, says Bartosz Kowalczyk, of Polish Business Link, which conducted the survey. “The mood is very tense.” The British government has made efforts to reassure members of the Polish community. At a meeting with Morawiecki last month, Theresa May declared in English and Polish: “We want you to stay.” But that message is being muddled by mixed signals. There are concerns, for instance, over proposals to introduce a minimum salary threshold of £30,000 for EU workers after Brexit. “One moment May tells them that she wants them to stay, the next moment they hear of all these different conditions,” says Niko Cichowlas, who moved from Poland to the UK in 1981 and runs a construction company in London with a large proportion of Polish employees, many of whom have returned since the referendum. “They are feeling lost.” Particular offence was caused by May’s suggestion last year that EU nationals had “jumped the queue” in search of jobs in the UK, compounded by now dropped proposals to make EU nationals pay a £65 fee for “settled status” after Brexit. The exasperation remains. “This is an insult to me, to my kids, to my friends who came after Poland joined the EU,” says Damian Wawrzyniak, a successful chef and consultant with a restaurant in Cambridgeshire, who moved to the UK in 2004. “I feel unwelcome. It’s not about the money. I came here legally, never had any problem with the law, paid my taxes, never spent a day on benefits. I’ve worked every day since I came here 15 years ago – why should I apply again?” For Alicia Kuczyńska, who moved to the UK as a 20-year-old student in 2003, but returned to Poland in September, making the move back was not easy. “I spent my whole adult life in Britain. In many ways, I think I am more British than Polish,” she says. “It has been quite hard to adjust here in Poland, but I could just feel that where I was living in Bournemouth people didn’t like immigrants, they didn’t want them to succeed. My friends’ kids were being bullied at school.” Many Poles are attracted home because of a robust economy and a steady rise in living standards since EU accession. Rising living costs in the UK and a steep fall in the value of sterling is also making Britain a much less attractive proposition. “There is a clear pull factor from Poland,” says Agnieszka Smoleńska of Polityka Insight, a Warsaw-based centre for policy analysis, who studied in London in the late 2000s. “Many people in my generation see opportunities in Poland that we never saw before.” But, according to the Guardian’s conversations with Poles, there is also a strong sense of disillusionment. “When I came here I was like: ‘Wow, the English are so tolerant,’” says Sławomir Kaczyński, 34, who works in the catering sector in Dartford but has just accepted a job offer in Iceland. “But after five minutes they start crying that they pay for everything and that foreigners steal their jobs. After Brexit the country showed its true face. Cichowlas says: “When I hear the guys talking, they feel that the British are turning against them, they feel this rightwing antagonism, and some of them end up becoming quite anti-British themselves – the process works both ways. They feel under attack, it is very sad.”The Welsh town of Harlech is challenging New Zealand’s claim to the steepest street in the world, forcing the city of Dunedin to contemplate losing one of its most famous and lucrative tourist attractions. Baldwin Street in Dunedin draws in thousands of tourists a year since being crowned the steepest street in the world by Guinness World Records, with an exhausting 1:3 gradient. Located in an otherwise quiet valley of the South Island city, Baldwin Street has attracted daredevils and adventure sports enthusiasts, prompting the local council to upgrade infrastructure and local residents to launch cottage industries selling food, drinks and souvenirs. The street has also become a hit on Instagram and social media. Now, the residents of Harlech in Wales are laying down a challenge, claiming Ffordd Pen Llech is one degree steeper than Baldwin Street, with a gradient of 36% to Baldwin’s 35%. Measurements are being taken on Ffordd Pen Llech and will be submitted to Guinness World Records, with a decision expected later this month. On social media Dunedin’s residents were contemplating a life without their treasured title. “We would have to change signage around the street and reprint a lot of brochures around town,” wrote Joseph on Facebook. “I have a great solution though, we just redo the signs and reprint the brochures with the title ‘the world’s first steepest street’ tourists wouldn’t know the difference.” Another suggested Baldwin Street reinvent itself as the world’s steepest cycle lane, while another mooted idea was to resurface the top of the street to increase the gradient and retain the title. Dunedin mayor Dave Cull said the street had faced challenges before and had promptly “seen them off”. “If Wales turns out to have a steeper one we will just have to arrange one of our periodic earthquakes and tilt Baldwin a bit more” said Cull. It takes about 10 minutes to walk up the 350-metre long Baldwin Street, but residents often do it in seven. “I have angina and climbing 276 steps is cheaper than going to the gym,” said Bindi Bezar, who operates a gift shop at the bottom of the street. The increasing popularity of Baldwin Street has been a mixed blessing for residents, with some enjoying the novelty of popularity, and others fed-up with tourists going to the toilet in their gardens and peering into their houses. “I think a lot of tourists don’t know this is a real street, that people actually live here,” said Beverley McClay, a resident for nine years. “It’s very social, very busy. I often come out in my dressing gown to meet people, and the tourists like to watch me stacking wood, they ask me what I am doing.” Dunedin City Council is undertaking a series of upgrades to strengthen the street and help residents cope with the thousands of tourists who visit every year. In the past two years Baldwin Street has also become a sought-after destination in an unusual social media trend to snap pictures at odd angles, which create the optical illusion of the houses being severely lopsided. The trend has significantly increased visitor numbers – especially during the winter season when tourists usually avoided the area because of frost, ice and occasional snow.France has triggered a €50m (£44m) plan for a no-deal Brexit after the UK parliament’s overwhelming rejection of Theresa May’s deal, the French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, has said. “What’s certain is that the scenario of a no-deal Brexit is less and less unlikely,” Philippe told reporters in Paris after a meeting with ministers on Thursday, adding there were “strong fears” Britain would leave without a deal on 29 March. “In such conditions, the government’s responsibility is to make sure the country is ready, that the interests of our citizens are preserved … That’s why ... I have decided to trigger the plan for a no-deal Brexit.” Five decrees will be issued “within the next three weeks” including authorisation for major investment in new infrastructure such as border control checkpoints, roads, lorry parks and warehouses at the ports and airports “most concerned” by the prospect of no deal, Philippe said. Authorities will also start hiring 600 extra government employees to deal with the consequences for cross-border trade of the UK leaving the EU without a deal, including customs, veterinary and other inspectors to carry out the necessary checks on goods, livestock and food products. “We want to be ready,” Philippe said. “This plan incorporates legislative and legal measures aiming to ensure … that the rights of both our fellow citizens and our businesses are effectively protected.” He added that France would also take steps to secure the interests of its fishing and fish-processing industries. The French parliament this week approved a law allowing the government to impose emergency measures by decree if necessary to cope with the consequences of a no-deal Brexit, including steps to “stabilise” travel, residence, work and welfare rights for British citizens in France, who would have 12 months to apply for permission to stay. A no-deal Brexit would be “dramatic”, said Jean Bizet, the chair of the French senate’s European affairs committee, which on Tuesday heard from Gina Miller, the campaigner whose supreme court case forced the government to win parliament’s backing before it could trigger article 50, kickstarting the two-year Brexit process. Miller said she thought the most likely outcomes were a Norway-style, very soft Brexit or no deal. A people’s vote or second referendum was much less likely, she said. “It’s almost impossible to say and, despite the short length of time left, almost too early to say. But any outcome is now in the gift of MPs and from what I’m hearing only about a third back a people’s vote. So if you go by that we’re a long way off.” Miller said the main obstacles to a people’s vote were practical, organisational issues: “An extension of article 50 would not be enough, it would probably require revocation,” she said. “You’re talking nine to 11 months. It’s not realistic to expect the EU to go along with that” without revocation. Theresa May has left it far too late to start working on reaching a cross-party consensus on a form of Brexit that might be acceptable to parliament, she added, and a lot now rested on the Labour party’s response. “The Labour frontbench has to come off the fence and make a decision,” Miller said. “It has to move to something. I think it could be Norway – it’s very hard for them as a Norway-plus relationship doesn’t satisfy their six tests. At the moment, I’d say we’re poised 50-50 between Norway and a no deal.”Tech giant Apple has announced that its first original feature film will reteam actor Bill Murray and director Sofia Coppola for a father-daughter comedy-drama called On the Rocks. According to the Hollywood Reporter, On the Rocks is about a young mother, played by Rashida Jones, who reconnects with her larger-than-life playboy father (Murray) on an adventure through New York. Coppola and Murray worked together on the 2003 comedy Lost in Translation, in which Murray played a jaded film star striking up an intense relationship with Scarlett Johansson’s bored photographer’s wife. Murray was Oscar-nominated for the role, while Coppola won the Academy award for best original screenplay. The film is the first fruit of Apple’s deal with A24, the US distributor behind such cult hits as Spring Breakers, Ex Machina and Moonlight. Reports suggest Apple is planning to invest more than $4bn (£3.1bn) in original content by 2022, with the vast majority to date going on TV programming such as a new Amazing Stories anthology from Steven Spielberg and untitled series from Damien Chazelle and M Night Shyamalan.Carol Channing, the American actor who originated the roles of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the eponymous heroine of Hello, Dolly! on Broadway, has died aged 97, her publicist has announced. Channing played the matchmaking widow Dolly Levi more than 5,000 times across three Broadway runs from the 1960s to the 1990s and on tours around the world. The part had been turned down by Ethel Merman, but Channing made it her own, donning a hat as feathery as her eyelashes and a red sequinned gown. The musical, based on a Thornton Wilder play and written by Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman, won several Tony awards upon its premiere including best actress in a musical for Channing. She claimed to have missed only one performance as Dolly, after a bout of food poisoning in Kalamazoo, Michigan. When she returned to the role in her mid-70s, in the 1995 revival, the New York Times critic Vincent Canby concluded: “World, beware: it’s possible this woman is a substance that should be legally controlled.” A sparkling entertainer with bright eyes, a megawatt smile, a gorgeously gravelly voice and, frequently, a platinum bob wig, Channing was a natural performer. The only child of George Channing, a journalist, and Adelaide (née Glaser), she was born in Seattle in 1921 and loved to sing as a child. Channing excelled at imitating her teachers and fellow students at school in San Francisco (she remained a fine impersonator) and later attended Bennington College in Vermont. She was raised as a Christian Scientist and was entranced by the magic of the theatre when she delivered copies of The Christian Science Monitor newspaper to the stage door of a local playhouse. Inspired by Ethel Waters, she set out to become a performer. “There wasn’t an inch of the entertainment field I didn’t investigate,” she wrote in her memoir Just Lucky I Guess. “I auditioned for anyone who would look.” She was accepted into the San Francisco Ballet as a teenager, performed comedy at the Borscht Belt summer resorts in upstate New York’s Catskill mountains, and began to get roles on Broadway after understudying Eve Arden in the musical comedy Let’s Face It! co-starring Danny Kaye. Anita Loos, the author of the 1925 comic novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, saw her on stage in the satirical revue Lend An Ear and proclaimed: “There’s my Lorelei.” Channing was swiftly cast in her first leading role as the gleeful, gold-digging Lorelei Lee, the Little Rock flapper who believes diamonds are a girl’s best friend, in the musical based on the novel. After it opened in 1949, she became an instant star and Time magazine put her on its cover. When the musical became a movie in 1953, Marilyn Monroe was given the role of Lorelei. Channing said that Noël Coward once offered her a role but she turned it down; he later told her she was a “silly ox” for not accepting. But after her run as Lorelei she appeared in more Broadway musicals – Wonderful Town, The Vamp and Show Girl – and also had film roles, including the 1956 movie The First Traveling Saleslady, which cast her and a young Clint Eastwood as a couple. It also gave Channing a song, A Corset Can Do a Lot for a Lady. Her most successful film role was as the nightclub singer Muzzy Van Hossmere, fond of quaffing champagne and proclaiming “raspberries!” in Thoroughly Modern Millie, which brought her an Oscar nomination in 1968 (she lost to Estelle Parsons for Bonnie and Clyde). Channing was furious to find Barbra Streisand cast in the film version of Hello, Dolly! – she said it was “like somebody had kidnapped my baby” – but was glad to play the part over many decades on stage. She also returned to her other signature theatre role in a 1974 Broadway sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, entitled Lorelei. Following the 30th anniversary tour of Hello, Dolly!, she received a lifetime achievement Tony award in 1995. Her memoir was published in 2002. Channing was married four times and had a son, the cartoonist Channing Lowe.Scored in Rotherham’s 2-1 win over Southampton in 2002 and now their assistant coach I never get tired of talking about my goal against Southampton. Beating a Premier League side is one thing but the way the goal was scored was special, too. It was a diving header and somebody managed to do a good job of selling the photograph, because it made it to a newspaper in Sydney. I know because someone sent me a copy from Australia. We were confident about playing them at Millmoor. That stadium was almost worth a goal start for us. Sustaining Championship football for as long as we did was partly down to it. People didn’t fancy it there. Teams didn’t want to use the changing rooms and I’m sure Southampton had that mindset. The longer the game went on, the more we saw it was possible to win. We have to believe we can do something similar against City. I’ve studied Pep Guardiola for 10 years. It will be a great experience just to study him from the next technical area and it would be nice to have a chat. It won’t be easy but Wigan knocked them out last year. Who knows? Oldham’s match-day press officer for 56 years I got my first season ticket in 1947 and volunteer at the club for nothing now. One of my most memorable moments is when we beat Everton after two replays in the fifth round in 1990. It was in the days without mobile phones so the press agencies would phone their copy over from the press box. But on the morning of the second replay, somebody had ripped out all the phone wires in the press box. Luckily the commercial manager jumped in his car, got on to the bosses at BT and managed to get the phones back on. Then there was the run to the semi-finals in 1994. We played Manchester United at Wembley and were 1-0 up with a minute to go in extra time. But Mark Hughes turned and volleyed in that equaliser. The next day Joe Royle told me it wouldn’t have gone in if it had been anyone else. I went with friends and they were standing on the seats and singing to United. I remember saying: ‘It’s not over yet’. Sure enough, in it went. Then we lost the replay.” Barnet’s caretaker manager and nephew of Tony Currie, Sheffield United legend and director I was at home with my wife and children for the draw and the phone didn’t stop ringing when it turned out it was Sheffield United away. All the family have been in touch and we’ve been talking about it ever since. I’m really looking forward to it. My slight change in title since John Still’s retirement as manager has added even more to the occasion and we have a chance to go up there and upset my uncle. I had a chat with Tony after the draw. We were excited to draw each other. He’s been singing the praises of Chris Wilder and the team up there. He said some of United’s football has been terrific. They’re doing so well in the Championship. We’re under no illusions. It’s a really difficult game but we want to enjoy it. I look forward to seeing Tony. We’ll embrace – we’re family. I’m sure we’ll meet up after the game whatever the outcome. Let’s just hope it’s him congratulating me. Newport’s PA announcer I’ve been doing this job since the mid-70s and I’m also the official commentator for away games. My late father, John Thraves, was a director of the club in the 60s and 70s. Last season was our first run for a long time. We knocked Leeds out in the third round and almost beat Spurs. They both found it hard because our crowds are very noisy. Leicester will find the Welsh are very passionate on these occasions. I’ll be pitch level with the radio mic. I have a phrase before kick-off – “Let’s get behind the boys and let’s make some noise” – and I really go for it. The fans respond to it and my job is to get them whipped up. I remember the public address system failing at a game against Swindon at our old ground. I went around the track announcing the teams with a loud hailer. It was very amusing for the away fans.A horror bookshop in California has been saved from closure after a host of high-profile fans including Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del Toro and Cory Doctorow offered their support. Dark Delicacies in Burbank, California, has been running since 1994, but co-owner Del Howison said the business had been put under enormous financial strain over the last few years, thanks to “skyrocket[ing]” rents. The store’s lease was up in May, and he and his wife Sue had “resigned ourselves to the fact that we would be forced to close, just shy of our 25th anniversary. We were heartbroken,” he wrote on GoFundMe, where he launched an appeal last week to raise $20,000 (£15,000) to move the shop to a new location around the corner. “We knew we would never become rich running the store, and that was OK. We just wanted to be able to do something we loved and be a part of the community we cherished. A possible new location, coupled with all the people who wrote and stopped by asking us to stay in business, made Sue and I realise we weren’t ready to go quietly into the night,” he wrote. “Moves are expensive and this one is no exception. So, we are asking for a little help in making a resurrection possible.” Director Del Toro called on his fellow “horror lovers” to help the store, writing on Twitter: “I love Burbank. I edited Cronos, Blade II, Mimic etc, there … and I love, love, love Dark Delicacies. I vow to help it move successfully. You can help, too.” The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth director, who is also co-author with Chuck Hogan author of The Strain series of horror novels, was joined in his appreciation of the store by Gaiman, who called it “a wonderful bookshop”, and by the novelist Cory Doctorow, who also backed the crowdfunder. On his website BoingBoing, Doctorow described Dark Delicacies as an “amazing quarter-century institution”. Dark Delicacies has now raised more than $24,000 in four days. “We have hit the initial sum we were reaching for due to the generosity of you, the fans and professionals. We cannot thank you enough,” said Howison. “This amount will cover the demo and partial build-up of the new store. Additional money donated will go to finishing the building and help with the actual relocation We are estimating that to be an additional $10,000.”Four people died in a massive explosion caused by a “pocket of gas” in a six storey building in Paris. Two of the dead are firefighters called to investigate a gas leak. Another 32 people were injured in the blast in the 9th arrondissement of the capital, eight of them critically. One of the firefighters was trapped under the rubble of the destroyed building for two-and-a-half hours before being rescued by colleagues. The French interior minister, Christophe Castaner, told journalists at the scene four people “two firefighters and two civilians” had died. “At 8.37am the fire brigade was called to 6 rue Trevise to investigate a gas leak. While they were there a dramatic explosion occurred.” He praised the courage of firefighters who risked their lives to save their lives to save victims. Rémy Heitz, the Paris public prosecutor said an investigation had been launched into the tragedy. The origin of the explosion was a “pocket of gas”, he said adding that experts would be verifying what had caused the build up in the building. The blast and subsequent fire completely destroyed a boulangerie on the ground floor of 6 rue Trevise and destroyed apartments above. It also seriously damaged several neighbouring buildings and shattered windows for a hundred metres around. Vehicles parked in rue Trevise were overturned and set alight by the force of the explosion. The blast happened as Paris prepared for a ninth weekend of gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protests across the city and elsewhere in France. The prime minister, Édouard Philippe, and the interior minister, Christophe Castaner, visited the scene of the explosion. The mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo was also at the scene. The explosion, which happened just before 9am, was heard a mile away. Dozens of firefighters, police and ambulances rushed to the scene and rapidly sealed off surrounding streets, many of them cloaked in a thick cloud of acrid smoke. The boulanger, Hubert Beatrix, watched shocked as dozens of firefighters struggled to put out the blaze and evacuate residents of nearby buildings. #Paris gas explosion. Fire service evacuating people from buildings around after massive explosion in boulangerie. I heard it at home a mile away. pic.twitter.com/2ZCRqLcNoU “I have no idea what happened. There’s no gas in my shop apart from a small supply for heating. My ovens are electric,” Beatrix told the Guardian. “The shop was closed, luckily for me and my customers. Someone called me to tell me about this, but I still don’t know what happened.” Commander Eric Moulin, of the Paris fire service, said: “Of those who are in a critical condition, two fire officers and three civilians have life-threatening injures. One of the firefighters was out for several minutes and rescued by his colleagues.” The bakery was almost entirely destroyed, leaving a few columns holding up the rest of the six-storey building. Place de l’Opera nearby was cleared to allow three emergency helicopters to land in order to evacuate the injured from the explosion. One female resident said: “The neighbours called the fire service because there was a very strong smell of gas this morning. Fire officers knocked on doors to tell us to stay where we were and shortly after that there was an explosion. There’s nothing left of our apartment. Nothing.” Killian, a local resident, said it was carnage. “The windows were blown out. It was horrible.”Life, as Donald Trump has known it for the last two years, has just changed forever. Quagmired in a government shutdown of his own making, Trump’s ability to manipulate his world is already severely constrained in this very new year. The more he struggles against his new surroundings, the more he sinks. Last week the president could only watch his beloved cable news channels as a bystander to the biggest tectonic shifts, as the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and Senator Elizabeth Warren became the first candidate to officially emerge to run against him next year. And it won’t be long before the House launches several investigations into corruption and incompetence, while the Mueller investigation continues to tighten several nooses around all things Trumpian. Outside Trump’s wall of delusion and distractions, there is a host of strong women candidates poised to join Warren So it may be early, but it’s not too soon to survey who is best placed to eject Trump from the White House, if indeed the 45th president makes it that far. It’s no coincidence that the first candidate to emerge against Trump – and enrage him – is a woman. Warren, the Massachusetts senator, represents at least two constituencies that have driven grassroots politics over the last decade. That is something Trump should recognise from his own campaign. Almost every US election since 2006 has been defined by a wave of voters seeking change, especially in the shape of a new candidate promising to reform a broken system. Nancy Pelosi swept to power as House speaker first in 2006 amid the disaster of President Bush’s second term, and she returned this week to the same position promising adult supervision of an even more calamitous Republican. Each cycle in between – with the exception of Obama’s reelection in 2012 – has seen the same dynamic of turfing out incumbents in the pursuit of hope and change. Warren has long given voice and academic heft to the argument that the root cause of the broken system is a broken economy, skewed by Wall Street and the super-wealthy. But on that basis, as with most other policies, she will find herself in a crowded space with most of the other Democrats who will join her in this contest. The second factor propelling Warren’s candidacy is the dramatic political turn in November’s midterms: the sharp shift among women voters. Democrats held a 19-point advantage among women, according to the exit polls, six points higher than two years earlier. In particular, Democrats moved from a nine-point loss among white women to parity with Republicans as married women shifted allegiance. This is not a trend that Trump knows how to stop. In fact, his reaction to Warren’s candidacy only underscores his limited grasp of the shifting political realities that kicked his own party out of power late last year. He told Fox News this week that “you’d have to ask her psychiatrist” to know if Warren believes she can win, and he continued to troll her on Twitter about her Native American family roots. Outside Trump’s wall of delusion and distractions, a host of strong women candidates is poised to join Warren. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota have often found themselves entirely misjudged by the men around them. Gillibrand was considered vulnerable in her first Senate election in 2010, but she trounced all comers in all of her contests. Klobuchar proved more than a match for the clumsy bullying of supreme court nominee – now Justice – Brett Kavanaugh last year. But one likely candidate particularly intrigues. Kamala Harris embodies the driving force pushing Democrats to record turnouts in non-presidential contests over the last two years: women of colour. The California senator has served just two years in Congress – like the last freshman senator to win the Democratic nomination, in 2008. But unlike Barack Obama, Harris has a very significant record of public service in her pre-Senate career, serving as her state’s attorney general for six years and as San Francisco’s district attorney for seven years. While all the Democratic candidates can appeal beyond their own demographics, personal perspectives can and do influence political character. There’s no mystery about why Trump performs so well with older white men. And there should be no surprise that Harris – the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants – has already won the overwhelming support and respect of influential women of colour who will help shape the Democratic primaries. Harris, like the other candidates of colour, will face the same questions Obama did in 2008 about appealing to the white working-class voters across the rust-belt states that Hillary Clinton narrowly lost to Trump. However, working-class challenges are most acutely experienced by minorities, and each of the former industrial states that tipped the 2016 election – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin – have diverse electorates that shifted decisively against Trump last year. The test for Harris, and all the other Democrats, is whether she can effectively demonstrate that she is listening and responding to those voters in order to overcome the culture wars that Trump will happily wage. Obama succeeded in 2008 by showing he was the adult in the middle of a financial crisis. He succeeded again in 2012, by showing Mitt Romney was out of touch with economic reality. If anything, Trump fills both boxes even more snugly than his predecessors. Well before the general election, the candidates will need to navigate the primary and caucus voters, where Democrats – even in less diverse states like Iowa – tend to be more progressive and want more change, not less. There’s no reason to think a candidate of colour cannot succeed there, where Obama did in 2008. The biggest difference this time around is that the largest state of all has moved forward its primary – with all its nominating delegates – to March, three months ahead of where it used to be. That state, California, is home to Kamala Harris. All the challengers will claim they can appeal to working-class and middle-class voters with more affordable healthcare and education, and a fairer economy. The key primary test for all candidates will be who can best take the fight to Trump while still talking to voters beyond the reach of his tweets. In politics they say you should never wrestle with a pig, but the desire to stay clean did little for Trump’s opponents in 2016. Voters expect their candidates to stand up for themselves while still talking about what matters in their lives. The test for the female (and male) candidates of 2020 is how to sling mud without getting stuck in it. • Richard Wolffe is a columnist for the Guardian USOpponents of Theresa May’s Brexit deal have seized on a suggestion by Germany’s foreign minister that further negotiations could be opened with the EU should MPs reject the prime minister’s agreement on Tuesday evening. With hours to go before MPs have their say in parliament, Heiko Maas spoke of his doubts that the agreement could be radically changed but also suggested there might be grounds for further talks. “The agreement stands, as it is,” the German minister said. “I doubt very much that the agreement can be fundamentally reopened. If there were a better solution, it would already have been put forward.” Maas said the withdrawal agreement and the accompanying political declaration on the future relationship was the best vehicle for avoiding a no-deal Brexit, but he added: “If it goes wrong tonight, there could be further talks.” The leading Brexiter and former cabinet minister Owen Paterson tweeted in response: “Very significant statement from Germany’s foreign minister that the EU would be prepared to reopen talks if and when the withdrawal agreement is defeated in the Commons.” MPs planning to vote down the deal were later offered further grounds for hope by the head of the eurozones finance ministers, Mario Centeno, who said the EU and Britain could talk further and adjust their positions to avoid a no-deal Brexit. “We will see the result (of the vote) today and we can adjust our trajectory,” he said. “We can open all the dossiers ... We need to take informed decisions with total calm and avoid a no-deal exit. Practically anything is better than a no-deal exit.” The interventions will be regarded as unhelpful in Downing Street, where the size of the defeat in the meaningful vote on the deal will instruct the UK government’s next move. Earlier in the day, Berlin denied reports that Angela Merkel had signalled to the prime minister in a recent call that she would engineer a significant concession to ensure victory in a second vote on the deal, should the first fail as expected. A statement from the chancellery claimed the reports had misrepresented the call, and that Merkel had “given no assurances beyond those that were discussed in the European council in December”. At that summit the EU’s 27 leaders had merely restated that the customs union envisaged in the backstop, to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, would be temporary. The EU has repeatedly insisted that the deal struck by May is the “only deal” and that there will not be a renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement, including the backstop, which Brexiters fear will keep the UK indefinitely trapped in a customs union with the bloc. Speaking in Strasbourg, between plenary sessions of the European parliament, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, on being asked about his message to the British parliament, told reporters: “I would hope that they behave in a responsible way.” The Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, whose country has held the rolling presidency of the EU for the last six months, said the deal being put in front of parliament was a fair compromise. He said: “The European Union, I believe, in negotiations with the United Kingdom has nothing to reproach itself for because we negotiated a very balanced exit agreement and we also have a political declaration on the future of our relationship. “Now, even if things don’t go our way this evening in the vote in the British parliament and even if the next few weeks and months are rocky it is important that we continue to sing from the same hymn-sheet. We in the council, commission and parliament.” The British prime minister is expected to return to Brussels within 48 hours should her defeat in parliament be manageable, and a possible way forward for the current deal emerges. But Brussels is preparing itself for a request for an extension to the two-year negotiating period from Downing Street in the coming weeks, given the limited time available before Brexit day on 29 March. Leaders of the groups in the European parliament were sceptical on Tuesday about further talks, however. The leader of the Greens, Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian MEP, said: “She can come back but this reality will not change. This is why giving more time to the UK under article 50 … will not change the reality. “More time for a referendum, sure. More time for a general election, sure. More time to think about it, no. The facts are now. Make up your mind ... If the parliament is not able to make up its mind, ask the people.” The socialist group leader, Udo Bullmann, a German MEP, voiced his backing for a second referendum, saying: “We are deeply convinced that the British people should have the opportunity to assess the situation in one way or another.”. Esteban González Pons, a Spanish MEP speaking for the largest group in parliament, the centre-right European People’s party, said: “The EPP is not against the extension of article 50. If the prime minister of the UK were to need more time, then it will certainly not be the EPP group which would oppose granting additional time. But this would need to be additional time denominated in weeks rather than months.”Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, has rebuffed calls from the international community to hold elections within eight days, protracting a diplomatic crisis that shows little respite. In a wide-ranging interview with CNN Türk that aired on Monday, Maduro accused the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, of violating “the constitution and every law”. Guaidó, the leader of the opposition-held national assembly, declared himself interim president on Wednesday as hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest against Maduro’s rule. The United States, Canada and a dozen Latin American countries swiftly recognised Guaidó, the fresh-faced leader of the once-fractured opposition, and labelled Maduro a dictator, responsible for the economic and political crisis that engulfed his South American nation. Britain, Germany, France and Spain all said they would recognise Guaidó unless Maduro called elections within eight days, an ultimatum that Jorge Arreaza, Venezuela’s bullish foreign minister, dismissed as “childlike”. Russia, one of Maduro’s staunchest allies, described the threat as “absurd”. However, Maduro retains the support of China, Cuba, Bolivia and Turkey and, most importantly perhaps, he still has the backing of the military – long the arbiter of political disputes – though his defence attache to the Venezuelan embassy in Washington defected to Guaidó on Saturday. In an attempt to trigger more defections, Guaidó is canvassing military bases, offering amnesty to troops who switch sides. Oil-rich Venezuela is wracked with hyperinflation, rendering the bolivar currency practically worthless. Shortages in food staples and basic medicines are rampant and crime is widespread. More than 3 million Venezuelans have fled, causing consternation across the continent. Maduro, who has frequently blamed the crisis on an “economic war” waged by the US, won re-election last May in a vote widely regarded as a sham. Shortly before his second two-year term began in early January, Guaidó – a relative unknown inside and outside Venezuela – indicated he would be ready to assume the presidency on an interim basis. He made good on that promise last Wednesday. In Sunday’s interview with CNN Türk, Maduro took aim once more at the US, calling the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, “desperate and full of hate”, after the diplomat had told the UN security council on Saturday morning it was “time [for other countries] to pick a side”. When Trump formally recognised Guaidó as interim president last Wednesday, Maduro swiftly broke off diplomatic ties and demanded that all staff be pulled out of the embassy by Sunday, an order that the state department dismissed as illegitimate. On Saturday, Maduro extended the deadline by a month and told CNN that he had reached out to Trump but had not received a response. “He despises us,” Maduro said, adding that he was “overwhelmed with his internal problems”.With a diverse influx of candidates, the Democratic presidential race is already being framed in historic terms. When Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren announced their campaigns, making it the first time two female senators would be running for a party’s presidential nomination at the same time, outlets declared that “women have already made history in the 2020 Democratic primary”. And when she entered the race on Martin Luther King Jr Day, Kamala Harris’s campaign logo paid tribute to Shirley Chisholm, the first black person and woman to run for a major party presidential nomination. “This moment is more than a milestone – it’s a ground-gripping convulsion,” Swanee Hunt wrote for CNN. That the Democratic primary field is already one of the most diverse in history is a welcome fact for sure. Yet we are hardly a month into the race and the pervasive argument of representation over policy has already begun to surface. Reporters have posited that January 2019 could be the month “that Democrats truly become the party of women” simply because more women are running. And others have dismissed criticisms of Harris, whose prosecutorial record has become a target of progressives, implying that they are a leftist conspiracy or simply unfairly weighted attacks against a black woman running for office. (This is despite the fact that some of Harris’s harshest and most comprehensive critics have been black women.) This reductionism skates over the opportunity that the diverse Democratic field actually presents: a chance to push for the candidate not with their preferred identity, but with the most comprehensively feminist and anti-racist policy positions. For one, the person who ultimately wins the nomination will face off against a historically unpopular president. While much of this could change over a years-long campaign, early polling shows that all of the Democrats’ favored candidates are likely to beat Donald Trump. Democratic firm @ppppolls surveys early 2020 head-to-head contests:Biden 53%, Trump 41%Sanders 51%, Trump 41%Harris 48%, Trump 41%O’Rourke 47%, Trump 41%Warren 48%, Trump 42%Booker 47%, Trump 42%Gillibrand 47%, Trump 42%**Trump approval: 40/57https://t.co/bATutAFANR As Eric Levitz has argued over at New York magazine, this means that voters should be wary of arguments claiming a candidate’s electability. “Barring a sharp change in the political winds (or Trump’s removal from office), Democratic voters should ignore such punditry, and simply vote for whichever candidate they would most like to be president,” Levitz wrote. In other words, better to ignore media and political operatives who think Warren is “unlikable” – especially if she can both win and do so on a substantively feminist policy platform. For progressives, this means the opportunity to push for the candidate with the policies they want. Harris should be criticized, not only because she has harmed marginalized communities in her time as a prosecutor, but also because she has shown very little willingness to grapple with that record. As the Atlantic’s Hannah Giorgis wrote in her review of Harris’s recent memoir: “It is tempting for some to view Harris’s marginalized identities as evidence enough of her progressive politics. Throughout The Truths We Hold, Harris fans this ideological beatification without deeply interrogating its roots or its consequences.” And often, representation-first praise of candidates can help to conceal hidden policy agendas. Take Hunt, who wrote that Harris’s run “gives us a glimpse at a new reality – a leader who embodies the convergence of race and gender in America”. As journalist Melissa Gira Grant pointed out on Twitter, Hunt conveniently failed to mention that she and Harris align on policies that undermine the rights of sex workers. Swanee Hunt, whose private foundation bankrolls anti-sex work prosecutions and lobbied hard for SESTA and against Backpage, somehow forgets to mention that she shares those convictions with Harris. https://t.co/XYMxnaYK7Q Gillibrand also has to answer for less-than-feminist spots on her record, perhaps most significantly on her Wall Street-friendly stances. Empowering big banks has only resulted in disastrous consequences for women and people of color. Yet before she even announced her bid, it was reported that Gillibrand was calling up donors within the financial sector to seek their support. None of this is to dismiss the fact that the female candidates are sure to face a barrage of sexist attacks that (potential) white male candidates like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders won’t. When Warren announced her campaign, her “likability” was immediately questioned. Gillibrand has been continually branded as an “opportunist” for speaking out against former senator Al Franken’s alleged groping and forcibly kissing numerous women. On Monday, she was described by Fox News hosts as having a “mental illness” because of her shifting policy positions. Harris only threw her hat in the ring a few days ago and has already faced a redux of racist birther conspiracies. But one can simultaneously acknowledge that these obstacles exist, while also holding candidates’ feet to the fire when it comes to their policies and records. This applies across the board – if Sanders ends up running, he will need to ditch the line that people working “40 hours a week” shouldn’t live in poverty. It’s harmful rhetoric that only plays into welfare reform-era ideas of deserving and undeserving poor, targeting poor black women. With the nomination still up for grabs for any of the candidates, it’s imperative that we don’t fall for symbolism over substance. We’ve already seen that strategy fail just two years ago. Energy on the left has only grown since the 2016 election, meaning that we have a chance to see history being made: a Democratic nominee with a truly progressive policy platform. Clio Chang is a freelance contributor based in New York CityDo you have a cancer? Or are you “a brave hero fighting against the demon foe”? Have you something in your body that needs removing, or are you a heroic victim in a war you may “win or lose”? A poll by Macmillan Cancer Support has found that many people with cancer are fed up with the language of war. They want to be treated like anyone else who is ill. They want to discuss their treatment with a doctor. It is as simple as that. Anyone with experience of a cancer knows well the lugubrious looks you get. You poor thing. We are so sorry. How long have “they” given you? Be brave. Be positive. Fight back. Don’t give in and “lose”. It suggests you lacked courage and were “beaten”. Language always matters. It matters not because it affects physical wellbeing – a subject on which psychotherapists differ – but because it affects how people live with their illness and relate to those around them. The taboo that surrounds cancer is still intense. Until the middle of the last century, its apparent incurability made it the great unmentionable. That taboo still turns initial diagnosis, even of the commonest and most curable cancers such as breast, bowel, lung and prostate, into a devastating blow that can be treated as a premonition of death by family and friends. Having some time ago been through this myself, I am sure a way to de-escalate the language of cancer is to stop referring to it like bubonic plague. Rather use the indefinite article, as “a” cancer, a specific thing, an intrusion, a growth. There are certainly blood, bone and cell cancers that are, or have become, “blanket”. But most are malignant growths to be removed or destroyed in situ, the quicker the better. If they have not spread, they are gone. It does not leave people “in remission”, with the veil of death still hovering over them. The image of cancer as an invading army, an immortal alien no human body can resist, derives in part from the failure of medical research to find a “cure”. There has been a suspicion that the pharmaceutical industry likes this image of being engaged in a cold, or hot, war as it helps fundraising, not least from government – and that this lay behind big pharma’s resistance to immunotherapy research, now at last ending. A sensible approach to cancers (plural) should owe less to the language of the Pentagon and more to a local GP surgery. It would comfort thousands of ordinary mortals, who want to handle this illness like any other. In most cases, this means: “Have you a cancer? I am so sorry, when are they taking it out?” • Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistCesare Battisti, a former leftwing guerrilla fighter wanted by the Italian authorities over four murders in the late 1970s, has arrived in Rome after almost four decades on the run. His return follows a strengthening of ties between Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and Italy’s populist coalition government. Battisti, 64, landed at the capital’s Ciampino airport in a government aircraft following his arrest in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra on Saturday night. He will be taken to Rome’s Rebibbia prison, where he is expected to serve the first six months of his life sentence in solitary confinement. Matteo Salvini, the far-right interior minister, and Alfonso Bonafede, the justice minister, awaited his arrival at the airport. “Those who make mistakes, pay,” Salvini told reporters. “Italy is now a respectable country.” Bonafede said: “We are telling the world that nobody can evade Italian justice. Battisti is a multiple murderer who committed serious crimes; his escape mortified the pain of the families of the victims and of an entire population. So many years have passed but the hurt has not been soothed.” Battisti was convicted in Italy in 1979 of belonging to the outlawed Armed Proletarians for Communism, and in 1981 he escaped from prison. He was subsequently convicted in absentia of killing two police officers, taking part in the murder of a butcher and helping to plan the killing of a jeweller. Battisti admitted to being part of the group but denied responsibility for any deaths. Battisti had been living in Cananéia, the southernmost city in the state of São Paulo, for years. Before that he spent almost two decades on the run in Mexico and France, where he was protected by the Mitterrand doctrine, a 1985 law that offered asylum to about 100 former Italian guerrillas “on the condition that they withdrew from politics”. In 2004, Battisti skipped bail in France and took refuge in Brazil, where he lived clandestinely for three years until he was arrested in 2007 in Rio de Janeiro. After four years in custody, Brazil’s departing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, issued a decree refusing to extradite Battisti to Italy, and he was freed. The case was given fresh impetus due to the friendly relations between Salvini and Bolsonaro. Shortly after Bolsonaro was elected in October, he promised Salvini he would send Battisti back to Italy to serve his prison term. He also said the extradition of Battisti, whom he described as a figure “adored by the Brazilian left”, would reflect to the world his government’s commitment to fighting terrorism. A Brazilian court ordered Battisti’s arrest in December and he was found in Bolivia on Saturday. “We don’t know from where he came in or when,” said Bolivia’s interior minister, Carlos Romero. Salvini celebrated news of the extradition on Sunday, posting a photo of Battisti on Facebook alongside the caption “the good times are over”.Ever so politely – for Jason Holder is a polite man – West Indies’ captain redoubled the torment of an England team who could score only 77 runs on Thursday and take no wickets on Friday. Holder, batting at No 8, hit a double century, only the third man in Test history to do that from there; Shane Dowrich hit his third Test century; and England toiled for four hours 40 minutes on this puzzling surface. West Indies began the day on 127 for six hoping for a lead in excess of 400. When Holder declared after celebrating his double century the total was 415 for six and it was hard to conclude these two proud Bajans were “very ordinary, average cricketers”. There was more bewilderment in the air: 18 wickets on Thursday, none on Friday. The victory target of 628 was the highest set by West Indies. Holder is a remarkable cricketer. Has there been a more elegant six foot seven inch batsman? Amid a gentle, languid swing of the bat his timing is exquisite; the ball travels vast distances but no violence is involved. As a bowler, despite those long levers, he is shrewd rather than speedy. He is surprisingly lacking in pace compared with so many of his lofty predecessors yet in 2018 he took his Test wickets at 12 apiece. No wonder he had a place in the ICC’s notional Test team of the year. Yet none of the above is the most astonishing thing about Holder and that includes Friday’s silky double century. How many leaders have been heralded as great when they have been in charge of losing sides? In sport results generally dictate judgments – it is easier that way – yet in the Caribbean there has long been the acknowledgment that Holder has been an exceptional leader of a losing side. Before strolling out to toss with Joe Root on Wednesday Holder had led West Indies 27 times out of his 35 Tests, starting at the age of 23. In that time West Indies had lost 15 and won seven matches. And yet it does not seem much of a mystery that Holder is so widely lauded. At a difficult time in West Indies’ cricket history he is bright, soft-spoken and measured when fulfilling his duties with the world at large; more importantly he is hugely respected by his players and by the board, a middle man who is better placed than anyone to keep what has often been a fragile peace in recent times. And he can play all right; moreover his form seems to be enhanced by the captaincy, which can often prevent a player dwelling too long on the odd failure. He could muster only five runs in West Indies’ first innings; then he was the perfect foil to Kemar Roach on Thursday afternoon, unrelentingly accurate and capable of dismissing England’s best batsman in an eight-over spell. But on Friday he was centre stage, cruising to 202 from 229 balls with eight sixes. Holder made it all look so effortless. He was respectful against the early overs from Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes but once they were rested he dissected a dispirited attack magnificently. When he decided to attack there was never a glimmer of a mishit. He shredded England’s major spinners although, perversely, Root prompted a few moments of indecision. Dowrich, who was West Indies’ highest runscorer in Test cricket in 2018, looked on admiringly as his captain gracefully took control. He was more restrained, yet compact and wonderfully pragmatic. On Thursday English batsmen felt the pain of a public humiliation as they came and went like mourners in a funereal procession. Now it was the turn of the bowlers to be cruelly exposed. For them there was no early release to the pavilion. Root now resembled the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dyke. Unfortunately he did not have enough fingers. By now it had become patently obvious that England’s selection for the Test had been flawed. It may be that this sticks in the memory for a long time. The Kolkata Test of 1993 is recalled when Graham Gooch and Micky Stewart, decided to play four seamers plus the greenhorn, Ian Salisbury, even though India had announced their team, which included three spinners. India prevailed. Likewise Root will not forget this selection quickly; nor, one imagines, will Stuart Broad. West Indies are highly likely to prevail. Root’s agony was highlighted on Friday morning. It soon became apparent that, if Holder and Dowrich could survive the opening spells of Stokes and Anderson, who was moving gingerly after his first innings exertions, there would be runs aplenty. England’s captain had five regular bowlers at his disposal but in his heart of hearts he wanted to bowl only two of them. As soon as Anderson was rested Holder took 13 runs from Moeen Ali’s first over with three off-side boundaries. They tried a series of eccentric fields for Sam Curran to no great effect. Adil Rashid was toothless and expensive. England had not looked so moribund in the field since India piled up 759 for seven in Chennai in 2016. The solitary – and substantial – consolation for England was that they managed to negotiate their 20 overs in the final session without losing a wicket with Rory Burns in particular batting with reassuring composure. Quite how they react to this experience when they get to Antigua remains a mystery. But one thing is certain: they will not be picking the same team.Supporters of Theresa May put her extraordinary inflexibility in the face of new facts down to two things: her fabled resilience, and her deeply ingrained determination not to split the Conservative party. Chris Wilkins, who worked for the prime minister in Downing Street, including drafting key speeches, says: “I often reflect on my time there and think I underestimated the extent to which she is a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative. She is absolutely steeped in the party.” When Jacob Rees-Mogg invoked the Victorian prime minister Robert Peel last year to warn May against relying on Labour votes to pass her Brexit deal, he knew the analogy would hit home. Peel split his party over the corn laws, and banished them from power for a generation as a result. Wilkins says May is also sustained by a sense that she is the only grown-up in the room; a serious politician executing what she repeatedly calls “the will of the people”, rather than posturing like the former public schoolboys she trounced in the Tory leadership race. “She has this phrase: ‘Politics is not a game.’ That is the Theresa May worldview,” he says. As the prime minister herself put it during her leadership speech: “I don’t tour the television studios. I don’t gossip about people over lunch. I don’t go drinking in parliament’s bars. I don’t often wear my heart on my sleeve. I just get on with the job in front of me.” Less charitable colleagues argue that this belief in her personal fitness to understand, and deliver, what the public wants is itself a kind of vanity. Aside from the august institution that is the Tory party, and the “precious union”, as she calls it, it can be hard to say what May believes in. Her former chief of staff Nick Timothy was an enthusiastic advocate of a kind of red Toryism. But the departure of “the chiefs” – Timothy and Fiona Hill – was one of the few things that did change after the general election, and that theme has been all but swamped by Brexit. However, one thread running consistently through May’s tenure as home secretary under David Cameron, and her premiership, has been controlling immigration. Unlike the former chancellor George Osborne, she was a champion of stricter migration controls. Vince Cable, who was the business secretary in the coalition, has even accused her of being obsessed with hitting the net migration target. As prime minister she has resisted removing students from the target despite a push from inside her own cabinet, and has put the brakes on visa liberalisation. She firmly believes the public’s view on immigration is more in line with her own than those of the more liberal Tory MPs. May’s “burning injustices” speech, delivered when she entered Downing Street in the tumultuous summer of 2016, has entered political folklore, not least because she frequently mentions it herself. But another speech, delivered the morning after the general election in 2017, with her grip on power uncertain, was a better guide to the tenor of May’s premiership. During the election campaign, the prime minister had made a personal plea to the public to back her Brexit strategy by increasing her majority so she could overrule remainers at Westminster. Far from endorsing her “strong and stable” leadership, the electorate appeared to warm to Jeremy Corbyn during what even her own colleagues acknowledge was a disastrous campaign, and stripped the Tories of their majority. That morning, speaking outside No 10, May gave not a hint of apology or humility, let alone suggest she would flex her position on Brexit to accommodate the dramatically different parliamentary reality. Instead, she said she had spoken to the Queen, and would work with the Democratic Unionist party to form “a government that can provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time for our country”. She then gave a familiar promise to “deliver on the will of the British people by taking this country out of the European Union”, before briskly concluding: “Now let’s get to work.” It was as though “nothing has changed” – which began as her tetchy response to questions about the Tories’ social care policy at a campaign press conference – had become a guiding principle. These past months have brought together the stubborn grit that is May’s most visible character trait, with that overriding determination not to be the leader who splits the Tories – along with a firm belief that the public wants politicians to “deliver Brexit” and control immigration – and she’s the woman to do it. So perhaps it should be no surprise that May’s reaction to the resounding rejection of her Brexit deal by MPs from every party was, just like after her general election humiliation, “Now let’s get to work”.The war of words in the run-up to Sunday’s Super Bowl has started with Los Angeles Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman questioning whether age is starting to affect the 41-year-old Tom Brady. Brady was at his vintage best as he led the New England Patriots on two late drives to beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game but Robey-Coleman believes there are definite signs of decline. “Yes. Yes. Age has definitely taken a toll. For him to still be doing it, that’s a great compliment for him. But I think that he’s definitely not the same quarterback he was,” Robey-Coleman told Bleacher Report in an interview published on Monday. “Movement. Speed. Velocity. Arm strength. He still can sling it, but he’s not slinging it as much. Whatever he was doing – because of his age and all that – he’s not doing as much of that anymore. He’s still doing the same things; he’s just not doing as much of it. And sometimes, it’s not the sharpest. But it still gets done.” Brady and his head coach, Bill Belichick, are aiming to win their sixth Super Bowl together, but Robey-Coleman says his team are confident ahead of Sunday. “Don’t fear, don’t fear, don’t fear beating the giant,” he said. “Don’t fear beating the GOAT. Don’t fear it. Embrace it. Embrace it. Take it in – while you’re doing it.” Robey-Coleman admits some of his antipathy is personal. He started his career with the Patriots’ divisional rivals, the Buffalo Bills, and says he has grown tired of New England’s “arrogance” and the fact that they appear to enjoy “antagonizing” opponents. “I’ve got Buffalo blood running through my veins, so you know I hate these guys,” Robey-Coleman said. “I naturally hate them. I never liked New England.” Robey-Coleman was at the heart of controversy as the Rams beat the Saints in the NFC Championship game earlier this month. He collided with the Rams’ Tommylee Lewis as Lewis turned to make the catch late in the game. It a clear case of defensive pass-interference but the officials did not call for a penalty and the Rams went on to win the game. Saints fans have since filed a lawsuit looking to overturn the result of the game.A class action lawsuit claims that Beyoncé’s official website violates the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990) by denying visually impaired users equal access to its products and services, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Web accessibility requires photos to be coded with alt-text so that screen-readers used by visually impaired users can speak the alternative text. Dan Shaked, attorney for plaintiff Mary Conner, said: “There are many important pictures on beyonce.com that lack a text equivalent … As a result, Plaintiff and blind beyonce.com customers are unable to determine what is on the website, browse the website or investigate and/or make purchases.” The Guardian has contacted representatives for Beyoncé for comment. Conner is described in the suit as having “no vision whatsoever”. Shaked describes music as “the one and only form of entertainment that truly presents an even playing field between the visually impaired and the sighted”. Conner’s hopes of attending a Beyoncé concert were restricted by her lack of access to the website, the suit claims. The complaint lists further issues including the lack of accessible drop-down menus and navigation links, and the inability to navigate using a keyboard instead of a mouse. The proposed lawsuit includes “all legally blind individuals in the United States who have attempted to access Beyonce.com and as a result have been denied access to the enjoyment of goods and services offered by Beyonce.com, during the relevant statutory period.” Conner seeks a court injunction that would require Beyoncé’s company to make the site accessible to blind and visually impaired customers in accordance with ADA rules, and is pursuing damages for those who have “been subject to unlawful discrimination”.The world marathon record holder Eliud Kipchoge says he is “relishing the prospect” of facing Mo Farah again over 26.2 miles after confirming that he will run the London Marathon in April. Kipchoge, who won his third London title in last year’s race, with Farah finishing third, then went on to set a stunning world record of two hours, one minute and 39 seconds in Berlin in September – beating the previous best by over a minute. Farah, meanwhile, went on to claim the Chicago Marathon in October in a European record time of 2hr 5min 11sec – and afterwards promised that he was “not afraid to keep turning up in the same field and testing Kipchoge”. That wish has now been granted with the Kenyan, who was named the 2018 IAAF Athlete of the Year in December, having agreed to make his fourth appearance in London. “I had a memorable 2018, winning the Virgin Money London Marathon and then setting a new world record at the Berlin marathon and I’m hoping that 2019 is just as good to me,”said Kipchoge. “I am looking forward to racing Sir Mo Farah again. He is a great champion and proved in Chicago that he can win a major marathon so I relish the battle with him and also the many other great athletes that I’m sure will once again be on the start line in London.” The top three from the 2018 podium will all be in London again this year with organisers confirming that Ethiopia’s 22-year-old marathon star Shura Kitata, who was second to Kipchoge last year before finishing runner-up in the New York marathon in November, will race. Hugh Brasher, event director of the race, said he was delighted to have set up a mouthwatering showdown between Kipchoge, who is unbeaten in London and also holds the course record of 2:03.05, and Britain’s greatest distance runner. “There is no doubt that Eliud Kipchoge is the greatest marathon runner of all time,” he said “Since Sir Mo Farah won the Chicago Marathon in October, everyone has been talking about another head-to-head between Mo and Eliud and we are absolutely thrilled that this showdown will happen. “We will see two absolute legends of distance running competing over 26.2 miles of roads in the greatest marathon in the world. I cannot wait until Sunday 28 April to see who comes out on top.”A recent disclosure that Trump’s campaign chairman and a key Russian business associate discussed a Ukraine peace plan in mid-2016 could signal more scrutiny of a powerful Russian oligarch by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, former prosecutors and intelligence officials told the Guardian. The timing of the talks between Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, a veteran political consultant, and Konstantin Kilimnik, his longtime aide who allegedly had ties to Russian intelligence in 2016, occurred in New York on 2 August. The meeting came just days after Kilimnik met in Moscow with Oleg Deripaska, a powerful oligarch and close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Deripaska had been a major client of Manafort but had sued him over a failed business deal in Ukraine and was seeking to recoup almost $25m. The Trump administration announced late last year it intended to lift sanctions on Deripaska’s companies, despite strong opposition from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress. The treasury department had imposed the sanctions on Deripaska and several of his companies in tandem with seven Russian oligarchs, 12 companies they owned or controlled, and 17 Russian government officials, for “malign activity” which included “ attempting to subvert western democracies, and malicious cyber-activities”. The talks in New York, revealed in a recent court filing from Mueller’s office, came soon after Kilimnik emailed Manafort that he needed to brief him on his Deripaska meeting. Kilimnik, who worked for a decade with Manafort when he was a political consultant making tens of millions representing Deripaska and pro-Moscow Ukrainian political parties, emailed Manafort in late July that he had just spent hours with the man “who gave you your biggest jar of black caviar several years ago”, referring to Deripaska. Kilimnik’s email to Manafort said that Deripaska asked him to convey “several important messages from him to you”. Mueller’s new mid-January court filing was the first evidence that Manafort and Kilimnik had talked about Ukraine peace plans. The filing also stated they discussed such proposals on “more than one occasion”. The ex-officials say the Mueller filing may signal a growing interest in Deripaska’s involvement with Manafort and Kilimnik. “This raises the question as to whether Mueller has an ongoing interest in Deripaska in his investigation,” said Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in money laundering enforcement. Some pro-Moscow peace plans for Ukraine have been “proxies” for ending the painful sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 after it invaded eastern Ukraine and Crimea, a major Kremlin goal, Zeldin noted. Similarly, Nick Akerman, a former assistant Watergate prosecutor, said: “It seems quite likely that Mueller would be focused on Deripaska too as he examines Manafort and Kilimnik.” Intelligence veterans say Kremlin linkages could have been at play in the back-to-back talks in Moscow and New York. “Deripaska is a key lieutenant and a significant oligarch in Putin’s oligarch system,” said Steven Hall, a retired CIA chief of Russia operations. “Deripaska would get his marching orders from the Kremlin about what Russia wanted, including lifting of sanctions and a resolution of the situation in Ukraine that favored Russia,” Hall said. “It seems likely the chain of communication would have been Putin to Deripaska to Kilimnik to Manafort.” “The Manafort connection to Deripaska is essential,” Hall added. “I think people really need to focus on the Manafort-Deripaska relationship. It’s essentially a Trump-Putin connection.” Mueller’s revelation about the initial peace plan chat came in a heavily redacted filing documenting five alleged lies by Manafort in violation of a plea agreement to cooperate fully, after he had been convicted on multiple charges including bank and tax fraud and pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts. A Manafort spokesperson declined comment. Neither Kilimnik nor Deripaska responded to emails seeking comment. During the 2016 election season when the FBI began looking into Russian meddling Deripaska was at least briefly turned to for help. In September 2016 during a Deripaska trip to New York, FBI agents paid a surprise visit on the oligarch in an unsuccessful effort to get him to cooperate in their inquiries into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, the New York Times reported. Soon after Trump hired Manafort – originally to help secure the delegates to grab the GOP presidential nomination – the latter emailed Kilimnik to ensure that Deripaska was in the loop about Manafort’s role with the campaign. In emails first reported by the Washington Post, Manafort proposed giving Deripaska “private briefings” on the Trump campaign, and told Kilimnik to pass the idea on to the oligarch, apparently an effort to win his favor and settle the lawsuit that Deripaska had brought against him. Manafort, Kilimnik and Deripaska have said no formal proposal was ever made and nothing came of the idea. In his July emails to Manafort, which the Atlantic first reported, Kilimnik said he told Deripaska he had to “run it by you first”, but could come quickly “provided that he buys me a ticket”. Kilimnik called Deripaska’s ideas about his country’s future “quite interesting”. Manafort replied that Tuesday 2 August would work, and the two men reportedly met that day at the Grand Havana Room, a cigar bar in midtown Manhattan. Kilimnik, an elusive 48-year-old with a background of training at a military intelligence school who now lives in Moscow after years in Kiev, was charged, along with Manafort, in 2018 by Mueller with witness tampering. Another Kilimnik business partner has been charged with illegally funneling $50,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch into Trump’s inauguration fund. Last year, the special counsel also stated in a court document that Kilimnik had ties to Russian intelligence during 2016, an allegation that Kilimnik has denied.Marcus Rashford graced his 150th Manchester United appearance with a strike he – and those inside Old Trafford – will always remember. Goal No 41 of his career came just before the interval and ensured a seventh win from Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s opening seven matches in charge. The Norwegian believes Rashford may currently be the Premier League’s finest No 9. “He’s playing the best football of his career,” Solskjær said. “Harry Kane is injured so maybe that gives him the chance to be the best at the moment.” Rashford’s winner came after Diogo Dalot moved along the left, drawing two defenders, before playing a clever ball to the 21-year-old. From there Rashford turned on the style: despite a tight angle he made a mug of Pascal Gross, then beat David Button with a sweet curled effort. Solskjær said: “What a finish. It is great working with him. That was his 150th game – I think he has scored more than a couple of the legends we have so he has a great future ahead of him. The first thing when I met him – he had missed some chances – I said: ‘No problem, you’ll be all right, just settle down a little bit’.” Solskjær initially named his preferred XI, meaning no changes from the win at Tottenham, but Luke Shaw’s withdrawal due to illness led to Dalot’s inclusion, the Portuguese player slotting in at left-back. Chris Hughton retained the same team that lost to Liverpool last Saturday. United’s speed of passing and thought dominated a quiet start, with the visitors claiming a corner and not much else. Ashley Young lifted a free-kick straight into the Stretford End, but the captain came close to creating the opener with his next contribution. A scuffed cross came to Rashford via Gaëtan Bong and his shot was beaten away by Button, the danger eventually ending when Paul Pogba’s subsequent effort was blocked. This flurry jump-started United. Pogba narrowly missed with an overhead kick, and soon after a Rashford chip came close to beating the visiting goalkeeper. United stepped on the throttle and claimed a corner, Nemanja Matic firing a 30-yard diagonal to Pogba. The midfielder’s first touch swept the ball inside the area and Bong took him down. After a pause the referee, Paul Tierney, pointed to the spot. Up stepped Pogba, with his trademark slow-motion shuffle run-up, to beat Button to the right. Brighton’s response was to pepper United’s area aerially and the home side just about dealt with it. When Hughton’s side tried some slide-rule stuff they carved a chance for Glenn Murray but the No 9’s attempt was a pea roller that gave David de Gea no cause for concern. Button needed to be alert when Anthony Martial tried a lob that appeared to have him beaten before he stuck out a glove to keep the score at 1-0. Next came Rashford’s strike and the second half’s opening act also had him taking the lead. This time he collected the ball down the left, cut in, then hit a dipping cross in that Jesse Lingard should have finished. The Rashford show may well have inspired Martial as he sliced through Brighton and let go an effort that beat Button but landed on the roof of the net. On the hour Hughton replaced Solly March and Murray with Anthony Knockaert and Florin Andone. As is the way under Solskjær, though, United continued to press. Young won a corner from his cross, took this, and Victor Lindelöf’s header went wide. Brighton showed backbone by pulling one back: Davy Pröpper’s ball with the outside of his boot was missed by Phil Jones and Gross made no mistake. Despite a nervy finish neither did United in closing the contest out. Rashford took a painful knock from Martín Montoya but was able to continue before being replaced in added time by Matteo Darmian. If United beat Burnley on Tuesday week it will be their seventh straight league win, and Solskjær will pull ahead of Carlo Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola as the manager with the best start to a Premier League tenure. Solskjær said: “The last 20 minutes we were in trouble. You can’t always play fantasy football. At times we did and it’s a great three points.”Longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone said on Sunday he would have to consult with his attorneys about potentially cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. “That’s a question I’ll have to determine after my attorneys have some discussion,” Stone said on ABC’s This Week. “If there’s wrongdoing by other people in the campaign that I know about – which I know of none – but if there is I would certainly testify honestly. I’d also testify honestly about any other matter including communications with the president.” Mueller and his team have indicted or secured guilty pleas from at least 34 individuals, including prominent members of Trump’s campaign, and three companies. Stone has repeatedly said he will not testify against Trump, a vow he repeated on Friday morning after he was charged with witness tampering and lying to Congress about his alleged attempts to establish a chain of communication between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which published emails stolen by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. Stone told Congress he had no contact with two alleged intermediaries to WikiLeaks, when in fact, prosecutors showed, he was in frequent contact with both parties, including 30 text messages exchanged with one party on the very day Stone denied it. “They’re right, I did forget on some occasions that I had text messages and emails – that are entirely exculpatory,” Stone told ABC. “I will prove in court that any failure of memory on my part was without intent and would be immaterial. I am human and I did make some errors but they’re errors that would be inconsequential within the scope of this investigation.” Stone could spend years in prison if convicted, although such a sentence could be reduced if he cooperated with prosecutors, a step taken by others in the Russia inquiry including the former national security adviser Michael Flynn and deputy campaign chair Rick Gates. Stone also told ABC he had not destroyed any evidence relevant to Mueller’s inquiries. Apart from Stone’s apparent contacts with WikiLeaks, prosecutors have shown that campaign figures: had hundreds of contacts with Russian operatives including discussions of US-Russia policy held an in-person meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton offered internal polling from the campaign to a Russian with links to military intelligence and lied systemically about that activity, even as the Trump Organization pursued plans to develop a building in Moscow and Trump invited Russian hackers to target his opponent, Hillary Clinton. “It’s clear that Mueller’s work is not yet done,” Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, said in a separate interview on ABC. “We can see clues of that in the grand jury activity.” A second figure identified by prosecutors as part of the alleged chain connecting the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, denied on Sunday that he had advance knowledge of what WikiLeaks planned to publish during the election about Clinton. The denial contradicted evidence laid out in the Stone indictment, which refers to Corsi as “Person 1”. The indictment includes an email from Corsi to Stone in which Corsi claims knowledge of what “hackers” attacking the election intend to do and recommends coordinated action the Trump campaign should take – which the campaign subsequently took. “Time to let more than [Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta] be exposed as in bed w/enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC,” the email, from 2 August 2016, reads. “That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke – neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.” Two weeks later, Trump began bringing up Clinton’s health on the campaign trail. “To defeat crime and radical Islamic terrorism in our country, to win trade in our country, you need tremendous physical and mental strength and stamina,” he said in a speech in Wisconsin. “Hillary Clinton doesn’t have that strength and stamina.” Weeks later, WikiLeaks released an email between top Clinton campaign advisers in which one wrote, “Hard to think of anything more counter-productive than demanding Bernie’s medical records” – a reference to her primary opponent Bernie Sanders that the political right spun as proof that Clinton had a health secret to hide. On Sunday, Corsi denied any contacts with WikiLeaks and said his reference in the email to Stone about Clinton’s health was just an educated guess. “I did just connect the dots and figure it out on my own,” Corsi said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I admit that’s hard to accept … remarkably, often I’m correct.” Whatever the inconsistencies in their public statements, Corsi and Stone remain staunch defenders of Trump – for now “I don’t recall that Roger ever said that he was under instructions from anyone in the campaign” to contact WikiLeaks, Corsi said. “I’m not a human tape recorder … But I’m going to do my best to tell the truth.”At least the Sun thrives on chaos. The savage parliamentary mauling of Britain’s withdrawal agreement with the European Union allowed Rupert Murdoch’s pet tabloid to unveil on Wednesday morning a front page of grandly gleeful malevolence. Under the headline Brextinct, it conjured a creepy chimera of Theresa May’s head pasted on to the body of a dodo. But the thing about such surreal pictures is that it is not easy to control their interpretation. From the outside, this one seemed to suggest much more than the immediately intended message that both May and her deal are politically dead. When, it prompted one to ask, did Brextinction really happen? Was this strange creature ever really alive or was it not always a grotesquely photoshopped image of something else, a crisis of belonging that has attached itself to the wrong union? Do the events of this week point us, not towards the EU, but to the travails of a radically disunited kingdom? The dodo, after all, may be proverbially dead but it has a vivid afterlife in that great trawl of the English unconscious, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is the Dodo, when various characters have fallen into a pool of tears, who suggests how they might dry themselves – the Caucus-race. “There was no ‘One, two, three, and away’, but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out, ‘The race is over!’ and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, ‘But who has won?’” This seems, this week more than ever, a perfect description of the state to which British politics has been reduced – a lot of frantically anarchic running overseen by a defunct creature, the Brextinct dodo. And who has won? Carroll’s Dodo, of course, decrees: “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.” Having emptied Alice’s pockets to provide rewards for everyone else, the Dodo solemnly presents her with the only thing that’s left: her own thimble. “We beg your acceptance of this elegant thimble.” The Brexit game is patently not worth the thimble to be presented at the end of it. Yet in Theresa May’s humiliation on Tuesday, there were prizes for almost everybody else: a glimpse of opportunity for her rivals in cabinet; a revival of their sadomasochistic no-deal fantasies for the zealots; the hope of a second referendum for remainers; proof of the near-collapse of the Westminster order for nationalists; the hope of a general election for Jeremy Corbyn. But in truth nobody has won anything – it is a losing game all round. For all of this is the afterlife of dead things. One of them is Brexit itself. When did Brextinction occur? On 24 June 2016. The project was driven by decades of camped-up mendacity about the tyranny of the EU, and sold in the referendum as a fantasy of national liberation. It simply could not survive contact with reality. It died the moment it became real. You cannot free yourself from imaginary oppression. Even if May were a political genius – and let us concede that she is not – Brexit was always going to come down to a choice between two evils: the heroic but catastrophic failure of crashing out; or the unheroic but less damaging failure of swapping first-class for second-class EU membership. These are the real afterlives of a departed reverie. If the choice between shooting oneself in the head or in the foot is the answer to Britain’s long-term problems, surely the wrong question is being asked. It is becoming ever clearer that Brexit is not about its ostensible subject: Britain’s relationship with the EU. The very word Brexit contains a literally unspoken truth. It does not include or even allude to Europe. It is British exit that is the point, not what it is exiting from. The tautologous slogan Leave Means Leave is similarly (if unintentionally) honest: the meaning is in the leaving, not in what is being left or how. Paradoxically, this drama of departure has really served only to displace a crisis of belonging. Brexit plays out a conflict between Them and Us, but it is surely obvious after this week that the problem is not with Them on the continent. It’s with the British Us, the unravelling of an imagined community. The visible collapse of the Westminster polity this week may be a result of Brexit, but Brexit itself is the result of the invisible subsidence of the political order over recent decades. It may seem strange to call this slow collapse invisible since so much of it is obvious: the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class. But the collective effects of these interrelated developments do seem to have been barely visible within the political mainstream until David Cameron accidentally took the lid off by calling a referendum and asking people to endorse the status quo. What we see with the lid off and the fog of fantasies at last beginning to dissipate is the truth that Brexit is much less about Britain’s relationship with the EU than it is about Britain’s relationship with itself. It is the projection outwards of an inner turmoil. An archaic political system had carried on even while its foundations in a collective sense of belonging were crumbling. Brexit in one way alone has done a real service: it has forced the old system to play out its death throes in public. The spectacle is ugly, but at least it shows that a fissiparous four-nation state cannot be governed without radical social and constitutional change. European leaders have continually expressed exasperation that the British have really been negotiating not with them, but with each other. But perhaps it is time to recognise that there is a useful truth in this: Brexit is really just the vehicle that has delivered a fraught state to a place where it can no longer pretend to be a settled and functioning democracy. Brexit’s work is done – everyone can now see that the Westminster dodo is dead. It is time to move on from the pretence that the problem with British democracy is the EU and to recognise that it is with itself. After Brextinction there must be a whole new political ecosystem. Drop the dead dodo, end the mad race for a meaningless prize, and start talking about who you want to be. • Fintan O’Toole is a columnist at the Irish Times and author of Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of PainVenezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has accused Donald Trump and the “group of extremists around him” of plotting to topple him in order to seize Venezuela’s oil, and warned he risked transforming the South American country into a new Vietnam. In a four-minute Facebook video – published as Venezuela prepared for a day of fresh pro-opposition protests on Wednesday – Maduro claimed the leaders of the US “empire” were conspiring “to get their hands on our oil – just like they did in Iraq and in Libya”. Unable to accuse Venezuela’s government of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, they were instead waging a media campaign of fake news to justify intervening in a country that boasts the world’s biggest crude reserves, Maduro claimed. “We will not allow a Vietnam in Latin America. If the US intends to intervene against us they will get a Vietnam worse than they could have imaged. We do not allow violence. We are a peaceful people,” Venezuela’s embattled leftist leader added. “I ask that Venezuela be respected and I ask for the support of the people of the US so there isn’t a new Vietnam, least of all here in our America.” In the video, Maduro painted himself as US “admirer” who had visited Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and Washington and wanted closer relations with the US. “The United States is so much bigger than Donald Trump, so much bigger,” he said. But Maduro looks unlikely to repair relations with the Trump White House, which has thrown its full weight behind his rival to the presidency, Juan Guaidó. On Monday, Trump stepped up its battle against Maduro by announcing sweeping sanctions against the country’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Maduro also said on Wednesday he was willing to negotiate with Guaidó. “I’m willing to sit down for talks with the opposition so that we could talk for the sake of Venezuela’s peace and its future,” he said. Maduro said the talks could be held with the mediation of other countries, naming Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia, the Vatican and Russia. Venezuela’s supreme court has imposed a travel ban and financial restrictions on Guaidó, including freezing his bank accounts. Guaidó, a 35-year-old former student leader and head of Venezuela’s opposition-run national assembly, has been in the forefront of a renewed attempt to force Maduro from power since last week when he declared himself Venezuela’s rightful interim president in a daring challenge to the incumbent. Guaidó has called a two-hour protest for Wednesday afternoon and a larger mobilisation on Saturday. At noon on Wednesday, opponents of Maduro – who was elected in 2013 and again last May in disputed elections – have been urged to take to the streets holding white pieces of paper on which they should write their reasons for wanting Maduro out. They are being asked to post photographs of their protests on social media under the hashtag #TodosTenemosRazones (we all have reasons) before singing the national anthem. The Associated Press contributed to this reportHere is a truly terrible Working Girl knock-off, fronted by Jennifer Lopez on her most stately and self-conscious form, embedded in a pastiche 80s-aspirational New York world in which cast members break out their karaoke version of Salt-N-Pepa’s Push It. The film does, however, have an unusual development that plays on that rare thing: the second act in American lives and indeed in American movies. Lopez plays Maya, a woman in her forties, living out in Queens (for Melanie Griffith it was Staten Island), vibrant but with some personal sadness in her heart. She is working in a big store and can see clearly how its productivity and customer relations could be improved, but Maya never went to college, so useless guys with MBAs get promoted over her head. As she calls them: “The educated people in their fancy houses who name their children after fruit.” Then her hilarious madcap pals fake a CV for her with Harvard degrees and the like, without her knowing, and send it off to a fancy Manhattan beauty product corporation. So Maya finds herself installed in a chi-chi corner office by the dishy silver-fox CEO (Treat Williams), who is bowled over by her combination of street smarts and Ivy League record. And it isn’t long before Maya finds herself in a face-off with an icily manicured younger executive, Zoe, played by Vanessa Hudgens. Well, this isn’t the whole story, but that all-important second act turns out to be as flimsily constructed and ridiculous as everything else. And there’s a toe-curling moment that could have been written by Ricky Gervais: Maya has a eureka idea for a new skincare product based on leaves from the gingko tree that survived Hiroshima. That’s right! Hiroshima! Inspiring skincare! Feelgood or what?The 16-year-old schoolgirl Alphonsine Mumureke said she was in the cafeteria of the Catholic boarding school Kibeho College, Rwanda, when she heard a voice “soft as air and sweeter than music”. She saw a beautiful woman – neither white nor black – floating above the floor in a flowing seamless dress, with a veil that covered her hair. She wore no shoes, just like Alphonsine and her classmates. “Who are you?” Alphonsine asked. “I am the mother of the word,” replied the woman, whom Alphonsine immediately recognised as the Virgin Mary. Then she issued a terrible warning: Rwanda was going to become a hell on Earth in a conflict that would see the picturesque rivers of Kibeho village run red with blood. It was 28 November 1981, and when Alphonsine reported what she had seen, her friends ridiculed her, her teachers scolded her and her village shunned her. But then another two students, Anathalie and Marie Claire – the three became known as “the Trinity” – insisted they too had been visited by the Virgin Mary and given the same apocalyptic warning. Kibeho is a small parish nestled in Mubuga, the “land of the seven hills” in eastern Rwanda. It is the most famine-prone region of one of the world’s poorest countries, but so beautiful that locals say: “God comes on holiday here.” Of course we now know that, a decade after the Trinity’s terrible visions, Rwanda was riven by a terrible genocide. During 100 days in 1994, up to a million of Rwanda’s population of just over seven million were murdered by the ruling Hutu government in an attempt to exterminate the Tutsi tribe. Thousands of people were slaughtered in their churches, their decapitated bodies dumped into rivers. Colleagues, neighbours, friends and even family members slaughtered one another. Kibeho itself suffered two massacres. Thousands of citizens were brutally killed in the parish church and, a year later, on the esplanade where the apparitions had taken place. Most of the college’s students were murdered. In 2001, after a 20-year investigation by the Vatican – and seven years after the genocide – the pope certified the apparitions as authentic. Tens of thousands of pilgrims now travel to Kibeho each year in search of benediction. The extraordinary story of these three schoolgirls inspired my friend, the American playwright Katori Hall, to write Our Lady of Kibeho. I first worked with Katori in New York in 2006. Katori’s background as a journalist and an actor bring a rare sensibility to her plays, which combine a reporter’s eye for a good story and historical detail together with an understanding of how to craft characters that only an actor can experience. Back in London, I staged the world premiere of her play The Mountaintop, about the life and death of Martin Luther King, which went on to become the surprise winner of the best play award at the 2010 Oliviers and is now one of the most produced new plays in the US. For Katori, Kibeho College symbolised the defining role the Catholic church has played in Rwanda’s education system and political life over the last century, including shaping its ideological divisions. It was the church that had helped implement the disastrous “racial” nationwide census, distinguishing Hutu from Tutsi in every neighbourhood. Alone in their community, Alphonsine, Anathalie and Marie Claire understood the lessons that scripture offered against the growing hatred of their times. Young and powerless, their warnings went unheeded. Survivors of the tragedy describe burning churches, streets clotted with corpses, starving livestock, mass graves, lost orphans and famine and disease everywhere – the very things described by the three girls when recounting their terrible visions. Fergal Keane, a BBC correspondent in Rwanda in 1994, found it difficult to capture the horror of what happened. “In writing about Rwanda, I am conscious that my words will always be unequal to the task … What I encountered was evil in a form that rendered me inarticulate.” Most historical accounts of the genocide focus on either society or the state, the former exploring the longstanding racism in Rwandan society and the latter documenting the complex power struggles in government and the ways in which propaganda radiated from the capital to the provinces and inspired the violence. While Katori’s play touches on the political, economic and social, it is more interested in how religion can influence the personal and political behaviour of a nation. What makes Katori’s play so moving is that it takes place at a time before the genocide, when there is still space for optimism in the lives of the schoolchildren it depicts. Some of those children who survived have helped Katori in researching her play. They have noted that the power of Our Lady of Kibeho lies in its ability to stay true to the perspectives of Alphonsine, Anathalie and Marie Claire. Despite rumblings of the growing divide between Hutus and Tutsis, we lose ourselves in this story of these three young women who want to change the world they will inherit. Whether the visions that they described were real or not, the schoolgirls’ testimony highlighted the daily injustices that they saw around them. Theirs was a protest against the moral, social and political decay of their community – a reminder that sometimes young people can sense tragedy ahead in a way that adults are incapable of. In turbulent times when the voices of young people are so often ignored, Katori and I hope that the UK premiere of this extraordinary play will spark a conversation on ways to heal our own political, racial and religious divides. On a summer morning in 2003, many of those who had participated in the genocidal killings walked out of prison into the sunshine, singing hymns, their freedom granted by the president. Survivors watched as those who had killed their families and friends returned to their villages, reoccupying homes that had been empty for almost a decade. Today, Rwandans continue to confront on a daily basis the pain of memory, the power of reconciliation, the challenges of redemption and forgiveness and the ineradicability of loss. Two words hover over the nation’s collective psychology: never again. • Our Lady of Kibeho is at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton, until 2 February.Ireland voted by a landslide to legalise abortion – but turning that social revolution into medical reality has fallen largely on the shoulders of just 200 GPs. That is the approximate number, representing 5% of all general practitioners, that have signed up to perform the service which started rolling out on 1 January. Ethical qualms, doubts about clinical readiness and fear of protests have deterred the rest, leaving the abortion providers to face potential isolation, stigma and harassment from the remnants of Catholic Ireland. So far that has not happened. There has been minimal backlash. “We’re going around wondering, ‘are they planning something we’ve missed?’” said Mary Favier, a prominent pro-choice campaigner and GP who provides abortion services in Cork. “But we can’t see what it’s going to be.” Besides a fleeting protest in Galway – half a dozen people with placards picketed a surgery for a few hours – abortion has become available in 22 of Ireland’s 26 counties with barely a fuss. “People have been pragmatic and got on with it,” said Tom O’Dowd, who has a surgery in west Dublin. “US-style picketing doesn’t seem to work here.” While speaking to the Guardian in his county Kildare surgery this week Brendan O’Shea’s phone rang: it was a fellow GP from a neighbouring county seeking misoprostol, an abortion pill, for a patient. O’Shea obliged. A scene not long ago unimaginable, now becoming commonplace. “Irish history is moving rapidly at the moment,” said O’Shea, who at 57 can recall a colleague who was prosecuted in the 1970s for supplying condoms in breach of a contraception ban. “It’s not Catholic Ireland any more. It’s a creatively disrupted society undergoing rapid evolution.” In a referendum last May two thirds of voters opted to lift a near-total constitutional ban on abortion, a landmark victory for women’s rights. The Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act was signed into law just before Christmas. Under the new system GPs provide abortions to women up to nine weeks pregnant and hospitals perform terminations at between nine and 12 weeks, after which abortions are allowed only in exceptional circumstances. The GPs hope to end a three-day “cooling off” period for women seeking abortions, calling it a restriction without medical reason. The service is largely free, with the state paying GPs approximately €400 (£358) per patient. Previously an average of about 3,000 Irish women travelled to England each year for abortions. Women from Northern Ireland, where abortion remains banned, can access the Republic’s new service but must pay. In addition to the Galway GP office some anti-abortion activists briefly picketed a hospital in Drogheda. Others set up potentially misleading websites that mimic the state’s unplanned pregnancy support service. It's like a whole new medical process that we've never really got our heads around Such tactics appear to have fizzled even among people who voted against legalising abortion. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, urged protesters to be cautious, saying the church should focus on educating people and helping women in crisis. “Some of the GPs in small towns are finding it difficult because the clergy have been looking for them, wanting a word in their ear, but they’re not egging on protests,” said O’Dowd. A bigger challenge has been the speed of rollout, which has left many GPs lacking proper information guidance and training. “We have no experience either through undergraduate or postgraduate training,” said Sarah Fitzgibbon, a Cork-based GP who will not sign up until she feels better prepared. “It’s like a whole new medical process that we’ve never really got our heads around.” Abortion care providers find solidarity in groups like Doctors for Choice and the Southern Taskgroup on Abortion and Reproductive Topics (Start). They share tips through WhatsApp. “We have set up buddy systems so we can all talk to each other. Everyone is encouraged to ask questions,” said Favier. O’Shea, the Kildare GP, expressed confidence more colleagues will sign up as the service settles down. Ireland, he said, could take pride in its path to abortion rights: a citizens’ assembly, a referendum, legislation and service rollout. “It has been quietly inspiring.”Izzy just wants to tell the world about her skincare regime. The blond teenager has suffered with acne for years – at school, one bully cruelly nicknamed her Dimple Pimple. She has tried so many face washes – she even had prescription meds. It’s no wonder her story, told in a series of tweets earlier this month, resonated with hundreds of people, and was “liked” on the site more than 1,000 times. Thankfully, there is a happy ending. One “random Tuesday about six months ago”, Izzy found a cure for her troublesome skin. Coffee Creations coffee scrub! This Twitter thread – which looks like it was sent by an earnest young woman – is an advert posted by a corporation in a process known as “astroturfing” (like the artificial turf, it might look authentic, but it’s not the real thing). Izzy’s thread – and the countless others “she” has posted like it – sum up just how complicated online advertising is today. That’s why, although I’m happy that dozens of celebrities have promised the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to be clearer about the way they advertise online, I wonder if it’s too little, too late. Sixteen influencers – including models, reality TV stars, and actors – have vowed to the CMA that they will be clear in their online posts about whether they have been paid (in money or gifts) to promote a product. This comes five years after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) first introduced #ad, a way for internet celebrities to clearly mark paid-for posts. Social media celebs earn thousands of pounds by posting adverts for brands, and this new commitment to transparency is commendable. Young, impressionable audiences deserve to know whether someone they admire is truly recommending a product or being paid to do so. Under the CMA’s remit, influencers who break the rules can be fined and even jailed for up to two years. Obsessed with @SugarBearHair for over a year! This is more than just an #Ad because I truly love these delicious, soft, chewy vitamins. I've loved keeping my natural hair short because of the fun versatility it gives me, so I take SugarBear vitamins for stronger healthier hair. These vitamins are amazing! #sugarbearhair #ad A post shared by  Khloé (@khloekardashian) on Jun 12, 2017 at 1:16pm PDT And yet, is anyone really deterred? In September 2017, the ASA upheld a complaint against Geordie Shore star Sophie Kasaei for posting a picture of the diet drink Flat Tummy Tea on Instagram, alongside unverified claims that the drink aided weight loss. This was arguably a win for regulators, but Kasaei was undeterred. On 2 January 2018, she told her 1.9 million Instagram followers about her new range of diet supplements, SZKNutrition. Earlier this month, she posted about the supplements again – without #ad or a mention of her recent trip to an exclusive exercise bootcamp in Marrakech. Ultimately, the public continues to be misled – and things quickly get even more complicated. In December 2017, a 22-year-old American named Jake tweeted a picture of Extra chewing gum alongside a story about his blossoming romance with a classmate. The tweet looked like an ad – the brand was prominent, and Jake even used Extra’s official social media slogan #GiveExtraGetExtra. Yet when I contacted Extra, they were emphatic that this was not a paid promotion. Why would a young person create a social media post that looks like an ad, even when they’re not being paid? Recently the Atlantic’s Taylor Lorenz revealed that hundreds of wannabe-influencers are faking brand deals by posting advertisements that seem paid for, using #ad, so that they look more famous than they are. Good luck, CMA! Two recent documentary films about the ill-fated Fyre festival have been getting lots of attention – but no influencer who was paid to advertise the disastrous event (which saw attendees at the music festival stranded in the Bahamas with limited food and water) has been punished or faced opprobrium. Kendall Jenner reportedly received $250,000 to advertise Fyre, and did so without using #ad. She hasn’t been fined, or even spoken publicly about the deal. The CMA is making progress, and celebrities who are truly committed to change are commendable, but there are far too many shady influencers who continue to blur the lines – and get away with it. My personal favourite comes from Jenner’s sister, Khloé Kardashian. On 12 June 2017, the reality star posted a candid caption about her love of a sugary hair supplement. “This is more than just an #Ad because I truly love these delicious, soft, chewy vitamins,” she wrote on Instagram. And they say the Kardashians aren’t clever! There are countless other examples: one famous British YouTuber has been known to place the word “ad” on the bottom right hand corner of his YouTube thumbnails, conveniently behind YouTube’s timestamps – while his girlfriend posts affiliated links to the products she uses in her videos without revealing that she’s paid every time they’re clicked. It prompts the question – is this industry even possible to regulate? Influencers will tell you where the dress they’re wearing is from and the name of the lipstick they used – are they being helpful or are they advertising? I’ve written about this phenomenon for five years, and I can’t tell. How on earth could a pre-teen? How on earth can the CMA? • Amelia Tait is a journalist who writes about tech and internet phenomenaAs kids, Poppy and Bryony Cleall always sat back-to-back when they were unwrapping their birthday presents so they wouldn’t spoil the surprise if they were both given the same things. This stuff is always tricky for twins. Like the time Bryony got picked for England Under-18s but Poppy didn’t, or Poppy made the under-20s but Bryony was left out. Then there were the years they played for competing teams: Poppy was at Saracens while Bryony was at Bristol, and Poppy was at Bristol while Bryony was at Saracens. Just last week, when the RFU announced its first batch of permanent full-time contracts, Poppy got one but Bryony did not. Bryony is still in the England elite player squad, but will carry on in her day job as the head of girls’ PE at the Harris City Academy in Crystal Palace. “Poppy’s never even asked me if I’m OK about not getting a full-time contract,” Bryony teases. She is. She missed five years of her career because of injuries which is why she is a step behind her sister. Bryony has not played for England yet but Poppy made her debut in 2016 and now has 24 caps. “The email that told me I was in the elite player squad said at the bottom of it: ‘I know you may be disappointed by this’ but I was over the moon. I rang Poppy and I shouted: ‘Woohoo! I got in!’ I’m proud just to be involved.” The twins started playing when they were six. Their brother Josh used to play in an after-school rugby club, Poppy explains, “but Mum and Dad would come and pick us up all together at four o’clock so we had to wait around and watch until one day the coach said: ‘Do you two want to come and play?’ We’ve been at it ever since.” Sometimes they were playing with each other, sometimes against. Once they were on opposite sides in the Premiership semi-final. “Dad was like: ‘It’s OK, at least one Cleall will be in the final,’” Poppy says. Bryony cuts in: “Then she got injured and missed it anyway.” “Poppy will hate me for saying this,” Bryony says, “but my favourite story is the time she pulled my hair. It should have been a red card. I was with the ball and she went to tackle me and got a fistful of my hair. She let go and went: ‘Oh my God! I’m so sorry!’” Now they are back playing together at Saracens. This Saturday Sarries, the leaders of the Women’s Premier15 table, are playing Harlequins, who are second. Poppy is recovering from an injury but says she’ll be fit, if picked, for the latest round of what is becoming one of the league’s defining rivalries. “It extends beyond the pitch,” Bryony says. “Quins are definitely pushing women’s rugby to the forefront and so are Sarries. Both clubs want to be the number one draw in women’s rugby.” Lately the twins have been working together too. Poppy’s new contract means Bryony is going to have to find a new coach for Harris City’s under-18s team. Poppy took on the job when she moved back to London. But, as of 1 January, she is a full-time pro. “It’s such a privilege that we can be the first ever professionals,” Poppy says, “and it’s a little bit of pressure, too.” She has been a professional before, briefly, when the RFU gave the women full-time contracts before the last World Cup – but scrapped them when the tournament was over. “People just always ask me how come Poppy’s skinnier than me,” Bryony says, “and I always say it’s because she went professional four years ago.” Before that Poppy worked as a prison officer. “Anyone that can juggle a sporting career and a job, hats off,” she says, “because it was so stressful and some days it really did get me down.” She used up her holiday allowance taking time off to play games on the weekends. “I remember one weekend when our manager told me I had to play but I just couldn’t get it off work. In the end I told her I’d play so long as she didn’t put my name on the teamsheet. Lo and behold I scored a hat-trick, and on Monday morning my name was right there at the top. Two days later at work they were like: ‘You know when you rang in sick at the weekend? How do you explain this?” She felt like she was always letting somebody down, either her coaches or her bosses. It was always “sorry I can’t train because I’ve got work, or sorry I can’t work I’ve got to play”. Bryony is lucky as the school allows her some flexibility. But she is still painfully aware of the problems her playing career causes for her teaching colleagues. “It’s the work I leave behind, it’s really a burden for the department to have to pick up the load I’m missing.” For years, this was just the way it was if you were a woman who wanted to play international rugby. “You just put your head down and get on with it,” Poppy says. “Everyone’s got to make the sacrifices.” It should not be that way. And now, at last, it is not. “The women’s game has taken a big step in the right direction,” Bryony says. “I would have loved to have that first professional contract but I think it’s really more important for kids who are six years old now who can pick up a ball and think ‘actually, I want to be professional’ not ‘I want to play rugby and do some other job for a living’ but ‘my dream is to be a professional rugby player’.” Poppy agrees: “That’s the history that’s being written now, we’re living a dream that all the little girls who come after us can have from the start.”Jürgen Klopp has said Liverpool must heed the warning of Crystal Palace’s recent victory at Manchester City to avoid a similar shock against Roy Hodgson’s side. Liverpool are unbeaten in 31 Premier League home matches since Palace recorded a third consecutive away win at Anfield in April 2017. The league leaders can re-establish a seven-point lead over City at the top, at least until Sunday, by extending that sequence to the second longest in the club’s history on Saturday. Klopp has not focused preparations on Palace’s 3-2 win at City in December because of the limited amount of possession the visitors had that day. But he admits that result should alert his players to the threat posed. “Of course it helps rather than the other way around,” said the Liverpool manager who, referencing the current “Spygate” furore around Marcelo Bielsa, joked he had studied Palace “51 times” this week. “I saw the City game and the percentage possession was 70 to 80 [78%] for City,” he added. “That’s massive. They scored a beautiful goal and hopefully [Andros] Townsend will not do that again. In counterattacks, at set pieces, it is clear they are good. That’s how a game can happen. But there are other games [to study]. We need to see them play football as well. There was not too much in that game. “That’s why I watched three different types of games: at least two away games but one home game as well because it gives you a better picture of what they do if you let them. That makes it more important that you don’t allow them. If you let Crystal Palace play they are really good. They play a direct style and they defend pretty deep but at Palace earlier in the season they did exactly the same and we scored at least one goal on a counterattack after a set piece. Use situations like this, it’s all important.” Klopp has been linked with a surprise reunion with Philippe Coutinho in some quarters recently, with the former Liverpool playmaker struggling to justify his £142m transfer fee at Barcelona. The Liverpool manager dismissed rumours of the Brazil international returning to Anfield this month. “I would not say it is a potential transfer or a likely one,” he said. “There is nothing to say. There is no story. Phil is at Barcelona and, as I know it, he fits in really well and everything is fine.”Watched by more than 100 million people in the US and attracting stars including Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake, it is one of the most prestigious music shows in the world. But the Super Bowl’s half-time slot next month appears to be facing an unfamiliar problem: a lack of people willing to perform. As the National Football League digs in its heels in a dispute with Colin Kaepernick, the star quarterback who refused to stand for the national anthem in protest at police brutality against racial minorities, the show this year has become more about politics than music. The fact that the Super Bowl is taking place in Atlanta, arguably the capital of black music in the US, has only added to the storm. Some of the biggest names in pop and rap, including Rihanna and Cardi B, have turned down the opportunity to appear, while one group that has reportedly been booked, the Adam Levine-fronted pop-rock act Maroon 5, is facing pressure to pull out. Rapper Travis Scott, the only performer reportedly secured to join the show, is facing pressure from hip-hop superstar Jay-Z and civil rights groups to pull out. With four weeks to go, producers of the 13-minute event are scrambling to find additional performers for what Variety last week called “music’s least wanted gig”. Gerald Griggs, vice-president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP civil rights group, told the Observer it had contacted performers who had signed up to ask them to rethink their participation. He said: “The majority of artists we’ve reached out to are standing in solidarity against the NFL. They do not want to be associated because of the protest that was started by Mr Kaepernick against racial injustice and police brutality.” Kaepernick, who was the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers and led them to the Super Bowl in 2013, accuses NFL owners of colluding to keep him out of the league after his decision to “take the knee” during the national anthem at games sparked a mass protest movement. In 2017 the player filed a collusion grievance against the NFL, claiming team owners had conspired to keep him off the field due to his protests. He is seeking damages equal to what he would have earned if he were still playing in the league. The NFL denies the allegations. For protesters who back Kaepernick, the Atlanta show is the ideal venue to send a strong message about the league’s refusal – backed by Donald Trump – to support him and other players’ right to refuse to stand for the anthem. Trump, who was angered by the protests, said that if players refused to stand, NFL owners should “get that son of a bitch off the field right now”. The Super Bowl half-time show – which last year was headlined by Justin Timberlake, and has previously engaged Lady Gaga and the Rolling Stones and witnessed an epic, rain-soaked performance by Prince – “is the biggest stage in the world to bring our message to the world about the atrocities that are happening in the United States, and particularly in Atlanta, that have not been addressed,” said Griggs. “We appreciate the entertainers for lending their voices in opposition and standing with us. We call on artists like Travis Scott to pull out.” The first star to clearly link the Super Bowl show to Kaepernick was Rihanna. In October she confirmed she had been approached to perform but had decided to support the quarterback. “She said no because of the kneeling controversy. She doesn’t agree with the NFL’s stance,” a representative told US Weekly. “The offer and exposure would have been great for Rihanna as she’s planning a new album and tour but she stuck to what’s right in her eyes,” a source told Entertainment Tonight. With typical flamboyance, Cardi B initially said she wanted a solo slot and $1m to perform (artists are not paid for the half-time show, but are given a “gift in kind” by the NFL), though a representative later said “she was not particularly interested in participating because of how she feels about Colin Kaepernick and the whole movement”. So far Maroon 5 have been absent from the conversation. The band has not been formally announced by the NFL, but a representative called the invitation “a dream come true” and its participation has not been denied. Levine has come under pressure from comedian Amy Schumer, who has vowed not to appear in any commercial during the game, to also skip the show. “Once you witness the truly deep inequality and endless racism people of color face in our country, not to mention the police brutality and murders,” she wrote on Instagram, “why not kneel next to your brothers? Otherwise how are you not complicit? I think it would be cool if @maroon5 backed out of super bowl…” Griggs said: “We would implore them to rethink their participation. The protest Mr Kaepernick is making over the number of people killed by law enforcement has not been resolved. We would hope they would use their celebrity status to send that message to an even broader audience by pulling out.” The apparent decision to pass over Atlanta rappers in favour of more mainstream performers has also been criticised. Even those not directly associated with Atlanta, like Cardi B, are linked to the city through the management of the label Quality Control Music, also home to Migos and Lil Yachty. The NFL has not commented on the controversy.My break from work came to an end this morning, as I was reminded of a fact: children are eating too much sugar. The new and welcoming part of the story was that the government is launching a campaign in England to help parents choose lower-sugar options for their children. Wearing my nutritionist’s hat, blaming sugar alone is not the answer to childhood obesity. Still, every action in the fight against obesity does help. Keeping the sugar debate alive opens opportunities for much-needed action in areas that have received little attention. The levy on sugar in Mexico and recently in the UK revealed the results that are possible when there is engagement from governments and the food industry. In the UK, we are just at the beginning of a wider programme that will succeed only if important players such as the infant food industry become actively engaged. My interest in this began in 2009 when I became a mother and had the responsibility of choosing what to feed my twins. Being a nutritionist gave me a lot of advantages in navigating the baby feeding journey but also made me wonder what choices other parents have. What does the market offer when parents decide not to, or cannot, prepare baby food from scratch? I was so concerned that I decided to refocus my academic research on infant feeding. It became apparent that there was little information on the ingredients used in the formulation of commercial baby foods in the British market. My studies led me to report that the baby-food market was promoting the development of sweet preferences with the widespread use of sweeter vegetables and fruit, such as carrots and apples, rather than more bitter-tasting green vegetables. I also found that many baby-food companies were adding concentrated fruit juice or pureed fruit to make foods taste sweeter and that on average, dry sweet snacks had 26g of sugar per 100g. The food industry argues that it is using fruit and vegetables, which is true, but the problem is that the moment these fruits and vegetables are mashed and highly processed, the carbohydrates in the cell walls become free sugars. So I was seriously concerned to hear Tim Rycroft, of the Food and Drink Federation, defend adding sugar to infant food for reasons of “palatability” on the BBC’s Today programme on Wednesday. Making foods sweeter is a good way to ensure that children will choose them over other foods that are less immediately palatable. This, unfortunately, is what happens if babies are not offered less sweet foods. If the baby-food market offers highly processed fruits and other foods of a sweet nature, babies will have less opportunities to become familiar with a wider selection of foods in the future. But should we just blame the food industry for this? Is voluntary action enough or should we have stricter regulations to ensure that the baby-food market follows suit with the rest of the industry on sugar reduction goals? Reducing the sugar content in processed baby foods can help achieve the current advice of reducing the contribution from free sugars in total daily energy intake to 5%. In the UK, commercial baby foods are bought by at least one-third of parents. Alison Tedstone said on Today in the same interview that Public Health England, where she is chief nutritionist, that she was seeking to engage more players in the sugar reduction programme and that other measurements will follow in 2020. I will be eagerly following this progress, in particular the engagement of the food industry. Most importantly, we need changes to legislation to make it mandatory for the industry to align to a reformulation programme rather than relying on it to volunteer for one. Additionally, the government should listen to expert groups that recommend increasing the age at which solid food is introduced from four months to six months. Limiting children’s exposure to processed foods from an early age is something we all owe to children. Parents need a more supportive environment to give children a good start in life: less sugar, broader palates and healthier diets. • Dr Ada Garcia is a public health nutritionist at the University of GlasgowA young man is being treated in isolation at Uppsala University hospital in Sweden after suspicion of Ebola contamination, the regional authority has said. Region Uppsala, which oversees several hospitals and medical clinics north of Stockholm, says a test had been carried out on the patient, who was not identified. A result is expected later on Friday. The young man had been in Burundi for around three weeks, and was exhibiting classic symptoms of haemorrhagic fever, including vomiting blood, according to the hospital’s chief medical officer. The emergency clinic at Enköping hospital, where the patient was first admitted, has been closed and staff who were in contact with the patient are also being looked after. An outbreak of the virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – which shares a border with Burundi – began in August 2018, and has resulted in 608 cases and 368 deaths. Efforts to contain the disease have been hampered by continued instability. On Thursday, director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that the outbreak was occurring in “the most difficult context imaginable”. “To end it [the outbreak] the response needs to be supported and expanded, not further complicated. Ebola is unforgiving, and disruptions give the virus the advantage,” said Tedros. To date, more than 54,000 people in DRC, including frontline responders and those at risk of having contact with the disease, have been vaccinated. Fatality rates for Ebola have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The virus spreads from from human to human through close contact with the bodily fluids of someone who has the disease. The incubation period for Ebola – the gap between an individual being infected and showing symptoms – is up to 21 days, meaning it is possible for an infected person to travel widely before realising they have the disease. Humans are not infectious until they develop symptoms, which at first are fever, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. The worst Ebola epidemic ended in West Africa two years ago after killing more than 11,300 people and infecting about 28,600 across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Cases outside of Africa have been isolated. Pauline Cafferkey, a Scottish nurse who volunteered in Sierra Leone in December 2014, was the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the UK.Milk dealers in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu are asking police to stop movie fans splashing milk on posters and cutouts of their idols. The dealers say the practice, in imitation of the way milk is sometimes poured over effigies of Hindu gods during rituals, encourages theft. The practice of paal abhishekam (anointing with milk) posters and cardboard cutouts of the actors is done in the lead-up to a blockbuster release in the hope that it will become a hit. It has been discouraged by some actors, but this week the Tamil star Silambarasan Thesingu Rajendar, also known as Simbu, posted a video on social media telling fans to “celebrate my movie release like never before by erecting huge banners and cutouts and pouring pots of milk”. The video prompted a police complaint from the Tamil Nadu Milk Dealers Employees Welfare Association, whose president told the Guardian that the practice should be banned immediately. “In Tamil Nadu, 20% of people are not able to access milk and there are a lot of children in the streets without milk,” SA Ponnusamy said. “We are as a nation saying we need more milk for children, not cutouts.” He estimated that more than 15,000 gallons of milk could be wasted each day by being poured over posters and billboards after a big film release. He said people delivering milk early in the morning were routinely being rushed by groups of youths who ran off with two or three boxes of milk each. “We’d prefer the youth be encouraged to do things like signing up to be organ donors or planting trees,” Ponnusamy said. “All the heroes have to motivate their youth in this direction.” In October a Simbu fan attached himself to a crane so he could be lifted high enough to pour milk over a billboard of the actor. And that's why we call it a festival 🎆 #ETHIDiwali The way we celebrate him beyond boundaries!!! #STRFans #Simbu #ETHIFestival#ChekkaChivanthaVaanam #CCVBlockbuster @MadrasTalkies_ @LycaProductions @aditi1231 pic.twitter.com/ZqOophmM65 In a country obsessed with cinema, the adoration shown to actors in the Tamil film industry, or Kollywood, might exceed all others. The 2016 release of the film Kabali, starring the Tamil actor Rajinikanth, prompted such a frenzy that many companies gave their employees a day off. A aeroplane decorated with Rajinikanth’s face was flown from Bangalore to Chennai, serving Rajinikanth’s favourite food on board, to bring 100 fans to a “first day, first show” screening. Tens of thousands of gallons of milk were spilled on his posters.Tao’s, a meditation centre on a hill overlooking the sea on the island of Paros, hosts a dance retreat each September. The style of dance is “open floor movement”, which is said to boost creativity and help people “refresh, recuperate, recharge and rejoice”. It is suitable for anyone who wants to move, regardless of age or experience. The schedule includes three hours of dancing before lunch and two hours after, optional morning meditation and time to explore the island – car hire (shared between three people) is included in the price. Guests stay at the Christiana, a simple hotel by the sea with a pool and a restaurant specialising in seafoodfish soup and lobster spaghetti.• From €725 for five nights, 11-15 September, including vegetarian breakfast, lunch and car hire, taos-greece.com A Nest of Gentle Makers is a new twice-yearly weekend retreat in Minstead in the New Forest, with a focus on gentle creativity in a relaxing environment. There are sessions with an artist and illustrator, producing drawings, collages, rubbings and prints inspired by nature; a stitching workshop, based on a Japanese patchwork technique; a guided walk in the forest; and three yoga sessions. Guests stay in heated tipis or shepherd’s huts; food is largely vegetarian and includes a barbecue and a dinner around the campfire.• £370 full-board, 10-12 May and 11-13 October, anestofgentlemakers.co.uk Cortijo Romero has been running creative and wellness holidays in Andalucía since 1986. Courses include mindful photography, improv theatre, singing and writing; each includes 18-20 hours of teaching and learning plus morning tai chi or yoga, Spanish lessons, evening dance sessions and a full day’s excursion to the mountains for a picnic and wild swimming. Optional extras include massages, counselling and life coaching (£36 an hour). The retreat centre is in an olive grove not far from Granada. • From £685 for a week’s mindful photography, 27 April to 4 May and 26 October to 2 November, including vegetarian meals, cortijo-romero.co.uk The twice-yearly Ireland Writing Retreat in Gweedore, two miles inland from the stunning west Donegal coastline, offers practical, hands-on writing and editing workshops, plus talks by authors about publishing and marketing. The week includes a boat trip to the island of Gola (pictured), walks and a tour of Glenveagh national park and castle, Irish language and dance classes, and traditional music concerts. It also offers a retreat focusing on travel writing (16-22 March), and two further afield: one on the Black Sea near Mangalia, Romania (27 May-2 June), and a new retreat in Paris (14-20 October). • Week from €990 B&B, 24-30 June and 23-29 September, irelandwritingretreat.com Archipelago Folkschool runs short residential craft courses in beautiful areas of Scotland. They range from a weekend spoon-carving course (£200, 10-12 May) to a week learning blacksmithing (£950, 6-13 April), both on a farm in Lochgoilhead, Argyll & Bute. Boatbuilding is the main focus, though: this year there is a “build your own sea kayak” course and a women’s boatbuilding week, both on a croft on the Isle of Mull. Accommodation ranges from tents and hostels to homestays. As well as teaching practical skills, these retreats promote participation in communities and connection with the environment.• Boatbuilding from £750, women’s course 8-15 June, sea kayaks 3-11 August, archipelagofolkschool.org The Athanor Centre in Lochem, close to the German border, holds regular retreats, covering interests such as handicrafts (26-29 January) and yoga and voice (25 February to 1 March). One of the most intriguing is a “sculpting in wood and kung fu flow” retreat, designed to improve connection and imagination. The days start with kung fu flow, a kind of moving meditation, and are then spent outdoors, working with wood under sculptor Anna Hakvoort. No experience of either discipline is necessary and all tools are provided. The centre is a converted 1930s farmhouse in large grounds with features such as a modern stone circle, a labyrinth and fire pits.• From £740 for five days, 20 April to 3 May, centrumathanor.nl West Dean College of Arts and Conservation near Chichester holds week-long creative retreats over the summer. There are almost 30 subjects on offer, from drawing, painting and sculpting to jewellery making and photography. Each includes intensive teaching, visits to local arts venues, an optional trip to the Chichester Festival Theatre and an end-of-week party. Accommodation is in the Grade II-listed manor house, the old vicarage or an annexe in the college’s parkland. Year-round, there are also one-day workshops (such as silversmithing, £125) and three-day courses (garden design, say, £372).• Summer schools from £771 (50% off for teachers), half-board accommodation from £378pp, 26 July-18 August, westdean.org.uk Built in the 19th-century, L’Ancienne Poste, a luxury lodge in the lush Louron valley, is a great base for mountain biking in summer and skiing in winter. It is also the perfect setting for art retreats – the wooded valleys and soaring peaks will bring out anyone’s inner Cézanne. Tutored by Jacqueline Williams, a member of the New English Art Club, guests go walking in the mountains and painting en plein air. There are also trips to the local Balnéa Spa, drinks in front of the fire and four-course dinners with wine.• From €999pp half-board for a week including art materials, courses start 31 August and 7 September, ancienneposteavajan.com Budding songwriters can find their voice on a retreat in Charneca do Guincho, a small village near the coast west of Lisbon. Three tutors – two singer-songwriters and a producer – give workshops on writing, arranging and performing, and the retreat concludes with an evening performance for an invited audience. Morning yoga sessions are included; free time can be spent walking, surfing or horse-riding; and guests can join an optional visit to Cascais town or Sintra. The retreat is based at Guincho Wayra House, an arty hostel sleeping 14 in two private rooms and two shared rooms, a 15-minute walk from the beach.• From €385 for four nights in a shared room, 6-10 February, with breakfast, lunch and two dinners, livesoundtravels.com The Cherry Wood Project is an off-grid woodland management venture six miles north of Bath that runs a green woodwork school. Visitors can learn to make stools and chairs or build a Viking bowl lathe using only hand tools. The wood is managed sustainably and there is no mains power or wifi, with cooking over an open fire. Arrival by public transport is encouraged, and camping is free with the course (other accommodation such as huts, yurts, bell tents and a cob house are available for £25 a night).• Make a chair from a log (11-19 May and 22-30 June) £495; build a lathe and learn to turn (24-27 May) £425 plus materials, cherrywoodproject.co.ukA wide-ranging ban on microplastics covering about 90% of pollutants has been proposed by the EU in an attempt to cut 400,000 tonnes of plastic pollution in 20 years. Every year, Europe releases a bulk amount of microplastics six times bigger than the “Great Pacific garbage patch” into the environment – the equivalent of 10bn plastic bottles. The phasing out proposed by the European Chemicals Agency (Echa) would remove 36,000 tonnes a year of “intentionally added” microplastic fibres and fragments, starting in 2020. Cosmetics, detergents, paints, polish and coatings would all require design overhauls, as would products in the construction, agriculture and fossil fuels sectors. The draft law targets microplastics that are not necessary but have been added to products by manufacturers for convenience or profit. Baskut Tuncak, the UN’s special rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes, said: “Microplastics are a growing concern to a number of human rights. The steps proposed by Echa are necessary to help ensure present and future generations can enjoy what is their human right: a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.” The UK imposed a more limited ban on plastic microbeads in cosmetics and personal care products last year, focused on items such as shaving foam, toothpaste and shower gel. The EU’s measure is “much more comprehensive”, according to its authors, in terms of the sectors, volumes and product usages covered. Peter Simpson, a senior scientist at Echa, said: “We are also looking at ‘leave-on’ cosmetics such as makeup or moisturisers as well as detergents, which aren’t included in the UK ban, and materials such as encapsulation fragrances that are used in other household products.” The legislation also phases out the use of microplastics in products such as fertilisers, from which scientists believe they may be entering the human food chain. An Echa spokesperson said it was “unknown for now” whether the measure would apply in the UK after Brexit. Seb Dance, Labour’s deputy leader in the European parliament, said Britons could lose out as a result of leaving the EU. “Clearly these proposals go much further than the measures so far suggested by Michael Gove,” he said. “But even if Gove’s plan was as ambitious as this, there would be little point in one country taking action on its own to try to solve this crisis, as the products we buy, and the supply chains they depend on, cross many borders. “Whatever the shenanigans in Westminster, let’s hope that the government and MPs do not lose sight of the need to have comprehensive cross-border initiatives that scale up the response to the problem.” Prof Richard Thompson of Plymouth University’s school of biological and marine sciences said: “Plastics don’t respect borders in the way that people do and, for me, the appropriate scale to legislate for our environment on is the European one. I have concerns that we may be compromised by leaving the EU, because it’s more complicated to manage things on a country-by-country basis.” Echa’s scientific committee will review the proposal for 15 months before sending an opinion to the European commission, which will have three months to prepare legislation. It could then take up to eight months for use restrictions to come into force. The measure is part of an EU clampdown on plastics, ranging from taxes and bans on single-use items to a €350m (£305m) investment in modernising the sector through investment and more recycling. Product bans and use restrictions on microplastics would be phased in over a six-year period, designed to give companies lead time to change production processes and parts at minimal cost. However, it does not tackle the estimated 176,000 tonnes of microplastics that are unintentionally released into EU surface waters every year, the lion’s share from road tyre wear and preproduction pellets. This has added to concerns from some environmentalists that the process lacks urgency. Elise Vitali, chemicals policy officer at the European Environmental Bureau, said the microplastics problem was “fed by irresponsible firms, such as those making personal care products, that decided to swap natural ingredients like ground almond, coconut shell and olive seed for plastic microbeads and ignored the public backlash and scientific warnings”. She added: “We’ll be pushing hard to tighten this proposal to ensure real impact. Tackling the plastics inside products is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to solving the microplastic blight, but is a necessary step.” Microplastics are tiny synthetic polymers that resist biodegradation and block the digestive tracts of aquatic creatures, turtles and birds, diminishing the urge to eat and altering feeding behaviour. With mass industrial production, they have spread to Earth’s peaks, depths, the Arctic and human bodies, where their health impacts are not yet fully understood.Native American community leaders have offered to educate the staff and students at Covington Catholic high school after its students were filmed  in an apparent confrontation with a Native American elder at the Lincoln Memorial last week. “There is an opportunity here to learn from what happened,” Native American leaders with the the Awake Media Program said in a letter sent to the school in Park Hills, Kentucky, on Thursday. The incident, which took place during an anti-abortion rally in Washington DC on Sunday, has laid bare stark divisions across the US. The footage drew immediate condemnation over the weekend. Nick Sandmann, the student featured prominently in the footage, told NBC’s Today on Wednesday he “wasn’t smirking” or acting “disrespectful” against Native American activist Nathan Phillips. When additional footage of the incident became available, conservative media jumped into the fray, accusing liberal media of rushing to judgment. “While we know that this is a divisive time, we are coming to you with a hope to build understanding,” wrote the group, which advocates for more Native stories and representation in media. “We would like to hold a workshop or a series of talks guided by our program leaders and community elders to help your school staff, administration and students learn about our lives, our beliefs and how to treat people of different backgrounds with thoughtfulness and care.” The phone line for Covington Catholic high school was disconnected Thursday, and school officials did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. “It’s just a big mess,” Doug Good Feather, a leader leader of the Lakota Way Healing Center and the Awake Media Program, told the Guardian. “You got both sides striking out at each other.” This is where education and understanding comes into play, said Good Feather, a descendent of Sitting Bull. “Instead of yelling and screaming and pointing fingers, we have to teach and help people understand,” he said. “Instead of constantly fighting each other, we need to take responsibility and educate each other and evolve. And when we give our kids that kind of teaching to work together, we will evolve lightyears ahead. But if we don’t, we’re just going to be stuck.” “It was disgusting, just seeing how bad it got,” said Anpa’o Locke, a 20-year-old fellow with the Awake Media Program. “But we’ve been resistant and resilient for the past 500 years. This is not new to us.” Locke recalled feeling “a boiling” within her body when she first watched the video. But even with her anger, she understands that education is the first step. When indigenous stories are ignored or erased and Native people are considered unfamiliar or foreign, they are allowed to be written off as “the other” in an us versus them news cycle, Locke said. In making sure people know about Native culture and beliefs, “we don’t get swept up and people don’t walk over us anymore”, she said. “It’s just about us standing up for us,” she said. “This is the last straw. We are here and you can’t forget us any more.”Sir John Major has called for MPs to be allowed to have a free vote on a series of options to solve the unfolding Brexit crisis, saying he feared millions will be hurt if Britain leaves the EU with the wrong deal or none at all. The former prime minister called on Theresa May to stage a series of “indicative” votes in parliament to establish whether any proposals could command a majority. “The prime minister … fought for her deal, she got a deal, she argued valiantly for it, but the House of Commons killed it and killed it comprehensively,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “So her deal is dead and I don’t honestly think that tinkering with it is going to make very much difference, if any difference at all. “And so the prime minister still needs a deal. If she can’t deliver one that parliament accepts, then she needs to become a facilitator, a mediator, to find out what parliament will accept.” Ideally the party would permit a free vote, he said, “so that we can get an honest representation of parliament”. He said: “It’s the only way to get an absolutely honest answer from members of parliament, and if it is a free vote, it removes the danger of resignations from government or the opposition front bench because they disagree with their leader’s policy.” He added: “This is such a unique issue, I think it would be an act of statesmanship by the party leaders to say: ‘Because of the very strong opinions on either side, we are going to lift the party whips so parliament and the country can get a genuine view of what it is members of parliament most think would be best for our country or, perhaps, least bad for our country.’ It is a unique way of doing it, but I think it is justified.” In 1971, the then prime minister, Edward Heath, offered Tory MPs a free vote on whether to join the European Economic Community in order to help solve division. Major also said that if the cabinet or parliament could not find a solution, then the other option was to have a second referendum. Major’s comments come after he wrote an article last week in which he said revoking article 50, which gave the country two years to leave the EU after it was triggered in 2017, had become the “only sensible course”. On Saturday, Major told BBC’s Today programme: “I’m no longer in politics; I have no axe to grind. I’m not part of the remain campaign, and I’m certainly not part of the leave campaign. I can look at it quite dispassionately … and I will tell you my fear. My fear is that millions of people who do not deserve to be hurt, both businesses and individuals and families and young people with their prospects, are going to be hurt. “And if I have to eat past words because I now realise that is the case, I will make a meal of them every single day, because it is the future, and those people, I believe, are the primary responsibility of parliament, and if parliament does not address that responsibility, then parliament will, in my view, have failed in its duty.” Later in the programme, the former Brexit minister and Leave campaigner Suella Braverman, who resigned from government in protest at May’s deal, dismissed Major’s comments, describing them as “remainer elite views”. “Thank you Sir John, but no thanks,” she said.Late-night hosts crack the case of Steve King’s racism and the real number of White House hamberders (yes, hamberders). In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel marked the historic occasion when “Donald Trump became the first US president ever to congratulate himself on making a fast-food order,” Kimmel said, flashing a picture of Trump behind his table of McDonald’s hamburgers, or, as he called it on Twitter, “hamberders.” “That’s right, hamberders,” Kimmel confirmed. “How does that happen? The E and the U aren’t even near each other on the keyboard. It’s like in the middle of tweeting he had a stroke or something. Or is it possible … he thought they were called hamberders until today?” Kimmel also pointed out that while Trump claimed he served over 1,000 hamburgers to the Clemson football team, “a source inside the White House claims the number of berders was much lower than that”. Kimmel then played a clip of Trump showing off the McDonald’s meal of “300 hamburgers” to reporters. “He has to lie about everything. He can’t help it,” Kimmel said. “Or maybe he ate the 700 other hamberders himself.” On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah turned the condemnation of Iowa congressman Steve King’s racist comments into another case for “Trevor Noah: Racism Detective”. “Racism - as we all know, it died for good the night that Barack Obama was elected president,” Noah said. “But a strange thing happened this week: we learned that racism may be coming back to life. And it turns out, it’s already in the House.” Noah referred to the censure of King, who recently asked the New York Times how the terms “white supremacy” and “white nationalist” became to be considered offensive. Is Steve King a racist? Trevor Noah: Racism Detective is on the case. pic.twitter.com/TqiQ1RhAGm The comments drew condemnation from King’s House Republican colleagues – he was stripped of his committee duties for them – but as Noah suggests, perhaps these colleagues could have reached a similar conclusion earlier. “So as it stands, Steve King said a thing that is really racist. But he claims that he isn’t racist at all. So which is it? Is he racist, or not?” Noah said. Dressed as a film noir private eye, Noah sought a definitive answer on King’s racism through past public comments, or “clues”, including clips in which King disparaged Mexican immigrants, said he didn’t want Muslims working in pork factories, and claimed that the west was a “superior civilization”. But does that qualify as racism? Noah asked, a pointed jab at media organizations’ reluctance to clearly label it. “Let’s look at the evidence,” Noah said. “On the one hand, we have Steve King being racist toward Mexicans, Muslims, and the entire non-white world. But on the other hand, he says he’s not racist. Even I’m not good enough as a racism detective to crack this one,” he said. “So I guess it will have to remain in the street. Join me next week when I investigate cross burnings: are they racist? Or just a dramatic way to roast marshmallows.” Over at the Late Show, Colbert admired how the president hosted a White House meal of America’s most gourmet food: McDonald’s. Donald Trump ordered the massive fas-food order for the Clemson Tigers under the reasoning of “you guys aren’t into salads”. “You are precision athletes,” Colbert continued, in the voice of the president. “You need to fuel your big machines with performance nuggets and vitamin cheese. That’s how I got my golf body.” Colbert noted that not everyone was there for vitamin cheese, and showed a clip of a Clemson player remarking on camera, upon entering the White House: “I thought this was a joke.” “Yeah, we all thought it was a joke. Then election night came around,” Colbert said. And if you thought the event could be any less dignified, “well, apparently, you forgot Donald Trump has a Twitter account,” Colbert said. “That’s right. In addition to hamberders, there were chorken McNerglets, fronch firs, felayshofitch and of course, pizzazz,” Colbert added.The government is set to incentivise pharmaceutical companies to develop “urgently needed” drugs to fight antimicrobial resistant (AMR) superbugs, with the health secretary set to warn “we are on the cusp of a world where a simple graze could be deadly”. Under the plans, the inappropriate use of antibiotics would also be cut by 15%, reducing resistant infections and potentially saving thousands of lives in the UK. The pharmaceutical industry is braced for criticism that it has been reluctant to carry out research in the area since it is potentially less profitable than breakthrough medicines. Health secretary Matt Hancock is to announce the proposals at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, where he will make the case for AMR to be treated as a “global health emergency” that poses as big a threat to humanity as climate change. “Imagine a world without antibiotics. Where treatable infections become untreatable, where routine surgery like a hip operation becomes too risky to carry out, and where every wound is potentially life-threatening,” Hancock is expected to say. “What would go through your mind if your child cut their finger and you knew there was no antibiotic left that could treat an infection? This was the human condition until almost a century ago. I don’t want it to be the future for my children – yet it may be unless we act. “Each and every one of us benefits from antibiotics, but we all too easily take them for granted, and I shudder at the thought of a world in which their power is diminished. Antimicrobial resistance is as big a danger to humanity as climate change or warfare. That’s why we need an urgent global response.” Work to introduce the new payment model will be under way within six months, with the government aiming to reduce the number of drug-resistant infections by 5,000, or 10%, by 2025 – and prevent at least 15,000 patients a year from contracting infections as a result of their healthcare by 2024. Antibiotic resistance poses a substantial threat to modern medicine and is predicted to kill 10 million people every year by 2050, according to the O’Neill report – a 2016 review, commissioned by the government, which assessed the potential impact of AMR. Resistant infections contribute to the deaths of about 2,000 people each year in the UK, with at least 20% of antibiotics in primary care inappropriately prescribed, according to official figures. A lack of effective antibiotics could see simple operations such as caesarean sections or hip replacements become too dangerous to perform. The number of drug-resistant bloodstream infections, such as super-gonorrhoea, increased by 35% from 2013 to 2017. Theresa May, the prime minister, said: “The increase in antibiotic resistance is a threat we cannot afford to ignore. It is vital that we tackle the spread of drug-resistant infections before routine operations and minor illnesses become life-threatening. “I am very proud of the UK’s global leadership on this important agenda. We will continue to work with our partners to drive international action that will protect the health of future generations.” In a statement, the health department said: “The way drugs companies are currently paid depends on the volumes they sell, meaning companies have an incentive to sell as many antibiotics as possible, at the same time as government is trying to reduce antibiotic use. “Low returns on investment in development means industry does not innovate enough and as a result, very few of the new drugs that are currently in the pipeline are targeted towards priority infections.” The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and NHS England will explore how a new payment model could pay pharmaceutical companies for drugs based on how valuable the medicines are to the health service, rather than on the simple basis of the sheer quantity of antibiotics sold. It is hoped that this would incentivise companies to invest in the development of drugs that will treat high-priority resistant infections. The UK has cut the amount of antibiotics it uses by more than 7% since 2014.When Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, announced her presidential run on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show this week, the American public was exposed to something that they hadn’t seen since the 1972 presidential run of Shirley Chisholm: a contender for the nation’s highest office who is a committed and vocal feminist. Gillibrand’s presidential bid comes against the backdrop of her decade-long record in the Senate, where she has advocated for women’s rights with a tenacity and persistence rarely seen in that body. She has drafted bills that would provide mandatory paid family leave, so that workers can afford to take time off for pregnancies and to do the tasks that are disproportionately done by women – things like childcare, or tending to sick family members. Gillibrand has called on Donald Trump to resign over the sexual assault allegations against him, and she wrote and passed legislation that changed the way that Congress handled its own sexual harassment lawsuits, ensuring that taxpayers would not be on the hook for settlements or hush money meant to cover up a congressman’s bad behavior. She has worked to elect more women to office, and she makes a point of talking about other Democratic women’s accomplishments in public. She supports legislation that would ban forced arbitration in sexual harassment cases, an issue that many feminists see as a primary obstacle in the fight against sex discrimination in the workplace. And she has been outspoken about the need to reduce the rates of maternal and infant mortality, which are higher in the United States than in almost any other developed country, particularly for black women. Gillibrand has not always been consistent in her policy positions: she used to represent a conservative rural district in the House of Representatives, and as a congresswoman her positions on guns and immigration were far to the right of where they are now. But her feminism has remained a constant: she has always been looking for ways to reduce the kinds of suffering and indignity that women are subjected to because they are women. In 2013, asked why she spent so much effort on women’s issues, Gillibrand turned the question around. “Well, why do you focus on issues that pertain to 52% of the population? It’s pretty important.” Gillibrand became the object of ire and vilification by those who wished that Franken could remain in the Senate Of course, it is her feminism that has created controversy around Gillibrand, and attracted the particular strain of virulent hatred that is reserved for women who stand up to sexism. In particular, as soon as she announced her presidential campaign, critics were quick to condemn her 2017 call for the resignation of Senator Al Franken over allegations of sexual abuse. Gillibrand was not the only one of Franken’s colleagues to call for his resignation: about 30 Senate Democrats, beginning with women, publicly stated that he should resign over the course of one day in December 2017. But Gillibrand was the first, and she became the object of ire and vilification by those who wished that Franken could remain in the Senate. People on Twitter decried what Gillibrand “did to” Franken; they said that she had “thrown him under the bus.” There was a lot of anger by Franken supporters after he finally did resign, and most of that anger has been directed at Gillibrand; very little was directed at Franken himself. That’s notable, because the allegations against Franken were numerous, credible, consistent and gross. Three women who encountered Franken in a professional capacity say that Franken kissed them abruptly, without invitation, and with physical force; one of those women described the kiss as “wet, open-mouthed”. In one instance, when confronted, Franken is alleged to have claimed that the forced kiss was his “right as an entertainer”. Four other women say that he groped their asses or breasts, and one of those women says that Franken asked her to follow him into a bathroom. (Parts of these allegations Franken has denied; others he has hedged on or claimed not to remember.) Much of the controversy surrounding Franken centered on a photo of him, where he can be seen with his hands over the breasts of an unconscious woman. He grins wildly at the camera. Defenders of Franken have responded that the photo is just a joke, and this is true. It is a joke where the punchline is the idea that women might have dignity. If I had to put money on it, I would bet that Gillibrand didn’t laugh. Ours is a culture well practiced in shifting blame for men’s choices on to women The ire directed at Gillibrand over Franken’s behavior is misplaced, but it is not unusual. Ours is a culture well practiced in shifting blame for men’s choices on to women. Women are blamed for the things men do to them or the things that men do to others; they are blamed because they didn’t say anything, and they are blamed when they do say something. Some feminists have pointed out that this logic does a disservice to men, implying that men are either too corrupt, too stupid, or too incompetent to be held accountable for themselves. And this is indeed an insulting and unrealistically low estimation of men’s faculties. But the ire directed at Gillibrand does not come from a presumption that Franken could not have stooped himself to doing the things he is accused of, and it does not come from a presumption that Gillibrand could have, or should have been able to stop him herself. Instead, what provokes this anger is the idea that our shared commitment to women’s equality might be more than just a polite pretense; that the idea that women have rights and dignity, and that those rights and dignity should not be violated, might actually be enforced. This misogyny will hurt Gillibrand’s presidential hopes; it will be used to divide Democrats among themselves over a contentious social issue and to flame a sexist backlash to the #MeToo movement. George Soros, the billionaire and major Democratic party donor, has already said that the incident makes him wary of Gillibrand as a candidate. Many of those who have attacked Gillibrand on this issue allege that she used the allegations against Franken as a way to further her own career, but in light of these severe and predictable setbacks to her presidential ambitions, this doesn’t ring true. A more plausible explanation for Gillibrand’s choice to call for Franken’s resignation is that she saw a choice between principle and convenience, and chose the former. It’s not the first time that Gillibrand has suffered retaliation for her feminism. She has consistently taken these stands for women even when they are deeply unpopular, even when she has to stand alone. This was the case with her work to curb sexual harassment and assault in the military. The effort is a longtime passion of Gillibrand’s, one that she has been more committed to than any other lawmaker in Congress. And it has cost her. When she proposed new rules that would make it harder for the military to conceal or ignore sexual violence, or to retaliate against personnel who complained about it, Gillibrand faced fierce and public pushback from a Pentagon that is slow to take women’s rights seriously and quick to reject oversight. She stood her ground. I hope she does the same now, tooDrone footage of an eerie abandoned urban development of mini castles in Turkey has shone a light on the troubles facing the country’s economy. Burj al Babas, billed as a luxury housing development near Mudurnu, a village roughly halfway between Istanbul and Ankara, was left unfinished last year after its developers Sarot Property Group went bankrupt. The future of the 300 closely packed chateaux – which cost an estimated £151m to build – is now uncertain and the project has become a cautionary tale for other developers in Turkey’s debt-laden construction sector. Work began in 2014 on units primarily designed as holiday homes for wealthy Gulf tourists. The plans also included Turkish baths and an entertainment complex. Only a handful of the £379,000 Disney-style homes were sold, however, and several investors have since pulled out, Mezher Yerdelen, deputy chair of the Sarot Property Group, told Agence France-Presse. Of 732 planned buildings, 587 were completed, and the company is now £20m in debt. The construction project has long been hated by Mudurnu locals, who say it is not in keeping with the area’s traditional architecture, characterised by Byzantine buildings, traditional Ottoman wooden houses and a 600-year-old mosque. Since Burj al Babas got the go-ahead, the Turkish government has introduced new building regulations designed to preserve local character and heritage. In several places, housing developments must now be low-rise and fit in with existing neighbourhoods. But it may be too late to undo some of the damage, said Yaşar Adnan Adanalı, an Istanbul-based urban development researcher. “I worry that projects like Burj al Babas opened Pandora’s box, in some respects,” he said. “Developments without proper planning that do not contextualise the geography and history of their surroundings have exploded in Turkey since.” The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has encouraged a construction boom during his time in office, hailing large, job-heavy infrastructure projects as the engine of the Turkish economy. However, the weakening Turkish lira has left many companies struggling to pay off the foreign currency debt borrowed to finance projects, stalling work and bankrupting companies. The collapsing construction bubble has resulted in half-finished high-rises and ghost towns all over the country. Atilla Yesilada, Turkey analyst for GlobalSource Partners, an emerging markets analysis firm, said Burj al Babas’s fate was a snapshot of the wider malaise plaguing the Turkish construction sector. “It’s not just the homebuilders who go bankrupt. The people who supply goods to those industries – the architects, the technicians, the glass makers – those people suffer too,” he said. Last year, Turkey slashed the financial and investment criteria for foreigners to become Turkish citizens, in a move it is hoped will double annual property investment by foreigners to around £7.6bn. Despite no sure indications that the country’s economic woes will reverse in the near future, Sarot Group is still hopeful Gulf investors, lured by the prospect of Turkish passports, will return and Burj al Babas will be finished. “We only need to sell 100 villas to pay off our debt,” said Yerdelen. “I believe we can get over this crisis in four to five months and partially inaugurate the project in 2019.”This is Alison Rourke with today’s briefing as Theresa May prepares to set out her Brexit Plan B. The PM is expected to reject calls for a cross-party consensus on Brexit when she addresses parliament today and instead back new diplomatic efforts in Brussels to renegotiate the Irish backstop. One source told the Guardian that “no actual solutions” were proposed in May’s conference call with Cabinet members last night. “It is difficult to know – as ever – what she will do,” another told the Guardian. “But the broad agreement is on the need to bring DUP and Tory rebels on board.” Sources inside the government say May’s overriding priority is to prevent a historic split in the Tory party, with rumours circulating that there could be a breakaway if the PM opted for a customs union. As Brexit shakes the foundations of the Tory party, Jeremy Corbyn is likely to refrain from making fresh moves towards backing a second referendum until after plan B is voted on later this month, as he too seeks to balance pressure from rival wings of his party. UK warehouse space meanwhile is nearing capacity as firms stockpile for Brexit. Three-quarters of warehouse owners say they have no space left as costs have risen by 25% after a surge in Brexit-related inquiries. And in the first of our new series, Brexit frontline, Lisa O’Carroll joins a British lorry driver trying to navigate the already difficult route through French ports, and hears how, with so much uncertainty, some haulage companies are making their own Brexit contingency plans. EU citizen registration – Migration experts are warning that EU citizens living in the UK could become a new “Windrush scandal” as the scheme to register an estimated 3.5 million people begins. From today, the third phase of testing will open to EU residents in Britain, who will be able to register for the new post-Brexit “settled status”. The Home Office is extending its live trial to all EU citizens who hold a valid passport and any non-EU citizen family members who hold a valid biometric residence card. Critics have warned that thousands could be left without legal status to remain in the UK if applications are not processed quickly and effectively. ‘Appalled’ – Labour has lodged a formal complaint with the BBC about the treatment of Diane Abbott on Question Time last week. Abbott accused the programme of legitimising racist abuse, claiming she was repeatedly interrupted and singled out before the episode. The party has demanded to see footage of the audience from a pre-show warm-up amid allegations the crowd in Derby had been “whipped up” against Abbott. House prices hit – Properties in some of Britain’s wealthiest areas have had up to 25% wiped off their value in 12 months according to the estate agent Your Move. The figures come days after Britain’s surveyors issued an especially gloomy assessment, fuelled by the lack of clarity over Britain’s departure from the EU. On Thursday, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said house prices were falling at their fastest rate in six years, and that the outlook for sales was the weakest in two decades. Praying in tongues – The archbishop of Canterbury says he speaks in tongues every day as part of his 5am prayer. “Given it’s usually extremely early in the morning it’s not usually an immensely ecstatic moment,” Justin Welby says. He also says he expects to “hear from God through other people with words of knowledge or prophecies – some of which I am unsure about, others I can sense there being something of the spirit of God”. “Words of knowledge” and “prophecies” are believed to be revelations from God about people or future events. Both are common in Pentecostal and “charismatic” evangelical churches. Lunar eclipse – Stargazers in parts of Britain have been treated to the spectacular sight of the super blood wolf moon. One Guardian reader in Stratford-upon-Avon wrote: “Clouds have rolled back and a great view of the eclipse.” Cloudy skies over parts of London obscured the event for others. The rare celestial event takes places when moon is positioned slightly closer to earth than normal, and appears slightly bigger and brighter than normal. At the same time, the moon gave off a coppery red glow as it slipped into Earth’s shadow. The “wolf” part of the name is because the event is happening in January, when wolves used to howl in hunger outside villages. Calamitous weather events and warnings from scientists that the planet is warming faster than previously believed are causing alarm. Global environment editor, Jonathan Watts, describes the shifts needed to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5C. Plus: David Conn on how football and gambling have become inseparable Over the next five weeks, the 71-year-old actor Glenn Close could well be collecting more statuettes, including at the Baftas and the Academy Awards for her performance in The Wife as Joan Castleman, the overlooked spouse of a Nobel-winning novelist, played by Jonathan Pryce. In Close’s powerful speech when she won a Golden Globe for the role, she urged women “to find personal fulfilment”. “I’ve been floored by the response,” she says. “People are coming up to me in airports to talk about my speech.” In The Wife, the opening sex scene was the first thing they shot. “We arrived on set in our jammies,” she chuckled. Asked if it feels revolutionary to see two actors in their 70s having drowsy, vocal, pleasurably filthy sex together, she agrees: “It’s one of the great myths that you lose your sexuality as you get older.” Right now, she believes she is in her prime. “I feel as free and as creative, as sexual and as eager as I ever have. And it’s ironic because I’m thinking: ‘How much time do I have left now?’” Five-time NFL champion Tom Brady guided the Patriots to another Super Bowl after Rex Burkhead’s two-yard overtime touchdown lifted New England past Kansas City to secure the AFC championship. The Los Angeles Rams now stand in the Patriots’ way, after a Greg Zuerlein field goal in overtime saw them down the New Orleans Saints in the NFC championship game. Jimmy Anderson acted as England’s speaker in Barbados over the weekend and, on the subject of how much West Indian desire there is to beat the tourists in their upcoming Test series, apparently the eyes have it. Mauricio Pochettino admitted the hamstring injury which forced Dele Alli out of Tottenham’s 2-1 win at Fulham did “not look great” as he faced up to the loss of yet another key attacking player. There was no maiden Quad Series crown for England but, in the context of what is to come this year, another successful chapter in their captivating netball rivalry with Australia may be much more significant. Judd Trump won his first Masters snooker title with an emphatic 10-4 victory over Ronnie O’Sullivan at Alexandra Palace. And Lindsey Vonn may have competed in her last ski race – after failing to finish a World Cup super-G on Sunday as she battles pain in both of her knees, Vonn said immediate retirement “is a possibility”. China’s economic growth is at its slowest since 1990, according to new GDP figures. It grew 6.6% in 2018, amid the ongoing trade war with the US. The figures suggest that China may no longer be able to help shore up weakening global growth, as it has in the past. In gloomy news from the UK, more than 23,000 shops and 175,000 high street jobs are predicted to go this year, according to the annual report today from the real estate adviser Altus Group, as the shift to online shopping continues. The pound is trading at €1.13 and $1.79. The Guardian splashes today on the news that Spice Girls T-shirts were made in a factory paying staff 35p an hour: “Revealed: the poverty pay behind the charity slogans” is that paper’s headline. As Theresa May prepares to present her plan B to parliament, it’s not surprising that many papers splash with variations of the story. The Times splashes with: “May blames Corbyn as cross-party talks fail”. The FT has: “May poised for Commons clash after refusing to budge on Brexit”. The i’s headline is: “Plan B blow for May as MPs plot to take control”. The Telegraph says May’s plan B is “Good Friday deal could be rewritten”. The Daily Express’s headline is: “Do not hijack our Brexit”, saying May intends to defy Remainer MPs’ plot to delay the Brexit leaving date. The Guardian also carries Brexit on its front page, with the headline: “PM”s Brexit plan B – to renegotiate backstop”. The Mirror steers clear of Brexit, splashing on the Duke’s car crash last week: “The Queen’s sorry... No world from Philip” is its headline. The Daily Mail also side-steps Brexit, with its headline “Women dying of embarrassment”, a story about how women are putting their lives at risk because they are too embarrassed to be tested for cervical cancer. And the Sun leads on a “world exclusive” with a picture of Ant McPartlin and the headline: “Dec’s anger at my drink drive crash”. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comThe confetti cannon is set to go off every two weeks, firing out 3,216 pieces of paper, each colour-coded to match the gamma ray bursts that destroy entire galaxies. Nearby, a spinning wheel contains all the colours of the universe – today’s is “cosmic latte”. Elsewhere in Katie Paterson’s new show, there’s a lightbulb that emits “moonlight”, an LP that turns at the speed of the Earth (one rotation a day), and letters of condolence sent to an astronomer mourning for dead stars. Critics have marvelled at Paterson’s ability to blend “the galactic and the mundane”. They have also coined a term for the feeling you get when contemplating her work: ontological vertigo. “I love that expression,” laughs the artist, who is busy installing what will be her largest ever British exhibition, at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. “That’s what I get if I’m thinking about billions of years. It is sometimes dizzy-making, especially if you’ve got that colour wheel spinning.” Paterson grew up in Glasgow, moved to Berlin for a decade and now lives in Fife with her artist partner and young son. She first gained attention for an installation in which people could call on a phone to listen – live – to a glacier melting. Since that MA piece, she has created many impossible-sounding artworks: sending a meteorite back into space, recreating the smell of Saturn’s moon, compiling a picture archive of darkness throughout the universe, and mapping all known dead stars. She was “a total daydreamer” growing up: “I would lock myself in rooms and spend time just daydreaming, which sounds completely nuts. I would construct worlds.” Paterson, who has dyslexia, develops ideas by writing words on pieces of paper and rearranging them to create short texts. In between her two art degrees, she worked as a hotel maid in northern Iceland for seven months. “That’s had the biggest impact,” she says. “That was my first true experience of landscape: northern lights, geysers, glaciers, midnight sun, and the energy, the bursting Earth, just seeing the strata – time physically embodied in the landscape. The light was phenomenal. That’s when I started getting into sciences.” The blizzard of improbable ideas she dreams up is at the heart of the new exhibition. Alongside her physical works are silver-lettered texts: “A foghorn set off at sea every time a star dies”; “A wave machine hidden inside the sea”; “Venus’s sky recreated on Earth”; “A mountain carried away stone by stone”. She has paired each idea with works by Turner. She is publishing a book containing 120 of the silver texts, called A Place That Exists Only in Moonlight. Its cover is printed with cosmic dust. With Paterson, what sounds like an art hoax invariably turns out to be true: she acquired “quite a lot” of moon dust, she says, as well as meteor fragments from Mars and some asteroid remnants – and ground them up with a pestle and mortar. “I breathed in some really crazy things from outer space and then I sent it off to the ink people,” she says. The dust was added to the ink and each screenprinted copy has some of this mysterious blend. “There may even be nano-diamonds,” says Paterson, stroking the cover. “And some extremely ancient meteorites that may be proto-planets – the really purist stuff from outer space.” Some of Paterson’s ideas really are impossible, but they still possess imaginative power. “Not all of them need to come into existence to form something in your mind,” she says. “They can exist in and of themselves, being something that people can make alive in their minds.” Even so, Paterson has a gift for turning improbable fantasy into matter. “I hope I’ve proved many people wrong. I’ve had a lot of people say no. I really surprise myself that I’ve managed to make some of these things happen.” Her works often require lengthy collaborations with scientists. When she began a residency at University College London’s astrophysics department, scientists asked if she was simply going to paint a mural on their corridor. Once she put them straight, she was surprised at how open-minded they were when faced with her challenges. “It’s been amazing,” she says. “Steve Fossey at UCL is our go-to scientist. Poor Steve is inundated with some of the most absurd questions, like trying to puzzle the colours of the entire universe.” Sending the meteorite back into space – one of her favourite improbables – was a collaboration with the European Space Agency. “That moment where they agreed to send it back to space, to the International Space Station, that shocked me,” she says. Another favourite is the Future Library. This newly planted forest of 1,000 trees near Oslo will be tended for 100 years. Each year, an author writes a book and gives it to the library to be buried. The first was Margaret Atwood; the latest is South Korean Han Kang. In 2114, the trees will be harvested to print and reveal Paterson’s anthology of 100 books. Of course, neither Paterson, nor anybody reading this today, will be alive to witness this moment. “I don’t know if I’m sometimes the luckiest person ever,” says Paterson. “Things just fall into place.” She found unexpected support for this long-nurtured idea in Oslo: some land was donated and she returns every year as each new book is committed to the library. The Norwegian spruce saplings are now above waist height. “I feel like my life grows with this yearly ritual. One year I’m pregnant in the forest. The next year I have a child. It sort of snowballs with all the authors.” Paterson is a member of the Future Library’s board of trustees. Eventually she’ll be replaced by a younger person. “The mandate is to compassionately sustain the artwork for its 100-year duration,” she says. “The foresters have a big part to play, they tend to the trees. It’s my dream project because it’s got every aspect of what I like – the collaboration with authors, foresters and librarians. And it operates on slower time. It’s not this rush to make something for a deadline. It’s really nice to let something organically evolve. I couldn’t ask for anything more.” This year, Paterson has more deadlines than ever, with another big solo exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and First There Is a Mountain, an epic set of 25 beach events every second Sunday over British Summer Time. People can sign up to make miniature sand mountains from pails that are tiny casts of five real mountains. A new piece of writing about each place, from Orkney to Margate, will also be read out. “It is quite a small gesture,” she says, “yet it does connect the ephemeral to these vast mountains and the deep time of sand.” The biggest challenge was making her mountain casts from compostable material. “It’s been a complete nightmare but we got there in the end. We don’t want to be putting more garbage in the sea.” After the events, the pails will be composted by a farmer. “I’d like some of the soil back at the end,” she says. Turner’s been painting with the colours of the universe, without knowing. Or maybe he did At the Margate show, the connection between a Romantic painter and a Scottish conceptual artist is not as tenuous as it might first appear. Turner was friends with Michael Faraday and was deeply curious about science, geology and the natural world. Critics have noted that Paterson’s work, like Turner’s, raises Romantic questions of loss and reflects the awe and terror we feel when faced by the mighty universe. As Paterson installs her exhibition, new connections keep arising. Like Paterson, Turner kept a book of ideas and tried to create “moonlight” through mixing paint. “In the beginning,” she says, “I would’ve never had the audacity to exhibit with Turner works but, as it’s gone on, interesting relationships have been opening up.” When she first chose the Turner works, including many of his little-known sketches, “it was like breathing the freshest air ever. His work was so shockingly beautiful. I hadn’t had that experience before.” The most serendipitous connection is visible in the gallery. A Turner sunset – chosen to represent her idea of “Venus’s sky recreated on Earth” – perfectly matches the colours of the universe spinning on her wheel. “I was so happy about that,” she laughs. “Turner’s been painting with the colours of the universe, without knowing. Or maybe he did. Ultimately, we’re all drawn to the unspeakable wonder of everything.” • A Place that Exists Only in Moonlight: Katie Paterson and JMW Turner is at Turner Contemporary Margate, 26 January to 6 May.Clouds of volcanic dust envelop the car as we judder down the track through the Malpaís – the badlands. Contorted lava fields and cinder cones surround us in a fierce display. This was once believed to be the end of the Earth. Before Columbus voyaged to America, El Hierro – the smallest and least-visited of the Canary Islands – was the westernmost edge of the known world. It lies 190 miles off the coast of north Africa, with nothing but ocean to the west until Florida, some 3,000 miles away. The sense of isolation is still palpable. There are few beaches, no resort hotels, and getting here requires a flight or 2½-hour ferry ride from Tenerife – but the few that make the effort are amply rewarded. It seemed like the perfect destination for an off-the-beaten-track hiking adventure with the kids. My seven-year-old daughter and I are joining friends on a guided three-day group trip, exploring the island on foot and by car from our base at Balneario Pozo de la Salud, a small spa hotel on a bay on the west coast. We start our tour at the Faro de Punta Orchilla, a lighthouse on the south-western tip of the island and regarded as the prime meridian for early map makers, until Greenwich won out. The seven of us are the only ones here. In February, it’s hot and eerily quiet. “Out there,” our guide, Paolo, says, gazing over the ocean, “people once thought there was nothing but sea monsters.” Back in the car, we wind up along switchback roads. At over 100 metres, “heroic vineyards”, so-called for the strength and agility needed to harvest the grapes, cling to the mountainside. Small villages are strung with colourful bunting – it is carnival season, and soon each village will be holding a celebration. We arrive at El Sabinar – a wild juniper forest shaped by centuries of fierce north-easterly winds. Bent double or twisting horizontally along the ground, these trees have been sculpted into extraordinary shapes. “The wind is an artist,” Paolo smiles. “It shapes our land, the nature around us, and defines the way we live.” El Hierro is an elemental place. Stark and rugged, its dark cliffs soar some 1,000 metres from the sea. Although it enjoys a sub-tropical climate, there can be a 10-degree difference in temperature from sea level to mountaintops. The terrain and ecosystems transform suddenly, too. One minute we’re exploring dense, mossy woods and the next we are scrambling up scree slopes to a crater’s edge; meadows give way to pine forests ravaged by fire but still thriving; lava fields ripple out from plantations of banana, avocado and pineapple. With such rich diversity, it’s little wonder Unesco designated the island a biosphere reserve and geopark in 2015. We stop for a swim at the village of La Restinga, which made headlines in 2011 when a submarine volcano erupted just 2km offshore. Magma bubbles were seen from the water’s edge and all 600 villagers were evacuated. Despite this, the protected waters here are called Mar de las Calmas – Sea of Calm – and are one of the best diving spots in the world, with spectacular sub-acquatic flora and fauna. But even in high season Restinga is quiet. We see just three divers and a row of elderly gentlemen sipping wine. El Hierro’s story is one of resilience. At the chapel of Our Lady of the Kings, we hear tales of miracles worked by the island’s patron saint – mainly bringing rain. Nearby, we explore caves once inhabited by Bimbaches, the first inhabitants of the island, which are still used by modern-day shepherds. We pause to feed bananas to tiny lizards before heading to the Lagartario eco-museum to meet El Hierro’s famous giant lizards, thought to be extinct until they were rediscovered in 1974. Our hotel was built for those coming to take the healing waters of a spring discovered in the 18th century, and its clifftop location is hard to beat: the soundtrack is of Atlantic breakers crashing below. After days out exploring, we dine here on tasty, simple fare such as grilled fish with the Canaries’ trademark papas arrugadas, small salt-crusted potatoes with green and red mojo dipping sauces. A standout dessert is El Hierro smoked cheese baked in palm syrup. With Paolo’s encouragement, the kids (aged between seven and 10) walk for around four miles each day without complaint, dreaming up stories about lava giants or chasing pixies in the cloud forest. They search for King Neptune in sea stacks and duendes – mischievous spirits – in a rock face, and play where witches once danced by moonlight. The story says that the witches hoped to discover in their trances what had happened to their menfolk who had sailed to Venezuela and Cuba in search of an easier life. Today, life at the end of the world is not so hard. The island has no crime and the pace is slow. The people are hospitable and proud of their connection to nature. On our way back to the port we pass the towering wind turbines of the island’s revolutionary new energy and desalination plant. Wind and sea are shaping the island’s future too: El Hierro is set to become one of the world’s first sustainable islands – wind and sun already supply 60% of the island’s energy. In a couple of years it hopes to be fully energy self-sufficient. It is an extraordinary development, given that just 50 years ago few homes here had electricity at all. “We never complain about the wind,” Paolo says. “It gives us life.” The vast propellers turn slowly, catching the quickening trade winds, the ones Columbus tackled as he sailed into the unknown. Had he picked up supplies at El Hierro instead of neighbouring La Gomera, perhaps the course of history would have been different. I now know from experience that leaving this magical place is very, very hard. • The trip was provided by Much Better Adventures, whose new three-day guided tour of El Hierro is available from January to April and costs £478pp, including accommodation, meals and local transport. Some departures are specifically family-friendly and individual trips can be arrangedThe British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has admitted for the first time that Russian support for the Syrian regime means Bashar al-Assad will remain in power for some time. The UK has been at the forefront of calls for the Syrian president to leave office as part of a transition to a new government, but over the past year British diplomats have acknowledged that Assad would have to be allowed to stand in any UN-supervised democratic elections in Syria. In December Donald Trump announced that the remaining 2,000 US troops in Syria would imminently withdraw, leaving Assad in power and a large Iranian military presence intact within Syria. Many Arab states have also accepted that Assad has survived the seven-year civil war and are preparing to reopen embassies in Damascus. During a three-day trip to Asia, Hunt told Sky News: “I think you know the British longstanding position is that we won’t have lasting peace in Syria with that regime. But regretfully we do think he’s going to be around for a while and that is because of the support that he’s had from Russia. “Russia may think that it’s gained a sphere of influence. What we would say to them is: yes – and you’ve also gained a responsibility. If you’re going to be involved in Syria then you need to make sure that there really is peace in Syria. And that means making sure that President Assad does not use chemical weapons.” In April 2017 Hunt’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, described Assad as a monster that needed decapitating. Just before Christmas the UN acknowledged it had failed to persuade Russia to agree to form a sufficiently diverse body to prepare a constitution and elections in Syria. This means UN-supervised elections are delayed indefinitely. The UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has resigned. The British acknowledgement of Assad’s continued grip on power underlines doubts that Syrian military leaders will ever be held accountable for the use of chemical weapons in the civil war. The UK was instrumental in giving the OPCW, the chemical weapons watchdog in The Hague, additional powers to investigate and attribute the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The UK has claimed Assad’s forces used chemical weapons most recently in Douma in April 2018, an attack that led to joint US, French and British airstrikes. The OPCW has yet to give a formal final verdict on whether Assad’s forces used chemical weapons. Hunt’s remarks will raise questions about whether European powers will be willing to lift sanctions against Assad or end a moratorium on providing the country with reconstruction aid. The EU has said it will not provide Syria with reconstruction aid until it has assurances that democratic elections will be held. In Washington, after an outcry over the withdrawal announcement and the resignation of the defence secretary, Jim Mattis, Trump has said he will not allow US troops to leave in a way that endangers the Kurdish forces that have been at the heart of the fight against Islamic State in Northern Syria. The US had previously set preconditions on a US troop withdrawal including the departure of Iranian militias, but at a briefing on Wednesday Trump said Iran could “do what they want there, frankly,” remarks that left Israel politicians aghast. Convinced that Isis has been defeated, Trump dismissed the continuing value of Syria to the US, saying: “We are talking about sand and death. We are not talking about vast wealth.” The UK privately opposed Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria on the basis that Isis is far from defeated There are also concerns that the Kurds abandoned by the west will release Isis fighters under their guard. Hunt said he wanted the fate of two British Isis fighters, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, to be settled. The two men, who have been stripped of their British citizenship, are being held by Syrian Kurdish forces.Americans woke on Saturday to the 15th day of a partial government shutdown that Donald Trump said could go on for months or years, if he is not given funding for a wall on the Mexican border. New talks were due but as the nation digested the president’s rambling, contradictory and combative remarks at a White House press conference on Friday, potentially devastating effects of the shutdown were coming into focus. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides dietary assistance to 38 million low-income Americans colloquially known as food stamps, will face cuts and will run out of funds in March. Tax refunds totalling billions of dollars and due in April to millions may be delayed. And, CNN reported, Transportation Security Agents vital to the operation of major airports are beginning to call out sick, after being forced to work without pay. Hydrick Thomas, the president of the national TSA employee union, told CNN of the callouts by “hundreds” of officers: “This will definitely affect the flying public who we [are] sworn to protect.” Trump named Vice-President Mike Pence, homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and senior adviser Jared Kushner as his representatives at meetings with Democrats, starting at 11am on Saturday. He also returned to Twitter, claiming “great support … from all sides for Border Security” and slamming what he said was “very inaccurate” media reporting. The president later attacked CNN for its TSA story and praised a Department of Homeland Security spokesman for a Trump-style tweet. “Security operations at airports have not been impacted by a non-existent sick out,” Tyler Houlton wrote, calling CNN “fake news” and alleging that the number of TSA officers calling in sick had been misrepresented. Unlike House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and minority whip Steve Scalise, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, was not present at the Friday press conference. He has sought to leave Democrats and the president to fight it out, thereby to avoid political damage. Trump shrugged off McConnell’s absence but minority leader Chuck Schumer said: “The president needs an intervention, and Senate Republicans are just the right ones to intervene.” Trump campaigned on a promise to build the wall, which he says is necessary to stop undocumented migration and the flow of drugs, and to stop terrorists entering the country. The last claim is as frequently questioned by factcheckers as it is trotted out by Trump and his allies. On Friday, asked to comment on the claim as she stood with her boss in the White House Rose Garden, Nielsen said more than 3,000 “special interest aliens” had been stopped at the border in an unspecified period. It was swiftly pointed out that nearly all people crossing the southern border who are not from western hemisphere countries are thus classified. Trump also campaigned on a promise that Mexico would pay for the wall. That has not happened. The president and his allies claim a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, not yet ratified by Congress, will provide savings to meet the promise. Opponents and factcheckers doubt that. Democrats who now control the House of Representatives have flatly refused to provide the $5.6bn Trump wants for the wall, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called “immoral” and which most experts believe would be ineffective and unrealistic. Public polling shows majority opposition to Trump on the wall and immigration in general. The president is also playing to his political base. Asked about a claim made by Schumer after a fruitless meeting on Friday that the White House was ready to continue the shutdown indefinitely, Trump said: “Absolutely I said that.” He also said he could declare a national emergency and build the wall anyway “if I want”; rhapsodised about the qualities of steel, the material he now says the wall will be built with, instead of concrete, which previously he insisted was his material of choice; and claimed federal employees affected by the shutdown were “in many cases the biggest fans of what we’re doing”. That contradicted a swiftly notorious tweet from last week, in which Trump claimed most workers “not getting paid are Democrats”. Later on Saturday the president returned to that theme, tweeting: “I don’t care that most of the workers not getting paid are Democrats, I want to stop the Shutdown as soon as we are in agreement on Strong Border Security! I am in the White House ready to go, where are the Dems?” Trump could technically declare an emergency and build his wall. On Friday, University of Texas law professor and CNN analyst Steve Vladeck tweeted: “One of the enduring phenomena of the Trump era is going to be the list of statutes that give far too much power to the president, but that we didn’t used to worry about because we assumed there would be political safeguards. Today’s entrant: The National Emergencies Act of 1976.” It has been widely suggested that action on the legal status of Dreamers, undocumented migrants brought to the US as children, might be on the table in any deal. But Democrats remain wary. A previous shutdown, one of three within a year, was triggered by Trump’s escalating demands for wall funding in return for reform. Multiple media outlets have reported increasing hardship for federal employees, about 800,000 in total, either sent home or working without pay. Pay is next due on 11 January. On Friday, Trump, who last month signed an executive order blocking pay raises for federal employees, said he “might” block raises due to cabinet political appointees on Saturday. Pence said he would not accept his. Deaths were reported in national parks kept open with reduced staffing levels. “We won’t be opening [government] until it’s solved,” Trump said at his press conference. “I don’t call it a shutdown. I call it doing what you have to do for the benefit and the safety of our country.”Katie Boulter, cool in every way but one on a day of killing heat, earned a second-round match in the first slam of the season against one of the most feared young players in tennis, Aryna Sabalenka, when she outlasted another formidable Russian, Ekaterina Makarova, in three sets. It took the 22-year-old Leicester prospect two hours and 24 minutes to win 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (10-6), but she got in a muddle at the end when she forgot the new match tie-break was in operation, celebrating three points too early. Sabalenka, the 11th seed, experienced no such drama in dismissing her compatriot, Anna Kalinskaya 6-1, 6-4 in a little over an hour. Her match against Boulter on Wednesday will at least be more comfortable, as the temperature is expected to fall from the opening day 35C. Boulter, who made the main draw on merit and is ranked 97 in the world, blushed when explaining how she began to celebrate after going 7-4 up in the final-set tie-break. “I was in the moment and I kind of forgot that it was first-to-10,” she said. “It’s very tough to turn around, to get back to work and find a way, because you’ve just released and you think you’ve won the match. I thought I did that really well and I am pretty proud of myself for digging deep. “The umpire actually said it at the end of six-all [in the set score]. I didn’t hear it because I was so focussed on myself and in the zone that I didn’t process it. “I had actually seen it a lot, over Twitter and stuff. But it’s so tough to say what’s going to go through your mind at that point, as it’s a new rule. I ended up getting the win. I probably would have been devastated had I not. A couple of people have mentioned in to me [via phone messages] and I can laugh it off now. At least I know the rule, so it definitely won’t happen again.” Wooopsy 😂🤦🏼‍♀️ https://t.co/07nKcgMJKx As high emotions swept over other corners of Melbourne Park, Boulter remained calm. Several times, she was under pressure and hit her way out of trouble with carefree disregard for the consequences, which she later described as, “my way”. She blew four break points in the seventh game of the third set, then had to save two in the next game to stay in the fight, but did not panic, trusting her shot-making to transfer the pressure back across the net. “I’ve focused really hard on just relaxing through the shot and trying to play my way instead of getting caught in someone else’s,” she said. “I think I did that really well. “My expectations were just to enjoy the moment. I put in so much hard work last year to get to this point that I just wanted to have fun out there and compete, and do the best that I could.” As for handling the stamina-draining heat, she said, “I’ve come a long way with that. I actually cramped last year. I just wanted to get through a match. I knew it was at a high-quality level and I was going to have to fight for it. I think I stayed pretty calmly, and my body held up really well.” It is early days in her journey but, having recently been signed by David Beckham’s promotional company, she would seem to be on the sponsors’ radar. If she were to shock Sabalenka, they would be well pleased. Elsewhere, British tears flowed. Poor Harriet Dart, who’d done well to qualify, found Maria Sharapova in unforgiving mood as they shared the honour of opening the tournament on Rod Laver Arena. The Russian, Dart’s childhood hero, showed no mercy in dismissing her with a rare double bagel. Dart, who arrived with a career-high ranking of 131, could not contain her tears when leaving the big stage a little over an hour after walking out to the biggest occasion of her young career. “It was a difficult match,” she said later. “She doesn’t really give you anything. She came out of the box quickly. The whole environment was different for me, coming from the smaller courts, but I carried myself well out there. There are many years in front of me.” A tearful Heather Watson was also devastated after claiming an unwanted piece of history as the first player to leave the tournament, when the 31st seed Petra Martic beat her 6-1, 6-2 on Court14. “I was feeling a bit anxious,” the former British No1 said. “I so wanted to do well. It was very hot out there. I’ve got to change something. I can’t continue like this, that’s for sure.” Also through are second seed and former champion, Angelique Kerber, who lost only four games against Polona Hercog and meets Brazilian qualifier Bernarda Pera in the second round. The German is in the same quarter as the former US Open champion, Sloane Stephens, who plays the unseeded Hungarian Timea Babos after taking just 67 minutes to beat her fellow-American Taylor Townsend.President Donald Trump opened his Oval Office address on 8 January with these words: “There is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.” In one respect, he’s right. There is a growing humanitarian crisis at the border, but not for lack of a border wall – the crisis is growing because of the Trump administration’s illegal and inhumane policies toward asylum seekers. As a law student enrolled in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, I spent the first week of the new year volunteering in Tijuana with an organization that provides legal services to asylum seekers. The organization, Al Otro Lado, serves individuals who hope to present themselves to US officials at the port of San Ysidro, the largest land border crossing in the United States. I use the word “hope” because the Trump administration has effectively prevented thousands of people – including many women and children – from exercising their legal right to apply for asylum by blocking their path to the port of entry itself. Under domestic and international law, any immigrant who arrives at a US port of entry has a right to apply for asylum. The process is not easy and involves multiple interviews to determine whether an individual meets the narrow, categorical definition of a “refugee” under US law. Many asylum seekers will languish in detention while awaiting their turn before an immigration judge, without any opportunity to collect evidence or consult an attorney. Most will have their applications denied. But everyone is entitled to this process. The government must allow families at the border to present themselves and claim asylum. Immigrants who arrive at the Mexican entrance to San Ysidro sign up for an informal waiting list and take a number. “La Lista” was developed and managed by Mexican immigration officials and others in response to the US government’s policy of allowing only a small number of people to present themselves each day. It is a primitive system, recorded by hand in a composition notebook and relayed only by word of mouth. The numbers are scratched on to tiny pieces of scrap paper, which migrants guard closely as they wait their turn. The wait can take weeks or even months. This system should not have to exist; the situation that US policies have created is patently illegal and unquestionably responsible for the growing humanitarian crisis at the southern border. I met dozens of families with young children who were living in shelters and tent cities, patiently waiting for their numbers to be read off La Lista. These families had no food, income, or access to basic needs like medical care. They expressed fear of street crime and the practical challenges of living without documentation. Those who could work had a disincentive to seeking employment in Tijuana, because any evidence of potential stability in Mexico might hurt their asylum cases in the United States. Moreover, the administration’s policy of punishing families by making them wait at the border fails to deter migrants, many of whom are fleeing violence and repression from hostile government actors. I advised some families not to approach the border at all. I tried to be realistic about the hardships they would face even after they successfully crossed on to US soil. I will never forget the looks of desperation on the faces of the men and women I counseled. Fathers told me they had to take the chance for their little girls. Rape victims told me they could not return home and face their attackers. They all told me they understood the risks. But what choice did they have? If President Trump is genuinely concerned with the growing humanitarian crisis at the border, he should take immediate action to permit asylum seekers to present themselves to immigration officials. The law is clear on the issue – immigrants have the right to apply for asylum at any port of entry and between ports of entry. What’s clearer is that his policies have had, and will continue to have, devastating effects on thousands of well-meaning families who have not even begun the long and difficult asylum process. Amanda Chuzi is a student at Columbia Law School and a former homeland security staffer in the US SenateThe name Claas Relotius recently joined those of Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair in the list of reporters whose deceptions massively harmed esteemed publications, and journalism more generally. Similarities in the cases offer lessons. Last December the prestigious German magazine Der Spiegel revealed the extent of the fraud of Relotius, one of its star writers. Disclosures continue, but it is already clear that large parts of his award-winning reporting were simply made up. Readers can wonder about the trust they are asked to extend to all journalism, especially the anonymously sourced kind Cooke’s fabrication in 1980 of a story of a child heroin addict led the Washington Post to return a Pulitzer prize. Blair’s deceptions during 2002-03 resulted in the New York Times appointing its first public editor, a role similar to readers’ editor. There are other less spectacular cases, and the Guardian is not immune. The Der Spiegel case is particularly harmful, in place and time, as Guardian correspondents noted: “In recent years, the anti-immigration group Pegida and elements of Alternative for Germany (AfD) have resurrected the Nazi-era slur of Lügenpresse (“lying press”) to denigrate mainstream journalism they claim does not represent the world as they see it.” The US ambassador to Germany was quick to allege an anti-American institutional bias, a charge Der Spiegel rejected while also publishing the ambassador’s letter. In cases such as this – that is, intentional fabrication as distinct from making errors or being misled by sources – trust suffers two blows. Readers can wonder about the trust they are asked to extend to all journalism, especially the anonymously sourced kind. And the trust that editors routinely and unavoidably place in reporters is shaken. All three cases share at least two similarities. Key editors were insufficiently wary of the precocious successes of Relotius, 33, Blair, 27, and Cooke, 25, while they were providing what editors were pleased to be receiving. Colleagues who had doubts were either hesitant to speak up or, when they did, were not listened to seriously enough. Insofar as lessons can be generalised from these episodes, they include: beware the temptation to loosen standard checks and balances; listen for unease among colleagues – discount for envy perhaps, but stay aware that whistleblowing is difficult inside any professional culture; break the story yourself – rebuilding trust is harder if others disclosed your problem, and the fact that you were aware of it; conduct an authentic investigation and publish the result; review systems, not just individuals; apologise, without overdoing it; follow up, well after the fuss has died down and after any recommended reforms have been implemented, to see what has changed and what has returned to the way it was. • Paul Chadwick is the Guardian’s readers’ editorEva Wiseman visits a traditional ‘wellness island’ reinvented for the 21st-century traveller What is a holiday for? Once, I would have confidently said: “For a break from work”, or if I was being paid by the word, “For reading bestsellers, in the sun, slightly drunk on local wine and weather, in a bikini and area of patchy phone reception, just bad enough that you have no choice but to fall behind on world news.” But it has become clear that the point of a holiday is a fluid and changeable thing, a thing that tells us much about our seasonal anxieties and spiritual ambitions. Consider for instance the inner workings of the period when a holiday was about “travel”, about journeying and exploring, broadening our minds through a long plane ride to somewhere hot. Or the focus on “eco-tourism”, where tourists were encouraged to believe they were saving the world by camping. Today, according to Lonely Planet, “wellness tourism” is the fastest-growing sector in travel, having seen a 10% rise last year to make it a market worth over $500bn. The Global Wellness Institute predicts that by 2020 it will rise to $800bn. Across the globe, retreats and resorts are opening or rebranding, whether it’s yurts in Cornwall or medical clinics in Greece, places to improve oneself, ideally while also getting a tan. And all because a holiday is never just a holiday. It is for this reason that I’m sweating on a six-seater plane with my family, juddering over the Adriatic and pretending to our four-year-old that everything is completely, totally fine. Until now, the island of Lošinj in Croatia has been accessible to many only via a five-hour road and ferry trip from Zagreb, so it’s remained a holiday destination for tourists driving from Hungary or Germany. But this year the scattered five-star hotels have started chartering these tiny, terrifying flights to bring a wealthier clientele from Russia and the UK, people attracted by its historic “wellness” credentials. In the late 1800s, after Croatian botanist Ambroz Haračić helped reforest this previously rocky port, the Austro-Hungarian government declared Lošinj a health resort. Today, having dusted off the title “wellness island”, Lošinj is welcoming a new influx of tourists visiting to enjoy air quality so pure (a combination of salt-spray from the sea, hundreds of thousands of Aleppo pines, and a unique geographical micro-climate) it’s been proven to improve lung health. That and the blue water, the heat, and its relative affordability. Typically, visitors have rented mobile homes or stayed on the campsites, all of which are metres from a stony beach, and most of which have their own massage facilities – health drills deep here, wellness is not just for the wealthy. But one draw of the newly renovated luxury hotels is the scale of their offerings, vast modern spas, air-conditioned to a gentle chill. We are greeted at the Bellevue, its midcentury furniture suggesting a dozen new ways to relax, with the coldest glasses of water I’ve ever tasted. The spa here stretches across the basement of the white 1960s hotel – one end is dark-walled and soothing, with colour therapy and steam rooms, the other clinical and spare, offering Botox and cryotherapy. After checking in I walk through the piped music of its hallway, be-robed and dazed – perhaps it’s the Lošinj air or perhaps the flight, but I feel almost medicated, floating. The island is only 21 miles long and just under three miles wide – a coastal path wraps around the bay of Čikat, and a guide walks us along it into a forest to pick herbs and plants, which we take back to the spa to blend and distil into a balm. It smells like the island, a rich green scent which follows us as we trot around the cove that evening to a fish restaurant, Konoba Cigale, where the proximity to Venice shows in the menu – they stuff their homemade pasta with seafood caught that morning. Again, that blissful feeling overwhelmed me as our daughter danced to the accordion player and my partner and I looked at each other over our Istrian wine with a sort of stunned disbelief at the glory of it all, at the possibility of a holiday that feels like the photos. Morning came with birdsong. But, a moment here to discuss the breakfast buffet. Too often, I think, hotel guests become jaded by the intense joy delivered to them daily – this, too, is a side-effect of the holiday experience. A couple of days in and you no longer marvel at the blueness of the sea or the blueness of the sky, or the crisp affordability of the local wine, or, in the case of Lošinj, the smell, that leafy smell of health and wellness. But if you are four years old and enjoying your first hotel, the breakfast buffet in a grand lobby is by far the most exciting element of any holiday, and remains so every time you emerge from the lift, into this oasis of omelettes and fruit. For the stressed and old, wellness is a simplifying of one’s polluted urban life; for children, it’s cake for breakfast. A freediver ferried us on a speedboat around the bay, stopping to show us secluded caves where we could swim, eventually pulling up to a restaurant on the shore of the tiny car-free island of Ilovik. On the way back, our daughter slept by the engine of the boat in a nest of towels. There was much we didn’t do. We didn’t visit the Museum of Apoxyomenos in the town of Mali Lošinj, which boasts a single exhibit – a Greek bronze statue of an athlete dating from the 1st century, found in the sea. We didn’t cycle into the forests, or see a dolphin, or stumble into the naturist colony. We did, however, eat ice cream in the island’s two fishing villages, Veli Lošinj and Mali Lošinj, and we did eat at the obscenely romantic Lanterna restaurant, in the shade of an old lighthouse, and we did take a taxi up to the Providenca at sunset, a viewpoint carved into a mountain top. And we did lie motionless on sunloungers with local aloe vera pulp smeared across our sunburned shoulders in the bloated afternoon sun. Though some wellness tourists expect to come home thinner, instead it felt as if we’d returned with a gorgeous weightlessness, the result of a week on this perfumed island with its daily catches and clear water. We braced once more on the tiny plane, our teeth rattling as we insisted, dry-mouthed, that the wings were meant to wobble like that. At home it took some time to rejoin our old commuting routines, our school runs, our doom. Some time to recover from the undiluted joy of a holiday like this, one that left us feeling… better.• A week’s half-board stay in the four-star Family Hotel Vespera costs from £708pp. A week’s half-board at the five-star Hotel Bellevue costs from £1,514pp, losinj-hotels.com. British Airways and Croatian Airlines fly to Zagreb. Silver Air has launched summer-only scheduled flights to Lošinj from Zagreb, Venice and Lugano, silverairtravels.com This year the “white town” of Vejer de la Frontera will see the return of a traditional hamam after an absence of several hundred years. Communal bathhouses were a common feature of Andalusian towns under Moorish rule. The Califa Hamam will combine a Roman-inspired caldarium, tepidarium and a frigidarium (hot, warm and cold baths) with a Moroccan steam room, massage room and a domed atrium where mint tea will be served. The company behind the new venture, the Califa Group, will also open a boutique hotel in Vejer’s medieval old town this spring. Plaza No 18 will have six stylish guest rooms set within a 19th-century merchant’s house with courtyard and roof terrace. Hotel and hamam packages will be available for a cosseting break.• Double rooms at Plaza No 18 from £179. Prices for the hamam have yet to be released, califavejer.com Fitness is the new rock’n’roll, if the recent proliferation of exercise-themed festivals is anything to go by – think Glastonbury with 5k runs instead of all-night raves. Something Wild is a family-friendly running festival in Dartmoor with scenic races and marathons for all ages and levels, forest school for children, yoga, wild swimming and live music (2-4 August, weekend tickets from £20pp). The Love Trails Running Festival on the Gower Peninsula (4-7 July, tickets from £62pp) takes a more hedonistic approach with pub-crawl runs and a line-up of bands alongside the race programme, campfire talks, wood-fired hot tubs and wellbeing workshops. At the Big Retreat in Pembrokeshire, you can choose from more than 200 fitness and wellbeing classes, plus creative workshops (24-27 May, early-bird adult weekend tickets with camping from £144). People have been coming to take the waters at Bad Ragaz for almost 800 years, ever since Benedictine monks first discovered the healing properties of the warm spring water. The Grand Resort Bad Ragaz is home to one of the leading medical spas in the world, but a night at the hotel here will set you back at least £300. However, you can bathe in those same mineral-rich waters for the less terrifying price of £22. The Tamina Therme is a contemporary public bathhouse which opened in the town nine years ago. Forget any negative notions of municipal baths: this place is stunning, with soaring ceilings, marble floors and mountain views. The entry price gives you access to various indoor and outdoor pools, whirlpools, steam baths and saunas and, for an additional fee, you can book treatments such as Haki – a relaxing cross between massage and yoga.• Entry to Tamina Therme costs from £22 for up to 2 hours (taminatherme.ch). A double room at the Hotel Garni Torkelbündte, a 500m walk from the Tamina Therme, costs from £76 per night, torkelbuendte.ch Soul & Surf, which has gained a devoted following for its laid-back yoga and surf holidays in Kerala and Sri Lanka, will open its first permanent European base in Portugal in April. Following a series of successful pop-up retreats in the Algarve, the British founders Ed and Sofie Templeton will set up shop in a rustic Iberian farmhouse on the outskirts of Lagos, a 40-minute drive from Faro. This stretch of coastline is known for its great surf conditions for all abilities. Families are welcome and the company will launch some kid-friendly breaks later this year. • A week’s retreat costs from £712pp full-board, based on two sharing, including surf tuition, yoga and meditation sessions. Three-night breaks start from £370pp (soulsandsurf.com) It would be hard to conjure up a more enchanting setting for a retreat than the village of Ulpotha, surrounded by jungle in central Sri Lanka, with a lotus-strewn freshwater lake for swimming. Despite its location and rustic accommodation – off-grid wattle-and-daub huts – its reputation attracts burned-out travellers from all over the world. Retreats run for a fortnight at a time for six months of the year (from November to March and June to August) with each one being led by a different yoga teacher.• Two-week programmes cost from £2,335pp including accommodation on a twin share basis, vegetarian meals, snacks, two yoga classes a day, a consultation with an Ayurveda doctor, a full day excursion per week, a massage per week (ulpotha.com) Hike Caribbean has launched two new “hike and swim” trips for 2019, combining challenging hikes with an open-water swim from Nevis to St Kitts. The group tours depart in March and will give participants the chance to summit the peaks of Nevis, Antigua and St Kitts. Tours will be timed to coincide with the annual 4km swim from Oualie Beach on Nevis to Cockleshell Beach on St Kitts on 31 March. It finishes with a breakfast party on the beach.• Prices start from £1,299pp for the seven-night Double Summit and Swim trip (departs 27 March). Includes accommodation, based on two sharing, transfers and inter-island flights (hikecaribbean.com) The White Isle has reinvented itself in recent years as a wellness destination, a canny move given that its original clubbing clientele have (mostly) grown up and are more interested in soaking in a hot tub than dancing on a podium. At the forefront of this reinvention are two of the island’s most iconic hotels. Atzaro – one of Ibiza’s best-loved agroturismos, whose celebrity fans include Kate Hudson and Rihanna – has upgraded its spa facilities as part of a major revamp and launched walking and cycling breaks for winter and spring. Packages include guided hikes or bike rides with a nature guide, foraging for medicinal wild herbs and access to spa, yoga and wellness classes. In the evenings, chill out in the brand new Scandi-inspired garden sauna pod, or in front of one of the hotel’s log fires. And for further proof that times are changing: Pikes, the party hotel where the video for Wham’s Club Tropicana was famously shot, will host its first-ever fitness retreat this spring. The Rockovery Retreat is being billed as an extravaganza of “fun, frolics and fitness”.• A three-night nature walking or biking package at Atzaro costs £595 (plus tax), based on two sharing a double room and B&B (atzaro.com). The three-night Rockovery Retreat at Pikes (12-15 May) costs £1,352pp, including accommodation, meals, fitness training, yoga, talks and workshops (pikesibiza.com) Mindfulness and environmental sustainability are the cornerstones of the Sharpham Trust, an educational charity based just outside Totnes in Devon. Most of the retreats are in the charity’s Grade I-listed Georgian mansion, or in a barn set in its grounds, but if you really want to make a connection with nature, opt for one of the Woodland retreats which include accommodation in bell tents. The days include guided meditations, sensory exercises and periods of silence, with evenings around the campfire. For something more active, the popular Walking Retreats feature daily guided walks through the countryside, along the Devon coast path or in the Trust’s Capability Brown-designed gardens.• A three-night Nature Connection retreat costs £335, with full-board camping, next retreat 25 July; a four-night Mindfulness and Walking Retreat costs from £385pp including single-occupancy accommodation in the mansion, 13 May (sharphamtrust.org) An estate in Tuscany, surrounded by lavender fields, vineyards and orchards is the new location for luxury retreat company in:spa. The family-run Locanda Cugnanello, which is 20 miles from Siena, features a luxurious villa alongside an 800-year-old farmhouse that blends rustic style with modern comforts. There are 12 comfortable guestrooms, a saltwater pool, outdoor sofas and a large hammock. Its rural location offers guests a peaceful retreat in which to detox and de-stress, with a combination of yoga and fitness classes, hikes, spa treatments and nutritional consultations. Also, new for this year, in:spa is offering guests the chance to sign up for a pre-retreat consultation with a health screening company who will check blood sugar, cardiovascular function and cholesterol levels and give recommendations on ways to improve health during the retreat. • A week-long retreat costs from £2,095pp, based on two sharing on an all-inclusive basis. Retreat dates are 4-11 May and 7-14 September. Pre-retreat health consultations cost £499 (inspa-retreats.com) Genevieve Fox defies her sons’ scepticism – and her own expectations – on a fitness retreat Ten days before my fitness bootcamp in Marbella, a friend came over and glanced at my fitness schedule, pinned to the fridge. “It says ‘hit’ here,” she said, “but with two i’s.” “Must be a typo,” I said. I hadn’t looked at it. Seven days before I was due to meet my fitness fate, my 17-year-old son also looked at the schedule. He promptly telephoned his older brother, who then rang me. “About this fitness thing,” he said, “I hear you’re doing something called ‘insanity’. Are you sure about all this?” My sons expressing concern for their unfit mother. I was touched. And secretly alarmed. From Thursday afternoon until Sunday lunchtime, a new world awaited: of beach runs and burpees, fasted HIIT and tabatas, circuits and squat jumps. I emailed James Davis, who runs 38°N – specialising in luxury fitness retreats in Marbella and Ibiza – with his wife Claire. “Am worried that I am too unfit to benefit from a weekend and that everyone else will be super-fit,” I wrote. I jumped through the rungs of a ladder on the sand, did star jumps – and wished I still had a pelvic floor “Please don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll do a fitness benchmark. From there, we adapt the training to the individual.” In case he was lying, and because I dreaded the public humiliation more than the heart attack, I did some emergency pre-training: two jogs with the dog, one on my own, and two cycling and running sessions in a gym. The day before departure, I emailed James again: “Am slightly dreading being so hideously unfit.” “Everyone is at their own level,” he replied, “on their own journey, and we’ll have a great time.” And I did. In the words of the late artist Louise Bourgeois: “I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful.” It really was. I did one form of high-intensity exercise after another, on the beach, on tarmac, in the gym. Just as Sisyphus pushed the rock up the mountain, so James and Claire pushed me on, and on. At 8am, for three mornings running, I did “Fasted HIIT: Metcon”. This translates as, skip breakfast, then do high intensity interval training and metabolic conditioning. I jumped through the rungs of a ladder on the sand, like footballers do; did star jumps and wished I had a pelvic floor; I saw, and swung, my first ever kettle bell, thrusting my hips outwards in what looked like a misguided mating call. I picked up two ropes thick enough to moor a tanker and tried, and failed, to wiggle them up and down. By Sunday morning, they were, if not ribbons in my hands, at least airborne. Two boxing sessions with James and I was hooked. I’ve since bought my own gloves and joined a boxing class. During the spin sessions, I slid off the saddle, swore volubly, sweated more, and felt like my legs were being ripped apart. But Claire got me through the pain barrier. She is dynamic, fun and magically motivating. I reported my triumphs, as well as the three-course lunches and sumptuous breakfast banquets overlooking the sea in this fabulous hotel, to the family. “I’m glad (and surprised) you’re still alive,” wrote my older son. I am surprised I’ve since joined a gym, go to this gym, and have signed up to a 38°N bespoke, 28-day HIIT home workout plan – short bouts of exercise won’t disrupt my day, so there’s a high chance I’ll do them, armed with my new, can-do mindset. I even fancy a 38°N pop-up fitness weekend in London later this year. I know I sound as if a cult has got me, but feeling energised is a revelation. Count me in.• 38°N’s Body: Reset Weekend at the Puente Romano Beach Resort and Spa, 7-10 March, costs £1,399pp based on two people sharing (thirtyeightdegreesnorth.com) Are babies and relaxation incompatible? Séamas O’Reilly finds out on a family spa break “Oh right… wow,” replied one pal, when we said we were doing a spa break with our four-month old. “Good for you,” they added, in the strained, halted speech you’d use if someone had announced their intention to eat the contents of a vacuum bag. Undeterred by such scepticism, we pledged to give it our all. The experience on offer seemed idyllic, two nights at a hotel and spa that catered specially to families, even babies. Taking a 90-minute train from Waterloo, we set out to do the unthinkable. “Not much nightlife around,” our cabbie said, just in case we’d come to Brockenhurst in search of an active local grime scene. “But families love coming here for the views.” On that point, he wasn’t wrong. Around 15 miles southwest of Southampton, New Park Manor Hotel & Spa is set within the decidedly toothsome environs of the New Forest, and we hadn’t been within its gates for 60 seconds before we sighted deer striding through the open park. The manor itself is a grand old house that dates, in some form or another, to the 11th century. Since then it’s been inhabited by lords, landowners and, at one point, Nell Gwyn, mistress of Charles II. It’s only been operating as a hotel since 1970, which rather dashed my fond imaginings of William the Conqueror towelling down in the sauna after a busy day of mutton and jousting. While our room was prepared, we took in one of the nearby forest trails and found the effect so calming it took us a minute to realise our son was similarly transfixed himself. Ordinarily more of a picking-up-spoons-and-throwing-them guy, the perpetual fall of orange-red leaves had placed him in a state of cherubic hypnosis. For two hours a day, we took in the luxuriously appointed spa while he was lavished with attention in the creche New Park Manor is part of the Luxury Family Hotels group, which specialises in providing plush but unfussy breaks for families, and we entered our room to find a cot, changing mat, baby swimming togs and a rubber duckie. Even better were the bright and colourful creche facilities, to which we delivered the boy for two hours on both days of our stay. Fears he would fret once we parted were, in the end, unfounded. One glance at his charming new handlers was enough to scrub us from his memory, allowing us to take in the luxuriously appointed spa while he was lavished with attention. Leaving the fickle brute to his new pals, we made our way to the spa for the pool, treatment rooms, sauna and sanarium. This last concept was previously unknown to me, and comprised a room that’s basically a sauna, but at a lower temperature and slightly increased humidity. I found it had a gloriously balmy effect on my weary joints and, better still, the information plaque which listed the difference between it and a sauna was slightly obscured from view, so I could inform everyone who came in like some kind of spa connoisseur. My wife and I both had deep-tissue massages, and were rendered pleasantly cross-eyed by Jeanette, who worked our tired muscles until our brains dissolved into warm goo. Upon collecting him from the creche, we took the boy for his first ever swim, an activity to which he took such an immediate and ecstatic liking, it might be the highlight of our entire trip. Better yet, the easy come and go of other families meant we never felt in anyone’s way, and made us think a stay here would be truly ideal for slightly older children, as both the spa and the upstairs nook filled with books and toys, are perfect diversions for curious and mobile kids. We ate in the restaurant both evenings. I particularly enjoyed the chowder and my wife nearly screamed at her menu, the first she’d read in a while where vegetarian was not synonymous with “you can have mushroom risotto or some leaves”. The restaurant even offered baby monitors in case our little Michael Phelps rose from his slumber. He did, on both evenings, but the process of jaunting upstairs to settle him was so pain-free, it made us reflect on the true success of what was a wonderful weekend. Holidaying with a baby isn’t about having the work done for you; it’s about providing the tools and environment to make that work more worth it than ever.• The Baby’s First Stay Away package costs from £469 for two nights, with dinner, including two 30-minute spa treatments, a two-hour creche session each day and welcome hamper (newparkmanorhotel.co.uk) Center Parcs is known for many things – the weatherproof “sub-tropical swimming paradise” and a mind-boggling array of child-pleasing activities – but it’s not necessarily the first place you’d head to in search of a zen-like state of relaxation. Which is a shame as its Aqua Sana spas are pretty good. The pick of the bunch is the spa at Center Parcs’ Sherwood Forest site, which recently underwent a multi-million pound overhaul, resulting in a grown-up Scandinavian-inspired space which has been designed to make the most of the woodland environment and boasts the world’s first “treetop sauna”. The spa at the Longleat Forest location will undergo a similar revamp this year.• Spa day packages start from £89pp and include access to the spa, with its heated outdoor pool and hot tubs, thermal suites and treetop sauna, plus lunch and refreshments. Overnight spa breaks with apartment accommodation cost from £169pp (aquasana.co.uk) If you want a dose of sunshine with your soul-searching, but don’t want to travel long-haul, Morocco provides an affordable alternative to the five-star Asian spa resorts. Just north of Agadir, near to the surfing village of Taghazout, Paradis Plage offers surf tuition, yoga classes and an impressive spa. Start your day with sun salutations in the beachfront yoga shala, before testing your surf skills on one of Morocco’s most famous breaks. Finish by unwinding in the spa with traditional Moroccan hamam treatments.• Health and Fitness Travel offers a three-night Body Break from £435pp, including a choice of fitness classes and spa treatments (healthandfitnesstravel.com) Founded by American chef, wellness coach and author Diana Stobo, the Retreat offers an intimate “home from home” experience, surrounded by jungle on a mist-wreathed mountainside. There are a handful of different healthy living programmes to choose from, but the most popular is the four or six-night Revive & Renew package, which includes daily yoga classes and nature hikes, a massage, healthy cooking classes and meals made with organic food grown on the hotel’s own farm. Accommodation is in charming casitas with balconies overlooking the lush Nicoya peninsula and guests have full access to the steam room, pool, gym and a spa that offers locally inspired treatments, such as a Costa Rican coffee scrub and fruit smoothie facials. • Health and Fitness Travel offers six nights at The Retreat from £1,600pp, based on two sharing on a fullboard basis (healthandfitnesstravel.com) A good night’s sleep is the 21st-century holy grail: elusive for many, but essential to our wellbeing. The Princesa Yaiza Suite Hotel Resort in Lanzarote claims to have the answer – magnesium. Research has shown that the mineral plays a key role in regulating melatonin levels, the hormone responsible for our sleep patterns. The five-star hotel’s Thalasso and Spa centre has recently launched a series of magnesium-based treatments for guests to help get their sleep cycle back on track. Sign up for a two or four-day SOS Sleep Kit programme that includes acupuncture or reflexology, a massage and magnesium body wrap and bath. • The two-night SOS Sleep Kit programme costs £225pp and the four-day programme £468pp. Rooms at Princesa Yaiza from £169 per night B&B (princesayaiza.com) Not everyone has the luxury of taking a week or more out of their life to indulge in a far-flung spa break or retreat. It was for this reason that pyschotherapist and author Danielle Marchant launched her Pause Retreats to give busy people a chance to step off the treadmill and take stock. In Danielle’s own words, the retreats “are not about finding answers, but about asking the right questions” and combine meditation, yoga and “sacred circle” rituals, with life coaching. Her one-day Instant Pause retreats take place in London and Somerset a couple of times a year. You can also opt for a two-and-a-half-day Wild Pause that includes camping in Cornwall and a five-day Deep Pause retreat which takes place in Cornwall and Bali once a year.• Instant Pause day workshops cost £129pp. The two-day Wild Pause in Cornwall costs £389pp (5-7 July) and the five-day Deep Pause in Cornwall costs £849pp (lifebydanielle.com) A breast cancer diagnosis in her 30s was the catalyst for Claire Maguire to retrain as a life coach and yoga instructor and to open up Split Farthing Hall, her Georgian home near Thirsk in North Yorkshire, to detox, yoga and emotional wellbeing retreats for women. As the name suggests, Raw Horizons retreats incorporate a diet of gourmet raw food, complimented by kundalini yoga, meditation and personal-growth workshops and exercises. Among the retreats on offer are weekend rejuvenating breaks, three-night juice detoxes and five-night life-coaching retreats. • A three-night Juice Detox and Holistic Retreat costs from £575pp, based on two sharing (rawhorizons.co.uk) If signing up for a full-blown yoga or wellness retreat feels a bit daunting (or expensive), Goa has no shortage of affordable, low-key places where daily yoga classes and ayurvedic treatments are available, but you’ll still have most of the day free for lounging on the beach, learning to surf or sightseeing. One such place is the charming Anahata, a rustic collection of thatched beach cottages set in a palm grove just behind Mandrem beach. Morning and sunset beach yoga sessions are available, as well as a choice of martial arts and mindfulness classes. Authentic ayurvedic massages are offered in a thatched cabana and the restaurant serves healthy, home-cooked food. • Retreats cost from £88. Anahata is closed from May to October during the monsoon (i-escape.com) Romy Fraser has been offering healthy living, nutrition and creative courses on her 200-acre organic farm in Devon for 10 years. The ever-popular Seasonal Nutrition weekends, led by chef and medicinal nutritionist Daphne Lambert, are all about harmonising your diet with the changing seasons, with lots of practical advice on using home-grown and foraged seasonal foods. The spring workshop will examine the relationship between soil and gut biodiversity, and will feature ingredients and recipes that support digestion. Communal meals are taken around the farmhouse table and accommodation can be booked in the on-site guesthouse. Other workshops include beekeeping, creative writing, herbal medicine and singing. • The Seasonal Nutrition weekends cost £395pp, including two nights’ accommodation, and take place four times a year. Non-residential courses cost £295 (trillfarm.co.uk) The Thai hotel group Anantara is a leader in the field when it comes to luxury spa hotels. Six years ago it launched Avani Hotels & Resorts – an affordable spin-off brand designed to appeal to younger travellers, which has gone from strength to strength. The latest opening is on Koh Samui, a sleek, contemporary seaside hideaway on the quiet side of the island, which offers gorgeous design and top-notch facilities at a fraction of the price of many luxury Asian spa hotels. As well as the spa and well-equipped gym, there are regular yoga and fitness classes, plus nature hikes and stand-up paddleboarding tuition. • Doubles from £131 per night, pool villas from £235 (avanihotels.com) Whether you’re looking to brush up on your golf or tennis game, perfect your swimming technique or simply get into a better fitness routine, the Algarve’s state-of-the-art sports and fitness centre will have something to suit. Work recently finished on the final phase of the Campus in Quinta do Lago, a high-performance training facility pitched at elite athletes and enthusiastic amateurs alike. Book some professional-level tuition on the tennis courts (Judy Murray runs a tennis camp here), sign up for one of the dozens of daily classes in the gym or exercise studios, from ballet to boxfit, or make a splash in the 25m outdoor pool. At the Bike Shed, you can rent a bike or book a guided cycling tour through the Ria Formosa Natural Park. Children’s classes and tuition are also available. The nearby Magnolia Hotel – a cool, contemporary retreat with motel-style rooms overlooking an outdoor pool – offers a free transfer service to the Campus.• Adult group tennis coaching £18 per session; fitness classes £18 (quintadolago.com). Double rooms at the Magnolia Hotel from £88 on a B&B basis (themagnoliahotelqdl.com) Since launching three years ago, Body Camp Ibiza has gained something of a cult following, attracting celebrity endorsements from the likes of Emma Willis, Donna Air, Caroline Flack and Mel C, for its blend of holistic wellbeing and fitness with a relaxed, Balearic vibe. This summer will see the opening of a permanent site in Mallorca, allowing the camps to operate year-round (Ibiza is March to September only). Like its sister camp, Body Camp Mallorca will offer a full timetable of exercise classes and activities, but there will be a slightly stronger emphasis on fitness and nutrition and, unlike Ibiza, guests will have the option of taking the afternoon off for relaxing by the pool, hiking, mountain biking or booking a spa treatment if they want some downtime. • Body Camp Mallorca opens on 3 May. A seven-night programme costs from £1,150pp based on four sharing. Three and four-night breaks are available from £600pp (thebodycamp.com) For a friendly and accessible introduction to meditation, the beginners’ weekends hosted by the Madhyamaka Buddhist Centre in the Yorkshire Wolds are hard to beat. Housed in a sprawling Georgian mansion, the retreats are aimed at all levels, with introductory talks on modern Buddhism. As well as the beginners’ courses, there are year-round Rest and Reflect weeks where you can drop into as many meditation classes you like or, if you just want some time out from the rat race, you can book a bed in a dorm or one of the single or double rooms on a B&B basis and soak up the peaceful atmosphere. Check the calendar for special workshops such as the Overcoming Stress Anxiety and Depression weekend (3-5 May).• Learn to Meditate weekends cost from £105pp, based on shared dormitory accommodation, including all meals and classes. The next one is 15-17 March. B&B from £40pp (madhyamaka.org) Circling six thalassotherapy pools gives Harriet Green the blissful relaxation she is after I push one toe into the murky-brown water. It’s hot, really hot, with a gloopy, oily consistency making it move strangely – less like water than a thick milkshake. Wading in, I find it is also ridiculously buoyant. Infused with magnesium salts, it’s three times denser than the Dead Sea. Why struggle to keep upright? I drop back and float. Blimey, it’s relaxing. I feel weightless, and spend the prescribed 10 minutes watching clouds drift overhead. I’m at the impressive Aquaforte spa, within Sardinia’s Forte Village. When the resort built its six thalassotherapy pools 25 years ago, it was something of a pioneer. The pools become successively cooler and less murky as guests progress through each 90-minute circuit. The second pool has a lower concentration of sea oil, plus anti-inflammatory aloe vera and mint. The third, is a sodium-rich pool with sea salt. The fourth is pure sea water with vigorous hydrojets. Pools five and six are the coldest – a refreshing 20C. They’re all in an idyllic setting surrounded by trees. “The term thalassotherapy comes from the Greek and means sea treatment,” says Dr Angelo Cerina, who created the spa in the 1990s. “It brings together a number of factors: climate, sun, wind, iodine-laden air, sand, muds and seaweed.” Each pool is designed for a different effect: buoyancy in the first pool is to help post-traumatic recovery, and the salt level promotes powerful draining effects. The full circuit is recommended for skin disorders, such as psoriasis, and joint problems – and for people like me for, simply, wonderful relaxation. When I’m wrapped in a fluffy robe, I sip herbal tea and read the tempting menu of body treatments (Note: it’s less relaxing if you shave your legs immediately before coming to the spa, because the salty water will sting like a thousand bees – but, happily, the sharp pain soon passes.) Forte Village is a giant beach resort 45 minutes from Cagliari airport, but arranged to feel small – intimate and exclusive. It has variety of room options in its eight hotels dotted around the lush gardens, from the bijou to palatial villas. During high season there are 21 restaurants (Sardinian, Mexican, Brazilian, pizza, gourmet…) Also, in high season, however, Forte Village is expensive, the shops packed with slick designer labels and restaurants run by celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsay. We went in October when it was blissfully – sometimes eerily – quiet. Perfect for a spa break, and much easier on the wallet, though quite a few of the hotels, restaurants and facilities were closed. I was knackered and needed time-out, but others come for the high-tech medical centre, offering expert sports medicine, nutrition advice and osteopathy. Indeed, Forte Village is quite a magnet for top-ranking tennis players. While I was there, many up-and-coming pros worked out in the gym and relaxed their muscles in the pools after matches. Professor Pier Francesco Parra, medical specialist to the Italian Davis Cup national team who has treated the likes of Novak Djokovic and Venus Williams, is on hand during key periods to sort out the bad backs of the tennis players – and normal guests alike. The 90-minute pool circuit is as active as I get during our short stay. When I’ve dried off and wrapped myself in a fluffy bathrobe, I relax in the spa’s beautiful reception, sipping herbal tea, and reading from the tempting menu of hands-on body treatments. Salt exfoliation, followed by Ayurvedic massage using warm Sardinian honey? Or a water-based massage while floating in pool three? I went for the first: wonderful. But the best thing about being at Forte Village is to visit those magic pools every day, wade into that murky-brown water, and repeat the restful circuit again and again. • Forte Village Resort, Sardinia (fortevillageresort.com) offers three nights from £689pp, half board including return flights from Stansted with EasyJet (available April, May, September and October). Spa packages can be arranged in advance or directly with the hotel. To book, visit citalia.com This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Marcelo Bielsa has admitted Leeds United have spied on every team they have faced this season. The manager, strongly criticised by Frank Lampard after it emerged Leeds sent someone to watch Derby’s training before the teams met last week, said what he had done was not illegal. The EFL is investigating Leeds’ conduct and Bielsa said: “I’m going to make it easier for the EFL investigation. I’m going to make it easier for them and I assume my behaviour is observed from the most extreme position. “I observed all the rivals we played against. We watched all the training sessions before we played them. “My goal is to make this easier for the investigation. By doing this I assume the possible sanctions by the authorities. I don’t want to compare my situation with previous similar incidents. “I don’t want to make it easier for me by attacking others. Regarding what I’ve done – it is not illegal. It’s not specified, described or restrained.” Bielsa added: “It’s not seen as a good thing, but it is not a violation of the law. Although not illegal it’s not necessarily the right thing to do. “The wrong things you do are not done with bad intention or an intention to cheat. If you observe something without authorisation we call it spying. I’m going to try and explain I did not have bad intentions. “I did not try to get an unfair sporting advantage. But I did it because it was not illegal or violating specific laws. “As Lampard says, he doesn’t believe I have bad intentions. He believes I violated the fair play spirit so I have to adapt to the rules and habits of English football.”You can vary the vegetables used in the filling for these tarts and replace the potatoes with roast pumpkin or even cooked okra (ladies’ fingers) or peas. Makes 12 x 8-10cm individual tartsFor the pastry doughplain flour 500g salt 1 tsp unsalted butter 250g egg yolk 1 water 125-250ml butter for greasingplain flour for dusting For the fillingcurry powder 1 tbsp single cream 1.5 litres dijon mustard 2 tbsp eggs 8 egg yolks 2 grated nutmeg a pinch salt ½ tsp ground black peppercheddar 250g, grated cauliflower 2-3 heads, broken into small florets, blanched and drained potatoes 500g, diced, boiled and drainedfresh coriander 1 bunch, coarsely chopped To make the pastry dough, sift the flour and salt into a bowl, add the butter and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fresh breadcrumbs. Make a well in the middle and add the egg yolk and 125ml water. Mix vigorously with a fork until almost all the flour is incorporated, then add a little more water and bring the dough together with your fingers, using as little water as possible. The dough should just come together naturally without force, and be soft but firm and not sticky. Shape into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Grease 12 x 8-10cm individual tart tins with butter. Roll out the dough to about 5mm thick on a lightly floured surface and cut 12 rounds to fit the prepared tart tins. Ease them into the tins and trim off any excess dough. Rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Line the pastry cases with foil or baking paper and fill with dried beans, baking beans or rice. Bake blind for 30-35 minutes, till the base is light, golden and dry. Remove from the oven, take out the weights and lining and let cool. Meanwhile, in a bowl, stir the curry powder into the cream, then beat in the mustard, eggs, egg yolks, nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Divide the cheese among the pastry cases, then add the cauliflower, potatoes and most of the coriander. Cover with the egg mixture and top with the remaining coriander. Bake for about 25 minutes, until firm and golden. Remove from the oven and serve immediately or let cool.From How To Boil An Egg by Fiona Strickland and Rose Carrarini (Phaidon Press, £22.95) I call this “English salad” because as a kid this is the only salad I knew. It was always on the table at home and all the ingredients were either grown in the allotment or greenhouse, or bought from the local greengrocer. The dressing was salad cream – never vinaigrette or mayonnaise. This is my version. Serves 4raw beetroot 4 malt vinegar 100ml eggs 4 large, at room temperaturecucumber 1 full-flavoured salad tomatoes 6 spring onions 1 bunch, trimmed and slicedradishes 1 bunch (or 2 bunches if they are small), halvedbutton mushrooms 6, finely slicedmustard and cress 1 punnet, freshly cutsea salt and freshly ground black pepper For the salad creamegg yolks 2 English mustard 2 tsp caster sugar 2 tsp lemon juice 2 tbsp light olive oil 100ml double cream 150ml To make the salad cream, put the egg yolks, mustard, sugar and lemon juice into a bowl and whisk for 1 minute. Gradually add the olive oil, drop by drop to begin with and then in a steady stream until it is all incorporated. Slowly whisk in the cream and season with salt to taste. Cover and refrigerate until required. the beetroot, put them into a pan with the malt vinegar, cover with water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 25-30 minutes until tender. In the meantime, bring a pan of water to the boil. Gently lower in the eggs and cook for 6 minutes. Remove the eggs from the pan and refresh in ice-cold water. Leave until cold, then peel away the shells. Once the beetroot are cooked, remove them from the pan and leave until cool enough to handle, then peel away the skin. Peel and slice the cucumber and place in a large bowl. Cut out the stalk end from the tomatoes and slice each one into 8 wedges. Add to the bowl along with the spring onions, radishes and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and toss gently to mix. Scatter the salad veg over a large serving platter. Cut the boiled eggs in half lengthways and arrange across the salad. Slice the beetroot and lay the slices on the salad. Add drizzles of salad cream and scatter over the mustard and cress. Serve the rest of the dressing separately for everyone to help themselves.From Nathan Outlaw’s Home Kitchen by Nathan Outlaw (Quadrille, £20) While living in Changsha I was lucky enough to meet one of the really great chefs of the older generation, Shi Yinxiang, then in his late 80s and still overseeing a restaurant bearing his name in the centre of town. Master Shi was born in 1917, the third generation of chefs in his family. He told me he had begun cooking at home at the age of 10, and five years later had started his apprenticeship under a famous chef who had worked in the household of a government official before opening his own restaurant in Changsha. There he learned the subtle arts of Hunanese haute cuisine, and by the 1950s he was working for the government, and in charge of the catering for the visits of national leaders, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi and Jiang Zemin. Shi became known for his brilliant and innovative cooking, and in the 1980s he published a comprehensive Hunanese cookery book that brought together his more than 50 years’ experience. He is an enchanting man, with a kindly manner and a face that creases up frequently into a beatific smile. He is still riding on a crest of glory as the man who managed to delight Chairman Mao with his cooking, and the first Hunanese chef to be awarded “special first-grade” status. The following recipe is a humble one, but it’s a soup that I ate at Master Shi’s restaurant as he told me about his life. The dried seaweed, which is sold in thin discs about 20cm in diameter, and looks black and frizzy before soaking, can be found in good Chinese supermarkets. Serves 2 as Western style starter, 4 as part of Chinese meal vegetarian stock 1 litre dried purple laver seaweed 1 disc (nori in Japanese)fresh ginger 20g, peeled and slivered salt and white pepperegg 1spring onion 1, green part only, finely sliced Heat the stock with the seaweed and ginger and simmer gently as the seaweed reconstitutes itself. Tease the tightly massed disc apart with a pair of chopsticks, so the seaweed drifts in strands in the liquid. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Beat the egg well. Turn the heat down to a minimum, drizzle in the egg into the soup in a thin spiralling stream across the surface. Then turn off the heat, cover the pan tightly and leave for a minute to allow the egg to set into little flakes or “flowers”. Serve immediately with a sprinkling of spring onion.From The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop (Ebury Press, £30) Eggs are the fall-back ingredient in every Indian household. I associate egg curry with monsoons in Calcutta, when the bazaar was closed due to flooding. The local delivery man would bring eggs to our home, cycling through the flooded streets. The egg curry made at home usually included potatoes to make the dish more substantial, though I have omitted them here. You can use any type of egg for this dish, even quail eggs. In India we leave the eggs whole, but you can halve them before returning them to the pan. Just be careful not to lose their yolks in the gravy. Serves 2medium eggs 4 vegetable oil 6 tbsp green cardamom pod 1 clove 1 Indian bay leaf 1 cumin seeds ½ tsp onions 2 medium, finely choppedgarlic paste 1 tsp fresh ginger paste 1 tbsp ground turmeric ½ tsp ground coriander 1 tbsp chilli powder ½ tsp natural (plain) yogurt 6 tbsp salt 1 tsp fresh herbs a handful, to garnish If you keep your eggs in the refrigerator, take them out 30 minutes before cooking to bring them to room temperature. Fill a large pan with water and bring to a rolling boil over a high heat. Lower the heat to a simmer, then place the eggs in the water and cook for 12 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the eggs from the pan and place in cold running water to prevent further cooking. When they’re cool enough to handle, shell the eggs. In a shallow saucepan, heat the oil over a medium-high heat. Add the hard-boiled eggs and cook until they are speckled all over with brown patches. Remove the eggs from the pan and set aside. To the remaining oil, add the cardamom, clove and bay leaf. Add the cumin seeds and cook, stirring, for a few seconds until the seeds darken. Add the chopped onions, garlic and ginger to the pan, cook for a further 5 minutes until the onion mixture has softened and coloured to a light brown. Continue to stir while cooking to prevent the onions from burning and sticking to the base of the pan. If the onion mixture does stick to the base of the pan, sprinkle over some water. Add the ground turmeric, coriander and chilli powder. Cook, stirring, for 10-20 seconds or until the “raw” smell of the turmeric has disappeared, taking care not to let the ground spices burn. Pour over 200ml cold water and increase the heat to high. Once any excess water has evaporated, lower the heat. To avoid any lumps in the sauce, stir the yogurt before adding it to the pan. Stir to mix evenly and then season with salt. Lastly, add the hard boiled eggs to the pan and allow to heat through. Before serving, scatter over plenty of fresh herbs.From Asma’s Indian Kitchen by Asma Khan (Pavilion Books, £20) Toasted, flaked almonds add a welcome note of crispness to the base of a cheesecake and lighten the crust. My feeling is that the base should be delicate and barely there, so I avoid pressing the crumbs into the cake tin too firmly, as it tends to compact the mixture. Serves 8For the crustflaked almonds 70gplain biscuits 150g, such as Nice or Mariebutter 65g For the mousseeggs 4 mediumcaster sugar 150glemons 2 largegelatine 5 sheets (9g)full-fat cream cheese 250gdouble cream 250mlrose petals a handful You will need a round 20-22cm cake tin with a removable base, lined on the base with a disc of baking parchment. In a dry, shallow pan, toast the flaked almonds until golden, then remove from the heat. Crush the biscuits to fine crumbs, either in a plastic freezer bag with a rolling pin, or using a food processor. Melt the butter, then add the crumbs and flaked almonds, and mix thoroughly. Transfer the mixture to the lined cake tin, pressing it in a thin layer over the base. Chill for an hour. Separate the eggs. Put the whites in a large mixing bowl. Beat the yolks and sugar together using an electric mixer with a whisk attachment until thick and pale. Grate the lemons finely, then add the zest to the yolk mix. Juice the lemons – you will need 125ml. Soak the gelatine in a bowl of cool water. Warm the lemon juice in a small saucepan and remove from the heat. Lift the softened gelatine from the water (it should be a soft, quivery mass, only just solid enough to pick up) and drop it into the warm juice. Stir until it is dissolved. Add the cream cheese to the yolk-and-sugar mixture, beating until completely smooth, then add the lemon juice and gelatine. Whip the cream until it’s thick enough to sit in soft waves (not quite thick enough to stand in stiff peaks), then fold gently into the mixture. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold them in carefully and thoroughly. Pour the mixture into the chilled cake tin (it should come almost to the top), then cover tightly with clingfilm and chill overnight. (Make sure you don’t have anything garlicky in the fridge – mousse-type dishes will pick up the scent overnight.) The next day, run a warm palette knife around the edge of the cake to release it from the edges, then remove it carefully from the tin. Decorate with the rose petals. Note that the cake is wobbly and fragile, so keep it chilled until you intend to serve it, and use a cake slice to serve it.Nigel Slater is the Observer’s food writer OFM’s 20 best egg recipes part 3 launches tomorrow morningEngland left the field on a sunkissed evening frustrated and aware that the series could be decided here in Antigua. On a surprisingly spicy surface upon which the tourists had been dismissed for 187, they had bowled 21 overs and the West Indies openers were still intact. The bat had been beaten frequently, especially when the recalled Stuart Broad was bowling, but no edges were forthcoming as Kraigg Brathwaite and John Campbell nobly eked their way to 30 without loss. So West Indies had the better of a captivating day during which batting was always a trial. But for fine efforts by two of England’s more mercurial cricketers, Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali, the situation could have been far worse. Bairstow hit a sparky 52 in the morning, Moeen a vital 60 in the afternoon to keep England afloat. The wonderful thing about Moeen is you never know how he’s going. In Barbados he registered his first pair in Test cricket and it was not a good one. A hoick against Shannon Gabriel and a slap against Roston Chase sent him back to the pavilion, hapless and runless. When Moeen strolled out to the middle in Antigua straight after lunch with England on 78 for 5 there may have been the odd stifled groan among English supporters. Given his recent struggles would not Ben Foakes be a better bet to stabilize a sinking ship? Well, Foakes played in a manner to justify that thought but Moeen remained alongside him long enough to avoid further humiliation in conditions far more testing for batsmen than in Barbados. Moeen did not suddenly produce a flawless knock. His first defensive shot lacked any foot movement – perhaps he was expecting another bouncer as he managed little more than a twitch of the knees before sticking his bat more or less in the right place. A pushed drive for two gave him his first runs of the series but the next scoring shot was a miscued pull, which ballooned unconvincingly on the leg side; there were a few slices between or over the slip cordon. But in between there were silky drives, straight and square on the offside, punctuated by a few defensive strokes of much greater conviction. His runs may have come as a surprise although we have become accustomed to the notion that every Moeen innings is an adventure into the unknown; the force may be with him or it may be in another country. No one, including himself, one suspects, can tell. The usual rules of being in or out of form do not seem to apply to him. There were other surprises here. The mower was left in the shed and the pitch was greener than expected, which prompted Jason Holder to bowl first, just as he did in 2018 when Bangladesh were bowled out for 43 within 19 overs on the first morning. The ball misbehaved. There was extravagant bounce, which can be a problem. However, it is uneven bounce that undermines batsmen the most and there was a bit of that as well. Batting was obviously going to be a challenge. So this was a tricky time to make a debut for Joe Denly, one of four Josephs in the match, which might be a record. Denly looked on as Rory Burns edged a fine delivery from Kemar Roach to Holder at second slip. Then before scoring he just survived an lbw shout by virtue of an umpire’s call. A dabbed single got him off the mark but he will not remember his dismissal to Alzarri Joseph’s first ball with any fondness. The delivery was very wide and Denly just managed to reach it. Soon Joe Root received a snorter from Joseph that reared from a length. From the bat handle the ball ballooned high above the slip cordon. Diving backwards, Campbell parried the ball, whereupon Shai Hope, running around from second slip, took off to complete a spectacular catch. Bairstow responded superbly to an impending crisis. He left the ball well; more obviously he struck it superbly when it was in his arc and this prompted the West Indies’ pacemen to lose their length against him. At one point he struck five fours off Holder and Joseph in eight balls. Bairstow may not like the idea of batting at three for England that much but he looks as well equipped to do so as anyone else at the moment. One stroke, a drive off Holder, was stunning; it went for six over wide mid-off. But for Bairstow England’s total might have resembled that of Bangladesh last year. By lunch he had a half-century out of 78 for four since Jos Buttler, caught at second slip off Holder, had not been able to accompany him for long. However, Bairstow could not kick on after the break when he was immediately lbw to a full-length delivery from Roach. Ben Stokes sparred with Gabriel with bat and tongue. The tone of their conversation did not appear to be very angelic and the umpires began to intervene but then there was a little glove punch between the two of them and peace was restored. Gabriel had the last word (unspoken) when Stokes edged to the keeper. There followed the only substantial stand of the day – 85 – before Moeen somehow lobbed a catch to mid-on off Roach. It was inevitably an odd-looking dismissal but perhaps the ball had misbehaved. Meanwhile Foakes had been impressively busy. Once he had been bowled for 35 off his right hand when attempting to hook Gabriel the innings subsided rapidly, Roach finishing with four for 30. That hand was badly bruised in the process so Bairstow came out with the gloves on, a move that may not have required much persuasion.YouTube has banned creators from depicting “dangerous challenges and pranks”, after a wave of incidents prompted by a viral challenge involving driving blindfolded pushed it to act. The so-called Bird Box challenge, inspired by the Netflix film of the same name, saw YouTubers imitating scenes from the movie in which characters must perform common tasks while blindfolded. A culture of one-upmanship meant that rapidly progressed to online celebrities such as Jake Paul walking through traffic and driving their cars while unable to see, leading to a Utah teenager crashing her car into oncoming traffic repeating the stunt. Bird Box Challenge while driving...predictable result. This happened on Monday as a result of the driver covering her eyes while driving on Layton Parkway. Luckily no injuries. pic.twitter.com/4DvYzrmDA2 YouTube has banned the depiction of such behaviour completely, citing similar memes such as the Tide Pod challenge (eating laundry detergent) and the fire challenge (setting yourself on fire). Challenges “that can cause death and/or have caused death in some instances have no place on YouTube”, the company said. YouTube is also banning pranks that while physically harmless, may cause serious distress. “We don’t allow pranks that make victims believe they’re in serious physical danger – for example, a home invasion prank or a drive-by shooting prank,” it said. “We also don’t allow pranks that cause children to experience severe emotional distress, meaning something so bad that it could leave the child traumatised for life.” In July, YouTube banned one couple whose videos had been regularly criticised by viewers for depicting behaviour some felt was tantamount to child abuse. Michael and Heather Martin, who posted videos to the site under the name FamilyOFive, had previously posted videos that drew concern from their audience. In one, Michael instructed his children to slap his daughter in the face; in another, Michael sprayed disappearing ink on the floor of his son’s bedroom, before calling him in and scolding him for it. As the son broke down in tears, Martin revealed the joke, telling him it was “just a prank”. Despite the concerns, however, the Martins were only banned from the site after they were convicted for child neglect and sentenced to five years’ probation. Even then, the ban only arrived nine months after the conviction. Users who violate the rules will not be penalised too harshly, however. A violation will mean the video being removed, and a “strike” being handed to the account. Creators who receive a strike are limited in what they can do for 90 days, but then all privileges will be restored if they do not receive a second strike in that time. YouTube also tightened rules on creators who violate its guidelines outside of videos, announcing a policy under which it will apply strikes to users who “egregiously” violate rules in video thumbnails, or links to external content. More wholesome pranks and challenges remain welcome on the site, YouTube said, citing examples “like Jimmy Kimmel’s terrible Christmas presents prank or the water bottle flip challenge”. The viral spread of such challenges remains a big deal for YouTube: the original, and still the most famous, challenge to hit YouTube, the ice bucket challenge, racked up a total of 1bn views in just over a month back in 2014, as ever bigger celebrities jumped on board to support the charitable aims of the challenge, and soak up some reflected goodwill.Porridge helps my brain work. I used to be force-fed it by my mother and I thought: “This is the most boring breakfast in the world. Who wants to eat this stuff?” But there’s no doubt it sets you straight for the day. It’s like a little warm caress in the belly. As you get older, loss becomes such a big part of life. I lost [stylist] Judy Blame, one of my closest friends, early last year. He was a living legend. But after Judy died I thought, I need to take care of myself. Your blood is beautiful. I went to see a blood doctor in Ibiza who analyses your blood microscopically. You watch it on a screen. It looked incredible, all these blue blood cells. I had two incidents that manifested as breakdowns. I was disconnected with what was happening to me hormonally, and how it was affecting me psychologically. I thought I was going crazy. My counsellor said: “You are aware you’re in your menopause?” I was going through this departure from being a fertile woman to this other space where my kids were leaving home. It left me confused and empty. Losing your parents is a pretty surreal thing. My father’s only been gone a couple of months, but he had Alzheimer’s, so in a way he was gone before he died. It’s taken me years to find a more spiritual edge to my mother not being around – to feel her presence in me. I feel privileged to have, for instance, my heritage, growing up with an African, European and American mix. I love being a grandma. I’m called “mormor”, the Swedish word for grandma. The other day we went to visit my mormor in Stockholm, my mum’s mum, who’s 95. Four generations of us were there. She has dementia, so it was difficult trying to explain whose mormor was who. Finding myself a pop star [with Buffalo Stance in 1988] was a shock. You’re now part of a public awareness. But we just got on with it. I know that sounds a bit drab, but that was the truth. I had my tribe, and we just ran with it. We thought, let’s do this as long as it lasts. Tyson is the most famous bump in pop [Cherry’s daughter, with whom she was pregnant when she appeared on Top of the Pops]. A little legend. On Portobello Road recently a guy came up and said, “Hi, remember me?” I told the person I was with: “That was the guy who stole my Grammy.” It was Milli Vanilli – they won it fraudulently, so I might go and try and get it back. Cam [McVey] and I have been married for 28 years. We’re partners, companions, lovers. When we met, it felt like we’d been looking for each other. As much as we drive each other crazy sometimes, that click makes for something really great. Broken Politics is out now. Neneh Cherry plays Leeds University Union (12 February), Manchester Albert Hall (13 February) and London Roundhouse (14 February)The eyes bulged, the fists pumped and Michael van Gerwen’s lips pursed as he let out a booming whoop. The Dutchman celebrated his third PDC World Championship title like a pantomime giant stomping on to the stage, as he brought this seasonal festival of darts to a fittingly colourful close. Van Gerwen beat Michael Smith 7-3 in the best-of-13-sets final that, outside those who numbered among the raucous crowd here, is unlikely to be remembered as a classic. It was a contest characterised more by errors than good play and, bar a mid-match rally from the “Bully Boy” Smith, it was short of tension too. But MVG did not mind. He not only cemented his place as the world’s No1 player but also pocketed £500,000, the biggest prize money in darts. “This is the best feeling you can have,” Van Gerwen said on collecting his hefty trophy. “I have worked for this so long and everyone knows I’ve had a difficult year. I’ve played good but I haven’t performed as well as I could have done – so to win this trophy it’s phenomenal. This means a lot to me.” “I think I played well through the game. I didn’t play phenomenal but I think the way I played my experience helped me. I knew Mike was a little nervous and I used that against him. I did the right things at the right moments and he didn’t. It was messy for me but what more do you want? It was my third world title.” Smith, for his part, was phlegmatic in defeat. “It will annoy me now for the next few hours but I made the final. There were 96 players here and tonight there were only two left and I got beat by the world No1. Putting the losing to one side I know I will do everything I can to come back next week. “I tried everything to turn it around, I went backstage and hit a wall. I think I broke my hand. I was trying just that little bit too hard but Michael had a job to do and he has done it. He didn’t really do much, to be honest, but this one loss won’t define the rest of my life.” The finalists took to the stage on a shorter walk-up than recent years but it was long enough for the crowd to show their preferences. Van Gerwen, dressed in his trademark Shrek green was roundly booed by the punters, while Smith was cheered as he raised his hands to give a heart-shaped salute from the stage. If the Dutchman was cast as the villain, it was all just part of the show. They were singing his name by the end, to the tune of Seven Nation Army. Besides, it fits his on-stage persona, aggressive in his celebrations and likely to get furious with himself should he throw a bad set of sticks. MVG set off at a romp, tearing through the first leg with a 129 checkout that caught the breath. Immediately the pressure was evident on the face of the 28-year-old Smith, who was making his first appearance in a final. But the Dutchman then missed opportunities to close out in both the second and the fourth legs, and a trend that would characterise the match was emerging. The Dutchman held on to claim the first set and then won the next two with something to spare. Smith was failing to reach anything like his form from earlier in the tournament, seemingly both over-complicating his strategy in each game and also not giving himself enough time to compose himself between throws. Having a crowd of 3,000 people whooping every time he hit a treble may not have helped in that regard. Neither would having had the soundbite “future world champion” looped on the PA system before the match. Smith said there was “nothing psychological” about his bad play, adding “there’s nothing going on inside my head, just one brain cell looking for another”. For all the self-deprecation, though, Smith will be smarting as, by the time Van Gerwen had romped to a four-set lead, he finally started to play. With MVG leading off in the fifth set, Smith broke in the fifth leg with a checkout of 124; treble 20, treble 14, and double 11. It was perhaps the best finish of the match – and all the more impressive given the darts Smith had thrown to that point. The “Bully Boy” went on to sweep the sixth set and the eighth was in the balance too, but with two chances to win the final and perhaps match-turning leg, Smith could not close out and Van Gerwen took a 6-2 lead. The wobbles were not over and MVG struggled to drag himself over the line, playing awfully in the fifth leg of the ninth set to allow Smith the chance to get another score on the board. But by this point both men knew the jig was up. The final set was the match in microcosm; Van Gerwen breaking to win the first leg, cruising to the second, blowing the third and then, in the fourth, spurning chances to kill the match. Finally, with his 14th dart, Van Gerwen found double 16 and the celebrations could begin.All-time highest minimum temperatures have been broken in three places as a heatwave sets in across much of Australia, threatening more record hot days. Meekatharra in Western Australia and Fowlers Gap and White Cliffs in New South Wales all registered an overnight minimum of 33C on Monday. Severe to extreme heatwave conditions extending from the interior of WA across South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, the ACT and NSW will bring maximum temperatures of 8C to 12C above average, and in some places up to 16C above average before the end of the week. From Tuesday through to Friday, parts of South Australia, Victoria and NSW may break January heat records, with daytime maximums extending up to the mid-40s. “It’s quite a significant heatwave because we are expecting a number of records to fall across those areas for both minimum and maximum temperatures,” said Dean Sgarbossa, a senior meteorologist with the Bureau of Meteorology. South Australia is forecast to have three days of severe to extreme heat, with Tarcoola in the central part of the state expecting a top of 48C on Tuesday and Wednesday. In Adelaide, where the heat is affecting cycling’s Tour Down Under, temperatures were likely to reach 41C later on Tuesday and 40C on Wednesday. In Victoria, severe to extreme heatwave conditions were forecast through to Friday and several locations across the state’s north were expected to reach or exceed maximum January temperature records. Rutherglen, Yarrawonga, Echuca, Shepparton and Mildura were all expected to reach 46C later on Tuesday. In Melbourne, where the Australian Open is under way, coastal breezes are keeping the heat to the low and mid-30s, after reaching 37C on Monday. However, the city’s outer suburbs will see temperatures into the 40s over the next couple of days. The ACT is expecting three days in a row of maximum temperatures above 40C from Wednesday, and NSW will bear the brunt of the heatwave later in the week when a large area of extreme heat conditions hits densely populated areas. “The entirety of the state of NSW will experience severe heatwave conditions for the majority of this week,” Sgarbossa said. Several areas across western NSW are expecting temperatures above 45C from Tuesday and all the way through to the weekend. The Bom said that while the heat in coastal areas in the east of the state was tempered by sea breezes, high humidity would make the days ahead feel hotter than the temperature suggested. Sydney was forecast to reach 30C on Tuesday, 32C on Wednesday and 34C by Friday, before a cool change. But some western suburbs would exceed 40C for much of the week. “What’s going to be unique about NSW is overnight temperatures will be unusually warm across large areas of inland NSW, with some locations in the far west staying above 30C,” Sgarbossa said. Much of the country had elevated fire danger ratings on Tuesday and that is expected to continue through the week. The Bom is forecasting a cooler change to start moving across through much of the heatwave-affected area from Friday.The relentless involvement of betting companies in football has drawn a generation of young men into strongly associating their support for the game with gambling, leading to “dire consequences” for many, a study has found. The explosion in marketing and sponsorship since the last Labour government deregulated gambling in 2005, combined with the ease of online betting via smartphones, has resulted in the “gamblification” of watching football, according to research conducted by Dr Darragh McGee of the University of Bath. McGee spent two years working closely with two groups of football supporters aged 18-35 in Bristol and Derry, recording their gambling habits in depth, in a research project funded by the British Academy. His findings, shared exclusively with the Guardian, include some of the young men telling him they can no longer watch a football match unless they have multiple bets; commonly they have up to 25 accounts with online gambling companies, and their football conversations with mates are all about betting, rather than the game. Participants said the gambling companies’ marketing is extremely effective, particularly the offers of “free” bets, and that their losses did not feel like real money because they are placed so casually on a phone and no longer involve going to a bookmaker’s shop. One told McGee the “buzz” of gambling is “up there with sex and drugs and rock’n’roll”, saying: “And I think because of that, gambling is the worst addiction of the lot.” That participant, a 31-year-old father of two in Derry, ultimately disclosed to McGee he had turned to drug dealing for a period to try to recoup money saved for a family holiday, which he had lost gambling. The participant told McGee he had 40 accounts with online betting companies and cannot watch matches, except the odd Premier League game, without betting. This includes in-play bets on the number of corners, throw-ins or yellow cards. He said he was “in debt to my eyeballs” on high-interest payday loans taken out to cover gambling losses, and his credit was “blacklisted to the max”. Gambling promises a route to wealth, social capital and masculine affirmation yet most end up in a cycle of indebtedness He said that gambling “took over my life for a while” and he has deep regrets about having neglected his baby daughter, because he would “sit on the laptop, continuous gambling for the day” when looking after her. He told McGee he had lost two friends to suicide, one directly attributed to gambling debts. Derry, like other areas of Northern Ireland, has some of the highest suicide rates in Britain. As McGee came to know the groups, he found the intensity of the online gambling culture in football has had catastrophic impacts on many of the participants. “Far from being the knowledge-based, risk-free activity it is marketed as, the profound appeal of online sports gambling has had dire consequences for many young men,” McGee has concluded, in research which is complete and due to be published academically next year. “The study documented the unfolding stories of several young men whose everyday lives are punctuated by deepening social and financial precarity, high-interest payday loans and bank debt, mortgage defaults, family breakdown, and mental health struggles. “In particular, for young men who find themselves deprived of viable routes to employment opportunities, gambling promises an alternative route to wealth, social capital and masculine affirmation, yet most end up ensnared in a cycle of indebtedness.” McGee shared his findings after the major online betting companies represented by the Remote Gambling Association announced they would voluntarily stop “whistle-to-whistle” television advertising during the broadcasting of live sport, except for horse racing. That measure was proposed by the Labour party as part of a reform package including a 1% levy – 10 times the current 0.1% levy – to fund research and treatment for gambling addiction. McGee welcomes the proposed whistle-to-whistle advertising ban as “a step in the right direction” but said: “A generation of young people already view gambling as a normalised part of sport. Turning the tide will require stronger state regulation and a genuine commitment to redistributing a greater slice of the losses incurred by British gamblers to education and treatment for problem gambling. Educating the next generation about the dangers will be key.” The betting companies have such huge “visibility” via ubiquitous sport sponsorship, marketing and advertising, and have had a free hand for so long, that the voluntary ban is unlikely to limit the amounts being gambled. The participants in his research said that once they were signed up to betting accounts and apps, the constant prompts during matches, and marketing offers, particularly offers of “free” or matched bets, were powerful encouragements to gamble. A total of £14.4bn was lost by people betting in the UK from April 2017 to March 2018, according to figures produced by the Gambling Commission, an increase from £13.8bn the previous year. Of that total, £5.3bn was lost gambling online, a 12.8% increase on the previous year. Online betting companies have targeted football in an industrialised way, paying for sponsorship and advertising, including in football-related media – the Guardian accepts such advertising – at a time when revenues from other advertisers are diminishing. This season, nine out of the 20 Premier League clubs have a gambling company as their main shirt sponsor, and as many as 17 out of the 24 Championship clubs. SkyBet sponsors the Football League and its three divisions, and is promoted by Sky during sports TV coverage. Major betting companies based in the UK, offshore and in overseas countries, particularly Asia, also sponsor billboards around pitches, which are prominent during broadcasts. Research by Goldsmiths University last year found gambling logos or branding were on screen for between 71% and 89% of Match of the Day programmes, even though the BBC does not carry actual advertising. McGee’s work with younger fans has led him to conclude that the marketing has “hooked” a generation into “an accelerated sports culture in which the casual staking of money is an essential accompaniment to watching the game”. He says “a new generation of sports fans view gambling as vital to their enjoyment of sport”. One of the participants, a 27-year-old living in Derry, told him: “As much as I enjoy it, gambling has ruined sport now, because you can’t watch it without thinking: ‘I should put a fiver on first goal.’ You can’t just enjoy it for what it is. It has completely taken over. All my mates can’t watch it without having a bet any more. It has ruined sport. “When I think back to when I was younger, I couldn’t wait to get home from school to see Man United playing in the Champions League on a Tuesday. It was the highlight of your week. I’d spend all day thinking about the game, and come 7pm I’d be sat glued to the TV waiting for the Champions League music to come on. “Now, I’m sat there thinking about what I should be betting on, or asking the boys who the smart money’s on tonight. At times, I end up betting against United just to make it interesting! I can’t remember the last time I just watched the game like a real fan, without having a bet on it.”As its name suggests, the polar vortex is found around the north pole. It’s a band of strong winds, high up in the atmosphere that keeps bitterly cold air locked around the Arctic region. This circulation isn’t considered a single storm, or even a weather pattern as such. Occasionally, the vortex can become distorted and meander far further south than normal. The phenomenon became widely known to Americans during a particularly frigid spell in 2014, when the media first started using the term “polar vortex”. It was also a factor in the “bomb cyclone” that battered the US east coast last year. This time, the polar vortex has broken in two, bringing the coldest conditions in decades to the midwest US. On Wednesday, Chicago was 10 degrees F colder than Antarctica. “At the moment the vortex looks like two swirling blobs of cold air, one settled over North America, the other over Eurasia,” said Jennifer Francis, the senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. “It splits up when there is sudden stratospheric warming.” Studies have pointed to a recent increase in instances where the polar vortex has bulged down into heavily populated areas. Scientists are gaining a better understanding of why this is happening, with many identifying climate change as an influence. There’s some evidence that the jet stream, a meandering air current that flows over North America and Europe, is slowing and becoming wavier as the planet warms. The jet stream interacts with the polar vortex, helping bring numbing temperatures further south. Scientists also point to a complex sequence of events involving sea ice, which is rapidly diminishing in the Arctic. As the ice retreats, summertime heat is absorbed by the dark ocean that lies underneath. This heat is released into the atmosphere during winter, spurring winds that can disrupt the polar vortex. “We aren’t entirely there yet but there’s more and more support for this concept,” said Francis. “It’s a new and developing hot research topic.” Well, Donald Trump certainly thinks so. “In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes,” the US president tweeted on Monday. “What the hell is going on with Global Waming (sic)? Please come back fast, we need you!” Scientists were quick to point out climate change’s role in allowing Arctic air to flow south, as well as to remind the president that winters still exist. A localized, albeit large, cold snap isn’t representative of the rest of the planet, as Australians currently sweltering in searing record heat of more than 46C (114F) will be well aware of. The past four years have been the hottest on record for the globe. In the US, record-breaking high temperatures are outnumbering record lows by a ratio of two to one. Research suggests this ratio will expand to 16 heat records for every cold record set if the US warms by 3C (5.4F) this century, which is likely unless greenhouse gases are severely curtailed. Trump’s repeated tweets mocking climate science when the temperature drops are “ridiculous, in a word”, said Francis. “He cares not to understand. It’s the only explanation.”“Everything I did in life, until now, was just for tennis. Nothing else mattered. That’s why it became too much, maybe. That’s why I suffered,” Simona Halep says intently on a midwinter afternoon in Bucharest. We sit in a corner of a restaurant where the clinking of cutlery provides a refined backdrop to the raw immediacy of a rare interview with the world No 1. There is snow on the ground outside but only warmth from Halep. Beyond her burning intensity she smiles with relief. “There is no pressure now. I feel lighter. I feel better. I wouldn’t have been this relaxed if I hadn’t won the French Open. A big weight is off my shoulders.” The 27-year-old has avoided opening up before because, apart from her shy and private nature, she was consumed by a fixation that was finally quenched in Paris last summer when winning her first grand slam. Halep can now offer insight into her life in Bucharest. We meet at 9am and she chats cheerfully while we are driven to an indoor court on the outskirts of the city. I watch her practise for the Australian Open, which begins next week in the contrasting furnace of Melbourne, where Halep suffered so much last year. On the way to lunch, with Halep drained after playing hard for two hours, she finds pleasure in the simple fact she spent her first Christmas at home in 10 years. “I dedicated myself 100%, so many years,” Halep says. “Now I’ve won a grand slam and I start to enjoy life more. I like to go out, make friendships. I’m more open. Before I won the French I was very focused.” Halep now appears the opposite of a one-dimensional obsessive. Instead, as she reflects on the dedication needed to reach her goals, she talks expansively about physical trauma, psychological barriers, the role of her former coach Darren Cahill and the sweetness of victory. Cahill will spend most of this year with his family in Australia and so Halep is currently without a coach. This unusual situation adds to the fascination as to whether, while returning from a back injury and exhaustion after her momentous 2018, she can become an even better player. “I have the experience and that’s why I decided to be alone for four months without a coach. I want to feel relaxed. I had a lot of pressure [last] year, from Romania, from the people around me, because everyone was talking about the grand slam title. It’s just a sport but for me it was everything. That’s why I suffered a little.” Halep’s psychological resolve has been tested but at last year’s Australian Open she was subjected to a physical battering that meant she was taken to hospital after her draining three-set defeat in the final against Caroline Wozniacki. The entire tournament had been an ordeal. “I have never played such a tough tournament and I hope I will not have to again,” she says. “It was a disaster. My mum was scared and she said I must never do that again because it was too much. It was a warning.” She had twisted her ankle badly in the first round but struggled on to win that match and the next one before facing Lauren Davis. They played for three hours 45 minutes in searing heat, costing Davis some of her toenails, before Halep won 15-13 in the final set. “That was amazing,” Halep says. “She played so well and had three match points. But I think I had more desire to win. That match meant a lot because mentally I was strong. I could stay so many hours on court.” Winning the French Open was the best moment I ever had. I was crying because it was huge. Halep survived another epic in the semi-finals, saving two match points and beating Angelique Kerber 9-7 in the third set, where “it felt like every point was 20 rallies because she’s a very big fighter. I was proud of that tournament. I was not even upset after I lost to Caroline in the final. I gave everything. But there was no more energy at the end. “After the final, we finished with the press around 10pm and they took me to doping control. At 2am I left because I couldn’t [produce a urine sample] as I was dehydrated. They took my blood. At the hotel I started shaking and they got me to hospital. My mother was worried and said if she was in my place she would stop and just enjoy life. It was really bad for three months. I was exhausted and couldn’t recover totally. But I am proud I played at my limit.” Just over four months later, in Paris, she was tested mentally rather than just physically. A fourth successive defeat in a major final would have felt ruinous – especially as Halep had lost the French Open the previous year when a set and 3-0 up in the final against Jelena Ostapenko. “I have the courage to say I lost that final,” she says. “She won it in the end because she was great and when you are young you just play. I lost it because I couldn’t handle the emotions. For the next three months, I cannot use the word ‘depressed’ because it’s too much, but I was sad for a long time.” In the 2018 French Open final, Halep was a set and 2-0 down to an inspired Sloane Stephens. “I didn’t expect her to play so well on clay so I thought everything will be lost again,” she says. “I said I have to try something so I was more aggressive. I went to the net three times in one game, which I never do. I won the game and I had the confidence because I thought about the year before when I was leading and lost it. I really believed then.” Halep’s face lights up as she remembers how 20 years of grinding work had finally given her the ultimate happiness she craved on court. “Everything I had dreamed was real in that moment. All the people I love were there and when I lift the trophy, and the national song is played, it was the best moment I ever had. I was crying because it was huge. Maybe it will be my best moment as an athlete. But let’s see. Maybe the future will give me even more.” That future is made intriguing by Halep’s decision not to replace Cahill immediately. In explaining how much he helped her overcome mentally, Halep suggests her personal challenge is shared by many Romanians. “People here don’t believe in themselves much. We are very talented but we don’t have confidence. I was lucky. Darren is Australian and totally different. He pushed me to be positive. I changed a lot.” Cahill took drastic action in March 2017 when, after she lost in Miami to Johanna Konta, he walked out because Halep was too negative. “I was shocked,” Halep says. “Darren was really upset. He said that if I don’t want to change it means I don’t want to be the best. After a few days I started to work with a psychologist. This lady [Alexis Castorri] helped me understand myself and to work on my weaknesses. Darren was really proud and so we started to work together again because he really thought I want to be the best.” Can she succeed without a coach? “No, I need to find a coach. At this level it is impossible to go alone.” Will she and Cahill be reunited? “I don’t know. I can say I hope so because he’s a great person and that matters the most.” Halep is as brave as she is honest and, in addressing all she gave up for tennis, she explains how she chose to undergo breast reduction surgery when she was 18. Did she feel scared? “No,” she says. “My family was scared. I was not scared because I knew I have to do it for tennis. My dream was just to be the best. So I was laughing when I went to the doctor. Afterwards, I was so much lighter and all my back problems were gone. So it was the best decision. I was dedicated 100% and did everything for tennis.” Her rise is remarkable because, apart from her Romanian background giving her few advantages, Halep’s character was perhaps not one of a typical sportsperson. “Sometimes I was crying that I don’t want to go on the court because I was too shy,” she says. “I was very introverted. I am still an introvert.” Halep smiles when I say she has been confident and revealing in this interview. “I am open now. I improved a lot and I can be more natural.” She has begun to support young Romanian players hoping to make it on the pro circuit. “I received a lot from tennis so it’s good to help others because it’s very difficult. Many talented kids get lost because they don’t have the money. Tennis is an expensive sport in Romania.” Halep also supports a girls’ ice hockey team. “I am paying for everything they need – equipment, coaches, some tournaments outside of Romania. They started to beat the boys so it’s good. Sometimes I go see them for the energy and to get motivated.” She is also motivated by her own “new goals. A new way. Of course I’m not like some players who won 10 or even 20 grand slams. But coming from Constanta [her home city], from nowhere, and becoming the best, is pretty huge for a Romanian, and for me as a person. “Now I would love to be better in Fed Cup, to dream of the title, and the Olympics in 2020. I also want to win a grand slam again, to finish No 1 again. But I won’t put pressure on myself. I will have few more years of tennis and then I want to improve in other ways. In 10 years I would love to have three kids, a beautiful family and be out of tennis – knowing I gave it everything.”Kamala Harris, the barrier-breaking California senator and the state’s former attorney general, has officially launched her presidential campaign for 2020, jumping into an increasingly diverse Democratic field so far dominated by a new generation of women and minority candidates. Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, launched her campaign for the White House on Monday – America’s Martin Luther King Jr Day holiday – in an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America. “Let’s do this, together. Let’s claim our future. For ourselves, for our children, and for our country,” Harris , 54, said in a campaign video that was released to coincide with her appearance on the morning television show. I'm running for president. Let's do this together. Join us: https://t.co/9KwgFlgZHA pic.twitter.com/otf2ez7t1p The first-term senator portrayed herself as a fighter for justice, decency and equality in the video. “They’re the values we as Americans cherish, and they’re all on the line now,” Harris says. “The future of our country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values.” She will formally launch her campaign on Sunday at a rally in Oakland, California, the city where she was born and where she began her career as a prosector in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Harris’s announcement follows the high-profile entrances of her fellow senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York as well as Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and former housing secretary Juilán Castro. She may also face competition from several other senate colleagues who are also weighing presidential bids in a primary race that has no frontrunner, including Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The former vice-president Joe Biden, the former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg are also considering runs. So too are home-state politicians including Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, and the California congressman Eric Swalwell. In the run-up to her campaign launch, Harris traveled the country on a book tour that she used as an opportunity to introduce herself – beginning with how to pronounce her name. “It’s ‘comma’ then add a ‘la’,” she told an audience in Washington, explaining that it means lotus in sanskrit. Harris will likely use that mnemonic trick again as she campaigns around the country. A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 54% of a Democratic primary voters were unsure of, or had never heard, of Harris. In the book, she casts herself as a perfect fit for this political moment. She has a compelling biography that often draws comparisons to Barack Obama mixed with a record – and plenty of viral material – of standing up to Trump on the issues that most inflamed the liberal base, from the travel ban to the Daca program for young undocumented immigrants to the Kavanaugh supreme court nomination. Harris began her career as a deputy district attorney in Alameda county, California, before becoming district attorney of San Francisco, where she focused on crime prevention. In 2010, she narrowly beat her Republican opponent to become California’s attorney general. Six years later she was easily elected to the Senate, where she became the second black woman ever to serve in the chamber. Republicans welcomed Harris to the race on Monday, by calling her “unqualified and out-of-touch”. “Kamala Harris is arguably the least vetted Democrat running for president,” Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens said in a statement, adding: “All she has to show for her brief time in the Senate is a radically liberal voting record.” Since arriving in the Senate in 2016, Harris has built a reputation for bringing a prosecutorial style of questioning to hearings with Trump nominees. In a combative exchange with the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, he said her rushed questions were making him “nervous”. While the skills she honed in the courtroom have served her well in the Senate – and helped to elevate her to the forefront of the anti-Trump resistance movement – progressives have lingering and serious questions about her career as California’s “top cop”. A recent op-ed published in the New York Times by University of San Francisco law professor, Lara Bazelon, accuses the senator of having been “often on the wrong side of history” when she served as the state’s attorney general. She pointed to her support of an initiative that threatened the parents of habitually truant elementary school children with jail time. She also defended a prosecutor who falsified testimony, only relenting after the case attracted national attention. Harris has highlighted other aspects of her record. She touts Back on Track, a program instituted while she was the DA in San Francisco, which allowed first-time nonviolent drug offenders a chance to have their charges dismissed if they completed vocational training. And in her book she recounts a “shouting match” she had over the phone with the JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon during the foreclosure crisis: “I took off my earrings (the Oakland in me) and picked up the receiver.” It’s an anecdote certain to draw wild applause from anti-Wall Street liberals on the stump. During the 2018 midterm elections, Harris campaigned on behalf of several women and minority candidates. She is aligned with many of her colleagues and the other contenders on policy, including her support for Medicare-for-All-style healthcare. And like several of the early entrants, Harris has vowed not to accept donations from corporate political-action committees, a pledge that is gaining traction among Democratic voters. With relatively minor policy differences among the potential Democratic contenders, the party’s months-long primary is likely to revolve around questions of identity, electoral strategy and style as as much as ideology. Voters will choose who they believe is best suited to take on Trump and who can appeal to the party’s many constituencies, which include white rural voters, young people, college-educated women and people of color.At a time when France is facing street protests about social injustice, a comedy about homeless women in the north is being tipped as one of the funniest and most moving films of the year. Les Invisibles, which opened in French cinemas on Wednesday, tells the story of women sleeping rough in northern France as a social work centre is threatened with closure. Many the main characters are played by former homeless women who are not professional actors. Adolpha van Meerhaeghe, 70, who plays one of the homeless characters, used to sleep rough outside Lille station and served time in prison for the manslaughter of her violent husband before writing a book about her story. She said her “big mouth” served her well on the streets and helped with her acting. “It’s hard to sleep outside and keep your personality. Humour kept me alive.” The film – in which the homeless women adopt pseudonyms like “Lady Di” and “Brigitte Macron” (the French president’s wife) – was feted at the Angoulême film festival last year as an ode to “the modern women of the resistance” – those on the streets and the female social workers helping them. Several other French festivals have given the film awards. The director, Louis-Julien Petit, known for his earlier film Discount, about supermarket workers in the former Nord-Pas-de-Calais, spent a year volunteering in women’s homeless shelters in Grenoble and Paris, saying he wanted to get the tone of the film right. “I had a lot of preconceived ideas but when I was in the shelters, what I found was people who were just like me,” he said. Corinne Masiero, a French actor who plays a social worker, said the film worked because of its “mix of humour and seriousness”, which meant the audience did not look down on the women but saw them as equals. “The viewer realises anyone could end up in that situation themselves,” she said. She revealed that in her teens and early 20s she had also slept rough as she struggled with addictions. Masiero, who once ran for municipal elections for the leftwing party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), told Le Parisien she was a supporter of the ongoing gilets jaunes anti-government protest movement and had demonstrated several times. “How can you respect a system that hands privileges to people who are already ultra-privileged?” she said. Audrey Lamy, another actor, said the film “brings women who are in the shadows into the light without judging them. The laughter makes you think.”The far-right Spanish political party Vox has agreed to support a new, rightwing Andalucían regional government after dropping its demands for the expulsion of 52,000 “illegal immigrants” and the repeal of laws on domestic violence and gender equality. Vox, which secured its first parliamentary seats in December’s Andalucían election, had also called for Spain’s autonomous regional governments to surrender the responsibilities for education, health and public order that they were handed after the end of the Franco dictatorship. But on Wednesday evening the far-right party said it would support a coalition between the conservative People’s party (PP) and the centre-right Citizens party that is intended to end 36 years of Socialist party rule in the southern Spanish region. Although Vox had described its 19 proposals as “very reasonable”, they were dismissed by the PP as “unacceptable nonsense”. One senior party member suggested: “Vox aren’t all there.” In a joint statement, the PP and Vox said the new regional government, led by the PP’s Juanma Moreno, would focus on “creating proper jobs” and fighting corruption. Vox was formed by disgruntled PP members five years ago and made a major breakthrough in December’s regional election, winning 12 seats with 11% of the vote and becoming the first far-right party to win representation since Spain returned to democracy after Francisco Franco’s death. Also among its 19 proposals were laws to “protect” bullfighting, flamenco and Holy Week celebrations, and a request that Andalucía’s regional day be changed to commemorate the 1492 conclusion of the Christian reconquest of Spain seven centuries after the first Moorish armies arrived. Its leader, Santiago Abascal, has raged against what he calls “supremacist feminism and gender totalitarianism”, and the party has complained that existing domestic violence laws are unfairly weighted against men. Vox’s rise has pushed the PP, led by Pablo Casado, further to the right. While it has abandoned its more radical demands in Andalucía, the upstart party has now further revealed its ability to shape the political debate and win symbolic concessions from the mainstream right. The EU and the French government both expressed concerns this week over the rhetoric and manoeuvrings since December’s election. The European commission’s chief spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, declined to comment on the formation of the regional government, but said: “For us, fundamental rights, parity, and equality between men and women remain an absolute political priority.” France’s minister for European affairs, Nathalie Loiseau, was more explicit. Although France’s governing party, La République En Marche, is aligned with the Citizens party, Loiseau warned against striking any deals with Vox. “As a member of a government and a party … that defeated the far-right to win a general election, you’ll understand why I say that there can be no deals with the far-right,” she told the Spanish radio network Cadena Ser on Tuesday. “I’ve listened to the initial statement from Vox representatives, saying they want to set back women’s rights. They are very worrying and I think everything possible must be done to fight this extremism.” The socialist government of Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said it regretted what it termed “the radicalisation of the PP and Citizens following their deal with the far-right”. It took particular aim at the latter party, accusing it of of failing to heed the warnings of other European parties, adding: “Citizens has made Vox a principal actor in the government of the people of Andalucía. In the face of this drift towards sexism and xenophobia, the government of Pedro Sánchez will focus on improving the present and preparing Spain for the future – even if others insist on looking back towards the past.” Women’s rights groups across Spain are planning action over the coming weeks to safeguard existing legislation and to protest against Vox’s demands.Andy Murray, who won two of his three slams with searing back pain but is limping now on one good leg at 31, will get no favours from a resurgent Roberto Bautista Agut in the first round of the Australian Open, which starts on Monday. It was a markedly different Murray who won their three previous meetings, and the Spaniard, seeded 22, is coming off an impressive treble in Doha against Stan Wawrinka, the world No 1 Novak Djokovic, then Thomas Berdych to win the final. A couple of hours after a dispiriting practice session against Djokovic, Murray drew one of many difficult long-shots in the tournament. This is shaping as a tournament of serious upsets, with so many quality players outside the seedings. If Murray should survive against the artful Agut, it does not get easier. Lurking to stop his run to the semi-finals are the rising Russian Karen Khachanov, the defending champion, Roger Federer, and Murray’s in-form compatriot, Cameron Norrie. Federer plays Denis Istomin first up, then might face Norrie, who beat Taylor Fritz on Thursday to reach the semi-finals in Auckland (where he grew up), and meets the young American again in the first round here. Murray has played some of the best tennis of his career in 12 visits to Melbourne, although he has been cursed to meet Djokovic in four finals and Federer in the fifth. Could this be his farewell to one of his favourite battlegrounds? The signs are not encouraging. Earlier, on a warm afternoon in front of several thousand fans on Margaret Court Arena, Murray looked decidedly uncomfortable and off the pace in a truncated workout with Djokovic (who has drawn a qualifier in the third quarter). He held serve just once as the Serb – still reaching for his best tennis in a slow start to the season – won 10 of the 12 games contested before their allotted time ran out. Practice often can mislead, because nobody wants to red-line so close to the real thing. Then again, Murray will be concerned that his rhythm and movement were poor again. He was aware that a solid hit against a career rival against whom he has won 11 of their 36 matches would deliver him worthwhile intelligence about his chances of being competitive at this tournament, and that did not happen. Ever the realist, Murray will wonder if he still has the weapons. He played well enough against the Australian outsider James Duckworth in the first round in Brisbane last week, before his level fell sharply against Daniil Medvedev, the languidly powerful world No 16 who hit him off the court. Medvedev, like Djokovic, hit flat and hard. The locker room that never sleeps will have taken note. Murray’s second serve also looks short of penetrating – and that has been a point of vulnerability for him even when fit in recent seasons. Federer, meanwhile, was relaxed and upbeat about reaching for his 100th career title – and 21st slam. “Ninety-nine is an incredible number,” he said. “I could live with that. But I’m so close. I’ll give it a go.” The 37-year-old Swiss, seeded three here, added: “My goal was always to play as long as possible. I have reminded myself that this was my dream. I’m surprised that I’m still at this level, able to be in the top 10. I think it’s a good thing that not so many players are retiring at 30.” Kyle Edmund, who reached his first slam semi-final here a year ago, is in the same quarter as Rafael Nadal and is troubled by a knee injury. He pulled out of the Sydney lead-up tournament and will do well to get past Thomas Berdych, who has rediscovered some of his early-career form.Fernandinho has questioned Liverpool’s ability to deal with the pressure of being Premier League leaders after Manchester City’s 2-1 defeat of Jürgen Klopp’s side. City’s first win over their title rivals in five attempts reduced the gap at the top to four points with 17 matches remaining. Fernandinho, who was among City’s finest performers at the Etihad Stadium on Thursday, said: “Four points is going to be interesting for the rest of the season for both teams. They are still leaders and they have a lot of games to play as well. It is not easy to stay at the top because the pressure is so high. You have to win every game, so we will see what happens in the end.” The midfielder pointed to the manner of the victory, in which Leroy Sané scored the winner after Roberto Firmino had cancelled out Sergio Agüero’s opener. “I am so glad because the team started so well,” he said. “At the beginning of the second half we suffered a little bit and after that, even when they had the ball in possession, we defended so well, we didn’t concede many chances. “This is the best way to play. Whoever wants to be champions has to be able to attack and defend. I think all the big games are like this [tense]. You cannot blink. You get punished, so you have to be careful all the time and everyone who was involved had the same feeling. We had to play our football and try to defend as well as we did, not concede goals. “We had a chance to show our quality after a couple of bad results [defeats to Leicester City and Crystal Palace]. We’re back on track and on winning ways. “The team has been playing good games and this is the most important for us. If you play bad you can win the games, but you have to play good and get the three points. It was a nice game for everybody and of course for the fans. They were so excited, and I am happy for them.” Of Sunday’s visit of Rotherham United in the FA Cup third round he added: “We try to play the same intensity as always. Some teams come to Etihad and don’t want to play with the ball like Liverpool did, so we won’t have to defend like we did. But with the ball we try to play with the same intensity always. We try to find the spaces to create the chances and arrive in the box. When we play games like this we have to try and recover the ball as fast as possible.”Sweden’s parliament has voted to give the Social Democrat leader, Stefan Löfven, a second term in office at the head of a new centre-left minority government, ending more than four months of deadlock following an inconclusive election. The caretaker prime minister will take office on Monday, governing in a coalition with the Green party and with the parliamentary backing of the Centre and Liberal parties, formerly members of the four-party centre-right opposition Alliance. The 9 September election produced a hung parliament, with the centre-right and centre-left blocs that have dominated Swedish politics for decades each securing about 40% of the vote and separated by a single seat, heralding months of complex coalition talks. Neither bloc was easily able to form a new government without in some way involving the third-biggest party, the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, with whom all other parties have refused to cooperate at national level. “More and more governments are becoming reliant on parties with an anti-democratic agenda,” Löfven said after winning the vote in parliament. “But in Sweden we stand up for democracy, for equality. Sweden has chosen a different path.” Both he and the centre-right leader, Ulf Kristersson, had tried unsuccessfully since the vote to forge potential ruling alliances in parliament. Only two more attempts were allowed before a snap election was due on 23 January. Löfven’s second attempt was approved because although only 115 MPs voted in favour and 153 against, with 77 abstentions, there was no majority against him. Under Swedish law, prime ministers can govern as long as a majority in parliamentary do not actively vote against them. The former welder and trade union leader succeeded in peeling the Centre and Liberal parties away from their centre-right bloc by offering major concessions, promising notably to cut taxes, reform the rental housing market and relax Sweden’s strict employment laws. While that allowed him to finally form a government, it will be one of Sweden’s weakest in living memory. Just 33% of voters cast their ballots for the two coalition parties, and with the Centre and Liberal parties the new administration holds 167 seats, eight short of a majority in the 349-seat Riksdag. If the former communists of the Left party, who like the Centre and Liberal parties abstained in Thursday’s vote, decide the government is swinging too far to the right and vote against it, the opposition – the Sweden Democrats plus the two remaining centre-right parties, the Moderates and Christian Democrats – would have a majority. “The constellation that has chosen this prime minister is only united by one thing: a democratically dubious desire to exclude other parties from influence – not to let their votes count,” said Kristersson, the Moderate party leader The Sweden Democrats leader, Jimmie Åkesson, who had hoped for more from the elections after his party won a record 17.5% of the vote, described the outcome of the talks as absurd. “My ambition now is that the Sweden Democrats will be a dominating force in a new strong centre-right opposition,” he said.A prototype of the world’s longest aircraft, the Airlander 10, will not be rebuilt and engineers are set to “rethink the skies” with a production-ready model. Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), the Bedford-based company that created Airlander 10, has already received Civil Aviation Authority(CAA) approval, and it is hoped the airship will take to the skies by the early 2020s. “Our focus is now entirely on bringing the first batch of production-standard, type-certified Airlander 10 aircraft into service with customers,” said Stephen McGlennan, the company’s chief executive. “The prototype served its purpose as the world’s first full-sized hybrid aircraft, providing us with the data we needed to move forward from prototype to production-standard. As a result, we do not plan to fly the prototype aircraft again.” The Airlander 10 prototype undertook six test flights, some of which ended in chaos, but the company stressed it was their decision not to rebuild the aircraft, saying it had done its job, successfully completed final testing and gathered an immense amount of data in the process. The Airlander 10 crashed in 2016 on its second test flight after a successful 30-minute maiden voyage. The company tweeted at the time: “Airlander sustained damage on landing during today’s flight. No damage was sustained mid-air or as a result of a telegraph pole as reported. “We’re debriefing following the second test flight this morning. All crew are safe and well and there are no injuries”. Another mishap befell the 92-metre-long (302ft), 44-metre-wide craft in 2017 when a woman was taken to hospital after its hull automatically deflated when the vessel came loose from its moorings. “While this incident and its effect are disappointing they do not take away from the fact that the company is now better positioned than ever to deliver production standard aircraft to its global markets,” a statement on Companies House said. The event prompted HAV to abandon plans to use the prototype as a “test article and sales demonstrator”. The company subsequently made a £32m insurance claim, which it told shareholders was the “maximum insured value”. The insurers agreed to pay £20m to the company after the prototype aircraft suffered “very significant damage”. “In the new circumstance in which the company finds itself the board determined that it was in the best interests of shareholders for the insurance proceeds to be directed at moving the company and Airlander towards production,” the statement continued. “Instead we move ahead with a big job – eight years after the initial build of the prototype, we are now identifying our critical supplier partners, getting ready to design all the details that make the difference between a prototype and a product, and finalising the product certification plans,” McGlennan said in a statement on Sunday. “Many people ask me this question – when will Airlander be flying again? My answer is this – look for many, many Airlanders flying again, ready to be delivered to customers and used around the world.” The company, founded in 2007, added it was in a “strong position to launch production” of the new aircraft, with the design already approved by the European Aviation Safety Agency. It said that it usually takes more than a year to prepare a facility for a CAA production organisation approval audit, but the Airlander Technology Centre was audit-ready within six months. The aircraft, which can take off and land from almost any flat surface, reached heights of 7,000ft and speeds of up to 50 knots during its final tests. It could be used for a variety of functions, including surveillance, communications, transporting freight, delivering aid and passenger travel, according to HAV. The original £25m model was developed as a surveillance aircraft for the US army, and its first flight took place in 2012 before the programme was cancelled in 2013. HAV then reacquired it, reassembling the part-plane, part-airship and its four diesel engine-driven propellers at RAF Cardington, Bedfordshire, where it was modified for civilian use.Geraldine Chacón, a 24-year-old lawyer from Caracas, went four months without seeing the sun while a prisoner in the Helicoide, the feared hillside prison complex administered by Venezuela’s secret police, where she was denied access to sunlight, water and food. “The guards told me I was a political prisoner, and for that I don’t get anything,” said Chacón, speaking by phone from Caracas, where she is on conditional release. “Without seeing the sun, you lose a sense of time, you don’t know if it’s day or night – it’s horrible.” Chacón’s crime was to be a human rights defender in Venezuela. Her role as the director of Community Ambassadors – a foundation which provides legal training for disadvantaged youth – put her in the crosshairs of the security forces, who have been systematic in weeding out perceived dissent. She had previously founded Amnesty International’s youth movement in Venezuela while at university. One of her colleagues, Gregory Hinds, was also arrested and held in the Helicoide compound for months at the same time. Others from Community Ambassadors have fled the country. Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, presides over the economic and social collapse of a country that was once the envy of Latin America. Hyperinflation is expected to reach 1 million per cent by the end of the year, rendering cash worthless. Shelves in supermarkets are often bare, while basic medicines are in short supply. About 3 million Venezuelans have fled, putting strain on neighbouring countries. In response, Maduro has denied the humanitarian crisis exists and stamped out dissent, locking up those accused of criticizing his regime – often without due process. In last year’s bout of nationwide protests, 165 people were killed and 15,000 were injured. More than 4,500 were arrested. “It’s a dangerous time for human rights defenders in Venezuela,” Chacón said. “It isn’t just opposition leaders that are targeted – I’ve never been attached to a political party.” Chacón’s nightmare began one night in February, when uniformed officers from the Bolivarian national intelligence service, Sebin, showed up at the house she shares with her mother. “It was 2am and I was in my pyjamas,” she said. “They said they only wanted to ask me a few questions, so I went with them.” Chacón didn’t see her mother again for four months. She was driven to the Helicoide, a sprawling pyramid of concrete and glass sitting atop a hill, where she was booked into the system. Eventually, she was brought before a judge who read a list of charges – including conspiracy and public incitement to commit crimes – before sentencing her. She was then moved to a cell she shared with 26 women, who slept on camping mattresses on the floor. In the sweltering Caracas heat, one of the worst things to endure was the lack of water, she said. “There was no drinking water, no running water of any kind. You can imagine how difficult that can be for 27 women sharing a cell.” Chacón’s mother would send 15 litres a week to her in prison – her only source of water. Two months into her sentence, a judge ordered Chacón and Hinds’ release but the ruling was ignored. A protest broke out inside the jail: detainees barricaded a section of cellblocks, calling on the Catholic church to mediate negotiations, and demanding freedom for political prisoners with release orders. Chacón was eventually given a conditional release in June but is forbidden to leave Venezuela, and could be rearrested at any time. Every month she reports to the same Caracas courtroom where she was first tried. “It’s a trauma every time I walk in there,” she said. “I’m still a prisoner.” Her case is hardly unique. Official statistics do not exist but watchdogs say that thousands of activists have been arbitrarily detained in conditions similar to those Chacón endured. Another activist, José Gregorio Hernández, said he was beaten with metal pipes during interrogations inside the Helicoide. “It’s like 1984 in there,” he said. “They do what they want and the answer to no one.” Hernández has applied for asylum in Colombia, where he now lives having been released last year. Chacón’s case received support from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Amnesty is currently campaigning for the Venezuelan government to lift all the conditions of her release, so that she can freely travel and continue her work unimpeded. “She’s an amazing role model for young women in her country,” the campaign statement reads. “But instead of supporting her work, the Venezuelan authorities have persecuted her for years.”The emerging global movement of rightwing populists is guilty of many things but ideological incoherence in choosing their enemies is generally not one of them. Whether it is Steve Bannon bashing Pope Francis, Matteo Salvini attacking the “do-gooders” in humanitarian NGOs or Marine Le Pen venting against the dull technocrats in Brussels, the populists go after a predictable, well-calculated set of targets. If anyone chooses their enemies well, it’s them. But there’s one issue on which there’s no agreement between American rightwing populists and their peers in the rest of the world: what to make of Silicon Valley. On the one hand, its services and platforms have been a boon to the populists everywhere, greatly boosting their audience numbers and allowing to target potential voters with highly personalized messages; the Cambridge Analytica fiasco has made it quite clear. Today, upstart and new rightwing parties like Spain’s Vox instinctively understand the primacy of digital battles; Vox already leads all other Spanish parties in terms of Instagram followers. Steve Bannon called people leading ‘evil’ Silicon Valley ‘complete narcissists’ and ‘sociopaths’ This pragmatic embrace of digital platforms is where the populist consensus ends; the intellectual evaluation of Silicon Valley’s significance is rather cacophonous. The American wing of the movement sees Big Tech as an attractive target of attack; for them, Silicon Valley is a bizarre mix of greedy capitalists and “cultural Marxists”, keen on indoctrinating their users into leftwing ideas while getting filthy rich off everyone’s data. Populists in the rest of the world, in contrast, see Silicon Valley’s platforms as their best chance of escaping the intellectual hegemony of their own domestic “cultural Marxists,” firmly ensconced in elite institutions, such as the media, the academia, and the Deep State. In an August 2018 interview with CNN, Steve Bannon called people leading “evil” Silicon Valley “complete narcissists” and “sociopaths”; the data grabbed by their companies, he insisted, should be “put in a public trust”. He also predicted that Big Tech would be one of the main themes of the 2020 presidential election. Given that the anger towards Silicon Valley is also growing on the left – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the latest sensation of American leftist politics, famously attacked New York City’s $3bn welcome package to Amazon – it seems like a reasonable prediction. Silicon Valley appears to be a perfect enemy for non-centrist forces in America, as bashing it helps to delegitimize the legacy of Obama and Clinton, seen as its primary enablers. Others on the right endorse Bannon’s opinions. Brad Parscale, the digital media director of Trump’s 2016 campaign, has complained that “Big Tech monsters like Google and Facebook have become nothing less than incubators for far-left liberal ideologies and are doing everything they can to eradicate conservative ideas and their proponents from the internet”. Recent bans on far-right and conservative personalities by social media and online fundraising platforms have only amplified such perceptions of Silicon Valley. Even Donald Trump complained that Google was “suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good” – a “very serious situation” that, he promised, “will be addressed”. To see the sharp contrast with how rightwing populists elsewhere perceive Silicon Valley, one could turn to a viral clip from Bolsonaro’s recent inauguration in Brazil, where a crowd of his supporters were filmed chanting “WhatsApp, WhatsApp! Facebook, Facebook!” This is hardly an atypical feeling. In 2017, when he was still a deputy of the European Parliament, Matteo Salvini delivered a feisty speech against attempts to crack down on fake news, declaring that the old elite ways of setting the public agenda were over. He concluded with “Long Live Facebook!” (he likewise thanked the site after the party did well in the 2018 elections). The European Union Copyright Directive nicely illustrates the bizarre friendship between Silicon Valley and European populists Salvini’s coalition partners, the Five Star Movement, have distanced themselves from the likes of Bannon and Bolsonaro. But, as a movement started by a blogger and propelled by social media, they, too, are enamored of Big Tech. Its culture of disruption is precisely what they hope to emulate with their rhetoric of turning Italy into a “smart nation” – for example, by endorsing the further Italian expansion of Amazon justified on the grounds that the data of Italian enterprises handled by the firm will now be stored locally. Last year’s battle about a controversial piece of legislation – the European Union Copyright Directive – nicely illustrates the bizarre friendship between Silicon Valley and European populists. The directive is universally hated by the digital platforms as it would require them to increase enforcement of uploaded content (many civil society groups have also complained that it might criminalize memes and even sharing of links). During the September 2018 vote in the European Parliament, most of the opposition to the directive came from Poland’s Law and Justice party, Italy’s Five Star Movement and Lega, and UKIP – Silicon Valley’s few odd allies in Brussels. Absent a major geopolitical and trade rupture with Washington, European populists are unlikely to change their views of Big Tech. Rather, they’ll keep building political capital by accusing establishment politicians of regulating digital platforms with the sole goal of censoring their populist opponents. Macron’s actions with regards to the online mobilization tactics used by the Gilets Jaunes movement are of critical importance here: any meddling in the digital platforms by the French state, already keen on enacting a stringent fake news law, would spectacularly backfire. But neither will the American populists lower their tone and find another target. On the issue of Silicon Valley and its power, Steve Bannon will remain closer to George Soros than to Matteo Salvini. This is a paradox that clever progressives ought to be able to exploit, if only by asking non-American rightwing populists to explain their great love for an industry that even Steve Bannon considers to be “evil”. No answer would be forthcoming as rightwing populists, whatever their rhetoric, have no sound analysis of either the global economy or of the Big Tech’s role in it (nor, alas, do many of their non-populist opponents). The sooner this absence gets revealed, the better.Donald Trump has dramatically escalated his feud with House speaker Nancy Pelosi amid the US government shutdown by canceling her previously undisclosed trip abroad and denying her the use of a military aircraft to visit American troops in Afghanistan. The president’s move came a day after Pelosi suggested the president either postpone or submit in writing his 29 January State of the Union address, citing security concerns stemming from the partial shutdown of the federal government. Hours after Pelosi said Trump had been “silent” in response to her request, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders posted a letter from Trump to the House speaker postponing her travel. “Due to the shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt and Afghanistan has been postponed,” the president wrote. “In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate.” He added: “It would be better if you were in Washington negotiating with me and joining the Strong Border Security movement. If you would like to make your journey flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative.” President @realDonaldTrump’s letter to @SpeakerPelosi concerning her upcoming travel pic.twitter.com/TtBCvwp080 Pelosi was due to depart on Thursday with a congressional delegation that included House intelligence chief Adam Schiff and Eliot Engel, the foreign affairs committee chairman. Schiff on Thursday sharply criticized the president for revealing the travel plans. “I think the president’s decision to disclose a trip the speaker’s making to a war zone was completely and utterly irresponsible in every way,” Schiff said. Overseas trips by a group of members of Congress – often referred to as a Codel – are not typically made public until the members arrive because of security reasons. It is commonplace for military transportation to be provided for congressional delegations and the House speaker, who is second in line for the presidency. Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, said the trip to Afghanistan required a stop in Brussels for the pilot to rest, while noting the delegation planned “to meet with top Nato commanders, US military leaders and key allies”. Hammill wrote on Twitter the weekend visit did not include a stop in Egypt, while the Afghanistan trip was intended “to express appreciation & thanks to our men & women in uniform for their service & dedication, & to obtain critical national security & intelligence briefings from those on the front lines”. Some experts said Trump’s move publicizing the trip to Afghanistan of such a senior delegation would pose a security risk in the future. “The president has now potentially endangered the speaker of the House and anyone who would travel with her by announcing that she plans to travel to a specific war zone in the near future,” said Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Pentagon and co-editor of the Just Security blog. A White House official said all other Codels were being canceled while the government remained closed. Pelosi’s office countered that Trump traveled to Iraq during the shutdown, as did a Codel led by Republican representative Lee Zeldin. Trump’s abrupt decision took Pelosi’s congressional delegation by surprise, as some lawmakers were reportedly already sitting on a US air force bus outside the Capitol trying to determine if they should proceed with their travel plans. Even some of the president’s allies expressed frustration at his retaliatory action. “One sophomoric response does not deserve another,” said South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a usually reliably vocal Trump ally in recent months. “Speaker Pelosi’s threat to cancel the State of the Union is very irresponsible and blatantly political. President Trump denying Speaker Pelosi military travel to visit our troops in Afghanistan, our allies in Egypt and Nato is also inappropriate.” Trump also canceled his delegation’s travel plans to the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, citing concerns about the shutdown. The delegation was led by the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and also included the secretary of state Mike Pompeo; the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross; the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and the White House deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell.It was a victory that was “somewhat flattering,” as Kicker put it, and even Borussia Mönchengladbach’s coach Dieter Hecking admitted his side were “a bit lucky”. Yet all it ultimately meant was that Peter Bosz returned to coaching in the Bundesliga as he had left it just over 13 months ago – with defeat, as he took the reins at Bayer Leverkusen. It was rarely dull when the Dutchman was in charge at Borussia Dortmund, a short spell so out of kilter with current events that it’s almost as surreal as the extended period in which the leaders were glued to the foot of the table during Jürgen Klopp’s final campaign at the helm. If the evidence of his reintroduction to German football on Saturday afternoon is anything to go by, it is unlikely to be so this time either. Whether it will work out for Leverkusen is more open to debate, with plenty of promise displayed against Gladbach but no points to show for it in the final analysis. “We can say again that we played great, kept our opponents in check and deserved a goal,” a frustrated Lars Bender told Sky. “It’s disappointing.” That the visitors were more ruthless and composed was not a surprise, with Alessane Pléa scoring a well-crafted winner which takes the Frenchman to double figures for Gladbach at a faster rate than the legendary Jupp Heynckes managed back in the 1960s. They were excellent before the winter break and stay just three points behind Bayern Munich. Yet they were never comfortable here. For Matthias Ginter, making his comeback after suffering a fractured jaw and eye socket in a sickening clash of heads with Hannover’s Noah Sarenren Bazee in November, it was hardly a gentle way of easing oneself back into the swing of things. It was all hands to the pump for Gladbach for long spells, having just 36% possession and facing 22 efforts at goal from Leverkusen. So even if the result irked, there was a feeling of optimism in the BayArena corridors at full time. “You can see we’ve learned a lot over the past two weeks,” said Kai Havertz. “We did a lot of things better today than we did in the Hinrunde.” The 19-year-old also praised Bosz for being “great at dealing with young players” which, as he pointed out, “is especially important in Leverkusen”. Getting a talent of Havertz’s stature onside is a great start to Bosz’s stewardship. Havertz, Julian Brandt and Leon Bailey, whose focus has drifted in recent months, were all included in a new, ultra-attacking line-up. After the plod of the closing months of Heiko Herrlich’s tenure, it feels like a relief. “The result is disappointing of course, but the way we played wasn’t. I’m convinced that we’ll have a lot of fun in the second half of the season,” said long-serving sporting director, Rudi Völler. Therein, perhaps, lies at least some of the difference between the context of Bosz’s difficulties at Dortmund and what he is adapting to with Die Werkself. In summer 2017 Bosz arrived at a club lacking direction upstairs, that accordingly didn’t really know what they wanted. He was the second choice for the role; eventual incumbent Lucien Favre, pretty much Bosz’s polar opposite, was the first. He inherited a team bruised from internal strife under Thomas Tuchel, still processing the aftermath of the bus attack – and an uneven squad fettered by big expectations. At Leverkusen, nobody’s expecting to chase the summit and the aim of making Europe – as Bosz pointed out post-match – is very doable with 16 matches to go and only a four-point gap. “I think we’re on a good path,” he said. With the new man’s ideas already crystal clear to his players, the route is in no doubt. Seatbelts will be required. • With it now seeming unlikely that Atlético Madrid’s Lucas Hernández will arrive in this window, the Callum Hudson-Odoi transfer having hit an impasse of sorts and Benjamin Pavard only arriving from Stuttgart in the summer, it appears Bayern Munich may largely have to get on with what they have. Good for them, then, that they got the Rückrunde under way in ominous fashion on Friday, winning 3-1 at Hoffenheim with no need for some of the squad’s elder elements. Leon Goretzka led the way with a brace and Bayern looked the part as they temporarily closed the gap at the top to three points behind Borussia Dortmund, and Kovac made it clear he is relishing the chance to put pressure on the leaders. “Now they have to react,” he said after the game. • Dortmund did just that, becoming the first team to win at Leipzig this season in Saturday’s late game, by a single goal via Axel Witsel’s thunderous finish from a Raphaël Guerreiro corner. This was exactly the sort of gritty win that potential champions need to get – and achieved without Marco Reus, the captain nursing a minor knock and not even named as a substitute. Reus continued to lead from the front, though, taking a seat on the touchline and encouraging his teammates in the dressing room, and it was that kind of all-hands-on-deck effort. Julian Weigl shone as a makeshift centre-back, and Roman Bürki made some important saves. Little wonder Favre told Sky he was “extremely satisfied”. What a strike! Blink and you'll miss it! ⚡️Dortmund stay 6️⃣ points clear at the top and have Axel Witsel to thank 💛 pic.twitter.com/wEL0zFEgKn • The last game of the weekend already felt like a big one for Schalke, with Domenico Tedesco’s team facing in-form Wolfsburg on the back of a very disappointing Hinrunde – and having moved on accordingly since, with iconic veteran centre-back Naldo joining Monaco and goalkeeper/captain Ralf Fährmann left out. It all fell into place – just – with Daniel Caligiuri firing a stylish late winner having earlier opened the scoring from the penalty spot. Fährmann faced a bevy of lurking photographers as he took his seat on the bench, though Tedesco insisted his dropping for Alexander Nübel wasn’t a “final decision”. He was just “getting a break”, according to sporting director Christian Heidel. • Eintracht Frankfurt’s “Büffelherde” of Sébastien Haller, Ante Rebic and Luka Jovic were quickly rampaging again, getting a goal each to take them to a win over Freiburg and close the gap on the top four to a point. They now have 29 goals and 17 assists between them, with Jovic’s strike taking him top of the Bundesliga scoring charts. • There’s little change at the bottom, with 17th and 18th-placed Hannover and Nürnberg beaten at home by Werder Bremen and Hertha, respectively. The former’s defeat would have been a humiliation without a standout display from goalkeeper Michael Esser. Stuttgart have been imaginative in this transfer window but defensive disarray in a 3-2 home reverse to Mainz – which kept them in the play-off spot – suggested teenage centre-back Ozan Kabak, signed from Galatasaray last week, might be expected to chip in sooner rather than later. Schalke 2-1 Wolfsburg, Nürnberg 1-3 Hertha Berlin, Leipzig 0-1 Dortmund, Augsburg 1-2 Fortuna Dusseldorf, Eintracht Frankfurt 3-1 Freiburg, Hannover 0-1 Werder Bremen, Bayer Leverkusen 0-1 Borussia Mönchengladbach, Stuttgart 2-3 Mainz, Hoffenheim 1-3 Bayern Munich Educators in Los Angeles, the second-largest school district in the country, are going on strike on Monday. By deciding to walk out for smaller class sizes, more support staff, fewer standardized tests and charter school regulation, LA’s teachers have ensured that California will be the next state hit by a strike wave that shows no signs of ebbing anytime soon. The teachers’ upsurge was one of the defining stories of 2018. It began in West Virginia, where teacher and support staff decided to shut down the schools until their demands for better pay and healthcare were taken seriously. They won big, and they inspired educators across the nation to follow their example. Work stoppages soon swept across Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina and Colorado. Though not all their demands were met, teachers won major gains and changed the national conversation about the reasons for public education’s crisis. Confounding all expectations, most of these actions erupted in Republican-dominated regions with relatively weak labor unions, bans on public sector strikes, and electorates that voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Media pundits dubbed this a “red state rebellion”. But blue states are hardly immune to low pay, underfunded schools and frustrated teachers. Last fall, educators across Washington and charter school teachers in Chicago joined the strike wave – and strikes are now looming in Los Angeles as well as Oakland, threatening to disrupt business as usual for tens of millions of people on the west coast. Above all, the teacher revolt expresses a rejection of the austerity and privatization agenda pushed by both Democrats and Republicans, particularly since the Great Recession. Today, 29 states have lower education funding than they did in 2008, and nationwide, education funding is still about $450 lower per student than it was a decade ago, according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report. Last year, educators across the nation reached their breaking point, finally squeezed too tight by rising living costs, crumbling schoolhouses, and an encroaching school privatization campaign that opportunistically treats the crisis caused by underfunding as a pretext to further erode public education and labor unions. However, 2018 wasn’t just the year that teachers had enough. Something else happened, too. West Virginia and subsequent battles have hammered home one of the labor movement’s most fundamental (and forgotten) lessons: strikes are the most powerful tool at working people’s disposal. Teachers have been rallying and lobbying against public education budget cuts for years – yet it was only once they began striking that politicians were forced to start making concessions. At most times, in most places, workers feel powerless in the face of management. But when they organize to bring work itself to a halt, the balance of power fundamentally shifts. Suddenly the true importance of workers’ labor is laid bare, and the powers-that-be have a crisis on their hands. Strikes transform ordinary working people with little wealth and political clout into a force to be reckoned with. And all that’s necessary to tap into this game-changing, table-turning power is for workers to recognize the extraordinary value of their work, and organize with each other to withhold it. Yet strike numbers have been declining for decades and it’s not hard to figure out why. Fewer workers are represented by unions than at any point in the last 70 years, thanks largely to a ruthless corporate offensive against the labor movement and basic union rights, including the right to strike. Unfortunately, most union officials have responded by retreating into a self-defeating reliance on electing and lobbying mainstream Democrats, instead of building disruptive strikes. The teachers’ upsurge points the way forward for unions and the working class. But it will face new challenges in 2019. With the movement now spreading to the blue states, educators and their unions will no longer be primarily battling Republican politicians. To win in a city like Los Angeles means nothing less than taking on the Democratic party establishment. The corporate-funded drive to privatize LA’s public schools is not led by acolytes of Donald Trump. To the contrary: Austin Beutner, the billionaire investment banker installed as superintendent by deep-pocketed backers of school privatization, is a proud liberal and a longtime funder of the Democratic party. Confronting Democratic politicians won’t come easy to many union leaders and educators, but the success of the movement depends on it. And if the strikes continue to spread, expect this growing labor militancy to exacerbate the polarizing intra-party struggle between the Democratic establishment and insurgent forces led by socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Winning in 2019 will also require foregrounding progressive taxation. Though districts and states can afford to make some immediate concessions – LA, for example, is sitting on $1.86bn in financial reserves – public education’s crisis can’t be solved without a massive re-investment in our schools. But who will pay for this? Against the inevitable attempts of mainstream politicians to pit teachers against other workers by cutting other social services or raising regressive taxes, educators and their unions will have to convince the public to join the fight for the only equitable solution: tax the billionaires and corporations. The stakes are high. Public education remains one of the few remaining public goods in the United States. For that very reason, corporate politicians are doing everything they can to dismantle and privatize the school system. But if the teachers’ upsurge can reverse this offensive, there’s little reason to assume that working people will stop there. Saving public education may be the first step towards building a revitalized labor movement capable of bringing many of society’s basic necessities – from healthcare to energy production – into the public sphere. Eric Blanc is a reporter who has covered the 2018 teacher strike wave on the ground in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and Los Angeles. His book about the teacher rebellion, Red State Revolt, will be published by Verso Books in early 2019. Meagan Day is a staff writer for Jacobin Magazine. She frequently covers labor issues for Jacobin, including including the 2018 teachers’ strikes. Her labor writing has also been published in The New York TimesThursday’s papers have gone after the Speaker of the House, John Bercow, whose decision to allow a vote giving Theresa May three days to present a Brexit “plan B” if her deal is defeated was considered at best “controversial” and at worst a demonstration of “flagrant prejudice”. The prejudice line came form the Mail, which ran its story under the headline “Out of order!” and called Bercow an “egotistical preening popinjay [who] has shamelessly put his anti-Brexit bias before the national interest – and is a disgrace to his office”. Thursday’s @DailyMailUK #MailFrontPages pic.twitter.com/MGNxMcF5mD Similar sentiments from the Express – “You’re so out of order!” – which suggested Bercow was now facing pressure to quit “after ‘disgracefully’ flouting parliamentary rules to help Remainers seize more control over Brexit”. They cited ex-ministers, the former speaker Betty Boothroyd and constitutional experts, whom the paper said were “united in a chorus of anger over the Commons ‘stitch-up’ that led to a government defeat”. Thursday’s @Daily_Express front page- Commons Speaker Bercow accused of flouting rules to thwart #Brexit- EXCLUSIVE End of an era - Is Queen’s most dutiful aide stepping aside?- Amazon boss and his £110hn divorce#tomrrowspaperstoday #frontpages pic.twitter.com/1UBEe6vPWf The Guardian’s front page features a striking picture from parliament, with Bercow at the centre, and reports “furious scenes in the House of Commons as the Speaker John Bercow took the controversial decision to allow a vote on the amendment, tabled by the former attorney general Dominic Grieve”. The paper’s headline: “May’s power ebbing away as she suffers another humiliating defeat”. Guardian front page, Thursday 10 January 2019: May’s power ebbing away as she suffers another humiliating defeat pic.twitter.com/XDODz18l6s The i has a similar focus, writing: “May losing control of Brexit”, adding “Tories outraged after Speaker is accused of ignoring his own officials about rebels”. The Sun labelled Bercow “Speaker of the devil” and reported on the “fury at Bercow bid to scupper Brexit”, saying “the controversy sparked a near riot in parliament”. Tomorrow's front page: Commons Speaker John Bercow accused of trying to sabotage Brexit https://t.co/AC3wgoiGpu pic.twitter.com/goRxDferHm The Telegraph follows its precedent of recent weeks on Brexit stories, offering a neutral headline – “Mr Speaker takes control” – but then sticking in the knife in the body copy, saying: “The Speaker ignored legal advice and parliamentary precedent to allow a vote that gives Mrs May just three days to present a plan B for Brexit if she loses the ‘meaningful vote’ next Tuesday.” The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph 'Mr Speaker takes control' pic.twitter.com/SyJaQmSLleTo ensure the executive is held to account and democracy prevails - however, some were throwing their toys out of their prams RT The Times – “Tory rebels join forces with Labour over Brexit” – doesn’t lead with Bercow’s role in the vote, instead focusing on how May’s “Brexit strategy was in tatters last night after Tory Remainer rebels opened talks with Labour”. But it didn’t spare the Speaker, saying he had “outraged ministers by overruling advice from officials in order to help an alliance of rebel Tories and opposition MPs to inflict the defeat, the second for the government in 24 hours”. THE TIMES: Tory rebels join forces with Labour over Brexit #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/S8jtW64oqG The Mirror claims it as a victory for Labour, saying: “May caves in on workers’ rights to save Brexit deal”. The paper says “Desperate Theresa May is ready to give in to key Labour demands on workers’ rights in a bid to salvage her Brexit deal”. Tomorrow's front page: May caves in on workers' rights to save Brexit deal#tomorrowspaperstoday https://t.co/ubrhR67pR6 pic.twitter.com/A9Dd5vXxGu The FT has “May offers MPs ‘backstop’ veto after second Commons defeat” and says the Speaker came “under fire”. It reports that “Eurosceptic Tory MPs were furious that yesterday’s vote was allowed by Commons Speaker John Bercow, who they view as an opponent of Brexit.” Just published: front page of the Financial Times UK edition, Thursday January 10 https://t.co/ubVGlRTiHz pic.twitter.com/Dt1jcHRfPcUS R&B artist James Ingram has died aged 66. TMZ reported that he had brain cancer. Ingram won two Grammy awards during his career: his performance on the Quincy Jones song One Hundred Ways earned him best male R&B vocal performance in 1982, and Yah Mo B There, a collaboration with the Doobie Brothers’ Michael McDonald, won best R&B performance by a group or duo with vocals in 1985. Ingram had two No 1 singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart: Baby, Come to Me with Patti Austin in 1982, and I Don’t Have the Heart in 1990. He co-wrote with frequent collaborator Jones the song PYT (Pretty Young Thing), included on Michael Jackson’s 1982 album Thriller. “It’s almost like I got the chance to go to Oz, and Quincy was the Wizard of Oz and Michael Jackson was who he was dealing with in his world,” he told Jet magazine in 1997. “Their work ethic is unbelievable.” Ingram sang on the 1985 US for Africa charity single We Are the World, which Jones produced. Jones paid tribute to Ingram in a statement to Billboard: “With that soulful, whisky-sounding voice, James Ingram was simply magical … Every beautiful note that James sang pierced your essence and comfortably made itself at home. But it was really no surprise, because James was a beautiful human being, with a heart the size of the moon. James Ingram was, and always will be, beyond compare.” Ingram was born in Ohio in 1952. He started performing after moving to Los Angeles, where he joined the band Revelation Funk. He played keyboards for Ray Charles, and he sang on Jones’s album The Dude in 1981. Two years later, he launched a solo career with the release of his debut, It’s Your Night. Ingram’s other collaborations included Donna Summer, Anita Baker, Nancy Wilson, Natalie Cole, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. His 1987 duet with Linda Ronstadt, Somewhere Out There, was a Top 10 hit in the UK and the US. Its songwriters won a Grammy for song of the year. Fifteen years elapsed between the release of Ingram’s fourth album, Always You in 1993, and his 2008 gospel album Stand (In the Light). During the 90s, he contributed to the soundtracks for children’s films such as Timmy’s Gift: A Precious Moments Christmas Story, Beethoven’s 2nd and Cats Don’t Dance. Sheila E, Gladys Knight, Shonda Rhimes and Roots drummer Questlove are among the stars who have paid tribute to Ingram. “He could SAAAAAANG, but under the guidance of Quincy Jones found a music backdrop that allowed him to dwell in spaces meant for Kenny Loggins or Barry Manilow,” Questlove wrote on Instagram. He suggested that Ingram’s work “set the stage” for Dr Dre’s pivotal 1992 debut album, The Chronic, praising his “explicit blackness” and the way he established a “strong arsenal of hits [without] having to ‘make it more palatable’ to [his] audience”.Mauricio Pochettino admitted it was vital for Tottenham Hotspur to start the new year with a bang and record a “massive” victory at Cardiff City that reignites their hopes of staying in the Premier League title race. A convincing 3-0 win lifts Spurs to second in the table and narrows the gap to the league summit to six points, before the leaders Liverpool’s clash with Manchester City on Thursday. Goals from Harry Kane, Christian Eriksen and Son Heung-min sealed a return to winning ways after a shock defeat by Wolves at Wembley on Saturday. “I think it was a massive victory, a massive three points to make us believe that little more, in our possibility to be in a very good position in the table,” Pochettino said. “I think it was so important to start the new year with a victory, away from home, at a very difficult place. I think they arrived with massive confidence after the last game [against Leicester]. “From the beginning today we showed massive energy and I think that is the team we want, and expect, to see to get a good performance on the pitch. I think it was so important to start to build another positive run and, of course in football it is impossible to win every single game, but for sure we are going try to win every single game until the end. I think it was so important for everyone, for confidence, because in three days we are going to start another competition, the FA Cup [against Tranmere], which is going to be important too and then the semi-final of the Carabao Cup against Chelsea.” The Cardiff manager, Neil Warnock, believes the Premier League should intervene to stop Tottenham moving to the new White Hart Lane this season. Warnock says his side’s relegation rivals could gain an unfair advantage by not playing Tottenham at Wembley, with Huddersfield among teams that are likely to face Spurs at their new stadium, which they hope will open by February. “They’ve made cock-ups now with the timing,” Warnock said. “The league should enforce they play at Wembley now for the rest of the season. I don’t think there should be any chance of an advantage to any of our opponents. “It’s not our fault. We should have been playing at the new stadium ourselves. I think they should step in now. It should be until the end of the season now. I think they should enforce it.”Casey Gerald knew he was special from a young age. Not in a conceited or entitled way – being poor, black, gay, “a damn near orphan”, and from the wrong side of Dallas meant he would often be told otherwise – but special because his mother insisted he was. “And she was the most magical creature I ever knew,” he says, “like something from the movies.” Gerald’s mother was, he later recognised, a manic depressive – “with big, crinkly, burnt-blond hair [that] made her look like a high-yellow Whitney Houston”. She left home and disappeared when he was 13. Some time before, Gerald’s football star father, the son of a renowned Texas preacher, became hooked on heroin only to then carousel in and out of prison. And so this gifted, athletic teenager ended up in the care of his grandmother and older sister – until a football scholarship to Yale became his ticket “to live America from the very bottom to the very top”. Gerald and I talk via a video call from Los Angeles. Now 31, he is eloquent, handsome, thoughtful – the rags-to-riches poster boy for the American dream that his book, There Will Be No Miracles Here, sets out to dismantle. On the surface, his life reads as the elevator pitch for a Disney movie, the Horatio Alger myth beloved of pop culture and politicians; so much so that after meeting Gerald in 2016, former president George W Bush used his story in a speech to illustrate the plucky, inspirational, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps narrative that feeds the country’s identity. “I think of my book as an intervention,” says Gerald. “To turn this American dream on its head is like being the warning on a pack of cigarettes: people will still smoke, but the way we’re taught to live our life in this society can kill you and it is killing people – even if they’re not dead, they are miserable, sad, depressed. We need to have a referendum on the American machine.” What would the question be? “How do we build a society where every kid has a shot? It’s as simple as that. One exceptional case [like mine] does not justify the suffering of 13 million American children who don’t have enough food or one in 30 who don’t have a stable place to sleep. My generation has inherited a country that doesn’t work any more.” Gerald says he feels traumatised not only by his childhood, but by his belief that a Yale degree in political science, a prestigious MBA from Harvard Business School and a glittering career on Wall Street would save him. “For sure, it’s one of the reasons I’m in therapy.” As a student, he took an internship at Lehman Brothers in the summer the bank filed for bankruptcy. Enthusiasm undimmed, after graduating he worked in economic policy and as an entrepreneur, but neither wealth nor success resolved his internal conflicts. “I had to write this book to understand what was wrong with me,” he says. “It’s a long journey.” Gerald’s memoir is a nonlinear collection of memories and experiences, often unsentimental and stark, sometimes elegiac and elliptical. By writing about the dual burden and invisibility of being a black American man, he plays with a literary tradition that has been canonised by the likes of Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s an ambitious exercise. “There is a great tradition of people writing on the margins of society and I am grateful for them, but I had no interest in writing that kind of book,” he says. “I set out to tell the truth and understand why I and a lot of my friends were cracked up. I started this in 2016 and so the country and a lot of the world was cracked up too, but I was sad. I wouldn’t say I was having a nervous breakdown but I wasn’t far off.” He wrote the first draft by hand, using “Morning Pages”, a writing style popularised by Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. This meant writing three pages of longhand every morning, on lined A4 paper, in a stream of consciousness. “I needed it to be a visceral exercise and lose myself in it.” By 29, Gerald had successfully founded (and closed) MBAs Across America, a nonprofit organisation that matched business students with small businesses. Its aim was to “show that purpose and not profit is the new bottom line”. The model was made open source and taught as part of a curriculum at Harvard Business School. According to New York magazine, Gerald seemed poised to either “run for national office in either party, become the youngest-ever CEO of a multinational business or produce and star in some viral reality show”. For now, he balks at the idea that he may consider a career in politics. “I don’t have any political ambitions or willingness to be a politician,” he says, shaking his head. “I do believe I have been put on this planet to do real work but my priority is to be well. If I’m well, everything I do will be well.” The experience of losing his grandmother last summer has underlined everything he wants his generation to rail against. “I was asked to write her obituary,” he explains, “and I got the draft [from his family] which was in essence: ‘she was born, she met this dude, she married him, she had seven of his children, she was a beautiful wife and mother and she died.’ And I thought: ‘holy shit, who is this? I thought she was a whole person and we’re supposed to go to her funeral and praise her for being submissive?’” He sighs. “I miss her so much. But eulogising her because she never complained? All that stuff, wow, that world is done. My sisters, my friends, my cousins, that is not a way of living for anyone.” Gerald’s book mirrors the findings of a 2017 Pew study on the American dream that confirms “the myth of bootstrapping” – the fantastical notion that wealth and security can be achieved simply if you work and dream hard enough. The report reveals that social mobility between those at the bottom and those in the middle of American society has become increasingly harder, not easier. Given the choice, most families are happier to make ends meet and pay their bills than move up the economic ladder; this reads particularly true of African Americans who are stuck at the lowest levels and more likely to stay there and even potentially fall further behind from one generation to the next. “Yes, this is Donald Trump’s America,” shrugs Gerald. “But let me be clear: I’m a black person, a queer person, my grandma’s grandfather was born a slave in Texas. Very few black people – if any I know – were shocked that Donald Trump was elected. Donald Trump may be the most American president we’ve ever had! “For 200 something years we’ve been taught that the president was supposed to be better than everyone else – a Washington or Lincoln. Now is one of the few times we have a president that reflects a strong strain of depravity that has always been part of America. Life for people that Trump has been destroying with his policies – for poor people, people of colour, for immigrants – that has been intolerable and unsustainable for a long time.” But Gerald isn’t without hope. “You can’t be a black American and not understand the extraordinary potential of the human spirit.” In any case, he believes a shift is under way. “Fundamentally, the way we are taught to be men in this country is a dead end and it’s changing – and I’m happy about that,” says Gerald. His book, like the TED talk he delivered in 2016 titled The Gospel of Doubt, begins with the end of the world: a flashback of Millennium Eve when he was in church with his grandmother praying for the Rapture. “There’s a reason for beginning with that,” he says. “So much of my childhood was the world ending over and over again; no one called a family meeting and said: ‘Hey Case, how do you feel about your momma disappearing?’ It just happened and then you have to figure life out.” Figuring things out included his place in the elite institutions he later found himself in, how he might make a difference, and his sexuality. “I didn’t want to write a dissertation on being an oppressed gay person,” he says. “I wanted to bring worthy language to the beauty of loving another boy in a society that hates gay people – but that doesn’t mean I have to hate myself.” The neighbourhood of Oak Cliff, where Gerald grew up, has barely changed in recent years, he says. Running east of downtown’s ever newer, ever shinier skyscrapers, it is still a predominantly African American area that straddles extreme wealth and deprivation. “A lot of white people want to make the conversation about segregation, but I grew with incredible, dedicated black teachers, I had black crossing guards to get me across the street, there were hardly any white people and it did not occur to me then that I was inferior because I was black. “Dallas, for all its faults, is not that much different to when I grew up except that there has been a continual material assault on the poor, working class, people of colour, that makes their lives materially more impossible. But that’s not a question of identity to me, that’s socioeconomics.” Writing and talking about his experience, which he is clear “does not fetishise or commodify black bodies for entertainment”, has come at a cost to his mental health. “I don’t think it’s cathartic; catharsis implies purging and that didn’t happen. I can just see it clearly now,” he says. “I don’t know what it will be like for us in 30 years or whether we will be happier. What I do know is that it will be different.” • There Will Be No Miracles Here is published by Profile (£16.99). To order a copy for £11.99 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99In 1997, at the height of media interest in the Young British Artists who had mostly come out of Goldsmiths’ College and set up shop in east London, Sarah Lucas made a series of self-portraits as part of her ongoing assault on received ideas of gender and sexuality. Many of the portraits involved food picked up at local markets in Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. Her most famous images – Chicken Knickers, in which she attached an oven-ready bird, cavity gaping, to her crotch, or Self-Portrait with Fried Eggs, where a pair of the latter lay on her T-shirted chest, below the ultimate “what you looking at? stare – asked blunt questions about the objectification of women, and the predictable appetite of the male gaze. Others, like this one, the first of three pictures entitled Got a Salmon On played with cliches of masculine prowess, to pointed comic effect. Lucas hoists the fat fish on her shoulder like a floppy rifle. She’s outside the barred-up gents in her oversized double-breasted pinstripe jacket and spit-and-polished boots. The title of the picture echoes a sexual boast, hints at a female equivalent, and captures some of the absurdity of such phrasing. Unusually, for Lucas, her eyes fix not on us but down on the salmon; she stands awkwardly, likably, trying to get a proper grip of the big fish and her slippery metaphors (by number three in the series, she has got the fish in place and stands, dark-eyed, to attention by the wall). The picture is included in an exhibition featuring more than a century of British women photographers subtitled A History of British Trailblazers. Lucas lines up alongside pioneers such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Lee Miller, as well as fellow former YBAs Sam Taylor-Wood and Gillian Wearing. Others more than match her technical gifts, but Lucas’s swagger and confrontation is a defining spirit. Women in Photography: A History of British Trailblazers opens on 30 Jan and runs until 2 June, The Lightbox, WokingThe fall lasts long enough that I have time to watch the blue ice race upward, aeons of time compressed into glacial ice, flashing by in fractions of seconds. I assume I’ve fallen far enough that I’ve pulled my climbing partner, Sean, into the crevasse with me. This is what it’s like to die in the mountains, a voice in my head tells me. Just as my mind completes that thought, the rope wrenches my climbing harness up. I bounce languidly up and down as the dynamic physics inherent in the rope play themselves out. Somehow Sean has checked my fall while still on the surface of the glacier. I brush the snow and chunks of ice from my hair, arms and chest and pull down the sleeves of my shirt. Finding my glacier glasses hanging from the pocket of my climbing bib, I tuck them away. I check myself for injuries and, incredibly, find none. Assessing my situation, I find there’s no ice shelf nearby to ease the tension from the rope, so Sean will not be able to begin setting up a pulley system to extract me. I look down. Nothing but blackness. I look at the wall of blue ice directly in front of me, take a deep breath and peer up at the tiny hole I made when I fell through the snow bridge spanning the crevasse – the same bridge Sean had crossed without incident as we made our way up Alaska’s Matanuska Glacier towards Mount Marcus Baker in the Chugach Range. “You get to look down one more time, then that’s it,” I tell myself out loud. Again, there’s only the black void yawning beneath me, swallowing everything, even sound. My stomach clenches. I remind myself to breathe. “Sean, are you OK?” I yell as I clamp my mechanical ascenders to the rope in preparation to climb up. “Yeah, I’m all right, but I’m right on the edge,” he calls back. “I can’t set up an anchor, so we’re just going to have to wait for the other guys to catch up.” Time passes. The onset of hypothermia means I can’t control my body from periodically shaking. To ignore my fear of dying, I gaze meditatively at the ice a few feet in front of me as I dangle. The miniature air pockets found in the whiter ice near the top of the glacier have long since been compressed, producing the mesmerising beauty of centuries-old turquoise ice. Slightly deeper into the crevasse is ice that has been there since long before the Neanderthals. I hang suspended in silence, mindful not to move for fear of dislodging Sean. Giving my full attention to the ice immediately within my vision, I focus on how the gently refracting light from above seems to penetrate and reflect off the perfectly smooth wall. Staring into it, the blue seems infinite. Despite the danger of my situation, the glacier’s beauty calms me. Eventually our two other teammates arrive and work to extract Sean from his perch just six inches from the edge of the crevasse. The three of them set up a three-way pulley system. Laboriously, my teammates begin to haul me up, inches at a time, out of what nearly became my tomb. I continue to focus on the delicately shifting shades of blue in the ice as I draw closer to the surface. My teammates pull me up to the lip of the crevasse. I repeatedly plunge the pick of my ice axe into the snow and haul myself out, never before as grateful for being on top of a glacier. I stand and gaze up at a mountain to the west, behind which the sun has just set. Snow plumes stream off one of its ridges, turned into red ribbons by the setting sun. Snowflakes flicker as they float into space. As relief floods my shivering body, I roar in gratitude. Utterly overwhelmed by being alive and surrounded by the beauty of the mountain world, I hug each of my three climbing partners. Now that I am safe, it sinks in just how close to death I’ve been. That was 22 April 2003 – Earth Day. In hindsight, I believe the emotion I felt then stemmed in part from something else – a deeper consciousness that the ice I had seen was vanishing. Seven years of climbing in Alaska had provided me with a front-row seat from where I could witness the dramatic impact of human-caused climate disruption. Each year, we found that the toe of the glacier had shrivelled further. Each year, for the annual early season ice-climbing festival on this glacier, we found ourselves hiking further up the crusty frozen mud left behind by its rapidly retreating terminus. Each year, the parking lot was moved closer to the glacier, only to be left farther away as the ice withdrew. Even sections of Denali – the highest mountain in North America, which stands more than 20,000 feet tall and is roughly 250 miles from the Arctic Circle – had already undergone startling changes in 2003: the ice of its glaciers was disappearing quickly. Our planet is rapidly changing, and what we are witnessing is unlike anything that has occurred in human, or even geological, history. The heat-trapping nature of CO2 and methane, both greenhouse gases, has been scientific fact for decades, and according to Nasa, “no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response”. Evidence shows that greenhouse gas emissions are causing the Earth to warm 10 times faster than it should, and the ramifications of this are being felt, quite literally, throughout the entire biosphere. Oceans are warming at unprecedented rates, droughts and wildfires of increasing severity and frequency are altering forests around the globe, and the Earth’s cryosphere – the parts of the Earth so cold that water is frozen into ice or snow – is melting at an ever-accelerating rate. The subsea permafrost in the Arctic is thawing, and we could experience a methane “burp” of previously trapped gas at any moment, causing the equivalent of several times the total amount of CO2 humans have emitted to be released into the atmosphere. The results would be catastrophic. Climate disruption also brings with it extreme weather such as hurricanes and floods. For instance, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to an increase in the frequency of severe major rain events, such as Hurricane Harvey over Houston in summer 2017, which dropped so much rain that the weight of the water actually caused the Earth’s crust to sink by 2cm. Earth has not seen current atmospheric CO2 levels since the Pliocene epoch, some 3m years ago. Three-quarters of that CO2 will still be here in 500 years. It takes a decade to experience the full warming effects of CO2 emissions. Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions, it would take another 25,000 years for most of what is currently in the atmosphere to be absorbed into the oceans. Climate disruption is progressing faster than ever, and faster than predicted. Seventeen of the 18 hottest years ever recorded have occurred since 2001. The distress signals from our overheated planet are all around us, with reports, studies and warnings increasing daily. Worst-case prediction made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the rise in temperatures, extreme weather, sea levels and CO2 levels in the atmosphere have fallen short of reality. Countless glaciers, rivers, lakes, forests and species are already vanishing at a pace never seen before, and all of this from increasing the global mean temperature by “only” 1C above the preindustrial baseline. Some scientists predict it could rise by as much as 10C by 2100. A study led by James Hansen, the former director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned that the rise we have seen so far has already caused unstoppable melting in both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Mountaineering in today’s climate-disrupted world is a vastly different endeavour from what it used to be. Glaciers are vanishing before our eyes, having shrunk to the lowest levels ever recorded, and are now melting faster than ever. Seventy per cent of the glaciers in western Canada are projected to be gone by 2100. Montana’s Glacier National Park will most likely not have any active glaciers by 2030. The Matanuska Glacier’s ancient ice is already rapidly vanishing. Dramatic changes are occurring even in the planet’s highest and coldest places. Even Mount Everest is transforming, as thousands of glaciers across the Himalayas are likely to shrink by up to 99% by 2100. A child born today will see an Everest largely free of glaciers within their lifetime. I lived in Alaska for a decade beginning in 1996, and spent time on the glaciers there. As early as the late 90s, large portions of the holiday season would go by in Anchorage without any snow on the ground. The waterfalls that my climbing friends and I had used for ice climbing barely froze some winters, and we could see the glaciers that we used to traverse to access peaks shrinking from year to year. In Nepal the sacred mountain Machapuchare rises abruptly on the eastern boundary of the Annapurna Sanctuary. As a child I came across a photograph of this peak in a geography textbook and was immediately captivated by its majesty. Shaped like a fish’s tail, the knife-edged ridge that forms its summit is a seemingly paper-thin line of rock that drops precipitously on either side, causing the apex of the peak – which is nearly half a mile higher than the top of Denali – to be one of the more dramatic summits anywhere. It is a masterpiece of nature. When I was 10 years old, I saw the Rocky Mountains of Colorado for the first time, their silhouettes against the setting sun, and I was awestruck. Years later I travelled to Alaska and drove a short way into Denali national park and preserve. When the afternoon clouds parted to reveal the majesty of Denali’s summit, my first inclination was to bow in wonderment. A year after that I moved to Alaska, and began training myself in the mountaineering skills I needed to access these sanctuaries that stand far from the violence, speed and greed of society. John Muir, the Scottish-American naturalist, author, philosopher and early wilderness-preservation advocate, captured my feelings precisely: “I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.” A glacier is essentially suspended energy, suspended force. It is, in a sense, life frozen in time. But now they are themselves running out of time. The planet’s ecosystems, pushed far beyond their capacity to adapt to human-generated traumas and stresses, are in a state of freefall. Just as I watched hundreds of years of time compressed into glacial ice flash before my eyes in a matter of seconds as I fell into the crevasse, swathes of the natural world are, in the blink of a geological eye, falling into oblivion. Modern life has compressed time and space. You can traverse the globe in a matter of hours, or gain information in nanoseconds. The price for this, along with everything we want, on demand, all the time, is a total disconnection from the planet that sustains our lives. I venture into the wilds and into the mountains in large part to allow space and time to stretch themselves back to what they were. The frenetic pace of contemporary life is having a devastating impact on this planet. Humans have transformed more than half the ice-free land on Earth. We have changed the composition of the atmosphere and the chemistry of the oceans from which we came. We now use more than half the planet’s readily accessible freshwater runoff, and the majority of the world’s major rivers have been either dammed or diverted. As a species, we now hang over the abyss of a geoengineered future we have created for ourselves. At our insistence, our voracious appetite is consuming nature itself. We have refused to heed the warnings Earth has been sending, and there is no rescue team on its way. At the end of July 2017 I flew to Alaska’s northern shore. A couple of days after my arrival I took a morning walk along the Arctic Ocean. The only thing that was a constant was the shore beneath my boots and the crunching sound of the tiny stones as I walked. Up here, only 1,300 miles from the north pole, the sun never sets in summer, and time stretches until it loses its meaning. Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow), one of several ancient villages in the area, is the northernmost incorporated point in the US. The indigenous people here, the Iñupiat, have learned to live on the edge of the tundra and the seas, with the whales, the birds and the ice floes. I met 55-year-old Marvin Kanayurak, who was born and raised here, as were his parents. He is a whaler and volunteers doing rescues. He tells me how there used to be pressure ridges in the sea ice (formed when two ice floes are forced together) during the winter that were 50 or even 60 feet high, but now they are “lucky” to find any even 20 feet tall. Heading out across the ice to find open water in the spring used to take them two weeks of plotting and making a trail. Now it takes them only a couple of days because the open water is so much closer. Kanayurak had told me that he was a volunteer gravedigger. The permafrost used to be 10-12 inches below the surface, so it would take three days of chipping with an ice pick to dig a grave. Now the permafrost is several feet below the surface, and softer, so he can dig a grave in a few hours. Permafrost is a layer of ground that is continuously frozen for a period of two years or more. It contains dead plants that absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere centuries ago, and then froze before decomposing. When it thaws, microbial activity converts a large portion of that organic material into methane and CO2, which is released back into the atmosphere. According to a Nasa report, over hundreds of millennia, “Arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon” – an estimated 1,400-1,850 gigatonnes, compared to 850 gigatonnes of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere. That’s equal to around half of all the estimated organic carbon in Earth’s soils, with most of it located in the top 10 feet of thaw-vulnerable soil. Scientists, along with others, are learning that the Arctic permafrost is less permanent than its name implies. Estimates of how much carbon will be released by thawing permafrost show it could average around 1.5bn tonnes annually, which is roughly the same amount as current US annual emissions from burning fossil fuels. Dr Kevin Schaefer, a research scientist for the National Snow and Ice Data Center who studies permafrost carbon feedback (PCF) – the warming of the surface of the planet that would result from the release of carbon from the permafrost – estimates that PCF by itself will increase temperatures by 0.2C by 2100, and even more beyond that. This means PCF will have a significant effect on the long-term climate, even if the goal of limiting atmospheric temperatures to 2C is reached. While I was in Utqiagvik I spoke to Dr Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who also specialises in permafrost. His lab has been collecting temperature data each year in many locations around the world, but mostly across Alaska, Canada and Russia. “If it comes closer to thawing point, then it becomes unstable,” Romanovsky said. “For any permafrost research, that is the crucial data: what is the temperature and how stable is it?” His lab is unique in that it now has nearly 40 years of data records from a variety of locations, and he generates permafrost temperature modelling to explain how the temperatures are changing. The changes in the permafrost happening across Alaska’s North Slope are due to some of the most dramatic temperature increases in the world. In 35 years of measurements here, the temperature at 20 metres below the ground has increased by 3C since Romanovsky’s first measurement, and at the surface of the permafrost one metre below the ground, the average temperature has increased by a staggering 5C since the mid-1980s. Even small increases bring the temperature of the permafrost closer to 0C. Crossing that line means the permafrost will start to thaw. Scientists used to believe the permafrost was stable across the North Slope, and that it would not begin to thaw this century. Romanovsky said: “If you look at our records, however, and extrapolate into the future another 30 years, assuming changes continue as they have been for the last 30 years, the permafrost on the North Slope will hit 0C by 2050 or 2060 at the latest. Nobody was expecting this, and most people would be surprised to see this happen so soon.” Schaefer also expressed concern about the impact that thawing permafrost will have on the infrastructure and people of the Arctic. “Thawing permafrost represents a radical change to the environment and way of life in the Arctic, with unknown social costs,” he said. I asked if he thought it would be necessary to relocate most, if not all, of the coastal villages in northern Alaska. He said that as sea levels go up and permafrost thaws, “there is risk the thawing will destroy critical infrastructure, which will require repair or moving it, and that includes entire villages. If you built your village right next to the ocean and it starts to melt, you have to move. This is happening in interior Alaska along rivers, and it’s also happening across the entire Arctic zone.” Roads, railroads, oil and gas infrastructure, airports, seaports – all these things were built across the Arctic on the assumption that the permafrost would stay frozen. “When it is frozen it is solid, but it thaws out and turns to mud, so it’s easy to see this causing a lot of damage to infrastructure,” Schaefer said. Dr Leonid Yurganov, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County physics department and the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, is an expert in the remote sensing of Arctic methane levels. He told me his team of researchers had already detected long-term increases in methane over large areas of the Arctic, and warned that the fast liberation of methane would influence air temperature near the surface and accelerate Arctic warming. “The difference in temperatures between the poles and the equator drives our air currents from west to east,” he said. “If this difference diminishes, the west-to-east air transport becomes slower, and north-south air currents become stronger. This results in frequent changes in weather in the midlatitudes.” It would change the climate, he says, “everywhere in the world”. Two days after leaving Utqiagvik, I flew from Anchorage to Seattle on my way home. Forty-five minutes before we landed, while flying at 35,000 feet, the plane entered a cloud of brownish-grey smoke rising from the 146 wildfires scorching British Columbia beneath us. At that point, they had burned more than 600,000 acres and forced 7,000 people from their homes. We descended into the brown cloud until we landed in Seattle, which was also enveloped in the smoke. A couple of days later, a leaked draft report from US scientists across 13 federal agencies warned of a worst-case scenario of 18F warming over the Arctic between 2071 and 2100. The report also noted that the Arctic was losing more than 3.5% of its sea ice coverage every decade, that the extent of the September sea ice had declined more than 10% per decade, that the land ice was disappearing at an increasingly rapid rate and that the severity of winter storms was increasing because of warming temperatures. The grim news seemed endless: the snow-free season on Alaska’s North Slope is lengthening. The year 2016 experienced the longest snow-free season in 115 years of record-keeping – roughly 45% longer than the average snow-free period over the previous four decades. The October temperature at Utqiagvik increased by a staggering 7.2C between 1979 and 2012. We are already facing mass extinction. There is no removing the heat we have introduced into the oceans, nor the 40bn tons of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere every single year. There may be no changing what is happening, and far worse things are coming. How, then, shall we meet this? Like so many people, I have wondered what to do at this time. Each of us now must find our own honest, natural response to the conditions that we have brought upon ourselves. I am heartened by people like my friend Karina Miotto in Brazil, who has devoted her entire life to protecting the Amazon. Each time a report is published about increased deforestation in her beloved rainforest, I watch Karina become consumed in grief. But each time, she goes deeper within herself and her community, further strengthening her love for that portion of the planet where she lives, and repurposes herself into her next action to protect the Amazon. I find solace in the fact that there are millions of others like Karina, particularly among the younger generations, who have drawn their lines around their respective portions of the planet closest to their hearts and are making their stands. I find my deepest conviction and connection to the Earth by communing with the mountains. I moved to Colorado and lived among them when I was in my early 20s, and it was there I began to deepen my relationship with them, and to really listen to them. I would hike out and just sit among the peaks, watching them for hours, and write about them in my journal. Today I know in my bones that my job is to learn to listen to them ever more deeply, and to share what they are telling us with those who are also listening. While western colonialist culture believes in “rights”, many indigenous cultures teach of “obligations” that we are born into: obligations to those who came before, to those who will come after, and to the Earth itself. When I orient myself around the question of what my obligations are, a deeper question immediately arises: from this moment on, knowing what is happening to the planet, to what do I devote my life? This is an edited extract from The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail, which will be published by The New Press on 15 January • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.I am starting to see what the Victorians meant about ankles. I have a bit of a thing for them myself these days. And it’s not just me: right now, they are a much-appreciated erogenous zone, sartorially speaking. Ah, excellent point. You’ve noticed that you can’t actually see my ankles. But here’s the thing: you can see that I have ankles. Bear with me. What I mean is that you might notice my ankles, even though you can’t see them, because my skirt is of a length that shows ankle, rather than leg, so it points to these rather eye-catching boots. If I had been wearing this skirt five years ago, I would probably have worn it with dark-coloured high heels, because it wouldn’t have occurred to me to make ankles a focal point; but in 2019 it calls for a jazzy ankle boot. The jazzy ankle boot is one of those trends that started as a silly fling and, against the odds, stuck. It stuck because it is simple and effective. My absolute favourite fashion tricks are the kind that are big on impact but don’t make your life difficult. A well-chosen pair of spectacular earrings, for instance: they fit into your handbag, and turn a black sweater and jeans into a passable evening look. A pair of interesting ankle boots with a modest heel works along the same lines. They transform a midi skirt, or trousers or jeans cropped at the ankle, into an interesting look. The ankle boot has risen as hemlines have fallen. An ankle boot is not particularly flattering, so when skirts were short and leg-lengthening illusions were called for, it didn’t really work. But when your skirt shows only a few inches of ankle, there is really no need to get hung up on leg-lengthening illusions. (There was never actually any point getting hung up on leg-lengthening illusions in the first place; but most of us feel those pressures and I don’t think it’s helpful to pretend we don’t.) It is not only skirts that have a new hemline. Trouser length has changed, too. It used to be that trousers were worn as long as possible without touching the ground, covering as much of the shoe as possible, stretching out the leg and disappearing the ankle. But the toe of a shoe pointing out from your hem doesn’t look quite right now. A hem that lands on or a bit above your ankle is the thing. A jazzy ankle boot slots into that gap nicely. It doesn’t need to colour-match with your bag or clothes, so one pair will work for most outfits. Try a pair. You may find yourself smitten. • Jess wears polo neck, £115, essentiel-antwerp.com. Skirt, £120, boden.co.uk. Boots, £250, gestuz.com. Blazer, Jess’ own. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Samantha Cooper at Carol Hayes Management. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.For the past 25 years I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a spectacular view of Collaroy-Narrabeen beach from my old wooden house tucked into the northern slopes of Mt Ramsay. I survey a gorgeous, curved slice of coast where swell dispatched from the far reaches of the Southern and Pacific oceans reaches a final, spectacular resignation. Collaroy-Narrabeen on Sydney’s northern beaches is arguably as well known for its peerless status in Australian surfing culture as it is the pinup for rising sea levels due to climate change. There cannot be a beach in Australia that has been more studied by experts and fought over by homeowners, beach users and grandstanding politicians than Collaroy-Narrabeen. At 2.6km it’s Sydney’s second-longest stretch of golden sand and pounding surf (Cronulla, at 4.8km is the longest). It’s also classified as the most at-risk beach from erosion in New South Wales and the third most at-risk in the nation. Collaroy takes its name from an 1881 shipwreck. The paddle steamer Collaroy, that plied its trade between Newcastle and Sydney as a passenger vessel, grounded at the end of my street, according records in the State Library of NSW. As for “Narrabeen”, its name is disputed as meaning either “source of fresh water” or “swan”. Camaraigal descendant and historian Dennis Foley, describes the idyllic shores and waterway of Narrabeen Lagoon, “the heart of our world” before British settlement. Collaroy-Narrabeen is mecca for international surfers. A bucket-list wave. Quick trivia question: which is the only non-American surf spot mentioned in the Beach Boys’ Surfin’ USA? It’s Narra-beyaaan… There you go. Look it up. (You owe me a chop from your next triumphant meat tray.) World-renowned surfing legends Simon Anderson, Terry Fitzgerald, Nat Young, Damien Hardman, Laura Enever, Mark Warren, Col Smith and Ozzie Wright had their pick of waves along the stretch – from the powerful beach break at Collaroy to the fabled left-hander at North Narrabeen known as “northy”. Surf writer Nick Carroll says: “It is possible that more surfers learned to pull vertical off-the-lips here than any other surf spot in the world.” Standards and expectations are high and routinely met. Master the hassle at “northy” and you’ll survive any competitive break on earth, my surfing husband Brendan Donohoe reckons. He’s been the president of the northern beaches branch of Surfrider Australia since 1999 (also former chair of the board) and through him I’ve had a front-row seat to observe the pitched battles fought over Collaroy-Narrabeen. For those not immersed in surfing culture, the beach is that one in those ubiquitous news pictures of smashed houses, tangled timber and a swimming pool wrenched from its moorings – all flung to the sand in the wild winter storm of 2016 which swallowed 50m of coastline, 150m of sand and dumped it in the surf zone. The images don’t surprise anyone with a passing local knowledge. Storms have been claiming houses and various bits of the beach’s four surf life saving clubs regularly since the first recorded image of splintered timber in 1920. Ask the old-timers. Question is, can a man-made seawall hold back the tides? One thing is absolutely certain according to coastal scientists worldwide: seawalls protect land property in the short-term but, eventually, destroy beaches. Think of the dunes of a beach as its precious lungs … breathing in and out with the tides. Sand is accreted, washed away. Breathe in. Breathe out. For the vast swathes of Australia’s uninhabited shoreline it’s a dynamic, natural process. When humans build houses in the dunes or breakwalls and seawalls on beaches and rivers, they harden the coast and its ability to recover naturally. Such structures have the inevitable effect of reflecting and concentrating wave energy and accelerating erosion. Eventually, the beach narrows and disappears. In 2002, the Surfrider Foundation called on the beach-loving residents of Collaroy-Narrabeen to protest the building of a seawall more than a kilometre long proposed by the then Warringah council. Also noted was that seawalls are eye-wateringly expensive to maintain, adding huge imposts to council rates. Thousands gathered, held hands, drew a “line in the sand”. Said “No to seawalls” and the audacious engineering project was scrapped. Decades earlier the council had committed to a “buyback” of properties in the wave impact zone. A strategic retreat from the worst of it. A handful of properties were purchased, but the policy was abandoned in 2007, deemed as “unsustainable” into the future, estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars by the MP for Pittwater, Rob Stokes. In 2013 Tony Abbott, member for Warringah, declared that a “green army” would build seawalls up and down the coast. The rising waters would be forever thwarted! Northern beaches mayors said “yeah, nah”. “It’s the opposite of the direction councils are going in.” The science is in. And it’s not that simple. The new, amalgamated Northern Beaches council now has a policy of approving partial seawall reinforcements with costs largely borne by the homeowners themselves. It’s seen as unfair by some. No comfort to the many thousands of homeowners along Australia’s vast, settled coastline whose precious properties (built in good faith) are now subject to the merciless forces of evermore destructive coastal surges due to climate change. So, what’s the answer? Coastal municipalities have been tackling the problem with a suite of measures. For some it will be a strategic retreat with assets that can be moved, for others it will be building partial seawalls, cliff reinforcement and revegetation. As is happening in other parts of the world, the costs of defence will sometimes be calculated as too onerous and properties will be abandoned to topple into the sea. What about pumping more sand to replenish the beach? I hear you ask. Good question! It’s what Surfrider Australia and others (including Rob Stokes) have been advocating for decades. After all, it’s been done on the southern Gold Coast since 1976 after breakwalls built in the 60s on the Tweed River disturbed the natural flow of sand, leaving local beaches bare and bereft. Sand is pumped through pipes on to the beaches, to the point where many now complain there’s too much of the stuff. However, the topography of threatened beaches in NSW is very different to the Goldie. Most of our eroding beaches are locked between headlands and sand is washed directly offshore to deep water, making restoration of our beaches a much more expensive and tricky proposition. In October 2017, a technical report on sand nourishment was prepared by the University of NSW’s Water Research Laboratory for the state Office of Environment and Heritage. It notes that in the US the trend since the 1960s has been to move away from fixed structures for coastal protection. These days some 80%-93% of US Army Corps of Engineers’ expenditure is directed to replenishing sand. The detailed report covers the waterfront in its analysis: the optimum width of beaches that sun-lovers expect; the sourcing of suitable sand with the right grain size; how to get it on to our beaches by either road or via a variety of offshore sand dredges and the attendant environmental impacts. It’s well worth a read if you’re wondering if sea-level rise is coming to a beach near you. Spoiler alert: it is. There’s increasing clamour from coastal experts for the NSW government to invest in a dredging vessel (or two) that could ply our coast and continually pump sand on to our most at-risk beaches. We could name one Beachy McBeachface! Renting sand-pumping vessels is also an option – there’s plenty of spare global capacity. The cost would be considerable, the oversight demanding and, no doubt, the science and technology is continually evolving. But the utter negligence of government(s) to not act, or even model future solutions, is unfathomable. The sheer volume of reports commissioned and left mouldering in bottom drawers could in themselves be a handy bulwark in the face of gathering storms. And those increasingly ferocious maelstroms are coming. Leaving in their wake another round of useless hand-wringing and blame. Hearts and homes broken. Ask yourself, what is a beach worth? To our economy, tourism and our adored beach-going and surfing culture? On Collaroy-Narrabeen, at least, the cost of doing something has been estimated. Too high a price to pay? The loss of my beloved beach, and yours – and it could happen in our children’s lifetime – is incalculable. It’s way past time to act.The image of the West End theatre producer has changed radically in the past half century but Duncan Weldon, who has died aged 77, was “old school” in his devotion to star names and familiar play titles in a career that saw him create a powerful commercial nexus between the Chichester Festival theatre and the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Although he operated as a solo producer, his greatest contribution was achieved in partnership with Paul Elliott. Together with the actor Richard Todd, they launched Triumph Theatre Productions in 1970 with a superb revival of JB Priestley’s When We Are Married, starring Peggy Mount and Fred Emney. The show started at the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, Guildford, Surrey, and transferred to the Strand (now the Novello), London. That show, said Weldon, cost £15,000 to put on. The problem, he complained 40 years later, was that a similar sort of production would now cost £500,000, and a new musical at least £2m. Without subsidy of any kind, the days of a modest West End success were over. “In the old days,” he said in 2003, “there were flops, break-evens and successes. The problem now is that the ‘doing all right’ plays have joined the flops. You win or lose, there’s nothing in between.” The other big change in his professional lifetime was that the box-office stars who once signed up for a six-month contract would now sign for only 12 weeks, so making money was even harder. Even the notoriously curmudgeonly Rex Harrison signed up to Weldon in 1973 for six months at Her Majesty’s as Pirandello’s Henry IV; it had taken Weldon years of “wooing” to land his big fish, but Harrison then did eight more shows for him, including Frederick Lonsdale’s Aren’t We All? with Claudette Colbert in 1984 and JM Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton with Edward Fox (Lonsdale’s grandson) in 1988. These last were two of the 63 consecutive plays Weldon produced at the Haymarket after he signed a 1978 contract with Louis Michaels, who had acquired the lease of the theatre from the Crown Commission, making him responsible for the next 25 years. During this period, Weldon and Elliott went their separate ways. When Michaels died in 1981, Weldon continued his Haymarket association (with the theatre now under the control of Enid Chanelle, Michaels’s business partner) while founding Triumph Apollo Productions with two friends, Lionel Becker and Paul Gregg, both of them with money and connections in Weldon’s native Southport, Merseyside, and produced shows starring Liza Minnelli, Dean Martin, Omar Sharif, Charlton Heston and Jack Lemmon. His plays in this period included Alan Bates in John Osborne’s A Patriot for Me, Glenda Jackson in Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, Lauren Bacall in Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth, Paul Scofield in Shaw’s Heartbreak House, Penelope Keith in Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea and Peter O’Toole in Shaw’s The Apple Cart. Weldon was born in Southport, into a Russian-Jewish immigrant family. His father, Clarence Weldon, ran a chain of photographic shops. His mother, Margaret (nee Andrew), had converted from Catholicism to Judaism. Duncan was educated at King George V grammar school, Southport, and the Northern School of Speech and Drama; he also ran amateur theatre groups in both Southport synagogues, orthodox and reform. He was star-struck from the outset, working as a call boy in the Southport Garrick for 10 shillings (50p) a week (plus tips) and collecting the autographs of Laurel and Hardy, Kay Kendall, Ted Ray and countless other stars who passed through. He left school in 1959 to run one of his father’s shops in Wigan and take a photography course at the Manchester college of technology. He was soon working as a photographer at his local theatre and for Peter Hall at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon (Hall returned the compliment by working for him; and, as Weldon pointed out, losing him far more money than he ever cost Hall), and acting in weekly rep at the Garrick for £9 a week. He befriended the director David Scase, who ran the Manchester Library theatre, and acted with him – and the unlikely duo of David Kossoff and Steven Berkoff – in 1965 at the Liverpool Playhouse in Siedman and Son, a play about a garment manufacturer in New York. Within a year, and encouraged by Kossoff, Weldon was producing six touring shows, with no office or secretary, but with a car and a telephone. Kossoff told him to visit an old London friend in a Southport nightclub. Thus he met the singer Helen Shapiro, whom he married in 1967. His first show with Elliott, in 1968, was No, No Nanette, directed by Lionel Blair and starring Bob Monkhouse, in Bournemouth. Their first London show together was Tons of Money at the Mayfair. It lost a fortune. One night’s box office takings were £1, 11 shillings and sixpence. Eventually, this strangely compatible, but odd, couple – Weldon bearded and taciturn; Elliott, far brasher, a salesman turned actor with a good line in patter – had their hits on three continents (in the West End in London and on tour, in North America, Canada mostly, and in Australia) with shows ranging from Eric Sykes and Jimmy Edwards in Big Bad Mouse in the 1970s through to David Suchet leading a Vatican mystery thriller written by a New York lawyer, The Last Confession, with a large cast in 2007, and Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart packing out in 2009 in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a play Weldon found both outlandish and incomprehensible. Although he had a big hit – four years at the Shaftesbury – with a Dad’s Army musical, Weldon’s luck was running out in the mid-90s and he turned with relief to running the Chichester Festival theatre in 1995, appointing Derek Jacobi, whom he adored as an actor and colleague, as his artistic director. That did not last long. Debts accumulated until Weldon resigned in 1997, not returning to Chichester until 2006 when, after two rocky intermediate directorships, and a £7m Arts Council bailout, Jonathan Church placed Chichester back on an even keel. Weldon and Elliott were prophetically pre-Thatcherite in developing a mixed economy, sharing production costs – first with the Billingham Forum arts centre, Stockton-on-Tees, then the Yvonne Arnaud, then Chichester – and harnessing talent from the subsidised sector. One of their unlikeliest, and most notable hits, in London and New York, was Marie Jones’s sparkish two-hander, Stones in His Pockets, with which they launched Triumph Entertainment in 2001. In the following year, their production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan won a Tony award for the best revival on Broadway. Weldon’s last co-producing credit was on Church’s acclaimed 2018 revival of The Price by Arthur Miller, starring Suchet and Brendan Coyle, which is due to transfer from the Theatre Royal Bath to Wyndham’s theatre next week. Last year Weldon and Elliott received Olivier Special Recognition awards for their contribution to British theatre. For such a quiet, unassuming man, his career, and indeed his private life, was something of a rollercoaster. He and Shapiro divorced in 1971. His second wife, in 1974, was the actor Janet Mahoney, with whom he had a daughter, Lucy. After their divorce, he lived alone until 2003 when, travelling to Australia to see Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack in his presentation of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, he met by chance Ann Sidney, Miss World 1964, whom he had known as a youthful friend of Elliott and whom he had presented in pantomime at Chichester in the mid-90s. They married in 2008. Weldon is survived by Ann, Lucy and his brother, Gordon. • Duncan Clark Weldon, theatre producer, born 19 March 1941; died 30 January 2019The dark side of the moon may not actually be dark, but alas it’s not that hospitable. That much became clear this week when a seedling planted by the Chinese (which also gave us the headline of the week) on the far side of the moon failed to survive a lunar night. Hardly surprising really: night over there goes on for two weeks with temperatures as low as -170C. But back on planet Earth, thankfully there are green shoots aplenty if you know where to look. The UK has resettled more than 10,000 Syrian refugees since 2015, but 70% are unemployed or underemployed – a considerable waste given the advanced professional skills that many have. Enter a group of social entrepreneurs with the savvy and financial acumen to get people like doctors and dentists back into their chosen profession. The cliche of the post-doctoral physicist driving minicabs for a living might finally be put to bed. Help of a different kind has been offer in Sweden to those on the receiving end of an online troll offensive. #Jagärhär mobilises a small army of benevolent commenters to threads where hate merchants are spreading their poison. The pen is mightier than the sword – and the keyboard is mightier than both. Each week, we’d like to try and include a nugget of data that shows human progress in a good light. Do get in touch to let us know where to look (email theupside@theguardian.com). This week we were curious about global employment rates – the number of people with jobs. So we consulted the World Bank, and according to its latest data more people have jobs than ever before. Have a good weekend. This piece on The Inkline about a British social enterprise battling loneliness and suicide via a tour bus that stops in various destinations across the UK and invites people to play chess. Also this article in the Atlantic that reports on 10 new guidelines for making better men. Thank you for giving me something to look forward to at the end of a week. Instead of feeling overwhelmed and tuning out from the news. I particularly enjoy some of the obscure things you pop in. Brooke Penrose, by email The German hashtag #ichbinhier has been a breath of fresh air for me. Ppl feel free to insult and attack others because they are anonymous. I like the fact that others are calling them out for their hate speech and encouraging positive behaviour online. This hashtag was needed years ago imo. MistyKasumi, commenting bravely about trolls below the line No need for a reply, just wanted to say thanks for your work. It’s made a big difference to my week. Matt Savage by email In Geneva, where 500 people gathered to figure out how to get this kind of news more prominently into our newspapers, television screens and websites. The challenge was beautifully articulated by the former Le Monde journalist and founder of Heidi news, Serge Michel… Solutions journalism is like Johnny Hallyday. 90pc of people love him and 90pc of journalists hate him. Great line from @UNOG_DG up now at #ConstructiveConf "Constructive journalism isn't about positive upbeat news, it's about reporting solutions to start a debate about what can be done. Journalists are not activists but can *activate* citizens". pic.twitter.com/06x6GuVhKc Also at the University of Birmingham School, central England, which has launched a bold experiment to tackle segregation by taking in children from all parts of the city. If you have a thought, a comment, a criticism or a suggestion of story ideas or subject matter, do please get in touch with us by email at theupside@theguardian.com. If you like this type of journalism and and would like to help us to uncover more valour, enterprise, altruism and innovation, please support our work with a single or recurring contribution. Support the Guardian.With their moustaches, traditional headwear and big campaign promises, Nurhadi and Aldo resemble almost any other politician. But, as Indonesia heads towards a presidential election, looks can be deceiving. The two presidential candidates are in fact fictional. Created by a group of disaffected millennials, they have struck a chord with young voters and their social media profiles, which regularly lampoon mainstream politics, have attracted almost 400,000 followers on Instagram and thousands on Twitter and Facebook since their creation last month. In what has so far shaped up to be a lacklustre election campaign, Nurhadi and Aldo have become best known for their vulgar campaign tagline, a creative abbreviation of the last few letters of their names to make “Dildo for Indonesia”. “I see this movement as a breath of fresh air for our politics,” says Edwin, one of the creators, told the Guardian. “It is a new perspective, a new way to enjoy politics, and the drama of elite politicians who always argue, but don’t actually represent us. “I was really looking forward to hearing from our candidates, but mostly they don’t show us their programs, or generate solutions for our problems.” The world’s third-largest democracy heads to the polls in April, and millennials will account for 80 out of 187 million voters, but some young voters are not enthused about the choices in front of them. On Thursday night in the first of five presidential debates – focused on law, human rights, terrorism and corruption – neither candidate veered much off script, with analysts suggesting they failed to articulate creative visions for some of Indonesia’s most deep-rooted problems. President Joko Widodo’s controversial pick for running mate, 75-year-old Islamic cleric Ma’ruf Amin who has advocated support for fatwas against religious minorities, LGBT people and even yoga, barely managed a few words, although when he did he made them count, saying “terrorism is not jihad”. His rival, the former military general Prabowo Subianto, avoided talk of past human rights violations, of which he stands accused, arguing the wages of civil servants should be increased to discourage corruption. The Nurhadi and Aldo accounts appropriate the classic Indonesian campaign aesthetic, a pious-looking candidate pictured next to their ballot number, or a lofty social program, often abbreviated into a catchy acronym. They mock the political formula, often using vulgarity. One policy for an internet subsidy program, “Program Subsidi Tagihan Warnet Bagi Umum” is cut into “Prostat Bau”, meaning “smelly prostate”. Others posts mock the conflict of interest between Indonesian media ownership and political parties, or use a caricature of Karl Marx, a satirical stab at Indonesia’s paranoia of communism, which is banned. Nurhadi and Aldo are also pro LGBT rights and have a “halal” program to legalise marijuana – both unthinkable in Indonesia’s current political climate. Edwin, who is a college student from central Java and asked that the Guardian use his first name only, said he created the candidates with the help of seven other young people he met through an online comedy page after becoming fed up with this year’s presidential candidates. A masseur from the Javanese town of Kudus agreed to lend his face to the campaign as Nurhadi, while Aldo is pure fiction, a mash-up of two different faces. This year’s presidential election pits controversial and retired Army general Prabowo Subianto and his running mate, former investment banker and businessman Sandiaga Uno against the incumbent president, Joko Widodo and his running mate, Ma’ruf Amin. The president’s running mate is a 75-year-old Islamic cleric notorious for promoting fatwas against LGBT people, religious minorities and yoga. Pangeran Siahaan, the founder of Asumsi, a YouTube channel that includes a weekly political talk show, says that after Amin’s candidacy was announced some young voters started to consider abstaining from the vote. He says: “I think Dildo For Indonesia, that counter movement, was started because there is some part of the young generation that are not really satisfied.” With voters aged 17-40 accounting for about 40% of the electorate, both presidential candidates have tried hard to appeal to young voters, especially online. “I think both candidates are trapped in what I call ‘viral and meme politics’ because they want to be viral and well distributed on social media because they think that is where millennials read their content,” explains Pangeran, “But if you take a look deeper, it is nothing but cosmetic.” Wearing sneakers or including a pop culture reference in a political speech, he adds, hasn’t worked for them either because: “The millennials don’t buy it.” Behind the dirty references masked as political visions, Edwin says their satirical account has a serious agenda. By showing how easy it is to replicate a vacuous political campaign he hopes voters will think twice about their choices. “We are here to provide humour but also education about how to choose a great leader and be a critical thinker,” he says, “So Nurhadi-Aldo are doing something other candidates are not.”Any day now, 29-year-old Ye Ming Yuen could be escorted out of his cell at Singapore’s Changi prison and whipped 24 times with a rattan cane. This comes on top of the 20-year sentence he’s already serving after being convicted of seven drug offences in a country that takes pride in its uncompromising approach when it comes to law-breaking. The story of Yuen, a former British public schoolboy and London DJ, has captured the attention of the British press, but he’s far from the only one awaiting caning. Judicial corporal punishment has been a long-time fixture in the south-east Asian city state. It was first introduced by British colonialists in the 19th century, but has been retained and even expanded by the post-independence government. Today, it’s applicable to more than 30 offences, from violent crimes like rape and robbery to nonviolent breaches of the law such as vandalism or overstaying one’s visa for over 90 days. Between January and October 2016, the courts handed down caning sentences to 1,257 people; 987 sentences were carried out in that time. Caning is only carried out on men between the ages of 18 and 50; a 1.2m-long cane of about 1.2cm in diameter is used. I’ve met men who’ve been subjected to such punishment, listening to them describe being lined up with others due to be caned that day. One said he was made to watch the man before him get caned, acutely aware that he’d be next. The pain, these men say, is excruciating. All human rights-related campaigns tend to be an uphill battle in Singapore All human rights-related campaigns tend to be an uphill battle in Singapore, where a single political party dominates and doesn’t tend to look kindly on dissent or challenges to its power. But caning is an especially tough nut to crack. Like the death penalty, it’s central to a criminal justice system that takes the logic of “spare the rod, spoil the child” to its extreme conclusion on a state level, and the establishment is highly reluctant to budge from that position. The courts have ruled that caning – an act of violence that causes the skin to split and the buttocks to bleed – does not “breach the high threshold of severity and brutality that is required for it to be regarded as torture”. The rhetoric of deterrence is strong in Singapore, where political leaders remind the populace of its tiny size and need to succeed in a messy, complicated world. Government officials point to other countries’ struggles with drugs and crime, arguing that Singapore’s tough stance keeps the streets clean and safe. The evidence that capital or corporal punishment deters crime is not as clear as they’d have everyone believe, but in a country where the mainstream press is kept under the government’s thumb, there aren’t that many avenues to question assertions made by the powerful. As with many other cases, public attention is often drawn to those with some measure of social capital or support. Little is heard about low-wage migrant workers caned for falling foul of the country’s immigration laws, or Singaporeans whose families have little hope of challenging the sentence and little wish to attract public attention. High-profile cases of caning tend to be those of citizens from developed countries in the west: the US teenager Michael Fay in the 1990s, the Swiss graffiti spray-painter Oliver Fricker in 2010, and German citizens Andreas von Knorre and Elton Hinz who vandalised a train in 2015. When foreign countries speak out on behalf of their citizens, it shines a much-needed light on this draconian and ruthless practice. Yet such outcries can be a double-edged sword, as the discourse in Singapore shifts away from the barbarism of the penalty towards the chest-thumping nationalist pride of a tiny nation intent on punching above its weight. In an obituary for Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew in 2015, the local media pointed to his steadfast response to the US’s uproar over Fay’s caning as an instance where he was “not afraid to stand up to a greater power where needed”. Advocacy and lobbying by foreigners for an end to judicial corporal punishment is quickly interpreted in Singapore as impinging on our sovereignty, bigger countries thinking they can push us around. It’s an anxious, fearful time for Ye Ming Yuen and his family. For Singapore, it’s yet another case to be fed into a narrative of “zero-tolerance” deterrence and national pride. But perhaps Singaporeans should ask ourselves: what does it say about our nation when this is what it takes to make us feel strong? • Kirsten Han is a freelance journalist and editor-in-chief of New Naratif, a platform for south-east Asian journalismBest actor in a TV series – musical or comedySacha Baron Cohen – Who Is America? 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Rosamund Pike – A Private War Best actor – dramaBradley Cooper – A Star Is BornWillem Dafoe – At Eternity’s GateLucas Hedges – Boy ErasedWINNER: Rami Malek – Bohemian RhapsodyJohn David Washington – BlacKkKlansman Best film – dramaBlack PantherBlacKkKlansmanWINNER: Bohemian RhapsodyIf Beale Street Could TalkA Star Is BornVenezuelan secret police seized and then swiftly released a prominent opposition leader, less than 48 hours after he declared himself ready to assume the presidency of his crisis-stricken country in a bold challenge to its leader Nicolás Maduro. Juan Guaidó, the 35-year-old head of Venezuela’s opposition-run parliament, was reportedly taken by agents from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) on Sunday morning as he travelled north out of the capital, Caracas. On Friday the politician threw down the gauntlet to Hugo Chávez’s heir, telling a rally Maduro was an illegitimate “usurper” and declaring that he therefore had the constitutional right to assume leadership of the country until fresh elections were held. Several regional powers, including Brazil and Colombia, voiced support for that move. A video circulating on social media showed the moment of Guaidó’s detention, which sparked an immediate wave of international criticism. The head of the Organisation of American States expressed his “absolute condemnation” of what he called “the kidnapping of Venezuela’s interim president”. “The international community must stop the crimes of Maduro and his goons,” Luis Almagro tweeted. The United States secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, denounced the “arbitrary detention”, adding: “The US and world are watching”. Two foreign journalists – from the Colombian broadcaster Caracol and CNN’s Spanish language channel, CNN en Español – were also reported to have been detained. However, less than an hour after the first reports of Guaidó’s detention he was released. “I am with him already,” tweeted the politician’s wife, Fabiana Rosales, adding: “The dictatorship will not crush his fighting spirit.” Agradezco a todos la inmediata reacción de apoyo ante el atropello de la dictadura contra mi esposo @JGuaido. Estoy ya con él. La dictadura no podrá doblegar su espíritu de lucha. Vamos rumbo al Cabildo Abierto. Stalin González, another prominent opposition leader, tweeted: “They will not scare us with acts of violence and arbitrariness. We will carry on fighting until we achieve the change Venezuela needs.” No nos van a amedrentar con actos de violencia y arbitrariedades. Seguiremos luchando hasta alcanzar el cambio que Venezuela necesita. Venezuela’s communications minister, Jorge Rodríguez, told state media the detention was a “unilateral and irregular” act carried out by rogue agents who were being investigated and dismissed. On Friday Venezuela’s chavista prison minister, María Iris Varela Rangel, had tweeted a warning to Guaidó after his challenge to her leader: “I’ve already prepared your cell and your uniform, I hope you name your cabinet quickly so I know who is going down with you.” Addressing a rally of supporters following his release, Guaidó painted his brief detention as the result of infighting between members of Maduro’s panicked administration. “Look what they are doing. They are desperate in [the presidential palace] Miraflores! They don’t know who is giving the orders!” he said, calling on Venezuelan citizens and members of the armed forces to unite against Maduro. “We are survivors. Not victims!” Guaidó said, repeating a call for renewed street protests. The secret police operation brought to a close a dramatic week for the oil-rich South American nation which appeared to signal the start of a new and potentially tumultuous phase in Venezuela’s economic and political crisis. On Thursday, Maduro, who assumed leadership of Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution after his 2013 death, shrugged off a storm of international condemnation to start his second six-year term in office. But with Venezuela’s economic collapse accelerating and international pressure mounting as Latin America swings back to the political right, many doubt Maduro will cling to power for that long. Maduro mocked Guaidó on Friday at a summit of Latin American leftists in Caracas, claiming most citizens did not even know who he was. “It is a show … a Hollywood-esque show,” Maduro said of his opponent’s bid to replace him.On 30 September 2018, Kylie Jenner – Kardashian scion, businesswoman and owner of a world-famous pout – uploaded a photo to Instagram. In it, she posed beside a blacked-out Range Rover in a pink Katharine Hamnett jacket, cinched at the waist with a grey Chanel bumbag. Underneath, she wore black cycling shorts, white socks and chunky Joshua Sanders trainers in a silvery metallic finish. More than four million people liked the post, captioned simply: “happy sunday.” In Leicester, a 20-year-old student Queentonia Ojeka studied the post closely. She liked the length of the blazer and how the shorts hit mid-thigh. Also, it looked comfortable. So Ojeka did what millions of young women across the country do every day: went online and purchased a tweed blazer from the American low-cost retailer Fashion Nova for $30 (£23), which she paired with £8 chocolate-brown cycling shorts from the British brand PrettyLittleThing. “I love Kylie Jenner,” Ojeka laughs. “As much as I hate to admit [it]. Her fashion is evolving, which is why I like her even more.” Corsets. Orthopaedic trainers. Crop tops. Cycling shorts. Cycling sunglasses. Sequinned slip dresses. Lace bodysuits. Neon. Latex. Thigh-high boots. These are all fashion trends the Kardashians have helped popularise internationally. In bedrooms across the country, women painstakingly contour, bake and overline their lips in an approximation of the Kardashian makeup aesthetic. In nightclubs, you’ll see Kardashian disciples teetering in Lycra bodycon and spike heels. Clothing this growing army of Kardashian clones is a fast-growing industry of ultra-low-cost online retailers. There is PrettyLittleThing, Missguided, Boohoo, Nastygal and the US phenomenon Fashion Nova, but newer players including Oh Polly and MissPap are also entering the space. Browse these sites, and you will see yards of figure-hugging lycra and cheap lace in neon, pastel, or earthy tones. For the price of a large takeaway pizza (dresses hover at around the £15 mark, and sales are always on), you can own an outfit that – if you squint hard enough – could be from a Kardashian-Jenner’s Instagram post. It is a good time to be a model who resembles one of the Kardashians, too: lookalikes such as Lalla Rania Benchegra, who has modelled for PrettyLittleThing and appeared in campaigns for Fashion Nova, are in high demand. For the uninitiated, the Kardashians rose to fame in 2007 with their reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, after the release of second-oldest daughter Kim’s sex tape. (The family had a certain degree of notoriety already thanks to the late Robert Kardashian’s involvement in the OJ Simpson murder trial: he was Simpson’s friend, and served on his legal team.) Just over a decade on, the family’s status as the Medicis of modern celebrity is assured: between them, they have a combined Instagram following of more than 536 million people, and Keeping Up With the Kardashians has run for 15 seasons. But the Kardashians weren’t always an unstoppable global fashion juggernaut. For years, they dressed in clothes you could buy in the average department store (their Kardashian Kollection was stocked in the US retailer Sears). Then, in 2012, Kim began dating Kanye West, who introduced her to designers including Olivier Rousteing at Balmain and Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy, as well as his own Yeezy brand. Gone was the polyester animal print and in was an athleisure-inspired silhouette. The West association arguably conferred credibility upon the family: by 2014, Kim was gracing the cover of Vogue in a strapless Lanvin wedding dress. Back then, Instagram was in its infancy, but as the Kardashians’ stars rose within the high-fashion firmament, they cemented their celebrity status on social media. In 2012, the year Kim began dating West, she reached a million followers on Instagram: just seven years later, she would top out at more than 125 million. “They are very influential, just because of how much they’re talked about,” says Ojeka. “They’re spoken about; they’re on everything.” The Kardashians patronise such brands as Boohoo and Fashion Nova, switching allegiances for monetary reward. According to the Instagram marketers Hopper HQ, a single post on Kylie’s Instagram will set you back a cool $1m; you can have Kim for $750,000. Brands that affiliate themselves with the Kardashians, whether officially or unofficially, experience mega-growth. Fashion Nova was the most-searched-for fashion brand on Google in the US in 2018. Boohoo’s UK sales rose by a third to £180m in the last four months of 2018, with its strong performance credited in part to a successful collaboration with the eldest Kardashian daughter, Kourtney, who has long championed the brand. (Sales increased 95% at PrettyLittleThing, and 74% at Nasty Girl in the same period.) The success of such companies comes as established players in the UK retail market struggle: Asos recently posted a shock profit warning, and sales are also in decline at Topshop. Even negative press can’t scupper their mega-growth: Boohoo was recently criticised for selling real fur jumpers it had advertised as fake. What makes these retailers so successful? Dr Jonathan Reynolds, a retail and e-commerce expert at the University of Oxford, says they have some distinct advantages. As most are online-only (Missguided has two physical stores in the UK), they don’t pay for retail space, which means they can have shorter product runs and test new products out. “When you’ve got a store, you have to fill it with goods, which means you have to have a big inventory. So they are a much more agile kind of business, which seems to chime today with the fairly instant culture we have.” The pulsating sun at the centre of this new fashion solar system is Instagram. Fashion Nova’s network of more than 3,000 influencers, including Kylie Jenner and Cardi B, are critical to its success. They post pictures of themselves wearing outfits that are immediately available to purchase online. If the item sells, great; if not, the brand moves on to the next thing, unencumbered by large amounts of stock. On Fashion Nova, you can currently buy a white polyester minidress modelled by Kylie herself for $32.99, plus postage. And if your brand can’t afford to drop millions on Kardashian endorsement then in-house design teams can produce knock-offs of designer items worn by celebrities within days. After Kim’s aesthetic? A neon-pink minidress similar to the one she wore to Kylie’s 21st birthday party could be yours, from Boohoo, for just £4. “I’ve seen girls wearing that pink dress out on the town,” says 25-year-old handbag designer Lauren Levin, from Leeds. “It’s a very popular style.” Levin frequently hears from customers wanting a Kardashian look. When Kim toted a neon bag in August 2018, Levin had so many requests, she created a replica. “They definitely have a massive influence on my generation.” “They can sell anything,” agrees Pamela Church-Gibson, the author of Fashion and Celebrity Culture. She describes them as being at the centre of an “alternate fashion system”, which “is not people looking at pictures of fashion shows and interpreting the trends themselves, it’s women wanting to look a certain way, social media providing those images, and new retailers, particularly retailers that use social media a lot, like Boohoo, picking up on these trends and bucking it to their advantage”. “When it comes to clothes, they know how to dress,” says 23-year-old Tanyel Hassan, of the Kardashians. “If there’s an outfit they’ve got on for, say, thousands of pounds, I go on Boohoo or Missguided to see if I can get one that’s inspired by that, but cheaper.” Hassan, a teacher from east London, spends £50 a month on clothes; if she is going on holidy, she will pick up a new wardrobe for £300. When Kim wore a black lace bustier at Paris fashion week in 2016, Hassan purchased a copycat from Boohoo for £12. When Kylie posed in a bodycon, calf-length dress in September 2018, Hassan bought a £20 Missguided version. Yet the Kardashians don’t just sell clothes, but a way of being. “The Kardashians live aspirational and over-the-top lifestyles,” says Amanda McClain, author of Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand: Celebrity, Materialism, and Sexuality. Dress like a Kardashian, and you can approximate a lifestyle otherwise beyond your reach, with low-cost retailers bridging the gap. “It makes it so much easier to be able to have even a little glimpse of being in their shoes,” says Ojeka. For some young Kardashian fans, social media can be the most important part of a night out, says Emily Hall of social influencer experts the Goat Agency. “They’ll have full-on photoshoots before they go out, because they’re looking for that approval from a wider audience.” But when your wardrobe is reverse-engineered to maximise likes, posting the same outfit twice is heresy. All the women I speak to concede there is enormous pressure to look good online. “I do think it has a negative effect,” Levin says. “Because when I post things on social media and I don’t get as many likes as the photo before, I think, what’s wrong with me? I’m very aware there’s a big pressure, and that comes from the Kardashian age we live in today.” She’s not alone in feeling the strain: a recent study of 1,300 British teenagers from researchers at the University of Birmingham found that the pressure to post flattering selfies online was creating body dissatisfaction and misery among schoolchildren. The most popular body type being celebrated by these young people? A slim waist, large breasts and hips – sound familiar? According to data from Mintel, 22% of consumers say that social media influences the clothing they buy, a figure that rises to 64% in the Generation Z (under 22 years old) demographic. “It accelerates a cycle of spend-consumption,” Church-Gibson says. “It is worrying, how fast this process moves.” To make this fashion even faster, brands have relocated their manufacturing back to the UK in order to shorten the time between seeing an outfit online and purchasing it. Leicester’s once-ossifying garment industry has cranked back into production. While this might sound like good news, an FT investigation recently found evidence of workers being paid below minimum wage. Low-cost retailers facilitate impulse purchasing with a “‘test and repeat’ strategy,” explains Saisangeeth Daswani of the trends intelligence company Stylus. “They’re producing very small quantities of many different styles, within a short turnaround time of approximately two to four weeks.” Should we care that armies of young women are clothing themselves in one-wear outfits? During the 2018 British parliamentary inquiry into fast fashion, MPs accused Boohoo of selling cheap dresses that charity shops were likely to snub. “I never thought I’d see the day when Topshop would look like couture, but with the rise of even cheaper brands like PrettyLittleThing, it’s making it look that way,” says Orsola de Castro of the sustainability campaigners Fashion Revolution. “If you’re buying a dress that costs £8, approximately less than a meal, inevitably someone along the supply chain, if not quite a few people, will be suffering.” A recent Fashion Revolution study found that British consumers care the least about the impact of disposable fashion of all the countries they surveyed. There was more public outrage when Burberry burned its excess stock, De Castro says, than when the Rana Plaza collapsed. “It’s difficult to make consumers empathise with workers … they feel their lives are hard enough, and can’t identify with someone else’s hardship.” In an age of low pay and general economic malaise, you can understand the appeal of a £4 dress that makes you feel, however fleetingly, like a Kardashian. “If you’ve worked hard, you deserve to feel good, and when you’re dressed in clothes that you love, you feel good about yourself,” says Hassan. But what makes this Kardashian aesthetic so appealing to young women? “The look is always the same,” Church-Gibson observes. “It always follows the same shape. Everything is tight; the heels are very high.” High-fashion designs are put through a Kardashian filter, such as when Kim wore a Celine dress in March 2017. “The Celine aesthetic is very loose, and worn with sneakers, but she paired it with very high heels,” Church-Gibson explains, describing the Kardashian aesthetic as “sexy, rather than fashionable”. Church-Gibson has watched the Kardashian influence spread like a virus through British wardrobes with dismay. “What worries me is that everybody looks so similar. The look they’re selling is total, from the top of the head to the sole of the foot … it’s a very homogenous way of looking.” She mentions the style blog Man Repeller, which began as a celebration of fashion trends commonly thought to repel men: acid-washed harem pants, shoulder pads and dungarees. The Kardashian aesthetic is the anti-Man Repeller look; a hyper-feminised, high-glamour look that seems calculated to entice the male gaze. Acolytes of the Kardashian style “do look very sexy, but they are interchangeable”, says Church-Gibson. “In a way, it’s the death of individuality.” And while the Kardashians are sometimes celebrated for popularising a new, more curvaceous “slim-thick” body type, it’s a shape that is arguably as inaccessible as the very slim ideal that preceded it. “They’ve simply helped swap one unattainable beauty standard for another,” says Yomi Adegoke, a freelance journalist and the co-author of Slay In Your Lane, who has written about the Kardashian influence in beauty. “The ideal has been replaced with a want for ethnically ambiguous women with curves, but only in certain places. It’s more like a Mr Potato Head approach to beauty, picking the ‘best bits’ from various different races and leaving women of colour, specifically black women, still at the bottom rung when they only have ‘parts’ that are deemed worthy and beautiful.” Will anyone break the Kardashians’ stranglehold on the fashion industry? “There’s no end in sight,” concludes McClain. “The only people who may usurp them in the future are the next generation – their own children.”Polish-American architect best known for the Jewish Museum in Berlin I went to school in New York, to the Cooper Union, and many of my teachers were Bauhaus refugees. Prof Hannes Beckmann, for example, who taught me colour theory and design, was a Bauhaus-taught painter and photographer, and was teaching us from the notes of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Can you believe it? He showed me their notes with the comments by these amazing artists on them. So I had the exact course that was taught at the Bauhaus and I learned the beauty and profundity of its ideas. Sometimes Beckmann would correct us using the words of Kandinsky, which I learned later reading his books. I think I was lucky to have been given an extended Bauhaus education through the refugees in New York. I would never have done what I do without that. Also, when I moved from Poland to Israel in the 1950s, Tel Aviv was a Bauhaus city, made by architects who came [from Germany] to Palestine and so that gave me a sense of the Bauhaus intellectually and in terms of city planning. It was beautiful living there; the ideas work perfectly. The city was low rise at that time, nothing more than four storeys high; buildings were raised above the ground to make way for car entry and they had little gardens. It was the ideal city, but cities grow and Tel Aviv today is very different. Bauhaus, at its core, is about understanding the world and its wonder. It’s the fact that everything to do with design – from the small to the large to the horizon – is something beautiful and worthy of the word wonder. I think Bauhaus has a strong ethical and political dimension – it strives for equality. It was only later on that it became minimalist and reductivist in its ideas. The true, original Bauhaus was about the eternal human spirit. I think the Bauhaus has a global impact – in Russia, the United States, Japan – because of what it sought to do – to illuminate the world of design with powerful concepts and the notion of beauty. It was to get rid of the junk, the accretions of time, to clear up the environment and see how it could be designed in a way that was not just functional but created a community. For the centenary, I would invite people to think that Bauhaus hasn’t ended, to think about its architects and designers and what they might be doing today. Certainly not the work they did in the 20s. It’s a style for the future; its lessons are to do with transformation of form – transformation of status and design to become socially important in the world. Artist and influential teacher of the YBA generation in the 1980s In a sense, the Bauhaus represents the 20th century – it defined our whole idea of what it is to be modern. What a radical idea it was for a school: this relationship between art and design, architecture, between furniture, graphics, painting, sculpture. Bauhaus tried to bring them all together and, in a true modernist sense, create a utopia. It’s interesting that many of the things they designed were very difficult for them to actually produce. So much of what they did really only became available to people in the 50s and 60s when the techniques for fabrication made it possible – they were so ahead of their time that although these things were meant to be mass-produced, they were unable to at the time. I became particularly interested in the Bauhaus [when I was studying] at Yale because of Josef Albers, who taught there for 10 years. I was struck by Albers’s very intelligent use of the visual. Sometimes people talk about the intellect and emotion as though the two are separate – it was very much a Bauhaus idea to bring them together. Everything they did was to maximise a kind of directness, economy, clarity. These are the things I see in my own work that I would trace directly back to Bauhaus ideas. And also the idea of the elevation of ordinary life, that it’s worth taking seriously how an object looks, in order to make it efficient and at the same time beautiful. So I was carrying something of the Bauhaus with me when I started teaching at Goldsmiths. I think the idea that there is some kind of connectedness between these traditions of art schools is very touching. Albers always thought that when it came to what an artist did in the studio, the most important relationship was between artists and their work: the artist and their individual sense, and what it is that they produced through their own sensibility. That’s something you see reflected in the YBAs. The way things are going, it could be that even in another 100 years people will still think of Bauhaus as representing the modern. It’s only half-joking to say that Ikea is the realisation of the Bauhaus dream: good, simple design, available at very modest prices to everybody. Perhaps more today than in the immediate past, there’s a conjunction between ideas in architecture, furniture design, art – the boundaries between different disciplines have softened a great deal. The things that the Bauhaus hit on and developed through the years went right to the heart of the design of things, the nature of things. They got it so accurately that it has never been truly displaced. Prize-winning architect whose buildings include the Gherkin and the Reichstag Very often, inspiration arrives subliminally, lying hidden to be discovered many years later, or perhaps never. Other influences are more direct; we can acknowledge them at the time and see clearly the impression they leave on our lives. Working in Manchester from the age of 16 to 18, I spent most lunch breaks wandering around buildings in the city. I wasn’t aware that some day I might be an architect. I was just drawn to buildings. Some buildings and parts of that city were particularly inspirational – the cast-iron structure of the Barton Arcade, the Victorian architecture of Manchester town hall, the modernism of the Daily Express building. There is another, more modest building which changed my life forever. This was my local lending library, built in 1903, in one of Manchester’s working-class suburbs. There, as a youth, I discovered books by Le Corbusier and the work of other modern architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright as well as the Bauhaus. So I discovered Bauhaus through my local library before becoming a student at Manchester University. When I moved to Yale as a postgraduate, I was taught by Paul Rudolph, who had studied under Walter Gropius at Harvard, so for me there is a direct lineage. I have a passionate interest in the links between architecture, design and art, which were at the core of the Bauhaus philosophy. There is also my driving curiosity about how things are made, which is mirrored in the term “Bauhaus” when it is taken in the sense of “the School of Building”, which it was at the time. The Bauhaus was one of the birthplaces of the modern world. It provided a utopian vision and a forward-looking worldview. Gropius envisioned a time when buildings would be mass-produced in factories and their component parts assembled on site – he designed cars, trains and, with Konrad Wachsmann, experimented with modular systems for housing. As technology and materials have advanced, this thinking is even more relevant. From the beginning of my career, I have encouraged the use of prefabricated components and we have worked at the scale of prefabricating entire buildings. The potential for three-dimensionally printing a building is arguably an extension of the Bauhaus philosophy. I am particularly interested in how these methods could be used to improve the quality of life in some of the world’s poorest communities. I recently had the pleasure of visiting a work by the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius – his house in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Gropius’s tenure at Harvard was arguably a transformative force in contemporary American architecture and changed the face of Boston and nearby Cambridge with a new wave of modernism. His house, completed in 1942, is a fusion of the Bauhaus ideals and is a masterpiece. The lasting influence of Bauhaus is not stylistic, but the attitude of mind it cultivated. In fact, perhaps the worst thing about Bauhaus are the bad copies of design classics from that period – fashion over substance. Bauhaus at its best was a revolution in the relationship between arts and crafts, aesthetics and functions, conceiving and making. Fashion designer with a minimalist clothing line using British materials Probably the Bauhaus had the biggest influence on me in my first year of art school. The coming together of different disciplines and the practice of combining design with manufacturing was inspirational, imaginative, experimental and, above all, a break with the past. Lucky were the students to have practising teachers such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Josef Albers and Paul Klee. A wealth of black-and-white photographs exists that capture the energy and spirit of those students – they are alive with creativity. Often shot with unconventional angles, girls with short haircuts and casual clothes, the look and mood of these photographs inspired me when designing clothes. They embodied a style that reflects an active working life and an equality of outlook. I recently visited the Bauhaus in Dessau as it was being renovated. A heap of chrome, cantilever chairs sat outside; inside, there were empty studios, corridors and staircases in the process of being repainted white with areas of selected colour. It was exciting to see the building empty and to imagine the life and creativity that went on there. Posters of past exhibitions were lying in an open chest – bold graphics that still looked fresh. I bought a couple and now wish I had bought them all. Author of the 2009 Booker prize-nominated novel of architecture The Glass Room I first visited Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat in the Czech city of Brno in the 1990s. In those days it was very difficult to get into it as a tourist: the iron curtain had only just come down and the mentality hadn’t. There was a slightly run-down air to it back then, but walking down the staircase into the living room was literally breathtaking – at least for me. I gasped. It was like walking into a work of art. That visit, and a second one 10 years later, made me think, “There’s a novel here.” Not the story of the family who actually lived there, but the story of my family, a family that I would eventually create in my novel The Glass Room. I love the aesthetic, but Bauhaus was also very much making a statement about internationalism. Of course, knowing the history, one knew how ghastly it was going to be in less than 20 years. To build something like Villa Tugendhat in 1928 in the centre of Europe was a wonderful symbol of light and breaking down barriers. And the world all around them was at that moment extinguishing light and building up barriers. So it became very much a source of inspiration. British graphic designer and typographer best known for his work with David Bowie and Damien Hirst The Bauhaus has always dominated my design thinking. Initially, I was absolutely against everything it stood for. As you do when you’re young, my work became a crusade against everything that was “functional”. I immersed myself in postmodernist theorists such as Jean-François Lyotard and playful design groups such as Memphis, creating layouts that were intentionally illegible and full of decoration for the sake of it. Then, as I got older, something happened. Tired of excess and decoration being used to sell the same old stuff, I started to do the opposite: strip everything down to the basic form, let an idea come through. I understood that within the framework of the Bauhaus there was still space for humanity – I had just chosen to ignore it when I was younger. The cover I designed for Bowie’s The Next Day was probably the most extreme example of this newfound appreciation. A simple obscuring of an old cover with a white square, but something that caused argument and debate when it came out. The Bauhaus is as important to me now as it was when I first started. I retain the spirit that the world would be a very boring place if everything was well designed, but In a world where most things are badly designed, everybody should learn the theories of Bauhaus before they are allowed to touch a computer. As for the legacy, I do think that the most prominent expression we have nowadays is not in art schools or rarefied museums – it is Ikea. Furniture made with simple production methods that is accessible to all affordable and has a simple, clean aesthetic. I am pretty sure Gropius et al would be rather happy about that. British novelist, journalist and writer fascinated by Bauhaus Twenty years ago, in 1998, I went to Tel Aviv to write an article for the Guardian on the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel. The place was very run-down in the late 1990s, before it was designated a Unesco world heritage site. At first I thought it was made up of a lot of decaying 60s buildings. Then, looking closer, I recognised the curved lines and clean, geometric shapes and realised the entire fabric of the city was Bauhaus. I discovered that the architects who had designed and built the city were refugees who had trained at the Bauhaus in Germany and fled from Nazi persecution in the 30s to what was then British Mandatory Palestine. Once there, they found such a huge demand for housing from others fleeing Europe that they built an entire Bauhaus city in less than a decade. I found that extraordinary and deeply moving. It seemed to me that the whole architecture of the city was a political metaphor, which was a jolt to the heart as well as the brain. I started wondering about the individuals who had financed and built the buildings, people fleeing for their lives and bringing with them the best of Europe to help them begin again in the supposedly backward Middle East. As well as previously unheard-of fitted kitchens, they created wonderful communal areas in their buildings, restaurants and nurseries, where people could share their lives. There was a heartbreaking idealism about it all. The trip inspired my book When I Lived in Modern Times, which is set in Tel Aviv in the 1940s. The fascination has stayed with me. My most recent book, The Dark Circle, is set in a sanatorium built by a German émigré, so I am still creating fictional Bauhaus settings for my novels. Designer of A-Cold-Wall* menswear label and the winner of the 2018 fashion award for British emerging menswear designer The Bauhaus school of thought has had much influence in shaping 20th-century architecture and, in turn, sculpting our individual interactions. I first encountered Bauhaus design aged 14, at an open day for my father’s MA course at Central Saint Martins. I remember the faculty archive had a selection of Bauhaus-inspired objects – teapots, cups, objects of that nature. Now, my favourite work is Josef Albers’s study into colour theory. Albers’s art works and furniture live in the space between design and art. The Bauhaus’s focus on multifaceted ideation and execution carved out a new dialogue across design theory and aesthetics that became the blueprint for my generation’s newfound freedom. Designers, artists and sculptors who I believe embody this notion (more so in their philosophy and theory than their aesthetic) include Noirwave artist Rharha [Rochelle Nembhard], fashion designer Virgil Abloh, designer Jobe Burns, musician Petite Noir, furniture designer Dozie Kanu and the painter Reginald Sylvester II. It’s the tone, physicality and voice of this generation. British artist whose collages and painting have been exhibited at the Tate and Saatchi. He was a Turner prize nominee in 2010 and his next show is at Simon Lee Gallery in February My introduction to Bauhaus was at school, through The Story of Art by EH Gombrich. He wrote: “Bauhaus got rid of the tasteless knick-knackery of the 19th century and streamlined design for the 20th century”, which I really liked. Then, I only thought about it in terms of modern architecture rather than painting. What I like about it now is the radical, intellectual seriousness and commitment to art education. For my work, the Bauhaus was influential in the developement of modern art and modern thought. I’m not into it as the hardcore root of modern abstractionism, but it was vital for the idea of looking as an intellectual pursuit. I really like Marcel Breuer’s Pirelli Tire Building in New Haven and Naum Gabo’s Linear Construction No 2, but one of my favourite Bauhaus paintings is by Oskar Schlemmer, Bauhaus Stairway (1932). I love how wacky his designs were. Kansai Yamamoto would never have created the Ziggy Stardust costumes for David Bowie without Schlemmer. Bauhaus’s legacy isn’t set, though, its reputation has changed with art history revisionism in a good way. We’re revising who the most important mid-century artists are, now that those who were famous are less respected. just look at Anni Albers at Tate Modern. It’s good that it has endured; after all, as Keats said, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”. Swiss curator, critic and artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London When I was a teenager in Zurich, there was an exhibition called The Tendency Towards the Total Work of Art curated by Harald Szeemann. It ran from February to April in 1983 and I went to see it 41 times. It was part of my inspiration to work in the arts and become a curator. It was a non-didactic attempt to create, as Szeemann said, “poems in space”. That was, somehow, the moment that art became a passion, something more intense. I also visited the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart at that time. It’s a housing estate conceived as an international showcase of what became the international style of modern architecture. It was built for an exhibition in 1927 and the 33 buildings include 63 living units designed by 17 architects. It made me want to curate architecture. I also took away the idea that while it’s good to visit exhibitions, it’s interesting to look at buildings. I would love to live in the Weissenhofsiedlung – what an experience that would be. The centenary is now, but which Bauhaus are you celebrating? As Eric Hobsbawm said, we need a protest against forgetting. It’s important to celebrate its achievements, but it’s also important, as the writer Alice Rawsthorn points out in her extraordinary Instagram account, to paint a truer picture of the Bauhaus within the brutal and tragic politics of its time, to address the misogyny of the early years and the accusations of Nazi collusion in the later years. Although we have a mine of information in the digital age, that doesn’t mean we remember more. I hope that we can focus on the more forgotten aspects of the school. Hannes Meyer, the school’s second director, deserves wider recognition. He was very interested in collective architecture, and if you look at the architecture world now, there are so many collectives. Johannes Itten is better known, but there’s such a current interest in technology and spirituality, revisiting him would be interesting. Lotte Stam-Beese and other women of the Bauhaus have not been remembered as they should. Stam-Beese was extraordinary – an urbanist, she planned whole cities in Ukraine and Holland. The Bauhaus was much more than a design school and, although it wasn’t open long, it was during an intense moment of history and that intensity has resonated through the generations. Spanish architect and first permanent female director of the prestigious Architectural Association school in London The Bauhaus did in the early 20s what many schools and institutions are unable to do today: consider every single act of life as a space of design and creative action. Over the years, I’ve organised many projects that resonated with the spirit of Bauhaus. The Architectural Association, like the Bauhaus, is a place where daring, creative thinking and risk-taking are basic attitudes towards learning and making. Both schools aim to answer one simple, yet large, question: how do we want to live together? Answering this goes beyond studios, workshops and seminars and includes a creative life of talks, discussions, parties and events. While the musician Andor Weininger created the “fun department” in the Bauhaus in the 20s, the AA today has its “party committee” [to help] push the school community to explore, discuss and debate beyond boundaries. The Bauhaus dealt with issues of housing, affordability and global aesthetics; the AA today faces the same issues with an added set of complex challenges including sustainability, technology and inequality in a local but also in a global context. I hope that a renewed interest in the Bauhaus and its methods will inspire us all. We all need more rigour – and more fun. Designer, founder of Willo Perron & Associates design studio, who works as creative director for St Vincent, Drake and Kanye West Bauhaus is complete. It’s the closest version I know of an art and design utopia, never negating any creative field. From architecture to theatre, dance to scenic design, costuming to typography, everything was built around a community and around the idea of sharing thoughts and information. There isn’t a single piece of work that I could pick as a favourite; the idea I love about Bauhaus is the inclusiveness of all mediums. Architect who worked with Zaha Hadid before setting up his own studio. Creator of the RIBA-award-winning 15 Clerkenwell Close The Bauhaus, for me, is character­ised by its seminal Dessau period where modernism aligned with Walter Gropius’s and Henry van der Velde’s original plan to bring together art and technical colleges under William Morris’s socialist and design ideals. The move to Dessau happened after the school was compelled for political reasons to leave Weimar, where it was seen as a hotbed of communists and it lost its funding. Dessau is where the Bauhaus became self-sufficient under the new head Hannes Meyer, by creating products and practising architecture in the town – including Dessau’s iconic buildings. Nazi elections saw it evacuate to Berlin, but the capital was soon loyal to the party. The school’s final head, Mies van der Rohe, called the students and tutors together and, over bottles of champagne, he told all to leave the country. Van der Rohe and others went to America, changing it and architecture for ever – leaving Tom Wolfe forlorn enough to write From Our House to Bauhaus. The legacy of the school’s short but remarkable 14 years of existence is its liberal and plural teaching of determination to follow through and develop ideas. It’s a legacy that should be taught at all schools, to all students and to practising architects.It is tempting, when your shiny New Year’s resolutions start to crumble, to tell yourself that self-control simply isn’t your strong point. “Oh well,” you might say, surrendering to the desire for a large glass of red. “No willpower, that’s my problem.” But, according to a body of scientific research, willpower is not a talent that a lucky few are born with. It is a skill to be practised. “Willpower is a dynamic, fluctuating resource,” explains Frank Ryan, consultant clinical psychologist and author of Willpower for Dummies. “Our level of willpower fluctuates according to our motivation in any given situation. Everybody can learn to use their willpower more effectively.“ Even if you are not trying to turn over a new leaf for the new year, cultivating willpower is a good idea, as the psychologist Walter Mischel demonstrated in the 1960s and 70s. In his famous study, a group of four-year-olds were offered the choice of one sweet treat now, or two if they could wait 15 minutes. Their performance was then monitored into adulthood. The “high delayers” went on to achieve greater academic success, better health and lower divorce rates. So there is more at stake than whether or not you make it to the end of Dry January. Here are a few ways to increase your chances. To maximise our chances of sticking to resolutions, Ryan says, we should identify our “willpower profile. For example: some people are more impulsive than others. That does come down to personality.” Introverts tend to get energised by thoughts and ideas, so if that’s you, you should find it easier to get motivated by an inner vision than extroverts, who get fired up by people and social approval. For introverts, scheduling time to reflect on your progress, such as keeping a diary, can be helpful. For extroverts, signing up for a group such as Parkrun or Weight Watchers where everyone has a common goal can help you to strengthen your resolve, as can sharing even small progress with others. “You need to learn the core skills to cope with triggers and cues that activate your reward-seeking response,” Ryan adds. “It’s about coping with temptation, which often comes from the environment: the people, places or things that act as motivational magnets to challenge your willpower.” In other words: if you are trying to avoid cake, it is probably best to find a route home that swerves the artisanal doughnuts. A study published by the British Journal of Health Psychology found that 91% of participants who wrote down a plan of when and where to exercise successfully met their goals. “Planning is important because the brain builds a story. It also likes order and the feeling of being in control,” explains the neuroscientist and coach Magdalena Bak-Maier of maketimecount.com. “If you don’t have a cognitive map, a representation in the mind of how you are going to achieve it, then there is no way to sustain your goal.” She points out that our brains are lazy and like to conserve energy, so regular reminders and visual clues can be helpful. “I have a goal that I want to do 100 push-ups a day,” she confides. “It sounds like a good goal but it’s not enough to nudge me into action. In order to build it into my mind’s priority list, I leave Post-It notes around my house. As I walk in the door, there’s a cartoon of me doing push-ups. In the kitchen, there’s another one. Whenever I see one, I stop and do the push-ups.” We need to be more strategic in our planning, she says. “You might have announced: ‘This year I’m going to write a novel’ or ‘I’m going to run a half-marathon,’ but that hasn’t given the brain anything to work with. Those are just ideas, not plans.” To clarify, a plan is: “I’m going to get up at 6.30am Monday to Friday and write 500 words of my screenplay before I leave for work.” Or: “I’m going to sign up for 10 yoga classes and go every Monday at 6pm.” One problem with the resolution fever that grips us at this time of year is the temptation to go for a total life overhaul. “This year I’m going to give up alcohol, meet The One and get a promotion.” You are doing really well on all fronts. But then one evening you bump into an attractive colleague at the bus stop. “Fancy a drink?” Next morning, you have to deal with a blinding hangover and an unusually demanding boss. What can you do about such conflicts? Don’t work on multiple resolutions. A psychological study published by the Journal of Consumer Research showed that intentions are most effective when you work on only one goal at a time. People who tried to work on a number of intentions at once were ultimately less successful at sticking to their plans. “People who are not moving towards their goal are often afraid of something they envisage happening as a result of achieving the goal,” says Bak-Maier. “I really struggled to finish my third book. Yes, it’s a great thing to aim for; I really wanted to do it. Eventually, I realised that I was subconsciously afraid of the book failing and no one buying it. Worse, once it was written, I knew I’d have to go out and market it. I dread marketing.” If in any doubt, Bak-Maier recommends paying attention to “somatic responses”, such as feeling mysteriously tired, achey or queasy, when faced with taking action on your goal. Chances are good that you might be too anxious to pursue it. Long-established research by the psychologist Roy Baumeister suggested that willpower is a finite resource that runs out after prolonged use. Although recent studies have challenged Baumeister’s findings, the concept, known as ego depletion, is still a useful one to bear in mind. Imagine you have planned to go to the gym after work even though you have had a gruelling day at the office and a grim commute. Instead, you spend the evening slumped on the couch chomping crisps. You’ve earned it, right? That is ego depletion in action. What this means is that you should be discerning about how you use your willpower reserves. Go to the gym or start writing that screenplay early in the day, even if you don’t consider yourself to be a morning person. Why? Because, unfortunately, the brain does not compartmentalise tasks that require uncomfortable effort. There is no special brain area marked “willpower for writing”. If you spend hours agreeing with your boss in a tedious meeting (it takes more willpower to suppress your views than to express them freely), don’t be surprised that you mysteriously have no energy for your own goals later. The upside of all types of willpower stemming from the same mental reservoir appears to be that if you strengthen willpower in one area, it will also positively impact other, unrelated behaviour. Australian researchers assigned volunteers to a two-month exercise regime. Those who stuck to it also reported smoking and drinking less, curbing their spending and improving study habits. It seems we all hold some willpower back in reserve. Researcher Mark Muraven found that study participants suddenly discovered extra self-control to do a task after they were told they would be paid for their effort, or that their effort would benefit others, such as helping to find a cure for a disease. So knowing your “why” can help you to get out of bed for a chilly morning run. According to Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist at Stanford University and the author of The Willpower Instinct, one reason people fail is that they view their future self as a stranger. That explains why it is so difficult to save for a pension; it feels like handing over your hard-earned cash to someone you’ve never met. “People who feel close to, caring toward, and similar to their future selves are more likely to invest in their wellbeing,” says McGonigal. Psychologists at the University of Liège in Belgium examined people’s ability to generate vivid “self-defining” future memories. This involves reflecting upon the most important aspects of your life and contemplating how you would like them to turn out, regardless of what challenges you are dealing with in the present. It may sound like magical thinking but the researchers found that the ability to generate such “memories” was crucial for experiencing a sense of self-continuity, a vital component in taking action on our goals. Set a distinction between a lapse and a relapse, says Ryan. “Say you go back to smoking every day for a month; that’s a relapse. But if you have an occasional cigarette, use that as a learning experience. Ask yourself: ‘Why did I smoke that time? I went out with my mates, we had a bit to drink, then I had a cigarette outside the pub because they were all smoking.’ Label that as a risk. ‘What will I do next time? Next time I’ll be more on my guard, I’ll say I’ve given up, so I’m not going to join you, I’ll just stay inside.’ Very simple strategies for what’s known as an implementation plan.” Finally, be kind to yourself. “Anticipate lapses and plan for them,” says Ryan. “Don’t blame yourself. Be compassionate when you have a setback. Reward yourself for effort, not outcomes. Changing habits, or establishing new ones, is a motivational marathon, with inevitable trips along the way.” Some of the more Calvinist-minded among us might balk at this. Surely we must suffer on the road to success? “If you’re feeling negative and self-critical, that actually reduces your willpower,” says Ryan. “Feeling negative and emotionally charged drains your willpower battery. Negative moods are the enemy of willpower, and self-blame is the main culprit.”Vaccines are one of the great success stories of modern medicine. Because of them we are no longer vulnerable to smallpox or polio or measles. The flu vaccine, however, is a different story. Its effectiveness varies from patient to patient, from population to population, and from year to year. It needs to be updated each season, and even in a good year is usually no more than 50% effective. We may rely on it to avoid catching the flu, but its story demonstrates how far we still are from a reliable vaccine. Vaccination, the process of infecting a healthy person with a microbe to prevent disease, dates back at least a thousand years. But the start of vaccination as we think of it today is generally credited to the work of Edward Jenner, a British physician born in 1749. Jenner was a keen observer with a deep interest in the natural world, and found time for both serious study and artistic play. He investigated everything from hydrogen balloons to the life cycle of the cuckoo, wrote poetry and played the violin, but smallpox – or rather, the eradication of it – is his legacy. Because of Jenner, this virus is not on our list of worries today. Smallpox was a vicious disease that killed more than 30% of those who contracted it. In the 1700s, there was one demographic, however, that seemed to be immune: milkmaids. It had been observed that in the course of their job milking cows, women came into contact with the milder bovine version of the smallpox virus, called cowpox. These women then became immune to the deadlier human smallpox virus. There was something in the cowpox that protected against smallpox, and in 1796 Edward Jenner famously took material from the fresh pustules on a milkmaid’s hand and inserted it under the skin of a young boy named James Phipps. After a brief and mild illness, Phipps recovered completely. Jenner then infected him with scrapings from a smallpox lesion, again and again, but the boy never got sick. Jenner named this process “vaccination” after variolae vaccinae, a Latin term for cowpox. His technique quickly spread through 19th-century England and beyond, saving countless people, inspiring modifications to the technique and changing the course of history. Jenner’s smallpox vaccine was improved and modified over the next several decades, and was soon joined by others. Louis Pasteur developed vaccines for animal diseases such as chicken cholera and anthrax, but of these he is best remembered for his rabies vaccine. Rabies was a common and uniformly fatal disease in the 19th century. Once a victim is bitten by a rabid animal, the virus multiplies slowly and infects the brain and nervous system. Pasteur did not know of the viral cause, but this didn’t really matter. He dissected and dried out the spinal cords of infected animals and then injected the remains into test animals, which then showed immunity to rabies. What Pasteur was doing was, in fact, weakening the virus, making it a Goldilocks version. It was not strong enough to kill, and it was not weak enough to be ignored by our immune system. One hundred years ago, during the 1918 flu pandemic, there were no flu vaccines. We didn’t know precisely what was causing the disease, so we couldn’t manufacture a vaccine to protect us. But this didn’t stop scientists and doctors from doing something, anything, to combat the outbreak. In 1919 Edward Rosenow from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, isolated several bacteria from the sputum and lungs of flu patients in Rochester, formulated a vaccine that contained five different kinds of bacteria, and doled it out to 100,000 people. At Tufts College Medical School in Boston, Timothy Leary (whose nephew and namesake would also become a doctor and experiment with psychedelics) produced his own blended vaccine using strains from the Chelsea Naval hospital, a nurse’s nose at Carney hospital and the infected wards of Camp Devens. Leary mixed these samples together, grew them on plates of agar and then sterilised the mixture. His vaccine was sent to San Francisco, where at least 18,000 people were inoculated with it. These and other efforts gave hope to a ravaged nation. One health official at the time wrote that the greatest value of a flu vaccine was that it reduced “fluphobia”. Worry and fear were as quick to spread as the disease itself, and any vaccine that provided at least mental relief was welcome. There was no evidence, of course, that any of these vaccines actually worked. Today, physicians go to great lengths to be sure that vaccine trials adhere to stringent standards, but a century ago these did not exist. Many of the vaccine trials were conducted on survivors of the flu, after the initial epidemic had passed, meaning that the pool was tainted with a degree of immunity. In 1933 the flu virus was identified, and scientists could then confront the culprit rather than the mess in its wake. Russians led the field, weakening the virus by transplanting it between chicken eggs. Around one billion people in the USSR were vaccinated using the live but weakened flu virus, and it was still in use at the end of the 20th century. Although it appeared to be successful, the live-flu vaccine was never tested in a rigorous way, and it remained a constant danger. Since it used a live virus, it could cross with other strains and morph into a more virulent version. Vaccine researchers therefore turned their attention to creating a vaccine containing what they called “inactive” strains. The virus was still grown in chick embryos, but this time it was rendered inactive by dunking it in a bath of formalin disinfectant. Although a higher dose of the inactive vaccine was needed to produce an immune response, there was no concern about the virus replicating. For the first several years the influenza vaccine contained only one strain, the influenza A virus, because, as far as anyone knew, that was the only kind of influenza out there. In 1940 influenza B was identified, which kicked off the perpetual task of calibrating vaccines to deal with multiple evolving strains. By the 1950s we had a vaccine that was effective against both A and B, but the virus, as always, was outpacing us. By the late 1970s we had to make a vaccine to hit three strains. For the 2016-7 flu season, most of the vaccine doses manufactured in the US targeted four different strains. The past 100 years have been a ceaseless arms race against an enemy with whom we cannot negotiate. The key to a good flu vaccine is matching it to the strains that are in circulation during a given season. The challenge is that it takes about six months to produce the vaccine, and so the manufacturers have to base their ingredients on some clever detective work led by the World Health Organization. There are about 110 WHO flu centres in 80 countries that receive swabs from the noses and throats of patients with influenza-like illnesses. These centres identify the flu strains that are circulating, and occasionally they will find a new one. When this happens, they send it to one of five collaborating centres, in London, Atlanta, Melbourne, Tokyo and Beijing, for a more detailed molecular analysis. Twice a year (in February for the northern hemisphere, and September for the southern) the WHO convenes a meeting to collate all the information and recommend a vaccine recipe for the upcoming season. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta provide additional domestic data, and the Food and Drug Administration makes a final decision on what goes into the vaccine. The manufacturers then have about six months to get the recommended flu vaccine to market. Because the influenza virus can mutate so quickly, nailing the exact recipe is challenging. In some seasons the match is close to perfect, but this is not always the case. If the virus drifts after the February meeting of the WHO, there will be a mismatch between vaccine and virus. The greater the mismatch, the less effective the vaccine. In a good year, we might expect the vaccine to be 50-60% effective. In the 2004-5 flu season, that figure was only 10%, meaning that the vaccine was a big misfire. We also botched the 2014-5 season, when new strains hadn’t been included in the vaccine. That season the vaccine was a measly 19% effective, compared to over 50% in the previous year. Early on in the 2017-8 influenza season, there were near-record numbers of hospitalisations, and though the latest vaccine’s performance improved throughout the season, overall effectiveness is estimated to have been 40%. Even if the vaccine hits the bullseye, different demographics have different reactions to it. Children have a very good response to the vaccine. The situation is more complicated with elderly patients, who have weaker immune systems overall but also have a lifetime buildup of natural immunity. After withstanding many flu seasons, their immune systems are wiser, you might say, than those of the young. The US and most other developed countries strongly recommend that older people receive a flu vaccine. One study compared 18 different groups over 10 influenza seasons and found that the vaccine reduced the overall winter mortality rate in older people by an astonishing 50%. But CDC epidemiologists have shown that the influenza mortality rate among older people rose alongside the vaccination rate, which raises questions about the urgency to vaccinate them. The bottom line is this: even if elderly people are vaccinated, they are still the population most likely to die from influenza. One way to better protect older people is to vaccinate an entirely different demographic: schoolchildren. This notion was elegantly demonstrated in a natural experiment in Japan. From 1962 to 1987 most Japanese schoolchildren were vaccinated against influenza; at one point the vaccine was mandatory for a solid decade. The vaccination rate grew to around 85%, but the mandatory vaccination programme was discontinued in 1994. Over the next several years, there was an increase in the number of deaths in elderly people during the flu seasons. In the US, where there had been no change in the vaccination policy, deaths of elderly people over the same flu seasons remained unchanged. Vaccinating one part of the population, in other words, benefits another. Data can be interpreted in many ways, and each nation has crafted its own policy accordingly. The CDC has recommended the flu vaccine for all healthy children in the US since 2008. In 2013 the UK phased in a child flu vaccination policy, in contrast to the majority of European countries. Germany provides free vaccines only to older people, leaving parents to pay for their children. Across Europe, the childhood vaccination rate is 15%, compared to almost 60% in the US. If flu vaccines are indeed mankind’s greatest weapon against the flu, why are they used in wildly different capacities? When my colleagues gave one another the influenza vaccine at the George Washington University hospital, we were following the advice of the CDC. When patients with influenza started to roll into the emergency room a few months later, I would ask if they had received a flu shot. Many had, and yet here they were in the hospital. I knew how they felt. My only visit to the emergency department as a patient – the year I got a nasty case of the flu – was after I had been given the flu vaccine. Despite the regular failure of the vaccine, Americans are bombarded every year with reminders and opportunities to get a flu shot. By the end of August, pharmacies are posting signs and doctors’ offices are gearing up. The vaccine is offered at many workplaces and houses of worship, and hospitals require all their health care providers to be vaccinated. Behind this effort is the CDC, which recommends the flu vaccine for everyone over the age of six months. One CDC poster that caught my attention asked: “Who needs a flu vaccine? a) You, b) You, c) You, d) All of the above”. (In case you were wondering, the correct answer is d.) The poster reminded us that “even healthy people can get the flu, and it can be serious”. The message then got more explicit: “Everyone 6 months and older should get a flu vaccine. This means you.” Recommendations about the use of vaccines in the US are made by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Acip), a group of more than a dozen experts with backgrounds in vaccination research, public health and health policy. It meets three times a year to review any new evidence and provide advice and guidance to the director of the CDC about the use of vaccines. As recently as 2006, the committee recommended the flu vaccine only for those at high-risk for complications of influenza and adults over the age of 50. But a couple of years later it expanded its recommendations to include everyone over the age of six months. And that recommendation has remained in place ever since. The public health campaign by the CDC to vaccinate everyone is not shared by other countries. Europe and Australia recommend the vaccine only for the very young, the elderly and those with underlying illnesses. Healthy adults are simply not targeted. It’s very difficult to compare death rates from influenza across different countries because the definition of an influenza case varies, as does the way in wahich a country collects its own statistics. Often, deaths from viral influenza and bacterial pneumonia are listed together. It is challenging, therefore, to compare the data we have from the US and the UK. However, in the UK, the death rate from influenza in 2014 was 0.2 per 100,000 people. And in the US, it was 1.4 per 100,000. That is seven times higher than in the UK, a country that vaccinates far less of its population. These numbers must be interpreted with caution, but they do at least suggest that the approach in the UK is reasonable. How can we properly determine whether a “vaccination for all” programme, such as the one in the US, saves more lives and protects more people than the English “vaccination for some”? Perhaps for one flu season we could encourage everyone to get vaccinated, and for the next we would encourage only those at increased risk. We could compare the influenza death rates between the two groups and get our answer. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Because the mortality rate from influenza is so low, we would need to enroll hundreds of thousands of patients in order to see if the vaccine made a difference. However, an experiment like this might be undermined by the strains of influenza that were circulating in each year. If one year’s strain was more contagious or deadlier than the next, our experiment would tell us nothing. We could instead collect evidence from small trials and look for trends. This method was used by the Cochrane collaboration, an international group of 37,000 medical contributors, in 2014, when they reviewed all the studies that evaluated the effects of the flu vaccine in healthy US adults. It was a large undertaking; there were 90 studies that compared giving the vaccine to withholding it, and a total of 8 million patients were involved. The Cochrane review found that the effect of the flu vaccine in healthy adults was “small”. About 2.5% of those not vaccinated became ill, versus 1.1% of those who were. That’s very small. Put another way, you would need to vaccinate 71 people to prevent one case of actual influenza. The vaccine did not reduce the number of working days lost, or the number of hospitalisations. So yes, the vaccine does prevent influenza in young, healthy adults, but in a very modest way. So why does the US still recommend universal vaccination, while the UK does not? It comes down to language. The CDC describes the flu like this in a poster intended for use in doctors’ offices: “The flu may make people cough and have a sore throat and fever. They may also have a runny or stuffy nose, feel tired, have body aches, or show other signs they are not well. The flu happens every year and is more common in the fall and winter in the US. People of all ages can get the flu, from babies and young adults, to the elderly.” Not so bad. But then this is on the homepage of the CDC’s flu site: “It can cause mild to severe illness. Serious outcomes of flu infection can result in hospitalization or death. Some people, such as older people, young children, and people with certain health conditions, are at high risk of serious flu complications. The best way to prevent the flu is by getting vaccinated each year.” The CDC’s approach to flu is that it is a potentially deadly disease that can be prevented with a vaccine. The British take another approach. Here is the advice about the flu from the NHS: “Flu is a common infectious viral illness spread by coughs and sneezes. It can be very unpleasant, but you’ll usually begin to feel better within about a week … [If you are an otherwise healthy adult] there’s usually no need to see a doctor if you have flu-like symptoms. The best remedy is to rest at home, keep warm and drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration.” At most, according to the British, influenza can be a bit of a nuisance: “Most people will make a full recovery and won’t experience any further problems, but elderly people and people with certain long-term medical conditions are more likely to have a bad case of flu or develop a serious complication, such as a chest infection.” There’s no mention of death as a complication. It’s all very “keep calm and carry on” – just like it was during the 1918 pandemic. Is the flu a killer or an irritant? We know with certainty that each year it kills many people in both the US and Britain. And we know with equal certainty that for almost all healthy people the flu is nothing but a minor annoyance. Both are correct. That’s the nature of influenza. It’s tricky and mysterious, causing discomfort in some of its victims and death in others. It’s just that the US and the UK quantify them in different ways. The British version of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee is called the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). It meets three times a year, reviews the scientific evidence and makes recommen-dations to the secretary of state for health if there is a need to change the vaccination policy. Andrew Pollard, the head of the JCVI, trained as a paediatrician and is now professor of paediatric infection and immunity at the University of Oxford. Pollard is extremely cognisant of the numerous effects of the flu, but for the JCVI, the biggest measure is cost-effectiveness. It may seem cold or callous to fixate on costs when lives are at stake, but money and resources are limited, and reckless or misdirected spending can lead to poor medical practices or greater harm. For example, spending $1m on medications for those who have had a heart attack might save 1,000 lives each year. That same $1m might have been spent instead on screenings for cervical cancer, which would save the lives of 60,000 women each year. What’s more important: saving 1,000 lives or 60,000 lives? It often comes down to who is asking (and which disease it is that you have). Andrew Pollard and his team at the JCVI looked at studies that measured the cost-effectiveness of the influenza vaccine. They concluded that given the vanishingly small number of young, healthy adults who become severely ill or die from the flu, it is not cost-effective to vaccinate this section of the population. Pollard’s committee measures the cost to the health system itself: how much the vaccine costs and how much it decreases the number of days that patients spend in hospital or in intensive care. They also estimate the vaccine’s effect on the number of flu-related visits to doctors’ offices. What they don’t measure is the wider cost to society, which includes lost labour, lost wages or the time a parent must spend taking care of a child. These, too, are burdens on society, but they do not enter into the deliberations of the JCVI. The vaccine is cost-effective to the healthcare system when it is given to children, older people, those with medical conditions and pregnant women. It is not cost-effective when given to young, healthy adults. In the US, the cost-effectiveness of the vaccine is less important. What is more important is whether or not it works. This approach has resulted in another difference in vaccination policy between the US and the UK, this time over the vaccine for chickenpox. The varicella vaccine can prevent both chickenpox and shingles, a later complication of the disease. In the US, the varicella vaccine is recommended for all children; the first dose is given at 12 months of age, and a booster shot four years later. In the UK, varicella is not on the list of vaccines for children. In the US, if a vaccine has been shown to work safely, the CDC generally recommends it. At the beginning of the 1976 flu outbreak, President Gerald Ford had to choose between two perfectly sound recommendations. One was to quickly vaccinate as many people as possible, while the other was to stockpile the vaccine and wait to see whether things got worse. Ford rejected the wait-and-see approach. “We cannot afford to take a chance with the health of our nation,” he said. “Better to err on the side of overreaction than underreaction.” This is the overriding approach to healthcare in the US. They are always ready to do more, to try the latest medications or surgical procedures, because, well, why take a chance? Compared with other western countries, the US does more invasive studies of the heart for patients with chest pain, without actually improving their outcomes. We in the US put more of our patients into the intensive care unit, even though they are, on average, less sick than their counterparts abroad. We give more chemotherapy to cancer patients near the ends of their disease, even though it improves neither the quality nor the length of their lives. We do these things because we can, because to do otherwise would be considered giving up – even if doing less would be an extremely sensible and kind decision. Influenza is not cancer, and it is not heart disease. But the US approach to it is emblematic of the way it treats most diseases: doing more is better. If there is an unexhausted option, exhaust it. And because many vaccines have had spectacular success in preventing and eradicating some ghastly infectious diseases, the expectation is that the influenza vaccine will do the same. It’s another hi-tech solution. To most people, the word “vaccine” is tantamount to a guarantee that a disease will leave you alone. It’s hard to make a catchy public service announcement that reflects the subtleties therein. “Vaccinate everyone over six months old” is the current message. It is easy to understand and easy to remember. A more accurate message is much clumsier: “Vaccinate school-aged children and pregnant women and probably elderly people (but the evidence is mixed) and those with chronic conditions, but no need to vaccinate young, healthy adults.” That wouldn’t really fit on a billboard. In this case, nuance may invite danger. The quest for a better influenza vaccine continues. The holy grail would be a vaccine that covers all possible strains of influenza (so there would be no problem of mismatched vaccination) and that needs to be given only once, not every year as is now the case. Dozens of research labs across the world have worked to create this so-called universal vaccine, but so far without success. The influenza virus is just too adept at changing its disguise, remaining one step ahead of our efforts to neutralise it with a one-shot-fits-all vaccine. Although influenza is a common illness, finding an effective vaccine to prevent it remains an exceptionally challenging endeavour. Adapted from Influenza: The Quest to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History by Jeremy Brown, published by Text on 31 January at £12.99. To order a copy for £10.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846 • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.Venice’s Santa Lucia railway station is packed as visitors scuttle across the concourse towards the water-bus stops. Taking a selfie against the backdrop of the Grand Canal, Ciro Esposito and his girlfriend have just arrived and are unimpressed with what may greet them in future if the Venetian authorities get their way: a minimum city entry fee of €2.50 throughout the year, rising to between €5 and €10 during peak periods. It is the price of a cappuccino, but for them “it’s going too far”. “They are using people like a bank machine,” says Esposito. “We are in Europe and can travel freely across borders, yet we have to pay to enter one of our own cities.” In earlier times it was the wheeled suitcases that tourists rattled over the cobbles that drew the ire of Venetians – so much so that the authorities pledged to fine anyone caught using one up to €500. That never happened, but now another – more plausible – penalty is being concocted. To manage the impact of the 30 million people who visit the lagoon city every year, the daytrippers – those who come, take pictures, and leave – are to be forced to pay, although it is unclear when the tax will be introduced or how it could be enforced. Venice may have a centuries-long history of cultivating tourism, devising crowd-drawing events such as the annual carnival, the Biennale international art exhibition and a star-studded film festival, but the advent of mass tourism has left it struggling with how to deal with the near-constant hordes who trudge around its precious sites, through its 11th century basilica, over its famousRialto bridge, and along its maze of winding calle. The influx is a blessing for the local council’s coffers but a scourge on the city’s fragile monuments and environment. Luigi Brugnaro, the Venice mayor who regularly lashes out at uncouth tourists, is increasingly under pressure to act. Not only does he face local elections next year but, in July, Unesco will decide whether or not to put the fragile city – battered by increasingly frequent flooding and swamped in summer by tourists – alongside America’s Everglades National Park and the rainforests of Madagascar on its list of the world’s endangered heritage sites. For many Italians, though, the charge is not the answer. Even those who welcome it are sceptical that it will make a real difference. The entrance fee will not apply to those who have booked hotel rooms, and visitors already pay a tourist tax of up to €6 per night if they stay in the city. “If people want to come, then they will still pay to come,” says Clelia Tanzarelli, a regular visitor from Rome. “Venice is a very delicate city and there needs to be some plan, but if this is just an extra tax then it won’t solve the problem. A better solution would be to limit visitor numbers.” As with the wheeled suitcases, the dilemma is how on earth to turn the plan into a workable and enforceable policy. There have been suggestions that the charge could be added to the cost of arriving in the city either by train, bus or cruise ship, with the respective transport companies passing the proceeds on to Venice authorities. While it is not possible to drive in Venice, people can arrive in the mainland area of the lagoon and park their vehicle for between €12 and €29 a day. Charging cruise-ship passengers is fairly straightforward – they could pay on the boat or as they disembark – but applying it to other modes of transport and distinguishing between Venice residents and visitors will be more challenging. “Beyond the announcement, it doesn’t seem to have been well thought out,” said Dominic Standish, a British academic and author of the book Venice in Environmental Peril? Myth and Reality. “But the paradox of this measure is that the authorities bemoan tourism and say Venice is becoming like Disneyland, but if they’re able to implement it, then it will make the city even more like Disneyland.” The notion of the fee appealing to residents may also backfire. Venetians have held several protests in recent years against a tourism industry which they argue has eroded their quality of life, damaged the environment and driven residents away. On some days the current population of 55,000 (down from about 175,000 in the post-second-world-war years) is dwarfed by the number of tourists. Brugnaro has said that some of the extra cash from the fee will help fund the cleaning up of rubbish that daytrippers leave in their wake and improve the lives of locals, but many of those same locals are enraged by the idea that the charge would also have to be paid by departed Venetians visiting home and family. Understandably, that is not something they can celebrate. “It’s like adding insult to injury,” said Marco Gasparinetti, who leads the Gruppo 25 Aprile activist group. “After forcing thousands of people to leave the city, you now force them to pay to visit their families? The tax would make sense if it was a way to offset the environmental impact of the cruise ships, as other than for cruise passengers, it’s very difficult to apply.” In a move to allay environmental concerns, Brugnaro tried to indicate to Unesco in late 2017 that he was getting tough on the cruise ships that, weighing more than 96,000 tonnes, disembark thousands of passengers in the heart of the city. They would no longer be able to sail past St Mark’s Square, he announced, and would instead take a less glamorous route via the industrial area of Marghera. Environmentalists have claimed that waves caused by the cruise ships have eroded the underwater supports of historic buildings and polluted the waters. But the plan is yet to be approved by the national government. If and when that approval comes, work on the new route, which requires the dredging of canals and construction of a new port, would take an estimated four years. And while diverting the ships would better preserve the historic centre, the move will do little to address concerns about pollution. It goes without saying, however, that Venice’s troubles are not limited to tourism. The city is also endangered by recurring acque alte, or high waters. On 29 October last year, three-quarters of the city was hit by the worst flooding in a decade. Rain poured for almost 24 hours, with strong winds raising the water to 156cm above the normal sea level – a record reached only five times in the history of the city. As tourists persevered with their holidays – wading through knee-deep water in wellies and venturing to deluged shops and restaurants – locals counted the cost of the damage. And the reckoning continues. A local newspaper has referred to the autumn flood as a day that Venetians will never forget. For the second time since 2000, water filled St Mark’s Basilica, causing damage to the marble floors, bronze metal doors and mosaic floors of the 1,000-year-old church. A few days after, the cathedral’s administrators made the striking claim that the damage had caused the structure to age “20 years in one day”. Initial repairs are costing about €2.2m but Marco Piana, one of the administrators, said the major concern was the long-term impact of the damage. Administrators said the damage would have been avoided if the multibillion-pound Mose project designed to prevent flooding in the Venice lagoon had been up and running. Work on the flood barrier began in 2003 but has been dogged by delays and myriad issues, including a corruption scandal that emerged in 2014 and saw former mayor Giorgio Orsoni accused of accepting bribes in return for awarding contracts. The latest estimated completion date is 2022, and the administrators have urged the national government to finish it as soon as possible. “Around 96% is done, so there is just a small bit left to do, but they keep pushing the date back … all of this depends on the funding coming from the government,” said Piana. The floor of the nearby Caffè Florian, one of Italy’s oldest and most famous coffee houses, was also damaged by the floods, as were several shops. Most locals grin and bear the high water when it occurs. “It does bother us when it happens but we’re used to it, and the tourists have fun with it,” said Michele Levorato, who runs a stall next to the Rialto bridge. He added that most locals also learned to live alongside the tourists, although he would like to see a “better quality” of visitor. “Many don’t respect the city,” he said. In advance of the Unesco deadline, authorities have tried other initiatives to better manage tourism, such as installing turnstiles at the two entry points to the lagoon during peak periods in an attempt to control the crowds heading towards St Mark’s Square and the Rialto. They are also trying to encourage people to visit other, lesser-known areas of the Venetian lagoon or one of its other islands, such as Murano and Burano. But the uniqueness of Venice will forever hold an allure, making it unlikely that the measures will have much impact. “If they want to improve the city they need to invest in better infrastructure in order to move people around better,” said Standish. “An underground train system is something that has been debated for decades but the current administration is unwilling to consider it. This is partly the issue – they don’t seem willing to make things better. They just have this anti-tourism bias.”Two teenage girls have been honoured by the Indian government after it was discovered they had pretended to be boys for four years to run their father’s barbershop when he became too ill to work. Jyoti Kumari, 18, and her 16-year-old sister, Neha, took over their father’s salon in their rural Uttar Pradesh state village after he became ill in 2014. The barbershop had initially closed but was the family’s only source of income, compelling the girls to try to run it themselves. Customers were initially sceptical about having their hair or moustaches trimmed by young women, while others “did not behave well towards us”, Jyoti told the Guardian. “So we decided to change our whole get-up so that none could identify us.” The girls cut their hair short, donned the stainless steel bracelets worn by men and adopted the male names Deepak and Raju. Several of those in their village of about 100 houses knew their real identities, but for the next few years, most customers from surrounding communities had no idea, Neha said. “You could not identify me even today.” The pair earned at least 400 rupees per day from the business, enough to pay for their father’s treatment and support the family. “We faced a lot of troubles when we started the job in 2014,” Neha said. “Others in the village mocked us but we ignored them and focused on work, since we had no other option.” The girls would open the shop in the afternoon so they could continue attending school. Jyoti has now graduated and Neha is still studying. As the years have passed, they have slowly revealed their real identities to more customers. “Now we have gained enough confidence and don’t fear anyone,” Neha said. “The majority of people have come to know that we are girls.” Jyoti has started regrowing her hair. After a journalist from the nearby city Gorakhpur published a story about the girls in a Hindi newspaper this week, they were honoured by government officers. “They are the brilliant story of how one can survive battling all odds,” said Abhishek Pandey, an official. “The little sisters are the inspiration for society and their story must be told to the masses.” Dhruv Narayan, the girls’ father, said: “This gives me a lot of pain when I find them at work but I am very proud of my daughters. They have extricated the family out of sudden crisis.” The girls said they would continue to run the barber shop in Banwari Tola village, which has become well-known since their story was published in local newspapers. They said their customers were unconcerned by the revelation of their true identities and most were touched by the noble purpose of the ruse. Most women in rural India work either on farms or from their homes at the end of large supply chains, embroidering or stitching clothes or preparing and packaging food. They usually work segregated from men. Running a male salon, especially in conservative rural parts of north and eastern India is unheard of. Labour force participation among Indian women has fallen over the past two decades even as the country’s economy has substantially grown. Analysts attributed the fall to women paying a professional “marriage penalty”, with many continuing to drop out of the workforce when they wed, either because their husband’s or family demand it or because of the strain of needing to carry the burden of running a household alongside their jobs.A highly critical report has found extensive flaws in the British government’s arms sales strategy. Based on analysis of the Yemen conflict, the study urges a reduction in weapons exports to conflict zones and states involved in human rights abuses. “Our conclusion is based on copious, authoritative information, and is compelling,” said Roy Isbister of Saferworld, joint authors of the report. “All of the warring parties in Yemen are repeatedly in breach of international law. Yet our voice is ignored by a government that will quote our work as ballast to its own arguments in other countries when it suits.” The report by Control Arms UK, a coalition of non-governmental organisations, was submitted to the committees on arms export controls (CAEC), the parliamentary watchdog responsible for policing the government’s compliance with domestic and international arms export policies. CAEC has made the report public as part of its inquiry into British arms exports in 2017. Fundamental changes are urged to save lives and reduce the impact of UK-manufactured weapons. The report reinforces concerns raised by CAEC last year following a review of UK arms sales in 2016, when the body called for greater regulation, transparency and compliance in the government’s decision-making process. The government response then acknowledged improvements were needed but failed to agree that the system fell short. Taking Yemen as a case study, the report uses statistical analysis to support the case for a suspension of arms to the Saudi coalition, as well as other warzones and countries on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) watchlist for human rights breaches. The authors advocate a joined-up approach to conflict resolution, with improvements to development and peace-building initiatives currently supported by the Department for International Development (DfID). Quoting statistics on arms supplies to Saudi Arabia for use in the Yemen conflict, the report shows that the British government authorised 18,107 open license deliveries of arms and dual-purpose equipment between 2015 and 2017, with no disclosure required of the quantities or value involved. A delivery could range from a single part for an aircraft valued at £1 to 20 Eurofighter Typhoon jets valued at £2.5bn. The figures exclude authorisations under single individual export and broker licenses. “The reporting on the use of open licences is wholly inadequate, as the type and quantities of equipment are a mystery,” said Isbister. “Are we talking a few nuts and bolts, or containers full of critical fighter aircraft components? We don’t know, and the government won’t tell. It’s not good enough, not by a long shot.” Official UN statistics suggest the death toll in Yemen as of March 2018 was in the region of 6,592, with a further 10,470 people injured. Control Arms said the figures failed to take into account deaths from malnutrition and disease, which would bring the number of people killed to somewhere between 56,000 and 80,000, according to analysis by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled). Detailing the devastating impact of conflict on Yemen’s infrastructure, Acled statistics revealed that of the 3,362 air strikes carried out in 2018, 420 hit residential areas, 231 struck farms, 95 hit civilian buses or vehicles, and 57 hit educational facilities or marketplaces. Ten attacks took place on medical facilities and two on NGO camps. Noting that only 75 of 1,015 incidents affecting infrastructure were analysed by the joint incident investigation team, the report called for more comprehensive investigation of such attacks. More than 24 million people in Yemen are in need of humanitarian assistance, almost half of them children, and food shortages continue to affect up to 16 million people, the report’s authors noted. The study’s recommendations included: Greater regulation of “brass-plate” companies that assist in brokering arms deals while shareholders and directors remain “invisible” to UK authorities.They are often used to conceal corrupt practices including the payment of bribes and fraud. More transparent investigations into breaches of arms control regulation. The UK has a poor record of prosecution, with complex cases often referred to the Serious Fraud Office for investigation only to be halted subsequently because of undisclosed “national security interests”. Improved reporting around open arms export licences. At present, open licences only require the seller to tell the government the number of deliveries made and not the quantity or type. Greater oversight and involvement by DfID in granting arms export licenses, since information passed to the department by aid agencies operating in conflict zones should enable it to assess the impact of UK-supplied weapons more fully. At present, licences are granted by the Department for International Trade and the FCO, with DfID limited to an advisory role. The report’s authors also recommended that the government should comply with its own FCO annual human rights report by ending arms supplies to countries guilty of human rights abuses. According to statistics supplied by NGO Action on Armed Violence, between 2008 and 2017, the UK government authorised arms export licenses worth £12bn to such countries, with a further £10bn in dual-use (military and non-military uses) licenses to countries on the FCO watchlist. The report’s authors challenged the government on its claim that the UK’s export controls system is “among the best and most robust in the world, with each application assessed on a case-by-case basis”, a stock response to criticism of existing measures. The report called for comparison with states such as Germany, where there is a “more restrictive and accountable approach” to weapon supplies in Yemen, and questioned why CAEC have consistently failed to hold the government to account. “The largest failing of the UK export control system in the last decade or more, by a mile, is the government’s willingness to supply the Saudi- and UAE-led war effort in Yemen,” said Isbister. “CAEC had almost nothing to say on the matter in last year’s report; Yemen is completely absent from the terms of reference for the current enquiry, and we are at a loss to understand why.” Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle said: “I share the concern of NGOs that CAEC is ineffective at holding the government to account over its routine contravention of its own arms export controls. It is extremely deferential to the government, which rejects even the most piecemeal of its recommendations. I hope that this year members will work together to push the government for a radical overhaul of licensing, enforcement and auditing.”I once made the mistake of going on a Tinder date with an aspiring comedian. By the time our main courses arrived he had shared his full sexual history, including a graphic description of a foursome with some travellers he had met on a couchsurfing site. I had always assumed these were meant for people who needed a cheap place to stay, but apparently at least one doubles as a hook-up app for casual-sex enthusiasts who hate hotel room charges. Eventually, after a long speech on female independence, he told me that he only paid for dinner when the girl was “very attractive”, so I plotted my escape while we split the bill. I thought he would be happy to call it a night, but no such luck. As I scrambled to find an emergency Uber, he grabbed hold of my foot, asking if he could lick my “sexy” toes all night. I declined his offer and spent my journey home wondering if it’s possible to shower your own skin off. There have been plenty of other disappointing dates over the years, including Andy the monosyllabic advertising consultant, Will the food thief who wouldn’t let me finish a sentence, and a Greek racist who would only eat white dairy products. Other encounters have felt more like the icebreaker at a banking conference than the start of a Romeo and Juliet remake. Online dating is useful for older singles like me (I’m 34), whose married friends are too busy cleaning up toddler poo to act as wing woman. These days, everyone I meet in real life is already in a committed relationship. Yet, after 18 months on the scene, I’m struggling to develop any excitement about people I’ve never seen in the flesh. I often end up ghosting people after exchanging a handful of messages. When 90% of dates lead to disappointment, revulsion or a vague sense of doom about the future of the human race, dancing to Taylor Swift in your bedroom and rehearsing an imaginary Oscars speech seems like more fun. We all know a bad workman blames his tools, so I decide to speak to my friends about my dating patterns. Never ones to hold back, they tell me that I am too judgmental, writing off good men for all the wrong reasons. Instead of giving someone a chance, I’ll leave after the first date because he can’t use apostrophes or doesn’t turn my stomach into a butterfly-filled frenzy of passion. They also tell me I’m too forgiving of narcissists and commitment-phobes, willing to make excuses for “complicated” blokes who frequently lose the ability to send text messages. Persia Lawson, dating coach and author of The Inner Fix, says that if you are repeatedly drawn to emotionally unavailable people, it is probably a defence mechanism. “People say they’re looking for a committed relationship, but when an available person comes along, they dismiss them due to lack of ‘spark’,” she explains. “In reality, they’re terrified of real commitment. There’s a sadomasochistic pleasure that comes with dating emotionally unavailable men.” As a dreamy flibbertigibbet who grew up with Disney movies as her primary source of spiritual guidance, it is tempting to wait for a prince to climb my hair and carry me off to an all-you-can-eat cheese restaurant. But instead of going 100mph or avoiding people who don’t take your breath away the second you meet, Persia recommends taking it slow. “Try rotational dating, where you meet different people for coffee, walks or a trip to the cinema or a museum. Anything that doesn’t involve late nights and alcohol is good, as drinking can influence your dating decisions in an unhealthy way and give you false confidence.” Her advice makes perfect sense. You wouldn’t expect to develop a close friendship overnight, so why do we expect so much from the people we date? Some of the best and most solid relationships develop over time, without instant infatuation to cloud your judgment. According to Lawson, it’s also important to be honest and avoid playing games. Provided you don’t turn up to a first date with wedding dress patterns and a list of possible names for your as-yet-unconceived child, there’s no reason you can’t be upfront about what you want. But when you have spent 15 years chasing players who have the emotional intelligence of a toothbrush, how do you change your ways and start choosing better men? Lawson says that rather than looking for the person I fancy the most, I should focus on shared values. “You need to have standards for yourself, but don’t be unrealistic or superficial. It doesn’t matter if a man isn’t three inches taller than you or a woman isn’t a certain weight. You can have preferences, but focusing on them too much is part of love avoidance and you keep people out by having strict specifications. The only thing you need to ask is how your date makes you feel about yourself as person. Do you feel comfortable? Do you share the same values? Do you want the same things?” Taking Lawson’s advice, I refresh my dating profile on Bumble and get swiping. After exchanging messages with a web developer called James, we agree to meet after work at a local pub. There will be booze involved, but I have set myself a deadline to come home at 9pm and finish some work. This also doubles as the perfect escape plan in case he turns out to be a homicidal maniac who collects human hair in jam jars. Although I have zero expectations, the date is a success and it is the most comfortable I have felt with a man in months. He is laid-back and has a good sense of humour, the kind of guy you could introduce to your friends without having to get them drunk first. When we say goodnight, he’s reserved and polite, a stark contrast to the men who have kissed me, declared their undying passion and then disappeared into the sunset in a cloud of sexy cologne. There was no instant chemistry, but we exchange a few messages the next day and he’s keen for us to have dinner together when we’re both free. In the meantime I arrange a coffee date with Luke, who works in advertising. Within the hour it’s clear that, while he’s a perfectly nice guy, there’s very little common ground and we don’t share the same sense of humour. I’m grateful I took Lawson’s advice to arrange a coffee date rather than dinner or drinks, where we might feel compelled to spend longer in each other’s company. We exchange a few messages afterwards, but it soon fizzles out. After a second successful date with James at an Indian restaurant, I arrange to meet up with an actor outside the V&A museum. Usually I would be wary of flamboyant men, but he seems chatty and outgoing, totally different from the dry-humoured type of guy I usually go out with. I’m not sure if I fancy him, but I’m so impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge of Britney Spears albums that I am up for another date. The next week, James and I enjoy a few more PG get-togethers, before agreeing to meet up at the London Wetland Centre to see the otters. To his credit, he doesn’t complain when I insist we queue up in the cold for a good view at feeding time, and we spend the rest of the day sharing newly acquired trivia about mustelids. He also gets bonus points for not pretending to be with someone else when I jump up and down, squealing: “Look how cute the otters are!” I don’t know if my refreshed approach to dating will lead to happily ever after, but keeping an open mind is helping me to enjoy the process again. For now I’m ready to forget the fairytale myth and enjoy online dating for what it is: a chance to meet interesting people and explore new parts of town. If something doesn’t work out I will, in the wise words of Dory the fish, “just keep swimming” until I find what I’m looking for. Perhaps my Disney education wasn’t completely wasted after all. Some names have been changed.There is no end to speculation about what has driven the rise of the radical right over the past few years. Threaded through all the theories, however, is a single, agreed claim – that the far right is the domain of men. Angry white men populate media images. Scholars discuss men’s desire for strength, power, loyalty, belonging and the return to a romantic, pure and untroubled national past that can be restored through heroic male action. Policymakers report on uncertainty about jobs and rising unemployment as factors disproportionately affecting men. However, there is reason to believe that male dominance of the far right is changing. Women play an increasing role in radical and far-right movements in ways that have largely been overlooked. Yet, as we argue in our recent book, Gender and the Radical and Extreme Right, attention to gender is critical for understanding the radical right. Historically, women have represented a small minority of visible activists in radical-right movements and were assumed to play traditional supportive roles, with some exceptions. Kathleen Blee’s work on women’s roles in the Ku Klux Klan, for example, documents ways in which women were active participants in the early to mid-20th century, not only in the KKK itself but in groups such as the women’s auxiliaries of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. Still, women have generally been disregarded as serious radical-right activists. As far-right ideas and aesthetics have become more mainstream the stigma of participating in far-right movements has declined, encouraging women to join where they might previously have hesitated. While a “gender gap” in voting for radical-right parties remains, it is often overemphasised. An analysis of European Social Survey data in seven European countries showed that more than 40% of votes for the populist radical right come from women. Women are more visibly active in radical-right movements than ever before. Some of the increase in women’s engagement in such parties and movements is the result of a shift in radical-right positions on gender and sexuality. While the far right has traditionally argued against same-sex marriage and has promoted women’s roles as wives and homemakers as part of “traditional” or “Christian” values, newer radical-right groups argue that western democratic traditions and values include supporting women’s rights, a wider range of sexualities, and tolerance toward the LGBT community. This was most striking in the case of the Pim Fortuyn List in the Netherlands, but parties such as the Swedish Democrats and the Danish People’s party, while not explicitly seeking to protect gay and lesbian citizens, have also became more ambiguous on LGBT issues. This platform is used to draw a contrast with a perceived Islamic threat from increased migration to gay and lesbian rights, tolerance for sexual difference, and secular modernity. The strategy has attracted female voters to radical-right platforms. The English Defence League (EDL) has also declared an openness to women and LGBT supporters. In the EDL, women remain a minority but mostly join on their own initiative, play an active role and share in the camaraderie of activism. Other far-right movements have also made deliberate strides to recruit women. Half of the Latvian National Front’s members are women, and it depicts women as spiritually superior to men, tasked with leadership and positioned as pioneers who safeguard the nation. Elsewhere in Europe, women have assumed key leadership positions in far-right parties such as Germany’s Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally. Women are also visibly violent in far-right movements. Last year, the German neo-Nazi terrorist Beate Zschäpe received a life sentence for her role in 10 murders, two bombings and other crimes. Of course, there are still plenty of traditional gendered understandings at the core of modern far- and radical-right movements. This is clearest around the idea of women as wives and mothers who will reproduce white nations through childbirth and childrearing. Greece’s Golden Dawn depicts women as the reproductive engines of the nation who will mother future soldiers. It tells women to refrain from entering the workforce or public roles unless they are in positions aligned with their purportedly natural, feminine roles as nurturers at home. Women who challenge these traditional norms pose a threat to the far right’s worldview. Rhetoric about women becoming “too powerful” has fuelled the far right’s attacks on changing social norms. In this sense, gender is crucial in triggering in many far-right men a discomfort with the world and desire for a return to some imagined simpler time. We see similar themes in the overlap online between far-right groups and the misogynistic “incel” movement, in which “involuntarily celibate” men’s sense of entitlement to women’s bodies has occasionally erupted in mass violence against women – most recently through the Tallahassee yoga studio shooting in Florida. It is not only the regulation of women’s bodies that motivates the far right, but also their protection. Radical-right groups have mobilised female voters with anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that is specifically tied to women’s rights, sexuality or assaults on women – using cases such as the 2015 New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne to argue that increased migration will lead to more rape and violence against white women. The recent riots in Chemnitz, Germany, were sparked by the death of a Cuban-German man during a street fight with two asylum seekers. Less widely reported were unproven rumours that the fight started when the Cuban-German man defended a German woman from an attempted sexual assault. Scholars, policymakers and the media have made great strides in understanding the role of masculinity in attracting men to far-right groups. But we have paid less attention to the potential for (re)framing femininity, women’s role in the nation, or discussions of women’s right to be used for recruitment or radicalisation by far-right political parties and movements. There is also scant discussion of the potential for women’s anger, their greater vulnerability during economic crises, or how the disproportionate impact of public service cutbacks on women is influencing their support for far-right politics. Shifting dynamics around gender and sexuality as well as changing social norms around traditional notions of masculinity may also play a role in how radical- and extreme-right movements mobilise – whether by trying to regulate and protect women’s bodies or by using the language of gender and sexual rights to argue for anti-migration and anti-Islam platforms. These developments suggest a need for a more nuanced understanding of gender in far-right movements. Without it, we are missing a big piece of the puzzle of why the radical right has proven appealing for so many people at this particular moment in history. • Cynthia Miller-Idriss is professor of education and sociology at the American University in Washington DC. Hilary Pilkington is professor of sociology at Manchester UniversityChelsea are supposed to be a changed club. The days when Luiz Felipe Scolari was shown the door in February of his first season, André Villas-Boas was cut adrift in March or Roberto di Matteo, fresh from a European Cup triumph, dumped unceremoniously in late November are apparently long gone. Yet this is the kind of wretched occasion prone to leave a livid hierarchy flicking through a list of potential interims as they contemplate a return to chopping and changing. Head coaches, after all, have been condemned by defeats far less emphatic. Maurizio Sarri had spent most of the second half here scribbling frantically in a notepad while his team were shredded, brutally and brilliantly, out on the pitch by Bournemouth. The hosts had only recently emerged from a run of 11 defeats in 14 games in all competitions but poured through Chelsea’s panicked and pathetic ranks, their counterattacks carrying all the bite and incision their opponents have lacked since the late autumn, sensing little to no resistance en route. The notes could express nothing else but horror. Not since 1996 have the London club endured a league thrashing of this magnitude. In other words, Roman Abramovich has never had to digest a loss so unpalatable. All of which makes this situation feel far more volatile than it might otherwise have been. This is actually uncharted territory, for all Sarri’s post-match insistence that he felt more “frustrated” than under pressure. The Italian had cast his coaching staff from the away dressing room and, while they shivered outside, spent an hour with his players attempting to piece together what had gone so hideously wrong. This, after all, was arguably a defeat far more insipid than that at Arsenal earlier in the month which had prompted Sarri, in his native tongue, to lacerate his players in public. He has already used the stick, and there is no appetite for carrot. “Maybe we are not at the top of the Premier League at the moment, but we are competitive and we cannot lose 4-0 against Bournemouth,” he mumbled once he had emerged. “I want to respect Bournemouth, and you know I like very much the coach Eddie [Howe], but it’s impossible to lose 4-0 here.” Only César Azpilicueta and David Luiz dared to approach a disgruntled away support to offer their apologies after the final whistle though, by then, plenty had ventured out into the night and away. Those who watch this team consistently are finding everything, from tactics to substitutions to meek and feeble displays, grimly predictable at present. They had whipped up a chorus of “You don’t know what you’re doing” to greet Gonzalo Higuaín’s withdrawal when their team’s deficit was two. Sarri needs Higuaín, a player he convinced the board to buy, to make an immediate impact. The Argentinian’s Premier League debut amounted to being flagged twice for offside, and not a single shot fired off or chance created. Not that this defeat was down to the 31-year-old loanee from Juventus. Higuaín was just the latest Chelsea forward struggling to provide some bite for a team who ping passes with little intent, whose movement off the ball can become aimless, before desperation sets in. They had needed to shift the ball far more quickly during a first half when they were actually on top, but they never went closer than Mateo Kovacic’s early header that was tipped on to the crossbar by Artur Boruc. Bournemouth’s threat, as sporadic as it was at first, always carried more menace, not least because this Chelsea team are only ever one concession from a collapse. Retreat almost exactly a year and the Cherries had won 3-0 at Stamford Bridge. This time, they would run riot on home territory. The home side’s ruthlessness was utterly admirable, the slick nature of their passing and movement putting the Carabao Cup finalists to shame. There was Ryan Fraser’s clever flick for David Brooks, and the Welshman’s precisely weighted pull-back into space for Josh King to dispatch and force Bournemouth ahead. Then the combination play between King and Brooks around the hour mark, with Brooks cutting inside a befuddled David Luiz to slide in a second beyond the exposed Kepa Arrizabalaga. King, with a splendid finish from Junior Stanislas’ pass, and the substitute Charlie Daniels would complete the rout. The home side did not even need their top scorer Callum Wilson, who has undergone a minor knee operation to flush out the joint, to run amok. They were as brilliant as Chelsea were dreadful. The visitors’ goal difference had taken such a pounding by the end that they had even slipped behind Arsenal in the table. The six-point advantage they held only a few weeks ago is a distant memory, and the scrutiny is all on a head coach struggling, still, to comprehend why.Prince Philip has apologised to a woman who broke her wrist after being involved in a car crash with his Land Rover Freelander. Emma Fairweather, 46, was a passenger in a friend’s Kia, with her friend’s nine-month-old baby, when the collision with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Land Rover occurred as he pulled out on to the A149 near Sandringham, the Queen’s Norfolk estate, 10 days ago. Both the baby and her friend were unhurt. In his letter to Fairweather, published by the Sunday Mirror and dated 21 January, the duke said he was “very sorry” for his part in the accident, and wished Fairweather “a speedy recovery from a very distressing experience”. Last week Fairweather told the newspaper that she felt “ignored and rejected” because she had not received an apology, but told the paper on Sunday that she was “chuffed” that he had finally responded. “I thought it was really nice that he signed off as ‘Philip’ and not the formal title. I was pleasantly surprised because of the personalised nature. “A lot of people said it was unrealistic that I wanted that human kindness from Prince Philip – which is what I saw this letter as.” In his letter, the duke went into some detail about the circumstances leading up to the accident, blaming the fact that “the sun was shining low over the main road” for not being able to see the Kia coming as he pulled out at the crossroads. “I was somewhat shaken after the accident,” he continued, “but I was greatly relieved that none of you were seriously injured. As a crowd was beginning to gather, I was advised to return to Sandringham House by a local police officer. I have since learned that you suffered a broken arm. I am deeply sorry about this injury.” Two days after the case, the duke was pictured driving a new Land Rover without a seatbelt and was spoken to by the police.Reacting to Donald Trump’s fury over a New York Times report that said the FBI investigated whether the president was working for Russia after he fired James Comey, Comey himself tweeted a quote by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” the former FBI director wrote on Saturday, adding an attribution: “FDR.” It soon became clear the tweet almost exactly matched one by Trump, issued on 21 November 2012, when the then reality TV star was digesting the re-election of Barack Obama. “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” Trump wrote, adding a slightly longer attribution: “Franklin D Roosevelt.” The quote is from a speech in Portland, Oregon, on 21 September 1932, in which Roosevelt, then a candidate for the White House, attacked the behaviour of owners of public utilities. According to documents made available online by the 32nd president’s library, he told his audience: “My friends, judge me by the enemies I have made”, and was greeted with “cheers, prolonged applause”. The Times article, published on Friday night was greeted with a mass intake of breath. It concerned FBI attempts to determine whether the president was a Russian asset. The president’s reaction to the report included a failure in a Fox News interview to deny he had “ever worked for Russia” and familiar abuse of the FBI director he fired in May 2017. It all made the congruence in their tweets seem amusing. But it seems Comey might have been making a sharper point. 21 November 2012, the date of Trump’s FDR tweet, was also the date of a presidential memorandum issued by Obama. Its subject: “National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs.” In the memo, Obama defined its purpose as “to provide direction and guidance to promote the development of effective insider threat programs within departments and agencies to deter, detect, and mitigate actions by employees who may represent a threat to national security. “These threats encompass potential espionage, violent acts against the Government or the Nation, and unauthorized disclosure of classified information.” According to White House practice, the memo followed a 2011 executive order on “Structural Reforms to Improve the Security of Classified Networks and the Responsible Sharing and Safeguarding of Classified Information”. The Times report said the FBI was worried about Trump’s behavior, including repeatedly linking the firing of Comey to investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump aides and Moscow, and in an infamous Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister shortly after the firing. Trump attacked the report again in his Saturday night interview with Fox News, saying it was “a great insult and the New York Times is a disaster of a paper. It’s a very horrible thing they said.” Also on Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Trump has “gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations” with Vladimir Putin, including “on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired”. In the 2012 memo, Obama wrote that he wanted to “reinforce our defenses against both adversaries and insiders who misuse their access and endanger our national security”. Obama appointed Comey director of the FBI in 2013. At the time of the order and memorandum, he was out of government. Since his firing by Trump, he has published an explosive and bestselling memoir and stringently criticised the president. The memo and Trump’s tweet being issued on the same day could of course be a coincidence. But on Sunday, a source who worked in the first Bush justice department told the Guardian that either way, “Comey is making a point: ‘Trump’s my enemy. That says plenty about me.’” Comey did not immediately comment further on Saturday but he did tweet about a trip to see a Broadway show: “The perfect day to see To Kill a Mockingbird … Amazing cast and vital message: ‘All rise.’”The Coca-Cola Company has shaped China’s policies towards its growing obesity crisis, encouraging a focus on exercise rather than diet and thereby safeguarding its drinks sales, an academic investigation has alleged. Susan Greenhalgh, a Harvard academic and China scholar, says Coca-Cola has exerted its influence since 1999 through a Chinese offshoot of an institute founded in the US by the then Coca-Cola vice-president Alex Malaspina with substantial company funding. The International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) has been heavily criticised in the US and Europe for promoting exercise and downplaying the need for people to cut down on excessive sugary drinks. China has a serious and growing obesity problem: 42.3% of Chinese adults were overweight or obese in 2011, up from 20.5% in 1991. Its 1.4 billion people constitute Coca-Cola’s third-largest market by volume. ILSI-China, says Greenhalgh, has influence in government circles. It had been led by Chen Chunming, who died last year. Chen was a well-connected nutritionist who had earlier been president of the Chinese academy of preventive medicine, a technical unit under the ministry of health. ILSI-China is funded by a dozen companies including Nestlé, McDonald’s and PepsiCo, but Coca-Cola has had the biggest involvement, says Greenhalgh. In China, ILSI is seen as “a bridge builder between government, academia and industry, providing the latest scientific information for policy decisions on nutrition (especially obesity and early childhood development), food safety and chronic disease prevention and control,” Greenhalgh writes in the British Medical Journal. In a series of interviews, Chen had told Greenhalgh that ILSI-China “does not just hold conferences; it puts scientific evidence into policy”. The BMJ paper says that since about 2004, Coca-Cola in the US had been advocating for “healthy, active lifestyles”, promoting the message that all food and drink were part of a healthy diet and that to avoid obesity what mattered was how much you moved. It even claimed there were health benefits to sugar-sweetened fizzy drinks. The message was promulgated in China through ILSI-China, the BMJ paper says. Between 1999-2015 ILSI-China’s obesity activities shifted from a focus on nutrition to physical activity, in line with Coca-Cola’s position that an active lifestyle was the key to tackling obesity. Tough measures recommended by the World Health Organization – such as taxing sugary drinks and restricting food advertising to children – were missing. National plans and targets emphasised physical fitness over dietary restrictions, in line with the drinks company’s “energy balance” perspective. Obesity meetings sponsored or co-sponsored by ILSI-China were packed with presentations by experts with financial ties to Coca-Cola or ILSI with a focus on the science of physical activity rather than nutrition. “In putting its massive resources behind only one side of the science, and with no other parties sufficiently resourced to champion more balanced solutions that included regulation of the food industry, the company made China safe for Coke,” says Greenhalgh. The global nutrition expert Prof Barry Popkin, who has worked in China for decades, said he was well aware of ILSI-China’s influence. “Over a three-decade period ILSI-China, along with the strong support of Alex Malaspina and Coke funding, did more to stop a number of healthy eating-related policy initiatives that would have helped to prevent the epidemic of obesity, diabetes and hypertension China is experiencing in the most insidious manner. I personally saw many regulatory initiatives stymied that would have helped prevent the very rapid growth of consumption of junk foods and sugary beverages,” he said. In a statement, ILSI said it was a transparent, non-profit organisation comprising 17 entities including that in China. It said it believed that scientists from industry, government, academia and other sectors should work together and did not lobby or make policy recommendations. “ILSI does not profess to have been perfect in our 40-year history. The journey to best-in-class nutrition and food safety science research has been a circuitous one. Not surprisingly, there have been bumps along the way. This is why ILSI has analysed best practices and has committed to ensuring scientific integrity in nutrition and food sector research,” it said in a statement. “We would also like to note that numerous experts named in the BMJ article are no longer employed by or affiliated with ILSI.” Coca-Cola said it recognised the health problems caused by too much sugar and was working on ways to reduce the calories in its drinks around the world. “In China, we are committed to offering a full and growing portfolio of diverse beverage choices that cater to evolving consumer needs,” it said, which included no-sugar and low-sugar options. Coca-Cola said it had listened closely to the public health community and other stakeholders about how it could help support the fight against obesity in a credible and transparent way. “In 2015 we made a commitment to publicly disclose our financial support of health and wellbeing-related scientific research and partnerships. “In addition, the company decided in 2017 not to provide, either directly or through a third party (such as a trade association), all of the funding for wellbeing scientific research. The Coca-Cola Company does not conduct its own research on health and wellbeing. Rather, we support research efforts by independent and respected research institutions and universities. Under our guidelines, we will provide financial support for such research only if a non-Coca-Cola entity funds at least 50% of the cost.”A former French boxing champion who was filmed punching police officers during a gilets jaunes protest has received more than €100,000 in public donations online, angering the government. The online fundraising platform Leetchi received €114,000 for Christophe Dettinger before the site closed the donation page after politicians expressed outrage on Tuesday. Leetchi said the funds were intended only for legal fees. Dettinger handed himself in to police after clashing with officers on a bridge in Paris during an anti-government protest on Saturday. The incident was cited by the government as a sign of the violent turn demonstrations against Emmanuel Macron have taken. The 37-year-old, a French light-heavyweight champion in 2007 and 2008 who retired from the sport in 2013, said in a video that he had “boiled over” after being teargassed with his wife on his eighth Saturday protest. “I reacted badly. Yes, I reacted badly,” he said, adding he had seen the “repression” of the police towards protesters. He added: “I’m demonstrating for all the pensioners, for the future of my children, for single women, for everything we’re fighting for. I am a gilet jaune. I have the anger of the people in me … it’s always the little people who pay.” But the funds raised online, seen as a mark of support for Dettinger, infuriated ministers. Marlène Schiappa, junior minister for equality, said: “Contributing to a fundraising kitty to support someone who attacked an officer is tantamount to being an accomplice to these grave acts of violence.” The labour minister, Muriel Pénicaud, called the fundraising campaign “incomprehensible”. “How can these people tell their children, the young, that violence is the answer?” she told CNews television. Mounir Mahjoubi, minister for the digital economy, tweeted: “Apparently hitting a police officer makes money. When the attraction of money adds to hatred and violence, I feel only disgust.” Police unions warned that the fundraising legitimised violence against police. Sébastien Chenu, an MP for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, said that the donations were “a barometer of the hatred for the government” before adding that he condemned all violence. The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement – named after the hi-vis jackets worn by protesters – began in November as a revolt against the imposition of a fuel tax, but has morphed into a nationwide movement against the government and the pro-business, centrist Macron, who is accused of favouring the rich and maintaining an unfair tax system.Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman held by Tehran, started a hunger strike after her interrogators tried to persuade her to become a spy, her husband has claimed. Richard Ratcliffe revealed his wife was calm as she began an initial three-day hunger strike in protest at the Iranian prison authorities’ refusal to give her a clear written undertaking she would receive medical help for a lump on her breast, and other concerns. He was speaking as the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, summoned the Iranian ambassador to demand the Iranian-British dual national, sentenced to five years in prison for espionage, was given proper medical help. Ratcliffe said it was “now or never” for Hunt to escalate the dispute by saying that the British government would give his wife diplomatic protection, a means by which the dispute would be elevated to a state-by-state dispute, making a legal international claim for her to be visited by UK authorities in prison more likely to be granted. Ratcliffe was also to meet Hunt on Monday. He praised the foreign secretary’s tougher rhetoric, but said it was time for more action, pointing out the request to give diplomatic protection had been tabled more than a year ago. He said the decision to disclose pressure on his wife from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to spy via a job with British Aid was difficult. But he said he had been appalled by the associated warning that if she did not agree to the offer, there would be consequences for her family still in Iran. “She was told it would be safer for her and safer for her family afterwards if she agreed to do this,” he said. Ratcliffe added: “She was told to think about it and that they would return. She had been terrified ever since.” He said he had written to the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, to protest against the threat, and had informed the UK Foreign Office. He also released an account of the demands that she should spy for Iran, adding everything in Iran was filmed, and if she had agreed, it would have been used against her. It was the first time the Revolutionary Guards had visited her for more than a year. Zaghari-Ratcliffe refused the offer outright, he said, insisting she did not wish to spy for either the UK or Iran. He said the request to become a spy for Iran was made on 29 December at the same time as the Iranians offered a short-term release in January. Ratcliffe said a previous release turned out to be part of a power game in which Iran bartered her case for a favourable court outcome in the long-running Iranian-British dispute over money owed to Iran by the UK for the sale of arms to Iran more than three decades ago. Ratcliffe claimed his wife had been used as a clear bargaining chip in two previous hearings on this case. On Sunday, speaking in London at the start of his wife’s hunger strike, he also disclosed the Iranian prison authorities had discussed her condition with her for an hour and a half, but said the authorities became angry when she demanded that they put undertakings to improve her medical help in writing. “There have been too many broken promises and blockages to rely on empty words,” Ratcliffe said. He added that her experience was that prison authorities played a game in which one branch of government made an offer, but only conditional on additional permission being given by another branch of the government. The Iranians, he said, “were involved in an elaborate game of pass the responsibility”. He said the Iranian prison medical chief had offered Zaghari-Ratcliffe a step-by-step process so long as she complied with the Iranian prison regime, but refused to put this in writing. In recent months she had been denied medical help for a lump in her breast, pains in her neck, numbness in her legs and psychiatric help. The demands of the hunger strike, he said, were to see a specialist medical doctor, and for any remedies proposed by the doctor to be granted. Ratcliffe described the Iranians as scrambling in response to the public pressure being applied by the Free Zaghari-Ratcliffe campaign. “This is not a game,” he said, adding at the same time he knew that if she chose to extend the hunger strike, the risks would multiply. Later the Foreign Office confirmed that Hunt had summoned the Iranian ambassador over Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s continued detention and her deteriorating health. A spokeswoman said: “The foreign secretary will call for Nazanin to be immediately given the healthcare she requires and for her and other innocent British Iranian dual nationals to be released. The foreign secretary has made this decision due to the deeply concerning deterioration in Nazanin’s health and the lack of progress in her case and other cases. “The treatment of all British-Iranians detained in Iran, including Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, is a priority for the government. We have repeatedly lobbied the Iranians to release Nazanin on humanitarian grounds and we will continue to raise all our cases at every level and every opportunity.” Monique Villa, the chief executive of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s employer, said denying her employee medical access, including for new lumps found in her breasts in December, was a form of torture. “This is a kind of very slow torture,” she told the press conference. She also said her employee had suffered “severe depression” in custody and reiterated she was not guilty of espionage. “She’s not spy material,” Villa said. “She’s innocent. She should be released immediately and she should have immediate medical access.”By now, it has become a familiar sight: Ole Gunnar Solskjær hugging his staff, eyes twinkling, applauding his players and celebrating the return of Manchester United, as we used to know them. Quick, incisive football, willing to take on anyone and, more often that not, coming out on top. Solskjær has even taken to chewing furiously on his gum, Sir Alex Ferguson-style, with the wrappers scattered round his feet, and at this rate the only possible regret for his club is that they did not tire of José Mourinho earlier. This was their eighth straight win since Solskjær was handed the role on a caretaker basis and the case for him taking over properly is building all the time, particularly now his restorative qualities appear to stretch to Alexis Sánchez, who scored the opening goal on his return to his former club. A lesser team would have wilted in the face of some concerted pressure from Arsenal, and perhaps Mourinho’s United would have, too. Not the current side, though. Solksjær’s team have rejuvenated, epitomised by the transformation of Victor Lindelof in the heart of their defence, Paul Pogba in midfield and assorted others. Solskjær was once part of the best counterattacking side in English football. He seems to be building the modern team the same way and United’s second and third goals, converted by Jesse Lingard and Anthony Martial, were another reminder of the days when Ferguson led the team into battle with Arsenal. So was the moment, late on, when Marcus Rashford clashed with Sead Kolasinac, locking foreheads like two angry stags, and the subsequent melee when Lingard was extremely fortunate to avoid his second yellow card of the night. A coin was thrown from the crowd, though it still felt small-fry compared to the hostilities when these teams used to meet. Solskjær, of course, will remember the years when it was the biggest occasion in English football. It is a bit different now, with Granit Xhaka against Lingard not quite the same as Patrick Vieira and Roy Keane, and two managers who greeted one another with an embrace, as opposed to the days when a handshake between Ferguson and Arséne Wenger involved no eye contact and only the briefest touch of flesh on flesh. Solskjær, in keeping with the modern rivalry, was even gentlemanly enough to instruct Luke Shaw to kick the ball out when Sokratis suffered the knee injury that ended his evening prematurely. Apart from the late bust-up, the only flicker of malevolence came on the occasions when Sanchez had the ball and Arsenal’s crowd reminded their former player what they thought of him. Even that, however, lacked real spite, quite possibly because the fans who were making their displeasure voluble must have known enough about the Chilean to realise he might take pleasure in turning down the volume. Sánchez celebrated his goal with fists raised but did not go in for any shushing gestures. No need to rub it in, after all, when nothing will have hurt his former club more than his goal, wriggling past Petr Cech to score with the kind of skill that has been seen only fleetingly during his year as a United player. For Arsenal, that was a devastating period bearing in mind Sánchez’s goal was followed three minutes later by Lingard scoring from one of their swift counterattacking thrusts. Both times it was Romelu Lukaku with the decisive pass and, for the first one in particular, the striker’s through ball was expertly weighted, completely deceiving the Arsenal defenders. Lukaku spent a lot of the night drifting into the space that Kolasinac, Arsenal’s left-back, vacated on his forward forays. It left Arsenal vulnerable on the break and Lingard’s finish, so calm and collected, was a beauty. There was no power in Lingard’s shot. No attempt to put his laces through the ball, the old-fashioned way. He simply controlled Lukaku’s pass, opened up his foot and rolled the ball into the bottom corner. Arsenal Petr Cech: 6 A tough night for the man who has become Arsenal's cup keeper in his farewell season. Ainsley Maitland-Niles: 5 Chosen to play right back in the absence of Bellerín but the lack of positional security showed. Sokratis Papastathopoulos: 6 Injured early and clearly frustrated to jar his leg on the way down from an aerial challenge. Laurent Koscielny: 6 Received lengthy treatment after he was battered by an accidental kick the side of his face. Sead Kolasinac: 6 A difficult night with Lukaku making his presence felt down his flank. Granit Xhaka: 5 Not enough protection to the defence from midfield, then ended up at centre-back. Lucas Torreira: 5 Struggled to muster his best levels of intensity or influence the game. Alex Iwobi: 6 Helped Arsenal to get a goal back but otherwise skittered about to little effect. Aaron Ramsey: 8 Effervescent. The Welshman roamed and was always on the lookout to inject some creative spark. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: 7 In position to tap in at the far post to give Arsenal a lifeline. Alexandre Lacazette: 7 His determination to help the press stands out. Saw a chance to equalise saved. Subs: Mustafi 6, Özil 6, Guendouzi 6 Manchester United Sergio Romero: 8 No bigger compliment than to say David de Gea wasn't missed. An instinctive hand to keep out Ramsey was crucial. Ashley Young: 7 A disciplined display as United captain on another big night on the Solskjaer roadshow. Eric Bailly: 7 Held his defensive ground as Arsenal searched for an equaliser against this confident back four. Victor Lindelöf: 8 Growing in stature under Solskjær, the Swedish defender has become a dominant presence. Luke Shaw: 7 An excellent block as Lacazette readied himself to blast at goal epitomised his solid work. Nemanja Matic: 7 Sat in front of the back four and had a steadying influence again. Ander Herrera: 7 An important cog in the machine with his intelligent link play, the glue in the side. Paul Pogba: 8 Did his fair share of defending, marauded forward when he could and made the killer goal. Romelu Lukaku: 8 Stationed on the right flank at the start, assisted twice with precision for United's quick blast. Jesse Lingard: 8 Led the line at centre forward, snaffled a goal, and ensured Rashford was not missed. Alexis Sánchez: 8 Back at his old stamping ground with a flourish and an old style piece of dynamic scoring. Subs: Rashford 6, Martial 7, Jones 6 Two-nil down, Arsenal were in deep trouble but Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s goal, two minutes before half-time, gave the home side a new sense of hope. Aaron Ramsey created the danger in a congested penalty area. As the pass was flicked across the six-yard area, Alexandre Lacazatte could not get a full touch of the ball. Aubameyang was next in line and scored with a simple finish. Arsenal would have been level a minute into the second half had it not been for a superb one-handed save from Sergio Romero to keep out Ramsey’s header and supply more evidence for those who believe David de Gea’s understudy has legitimate credentials to be recognised as the outstanding second-choice goalkeeper in the English game. The tie had ignited and the second half was an absorbing spectacle, interrupted only by the nasty blow suffered by Laurent Koscielny after challenging Lukaku, falling to the ground and accidentally taking his opponent’s studs to the side of his face, leaving him with a gash below his left ear. Koscielny, bloodied and bruised, was unable to continue after eight minutes of treatment on the pitch and that meant Arsenal had lost both their centre-halves. Unai Emery had to be adventurous, bringing on a midfielder, Matteo Guendouzi, as Koscielny’s replacement and also introducing Mesut Özil in the hope the German could conjure up some magic. Instead, United broke forward again in the 82nd minute. Pogba, driving through the middle, had the first attempt and Martial turned in the rebound after Cech had kept out the first shot. Koscielny’s injury meant ten minutes of stoppage time but United were never likely to be caught and their renaissance under Solskjær continues. Niclas Eliasson’s brilliant first-half goal proved the winner in a stirring FA Cup fourth-round tie as Bristol City edged out Bolton 2-1 at Ashton Gate. The visitors took a sixth-minute lead when defender Mark Beevers was given the freedom of City’s penalty area to shoot home unmarked with a sweet right-footed half-volley from a Luca Connell cross. But the advantage lasted less than two minutes. City winger Callum O’Dowda was allowed time to control a chip to the edge of the box on his chest before sending a low volley past the diving Remi Matthews. The result extended City’s unbeaten run in all competitions to 12 matches.Andy Murray, a complex man in search of simple pleasures, is resigned to hobbling away in pain from the sport that has been his life for more than two decades. But, as he contemplates what may be his last appearance on a tennis court – against Roberto Bautista Agut in the first round of the Australian Open on Monday – the manner of his leaving still consumes him. He has two stark choices: replace the hip that has turned him into a walking target and dream about another improbable comeback in the distant future, or have what is known as re-surfacing, a midway solution that would rescue at least some of his athleticism, if not enough for him to play professional tennis. For months Murray fought against the notion that soon the modest inscription on his Twitter biography – “I play tennis” – would be as redundant as his rackets. “My hip needs to be replaced at some stage,” he admitted on Friday in Melbourne. “It’s badly damaged. But I’ve dealt with the feeling for a very long time. I’d say: ‘If I can reduce the pain, it’s something I’ll be able to compete with.’ “But it got to a point where it wouldn’t improve. I can’t damage my hip more by playing. Obviously it will get worse [with age] but there are operations that will fix that. If I stop playing tennis today, I would seriously consider having an operation because, day to day, life is not fun if I can’t do stuff I would want to do – even if I wasn’t a professional athlete. “I would want to go and play football with my friends or go and play 18 holes of golf – whereas now I can’t think of anything worse than going and playing five-a-side football because I can’t kick a football. “There is a possibility it [a hip replacement] could prolong my career. Hip resurfacing is something that has been around for 15 years and has been successful for a younger generation of people that have had issues with hips. It allows them to live a very active lifestyle and that is why, I understand from speaking to experts, it is a better option for somebody of my age. “If I was to stop playing today, that is something I would consider because it would allow me to run around a little bit more freely than with a hip replacement. I’m sure there are some doctors and surgeons who would dispute that and say a hip replacement is better. But there are quite a few athletes out there who have gone back to competing after having [resurfacing] done. As somebody who wants to live an active lifestyle, it’s a better option for me.” He pretty much made his mind up that his career was over after a wretched third practice session with Fernando Verdasco in Miami in early December. The pain shooting through his right hip went straight to his heart and he told his team: “This is it. I need to know when this is over. My hip is killing me.” Murray recalled: “I had tears in my eyes. I said to them: ‘I shouldn’t be continuing to go through that for nothing any more.’” Murray needed a result or an end-point, as he calls it, a scoreline. “There have been points through the last year [since hip surgery in Melbourne] where I had spoken about stopping. I was in too much pain, wasn’t enjoying it. It didn’t feel like the surgery had worked. I had been advised after having the operation that things could improve after up to a year to 18 months. I was advised to see how that goes. Then I went off to Philadelphia and did different rehab, which helped and improved things to a point. “But my hip doesn’t recover from matches or training any more. In Brisbane [last week, when he lost in straight sets in the second round to the world No 16 Daniil Medvedev], I felt OK in the first match – not amazing, just OK. But next day I felt quite a bit worse. As a tournament goes on, the pain gets worse, so my performance drops. There’s no possibility for me to do well.” He has consulted his wife, Kim, and spoken to his mother, Judy, and brother, Jamie, who were on their way to Melbourne, he said, where they would more fully take on board what he is going through. “I’d imagine they are pretty gutted for me. They know everything I have gone through – well, to a certain extent they do. I have spoken to them a lot, probably my mum more than my brother. They know this isn’t a decision I want to take but one I feel I have to. You guys all have loved ones as well, you know what it is like. “Look, at the end of the day, it is only tennis. It’s just a game, whatever. There is more to life than that. But for many reasons it’s been more than that for me. Stopping the way it’s happened doesn’t sit particularly well with me. It’s not how I would want to finish playing. I don’t think any athlete wants that. They want to go out when they decide, not have their body telling them that is the case. That’s the hardest part of it.” Murray doubts he can ever replace the excitement that engaged him on court. “You can’t. Well, maybe you can by taking certain substances, but you cannot recreate the high of winning Wimbledon or winning a Davis Cup. As much as the lows of losing here for a fifth time hurt, I always had that as a motivation. It was something that gave me drive, to get up and work hard. I don’t anticipate being able to replace that. That’s something that maybe when I finish I will be happy about, living a more stable life.” And what have been the biggest highs? “Two things stand out to me: the second Wimbledon and carrying the flag at the Olympics. That was an off-court thing. There are not loads of things off the court that relate to my tennis. They don’t for me come anywhere close to that.” The man who did more than any of his coaches to transform Murray into the fully fledged champion he became was Ivan Lendl. Lendl said on Friday: “As Andy looks to wind down over the coming months the world of tennis will lose a great competitor but he will leave a measure of true grit that we all can learn from. Andy always left it all out on the court and I will look back with great feelings about the years we worked together. They were a lot of fun times filled with excitement. I am honoured to have been part of his team and to have been able to help him achieve as many of his lofty goals as possible.”Alysa Liu became the youngest person to win an individual title at the US figure skating championships, stealing the show Friday night with two triple axels and taking the title more than six months before her 14th birthday. Defending champion Bradie Tennell, the leader after Thursday’s short program, fell during her free skate and Liu, skating immediately after, took advantage, breezing through her routine after the two early triple axels, one of which was in combination. The Bay Area prodigy’s skate earned 143.62 points, enough to overcome Tennell. When her overall score of 217.51 was announced, she put her hands over her face, overcome with emotion. Tennell finished second (with a total score of 213.59 points) and Mariah Bell matched her career-best finish at a nationals with a bronze (212.40). On Thursday, Liu had become only the third woman to land a triple axel cleanly at a US nationals after Tonya Harding (1991) and Kimmie Meissner (2005). On Friday, she became the first to land two in a program. Not bad for a teenager making her senior-level debut. Earlier, Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue took a step toward defending their ice dancing title, finishing atop the standings after the rhythm dance. Tara Lipinski was the youngest women’s champion at nationals after winning at age 14 in 1997, and Scott Allen also was 14 when he won in 1964. Now a commentator with NBC, Lipinski was there Friday when her record fell. “Records are made to be broken,” Lipinski said. “It is quite an honor that she is the one to do it. What a phenomenal talent.” Hubbell and Donohue will compete for their second straight national title in the free dance Saturday. Madison Chock and Evan Bates were second after the rhythm dance, followed by Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker. The ice dancing competition is one of the most anticipated events of the week, in part because the top teams have plenty of ties to Michigan. Hubbell was born in Michigan, and she and Donohue used to train there. Chock and Bates are from Michigan as well. Those two teams now train in Montreal under the same coaches – with Hawayek and Baker there as well. “We’re pretty lucky that we get to train with the best in the world,” Donohue said. “We’re pushing each other. ... We’ve got such a unique, incredible atmosphere where we all love each other, we all want to beat each other.” Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko, who were fourth after the rhythm dance, train in Novi, Michigan. Hubbell and Donohue received a score of 84.56, ahead of 82.33 for Chock and Bates. “We are so happy to be back in Detroit,” said Chock, who had ankle surgery in the offseason. “It wasn’t too long ago that we moved from here up to Montreal, and our family and friends are still here.” Hubbell and Donohue won the US title last year and won silver at the world championships, so it’s no surprise that they’re in contention again. Chock and Bates were US champions in 2015 and finished third in 2018. Maia and Alex Shibutani, who won bronze at the Olympics last year, are not competing this season.Born from a skate brand background, Aries has enjoyed a cult following for years. Subversive graphics embody anti-fashion youth movements and trash culture. Price-wise it occupies the sweet spot between top-end high street and designer. The hand-printed tie-dye T-shirts and the Cerne Abbas giant motif fleece designed with artist Jeremy Deller are among our favourites. T-shirt, £95, ariesarise.com Men’s jewellery can be tricky terrain to navigate, but this London-based brand makes it easy with dialled-down bling. Pendants of found objects like paperclips and bottle tops are cast in brass and plated in ruthenium. Chains are offered in two lengths and while the rings are simple, the gold and ruby cuff features three 1.8mm square rubies discreetly fitted flush into one end. Necklace, £99, alexorso.com Stats say Swedes spend more time at home than anyone else in the world. Factor in the Scandi love of simple design and an ability to look chic at all times and you get Nufferton, purveyors of Instagram-friendly PJs. Think old school cotton stripe styles in shades of navy and claret and candy pastels that wouldn’t look out of place in a Wes Anderson movie. Pyjamas, £123.35, nufferton.com Athlete-entrepreneur brothers Tom and Phil Beahon founded Castore to provide high-performing sportswear using patented technology and advanced engineering for discerning sportsmen. The limited-edition Garcia hoodie is made from a fabric that is 100% waterproof yet lighter than most training tees. Top, £215, castore.com Having redesigned the humble boxer short to a well-fitting piece of kit, Hamilton and Hare set their sights on lounge wear. Their sleep shirts can take you straight from bed, on an emergency supermarket milk run and back to bed again without giving you away. Take advantage of the complimentary monogramming on cotton-cashmere items. Sleep shirt, £295, hamiltonandhare.com Founders Christian Larson and Andreas Palm set up CDLP to provide a solution to unsightly and uncomfortable ill-fitting underwear. Their pants, stylish and sustainable, are available in five colours and four styles from briefs to boxers. And they’re made from Lyocell, an organic fibre derived from wood pulp that is biodegradable. Life is better with good pants. Fact. Pants, from £27, cdlp.com Drawing on Spanish heritage, Goya sandals are a luxury version of the classic “menorquina” sandal, upgraded with a deep rubber boot sole for city-wear durability. Madrid-based British designer Kimberley Tecles-Byrom worked with Alicante artisans to create this summer must for anyone who shies away from sandals because they dislike their toes. Sandals, £258, thegoyabrand.com Aimé Leon Dore, a lifestyle, sport and ready-to-wear brand based in Queens, New York, celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. Think elevated authentic sportswear with its own basketball-inspired line, Sonny NYC (and even its own tournament). A few AW18 pieces from well appointed collaborations with Timberland and Woolrich can still be snapped up. Inject colour into January with their colour block rugby jersey. Top, £215, endclothing.com Uniqlo opens its first Manchester store this spring. Seek out fashion’s best kept-secret, the U Uniqlo line designed by Christophe Lemaire. It’s the backbone of many style insiders’ wardrobes, with great quality and design at wallet-friendly prices. This season we love the bold knitwear and bleached denim. Be quick though, it sells like hotcakes. Jacket, £34.90, uniqlo.com Pete Sunderland and Ross Baynham founded Instrmnt, a multidisciplinary design studio, in Glasgow in 2014. Their minimal watches are easy on the eye, the clever packaging as elegant as the watch itself. They come in a box, unassembled, with tools provided for the customer to build their own watch. All styles have a two-year guarantee. Watch, £180 instrmnt.co.uk This Paris menswear brand is without gimmicks or trends. Designer Pierre Mahéo describes it as “clothes for the everyday life… made in Europe in the most ethical way”. Pick up an unstructured summer suit or a really great pair of trousers. For SS19 the collection features plenty of (local) French silk and Japanese seersucker. Blazer, from £390, officinegenerale.com Putting slow fashion at the heart of her label, designer Stacey Wood focuses on fabrics that last. Should you no longer need it, you can return your worn product and receive a 15% discount code. Returned items are resold in the “hand me down” section of the website to minimise consumption. A summer capsule collection designed by model Richard Biedul is another highlight. Polo, £170, kingand tuckfield.com Opticals are given the bespoke treatment at Tom Davies. All frames are meticulously made by hand. After an in-depth consultation in-store to fit your new specs, video updates of your new glasses progressing through the TD workshop land in your inbox. In a final James Bond flourish, frames are finished with the name of the customer engraved discreetly on the inside of the temple arm. Glasses, from £395, tdtomdavies.com A go-to name on the Stockholm menswear scene since 2005, Hope is something of a newcomer to the UK. Collections are packed with interesting not-your-ordinary basics. Placing style first and gender second, Hope introduced dual sizing on labels in 2017, making it easier to shop across men’s and women’s collections without size confusion. Shirt, £180, hope-sthlm.com Hailing from Bolton in Manchester, brothers George and Michael Heaton are the brains behind this British-made, street-inspired brand. Denim, made in Italy, where the brand show at Milan fashion week, is the exception. A points scheme rewards regular customers. The windcheaters for spring are standout. Windcheater, £300, representclo.com This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Roger Federer at 37 shows no signs of sending his fans into mourning by even thinking about retiring from tennis, and said after his 100th match on Rod Laver Arena, “For the time being, it’s all good. Lights are on green.” The six-time and defending champion is chasing a hat-trick at the Australian Open, confirming his form and fitness with a comfortable straight sets win on Friday over the 21-year-old American, Taylor Fritz (who was making his debut on the tournament’s showcase court), to advance to the fourth round of a slam for the 64th time. “I’m injury-free, enjoying myself,” Federer said after dismissing Fritz in under an hour-and-a-half, 6-2, 7-5, 6-2. “The kids [two sets of twins] are having a great time too on the tour. My wife’s happy. So, for the moment, there are absolutely no complaints and no plans. I’m just happy where I am in my life, in my career right now.” Fritz, a former US boys champion, is ranked 50 in the world and took two sets off Alexander Zverev at Wimbledon last year, but he floundered against Federer. The Swiss remains on another level and, although stretched by Dan Evans on Wednesday, he looks up for the challenge from any of the young contenders who are increasingly making their presence felt. On Sunday, he will test himself against one of the best of the rising prospects, Stefanos Tsitsipas, who had to fight hard to get past the 19th seed, Nikoloz Basilashvili, in five sets. Tsitsipas – whose 21st birthday in August arrives four days after Federer’s 38th – had earlier joked he would be thrilled to play him next, but hoped it would be Fritz. “If I had known that Roger was 2-0 up when I said that,” he confessed later, “I probably wouldn’t have said it. “I learned a lot since my last match with him. I know the patterns that he’s using a bit better now. He’s serving really well, so I’m going to have to utilise his, and take advantage of my returns as much as possible. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be serving well, so the return games need to be aggressive and pressing a lot.“He’s a legend of our sport. It will be a great day facing him in one of the best arenas, Rod Laver. I’m really excited for that match.” Responding to the suggestion that Federer regarded him as a quiet type, Tsitsipas said: “I do all my talking in the court. Actually, I was shy when I was a kid but not anymore. I think I’m comfortable meeting new people and having a discussion with someone. But not many of the players want to be friends on the tour. That’s a problem, that’s an issue – unless you speak the same language. That’s why you see all these Spaniards, Latin Americans, hang out with each other. Then you have Asian people with each other. So that makes sense.” There will be no contempt when he and Federer become more familiar – almost certainly on Laver again – but plenty of mutual respect. “I’m happy I played against him at the Hopman Cup,” Federer said of a match in which he needed two tie-breaks to win and take Switzerland through to the final. “He played really well there. I actually did too. It was really high-quality tennis. This is obviously a different type of match, it being best of five, and the fourth round of a slam. “I like how he mixes up his game and also comes to the net. So will I. I think we will see some athletic, attacking tennis being played.”Splashed out in the sales? Cashed in your Christmas gift cards? The average Briton spends more than £1,000 on new clothes and shoes each year, according to the statistics agency Eurostat – and many are shelling out much, much more. But with a focus now on the environmental impact of the fashion industry, some of the bloggers, vloggers and influencers who cut their teeth sharing details of an endless array of new clothes and products, are changing tack – enter the “no-buy” movement. The idea is simple: instead of buying new clothes or beauty products, you make a commitment to use the things you already own. Some people, such as the beauty blogger Hannah Louise Poston, sign up to a “no-buy year” – and document their progress in much the same way that they once tracked their purchases. Others pledge not to buy for a few weeks or months or opt for “low-buy” options with a strict spending cap. A subreddit thread named MakeupRehab, offering tips and support for those undertaking not to buy new products, now has more than 50,000 subscribers. “Social media puts pressure on people to spend money they don’t have,” says Katherine Ormerod, author of Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life. She began a four-week “no buy” last month. With YouTube videos titled “$2,000+ makeup & beauty haul!” receiving more than 640,000 views, it is little wonder that many of us feel encouraged to overspend. But the temptation and “buzz” of getting your hands on the latest product can be hard to quell. Having new things feels good, says Ormerod. But wearing treasures that have an emotional resonance can feel incredible, too – something you don’t hear about in the social media context because it doesn’t make anyone any money. Of course, many online influencers have well-stocked wardrobes and bathroom cabinets, and are given the items they use and wear in posts, or are paid to wear them, but Ormerod is committed to not wearing any new products or clothes she is given. “Really I just want to reassure people they don’t have to spend a wedge on fashion every month to look stylish and there’s no such thing as ‘so last season’ any more,” she says. “True style has never been about that anyway.”The BBC is considering Brussels as the location for a new EU base after Brexit to allow it to continue to broadcast across the continent. Belgium’s prime minister, Charles Michel, has disclosed that he held discussions on the possibility in Davos with the BBC’s director general, Tony Hall. “Belgium is often on the shortlist of companies eager to anchor in the European Union after Brexit,” Michel said from the Swiss town hosting the World Economic Forum. It is understood that the BBC is also looking at the Netherlands and Ireland as potential sites for the new offshoot. The BBC will need EU-based licences for its international channels – which include BBC World, BBC Entertainment, BBC First, and BBC Earth – if it wishes to have them broadcast across the rest of Europe either after 29 March, if the UK leaves without a deal, or after the transition period, should Theresa May’s agreement be approved by parliament. The prime minister has been seeking to include the audiovisual industry in a free trade agreement to avoid the problem, but her pleas have been ignored. Last week, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, confirmed his opposition to Downing Street’s request. He said in a letter to a concerned group that he had no intention of permitting the UK to continue to dominate the industry. “France has consistently defended the exclusion of audiovisual services from free trade agreements,” he wrote. “This is an essential issue, which concerns the protection of cultural diversity. “Our country has made it a major point in every trade negotiation. It has thus obtained, in all the free trade agreements the EU has concluded, the exclusion of audiovisual services.” As a result, to secure a pan-EU broadcast licence, the BBC will need to have either its head office, or a significant part of the workforce of the relevant channel, or a satellite uplink in a member state to qualify for a licence there, a demand which could lead to the broadcaster moving some staff and operations into the EU. More than 500 pan-European channels use licences issued by the British regulator Ofcom. International media companies reportedly spend about £1bn a year in the UK, making it the most significant such hub. After Brexit, however, the licences are likely to be invalid as the UK will have left the EU’s single market. Last September, the British online sports channel DAZN said it was opening a development centre in Amsterdam as it sought to realise its ambition of becoming the “Netflix of sports”. The channel provides livestreams of Champions League football, Formula One and the ATP tennis tour in both English and German-speaking countries plus Japan. Turner Broadcasting System Deutschland and NBC Universal Global Networks Deutschland have also taken steps to secure EU licences. A BBC Studios spokesperson said: “BBC Studios, a commercial arm of the BBC, operates a number of bespoke TV channels outside of the UK, including some that are broadcast in the European Union. We will be keeping the situation under close review to ensure that we can continue to best serve our audiences in any changed regulatory environment.” BBC sources said that there were decision-making and workforce requirements, but that they expected the number of staff employed in the new base to be limited in number.Gillian Anderson is to follow in the footsteps of Meryl Streep, Patricia Hodge and Jennifer Saunders by taking on the role of Margaret Thatcher, it has been reported. Anderson, who is in rehearsals for a West End adaptation of the 1950 film All About Eve, will take on the role as the latest eye-catching addition to the cast of Netflix’s lavish blockbuster The Crown. According to the Sunday Times, she will reportedly appear as the former Conservative prime minister in series four of the show, with filming due to begin over the summer. Much will depend on her chemistry with Olivia Colman, who has succeeded Claire Foy as Elizabeth II for the next two series of the show. There has been a great deal written about the reportedly frosty relationship between the Queen and Thatcher during the 11 years in which she was prime minister. They found each other something of a mystery, say some. One account even suggested the Queen did mocking impressions of Thatcher and referred to her as “that woman”. Given that neither the Queen nor Thatcher spoke about their private weekly audiences, it is impossible to know for certain. Thatcher’s biographer Charles Moore has described the former prime minister as being “almost paralysingly correct” about her relationship with the monarch and nervous during the audiences. How The Crown, written by Peter Morgan, will portray the relationship remains to be seen, although a clue can surely be extracted from Morgan’s hit play The Audience, which dramatised the weekly meetings and starred Helen Mirren as the Queen. Thatcher was played by Haydn Gwynne, whose character gave the Queen an absurdly extravagant curtsey before bossily berating her over leaks. The Crown is one of Netflix’s most expensive and most accomplished dramas, with the relationship between the royal family and politicians featuring heavily. The first two series starred Foy and Matt Smith as Elizabeth and Philip, with John Lithgow playing Winston Churchill and Anton Lesser as Harold Macmillan. Series three and four will star Colman alongside Tobias Menzies as Philip. Netflix has kept details of the new series under wraps, with no release date announced. It has been reported that series three will cover the years from 1963 to 1976, with Harold Wilson, played by Jason Watkins, being prominent. Series four would then focus on the Thatcher years, with the introduction to the story of a young Princess Diana. If that is the case, there is fertile territory to plough, not least the Falklands war and the miners’ strike. Irish government files declassified in 2017 appear to back one famous story that the Queen was angry at Thatcher for not imposing sanctions against South Africa. Anderson has had a stellar career on screen and stage, but will probably always be best known for her portrayal of special agent Dana Scully in The X-Files. A spokesperson for Netflix declined to confirm or deny the reports.It is about this point in winter that you really begin to tire of wearing tights. Yes, they are a practical necessity – but they dig in. They fall down. They pill. They tear on first wear. They develop holes at the toes. They become weirdly baggy round the knees – billowy, even – while remaining scratchy and unyielding everywhere else. They assume that height and weight observe a strictly linear relationship. They extend either laughably high or uncomfortably not high enough, and, pre-purchase, it is impossible to tell which. And don’t get me started on the gusset. My aversion to tights sees me going without well into November, just to put off the associated rigmarole as long as possible. “Aren’t you cold?” people ask me. Yes, of course – but anything to delay the rat-king of tangled tights that emerges from my washing machine every week to be wrestled into submission. I may experience these frustrations more than most women, given that I exclusively wear skirts and dresses (a habit formed at school that these days passes for personal style) – but I refuse to believe I am alone in them. Tights are not comfortable to wear. Yet I have been laboriously encasing my legs in poly-blends for as long as I can remember – easily 20 years, dating back to my winter uniform in primary school. A UK woman spends on average £3,000 on tights in her lifetime, according to an Asda 2016 survey. No one is suggesting that this is the No 1 issue facing women today. But it can be a daily discomfort that men don’t have to put up with, and one that women suffer mostly in silence. And not privileged women, either. Bare legs year-round have already been established – first, by the US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, in about 2000 – as signifying a level of wealth that permits you to dress without mind for such mortal concerns as weather. But this means it is not wealthy one-percenters left trying to subtly hoik their tights up, or donning with dread that uncomfortable pair they perversely keep “as a spare”. As with the pocketless women’s clothes, the trouble with tights is not a western-world problem, it’s a working- or middle-class one – and because it is obviously, objectively low-ranking by any metric of importance, it doesn’t get talked about. But searching Twitter, the public void into which women scream, reveals it to be a recurring struggle: “I have those really annoying tights on that keep falling down [several endless-tears emoji] help”. A woman who identifies pulling up tights as “the most annoying thing about being tall” is corrected by a follower: “I gotta do that and I’m crazy short!” Another turns it into an insult: “You’re as annoying as when you get a hole in your tights and have to pull and scrunch the tip up and shove it in between your big & 2nd toe.” One more chides her boyfriend for calling tights tangled by the wash “the most annoying thing”: “AT LEAST YOU DON’T HAVE TO WEAR THEM PAL.” It speaks to women being forced regularly into garments that make them feel too tall, too short, too big, too small, too active, too clumsy or careless. This winter, I asked: what if there was another way? My Instagram feed had been insistent there might be for months. For more than a year I had been targeted with ads for a brand called Heist Studios, saying: “Goodbye, digging, sagging, seams and gusset. Hello, the best tights you’ve ever worn.” But on learning they were more than £20 a pair, I had scrolled past. Marks & Spencer’s bestseller, Body Sensor in 60 denier, is £6 a pair, or three for £8. I had paid more for tights (from many brands), I had paid less – and I had always seemed to receive the same, vaguely dissatisfying product. At £22, I would only feel worse when they inevitably got a run in them. There is “definitely a mentality shift involved”, says Toby Darbyshire, Heist’s founder and CEO, in going from getting change from a tenner for a three-pack to handing over £22 for just one pair. Women’s low expectations of how good a pair of tights could possibly be has been one of the hurdles the company has had to overcome. “You’re battling against years of people not giving any thought to how uncomfortable they are. How many times have you seen someone on the tube trying to hoik their tights up? That’s not because the garment works. And it’s not a problem suffered by men.” As a man, Darbyshire is quick to clarify, he doesn’t have “any product experience on a personal level” – but that outsider perspective, he says, has been helpful in highlighting just how much discomfort women had become immune to, under the impression there was no alternative. Darbyshire, a former management consultant who previously co-founded then sold a residential solar panel company, started Heist in 2015 after looking for “consumer sectors in need of disruption”. The women’s underwear market, he felt, was “fundamentally broken” – geared more towards fashion than function, and lagging behind in design innovation. Ask women what’s wrong with tights, Darbyshire says, and they often say: “Not much.” “Then you say, ‘OK, do they actually work?’ – and they’ll say, ‘No, they dig into my stomach, they sag, they roll’ … I mean, are your T-shirts uncomfortable? With tights, you go from the Helmut Newton line in the Wolford shop, which is very much selling glamour, to by the till in Boots and M&S. But just because it is an everyday, ‘basic’ product, doesn’t mean it has to be designed in any less thoughtful a way than your leggings from Lululemon.” The 120-year-old German hosiery specialists Falke – where prices range from £11 for its extremely sheer, 12-denier bestseller Shelina, up to £55 – is also at pains to stress what is obvious in other areas of fashion: you get what you pay for. It is possible to tell the difference in quality by feel alone, says Marie-Christine Essmeier, the brand’s senior product manager for women and children. “With an excellent yarn quality, a tight is more comfortable, easier to wear and to care for.” She says first-time Falke customers often find “there is no need any more to go for a cheap multipack, because you just feel it on your skin”. Darbyshire says, of Heist, that the difference is like that between “cashmere and carpet”, the yarn reaching 5,000 spirals an inch (a comparable measure to thread count in sheets) versus the bog-standard 300 or 400. The tights come in four styles (nude and 30, 50 and 80 denier) and two waistband heights (low and high). The seamless “toe-to-toe tube” removes the uncomfortable centre seam; Heist is also continually refining its “leg apertures” to better accommodate different shapes. Many of these innovations had been there to be applied to tights for years, says Darbyshire, but “the rest of the industry hadn’t been bothered to try”. I would have been more inclined to chalk this up to standard startup big talk if I hadn’t put on my first pair of Heist tights that morning. As I had gone about my day, I had had the nagging sense that something had changed. I eventually realised that I had learned to sit and stand and move about the office in a way that would minimise the discomfort caused by my tights. This tiny friction had been removed, and I quietly marvelled at the difference it made. For those for whom £22 for tights will always be beyond the pale, no matter how technologically advanced, the rest of the industry is catching up. Nicola Hart, M&S’s buyer for hosiery and socks, says the brand has seen a shift in sales from tights to socks, which she attributes to the trend for casual dressing, but adds that “as technology improves, tights have definitely become more comfortable to wear”. Seamless tights, Hart says, are a “game-changer”; M&S’s own line, with a deep smoothing waistband and without a central body seam, are “the most comfortable tight we have ever made”. On the high street, Calzedonia sells tights from £5 to £33, with its Made in Italy range the most popular for its multitude of options: “Any customer who is willing to pay more than £10 for a pair of tights knows exactly what they expect from them,” says a spokesman. (He also makes the fair point that, design aside, tights “will always be a delicate accessory” and the correct care is key to their lifespan.) Darbyshire is under no illusion that Heist will ever capture 100% of the market – but in two and a half years, it has sold 350,000 pairs, and it raised $4.4m (£3.4m) in its second funding round in June 2018. He refers me to the comments made on the brand’s Instagram as real proof of its success. “People are responding in kind of the same way you did: ‘I hadn’t realised just how crap this was.’” Heist has just applied the same philosophy to shapewear designed to take “up to 5cm” off your waist; bras are next. “In the scale of human tragedy,” says Darbyshire, “the restriction of freedom of a pair of tights is definitely not at the top of the scale. It may not even be near the middle.” But it is one of “these tiny frictions that are making life significantly less comfortable for women”, he says; the aim is to challenge their perception that they have to put up with them. • This article was amended on 17 January 2019 to remove an unverified statistic. It originally said that 3.5 billion women were reported to wear tights. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Ashleigh Barty, who strips down many of her trophies and gives them to friends to recycle for juniors at a Brisbane club, writes the sort of story Australian tennis badly needs right now. While various stars of the men’s game here, faded and flickering, former and current, embarrass themselves on an almost daily basis by bickering in public over private rows, the 22-year-old Queenslander with the open smile and rock-solid game has been quietly working her way to the fourth round of the Australian Open. She beat the exciting Greek prospect, Maria Sakkari, 7-5, 6-1 on Friday and plays the 2008 champion, Maria Sharapova, on Sunday. Later, she politely turned away the inevitable questions about allegations by Lleyton Hewitt that Bernard Tomic had threatened him and his family for freezing him out of the Davis Cup team. Tomic denies the claim. Nick Kyrgios and others have been ducking for cover. It is all very unsavoury. “I have no knowledge of what’s happening,” she said. “There are a million stories going around grand slam time because there are so many players, there are so many matches, there are so many amazing stories. From my point of view, it’s been a super positive week.” Barty will have the country cheering her on against Sharapova, who went out in the third round to Angelique Kerber on her return here last year after her drugs suspension, but has looked back to near her best this week. The Russian, 30th in the world after a quiet 2018, had two easy wins then had to fight harder on Friday to overcome the defending champion, Caroline Wozniacki 6-4, 4-6, 6-3. After two hours and 20 minutes, Wozniacki gifted Sharapova match point with a double fault, but the Russian got anxious in a long rally and wasted the chance with a loose forehand. She was not so profligate with the next opportunity and there was little the world No 3 could do about her withering, angled backhand. Wozniacki is the highest-ranked opponent Sharapova has beaten since her first-round victory over Simona Halep at the US Open in 2017, her first grand slam match since her ban. There has been a froideur between the two players since Wozniacki was highly critical of Sharapova’s welcome by tournament organisers on her return to the tour, leading to the Russian’s agent describing Wozniacki as “a journeyman”. Nine months later, the Dane won her first slam in Melbourne. Loved every minute of today’s battle. 4th round 👊🏻💪🏻 @AustralianOpen pic.twitter.com/36UhHTmIIZ After defeat in the first match between the two since Sharapova’s 15-month suspension, Wozniacki said of their frosty relationship: “Our terms are the same as they have always been. She doesn’t really talk to anybody and has her team and has her own thing. And that’s that. I do my own thing. I have my friends, and that’s that. We are on tour. We are competitors. We both try our hardest when we’re out there on court.” Wozniacki, who recently revealed she is suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, said the damp weather did not noticeably affect her game. “I feel good. I gave it everything I had. Definitely don’t want to blame it on anything else. She was just a little bit better than me today.” Sharapova also flat-batted questions about her edgy relationship with Wozniacki. “I just really like winning. I’m just really happy and proud of the way I competed today and I’m into the fourth round. So that’s all that matters.” Of the match-up with Barty, she added: “I know that it’s going to be a tough crowd, but I go out here to perform and play tennis. That’s why the nets go up, so we can compete. I love that opportunity.” Barty, whose natural talent enabled her to play cricket for Australia with little background in the sport, turned her energies and talent to tennis full-time in 2016 and has risen to 15 in the world on a growing wave of impressive results. However, while tennis has put more than $5m in her bank account, cricket still competes for her attention, and, once done with media commitments, she dashed home from Melbourne Park to catch the Australia-India one-dayer at the MCG on TV. If there is a minor concern about her prospects it is her reluctance to be specific about the medical timeout she took between sets on Friday. “I have just gotten to know my body well enough now to know when I need a little bit of help,” she said. “It was more just for a bit of reassurance and support.” She said of her busy schedule: “There is nothing else can get you ready for matches than matches. It was a perfect preparation through Perth and Sydney [where she beat world No1 Halep and lost to Petra Kvitova in a thrilling three-set final], and now I come here feeling great. “I feel like I have the matches and tennis under my belts. It’s getting to the point now where I’m feeling more and more comfortable on the court and can play my brand of tennis, which when I execute I know it works against the best in the world.” The other eye-catching performance on day five was the win by the 17-year-old American Amanda Anisimova, the youngest player left in the draw, who beat the world No 11 Aryna Sabalenka, considered by many a serious threat to the leading contenders. Asked if she had a single dream she would like to see realised, Anisimova said, bluntly: “I want to win this tournament right now. Anything is possible.” Born and raised in New Jersey of Russian parents, the former US Open junior champion took only 65 minutes to win 6-3, 6-2 and has now beaten seven of 11 seeded opponents in her short career – including Kvitova, her opponent in the fourth round. The eighth seed, a semi-finalist here in 2012, could be a dream-wrecker. She looked dangerous again after beating the in-form Belinda Bencic, 6-1, 6-4, although the second set was way more competitive until she broke in the seventh game.Two years after its inception, 10,000 bitcoin was just about enough to buy a couple of takeaway pizzas. Today those bitcoin would be worth nearly $38m (£30m). That is a huge increase, but just a fraction of their $180m value only 13 months ago, because since its creation a decade ago this week, the digital currency has been at the centre of one of the biggest economic bubbles in history. Bitcoin has had a wild ride since its birth on 3 January 2009. Created as a digital currency to sidestep the traditional finance industry using encrypted code, it took until May 2010 for the first reported purchase using bitcoin to take place: those two large Papa John’s pizzas worth $30 for 10,000 bitcoins. But in recent years bitcoin has become less useful as a medium of exchange and more famous for its boom-bust tendencies – drawing parallels to the Dutch tulip mania of 1637 and Dante’s Inferno for its ability to lose investors millions of pounds. It surged by more than 1,000%, sometimes gaining $2,500 in a single day, to stand at almost $20,000 just before Christmas 2017. But the digital currency then crumpled over the course of last year, and yesterday stood at just $3,780, having wiped out many investments on the way down. Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists to predict the 2008 financial crash and a former White House economic adviser is one of Bitcoin’s most vocal critics. He has called it the “mother of all bubbles” and tweeted last month that it,and other crypto copycats like Ethereum and Litecoin, should be ranked in a “2018 Shitcoin Hall/Pile of Manure Shame”. But despite the cautionary warnings from mainstream economists, as well as the finance industry labelling bitcoin a vehicle for scammers, crooks and terrorists, there are still legions of cryptocurrency fans, with an online cottage industry of news websites, blogs and podcasts. The digital currency launched as more than just an opportunity for investors to make millions (before losing them almost equal amounts). The technology underlying it has excited businesses, while the growth of cryptocurrencies promised another future for its fans outside the traditional financial system. At its launch a decade ago, the very first block of bitcoin was etched with a subversive statement: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The message from its creator – an unknown person or group of people going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto – was clear: bitcoin would exist outside of a system that had failed badly and could no longer be trusted. The idea came straight from the Austrian school of economics with a pinch of left-wing anarchism thrown in for good measure – offering individual liberty and a way to avoid the grasp of government, while sidestepping corporate power and the banking system. The birth of the digital currency represented a return to the days of private money in the earlier stages of western economic development, with a parallel to wildcat banks in the mid 19th century as the US expanded westward, when railway companies and construction firms issued thousands of banknotes between them. Scores of bitcoin copycats have emerged, hoping to ride the wave of euphoria evident in 2017, launched through initial coin offerings (ICOs) that in several cases turned out to be fraudulent scams. As with the age of private money, which led governments to create monopolies over currency under the auspices of the central banking system, in order to gain state control and to protect consumers from firms and individuals unable to repay the holders of their notes, bitcoin also appears to be heading for a more tightly regulated future. The UK government is poised to give sweeping new powers over digital currencies to the Financial Conduct Authority, after MPs warned that it and other cryptocurrencies were akin to the “wild west” and exposed consumers to various risks. Central banks including the Bank of England are examining cryptocurrencies, while some countries have looked to create their own. Despite losing some investors millions of pounds, the bitcoin boom and bust has also attracted attention to its underlying technology – the blockchain – which may be used to revolutionise the way companies handle payments or transfer information. Kiran Nagaraj of the accountancy firm KPMG said company executives increasingly ask about how they can use digital currencies or blockchain technology. “Credit to bitcoin, it created an awareness. The 2018 bear market will help create better quality services and products for the whole space overall,” he said. There are fears however that the institutional wave of investors that rushed to buy cryptocurrencies last year may slowly melt away. JP Morgan has warned that more professionals are ditching bitcoin than investing. After the launch of bitcoin futures on the Chicago Board Options Exchange a year ago – viewed by enthusiasts as its arrival in the mainstream – trading interest has slumped. Wild estimates were made for the future value of bitcoin a year ago. John McAfee, the software security company founder, predicted it would reach $500,000 by the end of 2020. The Winklevoss twins, who have invested significant sums in bitcoin, argued it could end up matching gold in value, meaning a price above $320,000 and total market capitalisation of at least $4tn. The argument went that prices only exist for any given asset because society agrees it is worth that amount, and why should bitcoin be any different, even if it lacks physical properties. But while gold also has limited utility to justify its value, unlike bitcoin the precious metal has been held in high regard for millennia. At the start of its 10th year, predictions for Bitcoin’s future are modest. Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia Pacific at the currency trading firm Oanda, is moderately optimistic: “A bit of risk is still in the air but I’m starting to warm up to the upside now … we could see $5,000 and even a push to $6,000 on a convincing enough break of the key $5,000 mark.” Clement Thibault, senior analyst at Investing.com, reckons investor confidence has been shot for the time being: “I believe too many would-be early adopters got burned badly last year, and once an asset has been labeled a bubble, a gamble, or a speculative investment, it takes time to rebuild the trust and appeal needed to push the asset forward.” There are still those, like Roubini, who believe bitcoin could – or should – be wiped out entirely, while Teunis Brosens of the Dutch bank ING, reckons it will just disappear into relative obscurity: “This time last year I wrote a note saying [bitcoin] will become a niche asset,” he said. “I’m happy to say I think that view aged well.”Rapper Ja Rule has criticised two new documentaries about Fyre festival, the failed luxury music event in the Bahamas of which he was a co-founder alongside Billy McFarland. Fyre was due to take place on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma over two weekends in April and May 2017. The festival was promoted on the image of luxury nonpareil including lavish beach houses and proximity to leading models and influencers. Both Hulu’s Fyre Fraud and Netflix’s Fyre detail the festival’s inability to fulfil basic infrastructure, let alone extravagant extras, leaving thousands of festivalgoers stranded without accommodation, food and water. McFarland was convicted of defrauding investors out of $27.4m (£21.3m) and jailed for six years in federal prison. Ja Rule tweeted: “I love how ppl watch a doc and think they have all the answers.” He called out the streaming platforms for allegedly paying people involved in the fiasco for their participation in the documentaries. He claimed that Hulu paid McFarland and Netflix paid the media organisation FuckJerry, which did marketing for Fyre, for their participation. McFarland was interviewed in the Hulu documentary and Elliot Tebele, creator of Jerry Media/FuckJerry, is an executive producer of the Netflix documentary. The films’ respective directors have criticised one another for the involvement of these parties. “That money should have went to the ppl in the Bahamas,” the rapper continued in reference to Maryann Rolle, who runs the Exuma Point Bar and Grille, which catered for stranded festivalgoers. Rolle said she used $50,000 (£38,000) of her own money to pay staff who helped at the event after being left in the lurch by the founders. More than $77,000 (£60,000) has been raised for Rolle in a crowd-funding effort. The rapper continued: “the docs clearly have Billy at fault but let’s blame the rapper lmao [laughing my ass off] ok,” Ja Rule continued. In another tweet, he said: “I had an amazing vision to create a festival like NO OTHER!!! I would NEVER SCAM or FRAUD anyone what sense does that make???” He claimed: “I too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, led astray!!!” The documentary contains footage from after the festival in which the rapper tells Fyre employees: “That’s not fraud, that’s not fraud. False advertising, maybe.”After Cesc Fàbregas had uttered his fond farewells to Chelsea on Friday night, the club’s social media team posted a collection of his greatest assists. Most were 40- or 50-yard passes, launched from within his own half. Yet whether the ball was caressed or caned, sent skyward or scuttling along the ground, it always landed precisely on the foot of a teammate. It provoked the same quiet awe as seeing a major golf winner repeatedly hit a flop wedge to within four feet of the flag, no matter how dicey the approach, or dangerous the lie. That, I think, is how the Premier League will remember the Spaniard. Sitting deep, unlocking defences, redefining the art of the assist. Yet at his peak, somewhere in his early to mid 20s, Fàbregas was much more than that. Not only a conjuror but a conductor too, able to dictate the tempo and flow of a game as well as change it in an instant – and also buzzy enough to get around the pitch and in opponent’s faces. And boy, could he could create. Between 2006-07 and 2010-11 no one in Europe’s five biggest leagues managed more assists than Fàbregas’s 60 – or created more than his 466 chances. Not Lionel Messi. Not Xavi or Mesut Özil, Frank Lampard or Steven Gerrard, although they all made the top 10. Fàbregas also averaged 3.5 chances created for every 90 minutes he played – again better than anyone else in Europe. How many more goals might Arsenal have scored if Thierry Henry and Fàbregas had stayed together? Instead the Spaniard had to service Nicklas Bendtner, a Robin Reliant of a striker compared to Henry’s Lamborghini, as well as Andrey Arshavin and Eduardo. Despite that, he continued to excel, contributing 15 goals and 13 assists from 27 games in the Gunners’ 2009-10 season despite several injuries. As Ted Knutson, the head of the football consultancy StatsBomb, who later did statistical analysis on Fàbregas’s merits for Barcelona, puts it: “That guy was the best young midfielder in the world. He was also the best attacking passer the Premier League has ever seen.” Looking back, it is bizarre that Fàbregas was selected only twice for the PFA’s team of the year. Then again, he is in good company given that Paul Scholes was also picked only twice. Perhaps Fàbregas is not rated as highly as he deserves because, like Wayne Rooney and Mike Tyson, his developmental trajectory was so steep and spectacular that his best years came so early and are now long behind him. Remember, he was Arsenal’s youngest ever player, aged 16 and 177 days, one of several debutants in a Carling Cup victory over Rotherham in October 2003, and became the club’s youngest scorer two months later. That goal came in a 5-1 mauling of an experienced Wolves side, after which my colleague Jon Brodkin hailed Fàbregas’s performance and purred: “This was men against boys all right, and the men were outclassed”. The next day Brodkin spoke to Arsenal’s head of youth development, Liam Brady, who warned him that the Gunners’ starlets would be “20 or 21” before they could “handle the physical side” of the Premier League. Yet by August 2004 Fàbregas, at 17, had forced his way into the Invincibles team that had just gone unbeaten in winning the Premier League. Shortly afterwards he made one of the best assists of his career, a stunning no-look reverse pass to Freddie Ljungberg in a thrilling 5-4 victory over Spurs. There were many more to come. Yet when it comes to assessing his place in the pantheon his time at Barcelona always counts again him. Being played as a false nine always felt a little false. During his three years at the Camp Nou, Fàbregas still ranked in the top six in Europe for assists, behind only Messi, Özil, Ángel Di María, Franck Ribéry and Eden Hazard, despite several injuries. And as Pep Guardiola put it: “When Cesc has the ball, in one second he is the most special player in the world for that ball in behind.” Nowadays there is also a recency bias when assessing Fàbregas’s legacy. In the past two years he has become slower of mind and foot, and inevitably less effective. But it is not so long ago that he set up Andrés Iniesta’s winner in the 2010 World Cup final, crossed for David Silva’s opener in Spain’s 4-0 thumping of Italy in the Euro 2012 final, or had 18 assists during Chelsea’s title-winning 2014-15 season – the joint-second highest in Europe behind Kevin De Bruyne. How Chelsea could do with that version of Fàbregas now. No one has passed more in the Premier League than Jorginho this season, but he does not have a single assist. Four Chelsea defenders are also in the top 10 of passes played, highlighting – as Jermaine Jenas pointed out on Match of the Day – the fact that Maurizio Sarri’s side are overplaying at the back and not getting the ball forward quickly enough. That is a charge you could never level at Fàbregas. No wonder Henry is hoping that the Spaniard, who provided so many assists during their time together at Arsenal, can help him once more by getting Monaco out of a relegation dogfight. Do not be surprised if the 31-year-old locksmith still proves capable of unpicking the toughest of defences.The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has been held liable by a US court for the extrajudicial killing of the Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and ordered to pay $300m dollars (£228m) in punitive damages. In a judgment published on Thursday, the Syrian government was found to have targeted journalists deliberately during the country’s civil war in order to “intimidate newsgathering” and suppress dissent. Colvin, an American reporter who operated out of London, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photojournalist, were killed in a rocket attack on a makeshift media centre in the rebel-held city of Homs in February 2012. A claim against Assad’s regime was lodged with a Washington court by her sister Cathleen and her three children. “It’s been almost seven years since my sister was killed by the Assad regime, and not a day goes by when I don’t think of her,” Cathleen said on Thursday. “My heart goes out to the families of the many thousands of victims of the Syrian conflict. It is my greatest hope that the court’s ruling will lead to other criminal prosecutions, and serve as a deterrent against future attacks on the press and on civilians. “Marie dedicated her life to fighting for justice on behalf of the victims of war and ensuring that their stories were heard. This case is an extension of her legacy, and I think she’d be proud of what we achieved today.” The British war photographer Paul Conroy, a former soldier with the Royal Artillery who worked closely with Colvin, escaped with a leg wound in the attack. He said he felt emotional and vindicated by the ruling. “Syrian journalists are being murdered daily for seven years and this is a really good day, it sounds a bit corny, for justice,” he told Press Association. “We can now use this case to point at our own politicians and world leaders who are thinking that the Assad regime can be rehabilitated back into the international democratic fold, as it were.” In her decision, judge Amy Jackson of the US district court for the District of Columbia declared that Marie Colvin was “specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country. [The] murder of journalists acting in their professional capacity could have a chilling effect on reporting such events worldwide.” “A targeted murder of an American citizen, whose courageous work was not only important, but vital to our understanding of war zones and of wars generally, is outrageous, and therefore a punitive damages award that multiples the impact on the responsible state is warranted.” As well as awarding $300m in punitive damages, the court also ordered Syria to pay $2.5m in compensation to Colvin’s sister and $11,836 in funeral expenses. Scott Gilmore, lead counsel for claimants, said: “This case is a legal rejoinder to the war on truth waged by strongman leaders like Bashar al-Assad. At a time when journalists face unprecedented threats, the court sent a very clear message: evidence speaks louder than disinformation, and censorship through violence is a serious breach of international law.” Lawyers for the Colvin family relied on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows claimants to sue foreign countries through the US courts for compensation and punitive damages. In 2016, Assad said in a television interview that Colvin was responsible for her own death because she had entered the country illegally and was working with “terrorists”.A former Ukip activist who is partnering with Nigel Farage in launching a new pro-Brexit political party has argued crime and fatherlessness among black men are due to high testosterone levels, and suggested their lower academic achievement could have a biological basis. Catherine Blaiklock has also expressed concern about “Muslim enclaves” and said food banks should be abolished as they create a “dependent, obese population”. The former parliamentary candidate and economics spokeswoman for Ukip, who has also argued too many women train as doctors, confirmed at the weekend she had applied to register Farage’s new party last month. Farage, a former Ukip leader, has vowed to contest any general, local or European elections with the new party if he believes Brexit is being thwarted. Blaiklock quit Ukip in December, shortly after Farage did the same. They were among a series of high-profile members to leave after the current leader, Gerard Batten, appointed the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser, amid wider concerns about the direction of the party. Soon after Blaiklock announced she had registered the party with the Electoral Commission, her Twitter feed appeared to be deleted, as were some posts from her personal blog. One of the deleted posts, titled “Baby mamas, gangs and testosterone”, argued biological reasons could be behind gang violence and family breakdown among men of African-Caribbean origin in the UK and the US. “I always joke that that black American men go crazy in their teens and 20s because of all their excess testosterone, have lots of babies, sex, violence, drugs, sport and music and then at 35, when their testosterone reduces to near the levels of white men, all settle down and become washing-machine repairmen. I may not be so far from the truth,” she wrote. “We do not like to talk about biology when related to race, but what is good for winning 100m races might not be great for passing A-level maths exams.” In another post, which has not been deleted, Blaiklock writes about her discomfort when encountering a woman wearing a full-face veil and expresses worry about the extent of Muslim immigration. Using a US example, she describes two cities near Detroit “that have become almost total Muslim enclaves”. The cities, Hamtramck and Dearborn, have significant Muslim populations but are otherwise diverse. In a post on the Conservative Woman website in January titled “Hungry? Let them eat spuds!” Blaiklock said food poverty was a myth and food banks should stop their activities as “they are creating a dependent, obese population”. In another post on the same website, she argues the NHS wastes large amounts of money by employing female doctors who then have children. To stop this, the NHS needs to “tie them into contracts, as with the army”, she suggests. Blaiklock said she had taken down her Twitter account “because I have no time right now to monitor it”. She added: “I have been happily married to a Jamaican man for six years, so anyone implying I am racist is revealing more about themselves than me.” A representative for Farage was contacted for comment.The enterprise bargaining agreement at my workplace permits three days of leave for the loss of a loved one. I’m not sure how three days of leave are supposed to work for the bereaved. On day one you are numb. Day two you cry. And on day three, you step towards life. Ready to be back at your desk by day four? Able to have friendly Monday morning chats? Contribute to the next strategic planning meeting? Grief cannot be neatly packaged into three days. Grief wears many faces, it keeps odd hours. My mother died a hard death from aggressive breast cancer in February 2017. After three days the funeral wasn’t even organised. At one month I was numb, trying to carry on each day as I had done before she died – back at my desk, as the enterprise bargaining agreement told me I should be. Three months later I was a shell of myself, unreachable. People began avoiding me at work, unsure of what to say or do. By six months I was a pool of tears. A colleague raised their voice at me and I spent the next week hiding in my house, crying. At nine months I was panic and fear. Every hour I ran around the block of my office or my house – trying to outrun the terror. At twelve months I was simply relieved to have survived twelve months. Now, at two years, I’m nothing if not changeable. Some days I’m joy on wheels, walking my dogs in the bush or sharing a drink with friends. Some days I burst into tears because my mother would have liked the way I pruned her favourite pot plant just so. Happy or sad, there isn’t a moment in my life that I don’t experience through the prism of her death. Grief is not one thing. Grief does not fit into three days of leave, or neatly around a nine-to-five work schedule. And yet we continue to pretend that it should. According to research, there are around 160,000 deaths in Australia each year. Each death leaves one to five close ties behind. What this research suggests is that, at any point in time, large numbers of our community – workplaces or otherwise – are grieving. We may be uncomfortable in the face of this grief, and unsure of what to do. But when we leave those who are grieving alone, we intensify their loneliness which can lead to depression, and other mental health issues, ultimately weakening their immune system. Grief raises the risk of heart disease, cancer and high blood pressure. With grief’s link to depression, one current theory is that it may in fact stop the process of neurogenesis – the ability of our brains to create new neurons. In other words, while we are grieving our brains may be unable to learn and adapt to new information, experiences or situations. Working through grief is like walking through molasses. Hardly the flexible, agile and adaptive employees our workplace strategic plans demand. In modern life we no longer make space for grief. We are uncomfortable bearing witness. As Cheryl Strayed wrote in her book Brave Enough, we do not help the bereaved when their suffering goes on beyond what we are comfortable with or feel is appropriate. We don’t help them, we tell them they need to get help, “we pathologize their pain; we call suffering a disease”. And in doing so, we make it harder for people to understand their own grief, let alone the grief of others. After the loss of her sister, Kate Beaton said “grief opens the doors to other parts of your life and mind, making lateral moves into unrelated spaces and opening fire there”. Grief upends your life, reshapes who you are, where you thought you were going and leaves all the plans you had for getting there on the scrap heap. As the two-year anniversary of my mother’s death looms, I think about her often. I try very literally to move in the direction of life, talking with my partner about our new puppy, about starting a family. I never imagined my mother wouldn’t be part of these conversations, where we grapple with how to fit another life event around our work schedules. Who will help us in the first few months of sleeplessness when our baby arrives? Tell us what do we do when the baby cries? Every step I take towards new life, I feel her absence at my side. Gemma Carey is a researcher at the University of New South Wales. She has written for Croakey, The Mandarin and have appeared on ABC National Radio.Councils are making millions of pounds from a private company accused of using aggressive and intimidating tactics to issue fines for minor offences such as littering and dog-fouling, an investigation has found. In interviews with the Guardian, whistleblowers said staff working for Kingdom Services Group – one of the fastest growing private security and services firms in the country – had targeted elderly people for littering because they knew they would be more likely to pay the fines. And they alleged that, with the company’s encouragement, some officers had deliberately targeted vulnerable people in deprived areas. One former officer said: “I believe this company is profiting from poverty.” Images on Kingdom’s website show staff conducting legitimate operations on behalf of councils. The company says that its officers undertake a comprehensive training programme and “operate under some of the tightest legal guidelines”. But whistleblowers say this does not tell the full story. Through interviews, leaked internal messages and freedom of information requests, a Guardian investigation found that Kingdom: • Is alleged to have encouraged staff to compete to issue as many fines as possible through a “100 club” league table in at least one area. • Is accused of deploying a training team that encouraged staff to conceal logos on their uniform and hide in bushes or behind cars to improve their chances of catching members of the public. • Is alleged to have followed people or falsely accused them in order to impose fines. • Generated £1.4m in fines over just eight months in one council area alone. A woman who successfully challenged a fine issued by Kingdom in the north-west told the Guardian she believed officers were issuing fines to people who were “easy targets”. The 57-year-old said two officers had approached her car in a supermarket carpark and accused her of dropping a cigarette. The woman said the company had only dropped the complaint after she obtained CCTV from the supermarket proving she had not thrown away her cigarette. While some councils have dropped the company, at least 14 still use it to collect fines. Kingdom denied any misconduct and said it maintained “high standards”. But critics said that the claims showed that council outsourcing of the fining process was out of control. The human rights charity Liberty said: “We have always said these powers are ripe for misuse. The powers should be scrapped from the statute book.” Kingdom is tasked by councils with dealing with a range of minor offences. Data obtained by the Guardian shows that the company has issued thousands of fines for cases including littering, dogs being off leads, dog-fouling and breaches of public space protection orders. More than 10,000 fines have been issued in Bristol alone by Kingdom in just under a year from November 2017, worth nearly £900,000. The company holds contracts with local authorities in England and Wales that routinely include a revenue-sharing agreement. Last year, a contract between the company and Liverpool city council generated a total of £1.4m in just eight months. And Kingdom’s website says that more broadly contracts have resulted in £3.3m for local authorities during the last 12 months. That success has coincided with a period of growth for Kingdom. Turnover at the company, which was known as Kingdom Security Limited until 2016, has surged from £27.7m in the 2012-13 financial year to £103m in 2017-18. But there is growing concern over how the company fulfils its contracts. Internal messages provided to the Guardian by a former Kingdom officer based in the north-west of England appear to show area management competing to issue as many fines as possible, drawing up a “100 club” league table for officers who issue at least 100 fines a month, equivalent to £10,000. “It was an internal leaderboard,” the former employee said, speaking anonymously. “It was all about targets and bonuses … In my training, if you saw someone smoking you could wait to see if they dropped their cigarette butts.” Another former Kingdom officer, who worked in Wales before leaving the company in 2017, alleged there was a “culture of fear” and officers had to issue four tickets a day for the contract to be financially viable. When they had problems doing so in winter due to less footfall a training team was brought in. “The training team came in and caused mayhem … You are supposed to wear full uniform … but the training team came in and wore plain clothes and that contradicted what the council wanted from the contract. They were telling us to hide in bushes and to hide behind cars and to make sure no one saw our logo,” he said. He added: “I believe this company is profiting from poverty. Some people would trawl around estates or out of town centres and know where to target because it was easier. Some people would target certain age groups, like over-60s, as they were law abiding and if issued with a fixed penalty notice they would pay it.” A few months ago a woman told Grimsby Live that she was followed for 15 minutes, including into a local pub, by five Kingdom officers for dropping a cigarette on Victoria Street. A member of North East Lincolnshire council, where the alleged conduct took place, strongly rejected the claim that enforcement officers harass people. In north Wales, an action group has been set up with 8,523 members who have run campaigns and marches against Kingdom. Members want to see the problem of littering and dog-fouling dealt with in-house. Across England and Wales, seven councils – including Liverpool, Anglesey, and Flintshire – no longer outsource the enforcement of minor environmental and antisocial behaviour fines to the firm. But at least 14 local authorities still have contracts with Kingdom Services Group. Liverpool dropped the company in November after complaints. The city’s mayor, Joe Anderson, said: “65% [of Kingdom officers] were operating in the city centre and 65% of fines were for disgarding cigarette butts. I am not saying that’s right, there are toxins in cigarettes that do environmental damage, but people were saying officers were lying in wait for people to come out of office buildings to smoke and fining them. That’s not what we are about.” Kingdom said that it had ended a number of the contracts itself “due to commercial decisions it has taken”. Kingdom Services Group still lists Liverpool city council as a customer on its website, and also says that it operates a range of payment schemes guaranteeing no cost to the local authority. “Kingdom’s costs are recovered by the fixed penalty notices (FPNs) we issue and, with our average 75% payment rate, which has resulted in £3.3m for local authorities during the last 12 months,” the website states. The company has denied it operates a bonus scheme. It says it pays its staff “an hourly rate together with an allowance for strict adherence to quality and procedures, which ensures controls are followed”. This is done to maintain “high standards”, it says. The company says FPNs are determined by legislation that also provides strict guidelines as to what constitutes an offence. It said that Kingdom officers are required to operate within them and do so in an effort to protect environmental standards. Lara ten Caten, a legal Officer at Liberty, said: “These orders are overwhelmingly used in poorer areas – outsourcing enforcement to a company that is just in it to make as much money as possible is not just callous but irresponsible and a failure of governance.”Jess Varnish, the former Great Britain track cyclist, has lost her landmark employment case against British Cycling and UK Sport which had threatened to overhaul funding for Olympic athletes. She began legal proceedings after claiming she was dropped from the British Cycling squad for the 2016 Rio Olympics in retaliation for criticising her coaches. She argued that she was in effect an employee of both British Cycling and UK Sport and therefore should be subject to certain protections under law – including sick pay, a pension and the right to sue for unfair dismissal. However, at a tribunal in Manchester last month British Cycling and UK Sport claimed national lottery funding for athletes is more akin to a university grant and therefore should not be subject to the same employment rights. After several weeks of deliberation their position was supported by Judge Ross, who on Wednesday ruled that Varnish was neither an employee nor a worker of either organisation. It means the cyclist will not be able to pursue a claim for unfair dismissal, sex discrimination and detriment suffered for being a whistleblower against British Cycling or UK Sport. Varnish, a former European team sprint champion and world silver medallist, is due to have a baby on Thursday and has not commented on the decision. Her agent said that she and her legal team would “digest the 43-page judgment” and look to offer a statement on Thursday. A British Cycling spokesman welcomed the verdict but made it clear the organisation regretted that Varnish’s case had ever gone to a tribunal. “The decision to contest this case was founded on what we believe is the best interests of riders who represent Great Britain, and our conviction that our relationship with them is not one of employer-employee but that of a service provider supporting talented and dedicated athletes to achieve their best,” he said. “We very much regret that Jess was advised to pursue the route of an employment tribunal when we had made significant efforts to reach a resolution which all parties regarded as equitable.” The spokesman also insisted that the macho culture in British Cycling that Varnish had spoken out about had improved. “Thanks to a lot of hard work by staff and riders the culture of the Great Britain cycling team is changed for the better since Jess first raised her concerns and we hope to welcome her to the national cycling centre as we would any other rider who has represented Great Britain,” he added. Varnish had claimed in April 2016 that the then British Cycling technical director, Shane Sutton, had told her “to go and have a baby” when she was dropped from funding before the Rio Games. A subsequent UK Sport independent investigation into bullying claims at British Cycling cleared Sutton, who had previously resigned, of that remark but found him to have used sexist language against Varnish. Meanwhile the ruling was greeted with relief by UK Sport, which faced having to overturn the way it funds British athletes if it had lost. Currently around 1,100 elite athletes are funded by UK Sport up to a maximum of £28,000 a year, tax-free. If Varnish had been successful the athletes would have benefited from employment rights and pension. However, UK Sport insisted that as a consequence it would have been unable to fund as many potential Olympians to achieve their dreams. It did acknowledge, however, that it had taken on board some of the issues that Varnish’s case had raised, particularly the need to provide a greater duty of care for athletes. “Whilst this verdict did not find Jessica Varnish to be an employee or worker of UK Sport or British Cycling, we have already taken action to strengthen the duty of care and welfare provided to athletes and are ensuring that avenues for raising any concerns are effective and appropriate,” it added. “It also gives us confidence that the structure of the relationship between other national governing bodies, their athletes and UK Sport can continue in a similar way but we will reflect on the concerns that were raised through this case when finalising our future strategy for post Tokyo. “We regret for Jessica Varnish, her partner and her family that pursuing this case was considered the best course of action she had to address the concerns she felt she experienced as an athlete on the British Cycling world class programme. We hope Jess feels proud of the success she achieved through cycling and we wish her all the very best for the future.” Joe Morrow, the lawyer who advised UK Sport, said: “This case marks a crucial moment for athletes and the entire sports industry safeguarding funding for athletes for the future. If the tribunal had ruled in favour of the claimant, funding for more than 1,000 could have been called into question.”Pebbles from a nearby riverbed form a chunky cobbled floor in the entrance to the new Muzeum Susch in Switzerland, as if a tributary once flowed through the building. Maybe it still does. The sound of dripping water can be heard coming from the end of a corridor, where a shiny trickle snakes down a bare rock face. There are other strange things going on. Peer through one opening and you find a gnarled column of earth plunging down into the basement, as if it’s the remains of an archaeological dig. Another passage is encrusted with viscous white goo, forming stringy stalactites that lead to a curious cave downstairs. In this beguiling new gallery in the Engadin valley, it is hard to tell where nature ends and artifice begins. It is located on the site of a 12th-century monastery, in a rambling complex of buildings that formerly housed a vicarage, hospice and brewery, and the young architects Chasper Schmidlin and Lukas Voellmy have concocted a magical place where the historic fabric, contemporary art and the raw geology of the landscape collide. The project is the brainchild of Grażyna Kulczyk, former wife of the late billionaire industrialist Jan Kulczyk, and one of Poland’s richest women. A 68-year-old with a platinum-blond bob and a fondness for skin-tight leather, Kulczyk has been collecting art since she was a law student in the 1970s. She has amassed an impressive haul, predominantly focused on female artists, which she describes as a “matrilineage through global art history”. In 2004, Kulczyk established an arts and retail complex in a former brewery in her hometown of Poznań, but sold it in 2015 to concentrate on this Swiss outpost, after plans for a base in Warsaw fell through. The resulting combination of deep-pocketed patronage and Swiss precision is one of the most exquisitely crafted private museums realised in recent years. From the outside, you might be hard-pressed to differentiate the building from any other white-rendered house in Susch. But step inside and the place unfolds as a Tardis-like warren of rooms, leading you from vaulted basements to airy timber lofts and galleries excavated from the mountainside – a process that saw 9,000 tonnes of rock blasted out. It is alpine chalet, primitive grotto and Bond villain’s lair in one. The sleepy village of Susch might seem like an unlikely place to find such an institution. It’s a tiny hamlet with a population of around 200, whose other main feature is a clinic for people suffering from burnout syndrome. But, just a short drive from the gilded playgrounds of St Moritz and Davos, the site isn’t quite as odd as it seems. The museum joins a growing gallery scene that has mushroomed over the last few years to service the area’s wealthy cultured visitors, in search of more than the usual après ski. There are now more than 30 galleries in the Engadin, with Hauser & Wirth joining the party last year. To make it stand out from the commercial galleries, Kulczyk says she has conceived the museum as more of a “laboratory”, where a series of permanent site-specific installations by the likes of Adrián Villar Rojas (the stratified column) and Sara Masüger (the gooey cave) will complement a programme of rotating exhibitions. Launching with a feminist bang, the opening show – titled A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women – explores female representation, sexual emancipation and the subversion of traditional gender roles, mixing work from Kulczyk’s collection with international loans. Given that Switzerland was the last European country to give women the vote (with one canton holding out until as late as 1991), the rooms of powerful female forms and gaping yonic voids are a welcome provocation. Without overwhelming the art, it is the building that is the star of the show. Schmidlin and Voellmy, both in their 30s, with one other small gallery in Basel to their name, have struck a brilliant balance between preservation and intervention, amplifying traces of the buildings’ former lives while creating new spaces that are very much their own. The project shows incredible attention to detail throughout, standing as a testament to local craftsmanship and the architects’ ability to deploy a limited palette of materials in unexpected new ways. They have used gravel dredged from the riverbed to make a coarse grey plaster, moulded over the existing masonry like thick icing on a lumpy cake. In other spaces, the rock from their excavations has been ground down and used to form floors of dark polished terrazzo, which spills through the excavated galleries as if it were an oil slick. The material alchemy continues with the use of local larch trees, felled and sliced into 12-metre long floorboards, laid so precisely in one room that it looks like one seamless mat of timber, poured from a vat. Set across multiple levels of sloping hillside, the exhibition spaces range from the crepuscular to the light-flooded. A narrow staircase leads down a former slot between two buildings to a vaulted basement, where Magdalena Abakanowicz’s moulded hessian figures stand like ghosts in the gloom. Upstairs, a former hay loft has been converted into a double-height auditorium and performance space, with huge picture windows that frame postcard-perfect views over the snowy valley. There are constant reminders of the past. Some ceilings are still charred from the beer brewing process, while the former stable block has a manure gutter running through the floor to a low-level window, and a hefty stone watering trough repurposed as a plinth for an archive display. Meanwhile, a triple-height space, once used as an “ice tower” to cool the brewery in summer, has been transformed into an enormous light-well, where Monika Sosnowska’s mangled steel stairs now hang like crumpled ribbons – perhaps a wry comment on where less imaginative architects might have placed a “feature” staircase. But the real drama is found in the bowels of the former brewery, where a storage cave has been enlarged to create a subterranean exhibition space worthy of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. A polished steel cylinder by Mirosław Bałka rotates slowly in the centre of the cave, adding to the sci-fi theatrics, while more water trickles down from the jagged rocky ceiling. It is a fittingly stagey prelude to what comes next: a black-walled concrete bunker, where 200 spot-lit portraits of Nazi generals line the room, their monocled faces and toothbrush moustaches glowing from the walls with camp horror. The controversial work of Polish artist Piotr Uklański (whose similar pieces have forced exhibitions to close in the past), it mocks the ridiculous kitsch of the Third Reich. Some of the art might be shocking, but the most lasting impact from visiting Muzeum Susch is a revelation of a different kind. In this era of design-and-build bodging, when architects are often sidelined and contractors cut corners, buildings can still be made this well.The government will struggle to register all of the EU citizens who want to stay in Britain post-Brexit within the next two years, even after scrapping a £65 fee for the application process, campaigners have said. On Monday, Theresa May said she had listened to concerns about the fee and decided to remove the “financial barrier” facing an estimated 3.8 million EU nationals living in the UK. Rights groups had earlier said the Home Office risked creating a new Windrush scandal if it got the scheme wrong. The the3million campaign group welcomed the move, announced during May’s statement to the House of Commons on her Brexit plan B, but said the task facing the Home Office could be insurmountable. “Because of the scale of the operation – registering up to 3.8 million people – and the time allowed, the Home Office is looking at having to process 5,000 applications a day for the next two years. If they are struggling with smaller numbers now, then EU citizens risk becoming the new Windrush,” said Nicolas Hatton, a co-founder of the group. The Home Office launched a third test phase for the registration scheme on Monday. Last month, a series of bugs were exposed in the scheme’s phone app, including complaints that the passport recognition function did not work on all Android devices. The app does not work on iPhones. Alexandrine Kantor, a French citizen who is an engineer at the Atomic Energy Authority, said she had to try 10 times to get the passport chip scanner to work using her Huawei. “And I have one of the latest phones and I am an engineer who is a bit techy. I can’t imagine what it will be like for old people trying to apply. It is not as easy and straightforward as they say,” she said. The Home Office said this latest phase of the scheme was “a test designed to identify bugs before the full rollout” in April. There was a largely positive response to the app on the Google Play store, from where it can be downloaded. “Worked without any problems,” said one commenter. “Scanning and near field communication working well,” said another, referring to the technology used to scan the passport.” “It took me two minutes on my phone from the beginning to the end,” said another. But others reported problems with phone focus, the instructions on the app and a loop. “It keeps sending the same message,” said one. “Terrible – Won’t even take picture of passport. Just wasted 30 minutes for nothing,” said another. More than 31,000 people applied for settled status during the two beta tests and more than 27,000 were successful. Around a third of the 2,776 cases awaiting a decision reported that they were unable to use passport verification process on the phone app and had to submit their ID manually. Hatton said: “You would expect them to have ironed out these technical problems in the beta tests.” The Home Office said it was working with representatives of vulnerable groups, local authorities and experts to make sure less tech-savvy people would be able to register on time. It said it had set up a resolution centre to deal with queries and increased caseworker numbers to 1,500 to help anyone having difficulties with the app. A spokesman said the Home Office was “monitoring applicant feedback very closely, including reviews on the Google Play store” and it was in talks with Apple about getting the app on iPhones. He added that once the scheme was fully open on 30 March, applicants would be able to post their ID document to the Home Office or visit “a local ‘chip check’ service run by a local authority or other provider”.From June last year, Dilip Trigunayak would stride out each morning to the banks of the Ganges and will the holy waters to recede. The clock was ticking. In six months, the floodplains where he stood would be the site of the largest human gathering in the world, probably ever. “I would watch the water levels going up and down,” the bureaucrat says. “From then my anxiety started.” More than 120 million Hindu devotees, as well as tourists, are expected to visit the north Indian city of Prayagraj over the next few weeks for the Kumbh Mela, a vast spiritual festival at the point where two sacred rivers, the Ganges and Yamuna, converge. As the rivers have emptied of monsoon rain in recent months, Indian authorities have swung into action, reclaiming the riverbed and laying the skeleton for a temporary city that at 15 sq miles (39 sq km) is two-thirds the size of Manhattan. The festival starts on Tuesday morning when tens of thousands of Hindu ascetics will charge – roaring, naked and ash-smeared – into the water, sanctifying it for the tens of millions of pilgrims who will follow in the coming days and weeks. Praygraj is said to be one of four sites in India where drops of the essence of immortality were spilled from an urn being fought over by gods and demons. The festival moves between the four locations, with Prayagraj the largest and most lavish. Pilgrims travel from across the country and wait for days for their opportunity to bathe there for a few seconds, including at least 30 million people on the most auspicious day. “People come here to taste the nectar of immortality,” says Sarabhang Giri, an Australian who was ordained a sadhu, or Hindu saint, in 2004. With an election looming in India, more earthly matters are also under contemplation. For India’s Hindu nationalist government, the Kumbh’s message of unity across the religion’s castes and innumerable deities dovetails nicely with the ruling Bharatiya Janata party’s goal of consolidating Hindu votes. This is the first Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj since the city’s Mughal-era name of Allahabad was changed. No Kumbh Mela has ever been so well funded, or so heavily promoted in the media and on billboards, invariably alongside the face of Narendra Modi, India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister. “In many recent Kumbhs there’s always been a political presence of some sort,” says Kama Maclean, an associate professor of south Asian history at the University of New South Wales. “For most people who go it’s a religious event. But from the 1930s people were going to the Kumbh Mela, bathing in the Ganga, and then going up [India’s first prime minister] Jawaharlal Nehru’s house and learning about nationalism.” Pilgrims at the Unesco-listed festival will traverse a pop-up city of more than 185 miles (300km) of roads, nearly two-dozen pontoon bridges, a hospital, 40 police stations and 120,000 toilets. At night, the city is illuminated by more than 40,000 lights. Last Sunday a parade of Hindu ascetics on elephants and camels passed billboards advertising matrimonial websites and the Kumbh’s free wifi. The core of the festival is the estimated 200,000 Hindu saints in attendance, many of whom emerge from seclusion in forests and mountains to take up residency in the tent city, where they perform prayers, administer blessings and lecture on Hindu scripture. Many belong to one of the 13 major sects represented at the fair, first formed as militant defenders of Hindu temples, and who in the past have turned their fire on each other to determine who bathes in the holy river first. “They have physically fought over the order,” says Giri. “Thousands of people have died in Kumbh Melas through history. Now they’ve worked out treaties saying this is the order in which we do it, and if there’s any change, there has to be big discussions.” As well as keeping the peace between holy orders, organisers must work to ward off disease. Some epidemiologists and historians trace the first cholera pandemic of the 19th century to 1817’s Kumbh Mela, from where the infection spread via colonial British naval ships to rest of Asia, Europe and eventually the United States. Apart from building toilets, and deploying an army of more than 9,000 “night sweepers” to collect or treat waste, authorities try to keep the river flowing at an optimum speed of at least 200,000 litres a second: fast enough to avoid stagnation, but not too quick that it washes away bathers. Stampedes are another constant threat. Thirty-six people where killed by a crush at a Prayagraj train station at the most recent event. In 1954, an elephant charged a dense crowd, killing more than 500 people. The key to public safety is to keep the mammoth crowds moving, says Devesh Chaturvedi, the chief public servant who organised Prayagraj’s last Kumbh Mela in 2013. “Even if the water is 500 metres away, we have a system where the pilgrims can be moved for another three or four kilometres. People won’t worry about how much they have to walk. But after five or six hours of walking they should finally get their dip.” One pilgrim, Devi Prasad, says he has walked hundreds of miles by foot from his village in Bihar state to bathe in the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna. A few more hours on foot is no trouble, the 63-year-old adds. “If you want to get close to God, you have to walk.”The app-based ride-hailing services Uber and Cabify are to suspend their operations in Barcelona from Friday after the Catalan government announced new rules requiring vehicles to be booked with at least 15 minutes’ notice. The regulations were put in place following pressure from taxi drivers, who have been striking to demand greater controls to govern so-called VTCs (private vehicles with driver). “The new restrictions approved by the Catalan government leave us with no choice but to suspend UberX while we assess our future in Barcelona,” an Uber spokesman told Reuters on Thursday. “We are committed to being a long-term partner to Spanish cities and hope to work with the Catalan government and the city council on fair regulation for all.” Shortly afterwards, Uber’s Spanish rival Cabify announced it was following suit and accused the regional government of “caving into the pressure and demands of the taxi industry [and] seriously damaging the interests of citizens”. Cabify, which claims to have a million users in Barcelona, said 98.5% of its cars were booked with less than 15 minutes’ notice. “After studying the [new rules], which are now official, the company has reached the conclusion that the sole objective of the new regulation – and its eventual effect – is the direct expulsion of the Cabify app and its partner companies in Catalonia and Barcelona,” it said. Unauto VTC, an association of transport companies in Spain, said the decision to adopt the new regulation could put 3,000 jobs at risk in Barcelona. Uber declined to say how many drivers work for it in Barcelona. Unauto VTC has previously criticised the regional government in Catalonia for “yielding to the blackmail of the taxi drivers, who are again kidnapping the city of Barcelona and using violence to shield their monopoly”. Taxi drivers in Madrid have been on strike for 12 days in an attempt to secure greater regulation of their disruptive rival. Last week, they blocked access to a trade exhibition centre in Madrid where a major tourism fair was on. On Monday, police in the capital used cranes to clear the central Paseo de Castellana after taxi drivers used their vehicles to obstruct the busy main road. Talks to resolve the standoff are continuing, but Madrid’s regional government has told the striking taxi drivers it will “not give into blackmail” and dismissed the Catalan government’s new measures as “heading back to the middle ages”. The region’s conservative president, Ángel Garrido, said: “We’re not going to give in to blackmail – not on day one; not on day 10. If they’re trying to get rid of a sector, the answer is going to be no.”One of the greatest betrayals in mafia history emerged into open court this week at the New York trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, as the former heir-apparent to Guzmán’s Sinaloa federation turned against his own boss, the cartel – and apparently even his own father. Vicente Zambada Niebla – “El Vicentillo” – is the son of Guzmán’s longtime partner and co-founder of the cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, and was once groomed to take over the business. But in court on Thursday, he testified for the prosecution. Zambada Niebla – the cartel’s former operations manager, envoy to politicians and businessmen and logistics supervisor – told the court that he started accompanying his father to planning meetings as a teenager. “I started realizing how everything was done,” he testified, “and little by little, I started getting involved in my father’s business.” Zambada Niebla greeted the defendant with a courteous half-smile. In contrast to the dry, often droll, testimony of previous turncoat witnesses, El Vicentillo gave meandering testimony which nonetheless gave some idea of the scope and depth of his authority: he oversaw importations of cocaine from Colombia into Mexico and onward to Los Angeles and Chicago, which he made his centre of operations. He described meeting high-level executives from Mexico’s state oil company Pemex, with a view to shipping nearly 100,000kg of cocaine to the US in a tanker owned by the conglomerate, bearing its logo. Zambada Niebla also alleged that a senior military officer in the Mexican defence ministry and a member of former president Vicente Fox’s security team – were accomplices of the Sinaloa cartel. Zambada Niebla is a star – potentially crucial – prosecution witness, but a controversial one. He was arrested in 2010 in Mexico City and extradited to Chicago. But he was never tried, and in April 2014 the DEA unsealed a guilty plea he had made in April 2013 in which he admitted operating a “vast narcotics trafficking conspiracy”. The court documents added that Zambada Niebla was now “cooperating with the United States”. During the first week of the Guzmán trial, El Vicentillo entered a further guilty plea for related offences, and another agreement to cooperate “on any matter”. He faces sentencing in March. Meanwhile, a year-long investigation by El Universal of Mexico City has traced the details of El Vicentillo’s relationship with the DEA, in which he provided information in exchange for a free hand to operate. The DEA has admitted contact with El Vicentillo but denies a deal allowing him to continue trafficking. All this will make for eventful cross-examination, so far as Judge Brian Cogan will allow, as will the possibility of a variation on the narrative: it is widely believed that El Mayo and Guzmán developed major differences, and that Zambada García betrayed his former partner to Mexican authorities in order to assume sole control over the cartel. Supporters of this theory argue that Zambada Niebla’s dealings with the DEA and cooperation agreements were – and still are – all part of El Mayo’s plan to take Guzmán down and secure reduced sentences for his son and brother. That would mean that El Vicentillo’s testimony marks a betrayal of Guzmán – with tacit US cooperation – but not of his father or the organisation. El Mayo’s brother, Jesús Zambada García, who was the cartel’s accountant until his arrest in 2008, has also testified in the trial.Roger Federer, who is ageing with the irresistible longevity of an oak tree, is the very antithesis of Andy Murray. While the Scot’s 31-year-old body screams at him every morning when he puts on his socks and shoes, and whose match against Roberto Bautista Agut in the first round of the Australian Open might round out his career, Federer, at 37, continues to float on his own cloud. His younger contemporaries are suffering to the point of resignation in the struggle to stay in a sport that has become cruelly brutal, yet Federer appears to be what Alex Corretja described Murray as when coaching him at his physical peak between 2008 and 2011: “indestructible.” The Swiss has had his aches and pains – even late-career knee surgery – but, as he sets about chasing a seventh Australian Open championship and the 100th title of a career that began last century, astonishingly he is among the fittest of the 128 contenders. There has only ever been one player named Federer in tennis, just as there was only one Bradman in cricket. The Don was plagued by ill-health, though. Federer has been blessed in every way. “His body took the decision, unfortunately,” Federer said. “I remember when I played with him in Glasgow [in late 2017, as Murray contemplated a comeback], I couldn’t believe he actually played. But it was for a good cause. It must have been a very long couple of years for him. I was disappointed and sad, a little bit shocked, to know now that we’re going to lose him at some point. I hope that he can play a good Australian Open and can keep playing beyond that, finish the way he wants to at Wimbledon.” Those are noble sentiments. The reality is Murray is near breaking point. Only more surgery could prolong his career. There is no defying the calendar. Maybe it’s also the way I play tennis, smoother than the other guys Largely immune to the ravages of time himself, the defending champion – who plays Denis Istomin on Monday evening - described on Sunday how players slowly crumble as the years pass. “Let’s say when you’re young, you have, I don’t know, a pain in the elbow. Next day you can play with it; two days later it’s like you never had it. All of a sudden – at maybe 30, 35, 40, depending on who you are, what problems you’ve had – you will feel it for two weeks. You can still play, but now you’re playing with pain. It takes longer to get rid of. “Everybody is very different. Everybody takes the pain differently. That’s also where you have to be very wise [about] what kind of schedule you’re playing with, what problem you’re dealing with.” So, how has the Methuselah of sport held the demons at bay for so long? “If you look at how unlucky things were with the incident here a few years ago when I ran the bath, I guess the knee was ready to go. Could easily have happened in the match against Novak [Djokovic], but it didn’t, maybe because I was warmed up. I have no idea what happened. You also need a bit of luck. “Then, I understand my body very well. I know when something hurts and I can play with it; I know when something hurts and I should not play with it, but I can still play maybe a match, maybe a week, a month, whatever. Sometimes that helps. But every player has that. My team know when to push me, when they are happy that I don’t practise so much.” The core difference between Federer and his rivals is his unshakeable belief in his talent, to trust his genius. “I’ve always believed I can play tennis when I don’t train so much,” he said. “That’s been maybe one thing, the confidence I have in my game, even if I don’t play so much, where I still feel I can come up to a good level. Maybe that takes away some pressure.” He added – confirming the silent thoughts of everyone in the room – that, “maybe it’s also the way I play tennis, smoother than the other guys. It maybe looks that way [but] I work extremely hard in the matches as well. It just doesn’t come across so much.” Now he has to deliver again to launch another assault on history. In the last match of day one on Rod Laver Arena, where he has celebrated most of his 94 wins here in 107 matches stretching back to the turn of the millennium, he plays Istomin for the seventh time. The world No99 has taken just two sets off him, both in front of Federer’s Swiss friends in Basel, in their last two meetings. Two years ago, though, he put an ailing Novak Djokovic out in five sets in the first round, his only success against the Serb in six attempts. Federer says, “I know what Denis did to Novak. I watched the entire game. I’ve had some tough ones against him in the past. He can play well on fast courts, and that’s what it’s going to be here as well. But I’m playing good tennis. I’m confident it needs a good performance by my opponent to beat me.” As I walked out of the hospital to start my new life – nearly three months after I was airlifted to England from Pakistan to save my life – the first thing I felt was a cold that cut through the purple parka someone had given me. It was two sizes too big, and I felt like a small doll. The frigid air crept down my neck and up my sleeves and penetrated my bones. I thought I would never warm up. The grey skies cast a subdued, almost gloomy effect on the white snow dusting the ground. I felt a deep longing for the warmth and sunshine of home. We drove through Birmingham’s streets to the high-rise building where my parents had moved after spending several weeks in a hotel. Birmingham’s busy-ness reminded me a bit of Islamabad, although the skyscrapers here were so tall you got dizzy looking up at them. Some buildings lit up with neon signs that pulsed a rainbow of colours, while others looked as if they had been wrapped in tinfoil or shingled with mirrors. The people were different as well – a mix of white and brown and black, European, Asian, and African. Women in burqas walked the frigid streets alongside white women in miniskirts, goose bumps covering bare legs that ended in impossibly high-heeled shoes. I laughed to myself at the memory of seeing women not wearing headscarves in Islamabad and thinking that was liberal! When my family flew to Birmingham from Pakistan, they arrived with only the clothes they were wearing. There was no time to go home, plus it was not safe. That meant they had to start from scratch in a world that was utterly foreign. Starting with our flat. My parents had to buy plates, pots, and cutlery so we could eat meals at home. In Pakistan, this would have made my mother so happy! She loved getting nice things for her kitchen in Mingora, but here she said that they did not feel as if they were hers. There was no sense of belonging – she felt like a stranger in a strange land. It did feel as if we had landed on the moon – everything looked, smelled, and felt different. Just getting to our flat meant using an elevator. I had been in one the summer before with my father, so at least I had experienced being transported in a small metal box. But for my mother, it was like boarding a spaceship. She would literally close her eyes as soon as we entered and say prayers beneath her breath. And then once safely in the apartment, I would hear her speaking to herself. “We’re on top of this building! What if there is a fire? Or an earthquake? Where would we go?” In Pakistan, we would just run out of the house. My mother liked being on the ground. I was on the precipice of making a decision: to continue my fight for girls’ education or not. Those early days in Birmingham reminded me of being internally displaced in Pakistan – except the faces, the food, and the language here were foreign. We were comfortable, we were being well taken care of – but it had not been our choice to come here and we missed home. At first, I thought our stay in Birmingham was temporary. Surely, I would go home in time to take my exams in March. I didn’t know threats were still being made against my life. My parents didn’t want to scare me. March came and went, and I missed my exams. But still, I would go back. Soon. And I would catch up with the other girls in my class. Then I enrolled in a local girls’ school in April. It started to sink in that while I’d had the same feeling that I’d had in the hospital, minus the fear of not knowing where my family was – that this was all temporary – that maybe this life in Birmingham was mine now. There was so much to get used to – starting with wearing itchy dark blue tights beneath my long wool skirt. I missed the comfort and ease of my shalwar kamiz! The school building was enormous – three stories made of stone – with three sets of stairs, red, blue, and green, that all led to different parts of various buildings that were connected with hallways and even bridges. It was a maze. It took me weeks to figure out my way around. At least in the classroom, no one could tell how out of place I felt. It was impossible to fake it between classes and during study periods and at lunch. That was when I felt the most alone: I didn’t know what to say to the other girls, who would sit together in clusters, giggling or rolling their eyes. I would pretend to read whatever book I had with me, missing Moniba, Malka-e-Noor, Safina, and all my friends back in Mingora in a deep way that gnawed at my stomach, like a hunger I could not feed. These girls in Birmingham seemed so different from my friends. Their mannerisms, the way they spoke, so quickly that all the words ran together. I did not know whether I should introduce myself and talk to them. Or should I wait to be invited? Should I laugh at their jokes? Should I tell a joke? They often used words I wouldn’t use. Should I join in? Start swearing? Laugh when they laugh? I was so exhausted from trying to figure it all out that I could not wait for the bell to ring, signalling the end of the day. At least at our new home, I could speak Pashto with my family and tease my brothers. I could Skype with Moniba and watch Indian soap operas with my mother. This was the only solace. I still didn’t accept how hard it was going to be for me to go back to Pakistan. By then, I knew the Taliban had publicly threatened me again, but in my young and hopeful mind, I knew I would go back. So even as I was growing more accustomed to it, I continued to hold on to the idea that Birmingham was temporary. Not the beginning of our life in exile. It was possible to both feel that it was temporary and somehow know that it was not. One thing that helped was the thousands of letters I received from people all over the world, specifically from young girls and women thanking me for standing up for their rights. They reached me at a time when I was on the precipice of making a decision: to continue my fight for girls’ education or not. That’s when I realised the Taliban had failed in their mission: Instead of silencing me, they amplified my voice beyond Pakistan. People from all over the world wanted to support the cause I was so passionate about, they wanted to support me, and they welcomed me. That inspired me to continue my work. From then on, whenever anyone asked, “What are your plans?” I’d reply, “To continue fighting for girls’ rights to an education.” I had begun my activism in Pakistan, and I would continue it here in my new home. • This is an extract from We Are Displaced (W&N, £16.99). Malala Yousafzai will be interviewed in next weekend’s Review.There’s a certain type of movie character that finds time to suggest a shag even in the midst of a crisis. If anything, the fact the bomb clock is ticking or planetary destruction is pending gets them in the mood. The Tories are like that, but with backstabbing. There are 84 days until Brexit, Theresa May’s deal is about to get voted down heavily and bump the UK a few weeks closer to a calamitous no-deal exit, and the first thought of certain Tory leadership hopefuls is, “Ooh, how can I do over ‘the Saj’?” If you missed this latest flurry of displacement activity, a report claimed the home secretary refers to himself in the third person during meetings. According to what a source told the Sun, and which Javid hotly denied: “He uses phrases like, ‘Just you watch what the Sajid is going to do about this’, or ‘the Saj will sort that out’.” Oof. These drive-bys made a charming companion piece to the articles suggesting that Javid was failing to get a grip on Britain’s nonexistent migrant “crisis”, and the very detailed articles about Javid’s very luxurious South African holiday. The sheer amount of energy senior Tories have expended knifing occasional leadership frontrunner Sajid Javid this week is quite spellbinding. It’s like discovering that, as the Deepwater Horizon rig had blown out and begun spewing vast amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP executives had decided to hold a 96-hour black-tie murder mystery party. Even by the Conservatives’ own standards, there’s a true decadence to it. But please don’t get me wrong. I would be very relaxed if we were witnessing The Last Days of the Saj, given the home secretary’s deportment this week. To stand on a dock and suggest that Britain “will do everything we can” to stop refugees from achieving asylum in order to deter other refugees is morally repugnant and arguably illegal. To do so transparently to promote your career, and only after very reluctantly tearing yourself away from your £840-per-person-per-night luxury South African safari resort suggests you’ve got some crucial part of the leadership lobe missing and should be invalided out of future contests without delay. And so to the holiday that put the home secretary in such a misanthropic mood. Assuming the quoted rate is based on double occupancy, the Dulini Lodge clocks in at almost £1,700 per room per night, which feels … a lot? I mean, you’re spotting giraffes, not being treated for sex addiction. For £1,700 a night, I wouldn’t want to just spot Harvey Weinstein – I think I’d want to be taking his head home for my trophy wall. I have a Minnesotan dentist he’d look great next to. Javid is furious about what he sees as the tactical leaking of his private plunge pool and wine cellar arrangements, and suspects a specific senior No 10 figure. Could be. That said, which of us would rule out any number of other rivals, having watched cub defence secretary Gavin Williamson pointedly say he hadn’t received a request from Javid for a navy vessel to patrol the Channel. A clearly stung Javid let it be known that he had now written to Williamson to request just such a thing. Surprised he didn’t hire a skywriter. Then again, there’s something fitting about this grotesquery playing out like a wildly passive-aggressive epistolary novel in the Les Liaisons Dangereuses mould. “My dear Vicomte Williamson …” “My dear Le Saj …” In the end, though, neither of these posturing inadequates was sufficient to distract from Chris Grayling. This government is now so inanimate it doesn’t have a spirit animal; it has a spirit vegetable. Unless Grayling’s a mineral, which I’ll increasingly accept. Few organisations have done more to positively discriminate in favour of the clueless or incompetent than the Tory administrations of the past few years, but even accounting for the likes of Iain Duncan Smith and Andrea Leadsom, Chris Grayling is the ultimate poster child for anyone whose inner voice tells them they couldn’t be something because they’re honestly just sensationally bad at it. In a move in no way likely to hint at the delights to come, 2019 began with Chris Grayling taking to the airwaves seeking to justify the fact that, as part of his no-deal preparations, he has awarded a £13.8m ferry contract to a company with no ferries. According to Grayling, he’s very relaxed about Seaborne Freight, and will “make no apologies for supporting a new British business”. I like how Chris is treating no-deal Brexit like an episode of Dragons’ Den. Not only does Seaborne Freight have no ferries, but as the week wore on it turned out to have cut and pasted its website terms and conditions from those of a food delivery service. For that reason, I’m out. Somehow even less self-aware than Grayling, alas, is David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, who on Thursday declared that May should delay the deal vote even further to put pressure on the EU. “This is the moment to be hard nosed about these issues,” he wrote in the Telegraph. Like me, you may by now be so very, very over David Davis’s backseat hardman act. He had two years to put pressure on the EU, and according to a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office “could hardly be bothered to go to Brussels”. It was the same at the last-but-one Tory conference, when a comedian managed to get to Theresa May and hand her a p45 during her speech, only to be belatedly taken away by security. “He’s lucky I didn’t hit him,” Davis told reporters several days after the event, “or he’d have been down for a long time.” Mmm. If you look at the footage from the conference hall, luck doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it. David Davis doesn’t hit the unknown man who approaches the prime minister as a potential security threat, because David Davis stays sitting in his chair the whole time. Not so much a tale of derring-do, as a tale of derring-didn’t. And yet, Davis remains hugely popular with Tory members, which brings us to new research revealing that, while only 35% of the public would prefer to leave the EU with no deal, 76% of Tory members would. This time last year, the same researchers found out that only 41% of Tory members supported gay marriage, while 80% of Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP members did. And 54% of Tory members supported the return of the death penalty, against just 9% of Labour members, 8% of Lib Dems, and 23% of SNP members. I can’t think why it might be that, at last year’s conference, alleged leadership frontrunner Sajid Javid could barely half-fill the conference hall. If I ever do put my finger on it, I imagine it will be closely related to the reason Javid feels he must be twice as hard and heartless on migrants as anyone else in the cabinet – as well as the sort of guy who goes further than everyone, and talks about “sick Asian paedophiles”. Until then, it’s worth bearing in mind that, unless Tory MPs somehow unite around a single successor to May, they will be sending two names out to be decided upon by this particular mind pool. Will that time come later or sooner? Happy New Year, either way. • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistJürgen Klopp praised his players for producing their “most mature performance of the season” to return Liverpool to winning ways after back-to-back defeats. A loss at Brighton, after being beaten earlier this month by Manchester City and knocked out of the FA Cup on Monday by Wolves, would have raised concerns that Liverpool were feeling jittery as the title race intensified but they prevailed at the Amex Stadium thanks to a second-half penalty by Mohamed Salah. The win increased their lead at the top of the table to seven points, with Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City playing on Sunday and Monday respectively. “If you fall from the horse, you have to get back on it,” said Klopp of his team’s response to their two defeats. “So [the win] is good and important but we didn’t make a big fuss about two defeats.” Klopp said the most pleasing feature of the victory was his players’ attitude. They did not attack with their customary brio but they never looked flustered and offered little hope to Brighton. “When you speak about maturity, [it is about] how they defended,” he said. “If you see it in their faces, how Bobby [Firmino] is talking to everybody and they’re all defending. The boys worked really hard and deserved the three points, absolutely. “The headline before the game was: ‘Be ready.’ The headline after the game is: ‘Very mature.’ It was a big challenge for everybody to stay clam and concentrated because each little situation can be a massive threat on the counter or whatever. And don’t make any fouls because Brighton is unbelievably strong on set pieces. That level of concentration is difficult to keep but they did it. “We are not the Harlem Globetrotters. We have to deliver results and that’s difficult. For that we need to perform. The performance was good, not the best of the season, but from a maturity point of view I would say it was the most mature of the season.” Brighton’s manager, Chris Hughton, said that he, unlike the home fans, had no grievance with the referee over the penalty awarded to Liverpool – for a clear foul by Pascal Gross on Salah – and said he makes Liverpool favourites to win the title. “At the moment they are in pole position with the points they have to play with and the quality they have,” he said.What sort of person repeatedly picks on a disabled child in the most vicious and cruel of terms? The answer, of course, is the sort of people the model Katie Price had in mind when she started campaigning for online abuse to become a specific criminal offence. Price’s 15-year-old son Harvey – who is blind, autistic and has Prader-Willi syndrome – has been hideously mocked and taunted. His mother quickly gathered more than 220,000 supportive signatures for a petition demanding online abuse be treated as a hate crime, and now the parliamentary petitions committee has accepted her argument that the law isn’t fit for purpose – or to be precise a part of that argument. (Price’s petition referred not just to disability but to homophobia, racism and even body-shaming of women; the MPs were careful to single out disability alone, arguing in their report that they didn’t want to cut across the work of others on the rest.) Despite sympathetic noises from Downing Street, this is perhaps unlikely to become law any time soon. Even if the government could somehow tear itself away from Brexit, there are too many difficult questions here about the limits of free speech and the unwritten right to cause offence. But Price is right to challenge the Pandora’s box that social media companies have so carelessly (and profitably) opened, by creating platforms on which anyone can say anything to anyone with relative impunity. If not this, then what exactly are they going to do to cap the fountain of poison? Platforms did not somehow invent prejudice, obviously. Every cruel, repellent attitude now up in lights on Twitter or Facebook was there before, festering in private conversations or lurking in the minds of those too embarrassed to say it to someone’s face. The need to tackle this deeper culture is reflected in the committee’s more general suggestion that images of disabled people should be routinely included in, for example, government advertising. But by ensuring that what was previously muttered behind someone’s back can be thrust into their faces by strangers, social media companies have inadvertently weaponised prejudice. More than that, they have normalised it. Bullies see what others get away with saying in public, and are emboldened. And eventually the bullied slink away, deciding it’s just not worth trying to join in. To force disabled people who may already be housebound, isolated or lonely out of one of the few spaces in which they can easily engage with others on equal terms (not to mention a useful campaigning tool) feels particularly outrageous. Those who champion free speech at any price are all too often those who won’t have to pay that price themselves, because they don’t fall into the minority groups that are disproportionately on the sharp end. But if the committee is right to say that self-regulation has failed, replacing it with something else is not easy. Should repeat offenders be banned from opening social media accounts, and if so should teenagers be treated differently from grown adults? What about trolls who turn out to have mental health issues themselves? How would you reduce vexatious complaints, in the kind of emotive Twitter spats that leave both sides claiming they have been victimised? These are all fair questions. But it’s unfair to expect distressed parents to create oven-ready legislation; that’s where parliament is supposed to come in, refining ideas that well up from the public into something that works in practice. It’s clear from their rather feeble, clumsy efforts to enforce some belated rules of engagement that the big social media companies can’t realistically cope with the sheer volume of spite they attract. And as the petitions committee’s chair, Helen Jones, said, it is intolerable for disabled people to be driven off platforms by dumb prejudice while their victorious abusers are free to stay and pick their next victim. If not this, then what? • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newly elected Democratic congresswoman, has floated the idea of US income tax rates as high as 70%. Although only an idea for now, her intervention raises questions over whether such a policy might work in another country with sharp economic divisions: the UK. Her proposal would apply to income above $10m (£7.8m) a year. Ocasio-Cortez argued that the wealthiest Americans needed to pay their fair share of taxes to help fund a “Green New Deal” for the US to combat climate change, while also tackling inequality. Britain was used to higher top rates of income tax as recently as the late 1970s, when the highest rate was set at 83% under the Labour government of Jim Callaghan, before the rise of neoliberal economic policy under Margaret Thatcher. The prevailing logic in UK government since has tended to be that lower headline rates of tax help to encourage individual enterprise, empower wealth and job creators, and attract the brightest and best to Britain, boosting economic growth. Thatcher oversaw reductions in the top tax rate to 60% and then to 40% by 1988, where it has remained until Gordon Brown introduced a 50% additional rate on earnings above £150,000 after the 2008 financial crisis. George Osborne, however, cut that additional rate to 45% in 2012, arguing that Brown had not managed to bring in any additional revenue because wealthy taxpayers altered their arrangements to avoid the tax. Debates have raged over the optimum levels for individual taxation in the UK ever since income tax was introduced in 1799 to help finance the wars with France. Governments in the 21st century have tended to worry that higher tax rates might cause the richest to change their behaviour to avoid taxes, losing them potential revenue, or to flee the country altogether. During the 1970s, the US economist Arthur Laffer argued that higher tax rates would only generate higher revenue up to a certain level before revenue declined, a theory known as the “Laffer curve”. The idea was that the more money the government took, the less incentive there was to work. If the government took 100% of your income, there was no point in working. Higher income tax rates could result in wealthy individuals shifting their earnings into company shares, which attract a lower rate of taxation as capital gains, or into offshore vehicles. Globalisation has increased in recent decades, meaning that the super-rich can more easily relocate their tax affairs. Higher tax rates may also reduce household spending, as the state takes money that individuals would otherwise spend, damaging the economy. On the flipside, however, the state may have more money to spend to boost the size of the economy, for example through more investment in education or infrastructure. Economists say for this reason, among others, the evidence is mixed that lower rates can boost revenue from taxes, or the size of the economy. Scandinavian economies such as Sweden have higher rates than the UK, without falling behind in the global economic league tables. Stuart Adam, a senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “All the scare stories that everyone will leave the country are clearly nonsense. But saying there will be no response is clearly nonsense also. The question is where we are in between – and it’s difficult to know.” Rising levels of inequality since the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the ballooning government budget deficit, have raised renewed questions over whether higher income tax rates could be used to redistribute wealth. There is a sixfold difference between the income of the top 20% of households and those of the bottom 20%. Meanwhile, wealth inequality is much worse: 44% of the UK’s wealth is owned by only 10% of the population, five times the total wealth held by the poorest half. Today the UK has a basic rate income tax of 20% for earnings above £11,500, a higher rate of 40% on earnings over £45,001, and the additional rate of 45% for income over £150,000. As much as the actual rate of taxation, these thresholds matter. First, they mean that not all of a person’s earnings are taxed at the same level: someone earning £200,000 a year, for example, would only hand over 45% to the government on £50,000. The rest would attract lower rates of taxation. There are about 31 million people in Britain paying individual income tax. About 26.3 million pay the basic rate, while 4.3 million pay the higher rate and only 393,000 pay the additional rate – about 1% of all taxpayers. However, despite being in the minority, the top 50% paid 90.6% of total income tax (about £178bn) collected in 2015-16. The top 1% of taxpayers paid 28.8% of the total. Given the low numbers of high-tax payers involved, Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion of a 70% rate for those receiving more than $10m would mean very few people outside of FTSE 100 chief executives and hedge fund bosses would pay such a rate. For this reason, many economists say that higher tax bands are more useful as political statements rather than as revenue raisers. Wealth taxes – levied on items such as property and inheritance money – might be a better idea, according to Carys Roberts, a senior economist at the IPPR thinktank. Total household wealth has rapidly risen to almost £13tn, with the top 10% owning half of it, and is taxed at comparatively low rates. “We need to have conversation on tax, about recapturing some of the huge gains that are being made at the top of society. The only point where I differ is in how best to do that,” she said.The Australian newspaper dubbed it “sunburnt noir” or “Southern Cross crime” back in July – a tentative label for the swell of excellent crime writing coming out of Australia these days, by authors such as Jane Harper and Emma Viskic. Chris Hammer’s extremely accomplished debut novel, Scrublands (Wildfire), adds another voice to the trend. Set in the blistering heat of a remote Australian town ravaged by drought and threatened by bushfires, this is a complex, meaty, intelligent mystery. Martin Scarsden is a journalist with PTSD who is sent by his editor to Riversend (population 800). A year earlier, the town’s charismatic young priest inexplicably shot dead five members of his congregation, before he was killed himself. Martin is writing a “one year on” piece, but soon finds himself drawn into the mystery of why Byron Swift summarily executed these five men in this town as “hot as Hades”. Hammer’s writing is so evocative the heat practically rises off the pages of Scrublands; a scene where the town’s men fight a bushfire is brought to life in terrifying style. He gives his story deliciously noirish overtones, from the gorgeous bookseller with “troubled green eyes” named Mandalay Blonde (“Everyone calls me Mandy”), to the gloriously named local drunk, Harley Snouch, and the Black Dog Motel. Plagued by nightmares and insomnia, “somehow, in this dried-out town, [Martin] can feel his blood beginning to course once again”. From devastating heat to snow: in Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party (Harper Collins) a group of old friends from university travel to an exclusive lodge in the remote Scottish Highlands for New Year. We know from the start that this reunion isn’t going to go well. By 2 January, a body has been found and a huge snowstorm means the party can’t leave the property. Foley goes on to carefully, slyly circle the truth, moving her narrative back and forth between the discovery of the murder and the friends’ arrival in the lodge. They might have known each other for years, but “even as they laughed and jostled and teased one another, I could sense something underneath it – something off”, the lodge’s manager, Heather, tells us. Moving between characters – the attractive one; the successful plain one; the newcomer to the group – it quickly becomes clear that there is a lot these old friends are hiding from each other. Foley excels at the small details that make up a person. Beautiful, vain, life-and-soul-of-the-party Miranda is skewered by her best friend Katie, who reveals her as someone who will turn up with a fake tan and “say something like, ‘Oh yes, I spent a lot of time in the sun recently – I tan so easily’ and abruptly change the subject”. Foley builds the tension cleverly and creepily, underlining the point that old friends aren’t always the best. “I look around at the others. They’re all grinning, but their faces, in the light thrown from the Lodge, look strange, spectral, and their smiles look like snarls,” says Miranda. Lizzy Barber’s debut My Name Is Anna (Cornerstone) is one of those thrillers in which it is almost impossible not to flick ahead: it’s the story of a little girl who was kidnapped in Florida as a toddler. Fifteen years later, the story flits between her point of view – now the daughter of a Carrie-style religious mother, unable to stop dreaming of a name that isn’t hers – and that of her younger sister, trying to live a normal teenage life in London while a media circus continues to hound her family, and her mother obsesses over her whereabouts, “smothering me with all the excess love she has, enough for three of us, not two”. Sometimes Barber’s notes of doom are a little overwritten – even tulips have “tight-lipped petals on the verge of spilling their secrets” – but for me, this was a genuine gallop to the denouement. • To order any of these titles for a special price, click on the titles, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99‘Thefacebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges. We have opened up Thefacebook for popular consumption at Harvard University. You can use Thefacebook to: search for people at your school; find out who are [sic] in your classes; look up your friends’ friends; see a visualization of your social network.” On 4 February 2004, this rather clunky announcement launched an invention conceived in the dorm room of a Harvard student called Mark Zuckerberg, and intended to be an improvement on the so-called face books that US universities traditionally used to collect photos and basic information about their students. From the vantage point of 2019, Thefacebook – as it was then known – looks familiar, but also strange. Pages were coloured that now familiar shade of blue, and “friends” were obviously a central element of what was displayed. However, there was little on show from the wider world: the only photos were people’s profile pictures, and there was no ever-changing news feed. Everything on offer was centred on the lives of students: first at Harvard, then at Columbia, Stanford and Yale. On the face of it, the focus was campus dating and a feature whereby users could send each other “pokes”, whose meaning was open to interpretation, thus increasing the fun. Very quickly, though, something else happened. By the autumn of 2005, 85% of US college students were using the site with 60% of students visiting it daily. As they immersed themselves, Thefacebook tapped into the fierce social competitiveness that the US education system seems to be built on. As David Kirkpatrick’s definitive history The Facebook Effect explains, users of the new site began to fixate on perfecting the details of their profile, not just to date, but to make themselves more attractive as potential friends. This came down to a handful of imperatives: “Find exactly the right profile picture. Change it regularly. Consider carefully how you describe your interests.” In fact, says Kirkpatrick, being a successful Facebooker soon became such a necessity that it began to affect choices people made in the real world: “Since everyone’s classes were listed, some students even began selecting what they studied in order to project a certain image of themselves. And many definitely selected classes based on who Thefacebook indicated would be joining them there.” Everyone, it seemed, was performing, and the basic idea was to do as much performing as possible. At the end of 2004, Thefacebook reached a million users; in September 2006, having renamed itself Facebook, it moved beyond campuses and high schools, and opened itself up to anyone over 13 with an email address. But a core tenet of its Harvard beginnings remained: the imperative for users to present the world with the most flattering impression of themselves. Fifteen years after Facebook’s birth, it has 2.2 billion users, Zuckerberg sits on a fortune of about $55bn (£42bn), and this week the company posted a record profit of $6.88bn for the final three months of 2018. And we know one other thing for sure: tangled up in its success is the fact that people lie about themselves on Facebook, as they do on other social media platforms. In 2016, when the market research firm Custard surveyed 2,000 people in the UK, it found that only 18% of them said their Facebook profile accurately represented them, 31% said the face they presented on Facebook boiled down to “pretty much my life but without the boring bits”, and 14% said Facebook made them look “much more” socially active than they were. Men, it seemed, were more likely than women to knowingly depart from the truth: 43% admitted to fabricating some aspect of their online selves. That said, there is plenty of evidence of the same everyday deceit on the other side of the gender divide. Six years ago, the market research company OnePoll found that a third of women it surveyed admitted to “dishonesty” on social media. Almost one in four admitted to lying or exaggerating about key aspects of their life online between one and three times a month, and almost one in 10 said they lied more than once a week. Nearly 30% of women lied about doing something when they were really home alone, and 20% were not truthful about their holiday activities or their jobs. On the face of it, this may not seem that revelatory. It is, perhaps, in the nature of our relationships with other human beings that we work desperately hard on our outward presentation, and sometimes fall into a kind of performance that leads inexorably towards fibs. However, the Facebook age marks a break from traditional human behaviour in key aspect. In the past, we could regularly take a break from acting, and revert to some sense of our private, authentic selves. Now, as we constantly prod at our smartphones and feel the pull of their addictive apps, when does the performing ever stop? Along with Russian interference in elections, fake news, Facebook’s approach to hate speech and its insatiable appetite for personal data, this is surely one of the most malign ways in which its presence in our lives is playing out. What its innovations have done to the divide between our social and private lives highlights a mess of stuff to do with the true meanings of intimacy and privacy, and something that goes even closer to the heart of what it is to be human: who we really are beyond the attention and judgments of others, and whether we even know any more. This demise of the barrier between our public and private selves is particularly relevant to people going through that stage of life when the very idea of “self” is still in flux: the often difficult period from the stirrings of adolescence to the mid-20s (and, if you’re unlucky, even older). At that point, sensitivity to your peer group is at its height and an obsession with what some people call “social comparison” tends to run deep. We all know the basics: you desperately want to meet all the requirements of whichever code of cool is holding sway, and avoid mockery at all costs. Looks are at their peak of importance. So are clothes. In her new doorstop-sized treatise on the dominance of Facebook and Google, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the American academic Shoshana Zuboff gets to the heart of why social media collides with this stage of life in a particularly toxic way. “Social media marks a new era in the intensity, density and pervasiveness of social comparison processes especially for the youngest among us, who are ‘almost constantly online’ at a time of life when one’s own identity, voice and moral agency are a work in progress,” she writes. “In fact, the psychological tsunami of social comparison triggered by the social media experience is considered unprecedented.” She calls this experience “life in the hive”, and rather chillingly characterises it as “being alive in the gaze of others because it’s the only life one has, even when it hurts”. I remember what it was like being 16, and the minefield of peer pressure, ridicule and keeping up with the cool kids I had to navigate. Coming home each afternoon and having long spells to unwind was essential – in fact, it was in these daily quiet periods that I began to get some vague sense of who I was. If you had told me that in the near future, the noise of school would emanate from an addictive device that compelled me to carry on performing for my peers until I fell asleep, I would probably have screamed. Yet this is now the everyday reality for millions of teenagers, and we all know the likely consequences. According to a report published this week by the media regulator Ofcom, 70% of those aged 12 to 15 have at least one social media profile. Among those aged eight to 11, the figure is 18%. Ofcom says that children’s most visible accounts tend to “be more highly curated, showing a ‘picture-perfect’ self”. A substantial body of opinion links depression and anxiety to social media use, something routinely traced to online bullying and negative self-perception caused by reading other people’s online posts. According to the Millennium Cohort Study led by the Institute of Education, London (which follows the life experiences of 19,000 people born at the start of the 21st century), almost 40% of girls who spend more than five hours a day on social media show symptoms of depression; research in 2017 by the Royal Society for Public Health recorded young people themselves suggesting that all the big social platforms had a negative effect on their mental wellbeing, something that health professionals said was bound up with increased feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. In response, defenders of Facebook might argue that its popularity is declining among younger users, who now prefer Snapchat and Instagram. However, Facebook is still used by millions of young people and Zuckerberg’s company owns Instagram. There is also a sense in which Facebook has led the way in breaking down some of the behavioural distinctions between children, youths and adults, to the point that all social media users are acting like teenagers, and experiencing the same downsides of excessive use, whichever platform they favour. Put another way, endless performance, the craven pursuit of approval and worrying about what other people think of us might be quintessentially adolescent behaviour, but millions of people of a much more advanced age are doing exactly those things on a minute-by-minute basis, usually via Facebook. And in that context, the 15th anniversary of Mark Zuckerberg’s invention might be a good time to take a step back, and consider whether we are suffering from a huge outbreak of collective arrested development, with all the pain and dysfunction that entails. I don’t often use Facebook, but I am a habitual tweeter, and I know that I post too much, and that it gets in the way of far too many experiences. By the same token, I am not sure that repeatedly changing one’s Facebook profile picture in pursuit of two-word comments from your friends (such as “Gorgeous, babe”) is behaviour that does anyone any good, but it definitely doesn’t suit people much over 25. There is no need to write posts about what you just had for dinner, or the funny thing the dog did. Most of all, it seems incontestable that, whatever age we are, we need moments of quiet and introspection to reaffirm what it is to be alive, and that Facebook is something that too often spoils things. This is particularly true of the way we enjoy other people’s creativity. A recent article on the music website the Quietus by the writer Jazz Monroe nails the essential point. “When we submit to a profound experience of art, it’s a rare reprieve from the everyday torrent of triviality and distraction,” he wrote. “Likewise, when you finish a great book, there’s supposed to be a moment when you reflect on it. But it’s so easy to just check your phone, or tweet some earnest statement about it.” Even in the company of other people, there are times when we need to withdraw into ourselves and savour an essentially private moment of transcendence. Gigs are a good example, which makes me think of a line from Radiohead’s 1997 song Karma Police, which I heard Thom Yorke sing a cappella to an entranced crowd at Glastonbury: “For a minute there, I lost myself.” But in such settings, Monroe says, smartphones and their apps are basically “alien interlopers carrying a ton of baggage”. He goes on: “Small concerts are not designed to outperform a £600 device containing the entire internet. That makes the radioactive slab of social energy in your pocket a cultural hazard. When you shoot a casual glance at its screen – perhaps unconsciously, out of undiagnosed boredom – the megawatt glare that screams into the gently lit room is not discreet. Not everybody else was bored at that moment.” I often wonder, in fact, whether social media platforms and smartphones are the root cause of one very irksome aspect of life in the 21st century: the way people now endlessly chat during musical performances, seemingly unaware that if they concentrated silently on what was happening onstage, they might have a much better time. And what is it people are being distracted by, whether they are alone, or in company? Social media comes down to an endless series of competitions, with prizes in the form of attention: likes, friends, comments. On top of that, Facebook has become humanity’s main means of reminding individuals of the exciting, fulfilling stuff that other people claim to be doing, and giving them the feeling they ought to join in. For all that Silicon Valley styles itself as being about liberating us from earthly concerns and creating a new kind of networked human, these things tap into aspects of our psychology that are primitive and animalistic. In his brilliant polemic, 10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, the virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier pithily describes what silently happens as we endlessly scroll: “Deep mechanisms in the social parts of our brains monitor our social standing, making us terrified to be left behind, like a runt sacrificed to predators on the savannah.” I know when I last felt like that. It was when I was at school, and then university. I had a recurrently good time at both places, but I also vividly recall the sense of always either being in the crowd, or wondering why I wasn’t. In that sense, in the same way that the personal development of celebrities is sometimes said to be frozen at the point they first become famous, so Facebook and its effects were always going to be defined by its beginnings at Harvard. It has turned the world into one big college dorm, where there is rarely any silence, and anyone of a sensitive disposition longs for a bit of me time, to no avail. Among the many arguments against Zuckerberg’s goal of “bringing the world closer together”, perhaps, is the fact that the human condition demands that we also need to regularly be apart, and alone. Has that been forgotten in only 15 years?In December I travelled to Minsk for a seminar with a group of European historians. A few miles outside the capital of Belarus, we visited places where both the Nazis and Stalin’s secret police had committed some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. During those few days, I also spoke with some young locals who offered glimmers of hope as to what a truly united Europe could one day look like. It was the most instructive trip I’ve made in years: a deep dive into conflicting European memories, highlighting the difficulty of overcoming stereotypes and ideological narratives, as well as the legacy of the cold war in people’s minds. It may sound odd, but for anyone trying to keep abreast of what Europe means, the best view could arguably be found right there, in those flatlands of marshes, pine trees and spruce, dotted with towns and villages on which the past weighs heavily. 14 million people were murdered between 1933 and 1945 in an area that stretches from the Baltic sea to the Black sea Minsk is, of course, outside the European Union, in a nation where a dictator rules, in something of a grey zone between Europe and Russia. Few people in western Europe know about Belarus, let alone have been there. Yet it should be prominent in our consciences. “Belarus was the worst place to be in world war two,” the historian Timothy Snyder once noted. In his book Bloodlands, Snyder recounts how 14 million people were murdered between 1933 and 1945 in an area that stretches from the Baltic sea to the Black sea, with Belarus worst affected: a quarter of its population were killed as a result of both Stalin’s and Hitler’s policies. We ignore much about our continent’s history if we overlook the plight of this region, where the two totalitarian systems converged with horrific consequences – at once plotting together and competing as they laid claim to territory and exterminated those living there, or deported people there to die. Of all the places I’ve visited in Europe, nowhere is that complex history more poignant than in the forests outside Minsk, where three sites of mass carnage, only a few miles apart, are commemorated in very different ways. A fork in the road in Maly Trostenets is where tens of thousands of Jews, many from Germany and Austria, were shot over pits by SS commandos, their corpses later burned. Construction of a monument has recently started there, but strikingly it doesn’t indicate the victims’ names. This is because Belarusian officials are uneasy with commemorating the Holocaust – much as the Soviet authorities were. Instead, on trees nearby, families of victims have placed small yellow posters bearing the details of those who perished. Not far from there, in the forest of Kuropaty, lies a place where Stalin’s men shot thousands during the 1930s. Wooden crosses of Orthodox Christianity have been planted by Belarusian civil groups and opposition activists as a way of honouring the victims. But there again, no names. And there is no official monument at all. The cult of Stalin remains untouched in Belarus, much like it has been restored in Putin’s Russia. And a little further, in Khatyn, is a clearing in the forest where a village once stood. The Nazis massacred its entire population, pushing families into a barn and setting it on fire. They decimated hundreds of villages in Belarus this way. And here the full spectrum of Soviet‑era commemorations is deployed: a monument with names, a museum, tour guides. Khatyn symbolises the persecution of an entire nation – but it is an exclusive emblem, sitting alongside huge omissions. In Belarus the crimes of Stalinism are left largely untold, as are those perpetuated by the Nazis against the Jews. These places should rank prominently in our European minds, yet they don’t. Dealing with the full dimensions of what happened is hard enough for Belarusians dominated by autocracy and propaganda. But it is just as difficult for many of us elsewhere, because we tend to remember the 20th century from a western point of view, not from a fully continental perspective. The iron curtain, which lifted three decades ago, still lingers in our heads. Yet I took back another, much more uplifting message from this trip: young people I met privately shared their hopes of breaking down barriers and connecting with their generation in other parts of Europe. Far from our constant debates about populism, Brexit, Donald Trump and the EU’s struggles, they asked: “What do the young British want? Or the French?”; “Do they worry like us about the environment?”; “How can we share more with them?” In this part of Europe, which experienced the worst of 20th-century nightmares, I found signs of a positive energy, a striving for the basics of democracy and dialogue. It’s a quest no doubt hampered by a regime that likes to lock up dissidents. All the same, which energy seemed to want to burst out of the cold ground like budding flowers in spring. With crucial tests for Europe looming (not least the Brexit endgame, and European parliament elections in May), it was in Belarus that I found more reasons to hope than to wallow in gloom. I also came back more convinced than ever that Europe’s travails will only be addressed once we show a greater curiosity for other peoples’ memories. The historian Tony Judt once said: “Getting history right can require a new generation coming along.” He added: “There is probably a limit to how much you can break taboos.” It is at a human level, through exchanges, contacts, dialogue, and more awareness of history (especially in the media), that we can bring down some of those walls in our heads. Accepting differences, after shedding light on them, is surely as important to Europe’s future as trade deals or deficit targets. Walking down those frozen forest tracks in Belarus and discussing Europe with young people there felt like the start of a long road – one that holds promises, too. • Natalie Nougayrède is a Guardian columnist“We’re not used to being dragged into all this drama,” giggles Jade Thirlwall, one quarter of the UK’s biggest girl band, nay pop band, Little Mix. “We’re getting it from all angles at the minute.” She is referring to the campaign for the band’s fifth album, the bluntly titled LM5, which has seen them dragged into the public spat between Nicki Minaj and Cardi B via the album’s first single Woman Like Me; part ways with Simon Cowell, the man whose talent show The X Factor birthed them in 2011, and his label Syco; and fall foul of ham-faced Twitter troll Piers Morgan over the feminism behind their recent empowerment anthem, Strip, and its accompanying naked photoshoot – in which their skin was daubed with the myriad insults they’ve received. At one point Jesy Nelson, very much the band’s mouthpiece, called Morgan a “twat” on Nick Grimshaw’s Radio 1 show. “Mate, it’s mental,” says Thirlwall, in summary. This, it turns out, is the point when Little Mix make the risky shift from sugary, poptastic girl band to a group of young women well-versed in post-2013 Beyoncé. While their first self-penned single, Wings, was all about empowering young fans in general terms (“Don’t let what they say keep you up at night”), the Daily Mail-referencing, trap-infused Strip – inspired by a tabloid story attacking Thirlwall and Perrie Edwards’s looks – is a reflection of the experiences of four mid-twentysomethings trying to emancipate themselves from the focus of the media microscope. “We wanted to channel our anger [at the story] into a positive song saying: ‘Oh fuck off, this is me, and I’m going to love every single part of me and if you don’t like it sod off,’” roars Nelson when we meet in a London hotel suite in mid-November, the day before LM5’s release. Next to her sit Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock, the three of them dressed-down, makeup-free and surrounded by the detritus of a lunch heavy in avocado. The absent Thirlwall has had a family emergency, but we speak later on the phone. Prior to our chat I had been told they wouldn’t talk about the split from Syco (they’re now signed to RCA) or a bizarre Simon Cowell interview in which he’d suggested the fall-out was to do with Woman Like Me (“They didn’t want to record it,” he said). Without mentioning the X Factor overlord by name I ask if they didn’t want it be the first single? Silence. One by one, their eyes dart in the direction of their PR sitting in the corner. “No. OK, so … ” Nelson begins. There’s a short discussion about whether this is something we should be getting into. “So this is what happened,” Nelson continues, taking it upon herself to ignore the mood in the room. “We so wanted to write a song like Strip and were so passionate about releasing it as our first single. We’d co-directed the video, we’d done the [naked] photoshoot, so we were excited. Obviously when Woman Like Me was put on the table, in our heads Strip was going to be the first single, and [Woman Like Me] didn’t feel exactly like what we’d sing about,” she says, referencing an original version written solely by Ed Sheeran and Jess Glynne. “So we went in, tweaked the lyrics, changed the production, and got Nicki on it, which was an absolute dream. We didn’t despise it at all. It’s a banger.” Even that dream Nicki Minaj collaboration almost turned sour. Lifelong fans of the Beez in the Trap hitmaker, the band were rattled when Cardi B claimed, via now-deleted Instagram videos, that she had been first choice to feature on the track. The band retaliated, posting a screenshot of an old WhatsApp chat mentioning Minaj as their sole choice alongside a caption that read: “Sorry Cardi hun but this is the T, we’ve always wanted the QUEEN”. To really underline the shadiness, it then had “no shade” written in brackets. I suggest the use of “hun” was the icing on the cake. There is a chorus of cackles, before they look sheepishly at each other. “People kind of assumed we were taking sides because of the way it was worded but we would never pick sides,” says Edwards. “We’d never want to tear Cardi B down, it’s not about that, it was more that she said something that wasn’t true.” When I speak to Thirlwall a week later she reiterates that point. “We just wanted to state the facts,” she says. “Everything’s OK now … I hope.” We talk about the Strip furore that erupted shortly after the album’s release. “It’s not about sexualising yourself; it’s about having a voice and speaking out and being brave enough to stand up to people,” she says. And then along came Piers Morgan (on Good Morning Britain he asked: “What is empowering about this? … It’s using sex to sell records”). “Yeah, right on cue,” she laughs. “What was amazing, actually, is that we haven’t had to say much [to him], as women have rallied together and defended us,” she adds, referring to tweets from the likes of Ariana Grande and Fifth Harmony’s Lauren Jauregui. Does she have anything to say to Morgan now? “I mean, he’s, you know, ugh … I don’t want to dwell too much on it, and he doesn’t deserve a line on it because he’s obviously loving it.” Rewind to a more innocent time, a Sunday in mid-October to be precise, and Little Mix are kicking off the LM5 campaign in the labyrinthine corridors of London’s Wembley Arena. They’re running 15 minutes late for their 1pm call time on the red carpet at Radio 1’s annual Teen awards, an event it feels as if they’re slowly outgrowing, and the gaggle of photographers are getting restless. Suddenly, Little Mix appear, dressed head to toe in variations of black business attire. Gone, for the time being at least, are the leotard-based outfits Mel C once criticised for being “too provocative”, and the beaming smiles that accompanied playful No 1 hits such as Black Magic and Shout Out to My Ex. Once the flashbulbs are off, however, they click into schmooze mode, goofing around on live radio with host Matt Edmondson and partaking in an on-camera Halloween-themed interview involving questions plucked out of a pumpkin. We meet briefly, sandwiched between a stairwell and the disabled loo. They’re meant to be doing last-minute rehearsals ahead of their debut performance of Woman Like Me, but have time for a quick hello. It’s 2pm and they have been here since 8am. At one point, a bored-looking Thirlwall balances a bottle of water on her head, while the others organise themselves into height order. Suddenly they are engulfed by people – radio pluggers, PRs, thick-set security guards, a constantly primed glam squad – and shuffled off to prepare for the show. Based on pop’s unwritten girl band laws, Little Mix should have announced a hiatus by now, one that involves a smattering of TV presenting, a tell-all book and, for one lucky member, a few weeks in the Australian jungle come November time. Their last album, 2016’s Glory Days, however, was their first to shift more than a million copies in the UK, while Woman Like Me became their 13th Top 10 hit. This year, they will turn their attention fully to the US, where their popularity has been on the wane (2012’s debut DNA peaked at No 4, while LM5 has so far reached No 40). “That’s our main aim: we really want to crack America,” Nelson says. “We’re willing to put the work in.” That desire to prove people wrong has always been part of their, ahem, DNA ever since producers on The X Factor told them there was no point putting them through to live shows as viewers didn’t vote for girl bands. Expectations were so low that the paparazzi would shout “see you on This Morning, girls”, referring to ITV’s preferred dumping ground for discarded contestants the morning after live shows. The only people who seemed to believe in Little Mix were Little Mix themselves. “We set our goals very high from the start,” says Pinnock, slumping further into her hotel armchair. “We wanted dolls, we wanted bed sheets, we wanted makeup, absolutely everything, and obviously these things kept being ticked off.” They also wanted the ultimate in music industry credibility: a Brit award, something they achieved in 2017 when they won best British single for Shout Out to My Ex. They also got to open that year’s show. “I cried when I found out we were performing,” laughs Nelson. “Oh my God,” shrieks Edwards. “Do you know that was one of the best moments of my life. I’d just fallen off my bike cause I was mortal and I’d split my head open a bit.” She senses confusion. “Did I ever tell you this?” The other two look shocked as Edwards rattles through the story: she was on holiday in the Maldives, she’d had “one too many Jack Daniel’s” and went over her handlebars and cracked her head on a tree. “I was a mess. My friend checked my head and was like: ‘Babe, just to let you know you’re bleeding,’ but I was reading me emails and was like: ‘I don’t care! I’m performing at the Brits.’” We talk about LM5, the title. “That’s literally what the fans were already calling it,” says Nelson, matter-of-factly. A week before our interview, at a Julie Adenuga-hosted Apple Music event in east London – essentially the authentic flipside to the Teen awards – in which they performed stripped-back versions of their hits with an all-female band, they’d mentioned a different working title, one I’d noted down as “Wine and Wet Wipes”. “Ha!” shouts Edwards instead of actually laughing, a time-saving device they all use. “Wine and Makeup Wipes,” corrects Nelson, “but I hated it”. “It sounds like an Amy Winehouse album title doesn’t it,” adds Edwards. They’d also said that the creation of LM5 was lubricated by a healthy dose of alcohol. “It definitely helped,” Thirlwall tells me later on the phone, “and gave me the courage to sing about things I might have been scared to touch on before.” As well as Strip’s self-empowerment, the album also touches on feminism (Joan of Arc), female friendship (the Destiny’s Child-esque Told You So) and, on the Thirlwall-penned Woman’s World, gender politics. “I remember years ago I did a political tweet and got absolutely annihilated by mostly male MPs who were furious that a pop star had an opinion,” she says, referring to her expression of sadness at the 2015 air strikes in Syria. “Now I feel more confident to write about things. With Woman’s World, I remember getting in the studio and the whole #MeToo thing was happening and I was really angry. I started talking about my mum and how she was always seen as less equal even though she worked just as hard as the men around her. I thought it was about time we did a female empowerment song that was very specifically about what was going on in the world.” Thirlwall isn’t the only one who has felt emboldened to tackle issues head-on. In a recent interview, Pinnock discussed how she felt “invisible” in the band, and was told early on by Beyoncé’s creative director, Frank Gatson, that as a black woman she’d have to work twice as hard to make it in the music industry. “I’ve kept it in me for seven years and it just felt like such a weight was lifted when I said the words,” she says now. “There is such a problem with racism, so to actually just say it and have so many people of colour message me and thank me for saying something … ” She trails off. “I remember when I used to cry about it to my manager I used to be like: ‘Why do I feel like this?’ and she’d never say it, and I’d never say it. It was really strange. Now, though, oh my God, I’m so proud of this skin.” We chat about the band’s favourite songs on the album, specifically the head-knocking R&B banger Forget You Not, a song Edwards partially leaked in October after filming footballer boyfriend Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain dancing to it. It’s a shame it’s only on the deluxe edition, I say. “No it isn’t,” snaps Edwards. “It is, babe,” soothes Pinnock. “No it isn’t,” maintains Edwards. This goes on for a few minutes. “You’re winding me up,” she continues. “I’m fucking fuming.” People will buy the deluxe, though. “Well I hope so because it’s got one of my favourite songs on there! That wasn’t the final decision.” The tension is diffused with a quick-fire Q&A. Favourite girl band of all time? “I can’t decide between Spice Girls and Destiny’s Child,” says Edwards. “Same,” says Nelson. “Growing up Spice Girls, but musically it was TLC and Destiny’s Child,” adds Pinnock. Thirlwall, meanwhile, goes with the Supremes, citing Diana Ross as her favourite girl band member ever. What five things should any good girl band have, I ask. “Friendship, unity, passion, drive and sass,” Nelson, Pinnock and Edwards say, almost as one. Thirlwall takes her time. “Friendship. Loyalty. Ambition. Talent,” A pause: “And balls!” LM5 is out now“I’ve been told since fifth grade that college makes you a better person,” said the young woman. Her mother, an immigrant from Mexico, had always dreamed of going to college, but never got the chance. So, as she started her senior year at KIPP University Prep, a charter school in San Antonio, she buckled down and filled out applications to more than a dozen schools. But then, suddenly, things went sideways. Her mother was in the process of becoming a US citizen this fall, and she was afraid that the financial aid application might derail the process. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the young woman asked me not to use her real name. I’ll call her Mariela. Back in September, the Trump administration announced a long-rumored proposal to deter immigrants seeking long-term legal residency from using public health, nutrition and housing programs. The result would be that immigrants who use these programs would have a lower chance of receiving long-term legal residency in the United States. While this so-called “public charge” rule does not apply to federal financial aid programs, Mariela’s mother still worried. Advocates for immigrant families call this “the chilling effect” of the administration’s approach to immigration. Mariela’s story shows how, stunning as it sounds, the symbolism of the administration’s immigration agenda may matter even more than the substance. Sure, the substance of the administration’s agenda is amply cruel. It has left hundreds of thousands of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) recipients uncertain about their legal status. It has ripped thousands of vulnerable children from asylum-seeking families at the border. Nearly 200,000 US-citizen children stand to lose their immigrant parents to the administration’s sunsetting of their legal right to stay in the country. The public charge proposal alone would affect the long-term legal status of nearly 400,000 immigrants each year. The underlying message – the symbolism – is clear. In each of these cases, the administration presents immigrants as dangerous. It targets them as others, as not-fully-human, as competitors that undermine the values, pocketbooks and opportunities of native-born Americans. It demeans immigrants and divides them from native-born Americans. Think about the ugly messages President Trump’s immigration agenda reinforces for native-born Americans. It suggests that, whenever possible, immigrants should be dissuaded from coming to the United States – even if that requires threatening and/or harming children. Further, it suggests that legal immigrants working and paying taxes in the United States should be discouraged from using public programs that would help them and their families live healthier, more productive lives. It seems almost quaint to insist on this in 2019, when the facts of so many matters have been so thoroughly damned so many times, but still: almost none of this thinking is even remotely tethered to the real world. There are reams of research showing how immigrants make communities – and the country – richer, safer and better. Mariela’s ears are open too. Think about how she hears these messages emboldening many native-born Americans’ prejudices. In the past two years, Mariela says that she’s repeatedly been abused by white strangers. They taunt her – “you’re gonna get deported” – and that, she says, “makes me feel like I’m illegal here”. Her mother’s mistrust of an antagonistic, fickle US government could leave a citizen like Mariela without a path through college. It would scramble her precarious, carefully laid plans. She’s done everything right – she’s worked hard and built a foundation for her future. She wants to believe in this country, in its meritocratic promises – work hard, get a degree, do better than your parents. But, in 2019, it’s not entirely clear to her that her country believes in or has a place for her. There are millions of others like Mariela – children with at least one immigrant parent are a growing segment of the US student body today, and will be a large share of the US workforce in the future. What happens if the Trump administration’s agenda blocks their ambitions and dashes their hopes? Deterring these children from college will make them less educated, and less productive, but it’s hard to see how it makes the country better. The administration’s immigration agenda also divides immigrant families from native-born American families (many of whom, we should note, are just immigrant families of a marginally less recent vintage). It’s undermining how these families see one another. And for what? Short-term political gains fueled by anxious American revanchism? The United States is not what I’d call a free country, because we’re still in the shadows, hiding One of Mariela’s classmates, who I’ll call Gustavo, ran into similar difficulties this fall. As he approached college and financial aid applications, his parents balked. “[They] told me not to fill mine out. They were scared that something might happen to my mom,” he said. She’s in the country on a visa, and Gustavo said the family worried that applying for financial aid to support his education could cost her the right to stay with her husband and son, both of whom are native-born US citizens. Money’s tight in Gustavo’s family – he says he works after school to help pay the bills. He can’t see a path to college without financial aid. Asked if he feels American, Gustavo hesitates, mulling his long life in the country, reflecting on his deferred dreams. Maybe someday, he says, when he and “every Hispanic person can feel safe going out and not have any type of racial slurs”. He sighs. “The United States is not what I’d call a free country, because we’re still in the shadows, hiding.” His situation more or less sums up the problem with the administration’s immigration agenda. Most of it is substantively ineffective, more likely to inflict cruelty on vulnerable families than to achieve any meaningful improvements to the United States. And yet, all of it further stigmatizes immigrant families, and that detaches them from the country’s social life and public institutions. Through a strange and selfish alchemy, it converts basic pieces of upward mobility – access to food, healthcare and education – into supposed luxuries that immigrants and their children should not be able to access. Like Mariela, Gustavo says he’s trying to believe in the rules, trying to make his family proud. “Most Hispanic parents … want something bigger. They always pushed me to go to college.” Without the resources to pursue his college dream, afraid that his government would penalize or target his family if he applied for financial aid, frustrated and marginalized by his country’s leadership, Gustavo needed another door to opportunity and the American Dream. So he’s trying another way of proving to his birth country that he belongs, that he should have a shot: he’s offering up his body. He’s joining the military. Conor P Williams is a fellow at The Century FoundationA Briton and an American were among at least 14 people killed in the militant attack on a hotel and office complex in Nairobi on Tuesday, officials and relatives have said. The Briton was named by his employer, the charity Gatsby Africa, as Luke Potter, its Africa programmes director. In a statement, it said he had devoted the past 10 years to helping some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. “Luke was respected by all he worked with, bringing huge drive, determination, a relentless work ethic, and a thirst for new ideas to every project,” the statement said. “He brought a calm head and his unique sense of humour to every situation … He was our colleague and our friend.” The charity said it shared the grief of his family, partner, daughter and friends. Nic Hailey, the British high commissioner in Nairobi, said authorities were providing support to his family and friends. Another British person was wounded and was receiving medical attention, the Foreign Office said. Jason Spindler, the American who died, was the director of a business development firm who was based in the Kenyan capital, and had survived the 11 September attacks in New York. “It’s with a heavy heart that I announce that my brother, Jason Spindler, passed away this morning during a terror attack in Nairobi,” his brother Jonathan wrote on Facebook. “Jason was a survivor of 9/11 and a fighter. I am sure he gave them hell.” Eleven Kenyans were confirmed dead, a mortuary official told Agence France-Presse. One victim had no papers, the official added. The London-based consultancy firm Adam Smith International said two of its employees had died on the terrace of a restaurant in the complex, where the company has offices. Abdalla Dahir and Feisal Ahmed, Kenyans of Somali descent, had been working on the Somalia Stability Fund managed by ASI to “bring peace and prosperity to Somalia”, the company said. Fifty staff and consultants were safely evacuated, it added. Another victim was named as James Oduor, commonly known as Cobra. Oduor, known for his love of football, was tweeting as the attack was going on, asking people outside the complex what was going on. “What’s happening at 14 Riverside man? We’re trapped in our buildings.” he said in one message. He worked for an electrical company in the building. Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, said early on Wednesday that security forces had ended operations at the dusitD2 hotel, having killed all four attackers. A member of the British SAS took part in the mission to end the assault, photos from the scene showed. The heavily armed man with a military vest and balaclava worked with local forces and helping victims leave the complex. It was reported the lone SAS member took part in the operation alongside US Navy seals, having been in the country to train Kenyan special forces. The MoD said it did not comment on special forces. Families who went to the Chiromo morgue were told they could not view the bodies until a forensic investigation had been performed, provoking grief and anger. The family of a missing 35-year-old man collapsed in the courtyard upon hearing that a body had arrived with his identification papers. “He is gone, he is gone,” the father repeated into his phone as his mother wrapped a shawl around herself and wept. A woman who gave her name as Njoki wept as she said: “My sister is not in any of the hospitals and the last time we spoke she was a bit calm but suddenly she started crying and shouting and I could hear gunshots and her phone remained on but she wasn’t speaking. We have no doubt her body is here. Let them allow us in.” As other families pleaded to be allowed access, an elderly couple arrived in silence, bringing a freshly pressed suit to dress their dead son. Hiram Macharia, a marketing executive at LG Electronics, said he and some colleagues had been rescued by police from their office two hours after the attack began, but that one workmate did not survive. “One of our colleagues went to the top of the building and his body was found there,” Macharia said outside the hotel. Kenyatta said more than 700 civilians were safely evacuated from the complex. The assault began shortly after 3pm on Tuesday with an explosion in the parking lot and then a suicide bomb blast in the hotel’s foyer. It was claimed by al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist organisation based in neighbouring Somalia that carried out the 2013 attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall that left at least 67 dead. A woman rescued from the hair salon she manages in the dusitD2 complex on Tuesday also survived the Westgate attack, local media reported. “I was working there when the attackers stormed in, it was not easy just like today. All I can say is that I thank God,” Tracy Wanjiru told Nairobi News. Wanjiru said she heard a loud explosion on Tuesday and went out to see what was happening. “I jumped back to the salon, told my colleagues we were under attack. They dismissed me at first but when they heard wails and screams, everyone went into hiding,” she said.The Kumbh Mela is held at the four spots along the Ganges river where, Hindu tradition has it, drops of the nectar of immortality fell from an urn, or kumbh, that was being fought over by the gods and demons. Tens of millions of pilgrims attend Kumbh Melas at these sites roughly every three years, praying the holy waters will emancipate them from the cycle of rebirth. The festival in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, where the Ganges and the Yamuna meet, has become the largest. According to one set of Hindu holy books, the Puranas: “Those who bathe in the bright waters of the Ganga where they meet the dark waters of the Yamuna during the month of Magh [roughly January/February] will not be reborn, even in thousands of years.” Hindus believe every soul passes through different lives (better or worse depending on your karma in the previous life) but the highest point is breaking out of the cycle, transcending it and achieving salvation/emancipation from the earthly life with its suffering and desires. But the Kumbh Mela is also a vast market, meeting place and centre of learning, where people can attend spiritual lectures or take blessing from some of the country’s most-revered gurus, and Hindu saints are ordained. Hard to say. A Chinese monk named Hsuan Tsang (or Xuanzang) described something that resembles the Kumbh Mela on the banks at Prayagraj in 643AD. Festivals are thought to have been held at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna since ancient times, but historians have more recently argued the Kumbh in its modern form may have started around 1870, emerging from a power struggle between the Hindu clergy and the British colonialists. It’s huge, even on an Indian scale. Nobody knows for sure, but organisers estimated 120 million attended the 2013 version in Prayagraj. That included an estimated 30 million on what was considered the most auspicious day for bathing. An entire city about two-thirds the size of Manhattan (or 15 sq miles) emerges from the banks of the river to accommodate the numbers attending. This year, that includes 185 miles (300km) of roads and more than 120,000 toilets. Overwhelming. It echoes with hundreds of musical performances, voices droning over loudspeakers, chants and prayers, the occasional trumpeting of an elephant and the din of millions of people. Holy men march past you in lines carrying coconut half-shells and wailing for alms; others sit in quiet repose, their bodies caked in ash. One priest was crouched on a corner wearing a loin cloth and aviator sunglasses, smoking hashish from a pipe, watched over by an Indian police officer carrying an automatic weapon. There is a palpably joyous atmosphere – if your senses manage to adjust. It goes for more than 50 days, with four major bathing days throughout, but one key moment is the first day, when members of the main holy orders charge out into the river, often naked, roaring and smeared in ashes, to sanctify the waters and formally mark the beginning of the bathing. These holy orders originally formed as armies to protect temples from invaders. Throughout the history of the festival, they have turned their weapons on each other, fighting armed battles over which order gets to enter the river first. In recent years, however, they have opted for dialogue to decide the schedule, but it is still a touchy issue and government officials are sometimes called in to help mediate. Political parties have often sought to exploit the Kumbh Mela, though they have to be subtle – it is primarily a spiritual event after all. No Kumbh Mela has ever been quite so widely marketed as this one, with advertisements often featuring small pictures of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. The fairgrounds are also plastered with billboards promoting his government’s social welfare programmes. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party aims to unite Hindus behind a single political platform, something adherents have historically been reluctant to do, given how riven the religion is by caste and regional differences. But the Kumbh Mela is indisputably moment of unity for Hindus, and that dovetails nicely with Modi’s political project, and so it can’t hurt to have such a giant iteration of the festival in an election year – especially if his picture is all over it.Samuel Beckett won the Nobel prize in literature in 1969, but newly released archives reveal that just a year earlier, the secretive committee that selects the winners had raised serious concerns about whether his writing was consistent with the spirit of the award. In the words of Alfred Nobel’s will, the honour goes to an author who has written “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”. The winner is decided each year by the members of the Swedish Academy, with their deliberations kept secret for 50 years. Just-released documents from 1968 show the committee’s chairman, Anders Österling, writing that “regarding Samuel Beckett, unfortunately, I have to maintain my basic doubts as to whether a prize to him is consistent with the spirit of Nobel’s will”. “Of course, I do not dispute the artistic effect of Beckett’s dramas, but misanthropic satire (of the Swift type) or radical pessimism (of the Leopardi type) has a powerful heart, which in my opinion is lacking in Beckett,” wrote Österling. He had previously slammed the possibility of the Waiting for Godot author winning the Nobel in 1964, when he said that he “would almost consider a Nobel prize for him as an absurdity in his own style”. Beckett had been a popular choice with other committee members in 1968, who praised “the human compassion that inspires his work”. Other leading contenders for the prize that year included French novelist André Malraux, British poet WH Auden and Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata. Other names put forward for the world’s top literature prize in 1968 included Ezra Pound and EM Forster – both dismissed on account of their advancing ages – Chinua Achebe, Charles de Gaulle and Graham Greene. Vladimir Nabokov was again set aside by a jury that had previously described his novel Lolita as immoral, and was not inclined to change its mind; Eugène Ionesco was considered, and hailed for the novelty he had brought to modern drama, but dismissed because of the controversial nature of his work. Australian author Patrick White, who would win the Nobel five years later, was already emerging in 1968 as a serious contender. The committee praised his “great novel” The Tree of Man, saying that White could be the “fifth continent’s first full-time representative in literature”. Österling pushed for the choice of Malraux, despite the author’s position as minister of culture in De Gaulle’s government, but added that a prize for Kawabata “should prove justified and welcome”, as would one for Auden, even though “the groundbreaking stage of his poetry is now a while ago”. Kawabata would go on to emerge triumphant, praised by the jury “for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind”. Beckett, despite Österling’s previous reservations, would win the next year, “for his writing, which – in new forms for the novel and drama – in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”. Auden, Malraux, Achebe, Pound, De Gaulle, Greene and Forster never won. The 50-year embargo on the documents revealing the jury members’ thoughts means that Nobel watchers will have to wait until 2066 to read the negotiations that went on before Bob Dylan was named as the 2016 Nobel laureate, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”, a choice which was praised in some quarters and reviled in others. The archives for 2018, however, are likely to be less illuminating in 2068: the Nobel prize for literature was withheld last year after the Swedish Academy was hit by scandal. Jean-Claude Arnault, husband of academy member Katarina Frostenson, was accused of sexual assault, later convicted of rape and sentenced to prison in October. A wave of resignations in the academy over its handling of the allegations followed, and it was subsequently decided to postpone the prize for a year “in view of … reduced public confidence”. The Nobel Foundation, which funds the prize, has said that it hopes the academy will become more transparent, with executive director Lars Heikensten saying: “The academy has cultivated a closed culture over a long period of time. This was likely to be challenged at one time or another.”Exactly two years ago, in early 2017, the actor Mahershala Ali and his wife were about to give birth – one after the other. “It’s something we still joke about,” says the 44-year-old American, sitting in a London hotel, smiling at the memory. “My wife was pregnant with a baby. And I was pregnant with an Oscar.” The actor knows that sounds glib. He knows that however exciting or worked-for an industry prize – Ali won his best supporting actor award that year for a standout performance in the coming-of-age drama Moonlight – nothing compares to the graft of bearing an actual child. But aspects of the comparison stand. There’s a lot of build-up and then things go crazy all at once. Taking home a newborn, like taking home an Oscar, turns life on its head. And forget about sleep. Ali’s wife, the artist Amatus Sami-Karim, gave birth to their daughter, Bari, that February, and 100 frazzled hours later Ali was on stage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, looking blinky and delighted, and bringing an audience of grandees to their feet when he croaked: “I just wanna thank my wife.” It was a week that changed everything for Ali. Until then he’d been an auxiliary guy, a well-thought-of actor who didn’t often get his name on the posters and who was probably best known for his regular appearances in Netflix’s House Of Cards. Ali had a fun if slightly underwritten role as the Washington fixer Remy Danton, a job he quit when the show was at its peak – wanting to take one last shot at becoming a leading actor before it was too late. Moonlight, in which he was a taciturn drug dealer, a character who appeared only fleetingly but whose presence hung over the whole movie, suggested Ali had the chops for lead roles. The Oscar win in 2017 pushed him over the top, and in the two years since then Ali has juggled parenthood with work on two huge new productions due out this month – the third season of HBO’s prestige procedural True Detective and the awards-tipped biopic Green Book, about the pioneering African American pianist Don Shirley. I want to talk to Ali about Green Book, a rich and affecting film which last week won best comedy or musical at the Golden Globes; Ali picked up the award for best supporting actor. But first, I’m curious to know what happened next in the Ali family home, when a newborn and an Oscar came home within hours of each other. He considers his answer carefully. The actor is an observant Muslim, a thoughtful guy who speaks in long, unhurried sentences. Combined with today’s outfit – a navy blue kimono-like gown, buttoned to the throat – it projects a potent sense of spiritual calm. Ali says that having the baby and the Oscar “was like a jigsaw puzzle which my wife and I had to try to put together. And as soon as we felt like we’d figured it out, it changed. It took a lot of listening to each other. Reacting. Every now and then we had to hit a tuning fork, to make sure we were in sync.” Throughout a 10-month shoot on True Detective, Ali’s wife and daughter travelled from the family home in Los Angeles to the set in Arkansas as often as possible. After that, he was straight on to Green Book, which was based in New Orleans, and here the young family were able to snatch some life together between days on set. And after that? Ali says he just stopped saying yes to jobs. His wife needed time for her own career as an artist. The couple hit the tuning fork – and the tuning fork said it was blatantly her turn. They moved back to Los Angeles. “You get to the point where you think: ‘If I were to accept the next thing I’d be throwing off the balance of my family.’” Ali talks a lot about balance. Central to the appeal of playing Don Shirley in Green Book was that here was a historical figure all out of whack, a man blessed with enormous musical talent but with no clear place in the world he inhabited. Shirley rose to prominence in New York in the 1960s, becoming such a fixture at Carnegie Hall that he ended up living in a grand apartment above the main auditorium. “The more he had, the more he attained,” Ali says. “He still couldn’t get away from his isolated existence, because he was sort of a man beyond his time. You think about the Michael Jacksons of the world, the Princes, people so exceptional and extraordinary they almost have alien status.” Green Book, which also stars Viggo Mortensen, plays out as a road movie. Mortensen is Tony “Lip” Vallelonga, an Italian-American bodyguard who is hired by Shirley to provide protection on a risky tour through the Jim Crow-era South. The film is based on real-life events, though both Shirley and Vallelonga have since died, and controversy brewed last year when Shirley’s surviving relatives questioned Green Book’s accuracy. Was the musician really such an aloof figure, estranged from his family, from mainstream black culture, from the black politics of the era, as Green Book insists? Shirley’s brother and nephew wondered why they hadn’t figured in the writing or the production of the film, calling it “a symphony of lies”, while Vallelonga’s son has a screenwriting credit. Late last year, Ali telephoned the Shirley family to apologise for not consulting them first. What seems beyond question is that the pianist was a man who struggled to fit in. Ali’s take is that “he was someone who was not black enough for the black community. He was not white enough to be accepted in his profession. And he was not ready to be embraced by society because of how he identified sexually.” Towards the end of the movie, the actor delivers a big, weepy scene in the rain in which Shirley opens up, about what it is to be black and gay, and so doubly inferior in the eyes of 1960s society. This will be the clip of Ali that gets shown during awards season, whenever they are running down the list of nominees – but, for me, it’s his smaller moments in the film that linger. In one scene, Shirley is invited to a grand black-tie dinner party at which the host, imagining a great treat for his guest, reveals the evening’s menu: fried chicken. And instead of walking out or protesting, Ali has Shirley hesitate for a moment – and then produce a beaming smile, showing exactly the gratitude that white society meant him to. I ask Ali about that pained smile, which prompts a personal story. “That smile... I think it has a bit to do with Shirley wanting to be comfortable. If they’re not comfortable then he won’t be comfortable. So many times, in my life, just living in New York city for a good bit of time... You’re walking on the street a lot, you’re on public transportation, you’re travelling late at night. And I remember I was always really conscious of how I dressed. Like, I wouldn’t wear clothes that allowed people to identify me with what I would think they would view as the typical black man. I wouldn’t wear tennis shoes. It was a conscious thing, because I found that women would cross the street [to avoid me], day or night. Or turn their ring over on the subway – turn the diamond inward! These were little things I would catch all the time.” Ali continues: “How people would react to a large, fairly muscular, dark-skinned black man – I would be so conscious of it and it would upset me. It would affect my energy for the rest of the day. So in order to protect myself from having to manage other people’s fear, I would do things to preempt that. And so many black people around the world do this. Because there’s an idea that we’re something to be feared, or that we pose a danger.” Shirley’s forced smile in the movie? That’s normal, Ali suggests: that’s textbook. “That’s just part of the tactics of a black person navigating a world that doesn’t know how to react. You develop this habit of addressing a situation by communicating how safe you are.” The actor puts out his hands in a helpless gesture: it is what it is, “the double consciousness that black people carry with them”. *** I went through a process of digging through different religions and ways of connecting to God. And that ended up being Islam for me Ali’s mother, Willicia, was the daughter of a Christian minister, and later became one herself. She picked her son’s name – Mahershalalhashbaz in full – out of the Bible. Mother and son lived in the Bay Area of California in what Ali describes as a “prayerful home”. His father, Phillip, was around for a few years, until he left the family in unusual circumstances. An amateur dancer, he was invited, in the late 1970s, to appear on a TV talent contest called Soul Train. He won, came home with a sports car, and then one day moved across America to try to get work in the theatre in New York. For about 20 years, until his death in the mid-1990s, Phillip appeared in the chorus line in Broadway musicals. Ali would occasionally visit. They cannot have seen each other often, because the actor once said he could count on 10 fingers the number of times the two of them were together. “But I always really respected and admired what my dad was doing,” he tells me. Ali grew up close to his mother until he was in his early 20s, at which point there was a difficult breach over religion. “We lost a lot of years. Being in a relationship with God through Christianity had carried me for a period of time,” he remembers. “And then I felt like I needed to understand something deeper. So I went through a process of digging through different religions and philosophies, and ways of connecting to God. And that ended up being Islam for me.” He converted at the start of 2000, changing his name from Gilmore to Ali. His mother was upset and many of his friends were politely confused. But on the whole, Ali recalls, “it didn’t necessarily seem that deep a thing to do. And then 9/11 happened.” Moving through airports became difficult. After a few years of being taken aside at security gates, Ali learned that his name was on a watch list for air travel. Meanwhile, his wife, also a practising Muslim, had stopped wearing a headscarf on city streets: too much grief. There was trouble with the couple’s bank account, their funds had been mysteriously frozen, Ali was told. Having grown up with that “double consciousness” about his race, he watched his religion become another thing that conservatives in America flinched from. He wondered how it would affect his work and tells me he decided to compartmentalise his faith, keeping it separate from his burgeoning acting career, “making sure the work was the work and my spiritual space was my spiritual space”. In fact the two things – the work and the faith – were on a funny sort of collision course that would take years to play out. Ali might have been a professional basketballer, having once been good enough to earn a scholarship to a private college in California. He was OK, he says, “but I don’t think I had the approach or mentality that would sustain a successful sporting career”. As a student he’d started writing poetry, sometimes performing it, and, “I was sort of caught between the worlds, where I think my mentality was more suited for the arts over athletics.” He enrolled on a graduate course in drama at New York University, and afterwards hung around long enough to play a boxer in an off-Broadway show, before moving back to Los Angeles. His third-tier Hollywood career began on a TV drama called Crossing Jordan. (“I was the black guy on the show,” Ali once said. “That was kind of it.”) More forgettable TV shows followed, and occasionally he got middle-size parts in middle-quality films, such as The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and The Place Beyond The Pines. At one point he released a rap album. In 2012, vaguely hoping for a bounce in name recognition, he shortened that astonishing name from Mahershalalhashbaz to Mahershala. (Pronounced correctly it’s Ma-HER-sha-la.) Between episodes of House Of Cards, he played a military grunt in a couple of Hunger Games movies. He’d hoped for more. I was a person they felt enough respect for to honour with an award – well, I’m not that different from the people not allowed into America The actor was in his agent’s office when he first read the script for Moonlight, a heavily autobiographical work by the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney about a Miami schoolboy called Chiron, persecuted for being gay. Ali was told there might be a part for him in the film as a drug dealer, Juan, who becomes a father figure to Chiron. For 15 years Ali had been in auditions that called for a muscular black man to play a criminal, and he might have hesitated – but something about the character of Juan felt different, more nuanced. Ali later said he had a “visceral reaction” to McCraney’s script. Shot by the director Barry Jenkins in late 2015, audiences had a similarly visceral reaction to Moonlight when it began to play at festivals in 2016, and the momentum continued through to Oscars night in 2017, Ali and his colleagues scooping up nominations at the Golden Globes, the Baftas and the Screen Actors Guild awards. The SAG ceremony took place in January 2017, at the end of a difficult weekend. President Trump had just unveiled the policy that became known as his “Muslim travel ban”. Ali had a lot going on in his life (the baby was due, the Oscar was due) and he could have been forgiven for ignoring the politics of the moment. But it was rare for a Muslim actor even to be nominated at these ceremonies, and on the way to the SAG awards he kept thinking about Trump’s travel ban. The actor didn’t fancy declaiming or fist-waving – not his style. At the same time he felt it worth pointing out that here he was, up for famous prizes, “and if I was a person they felt enough respect for to honour with an award, well, I’m not that different from those people that are not allowed to travel into the country”. When he won, Ali wound up telling a story about his mother. Tender, as personal as it was political, the speech has since been viewed hundreds of thousands of times online. “My mother is an ordained minister,” Ali said: “I’m a Muslim. She didn’t do backflips when I called her to tell her I’d converted 17 years ago. But I tell you now, you put things to the side [and] I’m able to see her, she’s able to see me, and we love each other.” His was one of the first Muslim-American voices the country heard that weekend, certainly from within the arts, and it was a powerful moment. Talking softly from the podium about the particular pain of persecution that comes from within one’s own community, Ali’s voice cracked as he said: “I hope that we do a better job.” Two years on, it isn’t clear we are doing a better job. The US is full of renewed talk of a border wall. Europe is racking itself over Brexit. The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements have helped expose even graver social ills than were previously acknowledged. I ask Ali: if he were to get back up on a winner’s podium with this new film, would he speak to the political moment again? Characteristically, he takes a moment to consider this. He doesn’t say yes, he doesn’t say no. His daughter, born in Oscars week, is now two years old and Ali offers up a lesson he’s learned from parenting her. “It’s not like you get to say to them, ‘Hey! Don’t touch that hot stove!’ And then they never touch the stove again. You’ve got to keep drilling the message, right? You’ve got to carry on the conversation until they grow into a state of consciousness where they understand.” So we’re only at the beginning, Ali thinks. “It’s a conversation that’s gonna go on for a while yet.” • Green Book is released in the UK on 1 February. If you would like to make a comment on this piece, and be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).The raid happened before dawn, a Swat team of heavily-armed FBI agents in camouflage uniforms rushing between Florida palm trees to confront their target. The spectacle was laden with melodrama, surprisingly so given who had ordered it: Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation who has turned understatement into an art form. But for the man at the receiving end of the FBI swoop, the fireworks were entirely in keeping. Roger Stone, the political consultant indicted on seven counts on Friday in Mueller’s probe into Russia interference in the 2016 US election, is a connoisseur of political pyrotechnics. The 66-year-old was one of the “ratfuckers” who engaged in dirty tricks on behalf of Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, when he was still a teenager. From there he carved out a career in the dark arts of ruthless campaigning, working for Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and latterly Donald Trump. His attachment to Nixon is enduring, literally so in the form of the disgraced former president’s grinning face tattooed on his back. As Stone emerged from a Fort Lauderdale courthouse following his indictment later on Friday, he alluded to his hero by making the same “V for victory” pose that Nixon adopted in 1974 as he boarded Marine One for the last time. An arch conspiracy theorist, Stone embraced “fake news” before the term existed. His blurring of the lines between real and make-believe goes so far that it is hard to tell where the real Roger Stone ends and the fictitious Roger Stone begins, replete with top hat and tails, chauffeur-driven Jaguars and martinis mixed to a recipe given to him by Nixon, who in turn inherited it, like the V-sign, from Winston Churchill. “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about,” Stone said on the steps of the Florida courthouse, as though dictating his own epitaph. There are flashes of that rapscallion Stone in Mueller’s 23-page indictment. The document quotes a text message sent by Stone to a person alleged to be his go-between with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. In it, Stone circles back yet again to Nixon as he tries to persuade the intermediary to keep his mouth shut when facing investigators. “Stonewall it,” the text says. ‘Plead the fifth. Anything to save the plan … Richard Nixon.” In further attempts allegedly to lean on the individual – dubbed “Person 2” in the indictment but presumed to be the radio host Randy Credico – Stone drew on a character from The Godfather: Part II. Do a “Frank Pentangeli” he exhorted, referring to the movie mobster who under duress retracts his testimony against mafia boss Michael Corleone in front of a congressional committee. The new charges concentrate on Stone’s alleged lies about his actions concerning WikiLeaks and its release of thousands of Democratic emails reportedly hacked by Russian agents during the 2016 election. Seasoned observers of Stone will be less than astonished by such accusations, given his relativist approach to right and wrong. As he told the Guardian in 2017: “One man’s dirty trick is another man’s civic participation.” But Mueller goes much further. He presents a mass of detail alleging Stone was proactive both in seeking information about WikiLeaks’ hacked material and, crucially, in passing that information to senior figures within the Trump campaign. As such, Stone acts as a lightning conductor, channeling the legal peril posed by Mueller deep into the heart of Trump’s inner circle. After the first tranche of stolen Democratic emails was released by WikiLeaks in July 2016, Mueller notes, “a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases … Stone thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by [WikiLeaks].” “Directed”: the word will send shivers down White House spines. Though the individual who did the directing remains a mystery, speculation will inevitably veer towards the occupant of the Oval Office. Trump and Stone go back decades. Stone first urged the real estate developer to stand for president in the 1980s, was Trump’s main adviser when he toyed with running in 2000, and duly entered the presidential campaign when Trump took the leap in 2015. The pair are natural allies. Stone’s adoration of Nixon as a political strongman is shared by Trump. They both see themselves as outsiders; are attracted to conspiracy theories – the “birther” lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya was propagated by both; and have a profoundly relaxed approach to veracity. Stone calls himself a “fervent supporter” of the president and “one of his oldest friends”. Trump, by contrast, sensing danger perhaps, has tried to put distance between them. In 2008 he told the New Yorker: “Roger is a stone-cold loser.” He went on to complain that Stone “always tries taking credit for things he never did”, inadvertently pointing towards another quality they have in common. Stone quit the Trump campaign in August 2015. Was he fired, did he walk? The reality was, true to form, opaque. But even after departing, as Mueller spells out, Stone kept in close touch with senior figures such as Steve Bannon. On the steps of the Fort Lauderdale courthouse following his indictment, Stone proclaimed himself “not guilty”. He declared: “I will not testify against the president”. As a statement of intent, it was entirely unambiguous. Donald Trump should be worried.Dhanakosa, on the banks of beautiful Loch Voil, near Balquhidder in central Scotland, is truly a place to stop, breathe, unwind and take stock. Amid the glorious scenery, you eat delicious, healthy vegetarian meals (and can even take a recipe book home), do yoga, hill walk, learn to meditate or reinvigorate your practice and your life. It’s the perfect place to come if you just want some time out to reset yourself. I’ve come here for the weekend and for a week. They operate on the Buddhist principle of Dana or generosity. You pay the deposit of £75 (for a week) or £50 (weekend) and then from a suggested scale (from £285 to £445 for a week). It’s a magical place. • dhanakosa.com Carolann Every week we ask our readers for recommendations from their travels. A selection of tips will be featured online and may appear in print, and the best entry each week (as chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet) wins a £200 voucher from hotels.com. To enter the latest competition visit the readers' tips homepage The Mandala Ashram in south-west Wales calls itself a “home for seekers” – and it really lives its values, offering a screen-free, turmeric-rich environment with a rule of silence from 9pm to breakfast, after which you’re allocated a task to help the community function. You’re invited to use this work to meditate on the values of “right-living” – even when off your yoga mat. If you manage to shatter two glass shelves as you clean out the fridge – as I did – you are supported in reflecting on mindfulness. • Three-day retreat £235 full-board, mandalayogaashram.co.ukElizabeth Gowing After a short but destructive relationship broke me I Googled “place to go when you are tired” and found Raw Horizons, near Thirsk in North Yorkshire. I spent five days and nights with five other women (all were there for different reasons) plus the life coach and her mum in their beautiful private house. While doing things I have never done before (guided meditation, daily yoga, collaging, goddess dancing and raw eating) I rediscovered my inner strength and mojo for life. Modern UK life is difficult, so I wish everyone had the opportunity to take time out like this.• From £1,195, rawhorizons.co.ukDee Moniack Mhor, in the Highlands near Inverness, offers a five-day untutored writing retreat that had everything I needed. Peace, quiet, walks, sunsets, poetry library, whisky, fires, ghost stories, other writers and haggis. It’s brilliant value for money, and the staff are exceptional, giving you just the right support. I can honestly say it changed my life – I quit my job soon after I came back and am heading back to Scotland soon. • £350 for five days full-board, moniackmhor.org.ukKitty I spent four days at a lakeside yoga retreat in the wild forest of Bergslagen, a two-hour drive from Stockholm. The enchanting setting offers a nourishing immersion into Nordic nature, yoga and spirituality. From the moment I arrived, I went offline, replacing screen time with yoga, meditation, forest walks, wild swimming, kirtan (shared recitation) and journalling. Highlights included a floating wood-fired sauna and wholesome vegetarian meals, inspired by Ayurveda (holistic healing). Shambala is an invitation to step away from the humdrum of routine, to live in communion with nature and reconnect to self. • £500 for four-day retreat, shambalagatherings.comKate Bullen Going on the Kaliyoga retreat in Orgiva was the best decision I ever made. Twice a day we practised yoga in a space that opened on to the beautiful Andalucian countryside, in a group that ranged from complete yoga newbies to qualified teachers. When we weren’t perfecting our downward-facing dogs we were taken on guided walks in the breathtaking Alpujarras and ate delicious vegetarian food. We slept in tipis. Thank you Kaliyoga – what a week!• Week from £895 full-board, kaliyoga.comSarah Brodie Meditation at dawn as the first swifts scream through blue skies. Morning walks through cool cork forests into the Andalucian hills. Back in time for freshly cooked paella under the shade of the kitchen patio. A short siesta, and then time to put into writing the sheer joy and exhilaration of this new-found experience. It is run by the amazing Elaine Kingett, who guides, lovingly, words you didn’t know you could articulate. It’s held at a finca near Seville , where Sam, Jeannie and Charlie Chesterton make you feel like family. I’m still writing.• Week from £1,550 full-board including wine, cocktails, and local transport, write-it-down.co.uk Jenni I went alone to Kopan Buddhist monastery, near Kathmandu, for two weeks to learn meditation and mindfulness but once there found myself among a hundred like-minded people from all over the world. We started early morning meditation with different meditation techniques. We had silence inner peace and happiness. I found my real self and it has empowered me to be able to control my mind. It cost only £85 for two weeks’ accommodation, all veggie-fantastic meals and meditation and mindfulness training by monks. Best experience of my life. • kopanmonastery.comCatherine McCauley Among a bewildering growth of dubious yoga retreats across India, the Meenakshi ashram, a short bus/rickshaw ride out of Madurai, is honest and peaceful. For about £47 a day, you get five hours of well-taught yoga, a clean bed and two simple vegetarian meals. Dawn meditation among a medley of cicada song and jasmine blossom provided a sense of peace I still often think about. Go with an open mind and a sense of humour. Throw yourself into the chanting, temple visits and enjoy some random lessons on life and the universe from a charismatic sadhu. I always smile when I remember my visit. • sivananda.org.in/maduraiBeth The Wonderland Healing Centre on the island of Kho Phangan offers yoga, meditation, detox, delicious fully vegan food and many alternative therapy treatments … it’s truly a wonderland! I spent seven nights here during a year-long backpacking trip around the world and didn’t want to leave. It completely rejuvenated me (I am much older than the average backpacker) and almost a year on I’m still drawing on stuff I learned there.• Week in a four-bed dorm £378 full-board, Wonderlandhc.comValIt’s not inevitable that the romance will die in a long-term relationship, but things do change. When you first meet someone, you focus on them entirely, want to spend all your time with them and have a lot of sex. That crazy, romantic love settles down within six months to two years. Other things get in the way, such as work and children. And unexpected challenges, such as bereavements or financial pressures, can test a relationship. You need to focus on keeping your relationship alive. As a counsellor, I always say to my clients: “You need to invest as much energy and time in your relationship as you do for anything else, whether it’s your work, studies, children or friends.” Schedule time together, for just the two of you. That might be date nights or weekends away, or it might be creating new interests together, such as rock climbing or going to gigs. A shared calendar is a good idea, so you are aware of the other person’s schedule. And be considerate. If you’re going out with friends after work, send your partner a message and let them know. It shows you’re thinking of them. Think about how you’re communicating with your partner. Does your partner often misunderstand what you’re saying? Do you tend to leave issues unresolved? Unresolved issues have a tendency to mount up. Something that might not have started as a massive problem – your partner’s chronic lateness, say – can become one if you don’t discuss it. If you still end up arguing, try to see things from the other person’s perspective. Most of us find that extremely hard. Ask your partner what makes them feel loved. Is it you cleaning their car? Taking the kids to the park on a Sunday so they can have a lie-in? Do it for them. Often, people need to hear verbal expressions of love. Tell them that you love them, unprompted. Give them a hug or bring them a cup of coffee. Little things like that make a huge difference. You should never try to change your partner’s personality, because it was that personality that you fell in love with. But that doesn’t mean you can’t identify behaviours you don’t like. For example, if they are very impatient and always interrupt you when you’re speaking, tell them: “When you interrupt me, it makes me feel as if what I’m saying isn’t important.” You can’t knock the impatience entirely out of their personality, but you can work on the interrupting. Try to recognise the positive things your partner does. You can fall into the habit of expecting them to be good to you, and complaining when they’re not perfect. Take stock of the nice things they do. The main things that kill relationships are criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt. Defensiveness is often a response to previous criticism, so when you’re communicating with your partner, be very careful that they don’t feel that you’re attacking their character. And vice versa: if your partner is annoyed at you for something you have done, try to hear what they are saying. Although communication is key, sometimes you need to bite your tongue. Perhaps the way your partner makes the bed really annoys you. Is there something wrong with the bed or is it that you have a way of doing things that you prefer? Even if you don’t like how they have made the bed, they have made an effort to do it, so say thanks. Most people hate to schedule sex, but spontaneity doesn’t always work. In the same way that you set aside time for the gym or hobbies, set aside time for sex – or, if that makes you uncomfortable, some form of physical intimacy. Say: “On Wednesday night we’re going to get into bed together and just be close, even if it’s only kissing, cuddling or massaging each other.” That can lessen the pressure to perform. And if you’re having sexual difficulties, such as erectile dysfunction, get some professional help. Don’t think that going to a hotel for a dirty weekend will be a quick fix. If your sex life is basically good and you want to spice it up a little, then a hotel is great. But if you have got issues around sex, or more broadly in your relationship, a dirty weekend won’t help, because you need to work on those issues first. If you’re thinking: “I’d like to have sex with other people,” think about how you can bring those desires into the relationship. It might be that there are certain things you would like to try, but don’t feel comfortable raising with your partner. Now is the time to say: “What about trying this?” When your life is busy, and you have got burdens and commitments such as kids or elderly parents, it’s easy to put your relationship on the backburner. But that’s a mistake; it needs to be a priority. Because if your relationship is good, other things become more manageable. There is someone who has got your back, and will support you. It makes life that little bit easier. Miranda Christophers was speaking to Sirin Kale.Thousands of protesters will take to the streets across the US on Saturday to resist Donald Trump and stand up for women’s rights at the third annual Women’s March. Though this year’s event has been marred by controversy, participants will seek to channel the spirit of the first massive march in 2017 that saw hundreds of thousands of protests take over the nation’s capital the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, spurring activism and political campaigns by women around the country. “It’s time to march again. The 2017 Women’s March inspired hundreds of women to run, millions more to vote, and dozens to win elected office. The 2019 Women’s March marks two years of resistance to the Trump presidency, two years of training new activists, and two years of building power,” the Women’s March says on its website. “And this time, we’re coming back with an agenda.” Organizers plan to unveil a 10-part federal policy platform dubbed the Women’s Agenda at the event, with proposals on combating violence against women, reproductive rights, and racial and economic fairness. “Women are just not on the agenda in this current administration,” the Women’s March chief operating officer, Rachel Carmona, said. Last year, organizers hosted a Las Vegas event, focusing their efforts on turning out voters in a midterm election year. This year, the main event will again be in Washington DC, kicking off at Freedom Plaza near the White House. Speakers are set to include the professor and activist Angela Davis, film-maker Michael Moore, actors Scarlett Johansson and America Ferrera, and feminist writer Gloria Steinem. Companion marches and rallies are also planned in cities and towns around the country, from New York to Seattle. But controversy and infighting have threatened to overshadow this year’s march, as organizers fend off accusations of antisemitism. Tamika Mallory, one of the co-chairs of the Women’s March leadership, drew criticism after she posted a photo on Instagram of herself with the Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, calling him “the GOAT”, which stands for greatest of all time. Farrakhan has a long history of antisemitic comments, including saying, “the powerful Jews are my enemy”. Tablet magazine reported that at a meeting early in the planning of the original Women’s March, Mallory and another co-chair, Carmen Perez, argued that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility for the exploitation of black and brown people, and were leaders of the American slave trade, a theory promoted by the Nation of Islam. They have denied making those comments. In New York, there will be two separate events on Saturday because of rifts between organizers. Organizers decided not to host a march this year in Chicago. In Eureka, California, supporters opted not to hold a rally out of concern it would be “overwhelmingly white”. In an appearance this week on ABC’s The View, Mallory said she “does not agree” with many of Farrakhan’s statements, but declined when pressed to directly condemn them. “I didn’t call him the greatest of all time because of his rhetoric. I called him the greatest of all time because of what he’s done in black communities,” she said. Bob Bland, another co-chair, said the march “unequivocally condemns antisemitism” and sought to keep the focus on the event’s broader message. “These are the leaders we’ve been waiting for,” she said of women inspired by the movement to get into politics. “We always wanted to see these women become the face of our leadership and the face of the nation, and I think that’s what we saw in the midterm elections, where we saw a historical outpouring of thousands of women running for office.” Reuters contributed to this report.A nine-year-old girl in Japan will become the youngest-ever professional player of the strategy board game go when she makes her debut later this year. Sumire Nakamura, who attends primary school in Osaka, started playing go at the age of three and will start her career at the lowest rank of shodan on 1 April, according to Japanese media. She will comfortably beat the record for the youngest professional held by Rina Fujisawa, who was aged 11 years and six months when she turned professional nine years ago. Nakamura, who was encouraged to play go by her father, Shinya, himself a ninth-degree professional player who won a national title in 1998, is the product of a special programme to nurture a new generation of top Japanese players who can compete with their Chinese and Korean counterparts in international tournaments. The primary school pupil honed her skills at tournaments involving other schoolchildren and recently sharpened her competitive edge in South Korea. Flanked by Japan Go Association officials and her parents, Sumire overcame her initial bashfulness to tell reporters at the weekend: “I’m happy when I win. I want to win a title while I’m at junior high school.” Go, which requires players to take control of territory on the board, is said to have originated in China more than 2,500 years ago and has an estimated 20 million active players, mainly in east Asia. Fans of go will be hoping that Nakamura’s extraordinary rise will boost interest the game, in the same way Sota Fujii did for shogi, a Japanese version of chess. Fujii set a record for consecutive victories in professional shogi in 2017, aged just 14, winning plaudits from the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and sparking a surge of interest in the game. Last month, Fujii won his 100th official match, becoming the youngest professional player to reach the milestone. He also completed the feat faster than any other player.Activists and lawyers in Zimbabwe fear that the brutal crackdown by security forces will continue “for the foreseeable future” as authorities seek to crush all possible opposition to the ruling Zanu-PF party. Hundreds of activists and opposition officials remain in hiding this weekend after almost two weeks of arbitrary arrests, beatings, rapes and abductions committed by police and military in the poor southern African country. The crackdown followed an outbreak of rioting and looting during a shutdown called by union leaders to protest a hike in fuel prices. So far 12 people have been killed, many more injured and between 700 and 1,500 detained. “This is not going to be over quickly. We have seen that the state have just notched up the level of oppression and that is the level they are going to be operating at for the foreseeable future,” said Doug Coltart, a human rights lawyer in Harare. The abuses are the worst seen in Zimbabwe for at least a decade and have dashed any remaining hopes that the ousting of autocratic ruler Robert Mugabe in November 2017 would lead to significant political reform. One veteran activist described the crackdown as likely to become “the new normal”. “This is going to go on for weeks, months, however long it takes for the authorities to feel sure they have made certain that there’s no real opposition left,” the activist, who requested anonymity, said. Around 20 arrests were reported on Friday and Saturday across the country, as well as scattered incidents of assault. Police appeared to be targeting poor vendors and taxi drivers. Hundreds of opposition activists are currently in hiding, or have fled overseas. “They are not just trying to arrest me, they are trying to kill me,” said Ishmael Kawzani, a former independent candidate in local elections, who has fled his home in Kuwadzana, a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Harare, the capital, which has seen repeated army dragnets in recent days. Jacob Mafume, an MDC spokesperson, said the five members of parliament, 10 councillors and more than 200 members of the party had been detained. At least six people have been charged with subversion – an unprecedented number – and so face prison sentences of up to 20 years. They include four trade union officials, an MDC parliamentarian and a well-known social media activist. “There is a kind of messaging here. They are saying: ‘We can go for your leaders, so we can go for anyone. They are saying to Zimbabweans we don’t care who you are,” said Alec Muchadehama, a lawyer representing Peter Mutasa, a senior trade union leader charged with subversion. There are also concerns about mass trials of up to 60 men and women accused of participating in riots and looting. It now appears very unlikely that Emmerson Mnangagwa, who succeeded Mugabe and won contested elections last year, will achieve his stated aim of ending Zimbabwe’s pariah status to unlock the massive financial aid necessary to avert total economic collapse. This suggests that basic commodities such as food, fuel and medicine will remain both scarce and increasingly expensive, making further protests likely. Mnangagwa cut short a trip to Europe and Asia to return to deal with the unrest and pledged dialogue with opposition groups. Authorities have defended the crackdown as a necessary measure to restore order. Labour activists and unions are considering further protests in coming weeks. Teachers have been among the most vocal advocates of further direct action to force concessions from the government over pay and conditions. However, the detention of several leaders of teachers’ unions has made mobilisation harder, officials said. On Friday the powerful Apex council, which combined dozens of civil service unions, said it would not accept the latest government offers of increased allowances and might move towards industrial action. “The unions are cautiously moving towards the front line but they will want to move with a collective position. These guys are in an invidious position because they still need to earn and protests would contribute [to] a further erosion in government services,” said Piers Pigou, a South Africa-based expert with the International Crisis Group. Lawyers are also meeting to consider their strategy in the face of the crackdown, and may demonstrate during the coming days week. “After the sheer brutality of the last two weeks, the population has been cowed into submission. Lawyers have that layer of protection that might allow them to march, though being beaten up or shot is still possible,” said Coltart.The rate at which asteroids are slamming into Earth has nearly tripled since the dinosaurs first roamed, according to a survey of the scars left behind. Researchers worked out the rate of asteroid strikes on the moon and the Earth and found that in the past 290m years the number of collisions had increased dramatically. Before that time, the planet suffered an asteroid strike about once every 3m years, but since then the rate has risen to once nearly every 1m years. The figures are based on collisions that left craters at least 10km (6.2 miles) wide. “The cratering rate changes instantaneously,” said Thomas Gernon, an Earth scientist at the University of Southampton and a fellow of the Turing Institute. “There’s an order of two to three increase in asteroid strikes from 290m years ago.” The findings suggest that the dinosaurs may have been unfortunate in evolving 240m years ago, just as the odds of being wiped out by a stray asteroid were ramping up. It was one of those impacts, on top of other factors, that did for the beasts 66m years ago. Many scientists had assumed that asteroid strikes were a rare but constant threat in Earth’s deep history, but the latest study challenges that belief. “I was surprised to see the change,” said Rebecca Ghent, a planetary scientist at the University of Toronto. “There was no reason to think that the rate would be any higher than in the past.” Writing in the journal Science, the researchers describe how they turned to the moon to examine the violent history of Earth. The Earth and moon are hit by asteroids with similar frequency, but impact craters on Earth are often erased or obscured by erosion and the shifting continents which churn up the crust. On the geologically inactive moon, impact craters are preserved almost indefinitely, making them easier to examine. Using images from Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the scientists studied the “rockiness” of the debris surrounding craters on the moon. Rocks thrown up by asteroid impacts are steadily ground down by the constant rain of micrometeorites that pours down on the moon. This means the state of the rocks around a crater can be used to date it. “When you have a fresh impact you get a lot of large rocks that sit around the crater, but over time they get bombarded by small micrometeorites and are transformed into lunar regolith,” said Sara Mazrouei, the first author of the paper and a planetary scientist at Toronto. The dates revealed that the moon, and by extension the Earth, has suffered more intense asteroid bombardment in the past 290m years than at any time in the previous billion. On Earth there are hardly any impact craters older than 650m years, most likely because they were eroded when the planet became encased in ice in an event known as Snowball Earth. Christian Köberl, director general of the Natural History Museum in Vienna – who was not involved in the study, said that while there appeared to be a rise in asteroid strikes in the past few hundred million years, the lack of craters on Earth older than 650m years “must be homemade, as a result of terrestrial geological processes”. William Bottke, a researcher on the team at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, said the uptick in asteroid strikes was probably caused by one or more giant space rocks breaking up in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter about 300m years ago. When asteroids collide they produce a swarm of fragments that can find their way on to collision courses with the Earth or moon. “If the initial breakup is large enough, the increase in impacts can last for hundreds of millions of years,” he said. The question now is whether the rate of asteroid strikes is still rising, or perhaps falling back to a lower level. Either way, Ghent believes there is no cause for alarm. “Because large impacts are very rare in the first place, even if you double or triple the probability they are still very rare,” she said.Having distanced himself from politics in October, Kanye West welcomed the new year by reaffirming his support for Donald Trump in a series of tweets. “Trump all day,” West posted, followed by a tweet containing three dragon emojis, an apparent reference to his description of himself and the US president sharing “dragon energy”. A further tweet stated: “Just so in 2019 you know where I stand.” He affirmed, “From now on I’m performing with my mutherfucking hat on,” in reference to the Make America Great Again hat associated with Trump’s presidential campaign that he frequently wore in 2018. In December, Pusha T – whose 2018 album Daytona was produced by West – told The Daily Show that West had stopped wearing the hat. Pusha T has described the accessory as “this generation’s Ku Klux hood”. West explained his attraction to the Maga hat: “One of my favorite of many things about what the Trump hat represents to me is that people can’t tell me what to do because I’m black.” In late October, West – stung by ultra-conservative commentator Candace Owens falsely claiming he had described the logo for her “Blexit” campaign designed to deter black Americans from voting Democrat – said: “My eyes are now wide open and now realize I’ve been used to spread messages I don’t believe in. I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative!!!” However, yesterday West warmed once again to the theme: “Blacks are 90% Democrats,” he tweeted (a Pew Research Center poll cited 90% of black voters supporting the Democrats in the 2018 House of Representatives race), and suggested: “That sounds like control to me,” adding a suspicious face emoji. “They will not program me,” he wrote. In a tweet stating “2024”, West seemed to allude to his previously discussed ambitions to run for president. In early October, West met with Trump in the Oval Office and monologued about race relations, tax breaks, criminal justice and mental health and described the Maga hat as a “Superman cape”. West also deleted a series of tweets aimed at Drake, with whom he is feuding. One tweet called out the Canadian rapper for following his wife, Kim Kardashian West, on Instagram. Drake appears to have unfollowed the reality star. Last month, Snoop Dogg criticised West’s social media outbursts: “He acting a plum damn fool,” the rapper said in a video posted to Instagram.With its sweet melody over a beat made for couples’ dancing, Aya Nakamura’s track Djadja sounds, to anglophone ears, like a love song. With the video fast approaching 300m views on YouTube, this catchy afropop song made Nakamura’s the queen of the French urban music scene last year. But while the 23-year-old’s voice playfully switches between singing and soft rap, the bittersweet track finds Nakamura calling out a guy who has been lying about having sex with her. “You think about me while I think about making money,” she sings (in French), witheringly. “I’m not your mother / I’m not going to lecture you.” The song has been hailed as an anthem for female empowerment and taken on a life of its own: Nakamura’s image was used on posters during recent French protests confronting violence against women. Yet the singer is equivocal about the reaction. “It’s cool to be able to represent black women in France,” she says, “but I have my own way of being, my own way of doing things. There’s a problem when people say, ‘You’re the only black woman representing’ – there are others too.” Recently there has been a buzz around French artists breaking into foreign markets, including PNL, the Blaze and Christine and the Queens, but Aya represents something different. Determined and suburban, she talks about making money and dominating men much like Rihanna or Cardi B would. And unlike other French women who have come close to breaking international markets, she is not white, Arab or mixed race. She’s a black woman in an industry known to discriminate in favour of lighter-skinned artists. “Colourism exists in some way everywhere,” she says. “It’s really difficult when there are people trying to pressure you into bleaching your skin, because that’s what they want. You ask yourself: where are we? Why should I do that? This is how I am.” She adds that an idealised image of the all-powerful black woman isn’t helpful. She recently refused a selfie with a fan in Senegal because she was tired from a flight. Media and fans branded her a snob. “People have this image of the black woman who can face anything, but we are just like everyone else.” In fact Nakamura’s appeal lies partly in her demand for that kind of respect – in her song Copines, she shames a guy who has been checking out her friends – and in her music she doesn’t pretend to be approachable. She seems unfazed by the attention resulting from Djadja. “My concept isn’t about making everyone happy,” she says. “When I’m in the studio it’s about what I like ... I don’t worry about everyone getting what I’m saying.” While she appeals to the frustrations that some listeners may share about men, Nakamura also has a softer side. Last month, she released a song called La Dot, about falling for a guy, getting a dowry and wanting “the dream life”. This might seem at odds with some people’s vision of female empowerment, but as a young French Malian woman, Nakamura has her own vision of fairytale romance that speaks to a generation of young women from north and west African backgrounds in France. It takes strong sense of autonomy and self-respect and mixes it with traditional values passed on from older generations. Born Aya Danioko in Mali – Nakamura was adopted as a stage name, inspired by a character from superhero drama Heroes – she came to live in Aulnay-sous-Bois in the suburbs of Paris with her family when she was a baby. Her mother was a griotte, a traditional Malian poet or singer. “If you come from a line of griots you’re automatically categorised by that,” she says. “They tell people’s stories in the villages, and basically performed the role of the media for previous generations.” This played a big part in Nakamura’s life growing up in France. “On Sundays, the family would come together to eat a big lunch, or if there was a wedding my mum would sing there. They were ‘real’ [traditional] weddings too – that is to say, the groom’s family would have go and pay the family of the bride the dowry in order to marry her.” In her house, uncles and aunts played a big role in teaching the younger ones about Malian culture. Did these women influence the no-nonsense attitude in her music? “No, that was me,” she says. “I’ve always had quite a strong character, ever since I was little.” She is interrupted by her two-year-old daughter. “It’s like having two jobs,” she says of her life as a parent and a rising star. “I work with my family; it’s very complicated but it’s OK.” Nakamura pushes back on the suggestion that she is continuing the griot tradition, clarifying that what she does is a little different. Her song about Grammy-award winning Malian singer Oumou Sangaré pays homage to a woman who she grew up admiring, and Sangaré features in the video for the track. “She’s a singer, a businesswoman and she really represents Malian women,” she says passionately. “I really went into fan mode when I met her – she was so beautiful and she really got what I was doing.” Her success over the past year may have pushed her into the spotlight and exposed her to pressure to meet others’ expectations, but Nakamura is adamant that her motivation lies closer to home: “I really want to show my daughter my story and let her know who we are.”Two people have been killed and nearly 40 detained in a new crackdown on LGBT people in Russia’s Chechnya region, activists have said. The deaths were reportedly caused by the use of torture by police. The reports on Monday echo those from 2017, when hundreds of gay men were rounded up by police in Chechnya and subjected to beatings and electric shocks in secret prisons, provoking international condemnation and sanctions. If confirmed, the new detentions and killings would show that pressure on Russia and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has not dissuaded him from presiding over modern-day pogroms against LGBT people in the conservative republic. The Russian LGBT Network, a St Petersburg-based NGO that campaigns for equal rights for sexual minorities in Russia, led an effort to evacuate LGBT people from Chechnya in 2017. The NGO maintains an extensive network of contacts among Russia’s LGBT community. The new wave of persecution began in late December, according to the Russian LGBT Network, after an administrator for an online group for LGBT people on the social network VKontakte was detained. Police used the contacts in his phone to round up others. Those detained included both men and women, said Igor Kochetkov, the programme director for the Russian LGBT Network. Police used a jail in the town of Argun to hold the prisoners, took their documents to prevent them from leaving the region, and threatened violence against relatives to prevent them from speaking publicly about the crackdown. “The persecution of men and women suspected of homosexuality never ceased,” Kochetkov said. “The only thing that has changed is its scale.” The reports were partially confirmed by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which said its sources confirmed a new crackdown on LGBT people in Chechnya and quoted a message posted on one VKontakte group: “I ask everyone who is still free to treat this message seriously and get out of the republic as soon as possible.” Previous victims have described the brutal tactics used by Chechen law enforcement against LGBT people in the republic. One young Chechen man said he had been beaten with metal rods, subjected to electric shocks and verbally abused for his sexual orientation. Three young men were reportedly killed in that crackdown. Another victim, Maksim Lapunov, said he had been beaten with batons while having a plastic bag pulled over his head. He was the first to make a formal complaint to Russia’s investigative committee, which so far has not opened a criminal case in relation to the reports. The reports led to international outrage and sanctions against Kadyrov, who was targeted in late 2017 under the US Magnitsky Act for supporting “extrajudicial killings” and an “anti-gay purge”. Kadyrov has denied the purge took place but also told one interviewer that gay people in Chechnya should be removed “to cleanse our blood”.Last year a Dutch doctor called Bert Keizer was summoned to the house of a man dying of lung cancer, in order to end his life. When Keizer and the nurse who was to assist him arrived, they found around 35 people gathered around the dying man’s bed. “They were drinking and guffawing and crying,” Keizer told me when I met him in Amsterdam recently. “It was boisterous. And I thought: ‘How am I going to cleave the waters?’ But the man knew exactly what to do. Suddenly he said, ‘OK, guys!’ and everyone understood. Everyone fell silent. The very small children were taken out of the room and I gave him his injection. I could have kissed him, because I wouldn’t have known how to break up the party.” Keizer is one of around 60 physicians on the books of the Levenseindekliniek, or End of Life Clinic, which matches doctors willing to perform euthanasia with patients seeking an end to their lives, and which was responsible for the euthanasia of some 750 people in 2017. For Keizer, who was a philosopher before studying medicine, the advent of widespread access to euthanasia represents a new era. “For the first time in history,” he told me, “we have developed a space where people move towards death while we are touching them and they are in our midst. That’s completely different from killing yourself when your wife’s out shopping and the kids are at school and you hang yourself in the library – which is the most horrible way of doing it, because the wound never heals. The fact that you are a person means that you are linked to other people. And we have found a bearable way of severing that link, not by a natural death, but by a self-willed ending. It’s a very special thing.” This “special thing” has in fact become normal. Everyone in the Netherlands seems to have known someone who has been euthanised, and the kind of choreographed farewell that Keizer describes is far from unusual. Certainly, the idea that we humans have a variety of deaths to choose from is more familiar in the Netherlands than anywhere else. But the long-term consequences of this idea are only just becoming discernible. Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands for long enough to show what can happen after the practice beds in. And as an end-of-life specialist in a nation that has for decades been the standard bearer of libertarian reform, Keizer may be a witness to the future that awaits us all. In 2002, the parliament in the Hague legalised euthanasia for patients experiencing “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement”. Since then, euthanasia and its close relation, assisted dying, in which one person facilitates the suicide of another, have been embraced by Belgium and Canada, while public opinion in many countries where it isn’t on the national statute, such as Britain, the US and New Zealand, has swung heavily in favour. The momentum of euthanasia appears unstoppable; after Colombia, in 2015, and the Australian state of Victoria, in 2017, Spain may be the next big jurisdiction to legalise physician-assisted death, while one in six Americans (the majority of them in California) live in states where it is legal. In Switzerland, which has the world’s oldest assisted dying laws, foreigners are also able to obtain euthanasia. If western society continues to follow the Dutch, Belgian and Canadian examples, there is every chance that in a few decades’ time euthanasia will be one widely available option from a menu of possible deaths, including an “end of life” poison pill available on demand to anyone who finds life unbearable. For many greying baby boomers – veterans of earlier struggles to legalise abortion and contraception – a civilised death at a time of their choosing is a right that the state should provide and regulate. As this generation enters its final years, the precept that life is precious irrespective of one’s medical condition is being called into question as never before. As the world’s pioneer, the Netherlands has also discovered that although legalising euthanasia might resolve one ethical conundrum, it opens a can of others – most importantly, where the limits of the practice should be drawn. In the past few years a small but influential group of academics and jurists have raised the alarm over what is generally referred to, a little archly, as the “slippery slope” – the idea that a measure introduced to provide relief to late-stage cancer patients has expanded to include people who might otherwise live for many years, from sufferers of muscle-wasting diseases such as multiple sclerosis to sexagenarians with dementia and even mentally ill young people. Perhaps the most prominent of these sceptics is Theo Boer, who teaches ethics at the Theological University of Kampen. Between 2005 and 2014, Boer was a member of one of the five regional boards that were set up to review every act of euthanasia and hand cases over to prosecutors if irregularities are detected. (Each review board is composed of a lawyer, a doctor and an ethicist.) Recent government figures suggest that doubts over the direction of Dutch euthanasia are having an effect on the willingness of doctors to perform the procedure. In November, the health ministry revealed that in the first nine months of 2018 the number of cases was down 9% compared to the same period in 2017, the first drop since 2006. In a related sign of a more hostile legal environment, shortly afterwards the judiciary announced the first prosecution of a doctor for malpractice while administering euthanasia. It is too early to say if euthanasia in the Netherlands has reached a high-water mark – and too early to say if the other countries that are currently making it easier to have an assisted death will also hesitate if the practice comes to be seen as too widespread. But it is significant that in addition to the passionate advocacy of Bert Keizer – who positively welcomes the “slippery slope” – Boer’s more critical views are being solicited by foreign parliamentarians and ethicists who are considering legal changes in their own countries. As Boer explained to me, “when I’m showing the statistics to people in Portugal or Iceland or wherever, I say: ‘Look closely at the Netherlands because this is where your country may be 20 years from now.’” “The process of bringing in euthanasia legislation began with a desire to deal with the most heartbreaking cases – really terrible forms of death,” Boer said. “But there have been important changes in the way the law is applied. We have put in motion something that we have now discovered has more consequences than we ever imagined.” Bert Keizer carried out his first euthanasia in 1984. Back then, when he was working as a doctor in a care home, ending the life of a desperately ill person at their request was illegal, even if prosecutions were rare. When a retired shoemaker called Antonius Albertus, who was dying of lung cancer, asked to be put out of his misery, Keizer found that two sides of himself – the law-abiding doctor and the altruist – were at odds. “Antonius wasn’t in pain,” Keizer told me, “but he had that particular exhaustion that every oncologist knows, a harrowing exhaustion, and I saw him dwindle before me.” In the event, Keizer, who as an 11-year-old watched his mother suffer an excruciating death from liver disease, went with the altruist. He injected 40mg of Valium into Antonius – enough to put him in a coma – then gave him the anti-respiratory drug that ended his life. Keizer was not investigated after reporting an unnatural death at his own hand, and his career did not suffer as he feared it might. But what, I asked him, had prompted him to break the law, and violate a principle – the preservation of life – that has defined medical ethics since Hippocrates? Keizer paused to brush away a spider that had crawled uninvited on to my shoulder. “It was something very selfish,” he replied. “If ever I was in his situation, asking for death, I would want people to listen to me, and not say, ‘It cannot be done because of the law or the Bible.’” Over the past few decades the Bible has been increasingly sidelined, and the law has vindicated the young doctor who put Antonius to sleep. As people got used to the new law, the number of Dutch people being euthanised began to rise sharply, from under 2,000 in 2007 to almost 6,600 in 2017. (Around the same number are estimated to have had their euthanasia request turned down as not conforming with the legal requirements.) Also in 2017, some 1,900 Dutch people killed themselves, while the number of people who died under palliative sedation – in theory, succumbing to their illness while cocooned from physical discomfort, but in practice often dying of dehydration while unconscious – hit an astonishing 32,000. Altogether, well over a quarter of all deaths in 2017 in the Netherlands were induced. One of the reasons why euthanasia became more common after 2007 is that the range of conditions considered eligible expanded, while the definition of “unbearable suffering” that is central to the law was also loosened. At the same time, murmurs of apprehension began to be heard, which, even in the marvellously decorous chamber of Dutch public debate, have risen in volume. Concerns centre on two issues with strong relevance to euthanasia: dementia and autonomy. Many Dutch people write advance directives that stipulate that if their mental state later deteriorates beyond a certain point – if, say, they are unable to recognise family members – they are to be euthanised regardless of whether they dissent from their original wishes. But Last January a medical ethicist called Berna Van Baarsen caused a stir when she resigned from one of the review boards in protest at the growing frequency with which dementia sufferers are being euthanised on the basis of a written directive that they are unable to confirm after losing their faculties. “It is fundamentally impossible,” she told the newspaper Trouw, “to establish that the patient is suffering unbearably, because he can no longer explain it.” Van Baarsen’s scruples have crystallised in the country’s first euthanasia malpractice case, which prosecutors are now preparing. (Three further cases are currently under investigation.) It involves a dementia sufferer who had asked to be killed when the “time” was “right”, but when her doctor judged this to be the case, she resisted. The patient had to be drugged and restrained by her family before she finally submitted to the doctor’s fatal injection. The doctor who administered the dose – who has not been identified – has defended her actions by saying that she was fulfilling her patient’s request and that, since the patient was incompetent, her protests before her death were irrelevant. Whatever the legal merits of her argument, it hardly changes what must have been a scene of unutterable grimness. The underlying problem with the advance directives is that they imply the subordination of an irrational human being to their rational former self, essentially splitting a single person into two mutually opposed ones. Many doctors, having watched patients adapt to circumstances they had once expected to find intolerable, doubt whether anyone can accurately predict what they will want after their condition worsens. The second conflict that has crept in as euthanasia has been normalised is a societal one. It comes up when there is an opposition between the right of the individual and society’s obligation to protect lives. “The euthanasia requests that are the most problematic,” explains Agnes van der Heide, professor of medical care and end-of-life decision-making at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, “are those that are based on the patient’s autonomy, which leads them to tell the doctor: ‘You aren’t the one to judge whether I am to die.’” She doesn’t expect this impulse, already strong among baby boomers, to diminish among coming generations. “For our young people, the autonomy principle is at the forefront of their thinking.” The growing divisions over euthanasia are being reflected in the deliberations of the review boards. Consensus is rarer than it was when the only cases that came before them involved patients with late-stage terminal illnesses, who were of sound mind. Since her resignation, Berna Van Baarsen has complained that “legal arguments weigh more and more heavily” on the committees, “while the moral question of whether in certain cases good is done by killing, threatens to get snowed under”. In this new, more ambiguous environment, the recent dip in euthanasia numbers doesn’t seem surprising. Besides their fear of attracting prosecutors’ attention, some doctors have been irked by the growing public perception that they are no-questions-asked purveyors of dignified death, and are pushing back. For Dutch GPs, fielding demands for euthanasia from assertive patients who resent the slightest reluctance on the part of their physician has become one of the more disagreeable aspects of their job. “In the coldest weeks of last winter,” Theo Boer told me, “a doctor friend of mine was told by an elderly patient: ‘I demand to have euthanasia this week – you promised.’ The doctor replied: ‘It’s -15C outside. Take a bottle of whisky and sit in your garden and we will find you tomorrow, because I cannot accept that you make me responsible for your own suicide.’ The doctor in question, Boer said, used to perform euthanasia on around three people a year. He has now stopped altogether. Although he supported the 2002 euthanasia law at the time, Boer now regrets that it didn’t stipulate that the patient must be competent at the time of termination, and that if possible the patient should administer the fatal dose themselves. Boer is also concerned about the psychological effect on doctors of killing someone with a substantial life expectancy: “When you euthanise a final-stage cancer patient, you know that even if your decision is problematic, that person would have died anyway. But when that person might have lived decades, what is always in your mind is that they might have found a new balance in their life.” In November 2016, Monique and Bert de Gooijer, a couple from Tilburg, became minor celebrities when a regional paper, the Brabants Dagblad, devoted an entire issue to the euthanasia of their son, an obese, darkly humorous, profoundly disturbed 38-year-old called Eelco. His euthanasia was one of the first high-profile cases involving a young person suffering from mental illness. Of the hundreds of reactions the newspaper received, most of them supportive, the one that made the biggest impression on the de Gooijers came from a woman whose daughter had gone out one day, taking the empty bottles to the store, and walked in front of a train. “She envied us,” Monique told me as I sat with her and Bert in their front room, “because she didn’t know why her daughter had done it. She said: ‘You were able to ask Eelco every question you had. I have only questions.’” Privately, even surreptitiously undertaken, suicide leaves behind shattered lives. Even when it goes according to plan, someone finds a body. That openly discussed euthanasia can cushion or even obviate much of this hurt is something I hadn’t really considered before meeting the de Gooijers. Nor had I fully savoured the irony that suicide, with its high risk of failure and collateral damage, was illegal across Europe until a few decades ago, while euthanasia, with its apparently more benign – at least, more manageable – consequences, remains illegal in most countries. Whatever the act of killing a physically healthy young man tells us about Dutch views of human wellbeing, the demise of Eelco de Gooijer didn’t traumatise a train driver or a weekender fishing in a canal. Eelco was euthanised only after long thought and discussions with his family. He enjoyed a good laugh with the undertaker who had come to take his measurements for a super-size coffin. He was able to say farewell to everyone who loved him, and he died, as Monique and Bert assured me, at peace. There might be a word for this kind of suicide, the kind that is acceptable to all parties. Call it consensual. “You try to make your child happy,” Monique said in her matter-of-fact way, “but Eelco wasn’t happy in life. He wanted to stop suffering, and death was the only way.” Eelco came of age just as euthanasia was being legalised. After years of being examined by psychiatrists who made multiple diagnoses and prescribed a variety of ineffective remedies, he began pestering the doctors of Tilburg to end his life. Euthanasia is counted as a basic health service, covered by the monthly premium that every citizen pays to his or her insurance company. But doctors are within their rights not to carry it out. Unique among medical procedures, a successful euthanasia isn’t something you can assess with your patient after the event. A small minority of doctors refuse to perform it for this reason, and others because of religious qualms. Some simply cannot get their heads around the idea that they must kill people they came into medicine in order to save. Those who demur on principle are a small proportion of the profession, perhaps less than 8%, according to the end-of-life specialist Agnes van der Heide. The reason why there is no uniformity of response to requests for euthanasia is that the doctor’s personal views – on what constitutes “unbearable suffering”, for instance – often weigh decisively. As the most solemn and consequential intervention a Dutch physician can be asked to make, and this in a profession that aims to standardise responses to all eventualities, the decision to kill is oddly contingent on a single, mercurial human conscience. A category of euthanasia request that Dutch doctors commonly reject is that of a mentally ill person whose desire to die could be interpreted as a symptom of a treatable psychiatric disease – Eelco de Gooijer, in other words. Eelco was turned down by two doctors in Tilburg; one of them balked at doing the deed because she was pregnant. In desperation, Eelco turned to the Levenseindekliniek. With its ideological commitment to euthanasia and cadre of specialist doctors, it has done much to help widen the scope of the practice, and one of its teams ended Eelco’s misery on 23 November 2016. A second team from the same clinic killed another psychologically disturbed youngster, Aurelia Brouwers, early last year. Ideally euthanasia is a structure with three struts: patient, doctor and the patient’s loved ones. In the case of Eelco de Gooijer, the struts were sturdy and aligned. Eelco’s death was accomplished with compassion, circumspection and scrupulous regard for the feelings of all concerned. It’s little wonder that the Dutch Voluntary Euthanasia Society, or NVVE, vaunts it as an example of euthanasia at its best. After leaving the de Gooijers, I drove northwards, bisecting hectares of plant nurseries, skirting Tesla’s European factory, to a conference organised by the NVVE. Apart from being the parent organisation of the Levenseindekliek, the NVVE, with its membership of 170,000 (bigger than any Dutch political party) and rolling programme of public meetings, is one of the most powerful interest groups in the Netherlands. The conference that day was aimed at tackling psychiatrists’ well known opposition to euthanasia for psychiatric cases – in effect, trying to break down the considerable opposition that remains among psychiatrists to euthanising disturbed youngsters like Eelco and Aurelia. The conference centre on the outskirts of Driebergen stood amid tall conifers and beehives. I was offered a beaker of curried pumpkin soup while the session that was underway when I arrived – titled “Guidelines for terminating life on the request of a patient with a psychiatric disorder” – came to an orderly close in the lecture hall. Precisely three minutes behind schedule, the Dutch planned-death establishment debouched for refreshments. I had met my first NVVE member quite by chance in Amsterdam. After watching her mother die incontinent and addled, this woman of around 70 signed an advance directive requesting euthanasia should she get dementia or lose control of her bowels. These conditions currently dominate the euthanasia debate, because so many people in their 60s and 70s want an opt-out from suffering they have observed in their parents. When I mentioned to the woman in Amsterdam the reluctance of many doctors to euthanise someone who isn’t mentally competent, she replied, bristling: “No doctor has the right to decide when my life should end.” At any meeting organised by the NVVE, you will look in vain for poor people, pious Christians or members of the Netherlands’ sizeable Muslim minority. According to Theo Boer, the typical NVVE member has “a detached house, woodblock floors and a grand piano”. Borne along by the ultra-rational spirit of Dutch libertarianism (the spirit that made the Netherlands a pioneer in reforming laws on drugs, sex and pornography), the Dutch euthanasia scene also exudes a strong whiff of upper-middle class entitlement. Over coffee I was introduced to Steven Pleiter, the director of the Levenseindekliniek. We went outside and basked in the early October sun as he described the “shift in mindset” he is trying to achieve. Choosing his words with care, Pleiter said he hoped that in future doctors will feel more confident accommodating demands for “the most complex varieties of euthanasia, like psychiatric illnesses and dementia” – not through a change in the law, he added, but through a kind of “acceptance … that grows and grows over the years”. When I asked him if he understood the scruples of those doctors who refuse to perform euthanasia because they entered their profession in order to save lives, he replied: “If the situation is unbearable and there is no prospect of improvement, and euthanasia is an option, it would be almost unethical [of a doctor] not to help that person.” After the Levenseindekliniek was founded in 2012, Pleiter sat down with the insurance companies to work out what they would pay the clinic for each euthanasia procedure its doctors perform. The current figure is €3,000, payable to the clinic even if the applicant pulls out at the last minute. I suggested to Pleiter that the insurance companies must prefer to pay a one-off fee for euthanising someone to spending a vast sum in order to keep that person, needy and unproductive, alive in a nursing home. Pleiter’s pained expression suggested that I had introduced a note of cynicism into a discussion that should be conducted on a more elevated plane. “There’s not an atom in my body that is in sympathy with what you are describing,” he replied. “This isn’t about money … it’s about empathy, ethics, compassion.” And he restated the credo that animates right-to-die movements everywhere: ‘I strongly believe there is no need for suffering.’ That not all planned deaths correspond to the experiences of Bert Keizer or the de Gooijer family is something one can easily forget amid the generally positive aura that surrounds euthanasia. The more I learned about it, the more it seemed that euthanasia, while assigning commendable value to the end of life, might simultaneously cheapen life itself. Another factor I hadn’t appreciated was the possibility of collateral damage. In an event as delicately contractual as euthanasia, there are different varieties of suffering. Back in the days when euthanasia was illegal but tolerated, the euthanising doctor was obliged to consult the relatives of the person who had asked to die. Due to qualms over personal autonomy and patient-doctor confidentiality – and an entirely proper concern to protect vulnerable people from unscrupulous relatives – this obligation didn’t make it into the 2002 law that legalised euthanasia. This legal nicety would become painfully significant to a middle-aged motorcycle salesman from Zwolle called Marc Veld. In the spring of last year, he began to suspect that his mother, Marijke, was planning to be euthanised, but he never got the opportunity to explain to her doctor why, in his view, her suffering was neither unbearable nor impossible to alleviate. On 9 June, the doctor phoned him and said: “I’m sorry, your mother passed away half an hour ago.” Marc showed me a picture he had taken of Marijke in her coffin, her white hair carefully brushed and her skin glowing with the smooth, even foundation of the mortuary beautician. Between her hands was a letter Marc had put there and would be buried with her – a letter detailing his unhappiness, resentment and guilt. There is little doubt that Marijke spent much of her 76 years in torment, beginning with her infancy in a Japanese concentration camp after the invasion of the Dutch East Indies, in 1941, and recurring during her unhappy adulthood in the Netherlands. But Dutch doctors don’t euthanise people because of depression – even if the more extreme advocates of the right to die think they should. As a result, it isn’t uncommon for depressives or lonely people to emphasise a physical ailment in order to get their euthanasia request approved. During his time on the review board, Theo Boer came across several cases in which the “death wish preceded the physical illness … some patients are happy to be able to ask for euthanasia on the basis of a physical reason, while the real reason is deeper”. In Marijke’s case, the physical reason was a terminal lung disease, which, Marc told me, she both exacerbated and exaggerated. She did this by cancelling physiotherapy sessions that might have slowed its progress, bombarding her GP with complaints about shortness of breath and slumping “like a sack of potatoes” whenever he visited. “To be sure of being euthanised,” Marc said drily, “you need above all to take acting lessons.” What torments him today is that his mother died while there was hope that her illness could be slowed. “If she had cancer and was feeling pain and it was the last three months of her life, I would have been happy for her to have euthanasia. But she could have lived at least a few more years.” Defenders of personal autonomy would say that Marc had no business interfering in his mother’s death, but beneath his anger lies the inconsolable sadness of a son who blames himself for not doing more. Marijke’s euthanasia was carried out according to the law, and will raise no alarms in the review board. It was also carried out without regard to her relatedness to other human beings. For all the safeguards that have been put in place against the manipulation of applicants for euthanasia, in cases where patients do include relatives in their decision-making, it can never be entirely foreclosed, as I discovered in a GP’s surgery in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium. The GP in question – we’ll call her Marie-Louise – is a self-confessed idealist who sees it as her mission to “care, care, care”. In 2017, one of her patients, a man in late middle-age, was diagnosed with dementia and signed a directive asking for euthanasia when his condition worsened. As his mind faltered, however, so did his resolve – which did not please his wife, who became an evangelist for her husband’s death. “He must have changed his mind 20 times,” Marie-Louise said. “I saw the pressure she was applying.” In order to illustrate one of the woman’s outbursts, Marie-Louise rose from her desk, walked over to the filing cabinet and, adopting the persona of the infuriated wife, slammed down her fist, exclaiming, “If only he had the courage! Coward!” Most medical ethicists would approve of Marie-Louise’s refusal to euthanise a patient who had been pressured. By the time she went away on holiday last summer, she believed she had won from her patient an undertaking not to press for euthanasia. But she had not reckoned with her own colleague in the practice, a doctor who takes a favourable line towards euthanasia, and when Marie-Louise returned from holidays she found out that this colleague had euthanised her patient. When I visited Marie-Louise several months after the event, she remained bewildered by what had happened. As with Marc, guilt was a factor; if she hadn’t gone away, would her patient still be alive? Now she was making plans to leave the practice, but hadn’t yet made an announcement for fear of unsettling her other patients. “How can I stay here?” she said. “I am a doctor and yet I can’t guarantee the safety of my most vulnerable patients.” While for many people whose loved ones have been euthanised, the procedure can be satisfactory and even inspiring, in others it has caused hurt and inner conflict. Bert Keizer rightly observes that suicide leaves scars on friends and family that may never heal. But suicide is an individual act, self-motivated and self-administered, and its force field is contained. Euthanasia, by contrast, is the product of society. When it goes wrong, it goes wrong for everyone. Even as law and culture make euthanasia seem more normal, it remains among the most unfamiliar acts a society can condone. It isn’t enough that the legal niceties be observed; there needs to be agreement among the interested parties on why it is taking place, and to what end. Without consensus on these basic motivations, euthanasia won’t be an occasion for empathy, ethics or compassion, but a bludgeon swinging through people’s lives, whose handiwork cannot be undone. Two years ago the Netherlands’ health and justice ministers issued a joint proposal for a “completed life” pill that would give anyone over 70 years of age the right to receive a lethal poison, cutting the doctor out of the equation completely. In the event, the fragmented nature of Dutch coalition politics stopped the proposal in its tracks, but doctors and end-of-life specialists I spoke to expect legislation to introduce such a completed-life bill to come before parliament in due course. Assuming it could be properly safeguarded (a big assumption), the completed-life pill would not necessarily displease many doctors I spoke to; it would allow them to get back to saving lives. But while some applicants for euthanasia are furious with doctors who turn them down, in practice people are unwilling to take their own lives. Rather than drink the poison or open the drip, 95% of applicants for active life termination in the Netherlands ask a doctor to kill them. In a society that vaunts its rejection of established figures of authority, when it comes to death, everyone asks for Mummy. Even those who have grave worries about the slippery slope concede that consensual euthanasia for terminal illness can be a beautiful thing, and that the principle of death at a time of one’s choosing can fit into a framework of care. The question for any country contemplating euthanasia legislation is whether the practice must inevitably expand – in which case, as Agnes van der Heide recognises, death will eventually “get a different meaning, be appreciated differently”. In the Netherlands many people would argue that – for all the current wobbles – that process is now irreversible. Christopher de Bellaigue will chair a discussion on euthanasia at the Dutch Centre in London EC2 on 23 Wednesday Jan at 7pm. See dutchcentre.com. This article was supported by funding from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.It was the New Year’s Eve travel sale that appeared to be too good to be true: business and first-class flights on Cathay Pacific from Vietnam to New York for $675 (£534), rather than the standard $16,000. It turned out to be a ticketing error, but the airline promised to honour the sale. “Happy 2019 all, and to those who bought our good – VERY good surprise ‘special’ on New Year’s Day,” the Hong Kong-based carrier tweeted on Wednesday. “Yes – we made a mistake, but we look forward to welcoming you onboard with your ticket issued. Hope this will make your 2019 ‘special’ too!” Happy 2019 all, and to those who bought our good - VERY good surprise ‘special’ on New Year’s Day, yes - we made a mistake but we look forward to welcoming you on board with your ticket issued. Hope this will make your 2019 ‘special’ too!.#promisemadepromisekept #lessonlearnt The flight offer was picked up on New Year’s Eve by Gary Leff, a travel blogger, who wrote: “Oh my goodness this is an amazing fare. “You can fly from Vietnam – the cheapest fares originate in Da Nang, but other cities work as well – to Cathay Pacific’s US gateways starting at $675.” Leff warned his readers not to book any additional travel or hotels around the deal, as he suspected Cathay “might get seller’s remorse” and not honour the fares. “I’d wait a few days after buying additional travel or making additional non-refundable plans around the fare,” he said. But when Cathay became aware of the mistake, the airline said it would stand by the fares. “We do not want to go back on our promise to our customers,” it said. “We made a mistake but we look forward to welcoming you onboard with your ticket issued.” The airline did not respond to requests for comment about the number of flights sold at the steep discount. Cathay has removed all business and first-class flights for August – the month of the cut-price fares – from its website, but the same flights in September are listed for $16,000. Another blog, One Mile at a Time, saw it was possible to buy first-class flights from Hanoi to Vancouver for $988 return. In a blogpost, it said: “Wow! Hurry, this won’t last.” There were also first-class return flights from Hong Kong to New York offered for $1,450. The price of those flights in September is more than $31,000. The South China Morning Post tracked down 11 passengers who collectively bought 18 first and business-class tickets at the discounted prices. They paid a total of £21,700 for flights that should have cost £540,000. It is not the first time airlines have mistakenly offered premium-class flights at economy prices. Singapore Airlines made the error in 2014, as did Hong Kong Airlines last summer, and both honoured the errors. But in 2015, United Airlines cancelled hundreds of tickets it sold for $100 by mistake. United said it would not honour the fares because the error was caused by a “third-party software provider”. Earlier this year, Cathay had to repaint one of its jets after customers noticed the airline had spelled its name wrong. The Boeing 777-367 was emblazoned with the words “Cathay Paciic”.Our charity appeal for 2018 sought to celebrate the work of five charities that helped bring the Windrush scandal to light, and raise vital money so they can continue to fight for justice for those whose lives have been turned upside down by the hostile environment policy. With your help, we’ve achieved both. It’s a fantastic achievement: thank you. Thousands of readers have donated to the appeal – we have so far raised more than £920,000 for our five charities, and there are still three days to go before it closes (at midnight on Thursday). The average individual donation has been about £75. As always, Guardian and Observer readers have shown extraordinary generosity. In a harsh and often cynical world, the appeal feels like a small beacon for justice, tolerance and compassion. The Windrush scandal was revealed by the Guardian in a series of award-winning reports last year. But it was first detected by the grassroots charities our appeal supports. They were able to identify the injustices and help those affected because they are close to and trusted by the communities they serve, because of their expertise, and because of their hard work and dogged pursuit of fairness and accountability. Despite the resignation of a home secretary and ministers’ tardy apologies for the scandal, the hostile environment rumbles on. Each week more people fall foul of unfair and draconian immigration policies: people who arrived in the UK legally and have lived here for decades, worked, paid taxes and raised children who find they have been unjustly thrown out of work, detained, denied healthcare, or evicted from their homes because they cannot provide documents to show they have a right to be in the UK. It is not only members of the Caribbean community who have suffered from the arbitrary cruelty of the hostile environment; as our charities point out, people from the wider Commonwealth have also been caught up in it. After Brexit, thousands of established EU migrants who cannot show the correct documentation may also find themselves destitute and facing deportation when free movement comes to an end. Readers’ donations will be shared among our five charities: Praxis Community Projects, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and the Refugee and Migrant Centre Black Country and Birmingham, each of which continue to do such vital work with migrants; the Runnymede Trust, a race equality thinktank, which played a key role in getting Windrush on to the political agenda; and Law Centres Network, which will use its share of the appeal to set up a fund its 43 local members can draw upon to fight hostile environment cases. Your donations will make a difference. Again, a massive thank you: for your generosity, for your kindness, for your solidarity. The Guardian and Observer charity appeal 2018 closes at midnight on Thursday. Please donate here.Chelsea have rejected Callum Hudson-Odoi’s transfer request, turned down Bayern Munich’s £35m offer for him and told the 18-year-old winger he is staying at Stamford Bridge for the remainder of the season. The London club took the hardline stance on Monday, just as Bayern were preparing what they hoped would be a decisive push to take Hudson-Odoi before the deadline on Thursday. Hudson-Odoi has had his head turned by the interest of the Bundesliga champions this month, so much so that he formally told Chelsea of his wish to be granted a transfer. Although he made his 11th appearance of the season in all competitions in the 3-0 FA Cup win against Sheffield Wednesday on Sunday – and scored his second goal – he has come to be convinced that his opportunities would be greater at Bayern; something which has been questioned at Chelsea. The situation looked bleak after the game against Wednesday, when Hudson-Odoi said that he did not know whether he had just made his final appearance for the club. But Chelsea, who have been annoyed at Bayern’s public courting of the player, have taken a calculated gamble by telling him he is going nowhere. That will give them another four months to convince Hudson-Odoi that his long-term future ought to lie at Stamford Bridge. They remain hopeful that he will come around to the idea, particularly if he is given further game-time. Hudson-Odoi will have 12 months to run on his contract in the summer but Chelsea do not believe that his value will drop between now and then if – in the worst-case scenario – they do have to sell him. Willian is the latest Chelsea player to insist that Hudson‑Odoi can fulfil his potential at the club. “He’s a special talent,” Willian said. “Of course, he’s only 18 and he can improve a lot. And in the future, he can become one of the best players in the world.” Tues 29 Jan Newcastle Utd v Man City 8pm (BT Sport 1)Wed 30 JanLiverpool v Leicester City 8pm (BT Sport 1)Sat 2 Feb Tottenham v Newcastle Utd 12.30pm (Sky Sports Main Event)Cardiff City v Bournemouth 5.30pm (BT Sport 1)Sun 3 Feb Leicester City v Man Utd 2.05pm (Sky Sports Main Event)Man City v Arsenal 4.30pm (Sky Sports Main Event)  MPs will vote on four amendments to the Brexit deal motion on Tuesday. Here are the details of who tabled them and what they mean. Proposed by Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer and others, this seeks to rule out a no-deal departure and criticises May’s plan for not providing “a permanent UK-EU customs union and strong single market deal”, which Labour says would harm business and could mean the Irish backstop coming into force. Slightly cheekily, the Liberal Democrats have tabled an amendment to this amendment suggesting that where Labour promises to pursue every option to prevent a no-deal exit, it should add “including a public vote as endorsed by the Labour party conference 2018”. Put down by both parties’ frontbenches, this condemns the deal on the basis that it “would be damaging for Scotland, Wales and the nations and regions of the UK as a whole”. It calls instead for an extension of article 50 so that a new plan can be made. Amendment B seeks to limit the scope of the Irish backstop by insisting it is temporary and by saying international law decrees the UK can unilaterally end the withdrawal agreement if there is any attempt to extend it beyond 2021. It has been proposed by Leigh, a veteran Tory backbencher, and is backed by 12 other Brexiters. A second amendment by Leigh states essentially the same thing in more detail. Another amendment focused on the backstop and backed by a series of Tory Brexiters. This simply states that the UK would have the right to terminate the backstop without the say-so of the EU.Supermodels including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Elsa Hosk and Emily Ratajkowski, are potentially steps away from facing demands to return sizeable payments they received for helping to promote the ill-fated Fyre Festival. On Monday, a New York bankruptcy judge signed off on subpoenas submitted by the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of the Bahamas music festival, which collapsed in chaos and discord before it had even got under way last April, requesting “information regarding the [Fyre Media’s] financial affairs from third parties”. That is likely to include Jenner, who, as a leading fashion “influencer” was reportedly paid $250,000 for a single Instagram post announcing the launch of ticket sales and offering her followers a discount code, and model management firms IMG Models and DNA Model Management, which represent many of about 25 models who were paid to star in promotional video for what was billed as an exclusive weekend event with gourmet food, luxury accommodations and world-class concerts. Festival-goers, who had paid between $1,000 and $12,500 for a ticket, found little by way of entertainment or cavorting supermodels for company on the Exumas island that had reputedly been once owned by Colombian cocaine lord Pablo Escobar. As two documentaries released this month have graphically, and sometimes hilariously depicted, the festival’s accommodations were rain-soaked refugee tents and the food little more than grim-looking cheese sandwiches. To make matters worse, festival goers had no means of getting home. In the fallout, festival organiser Billy McFarland pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges relating to the festival and in July pleaded guilty to various fraud charges stemming from a separate ticket selling operation, and sentenced to six years in federal prison. A separate civil lawsuit naming McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, whose real name is Jeffrey Atkins, brought by festival goers Matthew Herlihy and Anthony Lauriello claims the two men “knowingly lured attendees with false and fraudulent pretenses, in which the festival could not compare to”. They claim the event bore no resemblance to the event conjured up by Fyre’s “glossy” marketing and was instead an “unplanned, unorganized, disaster-stricken area” that organizers continued promoting until the day some of the 7,000 expected attendees began to arrive on the island. But any efforts to reclaim money from the women who signed on to promote the event may be hard-won. Despite a crackdown in 2017 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that warned celebrities and influencers must be clear about when their posts have been paid for, they cannot be held responsible for the product or event itself. The Manhattan US attorney Geoffrey Berman released a statement saying investors and customers lost about $26m in the scam. At the hearing this week, Gregory Messer, the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Fyre Media, said the task of unpicking exactly what had gone wrong had been “challenging” considering the lack of basic disclosures, bankruptcy schedules and a statement of financial affairs from the organisers. According to Women’s Wear Daily, payments totaling more than $5.2m were paid out to multiple recipients, including $1.2m to IMG models and $275,000 to Jenner. Of the 24 people in question, Fyre Media paid each one no less than $90,000. Messer said the recipients are needed for questioning “to gain a full understanding of the reasons for these transfers”. But while the supermodels were warned away from the event as it began to collapse, some were quick to apologise – and to establish that they had nothing to do with the failure. Bella Hadid shared on Twitter, “even though this was not my project what so ever” she “initially trusted this would be an amazing & memorable experience for all of us”. She continued she was “not knowing about the disaster that was to come…I feel so sorry and badly because this is something I couldn’t stand by, although of course if I would have known about the outcome, you would have all known too. I hope everyone is safe and back with their families and loved ones…xo.”Jeremy Corbyn is expected to meet Theresa May to discuss Brexit, with 58 days remaining until the UK leaves the EU. The meeting was confirmed that morning by Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary. It comes two weeks after Corbyn rejected the prime minister’s invitation on the grounds that she should first rule out a no-deal Brexit. After a morning of negotiations, Corbyn will meet May in the relative privacy of her office in the Commons at 3pm, according to Whitehall sources. The location means that Corbyn will not be walking up Downing Street, a location that would have given him the opportunity to make a statement outside No 10 afterwards. Interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Barclay said: “The vote was last night, the PM will be meeting with the leader of the opposition later today, there is an ongoing process … We are working hard in the national interest.” After parliament voted on Tuesday for a renegotiation of the Irish backstop and rejected the idea of leaving without an agreement, Corbyn said he would meet May to hold talks on how to move forward. The Brady amendment demands that the backstop arrangement in the EU withdrawal agreement to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland should be replaced with 'alternative arrangements'. The backstop is hated by many Tory Brexiters because it would keep the UK in an effective customs union until an alternative solution could be found to prevent the need for infrastructure at the border. The backstop has no time limit and exit can be only by joint agreement between the UK and the EU. Brexiters would like to see the backstop replaced either by an as-yet-unknown technological solution to ensure a smooth border or at least an end date or a unilateral exit mechanism.In order to seek this from Brussels, Theresa May decided the government should back an amendment tabled by Sir Graham Brady, a Tory backbencher, which said the backstop should be replaced. She also pledged to reopen the withdrawal agreement and change the text. The European Union has been adamant that both things cannot happen, but Downing Street believes that gaining a majority in the House of Commons for the change would demonstrate the crucial breakthrough needed to avoid a no-deal Brexit. After initial scepticism, members of the hard-Brexit European Research Group swung behind the government, though Tory remainers rebelled against it, and the amendment passed by 16 votes. However, the group has made it clear it will not necessarily back whichever compromise she may come back with. The Labour leader told the House of Commons he would have talks with the prime minister because “parliament has voted to remove the immediate threat of crashing out without a deal on 29 March”. The decision to hold the meeting follows internal pressure on Corbyn from some of his closest aides. One senior party source said: “If we want to avoid a no-deal Brexit, there has to be some level of negotiations between the parties. We have to be involved.” At the meeting, a Labour source said confirming rejection of a no-deal Brexit will remain a key issue. “Jeremy will insist that the will of parliament is respected and that no deal is now off the table,” he said. Corbyn will also push Labour’s Brexit plan, which envisages a customs union, a strong single-market relationship and a guarantee on workers’ rights, consumer standards and environmental protections. “That now must be the focus for negotiations,” the source said. Two weeks ago, May wrote to Corbyn urging him to take part in meetings with her and other ministers following the rejection of her negotiated deal on the withdrawal bill. Corbyn dismissed the invitation as a stunt. In a speech in Hastings, he said: “With no deal on the table, the prime minister will enter into phoney talks just to run down the clock and try to blackmail MPs to vote through her botched deal on a second attempt, by threatening the country with the chaos that no deal would bring.” They previously met to discuss the Brexit process in November.On Martin Luther King Day, late-night hosts examined the first amendment, Donald Trump’s shutdown offer and unfair comparisons to the civil rights leader. As the news cycles through backlash to the backlash of the viral video of Kentucky high schoolers seemingly intimidating a Native American veteran on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Daily Show host Trevor Noah attempted to take a step back and see the situation clearly. “The toughest thing to combat is our bias,” he said in a more sober, graphic-free segment. Admittedly, the Covington Catholic high school student in the widely circulated images “looks like an asshole”, he said. But the story is a “weird” one, with additional information making it harder to trust each video clip. “Depending on who was holding the camera, their story made them look like the victim,” Noah said. Which isn’t to say there’s been some bullshit victim cards thrown – Noah broadly refuted statements from the students that they were afraid. “I’m watching the video – you guys are dancing, your shirt is off,” he said. “I’m never taking my shirt off when I’m afraid.” “You don’t have to lie,” Noah said of one student’s response, issued through a lawyer’s statement. “You weren’t trying to defuse shit, man. You know? You were having a good time.” “The Maga hats is also a thing that you have to acknowledge,” Noah added, an outfit choice that he said the boys had to know “is a very explicit political symbol. You know how it makes people feel.” Overall, though, to get into the full understanding of what happened and the background that produced it, “I think it’s too convoluted and complicated to get into in one sitting in a few hundred characters on Twitter,” Noah said. “But I think everyone played the victim card a little too hard.” On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert avoided talk of the Lincoln Memorial confrontation and wished the country a happy Martin Luther King Day, “in which we honor Dr King’s dream: 50% off at Nordstrom’s”. Monday also marked the 31st day of the government shutdown, a fact the president attempted to address Saturday with an offer to restore Daca and “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) protections for immigrants brought to the US as children – protections he previously took away – for three years in exchange for border wall funding. Somehow, Colbert said, Democrats didn’t go for this deal. In other words: “So you want to rub the steak sauce on my head and I put my own head in the alligator’s mouth? No thank you.” The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, rejected the deal before Trump announced it on Saturday. “She said no before Trump even asked, a move known in Washington as ‘The Melania’,” Colbert joked. To help drum up public support for his offer, Trump dispatched vice-president and “man wishing the dogs in the dog park would put on some damn pants” Mike Pence, who favorably compared Trump’s actions to Martin Luther King’s on Face the Nation. “Mike, are you sure you want us to judge Trump on the content of his character?” Colbert asked. “He puts a lot of effort into the color of his skin.” And on Late Night, Seth Meyers took a closer look at Trump’s proposed offer from Saturday, a deal universally rejected by Democrats, but also by the conservative pundit Ann Coulter. “Now, we are living in a very surreal time where people like Ann Coulter have tremendous sway over the president,” Meyers explained. “In December, Trump was going to give up on the wall before Coulter called him a gutless and a vulgar publicity hound. He then went to try to win her back; Trump shut down the government.” Coulter criticized Trump’s latest proposal as “amnesty”, a claim Trump rejected on Twitter. This raises a bigger question, Meyers said. “Man, why is he so subservient to her? Does she have a different pee tape?” As for Congress, Meyers said that lawmakers should remember who they’re negotiating with: “President Werewolf, except he’s a werewolf 29 days a month, and then there’s a full moon and he turns into a human and you can talk to him. And then all you dummies celebrate because you think it’s permanent. Then the full moon goes away, and he goes back to chasing you through the woods.”Cinematography is one of the most mysterious aspects of film-making. The American Society of Cinematographers turned 100 this month and, though last year’s Oscar for the category drew attention after the first nomination for a female cinematographer, and Twitter users reguarly share examples of “One Perfect Shot”, the art of “painting with light” is little understood. Cinematographers are responsible for photographing films, but in practice their job is more complex. The skill of the cinematographer, or director of photography, is to combine visual artistry with technical knowledge and a certain amount of people management. “Maybe as many as 80 people on a movie come under your direct command,” says Bill Butler, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer who worked on classics including Jaws and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “Next to the director, it’s the cinematographer who is really in charge of everything, from the costume you wear to the makeup. You do a lot more than just take meter readings.” The ASC was established to formalise the role of and distinguish cinematographers from camera operators, but it had more to do with practicalities and problem solving. In the silent film era, movie cameras were generally heavy hand-cranked machines, and the centre of gravity of the US film industry was shifting from the east coast to the west. The technology and the medium were new, so camera operators everywhere faced common difficulties, such as annoying white streaks on footage, caused by static electricity. The east-coast based Cinema Camera Club, formed by a team of Edison’s camera operators, and the Static Club of America, based in Los Angeles and led by Universal’s Harry H Harris, collaborated on solutions to these issues, pooling their wisdom. Soon enough, Edison cinematographer Phil Rosen suggested a national organisation to his Hollywood colleague Charles Rosher. “It’s not just about making pretty pictures,” says Mandy Walker, whose CV includes Hidden Figures, Australia and the forthcoming Mulan. “The most important part of my job is helping the director tell a story with the images of the film and camera and lighting and lenses. The decisions we make are the most important.” Butler agrees: “One of the things that is important is your ability to understand the truth in the film you’re making. Where should you put the camera? How should your camera look at this story? If you do it wrong, then you interrupt the truth you’re trying to get to.” In many ways, the job has changed beyond recognition in the last century. By the time the ASC was founded in 1919, to keep up with the demand for movies, films were increasingly being shot under artificial lights in studios rather than outside in the sunlight. Camera operators had to become cinematographers, or directors of photography, manipulating various different lights and lenses to create specific effects. As the job became more technical and with more opportunities for creative expression, still photographers such as Charles Rosher entered the movies. “There was a stage when you had two directors on set, a director of actors and the director of photography,” says McDonough. “Eventually the actors became pre-eminent, so the director of actors became pre-eminent.” Through the 1920s, much cinematographic flair, especially in Hollywood, was focused on making the stars look more beautiful. This was the birth of the three-point lighting system with a key, a fill and a backlight to add a glamorous effect to stars’ faces, often accompanied by a generous amount of soft focus. Cinematographers were also widely expected to compose each shot, and the growing use of camera movement gave them more seniority: they would need to employ a camera operator and focus puller, too. More challenges and innovations were to come. By the 1940s and 50s, cinematographers were more regularly asked to light for Technicolor (although using crisp enough light that films would still look good on TV, in black-and-white) and create widescreen compositions. In the 60s, the use of handheld cameras and “soft light” (that is, bouncing light off reflective surfaces around a space rather than using direct sources), changed the game again. In the 1970s, Garrett Brown invented the Steadicam, removing the need for expensive dolly tracks, and allowing for a new range of faster, more fluid camera movements. That’s around the time that Butler started to work in cinema, after years spent on live TV. He brought some techniques from television and from European cinema to Hollywood, including bounce lighting and the extensive use of handheld photography in Jaws. “I was original in my style mainly because of my background in television. It very much affected what I did in film and, when things were changing from the old, old style of cinematography, all the rules started to get broken.” In the 21st century, the cinematographer’s remit is only expanding. For Walker, there are more departments to consult with than ever and the job extends before and after the shoot, especially with films that involve a lot of special effects. “Collaboration very early in pre-production is important so that the director knows that the cinematography and the VFX are working together.” Walker is also involved in post-production. A sense of cinematographic history can still come in useful. David Mullen, cinematographer for film and TV projects including The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and Jennifer’s Body has used historical techniques with modern lights and cameras to create a vintage Technicolor look. “I loved working on The Love Witch because I was able to recreate a lot of the lighting from the 50s and 60s,” he says. “The key to making it feel authentic was to put myself in the mindset of someone working back then and not try to apply any modern sensibility to the lighting.” There will be more and more advances in the technology and the way people view films, and I love it With the industry transitioning rapidly from film to digital and VR movies possibly spelling the end of the “one perfect shot”, what do cinematographers expect from the next 100 years? Mullen expresses some concern about “the end of cinema”, with declining ticket sales. “I don’t know whether fewer and fewer people want to see a movie in a theatre. And then we won’t have movie theatres any more. I hate to see that go, because viewing a movie on the big screen is a unique experience. It’s not the same as watching at home, even with a big television set.” Walker is more excited: “There will be more and more advances in the technology and the way people view films. I was reading that because of Netflix, people are going to cinema more because it has reinvigorated their film watching.” Although she shot Hidden Figures on film, Walker is enthusiastic about digital technology and recently shot a VR movie: “It’s broadening the art of cinema.” “There will be amazing tools that we’ll be using to gather images,” adds McDonough. “But I hope there’s still the human behind that making the final emotional decision about what it means and what to do with it.” “Digital does not really change what the cinematographer does. That doesn’t change, and won’t change in the future,” says Butler. “The future will still depend upon sense of composition and truth as the cinematographer sees it. That will not change. You still need somebody in there that understands the composition and the truth in what he’s doing.”A Senate committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, his attorney said on Thursday, and Cohen intends to comply with the interview demand, which is related to the Russia investigation. “This morning the Senate intelligence committee served Michael Cohen with a subpoena,” Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Cohen, said in a statement. The subpoena comes one day after Cohen asked to postpone an appearance before the House oversight committee, which had been scheduled for next week. Cohen cited “ongoing threats against his family” from the president and his attorney Rudy Giuliani. Davis disclosed the subpoena from the Senate intelligence committee in a one-sentence statement, and later told the Associated Press in a text message that “we will comply and hope to agree upon reasonable terms, ground rules and a date”. Cohen pleaded guilty last month to lying to Congress about how long into Trump’s campaign for the presidency he and his adviser pursued a deal to develop a tower in Russia’s capital, and for his involvement in payments to a former Playboy model and porn star. Cohen is set to begin a three-year prison sentence in March. Cohen earlier delayed his 7 February appearance before the House committee on oversight and reform on the advice of his legal team, citing ongoing cooperation in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and threats against his family. Trump, along with his attorney, Giuliani, have publicly urged the justice department to investigate Cohen’s father-in-law, insinuating the Cohen relative was part of some unspecified criminal activity. “If he wants to criticize Cohen, he can,” Davis said in an interview on Thursday. “Obviously, picking on his family publicly is a way of silencing him or intimidating him. And certainly he has engendered great fear in his extended family, which is why we postponed it.” That decision pushed back the chance of a public airing on details of Cohen’s relationship with Trump, including hush money payments that Cohen has admitted arranging to two women who say they had sex with the president. Trump has denied the allegation. Democrats have suggested they may subpoena Cohen to compel his testimony and the committee’s chairman, Representative Elijah Cummings, said Cohen could be brought from prison to appear before Congress. “We will get his testimony,” Cummings said. The Senate committee did not immediately confirm the subpoena. It ordinarily holds its Russia-related hearings in private. It was not immediately clear when the committee wanted to meet with Cohen.The Duke of Edinburgh has escaped unhurt after the car he was driving was involved in an accident close to the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. Police were called to the scene of a collision involving 97-year-old Prince Philip on Thursday. Witnesses told the BBC that the Range Rover being driven by Philip had overturned after pulling out from a driveway on the A149. He was helped out of the car by eyewitnesses and was reportedly conscious but very shocked and shaken. The palace would not confirm if he was alone in the vehicle at the time of the collision. A Buckingham Palace statement said: “The Duke of Edinburgh was involved in a road traffic accident with another vehicle this afternoon. The duke was not injured. The accident took place close to the Sandringham Estate. Local police attended the scene.” Philip, who retired from public life in August 2017, has been staying with the Queen at Sandringham since Christmas. Prince Philip was seen by a doctor as a precautionary measure who confirmed he was not injured, the palace said. Norfolk police said officers were called to the Sandringham Estate shortly before 3pm “following reports of a collision involving two cars”. A police spokesman said police and ambulance crews attended, and two people in one of the vehicles suffered minor injuries.George Clarke asked his father not to text him when he went on holiday to Valencia in September 2015; he didn’t want his father to be charged the extra fees. When Clarke, 25, landed back in the UK a week later, he headed straight to the restaurant where he worked as a waiter. His boss told him that one of his father’s neighbours had called while he was away – she was concerned about his father. Clarke had had messages like this before, and figuring his father was on one of his regular drinking binges, ignored her message. But two weeks later, the same neighbour called again. Clarke drove to his father’s flat, two miles from where he lived in Holmfirth, Yorkshire. No lights were on, and no one answered. He looked through a window and saw a loaf of bread on the kitchen counter that had turned blue and was surrounded by flies. He called the police. “The next thing I knew, there was this big, 6ft 8in man covered in tattoos outside the flat with one of those battering rams they use in drug raids, trying to smash the door down,” Clarke says. “I had a chuckle to myself, as the whole moment was quite slapstick, and my dad would have laughed, watching these officers trying to knock his old wooden door down.” Once inside, the police found Clarke’s father upstairs. A postmortem later revealed he had been dead for three weeks. I remember a time Dad drove us to school, and, looking back, I realise he was absolutely out of it Clarke has been grappling with that day since. “I get a heaviness in my chest when I talk about this,” he says. His parents divorced when he was 13; as a teenager, Clarke would visit his father two or three times a week with his two younger brothers, and spend the rest of his time with his mother. He remembers a time his father drove them to school, when Clarke was 15. “Looking back, I realise he was absolutely out of it. He was in a jovial mood, singing at the top of his lungs. And as a child I didn’t realise it was abnormal. The smell of alcohol was normal to me. It became part of the fabric of my childhood.” Clarke would find bottles of alcohol hidden around the house; in the cereal cupboard, or the washing basket. He became estranged from his father when he stopped coming to his rugby matches, and missed his graduation from Newcastle University. “Everyone was there with their family. And I bought him a ticket and offered him a drive up, and he said he’d come, and then he went silent for a week,” he says. His father’s behaviour has affected his relationships. “You put your faith in someone,” he says, “but if you’re not sure that faith is 100% well placed, you get hurt over and over again. There’s a cynic in me that thinks, well my dad lied to me, so why shouldn’t someone else?” *** Many children of alcoholics now have a dead parent, whether or not alcoholism is explicitly referenced on the death certificate. Alcoholism has long been recognised as a deadly disease, but there is far less awareness of its hidden victims: the children of alcoholics. A 2017 study by the University of Sheffield found that more than 200,000 children across England live with an alcoholic parent; other research has put the number of people in the UK affected by a parent’s problem drinking at 2.6 million. I grew up in a home affected by alcoholism. My father, whom I never knew, suffered from alcoholism all his life. My parents divorced by the time I was six, and my mother raised me and my seven siblings alone. But she also battled with depression and alcoholism, and it swallowed much of the joy from her life. She died when I was 16. Like many children of alcoholics, I tried to reason with my mother in an effort to stop her drinking. But when you’re 13, the last thing you want to be doing is begging a parent to stop hiding bottles of wine down the side of the bed, or spending your time persuading them that their life is, in fact, worth living. Children grow used to an alcoholic’s many contradictions. My mother was a fiercely intelligent, empathetic person, who went from nursing in a mental hospital to completing a politics degree at the age of 40. I would love to inherit her good qualities, but I also don’t want to end up like the person she was at her weakest; when she had truly fallen victim to alcohol. Children who were raised by an alcoholic parent share a bond; we are part of a club we never signed up to. My older sister thought that if people knew about our parents’ illness, our family would appear broken or dysfunctional. This went for me and some of my other siblings, too. For decades, we hid the true extent of our childhood experiences from others, because we just wanted to be “normal”. Instead we have tried to live the best lives we can as adults, and supported each other. I am the third youngest, and my older siblings bore the brunt of my mother’s illness, shielding the rest of us. While he was at university, my older brother spoke to my mother on the phone every night and tried to talk her out of a depressive spiral. When she died, my older sister Mary, who was 22 at the time, became legal guardian to me, my younger sister and brother, who were 13 and 15. We might otherwise have been separated and put into care. Today, some of my siblings drink, and some of them don’t. I enjoy social drinking. Since children of alcoholics are far more likely to become alcoholics themselves, I sometimes wonder how much our parents’ illnesses were hereditary, and whether we’re ever fully in control. While I’m confident I won’t develop a problem with alcohol, I have a solid support system around me, of good friends and family. But I’m not so sure things would have turned out this way without them. Over the past year, there has been an increased focus on helping children of alcoholics. In April last year, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Department for Work and Pensions, jointly announced £6m of funding. The plans include fast access to children’s mental health services, and programmes to treat parents’ addiction. The funding will also speed up the identification of children who are at risk, in the hope of reducing the numbers being taken into care. Stigma and shame have prevented many children from talking about the repercussions on their own health and wellbeing, but according to the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACOA), psychiatric problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and bulimia are common. I wanted to speak to others who grew up like me; to hear their stories, their coping mechanisms, and understand how they got through it. *** As one of the few people of colour in a very white area of Sunderland, Bindy Galsinh tells me she often felt isolated, forced to grapple with her father’s alcoholism alone. “It felt like my brothers and I were the only brown people in the north-east of England at the time. And there was massive stigma in our [Sikh] community. All of my aunts and uncles knew about his problem, because when they’d visit us they’d see him drunk. But all of my family, even my grandmas, would act like: ‘That’s the way it is, keep it hush-hush.’” When Galsinh’s father was drunk, he was aggressive and unpredictable. “He’d stay up and watch television all night. I remember when I was 10, I woke up to go to the toilet and was so scared of making any noise in the bathroom that I grabbed a pint glass, weed in it, and poured it down the sink.” Galsinh was diagnosed with PTSD in her 20s. She suffers from flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety and depression. She compares growing up with an alcoholic parent to living in “a war zone”, because you never know what is coming. “We don’t develop like other people. We didn’t grow up with safety around us.” She feared being defined by her father’s alcoholism in the eyes of friends or family. “It’s the look that says, ‘There must be something wrong with you, because he wouldn’t drink this much.’ It’s worse than shame.” Today, if Galsinh goes out, she has a drink. She chose not to be teetotal because she wants to prove she has control over alcohol, and does so with the support of friends. “To some weird degree, I drink because I want to feel closer to what he went through. I need to understand. You want to feel power over it.” Galsinh’s father died in 2013. She says she feels guilty for not grieving for him. “I was grieving for myself. That I could have been more if I had the support. I was grieving for the fact I didn’t deserve any of that.” She has few happy memories of her father, she says, although, “He was the cleverest person I’ve ever met. If anything was broken he could fix it.” *** My earliest memories of alcoholism being discussed in public life are in relation to the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy. To me, he seemed a committed politician, and as a 13-year-old who marched in protests against the Iraq war, I admired his stance on the issue. But his alcoholism was treated as a joke by the press and many of his peers, even after he stepped down from the leadership. On the comedy panel show Have I Got News For You, Jeremy Clarkson introduced Kennedy by saying: “On Paul Merton’s team tonight is a man who, after confessing to a drinking problem, reported that four party officials cornered him in his private office – although later it transpired that there were only two of them – Charles Kennedy!” In June 2015, Kennedy died after suffering a major haemorrhage caused by ongoing alcohol abuse. Thankfully, times have changed. When Labour MP Jon Ashworth stood up in the Commons in 2017 to talk about his alcoholic father, the video of his speech went viral, and he was widely applauded for its honesty. Ashworth described how the shame his father felt about his alcoholism seeped into all areas of his life. “One of the most heartbreaking things for me was when I got married and my father felt he couldn’t come to the wedding because he would be so drunk. He felt there would be well-known politicians there, and my dad, from a working-class background, felt if he was there, drunk, he would embarrass me.” His father died in 2011. On a grey morning, I meet Ashworth in his office at Westminster’s Portcullis House. He is welcoming and warm, and as we sit by his desk, he speaks passionately about the need for better services to treat alcoholism, and to protect NHS services. Though his voice softens when he recalls his childhood, he doesn’t shy away from the reality of his experience. “For too long, it’s been very difficult to talk about alcoholism,” he says. “People worry about speaking out because alcohol is such a huge part of our society, and nobody wants to be a killjoy. It’s almost as if it’s the final taboo.” We all like people who can be the life and soul of a party. But what happens at the end of it, when the band stops? Ashworth, along with a cross-bench group of MPs, is leading an effort to tackle alcoholism and to better support the children of alcoholics. Almost all local authorities have seen cuts to drug and alcohol services that specifically support children, with a total of £8.3m slashed by 70 councils in 2017. Between 2015 and 2021, 95 local authorities are reducing their alcohol treatment and prevention budgets by £6.5m. Though the £6m in funding promised last April won’t make up the shortfall, Ashworth has praised it as a “real breakthrough”. The cash will be shared with charities and child helplines. The All-Party Group for Children of Alcoholics is chaired by another Labour MP, Liam Byrne, also the son of an alcoholic. Its research has found that more than one in three deaths or serious injuries caused by neglect or abuse of a child are linked to parental drinking. Ashworth says his father was never physically abusive, but he still feels the shame that many children of alcoholics experience, even as adults. “By talking about my father, it’s as if I’m somehow betraying the memory of him, because I’m talking about his problems. People would say to me, ‘Isn’t he a great laugh, because he’s always drunk?’ We all like people who can be the life and soul of a party. But what happens at the end of it, when the band stops playing and the curtains are drawn and everyone goes, and it’s just me and him left alone in the house?” Alcoholism is often portrayed as a problem isolated to poorer families, but Ashworth notes that alcoholics can often be high-functioning and hold down demanding jobs. “If you’re living in a chaotic household, the system is looking out for you. But there’s a whole cohort of children who will never get spotted because, on the outside, their parents are holding down respectable, middle-class jobs. My family was a working-class one – but even from the outside, no one would necessarily know there was a problem.” Children of alcoholics are forced to grow up quickly, he says, and his mission is to let children of alcoholics know they’re not alone. “It doesn’t mean you can’t go on to do what you want in life. I have always wanted to be an MP and I achieved it.” He pauses. “Maybe that’s because I had to grow up quickly. And I want others to know they don’t need to suffer in silence.” *** Kate Jones has her own set of rules for drinking alcohol: she doesn’t drink when she’s alone, before lunchtime, or when she’s sad. And she doesn’t drink to get drunk. “But sometimes I break them,” she says, laughing. Jones grew up in a council home in Pill, a village just outside Bristol, with her parents and two younger brothers. Her father had a job as a forklift driver that involved shift work, but when he was signed off work with depression, her mother took on multiple jobs to support the family. Jones’s parents divorced when she was 18, and her father’s alcoholism led to his death in 2012. He often attempted to stop drinking, which led to fits and hallucinations. When he died, he had been sober for around two weeks; Jones thinks his body just wasn’t used to it. Before his alcoholism developed, Jones’s father would take her and her two brothers on family walks on Sunday afternoons. They’d take camping equipment, cook hotdogs and go fishing. “We’d walk through an abandoned railway, and he’d always say there was a ghost in the tunnel. In the middle of the tunnel, there was a big dip, and when it would rain, he’d hoick my five-year-old brother on to his shoulders and wade through the water to the other side.” Every time I saw an ambulance go past my school, I knew it was for my dad. And it always was. I was on constant alert By the time Jones was 14, she would wake for school and find him drinking a can of cider at 8am in the kitchen. When he was drunk, he wouldn’t eat with the family, preferring to sit alone in the living room. The smallest thing would push him to drink, she says. “Once he shouted and swore at me for singing along to an advert, and so he went to the shop and bought beer. And I thought to myself, ‘I did that, I made him go to the shop, I should be better next time.’” Jones says the years of managing her father’s alcoholism caused her to develop obsessive-compulsive disorder. She was petrified of receiving a call from her mother telling her that he had died. “Every time I saw an ambulance go past my school, I knew it was for my dad. And it always was. I was on constant alert.” She used to count the times he was hospitalised as a result of his alcoholism. By the 11th time she stopped. One of Jones’s last memories of her father is when she was 21 and he was rushed into hospital on life support. “I stood at the end of his bed in intensive care and I didn’t know what to do. I just burst into tears. The nurse came and said, ‘If his heart stops, we can’t resuscitate him, because his body can’t take it.’ I didn’t feel like an adult then, I felt like a child. I thought, OK, what do I do now – do I stay or go? I sat by his bed. The hospital smell still makes me think of my dad.” Only recently have I started to ask my siblings about our mother, wondering what it would be like if she were still alive. I wish I could have had parents at my graduation; that they could be there at Christmas, or for the birth of grandchildren. But the truth is, I have an airbrushed version of my mother in my head. If she were alive today, her illness would still have control over her life. As much as I would like my parents to see the person I’ve become, I would still be grappling with the consequences of their addiction. I’m 29 now, and it’s taken me more than 15 years to speak about my mother’s alcoholism. I no longer feel the intense pang of fear in my chest that I might be pitied or shamed. And I no longer believe that speaking about my mother’s alcoholism will tarnish her memory; her illness doesn’t negate the fact she was a good person and loving mother. Children of alcoholics are more than simply survivors of our parents’ illnesses; alcoholics should not be defined by that illness, either. But alcoholism is a part of who we are, and to ignore that, as we have in this country for so long, would be a disservice to other people grappling with the illness today. In many ways, the taboo is as dangerous as the disease. It’s time to let it go. • National Association for Children of Alcoholics: nacoa.org.uk, 0800 358 3456. Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).There are two kinds of questions to be asked about Brexit. One of them defines the day-to-day grind at Westminster, and is about an urgent set of issues that encompasses everything from the most basic framework for trade to the future of Northern Ireland, and which still seem all but insoluble. But as all the parliamentary drama on goes on, it is the other big Brexit conundrum that shows even fewer signs of resolution. To use a phrase habitually deployed by the prime minister herself, what kind of country do we want to be? Put another way, who are we? To some extent we know the answer, and it is not pretty. Whatever the varied motivations of many of the people who voted for it, our exit from the European Union looks to outsiders like an expression of nostalgia, introversion and a very unbecoming belligerence. Some of the most powerful branches of government seem to be operating on much the same impulses. As evidenced by the Windrush scandal and a steady stream of heartbreaking deportation stories, the Home Office now seems to be institutionally sociopathic. So does the Department for Work and Pensions. The public gets what the public wants, even when it ruins the lives of many of the public themselves Of the countries that make up the United Kingdom, England has come to be understood as a country awash with furies and resentments. Politicians have seen that a significant part of its population apparently thinks that immigration is inherently problematic and ought to be the focus of endless crackdowns, and that supposed benefit “cheats” deserve the same treatment. In turn, the Tories – and, it has to be said, elements of the pre-Corbyn Labour party – have only encouraged the same prejudices and misapprehensions, so the public gets what the public wants, even when it ruins the lives of many of the public themselves. The central tragedy of Brexit, perhaps, is that it represents such crabby, self-harming attitudes being applied to the fundamentals of economics, trade, and Britain’s place in the world. When I am out reporting, it usually seems that most of us remain essentially mild, moderate people, seemingly open to compromise. But everyday examples of the worst of the Brexit spirit are easy to find. Last week, I visited the offices of a successful language-learning app in central London, and talked to staff who had moved to the UK from across Europe, and who had recently started to experience a mixture of discomfort and estrangement. The Austrian chief executive told me that he had been upbraided by a complete stranger for speaking his native language: “I was talking in German on the phone, and an old lady, very well-dressed, came up to me and said, ‘Speak fucking English’.” We all know what sits behind such small horrors. The belief that millions of people come to this country to swing the lead and somehow milk the system is a commonplace. There are benign manifestations of England and Englishness, but in certain people’s mouths those words express whiteness, a defiant rejection of the outside world and the cities that have opened themselves to it. Some still believe that their country needs to rediscover its imperial supremacy, stand apart from Europe, and stick it to the rest of the world. There are hardened versions of these views on the outer edges of the political spectrum, and vaguer echoes that blur out into the mainstream. But they are real, and they are at the heart of where we have arrived. On the left, there is an age-old tendency to hear people talk about things that stray into questions of culture and identity, and automatically reduce them to matters of economics and inequality. In this view, people might complain about immigration but what they are really brassed off about is the housing crisis; when they talk longingly about the past they are essentially bemoaning the demise of manufacturing. As a recent speech by Jeremy Corbyn put it, the only divide that supposedly matters is that “between the many – who do the work, who create the wealth and pay their taxes, and the few – who set the rules, who reap the rewards and so often dodge taxes”. To the extent that England’s malaise is tangled up with a serious shortage of homes, deindustralistion, and our country’s awful imbalances of power and wealth, this is hardly unreasonable. Indeed, I have seen plenty of evidence of the deep connection between the two, and regularly arrived at the same conclusion. There again, why do much the same Brexit-ish instincts and opinions run so deep among affluent people with no obvious axe to grind? What students of Marxism would call economic determinism has its place, but it risks constant denial of the fact that politics has long since slipped free of the old simplicities of class and economic complaint. Culture matters. The political right understood this a long time ago, selling a brand of Englishness replete with the reactionary instincts that exploded in June 2016. In his brilliant Brexit book The Lure of Greatness, the writer and activist Anthony Barnett makes a point that people on the left ought to think deeply about: “One reason the right won such dramatic successes in 2016 in England is that their opponents on the left fled the field of meaning and identity.” Five years ago I watched a grassroots movement in Scotland lead a conversation about leaving the UK behind, and moving on from an old, patriarchal, hidebound view of their own country. People I met had developed a kind of progressive politics that could deal with the two key challenges of modernity – identity and belonging on one side, and equality and redistribution on the other – and incorporate them into a vision of a forward-looking, open country. The Scottish independence movement had its nasty elements, not least online. But after long years of groundwork, the conversation about a new Scotland had been updated by a coalition of organisations that stood well apart from party politics, known at the time as “the third Scotland”, because of its distance from both the SNP and the Labour party. Coming back home feeling both envious and excited, I wondered if my country could give rise to anything similar. I know, I know: England might be too big, weighed down by its history, and now fatally wounded by its deep divisions. Even though it has its own health service and education system, and an array of problems that originate in the broken way it is governed, almost no politicians on the left will talk about it. But 55 million of us live in that country, and if we believe it should finally embrace the values of diversity and acceptance and an open and connected world, we are going to have to make that case. As against imperial delusions and English exceptionalism, it is time we talked about the realities of our past and a future that necessarily involves being part of Europe – and the fact that in the 21st century, the movement of people is a basic fact of life. I know what a modern, open, accepting, diverse vision of my country looks like: I see it not just in Bristol, Manchester, Leicester, Leeds, and Birmingham, but in endless small kindnesses in places that are too often either ignored or reduced to a Brexit-supporting caricature. We need to seize on such examples and make the case for a new England. When do we start? • John Harris is a Guardian columnistPeople often tell me they are repulsed by feet. They’re gross and repellent, apparently. And while I can see where they’re coming from – especially in winter, when dryness becomes extreme, heels crack and nails become neglected and gnarly under the cover of thick socks and tights – I must admit I enjoy the challenge. I’m not ashamed to say that just as I’ll gleefully squeeze anyone’s blackheads and extract their spots, I take pleasure in making over their (freshly washed) feet. Thorough and robust exfoliation yields satisfying results. Foot scrubs – creams containing scratchy bits – are perfectly fine and pleasant, but they’ll have zero effect on hard, calloused skin. By far the better remedy is the oldest: a foot file (not the inferior, but more expensive, mechanical or sonic kind) and elbow grease, used dry and briskly across the heels, outer toes and balls of the feet, works wonders. My own weapon of choice is the Colossal Pedicure Foot File (£9.97) made, rather gratifyingly, by my favourite cheese grater brand, Microplane. Its expansion into personal care is inspired and its file, faultless – it removes all dead skin quickly, painlessly and efficiently (put down newspaper – the fallout is shocking), and unlike the common sandpaper style, it can be washed under the tap after each use. A foot file shouldn’t be used on broken skin, however. Deep cracks must be well on the road to recovery before you tackle the surrounding skin, so you’ll need a specialist cream in advance. O’Keeffe’s Healthy Feet (£8.49, 91g) is magical stuff. This thick, unctuous ointment looks unappealing, but slather it on each evening for two to three nights, cover with cotton bed socks, and any cracks will all but disappear (it works wonderfully on cracked hands, too). If your feet are in reasonable nick and you favour a relaxing treatment over the down and dirty home surgery that excites me more than it should, try Seoulista Rosy Toes Instant Pedicure. These are Korean product-filled paper socks (£7.99 a pair) that in only 20 minutes, soften and smooth unloved feet. When things are back on track, treat yourself to a paint job by CND Shellac, my favourite gel polish that lasts me well over a month. My regular is DryBy at Hershesons, but see lovecnd.com for your nearest stockist. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Small, wet, overweight countries should not – and usually do not – produce tennis superstars. And although it was a time his many followers in Scotland and beyond had been expecting for a while, the pain and frustration etched on Andy Murray’s face as he announced his retirement from tennis at a tearful press conference in Australia, still came as a shock. The fairytale Federer-style comeback we all wished for was not to be. The visceral authenticity of the emotion made it difficult to watch. But it said everything you need to know about Murray: still utterly committed to the game he loves, struggling to free himself from the only life he has ever known – even though it is now causing him excruciating pain. Two Wimbledon crowns, a US Open, two gold medals, a Davis Cup and world number one in a sport that Scottish people have no history of – many might say no business – being good at; Murray has nothing to prove to anyone. But it’s a bitter pill to swallow that the tennis gods did not see fit to allow him to bow out on a high, at a time of his choosing. I cannot think of another living Scot who elicits in their compatriots such genuine pride. As only those from other small countries can appreciate – the Swiss and the Jamaicans perhaps – possessing a global sports hero somehow makes your whole nation stand a little taller. A tiny smidgeon of the glory and the glamour reflects back on you, and because you’re not used to it, you make sure you savour every moment. The skill, grit and courage shown by Murray on court speaks for itself, and the buzz of being utterly consumed in the moment of watching him play, willing him to win with every demented fibre of your mind and body, is something many of us will never experience again. Murray’s announcement prompted an outpouring of love and praise from around the world that will, no doubt, give him comfort. Maybe all the more so since such support and admiration were noticeably lacking early in his career. To sections of the English media and many Tim Henman-loving English tennis fans, the young pretender, with his sweary on-court passion and intensity, was uncouth and arrogant; his dry, very Scottish off-court banter simply not cricket. This early antipathy was also driven by Murray being an outsider in UK tennis terms, having come up outside of the Lawn Tennis Association system. He was coached by his mother, Judy, a force of nature who begged, borrowed and sacrificed to give her son the opportunity to train at the highest level in Spain. The tennis establishment didn’t like the fact that the Murrays had done it on their own terms, though they were only forced to go elsewhere because the infrastructure did not exist to create champions in the UK, never mind a tennis backwater like Scotland. Shockingly, it still doesn’t. Even back before he had won anything big, the animosity and coldness from down south only made people in Scotland love Murray more. Eventually, Murray won round many of his detractors. Winning grand slams helped, of course, but one of the other ways he did this was by overturning a major stereotype in Scottish masculinity, the macho fear of showing emotion that still plagues so many men in our country. Murray taught Scots how to dream big. But he also made the call to be himself in public, to share his hurt and pain as well as his joy – and that takes guts. The shyness and awkwardness of the teenager we first got to know matured, through all the euphoric highs and painful lows, into the endearing, hard-won openness that we recognise in the battle-scarred veteran we saw today, and to whom our hearts reached out. • Marianne Taylor is a Glasgow-based freelance journalistIn late October, the pastor of one of China’s best-known underground churches asked this of his congregation: had they successfully spread the gospel throughout their city? “If tomorrow morning the Early Rain Covenant Church suddenly disappeared from the city of Chengdu, if each of us vanished into thin air, would this city be any different? Would anyone miss us?” said Wang Yi, leaning over his pulpit and pausing to let the question weigh on his audience. “I don’t know.” Almost three months later, Wang’s hypothetical scenario is being put to the test. The church in south-west China has been shuttered and Wang and his wife, Jiang Rong, remain in detention after police arrested more than 100 Early Rain church members in December. Many of those who haven’t been detained are in hiding. Others have been sent away from Chengdu and barred from returning. Some, including Wang’s mother and his young son, are under close surveillance. Wang and his wife are being charged for “inciting subversion”, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. Now the hall Wang preached from sits empty, the pulpit and cross that once hung behind him both gone. Prayer cushions have been replaced by a ping-pong table and a film of dust. New tenants, a construction company and a business association, occupy the three floors the church once rented. Plainclothes police stand outside, turning away those looking for the church. One of the officers told the Observer: “I have to tell you to leave and watch until you get in a car and go.” Early Rain is the latest victim of what Chinese Christians and rights activists say is the worst crackdown on religion since the country’s Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong’s government vowed to eradicate religion. Researchers say the current drive, fuelled by government unease over the growing number of Christians and their potential links to the west, is aimed not so much at destroying Christianity but bringing it to heel. “The government has orchestrated a campaign to ‘sinicise’ Christianity, to turn Christianity into a fully domesticated religion that would do the bidding of the party,” said Lian Xi, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, who focuses on Christianity in modern China. Over the past year, local governments have shut hundreds of unofficial congregations or “house churches” that operate outside the government-approved church network, including Early Rain. A statement signed by 500 house church leaders in November says authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to hang the Chinese flag and sing patriotic songs, and bar minors from attending. Churchgoers say the situation will get worse as the campaign reaches more of the country. Another church in Chengdu was placed under investigation last week. Less than a week after the mass arrest of Early Rain members, police raided a children’s Sunday school at a church in Guangzhou. Officials have also banned the 1,500-member Zion church in Beijing after its pastor refused to install CCTV. In November the Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church was shut for the second time in three months. “The Chinese Communist party (CCP) wants to be the God of China and the Chinese people. But according to the Bible only God is God. The government is scared of the churches,” said Huang Xiaoning, the church’s pastor. Local governments have also shut the state-approved “sanzi” churches. Sunday schools and youth ministries have been banned. One of the first signs of a crackdown was when authorities forcibly removed more than 1,000 crosses from sanzi churches in Zhejiang province between 2014 and 2016. “The goal of the crackdown is not to eradicate religions,” said Ying Fuk Tsang, director of the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “President Xi Jinping is trying to establish a new order on religion, suppressing its blistering development. [The government] aims to regulate the ‘religious market’ as a whole.” While the CCP is officially atheist, Christianity is one of five religions sanctioned by the government and religious freedom has been enshrined in the constitution since the 1980s. For decades, authorities tolerated the house churches, which refused to register with government bodies that required church leaders to adapt teachings to follow party doctrine. As China experienced an explosion in the number of religious believers, the government has grown wary of Christianity and Islam in particular, with their overseas links. In Xinjiang, a surveillance and internment system has been built for Muslim minorities, notably the Uighurs. Xi has called for the country to guard against “infiltration” through religion and extremist ideology. “What happens in Xinjiang and what happens to house churches is connected,” said Eva Pils, a professor of law at King’s College London, focusing on human rights. “Those kinds of new attitudes have translated into different types of measures against Christians, which amount to intensified persecution of religious groups.” There are at least 60 million Christians in China, spanning rural and urban areas. Congregation-based churches can organise large groups across the country and some have links with Christian groups abroad. Pastors such as Wang of Early Rain are especially alarming for authorities. Under Wang, a legal scholar and public intellectual, the church has advocated for parents of children killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake – deaths many critics say were caused by poor government-run construction – or for families of those affected by faulty vaccines. Every year the church commemorates victims of the 4 June protests in 1989, which were forcibly put down by the Chinese military. “Early Rain church is one of the few who dare to face what is wrong in society,” said one member. “Most churches don’t dare talk about this, but we obey strictly obey the Bible, and we don’t avoid anything.” Wang and Early Rain belong to what some see as a new generation of Christians that has emerged alongside a growing civil rights movement. Increasingly, activist church leaders have taken inspiration from the democratising role the church played in eastern European countries in the Soviet bloc or South Korea under martial law, according to Lian. Several of China’s most active human rights lawyers are Christians. “They have come to see the political potential of Christianity as a force for change,” said Lian. “What really makes the government nervous is Christianity’s claim to universal rights and values.” As of 2018, the government has implemented sweeping rules on religious practices, adding more requirements for religious groups and barring unapproved organisations from engaging in any religious activity. But the campaign is not just about managing behaviour. One of the goals of a government work plan for “promoting Chinese Christianity” between 2018 and 2022 is “thought reform”. The plan calls for “retranslating and annotating” the Bible, to find commonalities with socialism and establish a “correct understanding” of the text. “Ten years ago, we used to be able to say the party was not really interested in what people believed internally,” said Pils. “Xi Jinping’s response is much more invasive and it is in some ways returning to Mao-era attempts to control hearts and minds.” Bibles, sales of which have always been controlled in China, are no longer available for sale online, a loophole that had existed for years. In December, Christmas celebrations were banned in several schools and cities across China. “Last year’s crackdown is the worst in three decades,” said Bob Fu, the founder of ChinaAid, a Christian advocacy group based in the US. In Chengdu, Early Rain has not vanished. Before the raid, a plan was in place to preserve the church, with those who were not arrested expected to keep it running, holding meetings wherever they could. Slowly, more Early Rain members are being released. As of 9 January, at least 25 were still in detention. They maintain contact through encrypted platforms. On New Year’s Eve, 300 people joined an online service, some from their homes, others from cars or workplaces, to pray for 2019. Others gather in small groups in restaurants and parks. One member, a student who was sent back to Guangzhou, said he preaches the gospel to the police who monitor him. The church continues to send out daily scripture and posts videos of sermons. In one, pastor Wang alludes to the coming crackdown: “In this war, in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man. Therefore they are doomed to lose this war.”The New Zealand man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane has pleaded not guilty at Auckland’s high court. The 27-year-old man, whose name has been suppressed by the court, appeared in court on Wednesday morning, his second appearance since his arrest in December last year. Millane, 21, disappeared from central Auckland on 1 December, and her body was found in dense bushland in west Auckland a week later. A memorial was held in her Essex village last week, and attended by the New Zealand detective who led the inquiry into her disappearance. The accused is alleged to have murdered Millane sometime between December 1 and 2 last year, according to court documents seen by the New Zealand Herald. Justice Simon Moore scheduled a murder trial for 4 November, which is expected to last three weeks, the New Zealand Herald reported. Moore repeated warnings to the media and the general public to honour the accused’s name suppression, after numerous UK media outlets published his name and photograph following his first court appearance in December. Members of the public also shared his name and photographs widely on social media platforms and blogs. The accused was denied name suppression at his first court appearance, on 10 December, but his lawyers were given 20 working days to appeal, which expires in late January. The accused has been remanded in custody to next appear in court on 3 April, Stuff reported. Millane was travelling in New Zealand as part of a year-long overseas experience, and was last seen alive on CCTV footage entering the CityLife hotel in central Auckland on the night she disappeared. Grace’s father, David Millane, spent a week in New Zealand following the discovery of his daughter’s body, and thanked the people of New Zealand for their kindness and compassion. “Grace was not born here and only managed to stay a few weeks, but you have taken her to your hearts and in some small way she will forever be a Kiwi,” Millane said. “We all hope that what has happened to Grace will not deter even one person from venturing out into the world.” Mass candlelit vigils were held for Millane in every major town in New Zealand, and grief experts said many Kiwis experienced “vicarious trauma” about the murder in the usually safe country.Pete Wild described it as a fairytale and that was no hyperbole from an Oldham fan who bought a ticket to watch this match with friends but ended up managing the League Two team to victory over Premier League hosts. “My mates have said they’ll stand for the ticket now but we’ll see,” said the 33-year-old with the broadest of smiles. A wonderful story unfolded with a perfect sense of drama, as the underdogs fought back from a goal down thanks to strikes by Sam Surridge and Callum Lang either side of a penalty save by Daniel Iversen. Ten days ago this seemed an outlandish scenario. Wild had made arrangements to travel by train to Craven Cottage with five fellow fans but then, following Frankie Bunn’s dismissal as manager after a 6-0 defeat at Carlisle United on Boxing Day, he was asked to become the club’s manager on a caretaker basis. He stepped up from the role of academy manager, to which he had been assigned in June, also on an interim basis. It would have been a difficult time for anyone to get the job, let alone someone who was running Oldham under-16s last season and, by his own admission, had “only been an academy manager for two minutes”. The club has endured the most traumatic year in its recent history featuring discord, financial problems and relegation to League Two, a level to which they had not sunk since 1971. In his first two matches in charge Wild led Oldham to wins over Port Vale and Notts County but that could hardly be cited as evidence that victory over Premier League opponents was imminent. To Wild’s immense credit, and Fulham’s ignominy, there was no chasm on the pitch between the team who spent over £100m on players after last summer’s promotion to the Premier League and the one that has fended off winding-up orders and, in October, faced threats of a strike by players over unpaid wages. From the start here it was clear that Wild has instilled method and confidence. The 4,000 visiting fans had good cause to sing throughout the match. Fulham’s frustrations were encapsulated by the moment in the 37th minute when Neeskens Kebano was booked for diving in the box. Oldham’s defence, marshalled by the 37-year-old Peter Clarke, had kept their hosts at bay with such poise that the only hints of a goal up until then were a couple of headers by Floyd Ayité. Neither required Iversen to make a save. “The first half was boring from us,” said Claudio Ranieri later. It was music to Oldham’s ears. Fulham might have thought they had restored order when Denis Odoi drove the ball into the net in the 52nd minute after an inadvertent back-header from Ayité. But Oldham have grown accustomed to adversity and were not about to give up. Ranieri had made six changes to the lineup that started Fulham’s last Premier League match but, in recognition of Oldham’s defiance, he introduced more of his top players as the game advanced. The substitutions backfired. Ryan Sessegnon’s first involvement after his arrival in the 73rd minute resulted in him conceding a penalty after the prodigy tangled with the veteran Clarke. One of Wild’s substitutes, Surridge, converted from the spot. After the game he returned to Bournemouth, from whom he had been on loan since the start of the season. Ranieri cast on another high-calibre substitute, Aleksandar Mitrovic, just in time to take a penalty awarded to Fulham following a dubious tumble from Tom Cairney. Any debate about that was made redundant by Iversen’s save but Oldham exacted retribution anyway and in glorious style. In the 89th minute Gevaro Nepomuceno sent a cross to the back post and Callum Lang scored with a superb header. For Lang, too, this was a surreal turn of events given that on Friday he thought he would miss this match and return to Wigan, from whom he is on loan. “I can’t quite believe it,” he said. “Last week it was touch and go whether I would be going back to Wigan and now I’m enjoying one of the best feelings of my career, if not one of the greatest moments of my life.” Ranieri was left to fret about what this performance means for his team’s chances of Premier League survival. He said he was let down by players who have been asking for game time since his arrival in November. “You have an opportunity to prove me wrong and you miss it,” said the Italian. “If you lose and the players give you 100% passion and desire I can accept it but we didn’t play with passion and I don’t understand that.” As for Wild, he says he has no idea what this win means for his career. But as an Oldham fan he knows who he wants his team to get in the fourth round. “Manchester United away, because they ruined my childhood,” he said, referring to United’s last-gasp win in the 1994 FA Cup semi-final – Oldham’s last major mark in the competition – until now.Belgian techno, Milanese eccentricity, Finnish ambience and silken Berlin sounds make up January’s best releases – as well as a utopian playlist platform Alongside artists such as Angel Ho and Chino Amobi, Belgian-Congolese producer Nkisi is part of NON, a politically-minded collective and record label dedicated to multimedia art and music by artists of the African diaspora. Nkisi’s releases on NON are caustic meditations, blending the breakneck euphoria of the trance and gabber she loved as a teenager in Belgium with her own hard techno beats, in turn inspired by Congolese polyrhythms. Her debut album 7 Directions, out now on Lee Gamble’s UIQ label, further explores her ideas of pan-African rhythms and cosmology. In this recording, Nkisi’s phantasmagoric sound gets pushed gradually harder and faster, melding her own productions with PlayStation sounds, 90s hardcore and tribal techno. Paquita Gordon is a Milanese DJ who has long been based in the UK, but has a close relationship with Italian festival Terraforma. Hosted in rural gardens surrounding Villa Arconati, a baroque palace and museum near Milan dedicated to the arts, Terraforma has invited Gordon to play every year since it began in 2014. She has cited DJ residencies such as Villalobos at Fabric and Theo Parrish at Plastic People as formative experiences, and perhaps they helped nurture the subtle eccentricity of her sets. In her latest for Terraforma, programmed for a Sunday-afternoon slot, she leads the crowd down a winding path. Aleksi Perälä’s late-90s releases for British rave label Rephlex were a snug fit, releasing braindance under the monikers Ovuca and Astrobotnia. But it was during his studies in his native Helsinki – he is a classically trained pianist – that he broke away from the western 12-tone scale and folded microtonality into his ambient techno beats. Since 2014, Perälä has released a staggering 30 albums. Tracklists read as numerical codes, as if each release is a workbook for fine-tuning minute sonic details. In this recent live set, drum breaks and melodic techno riffs murmurate through the ambience. There is a school of thought in design that if you can make something simpler and still get the message across, do it. In December, Avalon Emerson and friends made buymusic.club, a website that allows artists to curate Bandcamp tracks into playlists; so far, selectors including Ben UFO and Four Tet have contributed. Buy Music Club is a simple and effective tool for people to buy tracks that are ID’d in DJ sets, too – on a recent upload of her performance at Mutek Mexico, Emerson neatly hyperlinks all tracks available on Bandcamp in her track list. Blending breaks that draw from ambient techno and jungle – from the superb Overmono Whities 019 EP and Skee Mask’s Compro album – with acid breakbeats and an inspired inclusion of Serpentwithfeet’s confessional vocals, Emerson is in fine, playful form here. For European techno fans, there are two sections to the musical timeline: Before Berghain and After Berghain. When the club opened in 2004, Andreas Baumecker controlled Berghain and Panorama Bar’s mammoth weekend lineups for the better part of a decade. His tastes as a booker and resident DJ shaped the direction of the club and, by osmosis, much of the dark and heavy loop-based techno sound that’s become synonymous with Berlin. For the seventh instalment of Panorama Bar’s mix series for in-house label Ostgut Ton, Baumecker builds two silken hours of time-evaporating techno with psychedelic tinges, including original tracks from his collaborative project Barker & Baumecker. It is nearly 10 years since Jim Coles became Om Unit. A chimeric project that has produced music across the hardcore spectrum, its sound has grown from Coles’ roots in hip-hop scratching: there are splintered drum and bass and junglist breaks, thrashings of IDM and dubstep-adjacent beats in his back catalogue. Recent years have shown a love for footwork, teasing out its tightly wrought 160bpm percussive patterns into a more skeletal form, juggling tempos as a nod to that early turntablism work. Based in Bristol, he also runs his own label, Cosmic Bridge. In this mix for Australian crew the Operatives, he blends forthcoming tracks from Cosmic Bridge artists as well as his own new material.As those who know me will readily attest, I could never be accused of being a fashion victim. My clothes-buying decisions seldom go beyond whether I really need another linen shirt or whether or not to go for turn-ups. Yet last week, I found myself being drawn into the curious - to me – world of high fashion and its singular vocabulary: capelet, tuxedo-jupe, paper-bag waists, cigarette-style trews, point-of-difference pencil skirt. I realise that I’m not exactly the target audience but the more I read the more mystifying it all became. And I was fully flummoxed by pull-up trousers. Pull-up trousers? What else could they be? But then I had a eureka moment. Why, all along I’ve been at fashion’s cutting edge. I can now shamelessly parade my pull-up socks, flaunt my tie-up shoes and sport my dernier cri collection of button-up shirts. Moving swiftly on from couture to the commonplace. How annoying can the little things be, which creep perniciously into everyday usage? Consider the following blights that have now become commonplace: ahead of; meet with; park up; fry off; back in 2005. Before, meet, park, fry, in 2005 – all are more felicitous, just as explicable, fewer words. And all the better for that. Talking of which, I would be very grateful if politicians would stop using the following phrases: “I would just like to make clear”; and “Let me be abundantly clear”. For your audience knows full well that you are about to feed us yards of flannel and acres of obfuscation about backstops, Efta, Norway-plus-plus and hard borders and that basically you are playing for time while trying to dredge up something pertinent to say. And that you never will. I hope I have made myself abundantly clear. • Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnistThere have been several times in his career when Nick Kyrgios has been guilty of not giving his best but at the Australian Open yesterday, he was simply outplayed by a better player. His 6-4, 7-6, 6-4 defeat by Milos Raonic, the 16th seed, gave him his earliest exit from his home grand slam and means he will fall further down the rankings to the high 60s. Having said he was “in a good place” on the eve of the tournament, the 23-year-old now faces a battle over the coming months to get himself back toward the top of the game. Raonic hit 30 aces and a hot day on serve throughout, dropping just six points on his first serve. He did not allow Kyrgios a single break point and when he had his chances on the Australian’s serve, he took enough of them to carve out a convincing victory. Kyrgios had his right knee taped at the end of the first set, an injury he has been carrying for the past few weeks. “I’m trying my nuts off and my knee hurts,” he said at one stage during the match. “It hurts to walk, it hurts to rock on my serve. I’ve taken four tablets and they’re not working.” However, Kyrgios did not use the injury as an excuse. “I don’t think that was at all the reason I lost today” he said. “He played unbelievable. Unbelievable serving. Never seen serving like that in my life. I’ve never been a part of it. I was just watching it literally going side to side. I was trying to mix up where I was standing, trying to move before, during, like trying to do anything. “He was in such a good rhythm on serve, I couldn’t do anything. He was way too good tonight. Every time I returned, he served and volleyed. He volleyed unbelievable. He was so composed on big points, he made returns, jag returns on big points on my serve. He was way too good for me tonight.” Kyrgios said he would have beaten 75 percent of the draw on that form. “I think there are players that are much better than I am,” he said. “Obviously guys like Roger [Federer] can neutralise big servers so easy with the chip return, which I don’t have. But [I] would have beaten a lot of players, for sure.” Kyrgios said he would be available for Davis Cup selection, playing down suggestions that he did not want to play under Australia captain Lleyton Hewitt. “Not really,” he said, when asked if there was a rift. Bernard Tomic claimed on Tuesday that “no one liked Hewitt” but Kyrgios said he had not even seen his comments. “I don’t have a big deal with anything,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to play Davis Cup. I love Davis Cup. If I don’t play, I don’t play. I’m available. That’s all I got to say.” With two more Australians making it through to round two, the total of 10 is the equal-best performance by home players in the past 16 years. Though Sam Stosur, Alya Tomljanovic, Daria Gavrilova and Destinee Aiava all lost and Thanasi Kokkinakis retired with a shoulder injury, teenager Alexei Popyrin and Alex Bolt both advanced with their first grand slam wins. World No149 Popyrin, who trains at the Patrick Mouratoglou academy in France, hit 60 winners in his 7-5, 7-6, 6-4 win over Mischa Zverev of Germany while Bolt, ranked 155, upset American Jack Sock 4–6, 6–3, 6–2, 6–2 for his first grand slam win.”In the early hours of one morning, nearly a decade ago, chauffeur Jayne Amelia Larson found herself trying to extricate the son of one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles from the back of her car. The then-chauffeur had been driving the twentysomething party boy up and down Santa Monica Boulevard in her Lincoln Town car as he tried to procure a “transvestite prostitute” for his girlfriend who, he said, “wanted to convert a gay guy”. After several hours, he threw up on the back seat and fell into a drunken slumber, then woke up and tried to urinate in the car. “He’d been in rehab again and again,” says Larson, recalling the incident that took place just weeks into her new career. “Another driver I later met had been his family’s driver, and said the kid repeatedly did stuff in the car you would not believe, like he went to the bathroom there because he was just so wasted. And I don’t mean in a clean way; I mean in an awful way.” Eventually, the chauffeuring firm she worked for directed her to one of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. But as she drove her client through the gates of a huge mansion, he panicked. “He kept saying: ‘Nobody loves me. Please don’t wake my parents. They hate me!’” As the car pulled up, an older man, whom she presumes was a member of his parents’ staff, stepped out from the darkness and helped him from the car. “The guy shushed him, and said: ‘You’re home. It’s OK now.’ It was just so weird and terrible and odd.” Larson’s experience is not as extraordinary as it might seem. Behind the tinted windows of luxury cars, chauffeurs have an insight into a world few people will see – the private, intimate space of the rich and famous. In a profession where personal referrals are important, discretion is taken seriously. But when drivers break this code, the results can be explosive. I spoke to chauffeurs in the UK and US who recalled disturbing incidents involving VIP clients, from scoring drugs to having sex on the back seats. Last month, the former personal driver to the multimillionaire and Conservative donor Christopher Moran told the Sunday Times that he had been aware that there were “at least a hundred prostitutes” operating from the Chelsea Cloisters apartment block owned by his former boss. Tony Heaney, who drove Moran’s Rolls-Royce for 25 years, told the paper he used to check the bins in the flats for condoms to tot up “exactly how many girls were working there”. The retired chauffeur told the paper he was upset after Moran allegedly failed to thank him when he left the job. Moran denied he knew the extent of the problem and his management took a “zero tolerance” approach to sex work in the building. Harvey Weinstein’s ex-chauffeur also went public with allegations about his former employer, saying the disgraced mogul had sex in the back of his car with a woman who begged the producer “not to hurt her” (Weinstein has denied the allegations). Jacques Chirac’s former driver, meanwhile, wrote a book claiming his boss had been a serial philanderer. Chauffeuring can be well paid. The annual salary for personal chauffeurs for executives and super-rich families in London averages between £35,000 and £60,000, according to Irving Scott, an upmarket household staffing agency. Drivers, it says, can expect bonuses for commitment, longevity and loyalty, with discretion and professional secrecy also financially rewarded. Other agencies advertise jobs such as a £35,000-a-year permanent role based in Knightsbridge, London, that includes maintaining the client’s “large collection of supercars and other luxury vehicles including a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley and an armoured Mercedes S class”; and a £40,000-a-year permanent role with a family split between London and a villa in the south of France, with duties also including security, supervising contractors, keeping the exterior of the property empty and putting out deckchairs. Yet for all the apparent glamour, the exacting nature of chauffeuring VIP clients was exposed last summer when it was alleged that Sir Martin Sorrell, the former chief executive of British advertising giant WPP, had suddenly sacked his personal driver of 15 years in October 2017. The unnamed driver was reportedly asked, at 2am, to pick up Lady Cristiana Sorrell from the exclusive Mayfair restaurant Isabel. The driver then refused to resume work at 7am, explaining he would be too tired to drive safely if he only got two or three hours’ sleep. The paper claimed the Sorrells fired him the next day. It is impossible to put a total value on the UK’s chauffeuring industry, which, at the top end, includes personal drivers, luxury hotel car services and small and large firms. According to Transport for London, there were more than 12,000 executive-class private hire vehicles – Mercedes E, S and Viano series – less than five years old in the capital in June 2017. Paul Gibson, editor of TheChauffeur.com, says that, in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of companies providing security chauffeurs, with close-protection training for executives, celebrities and super-rich clients. These chauffeurs are often at the high end of the earning bracket thanks to specialist qualifications such as defensive driving, as shown in the BBC drama The Bodyguard. One of the best known of these companies is Capstar, founded by two former British army officers, Robert Bassett Cross and Charles Bowmont, in 2012. The Brentford-based company began with a mission to recruit ex-forces personnel, included those wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Capstar has evolved into a lifestyle and security management service, helping clients with their private club membership or buying fine art and jewellery. Bowmont, a Sandhurst graduate, is well placed to understand his clients’ needs. A Swiss billionaire’s family, who required a very personal round-the-clock service to manage their daily schedule, are described as close personal friends. “I’d get a WhatsApp message from her going: ‘Right, my husband can’t take the children to school tomorrow, can you get the guys out?’” When Larson first became a chauffeur, however, unusually, she had no experience of private driving. The Harvard graduate had moved to California to pursue acting and producing. Years later, after months without work, she was persuaded to start chauffeuring by a friend, with the idea that she would have lots of free time to pursue telephone and film projects, and earn enough in tips to help clear her $40,000 debts. Initially hired by a high-end limo company to chauffeur film stars, rock groups and Hollywood moguls to showbiz events including the Golden Globes and the Oscars, she soon discovered the business was all-consuming, with some jobs lasting up to 17 hours. But the demands of her celebrity clients paled in comparison with those of the Saudi royals Larson worked for after driving for a couple of months. She was one of 40 drivers hired for seven weeks, with no days off, who were to be on call 24/7 for Princess Zaahira (not her real name), her children, the family’s security and their entourage and staff – including nannies, personal assistants and domestic servants. Larson subsequently wrote a play and a book, Driving the Saudis, about her experiences. Among the most challenging of Larson’s tasks was finding 27 bottles of a particular brand of hair-removal cream late one night, after a 12-hour shift. She went to 20 shops all over LA County and grabbed every bottle she could find. “But when I got back, I was dismissed by the princess’s secretary, who said: “Oh, it’s too late.” On another occasion, she was charged with picking up one of Princess Zaahira’s best friends at a plastic surgery clinic in Beverly Hills. Larson had to wait for hours outside before a nurse discharged the fiftysomething patient, but the woman, who was recovering after having buttock implants, promptly lost consciousness. A flummoxed Larson then had to recruit a group of nearby valets to help her lift the woman into the back of the SUV. “Within a few days of not eating, not sleeping, of chaos, of the complete contradiction of orders on a minute-by-minute basis, I just realised that the goal here is to survive,” she says. “The royal family and the upper echelon of the staff liked to keep chaos around them to keep you on your toes. And the servants were happy to let you do stuff that they would otherwise have been asked to do by the family.” Due to her gender and inexperience, Larson was at the bottom of the pecking order of the family’s entourage and the fleet of drivers. She says the princess’s hairdresser bullied and verbally abused her after she was assigned to drive him, offended to be relegated to a female driver of the least luxurious car in the motorcade, a Ford Crown Victoria. Yet she ingratiated herself with Princess Zaahira by recounting tales from the royal entourage’s nightly exploits at casinos, which tradition and decorum dictated that a Saudi princess could not attend. “I would do these little pantomimes for her,” says Larson. “She’d laugh and laugh. I’m sure it was because my accent was horrendous, but also because she was appreciating that I got a bit of the nuance of all the characters, especially the hairdresser. I felt as if I was floating on a little cloud around her.” She was assigned more luxurious cars and felt she was getting somewhere until the relatively paltry $1,000 tip she received at the end of the seven weeks disabused her. “It was about a fifth of the amount that the other – male – drivers received, after I had done far more work.” Her basic wage was also underwhelming, given her long hours. “A friend of mine figured out it was about $11 [£8.60] an hour, and I remember him saying: ‘Well, that’s not that bad.’ And I said: ‘For an 18-hour day?’” Gerold Wunstel, a chauffeur who has driven European government ministers in his native Germany and Hollywood stars in Los Angeles during his 24-year career, says those new to the business can get carried away by their proximity to VIP clients. “You think you’re part of the entourage,” he says. “You’re just the bloody chauffeur. Dave Stewart, of the Eurythmics, invited me in to his birthday party. I said no, because I’m not his friend, I’m a professional. You’re not supposed to mingle with Elvis Costello or whoever’s invited.” Wunstel, who most recently worked as the senior driver for the LA Philharmonic, recalls how a rich Saudi businessman he chauffeured around San Francisco and the Napa valley wine region challenged this. “We hit it off because he was educated in Switzerland and London, and spoke fluent German,” he says. But the client’s love of marijuana tested their relationship. At the beginning of the job, Wunstel drove the man to Haight-Ashbury, where San Francisco dealers hung out. “I had to tell him not to tip the drug dealers,” he says. After four days, Wunstel refused to go to the area again. “I had to say: ‘I’m really sorry but it’s too dangerous,’” he recalls. “‘I’m a new guy in this country. I just got a green card. If the police stop me with some marijuana, I’m in big trouble.’ Which wasn’t necessarily true, but I was not his drug mule.” His worst-behaved client was a billionaire. “I picked him up from a private airfield and he took a helicopter instead of walking 200 metres to the car,” says Wunstel. “With a stretch limo you have a divider, so you are supposed to not hear anything, but you hear everything. He had sex with a model while I was driving. No class, no manners. He gave me a $100 tip, but that’s not the point.” Wunstel has driven stars including Bill Murray, George Clooney and Eminem. But he says driving celebrities can be more hassle than it’s worth. “You have to be at the office four hours before because you don’t know when they are touching down in their private plane, and you don’t get paid extra. And, you know, some celebrities do not tip. The more experience I got, the more I realised I just like to drive ‘regular’ people, such as boring lawyers or real-estate guys. You go from one meeting to another and work 10 hours in a stretch, and you get paid.” Ervin Gjoni, managing director of EG Chauffeurs, based in Westminster, in central London, agrees. Chauffeuring royalty from the Gulf states, such as the UAE, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, is much more demanding, he says, with some clients sending lists of up to 50 criteria their chauffeurs must meet, covering their dress and grooming. One of EG’s chauffeurs, Manny Qorrolli, says a typical day in London might start at 2pm and might involve shopping in New Bond Street and Harrods for up to three hours apiece, going to a Mayfair restaurant and then to a shisha bar on the Edgware Road until around midnight. He might work up to 60 hours a week, but some Gulf royals have given him £500 tips for a fortnight’s job. For Larson, the experiences she gained as a chauffeur have changed her behaviour. She says: “One of the first things I do if I’m in a private-hire car now is ask: ‘How long have you been driving today?’ I know that if that guy has been driving 10, 12 or 14 hours, he’s exhausted. But I also make a point of having a conversation, even if I’m not in the mood. Because I know that whenever anybody had a conversation with me, for a moment, I felt like not just a lowly chauffeur. I’m also much more careful in a car now, because I know that the chauffeur could potentially be clocking everything I’m saying or doing.”All publicity is good publicity – unless, perhaps, you’re head of a multibillion pound global brand that has released what has been dubbed “the year’s worst marketing move” by one industry magazine, and an affront to masculinity by an apoplectic Piers Morgan. In 1989, Gillette launched its Best a Man Can Get campaign during the Superbowl. One of the most memorable slogans in advertising was projected onto soft-focus vignettes of male American life: strong men playing sport, brave men hurtling into space, dashing men kissing beautiful women. All set to a rousing 1980s power ballad. It did what advertising has been built to do: prop up a fantasy vision of manhood – one that relies on smooth abs and smouldering eyes to sell products. This week Gillette made a dramatic pivot to air a new campaign in response to #MeToo that challenges men to be better, less macho and to stop excusing bad behaviour with “boys will be boys”. The ad shows a father intervening in a fight, a friend stopping the street harassment of a woman, and a woman being mansplained to in a meeting. A company spokesperson denied the ad was set to air at next month’s Superbowl. Led by a male creative team in the US and directed by female A-list commercial director Kim Gehrig – who has inevitably shouldered a volley of abuse – a shaving brand has co-opted a social movement; Gillette became “woke”. Thousands may have complained and threatened boycotts, but the ad also earned much praise and has been described by celebrities as “beautiful” (Elijah Wood), “moving” (Jessica Chastian) and a “must-watch” (Arianna Huffington). According to Sprout Social, a media analytics firm, 63% of tweets to @Gillette have been positive. Gillette is not alone in commercialising a social, political movement for profit; parent company Procter and Gamble saw huge success with its #LikeAGirl campaign, which debuted during the 2014 Superbowl. Commodifying feminism has been a feature for the advertising industry for at least five years – brands have insisted that women feel “empowered” by everything from their shampoo (Pantene), their maxi pads (Always) and their moisturisers (Dove) to their energy bills (EDF). In 2015, Lynx took gender equality on board and swerved away from using semi-naked women to sell deodorant to men. Lynx (sold as Axe elsewhere in the world) now promotes a sensitive, inclusive take on masculinity, urging “find your magic”. A momentum was built. Just two years later, however, Pepsi spectacularly misfired with a tone-deaf ad starring Kendall Jenner in which the model was depicted as a social activist who managed to bring peace and unity to a rowdy protest by handing out cans of cola to police. So how did making a political stand become a profitable move? “We live in a world where brands think they need ‘purpose’,” says Dan Cullen-Shute, chief executive and co-founder of independent advertising agency Creature London. “Research continually shows that millennials want brands that do and mean something.” He is, however, scathing of Gillette’s execution – and cynicism. “Just selling their five-bladed whatever won’t cut it now,” he says. “That’s why they had to do something bold. I have an admiration that they tried, but as a piece of communication [this ad] is clumsy, self-important and badly put together. It is possible to think #MeToo is incredibly important and support a world in which men are more respectful and kind, but at the same time not believe it’s really Gillette’s space to talk about it.” Charles Olive, a cultural strategist who worked at Grey (the advertising agency which has the Gillette account), and Eliza Williams, managing editor of Creative Review, agree. “It looks like a Saturday Night Live skit or South Park parody,” says Olive. Williams adds: “It’s patronising and preachy – it’s not the best of this kind of advertising.” Both compare Gillette to the Nike campaign last year featuring Colin Kaepernick, which embraced civil rights, Black Lives Matter and activism with a portrait of the American football star strap-lined: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything”. “By being bold and divisive and taking on a subject they knew would be politically conflicted, it’s become the gold standard,” says Williams. “It was an elegant way of tapping into the conversation,” says Olive. “And companies now are continually asking: ‘How can we be meaningful, effective and impact change?’ They have a bottom line to protect but it’s interesting and positive that that now means there is money to be made in being socially responsible. ” But this form of “woke washing” – corporations adopting the veneer of progressive values for profit – leaves some uncomfortable. “We’re going to see more brands trying to take on social issues,” says Williams. “They’re taking the view thatbeing politically divisive is worth a risk and being at the heart of a debate where you come out as the good guys is positive.” But, she says wearily, “it is also a trend”. Rebecca Stewart, a reporter at marketing magazine The Drum, says companies can no longer afford to be circumspect: campaigns must be dramatic talking points to capture attention in an age where “the average consumer is exposed to 10,000 ads a day”. And selling razors is a cut-throat business: a decade ago Gillette controlled 70% of the market in the US, according to Euromonitor, but this fell to under 50% last year after the arrival of razor subscription services. Gillette was forced to shave 12% from its retail price. Cullen-Shute says brands are taking a gamble and hope to be on the right side of history – and the profit margin. “It’s too early to tell how successful this will be for Gillette,” he says. “But when the US government has shut down and all everyone’s talking about is Gillette...” He groans. “I just wish such an important conversation wasn’t reduced to an ad for shaving.”The first day of school was followed by yet another class photo on Capitol Hill. But one that was a little different from the traditional. After a series of procedural votes, the 89 female Democratic members of Congress gathered for a group picture in front of the Capitol on Friday. The setting was no different than any other picture of its size. There was jostling as people had to be arranged by height, late arrivers had to be squeezed and photographers kept on yelling “down front” as the 89 women, including 36 newly elected members of Congress, laughed and joked among themselves. There was no oratory at the scene, it was just a photo op, although the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, received a round of applause from her colleagues when she took her place in the front. Pelosi, who became the first female speaker in 2007, was re-elected yesterday after Democrats regained control of the House in the midterm elections. The newly elected Democratic class featured a number of firsts, including the first Native American women and the first Muslim American women elected to federal office. The history wentunremarked upon by members of the public save by one girl who pointed out as members left: “She’s the first Palestinian American member of Congress” or “She’s the first Native American member of Congress”. After the photos ended, Deb Haaland, one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress, walked back through the crowd holding a pink wool glove that a colleague had left on the stage while Cheri Bustos, the incoming chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, tried to herd her fellow Illinois Democrats together for a group picture. The aftermath of the photo also featured the first Democratic woman fleeing from reporters after one of the first controversies of the new Congress. Rashida Tlaib, the newly elected congresswoman from Michigan, refused to answer questions on comments she made about Donald Trump on Thursday, saying to “impeach the motherfucker”. The comments have met near universal condemnation from both sides of the aisle. However, Tlaib refused to talk to reporters about the comments after boasting on Twitter earlier on Friday: “I will always speak to truth to power.” Instead, a staffer trying to shield her from questioning occasionally shouted out the age-old dodge of elected officials on Capitol Hill: “Call our office.” It was a new day in Washington in so many ways, but not all.Brats do not endear themselves. Even when insulated from children, we nevertheless encounter our fair share of adults whom we suspect got their own way too much of the time as kids. The recent behaviour of some Conservative MPs could be a case in point. The foot-stamping of fanatical Brexiteers, unable to reconcile what they wish for with reality, is not unlike that of a child screaming their insistence that they won’t wear a coat even though it’s 2C outside. It’s not hard to imagine that they were rarely told no when they were young. Or that the finality of the word was seldom made concrete to them. They have become grandiose and overindulged, and we’re collectively suffering the consequences of their tantrum. During my 20s, child-free and sanctimonious, I did not suffer brats gladly. I knew many. Adults too entitled to think about the needs of others. Children who just needed “a good clip round the ear” to make them step back in line. Back then I didn’t think smacking was wrong: my parents smacked me as a child. I believed the practice had been demonised by white middle-class people who thought they knew better. Numerous conversations on the subject with my white partner ended in the same way. I’d maintain that smacking was a sort of cultural expression. It was, I’d say, a practice permissible in many working-class immigrant cultures yet now policed by a society that disparaged them. Harrumphing in a manner not dissimilar to the political-correctness-gone-mad brigade, I’d sometimes say smacking was actually a sign of my parents’ love for me. Some of my harshest punishments came about because, all too aware of our society’s inherent racism, they did love me and wanted me to do and be better in an environment that stacked the odds against me. I believed this was the right strategy because they did. No wonder, then, that I felt personally affronted by bratty children. Kids cossetted in a way that I thought black working-class children weren’t allowed to be. They could be wayward while we always had to yield to the will of our parents. My feelings of regret were like those of a perpetrator saying they were sorry after physically abusing a partner And then, I had my own children. With the power now vested in me by the tiny person who called me Mummy, I found myself sickened after those moments when frustration and sleeplessness spilled over into shouting. I’d see my son look at me with something near terror and I’d be stunned into remembering what it had sometimes felt like to be smacked by my parents. That at times, I had felt hated. That I was bad. That the badness was something to be exorcised through pain. Or the reverse, that goodness could be smacked into me. After all, as the Bible says, spare the rod and spoil the child. Around this time, I picked up bell hook’s All About Love. She writes about the voicelessness of children, of how “in our culture the private family dwelling is the one institutionalised sphere of power that can easily be autocratic and fascistic”. She recounts a discussion with “mostly educated, well-paid professionals”, a multigenerational, multiracial group of people, describing them all as broadly in favour of smacking. One young mother, hooks recalls, brags to the gathering about how “she did not hit her small son but instead would ‘clamp down on his flesh, pinching him until he got the message’”. It is then that hooks comments: “Had we all been listening to a man tell us that every time his wife or girlfriend does something he does not like he just clamps down on her flesh, pinching her as hard as he can, everyone would have been appalled.” On reading those words I came to understand that my own feelings of regret after losing my temper were like those of a perpetrator after physically abusing a partner. I indulged the idea that this was something my child had forced me to do in spite of myself. I’m familiar with these justifications for abuse; to see them play out in me was frightening. Smacking is a bridge I have chosen not to cross, and that decision has led me to consider the other forms of coercion exercised over children; the pinches, too-tight grips or verbal shaming. They are too often disciplined because parents don’t want to be perceived as weak-willed and indulgent. We do it so we are seen to be doing it, not always in order to benefit our children. This is a kind of machismo, an invocation of hierarchy for hierarchy’s sake. A demand for obedience and compliance, in the guise of showing respect, becomes instead a way of displaying power. I want to teach my children that their will needs to be respected as much as mine. It’s the least I can do. • Lola Okolosie is an English teacherNicola Sturgeon has referred herself to an independent ministerial ethics body after bowing to intense pressure to allow an investigation into her actions in the Alex Salmond sexual harassment case. The first minister’s move follows her admission that she held a secret meeting with Salmond at her home, in the presence of her government-employed chief of staff and one of Salmond’s advisers, where he briefed her on a Scottish government inquiry into sexual harassment allegations against him. Opposition parties said that meeting and a subsequent phone call with Salmond were in clear breach of the ministerial code since discussions with outsiders on government business had to be immediately reported to civil servants. Richard Leonard, the Scottish Labour leader, said it was a “grave error of judgment”. Sturgeon revealed on Thursday it took two months before she raised the meeting and phone call with Leslie Evans, the Scottish government’s top civil servant, and only did so because she was about to meet Salmond for a second time. Sturgeon advised Evans in writing that legal action by Salmond against the Scottish government was imminent, but denies that was an intervention in the inquiry. Her spokesman has also refused to confirm or deny that Salmond urged her to intervene at that meeting. The two had a total of three face-to-face meetings and two phone calls where the investigation was discussed over a 15-week period last summer. Sturgeon insists her meeting with Salmond was a party matter but she acknowledged on Sunday that her claims that she acted in line with the ministerial code needed to be confirmed by independent advisers. “I have acted appropriately and in good faith throughout, and in compliance with the ministerial code at all times. However, I have reflected carefully and understand that it is also important for parliament and the wider public to be assured of that,” she said. Her conduct will now be investigated by a two-person panel made up of Dame Elish Angiolini, a former lord advocate, Scotland’s chief prosecutor, and James Hamilton, a former director of public prosecutions in the Republic of Ireland. Sturgeon said the panel’s remit would be carefully drawn up to avoid it compromising a police criminal investigation into the allegations against Salmond. Sturgeon said the interests of the women in the case must be paramount. Salmond denies the allegations of sexual harassment against him. Sturgeon said: “The fact remains that at the centre of this issue are two women whose complaints could not be swept under the carpet. “Any continuing commentary about these issues at this stage – whether from myself, the government or Mr Salmond and his representatives – would only serve to distract from and potentially compromise the proper consideration by the police of the subject matter of their investigations. That is something we will not do.” Sturgeon had come under pressure to make the referral, which under the Scottish government’s rules can only be made by a first minister, from senior figures in the Scottish National party. Richard Leonard, the Scottish Labour leader, said Sturgeon had done the right thing by heeding opposition calls for her to refer herself. But there still needed to be a separate Scottish parliament investigation into the entire episode, with Holyrood also given powers to review the ministerial code inquiry. “Transparency is now absolutely essential in order for the public to have confidence in the first minister and the Scottish government,” he said. “That is why we should also see a full, public parliamentary inquiry in to what exactly has happened – and I look forward to working constructively with members from other parties this week in order to secure that.” On Sunday, Kevin Pringle, Salmond’s former spin doctor and a former communications chief for the SNP, urged her to do so quickly. “The first minister will have to be bold and candid” to allow her to rebuild the party’s reputation, he said. Pringle was Salmond’s chief spokesman when the then first minister made several self-referrals under the ministerial code. Salmond was exonerated of any breach each time. Writing in the Sunday Times, Pringle said the “drip-drip of information coming out slowly is poison” for Sturgeon’s government and the SNP. He said it undermined the case for independence if the civil service that would run an independent Scotland could not be trusted. “Last week was torrid for Sturgeon, and it can’t go on like that,” Pringle said. “She should lead the charge for an independent, external inquiry into the whole business, covering the conduct of ministers and officials. It may be uncomfortable, but it’s the only path to better ground.” It also emerged that Salmond’s claims the Scottish government leaked confidential data about the sexual harassment allegations against him are being investigated by a watchdog’s criminal offences unit. The Herald on Sunday reported that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which polices the UK’s data protection legislation, passed Salmond’s complaints to its criminal investigations desk in November last year. Two women filed formal complaints of sexual harassment against Salmond in January last year under the Scottish government’s new ministerial complaints system. In late August, Evans confirmed the cases had been investigated and reports had been handed to the police after news of the inquiry leaked. The leak triggered Salmond’s complaints to the ICO alongside a judicial review of the government’s handling of the investigation. The Herald on Sunday reports the ICO wrote to Salmond last year to say that based on the information he provided, an offence in breach of section 170 of the Data Protection Act “may have been committed”. That section prohibits the unlawful obtaining or disclosure of personal data. The government’s case dramatically collapsed last week after Evans admitted that the civil servant who investigated the complaints had already been counselling both women, a conflict of interest in breach of the complaints process. Evans’s future is now in doubt, with some senior SNP figures predicting she will be forced out. Sturgeon’s decision to refer herself under the ministerial code will take some of the pressure off Evans.Parliament is about to lie to those who elected it two years ago. It is about to pretend that there is a better way of leaving the EU than is outlined in Theresa May’s deal. It knows there is not. If it votes down May’s deal, it will lie. The deal is not a settlement but a transition. It is a way of moving forward, of leaving the EU pending negotiation of a long-term trading relationship. It is not a compromise but in reality a defeat for the “having our cake and eating it” school of Brexit fantasists. But it is the only deal on offer. All else is a Westminster miasma of personal ambition, party advantage and endemic hysteria. MPs are charged with governing the country well. Never in my experience have they shown less interest in that cause. Last week a still small voice spoke through the gloom. It was of a backbench MP, George Freeman, speaking of his evident despair over Brexit, but of the obligation on an MP to “cross the party divide and embrace the lost art of compromise”. The responsible next step was to leave as pledged by parliament in March, and move on to negotiate a future outside the EU. To vote against the deal was merely to shut one’s eyes and hope someone else gets the blame for the chaos. Fresh hope has been given to the stallers with a “coup” plan from three moderate Tories, Nicky Morgan, Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles. Assuming May’s plan fails on Tuesday – and they will be voting against her deal – they want a three-week delay, another vote and then the chairs of parliament’s committees to decide what to do next. This might mean another referendum, which is just a can-kicking exercise, or renegotiation on a single market or customs union terms. It would almost certainly mean postponing EU departure. Tuesday’s opportunity to move forward would be lost. The parliamentary coup is a desperate stagger through a quagmire. It further excuses MPs from confronting reality and sustains their mendacity. The leavers want a hard Brexit, on the pretence that the referendum was a vote for tariffs, hard borders and passport controls. All poll evidence says it was not. Remainers cling to the pretence that the referendum was not sensible and, by some device, can be reversed. It cannot. The polarising tendency of modern politics, the aversion to responsibility, compromise and common sense has never been so glaring. MPs should vote for the deal and do what they were elected to do, which is govern the country. If not, they will present the country with a profession in disarray. • Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistBlack Monday, in the historical sense, refers to 19 October 1987, the single worst day for America’s stock market in its history. It’s a potentially risky premise around which to build a TV show, given that the event, which didn’t induce a crippling economic depression, doesn’t loom particularly large in either pop cultural memory or the actual memory of anyone under 30. But the Dow Jones still dropped 22.6 points on Black Monday, which is about the level of subtlety on this new series of the same name. The Seth Rogen-produced show, which attempts to tell the unknown story behind who and what caused the crash, begins on the titular day with a hollowed-out Wall Street and a body dropping on to a car. It then jumps backwards, to 1986, and to the presumed triggers of Black Monday: brash Maurice “Mo” Monroe (Don Cheadle) leader of his outsiders band of traders, the Jammer Group; his deputy trader and ex-lover, Dawn Towner (Regina Hall); and aw-shucks Blair Pfaff (Andrew Rannells) a fresh Wharton grad with an algorithm and a serious girlfriend, both potentially lucrative. Monroe, recently deemed the 11th best trader by the Wall Street Journal, is bent on finding a higher high, be it a Lehman Brothers-owned property or another mound of cocaine. The first couple of episodes, though they include some truly surprising plot twists, serve mostly to establish the frenetic volatility of the characters and the 1980s Wall Street they inhabit. By 1980s, I mean the version of the 1980s that pop culture has established as THE EIGHTIES, a Technicolor and synth-blazed affair of Run DMC, Marion Barry references, big hair and bigger egos. Inflated sense of power, high stakes, big hip thrusts, bold instances of sexual harassment – Black Monday packs it all in, to the unfortunate effect of flattening its characters. As a cable series, Black Monday has the toys of prestige TV at its disposal – a recognizable and critically lauded cast, flexibility on episode length, money for music rights, freedom from the censor. But though the hair is high, the shoulders puffed, the acids washed, somehow all the closeups of Walkmans and literal mixtapes amount to how these traders treat their job: play. To be fair, the show does seem to be a parody; Mo doesn’t get his knee up to his chest, foot resting on a desk, for nothing. But effective parody pulls exaggeration into more honest humor and for the most part, Black Monday just isn’t that funny. The show often has the feel of sketch comedy – exaggerated physical gestures, note players like Cocaine Delivery Man, dialogue that builds extemporaneously on mundane physical surroundings like chairs – but without its freewheeling excitement. It’s unclear, after three episodes available for critics, what larger truth about Wall Street or the 80s Black Monday tries to tell, other than that there was a lot of cocaine (and characters asking “do you want to do some cocaine?” to signal that you are in the 1980s and people do cocaine). Not that a show needs to have a take-home “message”, but Black Monday posits itself as the untold account of a significant historical event, one in which an African American trader takes on an establishment which has no interest in making room for him or his success. Black Monday is not merely a 1980s story. Black Monday does have its pleasures, however. The shoulder pads and Michael Jackson sightings are entertaining; like a good 80s-themed party, it’s fun to play dress-up in extra-period tracksuits and chunky jewelry. Mo is a thinly written shock jock but in Cheadle’s hands, can still carry the room. Andrew Rannells is Andrew Rannells as a nerdy 80s computer nerd who you half-expect to burst into song at any moment, which is in itself entertaining. Black Monday’s brightest star, however, is Regina Hall as Dawn, whose fight to earn long-overdue recognition from Mo is the most genuine emotional current on the show. Like The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street before it, Black Monday aims to mine the wonkish, exclusive world of Wall Street finance into a narrative that a larger, presumably un-coked audience can follow. The problem is that the market is short for either catharsis or humor on Black Monday and, given the options abounding on TV, audiences may not want to bet on a whole season. Black Monday starts on Showtime on 20 January with a UK date yet to be announcedThe Who have confirmed that they are working on their first album of new material in 13 years. Lead guitarist Pete Townshend said in a statement that fans could expect “dark ballads, heavy rock stuff, experimental electronica, sampled stuff and Who-ish tunes that began with a guitar that goes yanga-dang”. The album is due later this year. It follows the band’s 11th studio album, Endless Wire, released in 2006, which included a 10-part mini-opera. Guardian music critic Alexis Petridis described it as “a fitting coda to [the] band’s career”. The group has also teased details of a US orchestral tour. Lead singer Roger Daltrey said of the tour: “Be aware Who fans! That just because it’s the Who with an orchestra, in no way will it compromise the way Pete and I deliver our music. This will be full throttle Who with horns and bells on.” Daltrey, 74, has said it could be his last tour. “I have to be realistic that this is the age I am and voices start to go after a while,” he told the Mirror. “I don’t want to be not as good as I was two years ago.” The group previously suggested that a Las Vegas residency in 2017 would be the start of their “long goodbye”. Townshend, 73, had said he would commit to the tour only if they had new material. “This has nothing to do with wanting a hit album [or] the fact the Who need a new album. It’s purely personal. It’s about my pride, my sense of self-worth and self-dignity as a writer.” The pair communicate through their management. Daltrey told the Mirror that Townshend “wanted a year off, so I haven’t spoken to him for a year. That is how we are. He needs that time away.” He added: “It is not music to fuck to. Ours is music to fight to and if it ever loses that fighting edge – which still exists between Pete and I – then I will stop. Because then I will be cheating my audience.” Townshend and Daltrey are the only remaining full-time members of the Who. Drummer Keith Moon died in 1978; replacement drummer Kenney Jones left the band in 1988, and bassist John Entwistle died in 2002. Their current touring band includes Zak Starkey, son of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, and Simon Townshend, younger brother of Pete. Daltrey recently told Billboard magazine that he hopes to release a live album from recent orchestral performances of the band’s 1969 rock opera Tommy, which featured new arrangements by composer David Campbell. Daltrey has said he would like to undertake a similar tour of their second rock opera, 1973’s Quadrophenia. He published a memoir, Thanks a Lot Mr Kibblewhite: My Story, in October. Daltrey said that he is still pursuing a biopic of Moon, a project that has been in the work for three decades, and dismissed rumours that the Who would perform at this year’s 50th anniversary revival of the Woodstock festival. The band performed at the original 1969 event. “August in America is too hot for me to work any more,” Daltrey said. “You can’t redo Woodstock because the stars of Woodstock were the audience. You can celebrate the date, but you can’t redo [the festival].”A former professional boxer who was filmed attacking a police officer during gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrations in Paris at the weekend is in custody after turning himself in to authorities. The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said on Twitter that the assailant, named in French media as Christophe Dettinger, “will have to answer for his actions in court”. A separate investigation has been launched after a police chief was seen on video assaulting a protester in the southern French city of Toulon. In the Paris video, a man dressed in black is seen throwing punches at a riot police officer attempting to stop protesters crossing a bridge over the Seine. Shortly afterwards he is seen kicking a police officer on the ground in the head and face. On Twitter, the police union SCPN wrote: “Monsieur, you have hit a colleague on the ground. You have been identified. For a boxer, you apparently don’t have a lot of respect or the rules. We’re going to teach you those of the law.” Dettinger, 37, was French light-heavyweight champion in 2007 and 2008 and retired from the sport in 2013. After police failed to find him at his home in Essonne, a department south of Paris where he reportedly works at a local town hall, his former trainer Jacky Trompesauce said his actions were “out of character” and advised him to give himself up. “I can see it’s him from the pictures, but something must have happened that’s not on the video. He’s a top-level sportsman, a respectful man, not a yob … perhaps he couldn’t stomach what the gendarmes were doing to people weaker than them,” Trompesauce told journalists. Laurent Boucher, another former coach, told France Inter radio. “I think he lost it. People can be impulsive; I can be, too.” In a video posted on Facebook the evening before handing himself in to police, Dettinger said he “boiled over” after being tear-gassed with his wife on his eighth Saturday protest. “I reacted badly. Yes, I reacted badly,” he said in the video, adding he had seen the “repression” of the police towards protesters. “I have seen the repression. I have seen the police gas people. I’ve seen the police hurt people with flashballs. I’ve seen people injured … I’ve seen pensioners tear gassed. I’ve seen many things,” he said. “I am a normal citizen. I work, I manage to make it to the end of the month, but it’s complicated. I’m demonstrating for all the pensioners, for the future of my children, for single women, for everything we’re fighting for. I am a gilet jaune. I have the anger of the people in me … it’s always the little people who pay.” Dettinger also denied reports he supported the far right or far left saying he was just “proud to be French”. He appealed for protestors to continue the struggle “peacefully”. French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said Dettinger had been remanded in custody and that he would have to “answer for his acts before the legal system”. In Toulon, officials said an internal investigation had been launched into the actions of police commander Didier Andrieux, seen attacking several gilets jaunes protesters. Andrieux, awarded the Légion d’honneur a year ago, told Var-Matin one protester he is seen on film hitting had thrown a “bottle shard” at him. Le Parisien said the officer had been given a warning in 2015 after an alleged incident with another police officer. The French authorities said a total of 50,000 protesters took part in an eighth successive weekend of demonstrations across the country. A third video, shared widely on social networks, showed protesters using a forklift truck to break down the entrance to a ministry annexe housing government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux on Saturday afternoon. Griveaux was evacuated from his office and taken out of a back door during the incident. Gilets jaunes protests began in November to oppose proposed rises in fuel taxes. The movement has since enlarged to encompass wider grievances against the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his centrist government. Protesters have rejected concessions announced by Macron aimed at responding to public anger. Gérald Darmanin, minister of public action and accounts, said those involved in “ultra-violence” would be treated with “ultra-severity”. “This has to stop,” he told RTL radio. “In a democracy we cannot have anarchy and chaos.” On Sunday, hundreds of women in yellow vests marched in several French cities carrying yellow balloons. Karen, a nurse from Marseilles, said the aim was to give “another image” of the movement. “All that’s in the media regarding this movement is acts of violence, while everyone is forgetting what is at the root of the problem,” she told Le Parisien.When Bi Gan’s latest drama premiered at Cannes in May 2018, critics were quick to praise its challenging, languorous narrative about a man returning to his home town in search of a former flame, as well as the ambitious single-take, hour-long dream sequence, and a shorter section in 3D. Early box office projections anticipated a modest increase on the takings for Gan’s previous film, Kaili Blues, about two depressed rural doctors. Yet A Long Day’s Journey Into Night took $38m in China on its opening night on 31 December, beating the likes of Venom. This was thanks to an artful marketing campaign that timed screenings to end on the stroke of midnight, and encouraged audience members to lock lips in the final scene, mirroring the protagonists. As Variety reports, a campaign suggested the film (which has no connection to the classic Eugene O’Neill play) was the perfect first-date film, with promotional messaging playing on the film’s Chinese title to ask potential viewers: “Do you know what kind of sweet talk you’ll use to invite someone to the last film of 2018, The Last Night On Earth?” Some $15m of tickets were pre-sold, with many spots fully booked and cinemas hosting more screenings to cater for demand. State broadcasters joined social networking sites in stoking anticipation, asking: “How will you spend your last night of 2018? Watching ‘Last Night On Earth’ or eating a big meal?” But a backlash is spreading after many audience members said they felt short-changed by the film, and cheated into believing it was a much more mainstream movie. Some felt angered by what they suspected was cultural snobbery at play. Wrote one commentator on Weibo: “Those who say that the film had artistic meanings that we’re just unable to understand, please go eat shit.” Many reported mass walkouts during the film, as well as multiple audience members nodding off as Gan’s dense drama unfolded. The film currently has a 2.8 out of 10 rating on Chinese movie website Maoyan, with typical comments including: “The worst movie in history! Tricksters, thieves! I’m indignant – it’s a total bomb, the worst trash of all trash!” Word of mouth proved so negative that takings fell to $1.5m on the film’s second day of release. Gan, 29, defended the campaign for his second feature, explaining he hoped many audience members would feel their cinematic horizons had been expanded. “My colleagues promoting it didn’t steal or rob — they just used their own abilities and knowledge to do their task,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve done anything wrong. “I myself am from a fourth, fifth-tier city. Are you saying that people there should only watch those kinds of [blockbuster] films? I’ve never believed that, although I don’t necessarily think that they’ll like my movie.”The main, motivating thesis of Brexit: The Uncivil War – an unpicking of the Vote Leave campaign’s success in getting Britain to … well, vote to leave the EU – was that nobody got the right information to the right people in the right way, or fully recognised it as their job to make sure this happened. And when that is a drama’s thesis, a heavy duty hangs on the writer, in this case James Graham. It is incumbent upon him, in an era besieged and almost defined by misinformation, not to add to the chaos. That duty was not clearly fulfilled. Brexit: The Uncivil War focuses on events from the point of view of the Leave campaign director, Dominic Cummings, played by Benedict Cumberbatch with his customary wit, intelligence and energy. You can see why he was catnip to a dramatist otherwise looking out at a sea of grey suits and wondering how to get inside the heads of shapeshifters like Cameron or Gove (as Gertrude Stein famously said of her old home, torn down to make way for something new – “there is no there there”) or persuade viewers that Boris Johnson is real enough to be a protagonist in anything other than the rolling Boris Johnson show that is his life. Cummings elicits strong feelings in everyone who deals with him. They either think (like Dominic Cummings) that he’s a maverick genius who the establishment conspires to keep from greatness, or that he’s a self-aggrandising pillock who should confine himself to the 8,000 blogposts about how thick everyone else is he likes to churn out, instead of insinuating himself into British politics. No doubt Graham began with his scepticism tanks brimming o’er, but somewhere along the line he seems to have succumbed to the dramatist’s temptation of falling in love with his subject. His Cummings – who closes his eyes in a store cupboard so he can calibrate the nation’s needs from the “hum” Britain gives off, which is quite a dramatic device to gift anyone, and who has so many eureka moments that Greece should slap a tariff on them as soon as it can – seems overall to be one that derives from taking Cummings at his own visionary valuation. A trick many people manage to pull off, of course (see Boris Johnson, above) and one that is probably responsible for as much entrenched privilege in the world as any public school network. But it’s never a good thing, and particularly not here. As a result of Cummings’ centrality and portrayal as a political savant, everyone around him is reduced to a cipher. Farage and Banks become cartoonish buffoons instead of dangerous shit-stirrers (a definite dereliction of duty), Gove and Johnson puppets worked by the unseen hand instead of senior Tory ministers with practical and moral responsibilities they abandoned in piles by the roadside to what both at one stage believed (and in Johnson’s case stated in a newspaper column) to be ruin, and everyone else enthralled – or in Daniel Hannan’s case, pathetically bleating – lackeys. I’d especially like to know how Matthew Elliott feels about being portrayed as a borderline simpleton whenever Cummings heaves into view. While it wasn’t simplistic in the sense that everyone involved with leave was pure evil while everyone remaining was an angel guarding the truth and democracy with flaming sword, it was superficial. All the main issues are touched but never dwelled on. We get a glimpse of the old versus new guard divide, a brief dissection of the difference between the official campaign and Farage’s fascistic version, Leave.EU, and touch on the usefulness of the latter in allowing the former to keep its hands (technically) clean, and the willingness of those (like billionaire Robert Mercer) to chuck spanners in the democratic works knowing the consequences will never affect them. Then we get working-class characters who sport either emotive speeches on their alienation from society and the political process in unlikely detail (unlikely, I mean, because people are rarely so articulate about the ineffable, not because they are working class) or faces full of dumb despair. Data manipulation by AggregateIQ gets more of a look-in, but even that felt oddly skimmed over now we have learned so much about it and the company’s links with Cambridge Analytica. Captions, including one that informed us Vote Leave had since been found guilty of breaking electoral law, were added presumably in haste before the end credits, heightening the sense of boxes being ticked; of dramatised headlines rushing past you rather than issues being embodied or explored; above all, of opportunities wasted. Still, as the title notes, Brexit is a war, and we are only at the beginning. Dramatists should find the next decade or so a grimly fertile one for narrative crops. Possibly the only native one we will actually be self-sufficient in. Take back control!Flights into three US airports are being delayed due to staffing issues in air traffic control, the Federal Aviation Administration has said. Air traffic was being delayed at LaGuardia airport in New York, Philadelphia international airport and Newark Liberty international airport in New Jersey, according to the FAA’s website. The delays come amid the ongoing partial US government shutdown, which began on 22 December and has left 800,000 federal employees without pay cheques. Among them are more than 400,000 workers, including air traffic controllers, airport security workers and FBI agents, have been told they must continue to report into work because they are deemed essential. A lack of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers had already forced some airports to close terminals. “There is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving La Guardia Airport, New York, NY (LGA),” the FAA said in an update on its website. “This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 1 hour and 26 minutes. To see if you may be affected, select your departure airport and check ‘Delays by Destination’.” The FAA said the delay was due to staffing. Philadelphia airport said it was averaging departure delays of over an hour, while Newark said delays were “46 minutes and one hour in length and increasing”. .@FAANews reporting departure delays of 1 hour, 14 minutes at PHL. Be sure to check flight status with your airline before coming to the airport. https://t.co/7JabJ3suPL Three unions for air traffic control workers issued a statement on Wednesday urging Congress and the White House to fund the government due to “unprecedented” risks to the air safety environment. “In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break,” the statement reads. The statement added that staffing at air traffic control facilities is currently at a 30-year low. The FAA issued a statement in response, saying the “traveling public can be assured that our nation’s airspace is #safe”. #FAA Statement: The traveling public can be assured that our nation's airspace is #safe. pic.twitter.com/NS6GyUUgbV More  details soon …The Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has directly urged the west to keep up the pressure to bring about elections in his country within four weeks, the UK foreign secretary has said. Jeremy Hunt spoke with Guaidó by phone on Wednesday before an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Romania on Thursday that will discuss what further economic sanctions can be imposed on senior figures in the Venezuelan leadership. Key EU countries are prepared to recognise Guaidó as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela if Nicolás Maduro refuses to call fresh elections by Sunday. Guaidó, 35, a former student leader and head of Venezuela’s opposition-run national assembly, has been at the forefront of a renewed attempt to force Maduro from power. He said in an opinion piece for the New York Times on Wednesday that he had held “clandestine” meetings with the military to try to persuade them to withdraw their support for Maduro. Protesters marched in Caracas on Wednesday calling for Maduro to stand down. In an interview to Spain’s El País newspaper, Guaidó repeated an appeal to Venezuela’s armed forces to take his side. “I am convinced that at a certain moment ... the army will end up manifesting its discontent, and take this opportunity to stand on the side of the constitution. And not only because we propose an amnesty,” he said. He added he believed there was no risk of a civil war “because 90% of the population wants a change” but a risk of violence from Maduro’s government. The European parliament has voted to recognise Guaidó due to his role as president of the national assembly. But not every EU state has issued the Sunday ultimatum, and Russia is looking to see if these divisions can be prised open. Moscow has so far offered full-throated support for Maduro. It is estimated to have invested £13bn in Venezuela through refinancing of the country’s debt and through oil and arms deals. Although the bulk of the anti-Maduro sanctions policy is being determined in Washington and Latin America, the EU could have a role in trying to cut off supplies to Maduro. Spain, the leading EU country in the crisis, opposes military intervention. Members of Maduro’s administration have rejected and ridiculed the EU countries’ ultimatum, the end of which will be marked by a day of pro-opposition protests on Saturday. “These men from the EU who think Venezuela is a colony have given us eight days to call elections and the deadline runs out on Saturday,” the powerful socialist party leader Diosdado Cabello told a rally in the northern city of Coro on Wednesday. “How scary. How terribly scary!” Cabello added mockingly. “Is the US going to get involved in an attack against Venezuela?” Maduro has accused Donald Trump and a “group of extremists around him” of plotting to topple him in order to seize Venezuela’s oil, and said he risked transforming the country into a new Vietnam. Venezuela’s supreme court has imposed a travel ban and financial restrictions on Guaidó, including freezing his bank accounts. Speaking on BBC radio, Hunt said a humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding in the country, with citizens struggling to find scraps of food. “Here in Britain and Europe we cannot determine the outcome of what happens in Venezuela. It has to be for the people of Venezuela,” he said. “But what we can do is support the president of the national assembly that wants to uphold the constitution and is saying there need to be elections in four weeks because there is not a legitimate president.” He added: “We are not considering sanctions against the whole country because there is a humanitarian situation and we wouldn’t want to make the situation even worse. But targeted sanctions against the kleptocrats who have enriched themselves on the back of the rest of the population who are very poor, that is something I think can be effective.” He said a decision on sanctions is not expected immediately on Thursday. Hunt, a Conservative, said “this is not an ideological crusade”, pointing out that Guaidó was a member of Socialist International. “I doubt if he agrees with President Trump on very many policies at all and that is why it is rather extraordinary Maduro continues to get such strong support from Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell,” he said. The Labour frontbench has called for fresh elections in Venezuela but has not called for Guaidó to be recognised as interim president. The Spanish government has called for the immediate release of four members of a news team from the Spanish news agency EFE who have been detained in Venezuela. EFE said three of its journalists – a Spaniard and two Colombians – and their Venezuelan driver were arrested by the intelligence service in Caracas on Wednesday. According to the agency, the trio had travelled from Bogotá in Colombia to report on the crisis in Venezuela. “Since learning of the arrest, the government, through our embassy in Caracas, is doing everything necessary to secure their swift release,” the Spanish government said on Thursday morning. “The government demands that the relevant authorities release them at once. The government also urges the Venezuelan authorities to respect the rule of law, human rights and basic freedoms, of which the freedom of the press is a central element.”The race promoters in Formula One believe their criticism of the sport’s owner, Liberty Media, has proved to be worthwhile but expect the company to work more closely with them in future. Liberty met the Formula One Promoters’ Association (Fopa) on Tuesday after the organisation had raised serious concerns at the way the sport was being run. Stuart Pringle, who is the managing director of the Silverstone circuit and chair of Fopa, was largely positive after the meeting. “There is every indication the message has been received,” Pringle told the BBC. “We were frustrated that we felt we had no option but to take this sort of action. But actually we have had a very positive day. We believe our concerns will be looked at and we as a group of promoters do recognise that ultimately we are all striving for the same thing – a healthy sport. We want to work in a meaningful way to achieve that so we will work collaboratively with them going forward.” Fopa represents 16 of the current 21 meetings on the F1 calendar and, after a meeting on Monday, issued a statement taking the sport’s owner to task. Liberty bought F1 in 2017 and has since been attempting to develop the sport but has yet to make any statement on the meeting with Fopa. The group raised three major issues. There was concern that it was detrimental to the sport for fans to lose free access to content and broadcasting, of particular issue in the UK. Sky TV has exclusive rights to F1 from this year until 2024 with only the British Grand Prix set to be shown on free-to-air television on Channel 4. This was a deal, however, that Liberty inherited from the previous owners and arranged by Bernie Ecclestone. Fopa also criticised a “lack of clarity on new initiatives in F1 and a lack of engagement with promoters on their implementation”. Promoters pay huge fees to host races, with Silverstone expected to pay approximately £20m for this year’s British Grand Prix. The fees are a major source of income for F1 but increasingly promoters have maintained they were unable to meet them. Silverstone activated a break clause in their contract in 2017, arguing that the fees made hosting the grand prix unsustainable. They have yet to agree a new deal and, if they do not, this year will be the last British Grand Prix at the circuit which held the first F1 world championship race in 1950. F1 has been attempting to agree a new race in Miami but is understood to be trying to use a profit-share model rather than a hosting fee, to which Fopa also objected. “New races should not be introduced to the detriment of existing events although the association is encouraged by the alternative business models being offered to prospective venues,” said the statement. Alongside Silverstone, four other circuits have deals that end in 2019: Monza, Hockenheim, Barcelona and Mexico City. “If this continues, Formula One will be racing on second-rate circuits, if any at all,” Pringle said on Monday. “Everyone is disgruntled. Liberty’s ideas are disjointed. We have all been compliant and quiet hitherto, but we have great concerns about the future health of the sport under the people who run it now.”Even as Paweł Adamowicz was lying in state at Gdańsk’s European Solidarity Centre, a museum, archive, and public space dedicated to the history and values of the independent trade union born in the city’s shipyards, its grief-stricken staff were preparing his entry into history. The opening of the museum in 2014 was the realisation of a dream for Adamowicz, a Gdańsk native who had long sought to present his city to the world as a symbol of Europe’s hard-won freedom. In between shifts maintaining an overnight vigil by his coffin, researchers gathered materials with which to commemorate him. “We are working, we are making films, we are writing texts, but still I don’t think we can accept that this situation is real,” said Anna Mydlarska, head of the museum’s documentary film section, ahead of Adamowicz’s funeral on Saturday. She had first met him during a student strike in the late 1980s. “I am working on all this material in which Paweł Adamowicz is alive, and I can’t fully accept and absorb the fact that he is now a part of history, a part of the past. People are so shaken, we feel orphaned.” Gdańsk remains in mourning for its mayor, who was stabbed on stage at a charity concert last Sunday evening and died the following day. On Saturday, the streets of its picturesque old town were filled for his funeral in the giant brick St Mary’s Basilica. Black-and-white photos of Adamowicz hung in shop windows as mourners carrying flags of Gdańsk and Pomerania watched the service on big screens outside. The murder of Adamowicz, a staunch defender of minority rights at a time of rising levels of hate crime and an ardent liberal critic of the ruling conservative party’s anti-immigrant politics, has provoked an anguished and often ill-tempered national debate about hate speech and polarisation in Poland’s deeply divided society. “I am convinced that Paweł would want me to say the following words,” Dominican priest and anti-communist activist Ludwik Wiśniewski declared in a powerful eulogy that drew applause from the congregation and the crowd outside. “We must end hate. We must end hate speech. We must end contempt. We must end baseless accusations against others.” Paweł would want me to say, we must end hate. We must end hate speech But as the debate surrounding the circumstances of Adamowicz’s death continues, attention in Gdańsk is also turning to the life, legacy and personality of a native son who served as its mayor for more than 20 years, transcending many of Poland’s traditional political and cultural divisions. “He had unbelievable warmth – you could see the sympathy in his eyes,” said Jerzy Limon, professor of English at the University of Gdańsk, and a friend. “His love of the city was so strong, he was not one of those politicians who could just go anywhere. Gdańsk was his beloved, and the city is his greatest monument.” Adamowicz rose to prominence in 1988 as a law student at the University of Gdańsk, where he led a student strike in solidarity with workers striking in the city’s shipyard. “It was a period when people were tired of communism but they were also tired of fighting communism,” recalled Wojciech Szeląg, now a broadcaster, who participated in the strike. “It wasn’t a time of hope, it was a time you could paint only in grey. But I remember thinking that if people like Adamowicz were involved, it was worth it.” “He stood out – not just physically, because he was very tall but because he wasn’t the slightest bit aggressive,” said Mydlarska. “He was always smiling and ready to joke. He spoke slowly. He liked to quote the motto of Gdańsk: Nec temere, nec timide, ‘neither rashly, nor timidly’ – he loved that motto. He was part of the Gdańsk tradition of courage without aggression.” After the fall of communism, and still in his 20s, Adamowicz was elected to the city council in 1990, serving as head of the council from 1994 until his election as president of the city in 1998 at the age of 32. Those who knew and worked with him say his worldview was profoundly shaped by the experiences of his parents, who moved to Gdańsk in the 1940s from Vilnius, now the capital of Lithuania, as part of a wave of Polish people expelled from territory seized by the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the second world war. As Adamowicz would later recount, they brought with them an outlook rooted in the multicultural traditions of Poland’s eastern borderlands, which fitted perfectly with Gdańsk’s own history as a coastal trading city. “For most of its history, Gdańsk was a multinational city, a kind of united Europe in miniature, where different nationalities lived together in peace – a wonderful historical example of openness and understanding, a city prepared to accept immigrants,” said Limon, whose own family is also from Lithuania. “When people came from eastern Poland and settled here, they somehow incorporated Gdańsk’s history into their own. Paweł’s family was from the east, and he inherited this love of openness.” Adamowicz worked closely with NGOs and civil society to establish mechanisms that would defend and uphold minority rights, with a particular focus on the integration of large numbers of migrants from the former Soviet Union, and his determination appeared to grow in the face of increasing anti-migrant sentiment associated with the rise to power of the Law and Justice party in 2015. A committed Catholic with a background in conservative politics, he frequently defended his robust stance on minority rights in religious terms, incensing many on the Polish right, including elements of the Polish Catholic church. “In this festive season, I will try to explain to my compatriots in Gdańsk that the arrival of Christ was the very example of migration,” he told a meeting of the European Committee of the Regions in December 2016. “It is very rare to challenge the church but it is even more rare to challenge the church on the basis of its own social teachings,” said Marta Abramowicz, an LGBT activist and co-founder of Poland’s Campaign Against Homophobia, who moved to Gdańsk from Warsaw in 2010. “He didn’t just support us, he supported us proudly and openly, he said that it was important that we were a part of Gdańsk.” “He was a religious conservative who was loved by the feminist movement – this is why he was extraordinary, and this is why we will miss him so much. We need politicians who say it’s not leftist or communist to believe in human rights, it is just normal,” said Marta Siciarek, director of Gdańsk’s Immigrant Support Centre, which was set up in 2012 with Adamowicz’s support. “It wasn’t just talk, we had real challenges we needed to deal with. We had small children begging on the streets, and now the city is funding day care for them. But there is so much more we need to do, we still need him.” At a time of acute partisan discord, the assassination of a man who so ostentatiously eschewed aggression while seeking to root progressive values in Poland’s patriotic traditions – as illustrated by the mournful Arabic prayers sung by a representative of Gdańsk’s Muslim community in St Mary’s Basilica during the funeral service – has only heightened people’s grief and confusion. But in her eulogy, Adamowicz’s widow, Magdalena, reminded the congregation of her late husband’s last words. “This is a wonderful time to share what is good,” he had told the crowd gathered at the charity concert just before the attack. “You are all so lovely, Gdańsk is the most wonderful city in the world.”Manchester United’s winning run under Ole Gunnar Solskjær ended after nine matches but Victor Lindelöf’s late equaliser keeps them unbeaten under the caretaker manager and was the kind of comeback made famous by the 20-times champions. Chris Wood’s 81st-minute header looked to have proved the winner despite Paul Pogba’s late penalty but after bombarding Burnley’s goal up stepped Lindelöf to smash home in added time to send the home support delirious. It left Solskjaer contented with the spirit but rueing two points that escaped. “The way they came back was fantastic,” he said. “So I’m happy with a point but we could have got three at the end. Now you’ve got your answer – can they come back if they go one down or two down even, so I’m very happy with the response.” He made five changes from Friday’s FA Cup win at Arsenal. He retained Romelu Lukaku and introduced Marcus Rashford, the first time they operated together under the Norwegian. Alexis Sánchez was dropped after scoring, Jesse Lingard joining him on the bench, with no place for Anthony Martial due to a minor injury. The other four new selections were Juan Mata, David De Gea, Phil Jones and Andreas Pereira, who replaced Ander Herrera, the midfielder also a substitute. After Burnley’s 5-0 walloping at Manchester City in the Cup on Saturday, Sean Dyche reverted to the XI that drew at Watford in their last league outing. In selecting Pereira and Lukaku Solskjaer took what appeared a gamble. He stood down Herrera from what had been his first-choice side and moved Rashford from the No 9 berth out left to accommodate Lukaku. The early signs augured well regarding Rashford. First, he combined sharply with Mata and Pogba and stood up a cross from his wing that Burnley scrambled out for a corner. Then, he was in the area to have a shot blocked. Next came a one-two with Lukaku, though when in on goal he stabbed wide when scoring looked easier. Pereira’s first contribution was to spray a wild ball and concede possession and from this juncture Burnley enjoyed a passage of pressure inside United’s half. They went close after Wood found Ashley Westwood and Jones’s intervention nearly became a pass to Ashley Barnes as Luke Shaw slipped but the central defender cleaned up. What Burnley did well was press United inside their half. Pereira often had to go backwards when receiving due to the close attention of a white shirt. The way to beat this can be quick ball forward as when Lukaku took possession and flipped in a delivery towards Rashford in Burnley’s area. As soon as the second half started there was a scare for United. When De Gea tried to prevent a corner he handed possession to Barnes but to the goalkeeper’s relief it pin-balled back to him. The home side’s response was to move up-field, a sequence that ended with Mata hitting straight at Tom Heaton. More fluidity followed when Young pinged a 40-yard diagonal pass to Shaw along the left. He killed the ball, found Pogba and the effort had to be watched closely by the keeper. Then disaster struck for United and it was down to Pereira. The midfielder he dawdled near his own D and Jack Cork pounced and dispossessed him. From there, the ball was left to Barnes and he smashed home. This left Pereira aghast and United behind for the first time under Solskjær. Here, then, was a new test for him: could his side keep calm and respond? When Young forced a corner United had a chance. His delivery found Shaw and his attempt flashed across goal only for Pogba’s back-heel to be steered wide. Just after the hour mark Solskjær acted. This was the obvious move of pulling off the disappointing – and disappointed – Pereira and bringing on Lingard. United turned the heat up and after Lukaku’s close-range effort was saved he was replaced by Sánchez. This moved Rashford back inside but the question of why Solskjær had tinkered in the first place remained. He said: “Rom’s done really well against Burnley before, he’s scored, he’s a handful and with Anthony injured we thought that was the best option with Rashy out there.” Dyche was unhappy with Lingard’s part in the penalty, going down following a Jeff Hendrick challenge. “I just don’t like it when there’s a touch on the shoulder and their legs don’t work but it’s modern football,” he said.The commission investigating the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida has included a recommendation in its preliminary report that classroom teachers who volunteer and undergo training should be allowed to carry guns in school. The 15-member Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school public safety commission on Wednesday unanimously approved the 446-page report containing that proposal and a slew of other recommendations, many geared towards “hardening” schools as potential targets for mass shooters. The recommendations are now in the hands of outgoing state governor Rick Scott, governor-elect Ron DeSantis and the state legislature. Other changes proposed include ensuring school classroom doors can lock from the inside, mandatory lockdown training for teachers, and funding to install bulletproof glass on all school windows by the year 2025. Juliana Simone Carrasco, a high school student and volunteer with the campaign group Students Demand Action, said in response to the recommendation: “As a student attending school in Florida, I am appalled that the commission that was established to make schools in our state safer is recommending teachers carry guns.” Carrasco added in a statement released by the Everytown for Gun Safety advocacy group: “I don’t want my teachers to be armed, I want my elected leaders to pass policies to keep guns out of the hands of people with dangerous intentions to begin with.” Other critics added their opposition to the proposed policy.“There is no evidence that arming teachers makes kids safer,” said Gay Valimont, a volunteer leader with the Florida chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “Our children deserve real solutions to keep them safe from gun violence – like a criminal background check on every gun sale – not policies that will put them at even higher risk.” The nation’s two largest organizations of education professionals, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, have both repeatedly rejected calls for arming teachers as an answer to gun violence. The idea, which is routinely floated after high-profile school shooting incidents, was given new life after being promoted by Donald Trump following the Parkland massacre. The National Association of School Resource Officers, the largest organization of school-based law enforcement officers, also opposes arming teachers.The recommendation that would allow teachers to volunteer to carry weapons seeks to expand on a “guardian” program passed into law by the same school safety act that established the Marjory Stoneman Douglas commission in March 2018. Currently, the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program allows local school systems to partner with local sheriffs to arm eligible school employees who are not primarily classroom teachers. The program is voluntary, must be approved by the school board and requires each participating staff member complete 132 hours of comprehensive firearm safety and proficiency training. The commission recommended that the state legislature “should expand the guardian program to allow teachers … to carry concealed firearms on campuses for self-protection, and the protection of other staff and students in response to an active assailant incident”. The program’s namesake, Aaron Feis, died shielding students during the 2018 attack, and the attachment of his name to the provision angered some student activists because it is unknown whether Feis would have supported the controversial program. The March school safety bill also included a number of limited gun control provisions including raising the legal age to purchase firearms to 21 and allowing a court to prohibit a violent or mentally ill individual from purchasing or possessing a firearm. The recommendation is a very small part of the expansive report, which lays out in second-by-second detail what is believed to have happened before, during and after the 14 February 2018, shooting attack that left 17 dead and 17 wounded. The report was also highly critical of the Broward county sheriff’s office, calling its active shooter policy for deputies at the time of the Parkland attack “insufficient” and “inconsistent with current and standard law enforcement practice”. The policy extends officers’ discretion on whether or not to enter the scene of a believed active shooter incident. The report suggests the sheriff’s office “make [it] unequivocally clear that deputies are expected to immediately seek out an active assailant and that ‘containment’ is not the policy”.The ocean is the Earth’s biggest resource, covering more than 70% of our planet, and it is full of under-utilised sea vegetables that are delicious, sustainable and nutrient-dense. Next time you take a blustery walk on the beach, have a forage for fresh seaweed. Large, brush-like kelp heads will probably be scattered along the shoreline or in rock pools. Dry the freshest-smelling pieces at home – use a foraging handbook to identify kelp and other tasty species such as laver, dulse and sea lettuce. Kelp, or kombu as it’s called in Japan, where it’s widely used, is heralded as a sustainable protein, high in soluble fibre and full of vitamins A, B, C, D and E, among others, depending on the species. Despite being low in fat, seaweed is also full of omega-3 fatty acids. Seaweed is versatile and works in most dishes, either as a seasoning or as the main component. Try replacing pasta with sheets of boiled kelp in a vegetable or spinach lasagne; use it in salads; or make kombu dashi, a simple Japanese stock that will add an umami boost and savouriness to soups and stews. Kelp stock is a secret weapon in the kitchen that can save a dish or bring it to life. Prep 1 minCook 1-5 hrMakes 500ml stock 5cm piece of kelp (kombu)500ml water Fill a glass jar or bowl with the water, add the kelp and soak for a one to five hours, or in the fridge overnight. After soaking, strain through a sieve and keep in the fridge for up to three days (or several months in the freezer). Make miso soup using the leftover kelp by cutting it into small pieces and simmering with 300ml water for 15 minutes. Finish by stirring in two large tablespoons of miso and some chopped spring onion tops.I have spent the week watching a show in which a victim of childhood abuse tries to cope with her PTSD, while her gay flatmate wrestles over whether to sacrifice his career in order to out a high-profile sexual abuser. That sounds grim; you’re probably imagining some greyscale Channel 4 drama with Sarah Lancashire set in an apprehensive quarry. Actually, it’s the final six episodes of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (available from Fri, Netflix), the silliest, most colourful, best-written show on TV. Since the show’s first episode, when the titular Kimmy was rescued from a bunker where she has been held captive for 15 years, creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock have tried to take TV comedy to places it has never gone before. And by comedy, I don’t mean a show that gets called a comedy because it happens to be 22 minutes long, but when you start watching it’s just Hannah Gadsby delivering incurable illness diagnoses at a children’s hospital – there’s barely a line spoken in Schmidt that doesn’t have at least three jokes in it. I watch with subtitles on so I don’t miss a throwaway moment, such as when the vain Jacqueline responds to the discovery that “these millennials like us old broads” by adding “and us young narrows”. In these final episodes of the season, it feels as though they are daring themselves to see how far they can push it. Struggling actor Titus gets dragged into the Time’s Up movement when Ronan Farrow (played by the actual Ronan Farrow) asks him to go on the record about his Sesame Street audition, where he had a casting-couch experience with a pervert Muppet called Mr Frumpus. It gives you a sense of how the show finds humour in serious moments that his decision is based around whether he’ll lose his job as “the first ever black, male Dairy Queen” or get to join other victims who are all wearing shorts to the Tonys in solidarity (there are “divas in denim cutoffs, Bernadette in Bermudas and so many victims!”) Elsewhere, Kimmy uses her own covered-up workplace harassment case as blackmail to help launch a children’s book series that teaches little boys not to be perverts. Also, Rob Huebel guest stars as a home makeover host looking for a fake gay showbiz relationship so no one finds out he has a wife, and there’s an hour-long Sliding Doors parody in which the Sliding Doors moment is whether or not Kimmy went to the cinema to watch Sliding Doors. It’s not that the show makes light of serious issues – if anything it’s better than more po-faced attempts at joining up the dots between daily harassment, embedded misogyny and grave abuse – it just manages to do so while being constantly hilarious. Some will tell you that critically acclaimed writer-creators tend to overthink the follow-ups to their hit shows (hello Treme, The Romanoffs and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). But Kimmy Schmidt managed to avoid that curse by taking the gags and structure of 30 Rock and just infinitely upping the stakes, replacing dumb celebrities with troubled real people. By making a success of Schmidt, Fey and Carlock have shown how TV comedy can still be funny in serious times.Chicago is all about precision. When Gwen Verdon and I did our duet Nowadays, playing Roxie and Velma, it was a case of two dancing as one. I never want to see a picture where either one of us has even a finger out of place performing it! I liked the desperateness of Velma. She’s really an animal. She’s tough but she meets her match in Roxie who at first appears sweetly adorable. Velma is not ashamed to go as low as she needs to get as high as she wants. The song comes towards the end. These two girls, who are opposites throughout the entire show, finally come together and become one. One of the lines goes: “In 50 years or so it’s gonna change, you know, but oh, it’s heaven nowadays.” When I sing that bit today, I have to let the audience know that I know that almost 50 years have passed since I first sang it – and that I’ve changed. I’m a different person now. It’s fun to share that with the audience. With Velma and Roxie, we’re talking about two killers who have the audacity to ask: “Whatever happened to fair dealing and pure ethics?” The show is still running because it’s about human beings’ capacity for survival. All That Jazz is typical of Kander and Ebb: it has a looseness, a raucousness, a “bad girl” kind of thing about it: throwing caution to the wind. I had moved to California when I got the call from Bob Fosse and I came back to New York to do it. To stand next to Gwen in the show was quite an honour. She was delicious. Redheads have a lightness, a craziness, a kookiness. Think of Lucille Ball. Gwen was sort of like that. She was a great gal, a jokester. We had so much fun together. Somebody recently sent me some West Side Story photos that I’d never seen before. It brings it all back. I feel as though I could call up any of those people and continue where we left off. It was a wonderful, joyous time. Even Jerry Robbins is smiling in the pictures. They always accused him of being a taskmaster, which of course he was. If he hadn’t been, we never would have turned out the way we did. In my concert this month I’ll be singing a medley of A Boy Like That and America. I’m hoping to do a version of Somewhere, too. I did it at Carnegie Hall with a gay men’s choir. A Boy Like That is the moment when Anita finally discovers that Maria is having an affair with the boy who has killed Anita’s boyfriend and Maria’s brother. Anita is part mother and part friend to Maria but mostly mother. I played Anita on Broadway and in London. I hadn’t yet had a baby when I did the role in New York but when I did it in London I’d had my daughter, Lisa, and she was there with me at the time so I felt an even more maternal feeling. In The Visit, on Broadway in 2015, I played Claire, who was once a very good girl and is betrayed by her lover and kicked out of town by a judge. She marries several men and becomes rich while the town becomes poor. Then she returns: she’s bought up the judge, who is now her butler, and she comes back with an empty casket for her former lover. It is so dark but when you think about it, you go: “Serves him right!” She’s looking for the truth. She offers money for the people to help her and they all give it up. They sell their souls and kill him. This is a love story but a European one not a Disney one. This song is so haunting: “When you’re young, feeling oh so strong, what can prove you wrong? Love, and love alone.” That’s how deep her love for him was – and still is. I had a glorious time playing Charity on tour around the US. Gwen Verdon had the role on Broadway. Anything that anybody else would make vulgar she could make funny and adorable and sexy. It’s different from what happens today. It’s just the nastiest time now – the way people are dancing and what they’re singing. I feel sad when I sing this song. And lost and confused. Charity has fallen for somebody and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen. She feels completely lost and needs help. That’s why at the very end she looks up and says to the sky, “You tell me.” I can relate to it. But you don’t know the strength of the positive until you know the strength of the negative. Chita Rivera performs at Cadogan Hall, London, on 10 February.It had come billed as one of the greatest love stories never told. In previous interviews, Theresa May had spoken of Shinzō Abe, the Japanese prime minister, as her Rock. The one world leader who set her pulse racing. The man who truly got her. It was the relationship that transcended language barriers. Then again, May has always been more at home with silence. Love comes in many forms. Even near-indifference. After a day spent chatting to Abe about a new robotics deal – her software was seriously out of date – and visiting Twickenham, May looked as if she was all loved out. She managed a quick smile as she and Abe walked into the Downing Street side room for their joint press conference, but her eyes looked dead. The prime minister is currently running on little more than fumes. Almost as if the vote on Tuesday can’t come soon enough. It’s the waiting for inevitable defeat that’s destroying her from the inside. May got things rolling with a quick monotone roundup that was almost intelligible, as the voice of the simultaneous Japanese translator was about as loud as hers. She had very much enjoyed her day out, she mumbled in a manner that suggested the whole thing had been rather a chore. On another day it might have been fun, but after the week she’d had the last thing she needed was the enforced intimacy of a few hours not speaking to Abe. She kept her head down, staring at her script. They’d talked a bit about how everything was going to be fine after Brexit, how the British economy was going to get a huge boost from the ending of the Japanese ban on British meat and how she was going to send out a Van Gogh on loan. And that was about it. She ended as arbitrarily as she had begun. Abe had looked on rather awkwardly while May spoke. He had been expecting something more engaged and appeared wrong-footed by the flatness of the British prime minister’s delivery. He wasn’t used to a woman who chose to define herself by her absence rather than her presence. Maybe not even Japan’s most advanced artificial intelligence could help. To compensate, Abe became overanimated. There were no two countries closer than Britain and Japan. None. We were like brothers. And not even Brexit could divide us. May had negotiated the very best of the bad Brexit deals possible and he fervently hoped that it would be accepted because a no-deal Brexit was unimaginable. Not just to Japan but to the whole world. It was just as well that May had by now tuned out and was almost catatonic, as this outright dismissal of one of her last remaining bargaining chips had not been part of the Downing Street playbook. Instead, she stood hunched and impassive, with only the occasional flash of anger betraying she was in fact still sentient. It was hard to know if the anger was directed at Abe or whether she was merely reliving some of the many indignities that had been heaped on her in the past few days. Come the questions from the media, May went back on to autopilot. She ignored Abe’s appeal to take no-deal off the table and doubled down on her own doomed Brexit deal. It was her deal, it was the only deal, we wouldn’t be joining the customs union, there was no plan B and she was going to get it through parliament. Even though she definitely wasn’t. You almost had to admire her resilience and refusal to accept the inevitable. She would outlive the last cockroach in a nuclear wasteland. After taking a quick sideswipe at John Bercow over his decision to allow the Dominic Grieve amendment the day before – the Speaker is only one of many for whom she has now reserved a special place in hell – May tried to wrap the whole thing up by cutting short a British journalist who was about to ask Abe another awkward question about a no-deal Brexit. She’d had enough humiliation for another day. Abe looked surprised to be denied the chance to speak and gamely had a stab at giving his opinion on a British legal aid case that had nothing to do with Japan before May butted in. The show was over. The two prime ministers walked away in silence. Just as they had arrived. May’s public hell was over. Now she was merely left to her private hell.Thousands of people have fled into Cameroon from north-east Nigeria following violent attacks by a faction of the militant group Boko Haram, which looted and destroyed large parts of a major town. More than 8,000 refugees have crossed the border into Bodo after the attacks on the Nigerian town of Rann on Monday, in which at least 10 people are thought to have been killed. Homes and humanitarian organisations’ buildings were burned down. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said it was preparing to help 15,000 people with food, water and medicine. The organisation released photos showing smouldering buildings that had been burned to the ground, and columns of fleeing people crossing a river, their few belongings balanced on their heads. “What struck me when we arrived was the silence. Usually Rann bustles with life, but yesterday it was eerie and quiet, like a graveyard. The town has been devastated and I was devastated to see it,” said Isa Sadiq Bwala, an MSF nurse. It was unclear which faction of Boko Haram was responsible, but some sources in the north-east said the attacks were the work of Abubakar Shekau, the militant behind the 2014 abduction of the Chibok girls, who later appeared dishevelled in a video released online vowing to “sell them in the market”. Most of the girls were later freed. Rann, in the eastern part of Borno, has been the target of several bloody attacks in recent years. Two midwives who were abducted from Rann in March were later executed by Boko Haram, despite pleas from the International Committee of the Red Cross, their employer, to show mercy. “I’m deeply sadden by the brutality of the latest violence in Rann, Baga and other parts of Lake Chad,” the ICRC’s Mamadou Sow said on Thursday. “To see tens of thousands of already displaced families fleeing again aimlessly for safety in four different countries is devastating. Enough is enough; people are tired and must be protected.” Andrew Mews, MSF’s country director in Nigeria, said the attacks gave the lie to suggestions of improved stability in the country’s north-east. “The emergency is not over yet,” said Mews. “There’s been quite a lot of talk that perhaps the situation is stabilised, and that we could start looking at doing more development activities in the north-east, but the reality is the context doesn’t allow that. We wish that was the case.” He said that both the international organisations and the Nigerian authorities needed to stay and ensure a “proper humanitarian response” was delivered. There has been a pattern of increased attacks in Borno state, the epicentre of the Boko Haram crisis, in recent months, with militants briefly taking over the town of Baga and storming a military base, killing many soldiers and looting weapons. They belonged to the other major Boko Haram faction, Islamic State West Africa Province, which broke off from Shekau’s camp in 2016. The Maiduguri offices of one of Nigeria’s leading newspapers was raided and its bureau chief arrested after it published what the army said was sensitive information about a planned operation to retake Baga.It wasn’t Donald Trump, it wasn’t Lindsey Graham, it wasn’t any of the ageing white men who dominate the Republican party. It was, in fact, Barack Obama who in 2008 framed an unfortunate test for female politicians when he told his rival Hillary Clinton: “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” When Clinton ran for the presidency again in 2016, more than one headline referred to her “likability problem”, and when Senator Elizabeth Warren in effect launched her own campaign this week, it did not take long for the old trope to rear its head. “How does Elizabeth Warren avoid a Clinton – written off as too unlikable before her campaign gets off the ground?” asked a tweet from the Politico website. Warren had a quick riposte, tweeting a video of herself on a train on Wednesday with the comment: “I hear women candidates are most likable in the quiet car!” The exchange illustrated how “likability” appears to still be a women-only test. Misogyny may have been a crucial factor in Clinton’s narrow defeat by Trump, a man caught on video bragging about groping women. It could return with a vengeance in the 2020 election with Senators Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar potentially bidding to smash the final glass ceiling. Of course voter sexism and outright misogyny still exist Shilpa Phadke, the vice-president of the women’s initiative at the Center for American Progress thinktank in Washington, said: “Of course voter sexism and outright misogyny still exist. There’s a constant focus for women on what they’re wearing, what they look like and the tone of their voice. It’s almost as if they’re not only running for president but also running for Miss America. “The research shows women have to find a sweet spot so they are ‘warm enough’. They’re expected to conform to certain positive stereotypes and avoid certain negative stereotypes. This double standard doesn’t just exist in politics: if the presidency is gendered, so is business, so is the media, so is Hollywood. What’s happening with Elizabeth Warren is no different from what is faced by working women every day.” Phadke pointed, however, to surveys that show a strong majority of Americans say they are ready to elect a female president, as well as to Clinton’s victory by nearly 3m ballots in the popular vote. Male candidates face intense scrutiny on many counts but “likability” is seldom part of the lexicon. “I have never been asked by anyone personally or professionally whether a male candidate is likable or not,” said Bob Bland, the co-president of Women’s March. It’s notable, she adds, that “no one was asking that question when Elizabeth Warren was just a senator. Nobody was asking that question when Hillary Clinton was just secretary of state … So this is something that only happens to women when they ask for more power, when they say, ‘You know what? I am qualified for this position and I’m going to go for it.’ There is an invisible line in our society, and particularly in American politics, where if women ask for ‘too much’ they get punished for it and the way that is done is they are labelled unlikable. “Instead of asking whether women are likable enough to win, why don’t we ask all of the questions that we would ask any male candidate?” Writing on the GQ website, Luke Darby argues: “Obama was ‘cool’ if you liked him, or aloof and professorial if not. Bernie Sanders has good favorables. Mitt Romney is heading to the Senate now despite being a crossbreed of a career executive and a Brooks Brothers mannequin. But Warren, like Clinton before her, has to have the ability to be liked.” Neil Sroka, the communications director of the progressive group Democracy for America, notes that in 2016 Sanders had a “gruff demeanor” but pulled off a “curmudgeonly grandfather” act that proved popular. “That wouldn’t work for a female candidate and that speaks to sexism. There is a double standard.” Women are held to different standards from men when it comes to likability, according to Chloe Safier, a gender and women’s rights consultant. “The feminine version of likability does not allow for much ambition, intelligence or power-seeking,” she said. Safier was a graduate student at Harvard when Warren was teaching at its law school. “In my memory, she was eminently likable,” she continued. “She’s brilliant, warm and funny in an irreverent way. The discussion around a woman presidential candidate’s ‘likability’ is an updated, #MeToo-era adaptation of discussing a woman’s looks or clothes. It’s a thinly veiled attempt at tearing someone down because they don’t conform to rigid, limiting standards of gender-specific behaviour.” Trump fires off insults like a scattergun but seems to especially relish attacks on women and people of colour. He has taunted Warren for her claim of Native American ancestry by branding her “Pocahontas”. In October, Warren released a DNA test intended to support the claims, but it seemed to generate more controversy. Safier warned: “I think Trump will be vicious to any opposing candidate in 2020, but if the opposing candidate is a woman, I think he will be vicious in a particularly gendered way. He will pick apart a woman candidate’s looks, demeanour and ‘likability’, because he knows that will elicit a reaction. “And the press will pick up on that reaction, generating news cycles and debates about those things and whether he had a right to say them. We’ll be talking about that, instead of Warren’s policies and agenda. It’s a distraction circus, and one that Trump will use to his benefit.” If the candidate is a woman, I think Trump will be vicious in a gendered way Warren, 69, vowing to take on wealthy elites and Washington corruption, has hit the ground running after announcing on New Year’s Eve that she was launching a presidential exploratory committee. She has made some key political hires in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state, and will travel there on Friday. Her early moves coincide with Thursday’s formation of a new House of Representatives boasting a record 102 women. Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker for the second time, but only after a firestorm of Republican attack ads during the midterm elections – a measure of how she is singled out for vitriol in a way that the Democrats’ Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, is not. Bonnie Morris, a women’s history professor and author of 16 books including The Feminist Revolution, said: “Quite a few belligerent and unattractive men have been accepted as global leaders. It seems it’s fine when men are brusque and domineering. Women are cast in the home as a diplomat or a hostess: you’re expected to be a conduit between personalities and not have one that sticks out yourself.” Morris does “not expect anything positive” from Trump in the 2020 election campaign. “But the media has an opportunity to create a completely different format that ignores insulting tweets from the White House and sets a higher tone.” Sroka agreed that, as in the midterms, the president was likely to unleash a tide of misogyny, racism and xenophobia. He said: “The idea of a woman beating him is perhaps one of the most frightening things Trump can imagine, save for attending the inauguration in a prison jumpsuit.”When Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira met in London over Christmas, using a short break in the Ligue 1 schedule to take coffee in the way they always have, both men knew they have to pick their moments carefully nowadays. One of modern football’s powerhouse friendships, an awesome concentration of sheer accomplishment, must be put on hold twice a year from now on and on Wednesday they will discover how that feels. The 108th Derby de la Côte d’Azur is a significant staging post in their careers and, while their bond is rooted in years of success on the pitch, a sense of mutual adversity colours their first encounter as managers of Monaco and Nice. “We’re both really excited about it,” Vieira said on Tuesday, capturing the sentiment of last month’s chit-chat. But he allowed himself a smile when the notion of feeling sympathy with Henry, whose Monaco side sit second from bottom, was offered. Vieira’s spell at Nice has begun in stately fashion but his feeling of serenity was interrupted last week when Jean-Pierre Rivère and Julien Fournier – the club’s president and general manager respectively, both credited with his appointment – announced their impending departures. The reason given was “divergences” with Nice’s Sino-American owners and, with the team looking to push on from eighth place, the timing could hardly have been worse. Vieira said the difficulties at both clubs made life “really quite interesting” for two such callow coaches. “All the big issues he can find at Monaco, or I can find here at Nice, make us grow and create experience that we will use for the future,” he said. “You have some up and downs, and it’s about how you learn from those situations and improve yourself. It’s a tough situation here for me, knowing in the last couple of days that the chairman and [general manager] will leave, because they were the ones that brought me here. But I’ve been in the game long enough to understand things can sometimes go in a different way to what you’ve planned. “I would say Thierry, on the other side, has had different issues. But I believe he will find a way to get the best from his players and be successful.” There was no avoiding the fact that he sounded worried. Nice are likely to appoint the Barnsley chief executive, Gauthier Ganaye, to a senior role and Vieira hopes the matter is clarified quickly enough to allow him leeway in the transfer market. That is something Henry, who has made scant difference to a team racked with injuries and feeling the bite of summer departures, has been granted recently. Monaco have fallen far since Leonardo Jardim, whom Henry replaced in October, led a buccaneering side to the Champions League semi-finals in 2017 but the cavalry are arriving. Cesc Fàbregas made an impressive debut in Sunday’s encouraging draw with Marseille, recovering from a slow start to pull the strings. Henry cooed over his new recruit on Monday, recalling the day a 16-year-old Fàbregas first trained against Vieira and Gilberto Silva at Arsenal. “They didn’t see the ball, and they didn’t see him either,” he said. Fàbregas will escape Vieira’s view again on Wednesday, but not for the reasons Henry would wish. This match had been scheduled for 7 December, only to be postponed because of the Gilets Jaunes protests that took place across France. Ligue 1 clubs are barred from fielding players who were not registered for the original game; Fàbregas will join fellow newcomers Naldo and Fodé Ballo-Touré in the stands and Henry, whose team are yet to win at home this season, will have to get a tune out of the players that have flailed so far. This part of the world has never seemed the most obvious school of hard knocks but the pair’s formative years, Henry at Monaco and Vieira to the west at Cannes, taught them well. The derby’s idyllic setting, the clubs separated by a 20km stretch of coastline that has seduced dreamers and romantics for centuries, belies the gravity of the task but both managers appreciated the joy of marvelling at life’s circularity. “For a little bit we’re not going to like each other, because we’re not supposed to like each other in that type of game,” Henry joked. “It’s strange because we’ve spent so much time together,” Vieira said. “We’ve always been really close to each other. It never crossed my mind that we’d both be coaching here and playing against each other so soon.” It is reality now and, the next time they sit down together in the city that became their adoptive home, that 20-year relationship will have long since entered uncharted territory neither could have imagined.Let me count the ways in which I love my new phone: the clicky silver keys; the 10 minutes it now takes to write a text; the tinny jingle it plays when you switch it on. That’s right, I’ve dumped my iPhone and bought myself an old-style, internet‑free dumb phone (or “feature phone”, as the new branding would have it). Admittedly some of my enthusiasm is pure nostalgia. I harbour a similar affection for toast and Marmite, and bleepy 1990s trance – these things take me back to a time when life was simpler, and humanity seemed to have a cat in hell’s chance of getting its act together. But ditching the smartphone is not purely a backward-looking decision. On the contrary: I would place a bet on 2019 being a year in which growing numbers of people join what is becoming known as the “attention resistance”. Hell, maybe I’ll even make it to that Labour party meeting I’ve been thinking about attending for at least three years As a book reviewer I’ve seen a steady flow of literature on the impact of ubiquitous smartphone use: in 2017, Adam Alter’s Irresistible set out the ways in which social media companies have employed sophisticated psychological manipulation in order to keep us checking and clicking. Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep pointed to the overuse of technology as one cause of sleep deprivation, and Tanya Goodin’s Stop Staring at Screens looked at its impact on family life. It’s amazing, though, how possible it is to understand some of these arguments on a rational level and yet not feel willing or able to change your own behaviour. But that is what addiction means: we can be aware that something is causing us harm, and yet feel compelled to do it anyway. The book that has finally tipped me over the edge is Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism (which is out next month). Newport is an American professor of computer science and he not only sets out the evidence about how harmful constant connectivity is both socially and psychologically but gives readers practical advice about how to reclaim their time from the technology companies, and make more conscious decisions about what to give their attention. He argues that breaking free of tech addiction requires taking “aggressive action” to control our tech use. The most serious consequences of this addiction are likely to be suffered by young people. While there is still debate about why depression, anxiety and suicide have skyrocketed among people born in the past couple of decades, ubiquitous smartphone use – according to one US study, young people use their phones on average nine hours a day – surely plays a part. The human brain is simply not designed to cope with this level of stimulation. If we are to support our children in resisting tech addiction, we need to tackle our own. There are things about my iPhone I will definitely miss: the maps app; pictures from far-flung friends; instant access to my bank accounts. But on any rational analysis these inconveniences are minor. At the moment we live in a world in which it is still possible to choose to disconnect. In future we may not have that luxury. Yuval Noah Harari, in his terrifying 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, envisions a future in which “humans will not be able to survive at all if they are disconnected … insurance agencies might refuse to insure you, employers might refuse to employ you, and healthcare services might refuse to take care of you.” Harari is an eminent historian, by the way, not a screenwriter for Black Mirror. A couple of weeks in, I can report that smartphone‑free life is good. I have sat peacefully on the train, daydreaming as the countryside scrolls by; I have stopped a stranger in the street to ask for directions. I have plans to take up knitting, write poetry – hell, maybe I’ll even make it to that Labour party meeting I’ve been thinking about attending for at least three years. Already I feel more centred, less distracted, less edgy. I realise that I haven’t actually bought myself a brain transplant. But for a mere £31.99, it really feels like the next best thing. • Alice O’Keeffe is a freelance literary critic and journalistHundreds of thousands of US government contractors went back to work early this week after the end of a record 35-day government shutdown, but Tamela Worthen, who works as a security guard at the Smithsonian museum in Washington DC, wasn’t among them. Instead, she was at home recovering from an emergency room visit on Monday after a dangerously-elevated blood pressure left her dizzy and feeling like she couldn’t breathe. Worthen has hypertension and after a month of missed paychecks, she was unable to afford her medication this month, causing the flare-up. The cycle is vicious. She’s not getting paid for the missed time, which causes even more financial strain, which leads to more emotional stress, which compounds a condition like hypertension. “I just wasn’t feeling like myself. There’s no way I could have been standing on my feet for seven hours,” she said, pivoting quickly to concern over new bills she’ll have to face for this week’s ER visit and ambulance ride. Even if she had been able to make it back, Worthen’s reaction to the end of the shutdown is lukewarm. Unlike federal employees, furloughed contractor employees like Worthen have no reason to expect Congress will vote to pay them their back wages for the work missed during the shutdown. “It’s just one hurdle after another because you’re already backed up on your bills and you’re already a slave to your check,” Worthen said. “That income is just gone.” Her frustration with being used as a bargaining chip in Donald Trump’s gambit to secure funding for a border wall is palpable. “The president wants to try to make a point about this wall. He’s not realizing he’s gonna have a lot of blood on his hands because you got people on medicine... What if I had died?” Worthen’s struggles are not atypical according to Héctor Figueroa, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) chapter 32BJ. About 3,000 of his chapter members are government contract workers who were furloughed by their employer during the shutdown. “It’s been a great hardship for them and people are living on the edge, not knowing if they’re going to be able to pay the rent, choosing between buying food and buying medicine,” Figueroa told the Guardian. “These are entry-level jobs, many of our members are women – many are single mothers living paycheck to paycheck,” Figuroa added, describing the workers as “overwhelmingly” black and Hispanic. Black Americans are not only overrepresented in the federal workforce, but black-owned businesses also disproportionately contract with the federal government. According to the business analytics firm Equant, “Black-owned firms comprise 2.1% of all small businesses in the country that have one or more employees. However, such firms make up 11.7% of registered federal contractors.” That includes firms like LaJuanna Russell’s Virginia-based company Business Management Associates. She said she built the company from “me at my kitchen table” in 2002, to a multimillion dollar firm with nearly 100 employees today providing workforce support for more than a dozen federal agencies and it’s been “scary” to see how easily that could all be taken away. Russell explained how, during the government shutdown of 2013, her firm lost half its contracts in the blink of an eye. And many services contractors provide are highly specialized. “When you do business with the government, there are so many special rules and special requirements that you have to adhere to in a contract, that it doesn’t translate very easily into commercial work,” said David Berteau, the Professional Services Council CEO. PSC represents some 400 companies large and small who contract with the federal government, including Russell’s. PSC and the SEIU are both trying to secure back pay for contractors, which has never been authorized by Congress before. Berteau said: “Equal treatment between contract workers and government workers has been our theme throughout the shutdown,” and he believes there is “more traction” behind that idea than in previous shutdowns. A bill introduced by Senator Tina Smith, a Democrat of Minnesota, on Tuesday would make back-pay available to low-wage workers employed by outside government contractors, including janitors, cafeteria workers and security guards. A similar bill has been introduced in the House. “They clean office buildings and keep us safe and secure and serve millions of meals a year,” Smith said during a press conference at the Capitol. “Why should these hardworking people be forced to pay the price of the shutdown themselves?” That’s a question that comes up for contractors over and over, and there’s no good answer. “It’s just really ridiculous – this wasn’t even a real argument, it was a political argument,” said Russell. “You can’t just utilize people as pawns for political posturing.” Michelle Oler, who processes real estate transactions for the department of agriculture’s office of rural development agrees. “It’s disappointing because we’re supposed to live in such a great country and yet the ability to earn income gets held over your heads while a political dispute goes on.” Ohler was one of hundreds of contractors who, along with thousands of federal workers, even took to GoFundMe to try and fill in the gap in income while she was furloughed.Curry has five caps but has never before appeared in the Six Nations after missing out last year with a long-term wrist injury. He began the autumn in the No 7 jersey but was injured again in England’s opening match and such was Sam Underhill’s form thereafter that it is hard to imagine Curry would have come straight back in to the side but for the Bath flanker’s similarly awful luck with injuries. Curry then is set for another chance to answer the ongoing question as to who is Eddie Jones’s first-choice openside. The 20-year-old was one of the few shining lights of England’s tour of South Africa last summer and has more in his attacking armoury than Underhill. He is an effective operator at the breakdown but if there is one concern about Curry it is that he struggles to adapt if on the wrong side of the officials. At 19, he is the youngest player in the championship but deemed ready to make his transition to the senior setup, having steering France to the Junior World Cup title last summer. The son of the former France wing Emile, Ntamack has made 18 appearances for Toulouse this season, playing an instrumental role in their resurgence on the European stage. A fly-half by trade, Ntamack has made inside-centre his home for Toulouse this season but Jacques Brunel is keeping an open mind as to where he plays for France. “In matches Romain Ntamack starts as a centre but in open play he changes between positions. So we’ll say he’s a fly-half-centre,” the head coach said. It may come later in the tournament but the first of what is likely to be many caps beckons. Another promoted from France’s Under-20s side, Bamba made his senior international debut against Fiji in the autumn. Currently on loan at Brive from Lyon in France’s second tier, Bamba is a ferocious scrummager, bulldozing carrier and fond of the odd offload as well. Like Ntamack, he was part of the French side that won the Under-20s Six Nations title but it was the Junior World Cup where he really caught the eye as part of a pack that scrummaged both New Zealand and England off the park in the semis and final respectively. Aged 14 Bamba was a national judo champion before making the transition to rugby where he began life as a No 8 before moving to tighthead prop, which explains his thunderous runs, for which is beginning to make a name for himself. A pocket rocket who earned a surprise call-up to the Scotland squad in the autumn on the back of some eye-catching displays for Edinburgh in the Champions Cup against Montpellier and Toulouse. Gregor Townsend clearly likes what he sees and has no concerns over Graham’s size, stating last week: “I believe the game has never been more suited to smaller players. You look at Darcy Graham who has made more tackle breaks than the super-size wingers out there.” Graham has drawn comparisons with the former Wales wing Shane Williams, is similarly quick and has the ability to get crowds on their feet. He managed only one league start in his first season at Edinburgh but the former Scotland sevens player has five tries in his six Pro14 appearances this term. Williams started his first two Tests last year, the second against Tonga in the autumn, but looks poised for a first Six Nations appearance against France on Friday. Gareth Davies may well have recovered from a thigh injury but Williams – the lightest player in the championship at 78kg – is primed for a place among the replacements with Warren Gatland recently describing the scrum-half as “a young player who is pretty talented. He could be something pretty special”. Williams has been knocking on the door for a few years now, having previously been part of Wales’s sevens setup, and with Gatland looking for more depth at scrum-half, Williams now has the platform to push for a World Cup spot. Young’s cause is not helped by the limited amount of time he has been able to train with Wales as someone based in a different country but anyone who has seen him perform consistently well for Wasps this season will know he warrants a Six Nations debut at some stage of the tournament. The riches of openside flankers available also explain why this is the first time Warren Gatland has ever selected him (his previous involvements have come when the head coach was on British & Irish Lions duty) but with Ellis Jenkins a long-term injury absentee Young has been called up. Justin Tipuric and Josh Navidi are ahead of him in the pecking order, while there is Aaron Wainwright for competition too, but Young’s all-round excellence means he merits his chance.Over the next few weeks, Britain faces a stark binary choice. It is not the blackmail choice that Theresa May misleadingly poses: my deal or no deal. Nor is it the choice Jeremy Corbyn still implausibly claims: her bad Brexit or his much better Brexit. The real choice we must make before B-day (currently 29 March) is this: blindfold Brexit or democratic timeout. As parliament takes back control, we urgently need the Labour front bench to join MPs from all parties in getting us to the timeout. By timeout I mean a period of democratic deliberation leading up to a second referendum, in which we decide, on the basis of everything we now know, how we should address the real problems that contributed to the vote for Brexit in 2016, what kind of country we really want to be – and whether we can do that better outside or inside the EU. For this, our EU partners will extend article 50 and give us the necessary time. Everything else – May’s deal, no deal, customs union, Norway plus, Canada plus, common market 2.0, make your own label – is just a variant of blindfold Brexit. This clarifies what might otherwise appear like total confusion. In all these variants, what Brexit actually means would only be determined in a drawn-out negotiation after we had left the EU. And once you are out, you are out. Whatever the goals set by the British government – and both the government and the goals might change – we would be negotiating from a position even weaker than we are in today. As Ivan Rogers, our former permanent representative to the EU, has warned, those negotiations would be “tougher than anything we have seen to date”. A Labour government coming to power in these circumstances would be like a street cleaner having to gather the horse dung after a Tory hunt has passed down the high street. It wouldn’t be long before the public started blaming Labour rather than the “Tory Brexit”. One of the delusional ideas still whirring around Westminster is that, having “done Brexit”, we can rapidly get back to addressing our real problems, such as housing, health and education. Brexit won’t be done for a decade, and the economic cost of even the softest Brexit will leave less money available for already stretched public services. The people hardest hit will be Labour’s working-class voters. Another delusion is that it’s up to us to decide whether to extend article 50. Not so. It also requires the unanimity of the EU 27. Nobody knows what EU leaders would do in extremis, but they have repeatedly said that they will not extend it just for more negotiations. There could be a short technical extension to allow Britain to push through the necessary legislation. Otherwise, it would require a clear determination from London to have a referendum or a general election with the option of Britain remaining in the EU. As one seasoned observer puts it: you need an extension to have a referendum, but you also need a referendum to have an extension. Here, then, is the choice before Labour. Corbyn’s speech on Thursday remained in depressing denial-and-diversion territory: elect a Labour government to negotiate a better Brexit, but the real problem is a suffering majority that has been immiserated by a rapacious elite. This is just cakeism with red icing. In the next two weeks, the choice will become real. Unless something wholly unexpected happens, May’s deal will be voted down next Tuesday. Labour will then propose a motion of no confidence, potentially leading to a general election – but that motion, too, will be defeated. If the government respects the cross-party amendment dramatically voted through the House of Commons this week, it should come back within three parliamentary working days of Tuesday’s vote to say what it proposes to do next. Since the house is currently not scheduled to sit next Friday, that brings us to Monday 21 January. May has got all the Irish backstop reassurances that she is likely to get out of Brussels. Unless a significant number of Labour MPs swallow the mind-stretching proposition that a post-Brexit Conservative government is going to be a better protector of workers’ rights than the EU, an attempt to push her deal through on a second vote will fail. If the dissident Conservative Dominic Grieve and his fellow signatories to that cross-party amendment are supported in their interpretation by the Speaker, there will be the possibility of amendments to the government motion. By this procedural means, or an explicitly “indicative” vote, parliament could test the support among MPs for different options. Crunch time for Corbyn comes then, or very soon thereafter. If he can overcome his own Lexiter (leftwing Brexiter) instincts, then Labour can lead a cross-party parliamentary majority to take the Brexit question back to the people, in a well-prepared second referendum. The onus would then be on the government to respect the will of parliament and put through the necessary legislation. If it refused, or proved incapable, then parliament itself would have to take even more decisive control over the process. A benign side effect would be to curb what is still an over-mighty executive, and create a more modern, democratic balance between legislature and executive. The very method of getting to a second referendum will already have demonstrated something of crucial importance: that this is not simply a repeat of the first. It’s not Blairite, metropolitan, liberal elites telling the benighted people to vote again until they give the right answer. No, this is part of a much larger process – perhaps including a citizens’ assembly, as suggested in a recent Guardian editorial – which is a positive democratic response to the vote for Brexit. If this verbless phrase does not sound too Blairite for Corbynist ears: tough on Brexit, tough on the causes of Brexit. So this process would be as much about understanding the real causes of the Brexit vote, and addressing them, as about our relationship with the EU. The new people’s vote would then be a referendum on Britain’s future – who we think we are, what we want to be, and how we best get there. A convention being held in London today aims to kickstart this debate. For Labour to understand the real binary choice that we face – blindfold Brexit or democratic timeout – and plump decisively for the latter would be the best thing for the whole country, and for Europe. It would also, incidentally, be welcomed by a large majority of Labour party members and supporters, while further dividing the Conservatives. I don’t for a moment underestimate all the difficulties down this route. There is no good way out of the mess Britain has got itself into. But this is the least worst path, bringing unexpected possibilities for democratic and national renewal. Go for it, Labour – or the party, this country and our continent will regret the missed opportunity for ever more. • Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnistIn 2017, Donald Trump and Wisconsin’s then governor, Scott Walker, broke out the champagne and announced that they had lured the Taiwanese company Foxconn into building a $10bn factory in Wisconsin. It was supposed to be proof that the Trump administration was revitalizing America’s manufacturing industry. The catch was that the people of Wisconsin had to give Foxconn $4bn in tax credits – losing revenue that could have gone to fixing roads, funding schools, or fighting the opioid crisis. Wisconsinites knew this was a boondoggle, the outcome of state government leadership captured by corporate interests. At the time of the agreement, I was campaigning to take on the then House speaker, Paul Ryan, for his congressional seat. I was knocking doors every day, talking to people throughout the south-eastern Wisconsin district; few believed that tossing taxpayer dollars at Foxconn would create family-sustaining manufacturing jobs and lead to a more prosperous future. It turns out they were right to be suspicious. They voted Scott Walker out of office and two years later, Foxconn is set to renege on its deal – and could leave Wisconsinites on the hook for much of the bill. This isn’t the first time Foxconn has made big promises and not delivered. In 2013, Foxconn announced a $30 million high-tech factory in Pennsylvania that would create 500 jobs, but it never happened. Similar plans in China and Brazil never materialized. But it’s not just about Foxconn. The Foxconn debacle in Wisconsin is part of a growing trend of massive giveaways by federal, state and local governments to large, multinational corporations without any guarantee of payoff. In New York, elected leaders are throwing $1.5bn at Amazon to build a new campus in Queens. The giveaway has been broadly condemned by workers and community leaders. In New Jersey, a recent audit of the state’s Economic Development Authority found that the state had given away $11bn to big business with no provable economic benefit to show for it. Foxconn and their enabler Scott Walker promised 13,000 jobs; fewer than 260 people were hired in 2018 In Wisconsin, Walker claimed we couldn’t afford to fix our roads and bridges for our families’ use, but had money to expand the expressway from the airport to Mt Pleasant in order to accommodate Foxconn’s automated trucks that may now never come. Foxconn and their enabler Walker promised 13,000 jobs; fewer than 260 people were hired in 2018. I’m an ironworker who dedicated years to building my community. I ran for office because I could see that people like me are working hard but have less and less to show as a result of our labor. Meanwhile, corporations like Foxconn and Amazon are getting huge taxpayer subsidies for the promise of jobs that often never materialize. We need to invest in a Green New Deal to create millions of good-paying green jobs and bring our infrastructure into the 21st century. The 2018 election showed the hunger American voters have for leaders who work on behalf of their constituents, not their deep-pocketed donors. This new class of leaders are advocating for real investment in both remediating America’s infrastructure needs as well as promoting innovative programs like the Green New Deal to create good jobs to improve our country while addressing global warming and climate change. My organization, the Working Families party, and members of our movement across the country are demanding that kind of leadership, and are working in communities across the county to hold elected officials accountable and working for the people first. Randy Bryce was the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin’s first congressional district in 2018. He is currently a senior adviser to the Working Families partyThe first time Alex de Minaur played Rafael Nadal, at Wimbledon last summer, he was walloped in straight sets. “It was a surreal experience, words can’t really describe it,” the 19-year-old said. “You often get told what to expect and what to do in these situations but you’ve got to live it for yourself to actually realise the magnitude of the occasion. It was incredible. I had to experience that for myself, I believe next time round I’ll be used to it and hopefully it will be different.” De Minaur speaks with the maturity of someone who has been around the main tour a lot longer than just over a year. At a time when some of Australia’s top players seem to be more concerned with in-fighting, his down to earth attitude is a throwback to years gone by in Australian tennis. When he meets Nadal on home soil at Melbourne Park on Friday, he will do with confidence, having won his first ATP Tour title last weekend in Sydney. This time 12 months ago, he was ranked outside the top 100; this year, he is ranked 29 and seeded at a grand slam for the first time. Playing Nadal for the second time ought to be less daunting than the first. “I feel like I learnt a lot from that experience,” he said after his second-round win over Henri Laaksonen, the Swiss who pushed him to five sets. “I’m really looking forward to just having fun, going out there and just competing. I’ve already stepped out on court and played him, so that whole experience of playing Rafa, that’s not new to me anymore. So hopefully this time around I can go a bit more relaxed, just focus on myself, try to play some good tennis.” Born in Sydney to a Uruguyan father and Spanish mother, De Minaur moved to Alicante in Spain when he was five years old. Since then, he’s divided his time between Australia and Spain. When he is in Alicante, it’s hard to escape the exploits of Nadal, who is chasing his 18th grand slam title here. “Rafa is pretty much like the king in Spain,” he said. “He’s done so much amazing things for the sport. He’s had that many achievements. It’s pretty incredible. It’s going to be fun for me to get out on court and be able to test where I am.” With a game-style reminiscent of Lleyton Hewitt, the former world No 1 and now captain of Australia’s Davis Cup team, who is almost always to be found in his corner courtside, De Minaur possesses incredible speed, his retrieving skills as good, perhaps even better than Hewitt himself. “He’s probably the quickest guy on the circuit now, that’s for sure,” Australian Peter McNamara said. McNamara, a three-time grand slam doubles winner, said De Minaur asks difficult questions of his opponents. “He’s probably the fittest, too. He gets to balls that no other guy gets to, makes you play another shot. In men’s tennis, that can help a lot.” After reaching the third round here, Nadal pronounced himself happy with his form and paid De Minaur a compliment, saying: “He’s a little bit Spanish, no?”. It is 10 years since Nadal won the title in Melbourne, but after undergoing foot surgery in the off-season, he has looked strong at the Australian Open and won his first two matches in straight sets. He knows, though, that he may need to step things up again when he plays De Minaur. “Since a couple of years ago we know that we have a good player coming,” he said. “I think he improved a lot during the last three years. Today he is one of the best players of the world. That’s the real thing. He’s young, very young. He is winning a lot of matches. He’s having a great improvement year by year. So let’s see. Going to be a tough one.”The British Museum has tended to keep its lips sealed about its most controversial set of treasures: the sculptures removed from the Parthenon in Athens by Lord Elgin at the start of the 19th century. I know, because I’ve taken part in public debates to put its case – without anyone from the museum to back me up – most recently at University College London, which is so close to the museum that its curators would have only needed to pop around the corner to say their piece. Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, has just broken with this policy of saying nothing and hoping the museum’s critics will go away. He has given an uninhibited interview to the Greek newspaper Ta Nea, in which he makes an intellectual argument for keeping the sculptures where they are. And he has used an incendiary word that has unleashed a torrent of outrage. In the interview – and to avoid repeating any mistranslations, I am quoting a text provided to me by the British Museum – Fischer claims that moving these and other objects from their original place into a museum in another part of the world can be “creative”. “When you move cultural heritage into a museum, you move it out of context,” he says. “Yet that displacement is also a creative act, and each encounter with it is potentially a creative act.” This may seem provocative. Is he actually claiming that when Elgin got his workmen to physically remove a huge part of the sculptures from the Parthenon temple, after doing a dodgy deal with the Ottoman empire that was oppressing Greece at the time, and ship them to London, this act of daylight robbery was creative? Try asking that another way. Was it creative when British soldiers destroyed the royal city of Benin, west Africa, in 1897 and looted the great brass plaques from its palace, many of which are in the British Museum? Or when Hitler planned a new museum to house the looted art of Europe? Emotion is easy and thinking is hard. The campaign to return Elgin’s booty to Greece has run on passion for 200 years, ever since Lord Byron denounced Elgin in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Today, this oldest of all cultural property protests has become emblematic of a wider outrage that sees many museum treasures, such as the British Museum’s Rapa Nui stone figure, as nothing more than imperial theft. There is a mood to support any and all such restitution claims – Jeremy Corbyn would return the Parthenon sculptures, no question – so for Fischer to call museums’ appropriation of other peoples’ art “creative” is bound to start a fire. Yet, if you don’t see his case, you are ultimately saying there shouldn’t be any world museums and every work of art should stay in its original location, as it only has meaning in its original context. If you follow this through to its logical conclusion, there should be no international sharing of images and ideas. Every altar piece in the National Gallery would have to go back to the church it was made for. That’s a terrifying plan to intellectually shrink our species in a myriad of mental Brexits. Placing these sculptures in the British Museum was an act of reverence. Those who argue for the return of the Parthenon sculptures and any other such restitution need to be clear that in attacking the dream of the world museum you are assaulting the heritage of the Enlightenment. Museums make us see more, they let us explore connections. Visit the British Museum’s Islamic gallery and you can see how Islamic art drew on the classical heritage of which the Parthenon sculptures are the summit. You can see the same influence in its early Buddhist art. Only a collection like that of the British Museum opens up these bigger ways of seeing. Creative? Actually, yes. The generosity and scope of a museum on the British Museum’s scale expands our horizons. It seems to me that there are two fundamental errors in the case to return the Parthenon treasures. One is the notion that ancient Greece, a civilisation that flourished 2,500 years ago, is somehow the cultural possession of modern Greece, that its achievements belong to Greece in some narrow national way. If that were true, no one outside Greece would study mathematics, philosophy or history, see a play, or do a scientific experiment – for all these fundamental human pursuits were invented by the ancient Greeks. The other is that placing these sculptures in the British Museum expressed contempt for Greece. In fact, it was an act of reverence. These masterpieces came to London at the height of neoclassicism, when the civilisation of ancient Greece was seen as the fount of all wisdom, beauty and truth. There’s a simple proof that putting this art in the British Museum was indeed creative. John Keats, unlike the aristocratic Lord Byron, was neither rich nor healthy enough to sail to Greece. But when he saw the Parthenon frieze in London it inspired him, in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, to describe its tragic image of a cow being led to slaughter: “To what green altar, O mysterious priest,Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?” If it’s not creative to inspire one of the greatest poets in the English language, what is? Greece has Byron on its side. The British Museum has Keats (not to mention Percy Bysshe Shelley, who in the same years wrote Ozymandias about another marvel in its collection). Fischer has been brave to stick his head over the parapet and say what he thinks. He’s the internationalist liberal in this debate. The passionate proponents of Greece’s claim need to explain how their argument differs from any other variety of nationalist populism.Sensitive data belonging to hundreds of German politicians, celebrities and public figures has been published online via a Twitter account in what is thought to be one of the largest leaks in the country’s history. The huge cache of documents includes personal phone numbers and addresses, internal party documents, credit card details and private chats. A government spokeswoman, Martina Fietz, said the leak affected politicians of all levels including those in the European, national and regional parliaments. “The German government is taking this incident very seriously,” she said, adding that faked documents could be among the cache. The documents were published online in December but only came to light on Thursday night. Several letters to and from Angela Merkel were among the documents, revealing email addresses and a fax number, German media reported, though a government spokeswoman said no sensitive information from the chancellory was leaked. Cabinet members and the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, were also among those affected. Reports said all of the main German political parties except the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had been hit. Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), their Bavarian sister party, the CSU, and the Social Democrats (SPD) spent Thursday night evaluating the scale of the damage and the authenticity of the documents, as did the liberal Free Democratic party, the Left party and the Greens. Das Bild newspaper said the leaks contained data from 405 CDU-CSU politicians, 294 SPD politicians, 105 Greens, at least 82 Left party members and 28 FDP MPs. That no AfD politician was affected prompted speculation that far-right sympathisers were behind the leaks. The German Green party leader, Robert Habeck, was among the leak’s biggest victims as records of his personal chats with family members were reportedly posted online. “You have to ask yourself where all this data comes from,” Michael Götschenberg, a reporter for ARD, who had seen part of the leaked cache, said on Friday. He said no politically sensitive data appeared to have been leaked but some “especially painful” personal chats relating to “family life” were among the documents he had seen. Other reports listed photos of ID cards, direct debit records and family photos as being among the documents. The sheer range of data published means it likely came from multiple sources. Much of the data is being treated as authentic, but there were suggestions some of it could have been faked. Florian Post, an SPD MP, told the German news agency dpa he had never seen at least one of the messages said to be from his communications. The leaks appeared on 1 December when the Twitter account @—0rbit began posting links on a daily basis in the style of an advent calendar. German celebrities and journalists were initially targeted, including the TV personalities Jan Böhmermann and Christian Ehring, the actor Til Schweiger, the YouTube star LeFloid and the rapper Sido. From 20 December onwards the account started tweeting data from politicians. The mysterious account, which was hastily shut down on Friday, purportedly had more than 18,000 followers. It described its activities as “security researching”, “artist” and “satire and irony” and said it was based in Hamburg. A motive for the leak remains unclear, as does how it could have stayed unnoticed for more than 10 days over the Christmas break. Spiegel reported that the Twitter account followed only a couple of others, including anonymousnews.ru, a site known for spreading far-right hate speech. An interior ministry spokesman could not say whether the documents had been obtained via an external hacking attack on the German parliament or by an insider. “According to our current information, government networks have not been targeted,” Germany’s federal office for information security (BSI) tweeted on Friday. Some of the leaked data could have been obtained during an earlier hacking attack on the German parliament. In 2015, the BSI shut down the parliamentary intranet for a spell after it emerged that hackers had installed spyware on the system. Last year, the government said a cyber-attack had targeted the foreign ministry’s computer network. At the time, both attacks were blamed on Russian hackers, accusations the Kremlin denies. Security officials have in the past pointed the finger at APT28, a Russian hacking group that experts say has close ties to a Russian spy agency and has been held responsible for an attack ahead of the 2016 US presidential election. Friday’s revelations triggered an emergency meeting of Germany’s national cyber-defence agency, a body set up by the BSI in 2016 to coordinate a response to online intrusions. German intelligence agencies have also asked for help from U.S. intelligence in investigating the incident, said Bild. German politicians expressed shock at the leaks and agreed that those behind the leaks had intended to undermine public trust in democracy. “Whoever is behind this wants to damage faith in our democracy and its institutions,” SPD Justice Minister Katarina Barley said in a statement. “[Those] responsible want to intimidate politicians,” added SPD secretary general Lars Klingbeil. “That will not succeed.” Cliff Sims, a former aide in Donald Trump’s White House, reportedly received a seven-figure advance for dishing dirt on his ex-boss. If Sims actually banked a million dollars, his agent deserves a round of props. As for Sims’ publishers, they may have overpaid. A copy of Team of Vipers, Sims’ touted tell-all, was obtained by the Guardian. It ladles out scoop but is short on insight. The author is critical of Trump world’s visceral brutality but does not adequately trace the mien and tenor of the West Wing to its occupant-in-chief. In his closing pages, Sims takes Trump to task for treating loyalty as a one-way street. The reader is left wondering what took so long for the scales to fall from Sims’ eyes. To be sure, the book is Sims’ consolation prize after departing what has become an island of misfit toys. He left the administration after being passed over for a promotion and blocked from moving to the state department, and not obtaining a security clearance. All in 500 days. Chaotic is an understatement. Kellyanne stood in a class of own in terms of her machinations – I had to admire her sheer gall Apparently, Sims got into hot water after having allegedly surreptitiously recorded a meeting with the president, which he then reportedly replayed to others. To compound Sims’s woes, the story made it into the New York Times. For the record, Sims characterizes the Times report as an “outlandish misrepresentation of what actually happened”. Despite being a lower-level staffer he made more than his fair share of enemies, particularly John Kelly, the former chief of staff and retired four-star marine general. Suffice to say, there is no love lost. Sims damns Kelly for an array of shortcomings including his lack of a total embrace of the president and his agenda, an interpersonal skills deficit, and his support for Rob Porter, the disgraced ex-White House staff secretary and alleged serial abuser. He also tags Kelly for a lack of self-awareness. From the looks of things, Sims’s animus toward Kelly was a byproduct of Kelly’s undiluted disdain for Sims. “Cliff,” he quotes Kelly as saying, “in the past 40 years, I don’t think I’ve ever had a subordinate whose reputation is worse than yours. In every single context that your name comes up, it’s always negative – always.” No matter. Sims vividly captures his peers’ and superiors’ shortcomings, with only Javanka and Hope Hicks, former communications director and Porter love interest, emerging unscathed. For the rest, Sims is unsparing, with deceit and backstabbing emerging as the intertwined coins of the realm. Sarah Sanders, Trump’s press secretary, possessed a casual attitude toward truth-telling when it came to the press, according to the book. In Sims’ words, Sanders “didn’t press as hard as she could have for the rock-bottom truth”, adding that her “gymnastics with the truth would tax even the nimblest of prevaricators, and Sanders was not that”. At least Sims believes that Sanders was not a “natural liar”. I don’t think I’ve ever had a subordinate whose reputation is worse than yours Likewise, Kellyanne Conway, the high priestess of “alternative facts”, comes in for her share of incoming. Sims spills the beans on Conway repeatedly trashing Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon and Sean Spicer to the mainstream media, while recounting to the press ostensibly private conversations with the president. While none of this is exactly news, it places Conway in the realm of performance artists. Think Roger Stone, without the special counsel breathing down her neck, a Nixon tattoo on her back or an organic attachment to the president. Who can forget Conway’s visual perorations on the word “collusion”? As Sims put it, “Kellyanne stood in a class of own in terms of her machinations – I had to admire her sheer gall.” For good measure, he takes a dig at George Conway, Kellyanne’s husband whose adherence to what were once deemed “conservative principles” is more consistent than his wife’s or Sims’ – and whose spidey sense led him to reject an appointment at the justice department. As for Simms own judgment, he admits to having supported Anthony Scaramucci joining the president’s team in a bid to impose order. Team of Vipers leaves more than just the impression that cultural resentment fuels the administration and the modern Republican party. As Charlottesville unspooled, Sims called Bannon, whom he found “maniacally insisting that this was a ‘moment’ that had to be seized upon”. To quote Sims quoting Bannon: “They have no idea what they’ve just done … This is a winning issue for us.” Winning? Not exactly. For the record, the Colin Kaepernick ad campaign boosted Nike’s sales, Nancy Pelosi wields the speaker’s gavel and Trump’s approval rating is in the low 40s, even as unemployment has dropped below 4%. When the Republicans lose suburbia, white college graduates and the wealthy – as they did in 2018 – they have a problem. The GOP’s transformation into a white workers’ party has come with a price. Yet there is every reason to believe Trump’s re-election effort will offer up more of the same. The president shows little indication of pivoting toward the center. For better or worse, his plutocrat-populist playbook will likely remain the operative force. In that vein, Sims shares his conversation with Trump concerning the NFL players’ protests and a possible second term, with Trump announcing that “the Democrats – you watch – they’re going to nominate a kneeler … 2020 will be fun, that I can tell you – a lot of fun … the kneelers! Just watch”. In other words, Pocahontas, Sacagawea and caravans will continue to take center stage. What is most memorable about Team of Vipers is the joylessness of working for this president and the acrid aftertaste it leaves. While factionalism is to be expected, a stint at the White House usually brings with it a passel of friends and memories. Just look at the recent funeral of George HW Bush. Not here. Rather, discord and a book are Trump’s emerging legacy and Sims’ parting gifts.A senior ally of Jeremy Corbyn has said holding a second EU referendum could badly affect the relationship between politicians and the public, as a series of Labour backbenchers tabled new amendments seeking such an option. Ian Lavery, a Labour MP who is also the party’s national campaigns coordinator, said that while the possibility of a second referendum should be maintained as a way to end an otherwise intractable Brexit impasse, he was worried about the consequences. Labour’s frontbench has tabled an amendment to Theresa May’s Brexit plan which includes this option, as decreed by party policy, Lavery says in an article for the Guardian. “However, we should be in no doubt that asking the voters to vote again on an issue they have already given an answer, until they come up with the right answer, risks serious damage to the relationship between many citizens and politicians at Westminster.” The best solution would be a Labour government, Lavery wrote, “not rerunning a divisive campaign that seems likely to deliver the same result again and do nothing to answer the demand of a country crying out for real change.” Such sentiments from someone seen as close to Corbyn’s team will dishearten those in the party keen to push forward the option of a second referendum, something that polls show is backed by a majority of Labour members. On Thursday a planned cross-party amendment for a so-called people’s vote was dropped by its organisers, who said the lack of explicit Labour frontbench backing meant it was unlikely to pass. However, the Commons order paper for Tuesday’s crucial series of votes on the next stages for Brexit now features three new amendments tabled by Labour MPs seeking this eventuality. The amendments, tabled by Ian Murray, Angela Smith and Mike Gapes, are amendments to the Labour frontbench amendment, and seek to mandate the government to organise a second referendum. The Smith version is backed by four other Labour MPs. In his article, Lavery said May had “spectacularly failed to deliver a Brexit deal that will meet the needs of our country”. He wrote: “Her attempts to revive her categorically rejected deal seem to have about the same chance of success as the kiss of life would have on the T rex exhibit at the Natural History Museum.” In parallel with Labour MPs’ manoeuvrings over a second referendum, Conservative backbenchers have been tabling amendments seeking to demonstrate their dislike of the Irish backstop, one of the main factors that led to the defeat of May’s plan. One of the key amendments on Tuesday, if selected for a vote by the Speaker, could be one tabled by the Tory MP Andrew Murrison that has attracted the support of key figures such as Graham Brady, the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, and May’s former de facto deputy Damian Green. This calls for the backstop – an indefinite insurance policy that would come into force if no permanent deal can be made to prevent a hard Irish border – to be “replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border”. While this could win over many Tory MPs who voted against the deal, and possibly also May’s DUP partners, it would require a change in the EU’s stance, which is seen as very unlikely. Asked whether more concessions from Brussels were possible, May’s spokesman indicated on Friday that some movement was needed. “I think there is a clear message from EU leaders that they want us to leave with a deal, and they understand that a deal is in the best interests of the United Kingdom and the European Union,” he said. “The prime minister put the deal as it stands before parliament, and that deal suffered a significant defeat. So clearly if we are to leave with a deal, we’re going to need to make some changes to it.”Theresa May faces a concerted campaign of parliamentary warfare from a powerful cross-party alliance of MPs determined to use every lever at their disposal to prevent Britain leaving the EU without a deal in March. The former staunch loyalist Sir Oliver Letwin signalled that he and other senior Conservatives would defy party whips, repeatedly if necessary, to avoid a no-deal Brexit, as the government suffered a humiliating defeat during a debate on the finance bill in the Commons. Letwin and 16 other former government ministers were among 20 Conservatives who banded together with the home affairs select committee chair, Yvette Cooper, and the Labour leadership to pass an anti no-deal amendment. They defeated the government by 303 votes to 296 – a majority of seven – making May the first prime minister in 41 years to lose a vote on a government finance bill. The move came after the PM conceded to senior ministers she was on course to lose next week’s historic Brexit vote, as the first cabinet meeting of the new year exposed deep divisions about the best way out of the deadlock. May told her cabinet she would respond swiftly with a statement to the House of Commons if she failed to win MPs’ backing for her deal next Tuesday. But cabinet sources said it was unclear what course she planned to take – and the general mood was of how “boxed in” the government was. Several pro-remain ministers, including David Gauke, Amber Rudd and Greg Clark, used the meeting to stress the importance of avoiding a no-deal Brexit, with Rudd saying that would have to mean reaching out across the House of Commons. Rudd told her colleagues: “More than ever we need to find the centre, reach across the house and find a majority for what will be agreed. Anything will need legislation.” However, opponents of a softer Brexit, including the House of Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, played down the risks of no deal and joined May in strongly rejecting the idea that has gained traction in Westminster in recent days of extending article 50. Leadsom has told friends she would refuse to table the legislation necessary to extend article 50, so that May would have to sack her if she wished to pursue such a policy. But Tuesday’s rebellion by erstwhile Tory loyalists underlined parliament’s determination to take control of the next steps in the Brexit process. Letwin, who gave an emotional speech saying he had almost never rebelled against his party, made clear Tuesday’s vote was the first step in a concerted effort by parliament to bind the government’s hands in the run-up to Brexit day. “The majority tonight that is expressed in this house will sustain itself,” he said. “We will not allow a no-deal exit to occur at the end of March.” The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said the vote was an important step to prevent a no-deal Brexit. “It shows that there is no majority in parliament, the cabinet or the country for crashing out of the EU without an agreement”, he said. “That is why we are taking every opportunity possible in parliament to prevent no deal. “Theresa May must now rule out no deal once and for all.” At cabinet earlier on Tuesday, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, had warned that too many MPs were holding out for the ideal Brexit deal, instead of facing the reality that there was no alternative to May’s approach. One source said he had compared MPs hoping for a better deal to “mid-50s swingers,” wishing Scarlett Johansson would turn up to one of their parties. “Or Pierce Brosnan,” said Rudd. Later in the discussion Gauke, the justice secretary, compared Labour’s Brexit position to Johansson turning up on a unicorn, the Whitehall source said. Clark stressed his determined opposition to a no-deal Brexit publicly on Tuesday, telling MPs, “I’ve always been very clear representing the views of small business and large business that no deal should not be contemplated.” The prime minister was expected to announce fresh reassurances on her deal in the coming days, including a beefed-up role for parliament in framing the next stage of negotiations on Britain’s future relationship with the EU. Downing Street has also been expecting the EU27 to offer further written reassurances about the Irish backstop, which has proved the most controversial aspect of the exit deal among Brexiters. However, they appeared likely to fall short of the legally binding changes to the withdrawal agreement the Democratic Unionist party has demanded. French EU affairs minister, Nathalie Loiseau, said on Tuesday, “regarding the Irish backstop no one wants to activate it”, adding, “these are political assurances but there is nothing more that we can do”. Loiseau also stressed that the deal MPs would vote on next week represented “the best possible agreement”, and “the only one”. Tory MPs were whipped to vote against the no-deal amendment on Tuesday evening, despite rumours that the government would concede. Privately, some cabinet Brexiters believe May would rather exit with no deal than tack towards a permanent customs union, or single market membership. But Tuesday’s vote suggested MPs were resolved not to let that happen. Before the vote, the prime minister had addressed a packed room of MPs, mostly from Labour and other opposition parties, who had signed a letter urging her to rule out no deal. Those present said that the prime minister tried to sell her Brexit deal, arguing that no Brexit would have “serious consequences for our democracy” and that the best way to avoid no deal “was to back a deal”. One Labour MP said after the meeting she was “a lot more concerned about no deal” because she had heard several other MPs warning of the risks of it in their constituencies. Those behind the amendment’s success conceded it may have little material effect on no-deal preparations. Instead, its purpose had been to galvanise MPs across the house and prove there was a parliamentary majority to oppose no deal. The rebels said they could seek to amend any and every piece of legislation the government brings to parliament between now and March. Cooper, speaking in the Commons, said MPs across the house agreed on the dangers of no deal. “I’m worried we could come to the crunch and parliament will not have the powers to stop [no deal] happening,” she said. “I think we have a responsibility not to just stand by.” Letwin, during his speech in the Commons, sounded almost tearful as he said he would rebel against the Tory whip. “I will be voting with [Cooper] against my own government, very much against my own will, and I will continue to do so right up until the end of March in the hope we can put paid to this disastrous proposal.” The government also confirmed on Tuesday that there would be five more days of debate on the Brexit deal, starting on Wednesday, with the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, opening the debate. However, the business motion tabled by the government suggested it would effectively be a resumption of the debate that was unexpectedly paused on 10 December, when May conceded she was likely to lose “by a significant margin”.Charly Cox is explaining why she thinks her poetry is so popular with young women. “It’s a really difficult age to articulate how you’re feeling,” she says. “We’re all so stressed out. We’re so confused, so lonely. Poetry is an incredible form of solace. If you encounter something in a poem that you feel you’re feeling, it is a freeing, lovely experience.” Cox, 23, leapt into the list of top 10 bestselling poets last year with She Must Be Mad, her debut collection of poems about her journey from girl to woman. Like Rupi Kaur, the 26-year-old Canadian-Punjabi who dominated the bestsellers last year, Cox first began publishing on Instagram. “A lot of the poets who are coming from online platforms are women or people of colour, and I think that has unsettled the very traditional, predominantly white, older male community, who have spent so long feeling that poetry is an incredibly exclusive academic club. Well, it’s not any more. Suddenly, it’s being blown open,” she says. Young women aged 13 to 24 are now the biggest consumers of poetry in the UK in a market that has grown by 48% over the past five years to £12.3m, according to UK book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan. But instead of buying works by the dead white men who have dominated the canon for centuries, young women are using their economic muscle to drive up sales of works by female poets, making poetry more diverse and representative than ever before. Kaur, for example, made nearly £1m from poetry sales last year. Her themes include menstrual taboos, sexual violence and women’s empowerment. Three other women – Pam Ayres, Helen Dunmore and Carol Ann Duffy, the UK’s first ever female poet laureate – all netted sales into six-figures, something almost unheard of five years ago. Contemporary feminist poet Wendy Cope managed to sell almost as many volumes as perennial favourite Sylvia Plath. This rise in the popularity of poetry by women and the increase in the value of the market corresponds with dramatic shifts in the demographics of poetry buyers. Five years ago, Nielsen’s research suggests 27% of poetry buyers were young women and another 27% were middle-aged or elderly men. Today, nearly 40% of poetry buyers are women under 35 while just 18% are men over 34. The proportion of teenage boys and young men in their early 20s who purchase poetry has also increased, from 12% in 2014 to 16% today. The ease with which poetry can be published online, read on mobile phones and shared on social media is one reason why the form has become more popular with teenagers and millennials, with young poets attracting millions of followers on Instagram. This is opening up the market to younger and more diverse female voices, says Susannah Herbert, director of the Forward Arts Foundation, which runs the Forward Prizes for poetry and National Poetry Day: “For young women who don’t necessarily feel they’ve got a massive right to the microphone, poetry offers a space to write and express yourself without crashing into an authority. Then other young women see something of themselves in those poems. “Publishers have noticed there is an appetite for the writing of women and that if they ignore that appetite, they are not going to sell as many books. Young women working in publishing can also see what is popular online and say: this has a market.” Emma Wright, 33, was one of those women. She set up her own poetry publishing house, The Emma Press, at the age of 25 after noticing that all the big publishers and poetry magazines were run by men – and that certain styles of poetry were not being published. “And it wasn’t because it wasn’t good. It was just not represented. It wasn’t in vogue. But the form, the subject matter and the style really resonated with me. I thought: who are the tastemakers? They did tend to be these older men,” she says. Poetry is far cheaper to edit and print than a novel; on a secondhand Mac, using inexpensive publishing software, Wright’s first poetry pamphlet print run cost her just £1,000. She sells her books direct to readers online as well as in bookshops, and chooses only to publish works which personally interest her: “I’m doing this for a reason and it’s obviously not the money. The payoff is that I publish poetry I want to read. That’s why I started, why I carry on. That’s what I’m bringing to the table.” As a British Asian, she is still working through her sense of identity: “That’s definitely my weak spot: what we learn from our parents, how we feel about ourselves.” Her reputation is now well-established, and she is no longer unique: “In the small press scene, increasing numbers of women are setting up their own poetry publishing houses because there aren’t the economic barriers there used to be.” This has coincided with a movement within poetry to expose aspects of women’s lives which they were previously expected to keep secret, Wright says: “There’s a sense of relief that you can talk about things like periods or pubic hair and share them and not get tarred and feathered.” There has also been an increase in the number of poems that involve the female sexual gaze, says Herbert: “Young women have always wanted to read poetry – why do you think troubadours knocked off verses for their lady loves? But I think they haven’t always bought poetry because most published poetry has not been aimed at them. The great mass of love poetry over the centuries has been men looking at girls. Even just 10 years ago, you could pick up an anthology and struggle to find poems in which women look at men. Now we’re seeing a catch-up.” At 17, Lucy Thynne was crowned Foyle Young Poet of the Year for the third year in a row in 2018 for In the Nude. The poem describes how she and a female friend drove past a nudist resort, then stopped to secretly observe “an Adam... the whitened flesh,/ exposed, turning towards the sun/ as it wobbled like a pale dessert/ we would never order”. She was inspired to start writing poetry by the female poets she was reading in her free time: “We only studied one female poet at school.” Thynne likes Duffy, but works by contemporary young poets like Helen Mort, Caroline Bird, Sarah Howe and Rebecca Perry particularly struck a chord. “You read that you’re not alone, that what you’re going through is normal,” she says. It led her to think writing poetry was something she could do too: “Poetry as a form used to be so constrained by the straitjacket criteria of the dead white man. It was refreshing to hear so many female voices. That’s what I think is attracting so many female readers to poetry. It works together in tandem.” And poetry, she says, is having a galvanising political effect on the women of her generation: “Poetry doesn’t just express ideas, it’s a vehicle for political messages. Post #Metoo and #TimesUp, we can look to female poets as militant figures.” Older works have also enjoyed revivals. Black feminist writer Audre Lorde died in 1992 but Your Silence Will Not Protect You, which brought together her prose and poetry for the first time, has sold more than 10,000 copies since its publication in October 2017. “Lorde’s poetry – about survival, care, gendered and racist violence – speaks to young women whose bodies remain vulnerable, especially if they are of colour, and whose bodily autonomy is threatened by the global rightward shift,” says editor Sarah Shin. One hundred and fifty “bold, brave and beautiful” poems by a wide range of contemporary women poets, new names and classic writers, including Imitaz Dharker and Emily Dickinson, edited by Ana Sampson. The debut collection from Bird, the comic poet from New Zealand who wrote the internet sensation “Keats is dead so fuck me from behind”. US-based Pakistani Kashmiri Muslim Fatimah Asghar’s closely observed poems have a big following among young women of colour. Amy Key does for verse what Phoebe Waller-Bridge, writer of Fleabag is doing for television, wrenching laughter of shock and recognition from line after line. Liz Berry looked to poetry for light when the birth of her first baby turned day and night upside-down. Finding no poems that did justice to her experiences, she wrote them herself. Chosen by Susannah Herbert, director of Forward Arts Foundation, which runs National Poetry Day and the Forward PrizesClose the books. Ready the gongs. We may have already seen the most remarkable performance from a British athlete in 2019. The fact that Jasmin Paris became the first woman to win the 268-mile Spine Race, which swaggeringly bills itself as one of the toughest endurance contests in the world, was jaw-dropping enough. In addition, to beat her nearest male rival by 15 hours and set a course record by 12 – while pumping milk for her baby daughter at feeding stations – marked it out as a feat for the ages. But there was another reason why Paris’s story resonated so deeply it made the BBC’s News at Six, received enormous traffic on the Guardian’s website and was tweeted by Chelsea Clinton. There was a purity which harked back to a bygone age of pushing at impossible boundaries for the sheer love of sport and unfettered adventure. In running the entire Pennine Way from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm in 83 hours, carrying a 5.5kg backpack containing her emergency supplies and 3,000 calories of snacks required by the rules and barely sleeping three hours across three nights, the 35-year-old vet from Edinburgh evoked the ghosts of Sir Edmund Hillary and Roger Bannister and other legends of the heroic age. It also brought to mind great endurance feats of past centuries, such as Foster Powell walking the 404 miles from London to York and back again in five days and 18 hours in 1773 – a story that captured the nation’s attention to such an extent that he was greeted by thousands of well wishers and the triumphant parp of French horns on his return. Or the exploits of Captain Robert Barclay who won a 1,000 guinea wager that he could walk a 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours – one mile every hour of every day and every night without a break – at Newmarket in 1809. Famously Barclay resorted to carrying pistols around his waist and having Big John Gully, an ex-boxing champion, to act as bodyguard because he was afraid someone would attempt to scupper his bet. Alas there was little time to celebrate his success given he had to leave Ramsgate eight days later to fight Napoleon with the British Army. Paris, who allowed herself a glass or two of champagne to celebrate her latest triumph, is taking a page out of the Barclay notebook by returning to work to write her PhD thesis on Monday morning. Indeed when I spoke to her, 36 hours or so after the race, she confessed to being a bit befuddled with all the attention – and made light of the fact that she had had just three hours’ sleep in three days and had “elephant feet” because they had swollen up so much. She was also unbothered by hallucinations on the final day, insisting that seeing animals in the rocks and trees were “interesting in a way, and diverting”. “Also my thermo-regulation is all over the place with the hot and cold, that’s another thing that tends to happen after all races,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “But overall I am feeling pretty good.” It was deeply impressive stuff. Especially when you consider that she only started running at 24. Then again, why would you be fazed when you have spent months preparing by getting up at 4am, while your husband and daughter are asleep, to run around 70-80 miles a week? Even at the start Paris believed that she could beat her male rivals, which included the previous record holder, the Irish international Eoin Keith. She also knew that in long ultra endurance events the physical advantages men have start to dwindle and the race would become about the head as well as the legs and lungs. “A massive part of it is mental,” she says. “With ultras it is always going to hurt at some point. You just have to know how to get through the bad times.” Paris could easily capitalise financially on her latest victory. But while she is helped by the small British company inov-8, which provides kit and shoes, she does not have a major sponsor - and does not want one. “I have been offered something more significant but I have a career already – I am a scientist and a vet – so I don’t need a second one,” she insists. “And I have absolutely no desire to tie myself to a contract or have anyone tell me what to do and when. I just want to keep it fun.” Can you blame her given we live in a world where athletes are reminded to put the correct hashtags on their instagram posts to please their sponsors? Or have carefully calibrated media training to ensure they offer little more than dull platitudes? There is too much preening and posing and bullshit in sport. This was a welcome antidote. Indeed Paris is uneasy when she is told that her achievements are exceptional. “Part of me thinks that if other people tried it they could do it too,” she insists. “All you need to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and feed yourself. We can do much more than we think, if we actually give it a go.” Something Paris, of course, knows better than anyone.An intriguing, previously unknown 13th-century version of a tale featuring Merlin and King Arthur has been discovered in the archives of Bristol central library. The seven handwritten fragments of parchment were unearthed bound inside an unrelated volume of the work of a 15th- century French scholar. Written in Old French, they tell the story of the Battle of Trèbes, in which Merlin inspires Arthur’s forces with a stirring speech and leads a charge using Sir Kay’s special dragon standard, which breathes real fire. The fragments are believed to be a version of the Estoire de Merlin – the story of Merlin – from the Old French sequence of texts known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Other versions of the cycle are known but this one features subtly different details. For example, different characters are responsible for leading the four divisions of Arthur’s forces. In addition, in other versions, Arthur and Merlin’s enemy, King Claudas, is wounded on the thigh, while in the newly discovered fragments the nature of the injury is not specified. This may lead to a new interpretation of the text as upper-leg injuries are often used as metaphors for impotence or castration. Dr Leah Tether, the president of the British branch of the International Arthurian Society and an academic based at Bristol University, cautioned that much more work needed to be done but said it was possible that these pages could be part of the version of the Vulgate Cycle that Sir Thomas Malory used as a source for his work Le Morte D’Arthur – which is the inspiration for many modern retellings of the Arthurian legend. Scholars are not convinced that Malory used any of the versions that until now had been known about. Tether said: “These fragments are a wonderfully exciting find, which may have implications for the study not just of this text but also of other related and later texts that have shaped our modern understanding of the Arthurian legend. “There is a small chance that this could be connected to a version that Malory had access to but we are a long way from proving that.” If the fragments were printed in a modern paperback they would fill about 20 pages. There has been some damage to them, which means it will take time to decipher all the text. “Time and research will reveal what further secrets about the legends of Arthur, Merlin and the Holy Grail these fragments might hold,” Tether said. “The south-west of England and Wales are, of course, closely bound up with the many locations made famous by the Arthurian legend, so it is all the more special to find an early fragment of the legend – one pre-dating any version written in English – here in Bristol.”Just when we thought we’d heard it all, along comes evidence of yet another way that men are controlling women, denying them bodily autonomy and sexually abusing them. It’s one you might not have heard of; certainly it’s been little discussed and does not appear to have been highlighted by the #MeToo movement. Arguably though, it has a far more serious and potentially life-changing impact on women’s lives than many of the abuses that movement has documented. It’s called reproductive coercion and, as a shocking new report in the journal BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Heath has found, as many as one in four women presenting at sexual health clinics is a victim of it. Reproductive coercion is not a new phenomenon. But it was very recently recognised as a distinct type of domestic abuse, and only defined as a concept in 2010, in a study in the journal Contraception. It describes a type of abuse in which someone else controls your reproductive choices, such as deciding whether you can use contraception, choose to become pregnant, or continue with a pregnancy. This can manifest as either psychological abuse or physical violence, or both, and ranges from emotional blackmail to sabotaging contraception to, at the extreme end, deliberately bringing on an abortion by spiking a woman’s food or drink. The new BMJ report reviews all the currently available evidence and brings it up to date, collating information from worldwide medical and social sciences research databases. It reveals that the problem is more common than previously acknowledged, and that younger women are particularly vulnerable to it, as (in the US at least) are black and ethnic minority women. And it shows that while male partners are predominantly responsible for acts of reproductive coercion, they’re not the only perpetrators. In some cultures, other family members, particularly older female relatives, frequently interfere with another woman’s reproductive autonomy. Reproductive control covers such a wide spectrum of behaviour that many women might not realise they’ve been a victim of it, not least because some of its myriad forms present passively, or very subtly. Take your friend who confides to you that her boyfriend hates wearing condoms and sweet-talks her until she’ll let him have sex with her without, because it feels so much nicer, and she gives in because he really loves her, and she knows she can trust him … Or the woman unlucky enough to have sex with a man who covertly removes his condom midway during sex, without her consent or knowledge – an act known as “stealthing” – and which he (and perhaps she) probably doesn’t know is a form of rape, for which men have been convicted. And then there’s the guy who lied to you about having had a vasectomy, or the one who swore on his life that he’d withdraw during unprotected sex but “got carried away in the moment”. And the bloke who said he’d break up with his girlfriend if she didn’t have an abortion, so she did, even though she wanted the baby. Conversely, there’s the man who wanted a(nother) child, when his partner did not, who pierced holes in the condoms and feigned surprise when she became pregnant. There are still, it seems, an awful lot of men who like to keep their women “barefoot and pregnant”. Perhaps that casual, jokey attitude to reproductive control is part of the problem. Recently, Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson quipped about messing around with his (now ex) fiancee, Ariana Grande’s birth control. “Last night I switched her birth control with Tic Tacs,” he said. “I believe in us and all, but I just want to make sure that she can’t go anywhere.” Hilarious. And last year, actor Ian Somerhalder brazenly admitted he’d decided to start a family with wife Nikki Reed by taking the birth control pack from her purse and throwing the pills in the toilet. Yes, women have been known to do this type of thing too, most famously in the case of notorious columnist, Liz Jones, who confessed to being so desperate for a baby that she had stolen her (then) husband’s sperm from his used condoms in the dead of night, and inseminated herself. But she represents a tiny minority. The reason is blindingly obvious: it’s mainly women who suffer the consequences of reproductive abuse. They’re the ones who need a prescription for the morning-after pill, who need to go through abortions, get pregnant, endure childbirth. They’re the ones who are kept in poverty by having unwanted children, who can’t get a job or improve their education. Like all forms of sexual abuse, this isn’t about sex, it’s about power. The BMJ report calls for more international research on the non-physical elements of abusive relationships and into how coercive control can be resisted. GPs and other health workers need to be more aware of it, and women need to be able to spot the signs so they can get out, or get help. The pill might be almost 60 years old, but we still have a long way to go before we’re in total control over our own reproductive lives. • Hilary Freeman is a journalist and authorPakistan’s supreme court is to consider a petition on Tuesday against the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman whose blasphemy conviction was overturned in October. Bibi, who spent eight years on death row, has been held at a secret location since her death sentence was quashed after hardline Islamists threatened to kill her if she was freed. Her lawyer, Saiful Malook, has said he is confident the court will reject the petition. If so, she is likely to be flown out of the country within hours. It emerged last week that Bibi’s daughters had already left Pakistan for Canada, one of several countries to have offered sanctuary to the farm worker and her family. Since her acquittal, Bibi’s supporters have called on the international community to ensure her safety. Her lawyer and Christian organisations appealed for her and her family to be given asylum in a western country. Australia, Spain and France are also thought to have offered sanctuary. Bibi’s case has been raised in the UK parliament several times since she was acquitted but not freed. The prime minister, Theresa May, has declined to answer questions about whether the UK has considered an offer of asylum, saying she does not want to further endanger Bibi and her family by discussing her case. Bibi, who has five children, was accused by Muslim villagers of insulting the prophet Muhammad in a row over a cup of water. She was convicted of blasphemy in 2010 and sentenced to death. After the supreme court overturned the verdict in October, saying there was no evidence to support the conviction, hardline Islamists staged violent protests and brought cities across Pakistan to a standstill. In the days following the court ruling, Bibi’s lawyer fled to the Netherlands, saying his life was in danger. Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, was accused of capitulating to the extremists’ demands after he agreed the supreme court would consider their petition against its ruling. In return, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a fast-growing political party dedicated solely to punishing blasphemy, ended its protest. In November, Bibi’s family claimed they were being hunted by extremists going house to house with their photographs to try to track them down.On a whisper-still January dawn, the most terrifying day of Allan Oppert’s life began unremarkably and with a feeling of deep calm. Like most Sundays, he woke to a knock on the door from his friends Dan and Dave. At Allan’s neat house in the small seaside town of Binningup, in the south-west corner of Western Australia, the three men drank strong coffee before towing Allan’s boat to a nearby ramp where three friends were launching another vessel. The two groups were heading out on the ocean together, a familiar arrangement aimed at ensuring safety. Oppert turned the key on his boat’s engine as the western horizon illuminated a glassy sea, a low swell barely bothering the shore. At the height of an Australian summer, mornings on the ocean offered early respite from the baking heat and unrelenting wind of the afternoon. The two boats were heading to a dive site that the men visited most weekends of the year, conditions allowing. A 15-minute boat ride from shore, the site featured a roughly cylindrical cavity about 6m wide and 3m deep on the ocean floor. In 33m of water, the “crater” bristled with crayfish, a delicious but formidable-looking crustacean prized for its sweet, delicate flesh. After several hours and two separate dives into the heart of the crater, a single tank of air remained between the six men. I said to Dan, ‘You go,’ and he said, ‘No, you go.’ After entering the water for his third dive of the day, this time alone, Oppert, a 42-year-old prison officer, began his descent. The process, as always, involved the release of air from inside his buoyancy vest to enable heavy weights strapped to his hips to drag him from the surface to the ocean floor. But this time he didn’t quite make it. The torpedo-shaped bulk of a huge great white shark inside the crater below loomed into view and, in the nanosecond that followed, Oppert registered both the animal’s curious demeanour – “like a dog on a scent” – and a firm belief that his life would not end there. [The shark is] going over to one spot and having a look and going over to another and having a sniff. These sharks are like dogs, in their gestures and in their behaviour. They hunch up their backs when they are annoyed, and she was annoyed. All of a sudden, she’s spun around. I got about halfway to the bottom. [I thought,] ‘She’s going to attack from the back or she’s going to attack from the side.’ The funny thing is that I didn’t think about dying. An uncannily cool head gave Oppert the presence of mind to reinflate his buoyancy vest, preventing further descent. (Days later, while examining his equipment, he noted the depth gauge registered just 17 metres.) Considering that great white sharks have been clocked swimming 13 metres a second, it is no surprise that the impact of the strike instantly pulled Oppert’s face mask down around his neck. It happened in a split second. The mouth’s opened up and she’s hit me in the guts with her nose. I thought: ‘Oh, here we go.’ But he kept his regulator – the mouthpiece that delivers air – firmly between his teeth. Throughout the dog-like shaking of his body that followed, he managed to pull the mask back over his face and purge it of water, returning terrifying visibility – an intimate view into the gelatinous gill slits of the world’s biggest predatory fish. I thought to myself, ‘Whew! It’s big!’ She was clenched down on both legs and the teeth were through to the bone. The pressure was so great that I thought if it gets any tighter, they’ll snap – she’ll snap both my legs off. Oppert’s steel speargun, which that morning had shot some large fish, was at the moment of the attack positioned across his thigh. It would be fair to surmise that the very implement that probably attracted the shark in the first place – by prompting fish distress signals that can travel far across the ocean – also helped to preserve his life by preventing the shark’s teeth from gaining full purchase above his knee. When the shark released its grip, the inflated buoyancy vest sent Oppert shooting to the surface, where he raised the alarm and was pulled to safety. Like many others in Western Australia at the time, Oppert was well aware of a fatal shark attack that had occurred four years earlier on a suburban beach about 150km up the coast. A middle-aged man had been mauled in shallow water in front of dozens of onlookers. But in the years that followed the death of Ken Crew in 2000 – the first such attack in living memory – many West Australians held the view it had been a one-off event, a freakish aberration caused by a “rogue” shark that had “mistaken” the swimmer for a seal. With no subsequent fatality to spook him and no inkling that an attack would kill a surfer further down the coast just six months later, Oppert had descended without a care in the world. It was a decision that nearly cost him his life and has left him 14 years later with the still visible scars from the multiple puncture marks of a shark’s teeth on his legs. Ken Crew’s death in the state capital of Perth changed the city’s notion of itself as a beach-lover’s paradise. It marked a moment of horror that still resonates. Eighteen years on, first-person accounts of those who swam with Crew and witnessed his death continue to have an effect on me, particularly those of his friend Jerry Ventouras. I turned around and saw this enormous fin travelling on the inside of Ken. It came in behind him. It was surreal. This damn big shark – somewhere between five metres and six metres – head up out of the water, its jaws wide open surging towards Ken. Without even stopping, [it] seemed to grab him across the lower half of his body, lift him out of the water and give him a couple of shakes like a dog would shake at a bone, [and then] dropped him in the middle of the pool in a great cloud of blood. There was no sound. West Australians were slow to forget what they learned about great white sharks that day. For most of us, venturing into the open ocean is a matter of idle leisure no more. But the state’s transition from heedless to near-hysterical has been a while in the making. Between September 2011 and July 2012, five people were killed by white sharks. Their deaths brought a tangible sense of panic and turned WA into an undisputed white shark hotspot. With each new encounter, swimmers, surfers and divers have become both more jittery and polarised in their views about what should be done. The WA government has installed measures to help protect ocean users. A network of 30 satellite-linked shark monitoring receivers, which signal the presence of tagged sharks, is one line of defence, in addition to the introduction of non-lethal “smart” drum lines – a system in which sharks are baited on a hook, then tagged and released offshore. This summer, some of WA’s most popular surf breaks will be linked for the first time to this broader network of receivers, and smart drum lines will be trialled. This follows the cancellation in April of the high-profile international surf competition the Margaret River Pro, after two surfers were attacked by great white sharks just hours, and a few kilometres, apart. The situation became untenable when the Brazilian pro surfer and current world champion, Gabriel Medina, told his 6 million Instagram followers he didn’t feel safe competing in Margaret River – an Australian surfing mecca. Despite bolstered aerial surveillance, smart drum lines and the addition of further shark monitoring receivers, confidence is far from buoyant. Most surfers and divers understand that only tagged sharks moving into specific swimming and surfing areas can be pinged. In WA, that’s 450 sharks, of which just 87 are great white sharks, some of them too small to pose a threat. A separate problem is that many south-west surf breaks are located in deep water above dark substrate, making shark-spotting from the air almost impossible. But Surf Life Saving WA’s ramped-up drone monitoring program is finding plenty of sharks, and more surfers and swimmers are staying informed about problem areas via SLSWA’s Twitter feed. Survivors of shark attacks and their families often lament the fact that sharks were spotted in the area hours or days beforehand and, had they had known this, they would never have entered the water. In contrast to Allan Oppert’s lack of concern about the shark risk, as he descended for his third dive of the day in 2004, Bernie Williams certainly did worry and was relying on his dive buddy’s shark shield (a device worn on the ankle that emits an electromagnetic field to deter sharks) on the 2006 morning he met the protagonist of his worst nightmare. The then 46-year-old contracts manager was on his second dive looking for exotic shells and crayfish with his friends Brian and Jenny, in 20m of water 6km off City beach in Perth. About 15 minutes into the dive, he heard an approaching boat. Sensing it had pulled up close to his own unoccupied vessel and that keys and wallets may be the target, he ascended to briefly check on the visitors. Satisfied that they seemed happily preoccupied with a matter on the opposite side of their boat, Williams descended once more. What he didn’t know on that choppy January morning was that the visiting boaters – who had been fishing nearby when a huge shark appeared beside their vessel – had come to warn him and his dive buddies about the danger. They had been looking for dive bubbles over the side of their boat when Williams briefly surfaced behind them, then quickly descended again. Back on the ocean floor, Williams found that his friends were nowhere to be seen. So he bounced about two metres off the ocean floor to clock their position. Mid-bounce he was struck from behind with an immense force. I am not very small and for something to take me from zero to 100km an hour in a fraction of a second, bending me double, you think, ‘God, have I been hit by a submarine?’ It came up from below, behind, and rammed me, just hammered me. When I first got hit I was winded, picked up by the left arm and pushed through the water so the visibility went. I was stunned, didn’t know what was going on. I had a dead weight hanging off my arm. Your peripheral vision in a face mask is nothing [so] when it slowed down a bit I could swing my head around. Then the bells went off. A shark’s eyeball literally filled my face mask. I remember looking down its side when it was swinging me around like a dog with a goanna and I noticed my flippers were about half-way down its length. A big shark. It was just so solid. Felt like a brick wall. Apparently hampered by the position of the spear gun along Williams’ left side, the animal released its grip and the diver found himself on the ocean floor, where he quickly took refuge in the recess of a reef ledge. I tucked up against a wall. I remember kneeling on the sand and [the ledge] came up to just over waist height. I was hunched down but there wasn’t enough room for me to get everything in there. I was really puffing hard, breathing like a steam train, beginning to hyperventilate. I remember hearing my heart banging. Banging away, banging away. Thinking to myself, ‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead. This thing has got my name punched … it’s not going away.’ I was that close to going to the dark side – going into a blind panic, close to saying, ‘You can’t do anything, you might as well just roll over.’ [But] I was really annoyed with it, that it was going to stop me seeing my family, actually kill me. You think to yourself you [will die] unless you try and work out how you are going to get out of this. I managed to slow [my breathing] down, checked my gear was OK, keeping an eye on the shark. Still had plenty of air. It went away into the gloom. I had a rough idea where I’d seen it disappear. Next thing it came flying across the reef at me. I had my spear gun and I thought I could shoot it but then it’s just going to get annoyed and crazier. I saw it come in and out of the gloom. Then it charged. It ran me down like a car. It was like a dart. The distance would have been 15 to 20 metres and it covered that in a couple of seconds. I had just enough time to lift my spear gun and try to fend it off. It went straight over my head. It would have been one metre above me. The girth of the thing. Like a car going over. Massive. Absolutely massive. The speed of the shark as it bit down on Williams’ elbow and vigorously shook him created an unusual wound – saltwater forced into the bite area at high pressure had a gouging effect, but he didn’t become aware of the pain until he realised the shark’s tactics had moved him further away from the reef and out on to the sand. Returning to the cover of the reef ledge, he noticed he was bleeding badly and visibility was diminishing. Blood was making the water shimmery. At that stage I was feeling woozy, beginning to fade. The shark charged again. It [got to] within a couple of metres and all of a sudden it did a shimmy in the water, turned its tail and took off. The speed of the thing! Assuming the animal had disappeared and would soon make another run at him, Williams turned in anticipation, to see his two dive friends swimming quickly, elbow to elbow, across the reef. With Jenny signalling that she had just seen a giant shark, it was soon clear that the pair had arrived with Jenny’s shark shield just in time. Bernie believes the abrupt shift in the shark’s behaviour and swimming direction as it homed in for another strike signalled its clear discomfort once inside the orbit of the approaching shield. He believes his friends may not have returned to find him for another 10 minutes had they not seen the shark, as both had plenty of air in their tanks. By the time the three pulled themselves to the safety of the boat just a couple of minutes later, Bernie’s own tank was almost empty. Research has shown that sharks maintain a pattern of “temporary residency” at favoured sites along with periods of long-distance travel using some “common corridors”. They do not permanently stay at any one site but are more likely to be present at favoured places and in common corridors. The fact that they don’t give birth until they reach about 5m in length and 16 years of age, and have an 18-month gestation period, make the sharks “vulnerable to even low levels of exploitation (including incidental bycatch) and are slow to recover”, according to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). It is also now clear that Australia has two distinct great white shark populations; an eastern population and a western-southern population. In other words, the 2.6m great white shark that injured a surfer at Ballina, on Australia’s east coast, in November 2018 probably belonged to a different – and considerably smaller – population than the animal (or animals) that attacked surfers in April in Margaret River. Back in 2007 one of the world’s foremost white shark experts, Dr Barry Bruce, told me that anyone who thought they knew how many white sharks were cruising Australian waters was “speaking through their backside”. In February Bruce co-published an article in the journal Scientific Reports about a groundbreaking CSIRO study that used world-first genetic analysis to estimate that there are between about 760 and 2,250 adult white sharks (best estimate 1,460 sharks) in the southern-western population off South Australia and WA, and between about 470 and 1,030 adult white sharks off eastern Australia (best estimate 750 sharks). The total white shark population off eastern Australia was estimated to be between 2,909 and 12,802 sharks (best estimate 5,460 sharks). Due to a lack of genetic data for juveniles, the total number of the southern-western population could not be directly estimated using these techniques. There are double the number of adult white sharks in the WA-South Australia population and fewer surfers, swimmers and divers (4.1 million people) compared with the east coast (18.8 million). And yet, since 2000, the western population has been responsible for 21 fatalities compared with the east coast’s five. Shark nets have been used for decades on the east coast of Australia, with mixed success. But the problem of unintended bycatch, including dolphins and turtles, puts them out of favour in WA. Certainly, there is no silver bullet. A newly appointed independent scientific advisory panel on sharks will provide advice to the WA government on the effectiveness of its new shark mitigation technologies and scientific research into white shark populations, movements and behaviours. The lead author of a University of Queensland study a that shows 90% decline in Queensland shark numbers says more advanced approaches to safeguarding ocean users are needed. Dr George Roff says drum lines, nets and culls are not the answer. “Nets do not stop sharks from entering beaches, but instead are designed to entangle and trap sharks [and] there is no scientific evidence that I am aware of that shows that culling is an effective approach to reducing shark attacks,” he says. “Smart drum lines are good for understanding where sharks go and if a certain shark tends to return to the same beach, but white sharks often travel hundreds to thousands of kilometres. For smart drum lines to be successful they have to tag a large number of sharks within the population. “Modern technologies such as camera-mounted drones can monitor beaches for sharks in real time, and Sharksafe barriers trialled in South Africa show that white sharks can be successfully excluded from swimming areas.” Just 11 months on and about 700km away from where Bernie Williams was attacked, 15-year-old Zac Golebiowski was enjoying a morning’s surf at a remote beach on Australia’s south coast when his life was irrevocably changed. In a nation renowned for its picturesque coastline, Esperance beaches represent some of the most “grammable” of all. With bay after bay of blinding white sand and clear cerulean waters, this part of the world could have been enhanced by a Technicolor enthusiast’s sleight of hand. But on the morning of 2 December 2006, a bruise of clouds hung low over Esperance and a bitter south-easterly wind soured surf conditions. Golebiowski was eager for a surf, nonetheless. So he headed out by car with older brother Sam and a teenage friend to a protected cove they knew would be breaking clean and perfect. Nestled between two national parks, Wharton beach, on Duke of Orleans Bay, is a favourite with families for its long and easy sandbar breaks close to shore. It was overcast and gloomy, a ‘sharky’ morning, but sharks [were] the last thing to think about when you are 15 and going for a surf with your brother and a mate. I had never heard about sharks at Whartons – it is the last thing, the very last thing, I expected. The sandbar was so shallow that, after each ride, it was impossible to turn and duck his long malibu surfboard under oncoming sets. Instead, Golebiowski rode each wave into shore, walked the length of the beach and then paddled out for the next ride. [After] three or four waves I got one that was a bit of a dud. It didn’t quite take me all the way into the beach. I started to paddle back out to where my brother was. The shark came in from deeper water and took my right leg as I was paddling towards [him]. It came from the side and it felt like what’d you’d imagine a big king hit to be like. A very big strike. It was a full-on horizontal attack in water that was only just head height. When I take my friends to where the attack happened they are always amazed that a shark attack could have happened there. The shark bit [off] my leg and the force of the bite took me down, pulled me under. There was no fighting for air. It was too shallow for that. It took me under and let go. I came straight back up and called for help. The [2.5-metre to three-metre) shark was probably a juvenile, curious, experimenting maybe. If it had been bigger it would have bitten me in half. A big shark in full hunting mode, it would have been carnage. [My brother] said it circled a couple of times. It could have attacked two more people but didn’t. Any higher up my leg and it would have got [major] arteries. Golebiowski’s survival was enabled by the quick and decisive action of his brother and strangers on the beach. Despite his trauma, the ocean continues to draw him in. No longer able to stand on a surfboard, he now uses a boogie board. It’s generally pretty good. I just think about the chances of a shark coming back and attacking a person again – it is never going to happen. But surfing at Whartons is a whole other ballgame. In the last few years with so many attacks I have thought about [the attack] more. It is coming up to 12 years since it happened. I [don’t] feel comfortable out there at all. There were eight WA shark fatalities in almost as many years after Golebiowski’s ordeal. On 2 October 2014 Sean Pollard, then 23, narrowly escaped becoming the ninth when he suffered a devastating attack by two great white sharks at the Esperance surf break where two and a half years later, in April 2017, 17-year-old Laeticia Brouwer became the state’s most recent shark attack victim. Pollard lost his left arm and right hand, and ligaments in both legs were damaged when a shark made three ferocious strikes, as the former electrician attempted to fend it off with his surfboard. In 2015 he told 60 Minutes: I felt this massive bump and the shark came underneath me. I was trying to paddle calmly so I wasn’t splashing around like I was panicking, but once it got directly behind me it charged. Went in for the kill. Both my arms were in its mouth, its eye was right there. That vision – this cover going over its eye as it bit down on me – [is] burnt into my mind. It took me underwater, started shaking its head. I remember having to hold my breath and it shook seven or eight times. That’s when I got bumped from behind by another shark. Back on the surface and with both hands now severed, he lay on his back and kicked for his life, catching a wave back into shore, where decisive action by four bystanders almost certainly saved his life. Almost a year after Pollard survived this attack, a free diver and spear fisher Norman Galli, then 50, dropped into a glassy sea off a small island near Albany, a five-hour drive further south. The environmental manager from Perth and his regular dive partner, Anton Van Zyl, had been in the water all morning spearing about a dozen fish when Galli felt the impact of what he initially thought must have been the hull or motor of a speeding boat. I was right up along a ledge that went from two metres depth down to five metres. I actually thought that the boat had driven over me – that is how hard and sudden the impact was. And how quickly it was over. I was blindsided. He had twice before encountered great white sharks in the ocean at close range. In both instances – in South Africa in 2000 and near Moore River on WA’s mid-west coast in 2012 – the animals departed as quickly as they appeared. But this time it was a different story. Experienced spear fishers say the shark that is going to bite you is the one you don’t see, and I certainly didn’t see this shark at all. It came in at a 45-degree angle from behind and attacked very close to the surface. The impact was hard, brutal. I was shaken around like a rag doll. It was just ferocious. And, were it not for the spear gun he was carrying, his life may well have ended there and then, on 30 October 2015. Like Allan Oppert and Bernie Williams, Norman Galli believes that the steel implement saved his life. In the first moment of the attack, the gun was rammed hard up against his ribcage. He believes its barrel became stuck in the back of the shark’s jaw. The town of Albany was a whaling port until 1978, when ships carrying harpooned whales would attract hungry white sharks in their wake. There have been several shark attacks in the area in recent years, including the fatal mauling of the 17-year-old spear fisher and free diver Jay Muscat nine months before Norman Galli’s close call, and in the same stretch of water. Free divers descend for minutes at a time on a single breath of air – held for long enough to locate and harpoon a fish, and return to the surface, which is where Galli was floating at the time of the attack. It shook me violently and I felt the cut of a tooth in my stomach. There was just a lot of white water and foam. When it released me and the commotion stopped I lifted my head out of the water, expecting to see the boat on top of me, but it was in the same position 150 metres or so away. I shouted for Anton. I backed up into a two-metre-deep rock ledge with my back towards Bald Island, feeling very vulnerable without my spear gun, which I could see about 20 metres away. Anton had parked the boat a safe distance from the swell and surge, which was crashing in to the island, and he called me to the boat. The island is surrounded by tall granite cliffs so I couldn’t get out of the water. I had to swim 30 metres or so. I didn’t know what had happened until I climbed on to the boat and blood was dripping from my stomach. When I lifted my arm, there were teethmarks in the wetsuit. It is difficult to tell whether any of the attacks described here might have been prevented by the mitigation strategies now in place in WA. Even if the shark that attacked Golebiowski in Esperance had been tagged, there were no receivers at the remote beach and, even if there had been, who knows whether an alert would have reached him in time. The same could be said of Galli and Pollard. But for surfers and divers in particular, shark shields are recognised as potent protection. Among the suite of measures designed to keep ocean users safer, the WA government has introduced a rebate for approved shields, the first such initiative in the world. So far, 2,300 regular ocean users have taken up the offer, embedding them in surfboards or wearing them on ankles. In the meantime, a number of attacks on Australia’s east coast in recent months will be in the thoughts of many ocean users across the country this summer. But only time will tell whether government measures can take a bite out of WA’s formidable reputation as a global shark-attack hotspot. • Fiona Adolph is writing a book about shark attacks in Western Australian in the past 20 yearsThe vast, wild landscapes of the Scottish Highlands have long lured tourists, but now a visit is becoming something of a status symbol among China’s growing number of middle-class or wealthy families. In 2017, of the 337,000 visitors from China who travelled to the UK, 62,000 went to Scotland, an almost sixfold increase since 2009, according to VisitScotland. Edinburgh is now the second most-visited city in the UK by Chinese tourists, after London, and last summer direct flights began between the Scottish capital and Beijing. Tour operators offering Chinese travellers packages to the Highlands advertise the area simply as “Utopia”. “Taking the road north, time stops here,” says one for the Isle of Skye. Others promote the chance to visit locations seen in the Harry Potter films: “Relive the magic of your childhood.” The boom in visits is unsurprising. China is the world’s fastest-growing source market for tourism and has for years been the top spender, according to the UN World Tourism Organization. While most Chinese people travel within Asia, more are going further afield. And there is still ample room for growth – only about 9% of Chinese citizens hold passports. So, what impact is it having in Scotland? Local businesses and tour operators are focusing their efforts on attracting more Chinese travellers (although locals have expressed fears that the local infrastructure is struggling to cope as it is). According to its website, VisitScotland is creating a toolkit for businesses on how to welcome Chinese travellers. The Highland and Islands Enterprise development agency is also holding workshops to teach local businesses how to cater to Chinese tourists – with advice including to provide chopsticks and picture menus. But it seems the Scots are doing well enough already. On the Chinese travel website Mafengwo, one traveller writing under the username Douniu described a recent visit to Glencoe. “When Glencoe appeared in front of us, all we could see were thick clouds enveloping the mountain and mist cascading down the hillside. In the sunlight, it looked like white silk. The black rocks showed the Highlands’ desolation. The moss, thistles, wind and intermittent drizzle made me feel like I was on another planet.”Genes associated with antibiotic-resistant superbugs have been discovered in the high Arctic, one of the most remote places on earth, showing the rapid spread and global nature of the resistance problem. The genes were first identified in a hospital patient in India in 2007-8, then in surface waters in Delhi in 2010, probably carried there by sewage, and are now confirmed in soil samples from Svalbard in the Arctic circle, in a paper in the journal Environment International. They may have been carried by migrating birds or human visitors, but human impact on the area is minimal. While the genes, called blaNDM-1, have been identified in Svalbard soil, the presence of superbugs has not. The genes can confer on bacteria resistance to carbapenems, which are antibiotics of last resort for the treatment of human diseases. Antibiotic resistance threatens a global “apocalypse”, England’s chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has warned, and last week the health secretary, Matt Hancock, called it a bigger threat than climate change or warfare. Common operations could become life-threatening and rapidly spreading and evolving diseases could overcome our last medical defences, reversing nearly a century of remarkable progress in human health. For the study, DNA was extracted from 40 samples of soil at eight locations in Svalbard, and among these a total of 131 antibiotic resistant genes were found. The blaNDM-1 gene was found in more than 60% of the soil cores studied. This discovery in such a remote region demonstrates the role that poor sanitation can play in generating antibiotic resistance, according to David Graham, a professor of ecosystems engineering at Newcastle University, who led the research team. While efforts to curb the growth of resistance have concentrated on overuse of antibiotics, this research shows there are other pathways by which resistance can be spread, he said. “What humans have done through excess use of antibiotics is accelerate the rate of evolution, creating resistant strains that never existed before,” he said. Crucially, poor sanitation provides a breeding ground for resistant bacteria that can then spread rapidly. The research showed the need for a worldwide response to the resistance crisis, said Graham, in place of the piecemeal efforts in some regions to curb overuse of the drugs in human health. “Local strategies can only do so much – we must think more globally,” he said. “The problem will be political.” Wealthy countries and wealthy people in developing countries who feel insulated from the filthy conditions of the world’s poor may find themselves falling victim to the same superbugs as resistant bacteria evolve rapidly in poor sanitation and can spread far afield. Helen Hamilton, a senior policy analyst at WaterAid, said: “We cannot tackle the rise of antimicrobial resistance without focusing on water, sanitation, hygiene and infection prevention control. In today’s globalised world, a drug-resistant infection in one part of the world will not be constrained by national borders.” She said the key was to bring better sanitation to developing countries, particularly for medical facilities, of which four in 10 in the developing world lack clean water on-site. This contributes directly to the growth of resistant infections. “We must tackle this silent crisis and make sure every health care facility has clean, safe water, decent toilets and soap and water for handwashing,” she said. “Prevention is the first step to slowing antimicrobial resistance and improving global health security.” Superbugs kill about 2,000 people in the UK each year, and a further 53,000 people are seriously affected. Last week, the government announced new measures to cut the use of antibiotics by 15% in the next five years, through education, preventive measures, more testing, and changing prescribing practices. There will also be a new NHS initiative to encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest in developing new antibiotics, by changing the way they are paid for some medicines. Drug companies largely left the field of antibiotics research over the last 40 years to pursue more profitable lines of business, meaning the “pipeline” of new medicines has been largely empty. Antibiotic resistance is forecast to kill 10m people a year by 2050 unless urgent action is taken globally.Ireland’s prime minister has denied having secret plans to introduce checks at the border with Northern Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Leo Varadkar was accused by the leader of Ireland’s opposition of keeping plans from voters after his deputy was overheard telling his transport minister he should avoid talking about checks on the border. “It seems there is a private understanding and knowledge of a border in the aftermath of a no-deal Brexit but at all costs that private understanding must not be shared with the public,” said the Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin, during leaders’ questions in the Dáil. “It’s like the scene in Fawlty Towers: ‘Whatever you do don’t mention the war,’” added Martin, whose party is supporting Varadkar’s Fine Gael in a confidence and supply deal similar to Theresa May’s deal with the DUP. The row over border checks erupted after the transport minister, Shane Ross, told reporters at a press conference after May’s Commons defeat on Tuesday he “would anticipate that there would be checks” on lorries coming from Scotland to the Republic of Ireland via Northern Ireland. In an unguarded comment caught on microphone after the press conference, he asked Simon Coveney, the deputy prime minister, whether he should have made the remark. Coveney replied: “Yes, but we can’t get into where they’ll be at this stage. They could be in the sea, they could be … But once you start talking about checks anywhere near the border, people will start delving into that and all of a sudden we’ll be the government that reintroduced a physical border on the island of Ireland.” Ross responded: “Yeah, but I didn’t know what to say.” Coming under pressure during leaders’ questions, Varadkar said: “We are not planning for checks on the land border in Northern Ireland.” All Coveney’s remarks proved, he said, is “that if you use the wrong words, or you say things in the wrong way, people will misinterpret that as meaning a secret plan and there is no such secret plan”. “We had a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. I remember it well during the Troubles … and before the single market in 1993,” he said. “I remember going there as a teenager. I remember the customs checks, I remember the 24-hour rule, I remember seeing soldiers, and I never want to see any of that ever again.” Pressed on how the government could possibly avoid mandatory checks on the border to protect the single market, Varadkar said that was for Brexiters who voted against May’s deal to sort out. Hitting out at Conservative MPs such as Owen Paterson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson who say the border issue is a fiction, he said: “It’s not good enough for those who rejected that to say there isn’t going to be a hard border because everyone says [so]. “The only way we can avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is having an agreement on customs, common customs union and regulatory alignment and that’s what we negotiated in the withdrawal agreement and the backstop.” “We have come up with the solution, we have it in the agreement,” he said, adding that if Westminster opted for no deal it would still have to honour the border promises. “It is now for those who rejected that to honour their commitment to us that there will be no hard border in island of Ireland – the ball is very much in their court,” Varadkar continued. “I don’t think they will be able to come up with a solution very different [to the withdrawal agreement].” His remarks come after the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, also claimed the border fears were exaggerated and that Ireland was refusing to come up with a solution. “For those of us who lived on the border and who were attacked by the IRA, we know that the IRA escaped across that border, so it was not a hard border, nobody wants to go back to that,” she told U105.8 FM radio.“It takes the will to look for solutions and the regrettable thing is the Republic of Ireland has not been in the solution-finding mode.”My daughter and her family arrived at Heathrow to catch a Virgin flight to South Africa in October. Tickets were booked via Lastminute.com. At the check-in desk they were asked for the children’s birth certificates, which they did not have. They were therefore refused boarding. Virgin staff said my daughter should have known because the information was on its website. The family had no alternative but to go home to fetch the birth certificates and, as Virgin was unable or unwilling to rebook their flight, had to book with another airline for the next day, which cost £3,000. They later discovered that as they were marked as a “no-show” for their outward bound flight, their return tickets had been voided and they would have to rebook that, too, at a cost of more than £2,000. Staff admitted it was common for families to be denied boarding for this reason, in which case – while ignorance is not an excuse – should they not provide better information? MM Always consult the Foreign Office website for entry requirements when you fly to any country outside the EU (and, if Brexit happens, any destination outside the UK). It was in June 2015 that South Africa introduced the most stringent immigration rules in the world, requiring all under-18s to present an unabridged birth certificate at the departure gate. This was intended to reduce child trafficking. But it was taking such a toll on tourism that the rules were relaxed. However, passengers are still urged to carry the documents as immigration officers may request them and, since airlines face fines if they carry inadequately documented passengers, some gate staff may still insist on them. Virgin told the Observer that there was a link to South African entry requirements on the e-tickets it sends to customers, but as you booked through Lastminute.com the format was different and the link not included. Lastminute says its website advises customers to check with an embassy or the Foreign Office before completing a booking. “Because we sell thousands of destinations we can’t provide country-specific information for each,” it says. If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number. Submission is subject to our terms and conditionsFacebook and Twitter both announced on Thursday they had taken down hundreds of accounts believed to have been part of coordinated influence operations from Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Facebook removed 783 pages, groups and accounts that it said posed as local actors in countries across Europe, the Middle East and south Asia and shared content that was largely repurposed from Iranian state media. The accounts, some of which had been active since 2010, had garnered about 2 million followers on Facebook and more than 250,000 followers on Instagram. While Facebook demurred from ascribing a motive to the operation, researchers with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab who analyzed the accounts said that it appeared designed to amplify views “in line with Iranian government’s international stances”. “The pages posted content with strong bias for the government in Tehran and against the ‘West’ and regional neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel,” the researchers wrote in a blog post. Several of the accounts focused on sharing pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli content, in French, English, Spanish and Hebrew. Many advanced pro-Iran, anti-Saudi Arabia messages to a largely Middle Eastern, Arabic-speaking audience. One targeted an English-language audience and posted 9/11 conspiracy theories. More than 30% of the removed accounts had been active for at least five years, the researchers said. The accounts purchased less than $30,000 in advertising on Facebook and Instagram, the company said. They also promoted eight “events” since May 2014, but Facebook said it could not confirm whether the events had actually taken place. Separately, Twitter announced that it had deleted thousands of “malicious” accounts from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. The accounts had “limited operations” targeting the US midterm elections in November, the company said, and the majority were suspended prior to election day. Twitter identified two operations in Venezuela. The first involved 764 accounts and distributed “spammy content focused on divisive political themes”. The platform was not able to “definitively” attribute the activity to a government-backed influence campaign, but said it removed the accounts anyway. The second Venezuelan campaign involved 1,196 accounts, which Twitter said appeared to be part of a state-backed influence campaign targeting Venezuelans. The takedowns were “an encouraging example of the type of collaboration we’re trying to build across industry”, said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, on a conference call with reporters. Gleicher said that Facebook had acted in part on information shared with the company by Twitter. Facebook also had its own ongoing investigation into inauthentic behavior from Iran, having previously announced account takedowns in August and October of 2018. Gleicher said that Twitter had shared information about the Venezuelan influence operations, and that Facebook was now “investigating those leads”.A mother died when she fell down the stairs of a New York City subway station while carrying her one-year-old baby in a stroller. Malaysia Goodson, 22, was found unresponsive on the platform at the 7th Ave station in Manhattan around 8pm on Monday, New York police said. The resident of Stamford, Connecticut, was taken to Mt Sinai West hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Her daughter was not seriously hurt. She was found conscious and treated at the station, according to the NYPD. The tragedy was a nightmare scenario for many parents in New York, who are forced to carry strollers up and down subway stairs or rely on strangers for help. Only about a quarter of the city’s 472 stations have elevators, making the rest inaccessible to people in wheelchairs and difficult to navigate for parents and older people. In a statement, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman, Shams Tarek, said: “This is an absolutely heartbreaking incident. While the ultimate cause of the event is being investigated by the MTA, medical examiner and the NYPD, we know how important it is to improve accessibility in our system.”The city comptroller, Scott Stringer, said: “As a parent one of my biggest fears was navigating my kids’ double stroller through our broken subway system. And it isn’t uncommon because only 24% of stations have elevators. It’s completely unacceptable. My heart goes out to [Goodson’s] family.” An audit by Stringer’s office found that 80% of subway elevators and escalators did not get proper maintenance. Disability advocates have sued the Metropolitan Transit Authority, charging that they have violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to install elevators and failed to maintain the ones that exist, leading to about 25 elevator outages a day. Goodson had come into the city to go shopping, her brother Dieshe Goodson told News 12 Connecticut. “She had a lot of bags and the baby in the stroller,” he said. “When I was on my way to the hospital last night, I was praying that it wasn’t her the whole time. Please don’t be my sister.” The New York medical examiner was investigating to determine the cause of death, which happened at the station on the B, D and E lines. “This is a heartbreaking tragedy that never should have happened,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter. “The subway system is not accessible for everyone and that’s an environment the MTA should not allow.” The president of New York City Transit, Andy Byford, a Briton, has pledged to improve accessibility as part of an ambitious plan to overhaul the ageing and delay-plagued subway system, aiming to create at least 50 accessible stations over five years, so that no rider is more than two stops away from one. But the system is in dire financial straits and the Fast Forward plan has not been funded. The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, has drawn criticism for a plan to renovate three dozen stations without adding elevators.The fada – a slanting line over a vowel – is a way of indicating a particular pronunciation or meaning in Irish. Seán is the Irish version of John whereas sean means old. On Monday the fada had a new meaning: affronted. That, at least, is how Irish language activists, celebrities and a government minister greeted news that the National Transport Authority (NTA) was refusing to include the acute accent on names of commuters using Leap cards, a type of public transport pass. The state agency blamed a “technical limitation” for its rendering of Bríd as Brid, Sinéad as Sinead, Séamus as Seamus and a host of other errors. “There is no real excuse for it,” Liam Ó Maonlaí, the frontman of the rock group Hothouse Flowers, told Irish media. “Pretty much all printing technology has the capacity to print fadas. A lot of people in Ireland view this language as something to be ashamed of. It is a pity.” Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh, a broadcaster, said the NTA’s excuse was “rubbish” and said private companies and state agencies had an obligation to get the language right. “I have three computers and they all take the fada. My name is my name. There is no excuse – whether public or private – if they want your business or you’re paying your taxes, that is your name. If you respect that person, then you have to respect their name.” Seán Kyne, the minister of state for the Irish language, said all state bodies were obliged to provide services in Irish and English. “The assertion that the inclusion of fadas on Irish names is not possible because of technical difficulties does not, in my view, make sense.” The NTA’s policy emerged after the transport minister, Shane Ross, complained that the son of a constituent wanted his Leap card to have the proper spelling of his name. The agency responded that it hoped to resolve the technical issue “at a suitable opportunity in the future”. The Irish language withered and almost vanished under British rule before making a comeback in recent decades. It remains unpopular with many schoolchildren who are obliged to study it. Some parents reportedly pressure psychologists to help students obtain exemptions by citing purported stress or anxiety caused by studying the language.There is an Instagram account called @IHaveThisThingWithFloors. I also have a thing with floors, and so, apparently, do more than 830,000 other people. This account is the antidote to the snaps that smug holidayers take of their feet on beaches, sand spilling over their toes. Smug feet all look the same and sand is beige. But I have this thing with floors: specifically, with tiles and flagstones. Some of my recent favourites that fellow floor enthusiasts have posted on the app include a fuchsia baroque floor; a multicoloured ikat design; a tiled seascape decorating an indoor pool. In my flat, which is on the ground floor of a converted Victorian terrace, the traditional brown, blue, white mosaic diamond tiles of that period seep under the door from the main hallway. Every time I come home, I admire them. Well, I feed my cat, make a cup of tea and then I admire them. Public loos – the few remaining – might not come top of most people’s list of admiration, but oh my god: the tiles! Floors and walls. The riches! Not far from where I live, there are well-maintained public toilets where the monochrome check floor is offset by deep green, sheening walls. There is a grade II-listed pub down the road. Formerly a hotel that opened in 1899 and cost a then-extravagant £30,000, it is in the French renaissance style and has a treat of a bathroom: white tiled floors with splashes of red, yellow, and blue – like Mondrian, but if Mondrian had gone a bit Jackson Pollock. Mondrian if Mondrian had been drinking in the pub. There are the tiles that look like Magic Eye paintings or the bright, geometric tiling in bars with overpriced cocktails and dim light. The fan designs of hotel lobbies and old theatres. The burgundy tiles of the Marrakech souks. The ornate teal and gold tiling in Turkish bathhouses. The cold, crumbling floors of Russian dachas that babushkas pad across to make evening chai. The country kitchens with an Aga and a perfect terracotta floor. The basic designs of monasteries. Or the ostentatious, 1920s art deco designs underfoot in California, bursting with extravagant shapes and the promise of parties. Salvage yards and eBay listings feed my passion. Tiled floors have been a thing for thousands of years, the ceramic sort at least. The Egyptians enjoyed a glass tile. But it’s the Industrial Revolution I have to thank for the boom in the type I have in my flat, when the potters of Victorian England were widespread and inexpensive. (Wealthier households went for the hand-painted Arts & Crafts option: think William Morris.) The mark of respect for a truly great tile is to walk all over it. Yes, I most definitely have a thing with floors.There is no stopping Leinster, that defeat at Toulouse proving a blip, and they will surely be too powerful for Wasps when the champions travel to Coventry next Sunday. Johnny Sexton watched his replacement Ross Byrne give a dominant display in the 29-13 win over Toulouse, once the bluebloods of Europe who are rediscovering some of their old princely form. If ever there was an illustration of English clubs’ fall from grace in Europe it was at the Recreation Ground where Bath and Wasps, with three Heineken Cup wins between them, fought out a meaningless game with Bath squeaking home 18-16 thanks to a late kick from Rhys Priestland. For Wasps there is some consolation in the return of Joe Launchbury who followed his return against Northampton with another captain’s performance. • Match report: Bath 18-16 Wasps Exeter Chiefs can still make progress after their convincing win over a demoralised Castres but Munster have only lost four times at Thomond Park in their European history and are dominating Pool Two. Saturday evening’s trip to Limerick will be mightily difficult for Rob Baxter’s men. It seems a long time ago now that Gloucester were celebrating that shock win at Exeter in the autumn. Danny Cipriani’s comeback was overshadowed by a brilliant performance by his opposite number Joey Carbery at Kingsholm on Friday evening. Carbery scored 26 points in a 41-15 win for Munster and controlled the game brilliantly. Johnny Sexton’s injured calf made may yet give Carbery the chance to shine against England. The game will not have made comfortable viewing for Exeter. • Match report: Exeter 34-12 Castres Saracens are the only side with a 100 % record in the competition and their shoulders must be tiring of carrying the English standard. Sunday’s bonus-point win in Lyon was a drab affair but with Maro Itoje restored to the side and Nick Tompkins, their young centre filling in superbly for the injured Brad Barritt, there was no way Lyon, with their aged pack, were going to put them off their stride. Itoje ended up in the sin-bin but Saracens lead the pool and can go through as the leading qualifier if they defeat Glasgow on Saturday. Glasgow, who started the weekend four points behind Saracens, made the most of Stuart Hogg’s return and their pack gave Cardiff Blues a tough afternoon. Rob Harley was impressive on his 200th appearance in the Warriors back row but it is difficult to see Glasgow putting a spoke in Saracens’ wheel next weekend. • Match report: Lyon 10-28 Saracens Team of the weekend15 Jack Nowell Exeter14 Darcy Graham Edinburgh13 Garry Ringrose Leinster12 James Johnstone Edinburgh11 Jacob Stockdale Ulster 10 Joey Carbery Munster9 Conor Murray Munster 1 Cian Healy Leinster2 Jamie George Saracens3 Jannie du Plessis Montpellier4 Leone Nakarawa Racing 92 5 Tadgh Beirne Munster 6 Rhys Ruddock Leinster7 Schalk Burger Saracens8 Ken Owens Scarlets Quote of the weekend"I think the Premiership is so tribal. We smash the hell out of each other and then we are almost too tired to get out there and have a crack when it comes to the Champions Cup. You can see where the teams are in the table that teams are under a lot of pressure" – Todd Blackadder, Bath’s director of rugby, tries to explain English clubs’ struggles in Europe Owens shines from front to backWarren Gatland watched Scarlets beat Leicester on Saturday evening and he would have been impressed by the versatility of the Scarlets hooker Ken Owens who played at No 8 again because of his side’s back-row crisis and ended up with the man-of-the-match award. Wayne Pivac, his coach, said: “He’s a great guy who always puts the team first.” Ulster’s 1999 Heineken Cup winners were presented to the crowd before Saturday’s pulsating 26-22 victory over Racing 92, the tournament’s highest scorers in this season’s competition. Can Ulster repeat their feat of 20 years ago? They are three points adrift of Racing at the top but look much too strong for Leicester, who crumbled at Parc y Scarlets on Saturday evening, when they meet the Tigers next weekend. Ulster, though, may struggle to make it to the last eight as Racing will be too strong for the Scarlets in Paris. The Parisians are odds-on to secure a bonus-point win and the likes of Finn Russell and Simon Zebo can profit from the work of Racing’s powerful pack. Leicester, meanwhile, paid the price of fielding a weakened side in west Wales and their only goal is to not finish bottom of this pool. How the mighty have fallen. Edinburgh are on course for their first quarter-final place for six years. If there were any doubts about their resurgence under coach Richard Cockerill they were dispelled at Stade Félix Mayol with a historic 28-17 win over Toulon, the first Scottish side to triumph there. A repeat display in Friday night’s meeting with Montpellier in the Scottish capital can give Edinburgh the bonus of a home draw in the last eight. Newcastle’s Champions Cup has been a mixed bag. They were also winners in Toulon, a result that really raise eyebrows, and they overcame Montpellier with a dramatic win with the last move of the game at Kingston Park but the battle against relegation and a raft of injuries did for them in Montpellier, hammered 45-8 to wipe out any mathematical hopes of making it to the last eight. • Match report: Toulon 28-17 EdinburghSerbia gave Vladimir Putin a hero’s welcome on Thursday as the Russian president’s plane arrived in Belgrade escorted by an honour guard of MiG-29 fighter jets that he recently donated to the country. “I’m delighted to be able to visit friendly, brotherly Serbia,” Putin told the Serbian leader, Aleksandar Vučić, at the airport. Ceremonial cannons fired and church bells rang out to herald Putin’s arrival, and billboards posted around the city bore Serbian and Russian flags. For Putin, who presented Vučić with a high state award during the visit, it was a chance to shore up one of the few strong bilateral relationships Russia has in Europe and reinforce Moscow’s claims to maintaining influence in the Balkans. “Although Serbia is not a very large country geographically, you can rely on us,” Vučić told Putin before the pair went into talks. In a ceremony, Putin presented Vučić with the Order of Alexander Nevsky, which in the past has been awarded to the autocratic leaders of Kremlin-friendly, post-Soviet countries. The bonhomie continued as Vučić gifted Putin a Sarplaninac puppy. Putin is popular in Serbia, where Russian opposition to the Nato bombing of the country in 1999 and the subsequent independence of Kosovo is still recalled fondly. Vučić, a former nationalist firebrand who now styles himself as a westerniser, has played a delicate balancing act in recent years, courting Europe while attempting to maintain good relations with Moscow. In interviews with Serbian media on the eve of his visit, Putin lashed out at the west for trying to push Russian influence out of the Balkans. “The policy of the United States and some other western nations aimed at asserting their dominant role remains a serious destabilising factor here,” he said. Western nations have expressed unease at what they believe to be Russian meddling in the region, including an apparent coup attempt in Montenegro, attempts at destabilisation in Bosnia and a humanitarian centre in southern Serbia that some western intelligence agencies believe has been a front for spying. Putin claimed the EU was forcing Serbia to make an “artificial choice” between Moscow and the west. He complained about the expansion of Nato into the Balkans, with Montenegro joining the military alliance in 2017 after a knife-edge referendum, and Macedonia now closer to joining after recently ratifying an agreement to change its name to North Macedonia and end a long-running dispute with Greece. Vučić, in an interview with the Guardian in Belgrade last year, said Serbia’s priority was further integration with the EU but that he wanted to maintain warm relations with Putin. “We are militarily neutral, we have no aspirations to join either Nato or the Russian alliance,” he said. “We have a good relationship with Russia and we have no problems with Russia but we are on our EU path.” The big issue for Vučić and Putin to discuss on Thursday was an EU-brokered settlement between Serbia and Kosovo, possibly involving an exchange of territories, that Vučić has been attempting to sign with his Kosovan counterpart, Hashim Thaçi. Both leaders are keen to sign a deal despite widespread opposition among their populations and unease among much of the international community about redrawing borders. The deal is likely to involve Serbia acknowledging Kosovo’s independence without formally recognising it, and would pave the way for Kosovo to join the UN and for both countries to join the EU. However, Russian support is crucial given its veto on the UN security council, and Putin may not support a deal that moves Serbia further along the path towards EU integration. Putin’s visit comes amid a series of large-scale protests against Vučić in Belgrade. There were suggestions that the Serbian government was organising pro-Putin rallies in Belgrade on Thursday in an attempt to show it could also mobilise supporters, with the newspaper Jużne Vesti claiming that government workers in the southern city of Niš were being bussed into the capital to attend rallies.Everton are attempting to sign Michy Batshuayi on a permanent deal from Chelsea, with the Belgium striker expected to cost around £35m. Batshuayi spent the first half of this season on loan at Valencia but has not made an appearance since the beginning of the month as the Spanish side attempt to cut short his spell. Despite interest from West Ham in taking him on loan, Chelsea have been searching for a permanent option for the 25-year-old and have held talks with Everton over a potential move, with the Londoners demanding more than the £33m they paid to sign him from Marseille in 2016. Batshuayi still has more than two years remaining on his contract at Stamford Bridge but having already signed Kurt Zouma on loan from Chelsea, Marco Silva’s side are only able to pursue a permanent deal but are confident an agreement can be reached before Thursday’s deadline. Any deal may still depend on whether they can agree a fee with Paris Saint-Germain for midfielder Idrissa Gueye, however. The French champions had a £21.5m bid rejected last week. Meanwhile, Leicester are primed to announce the loan signing of the Belgium midfielder, Youri Tielemans, from Monaco, with Adrien Silva, the Portugal midfielder, going in the opposite direction, also on loan until the end of the season. Neither deal has the option for a permanent transfer.When she announced last month that tens of thousands of asylum seekers would be returned to Mexico while their cases are considered, the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, described the move as a “historic” overhaul of US immigration policy. But more than two weeks later, the new strategy has yet to begin and it remains unclear how the plan would work – or even if Mexico is willing to enforce it. The measure would be the Trump administration’s most significant move so far to dissuade people from seeking asylum. It would relieve pressure on US immigration authorities – and transfer it to Mexico. But Mexican officials who would in theory implement the policy say they have been kept in the dark over the change – and some have explicitly opposed it. “I had heard rumors, but I was not consulted,” said Tonatiuh Guillén, head of Mexico’s national immigration authority, told the Guardian. “The US can’t just dump people into Mexico – they have to knock. We’ve asked for more answers, but the US government is shut down, so I guess they’ll answer when they figure that out. It’s all up in the air,” he said. The number of people – mostly Central Americans – who would be parked in Mexico as a result of the move could be enormous. In 2018, 93,000 people were given credible fear interviews – the first step in the asylum process. While overall immigration levels are at historic lows, the number of families and children crossing is at an all-time high. And a backlog of nearly 1m cases in the US means asylum seekers could remain in Mexico for years. The US can’t just dump people into Mexico – they have to knock. We’ve asked for more answers, but the US government is shut down “It’s not some small detail. The numbers just aren’t manageable. It will have far-reaching effects on services, employment, everything – the social and political fabric of Tijuana and other border cities,” said Guillén Confusion over the current state of the plan reigns on both sides of the border: when Nielsen announced the move on 20 December, Mexico’s foreign ministry reluctantly accepted, although within days the foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said he would need more information from US authorities. Guillén said Mexico had not formally accepted the plan. Meanwhile, US Congress members wrote to the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, on 2 January requesting the text and details of any agreement. Hopes for clarity have been further complicated by the shutdown of the US federal government triggered by a funding row over Donald Trump’s demands for a $5bn wall on the southern border. US border officials are already limiting the number of people who can apply for asylum at a port of entry, creating delays of several months for migrants hoping to get into the US – and overwhelming public services in Mexican border cities. Activists in Mexico say the “catch and return” policy would push conditions past breaking point. “Aside from this taking away people’s right to apply for asylum, it would cause Mexico’s northern border cities to nearly collapse,” said Esmeralda Siu Márquez, the executive coordinator of Coalición Pro Defensa Del Migrante, a network of local migrant support organizations. “This would change Tijuana from being a transit point. Shelters, which are already at capacity, are temporary – we’d need housing, integration programs, school programs, etc. We don’t have the budget.” Officials in Tijuana have already stretched thin resources, normally focused on Mexican deportees, to deal with the more than 5,000 members of the Central American migrant caravans which started arriving in November. Cesar Palencia, who handles migrant affairs in Tijuana, says he only heard of the plan on the news. “The city isn’t prepared for this. The [Mexican] federal government does not really understand what this would mean – they have no strategy, no budget for it,” he said. Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, cut the country’s migration and refugee budget after he took office 1 December 2018, and has not indicated whether or not that would change in light of the new plan. His administration has also pledged visas and work in Mexico for Central American migrants. But for many, like Samuel Tabora, a 24-year-old construction worker, the kind of jobs available in Mexico – particularly low-skill factory positions in Tijuana – do not pay enough for them to send much back home to Honduras, where over two-thirds of the country lives in poverty. Faced with the prospect of staying years in Mexico, he said he would consider jumping the border fence with his partner and four-year-old daughter. “If they deport me, we’ll just turn around and come back. I want to work and make money and to have something to send home to my family,” he said. Since Nielsen’s announcement, US agents have twice fired teargas into Mexico to prevent some people, including families with young children, from attempting to breach the border fence. Several of the asylum seekers who had heard of the potential policy said they would simply wait it out in Mexico. “Going back, I may as well just tie a noose for myself and hang it from a tree,” said Francisco M, who left Guatemala with his wife and three children due to extortion threats from gangs. “We are here alone and it hurt to leave our roots, but I’d have to have a death wish to go back there. No, we will stay as long as it takes.” Meanwhile, human rights groups warn that Mexico, one of the most violent countries in the world, is not safe for asylum seeker. Last month two Honduran teenagers who had traveled with the caravan were murdered in Tijuana. Advocates warn the plan would add formidable new challenges to the already-tortuous asylum process. “The policy essentially dispossesses people of their right to trial. It takes me months to prepare one asylum case. I’ll maybe meet with a person six times. People cannot build cases in the US if they can’t meet with their lawyers. How will they get to their hearings?” said Erika Pinheiro of Al Otro Lado, a legal aid organization in Tijuana. It would also encourage migrants seeking asylum to take more treacherous routes, she said. “By taking away legal avenues to asylum, you’re basically telling people to jump over the fence.”Jim Bachor makes street art – quite literally. For the last few years the 52-year-old has been making art out of the blight on our roads. Inspired to make mosiacs after a trip to Italy in the late 90s, Bachor has become “the pothole guy”, decorating holes in streets with colourful designs ranging from chickens to Aretha Franklin’s face. He made his first pothole mosaic in 2013, just outside his home in Chicago. “The potholes in our street were particularly bad,” he says. “I put two and two together. I had this unsolvable problem outside of our house, and 100 yards away in my studio I have this passion for an art form that is so durable.” Wearing a high-vis jacket and armed with traffic cones, Bachor has so far created 79 installations around the world including in New York and Helsinki. He creates the mosaics in his studio, fixing the artwork on a cheesecloth. Bachor then prepares the concrete on site and carefully sets the mosaic in the road. It takes about two hours, and he’s back the next day when the concrete is set to scrub off the excess. His requirements are specific – he even sent a pothole scout out in New York to find the right ones. The pothole can’t be in the centre of the street, it needs to be a road in a relatively good condition, and it must be a rough size of 18 to 24 inches, and a couple of inches deep. He doesn’t know the legalities of filling in potholes without permission, and his New York installations were removed by the city’s transport department.His work seems to cause less trouble in his hometown. “There was one time on south side of Chicago. This cop gets out and walks up to me and says, ‘Are you that pothole guy?’ “‘Yeah,’ I said. “He goes, ‘That is so fucking cool.’” Find more of Jim Bachor’s art on his website. Guardian Cities brings together the best in urban photography on Instagram at@guardiancities. Share your shots with us on Instagram with the hashtag #guardiancitiesSir David Attenborough has warned that humankind has the power to exterminate whole ecosystems “without even noticing”, and urged world leaders to treat the natural world with respect, during an interview with Prince William in Davos. Prince William also took world leaders to task at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, asking Attenborough why those in key positions have “taken so long” to address climate change. Attenborough said the connection between the natural world and urban societies had been “remote and widening” since the industrial revolution, meaning humans do not realise the effect their actions have on the global ecosystem. The 92-year-old broadcaster added that it was “difficult to overstate” the urgency of the environmental crisis. “We’re now so numerous, so powerful, so all-pervasive, the mechanisms we have for destruction are so wholesale and so frightening, that we can actually exterminate whole ecosystems without even noticing it. We have to now be really aware of the dangers of what we’re doing, and we already know that of course the plastic problem in the seas is wreaking appalling damage upon marine life, the extent of which we don’t yet fully know.” He stressed that the natural world “is not just a matter of beauty, interest and wonder” but a coherent ecosystem on which we depend for “every breath we take, every mouthful of food we take.” A healthy planet, Attenborough added, is an essential part of human life. “If we don’t recognise the kind of connections I’ve been describing, then the whole planet comes in hazard, and we are destroying the natural world and with it ourselves.” William pressed Attenborough for a key message for the politicians and business leaders gathered in Davos this week. “Care for the natural world. Not only care for the natural world but treat it with a degree of respect and reverence,” Attenborough said, adding that there was a worrying tendency to waste resources. “The thing that I really care for in our ordinary daily lives is not to waste the riches of the natural world on which we depend. And it’s not just energy ,which of course is very important, but it’s also dealing with the natural world with a degree of respect. Not to throw away food, not to throw away power – just care for the natural world of which you’re an essential part.” The Duke of Cambridge started and ended the session by congratulating Attenborough for winning the Crystal award, which recognises individuals who have helped make the world a better place, at the World Economic Forum on Monday night. William added it was a “personal treat” to be asking Attenborough questions, and quipped that it was a good change of pace from being the subject of interviews himself. Asking why global leaders have taken so long to react to climate change, William said: ““Why do you think world leaders and those in key positions of leadership; why do think they’ve taken so long … there have been quite a few faltering steps to act on environmental challenges?” Comparisons were also drawn between the broadcaster’s burgeoning BBC career in the 1950s, compared with his latest project that sees him team up with Netflix and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) for an upcoming series called “Our Planet” to be released on the online TV streaming site. Attenborough said his early work in the mid-1950s involved himself, one camera and one cameraman, and it was relatively “easy” to impress Britons simply by televising an armadillo. Now the systems are “unbelievable”, taking viewers to the sky and depths of the ocean in ways that 50 years ago, “people couldn’t imagine”. Prince William noted Attenborough’s late shift to environmental activism, noting that for many years the presenter “held back from speaking publicly about environmental issues”. Attenborough said that at the start of his career, it was nearly inconceivable that the environment would be in such a state of crisis and even pockets of animal extinction seemed like the exception rather than the norm. “To be truthful I don’t think there was anyone in the mid-50s who thought there was a danger that we would annihilate parts of the natural world. There were animals that were in danger, that’s true and there were animals that we could see if we didn’t do something they were going to become extinct. “And the notion that human beings might exterminate a whole species … you just hadn’t thought about it,” he said. “Now of course we’re only too well aware that the whole of the natural world is at our disposal, as it were. We can do things accidentally that exterminate a whole area of the natural world and species that live within it.” Something had kicked off the night before and the guys on the corner were keen to offer advice. “You don’t want to be hanging around here too long,” one said, refusing to elaborate. They were standing near Crispe house, a tower block on east London’s Gascoigne estate, undisputed territory of Hellbanianz. The gang, an Albanian street crew of drug dealers, is known locally for its violence and more widely for a social media output featuring Ferraris, wads of £50 notes and gold Rolex watches to help enhance its reputation and recruit “youngers”. The Gascoigne estate, built in the 1960s and occupying land that slopes south of Barking town centre to the Thames, is its historical home turf. It was getting dark, another two men appeared and, when asked if they were Hellbanianz, one said: “You should go.” The Observer was escorted off the estate and told not to return. Hellbanianz belong to the “retail game” of the cocaine trade. They are the street dealers and enforcers of the Mafia Shqiptare, the Albanian organised criminal syndicates who, the National Crime Agency believe, are consolidating power within the UK criminal underworld and on their way to a near total takeover of the UK’s £5bn cocaine market. The gang’s glossily produced trap music videos remind viewers “HB are ready for violence” and that they possess the requisite manpower and firearms. Yet, police sources say, Hellbanianz occupy the lowest rung of the Albanian mafia. To better understand the Albanians’ remarkable rise in the UK one might climb to the 12th floor of the Gascoigne estate’s high-rise blocks. From there, the skyline of London, where much of their cocaine will be snorted, stretches west. In the opposite direction, several miles along the Thames, lie the mammoth container ports where their cocaine is offloaded in multi-kilo shipments. But it is across the Atlantic, to the jungles of Latin America, where the story of the Mafia Shqiptare starts. How Albanians came to conquer the UK’s cocaine market is a lesson in criminal savvy; the value of making friends with the world’s most dangerous mafias; and the absolute threat of violence. It began with a business model that was simple in concept, but sufficiently bold to subvert the existing order. For years cocaine’s international importers worked separately from its wholesalers and the gangs. Pricing structure varied, depending on the drug’s purity; the higher it was, the more it cost. The Albanians ditched the entire model. They began negotiating directly with the Colombian cartels who control coca production. Huge shipments were arranged direct from South America. Supply chains were kept in-house. Intelligence obtained by British experts revealed that the Albanians were procuring cocaine from the cartels for about £4,000 to £5,500 a kilo, at a time when rivals thought they were getting a decent deal using Dutch wholesalers selling at £22,500 a kilo. The Albanians lowered the price of cocaine – and increased its purity. More massive consignments were brought into the UK. Tony Saggers, the former head of drugs threat and intelligence at the National Crime Agency, who has spent 30 years analysing the rhythms of the global narcotics economy, said: “What they have done very intelligently is say: ‘OK, we’ve got these margins to play with and we’re going to give a good slice of that to the customer.’” The Albanian effect has profoundly shaped the use, production and economy of cocaine. The drug is at its cheapest in the UK since 1990 and purer than it has been for a decade, which has caused record fatalities. The UK has the highest number of young users in Europe. More broadly, far bigger and more frequent shipments of the drug have been seized entering the UK as cocaine production in south America has hit record levels - up 31% on 2016. Rivals to the Albanian gangs like Hellbanianz initially struggled to compete because they had an inferior, more expensive product. Their only option has been to buy cocaine sourced from the Mafia Shqiptare. Saggers said: “They have shown that you don’t have to be greedy to dominate drug markets. They’ve gone down the route of sustainable prices, good quality.” Mohammed Qasim, a research fellow at Leeds Beckett University who studys drug dealers, described the Albanian business approach as “fantastic”, adding: “If they were on Dragon’s Den with this model, all the dragons would be giving them money.” Yet for the Albanians’ model to truly work it required control of Europe’s ports. For that the Mafia Shqiptare needed to collaborate with the ‘Ndrangheta, the most powerful and globalised of the Italian mafias, which controls mainland Europe’s cocaine trade. There is considerable evidence that not only are the Albanians working with the ‘Ndrangheta, but that they have formed the tightest of alliances. Sources say the Italian mafia consider the Albanians as equals. Saggers said: “There’s a strong Italian-organised mafia link with Albanians now, Albanians are working with them – not in competition with them. Plus, historically, the Italians have good contacts in Latin America.” Rotterdam in the Netherlands is Europe’s largest seaport, with eight million containers passing through each year. Many arrive via the direct “Colombian express” route before crossing to Harwich in Essex or Hull. The second busiest European port is Antwerp in Belgium, which connects to the Thames port of Tilbury, 15 miles from Hellbanianz territory. Collectively, the Belgian and Dutch ports employ 240,000 people, a cohort of whom, police intelligence indicates, work for the ‘Ndrangheta and Mafia Shqiptare. “This gives the Albanians based on the near continent, direct access and control of it [cocaine] at the ports,” said Saggers. An NCA source described Belgium and the Netherlands as “key nexus points of consolidation and onward trafficking of illicit commodities” and confirmed Albanian groups were “expanding their influence upstream” – police-speak for strengthening their grip on international cocaine supply. Anna Sergi, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Essex who specialises in mafia relationships, confirmed Albanians and the southern Italian crime group have joined forces. “Whenever the ‘Ndrangheta is shipping things over, they work a lot with the Albanians,” she said. Last month Operation Pollino, named after the area of southern Italy where the ‘Ndrangheta has its roots, arrested 90 suspects. Anti-mafia prosecutors described how the ‘Ndrangheta relied on “permanent groups working in ports and harbours” along with Albanian criminal networks. In 2017 an Albanian cocaine dealer was caught at a London petrol station with false Italian identification documents on his car and two kilos of the drug hidden in its boot. The most vulnerable point for drug smugglers is the port of entry. Security is tight, options are finite. Sources say that the ‘Ndrangheta has outsourced this element of the supply chain to the Albanians. “You need the best people to get it out of port. If you are good at moving things then you stay ahead of your competitors – and the Albanians are good at this,” said Sergi. Yet even the most senior Albanians are caught sometimes. Klodjan Copja, 30, who ran a £60m cocaine imports syndicate, was jailed in 2017 after his couriers were intercepted meeting drug-laden lorries arriving in Kent. One striking facet of what the NCA term the Albanians’ “increasing prominence” is their having – so far – avoided becoming embroiled in tit-for-tat feuds with rivals. The latest UK criminal threat assessment says that the Albanians are unusually skilled at developing relationships and “forging links with other OCGs [organised criminal gangs]”. Such relationship-building has left Livepool as the only part of England not routinely selling Albanian-sourced cocaine. Not only has the Merseyside port its own direct access to South America, Saggers says that its turf is jealously guarded by the city’s own criminal gangs. Also working in the Albanians’ favour is their reputation for violence. Saggers says the backdrop of the Kosovo conflict has given them a swagger comparable to that of Irish criminals during and after the Troubles. “They are quite charismatic and known to prioritise relationship-building rather than competitive feuds. Also, when you come from a country where there’s been conflict and you have a reputation for ruthlessness the charisma is underlined with an element of ‘actually, we do need to get on with these people’,” he said. Qasim also points to how the Albanian are regarded in criminal circles. “They are sophisticated, professional and they do what they promise. They always deliver,” he said. This has much to do with the Albanian code of besa – “to keep the promise” – but Sergi adds that the reputation of the Mafia Shqiptare must also be viewed through the ancestral code of kanun, the right to take revenge: that blood must pay with blood. “You most trust the ones similar to you,” she said. The concept was meant to keep things internal, close. Then the younger generation began making flashy videos and waving money around, and along came Hellbanianz. The Gascoigne estate is bordered on its south and west by the A13 and the North Circular roads, urban bulwarks against neighbouring gangs such as Newham’s Beckton Black Squad. In the mid-1990s the estate was run by white working-class crime families. “If you were black and went there you’d come out in an ambulance,” said David, a former resident. Deprivation and drugs blighted the estate long before a Jamaican gang run by Delroy “the King” Lewis started a ruthlessly efficient 24-hour operation on the estate, selling crack cocaine and heroin. Lewis was jailed in 2004 at a time when the estate’s Albanian population was growing through a new refugee crisis following fresh unrest in Kosovo, five years after the war there brought the first arrivals. By the time of the 2011 census, Albanian was the second language on the estate. Soon after, Hellbanianz took over. Rookwood House, a five-minute walk from Barking Abbey, became their notional headquarters. Linked by interlocking walkways and limited access points, the tower block was easy to defend from police and rivals. It was seen in the video for Hellbanianz’s trap track Hood Life. But five months ago Rookwood House was knocked down as part of a sweeping regeneration project. If they're importing kilos for a few thousand dollars, imagine how much money those youngsters are turning over Locals say Hellbanianz has moved operations north, to a prime spot near the Kings Lounge pub. “They gather at 9pm, same faces, same lot,” one said. Some might recognise the faces from YouTube where Hellbanianz posts footage to try to lure “falcons” – fresh recruits - with shots of scantily clad women, wheel-spinning Bentleys and the ubiquitious wads of money. Saggers said: “The retail market is the get-rich-quick environment. If they’re importing kilos for a few thousand dollars, imagine how much money those youngsters are turning over if they’re selling at £40 a gram?” Before its account was closed in November, Hellbanianz had 115,000 Instagram followers. The video for Hood Life, which opens with a drone shot of the Gascoigne estate, has been watched more than 7.5m times. The gang’s lyrics discuss defending Barking with “kallash” (AK47s)– and dishing out threats to rival Albanian outfit OTR ( On Top Of The Rest) and a fair few others. Their latest video, released in late October 2018, states they are “ready for war”. One resident called Hellbanianz the “stabbers”. Requesting anonymity, he said: “You’d be walking home and feel a little prick on your leg and later you realised you’d been stabbed by one of the Albanian kids.” Such disregard was evident in the case of Hellbanianz member Tristen Asllani, who in 2016 lost control during a high-speed police chase in Crouch End, north London, and ploughed into a shop. In the crumpled car, officers found a suitcase full of cocaine and later, at the 29-year-old’s home, another 21kg of the drug and a Skorpion machine pistol with a silencer. Such antics help explain why Albanians are the third largest foreign nationality in UK prisons. The figure is even more startling when considering the tiny number of UK organised criminals the NCA believes are Albanian – 0.8%. Hellbanianz’s high life – the bling, the violence – has fostered tensions within the Albanian community, particularly the goading of police. The Hood Life video shows gang members surrounding a Met patrol car. “This goes against the Albanian culture. Some of their higher end drug dealers, international traders, don’t like this behaviour. It exposes their activities. They want to be low-key, making profits without being caught,” said Qasim. On Longridge Road in Barking, home to its Albanian restaurants, some scowl when the gang or names of prominent members are mentioned. Others deny its existence. Another repercussion of the Albanian model has, say some, helped fuel knife crime and drug disputes by making cocaine affordable to smaller, younger street gangs. A recent report by the London borough of Waltham Forest said gangs were moving from postcode rivalries to commercial enterprises focused on dealing cocaine. Last Tuesday, 14-year-old Jayden Moodie was killed in the borough during a targeted attack, though his family say he had no gang involvement. Meanwhile, so long as Mafia Shqiptare keeps delivering their cocaine, recruiting teenagers to the Hellbanianz gangster life has never been easier.Few people in the UK (about 9%) eat as much fibre as they need, which is at least 25g to 29g, according to a new analysis for the World Health Organization, with over 30g probably more beneficial still. That is a lot of fibre. These are foods that can help. Cereals. Wholegrain cereals are an obvious choice for breakfast. Oat-based muesli is good as long as it doesn’t have a lot of added sugar. Bran flakes contain about 8g of fibre in a 40g portion. Bananas. They should be a bit green, said Prof John Cummings of Dundee University, one of the study authors. At that stage it is starch with fibre-like properties, he said. “As it ripens and becomes yellow and black, it becomes sugar.” There is about 3g of fibre in a medium banana. Apples. A small apple weighing around 80g has 2-3g of fibre. Nuts. Thirty grams of nuts contains about 2g of fibre. Wholemeal or wholegrain bread. This has about 2g of fibre per slice. White bread has had most of the fibre removed. “It is a no-brainer,” said Cummings. “Eat wholemeal bread.” Baked potatoes. A medium-sized potato with the skin on contains about 4g of fibre. Wholemeal pasta. 75g of wholewheat spaghetti contains about 8g of fibre. Pulses. Beans, peas and lentils are all good sources of fibre. There is 6.8g of fibre in 150g of baked beans; 100g of boiled lentils contains 8g.Los Angeles Rams (No2 seed) @ New Orleans Saints (No1 seed). Sunday, 3.05pm EST/8.05pm GMT What the Rams need to do: The Rams need to keep relying on their running game. Everyone was expecting Todd Gurley to have a big game against the Dallas Cowboys last weekend but nobody was expecting CJ Anderson to outdo him, or for both running backs to pick up more than 100 yards each. Now the Saints defense will have to game plan for both men. What the Saints need to do: Get in front early. The Saints had to crawl out of a 14-0 hole against the Philadelphia Eagles last week. That’s not going to work against a much tougher opponent in the Rams, who dominated in the first half against Dallas, going up 20-3 on their way to a 30-22 victory. Key player for the Rams: Aaron Donald, DT. Donald led the league in sacks during the regular season with 20.5, and is favorite to be named defensive player of the year. He’s going to have his work cut out against Drew Brees, however. Donald managed a few tackles on the future hall of famer in their last meeting, but no sacks. Key player for the Saints: Michael Thomas, WR. Last time these two teams faced each other, Thomas accumulated 211 yards and scored a key touchdown late on. Last weekend, Thomas went off for 171 yards and yet another touchdown against the Eagles. He will be a factor again. Unheralded players to watch: The kickers. It doesn’t get much more unheralded than being a kicker, but we’ve already seen how important they can be in a winner-takes-all scenario. Just ask poor Cody Parkey, whose blocked field-goal ended the Chicago Bears’ season. So, watch Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein and Saints kicker Wil Lutz. If casual football fans know one of their names after the game ends, that probably means something bad has happened. The usually reliable Lutz, in fact, nearly found himself the Saints’ fall guy with his fourth-quarter miss against the Eagles, but the Saints were able to hold on to win 20-14. Prediction: Rams 24-28 Saints New England Patriots (No2 seed) @ Kansas City Chiefs (No1 seed). Sunday, 6.40pm EST/11.40pm GMT What the Patriots need to do: Make Patrick Mahomes look like a playoff rookie. Mahomes had a successful postseason debut against the Indianapolis Colts, but he didn’t have a passing touchdown (although he did rush for one). That didn’t really matter in a comfortable 31-13 win, but that’s not going to cut it against Tom Brady and the Patriots. Every drive in which the Patriots defense can limit the Chiefs to a field goal (or less) will be crucial if this becomes a shootout similar to the teams’ previous meeting. What the Chiefs need to do: Watch the clock. The Chiefs’ Andy Reid is one of the best head coaches in the league, but he’s also notorious for his poor clock management in big games. If Sunday’s meeting ends up being close down the stretch, both teams must use their timeouts wisely and have perfect awareness of how much time is left (or at least glance at the clock on occasion). Key player for the Patriots: Julian Edelman, WR. There are plenty of benefits to being Tom Brady’s favorite target and that includes climbing up the Most Postseason Receptions list. With his 94th postseason reception last Sunday, Edelman moved up to second on the list, passing Reggie Wayne, and he ended the 41-28 blowout with 98. It’s safe to bet that he won’t beat Jerry Rice’s record of 151 but he’s probably a good bet to break the 100 mark this Sunday. Key player for the Chiefs: Damien Williams, RB. You think the Patriots regret not signing Williams? Kansas City’s running game could have taken a stumble when they cut Kareem Hunt. Instead they inserted Williams who has thrived in their system. He is coming off a 129-yard performance against the Colts. Unheralded player to watch: Cordarrelle Patterson, KR, New England Patriots. Patterson is technically a wide receiver, but the Patriots used him as a running back during the regular season when Sony Michel was unavailable. Now that Michel is healthy, as his mammoth game against the Chargers established, Patterson’s biggest impact will be as a kick returner. In fact, Los Angeles brought in a second kicker, Nick Rose, to handle kickoffs and limit Patterson’s chances (he would end up returning just one kick, for 23 yards). In a game that may well come down to the wire, one huge return could end up being key. Prediction: Patriots 31-34 ChiefsDowning Street has ruled out any movement on customs union membership after Brexit-supporting Conservatives told Theresa May that a change of course to gain support for her deal would risk a serious party split, and possible breakaway. The government set out its position on Wednesday night before the prime minister began Brexit talks with party leaders. May responded to the historic defeat of her Brexit bill on Tuesday by pledging to speak to “senior parliamentarians” to identify a deal that could secure a majority vote. However, after one leave-supporting backbencher said that if she made any concessions on the customs union “there’s a real risk to the party staying together”, No 10 stressed its commitment to the principle of an “independent trade deal”, which May does not believe is compatible with a customs union. Those who support a permanent customs union include the Labour frontbench under Jeremy Corbyn and Tory backers of a Norway-style deal. It is unlikely talks with either group will get off the ground if May maintains her red lines, although Labour, the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats have insisted May must keep all options on the table before talks can begin. Corbyn has said he will not speak to May until she rules out a no-deal Brexit. Privately, some ministers and MPs believe the prime minister can only achieve some form of cross-party consensus by pledging permanent customs union membership. “There is no other way,” one frontbencher said. “At some point, that penny will drop.” No 10 has not yet spelled out how May intends to identify the kind of deal that would have a chance of winning over enough of the 128 Conservative and Democratic Unionist MPs who voted against her on Tuesday night. The prime minister is expected to approach senior members of the European Research Group, the hard Brexit group chaired by Jacob Rees-Mogg which includes Steve Baker and Iain Duncan Smith. MPs in the hard Brexit faction suggested the deal could still be salvaged by agreeing on a hard end-date for the Irish border backstop. Several Eurosceptic rebels warned the prime minister against any efforts to pursue a softer Brexit. Simon Clarke, the MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, a marginal leave seat, said he feared a split if an eventual May deal was carried by Labour votes. “The PM is within her rights to try to find a sensible way forward, but there must be red lines,” he said. “Were we to adopt the terrible Labour idea of being non-voting members of the customs union, for example, I fear there’s a real risk to the party staying together.” Ben Bradley, who resigned his post as Tory vice-chair to vote against the deal, said May could still win if she pivoted towards the Brexiters. “Only one single thing needs to change,” he said. “An alternative to, or exit mechanism from, the backstop would in my view get a majority in the Commons, and the longer-term discussion about customs unions or free trade agreements then becomes a matter for future negotiations. “The DUP have consistently said that’s what they need, and I think most Brexiteer colleagues would support [that] along with leave-minded Labour MPs. The alternative – reaching out to Corbyn on a customs union deal – would split the government benches in half and make an election far more likely.” May is expected to extend her invitation for talks to Labour and other opposition backbenchers, as well as Tory Eurosceptics. One cabinet source expressed pessimism that trying to achieve a softer Brexit would be effective. “Getting a customs union would be extremely difficult. It would only work if the calculation was that Labour votes were absolutely the only way of preventing no deal,” he said. The justice secretary, David Gauke, said the government needed to show some flexibility but there were disadvantages to remaining in a customs union. Gauke told the BBC: “I don’t think we can today be boxing ourselves in. What we need to be doing is engaging across parliament, seeing what ideas emerge, where the support is for those particular ideas, and at that point we need to make an assessment: is this something negotiable with the European Union and something with majority support in the House of Commons? “I think the right answer would be to leave the customs union, but given where we are we have to be open to proposals that are put forward and make an assessment on the way forward.” Gauke did not rule out holding talks with Corbyn but suggested they would be futile. “I think there may be others who might be easier to work with.” May said in the Commons that the exercise of reaching out was about “wanting to understand the views of parliamentarians so that we can identify what could command the support of this House”. She said engagement had to align with what she defined as respecting the vote to leave, citing “ending free movement, a fairer deal for farmers and fishermen, opening up new opportunities to trade with the rest of the world and keeping good ties with our neighbours in Europe”. Ken Clarke, the pro-remain Tory MP, urged May to consider a customs union. “I have had to accept the majority in the House is committed to the UK leaving the European Union. She must also accept that she must now modify her red lines that she set for herself at Lancaster House and find a cross-party majority which will be along the lines I have indicated,” he said.We’re living through the most profound transformation in our information environment since Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of printing in circa 1439. And the problem with living through a revolution is that it’s impossible to take the long view of what’s happening. Hindsight is the only exact science in this business, and in that long run we’re all dead. Printing shaped and transformed societies over the next four centuries, but nobody in Mainz (Gutenberg’s home town) in, say, 1495 could have known that his technology would (among other things): fuel the Reformation and undermine the authority of the mighty Catholic church; enable the rise of what we now recognise as modern science; create unheard-of professions and industries; change the shape of our brains; and even recalibrate our conceptions of childhood. And yet printing did all this and more. Why choose 1495? Because we’re about the same distance into our revolution, the one kicked off by digital technology and networking. And although it’s now gradually dawning on us that this really is a big deal and that epochal social and economic changes are under way, we’re as clueless about where it’s heading and what’s driving it as the citizens of Mainz were in 1495. That’s not for want of trying, mind. Library shelves groan under the weight of books about what digital technology is doing to us and our world. Lots of scholars are thinking, researching and writing about this stuff. But they’re like the blind men trying to describe the elephant in the old fable: everyone has only a partial view, and nobody has the whole picture. So our contemporary state of awareness is – as Manuel Castells, the great scholar of cyberspace once put it – one of “informed bewilderment”. Which is why the arrival of Shoshana Zuboff’s new book is such a big event. Many years ago – in 1988, to be precise – as one of the first female professors at Harvard Business School to hold an endowed chair she published a landmark book, The Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, which changed the way we thought about the impact of computerisation on organisations and on work. It provided the most insightful account up to that time of how digital technology was changing the work of both managers and workers. And then Zuboff appeared to go quiet, though she was clearly incubating something bigger. The first hint of what was to come was a pair of startling essays – one in an academic journal in 2015, the other in a German newspaper in 2016. What these revealed was that she had come up with a new lens through which to view what Google, Facebook et al were doing – nothing less than spawning a new variant of capitalism. Those essays promised a more comprehensive expansion of this Big Idea. And now it has arrived – the most ambitious attempt yet to paint the bigger picture and to explain how the effects of digitisation that we are now experiencing as individuals and citizens have come about. The headline story is that it’s not so much about the nature of digital technology as about a new mutant form of capitalism that has found a way to use tech for its purposes. The name Zuboff has given to the new variant is “surveillance capitalism”. It works by providing free services that billions of people cheerfully use, enabling the providers of those services to monitor the behaviour of those users in astonishing detail – often without their explicit consent. “Surveillance capitalism,” she writes, “unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data. Although some of these data are applied to service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioural surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence’, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behaviour.” While the general modus operandi of Google, Facebook et al has been known and understood (at least by some people) for a while, what has been missing – and what Zuboff provides – is the insight and scholarship to situate them in a wider context. She points out that while most of us think that we are dealing merely with algorithmic inscrutability, in fact what confronts us is the latest phase in capitalism’s long evolution – from the making of products, to mass production, to managerial capitalism, to services, to financial capitalism, and now to the exploitation of behavioural predictions covertly derived from the surveillance of users. In that sense, her vast (660-page) book is a continuation of a tradition that includes Adam Smith, Max Weber, Karl Polanyi and – dare I say it – Karl Marx. Digital technology is separating the citizens in all societies into two groups: the watchers and the watched Viewed from this perspective, the behaviour of the digital giants looks rather different from the roseate hallucinations of Wired magazine. What one sees instead is a colonising ruthlessness of which John D Rockefeller would have been proud. First of all there was the arrogant appropriation of users’ behavioural data – viewed as a free resource, there for the taking. Then the use of patented methods to extract or infer data even when users had explicitly denied permission, followed by the use of technologies that were opaque by design and fostered user ignorance. And, of course, there is also the fact that the entire project was conducted in what was effectively lawless – or at any rate law-free – territory. Thus Google decided that it would digitise and store every book ever printed, regardless of copyright issues. Or that it would photograph every street and house on the planet without asking anyone’s permission. Facebook launched its infamous “beacons”, which reported a user’s online activities and published them to others’ news feeds without the knowledge of the user. And so on, in accordance with the disrupter’s mantra that “it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission”. When the security expert Bruce Schneier wrote that “surveillance is the business model of the internet” he was really only hinting at the reality that Zuboff has now illuminated. The combination of state surveillance and its capitalist counterpart means that digital technology is separating the citizens in all societies into two groups: the watchers (invisible, unknown and unaccountable) and the watched. This has profound consequences for democracy because asymmetry of knowledge translates into asymmetries of power. But whereas most democratic societies have at least some degree of oversight of state surveillance, we currently have almost no regulatory oversight of its privatised counterpart. This is intolerable. And it won’t be easy to fix because it requires us to tackle the essence of the problem – the logic of accumulation implicit in surveillance capitalism. That means that self-regulation is a nonstarter. “Demanding privacy from surveillance capitalists,” says Zuboff, “or lobbying for an end to commercial surveillance on the internet is like asking old Henry Ford to make each Model T by hand. It’s like asking a giraffe to shorten its neck, or a cow to give up chewing. These demands are existential threats that violate the basic mechanisms of the entity’s survival.” The Age of Surveillance Capital is a striking and illuminating book. A fellow reader remarked to me that it reminded him of Thomas Piketty’s magnum opus, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, in that it opens one’s eyes to things we ought to have noticed, but hadn’t. And if we fail to tame the new capitalist mutant rampaging through our societies then we will only have ourselves to blame, for we can no longer plead ignorance. John Naughton: At the moment, the world is obsessed with Facebook. But as you tell it, Google was the prime mover. Shoshana Zuboff: Surveillance capitalism is a human creation. It lives in history, not in technological inevitability. It was pioneered and elaborated through trial and error at Google in much the same way that the Ford Motor Company discovered the new economics of mass production or General Motors discovered the logic of managerial capitalism. Surveillance capitalism was invented around 2001 as the solution to financial emergency in the teeth of the dotcom bust when the fledgling company faced the loss of investor confidence. As investor pressure mounted, Google’s leaders abandoned their declared antipathy toward advertising. Instead they decided to boost ad revenue by using their exclusive access to user data logs (once known as “data exhaust”) in combination with their already substantial analytical capabilities and computational power, to generate predictions of user click-through rates, taken as a signal of an ad’s relevance. Operationally this meant that Google would both repurpose its growing cache of behavioural data, now put to work as a behavioural data surplus, and develop methods to aggressively seek new sources of this surplus. The company developed new methods of secret surplus capture that could uncover data that users intentionally opted to keep private, as well as to infer extensive personal information that users did not or would not provide. And this surplus would then be analysed for hidden meanings that could predict click-through behaviour. The surplus data became the basis for new predictions markets called targeted advertising. Here was the origin of surveillance capitalism in an unprecedented and lucrative brew: behavioural surplus, data science, material infrastructure, computational power, algorithmic systems, and automated platforms. As click-through rates skyrocketed, advertising quickly became as important as search. Eventually it became the cornerstone of a new kind of commerce that depended upon online surveillance at scale. The success of these new mechanisms only became visible when Google went public in 2004. That’s when it finally revealed that between 2001 and its 2004 IPO, revenues increased by 3,590%. JN: So surveillance capitalism started with advertising, but then became more general? SZ: Surveillance capitalism is no more limited to advertising than mass production was limited to the fabrication of the Ford Model T. It quickly became the default model for capital accumulation in Silicon Valley, embraced by nearly every startup and app. And it was a Google executive – Sheryl Sandberg – who played the role of Typhoid Mary, bringing surveillance capitalism from Google to Facebook, when she signed on as Mark Zuckerberg’s number two in 2008. By now it’s no longer restricted to individual companies or even to the internet sector. It has spread across a wide range of products, services, and economic sectors, including insurance, retail, healthcare, finance, entertainment, education, transportation, and more, birthing whole new ecosystems of suppliers, producers, customers, market-makers, and market players. Nearly every product or service that begins with the word “smart” or “personalised”, every internet-enabled device, every “digital assistant”, is simply a supply-chain interface for the unobstructed flow of behavioural data on its way to predicting our futures in a surveillance economy. JN: In this story of conquest and appropriation, the term “digital natives” takes on a new meaning… SZ: Yes, “digital natives” is a tragically ironic phrase. I am fascinated by the structure of colonial conquest, especially the first Spaniards who stumbled into the Caribbean islands. Historians call it the “conquest pattern”, which unfolds in three phases: legalistic measures to provide the invasion with a gloss of justification, a declaration of territorial claims, and the founding of a town to legitimate the declaration. Back then Columbus simply declared the islands as the territory of the Spanish monarchy and the pope. The sailors could not have imagined that they were writing the first draft of a pattern that would echo across space and time to a digital 21st century. The first surveillance capitalists also conquered by declaration. They simply declared our private experience to be theirs for the taking, for translation into data for their private ownership and their proprietary knowledge. They relied on misdirection and rhetorical camouflage, with secret declarations that we could neither understand nor contest. Google began by unilaterally declaring that the world wide web was its to take for its search engine. Surveillance capitalism originated in a second declaration that claimed our private experience for its revenues that flow from telling and selling our fortunes to other businesses. In both cases, it took without asking. Page [Larry, Google co-founder] foresaw that surplus operations would move beyond the online milieu to the real world, where data on human experience would be free for the taking. As it turns out his vision perfectly reflected the history of capitalism, marked by taking things that live outside the market sphere and declaring their new life as market commodities. We were caught off guard by surveillance capitalism because there was no way that we could have imagined its action, any more than the early peoples of the Caribbean could have foreseen the rivers of blood that would flow from their hospitality toward the sailors who appeared out of thin air waving the banner of the Spanish monarchs. Like the Caribbean people, we faced something truly unprecedented. Once we searched Google, but now Google searches us. Once we thought of digital services as free, but now surveillance capitalists think of us as free. JN: Then there’s the “inevitability” narrative – technological determinism on steroids. SZ: In my early fieldwork in the computerising offices and factories of the late 1970s and 80s, I discovered the duality of information technology: its capacity to automate but also to “informate”, which I use to mean to translate things, processes, behaviours, and so forth into information. This duality set information technology apart from earlier generations of technology: information technology produces new knowledge territories by virtue of its informating capability, always turning the world into information. The result is that these new knowledge territories become the subject of political conflict. The first conflict is over the distribution of knowledge: “Who knows?” The second is about authority: “Who decides who knows?” The third is about power: “Who decides who decides who knows?” Now the same dilemmas of knowledge, authority and power have surged over the walls of our offices, shops and factories to flood each one of us… and our societies. Surveillance capitalists were the first movers in this new world. They declared their right to know, to decide who knows, and to decide who decides. In this way they have come to dominate what I call “the division of learning in society”, which is now the central organising principle of the 21st-century social order, just as the division of labour was the key organising principle of society in the industrial age. JN: So the big story is not really the technology per se but the fact that it has spawned a new variant of capitalism that is enabled by the technology? SZ: Larry Page grasped that human experience could be Google’s virgin wood, that it could be extracted at no extra cost online and at very low cost out in the real world. For today’s owners of surveillance capital the experiential realities of bodies, thoughts and feelings are as virgin and blameless as nature’s once-plentiful meadows, rivers, oceans and forests before they fell to the market dynamic. We have no formal control over these processes because we are not essential to the new market action. Instead we are exiles from our own behaviour, denied access to or control over knowledge derived from its dispossession by others for others. Knowledge, authority and power rest with surveillance capital, for which we are merely “human natural resources”. We are the native peoples now whose claims to self-determination have vanished from the maps of our own experience. While it is impossible to imagine surveillance capitalism without the digital, it is easy to imagine the digital without surveillance capitalism. The point cannot be emphasised enough: surveillance capitalism is not technology. Digital technologies can take many forms and have many effects, depending upon the social and economic logics that bring them to life. Surveillance capitalism relies on algorithms and sensors, machine intelligence and platforms, but it is not the same as any of those. JN: Where does surveillance capitalism go from here? SZ: Surveillance capitalism moves from a focus on individual users to a focus on populations, like cities, and eventually on society as a whole. Think of the capital that can be attracted to futures markets in which population predictions evolve to approximate certainty. This has been a learning curve for surveillance capitalists, driven by competition over prediction products. First they learned that the more surplus the better the prediction, which led to economies of scale in supply efforts. Then they learned that the more varied the surplus the higher its predictive value. This new drive toward economies of scope sent them from the desktop to mobile, out into the world: your drive, run, shopping, search for a parking space, your blood and face, and always… location, location, location. The evolution did not stop there. Ultimately they understood that the most predictive behavioural data comes from what I call “economies of action”, as systems are designed to intervene in the state of play and actually modify behaviour, shaping it toward desired commercial outcomes. We saw the experimental development of this new “means of behavioural modification” in Facebook’s contagion experiments and the Google-incubated augmented reality game Pokémon Go. Democracy has slept, while surveillance capitalists amassed unprecedented concentrations of knowledge and power It is no longer enough to automate information flows about us; the goal now is to automate us. These processes are meticulously designed to produce ignorance by circumventing individual awareness and thus eliminate any possibility of self-determination. As one data scientist explained to me, “We can engineer the context around a particular behaviour and force change that way… We are learning how to write the music, and then we let the music make them dance.” This power to shape behaviour for others’ profit or power is entirely self-authorising. It has no foundation in democratic or moral legitimacy, as it usurps decision rights and erodes the processes of individual autonomy that are essential to the function of a democratic society. The message here is simple: Once I was mine. Now I am theirs. JN: What are the implications for democracy? SZ: During the past two decades surveillance capitalists have had a pretty free run, with hardly any interference from laws and regulations. Democracy has slept while surveillance capitalists amassed unprecedented concentrations of knowledge and power. These dangerous asymmetries are institutionalised in their monopolies of data science, their dominance of machine intelligence, which is surveillance capitalism’s “means of production”, their ecosystems of suppliers and customers, their lucrative prediction markets, their ability to shape the behaviour of individuals and populations, their ownership and control of our channels for social participation, and their vast capital reserves. We enter the 21st century marked by this stark inequality in the division of learning: they know more about us than we know about ourselves or than we know about them. These new forms of social inequality are inherently antidemocratic. At the same time, surveillance capitalism diverges from the history of market capitalism in key ways, and this has inhibited democracy’s normal response mechanisms. One of these is that surveillance capitalism abandons the organic reciprocities with people that in the past have helped to embed capitalism in society and tether it, however imperfectly, to society’s interests. First, surveillance capitalists no longer rely on people as consumers. Instead, supply and demand orients the surveillance capitalist firm to businesses intent on anticipating the behaviour of populations, groups and individuals. Second, by historical standards the large surveillance capitalists employ relatively few people compared with their unprecedented computational resources. General Motors employed more people during the height of the Great Depression than either Google or Facebook employs at their heights of market capitalisation. Finally, surveillance capitalism depends upon undermining individual self-determination, autonomy and decision rights for the sake of an unobstructed flow of behavioural data to feed markets that are about us but not for us. This antidemocratic and anti-egalitarian juggernaut is best described as a market-driven coup from above: an overthrow of the people concealed as the technological Trojan horse of digital technology. On the strength of its annexation of human experience, this coup achieves exclusive concentrations of knowledge and power that sustain privileged influence over the division of learning in society. It is a form of tyranny that feeds on people but is not of the people. Paradoxically, this coup is celebrated as “personalisation”, although it defiles, ignores, overrides, and displaces everything about you and me that is personal. JN: Our societies seem transfixed by all this: we are like rabbits paralysed in the headlights of an oncoming car. SZ: Despite surveillance capitalism’s domination of the digital milieu and its illegitimate power to take private experience and to shape human behaviour, most people find it difficult to withdraw, and many ponder if it is even possible. This does not mean, however, that we are foolish, lazy, or hapless. On the contrary, in my book I explore numerous reasons that explain how surveillance capitalists got away with creating the strategies that keep us paralysed. These include the historical, political and economic conditions that allowed them to succeed. And we’ve already discussed some of the other key reasons, including the nature of the unprecedented, conquest by declaration. Other significant reasons are the need for inclusion, identification with tech leaders and their projects, social persuasion dynamics, and a sense of inevitability, helplessness and resignation. We are trapped in an involuntary merger of personal necessity and economic extraction, as the same channels that we rely upon for daily logistics, social interaction, work, education, healthcare, access to products and services, and much more, now double as supply chain operations for surveillance capitalism’s surplus flows. The result is that the choice mechanisms we have traditionally associated with the private realm are eroded or vitiated. There can be no exit from processes that are intentionally designed to bypass individual awareness and produce ignorance, especially when these are the very same processes upon which we must depend for effective daily life. So our participation is best explained in terms of necessity, dependency, the foreclosure of alternatives, and enforced ignorance. JN: Doesn’t all this mean that regulation that just focuses on the technology is misguided and doomed to fail? What should we be doing to get a grip on this before it’s too late? SZ: The tech leaders desperately want us to believe that technology is the inevitable force here, and their hands are tied. But there is a rich history of digital applications before surveillance capitalism that really were empowering and consistent with democratic values. Technology is the puppet, but surveillance capitalism is the puppet master. Surveillance capitalism is a human-made phenomenon and it is in the realm of politics that it must be confronted. The resources of our democratic institutions must be mobilised, including our elected officials. GDPR [a recent EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the EU] is a good start, and time will tell if we can build on that sufficiently to help found and enforce a new paradigm of information capitalism. Our societies have tamed the dangerous excesses of raw capitalism before, and we must do it again. While there is no simple five-year action plan, much as we yearn for that, there are some things we know. Despite existing economic, legal and collective-action models such as antitrust, privacy laws and trade unions, surveillance capitalism has had a relatively unimpeded two decades to root and flourish. We need new paradigms born of a close understanding of surveillance capitalism’s economic imperatives and foundational mechanisms.” For example, the idea of “data ownership” is often championed as a solution. But what is the point of owning data that should not exist in the first place? All that does is further institutionalise and legitimate data capture. It’s like negotiating how many hours a day a seven-year-old should be allowed to work, rather than contesting the fundamental legitimacy of child labour. Data ownership also fails to reckon with the realities of behavioural surplus. Surveillance capitalists extract predictive value from the exclamation points in your post, not merely the content of what you write, or from how you walk and not merely where you walk. Users might get “ownership” of the data that they give to surveillance capitalists in the first place, but they will not get ownership of the surplus or the predictions gleaned from it – not without new legal concepts built on an understanding of these operations. Another example: there may be sound antitrust reasons to break up the largest tech firms, but this alone will not eliminate surveillance capitalism. Instead it will produce smaller surveillance capitalist firms and open the field for more surveillance capitalist competitors. So what is to be done? In any confrontation with the unprecedented, the first work begins with naming. Speaking for myself, this is why I’ve devoted the past seven years to this work… to move forward the project of naming as the first necessary step toward taming. My hope is that careful naming will give us all a better understanding of the true nature of this rogue mutation of capitalism and contribute to a sea change in public opinion, most of all among the young. • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff is published by Profile (£25). To order a copy for £22 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has vowed the US and its allies will “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria as he sought to reassure Middle Eastern nations it was not withdrawing from the region despite Donald Trump’s call for troops to return home. In a keynote speech delivered in Cairo, pitched as the centrepiece of his nine-country regional tour, Pompeo called for a common stand against Tehran. “It’s time for old rivalries to end, for the sake of the greater good of the region,” he said. The US would “use diplomacy and work with our partners to expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria and bolster efforts “to bring peace and stability to the long-suffering Syrian people”, he said. The US’s most senior diplomat also delivered a rebuke to Barack Obama, whose address from the Egyptian capital a decade ago set the course for his government’s outreach to Iran and disavowal of George W Bush’s intervention in Iraq. Pompeo claimed the US under Obama had been timid about asserting itself, “when the times – and our partners – demanded it”, and had emboldened Iran to entrench its influence across the region. He committed to ongoing airstrikes against Isis but did not directly address Trump’s decision to withdraw 2,000 US ground forces from eastern Syria. Pompeo and the US national security adviser, John Bolton, have attempted to walk back Trump’s December announcement and observers considered the announcement of continuing US airstrikes to be a further move to reassure allies, particularly Kurdish proxies, that they would not be abandoned. In remarks aimed at Obama’s support for the Iran nuclear deal, but which could also be applied to the withdrawal from Syria, Pompeo said: “When America retreats, chaos follows. When we neglect our friends, resentment builds. When we partner with enemies, they advance.” Casting Iran as a “cancerous influence”, Pompeo said the US had “reimposed sanctions that should never have been lifted”. “We embarked on a new pressure campaign to cut off the revenues the regime uses to spread terror and destruction,” he said. Consolidating traditional US relationships in the Middle East has been central to Trump’s regional strategy, as has bedrock support for Israel and attempts to align Arab allies with Jerusalem, particularly on Iran. Identifying as an evangelical Christian, Pompeo lauded the UAE’s recognition of Israel at a judo competition late last year, a move he said had been two years in the making. Pompeo spent little time on human rights or governance – touchstone issues for previous leaders. He did thank the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, for a recent court decision to acquit US citizens who had been convicted of improperly operating NGOs. Nancy Okail, the executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, was one of the 30 people acquitted in the case. She said while Pompeo’s acknowledgment of the case was important, “it is also necessary to recognise that prominent Egyptian civil society members are still being prosecuted under the same case. Forty-one of them are banned from travelling, along with having their assets frozen. This case must be fully closed and civil society should be allowed to perform their crucial role freely.” Pompeo’s address was largely in line with previous speeches from Trump, the most significant of which he gave in Riyadh nearly two years ago on his first trip abroad as president. The administration’s mantra has been to assist rather than lead, and Pompeo claimed the US had falsely considered itself a “force for what ails the Middle East”. “We have rediscovered our voice. We have rebuilt our relationships. We have rejected false overtures from enemies,” he said. “In just 24 months, the United States under President Trump has reasserted its traditional role as a force for good in this region, because we’ve learned from our mistakes.” Rob Malley, a former senior official in the Obama administration, said: “Listening to Secretary Pompeo’s speech is like listening to someone from a parallel universe – in which the war in Iraq or Abu Ghraib, US indifference to its allies’ human rights violations, or Washington’s own complicity in the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen never occurred. “Back on planet Earth, they will see it for what it is: a self-congratulatory, delusional depiction of the Trump administration’s Middle East policy.”The mayor of a Canadian town where 47 people were killed in a rail disaster in 2013 has complained to Netflix after images of the incident were used in the hit sci-fi film Bird Box. The accident happened when a train carrying crude oil exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, and the BBC reports that Netflix confirmed that footage of the disaster was included in a montage sequence illustrating an attack. Julie Morin, mayor of Lac-Mégantic said: “We are looking for assurances from Netflix that they are going to remove [the footage]. You can be sure we are going to follow up on this, and our citizens are on our side.” Canadian viewers had earlier become aware that images of the disaster had also been used in another Netflix show, the science fiction series Travelers. The show’s executive producer, Carrie Mudd, apologised and said the footage had been acquired from an agency called Pond 5. Morin added: “It’s hard enough for our citizens to see these images when they are used normally and respectfully on the news. Just imagine, to have them used as fiction, as if they were invented.” According to the BBC, Netflix – already under fire over the “Bird Box challenge” phenomenon – says it will not be removing the footage used in Bird Box. Mudd promised that the scene in Travelers will be replaced.He has come up with “Crooked Hillary”, “Little Marco”, “Lyin’ Ted”, “Crazy Bernie”, “Sloppy Steve” and “Cryin’ Chuck”. Donald Trump is the master of branding his opponents with crude names that somehow paint them into a corner. But so far one has eluded him: the woman he calls only “Nancy”. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has emerged as his nemesis, the face of opposition to the president. As a partial government shutdown enters a record fifth week, the Democrat has been implacable in denying him $5.7bn to help build a border wall. This week she out-Trumped Trump, by effectively rescinding his invitation to deliver the State of the Union address. Then, on Saturday, she released a sharply worded statement rejecting Trump's proposed deal to end the closure – shortly before the president announced it from the Diplomatic Room of the White House. “She’s not only outmanoeuvring him, she’s outraging him,” said Michael Cornfield, associate professor of political management at George Washington University in Washington. “She’s taunting him. She’s the matador, he’s the bull. He has no idea what he’s doing. He’s a genius of the publicity arts, not the political arts. In this he’s an absolute novice.” Now 78, Pelosi’s life and career have prepared her for this battle of wills. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the youngest of six children and the only girl. Her father was a US congressman turned city mayor, a political education she has never forgotten. Her own daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, said recently: “She’ll cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding.” Pelosi became a California fundraiser and party activist and was elected to Congress in 1987, the year New York wheeler-dealer Trump published The Art of the Deal. She was the first woman to become House speaker, from 2007 to 2011, and recently regained that position, putting her second in line to the presidency. Thrice-married Trump, who once boasted about grabbing women by the private parts, relished the chance to run against a female rival, Hillary Clinton, in 2016. Then he had a two-year honeymoon in the White House as Republicans controlled the House and Senate. But now the House is in Democratic hands and Pelosi – disciplined, shrewd, unflappable and steel-spined – threatens to expose his lack of political experience. The new balance of power became evident on 11 December when Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, met Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence in the Oval Office. “We should not have a Trump shutdown,” said Pelosi, leaning forward on the sofa’s edge. Trump looked up. “A what? Did you say a Trump – ?” Had he been drinking a glass of water, it was the moment Trump would have done a spit-take. The tables had been turned, the master brander outbranded. More than a month later, the label “Trump shutdown” has clung more than any other. The president did not help himself by telling Schumer he would be “proud to shut down the government” in the name of border security. When he claimed that “Nancy’s in a situation where it’s not easy for her to talk right now,” she put him in his place: “Mr President, please don’t characterise the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.” After the meeting, Pelosi reportedly told House Democrats it was like “a tinkle contest with a skunk” and that Trump’s insistence on building a wall was “like a manhood thing for him”. It must have come as a shock to a man who has spent the past two years being surrounded by yes men and yes women, the latter including Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Sanders. Cornfield said: “We will look back on 11 December as the day he met his match. She has mastered two political skills he doesn’t even know he’s deficient in. “One is she knows how to count votes. That’s how she got healthcare through, that’s how she got the speakership back and that’s how she’ll get impeachment through. She stays in touch with every one of the Democrats and most of the Republicans. She knows when she has to compromise and when to hold the line. “Second, she knows how to take advantage of the process. She knows that every day the shutdown goes on, she and the Democrats gain and Trump and the Republicans lose. She’s going to deny him TV time: she really knows how to jab him with a needle.” Over Christmas and into the new year Trump’s Twitter account and his allies in conservative media have blamed Democrats for the shutdown, falsely claiming they favour open borders that allow drugs and violent criminals to flood into the country. Pelosi has opted for precision strikes that prove more deadly. In one exchange with reporters, she suggested Trump lacks empathy for furloughed workers and “thinks maybe they could just ask their father for more money”, a reference to the president’s inherited wealth. After Trump walked out of a meeting, Pelosi mused: “It’s a temper tantrum. I’m the mother of five, grandmother of nine. I know a temper tantrum when I see one.” This week, as Trump continued to tweet back in anger, Pelosi suggested he delay his State of the Union address – the ultimate showcase for any president – until the government reopens. In a surprise letter, Pelosi said the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security had been “hamstrung” by furloughs so should not bear the burden of securing the event on 29 January on Capitol Hill. In an interview with the Washington Post, the Democratic congressman Steve Cohen called Pelosi’s letter her “Gene Hackman moment”, comparing it to an inspirational speech the actor delivers to a basketball team in the film Hoosiers. “It’s smart for two reasons,” he said. “Number one, Pelosi would be right behind him, and she’d have to sit there as he put the onus on her for the shutdown. Number two, it gives him a reason to end the shutdown, because he loves the TV audience and the attention.” The president tried to strike back on Thursday with a letter deriding a planned visit by Pelosi and other Democrats to Afghanistan as a “public relations event” and saying it would be better if she remained in Washington to negotiate reopening the government. “Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative,” Trump wrote in a letter addressed to “Madame Speaker” – a peculiar detour into French. The ball was back in Pelosi’s court. She countered by accusing Trump of putting troops and civilians working in Afghanistan in danger by publicising the planned trip. When a reporter asked if she considered it retaliation for her letter, she replied with no little irony: “I would hope not. I don’t think the president would be that petty, do you?” As the stalemate continues, Pelosi seems to be winning in the court of public opinion. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found Trump’s approval rating stands at 39% approve, 53% disapprove, a seven-point net change from December. Pelosi’s favorability rating, meanwhile, is up 13% among Democrats since the midterms (59% to 72%) in Civiqs polls, with virtually no shift among Republicans. It is tempting to see the duel through the prisms of age, gender, party or personal wealth – both Pelosi and Trump are rich. But for the speaker, it is not necessarily personal so much as devotion to the institution she has served for more than three decades. Cindy Simon Rosenthal, author of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics, published in 2007, says: “There are people who see it as power politics, a back and forth between a Republican president and Democratic speaker, but you can also see it as the re-emergence of one half of the legislative branch showing it’s not going to be rolled in deference to the White House. “Nancy Pelosi is trying to send a clear message that they’re going to reassert themselves. And he’s not sure how to handle that.”Ah, Jeremy Clarkson. Remember? We used to talk about him all the time, whether we wanted to or not. Then he punched his producer and had to leave Top Gear, Piers Morgan replaced him as the nation’s foremost choleric millionaire troll, and the world moved on. Wherever did he go? Into the lucrative but fragmented realm of internet TV, where since 2016 Amazon has been employing Clarkson, along with his sidekicks Richard Hammond and James May, to front a different cars-and-bants show called The Grand Tour. This arrangement suits everyone. Last year, leaked internal figures showed how Amazon measures the worth of an original programme by estimating how many new subscribers it attracts. On that metric, The Grand Tour laps everything else. It’s visibly expensive to make, and Clarkson and co earn even more than they did on Top Gear. But for Jeff Bezos, they’re worth it. That The Grand Tour is hardly ever mentioned by anyone who doesn’t watch The Grand Tour is of no concern. Folk at home are content too: petrolheads happily pay for Prime to get a plush version of the show they love, while the rest of us go about our business unmolested, reassured that the BBC is no longer besmirched. It’s a rare example of a major outsourcing project constituting a good deal for Britain. Anyway, here is Clarkson in pale jeans, bellowing “WE’RE BACK!” to wild applause from a studio full of white people, which means season three is under way. Time to gingerly crack open the shed door and see what they’re up to in there. Nothing of great note is the answer, at least in the opening episode, which takes the barnacled bros to Detroit to mess about in muscle cars. As always, it’s lushly filmed, with a fine eye for a startling location. The comic-book graphics complementing the superhero nicknames the men give the cars are a luxurious touch. Clarkson’s review of the McLaren Senna is crisp and vivid, conveying the thrill of driving it while pithily explaining its technical merits. There’s even a moment when May deviates from the scripted joshing and is properly funny off the cuff, earning a roaring laugh from his pals rather than the usual arch chortles. The show is undeniably well made, and almost all of it is jolly and inconsequential. Not that Clarkson abandons his brand entirely. Driving at 140mph among the peeling ruins of Detroit is a provocative metaphor, as if the simple act of continuing to make a globetrotting car show in 2019 didn’t already feel enough like an older generation laughing gaily while the world burns. But Clarkson is ready with a rant for his core fanbase of sore winners who hyperventilate if anything challenges their comfy prejudices. In Detroit, his sop to the sort of people who shout at vegan sausage rolls is a complaint that the city contains urban farms. Which grow vegetables! This is bad because Detroit is all about cars, not “peace hippies”. Clarkson protests by driving a Mustang through a kale patch. This outrage is, however, half-hearted. A pompous blowhard is just the character Clarkson plays, alongside May as a doddery eccentric and Hammond as a clumsy nerd. Clarkson’s anti-nutrition ramble is met with theatrical scorn by the other hosts, just as Hammond’s bizarre assertion that heterosexuals tend not to eat ice-cream was in series one. It’s a performative release of steam, a Statler and two Waldorfs going through the motions within a confined, virtually soundproofed safe space. Close that shed door and leave them to it.Carry on then, Marouane. After some suggestions this week that Marouane Fellaini might be on his way out of Old Trafford, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s Friday press conference went the other way. Instead Solskjær offered what newspapers like to call “a vote of confidence” in the gangling Belgian utility-menace, talking up Fellaini’s continued presence through this, his sixth year as a Manchester United player. It isn’t hard to see why some said his time was up. Under Solskjær Fellaini has played three minutes in the Premier League. His basic footballing presence has seemed at odds with a more mobile, fluid style. Plus there is of course a wider symbolic aspect to all this. Fellaini will never really shake his status as the first big signing of the post-Ferguson years. Through successive managerial eras he has fronted up gamely, but remained the embodiment of something stubborn and stuck, an inherited burden, like a particularly oppressive antique mahogany Victorian sideboard nobody ever has the will or the guts to throw away. How to characterise the Fellaini years? In his book The Last Empire Gore Vidal offers up a wryly crushing list of the official codenames of every 20th century US overseas military operation, a line-up that reads now like a stock list of the top-selling Macedonian erectile dysfunction drugs currently being advertised up in your spam email folder. Operation Shining Hope. Operation Decisive Enhancement. Operation Golden Python. Operation Noble Obelisk, Urgent Fury, Provide Relief, Provide Hope, Continue Hope, and of course – a personal favourite – Operation Frequent Wind. What codename would best capture Fellaini’s own five-and-a-half-year campaign at Old Trafford, you wonder. Operation Shin-Bobble. Operation Crowd-Slice. Operation Panic Hoof. Operation Slow Clanking Midfield Death? And yet, this is of course unfair in many ways. Fellaini is also the easiest of targets. There is no doubt he has been over-blamed, has become disproportionately symbolic of United’s recent difficult years. Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds: in the five years before Fellaini’s arrival United won four Premier Leagues and one Champions League. In five seasons since they haven’t come close to winning either. The failings have been systemic and structural. Other, more talented players have underperformed more spectacularly. But it is Fellaini who will be most marked by this, and most closely associated as a symbol of the dark times. But then, he was signed under a false premise in the first place. For years United had craved a proper midfielder, a player with the craft and the touch to control the spaces and work the angles, to drive the deeper rhythms of a game. In Fellaini they got someone who’d had his most spectacular times for Everton as a kind of improvised target-man, a No 10 of the skies, making use of his one really outstanding attribute, that incredible Velcro-touch chest control, the ability to catch long passes with those invisible chest-fingers and roll the ball down his neck, wearing it like a scarf, all the while clearing the area around him with a head-high, studs-up roundhouse ninja lunge. Fellaini’s strength and awkwardness remain his awkwardly-embraced strengths, that feeling he is always on the verge of kicking over a side-table, falling through a plasterboard wall, wrenching down the curtains. Otherwise he is a strange A-list midfielder: not fast, agile, notably creative or notably defensive; not renowned for his passing, dribbling, tackling, vision, finishing or any other of the more standard qualities. At which point it would be hipper, and more in keeping with the traditions of the sideways football column to start a sentence with the words “But still somehow”. To find a way of saying that in fact Fellaini has secretly been better than anyone thought, that he has at least been a fan favourite, an object of more profound and personal inspiration. Except, this isn’t really true, or at least not yet. Fellaini did play every minute of a couple of successful cup finals. He has scored vital goals. But he has also racked up two – yes: two – assists in five and a half years as a Manchester United midfielder. He has been the king of the bad times, played in the loss at home to Sevilla last year and in the four straight defeats to Wolfsburg, Norwich, Bournemouth and Stoke in December 2015. Plus the way managers have used him has seemed to sum up something more insidious. From Moyes to Mourinho Fellaini has been the bad habit you fall back on when there is no other sensible plan, the big red panic button you grope for under the desk, the sodden kebab spread across your chest in the first light of dawn. It is still hard not to associate him with United’s second signing of the post-Fergie age – Juan Mata – his own laughably disconnected tactical opposite. For a while they seemed always to be yoked together on the touchline, Fellaini a stirringly primal figure, United’s giant wicker football-man, Mata scampering around his ankles like the king of the gnomes. Together they made a perfect emblem of the lack of a guiding hand or long-term plan, a general absence of care and close expertise. Got a big bloke? Get a small bloke in next. It has at least been a genuinely fascinating United career, and a rebuttal to the notion that the only interesting stories are success stories. The news that Fellaini may now be staying after all is to be welcomed too, a chance for him to play for the first time in a team not leaning, a little exhaustedly, on his height and power; and, who knows, perhaps to finish all this – Operation Desperate Flick-On, Operation Knee In the Chest – on an unexpectedly happy note.When an expert in financial risk at one of the world’s most powerful private equity outfits tells investors to scale down their exposure to a specific corner of the debt market, it is worth taking notice. Henry McVey, who sits on the risk committee at KKR, said last week that the leveraged loan market – a $1.3tn (£1tn) pile of risky corporate loans – had been on a “great run in recent years” but the firm was now cutting its exposure to the asset class to zero. McVey is not alone in his caution. A growing chorus of global leaders spent 2018 warning that the leveraged loan mountain was getting dangerously large and inviting comparisons with the financial crisis a decade ago. The Bank of England, Australia’s central bank, the International Monetary Fund and members of the US Federal Reserve have raised red flags over so-called leveraged loans, which are offered to companies already in debt but often come with few strings attached. In October last year the Bank’s financial policy committee, which monitors the health of the financial system, pointedly raised the spectre of the 2007-08 credit crunch. It said the “global leveraged loan market was larger than – and was growing as quickly as – the US sub-prime mortgage market had been in 2006”. As with the sub-prime crisis, the bank added, underwriting standards had slipped – in other words, risky corporate debt was too easy to get right now. “Given the decline in underwriting standards, investors in leveraged loans are at increasing risk of loss,” said the Bank. The key question now is whether a bubble in a different corner of the debt market could trigger a market panic. “A quote wrongly attributed to Mark Twain fits here: history rarely repeats, but it does rhyme,” said Rasheed Saleuddin, a research associate at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. While he said it was hard to see the next financial crash coming directly from a failure in the leveraged loan market, Saleuddin added that there was a chance that “small changes in default rates in the loans or even in expectations of same could cause a meltdown”. In the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis, banks were so keen to lend that they liberally handed out mortgages to customers with weak or no credit histories who ended up defaulting when times got tough. Those mortgages had been bundled together and turned into investable products, causing a chain reaction of losses that spread like wildfire throughout the financial system and caused a global downturn. A decade later, rather than doling out risky loans to homeowners, banks are handing out leveraged loans to indebted companies. Many are also “covenant-lite”, meaning they come with fewer strings attached for borrowers, and as a result, present greater risk for lenders. Small changes in default rates in the loans or even in expectations of same could cause a meltdown But since most loans are sold on and packaged as collateralised loan obligations, or CLOs, there are fewer incentives to impose strict terms. Leveraged loans also come with floating rates, making them more attractive for investors, who receive higher interest payments when rates rise. Amir Amel-Zadeh, an associate professor at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, explained that investors in leveraged loans, loan mutual funds and CLOs could face higher losses than investors in the same products during the 2008 crisis due to lower lending standards, an increase in covenant-lite loans and higher levels of corporate indebtedness than 10 years ago. But while the trends in the CLO market were similar, he said the scale was nowhere near the mortgage securitisation market in 2008 – at about a tenth of the size. “So at first sight it is not as worrying from a systemic risk point of view. However, if economic conditions worsen, it can lead to losses for many investors and lead to a similar dry-up in liquidity in these instruments as we have witnessed with sub-prime mortgage securitisations during the 2008 crisis.” Reports have already emerged that the market for CLOs may be cooling, as uncertainty grips financial markets. With fewer investors lining up to take a slice of the leveraged loan market, prices have dropped, and banks have been postponing sales of leveraged loans to investors as a result. “If banks have to keep the loans on their books they will be exposed to the price risk,” Amel-Zadeh said. Without a hungry market to sell leveraged loans to, banks may be less willing to lend so liberally to indebted companies. And without further loans to feed their debt habits, companies could be at risk of default. This particular debt market will be one to watch in 2019.Heidi Allen and Frank Field make an odd partnership at first glance. Allen, 44, the Conservative MP for one of Britain’s richest constituencies, and Field, 76, a Labour MP for 39 years until he resigned over antisemitism in the party, have bonded across the Commons over a shared outrage at poverty. Now they have embarked on a nationwide tour in search of the “other England” shaped by the austerity policies pioneered by Allen’s party. It is proving emotional. Visits to the poorest corners of Newcastle, Glasgow, Morecambe and Cornwall beckon, but they have started in London and Leicester, where on Thursday they heard stories of an illiterate man sanctioned so often under universal credit that he lives on £5 a week; a man so poor he sold all but the clothes he was wearing; and someone being told to walk 44 miles to attend a job interview, despite having had a stroke, to save the state the cost of a £15 bus ticket. Time and again Allen, the MP for South Cambridgeshire, with its biotech start ups and affluent villages, was on the brink of tears as they visited two of the 15 food banks now helping sustain people in the east Midlands city and listened to people from charities, playgroups and community organisations. Away from Westminster’s attempt to solve the “mad riddle” of Brexit, Allen admitted that her patience with her party’s acquiescence over the welfare cuts, which started under George Osborne and the universal credit system, now being rolled out by Theresa May, had reached breaking point. “I have absolutely had enough,” Allen said, eyes reddening, in front of a group who spelled out how the reforms were turning the screw on some of the country’s poorest people. “So I asked Frank if he would join me on a tour of the UK to show the government this exists. Unless we blow the lid off it, my lot are not going to listen.” Robert Kennedy did something similar in the US in 1968 and gave a famous speech describing “another America” where he found children in Mississippi “crippled from hunger”, people in the “black ghetto” warding off rats, and native Americans living with 80% unemployment. In a similar vein, Allen and Field want to know “how the soft underbelly of our society – – ‘the other England’ – can be strengthened so that none of our fellow citizens are pushed into destitution”, Field said. “This denotes a new offensive and shows that parliament is aware there is something not wholesome out there in the nation and the nation sees it,” said Field. It follows the tour by the United Nation’s rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, who last autumn concluded that the government had inflicted “great misery” on its people with “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies. It was at E2, a community centre and food bank in the deprived Beaumont Leys estate in the north-west of Leicester, where Allen’s tears first welled. Council workers explained they had seen a surge in referrals to food banks since the introduction of universal credit. In June, when universal credit was first rolled out in Leicester, just 5% of people referred to food banks in the estate were on the benefit, but that has since risen to 29%. The problems poured forth from people waiting to pick up free food. Kate, 68, revealed how her son, who had suffered a stroke, had been sanctioned 15 times. “The system needs more caring people,” she said. “They are like little Hitlers.” The woman beside her, who didn’t want to be named, said the bailiffs were set to take back her two-bed council house because she was in arrears, including on bedroom tax. She uses the second bedroom for her granddaughter five nights a week, so her son can work, but that doesn’t count because it is not her child. Without much heating she wraps up in a dressing gown, coat and bobble hat. The bureaucratic struggle simply to claim benefits is a big problem. Sixty-five percent of the most vulnerable people who come to the council for help don’t have access to a computer, smart phone or an email address, which are needed to fill out forms. “You must just feel like the world is spiralling around you,” said Allen. “It’s two steps forward and one and a half back.” After housing costs, 41% of children in Leicester – more than 34,000 – are living in poverty. The Leicester South parliamentary constituency was in the poorest 2% of constituencies in the UK in 2018, which represented a slide down the rankings since 2015. Over the last two summer holidays, in the most deprived parts of the city, over 15,000 meals were served to almost 1,650 children, using government funds, according to Feeding Britain, a charity set up by Field and which now includes Allen among its trustees. “If the demand keeps increasing, food banks aren’t going to be sustainable,” Tim Adkin, crisis food manager for Action Homeless, told the MPs at a food bank in a retail unit in the city centre market dressed up to look like a shop, in part to reduce users’ sense of shame. “We can’t keep up with the demand.” It has seen a 20% increase in year-on-year demand. More and more families with children – now 25% of users – and single women are coming in. Adkin is among those giving up on central government to change things. “We are almost in a parallel universe,” Adkin told the MPs. “We are creating our own supply chain for energy and food.” “If you go into the job centre, there’s a barrier,” he said. “If you come in here, we are not the enemy.”Fish and chips is the latest British favourite to get a vegan makeover, with Quorn launching both battered and breaded “fishless fillets”. The fillets will be made using protein derived from a fungus and the company promises to replicate the texture and flakiness of real fish. The launch follows the success of the Greggs vegan sausage roll, which has been selling out across the country. Both products aim to capitalise on the rapidly growing numbers of people eating less meat, fish and dairy products. About a third of Britons have stopped or reduced their consumption of meat, while the Veganuary campaign signed up a record 250,000 people in 193 countries this year. People are reducing their consumption of animal products for a variety of reasons, including concerns over their health, animal welfare and the environment. Most people in rich nations eat more meat than is healthy and research indicates that avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact. The Quorn fillets, which will be available in supermarkets from March, give consumers a new alternative to fish. Many of the world’s fish stocks are overexploited and independent research has shown mycoprotein causes lower carbon emissions than farmed fish. The fishless fillets have taken five years to develop, said Geoff Bryant, the technical director at Quorn Foods UK, who added: “The launch marks the logical next step in helping people reduce our reliance on our oceans for protein.” In 2018, the UK launched more vegan food products  than any other nation. The Quorn fillets join a wide range of “faux fish” products on sale in supermarkets, from fishless fingers to vegan versions of tuna, smoked salmon, prawns, scampi, sushi and even caviar. Vegan alternatives to fish, such as “tofish”, have also gone on sale in pubs and chip shops. Will McCallum, the head of oceans at Greenpeace UK, welcomed the Quorn fillets, saying: “More than 3 billion people depend on the oceans for their primary source of protein, yet 90% of the world’s fish stocks are either being fished at the maximum level or overfished. If we want healthy oceans, we have to look at ways to reduce fishing both by looking at sustainable fishless alternatives, using more sustainable fishing methods and putting large areas of the ocean off-limits so that wildlife can recover.” However, Barrie Deas, the chief executive of the the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, said: “It is perfectly possible to buy and consume fish from sustainable sources. As the International Council for Exploration of the Sea makes clear, all of the main species groups in the north-east Atlantic are not only fished at sustainable levels but are on track to produce high average yields.” Joseph Poore, a food sustainability expert at the University of Oxford, said: “Quorn is leading the market in innovation, and I hope they go further by backing up their sustainability claims with labels on their products spelling out their emissions, impact on biodiversity, water and pesticide use.”China’s achievement in landing a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, announced by Beijing’s state media this morning, has ramifications that go far beyond the simple statement of this being a “first” for mankind. It puts China on the map of international space exploration on a par with the existing space powers of the United States and Russia – the European Union to a lesser extent – but also adds a new dimension. It is the first time a landing has been attempted on the far side of the moon, with the particular communications challenges this entails, and it has been a success. The first response from the US space agency, Nasa, was generous, as scientists to scientists: what China had managed was a “first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment”. The response in political and military quarters in Washington, as in Moscow, however, is likely to reflect trepidation. There is now a serious newcomer to be considered. China was late into space, sending its first astronaut into orbit in 2003 – 40 years after the Soviet Union and the US were embarking on their space race. Now Beijing has done something neither of the other two space powers has done – that may well be because they had other priorities for their space programmes, such as manned flight, human survival in space and the fascination with distant planets, first of all Mars. After Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon – a US triumph that provided some consolation for the shock that a Russian, Yuri Gagarin, became the first man to go into space – there was a sense that the moon had been “done”. Greater challenges awaited. Will that change now, and could the moon become a potentially contested territory? At a popular level, space has not lost its power to fascinate. The proximity of the moon and the mystery of its far side guarantee that China’s latest mission will command global attention beyond the scientific space fraternity. It will enhance China’s international standing, and could well inspire an interest in China and space among young people, as the US-Russia space race once did. The mix of admiration and anxiety that accompanied early Soviet space successes helped prompt the government of the then UK prime minister Harold Wilson to encourage (and fund) Russian teaching in the country’s schools and universities – and is one reason why I, and other Britons of my generation, had the opportunity to study Russian. Today the challenge, the excitement, and to some the perceived threat comes from a rising China – and now not just on planet Earth. An open question is how far China will be welcomed – or not – into the existing space “club”. After the no-holds-barred space rivalry of the US and the Soviet Union that constituted a part of the cold war, the US and Russia have settled into a more collaborative relationship in space that has largely withstood the worst of diplomatic tensions. The US suspended its space shuttle programme in 2011, but it has continued to send astronauts into space using Russian rockets, and the International Space Station has remained in use as a shared venture. Diplomatic expulsions, accusations of election interference and terrestrial disputes most recently over Ukraine and Syria have not affected cooperation in pursuit of national scientific and security interests in space. Space has remained a sanctions-free zone. It has taken more than half a century for US-Russia space cooperation to reach this point of relative equanimity, but the arrival of China as a serious player – graphically illustrated by its latest success – has the potential to disturb this. Will Russia, for instance, see China, with its recent successes and innovations, as a future partner in space or a deadly rival? The US – through its long-Sinophobic Congress – seems already to have made up its mind. Not only is it increasingly treating China as an economic and military competitor, but President Donald Trump recently ordered the creation of a new Space Command for the US armed services, suggesting the direction of his thinking here, too. So far, China’s precise ambitions for its space programme remain unclear. Establishing itself as a space power is surely one – but is it as a space power, or the space power? The equipment it has now sent to the moon suggests that communications and new natural resources are priorities. How far will the US, in particular, be prepared to watch and wait while Beijing potentially races ahead in these sensitive areas? Stand by for the US and Russia to take a new interest in the moon. • Mary Dejevsky is a former foreign correspondentSam Curran, seven Tests into his fledgling England career, could have been forgiven for thinking it was all a bit of doddle. Surrey’s 20-year-old all-rounder had tasted only success up to this point, every cap had resulted in victory and either his jail-breaking, lower-order batting or bustling, left-arm swing had contributed along the way. Three days into his eighth Test match the picture was very different. West Indies have put England through the mangle in Barbados, with the contrastingly built Jason Holder and Shane Dowrich combining for an attack-breaking, seventh-wicket stand of 295 that set their guests a fanciful 628 to win and inflicted some scarring wounds along the way. Among the most brutal strikes of Holder’s epic 202 not out was the six that took the pair’s vigil into three figures, launching Curran over extra cover and around 20 rows back in the Hewitt and Inniss stand. With roughly 10 inches in height difference between batsman and bowler, it felt like the Caribbean equivalent of the Fast Show’s competitive dad. This has been a chastening match for Curran the bowler. With a quicker ball that scarcely touches 80mph, he needs the ball to swing. But this in turn requires the right length and that is something he has been unable to locate consistently throughout. After 29 overs figures of one for 123 represent the first time the tough school of Test cricket hit home. None of this is to say that England’s crawl towards a 1-0 deficit falls on Curran’s shoulders, rather this talented young cricketer has been a touch exposed by a selection that, given its contrast to the home side’s, looked suspect from the outset. The brains trust seemingly stared too long into the pitch during the build-up, like one of those magic eye posters where everyone agrees they see the same thing despite being privately baffled. The wrong team can still win a Test, of course, and it is in the batting department where England, blown away for 77 all out on Thursday, will feel most sheepish. Kemar Roach was breathtaking in his five-wicket surge and dovetailed superbly with the rest of the four-man seam attack while the tourists were caught cold in sunny climes. But for all the issues with the batting – England, with only Joe Root averaging over 40 in the top six, appear determined to lay the table using an array of Swiss army knives – it is with the ball that the balance of a two-spinner, three-seamer attack has been shown up as the product of overthink. The knock-on effect of Stuart Broad’s omission has not just been the pressure on Curran, nor a West Indies first innings that might have reined in a touch more, but also the additional burden it has placed on Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes. With Moeen Ali finding his natural snap elusive and Adil Rashid brutalised by Holder in particular, Root has been forced to bowl the pair into the ground. When Anderson trudged back after his opening six-over spell on the third morning he understandably resembled C-3PO heading for an oil bath. The 36-year-old may be as fit as a flea but he needs 48 overs in the space of three days, with only a couple of hours watching the batsmen flop, like he needs another tour to Sri Lanka. Stokes has been ever-willing for his captain as a bowler and a constant threat. But for all the impressive physical work put in since the Bristol incident – the all-rounder has returned doubly determined not to waste his career – his hulking frame cannot be expected to pound in to this degree. The 27-year-old sent down 50.3 overs in this match, only nine balls shy of his heftiest workload against India at Trent Bridge in 2014. And he has undergone knee surgery during this time. At the start of an all-important World Cup and Ashes year it is too soon to be flogging two of England’smost precious commodities.Boris Johnson has wrongly claimed that he “didn’t make any remarks about Turkey, mate” during the EU referendum campaign, in comments that overshadowed a speech in Staffordshire intended to burnish his leadership credentials. The former foreign secretary’s clumsy attempt to rewrite history eclipsed a speech highly critical of Theresa May’s Brexit negotiating strategy, and earned him criticism for his refusal to disown or even recognise what he once said. While taking questions after his speech, Johnson was asked about his views on immigration and why he and the Vote Leave campaign he fronted had pushed so heavily the potential impact on immigration of Turkey being allowed to join the European Union. Johnson initially said: “I didn’t say anything about Turkey in the referendum campaign. I didn’t say a thing about Turkey,” and began to argue that he was “in the camp” of those who supported the principle of immigration. Asked to disown the idea of Turkish EU membership as a threat or scare tactic, Johnson said he had nothing to apologise for. “Since I made no remarks, I can’t disown them,” he said. Pressed again, he added: “I didn’t make any remarks about Turkey, mate.” However, during the 2016 referendum campaign, Johnson repeatedly raised the idea that Turkey – whose application to join the EU had stalled – could eventually become an EU member and its citizens would eventually able to migrate to the UK. A week before referendum day in June 2016, Johnson and Michael Gove wrote a joint letter to David Cameron claiming that the government supported the idea of Turkish membership of the EU. “The public will draw the reasonable conclusion that the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote leave and take back control on 23 June,” the letter stated. And during the BBC’s EU referendum debate, two days before the poll, Johnson said: “It’s government policy to accelerate Turkish accession.” A couple of weeks earlier, interviewed on the Andrew Marr Show, he said: “Frankly, I don’t mind whether Turkey joins the EU, provided the UK leaves the EU.” Warnings about the consequences of a possible Turkish accession to the EU were a core message in the campaign run by Vote Leave, alongside the discredited claim that Brexit would allow an extra £350m a week to be spent on the NHS. Johnson was the figurehead of Vote Leave, easily its most popular political backer. But despite his central role in the campaign, Johnson tried to claim on Friday that he was somewhat peripheral. “You do me too much honour. I was happy to support leave, and I do and I did,” he said after the speech, given at the headquarters of JCB, the digger and tractor maker, which is owned by a Vote Leave and Conservative donor, Anthony Bamford. Unlike Johnson, Gove has partially apologised for Vote Leave’s tactics. When asked, for a political book published in the summer, if he had been happy making appeals to “some very low sentiments”, Gove replied: “If it had been left entirely to me, the leave campaign would have a slightly different feel.” Turkey’s EU membership talks have been in the deep-freeze for years, with no imminent prospect of change. Relations worsened in 2016 after the country’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, cracked down on his opponents after a failed coup. Every EU member state holds a veto over Turkey’s EU membership, contrary to the claims of Brexit supporters during the referendum. Johnson has some Turkish ancestry, but this has not stopped him from getting into trouble when talking about the country. He once called Erdoğan a “wankerer” in an offensive limerick that won him a competition organised by the Spectator magazine, of which he was formerly the editor. The row about Johnson and Vote Leave’s use of the Turkey issue to persuade the public to vote in favour of Brexit overshadowed an undisguised leadership pitch in which Johnson accused May of “wasting our time” trying to get MPs to change their minds about her “ex-deal”. He said: “I fear that at present we are facing the wrong direction and trying to change the wrong bit of the landscape, and if we spend the next few weeks hydraulically straining to move MPs from one camp to the other, pointlessly trying to get Corbyn to parley at No 10, we will be wasting our time.” Pointedly reminding his audience that “the prime minister’s deal was thrown out by a record 230 votes, the largest majority in parliamentary history”, Johnson argued that May should go back the EU “fortified with the emphatic and conclusive mandate of parliament and demand real change to that backstop”. The former minister, who resigned last summer unhappy with the drift of May’s negotiating strategy, said the UK should hold back “at least half of the £39bn” that the prime minister had agreed to pay Brussels until it agreed to a deal on revised terms. May has been meeting some party leaders and Tory backbenchers as she tries to work out how to resolve the Brexit impasse. Allies of Johnson said he was not on the invite list. Few believe the EU will concede on the Irish backstop. “I am very pro-Turkish, but what I certainly can’t imagine is a situation in which 77 million [his estimate] of my fellow Turks and those of Turkish origin can come here without any checks at all. That is really mad” – Daily Express, 18 April 2016 “Frankly, I don’t mind whether Turkey joins the EU, provided the UK leaves the EU” – BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, 5 June 2016 “The public will draw the reasonable conclusion that the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote leave and take back control on 23 June” – letter with Michael Gove to David Cameron, 16 June 2016 “It’s government policy to accelerate Turkish accession” – BBC EU referendum debate, 21 June 2016 What Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave’s campaign director, said on 9 January 2017: “If Boris, Gove and Gisela [Stuart, Vote Leave’s chair] had not supported us and picked up the baseball bat marked ‘Turkey/NHS/£350m’ with five weeks to go, then 650,000 votes might have been lost.”If I were in charge of brownies and their taxonomy, there would be a proper list of categories. The only thing that unifies them really is the chocolate, beyond which they could be cakey, crumbly, chewy, chocolatey or, er, cocoa-ey. This one is my perfect brownie: dense and fudgy, thanks to the chia seeds; and rich, but not sickeningly so, with a salted caramel-like flavour that comes from using white miso and salt together. It makes this brownie incredibly special. And there is no category for that. Make sure you use flavourless coconut oil, unless you actually want to add a coconut flavour, and check that the chocolate is suitable for vegans. Prep 10 minCook 45 minMakes 16 4 ½ tbsp milled chia seeds150g flavourless coconut oil250g dark chocolate (85%), broken into small pieces420g light brown muscovado sugar120g plain flour3 ½ tbsp white miso (shiro miso)1 tsp flaky sea salt Heat the oven to 190c (180C fan)/390F/gas 6, and line a 20cm x 22cm square tin with greaseproof paper. In a small bowl, mix the milled chia seeds with 270ml water and set aside. Put the coconut oil and broken chocolate into a medium-sized saucepan, and set over a low heat. Stir occasionally until melted, then mix in the sugar, flour and miso, and crumble in the salt flakes. Finally, stir in the soaked and bloomed chia seeds, then pour into the lined tin and gently shake to distribute evenly. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 45 minutes, then remove. The brownies might still be a bit wobbly in the middle, but they will soon settle down as they cool and be deliciously fudgy. Leave to cool completely, then cut into 16 squares.Facebook closed the book on its scandal-plagued year Wednesday, with strong fourth quarter financial results that beat analyst expectations for earnings and revenue. The results highlighted how divorced Facebook’s business success is from its public reputation, which suffered another blow Wednesday when Apple punished the app maker for violating its rules with a program that paid users as young as 13 to install an app that surveilled them. The company posted a record profit of $6.88bn for the final three months of 2018, compared with $4.27bn the year before, with revenue rising 30% to $16.64bn. Key usage metrics – daily active users and monthly active users – both saw 9% year-over-year growth. Facebook now estimates that it has 2bn daily active users of at least one of its entire “family” of apps – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The positive results for revenue and user growth sent shares soaring 8% in after-hours trading. Crucially, usage metrics grew across all geographic regions, including slight growth in Europe and North America. In July, Facebook’s stock price plummeted after the second-quarter earnings showed stagnating user growth in North America and a slight decline in Europe. On a conference call with investors, executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg sketched a path for the company to move forward from the constant damage control mode of 2018. Both executives attempted to frame the company’s extensive problems – such as the misuse of private data, rampant misinformation, and foreign influence operations – as “social issues” endemic to the internet as a whole, and not particular to Facebook. Zuckerberg asserted that Facebook had “fundamentally changed how we run this company” and greatly improved its systems to reduce future problems. As such, he suggested that in 2019, the company would be able to refocus on product development to “deliver more experiences that meaningfully improve people’s lives” with new innovations in messaging, payments, groups, video and hardware. Among the product changes is a planned integration of messaging platforms for WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, which was first reported by the New York Times last week. Zuckerberg confirmed that the company was considering this change, which he said was still a “long term project” and would see more of Facebook’s products using end-to-end encryption. “Facebook might have delivered its weakest quarterly revenue growth since listing in 2012, but these numbers are actually some of the most reassuring in its short history,” said George Salmon, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. “The way that I feel starting 2019 is that we have clear roadmaps looking at what we need to do,” Zuckerberg said. “I do feel like we’ve started to turn a corner and have a clear plan for what we need to do now.”Céline Dion is the subject of a forthcoming biopic, The Power of Love, slated for release in 2020. French star Valérie Lemercier will direct the film and play the singer. Dion, 50, has authorised the project and granted the rights to her songs, Variety reports. The Power of Love will follow Dion from her childhood in Quebec in the 1960s, where she was the youngest of 14 children in what she has described as a poor but happy family, to her teenage rise to fame. Dion made her first recording, Ce n’était qu’un rêve, aged 12. She wrote the song with her mother Thérèse and brother Jacques. Another brother, Michael, sent the song to manager René Angélil, who remortgaged his home to fund her first album. Angélil and Dion married in December 1994 and remained together until his death in January 2016. Lemercier said she was touched by Dion’s grief following Angélil’s death, and began learning about Dion, her husband and mother . “I discovered the strength of their love story and their great humour, and I better understood how the alchemy of their three individual ambitions made an unwanted little girl the greatest star on the planet,” Lemercier said. Cécile Gaget of French studio Gaumont said the film would be “in the vein of “[forthcoming Elton John biopic] Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody, but unlike those movies which were produced and released by studios, The Power of Love is a potential box office hit accessible to independent distributors”. Of the director, she added: “She’s a powerhouse who knows how to move and how to dance. And she’s an perfectionist and an overachiever in many ways like Dion.” Lemercier has directed a number of domestic hits, including Palais Royal! and 50 Is the New 30, and has a background as a chanteuse, herself performing one-woman shows in Paris. The Power of Love joins a recent glut of music biopics and musician-endorsed movies. Bruce Springsteen has endorsed and lent 16 of his songs to the soundtrack of Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded by the Light, an adaptation of Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir about discovering Springsteen as a Muslim teenager growing up in 80s Britain. The film was acquired for $15m by New Line and Warner Bros at Sundance. The Dirt, an adaptation of the Mötley Crüe biography of the same name, will premiere on Netflix in March. The heavy metal band have recorded four new songs for the film’s soundtrack, which also features 14 of their hits. Dion will play her only European date of 2019 at London’s Hyde Park this summer, headlining the British Summer Time festival. It will be her first performance in the UK since summer 2017. The concert will come shortly after she completes her Las Vegas concert residency, which began in 2011 and will close on 8 June. She recently removed her 1998 duet with R Kelly, I’m Your Angel, from streaming services, following the broadcast of the Lifetime documentary series, Surviving R Kelly.The biggest rift in Christianity in centuries is expected to open up after a new Orthodox church in Ukraine gained formal independence from Moscow in a move set to heighten geopolitical tensions in the region. The newly elected head of the Ukrainian Orthodox church travelled to Istanbul to receive the “tomos”, or decree of autocephaly (independence), from the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, in an elaborate ceremony in St George’s Cathedral on the eve of the Orthodox Christmas. “The pious Ukrainian people have awaited this blessed day for seven entire centuries,” Bartholomew said in his address on Saturday. The Ukrainian church has been under the jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchate since 1686, and its independence is a heavy blow to Moscow. The Russian church, which currently has about 150 million Orthodox Christians under its authority, could lose a fifth of its members. In a move expected to split the 300 million-strong global Orthodox church, the Russians have said they will break off relations with Constantinople as a result of Bartholomew’s decision to grant independence to the Ukrainian church. Orthodox churches in other countries are aligning with Moscow or Constantinople in the rift. The row over independence for the Ukrainian church is seen as a proxy for political tensions between Moscow and Kiev. In 2014 – more than two decades after Ukraine broke away from the former Soviet Union – Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and supports separatist rebels in the east of the country. Constantinople’s recognition of an autonomous church is a boost to Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, who is facing a tough battle for re-election in March. He has backed autocephaly as part of a pushback against Russian influence in Ukraine. Kiev claims Moscow-backed churches in Ukraine are a Kremlin tool to spread propaganda and support fighters in the east in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people. The churches strongly deny this. Last month, Poroshenko and scores of bishops chose Metropolitan Epiphanius as the head of the new Ukrainian Orthodox church in a ceremony at St Sophia’s Cathedral in Kiev. Accompanied by solemn liturgical singing at the packed Istanbul ceremony on Saturday, Poroshenko thanked Bartholemew “for the courage to make this historic decision,” adding: “I want to thank the generations of Ukrainians who dreamed … and finally God sent us the Orthodox church of Ukraine.” The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, wants the Ukrainian church to stay within Moscow’s orbit, and has warned of “a heavy dispute, if not bloodshed” over attempts to reassign ownership of church property. The leader of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, is a close ally of Putin, whom he has described as “a miracle of God”. Kirill has also objected to Bartholomew’s close relationship with the Roman Catholic church and Pope Francis, and has long seen Moscow as a rival power centre to Constantinople. Bartholomew, who is “first among equals” of Orthodox patriarchs, criticised Moscow’s intention to break off relations as “a form of pressure and coercion in order to make others agree with one’s opinions is unacceptable” in a homily last month. He added: “I’m certain that soon our sister church of Russia will repent for this extreme decision.” Meanwhile, Putin said: “I think Bartholomew’s main incentive and motive is to subdue this territory and then start profiting from it.” In recent weeks, the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, has searched church property, including the home of the father superior of Kiev’s biggest and oldest monastery, which is part of the Russian Orthodox church. Igor Guskov, the SBU’s chief of staff, said the cleric was suspected of “inciting hatred”. The SBU has denounced the Moscow patriarchate as a tool of the Kremlin and has questioned priests loyal to Moscow.Next week the House of Commons will take what is probably the most consequential vote of our era. Unless the government again gets cold feet, key aspects of this country’s economic model, social cohesion and international future will be shaped in the so-called “meaningful vote” over Theresa May’s Brexit deal. It will define what Britain is more than any other political event in modern times. It poses questions and choices that cannot be shirked. This newspaper supported Britain’s entry into the European Community in the 1970s. We opposed Britain’s departure from the European Union in 2016. We took these positions on the basis of the same long-term principles. Britain is a European nation by virtue of its geography and history. It shares enduring economic and cultural ties and values with the rest of Europe. Above all, Britain has a direct interest, born from the suffering of our peoples in decades of war, in the peace and harmony of Europe from which all can prosper. In the era of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, Britain’s engagement in Europe is freshly urgent. However, the Guardian has never been an uncritical supporter of the EU. It has warned against the delusion of a United States of Europe. It has upheld the centrality of democratic nation states within the EU and stressed the enduring reality of national borders. It was enthusiastic about the epochal re-engagement between eastern and western Europe after the collapse of communism, but measured about the practicalities. It was critical about the reckless way that European monetary union was launched in the 1990s and, after much thought, preferred that Britain should keep its distance from the eurozone and its rules. These concerns have been vindicated by events. Although we opposed Brexit, it is essential to understand why a majority voted for it. Leave’s victory cannot simply be dismissed as nostalgia for empire or dislike of foreigners, though these were factors. Many leave voters felt abandoned and unheard in an increasingly unequal Britain marked by vast wealth in parts of south-east England and austerity and post-industrial abandonment elsewhere. Income levels in London have risen by a third since the financial crash – but have dropped by 14% in Yorkshire and Humberside. A cry for change In June 2016 all this came together in the belief of a majority of voters that the EU did not offer the right solution to Britain’s problems. Those of us who disagree need to show humility about what happened, respect the majority, understand the swirling dissatisfaction underlying it, and address it with sustained and practical answers. Ever since the referendum, the Guardian has tried to follow that approach in these columns. We accepted, without enthusiasm, that leave had won. We saw the vote as a cry for change. We hoped that Brexit would therefore be negotiated in the best way open to Mrs May’s government. We took the view that a “soft Brexit” would be the least bad outcome because it would prioritise jobs and the economy, maintain important links with the rest of Europe, not least in Ireland, and help to bind the wounds of 2016 by ensuring that the concerns of the 48% who voted to remain were taken into account alongside those of the 52% who voted to leave. If the government had produced something along these lines, there might have been a pragmatic consensus around a soft Brexit. We awaited Mrs May’s detailed proposals. This was the fair approach. Yet the Brexit process fell vastly short. Ministers did not say what they wanted before invoking article 50. The government took a hard approach, not a soft one. Mrs May misread the public mood in the election of 2017. Her ministers proved incompetent negotiators. They were dismissive of parliament instead of seeking to build a majority there. Nothing substantial was done to address the social causes of the vote. The prime minister prioritised holding the Conservative party together over uniting the country – and failed in both. Her government was contemptuous of genuine concerns about everything from the economy to civil rights. It took little notice of Scotland and Wales. It failed to see that the DUP’s sectarian interests in Ireland are a world away from the interests of Northern Ireland or modern Britain. Instead of producing a deal which could command a majority in the Commons, it produced one that doesn’t even command a majority in the Tory party. Collective floundering This outcome is not the fault of the remainers, the opposition parties or political elites. The government’s failure is squarely its own responsibility. Brexit has never been a properly worked out policy prescription for Britain’s problems. For many Tories, it is an attitude of mind, an amorphous resentment against the modern world, foreigners, and Britain’s loss of great-power status. This explains more than anything else why hardline Brexiters reject all compromise, refuse responsibility for the practical options, and continue to fantasise about a no-deal outcome which would make things far worse and hurt poor people most of all. It also explains why Mrs May’s deal – which leaves almost everything about the future relationship with Europe up in the air for two more years – is a leap of faith, and scarcely more acceptable than no deal at all. There has been a larger collective floundering across the political spectrum, including in Labour. We are living through a period of national democratic failure. We are deeply divided in many ways, not just over Brexit. Long-term comprehensive reform of Britain’s concentrations of economic, social and political power is essential. Inequality must be tackled in a radical way, from the top as well as the bottom. There must be innovative, sustainable plans for towns, for the north, for the many areas that feel excluded from progress and success. There is no single magic answer to this national need. The past is no solution. That is partly why the Guardian has been and continues to be cautious about advocating a second referendum on Brexit as the solution to this wider failure of politics-as-usual. It may, in the end, be the only practical option facing MPs on Brexit. But badly framed referendums are a crude way of making democratic decisions, especially because referendums empower those who shout loudest. Parliament’s role is crucial, but parliament is not perfect. Brexit has exposed the decrepit nature of our political system’s hardware (its constitutional arrangements) as well as its software (the way we do politics). We need to open up to new forms of power and politics – better distributed, more diverse, more strongly integrated, and more modern. Parliamentary sovereignty needs to be better rooted in the people. Other forms of deliberative debate are essential buttresses of the parliamentary process. Ireland found a reasoned route through its own long and divisive argument over abortion through such a mechanism. A citizens’ assembly of voters – a representative group of voters selected at random – held a dignified and detailed civic conversation over several weekend sessions about the practical way forward. Its reasoned conclusions formed the basis of the proposal approved by the Irish people last May and passed into law last month. The contrast between this form of political dispute resolution and Britain’s argument in and since 2016 is humbling. This lesson must be learned and applied in the reopening of the Brexit question. Plausible alternatives There is no outcome on the table this month that will not be divisive for years to come. That is true of a no-deal Brexit, which would be disastrous for the vast majority, especially younger people. It is true for Mrs May’s deal, as it sets the terms of the UK’s departure but not the nature of the future relationship with the EU, leaving the door open to more venomous debate. And it is true of a second referendum, because leave voters will fear that this is merely a device to rob them of their voice and restore a failed form of politics which has done little or nothing for them. No one creates division lightly. But divisions can be mitigated and rationally resolved in significant ways if the perils are recognised and the anxieties that underlie them are determinedly addressed. If Mrs May’s deal is rejected, as it should be, Britain should pause the article 50 process and put Brexit on hold. Parliament should explicitly reject no-deal. MPs should then open up the debate to the country: first, by establishing a citizens’ assembly to examine the options and issues that face the nation; and second, by giving parliament the right, if it so chooses, to put these alternatives in a referendum this year or next. Such a vote should not be a repeat of 2016, but a choice between new options for Britain’s future relationship with Europe which are spelled out and which parliament can implement. This would require a set of clear and plausible alternatives, and the time and political support for the assembly to deliberate. Given the schisms that we are seeking to heal, the medicine is not less democracy but more. A new and fairer deal This newspaper wants to see a reformed Britain within a reformed European Union. Neither part of this will be better achieved with Britain outside the EU. The issue facing the country this month is not simply Brexit. It is the kind of Britain in Europe we seek to be. All the major parties have, in different ways, let the country down on Brexit. That is why any parliamentary vote for a second referendum must also be rooted in a more radical approach to political economy, in actively reducing the inequality between regions and communities, in a practical debate about immigration control, and ultimately in reform of democratic institutions. The correct relationship with Europe is inextricably linked to the need to invest in future-focused industries and work, and to a whole-nation redistribution of investment and power to the English regions, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is a movement that, in the current parliament, can only be achieved if Labour wants it to happen. The responsibility on the Labour party to rise to the occasion is very great and will define its future relevance. The overarching purpose must be to bind Britain together, not force it further apart. This intent must be realised in long-term national promises, strategies and programmes, aiming at leave and remain voters alike and across the political spectrum. The message must be that this country needs a new and fairer deal, and that this is best guaranteed by a better Britain in a better Europe. The government has failed, so we must go back to the people.Good morning, I’m Warren Murray bringing you news that doesn’t go round the houses. At least 55 parliamentarians have written to the Metropolitan police commissioner calling for action over abuse of MPs, most of them women, by pro-Brexit protesters outside parliament. The Conservative MP Anna Soubry faced chants from protesters calling her a “Nazi” and a “traitor”. Labour’s Mary Creagh said such “vile, misogynist thuggery, abuse and harassment” raised particular worries following the murder of Jo Cox in 2016 by a far-right terrorist. The MPs’ letter to the Met chief, Cressida Dick, reads: “After months of peaceful and calm protests by groups representing a range of political views on Brexit, an ugly element of individuals with strong far-right and extreme-right connections, which your officers are well aware of, have increasingly engaged in intimidatory and potentially criminal acts targeting members of parliament, journalists, activists and members of the public.” The Commons Speaker, John Bercow, has also urged officers to do more to protect MPs. Scotland Yard has confirmed it is investigating. In parliament today, Labour is poised to support a backbench amendment to prevent a no-deal Brexit. And despite praising Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Vote Leave director Dominic Cummings, Lucy Mangan gives two out of five stars to Brexit: The Uncivil War which has gone to air on Channel 4 overnight. A superficial treatment that puts Cummings too firmly at the centre of everything, Mangan suggests – “Farage and Banks become cartoonish buffoons instead of dangerous shit-stirrers”. Carole Cadwalladr, who exposed dirty tricks in the leave campaign, takes writer James Graham to task. Meanwhile in Bolsover, a constituency that voted 70% leave, Helen Pidd finds that even some remain voters now support Brexit – “The way the EU has treated the UK on its exit has opened my eyes up a little bit,” says one – while the idea of a second referendum is anathema. Privatisation: no further, say NHS chiefs – Health service leaders want Theresa May to scrap Conservative legislation that forces the tendering of contracts for care. Their latest long-term plan, which Downing Street has endorsed, warns that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 is damaging the health service and curtailing its improvement. An estimated £8.7bn of the health service budget went to non-NHS providers of care in 2017-18. The NHS bosses say having to obey general competition rules prevents them choosing the best option for spending the “NHS pound” – Virgin Care has come under heavy criticism for suing the health service after having a bid rejected. Here is what the long-term plan means for patients. Uber shooter switches plea – An Uber driver who told police he was compelled to kill by a “devil figure” on the app has entered guilty pleas to murdering six people in between fares. Defence attorney Eusebio Solis said he had advised Jason Dalton not to plead guilty over the 2016 shooting spree in and around Kalamazoo, Michigan. But Dalton dropped an insanity defence and told the judge: “I’ve wanted this for quite a while.” Solis said: “There are personal reasons for him. He does not want to put his family through that, or the victims’ families, through the trial. It’s his decision.” The pleas mean he could be sentenced to life without parole. Drone users face curbs – Police will be handed extra powers to combat drones after the mass disruption at Gatwick airport in the run-up to Christmas. Exclusion zones around airports will be extended to about a three-mile radius, and further from runway ends, while police will be able to issue on-the-spot fines. Operators of larger drones will be required to register and take an online drone pilot competency test, and the Home Office is to test the use of counter-drone technology at airports and prisons. Police will be empowered to land, seize and search drones. Gene pairs – “You have to tolerate another animal next to you for an extended period of time and that is not easy.” It might sound to some like the institution of marriage, but the scientist is talking about monogamous species and what makes them stick together. Researchers say they have located the DNA that correlates with certain animals staying paired up to survive and raise offspring while others go their separate ways. “What evolution came up with is brilliant,” says Hans Hoffman, a senior author on the paper. “When we enter into a pair bond, or have offspring we must take care of, we find it rewarding. The reward system gets hijacked.” Future studies might manipulate genes in animals to see if it makes monogamous species promiscuous and vice versa. From mugshots to happy snaps – The privately run Lowdham Grange prison in Nottinghamshire has been praised by inspectors for putting in a photo booth so inmates can take pictures with their visiting families. The Ministry of Justice says helping prisoners keep up family ties leads to lower rates of reoffending. Lowdham Grange, run by Serco, was found to have a high rate of violent incidents, and has put in a hotline where inmates can report violent or antisocial behaviour. “We did see some innovative practice, and recent improvements needed to be embedded,” said Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons. As Kim Jong-un visits China again and attempts to negotiate a fresh summit with Donald Trump, the Guardian’s Tania Branigan looks at his leadership so far, while Emma Graham-Harrison describes a rare trip to Pyongyang and the humanitarian conditions for ordinary North Koreans. Plus: Catherine Shoard, at the start of the annual film awards season, argues prizes are not necessarily a mark of quality … The commission on the future of social housing believes 3.1m new social homes are needed to house people in three groups: those in greatest need, including the homeless, younger trapped renters and older renters. Robert Booth speaks to people from each of these groups. Rúben Neves’s second-half goal gave Wolverhampton Wanderers a 2-1 win over Liverpool in the FA Cup third round before last night’s fourth-round draw pitted Arsenal and Manchester United against each. Newport were rewarded for their exploits against Leicester City with a trip to Middlesbrough. Crucial talks on the future of European club rugby are about to commence with Heineken Champions Cup organisers seeking assurances that all parties are fully committed to the tournament beyond 2022. Alex Hepburn, a Worcestershire CCC all-rounder, raped a sleeping woman after helping to set up a sexual conquest “game” with friends on WhatsApp, a court has heard. World Anti-Doping Agency experts hope to finally get their hands on secret Russian doping data after a row over specialist IT equipment was resolved. The Ferrari Formula One team have replaced their team principal, Maurizio Arrivabene, with Mattia Binotto, their chief technical officer. And when a mugger approached a woman on the streets of Rio, he had little idea how things badly would turn out for him – his would-be victim was UFC strawweight fighter Polyana Viana, who ensured the encounter ended in predictable and bloody fashion. Overnight the ousted Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn has declared he is innocent of any wrongdoing as he appeared in a Tokyo court charged with financial misconduct. “I have always acted with integrity,” Ghosn said. “I never received any compensation from Nissan that was not disclosed, nor did I ever enter into any binding contract with Nissan to be paid a fixed amount that was not disclosed.” Shares have been mixed in Asia with officials keeping silent after two days of talks on the China-US trade tensions wrapped up. A short time ago Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was up 1.1% while the Hang Seng had added 0.3%. Australia’s S&P ASX 200 gained 0.6% and the South Korean Kospi gave up 0.2%. Shares fell in Taiwan and Thailand but rose in Singapore and Indonesia. The FTSE is forecast to open higher, while the pound has been trading at $1.276 and €1.115 overnight. Most front pages lead with news of May’s NHS plan and the tens of thousands of new staff needed for it to work. The i says: “The NHS needs YOU”, while the Mirror claims the plan is “Wrong medicine”. The Mail (“The doctor will see you by Skype”) and the Times (“Millions of patients to see doctor by Skype”) focus on the teleconferencing part of the plan. The Express seems to eat up the PM’s announcement, hailing an “NHS fit for 21st century”, whereas the Guardian says: “Time to curb privatisation of care, NHS chiefs tell PM”. The Telegraph runs a Brexit story: “UK ‘puts out feelers’ to pause Article 50”, the FT has “SoftBank slashes back WeWork investment plans after tech rout” and the Sun is still on Wayne Rooney’s arrest: “Wait till I get Roo home”. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comJimmy Anderson believes he has cracked bowling in all but one of Test cricket’s overseas outposts after a four‑wicket masterclass in Bridgetown made him the first England player to take 200 victims away from home. Now 36 but seemingly evergreen, Anderson admitted to feeling like “a spare part” on England’s tour to Sri Lanka. He took one wicket from two Tests as the spinners dominated in a historic 3-0 series victory by Joe Root’s side. Against West Indies on Wednesday he struck to end Shai Hope’s ominous-looking 57 with a ball that was 65 overs old, before his late burst with the second fresh Duke gutted the lower middle order to finish the first day with four for 33 from 24 overs. Anderson, whose 200th away wicket was a brute to get Shane Dowrich caught at slip, said: “I’ve always enjoyed the challenge away from home but it’s often been difficult to get to grips with conditions. “I guess it’s getting to know my game and getting my skills and confidence up. Now I feel I can bowl on most pitches – though you could probably take Sri Lanka out of that. Tours like that make you appreciate when there’s a bit of something for you. There was a bit of swing here even though the wicket was pretty flat.” Anderson is without his regular strike-partner, Stuart Broad, and the pair have gone four Tests since their last dual outing. They share 1,002 Test wickets between them – 851 when in the same side – and the senior man is sympathetic to Root’s tricky task in selecting the team. “Of course it causes conversation, it’s a massive decision,” Anderson said. “He’s a guy who has played 124 Tests but you have a really talented all‑rounder [Sam Curran], in that respect it shows how strong our squad is. It’s tough for Joe but that’s why he gets paid the big bucks.” A late collapse left West Indies on 264 for eight at stumps but they still have the dangerous Shimron Hetmyer unbeaten on 56 after an electric innings. Roston Chase, who made 54 from No 5, thinks Hetmyer could yet bring about a handy first-innings total on a pitch that offered plenty late on. Chase said: “Shimron recently got a heavy contract in the Indian Premier League [£450,000 at Royal Challengers Bangalore] and he’s showing why. Hopefully he can take on the mantle tomorrow and see if we can push on to get a good enough score.”Reports of two drone sightings temporarily halted arrivals at the second largest airport in the New York metropolitan area on Tuesday, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said. The drones were reported by flights preparing to land at Newark Liberty international airport in northern New Jersey, the spokesman said. The drones were seen flying at approximately 3,500ft over another nearby airport, Teterboro, which is about 20 miles to the north. No further drone sightings have been reported, and arrivals have since resumed at the airport, the spokesman said. The airport, operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said it was “supporting all federal law enforcement authorities as they investigate this incident”, in a statement posted on Twitter. The brief pause comes amid concern over the potential for drones to wreak havoc on air traffic. In late December, drone sightings near the UK’s Gatwick airport resulted in utter chaos as about 1,000 flights were cancelled over three days, affecting approximately 140,000 people. On 8 January, another drone sighting caused flights to be grounded at London Heathrow airport. The Newark airport is one of the busiest in the US, serving 43.3 million passengers in 2017, the most recent year for which data has been published. The FAA website advises hobbyists not to fly drones above 400ft and not to fly them near airports. Reuters contributed to this reportLast week Netflix claimed that 45 million of its subscribers had streamed the Sandra Bullock thriller Bird Box in its first week of release: a record for original movie content on the platform. Five days later, on 2 January, they issued a public health warning in the interests of keeping as many of those subscribers alive as possible. The service was responding to a growing social media fad for the Bird Box challenge, in which people emulate characters in the film who must perform every task blindfolded, lest lurking monsters drive them to suicide. “Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE,” Netflix tweeted from its primary account. “We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl” – a reference to the two unnamed children of Bullock’s character – “have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.” Netflix’s call for moderation (but not abstention) from the craze comes after thousands of videos posted online show people stumbling around houses, stairs and woods with scarves wrapped round their eyes. Meanwhile, YouTube star Morgan Adams’s 24-hour Bird Box challenge earned more than two million views in five days. ABC’s breakfast show Good Morning America also engaged with the meme when one of its anchors attempted to apply makeup to his co-host while blindfolded. The film, which has overcome mixed reviews to pick up considerable momentum – as well as celebrity fans such as Kim Kardashian – stars Bullock as a single mother endeavouring to save herself and her two children in a postapocalyptic America. She and her fellow survivors must wear blindfolds to prevent exposure to supernatural forces who take the form of their most potent fears and lead them to take their own lives. Susanne Bier’s film has earned unfavourable comparisons with last year’s sensory-deprivation horror A Quiet Place, as well as 2016’s alien invasion thriller Arrival. In her review for the Guardian, Amy Nicholson took particular issue with the ensemble cast, including Sarah Paulson, Jacki Weaver and John Malkovich, saying it “feels as curated as a box of donuts”. The narrative is adapted from a novel by Josh Malerman, and some fans of this original have taken issue with Bier’s considerable tweak to the book’s ending. Netflix rarely releases data on how many subscribers have seen films or TV shows on its site. The unverified 45 million figure represents about a third of their total customer base. Previous big hitters in terms of their original content have primarily been romcoms, with To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before cited by the streaming giant as being a particular hit in 2018 – although no figures were released. The service has also remained silent on data around its more prestige original movie content, such as Oscars frontrunner Roma and the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The same also applies to TV content, such as interactive Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch.The victims and grieving relatives of a Canadian truck crash, in which 16 people died, will have to wait until March to learn the driver’s sentence. Following an emotionally charged week of victim impact statements, the judge overseeing the case has asked for nearly two months to consider how to sentence the driver, Jaskirat Singh Sidhu. On 6 April last year, his semi-trailer truck collided with the bus of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team after he failed to stop at an intersection in central Saskatchewan. Sidhu had previously pleaded guilty to all 29 charges he faced — including 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death. Young hockey players, coaches, a trainer and a radio announcer were among those killed. The crown had asked for a 10-year prison sentence and a further 10 years of suspended driving. As part of the sentencing, 75 written victim impact statements were submitted to the court, with 65 read by friends and family over a four-day period. Some included grim details of the parents being unable to fully identify their children – and the tragic extent of some injuries. “I will not get to watch him experience the joys of being a father … the list of things we will not experience with him will never end,” Logan Boulet’s father, Toby, told the gymnasium-turned-courtroom in Melfort, Saskatchewan. “I just want to hold my boy … I hurt everywhere.” Some of those who survived the crash were left with severe injuries, including two who remain paralysed. Kaleb Dahlgren’s skull was fractured and six vertebrae in his neck and back were broken, Dahlgren’s father Mark told reporters. “I hope that Mr Sidhu is able to hear about how wonderful the people were that were involved in the accident – the people that survived and the people that passed away,” he said. In a near-miraculous turn of events, Dahlgren made a full recovery and recently signed to play hockey for York Lions at York University in Toronto, Ontario. Some chose to forgive Sidhu, arguing that he likely carries the heavy burden of seeing the devastation caused by his recklessness. “I have been forgiven for things I didn’t deserve, and I will forgive you the same,” said Christina Haugan, who lost her husband, Darcy, the Bronco’s head coach. Others were less charitable. “All of this grief was caused by you,” said Jaxon Joseph’s mother, Andrea, calling Sidhu an “arrogant and inconsiderate monster” for his failure to stop despite multiple road signs. The hearing also revealed new information about the accident. Sidhu had accumulated 70 violations of federal and provincial trucking regulations in the days leading up to the crash – meaning he should not have been allowed on the road at the time of the accident, according to documents presented in court. He had only been driving trucks for three weeks prior to the crash, and the week of the crash was his first time alone on the highway. “If Jaskirat Singh Sidhu had been stopped and inspected on April 6 2018 prior to the incident, he would have been placed under a 72-hour out of service declaration … preventing him from operating a commercial vehicle,” the report said. Among those violations were repeated failures to account for time spent driving and location of breaks, meant to prevent driver fatigue. Prior to the accident, Sidhu was not drunk, high or distracted when he failed to stop, nor was he speeding when he ran through a stop sign, according to the statement of facts. “I can’t even imagine what you guys are going through, or what you have been through,” Sidhu told the families of victims and the court, at times breaking down. “I have taken the most valuable things of your life.” “I feel you have remorse for your actions … I don’t think you are a terrible person … I think you were grossly unqualified to be in the road that day,” said Chris Joseph, Jaxon Joseph’s father, told Sidhu earlier in the week. “I hope I find forgiveness. I hope you find peace. I hope the industry changes so this never happens again.” The judge has said she will deliver the sentence on 22 March 2019.Just because most people don’t want something to happen doesn’t mean it won’t. So it is with a no-deal Brexit. I believe the majority of MPs, ministers and most people across the UK are opposed to the self-inflicted damage to our economy and security that would result from crashing out of the EU. But there are just 81 days left, and there is a growing danger that a combination of brinkmanship, political paralysis, siren voices and drift will push us over the cliff edge. This is too serious for parliament to stand by. That is why I have tabled an amendment to the finance bill with a group of other cross-party committee chairs to put safeguards in place against no deal. The amendment would mean that if the government wanted to use some of the specific powers in the finance bill to implement no deal, it would have to give parliament a vote first or apply to extend article 50. The amendment doesn’t affect the normal operations of the Treasury and government. But it does make it harder for the government to drift into no deal without parliament being able to direct it. The damage from no deal would be deep and long-lasting. The police will immediately lose access to the European criminal databases, currently checked 500 million times a year in order to stop wanted criminals and terror suspects. Things like this and the European arrest warrant help save lives and deliver justice, and the police say without them our country is less safe. The sudden switch to WTO tariffs would hit our economy too. One company in my constituency told me that the price of one of its crucial ingredients would double overnight. Border delays would damage the tight supply chains on which manufacturing industry, jobs and apprenticeships all depend. No deal would weaken us internationally as well – including in the negotiation of future trade deals. It would shatter the UK’s reputation for diplomacy, sound governance and reason. Boris Johnson may make flippant remarks about prawn cocktail crisps. John Redwood may promise that our farmers will grow more British produce (presumably overcoming the life-cycle of plants by getting more seeds into the ground in time for April). But they are playing games with other people’s lives and livelihoods. I have heard some argue that they need the imminent threat of no deal to persuade people to back the prime minister’s withdrawal agreement, if not next week then later on. But the reality is that there is no majority for the deal either in parliament or the country – and this is an irresponsible way to try to resolve something with such lasting consequences. The country can’t afford to play Brexit chicken and wait to see who blinks first. We need to ensure that parliament has the powers to prevent no deal if it reaches that point. My amendment has support from MPs who will back the prime minister’s deal and MPs who oppose it, MPs who voted to leave and MPs who want a second referendum. It doesn’t avoid the difficult debates and disagreements ahead over the best way forward, but it at least gives us the chance to rule out the worst outcome. For the sake of families, businesses and our country, we have to make sure that we can prevent the chaos and damage of a no-deal Brexit. • Yvette Cooper is a Labour MP and chair of the home affairs select committeeAs the partial federal government shutdown ends its second week, many workers without paychecks, as well as their families, are becoming increasingly worried about their personal finances. That problem was on the mind of one fifth-grader in Gaithersburg, Maryland (a DC suburb), whose mother was furloughed from her job at the Food and Drug Administration back on 28 December. But instead of complaining, she, like any good entrepreneur, took action: she opened up a business. The business is called Bella’s Sweet Scrubs and it’s owned by 11-year old capitalist and marketing whiz Bella Berrellez. Bella’s company sells sugar scrubs, which is something I’ve never heard of. But please don’t take my ignorance as criticism. I’ve learned that a “scrub” is kind of a paste that you use in the shower and it’s a very popular thing. The products sold by Bella’s Sweet Scrubs are made of organic sugar, organic coconut oil, organic olive oil, organic dye and organic essential oils. They’re handmade by Bella herself and she sells them on her Etsy site for only seven bucks a jar. Bella claims in a report by local television station WJLA that by scrubbing your body with her product just two or three times a week, your skin will be “nice and soft” and smell like lavender, eucalyptus or even purple rain, whatever that is. If you live in Montgomery county, Maryland, she’ll even personally deliver your purchase for an additional 50 cents (a price that I – with all due respect - would recommend revisiting). Another nice touch is that she includes a handwritten letter with each order. Not bad. Also not bad is Bella’s marketing acumen. Ask anyone who’s succeeded in business and they’ll tell you that timing is important – and Bella’s timing couldn’t be better. She not only launched the business to solve a potential financial problem but she chose to sell something cool and trendy: a natural, organic, homemade, healthy product. But more importantly, she used her age and her story – which ties directly into a leading national news story – to get lots of media coverage, including a four-minute segment this week on a local television morning show. Oh, and I’m writing about her too. There’s nothing like free PR to help promote a new startup and I personally know a few entrepreneurs – decades older than Bella – who would kill for the same kind of exposure. But with all her media success, Bella’s still humble about the operation. “I was just thinking of creative and fun ways to contribute to the family,” she told local TV station Fox 5. So here’s your chance to help out a furloughed worker and support a young entrepreneur. Oh, and smell a little bit better too. Who can argue with that business proposition?European objections have forced the United States to backtrack on plans to stage a two-day conference in Poland focused on building a global coalition against Iran. The conference is now being described as a wider brainstorming session about the Middle East. In announcing the summit earlier this month, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, had explicitly said the summit’s purpose was to focus on Iran’s influence and terrorism in the region. But the joint official announcement of the summit did not mention Iran, instead highlighting issues connected with Iran – “terrorism and extremism, missile development and proliferation, maritime trade and security, and threats posed by proxy groups across the region”. The change of emphasis follows signs that many European countries, including the EU foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, will avoid the two-day event on 12 and 13 February, and instead head to the Munich security forum later in the week. The US has been trying to persuade the EU to drop its support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and has been using the threat of US secondary sanctions to press EU firms not to trade with Iran. The UK is one of the countries most conflicted about attending the Polish conference since the UK is traditionally close to both Poland and the US, but has stood by the Iran nuclear deal. The broadening of the agenda may be designed to make it easier for the UK to attend. Jonathan Cohen, US representative at the UN, described the scope of the discussion as “much broader than any one country or set of issues”. He said it would be a “global brainstorming session” and stressed that it was “not the venue to demonise or attack Iran.” Issues such as the humanitarian crises in Syria and Yemen, missile development and cyber security would be discussed, Cohen told the UN security council. The Polish envoy to the UN, Joanna Wronecka, also said the ministerial conference in Warsaw would bring “added value to the efforts to peace in the Middle East by creating a positive vision to the region”. She said 70 countries all over the world had been invited but stressed the summit would address “a range of horizontal issues that touch on the whole region. We do not intend to focus on particular countries during the conference”. Poland’s deputy foreign affairs minister Maciej Lang travelled to Iran to reassure Tehran this week, and Poland on Wednesday said it may yet add Iran to the invitation list. Iran is sceptical that the US will be interested in anything other than a two-day Iran-bashing fest. Russia has already said it will not attend the summit, and a wider boycott, or attendance by low-level officials, would demonstrate the United States’ international isolation. Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif tweeted that his country had welcomed over 100,000 Polish refugees during the second world war. “[The] Polish government can’t wash the shame: while Iran saved Poles in the second world war, it now hosts a desperate anti-Iran circus.” European states have remained largely remained united behind the nuclear deal, even if its patience with Iranian ballistic missile tests is wearing thin. The summit may also serve to highlight the inability of the EU to assemble a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV) meant to serve as a back channel to handle financial transactions and bypass US sanctions on Iran. The SPV has been delayed for months. The new EU-Iran alliance has suffered due to accusations that Iran has been behind assassination plots on European soil, a matter being closely followed up by the Dutch and Danish governments.Callum Hudson-Odoi’s decision to lodge a transfer request this week after Bayern Munich’s £35m bid is a sign of changing times and a growing trend for young players at big Premier League clubs. Hudson-Odoi is trying to follow the path that has taken a lot of young English players abroad in recent years thanks to the success of Jadon Sancho at Borussia Dortmund and club partnerships with European sister clubs. Three or four years ago it would have been rare for a young player at a top Premier League club to request a transfer to go to one of Europe’s biggest clubs. It’s interesting to see a young player at Chelsea now saying: “I want to go” – not just on loan, but abroad permanently. Hudson-Odoi did well at the weekend and scored a great goal which exemplified why there is a lot of noise around him right now. I can certainly understand why Chelsea are battling to keep him because he is clearly a big talent, but from the player’s perspective it is tricky to be held back from leaving for Bayern when the alternative is the odd sporadic sub appearance and cup cameo. Unless something else is happening in the background and Eden Hazard or Willian is going to go in the summer, why not let a talented young player leave to play regularly at one of the biggest clubs in Europe? The players such as Hazard, Willian and Pedro are clearly ahead of Hudson-Odoi in the pecking order and which will not change since those are established Chelsea players. Or should it change? If the club are willing to turn down a £35m bid maybe that justifies him playing far more regularly for Chelsea. Ademola Lookman had a similar problem when he went on loan to RB Leipzig. Everton were quite stubborn about letting him go back there despite a successful spell. However, Lookman returned to the Everton substitutes bench. If young players are capable of playing 90 minutes every week at European clubs why prevent them from doing that? Since this recent trend, gone are the days where young players are content with sitting on the first-team bench with irregular cameos. Now they are ready and willing to expand their horizons to Europe to develop at a faster rate than they could do at home. Sometimes clubs take their ownership of the young player for granted and do not necessarily do the best thing for their development as a bigger picture. I think there are many clever contractual ways to let a young player continue his career elsewhere whilst still having first option to buy them back in future. Contracts can include a buyback clause like Barcelona did with Cesc Fàbregas or a sell-on clause where the development club benefits financially from all the work invested in the young player. But I don’t understand a situation where clubs dangle a carrot and let young players play in a few cup games where he does well but then doesn’t ever play in the league. The price tag reflects how much Bayern want him – they made four bids in total and don’t seem to have given up on signing him. Chelsea are not a club renowned for bringing through young players. Ruben Loftus-Cheek is the best one to come through in the past five years and had to go to Crystal Palace to get a game. Perhaps if Loftus-Cheek went to a bigger foreign club sooner he would have become an established player sooner. However, it may be a sign that Chelsea are sending out a message that they value their highly rated young players of which there are many in the club’s academy. Tottenham have established players who have come through the ranks such as Harry Kane and Harry Winks so it would be great to see Chelsea put faith in Hudson‑Odoi and give him a more consistent chance if he is prevented from leaving for Bayern. But without Sancho doing so well since he left Manchester City to move to Germany, I don’t think this trend would be as prominent. He was called up to the England squad and has really been the poster boy for young English players going abroad. All these guys know him well and will be speaking to him to find out what it’s like. He will be telling them how much he is enjoying it and not just the football – all these things that young lads appreciate. The fear for English players has always been that you might risk a place in the England team if you go abroad but now with all the technology we have and social media you are able to watch his goals and assists every week which means his performances are just as noticeable as players in the Premier League. You can’t really get away from Sancho on Instagram! If Sancho was ever going to leave Dortmund then I’m sure the bid would be for a lot more than £35m. So why not go abroad? Obviously as someone who is playing overseas, I can only recommend it as a life experience. I think it can actually help to go and do something like that when you are still very young. You are more adaptable to different types of coaching and different ways of playing because you are still learning. When you’re older you have established principles in your mind. I had to leave my house and my friends and family behind which adds to the difficulty of leaving somewhere familiar but when you’re young you don’t think about that. You just want to play football every day and score goals. I think it’s a win-win situation. It’s a bit like going to university like so many people do at that age – you’re a sponge and you meet all these new friends and experience all these new things. And you develop. For a few years some English clubs have had close connections with clubs in Europe such as Chelsea’s with Vitesse, but Bayern’s interest in Hudson-Odoi has shown there is another level of opportunity in Europe now. Hopefully it will only help our young players and the England national team to keep improving. The old argument has always been that the path is blocked for young players because of so many established internationals in the Premier League. But now you can go somewhere else and make your name.Theresa May has told Jeremy Corbyn his demand that she rule out a no-deal scenario as a prerequisite for Brexit talks is “an impossible condition” and called on him to join cross-party discussions immediately. In a letter to Corbyn on Thursday afternoon, written after the Labour leader dismissed her request for talks as a “stunt”, May said that she would be “happy to discuss” the Labour leader’s ideas. She urged him to “talk and see if we can begin to find a way forward for our country on Brexit”. Referring to Corbyn’s instruction to Labour MPs not to meet with her, May asked: “Is it right to ask your MPs not to seek a solution with the government?” The proposed talks have been stymied by Corbyn’s insistence that a no-deal must be ruled out as a precondition and May’s insistence that doing so would not be workable. In her letter she wrote: “It is not within the government’s power to rule out no deal.” May has been meeting other party leaders in the aftermath of the resounding defeat for her Brexit plan in the House of Commons earlier this week. A number of Labour MPs have defied their leader’s instruction not to engage in discussions designed to find a plan that might command a majority. Earlier, Downing Street insisted the prime minister was determined to stick to her “principles” on Brexit, including rejecting a customs union and a second referendum. With the clock running down to Brexit day on 29 March, May kicked off Thursday’s talks with the Green party MP, Caroline Lucas. May’s official spokesman insisted these conversations would be approached “in a constructive spirit, and wanting to hear what the various groups have to say”. But when asked whether May was willing to flex any of her negotiating red lines, he said they remained in place. “Where people have pre-existing positions, of course they will want to make their argument for them, and the PM is going to listen, but you understand the principles which the PM holds, which she believes honour the result of the referendum,” he said. “The PM has set out over the course of many months now what she believes the British people voted for, and what she believes is necessary to honour the referendum. She stands by those principles.” On the specific issue of a customs union, which is a key demand of both Labour and backers of a Norway-style softer Brexit, he said: “The PM is absolutely clear on the importance of having an independent trade policy in order to honour the result of the referendum.” Members of the customs union cannot strike their own trade deals. May’s spokesman said: “The ability for the UK to reach out throughout the world and strike its own trade deals is an important element of taking back control.” On whether a second referendum could be considered, the spokesman said: “You know the prime minister’s position on a second referendum.” Asked why the government had not discussed with Brussels the possibility of extending article 50 and delaying the UK’s departure, as the SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, has demanded as a condition of further talks, he said: “Because we do not wish to do it.” No 10 said the Cabinet Office minister, David Lidington, and the environment secretary, Michael Gove, would chair separate talks, including with the Labour backbenchers Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper, in their capacity as select committee chairs. They will be provided with civil service support, and the government has promised to lay a statement before parliament next Monday setting out its next steps. That motion will be amendable, allowing Labour and rival groups of backbenchers to test support for their own Brexit proposals. Asked to identify areas where compromise might be possible, May’s spokesman pointed to workers’ rights and environmental protections. May met Labour backbenchers and spoke to trade union leaders in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote to discuss beefing up workers’ rights in the hope of winning over support for her deal.“I asked the guys if I could just spend a little bit of time in the middle of the pitch to visualise what the players go through.” Standing in front of 25,500 purple seats, the new Orlando Pride manager Marc Skinner paused to drink it all in. It is a world away from Solihull Moors’ 3,050‑capacity Damson Park, where his former club, Birmingham City women, ply their trade. “There’s a famous picture of Andrés Iniesta on the pitch after his last game for Barcelona sitting in the middle of the field and I think he’s just trying to take it in, all the emotions, and think about them and that was what I was trying to do,” says the 35-year-old. “It’s really important for me that we connect with the fans in the stands, give them an identity, I tried to do that at Birmingham, so they feel a part of what we’re doing. This without the Orlando Pride fans is nothing for me.” The decision to leave his hometown club, where he had worked for 13 years, mid-season, was not easy. Birmingham are fourth in the Women’s Super League, the departure of Skinner perhaps a factor in the latest of their four losses that have left them six points off the top as it came after the announcement of his step across the pond. On top of that he has a new baby with his partner, the former England international Laura Bassett. But this was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down. “Everybody in England knows I love Birmingham,” says Skinner. “It’s my home city, and I wouldn’t have left it for anything other than a project like this with such wonderful potential. “It’s mesmerising. Just being here, it’s a different level. I hope it doesn’t affect Birmingham too much, we tried to leave Birmingham in a place where it would be able to be self sufficient and I hope that they show that over the last part of the season. They’ve done so much and there’s a lot of love for them.” The love is mutual. It would have been easy for fans and players to be angry or irritated with their outgoing manager but instead, there is sorrow and well-wishing – something that has surprised Skinner. “I think that’s been the most surreal part. I’m in awe of the outreach and outpouring and lovely comments that people have made. I think that’s testament to Birmingham and the fans, they are genuinely happy for people that progress and, look, hopefully they saw the job that we did at Birmingham and think it’s good.” Orlando Pride turned to Skinner after a disappointing seventh‑place finish in the NWSL led to Tom Sermanni’s departure, and the Englishman believes it is the similarity between the clubs and their ethos that attracted them to him. “There’s such a wonderful vibe around this club. They are like Birmingham, they are family orientated. They have values as a club, it’s not just a cutthroat business and that was really important for me. You have to pick your projects carefully and you have to pick something that fits in with your personality and then I really started to feel what I could bring here.” Pride come with some big names. The six-time world player of the year Marta is on the roster, alongside her compatriot Camila and Alex Morgan. “One thing they all have in common is they all want to win,” explains Skinner, whose arrival means six of the nine head coaches in the league are English. “If they want to win then I have to find out how they work together to bring them towards that common goal and that’s what I’ll make sure that I do. “I’m all about people before players. I’m going to get to know each individual, I’m going to care for them like I did at Birmingham and once they know that I care for them, once they know that I want success for them, I think it would be a pretty stubborn person that wouldn’t want to buy into that.” Skinner has form. Before his two years as manager in the West Midlands, he spent 10 years as the club’s technical director. “I think that shaped me. I still think players need developing regardless of their stature, regardless of their experience within the game and their age. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. I’m able to see the skill set they have and improve it. That’s shaped by my time developing players.” He may have arrived during an international break, but Skinner has already started working. “What I do is I send everyone a questionnaire. I want to get to know them before I meet them and then every player will have a one-to-one meeting before we come back to preseason. I’ve already started the groundwork. There’s nothing like standing in front of them and coaching but I’ll get to know them as best I can so I understand what makes them tick.” That is the most important thing for Skinner. “When they are not feeling well who they would turn to? I need to know all the important people in their lives, the things they value. There are a lot of people that look up to these players but who looks after them? We forget about that, we look about them as commodities and not the people they are. Once we can get that right we’ll be OK.” • The 28-game unbeaten run of the US women’s national team came to a grinding halt as the World Cup holders were defeated 3-1 by France. Two goals from Paris Saint-Germain’s Kadidiatou Diani gave the hosts of this summer’s World Cup the lead. The 20-year-old Marie‑Antoinette Katoto grabbed their third before Mallory Pugh pulled one back for the visitors in injury time. • The No 2 pick in the NWSL college draft, Hailie Mace, scored on her debut in the Australian W-League. Having been drafted by Sky Blue, where the poor conditions of player facilities were exposed last season, Mace decided to join Melbourne City to avoid joining the New Jersey side. It took just 12 minutes after coming off the bench for Mace to score in her new side’s 4-0 victory against Newcastle Jets. • Liverpool have completed the signing of 21-year-old Jemma Purfield. Purfield has graduated from Arizona State University and opted for a move to the WSL. The attacking full back, who can also play on the wing, has played for England youth teams. • The manager of the Australia women’s national team, Alen Stajcic, has been sacked by the Australian football federation after two confidential player surveys found an “unsatisfactory” team environment. The FFA chief, David Gallop, said: “We no longer have confidence Alen is the right person to lead the team and staff.” Stajcic had been in charge since 2014.When Graham Arnold took Australia to a first Asian Cup back in 2007 there was talk of winning the title without losing a game. More than a decade on, he is back as head coach but while there are fewer stars and less swagger in the Socceroos squad heading into the 2019 tournament there is a great deal more continental knowledge. Of the three Group B opponents lined up in the United Arab Emirates in January, only Palestine present something of a novelty to a nation now in its tweens as a member of the Asian football family. Jordan and Syria were met along the road to Russia 2018 with mixed results and it is the latter that presents the greatest threat to the Socceroos finishing top of the group. It is not just that Syria have a score to settle, though they do. The two teams played out an epic continental play-off for the 2018 World Cup that was settled by an extra-time goal in the second leg from a certain Tim Cahill. Not long before, Syria had hit the post and there was a feeling among the West Asian team that had the first leg took place in Damascus and not the neutral venue of Malaysia then it would have been Syria heading to Honduras for that final showdown. “Those were close games and the result could easily have been very different,” Syria coach Bernd Stange told The Guardian. “While revenge is not the most important thing at the Asian Cup, it is possible for us. We know that Australia will be tough to beat but we also know that we can win.” Stange spent 1998 to 2001 in charge of Perth Glory and the German knows Australian football and Arnold well. “He is a good friend and also a good coach. He deserves his chance and we will have to be at our best.” But it is not just about revenge. Syria are a decent team and have serious ambitions of their own which include getting out of the group stage for the first time in their history and then some. There is plenty of experience in the squad with two of the continent’s best forward players to give the Socceroo defence much to think about. Omar Khribin hit the post in that Sydney second leg and the 2017 Asian Player of the Year has recovered from injury issues to return to something close to his best. Omar Al Somah is another big name in attack. Arnold knows that these must be shackled, because if Syria get in front they can slow a game down with a brazenness that is almost admirable. If Syria are the main rivals for top spot then the Jordan opener will set the tone. The Socceroos have fallen foul of the team in the cauldron that is Amman but have found the same opposition much more accommodating in Australia as that 5-1 thrashing of the Harry Redknapp-led visitors during qualification for the 2018 World Cup demonstrated. The chopping of changing of coaches has led to a lack of identity. Ray Wilkins had little impact in charge at the 2015 Asian Cup, but there is a desire to change all that with new man, Vital Borkelmans. The Dutchman has not much head coach experience but spent 2012 to 2016 as assistant to Marc Wilmots as boss of Belgium. “The opening game can be cautious for all teams,” Borkelmans told The Guardian. “It will be very tight I think but there is no reason why we can’t defeat Australia.” Since taking the job in September, Borkelmans has tried to introduce more of a passing and possession game. A narrow defeat to Croatia in October suggested that the team, which has made the last eight in two of the last four editions, is moving in the right direction. Leaving out star attacker Hamza Al-Dardour, who scored four goals in 2015, is a big call but youngsters such as Baha Faisal have the talent to take their chances. Veteran goalkeeper Amer Shafi will also have to be at his best. And then there is Palestine. The team debuted in 2015, ending pointless with a goal difference of negative ten, but has progressed from being just happy to be at Asia’s biggest competition to having genuine ambitions of getting to the last 16. Qualification for 2019 saw Palestine competitive with Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and then strolling through the final stage. Some coaching instability has not helped but the cosmopolitan side, with a football diaspora that extends to Europe and South America, likes to get on the front foot whenever possible. It remains to be seen if it will do so against the continental champions. Given the format of the tournament, it is almost inconceivable that Australia will be heading home at the end of the group stage. Securing top spot however is not a foregone conclusion but this time Graham Arnold will be well aware of that.The first Dreamer to win the Rhodes scholarship is facing fears he won’t be allowed back into the country after completing the prestigious program. Jin Park, 22, is a recent Harvard University graduate whose family came to the US from South Korea when he was seven. He won the Rhodes Scholarship last year – but now risks not being allowed to return to the United States after studying at the University of Oxford in the UK under the grant. “If I leave, there’s a very real possibility that I won’t be able to come back. That’s the biggest fear for sure,” Park told the Associated Press. “I haven’t really thought about what that’s going to mean if I’m not allowed back.” Park was the first immigrant enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields young people who were brought to the country illegally as children from deportation, to win the famed scholarship. The group are often called “Dreamers”, after the never-passed legislation known as the Dream Act which would have given them permanent protection. Under President Barack Obama, who created Daca, participants were allowed to travel abroad under limited circumstances – including academic study – and return to the United States. But Donald Trump ordered an end to the Daca protections. Federal courts have ruled against him, ordering the program – which protects some 700,000 people – to stay in place for now. Park and his supporters say that should mean travel abroad is still allowed – but it’s unclear if the federal government will agree. “The government should enforce the law as it currently stands, to allow Jin to fulfil his scholarly work,” said Kristian Ramos of Define American, an immigrant advocacy group that supported Park’s bid for the scholarship. Park, a resident of Queens in New York who founded the advocacy group Higher Dreams, first applied for the Rhodes scholarship last year and was rejected because Daca recipients did not qualify. But the organization changed its policy, and he reapplied and won the award. After graduating from Harvard last month, he plans to enroll at Oxford in the fall in spite of the uncertainty, and hopes to study migration and political theory. He said he’s had trouble bringing up the potential perils with his parents, who cried when he won the scholarship. “This was especially meaningful for them. It was like a validation of the sacrifices they’ve made for me,” he told the AP. Regardless of what happens next, he considers Queens his home. “Whatever happens, I’m always going to know that fact. Even if I have to spend the rest of my life convincing the administration, or whoever comes next,” he said.Their problems, fears and concerns run the gamut, from the practical to the emotional and the existential to the deeply personal. Ahead of the Commons vote on Tuesday, some of the estimated 1.3 million British citizens living elsewhere in the EU worry they will lose their livelihoods because they will no longer be able to work across more than one country, or their professional qualifications may no longer be recognised. Others fear they will have to re-focus and rebuild businesses they have built up over decades, or are concerned they will not now be able to look after ageing parents in the UK. Emotionally, many feel a part of their identity is being amputated. Brexit has “completely turned my life upside down”, says Fiona Godfrey, who fears being out of work in less than three months. A health policy consultant, she lives in Luxembourg and often works in Brussels and other EU member states. As a freelancer, she is deemed to be providing services and so is not covered by the Brexit withdrawal agreement, which protects the rights of employees. Deal or no deal, she faces “a daunting and huge undertaking” to find out whether she can continue to work after 29 March. While she hopes to gain Luxembourgish citizenship, if that does not come through soon, she will be scrambling for legal advice. “I’ve worked all my adult life and it is a big worry to think that I might be about to lose my livelihood,” says the 53-year old. Like many British nationals, she feels abandoned by the British government and is scathing of officials’ advice to her and other British nationals that the best way to secure status is by applying for citizenship in their host country. “I find it astonishing that the only way the British government can tell us to maintain our rights is to apply for the citizenship of another country. We are being completely ignored and abandoned and there is very little help from anyone, anywhere.” Helen Burnham and her husband, Duncan, a private chef, run a successful catering business in the Belleville valley, part of the Trois Vallées ski area, where they settled permanently 11 years ago after selling up and leaving their jobs in the UK. “We’re going to be the ones who lose out: British citizens in the EU,” says Helen Burnham, 42. “EU nationals may face barriers to living in Britain, but they’ll still have the other 27 member states to choose from. After Brexit, we won’t.” That could cost them half their annual income, she says, since, when their work catering for French, British, Belgian and Dutch clients in ski chalets is quiet during the summer months, they move their business to private villas in Spain, Portugal or Greece. “For the last 10 years, all that business has come to us through word of mouth, from contacts we’ve built up in those countries,” she says. “It will really not be easy to replicate that in the south of France. And it’s nearly 50% of our revenue.” She says she is “angry – at the whole way it’s been dealt with, how people have been treated: we were promised nothing would change. Well, a lot’s changed already.” Owing to what they hope was an administrative error, the couple were granted only temporary residence permits, but have begun the process of applying for French nationality. “We have nothing to go back to,” says Helen. “All we have is here.” Nicola James left the UK in the depths of the 1991 recession with “very little money in her pocket”. She got a job teaching English in Cologne and later worked in hotels, banking and on a cruise ship. “I am a bit of a poster child for the freedom bit of freedom of movement,” says the German language graduate. Nearly three decades later, living in the Dutch city of Enkhuizen, she finds herself caught: she fears she will one day have to choose between living with her Dutch husband, who has multiple sclerosis, or being close to her elderly parents in Hertfordshire. Under the terms of the withdrawal agreement, once the Brexit transition period is over, her husband would have no automatic right to live in the UK. Their family income is below the current UK minimum threshold, barring him from settling in the UK if the rules remain unchanged after 2020. “It seems to be to be utterly Kafkaesque to be in a situation where you didn’t get a vote and you are suddenly asking do I leave my husband to fend for himself or do I leave my parents to just get on with it?” she says. Twelve years ago, James was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and lives with a generalised anxiety disorder. She says Brexit is not helping. “One of the worst things for mental health is uncertainty.” This week brought good news when the Dutch government announced  British citizens could stay in the event of no-deal Brexit, but she is still gripped by existential worries. “I’m being exiled for the crime of falling in love and exercising my freedom of movement rights.” At the personal level, Gavin Quinney, who after floating his IT business bought Château Bauduc in 1999 “for the price we were going to pay for a family home in Putney”, reckons his family should cope, eventually, with the practicalities of Brexit. “We’re economically active, we pay taxes and social security, two of our four children were born here so now have dual nationality, and we’re finally starting to move on residence permits for the rest of us,” he says. “There’s a distinct feeling of ‘why should we even have to’ and deep sorrow at losing our European identity.” His primary concern is for his daughter Sophie, who has special needs: he fears a no-deal Brexit could affect the French state’s provision for her. Business-wise, it is tougher. No deal would be “catastrophic”, says Quinney, who sells about 60% of the wine produced from his 65-acre vineyard direct to private customers in the UK and restaurateurs including Rick Stein and Gordon Ramsay. His short-term plan is to stockpile enough of his wine in UK warehouses to at least tide him over until autumn. After that, he says there will be a hard border at the Channel whatever anyone claims, and his business will have to adapt. “Frictionless trade does not exist outside the single market. Once the UK is unplugged from the EU system that lets trucks go straight through Dover … Our strategy I guess will be to use the transition period to move business away from the UK.” The Italian government has said British nationals in Italy would remain legally resident, keeping their existing rights to work, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, but myriad concerns remain. “I believed it would be easy to get a job in the legal world in Italy – it was Europe and opportunities were growing,” says Charlotte Oliver, a lawyer, who moved to Italy in 2001 to join her Italian boyfriend and became the first British solicitor to be admitted to the Italian bar council thanks to a new EU directive. “It was in fact very tough. It took 10 years, while at the same time raising two children, to build up experience and perfect my Italian.” Oliver, 52, went on to establish her own firm in 2013, but now faces uncertainty over whether her qualification as an Italian lawyer can or will be revoked, or if she can continue to practise as a British solicitor. Her rights to healthcare, a pension and freedom of movement within the EU, which is crucial for her job, are also at risk. She is applying for Italian citizenship, but that process now takes about four years, instead of two, under new rules recently approved by parliament. “It is immoral, and I believe illegal, that any person who has been given EU citizenship, and then exercised free movement, can be told our rights could be taken away,” she says. Matt Bristow returned to Berlin last summer fearing it could be his last chance. A 33-year old psychologist, he had always intended to live again in the German capital, where he owns a flat. Brexit forced a decision. “I have always felt happiest here and I felt the need to grab this opportunity while I still have it,” said Bristow, who quit the NHS earlier than planned and now works for a local authority in Berlin. Despite being fluent in German and doing part of his psychology training in the country, getting his qualifications recognised was not easy: it involved 18 months of form filling, language tests and legal translations costing hundreds of euros. At least the cost of living is cheaper than London: “I never felt like I had much money at the end of the month despite being in a reasonably well-paid professional job.” But he is increasingly anxious about no-deal Brexit, as his contract expires in the summer. “My worry is that I might be caught in a Catch-22, that it will be harder to convince new employers to employ me if I haven’t got a clear residence permit, but for some residence permits you need to have a job or a clear offer of work.” While the referendum result left him devastated, he now feels frustrated with the process and believes British nationals in the EU have been forgotten by British politicians. “We are out of sight and out of mind.” After finishing her PhD Louise Howes, 30, moved to southern Sweden in 2015 to take up a research post in the astronomy department at Lund University, a contract that is up at the end of February. “My fiance is also British – we’re getting married this summer – and his contract runs another five years,” she says. “We want to stay in Sweden, we like it. So I’m currently job hunting, for something maybe in research project management or data science.” Howes says she feels a “constant underlying nervousness” about what Brexit may bring, a “level of added stress I really don’t need … We’ve been told it will all be fine, but there’s nothing in writing. If you’re in full employment it should be quite straightforward, people say – but what if you’re not?” She is also applying for jobs in Copenhagen, less than an hour’s commute away across the Oresund Bridge. “Lots of people do it, in both directions,” Howes says. “But I have absolutely no clue whether as a British citizen I’ll be allowed to after Brexit. Non-Europeans have had problems, I know.” More generally, she says, she is, like almost everyone in the university sector, “acutely aware not just of the damage it will do to British universities but the problems it’s going to cause for EU academics and researchers in Britain, and Britons in European universities”. As the hours tick by towards the Brexit deal vote on Tuesday, Les Buchanan, 75, and his wife, Louise, 71, in Barcelona find themselves assailed by an all too familiar sensation. “It’s the uncertainty,” says Les Buchanan, who worked as a diplomat for 40 years before retiring to Spain in 2000. “Once you know something, you can face up to it.” He still feels exasperated at being denied a vote in the referendum because he had lived outside the UK for too long. But the pressing concern is what happens next, especially if the UK crashes out. “We don’t really know what the Spanish government line will be,” he says. “At the moment, we’re covered by the local health service and the British government pays the Spanish government for expats who were in the British system. Will that cease?” He is also worried his sterling pension could take another knock and that the British government could use Brexit as an excuse to freeze expat pensions. But he is grateful that at least they should be able to weather the financial loss. “For young people embarking upon their lives and being denied the benefits and freedoms the EU provides, it borders on the criminal,” he says. The couple have taken the necessary tests to acquire Spanish nationality but Les Buchanan is holding off renouncing his British citizenship, as he would have to: “I’m very pissed off, but not pissed enough to say I’m not British any more.”In book publishing, it seems, they still do fairytales. Really not very long ago, Angie Thomas was a secretary to a bishop at a megachurch in Jackson, Mississippi. At nights – and during quiet periods in the day, she furtively admits – she worked on a young adult novel inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. She had previously written a children’s book, but hadn’t had any interest from agents. “Yeah, I had more than 150 rejections for that one,” says Thomas matter-of-factly. Thomas’s break came when she cold-contacted a literary agent who was doing a Twitter Q&A. The story speeds up now: the novel became The Hate U Give (THUG), a YA sensation about a 16-year-old girl called Starr who witnesses her friend Khalil being shot by the police and turns to activism. THUG, published in early 2017, went straight into the bestseller chart in the US and stayed there for a year. It was a hit here too, and named overall winner of the 2018 Waterstones children’s book prize. It has now sold more than 2m copies globally. Last year, a film adaptation was released, which has been a critical and commercial success. “Oh, it’s definitely surreal,” says the 31-year-old Thomas, on the phone from Jackson. “I still can’t believe it. It does feel like a dream I’m going to wake up from.” Her agent now is one of the 150-plus who turned down her first book. “So I hold that over his head,” she says, and giggles. Now Thomas is back with a follow-up, On the Come Up. Like THUG, it is set in Garden Heights, a fictional inner-city neighbourhood that is deprived and predominantly black. But while her debut was more issue-led, On the Come Up is perhaps more personal to Thomas. The book’s protagonist, 16-year-old Bri, is obsessed with hip-hop – as Thomas herself is – and wants to make it as a rapper. When Bri’s mother loses her job (as a secretary at a church, as it happens), and the family is faced with running out of food and then eviction, Bri has to fast-track her ambitions. “When I started the book, I thought about what was the most traumatic thing in my life,” says Thomas. “And fortunately for me, it wasn’t losing a friend like Starr did, but unfortunately it was that experience of my mom losing her job and my family going into that crisis mode.” Thomas was a teenager at the time, being home-schooled because she was experiencing mental health problems brought on by bullying. Her mother, who had been a teacher, oversaw Angie’s education and looked after her own sick mother. “Yeah, it was a challenge,” Thomas goes on. “We were living off the benefits my grandmother received and, even with that, there were days when we didn’t know if we’d have enough food. So this book was definitely from my own experience.” Starr and Bri are both strong, independent characters, but they are also very different. “I compare Bri and Starr to Biggie and Tupac,” laughs Thomas. “Without the beef! Tupac was very community-orientated, and that’s how Starr is. But Bri, similar to Biggie, she’s about making it, she’s about seeing her dreams come to life. She’s about trying to save her family, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So that’s where they’re different, but they’re similar in the fact that they are both powerful young women who know they have voices, and they both understand how they can use those voices to affect an entire generation.” Thomas, meanwhile, has become a role model in her own right. The campaign We Need Diverse Books was started after a US study showed that, of the 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, only 93 featured black people as the main character. The problem was further highlighted when American schoolgirl Marley Dias attempted to find 1,000 books where the protagonist was a black girl and failed. “When a 12-year-old kid calls you out, you need to change,” says Thomas. “And I can see it slowly changing. There’s been a shift within the past few months where more than half of the books on the New York Times bestseller list for young adults were by authors of colour featuring main characters of colour, and that’s huge.” Thomas certainly knows what it’s like to look at the publishing industry and find its walls impenetrable. “Rejection is always hard, and a lot of rejection is really hard,” she says. “But what helped me was the community of unpublished authors out there on the internet, so you can connect and you can weep and mourn together. And I always had to remind myself that it only takes one yes to change everything. That’s what I tell aspiring writers now. I know writers who had 500 rejections, and more than that – but you just have to keep going and hope that you do get that one yes.” Screenwriter and novelist A story for you – I took THUG with me on a long journey. Was saving the last chapter as a treat. The woman opposite me – as old as me, no way a young adult! – kept eyeing my copy, so I offered it to her while I got on with my work. When we arrived, she looked pleadingly at me. I said: “OK, you can keep it. I’ll get another copy.” She looked so relieved. She literally could not bring herself to put it down. I think one reason it has appealed to so many people is that despite its darkness, it’s a very positive book, full of understanding. We don’t do religion in the UK, but I wondered if your faith had played a part in that?Angie Thomas First of all, that is a beautiful story. It always amazes me when I hear not just of people who connected with the book but people who are willing to share their own copy, because as a reader, I think I’d be too selfish. So thank you for being better than me! But yes, my faith is a huge part of who I am in every single thing that I do. It literally defines me. I tell people: “I love Jesus, but I cuss; thankfully he still loves me.” And often, as a Christian, I find myself around people who are like, “Well, why would you want to address something like racism?” But the fact is, especially here in America, Sunday is the most segregated day of the week. And I think it’s important for someone like me to speak up on this and to take a stand and hopefully to shed some light on the darkness. Co-author of Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible On the Come Up and THUG take place in the same fictional neighbourhood of Garden Heights. Did you always intend on telling new stories from the same universe, and is it something you will do again?I knew going in that I wanted to do another story in Garden Heights, at least one more, because it was important for me to show that even in a neighbourhood like that, you could have two young ladies whose lives are completely different, whose personalities are completely different. Black girls are already stereotyped so much and put into boxes so much, I never wanted anyone to assume that every single young lady in Garden Heights is like Starr or even like [her half-sister] Kenya. So now we have someone like Bri who is different from both of them. She’s her own person. She has her own personality. She has her own struggle. Someone recently asked me, did I think that Starr and Bri would get along? I think they would have their little clashes every now and then, but they would get along because both of them care deeply about others, and about their families and their community, and they can find common ground on that. It’s just they have different approaches to address the things that affect them. Author of most recently, The One Who Wrote Destiny, and co-editor of forthcoming The Good Immigrant USA Give us your top five rappers and why (I think we can assume Tupac is No 1)…I should have known he’d ask that question! But Lauryn Hill is one for sure. We don’t give Lauryn Hill enough props or respect, not just as a woman in hip-hop but just as a talented individual in hip-hop. She’s one of the best rappers of all time, and not enough people say that. Biggie for sure. As a Tupac fan, I’m sure people will be like, “How can you say that?” But you have to give respect where it’s due: Biggie had the most amazing use of wordplay and his flow was iconic. Then I have to say Kendrick Lamar. He’s new and everything, but I have to throw him in because he continues to be himself in an industry that often promotes being someone you’re not. And my fifth one, it’s either Jay-Z or André 3000, but I’m going to go with André 3000. As a southerner, Outkast was the group for me, and it was always amazing to see some rappers from the south who not only rapped well but they brought a lot of respect to us as a region when it comes to hip-hop. Usually with hip-hop it was always east coast versus west coast and the south was forgotten, but Outkast, they gave us a voice. Author of My Name Is Leon and the editor of forthcoming Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers Where do you see literature, particularly fiction, fitting in to acts of resistance?If nothing else, fiction has empowered a lot of people in the act of resistance. The Hate U Give, I know, has birthed several young activists and I’m so happy with that, I’m so proud these young people have decided to speak up and speak out on things that concern them. There was one young lady in Texas, it started out with her deciding she was going to speak up for the book when it was challenged by the school district. And that led to her becoming an activist in her own right in other areas. So I think books can empower. Rudine Sims Bishop [the author and educator] says that books are either mirrors, windows or sliding-glass doors, and that’s important in the act of resistance. You need that mirror to see yourself, to know what you can be and know what you are. And then you need that window to see into someone else’s life so you can understand what’s happening around you in the world that you may not notice at first glance. And you need the sliding-glass door so that you can step into someone else’s life and walk in with some empathy and use that empathy to make yourself heard. So yeah, I think books play a huge role in resistance. They play a huge role in opening people’s eyes and they’re a form of activism in their own right, in the fact that they do empower people and show others the lives of people who may not be like themselves. Award-winning British YA author of Orangeboy I have always known that there are black Americans, because US popular culture – from TV comedies and detective series to pop and hip-hop – have a prominent place in UK culture. Unfortunately, black British people rarely feature in the UK’s cultural exports to the US. How do black Americans perceive their UK counterparts, and how can us UK lot boost our profile in the States?First of all, I love Patrice. And it’s interesting, because when I first came to the UK for my book tour in 2017, I told some of the kids back here in Mississippi that I was going, and they were like, “Wait, are there black people over there?” And I’m like, “Gosh! Black people are everywhere!” But the thing is, so often we don’t know, we’re not told about black people beyond America and Africa. And Americans in general, we tend to be very self-absorbed and don’t hear about other communities beyond our own. So it’s definitely something that we fail to do. And, as for black British people to be more visible here in the States, I wish I had the answer. I would say one big thing I hope would happen though is that black British people would become more visible there in the UK. Cos I was talking to some black kids while I was there and they told me that they studied black history of America more than they’ve studied black history of the UK. And there is black history in the UK. So I think that should be changed, if nothing else. Poet whose most recent collection is Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems Is there such a thing as loving your characters for you? If so, how does a love for your characters, or the people they represent, inform how you put them through difficult situations? I feel like the way I answer that is probably either going to make me seem cruel or heartless. I love Khalil in The Hate U Give and it was heartbreaking for me to do what I do to him. So when he lost his life the way that he did, it breaks my heart just as much as it breaks my readers’ hearts. But the intention was that, even though it breaks their heart, maybe then they start thinking about the real-life Khalils, with that same love and empathy and sympathy. So it’s definitely intentional for me to love my characters, even when I put them through stuff. YA author whose new book, Ghost, is published 7 February Angie, one of the things writers, specifically writers of colour, often grapple with is the vaporous idea of authenticity, especially when it comes to voice. So, how do you balance writing a voice that feels culturally true without slipping into the clownishly trite?For me, it’s always about balance: being authentic without being over the top. Like slang: do I use slang every now and then? Absolutely. Will I overwhelm my reader with it and overwhelm my dialogue with it? No, absolutely not, because slang terms become outdated quickly, and also that’s not how these kids speak. They are not overusing it. So for me, an authentic voice is all about listening to the people around me, listening to the world and listening to language patterns and seeing how people actually talk. And when I write my dialogue I usually say it out loud so I can see if it sounds OK. I find a lot of historic novels that portray the way black people spoke back in the day, they did it over-the-top and they had us sounding very ignorant. And why? Because they had no respect for us as people. So as a writer, my goal is to always have respect for whoever it is that I’m writing about or writing for. Author of YA novel Clean You spent a lot of time on Twitter fielding questions about the casting of the film adaptation of The Hate U Give. Is social media, on balance, a blessing or a curse?Ha! A little of both. It’s a blessing because I get to connect with readers and I get to hear stories that I probably didn’t hear before. I get to see pictures of kids in the hallways taken by their teachers and they’re reading my book on their way to class, or I get to hear from parents who say, “This is the first book my kid has read in forever – thank you.” Or I get to hear from the kids themselves who say, “Oh my God, I love this book.” But then on the flipside you get the demands that sometimes readers make: “Why did you let them do this?” Or “Don’t let them do this.” I had to get to the point of recognising that I can’t please everyone and I’m OK with that. My job is to simply write the book, tell the stories. The rest is beyond my control. Did you have a eureka moment where you knew definitively that writing was what you wanted to do? What is your writing process?AlomohbittersMy eureka moment came while I was writing soap-opera fan fiction! There was this soap opera here in the States called Passions and it was one of the most vacuous to ever exist; they had a witch on there and all these things. But the characters on that show were so rich and there was so much to be explored with them that, as a teenager, I decided to write fan fiction for them and put it up online. So my eureka moment came when I had readers say: “Wow, you’re really good at this” or: “Girl, I rushed home when I saw that you had put up another chapter, I had to come home and read it.” That really pushed me and I was like: “Wow, well, maybe this is something I can do with my own characters. Maybe I can create these worlds myself, that belong to me.” As for my process, I always try at least to write an outline chart. I don’t always stick with the chart 100%, but it’s at least a road map and if I make a couple of detours here and there that’s OK. I took this from JK Rowling, actually. She did one for the fifth Harry Potter book and put it online: at the top of the chart, she had every character or subplot listed and then on the side she would have the different chapter numbers and that’s how she could keep up with what was happening in every single chapter. So that’s what I do for my books now. I do a chart. If it works for her, and she’s sold all those books, maybe it can work for me! NWA or Wu-Tang?Paul Taylor, DorsetOhhhh, that’s hard for me to answer that. Cos on the one hand, with NWA, they changed hip-hop as you know it – you’ve got an entire genre of hip-hop and, really, a coast in hip‑hop culture because of NWA. They helped bring west coast hip-hop to popularity. They gave us gangsta rap, but then on the other hand… they gave us gangsta rap. They gave us music that at times demeaned women, they gave us music that at times was destructive for the community when people took it the wrong way or used it a certain way. So it’s hard for me to say NWA. I do appreciate anything that they did, but I have to go with Wu-Tang. Do you see yourself as a political writer or a writer who happens to be political? How do you think Trump’s presidency is changing America and what mark do you think it will leave, especially on literature, when he goes?Gaverne Bennett, LondonThese days, it’s hard to say because politics is such a huge part of my life anyway. But I would say that I’m a writer who is concerned about politics. I would never just say that I only write about social justice issues, because I won’t. It’s funny, because I tell people: “Mississippi is known for two things: writing and racism.” And I happen to be a writer who writes about racism. For the second part, if nothing else right now, Trump has stained America. He has taken us out of a leadership position in the world. Nobody will listen to us now as a leader or as a beacon of hope for anything because of him and because of his actions and because of the decisions he makes. But I will say, I’m more hopeful now than I was before, because I’m seeing more people who are concerned about politics. We’re going to come away from this knowing that we have the ability to change things and that ultimately our government answers to us. So I hope that by the end, when he’s out of office, that the world will know that we Americans, the majority of us, don’t stand for what he stands for. So definitely, please don’t give up on us. Learning to read and write is “freedom” only if one can find a publisher with contacts for publicity. Eudora Welty, whose writings I adore, got hers through the New Deal programmes. How did you find yours?ShrimpandgritsWow, that’s awesome that he or she loves Eudora. My college that I attended is actually across the street from her house, so I would see that every single day. But, for me, my publishing journey actually started with Twitter, of all things. When I was writing The Hate U Give, I was honestly not sure if it was something that would even be published, because if you said Black Lives Matter to 30 different people you may get 30 different responses. But also because publishing, young-adult publishing was so white, I wasn’t used to seeing books about black girls and I definitely wasn’t seeing books about black girls in situations like this. So a literary agency held a question-and-answer session on Twitter and I went on and I asked a question. I’m paraphrasing but basically I asked: “Is a book that addresses an issue like this even something that can be published?” And a literary agent by the name of Brooks Sherman responded: “I don’t think any topic is off limits for young adult readership. It’s just a matter of how you address it.” And I was like: “Well, I hope I address it well.” And he said: “I’d actually like to read it if that’s OK.” So I sent it to him and a few months later he signed me as a client. A few months after that, he submitted it to publishers and 13 US publishers fought for the rights to the book. So Twitter is good for something; if nothing else, it found me an agent. Do you think the world should focus so much on the cultural problems of the US, when really it’s just 3% of the population?GreenlandGyrfalconNo, I don’t think that they should. That’s a great point. We should not be the centre of attention all the time. I see why [we are], because we are such a powerhouse, but we need to be aware of other countries and what’s happening there. It doesn’t make sense that you guys have to be subjected to our news maybe sometimes more than your own. So I am so sorry on behalf of America. I am so sorry that our stuff takes up so much air space. I am so sorry that we take up so many headlines. What advice would you give to your younger self?Molly Reed, aged 15, Barnes, LondonI would tell my younger self to be yourself no matter where you are. In a few years, you’re going to be entering university and you are going to ask questions if you’re being your authentic self because you’re often made to feel you’re either too much or not enough. But I promise you, you are enough. You’re enough for everywhere you go, for whatever you do. Always know that. And then I would tell my younger self, my 15-year-old self specifically, if you want to write, write for yourself. Whatever it is that you want to do, do it for yourself. Don’t do it for the accolades, do it because it’s something you love. And then I would tell my 15-year-old self: it’s going to be OK. There are days where you wonder if that’s true, how you’re going to survive all of this stuff. You wonder, will you make it? You just have to hang in there, you have to keep going and if you keep going, I promise you there will be light in the darkness. You can do it! Aww, you made me tear up! • On the Come Up (Walker Books, £7.99) by Angie Thomas is out 7 February. To order a copy for £7.03 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99 • Angie Thomas: On the Come Up is at the Southbank Centre, London, Tuesday 12 March, 7pm. Tickets (£15) from southbankcentre.co.ukMinisters have been urged by top doctors to reveal the extent of national drug stocks, amid growing evidence patients are stockpiling medication in preparation for a no-deal Brexit. The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), which represents tens of thousands of doctors, urged the government to be more “transparent about national stockpiles, particularly for things that are already in short supply or need refrigeration, such as insulin”. Prof Andrew Goddard, the RCP president, said: “Faith in the system will be created by openness and regular updates to trusts and clinicians; this will allow clinicians to reassure patients.” The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has warned medical shortages have increased in recent months. Generic drugs are usually bought through nationally set tariff prices. However, pharmacies can apply for price concessions under which the NHS will temporarily pay more when the drugs are in short supply. The number of concessions the PSNC applied for went up from 45 in October, to 72 in November and 87 in December. The Guardian has also found evidence some patients are stockpiling drugs, against official guidance. They said they were doing so by ordering drugs from abroad, and by asking their GPs for emergency prescriptions. One diabetic patient has been stockpiling insulin for four months, ordering twice the amount he needs for each of his drugs from the pharmacist. Robin Hewings, the head of policy at Diabetes UK, backed calls for more transparency from the government about current stock levels to reassure patients. “There is a level of concern that has risen quite a lot [in the last few months] and people with diabetes are talking about stockpiling. The government needs to be more transparent about insulin supplies.” Hewings said people with diabetes in particular needed more reassurance. He added the risks associated with patients stockpiling drugs meant NHS resources could be wasted. “If we are in a situation where supplies are constrained and people then start trying to get a lot more insulin than they need ... I worry about the way that might play out.” One diabetic patient, speaking anonymously, told the Guardian: “I am T1D and everyone on the diabetes forums are stockpiling insulin. People are reporting shortages due to this. We are used to getting insulin dispensed immediately or next day, but people say they are being asked to leave it a week.” Another woman, who also wanted to remain anonymous, said: “I’m really nervous about medical supplies and have scouted out both how to do day trips to France to get meds, or illegal postal supplies from India.” Patients have also reported their GPs helping them to stockpile, with a 37-year-old woman saying she was given an emergency prescription. “I saw my GP just before Christmas and said I was freaking out about a no deal and medicine shortages … She said that, since I was anxious about it, she’d give me a six-week supply of each of the medicines to keep in a cupboard and hopefully any interrupted supplies would be smoothed over by then. If nothing happens, I can just use it as normal, but she said it was entirely reasonable for me to be afraid,” she said. Speaking anonymously, the owner of a chemist in London said: “The cases I’ve seen were just patients getting large supplies when it wasn’t because they were going on holiday. The patient who received a private prescription got it from their regular GP. So they had likely been honest about their intentions to the GP and the GP was sympathetic but couldn’t help them with an NHS prescription.” Another patient, Florence Pattaralowha, claimed her GP had told her Naproxen, an anti-inflammatory drug, was in short supply due to Brexit. “I was informed by him there is no Naproxen in the country due to Brexit trade deals, as the medication is mainly outsourced for other countries,” she said. Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “We … would ask them [patients] not to take it upon themselves to stockpile, or put their prescribing healthcare professional in a difficult position by asking them to help them to do so, and look to the government to reassure the public.” In December, the Department of Health and Social Care revealed plans that would amend the Human Medicines Regulation 2012 and let pharmacists dispense an alternative medicine, rather than the prescription, without having to contact a GP. The health secretary, Matthew Hancock, insisted the move was “not actually just about Brexit”. The government has asked pharmaceutical companies to stockpile medicines as part of a UK-wide, no-deal contingency plan. However, patients, GPs and hospitals have been told they do not need to bring in extra supplies. Rachel Power, the chief executive of the Patients Association, said patients were in a very difficult position. She said: “It is impossible to say whether the government’s contingency planning will prove adequate … the uncertainty over Brexit is leaving patients who rely on medicine for their day-to-day wellbeing on the horns of a dreadful dilemma.” Goddard said: “The Department for Health and Social Care must work with NHS trusts and clinicians to create confidence in the new measures … During this period, we recognise the DHSC advice for hospitals, pharmacies and patients not to stockpile medicines, but urge transparency about national stockpiles, particularly for things that are already in short supply or need refrigeration, for example, insulin.” He added: “Faith in the system will be created by openness and regular updates to trusts and clinicians; this will allow clinicians to reassure patients.” The deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, said: “Obviously, it’s immensely helpful to have guidance from government on how trusts should start to plan for a no-deal Brexit … A real concern is that clearly this guidance comes at a time when trusts are having to prioritise responding to the pressures of winter.” A DHSC spokesperson said: “We have not seen any evidence of current medicine supply issues linked to EU exit preparations … Patients should not stockpile … the supply of medicines will be uninterrupted in the event of exiting the EU without a deal.”There was a mildly patronising theory doing the rounds after West Indies went 1-0 up in Barbados that the call would go out to the groundstaff of Antigua and St Lucia with instructions to kill the pitches; that somehow the best chance for Jason Holder’s side to regain the Wisden Trophy was to protect their lead with draws rather than duke it out. Things do not quite work like that in the Caribbean. Yes, there is a central curator, Ken Grafton, who travels around the islands trying to instil best practice and encourage greater consistency. But the region’s volatile weather prevents such exact science and after a week of both scorching sun and occasional stair-rodding rain, what emerged on day one at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in North Sound was anything but a wicket designed for a stalemate. Among the 7,000 travelling supporters who lined the grass banks and frolicked in the swimming pool was an old Barmy Army T-shirt from the 1998 tour to these parts. Presumably printed midway through that trip, it had an asterisk next to Sabina Park – the Test that was forced to be abandoned only 62 balls in after a corrugated pitch and the lethal combination of Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh left England 17 for three and with various body parts being dunked in buckets of ice. Things never got quite so extreme on day one in Antigua as they were in Jamaica back then. But nevertheless, when England reached lunch on 78 for four – a scoreline that on other days would prompt inquests into the latest offerings of a clown car top-order – it almost felt a minor triumph given the variable bounce that made pushing forward fraught with danger – and not just as regard’s the batsman’s wicket. Jonny Bairstow eschewed the “hunker down” approach being preached by Alastair Cook in his first outing as a BBC radio pundit and instead punished anything loose for a counterattacking 52. Not everyone enjoyed themselves out in the middle, however. Far from it. Just ask Joe Root, undone by a brutish lifter off a length from Alzarri Joseph that flew off the bat handle and was taken by the acrobatic slip pairing of John Campbell and Shai Hope. Or Ben Stokes, who wore a spiteful delivery on his left hand amid a running verbal battle with Shannon Gabriel, one that was bubbling up into great theatre before the hulking Trinidadian shut it down with a fine leg-cutter from wide of the crease. Then there was Ben Foakes, who ended the day receiving treatment to his right hand after being struck by Gabriel upon dismissal, with Bairstow, his rival for the gloves, returning behind the stumps during England’s late hunt for wickets. All of which made England’s second saviour on the day – a relative term amid a total of 187 all out – all the more unlikely. Moeen Ali came into this match rather fortunate to still be at No 7 in the order. His winter form with the bat has been rotten, averaging 9.7 from eight innings, and before Barbados, where he suffered a grim pair, he confessed to having lost the patience for the long innings and with it a desire to bat higher up. And yet a player who also has a reputation for being a touch windy against the short ball somehow found a way, shrugging off a crunching Gabriel bouncer to his helmet early on to craft 60 from 104 balls. Granted things got easier as the ball softened and the less threatening Roston Chase entered the fray. But Moeen’s stand of 85 with Foakes (35) ensured, at the very least, this series was not lost in space of only five days and flipped a few preconceptions on their head. So too have West Indies, who appear keen to sprint to the line early rather than grind out a series win. When it comes to pitches they are a bit like Doc Brown at the end of Back to the Future: where they are going, they do not need roads.You know what I love about capitalism? Its optimism. Even in the direst of circumstances, it is always able to find a silver lining. Take climate change, for example. After weird weather and ominous warnings of more to come, many of us are freaking out about an environmental apocalypse. Indeed, a new poll shows record numbers of Americans are worried about climate change and, after last year’s heatwave, concerns about the issue have soared in Britain. Now, it seems that big companies are equally worried about global warming, but they are thinking about the future with cool heads. Rather than being consumed by doom and gloom, or considering the idea that we should curb consumerism, corporations have realised climate change is an exciting business opportunity. You can see evidence of this in recent disclosures to CDP, a UK-based environmental reporting NGO that surveys companies on the “risks and opportunities” they face because of changing weather patterns. The 2018 disclosures, reported by Bloomberg last week, provide a fascinating insight into how some of the world’s largest corporations are, as Bloomberg puts it in a headline, “Getting Ready to Monetize Climate Change”. Let’s start with the pharmaceutical industry, which is particularly well placed to profit from our dystopian future. As Merck notes in its disclosure to CDP, climate change may lead to “expanded markets for products for tropical and weather-related diseases including water-borne illness”. AbbVie sees similar opportunities, saying that its “immunology product line could see an increase in sales” as a result of more extreme conditions. And Eli Lilly, another large pharmaceutical company, cites research showing climate change may increase the risk of diabetes by “curtailing physical activity, disrupting traditional food supplies, and increasing food insecurity”. While that is sad and all, the upside for Eli Lilly is a potential increase in demand for its diabetes products. It’s not just big pharma that sees dollar symbols in disaster. Honda reckons its generators may empower its consumers when the world’s infrastructure crumbles. The company notes that “the Katrina disaster was followed by a 27% increase in unit sales of [Honda] generators”. Meanwhile, the Home Depot is optimistic that, at the very least, it will sell more ceiling fans “should temperatures increase over time”. The tech industry, as one would expect, is taking an innovative view of how an apocalypse may affect the bottom line. Apple thinks that “as people begin to experience severe weather events with greater frequency” they will become increasingly glued to their mobile phones. It notes that, as well as helping you check in with your loved ones, your iPhone can “serve as a flashlight”. Which takes the idea of seeing the bright side of a bad situation to a whole new level. Apple also says that, if disaster strikes, you can charge your mobile device using “hand cranks”. Few people do that at the moment, but don’t be surprised if you see iCranks, Armageddon-proof iPhone chargers, hitting a store near you soon. All in all, Apple says that if it is “successful in creating products attractive to people whose purchasing habits are changing due to concerns about climate change” it could raise annual net sales by $2.3bn (£1.75bn). That’s something to be cheerful about as the ice melts, eh? Anyway, while there are plenty more examples of corporate climate-change optimism, let’s skip to the moral of this story, which is that, when it comes to global warming, we should all be acting more like multinationals. Rather than worrying about the planet being destroyed, why not ask yourself how you can best monetise the rest of your time on Earth? Invest in big pharma. Get a hand crank. And don’t lose sleep over deforestation – after all, money doesn’t grow on trees.The hero of The Mule is Earl Stone, a horticulturist who earns extra cash ferrying drugs across the US. He is a popular fellow, and there are no fewer than three scenes in the film in which he is applauded by large and admiring crowds. Though aged 90, he has two separate threesomes in the course of the film, both with women in their 20s who are eager to get their hands on him. (“It’s my turn!” says one impatiently). Earl may crack a joke about Viagra in the film’s opening minutes, but he requires no chemical boost. And it is not enough that he should get it on with two women at once; he is also spied on from across the street by a younger man, mystified and perhaps a touch envious about the old timer’s allure. It is encouraging to find a stereotype-busting role like this on the screen, and good to see that Clint Eastwood has the vim to play it. But that joy can only be compromised by the knowledge that Eastwood also cast the part, and called the shots behind the camera. All those closeups of himself looking incorrigible, or lapping up the adoration of others, or getting down to business with women young enough to be his great-granddaughters – these were staged and approved by him. Perhaps he even asked for extra takes. Better safe than sorry. Eastwood is no slouch when it comes to self-worship, though in his case it usually has a moral rather than a sexual dimension; in films such as Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino, he performs self-sacrificial acts for the betterment of mankind, or to atone for his own sins. At least when he made his directorial debut in 1971 with Play Misty for Me, he was to some extent interrogating male narcissism as much as he was wallowing in it. In that thriller about a gadabout DJ who is stalked by a female fan, there is the sense that Eastwood’s character is the architect of his own undoing, paying the price for his cavalier treatment of women. Fast forward nearly half a century and analysis has been replaced by analgesia. Whenever an actor directs his own performance (and it is almost invariably a “he”), there is the risk that a film will morph into a vanity project. There can have been little reason for the Scrubs star Zach Braff to have directed himself in Garden State and Wish I Was Here other than to promote Brand Braff: quirky, sensitive, indie-loving. Overstretching is another risk, as Kenneth Branagh proved when he directed himself in six films over the course of just seven years, some of them so bad that their titles (Dead Again, Peter’s Friends) are never mentioned on film sets for fear they will summon a Macbeth-style curse. But vanity need not make an endeavour worthless. When Bradley Cooper, who plays an FBI agent in The Mule, directed himself last year as a fading country-rock singer in A Star Is Born, he gave us vain without the pain. As one of the co-writers of this remake, Cooper had the opportunity to shift the balance of the story away from its usual focus on male self-destruction and to give the female lead a bigger slice of the pie. It was one he chose to resist. With Cooper in charge behind the camera, as well as hogging the meaty scenes in front of it, this was vanity cinema at its baldest. Fortunately it’s no hardship watching him: file Cooper in the vain-but-worth-it category alongside Warren Beatty directing his own performances in Heaven Can Wait and Reds. At least Cooper wasn’t deluded. When Kevin Spacey first proposed making Beyond the Sea, a film about the singer Bobby Darin, he was 32 – five years younger than Darin was when he died, and comfortably within range of playing the part. By the time Spacey found financing for the project, he was 45. A wise man would have known that the years had overtaken him, and that he should probably find someone else to tackle the crooner’s late teens and 20s, but Spacey was not that man. Beyond the Sea tries to pre-empt such criticisms by having the older Darin debate the story’s veracity with his childhood self, but this technique comes across as precisely what it is: the equivalent of slapping a sticking-plaster on a compound fracture. Plenty of actor-directors make the mistake of assuming themselves to be positively adorable. Sylvester Stallone directed parts two, three, four and six of his own Rocky series, amplifying his sentimental fondness for the title character each time. Even the one film that he directed that didn’t have a role for him – his pitiful Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive – still included a tell-tale flash of egotism. Stallone gives himself a Hitchcock-style walk-on part in the movie, which might have been harmless enough had he not directed its star, John Travolta, to perform a disbelieving double-take as he strolled past. There are numerous ways in which an actor-director can share with the world his high opinion of himself but you have to admire the directness of Vincent Gallo. It was ironic that the actor-writer-director was mocked for his film The Brown Bunny, and for the moment in which he is fellated on-screen by Chloë Sevigny, when anyone who has watched the whole movie will know that this scene has a nasty sting in the tail: the encounter transpires to be pure fantasy, the product of Gallo’s character’s warped guilt over failing to save Sevigny from an ugly death. Far more deserving of ridicule is the scene in his directorial debut Buffalo 66, in which he is shown peeing at a urinal while the man next to him marvels at Gallo’s equipment. “It’s so big!” the man says, as though it would have been impolite to keep this view to himself. Difficult to look at this scene, written and directed by its star, without thinking: What a dick. There is no shortage of contenders for the title of most self-regarding actor-director in cinema: George Clooney in Leatherheads, Jean-Claude Van Damme in The Quest, Steven Seagal in On Deadly Ground, Prince in Under the Cherry Moon. But it takes a special kind of vanity to combine narcissism and prestige and it is for that reason that no one can hold a candle to Kevin Costner, even 29 years after his performance in his own Dances With Wolves as a Union soldier who discovers a kinship with the Sioux. There may ostensibly be an on-screen love story between the hero and a Sioux woman (Mary McDonnell), but the most convincing romance is the one between director and star, Costner and Costner. There is nothing quite like it. Except, perhaps, Costner’s followup, The Postman, which repeated all the same tricks as Dances With Wolves to zero acclaim. In this futuristic drama, set at a time when democracy has collapsed in America and the land is ruled by thugs, Costner chances upon an old mail van and reinstates the country’s postal service. The actor does his humble messiah routine from Dances With Wolves, while several hundred extras send looks of awestruck wonder in his direction. The effect suggests a man contemplating himself in a mirror for three hours. If one element is conspicuous by its absence from this survey, it is women. It is not unheard of for a female director to show excessive self-regard or false humility, and it would be hard to think of a better example than The Mirror Has Two Faces, a take on the Ugly Duckling story directed by its star, Barbra Streisand. The picture contains endless scenes of Streisand fishing for the audience’s compliments, playing gawky when we can see all along that she’s glam; it is the stuff of Marie Antoinette at the milking stool. Yet to put it in the same class as Costner’s work would be to praise it with faint damning. Streisand can be self-indulgent, but she is no Costner. Only once a female film-maker directs herself in something as self-admiringly bad as The Postman will we have achieved true equality between the genders.Fish and chip shops and fishmongers are selling endangered sharks to an unwitting public, according to researchers who used DNA barcoding to identify species on sale. Most chip shop fish sold under generic names such as huss, rock, flake and rock salmon turned out to be spiny dogfish, a shark species classified as endangered in Europe by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s red list. Researchers at the University of Exeter also found fins of shark species unknowingly sold by a British wholesaler included scalloped hammerheads, which are endangered globally, as well as shortfin mako and smalleye hammerhead sharks. Other species sold in fish and chip shops and fishmongers included starry smooth-hounds, nursehounds and blue sharks. It was illegal to catch spiny dogfish in the EU until 2011 but the fish is now permitted to be sold as bycatch – when it is brought up in nets that target other species. The government allows many shark species to be sold under long-used generic names such as rock but the researchers are calling for more accurate food labelling – with fish clearly identified at the point of sale to consumers – so people know what species they are eating and where it came from. “It’s almost impossible for consumers to know what they are buying,” said Catherine Hobbs of the University of Exeter, and first author of the paper published in Scientific Reports. “People might think they’re getting a sustainably sourced product when they’re actually buying a threatened species. “There are also health issues. Knowing what species you are buying could be important in terms of allergies, toxins, mercury content and the growing concern over microplastics in the marine food chain.” Fins are more difficult to label because they are removed as soon as the sharks are caught but Hobbs said there was still an issue with “certain fishermen who don’t specifically adhere to the laws of labelling” when fish are landed. “The discovery of endangered hammerhead sharks highlights how widespread the sale of declining species really is – even reaching Europe and the UK,” said Dr Andrew Griffiths, also of the University of Exeter. “Scalloped hammerhead can be imported under strict conditions, but the wholesaler had no idea what species the fin belonged to.” The study analysed 78 samples from chip shops and 39 from fishmongers, mostly in southern England, as well as 10 fins from a wholesaler that sells them to restaurants and specialist supermarkets.Asia Bibi, the Christian farm labourer who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy, is expected to leave the country after the supreme court upheld her acquittal. The court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to October’s ruling brought by an extreme Islamist party, which led violent protests across the country in the autumn and called for Bibi to be killed. Bibi, who has been held at a secret location since her death sentence was overturned, may be flown out of the country within hours. Two of her children are reportedly already in Canada, which has offered Bibi asylum. The supreme court’s decision will be welcomed by Christian and human rights campaigners, who have lobbied western countries to offer sanctuary to Bibi, her husband and five children. Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, one of a three-judge panel that considered the petition, said: “Based on merit, this review petition is dismissed.” In a statement, Amnesty International said Bibi should be free “to reunite with her family and seek safety in a country of her choice”. But Hafiz Ehtisham Ahmed, an Islamist activist linked to the extremist Red Mosque in Islamabad, said Bibi may not be safe wherever she goes. “She deserves to be murdered according to Shariah. If she goes abroad, don’t Muslims live there? If she goes out of Pakistan … anybody can kill her there,” she told AFP. The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party, which was formed to defend Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and which led violent protests demanding Bibi’s execution after her acquittal, called on Tuesday for its members to be ready for action. However, most of its leaders are in detention after a government crackdown, and there were few protesters at the court in Islamabad. Bibi was sentenced to death in 2010 in what swiftly became Pakistan’s most infamous blasphemy case. She had been accused by Muslim villagers of insulting the prophet Muhammad in a row over a cup of water. Blasphemy is a highly inflammatory issue in Pakistan, where even unproven accusations of insulting Islam can spark lynchings. Human rights activists say blasphemy charges are frequently used to settle personal scores. After the supreme court overturned her conviction, cities across Pakistan were paralysed for several days by violent demonstrations with enraged extremists calling for her beheading. In a deal to end the violence, the government, led by the prime minister, Imran Khan, struck a deal allowing the petition seeking an appeal against the supreme court’s judgment. Khan was accused of capitulating to the extremists’ demands.As a six-year-old I recall being fascinated while watching my paternal grandfather prepare his boiled egg. He would gently, repeatedly, tap his egg with the back of a teaspoon and the shell would star into such minuscule fragments that he was able to remove the fragile bald pate in just the one go. This then neatly revealed the smoothest white dome – the fat end – ready for the spoon to spoil. It always oozed and wobbled, perfectly, the inside of that egg. In fact, the golden yolk would, occasionally, overflow the crest of the broken shell, all sticky down the blue-striped egg cup as it dribbled. His final task was to carefully mix together salt and white pepper, ready ground, naturally, in a weeny heap on the side of his plate, so to perfectly season each mouthful. For those who have always considered me to be something of a pedant, now you know where it may have started. To be frank, spending a small part of one’s life perfecting the cooking and eating of a morning egg is, for me, high on the list of good things to do. Far more important than sex. And texting. There are, for me, three ways to eat a boiled egg: a runny-yolked one for breakfast; a not-quite-so-runny-yolked one but with a firmly set white; and a boiled egg for slicing, or to be chopped and added to mayonnaise as a sandwich filling – particularly good when seasoned with anchovy. And that’s it. But to achieve perfection, the following cooking methods should be strictly adhered to. When buying eggs I ruthlessly rummage to the very back of the supermarket display to find the latest date possible. It is also well worth saying here, that the best and freshest store-bought eggs I have found are those from Clarence Court. The perfect eggsI firmly believe that to bring an egg up to an obvious simmer, not a full boil, from cold water produces the finest texture of both yolk and white. The pan used should have a thin base if cooking on a gas flame, or if on a flat, electric heat, the pan must have a perfect contact with the source, for the faster the water heats up, the more efficient the timing. To aid speed, the pan should be covered, and I have always favoured a rather cheap one with a glass lid, enabling a beady eye on optimum simmer. The eggs used here are medium-sized, 60-65g, and always at room temperature. For a morning egg with a just-set white and runny yolk throughout, once the water is simmering, switch off the heat, leave the lid intact and leave in the water for 1 minute. Lift out with a spoon and put in an egg cup. Eat at once, with soldiers. For an egg with a firmer white and semi-runny yolk, leave for 2 minutes. For an egg with firm white and slightly firmer yolk – yet still soft-textured – 3 minutes. Four minutes is a perfect egg to be quartered, or sliced, in a Sunday evening lettuce salad, say, or as an egg mayonnaise. And 5 minutes, for me, is as long as I need a hard-boiled egg to be cooked: the yolk is just firm and, once cold, will easily peel at a picnic. The ideal soldiersA word regarding soldiers. When a perfect soldier is dunked into the running yolk of a perfectly boiled egg, it needs to be ramrod straight. To achieve this, it is important to employ the correct bread. I always use the French pain de mie. This has a soft crumb, almost en route to brioche, but less rich. It crisps beautifully, but particularly so when enriched with a little butter before toasting; and by that, I mean almost fried. To achieve this, very lightly brush a thick slice of pain de mie with finest, unsalted, melted butter. Now, moderately heat a solid, non-stick frying pan, place the bread in the pan, butter-side down, and turn the heat down even lower. While the bread is colouring underneath, carefully brush the top side with more butter. When golden beneath, flip the slice over and repeat the process. Once both sides are equally gilded and super-crisp, slice into 1.5cm fingers. Note A slow and quiet care taken with the cooking will, eventually, produce the most crisp of dinky soldiers.Simon Hopkinson is a chef and author of The Vegetarian Option (Quadrille, £12.99) Makes 4eggs 5 large plain flour 50g, seasoned with salt and pepper simple sausage meat 300g fresh breadcrumbs 100g vegetable oil for deep frying Place 4 of the eggs in a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and cook for exactly 3 minutes, remove from the heat and allow to cool in the water, then peel and reserve. Dust the boiled eggs in seasoned flour, keeping the remaining flour for later. Divide the sausage meat into 4 equal portions. Form each portion into a flat cake large enough to fit around the egg. Work the sausage meat around the egg as evenly as possible while keeping the egg shape and making sure there are no cracks. Place the scotch eggs in the fridge for 20 minutes to firm up. Preheat your oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Beat the remaining egg. Remove the scotch eggs from the fridge and roll in the reserved seasoned flour followed by the beaten egg, then into the crumbs, making sure to coat the surface well at each stage. In a deep pan, heat the oil to 180C, or to when a small piece of bread rises and turns golden in 30 seconds. Fry the scotch eggs in the oil, turning frequently, for 3 minutes. Remove the scotch eggs and place them in the preheated oven for 5 minutes or until golden brown all over.Richard H Turner is a writer and restaurateur There was, no doubt there still is, a small restaurant in Avignon where I used to eat about twice a week, on market days, when I was living in a rickety old house in a crumbling Provençal hill-top village about 20 miles from the city of the Popes. Physically and emotionally worn to tatters by the pandemonium and splendour of the Avignon market, tottering under the weight of the provisions we had bought and agonised at the thought of all the glorious things which we hadn’t or couldn’t, we would make at last for the restaurant Molière to be rested and restored. It was a totally unpretentious little place and the proprietors had always been angelically kind, welcoming and generous. They purveyed some particularly delicious marc de champagne and were always treating us to a glass or two after lunch so that by the time we piled into the bus which was to take us home we were more than well prepared to face once more the rigours of our mistral-torn village. But even more powerful a draw than the marc was the delicious cheese omelette which was the Molière’s best speciality. The recipe was given to me by the proprietress whose name I have most ungratefully forgotten, but whose omelette, were there any justice in the world, would be as celebrated as that of Madame Poulard. Here it is. Serves 1Beat one tablespoon of finely grated parmesan with 3 eggs and a little pepper. Warm the pan a minute over the fire. Put in half an ounce (14g) of butter. Turn up the flame. When the butter bubbles and is about to change colour, pour in the eggs. Add one tablespoon of very fresh gruyere cut into little dice, and one tablespoon of thick fresh cream. Tip the pan towards you, easing some of the mixture from the far edge into the middle. Then tip the pan away from you again, filling the empty space with some of the still liquid eggs. By the time you have done this twice, the gruyere will have started to melt and your omelette is ready. Fold it over in three with a fork or palette knife, and slide it on to the warmed omelette dish. Serve it instantly.From An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David (Grub Street, £14.99) Another tortilla de bacalao? Well yes, I couldn’t write a book on the food of the Basque Country and not include this recipe. It’sThis is the a must-have dish when you are in a sidrería (cider house). When you caramelise the onions, make plenty as you can keep them in the fridge for at least a week – they make a great addition to any sandwich, or just on toast with some goat’s cheese. Heaven. Serves 4-6salt cod 400g olive oil 125ml white onions 3 large, finely slicedthyme a handful, leaves strippedfree-range eggs 6 freshly ground black pepperflat-leaf parsley a handful, finely chopped Soak the cod in cold water, skin side up, for 24 hours, changing the water a couple of times. Heat the oil in a large pan and gently fry the onions for a few minutes. Cover with a lid and cook over a low heat for 25 minutes until really soft. Remove the lid, add the thyme leaves and cook for a further 20-25 minutes until really caramelised and sticky. Scoop out with a slotted spoon, keeping some of the oil, and cool. Remove the skin from the cod and flake into large pieces. Beat the eggs with plenty of black pepper and gently fold in the onion, cod and parsley. In a large (23cm) non-stick pan, heat 2-3 tablespoons of the reserved oil and pour in the egg mixture. Swirl the pan over a high heat until the mixture starts to set around the edges, then reduce the heat and cook for 4-5 minutes until it just starts to set, so that the bottom and sides are golden but it is still quite loose in the middle. Cover the pan with a flat lid or board, turn the tortilla carefully onto it, then put the pan back on a low heat. Return the tortilla to the pan, cooked side up, and use a spatula to tuck the edges of the tortilla under to give its characteristic curved look. Cook for a couple of minutes, then turn onto a board and serve. It should still be lovely and juicy when you cut into it.From Basque: Spanish Recipes from San Sebastián & Beyond by José Pizarro (Hardie Grant, £25) Use cooked rice that has been chilled rather than fresh rice from the steamer. If you like your fried rice to have a warm yellow glow, add an extra egg yolk. Serves 2vegetable oil for stir-fryingegg 1, lightly beatencooked long-grain rice 200g, chilled (100g uncooked rice)salt and white pepperspring onion 1, green part finely choppedsesame oil 1 tsp Make sure your wok is clean and dry and then heat it until smoking. Coat with a thin film of vegetable oil, then immediately pour this oil out into a bowl. This process will prevent the rice from sticking to the wok. Add a tablespoon of cold vegetable oil to the wok and, just as it begins to smoke, add the beaten egg, agitating it so that it scrambles. If the egg sticks at this point, remove it and repeat the previous treatment of the wok. Add the rice and begin to mix it with the egg. If you have large lumps of rice, use the back of a ladle to break them up. When the rice has warmed through, season it with salt and pepper to taste. Finish by adding the chopped spring onion greens and the sesame oil.From A Wong: The Cookbook by Andrew Wong (Mitchell Beazley, £25) OFM’s 20 best egg recipes part 2 launches tomorrow morningThese days it does not matter how much the US economy is pumped with steroids, if China cannot keep pace, the rest of the world slows down. Even the US begins to stagger. That is the message from the International Monetary Fund, which has supplemented its usual March and October biannual health checks on the global economy with a handy interim report timed to coincide with the Davos business and political leaders’ summit. Where once the US was a V8 engine driving the global economy, now it has an equal partner on the other side of the Pacific. In a short report directed at the business leaders and “thinkers” attending the World Economic Forum, there were warnings about a no-deal Brexit and the shockwaves it would send through the global economic and financial systems. Italy was admonished for almost wilfully throwing away its recovery in a dispute with the European Union over its budget deficit. But the slowdown in the global economy over the past year and the worsening prospects for the next two years are almost entirely traced back to China and how well the Communist party leadership is handling the country’s economic affairs. Given the task at hand, there is an argument for congratulating Beijing. After it came to the rescue of the global economy in 2009 with a monster package of spending and borrowing, it has tried to bring the debts of its state enterprises under control, temper speculative property buying and restrict banks from reckless lending. All this has happened while its leaders have sought to clean up the major cities (of corruption and dirty air) and raise approximately 10 million people out of poverty each year. Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s determination to punish China for its exporting prowess could not have come at a worse time. The Communist party may have tightened its grip on economic activity and paid less heed to human rights abuses, but the capitalist genie is, to some extent, out of the bottle. The Chinese people from Shanghai to Chengdu like to speculate on property, the stock market and make money using cheap state finance and without paying too much attention to climate change. Until recently, Beijing could always turbo-charge exports and generate some extra income. With Trump’s negotiators blocking that route with tariffs (watch out Britain, the president’s trade team are difficult to please), China has seen its growth rate fall to its lowest level since 1990. The IMF boss, Christine Lagarde, was quick to downplay the potential for an imminent shock. She obviously wanted to sound more upbeat to her fellow citizens of the world, 1,500 metres up in the Swiss mountains. But she couldn’t help warning that China’s fate would determine the path for the rest of the world and that – without naming him – Trump should resolve his differences through negotiation and cooperation. Otherwise a difficult transition in China will founder, taking much of the world economy’s growth with it. As wishful thinking goes, it is hard to beat. There are delegates in Davos who breathed a sigh of relief when Trump announced that he and his delegation would not be turning up this year as planned. Time to think, they said. Especially about sharing. Lagarde, who was Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-of-centre finance minister before taking the IMF job, said on her arrival: “Solidarity is in all our self-interest.” The theme of sharing covers inequality, diversity, climate change and, at the top of the schedule on the first day, health. At Davos, the approach is mostly about the self, in line with Lagarde’s theme. So caring for someone in your community will make you more productive in your job. Opting for a career in the health industry will give job security in a world of ageing and increasingly unhealthy populations. On the other hand, sharing the wealth accumulated by the richest 1%, many of whom are at the WEF, does not appear to rank very high on the agenda.Inheritance tax loopholes and incentives for small business owners, most often benefiting the richest people in Britain, have cost taxpayers at least £4bn a year, according to official figures. Analysis of figures published by HM Revenue and Customs on Thursday revealed that the total cost of Britain’s system of tax relief had risen to a record £164bn annually – more than the entire NHS budget. While the measures are designed by the government to provide support to struggling households or to encourage economic growth, campaigners and Labour seized on the figures as evidence that the tax system has become increasingly tilted in favour of the richest in society. Peter Dowd, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said there were about 200 tax reliefs for which the government had no reliable cost estimate. “Today’s publication reveals the extent of tax giveaways which the Tories have allowed to expand without proper scrutiny,” he said. The biggest tax reliefs are zero or reduced VAT rates on purchases of food and energy, at a cost of about £53bn, followed by an exemption for capital gains tax on properties, worth £27bn, and pensions income tax relief worth £26bn. The cost to the public purse from inheritance tax loopholes – seen as an unpopular tax on death by some, but an equitable way of redistributing wealth by others – has risen to almost £2bn. Loopholes in the levy, which is paid by fewer than a tenth of estates and charged at 40% above the tax-free threshold of £325,000, include relief on agricultural land, business shares and transfers to charities. The cost to the taxpayer is roughly the same as the value of VAT relief on purchases of children’s clothes. Robert Palmer, the executive director of the campaign group Tax Justice UK, said: “Many of these reliefs are simply giveaways to companies and the wealthy. HMRC rarely looks at whether they are good value for money and are actually doing what they are meant to.” The HMRC figures also reveal that entrepreneurs’ relief, labelled by the Resolution Foundation thinktank as the “worst tax break” in Britain, will cost taxpayers £2.4bn this year. First introduced by Labour under Gordon Brown a decade ago, and then expanded by the Conservatives, it had initially been planned to cost about £200m a year, but has now cost taxpayers about £20bn in total. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, dismissed calls to scrap the loophole at the autumn budget, but said he would extend the qualifying period for tax relief from a year to two years to ensure it only helped genuine entrepreneurs. A Treasury spokesperson said: “Tax reliefs play an important role in the tax system, simplifying, reducing administrative burdens, and allowing HMRC to focus resources. We keep reliefs under review to ensure that they are fiscally sustainable and value for money.”A small green shoot is growing on the moon after a cotton seed germinated onboard a Chinese lunar lander, scientists said. The sprout has emerged from a lattice-like structure inside a canister after the Chang’e 4 lander touched down earlier this month, according to a series of photos released by the Advanced Technology Research Institute at Chongqing University. “This is the first time humans have done biological growth experiments on the lunar surface,” said Xie Gengxin, who led the design of the experiment, on Tuesday. Plants have been grown previously on the International Space Station, but this is the first time a seed has sprouted on the moon. The ability to grow plants in space is seen as crucial for long-term space missions and establishing human outposts elsewhere in the solar system, such as Mars. Harvesting food in space, ideally using locally extracted water, would mean astronauts could survive for far longer without returning to Earth for supplies. The Chang’e 4 probe – named after the Chinese moon goddess – made the world’s first soft landing on the far side of the moon on 3 January, a major step in China’s ambitions to become a space superpower. Scientists from Chongqing University, who designed the “mini lunar biosphere” experiment, sent an 18cm bucket-like container holding air, water and soil. Inside are cotton, arabidopsis – a small, flowering plant of the mustard family – and potato seeds, as well as fruit-fly eggs and yeast. Images sent back by the probe show a cotton plant has grown well, but so far none of the other plants had sprouted, the university said. Chang’e 4 is also equipped with instruments developed by scientists from Sweden, Germany and China to study the lunar environment, cosmic radiation and the interaction between solar wind and the moon’s surface. The lander released a rover, nicknamed Yutu 2 (Jade Rabbit), that will perform experiments in the Von Kármán crater. The agency said four more lunar missions are planned, confirming the launch of Chang’e 5 by the end of the year, which will be the first probe to return samples of the moon to Earth since the 1970s. “Experts are still discussing and verifying the feasibility of subsequent projects, but it’s confirmed that there will be another three missions after Chang’e 5,” said Wu Yanhua, deputy head of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), at a press conference. According to Wu, the Chang’e 6 mission will be designed to bring samples back from the south pole of the moon and this will be followed by probes that will conduct comprehensive surveys of the area. The series of missions will also lay the groundwork for the construction of a lunar research base, possibly using 3D printing technology to build facilities. Wu also revealed that China will send a probe to Mars around 2020.Deadlines for a retreat of Houthi troops in Yemen, agreed in talks last month, have had to be delayed, the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has said. He also conceded plans for prisoner exchanges have not gone to plan. Griffiths also had to deny that the retired general Patrick Cammaert, appointed by the UN to implement the ceasefire in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, had quit due to disagreements with Griffiths’s team. Griffiths confirmed Cammaert, a retired Dutch general, was leaving after only weeks in the job, but said he had always been on a short-term contract and there had been no dispute between the two men after the general’s convoy was fired upon in Hodeidah. Cammaert had been struggling to persuade the two sides to attend a regional coordination committee, seen as central to building trust, and ironing out disagreements over what was agreed in peace talks in Stockholm last month. Griffiths also rejected a call from the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis for the UN to declare the ceasefire is over. Such an announcement would be taken as a signal for the Saudi-backed forces to renew their offensive to capture the Houthi-held port city, seen by the Saudis as central to the Houthis’ effort to remain in power in the populated north of the country. For nearly four years, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates have been giving financial and military backing to the UN-recognised government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to regain power but have found the Iranian-backed Houthi resistance stronger than anticipated. Speaking to the Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, Griffiths said “timelines have been extended. The original deadlines were rather ambitious. We are dealing with a complex situation on the ground.” But he said he “categorically rejected” calls to name the party obstructing the Stockholm agreement. “I believe that the political leadership of both parties is determined to put an end to the suffering of the Yemeni people.” He accepted “the situation was volatile”, but said “the ceasefire is generally holding despite any security incidents that have been taking place. “General Cammaert’s plan was to stay in Yemen for a rather short period of time to ... lay the ground for establishing the Hodeidah mission. All the speculations about other reasons for the general’s departure are not accurate.” The Yemeni foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday that the Houthis had dodged the implementation of the Hodeidah agreement, refused to open safe corridors for the delivery of aid, and bombed Red Sea wheat silos, destroying badly needed aid. Yemeni government ministers personally met the UN secretary general, António Guterres, on Friday to demand he do more to enforce the agreement. Griffiths’s gloss on the state of the talks either reflects subtle progress towards a ceasefire only visible to those deeply involved in the talks, or the optimism required for a diplomat desperate to preserve the best and only chance for peace in Yemen. He is travelling to Yemen again this week to push for progress. In London 14 British-based aid groups urged both sides in the civil war to remember that the people of Yemen come first, adding commercial aid is not yet flowing to the level needed to restore vital imports of food and medicine. A large number of ships are waiting outside the port seeking permission to dock. Speaking from Hodeidah, Salem Baobaid, Islamic Relief’s head of office coordinator, said: “Until now, little has changed for ordinary people. After the months and months of bombing, shelling and starvation, it will take much more than a ceasefire to start breathing life into people who have been living on the edge of death for so long. “Things are so bad that large groups of people have started living in squalid, toxic conditions on the edge of the city’s main, highly contaminated garbage dump – just so they can forage for scraps.” He said members of his aid team had been killed by stray bullets and shelling was continuing. Baobaid said he had recently met Faiza, an 11-month-old girl weighing 5kg who had to come into the centre with her mother. “She barely moved, and had wide opened eyes … She barely cried. Her face was so pale it scared me. She had very bad diarrhoea and her mother was so exhausted that she could not breastfeed her properly. “When I first saw her, I thought she only had a few days left in this world. Luckily, we were able to help her and she is now out of danger.” He said there were 400,000 other children in the same state. In common with other aid workers, he said difficulties in getting permits to transport aid remained a huge problem with roadblocks every 20 minutes or so on the road between Hodeidah and Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. Other aid workers said the conflict was shifting from Hodeida and areas previously outside the fighting were now being sucked into the battles.It has been a full week since the New Year’s resolutions, so I think it’s safe to talk about pie. The crust, be it pastry, mashed vegetables or toasted breadcrumbs, is there to protect the filling from scorching in the oven and to provide substance. The crust is also there to hold a secret. Dig down through the depths of potato, parsnip or pastry and you will find treasure to savour – pieces of lamb with root vegetables and thyme; minced beef with soft onions and red wine, or perhaps golden smoked haddock with mussels and prawns. I chose to top the one I made this week, a rather nostalgic filling of beef, celery and thyme with frills of tight young kale leaves, with a 50:50 mash of Maris Pipers and Jersusalem artichokes. Later in the week I capped a smooth purée of roast cauliflower, rosemary and cream with more florets of toasted cauli. The crust this time was on the bottom, a crisp pastry case with pecorino. The topping of golden cauliflower curds allowed it to (just) sneak in under the title of pie. I am not sure whether it matters if your crust is as crisp as puff pastry or as soft as a roasted brassica, what matters is that you have your filling hidden. A delicious surprise as you dig in. I know I go on about it, but preheating a baking sheet is a thoroughly sound idea, allowing the base of your pastry case to cook crisply. Serves 6For the pastry:plain flour 150gbutter 75gpecorino 35g, gratedegg yolk 1iced water a little For the filling:cauliflowers 2, largerosemary 6 sprigsolive oil 8 tbspdouble cream 250mlYou will also need a 22cm diameter tart tin with a removable base Make the pastry first. Put the flour and butter in a food processor and reduce to fine crumbs. Add the pecorino and egg yolk and blend briefly, then introduce enough water (about 2-3 tbsp) to bring to a soft rollable dough. With lightly floured hands, pat the dough into a ball then cover and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6 and place a metal sheet on the middle shelf. Trim the leaves from the cauliflowers. Remove the florets, slicing the crown from each (leave about a centimetre of stalk on each), and put them in a mixing bowl. Reserve all the trimmings, you will use them in the filling. Roughly chop the stalks and trimmings and put them in a bowl. Pull the needles from the rosemary stems and divide equally between each bowl. Pour half of the oil into each bowl, season with salt and black pepper and toss gently to coat the florets and trimmings. Tip the trimmings into a small roasting tin, the florets into another and roast both for about 45 minutes, until tender and lightly toasted. Remove and set aside. Blend the stalks and trimmings in a food processor or blender until smooth. Remove the pastry from the fridge, roll out and line the tart tin. Fill with foil and baking beans, place on the heated baking sheet and cook in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Lift out the baking beans and foil, then return the tart case to the oven for 5-7 minutes until dry to the touch. Lower the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Fill the tart with the creamed cauliflower trimmings, then scatter the roasted florets over the surface, brushing them with any oil form the roasting tins. Bake for a further 10 minutes then serve. It is worth dotting some bits of butter on top of the mash, or even furrowing it with a fork, like a ploughed field, if you want to create a crisp outer crust. Serves 4For the filling:olive oil 3 tbspbeef 500g, dicedonions 3, mediumcelery 2 sticksplain flour 2 heaped tbsp bay leaves 3thyme 6 bushy sprigsbeef stock 1 litre, hot kale 75g, picked from its stalksFor the mash:floury potatoes 500gJerusalem artichokes 450gbutter 25gWarm the oil in a deep casserole over a moderately high heat, add the cubes of beef and let them brown evenly, turning them over in the pan as necessary. While the meat browns, peel and roughly chop the onions. Transfer the meat to a dish, then add the onions to the pan. Roughly chop the celery. When the onions are golden, add to the celery and continue cooking for 3 or 4 minutes without letting the celery brown. Stir in the flour, and brown lightly, then the bay leaves and thyme sprigs, pour in the hot stock and bring to the boil. Lower the heat so the liquid simmers gently. Partially cover with a lid and then leave for an hour, stirring occasionally. For the mash, peel and boil the potatoes in deep, lightly salted water, then do the same with the artichokes. Don’t be tempted to cook them in the same pan. Boil another pan of water, add the kale leaves, remove after 2 minutes and refresh in a bowl of iced water. Drain the potatoes and artichokes as each becomes tender, add one to the other then crush with a vegetable masher. Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. When the beef is almost tender and the sauce has thickened nicely, ladle into a baking dish. Spoon the mash on top then bake for 20 minutes until the crust is starting to colour. Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlaterLike many major metropolitan areas, Seattle is currently mired in what writer and housing activist Laura Bernstein has described as “a dual crisis of climate and affordability”. A lack of affordable housing near industry has led to carbon-intensive sprawl – think of all those commuting cars – and economic distress among Seattleites. So, last Wednesday, when Microsoft announced a plan to dedicate $500m towards alleviating the affordable housing crisis in the area, one might have been forgiven for thinking it was an entirely good thing. Indeed, the impact that $500m will make should not be understated. In the Puget Sound area, $250m of the funds will go towards the construction of housing that people making 60% of the area median income ($48,150 for a two-person household) can afford. Another $225m will help area developers complete projects that have stalled for lack of funding, and also acquire land for future projects. Microsoft will also be granting $25m to local homeless aid organizations and anti-eviction lawyers. The money also comes coupled with a suggestion that local governments relax regressive zoning restrictions that make building affordable apartments illegal in 75% of Seattle’s city limits. In sum, this package will make a real material difference for Seattle’s houseless, housing insecure and rent-burdened populations. But when you look the Microsoft gift horse in the mouth, certain cavities are visible. For instance, $475m of the funds are not, as is widely assumed, donations. They’re actually market-rate loans that affordable housing providers and government agencies will need to pay back. The Seattle Times reporter Mike Rosenberg notes that Microsoft will be turning a profit on this endeavor, while Seattle politics blog SCC Insight has cynically observed that the company is simply looking for places to sink some of its $135bn in liquid assets. In a declining stock market ransacked by Trump-induced economic insecurity, where better than an anemic public housing market to buy low and make a buck? The bigger problem at hand is that this bucket of funds had to come from a billion-dollar company, and not local government, in the first place. Washington state has no income tax; if it had even a minuscule one, it could have raised many times more than $500m over a longer period of time. As it stands, for the state with the most regressive tax code in the nation, even a $500m windfall is too little; for the 191 King county residents who died homeless in 2018, it is tragically too late.In May 2018, the Seattle city council introduced a modest tax on major corporations in the area; it repealed it a month later when the Seattle chamber of commerce spent nearly half a million dollars to excite rightwing opposition. Along with Amazon and Starbucks, Vulcan (Microsoft’s satellite real estate enterprise) was one of the corporations that contributed to the anti-tax campaign. Seen in the light of this nasty political fight, the company’s $500m gift seems a lot less like a donation, and more like a neoliberal rebrand. In a political era defined by declining public investment, think back on all the basic services that America’s tech overlords have attempted to recreate. The list is staggering. Silicon Valley transportation shuttles have caricatured public transportation. With its Prime Book Box subscription, Amazon has parodied public libraries. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has dropped $10m a mile on a kooky transit tunnel. And now, with its $500m contribution, Microsoft seeks to replace public housing. But the problem is that when we rely on capricious capitalists to do right by the public sector, they will always be a day late and a dollar short. The public sector can do better. During capitalism’s so-called “golden age”, between the end of the second world war and the early 1970s, high corporate tax rates subsidized the social safety net and public housing. Today, major corporations like Microsoft stash profits in offshore tax shelters, well out of reach of governments in need of revenue to fund basic services. Here in rainy Seattle, many residents living under the cloud of Jeff Bezos-era techno-libertarianism believe that the best we can do is wait for wealth to trickle down. But to meet its affordable housing crisis, Seattle could raise $500m of its own money by issuing municipal bonds. With visionary leadership, the city could embark on radical neighborhood densification via comprehensive zoning reform. If adopted by all major American cities, such a measure would achieve half the carbon reductions needed to hold global temperatures to a rise of 2C (3.6F). And with even modestly progressive redistributive taxes, we wouldn’t have to depend on the kindness of oligarchs to house our citizens. We should thank Microsoft for the aid and wish it the best of luck turning a profit on its foray into philanthropy. But a cash-strapped public in desperate need of relief shouldn’t allow software companies to have the final word. Shaun Scott is a Seattle writer and activist. He is the author of the book Millennials and the Moments That Made Us: A Cultural History of the US from 1982-Present (Zero Books, 2018)The Trump administration has tightened the screws on Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, announcing sanctions against the country’s state-owned oil giant PDVSA in what the US national security adviser admitted was partly an attempt to counter strategic threats from Cuba and Iran. At a briefing in the White House, the US treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, told reporters the sanctions would help punish “those responsible for Venezuela’s tragic decline” and boost Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader who last week declared himself Venezuela’s rightful interim president and was recognized by the United States. “It is a complete tragedy to have a humanitarian crisis in a country that has very rich resources,” Mnuchin said. The sanctions – which represent the US’s toughest economic move against Maduro to date – come five days after Guaidó’s dramatic declaration sparked Venezuela’s latest political crisis. The national security adviser, John Bolton, said $7bn of PDVSA assets would be immediately blocked as a result of the sanctions while the company would also lose an estimated $11bnin export proceeds over the coming year. Bolton said the sanctions were an attempt to alleviate “the poverty and the starvation and the humanitarian crisis” currently gripping the South American nation and stop “Maduro and his cronies” looting the assets of the Venezuelan people. “Now is the time to stand for democracy and prosperity in Venezuela,” he said, calling on “all responsible nations” to back Guaidó. However, he also conceded US strategic interests were in play, including concerns about the presence and activities of US foes in the region. “We think stability and democracy in Venezuela are in the direct national interests of the United States right now,” Bolton told reporters. “The authoritarian regime of Chávez and Maduro has allowed the penetration by adversaries of the United States, not least of which is Cuba.” He added: “Some call the country ‘Cubazuela’, reflecting the grip that Cuba’s military and security forces have on the Maduro regime. We think that is a strategic significant threat to the United States and there are others as well, including Iran’s interest in Venezuela’s uranium deposits.” Amir Richani, a Latin America analyst at ClipperData, which tracks energy shipments, said the sanctions were intended “to continue the asphyxiation of Maduro’s government” and would come as a major blow. The US is the biggest importer of Venezuelan crude, followed by India and China, last year importing an average of around 500,000 barrels a day. Richani said the sanctions indicated the White House had decided to go “all-out” against Maduro: “This is a really dangerous situation for Caracas.” The notepad Bolton was holding as he took to the stage hinted at just how potentially dangerous it could be. A handwritten note on its yellow pages appeared to read: “5,000 troops to Colombia”. Asked if there was any possibility of US troops getting involved in the Venezuelan crisis, Bolton replied: “Look, the president has made it very clear on this matter that all option are on the table.” Any violence against Guaidó, the Venezuelan opposition or US diplomatic staff “would be met by a significant response”. Earlier on Monday, Pope Francis said he feared bloodshed in Venezuela. Speaking on the papal plane as he returned from a five-day visit to Panama, the pope told reporters: “In this moment, I support all the Venezuelan people because they are a people who are suffering. “I suffer for what is happening in Venezuela. What is it that scares me? Bloodshed.” The Republican senator Marco Rubio celebrated the fresh sanctions, tweeting: “All property & interests of PdVSA are now blocked and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.” Rubio, thought to have been a major influence in Trump’s decision to recognize Guaidó, added: “Venezuela’s oil belongs to the Venezuelan people and the money for oil will now go to them through the legitimate government of Guaido.” In a second tweet, Rubio posted a photograph of Maduro and wrote: “All bad things must also come to an end.” In the latest sign of coordination between Guaidó and the White House, Guaidó also announced on Monday plans to name a new board for PDVSA and its US refining subsidiary, Citgo. The move would help kickstart the recovery of an industry “that today is living through a dark moment,” Guaidó tweeted.Welcome back, Mr Hazard. We’ve been expecting you. On a chilly, boisterous night under the low white lights at Stamford Bridge Chelsea reached the final of the Carabaou Cup. They did so thanks to a first half during which they scored twice and played with an unmannered freedom, not so much Sarri-ball as a team settling back into a comfortable old pair of shoes. Crucially Eden Hazard was restored from the start to a place on the left flank he never should have left. And for 45 minutes Hazard was sublime, a player reaching out into those old familiar spaces and reminding his manager that in this stitched-together Chelsea team there are some things you can only break by trying to fix. One step beyond, the PA blared at the end of this tie. For Spurs that step will have to wait. Chelsea had strolled their way through the penalty shootout, Jorginho, Willian and finally David Luiz producing wondrously impudent spot-kicks. By contrast Eric Dier will, no doubt regret opting to take his while apparently wearing a pair of mud-clogged fishing waders, all the better to punt the ball high into the Matthew Harding end. Penalties aside, this was a tie Hazard did most to win, leading Maurizio Sarri to a first domestic cup final and perhaps also, to a moment of clarity. For the last few weeks Sarri has watched in apparent bewilderment as Hazard struggled as a No 9, spluttering and stalling like a Maserati trying to bump its way through a field of turnips. In the buildup Chelsea’s manager had questioned the leadership capacities of his best player, although there has been a degree of cultural misunderstanding over this. Sarri did not blast or slam or roast Hazard. It is simply the way he communicates, a manager who feels an he can and must speak from the heart and the spleen. Whatever Sarri’s motivation it worked in the first half as Chelsea tried repeatedly to find the space behind Tottenham’s full-backs. It was here that Hazard lurked, ambling that familiar coiled way. The opening goal arrived just before the half hour via a deflected shot from N’Golo Kanté. Hazard had taken the corner that led to it. He made and finished the second, taking the ball in Hazard Country, that deep inside-left channel, rolling it to Pedro, who funnelled it on to Cesar Azpilicueta. The cross was skimmed perfectly in to Hazard’s path. His finish was lovely, letting the ball travel across his body and pinging it away into the far corner, a finish so relaxed it might have been executed from a prone position, paperback in one hand, left foot lolling over the edge of his favourite inflatable swan. After which Hazard ran the game for a while in his urgent, scurrying way. He dropped deep and passed crossfield with a flourish. He dropped even deeper and floated another long pass, Pirlo-style, into Kanté’s run. This was, for a while, Total Hazard, a left-sided forward free to make the game up in front of him, and looking in those moments like the only grown up on the pitch, a footballer playing under a slightly different gravity to everyone else. Spurs pressed back hard and Fernando Llorente scored with a wonderful header to make it 2-2 on aggregate. Hazard kept on running hard. Chelsea might have won it in normal time. They never looked like losing it on penalties. At the end of which Hazard’s performance here felt like a regal rebuke. José Mourinho used to fret that Hazard was not nasty enough, that he was too mild and too sane to ever really become an attacking machine in the galáctico mould. You do not have to be an obsessively driven narcissist to score 30 goals season after season in pursuit of undying sporting fame. But it helps. There is a strong suspicion Hazard really will make that move to Real Madrid at the end of the season. Here he showed enough edge to suggest some unfinished business before he does.Manchester United have been unseated as world football’s biggest earners after slipping to third behind Real Madrid and Barcelona in Deloitte’s annual report into club revenues. However, the underlying financial strength of the Premier League was emphasised as English clubs provided six of the top 10 in the accountancy experts’ money league, a record from a single country. The report found that football continues to boom, with the 20 highest-earning clubs in the world generating a record £7.4bn of combined revenue in 2017-18, an increase of 6% on the previous year. United, though, were unable to keep pace with Madrid and Barcelona after pulling in £581m in 2017-18, a fall of £8.8m on the previous season. The report’s authors found that United, despite returning to the Champions League last season, received broadly similar sums from Uefa as they did from winning the Europa League in 2016-17. Madrid, meanwhile, moved from second to first by increasing revenues by more than £85m to £665.2m off the back of a third consecutive Champions League title and a big uplift in sponsorship, merchandising and the exploitation of increasingly lucrative pre-season fixtures. They are the first club to generate more than €750m. Barcelona made it a Spanish one-two with revenues of just over £611m, a rise of more than £50m, after signing a new shirt sponsorship with a Japanese e-commerce company and winning La Liga. “European football remains a bull market, with annual revenue growth of almost €450m [approximately £390m],” said Dan Jones, a Deloitte partner. “Real Madrid’s outstanding financial performance in 2017-18 is built on their long history of success on the pitch, most recently three consecutive Champions League titles. This has enabled the club to continue to drive commercial revenue as the appetite to partner with Europe’s most successful clubs remains stronger than ever.” 1) Real Madrid 665.2 (579.7) – up from 2 last year2) Barcelona 661.6 (557.1) – up from 33) Manchester United 590 (581.2) – down from 14) Bayern Munich 557.4 (505.1) – unchanged5) Manchester City 503.5 (453.5) – unchanged6) Paris Saint-Germain 479.9 (417.8) – up from 77) Liverpool 455.1 (364.5) – up from 98) Chelsea 448 (367.8) – unchanged9) Arsenal 389.1 (419) – down from 610) Tottenham Hotspur 379.4 (308.9) – up from 1111) Juventus 349.8 (348.6) – down from 1012) Borussia Dortmund 281 (285.8) – unchanged13) Atlético Madrid 269.6 (234.2) – unchanged14) Internazionale 248.7 (225.2) – up from 1515) Roma 221.5 (147.6) – new entry16) Schalke 216 (197.8) – unchanged17) Everton 188.6 (171.2) – up from 2018) Milan 184 (164.7) – new entry19) Newcastle United 178.5 (85.7) – new entry20) West Ham 175.3 (183.3) – down from 17 English clubs continued to perform strongly off the pitch with Manchester City (£503.5m) remaining in fifth position and Liverpool (£455m) climbing from ninth to seventh after increasing revenues by more than £90m following their run to last year’s Champions League final. Chelsea (£448m), Arsenal (£389m) and Tottenham (£379m) were eighth, ninth and 10th respectively, with the Gunners losing nearly £30m in revenues after failing to qualify for the Champions League. Spurs, meanwhile, had a £26.5m increase in match-day revenue following their temporary move to Wembley and Champions League participation and closed the gap on Arsenal to around £10m. However, while Premier League clubs dominate the Money League with 13 clubs in the top 30, Deloitte warns that the lack of substantial increases for the next broadcast cycle means more clubs from the other “big five” leagues may start to narrow the gap. Sam Boor, a senior manager at Deloitte, said: “The substantial presence of Premier League clubs continues to be felt in this year’s money league. However, with the Premier League’s tender for the next cycle of domestic rights from 2019-20 complete and sale of overseas rights nearing conclusion, it is clear that Premier League clubs will be unable to rely on explosive growth in broadcast distributions as a source of future growth, as has been the case in recent years.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has continued to show her power to steer the national political conversation. In an interview, Ocasio-Cortez suggested offhandedly that income above $10m may need to be taxed up to 70%, especially if we are going to get serious about halting climate change. Her idea instantly sparked indignant replies from the right. Grover Norquist compared it to slavery. National Review’s Brian Riedl called it “completely destructive”. Steve Scalise said she wanted to “take away 70% of your income and give it to leftist fantasy programs”. Many critics attempt to confuse people over what Ocasio-Cortez said. Just to be clear: she said that when people earn $10m, the 10 millionth dollar and above should be taxed at a high rate. So unless you earn $10m, she’s not talking about “your” income. These are marginal tax rates, though the Republican party loves to trick people by conflating taxes that apply solely to the unfathomably rich with taxes that apply to ordinary workers. In fact, Ocasio-Cortez didn’t even specifically say what she wanted the US tax rate to be: she said that “sometimes you see” a 70% tax on multi-multimillionaires. And that’s true: Sweden has a 70% top tax rate and consistently remains near the top of the Global Innovation Index. She pointed to the fact that across the world, in many successful social democratic countries, high earners pay more than they do in the United States. That’s a fact, and it should make people wary of talking points about how destructive any attempt to fund critical programs would be. Many of the arguments against taxes on the wealthy are “moralistic” rather than empirical. The argument that taxes on high earners are “slavery” is incoherent. Nobody forces you to earn $10m. When you are enslaved, someone makes you do work. Being wealthy is a choice – you could avoid the tax whenever you like by shedding your wealth and joining the working class. If we want to talk about “freedom”, the concentration of wealth at the very top has made the super-rich more free do as they please than anyone else, while it’s poor people who are faced with the choice to either work or suffer. If we want to talk about morality, having tremendous wealth when there is terrible deprivation cannot be justified. The more intelligent criticism of Ocasio-Cortez is a pragmatic one. The National Review argument is that high tax rates simply can’t raise the kinds of revenue that would be necessary to fund a “Green New Deal”. This is, in part, because the rich would circumvent the tax through loopholes and moving money overseas. But this, in itself, is not an argument for not levying the tax: it’s an argument for closing loopholes and finding ways to effectively restrict the international movement of capital. If a law isn’t strong enough to achieve its proposed outcome, that’s an argument for improving the law. It’s easy for the right to dismiss Ocasio-Cortez as a young and naive fantasist who “doesn’t understand economics” (though she does have a degree in it). But Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has confirmed that what she said is “fully in line with serious economic research”, citing the work of fellow Nobel laureate Peter Diamond, who put the optimal top tax rate even higher than Ocasio-Cortez. Once we put aside the “taxation is slavery” silliness, the question is: “What rates maximize revenues?” National Review’s Riedl argues that high taxes cannot fund the full Green New Deal plan. But even then the real question is: how much climate action can we fund? That question is critical, because Ocasio-Cortez isn’t proposing federal spending for its own sake. The reason progressives are pushing a Green New Deal is because the entire planet is in mortal peril. “We can’t afford it” isn’t an option, because not dealing with this problem will impose costs on our children that are far higher than anything we might need to spend today. Stopping climate change is an investment, and so the question has to be “How are we going to do it?” rather than “Do we have the money to do it?” The National Review is correct that the left has to move beyond talking points and “actually lay out a specific, comprehensive proposal of spending and tax increases”. But critics of left proposals, too, need to be explaining how they think we can achieve the urgent goals put forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here’s the good news: even when conservatives are fuming about Ocasio-Cortez, they cannot stop talking about her ideas. The Green New Deal climate change plan has gone from marginal to mainstream almost overnight. Now, Fox is hosting entire panel discussions to debate her policies, and they often end up using their own information channel to make left ideas look appealing. They are frustrated in part because the more they denounce “socialist” ideas, they more popular the ideas become. “Her time to be popular is over,” a Fox news panelist said wishfully of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I very much doubt that it is. Nathan Robinson is the editor of Current AffairsThe Andy Murray story is not quite over. However, even a losing comeback to stand comparison with the best of his gilded career should not disguise the reality that his time left on the main stage is not a deal he can negotiate in good faith indefinitely, and he is honest enough to say so. The world No 23, Roberto Bautista Agut, who arrived at the Australian Open in excellent form, should have buried him inside two hours but Murray dragged him into a dogfight that lasted four hours and nine minutes, before the 30-year-old Spaniard prevailed 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (4), 6-2. On a pleasant Melbourne Monday evening Murray launched a fightback that gave Bautista Agut repeated cause to believe he would lose to him for a fourth time. However, as Murray’s body faded in inverse proportion to his soaring spirit and the exhortations of the packed Melbourne Court Arena, he had to bow to the inevitable. The former world No 1 revealed before the match he would have to return to the operating table sooner rather than later to fix his stubbornly ailing hip. Even then the odds on his carrying on would be marginal. He would love to say goodbye at Wimbledon, he said, but he is more likely to have a microphone in his hand than a racket on his next visit. Nevertheless, with his mother, Judy, and his older brother, Jamie, watching every sweating point Murray flirted with the impossible yet again. Afterwards he said courtside of the match and his reception: “That was incredible. Thank you so much to everyone who came out tonight. Honestly I’ve loved playing here over the years. It’s an amazing place to play tennis. If it was my last match, it was an amazing way to end. I literally gave everything I had. It wasn’t enough tonight, so congratulations to Roberto and his team. “Maybe I’ll see you again. I’ll do everything possible to try. If I want to go again, I’ll need to have a big operation where there are no guarantees I will be able to come back. I will give it my best shot.” Bautista Agut said: “Andy deserves this atmosphere, deserves all the people who came to watch him. It was an unbelievable match, a really good fight. He is a tough fighter, he gave everything until the last point and I want to congratulate him for all he did for tennis.” There followed a filmed tribute from several of Murray’s friends and rivals. Roger Federer said: “An amazing career. Congratulations, buddy.” Novak Djokovic said: “Thank you, my friend. All the best. We had quite a journey, from the age of 12.” Rafael Nadal, who has known him since they met as teenagers in Barcelona, was similarly effusive, as were John Isner, Nick Kyrgios, Alexander Zverev and Caroline Wozniacki, who revealed: “You always had the best jokes.” In the original Scottish play the general comes to grief through hubris, something of which this son of Glasgow could never be accused. Here his honesty was written in every wince and gesture. It was like watching a performance with a sad ending and a familiar narrative, each twist and turn hurling him back from the edge of the stage for one more encore, the place he has been the past two years. When he could not deliver the dagger after grabbing an early break point, then moments later dumped a backhand, Act I did not offer much promise. Act II drifted further towards a bad place, as Bautista Agut broke early and kept his tennis tidy. Murray, straining in every exchange, failed to find the necessary magic to stay in the longer rallies. The instincts were rock-solid, the racket met the ball with familiar certainty but not as often as needed, and the hip remained stubbornly unreliable. Bautista Agut stretched him wide and deep, just as Murray used to do in his pomp, when he won three majors, two Olympic gold medals and a Davis Cup. But he was suffering now. He always suffered. Suffering was something he embraced and was a weapon he employed to make opponents kneel before him. Yet this seemed cruel. It was Bautista Agut who chose when the exchanges ended. After an hour and a half Murray was two sets down and running out of ammunition. Pinned near the baseline, he could no longer find the right angles. His lateral speed was diminished, his balance not always perfect. The inexorable draining of his resources was interrupted by fleeting recreations of his past and he raised a fist each time. Even if it were Federer across the net, the crowd would have been with Murray on this wonderful night. One could almost hear the final curtain being cranked to descend as Act III got underway. In a quarter of an hour Bautista Agut was up another break, his fourth from five opportunities. Murray waited, playing each ball on merit as if these were the last of his career. Then, against all expectations but his own, he won four points in a row, broke back in the eighth game, held to love and was in front. As the denouement crept closer, Murray discovered his old fighting rhythm. His tormentor got another look on his serve but Murray saved with an inch-perfect backhand – followed by another, then a clinching cross-court forehand. A couple of cracking ground strokes on both wings in the 10th game got him to within two points of extending the drama. Another hush fell – then the roar ripped around the arena as Murray blasted a backhand for deuce. He got his first set point but found the tape. A drop-shot from deep fell short. A forehand swirled wide. On they went to the tie-break. Murray had won 194 shootouts in 853 matches, Agut 87 from 400. The Scot, seen having a flutter in the local casino at the weekend, gambled on all-out attack. When he thrashed the winner to seal the set, an expletive slipped from his lips; true to himself, as ever. It was the ninth time he had recovered from two sets down to keep the fight going. Murray double-faulted for the first time but fought through deuce to level at 2-2 in the fourth. After nearly three hours, at 0-30 down on his serve, he banged his injured right leg hard on the court, as if trying to kickstart an old jalopy. It spluttered into life. Serving to stay in the set, the match, the championship – and the sport, perhaps – Murray strained all working sinews (and some that maybe were not). He held and, as fireworks from the nearby MCG lit up the night sky, he did so again to force another tie-break, the highlight of which was a checked volley that took him to 5-1 on his way to dragging the bemused Bautista Agut into a deciding set. Bautista Agut broke for 2-1. From there to the end he steadily dismantled Murray’s resistance, forcing a final tired backhand from him that ballooned just short of the net.Most tennis players dream of winning a grand slam title, very few get anywhere close. At the age of 21, Naomi Osaka has two grand slam titles and when she wakes up on Monday morning, she will find No 1 next to her name on the world ranking list. It does not get much better than this. Yet it could do, quickly. Osaka’s 7-6, 5-7, 6-4 victory over Petra Kvitova in an outstanding final at the Australian Open not only sealed her place at the top of the game but also proved her win at the US Open was no flash in the pan. Though Serena Williams, whom she beat in New York, will continue to chase the two grand slam titles she needs to break the all-time record of 24, Osaka is well-placed to usurp her as the biggest player in the sport. Consider the facts. Osaka is the first woman to win consecutive grand slam titles since Williams in 2015. She is the first woman to follow her maiden grand slam title by winning the next one since Jennifer Capriati in 2001. Going into 2018, she had not won a title and was ranked 72. In the space of 10 months she has won three big tournaments, Indian Wells, the US Open and the Australian Open. Consistent, powerful, a superb athlete and with an ability to find inner calm under pressure, she has everything required to stay at the top. However, just a couple of hours after her victory here Osaka said she felt her success had been a long time coming. “In my mind, I would have liked to win this tournament last year, and I still have nightmares about a forehand I hit against [Simona] Halep when I had break point and I hit it out,” she said. “She went to the final after I lost to her. In the French Open, I played against [Madison] Keys and she went to the semis. I feel like every match I play, I have chances, so it always haunts me. If you are talking about if I thought I would win another grand slam before the US Open, I think possibly Wimbledon, I would have thought I had a chance, but then [Angelique] Kerber destroyed me. It just felt like learning experiences.” She has learned fast. The $2.95m she picked up for winning in Melbourne takes her career earnings through the $10m mark but her off-court earnings are likely to dwarf those in the years to come. Osaka had already signed four sponsorship deals since the US Open and, with her stock rising even more, the Japanese market alone will be hugely lucrative. Osaka will fly back to Florida this week where she can catch up with her family, including her sister Mari, also a tennis player. The French Open and Wimbledon will soon be on the agenda, though, and Osaka feels she can excel on any surface. “I have always felt like I could maybe be an all-court player,” she said. “The first time I played all the grand slams, I got to the third round in all of them. I had one disappointing grand slam [losing in the first round at the French Open]. I think mentally, I don’t like clay. I always tell myself I don’t like clay, so I never really embrace anything about it and that is something I have to change and the same goes for a grass court, because I see people slide and slip and it is a little bit frightening for me, so I think I have to change that.” Being the world No 1 comes with added responsibility, the chance to be a leading voice in the women’s game. For now, she is focused on her tennis. “To be in this position feels a bit weird because I feel like, all of my life, I have been chasing people and chasing after the ranking,” she said. “It is a bit strange for me to say it like that, for it to be a leadership position. I know No 1 is very difficult because people expect you to win all the time and you always have really hard matches because everyone wants to beat you. I feel like you should ask me after I have played my first match.” The way she held her nerve under pressure, both in New York and in Melbourne, suggests she will be able to handle it.The government is to waive the planned fee for EU nationals living in the UK to apply for settled status after Brexit, Theresa May has said in an update to the Commons in which she again rejected a second referendum and an article 50 extension. Making a statement to MPs after her Brexit deal was voted down by a vast majority last week, the prime minister laid out what she described as the lessons from a week of talks with other parties. However, beyond the change to the fee policy, the other lessons primarily saw May entrench her existing positions, prompting Jeremy Corbyn to liken the Brexit process to “Groundhog Day”. Under the planned scheme for EU nationals to apply to stay in the UK, which is currently being piloted, those aged over 16 have to pay £65, with a cost of £32.50 for anyone younger. May told MPs she had listened to “powerful representations” on the scheme. “I can confirm today that when we roll out the scheme in full on 30 March, the government will waive the application fee so that there is no financial barrier for any EU nationals who wish to stay. Anyone who has applied during the pilot phase will have their fee reimbursed.” May said she had met MPs and other parties “in a constructive spirit, without preconditions”, and criticised Corbyn for refusing to take part unless she ruled out a no-deal departure. Among six elements of her revised Brexit strategy laid out by the prime minister, including the fee waiver, was to argue that the only way to stop a no-deal departure would be to either vote through a deal or revoke article 50. She also dismissed the idea of seeking an extension to article 50, saying this was just “deferring the point of decision” and would probably be rejected by the EU. May also dismissed the idea of a second referendum as something that would “damage social cohesion by undermining faith in our democracy”. She also argued it could not command a majority in parliament. The other three issues laid out by the prime minister were efforts to reassure MPs on the Irish border backstop; giving more details on a future relationship, including confidential committee sessions to allow MPs to be kept informed; and guarantees on environmental standards and workers’ rights. “The process of engagement is ongoing,” she said. “In the next few days, my ministerial colleagues and I will continue to meet with members on all sides of the house, and with representatives of the trades unions, business groups, civil society and others as we try to find the broadest possible consensus on a way forward.” In response, Corbyn said May appeared “not to have come to terms with the scale of the defeat in this house last week”. The Labour leader said: “The prime minister seems to be going through the motions of accepting that result, but in reality is in deep denial. “The logic of that decisive defeat is that the prime minister must change her red lines because her current deal is undeliverable. So can she be clear and explicit to the house: which of her red lines is she prepared to move on?” A series of other MPs welcomed the decision on the fees but condemned May for what they said was her intransigence. The Labour backbencher Yvette Cooper, who has tabled an amendment seeking an extension to article 50, said the prime minister was showing no signs of genuine flexibility. Cooper said: “If she’s serious, why not give parliament a say before we’ve finished article 50 negotiations, not after, and why not put to parliament some votes on her red lines, including a customs union? Otherwise how can any of us believe a word she says?”European Union leaders are failing to act despite the “worsening” outlook for the rule of law in Hungary, according to a leading MEP. Judith Sargentini, a Dutch MEP whose report triggered the EU’s most serious disciplinary procedure against Hungary last September, called on the Council of EU member states to start “a real process” that would examine the rule of law in that country. “Since the vote on my report in September things in Hungary actually only got worse,” said the Green MEP. Since MEPs voted to trigger action from EU member states, she said the Central European University had moved to Vienna and the government had created a new court that will be subject to ministerial control. She also listed the decision to award refugee status to a former Macedonian prime minister convicted of corruption, the “slave law” on overtime, which has brought Hungarians on to the streets, as well as the merger of 450 media outlets without authorities being able to make usual checks. The MEP called on Romania, which is chairing the EU rotating presidency, to produce a timetable for examining the rule of law in Hungary, as she accused Budapest of stalling the process. “Hungarian citizens have the right for protection and have the right to know what you are planning to do.” Frans Timmermans, the vice-president of the European commission, said he regretted that Sargentini had not been given a chance to present her analysis of threats to the rule of law in Hungary to EU ministers. The European parliament voted to trigger the EU’s most serious disciplinary procedure against Hungary last September, a move that was supported by some MEPs in the centre-right European People’s party, the group that houses the ruling Fidesz party. Although EU law requires member states to act, the procedure has languished and little progress is expected before European elections in May. Hungary’s government refused to take part in the latest debate in Brussels, saying that the European institutions had been hijacked by “the political left and political liberals” for a political rally. Viktor Orbán’s spokesman, Zoltán Kovács, claimed that the rule of law procedure was a “political plot” linked to the philanthropist George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist who is subject to relentless attack by the Hungarian government. The government also singled out Timmermans, describing the Dutch EU commissioner as “an arm of these leftist liberal Soros-related organisations”. Timmermans, who is seeking to become the next commission president, rejected attempts to portray him as pursuing his own agenda. “In my work on the rule of law I have the full support of the president of the commission and all of the other members,” he told journalists. “I would be more worried if Viktor Orbán started praising me frankly,” in remarks that highlight the depth of tensions between Brussels and Budapest. During the debate on Wednesday evening Hungary’s government received support from conservative MPs, including members of the group created by David Cameron, once he took the Tories out of the moderate centre-right European People’s party. One Polish MEP, who sits with the British Conservatives, said the “European establishment” had been attacking “people you want to get rid of” ever since the moves to isolate the far-right Austrian leader Jörg Haider. Responding to such points, Timmermans said democracy was always invoked as justification for not complying with EU legislation. Hungary had made the “wonderful” and “sovereign choice” to become a member of the EU. “If you choose to become member of a treaty-based organisation, like the European Union, you by that choice say you will follow the rules of that treaty.” The debate came one day after new research from Transparency International showed that Hungary was deemed to have become more corrupt since Orbán returned to office in 2010. According to Transparency international’s latest corruption perceptions index, Hungary has fallen nine points in the rankings since 2012 to a level that suggests “serious problems with corruption”. Kovács dismissed suggestions that Hungary had questions to answer about alleged misuse of EU funds by Orbán’s friends and families. Kovács said it was “a very nice political agenda” for critics, but insisted Hungary obeyed all EU rules.Modern screen heroes come in many guises, but whether a leading man is cast as a mathematician, a surgeon or a scientist, the likelihood is that, once the shirt comes off, he will be equipped with both a firm abdomen and bulbous biceps. A new appetite for leading men who, whether or not they are playing professional athletes, appear to spend half the week in the gym is now concerning even established actors. Last week Outlander star Tom Brittney complained about the emphasis on achieving a “built” body before auditions. British drama schools are also tackling the pressure on students to conform to a muscular type. “It is real and prevalent, and we are very aware,” said Vanessa Ewan, a senior lecturer in movement at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Speaking to Radio Times, Brittney admitted some of his roles were now dependent on a strict gym regimen and diet. “It’s tough. And I would hope the industry pulls back from that,” the actor said. Last summer the comic Noel Fielding also confessed he got more work when he looked thinner. Hard luck on a host of Bake Off. Such sentiments were echoed this weekend by a group of male acting students who fear, like Brittney, that appearing in peak condition is now part of their job. “Of course there is a responsibility to look after ourselves as we train,” said Russell Scott-Dickson, 21, a Belfast-born student at Arts Educational Schools in London. “But there is a pressure to look that bit leaner, because it is going to help. And agents say to us that our image is the most important part of the package. We all deal with it differently, but it can obviously lead to problems like body dysmorphia or eating illnesses.” The fad for “bulk and muscle” that trainee actors and tutors identify is the latest in a succession of key screen looks. In the 1950s, bare-chested stars such as Johnny Weissmuller of the Tarzan films, or Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity, were broad rather than toned. They were replaced in the 1960s by the clean-cut, preppy looks of Robert Redford and Paul Newman, while in Britain during the late 1980s what really counted was having the undernourished, rarefied outline of a Rupert Everett or a Julian Sands. The new age of brawn has been ushered in by Aidan Turner’s Poldark, Idris Elba’s Luther and Richard Madden’s Bodyguard. Even the languid and cerebral Holmes in the BBC’s Sherlock, as played by Benedict Cumberbatch, annoyed some viewers with his unfeasibly developed upper arms. “It is an odd phenomenon,” said Catherine Alexander, a course leader at Central. “We talk about it a lot.” Referring to the Game of Thrones actor, Alexander said she knew it as the Kit Harington effect and believed it actually limited performances. “It is detrimental when people build up too much muscle because we convey emotion through our chests. An overly muscular chest is a barrier. The actor can’t make that connection, so we encourage our students to stop doing weights all the time,” she said. Taylor Bradshaw, 20, a student from south London, welcomes the support he gets at ArtsEd, which offers a gym and a coach, but he understands the need to represent reality. “Hopefully we will play different kinds of people. Not all the parts out there are soldiers and bodyguards,” he said. Beefing up for a role can be seen as just part of the essential artifice of performance, one of the tricks replicated down the ages, from theatrical masks to the soft-focus camera lens and contemporary special effects of Hollywood; but it is also a reflection of wider modern tastes. “We live in self-obsessed and image-conscious times and nowhere more so than in the TV and film industry,” said Bradshaw. Ewan, who runs a body/identity/image group at Central to help students, is worried about a blurring of lines between an actor’s personal image and the parts they hope to play. She also suspects the desire for bulk is about wanting control in a difficult marketplace. “The actor needs to discern the difference between a personal decision and a professional decision. The line is slim,” she said. “An actor faced with a free personal trainer in a first job sees that as a bonus and he may not recognise he is handing over more than he is gaining.” Drama schools, Ewan argues, are there to give actors the tools to transform without the need to change body shape. Leo Woodall, 22, another student, agrees and hopes the entertainment industry can avoid reproducing identikit leading men. The drive to look like the four American blockbusting stars, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine and Chris Pratt, does not encourage good mental health. “While it is true people want to look at beautiful people, they also want to see real people with imperfections. I like to be in shape, but I would not want to get too big because it would restrict me,” he said. Even a top-ranked star like Evans is not happy with the trend. He has complained, along with the actor Armie Hammer, that being seen as a muscular hunk in the Captain America role may send his career off into a dead end. The answer might be to let visual effects do the work. Certainly, producers of mass-market entertainment spend a big proportion of the budget on improving the look of the stars. Los Angeles is home to several profitable low-profile effects companies that specialise in digitally beautifying every shot with patented programmes such as Flame or Beauty Box. And in the cruel world of high-definition cinema, these efforts to remove stomach rolls and improve silhouettes are now as concentrated on the male actors as the female. Ewan regularly points out to students at Central how much easier it is to put on muscle for a role, either with exercise, padded costumes, or with CGI, than it is to slim down. And she acknowledges that it is an issue female actors “have been dealing with for ever”. As Brittney remarked last week: “Maybe it’s the guys’ turn.”For a viewer already familiar with the French film The Intouchables, watching its newly released American remake The Upside can often feel like one of those games challenging you to spot the differences between two seemingly identical photos. The core of an unlikely friendship between a wealthy white man and a black ex-con has been kept intact, and most of the elements changed stop at the superficial. Omar Sy’s Driss purloins a jade egg from his moneyed, quadriplegic employer (and soon-to-be bestie) Philippe, while Kevin Hart’s Del nicks a vintage copy of Huckleberry Finn from Phillip. His passion for the musical stylings of Earth, Wind and Fire has been swapped out for a love of Aretha Franklin. That Philippe fares much better than his Stateside equivalent on his first date with his romantic pen pal counts for something, but the most meaningful alteration has to be the relocation from Paris to New York. A giggly, late-night trip to get munchies from Manhattan’s storied Gray’s Papaya hot dog stand constitutes the only dash of specificity in a film that has otherwise been scrubbed of its time and place. Whatever the original may have had to say about socioeconomic disparity in France has been not lost, but actively disposed of in translation by an industry that values the generic as safe. The original was widely criticized in its native France for trafficking in stereotypes, but at least its distance between the banlieue and the tonier streets of Paris was real. The Upside makes a vagary of a vagary, with no sense of what the words “rich” or “poor” mean in the present-day United States. Hollywood’s ever-mounting need for fresh material has left its own past a graveyard of mangled intellectual property, and so The Upside arrives at the nose end of a spike in American remakes of more highly acclaimed foreign films. But the pattern of imports chosen for the dubious honor of a second life in the American entertainment industry suggests cause for concern in its emphasis on the pliable and familiar. Films once distinguished for their originality are then purchased for their potential sameness. Audiences taking in Neil Burger’s fantasy of polite racial harmony will be treated to the trailer for Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke’s take on the 2011 Mexican thriller Miss Bala. The true-ish story of Laura Guerrero, a beauty queen forcibly conscripted into collaboration with the La Estrella gang, was notable for its concentrations on fear and helplessness – two uncommon, unpredictable qualities in the protagonist of an action film. In the trailer for the upcoming remake, Gina Rodriguez’s Gloria learns how to handle a rifle, wraps the DEA around her finger as a double agent, and unleashes hell in a few shots that wouldn’t look out of place in one of the many Michael Mann knockoffs cluttering Best Buy discount bins. Those films cleanly pigeonholed into genre and boasting an easily pitched hook tend to make the trip across the Atlantic. Family comedies seem to fit the bill, even if they’re coming from countries with a nastier sense of humor than would make sense to US audiences. Force Majeure hinges on cowardice, insecurity and male fragility, so who better to make all that palatable for Americans than Will Ferrell, playing opposite Julia-Louis Dreyfus? Perhaps casting Tom Hanks in the lead role of the American version of A Man Called Ove will take the edge off of all the misery and suicide attempts that precede the heartwarming togetherness of its back half. As for Toni Erdmann, slated to be reworked with Kristen Wiig, I pegged it as a more artfully shot, mean-spirited clone of Adam Sandler’s That’s My Boy when I first saw the film at Cannes in 2016. We’ve been steadily recycling foreign horror for decades, lest we forget the J-horror boom of the early 2000s, in which Hollywood nicked the haunted-house conceit and the gaunt-faced ghost children while ditching the films’ weirder curlicues. To his credit, Nicolas Pesce has made it clear that his re-remake of The Grudge will be its own creature, as if anticipating the phenomenon of international bland-ening discussed here. Only time will tell if the new interpretations of Norway’s Thelma (repressed lesbian impulses lead to violent telekinesis and dead birds) and Austria’s Goodnight Mommy (a pair of twins with Capgras syndrome attempt to kill their bandaged mother, under the impression she is an impostor) preserve the tone and subtext of their originals, in addition to the bones of the premise. Same goes for the thrillers in the vein of The Guilty, a Danish production about a cop on desk duty who solves a crime through the phone, soon to be remounted with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead. An order for Americanization is not a death certificate for subtlety or quality, but these productions have intangible qualities – aloofness, a sadistic streak, a greater comfort with unhappy endings – unique to their homelands. Like aliens struggling to breathe in our Earth’s atmosphere, some of these films could not survive in the mainstream movie marketplace without significant revision. When abroad, even if it’s just at the multiplex, we gravitate toward whatever reminds us of home.Jeremy Corbyn could face up to a dozen resignations from the Labour frontbench if the party backs a second referendum as a way out of the Brexit crisis. A string of junior shadow ministers have told the Guardian they are strongly opposed to the idea of a second referendum, which they fear would expose Labour to a vicious backlash in leave-voting constituencies. The development follows another tense day of brinkmanship in Westminster between Theresa May and the Labour leader as they seek a way out of the crisis that has engulfed both major parties. Corbyn refused to enter talks with Theresa May on Thursday until she ruled out the idea of a no-deal departure, and demanded that his party’s MPs refuse similar invitations. Later May wrote to Corbyn telling him that ruling out no-deal was “an impossible condition” and calling on him to join cross-party discussions. With no sign of the impasse being broken, pressure is growing on Labour to consider a so-called people’s vote as the UK prepares to leave the EU on 29 March. With Corbyn’s hopes of a general election fading with the prime minister’s narrow victory in the no-confidence vote, some Labour supporters are raising pressure on Corbyn to support a second referendum. A snap poll conducted after the crushing defeat of May’s Brexit plan has found a 12-point lead for remaining in the EU – the largest margin since the 2016 vote. But the Guardian has contacted several senior shadow ministers from constituencies that voted to leave the EU who say they would consider their positions if Corbyn conceded to pressure to back a second referendum. One said: “I would be in a really difficult position if we backed a second referendum. I would have little choice but to stand down if I was to have any hope of retaining my seat and representing my constituents.” Another said they had made their views clear to Corbyn’s office and the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer. “I would feel deeply uncomfortable about going into a people’s vote at this stage. Given all the commitments that we made in the general election, we have to carry them out. This concept of blocking Brexit is wrong and would break a link with millions of our traditional voters who expect us to keep our word,” the shadow minister said. Anti-Brexit campaign group Labour for a People’s Vote published a list of 71 Labour MPs who support its cause on Wednesday, and claimed many more were privately supportive. But backbench MPs who have been canvassing opinion claim that number is matched by vehement opponents of a referendum, some of whom would be prepared to break the whip rather than support it. Several shadow cabinet ministers, including the Labour chair, Ian Lavery, and the shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, are also sceptical, believing the party’s first priority must be to keep up the pressure for a general election. Lavery made a passionate intervention against a new referendum at last week’s shadow cabinet meeting. Len McCluskey, the general secretary of the Unite trade union, has also said it would be a “betrayal” to seek to reverse the 2016 result. Gloria De Piero, the shadow justice minister, told the Guardian she was not in favour of a second referendum. “I stood on a manifesto that promised to respect the referendum result,” she said. Other shadow cabinet ministers, including the deputy Labour leader, Tom Watson, and the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, are more sympathetic towards a second referendum. Labour strategists have not ruled out a free vote on a second referendum, believing that whipping MPs either to support or oppose a referendum would open a deep rift. Lucy Powell, the MP for Manchester Central, said that with no agreed Brexit deal in place, it was unclear what options would be offered on a second referendum – and referendums were the wrong way to resolve the complex situation. “I think they’re terrible ways to make rational decisions,” she said. “And there’s a swathe of the public who would never forgive us.” At a meeting in Hastings, East Sussex, Corbyn remained uncommitted on the idea of a second referendum, saying again that it remained one of several options if an election did not happen. Explaining why he was the only opposition leader not to meet May for one-to-one talks, Corbyn dismissed the cross-party discussions as a “stunt”, adding that May appeared unable to grasp the fact that her withdrawal agreement was now “dead”. “She seems to be prepared to send the country hurtling towards a cliff-edge,” he said. But Labour’s former prime minister Tony Blair said Corbyn was wrong to refuse to meet May. “If, in a moment of national crisis, the prime minister asks the leader of the opposition to come and talk, of course he should,” Blair told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Another former Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, called for the Brexit deadline to be extended by a year, as he said the country was now “more divided” than at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax. MPs should force the government to extend article 50 and then give the public the final say on a renegotiated Brexit deal, he said. Speaking in Edinburgh on Thursday evening, Brown condemned the “paralysed and immobilised” parliament in Westminster and said there was rising anger from the public who wanted to be involved in the decision-making process. In a further development, a poll conducted by YouGov of more than 1,000 voters on Wednesday found 56% would now vote to stay in the EU, against 44% who want to leave. Exactly the same proportion of voters said they wanted a second EU referendum – three points higher than recorded in a similar poll before Christmas. Backing for a so-called people’s vote among Labour supporters stood at 78%. The remain lead was extended further when respondents were asked to compare it to May’s withdrawal agreement or the option of leaving the EU without a deal. Against the prime minister’s deal, remain led by 65% to 35%, while against no-deal was 59% to 41% in favour of staying in the EU.Manchester City handed Liverpool the initiative in the title race with an unscheduled defeat here when Newcastle came from behind to record an important victory in their bid to remain in the Premier League. A Salomón Rondón goal and a Matt Ritchie penalty not only cancelled out Sergio Agüero’s opener – scored after 24 seconds – but left City four points behind Liverpool. That gap will stretch to seven if the leaders beat Leicester at Anfield on Wednesday. “Seven points is a lot of points,” Guardiola conceded after the defeat that meant they can no longer match last season’s record tally of 100. “Liverpool’s advantage is not huge but it’s there – we have to win a lot of games now. But if we want to keep going up as a club we have to accept the challenge. We are in January and we are behind the leaders but there are a lot of trophies and points to play for.” If that was a challenge to his squad there was also sympathy. “I know how my players are feeling right now and I am close to them and by them,” City’s manager said. “Sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don’t – we had just won eight games in a row and scored 30 goals without reply but sometimes things don’t go your way. “I love these players, they are an incredible group of guys, they gave me all the prestige I have in England. “Our game was slow, we didn’t commit. It was not our best night. We lost second balls, we were not aggressive enough, that’s why we could not win. We didn’t have the rhythm we needed to impose our game. “We didn’t play our normal way but it happens sometimes. Players are human beings. It was not a good night but congratulations to Newcastle. They played good – and they have a very good manager.” Rafael Benítez’s family home remains on the Wirral and he smiled broadly when reminded he had done his former club a favour. “The most important thing now is Newcastle,” said a manager close to making the Paraguay and Atlanta playmaker Miguel Almirón his club’s £20m record signing. “My players have heart and they fight for each other,” he said. “We’ve beaten one of the best sides in Europe and they will feel they can beat anyone now.”A pile of menus sat, untouched, at a table filled with Jesup Federal Correctional Institution employees at Alec’s Sports Bar. A waitress, who wandered over occasionally to fill a round of water glasses lined with lemon wedges, seemed to intuitively know not to ask if anyone needs a soft drink or a plate of chicken fingers. “I’m not usually a water drinker,” Hannah Gariepy, a teacher – and eight-year employee – of the federal prison pointed out, “But I was thinking, what’s free?” Her colleagues erupted in laughter, all of them agreeing. One has a salad in her car. Another ate before coming to the bar. Jesup in southern Georgia feels like an archetypical blueprint of a small American southern town, dotted with a Dollar Store and a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Everyone knows everyone, the same few family names have shuffled in and out of local politics, and most days, its clean streets look deserted. But now this sense of desertion is different. For Jesup, like many other communities across America, is in the grip of a partial government shutdown affecting 800,000 American workers. And Jesup will feel the hit eventually as a large chunk of its economy relies on the federal prison – one of the town’s major employers. In one of the town’s bars, colleagues from the federal prison – which employs more than 300 people in Jesup and the surrounding Wayne county – fretted over cancelled doctor’s visits and now impossible requests from children to buy video games. These workers are all now working without pay. “We’re not rich,” someone said, as colleagues continued to join the group. But sometimes it seems they are alone in their ever-expanding worries as the now-longest ever shutdown grinds on. Yet non-federal workers in the town say they have yet to feel the full bite of their fellow citizens’ hardship. “I hope they budgeted,” the owner of Alec’s Sports Bar, who goes by his initials AB, shrugged after the group left his all-wood bar, lined with televisions turned to Fox News and sports. “It’s still too early to tell,” he added, when asked if Jesup’s population of 9,754, a population that has dropped nearly 5% since 2010, has felt the effects of the unpaid employees not spending any money. The town will feel it eventually, Melvina Barnes, a reintegration and re-entry officer at the prison who lives in Jesup, concluded. “Before the shutdown, I ate out every day in Jesup,” she added, sitting across from Gariepy. Just yesterday, she spent $100 on groceries. “The milk was six bucks,” she grimaced, admitting she has just $278 left in her bank account. But so far, outside those directly affected federal workers and their families, many in Jesup say the shutdown remains at a distance. Some have not even heard of it at all. “We really haven’t noticed anything, as far as an impact [of the shutdown] on the citizens,” the city manager, Mike Deal, said from behind an enormous wooden desk strewn in his office on tree-lined West Cherry Street, seemingly the town’s main road. Only one person has called in this morning, thinking if it went any longer he might be late on his water bill, Deal said. But we’ll work with him if they’ve been good paying customers, he added quickly. It’s the first phone call his office has received from a prison employee. A few blocks over, a sign in English, Spanish, German and Italian welcomes customers to Cafe Euro. Christian rock blasted over the speakers. A line formed for sugar-laden smoothies and frappes. One of the employees behind the counter said she hasn’t heard about the shutdown. I think it’s fine, she mused, because no one is talking about it. In Jesup, she said, that’s a big indicator if something is important or not. Other residents agreed. A cashier at the Piggly Wiggly did not know what the federal shutdown was exactly. Neither did an incoming shopper. Next door, at Surcheros, a Tex-Mex fast-food restaurant many of the prison employees say they frequent, noticed a slow lunch rush on the first unpaid payday for the prison employees. Yera Moye, who is ringing up customers said she didn’t know exactly why. She also had not heard about the shutdown. The county administrator tried to put the implication of the shutdown in Wayne county’s perspective. “My county, if you look at it, is very rural,” Ed Jeffords explained, pointing to a map across from his desk. A lot of people leave the county for work daily, or sometimes, permanently. He suggests the economy has needed revitalizing for years. For example, he added: “My kids can’t afford the lifestyle we gave them without leaving town.” His son plans to move to Orlando. Just outside Jeffords’ office, shuttered storefronts and near-empty stores on the town’s main drag lay empty as the evidence of the flagging economy in Jesup – a trend that started long before the shutdown hit the town’s main employer. The same group of teens circle three blocks for two hours one afternoon. The Strand dinner-movie theatre, showing Aquaman, The Mule and Vice, sees a few stragglers going in and out for tickets one afternoon. It’s a well-known fact that a few families in town own the majority of the wealth, Hank Tucker, a senior correctional officer and the president of the prison employees’ union said. Right now, he and his colleagues spend their dwindling savings on gas money to make their commute to the prison. That can’t last, though. “In two weeks, federal employees won’t be able to afford to show up to work because they won’t be able to pay for the gas to drive there,” Tucker said. Detta Dyal, who owns Shear Designs around the corner from where the group has convened, attends to her lone customer. As she brushed out her clients’ blond hair, she shrugged when talking about the shutdown. One of her employees’ husbands works at the prison, she says, but I’m sure she’s fine, she added. “I watch Fox News so I know about the shutdown,” she began, continuing: “I don’t know the impact on her but I’m sure she’s fine because I saw on the news people are getting extensions of mortgage payments and kids are getting free lunches.” The lack of understanding in the wider community hurts those workers laboring for nothing. “For the public to not know, to not care, to be so completely oblivious, to think we’re undeserving, that our very livelihoods, that our children that go to school with their children, that our family members that go to church with their families, are somehow less deserving for the service that we do is like a slap in the face,” Gariepy spat out, exhausted from the multiple 16-hour days she has worked in recent weeks, even during the shutdown. But she thinks her fellow citizens will notice their plight soon enough as the shutdown rolls on with little end in sight. “Two [more] weeks will absolutely crush federal employees,” she said, as the waitress refilled her water glass.There’s a droll Twitter account named Very British Problems that is mainly about over-apologising. It just summed up winter: “December: A lot of people doing the pub wrong. January: A lot of people doing the gym wrong. February: Pancakes.” Amateurs ruin everything until pancakes, in which we are all amateurs. It’s too late for a discourse on pub etiquette, which is moot, anyway. The main way to do the pub wrong is to get too drunk and sloppy. But the seasoned drinker only pretends to mind: really, we see you as learner drivers, a darned nuisance but necessary, if we want to bring up the next generation of binge drinkers. With gyms, however, there is so much to get wrong. You mix up miles and kilometres and hurl yourself off a treadmill. Everything you pick up will be too heavy, unless it’s tiny, and you look ridiculous – like a giant exercising. Your kit looks like pyjamas because that’s what it was until this morning, your trainers were made before training was invented and you’re using your arms on a leg machine. And please God tell me you haven’t wandered into a class without checking whether it was pump or zumba. There is nothing more suspicious, more scorned, than inactivity in a gym Even in the moments between each egregious error, you have a squirrelly, hunted look, because you can’t stop – there is nothing more suspicious, more scorned, than inactivity in a gym. But you also know that, whatever you do next, it will involve toning your elbow while improving the flexibility of your arse. Your best hope is that nobody’s watching, but this is the greatest of your vanities. The regulars are scoping your every move, they’re waiting till you get something so wrong they can report you, even if only to one another. They loathe you, but it’s not your fault, except in the sense that the gym is now too full because you are in it. The only way to get a gym right in January is to go at 2am.After two years of drum-rolling, Donald Trump’s “ultimate deal” for Israelis and Palestinians is about to enter what its architects claim is the pre-launch phase. The US president has said the peace plan drawn up by his team – two former personal lawyers and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner – will be ready to unveil by the end of January. Yet despite the anticipation surrounding Trump’s proposals for resolving one of the world’s most intractable conflicts, a more crucial plan for the region is already being implemented on the ground: an attempt to strengthen Israel’s hand while weakening that of the Palestinians. One by one, the US has implemented the key demands of Israel’s hardline rightwing lobby, drastically slashing humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, declaring the contested city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, shuttering Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington, and closing its own consulate that serves the occupied West Bank and Gaza. For Palestinians – and many Israelis – a peace deal is a sideshow. The bigger issue, which does not depend on peace, is the implementation of Israel’s wishes by the most accommodating US administration in its history. Trump has repeatedly said the measures are intended to force Palestinian leaders – who reject him outright as a biased mediator – into a peace effort. Trump has also said Israel will have to “pay a price” for peace, although has not specified what that would be. Palestinian leaders have responded by saying there is no genuine plan for a just solution. “It’s really a lie,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian politician. “Everybody is working on this fictitious concept. [The US] became partners with Israel and they are implementing Israeli policies. All we see are unilateral measures by the US and by Israel … The reality on the ground is now being engineered.” A state department official said a “high priority” has been placed on achieving a comprehensive deal, but it would be “difficult”. While they would not comment on details of the plan, which is still being drafted, a few aspects are becoming clearer. First, unlike previous US-led efforts in which it was up to the Israelis and the Palestinians to decide the details, the Trump version will likely be much more specific and prescriptive. In essence, it will be a series of suggestions that detractors say will be heavily focused on Israeli demands based on the political views of its authors. For example, Jason Greenblatt, who is leading Trump’s team after his promotion to government from chief legal officer at the Trump Organization, has broken US precedent to say Israeli settlement-building in the occupied West Bank – illegal under international law – is not an obstacle to peace. The US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who also worked for Trump’s company, has been even more vocal in his support of Israeli settlement construction, and even the annexation of Palestinian territory. Second, the US will only go so far in pushing the two sides to accept the deal, meaning the plan is liable to collapse. “The parties will need to decide if they think the plan works for them and will make their lives better,” Greenblatt has said. “The parties are the only ones who can make these compromises.” Critics say it is increasingly apparent that those drafting the plan might not even be betting on its success to achieve their goals, which are already being enforced on the ground. Trump’s team will know that from Israel’s perspective there is very little appetite for peace compared with the past. An August poll found only 9% of Israelis wanted their government to prioritise reaching a deal with the Palestinians in 2019. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is acutely aware of public sentiment as an election approaches, has said he does not see “any urgency” on Trump revealing his peace plan. His former defence minister Avigdor Lieberman was even clearer when asked about a peace deal that could result in Palestinian self-rule: “I don’t care about a Palestinian state,” he said. The justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, said she would tell Trump the plan was “a waste of time”. A European diplomat in Jerusalem told the Guardian on condition of anonymity that it was “distinctly possible that we could get to the end of Trump’s presidency with no [peace] proposals”. With few predicting success, Palestinians are presented with two options: accepting a plan drafted by the least receptive US administration to their cause since peace efforts began, or continuing to face punitive measures. If the plan is rejected out of hand, the status quo – in which Israel entrenches its occupation of the West Bank and continues to enforce a blockade on Gaza – will remain. However, US officials insist that there are genuine peace efforts. The three main architects – Greenblatt, Friedman and Jared Kushner – all come from a business background and their position has been to treat the conflict like a deal. With economic incentives they hope to convince a side that has historically prioritised issues of principle, such as the right of refugees to return to their homes or to call Jerusalem their capital. “There is no reason the Palestinians (in both the West Bank and Gaza) can’t enjoy economic success and integrate into a thriving regional economy – if they let us help,” the trio wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in July. Trump also sees any negotiations as transactional, saying he has to force the Palestinians to reach an agreement by weakening their hand through aid cuts. The president referred to his Jerusalem declaration as a bargaining “chip” taken away from the Palestinians. In a message sent a year ago to other senior officials on cutting funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, Kushner wrote in internal emails obtained by Foreign Policy: “Our goal can’t be to keep things stable and as they are … Sometimes you have to strategically risk breaking things in order to get there.” Shortly after Greenblatt was appointed last year, Tania Hary, the executive director at Gisha, an Israeli non-profit that promotes the freedom of movement of Palestinians, said her office started receiving calls from his team asking questions on the economy in Gaza, which has been kept under an Israel blockade for a decade. Greenblatt does not cite the blockade as a reason for the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, but focuses blame on its rulers, Hamas, and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which has blocked funding to the enclave. “My impression at the time was that I was being approached by business-minded people who thought they could solve a problem from a business perspective,” Hary said. “They recognised that there were obstacles to growth that included restrictions on movement and access,” she said, adding that her advice was that Gaza’s problems cannot be solved by keeping it isolated from the West Bank and Israel. But then they stopped calling. “I’m not sure if that [message] carried through.”When 27-year-old novelist Sally Rooney became the youngest-ever winner of the Costa Book Prize last week, it was to deafening cheers of critical acclaim that have characterised her brief career. Rooney has already been heralded as “the first great millennial novelist”, and a “Salinger for the Snapchat generation”. And these Snapchatting millennials have since been overwhelming booksellers in the rush to read their author, prompting shops to advertise that they still have copies of her novel, Normal People, in stock. Yet, for all her obvious talent, the fanfare around Rooney’s award made this millennial’s heart sink slightly. The slightly frenzied reaction to Rooney seems to be symptomatic of the way we now greet achievements by young people. Last year, another 27-year-old author, Daisy Johnson, became the youngest person to be shortlisted for the Man Booker prize for her debut novel, Everything Under. Likewise, some of 17-year-old Autumn de Forest’s expressionist paintings have been valued at $7m (£5.5m), poet Ocean Vuong was only 28 when he won the TS Eliot prize for his debut collection in 2017, and Christopher Paolini published the first of his bestselling Inheritance series when he was in his teens. It seems we increasingly celebrate youthfulness as a marker of success in and of itself; Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21 list began in 2017. This year’s cohort includes 11-year-old designer Kheris Rogers and seven-year-old “activist” Havana Chapman-Edwards. Rooney, Johnson and their contemporaries’ acclaim might be well-deserved, but our obsession with publicising youthful achievement has consequences. Anne Helen Petersen’s article on millennial burnout went viral last week for its critique of how the precarious economic environment has led to what she describes as “errand paralysis” in millennials; the pressures to succeed at work and in our personal lives – perhaps with stories of 20-something geniuses at the backs of our minds – leave us unable to undertake even the simplest of tasks. The focus on prodigies also means that older artists don’t always get their due. For instance, one of the best albums of 2018 came from 68-year-old bluesman Lonnie Holley. Traded for a bottle of whisky as a child and one of 26 siblings, he uses his gravelly baritone to sing of the injustices of his bewildering life and powerful musical resurrection. Similarly, singer Charles Bradley had to make his living as a James Brown impersonator for most of his career, only releasing his own music at the age of 63 with 2011’s No Time for Dreaming. He released two more records before dying in 2017 at the age of 68. In the art world, the painter Rose Wylie only began being given major solo exhibitions in her 70s. The moral of these examples is out of kilter with the times, and hugely inspiring. It’s not “if you’re lucky enough you’ll be born brilliant”, but “keep plugging away and you’ll eventually find the success you deserve”. The effects of the fetishisation of youth aren’t just felt by onlookers. For the prodigies themselves, the blaze of publicity isn’t always benign. The traumas of child stars such as Michael Jackson have been well documented, but last year we were reminded of Lauryn Hill, whose critically acclaimed debut album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, was released 20 years earlier, when she was 23. It was her only solo album. And after the enormous success of his debut in 1987 at 25 years old, Terence Trent D’Arby claimed recently he has been left with PTSD . I’m not saying we should discourage youthful achievement – but perhaps we ought not to capitalise on it so aggressively when it occurs. The “race to success” is not always worth winning. We should listen to Rose Wylie: “It shouldn’t be about age or gender or anything, it should just be about the quality” – of the work, the life lived, the quieter moments. • Ammar Kalia is a Guardian journalist and holder of a Scott Trust bursaryKevin Fret, a Puerto Rican musician who was one of the island’s only openly gay rappers, has been shot dead in the capital, San Juan, aged 24. Fret was shot at eight times as he rode a motorbike, and declared dead after being taken to a nearby hospital. His death means there have been an average of more than two murders a day in Puerto Rico so far this year. His manager, Eduardo Rodriguez, said Fret was an “artistic soul” and a “big-hearted dreamer”, adding: “There are no words that describe the feeling we have and the pain that causes us to know that a person with so many dreams has to go. We must all unite in these difficult times, and ask for much peace for our beloved Puerto Rico … He still had a lot left to do.” Fret broke through in 2018 with his debut single Soy Asi, which shares the Latin trap sound with other flamboyant Puerto Rican stars such as Bad Bunny and Ozuna. Fret, however, was openly gay, a rarity in the scene. “I’m going to act like I don’t give a damn about what anybody has to say, with my blonde hair, my black nails, showing my stomach, glittery from head to toe,” he told Paper magazine last year. “Young gay guys or young lesbians … are looking at me now like a role model, like wow, if he did it, and he don’t care what anybody else has to say, I can do it.” In June 2018, Fret was charged with aggravated battery in Miami, after he threw a metal bottle at a man he claimed was being homophobic towards him. His death comes in a week when an FBI official, Douglas Leff, described a “crisis of violence” in Puerto Rico, and its congress member Jenniffer González requested increased law enforcement from US Homeland Security – Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the US – to address a “sense of impunity and lawfulness” there. Gang activity, along with drug and human trafficking, is being blamed for the levels of violent crime, compounded by “high levels of absenteeism” in the Puerto Rico’s police force, according to González.Leeds United have made a formal apology for the actions of Marcelo Bielsa and rebuked their manager, after he admitted having sent a spy to watch Derby County in training before Friday’s Championship meeting between the two clubs. After his team beat Derby 2-0 to go five points clear at the top of the table, the Argentinian said: “It’s true there was someone from Leeds. The responsibility for this is me.” The FA is to investigate the incident after a member of Leeds’s staff was seen acting suspiciously outside Derby’s training ground on Thursday and a club statement, released on Saturday, from the Yorkshire club accepted blame. It read: “Following comments made by Marcelo Bielsa the club will look to work with our head coach and his staff to remind them of the integrity and honesty which are the foundations that Leeds United is built on. “Our owner Andrea Radrizzani has met with Derby County’s owner Mel Morris to formally apologise for Marcelo’s actions. We will make no further comment on this matter.” Frank Lampard, the Derby manager, said after the match at Elland Road: “It’s disrupted our preparations. Police had to come to the training ground, so that was disruptive. We were training on team tactics, shape, personnel and the fact that Harry Wilson wasn’t training. “He’s admitted it, so I don’t think there’ll be any further action but we had a guy in the bushes before we played Leeds earlier this season and we lost 4-1.”The government of Saudi Arabia makes it very clear that resistance to its regime is futile. It will not tolerate dissent; it is untouchable. The kingdom has never claimed to be a democracy – or that it believed in free speech, the right to protest, or the right to collectively bargain for rights. There is no independent press. The late King Abdullah introduced laws that leave no room for doubt about that position. King Salman and his son, the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, continue those policies and rule with an iron fist. Anti-terror laws were introduced to deal with such “crimes” as insulting the reputation of the state, harming the unity or stability of the kingdom by any means, sowing discord in society – and the high crime of breaking allegiance with the ruler. These hard-to-define crimes were designed to enable the arrest of anyone, for any reason. In terms of these laws, the US comic Hasan Minhaj’s satirical Netflix episode on Saudi Arabia – controversially taken down by the streaming service after complaints from the kingdom – ticked all the boxes. If Minhaj were a Saudi citizen, he would have been hauled in for “questioning”. All his electronic devices confiscated. Every comment he had made online and in private downloaded and analysed for previous transgressions against the state (even if they were legal at the time) and his picture printed in local newspapers with a red stamp on it, branding him a traitor and possibly a spy for an external enemy (Iran). He would have been humiliated, tortured, sexually assaulted, disappeared. The Saudi electronic army would have been mobilised to harass into silence anyone online who dared to come to his defence. They would defame him and his family. Accuse his mother of being a spy, a whore of the liberal left. Make fun of his ethnic background and how he was never truly a Saudi. Muse on how best he – and she – should die. His family would spend weeks trying to locate him in the labyrinth of the Saudi prison system. After months of denials and deafening silence, his mother crying and begging authorities to let her hear his voice, to know if he is alive, his family would finally get to see him. He would shuffle in, bruised, shaking. He would wonder if working for Netflix was even worth it. The anguish he brought on his family. What a high price for a few jokes. If he made it out alive, he might get an award for “courage”. Netflix would state that it must “respect” local laws if it wants to do business around the world. Hasan Minhaj, it would turn out, is expendable. His friends inside the country would text each other on Signal (a secure messaging app) to ask worriedly about him. What’s the latest? What should we do? Do we speak out and risk being arrested as well? They would be overwhelmed with guilt. They would feel crushed. They would have nightmares after news of his torture and attempted suicide. They would all quietly wonder how things got so bad, and plot their escape from the kingdom. Who has a second passport? Where can we apply for asylum? What country takes the most Saudis? Canada? Germany? Did western media not tell us that a new Saudi Arabia was on the horizon? More freedoms would be given to us young people? That we are the future and Prince Mohammed was our generation’s revolutionary and saviour? Too much you think? Minhaj wouldn’t have been treated like this? Ask Jamal Khashoggi. Right, you can’t. He is dead. Or more precisely, dismembered. Ask Hatoon al-Fassi, Loujain al-Hathloul, Nassima al-Sada, Raif Badawi, Samar Badawi, Waleed Abu al-Khair, Essam al-Zamel and the thousands of others still languishing in prison today. Ask Yemen. Stop asking Netflix to do what your governments have failed to do. • Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi Arabian journalist and film-maker“I don’t know the future,” shrugged Neo in 1999’s The Matrix. “I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin.” With him, on-screen and off, as The Matrix plunged audiences into the future of cinema, which 20 years later, looks like the Wachowskis’ wildest dreams: 1s and 0s everywhere and Keanu Reeves still kicking ass. The Matrix. Magnolia. Being John Malkovich. Fight Club. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Office Space. Man on the Moon. The Talented Mr. Ripley. Boys Don’t Cry. Three Kings. Toy Story 2. The Iron Giant. Eyes Wide Shut. Cruel Intentions. Election. American Pie. Notting Hill and Runaway Bride. 1999 might be the greatest year of modern cinema. I think so. If you aren’t nutty about two-thirds of these films, do you even like movies? What’s certain, however, is that 1999 is the most pivotal year of modern cinema – the moment that Hollywood anointed the chosen ones who would become the heroes of the new millennium, from David Fincher to Spike Jonze to an ingenue named Angelina Jolie, who introduced herself to the public by winning best supporting actress for playing a sociopathic mental patient. Girl, Interrupted wasn’t Jolie’s first film. But it was the movie that engraved her on the A-list, a pattern that’s also true for Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Reese Witherspoon in Election, Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You, and Russell Crowe in The Insider. What explains 1999’s extraordinary films? DVD sales began in 1997 and flooded studios with extra cash, especially in those first years as home viewers built their collection. Studios invested the windfall in a generation of upstart directors, predicting that audiences would buy a good film twice: once in the theater, and again for their shelf. Suddenly, the geniuses who’d been discovered during Sundance’s 90s indie wave were entrusted with millions in play-cash plus marketing muscle. It was a creative renaissance. Directors seized the chance to get weird. Paul Thomas Anderson scored $37m to assemble the lyrical montage Magnolia. David O Russell shouldered $47m to satirize the Gulf war. Even Spike Jonze, a music video director with zero film credits to his name, secured $13m to transport audiences to a multiverse of John Malkoviches. The risk paid off. These up-and-coming directors became major 21st-century voices. Still, part of the reason Anderson, Russell and Jonze are still the kings of the kooks is that today’s directors haven’t been given the same golden ticket. The talent exists; the cash doesn’t. Ambitious mid-priced films went extinct when the DVD empire began to crumble in 2008. Instead of betting on auteurs, studios put their chips on big screen superheroes. Break out at this year’s Sundance, and instead of being handed the freedom to dream, you’ll be given the keys to a franchise – and a conference table of producers as chaperones. Or you’ll stay small and scrappy forever, cranking out a terrific body of work that struggles to be seen amid the crush of streaming media competing for the audience’s attention at a couple bucks a pop, or flat-out free. Much has changed. Twenty years ago, two big-budget Julia Roberts romantic comedies atop the box office chart was a given. Now, both the genre and the star have been squired to streaming. Raunchy teenage comedies like American Pie are, like, totally awkward in an era where dating and sex are on the decline, and raunchy teenage dramas like Cruel Intentions are cloistered on TV to be recast as Riverdale characters who audiences can still safely see as cartoons. Sex is out, horror is in. And for that, we can thank 1999, too, as The Blair Witch Project launched a mania for mirco-budget nightmares that refuses to crawl back under the bed. The Blair Witch Project (which still holds up fabulously) begat Paranormal Activity which begat Blumhouse Pictures who begat everything from The Purge to Get Out to Insidious to Sinister. Add all four of their budgets together, and they still cost less than Being John Malkovich – even without inflation. As for M Night Shyamalan, hyped as “The Next Spielberg” on the cover of Newsweek after The Sixth Sense, he’s finally accepted the Spielberg’s populist template never fit an egotist who prefers to provoke. He’s also found happiness in low-budget thrills like The Visit, Split and the upcoming Glass (all three produced, of course, by Blumhouse). Probe the films of 1999 and a suspicion slithers in that we’re stuck in The Matrix ourselves. The near past is repeating like a programming glitch, or, say, an endless parade of Malcovi. There’s deja vu remakes of Tarzan and The Mummy and Pokémon and Galaxy Quest and the just-announced Toy Story 4. The Star Wars universe continues to propel the box office, as it’s done since The Phantom Menace. Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst’s comedy Dick about two teen girls who bring down Nixon’s corrupt administration makes for an apropos rewatch, as does Alexander Payne’s black comedy Election, in which a high-achieving blonde female candidate hamstrung by sexism and fraud loses her campaign to a dummy who never seriously intended to win. And if the Oscars mimic this year’s Golden Globes, Green Book winning best picture will be cringeworthy as American Beauty beating a field of worthier contenders in 1999. At least Kevin Spacey won’t be in attendance. But we’re also feeling a deeper connection to 1999, one that vibrates in our wiring. The Y2K panic triggered film-makers to think pessimistically about the future of human survival. The Wachowskis assumed we were toast. Kevin Smith’s Dogma and the Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick End of Days embraced the apocalypse. And David Fincher’s Fight Club and Sam Mendes’s American Beauty feared that mankind had become too weak and materialistic to survive the millennium. What’s scary about today – a time in which our nerves are again quivering with anxieties about capitalism, despotism and an all-but-inevitable environmental catastrophe – is that we’ve now been shaped by those films’ misanthropy. Not just the mens rights activists who’ve adopted The Matrix’s red pill/blue pill analogy as their own twisted “truth” or the Twitter trolls incubated on the internet who idolize Fight Club’s Tyler Durden. As for the solution, Fincher suggested boxing and domestic terrorism. Mendes touted weightlifting, crushing on underage girls, and, ultimately, suicide. In 1999, our heroes didn’t win. They failed, they disappeared, they died, they blew up their world. And they left a residue of cynicism we’re still scraping off, from our political apathy to the studios’ resentment that their DVD cash cow dropped dead. “The future is our world, Morpheus,” gloated The Matrix’s Agent Smith. He was right. Yet, we can change our tomorrow.Britain’s counter-terrorism chief has said he fears the far right will exploit Brexit tensions with their propaganda triggering rises in hate crime and creating an atmosphere that terrorists can exploit. The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, head of counter-terrorism policing, told the Guardian he was concerned that far rightwing rhetoric from those lawfully allowed to operate will fuel tensions that spill over, in the same way Islamist propaganda incites terrorism. He also said a no-deal Brexit leading to a loss of intelligence and data-sharing with Europe would leave its 27 nations and Britain less safe and was of “deep concern”. Basu, who briefs the prime minister and home secretary regularly, said police were working to minimise the damage but operations would be slower and more cumbersome if Britain left without a deal – and ministers knew this. Every part of policing is struggling to deal with the different Brexit scenarios, from no deal through to no Brexit, as Britain nears the 29 March deadline to leave the EU mired in uncertainty. While that is in the balance, the mounting divisions around Brexit led the senior police chief to voice his concerns about the effect in Britain. Basu said: “My concern is the polarisation, and I fear the far-right politicking and rhetoric leads to a rise in hate crime and a rise in disorder.” He said he was seeing an increase in far right activity from small but vocal groups as the Brexit saga continues, adding: “I am concerned about a small number of individuals trying to make a name for themselves such as Tommy Robinson.” Basu drew a distinction between the far right whose rhetoric and activity is lawful, and the extreme rightwing, which includes proscribed terror groups such as National Action. Basu, who is also Britain’s most senior minority ethnic police officer, said far right rhetoric may not be illegal, but it fuels tensions and he fears its potential effects. “It generates a permissive atmosphere to people who want to take their argument to more extreme levels,” he said. “There is a difference between being offensive and criminally offensive behaviour, and that is the line we have to monitor.” Asked for examples, Basu said: “The melodramatic claim that this country is being overtaken by sharia law, that kind of far right discourse, that Asians are only interested in grooming children.” While debate about such issues is lawful, the exploitation for extremist purposes concerns Basu because it could push susceptible people towards more extreme behaviour “in the same way extremist Islamist rhetoric radicalises people”. Basu said indicators used by police to measure how communities are feeling were already showing some rise in tensions. While there was no intelligence of public order threats, police were planning for them, he said. “We are monitoring if the intelligence suggests public order difficulties because of Brexit. So far it is not. We are planning for it, because it is sensible to plan for it. That potential exists.” Basu is well regarded in Whitehall and tipped as a future commissioner of Britain’s biggest force. He was speaking to promote a new advert in cinemas urging people to report suspicious terrorist activity as figures show 18 plots have been thwarted since March 2017, with 14 inspired by Islamist extremism and four from the extreme far right. Basu’s counter-terrorism network remains under pressure, with Isis’s loss of lands in Iraq and Syria not leading to a decrease in work for police and the security services, with a record 700 live investigations ongoing. Against that backdrop he spoke out about the damage no deal would cause, meaning a loss of key intelligence and data-sharing measures, with replacements being slower. The three key tools that he said were of “deep concern” to counter-terrorism investigators were fast-time access to intelligence and data through the SIS II [Schengen information system 2] database, as well as passenger name records, and the ability to use European arrest warrants. Basu said the damage from a no-deal Brexit to policing and security could be serious. “It is a very serious flaw in our security arrangements,” he said. “If we have no-deal Brexit, and we could not share that information, and if we lose access to those systems, it will inevitably make the UK and Europe less safe than it is today.” Basu added: “There will be gaps, and it will be slower and clunkier. We have set up systems to try to deal with a no-deal Brexit. But it will be nowhere near as good as what we have got today.” He said his European counterparts were keen to continue the relationship, and parts of cross-border police and security service counter-terrorism cooperation were covered by arrangements independent of the EU. Asked in terms of policing and security if a deal was better than no deal, Basu said: “Yes. A deal leaves us in the same position as we are today or better.” He also said the security and policing arrangements under the prime minister’s deal with Europe, rejected last week by MPs, would have mitigated the damage. Earlier this month Brexit tensions spilled over as remainer MP Anna Soubry was surrounded by pro-Brexit campaigners, who some claim were extremists, amid allegations her treatment was criminal and that police did nothing. Basu said the protests had been peaceful for months before, but accepted police should have done more, adding: “I have accepted we did not act as we should have done. Anyone being harassed or intimidated as they go about their lawful business, we should intervene. It will not happen unchallenged again.” The assistant commissioner said he had been into parliament to tell the Speaker and MPs this.The four greatest male players in modern tennis – who between them have won more than £400m across 16 years – arrive in Melbourne aware that their days as a dominant entity are numbered, if not already history. This could be Alexander Zverev’s time, or maybe the 2019 Australian Open will belong to Stefanos Tsitsipas or Daniil Medvedev. And Australians may even celebrate their first home slam men’s winner since Mark Edmondson 43 years ago if the 19-year-old Alex de Minaur can continue to perform minor miracles. At 212 in the world, Edmondson was and remains the lowest-ranked slam champion of the Open era; dreams do come true. For Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray, however, there have been only recurring nightmares, and in the past week their thin prospects of revisiting former glories receded rapidly. All around them, the young wolves are gathering. Only Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer from that golden era look capable of holding the line in five-setters – and they, too, are intermittently vulnerable, as Zverev showed in the ATP Finals in November, when he beat them in back-to-back matches. While it is unlikely Murray will withdraw before the start of the tournament on Monday week – as he did a year ago for hip surgery that delivered him hope but no miracle – his compadre is struggling to make it to the starting line with a shopping list of injuries that would keep an A&E ward busy for a month. Nadal’s left thigh joined his hip and other connected sinews in forcing his late withdrawal from the Brisbane International this week, his ninth in 13 of his most recent tournaments. Those are startling numbers and they suggest the end is rushing at the 32-year-old like a gored bull – although five tournament wins in 2018, including the French Open, alongside semi-final runs at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows, illuminated the gloom. He also defeated Zverev on the clay of Valencia and Rome and Tsitsipas in Barcelona, as well as on the hardcourts of Toronto. Murray, who beat only two top-20 players among five wins in 12 matches, had no such balm. When the loose-limbed young Russian power-hitter Medvedev blew him away in an hour and 21 minutes in Brisbane on Wednesday, the former world No 1 and three-time slam champion was reminded that, at 31, merely being competitive is going to be his biggest challenge over the championship fortnight. And when Medvedev dug deep to beat Milos Raonic 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-4 in the quarter-finals on Friday – saving three set points on his own serve to force the tie-break – Murray will have recognised a fellow grinder on the way up. A year ago here Nadal was playing tennis reminiscent of his run to the title in 2009 and to the 2017 decider against Federer – until his collapse with a leg and hip injury in the quarter-final against Marin Cilic, a retirement that set in train a wretched completion record for the rest of his campaign. “If we keep playing on these very, very hard surfaces,” Nadal complained later, “what’s going to happen in the future with our lives?” The answer might not be far away.‘Soak the bread in warm milk for 10 minutes ...” As recipe instructions go, this one is particularly reassuring. At this time of year, when it is cold and the gaps under our doors are letting in all sorts of unwelcome gusts, I would quite like to be soaked in warm milk much of the time. It is also reassuring because the soaking of bread in warm milk is likely to signal the start of a meatball recipe, for which the next step is adding minced beef to the soft mush of bread. You will be required to squash everything together with your hands – which means it inevitably squishes through your fingers – and to roll lumps between your palms until they resemble smooth and satisfying balls. I have written about meatballs before – twice, actually – the second time after discovering (thanks to a local trattoria called Il Piccolo Alpino) that poaching meatballs in a tomato sauce without preliminary browning is the secret to making them tender. And I still think this is the best way – unless they are winter meatballs with cabbage, this week’s recipe, which is inspired by the reassuring Marcella Hazan. Here, frying is important. Before frying, though, resting. In the introduction to his book of essays, the Italian food writer and historian Massimo Montanari recounts a time he made meatballs. He describes how he mixes the meat, cooked cardoons, breadcrumbs, egg and parmesan together; how, when the mixture is done, he shapes the polpettes and arranges them neatly on a plate. At this point, his wife suggests he leave the meatballs to sit for a few hours before cooking them. It then occurs to Montanari that letting the food rest before cooking is similar to what happens in our minds when we work out an idea. Ideas are the “result of experience, encounters, reflections, suggestions: many ingredients that come together into a new thought, but before that can happen, it is useful to let the thoughts rest, to firm up”. In short, he decides that the resting of the meatballs is like the resting of thoughts. After a rest, they simply turn out better. He is right, of course, about both ideas – rushing in to fry a new one is rarely advisable, especially at this time of year (let them simmer until February) – and meatballs, which are always better after a rest. It is with resting that the milky bread (a thick slice in five tablespoons of milk) and egg (one, beaten) plump up, expand like a foam filler and soften the texture; the parmesan (three tablespoons) seasons the meat (500g minced beef and 50g finely chopped pancetta); the onion (a small one, diced) infuses everything with its savoury base note, salt and pepper, too. This amount of mixture should yield 22 meatballs. I don’t roll them in dry breadcrumbs, rather leave them to rest for at least two hours, then fry them gently in a good amount of olive oil. Once they are browned all over and glistening, I lift the meatballs out of the pan and get on with the cabbage. Unlike me, savoy cabbages appreciate these cold days, and are at their best at this time of year. Quarter and shred a medium-sized cabbage, and put it, along with a peeled and crushed clove of garlic, in the pan you have just taken the meatballs out of (which will be thick with oil, dark juices and nubs of meat). Turn for a few minutes, then cover with a lid and cook until the cabbage has wilted into a tender slump. To finish, you add 200g chopped plum tomatoes to the cabbage, then the meatballs, and simmer everything for another 15 minutes. The cabbage slumps further, its green fading and its porcelain-like ribs becoming indistinguishable in the muddle of meatballs and flecks of red. This is when it becomes deeply, reassuringly tasty, as do the meatballs, richly meaty from the browning, and having taken on the sweetly savoury juices of the cabbage. It is a dish of pure directness, this one, a winter pleasure. Serve warm rather than hot, alone, with bread or – more reassuring words – buttery mashed potato. Prep 2 hr 30 min (includes resting)Cook 35 minServes 4–6 1 thick slice of white bread, without crusts5 tbsp milk, warmed until tepid500g beef, minced50g pancetta, finely chopped1 small onion, finely diced1 tbsp finely chopped parsley30g grated parmesan1 eggSalt and black pepperOlive oil1 savoy cabbage1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed200g plum tomatoes, chopped (ie, half a tin) Soak the bread in the warm milk for 10 minutes. Mix the now mushy bread with the beef, pancetta, onion, parmesan, egg and a good amount of salt and pepper, and knead gently until everything is combined. Scoop out large, walnut-sized lumps of mixture and shape into balls, roughly four centimetres in diameter. Leave them to rest for two hours, if possible. In a non-stick frying pan large enough to accommodate all the balls in a single layer, coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil, put on a medium flame and add the meatballs, nudging them gently so they brown all sides. Lift the meatballs from the pan on to a warm plate. Cut the cabbage into quarters, cut away its core and then shred each into thick slices. There should still be some oil in the pan (if not, add more) put it back on the flame. Add the garlic, the cabbage and a pinch of salt. Stir and turn the cabbage with wooden spoon until it wilts. Cover the pan with lid, lower the flame and cook for 15 minutes, or until cabbage is very tender. Taste and add salt and pepper as required. Add the tomatoes to the cabbage, cook for a few minutes, then add the meatballs, stir, cover and simmer gently for another 15 minutes. Serve warm, with mash, bread or rice. • This article was amended on 28 January 2019. Due to an editing error an earlier version listed “1 small tin of garlic cloves” as an ingredient.This has been corrected to “1 garlic clove”.Fears of electoral fraud are rising in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after officials said a total block on internet connections and SMS services imposed after the chaotic presidential poll on Sunday could last for several days. Both the opposition and ruling coalition have claimed victory in the elections – the third poll since 2002 and the end of a civil war in which millions died. The election, which some observers hope may bring a measure of political stability to the vast central African country, was marred by widespread logistics problems, insecurity and an outbreak of Ebola. Millions were left unable to vote. Barnabé Kikaya Bin Karubi, a senior adviser to the outgoing president, Joseph Kabila, said internet and SMS services were cut on Monday to preserve public order after “fictitious results” began circulating on social media. “That could lead us straight toward chaos,” Kikaya told Reuters, adding that the connections would remain cut until the publication of preliminary results on 6 January. The signal to Radio France Internationale (RFI), one of the most popular news sources in the DRC, was also down, and the government withdrew the accreditation of RFI’s main DRC correspondent late on Monday for having aired unofficial results from the opposition. Opposition activists said they believed the internet had been cut off to prevent people circulating information that could allow the official count to be challenged when it is announced. “It is very straightforward. They don’t want us to compile our own totals of votes,” said one Kinshasa resident who requested anonymity. Olivier Kamitatu, a spokesperson for opposition candidates, said the media crackdown was part of a “plan to obscure the truth of the ballot box”. The measures drew a sharp response from several western powers. In a statement supported by the UK and France, the EU and the US called on authorities to restore the internet and to allow the country’s two main election monitors – the National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO) and Symocel, an alliance of citizens’ observer missions – access to the count. The election, which passed off mostly peacefully, could bring about the central African country’s first ostensibly democratic transition of power in its troubled history and chart a road to a better future. Others fear renewed instability if the opposition rejects the results and calls for protests. Already delayed by two years, the poll was postponed by a further week to allow more time to overcome logistical challenges in a country of 80 million inhabitants spread over an area the size of western Europe with almost no metalled roads. Kabila’s second electoral mandate expired in 2016 and he only reluctantly called new elections under pressure from regional powers. The constitution forbade him from standing again and critics claim he hopes now to rule through the handpicked government candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. The president congratulated “the Congolese people” for having “accomplished their civic duty in peace and dignity” in a new year address broadcast on national television on Tuesday. “There can be no doubt. The DRC is not only a republic but … a democracy too,” he said. But analysts have long said the period after the elections would be more dangerous to the long-term stability of the DRC than the polls themselves. Opposition parties have pledged to oppose any result they see as fraudulent, promising to paralyse the country with a campaign of protests. “If the results during the publication of the presidential results don’t reflect the truth … trouble will break out across the city,” said Fabrice Shweka, a resident of the eastern city of Goma. In the poll on Sunday, Shadary, a hardline interior minister under EU sanctions for his role in a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy activists last year, faced off against two main opposition challengers, Félix Tshisekedi and Martin Fayulu. A survey shortly before the vote put Fayulu, a former business executive, ahead by more than 20 points. Shadary came in third on 19%. In a statement late on Monday, Fayulu complained about irregularities but said he was encouraged by the determination of Congolese people to vote despite long queues and voting machines that broke down. “I call for vigilance across the board and the general mobilisation of all Congolese so that the truth of the ballot box, the sole witness to the will of the Congolese people, can reward their efforts and sacrifices,” he said. Members of Fayulu’s campaign team have accused the government of ordering the shutdown to avoid broadcasting his “overwhelming victory”. The DRC refused international offers of help to conduct the elections, claiming it would compromise its sovereignty. Hundreds of polling places opened hours late because they did not have the needed lists of registered voters. Many voters could not find their names on the lists and there were problems with more than 500 of the electronic voting machines. Many polls stayed open into the night to allow those waiting in line to cast ballots. At least one Kinshasa polling station did not open until after the official closing time. The government’s last-minute decision to bar an estimated 1 million people in two opposition-stronghold cities from voting on Sunday, citing the deadly Ebola outbreak in the eastern part of the country, prompted protests. The DRC suffers from widespread corruption, continuing conflict, endemic disease, and some of the world’s highest levels of sexual violence and malnutrition. It is also rich in minerals, including those crucial to the world’s smartphones and electric cars. The country has not known a peaceful transfer of power since winning independence from Belgium in 1960.The speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, is considering abandoning his plans to step down this summer after cabinet ministers threatened to deny him a peerage because of his alleged “bias” against the government over Brexit. Friends of the speaker who have been in touch with him in the last 48 hours told the Observer that Bercow is now “seriously reflecting” on whether to stay on – possibly until 2022. Government sources briefed last week that someone who had “cheated centuries of procedure” should not expect to be elevated to the House of Lords. One source who knows Bercow’s thinking said that if the Conservative government was seeking to “punish” the speaker for how he conducted parliamentary business – and themselves defy centuries of convention under which speakers are granted peerages on retirement – he could well exercise his right to remain in the Commons chair until the end of this parliament, rather than leave soon after Brexit. Allies of Bercow said he fundamentally disapproved of attempts to bully him into toeing the government line. The extraordinary row between the speaker and the government is further poisoning the atmosphere in parliament as it grapples with the Brexit crisis, following the crushing defeat last week of Theresa May’s Brexit deal. Bercow is seen by many Tories as too sympathetic to Labour and those seeking to soften or thwart Brexit. As senior Tory and Labour MPs step up efforts over the coming days to seize control over the Brexit process from the government, Bercow’s role will be pivotal. A senior MP at the centre of moves to ensure parliament takes control of Brexit said: “The speaker will play a critical role in the coming days, selecting amendments and determining parliamentary business. If ministers thought it was a good idea to put his back up they may regret it.” Peerages for retiring speakers are normally approved by No 10 as a matter of course. But a Downing Street source said on Friday that it was the prime minister’s view that “there is no such thing as an automatic peerage”, even for a retiring speaker. Bercow, who infuriated May and the Tories earlier this month by departing from convention to allow MPs to take control of Commons business through permitting a controversial amendment, will be thrown back into the centre of the Brexit debate this week when a cross-party group of MPs led by Labour MP Yvette Cooper and Tory Nick Boles intend to hand parliament the power to delay Brexit – a move vehemently opposed by the government and leading Brexiters. Under the latest cross-party strategy, MPs would be able to delay Britain’s EU exit day if no Brexit deal were in place by the end of February. As speaker, Bercow holds the key to the plan, as only he can rule that the strategy should be debated and voted on by MPs. Another explosive proposal being discussed by MPs would allow them to pass Brexit motions without first winning majority support. Rebels have drawn up an amendment that would allow a motion backed by a minority of 300 MPs to take precedence over government business. This would allow backbench MPs to propose plans blocking a no-deal Brexit. After the crushing defeat of her plan last Tuesday, and an unsuccessful Labour attempt to oust the government in a no-confidence motion, the prime minister said she was willing to talk to opposition MPs, including party leaders, in an attempt to find a way forward. Tomorrow May will make statements to parliament on the way forward on Brexit and table a fresh motion which MPs can amend. The next key votes will take place on 29 January. Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said yesterday the party had a duty to talk to Theresa May if she was prepared to enter into an “intelligent conversation” on Brexit. Speaking at the Fabian Society’s new year conference in London, he said: “We are obligated, I think, through our sense of patriotism and respect for democracy to have an intelligent conversation on Brexit with Theresa May if she is offering it. But there is no bargain-basement Brexit on our agenda.”You have to feel for anyone tasked with designing a David Bowie app, which launches on 8 January, his birthday, priced £7.99. Given the guy was a shape-shifting pop genius who worked 10 steps ahead of his peers, transformed our cultural landscape and even turned his own death into a piece of art, you’re probably not going to get away with throwing up a few annotated pictures. Bowie fans want something that lives up to the icon’s name. No pressure. David Bowie Is … is an app based on the V&A’s record-breaking 2013 exhibition of the same name, which toured the world before ending up at New York’s Brooklyn Museum last year. The rather ambitious plan is not just to recreate the experience of going to the exhibition – which focused on the colourful, theatrical side of Bowie and drew a staggering 2m visitors – but to better it. As the creators put it, the app gains you access to all the exhibits: “Without the entire exhibition in the intimacy of your own environment, without glass barriers, vitrines or throngs of visitors.” Who needs people when you’ve got a smartphone? As someone who will happily seize any excuse not to have to mingle with the public, I settled down on the Guardian sofas for a play around. The makers have gone for an augmented reality approach – “staging” the exhibition in front of your camera viewer (that Guardian sofa gets quite psychedelic at times) and allowing you to navigate the items in three dimensions. You progress through the virtual museum’s series of rooms that range from the obvious (“Early influences”; “Life on Mars” etc) to the more esoteric (there’s a good one on Kansai Yamamoto, the Japanese fashion designer who created costumes for Bowie’s legendary Aladdin Sane tour). In each room, you’ll find the exhibition’s artefacts – lyric sheets, pop videos, various ephemera, not to mention a huge range of costumes – while Gary Oldman narrates. You can see Bowie’s early sketches proposing outfits for his teenage band the Delta Lemons (brown waistcoats with jeans), watch him perform in the short 1969 film The Mask (A Mime) and see the Warhol-esque lithograph he created of his wife Iman in 1994. In the Blackstar room, we hear him questioned on the subject of religion: “Do you indulge in a form of worship?” he’s asked. “Life,” he answers. “I love life very much indeed.” I found the more obscure rooms the most fascinating. In the Yamamoto room I learn the roots of Bowie’s love of “hikinuki” – the Japanese method of quick costume change that he experimented with during his Aladdin Sane shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York. It was here, while performing half-a-dozen costume changes each night, that he received standing ovations and realised he was on to something. As Bowie himself puts it, he didn’t want to be a radio, but a colour television. The exhibition subscribes to this notion too, and is deep and rich – even after an hour or so messing around I’d barely covered a third of it. It’s great that you can zoom in on lyric sheets and rotate the outlandish costumes a full 360 degrees. But for all the “behind the glass” hype, it’s no match for seeing the costumes in real life – the renderings inevitably lose some of the character. Mingling with the public is unfortunately still the best way to experience this kind of thing. As for the augmented reality interface – it’s both impressive and frustrating. At times you wish it was simpler, as certain artefacts are hard to access and the screen positioning makes viewing them a disorientating experience. You can be forced to hold your phone at awkward angles to get the best view. It’s great that the app invites you to take your time, revisit at your leisure and to take lots of breaks – a welcome antidote to the hectic-pace of most pop culture consumption – but browsing through David Bowie Is … isn’t always the most relaxing experience. Still, for the millions of fans who didn’t get to see the exhibition, or even ones who did but spent most of it trying to crane their neck around someone else’s shoulder, there’s plenty of value to be had in this summation of an artist who was neither a radio nor a colour television but something far more advanced indeed.It’s been called a miracle ingredient, a secret weapon, and the one thing vegans have been waiting for since the term “vegan” was coined in 1944. Aquafaba, or bean water (the liquor from cooking pulses), perfectly mimics egg’s ability to trap air (cue vegan meringue), emulsify (vegan mayonnaise), thicken (vegan ice-cream) and bind (vegan meatballs). Beyond that, Lacey Siomos, who blogs at Avocados and Ales, makes an aquafaba mozzarella that can be sliced, grated and melted – properties that had eluded previous vegan cheeses. For something that until four years ago was only ever drained down the sink, it’s revolutionary. While a dyed-in-the-wool eggs-and-butter baker might blink at the idea of whipping up something edible without using either, there are endless possibilities for plant-based treats, as the entries for flax, aquafaba and yoghurt show. And vegan baking runs the full gamut, from Dana Schultz – AKA the Minimalist Baker – and her no-fuss no-bakes to Food52’s genius chocolate birthday cake with the super-fluffy frosting. With a neutral flavour profile and rich, built-in creaminess, cashews are key to myriad plant-based takes on non-vegan dishes. When soaked and blended in water, they can be turned into milk, sauces, batters, cheese, creams, icing, caramel … Ready-made snacks, flavour bombs in savoury settings, and natural sweeteners for bakes, puddings and porridge. Many a chef’s secret ingredient, and a must-have in the vegan pantry. Vegan cookbook authors Bosh! best exemplify the DIY creativity that makes vegan cooking so exciting. “You name it, we can do it. It’s just knowing how,” they say. Their takes on pigs in blankets and fried chicken are as good a place as any to start. Ground flax or chia seeds – one tablespoon mixed with three tablespoons of hot water – make an excellent egg substitute in baking, particularly if you’re aiming for “crisp, crunchy biscuits that hold their shape”. Add more liquid – nut milk or fruit juice – and you get a pudding, a smoothie or a porridge. To avoid the unhealthy carb trap of timid vegan cooking, Elizabeth Turner of Forks Over Knives highlights whole grains. From millet and buckwheat to wheat berries and wild rice, they provide both a vehicle for flavour and wholesome heft. Fresh and bunched, or dried to crumble into dishes, it’s all about ramping up flavour (see also za’atar below). You’ll need a decent blender and/or food processor to make your own (potentially cheaper, pleasingly fresher) milk alternatives, nut and seed butters, and tahini; to blend cashews, blitz beans and whip up hidden-veg smoothies (a great way to diversify your vegetal intake). Some gadgets are definitely worth forking out for. The oversized, fleshy south-east Asian fruit that has pulled-meat aficionados turning vegan. Supermarkets now stock tins of brined pieces, to be turned into the likes of Meera Sodha’s tacos with fried corn and hot cashew sauce. While kombu (or edible kelp) is an unparalleled vegan source of umami (try it slow-braised in water with sweet soy: a revelation), plus the vegan-friendly way to make Japanese soup stock (AKA dashi), the other sea plants out there – from hijiki and nori to dulse and samphire – are as flavourful as they are nutritious. The Birkenstocks of the food world, and for good reason: pulses in general are cheap, easy to prepare, a source of goodness and very adaptable (black beans make fab brownies, cannellini a good lemon drizzle cake, and lentils great crisps). It’s possible to follow a soy-free vegan diet, but it’s not easy. Be it umami-rich miso paste, soy sauce and tofu – with its varieties variously substituting meat, eggs and cream, in contexts both savoury and sweet – or nutty, freshly blanched edamame as a crunchy snack, the range of soy-based possibilities is superb. The Bosh! guys call this magic dust. Heat-treated, it won’t ferment your food, unlike the active yeast in beer and bread, but it will boost its flavour with an addictive, nutty, cheesy tang. Buy it in flake form to add to sauces or scatter on traybakes; or blitz with oil, garlic, cayenne pepper and ground cashews, then coat kale leaves to create mind-blowingly good crisps. Always, always pack emergency snacks in case you can’t find vegan food wherever you land up. The one nutritional prerequisite of the vegan diet about which non-vegans are often the most sceptical, and yet, from pulses and seitan to yeast, grains and seeds, there are good sources of vegetal protein. Even a seasoned chef such as J Kenji López-Alt will attest to the new-found culinary pleasure in going vegan, because it forces you to explore the produce aisle like never before. He has blogged about how his consumption of good extra-virgin olive oil has gone up fourfold, and a nascent appreciation for the enormous variety of hot sauces, vinegars, dressings and DIY condiments out there. As with all cooking, your vegan dishes will only ever taste as good as the things you put into them. Meat (and fish, dairy and eggs) is, as López-Alt puts it, the easy answer to: What’s for dinner? So it’s helpful to be clear about why you want to avoid it – whether for animal welfare, environmental or health reasons. This east Asian wheat-gluten product is a go-to meat substitute. Some vegans take issue with the idea of wanting to emulate meat-eating in any way. Others embrace how seitan (much like tempeh and hard tofu) can be sliced, marinated, braised, barbecued, stewed and otherwise meatishly handled. Where tofu is coagulated soy milk curds, tempeh is whole cooked soy beans fermented into a savoury “cake”. The flavour is nutty but neutral (like tofu, it can go anywhere you want it to) and the texture pleasingly dense. It’s easy to make, too. You need good-quality soy beans, a starter culture (try a healthfood shop), an airy container (Kitchn says perforated zip-top bags do the trick nicely) and a warm spot in which to leave it. Try tempeh charred or finely sliced and fried until crisp. It makes a mean savoury crumble, too. Derek Sarno, the US chef behind Tesco’s new plant-based range, says he hasn’t met a mushroom he’s not fond of. And his takes on steak (made with char siu cluster brown mushrooms) and pulled carnitas (smoky and spiked with cumin) prove why: funghi allow you to achieve that savouriness more widely associated with a roast. NHS guidelines single out calcium, vitamin D, iron and vitamin B12 as the nutrients you have to make sure you get enough of. Find them in pulses, nuts, seeds, dried fruit, dark leafy greens and fortified foodstuffs (though quite what breads, drinks and cereals are fortified with might be problematic – see xanthan gum below). It may also be worth looking into supplements. López-Alt’s first monthly foray into vegan eating saw him lose 4.5kg (10lbs) and 80 points of cholesterol. Within a year of eating only plants – and a whole lot of exercise – Decca Aitkenhead had lost 18kg (40lb). Converts to plant-based eating variously speak of clear skin, increased energy levels, eased digestion, and better odds against heart disease and diabetes. An additive commonly used as a thickener, xanthan gum is sometimes made with egg whites, so pay attention to everything that goes into your food. The potential for animal byproducts lies in the most unsuspecting places: fish bladders in beer, anchovy in orange juice, human hair in bread. Cereals don’t always cut it, either, fortified as they often are with lanolin-derived vitamin D. Consult an online guide: the Vegan Society does a good one. Super-rich and silken coconut yoghurt makes a superlative substitute for Greek yoghurt. And it’s perfectly possible to make your own: all you need is coconut milk and a probiotic starter. Try it with other milk alternatives, too: see the Minimalist Baker’s nifty how-to. The herb-and-spice blend most keenly associated with Yotam Ottolenghi’s brand of culinary adventure. The name refers to a Middle Eastern herb, but many blends feature dried thyme, oregano or marjoram, or all three, as well as cumin and sumac. Either way, it’ll make your cooking sing. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.It’s two weeks into the new year and, with the fridge finally bare of leftovers and the stomach full of one too many treats, the annual pledge to make better choices has finally kicked in. Alas, the extremities of diet and exercise usually fall by the wayside come February. For this reason, I prefer a gentler approach to annual resolutions. A high dosage of vegetables, prepared lovingly and no less decadently than at other times of year, is the prescription – plus a little sweet luxury just to keep me going. The crisp, caramelised layer at the bottom of the pan makes this couscous particularly appealing. The trick to achieving this layer – known as tahdig or socarrat, depending on where you are in the world – is to let the couscous cook undisturbed, resisting the temptation to stir. Serve with a bowl of yoghurt. Prep 25 minCook 1 hr 20 minServes 4 ½ crown prince pumpkin or butternut squash (750g), skin on, cut into 2cm wedges and halved widthways3 tsp ground cinnamon8 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed105ml olive oil Salt and black pepper2 large onions, peeled, 1 cut into 1cm-thick rounds, the other finely chopped 2½ tsp caster sugar4 star anise⅓ tsp chilli flakes750g plum tomatoes (around 6-7), coarsely grated and skins discarded (600g net weight)1 tbsp tomato paste250g giant couscous250g baby spinach 15g coriander leaves, roughly chopped Heat the oven to 240C (230C fan)/465F/gas 9. Toss the pumpkin with a teaspoon of cinnamon, a quarter of the garlic, two tablespoons of oil, three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Spread out on an oven tray lined with baking paper, then roast for 30 minutes, until cooked through and nicely browned. Put the onion rounds on a second lined tray (keep them intact) and drizzle with a teaspoon and a half of oil. Sprinkle with half a teaspoon of sugar and a small pinch of salt and pepper, then roast for 18 minutes, carefully flipping over the rounds halfway, until softened and deeply charred. Keep warm while you get on with everything else. While the vegetables are roasting, make the sauce. On a medium-high flame, heat three tablespoons of oil in a large saute pan with a lid, then fry the chopped onion and star anise, stirring occasionally, for eight minutes, or until softened and browned. Add the rest of the garlic and the remaining two teaspoons of ground cinnamon, and cook for 30 seconds longer, or until fragrant. Add the chilli, tomatoes, tomato paste, the remaining two teaspoons of sugar, a teaspoon and a half of salt and a good grind of black pepper, and cook for eight minutes, stirring often, until thickened. Pour in 500ml water, bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the sauce is thick and rich. Measure out 400ml of the sauce (leave the star anise in the pan), pour this into a small saucepan and keep warm. Meanwhile, tip the couscous into the remaining sauce and stir to combine. Add 375ml water and quarter of a teaspoon of salt, and bring to a boil on a medium-high heat. Cover with a lid, turn down the heat to medium and leave to cook undisturbed for 30 minutes, or until all the liquid has been absorbed and the base and edges of the couscous have crisped up. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large frying pan on a medium-high flame. Add the spinach, an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper, and cook until barely wilted, about two minutes. Stir in the coriander and set aside. To serve, spoon the couscous on to a serving plate and top with the reserved sauce, pumpkin and spinach, layering it all up as you go, then add the onion rounds. Drizzle over the last teaspoon and a half of oil, and serve warm. Heat, acidity and the numbing effect of ginger and Sichuan pepper create an intensity here that can flavour an entire meal. Serve this with some fried tofu and a bowl of rice. Kohlrabi is an underused vegetable that I love. If you can’t get any, this will also work with a large radish, such as daikon, or with green papaya. The salad can discolour and go a bit soggy, so it’s best to toss it together just before serving. Prep 25 minCook 35 minServes 4 as a side 2 tsp white sesame seeds, toasted1 tsp black sesame seeds, toasted1 tsp poppy seeds, toasted1 tsp dried kombu or nori powder – blitz a sheet in a spice grinder or food processor1½ tsp aleppo chilli flakes (or ¾ tsp regular chilli flakes)½ tsp Sichuan peppercorns, finely crushed1 tbsp roasted and salted peanuts, roughly choppedFlaked sea salt3-4 medium kohlrabi, trimmed and peeled (570g net weight)3 tbsp lime juice2cm-piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped1 tbsp rice-wine vinegar6 spring onions, finely chopped 60ml sunflower oil Put the first seven ingredients in a small bowl with half a teaspoon of flaked sea salt. Slice the kohlrabi as thinly as possible – use a mandoline, ideally. Stack the slices on top of each other in manageable piles and cut into 2cm-wide strips to resemble very short tagliatelle. Transfer to a bowl with the lime juice and a teaspoon of flaked sea salt, toss and leave to marinate for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, put the ginger and three-quarters of a teaspoon of flaked sea salt in a mortar and pound to a paste. Transfer to a small bowl with the vinegar and two-thirds of the spring onion. Heat the oil in a small pan on a medium heat until warm, then pour over the ginger and spring onion, and leave to steep for 20 minutes. Drain the kohlrabi to get rid of the liquid that’s collected at the bottom of the bowl, then toss with the oil and ginger mixture. Transfer to a platter, sprinkle over the mixed seeds and nuts, and finish with the remaining spring onion. I guarantee you won’t miss the dairy and eggs commonly used in doughnuts. Instead, these are made with olive oil, which makes them rich and velvety. You can use other types of alcohol and fruity juices in the glaze, if you like, but please don’t leave out the sprinkling of salt at the end – it makes these doughnuts so much more special. Prep 10 minProve 1 hr 50 min Cook 40 minMakes 8 130ml lukewarm water1 tsp fast-action dried yeast1 tbsp caster sugar¼ tsp salt215g plain flour, plus extra for dusting½ tsp grated tangerine zest½ tsp vanilla bean paste or extract1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing1 litre sunflower oil, for frying For the glaze150g icing sugar2½ tbsp Grand Marnier2 tangerines – zest finely grated, to get 1½ tsp, then juiced, to get 2 tbsp ½ tbsp lemon juice ½ tsp vanilla bean paste or extractFlaked sea salt, to serve Put the first eight ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer with the dough hook in place. Knead on a medium-high speed for seven minutes, or until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl (it will be quite sticky), then transfer to a lightly greased bowl. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for about an hour and a half, until soft, pillowy and doubled in size. Meanwhile, whisk all the glaze ingredients in a medium bowl, until well combined and smooth. Lightly flour your hands and a clean work surface, then tip out the dough on to it. Punch down to release the air, then use a sharp knife to cut the dough into eight equal pieces (about 45g each). Clean and dry the work surface, then grease with a little olive oil. With lightly greased hands, shape each piece of dough into a smooth, round ball. Transfer to a tray lined with greaseproof paper, spacing them well apart, then leave to prove again, uncovered, for 20 minutes, or until the dough springs back slowly when touched. Heat the sunflower oil in a medium saucepan on a medium flame until it reaches 180C. Line a tray with plenty of kitchen paper. Once the oil is hot, use your hands very lightly to flatten each round of dough so it’s got two sides but without squeezing out much of the air. In batches of three, carefully lower the doughnuts into the hot oil and fry for two to two and a half minutes on each side, until golden brown and cooked through. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the cooked doughnuts to the lined tray and repeat with the remaining balls of dough. Once you’ve fried all the doughnuts, drop them individually into the bowl of glaze, turning them a few times with a spoon until coated on all sides. Transfer to a wire rack to dry for five minutes, then coat again with a second layer of glaze. Sprinkle with some salt and leave the glaze to set for another 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.It’s such a rare thrill to see a smart, adult drama like The Report that I left its Sundance premiere on an adrenaline high as if I’d just seen the latest Mission: Impossible movie, giddy from the ride I’d just taken. What makes this so remarkable is that the film, an exhaustive retelling of the investigation into CIA’s post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” practices, avoids forcing the facts into Hollywood formula, allowing us to simply bear witness as intelligent people discuss, argue and debate in government offices for two hours. In crude terms, it might be viewed as a cross between Spotlight and The Post although I’d argue that it’s finer than both of those films with its laser-tight focus resulting in an audacious unwillingness to entertain extraneous material. We spend the majority of the film with Daniel Jones (Adam Driver), a Senate staffer tasked with building a report on any potential abnormalities in how the CIA interrogated terror suspects after September 11. Dealing with Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening), he’s confronted with millions of documents that lead him on a six-year journey to prove major discrepancies and acts of extreme brutality. The decision to restrict the film’s narrative to the job at hand, rather than say, following Jones home to see the toll his work is taking on his relationship etc, gives The Report a compelling singularity and one that might alienate some viewers. His character is developed via his actions in the workplace rather than his personal life, the point being that, well, Jones didn’t really have one during the time he wrote the report. As a viewer, we’re given a similarly no-nonsense retelling with a dense unveiling of information that requires absolute attention. The film starts on unsure footing with some distracting, on-the-nose dialogue and some all-too-rapid time-jumps but soon settles down, gripping us to our seats for the next two hours. There are so, so, so many details being shared here yet writer and director Scott Z Burns, best known for collaborating with Steven Soderbergh on Contagion, Side Effects and The Informant!, has ingeniously constructed a film that manages to feel both strict and unsanitised yet utterly absorbing. His script is quite the feat, with brisk, tightly written dialogue filling every corner of every scene without it feeling as suffocating as a latter-day Sorkin might. Part of this is down to his aforementioned avoidance of cliche, Burns aware that the factual basis of what happened is thrilling enough and for any viewer, like me, who has a fetish for competence porn (that’s watching hugely capable, incredibly smart people carry out difficult tasks with great aptitude), The Report is close to orgasmic. There are so many occasions, especially near the end, when another writer might be tempted to add some flash to a number of confrontations yet simply watching characters outsmart each other using facts or the tenets of the law is so much more satisfying than any added theatrics. Fresh off his first Oscar nomination for BlackKklansman, Driver is a total natural with often difficult, demanding and intimidatingly wordy material. Like the script, he’s similarly unflashy and unquestionably convincing as a man doggedly following through with his convictions with so many of his info-stuffed monologues deserving quiet applause. It’s a restrained performance that he almost disappears into and acts as further proof of his versatility, dialling back the charm or confidence that might have typified many of his previous roles. As Feinstein, Bening is superb, nailing both her physicality and line delivery while avoiding any sort of broad caricature. It’s such a joy to see them act together, lightly sparring while reeling off Burns’s astute dialogue, and they’re matched by an adept supporting cast, including Jon Hamm, Maura Tierney, Corey Stoll and Michael C Hall. There’s no heavy hand employed when dealing with the challenging subject matter and Burns also avoids letting anyone off the hook, placing blame for much of what happened and the fallout on both political parties. He flashes back to a number of unflinching torture scenes that are efficient and not exploitative and even finds time for a small dig at Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. The Report is an angry, urgent film that rarely raises its voice, smartly conveying inhumanity and injustice without unnecessary drama. I found it thrilling. The Report is showing at the Sundance film festival and will be released later this yearClemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence completed the most remarkable freshman season in recent history on Monday night. His stunning performance against Alabama in college football’s national championship game already has NFL teams plotting how they can get their hands on him – and he still has two years until he can make the leap to the pros. It’s important to note how rare his rise is. College football is a shifting landscape. High school players, particularly quarterbacks, are better prepared than ever to make the leap to college. A year-round, hyper-intensive recruiting circuit, featuring non-stop training camps and one-on-one sessions with some of the game’s top quarterback coaches (private tutoring of top high school prospects pays more than being an NFL position coach), allows colleges to fully understand a player before he rocks up on campus. Still: what Lawrence did this year is close to unprecedented. Eight months prior to his systematic beat down of Alabama and one of college football’s greatest ever coaches, Nick Saban, Lawrence was attending his high school prom. He took the starting gig early this season, usurping Kelly Bryant, a talented, more experienced quarterback in the midst of an unbeaten run.Young players either grasp the physical side of the game – they’re bigger, quicker, stronger, or have a better arm than their peers – or they are a step ahead on the mental side of the game (typically these types of players are sons of coaches). Lawrence, though, is superior physically and mentally. There’s more than a whiff of Peyton Manning about his game; the way he surgically carves open a defense, winning with brain and brawn. He makes NFL throws with regularity, something it can take college quarterbacks years in the pros to perfect. This throw and catch is ridiculous.Trevor Lawrence to Tee Higgins #AllIn pic.twitter.com/Bjq7l7dZNL “My man is a true freshman,” ex-Clemson quarterback and current NFL star Deshaun Watson said after Monday night’s game. “He’s got at least two more years [in college] to do work. He’s gonna be a legend. He already is. People know that now.” College football’s archaic rules force Lawrence to stay in school for an extra two years. College sports’ governing body, the NCAA, in partnership with the NFL, forces so-called student-athletes to remain in school for three years of eligibility before they can head to the pros. That’s not exactly how the rule is written. Technically, a player could leave school, sit at home watching TV for three years, or go to a different pro football league. But that’s not the way it works in the real world. Players want to be in the NFL. The best job interview for the league is to play against the best competition, and that’s in college football. We’re not long removed from a debate about whether sitting out a team’s bowl game – an end of year game that’s tantamount to an exhibition – would dump a prospect’s draft stock because it would be considered too selfish. The NCAA and NFL do this under the guise of player safety. Nineteen-year olds aren’t ready to play with grown men, they say. How could we put a teenager in the manliest of worlds? The reality, of course, is that the NFL wants as much time as possible to see who’s good and who isn’t and, just as importantly, who’s broken. Meanwhile, the NCAA and its member schools want to protect their bottom line. Keeping star players around helps business – Clemson head coach Dabo Sweeney made just south of $1m for Monday’s win alone. Lawrence and his teammates made nothing.As for player safety, is there anything to prevent the NFL from inserting a rule that all players are draft eligible but are unable to play until they hit 21? Why could a team not take the organizational decision to play things long-term, draft Lawrence now, pay him, then sit him for two years until he hits some mythical age threshold, as though anybody is truly ready for the brutality of the league (and the rate of brain trauma in the NFL shows age is no protection against injury). It’s not like the education many players get at college is worth something anyway. As always, it’s about the money. It serves none of the powers to have to pay a superstar athlete to sit on a practice squad for two seasons. Lawrence will have to wait, and teams are ready. Already, smart ex-executives like the NFL Network’s Gil Brandt are talking about amassing draft capital for 2021, when Lawrence will be able to enter the league. Trevor Lawrence is the best true freshman QB I've ever seen. If I was running an NFL team, I'd be making trades for as many 2021 picks I could get my hands on. It’s a brilliant plan. A team cannot plan to be terrible in two years’ time and tank for the top pick. Our most recent example of a similar prospect is Andrew Luck, and it took a bizarre set of circumstances for the Colts to be happy throwing a season away in order to Suck for Luck. Tanking for Trevor won’t be quite as easy. What’s the incentive for a coaching staff? If you wind up 1-15 you will be fired even as a first-year coach, as Arizona’s Steve Wilks can attest.That makes plotting for the top pick tough. But you can tip the scales in your favor by collecting as many 2021 picks as possible. Perhaps the team selecting No 1 overall in two years’ time already has their quarterback of the future. Or maybe they don’t fall in love with Lawrence as much as other teams. Or maybe they think accepting a boatload of draft picks is a better use of resources than selecting a lone passer, as Cleveland did when they let Philadelphia jump up to select Carson Wentz. The league has two more years to nit-pick Lawrence. Every throw, every decision, on and off-the-field will be hyper-analyzed, all through the prism of his draft stock. Then again, with his physical tools alone he would be a top-10 lock this year. And he still has another two years to add muscle to his giant 6ft 5in frame (and get a decent haircut) before heading to the big show. Yet good quarterback play at the NFL level isn’t always spectacular. It resides in the absence of spectacle: setting and resetting protections, making sure the team checks from a bad play to a good one, getting the ball out hot, and the bravery to take a shot in order to complete a throw. Lawrence has already mastered the game within a game. He is more of a chess player – a manipulator – than any top draft choice since Luck. And he seems immune to pressure, regardless of the moment and regardless of the blitz. NFL teams are already circling. For perennial losers or teams lacking a long-term solution at quarterback, every decision, every action between now and the 2021 draft will be made with a view to grabbing Lawrence.British citizens in the Netherlands have been told they can stay in the country in the event of a no-deal Brexit, as the Dutch government became the latest to offer guarantees to worried residents. Any British person who has the right to live in the Netherlands on 29 March 2019 would be able to continue to live, work and study there, even if the UK crashes out of the European Union, according to a statement on the website of the Dutch ministry of justice. An estimated 45,000 British adults in the Netherlands could expect a letter to arrive before Brexit day from the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) that would serve as a temporary residence permit, in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal. British nationals, during a 15-month Dutch transition period, would receive a further letter inviting them to apply for a residence permit at a cost of €57, the standard cost for EU nationals. The guarantee applies to non-EU family members of British citizens. The offer follows similar decisions from Italy and Germany, while the French government has said it would guarantee the residence, employment and welfare rights of 160,000 resident British citizens living in France, as long as the UK made a reciprocal offer to French expatriates. The European commission, with time running out for a deal, last month urged EU governments to be “generous” in helping British nationals secure their rights if the UK left without a withdrawal agreement. The Dutch government has also pledged that any British nationals receiving child or health allowances would maintain these benefits in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The IND has been asking British citizens to wait to be invited to apply for permanent nationality so the application process could be handled in an orderly fashion. “The IND kindly asks you to wait for the invitation before submitting the application,” stated a sample letter, which promised that British nationals would get an invitation to apply for permanent residence by 1 April 2020. The British in Europe campaign group has argued for the rights of all citizens to be protected if the UK left the EU without a deal. “A no-deal situation is a disaster because unless the EU27 put in place legislation to give us status by 30 March 2019 our rights fall away,” said Jane Golding, the chair of British in Europe. In this scenario sorting out documents would be “a massive and overwhelming task in some countries”, she added.One year ago Albert Molina and his family joined the historic exodus from Venezuela, fleeing to Mexico after his ailing father fell victim to the collapse of its health service. On Wednesday night – after a day of intense political drama in his crumbling homeland – he stood outside the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico City with a placard reading “No more dictatorship” and suddenly rekindled dreams of a homecoming. “The thing Venezuelans most want is to go back to our homeland,” said Molina, a 33-year-old business administrator from Anzoátegui state. “I think if Maduro goes, we’ll be back in Venezuela the next month. I’m 100% sure,” he continued. “We love our homeland. We love our country – and we want to go back to rebuild.” Molina was one of thousands of newly energised exiles who turned out to protest outside their embassies on Wednesday, from Mexico City to Hong Kong, each hoping their country stood on the cusp of a new era. “We want the dictatorship out and an end to tyranny – it is more than possible,” said Jhonny Garcia, a 32-year-old accountant from Caracas, who said he had fled to Mexico City two years ago as Venezuela’s economic collapse accelerated. Jessica Solano, who abandoned her home in the city of Los Teques five years ago, carried a poster that read: “Maduro. Murderer. Usurper. Free Venezuela!” “He’s illegitimate. He’s an impostor,” the 28-year-old civil engineer of Maduro, who has accused the “gringo empire” of conspiring to overthrow him in order to steal Venezuelan oil. Solano called the decision of countries including the United States, Brazil and Colombia to recognise opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president “a step towards the hope that the government will change … and we can be with our families again”. “We have been away for so long. All we want is the hope of a change … If Venezuela truly changes and the economy improves I think the best thing will be to go back,” she said. Molina, who was at the demonstration with his mother, son and heavily pregnant wife, said it was time for the curtains to come down on Maduro’s regime. Chavistas were stashing millions of dollars overseas, he claimed: “And Venezuela broken, with no medicine, no food, as if it were a country at war, or perhaps even worse.” Behind him dissenters had plastered the entrance to their embassy with posters that said: “Out Maduro! Down with the Dictatorship!” One couple held a banner that read: “Operation freedom”. Felix Maradiaga, an exiled Nicaraguan activist who was also among the crowds, said he was also rooting for change: “Maduro is not only a problem for Venezuela. He’s a problem for the world.” “The Maduro dictatorship has been a disruptive force for many other countries,” Maradiaga added, pointing to its role in supporting Nicaragua’s embattled president Daniel Ortega, one of its few remaining regional allies. In Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, there were protests too as thousands gathered outside Venezuela’s embassy to celebrate the day’s developments by waving flags and beating drums. “The clamor of the people is felt in every corner of Venezuela and the world: End the usurpation and free elections!” tweeted the exiled opposition leader Julio Borges, who attended the march. As far away as Hong Kong demonstrators took to the streets with banners that read: “Juan Guaidó – we will stand with you until democracy is restored” and “I do not live in my country but my country will always live in me.” As the crowd outside the Mexico City embassy swelled, protesters unfurled a giant Venezuelan flag and began to chant the national anthem of their decaying nation. “Glory to the brave people, who shook off the yoke,” they sang. “Let’s cry out aloud: ‘Down with oppression!’”Manny Pacquiao finds himself in a bit of an unusual spot entering Saturday’s welterweight showdown with the profane underachiever Adrien Broner on the Las Vegas strip. The Filipino senator, who celebrated his 40th birthday in December, may well be a silhouette of the hyperkinetic force of nature that captured world titles in a record eight weight classes (from 112 to 154lbs) over the last two decades, catapulting from fringe curiosity to global brand. Yet even the reduced present-day iteration set to climb through the ropes at the MGM Grand Garden Arena for his 70th professional bout continues to fight at a high level and is no worse than a top-five welterweight in the world. Problem is, the weight class where Pacquiao campaigns is a top-heavy division occupied by some of the most gifted fighters in the sport, including pound-for-pound stars like Terence Crawford, Errol Spence Jr and, soon enough, Mikey Garcia, who is moving up to fight Spence in a March blockbuster at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. So while Pacquiao’s impending defense of the secondary welterweight title he captured from the shopworn Lucas Matthysse in the summer is not as lacking in credibility as the skeptics might allege, the endgame for a surefire Hall of Famer with absolutely nothing left to prove is less certain. The working theory is Pacquiao is angling not for supremacy at 147lbs but a rematch that nobody asked for with the retired Floyd Mayweather, an all-quadragenarian affair that might not do the record-shattering business of their poorly received 2015 blockbuster, but would no doubt be a money-spinning affair and another nine-figure payday for both men. That Pacquiao signed a two-fight deal with longtime Mayweather adviser Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions stable in November, and the sequel would be infinitely easier to make than the original, has only fueled the speculation. For now, Pacquiao, who came in one pound below the welterweight limit at Friday’s weigh-in (146lbs), is focused on the embattled Broner (146½lbs), knowing one misstep could wipe out his golden parachute. “This is a challenge because it is my first fight as a 40-year-old,” said Pacquiao during Wednesday’s final press conference. “I have something to prove to everyone about what that means. Age is just a number. What matters is how you prepare and that you’re working hard.” He added: “I don’t need to dislike my opponent to want a knockout. I’m just doing my job in the ring. If the knockout comes, it comes. We’re hoping to have that opportunity Saturday. I have to pressure him to make him open up. Wherever he goes, I’ll be there.” It’s all left the 29-year-old Broner, who’s somehow collected alphabet titles in four weight classes (from 130 to 147lbs) despite never being the top dog in any of them, in a perpetual huff throughout the promotion, bristling at the unfamiliar role of speed bump. Once touted as the heir apparent to Mayweather as the sport’s biggest star, the Cincinnati native has managed wins in only six of his last 10 outings, absorbing setbacks every time he’s taken a step up in competition during a tortuous regression to gatekeeper. “I just feel like y’all trying to play me, for real, I don’t like that shit,” Broner said. “Y’all keep saying he’s going to fight Floyd again. To my recognition, Floyd is fucking retired, man. ... There’s some shit going on and I just feel y’all are trying to throw me to the wolves.” Broner, who enters as nearly a 3-1 underdog, leaned into his familiar role of heel during the week, firing off a series of racist remarks to Pacquiao supporters and verbally lambasting the veteran commentator Al Bernstein, quite possibly the most pleasant personality in the sport, as he attempted to moderate a Q&A before the gathered press. Salesmanship, perhaps. But not even Broner can downplay the stakes at hand for his career. “I’m not in awe of any fighter, especially Manny Pacquiao,” he said. “I hope he’s in awe of me. I’m a one-of-a-kind fighter, too. I’ve made history in this sport. I just have to go out and win this fight, then everything is going to start going my way. Saturday night, I will be victorious. This is a defining moment in my career, and it’s going to be one of the biggest nights of my life.”In the spring of 2018, New York was gripped by a sudden, very particular and, for some, calamitous food shortage. Gaps appeared on grocery shelves. Coffee shops put out signs, turning customers away. Twitter and Instagram brimmed with outrage. The truly desperate searched from Williamsburg to Harlem, but it seemed undeniable: New York was out of oat milk. It wasn’t just New York, in fact. The entire US was suffering from a shortage of Oatly, a Swedish plant milk whose rapid rise from obscure digestive health brand to the dairy alternative of choice had caught even Oatly by surprise. Since its US launch in 2016, Oatly had gone from supplying a handful of upscale New York coffee shops to more than 3,000 cafes and grocery stores nationwide. The company had ramped up production by 1,250%, but when I spoke to CEO Toni Petersson in late summer, they were still struggling to meet demand. “How do we supply when the growth is this crazy?” Petersson said. Fortunately, when it comes to milk, in 2019 there is no shortage of alternative alternatives. Visit your local supermarket and you will find a refrigerated aisle overflowing with choice: almond milk, hazelnut milk, peanut, tiger nut, walnut, cashew – and that’s just the nuts. Coconut, hemp, spelt, quinoa, pea – you name it, somewhere a health-food startup is milking it. London tube stations are filled with ads for new plant milks – or rather, “mylks” (EU law prevents dairy alternatives from using the word milk if it isn’t produced by a lactating mammal). Cookbooks dedicate entire chapters to blending and straining your own. Sainsbury’s now stocks around 70 different options. There are the wellness punks (Rebel Kitchen, Rude Health), the dairy puns (Malk, Milkadamia, Mooala) and the nourishers (LoveRaw, Good Karma, Plenish). “People are just looking at every nut that exists and seeing if they can squash it into a milk,” said Glynis Murray, one of the owners of Good, which squashes hemp seeds into oil and milk. It seems unthinkable now, but as recently as 2008, alternatives to cow’s milk largely meant soya (invariably Alpro in the UK, Silk in the US). For anything else, you’d need to scour health-food shops for drab, clinical-looking, long-life cartons of rice milk buried in the back with the other digestive aids. “It was the deathly aisle,” said John Schoolcraft, Oatly’s global creative director. “It was just for people who were lactose intolerant [or] had an allergy to milk; vegans, vegetarians – people who, at that time, were on the fringe of society.” Plant milks are no longer fringe. Just over one in 10 of Pret a Manger’s hot drinks in the UK are ordered with dairy alternative milks (organic soya milk or organic rice-coconut milk). According to research firm Mintel, UK plant milk sales have grown by 30% since 2015, buoyed by a surge in vegan and vegetarian diets. In the US, nearly half of all shoppers now add a plant milk to their baskets. Globally, the industry is estimated to be worth $16bn. Meanwhile, reduced demand for cow’s milk and falling prices led to the closure of 1,000 dairy farms in the UK between 2013 and 2016. Milk’s reputation as a healthy food is under threat from anxieties about bovine antibiotics, animal cruelty and the industry’s environmental impact, as well as increased diagnosis of lactose intolerance. Teenagers now consider cow’s milk less healthy than plant milk alternatives, a development the former chairman of Dairy UK, David Dobbin, called “a demographic time bomb”. “Consumers are really not sure about the dairy industry,” Caroline Roux, a dairy analyst at Mintel, told me. “They’re not convinced these products are good for them any more.” But the plant milk boom is, as one entrepreneur told me, “way bigger than just switching your milk”. To converts, almond and oat milk are the next wave in a fundamental shift towards a more conscious, sustainable way of living. To critics, they’re little more than cleverly marketed nut juice with additives – a symptom of everything that’s wrong with modern food culture. And so a strange battle has emerged, between an industry trying to replace something it says we don’t need in the first place, and dairy, a business that for a century sold itself as the foundation of a healthy diet, while ignoring the fact that most of the world does just fine without it. We are all born milk drinkers. Babies’ guts produce the enzyme lactase, which breaks down lactose, the sugar in breastmilk (and cow’s milk), into the simpler sugars glucose and galactose. But for the majority of humans, production of the enzyme lactase plummets after weaning. “From a human perspective – no, to go further than that, from a mammalian perspective – the norm is to be able to tolerate your mother’s breast milk, and then as you get past infancy, to stop producing lactase and become lactose intolerant,” said Adam Fox, a consultant paediatric allergist at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals, and one of the UK’s leading food allergy experts. “Then you’ve got a small group of humans that have a mutation which means they maintain production of lactase into adulthood. Northern Europeans, the Masai [in east Africa], some Arab groups as well. But that’s the exception, not the rule.” That schism between milk-drinkers and the rest – actually a series of independent genetic mutations – appears to have occurred about 10,000 years ago, around the time humans were domesticating farm animals. It is the reason that in countries such as the UK, Sweden and Ireland, more than 90% of adults can drink milk without suffering any ill effects, but worldwide, more than two-thirds of all adults are considered lactose intolerant. For lactose-intolerant people, a glass of milk can induce bloating, stomach pains and diarrhoea. (Lactose intolerance should not be – though often is – confused with cow’s milk allergy, an immune response to the proteins in cow’s milk that affects around 1% of UK adults.) Even in northern Europe, milk as we know it is a recent phenomenon. Fresh milk, left unrefrigerated, spoils quickly and can harbour a variety of deadly pathogens, including E Coli and tuberculosis. For most of history it was either consumed within moments of milking, or processed as cheese or yoghurt. Few drunk milk in its liquid form. “The Romans considered it a sign of barbarism,” said Mark Kurlansky, author of Milk! A 10,000-Year Food Fracas. “The only people who drank milk were people on farms, because they were the only ones who could get it fresh enough.” (Even then, cow’s milk was considered inferior to alternatives such as goat or donkey.) In the 19th century, “swill milk” – so called because cows were fed the filthy runoff from inner-city breweries, turning their milk blue – was linked with thousands of infant deaths. Only in the early 20th century, with the introduction of mandatory pasteurisation – in which milk is heated to kill off any bacteria before bottling – did milk become safe enough for most people to drink regularly. It was the first world war that ultimately aligned political forces behind the dairy business. In Britain, rationing meant food was limited, and child malnutrition was rife. The emerging field of nutritional science identified milk – with its high protein content and newly discovered “vital amines”, or vitamins – as a potential solution. Thanks to government price controls, milk was one thing not in short supply. Soon, “consumers everywhere witnessed a snowfall of propaganda documenting the miracles worked by milk”, writes Deborah Valenze in Milk: A Local and Global History. Milk became the original superfood: a boundless source of calcium, protein and vitamins. In 1946, Winston Churchill and President Truman both passed measures to ensure milk was available free with school meals. Industry alliances like the UK’s Milk Marketing Board embarked on campaigns to enhance milk’s image. More recently, in the US, the Got Milk? campaign showed celebrities from Beyoncé to Kermit the Frog with milk moustaches. The message was clear: if you wanted your children to grow up big and strong, they needed to be drinking milk. Today, dairy is a vast and highly regulated behemoth, worth more than $400bn, produced by a global herd of more than 274 million cows. Politicians mess with milk at their peril (when Margaret Thatcher, as education secretary, in 1971 took the draconian step of cutting free school milk for the over-sevens, she was branded “milk snatcher”). And yet, for many consumers, the allure of milk is on the wane. In 1975, the average American consumed 247 pounds (around 130 litres) of milk per year; in 2017, it was just 149 pounds (66 litres). In the US, milk sales have fallen 15% since 2012. Milk’s “share of throat” – an industry term for the proportion of total liquid we consume in a day – has been eroded by a steady flow of soft drinks, juices and smoothies, even bottled water. But none of these presented an existential threat. Blanket marketing established the connection between milk and wholesomeness and good nutrition. Now new forms of persuasion, more targeted and pervasive, have stripped away that healthy sheen from dairy. The internet has given animal rights activists new reach. Search for “dairy” on YouTube and you will be assaulted by videos with titles like Dairy Is Scary (5m views), which depicts in graphic detail the suffering of dairy cows. Netflix, too, has provided previously untapped audiences for documentaries like Cowspiracy and What the Health. Besides the ill-treatment of animals, evidence has mounted that the dairy industry is catastrophic for the environment. Animal agriculture contributes more greenhouse gases than aviation, shipping and road vehicles combined. One recent study led by Oxford University claimed that observing a vegetarian or vegan diet is the single most effective way to reduce your own environmental footprint. Plant milks received a boost from their association with clean eating, a craze that has also had the effect of linking dairy with negative health issues. Clean eating, advocated by a fresh-skinned, glossy crop of wellness bloggers and Instagram celebrities, argued for the elimination of any foods deemed overly processed, allergenic, or otherwise “unnatural”: gluten, caffeine, meat and dairy. Its proponents blamed lactose intolerance as the cause of a range of ailments, including acne, eczema, lethargy, joint pain and a variety of digestive issues. And, as the clean eaters warned their readers off dairy, they sent them into the willing arms of plant milk startups. A steady supply of attractive millennial influencers filled their Instagram feeds with appetising shots of peanut-milk Thai curries and gluten-free beetroot bread. (According to industry analysts, one of the keys to the plant-based trend is that it looks appetising on Instagram.) The clean eaters did what years of vegan campaigning never could. Suddenly, giving up milk wasn’t just a health issue. It was part of living your best and most beautiful life. The notion of milking plants is not new. In China, soya milk has been made since at least the 14th century, most commonly as a step in making tofu. The earliest written mention of almond milk appears in a Baghdadi cookbook from 1226, the Kitab al-Tabikh. “If you look at Medieval recipes, they will often give you a choice between milk or almond milk,” said Mark Kurlansky (whose best-seller Cod: A Biography, launched an entire genre of food microhistories). In the west, until recently, almond and soya milk remained relatively unknown, except by vegetarians and the odd eccentric (Henry Ford, of the car company, was an early soya evangelist). In 1956, the Plantmilk Society was established in London by Leslie Cross, then vice-president of the British Vegan Society, a nascent group of animal rights activists. Cross, who particularly objected to the cruelty of the dairy industry, set about trying to find a dairy replacement using crops that could be grown in Britain. “The big issue originally was: how do you get a protein in a liquid that can emulate dairy milk?” said Adrian Ling, whose father, Arthur, was chair of the new organisation. Photos from the time show the smiling pioneers in white lab coats examining many glasses of questionable opaque liquids. “They did a lot of work on cabbage,” Ling said. Eventually, they settled on the soya bean. “It was a very small market – a few hundred people,” said Ling. “They lost a lot of money.” In 1981, a young Belgian food tech named Philippe Vandemoortele decided to use a new packing technology, the sterile Tetra Brik, to sell soya milk. “I started in a garage with pots and pans, a grinder. I was young, and very naive,” Vandemoortele, now 73, told me. He called his soya milk Alpro. Reviews were mixed. The local supermarket refused to stock it. “The buyer tasted my product, and he said: ‘Whoa. It’s awful!’” But Vandemoortele persisted. Today Alpro is owned by Danone, and in 2017 had a turnover in excess of £183m. Soya’s real break came in the late 90s, when a Colorado soya company called WhiteWave made what seems like a confoundingly obvious discovery: if they moved the product to the refrigerated aisle alongside the dairy milk, more people bought it. WhiteWave’s new refrigerated soya drink, which it called Silk, was a sensation. At the same time, Silk, Alpro and others jumped on emerging evidence about the link between high cholesterol and heart disease to market themselves as a healthy alternative. All of a sudden, soya was for everyone. Soya’s rapid growth was short-lived, in large part due to the fact that it doesn’t taste very good. Even modern soya milks, which add sugar, thickeners and other additives to imitate dairy milk, have a beany taste and odour. In the early 2000s, soya had its own health scare. Soya contains phytoestrogens, oestrogen-like compounds that can mimic the hormone’s effects in humans, a discovery that led to fears about it disrupting hormones and “feminising” men. Clinical studies have consistently shown those fears are overstated. Even so, neo-Nazis continue to push the theory that soya milk is a liberal conspiracy to emasculate men, and drink cow’s milk at rallies to demonstrate “digestive superiority”. In 2008, the Blue Diamond Growers, a large cooperative of almond farmers in California, sensed an opportunity. Its milk, Almond Breeze, had long lagged behind Silk, by then America’s leading soya brand. “We knew if we were wanting to compete with them, we would need to be in the refrigerated case,” Al Greenlee, Blue Diamond’s director of marketing, told me. Supermarkets maintain a tight grip on shelf space, charging high fees to stock a new product. Lucrative, high-traffic displays like the refrigerated case are fiercely competitive. The owners of Silk at that time – the dairy giant Dean Foods – had leveraged its industry clout to get Silk positioned alongside milk. “So we followed a similar path, and established a partnership with the second largest dairy in the country”. Blue Diamond started in Florida, targeting neighbourhoods with large Hispanic populations, who have a higher genetic incidence of lactose intolerance. Meanwhile, the California almond industry embarked on a vast marketing spree, funding – and publicising – new research into the health benefits of almonds. The effect was immediate. Glossy magazines proclaimed almonds a “superfood”. Almond Breeze was so successful that within two years Silk launched its own almond milk to try and keep up. By 2013, almond had overtaken soya as the best-selling plant milk in the US. In today’s crowded market, newcomers require something special to stand out. An Australian milk called Nutty Bruce boasts of “activated almonds”, which is a nod to the current craze for charcoal (superheated and then oxidised, “activated” charcoal is marketed as a detoxifier), but at closer inspection just means the almonds are soaked in water for slightly longer than usual. A San Francisco startup called Ripple claims to have developed a hi-tech process to isolate the protein in yellow peas without any of the associated flavours or colourings. Cheryl Mitchell, the chief scientist of the New York-based producer Elmhurst Milked, told me excitedly about her patented extraction process, which uses “high-pressure water and a sloughing action” to break down nuts and pulses while keeping the proteins intact. Mitchell comes from an esteemed line of food technologists: her father, Bill, invented Cool Whip imitation cream, the Pop Rocks popping candy and Tang fruit-flavoured drink. In the 1980s, she helped develop Rice Dream. Elmhurst was a dairy for 90 years; at its peak, it supplied public schools and Starbucks branches across Manhattan. But in 2016, its owners sold off the cattle and switched to plant milk. It now sells 11 varieties. “Wait till they see the corn milk,” she said. “It’s yellow, but it has more antioxidants than blueberries!” It seems every ingredient has its acolytes. “We are here to spread a philosophy about a way of being, one which is much more harmonious and symbiotic with nature,” Tamara Arbib, the founder of London-based coconut drinks company Rebel Kitchen, told me. Rebel Kitchen’s Mylk, launched in 2014, is a blend of coconut, rice and cashew. “I’m a massive fan of eating right for your blood type,” Arbib said. “A lot of blood types do better without dairy.” In July, I went to see one of the UK’s most prominent plant milk startups, Rude Health, in London. Launched by Camilla and Nick Barnard in 2005, Rude Health started out selling muesli, but quickly grew into a small health food empire. It was the tail end of a heatwave, at brunch time, and the Rude Health Cafe hummed with healthy looking professionals sipping cashew lattes. Nick, who has sharp features, grey hair, and wore an open-collared white shirt, ordered a kombucha. “I’m having dairy,” Camilla said, conspiratorially. Rude Health had attracted negative press in 2017, after some vegans became incensed at a company blogpost promoting sustainable dairy. “It hadn’t crossed our minds that to be for dairy free, we were expected to be against dairy,” Camilla said. “We were just chugging along, thinking we were for good quality.” The episode had made them reconsider their marketing strategy, to clarify that they’re not an exclusively vegan brand. “Why does everything have to be the magic pill, or the devil? Why do you have to be for or against?” Rude Health got into plant milks in 2013, selling three flavours: oat, brown rice and almond. Today, it sells 10, including Tiger Nut, Cashew and Hazelnut & Cacao. We walked over to the company’s offices nearby for a tasting session. Rival products and plant-based cookbooks lined the shelves. Nick poured shots of various shades of beige into small glasses. Many plant milk brands add calcium carbonate – chalk – to make the liquid whiter and more opaque (the calcium content is a happy bonus) but the colouring in these plant milks, Camilla assured me, was natural. We tried a few. The coconut was sweet, like a Bounty dissolved in water. The hazelnut was pleasingly thick, if slightly overwhelming. “Tondo Gentile,” Nick said, approvingly. “A gourmet hazelnut.” The almond tasted thin by comparison. The brand’s regular Almond Drink contains brown rice, “cold-pressed” sunflower oil and sea salt, but Rude Health also offers Ultimate Almond – just nuts and water – intended for purists. “There is a hardcore market,” Camilla said. Today, almond makes up around two thirds of all plant milks sold, but it is suffering its own reputational crisis. One issue is environmental: it takes 4.5 litres of water to grow a single almond (technically not a nut, but a seed). In California, which grows eight in 10 of the world’s almond crop, almond growing consumes an estimated 10% of the entire water supply – a controversial issue in a state often afflicted by drought. Consumers have also caught on that the actual almond content of most almond milks is minuscule. Both Silk and Alpro contain just 2% almonds. “It’s actually a water-based emulsion that you’re adding oils, a lot of sugar and gums to, and then just adding a couple of nuts on top,” Elmhurst’s Cheryl Mitchell said. “As a business model, it’s great – any time you can sell water, right? That’s essentially what they’re doing.” The industry insiders I spoke to agreed that almond’s moment is over. Right now the real growth is in coconut, and in oat. In 2012, when Petersson took over as CEO of Oatly, almost nobody had heard of oat milk outside Sweden. The company was founded in 1994 by Rickard Öste, a researcher at the university of Lund. “It’s a really good crop. You can grow oats everywhere,” said Petersson. “It has carbs, it has fat, it has protein and it has fibre.” Compared to oat milk, he said, almond is just “flavoured plant juice”. Petersson, who is 50, with dark hair and slim features, set about reinventing oat milk’s image. He hired John Schoolcraft, a marketing and advertising executive who had been running his own company, to help him. The concept, Schoolcraft said, was simple: “If you’re not lactose intolerant, why would you notice our product?” The pair redesigned its packaging, ditching its previous generic, 1990s aesthetic for a brash, millennial-friendly redesign: Oatly was restyled as Oat-ly! and the side of each carton displayed one of more than 80 messages written by Oatly staff, which congratulated readers on being part of the “post-milk generation” and, only semi-ironically, joining “the cult”. Oatly’s real masterstroke was the creation of its Barista Edition. Most plant milks split in hot drinks – one reason that so many manufacturers use acidity regulators and other additives – and don’t foam like cow’s milk (the problem is the plant proteins). There, Oatly has an advantage: it foams, and the taste of oat is mostly masked by the coffee. Petersson and Schoolcraft ignored supermarkets and targeted coffee bars in the hip neighbourhoods of Brooklyn in New York and Shoreditch in London. “The volume comes from retail, but the demand is created in coffee shops,” Petersson explained. “That’s where you try our product and experience oat for the first time, in an environment that you like.” “It blew my hair back,” said Stuart Forsyth, a former barista and the co-founder of vegan coffee brand Minor Figures. “Oatly made oats sexy.” Oatly’s growth hasn’t been without controversy. In 2015, the Swedish milk industry sued it, claiming its ad slogan “Like milk, but made for humans” unfairly denigrated cow’s milk. Oatly lost, but Petersson and Schoolcraft continue to use the slogan outside Sweden. “The line implies what everyone already knows. Milk is produced by cows for the benefit of baby cows,” said Schoolcraft. Whether or not plant milks really are a healthy substitute for cow’s milk is a matter of fierce debate, and not an inconsequential one. In June 2017, a Belgian couple were convicted of unintentionally causing the death of their seven-month-old baby, after feeding him oat and quinoa milks instead of infant formula. The parents, who ran a health-food shop, believed the child was lactose intolerant and sought the advice of homeopaths rather than seeking medical attention. Much of the debate revolves around whether or not plant milks should be fortified with additional vitamins to better imitate cow’s milk. Oatly fortifies its product according to WHO guidelines. Rude Health doesn’t. “The minute you start fortifying, you’re pretending it’s milk,” Camilla Barnard told me. “I don’t want to do that. It feels dishonest.” Because the Soil Association refuses organic certification to fortified products, many new plant milks choose the “purity” (and associated high price) of organic over the use of additional nutrients. Califia Farms’ unsweetened almond milk boasts “50% more calcium than milk” on its bottle – but it doesn’t contain Vitamin D, B12, Riboflavin or any of the other nutrients found in milk or other fortified plant milks. “A consumer has to read the label and understand the variation that exists in these milks, because they range tremendously,” said Dennis Savaiano, a professor of nutrition science at Purdue University who has studied milk for more than 30 years. What most plant milks are desperate to tell you is what they don’t have in them. Dairy-free; sugar-free; soya-free; gluten-free; GMO-free; bisphenol A-free – in some cases, the “free from” declarations are actually longer than the ingredients list. Califia Farms boasts its products are carrageenan-free, despite the widely used stabiliser being approved as safe by the European commission, the US Food and Drug Administration and the WHO. It’s the inevitable culmination of today’s anxious eating culture: we’ve gone from buying foods on the merits of their ingredients, to buying them on the basis of what’s left out. “If you look at our category, it’s a little bit messed up, you know?” Petersson conceded. “What’s the definition of an oat milk? Think of the comparison between oat milk and soya milk and almond or rice – are those all plant-based milks, or not? Nobody really knows.” To protect against such uncertainty – and protect the dairy industry from the upstarts – a US senator from Wisconsin sponsored a bill in 2017 called the Dairy Pride (Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, Milk and Cheese to Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday) Act, which would ban plant drinks from impersonating dairy. “No one is necessarily drinking milk for the nutritional benefits of it,” said Tamara Arbib of Rebel Kitchen. “When you’re an adult, you’re having it because you want something creamy in your drinks.” It is true that our postwar worries about child malnutrition have been replaced with fears about childhood obesity. And the two-thirds of the world that can’t drink milk aren’t suffering from osteoporosis or rickets; in fact, China and Japan have lower rates of these conditions than Europe. “A lot of scientists think this thing about how children have to drink cow’s milk is bogus. This idea that it makes you big and strong is clearly bogus,” Mark Kurlansky, the food historian, told me. “On the other hand, this idea that ‘milk is bad for you so I’m going to have almond milk or soya milk or something’ – that’s bogus, too. Because it’s a totally different food.” Every nutritionist I spoke to emphasised that milk is no less healthy than it’s ever been; in fact, it’s never been safer. “From a scientific perspective, the data that suggests milk is a bad food just doesn’t exist,” said Savaiano. “It has a lot of nutrients in it. It’s a great source of calcium, it’s a great source of protein, it’s a good source of riboflavin and potassium. So you can’t make the argument it’s not a nutritious food.” Nor could any health professional I spoke to point to any data showing a confirmed rise in diagnosed lactose intolerance, though most agreed that cases of self-diagnosis are rising. But the plant milk boom is not really about nutrition. Nor is it the first wave of a shift towards ethical, plant-based living – much as we need it. “Those other things might be on people’s lists, but they’re secondary selling characteristics,” explained Julian Mellentin, director of New Nutrition Business, a food industry analyst firm that has tracked plant milk’s rise. He pointed out that 90% of plant milk buyers still purchase other dairy products, like cheese and ice cream, both of which are still growing. The forces driving us towards plant milk are really something bigger: a manifestation of a collective anxiety that something is wrong with our bodies. That we aren’t as healthy and happy as we could be – or perhaps, should be – and something, or someone, must be to blame. “There’s a lot of people discovering dairy intolerances and gluten intolerances and that kind of stuff, but actually I think what you’re looking at is much more intolerance to the life we’ve been living,” said Arbib. Our growing suspicion of milk is perhaps a symptom of a lost faith: in Big Agriculture, in nutritional science. “People have learned that dietary advice changes,” Mellentin said. First saturated fat was killing us, now sugar is the number one enemy. Eggs and nuts were sources of bad cholesterol, now they’re superfoods. “So, understandably, people have become sceptical,” Mellentin went on. “Why listen to an expert when they change their mind all the time?” It doesn’t matter that that is how science works. Science changes, so who’s to say that your blood type doesn’t affect your dairy tolerance, or that carrageenan wasn’t the reason for some unspecified malaise? Just because our newfound lactose anxiety isn’t necessarily medically diagnosable, Mellentin said, that doesn’t mean it should be written off. “It’s not to do with allergies. It’s to do with how people feel, and making themselves feel better,” he said. How can you argue with that? Recently, Oatly has begun eyeing plant milk’s next target: China. It launched in the country in 2016, after receiving an undisclosed investment from a Chinese conglomerate. Sales have been promising. Demand for milk in China is growing, and Chinese businesses are investing heavily in plant milk and lactose-free alternatives. To Oatly, conquering China is more than business, it’s an ethical obligation. “The worst thing that could happen [environmentally] is if the Chinese people started to drink dairy milk, because there wouldn’t be enough cows in the world to support that,” said Toni Petersson, the CEO. The company’s latest challenge is competition: Quaker has announced plans for a line of oat drinks, and in January Silk launched its own oat brand, Oat Yeah. “We think oats can become its own category,” Petersson said. Other plant milk entrepreneurs were more cautious. Everyone knows how quickly health-food hype – juice cleanses, coconut oil – can die off. Meanwhile, kombucha is gaining ground as the gut-friendly food cure of the moment. Mellentin was blunt: “Peak plant milk is about three to five years away, at most.” • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.Rafael Benítez succeeded in pulling off the rare feat of making two sets of supporters extremely happy. Not content with choreographing a win which eases his side’s relegation worries, Newcastle’s manager significantly enhanced the chances of the former club still closest to his heart beating Manchester City to the title. Should Liverpool defeat Leicester at Anfield on Wednesday night they will go seven points clear of Pep Guardiola’s team, who may have kicked off with a swagger in their step but departed Tyneside staring at the floor. Few would have guessed the final score correctly after 24 seconds. Raheem Sterling has been setting agendas on and off the pitch of late and, straight from the kick-off, he was at it again, advancing down the right before sending a deep cross looping towards the far post. With Benítez’s back five looking merely half awake, Martin Dubravka was left unprotected and came off his line. His advance failed to prevent David Silva challenging – rather bravely or, perhaps, foolishly – for a header and, almost inevitably, the pair collided leaving Newcastle’s goalkeeper to miss the ball completely. Unluckily for Dubravka it fell for Sergio Agüero to lash into the empty net from around six yards. City had scored their 29th goal in seven games and as a familiar refrain rose from the Gallowgate End it felt a case of plus ça change. “We want Mike Ashley out,” demanded home fans. “We want Ashley out.” Not for the first time, the anger directed towards Newcastle’s owner offered confirmation that political tensions are not confined to Westminster. More than 280 miles north a febrile civil war has been raging between Benítez and Ashley. By hinting that no signings by 11pm might prompt him to walk out, Benítez forced the sports retail tycoon into a corner and Ashley finally extended an olive branch. Where transfer activity had been dormant, St James’ Park suddenly turned into a hive of activity with the Paraguay attacking midfielder Miguel Almirón on the verge of becoming a record signing and the Greece defensive midfielder Andreas Samaris and the Italian full-back Antonio Barreca discussing loan moves. Only time will tell if such recruits might mollify Benítez sufficiently to persuade him to extend his contract beyond May but the immediate future at least seems a little more certain. Unstable to start with, Newcastle’s defence acquired sturdiness as the game unravelled. Even so, they were fortunate not to fall further behind when Matt Ritchie conceded a free-kick following a foul on Sterling. That dead ball was whipped in brilliantly, and swiftly, by Kevin De Bruyne before Agüero redirected it into the roof of the net. The only problem was De Bruyne had not waited for the whistle and the “goal” was disallowed. Far from impressed, City clearly felt this represented painful pedantry on the part of referee, Paul Tierney, with their dismay only intensifying when De Bruyne was booked for his quick thinking. Conscious they had been reprieved, Newcastle regrouped and even gave their guests an odd counterattacking fright, most notably when Christian Atsu’s 20-yard shot took a hefty deflection off John Stones and swerved marginally off target. By now the temperature was plunging and a thin frost seemed to have permeating City’s brains, inhibiting customary invention and incision. At times, Guardiola’s players looked distinctly mortal. Yet although Dubravka was surprisingly underemployed, City remained loosely in control and Newcastle’s Fabian Schär made two vital interceptions; namely a splendidly timed tackle that prevented the lively Agüero from scoring and then a clearance off the line which diverted David Silva’s header to safety after City’s captain had displayed a wonderful change of pace before playing a one-two with Danilo. Schär’s interventions had the added effect of ensuring Guardiola could not relax. City’s manager looked perpetually on edge whenever Atsu’s counterattacking pace highlighted his side’s defensive vulnerabilities. Actually exploiting them was something entirely different though. If Almirón had been on the pitch in the No 10 role it might have been different but, in his absence, improvisation was hardly an injury-hit Newcastle’s strong suit. Neither were killer final balls. Benítez’s players did possess plenty of sheer bloody-minded determination and it paid dividends when Fernandinho only partially cleared a Ritchie cross and Isaac Hayden headed it back into the box. City had made the mistake of leaving Salomón Rondón unmarked and, having narrowly avoided colliding with Atsu, he drove a right-foot shot into the turf which bounced up over a nonplussed Ederson and on towards the roof of the net. Guardiola and co appealed for offside but their pleas seemed forlorn. Tellingly that equaliser came very shortly after De Bruyne had been diplomatically withdrawn in the wake of a challenge on Ritchie arguably worthy of a second yellow card. No one epitomises Newcastle’s diligence more than Benítez’s right-winger turned left wing-back so it seemed fitting Ritchie scored the winner from the penalty spot following Fernandinho’s foul on Sean Longstaff – and what seemed an eternity of a delay while Ederson had treatment on a groin injury which may, or may not, have been a psychological ploy designed to preserve his side’s title hopes. If so, it failed, leaving the ball firmly in Liverpool’s court.What we see is not the economy. What we see is the tiny fragment of economic life we are supposed to see: the products and services we buy. The rest – the mines, plantations, factories and dumps required to deliver and remove them – are kept as far from our minds as possible. Given the scale of global extraction and waste disposal, it is a remarkable feat of perception management. The recent enthusiasm for plastic porn – footage of the disgusting waste pouring into the sea – is a rare reminder that we are still living in a material world. But it has had no meaningful effect on government policy. When China banned imports of plastic waste a year ago, you might have hoped that the UK government would invest heavily in waste reduction and domestic recycling. Instead, it has sought new outlets for our filth. Among the lucky recipients are Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, none of which have adequate disposal systems – as I write, our plastic is doubtless flooding into their seas. There’s a term for this practice: waste colonialism. Our plastic exports are bad enough. But something even worse is happening that we don’t see at all. Every month, thousands of tonnes of used tyres leave our ports on a passage to India. There they are baked in pyrolysis plants, to make a dirty industrial fuel. While some of these plants meet Indian regulations, hundreds – perhaps thousands – are pouring toxins into the air, as officials look the other way. When tyre pyrolysis is done badly, it can produce a hideous mix: heavy metals, benzene, dioxins, furans and other persistent organic chemicals, some of which are highly carcinogenic. Videos of tyre pyrolysis in India show black smoke leaking from the baking chamber, and workers in T-shirts, without masks or other protective equipment, cleaning tarry residues out of the pipes and flasks. I can only imagine what their life expectancy might be. India suffers one of the world’s worst pollution crises, which causes massive rates of disease and early death. There is no data on the contribution made by tyre pyrolysis plants, but it is doubtless significant. Nor do we know whether British tyres are being burned in plants that are illegal, as our government has failed to investigate this. It seems prepared to break its own rules on behalf of the companies exporting our waste. And this is before Brexit. Unlike plastic waste, there is a ready market for used tyres within the UK. They are – or were – compressed into tight blocks to make road foundations, embankments and drainage beds. It’s not the closed-loop recycling that should be applied to everything we consume, let alone the radical reduction in the use of materials required to prevent environmental breakdown. But it’s much better than what’s happening to our discarded tyres now. The companies that made these blocks have either collapsed or are in danger of going that way, as they can no longer buy scrap tyres: Indian pyrolysis plants pay more. I was contacted by a leading tyre block broker, David L Reid. He was halfway through a major order from a local authority when his supplies dried up. The contract was lost, and the local authority had to switch to stone, costing it a further £200,000. He has other interests, so is able to weather this disruption, but his company, like others, has had to cease trading. With some of his former competitors, he has been frantically trying to discover what the government is playing at, so far with little success. Government guidelines seem clear enough: exporters must be able to demonstrate that the final destination of the waste they send to other countries “operates to human health and environmental protection standards that are broadly equivalent to the standards within the EU”. But when one tyre block company tested the UK Environment Agency’s willingness to enforce this rule, by asking whether it could send tyres to pyrolysis plants in Africa that “will not meet UK and EU pollution controls”, the agency told him “your suggested business plan is acceptable as long as the relevant procedures and documents are completed correctly”. The UK government’s due diligence consists of asking tyre exporters which companies they intend to sell to, then asking the Indian government whether those companies are legit. It has made no efforts to discover whether the firms receiving these tyres are their final destination, or whether the Indian government is properly regulating them. It has no figures for UK tyre exports to India. Arguing that they are classed as “green waste”, it washes its hands of them as soon as they leave our shores. To become a tyre trader, all you need to do is fill in a “U2 environmental exemption” form. Then you can buy used tyres from garages, ostensibly for bundling into construction blocks. But there appears to be nothing in British law (or at least in its implementation) to prevent you from using this licence to put them in a shipping container and send them to India. I put questions to the government about these issues but, despite repeated requests, it failed to send me a response on time. Reid has approached the environment secretary, Michael Gove, his Labour shadow, Sue Hayman, Liam Fox and other MPs and officials, all without answers. Does anyone care? Are the lives of people in India worth nothing to politicians in this country? It appears that among the first people to export used tyres to India, in 2009, was Richard Cook. He is the former Conservative parliamentary candidate for East Renfrewshire who channelled £435,000 (the origins of which remain mysterious) through Northern Ireland and into the leave campaign in England and Scotland. Investigations by openDemocracy and BBC Northern Ireland alleged that his shipment was classified as illegal by both the Indian government and UK regulators. Indian law at the time forbade used tyre imports. Cook denied the allegations. After I tried to speak to him, his solicitor rang to say “we have intimated a claim for damages against the BBC for defamation” and would not be making any further comment. In principle, the government could be held to account on this issue by European law. But if this is the way it is prepared to operate before Brexit – flouting its own rules on behalf of British exporters – imagine what it might do after we have left the EU. Every child is taught a basic environmental principle: you clear up your own mess. Our government seems happy to dump it on other people. • George Monbiot is a Guardian columnistJudging by the outrage generated by Gillette’s “toxic masculinity” ad campaign, the shaving company – or rather its marketing department – is one step ahead of society, or at least certain parts of it. But the brand may not be wildly out of step with its founder, King Camp Gillette. In 1894, around the same time that he was perfecting his design for a disposable razor, the Chicago-raised businessman published The Human Drift – a pamphlet advocating a socialist urban utopia, unearthed and excitedly shared on Twitter last week. Gillette proposed replacing all North America’s cities with one giant city, built above, and powered by, Niagara Falls – an extreme version of the high-density designs advocated by many urban theorists and “re-wilding” conservationists today. Those Gillette ads are nice, but get this: The company's founder wanted to build a socialist utopian city of tessellating hexagons on Niagara Falls where money would "pass into the oblivion of an ignorant age." https://t.co/9V26wTqhJf pic.twitter.com/V1EqAc8y5b “Under a perfect economical system of production and distribution … there can be only one city on a continent, and possibly only one in the world,” he wrote. While citizens might temporarily occupy countryside or coastal dwellings for field labour or pleasure, the city, named Metropolis, would be their only permanent home, housing at least 60 million people at any one time. Gillette described an urban area stretching from Niagara Falls around 60 miles eastwards into New York state, and a similar distance westwards from the falls into Ontario. His vision for renewable power might be considered ambitious even today. “Here is a power,” he wrote of the waterfalls, “which, if brought under control, is capable of keeping in continuous operation even manufacturing industry for centuries to come, and, in addition supply all the lighting, facilities, run all the elevators, and furnish the power necessary for the transportation system of the great central city.” The entrepreneur’s plans for “mammoth” apartment buildings could be considered equally ahead of their time. While some of his chosen materials – fire-brick, for example – would not win favour today, he included them for durability. Gillette also had a modern approach to the use of natural light: his planned apartments stack up around a circular atrium, topped with a glass dome. Glass featured heavily in his novel network of utilities, public transport and walkways. Accessible and transparent corridors, supported by steel pillars, would snake around the city holding its sewage, heating, cold-air and electrical systems. Atop this network would be more glass corridors housing public transport, and above those, covered pavements. Long before Jane Jacobs protested against car-worshipping urban design, Gillette insisted that bikes would be the only private vehicles in Metropolis. Perhaps anticipating the charge that his designs were too functional, he described artificial parks with domes of stained glass, urns of flowers and artworks. He wrote: “Here would be found a panorama of beauty that would throw into shadow the fables of wonderful palaces and cities told of in the Arabian Nights.” Although many of these ideas can be seen in later concepts and designs by other planners and architects, it is not clear how many people knew of the pamphlet, which soon fell into obscurity. His radical economic vision may be partly to blame: Gillette planned for one “company” to produce, manufacture and distribute the necessities of life in Metropolis; and crucially, there would be no money. “If the plan outlined could be understood by the masses,” he wrote, “enthusiasm would amount to such a pitch in the excitement and desire to see Metropolis completed that millions would enlist their services for an indefinite time to forward its building, and all they would ask would be soldier’s fare and clothing. “What would money be to them, when the near future would see it pass into the oblivion of an ignorant age?” Whether Gillette had too much faith in humanity – perhaps something his brand could be accused of in 2019 – or too much faith in his own plans, it’s hard to say. Maybe a moneyless city was just too tough a sell for a self-made millionaire. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereCesc Fàbregas says the 13 years he spent in London with Arsenal and Chelsea left him feeling “more English than Spanish”, but believes the time was right to seek a new challenge at Monaco after seeing his playing time increasingly limited. Speaking for the first time since his departure for the Ligue 1 side was confirmed on Friday, Fàbregas admitted he could not have envisaged leaving Stamford Bridge at the start of the season and that his reunion with Thierry Henry, the Monaco manager and his former teammate at Arsenal, initially came as a surprise. “I’m not going to lie, it was a difficult moment for me,” Fàbregas said of the tearful farewell he bade Chelsea’s fans after his final appearance, the 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest on 5 January. “I spent 13 years in England, a lot of great moments. I started my career there, played for two top clubs, winning a lot of things, setting some records, having friends, meeting so many great people. I felt at times more English than Spanish in a way. It was a fantastic experience and obviously a very emotional moment. “I felt it was the right time, after 501 games in English football – leaving on a high, which is what I always wanted. It’s the best time for me to move on and find new challenges and that’s why I’m here.” Fàbregas started only one Premier League game under Maurizio Sarri and that, allied with Chelsea’s unwillingness to offer a new contract of longer than one year to a player who turns 32 in May, expedited his decision to join Monaco, who sit in the relegation zone. “At the beginning the opportunity to come here was a surprise,” he said. “I spoke to my family and we decided it was the right thing for my future. I feel like a young player with new boots, and hopefully we can achieve good things. “I didn’t mean [it was a surprise] in a negative way. I mean I was in England for a very long time and comfortable where I was. In my head, even three months ago I didn’t feel I was going to move away from Chelsea. But some circumstances happened, the playing time and everything, and speaking to Vadim [Vasilyev, the Monaco chief executive], they convinced me about a new challenge. I’m very open-minded; I’m not scared of adapting to anything, I’ve been doing that since I was 16 and started playing professionally.” Monaco would like to reunite Fàbregas with Michy Batshuayi, the Chelsea striker whose loan at Valencia is to be cut short, but Vasilyev said the player’s parent club were holding out for a permanent deal.In every title-winning team there is a player whose crucial contribution is largely overlooked by the wider public. A subtle operator among the standout performers who generates few headlines and even fewer accolades. But the fans love him, as does the manager, because they know without him there would be no success, no glory, no shiny silver trophy in the middle of May. It is too early to decide who that figure is in Liverpool’s current side, mainly because it is too early to say for sure that Liverpool are going to win the title. But ahead of Thursday’s potentially pivotal game against Manchester City there is, it feels, a standout candidate. He has featured in all but one of the leaders’ league fixtures this season and been central, literally as well as figuratively, to everything that has gone right for Jürgen Klopp’s side. Yet praise has not come his way, certainly not compared to that which has been received by many others in red. He is the near-invisible man in English football’s most striking team right now and his name is Georginio Wijnaldum. Put simply, without Wijnaldum there would be no unbeaten run, no string of clean sheets and no stream of goals for the current pace-setters. He more than anyone has stitched together Liverpool’s excellent defence with their excellent attack and is a certainty to face City in the Merseyside club’s biggest game since May’s Champions League final. Klopp confirmed as much by substituting the Dutchman with 12 minutes of Saturday’s 5-1 victory over Arsenal remaining. It was a clear case of “rest up for Thursday, Gini” after yet another superb display from Liverpool’s No 5, and as he departed from the pitch there came a standing ovation from the home crowd, followed by a blast of the Wijnaldum song. They’ve been singing it for some time at Anfield. It has not been easy for Wijnaldum since he joined Liverpool from Newcastle for £25m in July 2016. Indeed, there was a level of scepticism to his very arrival given the player’s generally underwhelming displays for a Newcastle team that were relegated during his one season on Tyneside. He scored 11 goals in 38 league appearances, an average total for an international attacking midfielder, and particularly so given all of those goals came at home, with four arriving in one game – against Norwich. But that did not deter Klopp, primarily because he recognised there was more to Wijnaldum than meets the eye. “He can play a few positions and players that come through the Dutch system usually have a good tactical understanding,” he said upon acquiring the player, and increasingly the 28-year-old has vindicated his manager’s belief in what he can provide the team. Under Klopp, Wijnaldum has operated in both a two-man and three-man midfield, most often as a playmaker but also, on occasion, in a purely defensive role. The emphasis has shifted from scoring goals to providing and preventing them as required in a system underpinned by hard-running and aggressive counterpressing. It’s a lot to take in and, understandably, Wijnaldum initially struggled to adapt. But as his displays this season have shown, Klopp was right to believe that the man who captained PSV Eindhoven to the Eredivisie title in 2015 had the required aggression, stamina, work-rate, discipline, assurance in possession and all-round football intelligence to do so. Wijnaldum has completed 90 minutes for Liverpool on 18 occasions this season, including five of their six Champions League games. The only league game he has not been involved in was the 3-1 victory over Burnley last month and that was as part of a host of changes made by Klopp in order to keep his key men as fresh as possible. Practically ever present, the Netherlands international is also Liverpool’s best midfield performer in a number of notable areas, including most completed passes (906) and most completed dribbles (12 out of 19), showing his ability to not only keep Liverpool’s attacking momentum’s ticking over but also drive it forward. “Gini can switch from one mindset to the other and that is pretty good for us,” said Klopp of the player in August before going onto describe him as “outstanding” in the win over Arsenal, Liverpool’s eighth in succession in all competitions. He certainly was and what makes Wijnaldum’s form throughout the season especially noteworthy is he came into it with his place in the side under threat following the summer arrivals of Naby Keïta and Fabinho. His game-time and influence on Liverpool was meant to reduce but instead it has grown to the point where he is the most reliable, consistent and versatile midfielder for the team leading the way. And now for City. Wijnaldum will almost certainly find himself operating in a three-man midfield and tasked with putting pressure on those in blue when they have the ball – specifically the two Silvas, David and Bernardo – and then, when possession is overturned, getting Liverpool’s front three on the front foot as quickly as possible. Disrupt, distribute, run and rotate; instructions Wijnaldum has been following to a tee for some months now. About time more people noticed.“You’re part of an experiment in connection,” Nick Cave says from the stage. His In Conversation show, currently touring Australia, centres on questions and song requests but, like Cave’s new Red Hand Files website, “there will be no moderator”. So first he must briefly mire himself in rock’n’roll’s nemesis: a bit of housekeeping. The rules of play. While Cave is dressed impeccably at the Sydney Opera House, his collaborators tonight are no cool-as-fuck Bad Seeds. They’re in sensible shoes and fluoro vests, and are cheerfully waving those lightsaber batons used to direct planes on to the tarmac. “If you have a question signal to them,” says Cave. “And they’ll … whatever.” He burns out on explicating the detail. Fair enough. He’s got bigger fish to fry. The first fish is slapped down by a woman who shares his love of Leonard Cohen. “But can you explain Avalanche?” she says. “It’s always seemed so dark and incomprehensible to me.” He pauses. “I like it because it’s dark and incomprehensible. The big problem with most songs is that the meaning is too clear. I can play it if you like?” “Would you?” she says, her voice gone high and swoony. “I’ll do a version where I’m singing to you,” he says. Then, at the piano: “And now I’m going to fuck it up because I’ve talked too much about it.” Thus we ease into the evening’s rhythm. The lights fade, Cave does a single song at the piano. The lights brighten and he gestures with weary elegance at a flashing baton to answer a question. He spins in slow circles because not only do tables press in cabaret-style around his piano, but the stalls behind the stage are filled too. The layout gives him a dancing-bear captive air – which suits his efforts to place himself at our mercy. And at the mercy of an 11-year-old girl who asks “What’s the hardest thing about what you do?” He replies: “With live performance the terror of standing in front of people ... is incredibly addictive. But I grew to have a certain control over the outcome … these conversation events have brought back the terror. Because I don’t really know what I’m doing. And here I am answering the questions of a child.” Sometimes he refuses requests – “I can’t do the build on Jubilee Street” or “too many chords” – but mostly, he says yes. Some he sings very well and others he inhabits. Most of the latter are newer songs – Higgs Boson Blues, Mermaids and Skeleton Tree – with the exception of the best rendition of The Mercy Seat I’ve heard (or seen on YouTube), and an incendiary belting-out of God Is in the House. The Weeping Song suffers from the tyranny of his distance to it. It’s all plonky playing and affect. Another night you might not notice. Tonight, it jars due to how real he feels; up on his feet again to do the TEDx walk and talk. Our interactions fall into three categories. First, when he quips back: many are gently teased by Cave tonight. In these moments he’s “as funny as a circus” (that’s my dad, who I took, not Nick). “Maybe you don’t need to clap after I answer each question?” Cave suggests. “I start to analyse the volume of each clap and, well … ” The second is when he latches on to a topic and answers with depth and honesty. It’s like a late-night D&M with a mate – only the mate is Nick Cave and we’re yarning with the lights up amid a cast of thousands. “We’ll all live two lives,” he says in response to a comment about David Bowie’s final years – when he was facing mortality and reaching out to connect with fans. “In his first life, he did what many of us do and put himself forward as an individual … then later he looked for something communal and collective. It’s what happens to us all … I think we’re united by suffering.” The “great thrill” of the creative process, meanwhile, is when something “starts to emerge from meaninglessness even when you don’t see it at first. To be a creative person requires most of all, faith. Faith the moment will come. And when it does you can see it vibrating in front of your face”. The third category of interaction is tidbits about his music and collaborators. “It’s really about loss, the Bad Seeds,” he says. “It’s hard for people to look at them and not see the absences, now, of some towering figures.” He names some who’ve died and some who left the band: Blixa Bargeld, Conway Savage, Barry Adamson and Kid Congo. He talks about Brett Whiteley, Shane MacGowan, Tony Cohen. Rowland S Howard’s influence on guitar music globally has been “vast”, he says. “He was the first real game-changer for me and I owe him a huge amount for that.” Their artistic collaboration was fierce; “we forgot how to be friends”. He adds: “That’s how the Birthday Party collapsed as a band. We forgot how to be friends.”Cave says his work with Warren Ellis has deepened over the years. “Something special happens these days with Warren and I, where nothing can stop us if we’re in a room together.” Later, at a loss to name any new music he listens to (“I’m writing all day so I can’t”), he mentions their album. “We have something pretty cool brewing, me and old Wazza.” In no particular category falls the young fool who endears himself to Cave by asking to have his bare foot signed. “Do you have a pen?” he yells when Cave agrees. Ultimately, it’s true: he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s an amateur again! Only this time we get to be there. A professional would be more energy efficient. They’d know how to approximate questions, bridge to easier answers and recycle anecdotes. Instead of these pro moves, Cave instead chooses to not answer a few. He struggles particularly with a question on male sexual predators. “Who? I still don’t know who do you mean?” The man who asked tosses out Louis CK as an example. “I can’t comment on Louis CK,” Cave says. Just as the question is washing out to sea however, Cave relents and tugs it back. “Look, I’m in no way cavalier about this,” he says. “I’m not aware of it somehow having stained the music industry … where I don’t recognise this way men are being painted as monsters. It seems to be an industry that respects women – in some way. Is that right?” There’s a rumble of protest but no eruption. He’s wrong on this point of course – and his thoughts on #MeToo are far better expressed here – but tonight’s not about being right. It’s about being present, knowable, vulnerable and real. And funny. Always that. • Conversations With Nick Cave continues through January, in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and New ZealandIt’s the most wonderful time of the year. Or rather, it is if you take your lead from a chortling, bearded man who has spent most of the last month dispensing his own kind of giddy, red-suited festive cheer. At the start of December Jürgen Klopp could be seen haring across the Anfield pitch, skipping and leaping and making a strange yanking gesture with his arms, like a man repeatedly puncturing an inflatable lilo with a breadknife while being pursued by a swarm of angry jack russells. Liverpool’s stoppage-time Merseyside derby winner had just prevented Klopp’s team from slipping four points behind Manchester City, in the process prolonging the slow-burn heat of another moribund title race. Except not this time. Enter Jürgen’s festive miracle, a period of four weeks, six matches (plus six minutes of added time at Anfield) during which Liverpool have gone from four points behind City to seven points clear at the top. It is a remarkable surge of cold, hard sporting will, eight wins in a row in all competitions, with 23 goals scored and three conceded. In its shadow City have stuttered and stumbled. To such a degree that ahead of Thursday night’s brilliantly-timed meeting between the two it is the blue half of this table-topping syzygy that seems arguably the more fascinating right now. When City travelled to Anfield in October the match was billed by Sky Sports’ endlessly salivating marketing arm as “Champions versus Challengers”. Such is Liverpool’s momentum it is City who must now chase and apply pressure, Guardiola who must try to do something different, and indeed unprecedented, in his own coaching career. Winning ugly, taking a title with a stumble along the way: this is something no Pep team have done before. “We are so close!” Guardiola can be heard yelling at his players during the in-house hagiography of the title-winning season. But it was never really close. City simply ran away from the field, playing with such frictionless brilliance that as recently as this November there was already talk of a kind of ultimacy, of the greatest team of the past 25 years, the last century, perhaps the century to come. Instead of which Guardiola’s team must now come from behind. At Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City Guardiola, has won seven league titles in nine seasons, but his champion teams have all run from the front, bending the race to their own will from the gun. The closest to a messy league title win is probably the second one at Barcelona, which went to the final day of the season. But even then Barça just kept on running ahead of the tide, never stumbling, racking up 99 points in the process. In those two seasons without a title both Pep-built teams – Barcelona in his last season, City in his first – have malfunctioned long before the season’s end, both times accompanied by an element of flounce, of conceding the scrap with high-minded grace. Victory is yet to come on more pragmatic terms. This would be an excellent time to start, and not just for the sake of the Premier League season. It is always tempting to look for flaws in a team that has presented itself as close to sporting perfection. The chief snark directed at this City team is that it excels above all in putting away the mid-rankers. Victory on Thursday night might wrench the initiative back from Liverpool. But it would also be the first time City have beaten a team ahead of them in the league since Arsenal in December 2016. The strongest opponents City faced in 2018 were Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham and Lyon. Against these teams their record reads played 12, won four, lost six. This is, of course, unsurprising. The stronger teams are, believe it or not, a little harder to beat. But there is also a tactical and textural dimension to this. City’s system is built without compromise, is above all optimistic, geared always towards producing the perfect game, colouring the entire world sky blue for 90 minutes. Often this involves scoring early and simply streaking away from there, a microcosm of those title-winning seasons. Which is fine when it works, as it does most times. But City also haven’t come from behind to win a league game since West Ham at home last season. More recently against Crystal Palace and Chelsea going behind has seemed to spook the whole system, not least because successive opponents have pressed at the same weakness. Chelsea at the start of December showed how to surge in behind City’s full-backs when they press high and fail to track back urgently enough, or miss the right kind of cover from midfield. Several times at Stamford Bridge, a long flat diagonal pass out of defence found wide open green spaces behind the blue shirts. Palace did the same down the right a fortnight later. Last week Jamie Vardy and Marc Albrighton went scampering in down the left at the King Power Stadium. It is Guardiola’s love of overloads, of fearlessly stretching the pitch, that Lyon first managed to exploit in the Champions League, something better opponents than Schalke will also pick away at in the late stages of that competition. Andrés Iniesta pointed out this week that City really should come close to winning the Champions League given the investment made and the calibre of coach in charge. To do so, and indeed to make a mark on Klopp’s December surge, might require something different to what we’ve seen, the willingness to adapt and protect a weakness, to clench a scented handkerchief to the nose and deign to win ugly now and then. At the Etihad, City will face a Liverpool team with more varied ways of playing, greater physical strength, and an attack perfectly equipped to prey on that brittleness on the flanks. How they respond could decide Guardiola’s own ultimate success at a club that has shaped itself entirely to that uncompromising ideologue’s style.I recently started baking my own bread, and all the recipes say to leave the dough to rise, usually for an hour or two, “until doubled in size”. Mine rarely rises anywhere near that – where am I going wrong? Simon, Manchester Baking is easily the least forgiving of all culinary activities. Get anything even slightly out of whack – be that oven temperature, the ratio of your ingredients or even the humidity in your kitchen – and soggy bottoms and broken dreams await. In fact, there’s a strong case for saying that baking is more science than art, and, as with all things scientific, it always pays to heed the experts. You don’t get many more expert in bread-making than Richard Bertinet, a Bath-based baker and food writer from Brittany, so let’s ask him. “The first thing that springs to mind,” Bertinet says, “is that your dough is probably too cold.” Or, put another way, the water you’re using isn’t warm enough. “It’s vital you give the yeast a helping hand, otherwise it’ll just slumber lazily,” he says, adding that your water/ flour/salt/yeast ratio is also crucial. “A lot of people are wary of adding too much water, and end up using too little.” So how can you tell if your water is the wrong temperature? Easy, says Bertinet, whose sixth book, Crumb, is out in February (Octopus, £25) and covers all things bread. “Just stick a finger into it – if you can’t feel any change in temperature, the water is about right, but if it’s any cooler than blood temperature, you’re asking too much of your yeast.” Also, keep the salt and yeast well apart until you bring them together in the dough, otherwise, as Paul Hollywood warns, the former may kill the latter. Of course, there may be other factors involved. For instance, Bertinet wonders if maybe you’re proving the dough in the wrong environment. Yeast needs not just warmth, but also a bit of humidity to do its thing, “so never prove dough in an airing cupboard – it’s way too dry”. To help things along, put the dough in a greased bowl, cover it with plastic (Bertinet uses polythene bags) and leave somewhere warm in the kitchen. Finally, invest in the right yeast. If your dough isn’t rising, it might be tempting to use one of the strong, mass-market, fast-acting dried yeasts. Don’t, says Bertinet. “They’ve got all sorts of chemicals in them, and are far too strong.” He can see why the stuff is so popular, but convenience isn’t everything. And if you really have no option, ignore what it says on the packet and use sparingly. “One teaspoon for every kilo of flour is about right,” Bertinet says, “but no more.” He recommends using fresh yeast, if possible, which isn’t as hard to get hold of as you might think. “It’s sold in all good delis,” Bertinet says. “And, if you ask nicely, your local supermarket or high-street bakery might even give you some for free.” Especially if you buy a job lot of doughnuts or pasties first. • Do you have a culinary dilemma that needs solving? Email feast@theguardian.comDo you set an alarm to wake you up on weekdays, then hit the snooze button at weekends because you need more sleep? If so, you could be experiencing social jetlag – a condition associated with weight gain, reduced mental performance and chronic illness. “Social jetlag promotes practically everything that’s bad in our bodies,” says Till Roenneberg, professor of chronobiology at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, who coined the term. It occurs when we go to bed later and wake up later at the weekend than on weekdays. Like normal jetlag, it is a consequence of being forced to shift our bodies between two time zones: one dictated by work and social obligations, the other by our internal timing system, the circadian clock. It is estimated that two-thirds of us experience at least one hour of social jetlag a week, and a third experience two hours or more – equivalent to flying from London to Tel Aviv and back each week. How much social jetlag you experience is down to the magnitude of the mismatch between your two time zones. People’s sleep preference, known as their chronotype, is largely dictated by genes. “Owls” – whose natural tendency is to stay up late and not wake until 10 or 11am – experience more social jet lag than “larks”, because they struggle to get enough sleep in the week and sleep in at weekends to catch up. However, an extreme lark pressured into staying up late at weekends by friends will also suffer. As anyone who has experienced normal jetlag will know, one of the most obvious symptoms is trouble sleeping. The body takes a while to adapt to a new time zone – typically a day for every time zone you cross. Similarly, says Roenneberg: “Social jetlag and sleep deprivation are practically inseparable.” Chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to many of the same illnesses as social jetlag, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity and depression; and has been declared a public health epidemic by the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A study by the Rand Corporation calculated that inadequate sleep costs the UK £50bn a year – equivalent to 1.9% of GDP – due to decreased productivity and sickness. Sleep deprivation also takes its toll on our daily lives, affecting our vigilance, hand-eye coordination, memory, logical reasoning and emotional stability. However, social jetlag doesn’t only disrupt the amount of sleep. A study of undergraduates found that those who kept irregular bedtimes had poorer quality sleep than those with more consistent sleep schedules, even though they got roughly the same amount overall. Irregular sleep was also associated with poorer academic performance. Andrew Phillips, now at Monash University in Melbourne, who led the study, says: “This suggests sleep regularity is very important – it’s not just about getting the right amount of sleep, for example by sleeping in at weekends.” It has other consequences, too. Inside each of our cells is a molecular clock that governs the timing of almost every physiological process in our bodies. The most obvious of these is when we feel sleepy or alert, but circadian clocks also control when we secrete hormones, the activity of our immune cells, our body temperature, even our mood at different times of day and night. These clocks run on roughly (though not precisely) 24-hour schedules – larks tend to have slightly faster clocks, and owls slightly slower ones – synchronising through signals from a tiny patch of brain tissue known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which acts as a kind of internal Greenwich Meridian. It knows the time through its interactions with light-responsive cells at the back of the eye, which evolved to register the rising and setting of the sun. If you change the timing of your light exposure – as you do when you go to bed and wake earlier on weekdays, or when you fly across time zones – the timing of the clocks in your organs and tissues also shift, although at different rates. If you constantly shift the timing of your sleep and light exposure, as you might if you regularly sleep in at weekends, your clocks will be perpetually out of synchrony. “Almost all the hormones in your body are on some sort of circadian rhythm and when you are shifting your sleep time, the entire system is not going to be working as efficiently as it should,” says Sierra Forbush, a research assistant at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. She recently presented data from a study of 984 adults that suggested that, for every hour of social jetlag a person experienced each week, there was an 11% increase in their likelihood of having cardiovascular disease. Social jetlag was also associated with worse mood and greater levels of sleepiness and fatigue. Another study found that adults with higher levels of social jetlag were more likely to be overweight or obese and have metabolic syndrome (which is associated with the development of type 2 diabetes) compared with those with more regular sleep patterns – even after controlling for how much sleep they got. “We found that just one hour of social jetlag led to the accumulation of about two additional kilograms of fat mass, on average, by the age of 39,” says Michael Parsons, a circadian biology researcher at the Medical Research Council’s Harwell Institute in Oxfordshire, who led the study. “Although you often see this increase in fat and body mass index in shift workers, we were surprised that a relatively small amount of social jetlag – equivalent to flying across one time zone each week – could be associated with a relatively large increase in such things.” He cautions that factors such as eating too much and not getting enough exercise play a greater role in weight gain. However, he says: “As a society, it’s something we need to consider when deciding whether or not we should keep such things as daylight savings time [another source of social jetlag] or introduce more flexible working hours to better fit with people’s chronotype.” Which leads us to the question of what to do about it. It is unlikely that the occasional lie-in will be detrimental to your health – indeed, if it is the only way of catching up on sleep you have missed during the week, it is probably a good idea. “If you have accrued a sleep debt, it needs to be paid back,” says Phillips. “However, a much healthier alternative is to try to maintain a regular sleep pattern throughout the week and get more sleep each day.” One way of achieving this would be to allow greater flexibility in people’s working hours, so that owls could start work later and therefore get the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep each night. If he were an employer, Roenneberg says, he would ban the use of alarm clocks and instruct employees to start work only once they had had adequate sleep. “The majority of employees would still be in the office by 10am or 11am, but this would increase productivity, sick days would go down, and I would get your best time as an employer,” he says. “It’s a win-win situation.” However, there may be a simpler solution: light. Although people’s chronotype is genetically determined, environment also influences sleep timing. Studies have shown that when people are sent camping – removing them from the influence of artificial light and exposing them to more daylight – they become more lark-like and fall asleep about two hours earlier. Inspired by these studies, Phillips used a mathematical model of human sleep and circadian physiology to probe why this should be. He found that, regardless of whether they were exposed to natural or modern lighting conditions (where people spend most of the daytime indoors and their evenings exposed to artificial light), people with longer molecular clocks went to sleep later. However, in the modern condition, variation in the timing of people’s sleep more than doubled because exposure to bright (or blue-enriched) light at night pushes the timing of the SCN, the brain’s master clock, later – meaning a night-owl’s natural tendency to stay up later is amplified. “We found that these large inter-individual differences in sleep timing only manifest themselves in the presence of electric light,” says Phillips. “This is what’s causing a lot of individuals to become very delayed in their sleep timing and hence experience social jetlag.” He suggests turning off overhead lights two hours before bed, and switching to dimmer table lamps. And if you do use a computer or smartphone in the evening, install an app that automatically dims the screen and filters out the blue light. We evolved on a planet where day was day, and night was night. For the sake of our health, it is time to reacquaint ourselves with those extremes. • Linda Geddes’s book Chasing the Sun: The new science of sunlight and how it shapes our minds and bodies is published by Wellcome CollectionAt the beginning of each year, many of us look at our overflowing inboxes with horror, then make a resolution: no longer will our email account be burdened with thousands of unread messages. Instead, it will become gloriously empty. You will leave work each day knowing that you have dealt with every single message. Devotees of “inbox zero” say that having a clean email account is like having a clean conscience. No guilt about unanswered messages, no anxiety, no vague sense of impending doom. Maintaining an empty inbox may sound easy – just delete the lot and start again from scratch. But while purging your inbox can take seconds, keeping it empty requires the kind of devotion most of us don’t havereal devotion; the kind of dedication and time that many of us simply don’t have. So, instead of feeling bad about thousands of unread messages, an American journalist has suggested an alternative: “inbox infinity”. Rather than trying to deal with every single email, let them pile up, and allow the digital tide to wash over you. Accept that the number of messages in your inbox will always be infinite because the time you have to deal with them will always be finite. Some devotees of inbox infinity do their best to answer as many emails as they can. Others have taken to extreme measures, such as setting up a permanent out-of-office reply with other ways of reaching them. There are even some people who don’t use email at all. The film director Christopher Nolan shuns email entirely. Inbox infinity seems a great way of dealing with the endless deluge of emails. It stops you wasting your time endlessly dealing with emails. It also can; a liberation from the guilt and anxiety that our inboxes often inspire. But it does not come without risks. Neglecting emails may make you seem unprofessional. Colleagues and friends may think it is a sign that you don’t care. It could even cut you out of crucial communications. But for some, it really is the only practical option. After all, how can anyone deal with 500 emails when there are only 480 minutes in the average working day?Hours after taking office, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has launched an assault on environmental and Amazon protections with an executive order transferring the regulation and creation of new indigenous reserves to the agriculture ministry – which is controlled by the powerful agribusiness lobby. The move sparked outcry from indigenous leaders, who said it threatened their reserves, which make up about 13% of Brazilian territory, and marked a symbolic concession to farming interests at a time when deforestation is rising again. “There will be an increase in deforestation and violence against indigenous people,” said Dinaman Tuxá, the executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous People of Brazil (Apib). “Indigenous people are defenders and protectors of the environment.” Sonia Guajajara, an indigenous leader who stood as vice-presidential candidate for the Socialism and Freedom party (PSOL) tweeted her opposition. “The dismantling has already begun,” she posted on Tuesday. Previously, demarcation of indigenous reserves was controlled by the indigenous agency Funai, which has been moved from the justice ministry to a new ministry of women, family and human rights controlled by an evangelical pastor. The decision was included in an executive order which also gave Bolsonaro’s government secretary potentially far-reaching powers over non-governmental organizations working in Brazil. The temporary decree, which expires unless it is ratified by congress within 120 days, mandates that the office of the government secretary, Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz, “supervise, coordinate, monitor and accompany the activities and actions of international organizations and non-governmental organizations in the national territory”. Bolsonaro, who has often criticised Brazilian and international NGOs who he accuses of “sticking their noses into Brazil”, defended the measure in a tweet on Wednesday. “More than 15% of national territory is demarcated as indigenous land and quilombos. Less than a million people live in these places, isolated from true Brazil, exploited and manipulated by NGOs. Together we will integrate these citizens,” he posted. Separately, the incoming health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, suggested on Wednesday that there would be spending cuts on healthcare for indigenous people. “We have figures for the general public that are much below what is spent on healthcare for the indigenous,” he said, without providing details. During last year’s election campaign, Bolsonaro promised to end demarcation of new indigenous lands, reduce the power of environmental agencies and free up mining and commercial farming on indigenous reserves. His measure also gave the agriculture ministry power over new quilombos – rural settlements inhabited by descendants of former slaves. After she was sworn in on Wednesday, the new agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina Dias, defended the farm sector from accusations it has grown at the expense of the environment, adding that the strength of Brazil’s farmers had generated “unfounded accusations” from unnamed international groups. Silas Malafia, an influential televangelist and close friend of Bolsonaro, said developed countries who centuries ago cut down their own forests should pay if they wanted Brazil to preserve the Amazon. “We’re going to preserve everything because the gringos destroyed what they had?” he said. Former environment minister Marina Silva tweeted: “Bolsonaro has begun his government in the worst possible way.” Tuxá, the indigenous leader, said: “We will go through another colonisation process, this is what they want.”Arsenal will face Manchester United in the FA Cup fourth round while Newport have been rewarded for their exploits against Leicester City with a trip to Middlesbrough. Fellow giantkillers Oldham and Barnet were drawn to face Doncaster and Brentford respectively, while AFC Wimbledon, who have reached the fourth round for the first time in the new club’s history, will take on West Ham. Newport, beaten at this stage of the competition at Wembley last season by Tottenham after a replay, will nonetheless fancy their chances of reaching the fifth round despite a tough away draw against Tony Pulis’ side while Barnet, who share their “Bees” nickname with Brentford, will entertain their Championship opponents at The Hive. Elsewhere Accrington Stanley will face Derby or Southampton while Millwall entertain Everton, Manchester City take on Burnley and Crystal Palace entertain Tottenham in another all-Premier League tie. The holders, Chelsea, will face Sheffield Wednesday or Luton while Wolves’ reward for their surprise 2-1 victory over Liverpool last night, courtesy of Rúben Neves’s goal, is a trip to Shrewsbury or Stoke. United and Arsenal beat lower-league opposition to reach round four, with Unai Emery’s side winning 3-0 at Blackpool and Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s side seeing off Reading 2-0 at home. Arsenal - who have won the FA Cup a record 13 times - won the last time they faced United in this competition, with Danny Welbeck scoring the winning goal at Old Trafford in the sixth round as Arsène Wenger’s side went on to win the trophy. Brighton won comfortably at Bournemouth in round three and will welcome West Brom to the Amex Stadium, with the winners of a replay between Derby or Southampton travelling to face Accrington. Meanwhile, Swansea play host to Gillingham, Bristol City take on Bolton and QPR travel to League One leaders Portsmouth. FA Cup fourth-round draw: Swansea v Gillingham; AFC Wimbledon v West Ham; Shrewsbury or Stoke v Wolves; Millwall v Everton; Brighton v West Brom; Bristol City v Bolton; Accrington v Derby or Southampton; Doncaster v Oldham Chelsea v Sheffield Wednesday or Luton; Newcastle or Blackburn v Watford; Middlesbrough v Newport; Manchester City v Burnley; Barnet v Brentford; Portsmouth v QPR; Arsenal v Manchester United; Crystal Palace v Tottenham. Ties to be played 25-28 January.The devil’s attempt to take up residence in the ancient Spanish city of Segovia has been temporarily thwarted by a group of concerned locals and an online petition. Inspired by the legend that Segovia’s famous Roman aqueduct was built by the devil in a single night, the city council decided to commission a statue of the demonic architect in the hope of attracting tourists to one of its less visited neighbourhoods. The plan, however, has fallen foul of some Catholic Segovians. Opponents claim the portly, smiling devil, frozen mid-selfie in bronze, is offensive as it “exalts evil” and should have no place in the city. “In sacred art, diabolical iconography follows a doctrinal and ritual rule that guarantees its psychological, moral and spiritual efficacy,” the group says in an online petition to the council that has been signed by more than 5,400 people. “The devilish features are repulsive and despicable – not friendly and seductive, like the ‘friendly, evil-free devil’ you have come up with.” A judge has ordered the statue’s installation be suspended while he looks into whether the effigy constitutes an attack on people’s religious sentiments. The city’s heritage councillor, Claudia de Santos, has said the project will go ahead despite the “unfair, dispiriting” campaign against it. “I can’t get my head around the fact that this can be happening in 21st century Spain,” she told El País. The statue’s sculptor, José Antonio Abella, is similarly exasperated. “I mean, for goodness’ sake, it’s obviously got nothing to do with satanism,” Abella, 63, told the Guardian. “This is the 21st century! He’s a friendly, smiling caricature of the devil. This newly formed association says that the statue is offensive to people’s religious feelings, but there’s no religious aspect to this at all.” Abella is staggered at claims that his work could somehow make Segovia a focus for satanic worship, but worried at the damage the row could inflict on Segovia’s reputation as a friendly, forward-looking city. “It could find itself damaged because of this ridiculous image that some Segovians are giving it. It’s an open city, not somewhere that’s stranded in the 12th century.” Abella, who was inspired by a statue of the devil in the German city of Lübeck, says the aim of the artwork could not be more straightforward nor less sinister. “The council wants to diversify the tourist flow a bit,” he said. “At the moment everyone goes to the aqueduct, the main square, the cathedral and the Alcázar. Tourists tend to overlook other parts of the city and the sculpture – which will be 200 metres from the aqueduct – is intended to get tourists into a different bit of the city.” The idea is that people will take selfies with the selfie-taking devil. “It’s all very innocent,” added Abella. “This is all giving a very sad image of Segovia and of Spain.” Whatever happens, though, the sculptor is adamant that, after all the fuss, the jolly demon will be his last statue. “I want a quiet life and to be able to devote myself to writing books.”Evidence of the first beer believed to have been brewed in the UK, dating back more than 2,000 years, has been uncovered by road workers. Signs of the iron age brew from about 400BC were identified in fragments of charred residues from the beer-making process found during the £1.5bn upgrade of the A14 in Cambridgeshire. In parallel with the roadworks, a team of up to 250 archaeologists led by experts, from Mola Headland Infrastructure, a joint venture including Museum of London Archaeology, has been working on the project, investigating 33 sites across 360 hectares, making it one of the UK’s largest archeological projects. Lara González, an archaeobotanist with Mola, likened her work to looking for a needle in a haystack but said it offered rewards when finds of such significance were detected. “I knew when I looked at these tiny fragments under the microscope that I had something special,” she said. “The microstructure of these remains had clearly changed through the fermentation process and air bubbles typical of those formed in the boiling and mashing process of brewing.” She said the fragments initially appeared similar to bread before microscopic study proved otherwise. “It’s possible to see that this residue is from the beer-making process as it shows evidence of fermentation and contains larger pieces of cracked grains and bran but no fine flour,” said González. The road project had already yielded a treasure trove of archeological finds, including whole medieval and Anglo-Saxon villages, 342 burials, dozens of Roman brooches, a bone flute and the remains of a woolly mammoth that could be more than 130,000 years old. A Roman supply depot, rare Roman coins from the third century, an ornate 8th-century comb made of deer antler and 40 pottery kilns have also been uncovered. Steve Sherlock, the Highways England archaeology lead for the A14, said the work was continuing to unearth “incredible discoveries that are helping to shape our understanding of how life in Cambridgeshire, and beyond, has developed through history. “It’s a well-known fact that ancient populations used the beer-making process to purify water and create a safe source of hydration, but this is potentially the earliest physical evidence of that process taking place in the UK.” Roger Protz, lecturer, author of more than 20 books on beer, and former editor of the Campaign for Real Ale’s Good Beer Guide, said: “East Anglia has always been of great importance to brewing as a result of the quality of the barley that grows there. It’s known as maritime barley and is prized throughout the world. When the Romans invaded Britain they found the local tribes brewing a type of beer called curmi.” He said the beer was believed to have been made from grain, as hops did not come into use in Britain until the 15th century, with herbs and spice to balance the sweetness of the malt. The A14 work has been nominated for the rescue project of the year in the 2019 Current Archaeology awards.Israel has accused the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, of “rabid antisemitism” after he banned Israeli athletes from competing in a qualifying event for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. Malaysia has refused to grant visas to Israeli athletes scheduled to participate in the event to be held in the state of Sarawak in July, a move designed to demonstrate the country’s solidarity with Palestine. On Wednesday, the Malaysian foreign minister, Saifuddin Abdullah, confirmed the cabinet had decided Malaysia “will not host any more events involving Israel or its representatives”. “This is to me, a decision to reflect the government’s firm stance over the Israeli issue,” he said. He was echoed by the deputy sports minister, Sim Hee Kyung, who said the decision was “a means to protest against the continuous Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people”. The decision prompted condemnation from the Israeli foreign ministry, with spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon calling the ban “shameful” and saying it “totally opposes the Olympic spirit”. “Israel condemns the decision inspired no doubt by Malaysia’s PM Mahathir’s rabid antisemitism,” said Nahshon. He called on the International Paralympic Committee to force Malaysia to reverse the decision or to move the event to another country. Mahathir said this week he would not cave to any pressure, and if the athletes did attempt to come to the tournament “it is a violation”. “If they [International Paralympic Committee] want to withdraw Malaysia’s right to host the championship, they can do so,” said Mahathir. Malaysia, a majority Muslim country, does not have formal diplomatic ties with Israel and entry to Malaysia on an Israeli passport is banned. Mahathir has been much more vocal in his criticism of Israel than his predecessor Najib Razak, who allowed an Israeli UN delegation into Malaysia during his time as prime minister. Mahathir has faced accusations of antisemitism for decades, and has often repeated sentiments where he described Jews as “hook nosed” and said that “Jews rule the world by proxy.” This is not the first time Malaysia has prevented Israeli athletes competing in tournaments. In 2015, two windsurfers had to pull out of a competition on the Malaysian island of Langkawi after they were refused visas.It was 20 December when I received an invitation out of the blue. Would I like to attend lunch with Anna Wintour? If so please save the date and a formal invitation will follow. After the bewilderment (why me?) came joy (lunch! With Anna Wintour! At the tennis!). Then came the anxiety. What would I wear? I had nothing to wear! What the fuck would I wear? Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, has passed into legend. She has been mythologised in books and movies, had an award-winning documentary made about her (The September Issue), and has more influence on what we wear on a daily basis than anyone else. As the lunch drew nearer, questions about what to wear overcame any thoughts of the event itself. Or even the woman herself. I didn’t know if there would be a small selection of guests or large. I didn’t know if I’d be actually talking to Wintour or was expected to interview her. I didn’t know how I was going to get there (the lunch was in Melbourne, I was in Sydney) or even why I was invited. She doesn’t like all black, counselled one friend. She hates clothes to be wrinkled, so you have to wear something freshly ironed, said another. At the hairdresser, the woman at the next basin, who had once been in the same room as Wintour (an experience she described as “terrifying”) advised sotto voce to “Wear sunglasses. Everyone around her wears sunglasses.” Others suggested I just wear the most fashionable thing I own. Fair enough, but the most on-trend piece in my wardrobe is the Big Puffer and it was going to be 41C in heatwave-afflicted Melbourne. Apart from an upcoming court appearance (another wardrobe dilemma!), what I would wear was the thing I thought about most frequently, and also caused me the most stress in the weeks between 20 December and 24 January. When it comes to Anna Wintour, there exists a warped relationship between her and the public. It is not about what she is wearing (as it would be with normal celebrities), but what am I wearing when I am seeing her (her, the ultimate global arbiter of what we all wear). An invitation to lunch with her then becomes mostly an experience to be disseminated through the following lens: what did you wear when you went to lunch with Anna Wintour? The experience with Wintour has already been related to your friends perhaps weeks before the event itself. You might have Instagrammed a selfie wearing the chosen outfit before you have even gone to the lunch. It is over before it has even begun. The encounter is complete without in the conventional sense, ever having occurred. Wintour has gone beyond the usual questions you get when you meet a celebrity of “what is she like?” to the more meta “what are you like (or ‘how do you present’) when you are in a room with her”. She (the abstract she, because she is not real or human in this exchange) becomes a story that you tell others about yourself. The story is what you wore the day you had lunch with Anna Wintour. The mirror that she provides helps create and possibly endorse your identity (an identity that speaks through clothes). Zadie Smith did a very good essay on Justin Bieber about how he is denied personhood because he is the object of such intense projection among fans. “Not only is this meeting always already a story, it only really exists as narrative … it’s obvious that a [fan’s] only relation with the globally famous Bieber is as a piece of narrative to be told and retold to herself and other people and that Bieber himself, in his human reality, is barely involved, almost unnecessary,” writes Smith in Feeling Free. This is the problem not just with meeting famous people, but people who exist in our imagination in a state of perfection. Wintour’s state of perfection is in the area of clothes. For decades she has edited the most influential fashion magazine in the world. She exists then at the top of a hierarchy. It is a very human instinct to want to establish a hierarchy and create order. If you want to find out how good you are, you need to find a representation of perfection upon which to measure yourself. Wintour through the pop culture myth that surrounds her, and the fact that she edits Vogue, is the collective symbol of sartorial perfection. So the lunch came around and I walked in, still not sure what to expect. There was a giant screen with Wintour’s face on it and at least 400 people in the function room, drinking green juice or champagne or ordering flat whites from the coffee station or talking selfies on a small piece of red carpet in front of an Australian Open trademarked backdrop. We were all having lunch with Anna Wintour. Yet none of us were. My relief at the lack of intimacy was immense. You see, I was unhappy with my outfit and I did not want to be seen. The day was filthy hot and most people there were dressed neatly, the men in nondescript light suits, the women in cotton or linen sundresses. No one – literally no one – not Baz Luhrmann, not Julie Bishop, looked as if they’d stepped off the catwalk. People looked off-the-rack normal, unmemorable, fine. But yet, somewhere, even in this clothes-limiting heat, Wintour does actually serve her totemic purpose. She showed me who I am through the clothes that I ended up wearing. I did not have access to 90% of my clothes (I was on the road) and I didn’t have a lot of time or money, so I bought something tasteful but boring at the airport as I flew into Melbourne. We find out who we are under moments of stress and panic. We find out who we are when we dress for lunch with Anna Wintour. I found out this week I am a generic, mid-priced brand in an airport, that markets office clothes for women aged age 20 to 55. Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist.Donald Trump has defended a group of high school students who were filmed apparently confronting a Native American activist and military veteran. In a tweet on Tuesday, the president said the students “have become symbols of fake news”. He also suggested the students will use their experience “to bring people together”. Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said the White House had reached out to the Kentucky students and “voiced our support”. Amid reports the president could invite the students to the White House, she said if the president did so it would be sometime after the shutdown has concluded. The students from the Covington Catholic high school, in northern Kentucky, were filmed appearing to mock a group of Native Americans taking part in the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington DC last Friday. The student at the centre of the footage, Nick Sandmann, later said he was confronted by one Native American activist. The first footage of the incident to be widely circulated showed a group of students, many wearing red “Make America Great Again” Trump hats, shouting and seemingly encircling the Native American group. One of the teens, later identified as Sandmann, stood inches from Nathan Phillips, an Omaha tribe elder, seeming to smirk as Phillips chanted and played a drum. “Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be,” Trump wrote on Tuesday. “They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good – maybe even to bring people together. “It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!” The president also addressed the subject on Monday, apparently while watching a discussion on Fox News. The students were in DC to attend the March for Life, an anti-abortion rally. The Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic high school apologized for their behavior. “We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, DC,” the organizations said in a statement. “We extend our deepest apologies to Mr Phillips. This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.” Phillips, a Vietnam-era veteran, told the Detroit Free Press he was trying to maintain calm between the predominantly white students and several members of another group, of Black Hebrew Israelites, before the video was shot. According to Phillips, the students came over to watch the Black Hebrew Israelites and were offended by their comments. Tensions mounted as the high school group swelled to approximately 100. “They were in the process of attacking these four black individuals,” Phillips claimed. “So I put myself in between that, between a rock and hard place.” Phillips told the paper some of the four Black Hebrew Israelite members present said “some harsh things” and that one spat toward the Catholic students. In a statement on Sunday, Sandmann insisted he was trying to be the peacemaker. “When we arrived, we noticed four African American protestors who were also on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,” Sandmann said in the statement published by WKRC, a local media outlet. “I did hear them direct derogatory insults at our school group … They called us ‘racists’, ‘bigots’, ‘white crackers’, ‘faggots’ and ‘incest kids’.” Several minutes later, Sandmann said, a group of Native Americans, including Phillips, approached. “He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face,” Sandmann claimed. Though other videos have emerged that show different views of the incident, the first video prompted outrage in all corners of the American political landscape. Among Democrats, Deb Haaland of New Mexico, who was among the first Native American women elected to Congress last year, condemned the students’ actions as a “display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance”. Kentucky’s Democratic secretary of state, Alison Lundergan Grimes, wrote on Facebook: “I refuse to shame and solely blame these children for this type of behavior. “Instead, I turn to the adults and administration that are charged with teaching them, and to those who are silently letting others promote this behavior.” Victoria Bekiempis contributed reportingIndia’s main opposition Congress party has said it will implement a variation of a universal basic income (UBI) targeted at the poor if it wins the country’s upcoming national election. The announcement, dismissed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) as financially irresponsible, is the first major shot in an election battle likely to be replete with populist giveaways to voters. “We have decided that every poor person in India would be guaranteed a minimum income after the Congress forms the government in 2019,” the Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi, told a farmers’ rally in the central state of Chhattisgarh on Monday. “No one will go hungry in India, no one will remain poor,” he said. Congress won Chhattisgarh’s statehouse and two others in local elections in December thanks largely to anger among farmers at the persistent low prices being fetched by crops. More than 49% of Indians are employed in agriculture and their distress could be a decisive factor when people begin voting in April. Congress’s former finance minister P Chidambaram said more details of what he called “a turning point in the lives of the poor” would be revealed in the party’s manifesto. It is unclear whether the minimum income guarantee, likely to take the form of a direct cash transfer, would replace subsidies on food, petrol and fertilisers valued at 2.64tn rupees (£28bn) for all Indians in the 2018-19 budget. Chidambaram tweeted that a UBI had been discussed extensively and that “the time has come to adapt the principle to our situation and our needs and implement the same for the poor”. Praveen Chakravarty, from the Congress’s data analytics department, said late on Monday the income given to each household would vary depending on their earnings. “It’s actually a progressive scheme where there will be a certain threshold for minimum income that would be decided and fixed and those that fall below that threshold at varying degrees will be compensated with income transfers to ensure there is a basic minimum income support for every poor household in the country,” he said. “It will not be the same amount for everybody, it will depend on how poor each household is.” In principle, a UBI involves paying all citizens an unconditional monthly sum regardless of whether they work and how much they earn, and which they can use as they wish. It is intended to replace all existing social benefits. Its proponents on the left argue that it has the potential to eliminate poverty, while those on the right believe it can streamline the welfare system. Both also hope it could insulate workers against the threat of the mass automation of jobs. The idea has gained momentum in recent years and has been trialled on a small scale in places including Finland, Italy, Canada and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The government of Sikkim, another Indian state, promised to implement a UBI within three years if re-elected. The Congress plan appears to be closer to a social security scheme than a traditional UBI. A BJP spokesman said the idea was unaffordable. “Where will the money come from? He’s promising the moon to fool the people,” Gopal Krishna Agarwal told Reuters. Agarwal said the government had examined a UBI in 2014 but concluded that eliminating all subsidies would provide only enough funds to pay 6,000 rupees per family per month, less than what is required to feed them. The BJP hands down its last budget before the election on Friday and is expected to use the opportunity to try to assuage farmers as well as its traditional small-business base. India’s former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian in 2016 floated the idea of granting 1,500 rupees every month for poor households. On Monday he released a report proposing another variation on the UBI: giving 18,000 rupees each year to a rural household except those that are “demonstrably well off”. He and his co-author estimated the cost of the plan at 2.64tn rupees. Around 21.9% of Indians are believed to fall below the poverty line, according to World Bank analysis of data from the most recent census in 2011. Gandhi said on Monday: “We do not want two Indias in this country. There will be only one India and the Congress government will ensure a minimum income to every poor person in the country.” Chidambaram said the party would find the resources to implement the scheme. “The poor of India have the first charge on the resources of the country,” he added.This time the tears were of joy. Tennis already had a star in Naomi Osaka; now it has a superstar. Despite squandering three championship points at 5-3 in the second set, the Japanese regrouped brilliantly to beat Petra Kvitova 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-4 to win a dramatic Australian Open final. Her second consecutive grand slam title ensures she will be the new world No 1 and aged 21, there is surely a lot more success to come. Last September, Osaka was reduced to tears when the crowd booed after a controversial US Open final in which Serena Williams lost her cool. On Saturday, the tears flowed again at the end of a high quality, see-saw final, in which she lost her way and then found it again, her steely character coming through, just as it had in New York. As Kvitova’s final forehand return flew wide, Osaka fell to her haunches, her head in her hands. “I still feel very shocked,” Osaka said. “[At the end] I felt like the match wasn’t completely done but it was done. It’s one of those moments where you are fighting so hard and then when it’s finally over, you’re still in the state of competition.” Having received the trophy from Li Na, the first Asian woman to win a grand slam singles title when she triumphed at the French Open in 2011, Osaka said she had forgotten the notes she had written about what to say. “I forgot to smile,” she said later. “I was told to smile. I was panicking.” She is the first woman to follow her first grand slam title by immediately winning the next one since Jennifer Capriati in 2001 and the first since Williams in 2015 to win two majors in a row. This time last year, she was ranked No 72; now she owns two slam titles and is top of the pile as the No 1 on the planet for the first time. This was a performance full of maturity, even more remarkable given her age and relative lack of experience. Before the final, much of the focus had been on Kvitova and the possibility she could crown a fairytale comeback with a third major title, just over two years after she was attacked with a knife in her own home, an incident that left her needing several hours of surgery to save her left hand. Had Osaka not been in the final herself, the chances are that she would have been willing Kvitova to victory, so popular is the Czech with her fellow players and so incredible has been her comeback. But there is something special about Osaka, something that means that she is able to stay calm, even under the most intense pressure, and get the job done. It was a great final, full of brave hitting, good serving and some outstanding rallies, not to mention the tension, with not only a slam title but the No 1 ranking on the line. At 6-7, 3-5, 0-40 on the Kvitova serve, it looked done and dusted, the consistency of Osaka having been key as she pulled away. But with the finishing line in front of her, the Japanese blinked. Kvitova, the champion at Wimbledon in 2011 and 2014, sensed her chance, holding serve with some bold hitting, breaking in the next game, saving a break point to go ahead 6-5 and then breaking again as Osaka threatened to self-destruct. It was then that she took a bathroom break, shedding a few tears as she willed herself to bounce back. “I told myself I had no right to feel entitled, that she was a great player. I didn’t have a right to expect myself to win. In the third set, I shut down my feelings.” When Kvitova held serve to love at the start of the decider, a turnaround looked possible, even likely. But a brilliant backhand on the second point of her serve at 0-1 settled Osaka down and from then on, the momentum changed. Osaka won three consecutive games to lead 3-1 but even then it was not done. Kvitova had a chance to break back for 3-3 but Osaka saved it. When Kvitova held from 0-40 down at 4-2, Osaka might have been having flashbacks but she held firm to serve out for victory. Kvitova, too, was fighting back the tears. “It’s crazy, I can hardly believe I just played a final of a grand slam again,” she told the crowd. “It was a great final. Well done Naomi. For me it’s a big honour to have this [runners-up] trophy. Thank you to my team. You stuck with me when we didn’t know if I would even be able to hold a racket again.” Osaka said she had dreamed of being No 1 but that her achievements were still surprising. “It still hasn’t sunk in yet.”Andy Murray’s hopes of finishing his tennis career at Wimbledon this summer seem negligible, and he says there are “no guarantees” further surgery on his damaged right hip would enable him to carry on playing, even after losing heroically in five sets on the opening day of the 2019 Australian Open. The Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut had to play at his very best to beat the former world No 1 for the first time in four attempts, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (4), 6-2, in four hours and nine minutes in the Melbourne Arena, the tournament’s third show court, on a warm Monday evening. Murray, who turns 32 in May and has reached five finals here, said later: “I’ll probably decide in the next week or so. If I go ahead with the operation and I don’t recover well from it, then I don’t play again. I’m aware of that. I’ll be in less pain doing just normal things, like walking around and putting my shoes and socks on. “I know that I’m not the same player as I was. But, if today was my last match, it was a brilliant way to finish. That’s something that I’ll probably take into consideration, as well. It was an amazing atmosphere. I literally gave everything that I had on the court, fought as best as I could, and performed a lot better than I should have done with the amount I’ve been able to practice and train. I’d be OK with that being my last match.” He added: “I would like my daughters to come and watch me play a tennis match, hopefully understand what’s happening before I finish, but I’m aware that that probably isn’t going to happen now. I’m a bit sad about that.” Murray said the operation – the same one which has helped the American doubles player, Bob Bryan, recover from similar hip pain - did not come with a specific healing time, and he would not have it just to play tennis again. “You have to allow bones to heal and muscles to recover properly to give the operation the best chance of improving your quality of life. Me trying to get on a tennis court after two months just because I’m trying to get ready for Wimbledon might not be the best thing for my health in the future. I have to do the rehab properly, respect healing times, not rush anything. I don’t know exactly how long it would be.” Roger Federer, who will play Dan Evans next after a straight-sets win over Denis Istomin, led the accolades for Murray. “He is somebody who will try everything to beat you – within the rules, with his fighting spirit, his tactics, slicing, defence, attacking play, even serve and volley, chip and charge,” Federer said. “He’ll leave everything out there. He’s one of the great retrievers we had in our sport. “And carrying the weight of Britain on his shoulders, that was not easy for him. All of us, the players, we’re extremely happy that he ended up winning Wimbledon, Davis Cup, Olympic gold. He had to really fight for it and earn it, like world No 1. There’s a lot to admire about Andy, how he went about it.” Federer said of Evans, who beat Japanese qualifier Tatsuma Ito in straight sets, “I like the way he plays. He’s got all the shots, likes to take chances, takes the ball early. It’s nice to see him back on the Tour as well. I’m happy for him that he won his first round.”Jeremy Corbyn has promised to “change our country for the better” in an upbeat party political broadcast, launched in the hope of an imminent general election, that fails to mention Brexit. Labour tabled a motion of no confidence in Theresa May’s government on Tuesday night, after her Brexit deal was defeated overwhelmingly by MPs. The party is deemed unlikely to win the vote, which would trigger a general election in two weeks if no alternative government emerged. But Labour is keen to keep up the pressure for an election – and move the debate from Brexit, on which Corbyn is under intense pressure from activists to shift his ground, on to austerity, poverty and foreign policy. Labour strategists said the broadcast, called Our Country, and made by the same team that produced a well-received recent film, Our Town, is deliberately aimed at both remain and leave voters. It will be broadcast on ITV and BBC1 on Wednesday evening, shortly before MPs at Westminster are expected to vote in the motion of no confidence. Corbyn has infuriated some of his party’s supporters in recent interviews and speeches by rigidly sticking to Labour’s carefully negotiated policy of pursuing a general election, then keeping all options on the table – including that of a referendum. He narrates the film himself, highlighting poverty and spending cuts, and insisting: “It doesn’t have to be this way; we have the talent, we have the means, we have the creativity to be so much more. “They’ll say it can’t be done. They’ll say we can’t afford it. But our country is one of the richest in the world. And we resolve to make a choice. We won’t stand by as our society is divided. Together we can change our country for the better.” Party strategists say polling is telling them voters increasingly think Britain is “moving in the wrong direction”, whatever they think about Brexit – and they hope to capitalise on that discontent by offering an alternative, whatever the public’s frustrations over Labour’s Brexit stance. Labour’s election coordinator, Andrew Gwynne, said: “There is no doubt that the surge that saw Labour outpolling all predictions in 2017 is based on strong support for Jeremy Corbyn’s message of hope and radical change. People want an end to personal debt, cuts to services and fear and concern for the future. “Our broadcast today is part of our campaign to set out our vision of how we will unite our country, rebuild our economy and create a society that works for everyone.”Parliament is facing a day of further Brexit deadlock after Theresa May swung the government’s weight behind an amendment that would send her back to Brussels to demand an alternative to the Irish border backstop, splintering Conservative support. The chances of the amendment, championed by senior backbencher Sir Graham Brady, are on a knife-edge after Tory Brexiters split over whether they should back the change, while pro-remain MPs suggested they would vote against. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the hard-Brexit European Research Group (ERG), emerged from an earlier meeting with MPs saying the group would not back the move. An hour later, other pro-Brexit Tories left a meeting with the prime minister sounding less certain of their opposition. May addressed Tory MPs in parliament on Monday night, spelling out her support for Brady and urging them to support the amendment. According to sources, May told the meeting that if the government was going to have “a reasonable chance” of convincing Brussels of the seriousness of the opposition in parliament, then it was a vote that mattered, rather than words. Boris Johnson, who has been at the forefront of demands to reopen the text of the withdrawal agreement to remove the backstop entirely, was publicly rebuked by the prime minister after he asked how the amendment would amount to meaningful change. “We won’t know until you support us, Boris,” the prime minister retorted, prompting some cheers in the room. The Conservative party chair, Brandon Lewis, confirmed that the Tories would be whipped to support Brady’s amendment to a government motion on Tuesday night if it is selected by the Speaker. Brady’s amendment would approve May’s withdrawal agreement, but says the government must replace the backstop with “alternative arrangements” – a change that senior EU figures have repeatedly suggested would not be acceptable. Rees-Mogg said many of the ERG were fundamentally opposed to an amendment that would not necessitate the reopening of the withdrawal agreement text. “The amendment gives conditional approval, which is an issue. It does not say what the backstop would be replaced with, and Graham has said he could live with a protocol rather than changes to the text. From our point of view, it has to be changes to the text,” he said. Among those who said they were now undecided about how to vote was Ben Bradley, who resigned as a Tory vice-chair to vote against May’s withdrawal solution. “I really want to support her and back the Brady amendment, but I need firm clarification of her intentions and what kind of change to the backstop she is seeking, and that’s what I’m trying to get tonight and tomorrow before I decide,” he said. The success of another amendment tabled by Yvette Cooper, which would pave the way for legislation to delay the article 50 process, also looked uncertain on Monday night as senior Labour figures including Jon Trickett voiced doubt about the message it would send to voters. The shadow Cabinet Office minister said voters in his constituency would regard support for the measure on Tuesday as a failure to respect the result of the 2016 referendum. “I feel that it may look to people as if we’re trying to somehow remove the earlier decision, which was to Brexit,” he said. Without the explicit support of the Labour leadership, the amendment may struggle to win a majority. The fading support for both amendments could potentially see parliament vote down all possible routes posed by MPs to break the Brexit impasse. MPs will vote on a number of amendments, yet to be selected by the Speaker, John Bercow, to a government motion that May was obliged to table after the heavy defeat of her Brexit deal. Government sources said they remained highly uncertain whether Bercow would select Brady’s amendment for a vote. Before the vote, the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said the prime minister “has offered up no plan B or any credible solution to break the impasse” and demanded that the government spell out the next steps. “We now need to see action from the government, not further delay or warm words,” he said. “The prime minister needs to spell out precisely what she plans to negotiate with the EU, a timeline for delivery, and when parliament will next have a say on the terms of any deal the government has negotiated.” May is likely to make a new statement to parliament by 13 February on the next steps for the Brexit process. At their cabinet meeting before the vote, cabinet ministers will urge the prime minister to set out at the dispatch box when MPs will have the chance to vote again on her withdrawal agreement. “She needs to make a strong and clear statement,” one cabinet source said. The ERG will meet at 6pm on Tuesday night, an hour before the vote, to consider any last-minute amendments, including anything tabled by the government. Two other MPs, John Baron and Andrew Murrison, who had tabled amendments mandating changes to the backstop, said they would withdraw their amendments to give Brady’s the best shot at being selected by the Speaker. Senior Brexiter sources said the root of many MPs’ objections to the Brady amendment had hinged on what some claimed to have been promised by the chief whip, Julian Smith – that May was planning to demand that the EU reopen the text of the withdrawal agreement as a consequence of the Brady amendment. Yet many were spooked by Brady’s comments on Sunday night that the change would not require rewriting the agreement, but that a “codicil” with the new arrangements would suffice. Their concern was compounded after the prime minister declined to repeat the chief whips’ assurances in the meeting, one Brexiter source said. “That is the main reason why the bulk of the ERG are minded not to support this,” the source said. “If they vote for this, then they give up leverage for that demand to reopen the text.” May will also face a core group of rebels from the pro-remain group in her party, who may sink the amendment themselves even if the Brexiters eventually back it. Heidi Allen, one of the Tory MPs backing a second referendum, said: “There were no assurances on any of the other issues concerning many of us, such as the weak and non-binding political declaration; it was all about the backstop. I cannot believe our prime minister is prepared to renege on an internationally agreed treaty, via a backbench-sponsored amendment. I won’t be voting for it and many of my colleagues won’t either.” Those behind Brady’s amendment had also hoped to attract the support of the DUP. However, on Monday the party’s Brexit spokesman, Sammy Wilson, urged a hardline approach. “The real chaos when it come to the backstop is in Brussels and Dublin,” he said. “Now is the time for the prime minister to exploit the cracks which are emerging in the illogical position of the EU and the Irish.” Other moderate Tories also expressed deep scepticism about the effectiveness of the amendment, even if the party was eventually whipped to back it. “If Brexiteers buy this they’re a total pushover,” one Tory MP said. “The amendment may as well say: ‘I’d like world peace.’ What it does is underline that we don’t have an alternative.”Marko Arnautovic wants West Ham to accept the £35m bid from an unnamed Chinese club to allow him to “challenge for titles” but has been told he is not for sale. The forward signed in July 2017 for £20m, plus an additional £5m in potential add-ons, and is West Ham’s joint-top scorer this season with eight goals in all competitions. Manuel Pellegrini on Thursday dismissed suggestions the 29-year-old could leave this month but having admitted in November the Austrian would like to test himself in the Champions League, Arnautovic’s brother Danijel, who also acts as his agent, released a statement which asks for them to allow him to move to the Chinese Super League. “West Ham bought Marko for peanuts. They paid £20m for him, which is nothing in the current market,” read the statement. “They bought him to keep them in the Premier League last season and he did that. He took every award at the club; best player, signing of the season and the players’ award. “Now West Ham have a fantastic offer. It is close to double what they paid for him. He wants to go to a new market and challenge for titles. This is what he wants. It is his great desire that West Ham accept the offer from China.” Reports have stated the offer is from the CSL champions Shanghai SIPG, although their permitted allocation of three overseas players is filled by the former Chelsea midfielder Oscar and his fellow Brazilians Hulk and Elkeson. The deal would mean Arnautovic stands to earn £40m over a four-year contract, a large upgrade on his West Ham wage of £90,000 a week. Pellegrini underlined his determination to keep Arnautovic before West Ham’s home match with Arsenal on Saturday, with the club later issuing a statement which read: “Marko has a contract and we fully expect him to honour it. He is not for sale.” It is understood West Ham will not consider selling him this month, because of the difficulties replacing him. Arnautovic, whose contract expires in 2022, is believed to have asked to open negotiations over a new improved deal if the club will not allow him to leave. Stoke are also believed to have a sell-on clause that would entitle them to 20% of any future transfer fee.On a farm deep in Italy’s Lombardy region, scores of contented-looking pigs gambol, play and root about in spacious pens deep in straw. It looks more rural idyll than 1,000-strong breeding farm, but the pigs at this Fumagalli farm are in a lucky minority. Unlike many of the pigs destined for the country’s prestigious prosciutto market – worth 7.98bn euros (£7bn) last year – they have not been subjected to the painful practice of tail-docking. A recent EU audit found that across farms in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, the country’s two main pig breeding regions, 98% of farmers remove their animals’ tails, a rate that stands among the highest in Europe. Tail-docking – carried out without anaesthetic when the piglet is three to four days old – is intended to prevent the severe injuries that can occur when pigs bite each others’ tails. Studies have shown it causes acute trauma and pain, and can trigger infections and leave lasting discomfort. A 2014 EU report notes that the crowded, stressful conditions common on industrial-scale farms, in which pigs are unable to pursue their natural investigative behaviour, are the main trigger for tail-biting outbreaks. Routine tail-docking is illegal under an EU directive, and although this legislation is not enforced across Europe, the practice is banned under Italian law. So why are these regulations so broadly disregarded? “In theory, in order for a vet to be able to dock a pig’s tail, they had to declare that there were lesions on the sow’s teats, or on the ears or tails of other pigs,” explains Enrico Moriconi, a former vet and now Piedmont’s animal rights ombudsman. “But tails are cut when the piglets are five days old. It’s impossible to know at that point if the group will behave in this way. It’s just assumed that this kind of breeding leads to tail-biting, so they cut them off.” Italy is not unique in Europe for its high rates of tail-docking, say welfare campaigners Eurogroup for Animals. “However, it is an emblematic case, because Italian products such as Parma ham are associated with excellence,” points out the group’s veterinary adviser for farm animals, Elena Nalon. “Producers are routinely flaunting minimum legal requirements on animal welfare.” The Italian government acknowledges the scale of the problem. This year it set up a working group, which has drawn up a three-year action plan to be implemented across each of Italy’s 3,000 breeding farms to improve conditions, thus avoiding the need to dock pigs’ tails. “It’s a positive action,” says Annamaria Pisapia of Compassion in World Farming Italy. “But of course the breeders sometimes have difficulty in understanding it. Some of them are saying that they will be obliged to close 30% of farms … [But] this is the future. We have to breed animals with better care and pay the farmer higher prices.” Italy’s climate means the country is a special case, as the heat makes life particularly difficult for pigs, says Stefano Salvarani, who is pig farmers’ representative for Confagricoltura, one of the main farmers’ associations. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 35C, problematic for pigs, which have a limited capacity for regulating their own body temperature. “The animals get nervous,” he says. “It’s normal that they bite their brothers’ tails. It’s not comparable with the north of Europe. Also, our pigs grow bigger, so they can step on each other’s tails and get wounds, lesions to the spine.” Salvarani, whose company produces 6,000 pigs a year, is experimenting with leaving 20% of his stock undocked. “The problems start during the summer. You can give them little showers to make them feel better but it’s impossible to fight such a hot climate.” For him, the outcome of the trial is already clear. “Pigs are very intelligent. When they’re nervous, they can’t do anything but bite their neighbours. You can reduce stock intensity but it doesn’t change the result.” Back at the high-welfare Fumagalli farm, in Senna Lodigiana, Pietro Pizzagalli begs to differ. Fumagalli is a family-run business set up in the 1920s – it now produces from 30,000-35,000 pigs a year on farms across northern Italy, with a turnover of 55m euros. They stopped docking pigs’ tails four years ago in 80% of their farms, and last year they received the Good Pig Award from Compassion in World Farming Italy. All their sheds are enriched with straw, and sows are not confined to stalls after insemination. “We decided we wanted to do things differently,” says Pizzagalli, one of the Fumagalli family and manager of the company’s farms. Here, chains hang from the ceiling for the pigs to play with if they need something to bite on. There’s a solid floor, rather than a slatted one – the slats make it easier to deal with sewage, but are more likely to injure the animals’ feet – and pigs have space to move around. “We put fewer pigs per square metre than the law requires,” says Pizzagalli. “We get a smaller quantity of meat produced, but we believe that it’s worth it.” At another Fumagalli farm, in Cremona province, 950 pigs are kept in internal and external pens, with straw-covered floors. The owner, Gianluca Tomaselli, only recently started rearing pigs for the company, but is convinced of the efficacy of the system. “There is not much risk [in the pigs having long tails]” he says. “You just need to pay attention every day and if you see a wounded pig you bring him into the infirmary, which is a separate pen.” In November 2017, EU auditors visited Stefano Mazzali’s farm, in Mantova province. A conventional farmer, Mazzali has pigs with docked tails, but also 4,800 animals with tails intact. “We enrich the pens with baskets full of straw. We made a few attempts to find the right ones for the pigs but apart from that it wasn’t that difficult. I actually prefer pigs to have their tails because if they already have a short tail and it gets bitten, it’s more dangerous for the animal.” The obsession with tail-docking comes down to a psychological block for Italian farmers, according to Mazzali. “Yes, you have to organise better management for the sewage, and if you have an old building it can be expensive, and you need to pay extra attention to the animals. But it’s not difficult at all.” “It is more expensive,” says Pizzagalli. “With the straw, for example, the pig moves more and grows slower. Instead of 2kg of feed for 1kg of meat growth, you need 3kg. But there is a law. It’s like if I ignore the speed limit at 130km/h because I wanted to drive faster and get to my destination quicker. Normally, I would be sanctioned, and if I kept breaking the law they would take my driving licence away.” Yet without the law against tail-docking being strictly enforced, can Italy succeed in driving out the practice? “Changing this situation will require an overhaul of the system, a shift in farmers’ mentality towards putting animals’ needs at the centre of the pig production model,” says Eurogroup for Animals’ Elena Nalon. “Some farmers are already doing this, showing that it is not impossible. We need to make it mainstream.” The time is right for change, says vet Giovanni Alborali, who heads up the Italian government’s working group. “Breeders understand the importance of the animal welfare trend,” he says, “because if the pig is fine, the final product will be better. It’s good for profits and for ethics. With sows, we stopped keeping them in sow stalls for their whole pregnancy and put them into the group pen. Now it’s time to stop cutting pigs’ tails.”More than 100 Spanish firefighters, police officers and rescuers are searching for a two-year-old boy who fell down a deep borehole in Málaga province on Sunday afternoon. The boy, named Yulen, was out walking with his family when he fell down the hole, which is 110 metres deep and 25cm wide. He cried out when he fell but has not been heard from since. On Monday morning, rescuers came across a cup and a bag of sweets he was holding when he disappeared. The sweets were discovered in a layer of compacted, wet sand 78 metres down the borehole, which had been left uncovered. Rescuers have lowered a camera into the shaft but have yet to locate the boy. As the sides of the hole have not been shored up, they are trying not to do anything to provoke a collapse. The Spanish government’s representative in the region, María Gámez, said the rescue team was looking into “every technical possibility” given that the hole was too narrow for an adult to enter. “No one is technically prepared to rescue someone from such a narrow hole, but the technology exists to get into places as narrow and deep as this, and everything is being considered,” Gámez said. By midday on Monday, the team had removed 30cm of earth from the shaft. “It’s not just about getting down there, it’s also about keeping the hole open so that the rescue can happen,” Gámez added. Bernardo Moltó, a spokesman for the Málaga Guardia Civil, said the teams were trying to clear the layer of wet sand but were also looking into sinking a parallel shaft to locate and rescue Yulen. “So far, what we’ve managed to do is drill into that blockage a bit,” he said. “We’re going to try to clear the earth with a truck-mounted machine and try to dig a parallel tunnel, but to do that, we need to shore up the shaft to reach the boy.”Apple has left Facebook’s campus in disarray after the company revoked the social network’s permission to build or run employee-only applications, according to reports. Employees were reportedly left unable to read cafeteria menus, call for inter-office transport or use versions of the social network’s own apps. The move came on Wednesday, the day after it was revealed that Facebook had allegedly exploited a loophole in Apple’s approval system to bypass rules that banned the harvesting of data about what apps are installed on a user’s phone. Facebook Research, an app the company paid users as young as 13 to install that routed their iPhone traffic through the company’s own servers, had been built using an enterprise developer certificate (EDC) issued by Apple to companies that need to build applications for internal use. Apple revoked Facebook’s EDCs, telling the Guardian: “We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organisation. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.” The revocation didn’t just hit the Facebook Research app. Every app the company built using its EDC was rendered inoperable, with users reportedly unable to even open the programs from their home screens. That included internal test versions of Facebook and Instagram, widely distributed to employees so that they can experience newer features before they are released to the general public. Following the revocation, those employees had to download released versions of the iOS apps from Apple’s App Store. But Apple’s response also hit some of the basic infrastructure built into Facebook’s offices, particularly its HQ in Menlo Park, California. According to an internal memo, obtained by Business Insider, apps including Ride, which lets employees take shuttles between buildings on the company’s sprawling campus, and Mobile Home, an employee information portal, were down. Facebook have been approached for comment.It only takes about two minutes into the four-hour documentary Leaving Neverland to realise that Michael Jackson’s legacy is never going to be the same again. After a brief introduction, praising him for his indisputable talent, one of his accusers looks into the camera and lists the ways in which the singer helped him. He then states: “And he sexually abused me for seven years.” Ever since it was announced as a late addition to this year’s Sundance film festival, controversy hasn’t been far behind. The singer’s estate labelled it “an outrageous and pathetic attempt to exploit and cash in on Michael Jackson” while fans have reportedly levelled threats against the film’s director, the Bafta winner Dan Reed. Protests had been teased online, leading to an increased police presence, but on a frosty morning here in Utah, only a small group of the late singer’s die-hard obsessives showed up. For those inside the Egyptian theatre on Main Street, resistance wasn’t futile, it was utterly impossible. Over four hours, set to be shown in two portions on HBO and Channel 4, Reed shared the detailed testimonies of two men accusing Jackson of graphic and extensive sexual abuse when they were children. Before it started, we were informed that healthcare professionals were on hand for those who might need it, the explicit descriptions potentially causing difficulties for those who might feel triggered. While prior court cases might have buckled and previous accusers might have been labelled delusional opportunists, it’s difficult to imagine this sensitively crafted and horrifically detailed film being quite so easily denied. In a decision justified in a post-screening Q&A, Reed limits the focus to the two accusers and their families, insisting quite rightly that their stories remain powerful without any extraneous material. Their accounts contain many similarities: they were both younger than 10 when they got to know Jackson, they both possessed a keen interest in performing and they were both allegedly groomed then abused for an extended period of time. The first accuser, whom we hear from at the outset, is Wade Robson, who at a young age developed an intense fandom for Jackson, his “walls plastered” with posters. Described as “a sensitive boy”, he preferred dance over basketball and was soon emulating Jackson’s moves at the age of five in a local contest. The prize was meeting the man himself and the pair developed a deep friendship, one that was encouraged by an over-eager, self-described stage mother, spellbound by Jackson’s celebrity. The second accuser, James Safechuck, encountered Jackson after nabbing a key role in a Pepsi ad. Similarly, the two developed a friendship at a young age and by 10 he was accompanying him on tour, followed by an equally starstruck mother, who saw Jackson as another son. It’s James who first describes his recollection of their friendship turning sexual with Jackson allegedly introducing him to masturbation. He saw it as a form of “bonding” and it kicked off what he describes as a “sexual couple relationship” when the two were left alone, allowed to share hotel rooms by James’s unaware mother. The stories progress into even darker territory as she would find her hotel rooms being booked on different floors, Jackson making sure to prevent any potential discovery. James recalls that he woke on one occasion to find Jackson saying that while he was asleep, he had performed oral sex on him. He also told the boy that he was Jackson’s first sexual experience and that this was just an “acceptable way of experiencing your love”. When Neverland Ranch was built, it became easier to ensure privacy. “It sounds sick but it’s kind of like when you’re first dating somebody,” James explains, after listing the many, many spaces at the complex where Jackson would allegedly abuse him. He claims that Jackson would tell him that his mother was mean and that women were evil, pushing him away from his family and further into Jackson’s life. Wade claims that his abuse started at an even younger age, when he was just seven. The family stayed at Neverland and after Jackson convinced Wade’s mother, he was allowed to be alone with the boy for five days. “You and I were brought together by God,” Jackson said to Wade as he would allegedly engage in a number of anal and oral activities with him. He told Wade, too, that women weren’t to be trusted and warned that if anyone were to find out, they would both face jail. In one of the most chilling scenes, James recalls the mock wedding the pair had, complete with a wedding ring which he still owns and shows to the camera. He claims Jackson would reward him with jewelry for engaging in sexual acts. “It’s still hard for me to not blame myself,” he says, with his hands shaking as he holds the many trinkets. But the tenderness soon wore off as Wade, still just seven, was allegedly shown hardcore porn, while James was introduced to alcohol. The two were slowly fazed out of Jackson’s life as younger boys were introduced. “You’re no longer special,” James says. Macaulay Culkin replaced Wade in Jackson’s music video for the song Black or White, and Wade and James dealt with feelings of jealousy and resentment. Before the documentary premiered, Culkin denied any impropriety. “For me, it’s so normal and mundane,” he said. “I know it’s a big deal to everybody else, but it was a normal friendship.” In 1993, Jackson was publicly accused of sexual abuse by Jordan “Jordy” Chandler, which led to him reinserting himself into the lives of both boys, allegedly coaching them on how to respond to any questions. The case was ultimately settled out of court. “Secrets will eat you up,” James says while detailing the long term damage of the alleged abuse. Both he and Wade have suffered from depression, self-loathing, and anxiety and have struggled with familial relations. At one point, bleakly, James adds: “I don’t think time heals this one. It just gets worse.” The film also delves into the responsibility of the parents, with both mothers explaining their decision-making processes. Both were horrified when, as adults, their sons shared their stories and both sons have found forgiveness difficult. It also examines the complex reasoning for their decision to stay silent for all these years, including Wade’s appearance at Jackson’s 2004-5 trial, when the singer was accused of abusing Gavin Arvizo, as part of his defence. “I want to speak the truth as loud as I spoke the lie,” Wade says near the end of the film, determined to make up for the lost years spent grappling with the experience alone. After the film ended, an ashen-faced crowd rose to their feet to applaud Wade and James, who arrived on stage, both visibly moved by the response. They had met briefly as kids but have recently found support from each other as a way of feeling less isolated. They pointed out, for those who might question their motivations, that there was no compensation for appearing in the documentary. “We can’t change what happened to us,” Wade, now 36, said. “The feeling is what can we do with that now.” They’ve both received death threats from Jackson fans, who today have flooded Twitter with attempts to discredit the pair. “I understand that it’s really hard for them to believe because, in a way, not that long ago, I was in the same position they were in,” Wade said. “Even though it happened to me, I still couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that what Michael did was a bad thing up until six years ago. So I understand. We can only accept and understand something when we’re ready, and maybe we’ll never be ready. Maybe we will. So that’s their journey.” Leaving Neverland will air on HBO and Channel 4 later this yearThere was a sense of dread surrounding Netflix’s release of survival horror Bird Box, and not just because of the terrifying premise. The film, led by Sandra Bullock, was seen as one of the platform’s splashier original offerings of 2018 with a juicy set-up, an in-demand director and a high-profile pre-Christmas release. But a last-minute marketing campaign planted seeds of doubt with a trailer that left many calling it an ill-timed, sense-swapped copy of A Quiet Place, released to critical and commercial success earlier in the year. While the John Krasinski/Emily Blunt thriller focused on monsters who used sound to hunt their victims, in Bird Box, a demonic force targets sight. For those unlucky enough to catch a glimpse, their greatest fears become realised. Netflix remained confident, despite bad buzz, and nabbed a slot at the AFI film festival alongside awards-friendly titles such as Roma and Green Book. They also targeted voters with a sneak peek Directors Guild of America screening in New York. Both promising signs of a prestige project. Then critics caught a glimpse and, well, fear was far from realised. “A wannabe shocker … shortchanged in terms of suspense, scares and thrills,” said the Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy. “These characters feel so crammed together and underwritten that they add up to almost nothing,” wrote the Guardian’s Amy Nicholson. “A toy-chest apocalypse in which the rules of the game are, to all appearances, never understood,” complained the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. The reviews weren’t quite as toxic as those that met Netflix’s last big Christmas bet, the Will Smith-starring fantasy Bright, but they immediately put a stop to any awards chatter and pegged Bird Box as yet another misjudged original gamble. In a way, it seemed like the natural conclusion to a year that saw them spew out The Cloverfield Paradox, Mute, Extinction and TAU, all malformed attempts to prove they can take on the multiplex with genre film-making. Unlike those films however, Netflix granted Bird Box a campaign that rivaled the scale of its cinema-dwelling counterparts. Cities were strewn with billboards and digital ads, Bullock and director Susanne Bier (hot off award-winning miniseries The Night Manager) made their way around the interview circuit and the film was even given a one-week exclusive engagement on the big screen. While it has become notoriously hard to judge the success of a Netflix drop, given how the platform refuses to release viewership figures, it was clear that within days, Bird Box was an unqualified phenomenon. Not only did it start trending on Twitter but it soon became an unlikely meme-magnet. "Could you see us being together" Me: pic.twitter.com/VbadnRdJWv me after watching birdbox pic.twitter.com/DsuLUcyzzc The blind when everyone was committing suicide in bird box pic.twitter.com/FoRBhs4MtZ The reaction was so ebullient that it led Netflix to temporarily remove a different blindfold by tweet-bragging that over 45 million accounts had watched Bird Box in its first seven days, the biggest first week for one of their original films to date. While the release of an actual number (45,037,125, to be exact) might be somewhat groundbreaking given their reluctance to do so in the past, it follows on from a number of equally confident, if intentionally vaguer, statements about other 2018 releases. In October’s third-quarter earnings report, Netflix beamed over the results of their “Summer of Love” – a group of in-house romantic comedies that left most critics cold yet left subscribers fully engaged with over 80 million watching at least one of them and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before singled out as a particular hit. In December, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos claimed that their festive adventure The Christmas Chronicles had the “most impact” of any of star Kurt Russell’s films to date with 20 million watching in the first week. The Bird Box brag has left some industry figures unsure over the number’s veracity. Firstly, it’s not a figure that’s been independently assessed unlike, say, Nielsen ratings or official box office results. Secondly, while Netflix has stated that a user watching at least 70% of a film counts as a view, it is unclear how many of the 45m streams were complete. “I’m a huge fan and proponent of Netflix, but to believe that nearly one-third of all of their subscribers not only watched 70% of the movie but did so in the first week of it being on the site is all but unfathomable,” an anonymous producer told Business Insider over the weekend. “I want to believe it but just can’t. It’s not a watch for the faint of heart, after all.” But regardless of the potentially troublesome nature of this number, the film’s immediacy of impact is undeniable. In less than a month, Bird Box has already become part of the public lexicon in a way that would have been infinitely harder to achieve with a cinema-only release, provoking more chatter than last month’s big screen hits combined. The film’s viewership is so large that Kim Kardashian’s tweet asking if anyone had yet seen it, just 10 days after release, was the subject of widespread ridicule. Fans have even turned the house featured in the film into a tourist attraction, showing up in droves to take blindfolded selfies. Reactions reached a new fever pitch with the “Bird Box challenge” which has seen fans blindfolding themselves before taking on various tasks from petting dogs to playing basketball to, most worryingly, driving. It all led to the official Netflix account tweeting: “Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE.” “It’s going to take a very careful consideration about how it translates,” director Bier said to the Hollywood Reporter of the film’s wildfire reaction. “Classical measurement has either been box office or awards. This defies all of it. But creating a phenomenon is bound to translate into something.” So what is it about Bird Box that’s led to such unprecedented success? Based on a novel by Josh Malerman, the rights to Bird Box were originally purchased by Universal in 2013 before it was even published. Mama director Andy Muschietti, who would go on to direct It, was attached and Arrival’s Eric Heisserer was onboard to adapt. But the project fell apart and the script was then included in 2014’s Black List, an annual roundup of the best unproduced screenplays knocking around Hollywood. Fast forward to 2017 and after one of the project’s original producers joined Netflix, the film was suddenly brought to life. It was reportedly made for less than $20m, a far more modest investment than some of the platform’s more high-profile titles (Bright cost $90m while Outlaw King was made for a reported $120m), and given the consistency of the horror genre at the box office, the film would have undoubtedly made a tidy profit on the big screen. But as one analyst pointed out on Twitter, if those 45 million subscribers all bought a ticket to see it in the first week, it would have made roughly $411m in seven days, over $20m more than what The Force Awakens achieved in the same period. But that’s really the inarguable key to why Bird Box hit so hard because no matter what the release date, it’s close to impossible imagining that such a large amount of people would have gone out and purchased tickets to see it. Netflix hasn’t released figures for Bird Box’s exclusive big screen engagement for the week before its streaming release, a likely sign that the numbers weren’t quite so impressive. As a consumer, the in-home premiere of a film with a snappy high-concept and an appealing A-list lead would seem like an early Christmas gift, requiring no greater commitment than pressing play. Bullock is a notoriously picky actor, even more so after her Oscar win for The Blind Side in 2013 and her cannily chosen projects since have mostly proved just how wide her appeal remains. In 2013, she scored two major hits with Gravity and The Heat and while 2015’s Our Brand is Crisis was an Oscarbait misstep, her lead role in last year’s Ocean’s 8 was a resounding success, at least commercially, with almost $300m in the bank. While some pundits have suggested the film’s success is a direct result of her star appeal, it’s worth sharing the wealth with her ensemble, an almost algorithmically constructed cast of easy-to-place faces, picked with considerable skill. There’s Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes, American Crime Story’s Emmy-winning Sarah Paulson, veteran Oscar nominee John Malkovich, Get Out’s Lil Rel Howery, rapper-turned-actor Machine Gun Kelly, two-time Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver, British stage and screen star Tom Hollander and Jurassic Park’s BD Wong. It is a diverse, impressive cast with broad appeal and the constant unfolding of cameos makes it a hard film to switch off. Another key to the film’s mammoth consumption lies in Netflix’s lack of certification. During the film’s brief big screen release, it was rated R for violence, bloody images, language and brief sexuality, which would have restricted its audience and in turn, box office. But without parental supervision, Netflix is unburdened by such a hurdle, allowing anyone to watch, regardless of age. What will Netflix learn from such a landmark release? For starters, the dissonance between critical and public reaction to Bird Box implies that their products, if pitched right, can be critic-proof. This was already somewhat proved by their decision to renew Friends From College for a second season, one of 2018’s most poorly reviewed shows, and a confirmed sequel for Bright. A long-running complaint about Netflix’s ever-increasing selection of original movies is how many of them feel unceremoniously dumped and soon lost within an endless scroll. Bird Box’s extravagant marketing campaign, the budget of which is of course being kept a secret, has shown that pitching a streaming release as if it’s a big screen contender can pay off handsomely, keeping it in the memory of viewers for longer than just the day that it’s launched. The company’s awareness of the value of their viewing statistics to help figure out what future projects are worth betting on suggests that Bird Box will have an indelible effect on what’s in store and the algorithmic assembly of the film suggests that such strategising is what led to its existence in the first place. Bird Box landed in the same month as Roma, the critically adored drama from Alfonso Cuarón that’s predicted to land Netflix its first best picture nomination and perhaps even a win. The almost simultaneous release of both act as a close-to-perfect distillation of what the company is trying to achieve: arthouse acclaim and mainstream dominance. Both also launched on the precipice of Netflix’s biggest year to date with Martin Scorsese’s new gangster drama The Irishman starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, Jake Gyllenhaal’s art world thriller Velvet Buzzsaw and Steven Soderbergh’s Panama Papers drama with Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman, to name just a few. It’s an impressive slate for any studio and while the established big-hitters, from Disney to Warners, have been doggedly keeping their blindfolds on since Netflix entered the fray, unwilling to view a streaming platform as a serious challenger, 2019 might see them reluctantly taking them off to face the terrifying truth that lies ahead.Mauricio Pochettino knows he is the most coveted manager in football right now. I can only describe his comments this week about his future at Tottenham as a direct call for action to the club’s board following his show of loyalty. I understood Pochettino to be saying to them: “I have showed and I am showing my loyalty to you by batting away the likes of Real Madrid and Manchester United, but now if you back me financially I want to stay for the next 20 years”. Pochettino has been at Tottenham for five years, which is rare in modern football and yet has spent a lot less money than rivals clubs who challenge for the Premier League. Jürgen Klopp has turned Liverpool into real title contenders in only three years and has had to spend a lot of money to try to bridge the gap to Manchester City. But Klopp has also moulded that team in his own image, with an exciting brand of play which we have seen in abundance this season. Pochettino has done the same but how much of building a team to win the Premier League is down to having much more spending power versus a coach’s ability to change the playing style, tactical blueprint and perhaps most importantly the winning mentality of the team? Pochettino has been a revelation at Tottenham but the big challenge for him is to try and change the mentality of the club. I’ve said in other columns that Tottenham have been a nearly club for too long. Reaching eight semi-finals in as many years probably exemplifies that nearly status. Pochettino needs to try to mount the type of title push that Klopp and Liverpool are building while making sure they get over the line when it matters by starting to win trophies. However his call for action to “change the way we have done things in the last five years” is valid given the lack of spending by the board over the past few transfer windows. Tottenham need to become a winning team not just a great team with fantastic players. There are other managers who have built a winning team in less time than Pochettino. For now I think Pochettino will stay – I don’t think a manager comes out and says “I want to stay for 20 years” if he doesn’t want to and I applaud his loyalty when he would be forgiven for moving to, say, Real Madrid. But he knows he is in a more powerful position if he stays and shows his loyalty because now he has the power to ask for what he wants and do it directly. He is very smart. I’m not sure how much money will be available when Tottenham finally move into the new stadium but Arsenal struggled to compete for the Premier League for years when they moved to the Emirates. Tottenham were the first Premier League club ever not to buy anyone in the summer transfer window so to still be competing for the title is a real credit to Pochettino but I do not think Spurs can continue in this way. If the forthcoming transfer window is anything like the last one, it would be unfair to expect Tottenham to challenge while Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea continue to add key players to the team. Tottenham still need two world class full-backs and maybe another centre-back to make the next step. We have seen how crucial Virgil van Dijk has been to Liverpool. It is not always about signing star forwards and midfielders. Tottenham have as strong a front line in Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Son Heung-min and Lucas Moura as any other team in the league. Chelsea have changed managers a lot over the years and are spending a lot less these days but they have been fortunate to retain some of their best players at the same time, such as Eden Hazard. Maurizio Sarri is one of those managers who can get the best out of players who aren’t necessarily world class which he proved at Napoli. It goes back to managers having to work with what they have got versus those who just have a bottomless pit to spend like Pep Guardiola at Manchester City. Pochettino has now reached the stage where he is thinking: ‘I’ve brought this team such a long way but how can we go further?’ Now it’s about how the board react in the summer and whether he is given the money to strengthen the team. I hope Pochettino is supported. His loyalty deserves it. I can’t see Tottenham winning the Premier League this season because they have been dropping too many points against teams lower in the table but now he has made it clear that he wants to stay, next season could be a real chance for them. If Pochettino doesn’t get the financial backing from the board, I’m sure he will make it known and put more pressure on them. He walked away from Southampton after building a successful team, which proves if the opportunity is right he is capable of leaving. But I would be shocked if he went to Manchester United at the end of the season if he is in the perfect position now to really up it with Tottenham. I’m sure United are already thinking about who will be their permanent manager after Ole Gunnar Solskjær and if they don’t know it’s Pochettino now then I don’t think it will happen. Maybe it’s mind games but I don’t think Pochettino is that kind of person: Tottenham is his project. There is more potential to do something historic at Spurs by winning the title for the first time in almost 60 years than going to United to try to rebuild the club. Now he is so close to getting over the line it would be such a shame to walk away. Why would you go to Real Madrid, where they change their manager every other year, or to United where the rebuilding job is huge? If I was Pochettino, I would stay.So now we know. With the clock ticking rapidly towards 29 March, Theresa May’s Brexit has been defeated – and in devastating style. This was the worst government defeat in British history. The contradictions and dissembling the prime minister engaged in over the past two years have at last caught up with her. The final vote matched even the most doom-laden predictions. Defeat – even by a single vote, never mind 230 – was always going to be catastrophic. This was May’s flagship policy, on the issue that has dominated her agenda since her first day in office, back in July 2016. And she has failed to get support for it – from opposition MPs, her coalition partners, the DUP and, most crucially and embarrassingly, from a huge chunk of her own party. It could all have been so different. On her first day in office she said she stood for national unity. Yet within days May was uttering those ludicrous soundbites, “Brexit means Brexit” and “red, white and blue Brexit” as she bent over backwards to appease the hard right of her party. She talked tough, losing potential allies in Brussels, and set out those fateful red lines that ended the option of a customs union or single market. And then, to cap it all, she called an election – when 20 points ahead in the polls – and, after a disastrous campaign, lost her majority and her ability to make her own deals. May’s 30 months in office have been marked by incompetence and ineptitude, matched only by her self-delusion in believing, whatever humiliation she suffers, that “nothing has changed”. Some put this down to a sense of duty. More likely, as with all other leaders who cling on beyond their sellby date, it’s the shame of being turfed out of office. So we are left with the government in paralysis. She is unable to negotiate with Europe because she can’t deliver on any agreed deal; unable to be kicked out by her party, even though more than a third of its members want her out; unable to call an election because she knows her party will probably be beaten (and she has already promised them she won’t stand again). Under May, Britain has become a laughing stock around the world. Her dithering, her serial U-turns, the fact her words can’t be trusted, are dragging down the reputation of the entire nation. The longer she continues in office, the worse this will become. After her devastating defeat, Theresa May tried gamely to set out her agenda for the next few weeks. Right now, for Britain’s sake, May’s only plan should be to leave office. To unblock the political gridlock, there has to be another leader: one who can negotiate afresh with Europe and who can call an election to try to win a majority for whatever they agree. May’s reputation is shot. Regardless of whether she cobbles together enough support to see off Labour’s vote of no confidence tomorrow, she must go.In a flawlessly manicured instance of cosmic timing, last Sunday saw Justin Rose become the sixth golfer to surpass $50m in PGA Tour earnings. With his win at the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego, Rose now sits on a total of $51.02m, and counting. That, however, does not include his European Tour earnings, which currently stand at a further €27.25m. And counting. These thrilling moves in his balance sheet have turned out to be the perfect curtain raiser to confirmation that Rose would absolutely be playing in the inaugural Saudi International. Indeed, he couldn’t really even stick around to celebrate Sunday’s win, what with having a plane waiting to take him on the first leg of his long journey to the Saudi west coast. The tournament’s prize fund stands at $3.5m; though Rose and others are reported to have been paid up to $1m by way of an appearance fee. As for what to conclude, I guess this is just the latest iteration of that age-old question: how much golf is enough? The event will take place at the Royal Greens Golf and Country Club in the lyrically named King Abdullah Economic City, which evokes vistas of … well, the Saudi royal family and money. It is, as mentioned, a brand new date on the European Tour, which is forever scrambling to keep up with its PGA counterpart. The decision to allow Saudi Arabia to host a tour event is a hangover from the period when all sorts of people amusingly believed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a good egg, in the reforming mould. Without wishing to nitpick, you will recall that this unearned reputation took something of a dent after the murder and dismemberment of one of his critics, the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October. Ever since the CIA concluded that the so-called MbS directly ordered the murder, there has been a widespread sense that Prince Mohammed’s good guy costume needs a little work. Not widespread enough, however, to have penetrated the noggin of the European Tour chief executive, Keith Pelley, who may still be watching 2018 on a time-delay. “We have an excellent relationship with the Middle East,” Keith has explained, brilliantly homogenising earth’s most divided region. “We understand [Saudi Arabia’s] goal to make parts of the country more accessible to global business, tourism and leisure over the next decade.” Yes. That bit’s not difficult to understand, Keith. Understanding the wider issue of sportswashing ought not to be beyond your ken, either. As Amnesty has warned: “It’s clear that countries like Saudi Arabia are well aware of the potential for sport to subtly ‘rebrand’ a country.” For his failure to be even within touching distance of a clue, then, Keith places higher in the blame rankings than Rose. Even so, when players such as Paul Casey have decided not to play in Saudi Arabia on human rights grounds, Rose’s dismissal of concerns could hardly have been more affectless. “It’s a good field,” he reasoned. “There’s going to be a lot of world-ranking points to play for, by all accounts it’s a good golf course and it will be an experience to experience Saudi Arabia,” he said. [Warning: the Saudi Arabia experience can vary according to user.] “I’m taking three weeks off after it, so to have an international trip fits in the schedule really well, and it also gets one of my European Tour events out of the way very early.” Well then. Put like that … Naturally, other excuses are available. Having also decided to make the journey, Ian Poulter has gone with: “I’m probably not the most educated man in the world to sit down and have a discussion about politics.” Oh please. Poulter is perfectly bright, and you really don’t need to be a political science professor to get that chopping someone up in an embassy may place the perpetrators in the “guys whose money I shouldn’t take” file. Of course, it must be said that Justin hails from a country – the United Kingdom – which is vastly more unforgivably enmeshed with Riyadh, and which continues to sell billions of pounds of arms a year to the Saudis. In the scheme of things, then, should Rose and the European Tour really be held to higher standards than the UK government? The answer, in an ideal world, is no. But in a realistic world, imagine not WANTING to hold yourself to a higher standard than the UK government – currently the international standard for talentless post-moral dysfunctionality. Still, let’s play out with arguably my favourite take on it all, which emanated from the American Patrick Reed. Asked if he had any safety concerns about visiting Saudi Arabia, last year’s Masters champion dismissed the idea. “No,” breezed Reed, “because the European Tour has us covered.” On the one hand, yes. It feels vanishingly likely that anything unpleasant would happen to golfers paid to burnish Saudi Arabia’s dismal image. On the other, if the chips do go down, and you want a really crack unit to have your back covered, who you gonna call? The SAS, Delta Force, Seal Team Six, or… hang on, what was it again? … ah yes. The European Tour. Veteran of zero deadly missions, but several increasingly daring sorties into enemy coffers.The state department’s top diplomat dealing with Europe, and an outspoken supporter of Nato, has announced his resignation. Wess Mitchell said he was leaving from personal reasons, after just 16 months in the job as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, adding that he was “fully supportive” of the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. But the resignation adds to the exodus of senior officials who have championed the Nato alliance in the face of Donald Trump’s reported desire to withdraw. Mitchell also oversaw relations with the European Union, which the president has relentlessly berated. Pompeo emphasised the importance of “sturdy alliances” and “beautiful coalitions” to US security in remarks delivered on Tuesday, but he also praised the “new winds” of populism across the world, embodied by Brexit and the rise of Trump, the Five Star movement in Italy, and Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia. He also included Emmanuel Macron in France. “New winds are blowing across the world,” the US secretary of state told the World Economic Forum in Davos. His remarks were delivered by video as the US administration delegation canceled its trip to Switzerland because of the continuing government shutdown. “I would argue that this disruption is a positive development,” Pompeo said. “We are embracing time-tested truths. Truths like this: Nations matter. No international body can stand up for a people as well as their own leaders can.” Ivo Daalder, who was US ambassador to Nato in the Obama administration, said: “Just having been in Europe, there is a deep disquiet among our allies about America’s continued commitment to Europe, including Nato. “Having the top diplomat responsible for Europe step down only adds to the uncertainty and concern among all of our allies,” Daalder added. The former defence secretary, James Mattis, resigned in December, pointing to the need to maintain strong alliances and respect allies as his central difference with Trump. Two other senior Pentagon officials in charge of ties with Nato stepped down in late 2018: Thomas Goffus, deputy assistant defence secretary for Europe and Nato policy, and Robert Karem, assistant defence secretary for international security affairs. A Democratic staffer in the Senate said Mitchell’s departure was “unfortunate for those of us who want a responsible Russia policy”. “I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did,” the staffer said. “He was much more forward leaning than the White House on Russia and never seemed to be a Trump worshiper like so many in the administration.” “This is surprising news, which seems to have caught everyone off guard,” said Amanda Sloat, a former senior state department official. “He doesn’t appear to have shared this news with his ambassadors, who were in Washington last week for a global chiefs of mission conference. His deputy is also slated to retire soon, which raises question of near term leadership on European policy at a time of challenges there.” In an interview with the Washington Post, which broke the news of his resignation, Mitchell said: “I feel like I’ve done what I came in to do. My kids have a greater claim to my time right now than the public does.” Mitchell calls himself a devoted Atlanticist and insisted that “nothing could be further from the truth” that US membership of Nato was in question. Mitchell was instrumental in promoting a friendlier US policy towards Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s rightwing prime minister, and also helped broker a settlement with Greece over Macedonia’s name. “Wess has been one of the pillars of this administration’s most constructive foreign policy ideas,” said Daniel Fried, who did the same Europe assistant secretary job at state department in the George W Bush administration. “He has generated wide respect in Europe and his loss will be felt.” “Mitchell was a strong supporter of Nato, particularly in eastern Europe, where he will be sorely missed,” said Thomas Wright, the director of the Centre on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution. “His departure comes follows the resignation of senior Pentagon officials – Robert Karem and Tom Goffus – working on Nato along with Secretary Mattis. Without this pro-alliance caucus, Nato is now more vulnerable than at any time since the beginning of the Trump administration.”An 18-year-old Saudi woman seeking passage to asylum in Australia after fleeing her family in Saudi Arabia and renouncing Islam will be temporarily admitted to Thailand, Thai authorities have said. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun barricaded herself inside a transit zone hotel room in Bangkok airport to prevent immigration officials putting her on a flight to Kuwait after she was denied entry to Thailand while en route to Australia. Qunun said she would be killed if she was returned to Saudi Arabia, and vowed not to leave the hotel until she could see representatives from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. Thai immigration police later released photos of the teenager after she left her hotel room late on Monday. Her destination was not made public, but she said on Twitter she was under the protection of the UNHCHR and her passport had been returned. She also said her father had arrived in Thailand. Hey I'm Rahaf. My father just arrived as I heard witch worried and scared me a lot and I want to go to another country that I seek asylum inBut at least I feel save now under UNHCR protection with the agreement of Thailand authorities. And I finally got my passport back🙏🏻❤️ pic.twitter.com/pQER7HDVi7 Her case has brought international attention to the obstacles women face in Saudi Arabia. It also comes as the kingdom faces intense scrutiny over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which has renewed criticism of its human rights record. Qunun, who has a three-month tourist visa for Australia, said in a video posted on social media from inside the airport that she was trying to escape from her family because they subjected her to physical and psychological abuse. She has appealed for help from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia. “I am Rahaf … I am in the hotel, I need a country to protect me as soon as possible. I am seeking asylum,” said Qunun, who fled Kuwait while her family was visiting the Gulf country. “My family is strict and locked me in a room for six months just for cutting my hair,” she said, adding that she was certain she would be imprisoned if sent back. “I’m sure, 100%, they will kill me as soon as I get out of the Saudi jail,” she said. Surachate Hakparn, Thailand’s immigration police chief, told reporters on Monday evening that Qunun would be granted entry under the protection of the office of the UNHCR, which says it has been in touch with her. The UN agency is expected to take five to seven days to evaluate her case. Surachate said Qunun’s father was due to arrive in Bangkok on Monday night and that officials would establish whether or not she wanted to return to the Middle East with him. “As of now, she does not wish to go back and we will not force her. She won’t be sent anywhere tonight,” he told reporters. “Thailand is a land of smiles. We will not send anyone to die.” A 20-year-old friend of Qunun, whom the Guardian has chosen not to name and who recently moved from Saudi Arabia to Australia, said the threats to her were real. “She’s ex-Muslim and has a very strict family. They’re using violence with her and she faced sexual harassment,” she said. “She received a threat from her cousin – he said he wants to see her blood, he wants to kill her.” “If they didn’t kill her they couldn’t go [around in] public after this [Qunun renouncing the Muslim faith], so they have to do it,” the friend said. “It’s like: If you’re a man you should prove it. If they don’t kill her they can’t go outside and see other men.” Qunun’s friend has lived in Australia for three months, and said she was seeking asylum there after being abused in Saudi Arabia. She said she had known Qunun for a year, after connecting with her online. “She’s an activist, she’s a feminist,” she said. Georg Schmidt, Germany’s ambassador to Thailand, tweeted his support for Qunun, saying: “We share the great concern for Rahaf Mohammed and are in touch with the Thai side and the embassies of the countries she approached.” Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s Asia deputy director, said there was no doubt Qunun needed refugee protection. “She’s desperately fearful of her family, including her father who is a senior government official, and given Saudi Arabia’s long track record of looking the other way in so-called honour violence incidents, her worry that she could be killed if returned cannot be discounted,” Robertson told the Guardian. Saudi culture and guardianship policy requires women to have permission from a male relative to work, travel, marry, and even get some medical treatment. Her plight mirrors that of other Saudi women who in recent years have turned to social media to amplify their calls for help while trying to flee abusive families. Alqunun’s Twitter account attracted more than 50,000 followers in less than 48 hours and her story grabbed attention worldwide. Qunun, from Ha’il, in north-west Saudi Arabia, said she was stopped by Saudi and Kuwaiti officials when she arrived at Suvarnabhumi airport on Sunday and her travel document was forcibly taken from her, a claim backed by Human Rights Watch. The Saudi embassy in Bangkok said Qunun was initially held for not having a return ticket, and that she still had her passport, a claim she denied.Bruce Gilden got on with Texas, a sex worker, immediately. “We just sparked up a connection,” he says. “Once upon a time, I might have wound up in a room with her doing drugs.” The pair had met during one of Gilden’s first visits to Overtown. He had been visiting the deprived, sun-bleached Miami enclave since 2013 to take portraits and interview the women there whose addiction issues led to sex work. One such portrait captures Texas strutting past a brightly coloured wall. Her makeup is carefully administered, her dress and jewellery vibrant, her handbag covered in pop art iconography. A cigarette dangles precariously from her lips. She’s enjoying the camera. “She looks like a fashion model,” Gilden points out, “until you see the marks on her arm.” Gilden felt he could confide in Texas and told her the story of his mother, a picturesque 1950s housewife from Brooklyn who, behind closed doors, was hooked on prescription drugs. He told her about his own struggles with addiction. Texas responded: “I’ll stop doing [drugs] when I don’t enjoy it no longer.” The next time Gilden arrived in Overtown, he asked after Texas. She wasn’t around any more, the other women told him. She had taken an overdose and died. Gilden, 72, is well known for taking such stark, uncompromising portraits. It’s a signature that has served him well, and his photographs are frequently exhibited in some of the world’s biggest art institutions. But he has taken plenty of heat, too. His photographs have, even in these pages, been likened to a “latterday freak show”. He has been accused of creating portraits that “are so unforgiving and intrusive they dehumanise the subjects”. Gilden has never spoken publicly of how his childhood experiences drove him to create the portraits. The women of Overtown changed that, convincing him to speak openly and for the first time of the trauma that underpins his work. “In the faces of these women, I find echoes of my own mother’s story,” Gilden says. A tattoo inked across the breast of a woman named Jessica gave the series its name: Only God Can Judge Me. That’s also the title of a book of the images, published by London-based Browns Editions, run by artist and designer Jonathan Ellery. “By talking about what happened to his mum, Bruce is showing us where his photographs really come from,” Ellery says. “He didn’t need to give us that insight. It was his decision to do so. And it changes everything.” Gilden was born in Brooklyn in 1946. His father, Daniel, was a “tough guy, a mafioso-type figure” – a streetwise New Yorker with gold rings arranged on his fingers and a cigar always to hand. “And my mother was pretty, your average housewife,” he says. “But I would hear my parents talk in their room at night. The conversations were too disturbing and graphic to be discussed publicly. I heard things that no child should ever know.” He remembers, after such arguments, Pauline bursting into his room with cigarette burns on her chest. On other occasions, he can remember “seeing her in the middle of the afternoon going up the stairs with a man in the house where we lived”. “Witnessing all of this was devastating,” he says. “I felt ashamed, hurt, completely at a loss – but I couldn’t stop listening, no matter how much it hurt. And I wouldn’t say anything to anybody – because I was brought up by my father’s mafioso code of silence and secrecy.” He kept this chapter of his life resolutely private, until he met the women of Only God Can Judge Me. Photographing these women, and indeed photography in general, has been a form of catharsis. “I don’t do this to exploit people,” he says. “It’s who I am. I’ve seen it in my own home to some degree. What I photograph is what I lived.” After setting himself up as a New York street photographer, Gilden found himself seeking out the city’s misfits, down-and-outs and left-behinds. But as his recognition grew he started to struggle with addiction himself. His mother’s problems were also growing, and by the time Gilden had turned 30, she had been detained in a secure psychiatric unit. Gilden remembers taking the train out to the secure unit to visit her one Christmas. He took a portrait of her “when she weighed about 80 pounds, because she was starving herself to death”. He has kept the portrait, but has never shown it to anyone. Several years later, only two short weeks after the death of his father, Gilden received a call: his mother had killed herself in the asylum. “I didn’t do anything to help her,” he says. “That’s when I really went off the end (with drugs). I went on a bender. It was too much for me to handle.” Gilden has since made a life for himself – he’s now clean, happily married and living in Beacon, a forest-ringed city in Dutchess County, New York state. But Only God Can Judge Me brought memories of his past back to him. If someone can look at these and feel like they’re not alone in the world, then I’ve done my job For the first time in his career, he decided to couple his portraits with quotes from the women photographed. The words are as unsparing as his portraits. Trish, an older Jewish woman, told Gilden: “I was one of those ladies who lunch, a married woman. Then I started taking pain pills at the age of 30 because I have chronic pain. I had never taken a drug prior to that and I said, ‘Oh my God, I feel so much better!’ And that was it. That got a hold on me and this is where I wound up.” Jessica, a dark-haired woman with the tattoo, told Gilden: “I have been on the street since I was 14. I’m 39 now. I started using drugs with my parents, who were addicts and dealers. I thought it was normal. I was put in foster homes but I kept running away. I would always find myself in these areas. I never knew what I was running from, but now I know I was just looking for guidance. I never had that.” A younger woman, April, told Gilden of being raped as a child by her grandfather. “I tried to tell my parents once, but they didn’t believe me. I got in trouble so I never brought it up again until his funeral, when I walked up to his casket and spit in his face and told everyone.” Gilden hopes these images might give someone slipping into addiction a moment of pause. “If someone can look at these and feel like they’re not alone in the world, then I’ve done my job,” he says. But there’s something else at play here – a defiant stare at those who have so manifestly misunderstood his work. “These women – they’re not just left behind, they’re invisible,” Gilden says. “I like to make people look at them – to make them see. A lot of people have difficulty with that. And that always interests me. Why would you not want to look at these faces? Because this can happen to anyone’s loved one.” The book is dedicated to Gilden’s wife, Sophie, his daughter Nina and, on a separate page, “for my mother”. “It has taken me my whole life to deal with what happened to her,” Gilden says. Meeting the women of Overtown “gave me the courage to face it. I owe them a lot for that.” • Only God Can Judge Me is available from Browns Editions Sri Lanka’s president has praised his Philippines counterpart Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, which has taken thousands of lives, calling it an “example to the world”. In a speech during a visit to the Philippines this week, Maithripala Sirisena said he intended to replicate Duterte’s ruthless approach to tackling illegal drug use. “The war against crime and drugs carried out by you is an example to the whole world, and personally to me,” said Sirisena. “Drug menace is rampant in my country and I feel that we should follow your footsteps to control this hazard.” In his own statement, Duterte said that their aligned vision could mean partnering with Sri Lanka in the future to address international drug trafficking. Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, which has seen police handed unprecedented powers to carry out drug-related raids and arrests, has officially killed more than 5,000 people since 2016, though campaigners allege the real death toll could be up to 20,000. Those who have died have mainly been the urban poor. The international criminal court (ICC) is carrying out a preliminary investigation into whether the extrajudicial killings constitute crimes against humanity. Duterte has remained unrepentant about the scale of the deaths in the crackdown, saying he would promote police officers who “massacre” drug dealers and describing those killed as “just carcasses to me”. The speech was not the first time Sirisena has signalled his admiration for Duterte’s war on drugs. In July, Sri Lanka ended its 43-year moratorium on executions to bring back hanging as a punishment for drug dealers, a move the Sri Lankan president said was directly inspired by Duterte’s policy in the Philippines. During a cabinet meeting in July, Sirisena said he “was ready to sign the death warrants” of repeat drug offenders, according to his spokesperson Rajitha Senaratne. Nineteen drug offenders who were serving life sentences now face the death penalty. The Sri Lankan government says narcotics are a growing problem in the country and in January this year, authorities seized a cocaine stash worth $108m from a single shipment in the port of Colombo, which is a growing hub for international drug trafficking. “We were told that the Philippines has been successful in deploying the army and dealing with this problem,” said Senaratne in July. “We will try to replicate their success.”There are no good options for Labour on Brexit. Accepting this fact is both depressing and liberating. Being on the left is supposed to be about unbounded optimism, a belief that what is deemed politically impossible by the “sensible grownups” of politics can be realised, with sufficient imagination and determination. But recognising that there is no magic button that will end the Brexit debate is to be freed of the stress of searching for the impossible. Supporters of every position on Brexit should be honest about the downsides of their chosen strategies. Labour’s priority is, rightly, a general election. When Theresa May declared from a Downing Street podium that she was seeking to dissolve parliament in April 2017, she wanted to make the election entirely about Brexit. Labour did not allow her to do so, shifting the conversation on to domestic issues, where it was strong, from hiking taxes on the rich to investing in public services to public ownership: issues that unite remainers and leavers. Even though voters have priorities other than Brexit, such as stagnating wages, housing and the NHS, repeating the 2017 strategy this time would be far more challenging, to put it mildly. Labour’s electoral coalition, which encompasses both pro-remain Kensington and pro-leave Ashfield – will be placed under severe strain. The fact that Brexit dominates political debate is bad for Labour because it suppresses its anti-establishment politics; its leading figures are left looking like triangulating politicians, the same as the all the rest. Is this a good option? No. None of them are. But such a deal would solve the intractable Northern Ireland border problem Then there’s a second referendum, which may yet happen. Labour will have to make the best of it if it does. Yet we have learned from the Scottish independence vote and with Brexit what referendums do to our politics. They foster bitter divisions in ways that parliamentary elections tend not to do. That is why they can be such uniquely fertile political territory for the populist and far right. A referendum campaign would in effect hand the most demagogic, reactionary elements of British life a megaphone for several months. There are those who say well, we are already bitterly divided – how much worse can it get? To put it gently, they lack imagination: a new vote will be far uglier than the last, and its advocates should at least devise a strategy to deal with that. Although economic grievances were critical in delivering the referendum result, Brexit has fomented an all-out culture war. The most meaningful division in society is not between remainers and leavers, or young people and their grandparents, or even Labour or Tory voters. It is between a rapacious elite that has plunged Britain into economic and social crisis on one hand, and a majority that suffers the consequences on the other. The culture war distracts from this understanding of class politics, which underpins Labour’s mission. In a referendum, Labour will risk looking as if it supports the status quo. All the work it has done in leave-supporting constituencies, without which it cannot win an election, may be fatally undermined. The left was long berated for emphasising principles over power, for not understanding that without forming a government it cannot help people. Now it pursues an electoral strategy to win an election and deal with the injustices that caused Brexit, the same people denounce it for putting party ahead of country. A pro-Brexit slogan such as “Tell them again” will resonate and inflame passions. Polls show there is no decisive majority for remain – and that’s in the absence of an up-and-running leave campaign. Imagine if leave won again? The narrative would be that a remain elite had tried to subvert the result, dragged the nation through another vicious campaign, and must never be listened to again. Another possibility is what has been labelled “common market 2.0”, or Norway plus. Britain would remain part of the single market and enter a permanent customs union. Is this a good option? No. None of them are. But such a deal would solve the intractable Northern Ireland border problem and its proponents say the EU would no longer have jurisdiction over agricultural policy, fisheries and justice. Britain would be able to resist closer political integration. True, freedom of movement would not end – from my own perspective, a good thing – but technically controls can be implemented if the government is able to prove “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties”. Britain would also be able to shape its own rules on the financial sector. Norway plus advocates also claim it would mean significantly lower financial contributions, though this needs to be proven. There is one key issue of contention: state aid and policies of public ownership and economic interventionism, which Labour fears will undermine its ability to implement a transformative agenda. Common market 2.0 proponents point out that Norway has among the highest levels of state aid in Europe. On this, I defer to the economist Laurie Macfarlane. He suggests current rules do not preclude social democracy within certain limits but could represent a block on going further. Labour would have to test this argument in office: any bid to stop an elected government enacting its agenda would trigger a confrontation that, for the sake of democracy, Labour would have to win, appealing for international solidarity in the process. The arrangement might prove a stopgap. If it failed – for instance, if Labour’s proposals were blocked – it would have to end. Is this kicking the Brexit can down the road? Yes. Is it desperate? Of course it is. But look, the social fabric of Britain is disintegrating. There is a housing crisis, child poverty is soaring, wages are stagnant, and our public services and infrastructure are falling apart. The more our relationship with a trading bloc becomes the central axis of political discourse, the less attention Britain’s social crisis receives, and the worse it becomes. When May’s deal is voted down, Labour must push for a general election. But Norway plus may end up the only proposal that commands a majority in parliament. Labour supporters would be able to recall that what unites them is much greater than simply Brexit. Could it definitely be negotiated even if MPs vote for it? That’s not certain. But given the other unappetising choices on the plate, perhaps it is the only one Labour will be able to swallow. • Owen Jones is a Guardian columnistIt appears increasingly likely that Theresa May’s bad Brexit deal will be rejected by parliament – and rightly so. It’s a deal that would cause huge damage to the future of our country, putting jobs, prosperity and social mobility at grave risk. Tuesday’s vote is the biggest in parliament since the Iraq war – and every MP should think extremely carefully about the legacy they want to leave. I urge MPs of all political parties to put aside tribal politics and do what’s in the best interests of their constituents and the next generation. If MPs reject the deal, then Theresa May should do the responsible thing: immediately step aside and call a general election. Sadly, the Tories have a long history of putting their party above the national interest, so if an election is not immediately called, I will step up my campaign for a public vote – with the option of remaining in the EU on the ballot paper. It’s clear that if our government and parliament are incapable of finding a way out of this mess, it should be taken out of the hands of the politicians and returned to the British people to take back control and have their say. Our politics and public debate have never been as angry and divided as they are now – and some say a public vote would create yet more division and disillusionment. I strongly disagree. A public vote would not only allow us to move beyond the current stalemate but would start the desperately needed process of healing the deep divisions that have opened within our society. The blatant lies, mistruths and deceptions told by the Leave campaign during the EU referendum – which were laid bare for all to see in the Channel 4 drama Brexit: The Uncivil War last week – could not be used again. And those of us arguing to remain could run a campaign full of positivity for the future – Project Hope, not Project Fear. This would mean we could finally make the optimistic case for staying in the EU as well as retaining the free movement of people – something that too many politicians have been afraid to do for generations. Back in 2016, I – along with Gordon Brown, and others – tried to make this positive, patriotic and values-based case for Britain remaining in the EU, but we were too often drowned out by negative campaigning – on both sides. If there is another public vote, we can, and must, take a very different approach – one that brings our country back together. We can demonstrate that, when Britain takes a leadership role in Europe, our soft power spreads our liberal democratic values and helps to protect human rights We can run a campaign highlighting how the EU has been a force for good for generations – boosting our living standards, strengthening workers’ rights and acting as the greatest movement for peace and democracy the world has ever seen. We can remind people that our connections with Europe are a crucial part of British history – from the Polish Spitfire pilots who fought for our freedoms in the Battle of Britain to the creation of a European union being Winston Churchill’s ultimate dream. We can show people that our own history shows that the benefits of co-operation and being open to the world always eclipse the false comforts of isolation. And we can demonstrate that, when Britain takes a leadership role in Europe, our soft power and influence spreads our liberal democratic values and helps to protect human rights – both of which are more important than ever at a time of rising nationalist populism. As a country, we face major challenges because of the changing nature of our economy and society. Many people voted Leave because they felt left behind by this new world, where the benefits of economic growth increasingly flow to only a few at the top. Many were understandably looking for something, or someone, to blame – and for too long politicians and others have encouraged this and played on people’s fears, rather than addressing them. But the irony is that rather than looking inwards, being in the EU would give us the best chance of finding the solutions to many of the root causes of these grievances. So, in any new vote, we need to show that it’s only through being a proper part of Europe that we can exercise our power and influence on the world stage – allowing us to do more to ensure that all citizens share in the fruits of globalisation and to mitigate some of the consequences of societal and technological changes. Lastly, there is one group for whom this decision really matters because it’s their future that’s on the line – young people. Their voice was not properly heard during the 2016 EU referendum and this should not be allowed to happen again in such a crucial democratic decision for the future of our country. One important way to achieve this would be to reduce the voting age to 16. Europe is awash with opportunities for young Britons – whether it’s the chance to go on cultural exchange programmes, study abroad or get funding for an apprenticeship. In the next public vote, young people must be front and centre, with the message heard that remaining in the EU as a confident member can only leave a legacy of opportunities for our children, for our grandchildren and for future generations.Every year, thousands of Magellanic penguins get stranded along the coast of South America – but puzzlingly, about 75% of those that get stuck are female. Now scientists say they have worked out what is behind the gender imbalance: the females migrate further north than males. Magellanic penguins finish breeding in Patagonia in February, and during the subsequent winter months head north, reaching as far as Brazil, in search of anchovies. But every year thousands become stranded, with many airlifted to safety onboard military aircraft. Writing in the journal Current Biology, researchers in Japan and Argentina report how they attached tracking devices to eight male and six female penguins in 2017 and tracked where the birds went after they left the breeding grounds of Cabo dos Bahía in Argentina and began the migration north in April. Previously it was unknown whether males and females took different paths or not. “Although some assumptions are made, the exact reason for the female-biased stranding has been unknown due to the lack of information on their behaviour outside the breeding season, despite the growing focus on the conservation of this species,” said Takashi Yamamoto, a co-author of the report from the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Japan. The results from the study offer a clearer picture. While the authors note that only a small number of penguins were tracked, the females generally travelled further north, with many reaching waters off the coast of Uruguay. The males, meanwhile, predominantly stuck to waters off the Argentinian coast. The study also found males typically dived deeper than females: about 59 metres compared with about 35 metres. The authors offer a number of reasons why males and females may head to different areas – including to avoid competition for food – and why they dive to different depths – the females’ smaller bodies may restrict the depths they can reach. They also suggest the different sexes may seek waters of different temperatures, with the lighter females preferring warmer, shallower surroundings. The females may be more susceptible to being swept along on sea currents, they add. While researchers are still trying to understand why penguins end up stranded, Yamamoto and colleagues suggest those that end up further north may have used more energy swimming or catching dispersed prey, leaving them exhausted. Climate change, pollution in the area or injury from fishing equipment could also play a role. Reports of strandings have noted that many penguins are unwell or exhausted, with some also washing up dead. “In addition, plastic remains have been reported in the stomach of beach-washed Magellanic penguins,” said Yamamoto, adding that a skewed sex ratio could potentially lead to a population decline. While the findings may not help prevent strandings, Yamamoto said it could help with conservation of the species in the face of growing human-generated hazards. “If we do not consider any conservation action, such as marine zoning, I expect that the number of stranding individuals will increase.”It is like a scene from a horror film. As a car drives along a quiet road at night, hundreds of rats scuttle across the tarmac. For a few days now the small village of Gattolino (which translates roughly as “little cat”) has been battling an infestation of rodents. Locals have nicknamed the newcomers “crazy white rats” because of their strange behaviour. They have reportedly been jumping in front of cars and killing each other. One firefighter told a local paper: “I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Authorities in the northern Italian province of Cesena have launched a special taskforce bringing together firefighters, policemen and sanitary inspectors to cope with the emergency, which was brought to national attention when dashcam footage emerged of the rats. Francesca Lucchi, Cesena’s councillor for the environment, told local paper Resto del Carlino: “There are professionals and experts at work.” She added that environmental technicians and public health officials are working with local police to establish whether the rats are carrying diseases. The rats seem to have come from an old pigeon breeding enclosure – which closed last year – where they would find shelter and food. “It is very likely that the rats have run out of food from inside the enclosures and once the food was finished they came out to find more in the countryside,” the local mayor told journalists. Piero, who works at a sports bar in Gattolini, said one other aspect of the rats’ behaviour stood out. They are stopping and turning in the road shortly after the main Gattolino road sign. “Rats are not stupid,” he said. “They know not to mess around with the little cat.”Before the Sundance premiere of Official Secrets, an introduction named it one of many films during the festival that focuses on a character taking on the system. It proved to be an unavoidable and unfortunate reminder of The Report, Scott Z Burns’s thrilling, similarly themed and similarly talky political drama that premiered just days earlier. While that film, about an investigation into the CIA’s post-9/11 torture practices, avoided cliche and construct, the Eye in the Sky director Gavin Hood has delivered a far more traditional and at times stuffy tale, one that might be more suited to the small screen. Hood’s major ace is Keira Knightley, whose rousing lead performance adds a much-needed fire, igniting the pedestrian-level drama around her. She’s playing Katharine Gun, a translator working at Government Communications Headquarters who finds herself frustrated with what she’s seeing on the news. It’s 2003 and as Tony Blair argues for British involvement in an Iraq war, she’s struggling to understand the reasoning, aware of the lack of evidence underpinning his case. When Katharine receives an email asking for help, she’s concerned. Aware that a UN resolution was looking unlikely, the NSA was asking GCHQ employees to spy on diplomats, hoping to blackmail them into agreeing that invasion was necessary. Unsettled and angered by the request, Katharine found herself tasked with a life-changing dilemma, forced to weigh up the importance of herself versus her country. The story of Katharine Gun is one that’s often been overlooked and undervalued since the Iraq war and there’s immense satisfaction in seeing her bravery and selflessness heralded on the big screen. Hood, a South African director who’s experienced a patchy career in Hollywood after breaking out with the Oscar-winning Tsotsi, sticks to a similar formula used in his last film Eye in the Sky, which saw a troupe of talented actors discuss the morality of war as it pertained to a specific situation. While that film gripped, this one often plods, the story feeling a bit stretched over the expansive two-hour running time. After the email is leaked, Hood follows its arrival at the Observer and while it’s fascinating to witness the internal debate that took place over both its veracity and how it might affect the paper’s pro-invasion stance at the time, the newsroom scenes border on ham. While Matt Smith and Matthew Goode are solid, too many other performances feel broad and overcooked, especially Conleth Hill as editor Roger Alton and Rhys Ifans as Ed Vulliamy, who almost manages to outdo his turn in Snowden for sheer awfulness. These scenes are intermixed with Katharine’s domestic life and the strain the decision took on her marriage and while they do help build to a particularly tense sequence involving a potential deportation, the majority of them feel flat and repetitive and as her husband, Adam Bakri is utterly wooden. But the film relies on its lead star and Knightley is more than equipped for the task of carrying it on her shoulders. For too long, she was trapped in a cycle of mostly thankless supporting roles, from London Boulevard to Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit to Everest to Collateral Beauty, but after her commanding, nuanced lead performance in Colette, it feels like she’s having something of a comeback. She’s fantastic here, vulnerable and strong-willed, her face conveying the inner anguish of someone losing faith in her government while fearful for what might come next. During one particular interrogation, she’s particularly electric but in this scene, as with many others, she’s fighting against mediocrity both in the performers she’s paired with and Hood’s flat direction. It’s a testament to her skills as an actor that she makes it work quite so well. Official Secrets is a well-intentioned retelling of a daunting act of courage and as a vehicle for informing more people of who Katharine Gun is, it’s effective, carefully laying out the incremental stakes as well as her noble intentions. Credit for this however lies almost solely with Knightley. Official Secrets is showing at the Sundance film festivalBritain is in the grip of a crisis. Apparently. Last week the home secretary, Sajid Javid, declared the number of people attempting to cross the Channel a “major incident”, though the numbers don’t support such a claim. But that didn’t deter the newspapers. “Home secretary brings back two Border Force cutters to tackle migrant crisis,” says the Metro. “Sajid Javid recalls two Border Force boats to patrol English Channel amid migrant crisis,” the Evening Standard reports. “Migrant crisis,” the Sun shouts in capitals. “Two Border Force boats redeployed from the Med to patrol the Channel for migrants.” The Daily Express joined in: “Migrant crisis: 12 migrants detained at Kent beach ahead of Sajid Javid talks.” And the Times: “Migrant crisis: Sajid Javid sends extra boats to Channel.” Scapegoating people fleeing violence and poverty is an all-too-familiar political sport in Europe and the US. But its wellspring can be found in Australia, and it’s worth joining the dots – there are lessons for the UK government as it flirts with exploiting a “migrant crisis”. Let’s step back to 1901, when the Immigration Restriction Act was passed in Australia. The law formed the basis of the “White Australia” policy, intended to exclude all non-Europeans from immigrating to the country. Support for this policy, in subsequent years, delivered electoral success. In the 1903 election campaign Alfred Deakin, leader of the Protectionist party – and one of the architects of the White Australia policy – argued for the preservation of Australia’s “complexion”: Deakin was elected. Stanley Bruce, in the 1925 federal election, supported White Australia: he was re-elected, with an increased majority. But the policy came under scrutiny after indigenous soldiers defended the nation in the second world war and, after several changes in immigration law since 1947, White Australia was legally ended in 1973. In the following decade the nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity increased, and it suited Australia. Until it didn’t. In 1988, as leader of the Liberal opposition, John Howard called for a curb on Asian immigration. Later he publicly apologised, and admitted in 2002 that he had been wrong. Six months earlier, though, in November 2001, Howard had been re-elected as prime minister, in the wake of 9/11 – and the Tampa episode. In August 2001, the captain of the Norwegian freighter Tampa defied Canberra’s instruction to stay outside Australian waters with his cargo of 433 asylum seekers who had been rescued from a sinking Indonesian boat, and headed for Australian waters. SAS troops seized control of the ship, and Howard introduced legislation to remove the Tampa and future unwelcome vessels. The opposition Labor leader Kim Beazley, having initially supported the government, opposed the new law and accused Howard of “wedge politics”. The bill was defeated. But the “Pacific solution” was born: islands were cut from the Australian migration zone; detention centres were established on Manus Island and Nauru; the navy was deployed to intercept vessels carrying asylum seekers. Howard declared: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” He was elected for a third term. It was ugly but effective, and supported by the opposition. The die was cast, and it is shaping events today. Fear of immigration worked for the leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and now it appears Britain is returning to the theme. On Monday the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, accused the government of exploiting the issue in the lead-up to the parliamentary Brexit vote this month. Still, while the UK government flirts with an old Australian electoral trope, history shows it’s possible to do the right thing. In 1989, while Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke made a tearful promise to allow Chinese students to stay in Australia after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He had not consulted the cabinet. “I was told: ‘You cannot do that, Prime Minister.’ I said to them, ‘I just did. It is done.’” The core principle of the 1951 refugee convention states that “refugees should not be penalised for their illegal entry or stay” and recognises “that the seeking of asylum can require refugees to breach immigration rules”. Desperate people will take desperate measures to secure safety. But an individual’s dignity is denied when a government resorts to posturing against weak opposition. Amid the political bluff and bluster, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s real. Humanity. • Russell Cunningham is a production editor on sport for the GuardianA South Africa-based mercenary group has been accused by one of its former members of trying to intentionally spread Aids in southern Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. The claims are made by Alexander Jones in a documentary that premieres this weekend at the Sundance film festival. He says he spent years as an intelligence officer with the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), three decades ago, when it was masterminding coups and other violence across Africa. The film also explores the unexplained murder of a young SAIMR recruit in 1990, whose family believe was killed because of her work on an Aids-related project run by the group in South Africa and Mozambique. And it also claims the group’s then leader had a racist, apocalyptic obsession with HIV/Aids. Keith Maxwell wrote about a plague he hoped would decimate black populations, cement white rule, and bring back conservative religious mores, according to papers collected by the film-makers. Maxwell had no medical qualifications but ran clinics in poor, mostly black areas around Johannesburg while claiming to be a doctor. That gave him the opportunity for sinister experimentation, Jones says in the film, Cold Case Hammarskjöld. The film-makers were investigating SAIMR because it claimed responsibility for the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed Dag Hammarskjöld, then UN secretary general. “What easier way to get a guinea pig than [when] you live in an apartheid system?” Jones says in the film. “Black people have got no rights, they need medical treatment. There’s a white ‘philanthropist’ coming in and saying, ‘You know, I’ll open up these clinics and I’ll treat you.’ And meantime [he is] actually the wolf in sheep’s clothing.” A sign advertising “Dokotela [doctor] Maxwell” still hangs from the side of an office in Putfontein where locals remember a respected man with a virtual monopoly on the area’s healthcare. He offered strange treatments. including putting patients through “tubes”, which he said allowed him to see inside their bodies. He also gave “false injections”, said Ibrahim Karolia, who ran a shop across the road. Any interest Maxwell showed in Aids in public was benevolent. Claude Newbury, an anti-abortion doctor who knew the mercenary leader, confirmed he had no medical qualifications but described a committed humanitarian. “He was against genocide and he was trying to discover a cure for HIV,” Newbury told film-makers. A bizarre Johannesburg Sunday Times interview with teenage SAIMR “ensign” Debbie Campbell in August 1989 has a photo of a teenager with a halo of curls, taking water pollution measurements and also talking about searching for a cure for HIV/Aids. But the wholesome image has a sinister undertone. She describes being recruited out of school at 13, and it’s hard to imagine any benign interest an international mercenary group could have in signing up prepubescent girls. Documents collected by the film-makers appear to show that Maxwell’s private views were very different from his public persona. The papers suggest a ghoulish delight in the advent of an epidemic. In one he writes: “[South Africa] may well have one man, one vote with a white majority by the year 2000. Religion in its conservative, traditional form will return. Abortion on demand, abuse of drugs, and the other excesses of the 1960s, 70s and 80s will have no place in the post-Aids world.” The papers read like the fever dream of a man who aspired to be South Africa’s Josef Mengele. There are detailed, if sometimes garbled, accounts of how he thought the HIV virus could be isolated, propagated and used to target black Africans. What is less clear is whether he had the expertise or funds to implement his nightmarish visions. Jones, the former SAIMR member, claims he did. “We were involved in Mozambique, spreading the Aids virus through medical conditions,” he says. At least one other SAIMR member had apparently raised concerns about the group’s medical programmes. Dagmar Feil was a marine biologist who was recruited by her boyfriend. In 1990 she was murdered outside her home in Johannesburg; her relatives believe the killing was linked to her work on SAIMR’s Aids programme. “My sister came to me, and she said she needed to confide in me,” her brother Karl Feil told the film-makers. “She sat with me and said she thinks they are going to kill her.” She said that three or four others in her team had already been murdered, but when asked what team, Dagmar said “she couldn’t tell me”. “The topic of Aids research came up several times, quite loosely in conversations, I never put two and two together,” Feil says in the film. Instead Dagmar asked Karl to go with her to church, so she could “make right with God”. Weeks later she was dead. Jones says he knew Dagmar Feil and claims her death came after a trip to Mozambique, which he describes as a base for the group’s medical experimentation. “She was recruited to do medical research,” he says. “She progressed and she became part of the inner circle for operations. She went to Mozambique to fulfil her obligations and … word got out that she was going to testify.” Feil’s family spent years trying to find out what happened to her, but police showed little interest, her brother says. During that time, the family say another SAIMR member gave them papers believed to be Maxwell’s memoir and his account of SAIMR. They later shared these with the film-makers. Dagmar Feil’s mother also went to South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission several times, Karl Feil said. She asked it to investigate her daughter’s killing as part of a wider conspiracy, but was turned away. Although the commission first revealed the existence of SAIMR to the world, the team was also overworked and had to deal with false confessions, and what the family saw as their best hope of uncovering the truth slipped away. “They would not listen to her,” Karl Feil says. “They would not debate this issue at all.” Andreas Rocksen co-produced and Mads Brügger directed Cold Case Hammarskjöld. It was supported by DocSocSprinting is very high impact – when elite athletes hit maximum speed in a 100m race, their feet will strike the ground with a force equal to more than three times their body weight. Dina Asher-Smith – who clocked the new British record time for 100m last year, and was the first Briton to win triple European Championship gold – is able to harness the necessary strength and power by mixing track training with gym workouts. Her sessions include weights, squats and core work to condition and strengthen muscles. A huge part of sprinting is about moving your arms as well as your feet. As four-time Olympic sprint champion Michael Johnson puts it: “Think of your arms as your accelerators. Your arms drive your legs, not the other way round.” That means driving arms back as well as forwards for momentum (trying not to let arms swing out to the sides), while keeping shoulders and arms relaxed. Bring knees up high and try to keep your core controlled with a good upright posture. Plyometrics are explosive and intense exercises, such as jumping and skipping, that aim to boost muscle power. They can be beneficial to improving running economy and form. Running coach Nick Anderson says: “Your legs become quicker at landing and pushing off the ground, making you faster and more efficient.” He recommends jumping lunges, toe taps, high skips, bench jumps and calf drives, but not more than twice a week and never after running – it’s best to start with rested legs and to build up the duration and intensity. “Sprinting is all about explosive power; making sure you have symmetry in strength is key,” says physiotherapist Laura Jamieson. A simple way to test this is by comparing the strength and distance of a single hop on your right leg with that of your left leg. Exercises such as single leg deadlifts and lunges can help even them out. It may seem counterintuitive for a explosive, powerful movement such as sprinting, but learning to stay relaxed is key. “The more relaxed you are, the smoother and faster you’ll run,” Usain Bolt once said. “Your muscles get tight when you tense up.” Focus on relaxing your shoulders and not clenching your hands when you run. Johnson had a nifty trick for this: he would rest his thumb gently on his forefinger, which he said gave him the right amount of relaxation and focus. Dreaded by sprinters and endurance runners alike, hill sprints do come in useful.“Running uphill simulates the forward lean of the acceleration phase at the start of a race,” explains personal trainer and sprint coach Geoff Walcott. “Running downhill simulates overspeed running, but the gradient shouldn’t be too steep, for safety reasons.” Coordination and balance are fundamental not only to sprinting, but good running form in general. Walcott encourages exercises such as skipping and using speed ladders to get the feet and body moving faster, which will increase agility and speed.When American artist Danielle Eubank visited the Indian Ocean in Mozambique, she was taken back by the garbage. “There’s pollution everywhere, in the water, on the beach, baby strollers and plastic mats, plastic bags, plastic bottles,” she said. “They’re everywhere.” The artist has painted roughly 200 bodies of water in 22 countries, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, for her 20-year project One Artist Five Oceans. The goal is to raise awareness about ocean pollution and climate change. “I have always been a huge environmentalist, I’ve screamed at people and tried to get the message across in so many ways,” said Eubank, on the phone from her Los Angeles studio. “I prefer to show people, ‘Hey look, this is our world, let’s take care of it. Don’t destroy it.’ It’s something very precious, something we all share.” On 28 February, Eubank embarks on a long journey south to the Antarctic Circle for the last leg of her ocean painting project. She will depart from Ushuaia, Argentina to the Antarctic Peninsula to paint the Southern Ocean. It all started 20 years ago when Eubank was visiting the Doñana National Park in Huelva, in the south of Spain, where she spent her days painting on the beach with her back to the water. “Coming from California, I abhorred water paintings,” said Eubank. “For me, I could only see ideas other people had before me — crashing waves, dolphins and mermaids, I just couldn’t get into it.” But that all changed when, after spending days painting the park, she turned to the Atlantic Ocean. “I painted the dunes and got fed up and turned around at sunrise, in the morning,” she said. “I was faced with the water and nothing else. From that first point on, that’s all I wanted to paint — water.” She painted the Arctic Ocean from Svalbard, Norway. “What I noticed about the Arctic, is that the polar ice caps were melting in October,” she said. “The rate the oceans are warming up are the most frightening thing I can think of. Oceans are getting warmer.” When she painted the Indian Ocean, she noticed the illustrious hues. “The Indian Ocean is the most beautiful, it has the most difference in colors,” said Eubank. “It has times when its more golden and aqua, at times. There’s a lot of variations.” Though her series started in Spain, Eubank considers the Pacific the ocean her ‘home’ ocean. “I grew up in northern California near the coast,” she said. Having sailed the seven seas and (so far) four oceans, Eubank has visited most of these bodies of water by sea. Not any kind of boats, but by old fashioned ships, including one called the Borobudur, a wooden replica of an 8th century vessel. In a sense, Eubank is honoring a time-held tradition. “Explorers all had expedition artists; look at Captain Cook, he had William Hodges,” she said. “Back then, because people didn’t have cameras, they would take artists or do sketches themselves to document what they saw.” Sailing by a showy replica of an ancient boat does get a lot of attention. “Private boats would wave as they passed by,” said Eubank. “When we would come into port, sometimes there would be lines of people along the quay.” As she packs for Antarctica, Eubank will be painting with oils, pencils and below-zero ink in her sketchbooks, which will be clipped to her jacket so they don’t fly into the ocean. “It hopefully will help people look at things in a new way,” she said. The United Nations Environmental Program claims that 80% of all marine pollution is plastic, and that every year, over 8m tons of plastic ends up in the oceans. Apparently by 2050, oceans will carry more plastic than fish, just as the world’s oceans keep getting warmer. Upon returning from Antarctica, Eubank will put together a book of all her ocean paintings and open an exhibition of selected paintings on 24 May at Kwan Fong Gallery in Thousand Oaks, California. Instead of painting piles of garbage, she also hopes her viewers will relish in the beauty of these bodies of water, as well. “Our own actions affect what goes into the oceans,” said Eubank. “There’s a lot what we can do; like if everyone ate less meat each week, rode a bike, walked and took public transit, it would make an impact. Hang dry your clothes. People are surprised how easy it is to help the oceans and help the climate.”The Asian Football Confederation claims its president, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, is not responsible for matters regarding the Thai detention of Hakeem al-Araibi because he was recused from overseeing the region 18 months ago out of conflict-of-interest concerns. The new claim came in response to a call from the World Players Association for Salman to be disqualified from office if the refugee footballer was returned to Bahrain. Salman, a Bahraini royal who is also vice president of Fifa, has been widely criticised for his lack of action in the two months since the arrest and detention of Bahraini refugee Al-Araibi. The AFC did not address the disqualification calls but on Saturday said its senior vice president, Praful Patel, “was asked 18 months ago by the AFC executive committee to handle matters involving the AFC’s West Zone to ensure there were no accusations of a conflict of interest involving [Salman]”. It said the AFC administration was in contact with Fifa and the football federations of Bahrain, Thailand and Australia, but did not call for Al-Araibi’s release. Saturday’s statement is the first the AFC has said of Salman’s recusal. The AFC is increasingly alone in its failure to call for the release of the refugee footballer and Australian resident. Al-Araibi was arrested in Bangkok in November on a red notice issued to Bahrain by Interpol in contravention of its own refugee protection policies. Bahrain is seeking the return of Al-Araibi over a widely discredited vandalism conviction, delivered in absentia and carrying a 10-year prison sentence. The country’s justice system has a well-documented history of prisoner abuse and targeting of dissidents. Through its director of communications, Colin Gibson, the AFC has previously only said that it is working with Fifa, repeatedly declining to answer questions about the role of Salman or its specific efforts to help Al-Araibi. AFC officials also shut down questions on the topic of Al-Araibi at an Asian Cup pre-match press conference with the Australian Socceroos last week. Salman is expected to run for the presidency of Fifa in April. During his last tilt at the top role in 2016, Salman was the subject of public criticism by Al-Araibi, which Al-Araibi believes is largely behind Bahrain’s attempt to refoule him. World football organisations were widely criticised in the two months following Al-Araibi’s arrest over their initial silence and then muted responses, but in the wake of international lobbying, many have since called for the athlete’s return to Australia. Fifa recently lobbied the Thai government directly, but has still been criticised for not doing enough, and has been accused of abrogating its human rights responsibilities which require it to use all available means and leverage. On the same day as the AFC’s statement, the International Olympic Committee announced its support of Al-Araibi and Fifa’s position on his case – that he should be returned to Australia. It said the IOC member for Thailand, Khunying Patama Leeswadtrakul, had contacted the Thai government to try to find a solution based on “basic human and humanitarian values”. “The IOC president has personally discussed this worrying situation with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees,” the IOC added. “The high commissioner also expressed that UNHCR is very concerned about this case since Al-Araibi is a recognised refugee and should be allowed to return to Australia.” A leading Thai football team, Chiang Rai United, has also voiced support of Al-Araibi. “To take a footballer and lock him up is to ruin his life, particularly when there is no reason in law to hold him,” said club president Mitti Tiyapairat. On Sunday the president of the Jordanian Football Association, Ali Bin al-Hussein, called for Al-Araibi’s release. “Your silence as officials is a shame and a total embarrassment,” he said in a tweet which tagged Fifa and the AFC, as well as the football associations of Thailand and Bahrain, and Australia’s national team. “Protect your players.” Release Hakeem ! Your silence as officials is a shame and a total embarrassment. Protect your players @fathailand @bfainfo @FIFAcom @theafcdotcom @fatma_samoura @maryvharvey @maggiemrphy @afdpglobal @socceroos @thepfa #ReleaseHakeem On Monday morning an Australian cave diver who helped rescue the young Thai footballers in July, told the ABC “it does seem the gentleman concerned is the victim of a pretty grave injustice”. Retired vet Craig Challen – who alongside anaesthetist Richard Harris was jointly named  Australian of the Year – said there were questions around the actions of Interpol and perhaps Australia’s home affairs department. “I’m very hopeful justice will prevail in this case.” Bahrain has until 8 February to lodge its extradition documentation or request an extension, otherwise Al-Araibi can be freed. Thailand, which is not a signatory to the UN refugees convention, has so far resisted international pressure to release Al-Araibi back to Australia.Donald Trump raised the possibility of one day granting amnesty to migrants living in the US illegally, after Democrats rejected his latest plan to fund a wall along the southern border and reopen the US government. In a remark that angered Republicans while not being taken seriously by Democrats, Trump suggested legal status could be given to millions of undocumented people as part of a future grand bargain on American immigration law. The president floated the idea in a tweet on Sunday that stressed he was, for now, only offering to extend legal protections for some refugees and people who were brought to the US illegally as children. “Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else,” Trump said. He also said there would “no big push” to deport those already living in the US without permission. The US is more than four weeks into its longest government shutdown, which was triggered by Trump’s refusal to sign a bipartisan congressional spending plan that did not give him the billions of dollars he wants for a wall along the border with Mexico. Trump’s emphatic promise to “build the wall” won him the support of many conservative voters during the 2016 presidential campaign. He claimed he would force Mexico to pay for the wall directly, but has recently effectively conceded this will not happen. And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting! On Saturday, Trump said from the White House that he would agree to limited concessions for some undocumented immigrants if Democrats agreed to give him more than $5bn in public funds for the wall. Trump’s offer would comprise a three-year extension in legal protection for roughly 700,000 “dreamers”, were brought to the US illegally as children, and approximately 300,000 refugees facing an end to temporary legal status. The proposal was dismissed by senior Democrats even before Trump began speaking. Democrats are demanding that Trump reopen the government by signing the existing congressional spending plan before any further negotiations on immigration. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, described Trump’s plan as a “compilation of several previously rejected initiatives” that would not provide lasting security for dreamers and other groups. “What is original in the president’s proposal is not good,” she said. “What is good in the proposal is not original.” Republicans in the Senate will nonetheless take up Trump’s proposals next week. The Oklahoma senator James Lankford told ABC’s This Week the offer was “a reasonable compromise” and said: “The vote this week is not to pass the bill. It’s to open up and say, ‘Can we debate this? Can we amend it? Can we make changes?’” Democrats are unlikely to join in. On Saturday Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, accused Trump of “more hostage taking” as 800,000 federal government workers and hundreds of thousands of contractors continued to either work without pay or endure unpaid time off work. On Sunday, Schumer said he did not think the president's measures would pass the Senate. He also said he would push legislation to shield government workers from eviction or home foreclosure, repossession of cars and penalties for late payment of bills and student loans. Trump, meanwhile, insulted Pelosi and derided the cleanliness of the California city that she represents in Congress. He wrote in a tweet: “And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting!” The president’s proposal also met hostile reactions among many on the Republican right, highlighting a political dilemma that Trump, who claims to be a master dealmaker, has created for himself. Some conservatives dismissed the offer as being akin to an amnesty itself. Ann Coulter, the far-right author, said in a tweet: “Trump proposes amnesty. We voted for Trump and got Jeb!” The former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who was perceived as soft on immigration by the Republican right, was one of several candidates Trump defeated in the party’s 2016 presidential primary contest. Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, rejected the verdict of Coulter and other ultra-hardliners. “It’s not amnesty,” he told Fox News on Sunday. “There’s no permanent status here at all, which is what amnesty contemplates.” Trump has threatened to unilaterally declare an emergency to secure funding for the wall if the Democratic-controlled House refuses to approve his plans. Legal analysts have warned that such a drastic move would likely be halted by the courts. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat, said on Sunday that the chaotic shutdown would only be repeated on future policy disputes if his party caved to Trump’s demands on wall funding before a reopening of the government. “If the president can arbitrarily shut down the government now, he will do it time and again,” Warner told NBC’s Meet The Press. He and other Democrats have proposed passing separate legislation to ensure the out-of-pocket government workers are paid. Several opinion polls have indicated that a majority of Americans oppose Trump’s plan to build a border wall and that more people blame Trump for the ongoing shutdown than blame Democrats in Congress. An average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics currently states that 55.3% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance, the highest figure since last March. A little over 41% of people approve.What is a national emergency? What powers does a president have? Late-night hosts added some facts and figures to Donald Trump’s primetime address on the so-called “border crisis”. Trump’s primetime national address brought up two important questions for The Daily Show: what is a national emergency, and what can a president do with it? It’s not like national emergencies haven’t happened before. “Presidents declare national emergencies all the time,” Trevor Noah said. “What they don’t do is declare national emergencies to win a policy fight with Congress.” You thought Congress would be specific about what a president can call a “national emergency”? Think again. pic.twitter.com/tRsx1UTqVR The supreme court, Noah continued, has already ruled that for a situation to be considered a national emergency, it must be “urgent, infrequent and unexpected”. In other words: “America should have a urinary tract infection,” Noah joked. The supreme court’s criteria don’t really apply to illegal immigration, “which has more of a steady constant drip”, Noah said. “Still needs to be checked out, but it’s not an emergency.” Qualifications aside, during a national emergency, a president has startlingly expansive powers – ability to shut down communication facilities, freeze bank accounts, martial law. You would think, Noah said, that if Congress was going to authorize those powers to a president, “they would be specific about how the president could use them. And if you thought that, you would be thinking wrong.” Instead, Congress left the language intentionally vague because what counts as an emergency, Noah observed, is “different for different people”. “For some people, an emergency is black people barbecuing,” he said. “For other people, waiting for those three dots in a text message is an emergency.” In other words, the first Congress “assumed the president would be somebody responsible and trustworthy and potty-trained”. They didn’t count on a president who amounts to what Noah termed “the black light on American democracy”, exposing democratic loopholes (the president might be able to pardon himself, or not divest from businesses, or show his tax returns) and old mustard stains left and right. Though The Late Show was taped at 5.30pm, hours before Trump’s address, Stephen Colbert had no issue responding to the speech anyway. Colbert admitted that he felt “queasy” on election night because he foresaw an event as surreal as Trump broadcasting from the Oval Office. It was only a matter of time, because the former Celebrity Apprentice host “just misses being on television”, Colbert said. “It’s like when your cousin is staying with you and he brings his dog – you immediately imagine it pooping on your rug. And then eventually it does.” By The Late Show’s taping, it was already reported that Trump was not planning to declare a national emergency to build a border wall – the signature campaign promise that precipitated the government shutdown – without congressional approval. Such a scenario is “all up Trump’s alley”, Colbert said. “Remember, he got elected without the voters’ approval.” Could Trump legally declare a national emergency over the border that is seeing a 20-year low in illegal crossings? Technically, yes. It’s legal gray area, but what constitutes a national emergency is up to a president’s discretion. In other words: “We’re in what legal scholars call an Air Bud scenario,” joked Colbert. “There’s nothing in the rule book that says a golden retriever can’t declare martial law.” And to drum up enough fear to justify the emergency, Colbert continued, the White House “pulled Mike Pence away from his meal of tap water and hard-boiled toast” to preview Trump’s speech on cable news, where he claimed that 17,000 criminals had been apprehended at the border last year. Colbert broke down that figure. In fact, only 6,259 people apprehended at the border were found to have criminal convictions – half of them for trying to cross the border. “So half the criminals who are trying to cross the border are only criminals for trying to cross the border,” Colbert observed. “That’s a real catch-22. As in, they said they caught 17,000 [people] but it was more like 22.” Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, responded to the presidential address with a suggestion for Trump: get scarier. “If you’re Donald Trump, and you make a dumb promise during your campaign 200 times” and you need to get “people panicked enough to waste $5bn” on said promise, then “going on TV and telling us there are bad hombres sneaking over the border – that’s not going to do it,” said Kimmel. “We have plenty of bad hombres here already. “If you really want to make up a fake border crisis, then make it a scary border crisis,” he continued. “Go on TV and … say there is an army of chupacabras crawling in from Tijuana. “You want to build a wall, this is how you do it,” Kimmel said as he introduced a video which dubs “chupacabra” over “immigrants”. In contrast to his suggestion, Trump seemed sedated in his address, Kimmel said. “It was like somebody slipped a Xanax into his McFlurry this afternoon.”Whale whisperer Hori Parata was just seven years old when he attended his first mass stranding, a beaching of porpoises in New Zealand’s Northland, their cries screeching through the air on the deserted stretch of sand. Seven decades later, Parata, 75, has now overseen more than 500 strandings and is renowned in New Zealand as the leading Māori whale expert, called on by tribes around the country for cultural guidance as marine strandings become increasingly complex and fatal. “Man’s greed in the ocean is hurting the whales,” says Parata, a fierce and uncompromising elder of the Ngātiwai tribe of eastern Northland. Hori Parata at his Pātaua farm, the place where he was born and grew up “We’re having to put up with a lot of stuff today. The public want to hug the whales, they want to touch them, they want to feel good – that’s not the thing. We feel that is ridiculous.” Whale experts regard New Zealand – or Aotearoa as it is called by Māori – as the whale stranding capital of the world, with more than 5,000 incidents recorded since 1840, and an average of 300 individual animals beaching themselves each year. Kauri (Te Kaurinui Robert) Parata, watched by his father, Hori Parata, carves a traditional Māori design at their home in Whangārei. Kauri is a member of the Manu Taupunga group that is the organising arm of the whale-body recovery operation started by his father Concrete information on why whales strand remains elusive, but “sickness, navigational error, geographical features, a rapidly falling tide, being chased by a predator, or extreme weather” are all thought to contribute, according to the New Zealand Department of Conservation. Climate change is to blame too, scientists think, with warming ocean temperatures moving whales’ prey closer to the shore and forcing them to pursue their food into shallow waters. Clockwise from top: small whale bones; squid beaks, from the stomach of a sperm whale; the baleen filter-feeder system recovered from a stranded pygmy right whale. November marked the beginning of whale stranding season, and it started with a surge in incidents, according to whale rescue group Project Jonah, with 140 pilot whales beaching and dying on Stewart Island, 10 rare pygmy whales on Ninety Mile beach, 51 stranded and dead on the Chatham Islands and a spate of individual cases around the country. And as more whales beach and die – from exhaustion, heat stroke or seagulls feasting on their flesh – an acute sense of grief is growing among New Zealand’s indigenous people, who regard whales as their ancestors and taonga (treasures). “These days it is like a zoo. People just want to come and gawk at us, without even trying to understand what is happening with the animals and the environment,” says Parata, bristling with anger. “When will we talk about what is hurting these animals out on the sea? They are drowning out there, they can’t breathe, they beach themselves to be with the Aunties.” Ngātiwai believe the whales beach when they are ready to die and want to return to their families, the Māori people. Then, their human families use the whales’ gift of their bodies for sacred carvings, for traditional medicines, and even for compost. There are marked tribal differences across New Zealand and while some tribes work to refloat stranded whales, others like Parata’s Ngātiwai stand back and allow the Department of Conservation and volunteer groups to take the lead in rescue efforts. Then the tribe moves in en masse and holds a karakia (prayer), names each animal and sets to work removing their bones, blubber, eyes and teeth for cultural purposes. Buck Cullen with his daughter Kaiarahi (10 months) in his backyard, where he is storing a pair of massive sperm whale jawbones. Cullen is an integral member of Hori Parata’s whale recovery team But indigenous elders say they aren’t being listened to when they tell the government their whale kin are sick, and trying to escape an increasingly polluted and unpredictable ocean. Earlier this year in South Taranaki, a mass stranding that was described as “unprecedented” left the local Māori tribe scrambling. Security was brought in when thieves attacked a sperm whale with an axe, trying to remove valuable teeth from its jaw. 12 parāoa whales (sperm whales) recently stranded on the South Taranaki coast of Kaupokonui, on a scale not seen near this location in recent memory Parata and his 22-year-old son, Te Kaurinui Robert Parata, were called in to assist. Te Kaurinui was called after the first whale his father ever named, and left university this year to return to Whangārei and study whale tikanga (protocol) and carving. He says mass strandings are getting more local and international attention and money from donations, but traditional knowledge is being dismissed as overly spiritual. Clockwise from top: Te Kaurinui Parata, in front of the carving shed at Hihiaua Cultural Centre in Whangārei; Parata holds three whale teeth recovered from a beached whale – the middle one shows marks where a poacher had attempted to hack it out with an axe before the recovery group arrived; the Pou, a tribal identifier, in front of the carving shed. Māori harvest rights over dead whales have only been officially recognised since 1998, and the practice still elicits horror from some New Zealanders and visitors. “Our own ancestors wouldn’t say to go down there and hug the whales. That’s a modern thing,” says Te Kaurinui. Ngātiwai are currently investigating the link between the crisis of kauri die-back killing New Zealand’s native Tāne Mahuta tree and the increasing number of whale strandings. Parata and his family believe whale oil and byproducts could be used to try to cure Kauri dieback, and want more government money and attention directed towards indigenous knowledge of the interconnectedness of the New Zealand environment, and possible indigenous solutions. “People dismiss us when we tell them our spiritual understanding of whales – why they are beaching, why they are hurting,” says Te Kaurinui. Whangārei Harbour seen from Tamaterau, with mangrove sprouts coming up through the harbourside silt “We are not foreigners in this land. We did not take this land off anyone else. We were not lost waiting for some bullheads to tell us what was going on.” Kaitaia conservation department ranger Jamie Werner of Ngātiwai recently attended his first mass beaching on Ninety Mile Beach. It was the first recorded time pygmy whales had stranded on New Zealand shores. “I arrived at the beach and we leapfrogged between the animals. They were calling out to each other and reassuring each other,” says Werner. “It was a shock. We’re working to adapt but the ocean is changing so fast.” Above, the skull of a bryde’s whale; right, a large-calibre bullet of the type that the New Zealand Department of Conservation uses for euthanasing stranded whales that are beyond rescue The recent spate of mass strandings has been described as “heartbreaking” by the conservation department. But for Parata and his family the slow, painful deaths of their ancestors are personal – and ultimately devastating – for the health of the tribe and the sea. “It’s very emotional. Our ancestors tell us the strandings are a sign from the sea. So what is the sea telling us? We need to listen.”The scruffy camper van in the drive looks promising. Apart from that though, there’s little to suggest that this handsome former vicarage on a sleepy cul-de-sac in a working-class area of Leeds is home to an anarchist. One who once, along with some of her bandmates, very publicly poured a bucket of icy water over the deputy prime minister’s head. There’s even a festive wreath hanging on the front door – that’s practically bourgeois isn’t it? To be honest I’ve been doubting Alice Nutter’s continued anarcho-punk credentials since speaking to her on the phone, when she tipped me off that for an extra £20 I could upgrade to first class on the train. First class?! What, so I can attack the enemy from the inside? No, because it’s easier to get some work done … “Everyone thinks that somehow we’d be preserved in aspic, you know, like aged anarchists,” she says after letting me in. “I think everybody should have the right to first class, I don’t think some people should have it and some people shouldn’t. I think everybody should have the right to what’s good in life – I’m not embarrassed about that.” Alice Nutter offers me a latte. A FRIGGING LATTE! (He drinks a whiskey drink, he drinks a latte drink.) Her 19-year-old daughter, Mae, comes into the kitchen to make toast. She knows “embarrassingly little” about Chumbawamba, or Tubthumping. “I’ve always known mum as a writer,” she says. Because that’s what Alice Nutter is now. A writer of plays, and a TV screenwriter, most recently on Trust, the entertaining drama series about the kidnapping of Jean Paul Getty III. Alice always knew she was going to be a writer, ever since a teacher told her mum and dad that their daughter had an extraordinary command of the English language. But Nutter (or Anne Holden as she was before she punked herself up by deed poll, taking the name of a woman who was hanged in 1612 for witchcraft) didn’t get off to the brightest of starts. Born to a working-class family in Burnley, she had a bad relationship with her dad, got involved with drugs and left school with only a couple of O levels. Fortunately, she started hanging around with a more aspirational group of kids and that basically saved her. Together they became Chumbawamba. (I get knocked down, but I get up again.) Alice, now 57, was with the band for 22 of their 30 years in existence, singing, playing percussion, jumping around. “I’m not particularly musical,” she admits. “I’m a good dancer and I’m theatrical, I could get away with it.” For 20 years they lived in a squat in Leeds, sharing (very little) money, and ideas, becoming vegans (long before everyone became a vegan), getting involved with political causes – South Africa, Northern Ireland, the miners’ strike. More than anything, they were friends. Still are. Were they anarchists? “I don’t think it matters what you call yourself. What you need to do is align yourself with what’s most useful for change.” She says inequality was their main beef: “You can bring everything down to inequality and injustice. And it can be about class, or race, or whatever. At the time we were really anti-parliamentary because we thought they were all the same.” These days Alice knocks on doors for the Labour party, for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. “Promoting co-ops and cooperation, saying they’ll pledge £100m a year to help the homeless, I’ll knock on doors for that,” she says. “I was lucky, I came up through the postwar settlement, I screwed my education up, but I had those opportunities.” She feels that working-class kids today don’t have the chances she had. “I’d never be where I am today without the dole. That paid for me to have a creative life.” She describes herself as “a sort of communist-Marxist. Not a party political Communist, but in the sense of all things in common for people and the idea of sharing. I know I’ve got a lot but I’m totally willing to have less.” There’s a bust of Karl Marx on the mantelpiece, along with one of James Dean. We’ve moved into the cosy living room, with a wood-burner, a Christmas tree and biscuits. Chumbawamba’s big hit, Tubthumping, an anthem of defiance for the ordinary and the oppressed, came out in 1997. It didn’t win anything at the Brit awards ceremony, but that was where John Prescott got his soaking. Chumbawamba were angry about the government’s failure to resolve the Liverpool dockers’ strike. (They were not fans of New Labour or Blair.) They were also drunk, and disappointed – not so much about their own failure to win but about the fact that winning would have given a platform to the sacked scouse docker they’d brought along. Tubthumping also, for the first time, provided Chumbawamba with a bit of money. Ironic perhaps, but equally shared. Alice left the band in 2004, because “if you’re jumping about in your mid-40s, you look fucking stupid”. And because she knew she wasn’t really a musician, she was a writer. “I’d been planning it, in my head, all my life.” At the age of 28, while in Chumbawamba, Alice took an English A level. Plus she’d written short stories, a play for a Bradford anarchist group, and – with the band – a pantomime for the kids of striking miners in south Wales. “We didn’t know owt about theatre, we were making it up as we went along. We’d heard of Brecht, didn’t know fucking anything about it. I’d only been to the theatre twice before I started writing for it. I saw Hamlet and I thought, I can do that.” It wasn’t as easy as that. She soon realised that though she might have the right muscles she didn’t have the craft, and sitting at home trying wasn’t working. There needed to be a plan, focus. It was going to take time and a lot of graft. She started a screenwriting MA but quit when she began to feel it was more about getting a qualification than learning to write. Then she got on a so-you-want-to-be-a-writer course at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, which meant cancelling a holiday. That led to the offer of a three-week run in the Playhouse courtyard of her play Foxes, about a group of asylum seekers in Leeds. “I had a budget for a ladder and bucket, but there were actors, and I was so unbelievably thrilled.” Then came another course, this time with Jimmy McGovern, after which he asked if she would like to pitch to write an episode of The Street. She got it, and would have written more episodes if breast cancer had not got in the way. “A hiccup,” she says. Through another project she met Simon Beaufoy (“Boofoo, Bow Fort, Bow Fowey … I still can’t say his name”), who wrote The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire. He wasn’t immediately overjoyed by his writing partner for this project, which was about undercover cops. “He said to them, ‘Whatever you do, don’t get an activist, get a writer,’” says Nutter. “And they got me, and he said, ‘They got a fucking activist.’ But then I handed the script in and he realised I was a writer.” That one didn’t work out, but the pair realised they saw eye to eye. So when he created Trust, the big-budget TV series for FX directed by Danny Boyle (Oh Danny Boyle, Danny Boyle, Danny Boyle) among others, he hired Nutter – first to write one episode, then another, then to be involved in the whole thing. Trust rigorously explores money, family and power structures. And not just regarding the dysfunctional Gettys, but also the Italian kidnappers. Is the subject matter, the super rich, surprising for a Tubthumping anarchist to be involved with? No, she says, because it’s full of political themes. “And if you look at really rich people, there’s a socialism in the rich, they share everything with each other. It’s just no one else gets it.” It was also the most fun Nutter has ever had at work. “I just kept thinking: I can’t believe my luck.” Now she’s working on another series with Beaufoy – about happiness, artificial intelligence and algorithms. Two decades of Chumbawamba was, she says, the perfect training for being a screenwriter. “Because it’s collaborative. And because people clapping [what you do] for 20 years gives you a lot of confidence. I realised I had the rigour to start something and finish it.” It’s time for photos. Where does the photographer want her? Somewhere that looks bourgeois, like the flash kitchen, I suggest. “You’re obsessed,” she says. She would give me a lift to the station, but her car has a puncture. Is there an Uber service in Leeds, I wonder? Yes, but she doesn’t use them, on principle. “Once they’ve got the prices down they drive everyone else out.” She calls a local cab company instead. Credentials, credibility, dignity – all remain intact.Sexual abuse of boys is “barely addressed” by the laws in many countries, according to a global study that warns of a lack of support for young male survivors. The study, which examined child rape laws in 40 countries, found that just under half of jurisdictions lacked legal protections for boys. In many cases, laws were specific to girls and did not recognise boys as victims. Researchers also identified a tendency for support services, including shelters and legal aid, to be geared towards women and girls. “Often this is bundled up into an issue of violence against women, and therefore it is catering to girls rather than boys,” said Katherine Stewart, a consultant for Economist Intelligence Unit, which produced the report. It is estimated that 18% of girls and 8% of boys globally have experienced childhood sexual abuse, according to a study conducted in 2011. However, abuse among boys is thought to be higher in some countries, such as Kenya, where a Unicef study found that two in every 10 men experienced abuse in childhood. Social stigma, macho stereotypes and homophobia all contribute towards boys being less likely to report abuse, according to the report. The authors suggested that boys should be given tools and terminology that allow them to feel more comfortable reporting abuse or exploitation. The report, which ranked countries according to how well they are confronting child sexual abuse and exploitation, warned that tackling abuse should be a global priority. Greater internet access, combined with the growth of young populations in many countries, has increased the number of children at risk, the report said. Heightened instability due to armed conflict or climate change has also placed children in more danger. According to the rankings, Britain, Sweden and Canada are the countries tackling abuse most effectively. Pakistan, Egypt and Mozambique were rated at the bottom of the list. Across all countries, researchers found limited data on the prevalence of child abuse and exploitation. Only half of countries have produced or endorsed data on the proportion of the population that has experienced child abuse. Only five collect such data on child sexual exploitation, a form of abuse where a child receives gifts, money or affection in return for sexual activity. In some cases, countries only collected data on girls who had experienced abuse, or did not specify the gender of the victim. The report found that the UK had improved reporting among men, with cases in England and Wales climbing from 3,819 in 2006-07 to 12,130 in 2016-17, according to the Office for National Statistics. This was prompted by increased awareness following the #MeToo campaign and high-profile cases reported in the media, such as the child sexual abuse scandal in English football. India was cited as having the best legal framework to protect victims, due partly to the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, which focuses on protecting boys as well as girls from sexual violence. According to a government survey, more than 50% of children in India have experienced one or more forms of sexual abuse. The report described child abuse as a largely silent epidemic. Research suggests 120 million girls have been subjected to some form of sexual abuse, but only a tiny proportion – 1% – of rape survivors have sought professional help. The study was developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit with support from the World Childhood Foundation, Oak Foundation and the Carlson Family Foundation.Condé Nast, the owner of glossy magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ, has slumped to a £14m annual loss as it battles to reshape its business for the digital future. The high-end magazine publisher reported a pre-tax loss of £13.6m in 2017 – a huge swing from the £6.6m profit recorded the previous year – according to its most recent financial filings made public on Thursday. The company revealed that revenue was down 6.6%, from £121m to £113m. The reversal in fortune came in a tumultuous year that saw the British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman leave after more than 25 years, while Nicholas Coleridge, who had run Condé Nast Britain for almost three decades, stepped back to become chairman. The group also halted publication of Glamour as a monthly print title. “[It] was a transformational year for Condé Nast Britain,” the publisher said in its Companies House filing. “Appointing new leadership across many of our brands, we reorganised team structures and relocated all staff into Vogue House [London]. Condé Nast continues to make significant investments in its long-term digital growth.” The slide into the red didn’t stop the publisher’s directors from taking home a combined £2.4m, the same as the previous year when the company was in the black. There was also a payment of £1.39m in compensation for “loss of office” for an unnamed member of staff. Condé Nast said that much of the loss was attributable to one-off exceptional items, and that excluding those costs the publisher made a year-on-year profit of about £4m. The exceptional charges included £5.7m on business restructuring, including bringing all business units together at the Vogue House office, £2.2m in pension commitments and a near-£5m provision against a loan to Comag, a magazine distribution joint venture with rival Hearst it pulled out of. The publisher cut more than 50 jobs to employ 610 staff, however the group’s total wage bill still rose £5m to £47.2m. “Condé Nast Britain’s underlying profit in 2017 was positive,” said a spokeswoman for the company. “Due to exceptional costs, inter-company accounting and the contributions to the closed defined benefit pension scheme, the picture in the public domain is not representative of our profitability.” The tough trading conditions in the magazine market were also evident in the financial results of the Stylist Group, which has seen its losses double. Stylist was formerly called Shortlist Media, before it shut down Shortlist, the UK’s biggest men’s publication, late last year. The publisher, which is now focused on building its female-targeted title Stylist, reported a loss of £8.6m in the year to the end of March, up from £4.6m the previous year. Revenues rose marginally to £22.8m, as the publisher expanded into non-print businesses including events and built digital income. The Stylist Group is now owned by the Scottish publisher DC Thomson, which also owns an array of newspapers, magazines and genealogy sites including the Dundee Courier, Aberdeen Press & Journal, the Beano and Findmypast.If there is one thing that Liverpool should know, squatting defiantly at the top of the Premier League, it is that Manchester City have no intention of seeing another team remove the championship trophy from their possession. Pep Guardiola’s team made that clear when Liverpool came here two Thursdays ago and, in their latest victory, it quickly became clear the reigning champions are quite happy playing this game of catch-up – for now, at least. By the time they were finished the gap at the top had come back down to four points, Gabriel Jesus had fully justified Guardiola’s decision to keep him in the starting lineup and the goalkeeper, Ederson, had been impudent enough to stroll out of City’s penalty area and nonchalantly start to stroke around the ball in midfield. The crowd loved those moments and, briefly, it did seem to cross Ederson’s mind that he might continue those little one-twos even further upfield and join everybody else in the hunt for more goals. Do not bet against it happening at some point. The only surprise, perhaps, was that City did not do more to enhance their goal difference – now plus-42 compared with Liverpool’s plus-40 – once Jesus had scored twice in the first half, either side of Willy Boly’s red card for a studs-to-ankle challenge on Bernardo Silva. Two ahead against 10 men, City coasted through the second half but restricted themselves to only one more goal, courtesy of the Wolves captain, Conor Coady, inadvertently turning a deflected cross into his own net. To say it was comfortable would be an understatement and, in the process, City kept up their record of having scored at least twice in every home game this season. Their next goal will be their 100th in all competitions in 2018-19 and it is another measure of their firepower that they could win so convincingly on a night when Sergio Agüero and Kevin de Bruyne were restricted to substitute roles. At the same time it is also fair to say Wolves were obliging opponents for a side with City’s needs. Boly did at least apologise to Silva and, in days gone by, the defender would probably have had a reasonable defence that he took the ball first. Unfortunately for Boly, he ought to have realised that is no mitigation in modern football when the follow-through involves studs connecting with a player’s ankle. City were already leading at that point and the Frenchman’s red card meant the night swiftly became an exercise in damage limitation for the away side. Jesus had opened the scoring with a close-range finish from Leroy Sané’s low delivery, a goal that originated from a beautifully weighted pass forward by Aymeric Laporte, and when the Brazilian doubled the lead with a penalty six minutes before half-time it meant he had accumulated seven goals in eight days. Did Ryan Bennett make enough contact on Raheem Sterling to warrant the decision? Sterling was travelling at speed, darting past Bennett and Coady, and he does occasionally tend to make the most of any form of contact inside the penalty area. Yet it was a clumsy effort from Bennett, who missed the ball, and ultimately Sterling was too quick for him. Jesus came forward, stuttering his run-up and sidefooted his kick past Rui Patrício in the Wolves goal. Boly’s early departure meant Leander Dendoncker moving into a more defensive role and the visitors switching to a 5-2-2 system with little hope but to defend robustly and try to catch their opponents on the break. Truthfully, however, a side with 10 men was bound to be vulnerable against City’s pass-them-to-death approach. City have not been defeated by a promoted side in 35 attempts, going back to February 2007 against Reading, and Wolves have not won here in the top division since December 1979. At least the Wolves fans had not lost their sense of humour, greeting every touch with “olés” during one passage early in the second half when the 10 men reminded themselves what it was like to keep the ball for a couple of minutes. No longer than that, mind. City soon had it back and set about re-establishing their superiority, keeping their first clean sheet in 10 league fixtures. Instead Wolves had to repel a City side for whom Sané was excellent, Ederson was rarely troubled and David Silva established himself as the club’s highest appearance-maker in the Premier League era. This was the Spaniard’s 267th league appearance in City’s colours, taking him above Joe Hart from the modern era – though still some way short of the proper club record, set by Alan Oakes with 564 games from 1959 to 1976. Silva was replaced by De Bruyne on the hour and it was the Belgian’s cross that led to the third goal. Romain Saïss, one of the Wolves substitutes, headed it towards his own goal but the final touch came off Coady to benefit a City side that now have Huddersfield, Burnley and Newcastle, all in the bottom six, as their next three assignments. February looks trickier, starting with back-to-back games against Arsenal and Chelsea, but it is fair to say Liverpool must be acutely aware of the team looming in their wing mirrors.Alan Ochoa worked at Tesla’s Fremont plant in California for four years. He was laid off recently along with his entire department in quality control, many of whom were also long-time employees. “I have no idea how they expect to run without us,” said Ochoa. The electric car company releases its latest financial results on Wednesday and analysts are not expecting good news. On 18 January, founder Elon Musk sent out a mass email to employees announcing 7% of the company’s workforce were being laid off, in addition to cuts to temporary and contracted employees, and warning of a “very difficult” road ahead. Ochoa predicts Tesla’s “difficult road” will not be helped by laying off experienced staff. He said: “My last repair on Friday was finding a rear fascia was missing a screw so if you pulled on it, it would pop out. I grabbed a drill, the screw, got down on my knees and made the repair myself. No one would have known about it unless they tugged on the edges of the rear fascia like I had made it a habit to do. “But I know once the car starts driving it would become unseated due to the wind pulling it out.” An internal document provided to laid-off employees explained those who were dismissed were selected “by evaluating the criticality of each position, identifying duplicate roles, and by assessing the specific skills and abilities of each individual in the company”. Workers past and present believe Tesla is trying to cut costs by getting rid of more expensive, and experienced, staff. The company disputes this. Tesla has a one through five pay ranking system for employees. Five represents the most senior. Anthony Lamendola worked at the Lathrop facility, also in California, for nearly seven years before being laid off. Lamendola, who was also level five, said: “They let all the people go who have been there level rive or more, all level fours and threes, only kept one, two, some threes. I’ve never been late, never called in, never been wrote up in over six years. I’m just am in shock for them to do this and keep temps and new hires.” A current Tesla employee at Lathrop who requested anonymity for fear of losing their job, noted temporary employees and recent hires were kept on, while many long-time employees were laid off as part of the cuts. “This was a move I was expecting due to the high price of raw metal from our president’s tariff war with China,” the worker said. “Tesla Lathrop has a large amount of people that wanted to go union.” Back at the Fremont plant, a current employee who has worked for over four years at the plant was transferred to work on car seats as part of restructuring. He noted many transferred employees took hourly pay cuts, and a few walked off the job as a result. “It seems like they tried to get rid of the older, more experienced guys making more money than the entry level. I personally see and feel this is aimed at the higher-waged employees,” the employee said. “They replaced me with a $19 an hour worker. I make $26 an hour.” He was told his transfer would be a lateral move and wouldn’t include a pay cut, but he’s still wary that his pay will be reduced from changing departments. “I loved Tesla at one point. But four and a half years of living what I lived through, I don’t feel the love, what a good, dedicated employee should feel from a company.” Another employee at the Fremont plant noted that dozens of newly hired workers started training the week after the mass layoff, and that there was also an elimination of overtime. “You get in trouble with one minute of overtime, which is counter-productive because you have people wrapping up earlier than they normally would so they don’t risk going over,’ the worker said. A Tesla spokesperson said: “We are continuing to hire for essential positions.” The company denied senior and high-waged employees were targeted in the layoff. Tesla said: “Regarding the number of impacted employees, here’s what we said in our blogpost: as a result of the above, we unfortunately have no choice but to reduce full-time employee headcount by approximately 7% (we grew by 30% last year, which is more than we can support) and retain only the most critical temps and contractors.” The cuts have been severe. A third employee at the Fremont plant explained his department was cut in half, with the employees who survived this round of layoffs forced to do even more work. “We’re going to have to take over their positions,” the employee said. “We have to do our job, plus the contractor job. Usually we have to work for two people, now, we’re going to have to work for three people.” Tesla has suffered quality control setbacks in the past and workers fear those issues may be worsened by the cuts. Ochoa explained he was making several dozen repairs a day on quality control, depending on what line he was on. He said: “I fear the quality will be greatly diminished. Not all of my repairs were easy to see but would have a lasting effect.”Parliament must “seriously consider” levying a tax on meat to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help to render the farming industry carbon neutral, the Green party MP, Caroline Lucas, is urging. She will say on Friday that a meat tax in the UK could be offset for more sustainable meat producers, such as organic livestock farmers, through more money for sustainable agriculture schemes. Lucas will tell the Oxford Farming Conference, an annual gathering of farmers from across the UK, that the country must prioritise “more humane and human-scale methods of livestock farming, together with support for farmers to transition to less livestock”. “If the world’s diet doesn’t change, we simply can’t avoid the worst effects of climate change,” Lucas will say, in a stark warning timed to coincide with the push for people to adopt a vegan diet for a month, the “Veganuary” movement. In a call likely to be controversial, she will say: “Better manure management and careful selection of feed can both help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but – at the risk of incurring the wrath of the energy secretary, who said recently that encouraging people to eat less meat would be the worst sort of nanny state ever – we need serious consideration of measures like a meat tax.” She said that it would take “more than motivated consumers to bring about sustainability” in agriculture. Globally, livestock rearing is estimated to be responsible for about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions. Lucas has tabled a parliamentary motion to require farming to be net zero in emissions as quickly as possible, which would involve ways to reduce fertiliser use and increase the amount of organic matter in the nation’s soils, both issues that Michael Gove, the environment secretary, also espouses. She said: “We need to bring the whole food chain into the circle of responsibility, not leaving farmers to work on their own, together with clear signals that society will play its part in funding this transition through a new agriculture policy.” But the notion of Veganuary has come under attack from some at the conference, with the National Sheep Association (NSA) claiming the movement, which encourages people to give up animal products for the month and consider permanent changes to their diet for health and environmental reasons, was part of a “campaign against livestock farming”. Phil Stocker, chief executive of the NSA, defended British sheep farming as working to improve the environment rather than causing damage to it. “Our concern is that our unique, grass-based method of sheep production in Britain is hidden within more global and general statistics,” he said. He contrasted the UK’s sheep farming, which includes many upland areas unsuitable for other forms of agriculture and is one of the least intensive forms of livestock farming, with the megafarms and feedlots that characterise beef, pork and poultry production in many parts of the world, chiefly the US but increasingly being brought to the UK. “We are seeing criticisms from welfare campaigners, rewilders, climate change campaigners and health campaigners – but all these are connected and ignore the fact that UK sheep farming works very much in harmony with our environment, our landscapes and our human ecology, creating a countryside the majority of the public love and producing a food product that is healthy and nutritious within a balanced diet,” he said. Stocker said he opposed a meat tax: “The right meat, consumed sensibly, should be incentivised and not taxed. Sheep production is not damaging to the environment or to health – sheep mainly eat grass and grass is part of a complex and natural cycling of carbon, with soil storing carbon in organic matter. “Any meat tax would be likely to affect all meat production and consumption – and there are many different forms of meat production. A meat tax would end up putting further pressure on primary producers – in the case of sheep this would impact on the profitability of many small family farms, yet these are highly desirable and deliver a host of economic, social and environmental goods.” Earlier Gove told the conference that advances in synthetic biology meant that in the future we would be able to create traditional farming products such as meat, milk or eggs in laboratories, adding that “the potential for Britain to lead in this revolution is huge”. But asked whether the UK should be looking into increasing its production of “fake meat”, the National Farmers Union president, Minette Batters, said: “When you have one of the very few areas in the world where you have the right climate for producing food, that surely is what you should be doing.” She added that “95% of what we eat is produced in soil, it’s nutrient dense and that is why it is such a valuable food. Why would you want to be stepping back from that?”Eva Huffaker hoped for an apology. What she got was another Sieg Heil. When the 15-year-old Jewish student at Baraboo high school first saw the now notorious prom night photograph of her fellow students with their arms raised stiffly in a Nazi salute, she picked out the faces she recognised. “I didn’t really believe it when I first saw it. It took a while to sink in that I knew some of the people in the photo and what they were doing and how offensive and hateful that gesture is. It was very shocking and terrifying,” said Huffaker. The picture’s sweep of social media drew a torrent of denunciations and abuse from around the country against the young men, their teachers and Baraboo officials, including death threats. But the rural Wisconsin city is grappling with a more complex response that has opened a divide over how to see the actions of the teenagers in the photo – a question framed by some as being with or against the students. Amid a series of community meetings, some in Baraboo are pressing for a collective apology from the boys even if it is accompanied by an acceptance that their salutes were more a prank than an endorsement of fascism. Others regard them as victims subject to a form of lynching with their futures tarnished by accusations of sympathy for white supremacy. “I can’t imagine being a 17-year-old and having the world looking upon you as the personification of evil,” said Keri Olson, one of the organisers of a series of meetings in Baraboo to consider what to make of the photographs and how to react. “This is a community of 12,000 that all of a sudden has been cast in this light around the world. How do you prepare for that? How do you respond to that? It’s been a state of crisis here.” The divide is reflected at the high school itself. Some of the 60 students in the picture have apologised directly to Huffaker. A couple came to her house to say sorry to her family too. But Huffaker said they are the minority and that within the school, the teenagers in the photo are more often seen as the victims of the backlash. “A lot of students have been saying, ‘It’s just a joke, they didn’t mean it. This is being taken out of proportion and everyone just needs to calm down and just let it go.’ Which is really upsetting to me because people think that it’s OK just because they didn’t mean it. There are students who realise that it wasn’t OK but on the whole a lot of people are just trying to dismiss it,” she said. Huffaker said some students even appeared to endorse the photo after it was posted on social media with the hashtag #barabooproud. “There were students who immediately after the picture came out went around saying ‘We’re Baraboo proud’, kind of implying that they’re not against this. And there have been antisemitic comments,” she said. “There was an incident where a kid looked at me and he did the white supremacy symbol and then he stood up and did the Sieg Heil.” The origins of the photograph remain debated and disputed even by those who were there. The photographer was a parent, Pete Gust, whose son is in the picture. Gust said he asked the students to wave and that he was surprised when they raised their arms in a fascist salute. Some parents were upset. One woman shouted to her son to put his arm down. The photo was taken in May but only became public when Gust put it on his website in November for reasons he has so far declined to explain despite demands from furious parents to know why he thought that was a good idea. Local officials were swift to condemn the picture. The district schools administrator, Lori Mueller, criticised the students for “making extremely inappropriate gestures”, said the photo “is not reflective of the educational values and beliefs” of Baraboo schools, and promised to “pursue any and all appropriate actions, including legal”. The police chief announced an investigation. That prompted Pastor Dan Gunderson of Walnut Hill Bible church, who knows some of the students and their parents from services and coaching a wrestling team, to come to the boys’ defence. “It felt like our community, in order to prove that’s not our community, felt it necessary to say those voices don’t represent us. In that moment it felt like they were turning on the boys,” he said. The pastor challenged Mueller, telling her she was well-intentioned but mistaken and had “thrown the boys under the bus” by playing into the hands of people he accused of pursuing a wider political agenda by piling responsibility for rising extremism in the US on to a group of teenagers. “There’s a desire to have a narrative of small-town America being impacted by the presidency of Donald Trump and neo-Nazism and antisemitism and white supremacy,” he said. Gunderson wrote a Facebook posting under the heading “I Stand with Our Baraboo Boys” which was quickly read across the city and came to mark out the divisions. The pastor thinks it is the boys who are owed an apology. He said that from conversations with those involved he believes the students were weary of the photo shoot and restless at being told by Gust to make different poses. “One boy said very specifically, ‘I was making fun of the photographer. I was kind of mocking his request for us to do this’,” he said. But not all. A couple of students raised a fist, resistance-style. Several others kept their arms down including one who looks aghast. Some are clearly waving. One of the students, Jordan Blue, stands slightly apart on the far side of the back row. He said that some of the students deliberately raised their arms in a Nazi salute but did it as a joke. He also said that is not a justification. Gunderson said the students are being accused of an intent they did not have. “These boys are branded racists when they’re not. This branding isn’t just for now. In just a snapshot they are completely redefined and their futures are in jeopardy. Some of these boys come from extremely liberal homes. Parents – tough, tough guys – are coming to me with tears saying, ‘What’s going to happen to my son coming out of this?’” said Gunderson. “Nobody cares to hear it but I think these boys feel like they survived something. They’re traumatised. They’re scared.” The social media clamour called for the young men to be suspended or expelled from school. The district ruled that out because the photo was not taken on school property and the actions are protected by first amendment rights. In any case few in the city want the teenagers to face any more punishment than they have already suffered from public vilification. Eva Huffaker’s mother, Marcy, thinks the boys made a stupid mistake. “I think it comes from not thinking, not knowing. I have teenage boys. I don’t want them to be punished for the rest of their lives for being stupid. But there’s a lot of people who think this isn’t a big deal,” she said. Marcy Huffaker sees Gunderson’s framing of the issue as support or otherwise for the young men in the photograph as avoiding the consequences of their actions. “It felt to us like you’re either with the boys, and you want to protect the boys, or you’re against the boys,” she said. “But I’m not sure it really matters what their intentions were at this point because it’s a fact of that photo that has done such hurt.” As Baraboo struggles to find a response, it has also got a closer look at itself. Olson said the controversy has been a shock to a city that regards itself as liberal and tolerant. Sixty percent of its votes went to the Democrats running for state governor and US senator in November’s elections. “Smithsonian magazine named Baraboo the fourth-best small town to visit in America. So when you have that mindset that, wow, we must be a pretty great community, we have a lot to celebrate, but then all of a sudden this happens and the world sees Baraboo in a very different light we need to take something that feels very powerful and we need to do good with it,” she said. I feel like we are actually pretty desensitised because it’s so natural for our generation to make that homophobic or racist comment Yet community meetings have revealed to residents that the city is not as tolerant as they think it is. Black, gay and transgender residents have spoken up about discrimination and marginalisation. That includes some students at the high school. Eva Huffaker said she is not surprised. “There’s definitely a lot of racism in the school. There is also a lot of homophobia,” she said. “There’s a certain portion of students who are very aware of these things and definitely they call it out when they see it. But on the whole I feel like we are actually pretty desensitised to a lot of these topics because it’s so natural for our generation to make that homophobic comment or that racist comment. And because it happens so much I feel like people don’t really understand how hurtful and hateful those comments actually are.” The school district announced 13 “educational steps” including students visiting the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie and speakers about the Nazi genocide of the Jews at schools. One resident suggested Baraboo twinning with a German town near a former concentration camp. The school is also planning a greater focus on social justice. Olson put together an event with a former white supremacist who formed a group that included a man who murdered six people in a Wisconsin Sikh temple in 2012 and another man whose father was killed in the massacre. But for the Huffakers and others, Baraboo will not get to grips with the true impact of its sons raising their arms in a Hitler salute, and laughing at it, until an apology is forthcoming. Baraboo brought in a rabbi, Laurie Zimmerman, from the state capital, Madison, who pressed the Jewish concept of restorative justice that would require the boys to acknowledge the harm they have done and make amends. “This concept of teshuvah carries with it the recognition that we all make mistakes. We all do things we wish we hadn’t done,” she said. But lawyers are advising the teenagers and their families that in light of the police investigation and general climate they should not make any public statement and certainly not apologise. Marcy Huffaker said some of the boys have come to her house to say sorry to her family. “It’s been awkward and uncomfortable,” she said. “There’s lots of kids that we know and we’re friends with their families. The kids that have come to talk to us have realised what a terrible thing that was. Some said there was no intention of doing the Heil Hitler salute. Others have said differently.” Eva Huffaker is uncertain about how she feels about the students whose lives are likely to be defined by that one moment captured by the camera. “We were at a community gathering and someone was comparing them to sexual assault victims and Parkland shooter victims. That did not seem right. I understand that they have gotten threats for their lives and they are a victim in that sense. And their whole futures are basically affected by this. But they got themselves into this,” she said. “While they may not know the full effect of how hurtful that gesture is, they know who used it. They know, and a majority of the people in the picture still chose to do it.”Two months after Donald Trump fired his original attorney general, the Senate will on Tuesday cross-examine his proposed replacement, William Barr, a Washington stalwart who served in the role under George HW Bush. The pick has been welcomed by Republicans and even some Trump detractors, who reason that Barr is a known quantity and that Trump might have done much worse, given his extraordinary views on presidential impunity and his expressed hostility toward the Department of Justice (DoJ). But some Democrats, former federal prosecutors and DoJ figures are warning that Barr might not be such a known quantity after all, and that confirming him as attorney general would threaten the work of the special counsel Robert Mueller and the justice department more broadly. Barr’s nomination has surfaced at an unusually fraught moment in Washington. While clashes between the White House and justice department are not unheard of, Trump’s war on the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, his attacks on top justice department figures such as the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and former FBI director, James Comey, and his stated belief that he should be able to direct justice department investigations – all combined with the sheer magnitude of alleged criminal conduct by former Trump aides and business associates and possibly Trump himself – means the next attorney general will wield power with likely historic consequences. His view is outside the mainstream even of conservative, basic unitary executive theory The announcement last week of the planned departure of Rosenstein, who is seen as having faithfully protected the Mueller investigation against serious pressure from the White House, ratcheted stakes even higher. Critics of Barr have raised an alarm about a memo that Barr submitted to the department last year, ostensibly unsolicited, arguing that Mueller’s investigation of Trump for alleged obstruction of justice was “fatally misconceived”. “The new Barr memo makes it clear that his view is outside the mainstream even of conservative, basic unitary executive theory,” said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration. “It goes beyond that, to the point where it comes very close to putting the president above the law.” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Democrat on the judiciary committee, which will question Barr and vote on his nomination, said: “The memorandum is deeply worrisome because in effect he says the president is above the law. “That’s incorrect as a matter of law, but certainly for an attorney general to have that position is deeply wrong.” Other critics have raised concerns that Barr, who as attorney general in the early 1990s recommended that Bush pardon six Reagan officials caught up in the Iran-Contra affair, was nominated to defend the White House, not just to run the justice department. These critics point to Barr’s recent record as a Trump apologist. After the firing of Comey in 2017, Barr published an op-ed in the Washington Post praising the move. He also has supported Trump’s call for a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s ties to a uranium mining company that benefited from a decision made while she was secretary of state, a marginal view mainly consigned to the fever swamps of the far right. Count me as one Democrat who thinks President Trump has made an excellent choice Barr, 68, grew up in New York City and graduated from George Washington University law school before taking up a post on Ronald Reagan’s domestic policy staff. At the justice department he served in the Office of Legal Counsel, as deputy attorney general and finally, from 1991 to 1993, as attorney general, spotlighting gang violence and prison conditions – Barr argued that judges were dictating unrealistic quality-of-life standards. Barr – who is in his spare time an expert bagpiper – was also an immigration hardliner, hiring hundreds of new border guards and, according to a 1992 CBS News report that called him “a tough guy who’s not afraid to ruffle feathers”, swearing in some of them himself “to underscore he meant business”. A 1991 Los Angeles Times report noted Barr’s “dry, self-deprecating wit and full-bodied laugh” but called him “a staunch conservative who rarely hesitates to put his hardline views into action”, citing a 1989 legal opinion in which Barr authorized federal agents to seize fugitives overseas without a foreign government’s permission. However, even some strong Trump critics believe that, based on his past career, Barr would reprise his leadership of the justice department in good faith and not with undue deference to the White House. “Count me as one Democrat who thinks President Trump has made an excellent choice in his decision to nominate William P Barr,” Harry Litman, a former prosecutor who worked under Barr, wrote in December. “Was he, and is he, very conservative? You bet … But the roots of his political views concern the rule of law, public safety and the fair application of legal rules to all.” But others believe that Barr’s memo criticizing Mueller is an indication that his judgment or perspective might have changed in the 25 years since he was known for steering the justice department with a fair hand. “That reputation would make him all the more effective an attack dog for Trump,” said Kinkopf, who has argued elsewhere that Barr’s “expansive view of presidential power” laid the legal groundwork for the George W Bush-era torture program. “If he has gone over the to the dark side, so to speak, his past credible service makes him all the more effective in undermining the rule of law, and all the more dangerous.”The fight to eliminate “fatbergs” is to receive a major boost with the launch of a universal standard for wet wipes, clarifying which can be safely flushed down the toilet. Manufacturers of wipes will be able to use a “fine to flush” symbol on their packaging – drawn up by the water industry – provided they pass stringent tests. The logo aims to reassure consumers that the products do not contain plastic and will break down in the sewer system instead of clogging up sewers and contributing to fatbergs. Michael Roberts, the chief executive of Water UK, which represents major water and sewerage companies in Britain, said: “This is an important step in the battle against blockages. We’ve all seen the impact of fatbergs, and we want to see fewer of them. “Improving the environment is at the core of what the water industry does, and the new ‘fine to flush’ standard that we’ve created will make it easier for consumers to buy an environmentally friendly product instead of one which clogs up drains and sewers.” Cities across the world are growing used to the scourge of subterranean fatbergs – caused mainly by a buildup of wet wipes, fats, oils and grease into a solid mass. These include a 250-metre fatberg in Whitechapel in London in 2017, which weighed as much as 19 elephants, and a 64-metre fatberg discovered this week in Sidmouth, Devon. In 2017, the biggest investigation of sewer blockages in UK history showed wipes flushed down toilets caused serious problems in the sewerage system. The study found non-flushable wet wipes could account for about 93% of the material causing blockages. The industry has long been campaigning to stamp out “misleading” labelling of many wipes described as flushable, but that do not break down quickly when they enter the sewer system. Laura Foster, the head of clean seas at the Marine Conservation Society, said: “In 2018, during our annual Great British Beach Clean and survey, we found on average 12 wet wipes per 100 metres of beach cleaned – an increase of more than 300% over the past decade. We want a simple system where a product is either clearly labelled as ‘do not flush’ or has passed the ‘fine to flush’ standard.”In the Dart valley near Totnes, the Sharpham Trust meditation centre offers mindfulness retreats of different lengths throughout the year, including walking and singing breaks. Some are held in the estate’s mansion, others in the Barn Retreat nearby. For full immersion in the natural world, its Nature Connection retreat has accommodation in bell tents in the woods, with guided meditation and mindfulness activities, foraging and feasting on wild food.• Three-night meditation retreats from £145 full-board. Three-night Nature Connection retreat, 25 July, £335 full-board, sharphamtrust.org Wild Voice retreats combine meditation, singing, nature and adventure. The singing includes vocal workshops and outdoor choir sessions – participants don’t need to read music and no one has to sing a solo (phew!). Works range from classical pieces to pop songs, and everyone takes home a live recording. Mornings begin with meditation, yoga and tai chi, and outdoor activities might be kayaking, guided nature walks and campfire singsongs. There are three locations: a mansion in the Scottish Borders, a castle in Gloucestershire and a country estate near Stratford-upon-Avon. The first Wild Voice festival will take place this year in Northamptonshire (from £149, 31 May to 2 June).• Three days full-board £399, four days £499, next retreat 26-29 April, wildvoiceadventures.com One of the largest residential meditation centres in Europe, Gaia House, near Denbury, offers silent retreats in the Buddhist tradition (though all faiths and none are welcome). Group retreats range from two to nine nights – with titles like A Path of Peace and Kindness and Awakening and Liberating the Heart – and are led by different teachers, with accommodation mostly in shared rooms in the lovely old country house. Three daily vegetarian or vegan meals are included. The grounds and countryside are good for peaceful strolls, with views over Dartmoor.• Practising Samadhi (meditation) retreat, 2-4 March, from £128 full-board, plus voluntary donation for the teacher, gaiahouse.co.uk Leave the outside world behind on a retreat at the brand new Vajrasana centre in the Suffolk countryside east of Bury St Edmunds. Courses are run by the London Buddhist Centre, but you don’t need to be Buddhist to attend. Besides meditation instruction, there are workshops and talks as well as periods of silence – digital detox is encouraged, with no mobile phones or laptops. Accommodation is in shared rooms and vegan meals are eaten together. There are also yoga weekends, regulars’ weekends and longer retreats.• Two-night weekends run eight times a year, next one 25 January, £195 full-board, return coach transfers from London, £42, lbc.org.uk Aimed at the solo traveller, Serenity retreats, held in May, June and September on the Ionian island of Lefkada, offer a proper holiday with time on the beach or pottering in the village alongside meditation. Self-catering apartments (for one) are right on the sea, and daily guided meditation, mindful walks through olive groves and mindful movement sessions are included – led by down-to-earth zen meditation teacher Kim Bennett. There are various optional wellbeing courses (such as the art of self-compassion, donation based) as well as a choice of on-site treatments. • From £509 for a week, with accommodation and instruction, meals and flights extra, serenityretreat.co.uk The Moulin de Chaves riverside meditation centre near Cubjac was once a Zen monastery and makes an idyllic place to retreat from the world. Guests stay in the beautiful main house or pre-erected tents in the grounds with beds and bedding provided (camping is also sometimes possible). The programme for 2019 includes a week of mindful yoga and meditation (15-20 July) led by Moulin founder Martin Aylward and his wife Gail and conducted mostly in silence. A new yoga hall built of local oak with hemp walls opens this year.• From €300 full-board in a shared tent or €325 in a room, plus voluntary donation for teaching, moulindechaves.org Based in a family-run hotel in the ancient hilltop town of Assisi in Umbria, non-profit organisation Simply Peace runs retreats combining meditation with daily walks to local sacred sites (many associated with St Francis, who was born here). No experience is necessary for the heart-centred meditation practised, and one-to-one guidance is included. There’s plenty of free time in the afternoon to explore the town and surrounding countryside too.• Five-night retreat from €995 half-board, assisiretreats.org Learn mindful cooking, eating and walking on a five-day silent meditation retreat at the coastal Bobbio Centre, 45 miles south of Dublin, in County Wicklow. Paola Vais, who trained at the Ballymaloe cookery school, leads vegan and vegetarian cooking classes. Mindful meditation, walking and eating sessions are run by Marjó Oosterhoff, owner of the Passaddhi Retreat centre in County Cork. There’s plenty of time for beach strolls and local exploring too. No experience needed.• 19-23 June, €300 for food and accommodation, guidance on a donation basis, passaddhi.com Delve deep into the forests and mountains of Somiedo parque natural in Asturias on a week-long mindfulness and walking retreat led by UK-based therapist and trainer Frankie Sikes. Accommodation is in rustic self-catering apartments in La Pinietsa, a traditional stone farmhouse, and the mindful, silent walks are gentle and slow (practised as a type of meditation), with packed lunches provided (and phones and cameras left behind). The area is stunningly beautiful and there’s a free day to explore towns such as Oviedo or take a bear-watching trip.• Seven-day retreat £650, including transfers, breakfast and some lunches, various dates, walkinginspirit.co.uk This retreat at Villa Azul in northern Fuertaventura combines mthe ancient movement and meditation arts of meditative tai chi and qigong, taught by founder Paco Borges, with Taoist yoga. The setting, with views over the Atlantic, adds to the sense of peace, and some sessions are held on the outdoor deck. Healthy brunches, smoothies and four evening meals are included, as well as massages and transfers to the beach. Open all year, with retreats starting any day, it’s flexible, too.• From €665 a week, taichifuerteventura.comThere’s a reasonably good chance you’ve already seen the video of the American gymnast Katelyn Ohashi’s floor exercise from a quad meet in Anaheim last weekend. The two-minute clip of the UCLA senior tumbling and swaying and launching her 4ft 10in form into the air to a frenetic mashup of 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s hits became a viral smash almost immediately after it was posted to the team’s Twitter feed and has since racked up more than 40m views and counting. Virality is an unpredictable cocktail and the widespread appeal of the 21-year-old’s routine, which earned the sixth perfect score of her collegiate career and helped the Bruins to a first-place finish over California, Michigan State and UC Davis, is not down to any one ingredient. Her technical skill and extraordinary athleticism are obvious – the double layout with a split is a kicker rarely seen on the college level – but hardly unparalleled. Her charisma and showmanship are palpable but not without precedent, nor are the nostalgia-drizzled musical choices of Ike & Tina Turner and Earth, Wind & Fire along with the Jackson 5 and Michael and Janet Jackson. A 🔟 isn't enough for this floor routine by @katelyn_ohashi. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/pqUzl7AlUA The secret sauce, it seems, is the unbridled exuberance on display, both in Ohashi’s performance and the delirious reactions of her teammates watching from the sidelines and hanging on every step and manoeuvre, which altogether offers a welcome advert for a sport that’s been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past two years in the United States: gymnastics is fun. The pitchwoman could hardly be more appropriate given Ohashi’s particular journey. The one-time prodigy had been earmarked for Olympic stardom as a 14-year-old junior gymnast after capturing four gold medals, including the all-around title, at the US national championships in 2011. But even as she made an apparently seamless transition to the senior level by winning the all-around at the 2013 American Cup – edging no less than future Olympic hero Simone Biles for top of the podium – the Seattle native found herself breaking down both physically and mentally. She underwent surgery the following month that sidelined her for the rest of the year, followed by another surgery for a fractured back and a warning from doctors that she might never be able to return to competition. Ohashi’s auspicious senior debut wound up being the final meet of her elite career. Her well-documented reflections on her exit while ambivalent are flecked with a sense of relief. Soon after Ohashi accepted a scholarship offer to compete at UCLA under longtime coach Valorie Kondos Field, the former classical dancer who has transformed the Bruins into one of the nation’s most decorated programs. College gymnastics, which operates under different and far more accessible rules than in the Olympics, is a step down from the elite circuit, but engenders a team-oriented environment where Ohashi has rediscovered the joy of enjoying the sport on her own terms and thrived. She shared the individual national title in the floor exercise at last year’s NCAA women’s gymnastics championships while helping the Bruins to a seventh team crown. Last week’s clip is not the first collegiate floor routine to go viral. It’s not even Ohashi’s first: her floor exercise from last year’s Pac-12 championships was viewed more than 80m times on Facebook alone. But it’s hard to recall an entry from the surprisingly robust YouTube subgenre of collegiate floor exercises that’s made such a mainstream splash, earning shout-outs from Jesse Jackson, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ohashi has made the media rounds in the week since and leveraged the occasion to bring attention to the body shaming that she endured during her elite career. “In the gym, outside of the gym, on the internet, so it’s something that you can never really escape,” Ohashi said Thursday on ABC’s Good Morning America , where she read one of the poems that she wrote to help cope with the pain. “As a 14-year-old, it’s kind of hard to cope with, because you’re still developing as a person, and so everything really impacts you.” UCLA gymnast @katelyn_ohashi reads powerful poem she wrote called "Self-Hatred Goodbyes" on @GMA: "Because I am my own size and no words or judgmental stares will make me compromise." https://t.co/UW6NVbFSAf pic.twitter.com/fvmPmrdzy7 At a time when the US and UK are up against their own depressing maelstroms – and the parochial space of gymnastics in the former hasn’t fared much better – leave it to one of our smallest athletes to give the world the big pick-me-up it so desperately needs.The developers of a female-focused sex toy are alleging gender bias at the International Consumer Electronics Show after organizers revoked an innovation award honoring the company and prohibited it from showcasing its product. Lora Haddock, founder and CEO of Lora DiCarlo, said her team had been overjoyed when the company’s Osé personal massager was selected as the CES 2019 Innovation Awards honoree in the robotics and drone product category. It’s the company’s first product – a hands-free device developed by an almost entirely female team of engineers using “new micro-robotic technology that mimics all of the sensations of a human mouth, tongue, and fingers, for an experience that feels just like a real partner”, Haddock wrote in an open letter on the company’s website. “My team rejoiced and celebrated,” she wrote. “A month later our excitement and preparations were cut short.” Administrators with the Consumer Technology Association, the organization behind at the annual Las Vegas-based trade show, had contacted the company and told them that not only were they rescinding the award, the company would not be allowed to showcase the product at CES 2019. Haddock wrote that immediately after she asked why the award was revoked, CTA told the company that entries “deemed by CTA in their sole discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image will be disqualified”. In a statement, CTA officials said the product “should not have been accepted for the Innovation Awards Program” because it “does not fit into any of our existing product categories”. “CTA has communicated this position to Lora DiCarlo,” the statement reads. “We have apologized to the company for our mistake.” Haddock called this “an even more insulting and frankly ridiculous assertion”. She noted that her team of engineers designed the Osé in partnership with Oregon State University, whose robotics lab is ranked as one of the best in the nation. “Osé is the subject of eight pending patents and counting for robotics, biomimicry, and engineering feats,” she wrote. “Osé clearly fits the Robotics and Drone category – and CTA’s own expert judges agree.” CTA’s statement does not explain why Lora DiCarlo can no longer showcase its product at CES, and officials did not immediately respond to follow-up questions. But Techcrunch noted that OhMiBod, a Kegel exerciser, won the digital health and fitness product category in 2016. Meanwhile, Haddock pointed out that “a literal sex doll for men launched on the floor at CES in 2018 and a VR porn company exhibits there every year, allowing men to watch pornography in public as consumers walk by”. “Men’s sexuality is allowed to be explicit with a literal sex robot in the shape of an unrealistically proportioned woman and VR porn in point of pride along the aisle,” she wrote. “Female sexuality, on the other hand, is heavily muted if not outright banned. You cannot pretend to be unbiased if you allow a sex robot for men but not a vagina-focused robotic massager for blended orgasm.” Haddock said it was important to call CTA out because “these biases smother innovation by blocking access to funding, exposure, and consumers that could take brands and products to the next level”. “You never know how technology can be used, the future of healthcare might well be in the patent for a sex toy,” she wrote. “But if CES and CTA are so intent on keeping women and sex tech out, we’ll never find out.”“It’s not about me, it’s not about him,” Ole Gunnar Solskjær says, dismissing the notion that his side taking on Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham amounts to some sort of audition for the job of next permanent manager at Manchester United. “We don’t kick a ball at all.” He would say that, wouldn’t he? And so would Pochettino, most probably. Yet even without the background noise that suggests the Spurs manager is the only name in the frame as far as Headhunters United are concerned, Sunday’s meeting at Wembley would still be both a test and an opportunity for a caretaker who has made a flying start. There is no doubt Solskjær has made a flying start, because not only is he the first United manager since Sir Matt Busby to win his first five games, he is the only top-flight manager for more than a century to do so by a margin of two or more goals each time. He may simply be reaping the benefit of being a fresh and engaging antidote to José Mourinho’s divisive sarcasm, though anyone who has seen United in recent seasons will appreciate that 16 goals in five matches represents the sort of reboot that several coaches with more established reputations could not manage. The argument is already being advanced that United have not really played anyone yet, which while a little insulting to the likes of Newcastle and Cardiff is substantially true. All of Solskjær’s opponents have come from the bottom half of the table or the Championship, which is why Spurs amount to the first real test. Solskjær has a point when he says that Newcastle away was a test, as was winning over the Old Trafford crowd in his first home game, but Tottenham have been one of the form teams all season, not just in the last few weeks. With 48 points after 21 games they could normally expect to be even higher than third, as it is they are doing well to remain in touch with the formidable pace being set by Liverpool and Manchester City. Tottenham were also the team Mourinho mentioned when illustrating the difficulty of regaining United’s dominance. In the old days, he suggested, one or all of Harry Kane, Dele Alli or Son Heung-min might have been running out in red by now. While the point is debatable, there is no denying Spurs have some highly covetable players and a style that many a Premier League side would like to copy. That is where the opportunity lies for Solskjær, for he too likes to send out a side to attack, and United supporters will dare to hope that his first crack at a top-four side might not be an exercise in containment and caution. If Solskjær can match Pochettino at his own game his coaching stock would rise accordingly, regardless of what may or may not happen next season. The caretaker understands the reason for all the speculation linking the Spurs manager with a move north – his team plays the way United would like to play. “He’s done a very good job,” Solskjær says. “It is easier to play in an attacking way when you have the right players.” United have quality attacking players just waiting to be let off the leash, which is effectively what Solskjær has done, rejuvenating Marcus Rashford and Romelu Lukaku. So far so good, but when quality meets quality a little more attention to detail might be required. Solskjær has been looking at the stats. “We’ve been managing to outsprint opponents,” he says of his first five games. “Because we have been playing against teams at the bottom of the table that’s a very big compliment to my players. One of the best compliments you can get as a coach is when the other manager says: ‘Your boys worked hard,’ and that has been happening. I am pleased to be in charge of a Manchester United side that outruns teams from the lower part of the table. It’s not a coincidence that the stats have improved in the last few weeks because we’ve had a focus on going forward quickly.” Outsprinting Tottenham will be a different matter, especially as the peerless Son will play at Wembley before joining South Korea for the Asia Cup in Dubai, but as Solskjær and every United follower knows the emphasis on going forward quickly has been missing for some time. Sir Alex Ferguson’s preference for all-out attack has perhaps been overstated over the years, but even on a restrained day in the glory years United were never as restricted and reactive as they would become under Louis van Gaal and Mourinho. That chapter in the club’s history now appears to be closed, with Solskjær specifically recruited because he is committed to the club’s more adventurous traditions. Currently on something of an adventure himself, he has at least reached base camp on the managerial mountain climb by successfully bringing players and supporters into line. How high he can go might not depend on this weekend, even if the United succession will be an elephant in the room at Wembley, but by the time Solskjær has played Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool in different competitions over the coming six weeks, the club should have a clearer view of which direction is forward.David Wagner has left his job as manager of Huddersfield Town, the Premier League’s bottom club, after a fraught first five months of the season in which they have slid eight points adrift of safety. Huddersfield said the decision had been reached by mutual consent after discussions with Wagner, who had been in charge since November 2015. His departure comes as a considerable surprise, with a remarkable set of achievements at the John Smith’s Stadium having spared him intense scrutiny during their second top-flight campaign, and the club’s chairman, Dean Hoyle, said Wagner had instigated the move himself. “I had no intention of sacking David this season,” Hoyle said. “Subsequently David – being the great man he is – came to us and made it clear that he needs a break from the rigours of football management. “We discussed making that change immediately, but he also made it clear that he would give his all for the rest of this season before departing in the summer if we preferred. After a long discussion we all felt that David staying at the club until the end of the season was best, but we’ve kept discussions open and we all now feel that the time is right to part ways.” Hoyle stressed that the term “mutual consent” meant exactly that, calling it a “truly joint decision”. He continued: “David has a real, genuine love for this club and, like me, his foremost concern in our talks has been to establish what is best for Huddersfield Town.” Very few of Huddersfield’s staff had expected the news and, upon the announcement of Wagner’s exit, the atmosphere around the club was one of shock. The affable Wagner earned hero status after arriving from Borussia Dortmund’s second team, leading the Terriers to promotion in 2016-17 and ending their 45-year exile from the top division. They achieved that despite one of the lowest playing budgets in the Championship, succeeding in stunning fashion with a relentless, high-pressing brand of football. Last season they stayed up against all odds, draws at Manchester City and Chelsea securing their survival with a game to spare. Things have been tougher this time around however, Saturday’s goalless draw at Cardiff halting a run of eight straight league defeats but doing little to suggest a squad built with relatively meagre resources can complete a second great escape. “It’s a very sad day, but now we have to look to the future; that’s what football and our immediate situation demands,” Hoyle said. Mark Hudson, formerly Huddersfield’s captain and now a member of the coaching staff, will oversee Sunday’s home game against Manchester City, after which the next manager’s task may look more ominous. Sam Allardyce, Slavisa Jokanovic and David Moyes are early names to find favour with bookmakers and the club are already in the process of identifying potential appointments.Buddhist monks in Japan have posted videos on social media to prove their traditional attire is no obstacle to safe driving after one of their brethren was fined. Police said an officer had stopped the unnamed monk, who is in his 40s, on a road in Fukui prefecture in western Japan earlier this year and told him he could not drive in his “constricting” sōi robes. The officer issued him with a ticket that described him as “driving in a kimono that could affect safety” and fined him 6,000 yen ($55). Recent news reports of the incident sparked a show of solidarity from fellow monks in a stunning display of asceticism-meets-athleticism. 僧衣を着ててもこんくらい出来るので、車の運転で僧衣が邪魔になることはないのです。#僧衣 #法衣 #僧侶 #お坊さん #リップスティック #安心安全の僧衣 #パジャマより気楽に着れちゃう pic.twitter.com/bFnjmVgxYV Several posted videos of themselves performing a series of activities – from juggling and skateboarding to skipping and playing the guitar – accompanied by the Japanese hashtag “Sōi de dekiru mon” (I can do it in robes). Another clip shows a barefooted, shaven-headed man in robes wielding a Star Wars lightsaber. The clips prompted a wave of online praise for their agility, while some commenters wondered if the police were similarly unforgiving of drivers wearing long dresses. これだけできるんだから、運転ぐらい困ることはないよね。#僧衣でできるもん pic.twitter.com/TneoRtCNMD Others praised the monks for their show of resistance. “If there’s one thing that the [I can do it in robes hashtag] taught me, it’s don’t f**k with Japanese monks,” wrote one Twitter user. Another encouraged his followers to “copy paste this hashtag to see the baddest monks on the planet sending a message to the Japanese police”. The monk was on his way to a memorial service and was wearing robes that stretched below his knees, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun. The newspaper quoted him as saying that safety had been uppermost in his mind throughout his 20 years as a driver. 運転に支障があるとの事ですが、お坊さんの衣は足もちゃんと動きますよ。 #僧衣でできるもん pic.twitter.com/PVb1jepZQP His Kyoto-based order, meanwhile, has complained that strict enforcement of the traffic regulation on “unsafe” clothing could inhibit monks’ ability to perform their religious duties. The monk’s ordeal is not over, however. He has so far refused to pay the fine and has not responded to follow-up demands, the Yomiuri said, meaning he could be formally charged for violating road traffic laws and have his case sent to court. If that happens, the monk told the newspaper he would “clearly state at a trial that I can drive safely in my robes”.The UK’s national daily newspapers have played a key role in shaping the debate on Brexit. This is what they have said in their editorial columns – and on Tuesday’s front pages – regarding Theresa May’s deal with Brussels on leaving the EU. The Sun Tomorrow's front page: Prince Harry reveals he meditates every day pic.twitter.com/VLFdbwr8tX The Sun is highly critical of Theresa May’s deal but has so far stopped short of formally endorsing a no-deal exit from the EU. Instead, it has suggested that any attempt by remainers to pursue a softer Brexit would be seen as a betrayal of the EU referendum result, cause the government to collapse, and give control of Downing Street to Jeremy Corbyn’s “anti-western Marxist rabble”. “If this remainer-stuffed government nullifies or destroys Brexit they can kiss goodbye to their jobs and their party,” the paper’s editorial said last week. On Tuesday, the paper kicks the can a little further down the road, choosing to focus on a suggestion the prime minister believes she could force a second vote if she loses. Notably, the story is not the most prominent on the Sun’s front. Daily Mail Tuesday’s Daily MAIL: “Time To Put Your Country First” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/2IaSnnaEcO Since remain-supporting Geordie Greig took over the editorship from Paul Dacre in September, the Daily Mail has stuck closely to the Downing Street line on Brexit and backed May’s deal with Brussels as a solution to the “looming shambles” of a no-deal exit. The newspaper has repeatedly warned against attempts to overturn the result while insisting that a Corbyn government is the real threat to Britain’s future. The front of Tuesday’s edition is dominated by a clarion call – not an uncommon occurrence for the paper when the stakes are high – for MPs to back the “imperfect” deal. It is time to focus on other matters, the paper says, denouncing the parlous state of some of the country’s public services and infrastructure. Greig’s former paper, the Mail on Sunday, has taken a pro-Brexit stance under its new editor, Ted Verity, albeit making it clear that “we cannot leave without a deal”. Daily Telegraph The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph 'Out of allies, out of time' #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/fsLVe4vult The pro-Brexit newspaper owned by the Barclay brothers has been strongly critical of May’s deal, warning that any attempt to delay Britain’s exit from the EU would result in political radicalisation and a possible Corbyn government. On Tuesday, the paper is another to carry an editorial on its front, albeit only a short extract, in which it says it regrets having to oppose a Tory prime minister, but feels it has no choice. It would be a “historic mistake” to endorse this “dreadful deal”, the paper says. Its sister paper, the Sunday Telegraph, went further, describing it as an “appalling, misconceived” proposal: “Not only should MPs vote against the withdrawal agreement on Tuesday, but they must vote against it in large enough numbers to kill it dead, otherwise Theresa May will just keep bringing it back to the Commons until she gets her way”. The Times Tuesday’s TIMES: “May braced for historic defeat on Brexit D-Day” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/KhtElh3OTc The newspaper backed remain during the referendum but is now firmly behind May’s deal as a way of avoiding a chaotic exit at the end of March. “Her deal is not perfect but it would allow Britain to make an orderly withdrawal from the EU,” its editorial said on Monday, citing the commitment to guaranteeing citizens’ rights and meeting existing financial obligations. But its splash acknowledges that May is expected to suffer a heavy defeat. The Guardian Guardian front page, Tuesday 15 January 2019: May facing crushing defeat in Brexit vote pic.twitter.com/1qBc7PAd34 The Guardian has described the prime minister’s proposal as “a leap of faith, and scarcely more acceptable than no deal at all”, insisting it should be explicitly rejected, with the article 50 process paused and Brexit put on hold. Its editorial said last week: “MPs should then open up the debate to the country: first, by establishing a citizens’ assembly to examine the options and issues that face the nation; and second, by giving parliament the right, if it so chooses, to put these alternatives in a referendum this year or next.” Daily Express Tuesday’s Daily EXPRESS: “Don’t Lose Our Trust For Ever” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/fAB3UJueOy The Daily Express is the staunchest backer of Brexit among the national papers but has also been a staunch backer of Theresa May’s deal with Brussels – being rewarded with interviews with the prime minister and additional briefings from Downing Street. The newspaper has said the current proposal is “far from perfect” but is the best offer on the table. “We want hard-nosed pragmatism to win the day,” the paper said, while urging the EU to make further concessions to help the deal pass the House of Commons. Daily Mirror Tuesday’s Daily MIRROR: “Plan B” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/uqDCzE7nAE The Labour-supporting tabloid has trodden a careful line on Brexit, potentially because its readership is split down the middle on the question of leave and remain, according to YouGov polling commissioned by the People’s Vote campaign. It has endorsed the so-called Norway option of close alignment with the EU, believing it to be the least bad form of Brexit. Although the paper won’t rule out a second referendum and would like a general election, it does not think the latter is likely in the near future. Financial Times Tuesday’s FINANCIAL TIMES: “Tory Eurosceptics threaten May with humiliation over Brexit deal” #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/B5TpyNudPO The financial paper originally backed Theresa May’s deal, describing it as “imperfect but ultimately pragmatic” – a decision which earned the newspaper criticism from remain campaigners such as Andrew Adonis, who claim it is taking orders from its Japanese owners Nikkei.From as early as I can remember, I was told in no uncertain terms that things socially coded as feminine were off-limits for me. Assigned male at birth, the phrase “that’s not for boys” was one I heard with crushing regularity; and the sense of shame and dysphoria – heightened discomfort about my body and identity – stuck around for a long time. I attended a Catholic, all-boys high school where toxic, teenage masculinity was inescapable, and I felt deeply uncomfortable about my relationship with maleness and masculinity throughout my adolescence, until I came out as a trans woman and began transitioning around 2012. I immediately felt more comfortable in my body, in my own skin. But something kind of funny happened when I began blurring the boundaries of what my identity could mean. Over the first year or two of my transition, I felt very supported in having a more feminine gender expression, and rarely experienced backlash from the outside world. However, I’d face a kind of resistance when I cut my hair short and wore a button-down shirt. My work colleagues couldn’t understand why I was “trying to look like a boy” – the subtext being, that I didn’t look like what they imagined a trans woman looked like. At one point, I experienced the peculiar street harassment of being asked why I was “trying to look like a boy when I was obviously a girl”. Given that, a relatively short time earlier, I’d received the same comments from a stranger in reverse, I had to laugh. The idea that masculinity is toxic in and of itself does not gel with my experience While this kind of gender rigidity goes far beyond clothing and haircuts, it’s a useful metric for understanding my point. I began to realise how much society’s already-small acceptance of trans women was based on our willingness to perform a specific kind of femininity, enact these gendered expectations. I was a trans woman but not trans femme – a conundrum on top of a conundrum for society’s binary idea of what gender looks like. Ultimately, a patriarchal society punishes women, and in particular trans women, no matter what their proximity to femininity. It demands you stay within an extremely narrow set of boundaries for how you can present yourself – and straying too far away in either direction faces consequence. I think, then, that there’s a particular tightrope that trans women are made to walk, a kind of exaggerated version of the one all women are. Too feminine and we’re accused of feeding into stereotypes around women and femininity. Not feminine enough and well, why did we bother transitioning at all? It’s a reductive classification that leaves little space for the obvious fact that gender expression – for anyone – rarely if ever fits into a neat, defined box. There’s been significant progress in dispelling the notion that (cis) people have to conform to a stereotypical “ideal” of femininity or masculinity, but I don’t really see that given to trans people in the same way. At least part of this, I suspect, is the pressure often placed on trans people to appease a medical model of transition that can be very binary. I’ve had dozens of conversations with friends whose access to medical transition was contingent on their doctors being satisfied they “really wanted” to be the gender they said they were. The first psychiatrist I ever saw when I begun transitioning asked me in very plain terms – why was I transitioning if I didn’t want to wear a dress? Why wasn’t I attracted to men? He was asking me to fit within an extremely narrow definition of womanhood that I didn’t align with whatsoever. As far as I’m concerned, my relationship with masculinity as a trans woman has effectively changed from one imposed on me, to one that I have some level of agency over. It’s mine, and I own it whenever I make choices about the way I present myself to the world before I step out the front door. It’s empowering to take the gendered norms you had forced upon you as a young person and re-conceptualise, reclaim and subvert them in ways that are active, autonomous choices. I can understand why many trans women may want to completely detach themselves from masculinity. Having gendered norms forced upon you from birth can be an utterly traumatic experience, and I wouldn’t blame anyone who would want to remove themselves from that. But the idea that masculinity in and of itself is toxic doesn’t gel with my experience, and I hate the idea of trans people being given the freedom to identify how they wish yet forced to abide within arbitrary, pre-conceived limits of that identity. I want to see a representation of non-conforming gender that doesn’t force us to sit within arbitrary margins of what gender looks like. If all we’re doing as a society by existing outside of conventional gender norms is splitting ourselves into three discrete, rigid categories – women, men, and non-binary people – then that doesn’t seem like enough. I spent 21 odd years being told by the world the ways I could and could not present myself as I navigated my way through it. It makes little sense to me now that my body reflects the way I conceptualise my gender, that I would continue to let other people and internalized ideas dictate how I dress, or look, or act. Whether you’re trans or not – I don’t think you should either. Allison Gallagher is a writer and artist. Comments are premoderated to ensure the discussion is about topics that have been addressed in this article.In my innocence, I didn’t expect many people to be in a central Portsmouth Wetherspoons at 10.30am on a Friday morning. But there they all were, in their droves: passionate supporters of Brexit, there to hear the pub chain’s founder and chairman, Tim Martin, make the case for Britain leaving the EU with no deal. Martin has been on the road since November, with the aim of visiting at least 100 of his boozers. The day we crossed paths, he was traversing the south coast, moving on to Southampton and Weymouth: given that it has whetted the appetite of what remains of the country’s local press, drawn large crowds and shifted huge amounts of food and drink, the whole thing looks to have been an unlikely success. Martin’s case was unconvincing to the point of tedium: a half-argument that ignored what a no-deal Brexit would mean for British exports, and too blithely dismissed all those concerns about supply chains, and chaos at UK ports, let alone what a no-deal scenario would mean for the island of Ireland. But on the level of political sociology, the spectacle presented was compelling: the hardest of the Brexit hardcore, many of them on the pints and riled to snapping point before the speech even got going, and then taken into incandescence by the posse of local Liberal Democrats interrupting Martin’s speech at every turn. It is quite an experience, watching people repeatedly yell at each other about trade tariffs before they have had their lunch. Even after Martin had put down his microphone, a fierce debate continued. Meanwhile, very familiar mutterings punctuated the argy-bargy, and took the argument out of the realms of politics, into a mish-mash of culture and history: the second world war, the supposedly perfidious Germans, the idea that if we prospered before 1972, why can we not do so again? Last Thursday, the BBC’s Question Time was broadcast from Derby, where an endorsement for no deal from the writer Isabel Oakeshott triggered mass whoops and cheers, and yet another explosion of Brexit noise on Twitter. The truth that brief moment underlined is obvious: whatever the warnings from politicians, many people currently support the nightmarish prospect of the UK leaving the EU without any formal agreement. The extent to which that belief is a matter of deep conviction is a moot point: I wrote about Brexit boredom last week, and it seems pretty clear that many people say they would opt for no deal if pushed, but do so in the midst of disconnection and bafflement. Nonetheless, an inconvenient truth remains. Whereas I have never heard any member of the public make the case for what politicians call Norway plus, and belief in a second referendum still seems to be largely the preserve of a certain kind of middle-class person, no deal is the position that scores of people have recently expressed to me without prompting: “We should just get out”; “We have to leave, now”; “Why can’t we just walk away?” At its heart, I suppose, is a terrible logic, combined with a certain stubborn ignorance, which results in an insistence that the only thing that matches what millions of people thought they were voting for in 2016 is a clean break. Some support for no deal closely echoes the specious stuff repeatedly uttered by leading Brexiteers, about the EU needing Britain more than we need them, a country set free from Brussels diktats and trading again with its former colonies. But the most fascinating element of popular no-dealism is altogether more complicated, and built on a defiant rejection of all the warnings about falling off a cliff edge, so passionate that the refusal of advice feels more relevant to what people think than what the most reckless kind of Brexit actually might entail. In that sense, supporting no deal amounts to the same performative “fuck you” that defined a reasonable share of the original vote for leave. The gender aspect of Brexit is still too overlooked. Of the people gathered in that Wetherspoons, 90% were men. In a recent YouGov poll, support for no deal was put at 22%, but whereas 28% of men were no-dealers, among women the figure was a paltry 16%. There is something at play here similar to the belligerent masculinity channelled by Donald Trump: a yearning for all-or-nothing politics, enemies and endless confrontation, and an aggressive nostalgia. Some of the latter is shamelessly misogynistic, part of a macho bigotry that harks back to hierarchies of privilege that linger on, and blurs into racism. But there is also an element that ought to attract empathy: a yearning for a world in which men were steelworkers, coalminers and welders, and a desperate quest for something – anything – that might allow their successors to do the same. More widely, the politics of no deal betrays an urge for drama and crisis that a lot of us ought to be humble enough to recognise in ourselves. Not that long ago, a high-profile supporter of Jeremy Corbyn looked ahead to the new Labour Party taking power, and wondered: “Have we prepared the people who chanted for Jeremy at Glastonbury for the fact that, at some stage, they may only be able to withdraw 50 quid a day if the credit runs dry? If there is a very British coup, will they hold the streets?” A comparable romanticism surrounds the idea of a besieged post-Brexit Britain nobly trying to make its way without the interference of Brussels. It is, perhaps, one of the great failings of mainstream politics that it has been unable to project anything similar on to issues that cry out for public attention: imagine, for example, if people were as worked up about climate change. Finally, there are questions about no-dealism that are bound up with England, and national traits that go back centuries. One is a tendency to indulge in futile, inexplicable gestures, evident in everything from 18th-century riots to 1970s punk rock, and perfectly summed up in a sentiment mewled by a young man named Johnny Rotten, in the midst of a hit single titled Anarchy in the UK: “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it.” These things explode from time to time, but what never seems to go away is the self-image of an island nation, the seductive myth of Britain standing alone, and an eternally mistrustful attitude to the EU, now intensified by the bloodless functionaries – Tusk, Barnier, Juncker – apparently calling the shots on Brexit. At the moment, mainstream politics operates on the understanding that if no deal came to pass, queues of lorries and thinly stocked shops would spark no end of public outrage, and cause huge political damage to the Conservative party. But if the current procedural complexities surrounding Brexit eventually give way to much starker realities of what the EU calls a “disorderly withdrawal”, I would not be so sure. Somewhere between the Wetherspoons spirit, a mass desire to simply get Brexit over with and the mirage of a wronged country fighting for survival, there might lie the key to why no-dealism is suddenly proving more popular than some people would like to imagine. A no-deal exit would confirm that politics has entered the realms of the darkly surreal, and that 23 June 2016 was only the start. • John Harris is a Guardian columnistA leaked poll commissioned by the pro-EU Best for Britain campaign suggests that voters would be less likely to back Labour if the party was committed to stopping Brexit. According to the poll, passed to the Guardian, almost a third of respondents said they would be less likely to vote Labour, a similar number to those who said it would not make a difference. Twenty-five per cent said it would make them more likely to back Labour, with the rest saying they did not know. The campaign group, which is pushing for a second EU referendum, commissioned the as yet unreleased snap poll shortly before MPs voted down Theresa May’s Brexit deal. The Populus poll asked 2,000 people whether they would be more or less likely to vote Labour “if they commit to stop Brexit”. The polling also showed the party would lose around the same number of Labour voters as it would gain from the Conservatives. Just 9% of Conservative voters would switch to Labour in those circumstances, but 11% of current Labour voters said it would make them less likely to vote for the party. Jeremy Corbyn has made efforts to underline the delicacy of the party’s electoral position in recent days, including at a speech in Wakefield, where he said it must bridge the Brexit divide in order to address nationwide problems of inequality. A Best for Britain spokesman said the polling also showed that the vast majority of Labour voters would not desert the party if it committed to cancelling Brexit. It said the overall picture was skewed by Conservative and Ukip voters, but conceded that those were the voters the party needed to win over at the next general election. The campaign group also said Labour would see a dividend from Lib Dem and Green voters. Of the Lib Dem voters polled, 39% would be more likely to back Labour and 40% of Green voters. “It was a private poll that shows, like all of our public polling, that Labour members and supporters are clamouring to fight Brexit,” a Best for Britain spokesman said. “The poll shows that Conservative voters aren’t there just yet, but we are confident our campaign will get them there.” The cross-party campaign is separate from the People’s Vote campaign, though many MPs support both. The organisation, which was originally associated with the campaigner Gina Miller, who is no longer involved, has received about £800,000 from the philanthropist George Soros and has been involved in a series of eye-catching stunts, including installing a “big red button” outside the Labour conference urging MPs to stop Brexit.Dan Robson’s performance for Wasps was one of the few shining lights on what was a difficult day for the home side, even if they avoided the thrashing they received in Dublin. He looks back to the kind of form he began the season in before the injury that denied him a first cap in autumn struck.Robson’s try, selling Andrew Porter a fine dummy before racing to the line, was a demonstration of what he can bring, most likely off the bench, for England and Eddie Jones, who was watching in the stands. Bath can take heart from their performance in a scrappy match at Toulouse, even if the French side may have had a reason to avoid pressing for the bonus points. Both English sides have much to do in the Premiership, though, so will be somewhat relieved that forgettable European campaigns are over. Gerard Meagher Leinster cruise past Wasps and train sights on Ulster Eddie Jones remarked last week that rugby tended to oscillate between eras of contest and continuity, with the former currently in vogue. Exeter have based their success in the Premiership on being able to retain possession for long periods but have struggled to make the same impact in Europe where the breakdown is more of a contest. Their latest campaign came to grief at Thomond Park in a match that was unsparingly physical and played at a furious pace. Exeter were on the front foot for long periods but were undone by Tadhg Beirne at the breakdown. Munster’s victory made it eight wins in nine for Irish sides over the Premiership ahead of Leinster’s win at Wasps. Paul Rees Carbery helps Munster kick Chiefs out of Europe Saracens v GlasgowEdinburgh v MunsterRacing 92 v ToulouseLeinster v Ulster Clermont Auvergne v NorthamptonWorcester v Harlequins Sale v ConnachtLa Rochelle v Bristol • All ties to be played 29/30/31 March Saracens matched the pool tally of their first European title in 2016 with 28 points out of 30, a figure also achieved by Clermont and Harlequins in 2013. Only Biarritz have registered more, 29 in 2007. Second to them that season were Northampton, whom they drew in the quarter-finals. Northampton beat them. Second to Saracens here are Glasgow whom they play in the quarters in late March. Glasgow now are better than Northampton were then. Still, a Glasgow win would register as a significant upset. Saracens look the team best equipped to challenge Leinster. The Blues flickered but too fitfully. Lyon played the role of uninterested French team. Michael Aylwin Saracens into last eight as top seeds after beating Glasgow For both Scarlets and Leicester to end up losing five of their six pool games is a sign of the European times. The Tigers have now failed to finish in the top half of their pool for three successive seasons; there is also no Welsh representation in the last eight of either of Europe’s two competitions this season. Scarlets, gallant 46-33 losers in Paris in round six, scored the same number of pool tries as Ulster but the Irish province won no fewer than five matches en route to the quarter-finals. A free-wheeling Racing side are proving a spirited exception to the rule but, for the most part, a resilient set-piece and a tight, well-marshalled defence are key to success in the modern Europe. Robert Kitson Robert Kitson: Irish clubs have depth but Saracens can reach final There would rarely be a dull moment if Richard Cockerill were appointed England’s next head coach. It remains an unlikely proposition but Cockerill’s work in the Scottish capital cannot be overstated. Montpellier have a hulking pack but Edinburgh scrummaged them off the Murrayfield park and responded superbly to going behind early in the second half. They advance top of the pool and earn a home quarter-final to boot, a fine achievement considering the pool contained the three-times winners Toulon and a Newcastle side who won their first two matches. The Falcons slipped to a narrow defeat but there were signs of recovery for the Premiership’s bottom side. Gerard Meagher Edinburgh sink Montpellier to qualify for quarter-finals Team of the weekend 15 Johnny McNicholl Scarlets 14 Simon Zebo Racing 92 13 Garry Ringrose Leinster 12 Brad Barritt Saracens 11 Duhan van der Merwe Edinburgh 10 Finn Russell Racing 92 9 Ali Price Glasgow 1 Pierre Schoeman Edinburgh 2 Stuart McInally Edinburgh 3 Tadhg Furlong Leinster 4 Maro Itoje Saracens 5 Tadhg Beirne Munster 6 Peter O’Mahony Munster 7 Don Armand Exeter 8 CJ Stander Munster  Quote of the weekend "Considering the number of concussions I have suffered, and above that the amount of time it takes to shake off the symptoms afterwards, it is better to avoid the risk of further head injuries. We have tried rest, medication, neck treatment, jaw treatment, eye rehabilitation, multivitamins, and now I am to avoid any strenuous exercise and sports that require contact" – Pat Lambie, the South Africa and Racing 92 fly-half, explains his retirement with immediate effect at the age of 28 Three figures don’t add up Not one but two centuries chalked up in the final round of pool stage matches in the Challenge Cup, with both Northampton and Bristol hitting three figures. Such one-sided matches are not a good look for anybody and raise a number of questions, not least over player welfare. The two teams on the receiving end – Timisoara Saracens and Enisei-STM – were the two two qualifiers from the Continental Shield, a tournament struggling to get enough teams to take part. Artificial pitches point up contrast Four matches this weekend took place on artificial pitches and yielded 30 tries, six more than were scored in the other six on grass. It is too simplistic a view to put that statistic entirely down to the playing surface – Munster versus Exeter was hardly going to be a try-fest – but it is not completely coincidental either. In English rugby’s recent injury audit it emerged that players are at more of a risk on artificial surfaces, a concerning trend indeed, but the benefits are also clear.  By Gerard MeagherGame on. At a frantic, slightly wild Etihad Stadium Manchester City defibrillated their own hopes of retaining the title with a 2-1 defeat of Liverpool that was by turns fearful, fretful and often funny. That they did so owed much to their fighting spirit, a little more to good fortune and even more to Sergio Agüero, the blue-grey rinse at the front of this team who played for 45 minutes like the only City player not afraid of the moment, still cold and cool in the middle of all that fury – of which there was quite a lot. No doubt there will be some talk now of City learning to win ugly. Incorrectly so. City did not win ugly here. They won very ugly. They also won slapstick, won zany and won thanks to something close to a pastiche of backs-to-the wall defending, coming on towards the end like a team of senior nuclear particle physicists caught up in an increasingly convincing bare-knuckle street brawl. Finally one could almost hear the voices from the fringes muttering, as City’s ball-players experimented with the idea of shanking wild-eyed clearances into the crowd, as they punted the poor old beleaguered ball forward, as the back four lined up to head clear of their own six-yard box like a £900m Tony Pulis tribute project, and as Bernardo Silva, a man born to glide and twirl and address the ball with his own feather-quilled left foot, careered about the place like a city-centre nightclub bouncer on New Year’s Eve. Finally they have worked out how to play some proper football. And yet for all the energy this was also a victory born out of precision and out of a moment of stillness from City’s most understated leader. The images of victory will be rooted elsewhere. Vincent Kompany was at times a cartoon of chest-heaving full-body defence, although he might also have been sent off for an excessively forceful lunge through Mohamed Salah. At the end, as City’s players left the pitch, a teenage fan came haring through the lines to plead for a selfie with the captain and one half expected Kompany to take him out with a headlock- slamming two-footed Bruce Lee neck-lunge. Beyond this there was Agüero, who came out to fight at the start when the rest of his teammates were cowed, and who produced the one real moment of precision in a fearful first half. Sometimes it really is about the inch in front of your face. Or at least, that inch in front of Dejan Lovren inside the penalty area, with the ball falling out of the sky, the goal at a narrow angle, and 52,000 people drawing half a breath. City had struggled in the opening 40 minutes. Jürgen Klopp had gone with his most muscular midfield, that Milner-Henderson fulcrum, the footballing equivalent of a four-course all-you-can eat carvery roast dinner with boiled and mashed potatoes, all washed down with a two litre jug of extra thick custard. It was a concussive, bruising affair in those early exchanges. Fernandinho ran through the back of Sadio Mané. Virgil van Dijk clobbered Agüero. Fernandinho expanded his range by forearm-clubbing Andy Robertson in the neck. On his touchline Pep Guardiola whirled his arms and crouched like a downhill skier, performing elaborate windscreen-wiper gestures, punching buttons, as though trying to draw his players closer together in front of him. There was something missing from City in those moments. One could feel it stalking the pitch, an absence, something just out of sight. City had come without their swagger, more timid in the early minutes than they have been at any time in the last year and a half. And Liverpool really should have scored on 17 minutes. How they did not will perhaps be the subject one day of a 38-volume Warren Report style investigation that still leaves room for conspiracy theories and mass paranoia. Somehow John Stones cleared on the line just as the ball seemed to have already bulged the net, Mané having rolled it on to the post from Salah’s beautifully nudged pass. Inches, again. It was Agüero who led City through this, a beacon of certainty from the front, dropping so deep he was upended a couple of times in his own half, taking the ball and turning in half spaces. He touched the ball 20 times in the first half, scarcely wasted a pass and moved with a kind of affronted aristocratic grace through the hesitancy behind him. When the moment came he was ready. City pressed down the left. Bernardo Silva crossed from the touchline. Agüero stole in front of Lovren, took a touch and pirouetted towards goal. He did not look up as the ball dropped out of the lights, had already noted, logged and plotted the small pocket of space just past Alisson’s right ear, into which he spanked the ball with such sweetness it bulged along the roof of the net, rippling it out in cinematic fashion. The goal did settle City, although Roberto Firmino’s second-half equaliser was deserved and beautifully worked by Liverpool. City still had enough left to take the lead again, Leroy Sané’s shot skimming across Alisson into the far corner. And for all the fight and fury and grappling towards the end it was that moment of calm from their own enduring cutting edge that made the difference.More than half of Conservative party members want Theresa May’s Brexit deal to be rejected in favour of leaving the EU with no deal, according to a survey. The poll, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), found a majority of the Tory rank and file are convinced that leaving the EU without a deal is better than the prime minister’s Brexit plan. In a three-way referendum, with the options of leaving without a deal, staying in the EU or leaving with May’s deal, 57% preferred leaving without a deal. Only 23% of members said they would vote for May’s deal in a three-way referendum. The findings were released on Friday by the ESRC-funded party members project, run from Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University. Just 29% of Tory members would vote for May’s deal, compared with 64% who would vote to leave without a deal, if there was a two-option referendum. Among party members, opposition to the deal negotiated by their own leader outweighs support by a margin of 59% to 38%. More members (53%) think May’s deal does not respect the 2016 EU referendum result than the 42% who think it does. The findings are a further blow to May, who hopes to win a majority in parliament for her EU deal, which is expected to be put to the vote later in January. In November, she appealed directly to the public in an attempt to put pressure on rebellious backbenchers to fall in line. The survey result will spur on a minority of MPs who want the UK to leave on World Trade Organization rules. It comes after the EU refused to hold further meetings to discuss May’s Brexit deal, and as the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, warned no deal would become far more likely if MPs rejected the prime minister’s proposals. Academics surveyed 1,215 ordinary Conservative party members, together with a representative sample of 1,675 voters. Prof Tim Bale, who led the research, said the findings showed No 10 could not depend upon constituency associations to persuade Tory MPs to back May’s deal. “The Tory rank and file, it seems, are convinced that no deal is better than May’s deal,” he said. “Tory members’ dislike for the PM’s deal really comes out when we asked about a referendum in which the choice came down to her deal or no deal. “Only 29% of Tory members would vote for Mrs May’s deal, compared to 64% who would vote to leave without a deal. “But that’s as nothing to Conservative party members faced with a referendum offering just two choices – remain or no deal. Some 76% of Conservative party members would plump for no deal,” he said. Bale suggested there were two specific issues behind the opposition to May’s deal, the first being the Irish backstop. “Tory members have become convinced that the Irish backstop is a bad idea,” he said, with 40% believing it was a reason to reject the deal, and 21% thinking it was irrelevant because May’s deal “is a bad one anyway”. The second issue is 76% of members being sceptical about warnings that a no-deal Brexit would cause serious disruption, he said. “Tory members, like Tory voters, are utterly unconvinced, despite their own government’s best recent efforts, that a no-deal Brexit would cause serious disruption. “Some 72% of voters currently intending to support the Conservatives think the warnings are ‘exaggerated or invented’ – a figure that rises to 76% among Tory members. “Meanwhile, those members are convinced by a margin of 64% to 19% that leaving without a deal would have a positive rather than a negative effect on Britain’s economy in the medium to long term,” he said. Nearly half (48%) of Conservative members think May is doing fairly badly or very badly as prime minister, and 44% think she should quit if parliament rejects her deal, he said. “In short, Mrs May has failed not only to convince the country, and quite probably parliament, that her Brexit deal is a good one, she has also failed to convince the party faithful,” Bale said. The research showed that a greater proportion of Tory members think the government has made a mess of negotiating Brexit than those who just support the party. Among voters as a whole, 71% feel that the government has made a mess of negotiating Brexit, according to Bale’s analysis. That figure drops to 56% among those currently intending to vote Conservative. But the poll of party members found that 68% of Tory members think the government is doing badly at negotiating the country’s exit from the EU – a proportion that rises to 78% of those party members who voted leave in 2016.The first Saturday Night Live of 2019 kicks off with Deal or No Deal: Government Shutdown Edition. Replacement host Steve Harvey (Kenan Thompson) welcomes Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin), who attempts to make a deal with Congress to end the shutdown and get funding for his border wall. Nancy Pelosi (Kate McKinnon) is one of the briefcase holders. “Drunk on [her] own power”, she needles Trump with abandon. The pair bicker “like two grandparents fighting over a thermostat”. The president eventually moves on to spineless Chuck Schumer, who’s willing to concede for “$15 plus a pastrami on rye”. The rest of the sketch is a rundown of this week’s headlines – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ascendance, Corey Booker’s naked presidential ambitions, Cardi B’s tirade, “hamberders”. It appears 2019 will be more of the same when it comes to the show’s lazy political content, as this was yet another cold open that seemed to equate satire with basic reference. Emmy award-winner and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel star Rachel Brosnahan fulfills her New Year’s resolution by hosting for the first time. She leads several castmembers in a singalong about how 2019 will be the year of having fun, only to continually “pump the breaks” every time they recall one of the myriad disasters in which the world is mired: the shutdown, the LA teachers strike, turmoil in Europe, the Russian drug “krokodile” (the show’s a bit late with that reference). It’s another case of commentary by way of reference, but at least there’s a structural point to it here. In what seems to have become tradition, the first sketch, Earthquake News Report, is a simple vehicle for crass but clever double entendre. A news team interviews the survivors of a massive quake, all of who were visiting the Seattle change-of-name office at the time. This pitiable collection includes Donald McRonald, Mark Peanus, Lisa Simpson, Bill Cosby, Ty Neadick, Todd Kobell, Ivan Jerganov, Pete Ophelia, Allan “A” Hitler, Holden Tudiks, and Dr Donna Diddaadog. Next is a clever commercial parody for Leave Me Alun – a portable urn women can use as a “conversation prophylactic” when men attempt unwanted small talk. Millennial Millions is a gameshow in which millennials attempt to win basic entitlements like healthcare, social security and debt relief. To hold on to their winnings they must endure the ramblings of their idiotic baby boomer parents without losing their cool. Given the younger generation’s inability to accept “anything that challenges [their] worldview”, this proves easier said than done. The Raunchiest Mrs Rita is a spinoff of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, starring Leslie Jones as a foul-mouthed ‘60’s cleaning lady who becomes a superstar comedian in the Def Comedy Jam mode. It’s a clever idea that never really leans into its premise, instead coming off as a lazy excuse to have Brosnahan play her breakout role. Rockers Greta Van Fleet make their SNL debut, performing You’re the One. Then Weekend Update returns and immediately goes back over ground covered in the cold open: the shutdown, Trump’s “hamburger orgy” and bad-faith negotiation tactics, Ocasio-Cortez’s prominence, Schumer’s cravenness. Colin Jost gets the biggest reaction – half laughter/half groans – with a cringe-worthy R Kelly joke. Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren (McKinnon) is Update’s first guest. She talks about her progressive vision, defends herself against sexist criticism – “Am I likeable? Probably not. But neither is a prostate exam, but you need one or you’ll die” – and acknowledges the short-sightedness of her public DNA test: “Who knew race science wasn’t a good PR strategy?” She ends with a cutting appeal to the country’s worst instincts: “America, you will do everything you possibly can to not vote for a woman president. All I’m asking is that you let me be that woman.” She’s followed by Update’s de facto third host, Pete Davidson, as himself. He’s who’s brought along a friend and mentor, comedian John Mulaney. They briefly discusses Davidson’s public suicide threat from late last year (he says he’s doing better), before giving a snarky rundown of Clint Eastwood’s weirder-than-expected new movie, The Mule, which, among other things, sees the nearly 90-year-old actor-director engaging in multiple threesomes. Kool-Aid is a toothless parody of Gillette’s controversial “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” ad. The Gillette story is loaded with subtext rife for comic savaging: commercial manipulation of social justice issues, corporate hypocrisy, performative wokeness, childishness of rightwing backlash. But the show’s writers ignore all that, content with reminding audiences of the obnoxious, wall-smashing antics of the product’s famous mascot. Greta Van Fleet perform Black Smoke Rising. Given the episode’s recurring theme of baby boomers vs millennials, it’s fitting that the musical guest should be a young band so indebted to Led Zeppelin. Finally, we get a new installment of Barbie Instagram. Exasperated Mattel execs Travis (Thompson) and Diedre (Cecily Strong) meet their buffoonish marketing team, a group of dunces as oblivious to their product as they are to social media. Brosnahan is the standout as an especially deranged team member who seems to be using Ken and Barbie’s relationship to work out her own disturbing drama. It’s unfortunate that Brosnahan gets to be the center of a sketch only at the very end of the episode. While this wasn’t a particularly poor showing, it did mostly waste its comedically inclined host and the political content remained depressingly weak. That feels particularly egregious, given everything it has to work with.The level of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is forecast to rise by a near-record amount in 2019, according to the Met Office. The increase is being fuelled by the continued burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests, and will be particularly high in 2019 due to an expected return towards El Niño-like conditions. This natural climate variation causes warm and dry conditions in the tropics, meaning the plant growth that removes CO2 from the air is restricted. Levels of the greenhouse gas have not been as high as today for 3-5m years, when the global temperature was 2-3C warmer and the sea level was 10-20 metres higher. Climate action must be increased fivefold to limit warming to the 1.5C rise above pre-industrial levels that scientists advise, according to the UN. But the past four years have been the hottest on record and global emissions are rising again after a brief pause. “Looking at the monthly figures, it’s as if you can see the planet ‘breathing’ as the levels of CO2 fall and rise with the seasonal cycle of plant growth and decay in the northern hemisphere,” said Prof Richard Betts, at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre. “The graph is a thing of beauty, but also a stark reminder of human impact on climate. Each year’s CO2 is higher than the last, and this will keep happening until humans stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere.” “This news is worrying and compelling,” said Prof Nick Ostle, at Lancaster University. “It represents a call to innovate with rapid and radical responses to offset these growing emissions.” He said cuts in fossil fuel use, deforestation and emissions from livestock were needed: “It’s a massive challenge but there are real opportunities to make an impact individually and globally.” The Met Office has a good record of forecasting global CO2 levels and predicts that the average rise over 2019 will be 2.75 parts per million (ppm). That would put it among the highest annual rises in the 62 years since good records began. Only years with strong El Niño events, 1998 and 2016, are likely to be higher. The rise in 2016 was 3.39ppm. In the decade after the first measurement on the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa in 1956, annual rises were less than 0.9ppm per year. An El Niño event occurs when the tropical Pacific swings into a warm phase, causing many regions to have warmer and drier weather. Trees and plants are natural carbon sinks because they absorb CO2 as they grow, but this is reduced in El Niño years. “This year we expect these carbon sinks to be relatively weak, so the impact of record high human-caused emissions will be larger than last year,” said Betts. The Met Office forecasts an average CO2 level in 2019 of 411ppm. Monthly averages are expected to peak at 415ppm in May, before the growing season temporarily reduces levels to 408ppm in September, when CO2 will begin rising once again. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution sparked the large-scale burning of coal, oil and gas was 280ppm. “It never rains but it pours,” said Prof Dave Reay, at the University of Edinburgh. “Our own CO2 emissions are still increasing, and now the world’s natural carbon sinks are set for a bad year too. We know these sinks have been mopping up around half of all our emissions to date. We can only hope their faltering in 2019 is just a short-term blip, as without their help any chance of a safer climate future will turn to dust.” Prof Jos Barlow, also at Lancaster University, said the rising destruction of forests is serious concern: “This has been a particularly bad year. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased to around 8,000 square kilometres in 2018, which is equivalent to losing a football pitch of forest every 30 seconds. There are also worrying signs that deforestation is occurring at a faster rate in other Amazonian countries, such as Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.”The Luopu County No 1 Vocational Skills Training Centre is hard to miss. It emerges suddenly, a huge campus towering over hectares of farmland. Outside the compound, surrounded by tall white concrete walls lined with barbed wire and surveillance cameras, a police car patrols while several guards carrying long batons stand watch. The centre, which straddles a highway, is bigger than most of the surrounding villages – about 170,000sq metres. A banner on one building says: “Safeguard ethnic unity.” Half a dozen people stand on the roadside, staring at the buildings. No one is willing to say exactly what this prison-like facility is or why they are waiting on its perimeter. “We don’t know,” says an older woman. Another woman has come to see her brother but declines to say more. A young girl with her two brothers announces they have come to see their father. Her mother quickly hushes her. They are reluctant to talk because the building is not a formal prison or university, but an internment camp where Muslim minorities, mainly Uighurs, are sent against their will and without trial for months or even years. Researchers and residents say southern Xinjiang, where the Luopu County No 1 Vocational Skills Training Centre is located, has borne the brunt of the government’s crackdown on Muslims because of its density of Uighurs and distance from major cities. “We have a saying in Hotan: If you go into a concentration camp in Luopu, you never come out,” said Adil Awut*, from Hotan City, who is now living overseas. In December, the United Nations asked for direct access to the camps after a panel said it had received “credible reports” that 1.1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs, Hui and other ethnic minorities had been detained. Internees listening to speeches at Lop County number 4 re-education center ("洛浦县第四教育培训中心") in March of 2017. pic.twitter.com/2oDlZyMjVj Beijing has aggressively defended its policies and sought to portray the camps as benign and Xinjiang, where outbursts of violence occurred in the 1990s and 2000s, as peaceful thanks to government efforts. A starkly different reality emerges in Luopu, also known as Lop county, where Guardian interviews with current and former residents and analysis of public documents reveal new details about the government’s continuing campaign in one of the worst-affected areas of Xinjiang. Local authorities are expanding detention camps, increasing surveillance and policing, and co-opting residents through intimidation, force and financial incentives. In the past year, at least 10 buildings have been added to the No 1 Vocational Skills Training Centre, according to satellite imagery. Construction work on the camp, identified through company records found by the University of British Columbia student Shawn Zhang, was still being carried out when the Guardian visited in mid-December. Luopu, a sparsely populated rural county of about 280,000 that is almost entirely Uighur, is home to eight internment camps officially labelled “vocational training centres”, according to public budget documents seen by the Guardian. In 2018, officials expected to accommodate 12,000 “students” as well as another 2,100 inmates at another detention centre – a total of about 7% of the county’s adult population, or 11% of the entire male population. Luopu county also planned to spend almost 300m yuan ($44m) on “stability control”, including almost $300,000 on a surveillance system to cover all mosques, and funding for almost 6,000 police officers to work in “convenient police stations” and security checkpoints, as well as to patrol residential areas. The security measures and staggering costs underline China’s commitment to its controversial policies in Xinjiang despite growing criticism. Across the province, domestic security expenses doubled in 2017 as the security campaign got under way, with spending on detention centres in counties with large concentrations of ethnic minorities quadrupling, according to Adrian Zenz, a researcher focused on China’s ethnic policies. Budget overruns were common. Luopu county exceeded its budget by almost 300% in 2017, the highest increase in spending in all of Hotan prefecture. Yet, the buildup continues. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute analysed 28 camps across Xinjiang and found they had expanded 465% in size since 2016, with the largest growth between July and September last year. Five camps in Hotan city and surrounding counties had at least doubled in size, with one camp increasing 2,469% between 2016 and 2018. In Luopu, officials are bringing more than 2,700 assistant officers into the county’s 224 villages and townships. The “students” are closely monitored: almost 2,000 staff and police have been hired to oversee 12,000 detainees. Authorities are also spending money on incentivising residents. Officials in Luopu hire local imams and other religious leaders as “patriotic religious people”, paid a yearly stipend of 4,200 yuan (about $600) in an area where average disposable income is 6,800 yuan a year. Their job is in part to stop residents from going on non-government organised pilgrimages to Mecca. The relatively low-level assistant police, recruited mostly from Uighur communities, are paid 4,100 yuan a month, almost on a par with police in major cities. Some local governments are struggling to maintain this pace of spending. In neighbouring Cele county, where authorities expected to have almost 12,000 detainees in vocational camps and detention centres, a budget for 2018 says: “There are still many projects not included in the budget due to a lack of funds. The financial situation in 2018 is very severe.” As China’s economy slows, they may struggle even more. Zenz said: “The sustainability of this system basically depends on the financial capabilities of the central government … The long-term financial sustainability of all these top-down measures is certainly questionable.” Today, Hotan prefecture is under “grid style” management, involving intense policing and mass surveillance. On the Luopu government website, it is described as “often in a state of level one or two response”, the highest state of emergency. In Luopu, like many places in Xinjiang, the movements of Uighur residents are restricted. While Han Chinese are waved through security checkpoints, Uighur commuters register their ID cards, do full body scans, have their vehicles searched and their faces scanned. Hand-held devices scan smartphones for content deemed problematic. A police officer demanded to check the phone of a Guardian reporter because, she said “someone saw Arabic or Uighur language on it”. Abdulla Erkin*, born and raised in Luopu county, was living in Urumqi, in the north of Xinjiang, when the crackdown began in earnest. He says his family warned him not to return. “They all told me: ‘Don’t come here. Don’t come here. Just live in Urumqi.’” His sister, who works in a local government bureau in Luopu told him: “It’s worse day after day.” Erkin says most of his friends have been sent to a camp or prison. Now living overseas, he discovered last month that two of his brothers had been detained, and he fears five of his nephews have also gone. A Uighur businessman living in north-eastern China told the Guardian he left Hotan because of the constant threat of being detained. “My sense as well is that the counties of Hotan prefecture have been the target of most severe repression,” said Darren Byler, a lecturer at the University of Washington who has been focusing on Xinjiang. “From the perspective of the state, Hotan is framed as the most ‘backward and resistant’.” Chinese officials have said international observers are “welcome to Xinjiang”, but Guardian reporters were questioned by police in Luopu for four hours and followed by at least seven people in Hotan City. An official at the police station adjoining the No 1 Vocational Training Centre told the Guardian “all reporters, foreign or Chinese, from outside Xinjiang” were subject to their security measures. In a village in Luopu county, almost every home has a plaque on the door marking it a “model red star family”. These are families who have met requirements, including demonstrating “anti-extremism thought” and a “sense of modern civilisation”. Over the past year, Luopu local officials have gathered villagers to sing patriotic songs, a practice common in the camps, or to teach female residents how to be “good new era women” who promote “ideological emancipation”. But it’s not clear that these initiatives are what have inspired obedience. A woman burning a pile of branches lists people in her family who have been sent “to training”, including her 16-year-old son. Another woman says her husband has been in training in a different village since December 2017. She doesn’t know why he was sent. “We have always been farmers,” she says. A man carrying plastic bags of naan and skewers explains that his neighbour has gone to the training centre. He suddenly interrupts himself: “We are scared talking with you.” He says: “They will retaliate.” * Name has been changed to protect the identity of the intervieweeEarlier this week a new report from the National Association for Business Economics said that the 2017 Tax Reform Act had no major impact on how US businesses invested or hired. The report concluded that the number of businesses who said they do not plan to accelerate their investments rose to 84% from 81% a quarter earlier. In fact, spending plans from businesses fell to their lowest levels since July 2017. Employment growth did improve, but only modestly, with just a third of the respondents saying their employment at their firms grew this quarter compared to 31% the previous quarter. The good news is that the most of the survey’s 106 business economists who belong to the association and who responded to the survey do not expect a recession within the next 12 months. Nearly two-thirds – 64% – of respondents expect expansion. But the damage was done and opponents of the bill pounced. “So far, the investment response has been modest and underwhelming,” Owen Zidar, an economics and public affairs professor at Princeton, told CNN. “The idea there would be an enormous boom was pretty optimistic.” It was not great news for supporters of the bill. But hold on … The takeaway from everyone is that the 2017 tax cuts, which cost the economy approximately $1.5tn according to some estimates, have failed. But did they? As someone who runs a business and serves hundreds of other business owners in the trenches, I think the naysayers are lowering the coffin lid on the measure a little prematurely, and there are two big reasons why. For starters, we’re not going to fully know the full impact of the 2017 tax reform on people’s 2018 taxes until people actually do their 2018 taxes! What I mean is this: the tax reform didn’t actually take effect until the 2018 calendar tax year. Most of the employees I know didn’t take the time to adjust their withholdings to take advantage of the package’s lower rates or the increased standard deductions and many small business owners continued paying in their tax estimates throughout 2018 as planned. Why? Mainly because the tax rules required them to do so and their accountants were hesitant to suggest any big moves until certain rules – particularly the huge 20% pass-through deduction – were clarified … which didn’t happen until just last week! I predict that many individuals and small businesses, once they file their 2018 returns in the spring and summer of 2019, will find themselves with more cash in their pockets and will use that cash to spend, save and invest. Oh, and then we will see that repeat itself over the next few years as people adjust to a lower tax environment. Just watch. The other reason doesn’t have to do with how those corporations who saw their bills cut spent their savings. The real question is … when? Analysts have concluded that a great many publicly held corporations took their projected savings from the tax reform bill and used it to buy back their stock which in turn helped shore up the stock market and increase shareholder value. That’s what happened in 2018. But the tax reform package doesn’t expire at the end of 2018. This isn’t a one and done deal. This is a long term reduction in taxes. Making the very safe bet that tax rates won’t rise at least through the next election cycle, large corporations and small businesses can now look at another two years of much lower tax rates. With large stock buybacks in the rear mirror, where else will this money be spent but on capital and labor? Don’t believe me? Already the National Federation of Independent Businesses said in January that the percentage of business owners who reported that they increased employee compensation continued at 45-year record high levels and that 61% of owners reported capital outlays. Of those making expenditures, the NFIB said that 42% reported buying new equipment, 25% acquired vehicles, and 15% improved or expanded facilities. I think they’re just getting started. Unfortunately, the biggest thing getting in the way of the Trump administration’s tax cuts is the Trump administration itself. Donald Trump’s behavior, and tweeting, and threats to major trading partners, and his using a federal shutdown as a bargaining chip, and his outrageous games with the Federal Reserve and the congressional investigations looming over his administration’s past practices has served to create so much uncertainty (and disgust by many of my clients) as to almost offset all the positive things he has done for the business community, such as reducing regulations and taxes. That’s the reason why the Federal Reserve, according to the Washington Post, reported in January that businesses in many regions are becoming less optimistic (and therefore less likely to make long term investments) because of a “host of adverse developments, from plunging stock prices to uncertainty about a widening trade war”. Putting all that aside, the people who are judging the results of the tax reform package are doing so way too soon. You can’t evaluate a massive change in any government program after such a short period. These things require time to be absorbed into the longer term plans of companies and organizations that are impacted and needs to be judged as such. In my opinion, once a few years are behind us, we will see that the 2017 tax reform package was substantially beneficial for both large and small companies, so long as the president doesn’t get in the way of its benefits.Summer in south-east Brazil has brought soaring temperatures and some disconcerting eight-legged visitors. Residents in a rural area of southern Minas Gerais state have reported skies “raining spiders”, a phenomenon which experts say is typical in the region during hot, humid weather. Photos and videos shared on social media show hundreds of spiders hanging in the sky. João Pedro Martinelli Fonseca, who filmed one of the most widely shared clips, was traveling with his family to his grandparents’ farm in Espírito Santo do Dourado, about 250km north-east of São Paulo, when he realized the sky was covered with black dots. He told a local newspaper that he was “stunned and scared” – especially when one of the spiders fell through the open window. The boy’s grandmother, Jercina Martinelli, told another local paper: “There were many more webs and spiders than you can see in the video. We’ve seen this before, always at dusk on days when it’s been really hot.” In 2013, the same phenomenon made international headlines when residents of Santo Antônio da Platina in southern Brazil registered “raining spiders” around telephone polls. While it looks like the spiders are falling from the sky, they are actually hanging in a giant web to catch prey, said Adalberto dos Santos, a biology professor specializing in arachnology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. The species parawixia bistriata, is a rare “social” spider and the community web they build is so fine that it is nearly impossible for the human eye to see, giving the illusion that the spiders are floating on air. During the day, the spiders nest in a giant ball in the vegetation, emerging in the early evening to construct the giant web ceiling which hangs between trees and bushes, said Dos Santos. Each web can measure up to four meters wide and three meters thick. At dawn, they feast on prey they have caught overnight – usually small insects, but sometimes even small birds – before retreating to the vegetation again. Witnessing a sky full of spiders may be unnerving, but Dos Santos said humans have nothing to fear: the venom of this species is not harmful to humans and its bite causes little more discomfort than a red ant bite. Dos Santos said that the spiders’ vast net serves to regulate insects like flies and mosquitoes that come out during the muggy early evenings. “They benefit us far more than they harm us,” he said.A woman who defied violent protests to worship at a centuries-old south Indian shrine that banned females of “menstruating age” has been spurned by her family, attacked by relatives and locked out of her home. On New Year’s Day, Kanakadurga, 39, along with Bindu Ammini, became the first women to enter the inner sanctum of Kerala state’s Sabarimala temple, one of the country’s holiest Hindu sites. The supreme court had in September declared unconstitutional a customary ban on women aged between 10 and 50 from entering the temple, a hill shrine located at the end of a three-mile trek through dense mountainous forest. Kanakadurga, Ammini and hundreds of other women had attempted to reach Sabarimala once it reopened after September’s verdict but were turned away by sometimes violent protesters, mostly men, who see the court’s decision as inappropriate state intervention in a religious matter. The pair – Kanakadurga, a government employee, and Ammini, a 40-year old law lecturer – entered the temple to pray with police protection in the early hours of 1 January. The same day, hundreds of thousands of women in Kerala formed a 380-mile human chain across the length of the state in support of gender equality. “A lot of people tried to dissuade us and make us turn back – police officers, our friends … because they knew we were facing a lot of backlash,” Kanakadurga, who like many Indians uses one name, told Reuters after the climb. The two women’s quiet prayer at the shrine reignited protests across Kerala, considered one of India’s most progressive states on gender issues, but which has been bitterly divided over supreme court’s decision. About 75% of people disagree, according to one survey. The pair went into hiding after entering the temple and have been granted 24-hour police protection. Kanakadurga was admitted to hospital last week after a female relative allegedly beat her with a plank of wood minutes after she returned home. On Tuesday, Kanakadurga, a mother of two, slept in a government-run shelter after she returned home to find her husband had locked the doors and gone into hiding. Police tried to mediate with her husband’s family but were told she would not be accepted back until she “atones for her sins”, Ammini told the Hindustan Times. “I talked to her this morning also. She is in high spirits. Some forces are pressurising her family but they won’t succeed.” Kanakadurga’s brother told a group of Ayyappa devotees on Sunday that his family had also distanced themselves from her. A third woman, aged 46, has reached the temple since the two women’s entry, the office of the chief minister of Kerala said on 4 January. Dozens more, including some in men’s clothing, have been turned back by demonstrators, backed by the temple’s administrators. Lord Ayyappa, the deity who is worshipped at the shrine by up to 50 million people each year, was traditionally celibate, and many devotees fear the presence of women would contravene his explicit wishes and “pollute” the sacredness of the site. Pilgrims preparing to visit Sabarimala traditionally abstain from alcohol, meat and eggs and take a vow to be celibate for 40 days before their visit. Lifting the ban on women has been opposed by the Bharatiya Janata party, the Hindu nationalist party that controls India’s central government, as well as its traditional opponent the Congress party. Kerala’s ruling Communist party government supports the verdict. The prime minister has been careful not to criticise the supreme court but instead focused his ire on the Kerala state government that is enforcing the decision. “We knew that the communists do not respect Indian history, culture and spirituality but nobody imagined they will have such hatred,” Narendra Modi said at a rally in the state last week.Late-night hosts on Tuesday dissected the damage control of Rudy Giuliani and the 2020 Democratic candidates for president. On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert unpacked another round of Rudy Giuliani’s continuously contradicting statements, often in the same breath. After a Sunday in which he appeared to confirm that, despite Trump’s denials, the president was engaged in construction project negotiations in Moscow during the 2016 campaign, Giuliani spoke with the New Yorker in his typical circular fashion. Giuliani said: “I have a sense of ethics that is as high as anybody you can imagine.” But he then admitted he was “not an ethicist”. “I am everything. I am nothing,” Colbert translated. “I am old. I am young. I am ever-ending, just begun. Behold, I am Rudy, destroyer of clients.” Giuliani admitted that he worried about his legacy as Trump’s lawyer but figured “I can explain it to St Peter,” since he doesn’t think, as a lawyer, that he’s said anything untruthful. Good news for the president, Colbert said, because “you know things are going great when your lawyer is already prepping his argument to stay out of hell”. On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah provided an update on “world war D” – the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – as several candidates tried to Marie Kondo-away their problematic pasts. Former vice-president Joe Biden, for instance, admitted that he had been wrong on harsh sentencing laws for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. “It was a big mistake when it was made,” Biden said in a speech to the National Action Network on Monday. “We were told by the experts that ‘crack – you never go back’.” Noah had to pause Biden there. “I think he’s conflating two different phrases,” he said. “First, there’s ‘once you go black, you don’t go back,’ which isn’t true – just ask Obama. And then there’s ‘black don’t crack’, which also isn’t true – again, just ask Obama.” Next up, Bernie Sanders discussed allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination in his 2016 campaign in a meeting with begrudged staffers earlier this month, but refused to detail the conversation because it was “private”. Noah called bullshit on that last claim. “Bernie can’t say that any conversation he’s ever had has been private,” he said. “If you’re in a 10-mile radius of the man, you can hear the conversation.” Finally, Kirsten Gillibrand has been on an apology tour for her past policy ideas. Specifically, as a congresswoman from upstate New York, Gillibrand supported expediting “the removal of illegal aliens”, according to 2008 mailer sent from her congressional office and gathered by CNN. “If Trump’s immigration policies are racist,” CNN host Jake Tapper asked Gillibrand on Sunday, “were they racist when you held them as well?” Gillibrand avoided answering yes or no, but admitted her past policies were “not empathetic” and “not kind”. It was a tough sell for Noah. “It’s hard for her to say Trump’s policies are racist, but her identical policies were just ‘unkind’,” he said. “It’s like someone saying ‘No, honey, what YOU did was cheating. When I slept with Carol, I was just being unkind to our marriage.’”Conspiracy theories used to be seen as bizarre expressions of harmless eccentrics. Not any more. Gone are the days of outlandish theories about Roswell’s UFOs, the “hoax” moon landings or grassy knolls. Instead, today’s iterations have morphed into political weapons. Turbocharged by social media, they spread with astonishing speed, using death threats as currency. Together with their first cousins, fake news, they are challenging society’s trust in facts. At its most toxic, this contagion poses a profound threat to democracy by damaging its bedrock: a shared commitment to truth. Their growing reach and scale is astonishing. A University of Chicago study estimated in 2014 that half of the American public consistently endorses at least one conspiracy theory. When they repeated the survey last November, the proportion had risen to 61%. The startling finding was echoed by a recent study from the University of Cambridge that found 60% of Britons are wedded to a false narrative. The trend began on obscure online forums such as the alt-right playground 4chan. Soon, media entrepreneurs realized there was money to be made – most notoriously Alex Jones, whose site Infowars feeds its millions of readers a potent diet of lurid lies (9/11 was a government hit job; the feds manipulate the weather.) Now the conspiracy theorist-in-chief sits in the White House. Donald Trump cut his political teeth on the “birther” lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and went on to embrace climate change denial, rampant voter fraud and the discredited belief that childhood vaccines may cause autism. Amid this explosive growth, one aspect has been underappreciated: the human cost. What is the toll paid by those caught up in these falsehoods? And how are they fighting back? The Guardian talked to five people who can speak from bitter personal experience. We begin in a town we will not identify in Massachusetts where a young man, who tells his story here for the first time, was asleep in his bed. Valentine’s Day 2018 was Marcel Fontaine’s day off. He slept late into the afternoon, having worked a double shift the day before. When he woke up, a wave of happiness washed over him – he was in a relationship, had a job he loved at a local concert venue. His life was good. By the time he roused himself, the deadliest high school shooting in US history was already over. A 19-year-old with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle had entered the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, and opened fire. Seventeen had been killed, though Fontaine, who has no cable TV or radio, was oblivious to the tragedy. Then he received a text from a friend. A photo of Fontaine was flying around the internet and he was being accused of carrying out the terrible Florida shooting. His immediate response was bewilderment. What shooting? Where? He was in Massachusetts, 1,500 miles away. It would take a four-hour flight to reach the school. He’d only visited Florida once when he was a little boy to see Mickey Mouse. Fontaine, 25, describes himself on Twitter as a “non-binary gay queer autistic commie that loves horror movies and metal!” He was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum as a child and for years has struggled with anxiety and a debilitating stammer. At moments of heightened stress, he flaps his hands like a bird. In short, Fontaine is a vulnerable leftwing individual who would not harm a flea, which apparently makes him perfect fodder for the sadistic mockery of 4chan, the anonymous message board that hosts alt-right activists and other extremists. A few days before the Parkland shooting, a photo of Fontaine wearing a T-shirt of Marx, Lenin, Mao and other communist luminaries dressed in party hats had been grabbed from his Instagram feed and posted by an anonymous user on 4chan, where he was promptly derided as a “lefty dimwit”. The T-shirt, Fontaine protests, was a joke, a pun on Communist party. In the conspiratorial bubble of 4chan, it was but a small step from ridiculing Fontaine to casting him as the Parkland shooter. Within two hours of the massacre, the image had been reposted on the bulletin board, now saying: “Florida Shooter Was A Commie!” From there, Alex Jones’s conspiracy theory site, Infowars, leapt into the fray. Its “reporter” lifted Fontaine’s photo directly from 4chan and, without any attempt at verification, ran with it on the front page. “Shooter is a commie. Alleged photo of the suspect shows communist garb,” the outlet screamed. The false rumor quickly spread from Miami to Beijing. Fontaine was horrified. “I knew a lot about the Alex Jones fanbase – that they were radical extremists who believe every word he says, and that a lot of them hold firearms. I knew my life was at risk.” The first death threats landed via Facebook messenger by nightfall: “I hope someone throws you out of a rotary aircraft, you commie!” Another made a direct reference to the concert venue that employed him. “They knew where I worked, what I did. It just got me so afraid.” Death threats and autism spectrum conditions make poor bedfellows. They exacerbated his condition, ramping up his anxiety, insomnia and social isolation. “I wasn’t able to function, to cook, do basic tasks. I went days without taking a shower. I didn’t want to go out, I just wanted to be with myself.” Soon, he started having frequent panic attacks. Over the past six months, Fontaine has slowly pulled himself back together. He is in therapy to combat the bouts of panic and sleeplessness that still trouble him. But he has become less trusting of people and freezes whenever he sees someone dressed in camouflage or wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Do they read Infowars? he wonders. “I get very nervous because they might recognize me and want to actually pull something out on me. Or like beat me to a pulp.” As the anniversary of the shooting approaches, he finds it hard to understand why he was singled out. “It makes me sad. This event got me to a point where I just can’t be myself again.” Lenny Pozner, 51, is preparing to pack his bags, again. A few weeks ago, “hoaxers” – as he calls conspiracy theorists – reproduced a map of his Florida neighborhood with a dropped pin marking the precise location of his apartment. It will be the eighth time in five years he will have been forced to move home as he strives to keep one step ahead of the fanatics who relentlessly hound him. Pozner’s crime, in the eyes of conspiracy theorists, is being the father of one of the 20 children who were gunned down in the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Noah was the youngest of all victims. He had just turned six. Within months, conspiracy theorists, egged on by Alex Jones and Infowars, went to work. They generated thousands of web posts and a 426-page book called “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook”. Their thesis: the shooting at the elementary school never happened. The 20 kids who died were “crisis actors”. The tragedy was a con. Noah had never even existed, he was a construct of Photoshop. Within a year, it had reached such a pitch that Pozner knew he had to do something. “I agonized about the situation for several weeks. But ultimately I felt I owed it to my son to protect his memory.” He posted on his Google+ page his son’s birth and death certificates and kindergarten report card. “I was extremely naive. I believed that people were simply misinformed and that if I released proof that my child had existed, thrived, loved and was loved, and was ultimately murdered, they would understand our grief, stop harassing us, and more importantly, stop defacing photos of Noah and defaming him online.” Instead, he watched his deceased son buried a second time, under hundreds of pages of hateful web content. “I don’t think there’s any one word that fits the horror of it,” Pozner says. “It’s a phenomenon of the age which we’re in, modern day witch-hunts. It’s a form of mass delusion.” Pozner is extraordinarily controlled. His voice is flat and preternaturally calm, as though all emotion has been pummeled out of him. His apartment has the same pared-down, antiseptic quality. “I’ve gotten good at moving, I’ve adapted to it,” he says. He left Newtown for Florida in 2013 with Noah’s mother, his now former wife Veronique De La Rosa, and their two daughters in the hope of rebuilding their lives. (He asked the Guardian not to identify the town he now lives in.) He has deliveries sent to a separate address and has rented multiple postal boxes as decoys. The most serious of death threats came from Lucy Richards, a Florida resident who was so fervent in her belief that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake that she left messages on Pozner’s cellphone saying: “You’re going to die. Death is coming to you real soon, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” In June 2017, Richards was sentenced to five months in prison, followed by a further five months under house arrest. Pozner sees this outpouring of hatred as a product of digital technology running ahead of society’s ability to contain it. “Social media hasn’t matured. We lack a segment of law enforcement specializing in it. There really is no one to help.” But he reserves his staunchest criticism for Alex Jones, who he blames for amplifying conspiracies in the pursuit of profit. In a lawsuit suing Jones for defamation for more than $1m, lawyers for Pozner and De La Rosa chronicle how Infowars baited them over many years: the shooting was “staged”, a “giant hoax”. The school was an elaborate film set. It was all a “soap opera”. But in targeting Pozner, Jones picked on the wrong guy. Since 2014 Pozner has made it his life’s work to confront the conspiracy theorists. Through his organization the Honr Network, Pozner has systematically challenged those who he believes cross that line, forcing moderators to delete posts. In 2018 alone, he reported 2,568 videos to YouTube and had 1,555 of those expunged. Pozner’s lawsuit against Jones, which mirrors a similar legal case brought by Fontaine, is making its way through a federal court in Austin, Texas. Earlier this month they received a legal boost when the judge granted them access to Jones’s financial and marketing documents under discovery. Jones denies defaming anyone, though he has so far failed in having the suits dismissed on free speech grounds. Regarding the free speech argument, Pozner says: “You have the right to express yourself and your opinions, no matter how offensive they may be, until your chosen form of expression impedes my rights to be free from defamation and harassment.” What shocks Pozner most, he says, was how alone he was when he began this fight. “I was the only one standing up to the hoaxers, and other than the loss of my son that was my biggest disappointment at the time.” At least he has brought his son’s memory back to life. If you search Noah Pozner on Google you will find hundreds of articles about the boy’s life and death, and virtually none of the bile from those who questioned his existence. By Pozner’s reckoning, one in five people around the world are suggestible to conspiracy theories, and their obsessions are amplified by the crude logic of digital algorithms. “There is just no more truth, there is just what’s trending on Twitter,” he says. “Used to be, you had to burn books to keep people from finding out the truth, now you just have to push it to page 20 of a Google search.” Dr Paul Offit strode into a dispute over the safety of children’s vaccines in 1998. Twenty years later, he is still embroiled in it. His latest death threat arrived only about a month ago, when someone wrote on a forum frequented by vaccine skeptics that Offit was “dead already so they might as well assassinate him”. Offit’s worldview, as a pediatrician at the Children’s hospital of Philadelphia who has himself created a vaccine against rotavirus, had always revolved around the scientific method and evidence-based reality. “The assumption was that if you publish good papers in good journals, truth emerges and people abandon ill-founded beliefs. Didn’t work that way.” In 1998, the since-discredited British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield published a paper in medical journal the Lancet linking the MMR vaccine (against measles, mumps and rubella) to autism. Wakefield went on to advise parents to avoid MMR immunization for their children, spreading pandemonium across Europe and the US. In 2000, Offit decided to act, shocked that nobody was standing up for science. He set up the Vaccine Education Center to give the public a basic appreciation of vaccines which globally prevent up to 3m deaths each year. The backlash came almost immediately. It began with a flurry of emails calling him Satan, a Nazi. “It was devastating. It hurt, it always hurt, it still hurts. I never got so thick-skinned that when people assume my motives are evil it doesn’t hurt me.” He was stalked by a man who followed him from from one speaking engagement to the next. Protesters appeared outside medical meetings bearing placards with Offit’s face above the word “TERRORIST”. A voicemail was left for him at home. The man mentioned he had young children the same age as Offit’s. “We all want what’s best for our children, I’m sure you want what’s best for your children,” the man said, before going on to name Offit’s kids as well as the school they attended. It was the one time that Offit considered dropping it all. That night, he talked to his wife, Bonnie, and offered to quit standing up for vaccines. “If Bonnie had said stop to me that night, I would have stopped.” Bonnie told him to hang in there. You’re doing the right thing, she said, for science, for children. You mustn’t let them shut you up. Offit, 67, is hanging in there, sustained by two powerful motivations. The first is anger: although at least 17 major studies have found that MMR does not cause autism, conspiracy theorists continue to propound the falsehood. Offit is angry in particular at what he calls the “small group of professionals who do this as a living, the media-savvy, politically connected, lawyer-backed group” of anti-vaxxers who have become all the more vocal by using the internet as an organizing tool. “I think they’re evil, to be quite frank. I think they hurt children, they put children in harm’s way and to me they have to be defeated.” His second motivation: children. As the Guardian reported last month, anti-vaccine movements spurred on by rightwing populism are on the rise across Europe and immunization rates are plummeting as a result. The World Health Organization has included such movements – which it called “vaccine hesitancy” – among its top 10 global health threats for 2019. The result of this surge in conspiracy theories around vaccines is that measles outbreaks are at a 20-year high. In 2018 there were more than 60,000 European cases with 72 deaths, twice the number from the year before. Offit has seen at first hand what that means. One of the cases that haunts him is that of a mother who decided not to vaccinate her infant son against influenza, having read some fallacious material about the treatment. The little boy was brought in to the hospital and went through a progression of increasingly invasive care as his body was ravaged with flu. First the child was given an oxygen face mask, then put in a ventilator, then an oscillator and heart-lung machine, until finally he died. “The mother watched her child die in slow motion, like falling off a cliff slowly. It was very hard.” After the boy’s death, Offit asked the mother if she would be willing to talk to other parents wrestling with the decision to vaccinate as a way of preventing further tragedy. She politely declined. “She said to me she still thinks she made the right choice – the vaccine would have been more harmful.” As a developer of video games, Brianna Wu is well placed to judge the stakes involved when someone becomes caught up in the real-world fantasy that is a conspiracy theory. To her trained eye, the chances of prevailing within the maelstrom are passingly low. “If you address the conspiracy theory head-on, you just amplify the message you are trying to disprove. If you ignore it you just get screamed at and harassed until your career is over. It’s a no-win scenario,” she says. Wu, 41, speaks from brutal experience. “I will never forget the day it happened,” she says, recalling when she tweeted a collage of comments lampooning male conspiracy theorists in her industry. “My Twitter caught on fire with all kinds of threats and nasty comments. I knew I had a choice to make: I could sit down and say nothing, or I could take a stand.” She did take a stand, and by doing so, propelled herself into Gamergate, the misogynistic conspiracy theory that ran riot through 4chan, its sister imageboard 8chan, Reddit, Twitter and other social media platforms. The blow-up began in 2014 when fellow video game developer Zoe Quinn became the target of hundreds of anonymous male trolls propagating the false claim that she had sought to advance her career by having an affair with a video game journalist. The conflagration spread like wildfire, engulfing several other women in and around the gaming world. The bedlam could not have come at a worse juncture for Wu, erupting just weeks after she had launched her first video game, Revolution 60. Wu believes that women are targeted by conspiracy theorists more frequently than men, and yet they’re rarely heard. “The cost of speaking out is so high for women, I understand why most decide not to. I’ve heard hundreds of times over the last few years women with children saying ‘I am afraid to speak up because I don’t want my children to be targeted’. That is an utterly rational position – many women are correctly scared to talk.” Wu was scared, too. Her frivolous internet meme ridiculing the male trolls of Gamergate triggered an assault that continues to this day. At its peak, a woman turned up at her alma mater, the University of Mississippi, impersonating her in an attempt to acquire her college records. Someone else surreptitiously took photos of her as she went about her daily business. Wu was unaware of it until she received anonymous texts with pictures of her in coffee shops, restaurants, at the movies. An accurate floor plan of her house was assembled and published online, along with her address and pictures of her car and license plate. And then there were the death threats – up to 300 by her estimate. One message on Twitter threatened to cut off her husband’s “tiny Asian penis”. The couple evacuated their house and took refuge with friends and in hotels. Wu now devotes her time to running for Congress from her home in Dedham, Massachusetts. She sees her candidacy as a way of pressing federal authorities to take the problem of online conspiracy theories and harassment seriously. “The FBI employs about 30,000 agents in the US. As best as I can tell there’s no division that is specifically tasked with prosecuting extreme threats online – it’s simply not a priority for them,” she says. Wu looks back on Gamergate and is torn over its legacy for her. On the positive side, “it did show me there’s a toughness and resilience inside myself, it gave me almost rhinoceros-thick skin.” Then she quickly corrects herself. “Let’s not glamorize abuse. I came to a conclusion that having to read every day about people wanting to rape or kill me did permanent damage.” In October 2016, a month before Trump was elected, James Alefantis hosted a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Comet Ping Pong, his Washington DC pizza restaurant. Within days, his establishment was under siege and he found himself at the center of the mother of all modern conspiracy theories: Pizzagate. Hillary Clinton, so the narrative went, was masterminding a global child-trafficking ring that was holding kids as sex slaves in his basement. The rumor-mongering began when private emails of John Podesta, Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, were stolen allegedly by Russian agents and released through WikiLeaks. In them, Podesta mentioned his brother Tony’s friend and their occasional cooking companion, Alefantis, as well as a fundraising dinner they were planning together at Comet Ping Pong. Soon, photos of Alefantis’ godchildren were being lifted from his Instagram page and repackaged to support claims of hideous pedophilia. Conspiracy theorists were arguing that “James Alefantis” was a bastardization of “j’aime les enfant” (I like children) and that cheese pizza, “cp” for short, was a code for child pornography. The heinous notion that Alefantis was a pedophile working with Hillary Clinton to abuse children in the basement of his restaurant (Comet Ping Pong has no basement) hurtled around the internet. Abusive messages were posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page and in Yelp reviews; one online critic claimed to have found a child’s hand in his pizza. But it was not until bigger beasts got involved that it became truly dangerous. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, retired army general Michael Flynn, fanned the flames by tweeting about Clinton’s “sex crimes w children”. Then up popped Alex Jones once more, telling his thousands of Infowars listeners that “something’s going on, something’s being covered up”, exhorting his devotees to “go investigate it for yourself”. So they did. The self-appointed “investigators” stepped out of the computer screen and began turning up at Comet Ping Pong. “There was this break into the physical world that began to happen,” Alefantis recalls. “People came into the restaurant to film or look around. They came by my house, asking neighbors questions. Suddenly you look around and you don’t know who to trust.” In December 2016, Edgar Welch answered Jones’s call to investigate the satanic child sex ring. He drove 350 miles from North Carolina and burst into Comet Ping Pong armed with three guns. He went table to table, terrifying customers and staff, then shot into a locked closet before giving himself up to police. Six months later, he was sentenced to four years and is still behind bars in Elkton federal prison in Lisbon, Ohio. Alefantis finds it impossible to talk about that day without tearing up. For a full year after the gunman’s appearance, armed guards were posted at both doors of the restaurant, which remains equipped with multiple security cameras and panic buttons. Alex Jones eventually apologized for promoting Pizzagate, and in August was barred from YouTube, Apple and Facebook and other leading social media platforms. Last week the streaming device Roku joined the ban having granted Jones and Infowars access to its content for less than one day. But for Alefantis this is too little too late. The damage has gone too deep. His extraordinary, petrifying ride has taught him a lot about the modern world. At one point, against the advice of friends, he reached out to some of his assailants and asked them why they hated him so much. “I communicated with them. I realized that they also live in fear. That there’s a sense of abandonment and powerlessness where young people online believe the government is conspiring against them or stealing their children which is outrageous but real for them. We have a lot of learning to do about who is disenfranchised in this country.” Through it all he has held on to positive thoughts, encouraged by the support of the community of pizza lovers that rallied around in his darkest hour. “It feels at times that things are out of control, that hate is on the rise. But I now understand the power of community. It saved this place. There’s no reason it can’t save the rest of the country, or the world.”Activists campaigning for the release of the Bahraini national team footballer Hakeem al-Araibi, who has been detained in Thailand since November after an Interpol red notice was wrongly issued against him, say his plight has become an emergency. The warnings came from Brendan Schwab of the World Players Association and the former Australia captain Craig Foster after news that Bahrain has formally submitted an extradition request for Al-Araibi’s return. Schwab and Foster were in Zurich on Monday to urge Fifa to do more to save Al-Araibi, who fled Bahrain after being beaten by police and was given refugee status by Australia, over fears he will be tortured or even killed if he is sent back. “The situation is very urgent because, even if Bahrain does not succeed in extraditing Hakeem, the consequences for him of spending months or even years in the prison while his case drags will be destroying for him,” Schwab told the Guardian. “We are clearly facing a human rights emergency which needs to be elevated to the highest levels in Bahrain and Thailand. We need to see progress – and fast – for Hakeem’s sake.” Foster, meanwhile, said he wanted the case “resolved before Friday” after meeting the Fifa secretary general, Fatma Samoura. Al-Araibi and his supporters believe the fact he was a critic of Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, a member of Bahrain’s ruling family when he contested the Fifa presidential election in 2015, has led Sheikh Salman to seek revenge. In 2016 Al-Araibi was given a 10-year prison sentence in absentia after being convicted of vandalising a police station, even though he was playing in a televised match at the time the crime took place. “After meeting Fifa we believe it understands the gravity of the case,” Schwab said. “The urgent challenge now for football is to come up with a way to solve it.”A senator from Italy’s far-right League has been given an 18-month prison sentence for likening the country’s first black minister to an orangutan. Roberto Calderoli said during a party rally in July 2013 that whenever he saw pictures of Cécile Kyenge, an MEP who at the time was integration minister, “I cannot but think of the features of an orangutan”. Calderoli argued his comments about Kyenge, who moved to Italy from Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1983 to study medicine, were “playful banter”. A court in Bergamo found him guilty of defamation aggravated by racial hatred. But it is not certain whether he will serve any prison time – the sentence will only become definitive once a process of two appeals has been exhausted, and terms of less than two years are usually suspended. However, Kyenge said the verdict was a crucial result, especially at a time when racism was on the rise. “It’s a very important signal,” she said. “It means there are still judges who manage to keep watch over the political and public scene, and shows they are also trying to speak in the name of respect and dignity for people [who suffer racist attacks], and for fundamental rights. Words are weighty, and when they come from a politician, they risk having a very negative impact.” It was among the most high-profile racist attacks against Kyenge during her time in Enrico Letta’s government. She also had bananas thrown at her during political events and repeatedly faced insults and slurs from other politicians, the majority of whom were from the League but also from Brothers of Italy, a smaller far-right party. In 2017, Mario Borghezio, a League MEP, was ordered to pay €50,000 (£44,000) for describing Letta’s administration as the “bongo-bongo government” upon Kyenge’s appointment. She is pursuing legal cases against nine other politicians. Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League and Italy’s interior minister, is suing Kyenge for defamation after she called the party racist. A second hearing is scheduled for 29 March at a court in Piacenza.It came, it enchanted and now it’s gone again: the beach that reappeared on the Irish coast in 2017 after a 34-year absence, garnering worldwide attention, has vanished again. Winter storms have swept away the sand at Dooagh, Achill Island, in County Mayo, leaving only rock and a reminder that what nature gives, it can take away. “It was a series of storms,” Seamus Molloy, of Achill Tourism, said on Monday. “The beach took a really big battering during Storm Ali in September. Some huge rollers pounding off the coast, huge walls of water just falling down on the beach.” Molloy had suspected the beach was slipping away. “The sand was in flux, you could see it. Since Christmas I was looking at it most days. It happened over the past month – just washed away.” The beach at Dooagh, a 200-metre sliver wedged between beaches at Keel and Keem, first disappeared during winter storms in 1984. A freak tide around Easter 2017 restored it, hundreds of tonnes of sand coating the rocks, bringing with it a surge of media interest – BBC, CNN, Fox News, Time, Shanghai Daily – and tourists, including busloads from China. “In our own office here in 2017 we saw a 71% footfall increase in people seeking information,” said Molloy. Locals had braced for the beach’s departure and were hoping for a swift return, said the tourism manager. “It was great while we had it but there was an air of inevitability about it going. The sand is just out in the bay. With the right conditions it can come back.” Jon Fratschoel, the owner of Ferndale bed and breakfast, marvelled at the amount of sand washed ashore in 2017 and now gone. “It’s incredible, a natural wonder,” he said. Fratschoel was sceptical about the beach’s tourism impact. “I don’t think it’s a huge thing. When it first happened, maybe 10% of my guests knew about it.” He said Achill’s permanent beaches outclassed the ephemeral one. “It wasn’t the nicest of them. And it was quite short. I’m not sure if it’s a loss or not.” Achill, population 2,440, is Ireland’s biggest island, 57 square miles of bog, cliff and beach ringed by the Atlantic. A bridge connects it to the mainland. The beauty and pristine wilderness have drawn and inspired artists and writers. Graham Greene stayed at a traditional stone cottage in Dooagh village rented by his girlfriend, Catherine Walston, in the late 1940s. He reputedly wrote parts of The Heart of the Matter and The Fallen Idol beneath its corrugated tin roof. Heinrich Böll, the German anti-Nazi Nobel laureate, lived on Achill in the 1950s and 1960s. His former cottage is now a retreat for writers. Kevin Toolis chronicled the island’s mourning traditions in My Father’s Wake, part memoir, part meditation on death. Islanders were disappointed to bid farewell to Dooagh beach but there was a bright side, said Molloy. “This is just a shining example of the power of nature. From that point of view, it’s still a good news story.”Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov have both received lengthy bans for the ugly scenes after their fight at UFC 229 ended with brawls spreading into the crowd. McGregor has been fined $50,000 and suspended for six months while Nurmagomedov received the heavier penalty, being docked $500,000 and banned for nine months. The suspension are backdated to the fight, which took place in early October last year. Nurmagomedov’s ban will be reduced by three months if he agrees to record an anti-bullying message for the Las Vegas Police Department. His fine will be deducted from his purse for UFC 229, according to the terms handed down by the Nevada Athletic Commission. politics forever Nurmagomedov’s camp was unhappy at the disparity in fines.“I don’t think it’s fair,” his manager, Ali Abdelaziz, said. “Khabib gets $500k and Conor gets $50k? I think it’s bullshit.” Nurmagomedov simply tweeted “politics forever”. Nurmagomedov beat McGregor inside four rounds in Las Vegas in October before he leapt into the crowd and fought with one of his opponent’s trainers. Meanwhile, men thought to be members of the Russian’s team entered the octagon and attacked McGregor. Nurmagomedov apologised for his actions but said he had been provoked during the build-up to the fight, when McGregor had mocked his religion, father and country. Despite his loss, McGregor tweeted after the fight that he would like to meet Nurmagomedov again. “Good knock,” he wrote. “Looking forward to the rematch.”Apple’s cut in its sales forecast was blamed almost entirely on the economic slowdown in China, but the real picture is probably far more complex, with high prices, cultural differences, fierce competition and consumers keeping their phones for longer all causing problems. Its chief executive, Tim Cook, said falling sales of iPhone, iPads and computers were primarily due to the “magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in greater China”. While the downturn in China is a factor, Apple faces challenges in the west too. Smartphone ownership in the US and EU has reached saturation point and convincing people to upgrade from models that still work is far harder than attracting first-time buyers. People are holding on to their old iPhones for longer than ever. The average time people keep hold of them has risen from 18 months to up to three years. That has meant Apple finding long-term revenue services such as the App Store and Apple Pay, and increasing the purchase price of the phones. The iPhone X raised the price ceiling of a top-end mainstream smartphone to £1,000 in 2017, and a year later the XS Max pushed it up to as much as £1,449. “In mature affluent markets such as the US, in western Europe and South Korea, there is still a willingness to pay a significant premium for an iPhone,” said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight. But the higher prices have undoubtedly hit more price-conscious consumers. “The bulk of the iPhone user base may not be ready to shell out $1,200+ for base iPhone models which used to cost $699 just a few years ago,” said Neil Shah, a partner at Counterpoint Research. “Not all of the hundreds of millions of Apple iPhone user base are affluent.” The increasing cost of iPhones may lead to even longer replacement cycles. Apple is clearly aware of the problem, offering trade-in discounts at the end of 2018. The firm has also been pushing consumers towards instalment plans in the US. Increasing prices and slower improvements in capability are far greater problems for Apple in China, which last summer accounted for nearly 20% of the firm’s revenue, than in the west. The lock-in associated with Apple-exclusive services such as iMessage, Apple Photos and even the App Store, means the iPhone is not just another interchangeable smartphone in the US and many parts of Europe. That isn’t the case in China. No one smartphone dominates, and services are device agnostic. WeChat, for example, is far more than just a communications medium and social network like Facebook and WhatsApp; it is where 1 billion Chinese go for news, access to government services, to conduct business, pay for goods and services, and even to order a taxi. “Unlike the rest of the world, in China the most important layer of the smartphone stack is not the phone’s operating system. Rather, it is WeChat,” wrote the technology analyst Ben Thompson in 2017. “For all intents and purposes WeChat is your phone, and to a far greater extent in China than anywhere else, your phone is everything.” Thompson’s view is just as true now. There is little advantage in China to running iOS over Android on your phone. WeChat runs just as well on either, levelling the playing field. Apple is still premium-brand luxury, but it is only as good as its last smartphone. In China it comes up against local rivals such as Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi which not only match but exceed the iPhone, and at a far lower price. Huawei is now the second biggest smartphone maker in the world and its devices can cost as little as half as much as Apple’s. “Chinese brands are outcompeting and out-marketing Apple on design, mobile-first innovations and value ,” said Shah. He expects demand in the Chinese smartphone market to have shrunk by 9%-11% in 2018, but the iPhone to have shrunk by 15%-17%. It is not all doom and gloom for Apple. Ryan Reith, of the analysts IDC, said that while the firm has lost market share, primarily to Huawei, “Apple still has 73% of the premium segment ($600+) in China”. But the biggest issue for Apple is the importance of China to its future growth. Having effectively been priced out of India, which is one of the world’s smartphone markets that is still growing, China is crucial – and as a trade war between Washington and Beijing looms, Apple’s problems could get worse.Donald Trump may have talked to Michael Cohen in advance about Cohen’s false testimony to Congress on their pursuit of a property deal in Russia, the president’s attorney said on Sunday. Rudy Giuliani said it would have been “perfectly normal” for Trump to discuss the testimony with Cohen, his former legal fixer who has admitted to lying to Congress about when the “Trump Tower Moscow” project ended. “So what if he talked to him?”, Giuliani said on CNN’s State of the Union, while insisting that Trump did not instruct Cohen to lie in the testimony. Cohen initially told a congressional committee investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that the Trump Organization’s pursuit of a property deal in Russia ended before the Republican primary began in January 2016. But last November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and admitted discussions on the Moscow deal actually continued well into 2016. He said he had briefed Trump and members of Trump’s family extensively. Special counsel Robert Mueller said in a court filing last month Cohen told investigators about “preparing and circulating his response to the congressional inquiries”, indicating that the White House may have been in the loop about his false testimony. Late on Friday, the office of the special counsel disputed an explosive BuzzFeed News report that said Trump personally directed Cohen to lie to Congress. BuzzFeed has said it stands by the story, which was sourced to unnamed federal law enforcement officials. One of the story’s authors, Anthony Cormier, said on Sunday his sources maintained the information was accurate. “I have further confirmation that this is right,” Cormier told CNN’s Reliable Sources. “We are being told to stand our ground.” Giuliani said on Sunday Cohen had a clearer oversight of the Russia project than Trump, and that Trump had been too busy with his campaign to pay close attention. He said any advance discussion about Cohen’s testimony would have involved Cohen telling Trump what he intended to say and Trump trusting that it would be accurate. “The guy driving this testimony was Michael Cohen,” Giuliani told CNN. Giuliani also reiterated a past statement that the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations may have continued even beyond the June 2016 date given when Cohen admitted that his earlier testimony was false. On NBC’s Meet the Press, Giuliani said Trump’s team had told Mueller the discussions “went on throughout 2016” and continued “probably up to, could be up to, as far as October, November”. This would mean Trump was pursuing a lucrative deal requiring Russian government approval right up until his election as president of the US. American intelligence agencies have concluded Russia’s interference in the campaign was aimed at boosting Trump and damaging Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. Mueller is investigating whether anyone from Trump’s campaign was involved in the Russian interference. Trump has repeatedly claimed there was “no collusion”. Last week Giuliani conceded that Trump associates may have colluded with Russia. If they had, he said, Trump had not known.When Louis Rudd crossed the finishing line of his 925-mile solo trek across Antarctica last month, the first person he contacted was Wendy Searle. “I’ve done it!!!!” the army captain texted her. It was the news that the 41-year-old Searle, a Ministry of Defence civil servant and Rudd’s expedition leader, had spent sleepless nights waiting for. “I’d known he was going to do it two or three days before but hearing he was there safely, that he had completed it as he’d set out to … I was elated. And completely relieved.” Next year Searle plans to be in the centre of Antarctica sending a similar message. She is planning to break the women’s world speed record for skiing solo to the south pole, unassisted and unaided, with Rudd as her expedition leader. “It will be a huge challenge but I think everyone’s got one big adventure in them.” Searle will need to ski 702 miles across the frozen continent in less than 38 days, 23 hours and five minutes. “I can’t have any outside assistance and I have to take everything with me in a special sledge called a pulk: all my food, my fuel, my supplies, everything. I can’t have any food resupplies or medical help. I cannot even accept a cup of tea,” she said. “I’ll be completely alone and, in all likelihood I won’t see anybody else.” Searle is 5ft 5in tall and weighs just over 60kg; the pulk will weigh over 80kg. As training for the expedition, she is spending more than 10 hours a week lifting weights and running up and down hills pulling a tyre, while also holding down a full-time job in the Ministry of Defence press office. Knowing how difficult and dangerous the trip is going to be forces Searle to prioritise it. “When you know that, if you don’t do your training, one day that might be the difference between success and failure, then it’s a huge motivator.” Her family – her husband is a soldier and they have three teenage daughters and a nine-year-old son – are doing all they can to support her. “My children are super-independent, and they do a lot of managing upwards. They’ll say, ‘don’t forget parents evening and these are the appointments I’ve got you’. They’re amazing.” She is determined to show them that following your dreams is worth doing. “I want my children to think: if you pursue things with a passion, you will achieve the results you want to. I want them to see that it’s OK to pursue something with a white-hot passion in a single-minded way and focus on a goal.” Five years ago, Searle had never considered crossing the Antarctic. Then she managed the media campaign of an expedition to the south pole by a team of military personnel. “I became hooked.” She discovered the first woman hadn’t set foot on Antarctica until 1935, even though men had been going there for 100 years before that. It made her wonder if she could have a go herself. “Being around the pole community made it seem like a totally normal idea.” Despite the fact that she’d had no previous polar training and had never skied before, she successfully skied 350 miles across the Greenland ice sheet last year. “One thing I learned is that my polar expedition is going to be incredibly tough, mentally.”I definitely missed my children. But all I could think at the time was: no one day has been as bad or is ever going to be as bad as the six months I spent pretty much on my own in Germany when I was 25. My husband was away fighting in Iraq, I had a house, a dog and three children under four I was solely responsible for, and six months of just absolutely relentless grinding tiredness. As a woman, she faces certain physical challenges. “If you’re going for a pee in the Antarctic it is decidedly easier from a logistics point of view to be a guy. Periods are also a massive issue.” She will take medication to stop herself menstruating. Training for her adventures has changed who she is as a person. “Doing things that push me beyond what I thought I might be able to do, that has become a huge part of my life. I can’t imagine not doing those things now.” Searle is still raising money to fund the £50,000 expedition and hopes to raise a further £50,000 for charity. She says it is more difficult to attract sponsorship as a female polar explorer. “People need to get behind female adventurers. I asked a well-known TV agent why she doesn’t have more of us on her books and she said: ‘Honestly, there just isn’t the market for it.’ I’ve heard people in bookshops looking for adventure titles say: ‘Oh no, I don’t want to read anything by a woman.’” This kind of sexism is a vicious circle, she says. “If you’re not seeing women and mothers going on expeditions and doing amazing things, then how do you know women do that?” But they do, she says – she is part of a community of would-be female adventurers joining groups such as Adventure Queens or Love Her Wild. Searle hopes her story will change perceptions about who should be doing polar travel and is dismayed by the number of women she meets who tell her they could never do what she is doing. “They say that without even stopping to think about whether they could. I’ve got four kids and a full-time job. If I can do it, why can’t they?” But she adds: “I think there’s definitely a groundswell of women who want to go out and have adventures. They’re doing cool stuff, they just don’t shout about it. They don’t need that validation.”The magic of manure. Farmer Tom has been and gone. He left behind three sacks of muck. Black cow manure, well rotted, a good year old. Each bag so heavy I could hardly lift it. We don’t much like our soil too rich, preferring some structure to chocolate-cake crumb His name is Tom Jones, from close to the Welsh borders – and that makes me strangely happy. He came recommended by Jane Scotter from Fern Verrow, not too far from his farm in Kinnersley. Tom is also a talented cook. He used to work at a pub in Kentish Town in London, near me and Howard, before returning to his family’s Herefordshire home to concentrate on farming. He has cows and sheep, maybe pigs, and sells his meat to some of the country’s smartest restaurants. And if you are lucky – if you are a friend of a friend – he might stick a few sacks of rotting muck in the front of his van while making the long journey to make his big city drops. Our allotment neighbours use mostly Thompson’s heavy horse manure from an annual delivery, topped up with sacks from ponies closer by, but Jane steered us towards cow muck for growing vegetables and we are a little in awe of her (have a look at fernverrow.com to see why). We used to hire a flatback truck for a day and fill it from a farm north of Birmingham (forking it off wasn’t fun), but now our soil work is mostly done. We just add a few of Tom’s sacks in late winter or early spring, a handful of ‘500’ sprays through the summer and an occasional sploshing with a comfrey or nettle ‘tea’. We don’t much like our soil too rich, preferring some structure to chocolate-cake crumb. We are in London so there are always shards of old glass and pottery that work their way up. But a few sacks from Farmer Tom forked in and left to work its wormy magic never goes amiss come springtime. Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.comI make Bitcoin, and in a previous life, I covered the oil industry as a journalist. Increasingly, I’m realizing the two worlds are alike. Bitcoin is oil. And one day, Bitcoin will become big oil, and all who dabble in it will be reborn as enemies of the environmental movement, seen as plunderers of the planet and the bad guys in the fight against climate change – just like oil. Bitcoin’s environmental footprint will haunt it. Nobody has pointed this out, but it is painfully clear: if we can at all predict an industry’s growth by that of a different one, then oil is Bitcoin’s crystal ball. Most cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is the first and most valuable, are created by running servers to crunch mathematical puzzles, or “mining”. I have a facility that does that in Canada’s oil capital of Calgary, and its business model is similar to that of the city’s dominant industry. Both profit by generating and selling a product whose price swings with supply and demand. Some in Calgary partake in both. The cryptocurrency world is bigger than mining, just as the vaguely defined big oil is more than those who extract crude. But shares in either industry move in sync with the value of the underlying asset. Oil is considered volatile in finance. In the two years after 2014, its price fell more than 70%, similar to Bitcoin’s crash in 2018. Layoffs swept both industries. While oil has tangible uses, most buying and selling is done on paper by traders seeking profit, with barrels never changing hands. Long ago, I learned cryptocurrency trading from oil professionals. Then there is the environment. Oil is a big offender. So is Bitcoin. Mining uses as much power as a small country, according to some estimates. Miners compete for limited coins, resulting in an arms race, and that power usage increases constantly and rapidly. In China, which leads Bitcoin mining, 60% of energy comes from coal. Even if mining uses clean power, it carries the opportunity cost of not using said power for greener purposes, such as charging electric cars, which replace fossil-fuel-guzzling vehicles. The two industries are hardly the only environmental offenders, but they make great targets. Oil is currently the biggest one. That is in part because the industry is prominent, represented internationally by organized and high-profile groups. Attacks on it are visible. Environmentalists also see oil as futureless and unnecessary. Cars pollute, but few protest outside a General Motors factory – one day, its products could all be electric, but oil remains forever oil. Those two points apply well to Bitcoin. “How to buy Bitcoin” was third-ranked in Google’s how-to searches for 2017. With mergers and acquisitions more than doubling in 2018, cryptocurrency is becoming increasingly organized. Big cryptocurrency players have been accused of price manipulation, and their conflicts have rocked the market. Sounds just like the Saudi Arabia-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel. Bitcoin, too, has been accused by pundits of being futureless and unnecessary. It does have great potential to revolutionize finance, but a decade after its birth, the everyday person still has no practical use for it. Granted, the total value of all cryptocurrencies is only one-tenth of the over-$1tn worth of oil produced every year. But the International Energy Agency has said global oil demand will peak by 2040, as the world seeks cleaner energy. It is not this day, but a day may come when big oil shrinks or changes, becoming less of a target for environmentalists. Bitcoin is the natural next enemy. The caveat is that cryptocurrency continues to grow. Bitcoin – both the currency and industry – has endured worse crashes than 2018’s and emerged stronger. But the past is no map for the future. The battle lines, however, are already being drawn. While academics and the media have long noted mining’s electricity usage, 2018 marked the year environmental and progressive publications started sounding the alarm. Last December, a writer for the green publication Treehugger gloated over the cryptocurrency’s fall in price: “Bitcoin is a colossal waste of energy that will soon be no more. Good riddance.” Canada’s Hut 8 Mining Corp, which says it is the biggest of its kind to be publicly listed, uses so much power that a small town has a contractual right to pull the plug should residents not have enough electricity. Abkhazia has announced the shutdown of 15 mining sites over electricity use concerns. Municipalities in Washington state have reined in the activity. Norway has excluded miners from power subsidies, with one leftwing politician calling the activity “the most dirty form of cryptocurrency output”. Miners have a lot to think about – if not for the planet, then for survival – for this is a fight that is coming.An out of control bushfire burning in the Tasmanian world heritage area has threatened six towns and sent thick smoke across Hobart and Port Arthur, as Victoria experienced a day of wild temperature changes that brought a dangerous bushfire close to east Gippsland towns. The sky over Hobart turned a dramatic red on Friday morning as the smoke plume stretched for hundreds of kilometres across the state. Current mood in Hobart town... pic.twitter.com/upnS4MIXEi The fire in the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers national park, in the state’s south-west, had burned more than 15,000 hectares by Friday evening. The Tasmania Fire Service issued a watch and act alert on Friday morning for the small towns of Maydena and Tyenna, which are sandwiched between the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers national park and Mount Field national park. Later in the day emergency services also issued warnings for the towns of Bushy Park, Ellendale, Westerway and Fentonbury. #Hobart, what the heck?¿ pic.twitter.com/1VRhyOEBug The ABC reported that 600 people had been evacuated from the Mount Field national park and a further 60 from a campsite. The Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service said a number of world heritage values were in the area of the fire, including the alpine plateau above Lake Rhona and areas of mixed forest and temperate rainforest. Specific World Heritage values at risk from the fire include pencil pines, king billy pines, peat soils and cushion plants. Satellite pic clearly showing the smoke plume over Hobart and surrounds from the fire in the southwest. See for yourself at: https://t.co/sE8cPnCNXP pic.twitter.com/rIpts56r29 “PWS is working hard to contain the fire and minimise the damage to these fire-sensitive communities and the potential for damage to critical civil infrastructure,” the service said. A total fire ban was also in place in the eastern half of Tasmania as temperatures hit the mid-30s early in the day. Hobart had reached 33C by noon and Bushy Park in the upper Derwent Valley reached 35C. In Victoria, where temperatures soared into the 40s before dropping rapidly in the afternoon, 12 aircraft and 15 trucks worked on an out of control bushfire south of the Gippsland town of Rosedale. On Friday evening warnings were upgraded for Stradbroke West, Willung and Willung South, where residents were told it was too late too leave their homes. Earlier, Emergency Management Victoria also issued a watch and act warning for areas including Fulham, Longford, Kilmany, Kilmany South, Darriman, Giffard West, Gormandale, and Stradbroke. Victoria’s emergency management commissioner, Andrew Crisp, said the area wasn’t heavily populated, but there were a number of small farms where people were at risk. Residents of Ancona and Merton, north-east of Melbourne, were also warned to leave their properties because of an out-of-control grassfire at Strathbogie. Temperatures in the state’s north-west reached the mid 40s, with Walpeup the hottest place in the state at 46C and Mildura at 44.9C. Avalon airport near Geelong recorded 44.3C, Sale in Gippsland had reached 43C and Melbourne 42.6C. But temperatures plunged as much as 20C within an hour as a very rapid southerly change swept through later in the afternoon. Updated #VicCoolChange forecast. It arrived in #Melbourne right on cue at 4:02pm & the temp has now dropped to just 21.2°C! Thunderstorms are starting to develop in the spotty convective cloud near and east of the change. https://t.co/R7A74b1hnV #VicWeather #MelbWeather pic.twitter.com/dXXt6sgORV  Earlier the emergency services minister, Lisa Neville, said it was “really, really disappointing” people had broken a statewide fire ban after firefighters responded to three campfires in rural Victoria by 8am on Friday. “There are two strong messages: one a total fire ban, no campfires at all, but secondly, if you are leaving your camp area, absolutely make sure that campfire has been put out appropriately,” she said.This week, the Trump administration pushed ahead with its plan to return asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases are considered, moving the first group through San Diego’s San Ysidro crossing late on Friday. Meanwhile, far to the south, thousands of Central Americans are waiting at Mexico’s southern frontier for humanitarian visas. Several hundred have already hopped the border, and are following the route of previous migrant caravans north towards Tijuana. What neither group may be aware of, however, is that the city they are heading for is – once again – Mexico’s murder capital. Last year the country broke its own homicide record, with prosecutors opening 28,816 murder cases, 15% more than the previous year. And the city with most killings was Tijuana. Three murders on New Year’s Eve took the total to 2,502 – a rate of 126 per 100,000 inhabitants, returning the city to levels of hyper-violence it last saw a decade ago. And the numbers are still climbing: on 17 January, police announced 127 murders to date this year. Early that same evening, three more men were gunned down on streets across town in plain view; 24 hours later another three people were killed, including two women. While external observers fear a return to cartel turf wars over smuggling routes into the US, the city’s district attorney, José Alberto Álavarez Mendoza, highlights a pandemic of petty drug dealing on the local market, as neighbourhood gangs fight block-by-block for ‘tienditas’, outlets for mainly synthetic drugs. Tijuana’s leading expert on narco-traffic, Victor Clark Alfaro, says: “The cartel leaders – not the kind of people you’d meet at the country -club – have lost control of the low-level street dealers.” The violence is the worst since Tijuana witnessed all-out war between the local Arellano Félix syndicate and the Sinaloa cartel of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is currently on trial in New York. Broadly speaking, Guzmán won. “Those years were also characterised by extortion and kidnapping, which affected every citizen,” says Álvarez. “But these are now down. What we have is a tragic level of homicide largely among petty dealers in the domestic market for methamphetamine. “The drugs going north are getting through, but smuggling into the US is not violent right now – the killing is local, more intimate.” Álvarez says “these homicides are often people that know each other. They stake out turf, then defend or expand it. These are not cartels, they are splinters, cells.” The method of killing leaves hardly any evidence, he says. “I have a body, but no gun, no bullet or witness prepared to come forward. The revenge of the friends or family of the victim is not through the law, but another killing on the street. Sometimes I don’t even have an ID – 30% of our victims are buried anonymously in the common cemetery.” Victor Clark Alfaro has monitored crime and narco-traffic in Tijuana since the 1980s, for his Binational Commission for Human Rights here, and as a professor at San Diego State University across the border. Yet again, he is this week preparing a file as expert witness in a drugs trial in California. The cartels are still forceful in Tijuana, he says. But whereas up to 10 years ago, the ‘narco-juniors’ of the Arellano Félix clan would flash their wealth around discos and restaurants, “their heirs are invisible. They are businessmen, the people you’d meet at the country club. For the first time in three decades, I cannot name their leaders to you.” The Sinaloa cartel is still around, he says. And the defeated Arellano Félix Tijuana cartel has been revived, led by the original brothers’ sister, Enedina Arellano Félix, her children, nephews and nieces, reformed as the Tijuana Cartel Nueva Generación – and supported by the rising power in the Mexican organised crime world, the Jalisco New Generation cartel. “But the old cartels are fragmenting inside themselves,” says Clark, “across Mexico, and here. They still smuggle cocaine and meth – though now we’re seeing more fentanyl – and big meth producers are still selling on the domestic market. Six months ago, a meth lab was raided in Tecate capable of producing $10m-worth of meth a day.” But while the Arellano Félix clan carefully nurtured and controlled the domestic market, he says, the new generation doesn’t need to. “They do business, sell to the middleman for profit, but are separate from the killing between people who are usually on drugs themselves – where the drug dens are, in the poorest barrios where maquiladora [assembly plant] workers live, and hundreds live on the street.” He adds: “Why should they care? They know that every time 10 people are killed on the street, 1o more will take their place. What matters to them is the money.” Clark insists, however, that “we have always to factor in the role of the police – either dealing the drugs themselves, or allowing it to happen. We must ask: ‘Why is there never a bullet or gun?’ And ask that question all the way to the top, police and politicians: there are meth labs everywhere, and the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency] monitors what happens here carefully – why are the big seizures so rare?” Low sun sets over the troubled Nido de los Aguilas (Eagles’ Nest) neighbourhood, and Horacio Vallez is sitting on the steps of his house near the new, reinforced steel border fence. “We’ve seen it all here. We’ve got the fence behind our backs,” he says, “and before our eyes on the streets every week: another killing, another body here in the dust, more police, soldiers, plastic tape. But no one gets arrested.”Labour must keep open the option of a second EU referendum with remain on the ballot paper, Keir Starmer has said. After Theresa May’s Brexit deal was overwhelmingly voted down on Tuesday, leaving Labour as potential kingmakers in shaping the nature of Britain’s exit from the European Union, the shadow Brexit secretary said Labour must either instruct the government to negotiate a close economic relationship with the EU based on a customs union, or campaign for a further public vote. It comes after a leaked poll commissioned by the pro-EU Best for Britain campaign suggested that voters would be less likely to back Labour if the party was committed to stopping Brexit, while a number of junior shadow ministers have said they would consider their positions if Corbyn conceded to pressure to back a second referendum. Speaking at a Fabian Society event in London called Brexit and Beyond, Starmer restated the commitment made at the Labour conference in Liverpool last year, when the party pledged to keep all options on the table, including campaigning for a public vote – in the event that the opposition cannot force a general election. “That is a very important commitment,” he said. “It’s a commitment to you, our members and our movement. And it is one we will keep. “As I set out in Liverpool, a public vote has to be an option for Labour. After all, deeply embedded in our values are internationalism, collaboration and cooperation with our European partners.” He reiterated on Saturday: “I don’t think it is any secret I firmly believe there should be a remain option – and there has to be a genuine leave option.” The deputy Labour leader, Tom Watson, who also spoke at Saturday’s conference, called on his party not to fail Britain at a “great moment of change” and said that “the country needs the leadership that only we can give. Let’s make sure we do not fail them”. The shadow culture, media and sport minister said that a second referendum might be required to break the deadlock in parliament. “That might be the only way that the insurance policy part of our conference resolution can help break the impasse in those Brexit negotiations,” he said. Elsewhere, the Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston has said she will table a “people’s vote” amendment to the government’s plan B Brexit motion after it is published on Monday. During his speech Starmer said it now appeared inevitable that the government would have to apply for an extension to the article 50 withdrawal process since there is a raft of legislation that must get through parliament before Brexit, with less than 70 days remaining before the UK’s slated exit date on 29 March. “It seems inevitable to me that the government will have to apply for an extension of article 50,” he said. “And of course neither of the alternative options I have set out today could realistically be completed by 29 March. “So, it’s time for us inject some honesty into this debate, and to identify the credible solutions that remain. We also have to recognise that nobody – whether you voted leave or remain – wanted to be in this position. “In the coming weeks parliament will have the chance to take control. That starts by being open about the dilemmas we face, and the credible choices that are still available,” he added. The former head of the Crown Prosecution Service also criticised the failure in the Brexit debate to “tackle the causes of the referendum result”. He stressed the need to “tackle inequality, low pay, a broken housing market and the growing dislocation between our political system and the people who elect us”.From close up, all that is visible are some broken walls among the scrubby brush, a mound covered by parched grass, a dry river gully. But to Professor Karim Sadr and his team of archaeologists from Johannesburg’s University of Witwatersrand, the ruins at Kweneng tell an extraordinary story of a long-lost city. New laser technology has revealed that Kweneng, about 50km (31 miles) south of South Africa’s commercial capital, was once a thriving metropolis with hundreds of households, a vast meeting place, scores of walled family compounds and a bustling market. It was ruled over by kings who regulated trade, waged wars against other similar city states and settled disputes. The discoveries are important not just for South Africa – which some still claim was largely uninhabited before white settlers colonised the western coast and then pushed inland – but the African continent as a whole. In recent decades researchers have conclusively shown that western imperialists and historians who dismissed sub-Saharan Africa as a vast wasteland awaiting “civilisation” by Europeans were entirely wrong. Instead scholars have explored the riches, power and sophistication of cities and civilisations such as Great Zimbabwe, the empire of Mali, the kingdom of Benin and many others. Research has also revealed a continent that was part of global systems of commercial and intellectual exchange from the 15th century – well before the arrival of Europeans. A recent wave of research has gone further, revealing new layers of complex commercial, agricultural and urban development. “Now we understand that there was a network of settlements across very large territories and trading connections. These didn’t have a single major site and have left limited written or oral traces so have gone under the radar,” said Thomas Vernet-Habasque, a Johannesburg-based historian from the Sorbonne who is an expert on the history of pre-colonial Africa. Kweneng was one of several large settlements across northern parts of what is now South Africa that were inhabited by the Tswana-speaking peoples for many centuries before the first European settlers arrived. Many of these settlements were devastated – but not entirely depopulated – in violent upheavals at the beginning of the 19th century. The existence of Kweneng has been known for decades, but the new laser technology has revealed its true extent. The laser system works in a similar way to radar detection, except that instead of radio waves, the system sends out laser pulses. A computer then converts the pulses to a high resolution image, from which archaeologists can reconstruct how the area looked in the past. The city appears to have been split into three main neighbourhoods spread over 20 sq km (8 sq miles), with two very large stone walled enclosures that may have held cattle. The trade networks were very complex and intricate “If all the 900 homesteads of which we’ve found traces were inhabited at once, then the population could have been up to 20,000, but given references to other cities in the region, it was probably more like 5,000,” said Sadr. There is evidence of considerable sophistication too. “There were four or five levels of local government, probably with regiments organised by age that could be called up for civic work or war. They buried their important dead under the walls of the central cattle enclosures but there was a very strong egalitarian tradition and the king went out of his way to not stand out,” Sadr said. Finding an exact date for the end of Kweneng’s days as a major metropolis is very difficult, as current archaeological techniques are not accurate to within decades. But the final days of the city may have been fearful and violent, a victim of the chaotic conflicts known Mfecane, or great scattering, triggered by the military expansion of the Zulu kingdom further south. A previous dig by a team from Witwatersrand University excavated three homes in the city which appeared to have been deliberately destroyed with fire. Animal bones, weapons and valuable items such as beads had been abandoned, suggesting residents left in a hurry. “My guess is that the whole city was hit hard. The question is whether it was totally destroyed,” said Sadr. In South Africa, such questions have long had a political dimension. The history of the trading state of Mapungubwe, which was capable of manufacturing magnificent gold objects 800 years ago, was deliberately obscured by racist officials during the apartheid era. They wanted to hide evidence that the land occupied by white settlers had not only been home to a major African civilisation but also that local populations they dismissed as fit only for manual labour were capable of sophisticated artistic production. Work at Mapela, once thought to be a small town under the authority of the kings of Mapungubwe, shows the settlement was much bigger than previously thought. Archaeologists have found thousands of glass beads, which suggests that it was a thriving trade centre. “The trade networks were very complex and intricate. A similarity in copper ingot style suggests that there was trade and exchange between central Africa and southern Africa. Colonial interventions first of all saw the establishment of borders which divided related peoples,” said Shadreck Chirikure, an archaeologist at the University of Cape Town, who has excavated parts of Mapela. The history of land ownership and habitation remains a potent and sensitive issue today. If Kweneng was still inhabited in the middle of the 18th century, claims by local people to ownership of the land on which the city stood will be strengthened. Demands from local communities to reclaim land that they say is theirs have been blocked in a series of court cases for decades. The new findings may also begin to change the way visitors to southern Africa understand the environment. Researchers point out that landscapes seen by tourists as representing the “real Africa” in a pristine “natural” state are nothing of the kind. Communities living in much of South Africa’s Kruger national park were forcibly removed when it was established as a nature reserve. Even the famous savannah across much of the continent has been worked by man, with many plants relatively recent introductions by local communities. “Those environments that we saw as ‘wild’ are not wild at all,” said Vernet-Habasque. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereNo wonder the Asian Football Confederation bans all talk of politics at its competitions. Plenty of games on the continent come with off-pitch baggage: the Korean Derby, Iran v Iraq and Vietnam v Cambodia to name just a few but, traditionally, Saudi Arabia v Qatar has not been anything to write home about. Not until now. These days you cannot write home to Riyadh if you are in Doha and vice versa and that is just one reason why Thursday’s Asian Cup clash between the two is eagerly awaited. Some have been calling the meeting in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the host nation the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the “Blockade Derby”. The UAE – along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt – cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar in 2017. The claim was that, among other things, Doha was guilty of supporting terrorism. There is no political solution in sight and there have been football consequences. When Qatar were thrashing North Korea 6-0 last Sunday, the only positive for the small band of DPRK cheerleaders was that there were virtually no Qatari fans to rub their noses in it. The usual 45-minute flight from Doha to Abu Dhabi has become a pain, and that is even you are allowed in at all. Even when the AFC forced the UAE to host Qatari clubs in the 2018 Asian Champions League, it has not always gone smoothly. Wesley Sneijder and his Al-Gharafa teammates took 18 hours to get there last February. Though games are hard to watch on television in the UAE as the rights holder, BeIN Sports, a Qatari broadcaster, is involved in a dispute with the Saudi-based BeoutQ, which it accuses of pirating its content, for the most part games have gone reasonably well for an improving Qatar team. Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have done well so far and go into the game with two wins each, meaning they have already qualified for the last 16. That may take off some of the edge and both camps have been trying to play it all down, saying that there is little prospect of past episodes such as the 2017 Gulf Cup when the Saudi and Emirati teams withdrew from press conferences that contained Qatari broadcasters. The Qatar spokesperson, Ali Hassan al-Salat, was very positive before the game. “Everything has gone smoothly since we arrived in the Emirates,” he said, adding that the six-hour journey was not too bad. “We are looking forward to the Saudi Arabia game.” Handshakes will take place, say officials, and the game will be played in the right spirit. “We are footballers not politicians and we always respect fair play,” Turki al-Awad, a board member of the Saudi Arabia Football Federation told the Guardian. “This is just a football game. We are a professional team and we play Qatari teams all the time.” Al-Salat agrees that not shaking hands had not crossed Qatari minds. “Football is a message of peace. The slogan of the competition is ‘bringing Asia together’ and we are going to follow that during the competition.” The message on the field may be one of peace and fair play but off it the issues are unlikely to be solved soon. “The notion that football can help is delusionary,” James Dorsey, an expert in Middle Eastern football politics, said. “Football can only be a factor in an environment that is conducive to a solution, it can’t create that environment.” Dorsey sees the blockade as an unsuccessful attempt to force Qatar to follow the regional line set by the Saudis and its allies. “It has failed to break Qatar’s resolve and/or garner international support.” While Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE are all in the knockout stages of the Asian Cup and all entertain notions of winning, the shadow cast over the region by the 2022 World Cup grows larger. The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, told the Dubai newspaper Al Ittihad earlier this month that the UAE and Saudi could host games if the tournament is expanded, as he desires, from 32 to 48 teams as tiny Qatar could not handle so many (though he admitted there were issues to sort out first). That is certainly true even without expansion. It remains to be seen what would happen to the blockade if its instigators qualify for 2022. Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Cairo may have some thinking to do if so, though it is unlikely they would remove themselves and their football-loving fans from the World Cup. Qatar insists that there will be no issues with Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt coming to Doha. “The blockade has had no effect on Qatari football and everything is under control for now and for 2022,” Al-Salat said. “We will receive every team that qualifies and they will feel welcome. This is our tradition and our philosophy. We respect all teams and we will show that on Thursday.”Contrary to some of the pre-match hype, this result will not decide anything with regard to who succeeds José Mourinho on a permanent basis at Manchester United in the summer. Mauricio Pochettino and Tottenham lost but it is not curtains for the Argentinian’s candidacy. He will remain of great interest to the power-brokers at Old Trafford. What the result did do was swell the feelgood factor at United that has built under the caretaker management of Ole Gunnar Solskjær. Remarkably he has now won each of his first six matches in charge – no United manager has ever done that – and this was a big one in what was the first acid test of his tenure. Spurs have established themselves as a Premier League force under Pochettino and they threw everything at United in a fine second-half performance. Unfortunately for them they ran into a goalkeeper in inspired form. David de Gea made a succession of saves and blocks with his feet in that unshowy manner of his to merit the man-of-the-match award. He could not have been expected to make some of them. It added up to a fourth league defeat of the season for Spurs at Wembley and it came coated in misfortune, with the added blows of injuries to Harry Kane and Moussa Sissoko. The former limped off at the very end after twisting his ankle under a challenge from Phil Jones, and Spurs will hold their breath on the results of scans. Kane has a history of ankle problems and it is certainly bad timing, with Son Heung-min now departing for the Asia Cup. Most pleasing from United’s point of view was how Solskjær’s team came to play and attack. He sprang a tactical surprise by starting Jesse Lingard, rather than Romelu Lukaku, as the central striker, with Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial either side of him and the trio gave United a pacy and energetic feel. United’s visits to top-six opposition under Mourinho had, with only a couple of exceptions, been grisly wars of attrition. They did not just park the bus but throw the keys into the stand and the statistics showed only two wins from 13 matches – and 11 goals scored. It was a different story here and United deserved their half-time lead, which came on 44 minutes when Lingard, perfectly positioned by Solskjær, intercepted a loose pass from Kieran Trippier. He found Paul Pogba who, in keeping with Solskjær’s philosophy, got United moving quickly. It was his sumptuous crossfield ball that released Rashford in the inside right channel and offered the latest evidence of the freedom with which the Frenchman is playing under the Norwegian. Rashford got himself up against Jan Vertonghen, who was back after two months out with a hamstring injury, and the Spurs defender never looked like stopping the United forward, whose first touch was assured. The angle was tight but the low finish was arrowed into the far corner via Hugo Lloris’s fingertips. It was always going to be interesting to gauge Spurs’ intensity levels after Tuesday’s Carabao Cup semi-final first leg against Chelsea, when they looked jaded. United by contrast were fresh from a warm-weather training break in Dubai. Sissoko lasted only 42 minutes before succumbing to a groin problem, and it was while Spurs tried to reorganise that Rashford scored. Spurs created a few moments of danger in the first half, mainly through Kane, but it was the visitors who looked the slicker and more threatening before the interval. They could look back on a chance for Lingard, which he snatched at and lifted over, and low shots on the break from Rashford and Martial, both of which Lloris kept out. Spurs dug deep in the second half to show their character and quality. Sissoko’s replacement, Érik Lamela, injected bite and penetration, Trippier repeatedly got into crossing positions on the right and Dele Alli and Kane shimmered with menace. They hinted at an equaliser extensively but it would not come. Some of Spurs’ chances were gilt-edged, beginning with Kane’s on 48 minutes, forged by Alli’s through-ball. Kane shot straight at De Gea. The United goalkeeper did well to keep out an Alli header while another from Kane was more comfortable. He was just getting started. De Gea’s one-on-one block from Alli in the 66th minute took away the breath and so did the save he made with his left foot to keep out Toby Alderweireld’s near-post flick from a corner. There was also a flying catch from a Kane free-kick and further excellent saves to deny Alli and Kane. De Gea refused to be beaten. United had their chances at the other end. Pogba saw a header and a low shot both saved by Lloris and there was another moment when he chased his own blocked shot, brushed aside Christian Eriksen and tried to lob the Spurs goalkeeper, who made a wonderful reaction save. This was good Pogba, fusing muscle with deft touch to lift things to a higher plane – almost bullying the opposition – but there was a flash of bad Pogba on 78 minutes when he left a nasty boot in on Alli, for which he was booked. He diced with further trouble by hurling the ball away immediately after the foul. It was thrillingly open, the sort of game United fans used to see on a regular basis. Thanks in large part to De Gea, they could also bask in the result.Tensions reached boiling point at St Kilda beach in Melbourne as hundreds of far-right wing extremists and anti-racism campaigners faced off in a screaming match and minor scuffles broke out. Scores of police including some with riot shields and on horseback were on hand to keep the groups apart. A police boat kept watch from the water and two helicopters circled overhead. Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, the organisers of the far-right rally, said they had called it in order to “discuss” Melbourne’s youth crime and alleged African gang problems. “Our country is under attack,” Cottrell said over a megaphone. “Africans are 77 times more likely to commit home invasion. That’s not racism, that’s a fact!” Independent senator Fraser Anning flew down from Queensland to attend the event and Erikson thanked him for his presence. “The leftwing media likes to hang tags on us like neo-nazis, racists and facists, they are just ordinary hard working Australians who pay their taxes,” Anning told reporters. “Australia has had enough. I think this is the start of something bigger. The revolution will eventually start. People have had enough of these people and they have got to be sent back to where they came from.” In August, Anning’s “final solution” speech to parliament attracted condemnation from all sides of politics. Senator Frasr Anning 'accidentally' invokes "final solution", flies in to St Kilda to pose for happy snaps with these chaps. pic.twitter.com/mB2DvQdEty Some rightwing protesters wore Australian and Eureka flags as capes around their necks and chanted “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi”, and “rise without fear.” Counter-protesters shouted “nazi scum not welcome here”. A man in a ute equipped with speakers and a megaphone drove down the Esplanade in St Kilda chanting “Sudanese are welcome, racists are not”. Rightwing protesters surrounded his vehicle, broke the speakers and ran off with the generator. Later the two protest groups and police lines left the foreshore area and spilled out onto the road and walked towards the Luna Park. In one heated confrontation a rightwing protester broke through police lines and tried to grab a banner from three anti-racism campaigners. Police sprayed capsicum spray and used rubber pellets before arresting the rightwing protester. Paramedics were helping to treat two women who were sprayed in the eyes. The Guardian Australia saw at least six people being led away by police. An 18-year-old man was arrested on the beach after being found with a “dangerous article” at about 12.20pm, police said. “Victoria Police respects people’s right to protest peacefully, but will not tolerate those who break the law.” Police superintendent Tony Silva said there had been three arrests, including one for breach of bail. He said a number of others had been briefly detained and then released, adding that he hoped the public felt reassured police had the situation under control. One local resident, who gave her name as Janet, said the protests did not represent St Kilda. “People should just calm down,” she said. Grandmother Kimberley Neave from Inverloch said she had come to the rightwing rally because she was upset with the direction of the country and the amount of immigration. Earlier, Greek migrant Vas Karakassidis told the anti-racism rally that she knew what it was like to grow up feeling like you don’t belong. “This beach always welcomed everyone,” she said. The far-right rally was condemned by the Australian human rights commissioner, Chin Tan, who said there was no place in the country for such rallies. Cottrell and Erikson were convicted and fined by magistrates in 2017 for inciting contempt and ridicule of Muslims by making a video in which they beheaded a dummy with a toy sword in a protest against the building of the Bendigo mosque. Cottrell has appealed the conviction. The pair claim their rally was a response to recent incidents in which youths have mugged people in the Port Phillip Bay area. Erikson also last week confronted a group of young men of African background who were playing soccer at St Kilda, prompting police intervention. St Kilda and nearby Caulfield, areas with high Jewish populations, have also experienced a blitz of anti-semitic vandalism. Someone should ask @fraser_anning How he can champion a Far Right Rally Where supporters stand under an Australian flagDoing Nazi salutes ?#stkildapicnic #Nazis #StKildaBeach #auspol pic.twitter.com/tfPFhdttAi The “master race”.. #stkildapicnic pic.twitter.com/nYihRWYIKo There can be no moral equivalence when one side is there raising Nazi sieg heil salutes. We must condemn these far-right extremists for what they are: neo-Nazis, white nationalists and racial supremacists. Will our political leaders do this? #stkildapicnic https://t.co/07NyqPYXCm With additional reporting from Australian Associated Press.Theresa May is under mounting pressure to spell out what changes to the Irish backstop she hopes to negotiate with Brussels, after the fragile Brexit truce in her own party appeared to fray on Wednesday. The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, became the latest senior figure to reject the idea of revisiting the withdrawal agreement on Wednesday, insisting: “Calmly, I will say, right here and now, we need this backstop as it is.” Downing Street said ministers would hold a series of meetings with backbench Conservative MPs, including supporters of the so-called “Malthouse compromise”, in the coming days, to thrash out an agreed approach. May also met the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in her office in the House of Commons for face-to-face talks – though Downing Street subsequently denied that she had signalled a shift in position towards a customs union. The prime minister won the backing of parliament on Tuesday for an attempt to return to Brussels and unpick the backstop her own government negotiated, to replace it with unspecified “alternative arrangements”. When challenged by Corbyn at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday about what those might be, she mentioned “a unilateral exit mechanism or a time limit to the backstop” – and technological approaches such as a “trusted trader scheme”. She added that Tuesday’s vote showed there was a sustainable majority for a deal, if objections to the backstop were tackled. However, the EU seemed sceptical of her claims. Its most senior official told the prime minister on Wednesday evening it was her job to resolve the impasse. The European council president, Donald Tusk, warned May, in what sources described as an “open and frank” 45-minute phone call, that a precondition for any further talks was a concrete plan from Downing Street that could clearly command the support of parliament. She said that parliament had highlighted the issue that needed to be addressed in Tuesday’s vote. But the EU source said May had then failed to offer any proposals. Tusk is understood to have replied that May could not expect Brussels to come to her rescue with a solution. EU officials and leaders are increasingly concerned that Downing Street is seeking to blame Brussels for their failures. Before talks with the EU have even resumed, the prime minister is facing demands from Brexiters in her own party to overhaul her negotiating team. Some claim that they had received assurances from No 10 in the run-up to Tuesday’s crunch vote that May’s chief negotiator, Ollie Robbins – a bogeyman for many pro-Brexit MPs – would be joined on future missions to Brussels by Crawford Falconer, the UK’s top trade negotiator. May’s spokesman insisted on Wednesday that there had been no changes to the team, prompting the European Research Group’s Steve Baker to complain: “Excluding our chief trade negotiation adviser from our principal trade negotiation is a longstanding mistake which should be rectified now.” Falconer, who works in Liam Fox’s Department for International Trade, was previously New Zealand’s representative to the World Trade Organization. He worked with the pro-Brexit thinktank the Legatum Institute before being brought into government. The prime minister met Corbyn on Wednesday afternoon, after which the two sides disagreed about whether the prime minister was willing to soften her opposition to a customs union. A spokesman for the Labour leader said shortly after the meeting broke up that the prime minister had shown a “serious engagement in the detail” of Corbyn’s proposal for a customs union with the EU after Brexit.A few minutes later, Downing Street responded by saying that while May had asked Corbyn questions, her underlying position had not shifted.The party leaders held a 45-minute meeting that was described as “serious and engaged” by Labour. The Labour spokesman added that May was “interested in exploring the details of each element” of Labour’s Brexit proposals. The two party leaders will meet again soon, most likely within days. Corbyn made an offer to May at last year’s party conference that Labour could swing behind her deal if she backed a customs union, and offered fresh reassurances on workers’ rights and environmental standards. May has repeatedly insisted the UK must be able to strike its own trade deals, which would rule out joining a customs union – but many in Westminster still believe she could ultimately be pushed in that direction. Some Tory Brexiters have even hinted they might be willing to swallow the idea of a customs union if the backstop were struck out of the legally binding withdrawal agreement. “Can we get up and leave this thing one day, if we want to?” asked one senior leaver. “Is our destiny in our hands?” Other Brexiters are urging their restive colleagues to be patient and give May the space to negotiate. The former Brexit secretary David Davis said it was unlikely that May would make significant progress before 13 February, when she has promised to report back to parliament. “I would not expect the Europeans to start moving seriously until March – until the exit day is absolutely imminent. That’s just based on their past behaviour,” Davis said. Meanwhile, a leaked memo from the industry minister, Richard Harrington, obtained by Sky News, poured cold water on proposals drawn up by Nicky Morgan and Jacob Rees-Mogg, among others, to resolve the Brexit impasse. On the idea of technological solutions to avoid a hard border, his note said: “This idea was considered and rejected by both the UK and the EU in summer 2018, as both parties concluded that it would not maintain an open border. That is why we ended up with the current backstop. There is currently no border in the world, outside a customs union, that has eliminated border infrastructure.” Harrington has issued a series of increasingly dire public warnings about the risks of a no-deal Brexit in recent days, even going as far as to say that he was prepared to be sacked for doing so. The Brexit select committee chair, Hilary Benn, also questioned May’s plans on Wednesday, describing her remarks in the Commons as “a rerun of last summer, when the cabinet discussed technology, trusted traders and the maximum facilitation proposal as a way of solving the NI border problem” – all of which were then rejected by the EU. He warned that May appeared to have “decided to go through the same process all over again for reasons of party management rather than in the national interest”. Downing Street later dismissed remarks from the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, suggesting that Tuesday’s cross-cutting series of votes had made a “disorderly” Brexit more likely. “What the vote has done is set out what parliament requires in order to pass this deal, so we now have clarity. The EU has said that it was seeking clarity,” a spokesman said.The moment Dan (not his real name) realised he had a problem with cocaine, he had been off work for a week, sick with flu. His phone buzzed. It was his cocaine dealer, calling to check he was OK. When Dan, one of his favoured customers, hadn’t been in touch to buy the cocaine he usually took several times a week, the dealer knew something was wrong. “I don’t like thinking about that,” Dan says, shaking his head as we sit in a London pub. Now 36, Dan estimates he has spent £25,000 on cocaine. Lines in the pub on a Friday night after work. Lines on a Wednesday evening at a friend’s house while earnestly discussing 90s hip-hop. Lines at house parties, weddings, birthday parties and for no reason at all, other than that cocaine – the white powder that makes no one a better version of themselves, but that many of us continue to do anyway – is everywhere and freely available. Britain is a cocaine-loving country, and its love for the drug is growing. The country snorts more cocaine than almost anywhere in Europe. “Cocaine use is going up,” says João Matias of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. In the UK in 2017-2018, 2.6% of people aged 16-59 took powdered cocaine (as opposed to crack cocaine, the more potent variant of the drug, which was taken by 0.1% of the population in the same period), up from 2.4% in 2013-2014, according to Home Office figures. More young people are taking cocaine than ever before: 6% of 16- to 24-year-olds have tried it, despite the fact that, overall, fewer young people take drugs in general. It is also likely that Home Office figures, which often exclude students, prisoners and homeless people, underestimate cocaine use because those groups typically have above-average illegal drug use. Most of this cocaine ends up in our sewage system, and researchers have been finding increasing levels in Britain’s water supply since 2012, Matias says. Levels are highest at weekends, indicating recreational use. Cocaine used to be the sole preserve of affluent City workers and dissolute rock stars. They continue to favour the drug: data from the crime survey of England and Wales showed that powdered cocaine use increased from 2.2% in 2014/15 to 3.4% in 2017/18 in households earning £50,000 a year or more. (Use among those earning less than £10,000 a year fell during this period, although researchers believe the use of crack cocaine may be on the rise in poorer communities.) But powdered cocaine now appeals to those in more modest income brackets, too. “Coke is pretty classless now,” says Ian Hamilton, a senior lecturer in mental health at the University of York. “It’s not for financiers in the City of London any more. It’s more affordable, so that’s opened up the market to people who wouldn’t have tried it before.” And dealers are savvy marketers. Dan pulls out his phone to show me a “bargain bucket offer” he has received: five grams of cocaine for £210. Users come from all backgrounds. In Hyndburn – the once-prosperous centre of England’s textile industry, which is now in decline – 17 young people died of cocaine overdoses in a nine-month period in 2017. In Newcastle, according to a Vice report, cocaine has become “an important factor in the city’s legitimate economy”, with bars offering privacy curtains for patrons who wish to snort lines off their phones. According to the National Crime Agency, recent years have seen the Albanian mafia take control of the UK’s lucrative cocaine market with a brutally effective business model. By negotiating directly with the cartels in drug-producing Latin America, cutting out traditional international importers, the Albanian mafia have been able to deliver a purer, more affordable product to market: cocaine hasn’t been this cheap since 1990. Ironically, anti-drug laws have also improved the quality of cocaine. The 2015 Serious Crime Act criminalised the import of cutting agents such as benzocaine. When it is harder to cut the product, purity increases. This, along with the fact that cocaine production has increased in Latin America, has created a perfect powder storm. Cocaine purity, which has been increasing since 2010, is at its highest level in a decade. What happens when a product becomes cheaper, more plentiful and better quality? More people try it. As purity and availability increase, so, too, does the misery wreaked by cocaine. Hospital admissions for mental health disorders linked to cocaine have almost trebled in the past decade. Cocaine-related deaths have increased for the sixth year running, up to 432 deaths in England and Wales in 2017, compared with 112 in 2011. (It’s worth noting that these figures refer to powdered and crack cocaine, as official statistics do not differentiate between the two when establishing cause of death. Many of these deaths will involve users who have longstanding addictions to crack cocaine, as well as other co-dependencies.) Users leap from balconies, or fall from mountain paths while under the effects of the drug. Or their bodies give out on them: many deaths take place when users mix cocaine with alcohol, producing the toxic chemical cocaethylene. “There are a number of risks when it comes to mixing any drugs together,” says the consultant addiction psychiatrist Dr Prun Bijral of the drug treatment service Change Grow Live. As “alcohol is a depressant and cocaine is a stimulant,” combining the two in large quantities can overstimulate the heart and nervous system, leading to, in extreme circumstances, heart attacks. Mixing the two also “impairs your ability to measure and make a judgment on risks”, Bijral adds, meaning that you are far more likely to get yourself into a dangerous situation while drinking and taking cocaine. And it is not just your heart you should be worried about: cocaine abuse can cause the soft inner cartilage of your nose to erode, and it has been linked to brain abnormalities in regular users. Lucy White, a student at the University of the West of England, knew the dangers of messing with drugs: she saw 19-year-old Drake Morgan-Baines collapse and die in front of her, of MDMA (ecstasy) poisoning, while she was working in Motion nightclub in Bristol. “She was really disturbed by it,” her sister, Stacey Jordan, tells me. But just seven months later, White herself died of a lethal cocktail of cocaine and prescription drugs. “It was the drugs that killed her, but it was also the people she was with, and the peer pressure,” Jordan says. “I don’t think she realised how dangerous it was.” Cocaine use creates subtler forms of misery, too. “I’m the most confident person for those few hours when I’m on it,” Dan says, “but afterwards I’m having horrendous, almost suicidal, thoughts.” Paranoia lasts for days after a bender. “It’s crushing. The depression outweighs the good times so much,” he says. “It’s the feeling of being a disappointment to my parents. What the fuck am I doing?” I’ve been at weddings and people are doing it in the toilet. I’m looking on in pure horror Dan thinks Britons love cocaine because we work so hard (on average, we work the longest hours in Europe). “You can do coke tonight and go to work tomorrow and no one will know,” he says. “I may be a bit less productive, but only I know that.” Even though mixing alcohol and cocaine can prove deadly, many continue to do it. “Coke and alcohol go really well together,” Hamilton says. “You can drink for longer, and it makes you more confident.” “After two drinks, I wouldn’t be able to relax unless I knew the coke was sorted,” Dan says. “That was my mentality.” At a time of welfare cuts and ever-longer NHS mental health waiting lists, cocaine also seems to offer a quick fix for those struggling with stress or anxiety. “If you are a young person who is a bit anxious, lacking in confidence or not sure of your place in the grand scheme of things, coke sorts all that out for you,” Hamilton says. “If you can offer me a line now that makes me feel better, or the alternative is that I’m going to have to wait at least four weeks to see a counsellor, it’s an absolute no-brainer.” He pauses. “I’m not recommending it. But austerity has created a real bottleneck in people getting the support they need, and drugs are far more instant. They have no opening and closing hours.” Recently, I was in the sort of pub you bring your parents to: an upmarket affair with chalkboard menus. I went to the bathroom and there, dusted across the toilet-roll holder like icing sugar on a Victoria sponge, was a fine but unmistakable layer of cocaine. For someone like Dan, who is trying to avoid taking the drug, “you have to be very careful. It’s everywhere.” Recently, he was eating dinner in a Greek restaurant when a nearby stranger offered him cocaine. Did he accept? He drops his voice. “I did, yeah.” Cocaine’s resurgence is also linked to our changing night-time economy. The number of nightclubs in the UK halved between 2005 and 2015, and more than 25% of pubs have closed since 2001. As these places shutter, British people increasingly socialise behind closed doors. Unlike the club drug ecstasy, cocaine is best taken at home. Dan and his friends would often avoid bars to head back to someone’s flat, turn on some music and get a bag of cocaine in. “Bars are full of dickheads, so I’d say: ‘Let’s get out of here – I’m done.’ Only I wouldn’t be done: I’d stupidly stay up until 7am, having the same conversation.” To many people, a line of cocaine with a glass of wine on Saturday night is an ordinary sort of thing – and they certainly don’t think of the devastation wreaked by drug cartels in cocaine-producing parts of the world. “It’s not seen as a hard drug,” says Hamilton. “It’s snorted, not injected, so you don’t have to cross that line.” “The Chelsea flower show, the opera, churches, a Momentum fundraiser, Peppa Pig World …” The former Sun journalist Matt Quinton lists the places he and his colleagues found cocaine traces while working undercover for the newspaper. “Peppa Pig World was unexpected,” he says. The most shocking place Quinton found cocaine? A toilet that was only accessible to NHS staff. Because these exposés were popular with readers, and cheap to put together, Quinton or his colleagues would be sent out by editors to swab pretty much anywhere. As well as becoming extremely proficient at wiping down lavatories, Quinton learned one thing. “Coke is absolutely everywhere, especially if alcohol is being served,” he says. In the 18-month period Quinton only failed to find cocaine once: in the bathroom at a children’s festival. “That was because they had these toilets that were entirely plastic and clearly being blast-washed on a regular basis.” And, he adds, “they didn’t serve alcohol”. Even Jordan’s friends don’t see a bit of coke as much of anything, really, despite the fact she lost her sister to the drug. It angers her. “You can’t get away from it if all your friends do it,” she says. “I’ve been at weddings and people are doing it in the toilet. I’m looking on in pure horror.” After witnessing someone snorting cocaine off their hand at a nightclub bar, she avoids going clubbing. “I start lecturing strangers because I get too angry.” She understands why people do it. “I don’t think people understand the butterfly effect that it has – unless something happens to you.” Recent months have seen attempts to challenge the laissez-faire attitudes. Last July, London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, linked escalating violence on the city’s streets to middle-class cocaine use. Days later, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, denounced hypocritical middle-class users who profess to be politically aware. In October, the home secretary, Sajid Javid, told the Daily Mail that a government review would specifically look at the damage occasioned by middle-class drug users. Where did this sudden cross-party consensus on the evils of middle-class drug originate? One man: Simon Kempton. If I have a drink, I know someone will have coke on them, and it’s so hard to say no In May last year, Kempton – who is the Police Federation’s lead on drugs – was chairing a panel discussion at its annual conference when a journalist asked for his views on prohibition. “I let my guard down a bit and said something honest, which is never a good thing,” Kempton smiles. He singled out middle-class drug users for fuelling street violence. A media storm ensued, but after Dick, Khan and Javid echoed his stance, Kempton felt vindicated. He hopes to transform middle-class users’ attitude to the drug. “If you think back to when I was a nipper, drink-driving was accepted ethically,” he says. “It took 20 or 30 years of better education to understand that drink-driving isn’t ethical. There’s similar work to be done.” But does middle-class cocaine use really cause knife crime? “To my mind, the focus on middle-class cocaine users is a smokescreen for the failure to deal with the underlying causes of youth crime and violence,” says Prof Alex Stevens, an expert in criminal justice at the University of Kent, and the president of the International Society of the Study of Drug Policy. Since 2011, the coalition and Conservative governments have consistently attempted to link gangs and youth violence to drugs. But while street-level violence may be seen in the dealing of crack cocaine across so called county lines, powdered cocaine has a different supply chain. “Middle-class users don’t get their coke from young kids who are riding motorbikes out of council estates,” Stevens says. “There is violence in that supply chain too, but most of it happens in Latin America.” If the evidence is shaky, why are politicians so keen to connect these dots? “It’s a strategy to keep in people’s minds the link between drugs and black youths,” says Stafford Scott, an anti-racism campaigner based in Tottenham, north London. It also allows them to shirk responsibility for dealing with the real causes of knife crime: “poverty, isolation and marginalisation”. Has Scott ever seen any evidence of cocaine dealing in the communities he works with? “You don’t see powdered cocaine in the ’hood,” he says. Whether or not you agree that cocaine causes knife crime on our streets, one thing is for certain: cocaine causes damage. Maybe the damage takes place in a faraway country you prefer not to think about. Maybe it’s a subtler form of damage: to your relationships, finances, wellbeing or career. Dan has pulled himself out of the depths of his cocaine addiction gingerly. Sometimes, he slides downhill. Avoiding social situations where he knows cocaine will be present helps, “because I’m weak”, he says. “If I have a drink, I know someone will have coke on them, and it’s so hard to say no.” But it’s not easy to keep your distance. After we finish our interview, we step out of the pub into the frigid night air. We’re about to part ways when Dan notices a man outside, speaking loudly on the phone. He’s withdrawing a large sum of cash from an ATM and directing someone to his location. We look at each other, and Dan sighs. The charity Change Grow Live (changegrowlive.org) offers further information on, and help with, the issues raised in this articleNigel Clough managed to retain his sense of humour after Burton’s 9-0 trouncing by Manchester City by stating he hoped Pep Guardiola had “more than one glass” of wine on offer for the post-match drink. Burton’s heavy defeat in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg at the Etihad Stadium ended their hopes of reaching the final, yet when asked what his opposite number told him at full time Clough remained light-hearted. “He said: ‘Come in for a glass of wine.’ I hope he’s got more than a glass,” said the visiting manager, who insists his side will use the return leg in a fortnight to celebrate reaching the last four. “Do I wish we hadn’t played? Not at all, we have made history in getting this far. It wasn’t about tonight it was about the achievement of getting here. We kept going right to the end, they were shouting: ‘We want 10’. And we stopped them, that’s a positive for us. “I told them that front five, if they reach the Champions League semi-final, will give Real Madrid or whoever they play a problem.” As Clough paid tribute to City’s attacking quintet of Gabriel Jesus, Riyad Mahrez, Leroy Sané, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva, Guardiola referenced Clough’s late father, Brian, who is considered one of the greatest domestic managers. “His father showed him some tricks,” said City’s manager. “You know better than me what Clough means – all he won – and the respect for the way he played, his charisma. It’s an honour for me personally to play against a Clough. “I wanted to congratulate them for an incredible tournament. They beat mythical teams – like Aston Villa and Middlesbrough. We’re not a team who has a lot of titles in our museum so you have to take these chances to get to the final. You have to take it in the first leg.”Michel Barnier has warned that the move led by Labour MP Yvette Cooper to block the prime minister from delivering a no-deal Brexit is doomed to fail unless a majority for an alternative agreement is found. The EU’s chief negotiator, in a speech in Brussels, said the “default” for the UK was still crashing out if MPs could not coalesce around a new vision of its future outside the bloc. “There appears to be a majority in the Commons to oppose a no-deal but opposing a no-deal will not stop a no-deal from happening at the end of March”, he said. “To stop ‘no deal’, a positive majority for another solution will need to emerge.” Labour appears set to whip its MPs to back Cooper’s amendment paving the way for legislation that would mandate ministers to extend article 50 if a no-deal Brexit looked imminent. Barnier said that extending the two years of the negotiating period beyond 29 March should not be the primary focus for the UK parliament. “We need decisions more than we need time actually”, he said. “I don’t know whether postponing or extending will be raised but its the head of state and government that will have to answer that question by consensus. Some have said to me that if the question is raised, then why would we do that? What would the purpose be? How long would be required?” There have been growing fears in Brussels that the UK is heading for a crash landing out of the bloc. EU ambassadors on Wednesday were urged by the European commission to ensure that their national contingency measures did not replicate the terms of today in order to keep the pressure on parliament to forge a “positive majority” for a deal. Barnier reiterated in his address to the European economic and social committee, a civil society organisation, that he believed the key to getting an agreement through parliament lay in the prime minister, Theresa May, embracing a permanent customs union as backed by Labour. Senior EU diplomats are concerned, however, that this push by Brussels, which would involve redrafting the political declaration on the future relationship accompanying the withdrawal agreement, is falling on deaf ears. “If the UK red lines were to evolve in the next few weeks or months the union would be ready immediately and open to other models of relationships which are more ambitious”, Barnier said. “We’re ready to rework the content and ambition of the political declaration.” It is understood that Downing Street’s chief Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, has been told by EU officials that there was little point in the prime minister returning to Brussels to seek concessions on the Irish backstop. In an interview with Le Monde, Rzeczpospolita and Luxemburger Wort published earlier on Wednesday, Barnier made public his belief that May’s strategy of trying to secure a time-limit was doomed to fail. In comments that appear to put a wrecking ball to the prime minister’s strategy, he said the withdrawal agreement in all its facets was the “the only possible option” for Britain as it leaves. “The question of limiting the backstop in time has already been discussed twice by European leaders”, Barnier said. “This is the only possible option because an insurance is of no use if it is time limited. “We cannot tie the backstop to a time limit”, he added. “Imagine if your home’s insurance was limited to five years and you’d have a problem after six years … That’s difficult to justify. It’s similar with the backstop.” The European Parliament will warn on Thursday that it will refuse to ratify a withdrawal agreement that does not contain an “all-weather” Irish backstop, in a further blow to May. A draft statement from the parliament’s Brexit steering group, seen by the Guardian, further calls for May to offer a new plan for passing the deal next week. The statement says: “The UK government must work together with all political parties in the House of Commons to overcome this deadlock. It expects the UK side to come back as quickly as possible with a positive and viable proposal on the way forward.” The group of senior MEPs, led by the former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, says it expects “greater clarity next week from the UK on its position on the EU-UK relationship for the future”. Under the backstop, the UK would stay in a customs union with the EU unless an alternative arrangement could avoid the imposition of a hard border on the island of Ireland. In her statement to the Commons on Monday, May had said she would seek further concessions from Brussels having acknowledged that a large number of Conservative and Democratic Unionist party MPs “fear that we could be trapped in it”. The Tory MP and Brexiter Andrew Murrison has resubmitted a “sunset clause” amendment in the Commons, which offers support for May’s deal if the backstop can be time-limited to the end of 2021. It is believed that the prime minister may encourage Tory MPs to back the amendment next week if the Speaker, John Bercow, chooses to put it to a vote, then return to Brussels with “proof” of what is needed to get the deal through, should it pass. Barnier told the European media outlets that he did not believe this was the key to success in parliament. “Things could start moving rapidly”, Barnier said. “This depends on the future relationship, like I already said. We are ready to be more ambitious if the British decide to shift their red lines, for example by remaining in a customs union, or participating in the single market. I believe there is a readiness in London for that.” On Wednesday, Barnier and EU officials also back-peddled on their claims over the last 24 hours that a no deal Brexit would “obviously” lead to the imposition of a hard border on the island of Ireland. “We will have to find an operational way of carrying out checks and controls without putting back in place a border”, Barnier said, in a sign of the sensitivity of the issue.France’s foreign ministry has summoned the Italian ambassador in an escalating row over migrant arrivals in Europe that pits the centrist government of Emmanuel Macron against Italy’s far-right-populist coalition. Teresa Castaldo was summoned over “hostile” remarks made by the Italian deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio. Di Maio, who leads the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), told a rally in the central Abruzzo region on Sunday: “If today people are leaving Africa is it because some European countries, with France taking the lead, have never stopped colonising tens of African states?” He called on the EU to sanction France for “impoverishing Africa” and for migrants to be taken to the southern French port of Marseille instead of Italy. An estimated 170 people were feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean in two incidents at the weekend as they tried to make their way to Europe from Libya. Sources told the Ansa news agency the remarks were “hostile and without cause given the partnership between France and Italy in the European Union”. This is the latest fight Italy has picked against France since M5S came to power in coalition with the far-right League last June. Di Maio has never quite forgiven the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for speaking about “populist leprosy” in a reported criticism of the Italian government shortly after it was formed. Earlier this month, he urged France’s gilets jaunes, who have held several violent anti-government protests since early December, to “not give up”. Italy also summoned the French ambassador after Macron criticised Italy for “cynicism and irresponsibility” when the country’s leaders turned away a migrant rescue ship with more than 600 people onboard weeks after coming to power. Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, added fuel to the fire on Tuesday morning, saying France was not looking to bring calm to violence-ravaged Libya because its energy interests there rivalled those of Italy. “There are countries that steal wealth from Africa and France is definitely one of them,” Salvini said on Italian TV. “France has no interest in making Libya a better place. Paris is interested in taking control of the oil there. And their interests are opposed to the Italian ones. I’m proud to govern a generous country. We don’t take lessons on humanity from France, let alone from Macron. “In recent years, France turned back thousands of migrants, including women and children. They took them back to Italy in the middle of the night, like animals. Again, I don’t take lesson from Macron.” A French diplomatic source told Reuters it was not the first time that Salvini had made such comments and that it was probably because he felt he had been upstaged by Di Maio. The source added that the accusation was baseless and reiterated that French efforts in Libya were aimed at stabilising the country, preventing the spread of terrorism and curbing the migration flows. Both Salvini and Di Maio are campaigning hard for European parliamentary elections in May and are eager to show they have broken with the consensual politics of centre-left and centre-right parties. The two men have repeatedly targeted neighbouring France and accused the French president of doing nothing to help handle the hundreds of thousands of mainly African migrants who have reached Italy from Libya in recent years. Additional reporting by Lorenzo Tondo in PalermoA professional bull rider has died as a result of injuries sustained in a competition in Denver. Professional Bull Riders (PBR) confirmed in a statement that Mason Lowe died on Tuesday after he was thrown from a bull and trampled during Monday’s event at the Denver Coliseum at the National Western Complex. Lowe, 25, was immediately transported to Denver Health, where he succumbed on Tuesday to “massive heart, heart valve and aorta damage” according to USA Today. “The loss of Mason is devastating to us all,” PBR chief executive officer Sean Gleason said. “Our thoughts, prayers, and deepest condolences are with his family and wife Abbey. Right now we’re focusing on easing their pain and supporting them during this very difficult time.” All riders will wear a special patch to remember Lowe when the competition concludes on Wednesday night, the tour said. Said Gleason: “Our priorities are to Mason’s family first as we support them following his tragic passing, and then to his brothers in arms in Denver who are preparing to soldier on, strap in and compete tonight.” Lowe, a native of Exeter, Missouri, was ranked 18th in the world by PBR and had earned nearly $10,000 in prize money this year, his seventh as a professional. “Our entire rodeo family and every member of the Stock Show community is saddened by the loss of bull rider Mason Lowe,” said Paul Andrews, the president and CEO of the National Western Stock Show. “Our hearts and thoughts are with the Lowe family, his fellow bull riders and the entire PBR organization. The National Western Stock Show and the PBR will have a tribute tonight in honor of Mason.”Rosa López was six months pregnant with her seventh child when the killers came for her husband – unnamed assassins acting on orders she cannot, or dares not explain. Ten months later the 30-year-old Honduran sits on a muddy embankment outside the San Pedro Sula bus station with her eldest son, Sergio, 12, getting ready to flee their homeland on the latest migrant caravan north. “It’s not easy. I leave half of my heart here,” López said of her decision to leave her other six children – including seven-month-old Josué Alexander – behind, in the care of a sister. “But there’s no going back.” “We don’t envision becoming rich,” said López, from Santa Cruz de Yojoa, a city 86km (53 miles) south. “We just want the basics – a job to survive.” It is a plan Donald Trump says he is determined to thwart. On Tuesday morning, as hundreds, possibly thousands of Honduran migrants embarked on a punishing and highly politicized march towards “El Norte”, the United States president launched what promises to be a protracted Twitter war against the caravan and Democratic opponents on whom he blames the ongoing government shutdown. “A big new Caravan is heading up to our Southern Border from Honduras,” Trump tweeted. “Only a Wall will work. Only a Wall, or Steel Barrier, will keep our Country safe!” Trump’s tweet echoed recent warnings from Republican allies that migrants were not welcome and should not come. “We want the word to get out that it is harder to get across the border,” Marco Rubio told Fox. “When people start coming back and saying, ‘We tried to get across but we couldn’t’ … it’ll discourage them from coming.” In the day’s leading up to the caravan Honduran airwaves have filled with government propaganda adverts striking a similar tone. “Honduran brother – don’t be fooled!” a narrator warns would-be travellers in one. “Just listen to your brothers who have come back from previous caravans and say it was all lies and pain.” But there was no sign those warnings had been heeded on Tuesday morning as the sun rose over San Pedro Sula and migrants trudged out of this notoriously violent industrial hub towards the Guatemalan border. “Lies. Pure falsehoods,” scoffed Leonel López, an unemployed factory worker who setting off on the 5,000km odyssey alone. “God will open the doors to the United States for us,” predicted the 24-year-old, who said he was abandoning his country because it offered too few jobs and “so much death”. López, the bereaved mother-of-seven, also shrugged off Trump’s threats. “He makes himself out as being tough. But God is tougher and for God nothing is impossible,” she said, adding: “And so we move forwards, with sadness in our hearts.” When the last Central American caravan set a course for the US last October Trump painted it as an invading force filled with gangsters and “some very bad people”. But as scores of young families set off from the bus terminal on Tuesday, the caravan appeared to contain more pushchairs than drug pushers. “We want a future for our son,” said Ramón Cruz, 31, a jobless motorbike mechanic, as he pushed his three-year-old son, Joshua, down the hard shoulder, container trucks rattling past. Hanging from the back was a Buzz Lightyear backpack with a carton of juice tucked into its side pocket. “Our dream, like everyone here, is to make it to the United States because here there’s no way to live,” said Cruz’s 22-year-old wife, Ingris, who was wearing a blue and red Superman T-shirt. “There are so few work opportunities, so much violence. We have to leave our country practically fleeing.” Another family, including a three-month-old baby girl and her 16-year-old mother, said they were literally fleeing for their lives after being forced from their homes in the northern department of Colón by gangs of armed gunmen with ties to the military. “The whole department is virtually at war,” complained the baby’s grandfather, who said he had decided to get his six-member family out on the caravan after his daughter was raped and two of his homes burned down. “I’ll have to ask for political asylum. I can’t go back … they’ll kill my whole family.” Tears rolled down his teenage daughter’s cheeks as she considered their sudden decision to take flight. “I want a good future for my child. I don’t want her to have the same destiny as her mother,” she said. Dennis Matute, a 43-year-old traveling with his 11-year-old son, said poverty had forced them from the same region, a cocaine trafficking hub on Honduras’s Caribbean coast. “We are looking for a place where we can see a future for our children,” said the rural worker, a devout Christian who had spent four days fasting before setting off in order to ensure his God’s support. “Here, things just go from bad to worse.” Matute, who had left his wife, Dalila, behind, believing she was not up to the gruelling journey, admitted the trip was “a dramatic adventure”, not least for someone who was leaving Honduras for the first time. “It’s a bit overwhelming because it’s a tough journey – and there are risks,” he said of the caravan which members expect to last up to a month. “But … there’s a [Honduran] expression that goes: ‘Who wouldn’t give up on a boat to get to know a port? It’s worth risking everything for the sake of a dream’,” he said. “With faith we will manage it. I am going with faith and hope in God.” Like most of the wanderers, Matute, was carrying just one small black backpack containing a single change of clothes for him and his son. An estimated 5,000 people eventually joined last October’s caravan as it snaked northwards through Guatemala and then Mexico towards the US border where many of its members remain in camps and shelters. How many will join the latest expedition remains unclear, as does the exact route it will take. But Bartolo Fuentes, an opposition politician and radio presenter who was accused of organizing the last caravan – charges he forcefully rejects – told the Guardian he expected it to be larger than the previous one. Up to 3,000 people had set off from San Pedro Sula between 10pm on Monday and 5am on Tuesday, by bus and on foot, Fuentes claimed. “There is a humanitarian crisis in Honduras,” the activist said by way of explanation, adding that most of migrants hoped to reach the US where they could find the best-paying work. Fuentes laughed at the idea that Trump’s bluster – or his Great Wall – would succeed in halting the daily exodus from his country. “It is madness for Trump to keep insisting on this wall. This wall won’t stop anyone,” he said as a column of pilgrims filed past him through the hills south of San Pedro Sula and, slowly, towards the southern border. “It’s a show, it’s a spectacle, it’s propaganda,” Fuentes sneered. “These migrants aren’t a threat to anybody, not even Donald Trump.”People in the Muslim-majority southern Philippines have voted by a landslide to create a new autonomous region covering five provinces and three cities, a result the government hopes will bring peace to a war-torn part of the country and address issues that lure recruits to Isis-inspired groups. On Friday, the election commission declared the Bangsamoro Organic Law plebiscite “ratified”, four days after the vote was held. Almost 1.6 million voted yes, while 250,000 voted no. Another vote will take place on 6 February to allow more towns and villages to join the autonomous region. The plebiscite sealed a peace deal that the government signed with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 2014, but which languished in the national legislature until it was approved last year. The rebels have pledged to end a three-decade separatist uprising that killed more than 100,000 people in exchange for broader autonomy. The Liberation Front’s chairman, Murad Ebrahim, welcomed the victory, but said he knew the real work for lasting peace was just beginning. “We really see this as a huge challenge, because from being revolutionaries, we will be transforming into governance. That will be very challenging, because many of us have never been in government,” said Murad, who is poised to lead the new region. The Bangsamoro region will expand the powers, resources and territory of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) that it replaces. It will also receive an estimated at $1.3bn (£1bn) grant to bolster development in an area with some the highest poverty rates in the Philippines. Bangsamoro will include the core ARMM territories of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. Cotabato City, which twice rejected joining the ARMM in past referendums, voted yes to the new region, though by a narrower margin than elsewhere, 36,682 to 24,994. Celebrations erupted on social media as early as Monday night when unofficial counts pointed to a victory for yes across the southern Philippines, raising hopes of a final end to decades of violence. There has been a recent wave of attacks by militants linked or inspired by Isis, including the siege of Marawi city in 2017. An explosion on New Year’s Eve killed two people and wounded dozens in Cotabato City. The night before the plebiscite, a grenade was thrown at a house of a public official. The government described the day of the referendum as “relatively peaceful”, although a few scuffles outside polling stations were reported. Turnout exceeded 85%, according to James Jimenez, a spokesman for the election commission. Two crucial steps that will determine the success or failure of the newly created region will follow: governance and demobilisation. First, a Bangsamoro Transition Authority will be appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte to govern until October 2020, when elections will take place across the country. The 80-strong body is expected to be dominated by Liberation Front nominees. Second, the Liberation Front will demobilise its 30,000-40,000 forces in exchange for social and livelihood assistance.Héctor Bellerín’s season is over after he was diagnosed with a ruptured cruciate knee ligament and the Arsenal right-back faces a battle to be fit for the beginning of the next campaign. Bellerín collapsed in agony during his team’s 2-0 win against Chelsea at Emirates Stadium on Saturday and he now has the headline result in terms of the damage. But there could be yet more bad news for him as he waits to learn whether he has damaged the meniscus and other parts of the joint. The 23-year-old Spaniard had only just returned from a four-week lay-off because of a calf injury and the Chelsea game represented his return to the starting lineup. He has been left devastated by the setback and he must now begin what will be an arduous road back to full fitness. Bellerín will seek further medical opinions over the coming days which will help to place an exact time-frame on his absence. But a cruciate rupture normally involves a minimum of six months out. Unai Emery had said after the Chelsea game that the damage looked bad and the Arsenal manager must plan without one of his most influential players for the foreseeable future. Emery noted he had Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Stephan Lichtsteiner to cover in the position while he also mentioned Carl Jenkinson as a possible option. Emery is on record as saying that his room for manoeuvre in the January transfer window will be limited to loans, at best. The club spent £63.8m in net terms last summer to try to drive a return to the Champions League. Arsenal have already suffered horror injuries to Danny Welbeck and Rob Holding this season. Welbeck wrote off his ankle in the Europa League tie against Sporting in November while Holding ruptured his cruciate knee ligament against Manchester United in the Premier League the following month.Driving limousines in New York taught Kathy Shorr a lot about human nature. “Working-class guys were the best tippers,” she recalls. “They understood that the tip was going to make the driver’s day or evening. The worst were the people who had money: the more money it seemed that somebody had, the cheaper they were.” One particular man hired the limousine for the afternoon to propose to his girlfriend: Shorr bought flowers and drinks for the couple, and it took military precision, timing and coordination to get them from their upmarket brownstone building to Times Square for the exact moment a sign would appear on the billboard with her name on it, asking her to marry him. It all went off without a hitch: they got there at the right time, saw the message, she said yes. But at the end of the trip, nothing. The next day the man complained, saying the limousine was too cold. Even more galling, because of all the strategising involved, she didn’t even get a picture of them. In 1989, as a recent graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, Shorr had decided to take a job as a limousine driver in her native Brooklyn to photograph the people she drove around. At first she had considered driving taxis, but the customers would have been in and out too quickly, constantly in a hurry, while driving a limo gave her several hours with her passengers. So, for nine months in 1989 and 1990, she worked weekends for a downtown limo company. “I would describe them as being on the low end of the limousine hierarchy,” she says. “Drivers had to provide liquor and mixers for their clients, and everything was a bit shabby and cheap.” Shorr would wait until half an hour or so into the ride – assignments could last from a couple of hours to the whole day – and ask if she could take a few pictures. To her surprise, with the exception of one client, everyone said yes. When she revealed herself as a photographer, the dynamic inside the car would change. At first, they would treat her like an employee, giving her orders. “But then when I made that proclamation that I was a photographer doing a project, suddenly the guests in the car were working for me: everybody was like ‘Oh Kathy’, very friendly, and we were on the same level. You’d feel like you were no longer somebody that was going to be told what to do, you were going to be asked.” Most journeys were festive, joyous occasions: apart from one funeral, Shorr worked on weddings, proms, sweet-16 parties. “People were in a good mood and when you’re in that kind of mood there are very few things that will fluster you. There was a lot of laughing and drinking and extending the festivities of the day into the car.” At the time, limousines were not an unusual way of getting to and from special events: for a couple of hundred dollars, anyone could feel like a celebrity for a few hours. “If you were a working-class person you knew that if you saved, you could afford a limousine if you had an event.” Still, there was something about the limousine that fascinated onlookers. “Seeing that big white car, it was always like: ‘Oh, who’s in the car? I hope it stops, I want to see them get out’,” says Shorr, remembering the crowds that would form. “It had a cachet to it – usually when there’s a group of people that are dressed up, anybody in the vicinity is going to stop and watch, because it is kind of a spectacle.” There were also less thrilling sides to the job. Events could last five or six hours, which meant a lot of alone time for the waiting driver. Once, with her guests deposited at a party, Shorr parked the limousine and went to the cinema on her own; at other times she watched the TV in the back of the car. On another occasion, a young couple vaguely asked her to drive through Central Park. “So I drove through the park and I remember I had The Magic Flute on and I had the sun roof open and it was a nice night and all of a sudden the car started rocking back and forth.” She laughs. “So I had an inkling what was going on in the back seat.” Almost 30 years on, Shorr – now a freelance photographer and teacher of documentary photography at New York’s School of Visual Arts – looks back on her limo-driving days fondly. Limousines have become less fashionable, partly due to increased transport options such as Uber, partly due to the changing nature of fame. “Most celebrities drive in black 4x4 cars now,” says Shorr. “That says ‘Stay away, I don’t want to be looked at’, where with the limousine it was very much about ‘Look at me, I’m having a good time.’ I can’t even remember the last time I saw a limousine in New York.” The photos are a document of their time: people were smoking, smartphones didn’t exist, no one was taking selfies. “Nobody was interested in giving you a sanitised version of what they were,” says Shorr. “This was a collaboration between photographer and subject.” Most of all, the photos are documents of people: the types of people Shorr grew up with, who lived in Brooklyn before it was an aspirational place to live. “I think all the people I drove had jobs that they worked hard at. They weren’t jobs that required an education per se, but these were people that did what they had to do, and they also played hard. They liked to enjoy themselves, they lived life. They knew how to have a good time.” shotproject.org/kathy-shorrTowards the end of the Channel 4 drama Brexit: The Uncivil War which was broadcast last Monday evening, the leaders of the rival Remain and Leave campaigns meet in a central London bar. By coincidence Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s then director of communications, and Dominic Cummings, director of Vote Leave and inventor of the slogan “take back control”, spot one another across platforms at Moorgate tube station. They had regular rows when they worked as Tory advisers before the campaign began and have been at daggers drawn throughout it. But both are physically and emotionally exhausted as voting day approaches and – in an encounter Oliver has insisted was fictional – they agree to talk over a pint. It is shortly after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by a right-wing extremist in her West Yorkshire constituency. Oliver clearly feels things are slipping away from Remain. Sitting opposite his foe, the look on his face betrays his grim and growing realisation that Cummings is winning the war and heading for a stunning victory with unimaginable consequences for the country – albeit, he feels, by employing the basest of campaigning methods. “You’re feeding a toxic culture where the very notion of evidence-based truth is dead, where one side never believes the other, no one listens any more, we just yell,” Oliver says. Twitching a little, Cummings replies that Leave “had to yell, to be heard” and adds that the binary “in” or “out” question on which the British people would vote within days was always going to force people “into tribes”. Oliver then says his greatest fear is that the tribal divisions which the campaign has already established will become permanent. “I worry it won’t heal.” Earlier on Monday, before that broadcast, ugly scenes – of exactly the kind to which Oliver had alluded in the film – were playing out outside the House of Commons. And, in this case, they were all too real. Anna Soubry, the Tory MP and Remain campaigner, was mobbed by far-right pro-Brexit campaigners who yelled that she was a “Nazi”, a “traitor” and a “fascist”. The indomitable Soubry was shaken by the hostility that Brexit had fostered. In the House of Commons there were calls for the police to do more to protect MPs caught up in the feverish atmosphere created by Brexit. Two days later Soubry was equally horrified when the outspoken columnist Brendan O’Neill mocked a fellow MP for invoking the memory of Cox during a podcast in which they all took part. “I was on [this Sky News podcast] with [Labour MP] Jess Phillips discussing the problem of how to get women into public life – which is very real, a hugely important subject – and Jess mentioned Jo Cox,” Soubry tells the Observer after the incident. “And then this deeply offensive man – who if they had told me beforehand was on it, I wouldn’t have gone on, so I was already cross – he said: ‘Oh, to use a murder for political purpose’. And I lost it. “How dare he? We are talking about something that actually happened. It was clearly linked to the far right, which some of these people who are roaming outside parliament are, and he kept belittling it. This is a very present threat. It is not protest – they are thugs.” It was not just outside parliament that democracy had gone awry and turned sour. On Wednesday in the House of Commons – totally deadlocked on Brexit with just over two months to go until the UK is due to leave the EU – there was constitutional uproar. The speaker John Bercow had controversially allowed an amendment that will force Theresa May to come up with a Brexit Plan B within three days if the prime minister’s crucial meaningful vote is lost on Tuesday. On the government front bench five cabinet ministers, including May, Julian Smith, the chief whip, and the leader of the House, Andrea Leadsom, sat shaking their heads in fury at Bercow. Pro-Brexit MPs shouted about “constitutional outrage” and claimed Bercow was biased. One Labour MP observed later that “anarchy had spread from outside to inside the mother of parliaments”. Rather than parliament “taking back control” – which was what Brexiters had insisted Brexit was really about – it seemed to have completely lost it. When Cameron announced in January 2013 that the British people would be able to vote in a referendum on whether the UK should stay in or leave the European Union he assumed this great exercise in democracy would settle the decades-old argument for good. “It is time for the British people to have their say,” he said at the time. “It is time to settle this European question in British politics.” Many predictions by politicians and commentators over recent years have proved wildly wide of the mark, but none, perhaps, more so than this. This weekend, two and a half years after the UK voted narrowly to leave the EU, and as Tuesday’s crucial vote on May’s Brexit deal approaches, nothing is settled at all. Divisions in Westminster and the country are deeper, wider, and more visceral than ever. Our parliament, to which Brexiters want to return sovereignty, is gridlocked and unruly to the point of paralysis. At the point when its decisions are most urgently needed, it is unable to agree on a way forward. “The political bubble has never been polarised like this before,” says Kenneth Clarke, the Conservative former minister, father of the House of Commons and a lifetime pro-European. “It’s a tragedy ... a parody of democracy.” With May facing seemingly inevitable defeat this week, Clarke, who will retire at the next election after more than five decades at the forefront of politics, cannot see a way out of an interminable mess he never imagined could develop, and fears things will get worse before they get better. Some people roaming outside are clearly linked to the far right. It isn't protest – they are thugs From his lofty position as parliament’s wise old man he is also scornful of the prime minister. “It was always the plan of government to lose this first vote [on Tuesday] and then raise the Project Fear stuff,” he says. “But what do we do if [May] gets up in front of the House again and says: ‘The sky will fall in if we don’t vote for this deal’ and all this crap? If she comes out and says there is no deal now, she will have a lot of ministerial resignations and I don’t quite know what will happen then.” On his office wall Clarke, a survivor of European arguments that scarred, and in the end did for, the premierships of Margaret Thatcher and John Major as well as Cameron, has a framed copy of a 2017 front page in which he and 14 colleagues were notoriously branded Brexit mutineers. He considers it a reminder to keep going. But he fears the current prime minister simply has no idea where she is going. “The key events now are: what is Theresa May’s reaction to this three-day deadline she’s got?,” he asks. “Will she actually tell anybody what her Plan B is, beyond her rather lightweight entourage? I would be faintly appalled if I learned she wasn’t even turning her mind on what to do.” When Soubry reflects on the wider politics and the impact on her party she, too, is scathing about May and says she has never known times so uncertain and turbulent. “It is an utterly remarkable time,” she says. She believes the prime minister is trying to force her deal through the house despite the huge risk of ending up with a no-deal Brexit that many in her own cabinet have admitted would be economically catastrophic. It is a kind of political suicide mission. “Her tactics are to run the clock down deliberately,” Soubry says. “I think she’s prepared to crash out without a deal.” But would that not spell the end of the Conservative party, and disaster for the country with it? “I agree, but she’s prepared to do it,” she says. There is one thing, however, that has brought together MPs on all sides of the Brexit divide – even Soubry and May. She reveals that the prime minister – “who I have no relationship with” – sent her a handwritten letter about the abuse against her outside the Commons. “Dear Anna,” it reads, “I hoped to see you in the House today, but I wanted to write and say how sorry I was to see the treatment you received near parliament yesterday. That was appalling and no one should be subject to such abuse.” Soubry continues to read aloud. “We all know there are differing views, often very strongly held on the European issue, but everyone should be able to put their views without the risk of intimidation and abuse. I know you are a robust person, but incidents like this are unsettling and I’m sorry you were subject to such behaviour. Yours ever, Theresa.” Despite such occasional shows of solidarity between opposing sides in parliament, arguments over Brexit are all that newer MPs have known during their times as parliamentarians. Layla Moran, the first ethnic minority Liberal Democrat MP, who has been serving the voters of Oxford west and Abingdon since 2017 and is pushing hard for a second referendum, says she’s exhausted by it all and now regards it as the norm. For her there is no respite and the fear of what may lurk outside the safe interior of the Palace of Westminster is ever present. “We’re in the situation where we’re all in campaign mode,” she says. “It feels like we’ve been on the precipice of a general election for the whole time I’ve been an MP; we know we’re in the middle of a moment of history that will be written about, but not knowing what happens next is making it really tense and emotional.” She fears for her safety and that of others. “They’re bruisy men out there. You’d cross the road at night if you saw them.” Outside parliament the yelling from both sides of the Brexit argument continues. In recent weeks dozens have lined up with banners, flags and placards by mid-afternoon every day. The activity ramped up in the weeks before Christmas. “That’s when the yellow jacket lot first came,” confirms a policeman outside Black Rod’s garden last week. Has it made his job much harder? “Well it’s not got easier,” he sighs in the cold. Behind him, and dotted in pairs across Westminster, at almost every entrance and gate, are police armed with machine guns. I can't understand why people want it. We all have phones. We're all connected and have friends and family all over the world Andy Curzon, an engineer from Manchester, finds it “crazy that many people, including MPs, are incapable of understanding the basic facts of trade and that we’re going to sever these links.” He waves an EU flag next to a sign for passing cars that reads “TOOT TO STOP BREXIT”. Asked whether he has talked to any of the Leave protesters today, Curzon sighs. “You try but ... nationalism now is just crackers – I can’t understand why people want it. We all have phones. We’re all connected and have friends and family all over the world.” Two male Ukip protesters, who won’t share their names, blame “fake news”, under which they classify all major media, with no exceptions. “Leave means leave. We’re not unreasonable,” insists the younger man, dressed in a parka and blue jeans. He describes himself as “a citizen journalist from southwest London”. About the Soubry incident, he is flippant: “This is a Westminster bubble, that’s how people talk in the pub. Get used to it. There is no such thing as hate speech, it’s just different opinions. I find your paper offensive. I won’t shut you down or get you arrested.” On the street, the man still bellowing a full-throated “out means out” is enraged by a host of conspiracy theories he believes in. “I find news the way I need to find it,” he says when asked about his information. “I research people that I get it off. If I can get it from a family member then that’s it. If you were on my side, you’d be doing all that.” The country should prepare for riots, he says. “They can’t expect the people to be law-abiding citizens when government is as corrupt as it is. All them people in here,” he claims, “are getting paid backhanders all the way through the system.” On 23 June 2016 the British people voted by 51.9% to leave the EU and 48.1% to stay in. Cameron’s gamble not only backfired by delivering a Brexit vote which forced his resignation and set the UK on a road out of the EU, but his hope that a referendum would lance the European boil has been exposed as appallingly misplaced – for the precise opposite has happened. The British public is now more divided, more aware and more conscious of who is on which side of the argument at the heart of British public life. Politicians, communities, families are – 31 months on from the vote – unable to come together and seem largely immune to persuasion, unbiddable and unwilling to budge from entrenched positions. The country stands just 75 days away from the supposed moment of Brexit but with no national or political consensus over what Brexit should entail, or whether it should go ahead at all. Deadlock in parliament reflects division in the country. “Brexit has paralysed the democratic system,” says a senior Tory MP. “And the really alarming thing is I cannot see how this does not endure for decades. We will all be defined as Remainers or Leavers for decades to come. This is not a passing argument. It really is close to civil war.” Normal alliances have broken down, and parties have split many ways, raising questions about whether Brexit will deliver a new political alignment, in the form of new party in the centre and at the extremes. “The real legacy of Brexit could be a completely different British politics and party system,” says a Labour frontbencher. Cameron’s referendum has left the Conservative party split between hard Brexiters, soft Brexiters, and Remainers, while Labour, although its membership and supporters are overwhelmingly pro-Remain, has its own deep divides. Its leader Jeremy Corbyn seems unwilling to commit to what most of his party wants – a second referendum – because he is a lifelong Eurosceptic. Labour has staggered through the last two and half years with a policy of deliberate ambiguity in order to offend the fewest possible of its supporters. Outside the party system, there are two broad camps, fairly evenly split, if the polls are to be believed. On the one side are those who believe that because the country voted for Brexit it must go ahead with it – either because they think it is a good thing instrinsically or that not to do so would be dangerous for democracy, or both. In the other camp are those who believe that we should find a way out of activating Article 50 and stay in, perhaps by holding a second referendum with Remain on the ballot paper or by simply cancelling the whole project. Prominent supporters of both sides have been turning up the rhetoric before next week’s vote in the hope of winning the day. Yesterday the pro-Brexit cabinet minister Chris Grayling said blocking Brexit could end the 350 years of “moderate” politics that Britain has enjoyed since the English civil war. Last week leading businesses, including Jaguar, Land Rover and Ford, warned of job losses, while Greg Clark, the business secretary, said a no-deal Brexit would be economically “disastrous”. This week, the Brexit saga and uncertainty will enter another phase. What will happen if May’s deal is voted down – as it almost certainly will be – nobody knows. Downing Street is determined to press ahead with the vote, although it is aware that the prime minister is facing a massive defeat – another indication of how impossible her position has become. What then? “We could head for a no-deal Brexit, but Parliament voted last week to block that option off as it would be catastrophic,” says a senior Tory MP. “We could have a second referendum to sort out the mess, but there is no sign of a parliamentary majority for that either. So God only knows.” Outside the Commons the protests go on. “This is civil war without the muskets,” says Helen Slater, who has come from Bristol to campaign. “It is appalling.”Just days into his quest to become the first Latino presidential nominee in US history, Julián Castro, the former Obama administration housing chief, campaigned in New Hampshire, home to the first primary in the nation. While candidates often make a beeline to either Iowa or New Hampshire after declaring they are running, Castro’s visit to the Granite state on Wednesday was the second stop of his new campaign after returning from Puerto Rico, a US territory where citizens are ineligible to vote in presidential elections. “I went to San Juan, Puerto Rico, because I want every single American to know that everyone counts,” Castro told guests invited to a “Politics & Eggs” event hosted by Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city, on Wednesday morning. “If we’ve faced any crisis over these last two years, it’s that we have an administration that doesn’t believe that. It is picking and choosing who gets opportunity and who doesn’t based on what you look like, based on your faith, based on how long you’ve been in this country.” Castro’s two-day jaunt to New Hampshire featured no rallies and just one public event: A meet and greet at a coffee shop on Tuesday night. On Wednesday in Manchester, he told business leaders of his visions for a fairer and more prosperous America in the 21st century. He then travelled nearly 50 miles north to the small city of Laconia, the seat of a county where Donald Trump saw his most dominant victory in the state in 2016, to tour its downtown and visit an addiction treatment centre. In Laconia, Castro seemed most interested in learning about the challenges local business face and the ways the opioid crisis has ravaged this former mill town and other areas of New England. Perhaps Castro’s unconventional style of early campaigning – marked by his Puerto Rico visit and the lack of rallies in New Hampshire – can help raise his profile as he enters a crowded Democratic primary field filled with political superstars. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren announced her exploratory committee on New Year’s Eve; Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard announced that she would seek the presidency last week; New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand threw her hat in the ring on Tuesday. Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, former vice-president Joe Biden, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke are all tipped as contenders. In New Hampshire, Castro got his first “official” taste of the campaign trail. “Here in New Hampshire, ya’ll take your politics as seriously as we take our barbecue in Texas,” he told the audience in Manchester, remarking on the state’s once every four years political fervour. For many in New Hampshire, the visit was the first introduction to Castro. As the candidate walked down a snow-piled Main Street in Laconia and dropped into local businesses, many did not seem to recognize him and instead appeared taken aback by the flock of cameras following him. Laconia resident and business owner Carlos Cardona, who was helping guide Castro through the city, told him not to worry; when Obama first visited downtown Laconia in 2007, nobody knew who he was either. In Manchester, Castro sought to introduce voters to his political platforms. Among them: using his first executive order to recommit the US to the Paris Agreement, universal healthcare, universal pre-kindergarten, tuition-free colleges, reforming the criminal justice system, raising the minimum wage and finding affordable housing solutions. “It takes vision. My vision is that in the 21st century, America will be the smartest, healthiest, fairest and most prosperous nation on earth,” he told the crowd. Speaking to the Guardian, Castro laid out a foreign policy platform that involved repairing damaged alliances and moving away from the “erratic” decision-making of the Trump administration. “The number one thing I am going to do as president, at the beginning of my administration if I’m elected, is to repair the damaged relationships that this administration has caused around the world,” he said. Washington should forge new alliances, Castro said, particularly in Latin America. If citizens of those nations can feel safe in their home countries, he argued, it could help stem the flow of migrants arriving at the US’s southern border. On Syria, Castro said he supported withdrawing US troops, but in a “sensible way”. “What’s been missing from the president’s foreign policy has been a consistent and well thought out approach,” he said. “He has been very erratic. And that’s what needs to change in the next administration.” While Cardona, one of Castro’s guides through Laconia, said he hopes to welcome more Democratic candidates to the city and remains undecided, he appeared enthusiastic about Castro. “As a Latino myself, I think it’s important that we have a Latino standing up during this administration,” he said, adding that he considered Castro a “top tier” candidate. And if he does take the nomination, Castro believes he can beat Trump. “I believe that the Democratic nominee in 2020, whoever he or she is, will be able to win that election. Because I think more and more people are seeing that we’re falling short with this president, that America can do much better,” he said. “So I’m confident that if I’m the nominee, I can win in 2020.”Wild coffee species are under threat, with 60% of them facing possible extinction, including Arabica, the original of the world’s most popular form of coffee, researchers say. Most coffee species are found in the forests of Africa and Madagascar. They are threatened by climate change and the loss of natural habitat, as well as by the spread of diseases and pests. While cultivated coffee is thriving, making up a hugely profitable business globally, the health of those species will also be affected by climate change. In Ethiopia the number of locations where Arabica grows could be reduced by as much as 85% by 2080, and up to 60% of the land used for Ethiopia’s coffee production could become unsuitable by the end of the century, say scientists. Ethiopia is Africa’s biggest coffee exporter, exporting $1bn worth of the crop annually. About 15 million people in the country work in coffee production. Wild Arabica coffee, which is native to the region, is an important seed stock for coffee farming and is also harvested for commercial coffee production, so threats to it could have a damaging economic impact on the country. Commercial coffee on a global scale will also be affected if wild species die out, as those plants could hold the key to cross-breeding coffee varieties more resilient to the effects of climate change and possibly resistant to certain pests and diseases. The scientists, from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, published their research on Wednesday in the journals Science Advances and Global Change Biology. The analysis was based on their examination of the 124 known coffee species, and an assessment was produced for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which publishes the global Red List of threatened species. Due to this discovery, the wild relative of Coffea arabica is now classed as endangered. Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at Kew and lead author of the Science Advances paper, said: “Among the coffee species threatened with extinction are those that have potential to be used to breed and develop the coffees of the future, including those resistant to disease and capable of withstanding worsening climatic conditions. “The use and development of wild coffee resources could be key to the long-term sustainability of the coffee sector. Targeted action is urgently required in specific tropical countries, particularly in Africa, to protect the future of coffee.” There are ways to try to improve the prospects for wild coffee and commercial coffee production, including preventing deforestation and encouraging reforestation, and research into coffee varieties and the diseases and pests afflicting them. Davis said it was vital better effort was made to conserve coffee species in the wild, such as through improved management and designation of protected areas, such as nature reserves, as well as new protected areas for wild coffee species. He said that in Ethiopia there was already a scheme for protected areas for the conservation of wild Arabica coffee. Davis also called for renewed focus on germplasm collections, such as living collections and seed banks so that these could be made effective and sustainable for the long-term. He called too for better labelling of coffee products so consumers could become aware of the impact of their purchasing choices. “At the moment there are lots of different types of certification but very few cover forest preservation and none detail their negative environmental impact,” he said. Prices might also need to rise, he suggested, because for the past two years farmers had been pushed into loss through slim rewards. “Coffee farmers around the world are in many cases the guardians of cultivated coffee’s sensory diversity,” he said. “If prices remain low for too long some farmers will eventually stop growing coffee and we will lose much of what makes coffee special.” Eimear Nic Lughadha, senior research leader in Kew’s conservation department, said that some species could be already extinct. “A figure of 60% of all coffee species threatened with extinction is extremely high, especially when you compare this to a global estimate of 22% for plants,” she said. Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List unit, said: “The climate change impacts on Arabica coffee raise serious environmental, economic and social concerns, particularly for the millions of smallholder farmers that rely on this crop for their livelihood. The numerous wild relatives of commercially grown crops such as Arabica coffee are essential to ensure the resilience of cultivated coffee in the face of climate change and other threats.” The research also threw up another fascinating finding. A species of coffee known for its exquisite flavour, Coffea stenophylla, also known as the “highland coffee” of Sierra Leone, had been unseen in the wild by collectors since 1954. But the researchers managed last December to locate first a single plant then a few others, reached by walking for hours through dense forest to an isolated hilltop. However, the scientists reported that the area was under threat from deforestation and human encroachment, meaning that even this rediscovered plant might now not last long.Singer Matt Healy is standing on a hydraulic lift at the back of the arena stage, rubbing his slicked-back, natural-coloured dark hair. Dressed down in athleisure and a V-neck top, he turns his back to the crowd and regards the massive screen behind his band, the 1975, with curiosity. The visuals on this first night of the band’s latest tour have been pretty impressive thus far. “Modernity has failed us,” runs a line from Love It If We Made It (played later in the set), a stark statement from the band’s persuasive third album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. But the 1975 do have some uses for the tech age. There is a lot of very shiny stagecraft deployed in tonight’s gig, bumping them up into the role of arena innovators. For Sincerity Is Scary, Healy unexpectedly re-enacts the song’s video in a pair of chunky headphones and a rabbit-eared hat. A vast hi-res projection of a New York brownstone behind him, Healy cavorts like Michael Jackson down a sneaky treadmill that runs the width of the front of the stage. The band – drummer and producer George Daniel, bassist and keyboard player Ross MacDonald, guitarist and keyboard player Adam Hann – play on, safely behind a row of lights. They nail how our feelings are being manipulated by our technology more perceptively – and more tunefully – than most The stage set is full of moving light-boxes and glowing squares – nods to this band’s on-off obsession with rectangles. The quadrilaterals tilt, framing and reframing the action, referencing the original neon shape that appeared on the cover of the band’s 2013 self-titled debut album. (Fans have been known to get tattoos of “the box”.) It is, you reflect, a bit like a Facebook game of “how many rectangles can you see? 92% FAIL this simple test” writ large: there are zillions of them. A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships (their third No 1), dwells at length, too, on how those rectangles in our pockets suck us in, distract us and warp our sense of ourselves. It’s hardly the most original of modern complaints, but the 1975 are credible emissaries from a land of surfaces and mistrust: they nail the ongoing experience of how our feelings are being manipulated by our technology more perceptively – and more tunefully – than most. Radiohead, for one, never had a pop banger as blithe as the 1975’s sweetly nagging TooTimeTooTimeTooTime, which considers infidelity while recalling Justin Bieber and Afro-swing. And they are unlikely to have deployed dancers. The 1975 have always occupied a grey area between pop and rock – indeed, their creation myth involves shrugging off such delineations and making funky 80s arena guitar tunes, against the advice of the entire music industry. Most of tonight’s show feels more like pop in part because of two dancers, the Jaiy twins – thoughtfully non-sexualised in white overalls – whose dance steps Healy ably mimics. It’s hard to conjure real cleverness out of large venues, where the tendency is to have people flying about for the sake of it. But this band, armed with such a heavy album, manage to pull off a deft conjuring trick or two. As Healy gazes up at the back wall during The Ballad of Me and My Brain, a track from their previous record, I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful, Yet So Unaware of It, the backdrop buzzes with TV static. As Healy touches the screen, it warps into dazzling colour. He then steps up, and into the static. From the side, it looks as though he has vanished. It is a moment that draws a collective gasp from the crowd: it’s not so much that Healy has broken the fourth wall, it’s that the fourth wall has eaten him. Swiftly, the projections shift and Healy is visible once more, standing on a shelf inside the backdrop for one more audacious reveal. The singer is framed to look as though he is inside an actual iPhone, the word “hello” in an Apple-like font above his head. It’s quite a cool feat: toying with depth perception, then making people take pictures of you with their phones, standing inside a phone. After this, the rest of the band’s set goes by in a blur of dazzling, hyper-lurid digital visuals, the trajectory slightly downhill. It’s not that the 1975 lack for momentum – they just fail to pull the rug out from under the crowd in quite the same way as before. Healy, too, is more of an enigmatic presence tonight than he has been previously. It might be a case of first-night concentration, or perhaps, a clearer head than in years gone by. Whatever: he prioritises not falling off the travelator, rather than enacting his previous brand of foppish dissolution, or saying a great deal between songs. You can hardly blame him – the last time he was loose-lipped, he had to issue a clarification of his views on misogyny in rock and hip-hop. When he came out as a recovering heroin user last summer, the internet did not exactly wilt from the shock. Few artists have gone about their business with as much gusto for rock’n’roll cliche as this 29-year-old. Tattooed, frequently shirtless, when younger, Healy channelled the brash sensuality of 80s stars like INXS’s Michael Hutchence while simultaneously raising a millennial eyebrow at the absurdity of it all; tonight, he seems more contained, even as he gambols around. The jaded might wonder if smoking opiates was on some bucket list of poses for Healy. More compassionate observers might ponder the need for unquiet minds to self-medicate. Healy, for his part, has been candid in song and interviews about his insecurities and suicidal thoughts, which populate this album even more audibly than before. As a result, he has emerged as an articulate personality increasingly in tune with anxious times. Tonight, I Like America & America Likes Me (named after a Joseph Beuys performance art piece where he spent three days in a room with a coyote) marks the height of over-stimulation – our collective overload, and Healy’s personal version. Layered with Auto-Tune, Healy sings about his fear of death while the track hits a kind of auditory and retina-singeing peak, tilting at Xanax-addled trap hip-hop. Having survived the age of 27 – when Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain died – the only rock cliches left for the 1975 to embrace are travelling in different tour buses and making a documentary about their group therapy, as Metallica once did. Certainly, the album they made around Healy’s stint in rehab in Barbados is a sprawling, genre-hopping mashup that reflects both our era of always-on excess, and Healy’s particular responses to his own internal cacophony. That such harrowing fare can be this refreshing live is a coup.Thousands of Labour members have demanded their party oppose Theresa May’s Brexit deal and back a second referendum over EU membership. The call comes before a key party gathering which will be held amid warnings that some are already ending their membership over the issue. The pressure emerges as the biggest Brexit poll conducted since the referendum suggests support for Labour would fall significantly should it back or allow its MPs to back a Brexit agreement. More than 5,000 Labour members and supporters have contacted the party before its policy meeting of senior figures this week. Labour’s national policy forum, which includes trade union bosses, senior party officials and shadow cabinet ministers, meets on Wednesday. Officials will offer testimony that local members are quitting over the party’s refusal to oppose Brexit. One submission, from the chair of Devizes Labour party, warns that members are resigning and threatening to resign “because of Labour’s reluctance to take a more proactive role in the campaign to force a people’s vote on this issue”. She warns: “If Labour now fails us on this there is likely to be a mass exodus of the activists we need to fight for Labour in nearby winnable constituencies.” Activists point to the biggest ever Brexit poll, which shows that Labour’s support would collapse at the next election if it eventually backed a Brexit deal or handed its MPs freedom to vote on such a deal. The YouGov poll of 25,000 voters for the People’s Vote campaign found that Labour’s support would then slump to 26% of the vote – lower than the 27.6% secured by Michael Foot in the party’s disastrous 1983 election. Labour is currently committed to voting against May’s deal, but has stopped short of opposing Brexit under different terms. The poll, conducted over the Christmas break, suggested there was a majority in favour of a second referendum and against Brexit. Voters would prefer that they, rather than MPs, are given the final say by 53% to 47%, excluding those who said they did not know. It found that 54% back staying in the EU, while 46% back leaving, excluding those who did not know. A Labour spokesperson said: “As unanimously agreed at conference, if Theresa May’s botched Brexit deal is voted down in parliament then a general election should be called. In line with the policy agreed at conference, if the Conservatives block a general election then we will keep all options on the table, including the option of campaigning for a public vote.” There is huge pressure on Jeremy Corbyn and the PM as MPs prepare to return after the Christmas break, with the crucial vote on May’s deal scheduled for a week on Tuesday. Some insiders are already expecting a further delay to the vote. Under one plan, MPs would pass an amendment suggesting the deal will only pass with further legal guarantees from the EU about the so-called “Irish backstop” – which would keep the Irish border open but could tether Britain to the EU’s customs union. It comes after a concerted push from some cabinet ministers to show Brussels what sort of compromise would be required to secure parliamentary support. Downing Street sources insisted last night that the vote on the Brexit deal would go ahead next week. It has also emerged that Tory party members are favouring leading Brexiters as their preferred candidates to replace May. Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Davis are top of the party’s grassroots list. The next leader is likely to take the lead role in negotiating Britain’s long-term trading relationship with the EU. The cluster of Brexiters at the top of members’ wishlist is the latest sign of pressure May faces from the right. After May pledged not to fight the next election as leader, Tory members were asked to name their preferred successor by the Party Members Project, run by Queen Mary University, London, and Sussex University. Johnson, who has been a leading critic of May’s deal since quitting as foreign secretary, topped the poll with 20%. Rees-Mogg, the leader of the European Research Group of pro-Brexit MPs, trailed in second on 15%, while Davis, who quit as Brexit secretary last year, scored 8%. However, 12% said they did not know who should be the next leader, so the field could yet open up should May manage to hold on for some time and new figures emerge as contenders. Worryingly for Remain supporters, home secretary Sajid Javid was the only figure who originally backed staying in the EU, among the top five names in the members’ wishlist. Meanwhile, May has warned MPs of the risks they are taking with democracy and the livelihoods of their constituents by seeking either a second referendum or “their particular vision” of Brexit. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, the PM was also critical of Labour’s approach under Corbyn, saying it was based on a “cynical tissue of incoherence, designed to avoid difficult decisions”. In a message that appeared aimed at winning opposition support for her deal, she said that “MPs of every party will face the same question when the division bell rings. It is a question of profound significance for our democracy and for our constituents. “The only way to both honour the result of the referendum and protect jobs and security is by backing the deal that is on the table.”The Matrix has barely started when a phone booth is demolished, left as a smashed pancake of glass and metal. It was a prophetic touch. Payphones were still everywhere in western cities when the film came out in March 1999. By the time of the first sequel four years later, they were already half-vanished, replaced by a private army of Nokias and Motorolas. But now The Matrix is a relic too, a quaint slice of 90s nostalgia about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. “1999”, the recent song from Charli XCX and Troye Sivan, features wistful lyrics (“Those days, it was so much better”) and cover art in which the millennial pop stars wear the black leather costumes made famous by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as they battled the machines enslaving humanity. Yet for a relic, it never slipped far from view – still a familiar reference in a world divided between internet and IRL (in real life), its characters endlessly circulating in memes and gifs, often as vehicles for the acrid politics that define our 21st century. Back in the 20th, much of the highest excitement was reserved for the visuals – the “digital rain” of green code, the bullets slowed to a stop while Reeves swayed around them. But the premise was what made it a phenomenon, the idea our whole reality might be a virtual concoction. How would we know? More ticklish still, would we want to? If, like Reeves’s weary hacker Neo, we were approached by Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus, would we take the blue pill to return us to life as it merely seemed to be? Or the red that promised us – however terrible – the real? Of course, Neo chose red, as we told ourselves we would, too. The notion of the matrix hit a nerve. Despite sunlit economies and political stability, a strange ennui and mistrust of technology hung over the end of the 90s. People fretted about the “millennium bug” and reality TV. In fact, as sibling co-creators the Wachowskis alluded to on screen, the film was just the latest in a long line of variations on a theme, nestled in the mainstream of philosophy. In the allegory of the cave, Plato presented humanity chained to a cave wall, taking passing shadows for reality. Then came the first meditation of Descartes (1641), speculating that everything his senses told him might just be the work of an “evil demon”. By the 1980s, we had the theory of the brain in the vat – built on the impossibility of ever knowing for sure that you aren’t exactly that, your whole life simply electrical impulses wired into your tank. For the philosophers of 1999, The Matrix meant boom time. High-profile essay collections found existentialists, nihilists, Christian theologians, Zen Buddhists and a dozen other schools of thought throwing metaphysical buns at each other over the meaning of the movie. For a time, the shriek and whirr of your dial-up modem could take you – eventually – to the official Matrix website, where densely argued academic papers were hosted on the corporate dime of Warner Bros. But the mind to which the Wachowskis paid their deepest tribute was unimpressed. During the film, Neo pulls from a shelf a hardback, Simulacra and Simulation, by academic and provocateur Jean Baudrillard. While the pages were hollowed out to hold an illicit cache of computer disks, Reeves had been required by the Wachowskis to read the book, to better acquaint himself with the film’s most treasured influence. A postmodernist darling, Baudrillard put forth a slippery but naggingly brilliant idea – that reality itself had been replaced with endless reproductions of what simply felt like it. Jobs, novels, architecture, ideologies, wars: they were all just copies and copies of copies of long gone originals. Take The Matrix – living on in those gifs, pop songs and this piece in the Guardian, but actually watched with vanishing rarity. To ‘redpill’ is now a verb, opening the eyes of far-right recruits to hated oppressors – feminists and people of colour Baudrillard called it “the desert of the real”. The Wachowskis had Morpheus intone the phrase from a Chesterfield armchair set in the smoking ruins of our former civilisation. But the film only moved Baudrillard to protest that it was a misrepresentation. For him, “hypercapitalism” had destroyed the very idea of reality – whereas The Matrix had a whole new one ready to go as soon as Neo could overthrow the machines. The theory of the brain in a vat contained a fiendish double bluff – from within your tank, you might even be prompted to wonder if you were just a floating brain. To Baudrillard, hypercapitalism was similarly deceptive, knowingly producing spectacles about the evil of the system. The kiss-off was inevitable: “The Matrix,” he said, “is surely the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce.” He let slip that overtures had been made but he had declined any involvement in the sequels. (As salt in the wound, he also said he preferred David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.) His decision-making proved sound. Two follow-ups – Reloaded and Revolutions – were released back-to-back in 2003. They were both bitter letdowns, cliched and confused. Somewhere there was what might have been a nod to Baudrillard’s complaints, but the delivery was so hamfisted, it barely registered. The Wachowskis never quite regained their lustre. Should it matter? In other ways you might almost call real-world, they set an important example. At first glance, The Matrix shared some of Hollywood’s worst habits – among its influences was the Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell, an inspiration from another culture, refitted with a white hero. Yet Neo’s enlightenment lay with people of colour, not just Morpheus but the cryptic Oracle played by Gloria Foster. And a subtle blurring of sexual signals put a twist in the on-screen relationship between Reeves and Moss, lovers and lookalikes in shades and with neat androgynous haircuts. Issues of identity would prove life-changing for the Wachowskis themselves, the results as groundbreaking as anything in their films. In 2008, Lana Wachowski completed her gender transition – the first and only Hollywood director to do so until, eight years later, her sister Lilly followed suit. To its creators, perhaps the matrix was the patriarchy and the war it waged on the authentic self, and their resistance to it was their greatest achievement. But everyone has a matrix and that ended up as a problem. As early as 1999, Slavoj Žižek had noted a hitch with the utopian prospectus for life online. Instead of the internet bringing people together, he wrote, it would dissolve us into a “multitude of ‘small others’ [and] tribal particular identifications”. Later, in his regular takedowns of The Matrix – delivered with unfakeable contempt – Žižek came to the same conclusion about the Wachowskis’ film. That, for him, was the secret of its success. Their original intentions hardly mattered: whether the Wachowskis meant their red pill to represent a gateway to Baudrillard or an escape from norms of gender identity, the easy-access metaphor made it universally seductive. Asked if they could imagine what it felt like to be a lonely rebel, oppressed by dark forces distorting reality, it turned out pretty much everyone did – from Flat Earthers to neo-Nazis. As Žižek put it in the documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema: “I want a third pill.” Baudrillard died in 2007, a year before the financial crash saw the wheels come off hypercapitalism. He may not have been surprised that confronted by a genuine rip in the fabric of the system, the response among both public and politicians was a frantic attempt to go back to normal and never mention it again. Instead, a bogus new reality arose – the reanimated far-right. With awful irony, the stunted boys of 4chan and Reddit appropriated The Matrix. To “redpill” became a verb, opening the eyes of new recruits to their hated oppressors – feminists, people of colour and progressives. Morpheus became the face of memes that asked: “What If I Told You Hitler Was A Socialist?” And here we are now, in the Britain of 2019. It is, of course, pure Baudrillard, a country manically returning to an earlier version of itself that never existed. Our unreality is operating at a heightened pitch. Global leaders lie so openly as to mock the very notion of truth. We exist as plots of online data, the last real things in an internet otherwise home only to bots and deepfakes. There is even an updated model of the brain in the vat – “simulated universe” theory, in which you are, right now, part of a computer program. Elon Musk is a believer. Inevitably, as the 20th anniversary of the film has approached, plans have emerged for a Matrix reboot. Reports have suggested that after last year’s cancellation of their Netflix project Sense8, the Wachowskis may retire from filmmaking. But Warner Bros, as the owners of the movie, did not seem to be involving them anyway. Instead, it was said, the studio would take their intellectual property and create an expanded “multiverse” of related characters and storylines. A whole set of new Matrixes, in other words – all accompanied by the ghost of Jean Baudrillard.I was 11 when my parents separated. A “bad age”, people sometimes say, in that sagacious tone, when the topic comes up. It rarely does any more, because to have divorced parents is unexceptional these days. A “broken home” (file this term in the glossary along with “bad age” and “child of divorce”) leaves an indelible mark on a person, we are told. Yet alongside the many false assumptions peddled about the impact of absent or single parents on childhood, there are also pieces of research about divorce that are worthy of our attention. The latest, from the Institute of Education, suggests that parental separation is more likely to harm the mental health of children if they are aged at least seven when the split occurs. It looked at 6,245 children and young people in the UK and found that minors aged between seven and 14 at the time of the split exhibited a 16% rise in emotional problems such as anxiety and depressive symptoms and an 8% increase in conduct disorders. Divorce is lonely for all involved, especially children. Having counselling can change everything In other words, there is something in the notion of a “bad age” for a child to experience a parental split. The reason being, perhaps, that after the age of seven you have a growing sense of your own identity, are less oblivious to relationship dynamics, and are more likely to remember the hurt and pain you feel and witness. And mental health problems in childhood, especially if left untreated, can continue to manifest in adulthood. On some level, this is difficult to admit. A part of me feels that it’s somehow babyish to lay your mental health problems at the door of your parents’ divorce: “I am this way because my parents separated 20 years ago.” Perhaps I’ve internalised the snowflake narrative, the emphasis on “resilience”. You just get on with it, don’t you? Each person has his or her sadnesses to bear. And yet if I’m honest – completely honest in a way that feels exposing – I would say that parental separation can tear a child’s world asunder. It shatters all your illusions about what should be a place of safety and stability: your home, your family. The core of everything, when you’re a child. And beyond. It shapes your view of relationships, your approach to trust. It exposes your parents as human beings. You see more of them than you might wish to see, weeping and raging and threatening and struggling to cope. They are less emotionally available than perhaps they could be. Grown-up realities are thrust upon you in ways that are confusing and disruptive. The people who are meant to ensure that your childhood is blissfully innocent are confronting the collapse of a marriage and however classily they try and do it, some shrapnel damage will occur. The child or children will suffer. It would be strange if these scars disappeared in adulthood. Family is fundamental. It sets you up for life. Divorce is one of the spectres that children dread, a bogeyman, a babadook under the bed, clutching a written demand from the child support agency, a new stepmother or father on its arm. I say this not to make all the divorced parents feel bad. I have survived depression and anxiety in adolescence and adulthood, though both have at times have been severe, and life events unrelated to my parents’ separation played a major part in those episodes. My parents divorced two decades ago, and have been separated for more of my life than they were together. I have a good relationship with both of them. They are supportive and loving, and I feel very lucky. I know people whose parents remained unhappily together, whose childhood homes were infested with a leaden, unspoken misery, whose parents were openly unfaithful. These people have also battled mental health issues. Staying together for the kids can be just as harmful, if not more so. Knowing, however, the impact of parental separation on child and adolescent mental health better equips professionals to help children deal with it, and arguably makes it less likely that they will require so much mental health treatment from the NHS in adulthood. Some 37% of the more than 338,000 under-18s referred to NHS child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in England in 2017 were denied any help at all. Leave children floundering and they will flounder as adults. Divorce is lonely for all involved, especially children. Having counselling, or at least a grown-up to talk to can change everything. To expect you to soldier on and be brave seems to be a curious misunderstanding of child behaviour, and yet that is what was expected of most people I have met in adulthood whose parents split up when they were old enough to remember it vividly. We owe children better than that. Divorce may be unexceptional in today’s society, but childhood depression should be, bad age or not. • Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and authorIt’s a divorce battle that pitches Moscow against London, involving tax havens, sumptuous properties, a mega-yacht and priceless art. Now, the acrimonious row between Farkhad Akhmedov, a Putin ally and oligarch, and his former wife has taken a new, rancorous twist. After more than three years fighting a high court ruling ordering Akhmedov to pay Tatiana Akhmedova, who is British, hundreds of millions of pounds, his lawyers have involved the international police agency Interpol in their attempts to stop her from seizing his assets. The highly unusual development has triggered claims that Akhmedov’s lawyers are abusing the legal process, claims that have been strongly rejected. The eye-popping divorce row went public in 2017, a year after Akhmedov, who made more than £1bn in the oil and gas trade, was ordered to pay Akhmedova £453m in the UK’s largest-ever divorce settlement. Since then, he has been accused of hiding his assets and cash overseas as he continues to dispute the ruling. Lawyers acting for Akhmedov, who was born in Azerbaijan but has indefinite leave to remain in the UK, argued that he had made a “stellar” contribution to his wealth creation, which meant that he should not have to give his wife, a British citizen since 2000, almost half of his fortune. Crucial to Akhmedov’s defence was the claim that an earlier divorce between the couple – in Moscow 19 years ago – supersedes the UK judgment, making his ex-wife’s attempts to seize his assets a fraudulent act. However, handing down his judgment in 2016, Justice Haddon-Cave said he had found no evidence of the earlier divorce. “The inference to be drawn … is that the 2000 Moscow divorce documents … were, at all material times, forged,” Haddon-Cave concluded. Haddon-Cave ordered that a raft of Akhmedov’s assets should be frozen. These included several offshore bank accounts, a collection of vintage shotguns, a £350,000 Aston Martin and a modern art collection, estimated to be worth £90m and which includes Mark Rothko’s Yellow and Blue and Damien Hirst’s Kingdom of Heaven. But Akhmedov’s lawyers continue to reject the British ruling, insisting to the Russian authorities that the 2000 divorce was genuine. Documents seen by the Observer show that last June, in response to requests from Interpol Lichtenstein, Interpol Russia confirmed that the couple’s marriage had been dissolved “in accordance with the decision of Zyuzinskiy district Court of Moscow dated 18.08.2000”. Moreover, Interpol Russia informed Interpol Lichtenstein that it was investigating claims from Akhmedov and his lawyers regarding the “misappropriation” of his assets on a “large scale”, based on a “fraud” committed by his ex-wife. The involvement of Interpol Russia in the divorce row was condemned by Yury Kuznetsov, Akhmedova’s lawyer in Moscow. “By the time the documents were passed to the Russian authorities, the English court had already concluded that their substance had been falsified. I am not aware of any explanation for this conduct and am disturbed by this as it appears to me that Mr Akhmedov – or someone on his behalf – was seeking to mislead Russian Interpol in an attempt to suborn Russia’s legal processes.” Hannes Arnold, Akhmedova’s lawyer in Liechtenstein, added: “It is unfortunate that Interpol Russia has been misled into passing along indisputably distorted information in response to the request of the Liechtenstein criminal authorities on the proceedings in Russia, which is clearly not in compliance with the facts. The suspicion of abuse of Interpol Russia by Mr Akhmedov – or someone on his behalf – is obvious.” But a spokesman for Akhmedov, who last year appeared on the “Putin List,” an inventory compiled by the US authorities of business and political elites with close ties to the Kremlin, denied the suggestion that Interpol was being used in an abuse of the legal process. “Interpol was asked by a Liechtenstein judge to investigate the whereabouts of critical Russian court documents relating to the 2000 Moscow divorce,” the spokesman said. “Mr Akhmedov’s legal team told Interpol – as they had previously told the courts – that the documents were criminally destroyed by agents acting for Tatiana. A ruling is awaited from the Russian supreme court in the matter.” The extraordinary case has shone a light on the rarefied world of Russia’s super-rich. The court heard that Akhmedov had bought two of his sons multimillion pound properties in London and that his ex-wife required £30m to buy a foreign property and £40m for a residence in England. She also needed annual income of around £5m to maintain her current lifestyle. The court heard that Akhmedov’s wealth resided largely in a Bermudian trust that had links to companies in Panama, Cyprus and the Isle of Man. His ex-wife’s case is being supported by Burford Capital, a boutique finance company that provides funding for high-net-worth individuals pursuing litigation in return for taking a slice of their fortune once assets have been recovered. The jewel in the crown for both sides is Akhmedov’s £230m yacht, Luna, which he bought from fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich. Boasting an onboard spa, two heliports and a mini-submarine, it has a missile detection system, bomb-resistant doors and an anti-drone device. The vessel has been impounded by the authorities in Dubai while the warring parties continue to contest its ownership in the courts. “Mr Akhmedov continues to fight all efforts of Tatiana and her backers, Burford Capital, to enforce what he has always said was a misguided and wrong judgment by the English high court on the opportunistic actions of his ex-wife and her legal team,” a spokesman for Akhmedov said. A spokesman for Interpol said it rarely commented on specific cases or individuals.A veteran American cyclist has accepted a public warning issued by the US Anti-Doping Agency after being stripped of a world record he set earlier this year for failing a drugs test. Carl Grove set a new record when winning the 90-94 age group sprint title at the US Masters Track National Championships in July, only to test positive for epitrenbolone, a metabolite of trenbolon, which is a substance prohibited by Usada. The anti-doping rule violation was “more likely than not” to have been caused by the consumption of a contaminated piece of meat the night before the race, according to Usada. A test undertaken the day before had returned a negative result. The same in-competition urine test also revealed that a supplement the nonagenarian was using prior to the race in July was contaminated with clomiphene, another prohibited substance. The perils of eating contaminated meat made headlines in 2012 when Alberto Contador was handed a two-year ban and stripped of the 2010 Tour de France title after the controversial performance enhancing drug clenbuterol was found in his blood. The Spaniard blamed the positive result on suspect meat. Usada provides comprehensive instruction on its website on the testing process and prohibited substances, how to obtain permission to use a necessary medication, and the risks and dangers of taking supplements, as well as performance-enhancing and recreational drugs.Is this the death of journalism – or just of history? This week sees the screening of Vice, a biopic of George W Bush’s vice-president, Dick Cheney, who is presented as the evil genius behind the Iraq war, torture and other misdemeanours. Its maker, Adam McKay, makes no bones about wishing to nail the misdeeds of a man “about to sail over the horizon”. His star, Christian Bale, even “thanked Satan for giving me inspiration to play the role”. Vice follows hard on the heels of the British dramatist James Graham’s Brexit: The Uncivil War, for Channel 4. That set out to reveal the truth about Brexit, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings, the eccentric fixer behind the Vote Leave campaign. Graham declared a desire “to make sense of how the fault lines began … to do what journalism cannot do.” The embellishments in Darkest Hour would have done credit to Russia’s Mosfilm or Mao’s China Well, he is right on that. Journalism does not deliberately lie, like Darkest Hour lied, like The Crown lied, like All the Money in the World lied. Film-makers claim the right to mis-sell films as history, sexed up with invention. They do so not because they have researched history and found it wrong, but because they fear accuracy will not put bums on seats. They must make Brexit into Game of Thrones. In attacking the accuracy of Vice in Slate, Fred Caplan suggests it owes more to Dr Strangelove and Mad magazine than to any known record of events. It was simply wrong to depict Cheney as “really in charge of the Bush administration”, let alone as going to war to aid his friends in the oil industry. McKay’s line is that he tried to be “as truthful as humanly possible”. But he rejects aspiration to journalistic truth, wishing instead to present “a spray paint portrait, a Ralph Steadman portrait”. A disclaimer at the start of Vice merely says, “We did our fucking best” – perhaps their best at destroying Cheney. Graham’s Brexit saga was enjoyable, and Cumberbatch outstanding. But, unlike in his behind-the-scenes play This House, the clear intention was to retell history through the real people whose actions “probably affected the outcome of the referendum”. Though scenes appeared more like Spitting Image than reality, Cumberbatch was desperate to imitate Cummings, even mimicking him while dining together, according to Cummings’ wife, Mary Wakefield. If Cumberbatch wanted to be so accurate, was it somehow to validate the inaccuracy of the script? Did Cummings really invent “Take back control”? Did he really sack John Mills from Vote Leave? Who knows, when all we do know is that some is true and some is not? This is surely the essence. The discipline of history holds that if the historian, modern or ancient, falsifies a record for dramatic effect, the exercise collapses. Unless each fact is labelled true or false, the totality is false. The story is in the dramatist’s head, and has no right to claim faithfulness to history. Two other films now on release, The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots, are brilliant period romps. One is “based on” Queen Anne’s relations with her two ladies-in-waiting, the other on Mary’s relations with Elizabeth I, complete with an invented meeting between them. Both are modernised tales of feminine machismo, their (female) actors speaking today’s foul-mouthed English and treating the male actors as toxic cartoons. The director of The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos, remarked casually that “some of the things in the film are accurate and a lot aren’t”. What is a history student to make of that? I am sure the distant past can look after itself. Peddlers of fake history always cite Shakespeare’s Richard III as their template. We should note that it took three centuries for historians to rescue Richard from that hatchet job. We might now ask how long it will take poor, dignified Queen Anne to recover from The Favourite – or can we rely on television’s admirable fib-chaser Lucy Worsley to do it first? Historical bias is potent. Churchill remarked that history would be kind to him “as I intend to write it myself”. He did, and it was. The most disgraced interwar politician emerged as a saintly hero, single-handed slayer of the demon Hitler. He has remained so ever since. The embellishments in Darkest Hour would have done credit to Russia’s Mosfilm or Mao’s China. More alarming is the appeal of current affairs to ratings-hungry producers. The stories of the British royal family, Dick Cheney, Brexit and – soon, we can be sure – Donald Trump have immediacy and relevance. They pander to the (mostly leftwing) biases of actors and directors, with invention excused as “artistic licence”. I recall the reply when I chided a director about his fabricating a scene. “I am an artist,” he said with a faint sneer. “You are a journalist.” Film-makers claim that everyone knows they make things up. I am not sure everyone does. But the fictions enter the record as attributed to historical figures. Directors discard the “suspension of disbelief” by using names, appearances, settings and spoken words to claim, “This is true. This happened. This is what history was really like.” Journalists flatter themselves with the Washington Post’s claim to be “a first rough draft of history”. But they are charged, in the time available, to describe the world as it really is. They rightly call facts sacred. No serious journalist takes pride in inaccuracy. If it occurs, there are lawyers and regulators ready to demand correction. When the likes of Trump accuse the world of fake news, we need tools, definitions, concepts of accuracy to rebut him. Why give him a free pass with fake instant history? If a newspaper declared on its front page, “These stories are based on real events, and some of them are true”, it would be laughed out of court. When films do it, they claim Oscars. • Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistA no-deal Brexit would spell severe disruption for the UK’s farming and food industries, and hardship for small farmers in particular, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, has said. Tariffs of as much as 40% would be slapped on British exports and products destined for the EU would be subject to a strict inspection regime, which would cause hold-ups and delays. Small farmers would be most at risk from the effects, Gove told the Oxford Farming Conference, adding that the “real gains” from Brexit, such as leaving the EU’s common agricultural policy, would be at risk in the event of no deal. “My principal concern is [over the] checking of foods when travelling into the EU, the inspections – all of these things add up,” he said. “While we would adjust to the challenge, we wouldn’t necessarily [be able to] in the short term and farmers, especially small farmers, would face barriers to trade.” He strongly backed Theresa May’s proposed deal, which parliament is expected to vote on later this month, though he admitted it was not perfect. “We must not make the perfect the enemy of the good,” he said. Gove pledged to defend the UK’s high standards for food and animal welfare, which are likely to come under attack in trade negotiations, even though he noted that “not everyone in Whitehall” appreciated their importance. “[There is] consumer resistance to lowering those barriers – the public do feel strongly for retaining food protections and animal welfare protections,” he said, adding that these should be addressed in any trade bills. Such bills would have to pass the House of Commons, he noted, where MPs would have a say on retaining high standards. “Brexit does not just mean the government taking back control but parliament taking back control.” Green campaigners warned that a no-deal Brexit would have implications for the UK’s environment beyond farming. Shaun Spiers, chair of the Greener UK coalition, said: “A no-deal Brexit would lead to traffic chaos and air pollution around ports, put at risk many farms and businesses and leave the UK without the means to enforce vital environmental laws. From chemical safety to animal welfare, leaving the EU without a deal would be disastrous for our countryside and the wider environment.” Gove’s warnings were backed up by Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, who called on the government to give farmers firm guidance on how Brexit would affect them, and put in place plans to ensure the UK’s food supply was secure throughout the process of leaving the EU. “We are less than 90 days away from Brexit and there is still enormous uncertainty about the future and how domestic food production fits into that,” she said. Batters stressed the importance of healthy food in people’s lives, saying problems such as obesity were the result of bad diets, rather than bad food. “When I speak to people about food, they do recognise the importance of our sector to our economy, to our environment, and to our food security,” she said. “Food is one of the fundamentals of life. Its importance cannot be overstated. A government that fails to deliver a Brexit that gets this right will fail us all.” Batters took aim at Gove’s proposals for a new agriculture bill, which many farmers fear overemphasises the importance of safeguards for the environment over food production. She said: “If we ever turn the food production tap off, we will massively struggle to turn it back on again.” She demanded firmer assurances that the UK would not be flooded with cheap food imports from countries with lower standards than British farmers must adhere to. “If you believe it, write it down,” she challenged Gove. Tim Breitmeyer, president of the CLA, which represents landowners and rural businesses, said: “As MPs return to parliament next week we urge them to work together to avoid no deal. We agree with the Defra secretary’s analysis that a scenario where the UK leaves without arrangements in place for free and frictionless trade with the EU would have major repercussions for farming, food production and the environment.” Sue Hayman, the shadow environment secretary, said: “Michael Gove’s speech today was totally meaningless in the face of Liam Fox’s vision of free trade deals that stand to undercut our farming and food standards. “With only 85 days to go until Brexit, his talk of robotics and artificial intelligence is irrelevant while basic legislation on farming isn’t even in place and there are serious concerns about Defra’s preparedness for a no-deal scenario that would be devastating for farmers. “Labour is calling on the government to support sustainable food production, provide multi annual payments to farmers and provide a cast iron guarantee that British farming standards will not be undercut by any new trade deals.”Even for a former member of the Crazy Gang, it must have been hard to watch. With his side leading 3-0 five minutes into the second half thanks to two strikes from Scott Wagstaff and another from Kwesi Appiah, Wally Downes saw his side go into the final stages leading by a single goal after West Ham’s second-half fightback. But as the club that conjured up the most unlikely of FA Cup stories when they saw off Liverpool at Wembley in the 1988 final, Wimbledon are used to holding their nerve. A brilliant header from the substitute Toby Sibbick in the 88th minute sealed a victory for Downes’s side that will go down in history in these parts. This was in effect a rematch of a fifth-round tie in 1985 when Wimbledon – then in the second tier and in the midst of their rapid rise to the pinnacle of English football – were hammered 5-1 in the replay after drawing at Plough Lane. Downes was part of the team that day and returned there in December, leading the club’s new incarnation to the fourth round for the first time by beating Joey Barton’s Fleetwood Town. Yet with Vinnie Jones and a host of the 1988 winners in town, there was no escaping the echoes of the past as they tore into their opponents from the start. Manuel Pellegrini had made five changes to the side that lost at Bournemouth, pairing Andy Carroll and Javier Hernández up front in the continued absence of Marko Arnautovic. West Ham have not got past the sixth round in this competition since they lost to Liverpool in the 2006 final and lacked intensity throughout the first half in front of a raucous crowd in suburban south-west London. After spurning a couple of early chances, Wimbledon richly deserved their breakthrough when it came, 11 minutes before half-time. Mark Noble’s dreadful clearance was quickly returned after a lovely pass from Anthony Wordsworth and Appiah’s shot from the edge of the area took a cruel deflection off Issa Diop on its way into the net. There was even better to come. Four minutes before the break, Pedro Obiang dallied in possession and lost the ball to a determined double-effort from Wagstaff and Appiah, the former racing clear to coolly slot home and send the home supporters into raptures. With the game already slipping away, Pellegrini used the interval to make a triple substitution, withdrawing Carroll, the unfortunate Obiang and Grady Diangana for Ryan Fredericks, Felipe Anderson and Lucas Pérez. But within a minute it seemed as though any hopes of a change in fortune had gone out of the window. None of the three substitutes had even touched the ball when the excellent Dylan Connolly wriggled away on the left and found Wagstaff for the former Charlton midfielder to volley home his second. Aaron Ramsdale, untested for almost an hour, was then forced into a smart reaction save by Michail Antonio. Unfortunately for the Wimbledon goalkeeper, Pérez was on hand to slam home the rebound and suddenly West Ham had a glimmer of hope. The Spaniard was guilty of wasting a chance to cut the deficit further when he missed the target from close range soon after. A mistake from the Wimbledon captain Will Nightingale, who had barely put a foot wrong until that point, then offered West Ham real hope when he brought down Anderson just outside the box and the Brazilian curled home the free-kick with aplomb. With 19 minutes still to play, Wimbledon’s players suddenly looked jaded. Appiah was withdrawn for Jake Jervis and took an age to leave the pitch as Wimbledon attempted to run down time. Anthony Taylor rightly showed Arthur Masuaku a yellow card for diving as he attempted to earn the replay for his side. But rather than wait for what seemed an inevitable equaliser Wimbledon, not or the first time, took matters into their own hands. “I was pleased to get the fourth, and for the team and fans – it gave them the chance to enjoy the last few minutes,” said Downes. “At 3-2 with five minutes to go they could have got a corner and it was nail-biting. But getting the fourth helped them enjoy it.”Ariana Grande’s song 7 Rings was released less than two weeks ago. In that time, it has already reached No 1 in 18 countries and broken Spotify’s record for most streams in a 24-hour period. So, obviously, Grande celebrated this achievement in the traditional manner; getting the Japanese for “small charcoal grill” tattooed on her hand. The slip-up has already become infamous. Grande apparently wanted “7 Rings” tattooed on her in kanji. However, the tattoo she got actually reads “shichirin”; a lightweight portable charcoal stove that is used in Japan to grill fish or meat. It is embarrassing, but at least it allows Grande to enter the prestigious and sacred Celebrity Botched Tattoo Translation Hall of Fame. Here are her peers. In 2000, David Beckham wanted to get a tattoo in honour of his wife. However, he also wanted it in Hindi, a language he doesn’t speak. Which is why, when translated, his tattoo reads “Vihctoria”. Sadly, however, a “Vihctoria” isn’t a small charcoal grill, so Grande’s tattoo is still funnier. Jessie J once wrote a song called Who You Are, which contained the lyric “Don’t lose who you are in the blur of the stars”. To mark this, she had the words “Don’t loose who you are in the blur of the stars” tattooed on her pelvis. This is also why Jessie J favours high-waisted trousers these days. Grande needs to go some to beat Spears, for she has two misspelled tattoos. On her hip is a Chinese symbol that was intended to read “rebellious” but says “strange”. And on the back of her neck, there used to be three Hebrew characters. They were meant to spell “God”, in an act of devotion to Kabbalah, but they were inked out of order so were just gibberish. The phrase “rebel flower” is important to Rihanna. It is how she describes herself, it is the name of a perfume she launched in 2010 and it is the title of an unauthorised biography that someone once wrote about her. It is also why she has the words “Rebelle Fleur” tattooed on her neck, even though French adjectives typically follow the nouns they modify, so it is ultimately meaningless. Finally, the ruler of the Celebrity Botched Tattoo Translation Hall of Fame. Actor Panettiere has “Live Without Regrets” tattooed on her side in Italian. Except it is spelled incorrectly. This is a level that Grande can only aspire to reach. Maybe next time.A 90-year-old cyclist who was stripped of his world record after a failed drugs test has questioned the wisdom of the US Anti-Doping Agency’s decision. Usada admitted that Carl Grove’s failed test was probably due to his inadvertent consumption of contaminated meat but said that it still had to issue him with a public warning, the least serious punishment available. Grove told the Associated Press this week that he believes taxpayers’ money would be better spent on catching more serious offenders. “Us old guys are kind of like peanuts. I think that they’re wasting their time,” he said. “What can I gain at 90 years old doing drugs? Tell me, I just don’t know. So I think that somewhere there ought to be a cutoff and they ought to zero in on the stuff that is done for money reasons or whatever it may be. But I think after 65 or 70, you know, they ought to just give up.” Grove tested positive for epitrenbolone, a metabolite of banned substance trenbolon, at July’s US Masters Track National Championships, where he won the the 90-94 age group sprint title. The former United States Navy Band saxophonist, who played for US presidents during his time in the armed forces, said the decision had initially hurt him. “I was really kind of down for a while. But I’m over it,” Grove said. “I wanted to be an inspiration, if possible. I worked like a real horse to do it. They struck me from the records. I don’t really care about that too much. The thing that I really, really care about is that I wanted to be a sterling, totally clean person in front of people that knew about me. “It looked like I had not been an honest person to a lot of people. I guess I was kind of worried about what did other people think, you know? Then, I began to think, ‘Well, some of them will believe me and some of them won’t.’ I guess that’s just the way it is.” Grove, whose mother and father lived to 105 and 97 respectively, says he is determined to continue his cycling career. His next goal is the world record for the distance ridden in an hour in the 90-95 age bracket. The current mark was set in 2017 by France’s Rene Gaillard, who covered 29.278km (18 miles). “Sometimes, I ride in the morning and it’s a beautiful sunrise. I’m alive. I’m looking. I’m looking around. I’m feeling good. I’m so happy,” he said. “I’ve got so many gold medals and ribbons and stuff, and that doesn’t count. What counts is getting out there and doing the best I can do and show people what they can do.” Grove will turn 91 on 13 July.A brutal crackdown in Zimbabwe that has followed protests against fuel price rises is “just a foretaste of things to come”, the president’s spokesman has said. The harsh words will increase concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in the poor southern African country, coming after a week in which police and soldiers have beaten civilians, shot 12 people dead and detained at least 600 people, many without charge. “[The] government will not stand by while such narrow interests play out so violently,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s spokesman George Charamba told the state-controlled Sunday Mail newspaper. The repression followed a national strike called by unions after the government ordered a massive fuel price hike eight days ago. The price rise, of about 250%, is the latest blow to millions of citizens who are increasingly unable to buy basics such as fuel, food and medicines. Inflation is running at 40% – its highest rate since hyperinflation forced Zimbabwe to abandon its currency 10 years ago in favour of dollars, electronic cash and “bond notes” issued by the central bank. The violence is the worst seen in Zimbabwe for a decade, prompting many to make comparisons with the worst days of the 37-year rule of the autocratic former president Robert Mugabe. The government has called the unrest “terrorism” and blamed the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Mnangagwa, a ruling Zanu-PF party stalwart, took power when Mugabe was ousted in a military takeover in November 2017 and then won contested elections last year. On Sunday the president, who has been touring central Asia, Russia and Europe in a bid to drum up investment for the country’s crippled economy, said he would return to Zimbabwe instead of attending this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos. “In light of the economic situation, I will be returning home … The first priority is to get Zimbabwe calm, stable and working again,” Mnangagwa tweeted. The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said it treated 68 gunshot wounds and 100-plus other cases of “assaults with sharp objects, booted feet, baton sticks” last week. There were further reports of violence over the weekend, as army and police patrols searched hundreds of homes in Harare, the capital, for property stolen in outbreaks of looting last week. Large numbers of people remain missing – including senior union officials involved in organising the three-day shutdown. Armed police were also reported to have surrounded the homes of senior officials and parliamentarians from the MDC. Chalton Hwende, the MDC representative for Kuwadzana East, a poor area on the outskirts of Harare, said six opposition lawmakers were already in custody. Some have been charged with inciting violence, though the party was careful to call for peaceful protests and was not involved in the organisation of the shutdown. “This is all just an excuse to destroy the MDC. Mugabe was just the face of the machine. We always expected things to get worse,” Hwende said. Much of the repression has been concentrated in poor neighbourhoods and satellite towns of Harare, such as Chitungwiza and Ruwa, which voted heavily for the MDC in the elections last July. On Saturday, a series of funerals brought hundreds on to the streets. Neighbours of a 35-year-old shot on the second day of the crackdown described “unidentified [people] monitoring the dead man’s family”. Kelvin Tinashe Choto, 22, was shot in the head while watching the protests in Harare. “He was our future,” said his father, Julius Choto, as the family buried him in Chitungwiza on Saturday. “I have been robbed. He was my only son and his future was bright. I have been robbed by the state.” The end of Mugabe’s rule prompted widespread optimism that the repression of previous decades was over. But any faint hopes of political reform have been extinguished. The crisis has attracted fierce criticism from western powers, and will undermine Zimbabwe’s efforts to rejoin the international community after decades as a pariah. Mugabe’s rule left Zimbabwe with vast debts, a crumbling infrastructure and soaring unemployment, especially among young people. Most of its 16 million people live hand-to-mouth, or survive on remittances from the extensive diaspora. Albert Taurai, in hospital in Harare with a broken spine, said he had gone to buy food when he was attacked by a group of armed men in plain clothes. They struck him with iron bars on the back, thighs and ankles, saying “Zimbabwe will never be shut down”. “I have seen both Mugabe and Mnangagwa. This just is worse than Mugabe,” Taurai, 46, said.For 17 days, a host of volunteers and a skeleton staff kept the trash cans and toilets from overflowing at Joshua Tree national park. But on Tuesday, 18 days after the federal government shutdown furloughed the vast majority of national park staff, officials announced that vandalism of the park’s distinctive namesake plants and other maintenance and sanitation problems will require closure starting Thursday. “While the vast majority of those who visit Joshua Tree do so in a responsible manner, there have been incidents of new roads being created by motorists and the destruction of Joshua trees in recent days that have precipitated the closure,” spokesman George Land said in a news release. Land told the Los Angeles Times that, with only eight rangers currently overseeing the nearly 800,000 acre park, the gates would likely remain closed until the shutdown ends. But a different spokesman for the National Parks Service, Mike Litterst, subsequently told the Times that the park may not close after all if staff are able to complete cleanup work before Thursday. National Park Service officials did not immediately respond to requests for clarification. The potential closure of Joshua Tree was met with mixed emotions by those whose livelihoods depend on the more than 2.8 million visitors the park attracts annually. “I have 11 employees who are effectively going to be laid off as of Thursday,” said Seth Zaharias, co-owner of a company that leads rock climbing trips in the park. “They are not going to work for the remainder of the shutdown.” Still, Zaharias said that reports of vandalism to the park made him support the closure. “Economically, that’s disastrous for our community,” he said of the prospect of serious environmental damage to the park. “It’s really bad.” His company was beginning to send out cancellation notices for customers who had booked trips after Thursday, he said. David Lamfrom, director of the California desert and national wildlife programs for the National Parks Conservation Association, warned that the damage to Joshua Tree’s desert landscape could be catastrophic. “It’s an incredibly fragile landscape that takes generations and generations to grow, and generations and generations to heal,” Lamfrom said. “The amount of time it takes to heal can be on the geological scale.” Lamfrom expressed frustration that community members had been placed in the position of trying to keep the park operating during the shutdown. “For business owners and community members to have to take up the mantle and the burden of running our national parks makes no sense,” he said. “We have professionals who are dedicated to doing that work, and they’re sitting at home.” Lamfrom also warned that because most of the park’s rangers are furloughed, the extent of environmental damage is likely still unknown. “The main story has been about poop, but I think there’s a much bigger story,” he said. “The resource impacts could be really dangerous. We’re reeling, and we’re all just kind of hoping that the worst hasn’t happened.”Should prosecco join the list of environmentally sinful food and drink, such as North Atlantic cod (overfished), beef (huge climate impact) and coffee (excessive water consumption)? That’s the question raised by a study that modelled the amount of soil erosion caused by production of the sparkling wine in north-east Italy. As demand for the Italian white wine has surged in recent years, production has intensified on steep slopes where the soil is often bare. Heavy rain then causes serious erosion. Researchers at the University of Padua found that three-quarters of soil loss from hillsides of the winemaking region in Veneto, home to a number of Controlled and Guaranteed Designation of Origin (DOCG) wines, is a result of prosecco production. That’s the equivalent of 400,000 tonnes of soil each year, or 4.4kg of soil for each of the 90m bottles of prosecco the region produces each year. Such a rate of loss is unsustainable, says the soil expert Prof Chris Collins. It’s not just bad news for the health of the vineyards, but for the wider environment, too, he adds. “The more soil you can leave in situ, the better in terms of nutrients. When soil goes downstream, it causes sedimentation. It also makes water treatment expensive because they have to take the soil out, and it can take pesticides downstream,” says Collins, who coordinates the UK’s soil security programme. The world consumes about 370m bottles of prosecco a year, according to the IWSR drinks market analysis, with Italy top, followed by the UK and the US. The Wine and Spirit Trade Association says most of the £1.5bn Britons spent on sparkling wine last year was on prosecco. Should we stop drinking the stuff? “No, we should manage our vineyards better,” says Collins. Grassing the soil in the affected area would dramatically cut erosion, he adds. The authors of the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, think the amount of soil lost could be made three times smaller using grass and hedgerows. The researchers did not consider the impact of Boris Johnson, however, who memorably told Italy it would sell less prosecco if it failed to accept the UK’s Brexit demands.A Turkish journalist has been sentenced to more than a year in jail for her work on the Paradise Papers investigation into offshore tax havens, because it revealed details of the business activities of the country’s former prime minister and his sons. Pelin Ünker, a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was found guilty in an Istanbul court of “defamation and insult” for writing about companies in Malta owned by Binali Yıldırım and his sons. Yıldırım was prime minister from 2016 to 2018, when the post was abolished, and is now the speaker of the country’s national assembly. After the sentence was issued, Ünker told the ICIJ she intended to appeal, pointing out that the Yildirim family had admitted that articles about their Maltese businesses were accurate. She said: “This decision is not a surprise for us. Because the result was certain from the beginning. There is no criminal offence or defamation in my articles. “The fact is Binali Yıldırım’s sons have Maltese companies. Binali Yıldırım had already accepted that they have these companies. In the indictment, it is also accepted.” Turkey has the world’s worst record for jailing journalists, with 68 in prison at the end of last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. All the jailed reporters are facing charges of crimes against the state. The Paradise Papers revelations stemmed from a mass leak of documentation on the offshore financial industry published by a consortium of 90 media outlets around the world, including the Guardian. The investigation has sparked new or expanded criminal investigations in Switzerland and Argentina and accelerated the process of reform in the European Union. The ICIJ’s director, Gerard Ryle, condemned Ünker’s jail sentence of 13 months, as the latest in a long series of attacks on free speech in Turkey. “This unjust ruling is about silencing fair and accurate reporting. Nothing more,” Ryle said. “ICIJ commends Pelin Ünker’s brave and truthful investigative reporting and it condemns this latest assault on journalistic freedom under Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic rule.”Researchers looking into the success of faecal transplants believe they have identified why the poo of certain donors produces better results than others – so called “super-donors”. A team at the University of Auckland examined results from previous studies on faecal transplants – when faeces, and the microbes it contains, are taken from a healthy gut and used to “re-set” the gut of the recipient – to understand why poo from certain donors resulted in a better success rate in treating certain conditions. The transfer of faeces from one individual into another has become a useful treatment for recurrent Clostridium difficile (C Diff) infections, a debilitating condition that causes diarrhoea and tummy pain. However, the procedure is also showing promise for a host of other conditions, including ulcerative colitis (an inflammatory bowel disease), that have been also been linked to the microbiome of the gut– the community of bacteria, viruses and fungi found there – being out of kilter. Studies have shown that while success rates for procedures to treat C Diff are similar regardless of the stool donor, some conditions – including ulcerative colitis – were improved depending on the donor. In one study the remission rate for ulcerative colitis was twice as high among recipients whose transplant included stool from one particular donor. Such results have fuelled the emergence of an unlikely sounding hero: the super-donor.  Writing in the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, Dr Justin O’Sullivan and colleagues say while recurrent C Diff infections are down to the overgrowth of a particular type of bacteria, a more complex shift in conditions seems to be present in ulcerative colitis where a “super-donor effect” is seen. By looking at closer at what makes someone a super-donor, O’Sullivan said, it is possible to delve deeper into what is behind the recipient’s recovery, and could eventually allow experts to administer only certain bacteria or chemicals to treat a condition. Looking at previously published studies in the field, O’Sullivan and colleagues say a stool from a super-donor often has a greater diversity of microbes. However, they add for some conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, specific components are important such as whether the stool is richer in particular bacteria – such as those which produce certain chemicals.In other studies, it has been suggested the presence of viruses in the stool might play a role in resolving certain conditions. “We think the super-donors differ depending on the condition you are trying to treat,” said O’Sullivan. The team added that compatibility between the donor and recipient is another key factor, not least the immune reaction of the recipient to the donor stool, and which species and strains are present in the recipient’s gut before transplant. What’s more, for the procedure to be a long-term success, O’Sullivan and colleagues say factors including the diet of the recipient is important – previous work has shown what we eat shapes the community of microbes in the gut. The researchers conclude there is no “one stool fits all” approach, however, and that a more personalised approach, with better matching between donors and recipients,could improve the chances of a faecal transplant being a success – and widen the procedure’s use for other diseases, such as asthma. Prof Rob Knight, an expert on the human microbiome at the University of California San Diego who was not involved in the study, said: “Strategies to find super-donors whose stool is especially effective as a curative are still in their infancy, although progress on this topic – or making synthetic super-donors from the stool of many people – could greatly improve application of [faecal transplants],” he said.The Golden State Warriors shared a private visit with former US president Barack Obama on Thursday before beating the Washington Wizards 126-118 in the nation’s capital. A photo of the meeting was posted on Instagram by Tony Banks, a member of the Warriors’ staff, who later deleted the image. San Jose Mercury News reporter Logan Murdock captured the photo and tweeted it. Looks like the Warriors paid a visit to President Barack Obama during their visit to Washington DC. pic.twitter.com/D5PSwjc3Gl The team’s players and security personnel visited with Obama for about an hour, the Mercury News said. Golden State’s coaching staff was not in attendance. The Warriors have avoided the traditional trip for a championship team to the White House under sitting president Donald Trump. Trump publicly revoked the standing invitation after Golden State’s 2017 NBA title after guard Stephen Curry had previously said he would not want to attend. The team also did not visit after their 2018 championship. Warriors players declined to elaborate on who set up the meeting with Obama. A team official told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne that Curry was key in arranging it, but it was meant to remain private and not intended as a political statement. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, chatted with Curry after the game for a couple of moments before getting a photo with the two-time MVP. Steph and Nancy pic.twitter.com/TplYpDMeCg Pelosi, who represents California’s 12th congressional district not far from the team’s Oakland headquarters, had previously invited the Warriors to visit the Capitol following their 2017 championship.Greater Manchester will effectively ban fracking as part of its effort to become carbon neutral by 2038, in a setback for the controversial industry. The region’s mayor, Andy Burnham, said the combined authority would put planning measures in place that create “a presumption” against fracking for shale gas. “It’s about embracing the future, not the past. Cities like Greater Manchester need to join the group of leading cities on the world stage that are driving fast towards carbon neutrality,” Burnham told the Guardian. “That is a big challenge and it must be embraced wholeheartedly and it means a full commitment to renewable energy and not half measures and not clinging on to processes that hark back to a past.” London is finalising a similar scheme and Manchester’s announcement, which comes into force on Monday, comes amid a wave of discontent among local councils – including Tory controlled authorities – which experts warn could kill off the government’s plans. Burnham said council leaders had looked at what happened in nearby Lancashire, where fracking started in October at Preston New Road near Blackpool against the will of the local authority following a government intervention. The energy firm Cuadrilla was forced to pause operations three times in the run-up to Christmas after drilling caused small earthquakes that breached legal limits. “For the legal limits to be breached so regularly is a worry, isn’t it?” Burnham said. “It’s hard to know what damage is being done and the effect that is having on groundwater and all of those other issues that emerge. “It’s even more worrying in Greater Manchester, which is a much more urban place, where there is more contaminated land, more mineshafts. This is an industry which hasn’t proven its case. In fact the opposite.” In London mayor Sadiq Khan, who last month declared a “climate emergency”, has said that any fracking proposals that reach his desk will be thrown out. And his draft London Plan, which will be ratified later this year, has introduced an effective ban on fracking across the capital. Several other authorities - including Leeds, Wakefield, Hull and York – have expressed their opposition to fracking and experts believe the stance taken by Manchester and London will embolden other local authorities. Norway, one of the world’s major oil- and gas-producing nations, now generates 98% of its electricity from renewable sources and has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030. Cities such as Berlin, Boston, Copenhagen, London and New York have joined the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA), pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80-100% by 2050 or sooner. Greater Manchester plans to bring forward its target for becoming a zero-carbon region by 12 years, to 2038. Manchester city council, one of its 10 local authorities, has already agreed to the new goal after accepting advice from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research at the University of Manchester. Burnham accepted that Greater Manchester does not have the power to implement a ban on fracking. “That’s a reflection of government policy and not our policy. We would if we could,” he said. “We are doing what we can within the legal structures that we have got at our disposal.” The new policy will be announced on Monday as part of the Greater Manchester spatial framework, which sets out a strategic plan for the city region until 2037. Local leaders have agreed to include concerns about the impact of the exploitation of new sources of hydrocarbons. They believe that the government’s support of fracking means there is less of an imperative to invest in new zero-carbon technologies, slowing the speed at which these become financially viable and/or technically feasible. The move echoes similar policies already pursued by the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales. In September the petrochemical company Ineos lost a legal challenge against the Scottish government’s position on fracking. Scotland’s highest court ruled that politicians had not exceeded their powers by imposing a moratorium on fracking for oil and gas. Burnham said he was hopeful that energy companies would respect Greater Manchester’s wishes and not apply to frack in the region. “There has never been a legal case involving a spatial framework of this kind. We would be empowering our own communities to take on a government policy, which at times seems to impose its will on local communities,” he said. Around 2.6 million people live in Greater Manchester, large parts of which are “shale prospective areas” identified by the British Geological Survey and the Oil and Gas Authority. Energy firms have been granted licences to pursue oil and gas exploration in the west and north of the region, and the energy firm iGas drilled a combined coal bed methane and shale gas exploration well in Barton Moss in Salford in 2013-14. Energy industry analysts have begun to question the economic feasibility of fracking in the UK. Since 2013, gas prices have fallen sharply and there is no shortage of supply in Europe or around the world. German import prices – the standard European benchmark – are half their 2013 level. It is also not yet proven that the substantial shale resources present under the north of England and elsewhere in the UK can be recovered at a commercially viable volume as in the US.Theresa May has insisted she will go ahead with a crucial vote on her Brexit deal amid growing speculation that it could be delayed. The prime minister said she was seeking further clarification from the EU to address the concerns of MPs, as well as specific measures relating to the backstop on Northern Ireland before the vote in the week beginning 14 January. She also said she would look at giving parliament a greater say in how the UK’s future relationship would be negotiated, but refused to say exactly what that might be. Asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday if the vote – which was postponed last month – would go ahead, she replied: “Yes we are going to hold the vote. The debate will start next week and it will carry on until the following week, but we will be holding the vote.” Asked if there had been any changes she could offer to backbenchers who are expected to vote down her deal, she said: “What we will be setting out over the next few days are assurances in three areas: first are measures specific to Northern Ireland; the second is a greater role for parliament as we take these negotiations forward into the next stage for our future relationship; and third, and we are still working on this, is further assurances from the European Union to address the issues that have been raised.” The mooted extension to the transition period is a new idea being put forward by the EU to help Theresa May square the circle created by the written agreement last December and the draft withdrawal agreement in March. That committed the UK and the EU to ensuring there was no divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But it also, after an intervention by the Democratic Unionist party, committed the UK (not the EU) not to have any trading differences between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The problem is that these are two irreconcilable agreements. They also impinge on the legally binding Good Friday agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland and in some senses pooled sovereignty of Northern Ireland giving people a birthright to be Irish or British or both. If the UK leaves the EU along with the customs union and the single market then the border in Ireland becomes the only land border between the UK and the EU forcing customs, tax and regulatory controls. The backstop is one of three options agreed by the EU and the UK in December and would only come into play if option A (overall agreement) or option B (a tailor-made solution) cannot be agreed by the end of transition. The Irish have likened it to an insurance policy. The new EU idea is to extend the transition period to allow time to get to option A or B. But an extension is problematic for Brexiters and leave voters, who want the UK to get out of the EU as soon as possible. The Irish and the EU will also still need the backstop in the withdrawal agreement, which must be signed before the business of the trade deal can get under way. Otherwise it is  a no-deal Brexit. Extending the transition into 2021 would mean another year of paying into the EU budget. Britain would have to negotiate this but it has been estimated at anywhere between £10bn and £17bn. Staying in the EU for another year would also mean continued freedom of movement and being under the European court of justice, which Brexiters would oppose. May said a second referendum would be “disrespecting” people who voted for Brexit and warned it could not be held before 29 March, the date of Britain’s departure from the EU. On her own future, she refused to put a timescale on her departure. “I was clear before Christmas with my colleagues on two things: one, I’m not going to call a snap election and secondly that I’m not going to be leading the party into the 2022 general election. “What colleagues have said they want me to do is to deliver Brexit, which is what I am working on doing and also deliver on the agenda I set out when I first became prime minister.” Earlier, May had told the Mail on Sunday that the UK faces a moment of “profound challenge” as she urged MPs to get behind her Brexit deal. She warned critics from both sides of the Brexit divide that they risked damaging the economy and trust in democracy by opposing her plan. May said: “There are some in parliament who, despite voting in favour of holding the referendum, voting in favour of triggering article 50 and standing on manifestos committed to delivering Brexit, now want to stop us leaving by holding another referendum. “Others across the House of Commons are so focused on their particular vision of Brexit that they risk making a perfect ideal the enemy of a good deal. “Both groups are motivated by what they think is best for the country, but both must realise the risks they are running with our democracy and the livelihoods of our constituents.” On the Marr show, May said the UK would be in “uncharted territory” if the House of Commons rejected the terms of the UK’s withdrawal. She declined to say if she would seek further votes if this happened. She also declined to say whether she would back a second referendum if it were supported by a majority of MPs. The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March. May agreed her deal on the terms of the UK’s divorce and the framework of future relations with the EU but it needs to pass a vote by MPs. The Commons vote had been scheduled to take place in December but May called it off after it became clear that not enough MPs would back her deal. The debate on the deal will restart on Wednesday, with the crucial vote now expected to take place on 14 or 15 January. It was reported on Sunday that an all-party group of senior MPs could attempt to derail a no-deal Brexit this week by starving the government of cash. MPs will vote on Tuesday on two amendments to the finance bill that could lead to gridlock in Whitehall unless May wins approval from parliament for a deal with Brussels. A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal. As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government. That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit. “The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs. Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added. The Sunday Times reported that the former Labour cabinet minister Yvette Cooper is at the head of a group of select committee leaders who have tabled an amendment that would rob the Treasury of its no-deal powers if ministers pressed ahead without the support of MPs. The bill grants the Treasury the right to spend money on a no-deal Brexit and wider powers, which are not defined, that could be used for emergency interventions in the event of no deal. Meanwhile, the health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock, said he was “confident” there would be an unhindered supply of medicines in the event of a no-deal Brexit, as long as the pharmaceutical industry took the necessary action. “We are confident that if everybody does what they need to do then we will have an unhindered supply of medicines,” he told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.In Washington state, a freshly implemented ballot initiative and a raft of new bills may produce some of the tightest firearms regulations in the US. But standing in the way is a group of rural law enforcement officers who say point blank that they won’t enforce any of it. The Klickitat county sheriff, Bob Songer, is one of them. He told the Guardian that the initiative passed last November “is unconstitutional on several grounds. I’ve taken the position that as an elected official, I am not going to enforce that law”. Songer also cited ongoing litigation by the National Rife Association gun industry lobby and others which aims to demonstrate the laws violate both the second amendment and the state’s constitution. He also said that if other agencies attempted to seize weapons from county residents under the auspices of the new laws, he would consider preventively “standing in their doorway”. In November, the state’s voters handily passed an initiative, I-1639, which mostly targeted semi-automatic rifles. As of 1 January, purchasers of these weapons must now be over 21, undergo an enhanced background check, must have completed a safety course, and need to wait 9 days to take possession of their weapon. Also, gun owners who fail to store their weapons safely risk felony “community endangerment” charges. Feeling the wind at their backs after the ballot, gun campaigners and liberal legislators have now gone even further in the new legislative session. Bills introduced in the last week to Washington’s Democrat-dominated legislature look to further restrict firearms. Some laws would ban high capacity magazines and plastic guns made with 3D printers. Others would mandate training for concealed carry permits, and remove guns and ammo during and after domestic violence incidents. Washington’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, who proposed several of the bills, said in an email: “Now is the time to act. Washingtonians have made it clear that they support common-sense gun safety reforms”. Kristen Ellingboe, from Washington’s Alliance for Gun Safety, which has long campaigned for more firearms restrictions, said that “for a long time our elected officials thought that gun violence protection was somehow controversial, but they have been behind where the people of Washington are on this issue”. But like other west coast states, Washington exhibits a deep cultural and political divide between its populous, coastal cities and its more sparsely populated rural hinterland. I-1639 passed on a roughly 60-40 split; in the big, blue counties west of the Cascade Mountains, such as King county, where Seattle is located, the margins were even bigger. However, 27 of Washington’s 39 counties rejected the ballot measure. Many of those counties are in the state’s more rural, sparsely populated districts. It is in these counties that many – including sworn officers – are promising to resist the laws. In Ferry county in eastern Washington, more than 72% of voters rejected I-1639. In the county’s only incorporated city, Republic, the police chief Loren Culp asked the council in November to declare the city a “second amendment sanctuary”. That vote has been delayed until March, but in the meantime, like Songer, Culp says he will not enforce. The sheriff in Ferry county, Ray Maycumber, told the Guardian that he would not be enforcing the laws either, at least until the NRA’s litigation is completed. “There’s a window of time when I get to make the assessment”, he said. Should the NRA not succeed, he said, he would “consider if I want to go on in the job”. The “sanctuary” idea has caught on with other rightwing activists. Matt Marshall is the leader of the Washington Three Percent, a patriot movement group which has held several open carry rallies in downtown Seattle in the last year. Marshall is attempting to persuade rural Washington counties to adopt local second amendment sanctuary ordinances. Next week, together with the Patriot Prayer founder and former Senate candidate Joey Gibson, he is addressing a meeting of Lewis and Pierce counties to try to persuade them to adopt resolutions which would mean that the gun laws were not enforced. The refusal of law enforcement officers to enforce the new restrictions plays into a longer history of so-called “constitutional” sheriffs resisting the gradual tightening of gun laws. There are also hints, in the stance, of the doctrine of “county supremacy”, long nursed on the constitutionalist far right, which holds that county sheriffs are the highest constitutional authority in the country. Such notions have long been promoted by figures like sheriff Richard Mack, who leads the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. As gun laws throughout the west have gradually tightened in recent decades, resistance along these lines has become prevalent in areas with strong political support for gun rights. Since the initiative passed, and they made their positions public, both Songer and Culp have been lionized in conservative media. Earlier this month, Songer detailed his position on the Alex Jones show, where he appeared with Gibson. On this resistance to the new wave of gun restrictions in Washington, Ellingboe, the gun safety campaigner, said “it’s disappointing that the gun lobby is trying to undermine the will of Washington voters”.Drug company executives appearing in court in Boston this week have been accused of running “a criminal enterprise” and putting greed before patient safety as they pushed prescription narcotics during the opioids crisis blighting the health of America. The defendants are the first painkiller manufacturing bosses to stand trial over conduct the authorities say contributed to an overdose epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people across the US, regardless of region, age, race and income in the last 20 years. If the Boston trial and others scheduled to get under way later this year are anything to go by, 2019 is now shaping up as the start of a reckoning for the pharmaceutical giants still making billions from opioids. Assistant US attorney David Lazarus told jurors in the federal court in Boston that John Kapoor and the company he created, Insys Therapeutics Inc, ran a nationwide kickback and conspiracy scheme that effectively bribed doctors to routinely prescribe patients an addictive fentanyl spray that was many times more powerful than morphine and had been approved to alleviate the agony of advanced cancer. Kapoor and four of his colleagues deny the criminal charges against them. “This is a case about greed and the consequences of putting profits over people,” Lazarus said in his opening statement on Monday, adding that Arizona-based Insys also defrauded insurers into paying for the narcotic nasal spray Subsys, which contains fentanyl. Kapoor was arrested in 2017 on the same day Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. In 2017, a record 47,600 people died of opioid-related overdoses, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fentanyl is the synthetic opioid that killed Prince. Almost 100 people are dying every day across America from opioid overdoses – more than car crashes and shootings combined. The majority of these fatalities reveal widespread addiction to powerful prescription painkillers. The crisis unfolded in the mid-90s when the US pharmaceutical industry began marketing legal narcotics, particularly OxyContin, to treat everyday pain. This slow-release opioid was vigorously promoted to doctors and, amid lax regulation and slick sales tactics, people were assured it was safe. But the drug was akin to luxury morphine, doled out like super aspirin, and highly addictive. What resulted was a commercial triumph and a public health tragedy. Belated efforts to rein in distribution fueled a resurgence of heroin and the emergence of a deadly, black market version of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The crisis is so deep because it affects all races, regions and incomes Former Insys senior executives Michael Babich and Alec Burlakoff have already pleaded guilty and are helping prosecutors. Insys paid $150m to resolve a federal investigation into the marketing of Subsys. Lazarus said one defendant, Sunrise Lee – a sales executive and ex-stripper – gave a lap dance to an Illinois doctor to persuade him to prescribe Subsys to patients it wasn’t suitable for. As the trial continues, a new reality of so-called big pharma bosses facing the consequences over opioid deaths and addiction appears to be just beginning to play out as other legal battles loom. In May, Oklahoma is due to be the first state to go to trial out of more than 40suing Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the most well-known prescription opioid – OxyContin – and several other companies, claiming they hid the addictive nature of their products and how easy they were to abuse. And in October, three bellwether trials will get under way in a huge multi-district litigation case before a federal court in Cleveland, Ohio, that has brought together more than 1,200 lawsuits from county and city governments across the nation. “The opioids crisis is the biggest public health problem that we have in this country and it’s outrageous that it’s gone on this long … I see it as very significant that now we as a society are holding people accountable,” said Angela Mattie, a professor in the school of business and the school of medicine at Quinnipiac University. Robert Bird, professor of business law at the University of Connecticut, said the balance of power has shifted away from big pharma to the public. “Over the next year, a day of reckoning is possible,” he said. A judge in Oklahoma ruled last summer that cameras can be brought into the courtroom when the trial against pharmaceutical companies Purdue Pharma, Allergan, Janssen, Teva and subsidiary companies begins on 28 May. Mike Hunter, the state attorney general, said the transparency would “allow individuals to see how these companies maliciously deceived the nation while creating the deadliest manmade epidemic in United States history”. The companies deny wrongdoing. On Friday, further explosive details are due to be made public in a civil case brought against Purdue by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey. Massachusetts is one of a small number of plaintiffs in the avalanche of litigation against Purdue that has amended its original complaint specifically to add the names of individual members of the Sackler family, who wholly own Purdue Pharma, to the list of defendants. Earlier this month, newly unveiled court filings in Healey’s case revealed that when OxyContin was created in the mid-1990s, family member Richard Sackler, who was then a senior executive at Purdue, told people gathered at the painkiller’s launch party that the event would be “followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition”. Portions of the complaint remained redacted, but on Monday the judge in the case ruled that almost all of it must be revealed by noon on Friday in court in Boston – moments away from where Kapoor and the Insys executives are now on trial. Suffolk county in Long Island, New York, has also sued Sackler family members personally. “We are beginning, through various documents, to learn what the Sackler family knew and when they knew it and that they continued to do business,” said Mattie. There are signs that a huge settlement could be on the horizon but, meanwhile, plaintiffs are forging ahead towards trial. Joe Rice is co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the multi-district litigation (MDL) in Cleveland, a city suffering from the overdose epidemic. “The MDL has been extensively involved in developing documentary and deposition evidence against all the defendants and that includes Purdue and, by necessity, information about the Sackler family while they were directors of the company, and much of that has been shared with the attorneys general [in the state cases], including Massachusetts,” Rice said on Tuesday. The Sackler family is worth around $13bn. The dynasty is known for philanthropy to cultural and academic institutions in the US and the UK, but the controversy is affecting that profile. Leading institutions say little about the ethics of accepting donations, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York broke ranks and is reviewing its policy, as first reported by the conservative news website the Daily Caller. Spokesman Ken Weine said: “We are watching this topic with great interest, and, in light of the recent developments, carefully reviewing our overall policies in this area.” In 2007, executives at Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty in criminal court that they had misled regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s risk of addiction and its potential to be abused. The company paid $600m in fines and other payments and a trial was avoided. The American man who was detained in Russia on accusations of being a spy is a retired marine who was visiting Moscow to attend a wedding, according to his family. In a statement released on Tuesday morning, the family of Paul Whelan said the last time anyone had contact with him was on 28 December, the night before the wedding he was due to attend. Russia’s domestic security service announced on Monday that it had arrested an American on Friday who was “carrying out an act of espionage”. A statement in Russian did not provide further details about the individual who was detained or information about the alleged spying, but his name appeared to translate as Paul Whelan. The US state department declined to comment on whether the detained individual was a former marine, but in response to a question from the Guardian it said it was aware that a US citizen had been detained, had been notified of his detention by the Russian ministry of foreign affairs, and said it was seeking access to the individual. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no additional information to provide at this time,” the department said. In an email to the Guardian, Whelan’s twin brother, David, said Whelan was attending the wedding of a fellow former marine, who was marrying a Russian woman. Whelan’s family said he had been to Russia “numerous times”, as far back as 2007, and was currently working on a corporate security team for Borg Warner, which is listed online as a Michigan-based maker of automative industry components. David Whelan said his brother had previously been to Russia as a visitor and for his work for Kelly Services, a management consultancy. The Guardian could not immediately verify the accuracy of the family’s statement. Whelan’s previous trips to Russia, his brother said, were only for short visits and he had limited Russian language abilities “other than to be able to get around”. “This visit was entirely for pleasure, from what I understand,” his brother said. The family said they had learn of Whelan’s arrest on Monday after reading the news reports. “We noticed that he was not in communication on the 28th, which was very much out of character for him even when he was traveling,” the family said. “We are deeply concerned for his safety and wellbeing. His innocence is undoubted and we trust that his rights will be respected.” A spokesperson for Borg Warner confirmed that Whelan was employed as the company’s global security director, responsible for overseeing security at the company’s facilities in Michigan and “other company locations around the world”. It is not clear whether any US officials have seen Whelan since his arrest. The family said they had been in contact with their congressional representatives, the US embassy and the state epartment, where many officials were on furlough due to the US government shutdown. The family said they believed a 72-hour window for the US government to be able to visit Whelan had already started and they had not been in contact with anyone who had seen or been in contact with Whelan since 5pm (Moscow time) on 28 December. “We are hoping he will be able to return home soon,” the family said. The wedding party had been staying at the Metropol hotel in Moscow. Whelan’s arrest came just weeks after a Russian national named Maria Butina pleaded guilty to secretly acting as a Russian agent in the US. It is not clear whether Whelan’s detention was an attempt to retaliate for Butina’s arrest, which was a sore point in US-Russian relations.Marie was fast asleep when the rebels came. “They wanted to kill all the men,” she says, “and to destroy our homes.” Three militants burst into her room then moved to the next house, leaving her screaming in terror but unscathed. In a conflict zone where rape is routinely used as a weapon of war, other girls were less fortunate that night. She was just 12. After fleeing into the forest, Marie and her relatives found their way several days later to Kaga-Bandoro, an impoverished town in wartorn Central African Republic (CAR) where a camp had been established for internally displaced people. But Marie’s ordeal was not over. One morning, she went to collect water just outside the camp. At the well, two gunmen cornered her. “They caught me and raped me. Afterwards, I had to see a doctor.” She pauses. “The rape had caused damage.” Encircled by hostile militants on all sides, this besieged camp is a threatening place, especially for children. Aid workers run makeshift classrooms to nurture some kind of hope for the future and teachers push a curriculum of forgiveness and unity. Under dusty tarpaulins sit dozens of pupils, including former child soldiers and young survivors of rape. At rickety wooden desks, they count, read and sing, continuing an education against the odds. “To break the cycle of violence, forgiveness is essential,” says Therese Aka, a child-protection specialist with the UN’s children’s agency, Unicef. “These children are crucial to rebuilding the country.” While facilities are basic, the need for them is profound. Violence has shut down roughly a third of CAR’s schools. Unicef says more than 40% of children fail to finish primary school while over 90% don’t make it through secondary school, leaving them at risk of sexual exploitation or being recruited into militias. CAR’s war has no rules. Places that protect and support civilians – churches and mosques, schools and hospitals – are all targets. In Kaga -Bandoro, soldiers have ransacked the town’s only school repeatedly, looting tables, chairs, even doors. In NGO parlance, makeshift classrooms are dubbed “temporary learning spaces”. But for aid workers like Joslyn Sanzé, the phrase is misleading. “In reality, there’s nothing temporary about them,” says Sanzé, an education officer for Unicef. “People have been in this camp for so long. This is their home now.” I teach them to forgive, to move on from what happened in their villages, not to take vengeance and kill more people In one of the most dangerous countries for humanitarians – who faced nearly 400 attacks last year – Sanzé is on a mission to help as many children as possible. But with up to 20,000 in this camp alone, and only a handful of tents, resources are at breaking point. Nationwide, violence has forced more than a million people – a quarter of CAR’s population – from their homes. Two-thirds of children are in urgent need of aid: 1.5 million in total, up from 1.2 million in 2016. The humanitarian response is chronically underfunded; not once in the past three years has even half of the required support been obtained. So far this year, international donors have provided 3% of the requested $430.7m (£261m). And the crisis is deepening. “This war is creating a lost generation,” Sanzé tells The Guardian. “These are children who have seen their own parents and teachers killed or attacked. When they arrive at this camp, they feel so lost. But here, they find new friendships and their hope is reborn.” Spotting a UN policeman enter a classroom, Sanzé moves off to ask the officer to leave; his holstered gun would panic the children. Teachers – themselves uprooted by fighting – are hired to work in these classrooms, bolstering their sense of purpose despite the desolation. “These teachers are survivors,” says Sanzé. “They have lost everything but this work allows them to find themselves again.” One such survivor is Elizabeth Yaketé. Strict, no-nonsense and devoted to her profession, this primary school teacher fled into the bush five years ago when militants attacked her village and burned down her house. Today, in defiance of the dirt, danger and dire sanitation, her clothes are spotless each morning as she arrives at class from the camp’s labyrinth of huts. “Everyone has the capacity inside themselves to teach,” says Yaketé, in her early 50s. “All these children want peace and to return home. I teach them to forgive and to move on from what happened in their villages, not to take vengeance and kill even more people.” This relentless cycle of reprisals was set in motion by the outbreak of war in 2013. A largely Muslim alliance of rebels seized much of the country and toppled the government, atrocities triggering revenge attacks from predominantly Christian militias. A brief calm followed elections in 2016, but violence has returned as the rebel coalition disintegrates into rival factions. These groups fight over mineral resources and terrorise civilians with impunity, making life for children here more dangerous than ever. CAR’s government and the numerous rebel groups that collectively control most of the country met on Thursday in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, in a bid by the African Union to revive stalled peace talks. Stakes are high. “[CAR] is steering towards a catastrophe, unless upcoming peace talks succeed,” warned Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “We now need to seize this opportunity to prevent the country from sliding backwards into a full-blown war.” The summit comes against a backdrop of intensifying violence that has put peacekeepers in the dock for failing to keep civilians safe.By early November, attacks in the north-western town of Batangafo had forced 27,000 people to flee after militants raged through a camp for internally displaced people close to a peacekeeper base. The fighting prompted Egeland to condemn the UN’s peacekeeping mission as “overstretched, under-resourced [and] unable to protect civilians from atrocities”. To the south, in Alindao, Amnesty International revealed in December, Blue Helmets deserted their posts as militants massacred up to 100 civilians. Investigators said UN soldiers retreated to their base as rebels fired artillery into a crowded camp, storming the site and torching homes. The many dead included women, children, the elderly and disabled people. Amid this maelstrom, Marie and thousands more like her battle on with their education. “This camp feels very strange,” she says. “It is not home. But I can’t leave because soldiers still live in my village. My studies are all I have.” Sanzé is equally determined to persevere, even in the face of such horrors. The next generation, he says, must not be abandoned. “If we give up now, my country will fall apart,” he says in Kaga Bandoro as morning classes end and children stream out of crowded tents in scorching heat. “We have to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the country. Education is the foundation of everything in life.” Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting *Marie’s name has been changed to protect her identityThe spectacle of a crowd of white teens in pro-Trump caps mocking a Native American activist on the National Mall just days before Martin Luther King Jr day was perhaps not needed to demonstrate that America’s social fabric is stretched thin. The explosion of a media controversy around the incident was probably not necessary to drive participants in the ensuing debate into their usual partisan crouches. And the role of an apparent imposter Twitter account in originally pushing video of the confrontation to go viral was not required to underscore how vulnerable the national dialogue still is to social media hijacking, less than two years out from the 2020 elections. But those elements combined help to explain why the showdown on the Mall between Covington Catholic high school students demonstrating against abortion rights and two other groups has struck a national chord, with reverberations in culture and politics amplified by an aggressive entry into the argument by Donald Trump himself. “The students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good – maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!” It was unclear whether Trump intended to echo King, who delivered his “I have a dream” speech at the very site of the clash, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Trump’s sure intent, however, was to vindicate the racist and mob-like conduct of some students in the affair by pointing out, as Fox News had already done, that early video of the incident did not capture a previous war of insults at the scene between the Covington students and a small group of confrontational African American evangelists called the Black Hebrew Israelites. Opinions diverge – along ideological lines, of course – on whether full-length video of the scene cast the students’ conduct in a different light. The video does capture a moment in which a student takes off his shirt and leads his classmates in a chant, which they heartily join, in the style of a football cheer, or a Trump campaign rally. “In this case the facts happened to support the rightwing tribe,” wrote the conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. On the contrary, wrote Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, watching every available video “doesn’t greatly change the substance of what you see on the video, which is a middle aged Native American activist/elder beating a ceremonial drum in the face of what appears to be a bemused and cocky teenager while his classmates surrounding them, mostly wearing Maga caps, jeer and taunt the man with chopping motions.” Maga: Make America Great Again. The northern Kentucky county where Covington Catholic is located voted for Trump by a 26-point margin. It is also in the heart of a region on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center for its proliferation of hate groups, including white supremacist and radical Christian identity groups. After originally censuring the students and vowing consequences, Covington has in recent days deployed media surrogates to defend itself, to argue that the students were not at fault, and their actions on video had been misunderstood. In a strong indicator of the political undertones of the argument taking shape, the school’s public relations firm is closely tied to Mitch McConnell, the senate majority leader from Kentucky, noted Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko. In a national television interview broadcast on Wednesday morning, the student at the center of the spectacle, Nicholas Sandmann, repeated a claim he made Sunday, that he was trying to defuse the situation, wearing a smile of silent prayer, not a condescending smirk, as he stood nose-to-nose with Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips. The forensic, and remarkably sharp, debate over what the video exactly shows is another typical feature of the national moment. Trump began his presidency by asking people not to believe photographs showing that his inauguration drew a relatively small crowd. More recently, Trump claimed that he had never said that Mexico would pay for a border wall, despite miles of video evidence to the contrary. The loud disagreement between the political camps over whose side the evidence is on seems unlikely to resolve itself soon. But after a presidential election in which the pernicious influence of imposter social media accounts has been widely documented, the question of exactly who is goading the two sides to battle seems worthy of examination. The original viral Covington video was spread by a Twitter account called @2020fight, a new account with tens of thousands of followers that specialized in incendiary but ideologically inconsistent political content and was attributed to a “teacher” from California, despite using the photograph of a blogger from Brazil. Twitter suspended the account on Tuesday. While there are currently no solid indications of who was behind the account, said Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the account’s tactics and patterns are reminiscent of the 2016 social media election tampering campaign. “It still shows the power of inauthentic social media manipulation,” said Watts. “It’s dividing us. It doesn’t bode well for 2020.” Bernice King, daughter of the civil rights icon, was among the Twitter users to post the viral video. “We are not a post-racial or post-racism nation,” she wrote. “Courageous people, like this Native elder, face overt racism and racist ideologies and systems each and every day. This is ugly, America. Truth, education and corrective action matter.” “America has cowered in the drudgery of racism and bigotry for 400+ years,” she continued. “Colonialism and white supremacy have violently shaped systems, including education, across the globe. What we teach NOW matters. Our children are influenced by the hate OR the love we give. Choices.”Donald Trump produced a torrent of misleading tweets on Saturday to deny the stunning claim that he was secretly working on behalf of Russia. In a front page story extraordinary even by the tumultuous standards of the Trump era, the New York Times reported that the FBI launched an investigation into whether the US president was acting as a Russian asset, against his own country’s interests. The investigation opened after Trump fired the FBI director James Comey in May 2017, the Times said, citing anonymous sources. It was part counterintelligence, to determine whether Trump was knowingly or unknowingly working for Moscow and posed a threat to national security. It was also part criminal, to ascertain whether Trump’s dismissal of Comey constituted obstruction of justice. The FBI effort was soon absorbed into the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow, the Times reported, adding that it was unclear if the counterintelligence aspect is still being pursued. Jesse McKinley, a New York Times journalist, wrote on Twitter: “It sounds like spy fiction but it is not: the FBI was investigating the president of the United States to see if he was working for the Russians.” The president tried to fight back in characteristic style, by firing off half a dozen intemperate tweets. The first said: “Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!” Trump went on to make baseless claims that the FBI mishandled an investigation into his election rival, Hillary Clinton, and proclaimed: “My firing of James Comey was a great day for America.” He suggested without evidence that Comey is being protected by Mueller, who has issued dozens of indictments and secured convictions of some of the Trump’s close associates. And he insisted: “I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!” Trump’s warm relationship with the Russian president Vladimir Putin has long set alarm bells ringing. The day after firing Comey, he hosted Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in the Oval Office – and disclosed intelligence from an Israeli counterterrorism operation. At a summit in Helsinki last summer, Trump appeared to side with Putin over his own intelligence agencies on the question of election interference. On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Trump took the notes from of a 2017 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hamburg from his own interpreter. Citing current and former US officials, the paper also said Trump instructed the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials. The White House spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, said the report was “so outrageously inaccurate it doesn’t even warrant a response.” In December the president startled his own national security officials by suddenly announcing the withdrawal of troops from Syria, widely seen as handing a strategic victory to Russia and prompting the defense secretary James Mattis to quit. He also bizarrely endorsed the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. In a statement later on Saturday, House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff did not “comment on the specifics of the New York Times report” but said “counterintelligence concerns about those associated with the Trump campaign, including the president himself, have been at the heart of our investigation since the beginning”. His committee, he said, “has a responsibility to the American people to ensure that the president is working in our national interest and is not motivated by any other factor”. Holed up at the White House, Trump turned his Twitter feed to the other subject dominating US politics: a partial government shutdown which, in its 22nd day, is now the longest in history, eclipsing the record set under Bill Clinton. Trump is demanding $5.7bn towards his long-promised wall on the US-Mexico border, claiming it will solve a humanitarian and national security crisis. Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, have passed measures to reopen the government without funding the wall, which they regard as an expensive, impractical and immoral response to a manufactured crisis. The result is a political stalemate that leaves a quarter of the government unfunded. About 800,000 workers missed pay cheques on Friday. The House and Senate voted to give federal workers back pay whenever the federal government reopens, then left Washington for the weekend. Miami’s airport will close one of its concourses most of Saturday, Sunday and Monday to make sure security checkpoints are adequately staffed as the shutdown begins to strain the system. Security screeners who are not being paid are staying at home and safety inspectors are off the job. Some national parks are closed while rubbish has been piling up in those that remain open. The Smithsonian museums and national zoo in Washington are shuttered. Nearly everyone at Nasa is being told to stay at home. With polls showing Trump getting most of the blame, the president is toying with the idea of declaring a national emergency, bypassing Congress and funding the wall from existing federal revenue. Republicans are divided on the move and it would be certain to face legal challenges. The president, who claims to be a master dealmaker, rattled off half a dozen tweets on Saturday, including the cryptic promise: “I do have a plan on the Shutdown. But to understand that plan you would have to understand the fact that I won the election, and I promised safety and security for the American people. Part of that promise was a Wall at the Southern Border. Elections have consequences!” House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has vowed to oppose any funding, said the president is seeking to divert attention from Mueller and other White House troubles. “This isn’t a wall between Mexico and the United States,” the Democrat told reporters this week. “This is a wall between his failures of his administration. This is a big diversion and he’s a master of diversion.”On 22 December 2016, a retired professor of Hawaiian studies named Carlos Andrade sent a letter to dozens of his relatives informing them that he was about to sue them. The relatives were among hundreds of partial owners of four small parcels of land on the island of Kauai, the legacy of a shared ancestor named Manuel Rapozo. A neighboring landowner, Northshore Kalo LLC, was willing to pay the legal fees to clear up the title on the property – enabling Andrade to take full ownership and compensate his fellow descendants for their shares. It wasn’t until nearly a month later that the Honolulu Star-Advertiser broke the news that Northshore Kalo LLC was not a taro farm, as some had assumed (“kalo” means “taro” in Hawaiian), but a shell corporation controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook founder was pursuing eight separate lawsuits related to parcels of land that, like the Rapozo parcels, were surrounded by his 700-acre Kauai estate. Those who had been sued had a choice: they could sell their partial shares or try to outbid a billionaire in a public auction. If they lost, they could be forced to pay Zuckerberg’s legal fees. A media firestorm ensued, with some Native Hawaiians declaring Zuckerberg the “face of neocolonialism” and local politicians demanding reform to the state law that created the “quiet title and partition” process. Within days, Zuckerberg published an op-ed in the local paper apologizing for his ham-fisted approach and promising to drop the lawsuits. But beneath the headline, Zuckerberg’s mea culpa included one major caveat: he would continue to support Andrade’s claim to his family’s parcels. Now, two years later, the quiet title process initiated by Andrade is drawing to a close and a judge has ordered a public auction of the parcels. When one of the richest men in the world has expressed an interest in the outcome of an auction, there is no real question that he will get his way. But as the process heads towards its inevitable conclusion, a small cadre of Rapozo descendants are continuing to resist the forced sale of the property. They know that they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of holding on to their tiny slice of paradise. Still, they argue that Zuckerberg’s involvement in the case, even though he is no longer directly suing them, makes a mockery of an unfair system that has long seen longtime residents of Hawaii lose their land to wealthy newcomers, be they sugar barons or tech billionaires. “There’s a class of person – and Zuckerberg is a poster child – that have so much money that they distort day-to-day deeds and behavior,” said Wayne Rapozo, a London-based corporate lawyer who is a descendant of Manuel Rapozo’s brother and is helping to coordinate and finance the holdouts’ legal fight. “Even if we lose, this has to be fought,” Rapozo continued. “I want my nieces and descendants to know that someone thought it was wrong … I want it to be known that it was resisted.” On a blustery afternoon last November, Shannon Buckner stood in the shadow of the 6ft stone wall that surrounds Zuckerberg’s island retreat, peering through the gate. “This is our grandfather that I never knew, and I don’t want it to be gone,” she said. “I want my kids to be able to enjoy it. I’m going to fight to the end even if I lose.” Buckner first learned of her inheritance – a 0.026% share of the Rapozo parcels – when she was sued by Andrade and Northshore Kalo back in 2016. The 46-year-old mother of two was living in Lihue, Kauai, at the time, just 20 minutes south of the parcels, which are located near the north shore plantation town of Kilauea. But she grew up on another island and was not familiar with her connection to the Portuguese sugar plantation worker who had purchased the property in 1894. That ancestor, Manuel Rapozo, immigrated to Kauai from the Azores in 1882, according to family lore, and eventually renounced his Portuguese citizenship to become a full-fledged citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaii. When he died intestate in 1928, ownership of his land was passed to his seven children, and from there down through the generations. For Rapozo descendants who grew up on Kauai, the parcels were an important part of their birthright. Before Zuckerberg purchased the estate (and built his mile-long wall), it was owned by a local auto dealer and surrounded by a hog wire fence. Family members had keys to the gate and could visit the parcels or access Pila’a beach, a stretch of white sand that can otherwise only be reached by a somewhat treacherous hike along the coast. “My children grew up on that property,” said one descendant, a resident of Kilauea who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, citing concerns over her employment. “I have animals buried there. My children learned to ride bikes, shoot guns, drive, you name it, on that property.” Other holdouts, such as Alika Guerrero, have never set foot on the property, but still want to maintain their connection to it.The 24-year-old Guerrero, who teaches Native Hawaiian culture and language at a resort on Maui, spoke to the Guardian in the lobby of another Maui hotel where his mother, 57-year-old Jennie Guerrero, works in the housekeeping department. Jennie Guerrero owns a 0.45% share of the property, which she said she wanted to pass on to her three sons. “Both of us had the same response,” Alika Guerrero said of the day that he and his mother learned of the lawsuits. “Our family name is not going to be attached to anything to do with a billionaire buying up land in Hawaii and having us sell out our ancestral land.” Wayne Rapozo, who grew up on Kauai and now lives and works in London, said that Zuckerberg and Andrade have created a model for how a “tag team tango of billionaire and dissident cousin” can dispossess “ordinary middle-class families that don’t have $40bn to play games with other people’s lives”. “This case sets a horrible precedent which is un-American and un-Hawaiian,” he said. “They are making Hawaii look like a banana republic or colonial possession.” To Andrade and Zuckerberg, the case is much more straightforward: Andrade is the rightful heir to the parcels, they argue, and the lawsuit is simply a legal process that will allow them to compensate partial owners for fractional shares that are otherwise useless to them. “It is not reasonable or practical for 138 parties to own and control 2.35 acres,” said Harvey L Cohen, Andrade’s attorney, by email. “The quiet title process exists to address such matters, so that there is a clear owner based on an individual’s ownership interests and history with the land.” Andrade declined to be interviewed for this article, but he provided a lengthy statement detailing his history with the land and reasons for pursuing the quiet title. Born in 1944 in the medical dispensary of the Kilauea sugar plantation where his great-grandfather (Manuel Rapozo), grandfather, and mother had all worked, Andrade said that he first learned of the parcels in the 1970s, when he was a new father and struggling to find affordable housing. It was then that an aunt suggested that he live “on Grandpa’s land”, Andrade said. He and his wife had the land surveyed, cleared it, planted gardens and restored its irrigation system and taro pondfields. Other improvements included planting fruit trees and vegetables, and building a “comfortable, but still ‘off the grid’” house out of recycled building materials on one of the parcels. “I am unaware of any other descendant of Manuel Rapozo who has attempted to make use of the lands or who has offered to assist in paying the property taxes or to contribute to clearing the lands and having them surveyed,” Andrade wrote. “I have spent more than half my life tending to these lands. Hopefully, my family and I will be able to do so well into the future. I pursue these actions of my own volition in order to make that dream a reality.” Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mark Zuckerberg, endorsed Andrade’s perspective. “As Mark stated in his op-ed, he supports Dr Andrade’s claim to the property because Dr Andrade is the only member of the family to have cared for, lived on and paid taxes on this land and he did so over the course of 40 years,” LaBolt said by email.“Mark kept his word and withdrew from the quiet title actions as a plaintiff,” LaBolt continued. “As required by law, Northshore Kalo became a defendant in the actions alongside the other individuals holding interests in the land. Neither Mark nor Northshore Kalo will bid at the auction. In fact, following the completion of the quiet title actions, neither Mark nor Northshore Kalo will own any interest in any of the kuleana involved in the quiet title action.” Northshore Kalo did indeed withdraw from the lawsuit as a plaintiff in 2017, and switched to being one of the hundreds of defendants. The shell corporation has continued to buy up partial shares from other defendants, however. When the quiet title suit was filed in December 2016, Andrade owned about 14% of the parcels, and Northshore Kalo owned about 24.1%. By the time the judge ordered the auction in November 2018, Andrade’s share had increased to 27.1% and Northshore Kalo’s to 43.9%. According to real estate records reviewed by the Guardian, Northshore Kalo paid out more than $450,000 in 71 different transactions in the course of increasing its stake. Attorneys for the holdouts have argued in court documents that Andrade and Northshore Kalo used misrepresentations to acquire some of those shares, alleging that Andrade falsely told relatives that the land would “stay in the family” and that Northshore Kalo took advantage of people’s mistaken belief that it was a taro farm. The judge rejected these arguments and ordered the auction. Notice of the time and place of the sale will be published in the local newspaper, and the plaintiff and defendants will be allowed to bid for the parcels. Back in 2016, Zuckerberg forecasted the outcome of that contest when he wrote about Andrade’s claim to the lands. “He is 72 years old, retired, and wants to clear up the titles of these kuleana so he can pass the land on to his children,” Zuckerberg wrote. “He will continue his quiet title action and upon completion his family will have ownership of those kuleana. He has been a steward of his family lands and we support him in this effort.” The Kilauea cousin, Buckner and the Guerreros all say that they understand why Andrade wants to pass the land on to his children. They simply point out that they have children as well – and dispute his claims that he was the only descendant to care for the properties. “For people like myself, our connection to land and ancestral property is more than just about money,” said Alika Guerrero. “We’ve been dispossessed for the last 150 years at least, so every little bit to us matters.” To the young hotel employee, Zuckerberg’s decision to pick sides in a family dispute is less about what’s right and more about limiting the number of people with the right to access his properties. “We’re a blemish in his sanctuary.”The front pages all lead with Brexit news, and while all agree there is political chaos, they disagree about who is to blame: is it Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn or MPs in general? The Guardian says: “May survives vote, but Britain remains in Brexit deadlock”, adding that despite surviving as PM and “weathering a dramatic no-confidence vote”, May “was left scrambling to strike a Brexit compromise” and Tory MPs remain “deeply divided about how May should adapt her deal”. The Guardian front page, Thursday 17 January 2019: May survives vote, but Britain remains in Brexit deadlock pic.twitter.com/QdHwq7RNQC The Financial Times: “May starts search for Brexit ideas after narrow confidence vote win”, which might be subtly suggesting it’s a bit late in the day to begin that search. Just published: front page of the Financial Times, UK edition, Thursday 17 January https://t.co/Le9axugXNP pic.twitter.com/wLl5CJM4b9 The Telegraph skips the main events of the night to focus on the issue of a no-deal, working its business contacts to give readers the headline: “Hammond tells business chiefs MPs will stop no-deal Brexit”. Thursday's Daily Telegraph front page: Hammond tells business chiefs MPs will stop no-deal Brexit #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/1vxKFkCxkJ The Sun focuses on May’s invitation to Corbyn to discuss next steps, with the headline: “Come on over to May place”. it raises the question, if May were replaced with a prime minister whose name lent itself less well to puns, would the Sun explode? The paper blames Corbyn for the current impasse, saying: “Theresa May dramatically invited Jeremy Corbyn to Downing Street last night for emergency Brexit talks” but “the EU exit deadlock crisis deepened when the hard left Labour boss ducked the invitation”. Tomorrow's front page: Theresa May dramatically invites Jeremy Corbyn to Downing Street for emergency Brexit talks after surviving vote of no confidence https://t.co/ipJDWvIp1u pic.twitter.com/uLF57rF0Vt The Mirror gives top billing to Corbyn’s response to May’s offer: “Ditch No Deal .. and then we’ll talk Brexit”. The Mirror paints a picture of the Labour leader in control, saying “Jeremy Corbyn last night snubbed Theresa May’s plea to help save her Brexit” after “the PM begged rival party leaders to join her for talks”. MIRROR: Ditch no deal...and then we’ll talk Brexit #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/AtaRd4eMOy The Daily Mail paints things quite differently, saying “May wins confidence vote, invites Labour leader for Brexit talks at No 10, then .. wrecker Corbyn slams door on Theresa”. It accuses him of “playing party politics” after rejecting talks to break the deadlock. Thursday's @DailyMailUK #MailFrontPages pic.twitter.com/01fRfAWtaI The Times also lays the blame for the lack of progress at the Labour leader’s feet with “Corbyn snubs Brexit talks”. Rather than saying the PM had “begged” the Labour leader to join in talks, as the Mirror does, the Times says “She appealed to opposition MPs to work with her on a revised deal ... The Labour leader resisted the overture, however, insisting that Mrs May abandon a no-deal exit before the start of any ‘positive talks’.” TIMES: Corbyn snubs Brexit talks #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/e5N6buMpDL The i scoops up a variety of potential outcomes from this week’s failed Brexit vote, including a “Softer Brexit”, which is its headline, as well as cabinet resignations, a split Conservative party, and a new Scottish independence referendum. I: Softer Brexit #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/bxcIo6DQ3c The Daily Express is angry at politicians from both sides, saying: “You’ve lost respect of the nation”, citing a poll that shows 72% of those asked want a complete overhaul of the UK political system in the wake of the Brexit vote. EXPRESS: You’ve lost the respect of the nation #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/wxeReNlIhL The Scottish papers are deeply unimpressed with the week’s events. The National says “the day after this useless government suffers a historic defeat, Corbyn can’t even lay a glove on a prime minister with no Brexit plan.” The paper says another referendum could be the answer: “Independence is only way out of this mess”. Tomorrow's front page: One of the most useless governments in history –yet Corbyn can't even lay a glove on a Prime Minister with no Brexit plan who is propped up by the DUP. It's becoming increasingly clear that independence is the only way out of this mess. pic.twitter.com/ackcmXCHESMark Francois has made himself into the most famous ex-TA lieutenant since Gareth Keenan in The Office by insisting on tearing up a letter he happened to have on him when the BBC was trying to ask him about something else. The letter came from the chief executive of a vast and successful company, formed in 1967 as a government initiative between the UK, France and West Germany and which employs more than 14,000 skilled people in this country. Its boss was pointing out that just because factories are based in the UK now, that doesn’t mean they will stay here if we decide to leave the largest free trade bloc on Earth. Well and good, you might think. Sound, free-market common sense, with which James Dyson would smile and agree (although not with the cameras running). But Francois’s eagle infantryman’s eye had spotted a gap in the Brexit enemy’s defences and a chance to become memorable, live on TV. You see, the current CEO of Airbus isn’t just a businessman pointing out economic problems. He is also a square-headed, jackbooted, scar-faced, sausage-noshing, Sieg-Heiling swab! Cripes, Lt Francois, sir, we ain’t gonna let the likes of ’im shove us around, are we?! Éamon de Valera claimed that if he wanted to know what the plain people of Ireland thought, he only had to look into his own heart. Sadly, it’s like that with me and ex-Lt Mark “Frenchy” Francois, and not just because I was almost a TA lieutenant, too (I got my entire squad “killed” when trying to qualify as an Intelligence Corps corporal, and was told – I can only assume, because I was tall, blond and had been to Oxford – that while I would clearly be NBG as an Int Corps NCO, they would recommend me as an infantry subaltern to a county regiment). The mightier we think the Germans are, the more special we must have been to beat them. You see? You see, we are both sons of the 60s. Our minds were bent forever by Biggles, The Victor, War Stories for Boys and suchlike. That was the world that was, to boys back then and to this day, I can – why, dear God, why? – tell an ME109 from a FW190 at first sight. This national insanity, which still rules what passes for the brains of middle-aged Englishmen, is quite simple to explain. To us, the Germans are the perfect enemy, as England is to Scottish rugby fans: a mighty, almost inhumanly efficient power that we should never, logically, be able to beat – but did, twice! That’s why the biggest day by miles every year at the Tank Museum in Bovington is when they wheel out the world’s only working Tiger tank. Thousands of Englishmen, who have known no peril deadlier than Tim Martin’s beer and sat fats, strap their uncomprehending sons into the backs of fat black Audis and bring the country lanes of Dorset to a standstill as they queue to see this terrifying beast, its yearly hour come round again at last, chew up a small patch of ye olde green & pleasant. As they watch, they don’t think about the pesky facts. (Tigers were so deadly because they cost five times as much as Shermans. The Germans bet on quality, we bet on numbers. Hard cheese on the poor bloody young Englishmen of 1944.) No, no. They think: my God, look at it. How did we ever win? We must be so damn special that somehow, the normal laws of war and economics don’t apply to us! You see? The mightier we think the Germans are, the more special we must have been to beat them. This explains why we buy so many vast German cars but vote Brexit. Of course their cars are logically better, because they’re the Germans, aren’t they? But we are the people beyond logic, the plucky Brits who somehow win at the last gasp. That’s why we so badly need the Germans to be bad. If the Germans weren’t the Germans, the English would have to stop being the English and become, God forbid, just another, normal, middle-size nation. And that, as far as ex-Lt Mark Francois (TA) is concerned, would be a bridge too far. • James Hawes is the author of The Shortest History of GermanyGood morning, this is Alison Rourke welcoming you to the final morning briefing of this hectic Brexit week. A string of junior shadow ministers have told the Guardian they strongly oppose a “people’s vote” and might resign if the party backs a second referendum, believing it could expose Labour to a vicious backlash in its pro-leave constituencies. “I would feel deeply uncomfortable about going into a people’s vote at this stage,” said one, adding the idea of not carrying out Brexit would “break a link with millions of our traditional voters who expect us to keep our word.” Labour strategists have not ruled out a free vote on a second referendum, believing that whipping MPs either to support or oppose a referendum would open a deep rift. Meanwhile, Theresa May continues to insist her door is open to Corbyn but also that it is “impossible” to rule out a no-deal exit. On Thursday a group of senior Tory Brexiters – including former cabinet ministers David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and Theresa Villiers – told the PM parliament would back a deal if she could find a way of dealing with the Northern Ireland backstop issue. The DUP’s Nigel Dodds said May “has a way through this” if she could ease concerns about the backstop. As the political brinkmanship continues, manufacturers are stockpiling cash in the face of “terrifying uncertainty”, according to the the manufacturing lobby group EEF. Its chief executive, Stephen Phipson, said companies were “ramping up their contingency operations” in preparation for a hard Brexit. ‘Very shocked’ – The Duke of Edinburgh is reported to be shaken after the Land Rover he was driving was involved in a collision in Norfolk. Prince Philip, 97, escaped without injury from the accident that involved another car near the Queen’s Sandringham Estate. Both drivers were breath tested and returned negative readings. Trump targets Pelosi– Donald Trump has dramatically escalated his feud with Democrat House speaker Nancy Pelosi over the US government shutdown by cancelling her previously undisclosed trip abroad and denying her the use of a military aircraft to visit American troops in Afghanistan. It follows Pelosi suggesting he should postpone his State of the Union address, or submit it in writing. “In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate,” he wrote to Pelosi. Trump added that she should be in Washington negotiating with him over the shutdown. NHS overspend – Some hospitals are overspending by as much as £141m a year due to NHS underfunding, staff shortages and demand for care, according to Whitehall’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office. The NAO concluded in its annual review of health service finances that the NHS in England was grappling with budgetary problems that are unsustainable. The watchdog warned that continuing to cut spending on public health, capital projects and medical education and training, in order to give the NHS more money for frontline care, “could affect the NHS’s ability to deliver the priorities of the long-term plan”. ‘Going back would be the end for us’ – The Home Office has come under fire for trying to separate an Iranian couple from their four British children and 11 grandchildren by forcing them to return to Iran. The couple, aged 83 and 73, bought their flat in Edinburgh in 1978, live near their close-knit family and depend heavily on their daily support. But they also act as co-parents to one of their grandchildren, a teenager with severe autism who requires constant supervision. Although the couple raised their children in the UK, they never sought British citizenship. Heatwave hell – Spare a thought for the residents of the Australian outback community of Noona, population 14, who attempted to sleep through a night of 35.9C on Thursday. The town, 670km west of Sydney, has the dubious honour of setting a new, country-wide record for overnight minimum temperatures. Large parts of Australia are continuing feeling the heat with 45C forecast in parts of western Sydney today, and the country’s capital, Canberra, is on track for its fourth consecutive day over 40C. ‘Cute rat’ – Tokyo authorities are taking a closer look at graffiti that could be the work of the elusive street artist Banksy. The city’s governor, Yuriko Koike, asked on Twitter if the image of a rat holding an umbrella – one of Banksy’s best-known works – that appeared on a door at a monorail station, could be a gift to the city from the artist. The Democrats are already fighting for the opportunity to take on Donald Trump – but can any of them hope to unseat him? Plus: Nobel peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai on what she would like to tell the US president about building walls. Countries around the world are making it easier to choose the time and manner of your death. But doctors in the Netherlands, the world’s euthanasia capital, are starting to worry about the consequences, writes Christopher de Bellaigue. As the world’s pioneer, almost every Dutch person seems to have known someone who has been euthanised, he says. But questions remain to be answered about where the limits of the practice should be drawn. Eddie Jones has made the remarkable claim he may break from convention and select nine forwards in his England side for the Six Nations. Bernard Tomic has denied he has ever threatened Lleyton Hewitt’s family as Australia’s ugly tennis feud continues to escalate, with Tomic hitting back at the Davis Cup captain’s sensational claims of blackmail and physical threats calling Hewitt a “liar”. Jess Varnish insists she has emerged as a winner despite losing her landmark employment case against British Cycling and UK Sport because both bodies have made significant changes since she exposed what she described as the “culture of fear and lack of athlete welfare in the British world class performance system”. The World Anti-Doping Agency says its expert team has finally managed to retrieve all the doping data from the Moscow laboratory – but admits it cannot yet be sure whether it is genuine. And Jonny Bairstow fell two runs short of a second century in his new No 3 position for England but the Yorkshireman’s desire to reclaim England’s wicketkeeping gloves remains undimmed. Asian stocks advanced on Friday as a report of progress in US-China trade talks stirred hopes of a deal in their tariff dispute and supported risk sentiment. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, discussed lifting some or all tariffs imposed on Chinese imports and suggested offering a tariff rollback during trade discussions scheduled for 30 January. The pound is buying €1.14 and $1.30. Brexit and Prince Philip’s car crash dominate today’s papers. “Corbyn faces threat of revolt if he seeks new referendum” is the Guardian’s headline. “May faces revolt against no deal” says the Telegraph. The Times has “Bitte! Stop Brexit and stay with us, Germany asks Britain”. Photos of Prince Philip’s overturned Land Rover feature on most of the front pages. “How did he walk away”, asks the Mail. “Philip, 97, cheats death in crash” is the Mirror’s headline. “My Legs! My Legs! Philip’s agony as he’s pulled from car crash” is the Sun’s splash. The Daily Express plays it straight with: “Prince Philip crash horror”. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.com‘I didn’t think 2019 would start with me in my house in a onesie, hungover and watching Sister Act, angry,” says London Hughes, a 29-year old comedian and TV presenter from Brighton. But this anger did inspire a tweet that went viral: “Sister Act is on, and I’m still a tiny bit pissed off that in 2018 a whole Whoopi Goldberg agreed to do a travel show with me but no TV channels wanted it,” she posted on New Year’s Day. Sister act is on, and I’m still a tiny bit pissed off that in 2018 a whole Whoopi Goldberg agreed to do a travel show with me but no TV channels wanted it. In 2019 let’s have more female comedians travelling and making TV and not just male comedians and their mum’s please. Thnx The comedian-travel show format is now well trodden, commonly involving a comic taking a trip with either their family (Jack Whitehall’s Travels With My Father, Romesh Ranganathan’s Asian Provocateur, Russell Howard & Mum) or friends (Joel & Nish vs the World, Dara Ó Briain’s Three Men in a Boat). Notice anything about these comics? All of them are men. In fact Sue Perkins seems to be the only woman in British comedy with a passport. Last year, Hughes was in discussion with a television production company to make a travel show – a far cry from a decade earlier when she wrote her first comedy set after being fired from TGI Fridays. Since then she has won the prestigious Funny Women comedy award, created a YouTube series, appeared on ITV2’s Don’t Hate the Playaz and Channel 4’s Celebs Go Dating, and has worked as a presenter on channels such as CBBC. Hughes idly mentioned to the production company that working with her comic hero, Whoopi Goldberg, would be great. “She’s my Beyoncé. She’s the only black female household name in comedy.” A month later Goldberg agreed to take part. “We could have done anything,” says Hughes. “We could have gone to Ibiza or sat in a caravan making sausages. It’s me and Whoopi Goldberg, who wouldn’t want to watch that?” So, what happened? “We took this idea to every channel,” says Hughes. “The feedback from some was that Whoopi Goldberg isn’t relevant enough. Not relevant? She’s a legend!” In response to Hughes’s tweet, comedians including Jenny Eclair, Gina Yashere and Katy Brand shared their frustration at having tried and failed to get similar shows commissioned. As the standup Tiff Stevenson put it, who was trying to put a show together with Meera Syal: “Travel is very different for women, let alone the fact we’ve all come up with different/cool ways of packaging it.” Although television is its own industry, it’s worth noting the role of women in the travel sector: 80% of consumer travel decisions are made by women, and women make up most of the sector’s workforce. “I can’t believe no one wants to make a funny travel show for women,” says Hughes. Jody Smith was formerly a commissioning editor at Channel 4 and is now creative director of Studio71, a TV production and talent management company. “The issue is there are fewer high-profile female comedians that broadcasters think will draw an audience to a show,” he says. “The only way to solve this is for channels to back more female comedians early on.” But Hughes believes that commissioners are too heavily influenced by the lack of diversity in the industry to understand why a female travel show might appeal. “The people making the comedy went to university with the people starring in the comedy,” she says. “If you didn’t have any black friends you’d think all we did was kill each other or make grime records,” she adds, laughing. “And I don’t tick that urban box. I’m from a lower- to middle-class family. I just happen to be a British black girl. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” she says. “I’ve had a great career and I’m actually making loads of other shows with the very channels that rejected the show with me and Whoopi. It’s not an attack, but a comment on the state of comedy right now.”Remember when Barack Obama called President Trump a “total and complete dipshit”? No, me neither. But if you search for it, there’s a video on YouTube where he appears to be saying just that. I used to think that “deepfakes” would change the world. These clips, created using off-the-shelf AI systems, take advantage of new capabilities to near-perfectly edit video, swapping faces, altering expressions and synthesising speech without any artistic expertise. The technology burst into the public consciousness around Christmas 2016, when a small batch of perverts cottoned on to the possibilities of using it to insert their favourite celebrities into pornography. But others were quick to see the wider ramifications of the tech: a well-timed deepfake of, say, a world leader declaring war, or an FTSE100 chief executive openly discussing their company’s impending bankruptcy, could send shockwaves through the world’s media. Worse still, if such behaviour became commonplace, it could lead to a breakdown in belief that even extended to real footage. If anything could be fake, everything could be. Seeing is believing, after all, and if you can’t believe what your lying eyes tell you, then what can you believe? Deepfakes would, I believed, usher in an infopocalypse: a new world where commonly held reality fell apart, and chaos reigned. But then something interesting happened – or rather, didn’t. The year continued, and global information warfare showed no sign of abating, but deepfakes remained curiously absent. Eventually, I realised why: deepfakes are nothing new. We have had the technology to create falsehoods that are indistinguishable from the truth for centuries. Watch: “In a dramatic moment at the close of Monday’s Commons debate, as the government formally deferred the deal vote, the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg marched forward to grab the mace in protest and held it aloft. The ceremonial object represents the Queen’s authority in parliament – without it parliament cannot meet or pass laws.” What I did here bears breaking down: using a common piece of software called a “word processor”, I performed a “nameswap” on a piece of text describing events that happened in the House of Commons in early December, substituting the words “Jacob Rees-Mogg” for “Lloyd Russell-Moyle”, and created an alternative reality. I call this a “shallowfake”. You may know it by its older name, a “lie”. For the vast majority of humanity’s history, information has been almost exclusively transferred through spoken and written language – media that make creating utterly plausible falsehoods easy. One way of looking at the history of journalism is as a gradual evolution of a set of norms and practices to get around that basic vulnerability. In 1835, the blunt economics of newspaper journalism were such that the New York Sun was motivated to simply fabricate stories of the discovery of life on the moon, falsely attributed to a British astronomer in South Africa. The hoax, published over the course of six weeks, created a media storm. Even as rivals attacked the paper, they also attempted to cash in on the furore themselves; the Sun never formally retracted the hoax, its circulation remained higher for years afterwards. One hundred and fifty years later, the “Hitler diaries” affair showed how the modern media ecosystem reacts to the same sort of fakery. When an antiques dealer presented the Sunday Times with a “discovery” of 62 volumes of writings by the Nazi dictator, they ran the story as a “world exclusive”. But the tale quickly fell apart – among other red flags, the diaries were written on paper that hadn’t even been available in Hitler’s era – and the Sunday Times was forced into a humiliating climbdown. Rupert Murdoch moved the editor at the time to emeritus position, telling him, according to Charles Hamilton’s book on the affair, “It’s Latin, Frank; the e means you’re out and the meritus means you deserved it.” The risk of deepfakes, then, isn’t that the newfound ability to create convincing hoaxes may lead to a breakdown in trust and ultimately a debilitating infopocalypse. It’s that the infopocalypse has already happened, and our collective ability to resist fakes of any sort – text or image – is at a centennial low. The single greatest effect of the internet has been a flattening of the information ecosystem. That allows sources of information to bypass gatekeepers, niche interests to be directly served by publishers who wouldn’t have been able to scale in the days of print, and individuals to interact with each other, in a many-to-many conversation rather than a one-to-many broadcast. Our ability to handle fakes has been reset. On social media, the public is for the first time exposed to the raw firehose of news, with no ability or desire to perform the work of verification, with incentives for sharing the most sensationalist content. Faced with a race to keep up with the pace of change and an explosion in the availability of new information sources, hoaxes and untruths have gradually infiltrated the pages of even the most respectable journals; the tweets of Russian trolls have made into news coverage, and conspiracy theories such as QAnon have gained such support that they needed to be covered as semi-serious movements. Deepfakes aren’t dangerous because they’ll change the world. They’re dangerous because the world has already changed, and we’re less ready to tackle their reality distortion than we have been for decades. • Alex Hern is a technology reporter for the GuardianSpicy tomatoes could soon be on the menu thanks to the rise of genome-editing technology, say researchers. It is not the first time experts have claimed the techniques could help to precisely and rapidly develop fruits and vegetables with unusual traits: scientists have already been looking at changing the colour of kiwi fruits and tweaking the taste of strawberries. But researchers in Brazil and Ireland say such methods also could offer practical advantages, with spicy tomatoes offering a way of harvesting capsaicinoids, the pungent chemicals found in chilli peppers. “Capsaicinoids are very valuable compounds; they are used in [the] weapons industry for pepper spray, they are also used for anaesthetics [and] there is some research showing that they promote weight loss,” said Agustin Zsögön from the Federal University of Viçosa in Brazil, co-author of an article arguing for the benefits of engineering hot tomatoes. Writing in the Trends in Plant Science journal, the researchers say chilli peppers are labour-intensive and difficult crops to cultivate, and it is tricky to keep the pungency of the fruits consistent. By contrast, tomato yields are high and the plant is well-studied, making it a good choice for turning up the heat. “You could produce [the capsaicinoids] in a more cost-effective manner,” Zsögön said. Tomatoes and chilli peppers developed from a common ancestor but diverged about 19m years ago. “All the genes to produce capsaicinoids exist in the tomato, they are just not active,” Zsögön said. Using a gene-editing technology, such as a variation of Crispr-Cas9, it would be possible to switch these genes back on in tomatoes, adding a kick to the everyday fruit, he said. Zsögön and his team are already working on the feat, and say they hope to have some news by the end of the year. Zsögön added the endeavour was also about showing that genome engineering is a useful tool, and helping people to accept the technology. “There is the fun side – you just do it … because we can, basically – and there [are] the potentially interesting applications for agriculture,” he said. Zsögön said he was personally looking forward to hot tomatoes to make guacamole, but added that it might be best if the spicy produce did not end up at Spain’s annual tomato-throwing competition. “There could be injuries,” he said.Thousands of protesters in Hungary braved snow and freezing temperatures on a march against Viktor Orbán’s rightwing government, denouncing harsh new legislation that has been dubbed the “slave law”. Passed in December, it allows companies to demand that staff work up to 400 hours overtime a year – or the equivalent of an extra day a week. Hungary’s opposition has been fractured and ineffectual as Orbán has steadily amassed power since he was elected prime minister in 2010, but the “slave law” has created a rare rallying point. At least 10,000 people marched through Budapest, from the historic Heroes Square to the parliament building on the banks of the Danube. Many also channelled wider concerns about attacks on academia, the judiciary and media. Some were protesting against new courts that critics say could be politically manipulated. Others, in an apparent attack on bias in state-controlled media, shouted: “The TV is lying.” Banners included slogans such as “sweep away the regime”, or called for a “national strike”. “We disagree with almost everything that is going on since this government got into power, from corruption to pseudo-democracy,” Eva Demeter, a 50-year-old woman, told Reuters. She said more Hungarians were pouring on to the streets because the slave law “affects a bigger crowd”. Orbán’s Fidesz party, which has widespread support, won elections with a landslide last year to seal a two-thirds majority in parliament. His government has wrested control of previously independent institutions, and last year the European parliament voted to bring disciplinary proceedings against Hungary for putting the rule of law at risk. In early December the Central European University also announced it will leave Budapest for Vienna after a protracted battle with the Hungarian government, in the first case of a major university being pushed out of an EU country. rally was organised by opposition parties, trade unions and civic groups. Zoltán Mucsi, who leads the union at the steelmaker Dunaferr Vasas, said the “slave law” was undemocratic. The big trade unions may call a strike if the government does not sit down with them to negotiate, he told Reuters. When it was put forward in parliament, opposition MPs whistled, jeered and sounded sirens in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to block its passage. Then they took to the streets, and some camped out inside state television headquarters for nearly 24 hours, demanding a chance to read a list of demands on air, as protesters marched through Budapest. Previous demonstrations have mostly been peaceful, though there were some clashes with police who used teargas. The latest march appeared to end peacefully, with demonstrators singing the national anthem. Orbán has so far been defiant in the face of the protests. István Hollik, a government spokesman, repeated the claim that George Soros, a Hungarian-American billionaire, was funding the marchers; in December officials also accused the opposition of “unprecedented” behaviour in parliament. Soros is a frequent target of official attacks, including a poster campaign that was widely criticised as antisemitic. The posters were part of a campaign about immigration, an issue which has been at the heart of repeated government campaigns. Orbán’s government has taken a fierce nativist line, portraying itself as fighting powerful and “shadowy” pro-migration forces. Critics point out that hundreds of thousands of Hungarians themselves have migrated to other countries, and say he is stirring up xenophobia to distract the electorate from issues from more pressing issues including corruption and economic woes.Like many others, when the exclusive Fyre festival in the Bahamas last year unravelled, I just thought it was a bit of a laugh. Anyone daft enough to spend up to £75,000 to see Blink 182 deserved a Hunger Games scenario. But after watching the documentaries on Netflix and Hulu, I am gobsmacked. This festival involved all those people who have those non-jobs that no one understands: the start-up bros, the events team, the consultants, the endless PR and advertising types, all of whom act as if they are neurosurgeons. In this hierarchy of evil, the chancers at the top of the pile are of course “the influencers” – mostly models who get paid £250,000 to put a shot on Instagram. The Fyre festival was masterminded, though that word is entirely inappropriate, by the promoter Billy McFarland as an aspirational, super-luxe festival on an island previously owned by Pablo Escobar. There was no infrastructure there, but tickets were sold to “losers” who wanted in after watching promo videos featuring supermodels on boats in azure water. Many seemed to realise early on that the “genius” of McFarland – who is currently in prison for fraud – was simply in flogging a fantasy. There was no accommodation or transport. The most sensible person was a pilot who had taught himself to fly on flight simulators and thought that building toilets for the festivalgoers might be as important as flying in Bella Hadid. The tents were soaked, there was no food, cars or private jets. It was a monstrous scam pulled on those we think are rich and stupid enough to deserve it. But of course the locals suffered – although at least a crowdfunding page has been set up to pay them for their work. The organisers should have been accountable. But nothing is real, except cashflow. This is not fiddling as Rome burns – the organisers couldn’t even locate Rome on a map. Truly a parable for our times.Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, is one step away from facing trial after a surprise court ruling determined that he be tried for kidnapping. In August, prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily, placed Salvini, who is leader of the far-right party the League, under investigation for the alleged kidnapping and detention of 177 migrants whom he prevented from disembarking the Italian coastguard ship Ubaldo Diciotti. The ship had been docked for six days at the Sicilian port of Catania as Salvini maintained a standoff with the EU in an attempt to push other member states to take in the migrants. The Catholic church, Ireland and Albania, which is not an EU state, eventually agreed to host the mostly Eritrean migrants. “I could face up to 15 years of jail because I have stopped the disembarking of illegals in Italy,” Salvini wrote on Facebook in response. “I’m speechless. Am I afraid? Not at all. I’m not going to give up on this. Now the decision will pass through the Senate. We’ll see how it goes …” Since Salvini is a government minister, the accusations against him will be put to parliamentarians or senators, who will vote either for him to stand trial or for the proceedings to be halted. Salvini said he was confident he had the support of the senators from the League, his far-right party. But the support of his coalition partners, the populist Five Star Movement, is far less assured. One of the M5S’s founding principles has always been to ask for the resignation of politicians under investigation. Until last year, this principle was written in the Movement’s own statutes. The rule was part of the party’s attempt to present a clean image and distance itself from corruption. Two years ago, Luigi Di Maio, the Italian deputy prime minister and leader of the M5S, called for the resignation of Angelino Alfano, minister of the interior at the time, who was under investigation for abuse of office. Di Maio said: “We cannot allow a minister of interior under investigation to remain in office. Alfano must resign.” Should the M5S vote against criminal proceedings, thereby rescuing Salvini from a possible conviction, the party would lose credibility among its supporters. Bit if it supported the investigation against Salvini, then it risks losing him and their political alliance, which would cause the entire government to fall. The ruling by the court of ministers on Thursday came as a surprise, as the chief prosecutor of Catania, Carmelo Zuccaro, known for launching several investigations against rescue boats operated by aid groups, a few months ago dropped the charges against Salvini, suggesting the court of ministers would not put him on trial. ‘’If what I did means I’m a kidnapper,” Salvini said, “well, then you can consider me as a kidnapper for the coming months.’’New Democratic leadership in the investigation into the Flint water crisis has sparked hope among activists that a tougher line will be taken on prosecuting officials and compensating victims of the environmental disaster. The move comes after three years of Republicans leading the investigation saw 15 state and city officials face criminal charges or be prosecuted over decisions that led to at least 12 deaths, and likely sickened thousands more. At the same time, hundreds of civil lawsuits representing tens of thousands of victims are working their way through state and federal courts. But critics say there’s been little accountability when Republicans headed the investigation and its targets have been let off lightly. None of the crisis’s perpetrators have paid a fine or served a day in jail for poisoning the city’s water or the subsequent cover-up. Likewise, the state isn’t paying reparations for the deaths or health problems resulting from Flint’s lead-tainted water. Now newly elected Democratic Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel has taken over the investigation from 1 January. She enters office after a 2018 campaign in which she labeled the prosecutions “politically charged show trials” designed to benefit her predecessor, Republican Bill Schuette, who ran for governor last year. Though Schuette’s special prosecutor, Todd Flood, initially charged suspects with felonies like involuntary manslaughter and false pretenses, he ended up negotiating seven plea deals for misdemeanors as minor as “disturbing the peace at a public meeting”. At the same time, Schuette spent over $25m in taxpayer money on legal fees, some of which funded the state’s fights against the civil lawsuits seeking compensation. But Nessel has pledged to fully re-evaluate the investigation, and after a week in office she announced a dramatic shift in the state’s approach to Flint. On the criminal side, Nessel asked a Democratic prosecutor to review and take over the investigation. That could lead to more charges, or frivolous charges being dropped. Nessel also directed the state to settle civil lawsuits brought against it, which would result in victims finally receiving compensation. With Democrats now investigating Flint, there’s a sense among many activists and community leaders that Michigan is finally serious about seeking justice for victims. The Republican-led investigation “was never about the state taking responsibility and making sure that the health of Flint’s families was the focus,” said Michigan senate minority leader and Flint resident Jim Ananich. “It was about trying to protect the governor’s image and do public relations, and now it will be about getting Flint the justice it deserves, and making families whole,” he said. The shift may also highlight the failure of the Republicans’ austerity measures in Michigan that many say are the crisis’s source. In November 2012, voters repealed governor Rick Snyder and the Republican-controlled legislature’s controversial emergency financial manager law. But Republicans reworked the law and rammed through a new version two months later, paving the way for Snyder to install a financial manager in Flint. That financial manager in April 2014 ordered the city to begin pulling water from the Flint river instead of purchasing it from Detroit as a cost saving measure. Soon after, Flint’s water turned dark as residents began experiencing lead poisoning symptoms and dying from Legionnaires disease. A series of meaningful sentences and payouts could be viewed not just as a condemnation of those involved in the immediate crisis, but wider Republican policies, as well. “This happens sometimes with both parties – they don’t want to admit their own party made some mistakes, and lots of mistakes were made here,” Ananich said. Nessel is tapping Kym Worthy for the special prosecutor position, though the latter hasn’t yet accepted the offer. She’s now the prosecutor in a county that’s home to Detroit, and experts say is trusted locally after handling other complex, situations. That includes successfully processing a backlog of 11,000 untested rape kits discovered in a Detroit police station in 2010, and the successful prosecution of two white police officers who in 1992 beat to death a black man, Malice Green. A Nessel spokesperson declined to comment, but Nessel said of Worthy in a press release: “There is no one whose opinion I value more when it comes to the complexity and importance of these cases.” Nessel’s office hasn’t said who else could be charged should Worthy or another special prosecutor take over the case. Charges could also be dropped. During her campaign, Nessel criticized Schuette for paying Flood an hourly rate, which she said incentivized “the charging of unsustainable cases” and other measures to drag out the process. She also questionedFlood’s impartiality. He was appointed to investigate Snyder and his administration, even though he’s a Snyder campaign donor. On the civil side, Schuette has argued the state doesn’t have a constitutional obligation to provide clean water, and it has been difficult for those suing the government to get around the defense of sovereign immunity, which shields officials from legal responsibility. In one of the largest civil cases, a federal judge granted immunity to Snyder, high ranking environmental officials and an emergency financial manager. That case consists of 12 class action suits consolidated into one large suit. Plaintiffs are asking for an independent monitor to ensure state health and environmental departments are complying with court orders. They’re also seeking the establishment of a fund for 100,000 people affected by the crisis. The plaintiff’s co-counsel, Michael Pitt, says he’s more confident that victims will see some justice now that Nessel is in charge. “She’s very dedicated to the goal of making sure the victims of state abuse and government abuse are taken care of in the proper way,” he said. Still, the damage is so far-reaching that it’s going to be difficult to repair, said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University Law School professor and former federal prosecutor. “How much is the state willing to commit?” Henning asked. “That’s the issue. Leaving all the legal niceties aside, how much is the state willing to pay?”Elizabeth Warren has been criticized by her opponents as “out of touch”, but the Massachusetts senator’s message seemed to resonate with voters in Iowa as she officially kicked off the presidential campaign she announced this week. “What’s happening to working families in America?” she asked an enthusiastic crowd of about 500 in Council Bluffs, a city of 62,000 straddling the Iowa-Nebraska border. “Why has America’s middle class been hollowed out? What’s happening to opportunity in this country? Why is the path so rocky for so many people, and so much rockier for people of color? Why has this happened in America?” The Democrat, whose criticism of big banks and corporations has made her a progressive star, was appearing as part of a five-city tour across the crucial state over the weekend. She was also scheduled to stop in Sioux City, Storm Lake, Des Moines and Ankeny. It was a strong introduction to the state which will host the first Democratic contest of the 2020 race 13 months from now. It was also an opportunity for the senator, who seems more comfortable talking about the intricacies of policy than she does politicking, to get a head start over what is expected to be a crowded field. “This is the fight of my life,” she said. “I picked it because it picked me.” America right now works for the rich and powerful. We need to call that out for what it is: corruption, pure and simple She got a warm reception on Friday at McCoy’s, a bowling alley bar in spitting distance of the interstate that leads in and out of town. An enthusiastic crowd of 300 packed the bar’s event room on an unseasonably warm January evening, with 200 others forced to watch from outside. Warren addressed the latter briefly in the parking lot before her speech. “We are in this fight together, all the way,” she said. The senator stuck to a populist tone upon taking the stage, telling her audience that problems both at home and abroad in America “intersect in a Washington that is working for the wealthy and well-connected”, and is worse off for it. “Right now, government works great for giant drug companies – it just doesn’t work great for people trying to fill prescriptions,” Warren said. “It works great for giant oil companies that want to drill everywhere – it just doesn’t work great for families who want kids who can actually breathe the air. It works great for giant financial companies like Equifax – it just doesn’t work for people whose social security numbers get stolen. “That’s the difference in America,” Warren continued. “It is an America right now that works for the rich and the powerful. And we need to call that out for what it is: corruption, pure and simple.” It was on message for the former Harvard law professor, who has made economic populism the focus of her public service. Now 69, she spearheaded the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and has been a reliable critic of Donald Trump. Trump, of course, has hit right back, frequently mocking Warren as “Pocahontas”, which she and Native American leaders have slammed as a “racial slur.” And yet, her response to such racist bullying has created a significant question mark over her presidential bid. In October, Warren released the results of a DNA test that revealed she had distant Native American heritage, a move aimed at silencing the president’s taunts and disproving claims she falsely claimed Cherokee and Delaware tribe heritage in the past. But the move was widely criticized, including by Native American groups, as racist and for its apparent ignorance of the racist history of blood tests. On Friday night, neither the president’s taunts nor Warren’s unfortunate response came up. Instead, Warren described growing up in Oklahoma with a father put out of work by a heart attack and a mother who sacrificed a great deal to make ends meet. “If you want to know who I am, that story is etched on my heart, and always will be,” she said, offering a sort of origin story. Warren mostly stuck to the domestic issues for which she’s most known, delivering impassioned, convincing monologues on everything from healthcare to student loan debt to prescription drug prices to the minimum wage. “When I was a kid, a minimum wage in America would support a family of three,” she said. “It would pay a mortgage, keep the utilities on, and put food on the table. Today, a minimum wage job in America will not keep a momma and a baby out of poverty. Think about that difference. Because for me, that’s what this is all about.” During a question-and-answer session, Warren moved on to foreign affairs, expressing concern about the “rise of autocracies” around the world and the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies, including the separations of children from their families. “It was unbelievable,” she said of a recent trip to the border, where she saw migrants held in cages. “We cannot give up the dream of comprehensive immigration reform,” Warren said, to applause. “We have to have an immigration system that understands the difference between the threat posed by criminals and terrorists and nine-year-old girls. “We need to be committed to a system that keeps us safe, and a system that is consistent with our values.” The message seemed to appeal to those in attendance, many of whom remain undecided. “I like what I heard,” said Sara Madison, a substitute teacher in Council Bluffs. “She doesn’t seem like she’s only invested in Washington.” Attendees expressed concern about their and their children’s futures and identified with Warren’s populist rallying cry as a possible way forward in the fight against Trump. “She’s the voice of the real middle class,” said Ashanti Scates, a veteran and mother of two from Omaha, Nebraska, just over the river, who has been a fan since Warren entered the Senate in 2013. “The everyday Americans.”Donald Trump Jr and long-term Trump aide Roger Stone face a heightened threat of criminal charges as Democrats on Capitol Hill prepare to hand evidence to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. They could be charged with perjury if there is evidence that they lied to Congress during interviews behind closed doors with the House intelligence committee. The California Democrat Adam Schiff will take over leadership of the committee now that his party has control of the House, following victory in the midterm elections. Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Schiff made clear he would be handing over transcripts which had been withheld from Mueller’s investigation by Republicans when they controlled the panel. The committee staged 73 interviews with dozens of witnesses, including Jared Kushner, Trump Jr and Stone. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, has already pleaded guilty to perjury for lying to Congress over attempts to make a deal to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow. Schiff said he was “trying to deconflict” with special counsel Mueller’s investigation because over the last two years the committee, under Republican leadership, had actively tried to make the special counsel’s work more difficult. Schiff said he planned “as one of our first acts to make the transcripts of our witnesses fully available to special counsel for any purpose, including the bringing of perjury charges”. Trump Jr is in peril because he orchestrated the now infamous Trump Tower meeting with a group of Russians after being promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. He would face problems if he told Congress that his father was unaware of the meeting but Mueller has obtained evidence to contradict that. Stone has been under scrutiny over whether he joined the Russian conspiracy to hack Democratic party emails and whether he had prior knowledge of their publication by WikiLeaks. Kushner, Trump’s son in law and senior adviser, has faced questions over his contacts with Russian officials during the transition period between the November 2016 election and the start of the Trump administration in January 2017. Mueller’s investigation has had access to emails and other records which can be used to test whether witnesses were honest in their evidence to Congress. Schiff did not name any individuals, but said: “There’s no reason to protect these witnesses. There’s every reason to validate Congress’s interest in not having people come before it and lie. “I think people felt that they had some kind of immunity when the GOP majority at the time because they would often intervene and tell witnesses, ‘You don’t have to answer that question.’” Schiff also underlined that his committee will start to investigate the Trump Organization and any possible connections to Russian money. He said last month he wanted to investigate finances of the Trump Organization, naming Deutsche Bank, which has a history of laundering Russian money and which for a time was the only lender willing to do business with Trump. On Sunday, Schiff said his committee had gone to work seeking records from private institutions. Trump has consistently claimed the Mueller investigation into Russian election interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign is a hoax and a witch-hunt. On Friday, it was confirmed that judge Beryl Howell, chief judge of US district court in Washington DC, had granted a six-month extension to the grand jury which has been reviewing evidence and recommending or rejecting charges in connection with the Mueller investigation. Under federal rules, a grand jury can serve no longer than 18 months unless the chief judge extends its service by a period of six months or less, “upon determination that such extension is in the public interest”. So far, 33 people and three Russian organisations have been charged, convicted or have pleaded guilty in connection with Mueller’s investigation. Schiff said it was premature to talk about the possible impeachment of Trump, saying “we need to see what Bob Mueller has to say”. He said impeachment was a theoretical possibility, but could only go ahead if it was a bipartisan process with Senate Republicans in support.A live-action remake of Aladdin, directed by Guy Ritchie, comes to the big screen next year, with Mena Massoud as Aladdin and Will Smith as the Genie. It is set in the fictional kingdom of Agrabah, and was filmed in Wadi Rum in Jordan, where the protected desert landscape, sandstone and basalt mountains, canyons and otherworldly rock formations – such as Burdah Rock Bridge, one of the highest natural arches in the world – create a dramatic landscape. Exploring by 4x4 is recommended, and visitors can also stay in a Bedouin desert camp, go camel riding, and visit the 4,000-year-old rock drawings at Khazali Canyon. Booking directly with the Jordan visitor centre on arrival is advised, or with a tour company in advance (such as Jordan Tracks, 1 day 1 night, camel/jeep tour from £90).• Released May 2019 Quentin Tarantino’s ninth (and supposedly penultimate) film has a stellar cast including Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie and Al Pacino. Full details of the crime drama have yet to be unveiled, but last April the director told the CinemaCon convention: “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood takes place in 1969, at the height of the counterculture, hippy revolution and the height of new Hollywood. Street by street, block by block, we’ll transform Los Angeles into the Hollywood of 1969.” Photos and videos have surfaced showing a stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, between Las Palmas and Cherokee, transformed with period cars, shop fronts and cinemas. But while most of the sets are temporary, it is possible to visit some permanent fixtures featured in the film, including Hollywood’s oldest restaurant, Musso & Frank Grill, which opened in 1919 and whose reputation was set during the golden age of Hollywood, visited by stars such as Charlie Chaplin. Other Hollywood locations for reliving the retro vibe include Dan Tana’s Italian in West Hollywood, the city’s first late-night restaurant, where stars would dine in anonymity: it celebrated 50 years last year. Next to the art deco Pantages Theater, there’s Hollywood’s oldest dive bar, Frolic Room (which originally opened as a speakeasy in 1930, was a bolthole for Barfly writer Charles Bukowski, and featured in LA Confidential). And the Hollywood Museum in the restored art deco Max Factor building, has tons of memorabilia and a historic pink lobby.• Released July 2019 Almost 25 years after the animated classic hit the screens, a CGI version featuring the voices of Beyoncé, Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Seth Rogen is being released. Research trips for the original animated film took place in Kenya’s Hell’s Gate national park in Kenya – though Pride Rock was a fictitious element added by the animators. Hell’s Gate national park,90km from Nairobi, is named for the intense geothermal activity within its boundaries. The spectacular landscape includes deep, twisting gorges, volcanic rock towers and plumes of steam. ABig cat numbers here are low, which means that, uniquely in Kenyan parks, pedestrians are allowed full access. But other wildlife is abundant, with more than 103 species of birds, buffalos, zebras, gazelles, hyenas, antelopes and baboons. Hire bikes and local guides (for hiking and walking safaris) are available at the entrance; those wanting to explore by car can hire 4x4s at Nairobi airport). If a distant hyena lullaby sounds appealing, there are three campsites in the park (Endachata, Naiburta and Oldubai) and more options at nearby Lake Naivasha. • Released July 2019 Following on from the finale of the television series in December 2015, the film continues to chart the lives of the Crawley family, their friends and servants. Although set in Yorkshire, filming largely took place at Highclere Castle in Hampshire (where Jeeves & Wooster, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, was also shot). The 17th-century Jacobethan castle, with landscaped grounds by Capability Brown, offers special winter tours (January-March, £120), tours with afternoon tea (daily April-September, from £51), and a live Downton concert by the chamber orchestra of London with narration by Carson (Jim Carter) on 22 June 2019. Scenes in the fictional Yorkshire village of Downton were filmed in Bampton in Oxfordshire, including at 11th-century St Mary’s Church. Further scenes were shot in Lacock in Wiltshire, a village owned almost entirely by the National Trust, including many of the historic cottages and Lacock Abbey, which has featured in Harry Potter and Pride and Prejudice.• Released September 2019 Jessie Buckley stars as a Glaswegian ex-con and single mum who dreams of breaking into the country music scene in Nashville. But Glasgow has its own Grand Ole Opry, a country and western club started in 1974 in a former cinema and still putting on gigs every Friday and Saturday. In March, the city, along with London and Dublin, will co-host Europe’s biggest country music festival C2C: Country to Country (8-10 March at SSE Hydro) with Keith Urban and Lyle Lovett on the bill. Glasgow is also a Unesco city of music, putting on more than 150 gigs a week in around 40 venues across the city. Music hotspots include King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Broadcast, Bloc+, SWG3, Stereo, Maggie Mays, and Mono, which is also a record store and vegan cafe.• Released April 2019 The original film title – Everest – might have given a clue to the location of this animated film from DreamWorks. Although story details have yet to be disclosed, it is thought to follow a group from the streets of Shanghai who trek 3,000 miles to reunite the mythical Yeti with his family at the highest point on Earth, in the Himalayas. Since the first successful ascent to the summit of Everest in 1953, the Himalayas have become more accessible, with walking routes across Nepal, India, Pakistan, Tibet and Burma, and varied options depending on season, budget and ability. Trekking in China more specifically includes a multitude of routes around Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan province, taking in deep ravines, snow-capped ranges, rivers, forests and remote rice terraces. Alternatively, there are routes at Sichuan’s Gongga Shan, the King of Mountains, passing glaciers, temples and views over the Tibetan meadows; or in the far north-west of China in Kanas national park, in the Altai mountains that creep in from Siberia. Tours of the Himalayas in Nepal, India, Pakistan, Tibet and Burma, range from self-guided trekking suitable for families (World Expeditions, £990pp, 11 days B&B), to trekking up to an altitude of 5,364 metres to Everest Base Camp (£1,740, 17 days, including all meals and accommodation).• Released September 2019 Calanque de Méjean, an picturesque inlet near Marseille in southern France, was the location for this family drama by veteran director Robert Guédiguian. The tiny port beside the towering arches of a large viaduct sets the scene for the reunion of several siblings, who return to the family home when their father suffers a stroke. Guédiguian said Méjean had always reminded him of theatre: “The colourful little houses built into the hills seem to be no more than facades ... A viaduct overlooks them and its trains look like child’s toys; the openness towards the sea transforms the horizon into a backdrop ... like painted canvases ... especially with the winter light, when everyone has gone. It becomes an abandoned set – melancholy and beautiful.” Méjean is one of several coastal hamlets along Provence’s Côte Bleue, with a picturesque railway route hugging the shore.• Released January 2019 Another homecoming film, this time from Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, following Laura (Penélope Cruz), who travels from Buenos Aires back to her childhood home in a village near Madrid to attend a wedding. Abduction, threats and former lovers (namely Paco, played by Javier Bardem) play out in this Spanish drama filmed in the village of Torrelaguna 40 miles from the capital. Torrelaguna has a beautiful traditional plaza, atmospheric 15th-century church, a Roman bridge, a 10th-century watchtower, and other historic buildings mixing gothic, baroque and neoclassical architectural styles. Restaurants serving Spanishspecialities include Alfoli de la Sal and Casa Moraleda; there are horse riding and walking routes in the surrounding meadows and hills; and the views from the nearby black-slate village of Patones de Arriba are worth a trip too.• Released March 2019 Set in Port Isaac, Cornwall, this feelgood British comedy drama is based on the true story of a group of fishermen who were given a record deal after singing sea shanties in their local pub. On the Atlantic coast of north Cornwall, the tiny village of Port Isaac is a popular filming spot, already featuring in Poldark, Doc Martin and Saving Grace. During the making of Fisherman’s Friends, the original fishermen worked on the boats with the film crew, helped with singing coaching and consulted on accents and dialects. If visiting the area, expect a bit of a sing-song in the local pubs, or during the summer (depending on the weather) you might be lucky enough to catch the Fisherman’s Friends giving a performance of sea shanties on the platt (dock). These shows are free, with donations going to charity. There are boat and fishing trips from the port depending on weather and season, and Polzeath beach, one of the best surfing spots in north Cornwall, is five miles away.• Released March 2019 This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Air pollution is as bad for pregnant women as smoking in raising the risk of miscarriage, according to a scientific study. They said the finding was upsetting and that toxic air must be cut to protect the health of the next generation. Air pollution is already known to harm foetuses by increasing the risk of premature birth and low birth weight. Recent research has also found pollution particles in placentas. The effect of long-term exposure to dirty air on the risk of miscarriage has been analysed previously. Studies from Brazil to Italy to Mongolia found a link, but others failed to do so. However, the latest study is the first to assess the impact of short-term exposure to air pollution. It found that raised levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution that are commonplace around the world increased the risk of losing a pregnancy by 16%. “It’s pretty profound,” said Dr Matthew Fuller, at the University of Utah’s department of emergency medicine and one of the research team. “If you compare that increase in risk to other studies on environmental effects on the foetus, it’s akin to tobacco smoke in first trimester pregnancy loss.” NO2 is produced by fuel burning, particularly in diesel vehicles. The research, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, was conducted in Salt Lake City in the US, and surrounding urban areas. But Fuller said the results were applicable elsewhere: “There are many places in the world that suffer from pollution that is far greater, so this is not a problem unique to Utah. This is a problem we are all facing.” NO2 levels in Salt Lake City are similar to those in cities such as London and Paris. Fuller was initially alerted to the issue when a family member lost a miscarried during a particularly poor period of air quality in 2016. He said: “That triggered the question in my mind and then I started noticing anecdotally that I was seeing spikes in miscarriage numbers in the emergency department during and after [pollution spikes].” Fuller teamed up with the population health scientist Claire Leiser and others to see if the effect was real. They analysed the records of more than 1,300 women who attended the emergency department after miscarriages from 2007 and 2015. A woman’s exposure to air pollution at the time of the miscarriage was compared with similar times when she did not miscarry, meaning that age, weight, income and other personal factors were accounted for. The strongest link with a lost pregnancy was the level of NO2 in the seven days before the miscarriage. The average seven-day NO2 level across the whole period was 34 micrograms per cubic metre (μg/m3), but peaked at 145μg/m3. The researchers found an increase in NO2 pollution of 20μg/m3 was associated with a 16% rise in the risk of miscarriage. “Many of us think there is an effect [of air pollution] on our health, but to find out there are actual effects on unborn children is very upsetting,” said Fuller. Higher levels of particle pollution were also linked to a greater risk of miscarriage, as found in a previous study, but the association in the new work was not statistically significant. However, other recent studies on long-term exposure to particle pollution in Iran, Italy, Mongolia and the US found significant links. Other air pollutants, including ozone and sulphur dioxide have also been implicated in these analyses. The mechanism by which air pollution could harm a foetus has not yet been established but a likely hypothesis is that the pollutants cause oxidative stress and inflammation. Dr Sarah Stock, at the University of Edinburgh and not part of the research team, said: “Air pollution is clearly detrimental to the health of millions of mothers, babies and children worldwide. Measures to reduce the impact of air pollution are crucial to ensure the health of future generations.” But she noted that the risk of miscarriage varied substantially with the number of weeks of pregnancy and that the study had not been able to record this information, potentially introducing a bias into the result. Leiser said: “If we were able to get the gestation stage that would be a real benefit, to get a sense of when the woman is most at risk. There really needs to be more studies done on this specific issue. But we know enough about air pollution and birth outcomes to say, if you are pregnant, talk to your doctor.” The best action is to cut overall levels of pollution in urban areas, said Fuller. However he said women could choose to time their pregnancies to avoid the most polluted times of year. This is winter in Utah and many other places, but will vary depending on local conditions. Fuller also said pregnant women could avoid exertion on polluted days and consider buying indoor air filters. “But in the developing world these are luxuries many people can’t afford,” he said.Theresa May was handed a two-week deadline to resuscitate her Brexit deal last night after she caved to Tory Eurosceptics and pledged to go back to Brussels to demand changes to the Irish backstop. With just 59 days to go until exit day, MPs narrowly passed a government-backed amendment, tabled by the senior Tory Graham Brady, promising to replace the Irish backstop with unspecified “alternative arrangements”. But within minutes of the Commons result the European council president, Donald Tusk, announced that the EU was not prepared to reopen the deal. “The withdrawal agreement is, and remains, the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union,” a spokesman for Tusk said. “The backstop is part of the withdrawal agreement, and the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, said the EU needed to “hold our nerve”. On a dramatic day in Westminster the House of Commons also served notice that it would not support the government if it pursued a no-deal Brexit, undermining what May regards as one of her key bargaining chips in the days ahead. However, May said: “It is now clear that there is a route that can secure a substantial and sustainable majority in this house for leaving the EU, with a deal.” She repeatedly stressed protections for workers’ rights, as well as mooting changes to the backstop in the hope of winning over Labour MPs, and promised to keep “battling for Britain”. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said he would meet the prime minister after the amendment against no-deal Brexit was passed. He had previously declined her invitation to talks until a no deal was taken off the table. May assured MPs she would try to bring back a renegotiated deal for parliament to approve, in a “meaningful vote”, as soon as possible. If she has not managed to do so by 13 February, the government will table a statement about what it plans to do next and allow MPs to vote on it on Valentine’s Day. The government saw off a series of attempts by backbenchers to seize control of business in parliament to avert a no deal. Fourteen Labour rebels helped May to defeat Yvette Cooper’s attempt to timetable a bill that would mandate the government to extend article 50. But MPs narrowly passed a more straightforward amendment, tabled by Labour’s Jack Dromey and the Conservative Caroline Spelman, saying they would not accept a no deal outcome, by 318 votes to 310. May had repeatedly insisted the 585-page withdrawal agreement signed off by EU leaders at a special summit in November was not open for renegotiation. But she urged her own backbenchers to support an amendment rejecting the hardest-fought aspect of the deal: the Irish backstop. Tabled by Brady, the amendment was passed by 317 votes to 301, a majority of 16. May had earlier said a victory would “send a clear message to Brussels about what the house wants to see changing in the withdrawal agreement in order to be able to support it”. Officials in Brussels suggested even before the Brady amendment had been passed that reopening the withdrawal agreement was impossible. Some Tory backbenchers said May had been “played” by rightwingers in her party who made clear they reserved the right to vote against her in a fortnight’s time, even if she secured changes. Steve Baker, the deputy chair of the backbench European Research Group (ERG), announcing that its members would vote for the Brady amendment, made clear they could still reject any renegotiated deal she brought back. “A vote for the Brady amendment is a vote to see if the PM can land a deal that will work. If not then we are not committed,” he said. The prime minister spoke to European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, by phone to set out her intentions before MPs began debating seven amendments that pursued a series of objectives. May firmly rejected a pair of proposals aimed at giving MPs the opportunity to steer the next stage of the Brexit process, one tabled by Cooper and Nick Boles, and another by the former attorney general Dominic Grieve. She said they would, “seek to create and exploit mechanisms that would allow parliament to usurp the proper role of the executive”, saying both approaches were “deeply misguided, and not a responsible course of action”. Both were rejected, Grieve by a majority of 20, and Cooper by 23. May said she could seek changes to the backstop including a time limit, a unilateral exit clause, or an alternative plan put forward by an unlikely group of Tory MPs, including Jacob Rees-Mogg and the former education secretary Nicky Morgan. “What I’m talking about is not a further exchange of letters, but a significant and legally binding change to the withdrawal agreement,” May said. “Negotiating such a change will not be easy. It will involve reopening the withdrawal agreement, a move for which I know there is limited appetite among our European partners.” May’s cabinet had earlier cautiously welcomed the so-called Malthouse compromise, named after the housing minister who brokered it, with Michael Gove particularly enthusiastic, according to Tory sources, while Greg Clark struck a sceptical note. It includes resurrecting plans for border checks to be avoided through the use of technology, long favoured by Brexiters including Boris Johnson. But all of the “alternative arrangements” mooted in the course of the debate had already been flatly rejected by EU negotiators. Privately, some ministers were dismissive, with one cabinet source saying: “I’m trying not to say the word ‘unicorn’.” But the prime minister warded off threats of a revolt from remainer ministers, who had threatened to back the Cooper-Boles amendment, by promising parliament another chance to vote on the government’s Brexit policy in February. A government source said: “It’s one last push; it’s a chance to lance the boil of ‘we haven’t tried hard enough’.” As well as attempting to revisit the controversial backstop, May stressed that she will continue discussions with trade unions and Labour MPs about how the government can offer more assurances on workers’ rights, including potentially through legislation. The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, accused the prime minister of pursuing an impossible deal with Brussels in an attempt to assuage the demands of rebels on her own backbenches. “The danger is obvious – that the prime minister today may build a temporary sense of unity on her own benches, but in reality she’s raising expectations that she can never fulfil,” he said. Jeremy Corbyn had earlier claimed the real “obstacle to a solution” was May and her government. Labour tabled its own amendment calling for MPs to be allowed to vote on options, including Corbyn’s Brexit policy, and a “public vote”. It was defeated by 296 votes to 327.Sven-Göran Eriksson doesn’t really do regrets. The Swede has had an extraordinary career – and it is still going – having managed 16 teams in eight different countries but, he says on a sunny day in Abu Dhabi, there are not many things he would have done differently over the past 42 years. Not a single one? “Well …” the current Philippines coach says when we meet at a swish hotel next to the Zayed Sports City Stadium in the capital of the United Arab Emirates. “Maybe one then … and that would be that last World Cup.” In 2006 England travelled to the World Cup in Germany with a squad including Steven Gerrard, David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen. They progressed through the group and beat Ecuador in the last 16 to set up a quarter-final meeting with Portugal. In Gelsenkirchen, after 120 minutes and no goals, no Beckham (injured) and no Rooney (sent off), England scored just one spot-kick to lose 3-1 and exit a major tournament at the quarter-final stage under Eriksson for a third time in four years. Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Jamie Carragher all missed and Eriksson says now: “I should have taken a mental coach for the penalty shootout. I thought we were experienced enough and we had players who were specialists in penalties.” He shakes his head, smiling, and then adds: “It is history now.” Eriksson’s Philippines have fought bravely in the first two games at the Asian Cup in the UAE but lost both, against South Korea (1-0) and China (3-0) and play their final group game against Kyrgyzstan. He still follows England and there was no jealousy of Gareth Southgate and his players as they reached the World Cup semi-finals in Russia. Rather the contrary. “I was very happy for them. They did well but they also had a good squad – young, hungry players. And when you see them play for Tottenham and [Manchester] United, they are playing great football and are confident. They also have one very important thing – pace – and so they are very dangerous on the counterattack.” Eriksson also notes that these players then go back to their clubs and are coached by some of the best tacticians in the world. That, too, makes a difference. “When I was in Italy in the 90s, early 2000s, everybody wanted to go to Italy, all the players. Today they want to go to the Premier League and it is the same with coaches.” And that includes Pep Guardiola at Manchester City. Eriksson, sandwiched in the club’s managerial roll-call between Stuart Pearce and Mark Hughes, left the then City of Manchester Stadium in June 2008, almost a year after joining and just two months before the Abu Dhabi United Group took over. Again, there is no jealously at the hundreds of millions that have left this sprawling city to fund Manchester City’s rise. “It would have been great, no? I was there just a little too early,” he says with that familiar smile. He is a fan. “They are great and I think they will be a great, great club for years to come.” After stints in China and now south-east Asia, Eriksson is well-placed to see whether City can rival the other Manchester team in terms of popularity in the world’s biggest continent where the sight of light blue shirts is still rare. “They can, but it will take some time because you know that, in Asia, United and Liverpool are huge with the history.” But there are signs of change. “I think that the young generation are looking at Manchester City, not Manchester United.” City are leading the way on the field and managers such as Guardiola ensure that, even at 70, Eriksson has to work to stay abreast of modern trends and methods. “If you want to keep up with the changes, then you have to watch as much football as you can. Live is the best way but also on television. All the best teams: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and now City. What are they doing? If possible, go and see them training. You can always learn. You will never be fully learned in this job.” I wasn’t looking for a job. I had just said no to Cameroon and Iraq. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to see the Philippines The ability to adapt is key even for a man who started at Degerfors in 1977. “Back then in Sweden it was 4-4-2 all the way, it was the bible. If it was 1-0 with three minutes to go and I take out a striker then I put in another one, 4-4-2 all the time.” Now, he says, he is much more flexible. “Over time I realised that the most important thing is not the system but the players you have. Then you make a system for them.” But studying the game is not a chore. “ I love football. I don’t use drugs but football is my drug. I had one year off before this job so I took care of my local team in the fifth division in Sweden and we went up to the fourth. I helped them with players too. It was great.” Eriksson denies that money is the main motivation despite the fact that, due to the actions of a former financial adviser, the coach lost millions in the previous decade. “I am not here for the money, I don’t need to work if I don’t want to.” He was appointed on a three-month contract in October, replacing Terry Butcher who resigned in August after 50 days in the job and no games. “I wasn’t looking for a job. I had just said no to Cameroon and Iraq. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to go and see the Philippines.” He immediately felt comfortable. “I liked the players and I liked the people. I am here for three months, the weather is nice and it is cold in Sweden from November to January. Also, the Asian Cup is a high level.” The Philippines may have the friendliest football scene in Asia but crowds at home are small and there are only two journalists following the team around the UAE, a contrast to the English press pack that Eriksson admits, with a smile, he does not miss. “There is a huge difference and not just with the interest and pressure. Behind the scenes with England, the organisation and the rest, everything is perfect and was perfect even in my time.” Instead of the Three Lions, the Philippines have the three B’s – billiards, boxing and basketball – with football sometimes struggling for attention in the former American colony. “It is not a football country but the generation of players they have are good and had their football education in Europe: England, Spain and Germany. If things can change a little bit to make football more popular in the country then now is the time.” And when his time here ends? Well, it is more likely that he will stay east than go back to England, if the offer was to come. “It will not come. They are looking at age. Asia is better. They are looking for grey hair.”The UK leads the European Union in giving subsidies to fossil fuels, according to a report from the European commission. It found €12bn (£10.5bn) a year in support for fossil fuels in the UK, significantly more than the €8.3bn spent on renewable energy. The commission report warned that the total subsidies for coal, oil and gas across the EU remained at the same level as 2008. This is despite both the EU and G20 having long pledged to phase out the subsidies, which hamper the rapid transition to clean energy needed to fight climate change. Germany provided the biggest energy subsidies, with €27bn for renewable energy, almost three times the €9.5bn given to fossil fuels. Spain and Italy also gave more subsidies to renewable energy than fossil fuels. But along with the UK, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland all gave more to fossil fuels. The report is based on 2016 Eurostat data, the latest available, and found that across the EU renewable energy received 45% of subsidies and fossil fuels 33%. The commission report said policies were being pursued to cut carbon emissions and meet the Paris climate agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels. “However, despite this and the international commitments made in the context of G20 and G7, fossil fuel subsidies in the EU have not decreased,” it said. “EU and national policies might need to be reinforced to phase out such subsidies.” The total fossil fuel subsidies in the EU were €55bn in 2016, the report concluded. “This is a very high number, given we are reaching the deadline for some of their [phase out] promises,” said Ipek Gencsu, subsidies expert at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). A significant part of the UK fossil fuel subsidies identified by the commission is the 5% rate of VAT on domestic gas and electricity, cut from the standard 20%. The UK government did not dispute the data but denied that it provided any subsidies for fossil fuels under its own definition and that of the International Energy Agency. “We do not subsidise fossil fuels,” a government spokeswoman said. “We’re firmly committed to tackling climate change by using renewables, storage, interconnectors, new nuclear and more to deliver a secure and dynamic energy market at the least possible cost for consumers.” Shelagh Whitley, also at ODI, was dismissive of the UK government’s claim to provide no fossil fuel subsidies. “They are lying,” she said. “It’s absurd. They are playing games and continuing to prop up a centuries old energy system.” She said the WTO definition of subsidies, accepted by the UK and 163 other nations, includes “government revenue that is otherwise due, foregone or not collected” such as reduced tax rates. Other countries, such as Germany and Italy, call such tax breaks subsidies, she said and noted the UK also gave tax breaks for oil and gas operators in the North Sea. Whitley said that rather than arguing about definitions, the UK should use its tax system to accelerate the transition to clean energy. In September, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, said the government had “forgone” billions of pounds by choosing not to implement a scheduled rise in duty on petrol and diesel. “The fuel duty freezes since 2011 have meant that the exchequer has forgone around £46bn in revenues through to 2018-19.” He said the tax not collected was “about twice as much as we spend on all NHS nurses and doctors each year”. The UK government spokeswoman said low VAT was important in keeping bills down for families. But experts say untargeted measures are an inefficient way to help those in need. Worldwide, fossil fuel subsidies overwhelmingly benefit the well off. “There are better ways to help on heating costs in the UK, such as installing insulation measures,” Gencsu said. Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour’s shadow business and energy secretary, said: “The balance of the UK’s energy subsidies are all wrong. Denmark and Germany won big by investing early-on in what is now a hugely profitable offshore wind industry. The UK must not miss out on the opportunity to lead the world on the next generation of renewables, and support should be geared towards these technologies of the future.” Craig Bennett, the Friends of the Earth CEO, said: “Spiralling climate change is going to cost people and our economy huge sums of money, through the damage, disruption and instability it causes. So it’s astonishing that the UK government is still throwing taxpayers’ money at some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. Ministers must switch funding to rapidly boost energy efficiency and renewables.”Andy Murray’s mother, Judy, thinks he could play tennis again, although she believes he is still agonising over further hip surgery that would ease his pain while almost certainly ending his career. Murray, who has won three majors, two Olympic gold medals, a Davis Cup, a knighthood and been voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year an unprecedented three times, says he will make a decision over the next week or so. His mother was courtside in Melbourne on Monday to watch her youngest son lose to the Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut in five sets in the first round of the Australian Open in what many believe was his last match. On Tuesday she said: “I don’t know what he’ll do next. He probably doesn’t know yet. He can take his time, there’s no rush to make any decisions. It all needs to be looked at and researched and weighed up. But, whatever he decides, I’ll be right behind him. Quality of life, of course, is massive and he’s got two little kids. He must enjoy life in the long-term. But you just get the sense that there’s something else in him, that he’s not quite ready to quit yet. So we’ll see.” Andy himself was equivocal, leaving open the possibility of either delaying surgery as he tries to prepare for a farewell at Wimbledon this summer, or having a second operation which would ease the pain in his right hip and allow him to lead a normal life, but would make a return to elite level competition difficult, if not impossible. Judy Murray said she first realised Andy had set an end-point to his career when she visited him in Miami before Christmas. “I could see he was in pain in between points [in practice]. I could see it in his face, as well, obviously, as the limping. It wasn’t stopping him from chasing everything down, but you could see that it was torture. “After one practice session he said, ‘I just can’t do it anymore.’ It was heartbreaking because it’s been his life. He loves it so much. He has always loved the life, loved the game. He’s the only one who knows how he feels, the only one. Nobody else can tell you any of that. He has to trust himself, he has to make that decision. He is never letting anyone down by saying it. We can encourage him all we like. At the end of the day we don’t know how he feels, we don’t know bad it is mentally and physically to go through something like that.” She added: “It’s very hard as a parent to watch your kids struggling with anything, especially if they are physically hurting. Also to know that there isn’t really anything you can do to help them, that’s really hard. But I’ve always been a big believer in encouraging your kids to make your own decisions, step in if you realise they are going to make a huge boob, particularly when they are younger. You want them to be strong enough to make those decisions for themselves. “When you are surrounded by a lot of people who have been with you on the journey, it is maybe a little bit harder because you feel like you are letting everyone else down, but, in actual fact, you are not because it is only about you. It can only be about him. Twenty months is a long time to be in pain. Whatever is right for him is right, no question.” Murray said after his match against Bautista Agut, which lasted four hours and nine minutes, that over-training early in his career had probably taken its toll. His mother agreed, saying he should have copied the example of Roger Federer, who, at 37, sticks to a lighter regime. “What always concerned me was the limited amount of rest and recovery there was from competition, in particular, but also what he put himself through in the off-season in order to get better. I think Roger summed it up beautifully the other day when he said, ‘You have to trust in your talent’. It’s not about volume, it’s about working smart. That’s always been my theory. “But hindsight’s a great thing, isn’t it? The good thing with Andy is that he’s so willing to share his experiences and his advice with others, particularly the younger generation coming through. Hopefully he can help them and their coaches and parents not to make the same mistakes.” She revealed that Andy was fortunate to have played professional sport in the first place. “He is remarkable. He was born with a bipartite patella [split kneecap]. We had no idea. Obviously you don’t know what’s going on in your body until you scan it or X-ray it. When that was discovered, back in 2003, he’d had a good eight or nine months of it being diagnosed as patella tendinitis. “The consultant said, ‘I don’t know if it’s a bipartite patella or if the kneecap is fractured.’ We couldn’t afford a scan, which was over £400. That was a fortune in those days, and I didn’t have the money. I had to go to the Scottish Institute of Sport and, thankfully, they paid for it. That began a search for tennis players who had had bipartite patellas, how they’d treated it and what had they gone on to do.” As for Andy’s future, she says: “He’s got a lot of options. He’s a really smart guy, he’s interested in a lot of things. I think he’d be a great coaching mentor. [His brother] Jamie would be as well. They both read the game very well, they understand it, they communicate very well – and they’ve got masses of experience. “Andy did a little spot of commentating during Wimbledon last year and he seemed to have done a good job with that too. He’s interested in property, he’s got the hotel in Scotland, he’s got Seedrs, the start-up companies, so he’ll not be short for options, that’s for sure.”Congress is expected to make an unprecedented challenge to Donald Trump’s authority to take the US into a war in the coming weeks, with a bipartisan measure calling for the end of US military involvement in the Yemen conflict. The Senate passed the measure, invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution, last month but a parallel effort in the House of Representatives was sunk by the Republican leadership. Now the House is under Democratic control, there is a plan to put forward identical measures in both chambers, which would put a permanent end to US refuelling, logistical support, intelligence and special forces operations with the Saudi-led coalition. It would force Trump to accept the constraints on his executive power, or use his veto to continue an unpopular war, in support of an unpopular ally in Riyadh. It is unlikely his opponents could muster the two-thirds majorities in each house required to override the veto, but the standoff would highlight the deep divide between the president and Congress over Saudi relations, at a time when Yemen is on the brink of famine, and in the wake of the brutal murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Ro Khanna, the lead author of the proposed House resolution, said he had an undertaking from the new House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that it would be put to a vote in the next six weeks, though that timing might be set back by the government shutdown. The resolution will be identical to a resolution passed by the Senate in December, by a 56 to 41 majority. Since there is a new Senate following November midterm elections, the measure – introduced by independent senator Bernie Sanders, Republican Mike Lee and Democrat Chris Murphy – would have to be reintroduced. But 51 senators who backed the resolution in December are still in their seats, as well as two new Democrats who are expected to back it. “We are waiting for the shutdown to end, but we are ready to move pretty quickly,” a Democratic Senate staffer said. If the ceasefire agreed last month for Hodeidah and other Yemeni ports holds and humanitarian aid is allowed to flow freely to the 22 million Yemenis in desperate need, and if the Saudi regime shows more transparency over the Khashoggi murder, the legislation could be held back. But its backers say the threat of its passing was enough to force concessions from the Saudi-backed Yemeni government delegation at ceasefire talks in Sweden. If passed, it will be the first time Congress has used a war powers resolution measure to limit the president’s power to take the country into a foreign conflict. “One cannot underestimate the historic impact of the House and Senate passing this,” Khanna said in an interview with the Guardian. He said that the former defence secretary James Mattis advised the Saudis to make progress in the Stockholm talks to avoid “further embarrassment from Congress”. “We’ve heard from reports on the ground in Sweden that they’re carefully watching what Congress does,” he added. “I believe that both chambers of Congress acting would be such a statement to the world and to the Saudis and the coalition ... that they themselves will temper the military offensive and it may lead to a ceasefire. It may lead to the opening of ports and allowing humanitarian assistance. They don’t want to continue to jeopardize their relationship with the United States.” Khanna believes the Trump administration overplayed its hand over the Saudi monarchy’s role in Yemen and the Khashoggi murder. Mattis and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, repeatedly assured Congress the Saudi military was making efforts to limit civilian casualties from coalition bombing. However, there was no reduction in the toll and coalition actions to isolate areas of the country run by Houthi rebels has brought Yemen to the brink of what the UN warns could be the worst famine in a generation. Since the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi by Saudi operatives, Trump, Pompeo and Mattis played down the culpability of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a close Trump ally, in spite of a CIA assessment that he almost certainly ordered the murder. Administration briefings and attempts to prevent the CIA director, Gina Haspel, briefing Congress, angered members on both sides of the aisle. “It has made members of Congress more willing to assert their article 1 rights of having a role in foreign policy,” Khanna said. The first article of the US constitution formally gives Congress the sole authority to declare war, but that has been largely ignored by a succession of presidents from both parties. Khanna argues that the Trump administration will force the legislature to take its duties more seriously. “The overreach by the administration and the disregard for Congress has awakened Congress from our slumber,” he said.Once, back in the 60s and 70s, the phrase “world class” demarcated the line between Australian arts – including popular music – and the rest. Our cultural cringe was as rife as gonorrhoea was at the time, but not nearly as easy to treat with a shot of penicillin. Since then, after rock raiders like INXS, AC/DC and Men At Work and more recently Vance Joy, Sia, Flume and Courtney Barnett rained down international hits, I thought we’d risen above the cringe. But has it simply become internalised? Are our modern day writers and performers really valued in contemporary Australia? Or are we battling the 2019 version of this phenomenon? Whether abstract or figurative, mural, statue or installation, our monuments and public artworks talk to us about who we are. The large majority salute white men – traditionally explorers, political and military figures. In recent years, paint protests on Captain Cook statues in Sydney and Melbourne, including on Australia Day, display changing attitudes to the status quo. Sports legends are also popular in public art, but surely there is more to the Australian soul than that. Representing the arts, ballad and short story writer Henry Lawson (1867–1922) has 12 various statues, plaques and artworks in his honour, while Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833–70) has nine, according to Monuments Australia. It is dead-set true that Australia needs more monuments to women, although Dorothea “I love a sunburnt country” Mackellar, opera singer Nellie Melba, children’s writer-illustrator May Gibbs, novelist Miles Franklin and poet Judith Wright are among those remembered this way. People of colour also need more public art tributes. It would be terrific to see good renditions of Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter serenading each other in Fitzroy, for instance, although it is challenging for people well and truly alive, like Archie, to face a statue of themselves without some confusion. Slowly, I believe, the cultural cringe that sees contemporary musicians as not worthy of respect is changing. It is interesting that Queensland, once at war with rock as detailed in Andrew Stafford’s book Pig City, has led the way since 2010 with their Go Between Bridge (to the Go-Betweens), ornate 70m Bee Gees Way in Redcliffe, and a giant mural to The Saints unveiled in 2017. Such tributes recognise more recent storytellers and the importance of popular music to the Australian journey. They also attract significant tourism boosts for local businesses. Fremantle has its Bon Scott statue drawing selfies galore, but Melbourne and Sydney, the biggest creators of contemporary music stars, songs and recordings, have faltered. AC/DC Lane, Amphlett Lane and Rowland S Howard Lane in Melbourne are significant places to visit. But we need this thinking to proliferate and we need the lasting respect and solidity of beautifully executed, 3D bronze and stainless steel as well. If our long-resistant cultural cringe is to be put to the sword, arts-centric Yarra Council, rich in rock gigs, bars and entertainment venues, is the right kind of local government to lead the way. Yarra supported Melbourne’s Overload poetry festival for most of its decade-long existence from 2002, evidence that it supports literature and the arts from the most street level up. Recently the council announced a plan to erect a statue of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, who wrote the lyrics to great international hits like Original Sin, Never Tear Us Apart and Listen Like Thieves, and sadly died in 1997. Hutch is the perfect subject for our next contemporary rock statue. It seems cringe-worthy that the man who led what was the biggest band in the world for a couple of years, with international hits through the 80s and 90s, still has no local public monument 21 years after his death. He was more than our most beautiful frontman. He was also a dancer with a rare gift, inspiring his audience to dance with him, a heartbreaking singer and a sensitive, dreamy-minded lyricist whose abiding messages were love and peace. Yes, he is another white man. But Michael Hutchence made 20 years of powerful music with INXS; and also with Ollie Olsen, in Max Q (1989), and on the soundtrack of Richard Lowenstein’s Dogs in Space (1986). That cult classic, which Hutchence also starred in, was filmed and recorded in Richmond, providing a strong link to the proposed site of the statue green-lit by Yarra Council in December. It’s just across from the new statue of Molly Meldrum and his dog Ziggy, near the Wall of Music mural at the back of the Corner Hotel, winner of the publicly-voted Best Large Venue gong at the 2018 Music Victoria awards. There, perhaps, he might invite you in to join him for a quick drink to celebrate music, poetry and the ongoing rhythm of life. • Jen Jewel Brown is an Australian music writer and poetSicilian authorities have made a series of arrests after a suspected sex trafficking ring was believed to have forced at least 15 Nigerian girls into prostitution in Italy. Among those arrested were two Nigerian women, Rita Ihama, 38, and Monica Onaigfohe, aged 20, who police believe organised the trafficking of the women from Libya to Italy. An Italian national, Giovanni Buscemi, was also arrested on suspicion of helping facilitate the trafficking and exploitation of the girls. Prosecutors believe the group of young women were lured from Nigeria with the promise of work in Italy. They say before they left their homes they were made to undergo traditional oath-taking ceremonies involving complicated and frightening rituals. The use of “juju” ceremonies in the trafficking of women from Nigeria to Europe are widespread and have been found to have a profound psychological impact on victims. “On arrival in Italy, the women [say they] were forced into prostitution and told they must pay back the cost of their travel to Italy,” said Giovannella Scaminaci, deputy chief prosecutor in Messina, who led the operation. She said that sex trafficking operations between Nigeria, Libya and Italy are highly organised and continue despite recent attempts to stem the flow of migration from north Africa to Europe. “There is an industry in the exploitation of girls from the age of 14 who have all become terrorised and controlled through the use of these juju ceremonies,” she says. Yesterday, Sicilian prosecutors in Catania also arrested 19 Nigerians suspected of belonging to the Supreme Vikings Confraternity, an organised crime group operational across Sicily. The men are accused of drug smuggling and the rape and sexual assault of Nigerian women in Cara di Mineo, one of Italy’s largest reception centres for refugees. Prosecutors told the Guardian that they were considering the possibility that the men arrested were raping women at the centre “with the aim of subjugating them and preparing them for prostitution’’. About 16,000 Nigerian women arrived in Italy from Libya between 2016-2017. According to the UN’s International Office for Migration (IOM) more than 80% of them were victims of trafficking, destined for a life of forced prostitution on street corners and in brothels across Italy and Europe. In recent weeks hundreds of people have been removed from reception centres across Italy as part of the populist government’s hardline immigration measures. The moves come as a part of a concerted push to implement the “Salvini decree” – named after Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini. It abolishes humanitarian protection for those not eligible for refugee status, and was passed by the Italian government last year. As a result hundreds of asylum seekers are now at risk of homelessness. NGOs and aid agencies, including the Red Cross, have warned that victims of sex trafficking are among those evicted. “If this is true then the decree has been misinterpreted by local authorities,” says Scaminaci. “Nigerian women victims of sex trafficking must always be granted a humanitarian permit or a refugee status because of the consequences they could face if deported back in Nigeria.” Last December, Blessing, a 31-year-old Nigerian woman who was trafficked into prostitution in Italy, said she had been removed from a reception centre in Isola di Capo Rizzuto, in Calabria. “When the police came to tell us that we couldn’t stay there any more, I couldn’t believe my ears,” she said. “They took all of our belongings and escorted us out. There was a young girl in our group. This is outrageous. I have a legal permit to stay. And soon I may not have a roof over my head. I’m really frightened.” Father Enzo Volpe, a Salesian priest in Palermo who has been providing assistance to Nigerian women for seven years, says that the clearing of reception centres is likely to increase the risk of further trafficking and exploitation. “Leaving these girls in the street, victims of sex trafficking, is not only inhumane, it also means facilitating the work of criminal organisations,” he said. “With no protection, these girls risk becoming easy prey.”Gigi Wu, a 36-year-old hiker and social media personality, recently died of hypothermia while trekking in Yushan national park in Taiwan. Wu fell down a ravine and alerted friends to her situation with her satellite phone, informing them she was badly injured. Emergency services tried to rescue her, but didn’t get there in time. There is nothing funny about someone dying in pain and alone. However, from the way much of the media covered the story you would be forgiven for thinking Wu’s death was a hilarious parable about the dangers of selfie culture. Wu, you see, was known by fans of her Facebook page as the “Bikini Hiker” because she used to change into a bikini at the top of a mountain and take a selfie. Let me emphasise that again: she only posed in a bikini briefly at the summit. She was an experienced hiker who would always trek in proper gear. When she died, she was fully clothed; bikinis had absolutely nothing to do with her death. However, always eager to shame a woman’s clothing, a slew of misleading headlines gave the impression she had died because she was inappropriately dressed and desperate for online attention. Newsweek, for example, announced: “‘Bikini hiker’ who posed on top of mountains in swimwear freezes to death.” The Daily Mail used seven photos of Wu in bikinis to illustrate its story, along with condescending captions about the “clear risks of climbing in inappropriate gear”. Coverage like this spurred a stream of judgmental comments on social media. Wu was a young woman who had a horrible accident and died. As if that wasn’t enough, she was turned into clickbait and shamed. She deserved so much better.Confused by the latest developments in the UK’s fraught departure from the European Union? Here’s your no-frills primer to what’s going on in Brexit – and what might happen next. Two-and-a-half years and a fraught series of negotiations after the UK voted to leave the EU, the two parties finally managed to sign their two-part divorce deal late last year. The first part of this is the 585-page withdrawal agreement covering the rights of EU citizens in the UK and British nationals on the continent, the sum Britain must pay the bloc for past commitments, and a mechanism (the “backstop”) to avoid customs and other border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The second part is a much shorter political declaration on the shape they would like their future trading relations to take, which is vaguely worded enough to allow for almost any outcome, from a close Norway-style relationship to a more distant free trade arrangement like the EU has signed with Canada. In theory, this whole package must now be approved by the British parliament so the necessary legislation can be passed to allow the UK to formally leave the EU as planned at the end of the two-year article 50 exit process on 29 March. Britain would then enter a 20-month transition period, during which nothing much will change and the future relationship will be negotiated, before finally stepping out into the big, wide world in December 2020 (or a bit later, depending on how long it takes to do the trade deal). Essentially because the withdrawal agreement – and particularly the backstop, which will come into force if the detailed terms of the future trading relationship do not manage to avoid that hard Irish border – does not have a majority in parliament. MPs in favour of Brexit fear it could leave Britain a perpetual Brussels “rule-taker”, potentially trapped in the EU’s regulatory orbit forever. Those opposed to Brexit say the deal risks leaving the country economically weakened, with no say in EU rule-making, and worse off all round than staying in the EU. The opposition Labour party rejects the deal, as do a large number of Conservative hardline Brexiters. The Democratic Unionist party, on which the government relies for its majority, also object, leaving the government facing a crushing defeat in the House of Commons. That is why Theresa May, the prime minister, pulled the Commons vote on the agreement that was planned pre-Christmas, rescheduling it for 15 January in the hope she could persuade the EU to come up with concessions or guarantees that would win her opponents (or enough of them) over. Good question. The EU hasn’t budged (it can’t, to any great extent: the agreement is legally binding, approved by 27 countries, and will not be reopened), and it is hard to see what supplementary assurances it could offer that would satisfy the Brexiters. Parliamentary resistance has not weakened, and the government has been reduced to trying to cut side-deals – in the form of amendments to the deal – with various different interest groups to try and peel off some of the objectors. Few observers think this tactic will work. In the meantime, the prime minister’s opponents in the Commons are waging a procedural guerilla war, tabling – and winning – amendments aimed at wresting more and more power over the process from the government and giving it to MPs instead, particularly if a no-deal Brexit looks likely. The problem is that while there is no clear majority for May’s deal, there is no clear majority for anything else either: not for a second referendum, nor a fresh election (Labour’s objective), or no deal (which almost all economist and business groups say would be a catastrophe), or a mooted “Norway-plus”, single-market style deal. And the clock is ticking. Assuming May is defeated on 15 January, many think it increasingly likely that the government may have to ask the EU27 for an extension to the two-year article 50 deadline to allow it – or more accurately, given the current mood, parliament – to look again at the existing deal, or try to develop an alternative Brexit approach it can agree on. Brexit, in other words, is far from over yet.Day and night, through crackling loudspeakers, the announcements ring out. “It is Babu speaking,” says a shrill voice. “I have lost my wallet and brother. Please come here the moment you hear this.” “Lal Ram is here,” a woman says a few times. “Come and collect him from the yellow tower.” “Whoever has taken my trousers, that were drying on my car,” booms a voice in Bengali. “At least return the car keys from the pocket. You can keep the trousers.” It is the first day of the largest human gathering ever. An estimated 15 million Hindus have come together at the convergence of the Ganges and Yamuna – two holy rivers in north India. Up to 10 times that many – more than the population of Russia – could bathe in the waters by the end of the festival in March. Children step between thickets of adult legs. Older pilgrims walk hunched over, eyes fixed to the ground. They and millions of others will be carried along in vast human waves to the water. Hundreds of thousands will get lost on the way. “We calculated last time we had 225,000 missing people,” says Devesh Chaturvedi, the head of the team that organised the last Kumbh Mela in the city, in 2013. High above the festival grounds, a pop-up city of tents and dusty roads about two-thirds the size of Manhattan, two giant yellow balloons hover. They mark the two lost-and-found centres that have become operational so far. By mid-morning, one centre is already heaving with lost men, women and children. “After taking a dip I felt sick and couldn’t get back to my group,” says an older man named Papon. He was found wandering in the crowd, freezing and in his underwear. “I’m wearing someone else’s clothes now,” he says, pulling a blanket around himself. “For the last 24 hours I haven’t eaten,” says Shripath, burying her head in a green shawl. Barely able to walk, she was put on the back of a motorbike the previous day by her brother. He said he would meet her closer to the river, but they lost each other. She knows the name of her village, but not which state or district it is in, and does not know any of her family’s phone numbers. She has been lost before at another festival in the mountains of Uttarakhand. “I wish I had never come,” she says. “Just take me back to my village. My grandchildren are there.” Twins who become separated at the Kumbh Mela and rediscover each other decades later was once a stock Bollywood storyline. Folks tales abound of heartless families taking burdensome older relatives to the festival and abandoning them there. In reality, most of the lost are found. This year the operation has gone digital, including an app with live updates of every new registered missing person. “The biggest challenge we face are the people,” says Mamta Tamboli, a manager with the IT firm running the lost-and-found system. India has 22 official languages and an estimated 720 dialects. Most who attend the Kumbh Mela hail from small villages they might rarely have previously left. New India, with its sleek software solutions, keeps crashing up against the old. “Around 90% [of the people who get lost] are illiterate,” says Tamboli. “They don’t know their mobile numbers, their district’s name. We have to try to understand, what are they saying? What language are they speaking?” Prasanna Uguonkar, who oversees the centre, says most people will spend only a few hours there. “Our experience is that we will locate [the families on] 70% on that day, within weeks it’s about 90%, and by the end of the Kumbh Mela around 99%,” he says. Those who are never reunited or go missing permanently may be mentally ill or could have chosen to run away, he says. Others go missing for even darker reasons. “We have studies now that show at large events the risk of trafficking increases,” says Dhananjay Tingal, from the child’s rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan, which is working at the festival. No data has been collected, but he knows from experience at other Hindu fairs that traffickers see the events as opportunities. “You see the large number of children moving around the area, or working with their parents,” he says. “In a crowd moving like that, a child who falls even five paces behind cannot be seen.” Uguonkar says his team is aware of the risks. He recounts a story of a boy who was lost at another festival he worked at. A man claiming to be his uncle arrived at the centre to collect him. “An assistant asked the boy: ‘Do you know this man? Do you recognise him?’” he says. The child hesitated. “So we said no, we aren’t handing over.” By the end of the first day, all who were in the lost-and-found centre in the morning had been reunited with their families, except for Shripath and another older woman beside her. In a few hours, they will be handed over to an organisation for destitute women. “Nobody is coming to pick us up,” Shripath says. “I’ve been crying so much I can’t open my eyes. Just put me on a train and I’ll get home myself.” Additional reporting by Kakoli Bhattacharya in PrayagrajThirty years ago, the Observer Magazine asked its readers to nominate the British buildings they loved or hated the most (11 June 1989, ‘The best and worst buildings in Britain’). ‘One man’s Mies is another man’s Poulson’ was the rather brilliant concession that such an exercise was, of course, highly subjective. The poll reflected the general architectural conservatism of the UK – ‘old equals good and new equals bad’. The clear favourite was Durham Cathedral: ‘The great Norman resting place of Cuthbert and Bede in its spectacular high loop above the Wear.’ The National Theatre in London was voted the worst: ‘It looks like a warehouse for tinned food.’ But even some revered older buildings came in for criticism: St Paul’s is ‘a snail, slithering across the city’; Buckingham Palace is ‘like an early unsuccessful timeshare’. The fact that the focus was almost entirely on exteriors of buildings surely owed something to the Prince of Wales, who made his infamous ‘monstrous carbuncle’ speech in 1984 and who compared the National Theatre to a nuclear power station. Max Hutchinson, Riba president-elect at the time, said the prince was ‘having an enormous influence on the public perception of architecture, but not on its understanding’. Quite a lot of the buildings didn’t fare so well in the subsequent years: the Arndale Centre in Manchester (third most hated) was blown up by the IRA in 1996; the Glasgow School of Art (10th best) has been hit by two devastating fires; the brutalist Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth was demolished in 2004; and the postmodernist Observer building was demolished in 2014. ‘An architectural lie, cold, lifeless, rotten, a fake, phoney, an indication of cowardice, pathetic mock classical mess’ were some of the readers’ damning descriptions of the latter. It was somehow apt that the building – with its Chippendale broken pediment and barcode facade – became the headquarters for the QVC shopping channel – a fate worse than demolition.On Friday, the New York Times released a bombshell report which said the FBI reacted to Donald Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey in May 2017 by opening an investigation into the president’s ties with Russia. On Saturday, on Twitter, Trump reacted with familiar anger and abuse. Also true to form, Comey was more arch. “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” he wrote, adding an attribution: “FDR.” “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” — FDR According to practice firmly established in the age of government and scandal by tweet, journalists raced to check whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt actually said those words. The answer was that he did – or some of them. According to records made available online by the Franklin D Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, Roosevelt made the remark on the campaign trail, in a speech in Portland, Oregon, on 21 September 1932. “My friends,” he said, “judge me by the enemies I have made.” The man who would become the 32nd president was referring to the owners of power utilities whose actions he deemed to be against the interests of the American people. The transcript records that his remark was greeted with: “Cheers, prolonged applause.” On Saturday, thanks to the miracles of Google, it also quickly became clear that Comey was by no means the first public figure to have reached for – and slightly misquoted – FDR’s Portland speech. "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt In November 2012, back when he was merely a property mogul, reality TV star and propagator of racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, about whose recent re-election he was decidedly cross, Trump tweeted the line himself.Jeremy Corbyn has offered no encouragement to supporters of a second EU referendum after he called for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government and an immediate general election. The Labour leader did not refer to a second referendum in his two Brexit speeches on Tuesday evening, and risked antagonising the party’s pro-remain wing, some of whom want him to back another poll by the end of the week. In his first, longer speech at the end of the full Brexit debate, Corbyn said: “Labour believes that a general election would be the best outcome for the country if this deal is rejected tonight.” He argued that despite differences of opinion over Brexit, membership of the European Union was not the most important issue facing the country. “We need to keep in mind that the vast majority of people in our country don’t think of themselves as remainers or leavers,” he said. “Whether they voted leave or remain two and a half years ago, they are concerned about their future.” One shadow cabinet member who supports a second referendum said they believed that opposition to a second referendum was hardening among Corbyn’s allies, with senior figures preparing to resist pressure to push for one. However, Chuka Umunna, a leading campaigner for a second referendum, said Corbyn “would face increasing demands to hold a people’s vote by the end of the week”, assuming May won Wednesday’s confidence vote as expected. An estimated 72% of party members want a second referendum, according to polling released at the turn of the year by the Economic and Social Research Council, and 89% of those surveyed think it was wrong for the UK to leave the EU. Michael Chessum, a Corbyn supporter and spokesman for leftwing pro-EU pressure group Another Europe is Possible, said that Labour members would be pleased that Corbyn had tabled an immediate vote of no confidence, arguing that it represented “a great moment of unity for the next 24 hours”. Another Europe is Possible is already mobilising Labour members in support of a second referendum. Chessum argued that it was important that the leadership moved “sooner rather than later to a people’s vote” and warned it could become a wedge issue if there was a divergence between the perceived position of the leadership and the membership over this issue. There have also been divisions among Labour MPs who have been critical of Corbyn, with several senior figures, such as Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn, preferring to support Tory MP Nick Boles’ bill that would allow parliament to take control of the Brexit process. Cooper called on May to work with all MPs to find a solution to the impasse. She tweeted: “PM says she now will listen and work cross party but she had 30 months to do that and she repeatedly refused. She cannot just carry on as if nothing has changed.” Benn, the chair of the Brexit select committee, said: “The prime minister’s Brexit agreement has been defeated by a majority of 230. Astonishing and unprecedented. The big question now is this. Will she listen?” The party has a limited amount of time to consider its position because May has to table a fresh Brexit motion on Monday, with a series of amendments submitted by MPs to come in the days after. The People’s Vote campaign has been considering whether to submit an amendment calling for a second referendum at that point. It would probably be put down in the name of the Conservative backbencher Sarah Wollaston. However, the Labour leadership’s hostility to the idea is so strong that the campaign has been considering a further delay. Insiders have said they wanted the second referendum option to be “the last one standing” after all other alternatives have been exhausted. Corbyn’s spokesman said after the vote that “a motion of no confidence can happen more than once”, suggesting the party could try for some time to force a general election. The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, was expected to listen closely to views within the parliamentary party in the coming days in recognition of the wide range of opinions. A drop-in session held on Monday with 30 to 40 Labour MPs saw “every shade of opinion expressed”, according to one of those present. The party’s Brexit policy, signed off at its annual conference in September, said all options, including a second referendum, would be considered if Labour could not secure a general election. But the party’s spokesman said Labour “respects the result of the referendum in 2016, which is why we supported the triggering of article 50”. Labour insiders said one other option under consideration was an alternative Brexit deal, in which the UK remained inside the customs union with a say on future trade deals and enhanced workers rights and protections, although few believe this is realistic.Britain’s manufacturers ramped up their stockpiling efforts last month in preparation for a potential no-deal Brexit in less than 90 days’ time, with factory output rising to the highest level in six months. According to the latest snapshot survey from IHS Markit and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, growing concerns about Brexit disruption from border hold-ups after 29 March led more businesses to build up stocks in December. Factories stockpiled raw materials used in production processes, as well as finished goods, at one of the fastest rates on record, according to the gauge of activity that is closely watched by the Bank of England and the Treasury for early warning signs from the British economy. The IHS Markit/Cips manufacturing purchasing managers’ index rose to 54.2 in December from 53.6 in November, beating all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists, on a scale where a reading above 50 indicates economic growth. In a sign of mounting stress for the British economy as the impasse in Westminster over Brexit continues, the stockpiling of finished goods increased at the second-fastest rate since 1992. The pound’s weakness also helped support export orders, with growth from the US, Europe, China, India, Brazil and Africa. The latest snapshot raises the prospect that Brexit uncertainty may perversely benefit the economy in the short-term by prompting companies to raise their activity levels to prepare for a no-deal scenario. The Bank has previously warned the majority of businesses in Britain have done little to prepare for a no-deal scenario, while the government has started to tell more companies to make preparations as it steps up its own plans. Economists, however, warned the boost is likely to only be temporary. Disruption after 29 March could curtail activity, while the removal of Brexit risks could lead businesses to run down their stockpiled goods rather than placing new orders. Rob Dobson, a director at IHS Markit, said the trend in production volumes remained lacklustre despite the stock-building. “Although manufacturers forecast growth over the coming year, confidence remains at a low ebb,” he said.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took questions while cooking mac and cheese. Elizabeth Warren chatted about her presidential bid while sipping a cold one. And on Thursday morning, Beto O’Rourke alked a out or-er olicy while si-ing in a en-is air. That’s “talked about border policy while sitting in a dentist’s chair”, for those of you unfamiliar with linguistic challenges of carrying on a conversation with a dental hygienist’s hands in your mouth. Two years after Twitter dominated a US presidential election, Instagram appears poised to become the go-to platform for politicians seeking to connect with voters. Beto is Instagramming his dental cleaning pic.twitter.com/BWyncSW3OK Where Twitter offers politicians a deep well of outrage just waiting to be tapped, Instagram’s milieu is the illusion of intimacy. That accessibility (“Elected representatives, they’re just like us”) has clearly worked for digital natives such as Ocasio-Cortez and O’Rourke. And with the slate of candidates to challenge Donald Trump in 2020 just beginning to take shape, it may only be a matter of time before we are subjected to Insta-stories of Cory Booker taking out the trash, Kamala Harris tackling her laundry, and Bernie Sanders clipping his toenails. um alexandria ocasio-cortez is literally making instant pot mac n cheese on instagram live and talking about politics and listening to janelle monae on a friday night. this is the representation i am here for!!!!!!! @ocasio2018 never change pic.twitter.com/A3AcrXbTC3 It may pose a problem for Instagram, however, which has a reputation as a respite from the fake news and partisan bickering that dominates the news feeds of its parent company, Facebook. The recent departure of Instagram’s founders has only increased anticipation that Facebook will now, finally, actually ruin Instagram. The platform’s political potency was certainly apparent to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Russian troll farm charged with interfering in the 2016 election. Analyses of its online propaganda campaign released by the US Senate intelligence committee in December revealed that propaganda posts on Instagram received more than twice as many engagements as IRA posts on Facebook. “Instagram was perhaps the most effective platform for the Internet Research Agency,” stated the report by New Knowledge, an American cybersecurity firm. Democrats appear to have learned their lesson: if you ant eat em, oin em.It was a chastening lesson for any woman tempted to join the cut and thrust of rightwing populism. After Corinna Miazga was elected to the German parliament in 2017 for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, a male colleague suggested she would be better suited to being a pole dancer than an MP. Miazga did not let it rest, getting her own back by telling a party conference of the lewd intervention by fellow MP Petr Bystron. “An ‘Argh’ went up in the audience,” she recalls. “No one could quite believe I’d dared to reveal this. Many people in the AfD were subsequently angry at me. They said: ‘We know you’re cross, but by bringing this into the public arena, you’ll encourage people to say we have a male-female problem in the party.’” A surge in rightwing populism across Europe over the past 20 years has been largely male-dominated – sometimes characterised as angry white men voting for angry white men. But this is changing. Angry white women are emerging as an important constituency, too. At least half a dozen women lead rightwing, populist European parties, such as Alice Weidel, of the AfD, and Giorgia Meloni, of the Brothers of Italy. They follow the leads set by Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (formerly Front National) and, before her, Pia Kjærsgaard, co-founder of the rampantly anti-immigration Danish People’s party, and Norway’s finance minister, Siv Jensen, leader of the country’s similarly anti-immigration Progress party. A new generation of women aged 20 to 50 are in parliament or local government in countries including Germany, France and Italy, following electoral breakthroughs by rightwing populists. Women are taking to the streets, too. Far-right protests in the UK still tend to be overwhelmingly male, but in continental Europe this is changing. At protest marches in the eastern German city of Chemnitz last year (following gatherings prompted by the stabbing of a local man, allegedly by two immigrants), the neo-Nazi Pegida group had plenty of women in the rank and file. It was similar at a rally last year of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. In France, large numbers of women have taken to the streets as part of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) anti-government movement, which has attracted people from across the political spectrum from left to far-right, some of whom vote Le Pen, and whose slogans often echo the disillusioned anti-elitism of populism. “There is evidence the gender gap is shrinking in some countries, although it clearly hasn’t disappeared everywhere,” says Eelco Harteveld of the University of Amsterdam. This raises the question: what do women see in nationalist populism that was once so dominated by patriarchal ideology? What motivates women to elect, support and even stand for parties and movements that shrink away from modern-day feminism? Conversations with dozens of European women – voters, MPs and academics – suggest several elements at play. Many working-class women feel just as “left behind” as their male counterparts. The key predictor of a radical-right vote is the level of a person’s education. Harteveld says that although the precarious manual jobs often associated with far-right voters are still largely male preserves, there is also precarious work in the service sector – where women are more numerous. Political scientists in France have pointed to the disillusionment of retail staff and supermarket cashiers as a case in point. “The elite in power hasn’t got a clue what life is like for real people, they’re totally cut off,” says Catherine, a cashier at a budget supermarket north-east of Paris, who has demonstrated with the gilets jaunes. Now in her mid-30s, she has been working on supermarket tills since she left school, and votes for Le Pen. “We can’t make ends meet on low salaries. I’m overdrawn before the end of each month, living on credit, barely able to afford the petrol to get to work or drive my three children where they need to go. We’ve never tried Le Pen in power, so why not give her a chance?” she says. In Italy, the far right has been particularly adept at winning over women who used to vote for the left. “The left represented by the Democratic party in recent years betrayed leftwing voters and leftwing ideals,” says Gianna Gambaccini, a neurologist who became a council member for Matteo Salvini’s far-right Northern League in Pisa last June. But not every female populist sympathiser is from marginalised corners of society. Probably the most important factor in rightwing populism among women is the same as it is for men: attitudes to immigration and Islam. “Top of the list is always a person’s view of immigration,” Harteveld says. Rightwing populist parties are specifically targeting women with a controversial and contested message that immigration, particularly from Muslim countries, brings with it misogynistic cultures that threaten women’s freedom in Europe – from catcalling women in short skirts to sexual assault. As Le Pen put it: “I am scared that the migrant crisis signals the beginning of the end of women’s rights.” A spate of sexual assaults blamed on groups of immigrant men in Cologne and Hamburg on New Year’s Eve at the end of 2015 provided ammunition for the far right to argue that immigrants were a physical threat, even though government studies have found that the vast majority of attacks on German women – including domestic violence – are perpetrated by German men. “I believe we are the only party in Germany who is really fighting for women’s rights, because we point out we’re in danger of losing the freedoms and rights of women for which we’ve fought for centuries,” says the AfD MP Nicole Höchst. Höchst says she is equally concerned for Muslim women living in Germany, many of whom strive to be educated and find a place in German society, “only to find that in the summer holidays they’re going to be married off to a husband they’ve never met in the country their families originated from”. Ebba Hermansson, 22, the youngest MP in the Swedish parliament, is gender-equality spokeswoman for the anti-immigration, nationalist Sweden Democrats. She says the issue of keeping women “safe from sexual violence” is one of her main concerns. “If you come from a country where women are not worth as much as men, or women don’t have the right to live their lives as they want, when you come [to Sweden] there’s a shock,” she says. The party’s political opponents have criticised any conflation of crime statistics with immigration. Leaders such as Le Pen are playing a double game. They reject the term “feminism” because they see it as an instrument of the left, and recoil from equality issues such as gender quotas in politics. Yet they co-opt the notion of “women’s rights”when it suits, chiefly as a pretext to attack what they claim is mass immigration by socially conservative men. Every woman must be protected in their right “to wear shorts or a miniskirt”, Le Pen has argued. “These are strong women leaders, but they step back from feminism,” says Susi Meret of Denmark’s Aalborg University. One young Italian mayor, Susanna Ceccardi of the male-dominated Northern League, even insists on being called “sindaco”, the masculine word for “mayor”, as opposed to “sindaca”. These parties believe that “leftwing feminism turns a blind eye to the consequences of immigration,” says Ann-Cathrine Jungar, from Sweden’s Södertörn University. Yet radical-right politicians in Europe know that the stigma and toxic image of a party affects whether female voters choose it. Some have sought to modernise or soften their image in response. Le Pen, who promotes herself as a twice-divorced single mother, has sought to tone down her party’s anti-abortion stance, move away from the traditional view of women as childbearers and homemakers, and appeal to gay voters. Jensen, who has warned about the “sneaking Islamisation” of Norwegian society, last year controversially won a “gay best friend” award given out by LGBT activists. The AfD likes to popularise an idealised vision of the nuclear family, with father at work and mother raising children. Miazga speaks of a nostalgia for the deutschmark, for economic stability, social order and the “traditional family”. “I value the traditional family, a sensible time when children were cared for,” she says. “I wish – and maybe this is a funny, romantic feeling – that we could get back to the Germany of the 1990s.” Yet the party’s promotion of the nuclear family is often at odds with the reality of leading women in the AfD. Weidel, for example, is a gay woman bringing up two children with her partner. With just four months to go until European elections that will pick a parliament to sit until 2024, the female vote will be crucial to the success of rightwing populists seeking to build on the 50-odd MEPs they have in the 751-seat chamber. Le Pen’s party, currently polling level with Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche, hopes to harness the fury unleashed by the gilets jaunes movement – and court the high number of working-class women who have taken to the streets. These include single mothers and working mothers on low incomes. In Italy, Meloni, has already been savvier at appealing to other women. “She attracts more women as she seems to be the only one making the battle for women,” says Letizia Giorgianni, who voted for the party last year. In Germany, the AfD – which has one of the biggest gender gaps on the European far-right – appears to be only just waking up to the fact that they might have to do things differently to attract female voters. Only about 13% of the AfD’s 30,000 party members are women. In parliament it has 10 female MPs – and 82 male. Esther Lehnert, a rightwing-populism expert from Berlin’s Alice Salomon University, says the party remains “steeped in chauvinism and sexism. It revels in this sort of leery sexist blokeism.” She recalls some of the AfD’s more controversial election posters, including one showing five naked female behinds, accompanied by the slogan: “For diversity”. Hochst Höchst is trying to change things. “People are repeatedly asking me why the AfD wants women to go back to the hearth,” says the single mother of four. “It’s simply not true. What we do advocate is that women should have the choice to stay at home if they want to, or to work.” The newly founded group FridA, or Frauen in der AfD (Women in the AfD), formed in early November, is Höchst’s answer to the charge that the party has not so far done enough to make itself welcoming to female newcomers. “Before I joined the party, there were countless times I was shopping at the market in my hometown and I didn’t approach the AfD information point, because there were only men there. As soon as there were women, I approached them instinctively,” she says. Lehnert says the future of the party may depend on whether it increases female support. “On a certain level, many people in the AfD recognise that they have to change and attract more women if they’re to have a chance to become an established ‘people’s party’. At the same time, I believe that these chauvinistic habits are so deep-set that I can’t see them arranging themselves differently. Typically, when women start to take up too much space in rightwing populist parties, they will at some point be put back in their place.” Both Miazga and Höchst see themselves as tough-skinned lone warriors, who regularly work 18 hour days. Both have received threats, with Höchst saying that her house is often smeared with offensive graffiti. Both were once top sportswomen and argue this has helped them to succeed in the AfD. “I could kill every man in the party,” said Höchst, who practices karate. But, she adds quickly: “Of course, I don’t want to.” Miazga’s favourite phrase when talking about the male-female divide in the party is to joke: “It takes just 10 of us to keep the 82 men in check”.Of all the many unanswered questions, there is one that leaps out in particular: why, 15 minutes before he was due to start the first day of his trial for multiple child-abuse charges, was the former football coach Kit Carson driving on a country road 45 miles from where he was supposed to be? The difficult truth is that his alleged victims may never get the answers they seek about why, rather than taking his place in the dock at Peterborough crown court, he was behind the wheel of his red Mazda on the A1303 between Cambridge and Newmarket and, for reasons as yet unexplained, driving in completely the wrong direction. Carson was supposed to be facing a trial for sexual offences against 11 boys over a 31-year period and allegedly using his position within football as a veil for his crimes. Instead he never made it to the court and at 9.45am on Monday, with the jury waiting to be sworn in, his car left the road and hit a tree. No apparent skid marks, according to the journalists and photographers who have visited that straight stretch of road, but tyre tracks showing he had travelled some distance over the grass verge in a straight line. Carson was pronounced dead at the scene. For now, all that can be said is that it is an incredible coincidence of timing. Incredible coincidences do happen, but this one has clearly been very hard for some people to accept. Freedom From Abuse, one of the organisations tackling child abuse, has used its Twitter account to describe Carson as a coward and it is certainly true that some of the people who were due to give evidence against their former coach are asking themselves whether it was a genuine accident or if there was something more to it. Of course they are. And, if you were in their shoes, wouldn’t you? As you can imagine, that does not make it a particularly easy subject to write about and, for the time being, it seems to me that the best policy is to wait for the post-mortem and try not to jump to conclusions, when it will be for the coroner to decide what happened on that quiet stretch of road near Bottisham, five miles out of Cambridge. One theory being investigated by detectives is that Carson, who was 75, had mixed up the date of his trial and believed it was starting on Wednesday. Indeed, he took a call from the court asking why he was not there and, in response, gave the impression he was on his way. Could it be that he was confused, agitated and under considerable stress and all that played a part in what then occurred? It still leaves a significant question about the direction he was travelling – directly east when Peterborough, from where he lived in Cambridge, was 40 miles north-west – but it is not my place to pre-judge an inquest, just as it would be wrong to assume a guilty verdict from the trial. Carson’s name will remain synonymous with football’s abuse scandal but he died, in the eyes of the law, an innocent man, with nothing ever proven. All of which must be shattering for the former players who had reported Carson on the back of the “tidal wave,” to quote the Football Association chairman, Greg Clarke, caused by Andy Woodward waiving his anonymity in November 2016 to expose the Barry Bennell scandal. The police have spent two years building their case against Carson and the charges took in offences from as far apart as an alleged indecent assault in 1978 to a count of inciting a 13-year-old boy into sexual activity in 2009. Carson worked as a youth developer at Norwich, Peterborough, Cambridge United and Histon FC, as well as scouting for Chelsea and running his own development centre, and it needs only a cursory look at his list of discoveries within the sport to realise why he was once regarded among the best in the business. At Norwich, the players he brought through included Craig Bellamy, Ruel Fox, Chris Sutton, Tim Sherwood and Danny Mills. For Peterborough, there was Matthew Etherington and Simon Davies and the story about how the owner, Peter Boizot, decided to buy the club because he was so impressed by the conduct of Carson’s players at a fundraising event. Carson was so highly regarded in the Barry Fry regime he had a 10-year contract and, speaking to FourFourTwo in October 1999, said he had turned down offers from three top-division clubs because “I couldn’t shit on Barry, if you will excuse the language”. Tottenham were one. Chelsea did eventually recruit him, as a regional scouting coordinator for East Anglia, and Carson also had strong links to youth football in Finland and Denmark. He took hundreds of players on tours abroad and had a website claiming: “I probably know more about European grassroots soccer than almost any other youth developer in England, having travelled to European nations with soccer teams well over 500 times.” The website had testimonies not only from Bellamy and Etherington but also Dan Ashworth, until recently the FA’s technical director. Ashworth had been Carson’s assistant at Peterborough and Cambridge and known him since being on the books of Norwich, aged 12. Against that, the case around Carson told of a culture where young footballers were routinely made to strip naked for exercise and body inspections, where he watched boys shower and sometimes woke them in the middle of night to perform this routine. Others have reported being instructed to wrestle in muddy puddles wearing just their underwear, or being told to pair off, remove their clothes, and massage each other with oil. Carson had always denied the allegations and was expected to take the line of defence that it was important to see the boys naked to check their muscular development. To which the next question might reasonably have been: was it necessary for them to remove their pants, too? He was charged with 12 offences, all relating to boys under 16, from incidents mainly in Cambridgeshire. One, however, allegedly took place at a hotel in the north-west. Three were at Peterborough’s training ground. Another was in the grounds of a prison and the overall picture is troubling, to say the least, when I have also seen testimony from the FA’s independent inquiry relating to the close links between Carson, Bennell and at least one of football’s other career paedophiles. Carson was prominently involved in the Canary Cup, a junior tournament held annually in Great Yarmouth, where Bennell and the now-deceased Frank Roper used to molest boys. My colleague Steven Morris has been on top of this story since first revealing that Carson was under investigation and has also spoken to a number of players, past and present, who refuse to believe the allegations against their former coach. Ben Coker, who played at Cambridge and is now at Southend, was one. Shortly before Carson’s arrest in January 2017 Coker said the complainants were “jumping on the bandwagon” and that he had been in contact with Carson to offer support. “I don’t know why they’re doing this,” he said. “It makes me angry.” Except I can also remember the “Friends of Barry Bennell” fund that was set up after the first boy came forward, in 1994, to say he had been raped by the former Crewe and Manchester City coach. People were angry then, too. So angry, indeed, that many wrote to court accusing the boy, aged 13, of making it up, of sour grapes and worse because, they said, he was bitter about the fact he was not good enough to make it as a professional footballer. Bennell’s friends and sympathisers raised thousands of pounds for the monster who is now serving a 31-year prison sentence. That is the thing about the people who use football as a means to prey on children: they are clever, they hide their crimes well, they know popularity is a shield and their roles automatically puts them in a position of strength, holding the dreams of those youngsters. Players, coaches, friends, parents and colleagues all get taken in. And if there is one thing I have learned during the last few years investigating the various offenders, it is that they are bloody good at what they do. And Kit Carson? None of us can claim to know whether he was a calculated, devious paedophile apart from the 11 footballers, now in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, who were willing, one by one, to stand up in front of a jury, face an interrogation from the defence barrister and go through the graphic details of what they allege their old coach did to them. One of the tragedies here is that what happened on the A1303 last Monday means that will always be the case. Perhaps you remember the episode of Father Ted when word gets around that he has a habit of standing at his front window and making the kind of straight-armed salute that never looks good in any circumstances – but particularly for a man of the cloth. All rather unfortunate this story, featuring the kind of rotten luck that apparently seems to inflict some of our Premier League footballers. It turned out there was a perfectly square bit of dirt on the window of Craggy Island’s parochial house. Father Ted just happened to be placed directly behind it, creating the impression he had grown a Hitler-style moustache, as he held up his arm to wave at some visitors. You can probably imagine the rest. Some people clearly have no luck and I certainly had to sympathise with Wayne Hennessey’s incredible misfortune after that photograph on Max Meyer’s Instagram account of his Crystal Palace teammates out for a meal, with the goalkeeper striking a rather unexpected pose from the back of the room. “Yesterday evening I had a meal with my teammates and we had a group photograph,” Hennessey duly explained. “I waved and shouted at the person taking the picture to get on with it and at the same time put my hand over my mouth to make the sound carry. It’s been brought to my attention that frozen in a moment by the camera this looks like I am making a completely inappropriate type of salute. I can assure everyone I would never ever do that.” Well, glad that one’s cleared up and what terribly bad luck to be in that position, holding up your arm Nazi-style, the other hand over your top lip, while shouting something at a bloke who just happens to be from Germany. “I believe him totally,” says Roy Hodgson, the Palace manager. “I have no reason to disbelieve it.” Of course you do, Roy, of course you do. Frank Lampard was clearly very upset, with some justification, about the discovery of a Leeds employee hiding in the bushes to spy on Derby’s training before the teams played each other at Elland Road on Friday. But don’t think it is only Marcelo Bielsa, the Leeds manager, who would pull such a stunt. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph in 2011, André Villas-Boas said he would regularly visit opposition training grounds, “often incognito,” for spying missions as part of José Mourinho’s backroom staff at Chelsea. A 3-0 win against Newcastle in November 2005 was referenced, when Villas‑Boas provided Chelsea with a dossier containing 24 tactical graphics. Lampard is entitled to be upset with Bielsa – but maybe he should consider who was wearing the No 8 shirt in Chelsea’s midfield that day.A church service that has been performed continuously for 96 days has come to an end after the Dutch government agreed to pardon a family the pastors were shielding from deportation as part of a wider amnesty. Sasun Tamrazyan, his wife Anousche and their children Hayarpi, 21, Warduhi, 19, and Seyran, 15, have been holed up in the Bethel church in The Hague since October, relying on a medieval law that says immigration authorities cannot enter while a religious service is being performed. The family, who have been in the Netherland for nine years, had claimed their lives would be in danger if they returned to Armenia, where Sasun had been a political activist. But this week the Dutch coalition government announced under pressure from campaigners that they would examine the cases of 700 children and their families who are under the threat of deportation. Residency rights were likely to be granted in 630 of the cases, government officials said. Derk Stegeman, a pastor at the Bethel church, said the Tamrazyan family had been reassured that they would be included among those allowed to stay in the country. Hayarpi Tamrazyan, an econometrics student at Tilburg University, said on leaving the church with her parents and siblings that it was “unreal, it is a relief” to “finally go outside again, walk around”. “The church has become a home,” she said. “We have had sad but also very beautiful moments. The Bethelkerk [Bethel church] is for me now a special building, but I am glad that I can get out of it and can continue to build on my future.” The amnesty was the result of an intense debate within the coalition government over the future of the so-called kinderpardon, a dispensation available to families with children who have lived in the Netherlands for more than five years, but which has been patchily applied. The Dutch government, led by Mark Rutte of the centre right VVD, includes the progressive D66 and two Christian parties, the relatively moderate CDA and the more conservative Christian Union. As part of the agreement, the kinderpardon will be taken off the statute books but the head of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) now has the discretionary authority in such cases rather than a politician. The government also said that only 500 rather than 750 people a year would be taken from refugee camps run by the UN in war zones. Luke Korlaar, head of protection at the the UN refugee agency in the Netherlands, said he was “happy for the children” but expressed his “pity that it is at the expense of refugees that need it”. Theo Hettema, chair of the General Council of the Protestant Church in The Hague, said he was “very grateful for a safe future for hundreds of refugees in the Netherlands” but also expressed his concern about the government’s wider immigration policy.The cockpit voice recorder of the Lion Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea in October, killing 189 people, has been found, an Indonesian official has said. Navy divers used specialised equipment to find the device under eight metres of seabed mud. The Lion Air jet, crashed into waters 30 metres deep. Ridwan Djamaluddin, a deputy maritime minister, told reporters on Monday the National Transportation Safety Committee had informed the ministry about the discovery. He said human remains were also discovered at the seabed location in the waters of Tanjung Karawang on Monday morning. The two-month-old Boeing 737 Max 8 jet operated by the Indonesian budget airline plunged into the sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta on 29 October, killing all on board. The CVR, which records conversations between the pilots, co-pilots and air traffic control, is believed to hold vital clues into the fatal crash. Indonesian aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman said the finding was “crucial” because it would allow investigators to understand “what was going on in the heads of the pilots during the flight”. The pilots of the downed plane had requested to turn back two minutes after taking off for Pangkal Pinang, before losing contact with air traffic control. It is unclear in what condition the black box was found but analyst Soejatman said there were various methods to recover the CVR data. Luhut Pandjaitan, the maritime and fisheries minister, told the Jakarta Post he hoped the discovery would bring more clarity to the investigation. “It’s very good progress. I think the information in the box might make things clear,” he said. The first black box to be recovered, the flight data recorder (FDR), was discovered days after the crash. A preliminary report by Indonesian authorities released in November showed there had been problems with the jet’s airspeed indicator, with the mechanism malfunctioning on the last four flights. In the days before the crash, an angle of attack sensor, which indicates whether a plane is going to stall, was also replaced. While the search for the second black box was resumed on 8 January, Indonesians officials had called off the search for the victims in late November. At the time, 196 body bags containing body parts had been recovered but only 125 victims had been identified, with the condition of the remains complicating the work of the police forensics team. Lion Air launched a multi-million dollar search effort in late December to continue the search for the remaining victims and second black box. The crash – the first of a Boeing 737 Max jet and the worst airline disaster in Indonesia in more than two decades, has also heightened concerns about the safety and maintenance operations of Lion Air – a budget airline that has expanded rapidly across south-east Asia over recent years.Well, there you are, then. Another epic political week has passed in off-brand Westeros, a septic isle from which there is no real escape, only a bloodstained booth where Chris Grayling is offering to sell you a ferry ticket. Every few days I change my mind about what I’d pop in the time capsule to explain to future generations just how inspirational this era was. This week, though, the choice could only be Wednesday’s parliamentary exchange between House of Commons Speaker John Bercow and Tory MP Adam Holloway, which I have lightly edited for space reasons. Holloway: “We’ve ALL noticed in recent months a sticker in your car making derogatory comments about Brexit. NO, THIS IS A SERIOUS POINT. HAVE YOU DRIVEN THAT CAR WITH THE STICKER THERE?” Bercow: “THAT sticker, on the subject of Brexit, HAPPENS to be affixed TO – or in the windscreen OF – MY WIFE’S CAR! YES!” Kill me now. And when you’ve done it, consider that exchange as our Statue of Liberty, and bury it in the sand for Charlton Heston to find at some unspecified point in the future. We are maniacs. We blew it. To watch that photon-weight fight, and indeed all the auto-parodic scenes of parliamentary sovereignty this week, is not to wonder how this country ever managed its many past victories and immense cultural and scientific achievements. It is to wonder how, in a very real sense, it has managed to even get its own pants on and leave the house at all for at least a decade. As for the details of Theresa May’s plan B, it is believed to be a variety of tinned goods and the contact details for Ray Mears I’ve seen Holloway-Bercow five times now, and I believe it is possible to draw a clear and fairly short line between it and a mad-eyed UK finally deploying Trident to kill the third of British sheep that a Defra paper suggests will need to be slaughtered in the event of no deal, in order to maintain market integrity. Until then, in her latest ironicidal gesture, Theresa May wants Bercow to explain himself. The feeling’s mutual. Indeed, Dominic Grieve’s amendment means that when the prime minister’s withdrawal deal is voted down next week, May will have to come to the house to explain her so-called plan B within three working days. I assumed that was about a year in parliamentary time, but it turns out it’s actually the following Monday. However, No 10 says the plan B debate will only be allocated 90 minutes, which feels quite a symbolic stretch of time. It’s difficult to decide on the precise football match to which it will be analogous. But there was a lower league Nigerian game in 2013 in which Akurba FC lost 79-0 to Plateau United Feeders. Seventy-two of those goals were scored in the second half, in case that affects any plan to bring on Grayling at some point. As for the specific details of May’s plan B, it is believed to be a variety of tinned goods and the contact details for Ray Mears. It’s her bad deal or no deal, kids – and no deal is no longer better than a bad deal, even if she told you for way more than a year that it was. Given how well that strategy went, it’s intriguing that May should have spent this week veering between suggesting that no deal was more likely, and suggesting that no Brexit was more likely. She’s good cop AND bad cop. Playing more than one character in a movie is fairly excruciating when Eddie Murphy does it; when a performer of the calibre of May attempts it, it is less watchable than gamma rays. As for her conviction that now is the moment to reach out to Labour leavers, a cool 19 months after her Darwin award-winning election, it is once again only possible to rationalise if you realise that the prime minister has been experiencing reality on a massive tape delay. On these calculations, May will wait until February 2020 to wish the England squad good luck as they head to Russia to kick off their World Cup campaign. For now, she remains the comic character pointing the gun at their own head and warning: “one false move and I’ll shoot” – even as the timer she so foolishly set clicks down to zero. Amid such desperately chaotic scenes, suggestions of a temporary “national unity administration” prompt an involuntary laugh. These feel like suggesting that Mordor might benefit from a couple of months of technocratic government. I suppose so. But things are quite … far gone down there, now? As for that self-styled Frodo, David Cameron, we are still unable to quantify how wrong his plan to destroy the ring has gone, other than to say the Shire is now primarily a vast Orc brothel. In the end, you only needed to watch the news for 15 seconds this week to surmise that most of our political class is not up to the job, and hasn’t been for years. In fact, the very calling of the referendum was an admission of that. We live in a representative democracy. Though it may have been subconscious for Cameron, if he’d been a politician capable of finessing the internal Tory politics of the situation, he wouldn’t have thrown the entire question open to the floor. But he did. He took what he thought would be an easy shortcut to an easy life, and we will all be living with the difficult, long-term implications of it for so many years to come. Cameron remains cocooned in his 25-grand shed, apparently still working on his memoir. What can you say? Other than: would you like me to come over and help you with the ending, dear? Failing that, I hear there’s a winter caretaker job going in a Colorado Rockies hotel – perhaps you’d consider applying and trying to finish it there. • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistKevin Hart, the comedian and actor who stepped down as Oscars host three days after his appointment was confirmed, now seems set to return to the post. In an hour-long interview on Ellen DeGeneres’s chatshow, Hart said he was considering his options following a confused episode in which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reportedly asked him to apologise for past homophobic tweets and standup routines or to step down from the role. Hart stood down, claiming he had already apologised, but then offered an apology anyway. A month on, no new host has been announced. In DeGeneres, an openly gay two-times Oscars host held in huge public affection, Hart has a formidable champion. On the show, sections of which were released by DeGeneres ahead of the full broadcast on Monday, she says she has been in touch with the Academy to back Hart, that she suspects they hope he will return, and that she is “praying for that to happen”. Should Hart return, she promises audiences would see “sophistication, class, hilarity and [Hart] growing as a person”. Interviewer and interviewee concur that the chief problem lies not with Hart but with those who unearthed the tweets in question, from 2008, in the wake of his appointment. Hart describes this as “a malicious attack on my character … an attack to end me”. He continues: “This was to destroy me, to end all partnerships, all brand relationships, all investment opportunities, studio relationships, my production company and the people that work underneath me. “This was to damage the lives that have been invested in me. It’s bigger than just the Oscars, it’s about the individuals that are out there now that are finding success and damaging your ‘celebrity’.” Hart’s homophobic remarks on Twitter included calling someone a “fat faced fag”, comparing a profile picture to a “gay bill board for AIDS” and frequent self-declarations as “no homo”. One 2010 standup routine includes an extended riff in which Hart discusses trying to drum any hint of homosexuality out of his son. Many declared their distaste at Hart’s initial comments and what they saw as a lukewarm show of contrition. Speaking to the Guardian about the incident, Steve McQueen – whose film 12 Years a Slave won the best picture Oscar in 2014 – said he thought Hart’s appointment had been made with an eye on falling telecast viewing figures, “but obviously somebody made a mistake”. On her show, DeGeneres tells Hart that “there are so many haters out there” and urges him to “be the bigger man”. She goes on: “It’s a small group of people being very, very loud. We are a huge group of people who love you and want to see you host the Oscars.” I believe in forgiveness. I believe in second chances. And I believe in @KevinHart4real. pic.twitter.com/oJxfGXhU4P Hart indicates he would be eager to consider returning to what he has previously described as his “dream job” on crusading grounds: “Somebody has to take a stand against the trolls.” Some Twitter users have taken issue with Hart and DeGeneres’s version of events, maintaining that the former’s apology remains half-hearted, and that the latter was speaking out of turn – or even betraying the gay community. (1) First, the people who brought up Kevin Hart's past tweets — like me — were not, as Ellen characterized, "haters." The host of the Oscars had made anti-gay jokes, and LGBT people who love the Oscars were legitimately startled to see just how harsh his words were. It wasn't a… The only thing @KevinHart4real proved by going on Ellen was that he is a terrible actor with zero genuine remorse who didn’t have the decency to address his ignorance. No, they weren’t “haters” who came after you. It was the LGBTQI+ community because we’re sick to shit of it. Ellen’s show is basically the embodiment of respectability politics, so using it as a platform to absolve Kevin Hart on our behalf sounds pretty much on brand. Her sitcom allowed her to do something radical, which she suffered for, & she’s been running away from that ever since. A survey conducted at the end of 2018 by Spotted, a data and research provider focused on the celebrity endorsement space, suggested that the furore had barely dinted Hart’s appeal. The company’s “consumer approval” metric, which measures likability, relatability and trustworthiness among US consumers, measured a nearly 50% rebound following Hart’s apology. More striking was that his initial fall was so negligible: just an 11.55% drop in popularity after the controversy erupted. The Spotted CEO, Janet Comenos, said Hart remained in the top 5% of celebrity talent in terms of consumer approval. “Kevin Hart has an uncanny ability to recover from scandal,” she said. “His ability to quickly rebound is directly correlated to how high he scores, pre-scandal. When a celebrity is so well-liked in the eyes of consumers, just like a mother’s favourite child, they can almost do no wrong.” Hart was booked to appear on Ellen to promote The Upside, a remake of French hit The Intouchables. Hart plays a drifter recently released from prison who becomes the carer of a paralysed billionaire (played by Bryan Cranston).Australia’s Asian Cup dreams were crushed at the Hazza bin Zayed stadium, as a resolute United Arab Emirates condemned the Socceroos to a 1-0 defeat in Al Ain. Milos Degenek’s under-hit back-pass was the unfortunate deciding moment in the game, with Ali Mabkhout latching onto it before rounding Mat Ryan and finishing into an empty net. Degenek’s error proved decisive, but it seems unfair to focus on one player in such an abject team performance. This match felt like a return to the scene of the crime. It occurred in the same stadium as the group stage lost to Jordan. It was a strangely anti-climactic ending to a strange Asian Cup campaign, plagued by an attack unable to put organised defences under sustained pressure. Socceroos manager Graham Arnold had spoken about this tournament being part of a ‘four-year plan’, but that will do little to curb the imminent criticism of a campaign that will be deservedly condemned as a failure. A helter-skelter opening phase which promised an exciting match eventually turned into a slow, tactical affair. Ismail Alhammadi’s should have put the hosts ahead after breezing by Trent Sainsbury in the very first minute, but Mat Ryan stood tall to parry away a shot directed at his chest. Sainsbury had his own glorious chance to open the scoring moments later, but his free header ballooned over the crossbar and into orbit. The Emiratis reverted to the defensive style previously utilised by Uzbekistan and Jordan to nullify Australia’s attacking threat, while the Socceroos once again struggled to combat it despite maintain the lion’s share of possession. Australia, lacking the creativity of the suspended Tom Rogic, struggled to move the ball through central midfield. Slow and safe was the order of the day, with passes moving from one side of defence to the other as the UAE organised itself behind the ball. Attacking from set-pieces quickly became both teams’ main threat. Ali Mabkhout will wonder how he skied an open header in first-half stoppage time, while Australia created a vast percentage of their own chances through the exquisite corner delivery of Chris Ikonomidis. His team-mates were unable to reward him with the assist he deserved. Mabkhout’s opportunistic goal in the 68th minute did little to change the complexion of the game but highlighted that even in attacking desperation, throwing waves of players forward, the Australians were still unable to craft any meaningful attempts on goal. Mathew Leckie and Awer Mabil were introduced into the game with the Socceroos craving a spark, but they too struggled to find openings. The loud, intimidating atmosphere inside the stadium seemed to deflate Australia in the latter stages against the tournament hosts. A few long-range misses were met with roars of joy as the UAE ran down the clock to set up a semi-final against Qatar, who shocked South Korea in Friday’s quarter-final. The Socceroos players will now return to their clubs, while Arnold will be left to conduct a post-mortem on his team and especially the one-dimensional way his side performed going forward. Fans will feel underwhelmed by a set of underwhelming performances by a team that never hit full stride. Qatar’s Abdulaziz Hatem scored with a stunning late strike to send the 2022 World Cup hosts to their first Asian Cup semi-final – and hand Mauricio Pochettino an unexpected boost in the process. South Korea’s shock defeat means that Son Heung-min will be heading back from the Gulf sooner than expected – and could feasibly feature for Tottenham in Wednesday’s Premier League game against Watford. Hatem’s goal came out of the blue in the 78th minute, the defensive midfielder firing past South Korea goalkeeper Kim Seung-gyu with his left foot to settle a largely drab contest at Zayed Sport City in Abu Dhabi. South Korea poured forward to try and rescue the match but were unable to produce an equaliser as the Qataris advanced to face the hosts, United Arab Emirates, for a place in the final. “We’ve achieved something special today, this is history for us,” said Qatar coach Felix Sánchez. “We played a great game, the players made a huge effort and we achieved something great for our country. I’m the happiest coach in the world.”As Apple’s shares tumble after its cut in forecasts, the company is laying the blame squarely on the economic slowdown in China. But that is only part of the problem. Never before has Apple faced such fierce competition from a multitude of rivals from around the globe, all vying for a slice of the lucrative premium smartphone market. Matching or exceeding Apple’s iPhone on hardware quality, these phones are arguably more capable, often cheaper and, perhaps crucially for China, made by local firms, not only those from the US and South Korea. The iPhone X broke the mould in 2017 but 2018’s iPhone XS and XS Max, while very good phones, were only iterative improvements even though Apple pushed the top asking prices to an extraordinary £1,449 in the UK, $1,449 (£1,152) in the US and 12,799 yuan (£1,480) in China. The firm also launched a lower cost iPhone XR, which had the same processor and overall design of the iPhone XS, but dropped the quality of the screen, the materials used in its body and the dual camera system on the back for £749 in the UK, $749 in the US and 6,499 yuan in China. The iPhone’s biggest – and sometimes better – rivals are: The top of the pile for 2018 comes not from Samsung or Apple but China’s Huawei, which overtook the iPhone maker to become the second largest smartphone manufacturer by volume in the world. The Mate 20 Pro is something rather special, combining more cutting-edge technology than any other into a well-rounded, long-lasting, beautiful device. It has a huge curved 6.39in OLED display, IR-based face recognition matching that available on the iPhone, a fingerprint scanner embedded under the display, and a fantastic triple-camera system on the back and battery life near double the competition. It can even wirelessly charge another device, a trick never before seen on any smartphone. While certainly not cheap, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro also undercut both Apple’s top models – costing £900 in the UK and 6,799 yuan in China. The Mate 20 Pro is not available in the US. Huawei Mate 20 Pro review: cutting-edge brilliance 5/5 The perennial thorn in Apple’s side in its battle for domination of the market since 2010, Samsung’s latest is a different beast. The Galaxy Note 9 has the pre-requisite massive 6.4in OLED display, top of the line processor, wireless charging and a dual camera on the back. But it also has a powerful stylus that slots into the bottom of the phone and sets it apart from anything else, making it a real productivity powerhouse. You can draw, annotate, sign and handwrite on the large screen, and even use the stylus’s button as a remote control for things such as the camera, for the perfect hands-free selfie. The Note 9 is the do-anything phone and it costs £899 or less in the UK, $999 in the US and 6,999 yuan in China. Samsung Galaxy Note 9 review: the do-everything phone 4/5 The third iteration of the Android maker’s own-brand smartphone, the Pixel 3 and 3 XL offer Google’s vision of what the software on a phone should be. In the same way Apple makes both the hardware and software, the Pixel 3 benefits from Google’s synergy to create an Android experience that is second to none. It may not have all the whizz-bang features of rivals, and may have a fairly dated screen design, but its AI smarts and gamechanging camera software offer something different. The smaller Pixel 3 costs £739 in the UK, $799 in the US and is available in China from around 7,400 yuan. Google Pixel 3 review: raising the bar for the Android experience 5/5 High-cost rivals to Apple’s iPhone are one thing but there are also phones such as the brilliant OnePlus 6T that offer cutting-edge technology and great software at literally half the cost. The OnePlus 6T is a very fast, high-performing phone with top-of-the-line processor, a massive, beautiful 6.41in OLED display and excellent battery life. But it also has a tiny teardrop-shaped notch that makes the giant bar-shaped notch of the iPhone XS and Mate 20 Pro look stupid and an impressive in-display fingerprint scanner. The dual camera on the back is not quite as good and there is no wireless charging but the OnePlus 6T costs only £500 in the UK, $549 in the US and 3,499 yuan in China. OnePlus 6T review: you’d have to spend double to get better than this 5/5 Of course, in China the competition from local rivals is even more fierce. Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei’s Honor sub-brand and Meizu are just a few of the top manufacturers. And many of the most ground-breaking smartphones are only launched in China, such as Honor’s Magic 2, which is all screen on the front with a back half that slides up to reveal a camera. Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 3 does a similar thing with the back sliding up to reveal front-facing cameras, while the top of Oppo’s Find X pops up to reveal both front and rear cameras on command. Where hardware innovation was dominated by the US and South Korea, China’s many smartphone firms are looking to lead the pack. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Leading retail bosses, including the chief executives of Sainsbury’s, Asda, Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and Waitrose, have written to the government warning of significant disruption to food supplies in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The letter, backed by the British Retail Consortium trade body, also warns that grocery prices are likely to rise, as nearly a third of the food eaten in Britain comes from the EU and would be subject to import tariffs if the UK exits without a trade deal in place. “We are extremely concerned that our customers will be among the first to experience the realities of a no-deal Brexit,” said the letter, which is signed by the BRC and 10 leading store chain bosses. “We anticipate significant risks to maintaining the choice, quality and durability of food that our customers have come to expect in our stores, and there will be inevitable pressure on food prices from higher transport costs, currency devaluation and tariffs.” The letter comes before another crucial day in parliament on Tuesday, as MPs vote on a series of amendments to Theresa May’s Brexit plan. The retailers expressed particular concern about fresh foods, saying it is impossible to stockpile produce such as salad and fruit. The bosses – who include the Sainsbury’s chief executive, Mike Coupe; the Asda chief executive, Roger Burnley; and the Marks & Spencer CEO, Steve Rowe; as well as the heads of the Co-op, Waitrose, Costcutter, KFC UK, Pret a Manger, Lidl and McDonald’s – said retailers typically store no more than two weeks’ stock. They said that “as prudent businesses” they are stockpiling in order to be prepared for no deal but with frozen and chilled storages nearing capacity, there is very little general warehousing space available in the UK. “While we have been working closely with our suppliers on contingency plans, it is not possible to mitigate all the risks to our supply chains and we fear significant disruption in the short-term as a result if there is no Brexit deal,” the letter said. The store bosses warned of “major disruption” at Calais, a key route for food imports to the UK, potentially reducing freight trade by nearly 90%, as the French government has said it will enforce sanitary and customs checks on exports from the EU, which will cause long delays. “For consumers, this will reduce the availability and shelf life of many products in our stores,” the letter said. The retail analysts GlobalData said food price inflation could rise to about 5.1%, from 2.4%, in the case of a no-deal Brexit. “There has simply not been enough information provided by the government on how food prices, availability and regulations will be affected in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The just-in-time supply chain that UK supermarkets operate on means that there is not the specialist infrastructure in place to deal with stockpiling – particularly of fresh goods,” said Thomas Brereton, an analyst at GlobalData. “While the supermarkets are currently engaged in price wars – somewhat driven by the exceedingly successful proposition of the discounters Aldi and Lidl – it will be difficult for retailers to stop prices shooting upwards if import costs rise as much as speculated.” Downing Street said ministers were taking special measures to minimise the impact of a no-deal Brexit on supermarkets’ suppliers and insisted that food was not going to run out as a result. “The government has well-established ways of working with the food industry to prevent disruption and we are using these to support preparations for leaving the European Union,” the prime minister’s spokesman said. The spokesman said extra freight capacity would be made available to alleviate any pressure on the Dover-Calais crossing “to ensure vital goods continue to come into the country” but would not say what constituted vital goods, other than potentially medical supplies. No 10 also promised there would be a “functioning customs, excise and VAT system” on day one if there was a no-deal Brexit and special measures to ensure traffic is able to flow on the M20 route to the channel ports. However, the Food and Drink Federation, which represents thousands of food processors and manufacturers, has said a no-deal Brexit would be a “catastrophe”, with uncertainty undermining investment and constraining businesses’ ability to plan and export. The letter emerged after the British Chambers of Commerce said that thousands of the firms it represented had already triggered contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit, including proposals to move operations out of the UK.Former White House chief of staff John Kelly introduced himself to staff members with a speech that was “potentially hostile” to Donald Trump, according to a new memoir by a former Trump communications aide. The aide, Cliff Sims, described being shocked by a speech Kelly made to staff at the Eisenhower executive office building shortly after Kelly replaced outgoing chief of staff Reince Priebus. Sims writes in his book Team of Vipers, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian, that Kelly’s speech “hammered” on the theme of service to country coming first, and service to the president second. “Kelly seemed to be saying that… it might be necessary to subvert the president’s wishes in service of some amorphous higher calling,” Sims writes. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, was credited with bringing a degree of basic functionality to the White House when he took the chief of staff job in July 2017, firing the errant communications director Anthony Scaramucci and pushing out chief strategist Steve Bannon. The whole thing felt like Game of Thrones, but with the characters from Veep But from the start, the disciplined Marine was on a collision course with his boss. Trump chafed against Kelly’s attempts to introduce a chain of command, and Kelly committed public stumbles such as mishandling domestic abuse charges against staff secretary Rob Porter. By last December, Kelly and Trump were reportedly no longer speaking, and Kelly was replaced by acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney earlier this month. White House officials have previously expressed frustration with what they described as Kelly’s savior complex. “Kelly portrays himself to Trump administration aides as the lone bulwark against catastrophe, curbing the erratic urges of a president who has a questionable grasp on policy issues and the functions of government,” unnamed officials told NBC News last year. Sims’ book makes much of infighting among White House staff. “The whole thing felt like Game of Thrones, but with the characters from Veep,” writes Sims, an Alabaman who joined the Trump campaign as co-host of a Facebook live program run by the campaign. The memoir is the latest entry in the impressively stocked subgenre of tell-all books by former Trump aides and insiders, with previous contributors including Sean Spicer, Scaramucci, Omarosa Manigault Newman, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. The bookshelf has been generously padded by entries from journalists including Bob Woodward and Michael Wolff. If Kelly had reservations about some of Trump’s policy views, the pair shared many views including, crucially, a hardline posture on immigration. “We’re on the same page,” Sims quotes Bannon as saying when Kelly comes aboard. “He knows the border is f–ed. He dealt with it [in his previous role as secretary of homeland security]. “It’s going to be good.” Whatever was good about it soon soured, however. In September, Kelly found himself denying an accusation, reported by Woodward, that he had called Trump an “idiot”. “The idea I ever called the president an idiot is not true,” Kelly said. Sims does not report such a comment, but he writes that when the retired general smiled, he appeared to be in pain, concluding: “He didn’t seem like the most pleasant guy to be around.”After Tuesday night’s crushing defeat for Theresa May’s Brexit deal, there is perhaps one thing on which almost all MPs can agree: there is no obvious consensual route forward. Following are the main possibilities, the obstacles they face and an educated guess at how much support they might command. Most of them would probably involve an extension of article 50 beyond the 29 March deadline. Revoking article 50 is also possible, but unlikely without a second referendum. This appears to be the prime minister’s current choice: use the heavy loss to go back to Brussels and beg for another concession on the Irish backstop. The problem is that the only changes to the mechanism that would change minds – a guaranteed end date and/or a unilateral pull-out mechanism – have been definitively ruled out by the EU. Likely support in Commons: little more than the 202 seen on Tuesday if May secures no real changes. A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal. As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government. That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit. “The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs. Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added. This is still the default option if MPs find no other way out – a departure on 29 March and a switch to trading on World Trade Organisation terms. However, the Commons has already shown there is a clear majority against this happening, by backing Labour MP Yvette Cooper’s amendment seeking to prevent it happening. And plenty of senior Conservatives have made it clear they would back action to prevent May from pushing ahead with this. Likely support in Commons: perhaps fewer than 100 would accept it; many fewer want it as a stated ideal choice. These options are closely interlinked, if not the same – for example, the “plus” in Norway-plus refers to the intention of keeping the UK in a customs union as well as a single market, either permanently or until a solution to the Irish border issue can be found. Norway is among the four members of the European Free Trade Association (Efta) – as was the UK before it joined the then-European Economic Community in 1973. Such versions of Brexit would limit economic damage, but require continued freedom of movement for people, which is politically difficult. Also, senior Norwegian politicians have said they would not welcome the UK re-entering Efta. Likely support in Commons: extremely hard to say. Perhaps around 200, made up mainly of Labour MPs, plus some Conservatives and the Scottish National party. It all depends on the other options on the table. This soft Brexit compromise has been championed by the former Conservative minister Nick Boles as a plan B for leaving the European Union. It is based on Norway’s relationship with the EU, which is outside the bloc and the customs union but inside the single market. Under the plan the UK would have to join Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland in the European Free Trade Association (Efta), which would then allow it to participate in the European Economic Area (EEA). The ‘plus’ in this option refers to a temporary customs union with the EU, which would need to be negotiated to avoid a hard border ion the island of Ireland. The temporary arrangement would remain in place until the EU and UK agreed a specific trade deal. The option has the advantage of being as close to the EU as possible without full membership, and it would do away with the need for a problematic backstop for Northern Ireland. Like Norway, the UK would be outside the common fisheries and agriculture policies, and would not be subject to the European court of justice. But it crosses a key red line for Brexiters by continuing freedom of movement, one of the preconditions of single market membership. It would also limit the UK ability to negotiate its own trade deals while a new customs arrangement is under discussion. And it would require continued financial contributions to the EU without an influence inside the bloc. To be precise, “a” customs union, as Labour term it, to distinguish it from “the” existing one based around the EU. Labour, the main proponent of the idea, says it would help businesses with supply chains and solve the Irish border issue. May argues that it goes against the referendum result as it would preclude the UK signing its own trade deals. Likely support in Commons: most of Labour’s 256 MPs would back this in a whipped vote. Support from others would depend on the rival options on offer. A customs union is an agreement by a group of countries, such as the EU, to all apply the same tariffs on imported goods from the rest of the world and, typically, eliminate them entirely for trade within the group. By doing this, they can help avoid the need for costly and time-consuming customs checks during trade between members of the union. Asian shipping containers arriving at Felixstowe or Rotterdam, for example, need only pass through customs once before their contents head to markets all over Europe. Lorries passing between Dover and Calais avoid delay entirely. Customs are not the only checks that count – imports are also scrutinised for conformity with trading standards regulations and security and immigration purposes – but they do play an important role in determining how much friction there is at the border. A strict customs regime at Dover or between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would lead to delays that will be costly for business and disruptive for travellers. Just-in-time supply chains in industries such as car making could suffer. An Irish peace process built around the principle of entirely unfettered travel between north and south could be jeopardised. Otherwise styled as a “people’s vote” by one of the groups advocating it, arguing it would not merely be a repeat referendum but a fresh choice now that the facts of Brexit are known. On the plus side, it would end the deadlock in parliament. Negatives include considerable complexities on timing and vote mechanics, and the bad feeling it could stir in leavers who insist the matter was settled in 2016. Likely support in Commons: extremely hard to say, anything from 170 to 300, depending on a variety of factors, including whether Labour adopts the plan, and the other options.The government of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan has launched an “alarming” crackdown on journalists covering weeks of protests against the regime. At least five reporters have been detained by the national intelligence security services and are being held at undisclosed locations. Dozens of others have been arrested and held before being released. Khartoum has also revoked the work permits of correspondents working for two Arab-language regional news networks preventing them from working in the country. “We expect the blackout to get worse and more violations by the authorities against the media as the protests continue,” said Khalid Ahmed of the Sudanese Journalists’ Network. The crackdown comes with Sudan’s embattled president due in Qatar on Wednesday to seek support in the face of protests at home against his 29-year rule. Bashir will meet Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, to discuss possible aid to Sudan, which is suffering from deep economic problems. While Sudan has long had a poor reputation for freedom of media expression – the country is rank 174th out of 180 countries for press freedom – the latest crackdown is linked explicitly to protests against Bashir that broke out on 19 December. The five detained have been named as Qureshi Awad and Kamal Karar of Al-Midan newspaper, Adil Ibrahim of El Jareeda and Ogeel Naaim of Almijhar al-Siyasi. Speaking to the Guardian, Mazahir Ibrahim, Adil’s older sister, said she was concerned about her 39-year-old brother, who suffers from high blood pressure. She said authorities had refused to allow his family to supply him with his medication. The authorities have issued warrants for the arrest of another 38 journalists – 28 of them based abroad – accused of “incitement and spreading fake news”, which carries a potential sentence of three years in jail. Among those held and released was award-winning journalist Faisal Mohamed Salih, 62, who described security officers beating reporters. “The first time I was arrested when I was taken from my office. The first interrogation was designed to send a message back,” he said. “They treated me as if I was a spokesman of the protests and wanted to say the protests will not topple down the regime because it’s strong. “They acknowledged there were problems in the country but said demanding Bashir go is too big a demand.” As well as those working for Sudanese media, journalists working for Arab-language news outlets of Al Arabyia television and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network have been targeted. In a statement earlier this week, Al-Jazeera said its Khartoum office had been informed that their journalists’ credentials were revoked. The network denounced the move as “arbitrary” and “lacking any credible justification”. The moves follow the blocking of social media sites. Some newspapers have also been prevented from distributing copies. Printing was stopped at the El-Jareeda daily according to publisher Awad Awad. “Whenever there are protests national intelligence security services [censors] take out more than 80% of the content of the paper. We refuse because our credibility is more important. So they prevent printing,” he said. Noting over 90 violations of freedom of the press since the protests broke out, Arnaud Froger, of Reporters Without Borders, said: “We unreservedly condemn these new arrests, the latest escalation in the government’s harassment of media outlets and journalists who try to cover the ongoing events in their country. “The policy of systematically confiscating newspapers and arbitrarily arresting reporters is reaching alarming levels. This persecution of journalists and clampdown on news coverage must stop.”German police and prosecutors have questioned some of the claims made by a rightwing populist politician who suffered an attack that left him with serious head injuries. Police say video footage casts doubt on assertions by Frank Magnitz that he was beaten with a wooden instrument by attackers who only stopped assaulting him when two passersby intervened. Magnitz, 66, the head of Alternative für Deutschland in the city state of Bremen, was hospitalised on Monday evening after being attacked by strangers. The AfD claimed he had been knocked to the ground with a wooden instrument before being beaten around the head. Jörg Meuthen, the party’s federal chairman, posted a photograph on Twitter on Tuesday, showing the MP, apparently unconscious, with a deep gash to his head and a bruised face, and calling the attack an “assassination attempt”. The party praised two plumbers who had helped Magnitz to his feet and called the police, saying they had saved his life by intervening and scaring off the attackers. But police, who have described the attack as “politically motivated”, said analysis of CCTV footage shows that while Magnitz was knocked to the ground, the person responsible had quickly fled accompanied by two others and there was no evidence that Magnitz had been kicked or beaten while he was lying on the ground. His head injuries, they said, were likely incurred after he hit his head having been knocked down. “Recordings secured at the scene show two people who approached the 66-year-old from behind, while a third walked some distance behind,” a spokeswoman for Bremen police said. “One of the unknown people hit the man causing him to topple over.” The trio then fled the scene, she added. The MP suffered a heavy bleeding head wound, but “on the video material that has been watched so far, the use of an attack object cannot be detected”. Prosecutors have opened an investigation into grievous bodily harm and have appealed for witnesses. Magnitz gave several interviews from his hospital bed on Tuesday. He told the Berliner Morgenpost that while he “didn’t want to dramatise” the attack, he believed it had been “a politically motivated assassination attempt”. In a subsequent interview with the tabloid Bild, he said while it was unlikely, he would not rule out that he might also have been the victim of a mugging. He said the last thing he could recall was passing a handyman’s van, after which “everything went dark”. He came round, he said, when someone shook his arm, and asked if he still had his mobile phone and his wallet. Magnitz said he suspected his attackers might have been participants at a nearby memorial demonstration for an asylum seeker who was killed in police custody in Bremen 14 years ago. He told the Morgenpost he assumed someone from the demonstration recognised him and decided to follow him. A spokeswoman for the event’s organisers, the “Initiative to remember Laye-Alama Condé”, accused Magnitz of speculation and of “purposefully wanting to discredit the subject matter of our event”. The attack has been condemned across the political divide, with Steffen Seibert, the spokesman for Angela Merkel’s government, tweeting that the “brutal attack” should be strongly condemned. The AfD’s leadership has called the assault a “black day for democracy”, blaming it on constant AfD baiting by political parties and the media. The party entered the Bundestag for the first time in the autumn of 2017, having secured just under 13% in the national election.A British mining company has appealed to the supreme court to prevent 1,800 Zambian villagers bringing a pollution case involving its subsidiary from being tried in the UK. Lawyers for Vedanta Resources told Britain’s highest court that the case – brought by villagers who allege that their land and livelihoods were destroyed by water contamination from Vedanta-owned Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) – should be heard in Zambia instead. The UK courts have resisted previous attempts by Vedanta to have the case moved. Last year, the court of appeal upheld a high court ruling that the Zambian claimants had a legal right to bring their claim against a British company, citing KCM’s “opaque finances” as one reason the claimants may not be granted justice in Zambia. Vedanta is now appealing against this ruling. Leigh Day solicitor Oliver Holland, who is representing the villagers, said: “Our clients continue to suffer from the effects of the pollution both on their health and their livelihoods. “It is disappointing that Vedanta refuse to accept the judgments of the high court and court of appeal and continue to fight against our clients’ case, causing a delay of over three years to the progress of these claims.” The supreme court’s decision, expected in April, could set a precedent for “duty of care” owed by a UK parent company to the communities affected by a foreign subsidiary, said Marilyn Croser, director of Core, a British civil society network focusing on corporate accountability. “This case is a pivotal test for the development of parent company liability for human rights and environmental harm,” said Croser. “Victims of corporate human rights abuses face multiple barriers in holding companies to account and securing access to justice. A clear statement from the UK supreme court affirming the duty of care principle would help communities who have been harmed by corporate activities and would provide an important confirmation of the scope of parent companies’ obligations.” The ruling – if decided in favour of the claimants – could have major implications for British multinationals with operations abroad. Leigh Day, is seeking the right to appeal to the supreme court regarding a claim by 40,000 Nigerian farmers and fishermen against Royal Dutch Shell in London, in relation to oil spills in the Niger Delta. The firm is also seeking to take a case against Unilever to the supreme court relating to a claim brought by more than 200 Kenyan tea plantation workers and their families, who want compensation after being attacked in a bout of ethnic violence. Zambian campaigners George Mumbi and Esson Simbeye said they have spent the past 12 years campaigning for justice in Zambia, where “land is poisoned” and “people are sick”, to no avail. “Villagers along the River Kafue, as well as Chingola residents, have suffered severe pollution of water sources ever since Vedanta took over the mines,” Mumbi and Simbeye said in a statement. “People used to think British mining companies were better, but Vedanta is one of the worst foreign investors in Zambia. It is time that justice came home to roost in Britain.”There are just so many films to wade through at Sundance, from big-star vehicles to news-making documentaries, making it inevitable that smaller, less obviously worthy gems will fall through the cracks. There’s not been much noise around Animals, the second narrative feature from Australian director Sophie Hyde, and in a year when the festival has achieved record-breaking diversity in its lineup, there really should be. For Hyde has forged a wonderful, utterly lived-in film about two women at a crossroads, one that attendees should be breathlessly, excitedly discussing around town, urging everyone else to see immediately. There’s a far more conventional film to be made from what could be an overly familiar log-line: two best friends face conflict when one reveals she’s getting married. But what’s so startling about Animals is its undying ability to upend expectations. It’s not exactly packed with twists, but dialogue remains spiky and unpredictable, scenes don’t play out in the ways in which we’re used to, and characterisation is free of judgment and cliche. It’s easy to underestimate the unstructured delicacy of the script, written by Emma Jane Unsworth based on her book of the same name. There’s rich detail and truth underpinning her gloriously untamed study of friendship, one that refuses to play by the rules. Laura (Holliday Grainger) and Tyler (Alia Shawkat) have been best friends for 10 years and they share an intense co-dependency, living together and spending their nights drinking, snorting and fucking their way through Dublin. While Tyler appears content to be a barista, Laura craves more but struggles to focus on her dream to be a writer, too easily distracted by her vices. When she meets pianist Jim (Fra Fee), her friendship with Tyler is forced to mutate, with inspiration and romance pulling her away from their life together. For the first 10 minutes or so, Animals is a tad too deliberate, montaging a friendship that feels performed and Shawkat’s eccentric American is rather annoyingly outsized. But, as in Sarah Polley’s acutely observed marital drama Take this Waltz, we’re being inducted into a private world with two people who have a learned shorthand, one that might be off-putting but one that isn’t being neutered or softened for the viewer. It takes us time to acclimatise, to catch up on a decade’s worth of friendship, and Unsworth avoids an ungainly dump of exposition, details revealed with patience. It’s so rare to see a friendship constructed with such nuance and care, and there’s never a desperate plea for our investment or for us to even like the pair. We’re just seeing them as they are, messy and jagged. Shawkat, the more tested comic performer, is reliably strong but surprisingly not the film’s standout. Instead, all attention is drawn to Grainger, an actor whose filmography has been marked by smaller, often thankless roles. She’s absolutely mesmeric here, one of those rare, special performances that feels like we’re under a spell. There’s such remarkable subtlety in her facial reactions, from an exquisite scene where she watches her new boyfriend play the piano – oscillating between excitement, intimidation and arousal – to familiarly uncomfortable scenes of her trying to write, her unsaid lack of self-belief threatening to derail any progress. It’s just so captivating to see her on a journey, one that eschews obvious signposting and flagrancy, the film never selling her out. There’s specificity and profundity in how the film portrays the negotiation of a new relationship, figuring out how to maintain one’s own identity when romance blossoms and how to grow up without giving in. A lazier film would patronise and admonish the pair for the extremity of their lives, but there’s a strict resistance to any clumsy moralising. It’s an often funny but often painful watch, especially in one protracted party scene and the horrifying morning after, and the film is willing to venture into some audaciously dark places. Hyde’s direction is stylised but never suffocating, and she’s given her film a crisp, distinctive aesthetic without detracting from its reality. Echoes of Trainwreck, Bridesmaids and Fleabag only serve to remind us of how unconventional and defiant Animals is in comparison. Its wild nature won’t be to everyone’s taste, but that’s sort of the point. It’s not a film that cares if you find these women charming or likable – it just cares that you believe them. Animals is showing at the Sundance film festival and is still waiting for a distributorTurkey has asked Washington to hand over its bases in Syria as the Trump administration appeared to reverse plans to withdraw from the country’s north-east on Tuesday, jeopardising Ankara’s plans to launch a widespread military operation targeting Kurdish groups. The fresh row between the two Nato allies broke out as the US national security adviser, John Bolton, visited Ankara to row back on a surprise announcement by Donald Trump in December that US forces would leave Syria imminently, abandoning Kurdish proxies who had led its ground war against the Islamic State terror group. Turkey views those same Kurdish groups as mortal foes. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a scathing speech to parliament delivered while Bolton was still in the Turkish capital, said the US envoy had “made a serious mistake” and that Turkey would never agree to a compromise that protected the Kurdish militia, known as the YPG, whose members helped a US-led coalition push Isis out of most of Syria’s east. “Elements of the US administration are saying different things,” said Erdoğan. “The YPG and the PKK can never be representatives of the Kurdish people.” Erdoğan, signalling the rift, refused to meet Bolton, leaving the US national security adviser to instead hold talks with his Turkish counterpart, Ibrahim Kalin, and other officials at Ankara’s presidency complex. The Turkish leader said Turkey’s armed forces had finished preparations to enter Syria and that Washington was stalling on a commitment to leave the town of Manbij as a first step. Bolton, before arriving in Ankara, had directly contradicted the US president, claiming Washington would not leave Syria without first receiving guarantees that Turkey would not attack its allies. Trump later claimed this was “no different from my original statements”, but said the US would leave “at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!” Bolton’s added condition came amid a furore over Trump’s claims that Isis had been defeated and his apparent disregard for the fate of Kurdish forces recruited for the cause, whom Ankara had never accepted as legitimate allies. Erdoğan on Tuesday repeated his insistence that there was no distinction between the YPG in Syria and the PKK in Turkey, with whom Ankara has fought a four-decade civil war. Throughout the Syrian war, and in particular since the US partnered with the Kurds in 2014, Turkey has been deeply wary of Kurdish postwar ambitions, and what they might mean for the 500-mile border it shares with its southern neighbour. An emboldened Kurdish cause has been a nightmare scenario for Turkish officials, whose crackdown on the Kurds inside Syria intensified 11 months ago, when the country’s military invaded an enclave in Syria’s north-west, ousting the YPG from the town of Afrin. A schism between Turkey and the US over the fate of north-eastern Syria had grown since the Afrin operation, which also sparked tensions between Washington and its Kurdish-led anti-Isis force, which had implored its sponsor to defend it from the Turkish incursion. Since then, the Isis fight has slowed and there have been fears that it might stop altogether, just as the terror group faces a military defeat in the last slithers of lands it holds along the Iraqi-Syrian border. Regional security officials say as many as 5,000 diehard Isis members remain in the area, with potentially more having abandoned their weapons and filtered back into towns and villages on both sides of the border, where they have been biding their time. The group has retained significant firepower; on Saturday, Isis members fired a guided missile at a Kurdish position, seriously wounding two British special forces members who were assisting the local fighters. Britain and France, with growing uncertainty over US plans, had stepped up engagement with Kurdish forces with whom they too have partnered against Isis in Syria’s eastern deserts over the past four years. Bolton was on Tuesday joined in the region by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, whose arrival appeared to be part of a rearguard to assure the Kurds and other allies that the US was not abandoning its stated strategies of defeating Isis and curbing Iranian influence. Both Bolton and Pompeo are Iran hawks and their oft-stated goals had been thrown into confusion after Trump’s December announcement. Pompeo, on route to the region, said: “The counter-Isis campaign continues, the effort – the counter-Iran campaign absolutely continues, and our commitment to support Middle East stability is still full throttle.”My dog is an adonis, a prince among dogs. He’s also a relentless shitting machine, squirting out at least two noxious-smelling slippery daily turds that we (mostly) diligently pick up and dispose of in the conventional way. But as our household has been dragging itself further away from the routine pervasive disposable plastics, it has made less and less sense to wrap each fresh turd in a plastic bag and stick it in the landfill bin. Every time I watch my dog toothpaste-out his morning dump, I worry more and more about the best solution As is so often the case with “convenience”, dog poo bags feel like a tidy solution. In fact, they are a very short-term fix with terrible long-term implications. What we’re actually doing is preserving organic matter in an ecologically expensive plastic bag and sending it to an environment – a landfill – where it cannot decompose. Every time I’ve stood patiently watching my dog toothpaste-out his morning dump, I’ve worried more and more about the best solution. And finding the best answer is not as straightforward as you might think. Dog poo, it turns out, is a massively emotive and popular issue, both for dog owners and dog haters. Dog shit is disgusting. It smells. It spreads disease. And it’s hard to pick out of the soles of your shoes or your child’s hair as a result of someone who couldn’t be arsed to clear up after their animal. Let’s be clear that trying to reduce your consumption of plastics is categorically not a reason to stop picking up your dog’s poo. I also want to be honest and say that for about three days I tried flicking it into the bushes instead when on rural walks (let the hate mail commence) until my research confirmed that this was a terrible idea. I apologise. Part of the reason we have to pick it up is because there’s just a disproportionate number of dogs. There’s an estimated 900 million dogs in the world, and 89.7 million pet dogs in the US alone. Apart from being unpleasant, the CDC says that dog waste can spread diseases including campylobacter, tapeworm, hookworm, roundworm and rabies, and more rarely salmonella, MRSA and the plague. I have dodgy plumbing (in the house, not personally) and wouldn’t risk using a flushable dog poo bag. But I also called our local utility firm EMMUD and they said emphatically that only human poo, pee and paper should be put down the toilet. That rules out the otherwise sensible suggestion of carrying my dog’s poo home and flushing it. (But what would I then do with the soiled bag anyway?) Burying is not the same as composting. Even my compostable bags need to be in the unique microbial environment of a pungent, rotting down compost heap. Additionally, if I was to bury my dog’s waste somewhere close to a watershed, pathogens could be released into the ground water which then end up in rivers and in the sea. Bacteria from dog poo regularly causes algal bloom and can shut down beaches for swimming or for shellfishing. I had no idea. I was beginning to wonder if I should just get rid of the dog. But then I spoke to two rather brilliant people with two very different solutions. Professor M Leigh Ackland is a molecular biologist at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and has been successfully composting her dog’s poo for 25 years in her domestic garden compost heap. “Compost heaps are one of the best environments for breaking down waste because they have so many microbes, the microorganisms that can process waste. Compostable bags will rot in three months in a properly managed compost heap,” she says. “A high temperature is critical. With grass clippings it can reach 60°C (140°F). It has to be maintained, turned over, and not become too moist. But that temperature should kill most bacteria, including the toxoplasmosis found in cat poo.” Ackland shows me a picture of her beautifully abundant garden, clearly benefiting from her expertly maintained compost fertilizer. It’s a practice that has been used in agriculture for thousands of years, yet somehow we seem to have become detached from this simple process. “We have become so materialistic and consumerist that we generate massive amounts of waste that we never think about again. But to my mind, breaking things down and using them again is normal.” On the other side of the world, it’s one year since inventor and retired engineer Brian Harper launched his dog-poo powered biogas street lamp on a beautiful trail in England’s Malvern Hills. Walkers use free paper dog poo scoopy-bags and put it into a bin that feeds it into a biodigester. The microbes in the anaerobic digester produce methane, which is then stored and used to power a streetlamp that comes on at dusk. (Methane-powered lamps have a curiously long history in the UK.) He’s had interest from around the world, including on the east and west coasts of the US, and is working with 12 international partners to provide the K9 Bio System to parks and cities that want to address the dog poo problem in this brilliantly novel way. He estimates that 10 bags of poo will power a lamp for two hours, and is planning four sizes of biodigester – possibly even creating a BBQ add-on. That is what he said. “I reckon that conservatively one in five dogs are having their poo picked up in plastic bags. Dog poo goes straight to landfill, and becomes a major contributor to the methane gas that comes out of landfill,” he says. “We grab the methane at source, and don’t transport the waste or send it to an incinerator that gobbles up even more energy. And it’s also a big reducer of the plastic bag problem. I want to see this idea spread around the world and make a significant contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases – as well as the problem of dog poo on our shoes.” My efforts at handicrafts do not, alas, extend to building an anaerobic digester, so until this idea comes to light the trails of California I will have to wait. But we have drawn up a plan for a simple compost heap, and will be using up our collection of paper bags and cardboard in place of plastic as we get it going. The dog, of course, remains oblivious to the perfect storm he’s created.I am in a relationship of three years. We started off with a very healthy sexual relationship, but since about one year in, I have gradually lost all interest and am beginning to feel physically repulsed by the thought of being touched or touching him. My partner tries to get close to me and I just shut down and push his hands away. We have a 20-month-old son together, and I have a six-year-old daughter. The same thing happened after about one year with my ex, although I wasn’t pregnant or a mother by that time. I occasionally give in out of guilt for him and “let him”, but I feel violated and often cry throughout in the dark. We are arguing more and more, although I am not an argumentative person. I am feeling hatred rising inside me and I’m scared I’m going to ruin everything again. I don’t know what to do ... Is this something you can help with? Parents of very young children often experience low libido. This can be due to factors such as stress, fatigue, lack of privacy or opportunity, or perhaps hormonal changes. Becoming a mother can also change a woman’s self-perception so that the sense of herself as a sexual being can be naturally and temporarily lost. If you think these things apply to you, correct them by trying to get more rest and help with childcare, and try to reconnect with your earlier romantic and erotic feelings. That might mean occasionally returning to the kind of dating experiences you once enjoyed and creating time and space for your partner and you to enjoy yourselves. It is never easy to transition from being a couple to being a family of four. Resentments and anxieties can arise, sometimes remaining unspoken, and these can lead to a loss of sexual interest. What are your deep feelings about your new situation? Do you feel, for example, that your partner is pulling his weight? Your sex life will depend on the balance of your life and the viability of your partnership. Sometimes, however, there can be deeper psychological issues that arise during parenthood, perhaps related to unconscious matters or early trauma, and these usually require treatment. Fortunately, the fact that you began your relationship with a healthy sexual partnership makes it very likely that you will be able to restore it again. • Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders. • If you would like advice from Pamela Stephenson Connolly on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions: see gu.com/letters-terms.The business minister Richard Harrington has dared the prime minister to sack him after he praised Airbus for branding the government’s handling of Brexit a “disgrace”. Speaking at a German Industry UK gathering in London, Harrington said: “I was delighted to read Airbus’s comments this morning because it is telling it like it is,” adding that a no-deal Brexit would be “a total disaster for the economy”. The Airbus chief executive, Tom Enders, said on Thursday morning: “Please don’t listen to the Brexiteers’ madness which asserts that ‘because we have huge plants here we will not move and we will always be here’. They are wrong.” The company manufactures aircraft wings in the UK and employs 14,000 people in the country. Enders added: “It is a disgrace that, more than two years after the result of the 2016 referendum, businesses are still unable to plan properly for the future.” Harrington welcomed the comments, saying of a no-deal Brexit: “I really don’t believe in this idea. I am very happy to be public about it and very happy if the prime minister decides I am not the right person to do the business industry job.” Harrington had previously warned that he would be willing to resign rather than be part of a government that pursued a policy of leaving the EU without a deal. But his exasperation appears to have increased after Theresa May’s keenly awaited statement on Monday contained few fresh proposals for averting a no-deal Brexit. “This is a disaster for business and business needs to know where it is and that doesn’t mean, ‘oh great, two weeks before we are leaving, now we can rule out crashing out’,” he said. May has continued to insist that the only way to avoid Britain leaving the EU on 29 March without a deal in place is to support her deal. And she remains focused on renegotiating the backstop in a bid to win over her own backbenchers, rather than seeking a cross-party consensus. Several cabinet ministers, including the justice secretary, David Gauke, and the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, have suggested they would rather resign than support a no-deal Brexit. He also said Brexiters needed to stop clinging to the WTO as a liferaft as if it was a club, not a regulatory body. “I know in business we want one thing and that is certainty. The fact that we can rely on WTO as a way of conducting ourselves … there are no WTO rules. This is one of the fictions and fallacies. It provides a platform and a membership to negotiate individual agreements,” he said.Italian police have taken possession of more than two tonnes of cocaine in the largest drugs seizure in the country in 25 years, after a sting operation involving three other nations across two continents. The drugs, discovered in 60 bags in a cargo container at the Port of Genoa, have a total value of €500m (£436m) and were found with the help of the British, Colombian and Spanish police. The cocaine belongs to various drug-trafficking organisations associated with an organised armed group known as the “Gulf Clan”, which makes use of contacts in numerous European ports where drug expeditions are carried out. The container set off from Colombia and arrived in Genoa last week and was then destined for Barcelona in Spain. To catch the traffickers in Barcelona, the Italian investigators replaced the cargo of drugs - 1,801 bricks of pure cocaine - with salt and let it continue on its journey. In the Catalan city, Spanish police arrested the alleged recipient of the shipment, a 59-year-old Spaniard. “We had four hours to make a decision,” Maurizio Cintura, lieutenant of the Guardia di Finanza, told the Guardian. “After four hours the container had to leave for Barcelona where the traffickers were waiting for it. We therefore put 40 military in place, unloaded the two tonnes of cocaine and replaced it with 1,800 packets of salt. Then we placed GPS receivers in the load. This allowed us to arrest a 59-year-old man related to drug traffickers at Barcelona port.” Cintura said the investigation began on 22 January in Colombia and that the seized drugs would have been marketed all over Europe. The operation, dubbed ‘‘Genoese snow’’, follows another seizure of cocaine at the port of Livorno on Wednesday. In that case, 644 kilos of cocaine were hidden inside bags of coffee. The drugs were divided into 582 bricks inside 23 bags, hidden in one of the thousands of containers loaded on a ship flying the Portuguese flag and coming from the Spanish port of Algeciras. The value of the cocaine found in the earlier raid was around €130m. Spanish police said that using an empty container was a new technique being adopted by criminal organisations there. The two operations were not connected, police said, although both Italian ports seem to have become important destinations for cocaine trafficking from South America. “The port of Genoa, along with that of Livorno, has become the new narco trafficking crossroads,” said Genoa chief prosecutor, Francesco Cozzi, in a press conference. Prosecutors in Genoa said they were now looking into the connections between the cartels in South America and the drug traffickers in Europe. When asked about the role of the Italian Mafia in the Genoa raid, investigators said: “It is too early to say.” The Calabrian Mafia, or so-called ‘Ndrangheta mafia, is thought to run much of Europe’s cocaine trade. A study by the Demoskopika research institute in 2013 claimed the ’Ndrangheta made more money than Deutsche Bank and McDonald’s put together, with a turnover of €53bn.When the ball came to Iñaki Williams and he spun, turning it sharply around Sergi Gómez and into the centre circle, a single thought and word occurred to everyone inside San Mamés, Iñaki included: Run! And so he ran. He ran like no one they’d ever seen run before: faster and faster until somehow, eight seconds later and 70 metres away, he was standing before them roaring, and Athletic were 2-0 up with five minutes left, Sevilla beaten. All around they went wild, as breathless as he was. Few expected this. Sevilla were title contenders, Athletic fighting to avoid a first-ever relegation, desperation gripping. They knew Williams was fast, but they didn’t expect him to move quite like that, still less anticipate the finish, the precision with the pace. Athletic were desperate for goals, but they weren’t getting them: only Valencia and Huesca had fewer. Aritz Aduriz was out, Raúl García too. They needed Williams badly but they sometimes feared goals weren’t really his thing, not here. Goals like this are not really anybody’s thing. Not so long ago, a small boy had waited hours to meet the Athletic striker in the team hotel. “I bet you score loads of goals,” Williams said, crouching down, arm around the boy’s shoulder, adding: “more than me.” His league totals for the past four seasons read: one, eight, five, seven. Coming into Sunday’s match against Sevilla, he had five. He was playing his 100th consecutive game for Athletic – a feat no player had matched at any club in 25 years – but still no one at San Mamés had seen him score there for over two years. On Sunday, at last, they did. Twice. Williams’s last 15 league goals had come away from home, the latest at Vigo on Monday; it had been 770 days and 41 games since his last home goal. With every passing week, it got more bizarre, but the way he broke it was brilliant. First, with 22 minutes gone, he dashed up the left, cut inside, and crashed in a 20-yard shot that almost took the net with it. Then, with 84 gone, he did something better. When the ball came to him 15 metres or so inside his own half, Athletic led 1-0 but they were hanging on. Quincy Promes had bent one just wide and the nerves had taken over. It was played out towards Williams again. All game, he had fought, alone, and he was spent. But he spun, and then he started to shift. And then vooooooosh, he was gone. | GOAAAL! |Inaki Williams has done it again! 😍Shows strength and pace and he gets his reward! What a terrific game he’s had 🔥 pic.twitter.com/h5PwhcvIuc Afterwards, it was likened to Ronaldo, but this was different. Jorge Valdano once said that when the Brazilian attacked, it was like the whole herd attacked: a one-man stampede. This was smoother, more graceful, more continuous, and genuinely exhilarating. It was strangely collective too, as if another thousand people stood and ran too, an entire ground shouting go-go-go before the realisation that, bloody hell, he’s going to get there. He began behind Gómez, but was soon ahead, speeding between two men, the acceleration astonishing, until there he was flying past the goalkeeper, the ball in the net. The TV claimed he had run 62.3 metres. He reached 38.8km/h, they said. Which might not have been that scientific – the morning’s papers were talking 57 metres and a peak of 34.5km/h – but whatever it was, it was fast. It is hard to recall a run like it; impossible, in fact. Add in everything that went with it, the emotion, the significance, the timing, and very few goals have carried you along like this. Eventually, his teammates reached him. There’s something in this photo that explains everything: Williams, tongue between his teeth, chest out, screaming. Iker Muniain on his back, screaming. Dani García to his left, screaming. Ibai Gómez to his right, the new arrival from Alavés, the one man not subjected to the mounting pressure, gazing at him wearing a smile that says wow. What a photo https://t.co/RH2gFGFou7 “Williams pulls on his superhero’s cloak,” Marca read. “Williams, unchained,” said AS. El País called it a work of art. He was “a lightning bolt,” “a bullet”, “a rocket,” a “panther”, a “gazelle”. “All we can do is surrender to a great player,” said the Sevilla coach Pablo Machín. “He beat us in the air, on the floor, and for pace.” “He’s a sprinter, he needs space, and he has more away from home,” manager Gaizka Garitano said. “A striker lives off goals and you see when he’s more confident. He scored two goals of great quality and it’s good for him to take that ‘rucksack’ off his back.” It was good for all of them: as they stood there, celebrating the second, victory secure, and Athletic climbed to 15th. For the first time in a year they’ve won two in a row: that’s five weeks unbeaten now, 11 points from 15 under Garitano, as many as they picked up from the previous 42 possible with Eduardo Berizzo. They have a three-point cushion over relegation; they’re also – get this – just six points off a European place. No wonder there was release as well as joy. They’d all suffered. Williams especially. “I felt like crying,” he admitted afterwards. “When things go badly, it’s like you’re no use for anything. When you score, everyone pats you on the back; when you don’t, no one says a word to you. But faith moves mountains and I fought for that ball as if it was the last. I worked like a devil. I feel like I’ve taken a weight off my shoulders. Today was incredible.” He wasn’t going to hide. He was, though, going to run. Very, very fast. • It was only a penalty but Valencia managed to turn it into a piece of performance art, a moving portrait of their season. It was 0-0 against Real Valladolid, Valencia had won just four times all season, drawing 10 of their 18 games, they were presented with the chance to take a vital lead. Rodrigo, the striker who has scored just once since the opening day, thought penalties might offer him a way back, so had spent the week practising them. Now that they got one, he asked Dani Parejo to let him take it. Parejo, scorer of 18 out of 22 from the spot in the league, let him. Over on the bench, Marcelino García Toral, rubbed his eyes, barely able to watch as Rodrigo ran up and … produced just about the weakest shot you could imagine, the ball rebounding back to Santi Mina, who somehow put it wide, their entire year distilled in daftness. Eventually, Parejo did get a goal but it was not enough. They’d escaped, but only momentarily; for Valencia, there’s always a way back in to the labyrinth and with their only shot of the game Valladolid got an equaliser, thanks to an extraordinary free kick from Alcaraz. No one in Spain has a worse goals-per-shot ratio than them; no one has scored fewer, and no one can understand it. “We get smacked in the face every time,” Marcelino said. | #LaLiga | Miss the Valencia match earlier? 👀Watch the highlights here || https://t.co/aIKVGOX8Iw pic.twitter.com/64eNRPS6WM • “He’ll reach 500 too,” Ernesto Valverde said after Leo Messi scored his 400th league goal. So maybe we’ll talk about him then, then. | GOAAAAL! |Messi has scored his 400th goal in LaLiga!!Lionel Messi = 🐐 pic.twitter.com/i9j0n5NDNv • Cristiano Ronaldo called him “mini me”, his shirt calls him RDT, and his fans are calling him their saviour. Raúl De Tomás scored a sensational hat-trick on Friday as Rayo Vallecano won their third game in a row. Not that they’re out of the relegation zone yet, mind. The battle at the bottom has become quite something. Genuinely, there are 10 teams that could be dragged into it yet. • A penalty. Jan Oblak. Antoine Greizmann. 1-0. Stop here if you’ve heard this one before. • “Unfortunately, it went in,” Dani Ceballos mumbled after his late free kick somehow gave Real Madrid a 2-1 victory over his former club Real Betis on Sunday night. It was about the only time Madrid touched the ball in the second half, and it ended in the back of the net, Ceballos’s hands up in apology as all-around him his “home” whistled him. | GOAL! |Former Real Betis man Dani Ceballos steps up for Real Madrid! 👏A clever free kick that steals the 3 points in the last minutes of the game 😮 pic.twitter.com/zAwSaL9TQL • Two days later, and this column still hasn’t worked out what actually happened in the final 50 seconds or so in Villarreal, where the Yellow Submarine missed four chances and then Toko Ekambi missed a penalty against Getafe. | 🥺 |Toto Ekambi with an early contender for worst penalty of year.92nd minute, with Villarreal a goal down... 😧#LaLiga pic.twitter.com/pHRkdKN7K9 • What a weekend for goals, by the way. Not just Williams, but RDT, Daniel Parejo, Cristhian Stuani, Jorge Molina, Ángel, and Luis Suárez. Woof. Pick that lot out! • But the best goal of all, five days after Nick Blackman scored for Sporting against Valencia, came from Spanish football’s only other Englishman. Get in, Charlie I’Anson! Rayo Vallecano 4-2 Celta Vigo, Leganés 1-0 Huesca, Valencia 1-1 Valladolid, Girona 1-1 Alavés, Villarreal 1-2 Getafe, Atlético 1-0 Levante, Athletic Bilbao 2-0 Sevilla, Barcelona 3-0 Eibar, Real Betis 1-2 Real MadridThe pop star Robbie Williams is “blasting Black Sabbath music” at his neighbour, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, over a home extension row, a complaint to their local council has said. The musicians, who live in Holland Park, west London, clashed after the ex-Take That singer was granted conditional approval last year to build a basement swimming pool. Page is concerned the excavation work will damage his 1875 Grade I-listed mansion. A letter to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council, which is signed “Jonny”, says that Williams has been playing Black Sabbath to annoy his neighbour. It also states the singer has played Pink Floyd and Deep Purple songs at high volume, knowing “this upsets” the Led Zeppelin star. The correspondent adds that Williams has also dressed up to imitate Led Zeppelin’s frontman Robert Plant by “wearing a long hair wig, and stuffing a pillow under his shirt in an attempt to mock or imitate Mr Robert Plant’s beer belly that he has acquired in his older age”. This is “embarrassing”, the letter continues, because “Mr Plant was remembered for performing with his shirt open on stage, and obviously he cannot perform in his current condition”. Williams was granted planning permission in December but work cannot begin until councillors receive reassurance that vibration levels and ground movement issues will be monitored. They will also decide whether to ask Williams for a bond, which could be forfeited if those conditions were breached or Page’s property was damaged.Israel’s former military chief Benny Gantz has officially launched his election campaign by promising to unseat the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he accused of running a “regime” that “encourages incitement, subversion and hatred”. “We all need a government that solves our real problems and is not preoccupied with itself,” Gantz said during his maiden rally, scheduled for Israel’s primetime television slot. “I thank Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his service for 10 years. We will continue from here.” Opinion polls suggest Gantz is Netanyahu’s only credible challenger, despite having until now revealed almost none of his political beliefs. After he moved himself into politics in December, polls signalled that his new party, Israel Resilience, could win a critical number of seats in the 9 April general election. The retired general has already created a buzz among an electorate that analysts say often votes on personality rather than policy and has a strong penchant for military credentials. Israel Resilience released a jingle on Tuesday with the slogan “there is no more right and left, there is only Israel before everything”, and Gantz is expected to seek alliances with both sides in a political system favouring coalition governments. Head of the army from 2011 to 2015, including during two wars in the Gaza Strip, Gantz has sought to appease Israel’s militaristic rightwing. A short clip released by his party this month showed a bomb-flattened neighbourhood in Gaza after the 2014 war he led against the strip’s rulers, Hamas. “Only the strong wins,” reads text on the video, which says Israel killed more than 1,364 “terrorists” and destroyed 6,231 targets in the war. According to a scathing United Nations investigation, more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the 50-day conflict, more than half of them civilians, contradicting Gantz’s figures. Seventy-three people, the vast majority of them military personnel, died on the Israeli side. A Palestinian film company based in Gaza later said the footage, originally filmed to document the damage caused by Israeli bombings, had been “stolen” by Gantz’s team without permission. Army service is compulsory in Israel and the country has a tradition of senior military figures entering politics. Two chiefs of staff have become prime ministers: Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. Gantz is seen as a serious contender to threaten Netanyahu’s reputation as “Mr Security”, a nickname the prime minister’s supporters use. But Netanyahu’s allies have written off Gantz as a “leftist” and will seek to highlight any signs of restraint from him on Israel’s myriad security challenges. In another campaign video, Gantz says there is “no shame in yearning for peace”, although he adds that Israeli soldiers will probably be fighting for the next 50 years. The general-turned-politician promised that his government would strive to make deals. But he added that if peace did not happen, he would strengthen settlements in the occupied West Bank – regarded as illegal by the international community. Orit Galili-Zucker, who has advised both Netanyahu and his rivals on political communications, said Gantz was adopting a strategy of ambiguity to try to woo rightwing and centre-left voters. “The reason why polls are high for Gantz is because he brings something new, he is shaking the political arena,” she said. Netanyahu is the second longest-serving premier in the country’s history, having won four general elections since 1996. He remains the top contender by far to gather the most seats in the 120-seat Knesset and form a coalition. Polls suggest Netanyahu’s Likud party will take around 30 seats in April, with Gantz’s Resilience party second on 15. Netanyahu would then need to make an alliance, possibly including with Gantz who could be offered a conciliatory ministerial position, to form a 61-seat majority government. However, one of Netanyahu’s biggest election hurdles is a slew of corruption charges. In three cases, police have recommended he be indicted for bribery. Israel’s attorney general is expected to announce his decision on whether to charge Netanyahu before election day. The premier would not be required to step down if indicted. Despite the allegations, which he rejects as a “witch-hunt”, Netanyahu has held on to power through deals with ultra-nationalists and religious parties. In a jab at Netanyahu, Gantz said in his speech: “No Israeli leader is a king. “More and more people, both right and left, myself included, are deeply embarrassed by the way our leadership conducts itself.”“From this point on, we’re going to be trespassing,” announces Margarida Castro casually. “Everyone comfortable with that, right?” Our group of eight follow her across the threshold of an abandoned house in central Porto, Portugal’s second city. This once-sleepy, cobble-paved place is turning into one of Europe’s hottest tourist destinations, thanks in no small part to sweetener deals with low-cost airlines and a sophisticated government marketing drive. But being the darling of the 48-hour city break comes with its costs. Old cafes are starting to make way for Starbucks and Costa. Locals are finding themselves outpriced by the boom in short-term rentals. And, while Porto has yet to see anti-tourist protests as in Venice or Barcelona, there’s a growing sense of disquiet. And if locals are souring on tourism, so are some tourists. Porto’s sightseeing hotspots can be covered in a day or two, and middle-class city-breakers are looking for something different. A 2016 study by the online travel firm Expedia, for example, found millennial travellers are especially anxious for experiences that involve “living like a local” and finding “hidden gems” off the beaten track. That suits Castro just fine. A 36-year-old Porto native, she is one of a trio of architects who set up The Worst Tours five years ago. They show people around the city’s disused factories, old railway lines, empty lots and down-at-heel backstreets. The highlight? A downtown shopping mall that went bust in the mid-1990s, now offering cheap rent to cafe bars and practice studios for local bands. Their “anti-tour” was a response to how tourism was changing Porto. “We were needing to vent and find a way of pouring out our energy and frustrations, so we set up a walking tour to spark political debate,” she says, adding with a smile: “It was either this or hard drugs.” The Worst Tours is one of string of alternative city tours now popping up in popular tourist destinations around the world. In one way or another, all pledge to pierce the marketing blurb, unveil the real side of their cities and provide an “authentic” experience. “It’s obvious, no?” says Castro when asked why the format appeals. “No one likes being a tourist.” Martin Finlayson, a British first-time visitor to Porto who took the tour, agrees. “There are so many tourist bars and restaurants here nowadays,” he says. “I wanted to see what the real Porto was like – you know, where local people hang out, where they eat and drink.” Locals, too, are looking for novel ways to engage with their home cities. Eugene Quinn leads “urban adventures” around his adopted city of Vienna, including the Ugly Vienna Tour, the Corruption Tour, the Midnight Tour, and even a Smells Like Vienna Spirit Tour, which explores the olfactory delights of the Austrian capital. He says they attract as many as 80% locals. “It’s a shame that more people don’t actually see their own cities,” says Quinn, who, rather than carrying a flag, wears the orange trousers of the municipal street sweepers. Castro agrees, arguing that tours aren’t just for tourists, but encourage creativity along the peripatetic tradition of ancient Greece, sparking an exchange of ideas and experiences of urban living. The visit to the abandoned house in Porto, for instance, prompted a discussion about squatting: a common but little discussed practice in the city. Other topics addressed during the four-hour walk included social housing policies, rent hikes, green space and fachadismo – the practice of property developers ripping out the interiors of historic buildings while keeping the facades intact. “With our salaries, we don’t travel much,” Castro says. “So walking the city and debating with someone from Warsaw or Barcelona about this or that keeps my ideas in check.” Many sociologists and anthropologists have long considered “immersive tourism”, as the travel industry packages it, to be a futile quest: by the simple act of stepping into other people’s worlds, we change them. “That the arrival of tourists alters the local community has been a theme from the earliest years of tourism research,” says Dean MacCannell, a sociologist at the University of California Davis and the author of The Ethics of Sightseeing. He gives the example of indigenous women in Peru who traditionally put a flower in their hair to signal their readiness for a romantic relationship. Now, however, the act often merely represents an acquiescence to the photo-snapping visitor. “Today the flower means only that the woman knows herself to be an object of the tourist gaze,” he says. “What the tourist is seeing is life as it is actually lived by the locals under the regime of tourism. “If a tourist wants authenticity the industry and hosts will provide it in the form of staged authenticity. But usually it is a fake ‘real-life setting’ for the tourists to explore.” The Jane’s Walk movement makes a virtue of the limits of genuine immersion: it treats the city tour as a co-creative experience in which participants learn from one another rather than just gawp. Inspired by the urban studies guru Jane Jacobs, Jane’s Walks are pitched as an opportunity for people to “observe, reflect, share, question and re-imagine” the places where they live and work. Alia Scanlon, the movement’s Toronto-based coordinator, took a walking group to the city’s main railway station soon after the Yonge Street van attack last April. Protective bollards had been installed at the station’s entrances. “We stood and touched the barriers and discussed how our sense of safety had been affected and whether they made us feel more safe or not,” she says. In Leeds, meanwhile, the urban consultant and psychogeographer Anzir Boodoo uses the Jane’s Walk model to kick off novel conversations about urban living with his fellow residents. Boodoo has led walks to a former zoo, to a deconsecrated cemetery now buried under a new university campus, and to the city’s bus terminal, timed to coincide with the feast of Terminus, Roman god of boundary stones. He considers the experiential aspect of anti-tours to be essential. “It’s all about overturning our normal perceptions and interactions with urban spaces,” he says. “With these walks, you can never really know where they’re going to take you.” Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, explore our archive or sign up to receive our weekly newsletterAs the season of goodwill gives way to January purposefulness, we need something other than food to bring us together as a nation. We need people and things to hate. Casual misbehaviour isn’t enough: a person or entity has to offend or solidify some core British value, some sensibility we don’t think other nations share. What makes a great public enemy? You think you can create one by sticking someone on a front page with a target on their face, and the headline “Public Enemy”? It’s not that simple. You can’t just find a public figure with a few atrocious cock-ups on their CV and make their name rhyme with something (see: Failing Grayling). Politicians make terrible hate figures anyway because everyone expects to hate them. Ex-politicians, different matter; we expect to feel neutral towards them, maybe on a slow day get their name a bit wrong. Remember our delight when we realised that we properly, deep-seatedly hated David Cameron? If the loathing of a person or thing is too partisan, someone will defend them – which creates more bitter division. And a hate figure can’t be anyone too obvious. Triggering the nation’s bile ducts is complex biology. When the target is acquired, though, the effort is all worth it. I’ve identified the first five hatees of 2019. However many more come along, these, I guarantee, will last us all year. Whether or not they really deserve it. Meghan Markle. There were rumours that the new duchess was making no friends in the palace, but it was hard to pick a side. She wanted to marry in a particular tiara, but, according to reports, the Queen wouldn’t let her because it was a Russian emerald, and Markle had a tantrum. So what are the moral parameters of this tiff? If you’ve got a load of emeralds so shady you can’t wear them, why not sell them and give the money to refugees? It emerged yesterday, however, that Markle has banned Prince Harry from drinking alcohol, coffee and tea for January. Ancient principles are at stake. This is a stone-cold classic, Guys and Dolls switcheroo (Marry the man today / give him the girlish laughter / give him your hand today / and save the fist for after). (Core values: marriage, tea.) Bacon. It gives you cancer, but so do loads of things. Nobody hates cigarettes (it’s smokers we can’t abide). It’s not the meat per se, it’s the nitrates, and you can’t hate a nitrate. This cured product acts so innocently delicious, so timelessly wholesome, when all along it’s been asbestos with tasty rind. The problem with bacon, see, is that it’s not on the level. (Core value: English breakfast.) Bros. The success of the documentary Bros: After the Screaming Stops will lead some production company to give the Goss brothers a reality show. The philosophising will pall after seven minutes, but the vehicle will be kept on the road for months. We’ll feel generalised embarrassment, and this, being uncomfortable, will morph straight into hatred. Mark my words. (Core value: the humility of the has-been.) The Ferry Company With No Ferries. It’s hard not to blame Seaborne Freight, contracted to provide emergency capacity on the short straits in the event of a no-deal Brexit. But at least Ferry McNonExistentFerryFace will give us all a laugh, as we sink, giggling, into the sea. (Core value: caustic resignation.) The Woman Who Looked As If She Punched a Police Horse. A woman in Adelaide was reported to have ambled up to a horse on New Year’s Eve and punched it. It turns out that she may have actually punched someone on the other side of the horse. But still, who would throw punches in the vicinity of a horse? (Core value: be kind to horses.)It’s a framing that’s been everywhere over the past two years: the Resistance v Donald Trump. By some definitions that “resistance” even includes people like Mitt Romney and George W Bush. By almost all definitions it encompasses mainstream Democrats, such as the likely presidential hopefuls Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand. In their rhetoric and policy advocacy, this trio has been steadily moving to the left to keep pace with a leftward-moving Democratic party. Booker, Harris and Gillibrand know that voters demand action and are more supportive than ever of Medicare for All and universal childcare.  Gillibrand, long considered a moderate, has even gone as far as to endorse abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and, along with Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders’ single-payer healthcare bill. Harris has also backed universal healthcare and free college tuition for most Americans. But outward appearances aren’t everything. Booker, Harris and Gillibrand have been making a very different pitch of late – on Wall Street. According to CNBC, all three potential candidates have been reaching out to financial executives lately, including Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray, Robert Wolf from 32 Advisors and the Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly. Wall Street, after all, played an important role getting the senators where they are today. During his 2014 Senate run, in which just 7% of his contributions came from small donors, Booker raised $2.2m from the securities and investment industry. Harris and Gillibrand weren’t far behind in 2018, and even the progressive Democrat Sherrod Brown has solicited donations from Gallogly and other powerful executives. When CNBC’s story about Gillibrand personally working the phones to woo Wall Street executives came out, her team responded defensively, noting her support for financial regulation and promising that if she did run she would take “no corporate Pac money”. But what’s most telling isn’t that Gillibrand and others want Wall Street’s money, it’s that they want the blessings of financial CEOs. Even if she doesn’t take their contributions, she’s signaling that she’s just playing politics with populist rhetoric. That will allow capitalists to focus their attention on candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have shown a real willingness to abandon the traditional coziness of the Democratic party with the finance, insurance and real estate industries. Gillibrand and others are behaving perfectly rationally. The last presidential election cost $6.6bn – advertising, staff and conventions are expensive. But even more important than that, they know that while leftwing stances might help win Democratic primaries, the path of least resistance in the general election is capitulation to the big forces of capital that run this country. Those elites might allow some progressive tinkering on the margins, but nothing that challenges the inequities that keep them wealthy and their victims weak. Big business is likely to bet heavily on the Democratic party in 2020, maybe even more so than it did in 2016. In normal circumstances, the Democratic party is the second-favorite party of capital; with an erratic Trump around, it is often the first. The American ruling class has a nice hustle going with elections. We don’t have a labor-backed social democratic party that could create barriers to avoid capture by monied interests. It’s telling that when asked about the former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper’s recent chats with Wall Street political financiers, a staff member told CNBC: “We meet with a wide range of donors with shared values across sectors.” Plenty of Democratic leaders believe in the neoliberal growth model. Many have gotten personally wealthy off of it. Others think there is no alternative to allying with finance and then trying to create progressive social policy on the margins. But with sentiments like that, it doesn’t take fake news to convince working-class Americans that Democrats don’t really have their interests at heart. Of course, the Democratic party isn’t a monolith. But the insurgency waged by newly elected representatives such as the democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna and others is still in its infancy. At this stage, it isn’t going to scare capital away from the Democratic party, it’s going to make Wall Street invest more heavily to maintain its stake in it. Men like Mark Gallogly know who their real enemy is: more than anyone else, the establishment is wary of Bernie Sanders. It seems likely that he will run for president, but he’s been dismissed as a 2020 frontrunner despite his high favorability rates, name recognition, small-donor fundraising ability, appeal to independent voters, and his team’s experience running a competitive national campaign. As 2019 goes on, that dismissal will morph into all-out war. Wall Street isn’t afraid of corporate Democrats gaining power. It’s afraid of the Democrats who will take them on – and those, unfortunately, are few and far between. Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of JacobinThe Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, has castigated the European Union and accused Washington of waging an imperialist “world war” against his crisis-stricken nation, as he shrugged off a tempest of international condemnation to begin his second term in office. Maduro, who inherited Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution after his 2013 death, has overseen a calamitous decline in his country’s fortunes and was re-elected in disputed elections last May. A shower of domestic and international censure met the 56-year-old’s swearing in at the supreme court in Caracas on Thursday. The United States secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, condemned Maduro’s “illegitimate usurpation of power” and vowed to “use the full weight of US economic and diplomatic power to press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy”. The European Union called last year’s vote “neither free, nor fair”, and said Maduro was “starting a new mandate on the basis of non-democratic elections”. Latin American governments also denounced the inauguration, with Paraguay breaking off diplomatic ties and Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, branding Maduro “the victimizer who plays victim”. “Venezuela is living under a dictatorship,” Macri tweeted. Maduro defied those attacks during a feisty 80-minute address to fellow chavistas and international leftist allies including the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel. “We are a true, profound, popular and revolutionary democracy … not a democracy of the elites … of super-millionaires who go into power to enrich their economic group and to rob the people,” he claimed. “And I, Nicolás Maduro Moros, am a genuinely and profoundly democratic president.” Maduro, who is facing growing regional pressure as Latin American politics swerves back to the right, claimed his country was “at the centre of a world war” being waged by US imperialists and their “satellite governments” in Latin America. He assailed Colombia’s president, Iván Duque, and Brazil’s new far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, calling him a “fascist”. Maduro also attacked the European Union. “Stop, Europe … Don’t come again with your old colonialism. Don’t come again with your old aggression. Don’t come again, old Europe, with your old racism,” he said. “There’s been enough enslavement – the looting that you subjected us to for 500 years … Respect Venezuela … or sooner rather than later you’ll pay the historical price.” But there was also public acceptance that chavistas – implicated in a succession of eye-watering corruption scandals – had a hand in Venezuela’s collapse. “I want a new start for the Bolivarian Revolution … I want us to correct the many mistakes we have committed,” Maduro said, calling corrupt chavistas a greater threat than US imperialism. He promised “a great moral revolution” and “a profound correction of the mistakes of the Bolivarian revolution” in his second term. “We are the heirs of a great legacy. We cannot fail and we will not fail,” Maduro concluded to loud applause. Amid heavy security, red-clad chavistas gathered outside the court in downtown Caracas, surrounded by posters reading: “Yo soy presidente” – “I’m the president”. “I identify with Maduro because he’s a humble man, like me. My ideology is what brings me here today,” said Jesús Alcalá, a 44-year-old craftsman. Others were obliged to appear. “I was forced to come today,” said one 30-year-old housing ministry employee and who asked not to be named for fear of dismissal. “I’m not happy with this situation,” she confided. “I have three kids and I really struggle to feed them. I’m planning to leave the country this year.” On state television channels the Socialist party faithful lined up to defend their embattled leader. “Lots of countries are saying that our president is illegitimate – they are wrong,” a woman named as Sory Ramos told Telesur. María Alejandra Díaz, a member of Venezuela’s powerful constituent assembly, urged Maduro’s opponents to reject what she called foreign plots to unseat her leader. “Do not invite the demon into your home. Never ask a foreign power to intervene or invade,” she warned. Maduro’s term is due to last six years but many doubt he will make it that far, such are the economic and political headwinds buffeting his country. Last year inflation reportedly hit 1.35 million percent while a mass exodus that has seen almost 10% of the country abandon the country continued. “Economically we are in a death spiral,” said Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based expert for Crisis Group. “There is a real sense that the whole country is grinding to a halt – and a cold analysis has to reach the conclusion that it is impossible to go on like this.” But with the opposition “shattered into a thousand pieces” Gunson admitted there was no sign of even a midterm political or economic fix. “Some people say the government may collapse because it has collapsed the whole country and there is no way it can continue. But if there is nothing to take over from it then even if it’s collapsed it will remain in power.” David Smilde, a Venezuela expert from the Washington Office on Latin America advocacy group, said Maduro hoped forging “an alternative network” of partnerships with authoritarian countries including China, Russia and Turkey would enable him to weather the storm. “They think … that if they can just keep holding on, within a couple of years they can wait this out and countries will get tired of pressuring Venezuela eventually things will normalise. I think they’re just trying really to hang it out without any great master plan.”What the Colts need to do to win: The Colts aren’t going to be able to stop Patrick Mahomes from scoring touchdowns, so they need to take advantage of the Chiefs’ defense and score on as many drives as possible. Andrew Luck, the comeback player of the year, is quite capable of keeping pace. What the Chiefs need to do to win: Their defense needs to step up. The Chiefs had the second-worst passing defense in the league over the regular season, which could be quite a problem against Indianapolis, who have won 10 of their last 11 games. Key player: Patrick Mahomes, QB, Chiefs. In his first full year as a starting quarterback, Mahomes had a season for the ages, hitting marks that only the likes of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have reached. Now we get to see how he fares in his first playoff game. Prediction: Colts 28-31 Chiefs What the Cowboys need to do to win: Pretend it’s a home game. The Cowboys have lost their last seven road games in the playoffs. The good news? It’s not going to be difficult for them to imagine they’re playing in front of a friendly crowd. The Rams have yet to fully capture LA’s imagination since their move from St Louis and Cowboys fans, notoriously, travel well. There’s a good chance that the crowd’s loyalties will be evenly split. What the Rams need to do to win: Jared Goff has to return to form. The Rams QB had a fantastic start to the season, and his success translated to team success, but he came down to earth later in the season, throwing a career-high four picks in an early December game against the Chicago Bears, and struggling against the Philadelphia Eagles. He won’t be able to afford many mistakes on Saturday. Key player: Todd Gurley, RB, Los Angeles Rams. One of the best running backs in the league, Gurley is still recovering from a knee injury. The Rams expect to balance both him and CJ Anderson during their matchup against Dallas, but if Gurley has recovered, expect him to make a game-changing play or two. Prediction: Cowboys 28-21 Rams What the Chargers need to do to win: Get to the quarterback. While he ended the season with one of his finest efforts of the season, Tom Brady has looked human of late and more vulnerable to pressure. Meanwhile, the Chargers may have the best all-around defense of the teams remaining in the playoffs. What the Patriots need to do to win: Keep doing what they’re doing at home. The Patriots have a perfect 8-0 record at Gillette Stadium this season and no team will have benefitted more from the bye week, what with Brady showing some surprising signs of age. Oh, and Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers has never won a game against Brady. Key player: Rob Gronkowski, TE, Patriots. The Patriots’ playoff success has depended on the health of Gronkowski, maybe the greatest tight end in NFL history. Expect Brady to look for him when his team need to pick up big-time yardage, even though Gronkowski has not had a vintage season by his standards. Prediction: Chargers 28-31 Patriots What the Eagles need to do to win: Once again rely on Nick Foles’s magic. When the Bears’ Cody Parkey clanged the ball off the uprights twice last Sunday, it became tough to deny the fates. What the Saints need to do to win: Take an early lead. How do you protect yourself from a last-minute collapse like the one suffered by the Chicago Bears on Sunday? You throw a few unanswered touchdowns early and give your solid defense a chance to hold the line. Drew Brees can do just that. Key player: Cam Jordan, DE, Saints. Jordan is arguably the Saints’ best defensive player, certainly their most reliable one in terms of staying on the field. He leads the team in sacks and getting to the quarterback could be a major deal this week. Prediction: Eagles 17-31 SaintsRenault Mégane RS 280Price £27,8100-62mph 5.8 secsTop speed 155mphMPG 40.9CO2 163g/km “You’ll never lose that one in the car park,” laughs a customer at our local supermarket. The colour is “Volcanic Orange”, but it could as easily have been called “Sainsbury’s Orange”. His wife joins in. She’s less positive. She grimaces: “Urrgh, that really is awful!” I’m amazed for two reasons: first, they don’t know me and don’t know that this isn’t actually my car, yet they’re happy to be rude about it. And, second, they are both so, so wrong. The car looks fantastic. I am biased. The first car I ever owned was a bright orange Renault (I bought it for £15 – it had sliding rear windows and moss growing in the boot). The fact that, 30 years later, I am now once again sitting in a bright orange Renault gives my heart a jolt of pleasure. However, that jolt could as easily be explained by the fact that this new Mégane RS 280 is one of the most exhilarating hot hatches you’ll ever drive. The orange paint job is perfect: rather than a go-faster stripe, it feels like the entire car is wreathed in go-fasterness (is that even a word?). And it’s not just the colour that makes your eyes pop: it is clear from every angle that this is a machine that means what it says. It has a predatory, intense look about it, like an enraged bouncer who is just about to lose it and chuck you and your mates out of the nightclub. You get the picture. But just in case you miss any of these design cues, Renault has laid on a distinctive jingle that plays as you settle into your suede bucket seats – it’s a sort of deep animal growl which fades into thumping heartbeat. It wouldn’t be out of place at your local Odeon. Once you are settled, hit the ignition button and the show really gets under way. Racebred hot hatches aim to be all things to all families: driver-centred and involving, but with a boot and rear seats. Mostly they fail as, to be honest, anyone who buys a kick-ass hatch doesn’t really care about anyone but themselves. But the Mégane is different. The boot is sizable; the rear seats are roomy. More importantly the car can be driven in a respectful way – you don’t need to joggle your passengers’ brains out. However, when you find yourself on your own with a long stretch of tarmac unfurling ahead of you, that’s when you switch to “Race” mode and scare yourself half to death. Powering all this fun is a remarkably efficient, turbocharged 1.8-litre engine. The Mégane RS also uses Renault’s 4Control four-wheel steering to enhance cornering. I can’t say I noticed. I think it may be one of those technical benefits from which only the more gifted of drivers will benefit. And that’s not me. There’s also the RS Monitor Expert, which enables drivers to film and record their driving prowess on their smartphones and later overlay the vehicle’s telemetry information on to the video, so you can have a proper geek-out with your mates in the bar. And that’s really not me, either. With incendiary performance and a paint job to match, this Renault costs exactly £27,795.00 more than my first one – and it’s worth every single penny. Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@MartinLove166European colonization of the Americas resulted in the killing of so many native people that it transformed the environment and caused the Earth’s climate to cool down, new research has found. Settlers killed off huge numbers of people in conflicts and also by spreading disease, which reduced the indigenous population by 90% in the century following Christopher Columbus’s initial journey to the Americas and Caribbean in 1492. This “large-scale depopulation” resulted in vast tracts of agricultural land being left untended, researchers say, allowing the land to become overgrown with trees and other new vegetation. The regrowth soaked up enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to actually cool the planet, with the average temperature dropping by 0.15C in the late 1500s and early 1600s, the study by scientists at University College London found. “The great dying of the indigenous peoples of the Americas resulted in a human-driven global impact on the Earth system in the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution,” wrote the UCL team of Alexander Koch, Chris Brierley, Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis. The drop in temperature during this period is known as the “Little Ice Age”, a time when the River Thames in London would regularly freeze over, snowstorms were common in Portugal and disrupted agriculture caused famines in several European countries. The UCL researchers found that the European colonization of the Americas indirectly contributed to this colder period by causing the deaths of about 56 million people by 1600. The study attributes the deaths to factors including introduced disease, such as smallpox and measles, as well as warfare and societal collapse. Researchers then calculated how much land indigenous people required and then subsequently fell into disuse, finding that around 55m hectares, an area roughly equivalent to France, became vacant and was reclaimed by carbon dioxide-absorbing vegetation. The study sketches out a past where humans were influencing the climate long before the industrial revolution, where the use of fossil fuels for the manufacturing of goods, generation of electricity and transportation has allowed tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere. Widespread deforestation for agriculture and urban development has also spurred the release of greenhouse gases, causing the planet to warm by around 1C over the past century. Scientists have warned that the world has little over a decade to drastically reduce emissions or face increasingly severe storms, drought, heatwaves, coastal flooding and food insecurity. The revegetation of the Americas after European arrival aided declines of global carbon content in the air, dropping by around seven to 10 parts of carbon dioxide for every million molecules of air in the atmosphere. This compares to the 3ppm of carbon dioxide that humanity is currently adding to the atmosphere every year through the burning of fossil fuels. “There is a lot of talk around ‘negative emissions’ approaching and using tree-planting to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to mitigate climate change,” study co-author Chris Brierley told the BBC. “And what we see from this study is the scale of what’s required, because the great dying resulted in an area the size of France being reforested and that gave us only a few parts per million. “This is useful; it shows us what reforestation can do. But at the same, that kind of reduction is worth perhaps just two years of fossil fuel emissions at the present rate.”A few nights ago I had a nightmare – my family and I were living on the seventh floor of an apartment building in a US city that I could not name. It was a hot summer night. Through our open windows we heard shouts of: “Go back to where you come from!” This was followed by a commotion, and then gunshots and then death grunts. My daughter was standing by the window looking outside – I crawled to her yelling at her to get on her stomach – and then I woke up relieved. And then I read about the attack in Nairobi at the Dusit hotel in which at least 14 people were killed. My family and I had been planning to stay at the Dusit hotel next month when they come to visit me in Kenya. It is where we stayed last year and where the winners and organisers of the Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili prize for African Literature stayed in 2016. The shop where my daughter and wife had dresses hand-tailored is just a few doors down from Dusit. I feel upset and helpless not so much because I think the attack could have happened when we were there, it is more the randomness of it all. Anyone could die, the timing does not belong to us, it belongs to the terrorist. It is this indiscriminate nature of terror that, well, terrifies me. And that is the point. Unlike revolutionary movements that used violence to achieve specific attainable political goals, for al-Shabaab terror is for terror’s sake. Where South Africa’s Nelson Mandela-led ANC had the all-inclusive and progressive freedom charter, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram or the Islamic State have vague proclamations and edicts. They are most erudite when speaking of violence – think of those well-produced Isis videos of torture and death. But I also think about the videos released by the Pentagon of pretty, blue-green flare lights over Baghdad – the death and devastation below unseen – or the recent US army tweet during the New Year’s Eve ball that read: “If ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger.” Think of what a US drone strike on a wedding party, for example, does to the bodies of women, children and men, and the mental and physical trauma it inflicts on the survivors. Think of the Israeli Defense Force and the ongoing attacks on protesting unarmed Palestinians that have left 214 Palestinians dead and a staggering 18,000 wounded. Watch this New York Times investigative piece on the killing of a nurse who was out in the protests to help the wounded and decide for yourself who has the monopoly on violence and terror. To eradicate group terrorism we have to get rid of the state terrorism that feeds stateless terror organisations in the first place. I don’t see any other way around this. Writing for the Guardian in 2013 shortly after the Nairobi Westgate Mall attack that left 71 dead, I argued that al-Shabaab was the creation, in part, of the Ethiopian and US governments. There was a small window of hope when Somalia had started reconstituting itself under the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) after the fall of the western-sponsored dictator Siad Barre and the anarchy that ensued. But the idea of an Islamic government was too much and the US-sanctioned Ethiopian attack in 2006 on the ICU splintered it, with radical and radicalised elements forming al-Shabaab. After the 2013 Westgate Mall attack, the Kenyan government went on to do everything it should not have done. Kenyan Somalis became the enemy and were herded into soccer fields, concentration camps by another name. But earlier, in 2011, the Kenya Defense Force had invaded Somalia, ostensibly because al Shabaab had been kidnaping tourists and NGO workers. Never mind that we as a people have yet to fully atone for the 1980 Garissa and the 1984 Wagalla massacres that left thousands of Kenyan Somalis dead. Writing six years later about the same city, very little has changed. There is a certain feeling of vulnerability and loss of control that makes terror urgent and personal. We need to take the long view of history if any solution is to come about. If we don’t change, if we continue with the terror tit-for-tat, we will be creating yet another set of these manmade disasters. • Mukoma wa Ngugi is a writer and political analystI first heard about Dau five years ago, and have been figuratively banging on the door ever since, to no avail. Two weeks ago, the door opened – literally. I am invited to a mansion block on London’s Piccadilly where, behind an anonymous black door, lies another world. The lobby is dimly, atmospherically lit – a room out of a David Lynch movie. A man in a 1940s-style suit and hat stands pulling back the curtain and peeking on to the street – except he turns out to be a mannequin. A bald security guard with a Russian accent takes my signature and photograph. Photography and recording are forbidden. A friendly American woman guides me through labyrinthine corridors painted black and red and grey, the walls plastered with Soviet-era posters and photos. There are more mannequins in vintage costumes in startling places: hanging from a chandelier, kneeling and kissing a Soviet flag. There is a large mannequin workshop. There are modern editing suites behind frosted glass walls. There is a restaurant serving Georgian cuisine, and a function room in 1940s-style decor. The sound of a dog barking carries down the corridor. “That’s a real dog, by the way,” my guide says. You can’t be too sure. I am here to watch some films. Dau is a film project, or at least, it began as one. Now, nobody knows how to describe it. It has been called a “Stalinist Truman Show”, a serious anthropological experiment, even a “Soviet Love Island”. In scale, it has been compared to infamous movie shoots that spiralled out of control, such as Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. But Dau also has echoes of the Stanford prison experiment – in which students lost sight of the fact that they were playing a role, acting as guards and prisoners rather too enthusiastically. Stanford’s experiment had to be shut down after six days; Dau’s continued for three years. Dau began in 2005 as a conventional biopic of a real-life Russian scientist named Lev Landau. Landau worked with pioneering quantum physicists such as Niels Bohr, had a hand in the Soviet atomic weapons programme, and won a Nobel prize in 1962. He took an experimental approach to sex and drugs as well as science, living by his belief that marriage should be no impediment to sexual freedom (his wife, Kora, was less enthusiastic). The film’s director was Ilya Khrzhanovsky, a then 29-year-old Russian with just one previous work to his name – a challenging, hallucinatory drama titled 4, which had won considerable acclaim. The Greek-born conductor Teodor Currentzis was cast as the lead, simply named Dau. Non-actors made up the majority of the huge cast – 400 principal actors and 10,000 extras. The central location of Dau was a Soviet research institute, inspired by the secret facility in which Landau lived and worked from the late 30s until his death in 1968. About a year into shooting, in 2009, a gigantic set, the size of two football pitches, was constructed at an abandoned swimming baths in Kharkiv, north-east Ukraine. But when it was completed, Khrzhanovsky abandoned the idea of finishing the film to focus exclusively on his replica institute, now also known as Dau. It became less a film set than a parallel world: a functioning mini-state, stuck in the mid-20th century and sealed off from the modern world. Dau was populated with hundreds of extras, or “participants”, who lived as faithfully as possible as Soviet citizens. The period authenticity was obsessive, covering clothes (even down to the underwear), hairstyles, food packaging, cigarette brands. What is more, time moved forwards inside Dau, from 1938 to 1968, so all the period detail was continually updated. Participants were paid in Russian roubles, which could be spent on set. (Some of the older extras, playing caretakers, smuggled in their own roubles saved from the Soviet era and tried to spend them; they were reprimanded for using “fake” money.) Dau’s cast of non-actors was drawn from a nationwide database of auditionees compiled by the producers. The number of videotaped auditions fluctuates between 210,000 and 392,000, depending on who you ask; many of Dau’s “official” statistics are all but unverifiable. Roles were played by people who had played those roles for real: cleaners, waitresses, academics, party officials, shamans, artists; even, sometimes, criminals and real-life neo-Nazis, the latter of whom brought the project to a close by helping to destroy the set in “1968”. Scientists who visited or took up temporary residency there included Nobel-prize-winning physicist David Gross, neuroscientist James Fallon, and Harvard maths professor Shing-Tung Yau. The artists included Marina Abramović, Carsten Höller and theatre director Peter Sellars. The weirdest thing was, hardly any of this was actually filmed. This was not a giant Big Brother house; there were no hidden cameras. A single cinematographer – German veteran Jürgen Jürges – roamed the set with a three-person crew. Between 2009 and 2011, he filmed 700 hours of footage – only a fraction of the duration of the “experiment”. The rest of the time, people apparently went about their Soviet business, unobserved. The Scottish producer Eddie Dick got a taste of Dau in 2011, when he went to Ukraine to discuss a potential collaboration between Khrzhanovsky and director Nicolas Roeg. The induction process was meticulous, he tells me. He and his colleague were given a crib sheet of facts about 1953 – the current year inside Dau. They were dressed in period costume; Dick’s hair was cut; new spectacles with more period-appropriate frames were quickly ordered from a local optician. They were given “passports” and some (real) roubles. On the threshold of the set, their papers were checked by guards and they were interrogated about the purpose of their visit. “I wasn’t sure if everybody started doing things when we appeared, but certainly everybody was doing what they were supposed to be doing,” Dick says. Armed guards were marching up and down. People were eating in the cafe; three or four scientists were conducting experiments in the laboratory with electromagnetic guns. The journalists were preparing the newspaper of the day. The architects were poring over a plan of a Kharkiv of the future – as in, the 1960s. He even visited Dau’s apartment and met his wife, Nora, played by the Russian actor Radmila Shchyogoleva. “A tiny babushka opened the door. Nora floated downstairs in an elegant dress and had tea with us for half an hour. She was in character the whole time. The illusion was kept up by everyone and everything,” Dick says. “We never broke the rules, either. I never turned to anyone and said, ‘Come on. What the fuck’s going on here?’ You found yourself mesmerised by the facade, and we just went along with it.” But throughout Dick’s visit, he saw no filming taking place. Some people allegedly moved to Ukraine and lived at Dau for months, even years, eating, working and sleeping on the set. Others came and went quickly, convinced that this recreation of a totalitarian state had morphed into something genuinely oppressive and dark. Rumours began to circulate that Khrzhanovsky was as interested in sex and power as he was in art. Rather than Coppola’s shoot of Apocalypse Now, Dau began to sound like the heart of darkness itself: an entire world cut off from civilisation, living by its own rules, with Khrzhanovsky as its Colonel Kurtz figure, a film-maker gone rogue. *** The reason Dau’s door opened to me is that, nearly 15 years after its inception, the project is finally ready to show to the public. Three immersive exhibitions are planned for this year, in Paris, London, then Berlin. Before the opening, I am promised an interview with Khrzhanovsky in Paris. First, though, I am required to watch at least four of the 13 feature films that have been edited from 700 hours of footage from the institute. (More is planned: a TV series, documentaries, and, at some point, a cinema release for the original Dau movie.) The first three films I am shown are a trilogy centring on Nora. The films are in Russian with no subtitles, but through an earpiece a monotone voice narrates the English translation. In the first, Nora’s mother comes to visit her at the institute – which looks less like a genuine Soviet facility than a postmodern fantasia based on one. In the second film, Dau (Currentzis) is visited by his former lover, a beautiful Greek woman named Maria. Nora is away, but then returns unexpectedly. The third film, set more than a decade later, is more startling. Dau has considerably aged and is almost bedridden (the real Lev Landau had a debilitating car accident in 1962; he died in 1968). His son Denis has grown up into an eccentric man-child. Nora is bored and lonely. There is incest, and prolonged scenes of graphic, unsimulated sex. In the fourth film, the institute’s caretakers get drunk on vodka. An old lady vomits copiously. Then, for the bulk of the film, two men, Sasha and Valera, embark on a night of drunken passion that swings between tenderness, clumsy sex and physical and verbal abuse. The films are both exhilarating and boring. There are long, rambling dialogue scenes with very few cuts (Jürges shoots with a single camera). But there is an authentic emotional rawness and intensity to the drama. The experience is closer to watching a documentary, or perhaps a Danish Dogme film, like Lars von Trier’s The Idiots. The true scale of the project becomes apparent when I am shown a 10-minute trailer for the original, still unfinished Dau movie, which looks appetisingly epic: vast crowds, 1930s street scenes, a huge replica Soviet propeller plane. There are countless striking images: a masked ball, a church bell crashing to the ground, piles of rotten cabbages, women smashing up clay rabbits on a production line. I am also shown the digital component of the project. In Paris, visitors will be able to explore hours of footage from within custom-built booths, like confession boxes. My screen is divided into a grid of 16 sub-screens, each playing a random scene, like a bank of surveillance cameras. Click on one and it becomes full-screen. Supplementary information is available on each character in any scene: biographies, photo galleries, documentation such as passports and letters. Scanning this brings up a bewildering panoply of images: Abramović (in 50s costume) undergoing a purification ritual by a shaman; Fallon discussing capitalism at a dinner party; Dau standing over a naked man and woman having sex (there is always at least one screen playing sexual content). An official abusing a tearful, naked woman in a prison cell; shockingly, he forces her to drink cognac, then to put the bottle in her vagina. Nothing looks simulated. I recognise people from the movies I have seen: a bearded scientist who insulted Dau’s son as “clinically retarded” is now discussing a recent ayahuasca experiment. Elsewhere, one of the waitresses from the institute’s cafe is standing on a table with two men in their underpants at a party. They all begin throwing knives at an abstract painting. “That’s what I call contemporary art!” one of them exclaims. “Now we can put this up in a gallery.” *** Dau’s Paris launch took place this week in the half-renovated spaces of the Théâtre du Châtelet and Théâtre de la Ville. “I’m absolutely, 100% sure that what we’re experiencing here will be in the history books of Paris, of art history, of scientific innovation, of cinema history,” says Ruth Mackenzie, artistic director of Théâtre du Châtelet. The former director of the London 2012 Olympics cultural programme, Mackenzie has seen some grand cultural spectacles in her time, but describes Dau as a once-in-a-generation “gamechanger”. Others are more sceptical. “I’m convinced the reason the project has been active for so long has nothing to do with creative reasons, but that it allows Khrzhanovsky to live a luxurious and tyrannical lifestyle, lording it over dozens, if not hundreds, of people on a Russian oligarch’s dime,” says one critic, who asked not to be named. The “oligarch” is no secret: he is a Russian entrepreneur named Sergei Adoniev, who became a Bulgarian citizen in 2008. One estimate puts his wealth at $800m, mostly made in the Russian telecommunications business. He also funds Russia’s opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and largely devotes his time and wealth to cultural and philanthropic causes. But this week Bulgaria rescinded Adoniev’s citizenship; a ministry of justice spokeswoman said this followed notification that he “had been convicted in the United States 20 years ago on fraud charges”. When I visit Paris ahead of the launch, I meet Martine d’Anglejan-Chatillon, who Khrzhanovsky “cast” in the role of Dau’s executive producer” in 2016. Dau is “the antithesis of culture as entertainment,” she explains, “of having this nice, comfortable thing that you already know what it is before you go.” Visitors to Dau in Paris will not be able to fully control their own experience, she says. You do not buy a ticket; you are granted a “visa”. You can choose your length of stay – six hours, 24 hours or unlimited – and you must fill out a psychometric questionnaire online, the responses to which generate your own bespoke itinerary. Assuming your application is successful, you are required to trade your mobile phone for a device that directs you to various sites across the two venues. It could be a 400-seat auditorium or a fourth-level basement. I tour back-of-house spaces decorated in Dau’s now-familiar Soviet/Lynchian aesthetic: dimly lit corridors, Soviet paraphernalia, more mannequins. One room is a 1940s Russian parlour; another is filled with the contents of a Berlin sex shop. Your device might send you to a film screening, then to a talk or a performance by a visiting artist such as Currentzis, Brian Eno, Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja, or theatre director Romeo Castellucci. You might be prescribed some viewing on the Dau digital platform. And finally, you will be directed to a one-to-one session in a booth with an “active listener”, who could be a real-life priest or a rabbi or a psychologist. Were there aspects of the project that made D’Anglejan-Chatillon uncomfortable, I ask. “Of course. One projects. In the ambiguities that Ilya creates, we project our fears, our anxieties, our egos. I think that’s part of the work: it activates whatever part of you is a little bit damaged or heightened.” We were sleeping and waking up in the clothes we had worn inside. When we were out, it was like visiting another time She puts the question back to me. I mention the scene with the actor playing a prison guard abusing the naked woman. It is a scene from one of the 13 features, she explains, focusing on the woman, who is by no means disempowered throughout. And it is, after all, acting, she reminds me. “She knows she can stop. Everyone would stop if she said, ‘I can’t handle this.’ But she has chosen to put herself almost through this… almost this fire. Probably to find something else on the other side.” Without speaking to the woman herself, it is hard to verify this. The casting sheds some light on how Dau’s realism was achieved. Dau’s man-child son is played by Nikolay Voronov, who turns out to be a Ukrainian YouTube star. Sasha and Valera, the two gay lovers, were formerly homeless people, someone tells me, and, “They do that every night.” Nora’s mother is played by Radmila Shchyogoleva’s real-life mother, Lidiya. I speak to Dau’s star, Teodor Currentzis, over the phone. “The point is how to be yourself and not to be yourself at the same moment,” he says. He is now back at his day job, as artistic director of Russia’s Perm State Opera and Ballet Theatre. “You are in an environment that you know is a game, but it doesn’t work if you are not yourself,” he explains. Currentzis was invited by Khrzhanovsky to play the role of Dau after meeting him socially in Moscow, in 2005. He spent about a year shooting the film, then two years within the “institute”, on and off. He lived, slept and ate there, 24 hours a day, for days and weeks at a time. There was no nipping out to check emails. And when he and others did leave the institute, “sometimes we would notice after a while that we hadn’t changed our clothes. We were sleeping and waking up and working in the clothes we had worn inside. When we were out, it was like visiting another time. The real world was like a set to us.” According to Currentzis, many people lived at Dau for the duration of the experiment. “I know people who, if they had to decide whether to stay there or to return to ‘the future’, they would stay.” Within the institute, Currentzis had some freedom to do whatever he liked, but situations were also imposed on him. Somebody would knock at the door of his apartment, for example, or Nora’s mother would arrive. Sometimes he discussed events with Khrzhanovsky; sometimes Khrzhanovsky would not speak to him at all. The experience was no holiday. “I had absolute freedom inside, but if the ‘KGB’ grabbed me, they could send me to jail. They could behave really badly to you. I felt very uncomfortable many times, but it’s the same discomfort I feel in my own life. If we want to make something that is real, it has to be like real life.” Other people I spoke to were less comfortable with Khrzhanovsky’s project. Many former Dau associates were reluctant to speak to me at all. Eddie Dick found Khrzhanovsky to be worryingly megalomaniacal and surprisingly limited in his film knowledge; he had not heard of Nicolas Roeg or seen any of his work. “His overweening arrogance was breathtaking at times. All his staff were treated like servants and everybody treated him like a prince. If he said it was raining outside, it was definitely raining.” Dick helped Khrzhanovsky obtain a work permit for the UK, but when they met again in Edinburgh, Khrzhanovsky became increasingly indifferent to the proposed collaboration. “We had a falling out. Quite a deep falling out.” Questions were raised in 2011 by writer Michael Idov, who visited the Dau set and wrote about it for GQ magazine. He claimed a procession of young women were being offered “assistant” positions by Khrzhanovsky. One auditionee spoke of being questioned by him about her sex life and her willingness to perform sexual acts. When she refused, she was swiftly sent home. Further allegations surfaced this week in French newspaper Le Monde: that some of the neo-Nazi extras, led by Maxim Martsinkevich (currently serving a sentence in a penal colony for assault) repeatedly physically attacked an American artist named Andrew Ondrejcak, who was playing a psychologist on the Dau set. Ondrejcak said he was too traumatised to comment, Le Monde reported. When the Dau project began, the myth of the wild, inspired, genius-level male artist was still intact; 15 years later it emerges in a changed landscape. If the allegations about Khrzhanovsky’s project were true, the #MeToo movement and exposés of Hollywood abusers such as Harvey Weinstein would cast them in a very different light. (There is no suggestion that any of the public figures involved in the project had any knowledge of these allegations.) *** I am finally granted my audience with Khrzhanovsky, late in the evening in Paris – and he is strenuous in his denials. We meet in Dau’s pop-up Georgian restaurant, just across the street from the Théâtre du Châtelet. He is youthful-looking, with glasses, a round face and a mop of curly black hair, shaved at the sides – a style that reminds me of Kim Jong-Un. But Khrzhanovsky is not at all despotic-seeming: he is engaged and engaging, casual and conversational. Over coffee, then whisky, and many cigarettes, in slightly broken English, he talks at length about science, art, acting, politics, and the Soviet Union. Lev Landau had a scientific formula for happiness, he tells me. It had four basic elements: love, work, friendship, freedom. “What is freedom? What is happiness? That was the initial thing I was interested in.” That and the nature of genius: “Genius people are, for me, like kind of ancient heroes. They got a gift from the gods.” That was why he cast a conductor as Dau, he explains; Currentzis has the quality of genius, which no actor can portray. Does Khrzhanovsky, now 43, consider himself a genius? “No, definitely not. I just know that I have huge intuition. But I’m not clever. If I was clever, I would never make [Dau] happen, because then I would start to think, and if you think, you cannot do it.” An only child, Khrzhanovsky grew up in Moscow surrounded by artists and intellectuals. His father, Andrey, is a renowned film-maker, whose 1968 film The Glass Harmonica became the first animated movie to be banned in the USSR. His godfather was a screenwriter named Sergei Yermolinsky, who corresponded with Tolstoy as a child and was best friends with the writer Mikhail Bulgakov. They were culturally, if not financially, privileged, he acknowledges. The Soviet Union broke up when he was 15, but Khrzhanovsky still considers himself a “Soviet person”, he says. “When I come to the United Kingdom, at border control, where the form asks, ‘Where were you born?’ I write ‘USSR’.” Dau was less about recreating Soviet conditions than examining the present day, he explains. “If something’s a fairytale, if it’s fantasy or historical, then we’re, in a way, relaxed because it’s not about us.” Soviet citizens, and Dau’s participants, submitted to totalitarian rule with eyes open; today we seem to be oblivious to it, he suggests. “The system that controls us today is the cellphone. We say, ‘Oh great, I bought the new iPhone,’ or whatever. You bought something that controls you more.” He picks up his own phone from the table. “What does this thing know about us? More than we know about ourselves. We live in a transparent world, but we cannot accept it. In the same way that we cannot accept that we are on a planet moving through space when we’re sitting here.” But the retro setting was also a device to liberate human behaviour, it seems. “Because it’s not real, things happen more quickly, and they’re less risky, in a way. That’s why you can end up in a situation where you are very emotional. In normal life you would be afraid to go that far because the cost is too high.” He says he was never on set “directing” the action, but that he would talk to performers on the outside, or initiate events by bringing new people in. “I control only the rules. If the rules were wrong, I could change the rules. But I could not break the rules,” he says. Doesn’t this suggest he was as much a dictator as a director? He rejects this idea, saying that a lot of behaviour could be described as dictatorial. “You can be a dictator in your family,” he replies. “You can be a dictator in your company. You can be a dictator in your own life and destroy it.” He rejects the idea that he manipulated his actors into extreme behaviour, though. For one thing, there was no secret filming, he points out. “The people I invited were not the type who would go on a reality show. You need to respect them. And if you respect them, then they can go very far with you.” Khrzhanovsky also denies he abused his power for sexual gratification. I ask if he ever questioned interviewees or auditionees about their sex lives, as alleged. “This I never do when I am interviewing for the art department or the administrative positions. But for casting, I discuss childhood, parents, emotional things, love, sex, friendship, death… this is important, because we don’t work with actors but with real people. You talk to them about life, not acting methods.” Does he have any regrets about his treatment of women? “No. For me it makes no difference if it’s a woman or man, if you’re talking about work. Obviously there is an emotional difference between people and this is part of the beauty – but it is not determined by gender.” “There are a lot of rumours around my project,” he continues. “Then the rumours start to look like truth, then they become the truth. But it’s not the truth.” Does being Russian, and having a wealthy patron, not help? He agrees, explaining that a mutual friend introduced him to Adoniev, after the oligarch said he liked Khrzhanovsky’s film 4. But he has been the perfect patron, he says, giving the director plenty of money (he puts the figure at €25m) and left him well alone. “From the moment we met to the moment shooting finished, five years, I saw him maybe five times.” Khrzhanovsky insists that he does not have an unlimited budget. “I remember in one of our conversations he said, ‘You know, Ilya, probably you think I’m more rich than I am.’” Dau’s extravagance might seem outlandish, but its budget is probably lower than that of a typical Hollywood movie. Costs in Ukraine are low, and the crew was relatively small. Added to which, Khrzhanovsky points out, he has made 13 films out of it so far, with more to come. How much more depends on what happens when the public finally gets a chance to engage with Dau. It is time to see if Khrzhanovsky’s self-professed intuition was correct. Where can Khrzhanovsky can go next, having devoted so much of his life to this one project? Actually he has a plan, he tells me. He wants to build an experimental city of 5,000 people from around the world, where everything is recorded and everything is open and transparent. Maybe he’s joking. Coming from anyone else, it would sound utterly ridiculous. With Khrzhanovsky, you can’t be sure. • Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).The first footage has emerged of Roe v Wade, a controversial anti-abortion film, which is part of conservative efforts to overturn the landmark 1973 US supreme court ruling that deemed abortion a fundamental right under the US constitution. Co-written and co-directed by entrepreneur Nick Loeb, who sued his former partner Sofía Vergara in an attempt to gain control over their frozen embryos, Roe v Wade is an explicitly pro-life statement that its makers claimed was shot in secret fearing harassment from pro-choice activists. This is an entirely separate project from one recently announced by UK producers Alison Owen and Debra Hayward, which will focus on lawyer Sarah Weddington, who represented “Roe” AKA Norma McCorvey, the Texan woman who challenged state law denying her an abortion. The trailer for Roe v Wade has been released online, and features high-profile entertainment industry conservatives such as Jon Voight and Stacey Dash: the former plays Warren Burger, the Nixon-nominated chief justice of the supreme court at the time of the ruling, while the latter plays Dr Mildred Jefferson, co-founder of the National Right to Life Committee. With dialogue such as: “We have been in our second civil war for over 50 years now”, “Doctors must protect life … from the point of conception”, and “This is a conspiracy”, Roe v Wade’s trailer leaves no doubt what its intentions are; it also features news items about Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the supreme court followed by the line, “It will flip the decision.” The makers plan to promote the film at the anti-abortion March for Life rally that is due to take place in Washington DC on 18 January, but as yet do not have release plans in place.Three years ago, Carl Honoré, the journalist whose series of books, starting with In Praise of Slow in 2004, has made him the guru of slow living, had an epiphany. Like a true Canadian, though one born in Scotland and domiciled in London, he adores ice hockey, and still plays hard and fast at the age of 51. But one day, at a tournament in Gateshead, someone pointed out that he was the oldest player among the 240 competitors. “I knew that I was one of the oldest, but being told in such raw terms that I was the oldest – it just shook me. It knocked me for six in a way that shocked me.” Honoré was 48 at the time, “the big 50” was looming, and what he calls “the terrible weight of the number” started dragging him down. Was ageing really going to be as bad as everyone said? Was all he had to look forward to now decline, decrepitude and death? On the train back to London, as his team-mates knocked back the beers, he decided to embark on a book on the subject. “I’ve found with all my books that they start with what is almost an out-of-body experience when I see myself in sharp relief from the side,” he tells me. “I needed to understand my own relationship with the number, with what ageing means, and where I was going to be in 10 or 20 years.” The result is B(older): Making the Most of Our Longer Lives – a call for society to become less ageist and for individuals to stop worrying about the process of ageing and wring every drop out of whatever time is allotted to us. Honoré has travelled the world in search of active, high-achieving older people, but he stresses that he doesn’t want to hold the “outliers” up as the norm. He is more interested in a state of mind in which the average 70- and 80-year-old goes on working if they want to, volunteering, starting their own enterprises, playing competitive sport, having great sex – and society doesn’t bat an eye. It is ageist, he argues, to stop people being able to do those things; but it’s also ageist to make a big deal of it. Still having sex at 80, still making TV programmes at 90, even running marathons at 100? Why shouldn’t they be? The conclusion Honoré came to, after three years of research and an examination of the way older people are treated around the world, was that it was in many ways a golden age for “the old” (a term he would never use): there were more of them, they were healthier, more active and many were better off than in previous generations. They could no longer be ignored or marginalised. But, in his view, that is just a beginning. “It can be so much better,” he says, “if we move a lot of goalposts and change the way everything from healthcare to politics to the business world to education is organised.” He argues that the idea of being educated between the ages of five and 21, working for 40 years and then retiring on a pension at 60 is completely out of date, imagining a much more fluid way of life where we dip in and out of education and the job market and never formally “retire”. I ask Honoré at what age we become “old”. He refuses to supply a number. “I use the word ‘older’ in a very elastic way,” he says. “The definition is so fluid, and to box people in and say: ‘This is old’ narrows horizons. What do we gain by saying: ‘This person is old’?” He believes ageism is lessening but remains endemic. In fact, he says that when he began the book he was one of its worst proponents. “When I was younger, I was so ageist. I had a dread of growing old. I had bought into that idea that you hit 35 and it’s just a downward spiral. I used to think of old people as just sad and cantankerous. But, if you look at the stats, the people with the highest levels of happiness and life satisfaction in Britain are the over-60s. That doesn’t take away from the fact that many people will be very unhappy, but the story we are told and that we tell ourselves is that everyone is unhappy. It’s always the worst-case scenario: that’s what we are contaminated by.” Honoré no longer frets about ageing. “My biggest worry was that I would end up in a gloomy place,” he says, “but, thankfully, the opposite is true – I feel so much more optimistic now than I did when I embarked on the book. We have created a culture where ageing is seen as a chamber of horrors. There is no chink of light in it. I suspected that was not true, and along the way I found it to be utterly untrue.” B(older): Making the Most of Our Longer Lives is published by Simon & Schuster (£16.99) 1. If you think of yourself as old, you will be old. The media will bang on about dementia and loneliness, but ignore them. Concentrate on the upside. 2. Take yourself out of your comfort zone. Resist being pigeonholed; keep experimenting; challenge yourself and society’s stereotyping of you. 3. Try to stay healthy. Eat well and take lots of exercise – it’s good for brain and body. Exercise doesn’t have to mean playing competitive ice hockey; the odd brisk walk will keep you in shape. 4. Look for positive role models. Helen Mirren, David Attenborough and, best of all, Michelangelo, who lived until the ripe old age (in 16th-century terms) of 88 and spent the final 20 years of his life designing and overseeing the construction of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Now that’s a way to go out. 5. Seek to become the person you always wanted to be. One reason many people are at their happiest in their 60s is that they feel freer and less beholden to others. They contain all their previous selves and can start to make sense of them. 6. Don’t just maintain social connections with your own age group: mix across the generations as much as you can. Inter-generational contact has become increasingly difficult, but if we can do it we benefit – and society benefits. 7. Be willing to let stuff go. If that friendship isn’t working, drop it. Streamline your life. There is less time left, so make it count. 8. Ageing should be a process of opening rather than closing doors. “We will lose some things – speed, stamina, a bit of mental agility – but in many other respects we gain,” says Honoré. We learn new skills, have greater social awareness, are likely to be more altruistic, are “lighter” in our approach to life – because we are less hung up on creating a good impression – and can see the bigger picture. It may be that we are in a position to make a greater contribution to society in our 60s and 70s than in our so-called prime. 9. Honesty is the best policy. Don’t try to pretend you are not 75 or 85 or whatever age you are. “As soon as we start lying about our age, we’re giving the number a terrible power – a power it doesn’t deserve,” says Honoré. People do it because there are so many ageist assumptions attached to age, but the way to fight back is to subvert those assumptions. 10. Society tells us that sex, love and romance belong to the young, but it’s not true. Plenty of older people continue to experience the joy of sex. But there are no rules: have as much – or as little – as you want. Some older people see it as a blessed release to escape the shackles of falling in love (and lust), but others can’t imagine life without it. Whatever turns you on. 11. Ignore people who say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. You can. Despite the common perception that creativity is the preserve of the young, we can get more creative as we get older. Our neural networks loosen up and we have the confidence and freedom to challenge groupthink. Honoré was encouraged last year when the Turner prize abolished its age limit for artists. Michelangelo could have been a contender. 12. Don’t pretend death isn’t coming. Embrace it – just not yet. “It’s useful to know our lives are bookended,” says Honoré. “When time is running out, it becomes more precious. It gives life shape and, in some ways, meaning.” Don’t dwell morbidly on it, but don’t shy away from it either. The closer you get to it, the less you are likely to fear it and the greater your focus will be on the things that really matter.Hugh Grant has appealed for help tracking down personal items stolen from his car, including a script. The actor tweeted on Sunday night about the theft, writing: “In the unlikely chance that anyone knows who broke into my car tonight and stole my bag, please try and persuade them to at least return my script. Many weeks’ worth of notes and ideas. And perhaps [also return] my children’s medical cards.” Grant, who reportedly put his house in Notting Hill, west London, up for rent in October last year, did not say where the theft took place. He asked for the items to be returned to Coach Films in Ealing, west London. The cricketer Kevin Pietersen tweeted in reply: “Our street being invaded by scumbags?” Also responding to Grant, the comedian David Baddiel wrote: “I’m sorry. I’ve had very bad writer’s block.” I'm sorry. I've had very bad writer's block. Grant last appeared on screen in the BBC drama A Very English Scandal, playing the late Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe, for which he was nominated for several awards. He did not say which production the script in the car was for. Grant is currently working on Toff Guys, a Guy Ritchie film about a British drug lord, and the HBO series The Undoing, which also features Nicole Kidman and Donald Sutherland. Grant made his name in the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral and went on to appear in a number of romantic comedies. He has said he will no longer take such roles now he is “older and uglier” and is being offered a greater variety of parts. The actor, one of many celebrities who had their voicemails hacked, is one of the figureheads of the Hacked Off movement for press regulation. Police did not immediately comment on the theft.The EU is expected to publish a letter of clarification emphasising that any use of the Northern Ireland backstop designed to keep the land border open would only ever be temporary, although it will be a surprise if it makes much difference to the Commons arithmetic. Theresa May will also make a public appeal for support in a speech in Stoke-on-Trent in the morning, while MPs move on to day four of the Brexit debate, with Philip Hammond, the chancellor, closing proceedings. Monday night is the deadline for submitting amendments to the Brexit motion. If May allows it, MPs will finally get to vote on her Brexit deal, although few believe the prime minister can get it approved, given that more than 100 Tory MPs have said they will vote against it. John Bercow, the Speaker, will select which amendments to vote on. The one to watch is the Hilary Benn amendment, which rejects both May’s deal and no deal, and gives MPs a say in what happens next. The prime minister will conclude proceedings, speaking just before voting starts at 7pm. A result on the Benn amendment could come at about 7.30pm. If that falls, the all-important vote on May’s final deal is expected between 8 and 9pm. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, could immediately demand to hold a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, if she is defeated. A heavy loss, and May will face immediate calls to resign. If May were to prevail, business as usual would commence, starting with prime minister’s questions. But the DUP has threatened to abandon its confidence and supply agreement with the government if May’s deal goes through, leaving the Conservatives without an overall majority. A confidence vote could be held on Wednesday, if Corbyn calls for one. It will be hard for Labour to win, because in this scenario, if May’s deal is voted down, the DUP has said it will support the Conservatives in an attempt to get the Brexit deal renegotiated. If May suffers a heavy defeat – perhaps with 80 rebels or more – she may find she is not able to stay on. A more narrow defeat – 40 rebels or fewer – could encourage her to try to ask MPs to vote on the deal again, although it will almost certainly need to be revised first. May could make a dash to Brussels to see if there is any hope of renegotiating. If defeated, she has until the close of business on Monday 21 January to tell MPs what her plan B is; the Commons would then debate and vote on that later in the week. May could seek a general election, which Labour would support, but her own party may not. Soft Brexiters in the Conservative party could break ranks to see if there is majority support for the UK remaining in the customs union, and even the single market. Campaigners for a second referendum see this as their moment to strike: believing that their idea needs to be the last one standing – the only option that could achieve a majority in the house amid a crisis atmosphere. Except that there would then be an argument about what options should be on the ballot paper.Briana Libby is not a federal employee, and she is not into politics. She lives 2,500 miles from the US border with Mexico, where Donald Trump has demanded funds for a wall in exchange for ending the partial government shutdown. Nonetheless, the shutdown has hit Libby, 26, with devastating force. A mother of two daughters aged four and six, she was on the verge of buying her first home in southern Maine when the shutdown happened. A $200,000 mortgage Libby had negotiated with the support of the US department of agriculture was supposed to close on Friday. But with the shutdown, the loan program has ground to a halt. Meanwhile her landlord has found a new tenant, and Libby, a payroll specialist at a healthcare organization, fears becoming homeless. “My loan officer is pretty confident that at this point, closing in January is not an option at all, and we need to be out of our home at the end of the month,” Libby said. “So my option is packing up all of my stuff, finding a storage unit and sleeping on my mom’s living room floor until I can get into my home. “It’s going to be difficult, especially for my kids.” As the longest shutdown in US history enters its fifth week, the waves of havoc it has created are crashing ever further outward, threatening essential government functions and introducing unexpected hardships in the lives of millions of Americans. Crucial climate change monitoring and research has halted. Unpaid Coast Guard enlistees have had to turn to food banks to feed their families. Asylum seekers who have already waited years for an immigration court hearing now have to wait years longer. Theater workers and stage actors are threatened by an interruption in arts funding. Corrections officers can’t buy gas to get to work. Inmates say basic services are falling apart. Some federal employees have had to tap into their retirement plans. For those employees required to work without a paycheck because their roles are deemed essential, the pressure is intense, said Clifton Buchanan, a bureau of prisons corrections officer and union executive from Houston, Texas. “Last night I got a disturbing call that one of my officers attempted suicide,” Buchanan said. “Not having gas, not having food – I have staff that are contemplating quitting to go find another job. We’re already short-staffed. “It’s not a joke that we’re working for free.” Inside Washington, the shutdown has in part played out as a political circus: Trump serving 300 hamburgers on silver platters to a visiting college football team; members of Congress stuck on a tour bus after Trump, at the last minute, canceled their overseas trip; the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, telling Trump to delay his planned State of the Union Address; angry letters sent back and forth between the White House and Capitol Hill. But each day, terrible new costs of the political deadlock emerge. Federal employees claiming unemployment benefits jumped to 10,000 in the first week of the year, according to labor department figures – double the number from the previous week. Economists in Trump’s own White House estimate that for each week it lasts, the shutdown cuts 0.1 % from economic growth projections. The vice-president of the air traffic controllers union told CNN about air travel, “I would say it is less safe today than it was a month ago, absolutely.” According to a Syracuse University data tracking program, the shutdown has derailed more than 60,000 immigration cases and counting, said federal judge Amiena Khan, speaking in her capacity as executive vice-president of the National Association of Immigration Judges union. Because immigration courts are already over-scheduled, delayed cases probably get bumped to the “end of the line” – which probably means the end of 2021, almost three years away. “These are human beings that we deal with in immigration court on a daily basis,” Khan said. “These are life-and-death decisions for many individuals.” Ironically, given that Trump’s desire to eject and ban immigrants is driving the shutdown, some immigrants whose claims of asylum are without merit have been in effect granted a years-long reprieve by the shutdown. “It shows a high level of dysfunction,” Khan said. The shutdown has threatened to weaken the country’s immigration system in other ways. Border officers are among those working without pay, as are enlistees in the US Coast Guard, an essential part of immigration enforcement that last year recorded an almost fivefold increase in the number of migrants it intercepted off the coast of southern California. Yet some Coast Guard families have faced food emergencies and other crises because of the shutdown, said Katie Walvatne, 34, president of the south-east Connecticut Coast Guard Spouses Association. Walvatne, whose husband has served in the Coast Guard for more than 15 years, recently helped to open a food bank for enlisted families and other federal workers at the US Coast Guard academy in New London, Connecticut. “We just realized that families are going to need something so that they can put groceries in their pantries,” Walvatne said. “I have been there each day, and there’s always a steady stream of people coming in. And it’s everybody. It’s not just active duty.” Walvatne said the community’s sense of solidarity had ameliorated some of the difficulty of the situation. “For as much anxiety and stress as we’re having right now with this whole shutdown, the community – both active duty and not – has just been amazing,” she said. Elsewhere, the shutdown has interrupted basic government functions, such as processing tax returns, providing food assistance and supporting low-income housing. Arts organizations dependent on grants from the National Endowment for the Arts aren’t receiving promised funds for 2019 – and any grant submissions for 2020 cannot be processed, according to the Actors’ Equity Association union. The shutdown also has severely impeded scientists’ ability to monitor and research climate change data, said Paul Shearon, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers union, whose members work at the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Nasa and elsewhere. “Even all the way down to weather satellites, a lot of that information is just not being – is not available because those people are out,” Shearon said. Some important field work, such as identifying toxins and conducting cleanup in the wake of last November’s fatal wildfires in California, has been suspended or slowed – or employees are conducting the dangerous job without pay. “People are starting to go into their 401(k) plans to pay for rent, to pay regular bills.” Shearon said. “There are huge penalties that are involved in touching that 401(k) plan – that’s pretty dramatic.” Back in southern Maine, Briana Libby reflected on how close she had come to securing a piece of the American dream, which she hopes might still be hers. “It’s supposed to be a happy, exciting thing – but we are in fear of being homeless,” she said. Asked whether the experience had affected her political views, Libby said, “I don’t really pay too much attention to politics, to be honest. I never was a Trump supporter, but I also don’t really put my nose into it too much because, I just don’t. “But I think he’s making a fool of our country by doing this. I think it’s embarrassing for our country.”A woman’s claim in a Facebook posting that her ex-husband “tried to strangle” her was not libellous because there was evidence of an attack, the supreme court has been told. In an extraordinary case involving a bitter domestic dispute, five of the UK’s most senior judges are being asked to decide whether the phrase meant he had attempted to kill her and was therefore defamatory. The appeal has been brought by Nicola Stocker, who divorced her husband, Ronald, in 2012. Shortly afterwards, she requested and was accepted as a Facebook friend by his new partner, Deborah Bligh. During a series of exchanges with Bligh, Stocker told her about her former husband, saying: “Last time I accused him of cheating, he spent a night in the cells, tried to strangle me.” The posting was seen by several other acquaintances online. In written submissions to the court, David Price QC, for Nicola Stocker, argued that: “The phrase ‘tried to strangle’ is a common way of describing an assault involving a constriction of the neck or throat where the victim is alive … The phrase does not convey an intent to kill in ordinary language or in relevant criminal offences.” Both the high court and the court of appeal, however, found in favour of Ronald Stocker’s defamation claim against his ex-wife on the grounds that the words “tried to strangle” did imply an attempt to kill her by strangulation. But Mr Justice Mitting also ruled that Mr Stocker had “in temper” placed one hand on her mouth and the other on her neck in order to silence her with such force that red marks were visible on her neck to the police in an interview two hours later. Nicola Stocker was ordered to pay £5,000 damages plus legal costs in the high court case. Following an unsuccessful appeal to the court of appeal, her legal costs are estimated to have escalate to more than £200,000. “The [high court] judge’s finding that ‘tried to strangle’ logically imputed an intent to kill (based on the two Oxford English Dictionary definitions of strangle and the fact that the appellant was alive with red marks on her neck) was wrong,” Price told the court in written submissions. “If the judge’s meaning is overturned, it must follow that the defence of justification succeeds on the basis of the proved and admitted facts.” Protesters supporting Nicola Stocker gathered outside the supreme court on Thursday morning. The human rights organisation Liberty warned that the case raised concerns that victims of domestic abuse could be silenced by the use of defamation laws. Before the case, Harriet Wistrich, the director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said: “This case has chilling implications for women who speak out about male violence. The judgment reveals a shocking ignorance amongst members of the judiciary of the realities of domestic violence. “The fact that Mr Stocker was arrested and red marks were observed by the police on the victim’s neck is a serious warning of escalation of violence regardless of whether he had any intent to kill. “In fact, strangulation is a warning marker in standardised police risk assessments. We are appalled that a woman speaking out about an accepted incident of domestic violence has been silenced and severely financially penalised.” Karen Ingala Smith, the co-founder of the Femicide Census, said: “We know …. that between 2009 and 2017, 285 women were killed though strangulation, of which 188 women were strangled to death by a current or former partner; that’s an average of one woman strangled to death every two weeks. It is the second most common method used to kill women in the UK. “Whether used as a means to kill, frighten and/or control women strangulation is extremely dangerous and abusive.” The hearing continues.Forget about athleisure, ugly trainers and logomania, the most dominant trend to have gripped the masses in recent years isinteriors. The fashion world is currently consumed by a homeware obsession – making the “shelfie” the new selfie. It’s not a hard trend to hunt down. On social media, aesthetically pleasing backgrounds now get at least as much attention as the outfits we post photographs of. Elsewhere on our feeds, Peggy Guggenheim’s terrazzo-tiled palazzo in Venice, the quiet sophistication of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge and the sugary millennial-pink interior of the tea room at Sketch in London are just as likely to be pictured as a new pair of shoes. The hashtag #IHaveThisThingWithTiles has become as commonplace as #TodayI’mWearing, while Le Corbusier is the new Calvin Klein and Charlotte Perriand the new Prada. The two worlds have merged to create complementary – if co-dependant – style statements and, as a host of established players enter the fray, buying a cushion with your coat is set to become cheaper and more accessible than ever. Hot on the heels of River Island launching its 160-piece in-house collection last September (its head of homeware, Dayna Sofair declared that “style doesn’t end at our clothes”), Asos launches its first homeware line, Supply, next Monday. River Island promises that “customers will be able to shop the looks [priced between £6 for a mug to £275 for a rug] easily and refresh and update their home seasonally” just as they would with their wardrobes. Similarly, Asos’s “living” range, which starts at £8, is “inspired by seasonal trends and packed with innovative pieces for your home that are as individual as you are”. “It’s a natural extension of accessorising in fashion in the way you might buy something to cheer an outfit up; the equivalent is buying a cushion for your sofa or a vase for your mantlepiece,” says Vogue’s fashion features editor, Ellie Pithers. She too credits Instagram for the rate at which we are consuming images of people’s houses, hence increasing our appetite for interiors (witness the Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta this week releasing its spring 2019 campaign, in which the chrome and snakeskin chair the model sat on stole the show). “The next stage of showing off your good taste is extended to your house.” The new offering from Asos – which self-identifies as “a global fashion destination for 20-somethings” – promises to work, says Pithers, because it is targeting young trend-driven shoppers who don’t have a lot of space or money. “They haven’t focused on big furniture, because their customers are students who don’t have big flats.” Instead, they can “buy a standard sofa from Ikea then beautify it with lots of nice little bits”, such as placing a wicker wastepaper basket, a printed plate or a water jug nearby. River Island’s bestsellers so far – a coaster, a planter and a leopard-print mug –chime with this psychology. That the popularity of interiors has coincided with the rise of the Swedish H&M group on the high street is no coincidence. The group capitalised on the mid-century Scandinavian aesthetic – one of the most prevailing interiors trends of this century – by bottling the formula, firstly through its H&M Home brand and then with Arket, which launched in 2017. “Arket has been clever,” says Pithers. “The way they have the homewares by the till. Instead of buying a chocolate bar on the way out of the newsagent, you’re buying a little vase or a pack of matches that doesn’t cost very much and cheers you up.” When it comes to fashion, quick-fix, fast interiors are the new food for thought. And they’re always ready for a close-up. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.In his four years leading Canada, the Liberal prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has gone to great lengths – at home and abroad – to bolster his environmental credentials. Now, with a federal election looming, he is gambling his parliamentary majority and political future on them. When Canadians cast their votes next October, they will do so amid standard electoral issues: jobs, the economy and foreign policy. But in a country largely dependent on resource extraction, a pair of politically fractious additions have risen to the top: carbon taxes and pipelines. “The good news for the prime minister is that when you ask Canadians who they think would make the best prime minister, he still has a comfortable advantage over Conservative leader Andrew Scheer,” said Nik Nanos, a Canadian pollster. “The bad news is that leading up to the next federal election right now, it’s basically a coin toss between the Liberals and Conservatives.” Canadians have shown an increasing concern for the environment, but in a country largely dependent on resource extraction, the results are often messy. Earlier in the year, as part of its pan-Canadian climate change strategy, the federal government required all provinces have a minimum level of carbon pricing. For those that fail to do so, the government will implement its own carbon tax, set to begin in July 2019. Already, the levy has fired up Trudeau’s political opponents – at both the provincial and federal level. But the prime minister had been forced to fend off barbs from critics – including the left-of-centre New Democratic party and Indigenous communities, that any environmental goodwill he might have earned through his carbon tax has been sullied by the support for – and subsequent nationalisation of – an oil pipeline. “The only true test of a climate change plan, after all, is whether carbon is going up or down,” said the NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, in a statement about his frustrations with the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which runs from Alberta to the British Columbia coast. The result for Trudeau is a tricky path forward as he heads off attacks that he has done too little on the environment – or too much. “Trudeau has moved from having an environment that was friendly and pliant to one that is more combative and hostile,” said Nanos, pointing to a string of shifts to Conservative – or right-of-centre – provincial governments across the country since Trudeau was elected in 2015. Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, has repeatedly called carbon pricing “the worst tax ever” and at least five provinces have banded together to fight the tax in the courts, a battle legal experts believe they will lose. Along with their provincial counterparts, the federal Conservatives have pledged to repeal any carbon taxes, with Scheer dismissing the policy as an “election gimmick”. This fight comes amid reports that Canada is not on pace to meet its 2030 climate goals. “The opposition or the politicians will convince people that the carbon price is hurting them, even though that’s a lie,” said Mark Jaccard, professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University. Jaccard, who has also served as a policy analyst, has previously warned respective governments that carbon taxes – while effective at reducing emissions – are politically difficult to sell and often not as effective as other policy options. He points out that the biggest emissions reductions in Canada came from the Ontario government’s closure of coal plants. The recent plan to close all of Canada’s coal plants by 2029 will have a far greater impact than a carbon tax – yet the tax will probably remain at the centre of the discussion. The tax could end up being particularly appealing from an electoral standpoint, said Nelson Wiseman, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. All proceeds from the levy will be remitted back to households in the form of a cheque, the first of which will arrive in July – a date Wiseman suspects will be close enough to the election that people will take notice. But Wiseman, who has studied the country’s elections for generations, cautions: “We’re still a long way off. And things can change on a dime in politics.”The streaming pioneer Netflix’s first mover advantage has taken it to nearly 150m global subscribers – but serious competition is now coming as traditional media companies and Silicon Valley rivals fight back. Disney, with the might of its super franchises from Marvel to Pixar and Star Wars, is set to join the fray with its own streaming service, Disney+. The world’s largest entertainment group is banking on its content clout to help make its relatively late entry into the market a success. The AT&T-owned WarnerMedia is also prepping a service that will include content from HBO, Turner and the Warner Bros film studio. WarnerMedia has not been as combative as Disney in pulling content from Netflix. But Netflix’s willingness to pay $100m (£78m) to keep Friends for one more year – at which point WarnerMedia will have to decide whether to keep it exclusively for its own service – highlights the value of crowd-pulling content and the problems Netflix could face if media companies reassess their content strategies. Netflix previously paid $30m a year for Friends, which has proven one of its biggest hits globally. “Netflix is facing increased competition from some of its previous content suppliers,” said Richard Broughton, an analyst at Ampere Analysis. “Despite its major focus on original content the company is still hugely reliant on licensed content for subscribers and that carries risks.” Ampere estimates that Netflix original productions in the US make up only about 8% of the hours of content available in its vast library, and 9% in the UK. A further 5% of hours is labelled as original by Netflix because it airs it first, but is actually acquired from content suppliers, such as Star Trek: Discovery. “Individually any one of the big Hollywood studio groups does not make up a huge proportion of Netflix’s catalogue, maybe 4% or 5% of total hours,” says Broughton. “If one or two pull their content Netflix can plug the gap. But if the market gets more aggressive against Netflix, it is going to get tougher.” Netflix is already facing off against Amazon’s Prime Video, a global rival with ambitious plans including a Lord of the Rings extravaganza. A rattled Netflix upped its content budget by 50%, from $8bn to $12bn, when Amazon announced it would spend $5bn this year. But Amazon could easily outspend rivals: its market value is six times bigger than Netflix and 4.5 times the size of Disney. Netflix will also be looking over its shoulder at Apple, which is widely expected to launch a global streaming service this year. The content arms race is costing Netflix dear. The company expects a negative free cash flow of  $3bn-$4bn this year – meaning the amount it spends on content, marketing and other costs in 2018 will exceed what it earns from subscribers by at least $3bn. Netflix keeps turning to debt markets to top up the funds it needs to continue to feed film and TV content to the binge-watching generation it helped create – its net debt was $8.34bn at the end of September, up over 70% year-on-year. Netflix built its reputation and audiences from expensive dramas, such as The Crown. It has recently started to focus on cheaper, yet popular, unscripted shows – snapping up the Channel 4 reality show The Circle to make it in multiple markets – with the Netflix CEO Reed Hastings highlighting the value of such fare. “Unscripted television has always been a hugely profitable sector,” says Lucas Green, head of content at Banijay Group, maker of shows including Survivor, Temptation Island and Wife Swap. “Drama has always got the headlines and red carpet treatment. Yet gameshows, quiz, reality TV, dating, baking and talent shows are highly returnable, faster to produce, more cost efficient and therefore lower risk. ” Netflix is also facing pressure outside the US, which is increasingly nearing peak Netflix, for the next cycle of growth. Well over 80% of the new subscribers added by Netflix in the third quarter came from outside the US. The company has been very bullish on the prospects of the Asia-Pacific region, particularly India. But Netflix’s pricing makes it a premium service compared with pay-TV and streaming rivals in many of these new markets and it may have to cut prices – meaning it will need more subscribers. Which rival will be the biggest threat to Netflix? Broughton reckons it is Amazon: “If I had to put my money somewhere it would have to be on Amazon. New players like Disney and WarnerMedia will need a lot of time and marketing to break into households, and who else will want to licence content to them? Amazon has the deepest pockets. Its catalogue is by far the largest, even if a lot of the content is quite old, and it has been exploring sports rights and other areas other players aren’t. ”More than a dozen Labour frontbenchers have been to see the chief whip, Nick Brown, to issue a warning about the scale of opposition to the idea of a second Brexit referendum. The shadow housing minister, Melanie Onn, and the shadow justice minister, Gloria De Piero, both of whom represent constituencies that voted leave in 2016, were among a delegation who went to urge Brown not to whip Labour MPs to back a “people’s vote”. The hastily arranged meeting was requested after Labour published an amendment to Theresa May’s Brexit motion, calling for a public vote to be among the options presented to MPs to allow parliament to decide on what should happen next. Onn said: “It was a meeting for frontbenchers who would find it very difficult to vote for a people’s vote if it was whipped that way. We have been supportive of the party’s policy so far to keep us as a strong and united opposition. We have not been as free in our views as some other colleagues, whose views we absolutely respect, but we didn’t want that to be seen as the only set of views that exist.” Some of those present at yesterday’s meeting are understood to have warned that they have not yet decided whether to back Labour’s amendment. Onn had already suggested publicly that she would resign rather than vote for a referendum. A Labour source confirmed that the meeting had taken place but said it was not unusual for the chief whip to meet groups of MPs and that the atmosphere was collegiate. The meeting was so well attended more chairs had to be hurriedly brought in. One MP present said the amendment had taken many of them by surprise. Several MPs at the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) on Monday night, which was addressed by the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, spoke out against a second referendum, according to others present. Sceptical voices included the Warley MP John Spellar, usually considered as on the right of the Labour party, and Chris Williamson, a loyal ally of Jeremy Corbyn’s. Labour’s amendment calls on the government to allow parliament “to consider and vote on options to prevent the UK leaving the EU without a ratified withdrawal agreement and political declaration” – including Labour’s softer Brexit, and a “public vote”. Campaigners for a referendum reacted with disappointment, claiming the amendment did not go far enough in signalling Labour’s support. The Streatham MP Chuka Umunna said: “There is always a flurry of excitement when the frontbench acknowledges the obvious – that a people’s vote may be the only way forward (it is) – but that is not the position adopted by those running the show. Supporting ‘options’ is not a credible or sustainable policy.” Wes Streeting, who represents the leave-voting constituency of Ilford North, told his constituents in a speech on Tuesday: “As an MP representing voters on the London-Essex border who opted to leave, I would rather tell it how it is and risk losing my job, than stay silent and risk my constituents losing theirs.” Other Labour MPs fear a backlash from leave voters in their constituencies if they appear to be seeking to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum. Campaigners for a people’s vote have not yet decided whether to table an amendment to the government’s Brexit motion next week that would test the strength of support for a referendum. The Conservative MP Phillip Lee told the Guardian discussions were ongoing. Labour MPs present at a People’s Vote campaign event on Tuesday said they thought it was not yet the right moment to press the issue. The Houghton and Sunderland South MP Bridget Phillipson said: “I want to make sure when we get to the point when we want to secure a referendum, it is a time when we have the greatest prospects of success.” A campaign source said: “A people’s vote will probably not secure a majority in the House of Commons until every Brexit option has been exhausted but there will be multiple opportunities in parliament to give the public the final say when it has become clear this is the only way forward.” They fear that unless Labour whips its MPs to support a secnd referendum , the proposition will fail to win majority support in the Commons and the government will then be able to claim it has been rejected.A British man has been arrested in Nepal on suspicion of child sexual abuse two years after UK police tipped off authorities in the Himalayan country. The 50-year-old was arrested in an apartment in the capital, Kathmandu, on Saturday morning. Police said they found three underage boys on the premises. “We have been monitoring him since the last three weeks after his arrival in Nepal,” said Kabit Katwal, the Central Investigation Bureau officer who led the raid on his apartment. “He was found luring underaged children, buying stuff for them, and indulging in paedophilia.” The boys found in the apartment were aged between 13 and 15, he added. The suspect entered Nepal on 29 December last year with another man, police said. Two Nepalese identified as “helpers” were also found living in the apartment in the Ravi Bhawan neighbourhood. Uma Prasad Chaturvedi, superintendent of police, said authorities had received an Interpol request to look into the suspect in 2016 and again when he entered the country in December. The Briton was on his 16th visit to Nepal, where he appeared to have a strong network. Chaturvedi said police were investigating whether he had also entered the country in 2017. The man is currently detained at the CIB’s headquarters in Kathmandu. The three boys found in his apartment were receiving counselling, Chaturvedi said. There were 361 requests from UK nationals for consular assistance in relation to allegations of child sexual abuse between 2013 and 2017, according to Foreign Office data. Most of the requests came from Britons arrested in the US (124), followed by Australia (40) and Spain (39). There were a handful of requests received from what are considered hotspots for abuse by overseas nationals – including Indonesia, the Philippines and India – suggesting many more people have been arrested without the knowledge of UK authorities. Katwal said Nepal authorities had made child sexual abuse a national priority and were working with civil society groups to tackle the problem.Over the next few days an estimated 9,000 England supporters will have arrived in Barbados, packing out the hotels, bars and sun-kissed beaches before descending on the famous Kensington Oval for Wednesday’s first Test against West Indies. They would come in their droves regardless of England’s chances, such is the appeal of the Caribbean island known colloquially as “Bim”. But the expectation among them this time is that a team starting to play in the image of its captain, Joe Root, will begin an all-important 2019 by making it successive series victories away from the cold back home. Two years ago Eoin Morgan’s surging one-day side broke new ground when completing a 3-0 clean sweep in bustling Bridgetown, an important staging post in their rise to No 1, even if the opposition were suffering in the format. But in Test cricket the most recent visit to these shores offers a useful reminder that it remains a tough citadel to storm. Bowled out for 123 in their second innings en route to a five-wicket defeat, Alastair Cook’s side blew the chance to take the 2015 series and had to settle for a draw. There were consequences for a set-up still reeling from an abject World Cup too, chiefly the botched sacking of Peter Moores as head coach less than a week later in Ireland. There are six English survivors from that match – Root, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Ben Stokes, Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson – who will doubtless be warning the others against complacency. But after the 3-0 win in Sri Lanka last November, four days spent dismantling a West Indies Board President’s XI during the week and with a heavily-lacquered Dukes ball they fancy should swing a good while, optimism seemingly abounds. Having whittled the squad down to a 12, Root and the head coach, Trevor Bayliss, will examine the pitch at training this week and make their final selection. It appears to be between the left-arm swing of Sam Curran or Adil Rashid’s leg-breaks, with Broad and Anderson back in tandem here following bit-part roles on the last tour. Either call would see England bat all the way down to No 9, but it is the top, not the bottom, that will be under the microscope this series. Despite looking to divert talk away from the Ashes this summer, Root admitted he had been keeping a close eye on Australia’s recent defeat by India and he will be keen that Keaton Jennings and Rory Burns cement their opening partnership before those particular hostilities resume. For all the negativity that can surround West Indies at times the Caribbean remains verdant by way of cricketing talent. The challenge is still how this gets channelled through the sport’s three different formats given a global economic landscape that can often feel heavily stacked against the region. Richard Pybus, an Englishman with a relatively low profile at home after forging his career overseas, was in charge of this as the West Indies director of cricket until 2016, but he has now returned as the national team’s interim head coach to a touch of disquiet following the suggestion he was unilaterally hired by the board president, Dave Cameron. On Friday night, as the early travelling supporters were heading to Oistins Fish Fry for a evening of fresh food and rum punch, Cricket West Indies felt moved to issue a statement reaffirming that the appointment met standards of good governance. Enoch Lewis, the Leeward Islands Cricket Board president who has been most vocal in the criticism, was also to be referred to its ethics committee. While this all sounded a bit 1984 – the book, sadly, not the year of the 5-0 whitewash of England under Clive Lloyd – the team itself, though fresh from a recent 2-0 defeat in Bangladesh after crumbling against spin, are not to be underestimated at home. England, after all, have won only a single Caribbean Test series (2004) in the last 51 years. “Pride and Industry” is the national motto of Barbados and they are words that run through Jason Holder, the West Indies captain who hails from the island, like those in a stick of rock. It helps that the 6ft 7in right-armer is in the form of his life too, having spent 2018 taking 33 Test wickets at 12 runs apiece. With the brawny Shannon Gabriel set to hit splices hard and Kemar Roach having successfully converted himself into a bowler of high skill after losing the pace that once sent Ricky Ponting to the hospital with a broken elbow, England’s batsmen face a significantly different challenge from Sri Lanka provided the pitches are not dull. The question will be whether the home side’s batting, recently refurbished with a recall for Darren Bravo and two uncapped players in John Campbell and Shamar Brooks, stands up to scrutiny. Shai Hope, the Bajan right-hander who made his debut at the Kensington Oval four years ago – but his name with twin hundreds at Headingley in 2017, – will be the most prized wicket and Shimron Hetmyer, the destructive Guyanese, is another to watch. If England keep that pair quiet, and play judiciously with the bat themselves, then the hordes of supporters who stroll off the planes and giant cruise ships and into the region’s so-called mecca of cricket should have plenty to sing about.Jo Elgarf doesn’t look like you would imagine a prepper to look. She’s not a swivel-eyed libertarian, camouflaged and armed to the eyeballs, crawling around the woods in Montana, skinning a squirrel for breakfast and fuelling up for the apocalypse. She lives with her husband and three young children in a sleepy suburb of south-west London. Elgarf is happy to call herself a prepper, though; she is a member – and a moderator – of one of a growing number of prepper groups on social media. Hers – an anti-Brexit Facebook group called 48% Preppers – gets between 100 and 200 requests a day to join. Everyone wants to be ready for a no-deal Brexit. The stockpiling is not too extreme in Elgarf’s case; it just means the kitchen cupboards are stuffed full of pasta, sauces, rice, tins, milk powder and washing powder. There are a few things she wouldn’t normally get – such as tinned vegetables – which can go to a food bank if they’re not needed. Otherwise, it’s just a bit more of the usual. Elgarf reckons they have got enough to last the family from a month to six weeks. The group is not about scaremongering, she says. Quite the opposite – it’s about calming like-minded people down, and about promoting an old-fashioned larder mentality. “Have a look in your cupboard; if you got snowed in for a month, could you cope? We’re not predicting you won’t get anything. What we’re saying is: you may walk into a shop and can’t find any rice. Have you got something at home to replace it? “In Switzerland, they tell people to have, I think, two weeks’ stuff,” she says. People are vulnerable there, not just because they’re more likely to get snowed in, but also because they have a hard border. Elgarf’s degree was in European studies. And she worked in the food industry; she knows how just-in-time it operates. Chris Grayling’s little lorry exercise didn’t reassure her. Nor the chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry saying that a no-deal Brexit “should be avoided at all costs”. Because it’s not just about food for Elgarf and her family. One of her four-year-old twins, Nora, who has been sitting happily on her mum’s lap as we talk, has a rare brain condition called polymicrogyria. She has lots of prescriptions, but without two of them – Epilim and Keppra – for her epilepsy, she would have multiple seizures a day. “She can’t do without them,” says Elgarf. Both Epilim and Keppra are imported. If she could stockpile these medicines, she would. But they are controlled, and she can only get a month’s supply at a time. “It should be all right,” she has been told by doctors and the pharmacists. But when it’s your daughter’s life that’s at stake, “it should be all right” isn’t good enough. Many of the people who join the Facebook group have concerns about medicines, Elgarf says. There are a lot of diabetics and coeliacs among them. What they need is some reassurance. “We need to know for certain they have got a proper plan in place for anybody who depends on meds.” She has heard rumours that the most critical medicines may have to be collected from central hubs, which would be stocked on the basis of lists provided by GPs. It’s clearly something she has given thought to. Elgarf is also clear about why she is talking to me. “So come April and there’s no Epilim in the country, I’ll say: ‘Where’s that Guardian man?’ And you guys are going to be interested because this little child you saw in January now has no meds.” Nora has fallen asleep on her mum. And so to another unlikely prepper, and member of the same group, in Cardiff. “I don’t identify as a prepper, but I am prepping,” says Helena, who doesn’t want her surname published. “I always thought preppers were a bit batshit crazy and am quite surprised to find myself in this position.” Helena, who has a politics degree and works for a charity, doesn’t come across as crazy. None of the people I speak to do. Informed: tick. Cautious: tick. Organised: tick. Very organised, in Helena’s case: she has – and shares with me – a spreadsheet, colour-coded according to what is fully purchased (eg tinned tomatoes and loo paper, alongside a note that the average person uses 110 rolls a year), part-purchased (eg cereal), waiting delivery (powdered coconut), or pending testing (dried falafel mix). Falafel! I’m going straight round to Helena’s. She also has booze and biscuits. Brexit party in Cardiff on Friday 29 March, everyone. And she’s got makeup! We’re going to be looking good as the good ship Britannia goes down. Helena is not just prepping for herself. She is doing it for her dog, Charlie, too. And while she has about three months’ worth of supplies for herself, she is looking at more like a year for the dog, as she doesn’t see that pet food will be a priority. “I don’t really trust the government to look after me; I certainly don’t trust them to look after my dog,” she says. As well as dog food, there are treats and toys on the spreadsheet. Charlie is going to enjoy a hard Brexit. Helena sees it as an insurance policy. “Unless there’s enormous panic buying, I don’t think there’s going to be nothing on the shelves at Asda,” she says. “But I do think there’s a very good chance that choice is going to be limited.” Helena’s dad agrees. He thinks he should be doing the same, but just hasn’t got round to it yet. Her mum – who is “nearly as keen on Brexit as Nigel Farage” – has accused her of gullibility, ignorance and spreading fear. “I don’t think it’s scaremongering to protect your family, and because people are doing this earlier it means that, when we get to 29 March, there’s going to be more left for people who haven’t prepped, and the supply chains will have had the chance to catch up.” She hopes she is being overcautious. “I don’t want to be proved right at all. I’d be super-happy if, a year from now, I’m sitting here thinking: ‘Bloody hell, I’ve still got tinned potatoes on the shelf.’ I hope that my mother is right and Brexit is a fantastic success … the land of milk and honey.” As opposed to the land of powdered milk and … “golden syrup”, she says. Actually, there’s honey and golden syrup on the spreadsheet. In Cambridge, Diane says she is also stockpiling, though she doesn’t want to go into too much detail. “I’m a bit cautious about being presented as an idiot who has a cupboard full of stuff,” she says. She’s OK about using her surname, though: she is Diane Coyle, OBE, FACSS, the economist, Bennett professor of public policy at the University of Cambridge, former adviser to the Treasury, vice-chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission, winner of the Indigo prize … in short, really not an idiot. “The point about supply chains,” she explains, “is that the things you buy in the supermarket today were on the road last night. Supermarkets now don’t have warehouses full of stuff. If we have a no deal and the delays go up even by 12 hours – although I see there’s a new report saying it is going to be much more – then things will stop being put on the shelves. They will run out. And it’s not just stuff we buy from the EU, and it’s not just fresh produce – it’s quite a lot of things.” Coyle knows that she can’t get by without a cuppa and doesn’t want to run out of teabags or coffee because she didn’t get any in before a no-deal exit. “It’s things that matter to me, that we import, and it’s a bit of insurance.” We’re planning a few little Brexit veg boxes for friends and family, who we know can’t manage to prepare for themselves She did the same with cash before the financial crisis. Lending rates were going off the scale; “The message was the banks don’t trust each other with their money overnight, so why should I trust them with money overnight?” She took out some cash and stashed it away just in case; in the end she didn’t need it, but it emerged later that the cash machines were close to stopping working. Does she really expect empty shelves this time? “I don’t know – it’s completely uncertain. There are serious people saying the chances of a no-deal exit are significant. And even if they are only 10%, and it’s 90% we’ll have a deal, why would you not have that extra bit of insurance? It’s perfectly sensible.” Coyle worries that a lot of people don’t get the point about supply chains and the modern economy. “And, of course, it’s not just things we buy in supermarkets – it’s all the things companies use in making stuff, all of those imported components they use. It’s a just-in-time economy. This is a source of a lot of efficiency gains and improvements in productivity ever since the 1980s, and it means that people don’t hold stocks of stuff any more. So you’re very vulnerable to delays in imports getting into the country.” Surely the government realises this? “Well, I’m sure the civil servants appreciate it, and I’m sure some of the ministers appreciate it, but I don’t think all of them do, at least not from what they’re saying in public.” In north Cornwall, Nevine Mann believes we will leave the EU without a deal, and that’s what she is preparing for. “We’re expecting it to be pretty horrendous for at least a couple of months, hopefully settling down and becoming less horrendous over time,” says the former midwife. “Long term, we expect what’s available to be more expensive and different.” She and her family (five in total) are as ready as anyone. “We’ve done it early and slowly, so it’s not making a major impact on what’s available for others. We’re pretty much done. I’ve got a very short list of items I want to add.” They have supplies to last from four to six months, stored under the stairs, in the loft and the garage. Food, for them and for the cat (“The cat is fussy enough to starve herself if she doesn’t get what she wants”), and paracetamol and ibuprofen for kids and adults. And vitamin tablets in case there’s a shortage of vegetables. And Mann has been trying to stockpile a prescription antihistamine her younger son takes for his allergy to grass pollen. “I’ve always had my prescriptions once every two months rather than monthly anyway, so what I’m doing is just ordering them early and gradually building up a supply.” So far, they have only got a few weeks’ worth. It’s less of a worry than Nora’s Epilim and Keppra, perhaps, but concerning nonetheless: without it, he can’t go outdoors between March and October. For the Manns, it’s not just about stockpiling food and a bit of medicine. They are probably the best prepped of the preppers I speak to. They were planning to put solar panels on the roof anyway, but with the threat of no deal they have done it sooner, and they are trying to set up a system that stores energy on a big battery. They have a 1,100-litre water collection tank in the garden. And they’re hoping not to be needing those vitamin tablets because they will have their own fresh veg. They’re no experts (“Actually, I have a bit of a reputation for killing everything,” says Mann), but they have got vegetable patches in the garden, and they’re giving it a go, trying to grow overwintering varieties from seed. The results are mixed so far. Slugs and snails have had most of the purple sprouting broccoli, the winter lettuce and the chard, but the Manns have been more successful with broad beans, mangetout, shallots and garlic. I’m thinking the garlic may go with the snails, with a mangetout side … but maybe that’s one for further down the line. Mann and family also have some mature fruit trees and bushes, and are trying to learn what to do with them. They’re picking the brains of greener-fingered friends, they have bought a couple of idiots’ guides, they’re hoping they may have a little extra. “We’re planning, actually, to create a few little Brexit boxes for friends and family, who we know can’t manage to prepare for themselves, so they’ve got something at least,” says Mann. Brexit boxes! Isn’t that lovely? Who says it’s all about hatred, division and polarisation? And could this be the beginning of what may, one day, be known as Brexit spirit? Lastly, and briefly, to Dollis Hill, a sleepy suburb of north-west London. Vicky, a nosy teacher, picks from the printer a draft of her boyfriend’s article about stockpiling for Brexit. It’s all so bloody stupid, she says, and she means that it’s come to this – a wartime mentality in what’s supposed to be peacetime, not that people are stockpiling. “I’m going to do a bit,” she announces. “But where shall we put it? And we’re definitely having dried falafel mix.”Glaciers in western North America, excluding Alaska, are melting four times faster than in the previous decade, with changes in the jet stream exacerbating the longer-term effects of climate change, according to a new study. The retreat hasn’t been equal in the US and Canada. The famous alpine ice masses in the Cascade Mountains in the north-west US have largely been spared from the trend. “The losses we would expect were reduced because we got a lot of additional snow,” said David Shean, a co-author at the University of Washington. “Moving forward we may not be so lucky.” The jet stream – the currents of fast-flowing air in the atmosphere that affect weather – has shifted, causing more snow in the north-western US and less in south-western Canada, according to the study released in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Changes in the northern hemisphere jet stream are increasingly firmly linked to global warming. That warming from humans burning fossil fuels is also expected to continue to melt alpine glaciers, even under scenarios for more moderate greenhouse gas levels. While some of the fourfold increase in the melting rate in western North America is related to man-made climate change, the researchers can’t say with certainty how much. “We’re starting to understand these shorter cycles that have real impacts on how the glaciers are behaving and how much water is stored in the glaciers,” Shean explained. Alaskan glaciers get much of the attention in North America because Alaska is warming faster than the continental US. One of the tallest American glaciers, Mount Hunter in Denali national park, is seeing 60 times more snow melt than it did 150 years ago. The North American glaciers analyzed in the new study are far smaller than those in Alaska, Asia and elsewhere, so they won’t contribute much to sea-level rise as they melt. The authors say they offer critical lessons for water management, fisheries and flood prevention. With shrinking glaciers, less water will be available for nearby river systems when rainfall is low. In some parts of the world, millions of people could lose their primary water supplies. In the Pacific north-west US, if glaciers melted entirely, that could reduce the flow of certain watersheds by up to about 15% in dry months of August and September, Shean said. “In our case that will have an impact, especially if we’re having a drought year … but in general at least for the foreseeable future we should be OK here in Washington,” he said. Snow pack changes will be more important than glacier melt for water planners in the western US, Shean said. Still, changes in water temperature could pose problems for fish. And the sediment that comes with melting glaciers could fall to the bottoms of riverbeds, making them overflow during heavy rains. The authors got their data by comparing satellite images of glaciers from 2000 to 2009 and from 2009 to 2018. They estimated elevation changes, which can be difficult to assess with the smallest glaciers. Other researchers are attempting to get spy satellite and aerial photos from the 1950s and 1960s declassified so they can study longer-term changes, Shean said.China’s economy grew 6.6% in 2018, its slowest pace in almost 30 years, confirming a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy that could threaten global growth. After years of breakneck expansion, the world’s second largest economy is losing steam, official data on Monday confirmed. China’s growth in 2018 was the country’s slowest reported rate since 1990 and down from 6.8% growth in 2017. China’s economy grew 6.4% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, levels last seen in early 2009 at the height of the global financial crisis. “We see that there are changes in stability, concern about these changes. The external environment is complicated and severe. The economy is facing downward pressure,” said Ning Jizhe, director of China’s National Statistic Bureau, adding that China’s economy remained “steady overall”. Monday’s data, while in line with expectations, puts pressure on Beijing to reach a deal with Washington to end the bruising trade war. “China-US conflict is indeed affecting China’s economy, that is true, but the impact is manageable,” Ning said. The MSCI index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.4% while Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.5%. China’s CSI300 index rose 0.97%. The latest economic figures suggest China may no longer be able to help shore up weakening global growth, as it has in the past. A government campaign to rein in risky debt has been compounded by a trade war with the US, hitting consumer and business confidence. Over the past few months consumer spending, manufacturing output, and investment have reached record lows. So far China has held back from massive the stimulus measures used in 2009 that resulted in a binge of infrastructure projects and bad debt taken on by companies and local governments. Analysts say stimulus measures would not only undo government efforts lower risk in the financial system, such methods are not as effective anymore in spurring growth. “The data confirm a challenging period for China’s economy, with weakness discernible across different sectors,” said Tom Rafferty, principal economist for China at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Rafferty said stimulus measures would likely be mild and investor confidence would remain fragile as trade frictions continue. The group predicts even slower growth of 6.3% in 2019 and a further weakening in 2020. “The first half of 2019 is likely to be equally difficult, with headline growth likely to recede further. China’s economy is unlikely to experience a rebound similar to past business cycle expansions,” he said. Most economists doubt China’s official GDP figures, with some estimating that real figure could less than half the rate reported by the government. China’s latest data comes at a time when international attention is focused on the Chinese economy. “China’s official GDP number is always a fiction, but fourth quarter data was a particularly aggressive fiction,” said Leland Miller, chief executive officer of China Beige Book. Chinese vice premier Liu He will visit the United States on 30 and 31 January for the next round of trade talks with Washington. Vice president Wang Qishan is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos later this month. “A decision was clearly made to avoid any possible suggestion that China’s slowdown isn’t firmly under Beijing’s control,” Miller said. Monday’s economic data included some indications the downturn may not be as severe as initially thought. The country’s industrial output rose 5.7%, while retail sales increased 8.2% in December, compared to a year earlier. The country’s traditional economic drivers, infrastructure, real estate and exports, grew marginally last year, yet other areas like advanced technology and services expanded. “China’s economy still expanded a lot in absolute terms, and the economy is now almost 3.5 times the size it was a decade ago,” said Scott Kennedy, a trade expert focused on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. US President Donald Trump said on Saturday there has been progress toward a trade deal with China, but denied reports that he was considering lifting tariffs. “Things are going very well with China and with trade,” he told reporters at the White House. ‘So what,” the schoolboy son of a friend asked, while being forced to listen to the Today programme on the school run, “was politics before Brexit?” This brought back memories of my own naive inquiry of my father at the end of the second world war: “Will there be any more news, Daddy?” Not too enlightened for an embryonic journalist, but you can see the point. Many people, not least your correspondent, are concerned about the way the threat of Brexit has been diverting attention from a host of economic and social problems. Yet the focus on Brexit is necessary, because if it were allowed to go ahead, in any form, it would magnify those domestic problems, and be almost bound to have a deleterious impact on international relations. As it is, I am lost in admiration for the way our European partners have put up with our ministers making juvenile complaints about them – for all the world as if the other 27 had made a request to abandon us, rather than the reverse. As one of my Brussels contacts wrote to me in a New Year message: “We are watching with hard-to-describe feelings.” Now, in common, I imagine, with many others, I find myself watching the behaviour of the leader of the Labour party with hard-to-describe feelings. My feelings towards some of his colleagues are easier to describe. It is obvious that Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, has been doing his level best to try to knock some sense into Corbyn. The latter’s recent revelation in the Guardian to my colleague Heather Stewart that, if elected prime minister he planned to go ahead with Brexit, was deeply offensive to the vast majority of Labour members, who are Remainers. I keep having to remind people that a host of very prosperous people voted Leave, for reasons best known to themselves Perhaps Corbyn thinks he has been playing a clever game, keeping the Leave minority of Labour voters on board. However, this is at the expense of alienating the vast majority. Given the popular view that the referendum result was principally swayed by the discontent of the “left behind” and those with “nothing to lose”, I was interested in the point Corbyn made last week that the left-behind in Mansfield may have voted Leave but the left-behind in Tottenham elected to Remain. But what do you make of a so-called leader of the opposition who “cannot wish away the votes of 17 million people who wanted to leave”? What this means, given the preponderance of Labour people who voted to remain, is that a Labour leader affects to be swayed more by the Conservative supporters whose government he wishes to dislodge. It is as if, in the early 1980s, he would have opted for Thatcherism, or sado-monetarism, because more Conservatives voted for what the Conservative government of that era became. Corbyn is a walking and talking disaster. Just imagine how different things would be now if the increasingly impressive Yvette Cooper had beaten him to the Labour leadership. She is right to back an extension to article 50 – a move also championed by the estimable Lord Kerr, who, when in the Foreign Office, actually drafted article 50. Bad business, referendums, creating the opportunity for the surfacing of discontents that often have nothing to do with the nominal issue at hand. And I keep having to remind people that a host of very prosperous people voted Leave, for reasons best known to themselves. Nevertheless, bad business though referendums may be, it seems to me that we are moving towards the need for yet another – a referendum to end referendums. Now, as Robert Shrimsley observes in the Financial Times, a second referendum requires Corbyn’s support, but “that support is not forthcoming since he is not interested in stopping Brexit, only in bringing down the government”. But the truth that dare not speak its name is that, in the face of the worst Conservative government most people can remember, Labour should be 20 or 30 points ahead in the polls. One has an awful suspicion that Corbyn is incapable of winning an election anyway. Good luck to Starmer, Cooper, Hilary Benn and others in trying to bring their leader to his senses. He it was who decreed that Labour party policy should be determined by the members. I don’t know Corbyn’s taste in music, but my friend the impresario Lee Menzies recently reminded me of that Ira Gershwin line: “Let’s call the whole thing off.” William Keegan’s new book, Nine Crises – Fifty Years of Covering the British Economy From Devaluation To Brexit, will be published by Biteback on Thursday 24 JanuaryFrench researchers say they have discovered traces of dangerous chemicals in babies’ disposable nappies in the first study of its kind worldwide. Ministers have now given manufacturers 15 days to come up with a “plan of action” to remove a number of substances considered harmful to human health from their nappies. These include banned chemicals and traces of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate, which has not been banned but that the World Health Organization has classified as probably linked to cancer. The researchers tested 23 samples of different nappies on sale in France between 2016 and 2018. Certain substances thought to pose a risk were also found in nappies marketed as “ecological”. The report, published on Wednesday, did not name the brands found to contain the chemicals, but suggested they were well-known labels. Anses, the French agency for food, environmental and occupational health and safety, said it had detected “a number of hazardous chemicals in disposable nappies that could migrate through urine, for example, and enter into prolonged contact with babies’ skin”. Some were added intentionally, notably perfumes, it said. Researchers found about 60 chemicals, including glyphosate, used in the weedkiller Roundup, some of which have been banned in the European Union for more than 15 years. Other substances, usually found in cigarette smoke or diesel fumes were also discovered, according to the 206-page Safety in Baby Nappies report. Health thresholds had been exceeded for several substances under “realistic” conditions of use, it said. This use was calculated based on 4,000 nappies for every child between birth and three years. The French health secretary, Agnès Buzyn, who met representatives from nappy manufacturers after the report was released, sought to reassure parents. “Anses has said there is no immediate risk for the health of the child,” she said. “Obviously we should keep on putting our babies in nappies. We’ve been doing it for at least 50 years.” However, Buzyn admitted the report could not rule out “a risk for children’s health in the long term”, adding: “This is why, as a matter of precaution, we want to better protect our children from possible risks.”. The French government has given manufacturers 15 days to come up with a “plan of action” outlining changing the production process to “reduce or eliminate problem substances”. Two major manufacturers, Pampers and Joone, reacted to the report on Wednesday. “Our nappies are safe and always have been,” Pampers said, adding it had “already put into place the report’s recommendations.” It said: “Our products do not contain any of the allergens listed by the European Union”. Carole Juge-Llewellyn, the president of the French nappy manufacturer Joone, said the company had published toxicology analysis for its products and described the Anses report as “alarmist”. The report recommended eliminating or minimising the named substances in disposable nappies, more regulation covering the products and further research. Anses said: “It is not possible to exclude a health risk related to the wearing of disposable nappies.” The report concluded: “There is no epidemiological research allowing us to prove the health effects linked to the wearing of nappies. That said, dangerous chemical substances have been found in the nappies … there is evidence the safety thresholds for several substances have been crossed. “At the current time and from what we know at the moment, it is not possible to exclude a health risk linked to the wearing of disposable nappies.”MPs will begin debating Theresa May’s Brexit deal again this week, though materially very little has changed since the prime minister pulled the vote last month. Here’s what to expect in the coming days and the aftermath of the vote. The debate is scheduled to last for five more days, with a final vote on 15 January. Brexit secretary Steve Barclay will open the debate on Wednesday 9 January, when it will be closed by May’s de-facto deputy David Lidington, and other cabinet ministers will open and close the debate on the subsequent days, including Michael Gove, Greg Clark, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt. On the final day, the prime minister will close the debate, just before the vote. Previously the government had “themes” for the different days of debate, including the economy and the union. More than 100 MPs spoke in the debate before the vote was pulled last month and many had been concerned they would not be permitted to speak again. The government has said however that it intends for the MPs to be able to make contributions again. Nothing, though Downing Street says negotiations are ongoing with the European Union. MPs are now in the strange position of having a new debate while they are still unclear about the outcome of those talks. No 10 said restarting the debate before a conclusion had been reached was because of a commitment to hold the vote before 21 January. May told Andrew Marr on Sunday that MPs could expect reassurances in the next few days in three areas: on Northern Ireland; on the role of parliament in future negotiations; and from the EU27 member states. The prime minister is seeking legally binding reassurances on the backstop, to ensure those customs arrangements to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland would be temporary. It is still unclear what form that assurance could take – though EU sources have suggested an “exchange of letters “– or if that will be enough to reassure enough hardline Brexiters and her supply-and-confidence partners, the DUP. No 10 have said the sought-after clarification will only be published just before next week’s final vote, and would not emerge before the long-awaited five-day Brexit debate begins on Wednesday afternoon. Brussels is willing to repeat that the target for achieving a free-trade deal is the end of 2020, which if achieved would avoid the need for the unpopular Irish backstop to come into force, but the UK is sceptical that deadline can be achieved. The EU will not give ground on any adjustment to the withdrawal agreement itself. The UK wants the EU to commit to a legally binding target to finalise trade talks by the end of 2021. The UK believes this would allow a realistic amount of time to conclude the free-trade deal and limit the Irish backstop to a year. Downing Street said it is the intention that MPs have some time to discuss what, if anything, the prime minister has achieved in her discussions with Brussels, rather than springing it on MPs just before they vote. More than 100 MPs have so far committed to voting against this deal and few seemed to have been pacified over the Christmas break. Cabinet sources said May had acknowledged she may lose the vote and said things would “move quickly” if that happens. If the margin of defeat is less than predicted, May could try putting the same deal again to the Commons if she manages to get another concession from the EU, enough to argue the new motion is substantially different. Labour could also then table a vote of no confidence in the government, though it is unclear whether the party could win it, especially without the backing of the DUP, who have said they will support the government unless May’s deal passes.The son of James Gandolfini is to take on the late actor’s most recognisable role, by playing Tony Soprano in the film prequel to acclaimed series The Sopranos. Michael Gandolfini, 19, will appear as a younger version of the New Jersey mob boss in The Many Saints of Newark. The film, which is currently in pre-production, is set in 1967 and recalls the race riots between Italian- and African-Americans in the city. In a statement Michael Gandolfini said, “it’s a profound honour to continue my dad’s legacy while stepping into the shoes of a young Tony Soprano. “I’m thrilled that I am going to have the opportunity to work with David Chase and the incredible company of talent he has assembled for The Many Saints of Newark.” James Gandolfini, who died of a heart attack in 2013 aged 51, found fame and critical acclaim with his portrait of Tony Soprano, a violent mobster who seeks help from a therapist after suffering panic attacks. In total the actor received three Emmy awards and a Golden Globe for his performance in the series, which aired from 1999 to 2007. Currently without a release date, The Many Saints of Newark is written by Sopranos creator David Chase and will centre on the character of Dickie Moltisanti, father to series regular Christopher Moltisanti, as he mentors Tony. Vera Farmiga, Alessandro Nivola and Jon Bernthal are among the actors cast in the film, which will be directed by Alan Taylor, who directed multiple episodes of the original series. Michael Gandolfini is currently appearing in David Simon’s HBO series The Deuce and had a minor role in 2018 heist movie Ocean’s 8.An American newscaster for the Iranian government’s Press TV network, who was detained by the US government without being charged, has complained of mistreatment as she was held as a material witness in a criminal case. “This is something that needs to be condemned across the table,” said Marzieh Hashemi, whose 10-day detention ended when she was released late on Wednesday. “It is not about me. It is about the US justice department and government – that they feel that they can just take people’s rights away, sweep them off of the streets, hold them in the name of being a material witness and not charging them … indefinitely.” Hashemi’s detention and the limited details initially made available by authorities have prompted condemnation in the US and abroad, especially among press freedom and Muslim-advocacy groups including the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Those concerns were magnified when Hashemi’s family alleged that while in custody, Hashemi, an observant Muslim, was denied halal food and had her hijab forcibly removed. Hashemi confirmed to the Guardian she was made to remove her hijab during booking for her mugshot and while walking in common areas of the detention facility. “I said I want a scarf on,” Hashemi said. “I’m a Muslim woman, I have the right to wear hijab. And I said [it’s] freedom of religion. What you’re doing is illegal.” She also said she barely ate for the first three days, save for an apple given to her by a corrections officer, while her request to be provided with halal food was processed. If I haven’t committed a crime and I’m not being charged with a crime why would I feel [it] necessary to run? Authorities have not released an explanation for Hashemi’s detention but it appears related to her primary residency being in Iran. US law allows the government to arrest and hold “material witnesses” if a judge agrees with prosecutors that the individual has information that is important to a criminal proceeding and may flee if simply subpoenaed to appear in court. Hashemi denied strongly that she constituted a flight risk and said her attorney unsuccessfully motioned for the presiding judge to release her. “If I haven’t committed a crime and I’m not being charged with a crime why would I feel [it] necessary to run?” Hashemi said. Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel in Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) US program said that one of the problems with material witness laws is that the warrants are “issued in secret so we don’t know what they are based on”. “Another problem is that the process for challenging the detention is often conducted in secret so we don’t know what the grounds are for even using them in the first place or whether the process has been fair,” added Pitter, who has studied the laws with HRW, particularly its expanded usage after 9/11. The law’s usage in the federal system is currently uncommon. According to the Washington Post, Hashemi’s case is the first such filed in federal court in Washington this year, “and the court’s electronic docketing system indicates only two such cases were filed last year. Both are under seal.” In other jurisdictions, usage is less rare. In Hashemi’s home city of New Orleans, the district attorney requested more than 150 material witness warrants over an eight-year period, many of which were filed against crime victims hesitant to testify. Hashemi said she was not at liberty to discuss the exact nature of the case she was detained to testify on, but said she was questioned in front of a grand jury on four separate occasions, which was confirmed by disclosures made in a federal court order on Thursday. Hashemi said the case “had a lot to do with me being an American and where I live, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran, and related to a job situation”. Last week a US government source told Reuters that the grand jury was hearing arguments on Wednesday whether Hashemi’s employer, Press TV, is a “propaganda outlet” that failed to register with the justice department as a “foreign agent”. Neither the FBI or the DoJ responded to a request for confirmation.Key allies of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, led by Russia and China, have warned the US not to stage an “external intervention” in support of the opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s attempt to lead the country. Russia issued a strong declaration of support for Maduro’s government on Thursday, saying that a US military intervention in Venezuela would be “catastrophic”. “We warn against that,” said the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, in remarks published by a ministry publication and later echoed in a ministry communique. “We believe it would be a catastrophic scenario to shake the foundation of the development model we have been observing in the region of Latin America.” Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, called the events a “quasi-coup” and said the country was in an “extremely difficult situation”. He also accused the US of hypocrisy, asking rhetorically how Americans would react if House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, declared herself the country’s new president. “How would the current American president react to this?” Medvedev said on Facebook. “But when talking about other, they don’t care about customs, international law, foreign sovereignty and most importantly, people’s lives.” Russia is an important provider of financial support to the Venezuelan government, providing billions of dollars in loans, some as pre-payment for future deliveries of oil. In December, Russia dispatched two nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers to the country in a further show of support. Russia has said it is ready to facilitate talks among political forces in Venezuela. “We will stand, if you’d like, together with this country in defence of sovereignty, in defence of the inadmissibility of encroaching on the principle of nonintervention in internal affairs,” Ryabkov said. The Kremlin, which ultimately decides Russia’s foreign policy, has not yet commented on the crisis. But other members of the Russian establishment have spoken out in support of Maduro. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, called Guaidó’s claim to the presidency “illegal.” Franz Klintsevich, a senator and retired colonel, said Moscow could wind up its military cooperation with Venezuela if Maduro, who he said was the legitimately elected president, was ousted. Other MPs criticised US actions against Maduro. “The US is trying to carry out an operation to organise the next ‘colour revolution’ in Venezuela,” said Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of parliament, using a term for the popular uprisings that unseated leaders in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. China said on Thursday that it supported the Venezuelan government’s efforts in preserving the country’s sovereignty, independence and stability. “China supports efforts made by the Venezuelan government to protect the country’s sovereignty, independence and stability,” Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for ministry of foreign affairs, told a regular briefing in Beijing. “I want to emphasise that outside sanctions or interference usually make the situation more complicated and are not helpful to resolving the actual problems.” Venezuela has been one of Beijing’s closest allies in Latin America, and the largest recipient of Chinese financing, taking as much as £38bn in loans by 2017. China is Venezuela’s largest creditor, prompting concerns that as Venezuela’s economy spirals, state assets could fall into Chinese hands, as was the case with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port. It is in Beijing’s interest to support Maduro, given that a new government could refuse to honour Venezuela’s debt obligations to China. Maduro met China’s president, Xi Jinping, last year and toured Mao Zedong’s mausoleum in Beijing, and the countries agreed on £3.8bn in loans and more than 20 bilateral agreements. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan phoned Maduro and offered his support, a spokesman for the Turkish president said on Thursday. “Our president extended Turkey’s support to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and said: ‘My brother Maduro! Stand tall, we stand by you!’” İbrahim Kalın said on Twitter. Turkey’s foreign minister issued a warning about Guaidó’s declaration. “There is an elected president and another person declares himself president, and some countries recognise this. This may cause chaos,” Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told the A Haber news channel. “We are against the isolation of countries. I hope the situation will be solved peacefully.” Mexico, part of the 14-member Lima Group, departed from the regional bloc’s call for democratic transition and said it would stick to its “constitutional principles of non-intervention”. It joined with Uruguay, the only other prominent Latin American country still recognising Maduro, in calling for additional talks between the government and opposition to find a “peaceful solution”. Previous talks brokered by the Vatican on the Venezuelan situation broke down. Mexico had previously criticised Venezuela but its new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has returned the country to its traditional foreign policy of not weighing in on other internal affairs of other countries and expecting the same silence in return. Uruguay’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the two countries were proposing a “new process of inclusive and credible negotiations with full respect for the rule of law and human rights” to resolve the dispute peacefully. Iran denounced events in Venezuela, saying the opposition’s claim there that it holds the presidency was a “coup” and an attempt to take over power unlawfully. In Tehran, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told reporters on Thursday that the “Islamic Republic of Iran supports the government and people of Venezuela against any sort of foreign intervention and any illegitimate and illegal action such as attempt to make a coup d’état.” His remarks were carried by the semi-official Isna news agency. Cuba expressed its support, with the state newspaper Granma saying that by recognising Guaidó as interim president, Donald Trump was “directing a coup d’état”. Cuba is hugely dependent on Venezuelan petroleum paid for with doctors. In Britain, by contrast, Theresa May’s spokesman expressed support for Guaidó but stopped short of following the US in recognising him as interim president. “The 2018 presidential election in Venezuela was neither free nor fair, so the regime’s basis for power is deeply flawed,” the spokesman said. “We fully support the democratically-elected national assembly with Juan Guaidó as its president. In relation to the US we think it’s totally unacceptable for Venezuela to cut off diplomatic ties. The solution to this crisis lies in working to find a peaceful and diplomatic solution, not in expulsions.” Asked if that meant the UK backed Guaidó as the legitimate president, the spokesman said: “In relation to how the UK views these things, not in relation to Venezuela, the position is to recognise states rather than governments.” The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said talks in Venezuela were needed to avoid the political crisis spiralling out of control. “What we hope is that dialogue can be possible, and that we avoid an escalation that would lead to the kind of conflict that would be a disaster for the people of Venezuela and for the region,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Sovereign governments have the possibility to decide whatever they want. What we are worried [about] with the situation in Venezuela is the suffering of the people of Venezuela.” Maduro has presided over a deepening economic crisis that has left millions of people in poverty as the oil-rich country faces shortages of basic necessities such as food and medicine. An estimated 2.3 million people have fled the country since 2015, according to the UN, and the International Monetary Fund says inflation will hit a 10 million per cent this year.Chris Grayling has defended his decision to award a £13.8m contract to charter extra ferries to a “start-up” company that has no ships, as part of no-deal Brexit preparations.The transport secretary said he would “make no apologies for supporting a new British business” after widespread criticism of the award of the contract to the British firm Seaborne Freight, which has never previously operated a similar service.“It’s a new start-up business, government is supporting new British business and there is nothing wrong with that,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.“We have looked very carefully at this business, we have put in place a tight contract that makes sure they can deliver for us. I don’t see any problem with supporting a new British business.”He said the firm would be ready to deliver services from April and had been “looked at very carefully by a team of civil servants who have done due diligence on the company and reached a view they can deliver”.The contract is one of three agreements worth a total of £107.7m signed by the government to help ease congestion at Dover by securing extra lorry capacity in the event of a no-deal Brexit.Seaborne hopes to operate freight ferries from Ramsgate from late March, beginning with two ships and increasing to four by the end of the summer.The local Conservative councillor Paul Messenger was the first to raise concern in public about awarding such a lucrative contract to a firm with no prior experience. “It has no ships and no trading history so how can due diligence be done?” he told the BBC.He said the company had not moved “a single truck in their entire history … I don’t understand the logic of that”.Grayling dismissed the criticism on Wednesday, saying: “I am not quite sure what an individual Conservative councillor would be able to tell us.”He said the Department for Transport was confident the ferries would run by April. “We haven’t plucked this out of thin air,” he said. Seaborne was established two years ago with the aim of running freight ferries between Ramsgate and Ostend in Belgium. The company said it had been financed initially by shareholders to source suitable vessels and make arrangements with ports as well as building the infrastructure and crewing the vessels. “It was intended to start the service in mid-February but this has now been delayed until late March for operational reasons,” the firm said in a statement earlier this week. MPs are due to debate and then vote on Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement after they return to parliament on Monday, amid warnings that there could be a no-deal Brexit – or no Brexit at all – if it fails to win their backing. The prime minister is under pressure to win fresh concessions from Brussels to allow the deal to get through the Commons, after the December vote was pulled in the face of almost certain defeat. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told Today MPs could get “absolutely everything we want” from May’s Brexit deal. “We have a clear opportunity to leave the EU on 29 March,” he said. “It has the vast majority of things that people wanted, not absolutely everything. The question is, can we turn this into something that gives us absolutely everything we wanted, and I believe we can. “There will be some tough negotiations to follow in the years ahead but I think getting this clearer language on the backstop will help to get it through parliament.”A group of people who believe the Earth is flat have announced their “biggest, boldest, best adventure yet”: a Flat Earth cruise scheduled for 2020. The cruise, organized by the Flat Earth International Conference, promises to be a lovely time. Flat earthers – who include the rapper B.o.B. and reality television person Tila Tequila – will be able to enjoy restaurants, swimming pools and perhaps even an artificial surf wave. There’s just one problem for those seeking to celebrate the flatness of the Earth. The navigational systems cruise ships, and other vessels, use rely on the fact that the Earth is not flat: theoretically puncturing the beliefs of the flat Earth crowd. “Ships navigate based on the principle that the earth is round,” said Henk Keijer, a former cruise ship captain who sailed all over the globe during a 23-year career. “Nautical charts are designed with that in mind: that the Earth is round.” Keijer, who now works as a forensic marine expert for Robson Forensic, said the existence of GPS, the global positioning system, alone is proof that the Earth is a sphere, not a flat disc. GPS relies on 24 main satellites which orbit the earth to provide positional and navigational information. “The reason why 24 satellites were used is because on the curvature of the Earth,” Keijer said. “A minimum of three satellites are required to determine a position. But someone located on the other side of the Earth would also like to know their position, so they also require a certain number of satellites. “Had the Earth been flat, a total of three satellites would have been enough to provide this information to everyone on Earth. But it is not enough, because the Earth is round.” While there are different theories within the Flat Earth community, the core belief is the Earth is flat. The FEIC claims that after “extensive experimentation, analysis, and research”, its adherents came to believe the Earth is not a sphere. A common model offered for the exact topography of the Earth is that it is a large disk, surrounded by “an ice wall barrier” – Antarctica. The Flat Earth Society, which is not connected to the FEIC, has suggested that “the space agencies of the world” have conspired to fake “space travel and exploration”. “This likely began during the Cold War,” the Flat Earth Society says. “The USSR and USA were obsessed with beating each other into space to the point that each faked their accomplishments in an attempt to keep pace with the other’s supposed achievements,” the Flat Earth Society says. The FEIC did not respond to requests for more information on the Flat Earth cruise. The organization could potentially try to staff the cruise ship with a crew which does not think the Earth is round, but Keijer said that would be difficult. “I have sailed two million miles, give or take,” Keijer said. “I have not encountered one sea captain who believes the Earth is flat.”With unforgettable turns – Troels Hartmann in The Killing, Russian president Viktor Petrov in House of Cards – Lars Mikkelsen has become one of Denmark’s most successful exports. He has even played super-villain Charles Augustus Magnussen in Sherlock. But on a stopover in London between shoots, the laidback 54-year-old startlingly reveals that his latest TV role has truly transformed him, prompting a major life-change that still bemuses many around him. The decision that rocked the Mikkelsen clan occurred while he was shooting the show for which he recently won best actor at the International Emmys. He plays Johannes Krogh, a pastor who feels an intense personal connection with God, in Ride Upon the Storm. The ecclesiastical TV drama – written by Adam Price, creator of the Danish political epic Borgen – started in the UK this week after acclaim in Denmark, France and the US. Mikkelsen was raised by communist atheist parents, but says that at first he felt no obstacle to playing a man of God. You don’t have to be a Scottish murderer to act Macbeth, as Mikkelsen has done on the Copenhagen stage. “At the start,” he says, “my own background didn’t matter in terms of making a priest seem real.” But the longer he inhabited the part, the more impact it had. “Acting is a messy thing: it’s partly you, partly what’s in the script, and partly what you can pick up from your research. You’re left with a bloody mess in the end. You tend to want to make sense of it after.” I don't know if [my family and friends] have accepted it yet. Actually, I'm not sure I have But how could he make sense of playing a priest whose faith is so fervent that at one point, like a desperate lover, he climbs a ladder to kiss a statue of crucified Christ? Late in the filming of the second season, Mikkelsen went to see a pastor himself, and asked to be baptised into the National Church of Denmark. It was rather as if, while paying Petrov in House of Cards, he had gone to the Kremlin and started running Russia. The ceremony was low-key – head splashed three times with holy water, rather than total immersion – but it was such a change that it unnerved his family and friends. “I don’t know if they’ve accepted it yet,” he says. “Actually, I’m not sure I have. I can’t explain it. I think I’d been fighting it for a while. As I get older, I feel it’s important to be true to myself. And this felt true to myself.” His character has a line about churches being “built for the big moments in life”, and he came to the same conclusion. “I’m getting older, experiencing people dying, and to give that meaning, I found churches and ministers to be the right place.” He also wanted to feel part of a community: “For me it was the church. But if you don’t like that, join a fucking political party, join a trade union. It’s important to me that we join rather than disconnect.” For those viewers who may be resistant to religion, Johannes is a very human type of priest, prone to heavy drinking and adultery. Conflict with his sons – one also a priest, the other a troubled drifter – make Ride Upon the Storm a pacy, racy family drama as well as an exploration of faith. “Johannes is a real piece of work,” says Mikkelsen. “One of the concerns that often comes up in drama is how to make the character more likable, so we can relate to them. Actually, why can’t we sometimes just let the characters fucking cross a line, so the audience dislikes the guy and he has to retain our trust? Shakespeare does it all the time, but we’re now so afraid of losing the audience. Real people can be horrible. My family is not sympathetic to me the whole time.” He has two children with the Danish actress Anette Støvelbæk. “Sometimes I need to gain their trust again.” My brother Mads was originally a street-dancer and I was a juggler. The 80s was a freer time The pressure to follow parental example is another key theme of Ride Upon the Storm, though such an idea never seems to have occurred to Mikkelsen, whose parents were a nurse and bank worker. His younger brother, Mads, is also an internationally successful actor, having starred in movies including Pusher, Casino Royale and King Arthur. Was there some greasepaint DNA further back? “Nothing! It’s crazy, I know. We tend to attribute it to a rebellion. Mads was a street-dancer and I was a juggler originally. The 80s was a good time to try whatever appealed to you. The young generation now are pushed into further education, which I think is a bad thing. We were freer.” Lars says he and his brother are not competitive, and have only been up for the same role once. “It’s not been common, because we are very different-looking. But we were once up for a part Mads got but then couldn’t do, so I did it. It was called The Spider, and turned out to be my breakthrough role.” He soon attracted the attention of UK and US casting directors, leading to Sherlock and House of Cards, after the 2008 crime drama Forbrydelsen – AKA The Killing – led the surprise Scandinavian invasion of worldwide television. Lars had a small role in Borgen, which prompted Price to give him the lead in Ride Upon the Storm. “Adam wanted to do something more political than Borgen, and found that in religion. Nowadays, Norwegian church elections get nasty. By telling the truth about what the church is supposed to believe in, my character gets into trouble. Is that the democracy we want?” In House of Cards, Lars’s character, Viktor Petrov, president of the Russian Federation, has the same initials and KGB background as the real deal. Was Mikkelsen really just playing Putin? “Oh yeah, it was some version of him. But the work I did was how to elaborate on that and not just make it a parody.” Mikkelsen watched films of Putin’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and was struck by their being soft cops to his hard cop. “Lavrov is much more suave than Putin, who comes across as very callous and harsh. And Petrov, to me, was a suave character.” The final run of House of Cards was unusual because the show had lost the lead, after Netflix’s removal of Kevin Spacey, who played President Frank Underwood. This followed multiple allegations of past sexual misbehaviour on movie sets and elsewhere, some of which he has denied, but which remain in various stages of investigation. Was there a strained atmosphere on the Spacey-less set? “I got in so late in the last season – there were doubts about whether it was going to happen at all – that everyone had settled by then. People just wanted to finish it off as well as possible. So I didn’t really feel any tension. But of course, it was strange that he wasn’t there. That was weird.” Turning suddenly solemn, Mikkelsen says: “All I can say is that he was nice to me, man. And a phenomenal actor. It’s sad, really sad.” Has he had any contact with Spacey subsequently? “No! I don’t know the man. That’s the difference between working in Denmark and outside. I didn’t really know any of the people on House of Cards. In Denmark, we go out and have beers.” Had there ever been any gossip or unease about Spacey on set? “I never heard anything really. But for that final season, I was maybe there four days.” The #MeToo movement has hit Scandinavian showbusiness also, he says: “It’s a necessary movement. Predators have no place in the business.” Scandinavia has always been seen as a very sexually free place. Was that a complication? “Yes, that was an issue. But it has to be freedom with consent. You can always discuss how serious an offence was and whether there can be assumption of guilt without trial and so on. But that’s all secondary to the need to do something – and this movement did something.” Mikkelsen now acts regularly in both Danish and English. Does he think of them as “home” and “away” tongues, or is he comfortable in both? “I’m getting more and more at home in English, but it’s still quite an effort. With House of Cards, I had a Russian accent, which really helps to go somewhere that isn’t English English. For Sherlock, I had a Scandi accent. I’d like to be able to speak English without an accent, but it will take years yet.” He’s currently filming The Witcher, a fantasy series for Netflix based on a video game, and will host more episodes of the factual series Historien om Danmark, a huge hit at home, which tells the story of the people, landscape and wildlife of his nation. It has given him the second surprise conversion of his career. He laughs loudly. “Now I’m the David Attenborough of Denmark!” • Ride Upon the Storm is on Channel 4 on Sunday nights at 11pm, and is available on All 4 now.The dilemma Eighteen months ago, my husband left me and our children, who were both under five. We had been through a rocky period, drifting apart a little. I put this down in part to the demands of our jobs and my second pregnancy (severe morning sickness meant I lost my sex drive). But to him the spark was gone. There was already strong evidence of affairs and he was in an official relationship with one of those women within months of our split. They moved in together and she now sees my children during my ex’s contact time. I thought the shock would kill me, but I have coped through the hell of my heartbreak and have come to the conclusion I am better off without him. But I’m still in so much pain. Seeing families at the school gates literally hurts me. My ex’s family accept his new partner (they also still see me and are supportive, which I’m grateful for).I can’t contemplate a new relationship. I’ve had some casual dates and even sex, but it all meant nothing to me. I feel my trust has been damaged forever. If my own husband can’t stay with me, then who will? Mariella replies A better man. It sounds like you are well rid of your ex, who I hope will learn how lucky he was to have married such a reasonable woman in the first place. Reading your letter, the first thing that occurred to me was how balanced and clear-headed your description of your marriage breakdown is. Despite the pain you have endured. There’s no indication of the histrionics and bartering over children that are all too often the staples of such a separation. It sounds, too, as though you’ve accepted the children maintaining a close relationship with their father, including seeing him in the company of his new partner. That will have increased your own suffering in the short-term, so it’s yet another reason why you should be extremely proud of yourself. It’s hard to go through the seismically elevated emotions of separation, but it sounds as though you’re a prime example of magnanimity. Occupying the high ground may not reap immediate rewards, but sleeping soundly at night, knowing your behaviour has been exemplary and your conscience is clear, should be the pleasurable position you find yourself in. It’s certainly not the tranquil place your husband’s subconscious should be taking him in the dark hours. Love, by its very nature, is unreliable and yet we invest all our hopes and dreams in this entirely subjective state that ebbs and flows as naturally as the ocean. You describe the wear and tear on your marriage through two children and it’s a picture many will recognise. It’s a constant struggle to keep the connection between two lovers strong and resilient, and all too easy to opt for co-existing in resignation rather than keeping fundamental communication alive. It’s probably why so many second marriages work better than first ones – learning how important it is to maintain a degree of union when the forces of daily life seem set to push you apart is something most of us understand too late. If one of you chooses the easy option of seeking solace outside the relationship, there’s little that can be done to pull them back. Falling in love, and the ecstasies of discovering each other, is matched in emotional intensity only by its opposite – the torturous tumble we take when that same emotion becomes a negative force. Rejection is the most painful of experiences, bringing to the fore all our insecurities and compounding our tendency toward low self-worth. Forcing yourself into intimacy before you are strong enough can be detrimental You have taken a big knock and it will certainly take further time to restore your confidence and re-instil the trust you need to embark on your next romantic excursion. I’m glad you’re making attempts at re-entry into the dating game, but forcing yourself into intimacy before you are strong enough can be detrimental. That numbness after a sexual encounter can simply serve to confirm your sense that nothing will be as it was again. That’s where you are wrong and the law of averages and accrued experience can be relied upon. There’s no crystal ball required when I say you will meet someone and fall in love again. You’ll even, eventually, be delighted that you have been given the opportunity for this better relationship and there’s every reason to presume that it will long outlive (and pretty swiftly obscure) the heartache you’ve been through. It’s a waiting game, but one where keeping focused on all the other ingredients for a healthy life will mean you’re better prepared when you’re again knocked off solid ground and up into the elevated heights of love. You need to remember how transporting it is to love and be loved and look forward to the day that becomes a reality. Meanwhile, keep in mind that all any of us have is transitory, so envying those who appear to have what is absent in your life doesn’t deserve to be lingered on. The most important thing to keep focused on when life is at it’s most challenging is the knowledge that in the depths of winter, it’s sunny days that lie ahead. If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1The psychology of the con artist is such, say those who study them, that the very best fraudsters are able to sail through lie-detector tests because they don’t believe themselves to be lying. This fact came to light in Fyre Fraud, one of two documentaries released this week about the 2017 Fyre music festival, a fiasco that traumatised hundreds of social media influencers and for which organiser Billy McFarland is serving a six-year prison sentence. What’s fascinating about the story, as told in both the Netflix and Hulu shows, is how deeply McFarland tapped into the self-deception of his targets, and how the companies that enabled him continue to thrive. The art of the con feels like the great expression of our age and McFarland – a grifter who, as well as having the brainwave to put on a music festival in the Bahamas, ran a credit card company and sold fraudulent tickets to exclusive events – is the sort of vapid buffoon whose naked untrustworthiness is so undisguised as to make him seem almost transparent. His downfall, and the defrauding of millennials with more money than sense, was considered deeply satisfying at the time and continues to be so in the retelling – particularly the part played by Kendall Jenner and her imitators, all of whom heavily promoted a festival that, when partygoers turned up in the Bahamas, was discovered to be a tent city with no catering and no music lineup. It is the role played by Instagram that continues to interest. All advertising is premised on the selling of an ideal but the efficiency with which social influencers inculcate inadequacy in their followers, then sell them products and experiences to fix their sad little lives, is creepier than anything that predates it and feels like the greater deception behind McFarland’s hustle. On social media, people whose income derives from promoting a fantasy version of their lives were persuaded by McFarland to endorse the festival. It’s a strange thing about the current celebrity landscape that while consumers have become more sophisticated – no one who watches Keeping Up With the Kardashians is under any illusion that it is spontaneous, nor that the Kardashians are a happy family – the same voodoo still works on them time and again. It’s a dynamic that makes sense, in a way. While traditional advertising is at a remove from everyday life, a personal photostream in which every shot is carefully curated has an “integrity” that broader branding can’t reach. In this scenario, the enjoyment of an experience is secondary to that of selling of it down the chain to one’s own followers, with the subsequent admiration and envy it’s hoped to cause. It doesn’t matter if the experience is fake, nor if the artifice is fully on show. All that matters, as someone as unlikely as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez observed on Twitter recently, is that “the brand is so strong”. McFarland’s festival failed, but the delusion underpinning it rages on unabated. • Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnistThailandOriginally set up to help the fishing village of Ban Talae Nok recover after the tsunami of 2008, Andaman Discoveries has expanded its community tourism programmes across Thailand. From the beginning, the social enterprise has been committed to providing communities with additional income to allow them to continue living the way they want, and 50% of all profits support local development. A wide range of activities includes sleeping out in the jungle, visiting ethical elephant sanctuaries and snorkelling with the sea nomads. But for a taste of rural life, it’s hard to beat the original experience: staying in a home, spending time with the family, learning to cook their food, and having a go at batik or weaving.• andamandiscoveries.com South AfricaThe solar-powered Bulungula lodge (doubles £30 a night room-only) is owned and managed by the people of Nqileni, a village with breathtaking views across the cliffs and vast beaches of South Africa’s aptly named Wild Coast on the Eastern Cape. A few days here gives an immersion into rural Xhosa life, hanging out with fishermen or taking part in one of Bulungula’s activities, such as A Day in the Life of a Xhosa Woman (£6) – which involves gathering firewood in the forest and carrying it back on the head, and foraging for ingredients for lunch. • bulungula.co.za Ecuador The Black Sheep Inn, perched 3,200 metres up in the Ecuadorian Andes (bunkhouse bed $35pp, doubles from $60pp, both full-board), is a hiker’s paradise, with canyons, cloud forest and mountain lakes all reachable on day walks. The inn is run by the local community, the lodge and its gardens are built according to permaculture principles, and offer a hands-on insight into ecological living. Since the inn opened in 1995, it has been committed to improving life in the village of Chugchilán, and its impact is visible everywhere: on the local tourism businesses it has nurtured; the teacher salaries and scholarships it subsidises; the workshops it runs – everything from family planning to first aid; and the library, computer learning and recycling centres it has set up. • blacksheepinn.com LaosThe 24-hour Nam Nern Night Safari (£18pp) takes visitors by boat deep into the Nam Et-Phou Louey protected area of northern Laos. Daytime activities include birdwatching and listening to the sounds of the forest, exploring onshore and eating. In the evening the boat drifts silently with the engines off, as tourists scan the riverbank for sambar deer, loris, civets, monitor lizards, porcupines, owls and – for those who are very, very lucky – a bear or leopard. Villagers receive a set fee for running the tours, supplemented from a fund designed to further incentivise the protection of wildlife. At the end of the safari, guests record the wildlife they spotted (rarer species “score” more), and this decides the amount of the bonuses paid to the village development fund. • namet.org The GambiaEvery aspect of a stay at the beachside Sandele Eco Retreat (doubles from £70 half-board) supports the community’s sustainable development. Local craftsmen created the buildings using sustainable construction techniques such as stabilised earth blocks and natural ventilation. Its Sandele Foundation spreads its impact among the nearby villages, teaching practical solutions such as water conservation and constructing more efficient woodburning stoves, through an ecovillage network. Guests can choose to get as actively involved as they want, whether sharing their own skills or just using this inspiring place for their own personal development.• sandele.com VietnamKE Adventures’ two-week trekking holiday in north-east Vietnam includes overnight homestays with six ethnic minorities and a full day with the Black Lolo hill tribe. Other highlights are a visit to Ba Be national park, sightseeing in Hanoi, a cruise on Halong Bay and a night on Cat Ba island.• From £1,299pp, flights extra, next trip 25 Aug, keadventure.com Costa RicaCustomers can build their own itinerary with Rickshaw Travel by choosing from a selection of “bitesize” trips, many including homestays. On a two-day stay with the Bribri tribe in Costa Rica, guests reach the village by canoe, go trekking in the rainforest, visit cacao plantations and make their own chocolate.• From £218 for two days, rickshawtravel.co.uk Kerala Responsible Travel lists about 20 homestay holidays, from Cuba to Zambia. A Kerala trip can include homestays in the cities of Cochin and Alappuzha, and in the village of Kumarakom (pictured above) on Vembanad Lake, part of the Kerala backwaters as well as an overnight on a houseboat.• Eight days from £400, flights extra, responsibletravel.com ThailandMany of Intrepid Travel’s trips include a night with a local family, including its new Vegan Food Adventure, which starts with street food tours and cookery classes in Bangkok, Ayutthaya and Kanchanaburi. Guests then take an overnight train to Chiang Mai for two nights in a hotel and one in a village homestay, where they learn to cook an 11-dish khantohk dinner.• Eight days from £885, next trip 23 Feb, intrepidtravel.com PeruFundo Chincheros, a 19th-century Andean ranch near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru, has recently started farmstay holidays. Guests can help with the llamas, alpacas and other animals, go horse riding and take day trips to the lake and the Uros Islands. Fleewinter’s 13-day family trip includes two nights at the farm, or independent travellers can book direct.• Doubles from £80 B&B, fundochincheros.com London Guided walks offered by Unseen Tours around some of London’s most popular districts – Soho, Shoreditch, Covent Garden, London Bridge – are led by people who are either homeless or formerly homeless and still vulnerably housed. These are emphatically not about gawping at people who live on the streets. The guides design their own agenda, talking as much or little as they wish about their own experience and the realities of their lives. They reveal hidden sides to the city, from the site of the original Banksy girl with a balloon (now painted over), to the ongoing battle to preserve Crossbones, the outcasts’ graveyard unearthed during work on the Jubilee Line extension.• £15, sockmobevents.org.uk BerlinGuided by refugees from Syria, Refugee Voices weekly walking tours of Berlin tell two histories. With stops at the old East German parliament building, Checkpoint Charlie, the Topography of Terror and finally the twin churches of the Gendarmenmarkt, the refugees talk of Germany and there experiences there. But they also tell the story of Syria, often revealing how the two countries’ histories have intertwined, from the Stasi training Syria’s secret police in the 1960s and 70s, to Berlin housing more than 500 refugees in the former secret police HQ in 2015. • Donations €5-€10, refugeevoicestours.org Mumbai Reality Tours & Travel’s 2½-hour walking tour of Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums, is designed to challenge negative stereotypes and support the inhabitants. Groups are small, no photography is allowed, and your guides are the residents themselves, who reveal how Dharavi’s twisting streets are filled with artisans and micro-industries from pottery and embroidery to leather tanning and poppadom making. Four-fifths of the company’s profits go to development projects in slum communities, providing computer and English classes, a girls’ football program, and a scheme called I Was a Sari, employing women to upcycle old saris into designer products. It also runs slum tours in Delhi and multi-day tours in Kerala and Rajasthan. • About £9.50, realitytoursandtravel.com Cape TownCape Town tours run by not-for-profit group Uthando (the word means love) take visitors away from the seafront and Table Mountain and into the townships. But where many township tours are seen as voyeuristic, these trips focus not on sangomas (traditional healers) and shebeens, but on the social enterprises working to build a new South Africa. Participants visit three or four of the 20 initiatives that Uthando supports, working on, for example, providing opportunities for rehabilitating prisoners, supporting LGBT people in townships and a community dance project keeping young people out of gangs.• Half-day £56, uthandosa.org Multiple cities Authenticitys offers positive-impact trips to an ever-growing number of cities across Europe and Latin America, searchable by city, experience or issue. This might mean: sampling pintxos in San Sebastián on a foodie tour that also finances meals in a soup kitchen; seeing everyday life for women in Delhi, sharing a meal in their home and learning about a foundation that protects vulnerable women’s rights; or getting breathless in Barcelona on a jogging tour led by the founder of charity Street Child España.• €20pp, authenticitys.com National Trust The charity offers many working breaks, from weekends to full weeks, from gardening and farming to drystone walling. Among options for 2019 is woodland regeneration in West Sussex (14-21 July) and tree planting in Wasdale, Cumbria (9-16 March). Prices from £100, including basic accommodation and self-prepared meals. • nationaltrust.org.uk Tree huggersTrees for Life works to restore native forests in the Scottish Highlands. Its volunteers have planted over a million trees, and aim to plant a million more. Join a Conservation Week in Dundreggan or Glenn Affric, helping to keep some of the wildest parts of the UK wild. From £395 (£185 concs), with meals, accommodation and transport from Inverness. • treesforlife.org.uk WwoofingLearn about organic lifestyles by helping on a smallholding, garden or farm with Wwoof UK (for placements further afield, see wwoofinternational.org), with bed and board in return for practical help. Options include helping with a yurt business in Devon and clearing scrub and building bridges in Perthshire.• wwoof.org.uk RSPB Volunteer stays with Europe’s biggest wildlife conservation charity include helping at the visitor centre and observing nests at the Operation Osprey Project in Loch Garten in the Cairngorms, available from April to mid-August, habitat management at Ynys-Hir in Powys, and working at the Seabird Centre on Rathin Island in Northern Ireland. Volunteers . Most placements are for two weeks, although there are some one-week options.• rspb.org.uk/volunteering CanalsThe Inland Waterways Association works to protect and restore 6,500 miles of canals and rivers. Volunteers on week-long Canal Camps help clear vegetation and maintain and renovate locks. There are 25 sites in England and Wales, including three family camps. From £70, with accommodation and food.• waterways.org.uk India Ladakh’s first female mountain guide, Thinlas Chorol, and her 20 guides, porters and employees, all women, lead treks across the region’s passes and peaks that aim to support and inspire Ladakhi women, particularly those living in remote villages. Nights are spent in homestays run by women, giving them a chance to earn money where they live instead of having to find work in cities, and also to interact with visitors. In turn, tourists get a glimpse of the “real” Ladakh, including its traditional food. The trips attract solo female travellers in search of adventure although everyone is welcome. Tours vary from a one-day trip to Ladakh’s most impressive gompa (temple complex) to a challenging 14-day hike.• Day excursions from €60; multi-day hikes from €1,500pp, ladakhiwomenstravel.com Peru Tourism Caith is a Cusco-based organisation that operates four hostels in Cusco, Yucay, Accha and Puno, and tailormade tours across the country. All proceeds from overnight stays, trips and excursions help fund programmes run by Yanapanakusun, an NGO that works with girls and young women who are at risk of, or have been rescued from, domestic slavery. Rescued girls are offered education and training, particularly in tourism. Many of the girls go on to work for Tourism Caith as managers, cooks, hotel staff, drivers or friendly guides.• Tour prices from €1,500pp for up to 15 days, hostels from $20pp pn, turismocaith.org Mozambique Indian Ocean islands are usually associated with luxury resorts, but on sleepy Ibo island, off the north coast of Mozambique, Casa das Garças offers affordable rooms in an idyllic setting with strong links to the poor local community, in particular women. The lodge, which opened last year and also hosts visiting researchers, provides jobs and training, as well as buying products made by women (coffee, jams, peanut butter) and encouraging guests to eat at local seafood restaurants run by women.• From €61B&B, reopens in March, casadasgarcas.org ItalyThrough Stories and Hands of Women is a six-day small group tour dedicated to the women of remote, depopulated villages of Abruzzo. Guided by archaeologist Alessia, the tour starts in L’Aquila, a town still recovering from the devastating earthquake of 2009, and includes visits to 12 women who are preserving local traditions and trying to revitalise the region through their work; they include a wine maker, saffron grower, and several craft artisans. The tour is offered by ViaggieMiraggi, a sustainable tourism organisation that supports community projects around the world.• From €550 for a six-day tour including workshops and all meals, italy.viaggiemiraggi.org MoroccoArgan oil, or “liquid gold” as it’s been known since 600BC, provides a livelihood for thousands of Moroccan women. Many work for cooperatives that ensure the oil fetches a fair price. One of them, Coopérative Asdikae Bila Houdoud, organises an eight-day guided tour called Traditional Cosmetique where, in addition to extracting argan with local women, you can also learn how to make soaps, couscous, herbs, using centuries-old local recipes and techniques. Website is in French but tours are accompanied by an English speaking guide.• From €820 including accommodation, food, guide and transfers, marocnatureculture.org Jeremy Smith is a writer and consultant on tourism’s impact on people and the environment. Iaia Pedemonte is the founder of Gender Responsible Tourism This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Seventh Star was meant to be Tony Iommi’s first solo album, until label and management decided no one was going to buy it, and insisted it be billed as Black Sabbath, even if only Iommi was pictured on the cover. That it isn’t really Sabbath is apparent from the power ballad No Stranger to Love. Power ballad? Sabbath? Madness. Dehumaniser? Well, it certainly makes you feel like letting go of your humanity. The return of Geezer Butler and Ronnie James Dio should have been a good thing, but the band forgot to write any good songs to take advantage of the optimism. Letters from Earth has a good Iommi riff, but the rest is subpar. What long looked likely to be the final Black Sabbath album would have been a sad little footnote to their career. The appearance of Ice-T on Illusion of Power – the album was produced by Ernie C of Body Count – signified a band who had lost their way as surely as a middle-aged executive buying a Harley-Davidson. The 15th Sabbath album doesn’t sound much like Sabbath at all. The riffs are conventional mainstream metal: it would have sounded perfectly of its time five years earlier, but by 1990 – with Ozzy Osbourne-era Sabbath being exhumed by grunge and stoner bands – something more like the band of 20 years before might have hit home a lot harder. The first album with singer Tony Martin opened with an Iommi riff that offered hope of redemption: The Shining was more polished than, say, Wheels of Confusion, but it suggested Sabbath might be able to claw their way out of their hole. It often felt, though, as if the rest of the band were sanding down their leader’s riffs to fit an 80s template. Some Sabbath loyalists make a case for Headless Cross being a neglected classic. They can make the case, but they’re wrong. It’s perfectly serviceable, but Martin was an identikit metal singer: he sings about Satan with all the menace of someone offering cheese samples at Morrisons deli counter. Butler claimed Technical Ecstasy was Sabbath responding to punk. Given it was recorded in June 1976, that suggests they were either way ahead of the curve, or that Butler is mistaken. Back Street Kids may back his claim, but most of the rest of Technical Ecstasy was a mess. For the first time in more than decade, Sabbath sounded like a contemporary metal band, rather than a group trying to sound like a contemporary metal band (and on Cardinal Sin, Iommi and Butler gave Martin the kind of preposterously epic setting that Dio had deserved). It’s no Master of Reality, but it was the best Sabbath album since the early 80s. According to Sabbath mythology, Born Again should have been smothered at birth. Actually, it’s pretty good: Ian Gillan, whose only recordings with the band these were, still had his voice, and the other three are pretty focused. Of course, Gillan’s lyrics were awful and very un-Sabbath, but it was the best record he had been involved in since his time in Deep Purple. The final album of the original Ozzy era has a terrible reputation, but it’s a quirky and enjoyable record, as long as you don’t expect Sabbath Even Bloodier Sabbath. The title track has garage-band rawness; Air Dance is – dare one say it – oddly beautiful. It’s hit and miss, but it’s still better than almost everything from 1981 onwards. The original foursome reconvened for the first time since 1978 – and for the first record by any Sabbath lineup since 1995 – under the guidance of producer Rick Rubin, who fairly evidently told them there was only one thing people wanted Black Sabbath to do: sound like Black Sabbath. It didn’t scale the original heights, but 13 was miles better than anyone dared expect. After the success of Heaven and Hell (1980), Sabbath essentially made the same album again, just not quite as well. But what could have been a productive 80s was derailed by rows about the mix (Iommi accused Dio of sneaking back to the studio at night to turn his vocals up) and by Dio’s departure. A tolling bell, the sound of pouring rain, then the riff that changed everything: Black Sabbath invented an entire worldview within the first 60 seconds of their debut. You can still hear the blues-rock band they had been – The Wizard; Evil Woman, Don’t Play Your Games With Me; an interminable cover of Aynsley Dunbar’s Warning – which makes it an album of greater promise than reality. The last of the run of great albums (the fact you can see drummer Bill Ward’s underpants through his wife’s red tights on the cover is a handy metaphor for a band that was about to lose its grip), and still fantastic. Symptom of the Universe barrels along, before reaching a fabulous acoustic section – it is an album full of invention. And Osbourne, rarely an expressive singer, was at his best here. The title track! Iron Man! Rhyming “masses” with “masses” on War Pigs! The second Sabbath album was a leap into a different dimension from their debut: a huge, grim, monolithic edifice that brooked no doubt. You didn’t think it was OK; you thought it was the greatest thing ever. Or you hated it. For many years, virtually every critic fell into the second camp. The fools. The sleeve thanks “the great COKE-Cola Company of Los Angeles”, and you can hear it: Vol 4 is a powder-blown record, blank and unrelenting, grinding its teeth. Wheels of Confusion reduces the idea of the riff to its bare minimum. Snowblind – originally intended to be the title track – captures the essence of Vol 4. All your nihilist needs met in one place. The opener, Neon Knights, served notice that Black Sabbath – with Dio replacing Osbourne – were revitalised. It wasn’t the only track on which the group sounded rejuvenated by the emergent new wave of British of heavy metal (see also: Die Young). The title track still had the Sabbath plod, yet they somehow sounded nimble with it. They were leading again, not following. The fifth Sabbath album saw them stretching out – Looking for Today has a flute break! A flute! On a Black Sabbath record! – but without sacrificing intensity. From the cover – some sort of satanic ritual in bed – through the title track, to Killing Yourself to Live, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath helped codify metal and extend its boundaries. Master of Reality was Black Sabbath’s most subtle album yet and their most bludgeoning. Ward’s jazzy drumming – somehow swinging and precise – propelled even the most straightforward of the tracks. (Children of the Grave would be a pretty good boogie without Ward; he makes it monstrous.) The previous album was called Paranoid, but this was the one that sounded paranoid. The cause was perhaps the subject of the album’s opener, Sweet Leaf, on which a looped cough gives way to an Iommi riff so brutal that it is almost a caricature, before Osbourne spends several minutes explaining just how much he likes weed. A masterpiece.‘I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.” These could easily have been the words of the Chinese team behind Chang’e 4, shortly before it set off on its successful journey to the moon’s far side. But as any rock fan will tell you, they were immortalised 45 years ago at the end of Pink Floyd’s track Brain Damage. It was the line that gave their most famous album, The Dark Side of the Moon, its title. And it remains one of the most enduring phrases in popular culture – copied, spoofed and riffed on by generations to come (even Krusty the Clown has a “lost” album entitled Dark Side of the Moonpie). It’s not hard to see why artists have a fascination with the moon’s far side. It speaks of the unknowable, the distant and the elusive – and is especially ripe for metaphor. For Pink Floyd, the moon’s dark side was used to symbolise the darker forces of human nature on an album that delved into unusual territories for pop: mental illness, mortality and the scars of the second world war. As songwriter Roger Waters explained in the 1994 book Bricks in the Wall: “The line ‘I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon’ is me speaking to the listener, saying, ‘I know you have these bad feelings and impulses because I do too, and one of the ways I can make direct contact with you is to share with you the fact that I feel bad sometimes.’” Other songwriters have seen the moon’s most distant territory differently. For English folk singer Vin Garbutt, it helped describe the conditions of the 1982 Falklands war, where soldiers died in such cold and bloodied conditions it “may as well have been the dark side of the moon”. Rapper Lil Wayne’s 2018 duet with Nicki Minaj envisaged it more romantically, as a place of escape from a postapocalyptic Earth: he arranged to meet up with Minaj on the dark side of the moon, asking her to “leave a message in the dust just for me” when she reached the safe haven. Given that he also offered to take her for a walk once she got there “as she wears slippers”, you suspect their lovestruck escape mission might ultimately have been doomed by insufficient technical preparation. Outside music, the sheer remoteness of the moon’s furthest side has been seized on as a plot device. In the film Iron Sky, the defeated Nazis fled to the moon after the second world war to rebuild their forces – with the plan to ultimately conquer Earth using a space fleet. A crowdfunded sequel is due to be released this month. In Jed Mercurio’s 2007 novel Ascent, a Soviet astronaut successfully lands on the far side of the moon during a secret mission, only to be abandoned there alone when his craft breaks down and the USSR denies any such attempt took place. But for many people, the moon’s dark side will only ever be associated with Pink Floyd. On 4 January, the UK’s National Space Centre in Leicester is putting on the first of two sold-out light and laser shows in its Sir Patrick Moore Planetarium, combining the band’s music with the story of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, which orbited the moon and made the crew the first humans to see the moon’s other side. “While Pink Floyd titled The Dark Side of the Moon, as an allusion to lunacy, rather than astronomy, the links between the band and the Apollo space programme can be seen in their work,” says Josh Barker, the space centre’s planetarium coordinator and education presenter. “Pink Floyd played a major part in the heady days of the 1960s and 70s, creating innovative sounds that captured the feelings of optimism and freedom that set out the era as something really very special.” The timing of the shows with the Chang’e 4 landing may be coincidental, but nevertheless they neatly summarise the way the moon’s furthest reaches have fascinated scientists and artists alike. Bringing things back down to Earth for a moment, it’s safe to say that the Chang’e 4 team probably didn’t mention Pink Floyd’s song at the start of their mission – not because they’re all secretly bigger fans of King Crimson, but because the statement would be scientifically incorrect. It is not the moon’s “dark” side that Chang’e 4 landed on, but its far side – and that’s an important distinction. Each side of the moon is blessed with a roughly equal amount of the sun’s light; it’s just that humans only get to see one side of it. Of course, Pink Floyd acknowledged that too. Listen carefully as the album’s climax fades to leave a thudding heartbeat and you’ll hear Gerry O’Driscoll, the doorman to Abbey Road studios where it was recorded, saying: “There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.”When Ziad Ammar arrived in Canada, he had been out of jail for only three months. Tortured and starved in one of the prisons of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, he was weak and malnourished. It was not the best state in which to face a Canadian winter. “I bought everything that I needed for a whole month and then never left the house,” he said, laughing. Ammar, whose name has been changed to protect family members still in Syria, arrived in Montreal in the autumn of 2014. A native of Latakia, a coastal city on the glittering Mediterranean, he had never faced harsh winters, certainly nothing close to the blanket of snow that often adorns his new home city. Having to get used to the Canadian cold, and quickly, he took to developing his culinary skills, cooking Syrian dishes after work. Now he regularly makes kibbeh labanieh, meatballs made with bulgur and cooked in a yoghurt stew, the quintessential comfort food, and a lentil soup that reminds him of the version he used to order at a specific restaurant every time he drove from Latakia to Aleppo. He also serves up traditional knafeh pastry, served warm with piping-hot sugar syrup, alongside a glass of salep, a creamy Ottoman drink made with orchid flour, milk and cinnamon. “Sitting around a table of food with family in the cold makes you feel warm,” said Ammar, who has been reunited with his wife in Montreal. “Here, you can have that same feeling of warmth because of the memories.” Over the past three years, Canada has accepted more than 50,000 Syrian refugees as part of government- and privately-sponsored resettlement programmes. In an initiative that ran counter to the global mood of growing xenophobia and rightwing populism, its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, welcomed the first group of Syrians arriving as part of the government’s campaign in late 2015. Many who came after enduring war and displacement, and the misery of refugee camps in the Middle East, set about rebuilding their lives in Canada. I'd freeze waiting for the bus. People would gather around me and ask, 'Are you OK, ma'am?' because I was crying so much Added to the usual challenges of integration – finding work, accommodation and acquiring the language – learning to love the Canadian winter has proved a formidable task. In Montreal this weekend temperatures are expected to plunge to -20C with occasional snow flurries. The city launched a partial snow-clearing effort on Friday morning but freezing temperatures have made it extremely difficult for municipal workers to de-ice pavements. Horror stories – such as one from 1 January in which a couple driving on a highway in Quebec had their windshield shattered by flying ice – make it tempting to stay at home. Yesterday the weather in Damascus, by contrast, was bright and sunny, with a high temperature of 14C. Syrians in Canada have countless stories about their first winter in the country – hibernating for weeks on end; the first few times they slipped on ice and broke a limb; miscalculating how long they would have to wait in -20C for the bus; shopping for proper winter coats and boots; or splashing hands with hot water after a walk in freezing weather. For many new arrivals, the shock of the whole thing can drive them indoors. “If there’s a tiny bit of snow, they won’t come,” said Joulnar El Husseini-McCormick, an estate agent who volunteers to translate for newly arrived refugees at government departments, and who is originally from Homs herself. “You call them and they say, ‘It’s cold’. I remember one of them asked to postpone the appointment until March. I told her that in March there is snow,” she laughed. “They’d ask us if they can keep the kids at home when it snows,” she added. “We told them, ‘You can’t keep them at home for six months!’” In Montreal the shopping districts, cafes and restaurants were bustling and alive ahead of the holidays. The city also boasts an extensive underground network of pedestrian tunnels to avoid the worst of the weather. But as the Christmas lights came down and local markets with mulled wine and were dismantled, winter really began to set in. Charming festive vistas are giving way to brutal icy streets and freezing rain. Rather than conjuring up scenes of familial gatherings and comforting childhood memories, winter, for some new arrivals, symbolises a greater estrangement: a reminder of the warmth of communities they left behind, however torn apart by war they may have become. It can become a powerful sign of how different their new home is from the one they fled. “I was alone when I arrived in Canada in January and had no idea how cold it was,” said Dina Haddad, who is also from Latakia and arrived in Canada a year ago. “When I would take the bus, I didn’t know it arrived at specific times, so I’d freeze and my hands would turn white from the cold until they were numb, and I would cry and say, ‘I wish I never came to this cold’. People would gather around me and ask me, ‘Are you OK, ma’am?’ because of how much I was crying. Eventually, things worked out.” For those who remain inconsolable, there is always the promise of spring. “I do regret it when I’m waiting for a bus, it’s -20C, windy, and the bus is late,” said El Husseini-McCormick, who moved to Montreal in 2014 with her Canadian husband. “That’s the peak of regret. I think to myself, what brought me here?” “But when it’s 10 degrees and people are smiling, and you realise it’s spring, you’ll see it,” she added. “Spring is the best feeling in the world.”Jürgen Klopp has said Manchester City remain the best team in the world despite the recent slump that has left them trailing Liverpool by seven points before Thursday’s game at the Etihad Stadium. Pep Guardiola bestowed that mantle on Liverpool following their run of nine consecutive Premier League victories. His Anfield counterpart accepts that may be true on form but insists Liverpool’s unbeaten league campaign faces the biggest test imaginable against the champions. “It is one of the most difficult games you can play in the modern football world, away at City,” Klopp said. “We felt that plenty of times. It’s a really strong team with an outstanding manager. We have to be prepared as good as possible, we have to be brave, full of desire, angry – all that stuff, like in all the other games. “The opponent, for me, is still the best team in the world. It’s 100% my opinion because of the way they play, the things they achieved, the ability and all that stuff. Nothing changed. Only the points changed but not the preparation for the game.” As for Guardiola’s praise for Liverpool, Klopp said: “I heard it. He said: ‘In the moment’. Yes, with the record we had in December – I’m not sure if another team had a record like this in December – we are in a good moment. And we are a very good team as well so that’s why we have the amount of points but we prepare for one game. “Would I say they are the best team in the world if nobody would ask me? No. But we talk about it. It sounds like we go there and we are more likely to win then they are. It’s just not true.” Liverpool trailed City by 18 points on 3 January last year but have taken 16 points more after 20 games of this campaign, while Guardiola’s team have 11 fewer. “I trust my players 100% but you never feel certainty,” Klopp said. “I will never be so sure to say ‘we will deliver again’. It is an open question: ‘Can we do it again?’ You don’t know. I played football. You win four games in a row but what does that mean for the fifth game? “These boys are of a different level and quality, that is true. We are all in this situation. We are all in the same mood 100%. That is the mood in which we go to City. After City, we can talk about what happened there.” Klopp has James Milner available following injury. He also believes the finest goalkeepers in the world will be on display, with Alisson and Ederson eclipsing Manuel Neuer for quality on the ball. He said: “Coming from Germany and knowing how important Manuel Neuer was with his football playing on top of his goalkeeping skills, you can’t imagine that two can come along with the same skills and maybe even a bit better. What I would say is these two boys do not have to hide.” Klopp admits the showdown provides an opportunity to turn the season either way. “You have to ask Pep why he said it. If we would be 10 points behind then would my first thing after the game be to say: ‘We still will catch them!’ Of course not. It’s difficult with the qualities all the teams have but it’s just not important what happens. It’s the third of January, it’s a very important game for both teams and I would use it as motivation for the other team.’ Klopp added: “These kind of six-point games, it’s how it is, we play against each other and can pretty much go in all directions. It’s a motivation for them, 100%. They will be ready and we have to make sure we are ready, that’s all.”Early on New Year’s Day, I began scrolling through the messages people had left on social media. Usually you find a note of hope among popping corks and exploding fireworks. Not this year. All I found were posts like “2018 was a terrible year. Don’t expect more from 2019” or “I dread the year to come”. I started to suspect that those I followed on social media were all just a bit depressing. But that theory evaporated when a new batch of articles trying to capture the spirit of our age appeared. “It’s all over,” one piece declared. “All that’s left to us is making the best of a bad situation,” another announced. A fascinating new book bore the title The Worst is Yet to Come. It seems that 2019 is the dawn of an age of deep pessimism. According to some, things are going down quickly. All we can do is try to survive. The editors of n+1, one of the hippest intellectual journals on the planet, claim that our only hope seems to be that “our arrow-slinging children will bear us on their backs out of the civilization we ruined for them”. Upbeatsters rubbish such dark resignation. Things aren’t actually that bad, they claim. Life spans are expanding, GDP is rising, female empowerment is growing, poverty is declining. Even if there are a few pesky problems, such as falling life expectancy among poor people in rich nations due to deaths of despair, that’s no reason for negativity. If we are to believe we can do something about these big problems, we are told that we need to think positively. After all, there is a significant body of work showing that people with an optimistic outlook tend to suffer much less distress when faced with big life events such as childbirth, starting a business or facing a significant illness. In recent years, we have started to recognise the limits of being relentlessly upbeat. There is a growing movement of people prompting us to harness the power of pessimism. Pessimism is experiencing a strange revival in philosophy. Eugene Thacker reminds us that it will all inevitably end in ruin one day. Accepting that insight can give a strange sense of consolation and can free us to live. In self-help circles, people are beginning to embrace negative thinking by turning to stoic philosophers such as Seneca. Instead of closing their eyes and imagining the perfect future, they are sitting back and trying to envisage the worst-case scenario. Rather than envisaging themselves living in a luxury minimalist house in Malibu, these postmodern stoics try to imagine themselves sleeping in a cardboard box outside the downtown Los Angeles bus station. These exercises are not just perverse forms of psychological masochism. There is increasing evidence that positive thinking can impede action. In an experiment, the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen found that thirsty people in the lab who were asked to imagine a glass of icy water showed less energy, which could be put into getting hold of an actual glass of water. In another study, Oettingen found that while people who developed clear and defined goals for the future fared well, others who simply nurtured positive fantasies seemed to flounder. Psychologists have also found that pessimism can actually motivate us. For instance, one study by Julie Norem and Nancy Cantor found that people often adopted a pessimistic stance to steel themselves against future disappointments. This helped to motivate them to undertake what would otherwise seem like insurmountable tasks. More recent work suggests that pessimism and optimism are not polar opposites, but separate systems in our brains. You are not either pessimistic or optimistic. You can be both at the same time, or either. Perhaps the pessimism that infuses our age is not something we should recoil from or wallow in. Maybe pessimism could force us to realistically consider the worst-case scenario. Pessimism could help steel us against the inevitable anxieties that the future brings. A good dose of pessimism may actually motivate us in our attempts to address the problems we face. Pessimism could console and even free us. When mixed with some optimism, pessimism may help us to think more soberly and realistically about challenges that we face. Although being pessimistic is painful, it is certainly better than harbouring delusional fantasies about sunny uplands of the future. • André Spicer is professor of organisational behaviour at the Cass Business School at City, University of LondonWe arrive at sunset. The guesthouse sits on a rising prow of rock with dizzying views of the vast gorge below. The altitude is around 3,000 metres, and after six hours’ walking, I am tired. Inside the thatched hut, two young women are tending a fire where the shiro, a kind of bean stew, is cooking. I glance out of the small window and a lammergeier, a bearded vulture, comes sailing past. Perhaps he, too, is drawn by the smell of food. This is a hungry land. My guide, Suleiman, comes in and we chat to the women, who seem very excited and happy. “Do you like your job?” I ask. They laugh even more, exchanging glances. “We have never earned money before,” says one of them, Daragut. “It’s true,” says Suleiman, “They will get 30 birr a day, about $1, for each visitor that comes. You are the first.” Hence the excitement. Daragut elaborates a little. “We will save up and open our own coffee shop.” I am in a tiny Ethiopian settlement called Khaled Abo in the Janamora district, an area bordering the Simien Mountains in the north of the country. Two days earlier, Suleiman and I had left the town of Gondar and been dropped off at the head of a footpath into the mountains. There we found a drover and donkey ready to take our luggage. The nature of the trek was soon revealed: five days through a landscape of fabulous mountain panoramas populated by people with not an ounce of spare flesh on them. Farms are mostly a quarter of a hectare – just over half an acre – of desperately over-grazed hillside terraces. When the rains allow it, they grow wheat and barley. Some have small flocks of sheep; most have lots of children. None has electricity or running water. Bordering their land is the Simien Mountains national park, a major tourist attraction where visitors pay hundreds of dollars to be shown ibex, gelada monkeys and, with a bit of luck, a rare Ethiopian wolf. There is no evidence of that tourist money ever reaching these people. I am the first visitor on a tourism project that aims to address that, bringing money, employment and development to some of the communities around the park. Around 500 families have worked together to make a string of guesthouses, linking a superb route through their homeland. The sense of expectation and hope is palpable. For women like Daragut, the fantasy of owning a coffee shop has become a tangible ambition. I had my doubts about tourism in such a famished land, but from the start the welcome is overwhelming. On day one, a farmer invites us into his house, a simple hut partially plastered with cow dung and mud. The wind puffs dust through the cracks. One half of the main room is divided off for animals. There’s no furniture, just some sacks of grain to sit on. It’s United Nations food aid from Switzerland, says Suleiman: “They get 45kg of wheat every month.” These stick-thin people, I realise, are not only living on an actual cliff edge, they are permanently on the brink of disaster. One failed rainy season would finish them. I wonder if it’s right to be here. The farmer is adamant that it is. “We need visitors,” he tells me. “Not just for money, but to learn about the world.” Throughout the trek I hear this repeatedly. There’s an almost desperate urge among the people to be connected to the world, and to see some change. At Khaled Abo, I sleep well in the cold mountain air, rising at dawn to stand on the edge of this precipice. As the sun comes up, I distinctly hear a leopard cough directly below me. The curious thing about the landscape is that while every square inch of flat land is farmed, the vertiginous cliff is a wild wooded habitat for gelada, rare birds, hyenas, wolves and, as I discover, big cats. Simien is isolated from other mountain ranges and has evolved a unique flora and fauna. By day four I am in the swing of walking and Suleiman is coping well with his first-ever tourist, learning to point out things of interest. By day five, his attempts to teach me Amharic are even paying off. I can greet everyone and get the plurals and gender correct – handy at the wedding ceremonies we are invited to, or in the “honey beer” bars. This trip is certainly not for everyone: the simple food and lack of creature comforts are a challenge. The rewards are to see a region that few outsiders ever visit, to meet people isolated from the outside world, enjoy spectacular landscapes without modern infrastructure, light pollution and litter. The big reward, however, is to see your holiday become the source of someone else’s dreams. On my last day of walking, I fall in step with the donkey man, Adelalaw. We are on the escarpment again, on a path snaking along the edge of a steep precipice. I ask how much he earns in a year. “Last year, I sold one sheep for 600 birr and made 1,500 birr from selling beans.” That is about £70. For transporting my bag for the entire trek he is getting 800 birr: around five months’ money in less than a week. Money that is going directly into his pocket. “What do you think of tourists coming here?” I ask. “It is something good,” he laughs. “Something very, very good.” • The trip was provided by Tesfa Tours , whose six-night trek in Janamora Woreda for four people costs $560pp, including transfers from Gondar, food, accommodation, guide and pack animal, but not bottled drinks. The company recommends linking this trip with a few nights’ camping in the national park, a stay at Limalimo lodge and other extensions such as Lake Tana and Lalibela.The guesthouses and tour were set up with the assistance of Village Ways winner of the 2017 WTM responsible tourism award. Flights were provided by Ethiopian Airlines, which flies daily from Heathrow to Gondar via Addis Ababa from £665 returnIn 1953, Hollywood comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy embarked on a farewell tour of the British music hall circuit, dragging their luggage from one provincial hotel to the next. They pulled pints for the cameras, judged a beauty pageant at Butlins and reprised slapstick routines from their 1930s two-reelers. The tour was a hit but it was tinged with sadness as well. There are few sights so poignant as the exhausted antics of an ageing clown. The trick, says Steve Coogan, is to keep moving, branch out. Aged 53, he feels that comedy, by and large, is a young man’s game. He has been there, he has done it, and is shifting towards drama. “It’s fine to be biting, acerbic and silly when you’re young,” he says. “But when you grow up you need to act like a grownup.” Then he catches himself and winces at his presumption. “Maybe that just means I’ve got flabby and middle aged.” The jury is still out but I think maturity suits him. Coogan’s reputation was forged during his hectic 90s heyday, when he carried himself like a Premier League footballer, the cocksure comic striker behind witless Alan Partridge. These days, the hair has gone grey while the roles have turned more knotty, nuanced and tender. He was deftly affecting in the Bafta-winning Philomena, thin-skinned and whip-smart in Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip, and he gives a lovely, limber performance in Stan & Ollie, a bittersweet account of the duo’s swansong British tour. It’s hard to make a comedy from success. The best ones are about failure and bad luck and inadequacy Coogan explains that he started his career doing the voices on Spitting Image, so impersonating Laurel came relatively easily (the diffident smile; the precise, flat vowels). The hard part was digging behind the facade, revealing the man behind the screen image. But he is wary of sounding too precious about this; God forbid he should come over all Daniel Day-Lewis. “I’ve never really been a method actor,” he scoffs. “I don’t think Mike Leigh would like me. If he wanted me to do a medieval melodrama, I’d still be wearing my underpants from Marks & Spencer underneath my costume; I don’t care what he says.” There is a cafetiere inside the hotel room. Coogan insists on playing mother. He pours the coffee with a flourish but then struggles with the milk, which comes in a little carton that must be pierced with a plastic straw. His angle is wrong; the milk squirts out in a jet. For a brief, fleeting moment, he could be Partridge back at the Linton Travel Tavern. On screen, Laurel played gormless underling to Hardy’s finicky little king. Off screen, though, the roles were reversed. Laurel co-directed the pictures and devised the bulk of the gags. He was at once ringmaster and clown, the artist and the clay, to the point where it became difficult to spot where the man ended and the character began. Coogan suspects that this is a common confusion. “Look at Tony Hancock. Look at John Cleese with Basil Fawlty. What a comedian does is take their own essence and then channel it. Stan certainly did that. And I do it too, principally with Alan Partridge. He’s my way of channelling all my worst tendencies, my general ineptitude.” He pauses: “In fact, come to think of it, it’s not just comedians. Most movie stars are 80% versions of who they are off camera.” On screen (and arguably off it, too) Laurel and Hardy were at once inseparable and at permanent loggerheads. They gave the impression of being as much tragic as funny, the inspiration for Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. And at times Stan & Ollie – directed by John S Baird with a script by Jeff Pope, Coogan’s co-writer on Philomena – feels more indebted to Samuel Beckett than to the comedy of Laurel and Hardy producer Hal Roach. It’s a dying fall of a film: a tale of dwindling resources and aching limbs and two men who suspect they are being edged inexorably towards the exit door. Coogan thinks that this is entirely as it should be. “It’s hard to make a comedy from success,” he explains. “The best ones are about failure and bad luck and inadequacy. And this film is about the transience of all the success that went before.” Another pause. “Do you know that film Anvil: The Story of Anvil? It’s a documentary about a heavy metal band and their glory days are behind them and they’re flat broke. And I don’t particularly like the music. In fact, I sort of hate it. But what I was really moved by was their affection and unfailing loyalty in middle age. It’s only as they get older that they realise they love each other.” If someone said I was boring, that would bother me. But if I’m no longer funny, well, then I’ll do something not funny I wonder if the same might be said of The Trip. If not a tale of failure, exactly, Michael Winterbottom’s sitcom, initially on BBC Two, now on Sky Atlantic, brilliantly exposes the limits of success, the fragility of the male ego and the bond between two sparring partners whose relationship is closer than they would care to admit. Coogan and Rob Brydon play versions of themselves: affluent, status-conscious performers, each vying for the upper hand. Coogan likes to dismiss Brydon as a middle-of-the-road entertainer, a reliable footsoldier on the panel-show circuit. Brydon, in turn, suggests that his rival is a 1990s timepiece, a hedonistic antique like “Oasis or cocaine”. The Trip is partly scripted, partly improvised. It’s a comedy fiction, but there’s a truth to it, too. Coogan pushes his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. “I remember Rob once saying to me: ‘The trouble with you is that you’re not funny any more.’” Wait a minute … was this on camera or off? “God knows. It was in that sort of grey area in between. He was thinking: ‘What will really annoy Steve?’ And I remember thinking: ‘That’s not the worst thing you can say to me.’ I don’t think: ‘Oh my God, if I’m not funny my whole existence will crumble.’ It’s not my oxygen, being funny all the time. That’s a dysfunction. It’s just weird, to be honest. It would bother him more; that’s probably why he said it.” He grimaces. “I mean, if someone said I was boring, that would bother me. But if I’m no longer funny, well, then I’ll do something not funny. There are a lot of other things to be.” For Stan Laurel, born in Lancashire and raised on music hall, the 1953 British tour was a homecoming of sorts. In his own way, Coogan is similarly circling back to his roots. He was born in Middleton, north of Manchester, to a large Irish Catholic family. He says that the older he gets, the more Irish he feels. I think I’ve always had a political dimension. My family was political. I remember being told that Jesus was a socialist “I’d like to claim I was a horny-handed son of toil,” he says. “But it was a more lower middle-class or upper working-class background.” His dad worked as an engineer for IBM; the family was solidly socialist and prized education above all else. “I mean, we didn’t have a colour TV for such a long time. Even though the people on the council estate did have one and my grandmother got one straight away from Radio Rentals. So we didn’t have a colour telly, but we did have the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And so we were very aspirational as a family. There was this notion that, all being well, all of us kids would eventually end up as teachers.” By his early 20s, however, Coogan was already earning a decent living as a voiceover artist and standup comic. He joined the ensemble cast of Radio 4 comedy On the Hour (which subsequently morphed into BBC Two’s The Day Today) and won the Perrier award at the 1992 Edinburgh festival fringe. He became hugely successful at an indecently young age. I’m guessing his showbiz lifestyle made him the black sheep of the family, but he says that this was never really the case. “In terms of my profession, there was a precedent on my father’s side. My grandfather ran a dancehall in the 50s for Irish immigrants, when they were subject to the same prejudice as Jews and black people. You know, it was the era of ‘No blacks, dogs or Irish’. There was a certain ghettoisation in Manchester back then. Middleton had a lot of Irish people and it was right next door to Prestwich, which had a lot of Jewish people. But also, Catholicism isn’t puritanism. Catholicism allows you to get drunk and have a nice time. And if you’re from a working-class background, you’re expected to sing for your supper. Everybody does a turn. So it wasn’t that me being a performer was frowned upon. Quite the opposite, in fact.” The way Coogan tells it, his career has been shaped by an ongoing creative friction, even a niggling uncertainty about exactly what kind of artist he aspired to be. During the course of his career, he has bounced between what he refers to as his “Manchester gang” (Caroline Aherne, Jon Thomson, Craig Cash) and the “Oxbridge gang” (Armando Iannucci, Patrick Marber, Chris Morris); between big, bland Hollywood fodder and small, smart British productions. Partridge, I suspect, provides the man with his lynchpin: a popular character who has been allowed the space to take on a finer texture. Coogan says that he still loves to play Partridge and still laughs when he watches his antics on screen. So he’s basically saying he laughs at his own jokes? “Well, yeah,” he says, briefly rattled. “Because I don’t see it when I’m doing it. So when I watch it back in the editing suite, I feel the same delight as the audience would. I see Alan as Alan. I don’t see him as me.” During his 20s and 30s, Coogan was a favourite tabloid pinata. We thrilled to tales of how he liked nothing better than to snort rails of cocaine and then have sex with lap dancers. These days, he is a more sober, thoughtful figure, banging the drum for press regulation and writing op-eds calling for a second EU referendum. The change has been so striking it feels like a reinvention. I can’t quite work him out. Has Coogan grown more serious with age? Or was he always like this but elected to hide it? “I don’t know,” he says. “I think I’ve always had a political dimension. My family was political. I remember being told that Jesus was a socialist. But I was also very ambitious. And I started earning a lot of money early on. And I became apolitical. I thought: ‘Oh, sod all that.’ And it went to my head. It was like a sort of delayed adolescence.” Another pause: “But then you realise that all this stuff is transient and that you’re middle aged and that one day you’re going to be dead. And so you might as well make an effort to engage in some way.” I last met him when Philomena came out back in 2013. Back then, Coogan was a bracing, combative interviewee. He saw every question as a potential ambush and moved to thwart any perceived journalistic angle. Today, though, he seems more comfortable with the process, more at ease with himself. It used to be that he felt he always had to have his guard up. Now he accepts that he can sometimes afford to let it drop. He’s middle aged and a mass of insecurity and contradictions. He suspects that, on balance, that’s not such a terrible thing to be. “And actually I think acknowledging your own fallibility makes you a better artist and a better person,” he says in a rush. “It’s fairly obvious to me that the real wisdom lies in seeing people’s failings and trying to understand them. Because the alternative is that very childlike, Donald Trump thing of believing that admitting any weakness is fatal. What was it Bukowski said? All the clever people are full of self-doubt and all the stupid people are very confident. That’s the era we’re living in now. That’s the era I don’t want to be a part of. So all you can do is try to go about things differently. Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt.” Coogan gulps for breath. His eyes widen and then he rocks with laughter. “There you go, that’s my big artistic statement,” he says. “Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt. Took me the best part of an hour. Got there in the end.” Stan & Ollie is in UK cinemas on 11 January.Mauricio Pochettino has suggested he might have won a trophy at Tottenham by now had the club not been forced to move away from White Hart Lane as part of their new stadium build. The manager saw another route to silverware closed off on Thursday when his team lost on penalties to Chelsea in the semi-final of the Carabao Cup and, not for the first time, he found himself being asked to explain why he had not won anything during his four and a half years in charge. In an impassioned answer Pochettino pointed out Tottenham’s glory days had come during the era of black and white TV – they did the league and FA Cup double under Bill Nicholson in 1961, an achievement recalled in the dramatic big-screen montage before home matches. Pochettino noted Spurs had “no history of winning”, with the subtext he ought not to be blamed for a lack of trophies. In the last 34 years the club have won the FA Cup once and League Cup twice. The Argentinian is keen for people to see the bigger picture, which is the progress that the team have made in terms of their Champions League qualifications and the ability to compete with bigger-spending rivals. His exasperation was clear, particularly when he considered the temporary relocation to Wembley, which will run deep into a second season because of the delays over the stadium project. “We are always close to the last step [to trophies] but to achieve it is the most difficult thing,” Pochettino said, before Sunday’s FA Cup tie at Crystal Palace. “At the moment the team needed the last push, what happened? We build and build but then White Hart Lane – gone. “We moved to Wembley and there were all the doubts about how we are going to behave. There was the example of West Ham in their first season [at the London Stadium], and many things in this process that stopped the evolution of the team about to win. Remember, we were unbeaten in the Premier League at White Hart Lane in our last season there. Nobody said what it meant to move to Wembley to create another project and not only this – we were going to play only one season at Wembley and now it’s nearly two seasons and no one says nothing. “When Arsenal moved [to Emirates Stadium], people talked about massive problems, they are still paying, but Tottenham, with no history of winning … Our glory, I watch the [pre-match] video about the glory, it’s with Nicholson. It’s black and white. I watch it nearly every week and to create again that feeling, you need time. Four or five years, that’s nothing in the history of the club.” Pochettino risked labouring the point about how Spurs were in a “different project” to the other top clubs. “The problem is you want to put Tottenham in a level when they are still not there,” Pochettino said. “It is completely unfair to charge the club like you would Manchester City, Liverpool or Chelsea. We still need to finish our stadium. We need to create the basis to win.”John McEnroe does not get a lot wrong. However, when he suggested a few days ago that Stefanos Tsitispas’s victory over Roger Federer might represent a changing of the guard, he momentarily forgot the championship heart and pedigree of Rafael Nadal, who will play in his fifth Australian Open final on Sunday after slaying the young Greek on a warm Melbourne evening. Nadal, the 2009 champion, could well win his second title here, drawing him to within two majors of Federer’s 20 slams, and inviting speculation that, if he were to go on to prevail at Roland Garros (one of the safest bets in tennis), he would arrive at Wimbledon staring history in the face again. The guard is not for changing just yet. The 32-year-old Spaniard – who retired injured in the quarter-finals last year – has arrived back in the harsh southern limelight by beating a couple of Australian underdogs in James Duckworth and Matthew Ebden, then set about their fledgling compatriot Alex de Minaur, before trouncing his old foe Tomas Berdych and, to get to Thursday’s semi-final, the ebullient ball of American energy Frances Tiafoe. All of that occupied Nadal less than 10 and a half hours and 15 sets. He spent only an hour and 46 minutes accounting for the tired but willing challenge of Tsitsipas, the player hailed, by McEnroe and many others, as the leader of the new wave. Nadal won 6-2, 6-4, 6-0 and has not looked as dominant at this stage of a slam since Roland Garros last year; even on his favourite surface there, he lost a set, to Diego Schwartzman. This is his first run to a slam final without dropping a set since the 2017 French Open. Yet there were reasons to wonder. Three weeks ago, he pulled out of the Brisbane International to rest a thigh strain, a sorry continuation of his wretched run of injuries in 2018, when he played in only nine tournaments as fault lines in his hip, knee, abdomen and ankle threatened to bring his career to a painful close. Yet here he is again, winning a semi-final on a hard court – and persuading McEnroe, in his role as courtside jester, to now praise him as the nemesis of the Next Gen pretenders. “They don’t need any message,” Nadal said. “They are good, improving every month. It is always a big challenge to play against them. There is a new and very good generation coming. They are here now.” He said of Tsitsipas, who has had a remarkable tournament: “He’s brave, goes to the net often. He has everything to be a multi-grand slam champion. I hope to play him again in the next couple of years.” He added: “A few weeks ago in Brisbane, talking to the tournament director there, I had to take a very tough decision. It was difficult to imagine then that I would be where I am now. I feel really, really well.” Tsitsipas, who had taken 15 hours and 31 minutes to reach his first slam semi-final, signalled his intentions early, serve-volleying with brio. But Nadal struck first when he forced an uncontrolled backhand from Tsitsipas that lobbed in the tramlines. He broke again then ground out the points to take the set in half an hour. Tsitsipas, having taken care of business brilliantly against Federer, was discovering that backing up against the player who may go on to secure as many slams as the Swiss genius, was no straightforward exercise. The 20-year-old Greek tennis classicist with the flowing locks and the single-handed backhand was shattered but philosophical later. “I have no idea what I can take from that match,” he said. “It’s not that I was even close to getting to something. I only got six games. I feel very strange. I feel happy with my performance in this tournament but, at the same time, I feel disappointed. It’s a very weird feeling. It’s annoying that I didn’t get close to breaking him. He’s very aggressive from the baseline. “It felt like a different dimension of tennis. He gives you no rhythm. He plays just a different game style than the rest of the players. He has this talent that no other player has. I’ve never seen a player have this. He makes you play bad.” Awaiting Nadal will be either Novak Djokovic, whom he has beaten 25 times in 52 matches, or Lucas Pouille, who has won one of their three encounters. Djokovic and Pouille meet in the second semi-final on Friday. Djokovic, the world No 1 still unless Nadal wins on Sunday, knows better than most that this first major of the season can change careers. He said after Kei Nishikori quit injured in their quarter-final: “This was my first grand slam trophy back when I was 20 years old, and that opened a lot of doors for me. That was a huge confidence boost, a springboard for the rest of my career.” He said of Pouille: “It’s his first semi-final at a slam but he has won against Nadal in New York some years ago, and he’s made a couple of advances at the big tournaments. He’s not afraid to play his best at the biggest stage in sports. I expect him to come out, be very confident – as he always is.”Liberal values in Europe face a challenge “not seen since the 1930s”, leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections. The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was “coming apart before our eyes”. “We must now will Europe or perish beneath the waves of populism,” the document reads. “We must rediscover political voluntarism or accept that resentment, hatred, and their cortege of sad passions will surround and submerge us.” They write of their regret that Europe has been “abandoned from across the Channel” – an oblique reference to the drawn-out Brexit process that has arguably brought Anglo-European relations to their lowest point since the second world war. And they say that unless efforts are made to combat a rising tide of populism, the EU elections will be “the most calamitous that we have ever known: victory for the wreckers; disgrace for those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe, and Comenius; disdain for intelligence and culture; explosions of xenophobia and anti-semitism; disaster”. “Abandoned from across the Channel and from across the Atlantic by the two great allies who in the previous century saved it twice from suicide; vulnerable to the increasingly overt manipulations of the master of the Kremlin, Europe as an idea, as will and representation, is coming apart before our eyes,” the text reads. The 800-word paean was drafted by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Signatories included the novelists Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie, the historian Simon Schama and the Nobel prize laureates Svetlana Alexievitch, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk and Elfriede Jelinek. Rushdie told the Guardian: “Europe is in greater danger now than at any time in the last 70 years, and if one believes in that idea it’s time to stand up and be counted. “In the UK, I hope parliament may yet have the courage to call for a second referendum. That could rescue the country from the calamity of Brexit and go a long way towards rescuing the EU as well.” McEwan said he had signed the manifesto because he was “very pessimistic” about the current moment, “but try to be hopeful that the zeitgeist will turn”. Pamuk said the idea of Europe was also important to non-western countries. “Without the idea of Europe, freedom, women’s rights, democracy, egalitarianism is hard to defend in my part of the world. “The historical success of Europe made it easier to defend these ideas and values which are crucial to humanity all over the world,” he said. “There is no Europe besides these values except the Europe of tourism and business. Europe is not a geography first but these ideas. This idea of Europe is under attack.” In the EU elections in May – the first that will not include Britain – most observers predict a rise in support for populist, nationalist or anti-immigration parties. Many of them have made significant gains in national elections, as the centre-right and centre-left that have traditionally dominated Europe’s postwar politics retreat. Matteo Salvini, of Italy’s far-right League, has described the vote as a straight choice between “the Europe of the elites, banks, finance, immigration and precarious work” and that of “the people and of labour”, pledging to form a Eurosceptic “Italian-Polish axis”. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said the elections are a chance to bid farewell “to liberal democracy”. Unlike Eurosceptics in the UK, most European counterparts do not want to leave the EU but to take it over. Leading the charge against the resurgent rightwing populists are the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. While both have been weakened by domestic problems, this week they renewed their countries’ vows of postwar friendship and warned that the lessons of their bloody past were being forgotten. EU officials in Brussels believe it is possible there will be a decisive advance for the populists and gains for pro-European parties, or at least a confusing mix of the two, leaving the populists significantly stronger, but still facing a strong, if disunited, majority of pro-European MEPs. The net result is likely to be a far more complex parliamentary make-up, delicate coalition-building, and a European parliament increasingly unable to pass legislation to deal with major challenges, such as immigration and eurozone reform. While they did not make any practical calls to action, the manifesto’s signatories said they “refuse to resign themselves to this looming catastrophe”. They counted themselves among the “too quiet” European patriots who understand that “three-quarters of a century after the defeat of fascism and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, a new battle for civilisation is under way”. Despite its “mistakes, lapses, and occasional acts of cowardice”, Europe remains “the second home of every free man and woman on the planet”, they say, noting with regret the widely held but mistaken belief of their generation that “the continent would come together on its own, without our labour”. Pro-Europeans “no longer have a choice”, they say. “We must sound the alarm against the arsonists of soul and spirit that, from Paris to Rome, with stops in Barcelona, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna, or Warsaw, are playing with the fire of our freedoms.” The signatories are: Vassilis Alexakis, Svetlana Alexievitch, Anne Applebaum, Jens Christian Grøndahl, David Grossman, Agnès Heller, Elfriede Jelinek, Ismaïl Kadaré, György Konrád, Milan Kundera, Bernard-Henri Lévy, António Lobo Antunes, Claudio Magris, Ian McEwan, Herta Müller, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Orhan Pamuk, Rob Riemen, Salman Rushdie, Fernando Savater, Roberto Saviano, Eugenio Scalfari, Simon Schama, Peter Schneider, Abdulah Sidran, Leïla Slimani, Colm Tóibín, Mario Vargas Llosa, Adam Michnik and Adam ZagajewskiDanny Cipriani has made a timely return from injury and will start at fly-half for Gloucester on Friday night against Munster in a must-win European Champions Cup tie at Kingsholm. Gloucester will start the match at the bottom of the most closely contested of the five groups but they will finish it at the top if they win by more than seven points with a try bonus point. The England outside-half Cipriani, who is in talks with Gloucester about extending a contract that runs out next season, has not played since suffering a chest injury during last month’s Champions Cup tie against Exeter at Kingsholm. Gloucester have faltered in Cipriani’s absence, a narrow victory at Newcastle followed by defeats to Sale and Leicester. A loss to Munster would mean they would be unable to qualify for the quarter-finals. “The losses were disappointing but my message to the players was that history can’t be changed and we can only control what is in front of us,” said the Gloucester coach, Johan Ackermann. “It is good to have Danny back and the fact he is talking about extending his contract shows he wants to do well for us regardless of his outcome with England.” The wing Ollie Thorley also returns for Gloucester but in a week when the Rugby Football Union’s head medical officer called for significant law changes to make the game safer following a record number of serious injuries, Ackermann is without 15 players. Exeter, who face Castres in the other pool match on Sunday, will be hoping Gloucester at least prevent Munster from winning before their final match at Thomond Park next week. Exeter this week learned that their Argentina wing Santiago Cordero will join Bordeaux-Bègles next season after they were unable to match the Top 14 club’s offer because of the constraints of the Premiership’s salary cap. “Santiago has been fantastic and done better than we could have hoped for but there are financial realities involved in putting together a squad,” said the Exeter coach, Rob Baxter. “We cannot offer extra contracts to everybody and strengthen the squad. “I like the salary cap and the quality of competition it creates but in France they link it to your income. In this country, it does not matter if you are losing millions of pounds or making millions, the cap does not change. There are probably some things that need sorting out.” Exeter were the only club in the top-flight to make a profit last year.The Iranian ambassador to the UK has told the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe that his campaign to secure her release from a Tehran jail is reducing her chances of freedom. Speaking in response to the announcement by the Free Nazanin campaign that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had brought her three-day hunger strike to an end after prison authorities agreed she could receive medical treatment for a lump in her breast, the Iranian ambassador, Hamid Baeidinejad, claimed that she had already been given full access to the required facilities. While the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has described the campaign by Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband – Richard Ratcliffe – as inspirational, Baeidinejad claimed: “The way he has tried to campaign and make this a public issue is not helpful.” He suggested that doing so was merely agitating Ratcliffe’s wife and causing her psychological distress. The ambassador insisted that his remarks should not be construed as a threat, but said: “If her husband wants to be helpful, he should calm the situation.” In claims likely to be rejected by Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s supporters, he added: “The way he is trying to politicise the matter and publicise it is not helpful at all and puts the lady in a very stressful situation. It is only making this more complex.” Baeidinejad also accused Ratcliffe of lying when he claimed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had offered his wife freedom a month ago if she agreed to act as a spy for Iran in the UK. He insisted: “We want to help her and approach this from a humanitarian point of view.” The relatively rare briefing by the ambassador could either be taken as a sign that the Iranians are rattled by the high-profile campaign being mounted by the Zaghari-Ratcliffes, or a genuine attempt to persuade Richard Ratcliffe to lower the profile of his campaign, and so make it easier for clemency to be granted. The ambassador said that any convicted prisoner subject to a jail sentence of under 10 years could be released after serving a third of their sentence on the recommendation of the prison to the prosecutor general, so long as the individual was not deemed to be a threat to society or likely to reoffend. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in jail more than two years ago and would therefore now be eligible for release. Referring to her chances of clemency, Baeidinejad said: “I will let you judge if the person involved is in good conduct and is helping and assisting the prison authorities.” Baeidinejad’s intervention came as the Free Nazanin campaign said she had been allowed to call her husband to tell him of the end of her hunger strike, which she undertook along with a fellow prisoner. A statement said on Wednesday: “The Free Nazanin campaign can confirm with relief that Nazanin and Narges [Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian human rights activist in jail in the country] have ended their hunger strike today, and have not extended it beyond the original three days.” Zaghari-Ratcliffe lost 3kg over the three days she was on hunger strike and suffered increasing dizziness and a constant headache, the campaign group said. Richard Ratcliffe said: “The past few days have been really stressful. I never thought three days could pass so long.” Thanking Hunt for his intervention in summoning the Iranian ambassador on Monday, he added: “I am really glad this is over – I am still sorry it came to this, that Nazanin felt there was no other way. But I hope now those permissions mean that Nazanin will now get the medical attention she needs.” Baeidinejad also urged Hunt to lower the profile of the case, saying: “Our function as diplomats is to try to resolve this is in a manner so that the UK and Iranian people would feel it has been handled with vigilance and care. We are doing our best to approach this from a humanitarian way and not linked to the nuclear issue or any other deal. It should be considered on its own merits.” He said it was outrageous that the foreign secretary had suggested that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was being used as a diplomatic pawn as part of a wider Iranian attempt to force the British pay a 45-year-old debt arising from the Iranian purchase of Chieftain tanks. He said: “We condemn this kind of statement as outrageous and unacceptable. She has received a verdict of the judge that she deserves to be in prison and that is the law, and this law should be applied to any Iranian.” Richard Ratcliffe said on Wednesday: “I think that’s dangerously close to blaming the victim. The idea that a legal system defines its imprisonment based on how a family campaigns from the outside is extraordinary. “There are a number of Iranian dual-nationals being held by Iran. There is no obvious pattern between those who are quiet and those who are noisy. We will keep Nazinin in the spotlight, and I told the Revolutionary Guards that before we went public.”In 1982, when she was 60 years old, Sara Berman left her husband of 38 years and her home in Tel Aviv, taking one suitcase with her. It contained a potato grater, an old travel clock, a silver funnel, a cookie press for making sesame cookies, and clothing. Berman moved to a small studio apartment in Manhattan’s West Village. Her two daughters lived in Manhattan and so did her grandson. One day, she decided to wear only white. She arranged her ironed, starched, folded white garments in totemic piles on white shelves in her white wardrobe, along with the three watches she liked to wear all at once, and one or two other objects. Hers was an “edited” life, says Berman’s daughter, Maira Kalman, and a quest “for beauty and clarity”. After Berman died, in 2004, Maira, an author and illustrator, and her sister were sorting out her mother’s effects. “It was when we were looking at this beautiful landscape of a closet and a life that the idea for an exhibition came,” recalls Maira. “‘We should save it,’ I said to my sister. ‘One day it will be an exhibit.’ I just knew it had to be part of our culture.” Berman’s grandson, Alex Kalman, a writer, designer and curator, agreed. But it wasn’t until 2014 that he acquired his first gallery space: a 4ft x 5ft disused freight elevator shaft in a Tribeca alleyway. He called it Mmuseumm. Sara Berman’s Closet was Mmuseumm’s second exhibit. Then, in 2017, the exhibit transferred to the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was quite a step up for its unknown owner and her humble collection of shirts, underwear and brogues. Rather than an endless accumulation of matter, what Berman had was intentionally acquired and placed there Visitors to the Met were captivated, says Alex. “We overheard visitors of all nationalities saying: ‘Who is this Sara Berman?’ They expected her to be someone of great historical importance.” Exhibiting the closet was, he says, “a way of expanding the narrative of whose stories are being told, and how and why”. “Everything is usually based on wealth at the Met,” adds Alex’s mother. “But we were taking something that was from the vernacular, that was intimate and from the everyday. It spoke to people.” “She became an unexpected hero,” says Alex. The closet certainly has a devotional intensity – and provokes outsider anxiety, even envy in those whose failure to impose order over the chaos of their material lives is writ large in their floor-drobes and paper mountains. But Berman was no ascetic, says Maira, and was “very funny”. The closet, like her lifestyle, was merely a kind of “offering” by a woman who “had found what was important” and measured her new stab at life in cherished routines: eating pizza with her grandson every Wednesday in the Museum of Modern Art’s cafeteria, watching Jeopardy! every night on TV, writing a weekly letter to her sister back in Tel Aviv. The public response to the exhibition inspired Maira and Alex to create the hybrid memoir, Sara Berman’s Closet. “This is a book about Sara,” we learn from handwritten text on a cover that features a portrait of Berman, painted by Maira. Her striking white suit and overcoat are offset against a fuchsia sidewalk and matching tree behind her. “And her journey to America. and eating Lemon ices. and the meaning of Time.” The imperfect punctuation and capitalisation are in keeping with Alex’s lyrical prose and Maira’s naive paintings. Along with family photographs and documents, they chronicle Berman’s early life in Belarus, her years in Israel and new beginnings in America. Berman’s existence “was about intentionality,” says Alex. “Rather than an endless accumulation of matter, what she had was intentionally acquired and placed there.” Her actions were equally mindful. The text opposite an illustration of a lemon and a letter states: “Every action was done with care. Every day was filled with precise and Brilliant Actions.” There is a feeling of energy and wit in the memoir; a sense of a life in motion held steady by order, routine and stillness. Berman was playful and had a keen sense of the absurd that ran counter to what was, hints her daughter, a difficult marriage. Her pared-down existence “was borne of necessity and sorrow,” says Maira. “She left my father. They had a reasonably well-to-do life with lots of possessions. She left that life. She got a studio apartment with not much room. You can’t accumulate too much. “But starting fresh, what do you need? A bed, a table you write letters on to your sister and iron on – a fantastic limitation. It was the greatest freedom she had ever encountered in her own life,” she says, calling to mind Virginia Woolf’s exaltation of private space in A Room of One’s Own. Berman loved ironing, and so does her daughter, who finds meaning in an act that symbolises the paramaters of her mother’s known world when she was growing up in Belarus. “She came from a small village. Women never walked outside the house. For them, the expression of work was to take care of the home and family with utmost devotion.” The elevation of the domestic to art recalls Tracey Emin’s 1998 Turner Prize-winning artwork, My Bed. If that was an unsettling expression of chaos, Berman’s closet is a paean to the soothing power of order and also, says Maira, to “what it reveals about us as humans: that we need to persevere in this thing called life and to find a way to do so with meaning.” Her curated life and uniform of white were “not for show”, says Maira. “She was beautifully dressed all her life. But she was not vain. It was all done with a great sense of humour and certainly not in a self-conscious manner. It came from a sense of pleasure and wellbeing.” The potato grater, like its owner, travels through space and time. “The most quotidian things in the world can have the most meaning,” says Maira. “What we are saying is, the most humble, the most simple, the smallest moments in life are really the sweetest and can live on through decades and through centuries. We never want to forget that. We like to think of Sara making her potato pancakes with the grater, and to think of her as a source of wisdom.” Remembering is, of course, a way of conquering time. It is fitting, then, that next year Sara Berman’s Closet will mark the Fourth of July celebrations. It will be exhibited beside the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia – “a monument to freedom and independence.” Alex says. “It raises the question of what is monument-worthy. Sara Berman’s Closet is a monument to a life lived with great humility and tenderness.” And an awful lot of starch. Sara Berman’s Closet by Maira and Alex Kalman is published by HarperDesign at £20One of the most staggering things about the New England Patriots’ two decades of domination in the NFL is that, Tom Brady aside, their success isn’t built on a raft of superstars. That’s not say they haven’t had fine players: Randy Moss and the late Junior Seau are already in the NFL Hall of Fame and Brady, Rob Gronkowski and Adam Vinatieri will probably join them. But more than anything, the Pats’ five titles since 2001 have been about the team as a whole. And that’s down to the single most important person in the NFL: Bill Belichick. The head coach’s ability to zig while others zag has kept New England ahead of every team in the league for 18 years, and led to a mindboggling period of sustained success that should be impossible in that is designed for parity through a salary cap and draft system. Belichick’s genius lies in his refusal to wed himself to one overriding philosophy. He’s a shape-shifter, constantly evolving his team’s style – and that flexibility has been on show this season. As modern schemes have expanded the field and the focus has been on the dominance of quarterbacks and smaller, more mobile defensive players, Belichick has returned to an old-school, power running system According to a recent study, New England are the third heaviest team in the league. And that’s by design. Belichick, an economics major, is constantly looking to find market inefficiencies to exploit. He has had great success with quirky schematic innovations, but, for the most part, he takes tried and tested methods and adopts them. The brilliance is in the timing. Belichick reintroduced the 3-4 defense to the league back in the early 2000s. When it got too popular (thanks to the Patriots’ success), he switched back to a 4-3, where he could unearth some cheap gems. He was also an early adopter (around 2011) of the up-tempo spread offense that’s become ubiquitous in 2018. And he helped change the meaning of what a two tight-end team looked like, using Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez in ways we had never before seen: plodding tight ends were out, pass-catching polar bears were in. Naturally, Belichick now pretty much ignores that tactic. The Patriots have played a total of 12 downs with a running back and two tight ends on the field, far and away the lowest total in the league. What used to be the team’s base strategy is now an afterthought. Belichick saw a new way to take advantage of opposing teams and morphed. As defenses across the league have evolved to counteract spread offenses, they’re left vulnerable to run-heavy teams. So Belichick’s Patriots have poured resources into developing a sturdy offensive line to power that run game, including the huge left tackle Trent Brown, who stands at 6ft 8in and weighs a hefty 380lbs. They’ve also concentrated developing the deepest, most flexible running-back room in the league. Sony Michel was the Patriots’ first-round pick in 2018 – a cardinal sin among the more analytically minded who consider running backs less important in an era dominated by the passing game. The other New England running backs are made to feel like they matter too: James White and Rex Burkhead both make north of $3m while fullback James Devlin is the fourth-highest earner at his position in the league. All of them play a bunch of snaps, and they’re routinely deployed together in any number of pairings – the Patriots have used two backs on 36% of downs this season, trailing only the San Francisco 49ers. A feel for Trent Brown’s size as he arrives for interview. Biggest takeaway from the interview: He says he has comfort level on left side as well. Calls himself an excellent pass protector who gets after it in the run game. pic.twitter.com/hjcEf4Xnsz Belichick still uses his crown jewel of course: the same quick passing game we’re used to from Tom Brady is still humming along, and it was needed in the fourth quarter and overtime of the AFC Championship game with the team’s season on the line. But the Patriots’ late-season revitalization has been fueled by the offensive line and running game as much as anything else. Prior to their Week 11-bye, the Patriots averaged 108.5 rushing yards a game, eclipsing the 100-yard mark only five times in 10 weeks. Belichick doubled down after the mid-season break, committing to a strategy that would work during the bad weather of December and January. In the last eight games, the Patriots have churned out an average of 160.3 yards a game, rushing for over 100 yards in all but two games. Sunday’s Super Bowl is the culmination of Belichick’s grand plan. No team symbolizes where the sport is going as much as the Patriots’ opponents, Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams: young, fun, and innovative on offense; explosive and light on defense. The Rams are the lightest team in the NFL. And it shows on defense, particularly against the run. LA are the 28th-ranked defense in the league in rush defense DVOA, despite having the best two-man tandem in football playing along their defensive line. Belichick’s bet that a ball-control ground game was the Patriots’ best path to clinching their sixth championship has already paid dividends. While Brady and the Rams’ high-flying offense will dominate discourse this week, how LA’s defense stands up to the Patriots’ ground game will prove decisive on Sunday.The decision on whether or not to destroy the world came down to a humble Soviet duty officer early one morning in 1983. Stanislav Petrov was told by his computer that the United States had launched at least five intercontinental ballistic missiles at the Soviet Union, and that they would strike in just 25 minutes. Rather than send the alarm up the chain of command, the lieutenant colonel did nothing and averted a nuclear clash over what turned out to be a systems malfunction. For his troubles, Petrov was reprimanded for failing to keep careful notes during the incident and left the service the following year. He died at 77 just last year, on the cusp of the collapse of the architecture that has governed nuclear arms control for the last two generations. Potential nuclear clashes may seem the stuff of Cold War lore, but the framework to prevent them is recent and increasingly endangered. Led by National Security Advisor John Bolton, the United States in 2018 said it would leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the 1987 nuclear arms control treaty largely credited with keeping nuclear weapons out of Europe. That came after years of complaints about Russia testing a ground-based cruise missile that violated the treaty. The next pillar to fall could be the New Start treaty, signed by Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev in 2010, which reduced strategic missile launchers by half. That treaty will expire in 2021 unless it is extended, and President Trump has called it a “bad deal” in a telephone call with Vladimir Putin. Russia’s foreign minister has said he believes the United States is “preparing the soil to dismantle this deal.” Putin also threatened the United States with a new line of nuclear-capable weapons earlier this year, blaming the United States’ decision to exit the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty for a new arms race. His state of the nation speech, usually a staid affair, was accompanied by a low-resolution animation of a nuclear-powered cruise missile sailing from the Atlantic Ocean, around Cape Horn and then northward toward California. “You didn’t listen to our country then,” Putin said of the US leaving the ABM in 2001. “Listen to us now.” Taken together, these treaties are the bulk of the nuclear arms control framework that the United States and Russia inherited from the Cold War or have developed since. Experts from both sides note that the treaties weren’t perfect but warn that brokering deals is far more difficult than breaking them. The probability of an arms buildup is growing. “The INF decision and failure to get into real discussions about extending New START has us sleepwalking into a new nuclear arms race,” said Richard Burt, a former ambassador who served as chief negotiator for the United States on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, during an Atlantic Council event earlier this year. Viktor Yesin, the former chief of staff of the Russian Federation Strategic Missile Force, said that the US decision to exit the INF was largely with an eye to military developments in China and other countries not bound by the treaty. But the decision could lead to deployments of missiles in Europe, he said, unless the United States and Russia take steps to avoid it. Only “political measures” could avert “the worst outcome for Russia and Europe in the development of a ‘missile crisis,’ which will unavoidably arise after the United States exits the INF,” he said. Those warnings appear to be apt. A leaked memo published by the Washington Post showed that Bolton had ordered the Pentagon to “develop and deploy ground-launched missiles at the earliest possible date.” The order was tabled only after European allies intervened to prevent an immediate US pullout from the INF. Washington has issued Moscow a 60-day ultimatum, after which it will exit the treaty. Russia, which has not admitted to violating the treaty, has signalled it won’t change its behaviour. The driving force behind the pullout is seen as Bolton, who has spoken fervently against similar arms control treaties and presided over the demolition of both the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2001 and now the INF. Determined individuals can change the course of history. In 1983, Petrov’s decision not to alert his superiors came down to a “funny feeling in my gut.” Now, Bolton appears resolved to finally see a United States released from the bonds of missile treaties and nuclear arms control.Police and anti-terrorist forces have been fighting to regain control of a hotel and office complex in the centre of Nairobi after it was seized by gunmen. Witnesses in the Kenyan capital said between four and six armed men had rushed into the dusitD2 compound, which includes a hotel, restaurants, a spa and several office buildings housing international companies, at about 3pm on Tuesday. Sustained automatic gunfire and grenade explosions were heard shortly afterwards, as scores of people fled the scene. There were reports that at least three people had been killed and one suspect detained. Many more have been wounded with local hospitals asking for blood donations. Police officials have said that “armed criminals are still holed up in the building and that special forces are currently flushing them out”. One man came out covered in blood as students were evacuated from a nearby university building. Four ambulances and a fire engine arrived at the scene as fleeing office workers told reporters their colleagues were still huddled under their desks. The attack bore many of the hallmarks of a terrorist operation and was being described as a terrorist incident by police at the scene. Al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist organisation based in neighbouring Somalia, has already claimed responsibility on its in-house radio network and online. Al-Shabaab was responsible for an attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in 2013 which left at least 67 people dead. Tuesday’s attack came exactly three years after a deadly al-Shabaab attack on a Kenyan military base in El-Adde in Somalia, where about 140 Kenya soldiers were killed. “Al-Shabab mujahideen snipers are in operation in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Our intelligence confirms that mujahideen fighters stormed the target building”, the al-Shabaab statement said. Simon Crump, who works at one of the offices, said workers had barricaded themselves inside after several explosions. “We have no idea what is happening. Gunshots are coming from multiple directions,” he told the AFP news agency, saying people were terrified. As a helicopter flew low overhead witnesses at the scene said the gunmen and security forces were engaged in a fierce firefight. “There was a bomb, there is a lot of gunfire,” said one man working at the compound, asking not to be named. Officials initially said the incident was a robbery, but later admitted they were dealing with a suspected terrorist attack. “Security and emergency forces immediately responded to the incident and have cordoned off the area. The situation is being managed and residents are being screened and evacuated from the area,” Kenya’s Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet said. Flames and plumes of black smoke billowed into the sky from the compound’s car park where several vehicles were on fire, and scores of people fled the scene, some of them injured. Witnesses said two cars had been driven at speed into the hotel complex at around 3pm after shooting at security personnel at its gates. Gunmen then threw grenades into parked vehicles and entered the complex, initially targeting a bank and diners at a Thai restaurant. “They are using hand grenades, just like at the Westgate [Mall]. In a confined space teeming with people grenades and AK47s can do as much damage as a truck bomb,” said Rashid Abdi, an expert in Islamic militancy in east Africa with the International Crisis Group in Nairobi. Kenya faced a spate of attacks after it sent its army into Somalia in October 2011 to fight al-Shabaab, which is affiliated to al-Qaida. On 2 April 2015, al-Shabaab killed 148 people at a university in Garissa, eastern Kenya. Islamic State has a small presence in the Horn of Africa. “It was always a matter of when not if. There has been some successes against al-Shabab in northern Kenya but if we have learned anything it is that al-Shabaab lulls security services into complacency. Months and years can go between attacks and then they strike,” said Abdi. Authorities said they had been vigilant over the Christmas and New Year holiday season. “Hotels and other public buildings remain under close watch. Reports from throughout the country indicate that everything remains calm and normal,” Boinnet told reporters.There are two skilled performers making the best of their underwritten roles in Them That Follow, a rather dull slab of Appalachian dirge premiering at this year’s Sundance film festival. One is the never not welcome Olivia Colman, fresh off receiving her first Oscar nomination for The Favourite. The other is a snake. Both are ferociously committed, even terrifying at times, and both deserve far more than this frustratingly vacant attempt to provide insight into a specific community, rarely seen on screen. We’re in the world of Pentecostal snake-handlers, deep in the wilderness, and a congregation led by pastor Lemuel (Walton Goggins, on autopilot). His daughter Mara (Alice Englert) is being prepped for marriage to a local boy, whom she has little interest in, while she tries to limit her affection for the non-believing son of gas station attendant Hope (Colman). Mara has a secret that weighs heavy and threatens to destroy the lives of those around her. There’s an initial curiosity with Them That Follow, an intrigue at what we might discover and learn when spending 98 minutes in a world most of us know very little about. But not long into writer-directors Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage’s first feature, interest starts to dissipate. It’s a torturous slow-burn that expects us to invest in a lead character of profound emptiness who finds herself in a soapy scenario that plays out with little panache or ingenuity. Englert is a hologram of a character, stuck in a cycle of ponderous sub-Malickian scenes of staring at nature that don’t even possess the aesthetic appeal to make them visually interesting, requiring a great deal of patience from even the most patient of viewers. Her forbidden affair, which the film later prioritises and romanticises, is inert, constructed in about two abruptly handled scenes, one of which is conducted with such open stupidity that it leads to a predictably staged confrontation with Colman’s impassioned believer. But even when she’s given very little, Colman makes the most. She struggles with an American accent but she adds fire to whatever scene she crops up in, elevating the film around her with conviction and ferocity. While her performance in The Favourite has been deservedly lauded for its comic appeal, it’s also an underrated dramatic turn and here Colman reminds us of that particular set of skills, harking back to her game-changing turn in Tyrannosaur. And then there’s those snakes. With the film rumbling on at such a low level, a sequence involving a snake bite and the resulting fallout does prove involving although acts as the impetus for a sudden lurch into melodrama. There’s such a confounding lack of atmosphere or tension throughout that when the pulpy stuff arrives, it lands with a thud. There were walkouts here before one act of brutality but given how detached and lethargic the plot had been up until then, the decision to leave was entirely understandable. Poulton and Savage ultimately show very little interest in delving into the community they’ve chosen to depict. It would be kind to call the script’s characterisation slight, more realistic to refer to it as non-existent while third act learnings are identical to any other film about an extremist religious faction. It’s very hard to imagine Them That Follow existing outside of its lo-fi Sundance bubble. It’s competently made but utterly vacant, a forgettable indie fading fast. Them That Follow is showing at the Sundance film festivalDonald Trump is moving closer to using emergency powers to get $5.7bn to help build a wall on the US-Mexico border. The president is still smarting from arguably the biggest defeat of his presidency, a partial government shutdown over wall funding that dragged on for a record 35 days, laid off hundreds of thousands of workers or forced others to work without pay. And left him empty-handed. Trump finally signed a three-week deal to reopen the government but threatened to declare a national emergency and bypass Congress if it fails to reach a compromise, and is now making plans in the event he carries out that threat. Negotiations have so far gone nowhere as Democrats, with increased power in the House of Representatives after last November’s midterm elections, refuse to fund Trump’s long-promised wall. “I think Nancy Pelosi is hurting our country very badly by doing what’s she doing and, ultimately, I think I’ve set the table very nicely,” Trump told the New York Times on Thursday in a wide-ranging interview that touched upon the budget negotiations and the Mueller investigation. “I’ve actually always gotten along with her, but now I don’t think I will any more,” Trump also said, referring to speaker Pelosi. “If she doesn’t approve the wall, the rest of it’s just a waste of money and time and energy because it’s desperately needed,” he added, though he fell short of saying explicitly he was preparing to declare a national emergency. “I’ll continue to build the wall, and we’ll get the wall finished,” he said. Earlier in the day, Trump had claimed Pelosi would reverse her position because of the threat posed by caravans of immigrants heading to the US from Central America. “If you go to Tijuana [in Mexico] and take down that wall, you will have so many people coming into our country that Nancy Pelosi will be begging for a wall,” he told reporters at the White House. “She’ll be begging for a wall. She will say: ‘Mr President, please, please give us a wall.’”He insisted that wall construction is already under way and ongoing. “I’m not waiting for this committee. I’ve told a lot of people I don’t expect much out of this committee … If they don’t have a wall, I don’t want to even waste my time reading what they have.”The president acknowledged: “I was elected partially on this issue, not as much as people say, but partially on this issue … If we don’t put up a physical barrier, you can forget it. Our country’s going to be an unsafe place.” Trump’s comments come after a day of intense speculation about the president’s plans. “Trump met with his budget chief, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Jared Kushner and other top officials, including White House lawyers, on Tuesday to walk through the logistics of such a move,” Politico  reported. “And White House aides have been quietly meeting with outside conservative political groups to build support for the president to take such an action. Those talking points, which emphasize Trump’s legal authority, have begun to show up in such conservative media outlets as Breitbart News.” A national emergency would enable Trump to take existing funds appropriated by Congress for other purposes, for example military budget from the Pentagon and disaster relief money. There is bipartisan opposition to such a radical measure, typically reserved for wartime, terrorist attacks such as 9/11, or health emergencies. Such a move would almost certainly trigger a legal challenge. Even Trump’s own Republican party has warned that it would set a dangerous precedent, emboldening any future Democratic president to use emergency powers for their own priorities – such as climate change or healthcare. But Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator who has become a close confidant of Trump, tweeted on Monday: “If White House and Congress fail to reach a deal then President @realDonaldTrump must act through emergency powers to build wall/barrier.” And on Wednesday night, appearing on conservative-leaning cable network Fox News, Graham told host Sean Hannity: “To everybody who’s wondering how this movie ends, it ends this way: we’re going to build a wall one way or the other. I just talked to the president 10 minutes before I came on your show.” Graham added: “He has all the power in the world to do this. To my Republican colleagues: stand behind him and, if you don’t, you’re going to pay a price.” A border wall has been a centrepiece of Trump’s candidacy and presidency but so far he has been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives and a veteran political operator. On the first day of talks, congressional Democrats offered a border security plan that includes new money for customs agents, scanners, aircraft and boats to police the border, and to provide humanitarian assistance for immigrants. But it did not include money for a wall. Pelosi told reporters on Thursday: “There’s not going to be any wall money in the legislation. It is not a negotiation for the president to say … ‘It doesn’t matter what Congress says.’ The president wants to have Congress be completely irrelevant in how we meet the needs of the American people? No, c’mon. Let them work their will. I’m an appropriator.” The negotiating committee will probably have to wrap up its work around 10 February to meet the 15 February deadline set last week. There are slender hopes that a compromise can be achieved, partly over language. Trump has now said he wants “steel slats” along the border rather than the “concrete wall” he promised during his campaign.But Trump made clear his own lack of faith in congressional talks, tweeting: “Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee are wasting their time. Democrats, despite all of the evidence, proof and Caravans coming, are not going to give money to build the DESPERATELY needed WALL. I’ve got you covered. Wall is already being built, I don’t expect much help!”Hakeem al-Araibi, the refugee footballer from Bahrain who was detained in Thailand while on his honeymoon, has said he is “losing hope” and believes he will be tortured again or even killed if he is deported to Bahrain. Speaking to the Guardian from Bangkok Remand Prison, a visibly distressed Al-Araibi said he was “terrified ” and that his fear was “getting worse every day”. Al-Araibi was given asylum in Australia in 2017 after fleeing his home country where he was persecuted for his beliefs, tortured in prison and convicted on a trumped-up vandalism charge. “I didn’t do anything in Bahrain, I didn’t do anything in Thailand, I didn’t do anything in Australia,” said Al-Araibi. “How can they keep me locked up like this? Please help me, please. In Bahrain there are no human rights and no safety for people like me.” In late November, Al-Araibi, 25, who has lived in Australia for five years, found himself at the centre of a nightmare ordeal when he and his wife arrived in Thailand for their week-long honeymoon. Prior to leaving Australia, he had called up the immigration authorities to check he was safe to travel and had been given multiple assurances he was protected and could go “anywhere but Bahrain”. His sister back in Bahrain warned him it was a risk to travel but he had assured her: “I am under Australia’s protection now, they will not let anything happen to me.” But touching down in Bangkok, he was immediately detained by the Thai authorities. The arrest was based on an Interpol red notice which had erroneously been issued at the request of Bahrain, contradicting Interpol’s own regulations that notices will not be issued “if the status of refugee or asylum-seeking has been confirmed”. Despite Interpol lifting the notice on 4 December and subsequent pressure from the Australian government, Thailand – notorious for its draconian immigration policies where refugees are regularly sent back to countries where they may be in danger – made the decision to extend Al-Araibi’s detention for 60 days, pending a court verdict on whether to extradite him to Bahrain. Bahrain has until 8 February to submit the required documentation and then it is expected a court date will be set. While the Interpol red notice from Bahrain was issued on the basis of a conviction for Al-Araibi in 2014 for vandalising a police station, charges he vehemently denies and stresses were politically motivated, the footballer is adamant that Bahrain’s determination to bring him back are in fact connected to public comments he made in Australia about his torture when he was in prison in Bahrain for three months in 2012. Speaking to international media in 2016, Al-Araibi accused one of Bahrain’s most powerful figures, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa – a member of Bahrain’s ruling royal family and president of Asia’s governing body for football, who at the time was in the running for Fifa president – of discriminating against Shia Muslims (Al-Araibi is Shia while the ruling royal family is Sunni, divides that are starkly felt in Bahrain) and using his power to punish pro-democracy athletes who had protested against the royal family during the Arab spring in 2011. “This is nothing to do with my conviction; Bahrain wants me back to punish me because I talked to the media in 2016 about the terrible human rights and about how Sheikh Salman is a very bad man who discriminates against Shia Muslims,” said Al-Araibi. “I am so scared of being sent back to Bahrain, so scared because 100% they will arrest me, they will torture me again, possibly they will kill me.” He confirmed Bahrain had made no attempt to contact him since his arrest. For two days they blindfolded me and beat me in the face and legs, telling me I would never play football again Al-Araibi’s fear of torture if he is deported back to Bahrain comes from a place of harrowing experience. In 2012, while still a prominent player for the Bahrain national football team, he was suddenly arrested on the street and taken to jail on the accusation he and his brother had vandalised a police station. The charges, he says, were “entirely false” – he had in fact been playing football on TV for the national team when the alleged attack happened. But he believes he was targeted due to the support his brother had given pro-democracy Arab spring protests the year before, and the fact he is a Shia Muslim. “It was hell for me,” he said, describing prison. “For the first two days they blindfolded me and beat me in the face and legs, telling me I would never play football again. Five hours’ straight many police beat me. They poured cold water over my face and back. They were not even trying to get a confession out of me and whenever I asked them: ‘What did I do?’ they would just scream ‘shut up’ and beat me more.” After three months in jail, Al-Araibi was released on bail and was certain the case against him was so flimsy it would be dismissed. But in 2014, while playing an away game in Qatar with the Bahrain national team, he got a phone call. He, his brother and an accomplice had been found guilty of the vandalism and sentenced to 10 years in prison. His brother is currently serving the jail term in Bahrain. “I knew I could not go back to Bahrain,” Al-Araibi said. In a journey which took almost six months, he fled first to Iran, then Malaysia, then Thailand and eventually to Australia where he sought, and was later given, asylum. Since 2014, he has built a life in Melbourne, marrying his wife who he has known since he was 17, and playing semi-professional football. There is hope that the recent case of Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, an 18-year-old Saudi woman who barricaded herself in a Bangkok hotel room to prevent being deported back to Saudi Arabia, might work in Al-Arabi’s favour. Following a global outpouring of support, Thailand allowed her to seek asylum in Canada rather than obliging Saudi Arabia’s deportation requests. Thai authorities subsequently pledged to “follow international norms” in the treatment of asylum seekers. Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, told ABC radio on Wednesday her government was “very deeply concerned” by Al-Araibi’s ongoing detention. She noted she had met with the deputy prime minister, minister for justice and the minister for foreign affairs earlier this month in Thailand, and “we have most definitely ensured the Thai government is well aware at all levels of the great importance of this matter to Australia”. Australian football teams have joined Al-Araibi’s Pascoe Vale FC club in calling for his release, staging protests, wearing armbands and stopping for a minute’s applause at A-League games around the country. However, Football Federation Australia – whose chair is seeking a place on the executive of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) – has been criticised for its muted efforts. The AFC’s  president,  Sheikh Salman, has said even less. Fifa has released increasingly strong statements but has mostly directed its efforts towards the Australian and Thai governments. Football analysts and human rights groups have urged it to utilise the enormous influence it has with governments such as Bahrain, not least because Sheikh Salman is also its vice president. In its first significant response to the outcry, the Bahraini government told the Guardian last week Al-Araibi’s life was not in danger, and he had only to return home and appeal his conviction because its court system was “independent and transparent” in line with international standards. For Al-Araibi, languishing in jail, his thoughts are now only of his wife. “I am feeling very very bad, I miss my wife so much, I can’t sleep thinking about how much I miss her,” he said. “To keep my sanity I just run around the prison building and every step I think about her. All I want to be is back with her, not trapped in here. “We came to Thailand just to have a week of happiness here together but I regret it so much now, I wish we had never left Australia.”It’s been a while since Jeremy Clarkson caused an upset. The days of him punching a producer, prompting his ejection from the BBC, or straining diplomatic relations in Argentina seem so long ago, it’s enough to make one nostalgic. But order has been restored with a fresh storm about homophobic remarks aired during the new series of The Grand Tour, highlighted on Twitter by the singer Will Young. “Enough is enough,” said Young. “I’m pissed and fed up. I want Amazon Prime and the producers of Grand Tour to meet young LGBT [people] who want to kill themselves because of shaming and laughter and normalising of shaming homophobic narratives.” Young’s complaint lies with an episode in which Clarkson and his underlings, Richard Hammond and James May, travel across Colombia under the pretext of photographing wildlife. Clarkson is given a Jeep Wrangler to drive, which May notes is “a very popular car with the gay community”. The trio then stand around pondering the meaning of LGBT – “what is it – lesbian, bacon, transgender?” asks Clarkson. Later on Hammond declares that the vehicle would be best paired with “some nice chaps, suede, but ventilated at the back”. Meanwhile, The Weather Girls’ It’s Raining Men plays on the stereo. Should we be surprised? Schoolboy sniggering and colonial-style bantz has long been the trio’s stock-in-trade. The Grand Tour, meanwhile, has spent the past two-and-a-bit years bulldozing its way across continents, proudly racking up air miles and hoisting its hosts aloft like minor royalty in a sedan chair. In the offending episode, we also get to see Hammond trying to manoeuvre a monster truck through the back streets of Cartagena, in the process holding up an ambulance trying to attend an emergency. The moment passes with little more than a shrug. It’s possibly written into the contract that Clarkson and co must also cast lazy aspersions on “the locals”, much as they did on the BBC’s Top Gear. Back then Romania was “Borat country” and full of Gypsies; now, in an absurdly contrived set-piece, rural Colombians are donkey-shaggers. Such japes. The phrase “toxic masculinity” is overused, deployed to describe all manner of male infractions, but here it is apt, highlighting the raging entitlement and inherent smugness of three white men telling it like it is and waging their mid-life war against untrammelled political correctness, the liberal disease that saw them hounded off the BBC. The problem is that what they see as runaway wokeness, a lot of reasonable and courteous people view simply as “not being an arsehole”. It’s possible that Amazon is feeling a similar queasiness around the show. It’s one thing to try to reinvent a format once loved by millions; it’s another to blow an alleged £160m per series when that love is already on the wane. In any case, shortly before Christmas the platform revealed The Grand Tour would no longer exist as a series and will live on instead as a succession of “specials” – the final chapter, one hopes, for this bloated, catastrophically unfunny product. Young was right to call out Amazon as well as the presenters. The complacency with which Amazon Prime and its production team has treated the whole enterprise has finally come back to bite the platform. You can imagine the mood when plotting the first series – “Here you go, lads, have a pile of cash! Go mad! Let’s stick it to the BBC!” What we are seeing now is Clarkson, Hammond and May fully liberated and exercising their inalienable right to offend. Yet rarely has the show looked so flaccid, so bored with its own existence. All of which suggests that the BBC was right to pull the plug on Clarkson when it did, even if it meant dooming its biggest cash cow, Top Gear (which still staggers on, unloved). Commentators have a habit of signalling the departure of a big hitter as a national tragedy and another nail in the BBC’s coffin – see the wailing over Jonathan Ross’s exit post-Sachsgate and, more recently, Chris Evans’s move to Virgin. Yet, with each celebrity departure, fresh blood is hired, new shows are dreamed up, older ones are rejigged or retired. Life goes on. The Grand Tour was clearly a tantalising experiment for Amazon but it has failed to breathe life into an ailing format. The end is surely nigh. • Fiona Sturges is an arts writer specialising in books, music, podcasting and TVThere is a story Andy Murray tells from Wimbledon in 2006. He was 19, a gangly kid on his first full season on tour and had just taken over from Tim Henman as Britain’s top-ranked tennis player. He was walking through the crowd, coming back from the practice courts, when he passed a woman talking on her mobile phone. “Oh,” she said when she saw him go by, “that Scottish wanker’s just walked past.” Murray swears like a sailor himself but the insult stung so much he can still feel it. “I was like ‘what?’” he said in an interview a decade later. “This is my home tournament. Why is this happening?” Now that everybody is talking about how much they love Murray, it is easy to forget how little a lot of them used to like him. It was in 2006 that he joked that he would support “anyone who England are playing” at the World Cup, a line that was spun into a story about how he had bought himself a Paraguay shirt and was planning to wear it around Wimbledon for England’s next game. It was not Murray’s fault the media were making mischief but that did not matter. “I was getting things sent to my locker saying things like: ‘I hope you lose every tennis match for the rest of your life.’” The spotlight was pretty unforgiving and it must have seemed as if everyone watching – the public and the press – was picking at him, or on him. They called him boring. They said he was a whinger and a hypochondriac (which seems particularly absurd now when you think of the beating he has put his body through), that he spent too much time griping about his aches and pains, that he always had someone, or something, else to blame. The last Briton to win a Wimbledon singles title, Virginia Wade, called him a “drama queen” after he had three lots of physio during a match at the French Open. More than that, Murray just seemed too rough, rude and surly for the Wimbledon set, with their garden party airs and graces and starchy expectations about how a tennis player is supposed to behave. Middle England was a tough crowd for an ornery young Scot and his manner upset the snobs. He was always swearing on court, at himself and everyone else. “You twat,” he told his coach, Brad Gilbert, in a match in 2008. Even when he won his first grand slam title, the US Open in 2012, he cursed a blue streak while he was doing it. “Take your time, you dick”, “Fuck, man, fuck”, “My fucking legs feel like jelly”. Murray apologised for the language but he never apologised for being himself. “You need to try and be yourself as much as possible,” he said later that year, “but at the same time, if people don’t like you, it’s not really your problem. You need to make sure that you stay true to yourself.” That attitude has served him well. It seems almost cruel now that we would have such high expectations of a kid who was doing so much of his growing up in public, who was, as his first biographer Sue Mott wrote, still trying to figure out how to master the “incontinent, competitive rage” that had driven him to get that good in the first place. “Murray isn’t rude,” Mott wrote early on in his career. “He is preoccupied. He wants to win, with an unsettling fervour he has yet to control.” In the summer of 2012 we saw the truth of that when Murray started crying after he lost the Wimbledon final to Roger Federer in four sets. Speaking through the tears, he still made a point of choking out his sincere thanks for the crowd’s support. They gave him an ovation that went on so long he had started crying again by the time it was over. He won a lot of people over then and almost everyone else followed the next year, when he finally won the Championship too. It was not that Murray changed in those moments after he lost to Federer in 2012, more that everyone else did. We stopped wanting him to be something he is not, stopped expecting him to be anything other than what he is and has always made himself out to be. Murray is openly his own man. There is no phoniness to him and that lack of polish has become the most lovable thing about him – as later that year, when he admitted he had sold the red Ferrari he bought himself after his first run of success because it made him “feel like a bit a of a prat” when he was driving in it. Instead he went back to using his old VW Polo. The honesty that used to get him into trouble came to seem instead like a mark of his integrity. It meant he never shied away from issues others run from. He spoke out about match-fixing, doping and the hypocrisy of taking sponsorship from betting companies. He is a forthright feminist, so convinced in it that it is almost as if he is surprised to find there are people out there who could still believe in anything else. Which makes the knuckleheads who disagree with him about, say, equal pay, or the ability of a woman to work as a man’s coach, look stupid. It is rare enough for a sportsman to be so successful, much rarer still for one to be so unaffected by his success.An economy that’s rigged to benefit the richest 1% has left most of America behind. While wages for workers have remained flat for decades, expenses for health care, housing, and most basic needs have risen. Alongside record concentrations of income and wealth at the top, America’s racial wealth divide has persisted – or worsened. As people of color make up a larger share of the diversifying US population, that persistent racial wealth divide is bringing down America’s median wealth. But while wealth at the middle falters, it’s skyrocketing at the top. In other words, the 1% are profiting off ongoing racial economic inequality.All this is happening against a backdrop of seemingly good economic news. Black and Latino unemployment rates reached historic lows in 2018, and median income has slowly inched up for all households in the last few years. But measures of wealth – what you own minus what you owe – tell a very different story. Those were our findings in Dreams Deferred, a new study on the racial wealth divide for the Institute for Policy Studies. Since the early 1980s, median wealth among Black and Latino families has been stuck at less than $10,000 Since the early 1980s, median wealth among Black and Latino families has been stuck at less than $10,000. The median Black family today owns $3,600 – just 2% of the $147,000 of wealth the median white family owns. The median Latino family has assets worth $6,600 – just 4% of the median white family. In other words, the median white family has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latino family. “Median wealth” refers to the household at the exact middle of wealth distribution – with half of households above and half below. That’s different from “average wealth”, which skews the numbers by including the wealth of the richest 1%. (Average white wealth, for example, was $930,000 in 2016. But the ordinary white person isn’t close to being a millionaire.) Changes in median wealth give us a multi-decade understanding of economic security and well-being. Since 1983, median wealth for all US households declined by 3%, adjusting for inflation. Over this same period, the median Black family saw their wealth drop by more than half. Meanwhile, the number of households with $10m or more skyrocketed by 856%. If the trajectory of the past three decades continues, by 2050 the median white family will have $174,000 of wealth, while Latino median wealth will be just $8,600 – and Black median wealth will head downward to $600. In fact, the median Black family is on track to reach zero wealth by 2082. While the middle stagnates and the very top skyrockets away, there’s also surging growth at the bottom end of the spectrum.A growing number of households are “underwater” when it comes to wealth. The proportion of all US households – of any race – with zero or “negative” wealth (meaning their debts exceed the value of their assets) has grown from one in six in 1983 to one in five households today. 37% of Black families and 33% of Latino families have zero or negative wealth, compared to just 15.5% of white families Families of color are much likelier to be in this precarious financial situation. 37% of Black families and 33% of Latino families have zero or negative wealth, compared to just 15.5% of white families. These racial wealth divisions are damaging to the economy as a whole. Low levels of Black and Latino wealth, combined with their growing proportion of the population, are a significant contributor to the overall decline in American median household wealth. Meanwhile, efforts to close the racial economic divide have been thwarted by the larger economic inequalities surging through the economy. Billionaire-bankrolled outfits like the Koch network, for example, have invested heavily in politicians that have made the tax code more unequal than ever. Public policies aimed at reducing both overall inequality and the racial wealth divide in particular will be critical to creating a more equitable economic system. Such policies could include the expansion of first-time homeownership programs and the creation of a “baby bond” program, to seed an asset account for each newborn. But we also must address the overall challenges of inequality with policies to raise the minimum wage and expand health care, while taxing the 1% to fund education and infrastructure that create an economy that works for everyone, not just the super-rich. Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins are co-authors of the report, with Josh Hoxie and Sabrina Terry, Dream Deferred: How Enriching the 1 Percent Widens the Racial Wealth Divide, published by the Institute for Policy StudiesFrozen Arctic winds brought record-low temperatures across much of the US midwest on Wednesday, as a blast of Arctic air known as the polar vortex unnerved residents accustomed to brutal winters. As of Wednesday evening, at least eight deaths were linked to the system, including an elderly Illinois man who was found several hours after he fell trying to get into his home and a University of Iowa student found behind an academic hall several hours before dawn. A man was struck by a snowplow in the Chicago area, a young couple’s SUV struck another on a snowy road in northern Indiana and a Milwaukee man froze to death in a garage, authorities said. Classes were canceled Wednesday and Thursday in many cities, including Chicago, home of the country’s third-largest school system, and police warned of the risk of accidents on icy highways. In a rare move, the US Postal Service appeared to temporarily set aside its credo that “neither snow nor rain ... nor gloom of night” would stop its work: it halted deliveries from parts of the Dakotas through Ohio. Temperatures in Chicago dropped to a low of around -23F (-30C) on Wednesday, slightly above the city’s lowest-ever reading, from January 1985. With the wind chill factor, temperatures in Los Angeles felt about 100F warmer than Chicago on Wednesday morning. Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the service, said the some of the coldest wind chills were recorded in International Falls, Minnesota, at -55F (-48C). Even the south pole was warmer, with an expected low of -24F (-31C) with wind chill. Temperatures in Chicago were expected to tumble again into the -20s fahrenheit (-30s celsius) early Thursday. Some isolated areas could see as low as -40F (-40C), according to the National Weather Service. Daytime highs could climb into the single digits before warming up to the comparatively balmy 20s (-7 to -2 celsius) by Friday. In many cities, concern is especially acute for homeless people who may have nowhere to stay. Advocates said there are rarely enough shelter beds for all homeless people. “I’m cold and I’m afraid,” Tony Neeley, a homeless Chicago resident, told the New York Times Tuesday evening. The mayor of Lansing, Michigan reported shelters in his city were becoming “overloaded,” and a senior advisor to the mayor of Detroit worried anyone who refused help would “freeze or lose a limb”, according to the Detroit News. Many cities opened warming shelters in government buildings, churches, high schools and charities. At the same time, powerful wind gusts have brought down tree limbs and knocked out power as temperatures began to fall. In Indiana, trees downed power lines as temperatures hit -10F. Some people shared pictures of their pet’s multi-layered winter outfits, and reminded people to bring pets inside. At least 2,700 flights were canceled nationwide on Wednesday, largely in Chicago’s two main airports. Another 1,800 flights scheduled for Thursday were also called off. Amtrak said it had canceled all trains in and out of the city, where Hurley forecast -15F on Wednesday and a record-low -27F on Thursday. In New York, interstates are closed to trucks for fear of invisible “black ice”. Government offices are closed in New Jersey as the western part of the state. The bitter cold is being carried by the polar vortex, an area of low pressure which spins counterclockwise in the stratospheres over the north and south poles. The current of this low pressure area has been disrupted and is now pushing south. Advised to stay home, some Americans are taking the cold in their stride. One Wisconsin woman filled balloons with water and food coloring on her porch railing, to make icy colored orbs. Some set soda cans outside and filmed as the cold caused them to explode. In Buffalo, New York, intense cold and snow storms combined Tuesday evening to produce whiteout conditions. Dashcam footage from one trucker taken outside Grand Rapids, Michigan gave a snapshot of hair-raising driving conditions. “I about just got caught in a giant wreck; cars are into other pickups, there’s people hurt. I gotta let you go,” Jason Coffelt is heard saying in an Instagram posting dated Tuesday, as his truck is forced off the highway and pulls up just before a multi-vehicle accident.Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire. According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. In that time, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place, including a reduction of our CO2 emissions by at least 50%. And please note that those numbers do not include the aspect of equity, which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris agreement work on a global scale. Nor does it include tipping points or feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas released from the thawing Arctic permafrost. At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so, and the media has failed to create broad public awareness. But Homo sapiens have not yet failed. Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands. But unless we recognise the overall failures of our current systems, we most probably don’t stand a chance. We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly. Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases. Either we do that or we don’t. You say nothing in life is black or white. But that is a lie. A very dangerous lie. Either we prevent 1.5C of warming or we don’t. Either we avoid setting off that irreversible chain reaction beyond human control or we don’t. Either we choose to go on as a civilisation or we don’t. That is as black or white as it gets. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival. We all have a choice. We can create transformational action that will safeguard the living conditions for future generations. Or we can continue with our business as usual and fail. That is up to you and me. Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight? Here in Davos – just like everywhere else – everyone is talking about money. It seems money and growth are our only main concerns. And since the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, people are simply not aware of the full consequences on our everyday life. People are not aware that there is such a thing as a carbon budget, and just how incredibly small that remaining carbon budget is. That needs to change today. No other current challenge can match the importance of establishing a wide, public awareness and understanding of our rapidly disappearing carbon budget, that should and must become our new global currency and the very heart of our future and present economics. We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilisation – and the entire biosphere – must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be. We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility. Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is. This is an edited version of a speech given by Greta Thunberg at Davos this week.Shortly after last year’s US Open final Naomi Osaka found herself on American television, part of the traditional post-tournament round of commitments for the new champion. At 20, Osaka was the first Japanese player, woman or man, to win a grand slam title, her victory over Serena Williams an illustration of her talent and her ability to stay calm under pressure, remaining cool while her opponent suffered a meltdown. Osaka was guest of honour on The Ellen Show, hosted by Ellen Degeneres, where she was asked a series of questions about herself, all of which she answered well, even if the experience was not altogether enjoyable. Sitting in a small room in the media centre at the Australian Open, the 21-year-old winces at the memory. “Yikes,” she says. “It was very stressful and nerve-racking because I didn’t see [Ellen] until I walked on, and then from there it felt very odd because I’ve always watched her, she’s either on the TV or the computer.” In the end Osaka enjoyed herself, even when Ellen teased her, asking her if she had a crush on the actor, Michael B Jordan, before texting him as Osaka sat a little uncomfortably. Since then, and even before then, Osaka has earned a reputation for her personality, especially her humour, intentional or otherwise. In TV interviews or press conferences, where some players choose to hide behind cliches, talking about round by round or their next match, Osaka is honest and at times, laugh-out-loud funny. On Saturday, having come from a set and a break down in Melbourne to beat Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan to reach the last 16, she was asked to explain why, when she had fallen down at one stage during the match, she answered the umpire’s inquiry as to whether she was OK, with a simple: “No”. “That’s just funny to me,” she says. “He was like: ‘Naomi, are you OK?’ I mean, I was, but I wanted to see his reaction if I said no.” After one press conference early in her career, she told reporters that everyone born in Osaka, as she was, was called Osaka. It was only when she broke into a smile that they realised she was joking. Already a hero in Japan – if not yet as famous as Kei Nishikori – she has signed four sponsorship deals since that US Open win, the most recent with All Nippon Airlines on the eve of the Australian Open. Being herself is paying well but Osaka is not sure just how sensible it is. “For me I feel like it would be better if I wasn’t myself, in a way,” she says. “Because I really admire the other players, who can go in there very serious and talk about things and don’t stray off their story. I feel like I do that a lot. I just feel like it would be better if I was more … serious. “If when someone asks me a question, if I could just focus on not joking, I think that would be great, because for some reason I can’t. With some of the journalists I’ve known them for years now and I kind of consider them like my friends, so I always tend to joke around and some people don’t get it.” With almost $8m in prize money, Osaka is not your average 21-year-old, as she readily admits. “I don’t know if I’m ‘normal’,” she says. She is not. She is a superstar, a woman who could yet go on to win numerous grand slam titles, perhaps even this week in Melbourne, where she could yet face Serena Williams again, should both get to the semi-finals. The difference between now and even last year is that, having been the hunter for the first couple of years of her career, she is now the hunted. Hsieh almost got the better of her on Saturday, her slice-and-dice style causing Osaka more than a few headaches. The racket went flying a couple of times but she got through it, into the last 16, where she will play Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia. In New York Osaka cried at the trophy ceremony as sections of the crowd booed, thinking Williams, who was warned and penalised a point and then a game for code violations, had been hard done by. As a young girl growing up in Florida, Williams was her idol. Should they meet again, it is bound to be emotional but she seems resilient, able to channel pressure into a positive. For some players, winning a grand slam event can release the pressure but for others it can add to the expectation and a worry that people think they should win every time they step on to the court. Osaka, though, seems to relish the big occasions. “I enjoy grand slams the most,” she said. “I don’t really feel that much different. A lot of people ask me how I feel after the US Open. But for me, it feels like a fresh start. I’m just really excited every time I play a match. “I don’t feel pressure,” she says. “I feel nerves, if that makes sense. I felt really nervous in the first round but after that I felt really good. I have been playing really well, so for me, grand slams are more of an exciting time.” Whatever happens over the next week, she is likely to see the funny side.Negar Mohseni clutched a red carnation and waited patiently under cold, drizzly skies as the queue slowly snaked its way towards the grave of Rosa Luxemburg. “I simply want to pay my respects,” said the 54-year-old Iranian. “Besides, she gives me the strength and motivation to continue to believe in the fight for social justice.” A thick carpet of red blooms smothered the grave of the early 20th-century revolutionary leader and that of her fellow leftist agitator Karl Liebknecht at the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery in eastern Berlin. Both were murdered at the age of 47 on 15 January 100 years ago. Someone had left a note in a shaky hand that read “Peace, bread, roses, freedom”. People wiped away tears as they laid their flowers. The anniversary of the state-sanctioned murders of the founders of the Communist party of Germany (KPD) brought an estimated 20,000 people on to the streets of Berlin at the weekend for a march that marked the high point of a series of commemorative events, including theatre performances, readings and new biographies. Although Liebknecht is held in high regard, it is Luxemburg who has been stealing the limelight. Not least, according to Mark Jones – assistant professor at University College Dublin and a leading expert on the German revolution of 1918-19 that culminated in the murders – because “she was a high achiever who rose in the very male-dominated world of Social Democratic politics”. She was considered a great orator and a prolific writer, cherished today by her leftwing supporters due to her opposition to the first world war and her fight for the rights of the working class, as well as the fact that her early death meant her reputation was not blemished by later disillusionments with the communist dream. Her name retains its popularity as a choice for her supporters’ female offspring. Luxemburg’s slogans, along with portraits of her and Liebknecht, were held high on the red banners clutched by people as they made their way along the former Stalin Allee in eastern Berlin on Sunday, with hearty renditions of the Internationale and other revolutionary songs blaring out of portable speakers. “Of course, the brutal and sudden end to her story raises the question of what would have happened if she had survived,” said Jones. “At its most advanced and powerful, the Rosa Luxemburg myth claims that had she lived, National Socialism may have never taken control of Germany.” That was a view held by many at the demonstration. “I do believe the Nazis might not have come to power and history might well have taken a different turn had Rosa been able to fulfil her wishes,” said Kit Aastrup, a retired social worker who had taken a bus from Aarhus in Denmark to join the march. She wore a Russian ushanka ear-flap hat, embossed with a hammer and sickle. A group calling themselves the “Yellow Vests”, a nod to France’s gilet jaunes movement, held a banner across the width of the street that read: “Remembering Karl and Rosa in 2019 means showing solidarity with the ‘yellow vests’.” On the sidelines, a team from the British communist newspaper Morning Star was doing a roaring trade. “Red Rosa, the communist eagle,” ran the headline on its inside feature story on Luxemburg, referring to the affectionate title Lenin gave to the German communist. The article concludes: “Even after 100 years [her] memory still soars like an eagle to inspire revolutionary socialists all over the world.” Uwe Hiksch, a member of the opposition Die Linke, or Left party, which sees itself as the natural inheritor of Luxemburg’s legacy, guides tourists around the Berlin landmarks connected to the murders. A recent tour took in the site of Eden, the hotel where Luxemburg and Liebknecht were brought by demobilised former soldiers, known as Freikorps to be beaten and shot. It continues to the location where Luxemburg’s body was thrown into the canal, and, a few hundred metres away, the Neuen See lake where Liebknecht was shot and killed. When the Freikorps came to arrest her, Luxemburg was reading Goethe’s Faust. “She thought she was going to be taken to prison, she had no idea she was going to be murdered, so she brought a suitcase of books with her,” Hiksch said. Far from uniting Germany’s left, the murders created a deep divide, still felt keenly today in the animosities that exist between the Social Democratic party (SPD), the junior coalition partner to Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats, and Die Linke, successors to the communist party that ruled East Germany. Recently, Andrea Nahles became the first leader of the SPD to come close to admitting her party’s role in the revolutionaries’ deaths, amid evidence that Gustav Noske, the minister of defence in the SPD-led fledgling Weimar government at the time, effectively signed off on the murders in an effort to crush the far left. “It is probable that Gustav Noske had a hand in the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht,” she told the party faithful in November at an event to discuss the 1919 revolt. Noske was later involved in the farcical trials that followed the murders and that led to the acquittal of all but two of the suspects, who received paltry sentences. “The SPD has a very difficult relationship with the 1918-19 revolution,” said Jones. “While various party historians openly admit the SPD’s role in the events, others still want to defend it.” Even now, he said, Die Linke supporters argued that just as the SPD betrayed the working class then, so it continued to do with its labour reforms, seen as punishing the working class. The London writer David Fernbach was among those who came to Berlin to pay tribute to Luxemburg and Liebknecht. His grandfather, Wolfgang, was a member of the Spartacus League, the Marxist revolutionary movement founded by Luxemburg and Liebknecht in reaction to the SPD’s support for the first world war. Wolfgang was murdered by government troops on 11 January 1919, when he was 30. “Luxemburg made a huge contribution to the positive sides of German socialism at a time when it was free from the dogmatisms that were to follow, which is why I think she remains something of an untainted socialist icon today,” Fernbach said.Driving across a bone-dry riverbed at Walgett, it’s easy to believe the worst predictions of climate disaster are happening as the temperature gauge on the car dashboard hits 49C. Two rivers meet outside Walgett in north-west New South Wales: the Barwon and the Namoi. They are major tributaries in the Murray Darling system. But they’re both empty, and this has never happened before. Gamilaraay and Yuwalaraay elders who have lived on these rivers all their lives cry when they say they have never seen it as bad as this, and they doubt it can ever be recovered. The empty Barwon River “This to me is the ultimate destruction of our culture,” Gamilaraay elder Virginia Robinson says, sitting with the Dhariwaa elders group in Walgett. “All people think about now is there’s no water. Aboriginal people were very close to nature and that’s all unbalanced now. There’s no nature to go back to. “We’ve got no water, no special places to go, no animals to hunt. Our totem animals are dead, their bones are everywhere.” It’s a triple whammy: drought, land-clearing and climate change The decomposing body of a kangaroo on the side of the Castlereagh Hwy As all of Australia endured a heatwave last week, locals in the western NSW towns of Walgett and Lightning Ridge just shrugged. Almost every day in summer is 40C or above here; the heat is business as usual. And there’s been a prolonged drought. The Walgett shire, some 22,336 sq km, is drought-declared. Usually, the rivers provide the only relief: swimming, fishing for yellow belly (golden perch) or Murray cod, catching and cooking yabbies and mussels in a billycan on the riverbank, and seeking the solace of a big sleepy red gum. But this time there are no rivers. The Narran, the Namoi and the Barwon are all dry, or reduced to a series of green, stagnant weir pools. The mighty red gums, roots exposed, are hanging on for dear life. The heritage-protected Narran Lakes and wetlands are empty too, and with them have gone the breeding grounds of native birds and fish. The landscape next to the Castlereagh Highway Gamilaraay people and farmers rarely agree, but they are all worried their town of Walgett has six months to live if they don’t get any more water. A few weeks ago, the Keepit Dam upstream released a series of “environmental” flows that started to trickle down into their part of the Namoi five days ago. A couple of farmers have come down to the boat ramp outside Walgett this morning to see if the river has risen overnight, but it looks like it’s pooling at the weir and won’t reach the town pumps. A map of Walgett After this flow, the Keepit Dam is down to 0.5% capacity; there will be no more water coming down the river unless it rains. Walgett will have to live on bore water indefinitely. Bore water is high in mineral content, especially sodium. It kills gardens and discolours basins and bathtubs. It comes out of the tap very warm – there’s no need to turn on the hot tap to have a shower, but there’s also no chance for a cool drink of water from the tap. Two weeks ago, NSW Health issued an alert for the safe use of bore water, alarming some locals by describing the potential for amoebic meningitis. NSW Health’s director of environmental health, Richard Broome, said the amoeba that occurs in warm natural surface waters and soil causes infection which is rare but nearly always fatal. “Amoebic meningitis can occur if water containing active amoebae goes up someone’s nose,” Broome said. “At particular risk are people in rural areas who have their own tank, dam or bore water supply, such as those living on farms, and people with poorly maintained swimming pools. “Any unchlorinated water supply that seasonally exceeds 30C or continually exceeds 25C may be a risk. This includes lakes, rivers, dams, bores, tanks, garden hoses, natural hot springs, and spa and swimming pools that are poorly maintained. “People should be careful to prevent water going up their nose while swimming, diving or falling into warm, unchlorinated water, or while children are playing under garden sprinklers,” Broome said. NSW Health staff arrived in Walgett to monitor the water quality on Friday. Locals say bore water is not a long-term option as a drinking supply. There are stage five water restrictions – no outdoor water during daylight hours, limited washing and flushing of toilets, limits on the use of evaporative air conditioners. Keith Burke watches his grandkids, Jai and Connor throwing rocks into the green river. Local man Keith Burke standing in the empty Namoi River “People are talking about the fish kill at Menindee. It’s terrible, but what do you think happened to all the fish along 200km of the river here? What about us people?” Burke says. The water crisis was made worse last week when the town bore pump failed and there was no running water at all. Crowdfunding campaigns sprang up across NSW to send fresh water to Walgett – truckloads of bottled water. The pump was repaired and the bore water is back, but locals are at the end of their patience. When we’ve got no water in our rivers, it feels like we’re drained as well “We appreciate the water that people are bringing us,” Robinson says. “But it’s not the solution. We want to advocate for better water management. This is not the drought. It’s worse than that. “It’s a triple whammy: drought, land clearing and climate change – that means no water.” “When your totem animals are gone – the bandarr [kangaroo], the dhinawan [emu] who are you as a person?” Vanessa Hickey lives on the western side of town near the levee bank, and spent her life on the river. When she heard there was water flowing into the Namoi she bundled up her kids an they went down to see. “It was just a trickle,” Hickey says. “But oh! The feeling of watching it arrive, it was great. I felt real happy and alive again. “For a lot of my people here, when we’ve got no water in our rivers, it feels like we’re drained as well. Vanessa Hickey standing next to the empty Barwon River “When we got water, we’re happy. We are river people. “All I want to do is protect it. I’ve seen the destruction in 20 years. Look at it now! “We had two beautiful, flowing, fast rivers. Today, we got nothing, I can touch the bottom of the Barwon. 20 years ago, we would jump in, trying to touch the bottom. It took a few greedy people, and now we’ve got nothing “My kids are never going to have what I had growing up and that’s heartbreaking for me. It’s sad. It took a few greedy people, and now we’ve got nothing. “I don’t like coming down here, sharing stories with my son, I just break down and cry. What is there for him? “You got no water, you got no life.” Hickey wants to develop a ranger program to look after country, to monitor the health of the rivers and make sure water users do the right thing. “I’d sit out here all night if I had to, if it made a difference.” There’s lots of roadkill on the road from Walgett to Lightning Ridge – kangaroos, emus, the odd wild pig – drawn to the grass on the roadside and felled by road trains carrying feed or cattle or cotton. Rhonda Ashby lives in Lightning Ridge, and teaches Gamilaraay language at the school. Ashby was born and raised on the banks of the Barwon River at Walgett. “I haven’t got words for how this feels. It’s a deep grief,” Ashby says. Rhonda Ashby and her nephew Creed Gordon in Lightning Ridge “I remember those rivers being crystal clear. As kids we used to dive for mussels and throw them back up the bank to cook and eat.” The river has a responsibility … It’s the bloodline of this country “There were stories about the water dog, Marrayin, the mirri, going down all the way to Menindee. The water dog lived in a water hole there and we knew to be careful and not be there after dark. He was there to make us aware of the rules,” she says. “The river has a responsibility not just to us, but to plant and animals. It has a right to connect up to other waters. It’s the bloodline of this country. It’s like us: if our blood stops flowing, we get sick. The water, if that flow stops, we all become sick.” “When I lost my mum, the first place I looked to go was the river. I didn’t want to be around people, I went to the river and sat and mourned. It helped me to grieve. “It’s is like a library. The river is a quiet space. Those trees are like books, full of stories of the place, it’s a place of knowledge. It’s where you look for quietness.” North of Lightning Ridge is the Narran River, another artery in the Murray-Daring system. It’s where my grandmother was born. There are a couple of birthing trees still left, where Yuwalaraay women would have their babies. Newborns were washed in the river. People knew the exact spot on the riverbank where their life began. The Narran is dry too. Brenda McBride is a senior Gamilaraay-Yuwalaraay woman taking care of this place. The water, McBride says, is held in massive dams upstream by irrigators, miners and pastoralists, including the huge Cubbie station. Cubbie is licensed to take 460,000 megalitres, the equivalent of all irrigation entitlements downstream in north-western NSW, for its cotton farms. McBride picks up a handful of black soil where the river used to be. “These veins off the Murray-Darling are just as important as the river. The water has got a memory. It lives in a cycle. Everyone’s pulling the water out, so its just not coming here. With land clearing we get dust storms every week. It just breaks your heart. “You can walk up and down the Narran. Nothing. We know who’s got the water – Cubbie.” “Where is our water? For our totems – you’re the turtle, I’m the dhinawan, the emu. That’s a part of you, gone.” Just on sunset, Ashby takes us up to Kangaroo Point in Lightning Ridge. Her nephew Creed, 12, is in the car. I ask him, what does he think of the water shortages? Gamilaraay elder and cultural educator Brenda McBride standing in the empty Narran River north of Lightning Ridge “It’s so bad. It makes me sad what’s happening, with irrigation and mismanagement of the water. “Some say it’s drought but it’s cockies [landholders] pumping all the water out,” Creed says. “Water is life. Most people grew up on the river hearing stories and if there’s no river, where’s our culture?”Outside the National Archives in Washington, a sign says “Closed.” “We’re sorry,” it reads. “Due to the shutdown of the federal government, the Washington DC facility is closed.” This museum is not alone; government-funded Smithsonian museums in New York and Washington, as well as the National Zoo, are closed due to a partial government shutdown, which kicked off on 22 December over border security issues, forcing thousands of federal workers to work without pay or take unpaid time off. “We can’t reopen until we have a federal budget, so it all depends on a call from the White House,” said Linda St Thomas, the chief spokesperson of the Smithsonian Institution. “When we get federal funding, we will reopen immediately.” All 19 museums, including the National History Museum, the African Art Museum and the Portrait Gallery, are losing out on a great number of visitors. They’re accustomed to drawing 1 million visitors a month, according to St Thomas. “We go by month, it depends on the weather,” she said. “I think it’s roughly 1 million visitors for all 19 museums for the month of January.” All special events and programs, including lectures and films scheduled at the museums has been postponed until after the shutdown or are cancelled. The highly coveted exhibits – including the Oprah Winfrey retrospective at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the presidential portrait of Barack Obama at the National Portrait Gallery – will resume after funding is restored. The US Botanic Garden in Washington is also open daily, “having been funded for the fiscal year”, said Devin Dotson, its head of public affairs. “We continue to welcome visitors from across the United States and around the world to explore our collection.” The estimated 2019 budget for all Smithsonian museums is $957m. The funding includes a multi-million dollar roof repair of the Hazy Center, a renovation of thew National Air and Space Museum, funding to fix the ongoing infrastructure at the National Zoo and a renovation of the west wing at the National Museum of American History. In the meantime, the Washington tourism board is trying to shed light on other attractions for culture-seeking visitors; like the food scene and live sport (which may or may not satisfy art aficionados). “While we’re disappointed the Smithsonian museums are closed, the vast majority of things for visitors to see and do throughout Washington’s neighborhoods remain open,” said Elliott L Ferguson II, president and CEO of Destination DC. “It’s a great time to find a deal in the city and explore our Michelin-rated dining scene, watch a hockey or basketball game at Capitol One Arena or catch a show at one of the city’s many venues.” Other museums are still open, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Phillips Collection, the Museum of the Bible and National Law Enforcement Museum. The Newseum, a museum devoted to journalism, announced yesterday that they are offering free admission to federal employees during the shutdown. Due to the #GovernmentShutdown, Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo are closed. We will update our operating status as soon as the situation is resolved. We do not plan to update social media other than to inform you of our operating status. While the National Zoo is closed, the Smithsonian claims “essential personnel” are on site to care for the animals during the shutdown, though they remain closed to the public. Museum-goers remain disappointed by the closure, by what it represents to museum workers and arts administrators. “This administration has made it clear through budget cuts and ignorant tweets that the arts and cultural education are of little value or importance,” said Whitney Bell, a Los Angeles-based artist, writer and founder of a talk series called The Stories Of Women. “Hundreds of thousands of jobs furloughed and millions of Americans left without access to our most important cultural institutions, historic landmarks and influential art, and for what?” she asks. “A xenophobic wall that flies in the face of the melting-pot ideology this country was built on. This, like everything else Trump has done, is designed to whip up and manipulate fear to further an agenda that only protects his pitiful legacy, at the expense of the American people.”Stressed out by Brexit? I have a mindfulness exercise for you, one guaranteed to bring calm. Instead of imagining a deep, cool lake or a beach of bone-white sand, comfort yourself by imagining the day, several years from now, when a Chilcot-style inquiry probes the epic policy disaster that was Brexit. As you take deep breaths, and with your eyes closed, picture the squirming testimony of an aged David Cameron under sustained interrogation. Look on as Boris Johnson is at last called to account for the serial fictions of the 2016 campaign. Or perhaps contemplate the moment the panel delivers its damning, final report, concluding that this was a collective, systemic failure of the entire British political class. Last night’s series of votes in the Commons will provide a rich batch of evidence. Almost everyone involved, from both main parties, showed themselves to be immersed in delusion, trading fantasies and absurdities, each one refusing to meet reality’s eye, let alone tackle it head on. Most culpable, once again, is the prime minister. If our jaws weren’t already slackened to numbness by the last 30 months, they should have hit the floor at this latest performance. Theresa May had repeated endlessly, and for weeks, that her deal was the only deal on offer. Yet there she was, standing at the despatch box urging MPs to vote for an amendment that trashes that very same deal. The Brady amendment, which passed by 16 votes, demands what May had constantly said, up until yesterday morning, was impossible: the replacement of the Northern Irish backstop with “alternative arrangements”. It’s an extraordinary thing, this ability of May’s: she somehow manages to combine grinding intransigence with a willingness to perform the most brazen U-turns. Cheering her on was a Conservative party celebrating the rare thrill of unity. For the first time in ages, they could all be on the same side, declaring with one voice that what they really wanted was May’s deal minus the backstop. They beamed as if this result meant something, when it is in fact triply meaningless. First, it’s really no great achievement to get MPs to agree that they’d like the good bits of a deal but don’t want to swallow the bad bits: yes to the sugar, no to the pill. The Tories have united around a position that says they’d like the benefits of the withdrawal agreement, without paying all the costs. It’s the familiar Brexit delusion, which Brussels took all of six minutes to crush, by declaring – for the millionth time – that “the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” In other words, what the Daily Mail calls “Theresa’s triumph” is to have got her party to unite behind a stance that is doomed to fail. But even on its own terms, the vote is hollow. For what did MPs vote for but “alternative arrangements”? Not a specific, detailed counter to the backstop, spelling out concrete ways that a hard border might be avoided, but the nebulous promise of an “alternative”. When you don’t like x, then “not x” looks mighty alluring, not least because it can mean whatever you want it to mean. Brexiteers know the truth of that, because it was that same logic that saw them win the referendum itself. Their message back then boiled down to: do you want to stay in the European Union, with all its concrete, visible flaws, or would you like “alternative arrangements”? What we’ve all learned since is that the moment an “alternative” becomes real, it loses its all-things-to-all-people appeal. Which means that, even if Brussels were to relent and offer a revised proposal to the backstop, the new plan would enrage as many people as it would please – and would likely face rapid rejection by the Commons, by the Brexiteers swiftest of all. But the obloquy should not belong to the Tories alone. MPs had the chance to prevent the national cataclysm of a no-deal crash-out last night – and they refused to take it. They rejected Yvette Cooper’s amendment, which would have made such an exit impossible, thanks in part to 14 Labour rebels who concluded that even a slight delay to Brexit – just a few months – poses more of a threat to their constituents than a crash-out that could see shortages of food and medicine, with more warnings along those lines coming this morning from the leader of a major hospitals group. The future public inquiry into this horror show will damn those 14 especially. Instead, MPs voted for a toothless, non-binding amendment that confirms they don’t like no-deal very much, but are ready to do precisely nothing to prevent it. And while the Tories are still chasing unicorns, Labour is in its own fantasyland. Incredibly, shadow cabinet minister Richard Burgon was on TV last night still mouthing the same vacuities about “Labour’s alternative” Brexit and how it’s going to negotiate a “strong single-market relationship” – all the benefits, none of the costs – as if there isn’t only a matter of weeks to go till Britain leaves the EU. This just 24 hours after the party had embarrassed itself by planning to abstain on Tory legislation ending the free movement of people, only to reverse position 90 minutes later following a backlash on Twitter. The Sir John Chilcot of the future will note all this, even as she or he exempts the handful of MPs who are using every parliamentary wile they can to stop the country from slamming into the iceberg. The names Grieve, Cooper, Boles and others may earn themselves an admiring footnote in the report that will eventually come. But as for almost everyone else: they will be slammed for their role in a saga that disgraces this country and its supposed leaders more with each passing day. • Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistRespect is often described as grudging, and it doesn’t get more grudging than from Australians for Cheteshwar Pujara. Yet as this Australia v India series plays out its final stanza, the admiration from the home players and supporters is real. Here’s a player who does what their own cannot: bats as long as he wants, puts distractions aside, and refuses to go away. Australians tend to celebrate impulsiveness. We like to think we have a national style summed up by Adam Gilchrist pulverising hundreds, or Shane Warne twirling out bunnies. But with no talents like theirs in the national team, people suddenly don’t mind a more earnest approach. Nick Benton is a fringe state player who once got South Australia home in a Sheffield Shield chase batting at No 11 with a dislocated shoulder. A flaming moustachioed redhead whose Twitter profile photo features him cheerfully smiling from a toilet seat, Benton seems a decent midpoint for a national barometer. His online tribute was a piece of modern Australian literature: “Cheteshwar Pujara. 80+ skinfolds. 8 minutes 30 for a 2km time trial (on a good day). Fields like a tree. Wears 2015 ASICS spikes. Does not give a flying fuck how boring or bad he looks. At least our blokes have good rigs and the best gear.” If you don’t speak Australian, that’s admiration. Posted while Pujara posted 130 not out on the first day of the Sydney Test, it couldn’t be anything but. Three hundreds in four Tests this summer have drawn out such appreciation like Magnoplasm on a stubborn splinter. For a minute in the morning Mitchell Starc looked good. He whacked Mayank Agarwal on the ankle, took both edges of KL Rahul’s bat, then beat Agarwal twice in a row. Josh Hazlewood got a nick from Rahul next over, then Starc carried on beating Agarwal. “That’s the best over with the new ball Mitch Starc has bowled this summer,” said the former Australia opening batsman Ed Cowan on ABC radio. “The key was the length.” Spot on: while other services lauded Starc rediscovering his early swing, the ball-tracking technology showed he was swinging it less in Sydney than in any Test in over a year, including the UAE. The threat came because 61% of his spell was full. His last innings with a similar percentage was the opening day of the most recent Ashes in Brisbane, where the air was humid, the sky overcast, and the pitch so slow that short balls were sent home chipped and neutered. But in Sydney, after Agarwal looked uncomfortable against a couple of short balls, Starc and his captain Tim Paine decided to make a day of it. He sent down nine overs in the session, unbroken but for a change to the Randwick End. With a newish ball in the first session of a Test, this second spell was 81% short balls. Hazlewood joined in. Agarwal had some dicey moments but rode it out. At the other end, negotiating it serenely, was Pujara. When it was over India remained one wicket down. “I’m not really sure about that, I wasn’t too happy with that to be honest,” said an unusually frank Nathan Lyon of his bowling colleagues after play. “We missed out on using the moisture in the wicket. I thought we could have stuck there longer. But the captain and the bowlers came up with a decent plan and unfortunately it didn’t work.” It didn’t work. That sums up Australia’s series. Blasting opponents out worked in the Ashes a year ago. Not any more. The series plan would have been to keep Kohli quiet and let that take care of the rest: India’s captain has made one hundred compared to four last time he toured, but the plan hasn’t worked. About the only thing that has worked has been the bowlers: hard. The fifth bowler didn’t help in that regard. Another plan that hasn’t worked. Labuschagne came into this Test with a first-class bowling average of nearly 50 in his career and 60 this domestic season, but was billed by his coach and captain as a leg-spinning all-rounder. His first over was pulled for three boundaries. Paine immediately dragged him from the attack. The player pulling those half-trackers was Pujara, who cruised past his half-century and into the 60s. Only twice in his career has he scored more than a dozen runs from an over. Then he marched off for tea. By that stage Agarwal had holed out against Lyon for 77. Virat Kohli gloved Hazlewood down the leg side just after the break. But Pujara just kept doing what Pujara does. Indian fans call him The Wall in reference to Rahul Dravid. That’s not quite right. For one, there’s a tiny gap between bat and pad that Jimmy Anderson pilots the ball through like a drone at Gatwick Airport. Australia’s bowlers haven’t been able to find it. For another, though his trademark is obduracy, Pujara does open up once set. It’s just that getting set for him is a matter of two sessions. In the third he often came down the wicket to Lyon, tucking ones or whipping fours. His best from Starc was a cut shot from close to the body, on one foot at the point of contact, hands in tight and scything. The cut is the closest Pujara has to a flourish. His hundred came off Starc too, suitably unmemorable off the pads through backward square. Pujara tried an air-punch to celebrate, but even there he had the sheepish demeanour of a great uncle trying to negotiate the latter half of a wedding playlist. Not many current batsmen average 50, but their numbers just swelled by one: Pujara took his mark back over the threshold and will remain there even if he’s dismissed. “If” rather than “when”. In terms of deliveries this series he’s faced 246, 204, 103, 11, 319, 2, and now 250 and counting. He’s entirely capable of batting through another day for an Indian declaration or as last man standing. What he looks like while doing it doesn’t matter. Every shred of respect he receives this series has been earned.‘I must tell you a secret,” Lien de Jong’s mother said to her gently one day. “You are going to stay somewhere else for a while.” It was August 1942 in occupied Holland and De Jong was eight years old. The family was Jewish, but not observant. She would never see her parents again; they were murdered in Auschwitz six months later. She was sent to live with a non-Jewish family, the Van Eses, the first in a series of temporary homes in the Netherlands’ wartime underground network. Bart van Es is a Dutch-born English literature professor at Oxford University, who usually “writes scholarly books and articles on Shakespeare and Renaissance poetry”. He is also the grandson of Jans and Henk van Es, who, as part of the Dutch resistance, sheltered Jewish children such as Lien de Jong during the occupation. His account of her extraordinary, harrowing story of loss, survival and love, The Cut Out Girl, has just won the Costa Book of the Year award. “I was very amazed,” 85-year-old De Jong says, laughing, the morning after the ceremony. “I thought the young lady would win.” “Sally Rooney,” Van Es supplies. It is true that Rooney’s much-talked-about second novel, Normal People, was the hands-down favourite to take the prize. But The Cut Out Girl was “a hidden gem”, according to Sophie Raworth, chair of the Costa judges. “It was the book we felt everyone should read.” “I think of it as very much a joint book,” Van Es tells De Jong. Arrestingly and simply told, The Cut Out Girl is a powerful addition to memoirs of the Holocaust. It is a whiplash jolt from Rooney’s knowing story of millennial love and angst. “There is something millennial about this, too, in a way,” Van Es suggests. “It’s about modern Europe as well as about the war.” The book interweaves De Jong’s story with Van Es’s travels around the Netherlands – wartime archives, railway and petrol stations, motorways – during which he was struck by the impact of far-right politics there today, with figures such as Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom (PVV) making headlines. “He’s had very significant votes and has really changed the tone of Dutch politics in quite a scary way,” Van Es says. Famed for its tolerance, the Netherlands has “also got its nasty side”. Returning to his grandparents’ house, in what is now an almost entirely Muslim area, he says he felt uncomfortable researching a Jewish story. “It made me think, there’s a danger now that the world is becoming compartmentalised again in echo chambers of people who just tell their own stories. This is a story in one way about a non-Jewish person talking to a Jewish person, but beyond that about a person from the 21st century looking back at the 20th century.” If there is a message to the book, he says, it is that “you have to look beyond yourself, you have to have some larger vision, because in the war the people who acted, who did something for the Jews, were largely people who were part of organisations that spanned racial divides, things like my grandparents being part of the socialist movement.” “They were very principled people,” De Jong says. “They didn’t accept injustice in any way.” Although he “always had this sort of background idea, that I’m the family academic and I ought to write this up,” there wasn’t one single trigger that prompted Van Es to begin researching the life of the “lost” Jewish girl who lived with his grandparents during the war, but with whom there was a mysterious rift many years later. He has no memories of De Jong, although she remembers him as a tiny child, and he refers to her as “Aunt” in the book. “I like to say that,” he says, when I ask how they like their relationship to be described. “I never thought about it. You can call me Aunt,” she responds fondly. What was meant to be just a cup of coffee and a sandwich with his “aunt” turned into a 10-hour conversation and then a month-long extended interview, in which he came to know her “in a way that I had never known anybody else. Even with your most intimate contacts, you would never normally say: ‘Tell me your life, your earliest memories; what was your room like when you were a little girl?’ It was just an astonishing privilege to have that with another human being. I think that is something that has changed me. It has made me a more empathetic person.” Of their first exchange, De Jong says: “I always thought, ‘I have no special story, so what do you want?’ But talking together, it became a story.” And what a story it is. Her time with the Van Eses, which she refers to as “my first hiding parents”, was a particularly happy one. “That was the only place where I felt safe and could be a child and play with the other children,” she says. But then the knock would come on the door. “It’s funny how much shoes would matter in the time of crisis,” Van Es observes in the book, as she would have to pull on whatever was available and literally run for her life. The succession of hideouts that followed were increasingly unhappy, as she was passed from family to family, treated as a servant in one, and sexually abused in the last. It is striking in the book how De Jong’s memories, so vivid at first, become more vague as she becomes more traumatised. “One of the things the book is about is that you only remember things if you experience them in a community,” Van Es says. Towards the end of the war, De Jong became “almost like a zombie … She lived just in herself, living that was just living; she suddenly starts having these enormous gaps where she remembers absolutely nothing.” This, of course, presents something of a challenge to the biographer. And it is here that Van Es pulls off a clever authorial sleight of hand, making De Jong’s story intensely immediate and intimate, only then to concede that she herself can’t recall the details at all. “I wanted to be honest about that,” Van Es explains. “I wanted that sort of trick in the book, so you see it and then you don’t see it. And so I wanted those things to be completely historically correct, which they are. I did research.” For example, during the mass exodus from the village of Bennekom in 1944, a procession of families laden with their belongings, or piled on to carts and wagons, we see the bodies of fly-ridden dead horses and soldiers lying in bomb craters, and are told that De Jong “feels sticky” under the three dresses she is wearing to avoid carrying them. But as Van Es admits: “Of the journey to Ede … she can picture nothing at all.” Instead, he has “patched together” the recollections of the hundreds of others who made the journey, taken either from history books and diaries, or from accounts of people he later interviewed. “So it’s not necessarily Lien wearing three dresses. I will always make it clear that’s a made-up bit.” He wanted it to be not just factually accurate – he even checked the weather reports in newspapers from the time – but also “emotionally true”. How does it feel for De Jong, after all these years, to have the gaps filled in by someone else? “The emotional part is not there anywhere. It’s history for me, the whole story,” she replies. “Sometimes I’m sad about my family, who were lost, all of them; most of the time it is in a movie or on TV – just looking at other people I can feel emotion.” Today, she says, she is happy “with my friends and children and grandchildren”. She loves Amsterdam, where she lives, and enjoys being part of its cultural life. “I hope very much that my story can help when we are talking about children who are in a terrible situation these days, without parents or without family, going from one country to another,” she says. On the day of the Dutch publication of the book, which also happened to be De Jong’s 85th birthday, they appeared on a TV chatshow. The discussion centered on two Armenian children who were due to be deported back “home” in two days, despite having spent their whole lives with Dutch foster parents and speaking only Dutch. “It was really shocking that the government was saying: ‘We are going to send these children back,’” says Van Es. The following day a decision was made to allow the children to stay. “I had at least the right to speak,” she says, modestly denying Van Es’s reports that people on Twitter were saying DeJong had done more than those in parliament to help. The book sold out in the Netherlands the next day. This is not just a deeply personal story, for both De Jong and Van Es, but also one of national guilt: 80% of the Jews in the Netherlands died during the war, more than double the proportion of any other country in western Europe. With a bounty on every Jewish head, the Dutch authorities delivered 107,000 Jews to the death camps. “It is absolutely shocking,” Van Es says. “There was massive national hypocrisy at the end of the war. There were virtually no prison sentences for any of the collaborators and there was very little national reflection. Although it is changing now, for a very long time it has just been a straightforward story that: ‘We were occupied and essentially we were all part of the resistance.’” Against that background, Van Es recounts stories of extraordinary heroism and desperation: the farmer who cut off part of his finger in order to get paid leave so he could build a secret shelter for children; or the couple who turned their food-testing laboratory into a safe house, saving 50 children, with the help of a local doctor, but whose own lives ended in depression and poverty; or the family who sheltered in a hideout beneath a tree in a pine forest, breathing by means of a hand-pump connected to the ground above them. But The Cut Out Girl doesn’t end with De Jong’s return to the Van Es household after the war. There can be no uncomplicated happy ending. After a period of stability, in which she married and had three children, De Jong felt like “a cut-out picture of a perfect wife from a magazine”. She became increasingly depressed and isolated from her husband, whose traditional Judaism was “not very meaningful” to her. “I couldn’t live with it,” she says. In 1972, she attempted to kill herself. “I don’t think I had survivor’s guilt,” she reflects. “It was more the idea that I did not – I ought not – to be there. There was nobody who wanted me. When you have no family of your own, and you live with people who can send you away, no connection is unbreakable.” Life healed her, she says: “And the children and my choices. It took time.” At 47, she got divorced. “I married a very good man. But he couldn’t come along after a long time. I didn’t know what I wanted.” And then there was another terrible fracture, when Jans van Es – the woman she once called “Ma” – cut her off, the family mystery that is the emotional heart of the book: “Why, at my grandmother’s funeral, was Lien unmentioned and unseen?” Van Es asks. “How could such a connection break?” To answer this would be to give too much away. But the book has been healing for Van Es’s family. His mother, who was terrified about what its revelations might do to her parents’ reputation as brave members of the resistance, has been comforted by its reception. As Van Es says, winning the Costa has been an “incredible confirmation of what was quite a scary enterprise. Quite a lot of people have said they think it’s a kind book. So it was really uniting.” It has also been uniting for his immediate family, in particular for him and his teenage stepdaughter, Josie. De Jong’s experiences of feeling unwanted taught him “how important it is to tell people all the time: ‘You matter to me.’ It gave me a really good chance to talk to Josie. It has been a very meaningful thing for our family.” “Nobody is perfect,” De Jong adds. “We can see in the book that you can be a human being with all your faults and all your good things.” Van Es is already at work on another book, if not closer to home, then closer to his academic interests, on Shakespeare and the novel. And De Jong? “Just going on.” There are so many books already out there about the war, Van Es worries at one point. “There are also so many songs about love,’” De Jong replies. The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found by Bart van Es (Penguin Books, £9.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.A senior Labour MP leading a backbench effort to rule out a no-deal Brexit has argued that much of the government, including Theresa May, privately want this to happen, and are relying on parliament to take action. At the start of a political week in which the prime minister is likely to rule out any cross-party efforts to push ahead with a variation of her rejected Brexit plan, Yvette Cooper said it was time for MPs to act. Cooper, who chairs the home affairs select committee, is to table an amendment to a government motion on Monday which would seek to extend article 50 if a no-deal departure on 29 March was looking likely. The move is also the brainchild of the former Tory minister Nick Boles, and has backing from other senior Tories Sir Oliver Letwin and Nicky Morgan. Another backbench proposal from the former attorney general Dominic Grieve could lead to indicative votes being held in the Commons to scope out a consensus, or to the prioritising of proposals from a minority of 300 MPs from at least five parties. The junior business minister Richard Harrington urged May to rule out a no-deal Brexit, saying it would be an “absolute disaster” for the UK. May held a conference call with her cabinet on Sunday evening and will make a statement to the Commons on Monday in which she is likely to announce that she will seek fresh concessions from Brussels before putting her plan to MPs again. Cooper conceded that the idea of backbenchers trying to exert their power was “uncharted territory”, but said her planned amendment was limited in scope. It would decree that if no agreement had passed parliament by the end of February, the government would have to bring forward a binding motion seeking an extension of article 50 “so that we don’t go crashing over the cliff edge”, she said. Blaming May for consistently avoiding cross-party talks on Brexit since losing her majority in the 2017 election, Cooper said she believed much of the government wanted the extension option but could not seek it for political reasons. “My sense is that there are government ministers, including cabinet ministers, and I suspect even the prime minister herself, who want parliament to do this,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “She knows that she should rule out no deal in the national interest, because it would be so damaging. She’s refusing to do so, and I think she is hoping that parliament will do this for her. That is not leadership.” Cooper said she believed the EU would extend article 50 if asked: “I think they would take very seriously something that has come from parliament in this way. This would not be simply the prime minister just prevaricating and going round in circles.” Speaking earlier on the programme, Harrington refused to rule out backing a proposal such as Cooper’s. “I don’t know what the bill will be, or the mechanism. But all will change in the next couple of days.” Harrington, who has pledged to resign if May pushes for a no-deal Brexit, said the option would be “an absolute disaster for the country, and it’s supported by a minority of a minority of people”. He said: “She should in my view say: ‘We are responsible people, we are going to do our duty to Britons and we’re going to rule out no deal.’” Asked why a no-deal Brexit concerned him, Harrington said: “I’m afraid of Jaguar closing, Mini closing, the life sciences industry closing, and all the other things, because we’ve had no agreement that represents the way these businesses are integrated. It’s irresponsibility and we’ve got to stop it. “I’m not prepared to sell people down the river for other people’s dogma.” Stephen Laws, formerly the head government legislation lawyer, told Today he was concerned that backbench plans to control the Brexit process could cause a constitutional crisis. Arguing that parliamentary rules “give a clear veto to the government” over any bills involving significant spending, Laws said that if MPs forced through a measure, May could ask the Queen to decline royal assent. “I don’t think it’s a fanciful speculation, because if the rules aren’t applied as they should be, that’s what will happen,” he said.It was 48.9C last Tuesday in Port Augusta, South Australia, an old harbour city that now harvests solar power. Michelle Coles, the owner of the local cinema, took off her shoes at night to test the concrete before letting the dogs out. “People tend to stay at home,” she said. “They don’t walk around when it’s like this.” It’s easy to see why: in the middle of the day it takes seconds to blister a dog’s paw or child’s foot. In Mildura, in northern Victoria, last week gardeners burned their hands when they picked up their tools, which had been left in the sun at 46C. Fish were dying in the rivers. Almost every day last week a new heat record was broken in Australia. They spread out, unrelenting, across the country, with records broken for all kinds of reasons – as if the statistics were finding an infinite series of ways to say that it was hot. The tiny town of Noona – population 14 – reached the highest minimum ever recorded overnight in Australia – 35.9C was the coldest it got, at 7am on Friday. It was 45C by noon. A record fell on Tuesday in Meekatharra in Western Australia – the highest minimum there ever recorded (33C). Another fell on Wednesday, 2,000 miles away, in Albury, New South Wales – their hottest day (45.6C). It was 45C or higher for four consecutive days in Broken Hill – another record – and more than 40C for the same time period in Canberra, the nation’s capital. Nine records fell across NSW on Wednesday alone. Back in Port Augusta, Tuesday was the highest temperature since records began in 1962. In the Niagara Cafe in Gundagai, whose claim to fame is that the former Australian prime minister John Curtin once popped in during the second world war, Tina Loukissas turned off the deep fryer, then the grill. “It feels like you’ve walked into a sauna,” she said. “When it’s getting up to 43C or 44C, because you have all these machines going, the air conditioning isn’t coping very well. “We’ve got tables outside that nobody has sat at for the last couple of days … You’d be crazy to sit outside on a day like today.” In Mildura, Tolga Ozkuzucu, owner of Top Notch Gardens, had the misfortune to be working outdoors. “It’s been like hell,” he said. “You have to try to leave your tools in the shade. If you don’t, it burns your fingers. There’s not much you can do. “I try to start as early as I can. I’m not going to risk my body and health. People here are very understanding of that because they know how hot it is … nobody wants to be outside when it’s 46C.” In South Australia, they declared a “code red” across Adelaide, the state capital. Homelessness services were working overtime and the Red Cross started calling round a list of 750 people who were deemed especially vulnerable. At the Australian Open in Melbourne, only the sea breeze kept the temperature below 40C. At Adelaide’s Tour Down Under, a bike race, it was 41C. On Monday last week the hottest spot in New South Wales was Menindee, a river town that feeds the country’s largest water system, the Murray-Darling basin. It was 45C. It climbed to 47C on Wednesday, and by Thursday the fish were gasping. Australia’s native Murray cod can live for decades under normal conditions, growing all the while. The oldest are a metre long, with heavy white bellies that have to be held with both hands. Last week, hundreds died, choked of oxygen due to an algal bloom that fed and grew in the heat, and collapsed when temperatures dipped. Blue-green algae flourishes in hot, slow-moving water. Then, when temperatures inevitably drop, the algae dies and becomes a food source for bacteria, who multiply and starve the river of oxygen. The fish rise to the surface. The mass fish death has reignited a debate over water management in the region, where cotton farmers upstream have been accused of taking more water than they should. The heat is not the root cause, the locals stress. But the five punishing days settling over the river have not made it better. Last Thursday the cod were up near the surface and struggling. On Friday, it was 45C again. In Menindee, the locals believe the fish kill will happen again, with temperatures in the 40s expected to continue into this week. The water will be running hot. But away from the Darling, Michelle Coles from Port Augusta says she is used to the heat. “I didn’t think it was that hot yesterday, if you want an honest answer,” she said last Wednesday, the day after the temperature hit 48.9C. “Yesterday at the cinema, it was very quiet. People tend to stay home. We’re quite used to it. Once it’s over 40, it’s hot. “We’re conditioned to it. Honestly, I’d much rather be in 48C heat in Port Augusta than in the city. You’ve got so much concrete and it’s closed in, but here it’s quite open. “You just don’t stand out in the sun though. That would be stupid.”In a cramped rehearsal room on a side street in Brooklyn, AJ Lambert and her band are quibbling over the order of their set, trying to make sure it contains contrast and dynamism. It includes a handful of covers of songs by Shame, Spoon, TV on the Radio, Robert Wyatt and Chris Bell, all radically repurposed by the band of two synths, bass and drums. The setlist also contains a handful of Sinatra standards and these need to be especially well-judged. After all, Sinatra was Lambert’s grandfather. “When I hear things he sings, I hear them through some other filter,” she tells me later. “I hear them as a fan, but also as a human being I knew.” The placement of one song they are particularly puzzling over is that of Glad I’m Not a Kennedy, by Shona Laing. It’s a startling song to hear in this context, because of Sinatra’s history with the Kennedys. He was John F Kennedy’s friend and cheerleader until being abruptly cut off by the family in 1962, for reasons that have been the source of endless speculation since: usually assumed to involve the mafia, sex or both. “Yeah, that song’s super-personal to me,” Lambert says after rehearsal, eating a slice of salted caramel apple pie in a cafe around the corner. She knows how deeply her grandfather was hurt by his excision from Camelot’s inner circle. She knows, too, how he grieved after Kennedy’s death. But she has no idea what happened, either. “A lot of times I don’t know if I get the real story. Because they’re” – they being the Sinatra organisation: the family, the lawyers, the management – “so used to being on the defensive, understandably. But I’m far enough removed from all of it to be: ‘Well, I don’t know what’s true.’” So when Lambert sings Glad I’m Not a Kennedy, it’s not so much with the original’s regret for political opportunities missed, more with a sense of sadness for people whose lives have been overshadowed by their name, something she understands a little. “I’m singing it because they say all this horrible shit about my family, but it must have been so much worse to be in that family with all the shit that gets said about them. It’s a sad song. There are so many levels of tragedy and death and misery in that family.” Lambert is 44, and only now releasing her debut album, the excellent Careful You, in which the indie tracks and the standards come together in a seamless whole that recalls the lush soul productions of Matthew E White’s Spacebomb stable, topped by Lambert’s restrained, insinuating voice. She has been delayed by alcoholism (she’s four years sober), by motherhood, by having other jobs. And by not wanting to be seen to be hanging on the coattails of her grandfather or her mother, Nancy Sinatra. She was in indie bands through much of her 20s and 30s: a group called Sleepington at college, one called Looker, which ascended to the dizzy heights of recording a session for Steve Lamacq, brief spells with Here We Go Magic and the reformed punk band the Homosexuals – but tucked away in the rhythm section rather than out front. “I loved it,” she says. “I was a wild kid, drinking and drugging, and I loved it. But it was a world that suited me at that time. Perfect life, perfect fun. Until it wasn’t.” Her alcoholism, she says, was insidious. “I would black out pretty much every day. I don’t remember chunks of my life and nobody knew. It was that scary thing; I could be sitting here having this conversation looking normal. The next day they’d tell me we had a great conversation, and I wouldn’t remember it. All the time.” The singing only began in earnest in 2015, with her and a pianist doing covers of her favourite indie songs in a lounge act (“but it wasn’t campy; it wasn’t ironic”). In March 2016 her uncle, Frank Sinatra Jr, died, “and he left this hole, where no one in my family does that music at all. My mom doesn’t do it. And they approached me, the family powers that be, management types. ‘OK, we know you’re singing. He had been about to do this tribute show: do you want to see the list of songs?’ It was every single hit there ever was. And I felt if I were to do that it would be so cynical. It seemed ridiculous to be a 41-year-old woman, at that time, singing Love and Marriage and My Way. I said: ‘I don’t feel comfortable doing this, but I’m so honoured to have that lineage, and I feel like I have to do something for it.’ So I decided to do [Sinatra] album shows, where I do In the Wee Small Hours and Only the Lonely. This record came from having that experience.” Being the child of showbiz royalty wasn’t quite as bonkers as one might expect; visiting her grandfather was not a journey into the Rat Pack. “Everyone wants it to be jetting around and singing My Way around the piano every day. It just wasn’t like that.” There was wealth – of course there was – but not unimaginably so. Sinatra never wrote a song, so never saw a penny in publishing. Lambert gets a fixed income from the family’s ownership of the Sinatra master recordings and the name and likeness rights (“But it’s not enough to live off, because there’s a lot of us”). Relatively normal, though, does include the wholly unusual, such as when Nancy, then 54, posed naked for Playboy in 1995. “Can you imagine your mom doing that? I was miserable about it. I made a documentary short film about it, because I couldn’t process it. I made the choice: ‘I am going to be OK with this for now, because it’s the only way. I can’t sit and say it sucks, because it will make her feel bad and me feel worse.’ I thought, she must have a reason to do this. And she got paid a lot of money. Maybe she needed the money.” But everywhere, at all times, there’s the knowledge that everyone who meets her is thinking: that’s Frank Sinatra’s granddaughter. And the peculiarity of the fact that the person who to her was a grandad is to everyone else – literally, everyone else – less a person than a representation of something mythical, despicable or captivating, whatever it might be, but always just a representation. “That’s the thing,” she says. “He’ll always exist. It’s almost like they’re two different people for me. I can see him as the totem and I can see him as the person, and they’re very different people, but I know both of them.” And when you hear her sing the songs he sang, there’s a moment when you can understand that. • Careful You is released on Alpha Pup on 25 January. AJ Lambert plays the Moth Club, London, on 24 January. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.It was in Cardiff that I finally cracked the Da Vinci Code. For years I’ve been searching for the clues that would explain this weird and wonderful genius. I’ve visited the Tuscan hill town Vinci, where an illegitimate boy called Leonardo was born in 1452, and Amboise in the Loire Valley, where he died on 2 May 1519, looking for traces of his secret self. Yet it was on an icy afternoon in the Welsh capital that I finally found the killer clue to a real Leonardo da Vinci mystery: his sex life. Leonardo’s inky fingerprint has been found – it’s just barely visible with the naked eye – on his drawing The Cardiovascular System and Principal Organs of a Woman, done c.1509-10, yet this is not the revelation. This big, bold graphic dissection of a female body is a window on Leonardo’s emotions. He has drawn a female nude then transposed against her rounded breasts a complex machinery of tubes and pumps, bags and balloons. Her uterus looks like an alien creature. As an image of the female form it isn’t exactly intimate, let alone lustful. At the National Museum Wales, you can look straight from this to a far more sensual portrayal of the human body that he drew in about 1504: a scintillating study of a naked man from behind. Leonardo’s muscular model stands at attention, showing us his curly locks and rippling back. His hands seem to visibly shake with contained energy. His stance is potent. Leonardo uses red chalk to give this nude a carnal warmth: its softness lets him delicately model every bulge and recess of taut skin. The man’s buttocks are ripe ovals of perfection. These drawings shown together truly seem to decode something about the Renaissance artist, scientist, engineer and inventor who died 500 years ago this year. To celebrate Leonardo’s half-millennium, the Royal Collection, which owns the world’s most eye-popping hoard of his graphic works, has scattered traces of his true self across the UK: 12 museums in 12 cities have each got a piece of him. Perhaps, if you could somehow see all the shows, you would know everything there is to know about Leonardo. He would come to life and talk. And there is so much to explain. Looking from Leonardo’s loving, lingering male nude to his vision of what is clearly, for him, the alien entity of womanhood, it’s hard not to share Sigmund Freud’s analysis in his book on him that this Renaissance man loved other men. Was Leonardo gay – and is that the key to his inner life? It's a marvel that we can even talk about him in this way So is that it? Was Leonardo gay – and is that the key to his inner life? And yet, before you can humanise Leonardo you have to acknowledge the superhuman in him. It hits like a thunderbolt in Bristol Museum and Art Gallery’s gorgeous show of drawings sharply lit against dark blue walls. Every drawing in this exhibition is more than five centuries old. And these medieval masterpieces are incredibly well preserved. Each nuance of chalk, ink and colour wash seems to have been frozen forever. This is one reason why, I believe, you can get much closer to Leonardo in his drawings than in his paintings. His paintings have been restored and repainted over the centuries, or fallen to bits, like The Last Supper. But these sketches are pristine. They are not by his assistants. They are pure clear windows on his mind, many with his notes in his reversed handwriting interspersed among the images. In his drawing of A Storm Over a Valley he uses red chalk again, this time to create what feels more like a modelling of the atmosphere than a mere landscape sketch. Rolling banks of cloud billow above a mountain valley, releasing heavy cascades of rain on the settlements below. But what’s spooky is the point of view. Leonardo seems to be looking down on the little human world of churches and farms from far, far above. Perhaps he’s standing on a mountaintop – he did explore the Alps. Yet there are other landscapes by him that also seem to be seen from the sky. Famously, he tried to make a flying machine. This drawing shows flight is central to his way of thinking about the world: he literally wanted to rise above it all. Near the end of his life, he became obsessed with deluges tearing the world apart, smashing a mountain, destroying an army like ants For Leonardo was not at ease in human society. Why would he be? In one drawing in the Cardiff exhibition he portrays a thuggish face, a huge, fleshy head on a thick neck. In another work, in Bristol, he delineates a savage battle. They are both instances of his bleak feelings about the brutality and violence of our species. Other masterpieces show how, near the end of his life, he became obsessed with deluges tearing the world apart, smashing a mountain, destroying an army like ants under the swirling power of the elements. His curiosity is so insistent, like that of a staring child. Or maybe a serial killer, meticulously drawing the bones of the dead. No one had ever before looked at human anatomy as Leonardo does in drawings based on his own dissections. He finds within us a mysterious architecture. The interior of the heart is laced with fan vaulting like a gothic cathedral. Our bodies are labyrinths of tunnels and cavities, spheres and tree branches. That magic weave of fragile organic stuff links all nature. In his portrait of a woman looking downward, a design for his late painting The Virgin and St Anne, she sports a richly textured lacy headdress. The ruffled silk looks like a jellyfish sac he’s seen washed up on shore: the Virgin is wearing a marine organism in her hair. In a map of the river Arno in Tuscany the blue tendrils of the river look like tentacles, roots, or veins in a human body. The more of these drawings you see the more startling and real Leonardo becomes. But so does his jaundiced view of our species. We’re just part of a bigger picture. Human organs and the Earth, microcosm and macrocosm, all mirror each other. Perhaps that’s why the art of Leonardo leaves you so enraptured. I felt as if I could see my own skeleton and those of Cardiff passersby as I popped into Greggs for a vegan sausage roll. Come to think of it, Leonardo would have approved. He was a vegetarian. If everything is one interwoven fabric, he thought, who are we to act like lords of creation? • Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing runs 1 February-6 May in in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton and Sunderland. Then at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, 24 May – 13 October.The United States isn’t the only country with a border wall controversy these days. However, Denmark’s planned 42-mile (70km) fence along the German border is intended to keep out not people but wild boars, which authorities say threaten to bring disease to Danish pig farms. Construction on the fence was beginning on Monday along the northern edge of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Danish lawmakers and the country’s environmental agency approved the project last summer, arguing it would help farmers protect their pigs against African swine fever (ASF). The disease, lethal for pigs, has not yet been spotted in Denmark or Germany but it is common in eastern Europe and there was a small outbreak in Belgium last autumn. Though the threat of ASF may not sound alarming on its face, pigs and pork production are no joke in Denmark. The country has nearly twice as many pigs as people – it’s home to more than 12 million pigs across 3,000 farms, compared with a human population of just under 6 million – and pig exports account for billions of pounds annually. The wall will be electrified and will measure 1.5 metres (5ft) tall, theoretically low enough to allow larger animals such as deer to jump over but high enough to keep out the boars. It will cover fields and open land, leaving roads and path unblocked. On the German side of the border, there is scepticism about how effective such a fence will be. Research has shown that the biggest risk of spreading ASF comes from contaminated equipment or discarded food. Environmentalists have claimed the fence will disrupt the habitats of other wild animals, including wolves, otters and jackals. And at a time when Europe is debating the merits of borderless travel, erecting a physical barrier also sends a message. Denmark reinstituted border checks three years ago, and many other European countries including Germany have debated doing the same. “Such a fence creates a visible border,” Martin Ellermann, mayor of the German border town of Harrislee, told the regional broadcaster NDR. Ellermann and other local leaders have appealed to the state premier, Daniel Günther, imploring him to consider its local impact. Construction of the fence is expected to conclude later this year.Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, and his inner circle could be granted an amnesty if he agrees to relinquish power and submit to a peaceful political transition, his opposition challenger Juan Guaidó has said. In a high-stakes political gamble, Guaidó on Wednesday declared himself Venezuela’s legitimate interim president and was quickly recognised as such by powers including the United States, Brazil, Canada and Colombia. On Thursday British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said his government believed Guaidó was “the right person to take Venezuela forward” but China, Russia and Turkey all backed Maduro, who claims he is the victim of a coup attempt masterminded by the US. The US state department has now urged US citizens to “strongly consider” leaving Venezuela and ordered out non-emergency government staff. In his first interview since Wednesday’s dramatic declaration, Guaidó said he was determined to bring Maduro’s “dictatorship” to an end, stabilise his economically devastated nation and organise free elections “as soon as possible”. The 35-year-old opposition leader renewed his call for Venezuela’s military – whose members have been offered an amnesty – to turn on their commander-in-chief. He also indicated Maduro – who was sworn in for his second six-year term on 10 January despite a storm of international condemnation – could himself be offered an amnesty if he agreed to step aside. “This amnesty, these guarantees are on the table for everyone who is prepared to put themselves on the side of the constitution in order to recover the democratic order,” he said. “In periods of transition similar things have happened [before],” Guaidó told the broadcaster Univisión, pointing to previous pardons in Chile and Venezuela in the 1970s and 1950s. “We cannot discount any element,” he added, insisting that such a move would not represent either impunity or forgetting. Maduro – who has vowed to resist what he calls a “gringo” plot to unseat him – has given little public hint he will accept such an offer although addressing the supreme court in Caracas on Thursday he insisted: “I’m ready for dialogue, for understanding, for negotation, for agreement.” However, in the same speech Maduro also attacked Guaidó, accusing him of being a pawn in a US-backed plot to destroy the leftist Bolivarian revolution he inherited after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013. “Will we legitimise a puppet government imposed from abroad? We will allow our constitution to be violated … ? No!” said Maduro, blaming what he branded an attempted coup on Donald Trump’s “madness”. Venezuela’s military top brass also threw their support behind Maduro with defence minister, Vladimir Padrino, warning the country could be plunged into a devastating conflict by Guaidó’s “laughable” but dangerous gambit. “It is not civil war, a war between brothers, that will solve the problems of Venezuela. It is dialogue,” Padrino said. Venezuela expert Miguel Tinker Salas said he believed a negotiated solution – such as the one being promoted by the governments of Mexico and Uruguay – was the only way to defuse an increasingly perilous standoff that had the potential to escalate into a major geopolitical crisis between the US, Russia and China. But Salas said widespread guarantees would have to be given to Maduro’s backers. “It’s not just about Maduro going into exile. What happens to all the chavistas?” We’re not talking about merely a couple of hundred people. We are talking about hundreds of thousands who have supported Chávez – and they are worried about retribution.” In his interview, Guaidó insisted “nobody wanted” a foreign military intervention in Venezuela to remove Maduro and said he hoped a peaceful exit path could be found. “We must not lose hope,” he said, urging supporters to continue taking to the streets to demand change.Women’s advocacy groups have criticised the decision to broadcast a TV interview with the ringleader of a gang that bragged about having sex with underage, intoxicated girls in New Zealand. The interview coincided with an attempt to crowdfund his music career. Joseph Parker told Newshub he was not a “monster”, adding: “we didn’t do all the things that people thought we did.” The interview comes years after Parker became known as the ringleader of Facebook group “Roast Busters”, in which he and a core group of four other young Auckland men boasted about group sex with young, drunk girls. The scandal provoked national outrage in New Zealand. Five official complaints of sexual assault were lodged with police between 2011 and 2013, but the teenagers were never charged due to a lack of evidence. The Independent Police Conduct Authority found a year-long investigation made significant policing errors, failed to follow up leads and did not adhere to best practice for investigating alleged sexual assault. At the time thousands of people staged mass protests in New Zealand, calling for an end to rape culture and justice for the victims, and then prime minister John Key called the group “extremely disturbing and disgusting”. “We don’t choose the roast, the roast chooses us ... They know what we’re like; they know what they’re in for,” Parker said in one of the videos, which also “slut-shamed” the girls by naming and picturing them in videos online. “I just kept blacking out ‘cause I had drunken too much,” one underage girl told national television station Newshub in 2013. Now aged 23, Parker has given his first interview, telling Newshub he is sorry for his actions and wants to “make amends” for the harm he caused. He also said he had contacted women who were targeted by the group via social media to apologise – a move sexual assault experts say could be re-traumatising. “We weren’t the monsters everyone thought we were,” Parker told Newshub, who said he considered the experience a blessing which helped him mentally and spiritually grow as a person. “I understand I put them through a lot of hurt and pain; I can only try to understand the hurt they have been put through but I don’t think I will fully understand because I am not them.” The interview was criticised as disturbing and cynical by women’s advocacy groups. It comes at the same time Parker has launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise money for his music career – in which he sings songs about the saga. In one song, Parker raps: “Just knowin’ I’m entertaining so many people, the praises had me in a frenzy to maintain it so I’m humiliating females just for the fame, flying the Roast Busters flag higher than a plane.” Two of the women targeted by the Roast Busters reportedly later considered suicide. The youngest alleged victim was 13. The age of consent in New Zealand is 16, and sex with an under-age, intoxicated person is frequently regarded as non-consensual and therefore illegal. Amid the furore on Tuesday, “Roast Busters” became New Zealand’s top Twitter trend. Lizzie Marvelly, the author of The F Word: Growing up Feminist in Aotearoa, tweeted that she was “heartbroken” about the Parker interview, and the Roast Busters case was a “national shame”. Fiona McNamara, general manager of the Sexual Abuse Prevention Network, said the interview could re-traumatise victims and other survivors of sexual violence, and perpetuated rape culture. “It did not appear to be motivated by genuine empathy for the people that experienced harm … there were no charges laid and now this person is trying to promote a career and leverage off his notoriety to gain fame and success, is really giving a message that he can get away with anything.” A spokesperson for Mediaworks, the company which owns Newshub, said it had received “lots of feedback” following the interview, but no official complaints. “Reporting does not mean condoning – a key attribute to successful journalism requires interviewing many sources, including those we regard as wrongdoers, and it is newsworthy when one of the central figures of a story breaks their silence for the first time.”The tourism brochure for the German spa town of Bad Kissingen features a photograph of a young woman on its cover. Dressed in white shorts and a pink vest, the woman is perched peacefully on a sunny rock overlooking a river, reading a handwritten journal. Emblazoned on the top left of the page is the slogan Entdecke die Zeit – Discover Time. Located in the sparsely populated region of Lower Franconia in Bavaria, Bad Kissingen was once a fashionable resort for the European aristocracy and bourgeoisie. They came for rest and relaxation; soaking up the classical architecture and fragrant rose gardens, and taking the mineral-rich waters, which were reputed to cure all manner of ills. Today, Bad Kissingen has rebranded itself as the world’s first ChronoCity – a place where internal time is as important as external time, and sleep is sacrosanct. Most of us are not free to choose our work or school hours; we have little control over the lighting in our public spaces and external environment; and we are even forced to reprogramme our internal clock twice a year because of daylight saving time. The question that the idea of the “ChronoCity” raises is what changes could society make to better accommodate our body clocks? Michael Wieden, Bad Kissingen’s business manager, came up with the ChronoCity concept in 2013. Having followed scientific developments in the field of chronobiology with interest, Wieden realised that not only could weaving these principles into the town’s fabric benefit its residents, it would also make Bad Kissingen stand out from rival spa towns. Bad Kissingen has always been about healing and health, he reasoned; so what better way to heal our modern society than by bringing it back into contact with natural light and sleep. Tourists could come and learn about the importance of internal time, then return home and implement the lessons in their everyday lives. Wieden contacted a chronobiologist called Thomas Kantermann, who was similarly enthused by the idea of launching a revolution in the way that society prioritises sleep. Quickly, the two men began drawing up a manifesto of the things they’d like to change: schools should start later, children be educated outdoors where possible, and examinations not conducted in the mornings; businesses should be encouraged to offer flexitime, allowing people to work and study when they felt at their best; health clinics could pioneer chronotherapies, tailoring drug treatments to patients’ internal time; hotels might offer guests variable meal- and check-out times; and buildings should be modified to let in more daylight. In July 2013, Kantermann and Wieden, together with Bad Kissingen’s mayor and town council, and Kantermann’s academic colleagues, signed a letter of intent in which they pledged to promote chronobiology research in the town, and to make Bad Kissingen the first place in the world to “realise scientific field studies in a wider context”. Most controversial of all was their suggestion that Bad Kissingen should split from the rest of Germany and do away with daylight saving time (DST) – the practice of advancing clocks during summer months in order to make the evening daylight last longer. Since 1884, the world has been subdivided into 24 time zones, all referring to the longitudinal meridian that crosses the Greenwich observatory in London, hence the name Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Roughly a quarter of the world’s population – including most of the inhabitants of western Europe, Canada, most of the US and parts of Australia – also change their clocks twice a year. The original idea of DST is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who voiced concerns about energy consumption during dark autumn and winter evenings as early as 1784. Even now, lighting accounts for 19% of global electricity consumption and approximately 6% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. However, it wasn’t until 1907 that an Englishman called William Willett self-published a pamphlet, The Waste of Daylight. Willett believed that aligning work hours closer to sunrise (at least in cities) might encourage people to participate in more outdoor recreation, enhancing their physical wellbeing, and might keep them out of pubs, reduce industrial energy consumption and facilitate military training in the evenings. Willett died of influenza a year before his dream was realised: the UK adopted DST in 1916, followed by the US in 1918. Even so, as Winston Churchill noted, Willett “has the monument he would have wished in the thousands of playing-fields crowded with eager young people every fine evening throughout the summer and one of the finest epitaphs that any man could win: He gave more light to his countrymen”. There was a significant downside, however, as grasped by a fierce opponent of the change, John Milne, who wrote in the British Medical Journal, “for a certain period twice a year, the efficiency of the worker will be somewhat dampened”. By moving the clocks forwards each spring and backwards each autumn, we are creating a form of “social jetlag”, to use the term coined by the German chronobiologist Till Roenneberg to describe the gap between our individual body clock and the external clocks and timings that rule our lives. One study of US high-school students – a population that is already sleep-deprived – suggested that their sleep was curtailed by 32 minutes per night during the week following the spring clock change. Maths and science test scores fall in the week following the start of DST among young adolescents, while another study found lower annual scores for the SAT tests, which are used to decide university admissions, among US counties that observe DST, compared to those that don’t. In adults, the transition to summer time and the sleep deprivation it causes has been associated with an increase in accidental deaths and injuries, including road traffic accidents. US judges have even been found to dole out heftier sentences for the same crimes in the week after the transition. From a health perspective, clock changes have been tied to an elevated risk of heart attacks, strokes, suicide attempts and psychiatric admissions. If it had rejected daylight saving time, as Kantermann and Wieden campaigned for it to do, Bad Kissingen would have become the DST-free town in Europe: “Every individual and business would have got a big publicity boost from doing that,” says Roenneberg, the chronobiologist, who also supports the scrapping of the biannual changeover. Deliberately putting oneself in such temporal isolation may sound extreme, but there are precedents. For more than half a century, the US state of Arizona has declined to join the rest of the country in its annual spring leap forward to DST – although the Navajo Nation, which is largely inside its borders, does. (The Hopi Reservation, which is surrounded by the Navajo Nation, follows the rest of Arizona in remaining on winter time.) In the end, the Bad Kissingen town council defeated the motion about becoming DST-free. But even if the town isn’t ready to become a poster child for the anti-DST movement, momentum is building elsewhere – in Finland, for instance, where it’s light virtually all of the time during summer, but they still suffer the social jetlag caused by the time shift. The European commission also recently proposed abolishing DST – although it requires support from the 28 national governments and MEPs before anything changes. Meanwhile, in southern England many would like to see the entire country shifted permanently forward into Central European Time, given that, in Britain, the annual changing of clocks back to winter time means that it gets dark as early as 4pm in December and early January. This all goes to highlight a central point: our biology is tethered to the sun, yet the clocks society uses to keep time are influenced by a tangled web of political and historical factors. Take Germany as an example. At its widest point, the country extends across nine degrees of longitude, and the sun takes four minutes to pass over each of them, which means that the sun rises 36 minutes earlier at its eastern border than at its western one. In a country with the same time zone – and the same TV and radio shows, school start times, and work culture – you might expect that everyone would rise at more or less the same time, but Roenneberg has demonstrated that people’s chronotype – their innate propensity to sleep at a particular time – is shackled to sunrise. On average, Germans wake up four minutes later for every degree of longitude you travel west, meaning that those in the extreme east rise 36 minutes earlier, on average, than those living in the extreme west of the country. A similar pattern has been documented in the US, where those living on the eastern edge of its time zones get up earlier than those on the western edge, where the sun rises later. In some cases, this discrepancy between external and internal time is enormous. A key reason why the Spaniards eat dinner so late is because – positioned as they are at the extreme west of the Central European time zone – 10pm is in fact 7.30pm according to their internal time, which is set by the sunrise. If the UK advanced its clocks to match Germany and France, this would expose people to more light in the evenings, but not the mornings, pushing our internal clocks even later. Yet we’d still be having to get up at the same time each day to go to work or school, potentially making social jetlag even worse. And in mid-December, a switch to CET would mean that the sun would rise in London at 9am, and in Glasgow at 9.40am. Many office workers would be arriving at their desks while it was still dark outside. The sun would then set at 5pm in London, meaning that the standard nine-to-five worker who didn’t go outdoors at lunchtime would spend several months of winter seeing practically no daylight at all. Russia, which switched to permanent summer time in 2011, performed an abrupt U-turn just three years later, citing the ill health and accidents it caused. Sergei Kalashnikov, the chair of the State Duma health committee, claimed that the switch condemned Russians to increased stress and worsening health, because of having to travel to work or to school in pitch darkness. It was also blamed for an increase in morning road accidents. Since 2014, at least some parts of Russia have switched to living on permanent winter time. However, Muscovites now complain of the insomnia brought about by early sunrises during summer, and sales of blackout blinds have soared, which just goes to illustrate the complexity of the issue and how hard it is to get right. There are few members of society who more obviously find it hard to conform to its early-bird demands than teenagers. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that one of Bad Kissingen’s most enthusiastic early adopters of the ChronoCity idea was the local secondary school, the Jack Steinberger Gymnasium, which caters for around 900 pupils aged 10 to 18. Here, a group of older students created a questionnaire and canvassed their fellow pupils about whether it would be desirable to start school at 9am rather than 8am: the majority said it would. They also chronotyped the entire school and calculated the amount of social jetlag its pupils were suffering from each week. Approximately 40% were experiencing two to four hours of social jetlag, while a further 10% were contending with four to six hours – equivalent to flying from Berlin to Bangkok and back – each week. Teenagers are at greater risk of social jetlag than adults because their biological rhythms are naturally shifted later. This makes it harder for them to fall asleep at night, and yet they still must get up in the morning to go to school. To compensate for the sleep deprivation this causes, they then sleep in at weekends. Teenagers’ later chronotype also means that their natural peaks in logical reasoning and alertness occur later than they do in adults. In one study, Canadian researchers compared the cognitive performance of teenagers and adults during the mid-morning, and again, mid-afternoon. The teens’ scores improved by 10% in the afternoon, whereas the adults’ scores deteriorated by 7%. One strategy for dealing with this issue is to delay school start times and allow teenagers to sleep for longer in the mornings. The US state of Minnesota was among the first to investigate the benefits of doing so, after the Minnesota Medical Association sent a memo to all school districts urging them to do something to improve adolescent sleep. As a result, in the late 1990s, several high schools in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina changed their start time from 7.20am to 8.30am. When researchers from the University of Minnesota investigated the impact of the change, they were surprised to find almost unanimous support for it among students, teachers and parents. Students said that they felt less tired during the day, while teachers reported that the children seemed more engaged and focused. School attendance also improved. As news of this success began to spread, other schools started changing their hours as well, but no one had done a proper before-and-after study confirming that it made a real difference. When Judith Owens, a paediatrician with a particular interest in sleep medicine, was called in by her daughter’s high school to talk to staff about the potential benefits of starting school 30 minutes later, she decided to see if they could produce some more robust evidence. “Many felt that half an hour wasn’t going to do anything – it would just disrupt the school schedule,” Owens recalls. She suggested that they collect data on the students’ sleep and mood before and after a three-month trial of the later start. Owens was pleasantly surprised by the results. Just a 30-minute delay in starting school resulted in pupils getting an extra 45 minutes of sleep per night. The percentage of students getting less than seven hours of sleep decreased from 34% to just 7%. The kids also rated themselves as more motivated to participate in a variety of activities. But the thing that really swung it for Owens was the change in her own daughter, Grace. “She was like a different person,” she says. “It was no longer a battle to get her up in the morning; she would be able to eat breakfast; and the start of the day was just pleasant, instead of torture for everybody.” Owens changed her research focus and became involved in drawing up policy on school start times for the American Academy of Pediatrics, based on the best available evidence. In 2014, they issued a policy statement: starting school before 8.30am is a key modifiable contributor to insufficient sleep, as well as circadian rhythm disruption, in the adolescent population. But if school should start later in the day, what time would be best? Most British students don’t start school until around 8.50am, but one recent study concluded that most 18- and 19-year-olds don’t feel mentally sharp until much later, and therefore possibly shouldn’t start their studies until after 11am. In a separate study, the same researchers tested whether moving the start time of an English comprehensive school from 8.50am to 10am made any difference to its 13- to 16-year-old pupils. Rates of absence due to illness fell dramatically following the change: whereas before they had been slightly above the national average, two years after the change they were down to half the national rate. Pupils’ school performance also improved. Even a 10am start would be difficult to impose in countries such as the US, where most adults also start work earlier than in Britain. It would require a change of mindset among parents – as well as a more flexible attitude by employers – but the data suggests that it would make a difference to many pupils. The tide may be turning in schools, but in the workplace, there’s still a way to go. An individual’s chronotype is based on their sleep behaviour on free days, and a simple way to define it is to look at when the mid-point of sleep occurs: if you fall asleep at midnight at weekends and wake up at 8am, your mid-sleep time would be 4am. Roenneberg has discovered that for 60% of people, the mid-sleep time on free days is between 3.30am and 5.30am. Expecting people to wake at 6.30am and then to be mentally sharp when they arrive at work at 8am or 9am involves something of a fight against nature. Like physical performance, your mental skills peak and trough at various times throughout the day. Logical reasoning tends to peak between 10am and noon; problem-solving between noon and 2pm; while mathematical calculations tend to be fastest around 9pm. We also experience a post-lunch dip in alertness and concentration between about 2pm and 3pm. However, these are averages, so an early riser’s peak in problem-solving may arrive several hours earlier than a night owl’s. Research into this area is only just beginning, but managers with early-bird tendencies have been found to judge employees who start work later as less conscientious, and to rate their performance lower, compared to those who share such managers’ sleep preferences. Not only would a greater appreciation of these individual differences, and allowances for different schedules, help to level the playing field, it could boost workplace productivity, and employees’ health and happiness: “If you are forcing an evening person to show up at 7am, all you have is a grumpy employee who sits there and drinks coffee, procrastinating until 9am because he simply can’t focus,” says Stefan Volk, a management researcher at the University of Sydney Business School. Allowing staff to choose their work hours based on their individual sleep preferences is one solution. But is it worth the potential disruption it might cause? In a recent study, American researchers piloted a three-month intervention at a global IT firm, which aimed to improve workers’ sleep and work–life balance by helping them to move from a time-based to a more results-based office culture. Rather than judging colleagues on how they spent their time, workers were encouraged to work at whatever time or place they wanted, so long as they achieved specific results, such as delivering finished projects to customers. Following its introduction, workers’ average sleep time increased by eight minutes per night – adding up to almost an extra hour of sleep over the course of a week. But, perhaps more importantly, the number of times that people reported never or rarely feeling rested upon waking went down. As one employee who previously had to get up at 4.30am in order to get an early start at work and avoid the evening rush hour put it: “If I’m working from home I don’t get up until 6 or 6.30 and I start working at 7 … I get more sleep than I’ve had in years.” In Bad Kissingen, Wieden’s current focus is on establishing a centre for chronobiology in the town, which would provide an academic hub for chronobiology research across Europe. The proponents of the ChronoCity project hope that this will galvanise the town: “If we have a professor of chronobiology based here, who will go out into the community to give lectures and initiate research, it should be easier to open doors to hospitals and businesses and have a greater influence on health,” says the mayor, Kay Blankenburg. There have been some other victories as well. The Stadtbad, which oversees tourist and spa facilities in the town, now offers flexible working to its office staff; while Thorn Plöger, the manager of Bad Kissingen’s rehabilitation hospital, took the idea so seriously that, at one point, he adjusted all the hospital’s clocks, making some a little fast and some a little slow, in order to provoke reflection. “People are always so stressed about the time,” he explains. “They would say, ‘it’s 9 o’clock, I must get my medicine’, or ‘I have a date at midday, so I must leave’; I told them: ‘Take it slowly: entdecke die Zeit.’” Did they respond well, I ask? “No,” he says, with a mischievous smile, “they said: ‘You have to change the clocks back.’” Plöger sighs and shakes his head. “Germany has a problem. People are always watching the clock.” For the ChronoCity initiative to work, he explains, it requires a more flexible mindset: one that says it doesn’t matter when you start work, so long as you get the job done. It’s about internal time, not what the clock on the wall says. Adapted from Chasing the Sun by Linda Geddes, published by Wellcome Collection and Profile Books and available at guardianbookshop.com • Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.In a striped circus tent in Paris, nine pairs of rope-muscled female acrobats twisted and braided around each other until each couple had moved from a standing embrace to a double-height figure, with one woman standing on the shoulders of another. Dressed in custom-made Christian Dior playsuits, they then walked in their teetering pairs to the centre ring, where they rearranged themselves into a human archway for the models who followed them on to the catwalk. With a monumental exhibition about to open at the Victoria and Albert museum, this Christian Dior haute couture made the point that Dior, under first female designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, is as relevant to the future of fashion as to its history. This was Dior as politics and showbiz, not Dior as pomp and ceremony. With an all-female, all-body-shapes acrobatic company and evening dresses that referenced the “androgynous and asexual” aesthetic of the clown, Chiuri showed that there is much more to Dior than the full-skirted “new look”. In the slipstream of the phenomenal success of 2017 film The Greatest Showman, the circus is having a born-again pop cultural moment. The striped tent is a place “where beauty, origin, gender and age are no longer important, and only technique and daring matter,” as Chiuri’s show notes put it. “In a circus parade it is not just about being beautiful, it is about being proud, about being strong, about being bold and having fun,” she said backstage before the show. Rather than filling her head with archive images, her work on the upcoming exhibition had made her “think about fashion as an expression of society. In a fashion exhibition you can see in clothes the values of society changing. My job as the designer of Dior now is to make fashion that is connected to contemporary society.” Chiuri, set designer Shona Heath, and Lina Johansson, choreographer of the London-based Mimbre theatre group, together devised a show in which acrobats formed human pyramids around the models. “Honouring an idea of femininity that is powerful, free and determined,” they aimed for “an inclusive and feminist [show that] echoes Chiuri’s own active commitment”. Since Chiuri took over Dior, the influence of this venerable brand on fashion as it is worn on the street has become more direct. The “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirts from Chiuri’s first show turned feminist-slogan T-shirts from an alternative fashion choice into a worldwide commercial hit that was picked up all along the high street. Quieter but no less pervasive has been the influence of her chosen skirt shape – long and softly full – which has seen skirts with lower hemlines and a softer silhouette become a mainstay in the modern wardrobe. This season, those skirts came in boiled wool, in black tulle and in knotted lamé. Flame embroidery, sequinned hot pants, and ringmaster jackets with flourishes of gold frogging kept the circus spirit alive. Black tailoring, which is what Chiuri most often wears herself, was less attention-grabbing, but brilliantly executed. As the designer noted: “The women who buy haute couture these days don’t just want party dresses.”As Amazon’s workforce has more than doubled over the past three years, workers at Amazon fulfillment center warehouses in the United States have started organizing and pushing toward forming a union to fight back against the company’s treatment of its workers. Amazon’s global workforce reached more than 613,000 employees worldwide according to its latest quarterly earnings report, not including the 100,000 temporary employees the company hired for the holiday season. Just a few months after Amazon opened its first New York-based fulfillment center in Staten Island, workers announced on 12 December the launch of a union push with help from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “Amazon is a very big company. They need to have a union put in place,” said an Amazon worker who requested to remain anonymous. The worker has been with the company for two years and was transferred to Staten Island when it opened in October 2018. “They overwork you and you’re like a number to them. During peak season and Prime season, they give you 60 hours a week. In July, I had Prime week and worked 60 hours. The same day I worked overtime, I got into a bad car accident because I was falling asleep behind the wheel.” Other employees cited working conditions as one of the prevailing factors for wanting to form a union. “I support the effort. They have to be more supportive toward their employees,” said another Amazon employee in Staten Island. “Right now, at that fulfillment center, if an employee is a picker, they want that person to pick up 400 items per hour, picking each item every seven seconds.” They noted that to keep up with that hourly rate, workers cannot take bathroom breaks or they risk Tot (time off task points) that could be used to justify job termination. In a statement during the announcement of the union push, picker Rashad Long claimed workers are overworked, pressured with frivolous disciplinary actions and security lines at the exit cut into breaks and extended work shifts, unpaid. “We are not robots. We are human beings. We cannot come into work after only four hours of sleep and be expected to be fully energized and ready to work. That’s impossible,” said Long. “I feel like all the company cares about is getting their products out to the customers as quickly humanly as possible, no matter what that means for us workers in the end.” Amazon said in a statement: “To claim Staten Island workers want a union is not a fair representation of the vast majority of the employees at this site.” In Minnesota, workers at several Amazon facilities were the first to force management to the bargaining table over the past few months after workers held protests in the summer. “The end of September and October, we had private meetings with Amazon management,” said Nimo Omar, an organizer and founder of the Awood Center, an east African worker-led organization in the Minneapolis area. “We met with Amazon management, and we had workers from across five different warehouses in that meeting talking about working conditions at Amazon, from warehouse workers to truck drivers who deliver packages to some of the leads in these warehouses as well.” Workers held a rally outside the Shakopee fulfillment center on 14 December to continue to pressure Amazon to improve conditions for workers. “If you get injured, they don’t treat you well, they don’t care,” said 24-year-old Hibaq Mohamed, who has worked at the Shakopee facility for over two years. She said every two to three months, Amazon increases hourly productivity rates workers must meet to keep their jobs. “During summertime, we don’t get enough AC, in the winter we don’t get enough heat. We want to change the imbalance at Amazon.” Hafsa Hassan, 21, who has worked at the fulfillment center since July 2017, claimed managers create a hostile work environment that prevents workers from seeking proper medical treatment, taking bathroom breaks, or reporting safety issues. “A lot of workers aren’t comfortable going to managers and that has a lot to do with rate. There’s an obsession with rate,” said Hassan. “The rate people have to make every single hour, every hour it’s mentioned, and if a person isn’t doing well, the managers will pick on them. Sometimes you can hear it from different departments.” Amazon said it “did not recognize” these allegations. “We work hard every day to ensure all of our employees are treated fairly and with dignity and respect,” the company said. Amazon fulfillment centers aren’t the only part of Amazon where workers started organizing efforts in 2018. The online retail giant bought Whole Foods in August 2017 for $13.7bn. A little over a year later, workers launched Whole Worker, a unionizing effort in response to changes made by Amazon since the acquisition. Shortly after the group announced its founding, an employee leaked an Amazon training video where managers were taught how to discourage labor organizing efforts. In a 9 December email sent out by Whole Worker leaders to thousands of Whole Foods employees, the group announced solidarity with other organizing efforts across Amazon, including co-hosting a rally in Queens against the HQ2 project. “While we pursue our long-term goals, we are looking for other ways to collectively use our voices regarding unfair and potentially illegal compensation practices,” said the email. “We at Whole Worker believe that all Whole Foods and Amazon team members deserve a say in our workplaces and that coming together to negotiate a contract as a formal union is the only way to ensure that our voices are truly heard.” In an email, an Amazon spokesperson told the Guardian: “Amazon maintains an open-door policy that encourages employees to bring their comments, questions, and concerns directly to their management team for discussion and resolution. We firmly believe this direct connection is the most effective way to understand and respond to the needs of our workforce. “We provide a $15 minimum wage for all US hourly employees, opportunities for career growth, industry-leading benefits, and hands-on training using emerging technology. Associates are the heart and soul of our operations, and in fact, they are also our number one recruiter for new hires by regularly encouraging friends and family to apply for roles. We encourage anyone to compare our pay, benefits and workplace to other major employers across the country.”Facebook paid users as young as 13 to install an app that gave the company access to everything their phone sent or received over the internet. The company has been accused of exploiting a loophole in Apple’s privacy regulations to publish the iPhone app, which provided it with data it used to keep ahead of youth trends. As well as sparking renewed privacy concerns, the discovery could revive the cold war between the two businesses, which have previously attacked each other in the press over issues of privacy and security. Facebook was found to be using a voluntarily installed virtual private network (VPN) to route all data from participants’ devices through its own servers – despite the fact that Apple had removed a previous Facebook app that did the same thing, Onavo, from the iOS App Store over privacy violations. Facebook now says it will shut down the app, called Facebook Research, on iOS and maintains it did nothing wrong, and that the service was not a replacement for the Onavo VPN. According to TechCrunch, which first reported the existence of Facebook Research, the company paid users aged 13 to 35 a monthly fee, of up to $20, to install the app on iOS and Android. When they did, all of their internet data, however they connected and whatever app they were using, was funnelled through the company’s servers, allowing it to keep track of their activities on other services. Onavo Protect was used by the company for the same purpose but was removed from the iOS App Store in June 2018 when Apple implemented new rules that banned the collection of “information about which other apps are installed on a user’s device for the purposes of analytics or advertising/marketing”. Facebook Research avoided Apple’s enforcement of those privacy rules by asking users to install it using a feature called an “enterprise developer certificate”, which is intended to allow companies to build applications for internal use without needing to publish them to the App Store. In a statement, Facebook hit back at the reporting. “Key facts about this market research program are being ignored. Despite early reports, there was nothing ‘secret’ about this; it was literally called the Facebook Research App. “It wasn’t ‘spying’ as all of the people who signed up to participate went through a clear on-boarding process asking for their permission and were paid to participate. Finally, less than 5% of the people who chose to participate in this market research program were teens. All of them with signed parental consent forms.” But Will Strafach, the developer of Guardian Protect, an iOS firewall (unrelated to the Guardian newspaper), described the move on Twitter as “the most defiant behaviour I have ever seen by an App Store developer … I still don’t know how to best articulate how absolutely floored I am by Facebook thinking they can get away with this.” Addressing the issue of consent, Strafach acknowledged that Facebook said users were provided with “extensive information about the type of data we collect and how they can participate”, but argued that “they do not inform users of the massive amount of access you hand them when hitting ‘Trust’ on their root certificate. I do not think users can reasonably consent without this knowledge.” Facebook also said that the program was not built to replace Onavo, arguing that it started in 2016, while Onavo was only removed from Apple’s App Store in 2018. But the market research program appears to have been only active on Android from 2016 to 2018, with the iOS version launching after Onavo was pulled. Indeed, according to Strafach, the app reportedly contains numerous references to Onavo in its code. Already, some are speculating that the decision to bypass Apple’s approval process could lead to an escalation in the conflict between the two companies. John Gruber, an Apple blogger with an inside line to the iPhone maker, speculated that it could even result in the Facebook app being pulled off the store in retaliation. “To my eyes, this action constitutes Facebook declaring war on Apple’s iOS privacy protections,” Gruber wrote. “I don’t think it would be out of line for Apple to revoke Facebook’s developer certificate, maybe even pull their apps from the App Store. No regular developer would get away with this. Facebook is betting that their apps are too popular, that they can do what they want and Apple has to sit back and take it.” Facebook declined to comment further to the Guardian.It was time once again on Friday morning for Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, to go on television and say that the arrest of a Donald Trump campaign associate had nothing to do with the president. This time the arrestee was Roger Stone, a longtime Trump political adviser, taken into custody in a 6am raid by FBI agents on his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Stone was charged with lying to Congress, obstructing an investigation and witness tampering. In the past, Stone has denied all wrongdoing. As usual, the White House moved swiftly to dismiss the arrest. “This has nothing to do with the president and certainly nothing to do with the White House,” Sanders said on CNN. “This is something that has to do solely with that individual.” But influential members of Congress and legal analysts described a sharply different view of what the arrest meant. Perhaps most troubling for Trump was a tweet by the Democratic representative Jerry Nadler, the freshly minted chairman of the House judiciary committee – where articles of impeachment against Trump would originate, if Democrats decided to bring them. Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn... What did the President know and when did he know it? Nadler’s tweet named other Trump associates to plead guilty or be convicted of crimes since the election. The line of questioning was famously posed by a Republican senator during the Watergate hearings of 1973-74, which culminated in the resignation of Richard Nixon – on whose campaign Stone first cut his teeth as a political streetfighter and whose face Stone has tattooed on his back. Nadler has described a hesitancy to open impeachment hearings, and the Democrats seem unlikely to make such a move during the partial government shutdown, the longest in US history, which appears to be damaging Trump more deeply with each passing day. But renewed talk of impeachment represents only one threat that Trump and his campaign and associates could face with the arrest of Stone, which could also put the president in significant legal jeopardy, analysts said. In the indictment of Stone, special counsel Robert Mueller describes a line of communication between a senior Trump campaign official, who appears from previously published emails to be the former White House strategist Steve Bannon; Stone; and the WikiLeaks organization, which during the 2016 election battle published emails stolen from the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and elsewhere. Mueller has not charged Stone or any member of the Trump campaign with a conspiracy to defraud the United States by tampering in the election, as the special counsel did in the case of Russians accused of email hacking. But the alleged line of communication between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks could represent criminal activity along those lines, legal analysts said. Or the alleged communication between the campaign and other parties could violate laws forbidding coordination between campaigns and outside political groups. “Focus on underlying conduct revealed in [the Stone indictment],” tweeted Ryan Goodman, the co-editor-in-chief of the Just Security blog. “The coordination between Trump Campaign and WikiLeaks via Stone gives rise to potential criminal campaign law violations.” “Today’s indictment makes clear that Roger Stone had something to hide,” tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. “He desperately tried to hide his efforts to coordinate with WikiLeaks from Congress and the public. Why does Donald Trump care so much about ensuring that Stone doesn’t flip? What does *he* have to hide?” The Stone indictment appears to strengthen the case that the Trump campaign coordinated some of its own messaging with real-time actions by WikiLeaks, which the current secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has called a “non-state, hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors, like Russia”. In the indictment, Mueller asserts that Stone was told in advance of a WikiLeaks dump related to Clinton’s health, and the “Trump Campaign – and Russia – then kicked into gear on Clinton’s health”, Goodman pointed out. Other lines in the indictment could represent legal vulnerability for as-yet unnamed members of the Trump campaign. “A senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information WikiLeaks had,” the indictment says, without identifying who was giving the directions. The case against Stone – or against Trump or his associates – could change in unexpected ways depending on material that federal agents seized in the raid on Stone’s Florida home and a simultaneous raid on a Manhattan address tied to Stone on Friday. Material seized in the second raid included hard drives, the New York Times reported; any communications between Stone and WikiLeaks intermediaries or other actors could be significant. Mueller has signaled that he would follow justice department guidelines barring the indictment of a sitting president, which means that any legal vulnerability Trump might face would not appear to include looming criminal charges. But the descending spiral of public disapproval that Trump faces from the shutdown could make him more vulnerable to a move by Democrats to take the first steps toward impeachment. In any case, the arrest of Stone has made it all the harder for the White House to credibly argue that none of the wrongdoing alleged – and in many cases proven in court – by Mueller is connected with Trump himself. “It is completely normal for lots of smart, accomplished professionals to lie like crazy, tell other people to lie like crazy, and commit multiple felonies in the process, all in order to hide the fact that … nothing nefarious actually happened,” tweeted University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck.“Completely.”A longstanding conspiracy theory that the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess was replaced by a doppelganger in prison has been debunked. For years, there were rumours that the prisoner known as Spandau #7 at the Berlin jail was an impostor substituted in to take the place of the deputy Führer of the Third Reich. But now scientists say analysis of blood samples from Spandau #7 and a living relative of Hess has put an end to the theory. The inmate was Hess after all. “No match would have supported the impostor theory, but finally we got a match,” said Prof Jan Cemper-Kiesslich, of the University of Salzburg, a co-author of the research. Hess was captured after a solo flight and parachute landing in Scotland in 1941, where he apparently hoped to negotiate a peace deal. He was held at various locations including the Tower of London before being tried at Nuremberg and given a life sentence. He arrived at Spandau in 1947 and remained there until his apparent suicide in 1987, by which point he was the jail’s sole prisoner. But an enduring rumour before Hess even reached Spandau was that the inmate was a doppelganger. The study’s authors say his doctor at Spandau prison was among those who believed the theory, pointing to doubts about his journey to Scotland, his refusal to see relatives until 1969 and his “claimed amnesia”. The theory was also believed in the highest echelons of political life, including by the former US president Franklin Roosevelt. Hess’s family, however, disputed the idea. Writing in the journal Forensic Science International Genetics, Cemper-Kiedslich and colleagues report that their conclusion is based on analysis of a blood sample taken from Spandau #7 in 1982. The sample was hermetically sealed on a microscope slide kept for years for teaching purposes by another of the study’s authors, Rick Wahl, a former US army pathologist. It was a fortunate situation: Hess’s body was disinterred and cremated in 2011 to avoid his grave becoming a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis. The team tracked down a distant male relative of Hess, whose identity they are careful to protect. According to the New Scientist, which first reported on the study, the man agreed to give a DNA sample and the team compared it with that of Spandau #7, looking at DNA markers across the genome.. Cemper-Kiesslich told the Guardian the key was to look particularly at the Y-chromosome. “Usually the DNA markers that are used for paternity testing don’t work out for distant relatives. But on the other hand we knew that both sample donors [if Spandau #7 was Hess] shared a common paternal line,” he said. With Y-chromosomes passed down from father to son, that offered the possibility of a different analysis. “Persons with an unbroken paternal line display the same set of DNA markers on the Y chromosome,” said Cemper-Kiesslich. The authors say the people who carried out the analysis were unaware of the story of the samples until after the results were in. The results showed that the two people from whom the samples were taken were more than 99.99% likely to be related. “We are extremely sure that both samples [originate] from the same paternal line,” Cemper-Kiesslich said. “The person the slide sample was taken from indeed was Rudolf Hess.”While most things seem to have been going down the pan, there’s been one phenomenon making a clean sweep: Mrs Hinch. The cleaning craze that swept social media in 2018 shows no sign of abating this year – and it could well help you through the January blues. For those not in the know, Hinch is an Essex hairdresser catapulted to fame through her highly watchable Instagram stories showing her … cleaning. Her followers have skyrocketed over a few months to 1.4 million people. This “Hinch army” faithfully watch her clean her immaculate house as she shares her domestic tips, which include giving names to all her products and working through a list of chores (mostly accompanied by a snatch of high-octane music) and always – always – ending the day with putting the sink to bed at night. It doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, it’s addictive. Her meteoric rise is no flash in a pan (or Flash in a toilet pan). We’re suddenly surrounded by a surge of love for keeping everything spick and span. From Facebook groups for people addicted to the disinfectant Zoflora (you’d think it was the elixir of life, the way people are stockpiling it) to the festive TV adverts advocating giving a spray that prevents the smell of poo as Secret Santa presents, cleaning has been promoted to the status of a hobby. And there’s a flourishing movement to get our homes as dirt-free, as sparkly and as fragrant as humanly possible. While the country is falling apart around us, with Brexit bananas, austerity anguish and climate meltdown misery, we need to turn to bleaching our toilets. This is no coincidence. Cleaning helps us find our way through a dirty world. It can heal us, soothe us, fix us. There’s an almost instant gratification to cleaning. No job is too large, too daunting, too much of a brain drain. From dusting to vacuuming to mopping, there’s a simple, ritualistic process we can follow, and which can make us feel as if we have achieved something. We have been able to make a positive impact on the negative turmoil of the world. Work is precarious and money is tight, but my sink is spotless and still smells of Festive Fireside. There’s also a mindfulness to cleaning. Concentrating on a task – be that just wiping down your kitchen cupboards with your Minkeh – physically and mentally allows us to escape whatever’s going on around us. It lets troubled minds find a place of peacefulness. Following a process from start to finish gets us to focus on just that one job in hand, dispelling all other anxieties and worries. Cleaning soothes. I know this. At the end of last year, my brother died – suddenly, unexpectedly and, unfathomably, aged 64, from a heart attack. In the immediate aftermath of the news, I was at a loss as to what to do. So I got out my neglected collection of cleaning products, and for a few hours, I scrubbed my bathroom, from top to bottom, sobbing intermittently, going through memories as I tackled mould, coming to terms with death as I removed layers of dust. At the end of my weeping housework, my bathroom looked clean for the first time in a long while. But more than that: I felt satisfied, soothed, and ready to return to the world stronger. Maybe in years gone by, when something so awful happened, we would have gone out and found resolve in a pint or three, or found happiness through a bout of retail therapy. But austerity’s purse strings have made a mindless bender in the pub or the shop more hassle than helpful. Sophie Hinchcliffe herself admits cleaning helped her with worry and anxiety attacks; many of her followers feel similarly. So don’t scoff at Dave and Vera, but rather try a spot of Hinching yourself. You may find that, like the Hinch army, you’re not just sweeping away the day’s dirt, you’re sweeping away the daily grind. • Kathryn Hearn is a Guardian assistant production editorBritish nationals settled in Italy have landed a new year Brexit break after the Italian government announced they would remain legal residents of the country in the event of no deal. High level officials from the Ministero degli Affari Esteri told volunteers in the British in Italy campaign group that they “would continue to be legally resident with their existing rights to work” if Theresa May does not get her withdrawal agreement ratified and the UK crashes out of the EU on 29 March. “Our worst fears are over. This makes Italy the first EU27 country to publicly declare their plans for citizens’ rights post-Brexit, and to provide the reassurance we have been awaiting so long,” said the group in a statement. The Italian breakthrough comes days after immigration officials in Berlin vowed to open an urgent registration process to secure legal status will be in place for them in the event of the UK leaving the EU with no deal. The Berlin authorities delivered their promise quickly opening the registration process on Thursday 3 January, and telling worried Britons that if there was no deal they would be briefly exempt from German law requiring residency documentation. “From 30.03.2019 onwards British citizens in Germany will, for an initial period of three months until 30.06.2019, be exempted from the requirement to possess a German residency title,” they said on their website. Before Christmas the French also sought to reassure British nationals in France of their status post-Brexit. Nathalie Loiseau, the Europe minister, said that France would guarantee the residence, employment and welfare rights of the 160,000 resident British citizens living there provided that Britain offered the same guarantees to French expatriates. There are an estimated 60,000 British nationals living and working in Italy who were concerned at the prospect of becoming “irregular” with no rights to reside, work, or access national healthcare or social security if there was no deal. While British in Italy says they feel reassured that they will not now be illegal, they are concerned that they lose some of their rights including the freedom to move to another EU country or work or offer services in another EU country. This is because negotiations on these rights were set aside, to be discussed at the next Brexit phase of talks on the future relationship between the EU and the UK. “I feel a mixture of extreme relief that whatever happens with Brexit we will be able to continue to live legally in our adopted home, but this is coupled with a great anger that I and so many others have been left in this situation for so long when it could have been settled on 27 June 2016,” said Denise Abel, member of British in Italy. But she added: “I thank the Italian government from the bottom of my heart for doing what was promised to us, making it possible for us to continue to live our lives as before. The situation is not perfect for those of us who rely on freedom of movement for our work but at least we Brits in Italy can sleep better in our beds knowing we will not become illegal in our own homes.” A fellow member of the campaign group, Carole-Anne Richards, said she had “mixed feelings” about the news but her immediate feeling was “one of relief” that she won’t be illegal. “At the end of the day the UK government has not ensured my rights will be the same as promised – they will be significantly diminished,” she said. The absence of freedom of movement affects Britons who work in multiple EU countries and has lead to accusations that the EU and May are leaving them “landlocked”. According to one of the representative of British in Italy, the Italian state representatives assured them “they are working on legislation that will be in place by 29 March, so in the event of no deal we will all be legally resident and entitled work and continue with our existing rights now, as they are now”. They said they are hoping to replicate the rights Britons have had under Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement if that is ratified. This will mean British nationals can continue to live and work in the country, but they will still be without some of their rights including the freedom of movement to live or work in another EU country, or the ability to offer services in another country. British in Europe, the coalition of campaign groups for Britons facing the loss of rights because of Brexit, have accused the UK of abandoning an estimated 1 million Britons who would be left high and dry if the UK crashes out of the block. Theresa May and the EU have called on EU member states to be “generous” and to ensure Britons’ rights are protected, but there is underlying anger that in 2017 the EU offered to roll over 100% of rights to all those individuals in the UK and the continent affected by Brexit. The UK did not respond to this offer and instead came up with its own version of immigration rules for EU citizens in the UK forcing the EU to negotiate on these terms.Amazon has called the conclusions of a recent report into US author earnings flawed, after the Authors Guild suggested that the retail giant’s dominance could be partly responsible for the “a crisis of epic proportions” affecting writers in the US. The report from the writers’ body, published last week, highlighted the statistic that median income from writing-related work fell to $6,080 (£4,730) in 2017, down 42% from 2009, with literary authors particularly affected. Raising “serious concerns about the future of American literature”, the writers’ body singled out the growing dominance of Amazon for particular blame. “Amazon (which now controls 72% of the online book market in the US) puts pressure on [publishers] to keep costs down and takes a large percentage, plus marketing fees, forcing publishers to pass on their losses to authors,” said the report. But on Wednesday, Amazon took issue with the report’s conclusions. “The Authors Guild has acknowledged that there are significant differences between the data it compared in its recent survey and years prior, noting that ‘the data does not line up’,” said an Amazon statement. “As a result, many of the survey’s conclusions are flawed or contradictory. For instance, the survey also shows that earnings increased almost 17% for traditionally published authors and 89% for independent [self-published] authors, and that full-time authors saw their median income rise 13% since 2013.” The Authors Guild report did find that “authors first published prior to 2014 increased author-related income no matter which publishing strategy they used”. Traditionally published writers’ income rose by 17% from 2013 to 2017, to $10,150, while self-published writers’ income increased by 89% over the same period, to $3,400. Full-time authors did also saw their median royalty income rise 13%, to $12,400, since 2013. However, the report also found that the combined median royalty income for all published authors, including those who wrote part-time, was down 11% in 2017, compared with 2013. It pointed out that while self-published authors overall were earning more, they still earned 58% less than traditionally published writers in 2017. Authors Guild executive director Mary Rasenberger defended the survey, saying that the 17% rise in traditionally published writers’ income cited by Amazon did not include the full pool of authors surveyed, but only those who had published and earned money in both 2013 and 2017. “As we have explained to Amazon and state on our website, if you include all surveyed authors – including those who first published since 2013 – the number is lower: median annual earnings from all writing-related sources of $6,080 versus $8,170,” she said. “As the Authors Guild states on its website, the recent survey does not align perfectly with the data from our prior surveys because we surveyed a much broader pool in 2018, which we felt was important to get a full picture of the author landscape today. That does not make the conclusions ‘flawed or contradictory’ … we believe that the data does indicate a general income decline for published authors as whole, as well as Guild members.” While Amazon highlighted the fact that the average total income of US authors with earnings is currently $43,247, the Authors Guild said this figure was skewed by the multimillion-selling authors who responded to the survey, and that the median was the more accurate measure of income, as such high earners were “far and few between”. “The biggest takeaways from the survey are that respondents who identified themselves as full-time book authors still only earned a median income of $20,300, well below the federal poverty line for a family of three or more. That baseline fact should cause some concern,” said Rasenberger. “Also, earnings for all authors from their books alone declined 21% to $3,100 in 2017 from $3,900 in 2013.” Rasenberger said it was a good sign that self-publishing income had increased, and that overall writing-related earnings had stayed similar to 2013, rising for respondents who had been publishing for more than five years. “This suggests that authors who are still in the business are getting better at finding ways to bring in supplemental income related to their writing.”It seems perverse yet unavoidably sensible to suggest that, of the six British players entered in the 2019 Australian Open, Andy Murray is by no means the most likely to reach the second week of a tournament he has been a finalist five times. He will do his best to get there, but recent history suggests the former world No 1 has less chance of making a memorable impact than Britain’s best woman, Johanna Konta, or even the world No 14 Kyle Edmund, cut down by a knee injury in Brisbane and forced to withdraw from the Sydney Open. Edmund’s declaration that he would “do everything I can to be fit for the first grand slam of the year” did not inspire confidence that he will be able to replicate his run to the semi-finals a year ago, although his team insist his injury is not serious. Murray’s fitness remains an ongoing puzzle. He confessed after a good win and a bad loss in his comeback in Brisbane this week that he had no idea how long he would stay in the game, but the angst in his voice suggested he will not go meekly. His hip still hinders his lateral movement, although his all-court speed is more convincing than during any of his 12 matches last year, when he beat two top-20 players in five wins. Certainly, he looked the part in beating James Duckworth in the opening round, but was disturbingly off the pace in two quick sets the following day when Daniil Medvedev put him out of a tournament he has won twice and in which he had been unbeaten. Katie Boulter and Heather Watson, who are warming up in Hobart, and Cam Norrie, who plays Benoît Paire in Auckland – where he grew up – complete the British sextet for the first grand slam of the season, which starts on 14 January . Still, for all their best ambitions, any of them would be pleased get past the first round. Which leaves Konta, 37 in the world and determined to put a nightmare 2018 behind her, as the standard bearer. Much has changed for Konta since she went out in straight sets to Agnieszka Radwanska in the first round here a year ago: her coach, her management and, more importantly, her strategy. She was candid over lunch in London a few weeks ago when she spoke about the reason for her dramatic slide in the rankings after a season when she had announced her arrival at the summit of her sport with three breakthrough titles and a run to the Wimbledon semi-finals. “I basically just ran out of steam,” she said. To fix that, she will play more selectively, she said, organising quality time to breath life back into her game and her enthusiasm for a sport she began in this city more than two decades ago. “I’m going to have cycles of tournaments, rest, train, tournaments, rest train,” she said. The plan began brilliantly in Brisbane, when she played the former US Open champion Sloane Stephens off the court, then dipped alarmingly by losing in straight sets to world No 46, Ajla Tomljanovic. It was a worrying echo of her struggles last summer but Konta’s self-belief has rarely been anything less than 100 %, despite serial losses to players a long way below her in the rankings. Konta’s mood will have improved after beating the Czech Miriam Kolodziejova 6-3, 6-2 in 71 minutes in Sydney yesterday. She acknowledged change was needed. So out went her American coach, Michael Joyce, after less than a full season, and in came the Frenchman Dimitri Zavialoff. She and Joyce had a frank discussion in Wuhan that both acknowledged, “We’d kind of come to the end of our road,” as Konta put it – and it was all done a week later in Beijing. Konta says of Zavialoff, her fifth coach in 10 years: “It is much more of a partnership than I have had in previous coaching relationships. He encourages me to have a lot more input. There has to be a certain amount of compatibility. The personalities start to evolve and then, when you spend more time together in stressful situations, it becomes more apparent how well the two work together. But that takes time.” Elsewhere, there is calm for one man seemingly immune to stress. Roger Federer’s 22nd successive win in Australia – since losing in the Hopman Cup two years ago – saw off Alexander Zverev and put Switzerland on the board against Germany in Perth on Saturday. Federer looked sharp, relaxed and happy. “It puts me in a good position [for Melbourne] which is wonderful,” he said to an adoring audience of more than 14,000. Wonderful for Federer . Not so great for opponents waiting for him to grow old more disgracefully. Novak Djokovic’s surprise loss to Roberto Bautista Agut in Doha the previous evening will have put a spring in the 37-year-old’s step and it is not beyond him to win his 21st slam in Melbourne, scene of his remarkable comeback after seven months out with a knee injury in 2017.For a good period in the middle ages, Europeans totally forgot how to make concrete. The Roman recipe for the tough stuff – opus caementicium – was lost for roughly 600 years after the fall of the empire, and the modern formula we know and love wasn’t invented for another 300 years after that. I’m telling you this because human progress isn’t linear. It’s fine to go backwards and forwards – to retread old ground and improve old ideas. Yet if someone approached Theo Paphitis with a cinder block tomorrow, he’d rightly tell them to get the hell out of the Dragons’ Den. So why do we keep falling over ourselves to praise Silicon Valley for reinventing concrete – or, if you prefer your analogies more straightforward, the wheel? By competing with existing infrastructure, Lyft Shuttle could leave poorer people with fewer and worse transit options Last week, the New York Times ran a piece praising a “radically new” fee plan offered by a Silicon Valley-based university. Instead of charging tuition fees upfront, Lambda School allows students to pay back their debts after graduation – charging them proportionally, based on their salary. Sound familiar? Anyone with experience of the English education system will balk at the New York Times’s insistence that Silicon Valley is “breaking the status quo” – this has, after all, been the tuition fee model in England for 30 years. It’s not that this is necessarily a bad idea – the average American graduate owes $37,172 (£30,000) in student loans, with studies predicting that inflexible monthly repayments will mean recent grads can’t retire until they’re 75. Yet it is the language we use to praise these allegedly “new” ideas that needs reform. It’s not “radical” if it already exists. Take, for instance, the ride-hailing app Lyft’s 2017 invention, Lyft Shuttle. For a small fee, passengers share a single car that follows a predesignated route – instead of being picked up and dropped off at their chosen location, they must walk to or from one of the determined stops. It’s convenient! It’s affordable! It’s a bus. Tweets mocking Lyft Shuttle instantly went viral, but there’s actually very little that’s funny about it. Not only is the whole idea arguably classist (online, people have praised Lyft Shuttle for allowing them to get around without sitting next to common riff-raff), in practice, the service could harm investment in existing public transport. As Salon writer Keith A Spencer pointed out in 2017, by competing with existing infrastructure, Lyft Shuttle could leave poorer people with fewer and worse transit options than they had already. Not only is Silicon Valley wrapping up an old idea in a new bow, they’re threatening much-needed public services. Then again, some “inventions” are just funny. Last year, the fashion company Atoms promised to “modernise the footwear experience” by offering tennis shoes in quarter sizes (for the bargain price of £140!). In 2017 a team of Swedish inventors released their Pause Pod – a “private pop-up space” where busy employees could relax, which – yes, yes, you’ve guessed it – was just a tent. “We never claimed that it’s not a tent,” the Scandinavian developers offered in their defence. The examples are in fact endless: in 2017 We Work launched co-living spaces which were essentially just student dorms with added yoga; a startup’s brand new Bodega boxes were just vending machines; and no one will ever forget Juicero (rest in peace), the £300 machine that – investors realised all too late – essentially just poured juice. Most recently, everyone’s favourite Silicon Valley cyborg, Elon Musk, was mocked for his loop system, which provides underground tracks for cars. Australians felt this borrowed heavily from Adelaide’s O-Bahn system, which has existed for buses since 1986. Again, there’s nothing wrong with attempting to improve old inventions (though I have to politely insist that the relevant parties bring back pre-sugar tax Irn Bru). It’s just egos and the language employed by Silicon Valley are automatically annoying. While products might be marginal improvements on their predecessors, they often come with a host of new problems – such as Lyft’s dystopian insistence that a driver who gave birth on the job was somehow “impressive”, instead of a victim of lax modern labour laws. Not only are these products nowhere near as revolutionary as they sound, these companies and their inventors often ignore the majority of people to improve lives for a privileged minority. They’re too busy operating in a bubble of their own perceived brilliance to know what might work – old and new – in the wider world. • Amelia Tait is a freelance features writerEven a few years ago the notion that the Six Nations might be harder to win than a World Cup would have been ridiculous. Suddenly that is how it feels: whoever lifts the Webb Ellis Cup in Japan in November will not have met more highly-ranked opponents in more hostile surroundings than they will encounter on the cold playing fields of Europe in the next two months. Take Ireland, the defending champions and the second highest ranked team in the world. Their RWC pool contains four other teams ranked 7th, 11th, 16th and 19th respectively, and they could conceivably reach the final in Yokohama without facing opponents ranked higher than fifth. Contrast that with their more immediate task: five successive hardcore challenges, four against tough, improving teams ranked among the world’s top 10. It explains why expectations are so high for a tournament that, New Zealand apart, now has a higher percentage of the planet’s leading players than it ever has. In the fast-changing world of rugby nothing stays the same indefinitely but, for now, Europe holds the balance of oval-ball global power. Whoever wins the Six Nations will be laying down a serious marker for 2019’s other high-profile rugby tournament. Predicting who that may be with absolute confidence is as hazardous as it has ever been. In this giant-sized version of Cluedo, the only sure thing is the murder weapon: the lead piping is everyone’s go-to implement in the modern game. Whether or not a green, white, blue or red hand will apply the fatal blow – and precisely where the coup de grâce will be delivered – will keep us all guessing right up until the final round of games on 16 March. Even Ireland cannot rely on their outstanding 2018 form to give them much of a head start. No one has ever won back-to-back Six Nations grand slams. France were the last country to do so in 1997-98 when the tournament was still a five-team affair. Winning the title in consecutive seasons is also rare: it has happened only five times since 1999. Partly it is the alternate home and away rhythms of the championship, partly everyone else’s passionate desire to make amends for the previous year. Mix all this together and no team ever win the Six Nations by accident. History exerts its subtle pressures too. Did you know England have never won an outright title in a year ending with a nine since the world’s oldest rugby tournament began in the 1880s? The nearest they have come was in 1939 when, despite two of their three games being at Twickenham, the championship ended in a three-way tie. To improve that sickly sequence Eddie Jones’s side have little option but to win either in Dublin on Saturday or in Cardiff on 23 February. Neither scenario is out of the question but the feeling persists that, for assorted reasons, England are still six months behind where they would like to be. They may yet peak at the World Cup, as Jones keeps insisting they will, and this Six Nations may just have arrived a fraction too soon. Yes, England possess a smattering of World XV contenders but they have only really clicked for spells here and there. Is the real England the one who almost beat New Zealand in November or the one made to look mortal by Japan? Last season they were outwitted in Edinburgh and Paris and trailed in fifth. They will finish higher this time but, unless Owen Farrell, Maro Itoje and Billy Vunipola can jolt Ireland out of their confident stride the title may prove elusive. The opening weekend will do much to shape the fortunes of all concerned. Wales’s teamsheet for Paris may be missing Taulupe Faletau but it still contains more than enough talent, drive and experience to make a big impact. How Warren Gatland would love to send Jones’s England home from Cardiff empty-handed, not least to remind Twickenham’s top brass of his credentials as and when his opposite number departs. France, for their part, finally have a joined-up half-back combination, the great Wesley Fofana is back for a final Six Nations fling and losing at home to Fiji in November has given everyone a kick up the derriere. If it is hard to see them as title contenders just yet, their progress will be of particular interest to England, with whom they will share a World Cup pool. Keep an eye out for Demba Bamba, a precocious young tighthead with the size and nifty footwork to make a lively impression. Gregor Townsend’s Scotland will also be seeking to take the game to all and sundry; any backline containing Finn Russell and Stuart Hogg are always going to be worth watching. The question is whether, minus the injured John Barclay and Hamish Watson, the Scots can be as effective around the all-important breakdown as they have been on their best days. It is not hard to see them causing their three visitors to Murrayfield problems; their performances on the road will determine whether they finish in the top half. Italy will be as spirited as ever but standards across Europe continue to rise. Which brings us back to Ireland, such worthy winners last year and highly unlikely to suffer a vertiginous fall from grace. It could well boil down to a final-day showdown in Cardiff but Joe Schmidt’s team increasingly relish the biggest occasions. Ireland with the lead piping in the Principality Stadium remains 2019’s likeliest conclusion.The world needs to understand what Brazil has become, before it’s too late. Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s Brazil is not just another country that elected a far-right president at a time when the world’s most powerful nation is led by Donald Trump. It’s not just South America’s version of the current trend of countries sliding into authoritarianism, like we’ve seen in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and the Philippines. It’s not simply a peripheral nation with a pathetic leader. Brazil has become the apocalyptic vanguard that signals how radical this moment is – one with the power to worsen the climate crisis at top speed and blight the entire planet. Bolsonaro was elected in October, on his pledge to go back ‘50 years'. Brazil lived under a military dictatorship then The election of Bolsonaro is a response to what we might call civilisation’s new discontent. Maybe people can’t identify the source of their anxiety, which has driven up the consumption of tranquillisers and sedatives. The average citizen might apply more familiar labels to the corrosion of their quality of life, air, and water; to a relentless fear of the “other”; to the feeling they’re walking in quicksand. But what’s underpinning this new discontent pervading all areas of human experience is our climate crisis. Bolsonaro was elected in October, on his pledge to go back “50 years”. Fifty years ago, Brazil lived under a military dictatorship. For Bolsonaro and his followers, who are outright defenders of torture and the elimination of adversaries, it was a glorious era. Despite the terrifying menace of nuclear war, the world was still a place where science promised nothing but progress and solutions – it delivered no bad news, like global warming, that led to limitations on an individual’s daily life or on government actions. It was a time when white, heterosexual men held power and knew precisely who they were. They may have faced some resistance from minorities, but they still enjoyed absolute hegemony. We cannot comprehend what is now happening in Brazil – and around the world – unless we understand that our culture wars are tightly bound up with humanity’s need to say goodbye to 20th-century illusions of power and face a planet made more hostile by human hand. Things will soon reach catastrophic levels if nations and their residents do not unite in a global effort to do something extremely hard and unpopular: impose limits on ourselves to counteract global warming. The election of Bolsonaro ties all this together like no other event. The Bolsonaro administration promises a “new era” – a return to a time free of doubts and insecurity, with certainty about what a man is and what a woman is and a clear sense who’s in charge of the public sphere and the family. Their ultra-conservatism is at times corny, at times biblical – but never innocent. Soon after Bolsonaro’s inauguration last week, the minister of women, family, and human rights, Damares Alves – an evangelical pastor – stated in a video that now “girls wear pink and boys, blue”. Beside her, a supporter held an Israeli flag. Some neo-Pentecostals likewise waved Israeli flags at the inauguration. These religious groups, who are growing numerically and wielding greater power in Brazil, voted overwhelmingly for Bolsonaro. A significant portion of them believe Jews will play a role in fulfilling scriptural prophesies about the return of the Messiah. It must be remembered that Bolsonaro was baptised in the River Jordan, in Israel, a couple of years before the presidential campaign. Now in power, he has announced that Brazil will move its embassy to Jerusalem, which, say these evangelicals, will be the “stage for Armageddon”. In a recent visit to Brazil, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared: “We have no better friends in the world than the evangelical community.” Ernesto Araújo, the dogmatic foreign minister, said Bolsonaro’s rise will be marked by “God through the nation”. He has also written that climate change is an “ideology” dreamed up so imperialist nations could determine Brazil’s future. “The people who say there are no men and women are the same ones who preach that countries don’t have the right to protect their borders,” Araújo stated in his inaugural speech. This Brazil, stitched from a patchwork of dogmas, might be a fascinating topic of study if it didn’t put the whole planet at risk. Ideological discourse serves to instil the notion of destiny and to ensure cohesion within a population frightened about everything it might lose, from salaries and jobs to symbolic positions in the realms of race, gender, and sexual orientation. When Bolsonaro says he’s going to “free Brazil from political correctness”, he’s pledging to break both the “chains” that force people to respect minorities and those that curtail devastation of the Amazon forest. In his first days in power, the president shifted responsibility for demarcation of indigenous and quilombola territory – which makes up a large part of the protected Amazon – to the agriculture ministry. This government sector is controlled by agribusiness, responsible for much of deforestation and eager to get their hands on the remaining forest. Bolsonaro promised to turn the public land occupied by indigenous peoples into private land where mining and agribusiness concerns can reap profits. The goal is to make more forest land available for capitalist speculation: cattle, soybeans, mining, and major construction projects. This is why government ideologues fabricated the idea that “communism” – a system never implemented in Brazil and now largely irrelevant worldwide – is a looming threat to Brazilians. The supposed “international Marxist plot” serves to justify turning the forest into a commodity. In this fantasy, indigenous peoples, who are the chief barrier to destruction of the Amazon, are portrayed as a “threat to national sovereignty”. The deforestation rate for 2018 was the highest in a decade. The mere possibility that Bolsonaro might win had a liberating effect on deforesters and further inflamed conflicts in a country where more environmental defenders are killed than in any other. Without the world’s biggest tropical forest, there is no way to control global warming. If Bolsonaro’s messianic capitalism is not stopped, life on this planet will be much worse for everyone. For a contingent of neo-Pentecostal evangelicals, this may be welcomed as an apocalypse preceding the final salvation of “true believers”. For most of humanity, it will bring nothing but horror and suffering – perpetuated by the stupidity of a species with delusions of grandeur. Translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty •Eliane Brum is a Brazilian journalist, writer and documentary makerThe number of teachers from the EU wanting to work in England has slumped in the past year, with fears that Brexit will exacerbate staff shortages and hit language learning. Teachers from EU countries applying for the right to work in English schools fell by a quarter in a single year, according to official data. There were 3,525 people from member states awarded qualified teacher status (QTS) in 2017-18, which allows them to work in most state and special schools. A 25% fall on the previous year, it included a 17% drop in applicants from Spain, an 18% drop from Greece and a 33% drop from Poland. The fall comes after repeated warnings of a staffing shortage. Last summer the Education Policy Institute said that teaching shortages would become severe, with bigger classes and falling expertise as a result. Recruitment targets were missed last year for all subjects except biology, English, history and physical education. Teacher-training applications are also down last month compared with a year earlier, according to the National Association of Head Teachers. Ian Hartwright, senior policy adviser at the union, said: “We found from our work that there is no evidence to suggest they [EU teachers] are displacing UK teachers – in fact, they were probably filling gaps and mitigating a recruitment and retention crisis in teaching here and positively improving the lives of young people in England and the UK.” Modern languages could be among the subjects most affected by the fall in European applications to teach in England, he added. The Labour party said plans for a post-Brexit immigration policy with a salary threshold of £30,000 for visa eligibility would hit teaching. “The Tories have created a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention and their shambolic Brexit negotiations are making things worse,” said shadow schools minister Mike Kane. A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “There are more than 450,000 teachers in schools across the country – that’s over 10,000 more than in 2010. The proportion of people entering postgraduate initial teacher training from overseas has been stable since 2016. “The education secretary has made clear his commitment to recruiting more teachers into our schools, and our upcoming Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy will also help address this.”Venezuela is in turmoil. Both Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó claim to be president – the latter until new elections can be held – and neither has any incentive to back down. Maduro, who two weeks ago was sworn into his second term following disputed elections last year, has little public support, but he retains the backing of the military. Guaidó, on the other hand, can mobilize mass displays of popular support, and has the backing of a chorus of western democracies – but little control over the levers of power within Venezuela. So what are the possible outcomes for this embattled nation and its 32 million citizens – some three million of whom have already fled abroad? Venezuela’s current plight can be traced to a revolution that went terribly wrong. When Hugo Chávez, a former military officer, was elected president in 1998, he inherited a middle-income country plagued by deep inequality. Chávez had led an abortive coup attempt in 1992 and after winning power through the ballot box he set about transforming society. Chávez drove through a wide range of social reforms as part of his Bolivarian revolution, financed with the help of high oil profits – but he also bypassed parliament with a new constitution in 1999. The muzzling of parliamentary democracy – and the spread of corruption and mismanagement in state-run enterprises – intensified after 2010 amid falling oil prices. Chávez’s “economic war” against shortages led to hyperinflation and the collapse of private sector industry. The implosion in the economy between 2013 and 2017 was worse than the US in the Great Depression. In an attempt to stabilise the economy and control prices of essential goods, Chávez introduced strict controls on foreign currency exchange, but the mechanism soon became a tool for corruption. When Chávez died of cancer, his place was taken by his foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, who has intensified his mentor’s approach of responding to the economic downward spiral by concentrating power, ruling by decree and political repression. Maduro has twice survived previous challenges to his power. After mass protests in 2014, he targeted opposition leaders, such as Guaidó’s political patron, Leopoldo López, who was arrested and barred from running for office. Five years later he is still under house arrest. Fresh unrest broke out in 2017 when Maduro sidelined the national assembly after it switched hands to the opposition. Demonstrations were met with bloody repression: over 120 protestors killed and hundreds more injured. The crackdown prompted international condemnation but Maduro succeeded in consolidating his power. That approach seems less workable today. Although Maduro retains the backing of allies such as Russia, Turkey and Cuba, he has come under unprecedented international pressure including from a dozen Latin American countries. Military top brass has made a show of support for their commander in chief, but there has been a string of defections by junior officers. At the weekend, Maduro’s military attache to the embassy in Washington DC became the most senior figure to switch sides, followed by the consul in Miami. Rank and file soldiers have felt the economic impact of the country’s crisis, but Maduro has rewarded senior officers with positions in government and the state oil company PDVSA. But US sanctions on the company unveiled this week could change that. If Maduro is to survive this current challenge, he’ll have to keep the military onside, and that means finding a way to keep them paid. Another way out of the current standoff – though not one that would benefit the Venezuelan people – would be a military coup that leaves a general or some sympathetic civilian in charge. That would likely mean a return to business as usual: kleptocracy, mismanagement and authoritarianism. Potential successors in the military would be either Maduro’s lieutenant Diosdado Cabello or defence minister Vladimir Padrino López, both of whom command military support but are widely despised by many Venezuelans. Civilian candidates could be vice president Delcy Rodríguez or her predecessor Tareck El Aissami. Both are international pariahs. In any case, a change at the top would not placate the opposition, now emboldened and set on restoring democracy. And if political options are closed for good, there is a strong risk that opponents of the regime would turn to the armed struggle – and Latin America has a troubled history vanquishing insurgencies. Meanwhile, unless a new leader could rebuild the country’s wrecked economy, millions will continue to flee, further destabilizing the region. A transition back to democracy would be the easiest way out of the current standoff but Maduro has little to gain and everything to lose by surrendering power. Even if Maduro agrees to leave, he will not want to risk any reckoning over his authoritarian rule – and neither will thousands of public and military officials who enabled him. Guaidó has promised an amnesty to members of the armed forces who “contribute to the reestablishment of democratic order”. There are pragmatic reasons for such a move, said Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based consultant, who offered Colombia’s 2016 peace deal with the leftist Farc rebels as a possibly example. “You cannot have ten of thousands going into exile or be judged by ordinary courts – it would be chaos,” he said. Maduro and his inner circle would most likely have to leave the country, but it is unclear where he could go. His only major international allies are Russia, China, Cuba and Turkey, and it is unclear what could motivate any of them to receive him. Maduro has long characterised his country’s woes as the result of a decades-long imperialist campaign of “economic war” waged by the US. It has served him well, rallying his generals and what little support he has behind the flag. Now, however, some analysts fear that hawks in Washington DC and Caracas could drive the two countries into a real conflict. The Venezuelan crisis has prompted the biggest migration in Latin America’s modern history, and neighbouring countries are desperate for a swift resolution. “If the trend were to worsen, the pressure for a military strike to end the deadlock would likely increase,” said Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based consultant with Crisis Group. “And that is an outcome we should all be trying to avoid.” At the moment, such a conflict is still seen as a distant possibility, but conceivably, the rightwing governments of Brazil and Colombia could sign up to a US-led coalition against Maduro. Such a war – the first interstate war in South America in over 80 years – would be protracted, bloody and fraught with unpredictable variables, but when Donald Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton was photographed holding a legal pad with the note “5,000 troops to Colombia”, it prompted concerns that the US is seriously considering such an option. That figure would not be enough alone, however: the US invasion of Panama involved some 27,000 soldiers. “I think Bolton was just bluffing, but if it happens those troops would be a tripwire, ready to trigger a bigger deployment should there be any incursion from Venezuela,” said Adam Isacson, a security analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America. “Then there’s not telling how it escalates. Any war that involves Colombia and Venezuela would be devastating – both countries have strong airforces so it would be a war fought over infrastructure, military bases and cities – not just the border.”Paris’s nudist restaurant O’naturel is to close its doors next month, just 15 months after it opened. “We want to make gastronomy work for nudity,” cofounder Stéphane Saada, a former insurance salesman, said in 2017. Instead, the website now states, “it is with great regret” that the time has come to pull the plug. Contacted for comment, Saada and his twin brother and business partner, Mike, said there wasn’t much else to say: “We’re shutting down because we didn’t have enough clients. We would have preferred this adventure to go on for longer … We had a great start; now it’s best we close.” The last restaurateur to serve up buff dining could have told them as much. In 2016, Seb Lyall’s bamboo shack of a naked dining pop-up, the Bunyadi, in London, was met with initial interest but shut down three months later; a plan to resurface has not yet been realised. O’naturel’s 15 months is, in fact, very respectable. Most restaurants don’t make it past a year, even those that allow diners to be dressed – although temperature, and not just the measurable kind, might have been one reason for O’naturel’s downfall. “I found the ambiance very cold,” wrote Topgars34 on TripAdvisor. It’s true that, decor-wise, the joint looks more like a budget dental surgery than somewhere you would feel comfortable in the altogether. Topgars34 gave the food a decent 7.5 out of 10, but said: “Alone, and without a phone to keep me busy, the meal felt like an eternity.” More recently, programming included nude karaoke, soirées dansantes and a bikini party (a Facebook update said the last went ahead without the bathing suits at punters’ request) – so it’s not as if O’naturel wasn’t trying. It might be more that people just want food. Hannah Norris, founder of consultancy Nourish PR, highlights a downturn in novelty restaurants, referencing the recent demise of London’s Flavour Bastards – reviews slated its concept, a questionable, apparently anarchic way with ingredients, as well as irritating service and that offputting name. Where even last year concepts, including dining in the dark or in someone’s garden shed, were still being lauded, Norris now sees interest in straight-down-the-line culinary creativity. The chase, as she puts it, is for “that killer dish” – as long as restrictions on how you might eat it are, well, minimal. Neither Saada brother is a nudist – in fact, they reportedly dress identically from head to toe – which makes their choice of venture more gimmick than anything else. When asked whether they might pursue any other nudist avenues, they are categorical. “Non”, a long silence and then, again, “Non”.The FBI launched an investigation into whether Donald Trump had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests – and Trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal from his own administration the details of his conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to two bombshell reports. The New York Times reported on Friday that law enforcement officials were so concerned about Trump’s behavior after he fired James Comey as FBI director that they launched a counterintelligence investigation into whether he was acting as a Russian agent, either intentionally or unwittingly. According to another report by the Washington Post, Trump has taken unusual steps to conceal the contents of his discussions with Putin. After meeting with the Russian president in Hamburg in 2017, the Post reported, Trump took his interpreter’s notes and instructed him not to disclose what was discussed to other US officials. On Saturday night, Trump was asked by a Fox News host whether he had ever worked for Russia. “I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked,” he said. Why is he so chummy with Vladimir Putin? He did not give a yes or no answer. As for his conversations with Putin, he said: “I’m not keeping anything under wraps, I couldn’t care less.” On Sunday, Democrats said the latest revelations raise serious questions about Trump’s relationship with Putin and Russia. “Why is he so chummy with Vladimir Putin – this man who is a former KGB agent, never been a friend to the United States, invaded our allies, threatens us around the world, and tries his damndest to undermine our elections?” Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on ABC’s This Week. “Why is this President Trump’s best buddy? I don’t get it.” Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said it was suspicious that Trump has “parroted” the policies of Putin. “I do think it’s curious that throughout that whole summer when these investigations started, you have Vladimir Putin policies almost being parroted by Donald Trump,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union. This is not a traditional president. He has unorthodox means “You had Trump say only nice things about Putin – he never spoke ill about Russia. The Republican campaign doctrines softened on Russia and decreased their willingness to defend Ukraine.” Warner said the US government still does not know what took place in Trump’s meetings with Putin, including another in Helsinki last summer where Trump appeared to embrace Putin’s claim, rejected by US intelligence, that his country had nothing to do with an interference effort in the 2016 election. “The American government does not know what was discussed between Trump and Vladimir Putin in that frankly pathetic, embarrassing encounter,” Warner said. Republicans defended the president, saying the US during his administration has imposed tough sanctions against Russia in response to its interference campaign during the 2016 election and its aggression in Ukraine. “We’ve been very tough on Russia,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “Look at the sanctions that we have taken with this administration. I know this administration and I know this Congress is very tough on Russia and we will continue to be so. But I want this president to be able to build a relationship, even on a person level, with all the world leaders.” Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican senator and chair of the homeland security committee, said he had only heard “innuendo” about Trump’s interactions with Russia, not any evidence of improprieties. He said there were legitimate reasons to want to guard the president’s conversations with Putin. “This is not a traditional president,” he told CNN. “He has unorthodox means, but he is president of the United States. It is pretty much up to him in terms of who he wants to read into his conversations with world leaders. He was burned by leaks in other areas and he was pretty frustrated.” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally of the president, was more forceful, telling Fox News Sunday: “I am going to ask the FBI director: ‘Was there a counterintelligence investigation opened up regarding the president as being a potential agent of the Russians?’ I find it astonishing. “If this really did happen, Congress needs to know about it. How could the FBI do that? What kinds of checks and balances are there?” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not answer specific questions about whether he was aware of the FBI counterintelligence work when he directed the CIA. “The notion that President Trump is a threat to American national security is absolutely ludicrous,” he told CBS.“Daring” is how Donatella Versace describes today’s man – or at least the man who wears Versace. At the brand’s menswear show in Milan on Saturday evening, the designer showed a heady mash-up of textures, prints and palettes to the soundtrack of Supermodel (You Better Work) by drag queen RuPaul – highlighting that in 2019, men have more freedom than ever to express themselves through fashion. “Everything has changed, and today’s society allows everyone a greater freedom to express themselves with their clothes as well as with their actions,” she told guests. For autumn/winter 2019, Versace’s man will be mixing things up in Prince of Wales tailoring teamed with transparent plastic trousers, baroque and bondage motifs – referencing the work of founder Gianni in the 90s, bejewelled jeans, Beetlejuice stripes and leopard print. A collaboration with Ford – inspired, said Versace, by the “excitement of buying your first car” – will revive the American car manufacturer’s iconic blue-and-white logo on athleisure and leather jackets. Versace is right to be monitoring the zeitgeist. Not only is the menswear market booming – in the UK, menswear is predicted to grow by 11% between 2018 and 2022 to reach £17.1bn – but all eyes have been on the brand’s bottom line since its acquisition by Capri Holdings (formerly the Michael Kors group) on 31 December for £1.64 billion. While the it came as a surprise given that the Michael Kors group’s previous expertise lay in mid-range rather than luxury fashion, the sale was a celebrated one, securing Versace’s financial security, growth and longevity. Back on Italian soil this weekend at the first show since the deal was officially done, Versace was keen to point out that she understands the importance of evolution on the catwalk as much as in the boardroom. “In the 90s there was such a specific idea of a man, but since then, fashion has evolved dramatically and today one cannot define men in just that same, clear way... What I wanted to show in this collection are the different facets of a man, who, like everyone, dresses according to the occasion and has gained the courage that he didn’t have before.” There is clearly an insatiable interest in and demand for the brand. At the Golden Globes last week, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (which the Versace family said “should only be considered a work of fiction”) won two of the 25 awards on offer, including best miniseries or television film, while, according to Capri Holdings CEO John Idol, 2018 saw double-digit growth. At Marni earlier in the day, designer Francesco Risso continued his own evolution, albeit a more eccentric one than Versace’s. He coined his collection “a metamorphic exploration of the new youth through three-dimensionality”, which manifested in oversized layers of wool boucle, moleskin, mohair and leather, punctuated with prints derived from the 1976 animated film Allegro Non Troppo. In the same way that the Italian animation was intended as a parody of Walt Disney’s Fantasia, Risso’s fourth menswear collection for the brand exuded the playfulness and fun that the designer (whose own Instagram handle is @asliceofbambi) has frequently spoke about being central to the house founded in 1994 by Consuelo Castiglione.Who will win? Ireland. Impossible to predict with total certainty this year but Ireland’s set-piece is superior to those of their rivals. Otherwise it’s basically six hungry ferrets in a sack. Predicted order: Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, France, Italy. Key match? Wales v Ireland. The winner of this final-weekend fixture will almost certainly hoist the 2019 trophy. Given Ireland have only beaten the Welsh once in Cardiff since 2009 it will not be easy. Most important player? Tadhg Furlong. Assuming he starts all five of Ireland’s games, the remaining nations will struggle to knock the defending champions off their perch. Every team in the world would pick him right now. Breakthrough star? Scotland have a clutch of potential candidates. Keep an eye on Darcy Graham, Sam Johnson, Blair Kinghorn, Sam Skinner and Jamie Ritchie. I can’t wait for … Ireland v England on Saturday. If only to find out whether a week of warm-weather training in sleepy Portugal is ideal preparation for a cold, raucous Dublin evening. Who will win? Ireland. I expect Wales to shoot out of the blocks early but I can’t see past a race between Ireland and England. Ireland have two matches at home, England have three but I’m putting my money on Joe Schmidt’s men to go back to back. Predicted order: Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, France, Italy Key match? Ireland v England. This Six Nations begins and ends in Dublin on Saturday and I can see the winner going on to win the tournament. Most important player? Take all the fly-halves and consider just how much their coaches are hoping they don’t get injured. Put simply, quality leaders give you a better chance of winning so I can’t look past Johnny Sexton and Owen Farrell. Breakthrough star? Sean Cronin, Ireland. I would love to see Cronin get plenty of minutes - he’s a try-scoring machine for Leinster and there is no reason why he can’t have the same impact in a green jersey. I can’t wait for... How many times it is referenced that this Six Nations will have no bearing on the fortunes of teams at the World Cup. Who will win? Ireland. Home advantage should give them the edge against England and France, so as long they get by Scotland away it will all come down to whether they can beat Wales in Cardiff. Predicted order: Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, France, Italy. Key match? There are two this first weekend, in Dublin and Paris, but Wales v Ireland looms large on the last weekend as the match that could define the championship, and maybe even a grand slam. Most important player? Billy Vunipola. Good as England are, they’re that much better again when he’s playing. There are not many players in the Championship who single-handedly make such a difference to their team. Breakthrough star? There are a handful of contenders in Jacques Brunel’s France squad, though they’re so callow it is hard to know how they will go. Demba Bamba is one, Romain Ntamack another. I can’t wait for ... All of it, any of it, every last little bit of it, except for the long wait in the rain for the last train out of Cardiff on the night after the Wales v England game. Who will win? Wales. They have the huge advantage of playing both England and Ireland at home. But first France must be beaten on Friday and, while it is likely to be tight, Wales have history on their side. Predicted order: Wales, England, Ireland, France, Scotland, Italy. Key match? Wales v Ireland. I don’t expect the grand slam to be on for either side but this is still likely to be the decider. If it is anything like last year’s match we are in for a treat. Most important player? Jonathan Davies, Wales. Owen Farrell and Jonathan Sexton are more influential for their sides in the sense that their absences are more keenly felt but when Davies plays well, so do Wales. Breakthrough star? Damian Penaud, France. Has made the move from centre to wing for Clermont this season, appearing out wide more often than not, and that is where he stays for France. A classy operator with a habit of making yards in heavy traffic and an eye for a try. I can’t wait for … Craft and imagination to prevail over power and physicality. If we are constantly talking about brutality and intensity the tournament will be all the poorer for it. Who will win? Ireland. England should be more competitive, Wales and Scotland capable of shaking things up. There is no obvious reason, bar the risk of injury to Conor Murray and/or Johnny Sexton, for thinking Ireland won’t be the team to beat. Predicted order: Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy. Key game? Scotland v Ireland. Scotland have three home matches and a winnable trip to France in the first four rounds. They will beat Italy in the first, then it is Ireland in the second. That will make or break their confidence. Most important player? Johnny Sexton. It’s almost always the fly-halves, isn’t it? Owen Farrell is by far England’s; Sexton (a little ahead of Murray) is Ireland’s; Finn Russell is Scotland’s (because he is so inconsistent). Taulupe Faletau is probably Wales’s, but he is injured. So Sexton. Breakthrough star? Darcy Graham. Christian Wade, Shane Williams, where art thou? Graham is the latest to blaze a trail for the regular-sized guy. The 21-year-old from Hawick is 5ft 9in and, depending on who you believe, between 11 and 13 stone. But he can move. I can’t wait for … All of this to be reduced to nothing more than a qualifying competition for the League of Nations. Please tell us Agustín Pichot’s vision for international rugby is nothing more than a bad dream. Who will win? The grand slam champions France beat the world champions New Zealand in November and are the only threat to England. France have a strong pack but the English forwards are well drilled by the former Leicester lock Richard Blaze. Ireland in Dublin this Friday will be a tough test for Simon Middleton’s squad, though. Predicted order: England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Wales. Key match? England v France in Doncaster on Sunday week is the pivotal game of the tournament by a country mile. England are still smarting from their last-gasp defeat in Grenoble last March and the Yorkshireman Middleton is particularly looking forward to a tilt at revenge in the tightly-packed Castle Park ground. Most important player? Safi N’Diaye, the Montpellier back-rower, will be at her home stadium when the Six Nations champions open their account against Wales on Saturday night. The 30-year-old is powerful and quick and will be a threat at the breakdown. Breakthrough star? England’s front-row rock Rochelle Clark has departed but the prop Hannah Botterman, a 19-year-old painter and decorator from Luton, made a splash in the autumn Tests. The Saracens forward is a powerful ball-carrier who won’t take a backward step. I can’t wait for ... An Italian renaissance. Italy have never finished better than third in the Six Nations but the full-back Manuela Furlan, who took over as captain in November, can spark a revival when she leads her much-improved side in Glasgow this weekend.It was the moment that enshrined Ole Gunnar Solskjær into Manchester United legend. David Beckham’s corner, Teddy Sheringham’s flick and, well, you know the rest. What has remained a secret until now was that up in the Camp Nou directors’ box – following an outrageous piece of blagging – was Mauricio Pochettino. And when Solskjær did what he did, to win the 1999 Champions League final against Bayern Munich, Pochettino found himself celebrating as crazily as any United fan. The way the Tottenham manager tells it, he was simply carried along by the emotion of the moment. Pochettino was an Espanyol player at the time and, together with his teammate, Toni Jiménez – who is now the goalkeeper coach at Spurs – he had watched the first half from seats that were not so great. And so he and his partner-in-crime decided to upgrade. They were on the same level as the VIP area and they hopped from block to block until they got there. Remarkably, they spied two padded seats that were empty, jumped into them and, even more remarkably, they were not moved on. “We sat, like this,” Pochettino says, making like the meekest of boys. “Then, the second half started and we watched it from there – the presidents’ [area]. When Sheringham scored for 1-1 in the last minute, we said: 'Wow, amazing game, now injury-time.' And then when Solskjær scored, we were celebrating. How I shouted for a Manchester United goal was incredible! I don’t know why because in that moment, we were neutral. But the atmosphere was amazing.” It is a story that resonates particularly loudly because on Sunday at Wembley, Pochettino’s Spurs take on a United team that has been re-energised under the caretaker management of Solskjær. And, of course, there is the small matter of who may be given the United job on a permanent basis in the summer. Could it yet be Solskjær, who has won his first five matches – albeit against low-ranking opposition – but, perhaps more importantly, has reacquainted United with a sense of adventure and fun? The Spurs game is his first major test. Were he to triumph, it would certainly help his case. Or could it be Pochettino, whom United and Sir Alex Ferguson have in their sights? Ferguson, now back to health and influence, had advanced Pochettino’s candidacy in 2016, post Louis van Gaal, only for the Glazers to prefer the surer thing of José Mourinho. Pochettino wears his vanity more appealingly than Mourinho these days and since the Old Trafford sacking of a man that he counts as a friend, he has been cute, playful and frankly mischievous at various times with regard to the stories linking him with United at the end of the season. It is a soap opera that promises to run and run, although Pochettino played it straight for a change on Friday at his pre-match press conference when he stressed that Premier League points were the only thing on his mind. He looked positively flabbergasted when asked whether his players had joked with him about the United job. “No,” he said. “They are too respectful.” There has been the temptation to bill the game as Pochettino versus Solskjær, with the winner taking all, but that is not only glib, it is incorrect. It is so for several reasons and the biggest one is a man called Daniel Levy, the Spurs chairman who, if United come calling for Pochettino, will make it unbelievably difficult for them to take him. There was a time when United would have who they wanted from Spurs – Sheringham, Michael Carrick, Dimitar Berbatov, even if the latter’s move came after tortuous negotiations. Ferguson infamously described the business of dealing with Levy as “more painful than my hip replacement”. There has since been a shift in the relationship between the clubs and not only because Spurs finished above United in 2014, 2016 and 2017. As Pochettino noted, the economic landscape of the Premier League has shifted, making all of the clubs more financially powerful and able to resist unwanted overtures from the bigger ones. Levy has long been a nightmare to deal with but now it can be close to impossible. United, for example, wanted to take Eric Dier from Spurs in 2017. There was never any possibility of Levy sanctioning the departure of a player he wanted to keep. “Daniel is, as you know very well, so tough to negotiate with,” Pochettino said. “For different clubs in England to do business with him, it’s so difficult.” Pochettino, unusually, does not have an agent and he negotiated the new five-year contract he signed last May directly with Levy. Not unusually, he thought that he did a good job. “For me, if there was one person that was easy to do business with, it was Daniel,” Pochettino said. “I think it was more difficult for him than me because I am the manager and he cannot upset me.” If United or Real Madrid were to try to take Pochettino in the summer, it is likely that the dynamics of any negotiation between him and Levy would be different. In Levy’s favour would be the length of Pochettino’s contract and, crucially, the absence of a buyout clause in it. As recent history has shown, Tottenham talent does not get away from Levy without a fight or, in some instances, by playing an ugly game of brinkmanship. Just ask Berbatov. Or Luka Modric and Gareth Bale. If Pochettino does want a new challenge, he may have to ask himself just how hard he is prepared to push for it. Levy has been here before with some of his players and, although it would be a new experience with a manager, he would approach it with trademark iron fists. Ferguson knows this better than anyone. He did not try to sign Modric, even though he liked him, because he could not face dealing with Levy again. Pochettino versus Solskjær? There is a third player in the game.The runner-up in Democratic Republic of the Congo’s presidential election says he in fact won the vote by a landslide, as rising violence across the country fuels fears of a wider law and order breakdown. Martin Fayulu’s campaign team claimed it had evidence its candidate had scored more than 60% of the votes in the much-delayed election on 30 December, 42 points more than Félix Tshisekedi, who was declared the winner by the electoral commission early on Thursday. In a speech to hundreds of supporters who gathered in the capital, Kinshasa, on Friday, Fayulu denounced what he called the “people’s stolen victory” and said he would file a challenge to the official results at the constitutional court on Saturday morning. Fayulu’s figures are understood to be close to those compiled by the influential Catholic church, which deployed 40,000 observers on the day of the election. The church has refused to reveal who won according to its findings, but diplomats briefed on the church data say it indicated a clear victory for Fayulu, in line with pre-election polls that had put him at least 20 points ahead of Tshisekedi. The Fayulu camp figures are also very similar to those cited in hundreds of pages of documents leaked by a whistleblower and passed to the Guardian overnight on Thursday. The documents, which the Guardian has been unable to verify independently, are purported to be the electoral commission’s authentic count. An electoral commission spokesperson denied that there was any difference between the officially published results – which gave Tshisekedi 38%, four points ahead of Fayulu – and any other figures compiled by the body. Experts said the results in the leaked documents were “plausible in parts” but expressed scepticism about the claimed margin of Fayulu’s apparent win and the turnout figures cited. At least nine people have been killed and many more injured since the announcement of the result on Thursday. Five police stations have been attacked and scores of protesters arrested in a series of clashes with security agencies. A prison breakout and a massacre by a militia have further intensified security concerns across the vast, strategically crucial central African state. Most of the demonstrations have involved supporters of Fayulu, a former business executive, who immediately rejected the official results on Thursday, accusing Tshisekedi of doing a deal with outgoing president Joseph Kabila and calling for a campaign to resist what he called “an electoral coup”. In comments to the UN security council via video link on Friday, the president of the electoral commission defended the vote’s credibility and attacked the church. “I’d be very interested to know what party they work for,” said Corneille Nangaa. “I challenge anyone to say they have the pretension to have collected all the vote tallies.” The CENCO group of Catholic bishops told the security council it was independent and said the electoral commission should release its records to allow for verification and “dispel doubt among the population”. The Democratic Republic of the Congo's sheer size, its political history and its myriad problems are all reasons why observers have followed its election so closely. The vast, resource-rich country, with a population of 80 million spread over an area the size of western Europe, has never known a peaceful transition of power since its independence from Belgium in 1960. It remains one of the poorest places in the world, racked by war and disease and with massive inequality. In the east, where scores of militia commanders battle for control of mines, an outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 300. Countrywide an estimated 4.3 million people are displaced. It is still recovering from a civil war triggered by the fall of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, in which 4 million people died. Joseph Kabila has been in power as president since his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the victor of that conflict, was shot dead in 2001. The country’s problems have been exacerbated by the refusal of Kabila to leave power after the end of his second mandate two years ago, which is why December’s much-delayed election was invested with so much hope and trepidation. Chaos at polling stations on the day of the vote dampened hopes that the election would bring a measure of political stability.  The announcement by the electoral commission on 10 January that Felix Tshisekedi had won confounded polling that had put another opposition figure well in front and raised fears of a backroom deal ultimately keeping Kabila in power. Fayulu’s claim of substantial victory will fuel a febrile atmosphere that threatens to tip DRC into a cycle of protest, violent repression and worsening insecurity – dashing hopes that the election would mark a turning point in the country’s troubled history. Polls in 2006 and 2011 – both won by Kabila – saw significant bloodshed. Reports compiled by international NGOs and embassies seen by the Guardian reveal the extent of growing violence. Thousands of police and soldiers from the regular army as well as the feared republican guard, an elite unit loyal to Kabila, were deployed across the country as protests broke out. In Kikwit, the capital of Kwilu, between three and six civilians were killed and two police officers badly beaten as soldiers used live firing to clear unidentified youths who had erected barricades on Thursday evening. Aid workers described the situation on Friday as very tense, with shots heard in several locations. Several arrests were made by police, including a journalist who was later released. There are also reports of a prison breakout in the town, during which 90 convicts escaped and five were shot dead. Much of the prison was reportedly destroyed. In Mbandaka, a port town on the Congo river in the centre of the country, there were protests on Friday morning after the overnight deaths of two civilians, one a woman allegedly killed by a soldier. Soldiers were reported to have fired into the air to clear the crowds and a senior local leader of Fayulu’s coalition was arrested after calling for protests on a radio station. In the major town of Kisangani, police and soldiers stormed the campus of the university and makeshift road blocks in the Makiso neighbourhood to control a “massive and violent situation” with sporadic shooting, according to aid workers. The local offices of the main ruling party were burned and a drinking club belonging to the town governor was looted. Local reports described calm on Friday but nervous inhabitants were said to be withdrawing money from banks. Reinforcing fears of a more general breakdown of security, the bodies of seven civilians were discovered on Thursday morning in North Kivu, a restive eastern province. The find brings the death toll from a suspected militia attack earlier this week to 18, one of the most deadly for months, diplomatic sources told the Guardian. Tshisekedi’s apparent victory surprised some observers who believed authorities would ensure victory for the government candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, who was handpicked by Kabila as his successor. Kabila, has ruled since the 2001 assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, who overthrew the long-serving dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.Russia has avoided further sanctions from the World Anti-Doping Agency despite missing by more than a fortnight a 31 December deadline to provide doping data from its Moscow laboratory. However, Russia has been warned it faces being banned from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and prohibited from hosting international sporting events if there is any evidence that the lab data – which was retrieved last week – has been tampered with. Wada’s executive committee was heavily criticised in September when it decided to lift the Russian Anti-Doping Agency’s suspension despite Russia continuing to deny its involvement in a massive state-sponsored doping operation. However the Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie, insisted that the “significant progress” made since – including the acquisition of more than 20 terabytes of data from the Moscow lab which could help to prosecute potentially hundreds of doping cases – had justified the decision. “Collecting the all-important data is a critical step and it was not easy to achieve,” Reedie said. “We are not yet at the finishing line but undeniably we are much further along the track than we would have been without the September executive committee decision. “We are now proceeding to the second phase, namely authenticating the data retrieved from the Moscow laboratory so that ultimately we can use it to catch more athletes who cheated and to exonerate others.” Reedie described the criticism he has faced from many anti-doping groups and athletes, who believe he has been too soft on Russia, as “wearying” but insisted recent events had vindicated his decisions. “We will not be deterred from this mission, which we firmly believe is in the best interests of clean sport and of athletes worldwide,” he said. Meanwhile Wada’s director of investigations, Gunter Younger, promised that his department was now in a “very good position” to prosecute Russian doping cases after getting the Moscow lab data. “We had already identified the most suspicious cases,” he said. “We just needed the last piece of the puzzle, which was the raw lab data.” He also promised his department would examine the lab data closely for signs of manipulation. “It is very complicated to falsify individual documents, but we are not naive.” Jonathan Taylor, the head of Wada’s compliance review committee, said the “toughest possible sanctions” would be imposed on Russia if tampering was confirmed. “These will very likely include that Russia may not be granted any right to host any World Championships in any sport for a specified period; and that no Russian officials, athletes or athlete support personnel will be permitted to participate in the 2020 Olympic or Paralympic Games,” he wrote in a letter to Wada director general Olivier Niggli.Hassan al-Kontar has been living in Canada for just under a month. But the Syrian refugee – who made global headlines after becoming stranded in a Malaysian airport for more than eight months in 2018 – is so busy with media requests that he jokes he has only managed to get out into the snow a handful of times. “It’s very much like living in the airport, all the interviews. But obviously you cannot compare the two of them,” says Kontar, 37. “Whistler is an amazing place. There is nothing but nature, fresh air, wonderful people and beautiful snow.” Kontar was working in Dubai when war broke out in Syria in 2011. Knowing he would be forced to fight if he went back home, Kontar stayed in the UAE after his passport and work visa both expired, and was eventually deported to Malaysia. After being refused entry to Cambodia, Ecuador, Malaysia and Turkey, Kontar – a pacifist and minority Druze from Sweida province – found himself stranded in the arrivals section of Kuala Lumpur airport, a transit zone without restaurants or shops. For eight months, he slept under stairwells, showered in a disabled toilet and ate donated airline meals. He feels lucky to have been granted asylum – a status achieved with the help of a few Canadians he calls his “avenger team”, who sponsored him privately for resettlement. Yet he always carries the weight of knowing that though he has made it to safety, many others have not. “The guilt. The guilt is always there,” he sighs. “I am still receiving hate comments, and that is very hard. … But the hate is strong, especially from Malaysia and the Arab world, even from Syria – they always find something to criticise. For some I betrayed my country, for others I’m a coward who ran away from his duties.” He fights the negativity by trying to find solutions. He lobbies on behalf of detainees in Manus Island, Australia’s offshore detention centre, speaks in Canadian schools about his experience and is using his story to push wider knowledge about what is happening back at home in Syria. But he also recognises his own limitations. “The more I learn [about how to help], the more confused I get. What can I do? I am limited in my power,” he says. “But I need to be positive, for me and my family, and for other refugees. We learn from our mistakes and we find strength in ourselves. I try to tell everyone there’s a hero inside each of us … you need to believe in what you are doing.” Kontar is now living with one of own his real-life heroes, Laurie Cooper, a media relations consultant from Whistler who, along with some friends, organised Kontar’s resettlement. Kontar even got his own version of a Hollywood ending to a story that has drawn multiple comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal: his asylum papers came through just in time for Christmas. He lives in a log cabin on the edge of the woods with Cooper, her family and their pets, and is treated as a minor celebrity whenever they go into town. “He’s been very warmly welcomed by the community here,” says Cooper. “We cannot walk around the village without people coming up to say hello, give him a hug, welcome him to Whistler, buy him a coffee or give him a high five.” Kontar believes it is people like Cooper, who has helped with more than 30 refugee resettlements to Canada, who will turn things around in a world increasingly hostile to migrants and refugees. “When it comes to organisations, or the United Nations, or global systems, they have failed us – not only us as Syrians but the Yemeni, Iraqi, Rohingya, everyone who needs help,” Kontar says. “I’m trying to focus on the normal people who enjoy their normal lives from their normal living rooms. They can make a difference if they decide to: all we have to do is educate them, enlighten them about what is happening, and show them how they can help.” Kontar points to his own story: despite his many international interviews from Kuala Lumpur airport, only one refugee lawyer volunteered to help with his case; in the end, it was the only one he needed. “If there’s anyone who’s willing to help anyone anywhere, please try to volunteer, try to help, try to do something,” he urges. “People read these stories [about migrants] and feel sad and then hesitate, but it’s not that difficult. You can do it. You can help.” Kontar has not seen his family for a decade. He watched from afar as friends and family in Syria married and had children. War broke out. His father died. His city came under attack from Isis. And all the while, he was thinking, “I am not there,” he says. “I could not be there. That is a sadness that makes you feel it will never leave you, it will break you or leave you damaged. I feel now like I’m running out of time, like I need to make them happy, like I want them to taste what I’m tasting right now.” The hope is that one day, maybe they will join him in Canada. But for the moment, Kontar is happy to have been adopted into the Cooper family – and the Coopers are glad to have him. “We’d been in almost daily contact for seven months before he was detained and I felt I really knew him, even though we’d never met,” says Cooper. “When I finally gave him a hug, it felt like my son had come home.” “You can feel the love in this house,” agrees Kontar. “Everyone is very supportive and they are all wonderful people. So I feel 100% like I am at home.”The French government is under growing pressure to review police use of explosive weapons against civilians after serious injuries were reported during gilets jaunes street demonstrations, including people alleged to have lost eyes and to have had their hands and feet mutilated. France’s legal advisory body, the council of state, will on Wednesday examine an urgent request by the French Human Rights League and the CGT trade union to ban police from using a form of rubber-bullet launcher in which ball-shaped projectiles are shot out of specialised handheld launchers. France’s rights ombudsman has long warned they are dangerous and carry “disproportionate risk”. Lawyers have also petitioned the government to ban so-called “sting-ball” grenades, which contain 25g of TNT high-explosive. France is the only European country where crowd-control police use such powerful grenades, which deliver an explosion of small rubber balls that creates a stinging effect as well as launching an additional load of teargas. The grenades create a deafening effect that has been likened to the sound of an aircraft taking off. France’s centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, is facing renewed calls to ban such weapons after Jérôme Rodrigues, a high-profile member of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrators was hit in the eye on Saturday in Paris. He is said by his lawyer to have been disabled for life. Rights groups say Rodrigues’s case is the tip of the iceberg. Lawyers estimate that as many as 17 people have lost an eye because of the police’s use of such weapons since the start of the street demonstrations, while at least three have lost their hands and others have been left with their face or limbs mutilated. Injuries have happened at demonstrations in Paris and other cities, including Bordeaux and Nantes. Aïnoha Pascual, a Paris lawyer representing several of the injured people, including one person who had part of his hand ripped off, and another left partially deaf and with facial injuries, said never in recent history had so many serious injuries been seen during protests. She said using the sting-ball grenades was akin to using military weapons against a civilian population. “These weapons are a very real problem. In the 1980s, if one person was hit in the eye at a demonstration there would be a huge reaction, yet now there is no reaction from government.” Dominique, 54, a childcare worker from rural Normandy, described how she saw her sons seriously wounded. One of them had his hand ripped off by, she believes, a sting-ball grenade on the Champs Élysées in Paris in November during a family day out to support the gilets jaunes demonstrations. She said: “It was very calm where we were standing. There were a few people, a child, nothing extraordinary and suddenly my sons were hit. I remember seeing my son’s mutilated hand, his face and body peppered with shrapnel as if a paintbrush had been flicked at him. His brother, injured too, had to carry him because he couldn’t walk. I will never be able to forget those images.” She said her 21-year-old son’s right hand was blown off and her other son had injuries to his leg and feet. “I saw things that even in a film I wouldn’t have believed. It was like a war. It was our first demonstration. I had no idea the police had weapons that could do that damage.” Both her sons have been operated on several times. “The physical damage was acute, but so is the psychological damage. Any noise makes me jump now, even the sound of a plastic bottle being crushed. I can’t look at images of police on TV. My son has holes in his forehead; he can’t look at his mutilated hand. My other son will have shrapnel in his body for life as it’s too dangerous to remove all of it. We feel totally alone. We haven’t heard from the state. It’s as if we don’t exist.” The government has not commented on specific allegations or given any breakdown of injuries. The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, on Tuesday said only that 1,900 people had been injured in all circumstances since the start of the gilets jaunes demonstrations in November. Lawyers and journalists attempting to compile lists of police weapon injuries estimate at least 100 people have been wounded. A total of 101 investigations have been opened by France’s police watchdog. Castaner said 1,200 police officers had been injured since the start of the gilets jaunes protests and officers were acting “proportionately” in their use of weapons. He said because France was dealing with a “crisis” situation, any review of policing would not happen at the present time. At last weekend’s gilets jaunes protests, the government for the first time ordered officers firing the rubber-projectile launchers to wear body cameras, but the French media cast doubt on whether the cameras worked correctly. Protesting high-school students have been injured, with one teacher describing in November seeing a teenager’s cheek “burst open like a split pomegranate”, which she blamed on a police rubber projectile. An 80-year-old woman died last month in Marseille after she was hit by a police teargas canister while closing her window shutters during a demonstration. Arié Alimi, a lawyer for several people who have been injured, including a passerby who was hit by a rubber projectile as he had gone to observe the demonstrations at République in Paris, said: “What is shocking is there is no government apology to those who have been injured.”Trevor Bayliss has expressed concerns over “struggling” Keaton Jennings and described England’s batting in Bridgetown as lacking in mental fortitude. The England coach was left visibly irked by the 381-run defeat by West Indies, little surprise after his side collapsed to 77 all out in their first innings, then went on to be rolled over by an eight-wicket part-timer, Roston Chase. “I’m speechless,” said Bayliss, before eventually finding the words. “I think it gets down to a bit of guts and determination to get through those tough periods. They bowled extremely well against us but we have got to be able to deal with it.” Bayliss will sit down with the selector, Ed Smith, and the captain, Joe Root, after the team land in Antigua on Monday to discuss options for Thursday’s second Test. It may well be that in time-honoured tradition the bowling attack is shaken up in response to a batting failure. Nevertheless, Jennings presents a long-standing headache. The opener was one half of an opening stand of 85 on the fourth and final day with Rory Burns and made a century against Sri Lanka four Test matches ago. But a second stiff-legged drive in the match on 14 left him averaging 17 from 11 Tests against the seaming Dukes ball and Smith may lobby for his former Kent teammate, Joe Denly, to come in. “Keaton is struggling a little bit,” Bayliss said. “You could look at it and say they’ve put on 85, our best opening partnership [since mid-2017]. And it takes two guys to tango. [But] I’d be lying if I said we’re not worried about it and I’d be lying if I said he hadn’t been thinking about it.” On Burns, who top-scored for England in the match with a second-innings 84, Bayliss added: “Burns has shown enough. As we said in Sri Lanka, he looks like he’s been here for 20 or 30 Tests, not four. He’s still learning and will still get better.” Stuart Broad expressed his disappointment in a newspaper column at missing out – “I’m bowling the best I’ve ever bowled. I believe that 100 per cent. Everyone in this England group knows it too” – and will surely be restored. It may come a Test too late on what is expected to be a less seamer-friendly surface at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium. On the two-spinner, three-seamer attack deployed in Bridgetown, which saw Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes bowled into the ground as Sam Curran, Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid struggled, Bayliss was unrepentant. He said: “You make those decisions thinking the five guys you pick are going to bowl as well as we know they can do. Take Stokes and Anderson out, maybe one spell of Moeen, and we were far from our best in this match. We have a bit of work to do there. “It was down to Curran or Broad. The gut feel was Curran; he has done well for us over the last seven games. It didn’t work out like that, the young bloke has had his first bad Test in his career. It won’t be his last but he’s a good young player who will learn from it.” Like Root, Bayliss hopes England follow a “rollercoaster” recent trend that has seen harrowing Test defeats followed up with victory. “The boys are in the dressing room hurting and I’d be worried if they weren’t. But we’ve been in this situation before and come out and played some good cricket. So I’m looking forward to the next Test.”Theresa May’s Brexit preparations could be thrown into fresh turmoil on Tuesday with Labour poised to support a backbench amendment tabled by Yvette Cooper that could restrict the government’s taxation powers unless a no-deal Brexit is taken off the table. The Labour frontbench is likely to whip its MPs to back the cross-party amendment to the finance bill, significantly increasing its chances of success in the Commons if it is selected by the Speaker, John Bercow. Around a dozen Tory MPs have also signalled their intention to back the amendment. Downing Street and the Treasury are still assessing the extent of the damage that the amendment could do to its ability to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. “It’s important we can take any steps necessary for leaving the EU, including in a no-deal scenario,” Theresa May’s spokesman said. Writing for the Guardian, Cooper said there was a growing danger that “brinkmanship, political paralysis, siren voices” could see the UK fall over a Brexit cliff-edge. “Just because most people don’t want something to happen, doesn’t mean it won’t,” she said. “So it is with a no-deal Brexit. I believe the majority of MPs, ministers and most people across the UK are opposed to the self-inflicted damage to our economy and security that would result from crashing out of the EU.” The extent of the effect that the amendment would have to stop a no-deal Brexit is still unclear, but its organisers also see it as vehicle to demonstrate the strength of parliamentary opposition to no deal. MPs are also beginning preparations to target other bills for similar blocking amendments include immigration, fisheries and trade. The amendment has the backing of a number of Labour and Conservative select committee chairs, including Tories Nicky Morgan and Sarah Wollaston, Labour’s Hilary Benn and Frank Field, the pro-Brexit chair of the work and pensions select committee. Former minister Nick Boles and Tory grandees Sir Oliver Letwin and Nicholas Soames have also given their support. Bercow must rule on whether to accept the amendment ahead of the finance bill debate on Tuesday but it is understood to have a high chance of selection if the debate goes ahead. Cooper said the amendment had support from MPs on both sides of the Brexit debate, including from those committed to backing May’s deal and those opposing it. “It doesn’t avoid the difficult debates and disagreements ahead over the best way forward, but it at least gives us the chance to rule out the worst outcome,” she said. The amendment to the finance bill, tabled over the weekend, is one of the first of a slew of parliamentary tactics expected to be adopted by MPs to try to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Its effect would be to restrict the government’s freedom to make Brexit-related tax changes without parliamentary safeguards. It would be attached to one clause in the finance bill, designed to give the government the power to keep tax law working in the event of a no-deal Brexit. If it is passed, it would mean that clause would only be allowed to come into force if there were either a Brexit deal, a decision to extend article 50, or a vote in the Commons specifically approving a no-deal Brexit. Morgan said that it was time for parliament to create a mechanism to stop no deal by default. “Many of us have been clear that parliament will not allow a no-deal situation to unfold, and with less than 12 weeks to go until 29 March it is time for parliament to show our opposition to a no-deal exit,” she said. Experts are divided about the effectiveness of the amendment in stopping a no-deal Brexit altogether. Nikki da Costa, the former Downing Street head of legislative affairs who has extensive experience navigating the difficult parliamentary arithmetic since 2017, said the Treasury would have to weigh up if the powers could be reinstated via another route. If the government finds a new way to grant itself the same powers, it could allow the amendment to pass. “The easiest route is to see if those powers really are essential and how quickly they may be needed,” Da Costa said, saying she believed the actual effect to be “relatively minor”. “If those amendments, for example to EU references in tax law, aren’t really problematic, and you can afford not to amend for some time after exit day, then you might just accept the amendment and find another legislative vehicle at a later date.” Other efforts are also under way to demonstrate the extent of parliamentary opposition to a no-deal Brexit. Tory ex-minister Dame Caroline Spelman, who organised the letter with Labour’s Jack Dromey, are set to meet the prime minister on Tuesdayafter co-ordinating a letter signed by 200 MPs calling for May to rule out a no-deal Brexit. MPs returning to Westminster on Monday have also launched a new drive for parliament to coalesce around the so-called Norway-plus option championed by Boles and Labour’s Stephen Kinnock. On Monday, Labour former shadow minister Lucy Powell and Tory Robert Halfon, who chairs the education select committee, launched a detailed plan for a Norway-style compromise arrangement that would result in the UK remaining mostly within the European single market. Their plan is laid out in a new pamphlet, entitled “Common market 2.0”, which says the UK should remain in the single market and ensure continuity in current customs arrangements. In a joint statement to launch the report, Powell and Halfon said the route was “the only sensible, common-sense Brexit deal that can work” and called for more MPs to support the plans. “Common market 2.0 offers Theresa May a last chance at a Brexit deal that can command a cross-party majority,” they said. “It is also the only deal that meets Labour’s six tests by delivering on Jeremy Corbyn’s call for a customs union and a strong single market deal.” Kinnock said the plan “respects the 52/48 mandate [of the referendum result], commands a parliamentary majority, deals with concerns about free movement, removes the need for the backstop and reunites our deeply divided country.”A Chinese spacecraft could become the first ever to land on the “far side” of the moon tomorrow, in a milestone for human space exploration. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is aiming to land the craft in the unexplored South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest, oldest, deepest, crater on the moon’s surface. The robotic probe, Chang’e 4, entered an elliptical path around the moon last weekend, drawing as close as 15km (9 miles) from the surface. China’s mission control has not confirmed a time for the touchdown attempt but reports in state-run media suggested it would be early Thursday morning UK time. Spacecraft have taken pictures of the moon’s far side before, but no lander has ever touched down there. If successful, Chang’e will mark a step towards China’s ambition to become a leading power in space exploration alongside the US and Russia. One technological hurdle in targeting the side of the moon that constantly faces away from Earth is that direct communication with the spacecraft is not possible. Instead messages to and from Chang’e 4 are being relayed by the Queqiao (Magpie Bridge) satellite, which is in a “halo orbit” on the other side of the moon. The mission is aiming to take detailed measurements of the moon’s terrain and mineral composition. The Aitken basin is thought to have been formed during a gigantic collision very early in the moon’s history. The collision is likely to have thrown up material from the moon’s interior, meaning that Chang’e could provide new clues as to how the natural satellite was formed. The far side of the moon is also viewed as an attractive site for radio astronomy. A telescope situated there would be shielded from human radio activity, potentially making it more sensitive to radio bursts coming from the sun or to faint signals from deep space. Chang’e 4 is carrying an instrument to judge the “electromagnetic cleanliness” of the location as a first step to assessing the possibility of placing a telescope there. Lucie Green, a space scientist at University College London, said: “You’re completely shielded from all the emissions that we produce on Earth so you can get data that we couldn’t get elsewhere,. There’s been a lot of talk over the years of the potential of having a telescope on the far side. This mission could pave the way for more serious development on that side.” Since the moon’s revolution cycle is the same as its rotation cycle, the same side of the planetary body always faces Earth. The other face, most of which cannot be seen from Earth, is called the far side or “dark side” of the moon, not because it is dark but because most of it is uncharted.Once more, the saddle departs without the horse as everyone’s favourite constituency, People On Twitter, gets in high dudgeon about culture that doesn’t actually exist yet. This time it’s Gillian Anderson’s reported (although unconfirmed) turn as Margaret Thatcher in series four of The Crown, due to shoot later this summer. The apparent issue is that Anderson is too hot to play Thatcher, and her beauty will humanise the reviled politician while making Anderson herself less likable. This, in turn, will compromise Anderson fans’ sexual fantasies – does this mean I’m hot for Thatch? – while bringing undue satisfaction to Tories prone to moist-browed reminiscences of “Mrs T”. “Does Margaret Thatcher even deserve to be played by Gillian Anderson?” asks Irish culture site the Daily Edge. All of which is easily solved: presumably, prosthetics will be involved in Anderson’s transformation, and everyone else can grow the hell up. Who does Thatcher deserve to be played by? Katie Hopkins? The only valid question of “deserving” here is that of talented female actors to play the complex roles that are still depressingly rare. Anderson’s evidently leftwing fans will be aware of the double standard of “likability” to which female politicians are held and the reductiveness of perceiving women based solely on their looks, yet they they are apparently happy to hold an actor to these standards when their choices threaten their adolescent fantasies. And it is pea-brained feminism to assume that a woman’s choices must reflect her politics. For perspective, Vice recently published a piece about an upcoming biopic titled: “Zac Efron as Serial Killer Ted Bundy Is Disturbingly Hot”. Presumably, his portrayal hasn’t been interpreted as a ringing endorsement of the noted necrophile. And Peter Morgan’s royal saga isn’t propaganda. Princess Margaret is portrayed as a spoilt brat, Prince Philip a whiny MRA and even Churchill deluded to the point of reckless endangerment. Claire Foy’s performance is compelling, but her queen remains icy. And Morgan has form here: his play The Audience imagined Thatcher’s meetings with the Queen, depicting the former as hectoring and threatened. The likelihood of him instructing Anderson to play Thatcher as an aspirational #girlboss seems as unlikely as the highbrow actor agreeing to do so.It’s hard to say, because proponents of every alternative make bold claims about how many MPs support their cherished model. The extraordinary margin of victory in Tuesday’s vote against Theresa May’s deal suggests that even if the prime minister could persuade Brussels to agree to an end date for the Irish backstop, it would not be enough to assemble a majority. She could try offering legally binding promises on workers’ rights and environmental standards to try to win over Labour MPs from leave-backing constituencies. But many at Westminster believe the only deal that could garner support would have to include a customs union – which is fiercely opposed by leave-supporting Conservative backbenchers because it would curtail Britain’s rights to make new trade deals. Some even say they would split the Tory party over the issue. There is no majority in parliament for a no-deal Brexit, but under the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 the UK will leave the EU on 29 March whether a deal is in place or not. In order to avoid the significant economic and legal disruption that would result from leaving without a deal, the government must either win the support of parliament for a withdrawal agreement or delay or revoke article 50, the formal process of leaving. After Tuesday’s defeat, May said she would talk to “senior parliamentarians” to try to find a deal that MPs could back. But with the prime minister reluctant to budge on any of her “red lines”, it is far from clear how she can achieve this. A British request for more time is seen as almost inevitable by Brussels, not just because MPs are locked in stalemate, but because it looks impossible for parliament to pass all the necessary pre-Brexit legislation before 29 March. “If the UK comes around and asks for an extension of article 50 for a good reason, I don’t really see any one of the EU27 objecting,” one EU diplomat said. For the EU, “a good reason” is not another six months of chaos and confusion at Westminster – but a second referendum would not be the only condition for an extension; there may be other good reasons. If article 50 was extended beyond the summer the UK might be obliged to take part in European elections in late May. In which case, Farage, the former Ukip leader and key pro-Brexit campaigner, has said he would run. However some EU officials think Brussels can come up with legal fixes, such as allowing the UK government to appoint national parliamentarians to represent the UK during the extension period. Yes, but there is currently no majority in parliament for that option. MPs would have to legislate for a second referendum, which would mean extending article 50 for several months. And without a deal on the table that parliament can agree on, it is unclear what the “Brexit” option on the ballot paper would really mean. The prime minister is so decisively boxed in that only dramatic moves remain open to her. One of those is to call a general election. May believes strongly that her deal is closer to what the public wanted when they voted in the referendum, than a softer, Norway-style deal which would allow continued freedom of movement, and which she derides as a “politicians’ Brexit”. She could choose to trigger a referendum herself, again to appeal directly to the public, over the heads of her squabbling MPs. Or she could resign. With much of Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU yet to be negotiated, May could pledge to step down in exchange for supporting her deal, and let a leaver take over for the next stage.Like the fleeting blossom of Jacaranda trees in spring, faith in the government of Zimbabwe’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has waned, following another round of state violence towards unarmed citizens. A Harare woman wounded in the leg by a close-range gunshot from a soldier’s gun is ferried in a wheelbarrow to seek medical help. Elsewhere in the capital, a young footballer is killed for standing outside his home – his sole crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. These days, on the streets of Harare, an unnatural silence and fear have displaced the wild cheers of celebration that accompanied the 2017 resignation of Robert Mugabe as president. Hope has turned into mourning in cities around the country, where a general strike opposing Mnangagwa’s 150% fuel price hike turned bloody. At least 12 unarmed civilians have been killed and hundreds injured in a brutal crackdown led by the military. Our nation has had its moment in the sun – and is now trapped in a cycle of terror and unrest. Armed soldiers are a fixture on the streets, manning roadblocks and fuel stations. When you board a public bus, a soldier wielding a machine gun stands lifelessly next to the conductor. The government resorting to military control of civilian life is the clearest sign of failed leadership by Mugabe’s successors. It’s clear that until the military is removed from civilian spaces, Zimbabwe will only plunge into deeper political and economic misery. The involvement of the military in civilian politics is not new. As far back as 1975, as the country struggled for its independence, young military officers at the main Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla) training camp wrote a communique that led to the removal of Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole as leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) liberation party. Sithole had helped found Zanu in 1963, but the military manoeuvred to replace him with Mugabe. This interference in politics did not end after independence in 1980. In 2008, the then commander of the defence forces, General Constantino Chiwenga, stated that he would not salute any political leader who did not have liberation war credentials – echoing the same call by his predecessor, General Vitalis Zvinavashe. The military played a key role in violence during the elections of 2008 and 2002. While the involvement of the military in civilian politics was more constrained during Mugabe’s authoritarian tenure, even the wily president eventually lost control – he was forced out of office at the hands of the military in November 2017. Since then, the military has felt more emboldened than ever in playing a stronger role in social, political and economic affairs. Retired officers have been appointed to key cabinet, party and state positions, including the vice-presidency, Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Parks Authority. A popular claim, in the era of rising authoritarianism, is that “strongman” leadership and militaristic discipline is necessary for economic reforms and a stable environment. But as we are seeing in Zimbabwe, the reality is that strong military men often lack the required governing expertise, resorting to heavy-handed tactics instead. The military is also standing in the way of citizens’ fundamental freedoms – and it prevents civilian politicians and the young, who did not participate in the 1970s liberation war, from truly taking part in the political process. The Zanu-PF leadership has consistently rehashed liberation narratives to ward off any alternative leadership emerging – meanwhile it fails to develop new political and economic programmes to actually help Zimbabwe. Until this system changes, Zimbabwe will continue to be deprived of the wealth of skills its varied citizens have to offer in rebuilding the country. Restricting political options to those who participated in the war of independence and those who find favour with them, has stifled the emergence of any new vision to take the nation forward. The task of removing the military from civilian and political life is not going to be easy. Mnangagwa’s party and the military have been intertwined since the 1970s, while he only came to power because of the military’s support. But make no mistake about it: Mnangagwa is the commander-in-chief – only he can lawfully deploy soldiers on to the street or make them step down. The buck stops with Mnangagwa when it comes to blame for the ongoing violence. The wounds afflicting injured survivors may one day heal. But our politics will remain toxic as long as the military is at the centre of it. Any dialogue about the future must involve concerted, concrete plans to demilitarise Zimbabwean politics. Only then can the promise of a new Zimbabwe truly blossom. • Fadzayi Mahere is a Zimbabwean lawyer and politicianSlap bang in the middle of the island the towering stands at each end of the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium incongruously dominate a landscape that is still composed of scrubland and featuring the odd meandering goat. The ground is no more than 10km from the capital, St John’s, but it might as well be a hundred. The locals would wander in off the high street in St John’s to watch the Test match at the old Recreation Ground, especially if West Indies were in the ascendancy, which was usually the case. Chickie would get the disco going, Gravy would make an entrance on to a makeshift platform reminiscent of Dame Edna in her pomp, and there was a buzz about the place. But Antiguans are far more reluctant to trek to the middle of the island to watch cricket. Occasionally admission has been free for a Test here in recent times and still they have not turned up, not that there are many to come since the population of Antigua is under 100,000. This time there is every incentive for the home supporters to mingle with the thousands of British fans on the island. West Indies’ victory in Barbados was so emphatic there can be realistic hopes this is no false dawn. Since 2012 West Indies have won Test series against only Zimbabwe and Bangladesh but now the defeat of one of the “big boys” is most definitely on the horizon. The three-Test series can be won here before England rediscover their equilibrium. After their epic victory over England at Headingley in 2017 West Indies subsided again in the next Test at Lord’s. But somehow that outcome is far less likely this time. Jason Holder’s team are more mature, have the advantage of playing on home soil, and in Bridgetown they did not need a friendly declaration to win the game. Instead they steamrollered hapless opponents and after the match Holder was keen to emphasise this was merely a first step; he was delighted rather than ecstatic. “We have shown glimpses in the past and there have been some great personal performances,” he said on Wednesday, but he wants more now. He confirmed all of his players are fit. By the same token England were taken aback rather than traumatised after the Bridgetown Test and the reason for that is that they have been this way before so frequently – in Auckland last year, at Trent Bridge against India in 2018, in Abu Dhabi in 2012. There is the danger that a batting implosion is increasingly viewed as an occupational hazard, which is an unhealthy development. This time they have shuffled the pack. Joe Denly will make his Test debut at the age of 32, the oldest batsman to do so since Alan Wells in 1995, which did not work out frightfully well. Wells made a duck and three not out against West Indies at the Oval and never played a Test again. There is a good case for taking a punt on Denly, though not necessarily for the right reasons. He was a borderline selection for this tour. There was consideration of Jason Roy as a dynamic, wildcard, alternative opener but they stuck with Ed Smith’s punt. Keaton Jennings has struggled and there is an impetus to do something after the team have batted so poorly in two innings. Denly is the only spare. Sometimes captains obstinately give all the batsmen a chance to atone after a batting fiasco but not this time. Mike Atherton recalled a long, difficult conversation with Nasser Hussain, who was the spare batsman not called up in 1994 after England had been bowled out for 46 in Trinidad. With Jennings out of sorts it is probably worth finding out about Denly. The blunt truth is that he may have only four innings to make an impression as a Test opener, but that is better than nothing. There is then a five-month hiatus from Test cricket after the match in St Lucia next week, during which much can happen. Here he has the chance to surprise everyone, maybe taking as his mentor Australia’s Chris Rogers, who played 24 of his 25 Tests after his 35th birthday. There is time for Jennings to return to Test cricket one day, which may not be the case with Adil Rashid. He was omitted from the 12 and soon after it was announced he is going home because his wife is expecting their second child. Rashid will return for the ODIs, an easier form of the game, and one which suits him better. Rashid is unlikely to be used in Test cricket in the English summer or in New Zealand and South Africa next winter. There are two Tests in Sri Lanka in March 2020 but they seem a long way off. If Rashid has played his last Test he has taken more wickets (60) than any English leg-spinner since Doug Wright, who played his final game in 1951. We keep romancing but they do not seem to work very well in England. Stuart Broad is in the squad and this time it is virtually certain that he will be in the final XI. Root confirmed how well he has been bowling on this tour, which begged an obvious question. England will take one final look at the pitch on Thursday morning and then decide between Sam Curran and Jack Leach. The likelihood is that Curran, despite losing his lucky charm status last week, will play. Win the toss – and bat. There is patchy grass on the pitch, rather than an even covering, and not enough to insert the opposition. West Indies KC Brathwaite, JD Campbell, SD Hope, DM Bravo, RL Chase, SO Hetmyer, SO Dowrich, JO Holder, KAJ Roach, AS Joseph, ST Gabriel. England RJ Burns, JL Denly, JM Bairstow, JE Root, BA Stokes, JC Buttler, MM AlI, BT Foakes, SM Curran, SCJ Broad,  JMAnderson.Good morning – Warren Murray bringing you the Briefing with just four sleeps to go until the “meaningful vote”. In emotional scenes overnight, Andy Murray has announced he will retire from tennis this season and doubts he will make it through to Wimbledon in July. The news came at an anguished press conference in Melbourne, where the boy from Dunblane, who rose to become one of Britain’s greatest tennis players alongside Fred Perry, was heartbreakingly candid about the hip injury that has left him with debilitating pain. “I said to my team, ‘Look, I think I can get through this until Wimbledon. That’s where I would like to stop playing,’” said the former world number one, fighting back tears. “But I am not certain I am able to do that.” Murray is steeling himself for what is “almost certainly” one last effort, at the Australian Open on Monday against the Spaniard Bautista Agut. “I’ve been struggling for a long time. I have been in a lot of pain for probably about 20 months now,” Murray said. “I have pretty much done everything that I could to try and get my hip feeling better. It hasn’t helped loads. I’m in a better place than I was six months ago, but still in a lot of pain. It has been tough.” The tributes are flowing, and Kevin Mitchell, the Guardian’s tennis correspondent, has filed an appreciation of “one of our greatest ever sportsmen”. ‘Right at the time’ – The benefits freeze is unlikely to be continued beyond 2020, according to Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary. The Tory welfare policy introduced five years ago by George Osborne is estimated to cost some working families hundreds of pounds a year. In 2017 the Joseph Rowntree Foundation predicted it would drive almost half a million people into poverty by the time it came up for renewal in 2020. Rudd told Sky News: “It was the right thing to do at the time … it’s got one more year to run, I look forward to it coming off.” Reacting last night, a Labour source said the freeze had cut incomes “for those most up against it” while the rich and big business got tax cuts. “Rudd is flat wrong when she says it was the right policy.” Today, Rudd will announce a partial rollback to the two-child limit on universal credit payments. Coming up next, the fibre diet – Eating more fibre from less processed sources such as wholegrain cereals, pasta, bread, nuts and pulses can slash people’s chances of heart disease and early death, according to a landmark review for the World Health Organisation. Fashionable low-carb diets may increase people’s risk of heart disease because they throw out the fibre with the carbohydrates, the research suggests. University of Otago’s Professor Jim Mann, who led the research, said: “Here we have got very strong evidence that a high-fibre diet, which for the majority of people is at least high-ish in carbohydrates, has an enormous protective effect … Fibre-rich whole foods that require chewing and retain much of their structure in the gut increase satiety and help weight control and can favourably influence lipid and glucose levels.” Another of the authors, Professor John Cummings from the University of Dundee, said: “This is the end of 50 years of researching dietary fibre … We need to get this written in stone and part of people’s lives.” Brexit clock ticks down – The Confederation of British Industry is urging MPs to back Theresa May’s deal in next Tuesday’s vote, warning that a hard Brexit would cut GDP by up to 8% and cost thousands of jobs. May has sought to win Labour support for her Brexit deal by making a direct offer to union leaders to beef up workers’ rights. In his September conference speech, Jeremy Corbyn offered to support the prime minister’s deal if she toughened up employment rights and environmental standards – though May has rejected his further condition of a permanent customs union. The PM has said the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, should explain to parliament why he allowed MPs to vote on Dominic Grieve’s Brexit amendment. “Obviously the Speaker made a decision on a particular amendment; I was surprised at that decision,” the PM said, repeating others’ calls for Bercow to publish the advice he received from his clerks. Big questions answered – Fiona Bruce has hosted Question Time for the first time, and Mark Lawson was watching. “Bruce’s opening link, in which she declared ‘it’s lovely to be here!’, like a mayor opening a garden party, raised fears that she was going to soften the show,” Lawson writes. “But her follow-up questions to the three politician panellists – James Cleverly for the government, Emily Thornberry for the opposition, and Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson – were as brisk and persistent as David Dimbleby’s. The new presenter felt fresh and effective, but the BBC should have taken advantage of the succession to shake up the structure as well, and Bruce can only truly be judged when she has some non-Brexit subject matter.” Fatberg game-changer – “This is an important step in the battle against blockages. We’ve all seen the impact of fatbergs, and we want to see fewer of them.” Hear, hear Michael Roberts, chief executive of Water UK, who this morning hails the arrival of a “safe to flush” label for wet wipes. Many wipes are labelled as flushable when they don’t break down quickly in the sewers, and clump together with fats, oils and grease on a massive scale. The results have included a 250-metre fatberg in Whitechapel in London in 2017, which weighed as much as 19 elephants, and a 64-metre fatberg discovered this week in Sidmouth, Devon. With the US government in partial shutdown, the president continues to demand funding for his Mexican border wall. Lauren Gambino, in Washington DC, and Bryan Mealer, in Texas, discuss how Trump’s central campaign promise has led to this point of paralysis. Plus, John Harris looks back to the optimism of 1989. Between daylight saving and obligatory early starts, we live at the mercy of “official” time – and many of us feel permanently out of sync. Most of us are not free to choose our work or school hours; we have little control over the lighting in our public spaces and external environment; and we are even forced to reprogram our internal clock twice a year because of daylight saving time. But the German spa town of Bad Kissingen aims to be different. It has rebranded itself as the world’s first ChronoCity – a place where internal time is as important as external time, and sleep is sacrosanct. In July 2013 the council contacted a chronobiologist about tweaking the lives and affairs of the town and its people to better accommodate their body clocks. Since then there have been victories with flexible working, but it is an evolving effort – the idea of abandoning daylight saving was defeated. Science journalist Linda Geddes explains an individual’s “chronotype” is based on their sleep behaviour. It turns out there really is such a thing as a morning person or a night owl, and there is an argument for employers and society to accommodate that. Cristiano Ronaldo’s lawyer has confirmed authorities in Las Vegas have issued a warrant to collect DNA from the football star in the wake of allegations he raped a woman in the city in 2009. Ole Gunnar Solskjær accepts Mauricio Pochettino “has done a very good job” at Tottenham and understands why he is being linked with the permanent Manchester United manager’s role. The Southampton striker Charlie Austin has been handed a two-match suspension by the FA after admitting making a gesture towards Manchester City fans during the recent Premier League game at St Mary’s. And Danny Cipriani has made a timely return from injury and will start at fly-half for Gloucester tonight against Munster in a must-win European Champions Cup tie at Kingsholm. Overnight, the car industry boss Carlos Ghosn has been indicted in Japan on fresh charges of financial misconduct. Asian stocks inched up to five-week highs after Jerome Powell reiterated the Federal Reserve will be patient about raising interest rates, while trade talks between Washington and Beijing moved to higher levels. The US treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said China’s vice-premier Liu He would “most likely” visit Washington later in the month. The FTSE is set to open higher and the pound is worth $1.276 and €1.107 at time of writing. The Guardian’s lead story is “Blow to the low-carb diet as WHO report says fibre cuts early deaths”, a story that also features on the front page of the Times. But that paper splashes with: “May calls on union chief in bid to save Brexit deal”. The Express is thrilled with Michael Gove’s criticism of Corbyn’s Brexit stance: “Finally! Someone tells it as it is”, while the Financial Times reports: “Ford and JLR slash thousands of EU jobs in drive to stem sales slide”. Stories about the love lives of powerful men run on the front pages of the Sun: “Amazon slime” and the Mirror: “Cheat Boris and lover in Greek hideaway”. The Telegraph reports: “Trans row as men get access to women’s NHS wards”, the Mail has: “PM orders speedboat killer: give yourself up”, and the i says: “Can’t recycle: Britain to burn more than half its rubbish”. The Guardian Morning Briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. For more news: www.theguardian.comIn the opening scene of the film Roma, soapy water splashes across the screen. It’s the product of the protagonist, Cleo, scrubbing the driveway and cleaning up dog mess, which her employers, a middle-class Mexican family, chide her for not removing promptly. The scene, however simple and aesthetically pleasing, sends a subtle message that many Mexican moviegoers immediately understand about domestic workers like Cleo and the confusing status in the households they serve. “It’s clearly trying to say: this maid doesn’t only work for the family but she even works for the dog. She cleans up the dog’s shit,” said Gary Alazraki, a Mexican filmmaker and producer. “That’s her status in the family and yet she is so loved. They give her a home but they won’t give her electricity for her rooftop room. They [Cleo and her colleague] are part of the family but then they are an underclass,” he continued. “The movie’s success lies in its heart, which is that many of us grew up in a home where a nanny became part of the family in a very perverse way.” Since it was released late last year, Roma has won acclaim and awards – most recently a Golden Globe – and could next month capture Mexico’s first foreign-language film Oscar. It has catapulted its star, Yalitza Aparicio, into the global spotlight and onto the cover of Vogue’s Mexican edition – a first for an indigenous woman. But it has also prompted serious soul-searching about the plight of poorly paid and often-unprotected domestic workers in Mexico, where, nearly five decades after the period depicted in the film, inequality remains rife, racism stubbornly persists and social mobility seems to have stagnated. “What [the director] Alfonso Cuarón wanted to say in his film is: ‘look at the country in which I grew up in, how different it was and how much it hasn’t changed. And that’s not a good thing,’” Alazraki said. Named after the then-bourgeois Mexico City neighbourhood in which Cuarón was raised and the film is set, Roma has made an impression on the middle and upper classes even as it addresses uncomfortable issues such as race and class in a country where 43% of the population is poor. “I think it’s the kind of film that appeals to a certain kind of middle- and upper-income audience of a liberal persuasion, who see the film as putting into cinematic language a lot of their own concerns about class and race division in Mexico,” said Andrew Paxman, professor at Mexico City’s Centre for Research and Teaching in Economics. “It’s not a lecturing film,” he said. “In Mexican cinema … the poor are noble and the rich are bastards. Roma is very fresh in this regard. It’s not vilifying the employers. These are all well-rounded human beings, and that makes this film so innovative.” Roma’s release – first in cinemas and then on Netflix – coincided with political change in Mexico. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador swept into office in December, promising to combat inequality and put the priorities of poor and indigenous Mexicans first. He stokes nostalgia for past decades in the country, when the economy grew rapidly and the middle class expanded – the so-called Mexican miracle, which ran for nearly three decades after the second world war, and the tail end of which was captured in Roma, set in the early 1970s. When the culture ministry organised a special screening of Roma, it did so at Los Pinos, the presidential palace that López Obrador refuses to live in and opened to the public as a museum. But some facets of Mexican life remain stubbornly resistant to change. Examples of women like Cleo are still common, said Marcelina Bautista, founder of a union for domestic workers. Providing food and lodging is often offered as an excuse for not paying proper wages, Bautista said. “It’s a way to cheat and avoid the responsibilities that a person assumes when hiring someone, [and] when we demand our wages they come out and say we’re ingrates for being so demanding and unthankful for having a roof over our heads and food,” she said. Ingrained prejudice has also been reflected in media coverage of the film, with headlines referring to Cleo with disparaging words like “servant” and muchacha (girl, as maids are commonly called). The release of Roma was “raising consciousness”, Bautista added. “Many domestic workers really identify with the film.” And change could also come from the supreme court, which last month ruled in favour of domestic workers, who, as informal employees, petitioned for their labour rights and to receive social benefits such as healthcare and pensions. I think it is one of Mexico's most serious cinematic attempts at dealing with racism For some, Roma has caused discomforting memories of their own families’ treatment of domestic staff. “I have not been able to watch it because of all the memories of the 1970s,” said Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez, a Mexico City sociologist. Soriano-Núñez recalls his own grandmother verbally “bullying” the hired help or denigrating her in front of family. “I think it is one of Mexico’s most serious cinematic attempts at dealing with racism since Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados,” which was released in 1950, he said. The film’s middle-class appeal has been undeniable, though. Observers say much of it stems from its portrayal of a time when the middle class could live comfortably and security was provided, even if it was through the might of a politically repressive regime. The time, however sinister, still appealed to some in a population weary of crimes such as kidnapping and extortion and seeing drug cartels and lethal fuel-theft gangs operating with impunity, said Harim Gutiérrez, historian at the Metropolitan Autonomous University. “Roma depicts the swansong of the middle class produced by the Mexican miracle,” under the old political regime, Gutiérrez said. “It was a time when a physician who worked for the government could have the purchasing power to maintain a household the same size as this family had,” he added. “They could have a higher standard of living … with jobs that today barely allow for survival.”His debut The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle might be being praised as an “ingenious, intriguing and highly original mindbender of a murder mystery” by judges after it landed the Costa first novel award, but author Stuart Turton says that the process of writing it was “just awful”. On Monday night, Turton was announced as the winner of the £5,000 award for his genre-bending debut, in which Evelyn is murdered hundreds of times at a party thrown by her parents. The only way to break the cycle is for Aidan – who wakes each morning, Groundhog Day-style, in the body of a different guest – to identify her killer. Chosen as winner from 117 entries, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is, said judges, “fresh, enticing and completely unputdownable”. “We were all stunned that this exciting and accomplished novel, planned and plotted perfectly, is a debut,” said the panel. The prize has previously gone to massive bestsellers such as Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Nathan Filer’s The Shock of the Fall and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Turton, a 38-year-old freelance journalist from Widnes, Cheshire, never had a burning desire to be an author, but as an Agatha Christie fan since childhood, he had always wanted to write a golden age crime novel with a “Roger Ackroyd kind of twist”. A “phenomenally bad” attempt when he was 21 pointed him elsewhere, travelling the world and working in bookshops, airports and goat ranches, even cleaning toilets, until he became a journalist. He was working as a travel writer in Dubai when the idea that would become Evelyn Hardcastle struck him. “It was the body-hopping and the Groundhog Day loop. I didn’t have anything else, the characters or murder, I just had that concept. The moment I got it, I thought: ‘Oh crap, now I’ve got to go and do that, and I’ve got to be in England, I need that atmosphere, those stately homes. I need to be lost in drizzly forests, I cannot do that in the desert,’” he says. “I was terrified the entire time, from the moment the idea came and I knew I had to follow through on it.” Back in London, the novel still didn’t come easily. “The more I planned it, the more I tried to wrap these knots together, the more complicated it became. It was just awful for about a year,” he says. “I must have been horrible to be around because my mind was being pulled in about 18 directions. I’d given so much up, convinced my girlfriend to come [to London], and I didn’t think I could pull it off. Eventually I started having fun with it. The second year, I saw a glimmer in it that it could actually work, and that was amazing.” Turton’s debut is one of five winners in the Costa awards, which go to the “most enjoyable” books by authors resident in the UK and Ireland. Sally Rooney’s second novel Normal People, about the relationship between two youngsters in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, has taken this year’s Costa novel award, beating 172 contenders including Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls and Tom Rachman’s The Italian Teacher. Rooney’s win makes the 27-year-old the youngest ever recipient of the novel category, for a book that judges called a “trailblazing novel about modern life and love that will electrify any reader”. Bart van Es, an Oxford professor, won the biography award for his memoir The Cut Out Girl, which centres on the true story of a young Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis with a network of foster families in Holland during the second world war, and which judges called “the hidden gem of the year”. The poetry category went to the Scottish poet JO Morgan for Assurances, which draws from his father’s role as an officer in the RAF involved in the “Airborne Nuclear Deterrent” during the cold war. “We were all gripped by this polyphonic book-length poem and dazzled by its originality and inventiveness,” said judges. The Costa children’s book award, won in the past by Philip Pullman, was taken this year by Hilary McKay’s The Skylarks’ War. Set during the first world war, it is “as perfect a novel as you could ever want to read,” according to judges. Chosen from 641 entries in total, the five category winners will now go on to compete for the Costa book of the year, which is worth £30,000 and was won posthumously last year by Helen Dunmore with her final poetry collection Inside the Wave. This year’s winner, chosen by a panel of judges chaired by BBC journalist Sophie Raworth, will be announced on 29 January. Best novel: Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber) Best first novel: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (Raven Books) Best biography: The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es (Penguin) Best poetry: Assurances by JO Morgan (Jonathan Cape) Best children’s book: The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay (Macmillan)With the ageless Jimmy Anderson at the helm and the second new ball in his hand, England just managed to retrieve a tricky situation. By snatching three late wickets as the sun headed swiftly towards the Caribbean sea, he dragged England back into a game that had been slipping out of control. Anderson finished the day with exceptional figures: 24-12-33-4. Leaving aside the wickets column, look at the volume of overs and runs conceded. Amid an uneven display among the bowlers – Ben Stokes was also impressive, while the rest struggled – Joe Root was indebted to his senior citizen as the West Indies slumped from 240 for four to 264 for eight against the second new ball. After all the conjecture about the pitch, it transpired that it was as docile and well-behaved as a teacher’s pet. Moreover the much-discussed Dukes ball also behaved decorously, offering just moderate swing at the start – oddly the second one was more amenable. This reduced the impact of Sam Curran at the start and enhanced the considerable reputation of Stuart Broad, who was sitting as comfortably as his minor ailments would allow in the pavilion, having been omitted for the third time in four Test matches. By contrast John Campbell had every reason to feel a little light-headed as the match began. He had just received his first cap from two Bajan legends. Joel Garner, beaming as ever, passed the treasured maroon cap to Sir Garry Sobers, who duly handed it over to Campbell, seconds before he took guard to his first ball from Test cricket, which went for four. What a way to start the day. Campbell, a stocky left-hander from Jamaica, looked the part against the seamers. He easily outscored Kraigg Brathwaite, which was not difficult since the West Indies’ regular opener took 59 balls to reach double figures. Most of Campbell’s early runs came off Curran with glides to third man and thumps square of the wicket when the bowler pitched short, which was too often. Test cricket did not seem too tricky for the debutant. After just over an hour’s play Moeen Ali was introduced, whereupon Campbell swept at every ball he received from the off-spinner. In all he faced five deliveries from Moeen. The first four produced nine runs from various parts of Campbell’s bat; the fifth he missed and was lbw, an exasperating end to a promising innings. It is not a good idea to sweep every delivery in Test cricket. This was an exit reminiscent of one or two of those of Clayton Lambert from Guyana, who played some extravagant strokes against Phil Tufnell in the 1990s. Brathwaite and Shai Hope steadied the innings with few alarms. Brathwaite was transformed by the sight of some off-breaks. The tortoise suddenly twinkled down the crease to hit the ball over the fielders on the leg-side and he struck the first six of the series against Moeen. Against the other bowlers he went back into his shell as he emulated the Misbah-ul-Haq school of batting. At lunch West Indies were sitting happily on 89 for one. For the next hour they consolidated as Anderson bowled another miserly spell while Adil Rashid offered fewer run-scoring opportunities than usual. Then Stokes intervened. He was prepared to bend his back despite the sluggish surface. First he dispatched Brathwaite who edged a low catch into the safe hands of Root at second slip. Enter Darren Bravo for the first time in a Test match in over two years, an absence triggered not by a loss of form but because he called the chairman of the board, Dave Cameron, “a big idiot” on Twitter. It was not a memorable return. Bravo, falling over to the off-side, was lbw to a full delivery from Stokes delivered from around the wicket, which drifted from leg to off. All the while Hope batted beguilingly. A few of his cover drives had the crowd purring as they used to do here – and all around the Caribbean when Carl Hooper was having one of his good days. He reached his half century, only his second in his last 24 Test innings – for all his obvious class he has endured a barren trot against the red ball since his heroics at Headingley. Then Anderson, bowling his first over from the Joel Garner end, found his inside edge and his first wicket of the innings. Soon after came England’s first blemish in the field and it would prove an expensive one. Shimron Hetmyer, already known as “Hitmyer” over here, is a young batsman from Guyana who commands attention. He captained the Under-19 side that won the World Cup after sanctioning a “Mankad” run-out along the way. He is a left-hander who has a bit of a swagger – how refreshing to see him in his floppy hat against the spinners in the final session – and he likes to hit the ball. On three he drove loosely at Anderson; the ball sped in the air to the right of Jos Buttler at extra cover and the catch was spilled. It was a hard chance but the sort that Buttler would expect to take. Against the old ball Roston Chase and Hetmyer batted with endearing and decisive freedom. Moeen, bowling with little venom, was hit for two more straight sixes; Hetmyer gave Rashid the same treatment as the pair upped the tempo before the advent of the second new ball. They had added 66 together when Anderson, rock-solid reliable throughout the day, found the outside-edge of Chase’s bat. Shane Dowrich and captain Jason Holder followed in swift succession, while Stokes dealt with Kemar Roach. Anderson had delivered yet again and even the irrepressible Hetmyer was giving him due respect at the end.Here are our bold predictions for 2019 in sports. Please note the bold (or should that be bold?) in bold predictions: these are to be taken with a pinch of salt. That Woods could compete in illustrious golf company once more was demonstrated by strong performances in the 2018 Open and US PGA Championship. Subsequent victory at the Tour Championship proved a further, notable milestone for a player whose career seemed destined to peter out because of fitness troubles. The US Open’s return to Pebble Beach must have Woods licking his lips; he won the event by 15 shots there in 2000 – as remains a tournament record – and was just three adrift of Graeme McDowell in 2010, just months after chaos had engulfed his personal life. The last 12 months proved that Woods can add a 15th major title to his CV. The third of the upcoming year provides ideal opportunity. EM Anthony Davis will join LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. OK, maybe this isn’t exactly the boldest possible prediction since James’ wooing of the ridiculously talented New Orleans Pelicans center has reached the point where the NBA has issued a statement warning teams against tampering. The Pelicans probably won’t be able to hold on to their franchise player and it’s hard to imagine a better situation for Davis, or the league, than having him join James in LA. A LeBron/Davis Lakers team could do damage in the Western Conference, especially if Kevin Durant leaves the Golden State Warriors in the dust, which I’m also predicting will happen. HF On the surface, Harper is a free-agent dream. A so-called “generational” talent at 26 years old, and one with a career OPS of an even .900. Just about everybody, but everybody doesn’t have pockets deep enough to accommodate the outfielder. That means he’ll land in a big market, meaning greater expectations and pressure that Harper never truly felt in Washington. While DC is the sixth largest television market in the United States, it doesn’t play like a New York or an LA. If Harper lands in a big smoke, Harper will struggle to find his feet with expectations mixing into a formula that’s already produced inconsistent results. For example, Yasiel Puig, who may have been moved to help accommodate Harper’s would-be budget-busting contract, had a higher WAR than Harper last season: a paltry 1.3, albeit, mostly because of poor defensive numbers. Then again, he’s capable of hanging a 10 on the WAR scale, but that was three full seasons ago. That’s not the consistency you should expectant from a “generational” player. Buyer beware. DL Hardened skeptics pooh-poohed Mayweather’s summit meeting with Pacquiao for happening far past its sell-by date and were partially vindicated by a one-sided fight that left customers feeling let down and ripped off. A rematch between now-quadragenarian icons, surely won’t do the record-shattering business of that poorly received 2015 blockbuster, but will no doubt be a money-spinning affair and another nine-figure payday for both men. Pacquiao, who won a secondary welterweight title belt in the summer, signed with longtime Mayweather adviser Al Haymon last month and is due to fight Adrien Broner on 20 January. Should the Filipino senator make it through unscathed, a rematch that nobody asked for will likely be announced for May or June. BAG Given she is 13 in the world and hits the ball as hard as Serena Williams, picking 20-year-old Aryna Sabalenka to win a slam in 2019 might not appear to be that outrageous. After all, there have been eight different champions in the last eight majors. However, while that statistic alone describes the volatility and promise of the women’s game, Williams, at 37, is in the mood to build on her two 2018 finals in a comeback year of high drama - so Sabalenka and the other contenders will have that considerable obstacle to a breakthrough. None the less, she has more weapons than nearly all of her contemporaries. It could be the start of another era – even at Williams’s expense. KM Mixed martial arts can feel insular or expansive depending on your perspective. The UFC is often regarded as the sun at the center of MMA’s solar system, and the start of its five-year relationship with ESPN in January should only strengthen the promotion’s brand recognition. Heading into 2019, however, MMA outside the United States, particularly Asia’s One Championship, is well positioned to capture American fight fans’ imagination in a way it hasn’t since Pride collapsed more than a decade ago. JG Curling is a quadrennial hit on TV, and waves of people have hit the ice to try for themselves. But US broadcasters simply don’t know how to handle the sport between the Games. NBC’s Curling Night in America broadcasts, recorded en masse early in the season and shown game-by-game over the next several months, simply don’t cut it. They just repeat the same talking points – especially this year, when they talk ad infinitum about John Shuster’s magical gold-medal run – instead of giving a breakdown of the tactics behind each shot and whether or not it succeeded, as we can see on the occasional Canadian broadcast picked up by ESPN3. Ironically, the same network that makes curling a personality parade (NBC) proved the Premier League can be a hit on American TV when commentators stop talking down to viewers and start taking it seriously. When someone takes the same approach with curling, viewers will take notice. BDThe marketing for Karyn Kusama’s sun-dried Californian cop thriller Destroyer has leaned heavily on the supposedly drastic change of pace – and face – it represents for its very famous leading lady. “Nothing Nicole Kidman has done in her career can prepare you for Destroyer,” blares the leading pull-quote on the film’s posters, while variations of “transformative” appear below, over a straight-on image of Kidman’s admittedly dramatically altered visage: all hellishly mottled, perma-dirtied skin and ravine-deep eyebags, under a mangy, unconditioned bison pelt of a wig. It looks just enough like Kidman’s own to draw in the devoted, but removed from the poster, anyone else might take for a particularly egregious DUI mugshot. “See [X actor] as you’ve never seen them before” is, of course, a time-honoured promotional strategy, particularly when it comes to campaigning for acting awards, where elaborate makeup work or severe weight changes will never count against you. Kidman has been down this road before, to Oscar-winning effect. In 2002, the media attention on her dowdy deglam job as Virginia Woolf in The Hours rather overwhelmed the discussion of her finely wrought, emotionally piercing performance – jokes about her prosthetic hooter extended all the way to the Oscar presentation itself, as Denzel Washington opened the envelope and rather snidely announced her victory “by a nose”. That was in the flush of Kidman’s post-divorce career rejuvenation: freed from the demeaning celebrity status of being Mrs Tom Cruise, she took a varied, adventurous jumble range of projects to fully spotlight the serious solo acting intent that To Die For, Portrait of a Lady and Eyes Wide Shut had already promised. The Hours wasn’t even the best of them, but it was the one that announced that plan most literally, with literary biopic cred, uglifying makeup and all. She was never going to win an Oscar for truly on-the-edge work like Birth or Dogville – with characters whose interiority was more unnerving than their appearance – but Woolfing it up proved the point on Academy-friendly terms. Sixteen years on, the point no longer needs to be proved. We have since seen Kidman excelling in every register from brittle acid comedy (Margot at the Wedding) to sexed-up southern gothic derangement (The Paperboy) to quiet-storm trauma release (her astonishing, Emmy-winning turn on TV’s Little White Lies), with enough bizarre missteps and undeserved misfires in between to give her career a jaggedly complicated arc. All of which is to say that pretty much everything Kidman has done in her career has prepared us – and more importantly, her – for the role of raggedly bent Los Angeles cop Erin Bell in Kusama’s film, if only because it’s hard these days to think of what a typical Kidman role might be. On the outside, at least. For it’s what emerges from beneath that disorientingly scorched, ruined exterior that feels more familiar to Kidman, as Bell proves another expert study in her gallery of smart women who lie to themselves — the film’s niftily two-pronged narrative finds her chasing a fortune in the past, leading to a curdled blend of redemption and revenge in the present, kidding herself all the way about how easy or successful the pursuit might be. And she suffers for it, perhaps more physically and viscerally than in any Kidman vehicle since Lars von Trier put her through the wringer in Dogville. The beatings she takes here, filmed by Kusama with the kind of blunt, unfetishised frankness that male action directors rarely direct at female protagonists, are entirely startling. Genre films like Destroyer are rarely framed around female characters; when they are, the heroine tends to be portrayed as dully indestructible, her feminine attributes either pushed aside in favour of “one of the boys” toughness or flattened into a one-dimensional form of girl power. In this regard, Destroyer makes an interesting companion piece to Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn’s sharp, angry update of Lynda La Plante’s Widows – another bleak, hard-boiled genre piece to unusually place a fiftysomething woman at the active centre of its copious action. Erin Bell and Viola Davis’s Veronica Rawlings certainly share enough flawed, disappointment-fuelled determination to power a fiercely driven underworld mission; squint a little, and it’s not too hard to imagine how their narratives might intersect. Both films make the case for women who have been around the block a little as persuasive action heroes. Kidman’s Bell is resilient, certainly, but her damage is foregrounded to prove it, in her scarred, choked voice (deftly lowered from the flashbacks) and her jarring makeover: that face isn’t a mere attention-grabbing stunt, but the required external manifestation of all the repeated effort and failure she’s expended and endured as a cop, as a lover and, we come to learn, as a mother too. The overriding spirit of Kidman’s performance is one of a distinctly feminine exhaustion, the impact of having to work harder than the dismissive men surrounding her just to keep her head above water – and not always excelling in the process. However might a 51-year-old woman with three decades’ experience of working in pre-#TimesUp Hollywood channel such feeling? Perhaps Destroyer isn’t such a leap for the star after all.The story of the 1953 Charity Shield wasn’t too dissimilar from the story of the 1953 FA Cup final. Stan Mortensen was on target for Blackpool, but his teammate Stanley Matthews ran off with the man-of-the-match plaudits. Yet the tale wasn’t an exact facsimile: despite the heroic efforts of the two Stans, Cup winners Blackpool lost the Shield to league champions Arsenal. The veteran Tommy Lawton was on the scoresheet for the Gunners that day, and, pass that crowbar please, the modern-day Arsenal have similar star strikers on which to call: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette, the increasingly impressive Alex Iwobi. Setting aside Aubameyang’s inexplicable hoick over the bar from a yard out at Anfield, and Arsenal’s continued travails at the back – no clean sheet in six – whoever gets the nod up front for the visitors should decisively make hay against hosts who have lost four of their last six and shipped two goals against non-league Solihull Moors in the last round. Will the Unai Emery era begin with FA Cup No 14? Or can the Seasiders reprise their recent performance at the Emirates in the League Cup – when they were a linesman’s flag away from completing a two-goal comeback – and give the Gunners something to worry about? SM In the weeks after Tranmere won promotion back to the Football League, having already lost top scorer Andy Cook to Walsall, the fear was that the burden on James Norwood would be too great. But after scoring the winner at Wembley in May, Norwood has relished his role as Rovers’ go-to man, scoring 18 since August, propelling his side to within touching distance of the play-offs. The worry for Tranmere now is losing Norwood, with the 28-year-old out of contract this summer. Norwood has the perfect opportunity to impress suitors higher up the ladder on Friday evening, with an audition against a likely experimental Spurs back line under the lights at Prenton Park. “Big evenings like Tottenham will go a long way to seeing us keep moving forward,” said manager Micky Mellon. “We’ve seen some dark times and hit rock bottom.” BF “I don’t see the fuss about it, we’re going to turn up here, get absolutely smashed and I’m going to go home and get on with my life again,” said Alan Dowson, the Woking manager, in an interview last week. Maybe the magic of the Cup is lost on Dowson, or moreover perhaps it is just a touch of mind games, an attempt to relax his players before facing Premier League opposition. Woking, second in the National League South, are the lowest-ranked team left and warmed up for Javi Gracia’s Watford with a 3-0 win over Hampton and Richmond on Tuesday. Greg Luer, the former Hull youngster, hit a hat-trick in that game, while Ben Gerring, an October arrival, captained Truro City to the first round last season. Five leagues may separate the teams but, after sending Swindon packing in the last round, Woking, whose assistant manager is the Sky Sports commentator Martin Tyler, may just quietly fancy their chances of another upset against a team that are almost certain to make wholesale changes. BF Ipswich Town’s recent FA Cup record is staggeringly bad. They last advanced to the fourth round in 2009-10 and have since lost eight consecutive third-round ties. Anchored to the bottom of the Championship, 10 points from safety and with two wins to their name all season, there is little to suggest they will stop the rot against Accrington Stanley, who are just 12 places below Saturday’s visitors in the league standings. While maintaining Ipswich’s Championship status is manager Paul Lambert’s priority, he told reporters at his pre-match press conference he would travel to Accrington “as strong as I can”. Even so, Stanley manager John Coleman is unlikely to be fazed but has conceded his own team haven’t been playing too well either. “We are like Jekyll and Hyde at the moment, not in our performances but in our results, so this is an opportunity for us to get back on track,” he said, before pointing out that funds generated by a 2003-04 Cup run helped get Stanley into the Football League. Advancing to the fourth round for only the third time since the collapse of the original Stanley in 1966 could land them a similarly lucrative jackpot. BG How Lincoln City must have been rubbing their hands together at Everton’s recent wobble. Marco Silva’s side must do battle with the League Two leaders, impeccably led by the Cowley brothers, after five defeats in eight matches, the latest a chastening loss to Leicester. At Lincoln, the mood could not be more contrasting. The 6ft 5in Yerry Mina, if he plays, will meet his match in Matt Rhead and John Akinde, a pair of burly strikers who will be determined to make life difficult. As well as Akinde, prolific since arriving from Barnet in the summer, Lincoln boast guile in the shape of Shay McCartan, the talented Northern Ireland forward. “We’re looking forward to playing at Goodison Park against a massive club,” McCartan said. “We’re getting teams coming to us [in the league] and raising their games. And now we’ve got the chance to do that.” BF These two have quite the FA Cup pedigree. They’ve won it six times apiece, a total only bested in history by Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool and Aston Villa. Only problem is, all the good work was done an awfully long time ago. Newcastle lifted their sixth FA Cup in 1955, while Blackburn completed their collection in 1928, having won their other five in the 19th century. So No 7 is well overdue. More recent results – just three wins between them since the start of December – suggests the long wait is likely to go on, whoever prevails. But history can be a blessing as well as a burden: Newcastle beat Blackburn on their way to the 1910 and 1952 FA Cups, while Rovers saw off the Toon during their one successful 20th-century run. The winners are therefore permitted to brazenly ignore the current form-book and take a firm clutch of the good old Comforting Straws Of Precedence. They feel real nice, don’t they. SM Newport County saw off Welsh rivals Wrexham in emphatic style to earn themselves a plum home tie and the welcome windfall that comes with it being shown live on the BBC. In last season’s fourth round, Tottenham’s players clearly didn’t fancy the conditions on a cold January night at Rodney Parade and were extremely lucky to escape with a draw before winning the replay in the more familiar surroundings of Wembley. Given their current Jekyll and Hyde status there’s every chance Leicester could come a cropper, but Michael Flynn’s side will need to up their game considerably, having won just three of their past 15 games in League Two. BG Michael Jolley worked as a corporate bond trader for six years, in London and New York, but ultimately did not find life in banking fulfilling. Born in Sheffield and educated at Cambridge University, when he returned to England to pursue a career in football he volunteered in Crystal Palace’s academy as he embarked on earning his coaching badges while working in the city part-time. On Saturday Jolley will return to Selhurst Park as manager of Grimsby Town, more than a decade on from helping the likes of Sean Scannell, John Bostock and Victor Moses graduate through the ranks. Jolley is working with a palette of different youngsters these days, with Harry Clifton and Elliot Embleton, the Sunderland loanee and England Under-20 international impressing this season. Grimsby will arrive full of confidence, having hoisted themselves up to mid-table in League Two after four wins from their last five. BF Having seen off non-League outfits Hampton & Richmond and Maidstone United in the preceding rounds, Oldham Athletic will have the chance to slay a top-flight side when they travel to a Fulham team currently preoccupied with Premier League survival. Claudio Ranieri’s side should still be too good for an outfit currently sitting in mid-table three divisions below, but having knocked Liverpool out as a League One side six years ago, the Latics will fancy their chances. Currently without a manager after club legend Frankie Bunn was controversially dismissed on the back of a 6-0 Boxing Day defeat at the hands of Carlisle, Oldham are on something of a roll under caretaker Pete Wild, who has masterminded back-to-back wins against Port Vale and Notts County. An outsider in the betting to become the next manager, should he do the same against Premier League opposition he could surely stake a legitimate claim for being given the job full time. BG A trip to Ashton Gate is just about the last thing David Wagner needs right now. With Premier League safety undoubtedly the priority for his flailing team, a duel with a resurgent Bristol City side – unbeaten in eight – that fared so well against top-flight opposition en route to the Carabao Cup semis last season has the hallmarks of an uneasy ride. For the likes of Josh Brownhill and Lloyd Kelly, influential for the Robins this season, it is another chance to shine. City beat Manchester United, Watford and Crystal Palace last year and in Famara Diédhiou, who recently became a father for the second time, they have a striker returning to form. “I sent him a gif of Romario and Bebeto [celebrating] for Brazil and I thought that might just plant that seed in his head to get the goal,” said his manager, Lee Johnson, after the Senegalese opened the scoring in a 2-0 win at Stoke on New Year’s Day. BFRihanna is reportedly about to make history as the first black female to head up a fashion brand at the world’s largest luxury conglomerate, LVMH. It would be the first new fashion house the group, which owns Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, has launched since Christian Lacroix in 1987. The new brand is expected to take the singer’s last name, Fenty, which she uses for her make-up and lingerie businesses. Speculation was fuelled this week when she stepped out in an oversized pair of sunglasses with the brand’s logo visible on the side. Rihanna has filed a lawsuit against her father, Ronald Fenty, in a dispute over the use of the Fenty name by their respective companies. The lawsuit stated he “egregiously and fraudulently misrepresented to third parties and the public that their company … is affiliated with Rihanna”. Rihanna is asking for a legal injunction on the use of the Fenty name, as well as unspecified damages. The deal would be a shrewd business move for LVMH, which has been courting the singer for some time. While she worked on a capsule collection of sunglasses in 2015 for LVMH’s Dior, she collaborated with Puma in 2016, generating $1bn in sales for the sportswear brand. In 2017, LVMH lured her back to collaborate on her make-up line, Fenty Beauty. The range, which was praised for encompassing a wide range of skin tones, reportedly made $100m in sales within 40 days and was named as one of Time Magazine’s 25 best inventions that year. Her lingerie line, Savage x Fenty, which launched in May 2017, has enjoyed huge success and acclaim for its inclusivity. Pitched as the antidote to existing underwear brands such as Victoria’s Secret, which has been accused of being culturally out of touch and objectifying women, the TechStyle Fashion Group-backed brand includes sizes ranging from from XS to 3XL and features plus-size models in its campaigns. “I accept all of the bodies,” Rihanna told US Vogue last year. “I’m not built like a Victoria’s Secret girl, and I still feel very beautiful and confident in my lingerie.” TechStyle’s CEO told the trade publication WWD at the time that he chose Rihanna because she was “the right partner to bring instant credibility and exposure” to the brand. While the details of her new fashion brand remain under wraps, its concept is a reflection of the state of play in the fashion industry. Established and heritage brands are increasingly teaming up with high-profile celebrities such as Rihanna – who has 67 million Instagram followers – to work on collaborations and endorse products thanks to the influence they hold over the lucrative “Generation Z” consumer market. The Kardashian family are another prolific example of this and have been tapped by several fashion houses, including Calvin Klein, all eager to attract their combined 508.7 million social media followers. It would also signal a further evolution in what it takes to head up a fashion house in the 21st century. Like Virgil Abloh, who was appointed as the artistic director of LVMH’s flagship brand Louis Vuitton last year, Rihanna has no formal fashion training. Abloh’s first Vuitton collection is selling 30% faster than the much-hyped collaboration with Supreme from 2017. Abloh’s mentor Kanye West is another example of a successful musician-to-designer transition. Aside from his claims that his clothing brand Yeezy “will become the biggest apparel company in human history”, it was reported last year that his brand had received a $1.5bn valuation. The launch of Rihanna’s brand could go some way to answering calls for more diversity among fashion’s leaders. Last year, she became the first black woman to be on the September cover, traditionally the largest and most important edition of the magazine, of British Vogue. “A fearless music-industry icon and businesswoman, when it comes to that potent mix of fashion and celebrity, nobody does it quite like her,” said the editor-in-chief, Edward Enninful, of Rihanna.The Daily Telegraph has paid “substantial damages” to Melania Trump and apologised “unreservedly” to the US first lady after making a number of false claims about her life in an article. The claims were made in a story entitled The mystery of Melania, which ran on the cover of last Saturday’s Telegraph magazine, but the newspaper has now said it included a number of errors about Donald Trump’s wife which should not have been published. The piece promised to tell the truth on what it described as the “most private and enigmatic” of presidential wives after interviews with “White House insiders, Slovenian school friends and photographers”. The newspaper – after an unusually swift retraction and settlement – pulled the story by the US journalist Nina Burleigh, who works for Newsweek and is the author of the book Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women. The Telegraph took the story down from its website and issued a lengthy point-by-point correction.The newspaper said in a statement retracting the piece: “Mrs Trump’s father was not a fearsome presence and did not control the family. Mrs Trump did not leave her design and architecture course at university relating to the completion of an exam, as alleged in the article, but rather because she wanted to pursue a successful career as a professional model. Mrs Trump was not struggling in her modelling career before she met Mr Trump, and she did not advance in her career due to the assistance of Mr Trump.“We accept that Mrs Trump was a successful professional model in her own right before she met her husband and obtained her own modelling work without his assistance. Mrs Trump met Mr Trump in 1998, not in 1996 as stated in the article. The article also wrongly claimed that Mrs Trump’s mother, father and sister relocated to New York in 2005 to live in buildings owned by Mr Trump. They did not. The claim that Mrs Trump cried on election night is also false.“We apologise unreservedly to the first lady and her family for any embarrassment caused by our publication of these allegations. As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Mrs Trump substantial damages as well as her legal costs.”My older brother took me to see the original, 1939 version of The Four Feathers when I was nine or 10. He had seen it several times already – had once sat through it twice when, thanks to the principle of continuous performance, it was possible to stay put in your seat and watch the programme all over again at no extra cost. Films about war weren’t new to me. The Four Feathers stood out on two counts. Surprisingly, given its date, and in contrast to the usual British monochrome, it was in Technicolor; and the war it featured was older and more obscure than the familiar one, which had ended in 1945. In it, an army led by General Kitchener fought the Muslim revivalist leader, the Mahdi, and his followers in Sudan in the late 1890s. Adapted from the Edwardian novel by AEW Mason, the film tells the story of Harry Faversham, a young army officer who resigns his commission just before his regiment leaves England for Egypt, fearing that he can never live up to his family’s brave military traditions. Three of his fellow officers send him white feathers; in self-disgust and self-pity he plucks a fourth from the fan of his disapproving fiancee. And then, in a heroic act of expiation, he follows his regiment up the Nile disguised as a mute native, and in one way and another saves the lives of the officers who have despised him. The film was shot on location in Sudan, which in its day gave it a rare authenticity. Many scenes are memorable. I can still see the gunboat being towed up the rapids in the Nile; the Mahdi’s cavalry charge at Omdurman; Ralph Richardson, alone in the desert, losing his pith helmet and getting blinded by sunstroke (which means he can’t see his rescuer – yes, the man to whom he sent a white feather, the now-mute Harry Faversham!). I suppose I must have understood that the film represented an older piece of history than The Cruel Sea and Above Us the Waves; the helmets and the uniforms clearly came from a different age. But did I recognise anything antique in the film’s patriotism and imperialism? In 1941, when the US Senate decided to look into the motives of its producer, Alexander Korda, a witness told the inquiry that the film depicted “the ancient British sport of knocking off the natives … it was all pip-pip and tawny port and a thin red line of heroes”. What would I have made of that, aged nine? Dimly, I might have seen that the British in the film were slightly comic as well as noble. More likely, it was for me simply a thrilling story. In the mid-1950s we were all little matinee-warriors who knew our own side when we saw it. If someone had told us that the Mahdi was played by a white Scotsman (John Laurie) and that Britain should never have been in Sudan in the first place, we would have been puzzled by their objections. For several reasons – biographical, social, patriotic – it was one of Winston Churchill’s favourite films. He had fought at Omdurman as a young lieutenant in the Lancers 40 years before. Later, after a rollercoaster career had left him hard up and without much of an obvious political future, he and Korda became friends. Korda, a Hungarian émigré with grand ambitions for the British film industry, hired Churchill as a screenwriter and paid him lavishly – in the early 1930s, £10,000 for two screenplays was excellent money. As it turned out, neither of Churchill’s scripts was filmed, though the relationship was maintained. Churchill liked the cinema and possessed a cinematic imagination – images fill his speeches – and the two men shared a romantic appreciation of British history, out of which, arguably, came a strand of propaganda and a way of thinking about Britain/England that still endures. The director John Fleet charts the course of their friendship in a revealing documentary, Churchill and the Movie Mogul, which has its premiere this month as part of the BFI Southbank’s Korda season. Well before a second world war had become a firm prospect in the public’s mind, a Korda film was stressing the need for preparedness. “I’m an Englishman and I can’t say one thing and mean another,” says the chicken-munching king (Charles Laughton) in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). “This little island is no match for all of Europe.” All a king can do is “build ships, ships and more ships … to leave it undone will cost us England”. Churchill liked the film, with one reservation. It would have benefited, he wrote to Korda, from “a little less chicken-bone-chewing and a little more England-building”. That defect was remedied in Fire Over England (1937), another adaptation of an AEW Mason novel, in which Queen Elizabeth (Flora Robson) sends little fire ships to destroy the mighty Spanish Armada, and Laurence Olivier and his soon-to-be wife, Vivien Leigh, play the romantic leads. “How small we are, how wretched and defenceless,” says an Elizabethan courtier pondering England’s place on an Elizabethan globe, but there is Elizabeth herself at Tilbury: “I am come to live or die amongst you all …” Olivier and Leigh were together again as Admiral Nelson and his mistress in Lady Hamilton (1941), which Korda made in Hollywood under the title That Hamilton Woman. Churchill, by now prime minister, is reported to have watched it eight or nine times, most famously with President Roosevelt aboard the new battleship Prince of Wales. Each time Nelson died, Churchill cried. A witness to the performance in the battleship’s wardroom noted that he took a handkerchief from his pocket “and wiped his eyes without shame”. Churchill is thought to have strongly influenced – perhaps even written – the scene in which Nelson warns his admiralty bosses against any peace deal with Napoleon: “Believe me, gentlemen, he wants to be master of the world. You cannot make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them.” Churchill was by now realising a dream of his place in history. In a sense, he may have been crying at himself. The US had yet to enter the war. Nobody, including Olivier and Leigh, doubted that the film was propaganda intended to soften American public attitudes towards entry on the British side. It was for that reason that the Senate had its inquiry into Korda’s motives and attitudes. That Hamilton Woman was, after all, an American production, and the US was officially both neutral and anti-imperial. The message that came from Korda and Churchill was double-edged. On the one hand, it was defiant. Britain/England was small and alone (despite its extensive empire), but it had been small and alone before. It was its natural condition – from 1940 to Nelson, to Drake, to Henry VIII, to people in woad throwing rocks at the Roman soldiery: always defiant and always, ultimately, successful. One of Churchill’s film scripts concluded: “In all her wars England has always gained one battle – the last.” On the other hand, the Korda-Churchill message was a cry for help. “Look at little us, America, being brave once again.” In 1942, Korda became the first film producer or director to receive a knighthood. After the war, he paid Churchill £50,000 (the equivalent of about £2m today) for the rights to A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, though no film was made. Their joint idea of England unhelpfully persists. • Ian Jack is a Guardian columnistFor generations, the day in Spain has begun with picking up the paper from the newspaper kiosk and then reading it over breakfast in a bar. These two urban institutions – the kiosk and the bar – have been the twin pillars of any barrio, or neighbourhood. “You have a close relationship with your clients,” says Máximo Frutos, who owns a kiosk and is vice-president of the city’s news vendors association. “I have copies of the house keys for around 15 people in the barrio, in case they lose theirs. It’s not like any other business.” The kiosk is a social nexus as well as a point of sale, and is often passed down through generations. But with falling newsprint sales, many Spanish kiosks are struggling to adapt. Over the past few years, 53 of Barcelona’s 338 kiosks rolled down their shutters for the last time. Many more are expected to follow. “Fifteen years ago, newspaper sales accounted for about 80% of income. This year I made more from selling soft drinks than newspapers,” says Frutos. He says most vendors now survive by selling advertising space on the kiosk. “Another problem is that, outside tourist areas, the average age of our clients is over 60,” he adds. “Besides, young people aren’t interested in the work. You’re a slave to the job because you have to open seven days a week.” Young people aren’t interested in the work. You’re a slave to the job because you have to open seven days a week Now the city authorities have launched a pilot scheme to give kiosks a new lease of life. They have chosen 10 defunct kiosks and are establishing a cooperative of people with mixed abilities, including those with disabilities, to staff them. As well as newspapers and magazines, the kiosks will act as information points, book exchanges and places where you can charge your mobile, electric scooter or bicycle. In areas where tourists congregate kiosks have found it easier to adapt by catering to them. La Rambla, the city’s most famous and visited street, wouldn’t be what it is without its 11 emblematic kiosks – but although they still sell newspapers, they have become little more than souvenir shops, bedecked with key rings, fluffy toys and Barça football scarves. Juan Jiménez, who has worked on La Rambla for 30 years and is president of the street’s news vendors association, rejects the accusations of tackiness. “Kiosks on La Rambla have always sold other things apart from newspapers,” he says. “They used to sell books and publishers used them to launch their latest publications. They were also where people went to buy pornography, though not any more.” La Rambla is being reformed to attract citizens back to a street that is synonymous with the excesses of mass tourism. The first stage involves widening it, by reducing traffic lanes. There is also talk of moving the news kiosks down to the far end nearest the sea, which is commercially less attractive. Jiménez claims they haven’t been consulted by Km-Zero, the consortium in charge of the scheme, and insists their agreement with the city council, which expires in 2030, gives them the right to stay put. In other barrios the local businesses have survived, but [in La Rambla] we’ve lost everything Meanwhile, the consortium is intent on getting rid of the stalls at the top end of La Rambla that sell ice cream, sweets and souvenirs. Until 2013 the stalls in this stretch sold songbirds, rabbits, chickens and small reptiles. A campaign by animal rights activists forced them to close; they were replaced by kiosks selling waffles and souvenirs. Many locals dislike these new kiosks and there is an ongoing legal battle to close them down, too. With the animals gone and the newsstands given over to trinkets, it is left to the flower stalls to maintain the spirit of the old Rambla. Now 16 in number, they once served as the city’s wholesale flower market. When the poet Lorca’s show Doña Rosita opened on La Rambla in 1935, every night the star, Margarita Xirgu, received an anonymous bunch of flowers; realising the senders were the Rambla flower sellers, Lorca dedicated a performance to them. Carolina Pallés, a florist whose family have had a stall on La Rambla since even earlier, 1888, would be happy to see the more tourist-oriented kiosks depart. “Tourists never did buy flowers, unless it’s for Valentine’s Day,” she says. Behind her are news clippings of her grandmother pictured with Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, and her mother with the opera singer Plácido Domingo. “Our clients are people from here,” she says. “They buy flowers for Christmas, for weddings, funerals. We do flowers for the hotels. We don’t sell souvenirs.” The essence of urban life in Spain is the barrio, and the kiosks are a focal point in every one. The vendors know their customers, their families and their habits. In much of central Barcelona, however, that culture is barely clinging on. “I preferred Barcelona the way it was,” says Pallés. “In other barrios the local businesses have survived, but here we’ve lost everything.” Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive hereOne in 20 British adults do not believe the Holocaust happened, and 8% say that the scale of the genocide has been exaggerated, according to a poll marking Holocaust Memorial Day. Almost half of those questioned said they did not know how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and one in five grossly underestimated the number, saying that fewer than two million were killed. At least six million Jews died. The poll, commissioned by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, a charity established and funded by the UK government to promote and support the international day of remembrance, echoes the findings of a survey carried out in seven European countries in November. That poll found that one in three people knew little or nothing about the Holocaust, and an average of 5% said they had never heard of it. In France, 20% of those aged 18-34 said they had never heard of the Holocaust; in Austria, the figure was 12%. A survey in the US last year found that 9% of millennials said they had not heard, or did not think they had heard, of the Holocaust. The scale of ignorance about the Holocaust has shocked experts. Olivia Marks-Woldman, of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: “I must stress that I don’t think [the poll respondents] are active Holocaust deniers – people who deliberately propagate and disseminate vile distortions. But their ignorance means they are susceptible to myths and distortions.” The Holocaust is taught in schools as part of the history curriculum, but “that might only be one lesson”, she added. “And people who are middle-aged or over may never have been taught about it.” Steven Frank, who was one of only 93 children to survive the Theresienstadt camp, said: “I find these figures terribly worrying. In my experience, people don’t have a solid understanding of what happened during the Holocaust and that’s one reason I’m so committed to sharing what happened to me. “At one of my talks, I met someone who said the Holocaust didn’t happen. The only way to fight this kind of denial and antisemitism is with the truth – I tell people what happened, what I saw and experienced. If we ignore the past, I fear history will repeat itself.” Education was vital in the fight against ignorance and hate, said Karen Pollock of the Holocaust Educational Trust. “One person questioning the truth of the Holocaust is one too many, and so it is up to us to redouble our efforts to ensure future generations know that it did happen and become witnesses to one of the darkest episodes in our history.” The trust’s poll also found that 83% of those questioned said it was important to know about the Holocaust, and 76% believed more needs to be done to educate people. Holocaust Memorial Day will be marked by a national commemorative event in central London on Sunday, attended by senior politicians, faith leaders and survivors. More than 11,000 activities and events are planned across the UK. Yesterday Rachel Riley, the Countdown presenter, said she was to be given extra security on the show after receiving online abuse over her comments on antisemitism in the Labour party. The mathematician, who is Jewish, told the Times: “With the hashtag Get The Tories Out or the red rose or hashtag JC4PM, they say to me: ‘You’re only calling out the left’. Well, I’ve been attacked by people on the left and the best way to not have me talk about antisemitism on the left is not to be antisemitic.” The remembrance day will also mark the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, which began in April 1994, and 40th anniversary of the Cambodia genocide’s end. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said: “As each year the number of Holocaust survivors able to share their personal testimony diminishes, our responsibility to honour their experience, to educate the uninitiated grows ever greater if we are to ensure that Jews can live as safely as all other European citizens. “On 27 January, the world will unite to remember all the victims of the Holocaust – let their voices give us the call to action we need to work together, united, to ensure the future of the Europe we know.”A drug trafficker who managed to evade capture for 15 years by cutting and burning the skin of his fingertips and having it replaced with micro-implants has been arrested by Spanish police. The man, who has not been named, was arrested on Tuesday by officers from the national police force in the city of Getafe, near Madrid. In a statement, the Policía Nacional said the man, originally from the north-western Spanish region of Asturias, had been on the run for 15 years before specialist anti-drugs officers caught up with him. “The suspect had modified and changed his fingerprints to such an extent that they were no longer recognisable,” said the statement. “As well as cutting and burning, he had used micro-implants of skin. He had also had a hair transplant to avoid being recognised.” A police spokeswoman told the Guardian: “He’d used very sophisticated methods to alter the fingerprints of both hands so that he couldn’t be identified. He used skin implants to change the shape of his prints so that the scars beneath couldn’t be detected. It was a very sophisticated, specialist process that took place over a number of years.” The man, who had been the subject of four arrest warrants, had used false documents in the name of a Peruvian citizen to travel around the world. He had also adopted the cover of being a Croatian citizen to avoid being tracked down. “Officers have managed to ascertain that the arrested man travelled to Morocco on numerous occasions over the past few months, presumably to engage in activities related to drug-trafficking,” said the statement. “When he was arrested, he was found to be in possession of two encrypted phones – the kind of equipment usually used by criminal organisations.” Spanish media reported that the arrested man was an associate of the Galician smuggler and drug-trafficker Sito Miñanco, who  this week was jailed for four years and ordered to pay €6m (£5.25) fine after being convicted of laundering the proceeds of his drug trafficking. Miñanco’s lawyer was recently fined €2,000 for vaping in court during the trial last November.Was that a whiff of fatted calf we could smell this week? The USA finally returned to the cricketing fold, three years after being kicked out of the ICC for behaviour unbecoming an associate member, and the whole affair had a slight feel of the prodigal son about it. “The International Cricket Council today welcomed USA Cricket as its 105th Member, in what is a historical milestone for the governing body established in 2017,” beamed the official press release, as champagne corks popped across the Atlantic. The use of the word historical seemed a bit rich – after all, it’s also the only milestone this one-year-old organisation has achieved. But maybe the person who wrote it was feeling nostalgic. After all, 54 years ago, in 1965, the USA had been the very first non-Commonwealth country admitted to the ICC. And the decades since haven’t exactly wreathed it in glory. Cricket in the United States has been a confusing and confounding proposition for a long while: the Schleswig-Holstein of the modern game, with those who attempt to wrap their heads around it recklessly risking their sanity. The baffling workings of the USA Cricket Association (Usaca), formerly responsible for running the game, meant it had already been suspended three times before its final expulsion, due to governance that was characterised by paralysing politicking and financial incompetence. It was, at one stage, more than $4m in debt. Which is decent going considering there’s barely a cricket field in the country that has its own changing facilities. Now a new governing body called USA Cricket has been formed, with the help of a team of ICC troubleshooters, to allow Uncle Sam to rejoin the rest of the associate nations with a clean slate. So it’s new-year, new-start for US cricket, and the only people taking issue with the changes are Usaca’s former president Gladstone Dainty and board member Dr Linden Dodson, who are attempting to sue the ICC for $2m in damages. The fact that the new board is chaired by Paraag Marathe, the executive vice-president of football operations for the San Francisco 49ers, and includes an NBA executive and the managing director of the Boston Consulting Group will, it is hoped, finally give cricket some kind of a chance in a crowded and seriously competitive sports market. The ICC has made no secret of its desire to conquer America (and during Usaca’s suspension, offered so much extraordinary support that it started to look to some like special treatment). But it’s a mission that has always sounded a little ambitious – hubristic, even. Not least in a year when only 10 teams will compete in its World Cup. After all, for all the hyperbole surrounding cricket’s potential in the US, the game still appears to inspire less enthusiasm in the average American than Ivanka Trump’s clothing line. A coaching scheme that planned to convert baseball players into Twenty20 cricketers has not yet resulted in any star batter taking to the crease. The announcement of a giddying $2.4bn investment to professionalise US cricket, by a company led by the St Lucia Stars owner, Jay Pandya, has likewise gone quiet. To be fair to Pandya, he had agreed a $70m deal with Usaca for tournament rights which, since it was suspended from the ICC, it didn’t actually own. The US does, however, have a surprisingly vibrant grassroots game, enthusiastically sustained by communities from the Asian and Caribbean diasporas, to the tune of some 200,000 players (although that number is, like so many of the figures previously put out by Usaca, approximate and unaudited). And there has been recent success growing the game in unexpected cities, such as Raleigh, North Carolina, whose new taxpayer-funded ground played host last September to a World Cup qualifier between USA and Canada. Both the venue and the crowd – which reached roughly 2,000 – were the best either team had ever seen in north America. USA Cricket is not going to be able to solve the country’s cricket problems overnight – a fact of which it is keenly aware. Its scheme to introduce schoolkids to the game has started small: a series of instructional videos that are being tested at a handful of venues. There’s also a tellingly polite message when you call its office number: “If this call is concerning an issue you are having trying to join USA cricket, we apologise in advance for the challenges, but greatly appreciate your interest …” Still, there is one avenue that offers an opportunity both to grow and fund the game in the US that remains untried. Soccer’s popularity in the US has mushroomed because of the women’s game; levels of female participation owe much to the Title IX legislation that requires and guarantees equal access to federally funded sports programmes for men and women. Numerous sports – from beach volleyball to handball – have grown their membership by creating college scholarships and attracting programme funding from universities. Women’s cricket, it seems fair to say, was not well cultivated by Usaca: in 2011, the pool of talent they drew from was so small that the women’s squad for their World Cup qualifying matches included two players in their 50s. And while there are now a handful of female leagues in the country, a recent call for try-outs for the national training camps still mustered only around 100 players. Encouragingly, USA Cricket seems keen to tackle the deficit. There have begun conversations with the National Collegiate Athletic Association about the process of turning cricket into an intramural sport (albeit this is not a speedy process), and one of its first acts has been to advertise for a head coach for the women’s team. Perhaps it’s time for the Daughters of the American (Cricketing) Revolution to take the stage. • This is an extract taken from the Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.  More than 80,000 police officers are mobilising across France for the ninth weekend of gilets jaunes anti-government protests as Emmanuel Macron prepares to launch a three-month public debate process that he had hoped would channel protesters’ anger away from the streets. Demonstrators were expected in Paris on Saturday where the government fears a repeat of last weekend’s violent skirmishes with police. More than 5,000 police will be stationed in the capital and all local officers have been called back from leave. There could also be large protests in the small town of Bourges in central France after gilets jaunes groups online suggested its central location made it easy to reach and that it had less of a police presence. The town of 66,000 people – fearing clashes and violence – has closed museums, cleared building sites, removed parking meters and covered up electronic signs at bus stops. The local police chief on Friday banned any demonstration in Bourges historic centre, meaning protestors would have to keep to boulevards on the edge of the town. Many shop owners in the town said they could not afford to shut their businesses on the first Saturday of the January sales and would stay open until the last minute, closing only if there was a security risk – but fearing the majority of customers would stay away. Gilets jaunes demonstrators have continued to barricade roundabouts across France. The government said about 60% of speed cameras across France had been damaged or destroyed since the start of the protest movement in November. Officials said the speed cameras that do remain in use had shown more drivers breaking speed limits, presumably thinking they would not be caught. Although the gilets jaunes protests – named after the yellow hi-vis jackets worn by demonstrators – began in November as a revolt against fuel tax, local politicians said fury over this summer’s move to cut speeds to 80km per hour (50mph) on many secondary roads had played an important roll in mobilising protests in the countryside. “People are still complaining about it in the regions,” Christophe Jerretie, an MP for Macron’s La République En Marche party in Corrèze, said of the speed limits. Some protesters want the speed limit changes scrapped but the government believes the measure, which will be evaluated fully next year, has already saved hundreds of lives. The nationwide “great national debate”, which the president suggested in December as a solution to gilets jaunes’ complaints that citizens do not have enough say in policy, will launch on Tuesday. But it would be an unprecedented exercise that has proved complex to organise. The head of France’s national debates commission, Chantal Jouanno, withdrew her participation in Macron’s debate this week amid outrage over her €14,666 monthly salary, leaving the government scrabbling to reorganise proceedings. Questions remained over whether the debate process would be focused on town-hall meetings and whether the government would take into account what was said. The topics to be discussed included the tax system, reform of state institutions as well as democracy and citizenship. Fears have been raised that groups such as the powerful lobby against same-sex marriage would use the debate to reopen discussion on society issues. But the government said topics such as same-sex marriage, which came into force in France in 2013 amid massive street protests, would not be up for discussion. “It’s out of the question to roll back on abortion, the death penalty or equal marriage,” the government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said. Macron and his party want to hark back to the big door-to-door consultation on the nation’s problems that he set up before his presidential bid in 2017. But an Odoxa poll found seven out of 10 French people did not think the debate, which begins next week, would be useful for the country. In the meantime, the government has focused on law and order measures in response to violence at gilets jaunes protests as a way to try to win back support for the centrist, pro-business Macron, particularly among voters on the centre-right. The prime minister has promised new laws, including setting up a register of rioters, similar to that used to deter football hooligans, to force them to report to police and prevent them from joining demonstrations. Human rights lawyers have said some of the proposals could go against the French constitutional right to protest. But the government has been convinced that showing “authority” was crucial to win support back to Macron before European elections. Two recent polls have shown approval ratings for Macron and the prime minister rising again after a period of decline – although approval ratings for the president remained beneath the symbolically low level of 30%. A counter protest against the gilets jaunes demonstrators has been scheduled for 27 January in Paris. Annual Cevipof polling released in Le Figaro on Friday showed what the political scientist Bruno Cautrès called the highest level of “mistrust and anger” at French politicians and state institutions in 10 years of polling.Two Russians blamed for poisoning the former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, have been put on a European sanctions list, alongside the leaders of the country’s military intelligence agency, as the EU stepped up its response to the Salisbury attacks. Nine individuals, four Russians and five Syrians, have been included on a sanctions list that targets those accused of chemical weapons attacks, following agreement by European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels. The list is the first time the EU has targeted people thought to be behind chemical weapons attacks, after a decision in October to broaden the sanctions regime. Each person will be subject to an EU travel ban and asset freeze. Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre, the agency believed to be in charge of Syria’s chemical weapons programme, has also been added to the list. In a statement, the British government said the list included Igor Kostyukov and Vladimir Alexeyev, the head and deputy head of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, which the government said underlined “the responsibility of the GRU in this reckless use of a chemical weapon in Salisbury”. Also named were two suspected Russian military intelligence officers, who have been identified as Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, and were named by police as carrying out the attack. The pair visited Salisbury twice on the weekend of the attack, later claiming they wanted to visit the “wonderful” city to see the cathedral. British police and intelligence, who traced the pair’s movements around Salisbury in minute detail , believe they were on a mission to kill Sergei Skripal with the deadly nerve agent novichok, disguised in a fake Nina Ricci perfume bottle. A woman from Wiltshire, Dawn Sturgess, died after coming into contact with the deadly nerve agent, while her partner, another novichok victim, Charlie Rowley, fears the poison could kill him within a decade. The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the decision to impose sanctions had been taken on a very “strong legal basis”, dismissing criticism from the Kremlin that the men’s guilt was unproven. Earlier on Monday, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman told reporters in Moscow that the EU decision would change nothing and said the UK had not handed over the evidence against the men. Mogherini said she was confident EU member states had taken a decision on solid legal grounds. “The European Union, before taking decisions, as we have done today on sanctions, has a long and very sound legal assessment of the basis on which we adopt these decision, also because we need to them to be able to resist the test of courts.” She added the sanctions were “part of our strong commitment and determination on contributing to the preventing of the use of not only chemical weapons, but weapons of mass destruction”. In a statement, the UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said the UK had been at the vanguard of the EU action. “Today’s new sanctions deliver on our vow to take tough action against the reckless and irresponsible activities of the Russian military intelligence organisation, the GRU, which put innocent British citizens in serious danger in Salisbury last year.” “We have also imposed sanctions on individuals and an organisation responsible for the Syrian regime’s abhorrent use of chemical weapons over many years, including in Douma in April 2018.” Separately, the EU added 11 Syrian businessmen and companies that support the regime of Bashar al-Assad to another list targeting people who support or benefit from the Syrian leader. The businessmen and companies were described as being involved in luxury real estate and other regime-backed projects. The UK government has promised to implement all EU economic sanctions in force if it crashes out of the EU without a deal on 29 March. It has also said it wants to continue working with the EU on sanctions after Brexit, after being urged by a Lords select committee to maintain a broadly similar approach. EU foreign ministers including Hunt, were meeting in Brussels, where they also discussed how to combat disinformation in the run-up to the European elections in May. They had been presented with an EU paper that warned that “constant targeted disinformation campaigns” against the EU, its institutions and policies were likely to increase ahead of the elections.The Chinese telecom company Huawei is at the centre of an increasingly tense standoff between China and the US. What began as a trade spat and grievances over corporate intellectual property theft has developed into a global standoff involving “hostage diplomacy”, death sentences and allegations of Chinese espionage. Huawei’s senior executive Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada in December over allegations of sanctions violations and awaits extradition to the US. Meanwhile, three Canadians remain in police custody in China; one of them was sentenced to death this month. Washington, meanwhile, has said it will file a formal extradition request for Meng by the 30 January deadline. The US is reportedly investigating Huawei for stealing trade secrets while US lawmakers are calling for a ban on selling American-made chips and other components to the company. Last week, Vodafone became the latest company to flag concerns over Huawei, announcing a decision to “pause” use of the company’s equipment in its core mobile phone networks. Oxford University and the Prince’s Trust, Prince Charles’s charity, said this month they would no longer accept donations from Huawei. Huawei and its defenders have tried to paint the company as an innocent bystander, politicised against its will. Global Times editor Hu Xijin tweeted this month that: “By escalating its crackdown on Huawei, the US sets a bad precedent of applying McCarthyism in hi-tech fields. It deprives a hi-tech company of the rights to stay away from politics, focus on technology and market.” Yet, in many ways Huawei is used to scrutiny over its political associations. Critics point the finger at the possible connections between its founder Ren Zhengfei’ and the Chinese government. Ren, 74, a former engineer for the People’s Liberation Army, has been a party member since 1978 and was deemed one of 100 entrepreneurs who safeguarded “the leadership of the Chinese Communist party.” Huawei is also one of China’s so-called “national champions”’ referring to companies whose global expansion is considered in the national interest. Critics say Huawei’s rapid expansion is suspicious. Founded in 1987 and focused on selling telecom equipment in rural areas of China, it has grown into the world’s largest supplier of telecoms equipment and second largest smartphone maker. It operates in more than 170 countries, employing about 180,000 people. Others point to Huawei’s corporate structure, describing it as opaque. Huawei has long claimed that it is an employee-owned company, with Ren holding just 1.4% and the rest distributed among employees. “There are so many doubts about Huawei,” said Li Datong, an outspoken commentator and former journalist. “That Huawei is able to expand and hold a large share of the market has people wondering what other power there is behind the company? Everyone knows the answer,” he said. The US has been wary of Huawei’s state links since at least 2010, with the former head of the CIA claiming evidence of espionage – allegations that have not been proved. In 2015, when the company emerged as the largest supplier of networking equipment, concerns grew among US officials that Huawei-made routers and modems could be used to spy on Americans. This month, Ren went on a media blitz, breaking years of silence to say the company has never engaged in espionage on behalf of Beijing. “China’s ministry of foreign affairs has officially clarified that no law in China requires any company to install mandatory back doors. Huawei and me personally have never received any request from any government to provide improper information,” he said. Yet Huawei, like all companies operating in China, would have no choice but to supply information to Chinese security. China’s national intelligence law requires all organisations and individuals to “support, provide assistance, and cooperate in national intelligence work”. China’s counter-espionage law says all companies and citizens have to “truthfully provide information” and “must not refuse”. “The fact is, in China no single company can avoid this,” said Li. “You have to do what the government asks you to, no matter if you are state-owned or private. If you refuse, your business is over, so Huawei suffers from both sides, from the Chinese side and the democratic countries.” Outside China, Huawei’s troubles have morphed in recent months into an international web of allegations, threats and outright bans that would destroy a less powerful company. In the US, concerns have been compounded by hardening attitudes towards China in the Trump administration and Washington more broadly. US legislators introduced a rare bipartisan bill last week that would ban the sale of US chips or other components to Huawei or other Chinese companies deemed to have violated US sanctions or export control laws. “The United States government has basically declared war on Huawei and is using it as a proxy to push back against some of the ways the Chinese communist party operates,” said Isaac Stone Fish, a senior fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations. Concerns about Huawei’s relationship with the Chinese government have led US politicians and telecoms executives to call for banning Huawei from the rollout of the 5G network in the US, the next generation of the cellular technology. New Zealand and Australia have already moved to block the use of Huawei’s equipment as part of the 5G rollout citing similar concerns. In the UK, BT said in December it had removed Huawei equipment from parts of its network after the head of MI6 said it was time for the UK to decide whether it was “comfortable with Chinese ownership of these platforms”. Huawei has pledged to spend $2bn (£1.5bn) to alleviate those security concerns. Poland, where a Chinese employee of Huawei has been arrested on allegations of spying, has called on the European Union and Nato to decide whether to exclude Huawei from their markets. Even the Chinese firm’s sideline business in solar panels is under investigation. American politicians have claimed the firm’s panels “may pose a threat to our nation’s infrastructure.” An effective ban in the western world would be a blow to Huawei but it is likely the company can weather a fight with just the US. It still has its huge home market, South America and parts of Asia to fall back on. Other Chinese firms, including chipmaker ZTE, have run into trouble in the US, but the extent of Huawei’s woes is likely to chill the appetite of Chinese firms for the US market. Huawei has come under IP theft accusations before. US federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating allegations that Huawei stole trade secrets from US businesses. The investigation grew in part out of a civil lawsuit that starred a robot called Tappy. In 2014, T-Mobile filed a suit against Huawei in Seattle, accusing the Chinese firm of “theft of trade secrets, breaches of confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements” among other things. The telecom firm had spent years developing Tappy, a robot that uses a small, fast-moving finger to test and help improve handset quality, simulating human touch and adaptable to a range of devices. According to T-Mobile, Huawei instructed its employees to steal Tappy’s technology. One Huawei employee who was “continually peering into a security camera” tried to hide a stolen robot finger tip behind a monitor in the T-Mobile lab and then took the hidden part with him when he left. Huawei admitted two employees had acted inappropriately and said they had been fired but challenged T-Mobile’s claims that Tappy’s technology was secret, pointing out that video of the device in action was available on YouTube. In 2017, a jury sided with T-Mobile, ruling that Huawei had breached its contract and misappropriated its technology. But it did not award damages for stealing trade secrets and awarded the telecoms company a modest $4.8m (£3.6m). That investigation opened the door to a wider inquiry just as Donald Trump was gearing up for a trade war with China, one that made a political pawn of the already troubled Huawei. “The United States has the power, the desire and the allies to make Huawei’s life difficult not only in America but in other countries around the world,” said Stone Fish. He feels the real threat with Huawei may not be what it is doing now but the potential it has to act if tensions with the US and China really worsen. He said: “Because they are such an opaque company, we can’t trust them. We just don’t have enough information to give them the benefit of the doubt.”The far-right protests that erupted in Melbourne over the weekend which included neo-Nazis, should prompt us to be vigilant about those who seek to divide their fellow Australians on racial lines. So editorialised the Australian on Monday in the wake of news that Queensland senator Fraser Anning had attended a far-right rally at Melbourne’s St Kilda Beach on the weekend. The Australian’s unequivocal denunciation of those who seek to foment anger and intolerance based on race was refreshing. But also a little surprising. Had the editorial writer been reading any News Corp publications during 2018? Had they missed the year-long campaign to demonise the African community in Melbourne as a hotbed of gang activity? The same newspaper only last week editorialised “unfortunately, the Andrews government and senior police have equivocated at times about African gangs, as if the greater danger were an outbreak of mass racism among ordinary Victorians”. Anning cited the rise of “African gangs” in his home state as the reason why he spent $3,000 of taxpayers’ money to attend the rally at the invitation of Blair Cottrell, a notorious far-right convener of the United Patriots Front. But who helped highlight this “racial problem?” Outgoing racial discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane warned that focusing on race without looking at factors such as social disadvantage, or indeed the real facts about crime, posed an “urgent risk to racial harmony in Australia”. It is absolutely right for media to report on violent incidents in any city. Public safety is a legitimate concern. But it is absolutely wrong to dwell on the ethnicity of the offender unless it is germane to the story. The reason is simple. It plays to the worst aspects of human nature – fear and prejudice – damaging entire communities, whether that is the intention or not. News Corp publications, notably the Herald Sun and the Australian, have given oxygen to the “African gangs” phenomenon throughout 2018, despite the concerted efforts of the Victorian police to douse the comparisons with US-style gangs. Take this front-page headline in the Herald Sun on 9 September: “High rise chaos: police hunt violent African youths following tower mayhem.” Today's @theheraldsun front page pic.twitter.com/Qnnm3GC2GU Or this: “Carjack gang busted: AK 47 seized. 14 African, Middle Eastern and Asian youths arrested.” Tomorrow's @theheraldsun front page tonight #springst #auspol pic.twitter.com/pw8eS1ibBh Columnist Andrew Bolt spent 2018 highlighting incidents involving people of African background in his blog. There was no mention of crimes by drunken Aussies or visiting backpackers. Instead he recited a litany of incidents involving people of African appearance, who may or may not have been born overseas. On 12 July he offered this: We can’t pretend – as police once did – that there is not a very big crime problem in this specific group. In fact, police statistics last year showed the Sudanese-born, for instance, are an astonishing 128 times more likely than other Victorians to commit violent robberies and 68 times more likely to stage home invasions. What we don’t describe will not get addressed. We can’t pretend – as many politicians keep doing – that importing refugee groups from tribal war-torn Third World areas and from cultures very different to ours does not put Australians here in danger. It is just not fair to those who then become victims of crime. We need descriptors to help catch perpetrators. Bolt’s highly selective figures, which he says are police figures from 2015, are alarming at first glance. But the Sudanese community is small – just 1.1% of the Victorian population and younger than the Victorian average, which means there are likely to be more interactions with police. Social justice advocate Nyadol Nyuon offered this defence of the Sudanese community on Radio National: “The overwhelming majority of crimes in Victoria are committed by Australian and New Zealand-born people ... South Sudanese do commit about 1% of the offences.” The ABC and Guardian fact-checked her claim, using figures from Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency, and found that between April 2017 and March 2018, Australian and New Zealand-born offenders made up a combined 73.5% of the unique offender population (those people alleged to have committed crimes) in Victoria; whereas, those born in Sudan made up 1.1%. Despite the facts showing offenders are much more likely to be born in Australia, when the immigration minister Peter Dutton observed in January 2018 that people in Melbourne were “scared to go out to restaurants” because of African gang violence, Bolt and his fellow columnists leapt to his defence. News Corp columnists such as Rita Panahi have accused Victoria police of “engaging in semantics” when they have rejected the label “African gangs”. The police commissioner, Graham Ashton, has been lampooned for trying to distinguish between gang activity and street level crime. He argued that while these offenders know each other and might come together through social media, they are not part of an organised structure which is the hallmark of bikie gangs or overseas gangs. The reason why he’s made this point is not to downgrade the incidents, but to point out the solution might not lie in more vigorous police enforcement, but a much broader social response to bored and disenfranchised youth roaming the streets of outer Melbourne with little to do. Labelling these groups as gangs also runs the risk of making the lawlessness cool and can actually lead to more formal structures forming, say criminologists. But the more immediate fallout is for the largely law-abiding members of the particular community in the crosshairs, who have reported feeling fearful and being shunned in the street. And it gives licence to groups on the far right, who embrace the mainstream media narrative of a “racial problem” and then turn it into far more powerful hate speech, often directing their vitriol towards unrelated groups such as the Jewish community. As University of Adelaide media academic John Budarick observed: “Such media coverage is, sadly, something African-Australians have been exposed to before – it seems to have popped up regularly in some form over the past 10 years, at least. “Before this, it was the Lebanese who were said to be forming menacing gangs, and before them, the Vietnamese and the Italians. The Australian media have a poor record in dealing with difference and diversity.” Perhaps the Australian’s editorial represents a turning point in News Corp’s coverage, a signal that 2019 will usher in a more nuanced approach to crime and ethnicity – and a deeper understanding of the responsibility that the media carries for informed reporting. Comments will be pre-moderated to ensure they stay relevant to the topic.Unai Emery accepts that Arsenal’s hopes of qualifying for the Champions League via Premier League position will be over if they lose to Chelsea at Emirates Stadium on Saturday. The Arsenal manager continues to lament last Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at West Ham – his team’s third loss in six league games – and =it has set up what feels to him like a showdown. Another reverse could leave Arsenal nine points off the top four by the end of the weekend, with Tottenham playing at Fulham on Sunday. Arsenal do remain alive in the Europa League, where they have been drawn to face Bate Borisov in the last 32 next month. The winners of the competition are rewarded with a place in next season’s Champions League. Emery was asked whether nine points to the top four would be too much of a gap. “I think yes,” he replied. “After our loss to West Ham, it is a big difference to be six points behind Chelsea instead of three points. The opportunity we now have against Chelsea is not the same but, if we win, we have the opportunity to be closer to them.” Emery knows where Chelsea’s principal threat will come from. When he was at Paris St-Germain, the French club were linked with a move for Eden Hazard and Emery puts the Chelsea winger among the very best in the game. “With a player like Hazard, usually all of the big teams in the world will think about the possibility of trying to sign them,” Emery said. “He is in the top five players in the world. He has been the difference in a lot of matches.” Emery has switched between back three and back four systems and he believes that it shows a richness to his options. “I think the best possibility for us when we can’t control the match like we want is to sometimes use three centre-backs,” he said. “But at other moments, we need to play with full-backs because we need to control a different situation, with more players in the midfield.”At 9am the England supporters had swamped the public spaces outside the Kensington Oval, perusing the market stalls, taking on early fluids and jostling for pictures in front of the cover-driving statue of Sir Garfield Sobers. Inside the so-called mecca of Caribbean cricket another all-rounder was also being celebrated. In the pre-match huddle Ben Stokes received his 50th England cap from his former county teammate Steve Harmison, who once planted his personal flag in the region when blasting Michael Vaughan’s side to a series win in 2004. As well as informing Stokes that on first seeing him play as a spiky-haired teenager in the Durham academy he contacted Andrew Flintoff to tell him a successor had been found, Harmison offered a reminder that Stokes’s best years in an England shirt still lie ahead. With the Bristol incident of 2017 now in the rearview mirror, having been wrapped up by a cricket disciplinary hearing in December, one hopes Ashington’s most famous cricketing son is right. And it was in the afternoon session, just before a sprinkle of rain brought an early tea, that Stokes gave Harmison’s prophecy some early credence. Kraigg Brathwaite and Shai Hope had been making good on the huge banner outside the Worrell, Weekes and Walcott stand that proclaims “WI READY”, their second-wicket stand of 76 starting to induce both memories of their famous Headingley heist 18 months ago and grumblings about England’s chosen XI. Stokes tasted some of this himself in the morning. Hope had unfurled some wonderfully crisp drives through mid-off from some overly-full bowling – the kind of shots that induce a kick of frustration by the bowler but wide-eyed admiration from everyone else – while Brathwaite was being typically obdurate bar one calculated assault on Moeen Ali. But on his return to the Malcolm Marshall end Stokes found his mark, first smashing the pitch to induce a touch of extra bounce and seam for the edge of Brathwaite’s bat, before a full ball from around the wicket swung against the breeze that runs from leg to off to trap Darren Bravo for an lbw as clear as the Caribbean sea. In the space of five balls the day’s complexion had changed, while the two facets of his bowling – indefatigable brawn and a natural ability to get the ball hooping – had also been demonstrated. The first of these strikes, as well the late removal of Kemar Roach to a ball that climbed, will have been noticed by Stuart Broad, who is getting the ball to move away from the right-handers again and had been itching to play this Test in a very real sense. What he suspects to be a case of bed bugs may not have caused his omission – nor forced England’s players to sleep on mattresses in the hotel corridors, as was suggested elsewhere – but it has added some additional prickliness for a seamer who has 433 Test wickets but finds himself down the pecking order. Adil Rashid, whose leg-breaks were never expected to be penetrative on a first-day pitch, may have been the man preferred in the side but it probably says more about the high regard in which Sam Curran is held (as well a desire from Joe Root and the brains trust to pack the batting all the way down to No 10). After losing his first toss in nine, Root described the final selection as a “gut call” – the circuit-breaker amid a spell of overthink, most likely – but Curran, who knows only victory in his fledgling Test career, did not quite capitalise on the show of faith from his captain early on. Swing was not forthcoming for his left-armers, despite natural assistance when bowling from the Joel Garner end, and he was a fraction too short at times. Root requested more overs from the typically thrifty Jimmy Anderson and Stokes, and gave him just a couple with the second new ball. Patience is clearly required with a 20-year-old and it is worth remembering Curran has previously declared his intention to be more of an impact all-rounder in the mould of Stokes: the heir to Flintoff’s heir, if you will.Facebook is reportedly considering a merger of its three messaging platforms – WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger – allowing users to send messages between the networks for the first time. The plans are said to come directly from the Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, the New York Times has reported, and would involve rewriting the basic software of the three apps to ensure they were interoperable. A WhatsApp user would be able to, for instance, text an Instagram user for the first time without needing to switch applications. That rewrite would also involve enabling end-to-end encryption (E2E) on all three apps, according to the NYT’s Mike Isaac. While all WhatsApp messages use that security feature, which prevents anyone, including Facebook itself, from intercepting the contents of messages, support across Facebook’s wider business is patchy. Facebook Messenger only supports E2E in a special “secure conversations” mode, which is off by default and must be enabled separately for every chat, while Instagram features no encryption at all. While E2E is a valuable security measure for users, it has the side effect of preventing Facebook from scanning messages as part of its advertising business. The technology has also come under attack from law enforcement organisations, since it hinders their ability to intercept suspect communications in real time. In a statement, Facebook told the Guardian: “We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private. “We’re working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks. As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work.” The news has raised concerns among both privacy researchers and antitrust experts. Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, said the change “could be potentially be good or bad for security/privacy”. He added: “But given recent history and financial motivations of Facebook, I wouldn’t bet my lunch money on ‘good’. Now is a great time to start moving important conversations off those services.” In a thread on Twitter, Green wrote that his two major concerns were that the widespread rollout of E2E could result in WhatsApp getting comparatively less secure, rather than Facebook Messenger and Instagram becoming as secure as possible; and that WhatsApp users, who currently do not need to share much personal information at all with Facebook, may find their metadata co-mingled with their broader Facebook accounts. For similar reasons, the attempts to merge the networks could hit a stumbling block in Europe, where Facebook has once before been prevented from transferring data from WhatsApp to Facebook’s main service. In November 2016, the company was forced to halt a transfer of data following complaints from the pan-European data protection agency. The company was also forced by the UK’s information commissioner to promise not to do any transfers of EU user data until after the general data protection regulation (GDPR) came into force on 25 May 2018. Antitrust experts have noted that the merger of the three apps could make it harder to force Facebook to spin off WhatsApp or Instagram in the future, if a competition commissioner decided to force a demerger for anti-monopoly reasons. The founders of both WhatsApp and Instagram left Facebook in mysterious circumstances in 2018. Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, left in 2017 but went one step further in March, joining calls to “#deletefacebook” in a post on Twitter. Acton’s co-founder, and WhatsApp’s chief executive, Jan Koum, quit in April, announcing that he was “taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate Frisbee”. Then, in September, Instagram’s co-founders both quit at the same time without giving a reason other than saying they were departing to explore their “curiosity and creativity again”.“It just wouldn’t happen today,” Willie John McBride says on a rainy morning at home in Ballyclare as he explains the vast differences between the gleaming powerhouse of Irish rugby today and a ramshackle sport which he only began playing at the age of 17. Four years later, in 1962, as McBride remembers, “I was in the Lions Test team. Remarkably, I survived.” McBride not only survived. At 78 he remains the godfather of Irish rugby and a lock forward who won 63 caps for Ireland and played a record 17 Lions Tests. He also provides a perfect starting point for a journey through Irish rugby as McBride’s story shows how much Ireland and the game have changed. Despite past sectarian conflicts and multiple identities, there is a new cohesion among the four rugby provinces and the national team. “You feel that unity and its importance even more now,” McBride says. “This Ireland team are unifying the country in the north and south.” After winning the Grand Slam last year and having beaten New Zealand twice in three matches, Ireland are many people’s favourites for the World Cup. Coached by Joe Schmidt, they feature the world player of the year in Johnny Sexton and outstanding teammates including Ulster’s Jacob Stockdale, Munster’s Conor Murray and Leinster’s Tadhg Furlong. Ireland will face England at home with serene confidence in their opening Six Nations game on Saturday 2 February. The contrast with McBride’s debut against England, in February 1962, is stark. His first cap came in the midst of an 11-match winless slump stretching from February 1961 to March 1963. “We ran out with nine new caps at Twickenham and were beaten 16-0 – which was a hiding because a try was only three points.” Willie John McBride, the former Ireland and Lions rugby union captain and below is one of his old Irish rugby jerseys. In his third match for Ireland, against France, McBride played the last 30 minutes with a broken leg. “Unbelievable,” he chuckles. “I remember removing my boot and two guys ran on with a sponge and water. They rubbed it and said: ‘You’re all right.’ You didn’t come off in those days unless you were dead. Afterwards I was taken to hospital and had plaster of Paris in Paris – up to the knee.” McBride hopped back from Paris on his own – catching a plane, train and two buses before hobbling up the hill to his flat. “It was not the kind of care they’re given today.” Beyond medical support, money and attention to every detail of their rugby lives, McBride argues that the current internationals are luckiest in one particular regard. “I believe we have the best coach in the world, by a long way,” he says of Schmidt. “I know him quite well and he’s a guy for whom I’d give everything. There is talk about the World Cup but Ireland don’t get carried away. We beat the All Blacks and move on. That’s Joe’s character and in the last 15 minutes against New Zealand he brought on players who were just as good as those they replaced. Murray is a super player. Young Stockdale is another. I like Iain Henderson at lock. Ireland have few weaknesses.” Rugby gave us sanity and unity beyond the madness This is high praise from McBride who spends longer lamenting the ills of the modern game. He feels the ethos and camaraderie of rugby have been lost and he mourns the slow death of club rugby. Where clubs were once the lifeblood, the provinces of Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht now dominate. Their best players are contracted to the Irish union – which means their focus is on European and Test rugby. Unlike their exhausted counterparts in the English Premiership, the cream of Irish rugby often miss mundane Pro14 games. McBride sighs. “Somebody said to me: ‘This game is about five different things. Money, money, money, money and money.’ Professional rugby sucks all the good players out of the club scene. They have destroyed this part of rugby.” Everyone else among the dozen people I interview accepts that, to compete with England’s massive player pool and financial power, Ireland needed a structure that would allow the national team and the provinces to thrive. Leinster are European champions and Munster and Ulster offer key players to Ireland. All three Irish provinces qualified for the quarter-finals of the European Champions Cup last weekend. In contrast, only one English club, Saracens, reached the knockout stages. Ulster Ballyclare and Belfast Willie John McBride (aged 78), born 6 June 1940 in Toombridge, Northern Ireland. Played 63 times for Ireland and 17 Tests for the Lions  as a lock forward. Led the British & Irish Lions on their unbeaten tour of South Africa in 1974. Trevor Ringland (aged 59), born 13 November 1959 in Belfast. 35 caps for Ireland on the wing 1981-1988. Selected for the Lions in 1983, he played one Test against New Zealand on that tour. Still working as a solicitor in Belfast. Jacob Stockdale (aged 22), born 3 April 1996 in Lisburn. Deadly wing for Ulster and Ireland. Made his Test debut in 2014 and has won 14 caps, scoring 12 tries. Iain Henderson (aged 26), born 21 February 1992 in Craigavon. Lock forward for Ulster, Ireland and the Lions. He has won 42 caps, having made his debut in 2012. Munster Limerick Gerry McLoughlin (aged 66), born 11 June 1952 in Limerick. Former prop forward who won 18 Ireland caps. Famous for being in the front row of the Munster pack that beat the All Blacks in 1978. Niall O’Donovan (aged 58), born 4 May 1960 in Limerick. Played club rugby for Shannon from 1977 to 1992 and represented Munster from 1981-1988. Munster team manager since 2012. Keith Wood (aged 46), born 27 January 1972 in Killaloe, County Clare. Inspirational hooker and former captain of Ireland. Won 63 Test caps for Ireland, from 1994 to 2003. Member of the Lions’ successful 1997 series win in South Africa. Alan English (aged 53), born 24 July 1965 in Limerick. Journalist and author of best-selling books including Stand Up and Fight: When Munster Beat the All Blacks. English is not quoted but provided valuable background information. Leinster Dublin Justin Vanstone (aged 42), born 19 May 1976 in Plymouth, England. Head coach of the senior rugby team and head of PE at Blackrock College – 61 former Blackrock students have become Irish internationals. Tadhg Furlong (aged 26), born 14 November 1992 in Campile, Wexford. Made his international debut in 2015 and has since played 28 Tests for Ireland and three for the Lions. Hugo MacNeill (aged 60), born 16 September 1958 in Dublin. A full back, he won 37 caps for Ireland from 1981 to 1988 and played three Test for the Lions in 1983 against New Zealand. Stuart Lancaster (aged 49), born 9 October 1969 in Penrith, England. England’s head coach 2011-2015. He joined Leinster in 2016 and coaches the European champions with Leo Cullen. McRae’s standalone interview with Lancaster was published this year. Rory Best, Ireland’s captain, just like McBride, is a Protestant from Ulster. Yet even amid these fraught days of Brexit, seething with talk of Irish backstops and hard borders, Best does not face the pressures McBride endured during the Troubles. “You always got the cracks against you,” McBride recalls. “That bloody Ulsterman. Why is he captain of Ireland? Up here they’d say: ‘Why are you captaining that crowd?’ I was pretty headstrong so I ignored it.” Even when his life was threatened and an armed guard had to stand all night outside his hotel room door before some Five Nations games, McBride shrugged off the dangers. He witnessed terrifying scenes – especially on Bloody Friday in Belfast. “You didn’t know where to run from so many bombs. Boom, boom, boom everywhere. But it never stopped us playing. Rugby gave us sanity and unity beyond the madness.” Trevor Ringland’s office in Belfast is a half-hour drive from Ballyclare. The 59-year-old solicitor, who played 31 times for Ireland and won four Lions caps in the 1980s, is an eloquent advocate for this current Ireland team and, more importantly, the force for good that rugby exerts in the south and, particularly, Northern Ireland. “Absolutely,” he says of the game’s capacity to forge together people from bitterly divided communities. “Rugby shows the way to build relationships on this island. My frustration is that, politically, we’ve chosen methods of alienation, exclusion, hatred and violence. Rugby has always been relaxed about identities. It has an Irishness comfortable with a British aspect to it. And a Britishness comfortable with an Irish part of its identity. The politicians and extremists couldn’t have done it much worse but rugby has shown another way.” Trevor Ringland, the former Ireland and Lions player, in front of the famous cranes of the Harland and Wolff dockyard in Belfast. Ringland is a Protestant who worked briefly as a politician before the parochialism became too much for him, and yet this is just one aspect of his identity. “I’m a Belfast man and an Ulsterman. I’m British and I’m Irish. I’m Northern Irish and I’m European. I’m a long-suffering Leeds United supporter [Ringland laughs]. These identities are interchangeable and anyone who demeans any one part demeans me as a person. A multilayered identity challenges the extremists.” Ringland withdrew from politics when a unionist party leader refused to accept his invitation to attend a GAA final if a team from the North made it to Croke Park in Dublin. The unionist believed Croke Park symbolised Republican territory. In turn, many supporters of Gaelic football and hurling regard rugby as a Protestant sport. Few Catholic schools in Ulster play rugby but Ringland wants to break down the barriers – as Irish rugby did when the national team played at Croke Park from 2007 to 2010. The GAA relented on a rule prohibiting the playing of “foreign” sports at Croke Park and allowed Ireland to use its spiritual home. When England arrived at Croke Park in 2007, there was a danger history would swamp the occasion. Fourteen people were killed in and around Croke Park on 21 November 1920, when British soldiers opened fire on the crowd at the GAA headquarters, on a day of terrible violence during the Irish War of Independence. But rugby and Croke Park found harmony in a different century. “It was fantastic,” Ringland says, “and the first time I sang all three anthems – the Irish anthem, Ireland’s Call and even God Save The Queen. All were received with impeccable respect. It was incredibly emotional and showed us moving towards a maturing society where we respect the different traditions across the island. We could then support Ireland beating England [43-13].” In the check-in hall of Shannon Airport stands a bronze sculpture called The Day That Changed Ireland, by Paddy Campbell, depicting Paul O’Connoll winning a lineout during the historic February 2007 Ireland v England Six Nations match at Croke Park, Dublin. Ringland is so passionate because, as the son of a policeman, he played for Ireland during the Troubles in a team of Catholics and Protestants. Some of his teammates were wounded in bomb attacks and yet none of them shut their hearts to each other. They belonged to a team which transcended bigotry and strife. “Rugby wants everybody,” he says. “It challenges the extremists who like to box people into ‘them and us’. Our concept is ‘We’. Rugby is a direct challenge to the ideologies of hatred and it delivered during the most difficult times. There was murder and mayhem but rugby shone a light on how we do things differently. “It’s the same today. Rugby is inspiring and unifying when society is fractured again over Brexit and old hatreds. The Titanic is a good analogy for Northern Ireland, and Ireland. It was a great ship, well built, and the reason it sank was bad leadership. The reason we do badly as a society is through bad leadership. The people are great and you feel that so obviously in rugby.” At a European Champions Cup game between Ulster and Racing on a sunlit Saturday in mid-January the atmosphere is electric. Men, women and children are united in vibrant support as Ulster help secure their eventual place in the quarter-finals by beating the powerful French club. Alongside a beaming Stockdale, blood streams down Best’s face while the noise reverberates. No English ground can match this setting for European rugby. An Ulster fan walks past a mural outside the Kingspan Stadium in Belfast; a packed house for Ulster Rugby’s European Champions Cup game against Racing 92; a young fan waves the flag of Northern Ireland; a bloodied Rory Best, the Ireland and Ulster captain; Jacob Stockdale (centre) on a lap of honour with his teammates after Ulster’s 26-22 victory in which he scored two tries. Ringland compares Stockdale, who scored two tries, to another lethal finisher in Gerd Müller, the German footballer of the 1970s. I have already interviewed Stockdale and Iain Henderson and they are entertaining and intelligent players who represent a different kind of Ulster to a province once beset by violence and prejudice. Whether talking about his father’s work as a prison chaplain or telling me “Johnny Cash is my idol”, Stockdale is exuberant. He also stresses the Irish squad’s harmony. “From day one,” the 22-year-old wing says, “I felt only friendship from the guys from every province. Our different backgrounds are joked about. That’s brilliant. You’ve got a Protestant from Ulster captaining Ireland. Rory is the most successful Ireland captain ever.” Henderson underlines the new unity. He went to one of the few mixed schools, of Catholics and Protestants, in north Belfast. Henderson is Protestant and his wife, who went to the same school, is Catholic. “You notice a massive crossover in rugby now,” he says. “After we beat New Zealand in November I felt the impact. I filled my car with petrol in Belfast and three people said: ‘Great game at the weekend.’ Before, when you went down to Dublin, it was like you’d flown to the other side of the world. Now when you come back to Belfast you feel everyone’s invested into the huge potential of Ireland in a World Cup year.” Ringland agrees: “This is the best Irish squad we’ve ever seen. It’s a glorious period for Irish rugby.” I like talking about glory in Limerick with Gerry McLoughlin, the great old prop who played for Munster, Ireland and the Lions. McLoughlin was in the famous Munster team which became the first Irish side to beat New Zealand in 1978. At a time when Munster men believed they had to be twice as good as Leinster players to be picked for Ireland, McLoughlin scored a famous try at Twickenham as Ireland won the Triple Crown in 1982. McLoughlin grimaces when he says the try becomes more outlandish every year as people insist he carried most of the England pack on his back while bulldozing over. In Jerry Flannery’s bar, McLoughlin is more interested in talking about rugby now. “Young Joey Carbery is some player,” he says of the gifted No 10 who helped Munster to reach the European knockout stages yet again. “Now there’s progress in Irish rugby.” Munster fans watch the Leicester versus Ulster match on a TV in the Shannon RFC clubhouse. Adorning the walls is a picture of famous Munster and Shannon player Gerrry ‘Ginger’ McLaughlin and the shields won by the club for winning the All-Ireland League. McLoughlin points to Carberry’s arrival as further proof that Irish rugby has entered a new era. Carbery was a Sexton understudy at Leinster. The 22-year-old’s talent was obvious but Sexton couldn’t be shifted; and so Schmidt and the IRFU were not unhappy Carbery moved to Limerick this season. Munster yearned for his creativity and Ireland needed Carberry playing at fly-half in the furnace of European competition – just in case Sexton sustained injury. Leinster agreed to a loan which may became permanent because their depth is such that Ross Byrne, in Sexton’s absence, could steer them to a convincing win against Toulouse this month. “It’s not like my day,” McLoughlin says wryly, “but we love having Carbery at Munster.” McLoughlin, the mayor of Limerick in 2012, stresses how much Munster’s rugby players have lifted the city. “Limerick had a terrible reputation with drugs. But once Munster became a European force the old pride surged again. That’s rugby’s power.” Fans make their way to Thomond Park for the European Champions Cup match between Munster and Exeter; Conor Murray (left) and Chris Farrell lead a group of Munster players as they do a half-lap of the pitch to finish their warmup; the Munster Rugby Supporters Club choir sing their traditional song “Stand Up And Fight” just before the teams come out. Niall O’Donovan, who enjoyed having McLoughlin as his economics schoolteacher, straddles the divide between the amateur and professional eras. The current Munster manager played for Shannon, in the same pack as McLoughlin, and also coached that great old club for five seasons. In 1997, while still coaching Shannon, O’Donovan joined Declan Kidney as they took charge of a newly professional Munster. Until then, Munster only played three or four games a year while the clubs dominated every week. The crowd watch a scrum during Munster’s European Champions Cup match against Exeter at Thomond Park; Munster fans celebrate during the match; Niall O’Donovan, the Munster team manager; Joey Carbery (centre) is congratulated by Rory Scannell (left) and Alby Mathewson (right) after his kick won the match for Munster 9-7. O’Donovan knew Irish rugby had to change. “It’s sad but the club game had to give way. The IRFU got it right and put more money into the four provinces. I remember it changing. We played Saracens in the Heineken Cup in 1999 and took 10 fans with two flags. Then we went to the semi-final against Toulouse in Bordeaux in 2000. The streets had turned Munster red. The place was jammed, the bars were crammed. We outnumbered Toulouse in France. We got to the final at Twickenham and the ground was a sea of red – with three times as many fans as Northampton. Munster lost that day but we won the Heineken Cup twice on magical days.” O’Donovan then worked as Ireland’s forwards coach from 2002 to 2008. “We had some great days, some horrible days. Typical Irish. Joe Schmidt has had a huge influence in making Ireland so much more consistent and confident but you have to credit the IRFU for putting in good foundations. All four provinces supply depth to Joe’s squad. So it’s sustainable.” Amid such success, O’Donovan offers a telling reminder. “Rugby is still the fourth-choice sport in Ireland. Hurling, Gaelic football and soccer are still the first three in playing numbers in a very small population. So some weeks at Munster we understand we won’t play our best players. We look to get a longer lifespan out of them as there are just four professional teams in Ireland. England have 12. In Ireland we have a player pool of about 110 Irish professionals. We have to make sure they’re kept in good nick. I was captain at a time when we changed the coach nearly every nine months … we weren’t good enough or fit enough “Every little Irish village has a Gaelic football pitch, a hurling pitch, a pub and a church. Hurling is embedded into rural Ireland and rugby can’t replace that. Limerick is probably the only place where rugby is the main sport. We were delighted Limerick won the All-Ireland Hurling final last August [beating Galway at Croke Park in front of 82,000 fans] but rugby is in every corner of the city. Everybody here follows rugby. You won’t find that anywhere else in Ireland.” O’Donovan still supports his old club and last month he watched Shannon play Garryowen. “There was a reasonable crowd of 400 but it’s hard on the clubs now. Munster can’t afford to let the clubs die. In Leinster many players come through Dublin’s private schools whereas here the clubs have always been the backbone.” Keith Wood, the former Ireland captain who was world rugby’s player of the year in 2001, comes from Killaloe in County Clare, half an hour away, but we meet at his old school in Limerick. St Munchin’s was founded in 1796 and it has a great rugby heritage with five former pupils, including Wood and Conor Murray, having played for the Lions. Wood’s three sons are pupils now and he is proud of the fact that, unlike the Dublin conveyor belt of privately educated rugby talent, St Munchin’s is not a fee-paying school. Few rugby players can match the range of Wood’s interests and he remains a captivating presence. Before he takes me on a tour of the school which ends up with us watching his eldest son, Alexander, and his teammates finish their training session in the gathering darkness, Wood offers a striking analogy – Irish rugby is like a three-legged stool. The former Ireland and Lions player Keith Wood stands above Lough Derg in the Arra Mountains, County Tipperary, near his home town of Killaloe. “The provinces, the clubs and the schools hold up the game. The professional provincial leg looks perfect. The schools rugby leg is pretty good. The other leg, the club game, is not great – because we’re dealing with nascent professionalism. Rugby has only been professional for 20 years. It’s now time to fix the club leg. It’s when things are going well that you need to do your repair work. “The board have got so many things right – some by accident, some by incredible planning. They’ve done really well because they have protected the players. Johnny Sexton played 22 matches last year. I played 42 matches some years. We also have Joe Schmidt. I’m not saying Joe is the best coach in the world for other teams, but for Ireland he’s ideal.” Wood won 58 caps from 1994 to 2003. “I was captain at a time when we changed the coach nearly every nine months. I had six coaches up until 1998 but we weren’t good enough or fit enough. Until Warren Gatland came in there was no consistency of selection. Gatty changed that and gave us a consistent way of playing. We became incredibly hard to beat. There was a big improvement and then Eddie O’Sullivan brought us to a higher level and we won some Triple Crowns [for beating England, Scotland and Wales]. There was a sense something else was coming.” That “something else” meant that Ireland, under Schmidt, were transformed. “I really like watching Ireland play now,” Wood says. “Sometimes they grind out things which aren’t great, and I like them for that too. I love going to a game thinking: ‘We’re going to win but I want to see how we win it.’ I was convinced the week before that Ireland would beat New Zealand in November. As the week went on, I started thinking: ‘Jesus, I’m putting the kibosh on it.’ And then the game starts and, after 10 minutes, I said: ‘We’re going to win this. You can see it, you can sense it. They’re so in synch.’ Of course we won. That’s why Irish rugby, right now, is such fun.” Shannon RFC U20s surge forward as they take on Young Munster U20s in a local Limerick derby match, played at Tom Clifford Park, Greenfields. Wood considers a 22-year-old Leinster lock who has just 12 caps for Ireland. “James Ryan looks a born professional rugby player. My God, he’s lost two games in his life. Three losses, tops, in two years. He lost one game for Ireland on tour. And a game against Toulouse. He might have lost one other. These are All Black-style stats. Ryan looks mature, capable, strong, robust, a really good player with an extraordinary thirst for work. He doesn’t make many mistakes.” Ryan is a product of St Michael’s which has become one of the dominant schools in Dublin. Wood says: “There are 1.5 million people in Dublin – which is a conduit to excellence because so many are willing to pay to get their kids to certain schools. So in Leinster huge numbers are coming through the system. In Munster we would like more players coming through the schools. But there are demographic issues and more poverty in Limerick. I think there are 22 premier schools in Ireland and St Munchin’s is the only one that doesn’t pay its coaches. But they have produced 18 Irish internationals and five Lions. They buck the trend.” I first met Justin Vanstone at Saracens’ training ground in Hertfordshire. Vanstone and four of his fellow Blackrock College rugby coaches spent a day shadowing their Saracens counterparts, including Mark McCall, the director of rugby. It was a sign of the Dublin school’s sheer professionalism. Vanstone is English but he has lived in Dublin for 16 years. He is a perceptive teacher and, when we meet at Blackrock a month later, Vanstone is also a passionate guide around a rugby institution. We begin by walking down a corridor lined with photographs from school teams over the years which have produced so many internationals from Fergus Slattery, Hugo MacNeill and Leo Cullen to Brian O’Driscoll, Garry Ringrose and Joey Carbery. The current system appears more striking as Vanstone charts the dedication of his schoolboys. “It wouldn’t be uncommon for a boy to be in at 7am for something rugby-based before school. There will be training after school and the boys do night study from 6pm to 9pm. It’s a long day but they wouldn’t be in before seven every morning because we try to get a balance.” Vanstone stresses that his first-team drives standards. “The boys expect to have the video of our Saturday morning game that evening or early Sunday morning. We create clips they’ll go over before we assess it as a group on Monday. Expectations are high and we don’t want the coaches doing all the analysis. If it’s one-way traffic how can you expect boys to make decisions? Of course early in the season it is coach-led. But we like to step back and hear the boys’ voices.” Justin Vanstone, head coach for Blackrock College school rugby team, prepares for his Monday video analysis session; the main pitch, known as the ‘Front Lawn’ which is played on for a maximum of four matches per year; the corridor at Blackrock College that shows all the old first-team photos including one of the ‘Dream Team’ that won the Schools Cup in 1996 which had five players who became full Irish internationals including Leo Cullen and Brian O’Driscoll. Video analysis includes studying the opposition. Vanstone explains that the top schools share their footage. “It’s one of those unwritten rules that, during the friendly season, you do not attend an opponent’s game. But it’s fair game to access videos before the Leinster Schools Cup campaign. To avoid espionage, Leinster video these games and set up a database for us to study each other. It works for Leinster because they get video footage of the best schoolboys. It’s a win-win.” Vanstone nods when I say it sounds very serious. “I don’t disagree that it’s become very professional with a small ‘p’. But it’s down to the coaches to ensure that the unity, camaraderie and old-fashioned enjoyment of sport remains.” Tadgh Furlong offers compelling evidence that Leinster are not just dependent on the outstanding private schools found within a six-mile radius of each other in Dublin. Furlong comes from a farming family in the small parish of Horeswood, County Wexford, a two-and-half-hour journey from where we sit at Leinster’s training headquarters at University College Dublin. The prop is warm and welcoming and full of great stories about growing up in Wexford where he played hurling and Gaelic football as well as rugby. Furlong burst to prominence in the autumn of 2016 when he made his first Test start and, that November, he played in Ireland’s historic victory over New Zealand in Chicago. He has since played for the Lions, in the drawn 2017 series against the All Blacks, and established himself as arguably the best prop in world rugby. One measure of Furlong’s stature is that he has played New Zealand in six Tests and lost only two. “Rugby is a winter sport and hurling and football are very much summer sports,” Furlong says. “I used to alternate between them. Where I grew up everybody plays GAA. In my primary school class there were only six boys. Every village had their own teams and you’re scavenging for numbers. And playing hurling and football definitely helped my rugby. The space is so big. You definitely get spatial awareness and hurling was so good for my hand-eye coordination. Footwork, too. It’s multidirectional where rugby tends to be more linear.” The 26-year-old laughs when I mention YouTube footage of his nimble footwork – as a teenage GAA player. “That embarrassing video rears its head every now and again. But we had a good team with our local club and I won an All-Ireland under-14 with Wexford. My dad played rugby and he was also a prop. But he coached me in GAA. He’s a small-town cowboy in some respects. He’d write down a team on the back of a fag packet and tell me to get stuck in.” Tadhg Furlong, the Leinster and Lions player, at the Leinster training centre at the University College Dublin, in front of a specially commissioned artwork representing the rivers and land of the province combining together for the greater good. Below, Furlong is congratulated by friends and family after Ireland’s 2018 victory over England which game them the Grand Slam. It sounds a small miracle Furlong was spotted by Leinster and enticed to their academy in 2013. “Not really. There was a good club scene in Wexford and the Leinster system means if you’re talented you’ll be picked up. Of course the setup and coaching within the Dublin schools are unbelievable. But there are benefits from experiencing rugby outside the Dublin bubble. When you come into the academy you probably have a little chip on your shoulder. You want to prove yourself to lads who had their names in lights from school rugby. The other parallel is, because I never got exposed to the volume of training and weight sessions at school, you see rapid changes in your body and your skills when you join the academy. You get hungry to improve.” Furlong reminds me of Willie John McBride. They are both sons of farmers who came to the game late. McBride achieved prodigious feats, as Furlong is already doing. Yet Furlong, unlike McBride, came into a winning Irish team and he is too professional to echo the Ulsterman when looking ahead to the England game. This Irish team today are used to success and expect to sustain and improve it When asked for his England prediction, McBride had growled: “We can beat them again. They talk too much. People say: ‘Why do you keep hammering on about how you love to beat England?’ Well, there’s a difference between being British and English. I think England talk a lot of rubbish.” On a January afternoon of gentle sunshine, Hugo MacNeill, a former Blackrock boy who played for Ireland and the Lions in the 1980s, completes my journey. We stroll through Dublin and MacNeill reminds me that Leinster are the city’s sole professional sports team – and a resounding success as European champions four times in the past 10 seasons. He nods when hearing how Stuart Lancaster, the former England coach who is doing so well at Leinster, had stressed his surprise to me that so many of his players were born in Dublin, had never played for another club and had no intention of leaving. Lancaster admired their cohesion and identity. Stuart Lancaster, the former England rugby head coach and now senior coach at Leinster, and the club’s motto on display in the atrium at their training centre at the University College, Dublin. “We’re lucky Johnny Sexton’s experience in French club rugby [with Racing 92 from 2013 to 2015] was seen as negative,” MacNeill says. “It was a key moment when Sexton came home. It encouraged other players to stay in Dublin. We still have to be vigilant because there are massive salaries in England and France. But our European success helps keep our best players. Dublin is also really vibrant now. When I played for Ireland young people felt they had to leave because there were so few prospects.” MacNeill did a postgraduate degree in economics at Oxford between 1982 and 1984 – while playing for Ireland. He was part of the Irish side, including Ringland and McLoughlin, which won the Triple Crown in 1982. “The country was low in confidence,” he recalls. “My Oxford thesis was on job-sharing during terrible unemployment: 20% were unemployed. When we won the Triple Crown in 1982 this was before Ray Houghton [who scored the goal that beat England 1-0 at Euro 88], before U2, before Riverdance. Ireland was on its knees but our coach Mick Doyle said: ‘You can be the best in the world.’ We wanted to believe this, but it wasn’t easy. The country, however, bought into the idea and there was an amazing response. “We won another Triple Crown in 1985. The whole county was behind us and you could feel confidence returning. I went to a big business lunch on the Monday, after we won the [1985] championship on the Saturday, and the minister of finance spoke. He said: ‘After this great weekend, we’re delighted one of the Irish team is here.’ The place erupted. It was lovely. But we did not build secure foundations. We got the wooden spoon in 1986, and thoroughly deserved it. We got carried away because we weren’t used to success. This Irish team today are used to success and expect to sustain and improve it.” Hugo McNeill, the former Ireland and Lions player, on the pitch at Trinity College, his old college, and where Dublin University Rugby Club, the oldest club in the world to have played continuously, have games. MacNeill is most interested in Irish rugby’s enduring capacity to produce hope and unity. He remains close to Ringland. The Dubliner and the Ulsterman did commendable work in 1996 when, after an IRA bomb caused devastation in London’s Docklands, they organised the Peace Game between Ireland and the Barbarians – to show that the Irish wanted peace and unity above all else. “Trevor and I always spoke to each other during the Troubles. We talked and talked, and still do to this day. We wanted to learn about each other’s lives. We also believed the genius of rugby was that when Ireland went independent they kept things together. We are Ireland as one, north and south, in rugby. It’s not like football with the Republic of Ireland. It’s more than that. In some of Seamus Heaney’s best poems he talks about the neighbourly, casual slaughter of the Troubles. But rugby gave us a peaceful route. You respected and welcomed differences. Irish rugby always got this right. It still does today.” I have savoured Leinster’s meticulous planning, Munster’s gritty passion and Ulster’s layered identity and capacity for rugby leadership. A new Irish team are now the best in the country’s history and MacNeill’s belief in them, and rugby, is resonant. “Hopefully we’ll get through this Brexit mess, and come out the other side,” he says. “These are incredibly dangerous and sensitive times. We need peace and reconciliation. Irish rugby has always given us reconciliation with a generosity of spirit and mutual respect for our differences. It now also gives us a rugby team which might do something wonderful in the Six Nations and the World Cup. Irish rugby is leading the way – more than ever.” Ireland celebrate as captain Rory Best holds the Six Nations trophy and Jonnie Sexton clutches the Triple Crown shield after their victory over England gave them the Grand Slam in March 2018.Johanna Konta became the last of eight British players to leave the 2019 Australian Open, and in the most bizarre circumstances, sharing the record for the latest ever start to a grand slam match with her opponent, Garbiñe Muguruza. Their second-round battle was also a wonderful spectacle, full of rich, ripped ground strokes from all quarters, dogged defence and high passion. It was perhaps the best match of the tournament so far, watched by a handful of diehard fans and friends in the small hours of Friday morning in an echoing Margaret Court Arena when, but for a smattering of seagull droppings that rendered an alternative outside court unusable, it might have started and finished at a civilised hour. The Spaniard, irritable and rattled for much of the two hours and 42 minutes it lasted after they got under way at 12.30am, dredged up two glorious shots to finish it at 3.12am for a 6-4, 6-7 (3), 7-5 win that put her into the third round on Saturday. But Konta can be proud of her contribution to a memorable if very odd occasion. “She started better than I did, but I think I did a good job of raising my level to make it a competitive match,” Konta said later. “There were only a few points in it at the end. It’s not ideal for anyone to do any physical activity when it’s bedtime, but it is what it is and both of us were in the same boat. “Once [Alexander] Zverev and [Jérémy] Chardy’s match went to a fifth set [on the same court], we were actually going to go out to Court No 3 to start, but there was seagull poo everywhere and they had to clean the court. That would have taken 10 to 15 minutes and we were in the same boat anyway. “Ideally, both of us would have wanted to play earlier, but we don’t make the schedule and we both dealt with the same challenge. I think it’s more important to focus on the level of the match we had. It was actually a very good match. It was unfortunate that more people couldn’t enjoy it during the day. “I think I played a great match. That had a lot to do with the chemistry between us and the way our game styles match up. Garbiñe and I, every single match has been three sets. So we obviously do feed off each other’s game quite well, to play at a high level. It doesn’t guarantee we will have epic battles every time but it shows some game styles match up better than others.” She was disappointed with the result but encouraged by the performance, adding: “I look to take every opportunity to learn from every single match. I would have liked to have won and learned, but it didn’t go my way.” The thousand or so fans who had waited for the match soon dwindled to a couple of hundred but, at the end, they stood and cheered in appreciation of players who accepted their chore with the stoicism of professional athletes used to such things – even though they could easily have had the match moved to the smaller, empty Court No 3. Konta struggled to read the Spaniard’s rhythm in the early exchanges, shoving a backhand long from the baseline to surrender the first set. However, her level rose sharply in the second and stayed there until the end. She had the sniff of a break-back in the fourth game then saved two break points for four-all. By the time they got to the tie-break – with the roof now shut to keep out light rain – Muguruza’s confidence had dipped and Konta cashed in to force a decider. They went shot-for-shot in the third but the pressure was on Konta, behind in the serving cycle. As the clock ticked past 3am, the British No 1 held to love to stay in the tournament, but Muguruza brought up match point moments later with a wondrous backhand winner, then sealed it with another. Next up for Muguruza is the unpredictable Swiss Timea Bacsinszky, who played way above her world ranking of 145 to beat the Russian qualifier Natalia Vikhlyantseva. Serena Williams is still the raging favourite to win her eighth Australian title, and bring her total to 24, equal with Margaret Court’s career tally. She hit 20 clean winners in only an hour and 10 minutes to dismiss the Canadian Eugenie Bouchard for the loss of four games, and is likely to be equally ruthless against the Ukrainian teenager Dayana Yastremska, who took an hour and half to beat the No 23 seed Carla Suárez Navarro, confirming that her first-round win over Sam Stosur was no fluke. The prize for the winner will be a fourth-round shot at either the top seed Simona Halep, who had to dig deep to get past the Russian-born American Sofia Kenin, or Serena’s sister, Venus, who finished strongly against Alizé Cornet, bagelling the French player in the third set.Police in Western Australia have confirmed they sent multiple officers to an emergency call that turned out to be a screaming man with a “serious fear” of spiders. A concerned passerby was walking outside a house in suburban Perth when they heard a toddler screaming and a man repeatedly shouting “Why don’t you die?” After they called triple zero, officers arrived to find a man “trying to kill a spider”, who apologised for having an extreme fear of the arachnid. The Wanneroo police Twitter account posted a screenshot of the police log of the incident on Wednesday morning. “Caller walked past the AA and heard a male screaming out ‘Why don’t you die’ – repeatedly,” the log read. “The toddler inside was screaming … caller doesn’t know them, but has seen them a few times when walking”. Twenty minutes later, officers on the scene provided an update. “Police spoke with all parties who advised that husband had only been trying to kill a spider (has serious fear of spiders). Apologised for inconvenience to police. “No injuries sighted (except to spider). No further police involvement required”. An officer at Wanneroo police station confirmed to Guardian Australia that the incident occurred, but declined to provide further comment. The Wanneroo police account had tweeted the screenshot on Wednesday morning, but it was later deleted. A spokesman for WA police said the post had only been deleted because it included the screenshot of police communications. He said the account should have been transcribed in a separate post. “There’s nothing actually wrong with the contents of it,” he said. “There were just some typos in it, things like that.” In 2015, a similar incident occurred in Sydney when police attended a house to find a “quite embarrassed” man throwing furniture at a spider, alone.Russia has confirmed a fireball that streaked through the sky above New Zealand on Saturday was one of its early warning satellites burning up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The satellite’s dramatic descent was captured by TV cameras covering a cricket match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand. The match commentator suggested it was a “meteor shower”. Russia’s Aerospace Forces said the Kosmos 2430 missile early warning satellite, designed to detect intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches, was guided out of orbit as part of a planned operation on Saturday. “The satellite burned up completely in the dense atmosphere above the Atlantic Ocean at a height of around 100km,” Aerospace Forces said, adding that its re-entry had been under control at all times. It said the early warning satellite had been non-operational since 2012. The satellite was launched in 2007 as part of Russia’s “Oko” ICBM detection system. Russia is currently in the process of upgrading the Soviet-era system with more advanced missile-monitoring “Tundra” satellites. The first Tundra satellite was launched into orbit by Russia in 2015. Norad, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also confirmed that the brightly coloured object, which fragmented as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, was Kosmos 2430. “It looked like a jet plane at first, and I thought I could see that. But then it broke up into a million pieces – like fireworks,”’ Steve Bloor, who witnessed the event, told the New Zealand Herald. Facebook and its new head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, stand accused by Brussels of taking a “patchy, opaque, and self-selecting” approach to tackling disinformation. The description was said to apply to a number of internet companies by the EU commissioner, Sir Julian King, at the publication of a progress report on the attempt to clamp down on fake news before May’s European elections. But it was Mark Zuckerberg’s company, one of four major signatories to a new code of conduct, which bore the heaviest criticism from senior officials in the EU’s executive branch during a press conference in Brussels. Asked about the appointment of Clegg, the former British deputy prime minister, as Facebook’s head of global affairs, King said: “I wish Nick Clegg well, I wish him luck. I think he is going to need it.” On Tuesday, the commission published the first reports submitted by Google, the web browser Firefox Mozilla, and the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter on their adherence to the voluntary code of practice signed in October. Under the code, the internet firms are obliged to disrupt revenue for accounts and websites misrepresenting information, clamp down on fake accounts and bots, give prominence to reliable sources of news and improve the transparency of funding of political advertising. Clegg, who worked for the European commission in the mid-1990s, announced on Monday, during a visit to the Belgian capital, that Facebook would tackle political misinformation in the run-up to the EU elections with a “war room” based in Dublin. But while King said the development was welcome, he expressed his evident frustration with Clegg’s Silicon Valley employer. “Allow me to thank Facebook for their announcement yesterday of strengthened efforts to tackle disinformation, including more transparent political advertising, more resources for rapid response, and boosting their capacity to fight fake news”, said King. “Ideally it would have been even better if they had been able to report on these measures to us as part of this reporting process. Ideally they would have provided figures breaking down their performance against the performance indicators for the last quarter of last year. We look forward to them doing that.” King complained that independent researchers had not been allowed access to Facebook’s data, “and we need to do something about that”. He noted that by the firm’s own figures the site still hosted “80 to 90m” fake accounts. “Facebook is working with third-party fact-checkers and that is great,” he said. “But they are doing it in seven member states. We need to do it in all member states.” Of the other tech companies, Google was said to be “making progress” in scrutinising the placement of adverts, fighting fake accounts and impostor websites. But the commission said that tools to prioritise reputable news outlets were available only in a small number of member states Twitter was said to have drawn up new measures designed to act against malicious actors on its platform and automated systems or bots. But the commission said the company had not shown how it was ensuring that its advertising service blocked such accounts from promoting their tweets. Mozilla Firefox is upgrading in order to limit the information it revealed about users’ browsing activity but the commission said it was seeking further details on its rollout across the EU. King said: “Time is of the essence. There are lot of measures that need to be in place before the elections but the pre-election campaigns have already begun in many countries so we need to speed up these measures.” The tech companies are expected to update the commission on progress against the code of conduct every month for the next 12 months or risk the imposition of regulation. There is growing anxiety that the elections to the European parliament could be the target of manipulation in a similar manner to the US presidential election and the UK’s Brexit referendum. King said: “We remain concerned about the pace of progress. The pace of progress on these issues needs to be faster. We can’t afford to wake up after the election to find we could and should have done more. We need to take action now.”Theresa May would go back to Brussels with “enormous firepower” to renegotiate her Brexit deal if the Commons backed an amendment watering down the Irish backstop provision, a senior Conservative backbencher has said before a crucial series of votes. Graham Brady said he was hopeful of ministerial support for his amendment, which says the backstop should be replaced by “alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border”, even though Ireland has repeatedly stressed such a change cannot happen. His is among a series of amendments intended to change the backstop that could be picked for voting on Tuesday night. Another group aims to prevent the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, if agreement cannot be reached in time. The most prominent of the amendments, tabled by the Labour MP Yvette Cooper, would oblige the government to extend the Brexit deadline if an agreement had not been struck by the end of next month. Nick Boles, the Tory backbencher who is pushing for the plan alongside Cooper, argued on Monday it was vital this amendment attract enough support to be passed. “If we don’t seize the moment tomorrow afternoon then we’re at grave risk of just driving off the edge on 29 March, without really wanting to, and when there might be a compromise that we could achieve if had a few more months,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There is speculation that the government could formally back Brady’s amendment, which is intended to bring back onboard the many Conservative and DUP MPs who voted against May’s Brexit plan when it was overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons earlier this month. Much of the opposition centred around the backstop, the indefinite insurance policy that would keep Northern Ireland in customs alignment with the Irish Republic to avoid a hard border if no permanent deal or other arrangement could be found. The vote against May’s deal “didn’t necessarily indicate that the agreement is dead”, Brady, who chairs the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, told Today, just that MPs had “a very, very fundamental problem” with the backstop. Brady said his amendment was intended to break the impasse: “I’m hoping that the way in which the amendment is crafted can attract that very broad support. And if we can win the vote on my amendment, then I think it gives the prime minister enormous firepower when she goes back. “If my amendment is carried, she goes back to Brussels and says: you wanted to know what we can get through the House of Commons? This is it.” However, the EU and Irish government have repeatedly stressed that the backstop cannot be watered down, as reiterated on Sunday by Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister and deputy prime minister. The backstop, “as part of the withdrawal agreement, is part of a balanced package that isn’t going to change”, Coveney said. But Brady said he doubted the finality of such sentiments: “We are coming towards an end point, we are coming towards the exit date on 29 March. I think that is focusing minds. We’ve already seen across the European Union a little bit more flexibility and a little bit more creativity creeping in.” In his regular Daily Telegraph column on Monday, the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson argued that any changes to the backstop must be made to the withdrawal deal itself. Brady agreed that the change must be legally binding, adding: “I don’t think anybody’s going to accept something which is just warm words.” The Cooper and Boles plan seems set to get formal support from Labour, but the government is unlikely to allow ministers a free vote. Some ministers, among them Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke, are reported to be considering this to prevent the idea of a no-deal departure. “I certainly don’t want to see anyone resigning over this,” Boles said. “But this is the last chance for parliament. This is probably the only opportunity parliament is going to have to intervene in this process, to take control.” He added: “29 March is an entirely arbitrary date, just two years on from when we sent the letter. There’s nothing fundamental about it. And the truth is the prime minister has wasted time. She delayed the vote by a whole month over Christmas and New Year, as she thought she would lose it. She then went on to lose it by a greater margin.” Damian Hinds, the education secretary, declined to say what the government might do with the amendments. “We don’t know yet what people are going to say tomorrow,” he said. The PM’s commitment has been really clear: she’s going to listen and she’s going to see where that common ground is that we can move forward on, and then she will take that to the European Union, represent those points in order to be able to find a way forward.”A pledge to make it easier for “good citizens” to buy guns for self-defence helped sweep Jair Bolsonaro to power. But there is alarm that the Brazilian president’s decree loosening firearms laws will make pervasive violence against women even worse – and more deadly. “I believe this is a very negative measure that will lead more women to be threatened by violence,” said Maria da Penha, the women’s rights activist whose case changed Brazil’s domestic violence laws. “This decree should be reviewed.” In a country plagued by public insecurity, Da Penha’s story is widely known. In May 1983, she was asleep at her home in Fortaleza when her husband shot her in the back, leaving her paralysed. When she returned from hospital four months later, he was still free – and attempted to murder her again, this time by electrocution in the shower. Her fight for justice eventually led to the Maria da Penha law, which set up specialised courts and police stations, and ushered in protective measures like restraining orders. Despite this and other robust laws to protect women, domestic violence in Brazil is rampant. Allowing people with no criminal record to keep up to four guns at home will make such violence more murderous, say campaigners, who point out that half of all murders of women in 2016 involved a firearm. In 2017, 4,539 women were murdered, a rise of 6.1% on the year before, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Security. Rape also rose 8%, to 60,018. Since the decree, domestic violence survivors have been using the hashtag #SeEleEstivesseArmado (“If he had been armed”) to express the belief that, had their attacker had access to a gun, they would be dead. “My ex found it normal to pursue me 200km into a different state, invade my house, harass and threaten me,” says one. “That day, every time he reached in his rucksack, I thought he was going to grab a gun. If he had been armed, I would be dead.” Another tweet reads: “For many of us who experienced an abusive relationship, that question that lingers in the mind is: what if he had come back with a weapon?” “We live in a society colonised by fear,” says Debora Diniz, professor of anthropology at the University of Brasilia, explaining the appeal of Bolsonaro’s stance on gun ownership to women who voted for him in November and others who back the decree. “We are afraid of walking the streets and are looking for easy solutions.” Diniz warned that, imported into a macho society like Brazil, a US-style political understanding that an individual has a right to protect their private property is problematic for women, who might be regarded as part of that property. “A gun is an object of desire for men. Gender comes into the politics of weapons, for those who aspire to own them and those who use them to kill,” Diniz wrote in El Pais, arguing that weapons policy must be sensitive to a country’s gender norms. “Femicide is a word invented in Latin America. We are the region of the world where more women die at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends, fathers and sons. “If today there are cases where women survive attempted femicide, it is in large part because the instrument of violence was physical force or other instruments that are less lethal, like knives or ropes. In cases where guns are used, the chances of a woman surviving are much rarer.” The gun policy debate goes to the heart of divisions in Brazil as the country adapts to a new president. While many revile Bolsonaro for his expressions of misogyny and homophobia, his toughness on crime resonates with women panicked by what has become a violent crime epidemic. Pictured draped in a Brazilian flag, a revolver protruding from her jeans, São Paulo state deputy Leticia Aguiar is among high-profile supporters. She argues that women have been “the main victims” of a previous policy of civilian disarmament. “An unprotected woman is an easy target for rape. A woman who is armed is prepared for daily life and, in my view, can even be considered more of a citizen in favour of social order,” says Aguiar, the self-described “adoptive daughter” of Bolsonaro. That view is not echoed by the public defenders who have issued statements warning the decree will increase the risk of femicide. The public defender of São Paulo has formulated a protective measure that suspends the possession of weapons by anyone with a history of domestic and family violence, in accordance with the Maria da Penha law. Some point out that laws making it easier to own a gun wouldn’t help poorer women to protect themselves, since they couldn’t afford to buy one anyway. In communities where violence is already rife, the idea of introducing more weapons is widely seen as sheer madness. Women in such areas are disproportionately affected by gun violence, not just from drug trafficking gangs but also from military police during operations. “Making it easier to get guns is really bad, because we are already living in a civil war,” says *Jenifer Rodriguez, who lives in a favela in Duque de Caxias near Rio de Janeiro. “This week I was awoken with a gun to my head because the police came into the favela and they had a key to open all our doors. It was terrible, they kept me there answering questions for two hours and confiscated my phone. These days I say that when I leave the house I don’t know if I am going to return home alive.” Education is the weapon to protect women from violence, not guns, says Da Penha. “Only education from an early age can dismantle the culture of machismo and homophobia. We need to mobilise women against this mindset.” *Name changed to protect identitySaudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun has been found to be a refugee by the United Nations, and the Australian government will now consider her asylum request, according to the Department of Home Affairs. The 18-year-old woman barricaded herself in a Bangkok airport hotel room on Sunday to prevent her forcible return to Saudi Arabia, where she claims her family will kill her because she has renounced Islam. On Wednesday, the UN high commissioner for refugees assessed Qunun, found her to be a refugee and referred her to Australia for resettlement. The Department of Home Affairs said it “will consider this referral in the usual way, as it does with all UNHCR referrals”. A UNHCR spokeswoman told the Guardian that Qunun would remain in their care until a long-term solution has been found. “She remains in a safe location in Bangkok for the time being,” she said. Earlier on Wednesday, Australia’s home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, had warned there will be “no special treatment” for Qunun, despite a groundswell of support for the woman. The Australian director of Human Rights Watch Australia, Elaine Pearson, said the Australian government should “act quickly” to bring her safely to Australia. “She is a young Saudi woman whose face has been plastered around the world,” Pearson said. “She’s more at risk than other refugees, not just from her family but threats she has faced online and from her own government. “We all know what the Saudi government is capable of doing on foreign soil. I would hope that, once her claim has been assessed, the Australian government will act quickly to get her out of Thailand and to safety.” The Australian government previously said it would carefully consider granting a visa to Qunun if she is found to be a refugee by the United Nations. Her friends said on Tuesday that Australia had cancelled the tourist visa she was travelling on. Qunun was detained on arrival at Bangkok and denied entry to Thailand while en route to Australia, where she said she intended to seek asylum. The Australian Greens senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, has called on the government to show moral leadership and act quickly to offer Qunun sanctuary. “It is time to bring this courageous young woman to Australia to start her life as a free woman,” she said. A group called the Secret Sisterhood has set up a GoFundMe page to raise cash for Qunun once she is resettled in another country. • Jamie Fullerton and Australian Associated Press contributed to this reportFor better or for worse, one of post-imperial Britain’s favoured methods of understanding itself has been through the prism of the royal family. We come together at royal weddings and jubilees, some like to say, while others do so in front of box sets of The Crown. Brexit, on the other hand, has long been a straight-up car metaphor. Cars are far and away the most popular way of understanding what might be happening to us. Remainers warn of “a car being driven off a cliff” or of Theresa May “running out of road”; Brexiteers talk of “taking the wheel” and “the open road”. Sensationally, these two streams have crossed (DON’T CROSS THE STREAMS!) in the matter of Prince Philip’s road accident. The crash – widely believed to have been orchestrated by Mohamed Al Fayed and MI6, though you won’t read that in the mainstream media – comes at a moment of high Brexit drama. And looking at HRH’s upturned vehicle, I wonder what its import can be, other than that certain things might be regarded as recklessly beyond the capabilities of our decrepit political system? Then again, lesser vehicle analogies are available. Boris Johnson dragged Her Majesty’s press to the JCB headquarters in Staffordshire this morning, where he stood in front of a digger and pummelled the metaphor like it was a journalist asking questions about one of his criminal schoolfriends. Bros before backhoes, innit. As you would expect of the ironicidal maniac, Boris used this undisguised leadership tilt to once more rail against “elites”. In fact, this week the erstwhile foreign secretary has begun pushing things much further than he has gone before on this front. “I think [Britons] will feel there’s been a great conspiracy by the deep state of the UK,” he told LBC this week, “the people who really run the country, to overturn the vote in the referendum.” If you’re keeping a tally of such things, the two significant political figures most determined to mainstream that toxic Trump staple, the “deep state”, are Jeremy Corbyn’s senior aide, Andrew Murray – who invoked the deep state over two issues last September – and now Boris Johnson. Conclude from that what you will, but your answer should include the epithet “Bannon-frotters”. Optimists may feel able to dismiss Johnson as a Chinese restaurant’s Churchill impersonator, but to watch him lie remorselessly in Staffordshire was to be reminded that he is still something far more sinister. It remains disturbing to see the media held captive in Buffalo Boris’s well, while he leers his terrible catchphrases down at them. “It writes the article or it gets the hose …” Johnson has been sewing the pieces of his prime minister suit together for such a long time now; the prospect of him getting to wear it has yet to be eliminated. But what of the prime minister who Johnson is angling to replace? On Wednesday night, Theresa May treated us to yet another of those occasions where she emerges out of the No 10 door in signature angular fashion, says precisely nothing of substance, then jerks back in again. How many episodes of this show are there going to be? Far be it from me to criticise the Bagpuss producers, but the decision to spin off the character of Professor Yaffle’s wife isn’t really working. In the wake of her promise to reach out in “constructive spirit” and “work harder at taking parliament with us”, No 10 let it be known that the only things May isn’t flexible on are a second referendum, a customs union, a single market, extending article 50, or dropping the threat of no deal. She’ll do anything for love, but she won’t do that, or that, or that, or that. Those. The point is: she’s changed. That said, Jeremy Corbyn’s decision not to accept the cattle-prod May has graciously extended to him misunderstands the theatre. Corbyn prides himself on his historic success in keeping dialogue open during the Troubles, for instance, even though this vital role isn’t acknowledged in any of the significant books about these events. Like Steven Seagal in Under Siege 2, Corbyn’s “got medals that are so secret he can never show them to anybody”. Even so, the Labour leader’s current position looks unworthy of the hour. His determination, however, can only have been strengthened by Tony Blair popping up to say he was wrong. Perhaps Mr Blair might consider going on the airwaves and demanding the opposite of what he wants? I can’t help feeling it would be 100% effective. For her part, May has decided to capitalise on the impasse by sending Corbyn a long and intense letter about being ghosted. Do print all these out as they come, and you can burn them for warmth in the event of no deal. In the meantime, May has until Monday evening to come up with a workable plan B. On that note, you might have been surprised to read a well-briefed story on the front of the Times today, revealing that she will block a future peerage for Speaker John Bercow, on the basis of his growing taste for shithousery (I paraphrase slightly). To which the only response can be: is Brexit over? No, but is it? Are we actually in the sunlit uplands and none of us noticed? Because I think we all want confirmation that every last agreement has been nailed down and every last bonanza trade deal has been signed before No 10 spends one pissing second of its dwindling time briefing about whether ermine will or will not be forthcoming, for anyone, at some unspecified point in the future. Is anyone trying to get on top of plan B? According to reports, it’s David Lidington. The entity always described as “the de facto deputy prime minister” is apparently holding talks with senior opposition politicians, along with Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay – also believed to be an urban myth – and Michael Gove. The latter, of course, we are aware of, which makes his shortening leadership odds all the more eyecatching. In the immediate wake of the referendum, you will recall, Michael’s actions were regarded as the Tories’ personal knife-crime problem. After he backstabbed his Vote Leave buddy Boris Johnson, Michael’s behaviour was widely regarded as too disgusting for the Conservative party. Indeed, it was helpful to note Boris Johnson giving a shout-out to Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry in his speech this morning, because Berry’s only other claim to fame has been two July 2016 tweets reading, “I do not for one moment resile from my opinion that as a traitor Gove leaves Judas Iscariot standing”, and “there is a very deep pit reserved in hell for such as he. #Gove.” Well. We all live in that pit now, and “Safehands” Gove is being touted by some as our best hope for avoiding a deeper one. Farce could easily repeat itself as history. Ah yes, history. In the run-up to the predictably vast defeat of her withdrawal deal on Tuesday night, May was in full delusional mode. “When the history books are written,” she hazarded, “people will ask: did we deliver on the vote to leave? Or did we deliver for the economy and security?” Ah. I hate to travel back from the future with spoilers, but the history books end up making this period of British history a sealed section. Its contents are deemed too spectacularly grotesque to consume without a warning. • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist“It’s her word against his,” says a middle-aged male juror in thick-rimmed glasses. “Someone of his experience wouldn’t do something so risky.” A woman to my right says the defendant is probably guilty, but maybe not beyond reasonable doubt. “But why would she lie?” asks another female juror. Eleven strangers and I are discussing whether renowned children’s surgeon Simon Huxtable tried to rape Sally Hodges, the mother of a former patient. She says he tried to kiss her and then force himself on her. Huxtable says Hodges made up the allegation after he spurned her advances. Mobile phone records show he was at her home for 26 minutes but he told police he was there for only 10. His browsing history reveals he has an interest in rape porn. I fiddle with a yellow label that says I’m juror number 11. Except I’m not really. The witnesses are actors, and we’ve been watching their testimonies on tablets at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry. The case is fictional, but shared pretence is engaging and our deliberations become heated. The Justice Syndicate is part interactive play, part psychology experiment developed by audience-centric Newcastle theatre group FanSHEN and Kris De Meyer, a neuroscientist at King’s College London. It explores how we form and change opinions, our tendency to stick to initial instincts and how groups influence our views. De Meyer hopes that data gathered during the shows and their immersive nature will generate new insights into human decision-making. It’s a subject we surely need to understand better. On Monday, protesters jostled and yelled at Tory MP Anna Soubry in Westminster, calling her a “fascist” and “scum” because of her pro-Remain stance. Across the Atlantic, divisions appeared to deepen still further as Donald Trump and leading Democrats traded insults over his demands for a wall on the Mexican border. The increasingly polarised and hostile nature of public discourse raises important questions. If humans have the capacity for reason, why do we make so many bad decisions? How come people cling to extreme or irrational views in the face of facts? And can psychological insights lead to better, more rational decisions? The starting point for many who grapple with these questions, including those behind The Justice Syndicate, is the work in the 1950s of American social psychologist Leon Festinger. Based on a basic human desire to be consistent, Festinger said we compare ourselves to others to evaluate our own opinions and abilities, and that those in groups with diverging opinions will either seek to move towards consensus, ostracise individuals with opposing views or form entrenched factions. He also outlined how, when humans hold contradictory ideas, or their actions conflict with their beliefs, they suffer a form of mental discomfort called cognitive dissonance. His PhD student Elliot Aronson fleshed this concept out, showing how this is especially likely to lead to poor decision-making when it concerns something that is important to our self-image. “If I see myself as someone who is smart, competent and kind, and you give me some information that I have done something foolish, immoral or hurtful, I have a choice,” says US social psychologist Carol Tavris, co-author with Aronson of Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). “I can revise my view of myself, or I can dismiss the evidence. Most people take the least painful path and dismiss the evidence.” These pressures can lead to confirmation bias – the tendency to pay attention only to information that confirms our existing beliefs. It is perhaps the best known of human biases. During the 1970s, Nobel prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman outlined a series of other mental shortcuts that can lead us astray. The “availability heuristic”, for example, may mistakenly convince us that car travel is safer than flying. A £100 pair of jeans might seem like a bargain if reduced from £200, even if they cost £2 to make, thanks to the “anchoring effect”. And the “representativeness heuristic” can mislead gamblers into thinking they are due a win following a string of statistically unrelated losses. Kahneman went on to outline how the brain uses rapid, intuitive processes to make some decisions and slow, more conscious and deliberative processes for others. Some argue our cognitive biases only look strange if we see human reasoning individualistically. French cognitive psychologists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argue in their 2017 book The Enigma of Reason that as highly social animals, we are deeply concerned with appearing to be wise, competent and trustworthy to others. Our reasoning capabilities therefore evolved not to reach the most logical solutions to problems but to help us argue our case and justify our positions. “We are constantly justifying ourselves and seeking to persuade others that we are the kind of person they want to cooperate with,” says Mercier, of the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris. “From this perspective, it makes no sense to hold on to arguments that contradict your point of view, but it does make sense to have a confirmation bias.” In a 2015 study, Mercier asked participants to tackle a series of reasoning tasks, and provide justifications for their choices. When later asked to evaluate their own statements disguised as those of others, more than half disagreed with themselves. Political polarisation has been a hot topic since 2016, the year Britain voted to leave the EU and Donald Trump moved into the White House. De Meyer, however, has been tracking the phenomenon since George W Bush’s narrow victory in the 2000 presidential election, through the rise of the Tea Party movement, anti-Barack Obama sentiment and the rumbling acrimony over climate change. Aware of the insights psychology had to offer, he and film-maker Sheila Marshall produced the 2016 documentary Right Between Your Ears, which featured American Christian radio host Harold Camping and his followers, who believed that God would gather up his chosen few and then destroy the Earth with huge earthquakes on 21 October, 2011. It captures the intensity of the cognitive dissonance suffered by believers, who had left their jobs and sold their homes, on realising the end had not in fact been nigh. There have been some 20 Justice Syndicate shows since early 2017. The software on which it runs also gathers research data, tracking how consistent participants are when asked three times during the piece which way they are leaning, and how long they view pieces of evidence for. An initial analysis of recent shows found that almost half of participants failed to change their initial leanings at all, despite the introduction of new evidence. “Individuals take very different views on what bits of information are important,” says Joe McAlister, the computational artist who developed the software. “It’s taught me that people have a lot of different and unusual biases, which is fascinating but also quite terrifying.” The allegations of sexual assault made against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and US judge Brett Kavanaugh both affected Justice Syndicate debates and verdicts. McAlister says younger participants have focused more strongly on issues of consent. Recent failures to repeat experiments that support important concepts in psychology have led to a loss of confidence in the discipline. Some blamed the use of highly artificial decision-making tasks for this “reproducibility crisis”. De Meyer believes interactive theatre can produce more realistic results. “It allows us to recreate something with a certain level of realism, and opens up doors to do psychological research in a new way that we couldn’t do 20 years ago.” Others seem to agree. In December, De Meyer and FanSHEN produced a new piece, commissioned by the Cabinet Office, to probe people’s reactions to a national power grid failure. Work on a scenario about someone dying due to medical negligence will begin next month. De Meyer wants to use the format to study why people are more likely to blame those of different ethnic groups to themselves for errors. He also hopes his work can help explain rising political polarisation. Research by US thinktank the Pew Research Centre shows a growing gulf in the views of Republicans and Democrats on key topics such as race, the environment and the role of government. Another study shows Americans increasingly dislike or even loathe those who support the party they themselves oppose. Many blame social media for fanning the flames of division. “The way people use social media and select their own online news sources keeps them in their own little confirmation bias bubbles,” says Tavris. “Tweets go viral when they really resonate with a group or really anger a group,” says De Meyer. “Social media seems to be amplifying existing divisions and probably making them worse.” Psychology offers insights, both to individuals who want to make better decisions by learning about their own reasoning powers, and those seeking the secrets of persuading others. In a 2014 study, Mercier and colleagues found only 22% of participants could solve a reasoning task on their own, but when small groups discussed their thinking, this rose to 63%. “If people are reasoning on their own or only with people they agree with, nine times out of 10 they will stick to biased positions and you are going to get polarisation,” he says. “But if you take a group of people with some kind of common incentive but who disagree about something, then reason can help them get a better answer.” Back in our mock jury room, and an initial show of hands reveals that, after hearing the evidence, we see Simon Huxtable as guilty by a slim majority or 7-5. “She was drunk and upset,” argues juror number four, a young male. “But what would she have to do for people to believe her?” asks a female jury member, who adds a not guilty verdict would send out the wrong message to other victims. “His sexual fantasies, however extreme, are irrelevant,” says a male juror. “We need to focus on the facts of the case.” Another vote shows that 10 minutes of discussion has shifted opinion to 7-5 for not guilty. At this point, I notice a matriarchal juror across the table is speaking both frequently and sensibly and that many participants are looking in her direction when they speak. She is arguing with increasing conviction that the evidence against Simon Huxtable is merely circumstantial. A short while later, we vote again, reaching a not guilty verdict by 10-2. During a debriefing session, Dan Barnard of FanSHEN describes some or the psychological concepts underpinning the show and encourages us to consider how they affected our decisions. The show’s creators believe greater understanding of the mental triggers that affect our own decisions and those of others could help us all become a little more open-minded, tolerant and rational. “The most powerful form of learning is experiential,” says De Meyer. “My hope is that by making people aware of how they are thinking and behaving, it helps them to deal with real situations in which emotions and instincts might otherwise take over.” The Justice Syndicate is running on 9 February at the National Justice Museum, Nottingham; 11-23 February at the Battersea Arts Centre, London; and 14 April at the Pleasance theatre, Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh international science festival 1. A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? 2. It takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets. How long does it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? 3. A patch of lily pads on a lake doubles in size daily. It takes 48 days for it to completely cover the lake. How long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? Check your answers below. If you struggled, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Just one in six of more than 3,000 Americans, mostly of college students, got all three right. A third failed to get any correct. US psychologist Shane Frederick developed the cognitive reflection test in 2005 to measure the degree to which people either go with their gut instinct or take their time to reflect on simple but misleading puzzles. Answers: 1. 5p. 2. Five minutes. 3. 47 days.A Dutch approach to transforming old homes through a dramatic green makeover has arrived in the UK and cut tenants’ energy bills in half. Nottingham has become the first city council to pioneer the “Energiesprong” (energy leap) initiative, which has radically upgraded the energy efficiency of thousands of homes in the Netherlands. More than 150 social housing homes in Nottingham will receive new wall cladding, windows and solar panels after the local authority won £5m from the EU’s European Regional Development Fund. Some tenants in homes already refurbished in a pilot scheme have seen monthly energy bills drop from about £120 to £60-£70. Joan Warburton, who lives near the city’s Clinton Street market, said her previously cold bungalow was now much more comfortable. “It’s made a lot of difference. It’s warmer. I don’t need my dressing gown now. All the draughts have gone. Before it [the home] looked like a rabbit hutch – it looks like a proper home now,” she said. Energiesprong differs markedly from previous efforts at upgrading the efficiency of Britain’s housing stock, which is some of the draughtiest in Europe. Previous policies such as the failed Green Deal largely resulted in piecemeal improvements, such as a new boiler or wall insulation. The Dutch approach aims to refurbish the entire house and bring it up to the high standards that will be needed in decades’ time if carbon dioxide targets are to be met. Emily Braham, who is in charge of strategy and operations at the not-for-profit organisation Energiesprong UK, said: “The reason why this appealed to me so much is it gets us to a much better energy performance, where we have to be in 2050. That’s a huge difference to standard retrofit in the UK.” Costs are relatively high, at £85,000 per property initially but are expected to fall to £62,000 by the end of the programme. Braham said scale would help costs fall as the supply chain adapted. “Energiesprong is great, a gold standard – it should be pursued wherever possible for low carbon, low energy bills and high-skilled jobs,” said Pedro Guertler of environmental thinktank E3G. He added that Nottingham city council is a leader, but most austerity-hit councils no longer had the capacity to lead such work. The Treasury should increase energy efficiency investment by £1bn a year, he urged. Pilot Energiesprong projects are also planned in Maldon, Essex, and in the Exeter area. Braham said the government had indicated that it was interested in the initiative. There is currently a vacuum in energy efficiency policy, beyond schemes for people in fuel poverty. Braham said a no-deal Brexit could jeopardise Enegiesprong’s prospects in the UK: “If we left without a deal, it would be a risk.”Sometimes, journalists have been heard to wonder if the moniker under which the so-called Angry Chef has blogged since 2015 is ironic. Before they meet Anthony Warner, they expect the character they encounter online: a choleric type whose white apron, metaphorically speaking, is liberally splattered with the blood of the charlatans and pseudo-scientists he spends his time so furiously pulling apart. But then in he walks, a quietly spoken, dorky-looking bloke with a neatly trimmed beard and distinctly non-architectural glasses, and disappointment rises inside them like a pan coming to the boil. Is he about to yell the F-word in their faces? No, he is not. He is just going to go on – and on – about such things as genes and hormones and the difference between a simple problem and a complex one. Is his temperament really so placid? I’m not at all sure it is. Warner, a former chef who went on to work as a development cook at Premier Foods, owner of brands such as Oxo and Mr Kipling, certainly has a careful, almost pedantic way of talking; his determination to avoid generalisations when it comes to talking about diet means he can be both somewhat verbose and a little humourless. He doesn’t swear anything like as a much as his alter-ego. Nevertheless, it’s pretty easy to wind him up. All sorts of things seem to make him irritated, including me. On the quiet – actually, not even on the quiet – he’s a massive inverted snob, always on the look-out for perceived slights against processed food and takeaways. When, for instance, I tell a funny (ish) story about how Marco Pierre White became furious when I revealed to him in an interview that I often make my own stock – White, the original angry chef, was then the face of Knorr cubes – Warner seems to grow just a little taller in his seat. “Well, I get equally upset when people demean others for using products,” he says. Hang on! I didn’t demean anyone. “No, but to have a society where people are made to feel guilty for making a pasta bake from a jar…” He picks up his knife and fork, and silently sets about attacking the food on his plate. Warner, who lives in Nottinghamshire, meets me for lunch at a restaurant in London where he has schnitzel with pommes aligot – a dish that is surely anathema to many, if not most, of the exasperatingly wrong-headed dietary “experts” who first induced him to begin writing his blog, given that it combines mashed potato with cheese to such powerfully alluring effect. But alas, once his order arrives, he all but ignores it for 20 minutes or so. The trouble is that his new book, which we are here to discuss, is on such tricky, nuanced territory, talking about it demands his full attention. “It’s mind-bogglingly complex,” he says. “When I started my research, even I wasn’t sure where I was going. The only thing I knew for certain was people were over-simplifying, and this is a subject that completely defies simple explanation.” Genetics accounts for around 70% of the reasons why someone might become fat Warner’s first book, The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth about Healthy Eating, took apart every diet and food fad it’s possible to imagine; on the receiving end of his rage were, among other things, detoxing and the kind of nutritional nonsense purveyed by the likes of the Hemsley sisters, “Deliciously Ella” Mills and others who worship at the shrine of coconut oil. But these were, as he readily admits, pretty easy targets. His new book, The Truth About Fat, is altogether less focused in the sense that it is impossible to say, precisely, why levels of obesity may be rising, or what, if anything, can and should be done about this. Having waded through a lot of scientific papers and spoken to some of the world’s leading experts in this field, all Warner knows for sure is that body weight should not be defined, as it is now, as a behaviour – like smoking. “It’s the outcome of an enormously complicated set of circumstances,” he says. “This idea that willpower plays a part, that the overweight have some kind of personality deficit… Look at the evidence: that’s a ridiculous position to take. It’s just not true, and yet we’re conditioned to believe it is.” If his book has a message, then, it is that fat shaming, in all its various guises, must end. Calorie-reduction diets for weight loss do not, he writes in his book, work for the majority of people. Carbohydrates are not the enemy, and nor is sugar. Yet still we continue to regard those who are overweight as lazy and greedy (visibly overweight people are, among other things, less likely to be promoted at work, and more likely to be convicted of a crime by a jury) – cue even more misery for them as they embark on yet another regime that will inevitably fail. Why, he asks, are we not kinder? If we knew the facts, we surely would be. “The most shocking statistic I learned while I was writing the book was about binge-eating disorder in bariatric surgery populations,” he says. “Fifty per cent of those who have this surgery [a procedure that tackles obesity by reducing the size of the stomach] suffer from it, a condition that is very strongly associated with childhood trauma. It’s an expression of complex mental health problems.” Bariatric surgery, he believes, does help a great many people. But it still amazes him that the case against it isn’t made more often:.“If this was a drug, one that killed one in 200 people who took it, it wouldn’t get anywhere near being prescribed.” Warner has trouble with current definitions of obesity. He thinks body mass index, a number calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by the square of their height in metres, is too blunt a tool to be helpful (you tip from being overweight to being obese if your BMI is between 30 and 35). When, in 1997, the World Health Organisation moved the BMI of a person of normal weight from 27 to 25, millions of people woke up to find they had a health problem; he believes this change was based on questionable data. More significantly, he questions the notion of an “obesity epidemic”. Such language is unhelpful, not least because it suggests the race is on for a single “cure” when no such thing exists. Moreover, while populations may well be putting on weight, there is evidence to suggest that obesity, far from being an epidemic, has mostly affected only a small number of vulnerable individuals. The factors involved in weight gain are so multifarious, and interconnected in such complex and still elusive ways, it’s all but impossible to summarise them (for all Warner’s efforts to be as clear as possible for the lay reader, the 330 pages of his book are probably best described as chewy). Over lunch, I have a go at getting him to talk about some of these in a single sentence or so. Sometimes, he’s able to do it. Sometimes, he simply can’t. On the subject of genes, for instance, the evidence is (relatively) straightforward: “Body weight is one of the most inherited characteristics ever studied,” he says. “Genetics accounts for around 70% of the reasons why someone might become fat.” But when we move to hormones things get radically more complicated. “Historically, the biggest threat to human beings has been starvation. We have a system in place, and when our body thinks it’s not getting enough food, that hormonal system kicks in. It is almost impossible to override. It’s as powerful as the desire to breathe.” If he talked me through this system now, we’d probably still be here at dinnertime. On exercise, he notes that even if people are more sedentary than in the past – he’s not sure that we are – it is nevertheless quite difficult to expend more calories than you consume. “We’d have to run for an hour and a half to burn off the meal we’re eating now,” he says, eyeing my steak and chips. If we exercised more, it would, he thinks, make a huge difference to our health – to our mental health, and to the composition of our bodies in terms of muscle – but not necessarily to our weight. Nor is he into the idea of, say, banning takeaways from operating in the vicinity of schools. “It would be better if we could work with businesses to improve their food. Lots of fried chicken joints are still using hydrogenated vegetable oil. It would be easy to ban that, without any impact on the quality of their food.” His hunch is that those who are keen on takeaway bans simply find it “distasteful that young people like to hang out in them… It’s a culturally driven thing.” Warner, the son of a Hertfordshire accountant who fell into working as a chef having enjoyed the kitchen jobs he did as a biochemistry student in Manchester, famously believes that processed food can have the same value as any other kind of food; that we’re wrong to think something made from scratch is “better” or healthier. So does he cook from scratch at home? (He and his partner have a young daughter.) “Sometimes. But I worry about talking about how I cook. What works in my life might not fit into someone else’s.” When, after 20 years as a chef, he began working at Premier Foods (now he’s a writer, he still consults), it was fascinating to learn what “challenges” people faced when cooking at home. “I spent a lot of time doing focus groups and going to people’s houses, and most people know more than we give them credit for. They do know how to roast a chicken – and even if they don’t, the reasons for that won’t change unless their socio-economic conditions change. The number of times I’ve heard celebrity chefs tell people to buy a cheap cut of meat and slow cook it! Those recipes are written by someone who has no idea what it’s like to have to watch your electricity.” I have the impression he believes a special place in hell is reserved for those people – I’m not sure who they are, but he certainly seems to think they do exist – who believe the problem of obesity would be solved virtually overnight if only everyone knew how “to make their own hummus”. Still, all this surely leaves us with a problem. If the message does eventually get through that diets and exercise don’t work, and that a lot of our trouble lies with our genes, then why would anyone bother to do anything at all to change their lifestyle? Warner doesn’t exactly have an answer to this, beyond telling me he hopes only to help people accept complexity in the matter of weight gain, that we need better information and fewer false prophets, and to insist that, no, he really doesn’t wish to downplay the notion we do have a problem with obesity. “I know this will be framed as: ‘You don’t care about the health of the nation, you only care about your pay masters at big food.’ But I do think there are serious problems, even if they’re not necessarily the ones people think.” He’s not sure the message will ever get through. Just look at me: I’ve read his book, yet still I’m asking my naughty Protestant questions about self-control (not to mention telling him how I like to get off the bus a stop earlier, the better to try and shrink my bum). And he’s just as bad, in a way. As he’s perfectly willing to admit, if he ever began to get fat, he would almost certainly embark on a diet himself. (Warner has, incidentally, always been slim – something that, thanks to his genes, has never involved any effort on his part.) It is, he says, part of the human condition that we cling to ideas we know in our hearts to be worthless; to narratives that are little more than the result of a certain kind of brainwashing. In this sense, he’s every bit as human as some of those he is apt to attack. “We want short cuts,” he says. “We look at a diet, and we think: that looks OK. I only have to cut out this or that. And so we try it.” He eats the last morsel of schnitzel. Unsurprisingly, given the turn of our conversation, it seems to give him no pleasure at all. The Truth About Fat (Oneworld, £14.99) is published on 10 January. Order it for £13.19 from guardianbookshop.comHouthi rebels in Yemen have threatened to launch more drone attacks after a deadly strike last week on a Yemeni government military parade killed seven people, stoking tension between the warring parties and threatening UN efforts to broker peace. Houthi spokesman Yahya Sarea said Thursday’s drone strike on a military base in Lahaj province, which killed several people, was a “legitimate operation against aggression”. He said the movement was building a stockpile of locally manufactured drones. “Soon there will be enough in the strategic stockpile to launch more than one drone operation in multiple battle fronts at the same time,” Sarea told reporters in the Houthi-held capital, Sana’a, on Sunday. The Houthi statement came as Britain said it was pressing ahead in seeking an enhanced mandate for a UN mission to oversee a ceasefire in the port city region of Hodeidah, despite claims by the Saudi-backed Yemen government that the Houthis were not implementing the agreements struck between the parties in talks in Stockholm last month. The Yemeni intelligence chief, Brig Gen Saleh Tamah, died on Sunday from injuries sustained in the Houthi drone attack on Thursday. The attack was outside the ceasefire zone, but has been condemned by the US as a breach of the spirit of the Stockholm agreement. In a further worrying development, Houthi negotiators boycotted a meeting of the UN’s ceasefire monitoring body, the Redeployment Coordination Committee, on Sunday, saying the UN special envoy was using the committee to pursue other agendas. Britain is nevertheless planning to table a fresh security council resolution next week to give a UN team in Hodeidah a fresh mandate after the current one expires on 21 January. The new mandate will give the UN mission, overseen by the retired Dutch general Patrick Cammaert, enhanced powers to monitor the compliance of the parties to the ceasefire in Hodeidah governorate, and the mutual redeployment of forces from Hodeidah, and the ports of Salif and Ras Isa. The mission will also discuss with both sides how security in the city of Hodeidah and the ports can be overseen by “a new local security force in compliance with Yemeni law”, a vague phrase in the Stockholm agreement that has so far been interpreted differently by the parties. The Yemeni government claims the agreement means its forces can start policing the city, something the Houthis, currently in control of the city, reject. Hodeidah is the lifeline port for aid across Yemen. The fresh resolution is also likely to result in an increase in the number of UN monitors capable of overseeing breaches of the ceasefire, with a total team of 75. The monitors may be drawn from other UN existing missions in Yemen or sent to the country for this specific purpose. Both sides are accusing the other of repeated ceasefire breaches, and pressure is being applied on the US by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to do more to condemn the Houthis. Key issues remain access to humanitarian supplies, administration of the port of Hodeidah, the pullback of Houthi forces from the city and the composition of the new security force. Few diplomats would deny that the agreement is only being partially honoured, even if they would argue the levels of violence in the area have fallen. The Aid group Oxfam is one of many that fear that the vagueness of the ceasefire could lead to its collapse. Dina el-Mamoun, Oxfam’s head of policy and advocacy in Sana’a, recently warned: “There is an issue with the actual agreement, which is actually quite vague. The UN should have made clear these basic issues that go to the heart of the agreement: who needs to hand over what and to whom.” A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “As penholder on Yemen in the UN security council, the UK is determined to support the important agreements made in Stockholm at the end of 2018. A new UN security council resolution to establish a UN mission monitoring the Hodeidah ceasefire will be another step forward. This is a man-made conflict and it will have man-made solutions. We are working hard in support of the UN special envoy and urge all parties to maintain their backing for the UN peace process.” One difficulty is that the ceasefire is not nationwide, so the Houthi attack on Al Anad airbase in Lahij on Thursday using drones, was not technically in breach of the Stockholm agreement, but hardly helps enhance trust between the two sides. The US state department condemned the drone attack, saying it breached the spirit of the ceasefire, and adding: “We urge all sides to honour the commitments they made in Sweden to their fellow Yemenis by refraining from violence and provocative acts.” The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is currently on a Gulf tour where he is assessing the willingness of the Saudis to give the Stockholm agreement further time to bed down.One area where Manchester United are probably stronger. Both David de Gea and Hugo Lloris are excellent goalkeepers and regular internationals for Spain and France respectively. There is not a great deal to choose between the two except that De Gea has been playing behind a less settled and more porous defence of late and has had to come to his side’s rescue more often. He has managed that with a minimum of fuss and significantly keeps winning the club’s player of the year award. De Gea would most likely get into the Spurs side, whereas United would not swap him for Lloris. Verdict Advantage United Tottenham win this one, not least because the United manager for the last couple of seasons made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the strength of his central defence and Toby Alderweireld was believed to be high on the list of transfer targets. Based around the Belgian pairing of Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen Spurs have a back line that is both reliable and flexible. They can play with a three if Davinson Sánchez comes in, or just as well with a two, and while United have been using converted wingers at full-back, Spurs have a full set of specialists from which to choose even after parting with Kyle Walker. Verdict Advantage Spurs On paper United should excel in this area. They have certainly thrown enough money at it and, though there are encouraging signs that the shackles have been removed under Ole Gunnar Solksjær, it is still too easy to recall a time when Marouane Fellaini was the most consistent performer. Paul Pogba remains potential unfulfilled, despite the enormous fee, whereas Spurs have creative midfielders such as Christian Eriksen and Moussa Sissoko who deliver on a weekly basis and are beginning to be coveted by some of the biggest clubs in Europe. As the league table suggests, Spurs have a system that works. Verdict Advantage Spurs A month or two ago Spurs would have won hands down in this area because United were playing without confidence. Harry Kane, Dele Alli and Son Heung-min would all have been on José Mourinho’s theoretical shopping list, because the manager said so. United have done some catching up in recent weeks, however, with Marcus Rashford in particular showing his value and Romelu Lukaku becoming more effective. While Spurs are still more of a handful for defences, due to Kane’s accuracy, Alli’s elegant simplicity and Son’s cleverly channelled energy, perhaps a revived United deserve the benefit of the doubt. Verdict Draw Intuitively one would say United have the greater strength in depth, because they have so many quality players who cannot get into the side, though quite often when Fred, Alexis Sánchez or the presently injured Marcos Rojo make an appearance it is soon apparent why they are peripheral. Big credit is due to Mauricio Pochettino here for, when Lucas Moura, Harry Winks or Érik Lamela step up, they usually make a strong case for remaining in the team. United have suffered through managerial churn and inconsistent recruitment; Tottenham are more integrated and it is easier for Pochettino to play the rotation game. Verdict SpursWe still don’t have an oven in our new flat. Things that require one need carrying down a flight of stairs, across the internal courtyard and up two flights to my friend’s studio. She’s often away, so I let myself in, put whatever it is in the oven, set the timer on my phone and go home. When my pocket rings, I run back over. Our courtyard is not unused to cooking smells – in fact, it’s a vortex of them, the ovens and vents of a ground-floor bakery, trattoria, bar and canteen-like tavola calda competing for air. There are also the 64 kitchens in 64 flats over five floors that open on to the courtyard, including my friend’s studio. By the time I get to the courtyard, I have an absolute noseful. But today it was meat and potato pie. The smell of beef, onions and potato, a thick, purposeful and savoury scent of meat steaming and braising underneath a pie crust, and the smell of pastry itself, made me stop and catch my breath. In that hot scent were Yorkshire and Lancashire market stalls; my gentle grandparents and the oval meat and tatty pies that warmed our hands but gave us heartburn; their house, which always seemed to smell of worry, meat and potatoes; and, of course, Granny’s pub, and the endless meat and tatty pies eaten there. Then, as I ascended the stairs, the smell was also of Sicily, the wedges of olive-oil pastry torta we eat there in bars with strip lighting and curtains of lotto tickets. The odd combination of Sicilian and Lancashire aromas came about because I was trying a classic meat-and-potato filling in an Italian olive-oil crust, which some might say is sacrilege, but seemed a good pastry-filling match, especially for an Englishwoman with Lancastrian roots who lives with a Sicilian. This pastry is a good match for a meat and potato filling, because it stretches and can be twisted closed, making for a sturdy and functional pie. Alternatively, there is classic lard dough, which is tender and softly flaky. Of all the pies, meat and tatty is the best and most complete, I think: substance, softness and a starchy, enveloping gravy. The pleasure of pie is the same as the pleasure of a good short story – an enticing beginning (top), a fully flavoured middle and a satisfying end (base). I always wish for mashed potato with pies, except for meat and potato pie, when I wish for peas. I didn’t have any, so in their absence I had bread, butter and pickles – crisp, sweet and sharp – which provided a good alternative to accompany a pie I have carried through my life, across a courtyard and up a flight of stairs. Choose between the lard and the olive oil pastries. For the lard pastry150g lard, diced and frozen for 10 minutes250g plain flourSalt3–4 tbsp iced water For the olive-oil pastry450g plain flourSalt2 tbsp olive oilAbout 200ml water, at room temperature For the filling400g stewing steak, diced to 2.5cm cubes100g kidneys (optional)200g onion, diced250g potato, diced1 heaped tbsp plain flourSalt and black pepper75ml cold waterMilk, for brushing To make the lard pastry, rub the lard into the flour and salt until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs, then add just enough iced water to bring everything together into a dough ball. Knead briefly, wrap in clingfilm and chill for an hour. Alternatively, to make the olive-oil pastry, put the flour and salt in a large bowl, add the oil and enough warm water to make a soft, putty-like dough, knead for one minute, then wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes. Put the meat, potatoes, onion and flour in a bowl, season generously with salt and pepper and toss well with your hands. Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6 and pop in a baking tray. Roll two-thirds of the dough into a disc large enough to line – and overhang – a 20cm wide x 4cm deep, ideally loose-bottomed, pie tin. Pile the filling into the pie, carefully pour over the water, brush the edges with milk. Roll out the final third of the pastry into a disc wide enough to cover the top, roll it over the filling, and pinch or twist the edges together carefully. Make two slits in the top of the pie. Put on the preheated baking tray and bake for 25 minutes, then reduce the heat to 160C (140C fan)/325F/gas 3, and bake for another hour for the lard pastry (cover it with foil if it looks to be browning too quickly), and a little more than an hour for the olive-oil pastry. Let the pie sit for 15 minutes, then serve with peas or pickles.The White House asked the Pentagon to draw up options for military strikes against Iran in the wake of two incidents in Iraq last September when mortar shells and rockets fired by militias exploded near US diplomatic facilities, it was reported on Sunday. Contingency planning for potential conflicts is routine, but according to the Wall Street Journal, the seriousness of the request from the National Security Council unnerved defense and state officials. “It definitely rattled people,” a former senior US administration official was quoted as saying. “People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.” A direct US attack on Iran would be risk triggering a conflict between the two nations that would be hard to stop. There are already hardliners in both camps calling for military confrontation. The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, declined to comment on the report on Sunday, when questioned by reporters on his nine-nation tour of the Middle East, which is aimed in large part at maintaining Arab solidarity against Iran. On Sunday he flew from Qatar to Saudi Arabia, where he is due to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In Qatar, Pompeo provided details of a planned anti-Iran ministerial conference to be held, at US prompting, in Warsaw in February. “There’ll be a broad coalition of countries present,” he said, “and we’ll work on many issues, including how it is we can get the Islamic Republic of Iran to behave more like a normal nation.” Since John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, became national security adviser in April last year, he has joined with Pompeo in pushing for a much more aggressive posture towards Tehran. Bolton, who wrote a New York Times commentary in 2015 calling for Iran to be bombed, warned that Tehran would have “hell to pay” if it threatened the US or its allies. That warning came after a Shia militia fired three mortar shells on 6 September into the diplomatic district of Baghdad, where the US has its embassy. A few days later, missiles fired by unknown militants fell near the US consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Although there were no casualties or significant damage in either incident, they raised alarm in Washington that US diplomats could be vulnerable. “We have told the Islamic Republic of Iran that using a proxy force to attack an American interest will not prevent us from responding against the prime actor,” Pompeo told CNN at the time, making clear a military response was possible. Later on Sunday, Axios reported that James Mattis, the then defense secretary, had “deep concerns” about the White House request at the time, believing that it risked creating a direct conflict with Iran. Last year, Donald Trump pulled the US out of a multilateral 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. He has ordered a campaign of intense sanctions against the Islamic Republic. But he also reassured European leaders that he did not want to be drawn into a new Middle Eastern conflict, and that he would rein in Bolton. The president’s order for US troops to withdraw from Syria, where they were near Iranian troops and Iranian-backed militias, marked a defeat for Iran hawks in his administration. But with hardliners in positions of influence on both sides, the potential for an unplanned clash remains high, particularly in the crowded sea lanes of the Gulf or in Iraq. The tough talk from Bolton and Pompeo has added to concerns that Baghdad could again become a proxy battleground between the US and Iranian interests, much as it was during the height of the sectarian chaos, when a full-blown proxy war played out across the country. Throughout much of the US military presence in Iraq, the giant US embassy in the Iraqi capital’s fortified Green Zone was a target for Shia militias, which regularly rained in rockets and mortars from as far as seven miles away. Two of the main protagonists from 2007 to 2011, Asa’ib ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, both proxies of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, have gained strength in Baghdad in the past four years, and exert considerable influence across political and security spheres. Conflict could also be triggered if Iran decides to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal. The US abrogation of the agreement means Tehran is receiving few of the economic benefits it was promised. On Sunday, the head of the country’s nuclear programme, Ali Akbar Salehi, said technicians had begun “preliminary activities for designing” a new way of producing 20%-enriched uranium. If production was resumed, it would violate the 2015 agreement, which still exists with other world powers despite the US pulling out, and would escalate tensions with Israel, the Gulf states and the US. The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a pro-diplomacy advocacy group, issued a statement on the Wall Street Journal report, saying: “This administration takes an expansive view of war authorities and is leaning into confrontation with Iran at a time when there are numerous tripwires for conflict across the region.”Say what you like about the Rugby Football Union but it leads the world when it comes to totting up rugby injuries. Since 2002 there has been a painstaking audit of every twanged hamstring and strained ankle, with the aim of identifying trends rather than jumping to instant conclusions. It is unglamorous work but thank goodness someone has been doing it. Because each year we discover a little more about how the game is changing, for better or worse. The year 2017-18 figures are as thought-provoking as ever, not least the massive spike in injuries at England training sessions and the ever-lengthening periods that top players, on average, are out with injury. Concussions, by contrast, are fractionally down, although the experts are not yet sure if that is merely a blip. As with all statistics, perceptions tend to be shaped by those quoted in headlines rather than buried in the small print. Next year, when data from every major competition in both hemispheres will also be available for comparison, promises to be even more instructive. Unless, of course, rugby’s future ultimately boils down to an entirely separate question: what constitutes acceptable risk? What is “too dangerous” and who gets to define that? Rugby, as a contact sport, will always involve discomfort but at what point do personal choice and health and safety irrevocably part company? This particular debate also now has to be viewed in the context of the concussion-based litigation already transforming the landscape in American football. For all that, the views of Dr Simon Kemp, the RFU medical services director, on the subject of “responsible risk management” in rugby are worth contemplating, too. “It’s not for medics to determine if something is acceptable or not,” Kemp said. “You have to put it in context with other risks we’re exposed to in life. What about the risk of driving a car to and from training and matches, for example?” The health benefits of exercise and the joys of collaborative team sport also help to balance the equation. A life without rugby might be physically less painful but seriously deficient in other ways. Furthermore, as Kemp went on to emphasise, “one person’s evaluation of risk may be quite different from someone else’s, even with the same data available”. Those who would ban rugby on the basis of little Johnny breaking a finger aged 10 are never going to see the world through the same eyes as those looking to make it their profession. Such is human nature; born mountaineers and instinctive sofa dwellers are rarely going to chime either. Rugby, even so, urgently needs to clarify one crucial aspect if the sport is serious about prospering globally. For all the philosophical rights and wrongs, those in charge must now reach a definitive, far-sighted consensus on what is or isn’t an acceptable tackle, whether the participants weigh 70kg (11st) or 140kg. Damian Hopley, the Rugby Players’ Association chief executive, admits even a roomful of pro players could not agree in November whether Owen Farrell’s late match-turning no-arms tackle against South Africa should have been penalised or not. Will Spencer’s red card for Leicester against Wasps also sharply divided opinion. Which, as Hopley rightly says, invites a fundamental question: where does rugby go next? Does it really draw a line on the shirt above which a card is guaranteed? Fine in theory, unworkable if the ball carrier is stooping and it is also unlikely to impress shirt sponsors. Should the number of players on the field be reduced to, say, 12 on the basis that fewer bodies equals more space and, potentially, fewer collisions? Does the sport dare go back to old-school legal rucking – the answer will be no – and make itself less upright? Or does it do what it so frequently does and just tinker around the edges until the next crisis erupts? Encouragingly, it would appear everyone from World Rugby downwards recognises the time for procrastination is long gone. While Kemp reckons a significant reduction in training injuries through better player management is entirely achievable – “Training injuries are not down to luck” – no one is yet claiming to have found the silver bullet to make rugby safe for all. This week’s figures undoubtedly help inform the debate and may have bought rugby’s well-meaning authorities some extra time but, with recent tragic deaths in France focusing everyone’s minds, they should not obscure the continuing reality. If the game’s injury statistics soar any higher, history will not judge its modern guardians kindly.In word and deed Rafael Benítez gives the impression the FA Cup is a competition Newcastle can do without. His players’ commitment to victory at Blackburn suggested otherwise. The Premier League strugglers lost a two goal lead and two central defenders to injury before securing their place in round four with a spirited, clinical performance at Ewood Park. Newcastle were taken to extra time – an exertion both managers would rather have avoided – by Tony Mowbray’s determined Championship side as Adam Armstrong and Darragh Lenihan cancelled out an early advantage provided by two academy graduates. The visitors then lost Ciaran Clark plus his replacement, Jamaal Lascelles, to injury before extra-time goals from Joselu and Ayoze Pérez brought merited reward plus a welcome shot of confidence. “It was important win and important to score four goals,” said Benítez, who will discover in the coming days the extent of Clark’s knee injury and his captain’s hamstring problem. “The players care. Their effort and commitment was there and they managed the game really well in extra time. To react they way we did, you have to be really pleased as a manager.” Benítez made eight changes for the replay but his makeshift side settled immediately and took the lead with 56 seconds on the clock. For Newcastle’s two 21-year-old central midfielders, Sean Longstaff and Callum Roberts, it was a night to savour as they both scored their first goals in senior stripes. Longstaff opened an entertaining tie following strong centre-forward play by Joselu, who held off two home defenders before finding the young midfielder in space and directly in front of the Blackburn goal. With the Rovers defence backing off Longstaff accepted the invitation to shoot from distance and was rewarded when his finish deflected off Amari’i Bell and flew beyond the wrong-footed goalkeeper David Raya. It was the third fastest goal in the FA Cup this season. Newcastle doubled their lead when the influential Jacob Murphy latched on to Joselu’s flicked header and, despite appearing offside, beat Ryan Nyambe easily before forcing a save from Raya with an angled drive. Raya’s parry rebounded to Murphy. He beat Nyambe once again and delivered an inviting cross from the right that Roberts, with a controlled volley, steered inside Raya’s near post. At that stage the visitors were coasting. By half-time they were creaking. Armstrong became the third Newcastle academy graduate on the scoresheet, albeit for his new club, when Danny Graham prised open the visiting defence with ease. Holding off Federico Fernández, the former Sunderland striker released Armstrong into the penalty area with a perfectly weighted pass that he floated over Freddie Woodman as the young Newcastle keeper raced out to close the angle. The flow of the tie turned in favour of Blackburn who, despite missing four defenders themselves through injury, grew into the contest. Lenihan was close to an equaliser with a towering header from Harrison Reed’s corner. Newcastle failed to heed the warning and the pair combined again seconds before the break. Reed delivered to the far post where Lenihan powered home a header into the top corner despite the presence of two Newcastle defenders. Woodman’s disgust was plain as he exited for the interval. Benítez would share his keeper’s anger, and not only over the disappearance of their early lead. His hopes of avoiding injury to key players lay in ruins within minutes of the restart. Lascelles was summoned from the bench during the interval with Clark hobbling. Within three minutes he pulled up with a hamstring problem but played on for a further eight minutes before being substituted. Newcastle’s captain and manager exchanged words as the former headed down the tunnel and potentially out of a crucial period of the league campaign. Extra time brought more injury worries for Newcastle with Hayden and Fabian Schär both requiring lengthy treatment. They survived a scare when Rovers substitute Bradley Dack missed a glorious chance with only Woodman to beat but emerged victorious thanks to clinical finishes either side of the break. Joselu was offside when Schär shot from distance and Raya parried the ball back into his path. He converted expertly and, the offside missed, Newcastle were ahead once more. They were finally safe when Pérez was released clear down the right by Matt Ritchie and he produced a rising finish that Raya was powerless to stop. Nathan Jones’s first home game as Stoke City manager ended in a remarkable FA Cup collapse, with the Championship side going down 3-2 at home to Shrewsbury. The League One side were 2-0 down with 20 minutes to go but James Bolton, Fejiri Okenabirhie and Josh Laurent scored late goals to secure the Shrews a fourth-round tie against Premier League Wolves. Jones’s old side also went out of the competition, Atdhe Nuhiu scoring the only goal of the game as Sheffield Wednesday beat Luton Town at Kenilworth Road to set up a fourth-round meeting with Chelsea.Diners and town halls. Iowa and New Hampshire. The Rachel Maddow Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. While some campaign stops for Democrats running for president are very familiar, others reflect how the rise of liberal media hosts, late night comedians and “going viral” online could make all the difference in a tight race. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has appeared twice in three months on Colbert’s programme on the CBS TV network, first to promote her book, then for the big reveal about 2020. Colbert asked: “Do you have anything you would like to announce?” She replied: “I’m filing an exploratory committee for president of the United States, tonight!” Other guests on The Late Show, filmed before an audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York and broadcast at 11.35pm, have included Eric Holder, Cory Booker, John Kerry, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Julián Castro (who appeared with twin brother Joaquin) and Kamala Harris, all of whom have declared their candidacy or are said to be considering it. A recent CNN article was headlined: “Welcome to the Stephen Colbert primary.” Colbert, 54, who cut his teeth in improvisational comedy, has earned it. Future historians could do worse than watch the bitingly satirical take-downs of Donald Trump in his opening monologues.His edgy political wit has catapulted him past Jimmy Fallon in the late night ratings and drawn interviewees including Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi. “Any Democratic candidate who thinks they can ignore Stephen Colbert might as well not run for president,” said Stephen Farnsworth, director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. “Colbert once joked that the road to the White House runs through his show but it’s no joke; it is exactly so.” Colbert’s interviews are generally humorous with occasional probing questions. Farnsworth added: “Politicians have increasingly promoted their personalities in public. When you see how they interact on Twitter and YouTube, you see a heavy reliance on presenting themselves as a personality rather than discussing issues. These talkshows are a wonderful vehicle for getting a sense of who these people are in a way a stilted news conference never will.” Colbert is building on a long tradition. The first presidential candidate to appear on late-night TV was John F Kennedy, who featured on Tonight Starring Jack Paar in 1960, soon followed by his opponent Richard Nixon. Another Democrat aiming for the presidency, Bill Clinton, wore sunglasses and played Heartbreak Hotel on the tenor saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. Others got a relatively easy ride on the talkshows of Jay Leno and David Letterman or had cameo roles on Saturday Night Live, including Trump himself in November 2015. And Comedy Central offered The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (the same Colbert), two court jesters offering satire that many younger viewers found more refreshing than cable news. But cable news has a new lease of life in Trump era, especially at primetime. On the right, there’s Sean Hannity on Fox News. On the left, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. Her menu of news and analysis with attitude – “We have a bunch of questions” – averaged the second-highest audience on cable news last year with 2.9 million viewers per night, according to Nielsen. She has her own views on things and, by the way, she doesn’t disguise them: they’re right out in the open Maddow scooped the first interview with Warren after the Massachusetts senator announced she was formally exploring a run for the White House. She asked Gillibrand pointed questions about her shifting policy positions. Last week she questioned Harris and Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, another possible candidate. All seemingly regard Maddow’s show as a hotline to the anti-Trump resistance. Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who was an adviser to the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns, said: “I think she’s terrific. She’s incisive, she’s smart, she has her own views on things and, by the way, she doesn’t disguise them: they’re right out in the open.” Robert Lichter, professor of communication at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, said: “With the Democratic party moving to the left, she’s positioned to become a kingmaker. She’s a highly respected liberal and can make or break a candidacy early on by exposing someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Candidates will try to aim through Colbert’s jokes and Maddow’s seriousness.” The Daily Show with Trevor Noah has featured Booker and Gillibrand in recent months and the “no-bullshit” podcast Pod Save America also interviewed Gillibrand. David Litt, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama and author of Thanks, Obama, said: “It does require politicians to be a little more nimble and versatile because the talking points you fall back on on [Sunday TV politics talkshow] Meet the Press might not work when you’re being interviewed by a podcast or answering questions on Instagram or YouTube.” Litt, 32, usually catches Maddow’s show through clips on social media, which gives TV interviews a multiplier effect. “When I was at the Obama White House, we noticed when we did something with a less traditional media outlet, such as BuzzFeed or Between Two Ferns, the rest of the press still had to cover it … People are looking for authenticity and honesty and have less trust than ever in the traditional political press.”An anonymous short story centred on a 19th-century Scottish dockworkers strike could solve the mystery of a lost play by the Irish republican James Connolly, academics believe. No script has ever been found of the missing play, The Agitator’s Wife, which was first alluded to in a 1935 memoir by Connolly’s daughter Nora. Edinburgh-born Connolly, one of the contributors to and signatories of the Irish proclamation of independence in the 1916 Easter Rising, was a radical thinker renowned for his journalism and political theory but less celebrated for his creative writing. The short story, also titled The Agitator’s Wife, was discovered in an obscure journal in Warwick University library. It tells of the struggles of Scottish dockers against the shipping federation on the Leith waterfront from the late 1880s. The dockers’ leader, Tom Arnold, is exhausted by leading the strike, with a sick child at home, and overwhelmed by a sense of despair that drives him to contemplate suicide. His wife, Mary, steps in to lead the strikers and save the day. University of Glasgow academics now believe it was written by Connolly. “No script [of the play] has ever been found and there is no specific record of performance,” Prof Willy Maley, Dr Maria-Daniella Dick and Kirsty Lusk write in the Irish Studies Review. “We believe we may have unearthed if not the play itself then at least a version of the missing play. “This is, of course, a short story and not a play, but in every other sense it fits the bill for Connolly’s missing piece of writing. It was written in the appropriate period, it has the same title, it is rich in dialogue and it reminds us very strongly of Connolly’s other writing in its politics, its themes and in its socialist feminist viewpoint, which was rare for that time.” Maley, a professor of renaissance studies, said the partnership of equals between Tom and Mary Arnold should come as no surprise. “For Connolly, his idea of a workers’ republic had at its heart the equal rights of all men and women. In fact, his contribution can be seen in the proclamation of independence read in front of the Dublin’s GPO Building at the start of the Easter Rising. From the first line of the proclamation, Irish men and women were regarded as equals with religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities guaranteed to all citizens.” Maley believes it possible Nora Connolly misheard or misinterpreted her mother speak of The Agitator’s Wife, and that it was a short story rather than a play. The story was discovered in the February 1894 issue of a short-lived Christian socialist journal, the Labour Prophet. Connolly, who sustained serious wounds during the Easter Rising, was court-martialled and executed by firing squad on 12 May 1916.The night-time cold in New Delhi is biting. As the temperature plunges, Alam Ansari’s twin daughters, born prematurely, have only their parents’ body heat to keep them warm while they huddle in a crowded tent on the road outside the capital’s top hospital. They are not alone. Each day, about 8,000 people from across the country queue outside the outpatients department for treatment. Mainly from poorer backgrounds, they sleep in tents or on the ground. Ansari is rocking one of his three-month-old daughters. Something is wrong with both girls’ eyes, but he doesn’t know what. The family travelled to the All India Institute of Medical Science – known simply as AIIMS – after doctors in Bihar told them they were unable to offer treatment. The train from their remote village to India’s capital took two days. A construction worker, Ansari borrowed 40,000 rupees. “That’s down to 5,000 rupees after being here two months. Every day we’re sent here and there, from one doctor to another. I don’t know what to do when my money runs out but I have to get my daughters well,” he says. Amid the turmoil, the girls have yet to be named. AIIMS runs a shelter for patients from out of town, but it is packed. Ansari and his family are lucky to have found space in one of the temporary tents erected outside by the Delhi government at the start of winter to give sick patients a place to wait for appointments, test results, and treatment. Inside, more than 100 people are wrapped in multi-coloured blankets in the gloom. They are mostly two to a bed; many are very sick and weak, having inhabited tents or lived on pavements outside the hospital for weeks, if not months. Millions of Indians find state hospitals are unable to help when they are seriously ill, leaving them no choice but to travel to New Delhi. AIIMS now operates in seven other states, but doctors at the hospitals outside New Delhi often lack specialist expertise. Patients are almost invariably referred to the capital. The institute offers free consultations and some tests, although payment is still required for drugs. Often, people who come for treatment cannot afford to rent a room. Waiting for an appointment or follow-up consultation is too expensive, travelling to and fro too exhausting. So they stay on, sleeping, eating and living on the pavement, under trees and flyovers, in the metro subway, under bus shelters, and on the floor of public toilets. Chandi Devi, who spent three weeks sleeping in the metro subway before finding space in a tent, looks exhausted and downcast. “My father needs both his knee joints replaced. He can’t walk. I have to ask others to help me take him to the toilet,” says Devi, who has left behind her three young children to bring her father to AIIMs. He remains silent throughout, his single nylon blanket offering scant protection from the daytime chill, much less the night. Patients like Devi’s father get hot meals provided by NGOs. They use public toilets and buy bottled water. Clothes are washed and hung out to dry on the iron railings lining the busy road outside the hospital. Space under a footbridge is much sought after. The more fortunate manage to get a bed in shelters run by charities and religious trusts, but need far exceeds supply. “One day it’s go to this doctor, another day it’s go to another doctor. It’s endless. It’s been a month and they haven’t even started treatment because they say they haven’t got any beds,” says Devi. In the next bed is a mother with her son. He looks about seven years old, but she says he is 18 and has a “growth problem”. Beside her are a couple with a daughter who has mental health problems. Outside the tent, Shalini has been on the pavement for six months with her husband, who is paralysed. In the space under a footbridge, she has created a little “room” for her belongings, clothes and a few pots and pans. Atul Sethi is here with her father. “His kidneys have failed,” she says, pointing to an emaciated figure on the ground, shrouded from head to toe in a white sheet. “He can’t stand. We came four days ago from Madhya Pradesh and are still waiting to see a doctor.” Nearby, three-year-old Neelu, from a remote village in Jharkhand, is playing on the pavement by the government tents. Her “accommodation” is a makeshift bed erected on the road by her mother, Chunni Birhor. “I can’t sleep alongside so many people. The tent makes me feel claustrophobic, so I prefer to stay on the path with my daughter,” says Birhor. Neelu smiles and scampers around. She looks healthy but Birhor says her daughter has blood cancer and will need to start treatment the moment a bed becomes available. Today is a good day. Often, Neelu doesn’t even feel like getting up. Mother and daughter have been on the pavement for a fortnight. Neelu’s father, a mason from Madhopur in Uttar Pradesh, has gone to the chemist to buy his daughter some drugs. “We’re spending without earning. Every day is a day’s wages lost,” says Birhor, whose daughter is one of many children suffering from cancer who can be found outside AIIMS. By 6pm it is dark and the temperature dips. It’s the rush hour and road next to the hospital is humming with traffic. The air is thick with smelly pollutants that sting the eyes. Back at the tent, one of Ansari’s girls starts to cry. His wife takes her and starts to breastfeed. Even now, after two months living in a tent in the freezing cold trying to save the lives of his two infants,Ansari looks puzzled at his circumstances. “I thought that AIIMS, being the top hospital, would have made some ‘bandobast’ [arrangements]…” Then he trailis off, sensing the futility of saying anything more.Police in Canada have charged a minor with terrorism-related offences, after a Thursday evening raid on two properties in eastern Ontario which was part of a national security investigation that also involved the FBI. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Canada’s federal police force – said an adult male was also arrested in Kingston, Ontario, but was not charged. The minor, who cannot be named, has been charged with “knowingly facilitating a terrorist activity” and “counselling a person to deliver, place, discharge or detonate an explosive … in or against a place of public use with intent to cause death or serious bodily injury”, the RCMP said in a statement. “There was an attack planned,” Michael LeSage, a chief superintendent with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told reporters at a press conference in Kingston on Friday. “At no time was there a direct threat to public safety.” Police said they received “credible information” about a terror threat in December 2018 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but there was no specific location or time of the planned attack. Police did not confirm the identity of the second individual arrested, but multiple reports have identified him as Hussam Eddin Alzahabi, 20. His father confirmed to the Canadian Press that Alzahabi was arrested on Thursday night. During the operation, police sealed off a neighbourhood in Kingston as they searched two houses. Video and photographs from the scene showed officers removing boxes of evidence from the properties. Trace elements of explosive material were found in one of the houses, said LeSage, and the two individuals were attempting to “manufacture an improvised explosive device”. Police declined to comment on any motive. As part of the operation, federal police flew a Pilatus PC-12 surveillance plane over Kingston for weeks. Residents in the city had previously complained about the mysterious buzzing noise in the sky. Numerous government agencies were involved in the operation, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada. “The government of Canada constantly monitors all potential threats and has robust measures in place to address them,” said the public safety minister, Ralph Goodale, in a statement. The country’s threat level, which has been at “medium” since 2014, remains unchanged.There is a striking story in The Club, Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson’s new book on how the Premier League went global, that illustrates football’s inimitable ability to tickle the erogenous zones of the powerful. It turns out that when British prime ministers want to make deals, their secret weapon is the Premier League trophy. As the league’s former CEO Richard Scudamore explains: “Everyone who sees it will say, ‘Wow’. Heads of state, prime ministers – they all want a photo with the trophy. It’s what we like to call soft power.” But sometimes soft power is not enough. The velvet boot needs iron studs. And when it comes to the shocking case of the jailed Bahraini national team player Hakeem al-Araibi, football needs to go in two-footed. Sunday marked two months since Al-Araibi’s detainment in Thailand after he was hit with an Interpol red notice following his arrival in Bangkok on his honeymoon. It originated from the same Bahraini authorities who tortured him in 2012, forcing him to flee the country, and was quickly withdrawn by Interpol, which should never have applied it in the first place. Yet Al-Araibi still languishes in prison – facing extradition back to Bahrain and a 10-year prison sentence for apparently vandalising a police station, even though he was playing in a televised match at the time. It would be farcical if it was not so tragic. To make matters more alarming, Al-Araibi suspects the hand of Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa – a member of the ruling Bahrain royal family and the powerful president of the Asian Football Confederation – is behind his imprisonment because he was publicly critical of the Sheikh when the latter ran for Fifa president. “This is nothing to do with my conviction,” he told the Guardian last week. “Bahrain wants me back to punish me, because I talked to the media in 2016 about the terrible human rights and about how Sheikh Salman is a very bad man who discriminates against Shia Muslims.” In a response to the outcry, the Bahraini government has insisted Al-Araibi’s life is not in danger and he had only to return home and appeal his conviction because its court system was “independent and transparent” in line with international standards. At least in the last few days wheels have finally whirred into action, with Fifa writing to Thailand’s government expressing concern and asking for Al-Araibi to be returned to Australia, which granted him refugee status in 2017. The IOC president, Thomas Bach, who has championed the case of refugees and welcomed a refugee team to the Rio Olympics, has also urged a solution “based on human and humanitarian values”. These are classic acts of soft power. But with Al-Araibi stuck in jail awaiting a deadline of 8 February for Bahrain to apply for his extradition, they are not enough. It is time for Fifa and the IOC to threaten serious sporting sanctions if he is not released. It is a move that Brendan Schwab, the executive director of the World Players Association – which has worked tirelessly on Al-Araibi’s case – believes is overdue. “What we have to do as people involved in sport is to think through how we can maximise our leverage,” he told me. “Sporting sanctions are one of the key things.” Schwab, who is a lawyer and a trade union official, points out that Fifa’s rules on human rights protections compel the organisation as well as the AFC and the Bahrain and Thai FAs to help secure Al-Araibi’s freedom. “We realise that requires leveraging governments but football is uniquely positioned to do that because it has rules on human rights,” he added. “And if those rules are not upheld then football associations are not entitled to be part of the international football community. Football has said it is going to uphold human rights. So football needs to save Hakeem.” It would certainly help if more footballers spoke out, joining those from Australia where Al-Araibi was playing for Pascoe Vale FC before he was detained. Imagine the impact of prominent Premier League players shouting about the injustice of the case, or using the #SaveHakeem hashtag? British football is a global business, after all, with surveys suggesting that a larger percentage of the population in Thailand watches the Premier League than the UK. But this goes beyond football given that Bahrain is one of many Gulf states using sport to soften its image. It sponsors the Bahrain-Merida cycling team, led by the former Giro D’Italia and Tour de France winner Vincenzo Nibali, as well as hosting a Formula One grand prix, despite the 2011 race being cancelled after months of demonstrations against the regime. Yet the reality is that after those protests, 150 professional sports people were widely reported to have been arrested, detained, tortured, imprisoned or excluded from their sports for taking part in the pro-democracy demonstrations – including Al-Araibi, who now faces the chilling prospect of returning to the place he does not want to call home. Worryingly, Al-Araibi admits he is losing hope as he sits in his small concrete cell awaiting his fate. “I am so scared of being sent back to Bahrain,” he says. “So scared because 100% they will arrest me, they will torture me again, possibly they will kill me.” However, Schwab insists that all is not lost in a case which he describes as a litmus test for football and human rights, and for all refugee athletes. “I think that Fifa and the IOC needs to be talking sporting sanctions and the athletes need to be talking human rights,” he says. “And if those two things happen we will save Hakeem.”Let’s give James Dyson the benefit of the doubt. Let’s take at face value the assurances issued by his multibillion pound company – whose products involve the generation of hot air – as to why it is relocating its headquarters from Wiltshire to Singapore. Apparently, it has “nothing to do with Brexit”. What’s more, it’s barely a move at all, since it will see only two people, both top executives, actually moving to Singapore. Dyson will continue to employ 4,000 people in the UK, many of them in research and development, and the relocation is really just about wanting to keep a closer eye on the firm’s investments in Asia. That it chose to do that in Singapore, where companies pay a mere 17% in tax – rather than, say, India or South Korea – is surely pure coincidence. Let’s accept all that and agree that the Dyson decision is merely symbolic. What’s it symbolic of? First, it’s worth remembering the special place in Britain’s mythology that the company acquired early in its life. Before Dyson, so the story went, we were terrific at inventing bright ideas but rubbish at turning those ideas into profitable businesses. Brits would have the lightbulb moment, but when it came to manufacturing the actual bulbs, that work – and profit – would be shipped far away. Then along came James Dyson, hailed by successive governments, who proved it didn’t have to be that way. A British idea produced a British business. Well, that story has now come full circle. With its headquarters in Singapore, Dyson will no longer be a British firm. Indeed, the CEO, Jim Rowan, has asked that from now on it be referred to as a “global technology company”. Second, and for all its protestations to the contrary, Dyson’s decision is inevitably rolled in with all the others that suggest UK companies, and those based here, are now guarding themselves against Brexit, especially a Brexit of the no-deal, crash-out variety. How else are we to interpret Dyson’s admission that it’s moving to Singapore to be “future-proofed”? What future exactly does it wish to be proofed against? After all, Dyson’s announcement came on the same day that P&O revealed that it will be re-registering its entire cross-Channel fleet of ferries under the flag of Cyprus. To their credit, P&O were upfront: they’re doing this because of Brexit. Similarly, Sony is moving its European HQ from London to Amsterdam. Meanwhile, Bentley is stockpiling parts, and Dixons Carphone and Pets at Home are making similar moves. “We don’t want families to run out of food for their pets” after March 29, the latter company said in a line that, oddly, did not appear on the side of a bus during the 2016 campaign. Again, these firms could not be clearer. In the words of Bentley’s chief executive: “It’s Brexit that’s the killer … It would put at fundamental risk our chance of becoming profitable.” Another line that never made it as a Vote Leave slogan. How apt it is that one of those P&O ferries soon to be flying under the proud colours of Cyprus is called the Spirit of Britain. For this is the spirit now animating alarming numbers of Britain’s captains of industry: with the Brexit iceberg looming, they’ve concluded that they need to find safe harbour somewhere else. So why then might James Dyson be so coy? Why would he not admit it if he is shipping out to avoid Brexit, rushing to Singapore, whose trade agreement with the EU, signed in October, could well give Dyson better access to European markets than the company would have if it stuck around in no-deal Brexit Britain? Perhaps he feared the charge of hypocrisy, given that he was one of the few business leaders to back leave, a man who once urged a no-deal exit from the EU, arguing that “they’ll come to us”. And yet had he faced such a charge, he’d have hardly been lonely. For hypocrisy is emerging as a defining trait of the loudest Brexiteers. Recall the gap between Jacob Rees-Mogg’s position as leader of the European Research Group and his stance as co-founder of, part-time worker for and 15% stakeholder in Somerset Capital Management – which has warned its investors of the dangers of a hard Brexit and which has now set up not one but two funds in Dublin. Recall too the advice from fellow arch-Brexiteer John Redwood, who has a sideline as chief global strategist for the Charles Stanley investment bank, suggesting a year after the Brexit referendum that those with money pull it out of Britain and “look further afield.” Whether it’s Nigel Farage taking care to ensure two of his children can live, work and travel freely across the EU by having German passports, or Nigel Lawson, who lives in France, taking the precaution of applying for French residency, the pattern is familiar. It suggests a Brexiteer elite who believe that the pain of Brexit is for the little people. They are rich or powerful or connected enough to be insulated from the damage it will cause, making them free to sound off about its supposed benefits in the abstract – sovereignty! control! – while everyone else deals with the grim reality. So Dyson and his base will be safe in Singapore, leaving Britain to deal with the consequences of the disastrous decision he demanded. With every day the mess of Brexit is becoming clearer, and it will take more than a high-priced vacuum cleaner to clear it up – no matter how much it sucks. • Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistWhile not as overtly egregious as the awards handed out in the film categories – Seriously? Bohemian Rhapsody? Seriously? – the television half of this year’s Golden Globes still managed to smear itself across a spectrum ranging from “well-deserved” to “sit down, dad, you’re drunk”.We’ll start with the latter, because that’s more fun. If you take the opinion of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as gospel, which you probably shouldn’t (Bohemian Rhapsody? Really?), the biggest lesson to learn from last night’s awards is that comedy is in the worst trouble of its life. Of the three categories reserved for comedy – best actor, best actress, best series – two went to Netflix’s The Kominsky Method and one went to Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. This would be fine if either of these shows were remotely funny or good, but they’re not, so it isn’t. The Kominsky Method is a middling autumnal wist-com shored up by a big-ticket cast, and any given episode of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel is roughly the television equivalent of being beaten to death by a Puppini Sisters CD you found at a car boot fair. What a waste of three perfectly good trophies. Look at the list of nominees and you’ll find shows that are smarter, braver and – importantly – actually capable of making you laugh. Barry was in there. Atlanta was in there. The Good Place was in there. GLOW was in there. All of them are more deserving than the actual winners, which are both the sort of show you’d expect to blare out unwatched at full volume in the corner of a residential home common room. Good comedy does actually exist, HFPA. Do better next year. Luckily, the drama category winners were less alarmingly wayward. The Americans probably won best TV series because it’s finished now, and awards shows such as these have a habit of posthumously course-correcting, but it was deserved nevertheless. Maybe now the series is as critically acclaimed as it always deserved to be, people will actually start watching it. Probably not. Patricia Clarkson’s win for Sharp Objects was also undeniable. Her character was one of last year’s biggest TV monsters, and she played it so chillingly that she’s single-handedly preventing me from ever rewatching the series. And it was great that Golden Globes co-host Sandra Oh won for her funny and complicated role on Killing Eve, even if she did spaff away a perfectly good acceptance speech at the end of the her opening monologue. Ben Whishaw winning for A Very English Scandal was thoroughly deserved, since a lesser actor would have steered his character into a one-note comic territory. Richard Madden winning for Bodyguard, though, was a little weird. Compared to, say, Matthew Rhys in The Americans, he tended to come across as a little flat. If he’s named as the next James Bond, it’ll be because of this. And so to The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. Hopes weren’t exactly high for this gem of a series before the ceremony; not only was it written off as a dud compared to The People v OJ Simpson, but it faced some titanic competition in the form of Sharp Objects, A Very English Scandal and – in the acting category – Benedict Cumberbatch. The fact that it won twice, for best limited series and best actor, feels a little like vindication for those of us who fell for it from the start. It wasn’t a perfect show – the fact that Edgar Ramirez and Penelope Cruz were both nominated for their respective fling-it-at-a-wall-and-see-what-sticks accents remains bewildering – but it was gripping and livid and Darren Criss’ central performance was nothing short of mesmerising. The Golden Globes notoriously gets weak at the knees around big stars (which is presumably why it overlooked the fact that The Kominsky Method is stupid and bad) so for a relative newcomer like Criss to beat the likes of Hugh Grant, Benedict Cumberbatch, Antonio Banderas and Daniel Bruhl is a true achievement.Last Saturday afternoon a 23-year-old Italian called Enzo Bonito won a car race at the Foro Sol in Mexico City, and when he did it, motorsport shifted, just a little bit, towards a strange new future. Bonito was competing in the Race of Champions (RoC), racing head-to-head in a heat against Lucas di Grassi, a 34-year-old who won the Formula E championship just a couple of seasons back. And then, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, Bonito did it again the next day. This time he beat the 2012 Indycar champion, Ryan Hunter-Reay. The thing is, Bonito is a sim racer. He learned everything he knows from playing computer games. “It wasn’t much of a surprise for me at all, if I’m honest,” says Ben Payne, who is the director of esports at McLaren. “But I know it raises eyebrows for a lot of other people.” McLaren are investing a lot of time, effort and money in esports. Bonito is part of their team, along with Rudy van Buren, who won three races at last year’s RoC, in Riyadh. Van Buren was working as a kitchen salesman when he won McLaren’s World’s Fastest Gamer competition, which earned him a year-long job as their simulator driver. Later this year, Payne says, Van Buren will probably make the switch from being a virtual racing driver to a real racing driver. “If you or I are amazing at Fifa, that doesn’t mean we’re going to grace the FA Cup final any time soon and the same is true for most esports,” Payne says. “Just because you’re good at NBA2K doesn’t mean you’re going to get to play for the Boston Celtics. But sim racing is different. The skills are all so transferable. These guys know the tracks and they know the cars, they know the braking points, the gear changes, the apex points. They’ve spent as much time training how to race these cars in the virtual world as anybody else has in the real world. And that’s why they are taking names at RoC.” Van Buren’s backstory is a little different to Bonito’s though. Van Buren used to kart race when he was a kid. He was the Dutch national champion in 2003 but he stopped when he was 16 because he couldn’t afford to keep it up. Bonito, on the other hand, really has done most of his racing on a computer, at a wooden table, with a regular old chair. He got behind the wheel of a real racing car for the first time in 2018 at last year’s RoC. “I’m not going to lie, at first jumping into the car was a bit terrifying,” Bonito said back then. “But it went better than I thought.” No joke. That same week he got within 0.4sec of beating Petter Solberg, the two-time world rallycross champion. Last week McLaren held their shadow project grand finals, a competition to find the world’s best sim racers. They had more than 500,000 entrants. The final seven came to the UK to compete across a week of trials. On the Tuesday McLaren let them each loose in a 570S GT4 for 150 laps around the Top Gear test track in Dunsfold. “You do cross your fingers as they drive off,” Payne says, “but we didn’t have so much as a spin, really, and it was a bit greasy in the morning too.” One of the competitors, Ebrahim Almubarak, had never even driven a real sports car before. In his online profile he admitted he does not have a favourite driver because he has never actually watched any races, “but on social media in recent years I have been hearing a lot about Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel”. When the telemetry data from those laps came back McLaren’s analysts reckoned the best of the drivers were racing at a similar sort of level to someone who had spent a couple of years in F3. Which isn’t a surprise, because the winner, Igor Fraga, was a karting champion who had a class win in Formula 3 Brazil in 2017. This year, Payne says: “Igor will potentially have opportunities in a real car at McLaren.” Fraga is one of a generation of drivers who are adept at both forms of the sport. Payne admits you cannot learn everything about real racing from a computer screen. The physical sensations, the fatigue, and the feel of the thing, the way it flows through your body, for instance, or, more than either of those, the fear. There is no jeopardy in computer racing where you can always hit the reset button and start again. “Jenson Button once said that the fear factor is the biggest difference,” Payne says. “But when we put these guys in the cars they aren’t showing any fear because they know what they are doing. They’ve done thousands of laps on these tracks. I think they should be scared, we all think they should be scared, but they have such confidence in their ability.” Impressive as Bonito’s victories were last Saturday, the RoC is still a world away from competing in F1. Not everyone is convinced real racing and virtual racing will ever entirely converge. But McLaren are. They say they are democratising the sport, and sim racing is surely a cheaper, and more readily accessible, way in to it than karting. “We think the future of esports is as big and bright as we want to make it,” Payne says. He points out that McLaren’s CEO Zak Brown recently said that he thinks in the next decade there will be an F1 champion who has come from a gaming background as opposed to a karting background. The line between what’s real and what’s virtual, Payne says, is getting blurrier by the day.The speeches will have been made; the cabinet rows put on hold. The EU will have made a last-minute attempt to appease sceptical MPs. On Tuesday evening, MPs are finally due to troop through the voting lobbies to cast their judgment on Theresa May’s much-maligned Brexit deal. Even for the most rebellious, it will come as a long overdue moment of clarity. “The truth is, we need to decide one way or another whether or not we want the PM’s deal,” said one senior Tory rebel. “We’ve got to give a clear message about its acceptability to parliament, or otherwise, on Tuesday. I feel that anything else is a bit of a distraction.” Downing Street insiders are adamant that the vote, which has already been delayed once to avoid a heavy defeat, will go ahead this time. Yet with the Brexit process descending into the labyrinthine world of parliamentary procedure, there is a twist or two left before MPs take the plunge. Before the key vote on Tuesday night, votes will also be held on amendments designed to reshape May’s deal – some in effect reject the agreement, even before the proper vote on it has taken place. Should May’s deal be rejected as expected, an even more unpredictable phase of the Brexit battle begins. So what could happen then? There is already a row going on at the top of the Labour party about when or if it should call a vote of no-confidence in the government once May’s deal is defeated. Should Labour win it, the party would have the chance to try to form another government – but in practice, it would lead to an election. However, Jeremy Corbyn has admitted that Labour is unlikely to win a confidence vote. Most of those pushing for it to happen immediately know this – but want it out of the way so the party can take a step towards backing a second referendum. Whips have been telling MPs that a vote could be immediate – raising the hopes of those that want the party to back a second public vote. Even in the past couple of weeks, parliament and John Bercow, the speaker, have shown that they can assert themselves on the Brexit process because May’s government has no majority. Leading Tory rebels say they have a “legally copper-bottomed” plan to give parliament more control of the Brexit negotiations after Tuesday’s vote, but are keeping it close to their chests. Cabinet ministers are openly agitating for parliament to seize further control if May’s deal is defeated. Their main aim is to hold a series of indicative votes, showing what there is and is not a majority for. From no deal to Norway plus and no Brexit, all could be tested. Some also want to show there is already a majority for delaying Brexit day by extending article 50. Once the vote has been defeated, the prime minister will have to make a statement by next Monday about what she intends to do. Her most likely tactic will be to book yet another Eurostar ticket to Brussels in an attempt to secure further concessions from the EU on the Irish backstop – a mechanism designed to ensure the Irish border stays open after Brexit, which Brexiters say threatens to keep Britain tied to the bloc. It is the part of May’s deal that is causing the most concern to pro-Brexit Tory MPs. May has failed to secure meaningful concessions on the backstop so far. There are some hopes that after a defeat, Brussels may be more willing to consider something more substantial, but there are no guarantees. May would then hold a second vote on her tweaked deal. Such an outcome becomes more unlikely if her deal falls to a huge defeat on Tuesday. With time running out, there are now senior figures trying to find a Brexit compromise that could attract enough cross-party support to command a Commons majority. There are also cabinet ministers who are ready to urge May to shift to a softer Brexit, to attract enough Labour support. May has spoken to the unions and offered guarantees on environmental protection and workers’ rights. The obvious shift, already being backed by some in the cabinet, is a move to a permanent customs union with the EU. That would stop Britain signing its own international trade deals, but it would help sort some of the border and trade issues that concern many Labour MPs. It may not attract frontbench Labour support, but could secure enough Labour backing to work as a compromise. However, May has shown no inclination to consider a customs union, and such a move would lose her the support of some of her Tory backers. Having already failed to secure a majority in an election that she was predicted to win decisively, May is unlikely to take the same risk again as a way of securing her Brexit deal. While Corbyn says he wants an election, he does not have the means of securing one, while some in the shadow cabinet think the party is not properly prepared. The most likely way that an election could be called would be if a no-deal Brexit looked imminent. In that scenario, enough Tories may be so worried that they would back a no-confidence motion in the government to avoid it, triggering an election. There is currently no majority for a second referendum and both the Tory and Labour leaderships are against one. Yet if the parliamentary deadlock cannot be broken, more MPs from all sides may conclude that the only way to resolve the impasse is to go back to the people. That would unleash a whole new series of battles. What would the question be? Would no deal be on the ballot paper? If such a move was forced on May, would she resign? What would Labour’s position be in a referendum, given that it has promised to deliver Brexit? Cue another massive row.Pressure is growing on the electoral commission of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to release the results of last week’s election on time after the Catholic church said there was a clear winner and it knew who had been elected the next president. The US state department, the African Union and the Catholic church, which wields significant power in the central African country, have all urged the country’s government to respect the result. Opposition members fear the election may be rigged in favour of Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, the ruling party candidate who was handpicked by the current president, Joseph Kabila. The Democratic Republic of the Congo's sheer size, its political history and its myriad problems are all reasons why observers have followed its election so closely. DRC is a vast, resource-rich country, its population of 80 million spread over an area the size of western Europe. But it remains one of the poorest places in the world, racked by war and disease and with massive inequality. In the east, where scores of militia commanders battle for control of mines, an outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 300. Across the country, aid agencies estimate that 4.3 million people are displaced. It is still recovering from a civil war triggered by the fall of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, in which 4 million people died. Joseph Kabila has been in power as president since his father, the victor of that conflict, was shot dead in 2001. The country’s problems have been exacerbated by the refusal of Kabila to leave power after the end of his second mandate two years ago, which is why December’s much-delayed election was invested with so much hope and trepidation. DRC has never known a peaceful transition of power since its hasty independence from Belgium in 1960. Chaos at polling stations on the day of the vote and a block on internet connections and SMS services since have severely dampened hopes that the election would bring a measure of political stability. The Catholic church, which sent more than 40,000 observers to polling stations across the country, said it knew who the winner was, urging the national electoral commission (CENI) to publish the result. It stopped short of giving the winner’s name, as this is illegal in the DRC, but several observers said it signalled that Shadary had lost. “We call on the CENI, as an institution supporting democracy, to respect truth and justice, taking full responsibility as it publishes election results,” the national episcopal conference of Congo (Cenco) said in a statement. The results of the election on 30 December are due on Sunday, but the electoral commission has indicated that delays are likely. The government has cut internet access and blocked SMS messaging, as well as blocking the signals of two broadcasters and withdrawing a French correspondent’s accreditation, in what Angela Quintal, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, called a “systematic campaign of censorship”. The government hit back at the allegations. “Stop intimidating us,” Congolese media reported the electoral commission head, Corneille Nangaa, as saying. “Stop trying to influence the CENI decision. The CENI will announce the results in accordance with the law and the results it collected in all polling stations.” Lambert Mende, the minister of communications, defended the internet shutdown and the revocation of the accreditation of the Radio France International correspondent. He said: “We’re not a sort of zoo in which thrill-seeking tourists from the whole world are invited by pyromaniacs to see savages fighting in a lawless land.” President Kabila’s mandate expired in 2016 but he delayed elections by more than two years, arguing that an important census had not yet been held to count the number of voters, and that the country could not find the £1.4bn it said it needed to hold an election. He has ruled the country since 2001, when his father was assassinated. Polling just before the election showed a large majority of Congolese supported the opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu, a former businessman. The same poll showed almost half of respondents said they would protest against a rigged election, and more than half said they would not accept the result if Shadary was declared the winner. The US threatened sanctions against officials attempting to undermine democracy. Robert Palladino, a state department spokesman, said: “Those responsible for undermining democratic institutions and processes, threatening the peace, security, or stability of DRC or benefiting from corruption ‎will be held accountable. “Those who undermine the democratic process, threaten the peace, security or stability of the DRC, or benefit from corruption may find themselves not welcome in the United States and cut off from the US financial system. There are moments in every nation’s history when individuals and political leaders step forward and do the right thing. This is one of those moments for the DRC.” Jason Stearns, the director of the Congo Research Group at New York university, said the DRC was “in a different universe” after the church’s statement. “I think it is a very crucial moment,” he said. “I don’t think Kabila’s going to step down tomorrow ... but we had always suspected there were going to be flaws in the electoral process, there were certainly many suspicions that they could be rigged in favour of the ruling coalition but to have the Catholic church step up and say we know who won these elections, we have proof and we will publish – that is very different from just saying the process has been flawed.” He added: “They’re trying to make sure we don’t end up in a situation where CENI announces different results, there are then inevitable protests in the streets that turn violent, there’s a regime that digs in its heels and they end up in an ugly confrontation. To be honest, that’s where I think we’re going to end up.” Perhaps only way it wouldn’t, he said, was if the South African and Angolan presidents, the African Union chair and Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, all got together and told Kabila: “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over, step down or else.” That is unlikely – Kabila is in a powerful position, as the DRC is the largest copper producer in Africa and produces 60% of the world’s cobalt.This year’s nominations are out and while it’s a great year for Roma and The Favourite (leading the race with 10 a piece), there’s a trail of wreckage from those films that didn’t make the cut. While there are some legitimate snubs (no Bradley Cooper for best director, no Emily Blunt for best actress, no Won’t You Be My Neighbor? for best documentary), there’s also an entirely separate category of films that didn’t enter the conversation in the first place, despite being crafted to do just that. With his first film as director, 2015’s insidious psycho-thriller The Gift, actor Joel Edgerton showed remarkable deftness on both sides of the camera, infusing a familiarly structured tale with menace and morality. On paper, his follow-up seemed to suggest yet more critical acclaim, albeit for one with far weightier ambitions: the fact-based gay conversion drama Boy Erased. But a horrifyingly topical premise and a stacked cast, from Lucas Hedges to Nicole Kidman to Russell Crowe, couldn’t bring life to Edgerton’s stale direction and lifeless script, entirely devoid of specificity. An awards-friendly bow at Telluride led to some polite reviews but by release, any Oscar chances had been, ahem, erased. Rather like the lead character of his 2000 hit Castaway, Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis has found himself somewhat adrift in recent years. His attempt to recreate Philipe Petit’s twin towers stunt in 2015’s The Walk equated to a seat-edge sequence lost in a dull movie and while 2016’s Allied was a solid thriller, it failed to impress the majority of critics and audiences. Last year was strike three with his schmaltzy dramatisation of the 2010 documentary Marwencol about the true story of a man struggling with PTSD who creates a fictional village. Seen by many as an overly Hollywoodised take on a fascinating true story, complete with falsification and a misfiring lead performance by Steve Carell, it was one of 2018’s biggest commercial flops and landed on roughly no one’s best of list. If this time last year, one were to predict which female-fronted costume drama was going to be a multiple Oscar nominee in 2019 then it’s unlikely that a bawdy, surrealist, vulgar comedy about a same-sex love triangle from the director of Dogtooth would have been the pick. But Yorgos Lanthimos’s wonderfully rebellious retelling of Queen Anne’s unlikely reign scooped up 10 nominations this week while Mary Queen of Scots, its far more conventional cousin, was left with just two: costume design and makeup and hairstyling. Theatre director Josie Rourke’s drama joined the race rather late and while reviews were decent, it was inevitably affected by comparisons with The Favourite and stars Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie found out the hard way that playing monarchs doesn’t always lead to Oscar glory. While the warmly received, and commercially successful, RBG might have nabbed a best documentary nomination, its dramatised equivalent left Oscar voters cold, just weeks after it left US audiences and critics rather chilly. The life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is indisputably ripe for a biopic but Mimi Leder’s textbook drama On the Basis of Sex struggled to make the case thanks to a miscast Felicity Jones and a strict adherence to the rather dusty rules of the genre. Given the undying public fascination with Ginsburg’s achievements, don’t count out another biopic landing in the race in the future. Quite clearly sold as “the political film we need right now”, Jason Reitman’s fast-paced drama about the downfall of Senator Gary Hart was met with quite the opposite response from audiences and critics. After its premiere at Telluride, The Front Runner was met with indifference, a feeling that lingered through to its provocative release date on 8 November, when the US midterms took place. There was reserved acclaim for Hugh Jackman but even in a weak year for best actor, he couldn’t break through while, for Reitman, the film marks yet another Oscar-aiming project that failed to attract voters, to be filed alongside the sugary melodrama Labor Day and the salty, unfairly ignored black comedy Young Adult. With her lead role in indie drama Ben is Back, awards pundits were busy slapping themselves on their backs by announcing that in fact, Julia Roberts is back! But while reviews were mostly kind to the Oscar winner for her role as a mother dealing with a son struggling with addiction, there wasn’t quite enough buzz to fully launch her best actress campaign. Released soon after that other addiction drama (see below) and in a crowded early December slot, it promptly disappeared and while Roberts picked up a handful of nominations for her role in Amazon’s Homecoming, it was made very clear that this won’t be the year she’ll be returning to the Oscars main stage. After scoring a best actor nomination for his role in the sun-soaked romance Call Me by Your Name, it looked like Timothée Chalamet could be in the best supporting actor race just a year later. Even after Beautiful Boy’s high-profile premiere at last year’s Toronto film festival, when initial reviews were decidedly muted, Chalamet was still seen as a shoo-in. Yet despite some nominations along the way, both his performance and the film were Academy shut-outs this week. There was also considerable lack of audience interest and it’s unclear whether that was the result of a mixed critical response or whether watching a film about a teen struggling with meth addiction just didn’t seem like an appealing proposition, regardless of quality. Ever since she picked up a best actress nomination for her show-stopping performance in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike has struggled to find the right follow-up. Nothing has been overtly awful but films like A United Kingdom, Beirut, Hostiles and Entebbe have just sort of existed, provoking little more than shrugs. Teaming with Oscar-nominated documentarian Matthew Heineman for A Private War, the story of fearless war correspondent Marie Colvin seemed like a much-needed win, scoring her a string of positive reviews. But critical support could only do so much and despite a Golden Globe nomination, Pike couldn’t break into the Oscar conversation.A British woman jailed in Egypt for possession of the opioid painkiller Tramadol has been granted early release after 13 months behind bars. Laura Plummer was sentenced to three years in prison on Boxing Day 2017 for drug possession, after she was stopped at Hurghada airport in October that year with 290 Tramadol tablets in her suitcase. The 33-year-old retail worker from Hull maintained that she was unaware the drug was a controlled substance in Egypt, and that she was bringing the tablets into the country to help her partner’s back pain. Plummer initially faced the more serious charge of drug trafficking, which carries a penalty of up to 25 years in prison or even the death penalty. Despite translation issues during one trial session, which led her to mistakenly plead guilty to the trafficking charge, she was later given three years in Egypt’s Qanatar women’s prison for possession of a controlled substance. On 25 January, the anniversary of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, Plummer was one of 6,925 prisoners granted early release by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. She was then transferred to police custody in the Egyptian resort town of Hurghada, awaiting a flight home with her mother and sister. Despite false reports that Plummer was due to be pardoned in January 2018, Plummer remained in prison and was also denied an appeal last September. Her lawyer, Mohammed Osman, told the Guardian at the time that Plummer was due to spend at least a further nine months in prison, in order to serve the minimum requirement of half her three-year sentence. “Our staff continue to do all they can to support Laura and her family, and our embassy remains in regular contact with the Egyptian authorities,” said a Foreign Office spokesperson, commenting on Plummer’s release. FAO travel advice warns travellers to Egypt of the dangers of possessing illegal substances, as well as “publicising strongly negative opinions about Egypt or making political comments”. Despite the release of 6,925 prisoners, an estimated 60,000 political prisoners are believed to remain in Egypt, a figure repeatedly denied by Egyptian officials. Karl Turner MP, who represents Plummer’s East Hull constituency, praised the work of the Foreign Office and expressed his relief at the news of her release. “I am delighted for Laura and her family that this terrible ordeal is now coming to an end,” he said. “I would like to thank the Foreign Office and particularly minister of state Alistair Burt MP for everything he and officials has done for Laura and her family since this saga begun. I very much hope that Laura can put this behind her and get on with her life now”.  I first read about Bald Knob, Arkansas, in 2010, after thousands of poisoned blackbirds dropped dead from the sky in nearby Beebe. On first look, Bald Knob has an unsettling aesthetic: a sparsely populated town, a bygone agricultural zone with toppled silos, old trailers, taxidermy businesses, boarded-up shops and a Waffle House. It’s a narrative cliche to present a rural place below the Mason-Dixon line this way, yet the scenery fits the bill. I’ve lived in places like these, where a casual observer sees a weathered town and locals just see home. I proceed with caution anyway. I’m also unsettled by news reports of armed white nationalists marching at the capitol building in nearby Little Rock. I know this is how a lot of people experience the rural south – sorting through stereotypes and history as they go, wondering how much of the old south is present in the new. The 12,900-acre Bald Knob Refuge, which sits about 60 miles north-east of Little Rock, is a blend of both the old and new south. It’s a former rice farm that has grown rice and soybeans in order to provide much-needed habitat and fuel for migratory waterfowl like pintail ducks and snow geese since 1993. A half-mile into the refuge, the truck ahead of me spooks an unfathomable cloud of waterfowl. Hundreds of thousands of ducks rise from the wetlands, calling and circling. It’s breathtaking to witness. Later, a huge flock of lesser snow geese passes above me. My heart pounds; it’s moving to hear so many wingbeats overhead, to see the formations of a thousand white birds in the blue sky. Another truck comes by. The man rolls down his truck window and asks, “You OK?” “Fine,” I tell him, climbing down from the roof of my rental car, and showing him my camera. “Watching birds. You?” I ask even though I can see his rifle in the back. “Out scouting hunting spots,” he says, flashing a charming smile. “You can get a better view if you take the road ’round that way.” He points me toward a new route, then takes off. The relationship between hunters and conservation has always surprised me. Yet it’s often imperative to the success of major initiatives in the south, thanks to the influence of the not-for-profit organization Ducks Unlimited, which has a worldwide membership of 700,000 and has helped conserve over 13m acres of habitat. There are more than 34 million sportsmen and women in the United States. Sportsmen and traditional environmentalists aren’t always mutually exclusive, or easy co-conspirators. But, there is a critical need for information to flow between those on the ground and those in policy. In order to address the urgent realities of climate change, traditional environmentalists must continue to find ways to communicate and partner with non-traditional audiences: hunters, big agriculture, fishermen, corporations and loggers. I wanted to talk to people in the south who already work on these frontlines, and are able to build bridges between seemingly disparate audiences. Charlie Phillips, clammer and entrepreneur, is one of those men who’s lived several lives, as a fishmonger, horse trader and shrimper. “I’m one of those rare Republicans that believe that if you don’t take care of your environment, your environment can’t take care of you,” he says. Phillips, the owner of Sapelo Sea Farms in Georgia, makes his living growing clams, so water quality is crucial to him, which is why he serves on boards and tries to help scientists and fishermen find common ground. He’s frank about climate change and how it’s affecting his industry. He talks about the onset of “king tides”, and fish stock moving north as waters warm. He was working on the back of a shrimp boat in 1968 when Hurricane Camille hit. “I saw the big ships washed up on shore,” he tells me. “I’ve seen what big hurricanes can do. They’re worse now. Things aren’t what they used to be.” “Listen,” he says. “Fishermen just want to be able to catch what they want to catch and be left alone.” He says working fishermen end up not trusting scientists because the scientific reports don’t match up with what they witness firsthand on the water every day. Reports from scientists, he says, “feel three or four years behind what the fishermen see”. He thinks it’s crucial for fishermen and scientists to interact and learn more from each other. “We’ve gotten really good at throwing rocks at each other,” he tells me. “But we need to give up on throwing rocks. It’s not conducive to fixing problems.” Phillips is focused on what he cares most about: water. He’s evangelical about it. “It affects everything,” he says. “Wildlife, business, eco-tourism.” He bought his father’s restaurant, the Fish Dock, and uses the menus to educate customers about local water testing results. “I took poetic license,” he tells me, laughing. “I don’t use the word ‘fecal’, just ‘water quality’.” The following day I talk with Dr Zakiya Leggett, a forester and professor at North Carolina State University whose research focuses on carbon sequestration and soil ecology. She talks about her empathy for freshmen, many of whom tell her at the beginning of her class through a pre-course survey that they don’t believe in climate change. They tell her she shouldn’t try to change their minds. “We have to remember,” she says, her tone compassionate, “especially if these students are coming fresh from home, that they haven’t had time to form their own opinions.” She adds, “Maybe I can’t impress my ‘opinions,’ but I will give them the facts, like graphs of temperatures rising.” Leggett estimates that half of her students are coming from a rural environment. Born in Memphis, she recalls the difficult time she had adjusting when she went from the Tuskegee Institute to Duke University. She remembers struggling with elitism herself. Now she mentors students through this vulnerable transition, and is able to forge connections with first-generation college students and conservative students, as well as students of color – all groups who might otherwise struggle to join conversations about the scientific realities of climate change. Dr Todd Merendino, the manager of conservation programs in the Ducks Unlimited Texas field office, negotiates strategic partnerships with wildlife state agencies, agricultural producers, hunters, biologists, private landowners, petrochemical companies and the oil industry. A hunter and fisherman, he has a practical, outcomes-focused approach to his work. “Our mission is waterfowl and habitats,” he says. “I look for symbiotic relationships. Common ground. Common goals.” He speaks with corporations about responsible growth and convinces them that “wetlands and marshes are your insurance policy against flooding”. He ticks off the nature of their conversations: flood storage capacity, coastal restoration projects, storm surge abatement, initiatives that keep the marsh healthy. Ducks Unlimited recently completed a beneficial dredge use project near Port Arthur, Texas, which will move 2m cubic yards of dredge material to restore approximately 1,300 acres of the Salt Bayou Marsh watershed, an important migratory bird flyway recently degraded by hurricane damage. It’s generally more expensive to utilize dredge material in this manner, he says, but smarter to move it to a place where it serves a purpose. Merendino’s work has large-scale outcomes, and with that objective in mind he welcomes chances to partner with corporations and big agriculture. “If the rice industry went away,” he points out, “the amount of waterfowl habitat loss would be insurmountable, impossible to overcome.” After seeing the beauty and importance of the Bald Knob Refuge, the scale, necessity and complexity of this work impresses me. It’s easy to be an armchair activist in 2019, or make condescending online comments about the state of climate change activism in the south. But it’s much more difficult to swim against the ideological current, or to operate between two exasperating worlds in a hands-on way, in search of real impact. There is certainly more opportunity for cooperation and partnership, and places where more traditional environmentalists like me could find common ground with a hunter in Arkansas or a fisherman in Georgia, so that we could, quite frankly, save what we both love.An anti-gay evangelical pastor, who once described the victims of the 2016 Orlando mass shooting as “scum”, has resigned from his church after admitting sleeping with prostitutes. Donnie Romero, the leader of the anti-gay Stedfast Baptist church, stepped down on 2 January, saying he had been “a terrible husband and father”. The now former pastor made headlines in 2016 following the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people died. Romero said God should “finish the job” and kill the survivors of the shooting. Stedfast has been labelled an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The church is part of the New International Federation of Baptists, a group of 29 mostly US-based churches which adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible. In addition to his comments about the victims of the Orlando shooting, Romero has said gay people are “all pedophiles” and that they should be executed. Romero, who has a wife and seven children, told members of the church that he had “not been ruling my house well”, but did not initially elaborate on why he had resigned. Steven Anderson, the leader of an associated church, said in a YouTube video that Romero had committed “grievous sins”. “The major sin involved was being with prostitutes, and then there were also marijuana and gambling,” Anderson said. After Anderson’s statement Romero elaborated on his behavior in a video of his own. “I went to Jacksonville, and I went to a casino, and I was drinking,” Romero said. “There were girls there that were prostitutes, and I committed adultery on my wife multiple times. “I drank and gambled multiple times. I even smoked weed.” Stedfast has two churches, one in Fort Worth, Texas, and another in Jacksonville, Florida. Adam Fannin, a member of the Jacksonville congregation, told the Guardian the situation was “a mess” and said Romero’s actions had caused people to quit. “It’s already caused a church split in Jacksonville,” Fannin said. “A majority of people have decided to walk away from the church.” Fannin said he served as Romero’s deputy in Fort Worth for two years. He said did not know whether anyone else from the Jacksonville church had accompanied Romero during his activities. Fannin said he had been “calling for an investigation” into Romero. Prostitution is illegal in Florida. The Jacksonville sheriff’s department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.What had been looking like the toughest selection of Eddie Jones’s three-year England tenure has once again been hijacked by events. The unavailability of Ben Te’o for the opening Six Nations Test has not merely blown a sizeable hole in the coach’s midfield strategy but dispelled any notion that, at last, England have uncovered the secret of keeping their best players fit. With Brad Shields and Joe Cokanasiga also unavailable to feature, the first England team announcement of the calendar year on Thursday is no longer quite as hard to predict as it might have been. That said, Jones still has some major calls to make, not just in the context of the championship but the World Cup as well. While Manu Tuilagi may finally be back, does anyone know for certain what Jones’s best combination look like? The time for fudging certain problems has long gone and, assuming England wish to go big in Japan, the Ireland game in Dublin on Saturday offers Jones one of his last serious opportunities to resolve them. Ireland have become formidable opponents at home and escaping Joe Schmidt’s tactical vice on the opening Six Nations weekend would be the biggest achievement of Jones’s rollercoaster tenure to date. So which way to proceed? In certain positions Jones’s best men virtually pick themselves. Both Vunipolas and a refreshed Maro Itoje, for example, are fit and ready to add legitimate punch. With Sam Underhill injured, Tom Curry has to start on the openside. Ditto Jamie George at hooker with Dylan Hartley still nursing his grumbly knee. More tricky, in light of Te’o’s misfortune, is where to deploy Owen Farrell, who may have to wear his captain’s armband on the sleeve of the No 12 jersey. George Ford is a more than capable fly-half but, with so much riding on the Dublin match, this was a game seemingly made for Farrell at 10. The spine of a team is always crucial, as Ireland have been demonstrating repeatedly. From Rory Best through James Ryan, Conor Murray, Johnny Sexton and Rob Kearney there were absolutely no weak links in 2018. George, Itoje and Billy Vunipola offer a similar sense of security and Jones would love this Six Nations to remove any lingering uncertainty about his best options in the equally pivotal positions of 9, 10 and 15. At scrum-half, for instance, Ben Youngs has not always looked himself at Leicester this season, for whatever reason. Danny Care and Richard Wigglesworth are not involved at all. Quite why Wasps’ Dan Robson is still waiting to make his Test debut is a mystery but asking him to start this particular fixture, opposite the classy Murray, would be a seriously tall order. It makes more sense to ask Youngs to restate an unanswerable claim with Robson, for now, on the bench. Further down the backline, things start to become devilishly complicated. Much of it hinges on Jones’s decision at full‑back. A recall for Mike Brown to help defuse Ireland’s aerial threat appears increasingly on the cards but if Elliot Daly shifts to the wing that means omitting either the in-form Chris Ashton or Jack Nowell from the 23. Ultimately it boils down to precisely what Jones has in mind for Japan. Come the World Cup, Cokanasiga and Watson will also be in the back-three mix, with Jonathan Joseph also around to compete for the outside‑centre berth. If Jones still regards Daly as his World Cup full-back it hardly makes sense to reinstate Brown now. And is playing Daly on the wing ahead of Ashton and Nowell really the best use of the Wasps man’s considerable talent? Given his side’s distinctly moderate record in Dublin and with the try-scoring threat of Jacob Stockdale further complicating the equation, a starting back three of Nowell, Brown and May would be the most defensively solid option, with Ashton, Daly and Jonny May a more freewheeling alternative. A possible compromise would be Daly (whose long-range goalkicking would also be useful), Brown and May with Tuilagi and Slade forming a midfield duo that, but for injury, would have been trialled long ago. Could that combination unsettle Ireland? Given enough ball and some forward momentum, it just might. It may be seen by some as a bit of a risk but Jones already knows what the Ford‑Farrell axis can offer and retaining Slade as an extra tactical kicking option against Ireland also makes sense. Midfield power is perfectly fine but you also need players who can pass, kick shrewdly, create space for others and make consistently sound defensive decisions. If for any reason the Tuilagi-Slade combo does not instantly gel, Ford could be deployed for the last 25 minutes with Nowell also available to cover a number of eventualities from the bench. Elsewhere, given Ireland’s lineout threat, there is also a strong case for George Kruis in the second row, leaving Courtney Lawes or Joe Launchbury – or both – to make an impact later. Questions, questions. Injuries continue to bombard the Jones project but World Cup-winning coaches make their own luck. Robert Kitson’s England team to face Ireland: M Brown (Harlequins); E Daly (Wasps), H Slade (Exeter), M Tuilagi (Leicester), J May (Leicester); O Farrell (Saracens), B Youngs (Leicester); M Vunipola (Saracens), J George (Saracens), K Sinckler (Harlequins), M Itoje (Saracens), G Kruis (Saracens), M Wilson (Newcastle), T Curry (Sale), B Vunipola (Saracens). Replacements L Cowan-Dickie (Exeter), E Genge (Leicester), H Williams (Exeter), J Launchbury (Wasps), C Lawes (Northampton), D Robson (Wasps), G Ford (Leicester), J Nowell (Exeter). Rugby’s assorted powerbrokers have been meeting in Los Angeles to try to resolve the long-running debate about how the sport’s international future should be structured. Striking the right balance between satisfying core audiences and attracting new fans remains fundamental, as is the case with the club game. One word of warning: one of the most frequent reasons southern hemisphere players give for relocating north, aside from the money, is the chance to spend less time sitting on aeroplanes en route to away games. World leagues and continental play‑offs sound fine in theory but if it means players spending half their lives at 35,000 feet then their enjoyment will swiftly dwindle. Both the men’s and women’s Six Nations will be under close scrutiny this year when it comes to high tackles. The sport cannot afford any more high-profile instances to go unpunished and referees will be told as much in a conference call this week. The number of tries in the men’s tournament last season – 78 – was a Six Nations record and, weather permitting, there must be a good chance of a similarly high tally this season as well.City versus town? It might seem a facile debate in a small country where the interests of both should be aligned. What’s the difference, apart from size? Quite a lot, actually. For the past few decades, lobbying by a group of large cities has placed big population centres at the forefront of what remains of urban policy. Larger cities were seen as the engines of growth, portrayed as the economic saviours for surrounding communities. A contestable point, certainly. But these cities found a welcoming ear in government. The government responded with devolution deals to create combined authorities, led by mayors, in six city-regions, including Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Merseyside. But Theresa May went cool on the idea, instead preferring to reinvigorate “Brexit Britain”: those places which voted leave in June 2016. The PM even popped into a village up the hill from my Tyneside home to reassure the north (62 of the 73 local authority areas in northern England voted leave) that she was determined to deliver equity across the country: “It is my mission to make sure that ... no community is left behind as we plan both our domestic agenda and our Brexit strategy,” she said. Domestic agenda? Dream on. Few, if any, policies – aside, ironically, from EU funding – are in place to address deep-seated problems such as unemployment, vacant and partly abandoned town centres, and poor housing in these “left-behind” places that time, and governments, have largely forgotten. Yet in the north alone, these non-metropolitan areas have a population of 6.3 million. What’s more, a commitment to replace EU regional funding, used to help revive collapsing economies and communities in run-down areas (worth £1.2bn annually) with a “shared prosperity fund” has been kicked into the long grass. A government spokesman told Society Guardian ministers recognised the importance of reassuring communities on the future of such funding, post-Brexit. Hence, they were making progress in designing a new system. But domestic government has ground to a halt. The “left-behind” areas remain sidelined. Civil servants speak despairingly of “strategy stasis”. The state, nationally and locally, has been hollowed out. Swaths of the country are being hammered by the continuing impact of austerity on local councils. Research by economic geographers at Cambridge University underlines how town halls in the poorest parts of England, mainly in the north, have been hit disproportionately by the deepest spending cuts – with yet more to come – while the south has generally been treated much more leniently. So much for the PM’s pledge to end austerity. In 2017, frustrated by government inaction, the Town and Country Planning Association (of which I’m a former chair) and Newcastle University held a conference to address the challenges facing these “left-behind areas”. Alasdair Rae, a leading mapping geographer at the University of Sheffield, pointed out that these areas are wrongly viewed as the UK equivalent of the rust belt in the US, whereas they should be more accurately labelled a “necklace of neglect”, long-forgotten by a metropolitan elite obsessed with boosting big city economies. Meanwhile, Andy Pike, a regional specialist at Newcastle University, argued that an obsession with boosting “city centrism” has failed to provide a “spillover” to peripheral towns. “Growing disparities ... suggest that the wider spread of benefits have not reached the people and places left behind or sufficiently connected them to central urban prosperity,” he said. Naming these places can be invidious. But from west Cumbria, to east Durham, South Yorkshire to the Potteries, East Lancashire to the West Midlands and seaside towns, there are plenty of places – starved of council resources compounded by government inaction – with potential for renewal. Sometimes local endeavour is working wonders. Once governments could respond with a range of initiatives and organisations to partner these places, from a national regeneration body to nine regional development agencies and specific government offices in eight regions plus London. All have been abolished. Something has to give. How about a new, national department for the regions to coordinate strategy and address the left-behind places? Even active government might be a start. Remember that? • Peter Hetherington writes on communities and regenerationIt doesn’t take long for the first tears to fall. Backing singer Jovante Cunningham, one of several people featured in new docuseries Surviving R Kelly, is remembering what it was like to work for the R&B star and to witness the abuse and manipulation he allegedly wrought on dozens of young women and girls. “We went through a lot. We experienced a lot. We saw a lot.” She’s crying, somehow keeping her voice level. Later, she goes on: “He destroyed a lot of people. I can’t stress to you enough how people are still suffering behind things that went on 20 years ago.” She has just recalled seeing R Kelly and late singer Aaliyah entangled on a tour bus. Her words are “having sex”, but given Aaliyah’s age at the time, per the series, sexual intercourse of any kind would have constituted statutory rape in Illinois (Aaliyah’s mother has since dismissed Cunningham’s account). Like so many interviews from the six-part Lifetime show, Cunningham’s verbal unloading oozes pain, self-examination and the lightest touch of euphemism rooted in wincing away from horrible memories. The show, helmed by critic and film-maker dream hampton, plants its place in an 18-year line of reporting on Kelly’s offstage treatment of women and girls. The allegations themselves – ranging from Kelly soliciting teenage girls for sexual relationships at malls to allegedly running an “abusive cult” – actually date back to 1994. At the time of writing, Kelly is still signed to his record label and denies all the allegations levelled against him. Lifetime has made an impactful series, if at times heavy-handed in its use of sound and visual effects. It twists Kelly’s story and your stomach in knots. Most of the information expressed in Surviving R Kelly has already been made public, largely led by the tireless reporting of Chicago journalist Jim DeRogatis. And so, even when you have turned it off, the docuseries lingers with the stench of unresolved questions: what will happen to the women still believed to be living with Kelly, estranged from their families? What would it take for Kelly’s label, RCA Records, to address the overwhelming testimony made so far? And, finally, where can a viewer direct their rage, when Kelly has proved himself above scrutiny? I’ll be honest: you’ll wait a long while for easy answers to those questions. New information gleaned during the show’s production rarely leaves you feeling satisfied, or as though Kelly has been held fully accountable for the claims about his behaviour. You learn that Kelly used the abortion of survivor Lizzette Martinez, who met him aged 17, as creative fodder to write Michael Jackson’s hit You Are Not Alone. You hear from Demetrius Smith, the simpering former personal assistant who squirms through his memories of watching Kelly, at 27, marry 15-year-old Aaliyah; he never explicitly says who forged the documents to state her age as 18. And so the vague edges of knowledge once considered rumour are redrawn firmly, to drive home how the testimony of mostly young black women has been ignored and derided. Those who read Kelly’s 2012 memoir Soulacoaster: The Diary of Me will already know that he has said he was sexually abused as a child by an older woman for several years (“I remember it feeling weird. I remember feeling ashamed.”) You’ll have seen the fans who backed Kelly during his much delayed child abuse images case in 2008. But hearing directly from former fan Jerhonda Pace flips that perspective anew. She met Kelly outside the courthouse aged 14, and says he later emotionally abused her in his Atlanta home, slapping, choking and spitting on her. Essentially, Surviving R Kelly brings to life the women whose voices DeRogatis quoted in print for years – most recently and vividly with his 2017 BuzzFeed investigation about the “sex cult” that women allege Kelly runs. If you have followed the social media response to the show, you will have noticed several of the 40-plus people interviewed – cultural commentators, activists, psychologists, survivors – deal with a blend of victim-blaming and whataboutery, from those who think Kelly has being wrongfully singled out as a black man. Those people fail to see that Kelly isn’t being paraded around as some sort of bogeyman, while white abusers avoid scrutiny. Instead, women such as his ex-wife Andrea Kelly, who met him at 19 while auditioning as a dancer, and Kitti Jones, introduced to him aged 33, are finally granted the chance to look down a lens and tell their stories so that you can see them. Hampton saw the whataboutery coming. “I knew that essentially what we had from the survivors was incredibly compelling, honest evidence,” she said to ThinkProgress. “It needed context. It needed to live in the larger world we all live in: of racism, sexism, capitalism. We needed to talk about the record industry who considered this man a cash cow, and who will always look away.” About that. RCA Records are yet to respond to the fallout from the film, though may be playing it legally safe to avoid being sued by Kelly. Let this be clear: Surviving R Kelly has no solutions to magically fix the problem of the music industry and black American community averting their eyes from the allegations against Kelly. But it is giving a mainstream voice to black and brown women who’ve lacked one. So the show arrives at a confusing, and confused, time. Collectively, we don’t really understand how to deal with abusers who manage to avoid further scrutiny and career censure. Sceptics are quick to shout “Did you call the police?” when women share stories of sexual misconduct, abuse or harassment. But what happens when video evidence and verbal testimony aren’t enough to incriminate? Kelly’s a prime example: he was never tried on rape charges, and a jury instead acquitted him in 2008 on all 14 child abuse images charges, even after viewing the so-called “sex tape” that prompted his arrest in 2002. It’s more than a year since black activist and Surviving contributor Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement (often wrongfully credited to Alyssa Milano) came to be seen by many as a 2017 invention linked to the Harvey Weinstein revelations. And still, we flounder and argue when faced with the men who make art and money and connections, yet allegedly hurt women. This is really about trauma, falling in a grey area more nuanced than current legal terms. We need an understanding deeper than the confines of rape and consent laws developed hundreds of years ago by men. In the meantime, you get to decide whether to turn away from, or listen to, the voices that accompany the tears.The scourge of plastic waste in the world’s oceans is the target of a new global alliance of businesses which says it will try to reduce the amount of plastic waste produced and improve recycling. The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, launched on Wednesday, includes companies producing consumer goods and plastic, as well as waste management and recycling firms. Among more than 25 companies joining the effort are household names such as Procter & Gamble, Shell, BASF and ExxonMobil. Together the companies have committed $1bn (£778m) over the next five years, with an aspiration to raise that to $1.5bn (£1.2bn) if further members join. The firms intend to invest in a wide variety of projects, including research and development into new recycling technologies, building infrastructure to collect and recycle waste, and cleaning of areas where plastic waste concentrates, such as in rivers. About 8m tonnes of plastic waste is dumped in the seas annually, according to the UN. Plastic in the seas can choke fish and other marine creatures, destroy habitats and enter the food chain. But despite increasing public awareness about the problem, highlighted by Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II programmes, there has been little sign of it abating. David Taylor, chief executive of Procter & Gamble, who will chair the alliance, said industries involved in plastic production, use and recycling, had the ability to make a substantial difference to the amount of plastic waste polluting the oceans if they combined their efforts. “We believe in the power of collective action,” he said. “We want to minimise the use of plastic, make it recyclable, and start to generate a circular economy. Plastic has value, and we want to work to recapture that value time and time again. What is different about [the alliance] is that it is collective action, across the value chain.” He said P&G, which makes scores of household products, from Pampers disposable nappies and Ariel washing powder, to Gillette razors and Olay cosmetics, had been working for years to minimise its use of plastic and investigate alternatives, but that by combining with other companies it could do more. “We want to scale this up,” he said. However, some campaigners were not impressed. Graham Forbes, global plastics project leader at Greenpeace, said: “This is a desperate attempt from corporate polluters to maintain the status quo on plastics. In 2018 people all over the world spoke up and rejected the single-use plastics that companies like Procter & Gamble churn out on a daily basis, urging the industry to invest in refill and reuse systems and innovation. Instead of answering that call, P&G preferred to double down on a failed approach with fossil fuel giants Exxon, Dow and Total [which] fuel destructive climate change.” He added: “Make no mistake, plastics are a lifeline for the dying fossil fuel industry, and this announcement goes to show how far companies will go to preserve it.” Rob Kaplan, chief executive of Circulate Capital, which invests in recycling and other projects to reduce plastic waste, said businesses would provide the answer to plastic waste, but it would take many billions in investment. “There is no silver bullet to the plastic problem. Different parties are trying to push their own agenda, but there does not seem to be an alternative at present,” he said. Recycling, along with minimising waste, would be critical to removing the problem, he added, but the infrastructure to allow for widespread recycling was still lacking across much of the world, even in many developed countries.Israeli prosecutors have charged a 16-year-old Israeli settler with manslaughter after he was accused of throwing a rock at a speeding car and killing a Palestinian woman. According to the indictment, the suspect deliberately targeted the family car on 12 October in the occupied West Bank in an anti-Arab attack “as part of an act of terror”. The teenager, who has not been named, was also charged with intentional sabotage of a vehicle “under terrorist circumstances” after his DNA was found on the 2kg rock. Lawyers for the suspect have claimed he was not connected to the incident. Aisha Rabi, 48, and mother of eight, was travelling home along a highway late at night when the jagged rock plummeted down from a hill. Her eight-year-old daughter was in the back seat and her husband, who was driving, told the Guardian he believed it was a hate crime. Settler violence against Palestinians living in the West Bank has been rising since the beginning of 2017, according to the UN. A tally by the local Haaretz newspaper said “nationalist crimes”, such as beatings, stonings and painting anti-Arab or anti-Muslim slogans, tripled in 2018. Incidents often followed violence by Palestinians against Israelis living in West Bank settlements. During the past month, the Shin Bet internal security agency arrested five youths “for grave terrorism offences”, all of them students in an Israeli settlement yeshiva, a Jewish education centre, near where the attack occurred. The agency had initially called for a media blackout on the highly sensitive case, even as supporters of the teenage settlers launched a public battle to discredit Israeli security services. Four of the boys were released to house arrest, but only after their supporters had accused the Shin Bet and the police of illegal interrogations and mistreatment of minors in detention. A lawyer for one of the suspects said his 15-year-old client was shackled to a chair. Israeli far-right and pro-settlement groups have protested outside the residence of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to call on him to intervene. The outcry comes in the lead-up to an April election in which several politicians are seeking votes from the far right. A member of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party compared the Shin Bet to the Soviet KGB and accused it of “torturing Jewish boys”. In response to the criticism, the Shin Bet took the unusual step of defending itself, saying there was an ongoing effort to “slander” and “delegitimise” the agency. “Such action should be condemned, we must be allowed to continue with our activities to prevent terrorism, whether Jewish or Palestinian,” it said. The agency has questioned other students at the yeshiva and said settler activists drove to the school on the morning after the attack to brief students on how to prepare for Shin Bet interrogations.Josie Rourke kicks off her heels and sums up her current punishing schedule with the words: “Bouts of talking about myself, punctuated by having my hair done.” We are in a grand London hotel, where Rourke is stationed to publicise her debut feature film. “The only point of reference I have for all this is Notting Hill,” she says, referring to the scene in the film where Hugh Grant sneaks into a similarly grand hotel and, after stumbling into a press junket, introduces himself as a reporter from Horse & Houndand finds himself interviewing the cast of a sci-fi movie he hasn’t seen. All this highly controlled pizzazz contrasts comically with Rourke’s life as the artistic director of a small London theatre, the Donmar Warehouse, “where we walk to rehearsals and make our own tea”. The film is Mary Queen of Scots, which stars Saoirse Ronan in the title role; directing it has wrought many changes for the 42-year-old, Salford-born Rourke – not least exchanging the familiar embrace of a 250-seat theatre for a drenched Scottish hillside. “I’d be trying to direct more actors than you can even fit into the Donmar while it rained horizontally into my ear. I remember feeling that there had to be a German compound noun for that feeling when fewer Highland cattle than you had booked actually turn up.” The film follows the relationship between the Scottish queen and Elizabeth I, played by Margot Robbie. This is well-worked dramatic territory, and Rourke’s film is full of the exquisite costumes, dramatic battle scenes and eye-catching locations one associates with historical films, including occasional bursts of over-the-top period campery for good measure, such as David Tennant’s lavishly bearded John Knox who rails furiously against the unnatural spectacle of a woman on the throne. That “whore of Babylon”, he thunders, that “false Queen”. In other ways, though, the film is startlingly unconventional. For a start, Rourke has imported from British theatre a principle still unfamiliar in cinema: colour-blind casting. Bess of Hardwick, for example, is played by Gemma Chan, while Thomas Randolph, Elizabeth’s agent at Mary’s court, is portrayed by Adrian Lester. This has not gone down well in certain quarters. “I sometimes feel,” says Rourke, “that people’s reaction to a person of colour in a film is more an index of their prejudices than about having a real issue with authenticity.” And anyway, she says, turning a story into a film is already an exercise in make-believe. “Representation is an act of the imagination. Margot Robbie is Australian. Saoirse Ronan is Irish. Jack Lowden is Scottish and is playing an English person, which was probably the weirdest thing for people on set.” Lester, she adds, was an obvious first choice to play a shrewd diplomatic go-between. “Adrian was Peter Brook’s Hamlet. He knows more about this period in history, because of his depth of experience as a classical actor, than anyone else did on that set, except for perhaps Simon Russell Beale, who turned up one day to read Mary’s death warrant. Because of his exquisite finesse and subtlety as an actor, he is better equipped to play an ambassador than anyone else I can think of. Why would you not harness that talent and knowledge?” The other departure from convention reflects Rourke’s feminist eye. Her film is based on My Heart Is My Own, a biography of Mary by Cambridge history don John Guy that attempts to rescue the Scottish Catholic queen from some of the more lurid claims made about her, some promoted by the English Protestant court. “What’s happened to Mary is that she’s got a bit stuck in Tate Britain,” says Rourke. “She’s a bit like one of those pre-Raphaelite paintings, of which I’m not a great fan, where she is kind of a prone victim who has either just been killed or is ready for sex. She has become either a femme fatale governed by sexual appetites, or someone who is too wilful to be competent. Elizabeth is usually set up as a counterpoint, portrayed as iron-willed, calculating. I don’t think any of those things are quite true.” Rourke attempts to present a more subtle story, not just about “strong women”, but about two people who were also “gigantically vulnerable, sometimes confused about what to do, trying to work out what the political landscape was, fighting for the rights of their own bodies – stuff that we do now that is sometimes missing from those narratives.” The film has much to say about bodies: about the queens’ different calculations about marriage and producing an heir; about the violence done to women by men; about sexual pleasure; about physical closeness between women friends; about clothing as a projection of power and desirability. When I last saw Rourke, several months previously, she had been arguing with producers over the edit. She wanted to include scenes that showed Mary having her period, and another that showed her being given oral sex. “I was fighting for a period in a period movie,” she says. “Those were instructive discussions about how honest we were being about women’s bodies and what they do, women’s pleasure and what that is, and a queen’s body as a political canvas. I felt that was something I hadn’t seen before, that I just really wanted to show. There are not many of us who know what it feels like to be a crowned head of Europe – but what we do know is what it’s like to fight for the rights of our bodies.” She got her way in the end: the scenes are still there. “We need to show this stuff. It does need normalising. A journalist asked me how hard it was to shoot the scene where Mary has her period, and my answer was, ‘Not hard at all!’ There were six women in that room, and it was probably the thing that just most easily staged itself. But it does continue to freak some people out.” As for the cunnilingus scene, Rourke did not employ an intimacy director – a safeguarding role increasingly being discussed in the performing arts. Rather, she worked with the choreographer Wayne McGregor, who was movement director for the film. “I don’t think I’ve ever done a sex scene without a movement director, without treating it as a piece of choreography,” she says. “I hope the sex scenes feel truthful and alive. To think in a language of movement helps remove embarrassment, discomfort or shame.” Rourke is still in a tiny minority as a woman director in the mainstream film industry. But she is optimistic that this will change – and quickly. She was in her mid-30s when she became artistic director of the Donmar in 2012. “My experience in theatre is that the door opened a crack and let a few of us in – and people just kept flowing through. It’s important that this film succeeds, not because I am desperate for it to succeed, but so they will let a few more women through. That is the pressure I feel.” Mary Queen of Scots is released on 18 January.Any champion football player disappointed with Monday’s dinner at the White House can blame Democrats, according to a presidential spokesman. Clemson University’s football team on Thursday joined Donald Trump for dinner to celebrate their win over Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship. However, the government shutdown has left much of the White House staff furloughed, forcing the president to set the menu, the spokesperson said. The event created a golden culinary opportunity for a president whose typical evenings reportedly often involve a cheeseburger in front of the TV. On Monday’s menu was “McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King’s with some pizza”, Trump told reporters. White House says President Trump "is personally paying for” event with National Champions Clemson tonight "to be catered with some of everyone’s favorite fast foods,” because "much of the residence staff at the White House is furloughed” due to the ongoing government shutdown. pic.twitter.com/qeMc4iSKmG Photos of the spread show an array of Quarter Pounders and Big Macs, alongside silver bowls filled with various sauces – all individually wrapped to minimize waste. The president reasoned that the team would enjoy the fast food: “We have some very large people that like eating. So I think we’re going to have a little fun.” The food was also patriotic, he pointed out. Asked whether he preferred McDonald’s or Wendy’s, he noted: “If it’s American, I like it. It’s all American stuff,” Trump said. He added: “No matter what we did, there’s nothing you can have that’s better than that, right?” Here’s a video I shot of President Trump showing off his 300 hamburgers. pic.twitter.com/P06S6I5w07 Many on social media pointed out that top athletes might have reservations about eating 1,000 hamburgers, as Trump initially announced. In the end there were apparently a mere 300.Muslims in the southern Philippines are voting in a referendum on the proposed creation of an autonomous region that the government hopes will end nearly half a century of unrest and prevent a new wave of attacks by Islamic State-inspired militants. The vote caps a tumultuous peace effort by the government in Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the main rebel group, to seal a deal signed in 2014 but which had languished in the Philippine congress until it was finally approved last year. Bloodshed on Mindanao island, including the siege of Marawi city by Isis-linked militants in 2017, and other bombings and attacks in the south, threatened to derail it. “This is the first time I have voted in an election,” 70-year-old Murad Ebrahim, the chairman of the MILF, said on Monday as he showed off his ink-stained finger. “This solidifies the transformation from armed struggle to democratic politics.” Under the deal for Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), the rebels gave up their goal of an independent state in exchange for broad autonomy. Their 30,000-40,000 fighters are to be demobilised, ending a decades-long separatist rebellion that has killed more than 100,000 people. Murad was confident of a landslide victory for autonomy in most areas. “The Bangsamoro Organic Law will be ratified and the Bangsamoro government will be established,” he said. More than 2m ballots have been printed and a result is expected by Friday. The president, Rodrigo Duterte, last week urged voters to approve the plan and show they wanted peace, development and a local leadership that “truly represents and understand the needs of the Muslim people”. Centuries of conquest, first by Spanish and American colonial forces followed by Filipino Christian settlers, have gradually turned Muslims into a minority group in Mindanao, triggering conflict over land, resources and the sharing of political power. Uprisings seeking self-rule have been brutally suppressed, feeding resentment. The peace process that began in 1997 has been disrupted through the years by violent episodes, including an all-out war between the military and the MILF in 2001. Regional conflict escalated in in May 2017 when Isis militants took control of the Mindanao city of Marawi. It took five months for the Philippine army, backed by US and Australian surveillance aircraft, to quash the militants in a conflict that left 1,200 people, mostly Islamic fighters, dead and the city in ruins. Carlito Galvez Jr, the former chief of staff of the armed forces, said the creation of the Muslim region would be an important antidote to extremism in the region. “Beyond the economic and other fiscal incentives the law aims to provide, the BOL is, first and foremost, a document of peace,” said Galvez Jr, who will oversee the decommissioning of the rebel forces. “The BOL will ensure that those who use armed violence will become irrelevant because the law will provide people with greater incentive to choose the path of peace and development,” he said. He said the creation of the region would also facilitate better cooperation between the military, police, and the rebels in addressing other armed groups. Despite the fall of Marawi, the threat of Islamic extremism remains a major concern in Mindanao. The Guardian reported last year that an estimated 40 to 100 foreign fighters travelled to Mindanao to provide training and galvanise Isis support. This was reiterated in a document submitted to the Philippine supreme court this week that states that more than 200 villages in Mindanao are under threat from Isis-inspired groups who have the support of a growing number of foreign fighters. “There is consistent influx of foreign terrorists in the country who are primarily responsible for the conduct of training to local terrorist fighters, especially in making IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and motivating locals to serve as suicide bombers,” read the document filed by the office of the solicitor general in a rare public acknowledgement by the government of the level of threat still posed by Islamic militants in Mindanao. If approved, the new region of Bangsamoro will replace an existing poverty-racked autonomous region with a larger, better-funded and more powerful entity. An annual grant, estimated at $1.3bn (£1bn), is to be set aside to bolster development. Another vote is scheduled on 6 February for additional areas that might want to join the new Muslim region.Carlos Acosta, the ballet superstar considered one of the greatest dancers of all time, is to take charge of Birmingham Royal Ballet. The surprise announcement, which will be considered a major coup for the Birmingham company, was made on Tuesday afternoon. Acosta will take up his appointment in January 2020, succeeding the current director, David Bintley, who stands down at the end of the current season in July. Acosta said it was “a tremendous honour and privilege” to have been appointed as new director of “one of the country’s leading classical ballet companies. “My ambition is to build on its classical traditions, to expand its repertoire and to reach out to new and more diverse audiences. I want to define what it is to be a world-leading classical ballet company in the 21st century.” Acosta, for 17 years a principal at the Royal Ballet, is regarded as one of the greatest dancers in the world and has a remarkable rags-to-riches life story. The youngest of 11 children, he was born and brought up in one of the poorest districts in Havana and frequently skipped school. He was effectively forced in to ballet by his father, a lorry driver, to keep him off the streets and out of trouble. Acosta trained at the National Ballet School of Cuba before leaving to gradually build his stellar dance career with many of the world’s leading ballet companies. He bade farewell to Covent Garden in 2015 but continued to dance with his company Acosta Danza, most recently appearing at the Royal Albert Hall last October in a mixed bill celebrating his 30-year career. Sir David Normington, the chair of Birmingham Royal Ballet, said it was a great moment for the company. “We have secured the greatest male dancer of his generation to be our new director,” he said. “I know he will bring us his legendary artistry, energy and charisma and enable us to connect with new audiences, particularly in Birmingham. “It is a statement to the whole dance world that, building on David Bintley’s great legacy, Birmingham Royal Ballet intends to remain a major force for classical ballet in the UK and beyond.” Birmingham Royal Ballet is based at the Birmingham Hippodrome. It was originally established as Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, a touring sister company to the Royal Ballet, before relocating to Birmingham and changing its name in 1990. Like other arts organisations in Birmingham it is facing further deep cuts in its budget from one of its principal funders, the cash-strapped Birmingham city council. The appointment of Acosta was welcomed by Sir Nicholas Serota, chair of Arts Council England. He said: “Birmingham Royal Ballet is an exceptional company, with an international reputation for the artistic quality of its work. “We look forward to seeing Carlos build on this legacy, and to the company continuing to delight audiences with their array of classical and groundbreaking ballets.” Acosta is known for being warm and refreshingly down-to earth. In a Guardian Weekend Q&A last year he revealed his guilty pleasure to be BBC One’s Poldark and his most unappealing habit leaving wet towels on the bed. “It makes my wife very angry.”House Republicans formally stripped Representative Steve King of all committee assignments on Monday night, days after the Iowa Republican drew criticism for yet another controversial and racially charged comment. In an interview with the New York Times published last week, King rhetorically said “white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” The Iowa Republican has long been a lightning rod within his own party, making controversial comments, particularly on Twitter. King endorsed a white nationalist candidate for Toronto mayor, tweeted in support of far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders saying “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” compared immigrants to dirt and used rhetoric common to the alt-right in an interview with a magazine affiliated with the far-right Austrian Freedom party. King’s conduct drew condemnation from Steve Stivers, the head of the National Republican Campaign Committee, only days before the 2018 midterms. “Congressman Steve King’s recent comments, actions, and retweets are completely inappropriate. We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior,” said the Ohio Republican in a tweet. However, King still campaigned with top Iowa Republicans on the eve of the election and had not faced the full condemnation of his party until his most recent comments. In a statement on the decision to strip King of his committee assignments, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, said: “Steve’s remarks are beneath the dignity of the Party of Lincoln and the United States of America. His comments call into question whether he will treat all Americans equally, without regard for race and ethnicity. House Republicans are clear: we are all in this together, as fellow citizens equal before God and the law. As Congressman King’s fellow citizens, let us hope and pray earnestly that this action will lead to greater reflection and ultimately change on his part. In contrast, King insisted his words had been mischaracterized in a statement and said: “Leader McCarthy’s decision to remove me from committees is a political decision that ignores the truth.” Nick Ryan, a veteran Iowa Republican operative and longtime King critic, told the Guardian of King’s political career, “It’s over. Just a question of how it all formally ends now.” King still faces the potential for a formal resolution of censure in the House of Representatives. At least two members have introduced such resolutions, including the Democrat Tim Ryan of Ohio, who is joined by the co-sponsors Dave Joyce of Ohio, a Republican, and Dave Loebsack of Iowa, a Democrat. King drew a primary challenge last week from Randy Feenstra, an ardent social conservative who serves in the Iowa state senate. In a statement, Feenstra said: “One week ago, I announced my candidacy for Congress because our district desperately needs an effective conservative leader to represent our communities in Congress. Sadly, today, the voters and conservative values of our district have lost their seat at the table because of Congressman King’s caustic behavior.” King joins two other House Republicans, Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of California, in having no committee assignments. Both are under indictment.Snowed under with debts from a failed business, Renata’s hands shook as she told a tale of financial misery that drove her to contemplate suicide and visited fear on her ageing parents. “I was so scared of the debt collectors because they were coming to my parents’ house,” she said, depicting a nightmare scenario as hungry creditors closed in. “If you are a debtor here, the state criminalises you, worse than if you’re a real criminal. Even a murderer can be released early with good behaviour. I didn’t kill anyone or hurt anyone, I didn’t want my business to collapse – but I will not be free until the end of my life.” Renata’s harrowing experience mirrors a mounting personal debt crisis in the Czech Republic that is undermining one of Europe’s most flourishing economies by driving workers into the shadow economy to evade aggressive debt collectors. Now Czech MPs are under pressure to enact emergency legislation that could provide an escape route for the country’s vast army of debtors. They will vote on a radical new bankruptcy law this month after the Czech senate rejected an earlier proposal as too weak to tackle a crisis that critics say has left a trail of blighted lives and broken marriages. Renata, 54, is typical. Withholding her last name to shield her family and her five-year-old daughter, she described losing her home and possessions and enduring marital separation after the small building company she ran with her husband in a village near Prague went bust following the 2008 global financial crash, saddling her with bills she could not pay and allowing debt agencies to seize her property. “It has completely ruined my life,” she said, sitting in a cafe in the industrial city of Kladno, 18 miles north-west of Prague. “It’s hopeless. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. I’d like to repay some of the debt, but I’ve no money or property. And I need to care for my daughter.” Renata owes around 7m Czech koruna (£245,000) according to 34 separate debt recovery notices tabled by different private bailiff companies, some of which have repeatedly harassed her parents for money. Compounding her problems is what experts say is one of Europe’s most stringent insolvency laws, restricting bankruptcy to those able to prove they can pay 30% of their debts – impossible on her meagre income as a part-time bookkeeper. It is this law that MPs are being urged to reform. Renata is just one of 863,000 Czechs – out of a population of 10.6 million – facing paralysing demands after debt collectors ordered their bank accounts frozen and their incomes slashed on behalf of creditors determined to pursue outstanding dues regardless of ability to pay. Some 150,000 people have 10 or more outstanding debts for amounts they can never hope to pay. Many face inflated fines for not having valid tickets on public transport, often when they were children. Around 6,000 Czechs face debts from fines incurred when they were minors, mostly for being caught on trams or metro trains without tickets. Even a murderer can be released early with good behaviour. I didn’t kill anyone or hurt anyone but I will not be free until the end of my life Critics say lives are being scarred by a punitive debt-collecting system that has no parallel in western Europe – with local transport authorities and public utilities selling small unpaid debts to private collecting agencies at a huge mark-up. That often leads to modest sums being multiplied to thousands of pounds once late-payment sanctions and fees for lawyers and bailiffs are added. Some debtors borrow money to pay off the demands and fall into secondary debt. “My girlfriend and I were each fined 800 koruna (£28) when we were caught on the tram without a ticket in 2006,” said Sam Kahakzad, 32, a television producer from Prague. “We had no money, so couldn’t pay on the spot. We didn’t hear anything else until 2011, when we got letters demanding 28,000 koruna (£977) and warning we would be fined 10,000 koruna (£349) if we didn’t pay within a month. I had to make two emergency payments from my salary.” In one instance, a debt officially quoted at 3.5p for the electricity company Bohemia Energy soared to more than £733 after costs. The inflating of unpaid accounts with fees and penalties became commonplace after a 2001 reform ushering in a system of private bailiffs, who collected debts that had proliferated during a credit boom after the downfall of the communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia in 1989. Debt recovery rates duly increased. But anti-debt campaigners point to abuses exacerbated by competition among the 150 private bailiffs – some of whom are notorious for entering homes and seizing property, including children’s toys – and their close relationship with politicians, who have turned a blind eye to excesses. They warn that rising indebtedness is feeding inequality and social exclusion that threatens the country’s democratic gains after the fall of communism and joining the EU. “Experience with indebtedness and collection is associated with lower trust in institutions, lower trust in democracy,” said Daniel Prokop, a sociologist at Prague Charles University. “These people may not be authoritarian in the sense of supporting Vladimir Putin, but they say for people like them it doesn’t matter whether there is democracy. It is the people around them who are driven to extreme parties.” Jan Čulík, Czech studies specialist at Glasgow University, called the issue “one of the main factors destabilising the country”. He said: “No wonder people distrust the democratic regime and vote for populists and the new oligarchs. Would you vote for ‘democratic establishment’ politicians who condemned you to perpetual debt slavery? Under communism, nothing like this ever happened.” Meanwhile, debtors have become convenient scapegoats amid the rising populist mood. The Czech president, Miloš Zeman, who was prime minister when the current debt recovery law was passed, has repeatedly blamed them for their own predicament. Radek Hábl, a debt relief campaigner, compiled an interactive map showing that areas with the highest personal debt levels also displayed the greatest voter support for populist parties, and for Zeman, who was re-elected in last January’s presidential election. “It’s interesting because Zeman says he hates debtors,” said Hábl.At the age of 14, Jonathan Levit was given an order by the infamously brutal Mara Salvatrucha gang in his native Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras: to kill a friend he had known throughout childhood – “like a brother, all my life”. Jonathan had, like almost every child in the city of Tela’s terrifying barrio of Colonia 15 de Septiembre, grown up in the gang’s shadow; there was no avoiding it, especially if you were partial to a smoke, as he was. And now the time had come for him to execute “a mission” for what is also called MS-13 – the gang which, Jonathan says, “doesn’t just run Colonia 15, they almost run Honduras”. “But,” Jonathan recalls, “I’d rather have a friend than a peso in my pocket, and I refused. Whatever the price, that’s something I wouldn’t do.” The MS-13 death sentence was accordingly switched: Jonathan would die instead. Jonathan lived to tell his story this week in the courtyard of Casa del Migrante (Migrant House) at Ciudad Juárez in northernmost Mexico – cheek-by-jowl with El Paso, Texas. Having fled Honduras, he is determined to escape to the United States. Jonathan is one of 4,000 migrants since November last year, mostly from Central America, to pass through this center – operated by the Catholic diocese, run by two social workers, and volunteers. Jonathan wears an orange jacket and shock of black hair; his eyes are obsidian-deep and quick with mischief and wit. He remembers his life back home unhappily, without sentiment: “I started smoking marijuana when I was eight – I can’t tell you I’m proud of my life, or that it’s a good place to be, even before that happened with the Mara. But even if I wanted to go back, I can’t – ever – they’d kill me in the beat of a heart.” Sitting at a concrete table are two boys from Guatemala City with whom Jonathan has teamed up, Osman and Rodrigo, themselves in flight from “poverty and violence” back home. By contrast, this place is sad but clean and organised; mothers and children sit beside a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe; boys play football – but it’s no more than a way station. All three at our table want to work in construction in the US, but while the Guatemalans left recently, Jonathan’s nightmare is in his adolescent past: he’s now 19, become an artful dodger and survivor of the road, trying to cross the border into America. “I’ve been in Mexico five years now, working, saving, hiding – planning the moment. The Mexicans ordered me deported twice, but I slipped the net. The trains through this country” – La Bestia – “have been my home. They’re more dangerous for women than me; getting raped, kidnapped and killed. But now my time has come to cross.” With lines for asylum lengthening, and Donald Trump entrenching his hostility to migration, Jonathan has not entered the system most families here have conjoined, registering for a plastic bracelet and numbered place in the so-called metering line for an asylum hearing. “They’ve made it too difficult, and it takes too long. I’ll go alone, my own way.” Osman and Rodrigo are going illegally too; “Trump has made asylum impossible – too long, and you’ll likely get turned back”, says Osman, in English. “I miss it back there; my mother calls me every fucking day – it’s torture - but too dangerous to stay and there’s no future in Guatemala. I have to risk it.” Rodrigo, quieter, is more nervous: “I’ve a wife and son back home, that’s who I’m doing this for – but what if I get caught?” Word is out that migrants arriving in Ciudad Juárez stand a statistically negligible chance of asylum through El Paso compared to ports of entry into California from Tijuana where lines are therefore longer, tempting more and more to try Jonathan’s way. But El Paso’s courts are not the only menace. Juárez last year suffered a sudden surge in homicides: 1,247 – a rate of 96 per 100,000. By far the highest toll for any year since the city’s hyper-violence of 2008-2011, during which this was the most murderous metropolis in the world. Juárez now has Mexico’s second highest murder rate after Tijuana, attributed by city security and justice officials to turf wars between gangs for street-sale and cross-border smuggling of drugs. Casa del Migrante lies on the city outskirts towards the perilous Valle de Juárez, entrepôt for narco-traffic and likely route for migrants trying to cross illegally, including these boys. So acute danger faces those heading north, as traffickers hover to prey on and profit from the increased pool of potential custom, and those deported in the opposite direction, as gangs recruit their footsoldiers. The worst massacre in Mexico’s carnage since 2006 was not drug-related, but that of 72 migrants at San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in 2010, who refused or were unable to pay ‘la cuota’ – the levy. Traffickers are known in the parlance as ‘coyotes’ or ‘polleros’ – their quarry ‘pollos’, chickens. Blanca Ribera is one of two social workers at Casa del Migrante; after eight years, she says, “I’ve seen all kinds come through – before mostly Mexicans, but no longer. It’s never been like this – these numbers and so desperate, people who just cannot go back.” Ribera explains that a police presence outside the chain-link fence topped with razor wire is “because of incidents at the center and to keep away polleros. It’s forbidden for migrants go to the fence and talk to polleros. If they do, and seem honest, we’ll explain the risks; if they look to be doing business, they must leave. Those expelled, we do not see again.” Whether they make it or not; migrant disappearances are oft-reported along the border; sometimes people ask at the centre if a vanished person has been seen. But there’s a twist, according to Jonathan and almost all those who plan crossing of their own device. “The police are part of the system. We all know that,” says Jonathan. How part of this? Jonathan laughs again and makes to slice his index finger in half, “Fifty-fifty, that’s how it works. We watch the polleros watching us on the bridges and in the town, and the police allow the polleros to work on their plaza – turf – for a 50-50 cut on the money paid. If you don’t believe that, you’re an idiot. That’s partly why I stay away from them – to be apart from that shit.” Leticia Chavarría is a GP in one of Juárez’ many assembly plants who established a medical advocacy committee during the city’s most violent years and now works with the Bi-national Network for Solidarity with Migrants. “Everyone knows the crossings are managed by the polleros,” she says, “and it’s been understood that for years they’ve operated complicit with the authorities, under an accord never documented or proved. Polleros run stash houses across the city and do business openly, but are only arrested in very isolated cases”. There was no response to a request through his office to interview the mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Armando Carbada, on the policing of migrant security. The border hardens still: just east of downtown Juárez, late winter sun skates across a concrete slope down to the slow trickle of the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo on this side), and up the other bank, which is the USA, where Mexican-American workers operate a Volvo digger and trucks to build a brand new stretch of high steel fence. Wall or no wall, this new fortification – which started to the north, separating the satellite barrio of Anapra from New Mexico, under the Obama administration – began late last year under Trump, and continues. And as another caravan forms this week in Honduras, Ribera draws attention to a further, crucial, matter: resources. Circumstances combine against the running of places like Casa del Migrante; not just the surge in numbers and entrenched US policy, but accession by Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to a demand from Trump that asylum-seekers must wait in Mexico, not the US, for their cases to be heard. Mexico’s borderland is not yet America’s migrant waiting room, “but as the number of migrants increases, government help is reduced”, says Ribera. At Christmas, the priest who oversees Casa del Migrante, Padre Javier Calvillo, gave a rare press conference during which he lambasted Mexican federal, state and municipal authorities for failing to provide sufficient funds or manpower to help centres like this cope. “The municipality had taken 80 migrants from the bridge directly to Casa del Migrante, without any processing,” says Chavarría, “and Fr Calvillo said he could take no more. The city opened its own shelter, but it lasted a week.” Ribera says the city has now “assigned six workers due to arrive, and six more to come”. She added: “But the reality is that we are dependent on the church, and private donations from Ciudad Juárez, El Paso and Las Cruces [New Mexico]. It’s ironic that while Donald Trump’s policies and wall divide our countries, the support is all bi-national, from good people on both sides of the border. It’s corazon contra hígado, as we say in Mexico – heart against liver.” “The truth is,” says Chavarría, “that when most of those going across or being deported were Mexicans, there was more interest. The attitude is that these are Central Americans, not our problem. But it is. What will they do if they cannot enter the United States? Our work, either side of the border, is to educate both migrants and our own citizens on the rights they have.” Back at Casa del Migrante, more people arrive at the heavy gates: families from Guatemala like Eder Ramírez and his daughter, Leti, age eight; and two women travelling from Panajachel, with two children each, “running from the gangs”. Had they heard about two other children from their own country who died in US custody just across the river, over Christmas? No. A guard explains the rules: you must surrender your phone at reception and collect it when you leave. No weapons or drugs; no Viagra, only one smoking area. Then they register, grateful for a wide smile on the volunteer’s face. Leti wants a soda from the vending machine, but there’s no cash, and they look in a storage closet for donated used clothes that might fit. Leti chooses a pink Loony Tunes hoodie. I tell Jonathan I hope his friend is grateful for what he did – or didn’t do. “He is,” he replies. “He vanished from the Mara’s sight, and is still alive.” How long can you stay here? “Three days.” How long have you been here? “Three days. I cross tomorrow night.”Judd Trump won his first Masters title with an emphatic 10-4 victory over Ronnie O’Sullivan at Alexandra Palace. The 29-year-old began as an underdog in his first Masters final against a player seeking his eighth title, but made an impressive start, sweeping to a 4-0 lead and chalking up breaks of 89, 87 and 56. O’Sullivan went into the mid-session interval having scored only 45 points in the first four frames, but rallied with a 69 break to take the fifth. That didn’t rattle his opponent, who took the next three frames to open up a 7-1 lead ahead of Sunday’s evening session. Trailing by six frames going into the final session, O’Sullivan needed a fast start and he got one. He pulled one back in a scrappy opening before a fluked red at the start of the 10th frame let Trump in and he made no mistake with a break of 88. He was in the balls again and looked set to open up a 9-2 lead before he missed a long red with the rest, and O’Sullivan stepped up with a brilliant clearance of 114 to keep his hopes alive and reduce the arrears to 8-3. Trump responded by going 9-3 up via a break of 68, leaving O’Sullivan needing to win seven frames in a row. O’Sullivan subsequently registered another century break, posting 109 as he brought the gap down to five frames once again. However it was Trump’s night, and despite missing a relatively straightforward pink, he was let back in after O’Sullivan left a pink over the pocket. The Bristol left-hander then stepped up to put the match beyond doubt and claim his first Masters title with an emphatic 10-4 victory. It is Trump’s second “triple crown” title – and first for more than seven years – after winning the 2011 UK Championship. It is just the third defeat for O’Sullivan all season.The government has been accused of defying parliament by delaying plans to require British tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands to bring in public registers that reveal the true identity of owners of companies sheltering assets. Foreign Office ministers have caved in after a rebellion in the British overseas territories, including threats to take the government to court or even to secede from the UK. The British-administered tax shelters have always been seen as a blight on the Conservative claim to be fighting the multibillion-pound corruption industry. The Foreign Office told the overseas territories that they did not need to introduce compulsory public registers until 2023 – three years after the date MPs had thought they had set by law in a fractious debate last May. The date means public registers in the overseas territories, seen as critical to winding down tax avoidance, will not be introduced until a decade after David Cameron first raised the issue as a flagship anti-corruption measure ahead of the UK chairmanship of the G7 industrialised economies. A cross-party alliance of MPs last May, led by the former Conservative cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell and the former chair of the public accounts committee Margaret Hodge, had forced the government to concede that it would introduce an order in council by 2020 requiring public registers to be set up if the overseas territories had not done so voluntarily by that date. Hodge said: “This new timetable is a sleight of hand and an attempt to ignore the clear will of parliament. It was clear not that that order in council should be introduced in 2020, but the public register. We will have to consider what steps are taken to restore what was intended.” Mitchell said: “It is good that the overseas territories and Foreign Office accept that important change is coming. Nevertheless, parliament will be surprised at any move to put back the implementation date. I am sure the overseas territories and the Foreign Office will not want to challenge parliament by revisiting an issue on which they were not successful.” Chris Bryant, a Labour member of the foreign affairs select committee, said: “This timetable is not what parliament thought they were getting when they discussed this. The government has dragged its heels on this issue and this seems yet another unjustified delay. It as if the government has become the Department for Procrastination. It means the British overseas territories remain Britain’s achilles heel when it comes to financial corruption, money laundering and dodgy money.” He pointed out the amendment to the sanctions and money laundering bill that was passed set a deadline of 2020 for the order in council. MPs pushing this motion made clear this was also seen as the deadline for the introduction of the public register, he said,and that was also the understanding in the overseas territories. Shadow foreign office minister Helen Goodman said: “The government have tried and tried to avoid and delay this. But the law is clear. This takes their contempt for parliament to a new low.” Ministers appear to have backtracked after the 2020 deadline caused outrage in the overseas territories, which are worried that this timetable for disclosure requirements would lead to a flood of business decamping to other more secretive tax havens. Territories including the Cayman Islands argued that public registers should only be compulsory when they are introduced worldwide. The 2023 timetable was set out by Lord Ahmad, the minister responsible for the overseas territories, in evidence to the foreign affairs select committee. He told the committee: “It is our intention that if by 2020 there is no public register, for whatever territory, we will then issue an order in council, which will then have a requirement for an operational public register by 2023.” He said the only obligation provided in the legislation was to pass an order in council by 2020, but no date for the actual introduction of the public register was set. He has formally advised the overseas territories of this new timetable in writing following a meeting of the joint ministerial council, the body that brings together ministers and the overseas territories. Tax transparency campaigners have argued for more than a decade that only a public register will force companies to end the systematic tax evasion that lies at the heart of the economies of the overseas territories. A public register would be available to tax experts and reporters, not just law enforcement officials. “Every year that goes by gives more opportunity for dirty money to flow through the UK’s overseas territories and crown dependencies undetected,” said Rachel Davies Teka, the head of advocacy at Transparency International UK. “It will be disappointing if the overseas territories do not take the initiative to implement public registers on their own terms before the 2020 deadline.” The overseas territories are already in the process of setting up registers of beneficial ownership of companies that will only be available to law enforcement officers on request. Hodge said the cross-party alliance against tax havens had, in private negotiation with ministers last year, agreed to defer the introduction of the public register by a year to 2020 after ministers argued the territories were struggling to cope in the wake of hurricanes. The new timetable sets the date for the public register beyond the next UK election, opening the possibility that the timetable could be deferred further.In 1959, Hugh Lewin, who has died aged 79, joined the South African Liberal party: shortly afterwards it became the only legal non-racial political party in the country, with the banning in 1960 of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. Frustrated at the ruthless police state repression, Hugh joined the clandestine African Resistance Movement and embarked on a sabotage campaign, targeting government installations such as electricity pylons. ARM members were soon arrested after the police discovered its entire cell structure and its plans at the Cape Town flat of the national organiser, Adrian Leftwich, also a prominent Liberal. Best man at Hugh’s wedding, Leftwich turned state witness to convict him at his 1964 trial, as did his close friend and co-conspirator John Lloyd. Hugh told the judge: “I was terrified. Instinctively I was opposed to any form of violence and I knew that I was not suitable for the active role I was being asked to play … [but] I thought that sabotage might shock the whites into an awareness of the conditions under which blacks were living and, in due time, change the system. The motive was to shock, not to injure.” He was sentenced to seven years in jail. With typical modesty, he later described his prison sentence as “a parking ticket” compared to the much longer jail terms of the Robben Island prisoners who included Mandela. But he was seriously tortured, beaten regularly, constantly intimidated, and subjected to the pettiest cruelties. Like other white “politicals”, he was pilloried for betraying white volk. But Hugh’s spirit remained undaunted. He kept a secret diary, writing between the lines of his Bible in minute, almost-invisible pencil. Denis Goldberg, sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia trial, remembers: “He sang beautifully in his baritone voice to entertain our prisoner group and was a great actor in our Christmas concerts, singing revolutionary songs with communist tenor Eli Weinberg. The red flag and the Internationale were as much part of his repertoire as liberal songs out of the US Christian movement. He really contributed to building our unity.” I was then in exile in Britain leading the 1969-70 demonstrations to disrupt and stop whites-only Springbok rugby and cricket tours. There was a news blackout in prison, but a delighted Hugh heard about the campaign and that “bastard traitor” Peter Hain from his furious warders. Following his release in 1971, Hugh left South Africa for London on a one-way exit permit and immediately started transforming his secret jail diary into the book Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison, published in the UK in 1974. It was hailed as a classic in prison writing, containing a heart-wrenching poem Touch, about being tactile, which prison forbade. The sequel, Bandiet – Out of Jail (2002), published in the UK and in South Africa only when it was safe to do so after apartheid had ended, won the 2003 Olive Schreiner prize. In its foreword, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote: “Hugh Lewin went through sheer hell and emerged, not devastated, not broken and not consumed with bitterness or a lust for revenge. He is endowed with ubuntu – the very essence of being human.” Hugh was gentle and self-deprecating, and never sought the limelight. His jail-mate Paul Trewhela wrote: “He sought for no high office, and never trumpeted his name. He always did what he thought was right, no matter what the cost.” Born to Anglican missionary parents, Michael, a priest, and Muriel, a nurse, in Lydenburg, Hugh initially wanted to be a priest – perhaps influenced by his boyhood mentor, Trevor Huddleston. But soon after his arrival at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, he became embroiled in student politics, together with fellow black students from neighbouring Fort Hare, and my aunt Josephine Stocks, an activist. After graduating, he honed his journalistic skills at the Natal Witness, Drum magazine and the Golden City Post. Then, like my parents, his close friends Adelaine and Walter Hain, he became a member of the Liberal party of South Africa. After his release from jail, Hugh spent 10 years in London, working at the Guardian and for the International Defence and Aid Fund and was active in the British Anti-Apartheid Movement. He also started writing his much-loved Jafta children’s books about a little boy growing up in an African village. Less publicised was the key role he played in the publication of Steve Biko’s iconic I Write What I Like in 1978. Biko’s biographer Xolela Mangcu said: “Lewin was not one to go on the rooftops to shout about how he had contributed to the production of that seminal book, but those of us who were influenced by Biko’s ideas will be forever indebted to him.” When Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, Hugh moved to Harare with his then-wife, and former solicitor in prison, Pat Davidson, and their two small daughters. He felt it would be “closer to home”. There he trained a new generation of journalists, and co-founded Baobab Books for many emerging Zimbabwean writers who went on to achieve global success. Following his return to South Africa in 1993, he headed the new Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, in Johannesburg, and served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In 2012 he won the Alan Paton award for Stones Against the Mirror (2011), a soul-searching, beautifully crafted masterpiece about friendship and betrayal in the liberation struggle. In his final years, Hugh lived with Lewy body dementia, navigating this with typical courage, selflessly cared for by his partner of 30 years, the journalist Fiona Lloyd. He is survived by Fiona, and by his daughters, Thandi and Tessa, from his marriage to Pat, which ended in divorce. • Hugh Lewin, journalist and activist, born 3 December 1939; died 16 January 2019Antarctic explorers are to break their way through 75 miles (120km) of sea ice in an effort to reach the final resting place of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, which sank to the bottom of the Weddell Sea in November 1915. Expedition leaders believe they have the best chance yet to find the wreckage of the lost vessel, which became trapped in sea ice for 10 months and eventually went down in two miles of water after the crushing forces of the surrounding ice breached its hull. Researchers on the SA Agulhas II, a 13,700-tonne icebreaker, hope to reach the wreck site later this week if the weather and sea conditions do not turn. But that is not a given in the changeable Antarctic waters, which have a knack for scuppering even the best-laid plans. “We hope to achieve what we thought was impossible,” said Mensun Bound, director of exploration on the 2019 Weddell Sea expedition. “Although the odds of success were initially against us, the mood within the team is upbeat given the favourable ice and weather conditions, which we think will allow us to reach the search area.” Much of the Weddell Sea can be completely covered in sea ice up to 3 metres (10ft) thick, making it impassable for even the beefiest icebreakers. The explorers are using satellite imagery and drones to monitor the moving sea ice and chart what they hope will be a course through. “We now view this as the best opportunity in history to locate Endurance and we are relishing the chance to be involved in a search of such significance,” Bound added. Should the explorers make it to the last known location of the Endurance, they will send autonomous robotic submarines into the water to scan the seafloor for the sunken ship. Any wreckage will then be inspected with a better-equipped robotic sub, or “remote operated vehicle”, which is tethered to the ship. The spot where the Endurance went down is known with some precision, thanks to the coordinates recorded by Frank Worsley, Shackleton’s skipper and master navigator. What remains of the Endurance is unknown. The 44-metre long, three-masted barquentine may be so much debris scattered over the seabed. But there is a chance that what remained of the ship after Shackleton’s men had stripped it is largely intact if it sank gently to the bottom. Though made of wood, the vessel could be well-preserved because the organisms that cause decay tend not to thrive in such frigid waters. On Sunday, the expedition team was in the Erebus and Terror Gulf off the northern Antarctic peninsula, calibrating a high-precision acoustic positioning system that is used to track the robotic subs. They will start the voyage to the Endurance wreck site on Monday, said John Shears, a polar geographer and the expedition’s leader. “Just getting to the wreck site will be an exciting challenge,” Shears said. “We will need to break through about 120km of dense, thick pack ice, up to 2 -3 metres thick. Then, if we make it, we will be faced with the daunting prospect of finding a way to deploy the autonomous underwater vehicles and the remote operated vehicle through the constantly shifting ice to search for the wreck. It will be an epic adventure!” Scientists on the SA Agulhas II have spent the past two weeks collecting samples and surveying the area around the Larsen C ice shelf, where a trillion-tonne iceberg, four times the size of Greater London, calved in July 2017. Last year, satellite images from the European Space Agency revealed that the massive iceberg, named A68, had begun to move away from the ice shelf and pivot out into the Weddell Sea. Measurements from the area, including surveys from the autonomous submarines gliding beneath the waves, will help scientists understand how ice shelves form and collapse, and whether this has been part of the natural cycle in Antarctic history. Little is known about the organisms that eke out an existence in the Weddell Sea, but images from a tethered robotic submarine deployed by the researchers show corals and other marine life at depths of 400 metres. Julian Dowdeswell, the expedition’s chief scientist and director of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, said the team had gathered detailed observations on the glaciology, oceanography, biology and geology of the area around the Larsen C ice shelf. The expedition has not gone without a hitch. Last week, one of the autonomous submarines got stuck beneath a thick ice floe, costing the expedition four precious days while they smashed through ice to retrieve the vessel. Shears said the research team, along with the officers and crew of the icebreaker, deserved “enormous credit” for working all hours in the snow and freezing cold to gather so much scientific data. He said those onboard were now looking forward to the search for the Endurance as the ship made its way home. “We sincerely hope to get to the wreck site,” he said.I’m suffering from a bad case of opposition envy. Perhaps you missed this only-recently- discovered malady, among all the new year detox supplements and guides “to a new you”. In which case, let me fill you in. Spool back to the early summer of 2016, when twin horrors loomed on the horizon: Brexit and Trump. I imagined back then the devil offering progressive types one wish: they could either have Britain stay in the European Union or see Donald Trump lose the US presidential election. But they could not have both. I wrote then that, forced to make that diabolical choice, I’d opt for a remain victory in the referendum. Though four years of Trump would be a nightmare, Brexit would haunt us for generations. In the end, of course, Satan had the last laugh and we got saddled with both. But as I look across the Atlantic, I think my instinctive choice was probably right. Of course, it’s far too early to make predictions about 2020, and whether US voters will seize their chance to kick Trump out after four years. But what’s already clear is that the forces devoted to opposing America’s 2016 horror – Trump – are doing a better job than the forces opposing ours, Brexit. For one thing, the anti-Trumpers have already won a public vote. On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi returned as speaker of the House of Representatives following Democratic victories last November. The mood was celebratory on Capitol Hill as newly elected Democrats took their seats, revelling in their diversity and plurality, with more women and people of colour than ever before. Some Democrats are anxious about the year ahead, as more than 30 possible contenders for the party’s presidential nomination jostle and compete. But the coming contest could equally be viewed as proof of the party’s vigorous good health, with a deep bench of talent, whether older and experienced figures like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, or younger and charismatic ones, such as Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke. For now, though, the Democrats control one half of America’s lawmaking body, giving them the power to thwart, slow down and interrogate the Trump administration.On Friday, they unveiled a package of measures they called the For the People Act, which took aim at some of the more blatant Trumpian excesses, tightening lobbying rules and demanding presidential candidates release their tax returns. Now they chair House committees, Democrats will have the power to question, and subpoena the Trump inner circle, probing their way through the corruption allegations that surround this president. The most tangible form of opposition, however, is the one that’s led to the shutdown of about a quarter of the federal government, now entering its third week. For the funding tap to be turned back on, both Trump and Congress have to agree on spending bills – and Trump insists that they include $5bn for his wall on the Mexican border. The Democrats refuse to give him that money. (Besides, didn’t Trump promise that the Mexicans would pay for it?) They say the wall is wrong in principle and a spectacular waste of money – and they refuse to have any part of it. Now contrast all that with the situation in Britain. Does the opposition here say that the signature project of the May government – Brexit – is wrong in principle, and a spectacular waste of money? Does it refuse to have any part of it? No. Not even in the face of daily evidence that this is a similarly doomed venture. It could be Michael Gove, he of the 2016 leave campaign, warning that a no-deal crash-out from the EU on 29 March would lead to tariffs on beef and sheep meat of more than 40%. Or Chris Grayling, reassuring us that it’s fine to hand over £13.8m of taxpayers’ money to a ferry company with no ferries, even as Ramsgate begins emergency dredging to become once again a deeper-water port in a matter of weeks. Or Britain’s universities, in effect one of the country’s most successful exports, attracting the best and brightest from Europe and beyond, reporting a drop in take-up of places and warning that no-deal represents “one of the biggest threats” they’ve ever faced. Despite all this, and the undeniable truth that Brexit has always been a project of the nationalist right – a fact of which we shall be vividly reminded by Channel 4’s Brexit drama on Monday night – Labour’s stance has been to hem and haw, to be a little bit leave and a little bit remain, as it maintains its awkward perch on the Brexit fence. Never mind the data that shows Labour members overwhelmingly oppose Brexit, the party leader – who won the job by promising to listen to party members – told the Guardian before Christmas that even if Labour won a 2019 election, he would still go ahead with Brexit. This week Jeremy Corbyn disappointed those who would like to see Labour back a second referendum by appearing to add yet another stage in the much-vaunted sequence of moves that would lead him to call for a public vote – suggesting that if Theresa May’s deal is rejected in the Commons then that should be the cue for renegotiating a new deal with the EU, as if such a thing were possible before the crash-out deadline in nine weeks. “Most Labour MPs want someone to make a decision,” says one member of the shadow cabinet. “Leadership is about taking these decisions, and that of course has been lacking.” Imagine if Pelosi showed similarly tortured hesitation towards Trump and his wall, fearful of opposing it outright because, after all, Trump had won an election, thanks in part to his success in traditionally Democratic states. Yet that has been Labour’s position since 2016, terrified by those Labour seats that backed leave. It’s resulted in the absurdity of Labour policy being a “jobs-first Brexit”: you might as well call for a patients-first disease. There can’t be a jobs-first Brexit because every version of Brexit is worse for the economy and jobs than staying in the EU. You don’t hear Democrats talking about a migrants-first wall, no matter how many former Democrats in Wisconsin or Michigan backed Trump. They know a wall is a bad idea, and they are opposing it with a clear voice. Just as they know that Trump is doing to the US what Brexit is doing to Britain: weakening the country and trashing its reputation abroad. They are in opposition and they are opposing – no ifs, no buts. Those who wish to be saved from the madness of Brexit can only gaze across the Atlantic – and look on with envy. • Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistCeleriac is a bit of a beast to look at, but looks aren’t everything. Beneath that gnarly, knobbly exterior lies creamy white flesh with a sweet, nutty, super-savoury flavour. I turn to celeriac in these winter months; we eat it shaved thinly and raw in salads with a mustardy dressing, cut it into steaks brushed with herbs and griddled, and sometimes roasted whole. Here, though, I use it as the base for a stew with the surprise hit of some cheddar-spiked dumplings on top. It’s also the star of this simple soup, topped with a dukkah-style spicy nut sprinkle, elevating it to something I’d eat any day of the week. You’ll soon be strewing it over everything you cook. Be sure to peel the celeriac thickly to get rid of any green tinges around the edges, and to remove any stubborn dirt. Prep 20 minCook 2 hrServes 6-8 For the stewOlive oil6 small red onions, peeled and quartered1 head garlic, cloves peeled and left whole3 carrots2 parsnips1kg (approx) celeriac½ bottle red wine1 litre vegetable stock2 bay leavesA few sprigs rosemary leaves1 tbsp harissaSalt1 x 400g tin white beans (I use haricot)Greens and mustard, to serve For the dumplings100g celeriac saved from the stew, grated100g salted butter, chilled50g crumbly cheddar200g self-raising flourSalt and black pepperLeaves from a few sprigs of thymeEgg yolk, for brushing (optional) Heat the oven to 150C (130C fan)/300F/gas 2. Heat a heavy-based casserole over a medium-high flame and add a good glug of olive oil. Add the onions and garlic and cook for five minutes or so, until they begin to brown. Meanwhile, peel and chop the vegetables, making sure you save a 100g piece of celeriac for the dumplings. Once the onions are browned, add the vegetables to the pan and cook for another five minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour in the wine, stock, herbs, harissa and a good pinch of salt, cover with a lid, and put in the oven for an hour and 15 minutes. Meanwhile, make the dumpling mixture. Grate the celeriac and butter into a bowl, crumble in the cheddar, add the flour, salt and pepper, and strip in the leaves of the thyme. Add two tablespoons of very cold water, and use your hands to bring the dumpling mixture together into a nice dough – if it looks dry, add a few drops more water. Roll the dumplings into 12 balls. Once the stew is ready – the vegetables should be soft and yielding, the wine reduced – stir in the beans. Brush the dumplings with egg yolk, if you like, then put them on top of the stew, leaving a little room in between for them to increase in size. Put back in the oven – no lid this time – for another 25-30 minutes, until browned on top. Serve with greens and mustard. Keep any leftover spices in an airtight jar for up to six months, or put them on the table for extra sprinkling. Prep 15 minCook 50 minServes 6-8 Olive oilButter1 leek, trimmed and finely sliced1 celeriac, peeled and roughly chopped4 apples (I like cox’s), cored and roughly choppedA few sprigs thyme, leaves picked1.5 litres vegetable stock1 × 400g tin butter beans, drainedSalt and black pepper To serve2 tbsp nuts, (hazelnuts, almonds, macadamias or cashews), roughly chopped 1 tbsp sesame seeds (I use a mix of black and white)1 tsp coriander seeds1 tsp cumin seeds½ tsp fennel seeds½ tbsp nigella seeds½ tsp turmeric½ tsp flaked sea salt50g butterSage and thyme, crisped in butterYoghurt, to serveParathas or naan, to serve Heat a splash of oil and a knob of butter in a large pan, then cook the leek over a medium heat for 10 minutes, until soft. Add the celeriac, apples and thyme, and cook for two to three minutes, then add the stock and butter beans, and season well. Simmer over a low heat for 20-30 minutes, until the celeriac is tender, then remove from the heat and blitz smooth with a hand blender. Keep warm. Toast the nuts and sesame in a frying pan until golden brown, then remove from the pan and set aside. Add the spices to the dry pan and cook for two minutes, until fragrant, shaking the pan so the seeds don’t burn. Crush the spices slightly, then mix in the nuts and flaked sea salt. Remove the spicy nut mix from the pan and set aside if not serving immediately. Add the butter to the empty pan and, once it’s bubbling, remove from the heat and transfer to a plate to cool. Heat a little more butter in the pan and, once hot, add the herbs and cook until crisp, then transfer to a plate lined with kitchen paper. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with a swirl of yoghurt, a drizzle of the butter and a good sprinkling of the spice mix. Finish with crisp herbs, if you like, and a paratha or naan to dunk.Encouraging news for the embattled Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie, as the founder Wada president, Dick Pound, rides eye-catchingly to his defence. By way of recap, Russia last week missed the deadline to allow the World Anti‑Doping Agency access to the Moscow laboratory that was at the heart of its massive state-sponsored doping programme. This deadline was itself a bizarre act of faith on Wada’s part, given that Russia has failed to comply with two crucial recommendations of the McLaren report which uncovered the vast scale of their cheating. Anyway, the predictably missed deadline has gone down like the proverbial sandwich with many national anti-doping authorities, as well as many clean athletes who increasingly despair of the notion that Wada is run in their interests, and not those of states to which Wada’s main funder, the IOC, may wish to cosy up. But they’re all wrong, apparently. Dick has penned an article in which he explains that the reaction “has all the elements of a lynch mob”. Does it? I hesitate to resort to a Family Fortunes analogy, given the subject matter. But if you asked a hundred people what “all the elements of a lynch mob” were, and we pictured Vernon Kay waiting for the percentages to pop up on the big screen, I imagine our survey would have said something quite different. “Forty-nine people said ‘racists’,” Vernon might reveal. “Forty-one said ‘noose’ …. Seven said Deep South … I’m sorry, we’ve got nothing for ‘despairing anti-doping executives’ or ‘some newspaper articles’. Athletes, you have a chance to steal.” Leaving aside the question of whether it is remotely appropriate to cast an equivalence between robust criticism and actual lynching, Dick’s suggestion that the criticism is driven by ignorance of due process simply doesn’t stand up. Not only did Wada row back on its own terms for Russian readmission, but Reedie’s own predecessor in the president’s chair, David Howman, accused the agency of bowing to pressure. “This looks like they have taken the decision to deviate from a carefully put-together roadmap for entirely pragmatic reasons,” he judged. “Wada has gone from being an organisation that cared about clean athletes to one that cares about international federations that have not been able to stage events in Russia: it’s money over principle.” Reading Pound’s defence of Reedie’s stewardship, it is hard not to see Wada as just another club of the same sort of men who stick together. Of more immediate concern is its apparent faith that the Russian authorities are also chaps cut from similar cloth. In Michael Cockerell’s documentary about the great offices of state, a former foreign office official outlined something called “the Wykehamist fallacy”. “Intelligence failures very often come not because you can’t see what’s happening,” he smiled wryly, “but because you misinterpret the intentions. You read their intentions as if they’d been educated at Winchester, you know, and they haven’t been – they’re a bunch of thugs. And actually their intentions aren’t our sort of intentions, and they may not be bluffing – they may be out to do something catastrophically dangerous.” I can’t help feeling there is rather a lot of this naivety to Reedie (and now to his defender, Pound). Back last year when he was justifying the decision to chuck the Russians a bone, Reedie described the notion that Russia might miss the deadline as “inconceivable”. He must now conceive of such a thing, but the damage caused to his organisation – and, by more important extension, to the believability of sport – has been serious. If Wada continues to misidentify its enemies, it may become critical. And so to news that Wayne Rooney was arrested and fined last month at a Washington airport, after being accused of intoxication in a public place and swearing at police. According to his spokesman, Rooney was “disorientated” after taking “a prescribed amount of sleeping tablets mixed with some alcohol consumption”. He was on a private flight back from a one-day promotional trip to Saudi Arabia. The feelings of DC airport cops notwithstanding, some will find the Saudi Arabia element of the tale the most distasteful, for all the good it might have done Rooney’s business. Saudi Arabia is a country where women have historically not even been allowed into football stadiums. That all changed this time last year, you may recall, as part of a much-praised drive by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to “reform” his country, which was all going so well until his operatives murdered and dismembered a prominent journalist inside an embassy. Still, you will note that MBS has shaken off the haters in a very “you do you” way, and is continuing to bomb and starve Yemenis into the world’s deepest humanitarian catastrophe with the various weapons we continue to sell his family. Sorry, where were we? Ah yes. Football. Of course. With regards to Rooney, there is something very “football now” about getting wasted on top of your Ambien as you are private jetted from 18 hours’ sportswashing duty in arguably the ghastliest country in the world, back to Washington DC where you are seeing out your playing days far from home, and without even the sunshine lifestyle benefits so often touted as the perks of an LA Galaxy contract. I’m not saying Rooney has suffered enough for this latest misdemeanour, or even that he was aware of why a trip to Saudi should be right down his to-do list. But none of this is really the football you dream of when you’re a kid, is it, and all the money in the world can’t self-medicate that.Coordinating the takeoff and landing of hundreds of planes each day is a “team sport” with many members working 10 hours a day, six days a week, said Nick Daniels, a specialist at Dallas/Fort Worth international airport. “It takes all of us doing our jobs perfectly 100% of the time. There’s no room for error.” The shutdown has only increased the pressure. All air traffic controllers are deemed “essential” workers, meaning they have no paid sick or vacation days during the shutdown and all paid leave, even if scheduled in advance, has been cancelled. Daniels, union representative for his local chapter of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said he had saved up his leave to spend time with his 11-year-old son. But because of the shutdown, he had to come into work while his son was on winter break. Other controllers had to make tough decisions, some choosing whether to spend time with newborn children and risk losing pay. “Just the conversations and stress that it’s putting on my family as well as the stress that I deal with at work,” Daniels said, “you compile that and really, its immeasurable what impact it is having on all air traffic controllers.” In 2017, Jessica Kostrab moved to Ashford, a small town on the steps of Mount Rainier in Washington state. She got a job taking reservations for a contract company that helps run food services in one of the national park’s hotels. “This is the best decision I’ve made was to come out here,” Kostrab said. “I have never been happier – besides current circumstances.” Mount Rainier national park is closed for the duration of the shutdown, like dozens of other parks and historic sites maintained by the federal government. Towns like Ashford are almost completely made up of people, like Kostrab, who work for the park in some way. The town runs on the paychecks of such workers, which means it too is coming to a halt. “Some businesses are still open,” Kostrab said. “The gas station, the general store. A couple of the bars … but everything else is shut down.” Like many in the town, Kostrab has been furloughed indefinitely. Her boyfriend and his mom and sister, who work for the same company, have also been out of work since the shutdown began. “I can’t pay my rent,” Kostrab said. “I’m going to have trouble paying my car payment … I don’t know when I’m going to be able to buy groceries next. People don’t seem to care that it doesn’t just affect the federal government or its employees. It affects everyone in the communities around those parks.” Like any other 11-year-old, Bella Berrellez of North Potomac, Maryland would typically have spent her winter break coloring, listening to music, watching movies or playing with her little sister. This year, however, she started a business. After learning that her mother, who works at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), would be furloughed, Bella decided to help. “I knew my mom wasn’t going to be working and she wouldn’t get paid,” Bella said. “I was thinking of how I could help my family.” She came up with the idea for Bella’s Sweet Scrubs, a line of bath scrubs made and packaged herself. The scrubs are made of organic sugar and essential oils and come in scents like eucalyptus, lavender and coconut. Bella said she spends two hours a night working on her business, after she finishes her homework and has a snack. Sometimes her nana, little sister and friends help with the packaging and labeling. More than 300 scrubs have been sold, mostly online through her Etsy shop. Her family is doing all right financially during the shutdown, so she is donating a portion of her proceeds to a local food bank. She hopes to continue the business once the shutdown ends. Until then, she hopes her mom will be able to go back to work. “Government has a big role,” Berrellez said. “I would like it if [Congress and Donald Trump] could send them back to work.” A typical day of work starts with an hour and 15-minute drive from her home in Jefferson, Maryland to the FDA headquarters in Silver Spring. For Shaneece Hill, the commute is worth it, especially since she drives with her husband Joshua. “Me and my husband drive together everyday, we take lunch breaks together every day,” Hill said. “We save money by commuting together and when I work from home, he works from home.” Both are contract workers with the FDA. The shutdown therefore “hits us harder because both of us are affected”. Contract workers are not guaranteed back pay, an unfair reality for those who may work more than counterparts employed directly by the federal government, Hill said. “We get the short of the stick a lot,” Hill said. “We’re shuffled around more [despite being] the people that do more of the work.” Hill and Joshua have successfully filed for unemployment. They hope to get two weeks’ pay that way, which will likely be a little more than 10% of what they would usually make. They have already gone through their small emergency saving fund and might have to go into Hill’s retirement savings if the shutdown does not end soon. Hill said they have been more fortunate than others, since they are still able to pay their mortgage and buy groceries. “I know we’ll be all right,” she said. On 10 January, day 19 of the shutdown, a small group of workers from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a rally, in cold weather outside their office in downtown Manhattan. For Anthony Tseng, an environmental engineer, that meant a three-hour, $40 round-trip Metro North train ride from and back to his home in up the Hudson in Beacon. EPA employees have been furloughed since 29 December, a week after most employees were affected. But the effects can already be felt. Some of Tseng’s colleagues didn’t participate in the rally because they couldn’t afford to get there, he said. Tseng, president of his local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, said he understands such financial constraints. He lives check-to-check himself and is the main breadwinner for his family. Besides worrying about two daughters in college, a mortgage, car payments, utilities and food, he said he had “had to eat a lot more bologna sandwiches than I’d like to”. Tseng was working on two projects that have been stopped by the shutdown. Once the government reopens, it will take some time to start them up again. “The government has official procedures on how we open these projects,” Tseng said. “The time spent on that is a colossal waste on taxpayer money.” Having worked for the EPA since 1998, Tseng said he was frustrated that federal workers were being used as a “political chip” in Washington. “As a public servant, I’m not a politician,” Tseng said. “I just want to do my job.”Labour members are significantly more opposed to Brexit than Jeremy Corbyn is, with 72% of them thinking their leader should fully support a second referendum, according to a study of attitudes in the party. The polling, part of an ongoing wider academic study into attitudes in various parties, found that only 18% opposed Labour campaigning for a second referendum, while 88% would then opt for remain if such a vote was held. Official Labour policy is that a second referendum could potentially be considered if there is not a general election. However, Corbyn is publicly lukewarm on the idea, and prompted dismay among some party activists last month by saying he expected Brexit to happen even if Labour won a snap election. Corbyn is facing intense pressure from some in the party to change course, with one pro-remain party group pushing for a motion that Labour would guarantee a referendum if there was a general election. The study, part of the Party Members Project led by Prof Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London, found that while Labour members still strongly supported their leader overall, they appear both distanced from his views on Brexit and, for some, sceptical about his motives on the subject. The polling of 1,034 party members shortly before Christmas found that almost two-thirds believed Corbyn was doing very well or fairly well as leader, and 58% believe he could get a better Brexit deal than Theresa May as prime minister. But asked why they felt Corbyn had not campaigned for a second referendum, 23% of those asked said it was because the Labour leader backed leaving the EU. Another 34% put the decision down to not wanting to alienate Labour voters. If a new referendum was held, 88% of members would back remain, both in a two-way vote against either May’s plan or no deal, or in a three-way poll between all of them. The findings “increase the pressure on Labour’s leader to get off the fence”, Bale said. “If Jeremy Corbyn genuinely believes, as he has repeatedly claimed, that the Labour party’s policy should reflect the wishes of its members rather than just its leaders, then he arguably has a funny way of showing it – at least when it comes to Brexit,” he said. There was, he noted, some difference between the views of Labour voters and members. While a parallel poll of 1,675 voters found 73% of the party’s supporters believed the Brexit decision was a mistake, for members that rises to 89%. On the impact of a no-deal departure, 89% of members said this would harm the economy in the medium to long term, against 65% of current Labour voters and 45% of all voters. Of the near-third of members who said they oppose Labour’s current Brexit policy, 56% said the issue could make them quit the party – a potential loss of 88,000 people. Bale said Corbyn “does need to think carefully about whether his ambiguity on the issue is quite as cunningly clever as many commentators seem to believe”. He added: “It is because, if Corbyn carries on like this, then Labour risks losing some of the members on whom it’s relying to give it the activist edge over the Conservatives at the next general election.” A Labour spokesman said: “As unanimously agreed at Labour party conference, if Theresa May’s botched Brexit deal is voted down in parliament then a general election should be called. In line with the policy agreed at conference, if the Conservatives block a general election then we will keep all options on the table, including the option of campaigning for a public vote.”It is 1992. A young actor named Will Smith, already a famous rapper and sitcom star, is nervous about his first big film role, as a gay con artist in Six Degrees of Separation. It’s a part that requires him to kiss a man, so he calls his friend Denzel Washington, who tells him: “If you don’t feel comfortable about it, don’t do it.” (That’s Washington’s recollection. Less charitable reports have him telling Smith squarely: “Don’t you be kissing no man.”) In the finished film, there is no kiss – at least not in full view of the camera – and Smith later says he regrets not giving his all for fear that it would harm his career. Being openly gay has done nothing but restrict my career. I live in a cultural ghetto How times change. Now a successful heterosexual actor can swear off gay roles for an entirely different and apparently noble reason. Last weekend, Darren Criss took home a Golden Globe for his performance as the gay serial killer Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace. When he bagged an Emmy for the same part last year, he announced it would be his last gay role. Far from being homophobic, this was his attempt to open up opportunities for colleagues. Having played several LGBT characters, he was keen “to make sure I won’t be another straight boy taking a gay man’s role”. His decision comes at a time when there is a groundswell of opinion proposing that such parts should be given only to actors who identify as LGBT. Some voices in the debate, understandably agitated by the news that Jack Whitehall has been cast as a camp gay man in Disney’s Jungle Cruise, have even used the term “gayface” to describe straight actors going gay for pay, echoing the “blackface” of Laurence Olivier in Othello or Alec Guinness in A Passage to India. Awards season this year would look very different under such restrictions. No Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz or Emma Stone, all of whom play bisexual characters in The Favourite. Nor would Weisz and Rachel McAdams have been permitted to star as lovers in Disobedience. It’s goodbye to Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, and farewell to both Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Ben Whishaw would still be allowed to play Norman Scott in A Very English Scandal, for which he, too, won a Golden Globe, but his co-star Hugh Grant would need to be replaced as the MP Jeremy Thorpe, Scott’s lover who tried to have him killed. Would there be enough out LGBT actors – brilliant, out LGBT actors, that is – to fill all these vacant parts? It wouldn’t do to throw out the straights with the bathwater. This dilemma could only have arisen in a climate where there is a plenitude of LGBT roles and an eagerness to see diversity on screen. But it would be unwise to outlaw the function played in performances by interpretation, imagination and skill; it’s called acting for a reason, after all. What’s more, it seems unworkable to say that when an LGBT part is up for grabs, only the out should have a shout. It could operate as a kind of outing-by-default: closeted actors would now need to enter the audition room via the Something to Declare channel. And it would surely encourage category fraud. How long before Hollywood was hit by a sexuality equivalent of the Rachel Dolezal race scandal, with straight actors passing themselves off as gay? I foresee paparazzi snaps of avowed lesbians caught in clinches with men, prompting previously unimaginable tabloid headlines: “Oscar-Winning Actor in ‘Not Gay’ Shock!” Andrew Haigh, the writer-director of the landmark gay love story Weekend and the HBO series Looking, says sexuality is sometimes a consideration in the casting process. “For Weekend, and especially Looking, I wanted as many gay actors as possible,” he recalls. “The same goes for the crew. Working on LGBT material with LGBT people feels liberating. But it’s also about finding the right actor for a role. The sexuality of a character is not their defining characteristic. Identities are complex. Tom Cullen in Weekend or Raul Castillo in Looking may not have been gay in real life but they completely understood and related to the psychology of their roles. Also, what is forgotten in this debate is how important the writing is. It doesn’t matter if an actor is LGBT or not, if the writing doesn’t feel authentic then it’s unlikely to be any good.” The actor Chris New, who starred opposite Cullen in Weekend, feels he has been pigeonholed by his sexuality. “I’m known as being an out gay actor,” he says. “But I’m not – or, at least, I’m not just that. I’m an actor, yes, and in my private life I have mainly found that men attract me. I don’t see that, or any other singular aspect of my identity, as defining me or as something that I wish to trade on. In my work, I am increasingly allowed to engage in my culture only when that engagement centres on being gay. Being out has done nothing but restrict my career. In the current cultural climate I am invited to participate only on the basis of my supposed oppression. Nothing more is required of me. I live in a cultural ghetto.” His response has been a drastic one. “Any role where the character’s sexuality is their defining characteristic I turn down. Which means I don’t work very much. Or, at least, nowhere near as much as I’d like to.” How does he feel seeing a straight actor playing outside his own sexuality? “I really don’t mind at all. I just hope they are the best actor. And I quietly wish that the role could be defined as something a little more than just gay.” But what’s it like for those on the other side of the divide? Dan Krikler, a straight actor, agrees to be the voice of the heterosexual community for this article. The distinction became relevant when he played a gay man last year in the European premiere in London of Jordan Seavey’s explosive play Homos, Or Everyone in America. “As with any form of acting, you substitute the things that aren’t familiar with those that are,” he says. “Playing someone who’s attracted to guys, it’s not a big leap to substitute the feelings I usually have for women. There were other things that were new to me, so I had to ask a gay co-star, ‘How do you feel holding hands with a man in public?’ That doesn’t even cross your mind as part of a heterosexual couple. But it’s the kind of research you’d do with any role that doesn’t fit you exactly. It seems ridiculous to only play parts within your own experience. That would go against everything anyone’s ever learned about acting.” It may expand opportunities for LGBT performers, but the idea of like-for-like casting can only inhibit the scope of acting in general. Cate Blanchett, who played a lesbian in Carol and Bob Dylan in I’m Not There, has promised to “fight to the death for the right to suspend disbelief and play roles beyond my experience”. For his part, Seavey has no problem with it. “I used to feel that a straight person could not know, on a molecular level, the exact and particular experience of being queer,” he says. “But then a straight actor played a gay character in one of my plays and, being a brilliant actor, gave a brilliant performance. He was the right actor for the role – that’s all that mattered. It would be such a bad use of my time and energy to even think of complaining.” Seavey sees Darren Criss’s statement as sincere, if perhaps misguided. “It’s his choice to make, though I don’t think a straight actor playing a gay role is ‘taking’ the role from a gay actor. What would be nice is if gay actors got cast more often, especially in straight roles, and if film and television featured queer characters way more prominently. Parity and equality feel most important.” Haigh thinks Criss’s announcement may even have improved his prospects. “His reasons seem entirely heartfelt and genuine,” he says, “but the funny thing is it’s probably done his career a benefit [by] reminding everyone he’s straight. It’s another cause of frustration for LGBT actors: if you are a straight actor you are often applauded for playing gay, congratulated on your bravery, commended on your skill to pull off such a tricky feat. You rarely see a gay actor applauded for playing straight. And if a gay actor does play gay, there is often the assumption that no acting was really required in the first place.” The wisest route is surely the one opted for by Lucas Hedges, the 22-year-old actor who plays a young gay man undergoing conversion therapy in the forthcoming drama Boy Erased. “I recognise myself as existing on that spectrum,” Hedges said last year. “Not totally straight, but also not gay and not necessarily bisexual.” Seavey regards the new generation of actors as encouraging. “If you’re following young Hollywood, you’ll notice that sexuality is holding fewer actors back,” he notes. “They’re here, they’re queer – or at least wearing gender-fluid fashion on the red carpet – and hopefully the world is finally getting used to it.”Seven bodies have been found and more than a hundred people remain missing after a dam operated by the mining giant Vale collapsed in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, releasing a wave of red iron ore waste and raising fears of widespread contamination. Fire chief Col Edgar Estevão said there were seven dead, nine wounded and 100 people had been rescued from the sea of mud released by the dam, according to the G1 news site. The fire brigade believe around 150 are missing, he said. The state governor, Romeu Zema, told reporters on Friday he did not expect many survivors. “We know now that the chances of having survivors are minimal and that we will probably rescue bodies,” he said. Brazilian television showed images of survivors being winched to safety by a helicopter after the disaster at the Feijão mine near Brumadinho, less than two hours from the state capital, Belo Horizonte. As videos and photos of the destruction wrought by the torrent of mud swept around social media, enraged Brazilians demanded punishment for anyone responsible. The incident comes less than four years after another tailings dam collapsed in Minas Gerais, killing 19 people  in what was Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. That dam was operated by Samarco, which at the time of the disaster was half-owned by Vale, as well as Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton. Vale’s chief executive, Fabio Schvartsman, told reporters on Friday that one dam containing iron ore waste, known as tailings, had failed and another overflowed. Brazil’s environment ministry had earlier said three dams were involved in the disaster. Schvartsman said around 300 staff we were working at the plant and 100 had been rescued. “Most of those affected were Vale employees,” he said. “I’m completely torn apart by what happened.” Among those missing were 100 mine workers who were having lunch in an administrative area when it was hit by a torrent of sludge and water, said a fire brigade spokesman, Lt Pedro Aihara. “Our main worry now is to quickly find out where the missing people are,” Aihara said on GloboNews cable television channel. He later told TV Record that an upscale guesthouse called Pousada Nova Estância had been completely swept away along with 38 staff and guests. Set in rolling countryside, the town of Brumadinho has dozens of guesthouses for tourists visiting the nearby Inhotim outdoor art complex but is also home to mine workers. Local media said Inhotim, which attracts visitors from all over the world, had been evacuated but was not affected. “The mud still has not reached the town. The mud formed a barrier stopping the river and the town is in alert about what could happen,” Bernadete Parreiras, 69, owner of the Pousada Lafevi guesthouse near Brumadinho’s centre, told the Guardian. “Everyone is in panic, people disappeared, many friends, many family, many people from the town have disappeared … I don’t have words to express the feeling in the town and what people are suffering.” The company said in a statement it had made 40 ambulances and a helicopter available for rescue work. It said the 86-metre-high (280ft) dam, built in 1976, held 11.7m litres of mining waste and had condition-of-stability declarations from an international company called TÜV SÜD. It was no longer in operation, was regularly inspected and was being decommissioned, the company said. But Vale was trying to increase capacity in the mine complex where the dam was located and at another nearby mine, according to the Intercept Brasil, which printed a report by the National Civil Society Forum for Hydrographic Basins, a network of civil society groups, that had urged the authorities not to grant the licence over inconsistencies in the licensing procedure. Brazil’s ministry of the environment said it had set up a crisis cabinet and that environment minister, Ricardo Salles, and Eduardo Bim, head of the ministry’s environment agency Ibama, were heading to the scene. “Our major concern at this moment is to attend any victims of this serious tragedy,” Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, tweeted. “All reasonable measures are being taken.” Bolsonaro told reporters in Brasília that he would fly to Minas Gerais on Saturday morning and fly over the region “so we can once again re-evaluate the damage and take all the reasonable measures to minimise the suffering of relatives and possible victims as well as the environmental issue”. Bolsonaro has attacked environment agencies including Ibama for holding up development with what he describes as excessive licensing requirements and advocated freeing up mining in protected indigenous reserves. Environmentalists said Brazil had failed to learn from the Mariana disaster, in which 375 families lost their homes, and are yet to be rehoused. The three companies that operated the Mariana dam – Samarco, Vale and BHP Billiton – spent more than $1bn on a huge clean-up and relief operation and paid millions of dollars in fines over the disaster. But no individual has been convicted. “This new disaster with a mining waste tailings dam – this time in Brumadinho – is the sad consequence of a lesson not learnt by the Brazilian state and mining companies,” said Greenpeace Brasil’s campaigns director, Nilo D’Avila, in a statement. “Cases like these are not accidents but environmental crimes that should be investigated, punished and repaired.”The photograph at the beginning of this devastating book shows what may have been the last gathering of the Vienna-based family of Gustav Kleinmann, upholsterer. In 1938, during what Austrian Jews would later bitterly name “the November pogrom” – it began with Kristallnacht – peace-loving Gustav, a decorated war veteran, and his son Fritz, 15, were rounded up on the eager testimony of their non-Jewish neighbours. A year later, Gustav, after failing to rescue his boy from a second arrest and instant deportation – the Kleinmanns’ crime, on both occasions, was to be Jewish – was snatched at night from the family home he had courageously refused to abandon. In October 1939, he was dispatched to Buchenwald. And so, by a freak of fate, was Fritz. Doubtless, in the awful history of planned genocide we know as the Holocaust, other family members found one another and clung together during a pilgrimage through the rapidly multiplying work camps and extermination sites of Germany, Poland and Austria. Few can have recorded that story with such defiant care as Gustav Kleinmann. Somehow, throughout five years of methodically vicious incarceration, Gustav (his inspiration during the starvation he continuously endured was Gandhi) managed to maintain and conceal a sparsely kept diary. This journal, published with Fritz’s memoir as The Dog Will Not Die (1995), forms the bedrock of Jeremy Dronfield’s novelistic retelling of those terrible years. For a reviewer, it feels almost indecent to dwell upon the horrors inflicted, day by day, month after month, upon the innocent. Bizarre details stick in the mind: the meticulously kept flowerbeds; the garish Teutonic halls built for the enjoyment of thuggish guards by an army of slaves. At Buchenwald, Goethe’s Oak, located along one of the great writer’s favourite walks, was put to regular use for crucifixions. A hill nearby, once used for deer hunts, became a hunting ground for men. (Tricking prisoners to cross an invisible boundary line by a tossed cap made them fair game. “And the fool runs,” Gustav noted; each corpse won three days’ holiday for a trigger-happy guard.) Ironies abound. While intellectuals and artists were ordered to gather shit in gloveless hands, applause was given when one sturdy young journalist managed to hurl rocks faster than the stone-crushing machine revved up to double time (in order to grind its victim down). His reward? A command to act as secretary to the illiterate kapo who had tried to kill him. Gustav, meanwhile, was ordered to join a choir, drowning out the shots being fired at Russian prisoners of war. It was when his father was abruptly moved from Buchenwald to Auschwitz that Fritz Kleinmann took the most momentous decision of his young life. Licensed to remain in relative safety, he requested to join Gustav on what both men believed was a journey towards certain death. (“Everybody says it’s a one-way ticket, only Fritz and I don’t mope... you can only die once,” Gustav wrote.) The worst, as this theatrical historian never forgets to remind his readers, was yet to come. Mauthausen was the destination towards which father and son were going when Gustav persuaded Fritz to leap from a train Anyone new to Auschwitz history may be unaware, as I was, that one of its objectives was to set up a local camp at Monowitz that would harbour a workforce to speed up the building (for the flagging war effort) of a nearby chemical factory. Monowitz, when Fritz and Gustav arrived, was a fenced and mud-sodden field of sheds – no kitchen, no sanitation, no heat – to which they were marched for three hours each day before working on the uncompleted factory. Here, swiftly identifying their skills in bricklaying and stitching, the Kleinmanns stayed alive while up to 150 of their less useful comrades went off each day to be gassed at Birkenau (Primo Levi was another survivor). The ironies continue. Gustav’s new ally at Monowitz was an ex-soldier and co-worker who simply couldn’t credit that Hitler would imprison Jews without cause. But neither could Gustav credit the number of closed trains he saw carrying thousands of Hungarian Jews to their deaths. “And all this in the 20th century,” he wrote with disbelief. A year later, starving at Mauthausen, on the outskirts of his hometown Vienna, Gustav barely escaped being massacred by ferociously antisemitic Hungarian guards. (The Russians, by contrast, treated all camp inmates with respect.) Mauthausen was the destination towards which father and son were going when Gustav persuaded his son to leap from a speeding train of starving men and corpses, out into a snowdrift. If there are moments when Dronfield’s extraordinary book sounds more like a peculiarly gruesome thriller, readers should remind themselves that none of this is fiction. These horrors happened. Witnesses such as Gustav and Fritz survived and told their tales to ensure that their past should never be repeated. The rest is up to us. • The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield is published by Michael Joseph (£12.99). To order a copy for £11.43 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99Even Donald Trump appeared almost dazzled by the magical efficacy of one of the mantras of his 2016 campaign. If a rally got a little boring, and he sensed that people might be thinking of leaving, “I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they go nuts,” he crowed. His “big, beautiful wall” is no closer to reality than it was then, but he continues to relish its powers. It is clear that it will not be paid for by Mexico, as once promised, and will not do what he says it will to protect the United States. But in his highly performative presidency, Mr Trump values its symbolic importance. Unlike that other mantra – “Lock her up!” – its potency is undiminished by his victory. It allows him to present himself as the eternal insurgent, battling for change against the establishment. This explains the second-longest government shutdown in the US, as Mr Trump demands a $5.7bn downpayment on a pointless and very expensive project. With 800,000 federal employees facing the prospect of their first missed paycheck, growing public discontent about the impact, and no sign that the Democrats will offer him a route out, Mr Trump may be beginning to regret his televised declaration that he would be proud to shut down the government for border security: 47% of voters blame him for the impasse, and only 33% blame the Democrats. His first Oval Office address on Tuesday is unlikely to shift this. While it invoked the full authority of the presidency, it fitted ill with his style, which may explain Mr Trump’s reluctance to deliver it. (He also seems unenthusiastic about the border trip planned for Thursday.) Though his words at times echoed the hateful rhetoric of his inaugural speech, even his demand to know “How much more American blood must we shed?” seemed oddly half-hearted in delivery. He paid unconvincing lip service to the humanitarian crisis he created. There were more distortions and lies. In contrast to the administration’s claims, most drugs are smuggled through legal ports of entry; migration continues to fall; and unauthorised migrants are no more likely to commit criminal acts than others, and may be less so. But to Mr Trump, what matters is not whether words are true but whether they are compelling – and 86% of Republicans back the wall. Some around him believe he is wedded to realising it, or some version of it that he can claim as a victory, because of its talismanic qualities. Others believe that the fight itself is the thing. Either way, there is the alarming prospect that he might invoke a national emergency, allowing him to use Pentagon resources for the project. Legal challenges would be almost guaranteed, but if courts blocked his progress he would still be able to position himself as the doughty fighter for the people. His rallies rang to renewed chants of “Build that wall!” as the midterms approached last year, and his claims about a migrant “caravan” were given undue credence – but only went so far in holding back the Democratic advance. His base alone cannot win him a second term. It is true that the Democrats’ recapture of the House gives Mr Trump an opposition to run against. But their response to the shutdown is a reminder that the election left them not only stronger in legislative terms, but also emboldened to face down the president – dismissing his “temper tantrum” – and to try to make the political weather. Some Republicans have voiced potential support for Democrats’ plans to reopen parts of government. Yet however this ends, Mr Trump may feel the wall is as useful as ever. His remarks in 2016 made it clear that it was as much about tactics as his strategy of fostering fear and division. It is to be invoked in times of need. Those have arrived. Mr Trump looks increasingly anxious for a deal in the trade war he started with China. Above all, Robert Mueller’s investigation moves closer and looms larger. On the same day that the president spoke, we learned that Mr Mueller has accused his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, of sharing polling data with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies. Is it any surprise that Mr Trump would rather discuss the border? The wall does not have to be real to be useful: the only question is whether its magic is gradually wearing off.If ever there was a year for rugby union to show the best side of itself it is 2019. A first Rugby World Cup to be staged in Asia, fresh financial investment offering club rugby a chance to take a significant next step, a Six Nations championship requiring only a sprinkle of on-field brilliance to rank among the most compelling tournaments in recent memory. So why the slight sense of unease as the New Year fireworks crackled and popped? Partly it is because rugby has a long, undistinguished history of failing to grasp such major opportunities. It is only in 2015, for example, that English rugby was toasting the massive long-term benefits that hosting the biggest World Cup in history would inevitably bring. Barely three years later the talk is of damaging cuts to the community game, clubs struggling to put out as many adult teams as they used to and the Rugby Football Union’s latest winter of internal political discontent. Mix in the potential complications of Brexit, increasing disquiet over the game’s ever-growing physicality and the ongoing wrangling over the new global international calendar and there is a rising cacophony of noises off. None of this, though, is as damaging as the bleakest scenario of the lot: the prospect of rugby losing any semblance of a reputation for respect, honour and integrity with participants, to borrow from Oscar Wilde, knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing. Recent events have been far from encouraging in this fundamental area. Last weekend alone one of the supposed showpiece games of the English season was marred by accusations of a player spitting at an opponent, while a director of rugby had an unseemly press-room altercation with a journalist and a leading player publicly lambasted a fellow pro for potentially endangering his career. Before Christmas the England captain and an international teammate were pinged for backchat by a referee sick and tired of constantly being advised how to do his job. Eye-gouging, biting, simulation, bullying allegations, nightclub misconduct … any pretensions to the moral high ground to which rugby used to cling have long since been eroded. This matters for one fundamental reason: if rugby ceases to be regarded, even by those who love it, as a character-building, mood-enhancing and cherishable team sport for all, it becomes even harder to justify the lengthy queues of battered players in A & E. This is not to say rugby has surrendered its soul, merely that all involved need to be aware of the slippery slope they are on. Hard but fair should be rugby’s watchword, not “I think you’ll find the video evidence is inconclusive”. When players appeal to the referee, as they so often do, for penalties at breakdowns when the supposed offender is being deliberately pinned down by their own teammates, they should understand they do their sport a small but significant disservice. Ditto the mock outrage when a scrum goes down or, worse, arm-waving appeals are made to the assistant referee. Playing to the absolute limits of the laws is absolutely fine; deliberately going to ground after contact with the clear aim of getting an opponent carded is not. Some will argue such cynicism does not matter in the great scheme of things, that what happens out on the pitch is heat-of-the-moment stuff and no one else’s business. This ignores the snowball effect on behaviour at lower levels as well as the rising levels of frustration it generates, from directors of rugby downwards. Whether at games or on social media, there is no question that rugby fans as a species are growing more one-eyed, less tolerant and generally more easily enraged. This would also appear true of society as a whole but rugby, a game fundamentally predicated on respect for its officials and participants, is cheapened more than most by finger-pointing and unnecessary posturing. The point was rammed home at Wembley, of all places, last weekend. It is always instructive to attend other sports as a paying spectator to see what rugby should both learn from and beware. Tottenham Hotspur v Wolverhampton Wanderers proved a perfect case study. Those of us who have waited a lifetime to watch Wolves win at Wemb-er-lee in the flesh enjoyed the day immensely but, as a pure live sporting spectacle, Premier League football is no better – and arguably worse in certain respects - than its oval-ball cousin. This was particularly true in the stands where the concept of friendly rivalry remains depressingly alien. Dotted around the Spurs section were a number of closet Wolves fans, not all of whom could disguise their joy at their side’s equaliser. When Wolves scored again and a couple of them rose to their feet once more, the stewards were duly summoned. No sooner had a semblance of peace been restored, however, when Wolves scored again, precipitating an all-in mêlée involving home fans leaping over dozens of rows of seats and seeking to punish anyone looking even mildly enthused by Hélder Costa’s late clincher. None of this made the papers, obviously, because football is football and, depressingly, it is seen as perverse for human beings from different tribes to mix with each other as they do in both rugby codes. Different worlds, and all that, but sometimes rugby forgets to celebrate its greatest strength, namely its power to unite the unlikeliest of people on and of the field. Dilute that special quality, lose the humour that remains the game’s safety net and fail to nourish the sport’s image and 2019 will be remembered as the year that rugby union, at a critical moment in its history, threw it all away. This week the RFU will announce the remaining 28 full-time contracts being awarded to England’s leading 15-a-side female players. Aside from a nine-month period before the 2017 World Cup, England’s internationals have had to juggle their rugby commitments with work, making this a ground-breaking moment. “It is hugely significant for the women’s game,” confirmed Sarah Hunter, England’s captain. “Young girls can now aspire to making a living out of playing 15-a-side rugby rather than have the stress of finding a job that you are able to fit around the game.” If it does encourage a marked rise in female rugby participation, the extra financial commitment for the RFU will be well worth it. There were some good tries scored in 2018 but one of the most heartening was scored by Toulouse’s South African wing Cheslin Kolbe in Toulouse’s big win over Toulon last weekend. Classic offloading by big forwards, deft handling and a wonderful finish by a talented pocket rocket, it was almost a throwback to the golden era of French rugby. Any coach seeking to re-energise his team heading into the new year should encourage all his players, from 1 to 15, to take a look.Another week, another 12 Rudy Giuliani appearances on cable news show gone awry. As Giuliani tries and fails to walk back statements from his past few interviews, and as rumors swirl that even Donald Trump has tired of his lawyer’s repeated gaffes, it’s time for us to reveal the nominations for this year’s Giulianis – the Oscars of incriminating your boss on national television. We would like to promise the winners will be announced soon, but knowing Giuliani there will probably be an entirely new shortlist by mid-March. A flurry of nominations just in the last few days. Last week the Trump administration was handed something of a lifeline when a spokesperson for Robert Mueller disputed an explosive BuzzFeed report that Trump had instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. Giuliani just had to do nothing. Instead, he went on CNN and admitted Trump may have spoken to Cohen before his testimony, saying doing so would have been “perfectly normal” and asking belligerently: “So what if he talked to him?” His next nomination came when Giuliani told the New York Times Trump was involved in discussions to build a skyscraper in Moscow throughout the entire 2016 presidential campaign. This apparently confirmed Trump was involved with Russian authorities at the same time he was calling for an end to economic sanctions, a major line of inquiry for the Mueller investigation. After both missteps, Politico ran a story about Trump’s displeasure with Giuliani, which Giuliani himself provided a comment for, in which he apparently outlined the way he stretches the truth during interviews. “I do have a mastery of the facts, which is why I can spin them honestly, argue them several different ways,” he said. Inviting comparison to the famous line by Kellyanne Conway that she presented alternative facts, Giuliani added: “The problem is people don’t understand, or people don’t want to understand, alternative arguing, which is what you do in court all the time.” That’s right, it’s definitely people’s fault. Giuliani scoops all three nominations here. First for his continual offering of new information to the investigation. From the Trump Tower meeting to the payment of Stormy Daniels, Giuliani has continued to help Mueller fill in the gaps by giving away previously confidential information. If we ever get to see Mueller’s report, we should expect to see Giuliani’s name come up repeatedly in the citations. He might even get a shout-out in the dedication. But he’s also nominated for accepting that Trump’s “spygate” and “witch-hunt” claims about the Mueller investigation are really just nonsense to drum up anti-Mueller sentiment among the public. “It is for public opinion,” Giuliani told CNN in May. “Because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach or not impeach.” This quote may come in handy when Mueller’s findings are inevitably rejected by the president. Finally, Giuliani gets a nod for his Wednesday announcement that he never said there wasn’t collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia – only that Trump himself was not involved. Painting a picture for the prosecutor, he spelled out that he “never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or between people in the campaign”. Speaking of the C-word, Rudy has to be honoured for his ever-shifting understanding of what exactly it means. He has mostly repeated Trump’s line that there was no collusion, but at one point tried out the defence that collusion isn’t a crime. Now he’s saying that he never said there was no collusion, even though he’s on video saying exactly that over and over again. But Giuliani’s comments on Michael Cohen are a clear frontrunner. On 6 May 2018, Giuliani called the former Trump confidant “an honest, honorable lawyer” but months later, once Cohen had made clear he was willing to turn on Trump, he became a “devious little rat” and “a pathetic serial liar”. Still, there’s an outside chance here for Giuliani’s comments on truth itself. Having presumably once believed that observable facts occur, Giuliani in August of last year told Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, that Trump couldn’t just tell the truth to the Mueller investigation because – and you can now get T-shirts printed with Giuliani’s face and these words on – “truth isn’t truth”. To be fair to Giuliani, it’s a statement he has pretty much lived by ever since.Edvard Munch’s The Scream is a classic symbol of dread that has been hailed as the ultimate icon of contemporary politics – but a very different Norwegian painting is the country’s favourite. And as the British Museum prepares for a landmark Munch show this year, organisers of the first ever international exhibition of work by Harald Sohlberg have expressed the hope that his work will provide solace in troubled times. The Sohlberg exhibition will open next month at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery. The artist was a contemporary of Munch’s, but his enchanting landscapes present a very different Norway option for British audiences, and one many Norwegians prefer. His Winter Night in the Mountains, which will feature in the exhibition, was voted Norway’s national painting. Ahead of the Munch exhibition, the British Museum’s Hugo Chapman told the Guardian that The Scream was especially resonant today. “Is that not the feeling of our time?” he said. Curators of the Sohlberg show see his pictures as having a very different function. “He is an artist of escapism when the world appears to be going crazy,” Jennifer Scott, director of the Dulwich gallery, said. “Sohlberg’s work is the antidote to the horrors of daily life. Winter Night in the Mountains was painted in 1914 so his paintings were immensely important in times of trouble.” Featuring more than 90 works, the exhibition is the first Sohlberg show outside Norway and marks the 150th anniversary of his birth. It will also coincide with the major exhibition of Munch’s work that opens in April at the British Museum. “It is part of our mission to introduce artists who are relatively unknown in this country,” Scott said. “I really hope visitors will see both exhibitions, but it is lovely that ours opens first because I think we need it more. “Munch is exciting and raw. But, with Sohlberg, there is something that feels more profound and you can keep finding new things in his work.” She picks out his 1906 work Fisherman’s Cottage. “I remember seeing it as a kid and I didn’t know who Harald Sohlberg was, so I’m so excited that we’ve got it. It’s a beautiful view with trees that look almost fantastical, then a glinting cottage with just a light on inside. It makes you feel safe somehow, even though the expanse of nature can be quite terrifying. It is the kind of painting that people are going to fall head over heels in love with.” The British poet and novelist John Burnside regards Sohlberg as Norway’s finest painter and will explain why at a talk at the gallery in May. A character in his book, A Summer of Drowning, laments that nobody abroad knows anything about Norwegian art other than The Scream. One of Sohlberg’s other admirers is the UK’s ambassador to Norway, Richard Wood. “There is something very lasting and contemporary in Sohlberg’s work which Norwegians identify with very strongly, namely a sense of the country’s majestic but daunting geography and climate,” he told the Guardian. He added: “Norwegian art is relatively unknown in the UK. I hope that this will change with the Sohlberg exhibition and that the British public will be curious to discover more.” Wonderful retrospective of Harald Sohlberg has attracted more than 100,000 in his native Oslo. Coming to London next @DulwichGallery - don't miss it! @nasjonalmuseet #sohlberg pic.twitter.com/L0argdObAg “Sohlberg’s works are clearly aesthetically pleasing. But I hope that audiences will also be able to step back and understand what he is saying about the psyche of a country with growing pains on the harsh periphery of Europe.” He also backed Norway’s choice of Sohlberg’s work as its national painting over the better-known work by Munch. Wood said: “While The Scream is a unique and fascinating painting, it is about Munch’s tormented soul. While not without angst at the enormity of the cosmos, Winter Night captures the soul of a whole nation perfectly. And the light and depth and colour are simply wonderful.” Wood was diplomatic when asked whether the two exhibitions would help secure ties between the UK and Norway at a time of growing interest in the “Norway plus” option as a possible route out of the Brexit crisis. He said: “Norwegians feel a very strong bond with the UK. They remember historical links, they grow up watching UK media, learn flawless English, trade with British companies, support British football clubs. “The exhibiting of Norwegian artists in the UK will go some way to raise the profile of Norway in the UK. So I’m confident that whatever the outcome of political processes, the links with Norway will stay strong.”Billboard posters featuring quotes by Theresa May and Brexiter MPs have gone up around Dover as part of a “guerrilla advertising” campaign designed to embarrass pro-Brexit politicians using their own past claims and predictions. A pro-remain group called Led By Donkeys has claimed responsibility for the posters, describing them as the latest in a “public information campaign to remind the public of the statements and promises made to us by our MPs”. The latest posters – which also feature words from May, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab – include Liam Fox, who said in July 2017: “The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history.” Dover, as with other towns and cities where more of the posters were expected to appear, was chosen for its significance, in its case due to being a “frontline” for the impact of Brexit, a spokesperson for the group told the Guardian. The posters, which went up on Tuesday night in the port town, also included a Raab quote, for which he was ridiculed in November when he was Brexit secretary. He told an event: “I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.” Those behind the group, which publicises its activities using the @ByDonkeys Twitter account, have chosen to remain anonymous but said the idea came from a chat in a pub among a group of friends in east London. WhatsApp has allowed those involved to organise with others around the country. “The news cycle is just so fast now and people move on so quickly that people can forget what our leaders say,” the spokesperson said. “All we are doing is providing a public information service saying: ‘Stop a second and let’s remember what these people said before because they are currently on the bridge of the ship of state and we are sailing into chopping waters.’ We need to remember if they are qualified or not to take us on this journey and in many respects it’s clear they are not.” The group has been posting quotes on Twitter and asking followers to choose their favourites. The most popular one was a Rees-Mogg statement from 2011: “We could have two referendums. As it happens, it might make more sense to have the second referendum after the renegotiation is completed.” Another chosen quote was from a speech given by May shortly before the referendum, in which she asserted that “remaining in the European Union means we will be more secure from crime and terrorism”. The spokesperson said the group had spent “four or five hundred quid” on the seven posters that had appeared to cover costs such as travel and materials, but added: “You won’t be surprised to hear that we haven’t necessarily asked permission to put them up and we are being discerning about the adverts that we cover up.” Two of the Dover posters covered up McDonalds adverts, while the group changed its plans earlier this month after arriving at a billboard in Clapton, east London, to find it contained a feminist message. Another billboard was chosen instead. The spokesperson insisted that those involved were not affiliated to any of the Brexit groups, although the group’s number included some with “experience of campaigns.” They added: “We don’t have money to do a national advertising campaign. We have spare time, a ladder and maybe a little smidgen of wit. The treasure trove of historic verbal incompetence by our Brexit leaders makes this a relatively easy campaign to sustain.” The first poster went up in early January in Stoke Newington, north-east London, and featured David Cameron’s tweet before the 2015 election in which he claimed: “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice – stability and strong government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.” The spokesperson said: “The idea – like most half-decent ideas – came in a chat down the pub. We were talking about whether Cameron would one day delete his ‘chaos with Ed Miliband’ tweet, and someone said: ‘Let’s turn it into a tweet you can’t delete.’ It went from there.” It was followed by a poster in Clapton, also in east London, featuring David Davis. The campaign then spread to leave-voting country with a poster featuring a Michael Gove quote being pasted on a billboard in Romford, Essex. Boris Johnson would feature in the next manifestation of the campaign, according to the group, which described the former foreign secretary as “a treasure trove of hypocritical piffle”.Spanish police have broken up a tennis match-fixing ring that is alleged to involve nearly 30 professional players, including one who played in the last US Open. The Guardia Civil said on Thursday that 83 people were implicated in the racket, among them 28 players in the ITF Futures and Challenger categories. According to the force, those responsible for the alleged fraud were engaged in bribing professional players in order to profit from bets placed on fixed matches. “Fifteen people have been arrested, among them the heads of the organisation, and another 68 are under investigation,” the Guardia Civil said in a statement. “Of those 83, 28 are professional tennis players who have either been detained or investigated – one of whom took part in the last US Open.” The force said the operation had been prompted by complaints made by the international anti-corruption group the Tennis Integrity Unit. Officers focused their investigation on a Spanish player and the network began to unravel. “A group of Armenian individuals used a professional player who served as the link between them and the other members of the network,” the statement said. “Once the bribe had been paid, the Armenians headed for the match venues to use their overwhelming muscle to make sure that the player kept their end of the deal. They then gave the order for bets to be laid both nationally and internationally.” The Guardia Civil said the scam had been operating since at least February 2017 and could have generated profits running into millions of euros. Its officers searched 11 addresses in nine Spanish provinces, finding €167,000 (£151,000) in cash, as well as a handgun, stolen identity documents, jewellery, more than 50 electronic devices and five high-end vehicles. The investigation had resulted in the freezing of 42 bank accounts and the confiscation of various properties. “Those currently under arrest ran the money through different accounts before finally transferring it to those under their control, always using false names,” said police. “They are suspected of membership of a criminal organisation, corrupting private individuals (in the sporting world), fraud, money laundering, illegal possession of firearms and identity theft.” The Guardia Civil, which carried out the investigation in conjunction with Europol and officials at the Spanish tax office, said that internet betting was a growing phenomenon and criminals who exploited it were priority targets for the force.A rare lithograph of Edvard Munch’s most famous work, The Scream, will feature in the biggest UK exhibition of the artist’s prints in 45 years. Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, at the British Museum from April, will explore the Norwegian’s expression of complex, often fraught, human emotions. At a time when Monet was painting landscapes, Munch was depicting love and desire but also jealousy, loneliness, anxiety, grief and mental instability – most memorably in The Scream. The version being displayed at the British Museum is a black and white print, which followed a painting and two drawings of the image, but is the image that was disseminated widely during his lifetime and made him famous. Describing the timeless relevance of The Scream, the exhibition curator, Giulia Bartrum, said: “The emotional impact is incredibly important. Munch was deeply, deeply aware of mental instability, mental illness, a huge subject at the time, and that’s what he was trying to portray. Anything which tries to express the inner workings of the mind … has huge resonance today.” The Scream will be shown in the Anxiety and Separation section of the exhibition, which will also include a drawing, Despair, itself associated with Munch’s most famous work. Despair shows a figure turned away to look down into the fjords, which Bartrum said showed “perhaps the moment just before felt he heard the scream pass through nature”. In accompanying text, Munch wrote of the blood red sky, also depicted in The Scream, and how the feeling of the moment resonated around the valley and in his head. The same section also includes two versions of Angst, showing blank white faces streaming down Karl Johans Gate, Oslo’s busiest street, images Bartrum said would resonate with anyone who has felt lonely in London. The exhibition features 83 artworks in all, including 50 prints from Oslo’s Munch museum. Other themes include women, with whom Munch had a series of disastrous relationships, and sickness. Jealousy depicts the author Stanisław Przybyszewski in the foreground with a woman, presumed to be Dagny Juel, and a man with his back turned behind Przybyszewski. Juel is believed to have had a relationship with Munch before her brief marriage to Przybyszewski. The artist’s mother died from tuberculosis when he was young and his sister also succumbed to the disease. For The Sick Child, three versions of which feature in the show, Bartrum said Munch “drew out his feelings of emotion at the moment that his sister died”. She said the painting caused a scandal when it was exhibited in Berlin in 1892 because people were unused to such attempts to recreate the pain of the moment of death. The exhibition closed within a week, while at the same time proving popular with the avant-garde. The exhibition also includes matrices used to transfer ink on to paper, never before seen in the UK, and will be displayed alongside the corresponding prints. Bartrum said that for Munch, who never had children, partly because he feared they would suffer illness, his artwork served as a substitute and, unusually, he sought to collect the stones and wooden blocks, usually held by publishers. “Certainly where these matrices were concerned, he behaved as if they were his family,” she said. “He wrote anxious letters about them, always trying to track them down.” While the themes of Munch’s art resonate because of their timelessness, Bartrum, with an unsubtle nod to Brexit, said how the artist lived his life, during which he travelled to Paris and Berlin, bringing techniques and influences back to Norway, also served as an invaluable lesson in the modern age. She said: “He was a really cosmopolitan European figure and I think, in this day and age, that is an important message to convey.” Edvard Munch: Love and Angst is at the British Museum from 11 April-21 July 2019A 14-year-old boy has claimed he was “manhandled” and “dragged” away by a football steward as he filmed outside Chelsea’s ground. Max Hayes, 14, a YouTube vlogger, said the alleged incident – which took place at the FA Cup third-round match between the Premier League side Chelsea and the Championship’s Nottingham Forest – left him traumatised. Hayes, from Staffordshire, was at the match with his 18-year-old brother Alex and a friend. They started filming outside the ground for Hayes’s YouTube channel which has 3,916 subscribers. The teenager said he started to film quietly but was interrupted by an “aggressive” supervisor steward who told him filming wasn’t allowed there. The group then moved to a quieter area to continue but claimed the same steward “manhandled” them. Hayes said he was dragged “by the scruff of my neck” by the “very aggressive” steward and taken to a security room inside the stadium. He said he had his bag confiscated, with police saying there was “no point” in reporting the incident. Here’s the story of what happened to me today, at the game. #NFFC @ChelseaFC pic.twitter.com/qEMSir2SVL A spokesman for Chelsea said: “We are aware of the complaint and are looking into it.” Hayes has asked for an apology from Chelsea. He said on Twitter: “As a family we have been to multiple away grounds and have never had a problem with filming and doing what I love, and we’re therefore in complete shock at the brutal and unprofessional staff at Stamford Bridge … The whole incident ruined the day out for us, and I am still traumatised after the event.” The Chelsea Supporters’ Trust said: “We would like Max to know that Chelsea supporters are very disappointed to read his account of what happened and would like to offer heartfelt apologies to him on behalf of all of the decent and fair-minded followers of our club.”As all of Australia suffered through a brutal heatwave last week, locals in the outback New South Wales towns of Walgett and Lightning Ridge were better prepared than most. Almost every day in summer is 40C or above here. Usually, the rivers provide relief: swimming in cool water, fishing for golden perch or Murray cod or seeking the solace of a big sleepy red gum that lines the banks. But this year there are no rivers. With the mercury in the mid-40s, the Narran, the Namoi and the Barwon – all tributaries of the vast Murray-Darling river system – are dry, or reduced to a series of green, stagnant weir pools. The mighty red gums, roots exposed, are hanging on for dear life. Heritage-protected lakes and wetlands are empty, and with them have gone the breeding grounds of native birds and fish. Australia has endured a searing summer of drought and extreme heat. Hundreds of feral animals have died of thirst or faced culling as they encroached on properties in search of water. All-time temperature records have been broken in South Australia, with Adelaide reaching 46.6C, while Melbourne had its hottest day since the catastrophic 2009 bushfires, and more fires swept through Tasmania. The Murray-Darling basin, which stretches from Queensland, through New South Wales and Victoria before emptying into the Southern Ocean near Adelaide, should be the lifeblood of the continent in such times. But things have gone very wrong on the rivers. At Menindee, near Broken Hill, thousands of fish were found dead on 6 January, including giant Murray cod up to 40 years old. Government ministers blamed the drought that set in across eastern Australia from April 2017. The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said the environmental disaster was down to the fact it “just hasn’t rained”. “We are experiencing a very, very dry period of unprecedented proportions,” he said. “And when it rains, it will come down in such torrents people will probably be saying ‘what are we going to do with all the water?’ That’s Australia.” But the huge fish kill drew the nation’s attention to the wider crisis on the Murray-Darling, which has been the subject of political wrangling between farmers, environmentalists and Indigenous groups for decades. While irrigation has expanded in some of Australia’s driest regions, the Darling and its tributaries have been reduced to a series of muddy pools. It’s not the first time the Darling has ceased to flow, but the unfolding severe ecological and social consequences have caused Australians to question whether its plan to save the Murray Darling basin from environmental disaster is working. “We have witnessed a catastrophic failure of Australia’s supposedly world-leading water management system,” Rene Woods, from the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations says. ******* For decades the states along the river had been handing out water licences to farmers without any thought about what unbridled extraction for farming would mean for the river or downstream states. By the 1990s, the mouth of Murray at the end of the river system silted up. Salt levels became dangerously high, jeopardising Adelaide’s water supply, as well as internationally recognised wetlands. Governments were forced to act and in 2007, after years of difficult negotiations, the states and the commonwealth agreed to a plan that would licence water extraction and buy back a share of water for the environment. This water is owned by the Commonwealth and is released periodically to mimic nature and, in theory, keep the rivers healthy. But from the outset, the plan owed more to political compromise than science. “The best available science assembled for the guide to the the Basin Plan said that we needed 3,200GL to 7,600GL for the environment,” said Jamie Pittock, a professor at the Australian National University and a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. But ultimately only 2,750GL was allocated to the environment. Astoundingly, the plan also failed to take into account climate change, despite scientific reports showing that most of the basin will become hotter and drier. ****** The Aboriginal nations of the basin have been all but ignored, too. “In the 1990s, when NSW water reform began, it was really difficult, because we had people say “what have Aboriginal people got to do with water?” They didn’t see that we had a valid place at the table,” Yuwalaraay man Ted Fields says. Aboriginal people have some say over about a third of the country in the basin, but they hold less than 0.01% of Australia’s water diversions. Native title rights do not include ownership of natural waters. They can include the use of water for personal, social, domestic and cultural purposes but an entitlement to extract water doesn’t mean there is any water to extract, or that the water is drinkable. Traditional owners are angry at being shut out of the water conversation. The loss is not just about day-to-day shortages. Gamilaraay and Yuwalaraay elders who have lived on the rivers all their lives say they have never seen conditions as bad as now, and they doubt it can ever be recovered. “This to me is the ultimate destruction of our culture,” Gamilaraay elder Virginia Robinson says in Walgett. “All people think about now is there’s no water. Aboriginal people were very close to nature and that’s all unbalanced now. There’s no nature to go back to.” Buying up water to return to the environment remains deeply unpopular in much of rural Australia because of its impact on farms, rural towns and jobs. At the same time the creation of a water market, where allocations can be traded, has benefited big agribusinesses who moved into industrial scale production of cotton and other high value crops, as well as water trading. The Greens and Indigenous groups have called for a royal commission amid allegations of corruption and poor governance. South Australia has already held its own royal commission into the plan, but was hampered by the federal government’s refusal to cooperate. It will report next week and is expected to warn that key aspects of the Murray-Darling plan are in breach of the Commonwealth Water Act. In Walgett the dry river means the town must live on bore water indefinitely. Bore water is high in mineral content, especially sodium. It kills gardens and discolours basins and bathtubs. It comes out of the tap very warm – there’s no need to turn on the hot tap to have a shower, but there is also no chance for a cool drink. Locals say bore water is not a long-term option as a drinking supply. Water restrictions mean no water can be used during daylight hours, and there are limits on washing, flushing of toilets and the use of evaporative air conditioners, even when with temperatures at extreme levels. The fish kill and the heat have at least brought the problems of water management squarely into the consciousness of city dwellers. The future of the Murray Darling basin is now a major issue in the upcoming federal and NSW elections. Yuwalaraay cultural educator Daryl Ferguson has a message for politicians and voters alike. “Everyone should take a leaf out of our culture – it is about looking after the land. “Everyone says “this is mine, this is my part of the river, this is mine, mine, mine.” “I’m not here to talk about ownership; that’s not our culture. You want to own it? That’s fine. “Just look after it.”  Glenn Close picks up the phone in her Montana home and all hell breaks loose. Between waves of helpless laughter, she tries to explain exactly what is causing the chaos. “Sorry to be – can you hear me? – oh my God –there’s a dog going past the house and – wait there.” The pooch making all that racket is Pip, Close’s pet havanese. He only recently watched one of her films, she tells me; fittingly enough, it was the live-action version of 101 Dalmatians, in which she is a regally evil and blazingly camp Cruella de Vil in black-and-white fright wig and taloned gloves. “He was absolutely glued to the screen,” she says. Possibly in terror at her puppy-killing plans. Pip has his own Instagram account (he’s Sir Pippin of Beanfield). “Everyone knows about him, so I’ll have to start posting more things on there,” she says. Now may not be the time. Over the next five weeks, the 71-year-old actor will have numerous awards ceremonies to attend – including the Baftas on 10 February and the Academy Awards a fortnight later – and in all likelihood more statuettes to collect in honour of her performance in The Wife as Joan Castleman, the overlooked spouse of a Nobel-winning novelist, played by Jonathan Pryce. Since its premiere nearly 18 months ago, the film has been seducing audiences and critics everywhere, with the Oscar buzz for Close building to a deafening volume. A few weeks ago, she won a Golden Globe; her pop-eyed, gobsmacked expression when her name was read out, followed by an eloquent speech in which she paid tribute to her late mother (“who really sublimated herself to my father her whole life”) and urged women “to find personal fulfilment”, has won her new legions of fans. “I’ve been floored by the response,” she says. “People are coming up to me in airports to talk about my speech. It’s almost like I don’t know what I’ll say if I win again. It’ll be hard to top. It was such a spontaneous moment for me, and that kind of thing you can’t really repeat.” Close, who has been married three times, denies that her mother was a direct inspiration for her portrayal of Joan. “I didn’t channel her. Although of course I had seen her taking the back seat to my father my whole life, so it was in my DNA. I had a well of subliminal experience to draw on.” Her speech delivered the right sentiments at the right time. “It’s not that they hadn’t been expressed before, but I guess they resonate in this moment. For that whole generation, pre-feminism, that’s the way it was. That was the norm. It’s caused me to look back at my two grandmothers, who were basically unfulfilled women. One had this beautiful singing voice and she wasn’t allowed to pursue that. My other grandmother, whose wedding ring I’m wearing throughout this awards season, dreamed of being an actress.” It was the latter grandparent who inspired Close’s first screen performance, back in 1982, in The World According to Garp; she played Robin Williams’s pioneering feminist mother, though she was in fact only four years older than him. She came to film relatively late, although not for want of trying. She was 35, with an acclaimed stage career to her name, when she was cast in Garp. So while audiences have seen her grow on screen, they never got to see her grow up: her talent arrived fully formed. “Who is this actress who has virtually sneaked up on us?” asked a profile in New York magazine in 1982. By that time, Close already had a Tony nomination, for the musical Barnum, and an Obie award for playing a Victorian woman who lives as a man in The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, a project she clung to for another 30 years, eventually starring in the 2011 film version. (She is demonstrably tenacious: The Wife took 14 years to reach the screen, and she was attached for the last five of those.) Close is unusual for another reason: she got three Oscar nominations in her first three years working in film. After Garp, she was in contention for the baby-boomer comedy The Big Chill and again for the risible baseball drama The Natural. This means that she and the Academy Awards have been inextricably linked since the beginning of her screen career. Add a further three nominations – for playing a spurned lover who turns violent in Fatal Attraction, a scheming noblewoman in Dangerous Liaisons and poor, whimpering Albert Nobbs – and she is closing in on Richard Burton (seven) and Peter O’Toole (eight) for the most acting nods without a win. It is starting to look like a severe case of nominative determinism: Close but no cigar … The Oscar nominations aren’t announced until tomorrow, although there would be a recount to rival Florida 2000 if Close’s name is not in the best actress category. And although she will face stiff competition, chiefly from Olivia Colman, a co-favourite for The Favourite, there is in The Wife a convergence of encouraging factors. It is a timely subject and a rich, expertly layered performance. Also, it’s about time. Would it be unseemly to ask what she thinks of her own chances? “Oh, I daren’t even go there,” she laughs. “I’ve survived all this time just being at the party, and I’ve loved it. Most people sweat over whether they’ll actually win, but I’ve never felt that. I think I’ll be incredibly nervous when they open the envelope, but only because so many people will be disappointed if I don’t win. A lot of them already think I’ve got an Oscar. If I do lose, I want to look at the camera and reassure everyone: ‘I’m OK.’” Whatever happens on the night, it is unlikely to be as dramatic as her experience in 1988, the year of her Fatal Attraction nomination, when she was so heavily pregnant that she attended the ceremony with her obstetrician and his wife in tow. “I had broken my ankle, too, so I had an ankle brace and a cane,” she says. “We were late, there was terrible traffic and we had to get out of the limo and run through the parking lot, and I had lost an earring, so someone had to go back and find it.” Her infectiously jubilant laugh rings out. “When Michael Douglas and I came out to present an award, everyone started laughing at the fact that I was hugely pregnant, because in Fatal Attraction, of course, I keep telling him: ‘I’m going to have your baby!’” I long for the day when people say: ‘This is a fantastic movie,’ rather than: ‘This is a fantastic women’s movie The child she was carrying was her daughter, Annie Starke, who is outstanding as the younger Joan in The Wife. The manner in which Close’s pregnancy was reported back in 1987 was indicative of institutionalised misogyny; the popular press tried to portray her as a home-wrecking floozy who couldn’t distinguish between film and reality. “The star of Fatal Attraction has virtually recreated her screen persona by getting pregnant and wreaking havoc in her lover’s life!” reported one UK newspaper. She had first met Annie’s father, the film production manager John Starke, on the set of Garp. Although he was in another relationship when she fell pregnant, it was Close, rather than him, who was singled out for censure by the media. Close is hopeful now that the fall of Harvey Weinstein and the rise of the #MeToo movement is putting an end to such attitudes, or at least denying them the oxygen of publicity. “I think the effect of it all will be fascinating to see,” she says. “When women have more of a chance, all these great stories are going to come out. And it won’t just be about them. I long for the day when people say: ‘This is a fantastic movie,’ rather than: ‘This is a fantastic women’s movie.’ We have to keep the issue of the empowerment of women at the forefront because it’s something that won’t become part of our culture unless a lot of people fight for it.” Close has enjoyed her share of complex, challenging parts. She had a ball as the unapologetically savage lawyer Patty Hewes in the TV drama Damages, winning a Golden Globe and two Emmys in the process. Looking back on her career, though, she sees other instances where male perspectives were prioritised. Reversal of Fortune, in which she played Sunny von Bülow, the heiress whose husband Claus (Jeremy Irons) was charged with her murder before being exonerated, was one such example. “That was a script written very much from a man’s point of view,” she says now. “We really didn’t get under Sunny’s skin in that film.” And she has been vocal about the disappointments surrounding Fatal Attraction, from the lack of punishment meted out to the adulterer played by Douglas to the re-shot horror-style climax that transforms Alex, the woman scorned, into an implacable Terminator-like monster. No wonder cinema audiences were baying for Close’s blood, screaming “Kill her!” at the screen as they watched. “I had so many secrets as Alex,” she reflects. “The woman I was playing was not the same one who was perceived by the public. But I didn’t have the dialogue or the scenes to illuminate her backstory. If you did Fatal Attraction from Alex’s point of view, she would be a tragic person, not a dangerous, evil one.” What a terrific idea, I tell her. Someone should make that version. “We’ve actually approached Paramount about it,” she says. “They have other plans at the moment, but I agree it would be fascinating.” For all its toxicity, Fatal Attraction marked a turning point in the perception of Close. She fought hard to play Alex after executives and producers openly doubted that she could be sexy. And she hurled herself into that picture’s big sex scene. Taking place on top of the washing-up, with the tap running, it threw in everything, including the kitchen sink. Close knocked back margaritas hourly while that scene was being shot – and it took a while. How refreshing to find her sexuality undimmed in The Wife. The opening sex scene between her and Pryce was the first thing they shot. “We arrived on set in our jammies,” she chuckles. “We were both thinking the same thing: ‘We’re pros, we’ve been doing this a long time. Let’s just get down to it.’” It feels revolutionary to see two actors in their 70s having drowsy, vocal, pleasurably filthy sex together. “I know,” she whoops. “It’s one of the great myths that you lose your sexuality as you get older. One night last year, I was coming across town from the East Village to the West. It was late on a Friday night and there were a lot of couples on the street. Pippy and I were looking out of the car window and I could feel what all those couples were feeling.” Her voice has dropped to an intimate, tingling whisper. “I could feel their excitement, the sense of intimacy about to happen. It was extremely powerful.” Right now, she believes she is in her prime. “I feel as free and as creative, as sexual and as eager, as I ever have. And it’s ironic because I’m thinking: ‘How much time do I have left now?’ There are so many things I’m interested in doing. It’s one of those ironies, I suppose, that we sometimes start feeling comfortable in our own skin only late in our lives, but hopefully with enough time to benefit from it. I’m so glad to do what I do because even though I’m not a method actor and I don’t use my life in my acting, my work is still a progression. So what comes after this I’m excited to see. Right now, I’m just enjoying feeling …” She searches for the word, then giggles to herself. “Chuffed. Isn’t that what you all say? I’m feeling very chuffed.” • The Wife is released on DVD, Blu-ray and digital on 28 JanuaryFrench politicians have approved controversial measures to ban what the government calls “brute” troublemakers from street demonstrations as gilets jaunes (yellow vests) anti-government protests enter their 12th week. There were tense and heated exchanges in parliament late on Wednesday night, including from rebels within Emmanuel Macron’s own centrist party, as deputies backed giving regional prefects – local state security officials – the power to ban people presumed to be violent from taking part in demonstrations. Deputies on the left and some on the centre said the measures posed an “authoritarian” threat to civil liberties. The most controversial measure in the bill – which angered some rebels in the French president’s party – means that individuals deemed to represent a “particularly serious” threat to public order will be prevented from taking part in street protests. Their names will be added to a special police file. Any person presumed to have been involved in violence in previous demonstrations can be banned from street protests, but they don’t need to have been previously convicted. Regional prefects, rather than judges, will have new powers to impose the ban. There will also be a new crime of covering your face during a street demonstration – whether with a helmet, mask or scarf – punishable by a fine of €15,000 (£13,117) or a prison sentence. The measures are an attempt by the government to crack down on violence on the edges of gilets jaunes demonstrations in cities such as Paris and Bordeaux, in which cars and shops were smashed and torched, monuments like the Arc de Triomphe vandalised and police attacked. But some MPs, even within the ruling La République En Marche party, warned the law threatened people’s constitutional right to demonstrate in the street. “Who are we to protect the state of law if we’re weakening its essential and fundamental principles?” asked one MP from Macron’s party. Some politicians said the new law could be abused if a far-right party came to power in the future. Charles de Courson, from the centrist UDI party, told parliament the law was extremely dangerous. He said: “It’s as if we’re back under the Vichy regime [the Nazi-collaborationist regime of the 1940s]. You’re presumed to be a résistant so we throw you in prison. Wake up! Wake up, colleagues! … The day you have a different government in power – a far-right government – and you’re in opposition, you’ll see that it’s pure madness to vote for this text.” Macron’s interior minister, Christophe Castaner, argued that “a small minority of brutes” were “threatening, targeting and attacking” during demonstrations and they had “a thirst for chaos” that must be stopped. The full law will be voted on in parliament next week.One of the key principles you learn in medical school is that doctors should “do no harm”. But what should doctors do when our patients insist that we do things that we know are harmful? This is the dilemma that thousands of doctors face on a daily basis when tasked with helping patients with chronic pain. Pain is a universal human experience that alerts us to bodily harm. Most pain is transient and requires no specific intervention other than the passage of time. For more severe acute pain (pain that lasts hours, days or weeks) and cancer pain at the end of life, modern medicine has several very effective treatments – pills, injections and the like. But chronic pain (which persists for months or years) is a very different entity. Chronic pain is associated with an oversensitive and over-responsive nervous system, the causes of which are a complex interplay of biological, psychological and social factors. There is not necessarily any correlation between the experience of chronic pain and evidence of damage in the body, a phenomenon which is hard to make sense of; why does one person with a terrible-looking scan seem oblivious while another with a totally normal looking scan is rolling around in agony? As a liaison psychiatrist, patients with chronic pain are often referred to our team when our physical health colleagues feel stuck – all the relevant investigations have been done but they cannot find any bodily damage to account for the patient’s pain. Therefore, it must be a mental health problem, right? This dualistic thinking that continues to pervade our understanding and response to illness is really unhelpful, leaving patients feeling misunderstood and unheard. Pain is in the brain and as such is always both physical and mental. Excluding the tiny minority of malingerers, the pain that is experienced by patients is very real and can be a source of huge disability and distress. In trying to manage this distress, I sometimes wonder if doctors have become the victims of our own success. With each decade that passes, we see modern medicine develop increasingly sophisticated and effective treatments, creating an expectation that we will have solutions to all problems. Given that we have very effective treatments for acute pain, the public perception is often that this must also be true for chronic pain. Sadly, this is simply not the case. Patients who have complex health needs fall between the cracks of services which are designed with policy in mind rather than pathology In the UK we have a big problem with opioid painkillers, medications such as tramadol, codeine, morphine and fentanyl. It’s not as bad as in the US, where it is estimated that every 11 minutes somebody dies due to opioids, but it’s a big problem nonetheless. In 2017, GPs in England wrote 23.8m prescriptions for opioids, the majority of which would have provided little to no benefit for patients. There is next to no evidence to support the use of opioids in chronic pain. It is estimated that for every 10 patients who are given opioids for chronic pain, probably only one will have any benefit from treatment. Good news for this particular patient but the other nine patients are taking a medication which is ineffective and may also cause a myriad of unwanted side-effects including nausea, constipation, lowered libido, falls and difficulties breathing – they can even make the experience of pain worse. To put it simply, a bad situation is made a lot worse. Well-intentioned doctors prescribe opioids to try to ease their patient’s distress. If the starting dose doesn’t work, the temptation is to increase it even though the evidence tells us that this will not be helpful; if opioids don’t help in the first couple of weeks they are unlikely to help in the longer term. If these prescriptions are not reviewed in a timely manner, the patient can become dependent. In trying to solve one problem, you’ve created another. We know that many patients who have chronic pain also face other challenges: childhood adversity, poverty, domestic violence, mental illness. For such patients, opioids can become a way to numb themselves from the harsh reality of life, even though their pain persists. Doctors will often recognise that the opioids have become a problem and advise reducing the dose carefully, in order to minimise the discomfort of withdrawal. But many patients are very resistant to this, believing that the opioids are the only way that their lives can be manageable and that doctors do not understand or believe their suffering. Doctors describe being physically or legally threatened by patients who insist that under no circumstances should their opioids be reduced. They are faced with a choice of continuing to prescribe a medication they know is ineffective and harmful, or insisting on a reduction the patient says will cause them enormous hardship. So what’s the answer? Although we don’t have painkillers that are highly effective for the treatment of chronic pain, there is still a lot that can be done to help. Primarily, we need to help patients develop a thorough understanding of the causes and consequences of their pain – this in itself can be a very powerful and empowering intervention. In liaison psychiatry, we conduct a biopsychosocial assessment to explore the patient’s health and life circumstances as a whole. Where we find factors for which effective interventions are available, this is where treatment can then be focused: for example insomnia, inactivity, anxiety, depression, malnutrition, poor housing, obesity and stress. All of this takes time. I don’t envy GPs who have to do the bulk of this work in the space of 10-minute appointments – it’s no surprise that whipping out a prescription pad happens so frequently. Pain specialists can play an important role, but the numbers involved mean a vast majority of patients will never get to see one. As is often the case, patients who have complex health needs fall between the cracks of services which are designed with policy in mind rather than pathology: primary v secondary care, mental v physical. We need to find ways to work together more collaboratively as it’s clear that complex problems demand comprehensive solutions. With many millions of people in the UK thought to be affected by chronic pain, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. But herein also lies the key to transformation. We need to educate our population in order to adjust expectations of what can and can’t be achieved by health professionals, and to highlight just how much power people can have over their own experience of pain. • Mariam Alexander is an NHS consultant liaison psychiatristClose your eyes and think of Dior. What comes to mind? Christian Dior never had a pet movie star, like Givenchy had Audrey Hepburn; nor a longstanding muse, as Catherine Deneuve was for Yves Saint Laurent. So the odds are, that you think first of all of the New Look suit. The wasp-waist jacket with a full skirt have come to stand for Dior and, beyond that, for fashion itself – the very idea of a must-have New Look. This suit is the first thing you see when you enter Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, which opens at London’s V&A Museum on Saturday. On Monday morning, as the exhibition installation was in its final stages, the head of Dior had arrived from the Eurostar, ready to host the opening parties. Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s first female designer, was wearing jeans, black boots, and a thick-ribbed navy sweater under a clean-lined navy cashmere coat. Maria Grazia, as her team call her, wears her short hair bleached and slicked back, her eyes heavily rimmed with kohl, her knuckles encrusted with heavy jewellery. She is not the wasp-waisted, full-skirt type. What the designer, who was born in Rome in 1964, does have in common with Christian Dior, who founded his eponymous house 17 years before she was born, is a love of Britain. This Dior exhibition was first shown in Paris two years ago, but has been expanded by the curator Oriole Cullen to tell the story of Dior in the UK. British society adopted Dior from the start – Nancy Mitford and Margot Fonteyn were two of the 21 private clients who ordered the Daisy suit – a rounder, more decorative version of the Bar from Dior’s first Paris show. Within a year, Dior was staging fashion shows at the Savoy, conveniently close to his preferred Savile Row tailor; soon, he upsized to Blenheim Palace. “I love being in a country where the past lies so vividly around me,” he wrote in his memoir, Dior on Dior. (Monsieur Dior raved not only about Savile Row tailoring but also the style of British women and the food.) “From the moment I came to Dior, the link with Britain was very clear to me,” says Chiuri. “People tend to think of the Bar suit as being very feminine, and it is. But when I look at it, what I see is tailoring – really strong British tailoring. Almost severe.” Chiuri has loved London since she discovered the Beatles when was 12, she says. As a fashion student, she talked her way into an early John Galliano show in Olympia. These days, she is a frequent visitor to London, as her 24-year-old daughter, Raquelle, lives in the city. “For anyone who works in fashion at a brand with a history, Britain is fascinating, because it balances modernity with tradition, which is what we try to do,” she says. This will be the first fashion exhibition to be staged in the V&A’s new Sainsbury Wing, and the Dior in Britain section gives the show a timely emphasis on the idea of Britishness, and presents Princess Margaret as Dior’s answer to Hepburn or Deneuve. Her status as a fashion icon has been boosted by gorgeous wardrobing in the Netflix series The Crown, presenting Dior with an opportune moment to lay claim to the real-life princess, who wore Dior for her 21st birthday party. “She crystallised the whole popular frantic interest in royalty. The public had chosen well. She was a real fairy princess, delicate, graceful, exquisite,” wrote Dior of the young Margaret. The birthday party dress takes pride of place in the room devoted to his work in Britain, alongside the famous portrait of Margaret by Cecil Beaton. No fashion exhibition staged since Savage Beauty, the world-beating Alexander McQueen retrospective, can escape the comparison. The success of that show put fashion exhibitions on the map by showing museums their potential for pulling in a wider audience. But it is impossible to match for sheer drama, and casts a long shadow. This exhibition has an entirely different emotional tone. There are no shock tactics. All is sunny, pretty and deliciously gossipy – which is not to damn with faint praise; it is, frankly, charming. Dior died after just a decade helming the house, and so his talent is not part of the story long enough to be the central focus of this show. Instead, in this sensational line-up of haute couture dresses – every single piece in this show is handmade – we see the work of the stable of designers, including Yves Saint Laurent and John Galliano, who have captained the ship between Dior and Chiuri. It is the creation-myth Dior years, however, that make the case for fashion as an epoch-defining art form. The New Look was not just a trend, it was a vision of Paris reborn in a perilous postwar moment when it was not at all clear that French fashion would be able to reclaim its primacy. Dior became a national hero in France as a result. The cover of Time magazine on which he featured shortly before his death is displayed alongside the Bar suit. A true modernist, he was decades ahead of his time in building a global brand, travelling to Venezuela, Japan and Australia as well as London and New York. In the afterglow of the New Look’s success, he literally bottled his success and sold it: Miss Dior perfume went on sale for Christmas in 1947. The pale grey walls and white columns of Dior’s Avenue Montaigne headquarters have been adopted in the exhibition, adding to the sense that this is a show about a design house, not just a man. Rooms are arranged thematically, from “Historicism” to “Garden”. This doesn’t lend itself to narrative drama, but the Garden room – with hanging paper wisteria and roses, and a bench to enjoy the view of ravishing dresses – is a delight. As a result of the thematic layout, haute couture by Dior and Chiuri is mixed in with the other designers in each room. The Yves Saint Laurent pieces are, in many cases, the most timelessly chic. But it is impossible not to become aware that it is the Galliano pieces to which the eye is immediately drawn. The rest of a group of Egyptian-themed dresses seem to blend into the background when juxtaposed by Galliano’s turquoise python skirt suit with a swollen stomach, paired with the jackal-headed Anubis mask with which it was worn on the catwalk. No mention is made of the ignominious circumstances in which Galliano, who was found guilty of racist and antisemitic abuse in 2011, left the house. To revisit the showstopping dazzle of the Galliano years without context feels a little jarring, in an exhibition that elsewhere embraces the links between fashion and wider society. Chiuri wants to align Dior with modern feminism, and it is Marc Bohan, one of the lesser-known Dior designers, with whom she feels the most affinity. “His work was so contemporary. He had a quote that I love – ‘N’oubliez la femme’ – ‘Don’t forget the woman.’ For me, it’s impossible to forget the woman – I am the woman,” she says. She is “surprised every day,” that she is at Dior and at the V&A, she says, “but still, I want more. It is not just about me, as a woman. I want this brand to be about women, and I want this brand to care about women.”Novak Djokovic left Lucas Pouille in a heap after three mercifully quick sets to reach his seventh Australian Open final – where he has never lost – and his dazzling performance will have given Rafael Nadal much to think about before Sunday. In winning 6-0, 6-2, 6-2, the world No 1 was magnificent and as ruthless as in any win since his year of years, 2011. He started the match with an ace and drilled 24 clean winners past his bewildered opponent in only an hour and 23 minutes. It was the tennis equivalent of Anthony Joshua fighting Piers Morgan. As the loser succinctly put it later: “He just played amazing.” Djokovic’s verdict was almost mystical in its interpretation. “Every professional athlete wants to be in the zone, where everything flows so effortlessly and you are executing automatically everything you are intending to execute. You don’t need to think too much. I guess you’re driven by some force that takes over you and you feel divine, you feel like in a different dimension. It’s quite an awesome feeling that we all try to reach and stay in.” In truth, it was a mismatch. As a public execution, it would have drawn an awed crowd to the Bastille; as a warning to his Spanish rival, it was tantamount to a declaration of war. So, the most blood-spattered rivalry in tennis – across 52 matches – is extended in a perfect setting: a major final between the No 1 and No 2 players in the game. Djokovic leads their personal tally by two; Nadal has 17 major titles, Djokovic 14. Roger Federer has 20, and has stalled. There is plenty of history left to write in this extraordinary era. Poor Pouille, who played as well as he has ever done to reach his first major semi-final but had to fight through three four-setters and one five-setter among his battles in more than 15 hours on court, much of it in fierce heat, arrived in good spirits and left as a statistic. Djokovic has now not lost to a Frenchman in 28 straight slam contests. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who fell to him in the second round, was the last to beat him, in the quarters here nine years ago. French woe was compounded as Amélie Mauresmo, who won here in 2006, looked on from Pouille’s box. She knows a little about watching Djokovic win at close quarters, having been in Andy Murray’s corner for 10 defeats in 11 matches against him. Djokovic served two aces in the opening game and did not take his foot off Pouille’s throat until the end. There was hardly a moment of parity, Pouille’s occasional best efforts bludgeoned into irrelevance as Djokovic moved over the court with his familiar elasticity and menace. He built his attack on a serve that nagged at Pouille’s defences, and he won a staggering 32 of 38 points on first attempt, 13 of 15 when he had to serve twice. Two of his six aces came off second serves. There have been some absurdly quick matches in grand slam history – many of them buried in the distant past – but, in the Open era, only six have witnessed the loser compiling fewer games. Asked if he was trying to better Nadal’s 6-2, 6-4, 6-0 win over Stefanos Tsitsipas the previous day, he said, simply: “Yes.” This was also the second shortest completed match of this tournament, behind Tomas Berdych’s second-round win over Robin Haase in an hour and 19 minutes. And Djokovic had the luxury of a 52-minute workout in the quarters when Kei Nishikori retired in the second set after winning only two games. A seventh title would move him above Roger Federer and Roy Emerson in Australian tennis history, but Nadal, who has gone through this tournament like a hot knife through butter, will not be blown away like Pouille was – unless he is struck down by injury, as he was in the quarters last year. Failure to finish – or sometimes even start - became a recurring nightmare for the Spaniard in 2018, although he still won five titles, including another French Open, from nine appearances. This year – having withdrawn from the Brisbane Open to guard a thigh strain – he has moved and hit with his trademark muscularity, sweeping aside old and new with equal efficiency: from the rising stars Alex de Minaur and Frances Tiafoe to his long-time rival Berdych. None could push him into a fourth set. Now it gets serious. His history with Djokovic is long and glory-filled. He lost a terrific semi-final at Wimbledon last summer, which the Serb agrees was the turning point in his comeback. Here in 2012, they played in one of the great finals in the history of the sport – the longest slam decider of them all at five hours and 53 minutes. Djokovic, coming off his best-ever season, carried his form through that tournament – beating Murray in an equally draining semi-final – before taming Nadal in five sets. Asked how he would describe that struggle to his children, he smiled and said: “I’ll probably not have them sit down and watch it because I don’t like my children to watch TV that long. But I would probably present it in more a general concept of our rivalry. That match would be the icing on the cake. “Throughout my life and career, Nadal has been the greatest rival that I ever played against on all surfaces. Some matches were a great turning point in my career. I feel they have made me rethink my game.” Like a football team knocked out of a cup, Pouille wants his tormentor to go on and win, to validate his own effort. But he is not predicting another blitz in the final. “When he’s playing like this, he’s the best in the world, for sure,” he said. “We’ll see on Sunday how he goes, because Rafa looks pretty amazing too.”Rocket. What a wonderful name for a leaf. Wild rocket is even better, suggesting an untamed missile of heat and flavour. It was a bit disappointing, then, to find out the name has nothing to do with space travel or fireworks, but comes from the French roquette, diminutive of the Latin eruca, which – according to my dictionary – was originally an early variety of cabbage. Like cabbage (and broccoli, sprouts, kale, radish, turnips, mizuna, horseradish and watercress), rocket is part of the brassica, crucifer or mustards family, all with their different degrees of heat and pepperiness. Rocket is the higher end of the scale, the rascal of the salad bowl. I found my first leaf of rocket in a salad in Pizza Express on Coptic Street in central London when I was about 13. As if the place, with its white tiles, tiered topping station, Italian waiters and dough balls wasn’t exciting enough, there were hot leaves under the special house dressing. A few years later, when Pizza Express expanded to the home counties like middle-age spread, my brother would work there and we’d learn the secret of the house dressing, which I am sure had changed by then, so it was doubly disappointing. Back to the leaf at 13, though, which wasn’t disappointing. It was saw-edged, peppery and as Italian as the waiter. Eruca sativa has grown in the Mediterranean since Roman times, when it was considered an aphrodisiac. Nowadays, Italians have at least six names for this much-loved peppery leaf – ruga, arugula, rucola, ricola, ruchetta, rughetta. In Rome, it is generally rughetta and either domestica (cultivated) or selvatica (wild) – which, contrary to expectation, is often milder tasting. As much as I like it, I don’t want rocket everywhere. Some sandwiches and salads are better off without. Rocket works well in a mix of leafy but mild-mannered and bitter leaves. It is even better tangled round small, sweet tomatoes or with parmesan – as my partner says, “the dreaded shavings” – and especially with seared strips of beef, which make the rocket wilt. In Puglia, rocket is mixed with tomato sauce at the end of cooking to eat with pasta. I also enjoy it cooked – as so many green vegetables are in Puglia – with olive oil, garlic and chilli, also for pasta. Then there is soup. This is a meeting of two of my favourites: leek and potato, and watercress, with rocket standing in as the leafy green. It’s a standard recipe to start. Then, my bit: some rocket pesto to add to the soup in the last minutes of cooking. This isn’t blobbing a neat garnish on top; it is stirring a good amount of rocket puree into soup, which makes it speckled and insistently, brilliantly green. It also means two layers of rocket: some cooked along with the leek and starchy potato; the rest a bright, peppery, almost raw, rocket chaser at the end. Prep 10 minCook 40 minServes 4 2 bunches of rocket (about 100g)8 tbsp olive oil1 onion, diced1 large leek, slicedSalt and black pepper2 potatoes (about 500g), diced1 bay leaf1.2 litres water or vegetable stock Pick over the rocket and trim away any tough stems, then divide in two. In a large, heavy-based pan, gently fry the onion, leek and a pinch of salt in four tablespoons of olive oil until soft and translucent. Add the potato and stir until every cube glistens, then add the bay leaf and half the rocket and stir again. Add 1.2 litres of water or stock to the pan and another small pinch of salt, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 25 minutes, until the potato is soft and collapsing at the edges. In a blender, blitz the second bunch of rocket, the remaining four tablespoons of oil and a pinch of salt to a coarse puree and add it to the soup in the last two minutes of cooking. Taste and add a bit more salt if it needs it and a few grinds of black pepper. Serve with bread.Ruby Wax was born in Evanston, Illinois, and for more than 25 years has been a comedian, TV writer and performer. She holds a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from Oxford University and was awarded an OBE for her services to mental health. She is the author of the bestsellers Sane New World and A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled and has toured with the accompanying one-woman shows. Her latest book, How to Be Human, is out now in paperback. How to Be Human: The Manual sets out to answer life’s big questions… So in a nutshell – how can we be human?Part of it is to understand the mechanics of what we are, because if we don’t look in to how the brain works, how we got to be like this, we just assume, oh well, I am the way I am and we never change. Understanding neuroplasticity and epigenetics we realise that we can change. And if you can understand that it’s not our fault, our condition is the human condition, then we can be nicer to ourselves because part of the problem is that everybody has these critical voices. I don’t want to start being corny but when we start working as a bonding tribe, which we have the capacity to do, that’s us at our best, but we don’t know how to switch that part of our brain on, to get out of our self-obsession. “Inclusion is the condition where humans flourish best,” you write. Have you ever felt excluded?I always do. I’ve always felt like a freak of nature. First, living in America when my dog and I would look out of the window and watch people in their clusters in the park and I had a feeling of alienation; later, I realised I carry that feeling with me. Are we becoming more human or less in an age of technology?I think a bit of both. This has always been a question – from when we first started being able to read, to when the Industrial Revolution happened. There’s no point complaining about something we could use to our advantage. We can shout all we want, but history never stops. But if we’re going to survive the future, we need to upgrade our minds as much as we do technology. This is your third book exploring mental health and mindfulness. How did you first discover mindfulness?I had serious depression about 12 years ago, and I was desperate; I Googled, looked up, read everything I could about mindfulness. They were teaching it at Oxford and they weren’t teaching witchcraft so I thought, maybe there’s something to it; I studied it there. For me, it works – maybe for other people it doesn’t. It’s discipline, like going to the gym, you have to do it regularly: you’re exercising and training your brain. You state: “With my background I could only have ended up as a criminal or a comedian.” When did you discover your gift for humour?I was a real problem child in high school – and then one day I turned into Joan Rivers. It was like getting breasts – one day this thing hit and I made the really beautiful boys laugh; they ended up mostly gay. Humour was as good as beauty. So I used it. You also say that memory has kept your sense of self cohesive. How did you learn to turn your memories into powerful material?Most of my memories are horrific, so I learned to be funny as a defence. I turned my memories into comedy and delivered it to my mentor, Alan Rickman – he would listen and say, this is so great, keep going, write how you think. So it was out of the darkness that light came in. I think I would have ended up… maybe I wouldn’t have ended up. Maybe I would have killed myself. But I learned to take something that’s painful and flip it – then people listen and acknowledge it, so at least you get it out of your system; part of the problem with trauma is that it’s in your head and you can’t get it out. You did a famous BBC series Ruby Wax Meets… in which you interviewed celebrities. How does it feel being interviewed yourself?I like the sense of freefall it brings. I think I pay attention to the other person and respect them. You have to respect the person doing the interview whereas a lot of people don’t – especially when I interviewed Donald Trump. He thought I was an idiot so I became an idiot. He frightened me and it’s my default that when I’m treated like an idiot, I don’t make sense any more – but if I had stayed steady and mindful, I could have gotten a lot more out of him. So I learned from being an interviewer how to be interviewed. What books are on your bedside table?My favourite book now is The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St Aubyn. That’s my dream book. You’re rooting for a guy who’s beyond the gutter but also a genius. I love characters that are dark and funny – my favourite combination. I love The Corrections and Revolutionary Road and Philip Roth. What book would you recommend to people? The Sellout by Paul Beatty – he can write black American street slang; he makes genius and hilarious observations, and tells the story of the American dream gone wrong the way Tom Wolfe does. He’s taken a show that I saw in my childhood called Our Gang – there was a black kid in it and they would cover him in tar and torture him – it’s horrifying. Paul Beatty is writing about the American justice system gone completely wrong. It’s taking bigotry and turning it inside out. How do you organise your books?In order of their height. What do you read for sheer pleasure?I really like science books, and read a lot of them while researching How to Be Human. What kind of reader were you as a child?I couldn’t read as a child because my house was so noisy and distracting. I could only look at Dr Seuss because it was as crazy as my house. I watched a lot of TV – Jack Benny, Dick van Dyke, Jerry Lewis, Joan Rivers. I only got smart in my late 50s. I wish I did read more as a child but I couldn’t focus. I would hear my mother screaming, as she had hysteria. You write in your new book that you first became fascinated by mental illness aged around 13.I still have a library book out from Evanston high school that should have been returned in the 60s called This is Mental Illness. Maybe I had an inkling that my mother wasn’t like other mothers. When you’re a kid you tend to think that’s how everybody lives, but I must have sensed that something wasn’t right especially when I saw other kids’ mothers and they were so loving. My mum handed me her rage. But after researching my genealogy during Who Do You Think You Are? I can’t blame my parents any more – I feel sorry for them. What are you working on next? I’m working on another book, which will either be called How to Save the World or To the Future With Love. What is the process of writing a book like for you? I’m both illiterate and dyslexic and I have to stare at the words for ages. At first it’s just a splattering of pain, and then some time after my 15th edit it starts to sculpt into something really funny. The process is horrific – it’s like drawing from an open wound. Only toward the end when I make myself laugh, I think, oh this is good. When it meets the audience it’s a total pleasure. • How to Be Human: The Manual is published by Penguin (£8.99). To order a copy for £7.91 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99It’s always a fun day when something that purports to be unfashionable suddenly becomes fashionable. Today is that day and comfortable shoes are that thing. This is remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, it marks an end to the ugly shoe’s two-year reign of terror. And secondly, since when did fashion care about comfort? “It’s a dirty word, so we were warned off it,” says Tim Brown, co-founder of Allbirds, the incredibly sensible shoe company, which Time magazine called “the world’s most comfortable shoe”, and whose fabric one Google reviewer compared to “clouds”. The brand’s neat little woollen trainers, worn by the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Mila Kunis, and Emma Watson, are affordable, logo-free, environmentally friendly, and deeply uncool. They have also just sold their millionth pair. For context, it’s worth remembering that 2018 was defined by the ugly trainer: bulbous, sometimes artfully distressed, ironic, anti-beauty and weird. Louis Vuitton, Prada and Gucci did them. So did Zara, Topshop and Fila. They were an in-joke – and an expensive one at that (Balenciaga’s Triple S trainers cost £645 and come a little dirtied), all rooted in Miuccia Prada’s logic that “ugly is attractive, ugly is exciting. The investigation of ugliness is, to me, more interesting than the bourgeois idea of beauty.” To get the joke, you were the joke. Still, by the end of 2018, ugly trainers had reached critical mass. Low points included Jimmy Choo’s Diamond trainers or the candy-pink Escada basketball sneakers. Not only were they the dominant footwear on both catwalk and high street, but you might not want to play basketball in them either. By contrast, you can do anything in a pair of sensible trainers. Shoes that are unremarkable but functional, one colour and washable. Not exactly pretty, but an inversion of ugly trainers. Alongside Allbirds, see also Cole Haan’s Zerogrand trainer (so comfortable you can sleep in them, one imagines) and Camper’s Pelotas, an annual bestseller. Trainers themselves are going nowhere – in the past year or so, global sales of high heels dropped 12%, while sales of women’s sneakers rose 37% – but the sort of trainers we wear is shifting. Allbirds launched in 2016 with a single pair of lace-ups, designed for men and women, which came in soft merino wool. They now have six styles and a UK shop. According to Brown, they benefitted from the “casualisation of fashion, which just hadn’t come to footwear”. They describe their anti-style as “the right amount of nothing”. Unsurprisingly, they are most popular in Silicon Valley, where looking remarkable is frowned upon. Fans include Google’s Larry Page and the former Twitter chief Dick Costolo. Speaking from his San Francisco headquarters, Brown is unclear why they’re popular with tech types, but says that “San Francisco is struggling with its own identity, so maybe that’s why?” Silicon Valley’s biggest disruptor, whistleblower Christopher Wylie, wears fashion’s original ugly trainer – the Balenciaga Triple S in dove grey. Their popularity makes cultural sense, if nothing else. Designed to be worn 24 hours a day and, in the case of Allbirds, without socks, these are trainers for the hygge generation, for whom cosiness is a mindset. They are also, arguably, Kondo-pleasingly neat. While the sensible shoe is not quite an act of civil dissent, this sort of protest is still two fingers up to an industry that thinks it can control the narrative. Even if comfy shoes represent their own kind of ugliness. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.The European Medicines Agency, one of the biggest EU regulators and one of the first casualties of Brexit, has closed its doors in the UK for the last time with the loss of 900 jobs. Staff lowered and folded up the 28 national flags that adorned the lobby in the company’s Canary Wharf headquarters in London on Friday night, bidding it farewell before moving to their new offices in Amsterdam. The EMA evaluates medicines throughout the EU but was forced to relocate to the Dutch capital because pharmaceuticals regulation should be done in a member state. Amsterdam won the bid to host the agency in 2017. Its departure from London was lamented widely as it marks not just the loss of highly skilled jobs but the UK’s central place in pharmaceutical evaluation and monitoring. In a tweet on Friday evening, the agency said: “Today, EMA staff lowered the 28 EU flags and symbolically said goodbye to their London offices. [EMA executive director,] Guido Rasi expressed his thanks to the UK for its contribution to the work of the Agency and for having been a gracious host of EMA since 1995.” Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, said it was a “very sad day for the UK” and “a great day for the Netherlands”. The Labour MEP Claude Moraes said also expressed disappointment about the move, writing on Twitter that he was “obv[iously] sad that you to have to leave London.” Simon Fraser, the vice chair of Chatham House and the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: “Losing the European Medicines Agency HQ is a significant loss for London and for the UK.” The decision made by the EU to move the EMA was a body blow to those who have spent a lifetime charting the progress of medicines through evaluation and testing cycles. In September it emerged that Britain’s leading role in evaluating new medicines for sale to patients across the EU had collapsed with no more work coming from Europe because of Brexit. The head of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry, Mike Thompson, said at the time it was akin to watching a “British success story” being broken up.Police forensic officers are scouring Manchester’s Victoria station after a man stabbed three people, including a British Transport Police officer, during New Year’s Eve celebrations. The incident, classified as critical, was being investigated by counter-terrorism police officers after the perpetrator was allegedly heard shouting Islamist slogans. A man in his 30s was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and remains in custody. National security officials in government, police and security services were helping the investigation into the incident in which the British Transport police officer was stabbed in the shoulder, a man and woman in their 50s sustained abdominal injuries, and the woman received wounds to her face. Manchester city centre police said the incident just before 9pm was one of several “serious crime incidents” overnight, with 15 arrests being made and a total of 120 incidents recorded since 7pm on Monday. They said in a tweet just after 6am on Tuesday that officers had “done a great job of looking after people in the city”. The former chief constable of Greater Manchester police Sir Peter Fahy commended the courage of the officers who dealt with the station incident. “It would certainly appear police officers showed incredible bravery in tackling the attacker at Manchester’s Victoria station last night, saving lives,” he said. Greater Manchester police said the cordon at the station would be lifted soon, but a large police presence would remain in place. They also said the officer who was attacked, a sergeant in his 30s, had been released from hospital. “You will see more officers in and around the station throughout the morning but this is not as a result of any increased threat,” the police said. “Please follow directions from officers on the ground and speak to them if you have any concerns.” Rob Potts, the assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said officers were keeping an open mind about the attack. “[The] events will have understandably worried people but I need to stress that the incident is not ongoing. A man is in custody and there is currently no intelligence to suggest that there is any wider threat at this time.” Sam Clack, a BBC producer, who was waiting for a tram when the attack took place, said: “I just heard this most blood-curdling scream and looked down the platform. What it looked like was a guy in his 60s with a woman of similar age and another guy all dressed in black. “It looked like they were having a fight, but she was screaming in this blood-curdling way. I saw police in hi-vis come towards him. He came towards me. I looked down and saw he had a kitchen knife with a black handle with a good 12-inch blade. It was just fear, pure fear.” Clack said he heard the man shouting “Allah” during the attack. “He shouted it before, he shouted it during it – Allah. “The guy, his exact words were, he said: ‘As long as you keep bombing other countries, this sort of shit is going to keep happening.’” He said police used a stun gun and pepper spray on the man before “six or seven” officers jumped on him. “It was scary. I have never been so scared in my life. Someone with a knife six to eight feet away, he had just stabbed someone. It was the proximity. It just highlights the fact that it can happen anywhere.” Just been very close to the most terrifying thing. Man stabbed in Manchester Victoria station on tram platform. Feet from me, I was close to jumping on the tracks as attacker had long kitchen knife. Totally shaken. This is seriously messed up. pic.twitter.com/CnUw7j2TOT The North West ambulance service said it sent three vehicles to the incident and took all three victims to hospital for treatment. While the station was closed after the attack, the city’s fireworks display in Albert Square went ahead amid increased security. There have been no major terrorist attacks in the UK for the past year but MI5 and the police say they remain extremely busy dealing with 700 investigations into suspected terrorism. In 2017, there were five terrorist attacks – four in London and one in Manchester. The terrorism threat level for the UK remains at severe, meaning an attack is assessed as being highly likely.The humble game of Jenga has become the latest human pursuit to fall to machines, scientists have announced. In what marks significant progress for robotic manipulation of real-world objects, a Jenga-playing machine can learn the complex physics involved in withdrawing wooden blocks from a tower through physical trial and error. This differentiates it from robots that have mastered purely cognitive games such as chess and Go through visual cues. “Playing the game of Jenga also requires mastery of physical skills such as probing, pushing, pulling, placing and aligning pieces,” said Prof Alberto Rodriguez from the department of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Combining interactive perception and manipulation – whereby the robot would touch the tower to learn how and when to move blocks – is extremely difficult to simulate and therefore the robot has to learn in the real world, he added. So the researchers placed a two-pronged industrial robot arm with a force sensor in its wrist by the Jenga tower and allowed it to explore rather than using traditional machine-learning techniques that could require data from tens of thousands of block-extraction attempts in order to capture every possible scenario. The robot grouped the outcomes of approximately 300 attempts as it discovered that some blocks were harder to budge than others. “The robot builds clusters and then learns models for each of these clusters, instead of learning a model that captures absolutely everything that could happen,” said the paper’s lead author, MIT graduate student Nima Fazeli. This enabled the robot to develop a simple model to predict a block’s behaviour on the basis of its visual and tactile measurements as it gained an appreciation of the dynamics behind Jenga. “There are many tasks that we do with our hands where the feeling of doing it the right way comes in the language of forces and tactile cues,” Rodriguez said. “For tasks like these, a similar approach to ours could figure it out.” Still, the bot will have to improve if it is to conquer a human player, but it is not far off. Miquel Oller, a member of the team, said: “We saw how many blocks a human was able to extract before the tower fell and the difference was not that much.”The pound rose, and all was calm on the stock market. As far as the financial markets were concerned, the message was clear: the voting down by MPs of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement means a delayed Brexit, a softer Brexit or perhaps no Brexit at all. Those with serious wealth in Britain have always been worried that Brexit will lead to radical change. They now think that there will be a perpetuation of the status quo – or something not far removed from it. Hence the pound getting stronger. There’s no question that opting for the quiet life has its attractions. There would be a boost to the economy as companies decided to push ahead with investment plans that had been delayed while the outcome of Brexit was uncertain. And, of course, any economic costs of no deal would be avoided. The EU’s single market is more than a free-trade area. It aims to remove not just the fiscal barriers to trade (tariffs) but the physical and technical barriers (borders and divergent product standards) too by allowing as free movement as possible of goods, capital, services and people. In essence, it is about treating the EU as a single trading territory. See our full Brexit phrasebook. If the Bank of England is to be believed, these could be very high indeed. Just before Christmas, the Bank said the economy could shrink by 8% in the event of a disruptive no-deal outcome – a bigger recession than that seen when the global financial system came close to meltdown in 2008. But this was a worst-case scenario and the Bank had to throw in the kitchen sink to arrive at it. The idea, for example, that interest rates would rise by four percentage points after a no-deal Brexit is implausible. More likely, the Bank would join with the Treasury in using every available policy tool – including lower interest rates – to boost growth. More realistic projections have been provided by the consultancy firm Capital Economics. It forecasts that the economy will grow by 1.4% this year if May’s deal is eventually agreed, by 1.5% if a delay to the article 50 process leads to a softer Brexit, and by between 1% and -0.2% in the event of no deal, depending on whether it is orderly or not. Still a cost, in other words, but much more modest. Even so, why bother suffering any cost at all if it can be avoided by leaving things as they are? That seems like a reasonable argument, but in reality it is based on a series of doubtful assumptions. The first is that voters care only about economic growth. But if that were the case, they would support fracking and concreting over the green belt, both of which would lead to higher levels of activity. The second – voiced by business lobby groups – is that it is not possible to do better than the status quo because unemployment is low, real wages are growing, the City is the world’s financial hub and the UK is an attractive destination for inward investment. The third – shared by the European commission and some in the remain camp in the UK – is that there is nothing much wrong with Europe either. The EU is the world’s biggest market; the four freedoms allow for the movement of goods, people, money and services across the continent; and the euro has been a success. Yet in reality the UK has malfunctioned badly since the 2008 financial crisis, suffering a prolonged period of weak productivity growth and flatlining living standards. Investment has been weak. Most of the jobs created have been low-wage and low-skill. As for the rest of Europe, the eurozone was even slower to recover from the crash, in part because of the design flaws of monetary union and in part because its addiction to neoconservative economic dogma resulted in supercharged austerity programmes. Brexit, the gilets jaunes protesters in France, the terrible pain inflicted on Greece and the support for the League/Five Star government in Italy all tell their own story. Europe is alive with political discontent that reflects the demand for deep and urgent reform, but the chances of getting it are less likely if the status quo prevails. Why? Because the forces of conservatism are strong. Change comes about only when the pressure for it becomes too great to resist. The financial crisis provided one such opportunity to reform an economic system that for many people clearly wasn’t working; Brexit was a second. The left’s case for Brexit has always been based on the following notions: the current economic model is failing; socialism is needed to fix it; and the free-market ideology hardwired into the EU via the European Central Bank, judgments of the European court of justice and treaty changes will make that process all but impossible without a break with the status quo. It is theoretically possible that in the event of a “Brexit in name only” or no Brexit at all, policymakers will push ahead with what’s needed in order to make a reality of the slogan “a reformed Britain in a reformed Europe”. Possible but not all that plausible, given that it would require breaking up the euro, more autonomy for individual countries to intervene in the running of their economies, and a simultaneous philosophical U-turn in the big member states. Much more likely is that the pressure for change will dissipate and the real grievances of those who voted for Brexit will be quietly forgotten. The softer the Brexit, the more convinced the EU will be that it has been doing the right thing all along. Britain will not go up in flames, but there will still be consequences. Leave voters will feel they have been victims of an establishment stitch-up. The anger will not go away and will eventually resurface. The risk is that the losers will be the biggest supporters of the EU – the liberal left. And the biggest winners will be the extreme right. • Larry Elliott is the Guardian’s economics editorBolivia’s leftist president Evo Morales has clashed with an ally of Brazil’s new far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, highlighting the new ideological battlegrounds forming across Latin America as its leftist “pink tide” is consumed by a conservative counter-current. Rodrigo Amorim, a recently elected congressman for Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal party, belittled an urban indigenous community that occupied a disused indigenous museum in northern Rio de Janeiro. “If you like Indians, you should go to Bolivia – as well as being communist, it’s governed by an Indian,” Amorim told the Rio newspaper O Globo in an interview published on Friday. Morales, who was elected Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2005, hit back. “We regret the reemergence of white supremacist (KKK) ideology” in the region, he tweeted, calling such thinking a reflex of the xenophobia of Donald Trump’s administration. “Faced with intolerance and discrimination, indigenous peoples will promote respect and integration. We all have the same rights because we are children of the same Mother Earth,” Morales added. Bolsonaro, a self-styled anti-leftist crusader famed for his hostility towards minorities, has also faced accusations of racism towards Brazil’s black and indigenous communities. In interviews and on the campaign trail Bolsonaro has repeatedly compared indigenous tribespeople to animals living in zoos. But Morales – one of the few survivors of the “pink tide” generation of Latin American leaders that also included Bolsonaro’s leftwing nemesis Lula – was careful to direct his fire at Amorim, not Brazil’s new far-right leader. Despite their huge ideological differences, Morales attended Bolsonaro’s 1 January inauguration – a consequence, experts say, of Bolivia’s economic reliance on its neighbour. Bolivia exports around half of its natural gas to Brazil and the countries’ long-standing supply contract will expire later this year, meaning Morales is reluctant to cross Bolsonaro, whatever his personal feelings. Morales struck a diplomatic tone after travelling to Brasilia to watch Bolsonaro take office, arguing the two men had “a duty to work together for the benefit of our countries”. “Bolivia and Brazil are neighbors for life,” Morales tweeted alongside a video showing him clutching Bolsonaro’s hand with both hands. Bolsonaro – who has outraged activists by signalling he will move to open up Brazil’s indigenous reserves to development – has repeatedly name-checked Morales in order to justify his controversial plans for such communities. “In Bolivia, right here next door to Brazil, we’ve got an Indian who is president,” he said in a webcast to followers shortly before taking power. “So why do Indians in Brazil have to be treated like prehistoric men?” He added: “I’ve talked to the Indians. What do the Indians want? The great majority of the ones I’ve spoken to: they want electricity, they want internet, they want doctors, dentists … they want to play football, they want cars, they want to go the cinema, to go to the the theatre. They are human beings just like us.”US and Taliban officials have agreed in principle to the framework of a deal that could pave the way for peace talks in Kabul and ultimately the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, raising hopes of a breakthrough in the country’s 17-year conflict. Under the terms of the draft framework, the insurgents would promise to stop Afghan territory being used by terrorists. The US special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, confirmed the existence of the draft in an interview with the New York Times (NYT). The draft, thrashed out in lengthy talks in Qatar that ended on Saturday, requires the Taliban to agree to a ceasefire and to talk directly with the US-backed Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani – two conditions which the Taliban have not agreed to. If the talks led to a full deal, US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 18 months. The optimism expressed by Khalilzad in his NYT interview may yet be dashed by dissent within the Taliban or opposition from the government in Kabul. Ghani immediately expressed his doubts about a rushed process from which his ministers had been excluded. Last week Ghani acknowledged that more than 45,000 members of the Afghan security forces had died since 2014, a far higher number than previously thought. The Taliban run more than half the country and have not slowed the rate of attacks during winter, which is normally a lull. The group is increasingly confident that the US is losing the will to continue the war. Khalilzad said: “The Taliban have committed, to our satisfaction, to do what is necessary that would prevent Afghanistan from ever becoming a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals. We felt enough confidence that we said we need to get this fleshed out, and details need to be worked out.” Working groups would iron out details on the timeline of the withdrawal, but Khalilzad said there had been no discussions about the possibility of a Taliban role in a transitional government. The US stressed that the agreement was conditional on a ceasefire and direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Pakistan would be expected to play a key role in persuading the Taliban to show flexibility. Khalilzad returned to Afghanistan on Sunday to brief the Ghani government in Kabul after the six days of talks in Doha. In an address to the Afghan people responding to the talk of a breakthrough, Ghani recalled his country had struck deals with the Taliban before only to see the terms violated. “We want peace quickly, we want it soon, but we want it with prudence,” he said. “Prudence is important so we do not repeat past mistakes.” The acting US defence secretary, Patrick Shanahan, said he was encouraged by the progress of the talks but had not yet been tasked with planning a full withdrawal of troops. “Really the takeaway right now [is]: it’s encouraging,” Shanahan told reporters outside the Pentagon. There appear to have been few, if any, assurances from the Taliban about the kind of society Afghanistan would become, including about issues such as the future of girls’ education and women’s role in wider society. Ghani is nervous that the US president, Donald Trump, is so intent on withdrawing his troops from the country that he will sideline the Afghan government in the process, and even try to force Ghani’s ministers to share power with the Taliban in a transitional government. The Taliban refused to let the Ghani government, which it regards as a US puppet, accompany the Americans in the Doha talks. The Americans regarded the talks as serious since one of the most senior officials in the Taliban movement, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was chief negotiator. Ghani is running for a second five-year term in elections now scheduled for July. The talks in Doha, Qatar, lasted much longer than planned and longer than any previous attempt to end the Afghan conflict. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates took part in the last round of talks in December, but the Taliban insisted this time that only the US attended. The US sent troops to Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, and at the peak of the deployment had more than 100,000 troops in the country. It withdrew most of its forces in 2014, but still keeps about 14,000 troops there as part of a Nato-led mission aiding Afghan security forces and hunting militants. Khalilzad’s comments gave weight to reports last week that the Taliban had agreed to oppose al-Qaida and Islamic State in Afghanistan. The US invasion of 2001 was driven by the Taliban’s harbouring of al-Qaida, but more than 17 years later the jihadist group appears diminished in the region. Isis, however, is a growing and potent presence in Afghanistan, where it is fighting a fierce turf war with the Taliban in some areas.In terms of tantalising Sundance prospects, the idea of watching Zac Efron play Ted Bundy has charmed its way to the top, morbid curiosity attaching itself to what screams of flashy stunt casting. The ex-Disney heartthrob graduated from the High School Musical franchise to a spotty adult career, showing comic skills in two sharp Neighbors films but struggling to make dross like We Are Your Friends, Baywatch or Dirty Grandpa feel remotely necessary. His decision to play one of America’s most notorious and sadistic serial killers in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (named after a courtroom description of Bundy) is a carefully considered turning point, a gruesome gambit aimed at showing hidden depths underneath his Ken doll exterior and a textbook move for an actor whose work has been so closely associated with his appearance. But unlike other depth-plumbing heartthrobs like Jared Leto in Chapter 27 or Charlize Theron in Monster, Efron doesn’t require extreme weight gain or prosthetic teeth to transform, just an as-yet-unseen ability to lean into his dark side. The film starts by showing us events from Bundy’s fiance Liz’s perspective as a single mother seduced by a charismatic stranger called Ted. The pair’s honeymoon phase is soon brought to an end when Ted is accused of aggravated assault and Liz is forced to decide between a growing stack of evidence and her lover’s dogged insistence that he’s being framed. The decision to keep the viewer similarly in the dark as to Bundy’s involvement in the crimes makes it a mostly bloodless affair and directed by the documentarian Joe Berlinger, it’s also a rather drab one too, betraying a devilish title hinting at wilder, unseen depths. In fact, the most shocking thing about the film is Efron’s remarkably accomplished, fiercely committed performance. As Bundy, he ruthlessly weaponises the boyish charm that’s propelled much of his career, slyly convincing us of the spell he cast, not only on Liz but the many other women who were fighting his corner, sure of his innocence. It’s the career-changing moment he was clearly seeking and with an executive producer credit, one can understand his impassioned involvement, a juicy opportunity to break away from his pretty boy shackles and prove that he’s deserving of more dramatic work. But away from his standout turn, it’s a whole lot harder to figure out what those around him saw in the project. Despite being centred on Bundy’s longtime partner, her on-screen incarnation is stuck in a rather repetitive and incredibly limiting cycle of worrying and drinking and Collins, channelling a mopey, mid-00s Jennifer Connelly, struggles to pull her out of the dark. She’s reduced to a stock character, which makes the choice to pull focus away from the gory details of Bundy’s crimes feel all the more bizarre. As good as Efron is, he too is saddled with playing a character short on detail. We know nothing of his childhood, his motivation or the minutiae of just how he got away with it all for so long. Berlinger, and screenwriter Michael Werwie, clearly want to put us in the place of Liz and the others he fooled by withholding even a glimpse of his violence until the last minute. But given that we know both his guilt and depravity before the film even starts, it’s a technique that doesn’t fully work. Instead, it results in confusing time leaps and a list of frustratingly unanswered questions. Berlinger’s work as a documentary film-maker has brought him awards and acclaim for covering the crimes of everyone from Whitey Bulger to the West Memphis Three but his last narrative film was 2000’s disastrous sequel to The Blair Witch Project and it remains an ill-fitting format for him. As the festival kicked off, Berlinger also dropped a Bundy documentary on Netflix and at times, this feels like a lifeless reconstruction of that, only really coming to life when Efron is on the charm offensive. The facts of Bundy’s case remain fascinating and so they serve to drive interest regardless of presentation, but in order to separate this from previous attempts to bring his story to the screen, a surer, more stylish cinematic hand should have been pulling the strings. It’s a star vehicle that starts and ends with its star, the film around him struggling to justify its existence. Efron is wicked, the film less so. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is showing at the Sundance film festival This article has been amended on 27 January. It was originally claimed that the script was based on a book by Elizabeth Kendall which was incorrectIt could simply be a coincidence. Or perhaps the decision to exhibit Edvard Munch’s most famous work, The Scream, at the British Museum in April, closely following Britain’s scheduled 29 March exit from the EU, is an artful piece of deliberate subversion. Either way, the Norwegian painter’s celebrated depiction of extreme pain occasioned by high anxiety, mental instability, grief, loneliness and separation seems especially well-suited to the times. Yet while Britain heads for a potentially spectacular nervous breakdown, an agitated Europe is not in much better shape. Nervousness abounds about the EU’s prospects and cohesion, with the focus on European parliament elections on 23-26 May. This normally dull, uninspiring contest is turning into a battlefield on which a definitive struggle over Europe’s direction may be fought and decided. The last elections in 2014 saw the lowest ever turnout; 2019 could be very different. Two rival camps are emerging and one is doomed to defeat. On one side stand France and Germany, the fabled motor that notionally powered the EU from its inception. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, hopes voters will endorse his vision of a more integrated Europe, economically, financially and politically. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, is cautious about the specifics but supports Macron’s thrust. Both want an EU that can better stand up for its interests and values in a world shaken by the iconoclasm of Donald Trump. In her new year address, Merkel said Germany would take greater responsibility for seeking “global solutions” to global problems such as terrorism, migration and climate change. Her remarks were seen as defiance of both Trump’s nationalistic “America First” agenda and the 2016-18 rightwing populist advance in swaths of Germany and across Europe. Merkel and Macron will sign a highly symbolic update of the landmark 1963 Franco-German friendship treaty in the border city of Aachen this month. They aim to accelerate cooperation in defence, security and diplomacy, notably at the UN security council, where Germany is starting a two-year stint. Their message is plain: whatever Trump may say, multilateralism and the collaborative postwar world order remain alive and kicking – and henceforth their ideological home will be in the heart of Europe. Problems with this approach are many. For a start, much of what will be agreed in Aachen amounts to a sop to Macron, whose more ambitious ideas about budgetary and eurozone integration find scant support in Berlin. Then there is the growing weakness of both leaders. After a string of state election reverses, Merkel said she would stand down no later than 2021. Macron is under siege at home from gilets jaunes demonstrations – increasingly hijacked by the far right – objecting to everything from the cost of living to his Sun King airs. Long-time EU watchers see the Aachen exercise as a broad restatement of long-established, essentially nebulous goals that nevertheless reflect a resurgent geopolitical reality: that with Britain out of the mix, Paris and Berlin are re-establishing the virtually unchecked European hegemony they enjoyed before Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher butted in after 1973. In short, the dominant Franco-German axis is back, or could be – bad news for abandoned UK allies in central and eastern Europe. A more fundamental problem with these machinations is Europe’s admirably unbiddable voters, which brings us back to the May elections. Last week saw the most unabashed expression yet of the determination of Europe’s disparate, predominantly rightwing populist, nationalist, anti-immigrant and xenophobic parties to join together to break Brussels’s sclerotic, self-serving grip. Speaking in Warsaw after meeting senior members of Poland’s conservative government, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and leader of the far-right League, called for a continental coalition campaigning for an implicitly anti-foreigner “renaissance of European values” and an end to Europe “run by bureaucrats”, meaning the European commission, France, Germany and the Benelux countries. Salvini swiftly obtained the applause and backing of Europe’s foremost anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Eurosceptic, Viktor Orbán. Hungary’s prime minister had previously cast the May polls as a personality contest between himself and Macron. Now battle lines are expanding and stakes are rising. All of Europe is the prize. Salvini’s confident prediction of a new “European spring” looks, at first glance, to be sinister and overblown. Orbán’s claim that the migration question is the defining issue in European politics and his roadmap for a phased, rightwing takeover of the EU sound like unpleasant pipe-dreams. But is that really all they are? There is a theory, attractive to progressives and liberals for obvious reasons, that Euro-Atlantic populism has peaked, that Trump has overplayed his hand on the wall with Mexico, that the steam has gone out of the Syrian refugee crisis, that the anger and alienation that sparked Brexit and recently boosted the far-right in Sweden, Italy and Spain have dissipated. Dream on. The balance of political power in Europe has shifted from the centre to the extremes, possibly permanently, and mainly to the benefit of the hard right. About one in six western European voters now regularly back populist parties. Economic disparities and wealth gaps yawn ever wider. Across Europe, migration – locally problematic or not – resembles a roadside IED, ever ready to explode without warning. Agree with Orbán or not, migration has become a catch-all Trojan horse issue, encompassing concerns about identity, finite resources, community, culture and sovereignty. It symbolises the perceived failure of established elites to comprehend, let alone solve, the “problem”. It is a potent electoral weapon. When Salvini talks of a rebooted Europe founded on “new blood, new strength, new energy”, there are unmistakable rhetorical echoes of another benighted era of instability, of another crazed demagogue, of another pan-European crisis of leadership and legitimacy. The way things are going, perhaps they should be praying in Brussels for a repeat in May of 2014’s record low turnout. Or perhaps we should all put our hands to our ears and scream. • Simon Tisdall is an Observer writerSome things are almost too extraordinary to comprehend. Take what is almost the smallest and simplest measurement from the New Horizons space probe which has just passed Ultima Thule: it is travelling at 32,000 miles an hour, a speed that is more than 50 times faster than anyone alive on Earth has travelled – unless they are a military pilot or an astronaut. In fact, it’s close to magic: Puck boasts in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that he can girdle the Earth in 40 minutes; New Horizons could do it in 50. This is not an easy speed at which to control anything. Yet, while moving that fast, and so far from Earth that it takes radio signals, travelling at the speed of light, more than six hours to reach it, the probe has been flown within 2,400 miles of a lump of rock 20 miles long which is itself hurtling through space in an orbit it has kept since before the Earth was formed. As Nasa announced the mission’s success, China was attempting to place a lander on the far side of the moon to help to decide whether a radio telescope could some day be built there, entirely screened from the interference of earthly civilisation. Nasa has already managed to put another spacecraft in orbit around a tiny asteroid, only 500m in diameter and much closer to Earth than Ultima Thule: the plan here is to land on the rock, collect samples, and return with them to Earth by 2023. There are two Nasa probes on Mars, sending back a stream of data, videos, and even the sounds of the wind on an alien planet. Space exploration demands extraordinary technologies, and has helped to produce some of them. But it also requires extraordinary human qualities: for astronauts, great bravery, but for everyone, ingenuity, imagination, discipline, and even a sort of altruism. The scientists and engineers, and the astronauts themselves, all need to work for decades for little material reward: New Horizons will bring nothing back but knowledge. There is nothing to exploit in the outer reaches of the solar system, just the boundless satisfaction of understanding the universe a little bit better. The technology continues to get better and cheaper. Its role in the economy becomes steadily more central. While proper space exploration remains the preserve of governments, commercial exploration of the near-Earth orbit is cracking on. In fact our economy has extended into orbit for decades now. Without satellite communications and GPS information the world would come to a chaotic halt. The civilian – and the military – uses of imagery from space are now impossible to count. There is a danger here. It is not that of commercial exploitation but of the malevolently intended and unprofitable uses. The most obvious is the possibility of militarising space. In one sense, space has been militarised ever since the launch of the first intercontinental ballistic missiles, but there are new threats, involving the destruction of an enemy’s targets, such as their satellites, which we can only hope remain entirely theoretical. More immediately, space exploration has become a fashion among the unfathomably rich, such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who are running rival private space programmes. The use of huge rockets in the tech billionaires’ demonstrations of manhood isn’t entirely comical. It speaks of a dream that they can leave the Earth and all its messy problems far behind. It is a negation of the message of that first great picture from space – Earthrise – which showed us all sharing one planet. That is still who we are. And you cannot escape to the final frontier if you screw up the planet you start from.A Commons vote affirming confidence in Her Majesty’s government does not indicate that parliament trusts Theresa May. Her reprieve on Wednesday night, by a margin of 19, largely expresses Tory and DUP reluctance to risk a general election. Power is still flowing away from the prime minister. In 2017 voters deprived the Tories of a majority. Last December the government was found in contempt of parliament. One-third of Tory MPs have said they have no confidence in Mrs May as their party’s leader. On Tuesday, the prime minister’s Brexit deal was crushed in a Commons defeat greater than any recorded in the modern era. Mrs May’s authority has been stripped away; her credibility is gone. Every precedent guides her towards resignation. But not much about Brexit follows precedent. Immediately after Wednesday’s vote the prime minister offered talks with leaders of opposition parties to break the impasse. It is a welcome shift in tone, but there is no indication from Mrs May’s record that she has the diplomatic skills required to make such a consultation fruitful. She has clung compulsively to her original negotiating “red lines” and still seems unaware that the Brexit model they defined is beyond resuscitation. Her resistance to compromise has ratcheted up the risk of Britain reaching the article 50 deadline without any deal. Despite Mrs May’s new overtures, Downing Street still formally rejects the prospect of a customs union with the EU, although softening that line would transform dialogue with Labour and pro-European Tories. A customs union alone does not dissolve obstacles in the Commons, nor does it resolve problems around the Irish border, but it is the foundation of any Brexit deal that stands a chance of achieving those goals. Mrs May’s objection is that it limits independence in trade talks and upsets hardline Tory Eurosceptics. But the UK’s leverage in talks with superpower blocs – the US, China, India, the EU – is vastly overstated and the Brexit hardliners will never be satisfied with any deal. Holding out for their approval is a waste of time. Mrs May speaks often about duty to the electorate, as if the choices she makes stand above party interest. The opposite is true: she has imprisoned herself in a narrow, parochial view of what Brexit means, conditioned by irrational attachment to the Tory right. It is imperative that she break free of those constraints. She must show sincerity in the offer to work across the house, which means giving serious consideration to proposals that cross the red lines: a customs union, Efta, the EEA or some combination of those institutional arrangements. There are models of a soft Brexit that have been developed by groups of Labour and Tory MPs, showing the bipartisan spirit that Mrs May lacks. Wednesday’s fierce no-confidence debate stoked fires of tribal party allegiance, but those flames cannot be allowed to consume the prospect of Brexit partnership. The government’s next step must be to engage with the authors of alternative Brexit blueprints and present them in parliament as a menu of options, subject to indicative, unwhipped votes. MPs must, in the first analysis, be allowed to coalesce around plans unconstrained by formal party lines. The Commons should consider how such ideas might be developed with wider popular consent, as envisaged in the innovative model of a citizens’ assembly. The public could then be given a final say on the choices available, including EU membership on current terms. That process demands an extension to the article 50 period. Even an off-the-shelf Brexit model needs enabling legislation, which takes time. The prime minister’s reluctance to admit as much is another symptom of her delusional obstinacy. Mrs May has routinely struggled to adapt to changing circumstance as events have progressively limited her room for manoeuvre. That rigidity seems intrinsic to her character, irrespective of invitations to cross-party talks. It is not enough to affect a change of tone in the aftermath of a fierce parliamentary debate. The shift in style is welcome and long overdue. But the prime minister must now urgently show readiness to compromise on the very substance of Brexit.US efforts to extradite a Chinese telecoms executive from Canada may have been stymied by remarks on the case made by Donald trump, according to Canada’s top diplomat in Beijing. Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was detained at the request of the US on 1 December in Vancouver, over alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran. She is currently under house arrest and the US justice department has until 30 January to file a formal extradition request. The incident has inadvertently placed Canada in direct conflict with China, but Justin Trudeau’s government now appears to be adopting a new strategy to ease tension between the two countries. In statements made to Chinese-language media in Canada, ambassador John McCallum said Meng “has some strong arguments that she can make before a judge”, and outlined arguments that could weaken US attempts to extradite her. For more than a month, Canada has faced reprisals from China, including the detention and alleged abuse of two Canadian citizens and a deep-freeze in relations between the two countries. Canadian officials have repeatedly stressed that the case Meng, who is under house arrest in Vancouver, must be immune to political interference. But McCallum’s comments seemed to indicate a new strategy. On Wednesday, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said Canada was “committed to the rule of law” and declined to comment on McCallum’s remarks. “It is extraordinary to have McCallum say those things,” said Gordon Houlden, head of the University of Albert’a China Institute. “We know that he’s met with the cabinet, the prime minister and caucus. He’s up to speed on the thinking and this is a man of sufficient experience … This is not chance. He’s putting out a message there.” In his remarks, McCallum pointed to previous comments from Trump as potential evidence of political interference. In December, Trump suggested he would be open to using Meng’s pending case as a negotiating tactic in trade talks with China, saying he would “intervene if I thought it was necessary”. Trump’s statements, which left Canada scrambling to defend the integrity of its judicial system, were not the first time the president’s off-the-cuff ideas have served as an obstacle to his administration’s policy proposals. His previous remarks about the firing of former FBI director James Comey and Muslim immigrants have both created legal and political headaches. Once the US justice department files a formal extradition request for Meng, her case will be heard by a judge in British Columbia. The extradition request must then be approved by the country’s attorney general. “It is unusual and inappropriate for a senior official – and in this case a former cabinet minister – to express a view in public as to the relative merits of the arguments in an extradition case,” Michael Byers, a professor of political science at the university of British Columbia told the the Guardian in an email. “The judge will read about these comments and have to work harder to stay objective, and that is unfair to both him and the accused.” McCallum also made reference to the alleged breach of Iran sanctions in his public remarks: “Canada does not sign on to these Iran sanctions. So I think she has some strong arguments she can make before a judge.” US prosecutors, however, have stressed it is not violation of the sanctions, but of suspicious fraud that prompted the extradition request. McCallum’s remarks could represent a way of lessening tensions, said Houlden. “I think there’s maybe a little bit of concern that perhaps in Canada, by Canadians, that the Americans are prepared to fight China to last Canadian,” he said, calling the statements by McCallum a “trial ballon”. But the comments will also probably provide fodder for her legal team: “To be able to quote the ambassador to China, if I were her lawyer, I would certainly be adding a couple of talking points.”Last year was the hottest ever measured, continuing an upward trend that is a direct result of manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The key to the measurements is the oceans. Oceans absorb more than 90% of the heat that results from greenhouse gases, so if you want to measure global warming you really have to measure ocean warming. There are other ways to measure climate change, but none are as convincing as the oceans. Air temperatures are most commonly reported in the media as evidence of global warming, but the problem with these is they are very erratic. While there is certainly a long-term trend of higher air temperatures, any given year may be warmer or colder than the last. So oceans are key, and they are telling us a clear story. The last five years were the five hottest on record. The numbers are huge: in 2018 the extra ocean heat compared to a 1981-2010 baseline amounted to 196,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules. The current rate of ocean warming is equivalent to five Hiroshima-size atomic bombs exploding every second. The measurements have been published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences in an article by Lijing Cheng, the lead author, and his colleagues from the Institute for Atmospheric Physics in China. His collaborators, of which I am one, included researchers from around the world. The article charts ocean heat back to the late 1950s, showing a steady increase. Ocean warming is incontrovertible proof of global warming, and there are real consequences to a warming ocean. Firstly, warmer water expands, and this expansion causes sea levels to rise. Approximately a third of the rise in ocean waters is a result of the heat absorbed by the oceans. Scientists expect about one metre of sea level rise by the end of the century, which would be enough to displace 150 million people worldwide. The warming waters also make storms more powerful. In the US recently, we have seen hurricanes pass over extremely warm ocean waters, which has supercharged them and increased the damage they cause. Other kinds of storms are also being made stronger. Heavier downpours of rainfall are increasing flooding around the world. Simply put, our emissions of greenhouse gases have caused loss of life and property. We are all responsible, but the people who have denied the science and the solutions own a special responsibility that history will judge harshly. It isn’t just humans that are suffering and will suffer more in the future. The heating of oceans is causing tremendous problems for sea life, particularly coral reefs. If we continue to warm the planet, we can expect to lose much of these reefs. We can also anticipate reductions in fish and sea life populations. We scientists sound like a broken record. Every year we present the science and plead for action. Not nearly enough is being done. We can still tackle climate change, but we must act immediately. We have the means to make a difference, we lack only the will.Kenya’s president has vowed to “relentlessly pursue” anyone involved in the Nairobi hotel complex attack, confirming earlier reports that 14 civilians had died. Uhuru Kenyatta said security forces killed all four militants who stormed the dusitD2 hotel in the centre of the Kenyan capital, and that operations there had ended. “We will seek out every person who was involved in the funding, planning and execution of this heinous act,” Kenyatta said. “We will pursue them relentlessly wherever they will be until they are held accountable.” A Briton and an American have been confirmed among the dead in the attack, which began shortly after 3pm on Tuesday with an explosion in the parking lot and then a suicide bomb blast in the hotel’s foyer. The assault on the compound in the centre of the Kenyan capital, containing restaurants, a spa and several office buildings housing international companies as well as the luxury hotel, was the most high-profile by terrorists in Kenya for many years. It was claimed by al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist organisation based in neighbouring Somalia, on its in-house radio network and online. Al-Shabaab was responsible for an attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in 2013 that left at least 67 people dead. Images from security cameras showed four young men in black combat fatigues and armed with AK47s entering the compound. The gunmen initially targeted a bank and diners at a Thai restaurant, prompting panic. Survivors reported hearing a shattering blast and saw people mown down by gunmen as they sat at a cafe. Victims were left lying on tables, bleeding. “We were changing our shifts, and that is when I heard a loud blast and people were screaming,” said Enoch Kibet, who works as a cleaner at the cafe and managed to crawl out of a basement gate. “I couldn’t believe I was alive. The blast was so loud and shook the whole complex.” In the hours after the attack, the gunmen and security forces engaged in a series of sporadic but fierce firefights. Plumes of smoke rose into the air from several burning cars. “There was a bomb, there is a lot of gunfire,” said one man working at the complex, who asked not to be named. Others described office workers hiding under desks or sheltering behind makeshift barricades. Casualties were still being brought out of the complex at about 7am on Wednesday morning, when gunfire and blasts were heard. A heavily armed member of the British SAS who was reportedly on a training mission with Kenyan special forces was pictured helping to evacuate people during the attack. A woman rescued from the hair salon she manages in the dusitD2 complex on Tuesday also survived the Westgate attack, local media reported. “I was working there when the attackers stormed in, it was not easy just like today. All I can say is that I thank God,” Tracy Wanjiru told Nairobi News. Wanjiru said she heard a loud explosion on Tuesday and went out to see what was happening. “I jumped back to the salon, told my colleagues to be keen because we were under attack. They dismissed me at first but when they heard wails and screams, everyone went into hiding,” she said. Western and international security officials have told the Guardian they warned Kenyan counterparts about potential high-profile attacks by al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaida, over Christmas and the new year. The attack came exactly three years after an al-Shabaab attack on a Kenyan military base in El Adde in Somalia, in which about 140 Kenyan soldiers were killed. Experts say the organisation has other motivations for attacking Nairobi, a city it sees as a “western bastion”. Kenyatta said operations to “deter, disrupt and defeat” terrorists were under way throughout Kenya. “I assure every Kenyan and foreign visitors that you are safe in Kenya,” he said.The BBC has blamed “human error” for a suggestion on its News at Six that Theresa May would be flying back to Brussels for more Brexit talks in a second world war Spitfire. But the explanation has been greeted with scepticism by some who saw the incident as an example of pro-Brexit bias at the corporation. At the end of Wednesday’s evening programme viewers were shown black and white footage of the iconic planes as newsreader Sophie Raworth summarised the prime minister’s plan to reopen Brexit talks with EU leaders. As the footage of the planes was played, Raworth read: “Theresa May says she intends to go back to Brussels to negotiate her Brexit deal but EU leaders say the deal is done and they will not reopen talks.” The editor of the programme, Paul Royall, said the Spitfire clip had been intended to be a foretaste of an item about a new Battle of Britain museum at Biggin Hill in London. In a tweet he blamed the mix up on human error and joked he was “pretty sure” that May would not be travelling to Europe in a Spitfire. For those wondering - simple human error at end of #BBCNewsSix. A production mistake meant pictures used earlier to tease story about Biggin Hill ended up in our top story recap at close of show. If and when it happens pretty certain PM not travelling to Brussels like this. pic.twitter.com/P2yXMnkkCK Tim Montgomerie, the pro-Brexit columnist and founder of the ConservativeHome website, said he believed Royall’s explanation, but many would not. Many won’t ever believe that this ending to the #BBCNewsSix was an accident*!!! 😂😂😂* I do https://t.co/XxcVLCaHoA Some pro-EU Twitter users suggested it was a deliberate attempt to send a subliminal message about about May battling the European Union. No, not buying it, this fits too well in the Let's get back to former glory, we won the war after all- rhetoric that was peddled a lot on the BBC lately. You are bias and dangerously pushing the Hard Brexit agenda, shameful @BBC !!! A spokeswoman for BBC News said the gaffe was a genuine error and there was nothing more to add to Royall’s explanation.Richard Nixon once said there can be no whitewash at the White House. But it would be fair to say there is now a white flag. It was metaphorically waved by Donald Trump in a chilly yet sunny Rose Garden on Friday when he declared an end to the partial government shutdown after 35 tortuous days. The US president did not get his wall. All those federal government workers missing pay cheques and queueing at food banks, also those long lines at airports and fears over passenger safety, all that rubbish piling up in national parks, all the political pain inflicted on Trump and Republicans was for nothing. He wanted $5.7bn and he got $0. So why cave now? There are three likely reasons. First, there was the political pressure. Asked how he went bankrupt, a character in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises answers: “Gradually and then suddenly.” The bad news built gradually over Christmas and the new year, then suddenly on Friday as a shortage of air traffic controllers caused significant flight delays and I-regret-voting-for-Trump interviews reached a crescendo. Second, if Trump was going to cut his losses, he might as well do it now in the hope that he can deliver his State of the Union address as planned on Tuesday, or at least soon after. It is the sort of big televised moment that he no doubt fantasised about when he first ran for president. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told him it would be postponed until the government reopened. Friday’s surrender marked Pelosi 2, Trump 0. (Jackie Alemany‏, a Washington Post journalist, tweeted: “‘So I’m assuming Nancy Pelosi will be giving the State of the Union now, since she’s running the country,’ a former White House staffer texts.”) "So I'm assuming Nancy Pelosi will be giving the State of the Union now, since she's running the country," a former White House staffer texts. Third, Trump is a master of distraction and throwing out shiny objects to divert attention. The day began with the potentially catastrophic arrest of his longtime adviser Roger Stone as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia. How better to knock Stone out of the headlines than by ending the longest government shutdown in American history. The reality, however, is that Trump has exchanged one set of awful headlines for another. Already the narrative is that the self-proclaimed dealmaker capitulated, caved, gave in, surrendered and lost. He tried to dodge that perception by loading his Rose Garden speech with the usual graphic and gory claims about of drugs and violent criminals pouring over the US-Mexico border. At times breaking from the teleprompter to riff from the gut, Trump insisted: “Walls should not be controversial. Our country has built 654 miles of barrier over the last 15 years, and every career border patrol agent I have spoken with has told me that walls work. They do work. No matter where you go, they work. Israel built a wall – 99.9% successful. Won’t be any different for us.” And he warned that, without a fair deal from Congress, he will shut down the government again on 15 February or play his last card: declaring a national emergency to get the funds from elsewhere. Later, at a meeting in the White House, he threatened: “We’ll work with the Democrats and negotiate and if we can’t do that, then we’ll do a – obviously we’ll do the emergency because that’s what it is. It’s a national emergency.” But none of that is likely to satisfy the hard right who had been urging Trump to fight for the wall to the bitter end. Ann Coulter, author of In Trump We Trust, tweeted: “Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.” And so it was that Trump, a man hardly known for displays of respect to women, found himself crushed by Pelosi on his left and Coulter on his right. To paraphrase the film A Man for All Seasons, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for a wall?Lorna Doom, the bassist with cult Los Angeles punk band Germs, has died. Born Teresa Ryan, her age and cause of death is unknown, her death made public when the band’s drummer Don Bolles posted on Facebook: “She left this mortal coil today [Wednesday] around 1.” Tributes have been paid by punk musician Laura Jane Grace, who tweeted: “I can still see the ‘Germs burn’ on my wrist from when I was 14 years old. Few bands had as big of an impact on me.” Katy Goodman of indie-rock group Vivian Girls wrote: “RIP Lorna Doom. The germs burn on my wrist originated from you.” The “germs burn” was a cigarette burn by which fans showed allegiance to the band. Formed in 1976, Germs were one of the earliest and most influential west coast punk bands, helping to usher in the high-speed hardcore punk style. Their only album, (GI), was produced by Joan Jett and released in 1979. Belinda Carlisle had a short stint as a drummer, while their guitarist Pat Smear would go on to join Nirvana as a touring guitarist and then Foo Fighters. The band’s singer Darby Crash killed himself in 1980, aged 22, shortly after the band had split. Germs featured heavily in Penelope Spheeris’s 1981 documentary of the LA punk scene, The Decline of Western Civilization, and their story was later told in the 2007 biopic What We Do Is Secret. Following the release of the film, Germs reformed with Shane West, who played Crash in the film, as frontman. Doom said of her life following Crash’s death: “I moved to New York and was married. I did various things. I guess I was waiting for Shane to be born and to grow up and resume the position … this is the craziest thing that has ever happened to me; that this little group you thought you would never see or playing again, is now performing again. it’s about as crazy as you can get. It’s a good crazy.”A Mexican woman who was sentenced to 16 years in jail after suffering a miscarriage in a department store bathroom has walked free after a court in the central state of Querétaro overturned her homicide conviction. Prosecutors had accused Dafne McPherson, 29, of murdering her newborn, but an appeal court judge found that the scientific evidence used to convict her was flimsy. The case highlights the criminalisation of women who suffer miscarriages in parts of Mexico with intensely conservative and Catholic cultures. Mexico City decriminalised abortion a decade ago, but it remains illegal in much of the country, and women who suffer complicated births or spontaneous abortions are often targeted for prosecution. McPherson, broke down in tears after she was released from prison on Thursday. “I’m very happy. I’m going to be able to see my baby,” she said, referring to her daughter Lía, who she had not seen for three years. But she had bitter words for the prosecutors. “They didn’t investigate –they didn’t do a thing … That’s why there are people inside who shouldn’t be in prison.” McPherson was working at the Liverpool department store in the central Mexican city of San Juan del Río when she felt a sharp pain in her abdomen, and shortly after went into labour in the store bathroom. She has always insisted that she did not even know she was pregnant, but prosecutors accused her of inducing delivery and suffocating her baby in the toilet. Security at the store refused a Red Cross ambulance access to the parking lot, instead calling a private ambulance.Paramedics eventually found McPherson unconscious in the bathroom, having suffered a massive loss of blood. McPherson’s plight captured national attention after prosecutors accused her of indifference toward a newborn, describing her actions as something “not even a dog would do”. Maricruz Ocampo, an activist on women’s issues in Querétaro argued that McPherson had been punished for not living up to an idealised vision of womanhood. “It was treated as an abortion, but it was also treated as a deficiency of her as a mother,” she said. “They said that she had to react as a ‘super woman’ because ‘that’s what every mother does’.” McPherson’s parents were forced to sell the family home to cover legal costs.If a future of relentless fires, droughts, superstorms and rising sea levels makes you feel like you need a strong caffeinated beverage, there is some bad news: climate change is coming for the world’s coffee beans. Greg Meenahan, the partnership director at the non-profit institute World Coffee Research, puts it this way: “Demand for coffee is expected to double by the year 2050 and, if nothing is done, more than half of the world’s suitable coffee land will be pushed into unsuitability due to climate change. Without research and development, the coffee sector will need up to 180m more bags of coffee in 2050 than we are likely to have.” To address this, the organisation is undertaking the international multi-location variety trial, testing 35 coffee types across 23 countries to measure performance in different climates – including in regions not typically associated with coffee production, such as Australia. In what could be Australia’s most significant contribution to coffee since the flat white, scientists at Southern Cross University will be testing 20 “climate-resistant” varieties. Prof Graham King, the director of plant science at SCU, says that in January up to 900 plants will be planted at the tropical fruit research station in Alstonville, northern New South Wales. According to King, climate change is expected to devastate the world’s major coffee-growing regions through extreme weather and by increasing attacks by crop pests and diseases. “Many current mountainous tropical production areas of the world are likely to become untenable for coffee as climate change progresses,” he says. “Within Australia we currently have the benefit of no coffee rust or cherry borer, or other major pests and disease. This is quite unique compared with most production areas of the world.” The impact is already being felt. As detailed in a 2016 report by Fairtrade Australia, in 2012 Central America was hit by a wave of coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) after unusually high temperatures and high-altitude rains, causing US$500m in crop damages and putting nearly 350,000 labourers out of work. Droughts and frequent storms have led to Costa Rican farmers giving up coffee for orange plantations. Outside Latin America, the coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) – which used to only appear at a maximum altitude of 1,500 metres above sea level – is being found above this limit, thanks to unseasonably hot conditions and higher rainfall on plantations from Tanzania to Indonesia. On Mount Kilimanjaro plantations, the beetle is now found 300 metres higher than last century. The future of coffee … and the livelihood and wellbeing of coffee farmers, workers and their families is at stake Not only is Australia free of these blights, says King, but climate change could open up more Australian regions for growing coffee cherries owing to reduced frost damage in winter. King warns that the trial will need at least five years to reap results, but funding from the federal government-funded AgriFutures Australia runs out in May. He says it has offered “pretty poor engagement” on the issue. AgriFutures’ business development manager, Duncan Farquhar, says the coffee sector has been provided with funding for developing new varieties since 2014. “Emerging industries, including the coffee industry” have been invited to compete for a new round of funding, he says. The organisation’s figures indicate that local coffee production has a long way to go to meet domestic demand. In 2011–12, just under 50 Australian growers produced about 1,000 tonnes of dry green beans, while about 67,000 tonnes were imported. Its experts say Australian coffee is 10% to 15% lower in caffeine than much overseas coffee because it is grown in a low-stress environment. Caffeine is produced by coffee plants as a defence mechanism against threats from pests and diseases. An agronomist and coffee industry adviser, David Peasley, says rising temperatures could hurt coffee growing in north Queensland but agrees that in subtropical coffee growing regions they could help. He cautions that climate change could leave Australian plantations more vulnerable to pests and diseases and that extreme weather events will present a challenge. Indeed, without hardier varieties, Australian growers may find climate change brings more challenges than benefits. A grower, Zeta Grealy, says conditions have become increasingly difficult since she created her Zeta’s Coffee plantation on the border of NSW and Queensland in 1994. “In the past we had fabulous conditions, a lovely microclimate for coffee,” she says. “It used to look rainforest-y around here, now it’s very sparse. It has been a gradual change – where once we’d be getting two metres of rainfall, [across 2018] we had less than one. “Our crop actually didn’t happen this time, we had overripe cherries and completely green cherries, flowers on the tree – not what we want. So we decided to strip the trees and get them ready for next year.” The crop was down to 19kg from a typical year of about a tonne. Grealy is hopeful that the trials lead to access to varieties that can cope with lower rainfall. World Coffee Research is encouraging the industry to do its bit to safeguard the crop’s global future by contributing to its Checkoff program, in which roasters can donate up to 0.20 cents a kilogram of green coffee from participating suppliers to help fund initiatives such as the global trial. Supporters include Single O’s director of coffee, Wendy De Jong, whose company will be the first roaster to import a full container of “future-friendly” coffees to Australia. “[We] are calling on Australian roasters and importers to do their part to fund the critical research and development needed for coffee and farmers alike by signing up to the WCR Checkoff program,” she says. Fairtrade Australia’s chief executive, Molly Harriss Olson, welcomes research into hardier varieties, noting that by 2080 wild coffee – a vital bedrock of genetic diversity for developing new varieties – could become extinct. She notes that expanding Australian plantations won’t prevent climate change’s impact on coffee growers in other countries. “More frequent and severe drought is associated with a deep and disturbing sense of failure, loss, powerlessness, heightened anxiety, stress, depression and an increased suicide rate among farmers,” she says. Harriss Olson urged coffee consumers to educate themselves about the challenges facing growers, seek out brands that are both carbon-neutral and help producers to adapt to a changing climate, and urge businesses and governments to pursue a carbon-neutral economy. “It’s crucial that we all take action now,” she says. “Because the future of coffee, one of the world’s favourite commodities, and the livelihood and wellbeing of millions of coffee farmers, workers and their families is at stake.”I had come to see Diana in her bright, lovely room at the Mary Feilding Guild in north London, the place itself as perfect a version of assisted living as you could imagine. I was interviewing her for a magazine called the gentlewoman a couple of years ago. Diana was intrigued by the magazine’s name, until I told her that the magazine the same company produced for men was called Fantastic Man. Diana was outraged. “Why isn’t it called Fantastic Woman?” she exclaimed. If there was ever anyone who deserved the label Fantastic Woman, it was Diana Athill. Fantastic in her openness, her honesty, her humour, her complete lack of interest in what are commonly supposed to be life’s ordinary proprieties but which are, usually, simply stultifying convention. To be in her presence was to be reminded that every day of one’s life is a gift and that it’s never too late. She worked hard all her life as an editor and was integral to the success of authors such as VS Naipaul and Jean Rhys; her writing mostly took a back seat. She was in her 80s by the time Stet, her memoir of a life in publishing, catapulted her to unexpected literary fame. She never married, but a well-bred young woman born in the last year of the first world war would have been expected to marry. She would very plainly say that her failure to marry made her feel, when she was younger, that her life was in every way a failure. She had to fight to make her way in the world and listening to her acknowledge her struggles made it easier to acknowledge one’s own. At literary events, it was extraordinarily moving to see readers open up to her, to see her truly listen and respond with real kindness. But what also made Diana fantastic was her sense of fun, her delight in the world. Of course, it was fine to talk about literature with her, but was it really more wonderful than discussing the treasures to be found in the jewellery counters of the V&A shop? Did I know about the delights to be found in the Wrap catalogue before I met Diana? I did not. Her elegance, combined with that perfect skin, the brilliance of her deep-set blue eyes, that snowy hair and striking profile, might have been intimidating, but it wasn’t: it was joyful. As was the delight she took in her friends – her friendships were vigorously cross-generational and I know that even now Diana is gone, those of us who knew her will be bound by her memory. “I’m a good recoverer,” she said to me once. It’s a quote to remember. Tough stuff will happen; you will suffer; but you’ll recover. Bless you, Diana. How lucky we were to know you.Iran is digging its own diplomatic grave by punishing the jailed British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after it cut both her food rations and access to medical treatment for a lump on her breast, the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, has said. The family of the 40-year-old, who has been detained in Iran since 2016, said last week that she intended to begin a hunger strike on Monday 14 January alongside her fellow inmate and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi. The two women have been requesting medical treatment promised to them by a prison doctor, but denied by the Iranian prison authorities. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s weekly Sunday phonecall with her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has since been cut as well as her medical rations. Alistair Burt, the Middle East minister, who was speaking in the Commons on Monday, insisted her access to medicines was of “supreme importance” to the UK, and said pressure was being applied on the Iranian government to allow British officials consular access to her in prison. He said Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release may change perceptions of Iran. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP, Tulip Siddiq, said her treatment was “becoming a matter of life and death”, and called on the foreign ministry to summon the Iranian ambassador to the UK and to demand the issue was debated at the UN security council. “Tough rhetoric is not enough”, said Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead. Thornberry, in some of her most pointed remarks to the Iranian government, described the mistreatment of Zaghari-Ratcliffe as “a cruel and vengeful response”. She said the mistreatment of any prisoner was inhumane, but said in the context of her medical and physical condition, “her treatment is nothing but barbaric”. She added: “it was necessary for the Iranians to restore not just her basic rights, but her freedom without delay.” Iran faced a twin economic and military threat this year, Thornberry noted, from the US economic sanctions and dangerous military escalation. She said: “Iran will need us to fight on their behalf to preserve the nuclear deal, to preserve trade and stop the descent into war. Tehran needs to hear this. Every day Nazanin’s inhumane treatment continues, every time we see fresh human rights abuses in Iran, it makes it more and more difficult to summon the stomach for that fight. “When the Foreign Office says Iran is holding Nazanin for diplomatic advantage, Tehran needs to realise that in fact, the opposite is true. For her every day they continue her unjust detention, they are simply burying their own diplomatic grave.” The Zaghari-Ratcliffe campaign said: “[Nazanin] hasn’t started her hunger strike yet. She and Narges Mohammedi announced last week that they will go on hunger strike next Monday unless they are given the medical treatment promised by the prison doctor, but blocked by the prison authorities. “But [we have had] no formal response yet on whether she will be allowed the recommended treatment, so are waiting to see what happens over the next couple of days.” The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has been in contact with the family 11 times since August, and made her plight a highlight of his one-day visit to Tehran. The Iranian news agency Fars reported on Sunday that the Iranian judicial spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, criticised Hunt for threatening Iran over Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case. He said: “Firstly, he has done a damn wrong move to threaten [Iran]. Secondly, releasing or keeping Zaghari [in jail] is no way affected by their interference.” The foreign ministry has accused Hunt of hasty and incorrect remarks, insisting she had been found guilty of espionage and sentenced to five years in jail.I always forget about pies. How foolish I am! When you have the time and inclination, you can spend a few blissful, therapeutic hours forgetting the world’s turbulent times and making your own buttery, flaky pastry to dive into. Otherwise, cheat on the pastry and spend less than an hour assembling and baking a comforting, calming, nourishing creation that will make you beam inside and out. The buttery, silky-soft onion, cheese and celeriac filling is soothing and delicious – with or without the ham. Prep 30 minCook 45 minMakes 4 40g butter1 bay leaf1 onion, finely sliced¼ nutmeg, gratedSalt and black pepper 350g celeriac, peeled100g cooked ham, shredded180g lancashire cheese, grated350g puff pastry1 egg, beaten with a splash of milk Heat the oven to 190C (170C fan)/375F/gas 5. Melt the butter in a small pan and add the bay, onion and nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper, cook for eight to 10 minutes, until the onion is soft but not coloured, then take off the heat and leave to cool. Meanwhile, cut the celeriac into quarters and use a mandoline to slice them as thinly as you can – or just use a sharp knife. Bring a pan of salted water to a boil and cook the celeriac for a few minutes, until tender, then drain. On a floured surface, roll out the pastry to about 2mm thick. Use a bowl 10-12cm in diameter to cut out eight rounds of pastry, using the rolling pin to stretch four of them so they’re about 1cm larger in diameter than the others. Put the smaller rounds on an oven tray lined with baking paper, and prick all over with a fork. Arrange half the celeriac on the bottom of the rounds, leaving a 1cm gap around the edge, and season, then layer up with half the onion, cheese and ham. Repeat with all four layers for all the rounds, then brush the edges with egg wash and put the larger pastry round on top. Use a fork or your fingers to crimp the edges together, then brush all over with more egg wash. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, until the pastry is golden. Serve with mustard and a green salad. Crisp, raw celeriac in a remoulade is a revelation in winter when you want a change from rich, heartier food. A mustard-heavy dressing is essential, then pair with masses of chopped parsley and smoked fish, a softly poached egg or the more traditional ham. Leftover lancashire cheese is great in a toastie, especially with anything pickled.Dominic Cummings, the campaign director for Vote Leave, doesn’t just feature in James Graham’s scintillating new film about Brexit – he takes over it. Brilliantly brought to life by Benedict Cumberbatch (despite his struggles with Cummings’ oddly inflected, vaguely north-east English accent), the Cummings we see on screen is impulsive, implacable and virtually impossible to read. What were his motivations for wrenching Britain out of Europe? Even Graham admits to being unsure still. Brexit: The Uncivil War depicts Cummings as a man loathed by the MPs on the Vote Leave board who try to get him fired, loathed even more by Arron Banks, Nigel Farage and the more nationalistic Leave.EU campaigners … and yet deeply attractive in all his disruptive glory. But is this portrayal of the uncompromising strategist accurate? Some prominent remainers are sceptical. “He’s no Alan Turing,” one tells me. But Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Vote Leave campaign, is in no doubt the film captures Cummings’ energy, unwillingness to compromise and capacity for lateral thinking. “Cumberbatch has got Dom down to a T,” says Elliott, who was instrumental in getting Cummings to lead the campaign. “He captures his passion, his focus, his dedication, his frustration with members of parliament.” I ask him whether Cummings is as feisty as the film suggests. “Very much so,” he says with a laugh. “He’s good at enthusing, he’s got the killer instinct, he was willing to go into battle with the establishment. It takes a very special person to go into that sort of battle.” Elliott says not everything in the film is strictly accurate – the account of the battles on the Vote Leave board between Cummings and MPs such as Bill Cash and Bernard Jenkin are so compressed as to be baffling – but he accepts that such compression is inevitable. “I don’t blame James Graham for this,” he says. “Everything has to be hugely simplified for a 90-minute show.” Graham says there was enough material for a miniseries, and that what he set out to achieve was a dramatic truth. Elliott reckons he has caught the atmosphere perfectly. “The film captures how fast-paced and manic and high-pressured the campaign was,” he says. “For me, it also captures the fact that I was like a shock absorber between the campaign team and the board.” Other key leave figures, however, are less impressed. Daniel Hannan – a Conservative MEP, one of the founders of Vote Leave and dubbed “the man who brought you Brexit” by the Guardian – is dismissive. “This is very much a remainer take on the vote,” he tells me. “The acting is brilliant, but there is something almost cartoonish about the presentation of leavers.” Boris Johnson is shown as being secretly disappointed by leave’s success, which is idiotic Hannan says the key figures in the leave campaign are caricatured. “Matt Elliott was chief executive of the most successful campaign in British political history, but is portrayed here as a gormless chump. Douglas Carswell had a personal following few MPs could dream of, yet is absurdly portrayed as not wanting to visit the rougher estates in his constituency. Michael Gove is one of the cleverest men in parliament, but is portrayed here as a vacillating fool. Boris Johnson is shown as being secretly disappointed by leave’s success, which is idiotic, as anyone who campaigned with him will know.” “The whole premise, however dramatically engaging, is false,” insists Hannan. “The referendum campaign did not unleash demons. The number of British voters who see immigration as positive is higher than for any other country in the EU, and has risen significantly since the vote. Britain is one of a tiny number of EU countries with no populist anti-immigrant party in its main legislative chamber. You might say that Brexit is already working.” The remain side get much less attention in the film, which Lucy Thomas, deputy director of the remain campaign, believes is a weakness. “Leave was the underdog, so if you’re writing this you’re going to focus on how did they overturn the establishment,” she says. “The story almost writes itself: the very smart guy who comes out of self-imposed exile to run this amazing campaign and win. That is a really compelling story, but what it therefore lacks is a lot of the decisions and tension points within the remain campaign.” A key source of tension on the remain side was that four months before the vote, Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s director of communications, moved in to take over running much of the campaign from Will Straw, who had been directing it for more than a year. Straw is introduced in the film but never speaks, and his contention that the remain campaign should have taken on the issue of immigration and made a positive argument for it is never considered. Graham needs the dramatic arc of the film to become a personal duel between Cummings and Oliver (played by Rory Kinnear), which means significant figures such as Straw and remain’s official director of strategy, Ryan Coetzee, are left out. Peter Mandelson – who appears in the film only in a single news clip and as a disembodied voice in a chaotic conference call with Cameron and Oliver – accepts the use of artistic licence and believes Graham has caught the central struggle in the campaign perfectly. “The film is extraordinary,” he tells me. “It presses every button and captures Britain at the time.” Mandelson is scathing about the limitations of Oliver, who he says was no match for the “mad genius” of Cummings. “Craig is a very hard-working, very sincere, workaday press officer,” says Mandelson. “He worked very hard, but he’s not Lynton Crosby.” Mandelson had put together the campaign team headed by Straw, Thomas and Coetzee, and was frustrated when Oliver and No 10 took over. Early scripts were too data obsessed. There’s a danger of creating an idea that it was an act of political brilliance “All the people who knew the campaign and had been working on it for months were put to one side,” he says. “It was then run rather like David Cameron’s government – as a private members’ club.” Mandelson says the remain campaign assumed Cummings’ eccentricities meant the Vote Leave campaign would at some point implode, but it never did. Mandelson and Oliver disagree about pretty much everything. They can’t even agree that the conference call depicted in the film took place. Oliver insists it did; Mandelson claims it didn’t and that Cameron blanked him for the entire campaign, so much so that he had to get Tony Blair to approach Cameron directly to try to change the remain strategy on immigration. Oliver hotly denies Mandelson’s account. “That’s utter rubbish,” he tells me. “He had meetings all the time with people in No 10, and his claim after the event that somehow he hadn’t been allowed to be involved is totally disingenuous. The frustration was that he couldn’t talk to the Labour party and neither could other members of the campaign. That was a real struggle.” Mandelson and Oliver also disagree on how important data analytics were to the result. Mandelson believes Vote Leave’s use of personally tailored messaging was crucial. “It wasn’t a fair fight,” he says. “There was a lack of transparency in what they were doing, and it was highly manipulative. In that sense the country was hijacked.” Oliver counters that remain’s data analysis techniques were equally sophisticated, and says the real problems were that decades of anti-EU propaganda could not be reversed in a few months and that insurgents are always likely to triumph over proponents of the status quo. “Take back control” trumps “steady as she goes”. Oliver acted as a consultant on the film – his book, Unleashing Demons, and Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman’s All Out War were key sources for Graham – and says he tried to ensure it wasn’t all about data analytics and the subtext that leave won by using shadowy methods. “My concern was that the early scripts were too data obsessed,” he says. “There’s a danger of creating an idea that it was an act of political brilliance, but you still need the messaging to be there, and to me it was clear that immigration was, to paraphrase the Sun, what won it for them. They did emphasise that more in later scripts.” This is a battle for the future of the UK. James’s film exposes that leave had no real idea of Britain and its future In the film, the Vote Leave campaign is portrayed as leaving the “heavy lifting” on anti-immigration messaging to the Ukip-dominated Leave.EU, but leading remainers tell me that Cummings and Elliott also played dirty on the threat of Turkey joining the EU and immigrants arriving from the Middle East. Elliott, in his urbane way, says only that in 2016 Turkey was on a path to accession and that Vote Leave was citing what was a probability. Will the film make any difference to the polarised nature of the Brexit debate in Britain? Graham, Oliver and Elliott all express the hope that it will. “In that [entirely fictional] scene where Dom and Craig Oliver are having a pint together,” says Elliott, “what you see are two people who passionately think they are doing the best for their country and are putting their heart and soul into the campaign. They feel that if the outcome doesn’t go their way it will be disastrous. But at the same time, both of them are acting with the best intentions, and neither of them is being malevolent.” I ask Mandelson if there is any chance the film might act as balm for a troubled nation. “Not a hope,” he says. “This is a battle for the future of the country. What James’s film exposes is that leave had no real idea of Britain and its future beyond the duration of the referendum campaign. It didn’t represent a vision or a set of policies or a programme for the country. I think what people will take out of the film is, ‘What on earth was it all for? What has the country gained? How is it better? How are our prospects transformed?’ They will feel a profound sense of emptiness.” We have taken back control; we’re just not quite sure of what.• Brexit: The Uncivil War is on Channel 4 on Monday at 9pm.Playing a video game for 57 hours sounds like either heaven or hell, depending on who you are. But when it generates massive online buzz, garnering the attention of a sitting US congresswoman and Hollywood celebrities, and nets a charity for trans kids $340,000, it’s safe to assume you’ve done something good for the world. The person responsible for playing those hours, “Hbomberguy” – real name Harry Brewis, a YouTube essayist – did not set out to get the attention of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chelsea Manning, Mara Wilson and other popular figures. But he did. When I spoke to Brewis, he was still stunned by the attention but he seemed upbeat and elated by the experience. Brewis’s YouTube work consists of critical video essays on everything from BBC’s Sherlock to a 45-minute debunking of modern flat-earthers. His channel is one of the more popular ones countering the growing tide of the manosphere and alt-right. He is also a passionate, insightful game critic: he has an hour-long essay on why Fallout 3 is bad, and a shorter one on why Braid is excellent. Along with other insightful, lefty video essay channels such as Shaun, Contrapoints, and Philosophy Tube, Hbomberguy’s choice of topics are not limited to any one genre or medium. Instead, the only consistent part is Brewis himself – or rather his “Hbomberguy” character. For Brewis, because games often contain the packaged worldviews of their creators, they are an avenue to talk about a range of issues. “It turns out that video games are an important part of a lot of people’s lives,” he says. “They are definitely a part of how I learned to grow up and change as a person. By talking about games in this wider way, adjacent to talking about politics, I do end up accidentally getting people to think about things I couldn’t have done otherwise.” For last weekend’s stream, he chose Donkey Kong 64 because it’s a game that has haunted him for years, one he spent hours on as a kid but never finished. He chose to donate the proceeds to Mermaids, a UK charity that provides support for transgender and gender-variant children and young people: “Living in Britain, I find the media discussion surrounding this issue to be woefully misinformed,” he says. He was spurred on by Graham Linehan, who helped orchestrate an email campaign that saw Mermaids denied lottery funding late last year. It was partly this publicity, perhaps, that drew attention to Brewis’s fundraising efforts. Helping him behind the scenes were a range of trans people. Fellow streamer and Twitter personality Casey Explosion was central to the entire operation: managing the server, arranging the chats to get interesting people on, staying up longer than anyone, including Brewis himself – all without being asked. Brewis regards her as the hero of the stream. Speaking to the Escapist, Explosion said: “It felt like the entire internet showed up for trans rights.” “What I foresaw was we would get three grand max,” says Brewis. “When we got $75,000 and I realised it wasn’t going to stop, and there was still a full day and a half to go, I actually broke down. You can see in the stream, I had to have a moment. I realised we could maybe fund a year of the [Mermaids] project by ourselves and that would make a huge difference. So to me, the event has been more than a success. Success for me would’ve been three grand”. Brewis didn’t set out to become a lefty pop culture critic, he says. “I started doing this with the intent of having some laughs and getting people thinking about complex issues. Then an inordinate amount of people came to support me and it became the thing I did for a living. I got interested in bits of media I found fun and then one day I woke up and I was a socialist.” He laughs and says: “They tricked me!” Given how polarised internet discussions around both pop culture and politics have become, Brewis and his fellow leftwing YouTubers’ work is important. When you talk to young men who have begun to challenge the alt-right views that are dominant in some places where gamers gather on the Internet, they will often say that Hbomberguy started to change their minds. Watching his videos, it is easy to be drawn in due to his humour and friendliness. “I try and be as friendly and open to people as possible so people feel safe… How do I welcome into the fold people who would otherwise be my enemy?” he says. “The less condemnatory I am of people, the more of an option I give them.” Brewis’s extraordinarily successful Donkey Kong stream proves, for him, that there is hope: “There’s way more people out there who care than you’d believe.” As more famous people both within the gaming community and out dropped in to the stream, you could see him struggling to believe what was happening. “[Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez and [Chelsea] Manning attending was lovely and probably the most amazing moment,” he says. “But what really mattered to me was that people in games cared, who I never even realised did. Josh Sawyer who worked on Fallout: New Vegas – that [game] had a gay character in it, which meant a lot to me. Someone who worked on Rock Band or Guitar Hero came on to say ‘I’m looking to help [trans] creators get in to this space’. [Doom creator] John Romero came on!” “I discovered that so many of my personal heroes in gaming, the thing that I thought had a penchant for the regressive, had always been here. That was the real thing for me.”The autumn/winter 2019 menswear shows were full of comebacks and firsts. Milan hosted blockbuster shows from Prada, Versace and even Dolce & Gabbana, treading carefully after last year’s China racism row. Paris was packed and cold, but saw universally successful debuts from Hedi Slimane at Celine, Jonathan Anderson at Loewe and Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy. Craig Green returned to the London schedule alongside Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, who had a plaid party in a warehouse, and A-Cold-Wall*, which put a doberman on the catwalk. Scarves were long, bags were big and for the first time in four seasons, tailoring triumphed over tracksuits. Here are the other trends we can expect to see next autumn. John Lawrence Sullivan show during London fashion week at Kachette. Rare is the season in which leopard print is absent from womenswear … but menswear? It’s hardly a perennial. Yet this season it was, appearing in all shades and motifs, brash and textured. At John Lawrence Sullivan, it appeared on coats and bomber jackets in clear 70s prints. At Marni, it ran the gamut – from creepers and fluffy coats, to hats and wide-legged trousers, lending the whole collection a cartoonish edge. Neil Barrett put it on collars and Sacai doubled it up, but few expected to see a mod-style leopard-print coat in a quiet shade of gold. Some labels can change their spots, it seems. Take a walk on the wild side: Marni, Sacai, Neil Barrett and Céline. Dries van Noten in Paris This season, the death knell rang out for sportswear. Well, not quite, but the suit gave it a run for its money. Black versions that were edgy and funereal at the same time led the charge. In Paris, they were elegant, crisp and flowing at Dries van Noten, relaxed and casual at Valentino, and serious and winter-proof at Dunhill. At Dior, they came red-carpet ready with a detachable sash. Men in black: Stella McCartney and Prada. Over in Milan, Prada and Fendi showed versions with a high-octane glamour and feminine undertone – think shine and a slim cut that was pleasing to watch on the catwalk. Stella McCartney went for a back-to-school version. At Berluti, Kris Van Assche closed the show with a his-and-hers version – because how many trends overlap genders quite so keenly? Dunhill in Paris Black is back: Fendi and Valentino. Craig Green during London fashion week men. The autumn catwalks were a riot of colour this season, yet one shade ruled them all. Surprisingly, for a world that has been saturated by millennial pink and all the cultural and gender baggage that comes with it, here it was used with nuance, clashing with green or layered up at Ami and Acne Studios (the same Acne Studios that put it on a bag and launched a thousand copycats). At Loewe, Anderson turned it into a suit over comically oversized shirting, a fun combination which clashed magically with the mustard carpet. In the pink: Marni and Loewe Craig Green and Marni went for head to toe, playing with textures and fabrics – high shine or knitted, this was a “choose your weapon” moment. At Raf Simons, in his first show since news of his departure from Calvin Klein, the takeaway moment was a voluminous pink trenchcoat – no belt – styled in a loose, carefree way. “I want to do something abstract and beautiful and elegant and proud and sophisticated, but without losing the edge of what the brand stands for: the young generation,” he told Vogue. Touche. Pink overcoat at Raf Simons show in Paris. Everything’s rosy: Ami Paris and Acne Studios. Berluti at Palais Garnier, Paris As ever, leather was a recurring theme at the shows this year, though few things will top the Instagram picture of Frank Ocean in a pair of leather Loewe chaps backstage. That said, Isabel Marant’s flying jackets with billowing arms were wearable and a tour de force, while Givenchy’s ultra-tight leather trench (belted, this time) was a lesson in elegance. Jil Sander’s loose-fitting, grey leather shirt and leather trouser combination was aimed at the brave. Ditto Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, who went vintage with his jackets, and Berluti which opened the show at the Palais Garnier opera house with a tan brushed leather suit. Hell for leather: Isabel Marant, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, Givenchy and Jil Sander. Iceberg show in London. This season, men’s fashion continues to work in tandem with the weather, with puffer jackets designed to withstand the polar vortex. A bona fide trend since Balenciaga put them on the 2017 catwalk, they came athleisure-friendly at Iceberg under James Long in London, patched like a Mondrian at Fendi in Milan or low-denier and commuter-friendly at British label, Cottweiler. Pump up the volume: Fendi, Cottweiler. If oversized, primary-coloured puffer jackets have dominated high and low fashion for the past two years, Rick Owens’ longline versions were a u-turn moment, coming fitted in metallic and monochrome shades. Marni’s Francesco Risso introduced the hybrid coat/robe as outerwear this season, but it was his layered puffers in iced lemon which stole the show. Unless you count Cardi B’s on/off boyfriend, Offset, modelling a duvet coat in lilac with a built-in bumbag worn cross-body on the Off White catwalk, accessorised by the scent of vaping. Puff daddies: Rick Owens, and below: Marni, Off-White. Dior in Paris. Bags’ shapes wax and wane in fashion. But in menswear this season, they were enormous. In Paris, Hermès showed a men’s version of its cult Birkin bag in deep red, but elsewhere they tended towards sportier shapes. At Louis Vuitton, designer Virgil Abloh created a giant rucksack in grey felt with a subtle monogram, while Loewe created a drawstring bag in pastel leather. Working with a “survivalist” theme, Korean designer Juun.J created silver foil totes which packed down small – this in stark contrast to Xander Zhou whose huge one shouldered bags resembled angel’s wings. Xander Zhou and Juun.J. Pink drawstring at Loewe, and rucksack at Louis Vuitton. An oversized take on the Birkin shape at Hermès. Acne Studios, Paris Designers took their cue from Mr Tickle this season with scarves of all textures, shapes and colours trailing down the catwalks. At Acne Studios and Valentino they were floor-length and comically proportioned, either tasselled or fine ribbed and thrown over one shoulder. At Sunnei in Milan they came in muted tones with an apres-piste aesthetic, and were as wide as blankets. Dunhill designer Mark Weston continued to play with the classically masculine wardrobe; his were short, in a puffer fabric. Sport meets tailoring, perhaps. Harry Potter scarves at: Dunhill, Valentino, Liam Hodges and Sunnei.A highlight of Rolling Stone’s interview with Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey is the insight it gives into what goes on when a couple of Silicon Valley billionaire bros get together. Asked to describe his “most memorable encounter” with the Facebook CEO, Dorsey cast his mind back to 2011, the year Mark Zuckerberg challenged himself to eat only meat he had slaughtered. “He made goat for me for dinner,” recalled Dorsey. “He killed the goat.” Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt asked the obvious follow-up question: “In front of you?” No, clarified Dorsey, it was one Zuck had killed earlier – “with a laser gun and then the knife”, before sending the body to the butcher. The rest of their exchange deserves to be reproduced in full: RS: A … laser gun? Dorsey: I don’t know. A stun gun. They stun it, and then he knifed it. Then they send it to a butcher. Evidently in Palo Alto there’s a rule or regulation that you can have six livestock on any lot of land, so he had six goats at the time. I go, “We’re eating the goat you killed?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Have you eaten goat before?” He’s like, “Yeah, I love it.” I’m like, “What else are we having?” “Salad.” I said, “Where is the goat?” “It’s in the oven.” Then we waited for about 30 minutes. He’s like, “I think it’s done now.” We go in the dining room. He puts the goat down. It was cold. That was memorable. I don’t know if it went back in the oven. I just ate my salad. It was hard to see the metaphor in that, responded Hiatt. Dorsey suggested obliquely: “Revenge is a dish best served warm. Or cold.” Goat meat – in particular kid, which is tender and milder in flavour, like lamb – is tipped to be a huge food trend this year, following the steady increase in popularity of goat’s milk and cheese, as well as demand for ethical meat. It was recently reported that supermarkets have been testing goat recipes for sausages, meatballs and ready meals as a means of reducing waste – tens of thousands of male goats are culled each year because they cannot produce dairy products. The Goatober initiative sees a month-long celebration each year to raise awareness of the culling by promoting goat dishes on restaurant menus. It began in the US in 2011, but last year redoubled its efforts, coordinating campaigns in the US, UK and Europe. James Whetlor, founder of the Devon-based goat-meat supplier Cabrito, a former chef at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage and Goatober’s UK spokesman, says eating goat meat is already common in large parts of the world, pointing out that they have been eating it in Nigeria for thousands of years. As Global Meat News has reported, even Australia is “ahead of the curve in realising the potential of goat meat” as one of the world’s biggest exporters, with a five-year research and development plan under way to increase sales. Stunning, then knifing your own goat to serve to your friend, however, is the sort of “otherworldly experience” you go for “when you’ve got loads of money”, says Whetlor. As for Zuckerberg’s treatment, oven cooking a goat for half an hour is “brave, I would say” – western European tastes tend to favour a treatment like that of mutton, where the meat is cooked for longer and falls off the bone. Several UK restaurants, including St John and Ottolenghi in London, along with the chain Turtle Bay, already serve goat dishes. Trevor Gulliver, proprietor of St. John, says the restaurant has served goat for many years – often braised, in a large dish to be shared at the table, and even sometimes as offal in keeping with its nose-to-tail ethos. “We are delighted to see more and more people using it. It just makes sense.” It is easy to source ethically and locally (St John has the same supplier for meat and cheese) and great to cook with – once one has removed traces of goats’ notoriously wide-ranging diet. “Goats are fantastic converter – I don’t know how many bits of laundry and sheets off clotheslines we’ve had sent up to us in different forms.” Eventually, Whetlor says, that trend is bound to trickle down to retailers’ test kitchens. “Things are definitely moving in the goat-meat market … There will be a British goat meat product on supermarket shelves by this time next year. I will be stunned if there isn’t.” Like one of Zuck’s goats. The fact that goat cropped up at all in a Rolling Stone interview reflects its new position in the zeitgeist, suggests Whetlor, as well as the fact that the animal’s public image might align with Zuckerberg’s own. “There’s some slightly demonic stuff going on with goat – it’s always been seen in western culture as not to be trusted, or unusual,” he says. “It just plays into the idea that Zuckerberg is not quite human.”Even on a £4,800 trip of a lifetime, a holidaymaker doesn’t expect this. A UK couple are seeking compensation after saying they boarded a cruise ship sailing from Singapore to Phuket to find another man and woman in flagrante in their designated cabin. Bobby and Mary Jackson, aged 64 and 62, from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, were offered £200 each off their next journey with Norwegian Cruise Line. Mrs Jackson told the Sunday Post: “I was traumatised and I needed a glass of water.” Mr Jackson concurred: “We are not prudes but this was ridiculous.” Lisa Niver, a travel journalist and former cruise ship crew member, said the Jacksons’ experience was “outrageous”. In her seven years’ experience on a number of lines (though not Norwegian), she said many crew did not have passenger deck privileges at all. “When I worked onboard, the rules were very clear and strict. Breaking the rules had severe punishments including being fired or turned over to local authorities, both of which I saw happen during my years at sea.” The culprit was reported to be a crew member, abetted by a “mystery woman” – although in a twist, Norwegian say video footage (presumably outside the cabin) does not corroborate the Jacksons’ version of events. But the story has thrust forward questions of just what goes on onboard these ships. While the cost and nature of many cruises keeps them firmly populated by well-heeled passengers of advancing years, ships catering for a younger and drunker clientele have become well established, particularly in the US and Australia. For a certain kind of crew member, the promise of working and playing hard has appeal. As Brian Bruns, a waiter turned author of Cruise Ship Confidential, recalls of finishing a 16-hour shift: “It’s like you just came off the frontline. What do you do? You hammer shots so you pass out asap.” Those crew members with the energy for liaisons, after months at sea without a day off, might well prefer a passenger’s stateroom to their own quarters below deck, where those sub-officer class typically bunk up with three others in a cabin. And while younger western crew might work as entertainers or in customer-facing roles, the hardest graft is often done by lower-paid labourers. In international waters, aboard ships carrying thousands of crew, let alone passengers, anything goes. But the horror that the Jacksons say they were presented with by the Norwegian crew member – described only as “sheepish” – was essentially one of bad timing. Perhaps the real takeaway of their story is that no one sold on the brochures of azure waters and round-the-clock service wishes to be confronted too vividly with the reality: that the bed booked for a dream holiday will have been all too recently occupied, for better or worse, by another.An Indian queen fights bloody, over-the-top battles against British soldiers in a colonial-era Bollywood blockbuster that opens in India’s cinemas on Friday. Manikarnika: the Queen of Jhansi is a nationalistic epic about the life – and death at British hands – of Rani Lakshmibai, an Indian woman who learned martial arts, married a maharajah and became a leader in the 1857 rebellion against the British East India Company. The film’s lead actor, Kangana Ranaut, has been brawling off-screen too, this week warning hardline Hindu groups who have apparently threatened to disrupt the film’s release that she would “destroy each and every one of them”. Trailers for the film, which will be released in time for India’s Republic Day on 26 January, show a blood-splattered Lakshmibai wielding her sword in gory fights with red-coated British soldiers. Lakshmibai, who died aged 29 in the last battle of the rebellion at Gwalior, has had her virtues extolled in Indian ballads, poetry and books but not yet in the country’s popular cinema. Legends about her life say she was born into a royal court where she was trained in fighting and horse-riding along with two boys. She married the maharajah of Jhansi, whose kingdom was annexed by the East India Company in 1854. Three years later, company soldiers across north India began to rebel against the colonial administration and Lakshmibai joined the uprising. “She actually led an army into battle against the East India Company army,” said Harleen Singh, an associate professor at Brandeis University who has written a book about the queen. The first depictions of Lakshmibai came from Victorian novelists, who portrayed her as a cunning oriental despot, Singh said. In one fictional telling, she kidnaps white men and keeps them in a harem, eventually falling in love with a British soldier. “She is made to submit to the supremacy of British masculinity,” Singh added. It was well into the 20th century that she began to appear in Indian works in her modern depiction as a goddess of war and harbinger of independence. Singh said: “Whatever the historical and literary myth making may be about her, the historical fact is this young Indian queen rode out into battle against the British army and died in conflict. This was a remarkable woman.” Activists purporting to be from Karni Sena, a fanatical Hindu group, have seized on false rumours that the film alludes to Lakshmibai having an affair with a British soldier. Last year, the same group rioted in several Indian cities and threatened to mutilate the actor Deepika Padukone over similarly bogus claims that the film Padmaavat, about another historical Indian queen, depicted love scenes with a Muslim ruler. A national spokesman for Karni Sena denied that the fringe group had mobilised against the movie and said unauthorised people were using its name. At a press event for the film last week, Ranaut said Manikarnika was a celebration of the queen’s life that hardline Hindus ought to embrace. “They should support us and the film,” she said. “Lakshmibai is India’s daughter and everyone should push that film forward.” She added that although the film had been approved by historians and censors, “Karni Sena are continuing to harass me. If they don’t stop then they should know I am also a [member of the] Rajput [caste] and I will destroy each one of them.” It is a legal requirement in India that films that purport to depict historical events, or which include content that might offend a person’s faith, must be approved by a censor board that includes historians or religious leaders. Subhash Jha, an Indian film critic and writer, said popular Indian films about the colonial era frequently depicted the British as operatic villains. “All these films paint the Britishers in a very flat, caricatured way,” he said. Westerners such as the Australian actor Bob Christo made decades-long careers of playing menacing white villains in Indian films. After the 1857 rebellion was put down, the British government formally replaced the East India Company as India’s ruler. It sought to prevent future uprisings by winning over local princes and landlords to the regime rather than aggressively seeking to usurp them.More than 170 business leaders, including Terence Conran and Norman Foster, have thrown their weight behind the campaign for a second referendum on Brexit. In a step designed to indicate growing support for a “people’s vote” after Theresa May suffered the heaviest parliamentary defeat in the modern era over her Brexit plan, the letter due to be published in the Times on Thursday asks both main party leaders in Westminster to support a second referendum. Conran, the renowned designer, who was knighted in 1983, and Lord Foster, the architect behind the Gherkin skyscraper in the City of London, were among 172 signatories from the world of business urging a second referendum on the final Brexit deal. The architect Sir David Chipperfield and the noble laureate and research scientist Paul Nurse were also among new names on the list of supporters. Several other captains of industry, including Mike Rake, the former chairman of BT, had previously backed the campaign and were also included as signatories. The figures from business, together representing more than £100bn in annual contributions to the UK economy, warned that a bad Brexit deal or Britain leaving without any deal at all could damage the economy. While admitting that many business leaders had initially backed May’s deal, even though they believed it was far from perfect, the group stated that the priority after the prime minister’s defeat in parliament was to stop a “chaotic crash-out from the EU”. The letter said: “The only viable way to do this is by asking the people whether they still want to leave the EU. With the clock now ticking rapidly before we are due to quit, politicians must not waste any more time on fantasies. We urge the leadership of both the main parties to support a people’s vote.” Both May and the Labour frontbench under Jeremy Corbyn have so far dismissed the idea of a second referendum. The prime minister has said she will speak to senior MPs to find a compromise deal, while Corbyn is pushing for a general election. The warning comes after the CBI lobby group suggested that the UK resembles a “supertanker heading for the rocks” after the dismissal of May’s Brexit plan, saying the country would not be saved unless factions in the Conservative party drop their “red lines” for a deal. It also comes after Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, said the financial markets were indicating that a delay to Britain’s exit from the EU could be possible after the prime minister’s crushing defeat. The pound bounced back against the dollar on Tuesday night amid optimism that article 50 would be prolonged and that the prospect of a disorderly severance from Brussels had receded.This was a defeat on a scale without precedent in the era of universal suffrage, a rebuff more humiliating than any endured even by Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. Some 118 Conservatives voted against the signature policy of their own party tonight, thereby triggering a motion of no confidence that, in any normal era, would see the government toppled within hours. But such are these extraordinary times, that is not even the most significant story from tonight. What matters more than the fate of this government or this prime minister is the fate of the country and its decision to leave the European Union, which is now suspended in a state of limbo if not purgatory. The law says Britain will leave the EU in 70-odd days. Yet tonight it has rejected the only firm exit path that exists. It means that, unless something changes and MPs can reach an agreement with each other, Britain will crash out of the EU on 29 March without a deal – an outcome all but the most wild-eyed Brexiteers regard as an economic and social catastrophe for these islands. The question everyone wants answered is what happens now. There’ll be a no-confidence vote tomorrow which, given the promised support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists and the hardcore Brexit group around Jacob Rees-Mogg, the government seems set to win, despite everything. Then Theresa May pledges to talk to “senior parliamentarians” of other parties to hear what they need in order to back her. But, speaking after the defeat, her spokesman suggested her Brexit red lines had not blurred and were not about to. Which makes it hard to see how any progress, let alone a breakthrough, is even conceivable. So how did it come to this? What led May, parliament and the country to this moment? The answer you give will depend on how far back you want to go. You could look to the snap election of 2017, when May threw away her majority, thereby leaving her at the mercy of a hung parliament, where Brexit lacked a majority just as surely as she did. As a simple matter of arithmetic, the defeat tonight was foretold on the night of 8 June 2017. Or you might go back a few months earlier, to the triggering of article 50, which started the clock ticking on a negotiation for which May was palpably not ready. The cabinet was too split between leavers and remainers to know its own mind. Only in the last few months of the two-year period did the UK have anything like a position. Or you might say the die was cast much earlier, soon after May became prime minister and painted herself into a corner with a series of bright red lines. Once she had committed to leave the single market, customs union and jurisdiction of the European court of justice, and once she accepted that there could be no hard border in Ireland, then she had all but written the withdrawal agreement that MPs rejected tonight. The EU laws of physics dictated that there could be almost no other outcome. Of course, May’s drawing of those red lines was itself the fruit of another choice, a political calculation that her best hope lay with placating the hardest Brexiteers in her party. She had seen how the Europhobic wing of British Conservatism had devoured so many of her predecessors, and concluded that her own safety required her to placate that faction. Only later did she learn what her predecessors could have told her: that the Europhobes’ demands can never be met because what they want – cake in both its having and eating modes – is impossible. This has been Britain’s European story, repeatedly seeing what was a project of peace as a scam designed to swindle the Brits of their money In this she was repeating an error made by David Cameron in 2013, when he announced that there would be an in/out referendum before 2017. He, too, was seeking to placate the hard Brexiteers, seeking to blunt the appeal of Ukip. That was another fateful decision on the road to the vote tonight, one that failed to see that asking voters to approve the status quo in the post-crash era was asking to be punched hard in the face. Critical, too, was Cameron’s conduct of the referendum campaign, with its serial failures: its appeal to voters’ wallets rather than their hearts, its refusal to attack the Tory leaders of the leave campaign, its complacency. But Cameron also deserves blame for the manner of his departure. Had he delayed his resignation, he could have been around to frame what the referendum result meant. He could have said, for example, that Britons had voted to leave the EU but had not voted to leave either the single market or customs union, since neither were on the ballot paper. Britons clearly wanted out of the EU’s political institutions, he might have said, but they had not rejected membership of the common market. And so he could have advanced a Norway-style Brexit, one that would have minimised the harm. Instead he fled the scene of his own crime, leaving a vacuum into which rival definitions of Brexit could rush. Within weeks of his exit, Brexit was redefined in the hardest terms. All these decisions by May and Cameron laid the path to the vote tonight. But, in truth, the path is much longer and older. For at least three decades, “Europe” served as the all-purpose bogeyman of British politics. Cheered on by a Europe‑loathing press, itself fuelled by an endless flow of straight banana-type lies, many of them concocted by a Telegraph correspondent in Brussels by the name of Boris Johnson, politicians of all stripes found it convenient to blame Brussels for any and all ills. How easy it was for British politicians to say they’d love to act on this or that issue, but their hands were tied by those villains in the EU. Every summit was a “showdown” pitting plucky Britain against the wicked continentals. Both of the main political parties played this game. Recall Gordon Brown’s reluctance to be photographed signing the Lisbon treaty. (In the end he signed the treaty in a small room, alone – an early metaphor for the Brexit to come.) Given how long, and how bitterly, the fight against Europe had been fought, what’s remarkable is not how few Britons voted remain in 2016 but how many. Or you could go further back still. The Suez fiasco of 1956 was meant to have cured Britain of its imperial delusion, but what’s clear now is that many Britons never quite made that adjustment. Underpinning Brexit, with its belief that Britain should separate itself from its closest neighbours, is a refusal to accept that we are one part of an interdependent European economy. For the Brexiteers, Britain remains a global Gulliver tied down for too long by the Lilliputians of Little Europe. It is a fundamental misreading of our place in the world. Perhaps, though, the seeds of the vote were planted in the rubble of Britain’s wartime experience. Never occupied, many Britons never understood the intense need for the EU as continental Europeans feel it. In 1984, at a ceremony to honour the fallen of Verdun, François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl held hands, in a powerful gesture of Franco-German reconciliation. According to her biographer, Margaret Thatcher was unmoved, instead mocking the sight of two grown men holding hands. This has been Britain’s European story, repeatedly seeing what was a project of peace, designed to end centuries of bloodshed, as a scam designed to swindle the Brits of their money. You can go further back, to repeated wars against the French, the Spanish and the Germans. Or you can go further back still to the first Brexit nearly five centuries ago, when Henry VIII sought to take back control by breaking from Rome. Wherever you choose the starting point, the end point is clear enough. It ends like this, in the sight of a parliament paralysed by indecision, still unable to embrace Europe – but just as unable to break away. And in the spectacle of a country lost and adrift. • Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistAaron Ramsey has agreed a five-year deal with Juventus worth £36m and will join the Italian champions on a free transfer at the end of the season. The midfielder has been discussing a move for weeks and will leave Arsenal after 10 years at the club. It had been clear the Wales international would move in the summer and Juventus had been the frontrunners to secure the 28-year-old’s signature. Ramsey will be paid around £140,000 a week (£7.2m a season), making him Juventus’s second-highest earner behind Cristiano Ronaldo but ahead Paulo Dybala and Douglas Costa. Juventus, who have won the past seven Serie A titles, signed Ronaldo for €100m last summer and are nine points clear of Napoli in second place after 19 games. They have reached two of the last four Champions League finals, albeit losing both, to Barcelona in 2015 and Real Madrid two years later. They are in the last 16 of this season’s competition, where they face Atlético Madrid. The Juventus manager, Max Allegri, and the director Fabio Paratici are huge admirers of Ramsey, who is likely to be given a place in the Juventus starting XI, most likely playing with Miralem Pjanic and Blaise Matuidi in a three-man midfield. He is likely to replace one of Emre Can, Rodrigo Bentancur and Sami Khedira, with the latter possibly leaving the club in the summer. Ramsey signed for Arsenal from Cardiff for £4.8m. He has played 252 top-flight games for the club, scoring 52 goals. He won three FA Cups, scoring the winning goal in the 2014 and 2017 finals. He played arguably the best football of his career during Euro 2016 when Wales reached the semi-finals, although he was suspended for the last-four game when Portugal beat Chris Coleman’s team 2-0. Ramsey has had his injury problems but Juventus are delighted to have secured him on a free transfer, while Arsenal will regret seeing a player in the prime of his career leave under these circumstances. With Arsenal choosing to renew the contract of Mesut Özil – another star whose deal was due to expire this summer – they put themselves in a position where they could not re-sign Ramsey too. The Arsenal manager, Unai Emery, also had major reservations about both Özil and Ramsey fitting into his plans and the style he wants to play.Almost a year to the day since Andy Murray sat alone in a Brisbane hotel room for more than 10 hours contemplating his future he survived another comeback, with an encouraging and impressive straight-sets win over the Australian wildcard James Duckworth. However, the former world No 1 knows – and all the evidence confirms – he has some way to go before he can challenge seriously for major honours. Only two of his five wins from 12 matches in 2018 were against top-20 players and he now faces the world No 16, Daniil Medvedev, in the second round of the Brisbane International. This is a place in which he feels comfortable, though, having won the title twice and where he remains unbeaten in 10 matches. He would love another win but his focus must remain on his performance, which was too good for the world No 234, who lost to him in four sets in the first round of the US Open in September. Murray quit the Tour after losing to Fernando Verdasco – in the second round at Flushing Meadows, then in the quarter-finals in Shenzhen. It was the end of a troubled campaign, which stuttered before it even began when Murray pulled out of this event to have hip surgery in Melbourne. Before winning 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and a half on Tuesday Murray had said: “I think last year I was in more pain than I am just now … I’ve had a year of going through quite a lot, so I’ve accepted where I am and how I’m going to feel. Last year I was hoping I was going to get much, much better. Then I ended up having surgery and I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. That was tough but I want to try to enjoy myself over here. I missed playing here last year. I’m going to go out and compete as hard as I can.” Afterwards his on-court verdict was more emotional, admitting he did not know what the future held for him in the sport. “It’s not easy to sort of sum up in one sentence or one answer,” he said. “It’s been a really hard 18 months, a lot of ups and downs – it’s been tricky to just get back on the court competing again. “So I’m happy I’m back out here again. I want to just try and enjoy playing tennis as long as I can. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to last but we’ll see. “I thought I did quite well. For the first match of the new year after quite a long break it was all right.” Still Murray looked at least top-30 class – as Roger Federer described his form in the spluttering return he attempted last summer. While that is good enough to beat such as Duckworth Murray will have to stretch his sinews and his will against Medvedev, the 22-year-old Russian who won three times on Tour last year and is seeded fourth in the draw. They have never met. Mentally Murray has been in upbeat mood in the company of his peers in Brisbane, celebrating New Year’s Eve with a smile on his face behind ridiculous glasses. Physically it remains a different story, illustrated by his post-match comments. After operating on Murray at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne last January, John O’Donnell, the surgeon who saved his career, told Channel7 News: “I’m sure if anyone can do well after this kind of surgery Andy can because he’s the most motivated person you’d ever meet.” At the weekend O’Donnell, who has known Murray for a decade, admitted for the first time that Murray will have to live with the hip pain for the rest of his life. “He’s been walking a tightrope for some time,” he told BBC Sportsweek. “It had reached a point where he couldn’t play. It wasn’t really at a stage where we could attempt to make his hip normal. It was just to try and make it as much better as we could. He’s certainly improved but he still has ongoing problems with it. It’s just his intense desire to do well that’s kept him going as well as he has.” That level did not disappoint in Brisbane. Duckworth tested Murray’s mobility forward and sideways – and, at least in hunting down drop-shots, the Scot was superb. He saved four of five break points with his familiar scrambling energy and got his first break point of the match with a charge to the net and delightful crosscourt chip. He sealed the break by forcing a limp response from the Australian but dropped his own serve immediately – still a bad habit – then broke twice again for a solid win. There remains concern about his lateral movement, and that is something he is going to have to live with. The better players will be merciless in exploiting the obvious trouble he has in switching direction across the baseline, which was always one of his strengths. If he can adapt his game to minimise those moments of stress, he will have to attack more to kill the point before it grows into an old-fashioned war of attrition. The days of grinding are surely gone for Murray. While O’Donnell has obviously done an excellent job on reshaping his hip to alleviate the pain and allow him improved movement, the limp looks permanent. Murray will have to find another way to win at the highest level. In Brisbane on Tuesday, the first day of a new year, he showed he is up for the fight. Whether he can reproduce enough consistency against better opposition than Duckworth even Murray does not yet know. As ever he will keep his followers in a state of animated suspense.I’m not exactly sure why, but we’re currently experiencing a smattering of sitcoms about people left behind by fame. YouTube Premium recently launched Adam Pally’s new show Champaign Ill, about a rap entourage forced back to normality after the sudden death of their meal ticket. And now Comedy Central has The Other Two, about a pair of siblings struggling to cope with the fact that their 13-year-old brother has become a Bieber-sized pop sensation. Both shows are terrific. However, The Other Two has the potential to be something very special indeed. After two episodes, I was fully ready to sack off the rest of the day and plough through the entire series, and the fact that my preview credentials didn’t allow for that physically stung. Written by former Saturday Night Live head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, whose departure in 2017 coincided with a noticeable downturn in quality, The Other Two is funny and scathing and touching in equal measure, and just perfectly observed. It’s a show about the ugly ravages of celebrity as observed from the sidelines, and you suspect that this is something the writers know a lot about. Working on a show like SNL, which is essentially an office job routinely interrupted by outsized celebrity egos, seems to have drilled a very specific point of view into them, and this is their chance to let it out. I would even venture further and guess that this is a series about a Bieber analogue because of Kelly and Schneider’s first-hand experience with Bieber himself; after all, Bill Hader named him as the worst-behaved host thanks to a 2013 stint under Schneider and Kelly’s watch. Although, that said, this is not a show about the idiocy of precocious heartthrobs. Because The Other Two is too smart for that. In fact, it occasionally goes out of its way to show that the character is just a normal 13-year-old boy trapped in the headlights. Instead, the series goes after his adult supervisors, and it goes after them hard. His manager (Scooter Braun in all but name, played by Ken Marino) is a Colonel Parker-level monster; a middle-aged man with badly dyed hair who works his charge to the bone, bandaging up his Adam’s apple and dying his tongue pinker for better market appeal. His mother (a slightly more human Dina Lohan, played by Molly Shannon), is an ugly fame-hogging leech who clearly sees her young son #ChaseDreams as her last chance after the disappointments of her two older two children. Which brings us to the other two of the show’s title. Drew Tarver plays Carey, an actor first seen auditioning for the role of Man At Party Who Smells Fart; while Heléne Yorke plays his sister, a directionless former dancer gripped by a sudden desire to follow her passion – seeing 50 penises in the space of a single summer. These are the characters who the series hangs itself on, and they’re beautifully pitched; desperate because their brother’s fame has made them hopelessly aware of their own failings, but neutral enough to observe the manic world of celebrity with bemused detachment. Comedy podcast veteran Tarver is the closest thing the series has to a central figure, holding roughly the same role as Jason Bateman in Arrested Development, if Jason Bateman had ever furiously masturbated to pictures of his roommate. Yorke gets a longer leash, allowing her to play bigger, and she very clearly relishes every second of it. My feeling is that she’ll be the breakout star of The Other Two. One scene in the second episode, where her character accidentally has an adult conversation with an 11-year-old girl, is particularly inspired. I can’t wait to see what else she has in the bag for the rest of the series. I can’t wait to see the rest of the series in general, in fact. The first two episodes of The Other Two absolutely drip with potential. This one could be huge. The Other Two starts on Comedy Central in the US on 24 January with a UK date yet to be announcedRahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, the Saudi woman who captured the world’s attention by barricading herself in a Thai hotel room after fleeing abuse in her own country, has said she hopes to inspire other Saudi women to be “brave and free”. Speaking in her first interview after being given asylum in Canada, and landing in Toronto on Saturday, Qunun, told the ABC Australia her case might be the “agent for change” in Saudi Arabia, a country where women are denied basic freedoms and are not allowed to work, marry and travel without the permission of a male guardian. “I think that the number of women fleeing from the Saudi administration and abuse will increase, especially since there is no system to stop them,” said Qunun. “I hope my story encourages other women to be brave and free.” The 18-year-old added: “I hope my story prompts a change to the laws, especially as it’s been exposed to the world.” Qunun, who was in her first year of university, described how her desire to be independent and to escape abuse inflicted by her father and brother had driven her to make the drastic decision to flee her family during a visit to Kuwait, and head for Australia, with a stopover in Bangkok. She had a visa for Australia but at Bangkok airport she was detained by the Thai immigration authorities, who then placed her in a hotel room ready to be deported back to Saudi Arabia. After barricading herself in the room and refusing to leave for six nights, Qunun said she had expected the authorities to “enter the room and kidnap me” and had contemplated taking her own life. “That’s why I wrote a goodbye letter. I decided that I would end my life, before I was forced back to Saudi Arabia,” she said. However, as she used Twitter to publicise her plight, abuse and her decision to renounce Islam, her campaign for asylum quickly gathered momentum and support around the world. “I wanted to be free from oppression and depression,” she told the ABC. “I wanted to be independent. I wouldn’t have been able to marry the person I wanted. I couldn’t get a job without permission.” Qunun had originally applied for asylum in Australia but confirmed it was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that chose Canada because it processed her application more quickly. “This wasn’t my choice, it was the UN’s,” she said. “All I wanted was for a country to protect me. So, my choice was just for any country to protect me.” Qunun’s father, who is a governor in Saudi Arabia, and brother had travelled to Bangkok following her escape in an attempt to bring her back with them. After news of her successful asylum in Canada, the family released a statement on Monday saying they had disowned Qunun and described her as “mentally unstable”. In Saudi Arabia, the government-backed National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) also released a statement on Monday accusing several foreign countries of inciting “Saudi female delinquents to rebel against the values of their families and push them out of the country and seek to receive them under the pretext of granting them asylum.”Carlos Ghosn has vowed to remain in Japan in the unlikely event he is granted bail, even offering to wear an electronic ankle tag and hire security guards to track his every move as he awaits trial on financial misconduct charges. The former Nissan chairman has been in detention since he was first arrested on 19 November in a case that has rocked Japan’s car industry and cast doubt over the future of the carmaker’s alliance with Renault. The Tokyo district court has already turned down one bail request, believing Ghosn to be a flight risk who could tamper with evidence over allegations that he underreported his income by tens of millions of dollars and transferred personal investment losses to Nissan. The 64-year-old, who has made just one public appearance since his arrest, has repeatedly denied the allegations. In a statement released on Monday by his US-based representatives, Ghosn said he would “respect any and all bail conditions”. “I remain imprisoned in the detention centre, 64 days after I was arrested, with no release in sight,” he said. “As the court considers my bail application, I want to emphasise that I will reside in Japan and respect any and all bail conditions the court concludes are warranted. “I will attend my trial not only because I am legally obligated to do so, but because I am eager to finally have the opportunity to defend myself. “I am not guilty of the charges against me and I look forward to defending my reputation in the courtroom; nothing is more important to me or to my family.” The representative said Ghosn was willing to offer a higher bail fee using Nissan stock as collateral, confine himself to an apartment his family has rented in Tokyo and surrender his passport. He also vowed not to interact with anyone who could be a potential witness in his case and to report daily to prosecutors. The Tokyo district court was due to rule on the latest bail petition on Tuesday at the earliest, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK. His lawyers have conceded that he is unlikely to be released before his trial begins, which may not be for another six months. Ghosn’s prolonged detention has prompted criticism of Japan’s “hostage justice”, which allows prosecutors to rearrest suspects several times over different allegations and to question them for up to eight hours a day without a lawyer present. Last week his wife, Carole, appealed to Human Rights Watch to highlight her husband’s ordeal, claiming he was being subjected to “draconian” treatment in detention while prosecutors attempted to secure a confession.The Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and the fact-based comedy Green Book won major film awards at the 76th annual Golden Globes in a night that also saw a strong showing for British talent. Though his Spanish-language epic wasn’t eligible for inclusion in either main category, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma was awarded best foreign language film, while the director-writer-cinematographer bested Bradley Cooper and Spike Lee to take home the prize for best director. It was a victorious evening for British entertainers, with the stars of The Favourite, Vice, The Bodyguard, and A Very English Scandal recognized for their achievements in film and television. With wins for Roma, The Bodyguard, and the Michael Douglas-helmed comedy The Kominsky Method, Netflix will also be pleased with its haul. But as the dead sprint to the Oscars heats up, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s decision to honor Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody with the evening’s two pre-eminent awards is sure to earn derision, both films having been accused by audiences and critics alike of handling subjects like race and sexuality in a reductive and regressive manner. Before he was fired during production, the latter film was partially directed by Bryan Singer, who has been accused of sexual assault. Held at the Beverly Hilton and hosted by Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh, the 2019 Globes proved a somewhat less rousing affair than last year’s ceremony, when Oprah Winfrey gave an affecting speech that set off rumors of a potential 2020 run for the presidency, and celebrities wore all black and Time’s Up pins to honor the victims of sexual abuse. But in the absence of Oprah and, for the most part, overt references to the president or contemporary hot-button issues, Oh and Samberg approached their co-hosting duties with a certain tongue-in-cheek wit, calling out various celebrities not for their alleged indiscretions but for their good looks or awards season spoils: “You’re hot,” they told Bradley Cooper; “Jacked AF”, they said of Black Panther’s Michael B Jordan, while Oh told the twice-nominated (and twice-losing) Amy Adams to “save some for the rest of us”. Oh, however, would get her due, taking home the competitive award for best actress in a drama series for her stellar work in the cat-and-mouse thriller Killing Eve. The host triumphed over a murderer’s row of gifted contenders, including Julia Roberts, nominated for Homecoming; Elisabeth Moss, for The Handmaid’s Tale; and Keri Russell, for The Americans. While Samberg and Oh emceed the ceremony with a refreshing dose of levity, the Killing Eve star did take a moment to acknowledge the considerable diversity amongst the show’s nominees. “I wanted to be here to look out into this audience and witness this moment of change,” she said, noting lucrative box office returns for minority-led films like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians. “I’m not fooling myself. Next year could be different and probably will be. But this moment is real, because I see you.” The Americans earned a surprising and indisputably well-deserved win in best drama series, a category for which the Soviet spy drama, which just completed its six-season run, had never before been nominated despite deep and consistent reserves of love among television critics. Along with Russell, the show’s lead Matthew Rhys was nominated for best actor in a drama series but lost out to Richard Madden of The Bodyguard, the smash hit six-part BBC series that notched the network its highest viewing figures in a decade. In the drama acting categories, Glenn Close beat out Lady Gaga, Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, and Rosamund Pike for her powerful turn in The Wife, an adaptation of the Meg Wolitzer novel of the same name. Close’s speech, a galvanizing and heartfelt ode to women following their dreams, drew the night’s biggest applause, with the 13-time Globe nominee drawing parallels to her character’s struggle for recognition and fulfillment vis-à-vis her Nobel Prize-winning husband . “It was called The Wife … that’s why it took 14 years to get made,” said Close, who’s now well-positioned to win her first Oscar at next month’s Academy awards. “We are women and nurturers, we have our children, and our husband’s if we are lucky enough, our partners, whoever. But we have to find personal fulfillment. We have to follow our dreams.” Meanwhile, Bohemian Rhapsody’s Rami Malek upset Bradley Cooper to win best actor in a drama, making sure the star and director of A Star is Born, which was nominated for five awards on the evening and won one (best original song), went home with few spoils. Christian Bale, undoubtedly buoyed by the headline-making physical metamorphosis he underwent for his role as Dick Cheney in Vice, won best actor in a comedy ormusical, cheekily thanking Satan for providing him with inspiration for the role of the former US vice president. Olivia Colman won best actress in a comedy or musical for her tragicomic turn in Yorgos Lanthimos’ period piece The Favourite, whose supporting players Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz were nominated for best supporting actress. Another British success came for Ben Whishaw for his portrayal of Norman Scott in A Very British Scandal. Stone and Weisz, though, were beat out by Regina King, who won best supporting actress for her role in Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk. King defied the ceremony’s orchestral exit music to make an appeal for gender equality in Hollywood. “I am making a vow to make sure that everything that I produce, it’s 50% women,” said King, who was also nominated for best actress in a limited series. “And I just challenge anyone out there who is in a position of power to stand with us in solidarity and do the same.” The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, a breakout hit for Amazon and the darling of last year’s Globes, was upset by The Kominsky Method in the category of best comedy series, although Maisel’s star Rachel Brosnahan did notch her second consecutive win for best lead actress in a comedy series, beating out Alison Brie and Debra Messing. “Thank you to our incredible village it takes to make this show,” said Brosnahan, also an Emmy award winner in 2018. “And our village is a matriarchy.” Other television victors included a pair of Patricias: Arquette, for her lead actress work in the limited series Escape at Dannemora, and Clarkson, for her supporting work in Sharp Objects. Michael Douglas, who plays the titular Sandy Kominsky in the Chuck Lorre-created Netflix series, won best actor in a comedy series, adding a fourth Golden Globe to his well-decorated mantle, which includes the Cecile B DeMille lifetime achievement award given to him in 2004. This year, that honor was bestowed upon Jeff Bridges, who took the stage in full “the Dude” mode, channeling Lebowski with a series of free-associative wise-cracks about his prolific film career, punctuating his sentences with the character’s famous addendum: “man”. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse won the award for best animated feature film, beating out Ralph Breaks the Internet and Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. Elsewhere, the Neil Armstrong space odyssey First Man was honored for its Justin Hurwitz-composed score; The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story for best limited series; and Mahershala Ali for best supporting actor for his portrayal of the pianist Don Shirley in Green Book, the true story of an unlikely friendship between a black and a white man in the 1960s American South, which also won best screenplay. This year’s awards also marked the debut of a non-competitive honor for career achievement in television, named for Carol Burnett, also the award’s inaugural recipient. Burnett, whose visionary variety show The Carol Burnett Show won eight Golden Globe and 25 Emmy Awards over its 11-season run, was introduced by Steve Carell, who called her “one of the most revered, respected, and well-liked people in show business”. Burnett was greeted with rapturous applause by the Globes audience. “I’m really gobsmacked by this,” said the comic pioneer, who dedicated the award “to all those who share the love I have for television”, capping her speech with her celebrated ear-tug gesture, a nod to the grandmother who raised her.Six weeks ago the notion that Egypt might host this summer’s Africa Cup of Nations had barely passed anyone’s lips. Yet Tuesday’s overwhelming decision by the Confederation of African Football’s executive committee has conferred on them that responsibility and it marks the end of a chaotic process that, quite aside from the logistical blundering that has brought about this situation, leaves the continent once again asking itself broader questions. Egypt’s candidacy was approved by a vote of 16 to one, with one abstention, a rival South African bid having failed to get off the ground because of inadequate financial commitments. The process was hurried through after Cameroon were stripped of hosting rights on 30 November; an initial reaction is that Caf has stumbled upon the best possible sticking plaster for a bad job but there is little merit in its flair for sailing close to the wind. Cameroon was already lagging behind in its preparations when, in July 2017, Caf announced the tournament would be enlarged to 24 teams from its standard 16. At that point the alarm bells should have rung loudly but instead a pretence, regularly undermined by those close to the organising committee and by the delegations that returned from half-constructed venues, was maintained that the west African country could see it through. In September it was granted a last chance to put things right but, with two of the host cities located close to its violence-stricken anglophone regions, the reasons to pull the plug had stacked up insurmountably. As recently as October, the Caf president, Ahmad Ahmad, said his organisation had “never thought about withdrawing the Cup of Nations from Cameroon”. Ahmad, who made little secret of his wish for a country of such vibrant football heritage to hold the tournament after three of the previous four had been staged in the petrostates of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, was desperate for it to work. He succeeded Issa Hayatou in March 2017, coming through on an appealing ticket of modernisation and transparency, but opted too soon for an expansionist European-style template and was left scrambling, just as his predecessor was in finding replacement hosts for the 2013, 2015 and 2017 iterations. The reasons for those switches differed and it is not the fault of anybody at Caf that political instability and – in the case of Morocco’s last-minute withdrawal from hosting in 2015 – disease have forced them to think on their feet on previous occasions. But it makes Ahmad’s insistence on imitating the European Championship’s new format seem reckless when so much of the continent lacks the resources or need for a jamboree of this size. The Chinese-built stadium used in Oyem, in northern Gabon, two years ago already risks being reclaimed by the jungle; it is not a huge stretch, either, to imagine similar problems occurring after Cameroon (who will now host in 2021), Ivory Coast and Guinea have hosted the next three editions. Yet passing judgment from this distance on questions of progress, and what that ought to entail, is inherently problematic. One certainty is that Caf needs to revive this event’s flagging global profile and Egypt is capable of hosting a full-fat, authentic-looking tournament for the first time since Ghana in 2008. The rise of Mohamed Salah has already piqued interest in a country whose love of international football is visceral. The crowds should be large and boisterous, just as they were when Egypt last hosted, 13 years ago; the infrastructure will pose few problems; and fans from Africa and beyond will have to face none of the visa-related brick walls – or unfriendly flight times – that made Gabon and Equatorial Guinea almost inaccessible. Ahmad’s decision to hold the tournament in the summer should maximise its appeal, too. Yet Egypt’s searing heat – temperatures could reach up to 40C (104F) – will spook the medics and may well have a knock-on effect on the football, which reached an agreeably high tempo in 2017 but will find that difficult to match on a baking afternoon in Cairo. The terrorist attack that killed three tourists and their guide in Giza, just outside the capital, last month is another reminder that this tournament will not take place without significant risk; the stadiums themselves will be under scrutiny too given the ban on spectators at domestic games that ran for six years after the Port Said riot in 2012, although the Egyptian FA has pointed out that continental and international fixtures have been hosted to full attendances. How Egypt reacts will be noteworthy given the turbulence the sport has been caught up in during this decade. Its bid was fully backed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the country’s president, and his government. For Sisi, a Cup of Nations presents an opportunity to show Egypt is open for business and to use football, a tempestuous site for political contestation during and after the revolution, for narrower ends at a time when the regime is regularly condemned for brutality and authoritarianism. It all goes to emphasise that Caf will once again be muddling through while concerns about African football’s wider development, particularly in the light of such a poor World Cup performance from its representatives, hang in the air. On the pitch, perhaps stories such as the qualification of Mauritania – a shining, and rare, example of how to sensibly invest Fifa funds – will justify the expansion, while another feelgood story would be written if Saido Berahino and Burundi can book their place in March. But it is Egypt and, perhaps, the totemic figure of Salah who offer the real rescue act in a situation that should never have come to this.Tottenham Hotspur, a side wearing the scars of a World Cup as well as a draining domestic campaign, have staggered and fallen out of their second major cup competition inside four days. This was a meek surrender, their challenge fizzling out with none of the aggression or defiance demonstrated before the shootout loss at Chelsea. Crystal Palace, bound for the fifth round, are not used to such comfortable occasions on home territory. Mauricio Pochettino had offered up a resigned puff of the cheeks at the final whistle before shuffling back down the touchline, hands buried in his gilet pockets and another route to the first silverware of his coaching career blocked off. He may even have spent that trudge concocting the “trophies only build egos” line he would offer up in his post-match media duties though, in truth, he had plenty to ponder. Without the injured Harry Kane and Dele Alli, and with Son Heung-min weary on his return from the Asia Cup, his team had monopolised the ball but, one spurned penalty aside, proved horribly blunt in attack. Even a squad of Tottenham’s quality is feeling critically stretched. There was a disjointed feel to this whole performance and, with those clubs pursuing the top four smelling blood, they can ill afford a repeat against Watford on Wednesday. The collective was leggy, with some players rusty having been restored after lay-offs and others showing the strain from the cluttered schedule. Palace would argue theirs was hardly a settled selection either, but Spurs were made to look inadequate against a team who had scored only six goals all season at home prior to this tie. That tally has now been swollen to eight courtesy of Connor Wickham and Andros Townsend’s first-half goals. The 112th clean sheet of Julián Speroni’s 15-year Palace career, overtaking Nigel Martyn’s club record in the process, ensured progress. The Argentinian, his poise recovered from that traumatic occasion at Anfield on his first appearance in 13 months the previous weekend, was called upon to deny Fernando Llorente twice from close range after the break. But, for all that the visitors dominated possession and rattled up their corner and shot tallies accordingly, this contest had already veered out of Spurs’ grasp by then. Rather, the critical moments had come just before the interval, first when Speroni twice denied Georges-Kévin Nkoudou after a clever free-kick routine and then, most critically of all, when Spurs passed up a chance from the spot. Patrick van Aanholt’s crude foul on Juan Foyth had offered the visitors their route back into the tie but Kieran Trippier, who had not been involved in the shoot-out at Stamford Bridge on Thursday night, seemed unnerved by the ball rolling off the mark as he prepared to convert. Once repositioned, and with Speroni diving the right way, he squirted his effort wide of the left-hand post. After Eric Dier and Lucas Moura’s efforts on Thursday, Spurs have now missed three penalties in a row. Such profligacy tends to be punished. Palace, for once, were far more ruthless. They had their own good news stories to which they could cling, bolstering the mood ahead of a critical period in the Premier League which will shape the rest of their campaign. The lead had been established early, Jeffrey Schlupp collecting Joel Ward’s pass and bustling far too easily around Davinson Sánchez to spit away a right-foot shot nine minutes in. Paulo Gazzaniga could only parry that attempt out for Wickham, following up, to bundle in his first goal for 799 days off his knee. The referee checked the offside, but a player whose career has been badly interrupted by the serious knee injury sustained in a madcap 5-4 loss at Swansea in November 2016 would not be denied his moment. The emotion of his celebration, looking up to his family in the executive boxes before thumping the turf gleefully, said everything. “He’s hardly played in two and a quarter years,” said Roy Hodgson. “It can’t get much better than that for him. He’s worked so hard to get back to where he is.” It was Wickham’s presence at Kyle Walker-Peters’s back which panicked the young full-back into handling Wilfried Zaha’s cross just after the half-hour mark, and Townsend’s finish from the spot was far more clinical than that mustered by Trippier. The former Spurs winger should have added a third from Van Aanholt’s pass moments later but, even with that opportunity struck wastefully at Gazzaniga, Tottenham did not seem in the mood to revive. Everything their makeshift side attempted was laboured, or marginally lacking in conviction. When they did summon some oomph, the efforts from distance flew straight at Speroni. This was the 39-year-old’s 405th appearance for Palace. If it proves to have been his last, with Vicente Guaita and Wayne Hennessey likely to be in contention to return from injury at Southampton on Wednesday, then this was quite a way to go out. Hodgson should have Bakary Sako, re-signed from West Bromwich Albion, available for that trip with his options suddenly more promising going into the second half of the campaign. Certainly his second-choice back-line, superbly marshalled by Scott Dann – in whom Fulham have an interest, for all that Palace could price him out of a move – and Martin Kelly, were admirably disciplined to ease them through. Spurs could find no way through. They, like West Ham and Everton, had seen their aspirations in this competition buried in south London. Theirs have been a punishing few days.There was a moment of tranquillity after the tumult for Andy Murray as speculation swirled around Melbourne Park about where he would go from here, in what capacity and what state of mind. Gone midnight, a few hours after losing as bravely as he ever has done – in five sets to Robert Bautista Agut in the first round of the Australian Open – Murray crept on to the unattended Rod Laver Arena, where he had lost five finals, and took out the camera on his phone. He swung it around, to no obvious end, and brought it back to settle on his sad features. He has rarely looked so sad. He lifted his right hand and, silently, waved goodbye. It was as clear an indication as any that Murray is done with tennis after 14 years, 853 matches, 45 titles, among them three majors, two Olympic gold medals, one Davis Cup, one knighthood and the love of millions. He might yet return, but the odds are long. A little later, he matter-of-factly laid out the options facing him if he is to conjure up a farewell at Wimbledon this summer. “I would definitely play Wimbledon if I didn’t have the operation,” he said of a top-surface procedure that has saved the career of the American doubles player Bob Bryan, “because my hip isn’t going to be much worse off after tonight. If I took a few months off and didn’t play, I could definitely get myself on the court to play Wimbledon one last time “My hip is screwed anyway so it’s not like tonight’s match is going to make it any worse than what it is. So, if I took a few months off and didn’t play, I could definitely get myself on the court to play Wimbledon one last time. I could be competitive. I was competitive here against a top player with very little practice and matches. Grass is a better surface for me.” Pointedly, he calls that “option B”. It became clear his first choice is to bite down and go under the knife, not to extend his career but to be able to put on his socks and shoes, as he memorably put it. “Option B gives me the best chance of playing at Wimbledon. The first option makes my life a lot more comfortable and enjoyable, but potentially means I never play again and also miss Wimbledon. So that’s what I need to decide.” And which was favourite? “After tonight, probably to have the operation, because if that was my last match … If I’d got smoked tonight, I would have been, like, ‘Shit, I don’t want that to be the last match that I play.’ But, because of the way the match went and how I finished, I literally couldn’t have done any more than what I did. That was my maximum. My hip was completely gone at the end of the match. “It was an amazing atmosphere, it was brilliant. So that would be a nice way to finish as well. I would be able to deal with that being my last match OK … I think.” Unsurprisingly, the avalanche of nice words that descended upon him afterwards, from the packed Melbourne Arena to the galaxy of peers who posted their praise on the big screen, caught him off-guard. “I know there’s lots of tennis fans and British fans who would be sad about it, but I didn’t expect people to be really upset. That’s a bit embarrassing when you encounter that.” Murray will leave tennis immensely enhanced. He brought courts all around the world to life with his peculiar mixture of sweary belligerence and vulnerability. But he says British tennis did not make the most of his achievements, with which there will be little argument. “We’ve obviously got a few players here, Kyle [Edmund], Cam Norrie, Dan Evans, Harriet Dart, Jo [Konta], Heather [Watson], Katie Boulter. So there are quite a few players coming through that have potential to go on and do better, but obviously you are talking about the high end of the game. I was not thinking about winning Wimbledon when I was 15. I didn’t think that was ever going to be possible “To get eight Brits in the main draw, that is a decent number. It’s not amazing but it’s a decent number. The thing that is more concerning, from my understanding, is that participation is dropping. I know in Scotland that there have not been many indoor courts built in the last 10 years. That seems madness. I don’t understand why that is. “I guess those are the things that are important for the future. You need to get kids playing, you need to have the facilities that allow them to do that and I am not sure Britain has really capitalised on the last seven or eight years of success that we’ve had really, whether it be myself, my brother Jamie, Jo, Kyle, Davis Cup, those sorts of things.” As generous as he is to his contemporaries, Murray did most of it himself. Yet he reveals it was never his intention to be a star, to go on from his childhood in Dunblane and conquer the tennis world. “I never had any dreams like that,” he says. “I saw an interview that I did when I was 14 on the BBC. I just wanted to be a professional tennis player. I wanted to get to the top 100 in the world. When I moved over to Spain [at 15], that was what I was trying to do. I was not thinking about winning Wimbledon. I didn’t think that was ever going to be possible. I never had those dreams or ambitions when I was a kid.” But his talent would not be denied. When Murray won his first title on the full ATP Tour, in San Jose in 2006, his opponent in the final was Lleyton Hewitt who, against all odds, could play Jamie in the second round of the doubles here this week as a wildcard. Murray was 18 that day; Hewitt four years earlier had become the youngest world No 1 since Ellsworth Vines in 1932. Murray, now on the verge of retirement, turns 32 in May, while Hewitt – who has had at least as many operations as the Scot – will be 38. He is still dragging his old bones around the circuit, angering Bernard Tomic to the point of incomprehensible gibbering here this week. What Tomic does not comprehend is that the cycle of survival, triumph and despair in tennis respects no age, no reputation. Few have the luxury of choosing the point of their departure. Murray is at that door now, and still undecided when to walk through it. When he does, unlike Hewitt, he will close it for good.A lot of us have spent the past few weeks telling our children some fairly problematic stuff. That there’s an old man with a beard who breaks into our homes with a reindeer and watches them while they sleep. That it’s acceptable to talk about the ins and outs of a virgin’s womb. That there was a genocidal king who murdered newborn boys. I can’t think of any context in which we would tell these stories other than Christmas, but I suppose we feel they are balanced out by their happy endings. Santa is a creepy idea but he does leave presents. The traumatic experience of being homeless in another town with a birth imminent ends with a baby swaddled happily in a manger. We don’t tend to dwell on the next part, in which the holy family went on to become refugees in Egypt, although the Pope is among the religious figures who has suggested we should think about that more. You don’t even need to go that far to see what is wrong with this year’s Christmas message though, which, courtesy of Sajid Javid, is that there is officially No Room at the Inn. The home secretary cut short his £800-a-night luxury safari holiday in South Africa to appear to us as a Tory Ghost of Christmas Present, with the message that Britain is now facing a full-on “crisis”. There were plenty of scenarios that warranted that kind of conscientiousness. More people than ever relied on food banks to get through Christmas this year, around half of them children. More than 130,000 children faced Christmas in a state of homelessness, in temporary accommodation or B&Bs completely unfit for families. Almost every day, a woman is killed or takes her own life because of domestic violence, a form of abuse that often spikes at this time of year. None of these are serious enough to be considered a crisis, however. That privilege is reserved for the five small boats in which 40 desperate people attempted to cross the Channel on Christmas Day, no doubt hoping to make the case that they deserved to seek refuge in the UK. That’s no small detail – there is a legal right, established in international law, to claim asylum in a country after you arrive there, which these people were within their rights to follow. But Javid wasn’t going to let that get in the way of his ghoulish seasonal performance, having already determined their status for himself as “illegal” migrants. It’s not beneath us Brits to attempt to withdraw from international law on refugees – Conservative party leader Michael Howard campaigned on a platform of doing so in 2005 – but despite the many steps the government has taken to make life intolerable for migrants, that is not yet among them. Even though we, as humans and citizens of international law-abiding nations, have a duty to process refugees and accept those with a legitimate claim, this can seem an overwhelming responsibility. I can sympathise with the former mayor of Catania Enzo Bianco, for instance, who I once saw weep with grief as he recalled the migrants he had buried in unmarked graves in his town in Sicily, just one tragic consequence of the more than 300,000 migrants who arrived by boat in Italy between 2014 and 2015. The “crisis” of which Javid is speaking, by contrast, refers to the estimated 220 people who have attempted to cross the Channel to Britain since the start of November. The action he is advocating is the deployment of two Border Force vessels – which had been conducting search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean – and the toughening-up of measures to prevent crossings from France. Javid initially resisted deploying the vessels for fear that the prospect of being rescued would encourage more people to cross. There are at least three reasons why it feels as if this is designed to appease far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment, rather than to actually solve any problems. This current “crisis” began in November, making it far from obvious why the dramatic re-entry of Javid in the middle of the Christmas holidays was necessary – except for effect. Second, the idea that a crackdown on the French side would improve matters has absolutely no basis in fact. One of the triggers for the recent increase in the number of people coming across the Channel in boats – albeit still in very low numbers – is that conditions for migrants in France have worsened in recent weeks. Third, migration experts from EU countries, which have dealt with more than 1.8 million arrivals since 2014 – the majority from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq – are unequivocal that the relentless focus on policing, defence and surveillance has not prevented migrants from entering Europe, but has increased the likelihood that they will die attempting to do so. The truth is that Britain’s stance towards migrants has never had much to do with reason and everything to do with a cultural hostility that stretches back centuries. In just one example highlighted in a new book on Brexit and the end of empire, Rule Britannia, an 1893 magazine described immigrants and foreigners as “deceitful, effeminate, irreligious, immoral, unclean and unwholesome. Any one Englishman is a match for any seven of them.” The greatest immigration scandal of 2018 – the treatment of the Windrush generation – was a reminder that we have always exhibited a unique hostility towards people who are visibly different. The arrival of a few hundred people from the Caribbean in 1948 prompted a moment of national soul-searching (prime minister Clement Attlee even considered diverting the Windrush to east Africa), while the decision to offer citizenship to 200,000 Polish migrants the previous year went almost unnoticed. That Polish people are included in our newer incarnation of xenophobic frenzy gives me no joy whatsoever. It’s worth remembering that Dover, where the current “crisis” is unfolding, is the terrain of Tory MP Charlie Elphicke, who equated anti-fascist protesters with neo-Nazis, and defended a Tory councillor who described people of Middle Eastern heritage as “sons of camel drivers”. None of this, of course, is actually about the refugees or migrants in question. It’s about us, and our capacity for hypocrisy. We deported Windrush migrants while the flags were flying in celebration of the Commonwealth, and we are dehumanising refugees while the Christmas trees are still twinkling. We need to tell the children this particular Christmas story, so they don’t grow up sinking to the same abject depths. • Afua Hirsch is a Guardian columnistIn a world increasingly anxious about climate change, the surge in the generation of renewable energy over the past 20 years offers a sliver of hope. But the variable nature of wind and solar power means that storing energy until consumers need it has become the next big challenge. And so, large-scale battery installations are springing up across electricity grids around the world, to make them more flexible. In 2017, more than 1GW of energy storage capacity was added around the world – a record, yes, but still a drop in the ocean of global energy demand. Of course, we are not talking about a few AAA batteries here. And yet, all batteries broadly work in a similar manner. Electrical energy is converted to chemical energy when you charge a battery, and then the process is reversed when you draw power from it. There are three main constituents of most batteries: two electrodes and some form of chemical medium called the electrolyte, which can be a liquid, gel or solid. To generate electricity, a chemical reaction takes place that sees electrons move from the negative electrode, called the anode, to the positive electrode, called the cathode. When you charge the battery, the process is reversed, sending electrons back to the anode. There is around 500MW of large-scale battery capacity installed around the UK, a figure that is expected to double within three years, according to the analysts Aurora Energy Research. Almost all capacity uses lithium-ion. Globally installed capacity is expected to top 50GW by 2020 – and surge to almost 1,000GW by 2040, according to Bloomberg NEF. That would equate to about 7% of the world’s energy capacity. In the UK, battery installations are primarily being deployed to supply services to National Grid. Such ancillary services are increasingly important to help match supply and demand as a growing amount of intermittent wind and solar power comes online. There are also the beginnings of “hybrid” renewable energy power plants, where batteries are installed alongside solar farms and windfarms. This is particularly important for the economics of solar farms, which can push down power prices around midday by peaking at the same time. Instead of exporting immediately, hybrid farms can store power to sell later at higher prices. In other parts of the world, such as South Australia, batteries are being used to make the grid more resilient and avoid blackouts. Crucially, batteries are not yet suitable and do not make economic sense for interseasonal storage – that is, storing up solar power in summer to release in winter. Elon Musk may have popularised the concept of a home battery when he unveiled Tesla’s version three years ago, but the firm was not the first and is not the biggest in this field. Such batteries, which are about the size of a gas boiler, can store and release electricity either generated by a household or imported from the grid. The German firm Sonnen, which has around a 25% global market share in home batteries, said most customers today are people who have solar panels or live in storm-hit regions and want a clean, reliable backup source of power. “The market is still in the very, very early phase,” says the chief executive, Christoph Ostermann. Germany, Italy, Australia and the US states of California and Hawaii are the biggest markets so far. For solar households, it makes more financial sense to store and consume the energy rather than be paid for exporting it to the grid. In future, as more time-of-use energy tariffs emerge, there might also be enough of an incentive to install one to avoid peak pricing. However, for Ostermann, the most exciting prospect is harnessing thousands of the batteries as a “virtual power plant”. He describes this as an “Uberisation” of batteries that the company does not own but can call on, with permission. “We are not heading for utility scale, but virtual power plants can provide significant power,” he says. We are just beginning to see the second generation of battery-powered vehicles, according to the entrepreneur Henrik Fisker, the founder of the electric car maker Fisker Automotive. He views affordability and a decent range between charges as this crop’s defining features. While the first models, with the exception of Tesla, could manage around 100 miles, most new ones now offer between 200-300 miles. “I see the market starting to boom around 2020 or 2021, as there is more choice [of models],” says Fisker. Fisker also views ultrafast charging as vital to helping electric cars go mainstream. While a typical home will take about 8-10 hours to fully top up a car (with a 3KW socket), some new public chargers can do that in about 10 minutes (using a 350KW charger). Electric double-decker buses, built by the Chinese manufacturer BYD, already ply the streets of London. Elon Musk has announced plans for an electric truck. But the energy density required for heavy transport makes it a lot harder for batteries to beat fossil fuels. “It’s definitely more challenging,” says Prof Paul Shearing, the Royal Academy of Engineering’s chair in emerging battery technologies. “[But] I think the future is going to be electric, no matter which way you cut it.” Will we all be flying around in electric jumbo jets soon? “Not yet,” says Shearing, who adds that energy density and weight of batteries meant there would probably only be used in unmanned aerial vehicles in the short term. “I think it’ll be a long time until we see an electric passenger plane,” he says. A key element in lithium-ion batteries is cobalt, despite manufacturers’ attempt to reduce the amount required. More than 60% world’s cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where concerns have been raised about the social and environmental impact of mining the metal. The lithium in the batteries comes mainly from three big producer countries, Australia, Argentina and Chile, along with emerging producers such as Bolivia, Brazil, Canada and Zimbabwe. Water consumption and scarcity in some producer countries is the big concern here. “There are definite ethics issues. Large companies are going to be driven by cost,” says Shearer, of cobalt and lithium production. What happens to the batteries towards the end of their life is also a big challenge. Dr Jonathan Radcliffe, of the school of chemical engineering at the University of Birmingham, is worried about the fate of batteries when their performance in today’s crop of electric vehicles is no longer good enough for cars. Some now have a second life as a home battery, but he fears the market could be saturated in a few years, undermining the financial case for reuse. “The risk is that there is no viable second-use in the UK and we have a large amount of battery waste, without the processes in place to deal with it,” he says. The bigger and denser the battery, the more chemical energy it can store and therefore the more electricity it can generate. But a bigger, denser battery is more expensive, heavier, takes longer to charge and has more potential for destruction if things go wrong. The chemistry and internal construction of the battery also plays a role in how much energy it can store. Lithium-based batteries are popular because they have a relatively high energy-to-weight ratio and maintain their charge well when not in use. In most devices, battery life is a trade-off between physical size, design, energy density and safety, alongside the energy efficiency of the device it powers. Most batteries can only maintain their full capacity for a finite time and number of charge and discharge cycles. The exact process of battery ageing is still a hot research topic, but there are several mechanisms at play that occur when the battery is used or stored. The most common is the build-up of material on the anode, which slowly gets deposited when the battery is used or stored. A similar oxidation can also occur on the cathode, while the active ingredients of the battery can react and degrade over time. A combination of these effects reduce the amount of lithium ions and active material available for storing electricity, therefore reducing maximum capacity. But the internal resistance of the battery can also increase as it ages, meaning its peak power output is lower, a process that causes issues in iPhones. How a battery is used and stored can dramatically affect its ageing. For instance, batteries can be damaged by exposing them to extremes of temperature, which is more problematic for a car or similar than a smartphone. Rapid cycling of the battery also increases wear, particularly if the power demands on the battery are very high, as is the case with electric cars. Charging and using the battery to its extremes also accelerates ageing, such as charging batteries to their maximum and discharging them to zero. Safety was thrown into the spotlight when some of the batteries inside the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 developed a fault that caused them to short circuit and catch fire. When something disrupts the chemical reaction inside the battery, it can cause “thermal runaway”, where uncontrolled reactions chain together, generating too much heat, typically resulting in batteries bursting or catching fire. Various safety mechanisms, both electrical control circuits and physical measures including shielding and battery structure, mean such events are rare. But they are of particular concern for portable devices, which are often held on a person, and electric vehicles that may be involved in a collision that could damage the integrity of the battery. Companies are working hard to increase the amount of energy that can be packed into a battery, and to bring down the cost of making them. Future prices are unlikely to fall as fast as they have in the past, says Ostermann, because reductions have already been so rapid. Sonnen has seen prices fall from more than €1,000 (£905) per kilowatt hour of capacity when it started in 2010, to about €150-200 per kWh today. But the company expects to cut costs in electronics such as inverters. New wonder materials will take a while to break through, Shearer says. “The next 10 years are going to continue to be lithium-ion dominated. It’s taken a long time to get to this productivity and technological maturity level. For anything to catch up will take a while.” Most innovation will be around lithium-ion, he believes, such as improving the energy density and lowering costs by reducing the amount of cobalt in a battery. The rate at which batteries can take on a charge will also improve, Shearer adds. Radcliffe agrees that lithium-ion will continue to dominate. Cost and performance will improve, driven by the scale-up of manufacturing and continued research, he says. Batteries will also be put to new uses. Fisker says that as technology improves, he expects to see them eventually appear on construction sites, in mines and in industrial equipment, replacing diesel generators. They will be deployed in increasingly small devices, such as medical implants, Shearer says.Theresa May was handed a humiliating defeat in parliament by Labour and Conservative MPs who organised to demonstrate the strength of parliamentary opposition to leaving the EU with no deal. MPs voted by 303 to 296 in favour of an amendment to the finance bill tabled by Labour’s Yvette Cooper to curb some of the government’s tax administration powers in the event of no deal without explicit authorisation for parliament. The coalition of high-profile MPs behind the amendment are expected to use the victory as a springboard for further parliamentary action to prevent the UK crashing out of the EU. Sir Oliver Letwin, the former Tory minister who rebelled to back Cooper’s amendment, said: “The majority tonight that is expressed in this house will sustain itself. We will not allow a no-deal exit to occur at the end of March.” Twenty Conservatives rebelled against the government, including the former defence secretary Michael Fallon and former education secretary Justine Greening. Tory MPs were whipped to vote against the amendment, despite rumours that the government would concede. Eleven Tories had signed the amendment, including former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan, select committee chair Sarah Wollaston, former minister Nick Boles and Sir Nicholas Soames. During his speech in the Commons, Letwin sounded almost tearful as he said he would rebel against the Tory whip. “I will be voting with [Cooper] against my own government, very much against my own will, and I will continue to do so right up until the end of March in the hope we can put paid to this disastrous proposal.” Privately those behind the amendment’s success concede it may have little material effect on no-deal preparations. Instead, its purpose has been to galvanise MPs across the house and prove there is a parliamentary majority to oppose no deal, which they expect could grow when subsequent amendments are tabled to other bills, which could have wider-reaching consequences. Speaking in the Commons, Cooper said MPs across the house agreed on the dangers of no deal. “I’m worried we could come to the crunch and parliament will not have the powers to stop [no deal] happening,” she said. “I think we have a responsibility not to just stand by.” The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who turned round and applauded Cooper in the chamber as the defeat was announced, said: “This vote is an important step to prevent a no-deal Brexit. It shows that there is no majority in parliament, the cabinet or the country for crashing out of the EU without an agreement. That is why we are taking every opportunity possible in parliament to prevent no deal.” Labour threw its weight behind the amendment on Monday afternoon, as Treasury officials and Tory whips scrambled to assess the impact it could have on Treasury operations. Opening the debate, the shadow Treasury minister Jonathan Reynolds said it had the support of the opposition because it was “a chance for parliament to make a clear statement rejecting a no-deal outcome and that is a statement that cannot come soon enough”. He said that the government had “run down the clock” towards the 29 March exit date. “Nobody should be underestimating at this stage how likely a no deal exit could be,” he said. “The government has got us to the point of ruin.” Morgan said those who had signed the amendment had different views both on Brexit itself and on the way forward. “It is right that parliamentarians on both sides of the house should rule out the most damaging thing that could happen on 29 March,” she said. “It would be a gross dereliction of responsibility of members of this house to inflict a no-deal situation on our constituents,” she said. “It is time for members on all sides to make it clear to the government that a no-deal outcome for Brexit is absolutely unacceptable.” The veteran Tory MP Ken Clarke, a prominent Europhile, said crashing out with no deal would leave the UK “as the only developed country in the world that has no trade agreements at all with anyone and made to fall back on WTO rules, made to sound marvellous by Brexiteers but do not amount to very much.” Opposition to the rebels’ amendment came from pro-Brexit Labour MP Kate Hoey, who said it would be “irresponsible for the government not to be making contingency plans for a WTO situation…” Backers of the amendment concede that it cannot, in and of itself, stop a no-deal Brexit from occurring. It is attached to a clause designed to give the government the power to keep some areas of tax administration working in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Cooper’s amendment meant that new power would only be allowed to come into force if there were either a Brexit deal, a decision to extend article 50, or a vote in the Commons specifically approving a no-deal Brexit. It is this format of three options that MPs may later decide to attempt to apply to other bills going through the Commons. A number of bills could be amended, which might have more significant impact on day-to-day government operations. Seven bills must be implemented in order to provide a smooth exit by March, including trade, agriculture, healthcare, financial services, fisheries and immigration, as well as legislation for the withdrawal agreement. Government sources had briefed that the material effect of the finance bill amendment would be “low down the list” of difficulties if the UK was heading towards a no-deal Brexit and officials suggested that more emergency legislation would probably be needed, where the government could attempt to restore these powers without caveat. Earlier, May’s spokesman said the amendment was “not desirable but the effect of the amendment on no-deal preparations would be inconvenience rather than anything more significant”. He said it would not prevent the government from collecting tax. “What clause 89 does is allow the government to make minor amendments to tax law, in consequence of EU exit, in order to keep the tax code working as it currently does,” the spokesman said.Los Angeles has unveiled the US’s first publicly available earthquake early-warning app, a development seismologists hope will move cities across the west coast to invest in wide-scale alert technology. ShakeAlertLA uses mobile app technology to warn Los Angeles county residents when the US Geological Survey’s early warning sensor network indicates an earthquake of 5.0 magnitude or larger is about to shake their location. Seconds may not seem like much warning, but with earthquakes, “getting a few seconds’ heads-up can make a big difference if you need to pull to the side of the road, get out of an elevator, or drop, cover, and hold on,” the Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, said in a statement. The app, available for Android and Apple smartphones, only applies to Los Angeles county. Although public service agencies throughout the west coast have been utilizing the USGS’ early warning sensor network to detect earthquakes since October, the technology to immediately alert residents across the region to take cover does not exist, said Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. In the case of an earthquake, existing alerts such as amber alerts and the presidential alert are simply too slow, Allen continued. During its test in September, some smartphone users reported a 15-second delay in receiving the Presidential Alert. “The purpose of early warning is to get people into that safe place before the shaking starts instead of once the shaking starts,” he said. “If you have a few seconds, you can get under a sturdy table, you can get away from that bookcase, you can move away from hazardous materials, you can move away from the places you are likely to be injured.” But the architects behind the ShakeAlertLA pilot program believe that the app is “a crucial step towards delivering ShakeAlerts to the entire West Coast”, according to Garcetti’s office. Regions will face varying challenges. Typically, the farther users are from the epicenter of an earthquake, the more time they will have between an alert and a quake. San Francisco is located between the San Andreas fault line and the Hayward fault line. “Due to the proximity of our fault lines, the San Francisco Bay Area only has few seconds of warning with the current earthquake early warning technology,” said Francis Zamora, a spokesman for the city’s department of emergency management. Efforts to set up an SMS alert system three years ago failed. The city has since turned its focus on sending automated alerts to critical facilities like fire stations and schools. “San Francisco is monitoring the pilot program in Los Angeles and looks forward to evaluating the results of the program,” he said. Allen said he was hopeful that ShakeAlertLA would “accelerate” the development of this alert technology. “More cities should be asking why don’t we have an app as well,” Allen said. “We need to make sure everybody gets the alert before the next big earthquake strikes.”A prominent “conversion therapy” advocate, David Matheson, has come out as gay after spending what he said were decades of his life entrenched in homophobia. Matheson was a practitioner of the practice also known as “ex-gay therapy” or reparative therapy”, which promotes the false idea that being gay is something that should, and can, be “cured”. These therapies have been denounced by major medical bodies including the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and the UK’s National Health Service. Matheson said he knew his work had helped some people, but was certain he had hurt some people too. “Not that I would excuse myself, but any shortcomings I had as a therapist came from too narrow a view of what ‘emotionally healthy’ can look like.” Matheson said on Facebook. “They came from my own homophobia and narrow-mindedness. I am truly sorry for those flaws and the harm they have surely caused some people. And I’m sorry for the confusion and pain my choice may be causing others.” Matheson, a Mormon, affirmed his sexuality this week after the LGBT advocacy group Truth Wins Out reported on a leaked private conversation between Matheson and “conversion therapy” advocate Rich Wyler. After the private conversation was made public, Matheson wrote a Facebook post to affirm he was gay. Matheson said in the post he realized last year that he had to make a change in his life and divorced his wife of 34 years, in part because he felt he could no longer ignore his desire to have a relationship with a man. “What you can take from this is that my time in a straight marriage and in the ‘ex-gay’ world was genuine and sincere and a rich blessing to me,” Matheson wrote. “I remember most of it with fondness and gratitude for the joy and growth it caused in me and many others.’” Matheson told the Salt Lake Tribune’s podcast Mormon Land that he was exposed to homophobia as a youth in the Mormon church and found solace in therapy he received to deal with his own same-sex attraction. He said the benefits of that therapy, and his desire to help men like himself, drove him to become a therapist. Conversion therapy usually uses the talk therapy technique, but there have been documented instances of counselors using extreme “aversion treatments” such as electric shock treatment and medication. Matheson has said he never used “aversion treatments”. “To the men whose internalized homophobia I colluded with or who went away from therapy feeling that really was kind of hurtful to me, I am so sorry,” Matheson said. “I got into this because I really had a sense of compassion and love to this community” Matheson said the Mormon church has improved its position on LGBT issues since the 1970s, but added that he wasn’t sure it had acknowledged the stress that comes from being a gay Mormon. The Mormon church has in recent years clarified that it does not consider same-sex attraction a sin, but its policy dictates that people cannot participate in homosexual behavior and also participate in the church. Matheson said that by the time he began studying therapy, he had become consumed by the ideology that being gay is a sin. “Even though it was a deep part of me, I had turned against that part of me,” Matheson said. “So, I was buying hook line and sinker this idea that people can change.”British manufacturers are being forced to build up financial buffers in preparation for a no-deal Brexit as the cost of stockpiling goods and materials puts companies under strain. Measures taken by manufacturers to prepare for a disorderly exit include creating cash cushions and taking out working capital loans to cover the costs of stockpiling. Manufacturers have already spent millions storing raw materials and finished products in case a no-deal Brexit causes delays at the border, tying up money that would otherwise be used to run day-to-day operations. Airbus and Brompton Bicycle are among the UK-based manufacturers that have started stockpiling as 29 March looms. Santander, one of the biggest lenders to business in the country, said its manufacturing clients were building up cash reserves and delaying capital expenditures as they sought to keep cash in the business. A source at another major high street bank said the lender was working with manufacturing clients on offering more working capital loans. Paul Brooks, the head of manufacturing at Santander UK, said: “In recent months we have seen manufacturers choosing to build up cash reserves and delay investments due to uncertainty over the economy’s outlook. “We are working closely with our manufacturer customers to support them through this period, including helping them to manage their cashflow, spread the cost of buying assets and explore export opportunities in new international markets.” Recent figures show lending patterns consistent with stockpiling by manufacturers. The Bank of England’s fourth-quarter survey of UK credit conditions showed that demand for “inventory finance”, in which loans are secured against stock, rose much faster than average in the final quarter of 2018 after hitting a three-year high in the previous quarter. Overall demand for borrowing from manufacturers rose by 7% in the year to November, to £18bn, according to data from UK Finance, the banking industry body; bucking the trend of falling demand for loans in most other sectors. The financial strain from Brexit preparations is spread throughout manufacturing supply chains. Demand for new lending facilities is particularly acute among smaller companies, which often only have a single banking relationship, a senior banker said. There is also evidence of payments deadlines being squeezed by suppliers and stretched by customers, said the banker, further increasing the default risks borne by smaller firms. Manufacturers, from the largest companies such as Airbus to much smaller suppliers, have warned repeatedly that a no-deal Brexit would harm British industry by delaying goods at the border. EEF, the manufacturing lobby group, said 60% of the companies it surveyed were looking to stockpile goods in case supplies dry up. At least a quarter are already doing so. Stephen Phipson, the EEF chief executive, said British companies were “ramping up their contingency operations” in the face of “terrifying uncertainty”. He said: “Increasingly, companies are conducting in-depth audits of their supply chains to make cost efficiencies, while many are also reshoring where possible. We continue to talk to banks and other financial institutions on behalf of our members in order to make sure they have the financial support necessary for this extra expenditure.” British manufacturers have reached a “point of maximum uncertainty” on Brexit, one banker said, with the future of the trading relationship between the UK and the EU unclear before the 29 March exit date after the government’s preferred deal suffered a historic defeat in parliament. Stephen Pegge, UK Finance’s managing director for commercial finance, said: “Businesses have been building up their cash deposits and tend to be slower to draw down on lending facilities. This suggests firms are exercising caution in the face of ongoing economic uncertainty.” However, banking industry insiders are confident that British lenders will be able to continue to lend to companies even if no deal is reached. The Bank of England said in November that its stress tests showed that Britain’s largest banks would be able to lend to companies even if a no-deal Brexit causes a worse decline in the UK economy than the 2008 financial crisis.It was a strange feeling to wake up last week to the internet awash with the #BirdBoxChallenge meme. Inspired by the new Netflix thriller, Bird Box, people film themselves completing everyday tasks blindfolded – sometimes for 24 hours – without much success. So much so that Netflix issued a warning. Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE. We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes. But there’s a more serious side effect to this meme than basic injuries. Disability researcher Arielle Silverman and her colleagues have shown that conducting “simulations” like blindfolding among the abled can actually lead them to greater negative bias towards blindness itself. After being blindfolded for a short stint, people feel it as a more debilitating condition than it really is; they underestimate the adaptive capability of blind people and end the experiment more likely to agree with statements such as: “If I were blind, I would do anything to get my sight back.” This is because those participants focus on the beginning stages of the disability, the shock of it, rather than the adaptation process that comes with lived experience. For those who take the Bird Box Challenge, it’s the same story. As someone who grew up almost totally blind, the meme offers a strange, almost laughable version of what my life is really like. Most blind people don’t make like Jake Paul and immediately walk blindly into a busy Los Angeles street; instead, we spend time acquiring skills and tools that enable us to live in a world without sight. Take body protection, for starters. If you can’t see what’s in front of you, you do the next best thing: protect yourself from collision. This means shielding yourself with your arms or twisting your body away from the object you’re trying not to run into. Every time I get into a local train, I raise my arm to a shoulder height. The reason is because I know there are poles in this area of the train. If I run into one, it hurts a lot less if I’m cushioned by my arm. But gestures and postures won’t guarantee a collision-free life. You need to use your other senses to interact with your environment. There’s a scene in Bird Box where two characters, Boy and Girl, are in the back garden. They’re blindfolded, and their mother Malory knocks two objects together and says, “Listen to the clicks. Listen to the sounds, if they’re softer or louder … If they’re louder, you’re in an open space. Do you hear that? But if they’re softer, something is very close.” This is supposed to be a lesson in echolocation: a way to make sense of the world through sounds. The technique was made famous by the American Daniel Kish, for his ability to navigate by clicking with his mouth and listening to the way the sound bounces off the surfaces around him. In the real world, it’s not as simplistic as the film made it seem: most hard materials such as walls amplify echoes, for instance, while soft ones like a hedge absorb them. The blindfold itself can interfere, too; the type you’re wearing can change the sound that gets into the ears. Kish is one of very few people who can move about without additional mobility aids – viral videos even show him cycling on busy roads. Most people who are blind or have low vision are able to use echolocation to a lesser degree, to find corners or count driveways – but they would rarely walk the streets without some kind of mobility aid. We get specialised training with an orientation and mobility instructor to get around the environment safely, either with a long cane or a dog guide. They might help to map the safest route, point out landmarks and accompany clients to and from the destination until they gain enough confidence to do it alone. Most people don’t need to break down preparing dinner into sizeable goals such as food preparation, operating the stove and checking whether the food is done. But for someone who has grown up blind – especially someone who hasn’t watched their parents do it – these tasks might not come naturally. Professionals such as occupational therapists can show how to complete basic tasks like cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry, which can make a huge difference to surviving independently and safely. Living without vision is a lot more involved than it seems when you pop on a blindfold and hope for the best; it takes skills, creativity and appropriate aids and training. It’s not as hazardous as the meme makes it seem – but it’s not something that can be learned in 24 hours, either.There is something ancient within us, a burial ground behind our gut perhaps, which insists the cycle of new year must bring internal change. Why else would we reach for resolutions as soon as we’ve retched the last of December into the loo, repopulating our gut with promises we know we won’t keep? It is the beginning of the year, so we must admit the drinks we drink are wrong, the food we eat will kill us, the clothes we wear expose our lack of understanding about cultural signifiers of class, and that we are sometimes sad. We must change. But what if, what if we… don’t? What if change is bad? No, bear with me. What if, most of us, we’re OK as we are? What if we accept that we will never have the upper arms of a professional swimmer, nor a marriage of the kind seen in the background of romcoms? What if we acknowledge that perpetual happiness would not be a rational reaction to the world or indeed to life as a human, and that the constant pursuit of such a thing often obscures our view of existing contentment? What if this year we decide that we’re, sort of, basically good enough? Of course, there is merit to a considered reassessment of what is lacking in our lives, and here, look, is a universal date on which such a thing might start. But this striving for betterness, this dragging ourselves through a muddy park on the frostiest day of the year, this idea that if we’re not hurting, we’re not living, well, I resent this. I resent it all. This idea that if we're not hurting, we're not living, well, I resent this I resent the myth that we can find peace if we download the correct apps. I resent the lie that we can become more lovable through Pilates. I resent the promise that we will have more fun if we buy less comfortable shoes. I resent the idea that a reasonable goal is to recreate one’s 21-year-old body in that of a woman who is now 46. I resent the message that my life is a problem that must be fixed. And this is a message that gets harder and harder to avoid. Today, self-help is hidden in every purchase, like vegetables cut up very small in a child’s lunch. Whereas once there was half an aisle in the local bookshop offering hardbacks with screaming titles about love and success, now, in the midst of an apparent crisis of humanity, January sells infinite efforts in self-improvement. On top of losing weight and giving up alcohol, traditions now as ingrained as Christmas trees or elevenses, this year we must also perform them (among other things) with quiet knowledge about the fattening reality of diets and the truth about binge sobriety. We must accept that, and do it anyway. We must seek deeper relationships, we must meditate athletically, we must constantly strive, like wolves of Wall Street, except not in pursuit of money, which is vulgar, but instead a better quality of happiness, which is less so. We do this despite the fact that this is not our first January, and that we’ve seen how the story plays out. Every walk through town is a déjà vu of gym membership deals and opportunities to detox. Every magazine regifts a diet in different wrapping paper, scribbled over with words that tickle modern anxieties. The word “new” becomes its own prayer, new year, new you, new body, new bike, new relationship, new job, new routine, new skills, new sex life, new kitchen, new baby, new diagnosis, new trainers. Yesterday’s efforts appear offensive in their naivety, soiled by age – everything breaks as the year ends, falling to the floor with a thud and disturbing crack. Or, wait, does it? Does it? Things become confusing – the streetlights are still on when we wake. We try to hold two thoughts in our head at the same time – the feeling that we must change as the clock does, but also, that every year our panicking efforts rarely work to improve our lives, instead leaving us with the sour emptiness of failure, and having extended our overdraft for the privilege. The two thoughts fight in the dark like cats. Is there a compromise? We could cut down on meat, drink mindfully, jog around the park, but with no ambitions of perfecting ourselves. That might be nice? What about if this year we seek approval, not from the internet, but instead only from those we love? What if this year, we forget about trying to live longer, and instead enjoy the moments of glee in our existing day-to-days? What if, instead of cutting all alcohol from our lives for a month, we instead interrogate the things that make us want to drink too much? What if, instead of looking inwards, we stare cleanly out across this cold landscape of gentrified possibility, making sure the annual efforts to fix ourselves don’t distract us from fixing the world? What if the change we make is the realisation… we might not be the problem? It’s worked - I’ve postponed learning to drive long enough that self-driving cars are a reality. Lauren Collins’s elegant New Yorker profile of bestselling novelist Sally Rooney (which I read on a train opposite two people reading her books) reveals her to be intimidatingly smart and infuriatingly argumentative, she doesn’t give a toss what strangers think of her. Qualities I greatly admire in artists, but would rarely want to be stuck in a room with. During the period between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, 455 applications for divorce were lodged in England and Wales. Which sounds… not that bad? Really? Under 500 couples? After a week in one of their mum’s overheated houses, eating meat for every meal, a massive fight over Poirot, the kids in A&E with rashes that turn out to have been spilt Benetint cheek colour? Under 500 couples? Come on, that’s not bad. Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter@EvaWisemanDominic Buxton didn’t much care for politics when he was at school but in June 2016 he stayed up to watch the results of the Brexit referendum. Born in London in 1999, he migrated to Germany when he was three and moved back to London in 2015. When it was clear the UK had voted to leave the European Union, Buxton, now 19, was shocked. “I never thought of myself as anything other than European,” he said. “It was like a large chunk of my identity was being stripped away from me.” With Brexit less than three months away and the debate showing no sign of abating, the futures of young people like Buxton have become central to the discussions – even if they aren’t always consulted about it. In his local constituency of Poplar and Limehouse, he is one of many who feel their voices are not being heard. The east London borough – which includes a booming financial sector, a large student population from the nearby university, and just over half of its residents from a minority ethnic background – voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU. But the local Labour MP, Jim Fitzpatrick, who campaigned against Brexit, has said he will respect the result of the referendum. It’s a decision that has angered and dismayed some of his younger constituents. “Poplar and Limehouse voted to remain in the EU. As an MP, Jim Fitzpatrick’s immediate concern should be listening to the wishes of his constituents,” said Buxton, adding that his area had far too much to lose from leaving the trading bloc. He joined the Liberal Democrats soon after the referendum and describes them as “the only party fighting for an exit from Brexit”. The European Medicines Agency and European Banking, both currently based in Canary Wharf at the heart of the constituency, are relocating to other European cities. A recent study by Sussex University on the economic impact of Brexit noted that Poplar and Limehouse would be the third most affected constituency in terms of potential job losses caused by a no-deal Brexit. It is estimated the area could lose 7,950 jobs. “It provides me with a challenge and a contradiction and some great difficulty. But as I said to all my constituents, either leave or remain, it wasn’t a Poplar or Limehouse referendum, but it was a national referendum and the national vote is we’re leaving the EU,” said Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick said he was inclined to vote against Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement and cited Labour’s current policy on Brexit: vote down May’s deal, push for a general election, and try to renegotiate a new deal. Other options – including a second referendum – remain firmly on the table. Fitzpatrick said he was listening carefully to the concerns of his constituents, adding: “I have to square the circle between the national decision to leave, the national interest, party politics, constituency interests and my own conscience.” Fitzpatrick is also under pressure from young Labour voters to keep the country in the EU. “I would say with every Labour MP who wants to push ahead with Brexit, the country did not vote for a Tory Brexit. Just because Theresa May’s deal is the one on the table, doesn’t mean it is the one we should vote for,” said Megan Corton Scott, who works part time in Brussels for a member of the European parliament. Scott, a long-term Labour party supporter, said that while she understood people’s reluctance to come out in favour of a second referendum, she did not believe “there’s any Brexit that’s a Labour Brexit. That’s not aligned with my Labour values.” She firmly backs a “people’s vote”. We did not vote for a Tory Brexit ... just because Theresa May's deal is on the table, it doesn't mean we should vote for it Adam Allnut, 29, a Labour activist and a supporter of For our Future’s Sake, a youth-led group backing the People’s Vote campaign, has been lobbying Fitzpatrick to oppose Brexit, but respects and understands his MP’s position. “There’s no such thing as a jobs-first Brexit because every form of Brexit destroys the economy,” Allnut said. “I want a people’s vote, I want to remain in the EU, I want Labour in government, but I also want food on the table and to have a job.” The economy weighs heavily on many young people’s minds. Nathosh Wjendran, 21, a student at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), said he didn’t understand why people would want to leave such a large trading area. “It will definitely take a major toll on business,” he said. Millie Brooke, 18, who is studying film at QMUL, said the last few weeks have filled her with despair. “The government doesn’t really know what it’s doing and they probably should … But they don’t.” She has resigned herself to the idea that Brexit will happen. Her friend Maliha Anas, 19, a student from Norway, said she was happy with her own country’s arrangement with the EU. “It works so well in Norway. It could work here. But then again, because the UK has been in the EU as long as it has, I don’t know how it will affect the relationship between the other EU countries,” she said. The campaign for a second referendum had the backing of all the young people the Guardian spoke to in Poplar and Limehouse. Allnut said: “I think it should be between Theresa May’s deal and remain. These are the only two actual options on the table.” Allnut said the first referendum was a vote between a known, staying in the EU, and the unknown – life outside the EU. He believes remain would defeat May’s deal in a second referendum. “This vote is a known versus a known. If people have those stark statistics in front of them, I don’t think there would be much of a fight if people actually engage with it.” Scott said many people talked about the economic impact of Brexit but she was keen to stress its terrible effect on Britain’s social and cultural life. “For a long time the EU has been bankrolling the cultural face of Britain, but Brexit will make art even more reserved for the wealthy and elite, meaning it will only reflect a certain subset of people.” Scott likened the last six weeks in parliament to a soap opera. “It’s worse than I could have ever imagined,” she said. “I don’t want to believe anyone wants to plunge this country into its darkest day, but I’m not holding out much hope.” Constituency: Poplar and Limehouse Average age: 27 Average house price: £321,500 % non-UK born: 45.4% MP: Jim Fitzpatrick Party: Labour MP’s intended vote on May’s deal: Fitzpatrick is “inclined” to vote against May’s withdrawal agreement but will respect the result of the referendum Referendum result: Remain (Poplar and Limehouse is part of Tower Hamlets, where 67.46% voted to remain in the EU)This photograph belongs to a bigger series by Chris Killip called The Last Ships, which traces the decline of shipbuilding on the Tyne. “I made them with a sense of urgency, as I thought it wasn’t going to last,” Killip said later. “I didn’t set out to be the photographer of the English de-Industrial Revolution. It happened all around me during the time I was photographing.” Killip was intrigued by the contrast between the epic scale of the ships that loomed over the streets of Wallsend and South Shields and the working-class communities that lived in their shadow. Here, children play on a quiet terraced street beneath the towering outline of the Tyne Pride, the biggest ship ever built on the Tyne and, as it turned out, one of the last. The red-brick houses, the stone wall, the fog lend the scene an almost Victorian feel. Within a few years, though, that way of life came to an end with a brutal finality. Just two years after this photograph was taken, Killip made another in the same place: the street was demolished, the community scattered. In 1988, Killip condensed the work he had made in the north-east into the now classic book In Flagrante. Those bleak, desolate images were taken, photography writer Gerry Badger later wrote, “from a point of view that opposed everything [Margaret Thatcher] stood for”. Many of Killip’s shipbuilding photographs, though, remained unseen until recently. Now, alongside three other series he made in the north-east – The Station (1985), Skinningrove (1981-84) and Portraits (1970-89) – The Last Ships (1975-1977) has been published as a large format zine. The scale suits the subject matter perfectly. The images, which move from the epic to the intimate, evoke another England in which the terms “working class” and “community” were still synonymous. It seems an eternity ago. The Last Ships (£20) can be purchased from ponybox.co.uk. Chris Killip: The Last Ships is at the Laing Gallery, Newcastle until 4 May 2020I met Neutrino at the pirate radio station Supreme FM, where we were doing DJ sets. We clicked and joined So Solid Crew, who at that time were 30 strong. When we all piled into a tiny room, it was crazy – but when Neutrino and I signed our own record deal, we became a separate entity. Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty) was the first track we made. DJ magazine were advertising a day at a recording studio for £99. My brother brought the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels soundtrack to the studio, and one of the skits between the songs seemed to fit with a sample of the theme from the BBC series Casualty, which sounded edgy. So I used both in the track. When you’re 17, you don’t worry if using something like a TV theme in a track is cool. We didn’t know anything about clearing samples, but later we started worrying that someone would come after us. I phoned the reception desk at the BBC – “Excuse me, my band have sampled your Casualty tune” – but they didn’t take me seriously. When we got signed, the record label cleared the sample. We initially made Reload as a dub plate for the pirate radio show, but my brother’s £2,000 redundancy money paid for the first 1,000 white-label singles. We sold 20,000 from the back of a Peugeot 305. My brother ran up thousands of pounds in parking tickets: we’d park outside a shop, run in and do a sale-or-return deal, but it got quite expensive. The car’s exhaust fell off and the heater was stuck on – it was so hot inside that the glue on my new trainers melted. Initially, we had no commercial radio play. Some stations refused to play the single because they thought “reload” was about guns. But the pirates played it, then Kiss FM did, and it took off, which seemed to shock the mainstream stations. When they did the chart rundown on Capital, there was a three-second pause after they played the record. Then they just went: “Er, that was this week’s No 1.” When Oxide first played me the beginnings of Bound 4 Da Reload, it was mainly the beat and the Casualty theme. He wanted me to add some lyrics. “Bound for da reload” was something I said on pirate radio, meaning: “DJ, reload the track.” It was my first time in the studio, and I asked the engineer for the same mic I had used at the pirate station. He said: “You can’t use one of those in a recording studio!” I did the whole song in one take – I didn’t realise you could do it over and over again – but it captured a certain nervous energy. They called us “UK garage” but today, Reload sounds like the start of what was becoming grime. Pirate radio was massive then. People recorded our sets on cassette tapes, which made their way to cities around the country. We went from the underground to Top of the Pops very quickly. I remember going to buy trainers, and so many people were screaming at me they had to close the shop. I thought: “Why are people screaming at me?” and remembered: “Oh, yeah, we’re No 1.” When there was a rise in gun crime, garage music became the scapegoat, like what is happening now with drill. We went from being on Top of the Pops to not being able to play anywhere, and no one would work with us. Then I was shot in Mayfair. Someone tried to mug me, I wrestled with them and heard a bang. I felt a warm sensation in my leg. Luckily it was a flesh wound, but to add insult to injury, I was arrested because the gun magazine had dropped in the car when the guy put the firearm through the window. I said: “It’s not mine, I’ve just been shot!” It was a weird time – especially because Reload had the Casualty sample and police sirens on it. We’re both parents now, and they know Bound 4 Da Reload on the school run. There’s usually one person who’ll ask: “Can you DJ at our daughter’s birthday party?” I go, “I’m not the DJ. I’m the MC!” • Oxide & Neutrino’s new single, Dilemma 2.0, is out now.Anyone looking for signs of an Everton revival would be well advised to wait until less accommodating opponents are encountered. For Marco Silva’s stuttering side a match against the team propping up the table came along at the ideal time. A new face in the dugout made little or no difference to Huddersfield’s fortunes on the pitch, they gifted an early goal and were unable to take advantage when Everton went down to 10 men with almost half an hour remaining. To be kind to the relegation strugglers they were worth at least a point and might have had one but for some excellent goalkeeping by Jordan Pickford, particularly when keeping out a header from Elias Kachunga near the end. To be kind to Everton they managed to see out the game after Lucas Digne’s dismissal but this win was far from the confidence booster it could have been. Though Richarlison added to his goal tally it was just about all he managed successfully. “It was not a perfect performance and probably not the best game to watch but we deserved the three points for showing character,” Silva said. Jan Siewert was introduced with a small fanfare before his first game as the Huddersfield manager and it did not take his players long to demonstrate why David Wagner was finding life so difficult. They were behind after three minutes, picked apart by a Tom Davies pass that allowed Richarlison an early shot on target. Jonas Lössl managed to keep it out with his knees, though it was a simple enough task for Richarlison to reach the loose ball first and find a now unguarded net. Only in the team because Idrissa Gueye had been left out pending a transfer bid from Paris Saint-Germain, Davies managed to reach the goalline to turn the ball back before the home side had properly managed to cross the halfway line. Siewert cannot have been all that surprised, having taken over a side who have picked up only one point since November. Huddersfield have just five home goals to their credit from 13 league fixtures, a record low. While the reliable Jason Puncheon looks a decent acquisition his inclusion left Aaron Mooy and Alex Pritchard on the bench, leaving Huddersfield somewhat short of attacking inspiration. Puncheon produced the neatest of back heels to set Kachunga free along the goalline as the home side searched for an equaliser but, unlike the Everton move earlier, it did not produce a goal. Kachunga’s cross found Steve Mounié so awkwardly the striker was obliged to pass the ball backwards out of the area. Huddersfield improved when Mooy came on and he helped create his side’s first clear chance by providing room for Terence Kongolo to cross from the left, only for Kachunga to head over. Everton should have heeded the warning, but just past the hour they were caught on the break again through Juninho Bacuna’s superbly timed chip forward for Adama Diakhaby to chase. The French forward was through on goal, yet before he could make up his mind about shooting Digne clipped his heels to earn a straight red. The agile Pickford kept out Mooy’s well-struck free-kick and though Huddersfield had chances to score in a tense last 10 minutes, to no one’s great surprise they were unable to take them. “We made a bad start but at least we fought back to create openings,” Siewert said. “Now I know why Jordan Pickford is the England No 1.”You might think it obvious that nobody wants to pay more for their wine, but that’s not entirely true. “People often say to me: ‘Oh, I only drink expensive wines,’” says Sam Caporn, the wine expert and self-styled Mistress of Wine. “They say it’s because they don’t get headaches from them, but it’s the alcohol that gives you the headache, not the price!” When it comes to buying wine there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and one of the most common misconceptions is that spending a lot of money on a bottle means you will like it. But it might not be your style, it might be overpriced or you could be drinking it for completely the wrong occasion. So, with Brexit approaching – and with it rising prices for wine – how can we sniff out the best value when it comes to buying a bottle? Yes, I’m aware that I’m starting an article about buying cheap wine by telling you to spend more money on wine. You wouldn’t get a fitness guide that began with the suggestion that you should eat twice as many doughnuts. But very rarely will you find good wine at the very cheapest price points. And you want good wine, right, rather than sugary chemicals in a bottle? Caporn points out that the £7-a-bottle price point is where you start seeing real value. Anything below that and you’re paying for the bottle, the labelling, the shipping, the duty, the VAT … if you’re lucky, there’s a few pennies left for the actual liquid. “Don’t feel bad about spending a bit more,” says Michael Sager, from east London wine bar Sager and Wilde, who recommends a £10 starting point. “We’re not in France. We don’t produce wine en masse, affordably in a sustainable way, so this is just what it costs.” Do you know what wine you like? It sounds like a silly question but, according to Caporn, a lot of people don’t. Getting value for your money when it comes to wine involves at least a bit of legwork on your part – noting down which grapes, regions and styles you prefer, and progressing from there towards specific producers and vintages. Sager recommends using an app such as Vivino to keep track of the wines you have liked. Vivino can build a profile and help to guide you towards bottles you will enjoy in future. “In the long run, you won’t buy shit wine,” he says. With all its quirks and specialist insights, building up a comprehensive knowledge of wine can take years. “Even though I’m supposed to be an expert in the field, I’d much rather talk to someone and ask what they recommend,” says Sager. If you can find a wine merchant you trust, your job will become a lot easier, as they will come up with suggestions based on your preferences and price range. For instance, I always know I will try something interesting at the east London wine bar Weino BIB, because I trust Kirsty Tinkler’s choices – the wines she stocks are likely to be full of fruit and funky, farmyard notes. As for where to shop online, my panel of wine experts suggest shopping at Drop, Red Squirrel, Humble Grape, Tanners (if you’re looking for wines from Rhône or Burgundy) and even Majestic (especially if you’re after malbec). A supermarket’s own range often punches well above its weight, especially compared with the big brands on the shelves. Partly this is because it can save money on shipping by bottling the wine here in the UK. And partly it’s because the wines can become a labour of love for the buyers, who often take a hands-on approach when it comes to blending. Caporn used to be a buyer and now works for Aldi, which has some hidden gems in its Exhibition Range. She suggests Googling the producer’s name on the bottle. James Button from Decanter.com says that while Marks & Spencer and Waitrose are generally seen as the go-to places for supermarket wine, two of the most popular pages on his magazine’s website are for the ranges at Aldi and Lidl. “They’re often working with smaller producers from less well-known areas, which means better value for money,” he says. “For example, Lidl have a lot of good eastern European producers – they recently had a dry Hungarian tokaji for under £8; it’s a voluptuous white that’s waxy and fruity and works really well at this time of year.” Special offers might make your wine cheap, but will they provide more value? Not always. Button says two-for-one or half-price offers are the biggest cons. “It devalues the wine, because if a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon was £10 and now is suddenly £5, then was it ever really worth £10?” Instead, look for offers across the whole range – buy six bottles and save 25% is a common one. If you drink more than a few bottles a year (and if you don’t, why are you reading this?) then bulk buying will save you a few quid. Because of how they are made, natural wines tend to be more expensive. Yet Tinkler found that by cutting down on packaging, she could sell them at more affordable prices (while helping the environment, too). She sells wine in boxes and straight from the tap for customers who bring in their own bottles – providing uniquely farmy wines that start at under a tenner. “Reducing the glass and packaging can lower the price of wine by up to 30%,” she says, adding that these savings are passed on to the customer. Tinkler says there are similar shops dotted around the country, but for those without such a place nearby there are good options online. Try When in Rome (currently selling a 2¼-litre box of Piedmont barbera for £15.99) and Le Grappin, which specialises in “bagnums” (two bottles-worth in a bag). There is often value to be found in regions with a dodgy reputation. Beaujolais used to be known chiefly for its youthful plonk, but in recent years it has been making wines that rival those from nearby Burgundy, with the added benefit that you don’t need to remortgage your house to enjoy them. “Beaujolais cru is one of France’s most underappreciated wines,” says Dan Keeling, co-founder of Noble Rot restaurant and magazine. “Morgon, Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent all produce profound, food-versatile wines with moderate tannins and alcohol.” Keeling suggests Germany as another region with an undeservedly low reputation. “Precise, complex whites from Heymann-Löwenstein, Koehler-Ruprecht and Joh Jos Prüm are among the planet’s finest, affordable wines. At 7.5% ABV for Prüm kabinett, you may as well be drinking a virtuous health tonic.” Some of your best wine purchases could well be 0% ABV. Sager believes a new book, The Sommelier’s Atlas of Taste, will give you a better understanding of wine than any expensive trade qualification course. Likewise, one of the best purchases I made was a membership to the Wine Society (£40, but you get £20 off your first order). Not only is the quality of wines available consistently good, but most will be cheaper than on the high street. The situation you’re drinking in can matter as much as the wine – an austere bordeaux that might work at a Michelin-starred restaurant wouldn’t necessarily be a hit if you’ve got your mates around to watch the Love Island final. Expectations also matter. Caporn shares a story of someone who was fed up with people turning their noses up at her cheaper bargain finds, so she started decanting them into smart bottles – suddenly everyone loved them. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.Paris Saint-Germain have said that Neymar will be out for about 10 weeks with the metatarsal injury he suffered against Racing Strasbourg on 23 January. The news will come as a blow to the French club as they prepare to face Manchester United in the Champions League, with the first leg to take place on 12 February at Old Trafford and the second on 6 March in Paris. The club will be less worried about their attempts to win Ligue 1 as they are 13 points ahead of Lille, having played two games fewer than the second-placed team. A club statement said: “After detailed analysis by the specialists, a consensus was reached of a conservative treatment of Neymar’s injury to the fifth right metatarsal. As a result, Neymar is expected to return to the field within ten weeks. “Paris Saint-Germain sends its strongest support and encouragement to Neymar to overcome this injury, with the courage and determination that the player has always shown.” Manchester United are undefeated since Ole Gunnar Solskjæer took over from José Mourinho on 19 December, having won eight of their games and drawing one, in the Premier League against Burnley on Tuesday night.Margaret Ferguson’s family home on the Isle of Lewis was crowded with portraits. There were more than a hundred, and each was of a man looking out from the canvas. Veterans of the first world war, each man drowned on the same night, on the same boat, a short distance from safety. In heavy seas and a pitch-black night, an overcrowded steam yacht taking them home on leave, the Iolaire, struck a treacherous reef known as the Beasts of Holm in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1919. They were barely a mile from Stornoway harbour and 50 yards from the shore, and of the 280 men on board, only 79 survived. It remains the UK’s worst peacetime maritime disaster since the sinking of the Titanic – and is being marked by an official ceremony on Tuesday. Yet a century on, the Iolaire story is barely known beyond the Western Isles, despite its scale and horror. Its memory was suppressed too for generations on Lewis: every family, in a still tightly knit community, was either directly affected or knew someone who had died. Until quite recently, it was rarely, if ever, discussed. “It is very, very deep within us. In fact, when I think about it, I get a tightness in my chest. The tears are just below the surface,” Ferguson said. Ferguson, a painter and a widely respected family doctor on Lewis for the last 30 years, said she felt compelled to make the portraits, using black and white family photographs and an archived roll of honour from the Stornoway Gazette, published in the 1920s. Her great-great uncle, Alexander Mackenzie, is among them. She stored the pictures in her family’s uninhabited ancestral home on the Point peninsula, which overlooks the seas the Iolaire sailed that night, before being exhibited in Stornoway from 31 December until 2 March, one of a series of commemorative events to mark the centenary of the disaster. In Stornoway harbour, 280 illuminated columns are fixed on to the seabed, sketching the outline of the Iolaire’s hull: 201 of those columns have been lit in blue for those who died while 79 remain white for those who survived. The lighting effect on the artwork, named Sheòl an Iolaire, Gaelic for “the Iolaire sailed”, changes as the tide comes in and recedes. The commemorations, among the last being staged to mark the centenary of the first world war, include a New Year’s Day service overlooking the site, which will be attended by Prince Charles and Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister. Ferguson believes Lewis has begun to come to terms with the tragedy; even so, the portraits were kept temporarily in the family home because no one lives there. They were propped up on furniture, hung from walls, stacked against walls. “We’ve been talking in the family, saying that there are so many ghosts in the house,” she said. “My father finds it very difficult to go into the room with them.” As she worked on each image, “I kept thinking I was honouring this man and what he went through, and his family,” she said. “And I got a bit upset towards the end. It was a very intense experience, especially when I paint the eyes. It feels as if he’s in the room with you.” Ian Stephen, a poet and former Stornoway coastguard whose career began in a coastguard station overlooking the Beasts of Holm, believes everyone on Lewis knows the stories. There are accounts of drenched, numb survivors immediately walking home across the moors in the storm, too traumatised to wait for help; of women who rushed to the shore to find their sons’ and brothers’ inert bodies among the rocks or surf, their baggage and presents strewn over the sand; of the stream of coffins being taken by horse and cart to be buried every day throughout the following week. His great-uncle, John Smith, was one of those who died. “It really wasn’t talked about much. We were just aware there was a connection to the Iolaire. It’s only recently that it sunk home that was my grandfather’s brother,” Stephen said. “Part of the reason for the silence is the enormity of the tragedy; having lived through that hell [of war], they were so close to the shore.” All the men had spent the war at sea, on minesweepers, battlecruisers and destroyers. Some had already survived sinkings under enemy fire. Many, often volunteers who had joined the naval reserve, had navigated the narrow channel where the Iolaire struck the rocks as fishermen in civilian life. But the disaster had one hero, John Finlay Macleod, a boat builder from Ness who was on board the Iolaire that night. He saved nearly 40 lives by diving into the churning seas with a rope, then used it to pull a thick hawser taut between the yacht and the beach as a lifeline for survivors. Malcolm Macdonald, the co-author of an authoritative new study of the disaster, The Darkest Dawn, believes the community-wide trauma was amplified by the heavy wartime losses the Western Isles had already experienced, which in turn contributed to further waves of emigration and economic decline in the 1920s. Lewis and Harris, the two northern islands of the Western Isles, had a population of 34,600 in 1911. Macdonald estimates about 1,500 of those were killed during the war, and with another 201 lost on the Iolaire, that was an immense cumulative loss of young men and fathers. Although the official board of inquiry refused to find fault, Macdonald and Stephen believe the Iolaire’s commander and navigating officer made colossal navigational errors, taking the wrong course and failing to correct it in time, in a force 8 gale. Now aged 70, Macdonald, whose grandfather was among those who died, recalls it was never discussed when he was a child but he has recently been touring schools to discuss his book. “Everyone seems to want to open up and hear the full story. Young children at the schools I have spoken at all sit silently, listening, but then the questions, questions, questions keep pouring out,” he said.It was with a certain degree of inevitability that the first official encounter on a tennis court between Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios failed to pass without a whiff of controversy. After dominating a low-key hit-out in Melbourne, Tomic ensured post-match talk would not centre on the result but rather the comical manner of his victory after he played a sneaky underarm between-the-legs serve on match point. Tomic, who was once world No 17 but plummeted down the rankings during a period of decline that culminated in a brief appearance on a reality TV show last year, faced Kyrgios – no stranger to controversy himself – in a much-hyped pre-Australian Open exhibition match at the Kooyong Classic. Now ranked 85, Tomic proved sharper than the 51-ranked Kyrgios and put himself in a winning position with little fuss. Needing just one more point for victory, as he settled into his service stance, Tomic dropped a ball and hit it between his legs while continuing to bounce another ball, apparently in preparation to serve in the normal fashion. The unorthodox serve bounced in on the other side of the net, catching Kyrgios – as well as the umpire and the crowd at Kooyong – completely off guard. After a moment of deliberation, the umpire announced game, set and match to Tomic, leaving Kyrgios to laugh in bewilderment and shake his head as he moved off the court. “I don’t think there has ever been a player like BT,” Kyrgios said afterwards. “It is great to see him back out here as I know he was going through some rough times. He won a title last year and it looks like he is carrying a bit of momentum which is good to see.” The legality of the shot was not questioned by the umpire at the time, however according to the ITF’s rules of the game, underarm serving only allowed if the ball is struck before it hits the ground. Tomic’s effort appeared to bounce off the court before his racket struck it. The Queenslander failed to qualify for last year’s Australian Open but has won a place at next week’s tournament at Melbourne Park thanks to his improved ranking. “He looks happy, he looks healthy. That’s the main thing,” Kyrgios added. “You never want to see a talent like that go down and keep being down.” The hit-out lacked intensity but Tomic’s performance, particularly in the first set, was impressive, albeit coming against an opponent who appeared not yet to be up to tournament speed. Tomic broke Kyrgios in the fourth game of the match before going on to claim the first set and when he broke at 3-3 in the second, there was no looking back. The outing, and the performances of other Australians elsewhere, gave both players reason for cheer before the Australian Open. “We could make deep runs at the Australian Open, but we’ve also got Alex de Minaur [and John] Millman. We’ve got so many players. It’s an exciting time for Australian tennis,” Kyrgios said. “We’ve got such a wide variety of players. We all play different. It’s looking really really good.” Not all onlookers were impressed with what they saw on Wednesday, however. Australian Olympian Georgie Parker labelled the efforts of the players “an absolute joke”. Watching Kyrgios v Tomic at the @KooyongClassic... it’s an absolute joke. I’m paying money to be here and the two idiots aren’t giving two shits. It’s an exhibition match but you can still bet on it... How this isn’t match fixing is beyond me. Get these two off the circuit.The secret history of modern Britain is made in obscure corners between men and women taken seriously by no one but themselves. A good time to begin it would be in the winter of 2013/14 when the Institute of Economic Affairs, a rightist outfit that won’t reveal where its money comes from, offered a €100,000 prize to whoever could devise a means of leaving the European Union. The reason why politicians are now stumbling towards disaster like prisoners marching to the scaffold ought to have been clear from that moment. Obviously, Britain can leave the EU, but only if it is willing to pay an extortionate price. Yet first the institute’s judges, led by Nigel Lawson and Gisela Stuart, then the Leave campaigns of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings and, finally, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, who even now cannot speak plainly, have refused to acknowledge the harsh truth. As if to anticipate their failings, the winning entry came from a minor functionary in the British embassy in Manila by the name of Iain Mansfield. He brushed away the difficulties of leaving the EU and offered us our first helping of unicorn cake. Britain, he declared, could enjoy the free movement of capital and goods in the single market, he announced, but stop the free movement of labour. His triumph marked an ominous moment. Until 2013, even rightwing politicians accepted that they could not have the best of all possible worlds. Britain was tied into an integrated European economy. No government could wrench it away in a couple of years. Britain would have to stay in the customs union, as Liam Fox said in 2012. The most significant thinker in the Brexit movement went further. Richard North, the advocate of “Flexcit”, warned that, as a sudden departure would wreck people’s lives, Britain would have to be like Norway and stay in the single market, “at least in the medium term”, as it dedicated many years, maybe more than a decade, to flexible negotiations about a future arrangement. Rationally, a flexible approach made sense. But by the winter of 2013 the market for rational politics was faltering. North described how Lawson and his fellow judges excluded from the shortlist entries that said the only way to leave the EU was to follow the Norwegian example. Until that point, he had had regular meetings with Arron Banks, Owen Patterson and Cummings. “But something then happened – I don’t know what. Cummings went dark on me and I was ‘no platformed’.” Electorally, allowing millions to believe that the impossible was possible was perfect post-rational politics You don’t need to be a detective to work out why the darkness fell. How could the Brexit campaign inspire nationalist passions, how could Fox, Lawson, Johnson, Farage and Banks inspire even themselves, if they were to say that the only rational way to leave the EU was to carry on paying money, accepting freedom of movement and receiving laws that Britain had no say in making, while an orderly retreat was organised? Who would vote for that? What would be the point of leaving at all? Better to take the road to Narnia and promise everything while committing to nothing. After the prize was awarded to a political fantasy, Cummings gave fair warning of what was coming next. Writing in 2015, he admitted that the campaign would offer no exit plan: hard Brexit, soft Brexit or any Brexit in between. “There is much to be gained from swerving the whole issue,” he explained. Opponents of the EU “have been divided for years”. In any case, “the sheer complexity of leaving would involve endless questions of detail that cannot be answered”. An honourable man, and an honourable political movement, would have found these excellent reasons to think again. Not Cummings and not the Brexit movement. Intellectually, their Brexit was an empty idea. But electorally, allowing millions to believe that the impossible was possible was perfect post-rational politics. As Roland Smith of the Adam Smith Institute, another rightwing thinktank, said last week, the “dirty secret” of the Leave campaign was that it “didn’t have a well-formed idea of how to leave the EU or indeed whether any alternative was really palatable”. It is easy to portray Cummings, Johnson and Farage as grand villains. Indeed, if we crash out with no deal, we will be hard pressed to find so much misery brought to so many by so few. But the Cameron government, every MP who voted for the referendum, the supposedly ferocious interviewers at the BBC and hard-nosed journalists in the press let them get away with it. None insisted that the voters be told what form of Brexit they were voting for. As a point of contrast, consider that in 2018 Ireland discussed removing its constitutional ban on abortion. There was an exhaustive debate at a citizens’ assembly on the proposed measures and the government published a policy paper outlining in what circumstances abortion would be legal if the reform were approved in a referendum, so that no one could argue about the result. As a matter of deliberate policy by Brexit’s supporters, and as a consequence of unforgivable negligence by politicians and journalists, Britain’s referendum offered no such clarity. I hope you can now see the consequences of obscure arguments in political backwaters. Supporters of a “people’s vote” are met with the superficially plausible objection: “But we’ve already had a referendum.” Supporters of May’s deal and the “Norway option” face the objection that the Leave campaign never told them that we would have to accept EU rules once we left. Finally, for the supporters of a hard Brexit and the millions who risk their futures by believing them, crashing out and crying “to hell with it” are the logical consequences of the illogical retreat from reason they began in 2013. For good or ill, you can guarantee that the arguments that affect us most are the ones that never make it on to evening news. In the case of Brexit Britain, it’s all ill. • Nick Cohen is an Observer columnistThe world of sport – from tennis to golf and even a Bundesliga club – have been offering up words of support for Andy Murray after the three-time grand slam winner admitted he will retire this year and possibly even this month. Speaking in the build-up to his first-round match at the Australian Open, Murray said: “In December I spoke to my team and I told them: ‘I cannot keep doing this. Look, I think I can get through this until Wimbledon. That’s where I would like to stop playing.’ But I am not certain I am able to do that.” No one would begrudge Murray one last appearance at Wimbledon in July but, if his body does not allow him to make it that far, at least he will leave the sport knowing he is respected, admired and loved by his fellow pros. Nobody has done more for British tennis than you and it looks like nobody will for many years to come. You have been an inspiration, friend and role model to me from the get go and I thank you for everything. Hope to see you out there for as long as possible @andy_murray 🎾 pic.twitter.com/xkxUXf1lOb Andy, just watched your conference. Please don’t stop trying. Keep fighting. I can imagine your pain and sadness. I hope you can overcome this. You deserve to retire on your own terms, whenever that happens. We love you @andy_murray and we want to see you happy and doing well. 🙏 When you search for examples of “emptied the bucket to be as good as they could be” there should be a picture of Andy Murray sitting under that quote. Remarkable discipline for training, competition, sacrifice, perfection, a little crazy 😃 but a legend of a bloke. Bravo Andy 👏 Just thinking out loud here. He deserves his moment to say goodbye at Wimbledon. He’s too important to Great Britain and Wimbledon history to not have it..... Would be a pretty cool moment to play doubles w his bro at Wimby if he can’t play singles https://t.co/m7caeL2shX Tennis will come to an end for us all but the friendships will last a lifetime. What you’ve done for the sport will live on forever. I’m hoping for a strong and healthy finish for you, my friend! @andy_murray pic.twitter.com/Bcs0cdllJp Congratulations Andy #Murray. A career that speaks for itself. Wimbledon ChampionUS Open Champion Australian Open FinalFrench Open FinalDavis Cup WinnerOlympic Gold World No.1 100% from start to finish. Inspiring. My heart breaks listening to @andy_murray during his press conference... Hope he will make it through to Wimbledon and have the farewell he deserves . #greatguy My thoughts are with @andy_murray and I really hope we continue to see you fighting on court so you can retire on your own terms. Get well soon... Tennis is better with you. pic.twitter.com/0z1401hKXe .@andy_murray You are a champion on and off the court. So sorry you cannot retire on your own terms, but remember to look to the future. Your greatest impact on the world may be yet to come. Your voice for equality will inspire future generations. Much love to you & your family. https://t.co/AQUOP3LGec If true. Feel down to the bone for Andy Murray right now. Amazing player, fighter, nr 1 and multiple GS champion. Deepest respect. A modern great for moments like this...After an emotional announcement that retirement is on the horizon, it’s worth reliving *THAT* match point from @andy_murray to win the 2015 #DavisCup for @BritishTennis 🇬🇧  pic.twitter.com/PSssXQ6pNQ The @andy_murray that I know will absolutely make it to Wimbledon to play his final tournament. Not many with more heart, effort in the history of the game. Was always a pleasure to share the court pal. Andy will always be a titan of our sport. A hero of mine throughout my career. A true warrior whenever he steps on the court. https://t.co/Ka6fq5jy4B Really sad to hear that @andy_murray 😢You are a true champion of our sport and great example for all of us!Stay strong 🙏🏻 https://t.co/Bw8ZIF0QUM Andy Murray is our best British tennis player in the Open era. He is one of the best athletes, tactician & competitor to grace our sport.He should be so proud of his incredible career . 3 GS🏆, 1 DavisCup winner,2 Olympic Golds 🥇, Year end World no.1 , 45 titles!👏🏻 👏🏻👏🏻 The realest 🙏🏻 https://t.co/wy0Rh1gp9N @andy_murray Andy you are the best no matter what! And so strong! All the respect ! What a career @andy_murray keep it going as everybody wants to watch you @Wimbledon in July mate. #🇬🇧GOAT –– 3x Grand Slams–– 2x Olympic gold medals–– ATP Finals–– 2016 world No.1 –– 14x Masters 1000 titles–– 8x Grand Slam finals–– 45 total ATP titles Legend 🏆🏅🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/CYphhRvUcC 💚| “Andy Murray is an inspiration and a role model. He’s been the ideal mentor to Fraser Murray and Ryan Porteous. I hope he’s able to finish an incredible career on his terms. Everyone at Hibernian Football Club is rooting for him.” Neil Lennon. pic.twitter.com/jxAdSicxRl When you hear #AndyMurray is retiring 😮#UpTheMainz pic.twitter.com/0w74j6hUK6 Always sad when a sporting career comes to an end. Sadder still when it’s one of the greatest sportsmen that these islands has ever produced. Wish @andy_murray all the very best. A truly wonderful tennis player, and an absolute credit to his sport. Well played, Sir. 👋👋 https://t.co/z0td9c4Q3Y To Andy,Whatever happens next, you've done more than you know.#Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/0eJFHVpALGThere’s a very old function of literature that over time has lost currency, probably because of its dangerous proximity to the political and ethical spheres. I mean the idea that one of the purposes of a text is to instruct. Over the past 50 years, we have wisely convinced ourselves that the pleasure and enjoyment of a text are at one with its style. Very true: a text is made up of words, and the more beautifully chosen and put together the words are, the more seductive the text, and the more disruptive to the body of the reader. But the words, delighting us, shape our visions of the world; they penetrate our bodies, flow in and alter it, educating our gaze, feelings, even our position on different issues. Besides giving pleasure, style, in accordance with a long tradition, moves and teaches us. We fall in love with a text partly for the way it unwittingly informs us; that is, for the wealth of vivid, true experiences that pass from the writer directly into the life of the reader. It’s not just the meticulous choice of vocabulary, the metaphors, the memorable similes. What counts is how the writer inserts herself into the literary tradition – not only with her ability to orchestrate words, but with her ideas and the very personal store of urgent things she has to tell. An individual talent acts like a fishing net that captures daily experiences, holds them together imaginatively, and connects them to fundamental questions about the human condition. So style really is all, but in the sense that the more powerful it is, the more material it holds for comprehensive life lessons. Note, however, that I’m not alluding to novels that use literature to deal with vital contemporary subjects: world hunger, the threat of new fascisms, terrorism, religious conflicts, racism, sexuality, digitisation and its effects, and so on. I have nothing against such books; in fact, I’m eager to read them. Gripping stories can be full of science or sociology that shines a light on the various catastrophes that threaten the planet; ideologies are disseminated, theses sustained, political battles joined. But when I talk about instruction I don’t mean that kind of book. I’m not thinking of a didactic, moralising literature. I’m just trying to say that every work of value is also a transmission of firsthand knowledge – knowledge that is unexpected and, especially, hard to reduce to a form that is not literary. I mean learning that is pleasurable, learning that changes us inwardly – dramatically, even – under the impact of words that are true and charged with feeling. • Translated by Ann GoldsteinLabour has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn on the government’s flagship immigration bill, after initially saying it would not oppose the legislation that brings free movement to an end. The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, had sparked a backlash among MPs when she told the House of Commons the frontbench would not vote against the post-Brexit legislation. “The Labour party is clear that when Britain leaves the single market, freedom of movement ends, and we set this out in our 2017 manifesto. I am a slavish devotee of that magnificent document: so on that basis, the frontbench of the Labour party will not be opposing this bill this evening,” she said. She added that Labour would abstain at this stage, known as second reading, and seek amendments later. Abbott then tweeted that the bill put “the cart before the horse”, because it seeks to establish a new immigration regime before the UK’s future relationship with the EU has been settled. “Labour wants to amend Bill substantially. Today isn’t a final vote!” she added. But 90 minutes later, amid a growing backlash on social media, Labour shifted its position and announced it would whip its MPs to vote against the bill – though many had been told by the whips that they did not need to be present in Westminster on Monday. One usually loyal backbench MP described the leadership’s flip-flop on the bill as a “meltdown”, adding: “Anyone with one foot on the ground could have told you the optics of the abstention given Brexit sensitivities was shocking.” Several Labour backbenchers, including Chris Leslie and Angela Smith, had intervened to press Abbott, a longtime defender of immigration, on whether MPs would be whipped to oppose the bill – and signalled that they planned to rebel and vote against it. Theresa May has repeatedly said her Brexit deal will bring freedom of movement for EU citizens to an end, and the immigration bill will establish the new, stricter regime. Abbott had fiercely criticised the legislation as MPs debated it on Monday, calling it “one of the flimsiest pieces of legislation on a major issue that I or many of my colleagues have seen”. “This bill, the immigration white paper and the accompanying media narrative, plays to some of the very worst aspects of the Brexit debate. In the process, it risks doing irreparable damage to business, the economy and society,” she said. Immigration is at the heart of Labour’s internal tussle over how to respond to the referendum result of June 2016. Some MPs, particularly in leave-voting constituencies, believe Labour has little choice but to accede to the demands of voters who want to see controls on immigration – a phrase Ed Miliband was criticised for plastering on mugs during the 2015 general election campaign. Other Labour MPs, including the chair of the centrist group Progress, Alison McGovern, believe their party should be making the argument strongly for the benefits of immigration. The Tory MP Ken Clarke said of Abbott: “She’s actually been making an extremely coherent root and branch criticism of the bill, and she has an excellent record on these things; but the problem is, we’re meant to be debating whether this House of Commons will approve the second reading of the bill. “She’s denouncing it from beginning to end, but is saying the opposition don’t intend to vote against it. This makes the proceedings quite absurd.”Private company Blue Origin successfully launched a reusable rocket carrying eight Nasa-sponsored experiments to the edge of space on Wednesday. Lift-off took place at 15:05 GMT (09:05 CST) from its dedicated launch site in west Texas. The whole mission lasted just 10 mins 15s. After reaching an altitude of 107km (67 miles) the New Shepard rocket returned to Earth to make a soft landing. The capsule carrying the Nasa experiments separated at the highest point of the flight and parachuted back to Earth. The experiments were created by Nasa and American universities. They were mainly designed to look at ways of improving spaceflight. The New Shepard rocket that flew on Wednesday was making its fourth flight. It is the third one to be used by the company. A fourth version is currently being built. It will be able to carry humans on space tourism flights to the edge of space and could be ready by the end of the year. Blue Origin is owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. The company aims to eventually launch payloads into orbit, using a larger rocket called the New Glenn, which is currently in development.At least 130 migrants are missing off the coast Djibouti after two boats capsized, amid new warnings from the UN that six migrants a day die on maritime smuggling routes to Europe and elsewhere. According to the International Organization for Migration, the alarm was raised over the latest incident after two survivors were recovered. As the search for more survivors continued, the IOM said on Wednesday that 30 bodies had been found. Hopeful of finding work in rich Gulf countries, thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa region set off every year from Djibouti to cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait for the Arabian Peninsula. “Twenty-three bodies were recovered this morning and the coast guard continues (its) search,” said Lalini Veerassamy, the IOM chief of mission in Djibouti, a day after five people were found dead. According to local witnesses, the missing migrants were loaded into two overfilled boats that capsized about 30 minutes after setting sail. According to the IOM, an 18-year old survivor said he had boarded the first boat with 130 people on it. The teenager said he did not have any information about the fate of the second boat. The latest incident took place as the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, issued a new report detailing the alarming death toll in the Mediterranean last year. According to the agency, six lives were lost on average every day as an estimated 2,275 people died or went missing crossing the Mediterranean in 2018, despite a major drop in the number of arrivals reaching European shores. In total, 139,300 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe, the lowest number in five years. “Saving lives at sea is not a choice, nor a matter of politics, but an age-old obligation,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees. “We can put an end to these tragedies by having the courage and vision to look beyond the next boat, and adopt a long-term approach based on regional cooperation, that places human life and dignity at its core.” The report describes how shifts in policy by some European states have led to numerous incidents where large numbers of people were left stranded at sea for days on end, waiting for permission to dock. NGO boats and their crews faced growing restrictions on their search and rescue operations. On routes from Libya to Europe, one person died at sea for every 14 who arrived in Europe – a sharp rise on 2017 levels. Thousands more were returned to Libya, where they faced appalling conditions inside detention centres. The report also reveals significant changes in the routes being used by refugees and migrants. For the first time in recent years, Spain became the primary entry point to Europe as roughly 6,800 people arrived by land (through the enclaves in Ceuta and Melilla) and a further 58,600 people successfully crossed over the perilous western Mediterranean. As a result, the death toll for the western Mediterranean nearly quadrupled, from 202 in 2017 to 777 last year. An estimated 23,400 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy in 2018, a fivefold decrease compared with the previous year. Greece received a similar number of sea arrivals, about 32,500 compared with 30,000 in 2017, but experienced a near threefold increase in the number of people arriving via its land border with Turkey. Elsewhere in Europe, Bosnia and Herzegovina recorded an estimated 24,000 arrivals as refugees and migrants transited through the western Balkans. Cyprus received several boats carrying Syrian refugees from Lebanon, while small numbers crossed from France to the UK towards the end of the year.The serial photobomber who stole the show and became a meme after this year’s Golden Globes has made a new splash with a cameo on The Bold and the Beautiful. Canadian model Kelleth Cuthbert became known as Fiji Water Girl after popping up in the background of a series of celebrity portraits taken during the 72nd Golden Globes awards in January. She was at the event as one of a number of promotional staff for the water company, a Globes sponsor, but went viral after Twitter users noticed her face and distinctive blue dress turning up in shot after shot. Rumours about Cuthbert’s link to the long-running CBS soap opera began circulating after she posted a picture of herself with actors from The Bold and the Beautiful on Instagram last week, thanking the production team for having her on set. CBS haven’t confirmed her role as yet, or whether it will be an ongoing one, but the official Instagram account for The Bold and the Beautiful also posted a picture of Cuthbert on set, in the background, wearing a black dress and carrying … a tray of water. Look who was on the #BoldandBeautiful set today! 👀 #ifyouknowyouknow A post shared by  The Bold and The Beautiful (@boldandbeautifulcbs) on Jan 14, 2019 at 2:51pm PST The Bold and the Beautiful appearance comes after stints on the Late Late Show With James Corden and E! News, among others, in the wake of her Golden Globes notoriety. IMDB currently lists her appearance at the Globes as “Fiji Water Girl”. Not everyone found Cuthbert’s knack for getting in the frame endearing: Jamie Lee Curtis said in a tweet that she had deliberately tried to move away from the promotional staff for the Globes sponsors, Fiji and Moet. “I didn’t want to be doing advertising for either. The sponsors of events need to get permission from people before they try to take their picture with them,” Curtis said. While some called the Golden Globes incident an obvious PR stunt, Cuthbert claimed she hadn’t set out to photobomb. “No matter where you move, you’re in somebody’s shot,” she later told the Cut. “I think from so many years of modelling, when I hear a shutter, I just kind of give a face.” The Bold and the Beautiful first aired in 1987 as a companion series to CBS’s other long-running soap, The Young and the Restless, and aired its 8000th episode this January. Cuthbert is expected to appear on the show on 6 February.You see them sometimes in the kitchens and nurseries of wealthy people – women, mostly Filipino, rarely introduced by name. They come to the UK with a promise of income and regular hours, working as housekeepers or nannies to send money back home to their own families; but for many of them the reality is shockingly different. There are nearly 19,000 people on overseas domestic visas in the UK, according to a Freedom of Information request from the Home Office seen by the Guardian; and together they make up, like the Windrush generation, a population of migrants under threat. As part of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” policies as home secretary, the UK government changed the law in 2012 so that migrant domestic workers (MDWs) could only come to the UK on a non-renewable six-month “tied visa” – one that bound them to a single, named employer. This means that if their employer is exploitative or abusive, their main means of escape – moving to another employer – is closed to them. Mel, a 36-year-old domestic worker from the Philippines, describes being brought to London in 2009 by a Saudi family. Her contract guaranteed her a £1,500-a-month salary; in fact, she was paid nothing. She worked most days from 6am until at least 1am and slept in the laundry room. After four years, she managed to escape with the help of a Filipino friend who was a member of the Voice of Domestic Workers (VODW), a grassroots self-help group. Since then she has been undocumented, working as a volunteer for VODW, which supports her. “Why should escaping from an abusive employer be a crime?” she asks, but five years after she fled her host family, the law caught up with her. At 7.45am on a cold morning in December, Mel heard a loud knock on her front door. She opened it to find four immigration officers. They arrested her and spirited her away in a white van to Becket House, an immigration reporting centre near Tower Bridge in London, where she was photographed, fingerprinted and invited to return voluntarily to the Philippines. Just going back home is not an option for Mel and the women like her: her earnings would be so meagre that there is no way that she could support her children. The contract that Grace, 45, also from the Philippines, signed with the Kuwaiti family who brought her to the UK was for £1,200 a month, she recalls. She was paid just £220. Like her fellow domestic workers, she sent most of her earnings back home. Grace went abroad to lift her four children out of poverty – “to give food to your kids, pay for school uniform, books, transport – and hospital”. She worked seven days a week – no days off or holidays. What if she got sick? “You needed to get up!” she says. Grace wasn’t allowed out unaccompanied; when, two months after she arrived, her employers went to France on holiday, they locked her in the house alone for a week. A cleaner from a neighbouring house, hearing her sobbing, put a ladder up against the back balcony, enabling her to escape with her possessions in a black sack. Grace is now undocumented and dependent on “good Filipinos giving me odd jobs” to get by. Lucy, 46, weeps as she talks of her three children, aged 27, 18 and 13, whom she hasn’t seen for seven years, as a consequence – she says – of her employer pretending to renew her visa, but never doing so. Her husband back in the Philippines, who had diabetes, urged her to come home but, as she was taking her case to the high court, “I said let’s wait – and then he died. We’d been married for 23 years.” Lucy’s appeal failed. “I went crazy, I was thinking of suicide. Now I’m OK, but it’s so sad.” Lucy is now working “underground”, for an employer who is aware of her situation but pays her a living wage. Before 2012, an MDW could renew their visa over a period of five years and then apply for indefinite leave to remain and ultimately British citizenship. This was the route taken by Marissa Begonia, a VODW founding member and coordinator. After lobbying by VODW, the trade union Unite and Kalayaan, a charity for domestic workers, the government commissioned an independent review of the UK’s domestic visa policies in 2015. Attaching the visa to a specific employer, the review found, increased these women’s vulnerability to exploitation, while living outside the law “increases their vulnerability to further abuse”. The report’s author, James Ewins, recommended an unconditional right for migrant domestic workers to change their employer and the right to apply for an annual extension of their visa for a maximum of two-and-a-half years. The government rejected this recommendation. All it did, in 2016, as part of the Modern Slavery Act, was slightly modify the harsh restrictions it had introduced in 2012. A MDW now could change employer, but only within the six-month original visa period, which could not then be extended. In reality, most workers have to leave – or go underground. In 2011, the UN International Labour Organization introduced the Domestic Workers Convention to improve the living and working rights of domestic workers. It has been ratified by 26 countries – including Ireland, Germany and Italy – but the UK is not among them. Meanwhile, migrant domestic workers in the UK remain mostly unprotected by laws that the rest of us take for granted – they are not covered by health and safety laws, for example, or the Working Time Regulations 1998, and employers often don’t comply with the national minimum wage – as Mel and Grace know only too well. When VODW polled its members, it found that, of the 500 who responded, 76% had experienced verbal or physical abuse, and that they worked on average 91 hours a week. Some had even had their passports confiscated by their employers. Because of the hidden, private nature of the work and because many are unable to speak English, these women are socially isolated. There are few examples of true modern slavery, but these are undoubtedly some of them. “Their status as workers is blurred by the language – like ‘maids’ or ‘domestic servants’ – that’s used to describe them,” says Joyce Jiang, a lecturer at the University of York and researcher into the experiences of immigrant workers. Many of these women have had to leave their own children to look after those of their employers – and because of the intimate nature of the work, they are often seen as “labourers of love” or “part of the family”, which obscures how little they are paid. I asked the Home Office whether it planned to change the rules regarding MDWs, to allow these women, many of whom have lived and worked here for years, the right to stay legally. It pointed me to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a framework for identifying and supporting victims of human trafficking that, since 2016, also encompasses slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. The MDWs who go down this route successfully can get a two-year visa, after which they must return home. But it’s an imperfect solution, says Begonia. “You need to have been raped, beaten or starved to death to get it. If you’re not paid for months, is that not abuse or servitude?” Those in abusive workplaces who don’t apply fall back on the services of VODW. Begonia, Grace and the others constitute a remarkable rescue service. They distribute cards written in Tagalog, Hindi and Indonesian offering help and a phone number. When called, they go to a MDW’s home, wait outside and then escort them to safety. “Sometimes they don’t even know the address, so we tell them to look for an envelope that has it. Or if they’re working in a hotel, we tell them to phone reception,” says Begonia. VODW has rescued 80 women in this way. Now, in collaboration with Jiang and the film-maker Tassia Kobylinska of Goldsmiths, University of London, VODW has produced a video and exhibition, My Home Is Not My Home. As part of the project, funded by the University of York, Kobylinska worked with a group of migrant domestic workers, teaching them how to frame images and record audio so that they could document their lives on their phones. The exhibition includes an MDW’s white uniform, a job contract, the clothes that one MDW wore when escaping and letters from their children. “To put these things in a gallery makes them valuable. We hope that this will bring into the public domain what has festered behind closed doors. It can be used in evidence as part of their campaign [to remain here],” says Kobylinska. Begonia herself trod this path. “It was the most difficult and painful decision of my life to leave my children behind when they were one, two and three. I wanted so much to be a normal mother who could look after them physically – but my sister was their mother, really, and not me … what kept me going was the dream that we could one day be together again.” For her, the story has a happy ending. She has become a formidable voice for MDWs – lobbying parliament, speaking at the UN on behalf of VODW, for which she works part-time (she is still a domestic worker the rest of the time). Her three children now live with her and work in the UK. Of the others, Mel has been referred to the NRM. Lucy and Grace, however, remain undocumented. For them, in every sense, the UK is far from home. Some names have been changed. My Home Is Not My Home runs from 16 to 26 January at L’Etrangère, 44a Charlotte Road, London EC2The winner of Australia’s richest literary prize did not attend the ceremony. His absence was not by choice. Behrouz Boochani, whose debut book won both the $25,000 non-fiction prize at the Victorian premier’s literary awards and the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature on Thursday night, is not allowed into Australia. The Kurdish Iranian writer is an asylum seeker who has been kept in purgatory on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea for almost six years, first behind the wire of the Australian offshore detention centre, and then in alternative accommodation on the island. Now his book No Friend But the Mountains – composed one text message at a time from within the detention centre – has been recognised by a government from the same country that denied him access and locked him up. It is, he said, “a paradoxical feeling”. “I really don’t know what to say,” he told Guardian Australia in a conversation before the main award was announced, when he only knew of the non-fiction prize. “I certainly did not write this book just to win an award. “My main aim has always been for the people in Australia and around the world to understand deeply how this system has tortured innocent people on Manus and Nauru in a systematic way for almost six years. I hope this award will bring more attention to our situation, and create change, and end this barbaric policy.” Boochani speaks via text messages, because his internet connection keeps cutting out – the same method he used to write the book, an autobiographical account of his attempt to make the journey from Indonesia to Australia and his subsequent incarceration. Under Australia’s hardline immigration policy, asylum seekers who try to reach the country by boat are processed at offshore centres. For an asylum seeker kept in offshore detention to win such a major prize “brings enormous shame to the Australian government”, he said. Accepting the award on Boochani’s behalf was his translator, Omid Tofighian, who worked with interpreter Moones Mansoubi to translate Boochani’s Farsi text to English. “You can’t underestimate the impact that [this win] will have on Australian politics and Australian refugee politics – not only in Australia [but for] displaced and exiled people all over the world,” Tofighian said. “This is one of the most vicious forms of neocolonial oppression that is taking over the world at the moment – and to address this book in this way and to recognise it and draw attention to the narrative it is presenting will have repercussions for many generations to come.” The awards are split into seven categories, which are judged by a panel. In 2017 and 2018, women won each category, and they dominated the winners’ list again this year, with Elise Valmorbida winning the fiction prize with The Madonna of the Mountains; Kendall Feaver winning the drama prize for her play The Almighty Sometimes; Kate Lilley winning the poetry prize for Tilt; Victoria Hannan winning the $15,000 unpublished manuscript prize for Kokomo; and Bri Lee winning the people’s choice award for her memoir Eggshell Skull. After last year’s Nib prize, it is the second people’s choice award for the debut, a memoir that tracks Lee’s journey from being a judge’s associate to seeking justice through the courts for childhood sexual assault. She now receives “hundreds” of emails and messages from other sexual abuse survivors. “I respond to everyone,” she said. “Overall I get enough messages of such hope and optimism, and people just actually make life-changing decisions after reading this book, so even though I also get a lot of upsetting messages it all comes good. All I can hope for as a writer is to reach people in some way.” Lee said the unexpected commercial success of the book had given her “the most wonderful gift of freedom to write what I want next”. She is currently working on a series of essays. The young adult prize was won by Amelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina, for Catching Teller Crow. Western Australian author Kim Scott, a dual Miles Franklin award winner, won the prize for Indigenous writing for his novel Taboo, which deals with a modern community coming to terms with the historical and cultural legacy of a massacre on Noongar country in south-west WA. It is based on an experience in his own country at Ravensthorpe, halfway between Albany and Esperance. “My ancestral country is regarded as taboo by many Aboriginal people because of the killing that happened there in the late 19th century,” he said. “I didn’t even know about it until I was an adult, that nasty edge to our history … the emotional infrastructure of the times didn’t enable or perhaps allow it.” Scott said the novel was for “a lot of us who have been damaged by colonisation, and I would imagine that’s non-Aboriginal people as well ... healing and strengthening our relationship to pre-colonial heritage. “It’s all about foundations and being grounded ... and finding a way for an emotional and spiritual infrastructure. Stories are really important for that but so are things like the Uluru statement. They help us figure out a way to deal with this stuff.” Winner: The Madonna of the Mountains by Elise Valmorbida Shortlist: Flames by Robbie Arnott; Ironbark by Jay Carmichael; The Fireflies of Autumn: And Other Tales of San Ginese by Moreno Giovannoni; The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones; Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko Winner: No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani Shortlist: Staying: A Memoir by Jessie Cole; The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper; Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee; Miss Ex-Yugoslavia by Sofija Stefanovic; Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin Winner: The Almighty Sometimes by Kendall Feaver Shortlist: Going Down by Michele Lee; Barbara and the Camp Dogs by Ursula Yovich and Alana Valentine Winner: Tilt by Kate Lilley Shortlist: Flood Damages by Eunice Andrada; Milk Teeth by Rae White Winner: Catching Teller Crow by Ambelin Kwaymullina and Ezekiel Kwaymullina Shortlist: Amelia Westlake by Erin Gough; Between Us by Clare Atkins Winner: Taboo by Kim Scott Shortlist: Common People by Tony Birch; Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko; Blakwork by Alison Whittaker Winner: Kokomo by Victoria Hannan Shortlist: Wedding Cake Island by John Byron; Frontier Sport by Wayne MarshallIf January could be made an adjective – that is, if the trait of being released in the month of January could be assigned a set of aesthetic and thematic criteria – then I would venture that Serenity may be the single most January movie ever made. The typical January movie has been orphaned by a studio with little faith in its earning potential, banished to the post-holiday moviegoing lull, where riskier strains of badness may freely flourish without attracting too much public attention. (There are also traces of January in late August, after summer movie season has taken its dying breaths.) Serenity was originally slated for an awards-courting release date back in September, then nudged ahead one month for reasons inscrutable to those outside distribution outfit Aviron Pictures, and finally moved once more to its rightful resting place in late January. This merely describes a symptom, however, and not the condition itself. The January movie stands out not for its failings, but for the confidence and ingenuity with which it fails. Serenity was written, directed, and produced by Steven Knight, who’s proven himself competent in all three disciplines as a one-time scribe for David Cronenberg, the helmer of 2014’s solid Locke, and the creator of such BBC favorites as Peaky Blinders and Taboo. Evidently convinced of his own brilliance, Knight wielded enough industry cachet to steamroll the people generally tasked with keeping ideas like Serenity in the brains of their makers. The January movie is what happens when someone with a lot of vision and a minimum of self-awareness stops hearing the word “no,” and in this particular case, Knight lets his absolute assurance in his misguided mission run away with him all the way to Mauritius. The minuscule tax-lax African island doubles for Plymouth, an isolated seaside community tucked away in the Florida Keys where the gruff Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey, his Oscar win now a distant memory) has taken up residence. Where he comes from seems to be a mystery even to him, the haunted look in his eyes our only hint at an unspoken dark past. He whiles away his days taking visitors out on fishing expeditions, making extra scratch in his side-hustle as a gigolo – McConaughey’s bare buttocks command more screen time than some of the human supporting actors – and single-mindedly pursuing a tuna he’s named “Justice” for symbolic purposes. Maybe it’s all the cryptic non sequiturs spoken by the townspeople, but something’s definitely amiss. The arrival of Baker’s femme fatale ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway, blonde) reshapes what could be fairly deemed “The Old-But-Still-Got-It Man and the Sea” as a Sunshine State noir at maximum humidity. She needs Baker to kill the abusive new husband (Jason Clarke, visibly aware of how ridiculous his lines are and fully leaning into it) she won’t stop calling “daddy,” if not for her sake then for the sake of the unseen son they had together. Because it’s filled with garbled word-salad dialogue and a few screamingly awkward sex scenes, his ensuing moral turpitude makes for plenty of unintended hilarity. McConaughey and Hathaway share a mesmerizing anti-chemistry, not only implausible as lovers but as occupants of the same dimension. When she coos remembrances of losing her virginity to Baker in his tempted ear, it’s supposed to be tragically romantic, or at least sexy. Instead, the viewer begins mentally tabulating whether a sixteen-year-old Anne Hathaway bedding an equivalently de-aged Matthew McConaughey would qualify as statutory rape. (It would.) A dash of the unexpected provides the finishing touch to any January movie worth its salts, and Knight has successfully smuggled one of the most gobsmackingly ill-conceived twists in recent history into multiplexes nationwide. To reveal it here would rob the film of a measure of its great and terrible power, so suffice it to say that it would be like It’s A Wonderful Life ending with Jimmy Stewart discovering that everyone in Bedford Falls was a robot. This reversal of fortune disorients not only in its casual upending of the entire plot and, indeed, reason itself, but also in the totality with which it changes what kind of movie Serenity’s going to be. A complete shift takes place as the film mutates from an overcooked genre piece guided by some exquisitely strange choices to something rarer and more precious. The cinema calendar is chockablock with faulty efforts built around perfectly serviceable ideas, but realized without a modicum of distinction. Serenity offers the less-common inverse: a magnificently terrible idea, executed to perfection. It is the best kind of bad movie, bristling with more spectacularly dysfunctional personality than one hundred conveyor-belt CGI bonanzas. Its pleasures number too many to enumerate here – okay, fine: Hathaway’s character gets a momentous introduction with a Matrix-style 180-degree swoop – so do yourself the kindness of seeing this zeppelin crash of a film before its unceremonious dismissal from theaters. Insulate yourself from any further knowledge to the best of your ability, and bear witness to the minting of a new gold standard in January movies. Serenity is out in the US on 25 January and in the UK on 1 MarchAfter many years, and dancing around the edges, my best friend and I have fallen for each other. We recently confessed our feelings, and are now together. We’re in our early 30s and feeling our way through our new relationship, and it’s wonderful. He is clear he does not want children, and I don’t see them in my future either. He knows this. Very recently during sex, he has started pulling out to ejaculate. I asked him about it, and he just said that he doesn’t want kids. I take oral contraceptives. We had sex a handful of times before our relationship, and it was not an issue then. I’m insulted, and worried that he thinks I would be careless or might “trap” him. We’re at a delicate stage in this transition, so I don’t want to make a fuss, but it’s really playing on my mind that he now doesn’t trust me. He says he loves me. You are right to judge this transition as delicate; tread carefully, and try not to take his withdrawal personally. His opposition to having children may be rooted in deeply troubling aspects of his life, such as painful childhood memories – although perhaps he simply doesn’t feel ready for parenthood. Even though withdrawing is not a secure method of contraception, try to reframe his doing so as his way of protecting your relationship, or warding off what he may see as disaster for both of you. Perhaps he has been “trapped” in the past, in which case trust is at stake. In fact, many cases have shown that if there is even an unconscious desire on a woman’s part to have children, she might unconsciously “forget” to take her pill. Talk with him gently, seeking to understand his true feelings – and express yours. Also, examine your own feelings when he withholds his ejaculate – clearly, you feel distrusted, but do you also feel rejected? Punished? Dishonoured? Help him to understand and, hopefully, empathise. By the way, if you are hoping to have children at some point – and feel you need to do so at a biologically optimum time – it is essential to have that conversation pretty soon – in a frank and non-punitive manner. •Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders. •If you would like advice from Pamela Stephenson Connolly on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions: see gu.com/letters-terms.Chelsea blew the Women’s Super League title race wide open with an Erin Cuthbert double and this dominant win helped exorcise the demons of a brutal home defeat by Arsenal in October. “We’re building momentum,” said Chelsea’s manager, Emma Hayes. “Everyone watching us can see it’s a team that’s in the ascendancy.” But she was coy about her side’s title credentials. “We didn’t take the first position until April last year. We’re third and we’re enjoying looking at what’s going on above us. The league is out of our hands. I can’t control it.” By pulling to within two points of the Gunners Chelsea are in the running to retain the trophy they lifted in May after surviving a late goal and flurry of pressure from the home team. Chelsea arrived at Borehamwood a very different side from the one hammered by Arsenal on their own turf. “That was a moment in time that was never going to happen again. There’s not a 5-0 gap between us and today showed that,” said Hayes. Fran Kirby was fit enough for the bench only following her double against Reading in the League Cup in midweek, but Chelsea have found a way to win in her absence. Since their humbling by the Gunners the Blues had put together an 11-game unbeaten run, keeping 11 clean sheets – a scoreless draw against Birmingham were the only dropped points. With Chelsea’s squad depth the difference in their title win ahead of Manchester City last season, they are on the front foot once more. Arsenal suffered their first defeat at Manchester City in December and, already struggling with injuries, were dealt a blow when 10-goal Daniëlle van de Donk was ruled out after picking up a thigh injury in training. It showed in the benches, Arsenal fielding three outfield subs to Chelsea’s six. “We’ve got seven starting players in the stand and the soccer gods aren’t smiling on us at the moment but hopefully it’s not as bad as it could be,” said the Arsenal manager, Joe Montemurro. “I don’t make excuses. Chelsea were the better team today and they won. “It’s a game-by-game proposition. We don’t know which players are coming back, when players are coming back and how bad the injuries are.” Chelsea dominated a feisty first half. Three minutes in they had their first chance, a Magdalena Eriksson free-kick flashing over Pauline Peyraud-Magnin’s crossbar. That set the tone with Ji So-yun, Karen Carney and Beth England providing the main danger on the right. Their relentless pace was bound to force an opening and just before the half-hour mark it did. Some neat interplay from Carney and Ji led to the full-back Hannah Blundell sweeping in a delightful cross which was powerfully headed home by Cuthbert. With no love lost between the teams Carney earned the first yellow of the match after heftily bodychecking Katie McCabe, sending the Arsenal No 15 flying between the dugouts at the foot of the fourth official. After the break the Gunners came out fighting, seeing more of the ball in the opening exchanges than they had in the first period. But it felt inevitable the bright Chelsea forward line would do further damage to a fragile Arsenal defence. With an hour gone they punished the Gunners for not making more of their brighter period, Cuthbert again in the right place for the Blues to volley in from 15 yards. Kim Little’s whipped cross from the right was turned in by Vivianne Miedema to halve the deficit but provided little consolation forArsenal for the dropped points. • Manchester City leapfrogged Arsenal to the top of the WSL, having played a game more than the Gunners, with a 3-1 win at West Ham. First-half goals from Caroline Weir and Lauren Hemp put City ahead before Jane Ross pulled one back. Nikita Parris became the first player to score 40 WSL goals with City’s third. • Marc Skinner suffered defeat in his last game in charge of Birmingham as Gemma Evans’ first-half goal earned Bristol City three points on the road. • Brighton and Everton saw out a goalless draw, while a injury-time winner from Courtney Sweetman-Kirk secured Liverpool a 2-1 over Yeovil.Given Newport’s recent Cup pedigree – the League Two side knocked out Leeds and took Tottenham to a replay last season – Sunday’s game never looked an easy tie for Claude Puel’s Leicester, but looked even less so when he left the likes of Kasper Schmeichel, Harry Maguire, Ben Chilwell, Wilfred Ndidi and Jamie Vardy at home. Puel would still have expected the XI he sent out to progress but with no midweek game and no other competitions to play for, supporters who made the long trip to south Wales would be forgiven their dark mutterings on the return journey after a humbling defeat. Sunday’s other Premier League fall guys, Fulham, at least have a relegation battle to occupy them until May but seventh-placed Leicester are a long way from sixth and with fine victories over Manchester City and at Chelsea last month have shown what they are capable of at full-strength. The Christmas period leaves players jaded but you don’t get second chances in the FA Cup. Paul Chronnell There should have been two 19-year-olds on the scoresheet for Arsenal at Bloomfield Road as the young players entrusted by Unai Emery impressed against Blackpool. Joe Willock, the England Under-20 midfielder, seized his opportunities with two goals that owed much to sharp reactions and good awareness, and was only denied a first Arsenal hat-trick by a correct offside decision. Eddie Nketiah, was nowhere near as clinical, missing three presentable chances before half-time, and yet this remained a promising display from the Lewisham-born forward. Nketiah’s pace, movement and first touch all stood out against the League One side. As did his refusal to allow the misses to effect his contribution. He was replaced by Alexandre Lacazette in the 64th minute, a reminder of the obstacles in the way. Andy Hunter David Wagner was chuckling before the reporter had finished asking a question that started with the words: “Luckily you’re in a January transfer window so you can bring players into the club …” The Huddersfield manager, bringing a touch of reality to it all, replied: “Theoretically this is correct. Everybody knows the circumstances which we have in our football club, that we financially are not at the top of the hierarchy.” His team are bottom of the Premier League and eight points from safety. The German added: “We will see what we can make happen or not make happen.” A chastening FA Cup exit at Bristol City made it nine successive defeats and there have been only two victories all season, suggesting the board needs to make as much as possible happen in this window to give Wagner a fighting chance, with a proven goalscorer surely the priority. Stuart James If Roy Hodgson’s mood was anything to go by after his side edged past a valiant 10-man Grimsby, thanks to Jordan Ayew’s second goal in as many games, then this could be a long month for the Crystal Palace manager. Having pulled out of a loan deal to sign Dominic Solanke from Liverpool, finding a striker remains imperative given Alexander Sørloth’s travails in front of goal, although the impending return of Christian Benteke and Ayew’s sudden burst of form may give them some breathing space. The Ghana forward now looks likely to have his loan extended until the end of the season, while Hodgson claimed not to have even heard of Sunderland’s Josh Maja after he was linked with the club last week. “His name’s not been mentioned to me,” said the former England manager. “I don’t spend my time watching Sunderland play.” Ed Aarons Chelsea were busily insisting the deal was not yet done, but the tears of Cesc Fàbregas as he left the Stamford Bridge pitch and the assorted tributes from colleagues suggested otherwise. He played what is almost certain to be his last game for the club against Nottingham Forest on Saturday before leaving for Monaco, but even though he has been a peripheral figure you wonder about the wisdom of letting him go mid-season. The Catalan has served as the primary back-up to Jorginho as the deep-lying playmaker, perhaps the most important role in Maurizio Sarri’s system. “It would be really a problem without Cesc,” said Sarri a few weeks ago, probably because the alternatives are the talented but extremely raw Ethan Ampadu and, erm, David Luiz? The Brazilian centre-back said: “You need a minimum 20 players to rotate.” Nick Miller It felt unusual to hear Frank Lampard behaving like a typical manager on Saturday, offering up – if not quite excuses – then mitigation for his side. Derby travel to Leeds this weekend before replaying their FA Cup tie with Southampton and Lampard wanted it known that his squad will be stretched as his sixth-placed Rams look to hold on to their Championship play-off spot. “We’re going into a really important phase now, and it’s going to be test after test,” said Lampard. “We’re going to be competing against tough sides and just behind us are Aston Villa and Stoke with big budgets. I had to give Mason Mount a rest today, but I only have two centre-halves, so they’re playing. I’m not crying, I took this job knowing what it was. Spending the most money doesn’t mean you’ll win, but I do fear the tiredness and I’m not the only one saying that.” Paul MacInnes In an ideal world, Marco Silva would not have introduced André Gomes as a half-time substitute on Saturday. The Portugal midfielder has looked tired in recent games and this was a much-needed opportunity for him to rest, but Everton needed to re-establish control against Lincoln City and so on he came. That he replaced Tom Davies was no great surprise given the 20-year-old’s largely ineffective display up to then. It was not the first time either from a boyhood Evertonian who, like Ross Barkley before him, is in danger of losing his way at Goodison Park. Davies, with nine Premier League appearances this season, looked the real deal under Ronald Koeman but, two permanent managers later, the picture is very different and having not grasped the opportunity afforded to him on Saturday it is possible he may not get another one soon. Sachin Nakrani Ole Gunnar Solskjær will enjoy a week of warm-weather training in Dubai with Manchester United feeling his players believe they can now finish in a Champions League berth. Saturday’s 2-0 win over Reading was a fifth consecutive victory as caretaker manager but after closing the gap to six points to Chelsea, fourth place is Solskjær’s prime target. “I think the players are getting confidence and the feeling that we have momentum,” he said. How United fare in Sunday’s trip to third-placed Tottenham will provide the best barometer yet of where United are. “They’ve performed really well over a few years now and they’ve been towards the top of the league,” said the Norwegian. “You’ve got Harry Kane, one of the best strikers in the world, Christian Eriksen, Son Heung-min, Dele Alli – and we have to look at how we play against them.” Jamie Jackson Hats off to Blackburn’s impressive Bradley Dack and Charlie Mulgrew for raising the tone but the reality is that most drama at Newcastle occurs off the pitch these days. Unfortunately it tends to be of the tragi-comic variety. For instance, the weekend saw an orchestrated leaking of a letter from Peter Kenyon to Mike Ashley saying he hopes his consortium will be offered more time to try and buy out Newcastle. Then there’s the separate suggestion the two consortiums headed by Kenyon and Garry Cook might somehow govern the club, coalition style. Maybe Kenyon and Cook could be joint chief executives? Meanwhile Rafael Benítez seems under pressure to sign a one-year contract extension – his current deal expires in May – in exchange for Ashley buying some new players this month. Benítez will not relish next week’s Ewood Park replay. Louise Taylor It was tricky to assess Andy Carroll’s performance in West Ham’s nervy victory. On the one hand it was a typical piece of Carroll play that settled the tie, with the Birmingham defence powerless to stop the big man from rising to score his first goal since last April, and in those moments it is easy to understand why the 30-year-old might yet win over Manuel Pellegrini. The forward’s injury record will count against him when West Ham decide whether to renew his contract in the summer, but the sight of him soaring above a cowering defence remains something of a guilty pleasure. Before his goal, however, Carroll had infuriated the crowd with poor hold-up play and two woeful misses with his feet. His case for a new deal did not feel that strong when he made a farcical hash of trying to round Lee Camp, Birmingham’s goalkeeper. Jacob SteinbergThe gilets jaunes (yellow vests) have named 10 candidates for the European parliament elections in May and called for more of their fellow demonstrators to put their names forward. The French protest movement that, until now, has had no official leaders or formal organisation, announced on Wednesday that it would take part in the vote on 26 May after 10 weeks of occasionally violent demonstrations across the country. The list is headed by Ingrid Levavasseur, 31, a health worker who has become one of the most high-profile members of the movement. Nine other candidates, five women and four men whose ages range from 29 to 53 and who come from various backgrounds, have come forward. A communique from the group said names for France’s other 69 seats in the parliament are open to suggestions before 10 February. Candidates will be chosen in a vote by gilets jaunes activists. Levavasseur accused the French president, Emmanuel Macron, of ignoring the gilets jaunes. “We just want to be heard,” she said. The movement emerged in November in protest at a new eco tax on diesel and petrol. Since then, Macron’s centrist government has dropped the tax, but the movement has morphed into wider opposition to the president and his reformist administration. Macron is currently travelling around France overseeing a “great national debate” aimed at responding to public anger expressed by the gilets jaunes, but protesters have continued their demonstrations. Gilets jaunes continue to call for demonstrations across France every weekend. In major cities including Paris, Bordeaux and Marseille, these have led to violent clashes between police and protesters. The new group is calling itself the Ralliement d’Initiative Citoyenne (Citizen Initiative Rally) and has the same initials – RIC – as one of the gilets jaunes’ key demands for citizens’ referendums to decide national policy. “We want this list to be carried by people who have been involved in the mobilisation on the roundabouts from the beginning. No technocrats,” their statement read. ”We must transform the anger into a human political project that is able to bring solutions to the French.” Previous attempts by gilets jaunes to organise have led to those putting themselves forward being subjected to abuse and threats from rival groups. Levavasseur, from Normandy, was signed up by the French television station BFMTV as a commentator, but turned down the job earlier this month after she was abused by other gilets jaunes. Le Figaro newspaper said the group had to raise €700,000 (£610,000) to field the election list of candidates and had about 10% of that figure so far. RIC has not said how it will raise the remainder, but is considering appealing for donations through a crowdfunding campaign. Its programme is likely to be anti-European. The group’s statement added: “We no longer wish to suffer the decisions of European authorities and the diktats of the castes of financiers and technocrats who have forgotten the most important things: the human being, solidarity and the planet.” Le Figaro reported that another gilets jaunes group may present its own list for the European election. An Elabe opinion poll published on Wednesday suggested gilets jaunes candidates could attract 13% of the vote behind Macron’s La République en Marche and the far-right Rassemblement National (formerly the Front National).As the longest government shutdown in US history enters a fourth week with no resolution in sight, Jared Hautamaki considers himself relatively fortunate. The Home Depot where he already worked several shifts a week agreed to employ him full-time while he and hundreds of thousands of federal employees are locked out of their day-jobs. At $14 an hour, his retail paycheck will hardly match what he earns as an attorney adviser with the Environmental Protection Agency. But with four children under eight years old, Hautamaki says it’s a necessary accommodation. But still he worries the temporary income won’t be enough to cover the costs of daycare, a mortgage and the rest of his family’s monthly expenses if the shutdown lasts several more weeks as Donald Trump has threatened. “Imagine. I’m 42 years old and my retired mother is calling to ask if I need a loan,” Hautamaki said, speaking from his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, after finishing a shift that started at 4am. “I told her: not yet.” He let out a sigh. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.” The Washington metropolitan area is home to the largest share of federal workers in the country – and on Friday many of them missed a paycheck for the first time since parts of the federal government ceased functioning on 22 December. Frustrated employees posted photos on Twitter of their pay stub showing a net pay of $0. Members of Congress left town on Friday and no negotiations are scheduled. “This shutdown isn’t funny anymore,” Randy Erwin, the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said at a rally in downtown Washington on Thursday. “Right now, it’s ruining people’s lives.” Hundreds of furloughed federal workers, contractors and union members from the capital region marched to the White House last week carrying signs that directed Congress and the president to “Do your job so we can do ours”. “This is not a vacation,” said Marcia Mia, a furloughed federal worker who helps encourage compliance with environmental laws at the EPA. She attended the rally with a co-worker, Apple Chapman, who both carried signs warning that polluters are are getting off while they are kept off the job. “The work that we do has a direct impact on communities,” said Chapman, who has worked at the agency for 18 years. “It’s frustrating to know that and not be allowed to go to work.” The nation’s capital is now often eerily quiet during the weekday afternoon. Lunchtime hotspots that typically draw long lines have none. Food trucks pack up earlier than usual. Taxi drivers circle the city in search of passengers. And few tourists wander the National Mall, where the Smithsonian museums have closed for the duration of the shutdown. Meanwhile, the city of Washington has hired extra workers to clean up garbage from hundreds of trash bins managed by the federal government. The DC council had to pass the “Love Act” allowing couples to obtain marriage licenses because the bureau that handles them is funded by the federal government. As the impact of the shutdown ripples across the region, some DC businesses are offering discounts or assistance to ease the financial burden – and tedium – of a prolonged period without work. José Andrés, the owner of several popular restaurants in downtown DC and a vocal Trump critic, will give free sandwiches to “all my beautiful hardworking people of the Federal [government]”. Federal employees can catch a movie for free throughout the month of January at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Virginia. Meanwhile, several DC-area utility companies, as well as banks, mortgage companies and credit unions, have taken stepsto help customers affected by the shutdown. “For me, it’s the uncertainty – is it going to end today or is it not going to end?” said one 54-year-old employee of the National Science Foundation who asked not to be named. “You want to plan your life but without knowing day-to-day what’s going to happen.” Before the shutdown, he was charged with helping to prepare for it. He spent hours in meetings discussing funding lapse plans with senior officials who might otherwise be commissioning scientific research. “I don’t think the public at large appreciates how much goes into preparing for a shutdown,” he said. “We’re costing everyone money – not saving money.”Another week, another audience with Leicester City’s manager, and another question about his future. “It’s a common thread, all press conferences, I cannot manage these rumours,” Claude Puel replied, smiling. “It’s often we have a lot of bets about my future. But I’m sorry for lots of people who made this bet because they lost a lot of money.” Puel remains the favourite to be the next Premier League manager to leave his job, which may come as a surprise to those whose knowledge of Leicester begins and ends with their position in the table: eighth. The assumption that tends to follow is that any disgruntled Leicester supporters have ideas above their station, fuelled by that 5,000-1 triumph three years ago, and now expect to challenge for the title every season. The truth is rather different and has more to do with what they are paying to watch. To put it bluntly – and many Southampton supporters will probably be nodding their heads when they get to the end of this sentence – the football at home has been dull under Puel on far too many occasions to remember. As for the results, it is hard to sugarcoat statistics that show Puel’s record is worse than the man who was sacked to make way for him. Craig Shakespeare averaged 1.38 points per game, Leicester scored more goals than they conceded while he was in charge and they won as many games as they lost. Puel averages 1.35 points per game, Leicester have lost more matches than they have won under him and their goal difference is negative. Bearing in mind that Shakespeare was told to clear his desk after eight months because the club felt “a change is necessary to keep the club moving forward – consistent with the long-term expectations of our supporters, board and owners”, it is little wonder Puel’s position continues to be the subject of so much scrutiny. Where, say his critics, is the progress? An alternative take would be – and there are fans who remain firmly behind Puel – that the 54-year-old should be cut some slack. Those with a foot in the Frenchman’s camp say he deserves credit for giving youngsters a platform to thrive – Ben Chilwell in particular – that the loss of Riyad Mahrez to Manchester City last summer should not be overlooked and that allowances ought to be made for the emotional fallout in the wake of the helicopter crash in October that claimed the lives of five people, including Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, Leicester’s owner. The reality is that Leicester were unconvincing on the pitch before that tragedy. Indeed, Puel was straying into slightly awkward territory last week when he rounded on his critics and suggested that people had short memories when it comes to what the club has been through. “It was a fantastic feeling to move on and respect the memory of Vichai and his dream,” he said. “Now we have some things and words about finishing seventh or eighth, it is crazy. People forget quickly.” The focus on the league position is a red herring – Puel did not lose his job at Southampton because they finished eighth; it was the style of football, the lack of goals – only 41 in 38 matches – and his failure to galvanise the fanbase and players that did for him. The similarities at Leicester are striking. Leicester have scored only 13 goals at the King Power Stadium all season, they have lost three of their past four home matches, including back-to-back defeats against relegation strugglers Cardiff and Southampton, and were dumped out of the FA Cup by Newport County a fortnight ago. Arguably as worrying as all the facts and figures is that even now, 15 months after his appointment, it is hard to discern any clear identity in the way that Leicester play under Puel.On the day he was presented as manager Puel talked about how it was “difficult for Leicester to have been playing for three or four years with a counterattack and just this system. It’s important to have other answers … my work is to build the players up to have these options and solutions.” Yet if it was Puel’s intention to turn Leicester into more of a possession-based team at times, or at the very least make the players comfortable with an alternative approach, there is no evidence it has worked. For Southampton’s visit last Saturday Puel started with three defensive midfielders against a team in the relegation zone. Despite playing with an extra man for 45 minutes and enjoying 72% possession Leicester struggled to create chances and resorted to pumping hopeful crosses into the area that played into the hands of Jannik Vestergaard and Jan Bednarek. Remarkably those two Southampton defenders headed the ball clear as many times (14) as Jamie Vardy touched it in 90 minutes. Forget the superhero outfit that Leicester’s leading scorer wore to training on Thursday; a stepladder would have been more use against Southampton. The way that match panned out was predictable in many respects. Leicester’s win ratio under Puel is as low as 29% (W9 D9 L13) when they have more of the ball than their opponents. It climbs to as high as 50% (W10 D3 L7) when they surrender possession, which is why facing Chelsea and Manchester City in the space of four days around Christmas suited them. That is not to take anything away from those results – hugely impressive 1-0 and 2-1 victories respectively – but more to illustrate how playing on the counterattack remains Leicester’s best hope of picking up points. A game at Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday is a blessing for that reason and it would be no surprise if Leicester get a positive result. Yet even if that turns out to be the case, the debate about Puel’s future is unlikely to go away and it would be naive for anyone to think Leicester’s board have not been asking questions of their own. It feels as though it has got to the stage where a parting of the ways is inevitable in the summer at the latest, when the potential availability of Brendan Rodgers and Rafael Benítez alters the managerial landscape. Perhaps the bigger question is whether the bookies will be forced to pay out before then.Andy Murray’s career is all but over. He expects his match against Roberto Bautista Agut in the first round of the Australian Open on Monday to be his last but, even if another hip operation were to help him reach a more emotional and perhaps more fitting farewell at Wimbledon, it will never be the same for the player who stood alongside Fred Perry as the greatest Britain has ever had. Many would say Murray was the greater, but it is a fine call. The former world No1 and three-time slam champion conceded that the pain that has been running through his right hip with increasing strength the past few months has brought his serious playing days to a reluctant conclusion. Murray turns 32 on 15 May, when he would normally be preparing for another assault on the French Open – which is where the chronic weakness in his hip became almost unbearable in 2017 against Stan Wawrinka – but the chances of his returning there are virtually nil, as he admitted in a press conference in which he had to leave the room to compose himself, as the emotion welled in his reddening eyes. “There’s a chance of that, for sure,” he said when asked if this tournament – in which he has lost in five finals – would be his sign-off from the game he has played since he was 10 in Dunblane. “I am not sure I am able to play through the pain for another four or five months,” he said of his original plan to bow out at the All England Club, where he won two of his three majors. It was a year ago in Melbourne that Murray reluctantly agreed with his long-time medical confidant, John O’Donnell, a leading hip specialist, that he needed an operation to continue playing. It did not quite work, but he gave it as good a shot as he could muster, playing 12 matches, winning five, but only two against top 20 opponents. It became increasingly obvious that his ability to compete at the highest level was waning. The moment it fully dawned on him arrived in December during his preparation for Melbourne. The pain was now insistent and deep. There was no relief, even in everyday activities. Murray now has to confront more surgery to repair the damage of nearly a dozen years at the top of the game. Murray begins the year splitting from his coach Mark Petchey and replacing Tim Henman as British No 1 and goes on to claim more early-career landmarks: he beats Roger Federer for the first time, in Ohio, and wins his first ATP Tour event in San Jose, California, in front of Kim Sears, later Mrs Murray. Murray produces a straight-sets demolition of Roger Federer in the Olympic final at Wimbledon. He then goes on to win his first major, beating Novak Djokovic in New York in a five-set epic, finishing close to midnight, becoming the first British man since Fred Perry in the 1930s to win a singles slam title. Murray had raised hopes of emulating Perry at Wimbledon when he reached the final in 2012, only to come up against Roger Federer and a closed roof, which benefited the Swiss. A year later, however, on a boiling hot day at SW19, he faced down Novak Djokovic for the second time in three slam finals and won again, in straight sets, although he said he could hardly serve in the final game. He ended the 77-year wait for a British men’s singles champion, against the man considered the  best in the world at the time. The defence of his Wimbledon title in 2014 had not gone as planned, but two years later he showed he was back to his best. Against Milos Raonic in the final in SW19, he nullified the Canadian’s huge serve and cantered to victory in straight sets, leaving him one shy of Perry’s total of three Wimbledon wins. Murray had won gold in the 2012 Games on familiar turf but Rio de Janeiro presented different challenges, yet he overcame those to make Olympic history. He beat Juan Martín del Potro in five sets in the final and became the first man or woman to win consecutive singles tennis golds. Murray’s total career prize money from his singles and doubles successes combined His total career singles titles, with an overall  match win-loss ratio of 663-190 (77.73%) “I have an option to have another operation, which is a little bit more severe than what I have had before,” he said. “Having my hip resurfaced will allow me to have a better quality of life, be out of pain. That is something I’m seriously considering right now. Some athletes have had that and gone back to competing. But there are obviously no guarantees with that, and it is not something…the reason for having an operation is not to return to professional sport, it’s just for a better quality of life.” He added: “I’ve been struggling for a long time. I have been in a lot of pain for probably about 20 months now. I have pretty much done everything that I could to try and get my hip feeling better. It hasn’t helped loads. I’m in a better place than I was six months ago, but still in a lot of pain. It has been tough. “In the middle to the end of December in my training block, I spoke to my team, and I told them, ‘I cannot keep doing this.’ I needed to have an end point because I was playing with no idea when the pain was going to stop. I felt like making that decision. I said to my team, ‘Look, I think I can get through this until Wimbledon. That’s where I would like to stop playing.’ But I am not certain I am able to do that.” “Tough” has been Murray’s watchword in a career that seemed eternally embroidered in struggle. Very little came easy. But he is steeling himself for what is “almost certainly” one last effort, against the Spaniard Bautista Agut, who has lost to him in their three previous meetings but is likely to win on Monday. “Yes, I am going to play,” he confirmed. “I can still play to a level, but not a level I am not happy playing at.” Roger Federer remarked in London in November that Murray looked to be playing “top 30” tennis, and might even improve on that. It is not a place Murray would be happy, though. Now he has to deal with Bautista Agut. Few had expected Murray to beat Nadal in the semi-finals in New York but he did, raising hopes he could somehow produce the same result against Federer in the final. Despite some flashes of resistance, he lost to the dominant Swiss in straight sets. Five times Murray reached the final of the year’s first major and five times he lost: 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016. No one has lost that many times in a slam final without ever winning it at some stage. The closest he came was defeat in four sets in 2013 and 2015, both to  Djokovic. A stellar year ended on something of a low note. He already had hip problems and he had withdrawn from the French Open in May so he finally took the decision to try and sort out the issues in time for the next season in order to defend his hard-won Wimbledon title. Eleven years into his professional career he broke new ground at Roland Garros. For so long he had failed to produce performances that matched his world ranking but then he reached the final in Paris. His old nemesis, Djokovic, was there, lying in wait again. Given his condition at Wimbledon in 2017, where he limped and lost to Sam Querrey in the quarters, it was clear something had to be done. Hip surgery wasn’t a surprise in early 2018, but the location – Melbourne – was and slow recovery meant he only played the US Open. In his last tournament, Bautista Agut beat Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic and Tomáš Berdych to lift the title in Doha. Monday’s match could be an ugly spectacle, but Murray will give what he has left all the way to the end. Murray was aware of the whispers that he was finished. “You guys see me running around a tennis court, walking between points,” he said of his now trademark limp. “I know it doesn’t look good and it doesn’t look comfortable. There are little things, day to day, that are also a struggle. It would be nice to be able to do them without any pain – putting shoes on, socks on, things like that. “That’s the main reason for doing it. If I was to have an operation for that, I would rehab correctly, do it properly to give my hip the best chance at being good as it can be. But I am also realistic. I know it’s not an easy thing to come back to or play professional sport to a high level. I mean it has been done; Bob Bryan had this operation post-Wimbledon last year and he is back playing. I have had lots of communications with him about it. But there is a difference between singles and doubles in terms of the physicality and the movement. Certainly no guarantees there.” And, no, he would not contemplate a career in doubles. For now, and probably forever, it is over. He will be hugely missed – by fans, rivals and even the media he occasionally jousted with in one of the most entertaining and interesting careers in the history of British sport.My competitive football career started at Invergordon Academy in the Scottish Highlands, before I progressed to Invergordon Town at the age of 15. Since then, I’ve played in about 1,600 matches and scored well over 400 goals. The game I most remember was a local derby for Sherborne Town against another Sherborne side. I scored a hat-trick, but I also broke the goalkeeper’s thumb with a shot. You never forget a hat-trick. I scored another when I was 65. When I go on the pitch, I always say to the opposition, “I’m getting on a bit, but treat me as a normal player. Tackle me hard, I don’t mind, because I’ll be doing it to you.” I don’t want to be treated as an old person. And one or two do come in hard, and sometimes they’ve come off worse. One of my nicknames is The Tank. I’ve never been a dirty player, mind you. I have a routine to keep fit. Every evening before bed, I go to the window and take in 10 really, really deep breaths of fresh air. And I do the same thing in the morning – 10 breaths of fresh air, really holding it in my lungs. Living in Weymouth, we have lovely sea air. But wherever I am, I do this routine. And I’m strict with my diet. I live alone and I know what food is good for me and what isn’t. Certain foods suit the body. I’m disciplined, too. When I have a cup of tea, I take just one biscuit from the tin. I wouldn’t think about taking any more. Discipline, desire, dedication, determination and drive: I’ve tried to conduct my life by those five Ds. Discipline, desire, dedication, determination and drive : I’ve tried to conduct my life by those five Ds Playing football does make me feel young. People say, “You’re never that age.” Getting older is not a nice thing. I also play keyboards and sing in the pubs and clubs, and one of my gigs is at a rest home where there are obviously a lot of elderly people. I think, “Oh, I don’t want to get like that.” People have asked if I’d play walking football. It’s fine for those who can’t run very quickly, but it’s not for me. For as long as I can run around at a reasonable pace, I won’t attempt walking football. I want to play the game at the rate it should be played. I was a precision engineer by trade and we were on piece work; the quicker you worked, the more bonus you earned. It’s an in-built thing for me. I’ve never slowed down. The difficulty I’ve had in the past few years is finding a team. Veterans’ teams are constantly folding, including the team I signed for a couple of seasons ago. On the Thursday, the manager had 14 players available; but by the Sunday, only eight were available. He just said, “That’s it. I’m finished with veteran footballers. You’re not reliable.” So I’m without a club at the moment. Veterans football has become very competitive compared to 10 years ago, and I don’t want to play for cups and medals. I want to play in a competitive game, yes, but with the social side of it afterwards – food laid on, talk about the game, have a couple of pints. I miss the banter. In one pub, we even had a post-match singalong around the piano. I’m still available. There’s no question about that. I came to England from Jamaica in 1959 as a fast bowler, to play professionally for Crompton Cricket Club in the Central Lancashire League. They paid me £300 for the summer, but I had to pay my own air fare to come over. My first impression of England? That it was cold! The standard here was very good. I played that summer, then came back again the next summer and finally settled here in 1961. I’ve played with and against some legends, including Gary Sobers, Frank Worrell and Wes Hall. They also played professionally in Lancashire during the summer. Sobers played in the Central Lancashire League at the same time as me. I played for Lancashire over-50s until I was 70; now I play for Uppermill 2nd XI. We’ve got about five youngsters in the team, as well as me, and someone else who’s 75. I’ve played in the same team as my son, too. He’d bowl from one end and I’d be bowling from the other. I played 32 matches last summer and took roughly 30 wickets The opposition probably think, “I don’t want that old man to get me out,” so they up their game a little. My bowling is a little slower these days, but I still know how to get people out. I played 32 matches last summer and took roughly 30 wickets. One thing that annoyed me: in our final match I was on a hat-trick, but as I ran in to bowl, I slipped. Honestly, though, I don’t keep a close eye on how many wickets I’ve taken. I’m there to enjoy the game, like everybody else. Some fellas I know keep telling me, “I did this and I did that and I’ve got these trophies,” and all that. I’ve got trophies but I don’t crow about them. Even as a professional, I didn’t count up how many wickets I’d taken over a season. My wife keeps a scrapbook and I was looking through it yesterday. It says that way back in the 1980s, I had taken 1,780 wickets. I’ve taken a lot more now. Someone said more than 2,000. I don’t have a special diet. When I get an injury, I don’t cry off – I try to play through it. I’ve played a match with a pulled hamstring before and just rested it after. I stay active outside the cricket season, coaching the kids at the club. And I play bowls, too. Cricket’s in my blood, ever since I played barefoot back home in Jamaica as a kid. Everyone asks, “When are you going to finish?” I always tell them that I’ll wait to see what happens next year. I feel well at the moment. I think I’ll just keep going. I started road running when it became popular about 30 years ago. It was the London Marathon that made me want to – not that I intended to run a marathon. Running was something I really wanted to do but I was a bit nervous. I felt embarrassed. I thought the neighbours would think, “What is she doing?” Nowadays there are loads of women runners out on the road, but back then it was rather unusual. One day, I plucked up the courage and ran round the block. I started out rather casually, as though I was running for the bus, and then sped up after I went round the corner. I huffed and puffed, but when I got back, I thought, “I love this. I want to go again.” My first race was a 4km fun run. It was a team event, so I got a few people at work together. Most viewed it as a one-off, but my friend and I carried on afterwards. The following year, we did our first London Marathon together. We didn’t really have a training schedule; we ran five miles on weekdays, but added an extra mile to our longer Sunday run each week. We built up that way. It is good for relieving stress. When my husband was ill, I’d come home from hospital and go for a run That first marathon was tough. I reached the last few miles and said to myself, “If I finish this, I will never do anything this stupid again.” Then I ran it the following year and have done another 16 since then. I didn’t keep to that very well, did I? All have been the London Marathon, except for the time I ran the Lochaber one. That was beautiful, but very different: there was barely a soul about, and it was like a very long training run. London does get crowded. Everyone’s running on your heels and you’re running on others’ heels. I still think it’s the best, though. I did it in 2018 because I wanted to be the oldest woman, which I was. I won my age group, too – but I still didn’t get a place in the 2019 race [414,000 people entered the ballot; there are only about 17,000 places]. How unfair is that? I’ve tried track running, but going round in circles doesn’t do it for me. I tried the treadmill in the gym, but I could see the park through the window. I thought: “What am I doing in here? Why am I not running out there?” I still run four times a week. Having friends at my running club who are younger than me makes me feel younger. It is also good for relieving stress. When my husband was ill, I’d come home from hospital and go for a run – it was therapeutic. I want to run marathons until 2020, at which point I’ll be 85. That might be the end of the marathons, I think. But not running – I won’t give up running. I didn’t start playing table tennis until I was in my 20s; before that, I was playing county level tennis. I stopped playing when I had children and didn’t return for many years. But when I went back to work, I took it up again: there happened to be a table there. I played at lunchtimes and one of the men asked if I could be a reserve for their local league team. I didn’t play seriously until I started competing in veterans’ tournaments when I was 50. I was free from looking after the children by then. The first tournament I can remember was in Coventry, where I won the over-40s. The woman I beat was 42. She said, “I don’t mind being beaten by a 40-year-old, but not a 50-year-old!” The first big tournament I won was the Veterans European Championships in Vienna in 1995, when I was 65. I won the over-60s and beat the then world champion and a previous world champion. I’ve become world champion myself since, but I still think the first was my biggest win. I’d never won anything like that before. They played the national anthem and I received a bouquet and a huge cup. Table tennis has taken me to places I would never have visited otherwise. I’ve played all over the world Table tennis has taken me to places I would never have visited. I’ve played all over the world. My husband wasn’t a keen traveller, but I travelled with a group of veterans. I liked China very much – I won the over-80s singles and doubles there. I thought Rio was exotic. Canada was wonderful. I was disappointed at the world championships in Las Vegas last June. I was defending the title I won two years previously in Alicante, but lost to a Japanese player in the semi-final. It was very close – 16-14 in the final game – so I only got the bronze. They don’t play national anthems these days because there’s no time. It’s an enormous event. In Vegas, there were 150 tables in one room and 5,000 players! I’ve possibly got my eye on the over-90s title at the next world championships in 2020. We’ll have to wait and see. I don’t think table tennis gets enough publicity in this country. It’s much more affordable than buying a set of golf clubs; you can pay as little as £20 for a good bat. And then there are the health benefits. King’s College London did an experiment with several activities for the elderly, and table tennis came out well. As well as the physical movement, there’s the rapid eye movement and concentration, which is supposed to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. I was honoured to receive an MBE for services to table tennis. My family were stunned. Prince Charles made the award. I’ve never been impressed with him on the news, but he was charming. He asked if I was still playing. When I said I was, he said, “That’s wonderful. But I don’t think I’m going to take you on today.” What started me off was my father buying me a lightweight bike when he was demobbed. He had been a cyclist before the war, so it was in the blood. My first race was as a 20-year-old in a 50-mile time trial in Northumberland; I was the fastest novice, which fuelled my enthusiasm. I won the Veterans’ Road Race World Championship in Austria in 1997 when I was 70. I was up against former professionals. On the Monday, I won the world championship and on the Wednesday I became the European Masters champion. I won by three or four lengths at both events. I’ve got photos of my finishes, with my one-armed victory salute – a bit like Alan Shearer! I got two huge cups for those races. I’ve got trophies galore and more than 100 medals. Over the years, I’ve ridden many 12-hour time trials, and at the age of 80 I was determined to do a 24-hour one. I lost an hour and a half to sickness, but I still broke the record for an 80-year-old. I covered 326 miles in that time. And I crashed near the finish, too. I still do between 150-180 miles a week on the bike I still do between 150-180 miles a week on the bikeI’ve nearly killed myself on numerous occasions. When I was about 60, I had a nasty accident in Northumberland. I was coming up to a junction and there was no marshal around. I hadn’t seen that a wagon had stopped. I hit it at about 25mph and landed in the middle of the road. I broke my collarbone, punctured my lung and had to have a plate put into my left arm. And when I was 73, I was nearly killed in Thailand. A van hit me head-on and left me bleeding at the side of the road. I had to have 29 stitches in my head. The secret of my longevity? I had a very long-living mother who died only a week before her 99th birthday. Other than that, I’ve led a normal life. We didn’t have the supplements we have today. I wasn’t living on just bread and jam, but it was a simple diet. I still do between 150-180 miles a week on the bike. Fortunately, living in Northumberland, the roads are quiet. But the real handicap – whether I’m heading out north, south, east or west – is that I’ve got to climb straight away. And you’re starting from cold, which is not good. Cycling has never been as popular as running, but the social aspect has gone completely. When I go out on a Sunday, the most I see riding together are two or three riders. At one time, we might have had up to 60 doing a club run. Everyone recognises me because I wear my original club colours. And I don’t wear a helmet. Never have – only when I’ve been racing. • Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).As attitudes towards cannabis shift, the fastest-growing group of users is over 50 – and marijuana’s popularity among seniors is beginning to change the American experience of old age. Why are more seniors getting high? It might make more sense to ask: “Why not?” As adults reach retirement, they age out of drug tests and have far more time on their hands. Some feel liberated to abandon long-held proprieties. Elegant vape pens and other attractive, discreet products have helped de stigmatize the drug among older Americans. “Legalization seems to make non-users seem a little less scared of it, and perhaps less judgmental,” says Jo, a 56-year-old cannabis user who preferred not to use her real name. The seniors using cannabis today aren’t your parents’ grandparents. The generation that camped out at Woodstock is now in its seventies. They’ve been around grass long enough to realize it’s not going to kill them, and are more open to the possibility it will come with health benefits. (By contrast, in a survey of one, my 100-year-old grandmother recently said she had no interest in medical marijuana.) Seniors’ affinity for weed is beginning to ripple across the US healthcare system. A 2016 study found that in states with access to medical marijuana, those using Medicare part D – a benefit primarily for seniors – received fewer prescriptions for other drugs to treat depression, anxiety, pain, and other chronic issues. For the most part, scientific research has not confirmed marijuana as an effective treatment for these conditions. But proven or not, a number of seniors evidently prefer it to the medications they would otherwise be taking. A study published last year in in the Journal of the American Medical Association found opioid prescriptions for Medicare part D recipients dropped 14% after a state legalized medical marijuana – a hopeful sign amid the opioids crisis. While some doctors have expressed concerns about seniors self-medicating with weed, virtually everyone agrees the public health consequences of opioids are far worse. And the most serious health concerns associated with marijuana, such as impaired brain development, tend to affect younger people. For the industry, seniors’ newfound interest in cannabis is a business opportunity. The Colorado edibles company Wana Brands, among many others, sells cannabis products reminiscent of medicines familiar to seniors. Wana sells extended release capsules as well as products with different ratios of THC and CBD, which intoxicate users to different degrees and can have a variety of effects on ailments. For someone who hasn’t seen a joint in 40 years, the modern dispensary can be a dizzying experience replete with dozens of products – topicals (lotions), tinctures, sprays – all promising to help you feel better, but also to get you stoned. Whether or not marijuana helps seniors to alleviate their conditions, many may enjoy a sense of control over their own wellbeing. Meanwhile, dispensaries in California and elsewhere cater to older clientele with discounts and shuttle busses. Dispensary owners like to brag about how many older women come in as evidence that they’re created an attractive and welcoming store. It hasn’t escaped the pharmaceutical industry that marijuana could soon be seen as a viable replacement for many of its products. Perhaps someday soon it will be normal for seniors to pass their last decades in a cannabis-induced haze. Got a question about cannabis? Alex Halperin wants to hear from you, and will protect your anonymity. Get in touch: high.time@theguardian.comA hostel in Prague has been named the best in Europe, best small hostel and best in the world for solo travellers in Hostelworld’s Hoscars awards. The RoadHouse (from £25.82pp pn), in the city’s old town, was described as the ideal place for sociable backpackers in the awards, which this year includes a new solo category, reflecting a 42% rise in bookings by lone travellers between 2015 and 2017. Solo travellers praised the Roadhouse’s large shared spaces, group walking tours, organised trips to local festivals and home-from home touches, including Netflix and nightly “family dinners”. A friendly rather than a party hostel, it is the laid-back sister hostel to Prague’s MadHouse. The Hoscars are based on data from more than 1.2m reviews submitted over the last year, rating over 36,000 properties in 170 countries. The 2019 awards ranks properties in 29 categories, with other new gongs for gap-year travellers and those on career breaks (aged 31-plus). The new solo travel categories aim to acknowledge hostels that encourage those travelling alone to meet like-minded people. The site’s bookings from solo female travellers increased by 45% last year, with the newly refurbished We Love F Tourists in Lisbon (from £12.37) winning the best hostel for solo female travellers category. It is an affordable hostel, in a safe, central location. Men are also welcome – the F stands for “friendly” and “fun-loving” among other things, the hostel says. The highest-rated hostel for male solo travellers is Hostel One Paralelo in Barcelona (from £16.40), which offers free dinners and free parties every night, and was also rated best for career breakers. Other awards include the best hostels on each continent, in each of the top 50 cities, the best for atmosphere and value for money. Brits continue to favour south-east Asia, voting Cozy Nook Hostel in Da Lat in Vietnam top (from £5.84), followed by Lub D Cambodia in Siem Reap (from £9.37) and Stamps Backpackers in Chang Mai, Thailand (from £7.10). In the UK, Wombats City Hostel in east London (from £25.48), with its vaulted-ceiling bar and all-you-can-eat breakfast, was named top hostel in England; family-run River House in Cardiff (from £20) was top in Wales; rural Skyewalker Hostel on Isle of Skye (from £20) for Scotland; and friendly Global Village hostel in the vibrant Queen’s Quarter of Belfast (from £14.50), topped the Northern Ireland ratings. “This year’s annual Hoscars mark a momentous 20 years since Hostelworld received its first booking in 1999,” says Hostelworld’s Gary Morrison. “A lot has changed since then, including the quality and variety of hostels … and the ability for backpackers to search, plan and book on the go via our mobile app.”Kevin De Bruyne is back in contention for Manchester City’s pivotal Premier League clash with Liverpool after training positively on Wednesday morning, having missed the last game due to a muscle problem. City host Jürgen Klopp’s side hoping to close the gap to the leaders to four points. De Bruyne had only recently returned from a second serious knee injury this season when being forced out of Sunday’s 3-1 win at Southampton. In all he has managed just nine appearances yet Pep Guardiola is optimistic the midfielder may start against Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium. “He trained today but tomorrow [Wednesday] we need another check in the morning but he is much better,” said the manager, before stating Thursday’s match is a big chance. “The reality is clear - we are seven points down so it will be the second game of the second leg [of league matches], so there a lot of points to play for. “I have the feeling it is a big opportunity for us to reduce the gap. My focus is the same. Everybody asking what will happen if you lose, but we are going to try. It is our chance to fight or the Premier League.” City have failed to beat Liverpool in their previous four meetings though the Catalan pointed to last term’s corresponding league fixture. “Last year we beat them 5-0 here. It is Liverpool, the best team in all England in history,” said Guardiola. “We can beat them. I know today nobody trusts us but it is what it is. They are in the moment the best team in Europe, in the consistency, the way they control the details in their game. “We are going to focus on what we have to do to win the game. Everyone is talking if we lose, but we can win.”As the Washington Wizards and New York Knicks rolled into town for the NBA’s ninth London game the league’s commissioner Adam Silver offered his full backing to Enes Kanter – who stayed in the US for the Knicks’ 101-100 defeat – amid reports that Turkey had requested an Interpol red notice for his extradition and arrest on terrorism charges. The Knicks’ Turkish center, who denies all charges, has been heavily critical of Turkey’s president Recep Erdogan, calling him the “Hitler of our Century”. The Turkish authorities in turn have accused him of having links with an armed group behind a failed coup in the country in 2016. Last month Kanter decided to miss the trip to London fearing he could be “killed by Turkish spies” – and his apprehension only increased on Wednesday when a Turkish state news agency revealed the country was seeking an international warrant for his arrest. When Silver was asked about the case at a press conference before the game, he made it clear where his sympathies lie. “I think it is very unfortunate Enes Kanter is not here with the New York Knicks but I absolutely understand his reasoning,” he said. “There is nothing more important to me as the commissioner in the league than security and safety of our players, even it is just on social media, so we take very seriously the threats that he received.” Silver also made it clear that the NBA had not intervened to keep Kanter away from London. “There are significant issues that he is dealing with, and I recognise that for the NBA, by virtue of the fact that we’re a global business, we have to pay a lot of attention to those issues as well,” he continued. “I support Enes as a player in this league and I support the platform that our players have to speak out on issues that are important to them.” On Wednesday Kanter admitted that he felt “trapped” in the US because of the international warrant for his arrest and reiterated that he did not feel safe coming to Britain. “Erdogan’s long arms are everywhere, so that’s why I didn’t really feel safe to go to London,” he said. “The Turkish government put a red notice under my name with Interpol when my team was on the flight, still in the air, so if I went to London, as soon as I left the plane they would send me back to Turkey.” Kanter, who supports the Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen who Turkey blames for being behind the 2016 coup, also denied being a terrorist. “The only thing I terrorise is the rim,” he wrote on Twitter. The Knicks could have done with Kanter as they lost despite leading 89-77 going into the final quarter. At that stage the Wizards – heavy favourites beforehand – had looked as flat as the 20,000 crowd. Yet as they began a run, aided by successive three-pointers from Otto Porter Jr and Bradley Beal, they finally went ahead. The teams traded leads in the final two minutes, with the Knicks going ahead 100-99 with just 3.3 secs remaining. The match was finally settled at the death when referees ruled that Knicks’ Allonzo Trier was called for goaltending on a layup attempt by Thomas Bryant with 0.4 seconds remaining – giving the Wizards a 101-100 victory. It was the Knicks 34th loss in 44 games, while the Wizards’ record improves to 17 wins and 18 defeats. But it is not a match that will linger in the memory.Barnet, the last non-league side in the FA Cup, refuse to leave the competition without a fight and may yet advance to the fifth round for the first time in their history. Brentford will certainly not expect an easy ride in next week’s replay at Griffin Park after this see-sawing draw at the Hive. Apparently several Barnet players groaned and clasped their heads in disappointment when they heard that they would face Brentford, as they had hoped to be paired with more prestigious opponents after pulling off a shock win at Sheffield United in the third round. So the fifth-round draw, made just before kick-off here, was probably not greeted with euphoria in the home dressing room, a potential trip to Swansea City being no closer to the stuff of dreams. But making history surely is, and Barnet’s players would be fuelled by the knowledge that they could boldly go where their club had never been. What is more, there was a record crowd at the Hive to bear witness to their attempt to reach the fifth round. Besides, Brentford would be an impressive scalp to claim. They may not be giants in the grand scheme of things but they boast mighty pedigree compared to Barnet. These London clubs share a city but are supposed to be worlds apart in terms of ability, with 70 teams standing between them in the football pyramid. Brentford are comfortable in 18th place in the Championship while Barnet sit 17th in the National League, below Halifax Town on goal difference. What is more, Brentford were evidently intent on quashing their lowly hosts and advancing with the manager, Thomas Frank, fielding a strong lineup, whereas Sheffield United had deployed a shadow side in the previous round. Barnet’s manager, Darren Currie, was forced to make a significant alteration to his team owing to the suspension of his first-choice goalkeeper, Mark Cousins. With the club’s only other goalkeeper, Rihards Matrevics, never having started a senior match, The club quickly arranged a month-long loan deal from Leeds United for Will Huffer, a 20-year-old with one senior start before this tie. Huffer did not have to make a save until the 20th minute here, thanks to the valour of his defence. When it came, the first save, from a tame shot from 20 yards by Sergi Canos, amounted to a useful warmup for the goalkeeper on a night when the temperature plunged below zero. Huffer had to do some plunging himself two minutes later but still could not get a finger to Moses Odubajo’s powerful long-range drive from wide on the right. Mercifully for Barnet, the shot rebounded out off the inside of the far post. That narrow escape triggered a feisty response from the hosts, who came close to opening the scoring when Dan Sweeney met a corner by Medy Elito. Luke Daniels dived to his right to push the defender’s header round the post. The goalkeeper had to intervene again moments later to thwart Ephron Mason-Clark after Barnet harassed the visitors into coughing up possession in a dangerous area. After enduring a tricky spell, Brentford regained the upper hand and Barnet resumed their tenacious defending. But a flash of class from Ollie Watkins undid the hosts five minutes before the break, the midfielder ramming a low shot beyond Huffer from nearly 30 yards. The non-league side showed their spirit and no little quality as they unsettled the visiting defence again before the break, Elito missing by a yard as he attempted to emulate Watkins’s breakthrough strike. Home supporters in the Bees Terrace spent half-time dancing to keep themselves warm and their spirits up. Five minutes into the second period they jumped for joy as Barnet drew level. Mason-Clark created the goal with a run down the right before crossing for Shaq Coulthirst, who poked into the net from 10 yards. The home team were not satisfied: three minutes later they seized the lead, provoking mayhem in the visitors’ defence before Coulthirst, once a teammate of Harry Kane in Tottenham’s U-23s, fired into the net. Now Brentford summoned a quick response, Neal Maupay sending Huffer the wrong way from the penalty spot after Watkins duped David Tutonda into a foul. Both teams chased victory in a thrilling last half-hour. Brentford might have thought they had restored order when they struck through a high-class counter-attack in the 72nd minute, Canos finishing after a pass from the right from Henrik Dalsgaard, freshly sprung from the bench. But still Brentford could not shake off the pesky non-leaguers. Three minutes later Dan Sparkes, another substitute, made it 3-3 by curling a brilliant free-kick into the top corner from 20 yards. Odubajo again struck a post as Brentford did their damnedest to shake off Barnet once and for allbut the non-league side did not yield.Kristin Scott Thomas is among the guest stars lined up for the imminent second series of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s BBC comedy-drama Fleabag. The Four Weddings and a Funeral star, a Bafta and Olivier award winner, will appear in an as-yet-unannounced role in the series, which is expected to air this spring. Adapted from Waller-Bridge’s one-woman play of the same name, Fleabag follows its troubled titular character as she muddles through millennial life in London, negotiating grief, social anxiety and a number of awkward sexual encounters. Its first series, which was shown on BBC Three in 2016, received widespread acclaim for its mix of black comedy and affecting drama, and currently holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The show’s second series, which Waller-Bridge says she dreamed up while on a bus, is said to be centred on the theme of “Fleabag v God”, as the character wrestles with issues of faith and is brought closer to her estranged sister Claire (Sian Clifford). As well as Scott Thomas, Fleabag’s second series will reunite Fiona Shaw with Waller-Bridge after the Irish actor appeared as the flinty MI6 operative Carolyn Martens in last year’s popular spy thriller Killing Eve, which was also written by Fleabag’s star and creator. The pair join the already announced Andrew Scott, best known for his performance as Moriarty in the BBC’s updating of Sherlock, who will appear as a man of the cloth who prompts Fleabag into a new way of thinking. Olivia Colman, Hugh Skinner and Hugh Dennis are among the returning cast members. Responding to the casting of Scott Thomas and Shaw, Waller-Bridge said, “they literally begged me to be in it. Begged me. Begged. One of them was crying.”Residents of a Welsh coastal town are confident they can strip a city on the other side of the globe of the fiercely contested title of being home to the steepest street in the world. Helped by a small army of citizens, Myrddyn Phillips spent a tiring day trekking up and down Ffordd Pen Llech in Harlech, north-west Wales, to try to prove it was steeper than Baldwin Street in Dunedin. Dozens of measurements taken by  Phillips, who has surveyed hundreds of hills and mountains, will be crunched by a mathematician and sent on to the local authority, Gwynedd council, to be verified. They will then be presented to Guinness World Records for it to make a ruling. The process will take several months but some in New Zealand were clearly rattled, with one person suggesting it may be worth resurfacing Baldwin Street to hang on to the title, which has turned the neighbourhood into a tourist attraction. Phillips told the Guardian: “We’re confident that the street will prove steeper than the current world record holder but only the data will show us if this correct. We had a very long but very enjoyable day trying to find out.” To try to establish if Ffordd Pen Llech was steeper than Baldwin Street, Phillips took his global navigation satellite system (GNSS) to Harlech, already renowned for its castle, golf course and the song Men of Harlech. He used a combination of hi-tech – a satellite dish – and low-tech – chalk to mark out key points, and bricks to keep a tripod steady – to take a series of measurements. “Luckily it was a perfect day, weather-wise,” he said. “If it had been frosty it would have been dangerous.” As a veteran mountain scrambler, Phillips has a head for heights but he said the road still left him a little dizzy. A volunteer also dropped a brick and was shocked to see it rolling down the hill. “Bricks don’t usually do that,” said Phillips. The project is the brainchild of Gwyn Headley, from Harlech. He and Phillips both featured in a book celebrating the UK’s “dullest” men. Phillips made the book as a measurer of mountains with Headley making the grade as an expert on follies. Headley said he was “quietly confident” Harlech would pinch Dunedin’s title. “But I’ll be on tenterhooks until we hear,” he said. The people of Harlech suspect that Ffordd Pen Llech is slightly steeper than Baldwin Street, with a gradient of 36% to Baldwin’s 35%. Headley also argues that the Harlech street is more “organic” than Dunedin’s, flanked by 300-year-old houses and an ancient route to the castle. “I think we don’t make enough of the town. If the street proves to be the steepest it could be a boost to the place,” he said. The people of Harlech received a boost from Ordnance Survey, which has analysed the street from afar. Eddie Bulpitt, a developer and consultant on geospatial information systems at OS, said the road rose 60 metres over its 350-metre length. He said: “The steepest five-metre section of road is a crampon, belay, rappel-needing, roped-on 46.30%. That’s steep.” He continued: “However, the steepest 10-metre section [the crucial distance for the world record] is 39.25%.” Bulpitt added: “So, great test of the legs to cycle up and a test of nerves to keep braking to a minimum on the way down. Might need a few spare chains and brake blocks too.” A spokesman for OS said it was up to Guinness World Records to adjudicate, but added: “We think this street in Wales has every chance of being the world’s steepest street.” However, the people of Dunedin may not give in without a scrap. Located in an otherwise quiet valley of the South Island city, Baldwin Street has attracted daredevils and adventure sports enthusiasts, prompting the local council to upgrade infrastructure and residents to launch cottage industries selling food, drinks and souvenirs. On social media Dunedin’s residents were contemplating a life without their treasured title. “We would have to change signage around the street and reprint a lot of brochures around town,” wrote one person on Facebook. “I have a great solution though: we just redo the signs and reprint the brochures with the title ‘the world’s first steepest street’. Tourists wouldn’t know the difference.” Another suggested Baldwin Street should reinvent itself as the world’s steepest cycle lane, while another mooted idea was to resurface the top of the street to increase the gradient and retain the title. The mayor of Dunedin, Dave Cull, said the street had faced challenges before but had seen them off. “If Wales turns out to have a steeper one we will just have to arrange one of our periodic earthquakes and tilt Baldwin a bit more,” he joked. It takes about 10 minutes to walk up the 350-metre-long Baldwin Street, but residents often do it in seven. “I have angina and climbing 276 steps is cheaper than going to the gym,” said Bindi Bezar, who operates a gift shop at the bottom of the street. The increasing popularity of the street has been a mixed blessing for residents, with some enjoying the novelty and others fed up with tourists going to the toilet in their gardens and peering into their houses. “I think a lot of tourists don’t know this is a real street, that people actually live here,” said Beverley McClay. “It’s very social, very busy. I often come out in my dressing gown to meet people, and the tourists like to watch me stacking wood, they ask me what I am doing.” In the past two years Baldwin Street has also become a popular destination in an unusual social media trend: snapping pictures at odd angles that create the optical illusion of the houses being severely lopsided. The trend has significantly increased visitor numbers, especially during the winter season, when tourists used to avoid the area. Guinness World Records sets out a definition for the steepest street based on its maximum gradient over a 10-metre span, comparing the vertical rise to the horizontal distance. The street or road also must be a public thoroughfare that is commonly used by the public, who are able to drive vehicles across it.Last week, as world leaders and business elites arrived in Davos for the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates tweeted an infographic to his 46 million followers showing that the world has been getting better and better. “This is one of my favourite infographics,” he wrote. “A lot of people underestimate just how much life has improved over the past two centuries.” Of the six graphs – developed by Max Roser of Our World in Data – the first has attracted the most attention by far. It shows that the proportion of people living in poverty has declined from 94% in 1820 to only 10% today. The claim is simple and compelling. And it’s not just Gates who’s grabbed on to it. These figures have been trotted out in the past year by everyone from Steven Pinker to Nick Kristof and much of the rest of the Davos set to argue that the global extension of free-market capitalism has been great for everyone. Pinker and Gates have gone even further, saying we shouldn’t complain about rising inequality when the very forces that deliver such immense wealth to the richest are also eradicating poverty before our very eyes. It’s a powerful narrative. And it’s completely wrong. There are a number of problems with this graph, though. First of all, real data on poverty has only been collected since 1981. Anything before that is extremely sketchy, and to go back as far as 1820 is meaningless. Roser draws on a dataset that was never intended to describe poverty, but rather inequality in the distribution of world GDP – and that for only a limited range of countries. There is no actual research to bolster the claims about long-term poverty. It’s not science; it’s social media. What Roser’s numbers actually reveal is that the world went from a situation where most of humanity had no need of money at all to one where today most of humanity struggles to survive on extremely small amounts of money. The graph casts this as a decline in poverty, but in reality what was going on was a process of dispossession that bulldozed people into the capitalist labour system, during the enclosure movements in Europe and the colonisation of the global south. Prior to colonisation, most people lived in subsistence economies where they enjoyed access to abundant commons – land, water, forests, livestock and robust systems of sharing and reciprocity. They had little if any money, but then they didn’t need it in order to live well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor. This way of life was violently destroyed by colonisers who forced people off the land and into European-owned mines, factories and plantations, where they were paid paltry wages for work they never wanted to do in the first place. In other words, Roser’s graph illustrates a story of coerced proletarianisation. It is not at all clear that this represents an improvement in people’s lives, as in most cases we know that the new income people earned from wages didn’t come anywhere close to compensating for their loss of land and resources, which were of course gobbled up by colonisers. Gates’s favourite infographic takes the violence of colonisation and repackages it as a happy story of progress. But that’s not all that’s wrong here. The trend that the graph depicts is based on a poverty line of $1.90 (£1.44) per day, which is the equivalent of what $1.90 could buy in the US in 2011. It’s obscenely low by any standard, and we now have piles of evidence that people living just above this line have terrible levels of malnutrition and mortality. Earning $2 per day doesn’t mean that you’re somehow suddenly free of extreme poverty. Not by a long shot. Scholars have been calling for a more reasonable poverty line for many years. Most agree that people need a minimum of about $7.40 per day to achieve basic nutrition and normal human life expectancy, plus a half-decent chance of seeing their kids survive their fifth birthday. And many scholars, including Harvard economist Lant Pritchett, insist that the poverty line should be set even higher, at $10 to $15 per day. So what happens if we measure global poverty at the low end of this more realistic spectrum – $7.40 per day, to be extra conservative? Well, we see that the number of people living under this line has increased dramatically since measurements began in 1981, reaching some 4.2 billion people today. Suddenly the happy Davos narrative melts away. Moreover, the few gains that have been made have virtually all happened in one place: China. It is disingenuous, then, for the likes of Gates and Pinker to claim these gains as victories for Washington-consensus neoliberalism. Take China out of the equation, and the numbers look even worse. Over the four decades since 1981, not only has the number of people in poverty gone up, the proportion of people in poverty has remained stagnant at about 60%. It would be difficult to overstate the suffering that these numbers represent. This is a ringing indictment of our global economic system, which is failing the vast majority of humanity. Our world is richer than ever before, but virtually all of it is being captured by a small elite. Only 5% of all new income from global growth trickles down to the poorest 60% – and yet they are the people who produce most of the food and goods that the world consumes, toiling away in those factories, plantations and mines to which they were condemned 200 years ago. It is madness – and no amount of mansplaining from billionaires will be adequate to justify it. • Dr Jason Hickel is an academic at the University of London and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His most recent book is The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions. This is one of my favorite infographics. A lot of people underestimate just how much life has improved over the last two centuries: https://t.co/djavT7MaW9 pic.twitter.com/kuII7j4AuWPat McDonagh earned the nickname Supermac as an Irish teenager after a barnstorming performance in a Gaelic football match in the late 1960s. The centre half-back guided his school, Carmelite college of Moate, County Westmeath, to victory over St Gerald’s, a more fancied team. On Tuesday, half a century later, McDonagh prevailed in a different arena when his fast-food chain, Supermac’s, won a landmark legal battle against McDonald’s over the use of trademarks. The Galway-based firm persuaded the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to cancel McDonald’s use of the “Big Mac” trademark, opening the way for Supermac to expand across Britain and continental Europe. McDonald’s can appeal against the ruling. “We’re delighted. It’s a unique victory when you take on the golden arches and win,” McDonagh, Supermac’s managing director, said. “This is a victory for all small businesses. It prevents bigger companies from hoarding trademarks with no intention of using them.” The EUIPO, which is based in Alicante, Spain, ruled that McDonald’s had not proven genuine use of Big Mac, which it trademarked in 1996, as a burger or restaurant name. The trademark had stymied Supermac’s ambition of expanding beyond Ireland because McDonald’s had argued that similarity between Big Mac and Supermac would confuse customers. “We said there’d be no confusion. Big Mac and Supermac are two different things,” said McDonagh, 65. He opened the first Supermac’s in Ballinasloe, a town in county Galway, in 1978. The company now has 106 outlets across Ireland and Northern Ireland. In a statement, Supermac’s said it had won a David versus Goliath battle against trademark bullying by a powerful multinational. “They trademarked the SnackBox, which is one of Supermac’s most popular products, even though the product is not actually offered by them,” said McDonagh. “The EU is basically saying either use it or lose it.” On the day of the Brexit vote in Westminster the case showed the value of European Union membership, he said. “You can go to the EU and get a fair hearing.” McDonald’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.This week’s record-smashing heatwave is over for now in Australia’s south-east, but the reprieve will be short-lived as temperatures build up again in the coming days. A perfect storm, or rather the lack of one, is partly to blame for the extreme temperatures, with neither the northern monsoons nor the southern cool fronts making their usual appearances. “For pretty much most locations in the southern part of Australia, the heatwave is over,” said the Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Dean Narramore. “So it should be a much cooler weekend for many areas, but then we’ll start seeing the heat return at least in Adelaide as we move into Monday, back into the high 30s. “The rest of South Australia will be much much hotter, getting into the mid 40s probably from around Tuesday.” Perth is expected to reach 39 to 40C, and the inland area will have temperatures in the low-to-mid 40s, which will then head east. “We could see widespread low-to-mid 40s for many areas again and possibly some of that heat reaching the [east] coast,” said Narramore. Melbourne would possibly reach 40C later in the week, he added. Parts of the country were still hot on Saturday, reaching 42.1C in Bourke, New South Wales, and 42.5C in Birdsville, Queensland. Temperatures in Menindee, the site of devastating mass fish kills, were hovering a few degrees below 30C after hitting 47C on Wednesday and Thursday. The Bureau of Meteorology was still analysing the heatwave event, but Narramore said it appeared that the last week had been “one of the biggest and most intense heatwaves we’ve seen in a long time”. He estimated that at least 20 records had been broken. Previous climate change analysis by the CSIRO and BoM has found that every part of Australia will see increasingly longer hot spells, rises in average temperature, and more frequent hot days. Australia has warmed by 1C since 1910 and temperatures will continue to climb. According to the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, Australia has warmed by 1C since 1910, and temperatures will increase in the future. So how will climate change affect future heatwaves in Australia? The CSIRO and BoM have compiled different models for predicting the outcome of climate change in Australia to produce a guide to how different regions will likely be affected. They found that every part of Australia will continue to experience increases in average temperature, and will have a higher frequency of hot days. The duration of hot spells will increase in every region. In many areas in the northern half of Australia, the average number of days above 35C could increase by two to three times. Late in the century, towns such as Darwin, Alice Springs and Broome  may experience days with temperatures above 35C for about a third of the year. These higher temperatures will also result in higher evaporation, which will continue to make drought conditions worse. Temperature records were broken across the country over the past week, and Australia’s highest ever overnight minimum was recorded in Noona at 35.9C. In South Australia, Tarcoola and Port Augusta had their hottest days on record (49C and 48.9C respectively), and the NSW town of Tibooburra had its highest minimum temperature on record of 34.2C. Canberra had four consecutive days above the 40C mark and Broken Hill had three – both for the first time in recorded history. The already hot central desert region also experienced record heat, although not worse than the last heatwave. Ernabella set a new high at 44.5C. At midday on Saturday, there were 68 fires burning across NSW with 26 uncontained, the state’s rural fire service said. Fire bans remained in place across parts of the state. In the Northern Territory, firefighters worked to put out a blaze at Standley Chasm on Friday, which closed roads and several sections of the Larapinta trail. The bureau’s last climate statement noted that December had Australia’s warmest Christmas Day and Boxing Day on record. Narramore said there were two main reasons for the back-to-back heatwaves. “One is the very late monsoon, which normally covers northern Australia with clouds and showers, and cools the top of the country down. So the air continues to heat up over weeks and months,” he said. “The other reason is no strong cold fronts over southern Australia, which would normally flush out the hot air. “So there’s no relief up north and no relief down south … we need the monsoon to kick in or a nice front.” Authorities warned people to stay hydrated and check in on family and neighbours, particularly the elderly, as the heat returned.The children of an Islamic State fighter who were abandoned in Syria have been reunited with their mother, a month after the Guardian tracked down their family in Trinidad. Mahmud and Ayyub Ferreira, now aged 11 and seven, were abducted by their father and taken to Syria in 2014, where they spent several years living in the so-called caliphate before ending up in the hands of Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces. On Monday, they were released into the care of their mother, Felicia Perkins-Ferreira, who had never left Trinidad before travelling 6,000 miles from the Caribbean to be reunited with her sons in north-east Syria. After crossing the Iraqi border with the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, the family was flown to Switzerland with the help of Roger Waters from the rock band Pink Floyd. The two boys and their mother cried when they were reunited in the Syrian Kurdish administrative capital, Qamishli, hugging each other close. Perkins-Ferreira cleaned their faces with baby wipes and changed them into the clean clothes she had brought with her. More used to humidity and tropical heat, the Trinidadian mother was well wrapped up against biting temperatures that dipped to -2C.On the long drive back across the border to Iraq, Ayyub and Mahmud slept on their mother’s lap. She slept, too, she said.“That was the first time I’ve slept properly in four years,” said Perkins-Ferreira, who said she had been left traumatised by being separated from her sons. “I often wouldn’t eat for days, thinking: ‘If they’re not eating, why should I?’” On Tuesday, the family travelled to London where the two boys will receive counselling to help them recover from their ordeal. “I’m really, really grateful and I wish I could meet [all the people who helped] all in one and embrace them,” said Perkins-Ferreira. Kidnapped the day after Ayyub’s third birthday, the boys spent several years in Isis territory before the US-led coalition closed in and their father sent them out of Raqqa towards Turkey with their Belgian stepmother. They were found on the side of the road by the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces and held at Camp Roj with the families of dead or imprisoned militants. The boys’ father is believed to have died in the fighting and their step-mother is being held in a different Kurdish camp. The brothers were so traumatised by their experiences they could not remember their mother’s name, but they clung on to pictures of her, which the Guardian used to find Perkins-Ferreira in Petit Valley, a quiet suburb just outside Trinidad’s capital, Port of Spain. She had received only intermittent news of her sons over the past four years. Stafford Smith, of the international legal nonprofit Reprieve, enlisted the financial help and private jet of Waters to get the Ferreria boys out of Syria, after asking the Trinidad and Tobago authorities to issue emergency travel documents for the children. At the river border where the Tigris separates Syria from Iraq, officials hurriedly ushered the family on to a boat across the fast-flowing river and through a checkpoint kept open beyond normal hours to accommodate their passage. As the snow-capped mountains on the Turkish side of the triangular border receded and night fell, the marathon journey was extended by a two-hour police security check in Dohuk, where officers verified the boys had been taken to Syria against their will and posed no threat. In Erbil, where they arrived shortly before 1am, they were embraced by an emotional Waters, who put them up in a suite on the top floor of the Rotana hotel. The following morning, they boarded a plane chartered by Waters to Zurich, from where they travelled to London to begin a rehabilitation programme Reprieve has put in place before their return to Trinidad. “We’re going to make sure that they get on with a really productive, decent life,” said Stafford Smith. Ayuub dreams of being a professional footballer and Mahmud wants to become a cricketer. About 1,200 more children like Mahmud and Ayyub are believed to be stuck in a legal limbo in Syria after the defeat of Isis. Kurdish authorities have repeatedly called on their western partners, including the UK, to take their nationals home, but many governments have stonewalled the issue. At least 12 British children, most of whom were born in the caliphate, are believed to be in Kurdish custody.David de Gea said the Premier League was now seeing “the real Manchester United” after they won 1-0 at Tottenham to extend Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s perfect start to his time as the club’s caretaker manager. De Gea was United’s hero, making 11 saves – the most he has made in a top-flight league game – with some of them taking the breath and the wind from Spurs’ sails. Solskjær has won all six of his matches since he stepped in for the sacked José Mourinho. It was an afternoon of misfortune for Mauricio Pochettino, the Spurs manager, who has been heavily linked with a move to United at the end of the season, when Solskjær’s short-term contract is due to expire. Harry Kane suffered a twisted ankle after a tackle from Phil Jones in what was the last action of the game while Moussa Sissoko had earlier left with a groin problem. The severity of Kane’s injury is unclear at present but the timing is far from ideal, with Son Heung-min now departing for the Asia Cup. For United Paul Pogba continued his swashbuckling form – he set up the 44th-minute winner for Marcus Rashford with a beautifully weighted pass – and, although they came to rely on De Gea, there was further evidence of a return to their traditions of fast, attacking football, particularly in the first half. De Gea said: “The manager brought some happiness, the players are playing well and the team is very strong now. This is the real Manchester United. We won the game against a top team, we controlled the first half but in the second half they had chances. I don’t even remember some of the saves so I can’t pick a best.” Solskjær has described De Gea on more than one occasion as the best goalkeeper in the world and he added a twist to hyperbole here. “There have been some great keepers at this club and he is challenging Edwin [van der Sar] and Peter [Schmeichel] for the No 1 spot historically. There were one or two fantastic ones and the rest were just about concentration. The team spirit is fantastic and, secondly, we’ve shown we can defend today.” Solskjær and Pochettino both stressed that the question of the permanent managerial position at Old Trafford was not something they wanted to discuss. Pochettino was disappointed that a driving performance had yielded nothing – he said the second 45 minutes was the finest football of his four-and-a-half-year tenure at the club – and he was concerned about Kane, who has a history of ankle problems. “My worry is that it was a bad tackle in the last moment,” Pochettino said. “It wasn’t the intention of the United player but it was a bad tackle and now he has bit of a swelling on his ankle and he was limping after the game. We are going to lose Son for the Asia Cup and, if Harry suffers an injury, it is going to be massive for us.” Pogba, who had fallen out with Mourinho, has been revitalised under Solskjær. “I am enjoying my football now,” Pogba said. “I like to be more attacking. I had to defend too much before and that is not my best attribute. This is my position. The manager tells me to get into the box and score goals. The best example is Frank Lampard.”The Brazilian government has pledged to ease environmental licensing regulations just days after the deadliest mining disaster in decades prompted calls for tougher controls and stricter punishments for ecological crimes. The torrent of mud and iron ore tailings that engulfed the community of Brumadinho on Friday continues to inflict a toll on residents, river systems and freshwater species. Rescue teams had by Monday recovered 60 bodies near the site, which is operated by Vale, one of the world’s biggest mining companies, but hundreds of people are still missing. Many were eating lunch or resting in a hotel when the tailings dam collapsed and swept them away in a tide of orange sludge. It is the second such calamity to strike a Vale facility in the state of Minas Gerais in less than four years. In 2015, 19 people were killed when a tailings dam burst at an iron ore mine in Mariana that the Brazilian company co-owned with the London-listed BHP Group. The amount of slurry this time is 75% lower, at 13 million cubic metres, but now, as then, the ecological damage is spreading far beyond the immediate area and could potentially persist for many years with grave consequences for local communities, wildlife and the national economy. Over the weekend, TV and social networks were filled with images of emergency workers in helicopters trying to pull people out of the mud. Now many posts have switched to the impact on fish, frogs and other freshwater species. “Rio Paraopeba has started to die,” noted one grim tweet with a video clip of oxygen-deprived fish leaping out of the turbid water and flapping their last on the land. Começou a morte do Rio Paraopeba. pic.twitter.com/EuP6CR1cMc The level of toxicity in the tailings is not yet clear, but iron oxide can choke river sand and poison the surrounding vegetation. It can also compact the soil, preventing new growth of plants on land. Three years after the previous disaster, water from the affected Doce River is still legally unfit for human consumption in 90% of monitoring stations. A second and bigger impact is the amplification by previous manmade environmental problems. The torrent of water stirred up the heavy metals buried in the sediment on the bottom of the river. This is a huge problem in the state of Minas Gerais, which has a long history of poorly regulated resource extraction, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is working on a series of reports on the ecological impact of the previous tailings dam collapse in Mariana. The immediate threat is to the 280km (174 miles) of Paraopeba River. Vale insists the problem will not spread to the São Francisco basin, but conservationists remain concerned. In this region, 64% of fish species are found nowhere else on Earth, according to the IUCN. Even before the contamination, 10% were already classified as vulnerable, including Simpsonichthys picturatus and Brycon orthotaenia. January is the end of the spawning season, which means the deluge affected fry and small fish in important species for fisheries, such as croakers, curimbatás and surubins. The slurry is expected to reach the hydropower plant at Retiro Baixo by Thursday, where the authorities hope it can be controlled in the reservoir without spreading down to the estuary and into the ocean, as happened in the case of the Mariana disaster. Hydropower generation and water supplies are likely to be affected for years. The costs have yet to be calculated. After the previous calamity, Vale and Billiton paid $1bn into land and river recuperation efforts and more in an out-of-court settlement to affected communities. Fishing is still prohibited so stocks can recover and a dam remains disrupted. A separate lawsuit in now under way in UK courts. Campaigners say it is essential to tighten regulations and punish those involved. “Good environmental regulation isn’t about adding costs to development, it’s about safeguarding people and avoiding massive clean-up costs like the ones we are now seeing,” said Stewart Maginnis, the director of the nature-based solutions group in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Part of the problem is short-termism. A safer alternative to tailings dams is dry stacking of mining waste. This process – which removes water from the slurry so it can be stored in a stable condition – has been used successfully in many other countries. In Brazil, a 2016 test of dry stacking in Pau Branco iron-ore mine found it was safer, better for water-recycling and required less monitoring and maintenance. Over the 20-year life of a mine, it was also far more cost-efficient. But the extra initial investment of $5-$10m appears to have put off many Brazilian mine owners, who are more used to taking advantage of the country’s abundant rivers. Brazil has the most abundant water resources in the world, but they are tapped with often reckless abandon and inadequate regulation. Less than one in five of the country’s 24,092 dams come under the supervision of the 2010 dam safety law, 42 are unauthorised and 570 have no responsible operator, according to the Folha de São Paulo newspaper. With a mere 154 inspectors for such a vast country, only 3% of Brazil’s dams were inspected last year, it said. The problems date back decades, but the risks look set to grow. The new administration of the president, Jair Bolsonaro, has neutered the environment ministry and pledged to ease the licensing system for new projects. Despite the latest calamity, Augusto Heleno, the head of the national security office, insisted the fast-track approval process would go ahead. “Making the process more flexible means having very strict rules, but allowing certain works that depend on licensing to happen. It does not mean loosening environmental licensing. On the contrary, licensing has to be done well, but it can not be delayed without fair grounds,” he said. Campaigners say this should now be unthinkable. “It would be offensive to victims of Mariana and Brumadinho if they fulfil that promise,” said Carlos Rittl, who heads the Climate Observatory umbrella group of environmental NGOs. Environmental crimes are often punished with small fines that often go unpaid. As a result, campaigners say transgressions build into “time-bombs” that can explode, as was the case in Brumadinho. To avoid this, they say those responsible should be imprisoned. “This cannot be called an ‘accident’ under any circumstances,” said Malu Ribeiro, the founder of the NGO SOS Mata Atlantica. “Such environmental crimes should be punished with the legal rigour that society expects.” Vale’s chief executive, Fabio Schvartsman, said in a television interview on Sunday that he did everything the law required. “I’m not a mining technician,” he said. “I followed the technicians’ advice and you see what happened. It didn’t work. We are 100% within all the standards, and that didn’t do it.”David Cameron never believed he would have to hold an EU referendum because he expected to fall short of an overall majority in the 2015 election, according to Donald Tusk. The European council president said the then British prime minister had told him he was relaxed about promising the referendum – which he had done to appease Eurosceptics in his party – because he thought he would again be in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who would block any such move. In an interview as part of a BBC documentary, Tusk said: “I asked David Cameron, ‘Why did you decide on this referendum, this – it’s so dangerous, so even stupid, you know,’ and, he told me – and I was really amazed and even shocked – that the only reason was his own party.” Tusk continued: “[He told me] he felt really safe, because he thought at the same time that there’s no risk of a referendum, because his coalition partner, the Liberals, would block this idea of a referendum. But then, surprisingly, he won and there was no coalition partner. So paradoxically David Cameron became the real victim of his own victory.” Tusk’s remarks, which echo longstanding suspicions that Cameron never intended to hold a referendum, were immediately disputed by Craig Oliver who was Cameron’s director of communications in Downing Street. He tweeted: “This is completely wrong. David Cameron spent the whole of the 2015 election campaign making clear he would not lead any form of government that didn’t have a referendum. Look at almost any interview he did. The coalition as ‘excuse to bail’ is a myth.” Tusk also said he warned Cameron that his decision to hold the referendum was “stupid”. He said he also warned him that his attempt to secure a deal on free movement of people before the poll was doomed to fail. In the documentary, Inside Europe: 10 Years of Turmoil, Tusk said: “I told him bluntly ‘Come on David, get real’. I know that all prime ministers are promising to help you, but believe me the truth is that no one has an appetite for revolution in Europe only because of your stupid referendum. “If you try to force us, to hurry us, you will lose everything. And for the first time I saw something close to fear in his eyes. He finally realised what a challenge he was facing.” Tusk also recalls a telephone conversation with Cameron during which he learned he was going to resign. “David Cameron called me and he informed me that he’s ready to resign,” Tusk said. “I said, ‘Yes David, it would be very difficult even to imagine that a prime minister who was the leader of remain’s campaign would be just two days later a prime minister negotiating Brexit.’ It was like his day of reckoning was coming, reckoning for his biggest mistake in his life.” In the three-part series for BBC Two, William Hague, George Osborne and Nick Clegg are also interviewed. Osborne, who was chancellor at the time, warned against a gamble that could be a “disaster for Britain”, but Hague believed there was no other option. “This was coming. Either we had to lead that or be the victims of it,”Hague said. The former French president François Hollande discloses how, after dinner during an overnight stay at Chequers in September 2015, he tried to persuade Cameron not to hold the referendum. “Nothing obliged him to hold the referendum when he did,” Hollande said. “This would not be the first time that a commitment made at an election had not been kept afterwards, but he wanted to show he could negotiate successfully with Europeans.” The first part of Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil, ‘We Quit’, is on Monday 28 January, BBC Two, 9pm.More than 400,000 new dollar millionaires were created last year as the fortunes of the already-well off ticked over into six-zeros despite the decline in global stock markets. It takes the number of millionaires across the world to 22.6 million. The global population of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), classed as those with between $1m and $30m (£775,000-£23.3m) in liquid assets, grew by 1.9% to 22.4 million in 2018, according to the research firm Wealth-X. On top of this there were a further 255,810 ultra-high-net-worth individuals with fortunes of more than $30m. The most millionaires are in the US, with 8.7 million, followed by China (1.9 million), Japan (1.6 million), Germany (1 million) and the UK (900,000). The UK’s HNWI population grew by 1.5%, with a combined wealth of $2.4bn, up $36m on the previous year. The UK’s richest person is Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the founder and chief executive of the petrochemicals firm Ineos and a high-profile Brexiter, with an estimated fortune of £21bn and two superyachts. Almost one million millionaires live in New York City, making it by far the biggest city for the wealthy. Tokyo is in second place with 593,000 millionaires, followed by Los Angeles with 576,000. Wealth has been growing fastest in Africa, according to the report. It predicted the number of dollar millionaires in oil-rich Nigeria would increase by 16% over the next five years. There are currently 29,500 millionaires in Nigeria, and the country’s richest person, Aliko Dangote, controls a $10bn fortune that makes him the world’s 134th most wealthy person. Egypt, where there are 22,000 millionaires, was expected to be the second-fastest growing at 12.5%.. In Asia, it predicted the number in Bangladesh would grow by 11.4%. This was despite one in four Bangladeshis living in poverty, according to World Bank figures. Wealth-X said: “The strong forecast growth for the countries above is a direct result of strong fundamental economic and financial forecasts in each of these markets,. “In addition to a relatively stable exchange rate against the US dollar (with the exception of Egypt which is forecast to see about 4% drop in its currency value against the dollar), the GDP (measured in current dollars) [was expected to] grow by between 9% and 13% year-on-year between 2018 and 2023.”Inhaling the sharp scent of fresh pine, I lean over the half-open carriage doorway as tufts of dandelion heads whip by on the wind, and a bald eagle swoops overhead. Barely 12 miles have passed since we departed Jasper, Alberta, but I’m desperate to spot a bear. So far unsuccessful, I gaze out as the Skeena train approaches the south face of Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. Against an electric-blue sky, and worshipped by a congregation of conifers gathered at the base, its ice-capped crags wink and glisten in the sun, a halo of cloud revolving around its tip. Derived from the dialect of the Gitxsan First Nations people, meaning river of the clouds, the Skeena goes by a number of pseudonyms: fitting for a train as little known (by tourists) as it is beautiful. Affectionately known by commuters as the Rupert Rocket – or its rather dry official name, Train Five – the Skeena takes two days to cover the 1,160km journey from Jasper national park to Prince Rupert on the Pacific coast, with an obligatory overnight stop in the town of Prince George. Until the mid-1990s, the Skeena operated as an overnight service running straight through to Prince Rupert from Jasper. However, a downturn in the economy saw local communities suffer and the mayors of towns along the route agreed that they needed business, concluding that the train had to halt overnight in Prince George. Passengers could then have dinner and find a motel for the night before re-boarding the train in time for breakfast the following morning. Setting off from Jasper three times a week (Sun, Wed, Fri), the train worms its way north-west up the province of British Columbia past Moose Lake and the Cariboo Mountains, curving around freshwater lakes filled with salmon, First Nations reservations, logging towns and old sawmill settlements, clattering along a number of historic bridges before it reaches its destination. Most railway fans visiting British Columbia tend to ride the more expensive services, the most popular being the Canadian from Vancouver to Toronto or the luxury Rocky Mountaineer, but this commuter loop into the extreme depths of Canadian wilderness is one of the most quietly spectacular journeys in the world. Built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, the train carries about 334 passengers a week, not only offering tourists the chance to photograph teal-green lakes, majestic old elk, black bears, white-tailed deer and bald eagles but providing a lifeline to local residents along the route. Stopping at more than 30 stations between Jasper and Prince Rupert, with names such as Telkwa, Kitwanga, Kwinitsa and Vanderhoof, the train draws out the odd passenger who appears from deep within the woods as though flagging down a bus. We pass Longworth, so remote that three times a week Walter the postman opens up his house for two hours so people can come and collect their post, then Penny, home to nine people and four dogs, its station no bigger than a Cotswolds cottage. As we pull away, a trio of moose scarper down a drop, their antlers bobbing away through the trees. During a lull in the journey, I work my way up to the tail end of the train where I discover a viewing car with a comfortable lounge, books and complimentary coffee and tea. From mid-June to late-September, a “touring” class is operated here, offering those passengers (paying a premium for it) exclusive use of the panoramic dome car, and including meals and drinks but, for the rest of the year, the train operates a standard service. Curling up on an old sofa, I wrap my palms around a cup of peppermint tea and gaze out of the back window watching a pair of hawks duck and dive above a lake stretched out like a sheet of blue glass. I stay here for a couple of hours before giving up on bear-spotting and gather my things together, glancing through the window once more, just in time to see a small black bear bound away from the track and into the woods. • A single journey from Jasper to Prince Rupert in economy class costs from C$142 (£83), viarail.ca Nice to Dignes-les-Bains, FranceThe French Riviera is home to one of the loveliest coastal journeys but venture inland for a taste of the hidden Mediterranean via the metre-gauge Train des Pignes. Dating from 1890, the train traces the valleys and gorges of the Var river high into the mountains through medieval towns and fortresses, creeping past villages and stopping at sleepy towns rich with the scent of lavender. Four trains run a day so passengers can hop on and off for picnics or short hikes before returning on a later train to Nice.• Return fare €48, 3 hours and 20 mins each way, trainprovence.com Trivandrum to Kanyakumari, IndiaShort but sweet, The Island Express from Trivandrum takes you through the cool, jungle depths of Kerala to the southernmost tip of India where the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean meet. Cocooned by coconut groves and leaves flapping against the open windows, the train travels at an average speed of 15mph, crawling behind houses and along rivers, arriving just in time for you to buy an ice-cream and find a spot on the beach to watch the sun go down.• One-way fare £8, 3½ hours, cleartrip.com Ürümqi, China to Almaty, KazakhstanOver two days, this commuter train works its way out of the desert expanses of Xinjiang Province, crossing into Kazakhstan through some of the most rugged of Central Asia’s landscapes. Running along the Tian Shan mountains, their wizened old heads greyed with ice and veiled by rolling cloud, you’ll witness the terrain expand and shrink by the hour. Green lagoons appear in the distance shining between fingers of yellow sand, then vanish instantly as black clouds descend on the horizon.• One-way fare £192, 35 hours, realrussia.co.uk The Circum-Baikal, RussiaWhen travellers take the Trans-Siberian from Moscow to Vladivostok, a number of them break up the journey in Irkutsk from where you can visit Lake Baikal by steam train along a now-disused part of the old Trans-Siberian railroad. Formed in the middle of a giant crack in the Earth’s crust – the Baikal rift – the lake is dubbed the Galápagos of Russia by Unesco, owing to the endemic species of flora and fauna in the area. A short train ride from Irkutsk will bring you to Slyudyanka where the Circum-Baikal train departs every day except Mondays and Tuesdays.• Return fare £94, 14-hour round trip from Irkutsk-Slyudyanka-Lake Baikal-Irkutsk, baikalex.com Åndalsnes to Dombås, NorwayIn less than two hours passengers on this route can experience some of Norway’s most wild and varied landscapes. In summer the train passes by meadows carpeted with buttercups while snow-capped mountains rear up in the background, before skirting cliff faces and crossing old bridges as the Rauma river roars and crashes below. In winter clouds obscure the peaks and blizzards flare up from one moment to the next, giving an extra edge to the raw terrain. At Dombås there are train connections to Oslo and Trondheim.• Return fare £46; 1 hour and 40 mins each way, nsb.no Around the World in 80 Trains: a 45,000-Mile Adventure by Monisha Rajesh (Bloomsbury, £20) is published on 24 January. To order a copy for £17.60, including UK p&p, visit The Guardian Bookshop This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.The American doubles champion Bob Bryan, who is back on a tennis court five months after having a metal implant in his hip, says the surgeon who saved his career can do the same for Andy Murray, who is seriously considering having the operation. Desperate for one more appearance, at least, at Wimbledon this summer, Murray has already spoken to the doctor, Edwin Su, of the world-renowned Hospital For Special Surgery in New York, and Bryan says: “I think he’s going to have the surgery.” Murray, who limped away from the Australian Open in agony on Monday night, will decide in the next week whether to postpone the operation and try to play Wimbledon just on the work done with a physiotherapist, or walk away from tennis forever and have the operation now to improve his quality of life. The odds are on the latter, but Bryan – a 23-times grand slam doubles champion – thinks Murray is capable of defying them and playing again. “Dr Su has put a guy back in Major League Baseball, an NBA guy, put a guy back in NHL. He’s never had a guy back in singles in tennis, but he’s the only guy that will give you a chance to come back to professional sports. “I think Andy could do it. I don’t underestimate him. You look at the great workers in history: [Ivan] Lendl, [Jim] Courier, [Andy] Roddick. This guy is maybe even a step up from those guys. No one’s done more research about hips, doctors. He already knew my doctor, all the cases. The guy is knowledgable beyond belief on the hip, on the surgery. “Andy has spoken to Dr Su. I don’t know who Andy is going to choose if he goes down this route, but I would recommend him. He’s a tennis fan – he knows it inside and out. “The operation is called hip resurfacing, with an artificial implant. It’s a full replacement, has the bar that goes all the way down the femur. This is a little more – a sports, high-performance, smaller metal implant. I was on crutches a couple days after the operation, on 2 August. I was at the US Open three weeks after surgery with a cane. At the end of September, I was hitting some light balls. We started our training December 5, hitting some balls pretty hard, playing some sets.” Bryan is now back in grand slam action and won his first-round men’s doubles match in Melbourne alongside his brother Mike on Wednesday – the pair, semi-finalists here last year, won two tie-breaks to beat Australia’s Alex Bolt and Marc Polman in straight sets 7-6 (4), 7-6 (1). He added: “I just presented an option for him. That guy does everything you can possibly do as far as training and rehab. He’s talked to a million specialists. But I’m really the only guy to be playing on tour with a metal hip. So he’s been watching me like a hawk, asking me how I’m feeling after matches, after practices, where I’m at. He’s trying to gauge how long it would take him, if this procedure is an option. “I never once told him this is the way to go, because I do see that singles is a different monster. Those guys are really sliding around, killing themselves for four hours. Who knows if this joint would hold up? It’s not going to break, but who knows if you have that little explosiveness needed to be super-quick on the singles court? If you’re a step slow, it’s very exposed out there on a singles court. “I’m just telling him, I feel great, quality of life is great, practices are going well. Maybe I’m not 100% yet, but I’m only five months in. The doctors said: ‘This is more of like seven or eight months until you feel perfect.’ “Until I feel that, I can’t give you the guarantee, but I think he’s to the point where this is probably his last option.”Kanye West has donated $10m (£7.77m) to the creation of a major work of land art by James Turrell. The money will fund the ongoing construction of Roden Crater in Arizona, which is described on the project’s website as “a controlled environment for the experiencing and contemplation of light”. The completed work will comprise a series of 21 viewing spaces connected by six tunnels, creating “a vast, naked eye observatory for celestial objects and events ranging from obscure and infrequent to the more familiar summer and winter solstice”. Turrell is an American artist who works with light, often in the open air. He is known for his numerous Skyspace installations, where audiences contemplate a patch of sky as if it were a canvas. He has been working on the Roden Crater project since 1977, when he acquired the dormant volcano, and said he was thrilled by the donation. The site is managed by Arizona State University, which is working with the artist to raise $200m to complete the project. West visited the crater in December, writing on Twitter: “This is life changing. We all will live in Turrell spaces.” He has long been a champion of the visual arts, commissioning artists such as George Condo and Takashi Murakami to design his album sleeves, and praising artists including Kerry James Marshall. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian West, announced on Monday that the couple are expecting their fourth child, to be born through a surrogate mother.The ornate, sculpted facade of Paris’s Palais de la Porte Dorée is a majestic allegory: at its centre is France, symbolising peace, prosperity and abundance, surrounded by her “possessions”, the colonies, offering up their riches. Today the magnificent art deco palace, built for the 1931 Colonial Exhibition, houses the History of Immigration Museum, a popular venue for school visits. Its director, Hélène Orain, says the museum is a vital reminder of France’s colonial past. “We have a duty to remember. We must say what we did, take responsibility for what was done, including the pillaging and abuses. Our role is to show how we changed the destinies of the countries and continents we colonised.” For the students queueing outside the museum on a bitterly cold morning last week, the news headlines made their visit particularly pertinent. In an undiplomatic outburst, Italy’s deputy prime minister, Luigi di Maio, had blamed France for forcing poor African migrants to flee their countries by running them as de facto colonies. “France has never stopped colonising tens of African states,” said Di Maio, leader of the populist Five Star Movement. “The EU should sanction France, and all countries like France, that impoverish Africa and make these people leave, because Africans should be in Africa, not at the bottom of the Mediterranean.” His comments came after two boats carrying migrants sank, one off the coast of Libya and a second in the Mediterranean, drowning an estimated 170 people. Quick to put the boot into Emmanuel Macron ahead of May’s European elections, Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right League party and Italy’s other deputy prime minister, said France had a “very bad government and president”. The language was hostile and on a subject always guaranteed to raise hackles in France: colonialism. During the 2017 presidential election campaign, Macron caused the French right to hyperventilate after describing colonialism as a “crime against humanity” during a trip to a former colony, Algeria. Historian Gilles Manceron noted at the time that colonialism continued to haunt the collective French memory. “It’s an embarrassing question”, he wrote, that prompts “a form of denial” as well as “nostalgia in certain regions”. But Di Maio went further than what L’Express magazine called “French bashing … à l’Italienne” and accused France of manipulating the economies of African countries that use the CFA franc as their currency, stifling their development. The CFA franc – made up of two distinct but interchangeable currencies – is used in 14 central and west African countries. It is pegged to the euro at a fixed exchange rate and is guaranteed by the French treasury. To its proponents, it offers stability and control over inflation for the poorer nations that use it; to its critics, it is a symbol of French imperialism that hampers growth. Patrick Smith of the Africa Report, an English-language magazine focusing on African economies and politics, said: “There are advantages for some and disadvantages for others, and individual countries have to assess it for themselves.” Roland Marchal, an Africa specialist at the Paris-based National Centre for Scientific Research, agreed. “We can criticise France, and I often do, but Italy seems to be forgetting how it behaves in its former colonies, like Libya. “Having the CFA is voluntary, so it’s for African economists to decide; it might be good for some countries and not for others.” He said Di Maio’s and Salvini’s comments were “utterly risible”. At the heart of the ongoing Franco-Italian row, however, are the migrants themselves. Since the Five Star and League parties came to power in Rome last June, France and Italy, both hampered by the absence of a unified EU policy on mass migration, have been squabbling over where the thousands of desperate people saved in the Mediterranean should go. Macron accused Italy, which has closed its ports to rescue vessels, of being “inhumane”. Rome accused Paris of “hypocrisy” after France tightened security along the French-Italian border to halt migrant crossings and refused to allow the migrant rescue ship Aquarius to dock at Marseille last September. Smith said Di Maio’s and Salvini’s recent comments were just rhetoric. “They’re trying to keep up the pressure over migration, and Macron is an easy target,” he said. “When we look at the origin of the migrants in this latest wave, we see very few from CFA-zone countries.” He added: “Europe’s relationship with Africa is dysfunctional for many reasons, but that’s down to all 28 countries, not just France.” At the museum, Orain points out what some in the Italian government appear to have forgotten: that around 24 million Italians emigrated in the 19th and 20th centuries, many to France. “During that period Italy was a poor country and there was a massive wave of emigration … you can go to the end of the world and find Italian communities there,” she said. And she thinks France should be more welcoming to those who seek to make a life in the country. “For a long time we wanted people from our colonies to come to France: we asked them to come here and used them in manufacturing, mining, textiles and as soldiers who were excellent cannon fodder in our wars. “This story was never told. When people spoke about the ‘real France’ they talked about villages, the curé, the town hall, the church bells, the fields … They forgot that from a very early time there were immigrants working in those fields. “We pillaged our colonies for human resources, and that was not positive. What we try to show here in the museum is how immigration has been positive for France and its history.”Johanna Konta could be the last of eight British players left in this Australian Open by the weekend, but she views her second-round match against Garbiñe Muguruza on Thursday with the same equanimity as she would an opponent from outside the top 100. And, having lost to too many outsiders in big tournaments in the past, she is aware that danger lurks in every match. Her memories of Muguruza are clear and largely encouraging, however. The only time Muguruza beat Konta was in qualifying in Luxembourg seven years ago, when both were still searching for their identity on Tour. When it mattered, Konta got the better of her on the grass of Eastbourne in a seaside stroll in 2015, not far from her home, then prevailed on a wickedly hot day at Flushing Meadows a couple of months later to tip the Spaniard out of the US Open in three long sets. Muguruza, two years younger at 25 and 20 places above her in the rankings at 18, has the better record (six WTA titles, including two slams, to three) and has won more money ($18.2m to $7.1m), but she is beatable, even on the big stage, where nerves have often kicked in. Here she made it on to Court No 3 on Tuesday to account for Saisai Zheng, 6-2, 6-3, in an hour-and-a-quarter. She said later, “It’s never easy, first round. I didn’t know a lot about my opponent, because this is the first time we played each other.” If that smacked of complacency, there will be no room for it against Konta, who goes in battle-hardened after taking nearly three hours to beat the combative Australian, Ajla Tomljanovic, in serious heat on Court No 3. Muguruza definitely remembers their match in New York, describing it as, “a tough second round. She can play very well.” Asked was she surprised that Konta has yo-yoed on the rankings, she said, “No, it’s just tennis.” Aggressive players, she observed, “have good moments and not so good moments.” Konta says of Muguruza: “If I have learned anything in the years I have been on Tour, it is anybody can play at the very highest level on any given day. And for someone to win two grand slam titles, still ranked in the top 20, she is a heck of a player. “Going on court against anyone, you don’t underestimate them, especially not someone like her. No I don’t think she is vulnerable – I think she is doing very well and I am looking forward to playing her again.” Pleasantries aside, Muguruza had by far the easiest route to the second round. The prize for both is a continued path to at least the quarter-finals where the likely opponent will be Serena Williams, who could hardly have been more imposing in her first match here since winning the title in 2017 when seven weeks pregnant. The 37-year-old American needs one more major to match Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24, and began her campaign on Tuesday by blitzing her neighbour back in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, Tatjana Maria, 6-0, 6-2, in 49 minutes. In the next round she plays the Canadian, Eugenie Bouchard, who was way too good for the Chinese wildcard, Shuai Peng, winning in just under an hour for the lost of three games. “She lives in the community next to me,” Williams said of Maria. “It’s nice. She’s a really nice person. And her husband is really nice. Her family is sweet.” It was tempting to wonder what she would have done to the German had they not been neighbours. So, she filled her post-match remarks with platitudes, flatly refusing to talk about her meltdown in the 2018 US Open final in September, which is perhaps understandable. It was more than four months ago. However, when asked why she had avoided media commitments in a place where she has had so much success and which has always made her welcome (unlike one or two other places on the Tour over the years), she insisted it was to spend more time with her young daughter, Olympia. Sentiment is fine; but she has obligations, as well, and sometimes this escapes her understanding. “That’s the priority for me,” she said. “It’s kind of what I do in Florida. I train and I go right home and I spend the rest of the day with my daughter. For now, as a working mom, I feel guilty. And I understand that that’s normal, but these are years I’ll never get back. I just try to spend every moment that I can when I’m not working with her.” Fair enough, many will say. But she will need to be fully focused once the draw thins out and the opposition improves. Bouchard is determined to provide stiff resistance. “I have had tough moments the past year, for sure, tough injuries,” said Bouchard, who once was No 5 in the world and last year dipped as low as 194, arriving here ranked 79. “When you lose early, it’s less fun, of course, but I feel like I’m improving.” Williams says she cares nothing for rankings. “I don’t want to give myself a ranking anymore. It gives me too many negative expectations. I always expect to reach the sky. Anything below it is not good enough for me. I just know that I’m going in the right direction.”A tender and rarely seen portrait of a boy by Lucian Freud that hung in a legendary Irish house tucked away in the Wicklow mountains for more than 50 years is to appear at auction for the first time. The 1956 painting, Head of a Boy, is of Garech Browne, the wealthy Guinness heir who became a patron of Irish arts and music and hosted wild, dazzling, parties at the fairytale-esque Guinness home and estate. Browne was 16 when he sat for the 34-year-old Freud at Luggala. The result was “a jewel of a painting”, according to Tom Eddison, a contemporary art specialist at Sotheby’s inLondon. “It is funny with Freud, you don’t really get a grip of how good he was until you see these things in person, especially these works from the 1950s which you don’t see very often. “It is so precise and so beautifully executed. It is a really extraordinary painting, a very tender and beautiful portrait,” he said. Freud first visited Luggala with his then wife, Kitty Garman, in the 1940s when Browne’s mother, the socialite Oonagh Guinness, reigned supreme. Freud and Garman were to divorce and the artist married into the family, eloping to Paris with Browne’s cousin Lady Caroline Blackwood in 1953. Freud and the young Browne were kindred spirits, with the artist sneaking him in to Soho drinking holes. He introduced him to figures such as Francis Bacon, who became a lifelong friend, and took him on an educative trip round the Louvre in Paris. As an adult, Browne became an important patron of the Irish arts, setting up Claddagh Records in 1959, which championed the band The Chieftains as well as poets including Seamus Heaney. Parties at Luggala, an 18th-century gothic-inspired hunting lodge, were the stuff of legend. They attracted Hollywood actors, politicians, poets, artists, rock stars and hangers-on. The Beatles took acid there; Kofi Annan enjoyed country walks in the 2,000-hectare (5,000-acre) estate. Other names in the Luggala guestbook include Brendan Behan, Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger, John Hurt, Dennis Hopper, Charlotte Rampling and Michael Jackson, who reportedly used Luggala as a hideaway for six weeks in 2006, soon after being acquitted of child molestation charges. Browne, the last custodian of Luggala, died in London last March, aged 78. The portrait is well known but little seen. It was included in Freud’s blockbuster 1974 retrospective at London’s Hayward Gallery and a 2008 show in Dublin but otherwise has hung in Luggala’s sitting room for more than 50 years. “It is so wonderful,” said Eddison. “If you’re a Freud geek like me, when you know of these paintings but never really see them … when you see them for the first time it is such a powerful thing.” The work is Freud’s second attempt at painting Browne after the first was damaged in a fire at Luggala. At 18cm by 18cm, it is a small, intense painting, similar in size to Boy Smoking (1950-51), in the Tate collection; and Freud’s 1952 painting of Bacon that was in the Tate collection but stolen while on display in Berlin in 1988. Remarkably, it has yet to be recovered. Head of a Boy will be sold at Sotheby’s contemporary art sale on 5 March with an estimate of £4.5m-£6.5m.Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO, has a bold plan to rescue America, and it involves putting another billionaire in the White House to put a stop to dangerous ideas like universal healthcare and higher taxes on the wealthy. Schultz told CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday that he is “seriously thinking” about making a run for the Oval Office as a “centrist independent”. Why? Because, according to Schultz, “we see extremes on both sides … we are sitting with approximately $21.5tn of debt, which is a reckless example, not only of Republicans, but of Democrats. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, independent, Libertarian, Republican. Bring me your ideas. And I will be an independent person, who will embrace those ideas. Because I am not, in any way, in bed with a party.” As a remedy, the billionaire CEO is pitching an utterly unremarkable combination of middle-of-the-road policies and a language of moderation that would fall safely within the corporatist mainstream of the Democratic party. He believes popular, desperately-needed policies like Medicare For All are unaffordable and un-American, and is opposed to raising the top marginal rate of income tax lest people like him be taxed at levels unseen since that heyday of American communism otherwise known as the Nixon era. He expresses concern that so many have so little money in the bank but doesn’t think low-earning workers deserve a raise, a union, free health insurance, or the opportunity to get an education without drowning in debt courtesy of sky-high tuition. Whatever his superficial gestures towards moderation and inclusivity, Schultz is pledging to be a tribune for the billionaire class to which he himself belongs, over and against the growing current of popular, social democratic policies continuing to gather momentum within the Democratic party and among the wider US electorate. Given that the 2020 Democratic primaries are certain to include several Wall Street-friendly candidates, it’s unclear what exactly he hopes to accomplish beyond giving a voice to a handful of plutocrats who somehow find figures like Joe Biden and Cory Booker too extreme. But perhaps that’s precisely the point. As figures like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continue to popularize redistributive, egalitarian policies, America’s economic and financial elites seem increasingly worried that their interests will be pushed to the margins. Many, whatever their professed dislike of Donald Trump might be, would undoubtedly prefer his remaining in office to a Sanders or Warren presidency that would actually threaten their power by raising taxes, ending for-profit healthcare, or reforming the campaign finance system to end the tyranny of big money so that they can no longer buy elections or dominate the legislative process. And were he somehow to become president, there’s every reason to believe Schultz would run the country much as he ran Starbucks: like a conscientious but business-minded corporate executive concerned not with reducing social hierarchies but ever so slightly softening them. During his tenure as a company executive, for example, Schultz’s name became synonymous with initiatives like tuition support for employees and plans for hiring refugees. There is nothing to indicate that his political vision extends beyond the mould of a benign CEO who sees inequality as an inalienable fact of life and prefers to throw the odd company picnic to giving workers a raise or allowing them to unionize. But in a moment characterized by looming climate disaster, gilded age levels of inequality, and a political system dominated by plutocrats and big donors, American politics don’t need yet another centrist figure (inside or outside the Democratic party) preaching moderation – still less a more socially conscious kind of billionaire offering a vague, self-interested brand of class harmony as an alternative to meaningful reform. Instead, the grip of billionaires on the American political system – be they conscientious or not – must be broken once and for all.When Andy Murray berated a social media troll as “a clown” for accusing him and other senior players of extending their careers “just for the money”, he will have had a sympathetic audience in nearly every corner of the locker room. Injury has already robbed the Australian Open of the perennially fragile Juan Martín del Potro, and Alexander Zverev has put himself on the doubtful list. Kyle Edmund and Jo Konta are carrying injuries that might also put them out of the season’s first slam. This is a tough gig. Of those still standing, several will embark on the Melbourne fortnight this weekend in hope rather than expectation. As angry as Murray was on behalf of friends and rivals who sweat blood for the love of the game when they might more comfortably be inspecting their retirement portfolios and tee-off times on the Algarve, some younger players give detractors plenty of ammunition. Murray’s young rebel friend, Nick Kyrgios, is the villain du jour on any slow news day, along with his compatriot Bernard Tomic, who metaphorically waved his millions in front of critics after failing to qualify for the Australian Open two years ago. Kyrgios’s latest crime was to get bitten by a spider over Christmas before losing limply in the Brisbane International, where he was the defending champion, then winding up media commentators he suspects do not “understand” him. The sulking genius “reportedly spent a few hours at a Canberra hospital”, said one critic, who seemed reluctant to embrace the evidence of the player’s own Instagram post, which showed him with a drip attached to his left arm. So, when Jeremy Chardy dumped Kyrgios out of the tournament – and the top 50, for the first time in four years – the game’s free radical was primed to respond: “I honestly could not care less.” Kyrgios headed south looking as dispirited as he has done since injury shredded his 2018 season. But it’s the perception of “not caring” that disturbs traditionalists (and midnight trolls). If you don’t care, you don’t rate. That is why Naomi Osaka’s reaction to one of her most wretched performances – losing in Brisbane to the world No 27, Leisa Tsurenko, in two one-sided sets – struck a chord across tennis. In a press conference that should stand as a model of common sense, the US Open champion and world No 5 spoke openly about what looked like a brain-dump under pressure. “I feel like I had the worst attitude today,” she said. “I feel like I didn’t really know how to cope with not playing well. I don’t know ... I was sulking a little bit? There were moments when I tried not to do that, but then the ball wouldn’t go in and I would go back to being childish. “I feel like last year I did a lot of that. I’m trying to change it more and I think I had towards the end of last year.” She did, never more memorably than when keeping her cool as Serena Williams had a meltdown across the net in the US Open final. “I don’t necessarily like watching myself play,” Osaka added. “And I know that people don’t like to watch people who are so negative.” To be fair to Kyrgios, he has said similar. He too can be wickedly honest, although he can perhaps come across as a “smart-arse” – which might give him perverse satisfaction. If Kyrgios and Osaka were to talk about their shared neuroses, he might rediscover the innocent, less cynical swagger that carried him to a sit-up-and-look fourth round win over Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon in 2014. That performance, celebrated everywhere but in the Spaniard’s camp, announced Kyrgios’s arrival – much as an 18-year-old Tomic had done by reaching the quarter-finals there three years earlier. Both accepted the acclaim and riches, but neither rose to the challenge of delivering fevered expectations. It was as if the more was asked of them, the less they gave. They wanted to thrive on genius alone, which never works. Tomic initially seemed the more hurt, declaring he was “bored” with the game that had made him rich after Mischa Zverev put him out of Wimbledon in 2017. Echoing Kyrgios, he said, “I couldn’t care less if I make a fourth-round US Open or I lose first round. To me, everything is the same.” In Melbourne, Kyrgios (No 51 in the world) and Tomic (No 85) will be some way distant from young Alex de Minaur in the nation’s affections. “The Demon” has hustled his way into the top 30 with the sort of energy reminiscent of Lleyton Hewitt, the last Australian to insinuate himself into discussions at the top of the game. So far, de Minaur has shown no brattish tendencies. Meanwhile, Kyrgios and Tomic – who have had Hewitt’s conditional support – have gone their own way, and will live or die on a hill of their own making. Murray, who has travelled their journey, will surely wish them all well. But he will not forgive that midnight troll for claiming he and others are just hanging on for the money.A young man walks into a bar and meets Sam Shepard, Christopher Walken and Al Pacino. The man is Tim Roth. The year is 1990, and the actor is in New York to film Jumpin’ at the Boneyard, a bleak movie about drug abuse. Roth, who planned to nurse a quiet beer while watching American football, found himself in conversation with Walken and Shepard. “I thought: ‘What the fuck have I walked into?’” he says. “It was purely by chance.” By the time he left, Shepard had promised to write him a part in his next play. It was not the first time Roth had been in the right place at the right time, and it wouldn’t be the last. This unlikely encounter took place at a propitious time, just as Roth was starring as Van Gogh in Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo, and shortly before his comic double act with Gary Oldman in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead hit the festival circuit. Writing in the New Yorker, Pauline Kael described Roth’s acting as “a form of kinetic discharge”. After a decade in which the film industry had largely curdled into a hit machine of bland studio blockbusters, independent film was stirring into life and craft was back in vogue. Due back in London after filming, Roth instead chose to go prospecting in LA, expecting “to get swiftly kicked out the door”. Like his encounter in a Manhattan bar, serendipity intervened. Its name was Quentin Tarantino, the movie was Reservoir Dogs, and it changed everything. “He came back to my flat after a night in a bar, and we read every scene with all the characters, had a great time – and he gave me the job,” says Roth. “I was very fucking lucky. I got given a window, and I jumped.” When Shepard, good as his word, called back with a part in his next Broadway play, it was too late. “I couldn’t do it,” Roth says. “I always regret I lost that opportunity.” We are sitting on the veranda at the Langham, an old-world, old Hollywood hotel that has been servicing the rich since the 1930s. A sweep of lawn is framed by slender palm trees and the tropical blooms of birds of paradise. Roth grins. “It’s so cheesy, right?” Nearby a large party of women fills a room furnished in leather and burgundy wood, the tables a jumble of three-tiered cake plates and pots of tea. “It’s outside of the Hollywood scene,” Roth explains. “There are people who live around here, but you never see ’em.” Next summer, the 57-year-old actor can be seen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, his fifth movie with Tarantino, this one set during the Manson Family murders, and stuffed with stars including Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino and Margot Robbie. “I think there’s 100-odd characters in it,” says Roth, though he will not be drawn into discussing details. I used to get beaten up every day – I didn’t know how to fight In the meantime, there’s Tin Star, a kind of contemporary western set in the Canadian Rockies, and returning to Sky this month for a second season. Roth plays British cop Jim Worth with the kind of shuffling weariness of those who know that bad guys usually win – and reeling from the brutal murder of his son, all while going head-to-head with a mendacious oil company that has sent an executive (Christina Hendricks) to cajole and persuade (and maybe dispatch) troublemaking naysayers. After so many American roles, it’s a pleasure to hear Roth using his real accent, still unchanged by the decades of California living. Although the city is crawling with Brits now, he says it was different in 1990. “At the time that I came out here there were no English actors, except for Gary [Oldman]. He put the bridge out for me, made it seem possible.” Roth rarely misses an opportunity to give credit where it’s due, and his heroes and mentors materialise throughout our conversation, like old friends passing through: fellow actors such as Ray Winstone and John Hurt, former teachers, and the writers and directors – Alan Clarke, Ken Loach and Barrie Keeffe – who he credits for giving him a career. Roth is grateful to have grown up in 70s London, when a generation of writers were responding to Britain’s post-industrial decline with visceral social realism. It was a world he was familiar with. Cast as a racist skinhead in Made in Britain he was able to nail the nihilism, anger and violence of white working-class men because he’d had a masterclass in how bullies behave at his Lambeth high school. He recalls daily riots, kids charging in through windows, street battles. “I hated it because I used to get beaten up every day,” he says. “I didn’t know how to fight.” The bullying grew so bad Roth’s mum moved him to Croydon Tech. “I messed that up, so they sent me back to school,” he says. In the end, he just bunked off altogether. “We’d put on our uniform, throw a change of clothes in our bag, and head up to the West End, which was a dangerous place to be at that age,” he says. “A couple of my mates got lost into that sex trade shit.” Roth managed to avoid that fate, and spent much of his time at the ICA on the Mall. “At that time, it was run by three gay guys, and it was very underfunded, very scruffy, but very, very cool,” he recalls. “They gave us safety, and they talked to us as equals, and they gave us some kind of artistic credibility in our sort of small minds.” Invigorated, he returned to school and flourished. The bullies had left and the atmosphere had changed. “We got to have real conversations about stuff we cared about.” Punk was on the horizon, mutiny was in the air. Roth organised Rock Against Racism benefits and joined Students Against the Nazis. He dodged rocks on protest marches with his dad. Most importantly, he found his calling, collaborating with a friend on scripts based on a mash-up of the Marx Brothers and Samuel Beckett. “We fell in love with Waiting for Godot,” he says, sheepishly. “I was going through an utterly obnoxious phase.” He abandoned a place at art college to focus on his acting; there was a lot of angry-young-man stuff by Steven Berkoff and Keeffe in cramped rooms above pubs. Then came Trevor, the swastika-tattooed delinquent in Made in Britain. Watching it now you are aware of Roth’s alert and restless eyes, the insolent smile, the simmering intimation of violence. That it was put out on ITV seems extraordinary today, but perhaps no less so at the time. My father was a good man, but a complete mess because of his life and the war The screenwriter David Leland later recalled that the broadcast left people wondering whether their TVs were “plugged in properly”. When Trevor hurls bricks through the windows of Pakistani’s home, yelling “I’m British”, it unrolls like an origins story for the social disintegration that fuelled the referendum result in 2016. “I understand why the Brexit thing happened because Trump happened in America – I get what’s at the root of it,” he says. “You see the knee-jerk of racism which runs through the whole lot.” He believes our only option is to accommodate immigration. “As a result of climate change, and of economic corruption, there’s a migration system at work. People have got to move – and when the water levels rise they’re going to move even quicker.” Unusually, his father was the rare migrant who moved from New York to Liverpool. Roth is toying with making a movie based on his story. “He was from Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, which was really rough at that time, and he had a big and very nasty family,” he says. “They did the reverse thing and got out of the States. When my father was 11, he was working in brick factories in Liverpool, but they persuaded his father to get them out of there so he moved to Kent and was put to work in the hop fields.” By the age of 17, Roth senior was flying with bomber command in the Second World War. “He was a good man but he was a complete mess because of his life and the war,” says Roth. “One of the last conversations I ever had with him, he asked: ‘Did my dad ever fuck with you?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, me too.’ The bottom falls out of your world, but it gives you a voice. As messy as your life can be, as completely complicated as anything is, there has to be a window you can climb through, and he gave me that.” In the midst of the palms and the endless blue of the sky, Roth’s unvarnished delivery of this father-son confessional lands like a sucker punch. Fuelled by his own abuse, Roth’s directorial debut, The War Zone, a movie soggy with rain and despair, explores the impact of incest, its destructiveness, its poison. It’s an astounding movie, shot through with poetic moments of tenderness that make the scenes of sexual violence all the more horrifying. We are not used to seeing monsters portrayed as humans. Roth wanted to show how abusers make their victims complicit in their abuse. “They are directors and you are the actor, you perform it for them, you keep their secret,” he says. Tarantino came back to my flat and we read every Reservoir Dogs scene It’s been 20 years since Roth made The War Zone. Has he thought of directing another movie? “I wanted to make sure my kids [he has three sons, one by Lori Baker in 1984 and two by his wife, Nikki Butler] went to school without coming out with a mortgage hanging around their necks,” he says. He has been sitting on a script for King Lear that Harold Pinter wrote for him, and may direct a movie in Mexico based on a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. “The family has given it their blessing,” he says. And, of course, there’s Tin Star, in which the episodes allow for a lot of collaboration, just the way Roth likes it. “We spent a lot of time, myself and the producer Alison Jackson, working on improvising the dialogue and changing the nature of the story.” Was he worried that a class act like Tin Star would be lost in the crowd of so many other great shows? He was not – that was an old person’s way of thinking of TV. “I track it through my kids and their generation,” says Roth, before giving me a short tutorial on binge-watching. “It’s not television any more,” he said. “It’s something completely different.” Roth does not expect to live in the UK again, but it’s clear the contours of his working-class childhood still shape his career choices. He plays rich arseholes sparingly. Even his Oscar-nominated turn as the aristo-rapist Archibald Cunningham in Rob Roy operated as a vehicle to illuminate injustice. He says Tarantino gets a kick from writing “fake posh” roles for him, because he can sense his antagonistic relationship to class, a clue perhaps to the kind of character he may play in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. His relationship to Tarantino has defined his life in the US in more ways than one. He was in Sundance for the premiere of Reservoir Dogs in 1992 when he met Nikki Butler. A year later, the two were in Belize where Roth was filming Heart of Darkness with Nicolas Roeg. “That’s when we got married, in the jungle by the river there,” he says. “We decided to run away and do it on a film set.” Who proposed? “I did. I went and got a tattoo of her initials on my arm and then I went and had a beer with my mate, and went, ‘Right then, we’re off’, and I got back and did the deed. It’s a private story, but she thought I was going to break up with her.” He chuckles fondly. “It was a good one.” As Roth departs to meet the woman he still calls the “missus”, a group of friends sit beside us and proceed to order margaritas. It’s shortly after 1pm, and the sun is bright and high. The atmosphere is festive. “It’s a weird world,” Roth says in his gruff London accent, but despite this he seems, as always, perfectly placed. Series 2 of Tin Star begins on Sky Atlantic on 24 JanuaryForty years after Space Invaders, video games are still coming up with new ways to shoot aliens. Anthem is a multiplayer game set on a planet whose gods abandoned it mid-creation, leaving a pantheon of mutated creatures to ravage the beautiful environment and threaten the humans who share it. Clad in a nimble mech-suit with flying jets and a portable arsenal of guns, you soar out over the gorgeous overgrown planet with three other players and hold off the aliens, discovering majestic ruins from the dawn of creation. Anthem is one of many online games competing for players’ long-term attention, designed to be played every day or every week by groups of friends together. But it is made by BioWare, a developer known for role-playing games that immerse a lone player in a rich fantasy that they alone control. Why has the studio decided to make something so different? It is undeniably a risk: the strengths of good single-player games – an absorbing narrative, player choice, the ability to take your time and explore at your own place – do not transfer well to the shared world of multiplayer games. I can put my finger on one probable motivation: Destiny, the game that popularised the sci-fi multiplayer shooter (along with slow-burn action-shooter Warframe). Playing Anthem’s opening hours, the echoes of Bungie’s space-opera shooter are at times deafening. The story strikes the same tone of jargon-laden sci-fi drama, and involves a couple of cities’ worth of humans holding out against a planet that has been devastated. Some of the enemy aliens are intimidating, spiky bipeds that bring to mind not just the Fallen and the Cabal, but also Halo’s Covenant creatures. One of the mech-suits, the Storm, is extraordinarily similar to Destiny’s Warlock class in its feel, animations and abilities, floaty jump and all. The capsule city to which you return between missions is a warren of corridors filled with ambient tinkerers and quest-givers. But in the hands, Anthem feels unique; after an hour or two, the obvious comparison recedes and Anthem’s own identity reveals itself. Play revolves not around the guns and how exciting they feel to shoot but around the mechs’ exhilarating movement – particularly their power of flight. You begin every outing by leaping from the top of the city’s giant protective walls and soaring into the green. Flying in Anthem is brilliant, interwoven seamlessly with shooting so that you never have touch the ground if you’re good enough. You can hover in mid-air for better aim at a distance, or barrel towards a group of monsters, come crashing to the ground in the middle of them and whip out a sword. Flying is so fun that almost everything you do feels epic, whether it’s diving deep into a waterlogged cavern, hovering next to a titanic creature as you fire bullets and rockets at it, or swooping through a waterfall to cool your mech-suit’s jets. Honestly, I was expecting a science-fiction multiplayer game from BioWare to hook me with its story, but not with how immensely fun it feels to play. The addition of flight was a watershed moment in Anthem’s development, says Ben Irving, a lead producer who has been working on it for two years. It created lots of problems for the developers, such as how to balance range and how to get creatures to follow players’ movements. But it was so fun they had to make it work. “Lots of shooters have flight, but usually you’ll get into a plane or something,” he says. “In that situation you can have a different control scheme, but the challenge for us was that if you you jump and start flying, the controls still have to function the same way. It took us a lot of time to try and get the controls to feel seamless between walk, run, sprint, jump, fly, hover, swim.” That fluidity is what makes the game special. “It’s just so different – you can get lost in the sensation of flight, carving around corners and through water to cool your jets so you can keep going, seeing how far you can get before touching the ground,” says Thomas Singleton, a producer who joined Anthem last year, with whom I spent an enjoyable day exploring its early missions. “With this game it’s really important that we get people’s hands on the sticks and have them experience it for themselves. That’s where the game starts to sing and makes you smile.” Out in the wilds, where you are always part of a group of four mech-suited players, Anthem is all about the action. Choosing a tank-like Colossus with big guns and a hefty shield, a zippy Interceptor, the all-rounder Ranger or the elemental Storm suit, you dive from the walls of the city and start looking for trouble. Whether you’re in free exploration mode or on a mission, the world is enticingly packed with things to find: loot-filled caves, hidden areas, unstable relics that need to be shut down, and always plenty of different creatures to shoot. I found the fights far from easy, and understanding each mech-suit’s strengths and working as a team with fellow pilots was the only way through tougher waves of aliens. In between missions, you return either to a social hub called the Launch Bay with other players, or alone to Fort Tarsis. It is here that BioWare has exercised its traditional storytelling strengths. Tarsis is full of characters to converse with and learn from, companions on your journey. By keeping the story personal and the action communal, Anthem hopes to offer the kind of narrative depth that is usually necessarily absent from multiplayer games. “We learned from Star Wars: The Old Republic [BioWare’s Star Wars online RPG] that things like having a group conversation and rolling on who gets the choice isn’t satisfying,” says Ben. “When you’re making an online game with a narrative that lives for multiple years, it becomes impossible to have a story that involves individual choice, because you’d have to make 50 stories to account for all the branching. It’s fair to say the level of choice isn’t like a single-player BioWare game. It’s more about picking how you want to relate to our characters, how you reflect who you are.” Over the course of a day’s play, the characters and storytelling weren’t what impressed me about Anthem; it is perhaps telling that, a week later, I couldn’t tell you a single individual’s name without referring to my notes. There is intrigue in the setup of a world abandoned while it was still being forged, and the mysterious powers of creation that are still shaping it. But it is the shared adventures, the flight and fighting, that I’m looking forward to revisiting next month when Anthem is released. As an online game, it will doubtless change rapidly over its first year of life, but already there is much of interest to find in its world – and I’ve rarely played a mech game that feels so freeing and exciting to control. Anthem will be released on 22 February for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. A limited demo is available until 27 January.If you insist on starting each new year with a sense of childlike wonderment, you will be stunned by news that Russia has missed the New Year’s Eve deadline to allow the World Anti-Doping Agency access to the Moscow lab at the heart of its massive state-sponsored doping programme. This development is also incredible to wide-eyed Wada president Craig Reedie, who professes himself “bitterly disappointed”, while the head of Usada brands the situation “a total joke”. The latter verdict feels the more realistic. Back in November, Sir Craig justified his recommendation that Russia be readmitted to international competition, despite them having not met his organisation’s own conditions for that to happen. “I find it very hard to believe,” he found it very hard to believe, “that the guarantees, made to us by the Russian authorities, that they won’t deliver.” Yes, well. BELIEVE THE MAGIC, BUDDY. In a clear provocation to writers who prefer to fall back on at least one Princess Bride reference per column (ie me) Craig went on to say that the idea of Russia missing this deadline was “inconceivable”. Inconceivable! As Inigo Montoya is forced to remark in that movie: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” And here we are. I can’t believe that former 1960s badminton starlet Craig Reedie has had his arse handed to him yet again by former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin. Honestly, what are the chances? Also, how many arses does Craig have? At this rate he is surely down to the one he talks out of every time he makes a decision in the interests of a non-compliant, provenly dirty country as opposed to the clean and compliant athletes who should be his absolute priority. Before we go on, a reminder of the background. In 2016, Russia was found to have operated the biggest sports cheating programme of the 21st century. A German TV investigation claimed that up to 99% of Russian athletes were doping; subsequent individual bans revealed that even curlers and visually impaired Paralympians were at it. Russia were finally kicked out of the Olympics in late 2017, and embarked upon a profound exercise in self-reflection and soul-searching. I’m kidding, of course. They cocked an eyebrow and settled in for a short wait. Keen to sink to their expectations, Wada took 10 months to recommend Russian readmission, despite the country having not complied with two of the crucial recommendations of the McLaren report: one, to even admit a state-sponsored doping programme had existed, and two, to grant Wada access to its Moscow lab. So you could argue that compliance of one sort had technically occurred – Wada had complied with Russia, as opposed to the other way round. Alas, this wasn’t the glass-half-full take adopted by outraged athletes. Former cross-country skier Beckie Scott resigned as chair of Wada’s athlete committee in protest, while last October Reedie was pointedly not invited to a White House summit dedicated to reforming his organisation. Still, with the deadline clock ticking, everyone mostly had to wait. The next Wada meeting, at which any penalty on Russia could be enforced, is scheduled for 14 January. And so to last week’s not-entirely-sensational plot twist. Wada pitched up as billed in Moscow, only to be told their equipment was not authorised. Yup, the old “wrong equipment” gambit. Russia would love to help – they really would – but despite having made no equipment stipulations before the visit, things had now apparently become a problem. So what now? The new expectation, apparently, is that Russia will allow some sort of access in the 11th hour, outside their deadline but just before the 14 January meeting. This is surely taking the piss. Indeed, there is a neat irony to the fact that this all began with Russia literally taking the piss – passing tainted urine samples through a hole in the lab wall in exchange for clean ones. Furthermore, as most people know, the thing about the other sort of drug users is that you can’t keep enabling them. Their compulsion forces them to become very good liars, and they tell you they’ll change as a way of prolonging their refusal to do so. The accepted wisdom is that they really need to hit rock bottom – diving down filthy bogs in search of suppositories; licking novichok off doorknobs – before you can actually believe them. Without wishing to venture too far out on a limb, I don’t think Russia have reached their personal rock bottom just yet. Everything they have done thus far has been the equivalent of a celebrity’s tactical visit to an Arizona rehab called something like Cloudwinds. It reeks of defensive action mandated by your agent. Any reputation Sir Craig Reedie’s Wada has left – and for me it exists in entirely undetectable traces – will be gone if this missed deadline is excused. Reedie’s frequent refrain is that the athletes don’t understand the method to his apparent madness. On the contrary, they understand it very well. It is one rule for them, and another for a corrupt state. If this wasn’t made clear when the tainted Olympics in question was used as a curtain-raiser for Putin’s invasion of Crimea, it certainly has been ever since. On a positive note, the increasingly vocal protestations of athletes last year – from those calling time up on Wada to the remarkable survivors’ testimonies of Larry Nassar’s US gymnast victims – suggest they are more than aware that sport is mostly run for countries and administrators, and not for them. I can only wish an increasingly powerful 2019 to the talent, and a year of greater reckoning for those who leech off it.EL James, whose controversial erotic bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey explored the disturbing relationship between a student and a businessman, has written her first novel looking beyond the desires of Christian Grey: the “thrilling and sensuous” The Mister. Out on 16 April, and moving between London, Cornwall and the Balkans, The Mister will delve into the attraction which forms between the “privileged and aristocratic” young Englishman Maxim Trevelyan, and the “mysterious, talented and beautiful” Alessia Demachi, a woman who has arrived in London “owning little more than a dangerous and troublesome past”, said publisher Arrow. James’ Fifty Shades series – three books from the perspective of Anastasia Steele, as she is inducted into businessman Christian Grey’s BDSM fantasies, and two from Grey’s – has sold 150m copies around the world, bringing erotica into the mainstream, sparking controversy and unleashing a host of imitations.Although the publisher would not confirm whether The Mister also classifies as erotic fiction, the description provided to booksellers called it “a rollercoaster ride of danger and desire that leaves the reader breathless to the very last page”, and the author herself described it as a “passionate new romance” and a “Cinderella story for the 21st century”. James said: “Maxim and Alessia have led me on a fascinating journey and I hope that my readers will be swept away by their thrilling and sensual tale, just as I was while writing, and that, like me, they fall in love with them.” Her editor Selina Walker, publisher at Arrow, called James an exceptional storyteller and said the new book was “a unique and very special novel - passionate, romantic and full of suspense”. James’s new hero Maxim inherits his family’s noble title after a tragedy. “It’s a role he’s not prepared for and one that he struggles to face,” said Arrow. “But his biggest challenge is fighting his desire for an unexpected, enigmatic young woman who’s recently arrived in England, possessing little more than a dangerous and troublesome past. Reticent, beautiful, and musically gifted, she’s an alluring mystery, and Maxim’s longing for her deepens into a passion that he’s never experienced and dares not name.”A Russian lawyer who met senior aides to Donald Trump in 2016 had previously “secretly schemed” with the Russian official who was purportedly offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton, US authorities have alleged. Natalia Veselnitskaya was on Tuesday accused of fabricating evidence in a US money-laundering case she was working on when she attended a now-notorious meeting at Trump Tower in New York in June 2016. A criminal indictment unsealed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Veselnitskaya worked on the bogus evidence in 2014 with the office of Russia’s prosecutor general, Yury Chaika. She was charged with obstruction of justice. The June 2016 meeting was convened after Trump’s son, Donald Jr, was told by a representative for well-connected Russians that Chaika could provide incriminating material on Clinton, their Democratic opponent, to help Trump’s campaign. The meeting, which Donald Jr attended with the campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been closely examined by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any coordination with members of Trump’s team. Veselnitskaya’s obstruction charge relates to her work representing Prevezon Holdings, a Russian investment company. Prevezon was sued by the US government in New York for allegedly laundering part of $230m stolen by a Russian criminal network into upscale Manhattan condominiums. Angel Melendez, a senior FBI official in New York, said on Tuesday: “Veselnitskaya secretly schemed with a senior Russian prosecutor to provide false information to US law enforcement in an attempt to influence the legal proceedings in the southern district of New York.” During the Prevezon case, Veselnitskaya cited the report of a supposedly independent investigation by Russian authorities, which she said exonerated her clients. In a declaration to court signed under penalty of perjury, Veselnitskaya claimed she had “gone to great lengths” to obtain the report. In fact, US prosecutors said on Tuesday, Veselnitskaya secretly worked with Chaika’s office to draft and edit the report. Then Chaika’s office also helped Veselnitskaya file a phoney legal complaint against itself to make it appear she was obtaining the report through formal procedures, the indictment said. Veselnitskaya allegedly inserted 29 paragraphs into a draft of the report she received from Chaika’s office on 1 August 2014. The indictment said many of these additions made it into the final report passed to the US by Russian authorities. US authorities went on to allege that in June 2015, a prosecutor in Chaika’s office sent Veselnitskaya an email from his personal account containing a draft legal filing that she could use for her phoney complaint to Chaika’s office, in which she would pretend to demand the report she had helped to write. The US justice department announced in May 2017 that Prevezon would pay a $5.9m settlement to halt the government’s legal action. No wrongdoing was admitted and Prevezon maintained its innocence. The US attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, said in a statement that Veselnitskaya’s act “undermines the integrity of the judicial process” and threatened the enforcement of justice. Berman said: “We take seriously our responsibility to protect the integrity of the judicial proceedings in this district, and we will not stand idly by while outside influences seek to corrupt and pervert that process.” Melendez said Veselnitskaya was now “a wanted person” in the US, was “now on notice and will have to answer for her futile actions”. Russian authorities are unlikely to cooperate with the US attempt to prosecute Veselnitskaya while she remains in her home country. She will, however, no longer be able to travel to the US without risking arrest.Visiting his home town of Kassel in Germany for the first time in 72 years, Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg paused to recall the day he saw Hitler. The Führer was waving from a car surrounded by cheering Nazi crowds. Manfred was a little Jewish boy on his dad’s shoulders. “Did your father salute back?” asked a producer off-camera. “My father may have done,” Goldberg replied evenly, “not to stand out.” In 1930s Germany, the Goldbergs stood out despite themselves. Facing escalating persecution, Baruch Goldberg fled to Britain, but wife Rosa and sons Hermann and Manfred could not join him. They were deported to the Riga ghetto, ultimately winding up in a labour camp. It was there, one day in 1943, that Manfred learned his little brother had disappeared. He never saw him again. “To this day, I don’t know his fate.” Manfred and his mother were reunited with Baruch in London in 1946, and Manfred went on to study electronics at university. Today, aged 87, he is married with four sons and many grandchildren. His brother, who would have been 83, might have had such a life. But no. It was common for the SS to round up Jews, even nine-year-olds like Hermann, and shoot them in the forest. For a lifetime, Manfred couldn’t face that. “I have never recited a memorial prayer on his behalf, always making myself believe he was still alive,” he said. Last year, Manfred was persuaded to return to Germany for the installation of memorial stumbling stones, or Stolpersteine, for his family on Müllerstraße in Kassel. There are more than 70,000 such stones, 10cm square concrete cubes bearing brass plates inscribed with the names and life dates of victims of Nazi persecution. “Here lived Hermann Goldberg,” reads his brother’s Stolperstein. “Deportiert 1941 Riga. Ermordet.” Ermordet means murdered. As the concrete set on the Goldberg stones, Manfred made a speech before a small crowd. Then, gently, briefly, sweetly, this elderly gentleman sang a memorial prayer for his murdered brother, finally acknowledging publicly the unbearable truth. The idea of Stolpersteine, he explained, is that passersby will trip up on them and be forced to reflect. “I have my doubts,” he added. “People become immune to these things very fast.” The purpose of The Last Survivors (BBC Two) was to make us trip up, to stop us becoming complacent about the Holocaust. Only a couple of hundred of the few thousand survivors who made it to Britain live to tell their tales, and they will not be with us long. Director Arthur Cary spent a year with a handful of survivors, making an impeccably thoughtful 90-minute documentary that gave his interviewees their due dignity as each reflected, often scarcely willingly, on what happened to them as children. For an hour and a half, I was crying, especially when Cary followed three generations of Holocaust survivors to Auschwitz, knowing all the time that tears are not enough. Nor guilt. Among the interviewees was Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. A marvellously formidable woman, she was spared murder in Auschwitz because the orchestra of female inmates compelled to play for their captors needed a cellist. We saw her sitting on one of the slabs that make up Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Can you smoke sardonically? She certainly gave it her best shot, exhaling protractedly then chuckling over the fact that Jew-haters in today’s Germany “find themselves saddled with something so unsightly”. No doubt, though, the unsightliness of this wound in central Berlin, for antisemites and the rest of us, is its point. Lasker-Wallfisch was in Berlin to address the Bundestag on last year’s Holocaust Memorial Day. “I am one of the rapidly dwindling number of eyewitnesses to the catastrophe which befell us all those years ago,” she told German politicians including Angela Merkel, whom she admires for opening German borders to refugees, and Alternative for Germany representatives, whom she despises for fostering race hate and antisemitism. Earlier, we saw Anita having lunch at her daughter Maya’s home in Cricklewood. For many years, she did not tell Maya or her brother what she endured in Auschwitz and Belsen. “I wanted to have a normal life and the Holocaust doesn’t fit in,” explained Anita, who became a celebrated cellist. Finally, 40 years after the war, she wrote her children a heartbreaking letter that became the basis of her memoir Inherit the Truth. Maya read aloud from it: “We have never talked much about those dark days and how it came about that you do not have any grandparents … At what point does one start explaining to one’s child that there are people in the world who had as their ideology the total annihilation of Jews and other undesirables by murdering them in the most sophisticated manner?” Tough question. But Maya, now a psychotherapist, told her mum in a fond but difficult exchange that Anita’s silent scramble for normality had, paradoxically, traumatised her daughter. “Why was I so disturbed? Why was I picking my face when I was two?” Because I was absent, replied Anita. “The reason you were always absent was because of the Holocaust, because your mission was to build back some kind of a life.” I hope Anita didn’t mean what she said next. “To me, anyone who has got a roof over their head and enough food – forget the trauma.” But we mustn’t forget this trauma, be it to witnesses like Anita or their children like Maya, who will soon inherit the unsought burden of fighting humanity’s tendency to forget what we must remember. As Anita told the German parliament: “It is about making certain that it can never – never ever – happen again.”It was the night Manchester City made it clear they have no intentions of relinquishing their grip, finger by finger, on the Premier League trophy. Pep Guardiola and his players will cling to the belief that this victory could be a decisive blow and, at the very least, it has clipped back Liverpool when they were threatening to pull away. If City were to prolong the argument, it was imperative they found a way past the leaders. Even a draw would have felt like a grievous setback for the reigning champions and, when Roberto Firmino nodded in Liverpool’s equaliser, approaching the midway point of the second half, a lesser side than City could conceivably have wilted under the pressure. Not this team, though. As the song goes, City fight to the end and it was not just their competitive courage to conjure up a decisive goal, courtesy of Leroy Sané, that delivered a message. It was the spirit of togetherness displayed by Guardiola’s players in that nerve-shredding finale when Liverpool started pumping balls into the penalty area. On one hand City have not kept a clean sheet during their past 11 fixtures. On the other it was a show of collective defiance during those fraught moments when Liverpool had Virgil van Dijk operating as an extra centre-forward. City gave everything to defend their lead, in the way that true champions do. They dug in, they formed an impenetrable blue line and, when it needed the ugly stuff, they were happy to oblige. In the process they made it clear to their opponents it is going to be one hell of a battle between now and the end of the season. For Liverpool the priority must be not to wallow in self-pity. It is, after all, only a month ago that City were five points clear and looking capable of turning the title race into a procession. Liverpool still have a four-point cushion and, if they need encouragement, there is only one other club in history who has reached the new year unbeaten and not gone on to win the league – and that was Sheffield United in the 1899-1900 season. Liverpool will, however, reflect that the night could have taken a very different complexion but for an astonishing goalline clearance from John Stones. And Jürgen Klopp should be aggrieved that, having made it 1-1, his players left themselves so stretched when Sané collected Raheem Sterling’s pass and fizzed a diagonal shot past Alisson to score via the far post. Perhaps Liverpool might have been better to employ more restraint once Andrew Robertson, the game’s outstanding performer, had turned Trent Alexander-Arnold’s long cross into the six-yard box for Firmino to equalise with a stooping header. It is difficult to be too critical after such an absorbing game but Liverpool lost their shape at the key moment and Sané punished them with a brilliantly angled finish. Klopp also made the point that, with the game goal-less, Vincent Kompany was fortunate to be shown only a yellow card for a scything challenge on Mohamed Salah. City certainly rode their luck at times and never more so than when Salah played Sadio Mané through the middle, the shot thudded off the post and for a split-second, as Stones’s first attempt to clear the danger came back off Ederson and started looping towards an exposed net it felt as if the entire stadium held its breath, anticipating an own goal. The technology showed nine-tenths of the ball had crossed the goal-line – but not the final tenth. Stones had somehow got back to hook the ball away, brilliantly, from beneath his crossbar and City were spared by a matter of millimetres. When Liverpool watch the replays they will barely comprehend how Stones’s final swing of the ball missed Salah, from point-blank range, when even the merest of touches would have resulted in a goal. City made the most of their fortune and, when Sergio Agüero put them into the lead, five minutes before half-time, it was a reminder that the truly great strikers tend to save their best for the big occasions. Bernardo Silva did the build-up work on the left and for the first time Agüero had manoeuvred a yard for himself inside the penalty area. He was still left with an acute angle, shooting left to right, with an outstanding goalkeeper to beat in the shape of Alisson. Agüero had nicked the ball in front of Dejan Lovren but still had his opponent in close proximity. It was the kind of shooting opportunity, on the half-turn, that many strikers would have passed up, concluding that the chances of scoring were too remote. His finish was a beauty – swivelling on the spot and connecting with power and precision. The ball was still rising as it soared between Alisson and his near post and City had the breakthrough they craved. That goal continued Agüero’s record of having scored on all seven occasions he has faced Liverpool in league fixtures at this stadium. More importantly, it gave the home team an element of control when, until that point, Liverpool had seldom looked in trouble. Robertson had been coping with Sterling, Alexander-Arnold had the speed and agility to match Sané and, until that piece of brilliance from Agüero, it was unusual to see City finding it so difficult to create chances. Equally, the same could be said of Liverpool for most of the game and, if City’s supporters had any apprehension about seeing Danilo and Aymeric Laporte operating as their team’s full-backs, it was gone by the end. Liverpool’s 20-match unbeaten run was over and, for City, the title race had opened up with new possibilities.Donald Trump may have backed away froma threat to declare a national emergency in order to bypass Congress and build a wall on the southern border, but his preoccupation with his 2016 campaign promise persists. But what exactly is “the wall” and why is the president so intent on getting $5.7bn to fund it? Here are some answers to key questions: The US-Mexico border is 1,954 miles (3,145km) long and crosses vast deserts and mountains in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. About 654 miles of that have some sort of manmade barrier, such as fencing or a wall. Most of it was built after 2006. Details are thin on what would actually come from the $5.7bn. In recent weeks, Trump’s language has shifted from calling it a “wall” to a “barrier” and he has conceded it does not need to be concrete. “The barrier or the wall can be of steel instead of concrete if that works better,” Trump said earlier this month. “I intend to call the head of United States Steel and a couple of other steel companies to have them come up with a plate or a design … we’ll use that as our barrier.” In January 2018, 60% of Americans said they opposed Trump’s proposal to substantially expand the wall, according to the Pew Research Center. Expanding the wall is more popular among older people, white people and the less educated, according to the survey. There will never be an exact number because some people manage to cross illegally and undetected, then stay in the US, where they would not readily provide their immigration status to any sort of data collection. That said, a good starting point is the number of people US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehend at the southern border. In fiscal year 2017, that was 303,916 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Of that group, 13% claimed credible fear of returning to their home country, the first legal step in seeking asylum. To put this in perspective, also in 2017, more than 606,926 people who entered the US legally by air or sea, not land, overstayed their visas and remained in the country at the end of the year, according to the DHS. And in 2000, 1.6 million illegal border crossers were apprehended. The Trump administration has a habit of using “illegal” to describe completely legal actions, such as seeking asylum at the border. Influential, far-right immigration opponents, including people in senior positions in the Trump administration, oppose many aspects of the asylum process. They have worked to drastically restrict it, despite many of their efforts being blocked in the courts. Trump repeatedly refers to a crisis at the border and an “invasion” of migrants. He cites the wall as the primary solution, even though deep doubts abound about its efficacy. No. Trump and his supporters say Democrats support open borders (“Loopholes in our immigration laws, all supported by extremist open border Democrats,” Trump  tweeted in June 2018), but Democrats have backed plenty of legislation that restricts immigration. In February, the Senate voted on a bipartisan plan to spend $25bn over 10 years to expand the various physical barriers along the border and to protect the Dreamers, the estimated 3.6 million undocumented people who came to the US unlawfully as children. Trump rejected that bill. The wall became a symbol for Trump’s presidency, a promise that he would limit immigration. The thing is, he has been very effective at making immigration more difficult for people trying to enter legally and illegally – yet the wall project still eludes him. A hint to why he is so focused on getting this wall came in 2017, when the Washington Post published leaked transcripts from a private phone call between Trump and Mexico’s then president, Enrique Peña Nieto. A week after taking office, Trump told Peña Nieto that he had to stop rejecting his claim that Mexico would pay for the wall, according to the transcripts. He suggested in the conversation that this was because the wall was more important as a symbol than as a national security project. “I am just going to say that we are working it out,” Trump said. “Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important”Libya risks losing its last chance to find a peaceful solution to four years of deadlock because political parties backed by the west are plotting to hijack crucial talks, a former Libyan diplomat has told the UN. The warning from the country’s former ambassador to the UN, Ibrahim Dabbashi, comes in an open letter to Ghassan Salame, the UN special envoy for Libya. Salame is hoping to hold a national conference this month before presidential and parliamentary elections due by the summer that are designed to bring the war-torn country back together. Dabbashi, Libya’s ambassador to the UN until 2016, says in his letter, published on Monday, that “some Libyan parties backed by the active members of the UN security council are trying hijack the national conference”. He said Salame should not be fooled by these groups, who he said already occupy the chaotic political scene and were seeking to flood the meeting to maintain their power rather than find a long-term political solution. He said the UN needed to bypass them, ideally through municipal councils. The conference was a last chance for the UN mission to restore its credibility and for Libya to achieve a peaceful transition, Dabbashi said. The UN has not yet announced an agenda, format or timetable for the conference. Dabbashi’s warning came as suggestions mount that Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the strongman who is the dominant figure in Libya’s east, is determined to reunify the country militarily, if necessary by staging an assault on the capital, Tripoli. Salame has said Haftar, head of the self-styled Libyan National Army, is committed to the political process. But Haftar has been at loggerheads with the Tripoli-based UN backed Government of National Accord (GNA), led by Fayez al-Serraj for more than four years, splitting Libya’s chief institutions including the central bank, the government and security forces. While Dabbashi did not explicitly state which foreign powers he is accusing of interference, Haftar’s allies are primarily Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and increasingly France, while the GNA government is dependent on Qatar and, in recent months, on Turkey. Over the past year Haftar, presenting himself as capable of defeating jihadis and the Muslim Brotherhood, has been slowly building diplomatic support in Paris and Rome, alongside his long standing allies in Cairo and the UAE. The prospects of the UN holding free and fair elections this year depend on securing stability in the country, but fighting continues throughout the country including in the south, in the coastal port of Derna, sporadically in Tripoli, as well as south of Sirte. The GNA’s ministry of foreign affairs in the capital was attacked by Islamic State fighters on Christmas Day, leaving two dead. Salame is hoping improved oil revenues, exhaustion at political in-fighting and UN support, can persuade Libyans to accept the outcome of the elections. The new minister of the interior, Fathi Bashagha, installed in October, told BBC Arabic that elements of the Tripoli militia were running a parallel operation inside his ministry, executing their own agendas away from the government’s orders. Bashagha complained: “We have now a parallel interior ministry in Tripoli.” He claimed they had a huge amount of money to run their operations. “They are not militias, but illegal groups that contribute to fostering chaos and lack of security. They act on behalf of foreign nations”. If the political impasse continues Haftar may come to be seen as a more attractive proposition to some western countries, who are now as interested in stability as in democracy. Donald Trump last week described the removal of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011 as a catastrophe, saying the country would be better off if the former dictator was still in power. But a western embrace of Haftar as the man to bring security back to Libya would have to overlook claims that the Libyan National Army, in the name of defeating terrorism, has committed numerous atrocities worthy of referral to the international criminal court in the Hague. A legal opinion by the human rights lawyer Rodney Dixon QC given to the Guardian says forces under the command of Haftar “appear to be involved in the commission of the war crimes of murder, mutilation, torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and the targeting of civilians. These acts prima facie constitute crimes and violations of the Geneva convention”. Dixon, an expert in international law and regarded as a critic of Saudi Arabia, was shown videos compiled in the past three to four months. He said that in his opinion the appalling acts of violence shown in the videos serve as “a stark reminder of the gruesome crimes being perpetrated with impunity in eastern Libya, and of the urgent need for decisive, corrective action”. He added: “It is imperative that the perpetrators and their commanders should be investigated to obtain all available evidence so that those responsible can be brought to justice. As a starting point, the individual perpetrators shown in the videos should be identified. “Where there is evidence of them ordering these crimes, they should be prosecuted as direct offenders. Furthermore, those in charge should at least have known of these crimes, or had reason to know, and the failure to act to prevent or punish them could render those superiors criminally liable.” The UN security council has made Libya subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC, and the ICC in August last year issued a warrant for the arrest of a commander in the Libyan National Army, Mahmoud Werfalli. He was accused of ordering and participating in summary executions of prisoners in Benghazi, but remains at large. He had previously been arrested by Haftar; the ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, repeatedly called for Haftar to hand him over, but in July he was reported to have escaped prison. The Libyan National Army said this week it was dropping the arrest warrant against him, prompting the ICC to repeat its call for his arrest.The US has rejected Moscow’s offer to inspect a new Russian missile suspected of violating a key cold-war era treaty, and warned that it would suspend observance of the treaty on 2 February, giving six-month notice of a complete withdrawal. The under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, Andrea Thompson, confirmed the US intention to withdraw from the treaty after a meeting with a Russian delegation in Geneva, which both sides described as a failure. Donald Trump took US allies by surprise when he announced his intention to leave the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in October. The agreement led to the destruction of thousands of US and Soviet weapons, and has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the US of intransigence, saying Moscow had offered to allow US experts inspect the suspect missile, which it insists does not infringe the limits laid down in the treaty. “However, US representatives arrived with a prepared position that was based on an ultimatum and centred on a demand for us to destroy this rocket, its launchers, and all related equipment under US supervision,” Lavrov said. Thompson noted that the US had been demanding Russian transparency over the missile for more than five years. She confirmed that the offer of inspections was not enough and that the US was demanding the destruction of the missile system, known as the 9M729. “We explained to our Russian counterparts specifically what they would need to do in order to return to compliance in a manner that we can confirm, verifiable destruction of the non-compliant system,” Thompson said. “To see the missile does not confirm that distance that missile can travel, and at the end of the day that’s the violation of the treaty,” Thompson said in a phone briefing for reporters. She said that there were currently no plans for a follow-up talks on the INF before the 2 February deadline laid down by the Trump administration, though US and Russian diplomats would be meeting, including at a summit of the Nato-Russian council next week. Thompson said that if Russia did not show willingness to comply with the treaty by the deadline, the US would suspend its own obligations, meaning that the US defense department could start research and development on missiles with ranges currently banned by the INF, from 500 to 5,500km. At the same time, she told reporters, the US would formally give notice of its withdrawal from the treaty, which could come into effect on 2 August. After that, there would be no restrictions on deployment of medium-range missiles in Europe or the Pacific. The Obama administration had complained to Russia about its new missile but had not threatened to leave the treaty. Diplomats said that Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, persuaded him to withdraw, despite opposition from the state and defence departments, and from European allies. After a reported appeal from Germany’s Angela Merkel, the administration agreed to a two-month delay, to give a last chance for diplomacy to save the INF. Thompson confirmed that the Russian delegation in Geneva had raised their concerns about US missile defence launchers which Moscow says can be adapted to fire offensive missiles. She said that the US officials had repeated US insistence that the launchers were compliant with the INF, and provided documentary evidence. The Trump administration was criticised by former officials and arms control advocates for not pursuing the Russian offer of inspections. “We’ve spent years trying to get something – anything – out of the Russians on INF. The Russian offer of an exhibition of the 9M729 is not enough, but it is something,” Alexandra Bell, a former senior state department official who is now senior policy director at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “Perhaps it is a foundation on which to build. Not trying to take advantage of this opportunity is to leave diplomatic options on the table and that’s just foolish.” Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association said: “If the INF is terminated on 2 August, there will be nothing to prevent Russia from deploying nuclear missiles that threaten Europe and the Trump administration will have no hesitation in pursuing the deployment of INF-prohibited weapons in Europe.”Extreme weather hit the headlines throughout 2018, from the heatwave across much of the northern hemisphere, which saw unprecedented wild fires in Sweden, drought in the UK and devastating wildfires in the US, to floods in India and typhoons in south-east Asia. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, last year was the fourth hottest on record and confirms a trend of rising temperatures that is a clear signal that we are having an effect on the climate. Droughts, floods, fiercer storms and heatwaves, as well as sea level rises, are all expected to increase markedly as a result. Late in the year there was also the starkest warning yet from scientists of what our future will be if we allow climate change to take hold. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global body of the world’s leading climate scientists, which has been producing regular reports on the state of climate science since 1988, produced its latest comprehensive overview examining what the future will look like if we undergo 1.5C (2.7F) of warming. That does not sound like a lot – most people would be hard put to notice a temperature difference of 1.5C – but in climate terms, 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is enough to take us into the danger zone. It would see the mass die-off of coral reefs, the extinction of some species, rising sea levels, wet areas of the world becoming wetter and dry areas drier, and the decline of agricultural productivity across swathes of the globe. That is a future we should obviously try to avoid. But the UN climate conference in Poland that ended the year’s climate-related events in December showed little sign that the urgency of the scientists’ warnings had been heeded. Instead, countries discussed a “rulebook” for putting the 2015 Paris agreement into practice, including such arcane matters as how countries measure and verify their emissions, and how often they should report on them, and rows over carbon credits. In Poland, there were no firm commitments to ramp up countries’ national targets in line with scientific advice, and this is unlikely to happen before 2020 at the earliest. On current national emissions-cutting targets, we are in for about 3C of warming. Yet the IPCC warned that if we want to avoid 1.5C of warming, we have about 12 years to bring global emissions under control and swiftly move to just half of their current level. That represents a massive shift needed in the global economy, and yet emissions worldwide look to be moving upward again slightly after a decade in which they showed signs of stabilising. There was also bad news from the US at the talks, which played little part as Donald Trump prepares to withdraw from the Paris agreement, except to hold a side event at the conference celebrating a bright future for coal. Looked at this way, the omens from 2018 were not good. Fortunately, however, 2019 may indeed be a breakthrough year. Public opinion is mobilising around the world and politicians and businesses are paying attention. There will be a series of high-profile events that will engage the public and governments and may provide a better way forward than was managed last year. Chief among them is the promise of António Guterres, the UN secretary general, to hold a summit for world leaders that will require them to face up to the dangers of climate change head on. Guterres is uncompromising, warning in Poland that it would be “immoral and suicidal” not to take firm and urgent action commensurate with the scale of the problem. Leaders will be put on the spot, and will come under very public pressure as coalitions of civil society groups seek to put their case around the summit and in the lead-up to it. The role of women, who are among the most vulnerable to climate change, will be highlighted, and the role of young people, who will have to live with the consequences of their elders’ mistakes in a warming world. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is also holding a One World Summit, planned for the summer, at which the focus will be on persuading businesses to take a leading role, investing in projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and changing the way they use energy. There are clear signs of hope on climate change also in the rapidly falling cost of renewable energy technology, which is now competitive with fossil fuels. And the keep it in the ground campaign has succeeded in encouraging many investors to move their money out of fossil fuel stocks. But most of all the civil society campaigns which have ramped up in 2018 and look set to increase their momentum in the coming year are taking effect. Public opinion around the world is that our leaders, governments and businesses should be doing more on this vital issue. This can be seen in some unexpected ways, such as the rise of veganism and flexitarian eating, as people seek to reduce their impact on the climate from eating meat. Through well-publicised and effective movements and actions, more and more people are refusing silently to acquiesce in ignoring the dangers to the climate.Parts of Germany and Austria remain on high alert after extreme snow in Alpine regions, where 12 people have died in weather-related incidents. A nine-year-old German boy was the latest victim of the extreme weather, which has resulted in residents becoming snowed-in and motorists trapped for hours in freezing temperatures. The boy was killed by a falling tree in Aying, near Munich, on Thursday afternoon, police said. Two German skiers were killed by avalanches in the Austrian Alps at the weekend. The others died in traffic accidents or after being hit by falling trees. German and Austrian troops have been deployed to help residents trapped by the snow. About 300 German soldiers had been deployed by Friday as three Bavarian districts declared a state of emergency. The troops helped emergency services working around the clock to remove snow from roofs of buildings in danger of caving in under the weight. Schools remained shut and rail services were at a standstill in parts of southern and eastern Bavaria, as workers struggled to clear tracks of snow and fallen trees. Up to 100 flights out of Frankfurt and Munich were cancelled on Friday due to the weather. Roads were also closed due to fallen trees, accidents and snow drifts. Hundreds of motorists were stuck in their cars overnight into Friday as traffic ground to a halt on the A8 motorway near Rosenheim. The Red Cross and volunteers from the state-run civil protection organisation delivered aid to those stuck in freezing temperatures after lorries blocked the road, police told the German news agency DPA. Marginally warmer temperatures in lower regions on Friday gave emergency services reasons to hope for respite. But forecasts predicted more heavy snow for the region over the weekend. The volume of snow has triggered multiple avalanches in the Alps this week, killing a number of skiers. Six German teenagers were among those rescued from an avalanche that engulfed them on Wednesday in the Austrian Alps, police said. The Austrian avalanche warning service said the danger of further incidents remained high. Its German counterpart lowered the warning for the likelihood of avalanches from “great” to “considerable”.Facebook will tackle political misinformation in the run-up to the EU elections this May with a new “war room” based in Dublin, the company’s incoming communications chief, Nick Clegg, has announced. In his first speech as Facebook’s top public face, Clegg said the company would be setting up an “operations centre focused on elections integrity, based in Dublin, this spring”. The centre will build on the company’s previous experience running an “elections war room” in its US office, where it coordinated efforts to police the platform during the US midterm and Brazilian presidential elections. “This approach will help boost our rapid response efforts to fight misinformation, bringing together dozens of experts from across the company – including from our threat intelligence, data science, engineering, research, community operations and legal teams,” Clegg said. “They will work closely with the lawmakers, election commissions, other tech companies, academics and civil society groups to continue the fight against fake news, prevent the spread of voter suppression efforts and further integrate the large number of teams working on these important issues across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.” In his speech, made to an audience of European policymakers in Brussels and livestreamed on Facebook, Clegg accepted that the company had erred in the past, but said it was on a path of improvement. “What I have seen in my short time at Facebook is a young company – only 15 years old next month – which has grown at a startling pace, has undoubtedly made mistakes and is now entering a new phase of reform, responsibility and change.” The former Liberal Democrat leader said Facebook had worked to bolster its content review team, with more than 30,000 people around the world working on security and safety on the site. Clegg also said the company was continuing to work on “a way for people to appeal against content decisions to an independent entity sitting outside of the company” – a content review board once described by his boss, Mark Zuckerberg, as a “supreme court” of Facebook. Clegg added that Facebook would soon be publishing a draft charter for the board and opening it up to input from experts. However, later in the hour-long speech, Clegg went on the offensive, arguing that “we must avoid legitimate questions about data-driven businesses evolving into an outright rejection of data sharing and innovation”, and echoing Zuckerberg’s regular warning that attempts to clamp down on data harvesting by American businesses risk handing the future of innovation to China. “The Chinese approach could well lead to some large-scale improvements like better health outcomes – benefits derived from the mass capture and analysis of data – but it could equally be put to more sinister surveillance ends, as we have seen with the Chinese government’s controversial social credit system,” Clegg said. When he was hired in late 2018, Clegg said he had decided to take the role after deciding there was nothing more he could do in the fight against Brexit. “The Brexit drama will soon move to – and possibly culminate in – the place where it arguably belonged all along, in parliament. I will no longer seek to play a public role in that debate,” he wrote in a Guardian article explaining his decision.This is the story of how, against all odds, I learned to love Phil Collins, the Dad of Dad-Rock and the Norm of Normcore. Alternatively: how I found myself dancing like a loon to Su-Su-sudio, one of the most evil earworms of its benighted era – a song which I had valiantly tried to purge from my memory shortly after its release in 1985, now stuck in my head again, this time for all eternity. Oh no! Whether you missed Collins or not during his brief retirement, one thing is for sure: it’s quite a shock to see him. His first Australian show in more than 20 years, in Brisbane, sees him near the end of his wryly titled Not Dead Yet tour, named after his 2016 autobiography. He hobbles slowly on stage with the aid of a cane. It’s no act. Collins is 68, and frankly he looks in rougher shape than several older rock’n’rollers who are far more fortunate to still be walking among us. In conditions somewhere between steamy and equatorial (definitely no jacket required), Collins is dressed in a half-zipped-up sweater over a crew-necked shirt. He sits down awkwardly on an ordinary swivel desk chair, next to a side table carrying a bottle of water and a folder full of lyrics. “I had a back operation a few years ago,” he tells the crowd in greeting. “My foot’s fucked, but that’s not going to stop us having some fun.” And the opening chords for Against All Odds start. I stopped believing in guilty pleasures a long time ago – what you like is, well, just what you like – but even so, I’m a little disturbed to find myself misting up to this definitive power ballad/karaoke classic. The crowd, which is demographically narrow but numerically enormous, roars. Collins begins to sing: “How can I just let you walk away?” He needn’t worry. We are all so very here for this. It’s immediately obvious that Collins’ voice, weathered by booze (which he’s given up), age and multiple divorces, is smaller. On Against All Odds, he doesn’t have the lungs to reach for its massive final chorus, and doesn’t try. He’s within himself, measured – and smart. Fear not: Collins can still sing, and mostly he sings beautifully, albeit within his slightly diminished range and capacity. It’s life-affirming, even moving, to watch. From there, Collins and his 14-piece band (aided by four backup singers, a four-piece horn section and two drummers, including his 17-year-old son Nicholas) bust out a string of MOR ballads and white funk hits, starting with Another Day in Paradise, from 1989’s …But Seriously, and I Missed Again, from 1981’s Face Value. There are also quite a few songs which I’d long since forgotten, and which I am afraid to say I have instantly forgotten again. Those moments aside, the gig is immensely enjoyable. Collins’s band is cooking, especially the Dumbledore-like figure of bassist Leland Sklar, even if it’s hard to tell where his beard stops and his face begins. Collins introduces them all via a few unsubtle dick jokes about the size of each brass player’s instrument, at which point a female fan screams: “YOU CAN BLOW MY HORN ANYTIME!” Off the stage, it’s the best people-watching gig I’ve ever attended. Those who have paid for the Easy Lover VIP gift package ($743.65; the top-tier Not Dead Yet package was valued at $973.05) receive, among other souvenirs, a complimentary set of drumsticks. At one point, between songs, an excitable fellow turns to the crowd and bellows “COME ON PEOPLE!!! GET YOUR STICKS OUT!!! STICKS IN THE AIR!!!” It’s all quite mad. “About 400 years ago I was in a band called Genesis,” Collins says, the cue for Throwing It All Away and Follow You, Follow Me, accompanied by a video montage of vintage Phil. On Who Said I Would, he plays air-drums and nods along gnomically. During a long double-drum solo, he watches his young son (who’s every bit as good as his dad was) with pride – though, silhouetted from behind as he is, it’s hard to be sure Phil hasn’t actually nodded off. Then there’s a rumble of thunder, and it’s not a product of the relentless Brisbane humidity. We know what’s coming. Collins is out of his seat at last, and he stands and delivers In the Air Tonight with magisterial authority. He hasn’t been waiting for this moment all his life, so much as saving his voice to strike this night’s knockout blow. Nicholas enters with that enormous drum sound Collins made famous. All that’s missing is the gorilla suit. Hit after hit follows. The Supremes’ classic You Can’t Hurry Love is performed with due reverence, with Collins’ backing singers covering for his voice. It’s just beginning to flag a little, especially on the following Invisible Touch. But it doesn’t matter. Easy Lover has us winding up for the big finish. Sure enough, Sussudio kicks in, and streamers and confetti rain down, and I’m out of my seat with everybody else. I can’t help it. Take Me Home is the single encore, and it’s the only choice, really. Phil looks knackered. He gets to his feet once more and hobbles off stage again, back-slapped by his bandmates, with a broad grin on his face. Everyone else is wearing one too – everyone, that is, except for the poor kid, maybe five years old, who is crying and complaining to his mother: “TOO MUCH! TOO LOUD!!!” If you remain sceptical, consider this: Collins is one of two artists to have sold 100m records both as a solo artist and as a principal member of a band. The other is Paul McCartney. And if 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong – as the title of an RCA compilation of The King asserted – I am not going to be the one arrogant enough to assert that 200 million Phil Collins fans are. • Phil Collins’ Australian tour continues through January I am way too woke to be part of the backlash against Russell Brand, which was sparked by an interview this weekend in which he talked about fatherhood. I’m so woke I was part of the frontlash. But you don’t really want to cross a man whose revolutionary consciousness involves legal letters – so all I can say is well done Swami Russ for reproducing – and reaching a higher state of evolution than I imagined possible. After all, it is certainly neither right nor sensible to prefer the womanising, drug-addled Essex thesaurus to his latest incarnation, but then I am not here to be right or sensible. His voyage towards sobriety may have helped many. He rewrote the 12-step programme in his book Recovery; married Katy Perry; told everyone not to vote in 2015 (before changing his mind); oh, and had sex four or five times a day. He was beloved by brocialists as he demanded revolution, but then he forgot how to be funny. He made the political YouTube series The Trews because the bad old MSM (mainstream media) was not to be trusted. Now, though, he has “settled” down and had two children, as even a living saint must do. He married Laura Gallacher, a “lifestyle blogger”. In fact, it turns out her lifestyle is mainly looking after their two small children, because, not to put too fine a point on it, he does sod all. “I’m still of a romantic and reflective and, possibly, to give it its proper name, a religious disposition,” he says in an interview. It’s lucky, then, he has married someone who presumably isn’t a fellow mystic, because who does the childcare? “Laura does all of it. It turns out that she is extremely well versed in the nuances and complexities of child rearing.” Amazing. This revolution does not involve childcare. Brand talks about his worries that other people might spoil the perfection of his daughters, but his wife has never, ever, had a night off from them. I get it, looking after small children is dull. Instead, Brand gets up, prays, meditates, does a lot of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and goes to the gym. How can he possibly have time for these small beings? Plus, he just hasn’t had much experience of organising domesticity. Presumably it all just comes naturally to his wife. When he is alone with the kids he appears to manage so badly that an even bigger mess is made. We all know relationships like this, where the husband is the most difficult child of all. But then not every woman is married to a seeker of the spiritual path. So how does one learn to be a parent? Well, it’s a mundane journey all right, but one that dissolves the ego far more than any amount of chanting. It’s not unusual, though, for alternative saints to be entirely traditional. It’s easy not to sweat the small stuff if your mind is on the big stuff: revolution, ending world hunger, reaching the next stage of consciousness. A true revolutionary, though, might point out that it is the small stuff, and indeed the small people, who matter – that this is where change happens. The labour of love that is cooking and keeping a household together and looking after children is hard and complex – and adulation-free. Women’s work is not seen as the path to divinity, and so Brand witters on, incapable of reflecting on what is happening in his own home. If he really wants to change the world, or even himself, he could start by changing a few more nappies. I say this with loving kindness and compassion in my heart. Obviously.A Welsh farmhouse that was once in such poor condition that rainwater ran through its rooms is in fact an exceptionally rare 600-year-old medieval hall house, it has been confirmed, after conservation experts used a groundbreaking new dating technique originally developed by climate change scientists. Llwyn Celyn, which lies in the Black Mountains on the border of England and Wales, was completed in 1420, an analysis of its timbers found, making it one of only a tiny number of domestic buildings to survive from one of the most destructive periods in Welsh history, immediately following the failed revolt of the Welsh prince Owain Glyndŵr. Conservation experts from the Landmark Trust, who first encountered the building in a perilous state of disrepair but still inhabited by two farmers in 2007, initially believed it dated from much later in the 15th century. But repeated attempts to date its ancient timbers with tree ring analysis failed, in part because the technique is less effective on trees that have grown in a wet climate. Instead, they turned to a  technique developed in the geography department at Swansea University. Never before used on an undated historic building, it analyses the oxygen, hydrogen and carbon isotopes preserved within the cellulose of a tree’s rings to determine the climate conditions in which the tree grew. Each ring has a distinctive isotope signal, which can be used to determine very precisely the age of the timber, even on samples that would be undateable by conventional methods. The new technique will potentially be “transformative” for the dating of historic buildings and timbers back to the arrival of the Romans, and potentially into the Bronze Age, according to Neil Loader, a professor of geography at the university. “What is also important,” he says, “is that every timber we analyse and date does not just tell us the age of the sample, important though that i; it also provides a record of the climate experienced by that tree through time, and so in dating a sample we are also enhancing our understanding of the climate of these islands.” Caroline Stanford, a historian and head of engagement at the Landmark Trust, said the building was “the most important at-risk building in Wales” when the trust began a painstaking process of restoration, partly thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. “Even in that gloom and dereliction, there were things shining through that said, this is very special, in particular some decorative wooden door heads. But it was also the fact that it didn’t seem to have changed at all since a ceiling was put into the hall, which we thought was some time in the 17th century.” In fact, further investigation of Llwyn Celyn and its timbers revealed that the once open hall had been altered to include an upper floor in 1690, but the fixed bench on which the original lord of the hall would have sat at his high table was still in place, almost six centuries after it was first installed. The building has now been fully restored and is available to rent through the Landmark Trust. Stanford said the application of the Swansea technique was “a hugely important breakthrough”. He said: “Isotope research is transforming our understanding not only of historic buildings but of archaeology as well. It’s an absolutely fascinating crossover between science and the humanities, and transformative in our understanding [of buildings], but also in our understanding of the planet. “From the point of view of a buildings historian, it is breaking us out into the sunlight of a much bigger world, in terms of our understanding of how humanity has evolved.” Llwyn Celyn will feature on The £4 Million Restoration: Historic House Rescue on More 4 on 16 January at 9pmThere is considerable excitement in the Conservative party on Tuesday morning. It looks like a deal has been reached on Brexit. There’s just one problem, that, from what we can gather of the so-called “Malthouse compromise”, it stands no chance of being acceptable to the EU. There seem to be three fundamentals to the plan: the extension of the implementation period to 2021, technological solutions to ensure no border infrastructure requirements on the island of Ireland, and an interim free trade agreement to be tabled immediately. This has been termed a “triple-lock”. The first element is uncontroversial and indeed already part of the draft withdrawal agreement between the EU and UK. It means a standstill period during which trade carries on as before, and the UK continues to follow EU rules and trade policy, including a common external tariff. It is the second and third parts that are almost certain to be unacceptable to the EU. Technological solutions for the Irish border have been endlessly debated, but there is no border in the world outside of the EU where there are no physical checks, including the often cited Norway-Sweden and Switzerland-EU borders. Only where both countries are in a customs union and have more or less the same product regulations backed by a common court have checks been eliminated. For customs checks to decide whether tariffs are payable, a border is the only place where you always get the transport, declaration, supporting documents and goods together at the same time. Without this, the opportunities for smuggling are too great, and it should be remembered that checks are based on a risk-management approach, aimed at smugglers rather than regular traders. Non-customs checks, typically on animals and animal products, or potentially dangerous products such as chemicals, are equally tricky. The document on which the compromise is based appears to be Shanker Singham’s A Better Deal. It says that “The parties agree that inspections on veterinary and SPS [sanitary and phytosanitary agreement] regulations shall be done at the premises of the exporter, importer, or at official border inspection facilities, located in the vicinity of the point of entry into the territory of the other party.” This in fact recognises that there would almost certainly need to be border infrastructure of the type the backstop, with alignment of Northern Ireland for customs and product rules, was designed to prevent. The backstop is a firm red line for the commission, and there are numerous reasons why it will not be changed. The EU will demonstrate that its word cannot be trusted if it reverses. It is a guarantee promised to a member state, and to prioritise the interests of a soon-to-be third country over a member state would be devastating to the EU’s credibility. It has consistently rejected the view that technology solutions could replace a border. Finally, the EU does not trust the UK not to backslide from a vague no-border commitment, based on the fact that so many in the UK have downplayed the issue. The interim free trade agreement, to be tabled immediately, would not help avoid border checks. Even without tariffs there is no full free trade outside of a customs union, for rules of origin must be checked to ensure the product is eligible for a zero tariff, for example to stop a Chinese product being rebadged and passed off as a UK product. The agreement also envisages UK regulations differing from those in the EU. And the chances of the EU accepting an interim free trade agreement, drawn up in a matter of days or weeks, are close to zero. The EU typically takes upwards of five years to reach such agreements, in large part to make sure it is a good deal that will benefit the whole economy and has widespread support among member states. The UK would be wise to take the time needed in order to achieve this, not least because sensitive questions, such as which food standards and other regulations we should follow, are bound to be controversial. There is a mistaken belief that the prime minister will be strengthened by a unified Conservative party position. However such a position has to be realistic, and one that directly attacks the most fundamental red line of the European commission is not. It is almost as if the commission suggested the UK abandoned its commitment to end freedom of movement. On the contrary, this compromise is likely to infuriate the EU and member states, who will see in it a continued failure of the UK to grapple with the choices brought by Brexit, and a rerun of ideas already rejected. • David Henig is director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political EconomyMauricio Pochettino admitted the hamstring injury which forced Dele Alli out of Tottenham’s 2-1 win at Fulham did “not look great” as he faced up to the loss of yet another key attacking player. Spurs play Chelsea in the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg at Stamford Bridge on Thursday, leading 1-0 from the first leg, and Pochettino is already resigned to being without Harry Kane, who has an ankle ligament injury, and Son Heung-min, who is on international duty with South Korea at the Asian Cup. Pochettino said that Lucas Moura, who missed the Fulham game because of knee trouble, should return at Chelsea but he will miss the midfielders Moussa Sissoko (groin) and Victor Wanyama (knee) while he now faces an anxious wait over Alli. Pochettino appeared to concede that the manner in which Alli reached back to feel his hamstring in the 86th minute, as he chased a ball into touch, made a lay-off inevitable. The manager has already made it clear that he does not consider a move in the January transfer market to be either realistic or the right thing to do to answer what has come to feel like a selection crisis. “We need to assess Dele in the next few days but the hamstring is a muscle that you need to be careful with – in terms of the mechanism of the injury,” Pochettino said. “We need to assess but, of course, it does not look great. On the pitch I think we all agree that when you see him put his hand on his hamstring, it’s a situation where you feel … it’s not great to see that.” Pochettino, who did welcome back Eric Dier as a substitute after appendix surgery, maintained that injuries can offer chances to other members of his squad, even if resources are being stretched to breaking point. “It’s not a worry, it’s a massive opportunity for different players,” Pochettino said. “We’re going to go to Chelsea expecting to win. We hope it’s not a massive issue with Dele but the most important thing is to believe. Lucas trained today at the training ground. We didn’t want to risk him against Fulham but he’s nearly 100 %. Maybe it’s not going to be Dele but we are going to have Lucas on the bench or maybe from the beginning.”Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has announced the first increase in the country’s minimum wage in nearly a decade as his government took the first tangible step towards ending the austerity imposed during the euro crisis. The leftist leader said the standard monthly minimum wage would rise by 11%, from €586 (£509) to €650, and a lower-wage category for younger employees would be abolished. “[This] will be emblematic for the labour force, a rise that will reinvigorate the real economy,” Tsipras told a meeting of his cabinet. The mimimum wage freeze had become symbolic of the inequities of belt-tightening as Greece weathered its worst economic storm in modern times. The increase, while expected, was greater than anticipated: there had been speculation that it would rise by 8% to €630. Tsipras, who faces general elections later this year and is lagging in polls, is determined to reverse some of the unpopular measures Athens has been compelled to take by the creditors behind the bailouts that have kept Greece afloat for the past nine years. After receiving the biggest financial rescue in global economic history, the country exited its third and final EU-sponsored bailout programme last August. The planned wage increases were agreed in consultation with EU lenders still monitoring Athens’ fiscal progress and must be approved by parliament to take effect in February as the government hopes. An estimated 880,000 people will benefit from the changes, according to the labour ministry, which said unemployment pay and maternity support would also rise. One in three Greeks in the private sector earn less than €600 a month. The increase comes seven years after Greece was forced to slash the standard minimum wage by 22% to €586. Labour market reforms aimed at making the nation more competitive were felt especially by Greeks under the age of 25. Under the steely watch of creditors, Greece last year outperformed budget targets, but while unemployment has dropped by almost 10 percentage points to 18.1%, the economic recovery remains fragile. Hobbled by the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in Europe, the country’s banking system has the largest stock of non-performing loans of any EU member state, making it particularly vulnerable to global market instability. A glimmer of light emerged on Monday as borrowing costs on 10-year bonds dropped to a four–month low and Tsipras announced that the government would imminently be issuing a five-year bond.Emergency “trauma packs” flown into the UK during terrorist attacks are being stockpiled in Britain by the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson over concerns of a risk to life from border delays in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The company said the move was being made due to the danger posed to the “routine and rapid” provision of the vital emergency equipment it provides to the NHS in times of emergency from a distribution plant in Belgium. Hospitals do not generally keep large stocks of such emergency packs due to the risk of the devices or medicines contained within them running past their product shelf life. The development highlights the dependence of the UK on frictionless movement of goods across the border. On Thursday, the head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, admitted to the dangers posed by Brexit. “What we are doing is reviewing the tens of thousands of individual medicines, medical devices and other products that the health service uses, making sure that the manufacturers of those products have got extra buffer stockpiles,” Stevens said. “We do obviously have a reliance on the way the transport infrastructure works in order to continue uninterrupted supply.” Stevens added that it was “in nobody’s interest” in western Europe to stand in the way of the flow of medical equipment. “Getting those transport logistics right is absolutely crucial for the continuous flow of medical supplies, that is a statement of the obvious,” he said. At the time of the 2017 bombing of the Manchester arena, in which 23 people died, the high number of casualties of both adults and children required Johnson & Johnson to swiftly fly in additional packs from Belgium containing plates, wires, cables, nails and screws for the stabilising of joints. “This is routine and the rapid deployment of trauma packs to the UK by the European Distribution Centre meant patient safety was never compromised,” a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson said. The company, which is not the only provider of trauma packs, said that while there were “factors outside our control” it had been “preparing for no deal for well over a year” given the risks to medical supplies. “Our priority throughout has been to patients, consumers, healthcare providers and our employees,” the spokesman said. “We are doing everything we can to prepare for all potential Brexit scenarios – including increasing our level of stockholding, increasing warehouse capacity, reviewing and where necessary changing transport/distribution routes,” the spokesman said. Catherine Bearder, the Liberal Democrat MEP, said the government should formally rule out a no-deal Brexit. She said: “Vital trauma packs can be sent to hospitals from the EU within hours. Customs checks will delay the packs getting to patients in emergency situations – it’s terrifying. The prime minister must take no deal off the table now.” In 2017, the the cross-party home affairs select committee of MPs warned that post-Brexit customs checks could lead to five-hour delays at borders which could prove “critical in life and death situations where critically injured patients need care and treatment as soon as possible.” “Accident and emergency trauma packs (which are full of equipment and medicines) are flown in from the EU to the UK within hours from the order being placed to the operating room (OR) in a hospital,” the committee’s report said. “This short time frame is particularly necessary during unexpected large-scale emergencies, such as terrorist attacks, when a large number of people are suddenly seriously injured,” the report added. “Hospitals do not always stockpile these packs on a large enough scale to deal with these extreme emergencies because the medicines and devices included in them would risk running past their product shelf life and many packs would be wasted.”Iran has been accused by the Dutch government of directing two political assassinations in the Netherlands, triggering EU sanctions against Tehran’s military intelligence service. The two murders are alleged to have taken place in broad daylight in 2015 in Almere, a city east of Amsterdam, and in 2017 on a street close to the Dutch foreign ministry in The Hague. In a written statement to the Dutch parliament, Stef Blok, the country’s foreign minister, said intelligence services had found “strong indications that Iran was involved in the assassinations of two Dutch nationals of Iranian origin”. Blok added the government believed such “hostile actions” violated Dutch sovereignty. The man killed in 2015 was named as Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi, 56, who had previously been sentenced to death in Iran after being accused of planting a bomb at the Islamic Republic party’s headquarters in 1981, killing 73 people. Among those killed in the bomb attack was the second-in-command to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader. Samadi, who had been in the building shortly before the explosion, was accused of the attack and fled to Europe. He was sentenced to death in absentia. With his wife and teenage son, he had lived in Almere, working as an engineer under the alias Ali Motamed. He was shot in the head at point-blank range by two assailants dressed in black, in what was claimed to have the hallmarks of a contract killing.Two years later, the Iranian activist Ahmad Molla Nissi, 52, who founded an Arab nationalist group seeking an independent state inside Iran, was also shot in the head as he walked through The Hague. On Tuesday, the EU imposed sanctions against two Iranians and the country’s military intelligence service in response to the allegations. The Dutch government said the expulsion in June 2018 of two diplomats from the Iranian embassy in the Netherlands had been in retaliation for the murders and the Iranian ambassador had been summoned at the time.Dick Schoof, the director general of the Dutch security service, the AIVD, said it was involved in “intense” efforts with other countries to research the extent of Iranian “interference” in Europe. Last year, France and Denmark also accused Iran of plotting attacks on European soil, involving a foiled bombing attack that targeted a rally organised by an Iranian opposition group near Paris in June 2018 and the assassination of the exiled leader of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA), a separatist group with a history of carrying out attacks in Iran. The development has thrown EU-Iran relations into crisis at a time when Brussels is straining to keep alive the accord under which sanctions against Tehran were lifted in return for it lowering its nuclear ambitions. Last year, the US president, Donald Trump, pulled out of the agreement, describing it as a “rotten deal”.Netflix’s acclaimed new comedy Sex Education centers on the experiences of Otis, a 16-year-old virgin, played by Asa Butterfield, and his mom, Jean, a sex therapist, played by Gillian Anderson. Though Otis grows up in an ostensibly sex-positive home, he is incredibly uncomfortable about sex. He dislikes masturbating and is intensely afraid of being sexual with another person. “Let’s take things slow,” he tells a classmate, and they proceed to hold hands for 45 minutes. In the show, Otis’s ambivalence about sex is shown to come, at least partially, from the awkwardness of living with a sex therapist mother who decorates their home with explicit art, as well as some large dildos (her home is also the place where she counsels couples and where she regularly holds workshops). Despite the fact that Jean is a therapist, she has significant problems with boundary issues, holding the men she sleeps with at arm’s length while fixating on her son’s personal life. The playful twist in Sex Education comes when Otis offers advice to a popular peer who is insecure about his penis size. When Maeve, the class rebel, sees how effective Otis’s advice was, she suggests teaming up: she’ll secure clients and handle the business side of things, while Otis will provide therapy to kids struggling with all sorts of concerns about their burgeoning sexuality, from body insecurity to fears about the actual process of having sex. While critics have marveled at the show’s combination of raunch and warmth, this fusion harks back to a tradition of similarly fused teen comedies from American Pie to Netflix’s Big Mouth. So many finger-wagging pundits have warned that the rise of affirmative consent culture in high schools and college campuses would kill the fun spontaneity of sexuality. And yet, in reality, we see the opposite, with shows like Sex Education and Big Mouth eagerly illustrating how much better sex can be when we learn to communicate with our partners. And communicate they do: throughout Sex Education, we see Otis counsel teens worried about their bodies, their desires, and their relationships. While Otis’s advice doesn’t always hit the mark (he struggles to provide feedback to a lesbian couple since the dynamics of such a relationship are more “out of his wheelhouse” than penis problems) it does allow students the space to be honest about their fears and work through some of their anxieties. Sometimes Sex Education leans a little too hard into its “everyone struggles and deserves empathy” schtick: the viewer is asked to sympathize with bullies as much as the bullied, and I was particularly surprised that Jean’s mining of her son’s sexual issues was presented as a mild overreach of parenting, rather than a truly shocking abuse of power. Overall, though, the show consistently hits the right notes: earnest but not preachy, moving without ever being manipulative. In one storyline, an image of a student’s unwaxed vulva is shared without her consent by an anonymous and angry villain who wants an apology for some perceived wrongdoing. The other students make fun of the image, while the victim of the act is terrified that her identity will be exposed. When the headmaster scolds the students on how it’s a crime to share such pictures, a wave of students come to the defense of the targeted one. “It’s my vagina,” one after another says, first girls, and then even the most popular boy in school. As each stands up, the shame of the original image fades into the background. Finally, the targeted girl stands too: “It’s MY vagina,” she says proudly. I never thought I’d tear up when watching a school assembly scene, but there you have it. Sex Education is a defiantly hopeful show, one that insists that the young people who are struggling to navigate their hormones and an often unjust world are fully capable of true emotional growth. In particular, the show’s depiction of two of Otis’s closest friends is simply exceptional. Otis’s best friend, Eric, played by Ncuti Gatwa, is hilarious, smart, and exuberant and pushes back against viewer expectations of the trope of the gay best friend whose own needs are sidelined for the straight central protagonist. In particular, Eric’s relationship with his father, who clearly loves his son, but is also frightened for him growing up in a homophobic world, is incredibly touching. Likewise, Maeve, in a full-blooded performance by Emma Mackey, is one part Daria Morgendorffer and one part Lisa Simpson, a truly bright and engaged student who simply doesn’t have any parental support. Mackey’s Maeve is a full person, not just an object of desire, and it’s terrific to see how her relationship with Otis grows as they gain more trust and respect for each other. Ultimately, Sex Education is much less interested in the mechanics of sex than in what encourages real intimacy. This doesn’t mean that the show isn’t chock full of lewd masturbation jokes and scandalous drawings, but the heart of the series is first and foremost about relationships: between parents and kids, best friends, older and younger generations, as well as young people falling in and out of love. In its most daring move, Sex Education insists that it’s not only listening that aids in communication: it’s our own willingness to grow and change too.The “major incident” is well and truly under way. Sajid Javid has signalled just how seriously he is taking the recent spike in refugee crossings across the Channel by interrupting his holiday to deal with the crisis. All manner of plans are now being devised to shore up our borders. Around 100 people have crossed the Channel since Christmas Day but while the government ramps up concern about this sudden “new” development – actually something that has been occurring since 2017 – context is lacking. The past few years has seen the worst refugee crisis since the second world war. Not only the conflict in Syria but also ongoing persecution in countries such as Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan has prompted record numbers of refugees to flee for their lives. To put the hundred or so refugees reported to have crossed the Channel to the UK since Christmas Day into perspective: in 2015 1,015,078 refugees arrived in Europe, more than 800,000 trafficked by sea from Turkey to Greece. Since then the numbers reaching Europe have plummeted. From the beginning of this year until mid‑September 20,120 arrived in Italy, down from 180,000 in 2016 and 20,760 arrived in Greece. The number of clandestine arrivals at UK southern coastal ports in 2017-18 was 1,832, a 23% decrease on the 2,366 of these arrivals the previous year. Rather than hand-wringing about the latest refugee attempts to reach safety, Javid et al should be congratulating themselves on how effectively they have reduced migration to Europe. The government is right that there has been a (small) spike in Channel crossings in the past few days but this is likely to be a result of our effective policy to hermetically seal the previous lorry and train routes in Calais that refugees were using without attracting daily headlines. In the UK the numbers claiming asylum have gone down dramatically from a high of 84,132 in 2002. In 2015 there were 32,733 claims. The third quarter of 2018 reveals 7,444 claims. Whatever the fourth-quarter statistics will show when they are published early this year, those claiming asylum by crossing the Channel are likely to be a small percentage of the overall stats. It is easy for these politicians to condemn the gangs of traffickers cashing in on human misery. But this is so much more than a numbers game. The collapse in the number of refugees reaching Europe is certainly not due to a resolution of conflicts in global trouble spots leading to more people happily staying at home. It is due to a deliberate raft of policies promulgated by EU countries, including the UK, to shore up Fortress Europe. A deal signed between the European Union and Turkey in March 2016 specified that everyone who arrived in Greece from Turkey must claim asylum on arrival. Those who didn’t or whose asylum claims were rejected were sent back to Turkey. To address the exodus from countries such as Eritrea and Sudan, the Khartoum Process was established – political cooperation among countries along the migration route between the Horn of Africa and Europe. The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa claims to promote stability and address the root causes of irregular migration. All of these initiatives can be summarised simply with the words push back. Europe does not want these refugees. It doesn’t matter how “deserving” they are and whether or not they qualify for our protection under the Geneva convention. Doing the decent human thing and offering sanctuary to those fleeing persecution in Syria, Eritrea, Sudan and Afghanistan does not play out well politically at home. Some of those pushed back can go home without risking their lives. But many cannot. Eritrea – described as Africa’s North Korea, where indefinite military service is mandatory and where Pentecostal Christians cannot practise their religion – will not accept forced returnees. Thanks to push back, many refugees from Eritrea and other conflict zones are now holed up in horrendous detention centres in Libya, to which the UK contributes funds. They cannot go back nor can they move forward. Some are dying unrecorded in these hellholes – those who continue to live are suffering beyond measure. But our politicians are refusing to answer questions about their fate honestly. There are hollow words and crocodile tears about the dangers of refugees risking their lives making hazardous sea crossings, yet our politicians have declined to offer them a safe alternative. This is the real crisis, not the hundred people who have crossed the Channel in the past few days. It is easy for these politicians to condemn the gangs of traffickers cashing in on human misery. But our governments could put these gangs out of business and alleviate the mass of human suffering by opening up legal routes to sanctuary, shared fairly across every EU country. Instead of doing this they ramp up fears of the other by clamping down on a few dozen desperate refugees who are trying to reach our shores. • Diane Taylor is a freelance journalist and authorItaly’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has mocked new rules aimed at combating racism in football. The Italian football federation (FIGC) said on Wednesday that players would be told to leave the pitch if two warnings over the public address failed to stop racist chanting during matches. The move came after Kalidou Koulibaly, a Napoli player who was born in France to Senegalese parents, was subjected to monkey chants during a game against Inter Milan on Boxing Day. Three appeals were made over the PA system to stop the chants but the abuse continued throughout the match. Under the new guidelines, matches will be paused after the first warning and players will converge in the middle of the pitch. Upon a second warning, players will return to the changing rooms and a security official will then decide whether to call off the game. The FIGC’s president, Gabriele Gravina, said the move “simplified procedures by removing responsibility from the referee”. Procedures previously required the referee to briefly stop a match if racist chants were heard and to request a public announcement asking fans to stop. But Salvini disparaged the move, saying: “Now we have a Richter scale for booing. Come on, don’t make us laugh.” The FIGC also said on Wednesday it was investigating claims that a referee racially abused a Senegalese goalkeeper, Gueye Ass Dia, during a non-league game between Serino and Real Sarno. Serino players walked off in protest against the alleged abuse of their teammate. In January, after a meeting of government and FIGC officials to address racism and violence at football matches, Salvini, an ardent AC Milan supporter, said he was against suspending games for racist chanting, arguing that it was a “slippery slope”. But he pledged to root out violence after an Inter Milan fan died after clashes with Napoli supporters outside Milan’s San Siro stadium before the Boxing Day game. Roberto Coramusi, the head of institutional relations at FIGC, told the Guardian the federation would not comment on Salvini’s latest remarks, but he said: “We act on behalf of our convictions but also our competencies. The referee must indicate any sign of racism, but in the end the decision to stop a game is always the responsibility of the security official, who works under the interior ministry.” Raffaele Cantone, the chief of Italy’s anti-corruption agency, said the new rules were “wise”. “What happened to Koulibaly was scandalous. I’m convinced that if the referee calls players to the centre of the pitch, maybe [the racism] will stop. But you also need a burst of pride from the other spectators to show they have nothing to do with these idiots.” Racism and hooliganism have long blighted Italian football. In recent years the Italy international Mario Balotelli has been a persistent target of abuse. Italian football hooligans, knowns as ultras, tend to be well-organised, extremely violent and racist. Last year Daniele De Santis, a notorious ultra, was jailed for 16 years for the murder of a Napoli fan, Ciro Esposito, before the 2014 Italian Cup final game against Fiorentina.How can you resist an author who proclaims on his dust jacket: “Guy Kennaway lives for pleasure, producing books only when all else has failed”? He’s someone I’ve been running into at parties for years (he is friends with Jay Jopling of White Cube and the artist Mat Collishaw), but I never once suspected he was a writer. I thought maybe he was an art dealer of some sort, or possibly a collector – he was too well-dressed and socially assured to be an artist, still less a writer. That’s fine, he says; he doesn’t hang out with writers, because he thinks they are rather dreary, bitter people – he prefers artists because, “They know how to have a good time and they’ve got money.” But it turns out he has published five books, and his new book, Time To Go, is a corker which should keep book clubs arguing for years. It is both a serious discussion of self-euthanasia – which is how the publishers seem to be billing it – and a darkly hilarious account of his tricky relationship with his mother, Susie. It starts with her asking him to get her some heroin because she wants to be able to kill herself when the time comes. She is 88 and her husband, Stanley, is even older. They are both getting frail and she fears they might end up in some ghastly care home. Also, they live in France and are worried Brexit might mean an end to free healthcare. So it would be nice if she and Stanley could die together, in their double bed, at a time of their own choosing. How sweet, you might think, how sensible. But then you don’t yet know Susie. She is “certainly no Mrs Tiggy-Winkle,” Guy warns us, but “a woman of passion, anger and determination. She still relished revenge and had many scores to settle.” He thinks one of the scores might be with him and that she is plotting to get him busted for heroin. Then Stanley dies, of natural causes, and Susie is left alone. She seems to have forgotten the idea of killing herself, though Guy notices she is stockpiling tramadol. He and his sister visit her as often as possible and he fills the time by writing a book about her. Naturally she demands to read it, and is hideously upset when she does. She quite wants to sue him, but also thinks it would be fun to come to the launch party, give interviews denouncing him, go on Woman’s Hour running rings around Jane Garvey, perhaps make a film… As the book ends, she is still undecided. So I dashed down to Somerset to ask Guy what is happening – will his mother come to the launch party? He met me off the train and drove me to his home in Pilton, but wouldn’t be bounced into answering questions – nothing so vulgar. He spent the whole drive ranting about how this part of Somerset has been gentrified – he found sushi for sale in the local garage! And Hauser & Wirth has opened a gallery in nearby Bruton – “They’ve come with their flash, international culture and smeared it all over Somerset. Our culture was fine: cider-drinking, drug-taking, lazy, and now we have to know who Thomas Scheibitz is!” This rant keeps him going all the way to Pilton, where he switches to praise for Michael Eavis, who gives all the locals free tickets to Glastonbury. We drive down a steep farm track to a clutter of outbuildings which look most unpromising until we go round to the front, which reveals his home to be a beautiful three-gabled stone manor house, with a lawn stretching down to the river. Inside there are more surprises – several book-lined sitting rooms and a big, bright modern kitchen. When he finally cured his psoriasis – by sunbathing naked beside the Dead Sea – he became a sex addict instead He says he hopes I like lamb because: “I killed some lambs for you – took them to the abattoir, said goodbye to them, and brought them home in boxes.” He pours wine, checks the Aga, chats about books, chats about art, and finally, when I’m almost screaming with impatience, sits down to answer questions. So what made him decide to write Time To Go? “Well, I had that conversation with my mother. She said, ‘I’ve had a really interesting life, much more interesting than yours, but I’m planning to leave the party and I want you to get me some heroin.’ And I wrote it that day in my diary and thought afterwards: ‘That’s the best paragraph I’ve written in years. So maybe I should try to write about her, instead of plodding away at some silly novel. More fun.’” So how is his mother now? Not well, it turns out. She spent New Year in hospital after a fall, in exactly the helpless situation she wanted to avoid. And he thinks maybe his book is to blame. “To be honest, when she first read the book, she was so shocked that I saw a real decline. And my sister rang me and said: ‘Well done Guy, you killed Mummy!’ and I felt really guilty. I mean, I wanted to write the book, but I didn’t really want to kill her! She said: ‘Why can’t you write only the nice things about me?’ I said: ‘Because then we’d only have a four-page book, Mummy.’’’ Anyway, it seems pretty doubtful that she’ll come to his launch party. Guy Kennaway lives in considerable style. He has the house in Somerset, a flat in London and a house in Jamaica. So does he make lots of money from writing? “God no,” he laughs, “hardly any.” But his parents were quite well off. His father, James Kennaway, was a novelist and screenwriter who wrote Tunes of Glory but died in a car crash when Guy was only 11. Then his mother married another rich man, Brian Young, who was a successful advertising mogul, and then Stanley, who was a showbiz accountant. Also, Guy married a rich wife, Portia, from the Moores family who founded Littlewoods Pools, and she bought him this house when she divorced him in 2008. “I can’t talk about Portia,” he says, “but she’s a really generous and kind person.” So one way or another there was quite a bit of family money sloshing around. But also: “I make my living from buying old houses, doing them up and selling them at a profit. I’ve been fortunate enough to live at a time [he is 61] when it was almost impossible not to make money out of property, however stupid, lazy and idiotic you were. I’ve always got a building site on the go. At present I’m turning that garage at the back into a barn conversion.” The house is stuffed with books and he’s obviously a great reader, but he didn’t go to university until he was 24. His mother’s second husband, Brian, told him university was a waste of time and he should come and work with him in advertising, so he did. “As with so much of my life, I was totally in the right place at the right time, but I was the wrong person. I was coining it and had a flat in London people would die for, and I was taking clients out, getting drunk on expenses. Those were definitely the glory days. But I didn’t really like the people – advertising just seemed a bit flimsy to me – so I thought I ought to go to university after all.” He went to Edinburgh (where he shared a flat with Jay Jopling) to read English, but before he did, he published two novels – I Can Feel It Moving and The Winner of the Fooker Prize – which he now prefers to forget. “But I remember the vibe – to see your book in print is a nice feeling – which gave me the impetus to keep on writing. Unfortunately I became quite pretentious and basically wrote shit. I had a lot of books rejected – rightly so. But then I wrote One People [1997] about Jamaica and thought: ‘Oh you can do it!’’’ He and his wife had a house in Jamaica and had been going there for years and knew all the locals. So he wrote a book about the inhabitants of a village he called Angel Beach. It got rave reviews at the time, but might now be accused of cultural appropriation, because he wrote it all in Jamaican patois. His next book, Sunbathing Naked and Other Miracle Cures, was a memoir about his youthful battles with psoriasis and all the cures he took. And when he did finally get cured – by sunbathing naked beside the Dead Sea – he became a sex addict instead and had to go on a cure for that. His last book, Bird Brain (2011), was a very funny novel about a keen sportsman who dies in a shooting accident and is reincarnated as a pheasant. You do go in for dangerous subjects, I tell him. “Yes. If I was a brilliant writer, I wouldn’t need to.” A propos Sunbathing Naked, he says his psoriasis still comes back occasionally and, “It’s bound to turn up for my book launch – it likes to make the big engagements in my life.” But meeting other, much worse-afflicted “flakeys” by the Dead Sea taught him to stop worrying about it. But then he started worrying about being a sex addict. He thinks his father was one, too, but in those days it was just called shagging around. But it became obsessive – he masturbated constantly and couldn’t look at a petrol nozzle without imagining a penis. “There was something going on that was quite scary and uncontrollable, and it had to get really bad before I put my hands up and said ‘I need help.’ I remember crying and just feeling absolutely sick of myself and sick of the bullshit I had to create in order to weave this crazy lifestyle.” Finally he ’fessed up to his wife and she arranged for him to go on a sex addiction rehab course in Arizona, which worked. He also got God – I noticed a well-worn Bible on his bookshelf – and he says yes, he doesn’t go to church because it’s boring, “but I was on my knees this morning, asking God to tell me: ‘Just simmer down.’” Is he addicted to anything now? “Food! I wish I could get addicted to work, but I can’t unfortunately. But food is quite a friendly sort of addiction and not harmful to other people. Like now I think: ‘Oh my book is coming out. I might be shamed in the national press. I know what I’ll do, I’ll go and buy four pork pies, two scotch eggs, a jar of mustard and eat the lot and that will solve the problem. But that’s the worst that happens now: I head for the fridge. I don’t even head for the bottle.” I feel most alive when I’m enraging people at a boring dinner party Is his basic problem that he’s had life too easy, so he has to sort of invent complications? “Yes. I was very lucky and then I married someone who had a lot of money and I lost sight of decent values like hard work. I needed to learn humility and to stop thinking that everything revolved around me. These are all good things to learn – but sometimes I forget!” In Time To Go he mentions a girlfriend, Amanda, but he is now unattached. What happened to her? “She was so lovely,” he sighs. “But I knew what she was going to say next. And then she started trying to be interesting, which is the worst. I’d moved her in here at one stage, but I thought maybe I should talk to a lawyer as there might be financial implications, and he asked what date she moved in. So I went to my diary and found: ‘Amanda is moving in today. It’s going to be so sexy. She’ll be in my bed. This is wonderful.’ That was in March or whenever it was. And then I happened to look at the next entry and it said: ‘The coffee’s been moved, the sugar’s in the wrong place, I don’t know if I can deal with this. I have made a massive mistake.’ And that was the next day!” Hmm. At the end he asks how I think the interview has gone and I say it was a very nice lunch. I still can’t get the hang of him. He is terrifically amusing company, but he’s also very arrogant. I can’t stand the way he describes women as “sweet”. But actually he doesn’t really care what other people think. I remarked at one point that he must be much in demand as the spare man at dinner parties, but he said on the contrary, he is never asked because he’s so rude. “I feel most alive when I’m enraging people at a boring dinner party. I feel the evening has not been wasted.” Time To Go will probably enrage many people because it dares to make jokes about self-euthanasia. As he says on the book jacket: “Some things in life are too serious to joke about. Assisted suicide is not one of them.” Unfortunately, Ipso, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, disagrees and has made the subject of assisted dying almost taboo for journalists, so I can’t quote any of his jokes. All I can say is read the book – but, be warned, you need a robust sense of humour. Guy Kennaway is not for the faint-hearted. Time To Go is published by Mensch at £14.99At the end of last week, the actor and comedian who stepped down from hosting this year’s Oscars in the wake of a controversy over homophobia, said he was “evaluating” his position in terms of a return to the role. On Wednesday, Hart appeared to have come to a decision: that he would not be open to being rehired by the Academy – at least, not this year. Appearing on breakfast TV show Good Morning America, Hart said: “I am done with it. It gets no more energy. For the last time, I am done addressing this. There is no more conversation about it. I’m done with it, I am over it.” Questioned about how he had changed in the past eight years, since some of his more objectionable utterances, Hart said he was “over” discussing old tweets. “I have explained how I evolved. I’m not saying how I’ve changed anymore. I’m not saying what I’ve done and what the new me is. I’m giving no more explanation.” Hart had been thought to have been reinstalled as MC for next month’s ceremony following a remarkable interview on Ellen, which surfaced on Friday. In this, both Hart and interviewer Ellen DeGeneres concurred that the best way for Hart to “take a stand against the trolls” who had brought his homophobic tweets to light was to return to host the ceremony. But the interview met with a mixed reception on social media, with many declaring that they felt betrayed by DeGeneres for dismissing their concerns over Hart as simple mischief making. In the interview, Hart declined to apologise again but reiterated his feeling that the episode was a direct attempt to bring down his career. It was “a malicious attack on my character … an attack to end me”, he said. “This was to destroy me, to end all partnerships, all brand relationships, all investment opportunities, studio relationships, my production company and the people that work underneath me.” Any failure to accept his contrition, said Hart on Good Morning America, was not his fault. “I’m a good person,” he said. “If you don’t see that, it’s a problem with you. I shouldn’t have to prove who I am … what more do you want from me? You want blood? You want my arms?” Hart’s main reason for not resuming his post, he said, was because of the lack of time now available to prepare. Although the ceremony is still some six weeks away, Hart said promotional commitments for new film The Upside meant he would only have a fortnight to devote to the Academy Awards. “I can’t do it this year, it’s not going to happen, in the future if it does it does but it’s not the conversation of today.” The Upside is a remake of French hit drama Untouchable, about a paraplegic billionaire (in this case played by Bryan Cranston) and his unlikely new carer (played by Hart). In his review, Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw calls it “horrific”.There’s a terrific scene in The Favourite, the film about the last of the Stuart monarchs, when Queen Anne is about to propose a European policy to her parliament. Just before she opens her mouth, the bewigged MPs make plain that they won’t have it. The queen faints with shock and hits the floor with a thump. I don’t expect Queen Theresa to collapse when she loses in parliament this week, not least because the rejection of her Brexit deal is not going to be a surprise to anyone, herself included. If we still lived by the traditional rules of British politics, defeat ought to be the final curtain for Mrs May. Brexit is the defining task of her premiership and she is about to fail it. We’d ordinarily expect the abdication of the PM to follow such a humiliating rejection. Yet no one, neither friend nor foe, expects her to respond to defeat by submitting her resignation. Brexit has so scrambled our politics that it has normalised dramas that we would once have regarded as extraordinary and made the unthinkable routine. We no longer know which of the rules still apply. Some illumination of how Britain and its parliament got trapped in this howling nightmare is to be found in The Favourite. I hugely recommend this film and not just for the dazzling performances by Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone. The drama is footloose with the facts, but it is a prompt to pay more attention to a critical period of our history that is little taught in schools and little known to most Britons. The tensely convoluted relationship between parliament, ministers, monarch and favourites, played out during a war in Europe, echoes into our own era from the age of Anne. Her grandfather, Charles I, had been deprived of his crown and his head after he embarked on a losing struggle with parliament. When her father, James II, exhibited designs to create an absolutist Catholic monarchy, parliament rebelled again. He lost his crown, but escaped with his head, in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. By Anne’s time, quite a lot of clout was still wielded by the monarch – or by those, such as John and Sarah Churchill, who could get close enough to the monarch to harness the powers of the crown to their own ambitions. The queen could still dismiss her ministers, but power was leaching away. Anne was the last British sovereign to veto a parliamentary bill. Britain had begun its gradual transformation, centuries in the making, into a liberal democracy with an ornamental constitutional monarchy. One consequence of getting there by evolution rather than revolution is that Britain has never had a properly codified constitution. Other nations have sat down, thought about it and inscribed the rules in famous documents with resonant phrases. We have made things up as we have gone along, with the result that many of the laws governing our politics are ambiguous and contested. We never had the equivalent of the founding fathers of the United States. Unlike postwar Japan and Germany, Britain never suffered a devastating military defeat and then had a constitution imposed on us by the winners. You can argue that an ad-hoc constitution has not served Britain entirely badly. We have bolted on innovations in recent decades, such as the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly and the supreme court, with a relative lack of turbulence. Gaps in the constitution in protecting rights have been filled by membership of the European Union. The previous disinclination of Britons to go to war with themselves over constitutional issues has also meant a high tolerance for absurdities, such as a bloated, unelected second chamber that still calls itself the House of Lords and still contains hereditary peers. The constitution is stuck together from parliamentary conventions, precedents, international agreements, unwritten understandings, judicial rulings and legislative sticky notes. This seemed serviceable enough – until this spatchcocked structure collided with something as colossal as Brexit. We are partly paying the price for making such a massive decision by simple plebiscite, without having properly settled rules about referendums and how they can be reconciled with representative democracy. It is very hard work to amend the constitution of the United States and a change can only be made if there is a wide and deep consensus. Britain is heading out of the EU, the most consequential act in decades, on the basis of one ballot held nearly three years ago in which just one vote could have decided the outcome. The closeness of the result and the lack of agreement about what it meant spelled trouble from the start. It also led to the inevitable convulsions that were going to follow when a parliament largely against Brexit was tasked with implementing a result most MPs thought a mistake, a challenge without precedent. This conundrum might have been eased had Mrs May responded to her task with a non-partisan, cross-party approach, but she made things harder when she started out by seeking to please one faction of her party alone. The conventions and culture of parliament have deepened the nightmare. The British way of doing politics is founded in the idea that power is a binary contest between two big and tribal parties. It is expressed in the very architecture of the chamber of the House of Commons that sits the two sides confronting each other two swords’ length apart. It is incarnated in parliamentary rules that vest a large amount of power in the two tribal leaders – the prime minister and the leader of the official opposition. To compound the problem, it is a hung parliament in which the prime minister is a former Remainer trying to find a form of Brexit that can satisfy a majority and the opposition leader is a Brexiter leading a Remainer party who has little interest in trying to resolve the deadlock and lots of incentives to want it to end disastrously. The two of them have great sway over how parliamentary time is allocated and which motions MPs get to debate. This gives them the power to run down the clock – and both have been exploiting this for different reasons. Mrs May has taken Britain perilously close to the precipice of a crash-out Brexit on the gamble that, when MPs are staring into the abyss, they will finally succumb to her deal. This can be fairly called Blackmail Brexit. Even if she does ultimately prevail this way, forcing MPs to approve a plan they hate under the muzzle of the gun will guarantee further trouble and strife. Parliamentary convention has it that only the leader of the official opposition can table a motion of no confidence in the government. This has given Mr Corbyn an extremely convenient hiding place from his own contradictions. He keeps calling for an election, but repeatedly refuses to trigger the one mechanism that could make that happen because this delays the day when he has to declare whether he is or is not in favour of another referendum. If he fails to table a confidence motion this week, it will become too late to hold an election before Britain is due to leave the EU. In recent days, we have seen senior MPs from different parties working together to try to navigate an escape from the impasse. There is an embryonic cross-party coalition for seeking a solution, but it is desperately late and the obstacles to coalition-building, both cultural and mechanical, are huge. They have had to resort to parliamentary devices that will seem bewildering and arcane even to the most intelligent and engaged of voters. There was a great fuss when the Speaker allowed an amendment, which subsequently passed, instructing Mrs May to quickly report back to parliament when her deal is voted down. We are witnessing these parliamentary explosions about procedural issues and sequencing questions because MPs lack the tools to properly take control of Brexit decision-making. People I respect think that when the dust has finally settled, Britain will need to rethink its casual attitude to the rules of its democracy and embrace a properly codified and protected constitution. Professor Vernon Bogdanor will make that case in a book, Beyond Brexit, to be published in February. Britons might have avoided this nightmare – or at least been better prepared to cope with it – had we understood more of our history. Queen Anne, who lost all 17 of her children, died without a direct heir. Rather than risk giving the throne to another troublesome Stuart, pragmatic British parliamentarians recruited a replacement monarch from Germany who did not speak a word of English. His great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter now wears the crown. • Andrew Rawnsley is an Observer columnistOne of the least talked-about consequences of the partial shutdown of the US government – courtesy of Donald “I’m proud to shut down the government” Trump – is its negative effect on the US economy. Federal spending accounts for just over 20% of the total economy. When that spigot is turned halfway off, as it is now, demand for goods and services necessarily drops. The result is less investment and slower growth. Right now some 800,000 government employees aren’t collecting paychecks. Nor are hundreds of thousands of government contractors being paid. None of them can buy as much as before. It’s just another aspect of Trumponomics, which stands for the highly dubious proposition that prosperity comes from cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while squeezing American workers – the people who do most of the buying. A year ago, Trump and congressional Republicans predicted that their corporate tax cut would cause business investment to soar, which would lead to faster economic growth and higher wages. The tax-cut steroid wore off within six months of its passage It was classic supply side rubbish. Rather than invest more, American corporations have been scaling back their investment plans. The tax-cut steroid wore off within six months of its passage. Corporate investment rose at a 10% annual rate in the first half of 2018 but then slowed to 2.5% in the third quarter. According to the Institute for Supply Management, new orders for manufacturing equipment plunged 11 points in December. The logical explanation is that corporations won’t invest unless they expect an adequate return on such investments. That return depends on there being enough buyers for the goods and services they produce. But there aren’t enough. Besides all the government workers and contractors who aren’t being paid, American consumers as a whole have seen little if any rise in their paychecks, adjusted for inflation. Jobs are plentiful but typical pay is still in the dumps. When Trump slashed taxes on corporations he promised everyone else a wage boost of $4,000. It never happened. Instead, the benefits of the giant corporate tax cut went largely into the pockets of top executives and big investors. Corporate stock buybacks fueled a temporary stock market boom, but its benefits didn’t trickle down because more than 80% of stocks are owned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans. Unlike typical workers, the wealthy spend only a tiny fraction of what they earn. So when money flows to the top, total demand falls behind. Trumponomics is an abject failure because its premises are flawed Meanwhile, American employers have continued to cut pension and healthcare benefits. Jobs are less secure than ever. One in five is now held by a worker under contract, without any unemployment insurance, sick leave or retirement savings. Trump’s response? Allow employers to do more outsourcing. Make it harder for workers to form unions. Don’t even enforce labor laws on the books. Trump continues to undermine what’s left of the Affordable Care Act. Over the past two years, some 4 million people have lost health insurance coverage, according to the Commonwealth Fund. This undermines their capacity to buy anything else. Trump and his fellow Republicans refuse to raise the federal minimum wage, which would put money into the pockets of people who’d spend it. At $7.25 an hour, the minimum wage is now more than 25% below where it was in real terms half a century ago. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that raising it to $15 an hour would directly or indirectly lift the wages of 41.5 million people. That’s almost 30% of the wage-earning workforce. This would generate $144bn in additional income for families who need it most, including 23.1 million women and 4.5 million single parents. Talk about buying power. Nor has Trump moved an inch toward his campaign pledge to spend $1tn to reconstruct the nation’s roadways, waterworks and bridges. Infrastructure remains near the end of the legislative line. So where will demand for goods and services come from? Don’t count on exports. The global economy is slowing. And the Chinese aren’t buying lots of things produced in America these days. That’s the fallout from Trump’s trade war. Trumponomics is an abject failure because its premises are flawed. Cutting taxes on big corporations and the wealthy doesn’t stimulate investment. It only creates a bigger national debt that has to be paid off somehow, sometime. And who’s going to have to pay it off, either in higher taxes or fewer government services? You guessed it. Average Americans, who are already being shafted by Trump’s policies. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good.The Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen has rebutted an extraordinary attack by Brazil’s agriculture minister, who called her a “bad Brazilian” for her environmental activism and said she did not know “the facts”. Bündchen said the “bad Brazilians” were those responsible for Brazil’s worst deforestation figures in a decade. In a letter addressed to the minister, Tereza Cristina Dias, published in Brazilian media, Bündchen lamented government figures showing deforestation had increased by more than 13% in a year. “An immeasurable heritage threatened by illegal deforestation and the squatting of public lands. These, yes, are the ‘bad Brazilians’,” she wrote. In a tweet, she said: “Since 2006 I have been supporting projects and getting involved in socio-environmental causes”. In the letter she said that her grandparents were farmers, so she understood the importance of agriculture to Brazil. The war of words has highlighted rising international concern over the future of the Brazilian Amazon under the government of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has attacked the “fines industry” of environmental protection agencies. His foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, regards global warming as a Marxist plot. And the environment minister, Ricardo Salles, this week suspended contracts with non-government bodies for 90 days and promised surprise visits to check what they were doing with government money. In 2017, Bündchen criticised Brazil’s then president, Michel Temer, over plans to remove protected status for a large area of the Amazon – a move Temer later revoked. Last November she tweeted her opposition to Bolsonaro’s plans to fuse the environment and agriculture ministries – an idea that, along with withdrawing Brazil from the Paris climate deal, he later gave up on. Dias made her comments in a radio interview on Monday. Bündchen countered Dias’s accusation that she did not know “the facts”, pointing out in the letter that she had been to the Amazon, was a United Nations environment goodwill ambassador and had taken part in the launch of the Global Environment Pact at the UN general assembly in 2017 at the invitation of the French president, Emmanuel Macron. She said she had “participated in countless meetings with corporate presidents, universities, scientists, researchers, farmers and environmental organisations, where I was able to exchange information and learn more and more about how to take care of our planet”. She said technology and scientific advances had to be used in favour of agriculture and to prevent deforestation from going past a point of no control. “I see the preservation of nature not only as a legal environmental duty but also as a way to ensure water, biodiversity and climatic conditions essential for agricultural production,” she wrote. “I hope that during your mandate, concrete actions that result in a more sustainable, prosperous and just Brazil can be celebrated.” Dias thanked the model for her “kindness” and said she would invite her to take part in a “positive agenda that brings agriculture and preservation together”.Not long after Kirsten Gillibrand arrived in Congress more than a decade ago, she was nicknamed “Tracy Flick” in a reference to the calculating and aggressive blond high school student played by Reese Witherspoon in the 1999 film Election. It was not a term of endearment, but rather a derisive attempt to put down what Gillibrand’s colleagues – many of them men – complained was her unbridled ambition. “It was a put down to me and other ambitious women, meant to keep us in our place,” Gillibrand wrote in her 2014 book, Off the Sidelines. “Yes, I’m competitive. I fight for what I believe in, and I drive hard toward my goals. Does that make me ruthless and crazed? No.” This week, Gillibrand furthered her quest to dispel the notion that ambition was something for women to fear by declaring, during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, that she was forming an exploratory committee about a run for the White House. And with women voters now making up nearly 60% of the Democratic base, Gillibrand is betting they hold the keys to her pathway to the party’s nomination for president. An outspoken critic of the current administration, Gillibrand, 52, has cultivated the most anti-Trump voting record for any Democrat in the US Senate. She called on the president to resign amid allegations of sexual misconduct by as many as 17 women, and infamously told a crowd of Trump’s White House tenure: “Has he kept his promises? No. Fuck no.” “There’s something that’s very fierce and fearless about her that is empowering and could be a good quality in a candidate,” said Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and author of the book Dear Madame President. “She takes on fights that are controversial and that sometimes gets her into hot water. But she keeps at it anyway.” First elected to Congress in 2006, Gillibrand defeated three-term Republican incumbent John Sweeney to represent what was, at the time, a heavily conservative district in upstate New York. She was appointed in 2009 to fill the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton – after the latter became Barack Obama’s secretary of state – and was re-elected on three occasions, most recently in the 2018 midterms. As she prepares to formally launch her 2020 campaign, Gillibrand will join a crowded and diverse field of Democratic primary contenders. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Tulsi Gabbard and Julián Castro, the former housing secretary under Obama, are among those who have confirmed their intention to run. Expected to soon follow are Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, while others mulling a bid include former vice-president Joe Biden, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and former congressman Beto O’Rourke. Gillibrand is poised to spend the weekend courting Democratic party activists and donors in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state considered vital to securing the nomination. Gillibrand is regarded as a formidable contender whose focus on issues aimed at advancing women in the workplace and combating sexual violence earned her a nickname as the “#MeToo Senator”. A former lawyer, Gillibrand was at the forefront of pushing legislation that would take the prosecution of sexual assault cases in the military outside the chain of command – a years-long campaign that ultimately failed. She has similarly sought to address sexual assault on college campuses, and spoke about her own experience with sexual harassment within the halls of Congress. “Good thing you’re working out, because you wouldn’t want to get porky!” Gillibrand wrote in her 2014 book, recounting disparaging comments made by her male colleagues about her weight. Another told her: “You know, Kirsten, you’re even pretty when you’re fat.” Those revelations came long before the global reckoning around sexual assault and misconduct. “She has viewed policy and politics through the lens of gender for a long time,” said Kelly Dittmar, an assistant professor of political science and scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Indeed, Gillibrand’s long-term willingness to challenge powerful men – and the institutions protecting them – has carried risks. She generated headlines for going where few, if any, Democrats had gone before by telling a New York Times podcast that, in hindsight, it would have been an appropriate course of action for Bill Clinton to resign from the presidency after his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky came to light. The comments marked as a sharp reversal for someone once seen as a longtime ally of the Clintons. But the moment that has lingered politically is the fallout from Minnesota senator Al Franken’s resignation in 2017 following accusations by multiple women that he groped them. Gillibrand was the first Senate Democrat to call on Franken, who denied the allegations, to step down. “There’s intense resentment against her,” said Larry Jacobs, political science professor and department head at the University of Minnesota. “Progressives, they look at Donald Trump, they look at other Republicans, and they think they’re far more egregious.” He added: “They feel that Franken was poorly treated and that Gillibrand was the ringleader in that.” Numerous Democratic operatives told the Guardian that some within the donor class believe Gillibrand effectively forced other Senate Democrats to follow suit – resulting in Franken’s departure. Gillibrand stood by her decision on Wednesday, telling reporters: “My job was not to stay silent, I couldn’t defend it and I had to do what was right.” “And if some wealthy individuals, that makes them angry, that’s on them,” she added. Gillibrand is likely to face additional questions over her record, having begun her political career as a centrist Democrat only to evolve over the years into a liberal firebrand. While representing New York’s rural 20th congressional district, Gillibrand opposed “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants and a proposal to issue them driver’s licenses. But as a senator, she backed comprehensive immigration reform and threw her support behind abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency. Gillibrand also once enjoyed an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, stemming from her opposition to stricter gun laws in the earlier stages of her career. The NRA downgraded her rating to an “F” in 2010, after she embraced several gun control measures. Gillibrand has said she is “embarrassed” by her previous stances on guns. “If you looked up ‘political opportunism’ in the dictionary, Kirsten Gillibrand’s photo would be next to it,” said Michael Ahrens, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. Gillibrand is, of course, not the only politician to evolve on issues as the political and societal landscape has shifted. And if successful, she would be up against Trump, who has made many contradictory statements on key issues . For now, Gillibrand’s platform includes Medicare-for-All, universal paid family leave, reforming the criminal justice system, combating sexual harassment and touting her work on issues that include helping repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and securing health benefits for the victims and first responders in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “There’s a tenacity to her,” said Brian Fallon, who served as Hillary Clinton’s national press secretary in the 2016 presidential campaign “She’s willing to ruffle feathers and throw elbows.”The head of Venezuela’s armed forces has thrown his weight behind the embattled president, warning that the country could be thrust into a devastating civil war by what he called a US-backed “criminal plan” to unseat Nicolás Maduro. In a live address to the nation on Thursday, the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino, accused the Venezuelan opposition, the United States and regional allies such as Brazil of launching an attempted coup against Maduro that risked bringing “chaos and anarchy” to the country. “We are here to avoid, at all costs … a conflict between Venezuelans. It is not civil war, a war between brothers that will solve the problems of Venezuela. It is dialogue,” said Padrino, declaring unwavering support for “our commander-in-chief, the citizen Nicolás Maduro”. “We members of the armed forces know well the consequences [of war], just from looking at the history of humanity, of the last century, when millions and millions of human beings lost their lives,” Padrino added, flanked by the top brass of Venezuela’s armed forces. Padrino described Juan Guaidó’s decision to declare himself Venezuela’s president as a shameful and laughable fact but one that risked unleashing a wave of bloodshed. “I have to alert the people of Venezuela to the severe danger that this represents to our integrity and our national sovereignty.” Facing “a criminal plan that flagrantly threatens the sovereignty and independence of the nation”, Padrino said the armed forces would remain loyal to Maduro. Dissent would not be tolerated, he added ominously. “We will not tolerate acts of vandalism or terrorism by groups that promote violence as a perverse mechanism to achieve their objectives,” he said before ending his address with the rallying cry “Chávez vive y la patria sigue!” (“Chávez lives and the homeland goes on!”). Analysts have long held that Maduro’s survival depends on the backing of the military, who he has rewarded with senior positions in government and the state oil company PDVSA. But it is unclear how solid that support is. Guaidó and the opposition-held national assembly have sought to peel away the military, offering an amnesty to members of the armed forces who help bring about a return to democracy. This week, authorities arrested 27 national guardsmen who tried to launch an uprising against Maduro.Justin Trudeau was in campaign mode this week, striding around a school gymnasium, shirtsleeves rolled up and brow suitably furrowed as he addressed voters’ concerns at one of his annual town hall-style meetings. A day earlier and nearly 800km away, another face of the federal government was on display as dozens of police – some heavily armed – stormed a makeshift barricade, arresting 14 indigenous protesters and prompting others to flee for safety on snowmobiles. The protesters in northern British Columbia had camped out for days amid bitter cold and deep snow, manning a checkpoint to prevent construction vehicles from entering the territory of the Wet’suwet’en nation. Their demonstrations, part of a fight against a multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline, galvanized supporters across the country, and at his town hall meeting, the prime minister was forced to contend with a barrage of angry questions. The standoff ended on Wednesday night, in a temporary truce between leadership and police. But the dramatic scenes highlighted a broader issue for Canada in 2019: swaths of territory – never signed away by treaty or seized in war – still belong to indigenous nations who are fighting back against resource projects they say they never consented to. Unlike the rest of the country – where relationships between indigenous groups and the state are governed by treaties – few indigenous nations in British Columbia ever signed deals with colonial authorities, meaning the federal government still operates in a vacuum of authority on their lands, said Gordon Christie, a scholar of indigenous law at the University of British Columbia “What I see is a long history of the Canadian government doing its best to avoid acknowledging the existence of other systems of government,” he said. “The Crown has itself acknowledged that the way it gets authority over territory is through the making of a treaty,” said Christie. “So this is their problem.” In recent months, tensions with indigenous peoples have flared across Canada as energy companies seek to construct projects on and through indigenous lands. Both TransCanada, which is attempting to build the Coastal GasLink pipeline and Kinder Morgan, which was pushing the TransMountain pipeline, have faced fierce opposition from indigenous groups. Much of the current uncertainty surrounds who companies should consult with when they begin to plans projects which would enter indigenous lands. While elected indigenous officials from communities along the route of the proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline have signed benefit agreements with TransCanada, five Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs oppose the plan. The chiefs, who are unelected, argue they retain authority over the sprawling 22,000 sq km of the band’s traditional territory. Christie agreed, saying the hereditary chiefs legal claim to rightful control is “airtight”. “The goal has always been the same for Canada and indigenous people: it’s to remove us from our land and have access to the resources,” said Jennifer Wickham, a member of the Gitdumden, one of five clans making up the Wet’suwet’en nation. “That storyline has never changed.” TransCanada says it has had more than 15,000 “interactions and engagements” with indigenous groups as part of the consultation process. The outcome between protesters and police was “not the one we wanted”, the company in a statement. The events of the past week have cast a shadow over the Trudeau’s image of a political leader seeking reconciliation with Canada’s marginalized and often mistreated First Nations. While he lamented the arrests, his government will maintain its course, arguing the resource projects must be built. “Justin Trudeau has said that reconciliation is a priority for him. I would have to say to him, is this what reconciliation looks like?” said Wickham, whose sister Molly was arrested on Monday when police raided the protest camp. The site was first occupied by indigenous protesters in 2009 and now hosts a complex of buildings, including a traditional healing lodge. Freda Huson, who has lived there for nearly a decade said that for generations the community has lost land to farming and resource development and now fears that the pipeline could taint the only available drinking water in the area. “I shouldn’t have to be dragged into the courts to prove that I own land that I know is ours. Our people owned these territories since time immemorial,” she said. Trudeau pledged to overhaul the framework guiding relations with indigenous communities nearly a year ago. But in areas where no treaties were signed, the courts have often become the arbiter of land claims. In 2014, the Tsilhqot’in people in British Columbia won a longstanding battle over title rights at the country’s highest court – but at a cost of more than $10m. Both Huson and Wickham believe Canadian law is inadequately equipped to handle land claims fights with the government. In 1997 the supreme court put an end to one of the longest-running legal battles in Canadian history, ruling that the Wet’suwet’en had effectively demonstrated clear title to their land. The plaintiffs exhausted more than an estimated $25m on legal fees – only to have a retrial called, leaving uncertainty around their claim. “It doesn’t matter which route we take. We took this to the highest court in the Canada and it was ruled in our favour,” said Wickham. “Even when we follow their western law, it doesn’t do us any good.” Both the federal government and British Columbia have pledged to implement the United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (UNdrip). But Christie argues that until there is a fundamental shift in government attitudes, similar feuds will continue erupt. “The Canada government [could] change its stance and just acknowledge that these other systems of government have been around for a long period of time,” he said. “And treaty-making is the way to manage that.” Huson said: “We’re in the right. We’re not doing anything wrong. This is my home. This is my land. They want to break down my door.”Paul Gustard, the Harlequins head of rugby, has called for rugby fans and pundits to think twice before they rush to condemn players on social media following controversial incidents. The Quins hooker, Dave Ward, was widely accused of stamping and spitting in their win against Wasps last Saturday but, ultimately, neither allegation resulted in a citing charge. While Gustard accepts Ward was out of line for cynically treading on an opponent, an act described by the former England assistant coach as “pathetic” and deserving of a one-game club suspension, he remains irked by the modern trend for players to be instantly judged in the court of public opinion based on partial video evidence. “He was convicted before he even had a chance to say anything,” said Gustard. “Before the game was over and he knew anything about it people were saying he spat and stamped on someone. There is no evidence of him spitting on anybody. “In our country you are innocent until proven guilty. But not in this case; he was found guilty [on Twitter] by 5.30pm for spitting. Which he didn’t do, otherwise he would have been cited. He says he absolutely didn’t spit. If you have evidence that he is lying, prove it.” Gustard, nevertheless, has since apologised on Ward’s behalf to both Thomas Young and the player’s father, Dai, Wasps’ director of rugby, for the hooker’s sly and deliberate attempt to irritate his opponent by stepping on him. “It’s pathetic and that’s why I banned him. It wasn’t a stamp, which is why he didn’t get red-carded, but it is not acceptable and there is no need for it. It is not behaviour I want to see. We have a duty of care to protect the game and the values of the club and I have to protect those values. I don’t want that in our club and the players don’t accept it either.” Quins are also calling for the game’s disciplinary standards to be applied more consistently, with Gustard suggesting accusations of sledging made against some of his players tell less than half the story. “We talk to the referee, like every other team. Owen Farrell at Exeter the other week got done for backchat, Wasps were haranguing the ref at the weekend. How many times is Brad Shields in his face, is Dan Robson there, is Elliot Daly pushing people on the floor after? But we get singled out for it, which is unfair. “We want to work towards being seen in a better light, myself included. I remonstrated with the fourth official and that’s me not under control, which I have to work at. But in terms of discipline, we only conceded seven penalties all game.” England, meanwhile, have increasing back-row injury problems less than a month before the opening weekend of the Six Nations. Bath have confirmed that the flanker Sam Underhill needs to see a specialist after damaging ankle ligaments during Sunday’s 23-16 Premiership win over Leicester, in which his clubmate Mark Garvey also broke an ankle, and it is understood the former could be out for a minimum of four weeks. Quins also say Chris Robshaw, sidelined since early October with a knee problem, will not make a competitive return to action before England’s Six Nations squad is announced on 17 January, although he has resumed light running.I got this email today. It says “I hacked your device, because I sent you this message from your account.” It goes on to claim that it has filmed me watching pornography, and demands $698 in bitcoin. Phishing? Pwned? What to do? Pauline This is generally known either as “webcam blackmail” or “sextortion scam” and the email should have been diverted to your spam folder. Millions – perhaps billions – of similar emails have been sent over the years, but there seems to have been a flood of them over the past few months. Very few people ever make the requested payment. However, since the cost of sending millions of spam emails is basically zero, even a few payments are easy profits. While it’s generally safe to ignore spam emails like this, some people will want reassurance. You can almost always get this by searching the web for one or two sentences from the email. In this case, phrases appear on two threads in the r/Scams conference on Reddit: The Blackmail Email Scam and The Blackmail Email Scam (part 2). Publishing all the variants of these scam emails makes them easier to find. Random spam emails probably don’t have much success, so the would-be blackmailers have been trying to personalise their attacks in various ways. The most common ones are email spoofing, including a password, and including all or part of a phone number. Most email services have no way of authenticating the From: and Reply to: fields in email messages, so spammers can fill these fields with anything they like. Your attacker simply made the From: address the same as the To: address, so it looked as though you had sent the email yourself. You hadn’t. In 2012, a working group introduced a new system called DMARC (domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance) to alleviate the problem. It helps but it’s still not used widely enough. Dmarcian has a website where you can check if a domain is compliant. (Both google.com and outlook.com have valid records.) The UK’s Action Fraud office provides a tutorial to help businesses set up DMARC. Other versions of this phishing attack include one of the recipients’ passwords and/or part of a phone number. These have usually been obtained from one of the security breaches that have exposed details of billions of users. In 2017, Yahoo admitted that its data breaches compromised 3 billion accounts. Other major breaches involved Marriott International (500 million customers), LinkedIn (164 million), Adobe (153 million), eBay (145 million), Sony’s PlayStation Network (77 million), Uber (57 million) and Ashley Madison (31 million). There’s a good chance that one of your passwords was exposed in one or more of these breaches. You can check by typing your email addresses into the website, Have I Been Pwned? At the time of writing, this has 5.7 million pwned accounts from 339 pwned websites. There’s also a newer page for pwned passwords, as explained here. If your email address comes up in HIBP? then you must change the password that you used for all the sites that suffered data breaches. If you used the same password for any other sites – that’s a bad idea, obviously – you should also change the password on those. If the Pwned Password page reveals that one of your passwords has been exposed, you should change that as well: you may not have been pwned, but your password is not unique. Some are quite common. For example, the password “12345” has been exposed 2.3m times, “secret” 221,972 times, “god” 32,804 times and “arcticmonkeys” 649 times. Dashlane has a nice website that will tell you how long it would take to crack your password. However, even strong passwords are no use if they have already appeared in breaches. The xkcd cartoon password “correct horse battery staple” would theoretically take 15 octillion years to crack, but it has already been pwned twice in that form … and 111 times without the spaces. In the UK, you can use Action Fraud’s website to report a phishing attempt if “you have NOT lost any money or exposed your personal details. If you have lost money, you must report it as a crime,” the site says. Reporting phishing attempts is simple but optional: some people get several phishing emails per day, and they’re unlikely to report most of them. I don’t have any numbers, but I expect most people just delete and forget about them. Reporting a crime requires more effort, and if you are serious, you should create an account to do it. You can file a report as a “guest” but creating an account provides more options. You can, for example, save and resume reports, update them later, call Action Fraud to discuss your case, and get email progress reports. You can also report crimes by calling 0300 123 2040 on weekdays between 8am and 8pm. Businesses, charities and other organisations are urged to call this number during live cyber-attacks at any time. Action Fraud – which used to be the National Fraud Reporting Centre – is operated by the City of London police and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), which is overseen by the City of London police. They don’t investigate cases, but check them for “solvability factors” such as bank account details, phone numbers, postal addresses and so on. If there are any, they pass them on to a “local police force or other appropriate law enforcement agency”. By which time, any money transferred is likely to have disappeared … The best way to deal with phishing and other spam emails is to delete them on sight. Don’t open them, don’t reply to them, don’t open any documents that may be attached to them, don’t click any links in them, don’t enter any information into websites fetched by those links, and definitely don’t send them any money. Many of these emails will include a transparent, single-pixel image, known as a beacon. When you open the email, it fetches the tiny image.gif file from a remote server, so the spammers know they’ve hit a live, working email address. (Note: Gmail and some other services pre-fetch images to avoid this problem.) Also bear in mind that spam and phishing emails may include attempts to infect your computer with malware. This is why you should keep your anti-virus software and operating system up to date. It can be annoying, but thousands of PCs were infected by malware such as Stuxnet and WannaCry months or sometimes years after the vulnerabilities they exploited had been patched. Have you got a question? Email it to Ask.Jack@theguardian.comWhat the Colts need to do to win: Andrew Luck needs to change his postseason narrative. Luck’s resurgence after missing last season with injury has been a key reason why the Colts were able to sneak into the playoffs. Now he needs to change his, well, luck during the postseason. Luck has had more interceptions in the playoffs than any other quarterback since 2012 and has been generally less effective during the postseason than in the regular season. What the Texans need to do to win: The Houston Texans need to protect Deshaun Watson. The Texans’ offensive line has been horribly porous, allowing more than 60 sacks this season, and had the worst opposing sack rate in the league. The Colts alone have racked up 12 during their last two meetings with Houston. It’s hard to score when your QB is constantly on their back. Key player: JJ Watt, DE, Texans. It’s not often that the first-round of the playoffs features two potential Comeback Player of the Year candidates facing each other, but that’s what we’ll have when Watt is on Luck during Saturday’s contest. Watt missed most of last season with a leg injury, but has been back at full strength this year. Prediction: Colts 17-13 Texans What the Seahawks need to do to win: The Seahawks have to stop the Cowboys’ running game, which is easier said than done when it comes to containing Ezekiel Elliott. When the two teams faced each other earlier this season, Elliott had 16 carries and rushed for 127 yards but didn’t score a touchdown. The Seahawks weren’t great defensively that day, but they held on to the win. They’d take that again in a heartbeat during the playoffs. What the Cowboys need to do to win: Can they escape the ghosts of the past? The last time these two teams met during wildcard weekend, the Cowboys played their way out of a potential game-winning field goal when Tony Romo’s botched hold on the snap sealed a 21-20 Seahawks victory. The Cowboys have had a reputation as choke artists ever since and if something goes wrong, fans at JerryWorld may start expecting things to unravel. They can’t let that get to them. Key player: Ezekiel Elliott, RB, Cowboys. Elliott is Dallas’s most dynamic player, he ran for 1,434 yards this season, the most in the league. Dallas kept him out of the regular season finale against the New York Giants, meaning that he’s well rested for the rest of the postseason. The Cowboys will lean on him hard. Prediction: Seahawks 16-20 Cowboys What the Chargers need to do to win: The Chargers need to learn from their mistakes. The Chargers lost 22-10 when they battled the Ravens just a few weeks ago. Normally one would think that would be a bad sign, but this was a learning opportunity for LA, who basically get a chance for a do-over on a much bigger stage. What the Ravens need to do to win: Baltimore are going to want to take care of the ball. While they have improved with rookie Lamar Jackson as their quarterback, Jackson has had ball security issues. Jackson is an elite runner, but he’s still working on his pass accuracy. This wouldn’t be a huge issue if it weren’t for the fact that he’s also had 10 fumbles on the season. One costly turnover could make all the difference on Sunday. Key player: Philip Rivers, QB. Chargers. When it comes to elite passers, Rivers is never in the same conversation as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning or Drew Brees even though he should be. The main reason is that he’s never even participated in the Super Bowl. This is one of his last chances, but he’s going to need to win every game on the road from here on out. Baltimore’s dominant defense is going to make for a tough challenge. Prediction: Chargers 17-20 Ravens What the Eagles need to do to win: Rely on Nick Foles’s magic? At this point it’s ridiculous to think that the Eagles’ backup QB can keep leading them to victory whenever Carson Wentz goes down. But, hey, it keeps happening so why not keep believing? After earning Super Bowl MVP honors last year, Foles came in for Wentz again this season and helped the Eagles rattle off three straight wins to make the postseason. What the Bears needs to do to win: They need to play the same defense that got them here. Quarterback Mitchell Trubisky has been just about everything the team could have hoped for this season, but it’s never about the offense in Chicago. When the Bears win it’s because they have an elite defense, and this time around it’s no different. Bolstered by the Khalil Mack trade, Chicago’s defense is ranked third in the league and primed to turn Foles back into a pumpkin. Key player: Khalil Mack, OLB, Chicago Bears. The Bears traded two first-round picks to the Oakland Raiders to get Mack and then gave him a six-year/$141m contract, making him the highest paid defender in NFL history. He ended the year with 12.5 sacks, 47 tackles and a handful of key takeaways. Looks like he was worth it. Prediction: Eagles 16-21 Bears“It’s happening again,” says Menindee local Graeme McCrabb, as we stand on the banks of the Darling River, downstream from the fish kill on 7 January that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of fish, including 70-year-old Murray cod. “We stood here watching that guy die about half an hour ago,” he says gesturing to the white belly of an 80cm Murray cod floating in the middle of the stream. • Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Close in to the bank, another big cod is swimming slowly, just below the surface, gasping as it tries to get oxygen from a weak current flowing there. He’s too big to get into the area with faster current, but the water is probably too hot anyway because it’s flowing over a sand bank. Its 40C here this morning. Further out, two more cod are near a sand bank barely moving as they search for a current. “That one’s dying,” says McCrabb, as it turns on its side and we briefly glimpse its white belly. McCrabb and his friend Paul Grose, have been visiting these water holes daily, to assess the health of the fish. Today they are close to tears. It's heartbreaking, seeing these big fish die “I am gutted,” McCrabb says. “I’ve had a couple of moments this morning.” “It’s heartbreaking,” says Grose. “Seeing these big fish die.” I ask: “Is this normal, to see them swimming like this?” “Shit no,” says McCrabb. “They usually live on the bottom.” “It’s worse in the morning because the oxygen levels are lower,” he says as we watch this appalling scene of majestic fish gasping for life. “The algae will start to photosynthesise as the day goes on, but then, the water’s getting really warm in places and that’s no good either.” Then there is the fear of what will happen if the temperature drops sharply. A change is forecast for Friday night, which could see a repeat of the conditions that occurred before the massive fish kill of last week in the weir pool. Hundreds of thousands of fish were left strewn along the banks of the Darling: small bony bream, large Murray cod, golden perch , silver perch and even carp. In the mean time the temperatures is expected to hit 45C again on Thursday, and there is no rain in sight. According to the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, Australia has warmed by 1C since 1910, and temperatures will increase in the future. So how will climate change affect future heatwaves in Australia? The CSIRO and BoM have compiled different models for predicting the outcome of climate change in Australia to produce a guide to how different regions will likely be affected. They found that every part of Australia will continue to experience increases in average temperature, and will have a higher frequency of hot days. The duration of hot spells will increase in every region. In many areas in the northern half of Australia, the average number of days above 35C could increase by two to three times. Late in the century, towns such as Darwin, Alice Springs and Broome  may experience days with temperatures above 35C for about a third of the year. These higher temperatures will also result in higher evaporation, which will continue to make drought conditions worse. The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries has said the massive kill was due to cooler weather killing the algal blooms, deoxygenating the water and killing already stressed fish. “The big fear is this section of the river has the strongest cod populations,” McCrabb says. “We’ve been watching it like hawks. We were going to try and do a dogdy save – move them to another pool, but we don’t think the cod would survive.” The DPI staff are in Menindee now installing aerators at two places. But they only provide refuges and cannot make any significant change to the oxygen levels in the river. The chief executive of the Murray Darling Basin Authority has cast doubt on whether the solar powered devices, which are used in acquaculture, will make any real difference. The place where we watch the fish dying is downstream of the aerators and the fish cannot reach them. “This is the biggest environmental catastrophe in the river’s history and no one from the federal government has been here,” McCrabb says.It’s a Sunday morning and I’m on Rue Mouffetard, a bustling market street in Paris, skulking behind a pyramid of nectarines. My sights are set on a fluffy black poodle nuzzling the ankles of its owner, a stripey-trousered woman of a certain age. Raising my camera to my eye, I risk a few furtive shots but, irritatingly, the poodle keeps scampering out of the frame. Its mistress is engaged in animated banter with a guy tending a rack of roast chickens. Promising. But, spying the camera, he throws his hands in front of his face. This is the trouble with street photography. Like many amateur camera operators, I’m a fan of the genre and the vintage work of stars such as Saul Leiter and Elliott Erwitt. But the logistics are challenging. Since buying my first DSLR a few years ago, I have spent many hours pacing the streets of London in search of inspiration. People tend not to like a total stranger following them around taking photos of them and, as I am acutely aware of this, my compositions are frequently rushed and taken from peculiar angles. Magnum photographer Robert Capa’s adage, “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” certainly applied to me, but I had no idea how to overcome it. Then, one day, inspiration struck. I was listening to the photography podcast Hit the Streets when I heard its host, Valérie Jardin, mention upcoming workshops in Paris. These sounded like exactly what I needed. Now I’m here, I’m not so sure. “Remember, you’re not doing anything wrong,” Jardin, an energetic Frenchwoman, had told me. “You’re documenting life on the street, which is important. It’s best to start with a busy, touristy area where everyone has a camera. You’ll feel more invisible. Not only is a lot happening, with plenty to catch your eye, but you’ll be more at ease because of the crowd.” The trouble is, that morning I’m not feeling remotely at ease. “If you’re nervous about going in close to people with your camera, photograph dogs – owners are always so proud of them,” Jardin had suggested. “Compliment the dog and then you can work your way up to asking for a photo of its owner, too.” I snap the poodle again. The poodle looks confused. Its owner gives me a look that doesn’t encourage me to ask if she would like to be photographed. We had begun the workshop by going through some of Jardin’s work: highly stylised images of impeccably dressed people with a strong emphasis on dramatic natural light and silhouettes. Within minutes, my creative lethargy dissipated. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but much of contemporary street photography and the way it is taught has a kind of “Gotcha!” sensibility, where the onus is on viewing subjects as victims. Jardin’s beautiful photos, while still obviously “street”, have a different quality. They are photos you might want to hang on your wall rather than expect to see in the pages of a tabloid – a far cry from the in-your-face quality seen in the work of star snappers such as Bruce Gilden, Martin Parr and Dougie Wallace. “I’m more and more resistant to calling myself a street photographer,” Jardin had confided. “I’m recording life’s beautiful moments, ordinary moments that become extraordinary when you freeze them in time. Street photography is one of the most difficult genres to master. You have no control over what other people are going to do, only control over your gear and your vision. There’s a lot of luck involved, but without vision, luck doesn’t matter.” When Jardin takes me on to the streets, the biggest surprise is observing the simplicity of her camera settings. I suppose I had imagined there was some secret shutter-speed formula that would render light beautifully, if only someone would share it with me. In fact, she scarcely bothers with manual mode. Instead, her laser-like attention is on the people around her, and on the light. “I never bring the camera to my eye; it’s all done here,” she says, tapping the LCD screen of her black-and-silver Fujifilm X100F. I would never have tried what the experts call “shooting from the hip” if I had been on my own, believing it was beyond me. But my coach is confident I can do it. “The trick is to always shoot at the same focal length; in time your eye will know exactly what you’re going to get before you even press the shutter.” Several shots of cobblestones and a dog’s front paws later, I’m getting the hang of it. One thing is for sure: people are a lot less bothered by my presence without a camera at my eye. I sneak a glance at a woman engrossed in Le Journal du Dimanche and press the button. Now that I’ve turned off my camera’s beeps, as suggested, things are a lot easier. I relax and start to have fun. “I like the humour in your work,” declares Jardin, when we review our images. “Keep at it – I think you will get there.” I’m not even sure where “there” is, but I feel 10ft tall. Back home, I resolve to be bolder about the photos I take. But despite following Jardin’s advice to practise a different technique every day (silhouettes one day, panning the next), the discipline quickly becomes aimless and I feel deflated. Why am I doing this? Jardin agrees to give me some Skype coaching. During our first session she says I’m facing a common problem. “If you go aimlessly into town with your camera, you’re just going to get the same bunch of average shots of the same boring thing. What you want is a project that you can do anywhere, even if you’re travelling or the weather is bad.” Jardin has several such projects on the go, including people looking at modern art, beautiful smiles of strangers and hands. “The subject itself doesn’t matter, but it should be something that you’re naturally drawn to, so that you keep going with it.” She is also keen to impress upon me that the scattergun approach I had been adopting wasn’t likely to get the best results. “Be discerning – don’t settle!” This was one of the benefits of having worked on the street directly with her; it soon became apparent that 95% of her time is spent observing and predicting people’s behaviour. Being discerning about pressing the shutter is a skill I needed to learn. Suitably inspired, I choose two subject areas that I’m always drawn to: London shoppers and reflections. Jardin books me in for a follow-up session so she can assess what I’ve been up to. I must admit, this accountability in itself makes a huge difference. Just as I am slacking off on the whole thing, up pops a message from her: “How’s the project going?” That is enough to get me moving again. Over the course of a month, I assemble two albums and then narrow them down to five photos each. Some are new, some are images I had previously taken that fitted the theme. This is another thing I learned from Jardin – photography isn’t just about taking photos. You want to create a body of work by editing your images and grouping them together in a meaningful collection. Like a lot of people, I take loads of photos and then do nothing with them. At our final critique session, I must confess that I’m a little nervous. There is a particular mortification associated with presenting a photo to an expert and awaiting feedback. Whatever genre you favour, quite a lot can go awry with an image. Certainly, Jardin is robust in her observations about how each of my shots could be improved and is quick to pick up on recurring technical errors and bad habits. “If you’re going to shoot people from the back, it has to be super-interesting. Far better to run ahead of people and catch them from the front further up the street.” And: “Again, you’ve shown too much detail of the surrounding buildings. I wish you’d gone in closer to your subject. If you can’t bear to do that, then get a longer lens.” But she is also warm-hearted and generous with her praise. “I love, love, love the man outside the shop with the bag. He looks as still as the mannequins in the store. And the Café Rouge one, it’s my favourite. I love the interconnection between the human element and the backdrop. Bus, red building, red coat. That shows you visualised the strongest possible subject and then you were patient.” She even goes so far as to suggest I enter some shots to a photo competition, something I would never have thought about doing. She also puts things into perspective: “You should be really happy to have got so many good shots. Many street photographers believe a strike rate of one in 100 is good going.” Ultimately, having a professional scrutinise both my work and my working methods has been a revelation. It has made me stop dwelling on the skills I lack (such as photographing anything that is moving faster than a snail). Instead, I’ve started to appreciate what is unique about my photos: colour, drama, texture; things I would never have noticed on my own. Most significant of all about working with a creative coach is that, because they take you seriously, you start taking yourself seriously. I now print my photos and have produced cards using the images. I’m also going to start a photography foundation course in 2019, something I previously lacked the confidence to pursue. Who knows, I might even start a project about dogs and their owners. Valérie Jardin is the author of Street Photography: Creative Vision Behind the Lens. Her workshops are at valeriejardinphotography.comThe French authorities have set out plans to prevent people in small boats risking the dangerous Channel crossing to England after the Royal Navy agreed to deploy a vessel to the Strait of Dover. Measures being taken include improved cooperation between law enforcement agencies and more surveillance and security on beaches along the northern French coastline. The French interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said: “This plan should allow us to end these crossings by migrants who are not only illegal but also extremely dangerous. It is in our interest, as it is for the UK, to not allow new smugglers to operate which would attract new migrants.” The UK’s home secretary, Sajid Javid, has previously faced criticism for denouncing people trying to cross the Channel as “illegal” migrants without offering evidence of their motivation in making the dangerous journey. Experts have also said his threat to make it more difficult to successfully gain asylum in the UK, which he said would act as a deterrent to people thinking of attempting the crossing, would be unlawful. The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, has said the comments were part of a Conservative “obsession with maintaining a hostile environment”. Javid said: “I wholeheartedly welcome this action from our French colleagues and it is vital we continue to work together to tackle the situation in the English Channel. “France’s plan will operate in conjunction with the action that the UK is taking to protect our border and prevent the loss of life. We’ve stepped up our law enforcement response through the NCA and other agencies and earlier this week I announced two Border Force cutters would be returning to the UK from abroad – with a navy vessel helping with our patrols in the interim. “The UK and French authorities continue to work closely through the new 24/7 Anglo-French coordination centre in Calais and we are developing our joint action plan which will further build on this work. I look forward to finalising it when I meet the French interior minister in the coming weeks.” France said 71 crossing attempts were recorded last year, compared with 12 in 2017. There were 14 crossing attempts in the first 10 months of the year and 57 in November and December alone. Of the 71 attempts, 40 were successful and 31 failed. Of the 504 migrants seeking to cross the Channel in 2018, 276 managed to get to British waters and coasts and 228 were intercepted by the French authorities. Most of the people were Iranian. The increase in attempts to cross by boat is believed to be due to increased security at ferry ports and Eurotunnel. Castaner and Javid have spoken in recent days about measures to tackle the situation. Castaner said the UK had agreed to continue providing financial support and technology such as drones, radars and video surveillance. The French minister said: “The perspective of Brexit does not alter the need for our two countries to strengthen our cooperation to bring in concrete and coordinated measures to fight illegal immigration. “The British commitments show the willingness of the UK to continue participating in the security of our common border.” The UK defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, said on Thursday: “I can confirm that HMS Mersey will deploy to the Dover Straits to assist the UK Border Force and French authorities with their response to migrant crossings. “The professionalism of the Royal Navy means the crew have been able to immediately divert from routine operations to help prevent migrants from making the dangerous journey across the Channel.” Javid said the use of HMS Mersey was an interim measure until the cutters arrive back in UK waters from the Mediterranean.Rescuers in southern Spain are racing to reach a toddler who fell down a  borehole more than 100 metres deep four days ago. Two-year-old Julen Roselló had gone for a picnic with his family in the countryside on Sunday when he fell down the 25cm-wide hole in Totalán, near Málaga. He has not been seen or heard from since the fall, but relatives and rescuers are desperately hoping he is still alive. Engineers and specialist miners are lining the borehole to prevent it from collapsing and have sunk parallel and horizontal shafts into the hillside to try to locate Julen. For now, they are focusing on the vertical shaft as the quickest way to gain access. Juan López Escobar, a representative of Málaga’s mining college, told reporters it could take two or three more days to reach Julen. “Under normal conditions, you’d do a planned project using samples and soundings, and the work would take a month,” he said. “But in this case, the urgency of the rescue means a different timetable.” López Escobar said talking about timeframes was unhelpful. “We’re working to do it as soon as possible because of the health of the child.” Guardia Civil police officers and firefighters are being assisted by a team of mine rescue experts from Asturias and members of the Swedish rescue firm that helped find the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days in 2010. On Wednesday, regional authorities said a hair sample had been recovered from deep inside the shaft that matched Julen’s DNA. Two days earlier, rescuers exploring the hole found the cup and packet of sweets he was holding when he disappeared. Efforts to get to the toddler have been thwarted by a compacted plug of hard soil under which he could be trapped. The child’s father, José Roselló, said he had rushed to the hole as soon as he heard him cry out. “I pushed the stones away and heard my son crying,” he told the local Sur newspaper. “My son is down there – don’t let anyone try to cast doubt on that. I wish it were impossible for him to be down there, but I heard him. I wish it were me buried down there so that he could be up here with his mother.” Residents of Totalán held a vigil to support the family on Wednesday night. Some held homemade placards saying “All of Spain is with you”, and, “We are sending you our strength”. One man’s sign simply read “Julen”. “We are not only giving voice for all the residents of Totalán but also for the rest of the country because we have all had Julen in our minds since last Sunday,” Patricia Calderon, a resident, told Reuters. According to Spanish media reports, Julen’s older brother, Óliver, died of a sudden heart attack at the age of three, while walking with his family on a beach in Málaga in 2017. El Confidencial said Óliver had collapsed three weeks earlier but that his heart condition had gone undiagnosed.Black Britons and those of south Asian origin face “shocking” discrimination in the labour market at levels unchanged since the late 1960s, research has found. A study by experts based at the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, found applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds had to send 80% more applications to get a positive response from an employer than a white person of British origin. A linked study by the same researchers, comparing their results with similar field experiments dating back to 1969, found discrimination against black Britons and those of south Asian origin – particularly Pakistanis – unchanged over almost 50 years. The research, part of a larger cross-national project funded by the European Union and shared exclusively with the Guardian before its official launch, prompted concerns that race relations legislation had failed. It echoes findings published as part of the Guardian’s Bias in Britain series that people from minority ethnic backgrounds face discrimination when seeking a room to rent. In a snapshot survey of online flatshare ads the Guardian found that an applicant called Muhammad was significantly less likely to receive a positive response than an applicant called David. Prof Anthony Heath, co-author and emeritus fellow of Nuffield College, said: “The absence of any real decline in discrimination against black British and people of Pakistani background is a disturbing finding, which calls into question the effectiveness of previous policies. Ethnic inequality remains a burning injustice and there needs to be a radical rethink about how to tackle it.” The researchers sent almost 3,200 applications to both manual and non-manual jobs – including software engineers, marketing, chefs and shop assistants – advertised on a popular recruitment platform between November 2016 and December 2017. The study, which will be launched at the British Academy, London, on Friday, included 33 different minority ethnic groups, belonging to five broad groups. Additionally, two minority ethnic groups – Nigerian and Pakistani – were designed to have sufficiently large numbers of applications for separate analysis. Different ethnicity applicants were randomly assigned to different job vacancies – only one application was sent per post – and the number of callbacks/invitations for interview compared. On average, 24% of applicants of white British origin received a positive response from employers, compared with 15% of minority ethnic applicants applying with identical CVs and cover letters. All of the minority applications clearly stated that they were either British-born or had arrived in the country by the age of six and had obtained all their education and training in Britain. Minority ethnic applicants, including white minorities, had to send 60% more applications to get a positive response from an employer than a white person of British origin. While applicants originating from western Europe and the US were treated almost as well as the majority group, people of Pakistani origin had to make 70% more applications. The figures were even higher for those of Nigerian, Middle Eastern and north African (MENA) origin, at 80% and 90% respectively. Dr Zubaida Haque, the deputy director of the race equality thinktank Runnymede, described the findings as shocking. They demonstrated that “it’s not just covert racism or unconscious bias that we need to worry about; it’s overt and conscious racism, where applicants are getting shortlisted on the basis of their ethnicity and/or name”, she said. “It’s clear that race relations legislation is not sufficient to hold employers to account. There are no real consequences for employers of racially discriminating in subtle ways, but for BME applicants or employees it means higher unemployment, lower wages, poorer conditions and less security in work and life.” The researchers said the high levels of discrimination from countries with a sizeable Muslim population echoed “strong anti-Muslim attitudes recorded in recent surveys”. Dr Valentina Di Stasio, co-author and an assistant professor at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, said: “The persistent gaps in callbacks found for more visible and culturally distant minorities, regardless of the occupation considered or the information included in the application, suggest that employers may simply read no further as soon as they see a Middle East-sounding or African-sounding name.” As past field experiments did not include people from MENA countries, it could not be ascertained whether the level of discrimination against them had changed over time. Additionally, the historical comparison could only be done for non-manual jobs, due to insufficient past data on manual jobs. Nevertheless, the authors described the evidence of enduring discrimination against some minority ethnic groups as striking given the passage of the Race Relations Act 1976 and that many of the earlier studies included applicants born abroad with some foreign education. They said that while surveys had found declining racial prejudice among the public, the lack of change in the workplace reflected the continued presence of “employer stereotypes about the linguistic and work-related skills and motivations of minorities”. There were hints that discrimination against applicants of Indian origin may be in decline but the researchers said the sample size of people with Indian names in their study was too small to draw firm conclusions. Responding to the results, Matthew Fell of the Confederation of British Industry said: “Any bias is bad for business. Companies must act now to eradicate all forms of discrimination, including any bias in recruitment.” A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy also stressed the benefits of diversity, adding: “Last year, the prime minister launched a series of measures to help employers identify how to tackle ethnic disparities in the workplace, including a new race at work charter and a consultation on mandatory ethnicity pay reporting.”This year marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery, or invention, of the periodic table of the elements, one of the most important, if least dramatic, of all scientific breakthroughs. Chemistry has a bad reputation among non-chemists, perhaps because it is the first place in science where a schoolchild comes up against the stubborn complexity of nature. The organising principles of physics appear simple; evolution makes biology appear a well-ordered process, at least until it’s examined in detail. But chemistry is awkward and lumpy. There are endless facts to memorise, and there are few obvious and intuitively pleasing answers to questions such as why the periodic table has eight columns and not seven or nine. There is not even a hero figure like Darwin, Newton or Einstein whose story can dramatise our understanding of the subject. If there were, it would be Dmitri Mendeleev, the Russian who first organised the known elements into an arrangement which not only fitted them together but had predictive value: it suggested new elements that might be discovered, and what their qualities would be. This was not a complete theoretical understanding, but it exposed the phenomena which a theory must explain. In some sense the elements had been known since gold was first washed out of gravel, long before writing was invented. But the existence of some simple and apparently irreducible kinds of stuff did not prove and might not even imply that every substance in the world was made from simpler elements combined. The idea that water is really the combination of two gases, themselves never found in a pure state in nature, seems entirely fanciful until it is proved by experiment. In the 18th century, following Antoine Lavoisier, chemists began to isolate more and more elements from the apparent chaos around them. But their qualities and modes of reaction formed no discernible pattern. The discovery of this pattern and the development of its implications was Mendeleev’s great contribution. The periodic table made possible the modern industrial world. It didn’t just break down the world into its constituents; it supplied the knowledge needed to recombine these elements in new ways, from fertiliser to poison gas, from medicines to plastic. One of the remarkable things about this is that it worked even without a proper theoretical foundation. Not until 1913, when the British scientist Henry Moseley fired x-rays, then newly discovered, at elements and measured what came off, was it apparent how the underlying structure of atoms produced the qualities we detect in the elements. X-rays were only the start of the merger of chemistry with physics. At the extreme edge of present-day science lies the creation of new elements that can only be produced artificially: the most recent, oganesson, has only been observed as six short-lived atoms. But long before then, chemical analysis and understanding had been turned inwards, on to the bodies of living things. These techniques, widely available, make it possible to understand all the processes of life as interlocking reactions which can be tweaked to our advantage. One effect of this is that chemistry as a distinct subject tends to disappear. At the simplest level, it merges with physics; at its most complex it becomes a tool of biology. In both cases, chemistry, like all other science, is increasingly conducted inside computer simulations. But the depth and subtlety of the periodic table stands as one of the most remarkable feats of the human intellect.Australia, Thailand and the Gulf states have been inextricably linked in two global news stories lately, when two young people faced being forcibly returned to the places and people they fled simply because they happened to step foot in Bangkok. Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, an 18-year-old Saudi woman, was on her way to Australia seeking its protection. Twenty-five-year-old Hakeem al-Araibi, heading to Thailand with his wife for their honeymoon, already had it. Both Al-Araibi and Qunun have captured international headlines – far more than many others in similarly dire situations. But there is no denying Qunun’s case has drawn more support, including, crucially, from the government of Thailand. • Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Qunun obtained a tourist visa for Australia, where she intended to claim asylum. She fled her family when they went on a trip to Kuwait and flew to Bangkok, but says she was met on arrival by a Saudi diplomat and was tricked into handing over her passport. The teenager fears her family will kill her for renouncing Islam – a crime punishable by death under Saudi Arabia’s sharia law – and barricaded herself in the airport hotel room, demanding to speak to the United Nations high commission for refugees (UNHCR). “I am Rahaf … I am in the hotel, I need a country to protect me as soon as possible. I am seeking asylum,” she said. “My family is strict and locked me in a room for six months just for cutting my hair. “I’m sure, 100%, they will kill me as soon as I get out of the Saudi jail.” Thai authorities initially said she was a runaway and was unsafe without a guardian, but eventually bowed to pressure, allowing the UNHCR to visit. “She is now under the sovereignty of Thailand,” said the head of Thai immigration, General Surachate Hakparn. “No one and no embassy can force her to go anywhere. Thailand is a land of smiles. We will not send anyone to die.” She was sent to an undisclosed location, protected by the Thai government. The UNHCR assessed her to be a refugee in need of protection and Australia has said it will consider resettling her. Bahraini national, now Australian resident, Hakeem al-Araibi, was a member of the Bahrain national football team. Al-Araibi claims he was imprisoned and tortured by Bahraini authorities amid a crackdown on athletes taking part in pro-democracy rallies during the Arab Spring, and he fled to Australia and sought asylum in 2011. In 2014 he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years’ jail at a Bahraini trial beset by claims of coerced confessions, ignored evidence and bias. The conviction related to an act of vandalism which occurred at the same time – or at least not long after – al-Araibi was playing in a televised football match. In 2017 he was given formal refugee status by Australia. The previous year he had spoken out publicly against Bahraini royal and president of the Asian Football Confederation, Sheikh Salman al-Khalifa, for his lack of action defending the athletes in 2011 when he was head of the Bahrain Football Association. News in recent weeks have reported tax deals and large scale property developments between Thailand and Bahrain In late November Al-Araibi and his wife went to Thailand on a delayed honeymoon. He was arrested on arrival by Thai authorities who said they were acting on a red notice from Interpol. Despite the withdrawal of the red notice – which should never have been issued – Thai authorities said Bahrain had separately requested his detention prior to his arrival anyway, and Al-Araibi remains in a Thai prison. “I don’t want to stay here,” Al-Araibi told Guardian Australia from detention. “I’m a refugee in Australia. I’m scared of the Bahraini government … They will kill me. I don’t know what’s going to happen there. My life will end if I go to Bahrain.” Stark questions remain about the actions or potential mistakes of Interpol, the Australian federal police, its immigration department and communications between Thailand and Bahrain. Al-Araibi has applied for Australian citizenship but Australia’s immigration department has not yet granted it and the immigration minister will not comment on it. Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, has publicly called for Al-Araibi’s release and was due to meet Thai officials on Thursday, but Thailand continues to process Bahrain’s extradition request. Human Rights Watch has worked closely with both cases, and the UNHCR and Amnesty International are among international human rights groups to publicly lobby for both. Qunun is not yet out of danger, but her situation, just days after she was stopped at Bangkok airport, is markedly more positive than that of Al-Araibi, who has been locked up for 45 days and counting. So why the difference? The reasons are varied but likely include the age-old non-science of what makes news and what doesn’t. Al-Araibi’s case is also much more complicated based on the known facts, and being subject to an Interpol red notice might have suggested Al-Araibi’s arrest was legitimate. Qunun was able to get on social media with videos and urgent personal pleas immediately and prolifically. An army of loud and committed online supporters rose up after Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy translated and shared her posts. In a meeting with Thai immigration, a Saudi official noted the 45,000 followers she quickly gained, and remarked in Arabic: “I wish you had taken her phone, it would have been better than [taking] her passport.” Al-Araibi, while he also had a phone and was able to speak directly to journalists and send photos in the first days of his detention, did not attract the instant focus. Some media was far slower – particularly in Australia – to pick up on it, despite the story’s stronger links to the country than Qunun. Supporters rallied and international media reported the situation, but the chatter didn’t break through to mainstream audiences to the same degree, even when panicked phone calls reported he had been bundled away by Thai authorities and his wife told she would not see him again. Small protests were held outside Thai consulates in Australia, and the Victorian football community and global players associations rallied. Football Federation Australia, Fifa and the Asian Football Confederation were deafeningly silent for weeks, and even now direct their messages at governments instead of the influential Bahrainis among their own executives. There is perhaps a greater awareness of the horrendous danger to people – particularly women – in Saudi Arabia than of what Al-Araibi faces in Bahrain. The Saudi regime was cast further into the spotlight when journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in October. Women face extraordinary oppression. Under the Saudi guardianship system almost every aspect of a Saudi woman’s life is controlled by a male guardian. They are forbidden from travelling without a male relative as escort, cannot apply for a passport, get medical treatment or seek an education without permission. Eltahawy said Qunun represented a “breath of fresh air” who had showed Saudi women they could demand freedom and dignity. In April 2017, Dina Ali Lasloom, a 24-year-old Saudi woman, was forcibly returned by the Philippines, despite social media pleas, and hasn’t been heard from since. Fatima Yazbek of the Gulf Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (GIDHR) notes the death penalty is still carried out on political opponents in Bahrain, citing three executions in 2017, including one sports teacher. Human rights organisations have documented countless cases of abuse, torture and arbitrary imprisonment of dissidents, including those who sought to flee only to be deported by cooperative governments where they landed. Bangkok is implicated in more than one instance of a dissident returned to a Bahraini prison cell, where they were beaten and tortured. Government announcements and local news in recent weeks have reported tax deals and large-scale property developments between Thailand and Bahrain. “Hakeem is now the icon for the suffering of political detainees in Bahrain,” said GIDHR’s Yahya Alhadid. A royal family rules Bahrain and populates about half of the cabinet positions, as well as other important roles including the ambassadorship to the UK. The current Bahraini ambassador to the UK is Shaikh Fawaz bin Mohammed al-Khalifa, who was also chair of the information authority in 2011, when state television broadcast pictures and footage of protesting athletes, labelling them as traitors. The London embassy issued the only public statement from Bahrain, in the days after Al-Araibi’s arrest, defending the red notice. Alhadid questioned why the London embassy was commenting on a Bahraini who now lived in Australia and was detained in Thailand. “After Hakeem spoke out they didn’t forget what he did,” he suggested.Police Scotland spent more than £3m covering the costs of Donald Trump’s private visit to Scotland last year, deploying more than 5,500 officers around the country. The US president spent two nights at his Trump Turnberry resort in Ayrshire, where he played golf and had private meetings after attending a gala dinner at Blenheim Palace, talks with Theresa May in Buckinghamshire and an audience with the Queen at Windsor Castle. His visit to Turnberry was met by protests at the course and demonstrations in seven Scottish towns and cities, including Edinburgh, and at his other golf course north of Aberdeen. A paraglider paid by the campaign group Greenpeace buzzed Trump while he stood outside his hotel, breaching a no-fly zone. Police Scotland has disclosed it spent £3.2m above its normal day to day budgets to provide policing for the visit, following a freedom of information request from the Guardian. The force had to build watchtowers and temporary barriers, as well as perimeter patrols at Turnberry and nearby Prestwick airport, which is used by the Trumps on their visits to Turnberry. It also had to prepare for the possibility that Trump would visit his other golf resort in Aberdeenshire. Police Scotland said 5,537 personnel had claimed overtime or time off in lieu as a result of being deployed during the visit. Its overtime bill reached nearly £1.6m, included in the £3.2m total. Several weeks before Trump’s visit, the then acting chief constable of Scotland, Iain Livingstone, said he had to cancel leave and rest days for many officers to ensure he had adequate resources. He forecast the extra costs could hit £5m. It prompted an appeal from Humza Yousaf, the Scottish justice secretary, to the UK government for financial help, even though policing policy and funding is devolved to the Scottish government. The Treasury minister, Liz Truss, confirmed the UK government would foot the bill for policing costs directly associated with the visit, in line with its decision to provide extra funding for English forces. In October, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the representative body for English and Welsh chief constables, estimated its members spent £18m on policing Trump’s visit. Calum Steele, the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, the union for rank and file officers, said the need to invest that level of resources into the visit reflected Trump’s status, the significant size of the locations he visited and the potential for protests. He said it was essential the costs were met at UK level. “The president of the United States did not visit the UK to meet the prime minister of England,” he said. “The policing costs were considerable and unless met will leave the service with diminished capacity and capability to deliver policing in Scotland, especially at a time of shrinking budgets.” Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Green party’s leader at Holyrood, said: “The public will be appalled at the cost we are all paying as a result of the UK government fawning over this bigoted bully. He should never have been invited and Police Scotland should send the bill not to the UK government but to Trump himself as his visit was part business expense part ego trip.”An American newscaster for the Iranian government’s Press TV was released late Wednesday after her 10-day long detention in federal custody provoked outrage in the US and Iran. FBI agents arrested Marzieh Hashemi, a US citizen, at St Louis airport on 13 January. She was held as a material witness in an unspecified criminal proceeding, according to documents unsealed by the Department of Justice on Friday. Her detention prompted concerns about the potential first amendment issues of detaining a journalist, as well as religious liberty issues as Hashemi, a practicing Muslim, was reportedly denied Halal food and had her hijab forcibly removed. “Marzieh and her family will not allow this to be swept under the carpet,” the woman’s family said in a statement shortly after her release. They “still have serious grievances [and] they want assurances that this won’t happen to any Muslim – or any other person – ever again”. Hashemi has not been charged with any crime and appeared before a federal grand jury at least three times. US law allows the government to arrest and hold so-called “material witnesses” if a judge agrees that the individual has information that is important to a criminal proceeding and may flee if simply subpoenaed to appear in court. The justice department did not return a Guardian query about the nature of the criminal proceeding or why it took the step of detaining Hashemi to secure her testimony. It may have been due to the fact that she frequently travels to and lives part-time in Iran. Her release follows intense outrage in Tehran, where journalists gathered earlier on Wednesday to call the detention “illegal” and a “violation of human rights”. “This shows, for sure, to be a flagrant violation of human rights, a violation of domestic rights, a violation of freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. There is no doubt about that,” said Seyed Mostafa Khoshcheshm, a political analyst in Tehran, according to the Tasnim news agency. The comments came alongside a joint statement from three major Iranian journalist associations condemning the detention. Hashemi’s arrest added fuel to an increasingly tumultuous diplomatic relationship between the US and Iran, which has been unsettled by the Trump administration’s decision to back out of the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration and to reinstitute harsh sanctions. “The US govt needs to explain how Marzieh Hashemi – a journalist and grandmother – is such a flight risk that she must be incarcerated until she finishes her testimony to a grand jury,” said the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in a tweet on Monday, which was observed as Martin Luther King Jr Day in the US. “50 years after MLK assassination, US still violates the civil rights of black men and women,” he continued. Hashemi was born Melanie Franklin in Louisiana and changed her name when she converted to Islam after the Iranian revolution. According to Press TV, she has primarily lived in Iran for over a decade and was in the US to visit a sick family member. Hashemi was also working on a documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement while in the US. The statement from Hashemi’s family said she was expected to make comment “in due course” and that she was planning to attend one of over two dozen events around the world that organizers had already planned for Friday to protest for her freedom. “Just as America is aware of the harassment of the Black community by the police, America needs to start talking about the harassment of the Muslim community by the FBI,” read the statement.A British startup trying to counter the waste created by single-use coffee capsules says it will be strangled at birth by a no-deal Brexit. The founders of Moving Beans say Brexit is like a “bomb dropping” on their business, which started manufacturing in February. The firm is the latest to express frustration over the lack of understanding among Brexiters, such as the former minister Suella Braverman about the impact of no deal on real small to medium business. Moving Beans began producing coffee capsules using the fibre from sugar beet in response to a growing environmental backlash against single-serve pods such as those from Nespresso, which are advertised by George Clooney. The company claims to be the “first in the world who have managed to solve the problem of producing Nespresso-compatible coffee capsules which are compostable and maintain a delicious coffee taste”. But the team now fear for their future because of Brexit. Moving Beans employs three people and produces 5,000 capsules a month, with plans to expand to a staff of about 20 in two to three years. “We are trying to make a real difference, but this Brexit mess may actually really backfire on our company and eventually on the environmental wellbeing of the UK,” said co-founder Mike, who asked for his surname not to be published. Former Brexit minister Suella Braverman - if May vote lost, Govt shd embrace no deal ⁦@BBCNewsnight⁩ pic.twitter.com/x9naE3kInZ “Falling back on the World Trade Organization will close many UK SMEs [small and medium enterprises] – it’s real, not ‘project fear’,” he said. “The bomb dropped [when] our fulfilment company in the UK sent us the tariffs we would need to pay if we were to fall back on World Trade Organization rules and the paperwork which would need to be provided. Our margins are gone, directly because of import fees (VAT + duty) and indirectly because of staff spending more time doing admin.” They were told that under WTO tariffs they would have to pay 7.5% extra to import coffee for their capsules, which are manufactured on mainland Europe and could also attract a tariff – enough to decimate their profits. Mike explained that small margins or fluctuations in currency exchange rates could be absorbed by bigger and older businesses but not by startups, where everything is fine-tuned. “Margins are very tight in the business; we had to scout for a factory which is affordable whilst not compromising the quality of the product. We found one a year back, but in mainland Europe. We have been importing over past months, and it has worked really great, with customers loving our product and us not having had any troubles with the supply chain.” His partner Dan said if the company was “shifting massive volumes” it might be able to “ride through and hope for the best” but at the moment it is less than a year old and in a delicate startup phase of the business cycle. Dan and Mike agreed to speak out after reading of other small- and medium-sized businesses struggling to work out how they can absorb a no-deal Brexit. They are among many small businesses and entrepreneurs incensed with politicians such as Conservative backbencher Nadine Dorries, who recently said “no deal won’t crash the car”. No deal won’t crash the car. It will be a short bumpy ride and then voom, straight into the fast lane, leaving the sinking economics of the EU behind. An online clothing company in Bristol told the Guardian how “Brexit is not a business disrupter, it’s a business bankrupter” but said small businesses were scared to go public because of the abuse they get from Brexiters and others. Another medium-sized firm told the Guardian how Brexit had put up to 25,000 British seasonal jobs in ski resorts and summer activity holidays at risk. These businesses are typical of many in the country who are in despair over the prospect of no deal, according to the Confederation of British Industry. Dan and Mike said they were inspired to launch Moving Beans after reading about the “horrendous amount of waste” caused by Nespresso and other capsule machines, which produce capsules “almost impossible” to recycle. They hoped their product would be a winning formula for those who want the convenience of the coffee capsule machine but are conscious of the waste. But, Dan explained, there is a point at which consumers will not be willing to pay extra for environmentally-friendly products. In the worst case scenario, Moving Beans will concentrate on exporting from its factory in the EU to central Europe rather than selling to the UK. However, this is not what the duo had envisaged. “We are a company established in the UK and we would like to keep up the momentum here and keep people employed here,” said Dan. But their ultimate goal is to make a difference environmentally as well as to make coffee, so Moving Beans may have to quit Britain if the UK crashes out of the EU and the business is no longer viable. “We are on a mission to produce great coffee in sustainable way and if that means having to move elsewhere, then so be it. It is something we have discussed and something we will decide on as the Brexit deadline gets closer,” said Dan. If you own or run an SME and are likely to be affected by a no-deal Brexit, contact lisa.ocarroll@theguardian.comWhatever else happens with Brexit, no one in British politics will ever again underestimate the power of a timetable. The pressure of the article 50 clock ticking down forced Theresa May into the compromises that make her deal unpalatable to MPs. She has tried to pass the pain on to MPs, hoping that the grim consequences of missing the deadline would force them to settle for her plan. Earlier this week, in an act of parliamentary jujitsu, the former attorney general Dominic Grieve turned the timetable weapon back on May, securing an amendment that sets a limit of three days for the prime minister to say what comes next if her deal collapses. Running down the clock should eliminate options and force decisions. So far that hasn’t worked. Instead, the same volume of Brexit bluster has been compressed into an ever tighter space, which, in accordance with the laws of political thermodynamics, raises the temperature and increases the danger of something blowing up. Brexit law has now been amended and re-amended so many ways that power lies neither with the government nor with MPs May has been holding the lid, keeping the pressure on. It is her deal that MPs will almost certainly reject, and hers alone. Brexit itself does not depend on this particular prime minister. It is easy to forget that, when the whole business has felt like a Shakespearean tragedy with May at its centre: the hostage to pitiless circumstance undone by her own flaws, consumed by a megalomaniacal sense of duty – a monstrous hybrid of piety and arrogance. But next week begins the great disentanglement, when threads of what parliament might endorse will be separated and sorted, regardless of what May wants. Brexit law has now been amended and re-amended so many ways that power lies neither with the government nor with MPs. Parliament gets to say what it thinks should happen – the prime minister isn’t bound by law to do it, but would surely not survive long in office if she flatly refused. And so the race is on to form some cross-party coalition that can agree on some kind of plan: any plan that is not May’s one, and doesn’t involve flying off the no-deal cliff edge. As one cabinet minister put it to me recently: once that coalition is found, “it is then effectively the government”. It is premature to say that discussions are under way to form some national unity administration, but the idea is being seriously kicked around among pro-European Tories who imagine that disaffected moderate Labour MPs, worn down by dissidence in Jeremy Corbyn’s regime, can be recruited to a temporary arrangement that gets the country safely through the next few months. In my experience, remain-leaning Conservatives underestimate the gravitational force of Labour tribalism, regardless of who is leader, but it is certainly true that dismay over Brexit has created some surprising friendships that cross partisan lines. The two main propositions competing to prove their viability are the second referendum (under the banner of a people’s vote), and a Brexit model that keeps the UK inside the single market and the customs union, once characterised as Norway plus and now rebranded “common market 2.0”. Neither camp can yet muster a majority. The “Norwegians” say their numbers are artificially low because many Tories who support them, including cabinet ministers, have to pretend to back May’s deal right up until the moment it fails. But Tory people’s vote supporters also claim to have sleeper cells of ministerial endorsement. Labour MPs on both sides argue that their leader will eventually come to see the logic of their preferred option. It is a peculiar rivalry between factions who agree with each other about most of what is wrong with Brexit. They would almost certainly back each other’s proposal if their own were eliminated. The people’s vote side would prefer common market 2.0 to May’s deal. Many of the common market 2.0 brigade would go for a referendum if they were more confident that public opinion had shifted so far that the result would be a slam dunk for remain. Meanwhile, each side has to manage the awkward geometry of coalition-building across the floor of the Commons. When a Tory declares for a people’s vote, it makes it harder for the left to sign up. When former remainers back common market 2.0, it is harder to sell it to leavers as a bona fide Brexit. It is the classic Rubik’s Cube conundrum – lining up the colours on one face ruins another one. The one thing all can agree on – the only proposition for which a Commons majority has already been demonstrated this year – is that Britain should not crash out of the EU without a deal. The problem is that no deal is the scenario that requires the least action. It is what happens if everyone just carries on being pretty much as they have done, failing to organise around any one goal. MPs can rail against the idea of no deal, but that doesn’t prove it can’t happen. Many things were unthinkable before they started to look feasible, then suddenly became inevitable. Brexit was one. A second referendum might be another. May somehow bulldozing her deal through parliament cannot be ruled out completely. She has said many times that the UK leaves the EU on 29 March – but many officials believe that an extension to the article 50 period is inevitable. Even if parliament approves a deal, there isn’t much time to pass the subsequent enabling legislation. We are at the stage of the Brexit drama where every possible outcome has been ruled out at some point. The final act has to involve some shift in perceptions of what is possible. Birnam Wood is on its way to Dunsinane. The Brexit tragedy that was all about Theresa May’s ambition and misjudgments is coming to an end. The sequel is a story of rebel bands in parliament competing for power as it flies from the prime minister’s hands. • Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist‘Blue, blue, electric blue,” sings David Bowie’s voice as freelance journalist Dave Sheff (Steve Carell) Googles “crystal meth”, the highly dangerous, highly addictive cerulean rocks that his teenage son, Nic (Timothée Chalamet), has been using. This is the level of subtlety present in Felix van Groeningen’s awards-y drama, based on the memoirs of the real-life father-son duo. Mimicking the relapse-recovery cycle of addiction, the film’s timeline moves in unsatisfying narrative circles that stall the already shallow stakes. “A few weeks ago you told me you’d only done crystal meth once. The story has to be bigger than that, right?” Dave asks his son (because he’s a journalist). Except it’s not: the reasons for the clever, handsome, well-looked-after Nic’s slide into addiction remain opaque. Character detail is replaced by screamingly cliched pop-culture signifiers (Nic reads a Bukowski poem in earnest, claiming the writer saved his life “more than a few times”); the exposition is numbingly blunt (Dave discovers Nic’s sketchbook, filled with creepy doodles that read “I can never give them up”). Carell plays the concerned father, but his angry outbursts never quite land; it’s unfortunate that when he shouts, the actor’s serious register becomes indistinguishable from that of Michael Scott, his character in The Office. Still, it’s not entirely unmoving. A diner scene that sees Dave sad-eyed and aware of his own powerlessness is devastating; what I’ll call the Chalamet giggle is deployed to great effect, the actor’s cocked head and crinkly grin telegraphing the kind of sweetness that demands a second chance (Neil Young’s Heart of Gold plays as a clean Nic announces that he wants his parents to be proud of him, in case it was unclear). Yet Chalamet’s likability is almost a problem. “It’s as close to a miracle Nic survived,” says a doctor after an overdose, but in this universe, rich, white men get infinite chances to start again. If Beautiful Boy is meant to be a critique of artsy, moneyed liberals’ complicity regarding their privileged, addled offspring, it kneecaps itself with an onscreen message that ends the film. “Help is out there,” it insists, but only if your parents can afford it – and only if you’re a beautiful boy.The midterm elections brought an end to a period of one-party rule in Washington. In January, Donald Trump will face a newly empowered House Democratic majority eager to take on his administration. The incoming Democratic committee chairs have vowed rigorous oversight of Trump, his family and his administration. Armed with committee gavels, they will have the power and resources to pursue investigations, issue subpoenas and compel testimony. Trump in response has threatened to adopt a “warlike” posture, signaling a tumultuous end to an already-volatile first term. Here are the men and women most likely to torment the president. Incoming chair of the House committee on oversight and government reform As the ranking Democrat on the committee, Cummings has sat through his share of Republican-led investigations into the Obama administration. Now the outspoken 67-year-old will wield one of the most powerful gavels in Washington. The son of two former sharecroppers who moved from the south, Cummings was born and raised in Baltimore, a city he now represents in Congress. He practiced law and served for 14 years in the Maryland house of delegates before being elected to Congress in 1996. In January, Cummings will become one of the Democrats’ chief investigators into the Trump administration. He describes his approach as having “two tracks”. One track will scrutinize the executive branch, including whether Trump has profited from the presidency; a decision to add a citizenship question to the US census; and hush payments made to women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs. A second track will focus on reforms such as overhauling the US postal service and lowering prescription drug prices. Cummings has been wary of calls to impeach Trump. Rather than issuing subpoenas “like somebody’s handing out candy on Halloween”, the Democrat says he prefers a more judicious approach.“I’m not looking for retribution,” Cummings told ABC News. “Life is too short.” Incoming chair of the House permanent select committee on intelligence Schiff is one of Trump’s most combative political opponents. Mocked by the president as “Liddle Adam Schiff” – a barb that was recently modified to “Little Adam Schitt” – the California Democrat was at the center of the House’s deeply partisan investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Schiff began his career as a prosecutor with the Los Angeles division of the US attorney’s office in 1987. He gained prominence by prosecuting a case against the first FBI agent to be indicted for espionage against the United States. (The agent was convicted of passing classified information to the Soviet Union for money.) He was elected to Congress in 2000 after serving in the California state senate. Schiff, 58, is a leading attack dog on the Russia investigation and obstruction of justice. The Democrat has said he will examine whether Russia has financial leverage over the president through its investments in Trump’s business empire, something Trump says would “cross a red line”. Schiff recently said: “If the president’s business is trying to curry favor with the Kremlin, we can’t ignore that.” The congressman has also signaled that he will seek more information about whether Trump sought to obstruct the FBI’s investigation into the president’s dealings with Moscow when he fired its director James Comey. He also hasn’t ruled out calling Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, to testify in a public hearing. Incoming chair of the House judiciary committee The New York Democrat, universally known as “Jerry”, will chair the House judiciary committee, which has jurisdiction over key policy areas but will be watched closely for its role in any impeachment proceedings. Nadler’s political career began in 1977 as a New York assemblyman while he was still attending Fordham Law School. He was elected to Congress in 1992, and represents Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Wall Street and parts of Brooklyn. Long before Trump came to Washington, he and Nadler sparred over a real estate venture proposed by Trump that Nadler forcefully opposed. In his book The America We Deserve, Trump later described Nadler as “one of the most egregious hacks in contemporary politics”. Known as a steady hand, Nadler had been careful about broaching the topic of impeachment, dismissing such discussions as “premature”. However, in December Nadler said court filings stating that Trump directed Cohen to pay hush money “would be impeachable offenses”. Nadler, 71, has outlined an expansive list of subjects his committee will scrutinize, including Russian interference in the 2016 election; the policy on separating immigrant families at the southern border; the justice department’s failure to defend the Affordable Care Act; the allegations of sexual misconduct and perjury by the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh; a rise in antisemitic and hate crime incidents since Trump’s election, and the appointment of acting US attorney general Matthew Whitaker after the forced resignation of Jeff Sessions. Incoming chair of the House financial services committee Waters, or “Auntie Maxine” as she is affectionately known by her supporters in the anti-Trump “resistance” movement, is a frequent target of the president. Insulted by Trump as “crazy” and an “extraordinarily low IQ person”, the 80-year-old Democrat from California has earned her hard-charging reputation by fighting fire with fire. She has called Trump an “immoral, indecent, & inhumane thug” who “loves Putin” and “genuflects for Kim Jong-un”. The verbal volleys may only get worse as she assumes the top spot on the House financial services committee next year. Waters has consistently demanded information about Trump’s private bank dealings and possible connections to Russia. As chairwoman, she will have the power to demand answers from Trump’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank. She could also increase scrutiny on the nation’s biggest banks and Wall Street. Waters has called for more regulation of banks and could use her power to slow efforts by the Trump administration to roll back regulations on the financial institutions. Waters was one of the first Democrats in Washington to call for the president’s impeachment. She will be the first woman to chair the financial services committee. Incoming chair of the House ways and means committee As chairman of the powerful tax-writing committee, the long-serving Massachusetts Democrat is preparing to lead the fight for the release of Trump’s tax returns. Neal told the Washington Post that he will start by requesting Trump voluntarily release his tax returns. In the likely event Trump does not acquiesce, Neal, 69, says he will file a legal request with the treasury department to release the returns to a select group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Neal expects the effort will ultimately end up in federal court. Neal will also use his perch to defend social security, Medicare and Medicaid, federal programs that have personal resonance with him. His parents died when he was young, and Neal and his sisters relied on social security survivor benefit checks. He was elected to Congress in 1988 after serving as a city councilor and mayor of Springfield. He became the ranking Democrat on the committee in 2016. An outspoken opponent of the Republican tax overhaul, Neal has said he also plans to convene hearings on tax policy as well as healthcare and trade.Donald Trump claimed on Sunday he may declare a national emergency over immigration, to allow him to build a wall on America’s southern border. As the government shutdown triggered by the president entered its 16th day, Trump threatened to take extraordinary action to bypass Congress, where Democrats refuse to pass a spending bill that would give him $5.6bn to build his wall. New House speaker Nancy Pelosi has called the wall “an immorality” and refused to fund Trump’s signature election campaign pledge. By declaring a state of national emergency, the White House thinks it will be able to unlock money from other sources without congressional approval, although it has given no specific details of the move. Adam Schiff, a Democratic leader on Capitol Hill, declared the idea “a non-starter”. Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, the California representative said: “If Harry Truman couldn’t nationalise the steel industry during wartime, this president doesn’t have the power to declare an emergency and build a multi-billion dollar wall on the border. So that’s a non-starter.” The 1976 National Emergencies Act grants a president powers to take unilateral acts in times of crisis. But it also outlines congressional checks and with Democrats controlling the House, an attempt to make such a move would be fiercely contested, potentially pitching the US into constitutional crisis. Leaving the White House for Camp David on Sunday morning, Trump claimed that many of the 800,000 federal staff who are either working without pay or have been told to stay at home “agree 100% with what I’m doing”. “I may decide a national emergency depending on what happens over the next few days,” he said, insisting: “I have tremendous support within the Republican party.” Vice-president Mike Pence was set to take part in talks on Sunday afternoon, although the meeting was due to include congressional aides rather than leaders and it is not clear that Pence has authority to offer any deal. As he boarded Marine One, Trump cited human trafficking and claimed “there has never been a time when our country was so infested with so many different drugs”. “Everybody’s playing games but I’ll tell you this, I think the Democrats want to make a deal,” he said. “This shutdown could end tomorrow or it also could go on for a long time.” Trump said on Friday the shutdown could go on for years. The president’s language over the nature of the wall also continues to shift. “The barrier or the wall can be of steel instead of concrete if that works better,” he said. “I intend to call the head of United States Steel and a couple of other steel companies to have them come up with a plate or a design … we’ll use that as our barrier.”He claimed the wall “will pay for itself many times”. On Fox News Sunday, asked if an emergency order was really viable, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said: “Whatever action he takes will certainly be lawful and we’re looking at every option we can. This is something the president takes incredibly seriously, is very passionate about, and is not going to stop until he figures out the best way to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make America safer and more secure.” On CNN’s State of the Union, Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff since 1 January, said he was “heavily involved” in talking to all government departments “to try to find money we can legally use to defend the southern border”. Mulvaney also sought to present Trump’s shift to steel for his wall, from concrete, as a significant concession. “It came up the other day,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press, “in the private meeting with the ‘big eight’, as they’re called, the leaders of the House, the Senate, the Republicans, the Democrats. It was that he was willing to agree, and he mentioned this at the Rose Garden press conference, to take a concrete wall off the table.” That meeting went nowhere, though, and however the White House describes Trump’s demand, Democratic opposition is unlikely to weaken. The House this week oversaw the passage of two funding bills without wall money. Public polling shows majorities against a wall. By any measure, Trump’s fixation with a wall has boxed him into a corner. The New York Times reported on Saturday that it all began in 2014, when advisers needed a way to make the undisciplined speaker remember his key promises. “How do we get him to continue to talk about immigration?” Sam Nunberg, one such adviser, told the Times he asked another, Roger Stone. “We’re going to get him to talk about he’s going to build a wall.” Trump duly did, promising Mexico would pay for it, another vow now seemingly dropped although the president claims an as yet unratified trade deal with Mexico and Canada will provide savings that will pay for the wall. Factcheckers dispute that. Trump is aware of his predicament: as long ago as January 2017, a leaked transcript of a call with the Mexican president showed him saying he was in a “political bind, because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall – I have to. I’ve been talking about it for a two-year period.” On NBC on Sunday, Mulvaney said of the switch to steel: “What’s driving this is the president’s desire to change the conditions at the border. And if he has to give up a concrete wall and replace it with a steel fence in order to do that, so that Democrats can say, ‘See, he’s not building a wall anymore,’ that should help us move forward.” On Twitter and in public, however, Trump has relentlessly demanded a wall, using the word repeatedly, on Saturday as part of an attempted Game of Thrones meme, over a picture of a fence. Mulvaney’s NBC interview took a similar turn towards the bizarre when, asked if the president no longer wanted a wall but wanted a fence, he said: “The president is going to secure the border with a barrier … “I think he said [on Friday] he was going to secure the border with a 30ft-high barrier. I think he actually tweeted a picture out of it two weeks ago. We told the Democrats about it two weeks ago: ‘This is what we want to build. Do you think this is a wall?’ “Actually, under the way the law is written right now, technically it’s not a wall. If that’s not evidence of the president’s desire to try and resolve this, I don’t know what is.” While such talk continued, around 800,000 Americans remained without pay. Key government services including E-Verify, which allows employers to check the immigration status of employees, are either down or, like the food stamps system that helps 38 million people, facing cuts. Courts and airports are feeling the strain, national parks are short-staffed, museums and galleries are closed. It was however reported that one federally maintained attraction was still manned: the clock tower at the building which houses Trump’s Washington hotel.Supporters of a second referendum are calling on Labour’s ruling body to consult grassroots members about the party’s Brexit policy. On Tuesday, the national executive committee (NEC) holds its first full meeting this year. Activists will gather outside to hand leaflets to members, calling on them to ask the party’s half a million members what Jeremy Corbyn should do next. Six members of the party’s international policy commission, which met recently, have written to the Labour leader and to Labour’s general secretary, Jennie Formby, calling for an online poll to guide policy. “There are only two possible ways forward for the country from here: a different Brexit deal or stopping Brexit,” says the letter, seen by the Guardian. If Labour’s amendment fails to secure the backing of MPs on Tuesday “there will be no other way to avoid catastrophe (of a no-deal or a May-deal Brexit) than holding a public vote,” it says. The signatories, who did not wish to be named before the NEC’s discussions, said: “It is our view that there should be an online poll of party members in order to confirm whether there is an appetite for a public vote: specifically a referendum containing the option to remain in the EU. As the consultation on the bombing of Syria demonstrated, it could be held in a short period of time.” Polling suggests Labour members overwhelmingly support a “people’s vote”, with the hope of overturning the result of the 2016 referendum. The party’s leadership has edged towards the idea, including by tabling an amendment to Theresa May’s Brexit motion calling for MPs to be given a vote on options, including a call for a public vote. But Corbyn is still prioritising securing Labour’s alternative Brexit deal and continuing to press for a general election. People’s vote supporters in parliament opted last week to cancel plans for tabling their own amendment to May’s motion, fearing they could not secure a majority without Corbyn’s support. Mike Buckley, the director of campaign group Labour for a People’s Vote, said: “Labour is a proudly democratic party, with policy set by our members. Our conference policy states that we should now consider options – and to take the one most likely to stop the Tories’ Brexit plans. “Now is the time to consult members – either by a special conference, so that unions also get a say, or through an online poll. Sixty days from disaster, there is no excuse for delay.” Corbyn has been an enthusiastic supporter of increasing the involvement of party members as a longtime member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. But he and some of his close allies are acutely conscious of what they regard as the party’s obligations to represent leave voters in Labour heartland constituencies, as well as ardent remainers among the membership. More than a dozen MPs, including frontbenchers, met Labour’s chief whip last week to warn that they would not be prepared to back a second referendum. Some, including the Great Grimsby MP, Melanie Onn, said they would resign rather than support such a move.Some said he was buried under platform 4; others suggested platform 12 or 15. When a statue of Captain Matthew Flinders was installed at Euston in 2014, the only regret of those who had campaigned for a memorial to the explorer – who led the first circumnavigation of Australia – was that his final resting place, understood to be somewhere near the London rail station, was unlikely ever to be known. Five years later, that mystery has been solved by archaeologists working on the new HS2 rail link. The remains of the British navigator – buried over 200 years ago – have now been discovered in a graveyard being excavated to make way for the high-speed line between London and Birmingham. Only a small proportion of the 40,000 bodies being exhumed from St James’s cemetery, behind the station, have been identified so far, making the discovery of Flinders’ remains earlier this month a “needle in a haystack” find, according to HS2’s lead archaeologist, Helen Wass. While some of those buried in the cemetery had tin name plates on their coffins, many of these have not survived. But when Flinders died in July 1814, aged 40, the plate on his coffin was made of lead, meaning it was still legible. “All the records showed that he was buried there, but actually finding someone with a breastplate confirming their name is really amazing,” said Wass. “It is so exciting.” The find is more remarkable because when Flinders’ sister-in-law visited the cemetery in 1852, the location of his grave was already lost. As the first person to circumnavigate the continent and the explorer who popularised its name, Flinders is a figure of national importance in Australia, where a mountain range, two national parks, a university in Adelaide and one of the main streets of Melbourne, among many other things, are named after him. As such, said the country’s high commissioner to the UK, George Brandis, the discovery of his remains is “a matter of great importance to Australia”. In his native Britain, however, he has been largely forgotten, despite a biography that could almost compete with Robinson Crusoe, the novel that first inspired him as a child to go to sea. Born in Lincolnshire in 1774 to a family of surgeons, Flinders joined a navy ship aged 16 and a year later was sailing with the notorious Captain William Bligh, formerly of the Bounty, who taught him navigation and chart making. By 24 he had charted Tasmania and been the first to prove it was an island. Five years later Flinders had circumnavigated the entire continent, and charted much of its coastline, accompanied by his beloved cat Trim and an Aboriginal man called Bungaree – notably the first person ever to be described as an “Australian”. Forced to dock in Mauritius on his way home in 1803, Flinders was arrested by the French, with whom Britain was by now at war, and held on the island for seven years. Trim, his companion in captivity, disappeared the following year, likely stolen and eaten by a hungry slave; years later Flinders was still mourning “the best and most illustrious of his race”. In many of the statues of Flinders in Australia – and at Euston – he is accompanied by the faithful Trim. Rebekah Higgitt, a historian of science at the university of Kent, said that like Captain James Cook and Bligh, Flinders was one of “the great explorer-surveyor-commanders” of the intense period of navigational advances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As well as being a talented navigator, she said, he was clearly an impressive character in other ways. “He wants to go to sea, and the way to do that is to get to grips with mathematics and trigonometry, which he does really, really well. I think he must also have had quite a lot of charm, as he is promoted and supported by people quickly.” Along with many of the other skeletons excavated from the St James’s site, Flinders’ remains will now be examined by osteo-archaeologists. They will be looking for lessons as to how his life at sea affected his health. With excavations due to continue until late next year, Wass hopes the site has more secrets to reveal. “We are going to be able to tell so many stories about the life of London … we will look across the spread of the burial ground, the rich, poor and everything in between, so we can try to tell as holistic a story as possible about who is buried there.” Once they have been examined, the bodies will all be reburied in a site yet to be confirmed.Naught’s had, all’s spent. Theresa May tried. She really tried. But she just couldn’t manage it. The toxic mix of Brexit and her own stubborn incompetence has corroded the prime minister from the inside, and now she’s little more than a fragile shell. Unable to do much more than mechanically go through the motions in pursuit of a vote that she knows to be unwinnable. Sartre would have killed to know such existential despair. The Conservatives also recognise the game is up and that their leader’s authority is little more than an illusion. For May’s last-ditch effort to persuade the unpersuadable with a statement to the Commons, there were huge gaps on the government benches. Partly because few Tory MPs had anything to gain from putting themselves through such a numbing experience, but mostly to save themselves from having to witness a prime minister’s suffering. It was that painful to watch. Glassy-eyed and shrunken, May retreated into her familiar safe place. A hurried, disengaged monotone. A phoned-in repetition of every other Brexit statement she had given over the past few months. She didn’t believe a word of what she was saying, but she was nothing if not dutiful. She had some letters from the EU. Letters that were elegantly written and contained no spelling mistakes, but sadly lacked anything legally binding on the Northern Ireland backstop. After admitting that she had basically wasted the past five weeks by delaying the vote, the prime minister went on to make an unusual pitch. Remainer MPs should vote for her deal because if they didn’t then they would increase the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit, and leavers should vote for her deal because a failure to do so would increase the likelihood of no Brexit at all. Even a dodgy 1980s Amstrad computer would have detected that contradiction in its algorithms. May left her greatest misjudgment to the end, by reminding MPs that history would judge them. This from a government that had mishandled the Brexit negotiations from the off, had awarded a ferry contract to a company with no ferries, whose defence secretary wants to paintball the Spanish and whose international trade secretary believes that a no-deal Brexit wouldn’t be as bad as Dunkirk. Great. At least we won’t be dive-bombed by Stukas on the beach. History certainly will judge this government and the verdict won’t be kind. In a parallel universe, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May might have been an ideal match on a blind date. Both have a flair for the mediocre and instinctively misjudge the mood of the house. The Labour leader said all the right things in reply – the deal she was offering was exactly the same as the one the house would have rejected in December, etc – but he did so with little grace. This was a time for calm, measured, statesmanlike Jeremy. Not shouty, snarky Jeremy. For someone who is hoping to engineer a general election, he made little effort to engage those voters he needs to win over to become prime minister. As so often, the two leaders set the tone for what followed. Even normally passionate speakers such as Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry and Ed Miliband sounded as if they were overwhelmed with the semi-detached ennui of déjà vu. Everything that needed to be said had been said months ago. Along with a lot that hadn’t needed to be said and had been said anyway. Step forward Owen Paterson, who yet again insisted that the Northern Ireland border could be solved by imaginary technology operated by badgers. Several MPs from both sides of the house pressed May on whether she would extend article 50. Naturally, she prevaricated, because that’s what she always does. It’s her default mode. It’s one of the reasons the country is so screwed. Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville-Roberts injected some edge into the debate by observing that May hadn’t been so insistent on respecting the will of the people when the Welsh voted in favour of having their own national assembly, but the moment quickly passed. The time for home truths was long over. Then we were back to treading water. Monday was just a sideshow, with Tuesday’s vote the main event. Only then would we begin to see if the government did have a Plan B, or whether the only contingency was to repeat Plan A and hope for a different result. A plan that in the real world might be called the definition of insanity, but in the fantasy world of Westminster is increasingly viewed as a viable option. Brexit is making fools of everyone. Especially those who were already fools in the first place.The world may be crashing down around our ears but, as we wait out the apocalypse, one thing is clear: we will not be short of good telly. Subscription services are booming, budgets have skyrocketed and, with more original shows on offer than ever, viewers need never leave the house again. While on-demand TV and box-set bingeing means we each create our own schedules, TV dramas have nonetheless yielded genuine “watercooler” moments, albeit with the chatter happening on social media rather than at work. Will Bodyguard’s PC Budd ever crack a smile? Is it possible for Luther to open a door instead of kicking it in? We need answers, preferably from strangers on the internet. So how on earth did we get here? “It’s the same story with TV as with everything else: the internet came along and provided access to more content,” says Piers Wenger, controller of BBC drama. “The age of digital platforms and on-demand content has led to a global market for English-language television. But it’s in the last five or six years that it’s really started to pop, which means massive amounts of money coming into the UK drama sector. And the audiences are vast.” The figures are indeed mind-boggling. In the final quarter of 2018, Netflix reached 139 million subscribers worldwide. Meanwhile, the BBC – David to Netflix’s Goliath in budgetary terms – has enjoyed startling success in the past year, with Bodyguard and Killing Eve reaching 43m requests each on iPlayer (Bodyguard also became the most-watched drama since 2006, with 17.1m people tuning into the series finale. In a peculiar turn of events, these marquee dramas have also been largely loved by the critics, which either means that critical standards have dropped or TV is getting better. Lisa McGee, writer of the Channel 4 comedy-drama Derry Girls, reckons it is the latter. “The scale of storytelling has broadened, as has its ambition,” she says. “I like to write for TV because I like spending a lot of time with characters; you can do a lot in 20 hours. It’s doing what novels did 100 years ago. When I began writing 10 or 11 years ago, it was very different. Stories had to be episodic and have a theme. It was very formulaic. Now anything goes. No one’s afraid of the audience not understanding.” The writer David Nicholls, who adapted the addiction drama Patrick Melrose for Sky Atlantic, agrees: “There’s a wider range of tones and voices, and riskier shows are making it to the screen. With Patrick Melrose, no one ever said: ‘This is too tough for our audience’, or that he ought to be more likeable, or that we should take out the darker stuff. And that was great.” To understand TV’s current purple patch, McGee says, you have to go back 20 years to the arrival of HBO’s The Sopranos. It was, she says, a “game-changer, a show that assumed in its audience intelligence and sophistication”. More critically acclaimed HBO series followed including Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Wire and, later, Game of Thrones, along with hit shows from other networks – The West Wing, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost – all of which slotted comfortably into the 00s DVD box-set era and the growing appetite for binge-watching. If HBO showed what could be achieved through a succession of ambitious and generously funded shows, Netflix opened the floodgates through its consumer-friendly approach, upping the ante by allowing viewers to watch at their own pace and on whatever device they had to hand. Now, consumer demand has led to an era of feverish commissioning and eye-watering budgets across the networks. According to the Economist, Netflix splashed out $13bn on content in 2018, with the majority going on new commissions. While Wenger won’t be drawn on BBC drama’s financial outgoings, he says that budgets have increased sufficiently that “we can play in genres that we couldn’t have done justice to in the past”. All of which is great news for actors. “I’ve never been as busy as I am now,” says Daniel Mays, star of Line of Duty, Born to Kill and the forthcoming Sky One drama Temple. “Now you can really take the audience on a journey. Temple will be eight episodes at an hour long each. It gives us an incredible platform and the range to dig deep. Plus, the crossover among actors from film to TV is massive. When you’re working with actors of that calibre, it really raises your game.” Certainly, television is increasingly the place to be for Hollywood actors. In the era of “safe” cinema franchises, from Marvel and DC to Star Wars and Bourne, there is a sense that greater variety and experimentation can be found on TV. Older women in particular are finding meatier roles on the small screen: think Julia Roberts in Homecoming, Winona Ryder in Stranger Things and Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon in Big Little Lies. Nicholls has observed this blurring of the boundaries between TV and film. “As a writer, I no longer have to put on my TV hat,” he says. “I’m not suggesting there’s money to burn but there are things you can do now. You used to have to consciously limit your locations, or avoid scenes with large numbers of people, as these were tricky to implement. There was a kind of chamber quality to a lot of British TV, much of it wonderful, but now if you watch a prestige show like Peaky Blinders, it’s very cinematic.” While this increased ambition and scale is understandably seductive to writers and actors, what about the viewers? With a near-constant stream of new shows being flagged up, the choice can be overwhelming. And just because a show looks pretty and has set tongues wagging doesn’t mean it’s any good. “Starting something new definitely requires a level of commitment,” reflects Mays. “It can become this mountain to climb. We’re awash with content, so the worry is whether or not the production you’re working on can make an impact. It’s a fierce marketplace and the competition is stiff. Finding the audience seems to me to be the final hurdle.” Clearly there are greater challenges ahead. While Netflix continues to pile on subscribers, the rate of growth has started to slow; a price increase was recently announced for US viewers. Meanwhile, Disney is soon to join the party with its own platform, Disney+; Apple’s streaming service is set to launch this year; while Amazon Prime Video is proving a worthy adversary with series such as Transparent, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and an upcoming bank-busting Lord of the Rings series. If greater competition means more content, does more content mean quantity over quality? Mays thinks not. “I haven’t seen a dumbing down of anything – at least not yet. Looking at new projects, you have to think about who is writing it and who is going to be involved. But I see the rising competition as a positive thing. It’s good for actors but I think television as a whole has been enriched.” This improved picture, however, does not extend to representation. Behind the scenes, TV remains predominantly white and male, with a report last year stating that only 2.3% of it was made by directors from a BAME (black, Asian, minority ethnic) background. “It’s not enough to have more people in EastEnders and more people doing the weather,” Lenny Henry told the Press Association. Henry has been campaigning to increase the number of women, disabled and BAME people working on telly and film. “All we’re asking for is a seat at the table,” he told the BBC. While representation behind the camera is still evolving, Wenger says that the continued success of drama commissioning lies in long-term accessibility. “We already have the box-set system where series are available for longer. A BBC show might land live and be a moderate success and later you’ll see a spike on iPlayer. But I think that a heavily curated service could be of renewed value to the audience, rather than having to comb through an endless onscreen menu,” he says. “Clearly the future is about a mix of live viewing for the communal experience and the luxury of watching eight episodes of finely crafted drama on catchup. I don’t think one will annihilate the other. These things can work symbiotically.” McGee certainly doesn’t see the on-demand bubble bursting just yet. “There’s always going to be a market for choice,” she says. In the face of that, audiences may continue to fragment but – as we found out with Bodyguard – it only takes Richard Madden taking his shirt off to bring them together again.He drew portraits for Italian dukes, sketched for the papacy and died at the court of a French king. If there is any artist who defies nationhood it is surely Leonardo da Vinci. Yet last week, Leonardo’s cosmopolitan legacy was caught up in an extraordinary intergovernmental spat when Rome renewed its threat to block Italian galleries from lending to the forthcoming Louvre exhibition commemorating the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death. Leonardo was Italian, after all. Why don’t they loan us the Mona Lisa? This fine-art impasse has been brewing since November when the new Italian culture minister, Lucia Borgonzoni, from the far-right League party, described a previous government’s decision to lend to France as “one of the biggest, most shameful acts with regard to cultural heritage”. Bottom line: there could be no question of a loan without La Gioconda coming the other way. “Leonardo was Italian, after all. Why don’t they loan us the Mona Lisa?” The row exposes, in populist colour, the terrible danger for creative exchange when politicians claim possession of artists as national icons. More than that, what the Louvre-Leonardo dispute reinforces is the urgent need for museums to stand up to today’s encircling clamour of chauvinism and cultural essentialism. There is a long and beautiful history of princes marshalling art and design for propaganda purposes. We would not have nearly as glorious a memory of Henry VIII and his wives without the brushwork of Hans Holbein (a Bavarian). And what better insight into the Habsburg court of Philip IV of Spain is there than Diego Velázquez’s baroque cycle of royal portraits? Over the past three centuries, nations have proved just as adept as dynasties in ensuring that culture serves a wider ideological agenda. When Britishness was forged during the latter half of the 18th century on a diet of anti-Catholicism, empire and war, it was William Hogarth who best codified this developing sense of identity. His O the Roast Beef of Old England (“The Gate of Calais”), with its garish depictions of fat monks, bare-footed nuns and effeminate French soldiers, was a single-sheeted declaration of the glory of Great Britain. On the other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Cole (a British immigrant) and the Hudson River School of landscape artists would do the same for the US. Their vast, arching canvases depicted America as a new Eden, liberated from the corruption and filth of old Europe. It was the artistry of manifest destiny that helped to mould an emergent US sensibility. History abounds with moments of diplomatic tension relieved by artistic partnership Today, the process is no less overt, with art and monumental architecture heavily involved in national self-assertion. On the West Bund of Shanghai, for example, there is an incredible cluster of swish galleries and museums marking modern China’s new confidence when it comes to cultural patronage. And this March, unbowed by sanctions, Doha will open its stunning Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum of Qatar, filled with some of the greatest Islamic art in the world. But none of this nationalist lineage applies to Leonardo. Together with Erasmus of Rotterdam, Leonardo was one of the leading lights of Renaissance humanism. He was part of an influential school of quattrocento artists, writers and philosophers who moved seamlessly across the secular and spiritual, artistic and scientific, political and state boundaries, jettisoning the scholastic “middle ages” to champion the creative capacity of man. His Vitruvian Man (c 1490), with its anatomical depiction of human proportions rooted in classical purity, is a testament to the shared essence of humanity. From Florence to Milan to the Loire Valley, Leonardo was a child of the Renaissance for whom modern claims of nationhood make no sense. Clearly something else is going on with this cultural blockade. On the one hand, there is Leonardo lunacy. As the controversy over the purchase, authenticity and now whereabouts of the $450m Salvator Mundi has revealed, this genius artist-engineer of 500 years ago has the ability to send auction houses, scholars and even nations half-mad. Then there is the open rancour that exists between France’s progressive, pro-European President Emmanuel Macron and Rome’s more nationalistic Five Star-League coalition, with its official backing of the gilets jaunes insurgency. Yet the dispute highlights a wider, worrying trend for populist governments to seek to inhibit artistic exchange. A programme of economic nationalism, paranoid chauvinism and anti-immigration can quickly seep into the cultural sphere. In 2017, President Nicolás Maduro banned Gustavo Dudamel and his lauded Venezuela national youth orchestra from touring America after the conductor condemned the killing of musicians in Caracas. “Welcome to politics,” sneered Maduro. In turn, US sanctions on Tehran have heavily affected the ability of US institutions to collaborate with Iranian artists and curators. Most absurdly (if tellingly), in Russia, local authorities have sought to prevent Kaliningrad airport being renamed in honour of its most celebrated son, Immanuel Kant, precisely because of the 18th-century philosopher’s Enlightenment cosmopolitanism. By contrast, history also abounds with moments of diplomatic tension relieved by artistic partnership. At the height of the cold war, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the Bolshoi Ballet performed to rapturous audiences across Washington. From lending the Parthenon sculptures to Russia to hosting China’s terracotta army in Liverpool, British museums and galleries have long appreciated the importance of cultural engagement outside the diplomatic strictures of government. Today, Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, with its array of young musicians drawn from across the Middle East, is arguably the most inspiring example of art speaking with one language. With the liberal sky darkening from Hungary to Brazil, it is the responsibility of galleries, orchestras and theatres to defend these principles of enlightenment, cosmopolitanism and knowledge. As social media memes spread false news, and political divides become more embittered, our role as trusted institutions to contextualise current controversies fulfils a vital civic function. For we have the collections, born of thousands of years of empire, trade and migration, that dispel those alluring myths of national purity and, instead, tell the real, heterogeneous story of human creativity. Surely, that ethos of exchange and inquiry is the true humanist inheritance of Leonardo – and not this demeaning tussle as to whether Paris or Rome really own his genius. • Tristram Hunt is director of the Victoria and Albert MuseumBy declaring himself Venezuela’s president on Wednesday, Juan Guaidó has brought Venezuela to the edge of catastrophe. The hitherto unknown opposition leader’s actions, which appear to be closely coordinated with if not directed by the US, have set in motion a perilous chain of events. The US recognized Guaidó as president minutes after his declaration. A number of Latin American nations, most with conservative governments backed by the US, have also done so. The growing list includes Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica, and Paraguay. Canada and the Organization of American States have also recognized Guaidó. The European Union has reportedly considered such a step, but for now has instead issued a call for new elections. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has responded to these actions by breaking relations with the US and ordering US diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours. Guaidó, in turn, told US and other diplomats to stay, a message also put forward by Republican US senator Marco Rubio, a leading opponent of Maduro. The Trump administration is ignoring Maduro’s order, which a senior official called “meaningless.” Another senior Trump official has declared, “All options are on the table,” reiterating a message Trump himself has put forward since 2017. What happens next is anyone’s guess. But a US invasion feels like a real possibility. This course of action must be firmly rejected. This is not because Maduro deserves anyone’s support or sympathy. It is because of the untold suffering and damage US military intervention would bring to Venezuela and the region, and the vanishingly small likelihood such action could bring the change Venezuela needs. Venezuela does, indeed, need change. The economic crisis ravaging the country since 2013 shows no sign of abating and has grown worse in the last 18 months. Severe shortages of food, medicine, and basic goods, alongside punishing hyperinflation, have driven an estimated three million Venezuelans to leave the country in recent years. The government has reacted by governing in an increasingly authoritarian manner. The case against Maduro is easy to make. Yet it must be recognized that Venezuela’s crisis is not solely Maduro’s doing. The US government and opposition also share responsibility. The US has acknowledged that its sanctions could harm Venezuelans, with the following appearing in a November 2018 Congressional Research Service report: Although stronger economic sanctions could influence the Venezuelan government’s behavior, they also could have negative effects and unintended consequences. Analysts are concerned that stronger sanctions could exacerbate Venezuela’s difficult humanitarian situation, which has been marked by shortages of food and medicines, increased poverty, and mass migration. Many Venezuelan civil society groups oppose sanctions that could worsen humanitarian conditions. There is little doubt sanctions have worsened humanitarian conditions. The main reason is that harsher sanctions imposed in mid-2017 severely curtailed Venezuela’s ability to incur debt, and in so doing decimated Venezuelan oil production. This has lessened the public resources available to an increasingly desperate population. Far from being an accidental side effect, this seems to be one of the intents of US policy: make Venezuelans so desperate that they turn against Maduro. The inhumanity of such a policy is clear. The opposition bears a share of responsibility for the crisis for two reasons. One is the direct and indirect damage wrought by episodes of violent protest, such as occurred in 2014 and 2017, with full-throated encouragement by the US. In addition to property damaged and lives lost, many at the hands of opposition forces (with the government also responsible for many deaths), opposition violence fed a climate of fear and polarization, inhibiting the prospects for economic reform and government-opposition dialogue. The opposition also deserves criticism for its inability to establish more effective links to Venezuela’s working classes. While historically strongly supportive of Chavismo, the working classes – comprised largely of formal and informal workers, the unemployed or domestically employed poor – have suffered tremendously in the current crisis. This suffering has led to repeated instances of popular protest directed against the Maduro administration. The opposition has been unable to effectively connect with these protests for several reasons, foremost amongst them being its inability to articulate a positive program that effectively addresses everyday popular-sector concerns (e.g. declining livability). The working classes are also wary of the opposition’s history of violence and close ties to the US. To overcome the severe challenges it faces Venezuela needs a broad-based, peaceful opposition that effectively welds together legitimate political demands (eg for free and fair elections and meaningful government-opposition dialogue) and pressing social and economic demands, for access to food, medicine, and basic services. Guaidó’s and the US’ reckless adventurism have made this scenario far less likely, while dramatically increasing the risk of catastrophe and civil war. Such adventurism must be rejected. Gabriel Hetland is an assistant professor of Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies and Sociology at University at Albany, SUNYTran Thi Ngai was 24 and alone at home in her village in Vietnam’s Phu Yen province when a South Korean soldier forced his way into the house and raped her. “He pulled me inside the room, closed the door and raped me repeatedly. He had a gun on his body and I was terrified,” said Tran, now almost 80, and still waiting for South Korea to acknowledge sexual violence by its soldiers during the Vietnam war. A campaign group, Justice for Lai Dai Han (JLDH), is urging the country to recognise both the tens of thousands of children born as a result of rape by Korean troops, and their mothers, of whom around 800 are still alive today. Tran’s three children were conceived through rape during the war. Roughly 320,000 South Korean soldiers were deployed to Vietnam to fight alongside the US between 1964 and 1973, but the story of the country’s involvement in the conflict is largely untold. South Korea has never acknowledged claims of sexual violence allegedly perpetrated by its troops against thousands of women and girls, some as young as 12 – or the children born as a result. However, South Korea has continued to demand apologies from Japan for its use of “comfort women” from Korea, who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels before and during the second world war. This week, at an event to highlight work to prevent sexual violence in conflict, former British foreign secretary Jack Straw called on the UN human rights council to conduct a full investigation into sexual violence during the Vietnam war, and urged South Korea to confront a murky period in its past. “Facing up to unacceptable behaviour by troops is difficult for any country. However, as we have learned in the UK through painful experiences like Bloody Sunday, uncovering the truth not only gives victims and their families closure but can strengthen a nation and its values,” said Straw, who is an international ambassador for JLDH. “The victims of sexual violence and the Lai Dai Han deserve recognition and an opportunity to heal. We must demonstrate to the world the importance of following through on commitments to end sexual violence in conflict.” “Lai Dai Han” is a pejorative term meaning “mixed blood” in Vietnamese. The Vietnamese-Korean children say their lives have been blighted by stigma in a society that has acknowledged neither them nor the sexual violence suffered by their mothers. Many are illiterate because they were refused an education, and they have poor access to healthcare and social services. Tran Dai Nhat, the son of Tran Thi Ngai, recalled being beaten by teachers and thrown out of school when he was a child. It was not until he was 18 that his mother finally explained the discrimination was because he was mixed race. “At school they said I was the son of a ‘dog’. I couldn’t do anything and I never understood why,” he said. “Teachers hit me – saying I should go back to Korea with my father. My entire life, I have been made to feel as though I shouldn’t be [in Vietnam],” said Tran Dai Nhat, who founded JLDH and leads efforts to press for recognition and an apology from South Korea. Nadia Murad, who won last year’s Nobel peace prize with Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege for their work to stop the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, backed JLDH’s calls for recognition, saying: “The Lai Dai Han have been living in the shadows of Vietnamese society for far too long. The victims and their families deserve to be recognised as we work together to achieve justice.” Murad, who was forced into sexual slavery by Isis militants with other Yazidi women in Iraq, said more needed to be done to bring perpetrators of sexual violence to justice. “As these criminals enjoy more rights, freedom and life than the victims themselves, how can we restore dignity to the victims if everyone turns a blind eye to the prosecution of perpetrators and allows them to enjoy impunity?” William Hague, co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, said the case of the Vietnamese families showed the importance of confronting the past in order to move forward on preventing sexual violence in war. “There is now an overwhelming case for a permanent investigating body, under the auspices of the UN, to help ensure these atrocities can be prevented and justice made available,” he said. Straw told the Guardian: “This is not about compensation. Above anything, what these families want is recognition.” Straw added that he is pressing South Korea to apologise to families affected by sexual violence during the Vietnam war. But Tran Thi Ngai accepts that such an apology may be far off. “I lost everything after I was raped. I was imprisoned, I lost my home and my children lost their future. Any apology will probably come when I am dead. But I will accept it, even in the afterlife.”The Bauhaus, simply put, was a German school of art and design that opened in 1919 and closed in 1933. It was also very much more than that. It was the most influential and famous design school that has ever existed. It defined an epoch. It became the pre-eminent emblem of modern architecture and design. The name has become an adjective as well as a noun – Bauhaus style, Bauhaus look. And now it is coming up for the centenary of its founding, which shows both that what was called the “modern movement” is now part of history and that its influence is very much still around us. It is nowadays usually clear what the word “Bauhaus” means – design stripped down to its essentials, the rational and elegant use of modern materials and industrial techniques, clarity, simplicity, cool minimalism. The device on which I am writing this and the one on which you might be reading it follow these principles. So (with greater or lesser degrees of bastardisation) do buildings without number around the world, countless domestic objects, road signs, the lettering on a tube of toothpaste or the design of a car. The Bauhaus brand is consistent, coherent and universal. Its best-known creations, the tubular steel chairs of Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer or the steel-and-glass building built to house the school, reinforce its image. Yet the reality was considerably more chaotic and diverse, especially in its early years. It was founded in Weimar by the architect Walter Gropius, by merging the city’s Saxon Grand Ducal Art School and its Academy of Fine Art, with the aim of unifying crafts, art and architecture. Its spirit owed much to Victorian English visionary William Morris. The new institution was irrational as much as rational, mystical as much as practical and medieval as much as modern. It was a ferment of creative types pushing, pulling, fighting and collaborating. The school’s founding proclamation made no mention of industry or new technology. Instead, it called for “a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavoured to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists!” It aimed to break down barriers between art and different forms of craft. It dreamt of “a new building of the future that will unite every discipline”, which would “rise to heaven from the hands of a million workers as a crystal symbol of a new faith”. The front cover of the published version of the proclamation, drawn by the artist Lyonel Feininger, was a radiant image of a gothic cathedral. Driven by the belief that a deep knowledge of technical skills was necessary for art to flourish, the Bauhaus taught metalworking, ceramics, textiles, photography, cabinetmaking, typography and theatre design as well as art and architecture. Its output included the mesmerising fabrics of Anni Albers, in which new materials such as cellophane are mixed with traditional threads, and the fantastical costume design of Oskar Schlemmer, which made people look like intergalactic dolls. Also the expressionist art of Wassily Kandinsky and the mysterious paintings of Paul Klee, both of whom taught there. The early Bauhaus was sometimes more like a forerunner of the Californian communes of the 1960s than a laboratory for an industrial future. Johannes Itten, the shaven-headed Swiss artist who taught painting in the early years, was a follower of Mazdaznan, a pseudo-Zoroastrian fire cult that encouraged its adherents to purify themselves by, among other things, covering their bodies with tiny cuts. Old photographs show parties, dressing up and performances as much as technocratic endeavour. One student would later recall rumours about the admissions procedure, whereby every applicant was allegedly locked in a dark room: “Thunder and lightning are let loose upon him to get him into a state of agitation. His being admitted depends on how well he describes his reactions.” Although these stories were “exaggerated”, they described the spirit that attracted the student to the school. When he arrived, in the aftermath of the first world war, he found a ragtag band of students and faculty “from all social classes”. Some were “still in uniform, some barefoot or in sandals, some with the long beards of artists or ascetics”. It was too much for many residents of the Bauhaus’s conservative host city, for whom the weirdly dressed artistic types were subversive and possibly Bolshevik. “Men and women of Weimar!” read a newspaper announcement in 1920, inviting readers to a public demonstration, “our old and famous Art School is in danger!” The protesters didn’t stop it, although the Bauhaus moved to the industrial city of Dessau in 1925, where Gropius designed its famous building, and then briefly to Berlin, before it closed down under pressure from the Nazis in 1933. Many leading Bauhauslers, including Gropius, Breuer and the school’s last director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, emigrated to the United States, where they occupied influential academic posts. In 1938, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted an exhibition on the Bauhaus, with which Gropius was closely involved. Between them, Bauhaus architects determined the look of commercial and cultural America in the years after the war. The dominance of Gropius and Mies cemented the cool and rational version of the Bauhaus, which is its most distinctive – but not its only – contribution to the modern physical world. Wherever Bauhaus ideas go, the objections of the burghers of Weimar have often followed. “Every child,” lamented Tom Wolfe in From Bauhaus to Our House of 1981, “goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse”. Had there ever been another place on earth, he also said of Bauhaus-influenced America, “where so many people of wealth and power paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested?” Now, though, on its 100th birthday it should be possible to see the Bauhaus not as a threat to civilisation, nor as the manifesto of a single vision of modern life, but as a place of abundant creative energy and technical skill. It has touched almost every aspect of cultural and commercial production, almost everywhere in the world. As these pages show, it means many things to many people.Chelsea have confirmed the signing of Argentinian forward Gonzalo Higuaín. The 31-year-old has moved to Stamford Bridge on loan until the end of the season and will wear the No 9 shirt. Higuaín will reunite with Maurizio Sarri after ending his loan at Milan in order to seal his move from parent club Juventus. Sarri was head coach at Napoli when Higuaín equalled the all-time Serie A scoring record for a single season, scoring 36 goals in 2015-16. The 31-year-old Argentina international spent the first half of the campaign at Milan, scoring eight times in 22 appearances. Higuaín, who will not be available for Thursday’s Carabao Cup semi-final second leg against Tottenham, said he was keen to repay Chelsea’s faith in him. “When the opportunity to join Chelsea presented itself I had to take it,” he said. “It’s a team I’ve always liked that has a lot of history, a wonderful stadium and they play in the Premier League, a league I’ve always wanted to play in. I now hope I can give back that trust Chelsea have shown me out on the pitch. I can’t wait to start and I hope to adapt as soon as possible.” ✍ It's official!@G_Higuain is a Blue! #HiguaIN Higuaín, who has been capped 75 times by his country, scored just once in his final 12 appearances for Milan. But his record under Sarri has persuaded Chelsea to compromise on their usual policy of not signing players aged over 30 for vast sums. Higuaín’s arrival means Álvaro Morata is now expected to leave west London. And Sarri believes the former Real Madrid man Higuaín can contribute more than just goals as the Blues battle for a top-four Premier League finish and Champions League qualification. “It’s very difficult in January to find one of the most important strikers in the world. So I think the club is working very well because it’s not easy to get a new striker,” said Sarri. “We hope he’ll bring goals, that he starts scoring for us. He’s also very good at other aspects, other than just goals, but that’s what we are hoping for. He has had some difficulties recently, but we’re hoping we can raise him back to his best form.” Juventus revealed the existence of two long-term financial options attached to the deal, with Chelsea able to sign Higuaín outright during the loan spell for around £31.3m. A statement on Juventus.com read: “The agreement also grants to Chelsea the options to extend the duration of the loan until 30 June 2020, for a consideration of 18m euros (£15.7m) to be paid in 2019-20 financial year, or to acquire the registration rights of the player on a permanent basis for 36m euros (31.3m) to be paid in two financial years.” Chelsea director, Marina Granovskaia, added: “Gonzalo was our number one target in this transfer window and arrives with a proven record at the highest level. He has previously worked with Maurizio to great effect and is familiar with how the coach likes to play. “This was not an easy deal for us to do because of the numerous parties involved, but we are delighted we were able to make it happen and we look forward to seeing the impact Gonzalo will make for us in the second half of the season.” Milan will replace Higuaín with Polish striker Krzysztof Piatek, who is set to join from Genoa after the clubs agreed a €35m (£30.9m) fee over the weekend. Piatek has scored 13 league goals this season after arriving from Cracovia in the summer.Immigration policy is usually driven by perception much more than it is by reality. And at the heart of these perceptions is the question of how we think about the border. Is it a dark and dangerous place, under siege by aliens who come to spread crime and pestilence? Or is it a place of give-and-take, where our nation must deal with the outside world in a way consonant with our values and showing awareness that absolute sovereignty is a dangerous illusion? By now, the world knows that Donald Trump thinks of the border primarily as a threat. It is the nation’s weakest point, where it regrettably must have interchange with the dark forces that lie beyond the land of the free. Over it flow criminals, drugs, fictitious “unknown Middle Easterners” (by which he means terrorists) and migrants in general. His solution is to seal the border as tightly as possible with a “big, beautiful wall” while also cracking down on legal routes of entry into the United States. By defending the nation’s vulnerable underbelly, the wall can restore American sovereignty and greatness. The vision of an impenetrable wall stretching for thousands of miles appeals to those who mainly see the border as a source of danger and chaos. But the idea that bricks and mortar can solve the litany of challenges that borders bring is a dangerous illusion. Hermetically sealing a nation against the outside world is neither possible nor desirable. An impassable barrier that funnelled all cross-border traffic to legitimate ports of entry would do little to address the real challenges at the border. Foremost among these is the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Central American refugees in recent years. Many travel as family units who voluntarily surrender themselves to US authorities to apply for asylum. Even if a wall could stop them crossing the border, they are still legally entitled to claim asylum at a port of entry. The wall wouldn’t stop them. Nor would it do anything about what the Trump administration pejoratively calls “catch and release”, the practice whereby refugees are released into the interior of the US while they wait for an asylum hearing. The immigration court system has a backlog of over 800,000 cases and desperately needs more staff and resources to give asylum seekers fair and speedy hearings. The wall won’t help. Meanwhile, the manufactured crisis over wall funding which has shut down the government has forced immigration courts to close as well, exacerbating the backlog. The fantasy of the wall is a nightmare about the need for separation: that what is on the inside is good and what is on the outside is bad America’s population of unauthorized residents is dropping and apprehensions at the southern border are at multi-decade lows. Most unauthorized migrants overstay their temporary visas rather than illicitly crossing the southern border. A wall is unlikely to have much impact on the number of people illegally present in the country. There is also little chance that a border wall would stop the flow of illegal drugs into the US. As the Drug Enforcement Agency acknowledges, the vast majority of illegal drugs that enter the country do so through legal ports of entry, hidden among legitimate traffic. Short of shutting or slowing down legitimate trade with Mexico, worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, little can be done to stop this inflow – certainly not erecting a wall far away from where the drugs actually enter. What about the terrorists who imperil America’s security by sneaking in through Mexico? The wall won’t help with that problem either, because it’s a problem that doesn’t exist outside of the fevered imaginings of administration officials and conservative talking heads. There is no known case of a terrorist having crossed the southern border. The main terrorist threat facing the US today comes from homegrown extremists. A border wall won’t do anything to help with that, either. Regardless – perhaps because – of its lack of any practical worth, Trump supporters value the wall as a symbol of American sovereignty and strength. Rightwing commentators such as Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson are fond of invoking Israel’s border wall as an example of what they want for America: proud ramparts of freedom standing against the chaos and terror without. But an erroneous way of viewing the border is embedded in this way of thinking. It is a mistake to view the border purely as a source of threat, rather than the place where the US can become stronger through its interaction with the outside world. Honoring its legal and moral obligations to refugees allows the US to demonstrate its commitment to its highest ideals to the world. Cross-border trade strengthens the American economy and regional peace. A liberal visa system enriches America economically and culturally. At root, the fantasy of the wall is a nightmare about the need for separation: that what is on the inside is good and what is on the outside is bad. But America’s highest ideals have always been about creating a mixture of the inside and the outside which is greater than the sum of its parts. Keeping that tradition alive means keeping alive a way of viewing the border that sees it as representing much more of an opportunity than it does a threat. It means, first and foremost, tearing down the idea behind this wall.In a week that has seen their £58m striker offered around on loan and their brightest young star publicly courted by one of Europe’s biggest clubs, how Chelsea supporters must be thankful for Eden Hazard. The Belgium forward’s contract expires at the end of next season and he could yet find himself at Real Madrid one day, but he remains by far the most important player at Maurizio Sarri’s disposal as the Italian struggles to impose himself on English football. It took a moment of brilliance to settle this as Hazard set up Willian – himself the subject of a rejected bid from Barcelona this week – to curl home from an acute angle and end Newcastle’s hopes of a point after they had equalised Pedro’s opener. “Willian for us is really a very important player,” said Sarri. “We need wingers, so we need Pedro, we need [Callum Hudson-]Odoi, we need Willian, of course. For us, in this moment, he is a fundamental player.” Sarri said Chelsea lacked depth in key positions such as central midfield. “As you have seen, today Jorginho was in trouble and on the bench there wasn’t a player for that position, so I need a player, I need an option for Jorginho,” he said. “The club knows very well my opinion, I need the player there [but] it depends on the club decision.” Watched by owner Mike Ashley as he continues to be frustrated in his attempts to sell the club, Rafael Benítez’s side battled hard but were undone by a lack of quality in the final third as they slipped into the bottom three. With Álvaro Morata injured and potentially on his way out on loan, Sarri turned to Hazard to lead the line as Hudson-Odoi made way for Pedro on the right flank. The 18-year-old – the subject of a £35m bid from Bayern Munich this week – has still to start a Premier League game and found himself on the substitute’s bench despite impressing in both cup competitions. Unsurprisingly Benítez opted for a safety-first approach in front of his employer. Having stayed away for more than a year before he showed up at Selhurst Park in September for the 0-0 draw with Crystal Palace, Ashley attended six matches in succession but had not been seen since November, when news of a potential takeover led by former Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon first emerged. Even less surprisingly, he was greeted with a chorus of disapproval from the away end inside the first 60 seconds of the match. But, on his return to Stamford Bridge, Benítez got off to a terrible start when David Luiz’s brilliant long ball picked out Pedro’s run and he calmly lobbed the ball over Martin Dubravka. Yet Chelsea did not create another real chance until David Luiz headed wide in the 25th minute and they were pegged back just before the break. Ayoze Pérez had already served warning of Newcastle’s threat when he raced on to Salomón Rondón’s flick and poked his shot wide, but Ciaran Clark made no mistake with his header from Matt Ritchie’s corner. “After the goal I think we thought, ‘now it’s easy’, but it wasn’t,” admitted Sarri. “We slept for 20, 25 minutes, so at the end of the first half we were in trouble. We need to improve in the mental reaction. After our first goal something happened. We need to improve.” Having touched the ball less than any other Chelsea player in the first period, Hazard dropped deeper in an attempt to spark his side into life and the result was almost immediate. His interchange with Willian saw N’Golo Kanté find space to set up Pedro for a shot, only for Dubravka to tip it wide of the post. Christian Atsu wasted a good chance for Newcastle in front but could not direct Ritchie’s cross goalwards. Pedro wasted another great chance from Marcos Alonso’s cross but after Newcastle failed to clear properly, Hazard pounced on the loose ball, wriggled past three markers and played in Willian to curl a sumptuous effort in off the far post. It was Hazard’s 10th assist of the season, joining Lionel Messi as the only player from Europe’s top five leagues to have reached both that mark and 10 goals. Hudson-Odoi was serenaded with chants imploring him to stay when he came on for Pedro but Newcastle could have stolen the show had Rondón converted Javier Manquillo’s deep cross. “The reaction of the players after we conceded shows that they care,” said Benítez. “Hopefully everyone can see that the effort was were but it still was not enough. We have to stay calm because it’s a long-distance race. If we continue to play like we did today then we will have a good chance.”Netflix is to raise its US prices for the first time since 2017, a move designed to alleviate a large, debt-fueled $13bn investment in new films, series and documentaries this year – as well-funded competitors emerge in the content streaming business. The subscription price hikes, which constitute a jump of between 13% and 18%, take effect immediately for new customers but will be phased in gradually for existing subscribers over the next three months. Wall Street welcomed the move, sending Netflix shares higher as investors anticipate more revenue for the streaming giant. The stock rose as much as 6.8% to $355.50, accelerating a tear that has seen shares rise 40% since 24 December. The streaming service, which counts 58 million subscribers in the US and has shaken up the traditional model for both television and movie studios, is confident that subscribers will not shy from increased prices. Netflix’s previous subscription increase in 2017 did little to slow growth, as Netflix added 24 million customers that year. “We change pricing from time to time as we continue investing in great entertainment and improving the overall Netflix experience for the benefit of our members,” Netflix said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. Under the new terms, Netflix’s cheapest basic plan will cost $9 a month, up from $8; its most popular HD standard plan will cost $13, up from $11; and its 4K premium plan will cost $16, up from $14. The companyis expected to show strong growth when it reports its earnings on Thursday. It has been winning acclaim for its original productions, including Stranger Things, The Crown, Bird Box and current hit Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, and shows no signs of letting up. However, the company has been burning through cash – as much as $3bn in 2018 – to contain threats from Amazon, Disney and Apple, all new entrants to the streaming business that have promised significant investments in original content. On Monday, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal announced it would launch a newstreaming service in 2020. Disney is also set to launch its Disney+ service later this year. If analyst predictions prove correct, the efficacy of Netflix’s subscription model will be borne out on Thursday when it reports 9.2 million new subscribers for the last three months of 2018. That was also underscored by the company’s strong showing at the Golden Globes, where it won five awards, more than any other network or studio. In a note to investors, Goldman Sachs predicted that the results “will only be the beginning of the pay-off from Netflix’s accelerating spend and increasingly robust originals slate”, adding that “consensus continues to significantly underestimate the financial impacts of these dynamics”. UBS said Netflix would “achieve a higher margin and free cash flow trajectory than currently implied by the market” as its original content “demonstrates outsize marketplace success”. But emerging competition is likely only to increase pressure on Netflix to redouble its efforts. Jeff Bock, an analyst at Exhibitor Relations, recently predicted that the emerging dogfight for talent could end up replicating film’s studio system of its early years. “This reminds me of Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s, when studios were hiring so many people to roll out content as quickly as possible, because there was so much appetite for it. You just wanted content, it didn’t matter what it was. That’s what it feels like Netflix is doing now.”Donald Trump has backed away from his threat to declare a national emergency to fund his long-promised border wall, as pressure mounts to find a solution to the three-week impasse that has closed parts of the government, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers without pay. “We want Congress to do its job,” the president said Friday during a roundtable on border security at the White House. “What we’re not looking to do right now is national emergency.” Trump’s comments came amid reports that he was consulting White House attorneys and allies about declaring a national emergency, and using presidential powers to take unilateral action to construct the wall over the objections of Congress. He had earlier claimed that his lawyers told him the action would withstand legal scrutiny “100%”. Such a move to bypass Congress’s constitutional control of the nation’s purse strings would spark legal challenges and bipartisan cries of executive overreach. Trump insisted on Friday he had the right to declare a national emergency, but said: “I’m not going to do it so fast.” The president instead called on Democrats to find a way out of the shutdown, which on Saturday would become the longest in US history, with still no end to the deadlock in sight. About 800,000 workers, more than half of them still on the job, were to miss their first paycheck on Friday under the stoppage. Those markers – along with growing effects to national parks, food inspections and the economy overall – left some Republicans on Capitol Hill increasingly uncomfortable with Trump’s demands. Asked about the plight of those going without pay, the president shifted the focus, saying he felt badly “for people that have family members that have been killed” by “criminals” who came over the border. Protests nonetheless erupted in Washington, as hundreds of furloughed government employees and contractors rallied outside the White House demanding to return to work. Brandishing signs that read “We want work, not walls”, the demonstrators voiced concern over paying their bills absent a paycheck. Trump was not at the White House at the time of the protest. The president visited McAllen, Texas, and the Rio Grande on Thursday to highlight what he calls a crisis of drugs and crime. He said that “if for any reason we don’t get this going” – an agreement with House Democrats who have refused to approve the $5.7bn he demands for the wall – “I will declare a national emergency.” A congressional official said the White House has directed the Army Corps of Engineers to look for billions of dollars earmarked last year for disaster response for Puerto Rico and other areas that could be diverted to a border wall as part of the emergency declaration. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. “We’re either going to have a win, make a compromise – because I think a compromise is a win for everybody – or I will declare a national emergency,” Trump said before departing the White House for his politically flavored visit to the border. He wore his campaign-slogan “Make America Great Again” cap throughout. When the US Congress fails to pass appropriate funding for government operations and agencies, a shutdown is triggered. Most government services are frozen, barring those that are deemed “essential”, such as the work of the Department of Homeland Security and FBI. During this shutdown, around 25% of the government workforce is placed on unpaid furlough and told not to work. Workers deemed essential, such as active duty military personnel, are not furloughed. The president and members of Congress are at an impasse over what should be included in a spending bill to keep the government open. There have been more than a dozen government shutdowns in the US since 1981, although ranging in duration. The longest occurred under Bill Clinton, lasting a total of 21 days from December 1995 to January 1996, when the then House speaker, Newt Gingrich, demanded sharp cuts to government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and welfare. This shutdown is on course to be the longest in US history. A government shutdown would cost the US roughly $6.5bn a week, according to a report by S&P Global analysts. “A disruption in government spending means no government paychecks to spend; lost business and revenue to private contractors; lost sales at retail shops, particularly those that circle now-closed national parks; and less tax revenue for Uncle Sam,” the report stated. “That means less economic activity and fewer jobs.” Hundreds of thousands of people are not receiving regular paychecks in this shutdown. In previous shutdowns, furloughed employees have been paid retrospectively – but those payments have often been delayed. Sabrina Siddiqui Jenniffer González, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress, said it was “unacceptable” for Trump to consider taking billions of dollars intended to help the US territory recover from Hurricane Maria, a category 4 storm that ravaged the island and left nearly 3,000 dead. To reallocate disaster recovery funds toward the wall, she said, was akin to “playing with our pain and hope”. It was not clear what a compromise might entail, and there were no indications that one was in the offing. Trump says he won’t reopen the government without money for the wall. Democrats say they favor measures to bolster border security but oppose the long, impregnable barrier that Trump envisages. Democrats this week accused Trump of using rhetoric “full of misinformation and even malice” in his arguments to support the funding of the wall. The Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said at one point that he did not “see a path in Congress” to end the shutdown, then stated later that enough was enough: “It is time for President Trump to use emergency powers to fund the construction of a border wall/barrier.” Visiting a border patrol station in McAllen, Trump viewed tables piled with weapons and narcotics. Like nearly all drugs trafficked across the border, they were intercepted by agents at official ports of entry, he was told, and not in the remote areas where he wants to extend tall barriers. Still, he declared: “A wall works. Nothing like a wall.” He argued that the US can’t solve the problem without a “very substantial barrier” along the border, but offered exaggerations about the effectiveness of border walls and current apprehensions of those crossing illegally. Sitting among border patrol officers, state and local officials and military representatives, Trump insisted he was “winning” the shutdown fight and criticized Democrats for asserting he was manufacturing a sense of crisis in order to declare an emergency. On Capitol Hill, House speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the president of engaging in political games to fire up his most loyal supporters, suggesting that a heated meeting Wednesday with legislators at the White House had been “a setup” so that Trump could walk out of it. In an ominous sign for those seeking a swift end to the showdown, Trump announced he was canceling his trip to Davos, Switzerland, scheduled for later this month, citing Democrats’ “intransigence” on border security. He was to leave Jan. 21 to attend the World Economic Forum. The partial shutdown would set a record early Saturday, stretching beyond the 21-day closure that ended 6 January 1996, during Bill Clinton’s administration.A Spanish court has ruled that the five members of the so-called “Wolf Pack” who were convicted of sexually abusing an 18-year-old woman during the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona in 2016 can remain at liberty pending an appeal to the supreme court. There was outrage last April when judges dropped rape charges against José Ángel Prenda, Alfonso Cabezuelo, Antonio Manuel Guerrero, Jesús Escudero and Ángel Boza and instead convicted them of the lesser charge of sexual abuse, sentencing them to nine years. The accused appealed but the sentence was confirmed in December. Now judges in Navarra have voted by two to one that the five do not present a flight risk and can remain on bail until the supreme court ruling. According to the victim’s lawyer, there is almost no likelihood of the court overturning the verdict or reducing the sentence. No date has been set for the hearing. While on remand the five suspects, who include a soldier and a member of the civil guard and are all from Seville, have to report to the court once a week and are prevented from visiting Madrid, the victim’s hometown. This latest ruling is expected to provoke further protests at what many see as the kid glove treatment of the five – whose WhatsApp group was called La Manada, or the Wolf Pack – on the part of the authorities. All five had unprotected oral, anal and vaginal sex with the victim whom they had only met 20 minutes earlier, and filmed the assault on their phones. They stole the victim’s phone before abandoning her in a hallway. The judges ruled in April that, as she remained passively inert throughout, no violence was used and therefore the charge of rape did not apply. One judge even argued that they should only be charged with the theft of her phone. Thousands of people took to the streets to protest at the verdict but moves to have the sentence increased to 14 years at a second hearing in December, on the grounds that aggression was used during the assault, were rejected.The Taliban have launched a major attack on an Afghan military compound in central Maidan Wardak province, officials have said, with some putting the death toll at more than 100 people. Monday’s incident at a campus of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) is the latest in a series of deadly attacks in recent months by the Taliban, which has seized control of about half of Afghanistan. The Afghan authorities said the attack started on Monday morning, when a US-made armoured Humvee vehicle was driven into the compound and blown up. Gunmen also opened fire, before being killed by security forces. Government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have given differing estimates of the death toll. One said it could be as high as 126 people and another said yet more were thought to have been wounded. “Eight special commandos are among the dead,” said a senior member of Kabul’s defence ministry. An official from the Afghan public health ministry said the total of killed and wounded could be about 140 people. However, others offered a more conservative estimate. A senior NDS official in Kabul said at least 50 people were killed or wounded. Abdurrahman Mangal, a spokesman for the provincial governor in Maidan Wardak, said 12 people were killed and 12 were injured when the car bomb exploded near the Afghan special forces unit. Defence ministry officials said the Taliban had used the Humvee, which had been captured from Afghan forces, as a bomb in order to breach the military fortifications. Hussein Ali Baligh, a member of the local provincial council, said: “This morning, around 7am, a Humvee entered the NDS block in the city … about 150 NDS personnel were present at the time of the attack. The Humvee exploded right after entering the compound. The building has totally been collapsed.” At least two gunmen followed up the attack before being killed themselves. He said the attack sparked concerns in the province over how a Humvee that had been in the hands of government forces could pass through checkpoints while packed with explosives. “It shows the weakness of our forces,” he said. “Our forces are brave, but their commanders have weaknesses.” Sharif Hotak, a member of the provincial council in Maidan Wardak, said he had seen the bodies of 35 Afghan forces personnel in hospital. “Many more were killed. Several bodies were transported to Kabul city and many injured were transferred to hospitals in Kabul,” said Hotak, adding that “the government was hiding the accurate casualty figures to prevent a further dip in morale of the Afghan forces”. Government officials in Maidan Wardak and Kabul declined to comment when asked if they were obscuring the death toll. Two senior officials in the interior ministry said the exact casualty figure was not being disclosed to prevent unrest within the armed forces. “I have been told not to make the death toll figures public. It is frustrating to hide the facts,” said a senior interior ministry official in Kabul. The office of the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, said the “enemies of the country” had carried out an attack against NDS personnel in Maidan Shahr, the provincial capital. “They killed and wounded a number of our beloved and honest sons,” he said. He added: “Terrorist groups and their foreign supporters cannot weaken the high morale of our brave security and defence forces, because they have a great will to repress terrorists.” Ghani ordered the officials to investigate this attack. In recent years, the Afghan government has stopped releasing detailed casualty figures. Last year, Ghani said 28,000 Afghan police officers and soldiers had been killed since 2015, breaking the longstanding suppression of casualty data. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Islamist militant group, claimed it had killed 190 people. Last week, Taliban fighters set off a car bomb outside a highly fortified compound in Kabul, killing at least five people and wounding more than 110 Afghans and expats. Some analysts have suggested the recent increase in the intensity of Taliban attacks is a ploy by the group to gain the upper hand in ongoing talks with the US Afghan envoy.Human rights activists and public security experts have expressed outrage after the newly elected governor of Rio de Janeiro state confirmed plans to implement shoot-to-kill policing tactics in the crime-ridden region. Wilson Witzel, a former federal judge who unexpectedly won the governorship in October, said in radio interview on Thursday that Rio security forces were authorized to use lethal force against suspects. Later on the same day, he said that Rio needed its own version of Guantánamo Bay prison camp to free society of criminals who he described as “terrorists”. Witzel came to office on the wave of far-right, tough-on-crime rhetoric unleashed by Jair Bolsonaro. The president, who took office on Monday, has often defended giving a carte blanche to security forces and pledged to deploy the military on the streets of Brazilian cities if congress and governors gave him permission. In his own inauguration speech on Tuesday, Witzel promised confrontation with gangs. “Those who pick up guns and call for war will get a war,” he said. “Organized crime can no longer have the freedom to carry weapons of war and be treated romantically as people who didn’t have opportunities.” However, many fear such proposals could be disastrous for Rio’s already precarious security situation. “What he’s saying is illegal and unconstitutional,” said Ignacio Cano, a public security researcher at the Rio State University, pointing out that Brazil does not have the death penalty. “His discourse is as if sternness were the issue, when the real issues are corruption and a lack of efficiency and intelligence in investigations.” Cano said that threatening drug traffickers with death is unlikely to discourage them, as most know they are already heading for a violent end. “Rio security forces have always been violent and had low accountability, but he’s trying to sell this hard line as a new tactic,” said Cano. “We already know it doesn’t work and ramping up this kind of policy could have dire consequences.” Rio’s security forces had their deadliest year on record in 2018, with 1,444 police killings – an average of one every five and a half hours. During most of that period, Brazil’s military was in charge of security in Rio, under a federally mandated “intervention”. Security forces are rarely indicted on homicide charges. Rio is frequently described as being “at war” and many residents are exasperated by crime. Wars between competing gangs and the police result in daily shootings and armed robberies on the streets are common. For many voters in last year’s elections, crime was the principal motive for many to support hardline candidates such as Bolsonaro and Witzel. Mônica Fuchshuber, a graphic designer from Rio, said she had voted for Witzel because of his security policies. “I like how he has total intolerance for organized crime,” she said. “Rio is dominated by drug traffickers. We need to be taking more drastic measures.” After the election, Witzel promised to “slaughter” criminals by employing helicopter-borne snipers to kill anyone carrying a rifle, even if they were not engaging their weapons. His security policies will mostly affect Rio’s favelas – poor neighborhoods where drug traffickers often operate, but where the majority of residents are law-abiding citizens. Renata Souza, a recently elected state representative who lives in one of Rio’s most dangerous favelas, pointed to a recent case in which a resident was killed by police who mistook his umbrella for a rifle. “We already live in an alarming, insecure situation and now we have a governor who’s saying to kill freely in favelas without any accountability. It’s practically giving a death penalty for the favela.”As Apollo 11 sailed above the moon, mission control in Houston suggested the astronauts should keep an eye out for a “beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o”, who, according to legend, had ascended to the moon thousands of years previously, taking along a large rabbit as a companion. “I’ll look out for the bunny girl then,” Buzz Aldrin joked in reply, shortly ahead of his and Neil Armstrong’s historic touchdown at the lunar surface. Nearly 50 years on, an astronaut gazing down from orbit might glimpse a hi-tech homage to the ancient folk tale. China’s Chang’e 4 probe this month became the first to land on the lunar far side, and nearby, hibernating during the lunar night, the Jade Rabbit rover is exploring this uncharted territory. The mission showcases China’s ambition to become one of the world’s major powers in space exploration. The country has made the moon exciting again by beaming back the first close-up images of its mysterious far side. Beijing does not disclose how much is spent on its space programme, but aims to build a space station and a base on the moon, as well as send a probe to Mars by 2020 and carry out a mission to Jupiter by 2029. Possibly spurred on by China’s plans, other space agencies are showing a renewed interest in the moon, and landers from the US, India, Japan and Russia are planned over the next decade. So what is driving the renaissance of lunar exploration? James Carpenter, a project scientist on the European Space Agency’s lunar exploration team, believes that the latest interest goes beyond purely scientific goals. “There is a long-term motivation which is about sustained human presence in space,” he said. “If we ever want to live and work in a permanent, economically sustainable way off Earth, this requires that we learn to use the resources we find there.” The motivations for heading into space for longer periods include extracting valuable resources from the moon or asteroids, as well as a preparing for a “lifeboat scenario” where the world becomes uninhabitable. At a press conference, officials said there would be three more missions after Chang’e 5, a mission to return samples from the moon. By Chang’e 8, China hopes to lay the foundation for a research base, including possibly building houses on lunar soil using 3D printing. Wu Weiren, the chief designer of the Chang’e mission, told China’s state broadcaster CCTV: “It is human nature to explore the unknown world. China is on the road to becoming a strong space nation.” Preparing for living in space is a large element of the Chinese programme. Chang’e 4’s payload included experiments to investigate the presence of water in the lunar soil, as well as a miniature greenhouse to test the ability of plants and insects to survive in weak gravity. Back on Earth, students at Beihang University in Beijing ran a year-long experiment, Lunar Palace 1, in which students were housed in lunar-like conditions. Inside a module they grew potatoes, wheat and vegetables, and relied on oxygen and water that were recycled within the “bioregenerative life support system”. China is not alone in its ambitions on the moon. A Russian lander, scheduled for 2022, will attempt to drill into the south pole region and look at the potential for resource extraction, while ESA is planning experiments to harvest water and oxygen. Nasa is planning its first crewed mission around the moon in half a century for 2023. The prospect of China, the US and Europe competing to establish outposts and exploit the moon’s resources has led to talk of a new space race, with some suggesting that China is now ahead. However, John Logsdon, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said that many have overstated China’s recent accomplishments. He describes them as relatively modest when compared to Nasa’s New Horizons mission, the first to perform a fly-by of a Kuiper Belt object, or Japan’s Hayabusa 2 mission, set to land on an asteroid next month and return samples to Earth. “China’s achievement is impressive, but it is not something fundamental or different from what other countries are doing,” he said. For Logsdon, the key question in how the next phase of space exploration plays out is whether China becomes a collaborator with other countries or continues to compete. “It’s really a broader question of Chinese-US relationships overall,” he said. “Will the two countries become peer competitors in military, economic and technical terms, or will they find ways of working together? What happens in space just dramatises that.” Experts say other countries are likely to remain cautious about collaborating with China, despite some positive steps such as the inclusion of instruments aboard Chang’e 4 developed by teams in Sweden and Germany. “China’s reputation for stealing technology hurts chances for cooperation,” said James Lewis, senior vice-president and director of the technology policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China sees itself as competing – when they drone on about the need for win-win, it’s a sign that they think we are in a zero-sum game, where there can be only one winner.” Because the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), oversees the majority of what China does in space, there are also concerns about China’s goal to deploy space systems to more effectively gather information than their adversaries – or block their adversaries’ ability to do the same. Whichever way diplomatic relations in space play out, Carpenter said that nations and commercial players should be working to establish ground rules for the exploration of the moon and beyond. He added: “Something we’ve learned from working on Earth is that we have to learn how to manage resources in a sustainable and ethical way. This is something that is certainly going to be part of the discussion – how we do this in a way that is responsible in the future, and how we create the rules and governance and legal framework to ensure we do that.”A 16-year-old Syrian refugee who was disfigured in a bomb attack on her home has been refused a visa to get medical treatment in the US because of Donald Trump’s travel ban, the Guardian can reveal. Marwa al-Shekh Ameen resettled with her family in Germany, but doctors there encouraged her to seek more sophisticated medical treatment in America following 13 operations to repair trauma from third-degree burns to her face, arms and chest. Shriners Hospitals for Children in Boston scheduled an appointment to treat Marwa in November 2018 and a volunteer agency in Massachusetts offered to provide temporary housing for her and her father. But the US government denied her visa on 20 December, claiming there was not enough evidence to prove she would return to Germany. This has stunned Marwa’s supporters, who emphasized that all six of her siblings, including a twin sister and her parents, grandparents and uncles have resettled in Germany and were integrated into their new home near Nuremberg. Marwa’s uncle, Nael al-Shekh Ameen, said in an email: “If Shriners believes they can improve Marwa’s quality of life surely anyone with any sense of compassion would not deny her this vital treatment.” The US government, however, has made it extremely difficult for people from seven countries, including Syria, to enter the US under the revised version of Trump’s travel ban. Consular offices can issues visa waivers on a case-by-case basis, but advocates have warned these waivers are rarely granted and the process for getting one lacks transparency. Of the more than 33,176 visa applications from countries covered by the ban, about 2% were granted waivers from December 2017 to 31 May 2018, according to the state department. Last month, a Yemeni mother was only granted a visa to visit her dying two-year-old son in California after her case received worldwide attention. She had been repeatedly denied the visa before, but made it to California a week before he died. The state department said in a letter to Marwa that her visa was rejected because her application did not prove she would return to Germany. The state department would not provide further information to the Guardian because visa records are confidential. “Marwa and her family were devastated,” Shekh Ameen said. “They were full of hope that the visa would be issued. Marwa was saddened to think that human rights doesn’t count anymore.” Shekh Ameen said after Marwa’s visa was denied, the teenager stopped eating properly and was feeling unwell at school and at home. German doctors referred her to a psychiatric clinic because of her distress over not being able to get the reconstructive surgery she so desperately wants. In 2016, Marwa’s face was burned after a kerosene lamp ignited and exploded in the room she was in during a bomb attack near her home in Syria. Her family fled Syria for Turkey, where she received her first treatment for wounds that have left her face a bright pink and white. Severe trauma to her arms and hands has left her fingers brown and mangled and the skin around her eyes has changed shape. Despite these severe injuries, Marwa’s uncle said she is close with her siblings and likes to listen to music and uses social media like any other teenager. Last year, her family was thrilled to see her rap onstage with classmates in front of a crowd of 200 people during a music festival near her home outside Nuremberg. The state department said Marwa can re-apply for the visa, but it is unclear how she can provide further proof of her ties to Germany. Two members of German parliament, Britta Dassler and Martina Stamm-Fibich, wrote in support of Marwa’s case this week and said there was no reason to believe she would seek to stay in the US because of her and her family’s strong ties to their community in Germany. “We are impressed by the bravery the young Ms al-Shekh Ameen has demonstrated and her exemplary integration into our city and community,” their letter said. “Ms al-Shekh Ameen and her family epitomize the potential of a family that has suffered much hardship to integrate into their new life here in Germany,” they continued. “The family has overcome significant obstacles in order to remain together.” But a similar message sent in August 2018 by US senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey failed to sway the US government. “Ms al-Shekh Ameen’s story, in the way that she continues to carry herself as a beacon of hope and support after experiencing such trauma, is one of outstanding resilience and courage,” the senators wrote. In response, the state department told Warren’s office it was Marwa’s responsibility to prove she would return to Germany.People who stutter are being given electrical brain stimulation in a clinical trial aimed at improving fluency without the need for gruelling speech training. If shown to be effective, the technique – which involves passing an almost imperceptible current through the brain – could be routinely offered by speech therapists. “Stuttering can have serious effects on individuals in terms of their choice of career, what they can get out of education, their earning potential and personal life,” said Prof Kate Watkins, the trial’s principal investigator and a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford. About one in 20 young children go through a phase of stuttering, but most grow out of it. It is estimated that stuttering affects about one in 100 adults, with men about four times more likely to stutter than women. In the film The King’s Speech, a speech therapist uses a barrage of techniques to help King George VI, played by Colin Firth, to overcome his stutter, including breathing exercises and speaking without hearing his own voice. The royal client also learns that he can sing without stuttering, a common occurrence in people with the impediment. Speech therapy has advanced since the 1930s, but some of the most effective programmes for improving fluency still require intensive training and involve lengthy periods of using unnatural-sounding speech. The latest treatment, which is combined with fluency training, is not expected to completely cure people of their stutter but could potentially give them more control over it. The brain stimulation, known as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), involves strapping electrodes on each temple and then passing a current through the head. The current is weak enough that people are either oblivious to the electrodes being switched on or feel just a slight tingling. The stimulation increases the firing rate of neurons in certain brain regions, which scientists believe could make it quicker to learn thought patterns associated with fluent speech, and make the effects of training more permanent. There has been growing interest in the potential for tDCS to be used therapeutically for conditions ranging from depression to stroke, and some claim it could boost cognition in healthy people. Watkins, who has been researching the causes of stuttering for more than a decade, is investigating whether tDCS could help shift the patterns of brain activity that occur during speech towards resembling those that occur in people who speak fluently. Previously, her team has shown that stuttering is linked to subtle differences in brain activity, including more activity than usual in the brain’s right hemisphere. In the trial, the 40 participants are asked to speak in time with a metronome, saying one syllable on every beat. During this task, people who stutter typically become completely fluent. “The idea is that if you stimulate them while they’re fluent, you’re reinforcing that fluent speech process,” said Jennifer Chesters, a speech and language researcher at the University of Oxford who is involved in the trial. “And hopefully that will make it more likely for them to use that process in their normal life.” Each time a neuron fires in the brain, its connections with neighbouring neurons are strengthened or weakened slightly – this is how learning occurs. With stimulation, the threshold for neurons firing is lower, so this could accelerate the rewiring that occurs during fluency training. Half of the participants – all men with moderate to severe stutters – are given electrical stimulation while doing this task for 20 minutes. The rest wear the electrodes without them being switched on as a control. The participants repeat the training every day for five days, and their speaking fluency is tested at the outset, at each session and at a follow-up three months later. Naheem Bashir, 28, a neuroscientist based in London, is one of the trial’s participants. As a teenager, Bashir struggled to cope with his stutter and was thrown into crisis at the prospect of leaving home and going to university. “I felt I wouldn’t be taken seriously, I wouldn’t be able to make friends,” he said. “I felt so limited and restricted. My mental health really took a hit.” Bashir had speech therapy, which he said gave him some strategies for controlling his stuttering but more importantly helped him process his anxiety around it. “It’s realising that 99.9% of what we imagine will happen won’t happen,” he said. Bashir has recently completed a PhD looking at how the brain processes speech, runs a British Stammering Association support group for people who stutter, and sometimes does stand up comedy. He wants to break down the social stigma around stuttering, but there are still moments when not being able to get his words out is frustrating. “Using the phone is one of the most difficult things,” he said. “The other person is saying ‘the signal’s breaking up, I can’t hear you,’ and you’re like: ‘No, I’m literally not speaking,’” he said. The unpredictability of how fluent their speech will be at any given time is also a challenge for many people who stutter. During an interview with the Guardian, Bashir’s speech was almost flawless, but in a fluency test he repeatedly got held up on words read aloud from a sample text. Bashir is no longer desperate for a cure but he said better treatments could still be transformative. “When you’re in your worst moments of your stammer, it’s like a wall that you can’t see over,” he said. “Things like this intervention, if it works, can help bring down those walls a bit, so your stammer doesn’t feel as much of an obstacle and so you can see a life beyond your stammer.” More information on the trial, which is still recruiting participants, can be found hereAlongside film-making debuts from established actors and slow-burn word of mouth scary movies, Sundance is a festival primed for at least one crowd-pleasing comedy. In previous years, audiences and critics have roared along to Little Miss Sunshine, Happy, Texas, Juno, Patti Cake$, The Big Sick and Napoleon Dynamite. Not all of them have enjoyed such ebullience outside of Park City, though, and this year Transparent and Brooklyn Nine-Nine director Nisha Ganatra is hoping to sustain the laughter that met the premiere of her first feature, Late Night, all the way to the real world. In a packed screening filled with critics, punters and buyers, the reaction was an undeniable win, one-liners landing with consistency leading to a frenzied bidding war, one that has reportedly been won by Amazon for a record-breaking $13m. But while the film undoubtedly plays to a large crowd, at least here at Sundance, it’s not quite the home run one would have hoped given its intriguing conception. Inspired by her experience as the only woman in The Office writers room, Mindy Kaling has tapped into a relatively underrepresented area on screen: the difficulty of being a female comedian. For her first feature-length screenplay, Kaling has also taken the lead role as Molly, a chemical plant worker desperate to break into comedy. In a rather insanely convoluted manner, her path crosses with Katharine Newbury, played by Emma Thompson, a stalwart of the late-night talkshow scene whose program is losing ratings. She’s a self-confessed feminist and gives time on her show to women in power but has problems dealing with other women in the workplace and relies on an all-male writers room to construct her small screen quips. Keen to show this isn’t the case, Katharine hires Molly as a tokenistic gesture and while Molly enters with enthusiasm, she meets resistance from the men who work alongside her. It’s a setup ripe for sharp commentary on women co-existing in a male-dominated field, and Kaling has crafted a film that feels very much in line with recent discussions over everything from #MeToo to an increased awareness of diversity both in front of and behind the camera. But while she embeds the right buzzwords, she can’t quite mold a string of interesting ideas into a convincing and fully fleshed film. She constructs a familiar framework with beats one might spot a mile off, which gives the film a comforting, hard-to-hate vibe, but one that never quite coalesces with the edgier attempts to satirise the misogynistic nature of comedy. Thompson is a whirlwind in her role as the Miranda Priestly-esque boss, clearly relishing a rare opportunity to play a comic co-lead, firing off one-liners with great exuberance, and her skills as a dramatic actor are effortlessly employed in the final act. But her character is frustratingly inconsistent. We’re told that she has become complacent in her position and avoided covering anything too personal or political with age but simultaneously, her staffers complain that she devotes far too much time to high-ranking female politicians. She’s also a control freak, but one who hasn’t entered the writers room and got involved in the process. The attempts to save her show are also muddled, veering between interviewing Instagram celebrities and starring in viral skits to taking on the patriarchy in her monologue. The rules seem to change with every new scene and it’s tough to get a grasp on who or what anything really means. It’s inevitable, given the setup, that one would make comparisons to 30 Rock, the last time we spent so much time with a woman trying to deal with a mostly male writers room, and Kaling’s script does have a similar rat-a-tat rhythm, jokes falling over each other from scene to scene. But there’s far less insight and ingenuity here and Kaling is no Tina Fey, both in her writing and her on-screen charm. We’re never entirely sure of her character too and the script throws in a thinly constructed romantic sub-plot that should have either been excised or expanded. Arguably the film’s biggest problem is that it’s less laugh-out-loud hilarious and more deserving of the odd casual smirk. When a film or show is detailing the evolution of jokes or skits, we have to believe the end product is a doozy and despite copious audience reaction shots, the film struggles to sell us on this. The two leads share a stage midway through the film, delivering standup to a small crowd, and it’s almost impossible to believe they wouldn’t have been promptly booed off, zingers failing to zing. It remains a wonderful, broad opportunity for Thompson, who rarely gets such juicy chances at this stage of her career and while some of film’s puppyish attempts to get the audience onboard do break through, it often overdoes the earnestness. While Late Night wants to be loved, instead it will have to settle for being liked. Late Night is showing at the Sundance film festival and will be released later this yearFew people are shopping at the Beijing Yintai Centre, a high-end mall in the Chinese capital’s central business district. Store clerks say foot traffic has been low, even when holiday discounts were offered. Office workers walk past empty shops like Hermes, Dolce & Gabbana and Cartier, eating fruit they have brought for lunch. Li Xin, 33, who works for a security company nearby, likes to check out the selection of handbags. Her favourites are Chanel and Tom Ford. But recently, she has decided to cut back. “This year I didn’t buy any new bags, because everyone has been saying: ‘Winter is coming’,” she said. For the many businesses that depend on the spending power of China’s middle class, winter has already arrived. After decades of breakneck growth, the world’s second largest economy is slowing down, and Chinese consumers are feeling the pinch. As their country goes into what could be its slowest year of growth in decades, just above 6%, Chinese residents face rising living costs and debt, stagnating wages and worries about job security. Many have seen their savings wiped out in peer-to-peer lending scams, as Chinese stocks reached new lows last year, and as the property market, the largest store of household wealth in China, declined. As a result, Chinese shoppers are abandoning iPhones for cheaper Chinese-made smartphones, buying fewer Swiss watches and travelling less. Many couples have decided against having a second child because of the cost. The term “consumption downgrade” has become popular online, as netizens swap advice about how to save money. China’s slowdown is the result of a government campaign to rein in excessive debt and calm property prices. “Then came the trade war, which hasn’t had a huge direct effect on the economy, but has eliminated the sense of certainty and stability central to business and consumer confidence,” said Scott Kennedy of CSIS in Washington. What Chinese consumers can and cannot spend matters. Domestic consumption accounted for a little more than three-quarters of economic growth last year. As manufacturing and trade are hit by the US tariffs, the country’s policymakers are looking to its citizens to offset those losses. “Consumer spending plays a very important role. If it falls, the impact on the economy will be large,” said Ye Tan, an independent economist and analyst based in Shanghai. In theory, spending begets more spending as companies take more orders, produce more, and workers go home with more money in their pockets, according to Ye. “The whole process forms a virtuous cycle and people will have more confidence,” she said. “Confidence is really important.” Yet confidence is thin on the ground. The core areas of Chinese consumption – property, durable goods such as electronics, and cars – have all seen sharp declines over the past year. Last year, car sales contracted in China, the world’s largest auto market, for the first time since 1990. Retail sales in November grew at their weakest rate in 15 years. And at least one in five apartments in China are empty, according to Gan Li, a professor at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu. International companies that rely on Chinese shoppers have begun to sound the alarm. Apple issued its first profit warning since 2002 on the back of slowing demand in China. Ermenegildo Zegna said it would be holding back store expansion in the country, one of its largest markets, because of the expected downturn. “There is a need for some other sector to step up and provide leadership of the economy. The much hyped Chinese consumer should be the most obvious candidate to do so, but rather than pick up the slack, retail and services appear to be following manufacturing down the rabbit hole,” said Shehzad Qazi, managing director of China Beige Book International. The government is trying to restore confidence by cutting individual taxes and lowering mortgage requirements. In the northern province of Hebei, the government has proposed a four-day working week to encourage spending. City officials in Beijing are asking retailers to stay open for longer to foster a “night economy”. Property developers have slashed prices, while electronics retailers have begun offering discounts on iPhones. Economists say these measures will take time to have any meaningful impact and some analysts expect further stimulus measures to boost the economy. Others say the structural problems in the Chinese economy cannot be fixed so easily. “Turning on the credit spigots alone won’t fix the problem,” said Kennedy. On a Friday afternoon, the Apple store in the Sanlitun shopping district in Beijing is full, while a nearby store selling Huawei phones sits mostly empty. A worker at the Genius Bar says the store is usually even busier that today. Another store clerk says that while traffic is as much as it usually is, there is not the same clamour for new iPhones. When the latest model came out in October, there was no queue outside the store. Some argue that the idea of a “consumption downgrade” is overblown and that falling iPhone sales are no barometer of the broader economy. “Apple has been losing relevance in the Chinese market for a variety of reasons in recent years. The brand no longer excites Chinese consumers,” said Pan Yiling, senior editor of Jing Daily, which focuses on the Chinese luxury market. Pan says China’s middle class consumers are becoming more strategic. Those who enjoy luxury brands are cutting back on impulsive purchases and choosing more carefully. Lu Wei, 28, who works in a radio station in Beijing, decided to opt for a fake Louis Vuitton bag to add to her collection. It cost her about 900 yuan (£103), which she says is about 10 times less than the real version. “I suddenly realised that I am no longer young. I have to save some money.” China’s wealthier middle class will remain less affected by the downturn. A lawyer in the Yintai Centre, who give only her surname, Hu, brings her one-year old son here to a play and learning centre that costs 388 yuan (£45) per visit. Hu and her husband have been thinking about ways to cut back, for instance on their annual international trips. One concession Hu has made is to shop more on the e-commerce platform, Taobao, something she used to find embarrassing before. “Being brainwashed by consumerism is not a wise option for ordinary people like us,” she said. “Trying to get the best products with less money is not something to be ashamed of.” Additional reporting by Wang XueyingAlex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland, has been charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and two of attempted rape. Salmond, who appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff court before a closed session on Thursday afternoon, was charged with 14 offences: one of breach of the peace, two of indecent assault, nine of sexual assault, as well as the two of attempted rape. The 64-year-old made no plea during the hearing and was released on bail. Appearing outside court afterwards, he gave a brief statement saying that he was innocent. “Let me say from the outset, I am innocent of any criminality whatsoever,” the former SNP leader said. “Now that these proceedings, criminal proceedings are live, it is even more important to respect the court. He added: “The only thing that I can say is I refute absolutely these allegations of criminality and I will defend myself to the utmost in court. I’ve got great faith in the court system in Scotland.” “You know me well enough to know that I’d love to say a great deal more but I have got to observe the rules of the court and in court is where I will state my case.” Salmond was charged on Wednesday night after voluntarily attending a police station with his solicitor. Earlier a Police Scotland spokesman said: “We can confirm a 64-year-old man has been arrested and charged and a report has been sent to the procurator fiscal.” Salmond has been under investigation by Police Scotland over allegations of sexual harassment. He has consistently denied that he was guilty of any criminal behaviour. After the news of his arrest broke, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said that it would be “a shock to many people”. But she added: “These are now live criminal proceedings and that means now more than ever it would be completely inappropriate for me or anyone else for that matter to make any comment on the situation.” There have been media reports that the Police Scotland investigation had been broadened to include allegations about incidents at Edinburgh airport more than a decade ago. In early January, Salmond won a significant legal victory against the Scottish government after the civil service admitted its investigation into the two harassment claims had been mishandled. It emerged that the senior personnel expert who led the formal investigation, Judith MacKinnon, had been involved in counselling and supporting the two complainants before they filed their official complaints. The Scottish government acknowledged this was in breach of its rules, was unlawful and had the appearance of bias.Tottenham Hotspur’s worst fears have been realised after a scan on Harry Kane’s left ankle confirmed he sustained ligament damage during the defeat by Manchester United. The England captain is not expected even to resume training until early March. The striker had hobbled away from Wembley on Sunday after hurting the joint in a challenge with Phil Jones towards the end of the 1-0 loss and, while he had initially conceded he would miss at least a month in rehabilitation, medical tests on the ankle suggest his absence will extend further. The forward was photographed on crutches and wearing a protective boot as he visited a Harley Street clinic in central London to be scanned on Tuesday morning and Tottenham later issued a brief statement confirming the damage. The club are now resigned to being without their talismanic forward in both legs of their Champions League knockout tie against Borussia Dortmund and, should they progress beyond Chelsea, in the Carabao Cup final where Manchester City surely await. The 25-year-old is no stranger to ankle problems having endured time on the sidelines in each of the last three years, missing seven weeks in the autumn of 2016, after suffering injuries on the joint. However, with Spurs 1-0 up from the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final, his absence this time is particularly untimely, and he is likely to miss at least 11 games while he undertakes his rehabilitation. Mauricio Pochettino is already without Son Heung-min – potentially until the end of the month – while he plays for South Korea at the Asian Cup, and has ruled out reintroducing Vincent Janssen to the first team. That leaves Lucas Moura, who should return at Fulham on Sunday after knee trouble, and Fernando Llorente – who has in effect been available for transfer – as his striker options for the foreseeable future. The club had not anticipated entering the market this month and it remains to be seen if that policy shifts in the wake of Kane’s injury. Spurs potentially have seven Premier League fixtures between now and the start of March, when Arsenal are due at Wembley, together with the tie against the Bundesliga leaders. They play the second leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final at Stamford Bridge next Thursday, with the final on 24 February. Given that schedule, Kane may have been rested for the FA Cup fourth-round match against Crystal Palace.England’s Six Nations rivals have been warned to brace themselves for a resurgent Manu Tuilagi when the tournament kicks off in just over a fortnight. The injury-plagued centre has not started a Six Nations game since 2013 but his teammate George Ford believes the Leicester man is primed to make a significant impact this season. Tuilagi will be among a 35-strong England squad announced at Twickenham on Thursday for a pre-tournament camp in Portugal in the run-up to their opening match against last year’s grand slam winners, Ireland, in Dublin. The head coach, Eddie Jones, still has plenty of possible midfield options but a fit and firing Tuilagi would add a fresh attacking dimension. Ford, for one, senses Tuilagi is poised to come back with a bang. “I have never seen anyone as explosive as Manu,” said Ford, vying with Owen Farrell for the starting No 10 jersey against the Irish. “He is aggressive with it too. Manu wants to do some damage on the field … the opposition fear playing against him and he is unplayable at times. He offers a different dimension, definitely. You could put him in any team and he would make an impact.” The challenge for England is to unleash him in the right areas to maximise his strengths. “We all know how good Manu can be but you do need to be detailed in the way you attack. With Manu, we need to give him one-on-ones and soft shoulders. We’ve got to work hard on the inside to give him that bit of space on the outside where you can see his full potential. “I’m not saying he can’t smash into people or get you quick release ball from that breakdown but, if you want to see Manu at his best in terms of line-breaks, running through people and scoring tries, then the attack has to be smart by fixing guys so he can do what he does best. He is unbelievably powerful and so hard to stop. At the end of the day, he wants the ball in his hands in a bit of space. And if there isn’t any space, he wants to run over the top of someone.” It is also Ford’s belief Tuilagi has finally put behind him the injury woes that have savagely curtailed his career since 2013. “Manu looks as good as I’ve seen for a while,” said Ford. “He is out there every day, doing full sessions and looking as if he is moving a lot better. With Manu the crucial thing is just for him to keep playing because he will definitely get back to the player he was. Even when he does not get the ball the number of defenders he attracts is so important to a side. “In our last Premiership match against Gloucester he was particularly impressive in defence, flying around, putting big hits in. His match fitness is getting back there, which is really exciting for the club and for England as well.” The Breakdown: sign up and get our weekly rugby union email.It is now almost eight years since a trademark Tuilagi score helped England beat Ireland 20-9 in a 2011 World Cup warm-up in Dublin. It would be a surprise if Jones does not include him in his starting XV at the Aviva Stadium a fortnight on Saturday, either alongside Ben Te’o, Henry Slade or Farrell should Ford be picked at 10. The latter suggests that, in an ideal world, Tuilagi would prefer to wear 13. “I know he likes 13 at the club with Kyle Eastmond or Matt Toomua inside him. He feels it gives him a little bit extra space.” With England’s injury problems having eased slightly since the autumn, Jones will also be looking forward to seeing Billy Vunipola back in an England jersey but it seems unlikely that recently sidelined players, including Chris Robshaw, will feature against Ireland. Jones also needs to find a replacement for the injured Sam Underhill and decide where the long-serving Dan Cole fits in to his 2019 World Cup plans. George Ford is a Land Rover ambassador. Land Rover has a heritage in rugby, sharing and understanding the values of the sport. @LandRoverRugbyCosmetics giant Avon USA has apologized for an anti-cellulite product after the ad campaign was accused of “shaming women”. Actor Jameela Jamil had criticized the ad, which features a seated woman in shorts and tank top with the caption “dimples are cute on your face (not on your thighs),” on Saturday afternoon on Twitter. “And yet EVERYONE has dimples on their thighs, I do, you do, and the CLOWNS at @Avon_UK certainly do. Stop shaming women about age, gravity and cellulite. They’re inevitable, completely normal things. To make us fear them and try to ‘fix’ them, is to literally set us up for failure.” The Good Place actor criticized another ad for the company’s “Naked Proof” line of cosmetics, which leads with the phrase “Every body is beautiful,” several hours later. “Every body is beautiful, unless they have any ‘flaws’ I guess. What a gross abuse of the body positive movement. I want you all to look out for this constant manipulation. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It’s everywhere. You are constantly being manipulated to self hate,” said Jamil, who is behind the “I Weigh” movement to promote body positivity. Avon responded to Jamil’s criticism just after 5pm, tweeting, “Hi Jameela, we completely understand where you’re coming from. We realize that we missed the mark with this messaging. We have removed this messaging from all future marketing materials. We fully support our community in loving their bodies and feel confident in their own skin.” “THIS RIGHT HERE IS PROGRESS!!!! Thank you @AvonInsider for listening to us,” she responded. Avon USA also tweeted: “We hear you and we apologize. We messed up on our Smooth Moves Naked Proof messaging. We want to let you know that we are working diligently to remove this messaging from our marketing materials moving forward. We’re on it. We love our community of women.”More than 2,000 clergy and lay members of the Church of England have signed a letter calling on bishops to withdraw or change recent guidance on welcoming transgender people to the church. Last month the church issued advice to clergy and congregations recommending an adapted affirmation of baptism service to allow transgender Christians to celebrate their new identity and name. The guidance was criticised by a group of bishops who described it as “theologically and pastorally questionable”. One member of the archbishops’ council, the Rev Ian Paul, suggested church leaders were “allowing themselves to be hijacked by these very small special interest groups”. Now 2,155 clergy and senior lay members of the church have demanded the guidance be revised, postponed or withdrawn, saying “the notion of gender transition is highly contested in wider society”. Their letter to bishops says: “Gender dysphoria is an emotionally painful experience that requires understanding, support and compassion. In recent years controversial new theories about the relationship between biological sex and the social meaning of gender have been linked to gender dysphoria. These ideas continue to be widely contested, with well-intentioned and thoughtful people on all sides of the debate.” It adds: “The many ordinary parents and teachers who now express concern about these new theories do not wish to cause harm to the tiny number of children afflicted by gender dysphoria; but neither do they want to harm the potentially large numbers of children by potentially imposing untried and untested ideas on young children.” Paul, an evangelical member of the general synod, said the letter highlighted “really important doctrinal, liturgy and pastoral issues that have not been adequately addressed”. He said: “The fact that so many, from a wide range of traditions in the church, have been prepared to put their heads above the parapet is an indication of the strength of concern expressed here.” Another signatory, Edward Dowler, archdeacon of Hastings, who is from the Anglo-Catholic tradition, said church leaders “might have been more circumspect about appearing to lend their support to an increasingly high-profile ideological movement whose aims and methods sit uncomfortably with the Christian gospel and are now being increasingly questioned throughout western society”. Members of the general synod last year urged the church to go further in welcoming transgender people. But some conservatives believe gender is assigned by God and cannot be changed. Tina Beardsley, a trans clergy member who was consulted on the guidelines, said it was important to be given official recognition by the church. “This guidance arose from a decision at the general synod which was passed by an overwhelming majority. The signatories to the letter can’t accept this decision,” she said. “The advice is to use the affirmation of baptismal faith service to reaffirm someone’s faith post-transition with the name they have adopted. That’s all we’re talking about. There is an anti-trans narrative in this letter which is unhealthy, stigmatising and fear-mongering.” George Haggett, a trans pastoral assistant, said: “My main qualm is so much of this discussion is taking place above trans people’s heads. The letter is not free from transphobia by any stretch of the imagination, and there is a nasty suggestion that trans people are causing harm to their families. This is not being done in good faith.” The C of E says its guidance does not propose “transgender baptism services” but that clergy could use existing liturgy for baptism “in a creative and sensitive way” to mark a person’s gender transition. A spokesperson said: “The bishops will give the letter their serious consideration, especially in the context of the preparation of a major new set of teaching and learning resources on identity, relationships, marriage and sexuality, Living in Love and Faith, which will be published next year. The guidance is not a restatement or a new statement on matters relating to gender, nor does it change the C of E’s teaching.”Chit-chat with Tory backbenchers was probably the last thing Theresa May was in the mood for after MPs voted to serve Downing Street with a three-day deadline for setting out a Brexit plan B. But the prime minister hosted a Downing Street drinks party with colleagues on Wednesday night as part of a last-ditch charm offensive before next week’s vote in parliament, which even close allies admit she looks set to lose by a significant margin. One guest was the author of her latest misfortune – her Oxford contemporary and old friend Dominic Grieve, whose amendment has further narrowed her room for manoeuvre in the next few febrile days. In one sense, the angry clashes at Westminster on Wednesday, and the second defeat for the government in two days, changed little. While, formally, the EU withdrawal act gave the government 21 days to return to the Commons if the vote were lost – to set out what it plans to do next – there would have been intense political pressure to do so sooner. May had already reassured cabinet ministers that she would act more swiftly than that, and a government spokesman said on Wednesday: “We would seek to provide certainty, quickly.” Grieve’s amendment gives the UK prime minister a hard deadline, and underlines rebel backbenchers’ determination to use every tactic at their disposal to bind her hands. But almost as significant was the row that led to its passage, with the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, facing down his own clerks, May’s chief whip and the leader of the House of Commons, , and insisting Grieve’s amendment could be voted on. One pro-EU Tory said of Bercow: “He was brilliant today, utterly brilliant.” The government fears it sets a precedent by jeopardising a key power – the ability to decide on the business of the House of Commons. With backbenchers conducting a guerrilla campaign against a no-deal Brexit, that is the last thing Downing Street needs. For May, who sat implacable on the frontbench on Wednesday as the row raged around her, it was yet another heavy blow to her dented authority. But the prime minister made another significant concession, in an attempt to win over some leavers. The Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, said the government would accept an amendment tabled by the Tory MP Hugo Swire. Among other things, if the future relationship with the EU were not negotiated by mid-2020, it would give MPs the chance to choose between extending the transition period and entering the Irish backstop. The mooted extension to the transition period is a new idea being put forward by the EU to help Theresa May square the circle created by the written agreement last December and the draft withdrawal agreement in March. That committed the UK and the EU to ensuring there was no divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But it also, after an intervention by the Democratic Unionist party, committed the UK (not the EU) not to have any trading differences between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The problem is that these are two irreconcilable agreements. They also impinge on the legally binding Good Friday agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland and in some senses pooled sovereignty of Northern Ireland giving people a birthright to be Irish or British or both. If the UK leaves the EU along with the customs union and the single market then the border in Ireland becomes the only land border between the UK and the EU forcing customs, tax and regulatory controls. The backstop is one of three options agreed by the EU and the UK in December and would only come into play if option A (overall agreement) or option B (a tailor-made solution) cannot be agreed by the end of transition. The Irish have likened it to an insurance policy. The new EU idea is to extend the transition period to allow time to get to option A or B. But an extension is problematic for Brexiters and leave voters, who want the UK to get out of the EU as soon as possible. The Irish and the EU will also still need the backstop in the withdrawal agreement, which must be signed before the business of the trade deal can get under way. Otherwise it is  a no-deal Brexit. Extending the transition into 2021 would mean another year of paying into the EU budget. Britain would have to negotiate this but it has been estimated at anywhere between £10bn and £17bn. Staying in the EU for another year would also mean continued freedom of movement and being under the European court of justice, which Brexiters would oppose. Downing Street is also expecting some assurances from the EU27 between now and the moment of truth next Tuesday, though not the overhaul of the legally binding withdrawal agreement the Democratic Unionist party had demanded. Ultimately, though, few at Westminster believe May’s earlier tactic of sending MPs off home for Christmas to calm down and think about their responsibility to deliver on the referendum, had altered the dynamic in this deeply divided parliament. And as the fraught discussions at cabinet on Tuesday underlined, there are scant few options available if the vote is lost, and none of them look appealing. May could make another mad dash to Brussels; give MPs the opportunity to vote on a series of alternative Brexit options (which Tory whips believe might focus minds on the lack of a majority for any alternative to their deal); announce that she plans to leave without a deal; or even press the nuclear button and promise a general election. Whatever she does she will almost certainly face a full-blown vote of no confidence from Jeremy Corbyn within days or even hours of the vote next Tuesday. Before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, losing a vote on the finance bill on one day and another less than 24 hours later would have most likely proved fatal to a government’s authority. But opposition parties now need to win a formal vote of no confidence and it is unclear whether either the DUP or Tory rebels hate the deal enough to want to tear down the government. May cannot now be unseated by Tory MPs, who tried the no confidence gambit before Christmas and failed, and her cabinet is bitterly divided about the way forward. Some Tory colleagues believe the prime minister’s fabled resilience is such that she could try to keep putting her much maligned deal to MPs, grimly pressing home the fact that, as she repeatedly said on Wednesday, “the only way to avoid no deal is to vote for the deal”. Whichever path she chooses, more dramatic clashes with parliament lie ahead within a matter of days, however calm the chatter over the canapes at No 10.Recently, I received an email from a young woman who told me that, although she was struggling with an eating disorder, she got great pleasure from reading my restaurant reviews. She said reading about, and enjoying, such enthusiasm for food made her feel normal. I’m sure it did. My reviews gave her the opportunity to engage with a conversation around what we eat, without having to do any actual eating, which is the bit she finds tricky. She’s not a one-off. I’ve had multiple emails like this over the years from people in the grips of eating disorders, who enjoy reading restaurant reviews. It is literally pathological behaviour, but it does shine a light on the massive gulf that can open up between the act of writing about food and the extremely human business of eating it. That is most obvious at this time of year, when we are assailed by advice designed to help us find the new us. It doesn’t matter whether we are happy with the old us. We are promised we can create a new shiny version, one mouthful at a time. It is easy sloganeering to point out how knuckle-dragging so much of this advice is; that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to do so. Some advocates of plant-based diets like to gloss over the very real dangers of vitamin B12 deficiencies. Spoiler alert: it can lead to intellectual impairment. Meanwhile, the proponents of paleo and dairy-free diets claim that modern humans were not designed for their current diet, as if evolution was a cul de sac. We are literally designed, through evolution, to consume bovine milk. Many us adapted to do so because it was an available food supply, and most of those who couldn’t tolerate dairy, where it was a source of nutrition, died out leaving the lactose tolerant to pass on their genes. The reverse argument is that you should simply relax, stop pathologising food, and eat what you want. Do that, and everything will be fine. In the US there’s even an encouraging Eat What You Want day. This year it’s 11 May. The problem is, while that’s easier advice to follow, it’s really no more helpful than being told to quit dairy, binge on soup or live solely on a diet of sautéed kitten. Unless you have the metabolism of a small, hyperactive rodent, or what you really want happens to correspond to a perfectly balanced diet – in which case it’s definitely time to upgrade your desires – few of us can eat what we want without consequences. I certainly can’t. Because here’s the one piece of dietary advice worth paying attention to in January when everyone is telling you how to eat: there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all dietary advice, however much health professionals might wish it were otherwise. As the work on the gut biome by Professor Tim Spector has indicated, how our bodies process the food we eat differs from person to person. But there are so many other issues: how much money and time we have, for example, enabling us to hit the gym to mitigate impacts; what kind of jobs we do; the healthcare to which we have access. Where does that leave us all? Muddling through. Diet books are written in crass slogans, but we live our lives in meandering prose. We pick and choose from the advice. We know sugar is the enemy but we have a biscuit occasionally. We understand the panic over alcohol consumption, but sometimes we open the bottle. We try to get to the gym and sometimes we don’t. It’s called being human. We try. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we don’t. Please, don’t beat yourself up about it.Paris fashion week isn’t Paris fashion week without a sighting of Catherine Deneuve. In an ever-changing cast of nubile starlets, she is always there. Wearing a black patent-leather peacoat over a black polo neck at the Saint Laurent show, a year ago. Crossing the cobblestones of the Louvre in kitten heels to enter the Louis Vuitton show last September. Five minutes before the show is due to start you will likely find her outside, having a nonchalant cigarette; after it has finished, look backstage amid the gossip and the champagne. Deneuve is a proper film star, which is to say that her on-screen and off-screen glamour have melded into one iconic image. Her wardrobe as a 75-year-old – trench coats, mid-height heels, a chic palette of monochrome and camel set off by the perfect shade of blond – is remarkably similar to her wardrobe in Belle de Jour, her most famous film, which recently celebrated its 50th birthday. In that film, she wears a black patent trench by Yves Saint Laurent, which is almost identical to the coat she wore to the Saint Laurent show last year. Some icons never go out of style, and Deneuve as Séverine in Belle de Jour is a fashion lodestar. But right now, her look is more relevant than ever. When Riccardo Tisci made his Burberry debut in September 2018, the very first outfit the Italian designer proposed for this most British of labels was a primly buttoned beige shirt dress, which seemed to refer directly to this most French of movie moments. Versace’s pre-autumn collection, shown in New York late last year, also seemed to channel the subversive bourgeois chic of Séverine. Kaia Gerber opened that show in glossy, military-style outerwear juxtaposed with a boudoir satin skirt, head to toe in a cafe-culture palette of chestnut and coffee. (This being Versace, there was a safety pin thrown in for good measure.) Deneuve’s influence on fashion in 2019 is not limited to her Belle de Jour wardrobe. Her inimitable way with a hair ribbon spawned a modern army of It-girl copycats, who wore tongue-in-chic outsize hair bows by Miu Miu, Alessandra Rich and Emilia Wickstead throughout December’s party season. Even leopard print, which is to this decade’s fashion what the shoulder pad was to the 1980s, leads us back to Deneuve. She has a wardrobe of leopard print coats and silk shirts to rival that of Kate Moss – and knows instinctively the truth of the mantra that when stuck as to what to wear to a fashion show, leopard will never let you down. But her look is rooted in her partnership with Yves Saint Laurent, who designed her wardrobe for Belle de Jour. Deneuve and Saint Laurent had true fashion chemistry, on screen and in real life. Their style love story will be memorialised next week by an auction at Christie’s in Paris, during haute couture fashion week. It is “not without a certain sadness”, says Deneuve, that she is selling her wardrobe, prompted by the sale of the home in Normandy where the clothes have been stored for decades. In 1965, a 22-year-old Deneuve was invited to meet the Queen. Unsure of what to wear, she took up the suggestion of her then-husband, David Bailey, to approach Yves Saint Laurent, a rising star in Paris fashion. Saint Laurent – not yet 30, and not yet established in his own right but working at the house of Christian Dior – made her a long white crepe de chine dress with red embroidery, which marked “the start of a long professional collaboration and personal friendship”, Deneuve said recently, recalling how “silent complicity, our crazy laughter and our melancholy” bonded her to a man who “only designed clothes to beautify women”. It was Deneuve who suggested to the Belle de Jour director, Luis Buñuel, that Saint Laurent should dress her for the film. The subtle erotic charge of the Saint Laurent-clad Séverine, which came to epitomise Parisian chic – and prompted the sale of 200,000 pairs of the mid-height Roger Vivier shoes that Deneuve chose for her character – are an essential element of the film’s status. When the film celebrated its 50th birthday last year, it was the house of Saint Laurent that hosted the anniversary screening. The Christie’s sale, coming hot on the heels of that anniversary, is set to fuel Deneuve-mania. The metallic gold, velvet-draped evening gown, which Deneuve wore at the 2000 Oscars, where her film Est-Ouest was nominated in the best foreign film category, is expected to sell for €2,000-€3,000. A leopard-print velvet gown with a gilt belt by Yves St Lauren from the autumn/winter 1992 collection is expected to fetch upwards of €1,000. But for trophy-hunters of Parisian chic, the ultimate prize is, of course, Le Smoking. A custom tuxedo trouser suit made for Deneuve in 1982 could be yours for €1,000-€1,500. Who said you can’t buy style? The auction runs 24-30 January.Arsenal are hopeful of signing Barcelona’s Denis Suárez in the January transfer window. The Arsenal manager, Unai Emery, is an admirer of the 24-year-old central midfielder, having worked with him at Sevilla during the 2014-15 season. Suárez, who spent two years at Manchester City as an academy player between 2011 and 2013, has played 46 league matches for Barcelona in two and a half seasons but never been able to hold down a regular starting place. The Spaniard, who has one international cap, won in 2016, is under contract with Barcelona until 2020 and would cost around £20m. He has played 221 minutes this season but only 17 of them in the league. The two clubs have opened talks and there is a keenness on both sides to get the deal over the line this month. Arsenal are set to lose Aaron Ramsey on a free transfer in the summer with Juventus favourites to sign the 28-year-old. Southampton are in talks with Sampdoria regarding the potential sale of Manolo Gabbiadini. The two clubs are discussing a loan until the end of the season with an obligation to buy the striker in the summer for a fee in the region of £9m. However, Sampdoria first need to offload another forward, probably Grégoire Defrel or Gianluca Caprari. Gabbiadini, who joined from Napoli for £15m in January 2017, has had an uneven spell at St Mary’s. The striker started his career with a bang, scoring six goals in his first four games, including one against Manchester United in the League Cup final, but his form dipped and has been in and out of the team for the past 18 months. Gabbiadini has one goal in 15 appearances this season and the new Southampton manager, Ralph Hasenhüttl, has not included the 27-year-old in his past five matchday squads.Yorgos Lanthimos’s raucous period romp about a high-stakes love triangle in the court of Queen Anne continues its ascension to this season’s awards favourite with 12 nominations at this year’s British Academy film awards. The film, which swept the board at the British independent film awards in December, with a record 10 wins, is a contender in all the major categories other than best actor. The Favourite converted just one of its five nominations into a win (for Olivia Colman) at last Sunday’s Golden Globe awards, with controversial road trip drama Green Book the biggest victor, taking best supporting actor, best screenplay and best comedy or musical. Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, meanwhile, won best drama and best actor in a drama for Rami Malek. That film also performed strongly with British voters (though it was significantly omitted from the best film shortlist), taking it to level pegging – on seven nominations – with arch musical rival A Star is Born. Also on seven are First Man, the Neil Armstrong biopic starring Ryan Gosling, which has so far met with little awards love, and with Alfonso Cuarón’s much-lauded Roma. Meanwhile Vice, the Dick Cheney biopic which bagged Christian Bale the best actor in a comedy or musical prize on Sunday, came away with six nominations. Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman has five, and Green Book and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War have four each. This year's Baftas take place on 10 February 2019. The ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall will be hosted by Joanna Lumley and broadcast – about 90 minutes after it actually happens – on BBC ONE. The Baftas are voted for by around 6,500 members of the British Film and Television Academy. These are industry workers who have to apply for membership – and pay an annual subscription of £450. Each category in the shortlists is decided by a chapter of around 100 specialists in that area. Once the shortlists are announced, all voters can have their say. If they haven't seen a particular film, they are supposed to abstain from voting in that category – but this is unenforced. The Baftas matter on their own terms, third only to the Golden Globes and the Oscars as prestige gongs. A Bafta win adds critical kudos – and, hopefully, box office – to a film, as well as credibility to an individual's career. They also matter because of their proximity to the Oscars. Until 2001, the Baftas took place in April or May, but since the move to about a fortnight before the Academy Awards, their importance increased. This is because voting for the Oscars closes a few days after the Baftas, meaning it's the final chance for candidates to impress with their speeches - or for Oscar voters to seek to redress apparent miscarriages of justice. The Bafta and Oscar voting bases overlap considerably, too: around 500 people are thought to vote for both. Not necessarily. A recent survey found the Baftas were only the fourth best Oscars bellwether – after the DGA, PGA and SAG awards. Since 2001, they've predicted the best picture winner eight times out of a possible 17, diverging the past four years running, opting for Three Billboards over The Shape of Water, La La Land over Moonlight, The Revenant over Spotlight and Boyhood over Birdman. Their form is stronger when it comes to the acting categories, though they do consistently favour homegrown talent. A big bronze mask on a marble base, which Bafta reserves the right to buy back for £1 should the recipient give it to anyone other than their children. Plus a certificate, with which the winner can do what they like. Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Mary Poppins Returns, Mary, Queen of Scots and Stan & Ollie have three nominations each. Steve Coogan was nominated over co-star John C Reilly in the latter, perhaps betraying voters’ British bias, although Emily Blunt was passed over for her part as the magical nanny, with Mary Poppins Returns up only for technical awards. Significant snubs included Steve McQueen, whose followup to 12 Years a Slave, Widows, scored just one nomination, for leading actress Viola Davis. If Beale Street Could Talk’s Regina King was also omitted, despite being favourite for the best supporting actress Oscar. Mike Leigh’s Peterloo also failed to pick up a single nomination, while Black Panther took just one (for visual effects). Peterloo marks a rare failure for Film4, which picked up 20 nominations on Wednesday across a slate which includes The Favourite, Cold War and Widows. Meanwhile BBC Films came away with four for its titles, Stan & Ollie and Apostasy. The Bafta shortlists were read out by actors Will Poulter and Hayley Squires. This is the first year the BFI’s diversity standards have become mandatory in the best debut and best British film categories. These require films to fulfil a number of different production-stage quotas that demonstrate that they have “worked to increase the representation of under-represented groups” in areas including “onscreen representation” and “industry access and opportunities”. They come as part of Bafta’s drive to up the diversity of its membership, as well as the breadth of films they choose to celebrate. This year’s best British film nominees are Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Stan & Ollie, fashion documentary McQueen, Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, starring a vengeful Joaquin Phoenix, and serial killer thriller Beast. The latter is also up for best British debut for its writer/director Michael Pearce. Pitted alongside him are Daniel Kokotajlo for Apostasy, set amongst suburban Jehovah’s Witnesses; Chris Kelly for activist documentary A Cambodian Spring, and the teams behind Pili, about HIV sufferers in Tanzania, and neo kitchen sink drama Ray & Liz. The nominees for the Rising Star award – which is voted for by the public – were revealed last week, with Black Panther’s Letitia Wright fancied as early frontrunner. The Baftas will be announced in a ceremony on 10 February hosted for the second time by Joanna Lumley. The Oscars take place two weeks later; their host is still uncertain.Mauricio Pochettino believes he would have been sacked by now at Tottenham if all he had done was to win a domestic cup. The manager takes his team to League Two Tranmere in the FA Cup on Friday while he also has them in the Carabao Cup semi-finals, where they face Chelsea. Pochettino has never hidden where the domestic knockouts rank on his list of priorities and they are some way behind the Premier League and Champions League. It is his ambition to win one or both and to his mind being able to compete is of a higher value to the club and its standing than to win the FA Cup or Carabao Cup – even if he would love to do that. Pochettino has yet to win a trophy in his managerial career and it is a stick with which he is sometimes beaten. He sets greater store by his three top-three Premier League finishes with Spurs and the accompanying Champions League qualifications. “To win the Carabao Cup and be in the middle of the Premier League table …” Pochettino said. “I think I would be sacked a few years ago – with two or three Carabao Cups or FA Cups. If you don’t finish how we have finished [in the league] in the last three seasons but win the FA Cup, I don’t know if Daniel [Levy, the Spurs chairman] would have too much patience with me or is nice to say: ‘OK, you’re 10th in the Premier League, I’ll give you a new contract.’ “My ambition is to win the Champions League with Tottenham or the Premier League. That’s what puts you in a different level.” Pochettino will weigh up whether to use Harry Kane as a starter or substitute at Tranmere but he has promised to field a strong lineup notwithstanding Tuesday’s Carabao Cup semi-final, first leg against Chelsea at Wembley. Pochettino has made it clear the club must offload players this month if they are to have the funds to refresh the squad as they contend with the costs of their new stadium. They will listen to offers for at least five players – Victor Wanyama, Mousa Dembélé, Fernando Llorente, Georges-Kévin N’Koudou and Vincent Janssen. Wanyama has disappeared off the radar this season because of a serious knee problem. He last played in the win at Crystal Palace on 10 November and Pochettino’s assistant, Jesús Pérez, said: “We will see probably in two weeks if he is ready to start to train.” Dembélé and Llorente are out of contract in June, with the former interested in a move to China or the Middle East and the latter linked with a return to Athletic Bilbao. Spurs are keen to remove Llorente’s wages from the books. It has emerged he takes home £100,000 a week, Spurs having had to pay a premium to take him from Swansea in 2017 ahead of Chelsea. Pochettino said: “It doesn’t just depend on us to regenerate the squad. In case we don’t sell players, it’s impossible to bring players in and to find the capacity to bring players in.”When Leah Holroyd joined a dating site five years ago, the 31-year-old noticed a lot of men had listed The Great Gatsby as a favourite book. “So, to be slightly provocative, I mentioned in my profile that I thought it was overrated, and challenged someone to persuade me it was great,” she says. A postgraduate student in English literature sent her a message that read “a bit like literary criticism”, and they began exchanging messages and discussing their favourite books. Holroyd found him pleasant enough, but she was looking for a relationship rather than just friendship, and he only ever talked to her about authors. After a couple of weeks, the bibliophile said he would be visiting London where Holroyd, who builds online learning courses, was living. “He asked if I fancied meeting for coffee and a walk by the river,” she says. He suggested they swap phone numbers to make arrangements easier. “Almost instantly, he sent me closeups of his penis.” If the conversation had some potential, but was becoming boring, I would sometimes send a dick pic Holroyd’s experience is worryingly common. A 2018 YouGov poll found that, shockingly, four in 10 women aged between 18 and 36 have been sent a photograph of a penis without having asked for one – colloquially known as an unsolicited “dick pic”. (Only 5% of men in this age group admitted to having sent one.) Nor does this just happen through online dating. Some men have used the AirDrop function on their Apple devices – which allows users to share files with other nearby Apple devices – to send unsolicited pictures to women. Anyone, of any age, who has AirDrop turned on at its most unrestricted setting is at risk of picking up their phone to see a graphic image that was sent anonymously by someone in the same restaurant, cinema or train carriage. The problem has become widespread enough that MPs and campaigners are now calling for a law targeting “cyberflashers”. Laura Thompson, a researcher at City, University of London, whose work examines harassment over dating apps, says the issue has until now been trivialised. “The research in this area is really limited. I think this blind spot says something about how society and the law tends to think of the problem: that dick pics are an annoying internet phenomenon as opposed to ‘real’ flashing. The term ‘cyberflashing’ wasn’t even in widespread use until about a year or so ago. Research reflects the world we live in, and I just don’t think this problem has been taken seriously until relatively recently.” Yet the question that plagued me after hearing Holroyd’s story was: why? What happened in the mind of that man between talking about books, inviting a woman for coffee and a walk – and sending her a photograph of his penis? Unsurprisingly, I did not get very far by asking men in person if they had ever sent unsolicited photographs of their penis. So I set up an account on Reddit, where users can post anonymously in forums on a range of topics, and I asked the question again. Shortly afterwards, I went to the cinema. When I checked back a few hours later, I discovered more than 500 comments, and the moderators had shut the thread down. The comments were fascinating. The most important thing I learned is that sending pictures of one’s genitals has different meanings for different men – and different meanings for the same men at different points in their lives. Stephen Blumenthal, a consultant clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Portman – an NHS clinic that offers specialist long-term therapy to patients with disturbing sexual behaviours – says: “There’s always a tendency with these issues to provide one kind of formulation; a one-size-fits-all explanation. But the reality is that there are many different motives that people have, some of which are perhaps more troubled and troubling than others.” Some who shared their experiences anonymously wrote about not feeling confident with their bodies, and wanting praise. One Reddit user, Jake, told me: “I’ve done it a few times in the past, and I think it’s mostly about validation. Although most men will never admit to it, we are very insecure about our bodies, especially down there. So, unconsciously, we just want someone to say we look nice, or that we are attractive. OK, sending an unsolicited dick pic is really not the way to do it, but I do think that’s the driver. We are just desperate for someone to tell us we’re OK. Not even sexy or incredibly handsome – just OK.” Others described wanting to turn up the sexual excitement in a messaging conversation they felt was flagging. Another user, Dave, wrote: “If the conversation had some potential, but was slowing down or becoming boring, I would sometimes send a dick pic. Because either they stop texting me or I get laid.” He added that “dick pics now only get sent upon request”. For others, it was “a numbers game”. For all the unsolicited pictures that were ignored or rebuffed, there was the occasional woman who responded in kind, and if one picture “worked”, it was worth it. Jake wrote: “When they were well-received, I felt good about it, from the validation and the boost to my self-image, but also the precedent it opened. It was now OK for them to reply in kind, or to steer the conversation down more sexual routes.” Another, John, estimated he has sent 100 unsolicited pictures in chatrooms over the years, after becoming aroused. “I’d see people chatting about various subjects. If they were remotely sexual, I think that served as my entry point to sending a pic,” he wrote. While he did have a couple of his “best pictures” saved on his phone, “the thrill of it was taking a pic in that moment and sending it … I think it may have been about creating or imagining some kind of sexual connection in that moment. The feeling was a bit of a rush in the anticipation of a response.” He described the four types of responses he received: very rarely, it would lead to an overtly sexual conversation in a chat window, in which further pictures might be exchanged; or he might be sent a complimentary message; or he might receive a negative, angry response. But, most often, he received no response. John is now in his 60s and has not sent a picture like this in more than a decade. He wrote: “As I have become older, frankly, it just seems a combination of rude, silly and empty. I have learned this is offensive and an unwanted intrusion, even if it is the internet and anonymous. Even online, it is a violation, in my opinion; little different from the stereotypical street flasher in a trenchcoat. Really, those who send these unsolicited pics are essentially standing on a virtual street corner digitally flashing women they don’t know for their own sexual gratification.” I was intrigued by John’s condemnation, so I asked if he included himself among these online flashers. “Yes. The anonymity of the internet facilitates doing things online you’d never contemplate in the real world, so I think that helps men distance themselves from any consequences or impact on the person they send it to.” The guy on the train using AirDrop is looking for something very particular … he wants to see shock and surprise This notion makes a lot of sense to Blumenthal. “The internet has brought out all sorts of new varieties of unusual sexual proclivities that are related to previous versions, and might have some similar dynamics,” he says. Blumenthal believes there is a hidden narrative underneath some of these stories, which is what he has experienced with his patients who have committed indecent exposure: “Some will be trying to impress, whereas some will be seeking to intrude. And this intrusive aspect is an important one,” he says. “The guy on the train using AirDrop is flashing in the digital age. The flasher is looking for something very particular: he is interested in the response, focused on the faces of these women – he wants to see shock and surprise, and a kind of disabling of the person he is flashing.” In almost every case of real-world indecent exposure, he says, there will have been a childhood incident where the perpetrator endured a trauma that made him feel out of control. This is the notion of identification of the aggressor: determined never to be a victim again. As an adult, he unconsciously twists this act around so that, “he is now in the driving seat, watching the reaction of those he disturbs, inserting into his victim a feeling of shock, surprise, disturbance”. John says he has never heard about women being distressed by pictures sent by somebody they are already talking to online, describing them as “really more of an annoyance”. Perhaps some women do feel that, but others find them much more disturbing. When Holroyd received several explicit pictures from the man with whom she had just agreed to go for coffee and a walk, she tells me, “I felt totally shocked. Nothing in the conversation had made me think he was going to do that. I felt really worried because it seemed like a deception, I was confused, I didn’t know what he was really looking for, I didn’t feel safe.” When she replied to this man to say that she no longer wanted to meet him, she says, “he got really angry and aggressive. He told me that I must be mentally unstable because I had changed my mind so quickly. He said: ‘If you can just change your mind like that there’s something wrong with you.’ And he told me I should get professional help. He put the blame on me; made me feel I had done something wrong and had been unfair to him.” In expressing his rage towards Holroyd, he was also describing exactly how he had made Holroyd feel about him: he was the one whose behaviour had been unstable, unpredictable, disturbed and disturbing. He had projected his feelings directly on to her. There were many thoughtful and thought-provoking responses to my question on Reddit. But in response to the many posts from men insisting that some women like receiving them, one woman replied: “If a woman wants dick pics, it’s easy to ask for them. Or for a man to ask a woman if she would like to receive one. This [sending unsolicited images] is just like pulling your dick out in front of someone – of course, loads of people are into that, but you need to make sure of that before you do it, not just shrug and say: ‘Eh, some women would have loved it!’” Some men said they had stopped sending unsolicited photographs after a negative response. Another Reddit user, Jeremy, wrote about the one occasion he sent a photograph to a girl he had been messaging on Tinder: “She replied with: ‘Ew!’ and blocked me. Rightly so. Haven’t done it since.” Others replied that leaving it up to women to teach men what is acceptable by responding negatively could put those women at risk. Blumenthal says that it is crucial to distinguish between noncontact offences, in which the perpetrator does not touch his or her victim, and contact offences – and that the overlap between those who commit indecent exposure and those who go on to sexually assault their victims, is low. Yet the term “noncontact offence” in this context, is an interesting one – it almost feels inaccurate: while sending an unsolicited photograph does not involve physical contact, it can feel like a violation; an assault. Cyberflashing can be prosecuted under a number of different laws, which carry prison sentences of up to two years. But there are problems with these laws, says barrister Kate Parker, director of the UK-based Schools Consent Project, a charity she founded to educate young people about consent and sexual assault. A prosecution would need to prove that the sender’s purpose was either to cause distress or anxiety, or that the image was “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”. Parker says: “In an era where sending dick pics is becoming increasingly normalised, the depressing reality is that such intent might not be proven. Some men think it is an appropriate way to start a conversation, or take an existing conversation to a more ‘flirty’ level.” And when it comes to the notion of indecency, the threshold is increasingly high: “as our online and offline worlds are increasingly saturated with sexual imagery, it may be that society’s collective perception of sexual indecency begins to shift”. She supports the creation of a new law – one “that finally includes a consideration of the recipient’s – typically a woman – response to such messages as a determinant of criminal liability”. We can improve the law, criminalising this latest incarnation of flashing, but, unless we try to understand the motivations behind it, we have no hope of stopping it. When I was a schoolgirl, a man flashed me as I walked home from the local park – he ran ahead of me then stood masturbating, with his T-shirt over his face. When I was 17, on holiday in Paris with my best friend, a man thrust a photograph of a deformed penis in our faces. When I was in my 20s, a man I was flirting with texted me an unexpected dick pic. All these experiences, shifting in format, but not in nature, as technology progressed, were shocking, and unpleasant. On the upside, I am happy to report that in researching this piece, I did not receive a single one. Some names have been changed. For help and advice with any of the issues raised in this article, go to schoolsconsentproject.comIt epitomises China’s position in the global economy that a seismic warning about its health last week came from a US company: Apple. The iPhone maker cut sales forecasts, citing the unforeseen “magnitude” of the economic slowdown in China – a vital growth market. At the same time the head of Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, warned his employees that “winter is coming” in the world’s second-largest economy. If China is indeed entering an economic winter, then the chill will spread around the globe. Forty years after communist China opened its doors to trade with the west in a dash for growth, the country’s mix of free-market policies and central planning faces one of its sternest tests. China’s central bank said on Friday it was cutting the amount of cash that banks have to hold as reserves for the fifth time in a year, freeing up $116bn (£92bn) for new lending, as it tried to reduce the risk of a sharp economic slowdown. This week US negotiators will travel to Beijing for a crucial round of talks with their Chinese counterparts in an attempt to break the deadlock in a year-long dispute over trade tariffs. Global markets, worried about the impact of tariffs on growth, have suffered a jump in volatility over recent months, with investors oscillating between exuberant optimism and despondency about the outcome. Despite a near 20% fall in the US stock market between October and last month, some investors believe there are reasons for hope. They think Beijing might blink first in talks because the Chinese have much to lose by maintaining their objections to President Trump’s demands over trade imbalances, market access and alleged abuses of intellectual property. Beijing has downplayed the impact of extra tariffs on around £200bn of Chinese imports into the US. But the evidence from businesses and commentators inside China is clear: the dispute is hurting. And Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on almost $300bn of extra imports in March, including a 25% charge on imported cars, would be catastrophic. “China’s economy was already set to slow in 2019, but the trade dispute has added to it another set of intense pressures,” said Shehzad Qazi, managing director of China Beige Book International, an analysis firm that specialises in the Chinese economy. China’s exporting regions in the south have felt the impact most. “While it would be a mistake to attribute this primarily to the trade war, the severe deterioration in foreign orders, especially in the export-sensitive Guangdong region, stands out as a stark example of the pain the tariff war is already causing. If tariffs escalate further after 1 March, the added pressure on the Chinese economy will prove excruciating,” Qazi said. In December, local media in the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen reported that Mindrey Medical, a medical equipment company, had dismissed more than 200 employees, all recent graduates. The company responded saying that it had “needed staff with more experience”. Companies in Guangdong have been letting workers off early for the Chinese New Year break, known as Spring Festival, which usually last a few weeks. Janus, an electronics manufacturer in Dongguan, in Guangdong province, let workers off from 1 December until 30 April. Wang Changqiu, the manager of Tuke, a sports equipment factory in Guangzhou in Guangdong, said the firm had started to feel the impact of the trade war. Tuke exports almost all its products and just under half go to the US. The firm has already been hit by the weakening yuan, which has cut into slim profit margins. The company had been trying to reduce its reliance on the US market, said Changqiu. “The trade war is bad for us and it impacts not only us, but our customers. We’re very worried,” he said. The slowdown is also being felt in China’s hinterland. In Chengdu, the largest city in the south-western province of Sichuan, blocks of shops in the new business district of Chengdu High Tech Zone have been empty for months. A property manager said the company that owns them had been trying to sell them quickly because it needed the money. In Wuhouci, a Tibetan neighbourhood popular with tourists, streets were mostly empty over the new year, a two-day national holiday in China. A shop owner selling Buddhist art and iconography said business had been hard over the past year. “No one has money to buy anything,” he said. The impact of the US tariffs is expected to be felt more keenly starting from this month, now that major shopping seasons – Black Friday, Christmas, and China’s Singles’ Day on 11 November – have passed, analysts say. China’s small and medium-sized manufacturing companies, traditionally the backbone of the economy, are bearing the brunt, according to Ye Tan, an independent economist based in Shanghai. “Economic figures have already started to reflect the downturn but we cannot tell exactly how awful it is,” Ye said. “For some technology companies or larger companies that have bargaining power, the impact is not so big.” Underscoring Beijing’s weak position, President Xi Jinping backtracked on a ban on US soybeans in the summer and last month cut an extra tariff on car imports. These concessions preceded Trump’s agreement to suspend for 90 days the almost $300bn of further tariffs he had planned to impose this month – and start talks. But Xi has more than just his battle with the US to contend with. Since the 2008 financial crisis, China’s large state-owned enterprises, most of which are involved in heavy manufacturing or energy production, have only kept going with heavy borrowing. In an attempt to rein in the most indebted firms and foster a move away from manufacturing, in 2017 Beijing imposed tighter borrowing restrictions. These were also designed to dampen a property market that had led to steep price rises in the big cities. However, they served to undermine consumer confidence and slow growth, to the extent that some government advisers fear there could be social and political unrest. Yu Yongding, a former member of the central bank’s monetary policy committee, who has advised policymakers for years, was quoted by the China Business News as saying: “China’s experiences in the last 40 years have told us that all the problems will worsen if we can’t maintain economic growth rate at a certain level. “Without a certain level of economic growth speed, structural adjustments or economic system reform will be baseless,” said Yu, who is a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Diana Choyleva, a longtime China watcher and head of consultancy Enodo Economics, believes modern China is in the midst of its most difficult test yet. “In my 20 years of covering China’s economy and markets, this is the most worried I’ve ever been about the party’s ability to keep the show on the road.” Last week the central bank changed the definition of a small business to allow more firms to benefit from low borrowing rates. Economists estimate that this will result in the release of $210bn into the economy in the form of cheap loans. Choyleva said the various stimulus policies will give the first half of the year a boost before growth falls back again. She has told her clients to sell shares in Chinese companies whenever the local market rises because the boost to values will be short-lived. But while the reports of suffering of Chinese exporters might cheer the US negotiating team, they don’t hold all the cards. Apple and General Motors have complained that the tariff war is hurting their businesses too, as China is a vital market. The White House is also waking up to the prospect of a slowing economy now that the effects of tax cuts in 2017 are waning. With re-election in 2020 uppermost in Trump’s mind, he must consider the electoral benefits of a long battle with China against the negative impact on economic growth. As Apple indicated last week, this could be a deep winter for everyone. Wang Xueying contributed additional reportingSaracens will again be the only English club in the quarter-finals of the European Champions Cup after Exeter lost narrowly in a gruelling match at Thomond Park. The Chiefs did not just have to win to top the group and progress but deny Munster a bonus point. It was mission improbable but 14 minutes from time they got their chance. Three times in the first half they had turned down the opportunity to kick for goal to secure a lineout in Munster’s 22, their habit in the Premiership. They scored a try on the first occasion, 11 minutes in, when their driving maul was held up just short of the line and Don Armand forced his way over. The other two were repelled but when Nic White’s long, rolling kick into Munster’s 22 in the final quarter gave the Chiefs a foothold, they looked to seize the moment. Within a minute they were awarded a penalty, which they used to secure a lineout five metres out. There is no better team in Europe at turning that position into a try. Exeter were leading 7-6. A converted try would have stripped Munster of their bonus point and the home side went into the set piece without one of their jumpers when Tadhg Beirne, whose immovable presence at the breakdown had been a major reason why the Chiefs were not further ahead, admitted defeat to a knee injury and went off. On came Billy Holland, a Munster stalwart with 12 years of service. He and his fellow forwards knew that Luke Cowan-Dickie, who nine minutes earlier had replaced Jack Yeandle at hooker, was unlikely to throw short because it would have made the maul easier to defend. The ball duly went to the middle and up soared Holland, taking the ball in two hands. Exeter in their desperation conceded a penalty and they slowly deflated. Four minutes later, Joey Carbery kicked his third penalty of the evening to leave the Chiefs needing to score 10 points in a fixture that this season had yielded 36 in two matches. It may as well have been 100. They had given it everything and barely allowed Munster an opening but it was an evening when European experience prevailed. It was the home side’s 177th match in the Champions Cup and Exeter’s 37th. Even when they had been largely outplayed – though not outfought – Munster had the knowhow to hang tight and ride the storm. After some of the frolics earlier in the day, this was rugby in the raw. From the outset it was an unremitting contest for possession in the air and on the ground. The counter-rucking was fierce, no one was given any time on the ball and there would have been more space if both teams had been locked in a broom cupboard. It was a match largely played between the 22s. Munster scented the Exeter line only once, on the hour when Connor Murray, whose box-kicks were unerringly accurate, hanging in the air as if suspended for a few seconds, and they were held up just short and dispossessed. Otherwise they ran into what Carbery later described as a brick wall: never mind the quality, feel the hits. Carbery gave Munster an early lead with a penalty but Armand’s try put Exeter in control. Exeter went into the interval a point ahead with Carbery’s second penalty eight minutes before the break reducing the deficit. The pace barely dropped in the second period with the lure of the quarter-finals driving both teams. Munster had the crowd and history behind them and the Chiefs needed a moment of inspiration. On the most frenzied of nights it did not come. “I am hugely proud of the players,” said the Exeter head coach, Rob Baxter. “Most teams who come here do not get close to Munster but we did – without quite doing enough to win a game that could have gone either way. I am excited about next year in Europe already. We are very close and it is about how we move forward.”Brexiter Conservatives and the Democratic Unionist party emerged upbeat from their meetings with Theresa May in Downing Street, convinced that the prime minister was not intending to soften her position to try to attract Labour votes. Those who met with the prime minister on Thursday said that she gave little away but that she indicated she wanted the UK to be able to strike its own trade deals after Brexit, meaning that she was not going to soften her stance on leaving the customs union. A group of senior Brexiters – including former cabinet ministers David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and Theresa Villiers – told May that parliament would back a deal if she could find a way of dealing with the Northern Ireland backstop issue. Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s Westminster leader, struck a cautiously optimistic tone after meeting with May alongside the party’s leader Arlene Foster. May “has a way through this”, Dodds said, if she could ease concerns about the backstop. None of the Conservatives who met with the prime minister wanted to comment publicly. One of those present said: “We were reassured on the concerns we had; she made clear that the option of trying to strike free trade deals was a condition of a deal.” Others present at the meeting were Steve Baker, Mark Francois and John Whittingdale – while May was joined by Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, and Julian Smith, the chief whip. Another MP who was there concluded: “She is not going to push this deal through on the back of Labour votes, that much is clear.” A spokesman for May said that her meetings, that began on Wednesday night and continued throughout Thursday, would be approached “in a constructive spirit, and wanting to hear what the various groups have to say”. But he ruled out making significant concessions: “Where people have pre-existing positions, of course they will want to make their argument for them, and the PM is going to listen, but you understand the principles which the PM holds, which she believes honour the result of the referendum.” The prime minister also met with Green MP Caroline Lucas, on Thursday morning, after having met with Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable and the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford on Wednesday night. All pressed for a second referendum, and extending article 50 to ensure that one could be held. Friends of Lucas said that May pushed back on the idea of a second referendum, arguing it would “look bad for parliament if it could not fulfil this instruction of the British people”. The prime minister did ask for more information about the idea of holding a citizens’ assembly to debate Brexit. Senior backbenchers from other parties held meetings with the Cabinet Office minister, David Lidington, and the environment secretary, Michael Gove, who is becoming an increasingly important figure as the Brexit impasse continues. Several Labour MPs – including Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper and Stephen Kinnock – met the two minsters, despite a plea from party leader Jeremy Corbyn to avoid meeting with ministers. In a morning email to MPs Corbyn urged colleagues “to refrain from engagement with government until no deal is taken off the table”, a day after the Labour leader had said he would refuse to meet with May until she agreed to that condition. May wrote to Corbyn on Thursday afternoon calling on him to reconsider, saying that the Labour leader had “always believed in the importance of dialogue in politics”. She asked: “Do you really believe that, as well as declining to meet for talks yourself, it is right to ask your MPs not to seek a solution with the government?” Labour hit back, with a party spokesman saying: “As opposition MPs who have met with the government today have discovered, the prime minister is not yet prepared for serious talks to find a way forward.” Lidington and Gove presented Lib Dem and Plaid Cymru MPs, including Tom Brake and Liz Saville-Roberts, with a one-page document that showed it would take longer than a year to organise a second referendum. That is longer than the 22-week minimum set out in a report from the UCL Constitution Unit published last year, that took into account the time needed to legislate for one and organise the campaign. Eloise Todd, the director of Best for Britain, a second referendum pressure group, said: “Europe has already said it would extend article 50 to accommodate a referendum, and after the snap election of 2017 it’s clear the country could move quickly to organise a people’s vote.” May is expected to continue holding meetings on Friday, before heading to her country retreat at Chequers for the weekend. May will on Friday come under further pressure from Boris Johnson to develop a domestic policy agenda to deal with the consequences of the Brexit vote. Johnson will make a speech at the headquarters of digger maker JCB in Staffordshire, a firm owned by Tory donor Sir Anthony Bamford. Johnson will say that Brexit was “triggered by a feeling that in some way the people of this country has been drifting too far apart”. The former foreign secretary will say that to “bring the nation together” the government needs to invest in “great public services and safer streets, better hospitals, better transport links and better housing”.The day after her wedding, Komal Hadala was shaken awake at 4am by her mother-in-law. They joined a group of women who were waiting outside the house, in Nithora village, Uttar Pradesh. “It was the time when they went outdoors to relieve themselves in the fields before men started appearing. I couldn’t believe it. It was total darkness outside. And it had been raining,” says Hadala. They walked over 1km to find a suitable spot but the rain had made the ground and the undergrowth squelchy and disgusting, she says. “There were insects because of the rain and I was petrified. What was worse was the dark. At that hour you couldn’t see a thing and it was so disorientating.” Hadala, 22, had spent her childhood in a house in the Indian capital that had a toilet. This new fact of life in her married home was a rude awakening. It wasn’t long before she began pestering her husband and in-laws to build a toilet. They agreed. But one year later, by last summer, Hadala had succeeded in persuading 250 other families to build one too, giving Nithora the distinction of being “open defecation-free”, as it is known in India. Hadala tells the story of her toilet revolution sitting in her home with the women who supported her mission – her husband’s mother, grandmother and sister. The house is solid, though cold and oddly designed, and it is strange to think that, when building it, no one in the family, not even the women, thought of installing a toilet. “We never knew anything else. This is how it has always been. We had no choice but to go out in the fields. It was hell – getting up so early, the freezing cold in the winters, the fog, the fear that some man will stumble across you. The worst was – oh my god – when I used to have a bad stomach,” says Athri, her grandmother-in-law. Sometimes men would suddenly appear and start jeering. At other times, a farmer would turn up armed with a stick to run them off his fields. At night, women had to wait for cover of darkness before venturing out. For pregnant women, the sick and the elderly, with arthritic joints and mobility issues, answering nature’s call was an ordeal. After Hadala had expressed her intense shame to her in-laws, the family approached the village council head, Chahat Ram, to ask if funds were available. Ram acted swiftly to access the funds available for building toilets under the government’s Clean India campaign to end open defecation. Prime minister Narendra Modi had famously told Indians once to build toilets first, temples later. His goal is to have a toilet in every home. More than 90 million toilets have been built since 2014 when he came to power. But persuading villagers to change their centuries-old habits is not easy. Surveys have shown that in some areas, more than half the people still defecate in the open. “I had to keep meeting families to din it into them that going outside led to diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid and other illnesses,” says Hadala. “They didn’t think there was any link between illness and going outdoors but I learned all this at school. Luckily school children were receptive and they took the message home.” With funds coming in fast, building 250 toilets was not difficult. Persuading villagers to use them was another matter. Some of the families with existing toilets had been using them for storage and continued going outdoors. The reasons were the same as those found in many villages where toilets have been built but remain unused. A toilet inside a home defiles its “purity”, goes a popular belief. You can’t have a toilet near a kitchen where you cook or near the puja (prayer) room. Moreover, going al fresco is better, say the elderly, because you get some exercise too. Hadala got together with a bunch of women who, armed with torches and whistles, patrolled the fields to warn off the recidivists, mostly male. “The men seemed to think the toilets had been built only for women, not for them,” says Satto, Hadala’s mother-in-law. It was not the embarrassment of having a spotlight shone on your naked bottom accompanied by a screeching whistle, nor the hygiene or dignity argument that won most of the men over. It was the issue of women’s safety that convinced them. They realised that being out in the dark at 4am or 9pm was dangerous for the women in the family. “Now, I can say with pride that no one in the villages defecates in the open. The whole atmosphere has been changed by [Hadala’s] efforts and everyone is keeping every bit of the village clean,” says Ram. The village school, for example, has a row of neat and clean separate toilets for boys and girls – a far cry from many village schools where there is often no toilet at all – a running water supply and several places for handwashing. The girls get free sanitary pads. “It took a young girl to get us to raise our standards. But now everyone is involved and we plan to keep it up,” says Ram.If you ask most central bankers around the world what their plan is for dealing with the next normal-size recession, you would be surprised how many (at least in advanced economies) say “fiscal policy”. Given the high odds of a recession over the next two years – about 40% in the US, for example – monetary policymakers who think fiscal policy alone will save the day are setting themselves up for a rude awakening. Yes, it is true that with policy interest rates near zero in most advanced economies (and just above 2% even in the fast-growing US), there is little room for monetary policy to manoeuvre in a recession without considerable creativity. The best idea is to create an environment in which negative interest-rate policies can be used more fully and effectively. This will eventually happen, but in the meantime, today’s overdependence on countercyclical fiscal policy is dangerously naïve. There are vast institutional differences between technocratic central banks and the politically volatile legislatures that control spending and tax policy. Let’s bear in mind that a typical advanced-economy recession lasts only a year or so, whereas fiscal policy, even in the best of circumstances, invariably takes at least a few months just to be enacted. In some small economies – for example, Denmark (with 5.8 million people) – there is a broad social consensus to raise fiscal spending as a share of GDP. Some of this spending could easily be brought forward in a recession. In many other countries, however, notably the US and Germany, there is no such agreement. Even if progressives and conservatives both wanted to expand the government, their priorities would be vastly different. In the US, Democrats might favour new social programmes to reduce inequality, while Republicans might prefer increased spending on defence or border protection. Anyone who watched the US Senate confirmation hearings last September for supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh cannot seriously believe this group is capable of fine-tuned technocratic fiscal policy. This does not mean that fiscal stimulus should be off the table in the next recession. But it does mean that it cannot be the first line of defence, as altogether too many central bankers are hoping. Most advanced countries have a considerable backlog of high-return education and infrastructure projects, albeit most would take a long time to plan and implement. If left-leaning economists believe that fiscal policy is the main way out of a recession in 2019 or 2020, they should be lobbying for the government to prepare a pile of recession-ready projects. Former US president Barack Obama wanted to create an infrastructure bank in part for this purpose; tellingly, the idea never got off the ground. Likewise, many observers advocate bolstering “automatic stabilisers” such as unemployment benefits. Europe, with much higher levels of social insurance and taxation, has correspondingly stronger automatic stabilisers than does the US or Japan. When incomes fall, tax revenues decline and insurance payments rise, providing a built-in countercyclical fiscal stimulus. But proponents of higher automatic stabilisers pay too little attention to the negative incentive effects that come with higher government spending and the taxes needed to pay for it. To be clear, like many academic economists, I favour significantly raising taxes and transfers in the US as a response to growing inequality. But if there were a broad political consensus in favour of moving in this direction, it would have happened already. A more exotic concept is to create an independent fiscal council that issues economic forecasts and recommendations on the overall size of budgets and budget deficits. The idea is to create an institution for fiscal policy parallel to the central bank for monetary policy. Several countries, including Sweden and the United Kingdom, have adopted much watered-down versions of this idea. The problem is that elected legislatures don’t want to cede power, especially over taxes and spending. One can appreciate why central bankers don’t want to get gamed into some of the nuttier monetary policies that have been proposed, for example “helicopter money” (or more targeted “drone money”) whereby the central bank prints currency and hands it out to people. Such a policy is, of course, fiscal policy in disguise, and the day any central bank starts doing it heavily is the day it loses any semblance of independence. Others have argued for raising inflation targets, but this raises a raft of problems, not least that it undermines decades of efforts by central banks to establish the credibility of roughly 2% inflation. If fiscal policy is not the main answer to the next recession, what is? Central bankers who are serious about preparing for future recessions should be looking hard at proposals for how to pay interest on money, both positive and negative, which is by far the most elegant solution. It is high time to sharpen the instruments in central banks’ toolkit. Over-reliance on countercyclical fiscal policy will not work any better in this century than in it did in the last. • Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. He was the IMF’s chief economist from 2001-03. © Project SyndicateGolf’s obsession with irrelevance was in evidence again on Sunday. That Li Haotong’s caddie was adjudged to have assisted the player with the lining up of a putt in the final round of the Dubai Desert Classic cost the defending champion by way of a two-stroke penalty. Commentators, players and caddies blasted this marginal call, rendered possible by recent amendments to the rules of golf. Muirfield’s members had fresh meat to titter about over Monday gins. By Monday afternoon, the European Tour and the R&A were at odds regarding the implementation of said rule. Keith Pelley, the Tour’s chief executive, bemoaned the lack of discretion available to his referees. Sceptics may suggest Pelley was seeking to create controversy where one does not exist in the hope of creating a handy diversion. Pelley had earlier appeared on television in the US attempting to do something which is never wise; defending the indefensible. If Pelley’s willingness to cut a deal to host a tour event in Saudi Arabia caused minor ripples when announced last year, subsequent events and the fact this tournament begins on Thursday has thrust a reputational own goal firmly back into the spotlight. Suffice to say the R&A, which many feel allowed gender discrimination to prevail on its watch for centuries, has kept out of this one. Recurring horrors in relation to Saudi Arabia and human rights barely need revisiting. The CIA’s claim in November that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, most likely ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi added a further layer of negativity – to put it mildly – that the European Tour could have done without. There have also been reports of the torture and sexual harassment of women’s rights activists in Saudi detention centres. As it attempts to show the world it is actually a misunderstood utopia, Saudi Arabia turned towards the world’s leading golfers; and found a depressingly willing audience. Four of the world’s top five are scheduled to tee up in Saudi. That comes with hefty reward; Justin Rose, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka et al are being richly compensated by way of appearance fees for just turning up. Low-ranked players might feel a necessity to play as they battle to maintain status. Paul Casey made it clear last week that he would not travel on human rights grounds – a view shared by plenty of others who have opted to keep counsel. “You have to look at the entire Middle East region,” Pelley said. “We have an excellent relationship with the Middle East and it’s very important; why it’s important is we can’t play anywhere in Europe at this time of year. Saudi is just an extension of the Middle East strategy. “The European Tour is one of many global companies who operate in Saudi Arabia. We understand their goal to make parts of the country more accessible to global business, tourism and leisure over the next decade.” If not so serious, this would of course be hilarious. Here is a sporting body which penalises competitors for making an error with a scorecard yet thinks it reasonable to go cap in hand to a regime which, according to Amnesty International, oversaw the execution of 146 people in 2017. What Pelley understandably fails to mention in regards to Saudi Arabia is commercial necessity as his tour falls further and further behind its US equivalent. But must that arrive at all costs? To his credit, the Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee highlighted the Tour’s woefully bad call. “I cannot imagine what economic incentive it would take to get me to go to a place that is so egregiously on the wrong side of human rights,” he said. “I don’t think they fully understand what they are doing. “I don’t understand it from an economic point of view, I don’t understand it from a business point of view and I don’t understand it from a moral point of view. They are legitimising and enriching the rulers of this regime. I won’t even watch it on the TV. They should not be there. By participating, they are ventriloquists for this abhorrent, reprehensible regime.” Rose shrugged off such a notion. “I’m not a politician, I’m a pro golfer,” the Englishman said. “There are other reasons to go play it. It’s a good field, there’s going to be a lot of world ranking points to play for, by all accounts it’s a good golf course.” Rose’s explanation isn’t good enough, not least for someone so intelligent. When adding that he looked forward to “experiencing” Saudi Arabia, he should have contemplated what that has meant for so many others . Golfers readily skip events for all manner of trivialities. The problem is many of those around them rarely have the gumption to point out how poor scenarios may look in the real world. Commercial deals for players have spin-offs for managers, of course. The next time football or rugby is urged to view the world through golf’s lofty prism, the retort should be straightforward. The next time golf preaches about a genuine desire to be inclusive and diverse, we are entitled to burst out laughing. Quests for the moral high ground in sport are infamously tricky but this represents an extremity the European Tour should have readily avoided.The prominent Chinese rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for subversion. A court in Tianjin heard on Monday that Wang had been found “guilty of subversion of state power”. Wang, a lawyer who defended political activists, victims of land seizures, and members of the banned religious group Falun Gong, was tried in a closed hearing at the second intermediate people’s court on 26 December. Chinese courts often try sensitive political cases during the holiday season when western diplomats and media are away. He was one of approximately 250 lawyers and activists detained in 2015, as part of what is now known as the 709 crackdown, and was the last of the group still awaiting trial. Wang’s case is notable for the length of time he has been kept incommunicado, prompting a UN rights group on arbitrary detentions in August to call on Beijing to release Wang. After disappearing in August of 2015, Wang’s family was not sure he was alive until July 2018 when a lawyer and friend of the family was able to see him. “In the three years leading up to his sham of a trial, the authorities disappeared Wang Quanzhang into a black hole, where he was likely tortured. Wang’s family, who continue to be harassed by the authorities, didn’t even know if he was alive until recently,” said Doriane Lau, China researcher at Amnesty International. “His continued imprisonment only prolongs their suffering.” Wang’s sentencing was lighter than expected for a charge that carries a maximum punishment of life in prison. Wang’s pre-trial detention should contribute to his sentence, which means he could be released as early as 2020. In addition to his prison term, the court said he would be deprived of his political rights for five years – a parole-like period of heightened scrutiny. He will also be stripped of his legal license and unable to practice. “Until Wang Quanzhang is completely free, and he and his family are compensated for this nightmare, the injustice will continue,” said Michael Caster a human rights advocate who has worked with Wang. A directive ordering Chinese media not to report on Wang’s sentencing was leaked at the weekend. “Without unified prior arrangement, do not gather news or report, do not comment or reprint,” it said, according to China Digital Times. A copy of Wang’s indictment says the lawyer “seriously harmed the country’s security and social stability” by accepting funds from foreign organisations, training lawyers, representing “cults,” and providing investigative reports overseas.West Ham moved into the fourth round of the FA Cup with an edgy victory but the main talking point was a mild strop from Marko Arnautovic, who reacted to his early substitution by mooching off the pitch with the demeanour of a sulky teenager. Having given West Ham control of a tense tie against spirited and robust opponents, Arnautovic was unimpressed when he saw the fourth official holding up his number in the 20th minute. He flung his arms in the air, ignored Michail Antonio’s attempts to console him and questioned why Manuel Pellegrini had opted for a safety-first approach after learning his best forward had felt a twinge in his back. There was no swaying Pellegrini and it is impressive that the West Ham manager refused to be cowed by Arnautovic’s force of personality. Pellegrini is paid to make the tough calls and he poured cold water on the episode. It was a simple decision as far as he was concerned: there was no point taking any unnecessary risks given Arnautovic missed most of the festive period with a hamstring injury. “It is not very important,” Pellegrini said. “It was better to change him because he is just coming back from an injury. He could continue but it was better to protect him. He was angry for one minute.” Nothing to see here, then. Pellegrini was not about to pick a fight with one of his leading players, not least because Arnautovic’s importance became even more apparent after he reluctantly made way for Andy Carroll. West Ham toiled without the Austrian and although they played with enough professionalism to dash Birmingham’s hopes of forcing a replay, they could relax only when Carroll scored a trademark header in the 90th minute. With the away fans making plenty of noise, this was a competitive tie. While Birmingham face the prospect of a points deduction after revealing huge losses in their accounts, Garry Monk’s side have risen to eighth in the Championship and the chance to get one over their former owners, David Gold and David Sullivan, added spice to the atmosphere. However, the early signs were ominous for the underdogs. West Ham made an intense start and the opening goal arrived after two minutes. Monk called it a poor one to concede. Harlee Dean gave Angelo Ogbonna too much room from Grady Diangana’s corner and nobody in blue reacted in time when Lee Camp repelled the centre-back’s header. Birmingham’s goalkeeper was entitled to wonder why none of his defenders attacked the loose ball with any urgency. Even Arnautovic seemed surprised at how easy it was to head into the unguarded net for his third goal in two games. Arnautovic’s departure energised Birmingham. Xande Silva, a young Portuguese forward, struggled to click with Carroll and Birmingham targeted Antonio’s weaknesses at right-back. They almost equalised when Gary Gardner played a one-two with Lukas Jutkiewicz on the left and found space in the area, only to shoot against Arthur Masuaku. Birmingham deserved to be level at the break. Jutkiewicz had a towering header cleared off the line by Carroll and Maikel Kieftenbeld fired just wide. Connor Mahoney beat Masuaku with a silky manoeuvre, only for Antonio to stop the winger’s inviting cutback from reaching Gardner. West Ham lacked leadership after resting Mark Noble and Pablo Zabaleta, while Samir Nasri struggled to influence the game before being substituted in the 59th minute. Nasri, available after serving an 18-month doping ban, will need time to show why Pellegrini pushed for his arrival on a free transfer. As the minutes ticked away a blunt edge hurt Birmingham’s determined push for an equaliser and Wes Harding let himself down with a heavy touch after bursting through on goal in the closing stages. At the other end Carroll fired against the bar from close range. He then overran the ball after rounding Camp. At least he made amends when he headed home Antonio’s cross to score for the first time since last April but West Ham had spent most of the tie pining for Arnautovic.Evidence gathered by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, was obtained by Russians and leaked online in an attempt to discredit his inquiry into Moscow’s interference in US politics, prosecutors said on Wednesday. A court filing by Mueller’s office said more than 1,000 files that it shared confidentially with attorneys for indicted Russian hackers later appeared to have been uploaded to a filesharing site and promoted by a Twitter account. “We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case,” a tweet from the account said. “You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!” The tweet was posted in October last year by the account @HackingRedstone, according to the filing. A reporter was also offered leaked material via a direct message the same day. The account has since been removed from Twitter. Mueller’s court filing on Wednesday said the names and structure of folders containing the leaked files matched those used by Mueller’s office when it shared the data, and that these had not been made public. The prosecutors said the filesharing site had confirmed to the FBI that the account which posted the material was registered from an IP address – an identifier for devices connected to the internet – in Russia. FBI investigators had found no evidence that government servers holding the data had been hacked, according to Mueller’s team, pointing instead to a leak on the Russian side. Mueller disclosed the leak in a filing as part of his prosecution of Concord Management and Consulting, a Russian company that allegedly funded hacking operations by Russia’s notorious Internet Research Agency (IRA). The filing argued that attorneys for Concord should not be given access to “sensitive” evidence gathered by Mueller’s team for the case. It said: “The person who created the webpage used their knowledge of the non-sensitive discovery to make it appear as though the irrelevant files contained on the webpage were the sum total evidence of ‘IRA and Russian collusion’ gathered by law enforcement in this matter in an apparent effort to discredit the investigation.”Dua Lipa has become the most-nominated artist at the Brit awards for a second year in a row, underlining her status as one of the UK’s biggest pop stars this decade. After being nominated for five awards in 2018 and winning two, for British female and British breakthrough artist, the British-Kosovan singer is nominated four times in 2019 – though admittedly just for two hit songs. IDGAF, taken from her self-titled debut album last year but still eligible for this year’s awards, was nominated for British single and British video, with One Kiss, her summer smash hit with Scottish producer Calvin Harris, also nominated in the same categories. Her tally of four nominations is matched by 27-year-old pop singer Anne-Marie, who as well as getting song and video nominations for her hit 2002 – co-written by Ed Sheeran – is also nominated in the more prestigious categories of British female and British album. Like Lipa, whose breakthrough came after a few years of fitful popularity, Essex-born Anne-Marie began guesting on dance tracks back in 2013, but she has steadily developed into a chart-dominating solo star. She sang the 2016 Christmas No 1, Rockabye, produced by Clean Bandit (the pop group who are nominated twice this year for their song Solo) and earned her first Brit nomination in 2017, for British breakthrough. Other major collaborative hits followed, including Friends with US EDM producer Marshmello, and she was nominated for her second Brit in 2018 for her song Ciao Adios. Her album Speak Your Mind became 2018’s biggest-selling debut in the UK (though only the 26th highest seller overall). George Ezra, whose album Staying at Tamara’s was the second-biggest selling of 2018 after The Greatest Showman soundtrack, has three nominations, for British album, British male, and British single for Shotgun, which spent 12 weeks in the Top Three over the summer. As the only artist with one of the ten biggest-selling albums of the year in the male and album categories, his sheer success and cross-generational appeal means he will be a strong favourite to win both. Also with three nominations is versatile neo-soul singer Jorja Smith, who won the Critics’ Choice award in 2018, as voted for by a panel of industry experts – this year’s winner has already been announced as Tyneside singer-songwriter Sam Fender. Smith’s debut album Lost & Found is nominated for the British album award, and she also picks up nominations for British female and British breakthrough. The other nominees for British female are Florence + the Machine (another best album nominee), Lily Allen and Jess Glynne. The latter singer, who in 2018 became the British woman with the most chart-topping singles ever in the UK, picked up another nomination for her No 1 single I’ll Be There. She also appears on the twice-nominated These Days by dance group Rudimental, but the nebulous rules defining lead and featured artists mean that she does not share their nomination. Guitar-pop group the 1975 scored two prominent nominations, for British group and British album, though Arctic Monkeys were snubbed in the latter category and only scored one nomination. A strong year for north American music, particularly rap, meant that only two of the 15 international category nominees were not from the US or Canada: First Aid Kit and Christine and the Queens. Rap superstars including Drake, Eminem, Travis Scott and Cardi B were all nominated – as was Jay-Z with wife Beyoncé in the group category – but there was also room for cosmic jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington. In a lineup dominated by major label talent like Lipa, Glynne, Ezra and Anne-Marie, there were some other interesting curveballs, including the 14-strong hip-hop boyband Brockhampton, nominated for best international group despite none of their songs ever reaching the UK Top 100. Impassioned Bristol punk group Idles were nominated for British breakthrough alongside the poppier Mabel, Ella Mai, Tom Walker and Jorja Smith, while Cornish electronic experimentalist Aphex Twin was nominated alongside Ezra, Sam Smith, Craig David and Giggs for best British male, his fourth ever nomination. Perhaps disappointed to miss out in that category will be Calvin Harris, who topped the singles chart twice in 2018 and was rated by Forbes as the highest-earning DJ in the world for the sixth year running, though he does have two nominations for One Kiss with Lipa. Some of the year’s other biggest selling album artists, including Take That, Rod Stewart, Post Malone and Michael Bublé, all failed to secure a single nomination. The nominations are all drawn from votes by the Brits Academy, made up of industry and media figures – except for the best British singles, which are the 10 biggest selling of 2018, and the videos, which are the most viewed of 2018 on YouTube and Vevo. The singles shortlist is then voted on by the Academy along with the rest of the awards, apart from the video award, which is voted for by the public. British male Sam SmithCraig DavidAphex TwinGiggsGeorge Ezra British female Florence + the MachineJorja SmithAnne-MarieLily AllenJess Glynne British single Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa – One KissGeorge Ezra – ShotgunRudimental – These Days (feat. Jess Glynne, Macklemore & Dan Caplen)Dua Lipa – IDGAFAnnie-Marie – 2002Clean Bandit – SoloSigala & Paloma Faith – LullabyRamz – BarkingJess Glynne – I’ll Be ThereTom Walker – Leave the Light On British breakthrough MabelIdlesElla MaiTom WalkerJorja Smith British group Arctic MonkeysGorillazThe 1975Little MixYears & Years British video Anne-Marie – 2002Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa – One KissClean Bandit – Solo (feat. Demi Lovato)Dua Lipa – IDGAFJax Jones – Breathe (feat. Ina Wroldsen)Jonas Blue – Rise (feat. Jack & Jack)Liam Payne & Rita Ora – For You (Fifty Shades Freed)Little Mix – Woman Like MeRita Ora – Let You Love MeRudimental – These Days (feat. Jess Glynne, Macklemore & Dan Caplen) International group The CartersFirst Aid KitBrockhamptonChic & Nile RodgersTwenty-One Pilots International male DrakeEminemKamasi WashingtonShawn MendesTravis Scott International female Cardi BCamila CabelloChristine and the QueensAriana GrandeJanelle Monáe British album Jorja Smith – Lost & FoundThe 1975 – A Brief History of Online RelationshipsFlorence + the Machine – High as HopeAnne-Marie – Speak Your MindGeorge Ezra – Staying at Tamara’s • This article was amended to show that Sam Fender is from Tyneside, not Teeside.Renault has appointed a new chairman and chief executive after Carlos Ghosn resigned from both roles. The board named the outgoing Michelin boss Jean-Dominique Senard as chairman and Ghosn’s former deputy Thierry Bolloré as chief executive, confirming the requests of the French government, which owns 15% of the carmaker. Ghosn resigned on Thursday following his arrest in Japan amid the financial scandal that has rocked the French carmaker and its alliance with Japan’s Nissan. The appointments, which had been widely expected, may begin to resolve a Renault-Nissan leadership crisis that erupted after Ghosn’s arrest in Japan in November and swift dismissal as Nissan chairman. Renault’s board said that Senard will have “full responsibility” for managing the alliance with Nissan and the fellow Japanese carmaker Mitsubishi. Bolloré, 55, will take responsibility for Renault’s operational activities. The board also said Senard will evaluate the carmaker’s governance as it splits the chairman and chief executive roles into two, in a departure from Ghosn’s reign. The appointments mark a clear end to one of the auto industry’s most-feted careers, two decades after Ghosn was dispatched by former Renault CEO Louis Schweitzer to rescue newly acquired Nissan from near bankruptcy – a feat he pulled off in two years. After 14 years as Renault CEO and a decade as chairman, Ghosn formally resigned from both roles on the eve of the board meeting, the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said. Ghosn’s arrest and indictment for financial misconduct has strained Renault-Nissan relations, threatening the future of the partnership he transformed into a carmaking giant. For two months, the tensions deepened as Renault and the French government stuck by Ghosn despite the revelation he had arranged to be paid tens of millions of dollars in additional income, unknown to shareholders. Ghosn has been charged with failing to disclose more than $80m (£60m) in additional compensation for 2010-18 that he had agreed to be paid later. The Nissan director Greg Kelly and the Japanese company itself have also been indicted. Both men deny the deferred pay was illegal or required disclosure, while not contesting the agreements’ existence. Ghosn has denied a separate breach of trust charge over personal investment losses he temporarily transferred to Nissan in 2008. Ghosn finally agreed to step down from Renault after the French government called for leadership change and his bail requests were rejected by the Japanese courts. Senard, 65, faces the immediate task of soothing relations with Nissan, which is 43.4% owned by Renault but is the larger partner by sales. Nissan owns a 15% non-voting stake in its French parent and 34% in Mitsubishi Motors, a third major partner in the manufacturing alliance.The recorded, wiretapped life of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has dominated this week’s evidence at his trial for allegedly running the world’s biggest narco-traffic organisation. Testimony revealed Guzmán used an advanced encrypted communications system to spy on all his four (perhaps five) wives, serial mistresses and up to 19 children – even as US authorities eavesdropped on him. In one call, the cartel boss was recorded for US authorities hoping to one day arm a six-month-old daughter with an AK-47 Kalashnikov. Guzmán’s electronic life was revealed thanks to evidence from an undercover FBI agent, Charles Stephen Marston, and the man he recruited: the cartel’s top IT fixer, Cristian Rodríguez. Marston had posed as a Russian mafioso to lure Rodríguez into disclosing codes for communications using Voice over Internet Protocol using servers in the Netherlands. Rodríguez had already featured in evidence, when he was described by Colombian narco Jorge Cifuentes as having been too “irresponsible” to set up a proper encryption shield at one of Guzmán’s lairs. What Cifuentes did not know was that Rodríguez was worse than that: he was “proactively cooperating” with the FBI. Testifying on Wednesday, Rodríguez explained how he was instructed by Guzmán to install a “spyware” called FlexiSPY on 50 “special phones” as Guzmán called them. The cartel chief became obsessed with the technology, and wanted Rodríguez to hook it up to allow him access to other people’s computers too. On one occasion Rodíguez did so in the presence of the surveyed woman, whom Guzmán “distracted” while he installed the bug. A series of messages were then entered into evidence, exposing Guzmán at a level of intimacy to which no other mafia don has ever been subjected in open court: texts to Guzmán’s current wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, and a mistress, Agustina Cabanillas Acosta, whom Guzmán calls “Fiera” – wild beast. Guzmán tells Emma about an escape round the back of a safe house; “Oh love, that’s horrible”, she responds. Ms Coronel sat in court listening to the evidence and reading the messages for a second time, including those suggesting that she acted as an intermediary in the business – Ms Coronel has denied all illegal activity and knowledge of her husband’s. In one message, Guzmán says of his daughter Maria Joaquina, then aged six months: “Our Kiki is fearless. I’m going to give her an AK-47, so she can hang with me.” With Ms Acosta, Guzmán talks more business than pleasure: “How are the sales going?” he texts, in 2012. “Like busy bees,” she replies. “Nonstop, my love.” She then complains Guzmán is spying on her – which he is. As the messages were shown, Guzmán stared hard, apparently into space, twitching. Some observers noted that the couple refrained from their usual mutual glance before a break. Other recordings were more business-like, such as a conversation in which Guzmán seeks assurance from a man called “Gato” – the cat – that a favoured federal police commander is “receiving the monthly payment”. A cocaine distributor in Ohio is told to expect a consignment of methamphetamine instead. There’s a chat between a senior cartel manager and an operative called “Cholo Iván” telling him to hold off killing people he had kidnapped and bound “to make sure so we don’t execute innocent people”. Iván is then scolded for beating up police officers: “Don’t be chasing cops,” says Guzmán, “they’re the ones who help … Take it easy with the police.” But there’s a second thought: “You already beat them up once,” adds Guzmán, “They should listen now”. The early part of the week was, by contrast, given over to the street-level, brutish violent business of Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel, courtesy of the first prosecution witness to defect from its lowest ranks, Edgar Galván from El Paso, Texas. Galván made for a more interesting witness than his lowly status would suggest, because he represents so many of his kind, and offered insight into how the non-commissioned ranks of a narco-trafficking operation work, how its small cogs turn. Aged 26, he became “party friends” with a sicario – or hitman – for Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel called Antonio “Jaguar” Marrufo, tasked with the “cleansing” of Cuidad Juárez, the Mexican border city, of street-level affiliates of the Juárez cartel, La Línea, The Line. The acquaintance led to Galván to smuggling guns from Texas to Juárez – which he called juguetitos, “little toys” – and modest quantities of cocaine in the opposite direction. The southbound traffic is of especial significance in the light of previous evidence from Vicente Zambada Niebla, the cartel’s logistics manager and son of its cofounder, that 99% of the guns he bought for his organisation came from the US, the so-called “Iron River” of legally-purchased American weapons that fuels Mexico’s war. Jaguar showed Galván a “murder house” with sloping floors to wash blood, in which he killed operatives for La Línea. Galván was arrested in 2011, and is serving 24 years, which he stands to reduce by testifying.When The Ellen DeGeneres Show premiered in 2003, it was to low expectations. At the time, anyone who’d ever been on TV was trying to rebrand as a talkshow host and, for the most part, not succeeding (Sharon Osbourne, John McEnroe, Caroline Rhea – AKA Aunt Hilda from Sabrina the Teenage Witch). A standup comedian-turned-actor, DeGeneres had a successful self-titled sitcom in 1997, when both she and her lead character came out as gay. This meant she played the first lesbian protagonist on a network comedy. But rather than hailing her as revolutionary, Disney-owned network ABC slapped an “adult content” warning on the show, advertisers withdrew their support and viewers sent death threats. Within a year, DeGeneres was unemployed, depressed and radioactive to casting agents. It would have been easy to see the offer to present a daytime talkshow as a comedown, but DeGeneres turned it into one of the greatest second acts in showbusiness. Aware of what was at stake, she poured her energy and creativity into the programme, making it an extension of her persona: upbeat, empathic and wry without being snarky. She showed effortless charisma alongside guests as varied as Jane Fonda and Barack Obama, and her audience would coo when she talked about her wife Portia de Rossi and clap when she advocated for LGBTQ equality. Now, DeGeneres boasts a net worth of $400m, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and 30 Emmys. But 16 seasons in, her show has lost its groove. Her post-monologue dance through the studio audience was once a signature set-piece, but she stopped a couple of years ago, without warning or explanation, and now lets her in-house DJ tWitch do the honours or plays a funny video clip instead. She seems a little weary, and the show does, too. Whereas she used to feature talented kids from viral videos in moderation, this year, 11-year-old Walmart yodelling sensation Mason Ramsey practically made her set his second home, and segments highlighting people or organisations in need who are surprised with a large cheque are well-intended, but feel rushed and formulaic, like a conveyor belt for poverty porn. Worse, DeGeneres too often gives in to her passion for pranks, such as asking Adele to act eccentrically in a juice bar, without seeming to consider whether two multimillionaires jerking around minimum-wage employees for laughs is a good look. When she announced her first comedy special in 15 years, December 2018’s Relatable, which Netflix bought for $20m, it looked more like an exit strategy than a side hustle. Maybe it should have been obvious that she was ready to move on back in season 13, when she changed her theme song from Let’s Have a Little Fun Today to a Pink composition that includes the line, “been kinda bored lately”. She recently confirmed to the New York Times that she is unsure whether she will continue the show once her current contract ends in 2020. Let’s hope she has the vision to know when to stop.As R Kelly’s fall from grace continues – amid fresh allegations of psychological and physical abuse detailed in the Lifetime series Surviving R Kelly – the role TV documentaries and podcasts play in reopening apparent cold cases is being reassessed, too. The R&B star – who has been accused of subjecting women to mental, physical and sexual abuse, and of operating a “sex cult” – is the latest figure to face fresh investigation after series shed new light on their cases. Following the premiere of Surviving R Kelly, prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta are seeking new information from potential victims of the singer who have not yet come forward. (R Kelly has consistently denied any wrongdoing.) In the new golden age of TV and podcasting, one of the byproducts of the boom is an increased workload for police detectives who are being asked to re-examine their files after new evidence emerges on the small screen. It’s the true crime renaissance that has really opened the floodgates. Errol Morris’s film The Thin Blue Line, which was released in 1988 and told the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man falsely accused of murder, set the template for documentaries as a wrong-righting instrument. (Adams’ cases was re-examined and he was released a year after the film came out.) Making a Murderer, The Keepers, The Staircase, Evil Genius and The Jinx have continued that tradition. Making a Murderer, the Netflix sleeper hit that launched in December 2015 and became one of the streaming giant’s most well-known shows, focused on Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, who are both serving life sentences for the murder of the journalist Teresa Halbach. The first series triggered public outcry over their treatment by every branch of the US justice system, although neither man has had their convictions overturned and the second series followed them as their appeal options slowly run out. Andrew Jarecki’s The Jinx sought to implicate rather than exonerate its subject: the elusive real estate heir Robert Durst, who has been ordered to stand trial for the murder of his friend Susan Berman. The final episode of Jarecki’s series captured Durst on a hot mic, apparently confessing to the murders. Durst will stand trial for Berman’s murder later this year. He has denied the charge. Podcasting has had the biggest hit rate when it comes to forcing officials to revisit cases. Serial, In the Dark, The Doorstep Murder and, most recently, The Teacher’s Pet, have all sought to right apparent wrongs. Like Making a Murderer, Serial’s protagonist Adnan Syed – the Baltimore teen convicted of the kidnap and murder of his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 2000 – became a cause célèbre, with SNL parodies and column inches dedicated to the dubious prosecution case that sent him down. Syed is awaiting a new trial after a Maryland judge vacated judgment following the podcast. In the Dark looked at the case of Curtis Flowers, an African-American man from Mississippi who was tried six times for the same crime by a white prosecutor, in a case that shed light on racial bias in the deep south. The Teacher’s Pet, meanwhile focused on the mystery surrounding Sydney housewife and mother-of-two Lynette Dawson, who disappeared in the early 1980s. After the podcast cast doubts over the case, her husband Chris Dawson was charged with her murder in December, creating one of the biggest Australian news stories of the last decade. In the Dark’s Madeleine Baran told the BBC that the podcast-makers are not trying to replace the role of the police, and are simply journalists reporting the facts they find. “We have an advantage in that we’re not the prosecutor and we are not the defence,” Baran said. “That is really important – you need to be calm with factors going either way.” That search for balance is what drove Sarah Koenig and the Serial team, who returned last year to investigate the Ohio court system. Not by focusing on one case but by looking across multiple prosecutions to see how justice works in the US. The findings proved just as popular as the Syed case, with more than 1.4 million people downloading the first two episodes of its third season right after it was released. “I’ve had this urgent feeling of wanting to kind of hold open the courthouse door, and wave people inside,” said Koenig. “Because things are happening – shocking things, fascinating things – in plain sight.” As the R Kelly prosecutors gear up to investigate the star again, we could be about to witness the power of TV and podcasts to sway the scales of justice once more.The US government is about to conclude its third week of a partial shutdown, with 800,000 federal employees sent home or working without pay. Government shutdowns occur when Congress refuses to pass, or the president refuses to sign, a spending bill, cutting off funding to federal departments, like the FBI and parks services. Since 1976, when new budget laws giving Congress more power were enacted, there have been more than 20 gaps in budget funding, though not all of them have led to federal employees being furloughed (meaning sent home on unpaid leave, or working without pay). One shutdown in 1978 under President Jimmy Carter lasted 18 days after Carter vetoed a bill that included funding for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but federal employees continued to work and be paid. Most shutdowns have lasted just days – Ronald Reagan’s administration faced eight shutdowns lasting less than four days, three of which led to employees being furloughed. Here are the five longest shutdowns in US history that left staff without pay. If Trump’s shutdown continues through the weekend it will become the longest in US history, beating one held during Bill Clinton’s presidency that lasted 21 days. The 1995-1996 shutdown occurred when the president vetoed the budget passed by a Congress led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, which sought to rein in spending on health and education, amongst other things. The shutdown ran from 16 December, 1995 to 6 January, 1996 and followed an earlier, related shutdown. Eventually, after concessions on both sides, the shutdown was resolved and Clinton’s approval ratings shot up. Trump’s shutdown began on 22 December and has been caused by a standoff between the president, who is demanding $5.6bn for his border wall, and Congress, which is refusing to sign off on spending bills giving him that money. As a result of the shutdown, 800,000 federal employees have been sent home or are working without pay and Friday will be the first day that many employees will miss their paychecks. Trump used a televised address to argue for the need for a wall to increase border security and has told reporters that while he would prefer to work with Congress on a deal, he would use his emergency powers to circumvent Congress if it could not come to agreement. “I have the absolute right to declare a national emergency,” Trump said on Thursday, contradicting legal scholars who have questioned the president’s right to take such action in this case. This shutdown (1-17 October) was caused when House Republicans offered continuing resolutions aimed at delaying or defunding the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. At the time, Obama wrote a letter to the “dedicated and hard-working employees of the United States government” in which he apologised for the disruption to their work, writing: “None of this is fair to you.” This shutdown, lasting 14-19 November, was the first of two related shutdowns, the second of which lasted 21 days. In this initial five-day shutdown, 800,000 workers were furloughed. Monica Lewinsky testified that it was during this November shutdown, when many paid employees had been sent home, that she and Clinton began their sexual relationship. Like the current shutdown, the first shutdown of 2018 was on the subject of immigration. The shutdown began at midnight on 20 January after Republicans and Democrats could not agree on protective measures for people under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program. Almost 700,000 federal employees were believed to have been furloughed during the shutdown.Rahaf Mohammed, the Saudi teen who shot into the headlines after barricading herself into a Thai hotel room, has pledged to fight for women fleeing persecution after she successfully escaped abuse and the fear of death in her home country. “Today and for years to come, I will work in support of freedom for women around the world – the same freedom I experienced on the first day I arrived in Canada,” she told reporters at a press conference in Toronto. After her plans to seek asylum in Australia fell apart and she feared deportation back to Saudi Arabia, UNHCR intervened and granted her refugee status. Canada offered to resettle her and she landed in Toronto on Saturday. Mohammed, who was previously known as Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, has foregone her last name, after her family disowned the 18-year old in a statement on social media. “I was not treated respectfully by my family and I was not allowed to be myself and who I want to be,” said Mohammed. Costi, a Canadian refugee resettlement agency that works with recently arrived refugees, has helped Mohammed adjust to life in Canada. As soon as she landed in Toronto, she was whisked to the mall to get outfitted in winter clothing and a mobile phone, said Mario Calla, the organization’s executive director. The organization has also worked to find her a family to help ease the resettlement process. Costi has also hired private security for Mohammed, following a number of threats the young woman has received online. Refugee resettlement is often a lengthy process once a candidate has been approved, but Costi takes an average of two emergency cases a year, said Calla. Mohammed’s settlement has been a high-profile matter, with Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, escorting her through the arrival gate of Toronto’s airport. Freeland’s presence has been widely seen as a jab at Saudi Arabia for its treatment of female dissidents. Last year, a tweet by Freeland which sharply criticized the Saudi government’s detention of female activists, prompted officials in the kingdom to expel Canadian diplomats. On Monday, an American-based Saudi lobby group cautioned Canada over its policies– and its overt support of Mohammed. “The provocative and immature policies of [Freeland] and Justin Trudeau against the biggest Middle Eastern country and the heart of the Arab and Muslim world, Saudi Arabia, might lead major Arab-Muslim nations to review their relations with Canada,” tweeted Salman al-Ansari, a spokesman for the Saudi American Public Relations Affairs Committee. Mohammed has indicated she will no longer give public statements, following her press conference and three interviews given on Sunday. Instead, she will spend her time learning English and adjusting to life in a new city and country. “I want to be independent, travel, make my own decisions on education, a career, or who and when I should marry. I had no say in any of this,” she said. “Today I can proudly say that I am capable of making all of those decisions.”The current vogue for animal-related fashion isn’t all down to Instagram and influencers. Sebastian Flyte’s teddy bear Aloysius, featured in Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited, suggests animal accessories were a thing decades ago. Aloysius, in turn, was based on a real life It-bear, Archibald Ormsby-Gore, owned by Waugh’s poet friend, John Betjeman. Betjeman died holding Archie – a classic teddy in smart waistcoat – in 1984. Fast-forward 35 years and animal accessories are a thing again – although admittedly in less highbrow company. They feature as handbags (Loewe has both a bunny and an elephant available, while Moschino has produced a bear bag) and appliqués on sweatshirts (Kenzo’s tiger is a classic). Gucci – always a brand to take things to the max – has a pair of jeans in its recent men’s collection covered in an explosion of stuffed animals worthy of a child’s bedroom. Its most recent advertising campaign, meanwhile, stars several piglets. Animal magic in fashion is often dismissed as silliness, but including plushies in your wardrobe has twin benefits. Mega-lols is one of them. Walking around with Walking around with a Cath Kidston bag shaped like a bird is much more interesting than doing so with a canvas tote – and will almost certainly garner attention both online and in real life (note: this is not a trend to buy into if you’re bashful). It also, of course, provides a sort of security blanket. We may be grown-ups but sometimes the world is a scary place. There’s nothing like a jumper with a bunny (including tail) on it to provide reassurance. Edward Crutchley, who showed a very serious collection at London Fashion Week Men’s this month, brought a surprise in his finale. Several models wore novelty animal slippers. “We wanted some light relief,” says the designer. “The collection was more mature and serious, so this gave an element of irreverence at the end.” He sees the slippers as a mood-raiser. “They have had the most positive reaction of anything we’ve ever made,” says Crutchley. “Everyone loves them and they always raise a smile.” Fashion has undoubtedly cheered up in the last five years. As minimalism has faded, our confidence with statement pieces and pop-art-worthy prints has grown. These come with animal magic this season too, says matchesfashion.com’s buying director, Natalie Kingham. “The reinvented, reworked Jaws T-shirts at Calvin Klein 205W39NYC and Christopher Kane’s colourful horsepower pieces will make great bold summer essentials,” she says. Then, of course, there’s the seemingly unstoppable rise of animal print. This season, it is going beyond the leopard – now so commonplace in fashion that some call it a neutral – to tiger, cow and even giraffe. Kingham says it’s about different ways of styling it: “All variations go this season – whether tailored with neutrals or block colours or teamed together for ultimate impact.” Sales of animal print grew 233% at Asos last year, and design director Vanessa Spence is expecting more. “We continue to love animal print for spring, in every colour, style and print,” she says. “We love coloured prints in neons and bright colour clashes.” So what if you are sometimes reminded of the brightly coloured faux fur found in Build-A-Bear? Think of it as way to dress like a cuddly toy, rather than – like Sebastian, all those years ago – carry one around.The US government shutdown is now the longest such closure in history. On Saturday, day 22, members of Congress were out of Washington, Donald Trump was unmoved in the White House, his border wall unbuilt, and around 800,000 federal workers were still without pay and facing mounting hardship. Friday was the first payday of the year for such workers and contractors, some at home, some forced to work. Some paychecks turned up blank. Contractors may not recoup lost earnings. As callouts rose among workers deemed essential, so did problems for government programmes, for courts, national parks and vital transport and infrastructure services including major airports. Even White House staffing is severely affected. As Friday ticked into Saturday, the shutdown passed the 21-day mark set when Bill Clinton faced a hostile Republican Congress in 1995 and 1996. Nine of 15 cabinet-level departments were not funded. Earlier, Trump backed away from threats to declare a national emergency and build the wall with money appropriated from military, water management and disaster management funds, among other sources. Whatever you want to call it, it’s OK with me. They can name it whatever, they can name it peaches “We want Congress to do its job,” the president said in a discussion on border security at the White House. “What we’re not looking to do right now is national emergency.” Nonetheless, Trump insisted he had the right to declare an emergency if he chose to, and continued to insist there was a crisis at the border. Democrats reject that characterization and continue to prepare a response to an emergency declaration that would involve recourse to the courts. The impasse is over the $5.6bn needed for a wall on the border with Mexico that Trump promised on the campaign trail, saying Mexico would pay for it. Democrats who control the House are determined not to give it to him, whether or not – and most analysts say not – he is correct that savings from a new trade deal will mean Mexico pays after all. The White House has suggested building the wall with steel rather than concrete as a key concession. Democrats are not buying that. “This is where I ask the Democrats to come back to Washington and vote for money for the wall, the barrier,” Trump said on Friday. “Whatever you want to call it, it’s OK with me. They can name it whatever, they can name it peaches.” Democrats point to polling that indicates support for their opposition to Trump on the wall and other immigration matters, and to remarks by Trump in December in which he said he would be proud to force a shutdown. Republicans who control the Senate will not pass legislation advanced by Democrats in the House, knowing Trump will not sign it, but feel relatively sheltered from blame thanks to the president’s public intransigence. Some moderate Republicans have seemed to waver. Trump has not. But as he remains in the White House, after a short visit to the border this week, the pressure is rising: not only from the shutdown but also from continued revelations in the special counsel’s Russia inquiry and as House committees prepare to investigate his actions. According to S&P Global Ratings, meanwhile, the shutdown has cost the US economy $3.6bn, a toll that will exceed Trump’s funding demand in two weeks’ time. The National Weather Service is among government agencies affected by the shutdown. But enough forecasters remain on duty to say that the capital is about to be hit by a major snowstorm. Members of Congress were sure to leave town to avoid it.It is 350 years since the death of Rembrandt van Rijn. There is a year-long programme of events in nine Dutch cities, focusing on Rembrandt and the Dutch golden age (listings at holland.com). In Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum (15 Feb-10 June) will display all of its 22 paintings, 60 drawings and 300 engravings – the biggest Rembrandt collection ever seen in a single exhibition. Later in the year it has a Rembrandt and Velazquez show (11 Oct-19 Jan), while the Rembrandt House Museum has three exhibitions and the City Archives tell his personal story (until 7 April). In the Hague, the Mauritshuis (until 15 Sept) is showing 18 paintings attributed to Rembrandt; there’s a display of the painter’s early work at Leiden’s Museum De Lakenhal (3 Nov-9 Feb 2020, lakenhal.nl); and the Fries Museum (to 7 March) has an intimate show devoted to his wife, Saskia . Exhibitions are also taking place in Germany and the UK.• See codart.nl for details Museums and galleries across Europe are competing to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death. Many events are taking place in Italy, of course, including exhibitions at the Ambrosiana) in Milan (until 17 March; the Museo Galileo in Florencefrom April; and the Museo Leonardiano in Vinci, his birthplace near Florence, from April to June. The UK is also marking the occasion, with simultaneous exhibitions in 12 cities (1 Feb-6 May, rct.uk), each with a selection of 550 of Leonardo’s drawings, followed by a single exhibition of all the works at the Queen’s Gallery in London this summer and another at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh over the winter. The blockbuster show, however, is in autumn at the Louvrein Paris, which aims to bring together as many of the 17 paintings attributed to Leonardo as possible. Germany is celebrating the centenary of Bauhaus, the revolutionary art school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. The opening festival is already under way at the Berlin Academy of Arts, with a programme of concerts, plays and virtual reality installations (until Thursday 24 Jan). But visitors are encouraged to explore beyond the capital throughout the year on a self-guided road trip: the Grand Tour of Modernism connects landmark Bauhaus and modernist architecture in 100 locations across Germany. And three new Bauhaus museums, in Weimar (opens April), Dessau and Berlin (both due to open in Sept), will each hold a major anniversary exhibition.•  bauhaus100.com The Museo del Prado opened in Madrid on 19 November 1819, and is marking its bicentenary with a series of special exhibitions. These include a review of its history with treasures by El Greco, Murillo and more (to 10 March); and individual exhibitions on Bartolomé Bermejo, Velazquez, Giacometti and other artists. The On Tour Through Spain initiative will see paintings from the Prado’s collection loaned to provincial Spanish galleries for a month at a time. For example, A Blind Hurdy-Gurdy Player by Georges de La Tour is at the Atlantic Centre of Modern Art in Gran Canaria (4-30 June) and the Museum of Menorca (8 July-4 Aug) – well worth a visit for holidaymakers to the island.• museodelprado.es Ornans, a picturesque town on the Loue river in eastern France, is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of its most famous son, realist painter Gustave Courbet. There are several sites to visit in “Courbet Country”: the Gustave Courbet Museum and the painter’s studio, both in Ornans; the Courbet family farm in nearby Flagey; the source of the Loue, which he painted many times; and eight walking and cycling trails in the Loue valley. Activities to mark the bicentenary include displays of Courbet’s drawings (15 Feb-29 April) and a Courbet-Ferdinand Hodler exhibition (31 Oct-5 Jan 2020); the Franco-Chinese painter Yan Pei-Ming in residence in Courbet’s studio (from March); and two bike races in his honour (17 and 18 Aug).• Full listings at musee-courbet.doubs.fr This year is also the bicentenary of the birth of John Ruskin, the art critic, writer and reformer. There are exhibitions throughout the year at Brantwood, his former home in Cumbria, on topics from his clothes to his interest in geology and his legacy in Japan. There is also a show devoted to JMW Turner, whom Ruskin championed (6 February to 11 November, brantwood.org.uk). Exhibitions elsewhere include John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing at London’s Two Temple Place (26 Jan-22 April) and Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery (29 May-15 Sept), and Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud at York Art Gallery (29 March-23 June). On Ruskin’s birthday, 8 February, there is a free public lecture on his love of trees at Oxford University Museum of Natural History (register at eventbrite.co.uk) and an evening of readings and music at the Royal Academy, London.• Full listings at ruskinto-day.org On 9 September 2019, it will be 450 years since the death of the Flemish master, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A retrospective in Vienna has just ended, but Belgium has plenty more events commemorating the artist. In Brussels, the Royal Library of Belgium’s complete collection of Bruegel prints is on display at the Palace of Charles of Lorraine (15 Oct-16 Feb 2020); there is a virtual-reality journey back to the 16th century at Hallepoort, a medieval fortified city gate (22 June 2019-21 June 2020); and four new Breugel-themed guided tours. Visitors to the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp can see Breugel’s newly restored Dulle Griet (aka Mad Meg). And Bokrijk, an open-air museum in Genk inspired by Bruegel, has twice-daily performances of a family-friendly show, Bravo Mr Bruegel (11 July-1 Sept). • Full listings at visitflanders.com Visitors are invited to Lichtenstein’s 300th birthday celebrations this year. The principality was founded on 23 January 1719, and an exhibition at the Liechtenstein National Museum recreates the event (27 Feb-23 Jan 2020). The Museum of Fine Arts is staging a jubilee exhibition of the House of Lichtenstein’s Princely Collections, one of the most important private art collections in the world (19 Sept-Jan 2020, kunstmuseum.li). There is also a chance to see the Princely Collections at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, 16 Feb-10 June). Events kick off with a public birthday party on Wednesday and peak on 15 August, a national holiday, with a street party in the centre of Vaduz.• Full listings at 300.li August Renoir died 100 years ago in December. The Eau et Lumière Association, which has created 12 “Impressionisms Routes” linking sites that inspired 12 European impressionist painters, has declared 2019 to be Renoir Year. It hopes to attract more art lovers to attractions on the Renoir Route – visitors to Paris could try the Museum of Montmartre and Renoir Gardens, where he once lived, or the Musée de la Grenouillère in nearby Croissy-sur-Seine, where he painted river scenes. In the Champagne region, the Renoirs’ summerhouse and garden in the village of Essoyes is now a museum with a permanent exhibition on the artist’s life and work, complete with his studio and some of his sculptures, and the gardens that inspired many paintings. Renoir spent the last 12 years of his life in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. His house is now the excellent Renoir Museum, containing family furniture, 14 paintings and 30 sculptures, surrounded by olive trees and with panoramic views down to Cap d’Antibes.• More details at impressionismsroutes.com On 20 July, it will be 50 years since the first humans landed on the moon. Museums and science centres across the globe will be staging space- and lunar-themed exhibitions and activities. In the UK, the National Space Centre in Leicester has a new Apollo exhibition in its Space Oddities gallery (until September). But the main event is a Moon Festival in London, whose programme includes a lecture by Margaret Atwood on magic and the moon, a moon-themed underground jazz gig and a late-night cabaret for over-69s. Other festival highlights include a midnight run, a night-blooming garden and a street party with light projections, an astronomy tent and live music.• 19-26 July, moonfestival.co.ukThe House of Commons has spoken but what has it actually said? A clear and resounding “no” to a complex deal the UK and the EU have spent nearly two years negotiating. And behind the emphatic no lies an unlikely coalition of hard Brexiteers, ardent remainers and those in between, collaborating to kick the deal – and the prime minister. Unfortunately, the kick was directionless. There were loud cheers from outside Westminster when news of the result of the meaningful vote was relayed live to a surging crowd of remainers. They read the vote as providing the rationale for a second referendum, which they believe would keep them inside the EU. The DUP and hard Brexiteers cheered too – for very different reasons. They do not want a second referendum and do not read this result as a rallying cry for one. For them, the withdrawal agreement and political declaration will not deliver their vision of a future for the UK in a world of wonderful opportunity. Their rejection of the deal is a demand for a renegotiation. Specifically, the DUP insist on ditching the backstop, saying it is unnecessary, despite farm and industry leaders in Northern Ireland welcoming Theresa May’s deal as a good option. Public opinion overall in Northern Ireland, which appears in favour of the backstop, is not reflected in Westminster. It is notable that Lady Sylvia Hermon, an independent unionist from Northern Ireland, voted in favour of this deal. So we are where we are, but we don’t have the option of staying as we are. The UK is leaving the EU on 29 March – that does not change with the meaningful vote. The EU is watching the clock ticking and is making preparations for a no-deal Brexit. This week in Strasbourg discussions about those preparations took place, focusing on citizens, transport and financial services – noting that any contingency plans will not be as advantageous for citizens on both the EU and UK sides as what the withdrawal agreement would provide. Individual member states are also ramping up preparations, but no one relishes it. But we are also mulling over the “meaningful vote” and trying to find meaning in it. To make 116 MPs happy with one simple solution, even if there was one, to reach the smallest majority in the House of Commons based on Tuesday’s vote, is a huge task. Ditching the backstop as proposed by some would require the EU to rip out one third of the withdrawal agreement, leaving it lopsided and unbalanced. The objective of having no hard border on the island of Ireland is central to the withdrawal agreement, as are citizens’ rights and the financial settlement. Filleting the backstop will not happen. To do so would send shivers down the spines of many citizens in Northern Ireland and in my own constituency, which borders it, not to mention those across Europe who have been reassured by the EU standing up for the interests of a small member state. It may be time for May to move on from the almost eternal internal debate and division in her own party over Europe and now over Brexit. She needs to realise that she cannot keep every one of her Tory colleagues happy. Can a way and words be found to satisfy enough dissenters that it’s time to move on and facilitate an orderly Brexit? Appeals to Brexiteers fall on deaf ears. They are wedded to the cause and the sense that greatness awaits them in an EU-free world. The appeal, instead, must be to the moderates, including those who wish that Brexit would just go away. Can they accept that Brexit is coming and opt for an orderly planned Brexit – perhaps a softer one – rather than allow a chaotic and unplanned Brexit to happen by default? All is not lost – just yet. We need a clear indication from the House of Commons on a positive direction towards Brexit. Time and patience is ebbing. There will be more twists and turns this week and next before sanity prevails, I hope. • Mairead McGuinness is vice-president of the European parliament and an Irish MEPPropelled by a mass public rendition of Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves and accompanied by a thudding police helicopter overhead, hundreds of protesters have rallied in central London in solidarity with an estimated 89 Women’s Marches worldwide. In Athens, Berlin, Washington DC and Los Angeles, to name just a few, tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out to protest against violence against women and the impact of policies of austerity. They also had some choice words for Donald Trump and Theresa May. “Today is about improving the living and working conditions of women,” said Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, a lawyer, activist and the organiser of the London protest. “On the ground and in the data, it it is proven that austerity is disproportionately affecting women, especially vulnerable women.” Themed as the Bread and Roses March, in homage to the 1912 strike that revolutionised working women’s rights in the United States, the London chapter closed down the length of Regent Street, cheered through Piccadilly Circus and marched on to Trafalgar Square to hear a coalition of speakers from the Fawcett Society, Solace Women’s Aid and the Women’s Equality Party. Students Isobel, 18 and Nicole, 17, had travelled from Kingston for their first protest. Nicole was there “for science and to prove a career in engineering can be for everyone”. “Nicole’s teacher wouldn’t give her the textbook for her physics class for over a month because he assumed she was going to drop out,” said Isobel. “I complained about him but I’m the one who got in trouble,” said Nicole. “He would separate groups in class into boys against girls.” The first Women’s March, held the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, was the largest single-day protest in US history, drawing millions of people to the streets in the US and around the world to reject Trump in a colourful riot of placards, fury and pink “Pussyhats”. But the marches held in the US yesterday appeared to struggle to reach the heights of previous iterations, attracting tens of thousands rather than millions of people after controversial statements by organisers were blamed for pushing down numbers. While rallies took place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and, chiefly, Washington DC, they appeared diminished after accusations of antisemitism. In 2017 Tamika Mallory, one of the co-chairs of the Women’s March leadership, was criticised after she posted a photo on Instagram of herself and Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has made anti-semitic statements, calling him “the GOAT” – greatest of all time. Mallory has since said that she does not agree with all of Farrakhan’s statements, but refused to condemn him. The row, though, continues to cast a shadow. Yesterday rifts within the movement caused rival events to be held in New York and Philadelphia, with organisers deciding not to hold a march at all in Chicago. Plans to march in Eureka, California were cancelled after supporters decided that the protest would be “overwhelmingly white”. Elsewhere, however, the mood was buoyant, if angry. In Athens women held placards declaring “Silent No More” next to a picture of Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom. In Berlin about 2,000 people turned out to protest near the Brandenburg Gate, with slogans including “I’m Not Ovary Acting” and “Fight Like a Girl”. And in London, women waved signs emblazoned with messages including “Girl Power!”, “Put on your war paint” and, out of support for a BBC Radio 2 DJ, “Sara Cox: SMASHING IT!”. Thirteen year-old Izzy Gage from Fairham in Hampshire had asked her mother, Suzie, if they could come “because we’re feminists and just because I’m a girl, I’m not less”. Alison Traub had also come from Cambridge to support her daughter: “It’s hugely important to have our voice heard … to spur people on and be here and be counted. The upside is that it will inspire people to do something in a practical way.” The inspiration for this year’s London march was the Polish-born American suffragette and workers’ rights campaigner Rose Schneiderman, who, after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York in 1911 where 146 mainly female garment-industry workers died, declared: “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.” One placard held aloft read: “Sugar and spice and reproductive rights.” Another, quite simply, “Theresa May, we won’t pay”. Not all words for Britain’s second female prime minister were said in anger, however. Promoting the message #WeAreChange, activist Helen Pankhurst and Labour MP Dawn Butler drew huge cheers, and Butler declared: “We march for every single woman. This might not be popular, but Theresa May, we march for you too.”The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, will step down on 1 February – three and a half years before the end of his term – in search of greener pastures. His readiness to resign from the leadership of one the two most powerful international financial institutions is a worrying omen. But it is also an important wake-up call. The World Bank and the IMF are the last remaining columns of the Bretton Woods edifice under which capitalism experienced its golden age in the 1950s and 1960s. While that system, and the fixed exchange rate regime it relied upon, bit the dust in 1971, the two institutions continued to support global finance along purely Atlanticist lines: with Europe’s establishment choosing the IMF’s managing director and the United States selecting the head of the World Bank. Kim, a career physician who presented himself as a champion of poverty alleviation, now leaves the fate of the bank’s leadership in the hands of Donald Trump – the global equivalent of a progressive supreme court justice hanging up his robes in the middle of a Republican White House. Adding a touch of the absurd to the drama, it is the US president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who is now leading the search committee for Kim’s replacement. But like every crisis of the Trump era, this sordid affair is an excellent opportunity to mobilize around an entirely new vision for the Bretton Woods institutions – to push for radical reforms that would put the resources of the World Bank and the IMF in the service of the many, rather than lubricating the wheels of global finance in the interest of the very few. Such a progressive vision would bring the Bretton Woods system much closer to the lofty intentions of its framers. “Prosperity, like peace, is indivisible,” said the US treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, in his inaugural speech to the Bretton Woods conference, which gave birth to the World Bank (then the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and to the IMF. “We cannot afford to have it scattered here or there among the fortunate or enjoy it at the expense of others.” The original Bretton Woods plan was for exchange rates to be fixed, with the IMF helping heavily indebted countries restructure their debt and a stabilization fund curbing capital flight. Meanwhile, the World Bank would offer development finance and an international commodity stabilization corporation would “bring about the orderly marketing of staple commodities at prices fair to the producer and consumer alike”. Finally, the whole system would be dollar-denominated, with the greenback being the only currency exchangeable for gold at a fixed rate. If we do not act quickly – demanding a radical change of direction – the World Bank will likely fade into irrelevance John Maynard Keynes, the chief British negotiator at Bretton Woods, was worried that the new system could only rely on the dollar as long as America had a trade surplus. The moment the United States became a deficit country, the system would collapse. So, Keynes suggested that instead of building the new world order on the dollar, all major economies would subscribe to a multilateral International Clearing Union (ICU). While keeping their own currencies, and central banks, countries would agree to denominate all international payments in a common accounting unit, which Keynes named the bancor, and to clear all international payments through the ICU. Once set up, the ICU would tax persistent surpluses and deficits symmetrically so as to balance out capital flows, volatility, global aggregate demand and productivity. Had it been instituted, the ICU would have worked alongside the World Bank to keep the global economy in balance and build shared prosperity worldwide. But Keynes’s ICU was rejected. The United States was unwilling to replace the dollar as the anchor of the new monetary system. And so the IMF was downgraded to a bailout fund, the World Bank was limited to lending from its own reserves (contributed by stressed member states) and, crucially, any possibility of the IMF leveraging the World Bank’s investments (like a central bank might have done) was jettisoned. Following large US trade deficits, then president Richard Nixon announced on 15 August 1971 the effective end of the Bretton Woods system – just as Keynes had predicted. Immediately, the private banks, which the Bretton Woods system had been keeping under a lid, sprang up and the world was taken over by financialization. Rather than supporting governments and prosperity, the World Bank and the IMF led the so-called Washington consensus: an orchestrated campaign of mass privatization, austerity and financial deregulation. “There are virtually no limits on what can be privatized,” wrote Mary Shirley, the chief of the public sector management and private sector development division, in 1992. Jim Yong Kim was once a fierce critic of the Washington consensus. In his book Dying for Growth, published in 2000, Kim railed against the World Bank’s free marketeering, the costs of which “have been borne by the poor, the infirm and the vulnerable in poor countries that accepted the experts’ designs”. Yet as president, Kim turbocharged the bank’s commitment to private profits against the public interest. “Maximizing finance for development” (MFD), the strategy he adopted in 2015, transformed the World Bank from a direct investor in developing countries to a mere facilitator of private finance. The bank’s core activity would not be lending to governments, but to “de-risk projects, sectors and entire countries”, in effect socializing the risks on behalf of the private investors and privatizing any gains. From this perspective, it makes perfect sense that Mr Kim resigned early to take up a post at … a private equity firm. His decision must, however, be our cue to review the role of the World Bank and the IMF today, and perhaps to revisit Keynes’s prescient idea circa 1944. The world today needs, as much as it did in 1944, a massive international investment program. Back then, humanity needed reconstruction after a lethal world war. Today, the planet is crying out for a green transition that will cost at least $8tn annually. Jim Yong Kim’s departure makes one thing clear: the World Bank is on the brink Where will the money come from? Surely not from the stressed budgets of our states. Here’s an idea: build a new Bretton Woods and fund the International Green New Deal by simply mobilizing idle savings via a linkup between the revamped World Bank and the new IMF. The IMF can become the issuer of a digital currency unit in which all international payments are denominated, countries can retain their currencies (that will float freely against the IMF’s unit), and a wealth fund can be built by depositing in it currency units in proportion to every country’s trade deficits and surpluses. Meanwhile, backed by the IMF’s capacity to issue the world currency unit, the World Bank can crowd idle savings from across the world into green investments, reclaiming its soul after decades of investing in environmental destruction and human displacement. Kim’s departure makes one thing clear: the World Bank is on the brink. New development banks are growing in size and in scope, filling the space that the World Bank has long since abandoned. Now is the time to mobilize – to push a new crop of progressive leaders to start thinking internationally, taking their enthusiasm for the Green New Deal to the global level. If we do not act quickly – demanding a radical change of direction – the World Bank will likely fade into irrelevance. Or worse: it will become a plaything for the Trump family and its associates, making the world into their great golf course. David Adler is a writer and a member of DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective. Yanis Varoufakis is the co-founder of DiEM25. He is also the former finance minister of GreeceA group of influential German politicians and business leaders including the woman primed to take over from Angela Merkel as chancellor have urged Britain to stay in the EU as Brexit looms. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who became leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union last month, joined more than two dozen political, business and cultural figures in penning an open letter to the Times, arguing “from the bottom of our hearts” that Britain should not leave the bloc. “Britain has become part of who we are as Europeans,” the letter read. “We would miss Britain as part of the European Union, especially in these troubled times. Therefore Britons should know: from the bottom of our hearts, we want them to stay.” The letter said they respected the choice of the British people to leave, but if the UK decided to stay, “our door will always remain open”. Nodding to the two countries’ shared history, the group said Britain “did not give up on us” after the second world war and welcomed Germany back into the European community. Germans “have not forgotten and we are grateful”, they wrote. “Should Britain wish to leave the European Union for good, it will always have friends in Germany and Europe,” they said. “But Britons should equally know that we believe that no choice is irreversible.” The German leaders went on to say: “We would miss the legendary British black humour and going to the pub after work hours to drink an ale. We would miss tea with milk and driving on the left-hand side of the road. And we would miss seeing the panto at Christmas. “But more than anything else, we would miss the British people – our friends across the Channel.” Kramp-Karrenbauer was the most high-profile signatory of the letter, but she was joined by politicians including Andrea Nahles, the leader of the Social Democratic party, the Greens co-leaders and the head of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee. The signatories also included the president of the Federation of German Industries and senior executives at Daimler and Airbus, as well as sporting and cultural figures such as the former German footballer Jens Lehmann and the singer Campino. The plea came as some in Berlin predicted disastrous consequences if no Brexit deal was reached and signalled openness to the possibility of Britain staying in the EU. On Thursday, the German parliament passed a Brexit transition law, which would only take effect if the planned transition period until the end of 2020 were initiated. The foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said the ball was in the UK’s court, adding that “the time for games is over”. Expressing her regret that the House of Commons rejected Theresa May’s Brexit deal, Kramp-Karrenbauer said: “We will not block the path to Britain remaining in the EU. London must now put forward constructive proposals as to how to proceed.”There were shades of West Indies’ glory years to be found throughout their crushing defeat of England in Bridgetown but, when their gentle giant of a captain, Jason Holder, led his resurgent team from the field amid jubilant scenes, one thing felt missing. This was England’s first Test in Barbados since Tony Cozier died in May 2016. And as the voice that became synonymous with the shellackings of yesteryear, it would have been a mild source of comfort to followers back home – and delight to those in the region – had his Bajan lilt been deftly steel-panning the final moments of the latest England collapse. The professionalism that became one of the hallmarks of Cozier’s 50-plus years of broadcasting and writing - along with accuracy, knowledge, wit and colour – would never have allowed triumphalism to creep in, of course. But according to his son, Craig, among the locals whooping and cheering as the unlikely Roston Chase ran through the tourists like a dose of salts, his heart would nevertheless have swelled. “Towards the end of his career the good West Indies performances were few and far between. But this Test match would have made him so, so proud,” Cozier Jr said . “And he would have been especially proud of Jason Holder, who came through our club, Wanderers CC [in Bridgetown]. “My dad was a club man for 40-50 years and he was such a fan of Jason. The hard times depressed him but he always knew Jason’s character would make him one of the best things to come along for Caribbean cricket. In tough times he has turned himself into a strong leader of West Indies.” Being raised by such a well-known and popular broadcaster is a similar source of pride for Craig. He followed his father into the cricket world, first as a local newspaper journalist in Barbados, then a statistician, through to his current role as a television producer working on such events as the Indian Premier League. The Cozier family first arrived in the 18th century – their Scottish ancestors were labourers amid the rise of the sugar cane industry – and two and a half years on from Tony’s death, aged 76, they remain touched by the messages and tributes that flowed like the rum in the jubilant Greenidge and Haynes stand over the weekend. “He was already the voice of West Indies cricket before I was born and because his voice was attached to the success, that made me love what he did,” said Craig. “You would meet people, hear their stories, see them greet him with smiles, and you started to realise how important he was to the Caribbean people and how he shaped the culture of cricket. “There were so may tributes from all over the world when he died. Some of the more emotional ones, for me personally, were the ones that didn’t even mention his career in cricket, just the man himself and the human touch.” In his later years Cozier Sr had become a vocal critic of the West Indies Cricket Board during a period of political turmoil. At the time of death he had been pursuing legal action against its president, Dave Cameron, following remarks that poor eyesight had seen him dropped from local television commentary (and not, as most suspected, his views). “He found the board too sensitive to his critiques,” Cozier Jr said. “He was always constructive but even now you can still how see they react to criticism, like with [the recent appointment of head coach] Richard Pybus. If only they listened to people. But ultimately it’s about the players and now, especially the Test team, there is a steel about them. “Slowly we are finding a team who are competitive and will become more and more respected. That’s all that fans want to see: pride on the field. For a few years it seemed like the players weren’t interested – there was so much fighting with the board – but now, finally, we are seeing the stuff we want.” England’s cricketers may not share this sentiment as they head to Antigua for Thursday’s second Test, tails between legs. But for those among the travelling support who also fell in love with the style and swagger of West Indies teams growing up, drawn in by Cozier’s tropical tones, it is hard not to smile at this latest upturn.“He’s decapitating a Triceratops,” Siobhan Starrs observes casually. “You want drama with the T rex. We’ll give it to you.” The gory scene, worthy of Jurassic Park, is frozen in time in the 31,000sq-ft fossil hall at the popular Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, which reopens to the public on 8 June after a massive overhaul spanning five years and costing $125m. The Nation’s T rex, as this individual is known, will stand about 15ft tall, upright for the first time in 66m years, in this new exhibit, alongside more than 720 specimens, including dinosaurs, plants, animals and insects, ranging in size from a 90ft long Diplodocus to pollen grains of a millimetre. To the dismay of countless parents looking for diversions on rainy days, the grand fossil hall closed in 2014 for the biggest building renovation in the museum’s history. With its 1910 architectural grandeur and ornate craftsmanship restored, what was once colloquially known as the Hall of Extinct Monsters will now be called The David H Koch Hall of Fossils – Deep Time, in recognition of a $35m gift from the controversial conservative billionaire David Koch. The Smithsonian Institution’s 19 museums and zoo contain everything from Abraham Lincoln’s last silk stovepipe hat to Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis but there had always been a T rex-shaped hole in the collection. Visitors to the old hall had to make do with a cast replica. But 30 years ago a Montana rancher, hiking with her family on land managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the Hell Creek Formation, made a startling discovery. Digging with a garden shovel and jackknife, Kathy Wankel unearthed a complete T rex arm. A local expert excavated the rest. In 2014 the specimen was loaned to the Smithsonian for 50 years and now the skeleton has been assembled. It is an especially important T rex because of “all the debate about why the tiny little arms”, said Starrs, project manager in the museum’s office of exhibits. “It’s a very complete specimen for T rexes and it has the most complete arm ever found, including all digits, which helped advance science because this is an ongoing question: how coulda truly predatory dinosaur can take down prey if its arms are almost vestigial looking? “We present this as a question of open science in the exhibition because it really isn’t fully resolved, but they were probably scavengers and predators both, so they were just the perfect eating machine. If they came across something that was already dead they would scavenge. But they also were truly predatory at the same time.” Stomping on and biting the hapless triceratops, the T rex is not alone in playing to the gallery. Starrs (“I have kids so of course I love Jurassic Park”) explained: “It definitely was an important goal of ours that we wanted things to be as lifelike as possible, which doesn’t always mean high drama. So we’ve got predatory scenes like with our T-rex, which is clearly a dramatic moment, but then we also have ones where they’re slumbering or gently scratching the side of the face. “We’re trying to capture all phases of life, not just the most dramatic. Our Allosaurus is where we decided to take a predator and put it in in a surprising pose, a nesting scene, so it’s sitting with a clutch of eggs within its protective tail curve. The idea is to make them both scientifically accurate and make you start thinking about them as a living organism that lived in a real place in an ecosystem with other living things around it, just like organisms do today.” Other highlights in what is billed as the most visited room in the most visited natural history museum in the world include the first fossil to be given the name Stegosaurus as well as a Mastodon rearing up under a quotation from Charles Darwin: “From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” There are also some new acquisitions. Starrs said cryptically: “The most exciting one was a recent gift I can’t really talk about but it’s going to be great when visitors see it.” We’re using the past to understand the human footprint on the planet today. That’s revolutionary During the hall’s shutdown, all specimens were removed for conservation and study by Smithsonian scientists in a network of specially created labs and storage units in the bowels of the museum (“No social media post please” reads a sign with red lines through Facebook, Twitter and camera symbols). The biggest and heaviest fossils were disassembled and transported to “dino builders” Research Casting International near Toronto in Canada, where they were repositioned into more scientifically accurate poses. In some cases it was almost like a second excavation. A Gorgosaurus skull, for example, that had been half-embedded in plaster during a previous preservation process turned out to have a complete other side with even a full row of teeth. The first Ceratosaurus ever found, tantalisingly inaccessible to scientists for more than a century because it was half-buried in a museum wall, was labouriously extracted with hammer and chisel and power tools. Steve Jabo, a preparator proudly surveying the Ceratosaurus cast that will be displayed on its back in a losing fight against the Stegosaurus, explained: “It was locked in the wall in 1910. We didn’t know what the back would look like. The skull was smashed flat – it just happens geologically – but we had a guy who makes moulds reinflate it to 3D instead of being pancaked.” The gallery will depict life on earth’s epic journey of more than 3.7bn years, teasing out themes and fundamental questions around natural selection, ecosystems changes and mass extinctions. It also comes with a timely message about the impact of us. Starrs said: “We’re using the past as a point of entry and understanding the human footprint on the planet today. That’s revolutionary. “Are we headed to another mass extinction and are we driving that as a species? It was an asteroid and now is it humans? We tackle these questions in the exhibition which I’ve never seen done in a fossil hall before.” Yet the hall will carry David Koch’s name. He and his brother Charles have sent at least $100m directly to 84 groups denying climate change science since 1997, according to Greenpeace. David Koch’s donation comes at a time when museums are under greater scrutiny than ever over their sources of funding. Last April protesters gathered at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M Sackler Gallery of Art to focus attention on what they claim is the wealthy family’s role in the opioid crisis. Randall Kremer, the director of public affairs at the Natural History Museum, said: “The question certainly comes up but we don’t vet our donors on anything more than whether they believe in the mission. In the case of Mr Koch, he’s been on the board of the museum for a decade and is one of the preeminent philanthropists in the United States. Beyond that, it’s not an issue.”Police and military have launched a massive crackdown in Zimbabwe after what appears to be have been a widespread breakdown of public order linked to food and fuel shortages in the impoverished country. Access to the internet and social media was shut off for most of Wednesday, and armed soldiers were patrolling the streets of major cities as unidentified men were reported to be sweeping through poor neighbourhoods of Harare, the capital, and beating people “at random”. Activists, lawyers and other citizens described a wave of abductions in and around Harare. In some poor neighbourhoods, groups of young men set up roadblocks and were stoning the few vehicles on the roads. Police cells across the city are “full to capacity”, packed with large numbers of men and children. “The internet shutdown has been [used] to cover up a massive operation of repression,” said Doug Coltart, a lawyer who spoke to more than 30 detainees at the Harare’s central prison on Wednesday. Some were children. “Most said they had been abducted from homes by masked men with AK47s who dragged them out and beat them up. They are being held without charges or representation, with no food or water … The brutality of what is going on is shocking.” Police sealed off the centre of the southern city of Bulawayo following rioting and widespread looting. Security forces in the city beat people in their homes, forced residents to remove barricades from streets and fired on looters, local witnesses said. At least one person has been shot dead. The disorder followed a national strike called from Monday by unions in response to a steep rise in fuel prices ordered by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a ruling party stalwart who took power when Robert Mugabe was forced to resign after a military takeover in November 2017. Legacies of Mugabe’s 37-year rule include massive unemployment, huge government debts, an acute shortage of hard currency and a crumbling infrastructure. Desperation for food has forced some people to venture out in major cities but virtually all shops are closed and fuel stations empty. “I went out to buy some vegetables for my sick mother and the streets were full of sullen, hostile young men. They tried to make me buy a single mango for $15,” said one Harare resident. Police fired teargas in the capital after a crowd tried to overrun a shopping centre that opened to sell bread. Soldiers with AK-47s took charge of the long line. The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, a respected NGO, said it had received reports of human rights violations across Zimbabwe. Its members had attended to more than 100 patients by Tuesday afternoon, some with serious injuries. One doctor said they had treated at least 30 people with gunshot wounds, and 80 victims of serious assault. Activists working to provide care to victims of political violence said hundreds of people had been injured, but the true total was unknown because many were too frightened to seek medical treatment. “Things are very grim. It is very confused. No one knows what is happening,” said one veteran human rights worker. Eight people including a police officer died during clashes on Monday, according to human rights activists. Mnangagwa is travelling in Asia and Europe, leaving the hardline vice-president, Constantino Chiwenga, in charge. Chiwenga has been blamed for the shooting by soldiers of six civilians during opposition protests days after Zimbabwe’s election on 30 July last year, and for a brutal wave of repression after the results were announced in August. It is unclear who is conducting the raids, but their methods are very similar to those of security forces during the wave of repression following the election, which was won by Mnangagwa. It is also unclear to what extent the disorder and protests over the last 48 hours have been centrally organised. In a post on his Facebook account on Wednesday, Mnangagwa said he was saddened by the “wanton violence and cynical destruction” during the protests. The information minister, Monica Mutsvangwa, said on state television on Tuesday night that the demonstrations amounted to “terrorism” and were “well-coordinated” by the opposition. The crackdown has largely targeted opposition strongholds, though the leader of the ruling Zanu-PF party’s youth wing was arrested along with six others for burning buses belonging to the state-owned transport company. Amos Chibaya, a senior official in the Movement for Democratic Change – Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, said “unknown assailants” had attacked his home in Harare on Tuesday night and then again on Wednesday morning. Evan Mawarire, a pastor and prominent social media activist, was arrested his home in Harare early on Wednesday morning and has been charged with inciting violence. Speaking to the Guardian moments before his arrest, Mawarire described armed police massing outside his house. “They are not letting anyone in or out except my lawyer,” he said. Residents of Kuwadzana, a poor neighbourhood of Harare, said unidentified men had been going “door to door”. “They smashed our windows then burned out our car,” said Carol Maguwu, 27. Relatives of Kinos Shoko, another resident, said the 56-year-old had been abducted at noon on Tuesday by unidentified men and returned to his home at midnight, very badly beaten and unable to hear or speak.I’m employed by SOS Méditerranée and Médecins Sans Frontières to document humanitarian rescue missions in the Mediterranean. But I’m also part of the team of sailor-rescuers – I received the same training, and learned the same drills and first aid techniques. As a photographer I’m a witness, but there’s always the possibility that I’ll need to put down the camera and be hands-on. It happens pretty often, in fact. For this particular moment on the rescue ship  Aquarius in October 2017, I was able to just chronicle the rescue. In that one day, 588 survivors were brought aboard. The Aquarius can accommodate 600 people but we’ve had to bring 1,000 on before. The migrant boats often leave around the same time because they are all waiting for a window of good weather and a calm sea. When we spot a boat in distress, we approach it in two small, rigid-hulled inflatable boats filled with lifejackets. If we arrived directly with an enormous ship it could risk damaging the migrants’ boat, or people might start jumping into the water. The priority is always to ensure people will be able to stay afloat if anything happens. The rubber boats – this one is typical – tend to contain eight people for every square metre. The boats are very thin and are always overloaded and consequently very fragile. The people in this photo were fleeing Libya and had already spent 10 to 15 hours at sea, but their boat was in relatively good shape and was still completely inflated. The people were dehydrated, but thankfully no one was injured or had fallen overboard. This is one of the few images I have where the rescued people are looking straight at me. I shot it from the vantage point of one of the rescue boats; someone next to me from the rescue team must have been giving instructions about how to get on the Aquarius. The framing is very tight, which heightens the claustrophobia of being on the migrant boat. The shot represents maybe a third of its total length. Several people have told me the reflections in the water remind them of blood or fire. The sea is hostile: when you’ve been on it for several hours, you burn, you dehydrate. In the middle of the sea, you’re isolated. There’s nobody around. If you don’t photograph what’s happening, there will be no evidence of broken boats, of the deaths. But there’s an important ethic to respect: you don’t photograph the faces of the dead or those who drowned. The images have to be informative for the public, and maintain the dignity of the subjects, who are in incredibly vulnerable situations. They have only the clothes on their backs, squeezed against one another on the rubber boats. On board the Aquarius we have discussions, we distribute food, we stay on watch. There are stories that are unbearable to hear, but there are moments that are enriching, too. During my last mission I took a mini printer and printed photos for the survivors. It’s important that they have a record of this passage. It’s a piece of their journey. It bears witness to their experience. Later, these survivors disembarked in the south of Italy, in Vibo Valentia, then the Red Cross took over. Maritime law states that we should be able to disembark at the nearest safe port to the rescue, but that has become challenging. On a recent mission, we rescued 58 people, but had to spend 10 days roaming the sea near Malta. Those days idling on the sea at the whim of the wind and the waves were hard, and we aren’t equipped to have so many people living aboard that long. Since 2017 the situation has seriously deteriorated. Italy has closed itself off, and other European states are debating who should welcome survivors and when. But there are more migrant boats coming and it’s urgent that we continue the rescue missions. Last year saw more deaths on the Mediterranean than in 2017. Roughly one out of every five people who try to get to Europe in one of these boats dies. That’s enormous. It’s total chaos. But people would rather risk the sea – even if they don’t know how to swim – than staying in Libya. The Aquarius has had to end its operations and they are looking for another boat, because the situation in Libya is not improving and the dangerous departures from there continue – yet testimonies of this are almost completely absent from the central Mediterranean. Let us hope that this new year gives rise to other decisions from the European states, and to a re-consideration of the richness of intercultural exchange. • Maud Veith’s Ils arrivent pieds nus par la mer [They Arrive Barefoot from the Sea] is at Galerie de la MDA in Rennes, France until 10 January. Born: Paris, France, 1983. Studied: Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis and École des Gobelins, Paris. Influences: Graciela Iturbide and Duane Michals for the poetry in their work; Seydou Keïta for his life’s work; Anita Conti for her relationship with the sea and being an adventurous woman; Anders Petersen and Diane Arbus for their access to very private worlds. High point: “Founding the association Femmes PHOTOgraphes two years ago. The visibility and comfort of being with others brings us freedom and accuracy in our work.” Low point: “Facing the rise of the extremes in the world, and being sometimes discouraged about the real power of the image.” Top tip: “Take care of the people in front of the lens by offering them a photo print, so this moment can be a real exchange.” Backing for a second Brexit referendum in parliament is unlikely to be tested until after next week’s meaningful vote, as campaigners weigh up the best moment to try to win over the Labour leadership. The Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston has scrapped plans to table a “doctors’ amendment” calling for the public to be allowed to exercise “informed consent” about Theresa May’s deal. Wollaston said she would wait until after Tuesday in the hope that “Labour will by then be honouring its commitment to back a ‘people’s vote’”. Labour strategists had been discussing how the party should whip its MPs, in the event of an amendment being brought to the vote on Tuesday, and had not ruled out giving a free vote, reflecting varying views in the shadow cabinet. But they are unlikely to have to make a decision until after Jeremy Corbyn has tabled a no-confidence vote in the government, which colleagues say he will do “expeditiously” after Tuesday’s vote, with May’s deal expected to be defeated. Speaking in Wakefield this week, Corbyn stuck resolutely to Labour’s party conference line of first pushing for a general election, after which all options would remain on the table, “including campaigning for a public vote”. His allies are keen to stress that even if May survives a no-confidence motion next week, backing for another referendum would not follow automatically. But Corbyn would come under intense pressure from the party’s membership, which is overwhelmingly anti-Brexit. Downing Street is still hoping for concessions from the EU27 on the Irish backstop, to present to MPs before the vote. A spokeswoman for the prime minister said: “I think in terms of the assurances that the prime minister has said will be forthcoming, that will happen in the lead-up to the vote.” May will be urged to open talks with Labour if MPs vote down her deal. She has already spoken to key union leaders, including Unite’s Len McCluskey, and to several Labour MPs, and has offered to accept an amendment on workers’ rights tabled by John Mann. Another Labour MP, Jim Fitzpatrick, who represents Poplar and Limehouse, said on Friday he was edging towards backing May’s deal, adding: “I’m not quite there yet, but I’m not far away.” Gareth Snell, the Labour MP for Stoke Central, who was part of a group, mainly from leave constituencies, that met the prime minister in Downing Street, has said the workers’ rights amendment could be a “starting point”. However, disparate groups of backbenchers appear unlikely to deliver the scores of votes the government would need to overturn what looks likely to be a significant majority against her deal, and cabinet ministers including Amber Rudd have hinted the prime minister may have to open cross-party talks. Any move to seek an accommodation with Labour would infuriate rightwing Brexiters, but several cabinet ministers would probably prefer working with the opposition over pressing ahead without a deal. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said on Friday he believed parliament was “committed one way or another to try to stop no deal”. But May’s spokeswoman said: “The default position is that if the deal is not voted for, the UK will leave without one, and the only way to avoid that is to vote for her deal.” Extending an invitation to Corbyn to enter negotiations about how best to navigate through the next few perilous weeks would present a dilemma for the Labour leader. One close ally has warned he could be caricatured as “Ramsay MacCorbyn”, if he entered any kind of formal arrangement with May – after Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour leader who was reviled by colleagues for entering a national government with the Conservatives in 1931. “We have no confidence whatsoever that she’s capable of working collaboratively on a so-called soft Brexit,” said one shadow cabinet member. But Corbyn has offered to support May if she offers a customs union and stronger promises on environmental standards and workers’ rights. The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, widely regarded by Labour MPs as being warmer towards the idea of a people’s vote than some other members of the shadow cabinet, has suggested Labour would be willing to talk to MPs from other parties about the best way forward.Nicaragua’s best-known journalist has gone into exile after armed police raided and ransacked his newsroom in what experts called the latest chapter of the country’s slide into autocracy under President Daniel Ortega. Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the editor of Confidencial, a combative newsletter and website and a member of one of Nicaragua’s most influential families, announced his decision on Sunday. Chamorro wrote: “I will continue to fulfil my duties as a journalist from Costa Rica … investigating and denouncing the crimes, corruption and the impunity and documenting the terminal crisis of this dictatorship.” He blamed his decision on the “extreme threats” he and other Nicaraguan journalists were facing as a result of an intensifying press crackdown being waged by the country’s Sandinista leader. He claimed leaving Nicaragua – where Ortega has been struggling to regain control since a destabilising and deadly period of political upheaval began last April – was the only way to ensure his “physical integrity and freedom”. Throughout Nicaragua’s ongoing crisis, Chamorro has repeatedly insisted he would not be forced from the country. “I’m here and here I will remain,” he told the Guardian last month after his offices in the capital, Managua, were stormed and occupied by police. However, the assault on the media has continued to gather pace despite international condemnation. A week after the raid on Chamorro’s offices, another channel, 100% Noticias, was stormed and two of its directors taken into custody, where they remain. The Committee to Protect Journalists labelled the operations “an unacceptable escalation of the Nicaraguan government’s crackdown on the country’s independent media”. Last week, Nicaragua’s biggest newspaper, La Prensa, printed an almost blank front page in protest at the government’s apparent attempt to silence it by impounding printing materials. Readers used marker pens and pencils to write their own headlines into the empty space in a viral social media campaign that used the hashtag #LaPrensaChallenge. Suggested front-page headlines included: “They want to silence us but you can’t silence the truth”, “SOS Nicaragua” and “Nicaragua declares itself a territory free of Orteguismo”. Another headline celebrated the nine-month-old anti-Ortega movement with the rallying cry: “Insist, persist, resist and never desist!” In the article announcing his exile, Chamorro called on Nicaraguan citizens to continue using social media to challenge Ortega and vowed to continue his own journalism from Costa Rica, home to a sizeable and growing Nicaraguan exile community. “I am confident that better days lie ahead for Nicaragua,” he wrote.Although he failed to emerge from an Airbus waving it, MP Mark Francois had in his hand a piece of paper. “My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-day veteran,” he thundered to the news cameras on Friday, shortly before ripping up the aforementioned document. “He never submitted to bullying by any German. Neither will his son.” Leaving aside the somewhat bathetic description of Rommel’s Atlantic Wall defences as “bullying”, can you guess what Mark’s piece of paper actually was? Certification of a history doctorate? (He amusingly already holds an MA in war studies.) A letter from his future self reading simply “Don’t be a thermonuclear dick, Mark – it ends badly”? I’m afraid not. The document was in fact a widely reported missive from the German CEO of Airbus, Tom Enders, who employs 14,000 people in this country and supports a further 110,000 jobs in the supply chain. This week he expressed intense frustration that “more than two years after the result of the 2016 referendum, businesses are still unable to plan for the future … If you are still really sure that Brexit is best for Britain,” Enders concluded, “come together and deliver a pragmatic withdrawal agreement.” Or, as Francois counter-reasoned: “Tom Enders was a German paratrooper in his youth.” Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested that the Queen should, if necessary, suspend parliament to stop things not going his way Incredibly, given this competition, Quote of the Week must still go to Nadine Dorries, who went on telly to express contempt for Brexit-cautious MPs “who really don’t care about their careers going up in flames”. Did the erstwhile gobbler of kangaroo testicles just say that out loud? To hear Nadine speak at the best of times feels like intruding on private stupidity, but even by her standards, this is eye-catching from the member for Mid-Bedfordshire. It can’t really be that Nadine should have been in parliament for almost 14 years without anyone informing her that politicians are in fact SUPPOSED to act out of a higher sense of duty than personal career advancement. Far more believable is the idea that someone has actually flipped her wiring, so that the things Nadine ought to say remain only secret thoughts, while her inner monologue is now broadcast in all its epoch-illuminating glory. Hilarity ensues. Or possibly catastrophe. Ask me again in 63 days. Indeed, as the Brexit clock ticks down, Nadine may well be regarded by future historians as the archetypal thinker of the era. Even at this incredibly late hour, vast swaths of parliament are doggedly placing self-interest above national interest, apparently bolstered by some vague belief that Britain is too big to fail. Or, as Holly Golightly liked to think of Tiffany’s, that nothing very bad could ever happen to you there. If they hold fast to their current priorities and shun the personal inconvenience of compromise, no deal could very conceivably be stumbled into. Of course, there would be no stumbling about it for some. Consider the lavishly preposterous MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, Daniel Kawczynski, who this week took it upon himself to announce that he has written to the Polish prime minister and requested “formally” that Poland veto any request by the UK to extend article 50. We can’t be sure what formal channels this MP believes himself to be operating within, but openly demanding that foreign powers subvert the will of the UK legislature did seem to be the second hottest take on parliamentary sovereignty in as many days. The hottest take, as so often, belonged to Daniel’s European Research Group (ERG) colleague Jacob Rees-Mogg, who on Wednesday gave an address during which he suggested that the Queen should, if necessary, suspend parliament to stop things not going his way. Great to see that prorogation has officially entered the game, as yet another reminder that Brexit is rarely about the things it says it is about. Nothing says “I believe passionately in parliamentary sovereignty” quite as convincingly as demanding that the sovereign shut down parliament. Rees-Mogg believes Britain could surf the wave of no deal. He’s really very like Patrick Swayze in Point Break in that respect – except with an opera coat, no charisma and zero personal exposure to the 50-year storm. Yet people continue to misread him as dependably as his father used to misread the future. At Wednesday’s event, the economist Roger Bootle introduced him as “a modest man … too modest, almost, for his own good”. To which the only sane reply is: lololololololol. If you had to distil into one personage the British people’s gibbering historical deference to terrible ideas advanced by low-to-middlebrow post-feudal shitlords who openly detest them, this plastic aristocrat would be it. Rees-Mogg is the logical end of whole centuries of barking up the wrong tree. In the most recent leadership polls of Tory members, obviously, he trailed only Boris Johnson. And so to Brexit’s best-paid influencers. What an inevitability to learn that the former Brexit secretary David Davis has walked straight into a £60,000, 20-hour-a-year gig to advise the digger manufacturing firm JCB. That works out at £3,000 an hour, which feels like the sort of rate that might be expected if your workplace was a glass coffee table in Riyadh. Boris Johnson seems to be on ten grand a pop from the same source, suggesting he provides services too grotesque even for metaphorical allusion. It certainly feels more fitting than ever that he made last week’s speech at JCB in front of a great big hoe. Perhaps the best that can be said for JCB’s Brexiteer chairman, Sir Anthony Bamford, is that his business is, at least for now, still headquartered in the UK. News that the leave advocate James Dyson is to relocate his HQ to Singapore is proving harder to spin, particularly given he’s said: “It’s to make us future-proof for where we see the biggest opportunities.” Still, it will be one upside if we’re no longer required to genuflect and defer to Dyson on matters other than suction. I wonder if it says something about Britain that its Greatest Inventor makes vacuum cleaners and hair dryers and so on. Nothing wrong with that, of course – we all need them. But it’s hardly the premier league of inventions. Oh, you can give it “the airblade” all you like. But faced with an attacking move by the creators of artificial hearts or water-powered engines, Dyson and his hand-dryers would be hopelessly outclassed. Mark Francois may believe Britain could never be outclassed, even as he talks in a way that might reasonably be expected to appal the actual participants in events over which he has only heavy-breathed. But others on both the leave and remain sides may judge the UK’s self-respect to be hanging by a thread. And that’s where we stand as Theresa May heads into the latest of her crunch weeks – although Philip Hammond has reinforced the government’s reputation for can-kicking by suggesting that Tuesday’s vote doesn’t have to be “the sort of high-noon moment … It’s a great British tradition to compromise and find a solution,” he judged on Friday, “rather than standing throwing rocks at each other from different sides of the argument.” Mmm. Is Hammond watching the same Brexit you’re watching? The UK’s mad yen for self-dramatisation is a big part of what got us here; perhaps the sense of ourselves as instinctively great at this stuff should be abandoned as the need for a solution moves into its emergency stage. • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistDavid Bowie, who died three years ago this week, was interviewed in the Observer Magazine shortly after he turned ‘a remarkable 40’ for the 12 April 1987 issue. ‘After all these years of playing a role,’ the piece proclaimed, ‘the latest Bowie to emerge might be the real one.’ Bowie was promoting his latest album, Never Let Me Down, ‘a harsh, intense batch of songs, driven by screeching guitars and full of lyrics about sex, drugs and images of nuclear meltdown’. Years later, Bowie felt it was his nadir: ‘It was such an awful album.’ Is Bowie burnt out at this advanced age for a pop star, wondered the interviewer. ‘If you’re a painter, you don’t say: ‘Oh, they’ve had enough of me now.’ Well, I think like that. I’m doing it for me, and I enjoy what I’m doing.’ He is asked, rather cheekily, if Prince has replaced him, but Bowie is magnanimous rather than defensive. ‘In terms of the more exhibitionist forms of theatricality and musicianship, yeah. Absolutely. He’s sort of the 80s version. I’ve moved on to a different area now, and I don’t think anybody else could handle the job better.’ Bowie spoke defiantly about the video for the single Day In Day Out being banned from American TV (it features homelessness and prostitution). ‘We’re not changing a thing. I don’t care if it’s never shown. The song has some tough things to say and I wanted the video to have the same weight.’ Referring to his Live Aid appearance in 1985, Bowie agreed that it was ‘a wonderful experience’, before changing tack. ‘Financially it doesn’t mean shit – whatever amount you raise it’s gonna be nothing. It’s only going to be a token gesture. But I’m a great believer that of all the art forms, rock is the living art form. It’s the living culture, it’s the one thing that can actually move and change society.’ Something he managed to do right the way through to his remarkable final album, Blackstar.There is a particular breed of middle-aged man that prides itself on not knowing who Kim Kardashian is. “What’s that?” they cry in comment sections throughout the land, “What’s a Kim Kardashian?”. This performative I’m-too-busy-with-books-to-even-turn-on-the-TV intelligence usually backfires immediately (you’re telling me you’ve read 10,000 books but can’t discern that “Kimberly” is a woman’s name?) Pretending not to know who celebrities are to seem clever is likely an age-old phenomenon (Spartacus? Never heard of him) but thankfully, you no longer have to pretend. After makeup artist and YouTuber James Charles brought Birmingham to a standstill on Sunday – with traffic gridlocked as thousands of teenage fans flocked to see the 19-year-old at a shopping centre – many people are realising that they actually, genuinely haven’t the foggiest who 2019’s celebrities are. It’s now easier than ever to be out of the loop. Charles has almost 14m subscribers on his beauty-based YouTube channel, making him firmly famous by any measure. Yet the reaction to his Birmingham appearance has been everything from confused to outwardly hostile. “What a sad society we’ve turned into,” wrote one person in (where else but) a Facebook comment section, “Yes, people used to flock to get a glimpse of the Beatles, but the Beatles were writing amazing songs.” Another writes: “The world has definitely gone mad.” Sticking to the tried-and-tested theme, yet another adds: “You can’t compare it with the Beatles, different class.” Let’s give it a go, shall we? In 2014, CBS reported that the Beatles have sold 1.6bn singles in the United States since the 60s – in just three years, James Charles has accumulated 1.1bn views on his YouTube channel. The Beatles’ hair (which was unusually long for the time) was mocked by adults in the press who considered it androgynous; Charles has been disparaged by the aforementioned internet commenters as a “boy in makeup”. Both are arguably revolutionary. “Aha!” you twist and shout. “But the Beatles were talented!” Charles undeniably has talent (get back to me when you can do a rainbow cut crease) but it’s equally undeniable that there are now huge swathes of “talentless” YouTube celebrities who do nothing but talk to the camera about imagined internet drama. So the world has definitely gone mad, yeah? THIS IS THE END? Sure, if you ignore thousands of years of human history in which talentless idiots were celebrated with power, pounds, and prestige (for research purposes, start with nearly every royal ever). Rather than getting angry at this new celebrity culture, we should accept it (at least in order to have the appropriate infrastructure in place for YouTubers’ public appearances). Of course, there’s no denying that it’s increasingly hard to keep up with our modern, silo-ed celebrities. Charles has more than 13 million subscribers, and so do Eleonora Maronese, Roi Fabito, Rachel Levin, Guillermo Díaz Ibañez, Wengie Huang, and Nathaniel Peterson. Who? There are now more celebrities than ever before. When Andy Warhol said we’d all have our 15 minutes of fame, I doubt he meant simultaneously. And there are real repercussions for a celebrity culture that takes place almost in secret – not least, howcan parents hope to monitor who is influencing their kids if they’ve never even heard of the influencer in question? One of Britain’s most well-known YouTubers, Zoella, was first covered in a BBC article in 2013 which called her “one of the UK’s most successful young vloggers” – at the time she had 2.5m subscribers. There are now 3,208 YouTubers who have more than 2.5m subscribers. Things are changing so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. A year after the mainstream press introduced people to Zoella, her debut novel broke records and became the fastest-selling book of 2014, before it emerged it was written by a ghostwriter. This scandal allowed parents to show children the truth about online stars who pretend to be their best friends – it was an important teachable moment. And yet, naturally, the Guardian was disparaged by commenters at the time for writing “about a girl with a gloriously over-hyped book”. Snarky comments don’t help anyone, and we should recognise ignorance of celebrity culture as being just that – ignorance. I’m not saying you need to memorise all 3,208 YouTubers with over 2.5m subscribers – but when a person you’ve never heard of brings Britain’s second-largest city to a standstill, maybe Google them before scrolling to the comment section to type “WHO???”. • Amelia Tait is a journalist who writes about tech and internet phenomenaDarkness falls on the small town of Sambuca di Sicilia, where the council offices on Corso Umberto have been closed for more than three hours. And yet the phones keep ringing, hour after hour. “They’re calling from Sydney, London, New York,” says the exhausted deputy mayor, Giuseppe Cacioppo. A week after the town announced it was putting up abandoned homes for sale at a euro each, he has fielded requests for information from all over the globe. By Wednesday last week the council had received more than 300 calls and 94,000 emails. Many prospective buyers, not wanting to miss out, grabbed the first available flight to Palermo. Sambuca sits inside a nature reserve, surrounded by woods and mountains, about an hour’s drive from the Sicilian capital. In the town hall’s minuscule waiting room there are not enough seats for the dozens of visitors who have come from as far away as Panama, London, Boston and Dubai to get their hands on one of these famed homes for the cost of an espresso. They’re waiting anxiously for Cacioppo to take them on a guided tour of the ruins that are up for sale. It is quite a sight for 63-year-old Franco Lo Vecchio. Curious to see what the chatter is all about, he has rushed out of his house in the nearby Saraceno quarter in his slippers. He stands, mouth agape, looking at the long queue of foreigners who have come to see what’s on offer. It’s been a long time since so many people have gathered in the streets of Sambuca: once a bustling town of 9,000 people, it now has about 5,000. Like many small towns in southern Italy, it has been gradually abandoned by citizens seeking work elsewhere. “The decline began with the industrialisation of the agricultural sector, when machines replaced human labour and forced many peasants to abandon the fields,” says Lo Vecchio, who used to work as a French language teacher. “Then, if that weren’t enough, the earthquake struck and even more families began abandoning their homes.” In January 1968 the earth shook in the Belice valley, in south-west Sicily. Measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale, the earthquake was one of the most powerful to strike Italy, killing 231 people, injuring more than 1,000 and leaving 100,000 homeless. Four towns were razed entirely and others, like Sambuca, suffered terrible damage. The town’s main church, the Chiesa Madre, built around 1420 on part of the ancient Arab castle of Zabut in the oldest part of town, was so badly damaged it had to close. The story of the Lo Vecchio family reflects the history of Sambuca and the emigratory trend that threatens its survival. In 1955, Franco’s grandfather left for the US in search of work. In 1957, his father moved to Venezuela. In 1963, Franco himself left for northern Italy, and his daughter has now settled in Australia. Franco returned to Sambuca three years ago. “I was struck by the deserted roads and by the silence where once the voices of thousands of people echoed in the squares,” he says. “Sambuca, my Sambuca, now seemed a cemetery for the living dead.” In an attempt to resuscitate the town, the mayor, Leo Ciaccio, and his deputy, Cacioppo, have adopted a strategy that has become fashionable in the south: sell, or practically give away, abandoned homes to anyone who wants to move in. Other towns have attempted the same thing, including Gangi in northern Sicily, Salemi in the west near Marsala, and Ollolai in Sardinia. The symbolic price of a home: a euro. (Another approach is to facilitate the turning of abandoned homes into “scattered hotels”.) “Some people think that’s all it takes – the cost of a cup of coffee,” says Cacioppo. “They’re wrong. It’s an auction that starts at one euro. If those who participate do not bid higher, then yes, the house will be sold for the price of a croissant.” Currently there are 17 council-owned homes for sale in Sambuca. Another 15 will soon be added. Another 400 privately owned homes may yet come up for sale because they have been abandoned. The majority of the dwellings date from the mid-1800s; many of them were damaged in the earthquake and abandoned immediately after. They are homes where time stands still. In one two-storey house, which once belonged to a local carabinieri officer, a calendar on the wall is turned to July 1967. Some visitors leave the homes unimpressed. Others are smiling. “There is much potential in these homes,” says Nick, a 46-year-old property developer from London who did not want his surname to be published. He was in Kiev airport, waiting to board a flight to London, when he read an article about the sale of homes for a euro in a delightful Sicilian town. “I didn’t think twice. I winked at my wife and she agreed. We left the boarding queue for London and ran to the first ticket counter to purchase a flight to Palermo.” Polish couple Urszula and Maciej Kuziemska couldn’t resist either. They now live in Boston, and came to Sambuca in the hope of buying a romantic pied-à-terre away from the big city. Samar Choudhuri, another property developer, came from Panama to propose buying several homes in Sambuca for a group of investors. Caroline O’Hare, a British lawyer, arrived from Dubai, and Ammar Alansari came from the United Arab Emirates. He says he was bewitched by Sicily’s Arab architecture and culture. Franco Lo Vecchio looks at them with curiosity. The people of Sambuca have largely embraced the mayor’s plan, seeing it as a courageous act – a last-ditch effort to bring Sambuca back from its terminal illness. But not everyone is hopeful. Some believe there’s no way Sambuca can be saved from the decline history has reserved for small towns in southern Italy. Caterina, 50, is one. She regrets having returned to Sicily from Switzerland three years ago, leaving a job where she earned about £2,700 a month. Standing in front of her cafe on the deserted Corso Umberto, she lights a cigarette and contemplates the streets of Sambuca. “I still don’t know why I came back to work in a deserted bar where I’m forced to close two hours early because the place is totally empty. Will houses on sale for a euro help this town? I wouldn’t be so sure …” While potential buyers seek shelter from the rain, the restoration of the Chiesa Madre continues. For the first time since the earthquake the church reopened last week, just in time for the new visitors to admire it. It is a fitting metaphor for Sambuca: a town that after 50 years refuses to disappear and will do anything it takes to survive, even if it means selling its homes for the price of a coffee.Manolo Gabbiadini has agreed to rejoin Sampdoria for €12m (£10.8m) and so end an unhappy spell at Southampton. The 27-year-old striker will fly to Italy on Thursday before undertaking a medical test in Genoa the following day. Gabbiadini signed for Southampton in January 2017 from Napoli in a €17m [£14.6m] deal and he made an explosive start at St Mary’s, scoring six times in his first four matches – including two in the EFL Cup final defeat by Manchester United. Remarkably, he would go on to score only six more goals and, after coming on as a late substitute in Ralph Hasenhüttl’s first game in charge – at Cardiff on 8 December – he has not been included in any of the manager’s other squads. Gabbiadini, who had never previously played for a club outside of his native Italy, has had plenty of suitors this month across Europe. He has opted for a return to Serie A, where he will hope to drive Sampdoria, who he played for between 2013-2015 to a strong finish. They are seventh in the table, three points off fourth-placed Lazio.My foot fetish arrived with puberty, sparked by a pair of intriguing ankle boots when I was 14. These days, when I admire a woman, it’s from the ground up, and I can recognise people by their feet. (The other day I got a back view of a family friend and knew it was her before my eyes reached her mid-calf.) I like flat shoes: gladiators, Birkenstocks, flip-flops and clogs; the Clarks website is good for images of women in nice sandals. I’m also a big fan of barefoot artists, such as Florence Welch and Joss Stone. A well-defined ankle with slender achilles tendons does it for me. I told my wife as soon as I met her, and she was fairly neutral about it. When she was pregnant, I discovered reflexology, and she enjoyed receiving foot massages – as did several friends, some of whom guessed I had a foot fetish. My wife and I have not had any physical, let alone sexual contact, for several years. We don’t talk much any more, apart from practical issues. A few years ago I met a woman online who indulged my fetish, and met me off the train in a pair of flip-flops. More recently, a male friend let me massage his feet several times. He’s never reacted sexually to me, but he often drifts off to sleep while I kiss his feet and suck his toes. I haven’t come out to many people, because I’m nervous of their reactions. Luckily, I can enjoy watching synchronised swimming, beach volleyball and judo – as well as sitting at my local shopping centre watching dozens of pretty feet stroll past – without arousing too much suspicion. • Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure the discussion remains on the topics raised by the article. Each week, a reader tells us about their sex life. Want to share yours? Email sex@theguardian.comJair Bolsonaro has announced Brazil’s “liberation from socialism, inverted values, the bloated state and political correctness” after being sworn in as the country’s 42nd president. His words delighted a crowd of more than 100,000 – many of whom had travelled to its modernist capital for the event, convinced the far-right populist can rescue their troubled country from virulent corruption, rising violent crime and economic doldrums. The former army captain and his wife Michelle waved to crowds from an open-topped Rolls Royce before he and his vice-president, retired army general Hamilton Mourão, were sworn in at Congress. In a brief speech to the chamber of deputies, Bolsonaro thanked God for surviving from a near-fatal knife attack during the election campaign and invited lawmakers to help Brazil free itself from “corruption, criminality and economic irrresponsibility and ideological submission”. “We have a unique opportunity before us to reconstruct our country and rescue the hope of our compatriots,” he said. “We are going to unite the people, rescue the family, respect religions and our Judeo-Christian tradition, combat genre ideology, conserving our values.” He also referred to campaign promises such as freeing up gun possession. “Good citizens deserve the means to defend themselves,” he said. Bolsonaro said he was counting on Congress support to provide “legal support” for police to do their work; he has promised impunity for police who kill criminals. “They deserve it and must be respected,” he said. Bolsonaro has enjoyed the support of Brazil’s powerful agribusiness sector, which he said will have an “increase in efficiency” with “less bureaucracy” – words which will alarm environmentalists and indigenous activists concerned by his plans to reduce to streamline environmental licensing and allow commercial mining and farming on protected indigenous reserves. He also took aim at the leftist Workers’ party he has painted as communists responsible for all Brazil’s ills, from crime to corruption. “Irresponsibility conducted us to the worst ethical, moral and economic crisis in our history,” he said. Minutes afterwards, Donald Trump tweeted that Bolsonaro had made a “great inauguration speech”, adding: “The U.S.A is with you!” Shortly afterwards, Bolsonaro’s Twitter account replied: “Dear Mr. President @realDonaldTrump, I truly appreciate your words of encouragement. Together, under God’s protection, we shall bring prosperity and progress to our people.” Bolsonaro, a former army captain who served seven undistinguished terms as a member of Brazil’s lower house, was until this year regarded as a marginal figure known for his outbursts against leftists and LGBT people. He rode a wave of righteous anger to power provoked by sweeping corruption scandals and economic recession that Bolsonaro blamed on the leftist Workers’ party that ran Brazil for 13 years. In an aggressive and deeply polarised campaign that made adept use of social media, Bolsonaro focused attacks leftist former presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – currently serving a prison sentence for graft – and his successor Dilma Rousseff, impeached in 2016 for breaking budget rules. Bolsonaro’s election victory marks a dramatic swing to the right for Brazil, which from 1964 to 1985 was run by a military dictatorship that its new president has expressed support for. The inauguration took place under the tightest security team seen in decades. Crowds of supporters passed through three checkpoints, including metal detectors. The new government said 115,000 people attended – much fewer than the half a million expected. As they sang and chanted, firemen sprayed some with water to alleviate the muggy heat. Many of the groups who travelled across country wore matching T-shirts and hats emblazoned with Bolsonaro’s photo and name. Around 80 bikers had come from Fortaleza in the north-east. “He is the man who will wake this country up, said Francisco Siqueira, 64, a retired army lieutenant who organised pro-Bolsonaro campaign parades of bikers. “Brazilians will be proud when they travel abroad.” Lawyer Eliana Rabello, 41, had flown from Colatina in Espírito Santo state with 12 family members, including husband Marcelo, 42, a public servant and their daughter Mariana, 7 – all wearing Bolsonaro baseball caps. They had been campaigning for Bolsonaro from the beginning. “We saw he was the guy who was hope for Brazil,” she said, playing down his extremist comments such as threatening a “cleansing” of leftists as “hot blood”. But to deliver on his radical campaign promises and return Brazil to economic growth will require doing deals with the mercenary Congress, analysts said – something he has sworn he will not do. Traditionally Brazilian presidents offer ministerial jobs to members of a coalition of parties in return for support – there are over 30 parties in Congress, none of which has a clear majority. “That’s how the game is played,” said David Fleischer, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Brasília and a veteran observer of Brazilian politics. The system was blamed for corruption scandals in the leftist governments of Lula and Dilma Rousseff – and cleaning up Brazil’s graft problem is one of Bolsonaro’s central campaign promises. Instead of “pork barrel” dealing, he plans to lean on the support of cross-party, issue-based blocks in Congress formed of lawmakers who are evangelical Christians or linked to agribusiness and the arms lobby. “I’m not sure that’s going to work,” said Fleischer. If Bolsonaro wants to get an overhaul of Brazil’s pension system through Congress – something his predecessor Michel Temer failed to do – and reform financial markets regard as key to reducing a soaring deficit, Bolsonaro will need to bargain, he said. “It’s sit down and negotiate,” he said. All that is yet to come. For now, Bolsonaro is riding a wave of enthusiasm from conservative Brazilians who identify with his promise to return their country to a traditional past. “It’s like a pendulum,” said Elias Figueira, 57, an Uber driver from Rio, “from Marxism back to the right.” In a poll published Tuesday, 65% of Brazilians said they expected his government to be “good or great”. As soldiers in ceremonial dress fired cannons in salute, they cheered, waved flags and celebrated in hope that the perennial country of the future might find its destiny by heading back into its past. In a second speech delivered from the presidential headquarters after receiving the presidential sash from outgoing president Temer, Bolsonaro said Brazilians could now “dream of a better life”. “We are going to re-establish order in this country,” he said. He and Mourão held up a Brazilian flag. “It will only turn red if our blood is needed to keep it green and yellow,” he said. The crowds cheered, waved flags and celebrated the hope that Brazil – the perennial country of the future – might find its destiny by heading back into its past.Concerns over Chinese growth could spell problems for Africa and other parts of the developing world. Beijing funded an overseas investment boom in the past few decades as it strove to become the world’s second largest economic superpower, while also buying vast amounts of the natural resources produced by emerging nations. The scale of the expansion forms part of China’s multibillion-dollar “Belt and Road” Initiative, a state-backed campaign to promote its influence around the world, while providing stimulus for its own slowing economy. The transcontinental development project, launched by China’s president, Xi Jinping, in 2013, aims to improve infrastructure links between Asia, Europe and Africa, with the aim for China to reap the benefits from increasing levels of global trade. Mounting tensions between China and the US, however, have acted as a handbrake on rising levels of world trade. The International Monetary Fund forecasts Chinese growth will slow to 6.2% this year from about 6.6% in 2018, due to escalations in the trade dispute that erupted last year. There are also rising fears over the rapid growth of debt in China used to fuel its expansion over the past decade. With Chinese investment in some African nations worth more than some of those states’ own domestic spending, analysts fear the prospect of weaker investment in future and fading demand for commodity exports. Figures from the United Nations’ development agency, Unctad, show that weakness in global commodity prices in 2014 and 2015 caused foreign direct investment flows into Africa to fall from $55bn in 2015 to $42bn in 2017, showing how Africa might be hit by a Chinese slowdown. Richard Kozul-Wright, director of the division for globalisation and development strategies at Unctad, said: “China has been slowing down gradually for the last two or three years, coinciding with continued expansion abroad. Whether the current shocks linked to trade and growing concerns about debt will be significantly worse, I guess we are not sure yet. That’s a big uncertainty.” More than four fifths of the amount China spends on construction overseas goes to low- or middle-income economies Craig Botham, an emerging-markets economist at the City investment firm Schroders, warned that weaker Chinese demand for commodities could have a negative impact on emerging markets: “It should mean slower growth for anyone with an export link to China.” The overseas lending from China’s two main development banks reached $675bn at the end of 2016 – more than twice the size of loans from the World Bank, which has a remit to tackle poverty in the developing world, with African development a focus of the Chinese institutions. More than four fifths of the amount China spends on construction overseas goes to low- or middle-income economies. According to Unctad, China holds the fourth-largest stock of foreign direct investment in Africa at $40bn, behind the US at $57bn, the UK at $55bn, and France at $49bn. The investments run from aid projects to infrastructure, including help to upgrade more than 18,000 miles of highways, 1,200 miles of railways, and raising ports capacity by about 85 million tonnes per year. According to Deloitte, China is the most visible single-country funder and builder of infrastructure projects in Africa, having spent about $11.5bn a year on average since 2012 – about a third of all African government spending, worth an average $30.1bn. Despite the risks facing developing nations from China’s slowdown, experts say Beijing is likely to remain significantly influential. Officials committed late last year to spending $60bn in Africa over the next three years, although there are fears the project may saddle developing countries with too much debt just as the world economy begins to falter. Razia Kahn, chief economist for Africa and the Middle East at Standard Chartered, said it “would have to be a very severe slump” to affect Africa. The consensus forecast for China’s GDP growth is 6.2%: “that is still a very healthy pace of growth.” Kozul-Wright at Unctad said: “China’s weight in the global economy is going to continue to grow and its footprint will continue to grow. Maybe not in the same way as the last 20 years. But the idea that Trump can put the genie back in the bottle seems rather naive.”Ever keen to bend to the latest trends, sportswear brands are now tailoring their yoga collections – historically geared towards women – to include menswear. This week, Nike launched its first yoga-specific collection, including a menswear range in “a nature-inspired colour palette”, which features long-hem T-shirts and slim, straight shorts designed to stay in place during inversions. Elsewhere, the menswear yoga brand So We Flow launched in 2017 after its founder, Jake Wood, noticed “men who did any yoga were wearing ultra-technical sportswear, old gym rags and bohemian mash-ups”. Like Nike, So We Flow’s clothes favour earthy tones, such as “olive” and “grit”. Brogawear – as the yoga branch of sportswear is commonly known – is also creeping into fashion, designed to be worn on and off the mat. So We Flow combines “the understated aesthetic of British workwear with a purpose firmly committed to movement and utility”. Lululemon, the brand best known for its women’s luxury yoga pants, plans to grow its men’s category to a $1bn (£780bn) business by 2020, and last year revealed men made up 30% of new customers during the first quarter. In the US, men-only “broga” classes and retreats have also been gaining in popularity. Will Wheeler, the founder of Level Six yoga studio in Peckham, south London, said: “We are definitely seeing an uptick in the number of men joining our classes. There’s a rise in yoga as a stretchy complement to high-intensity workouts. A class can be just as sweaty as gym training.” According to the founder of Triyoga, Jonathan Sattin, men accounted for 11%–27% of class attendees in 2015. By last year, that figure was 25%–50%. Yoga has also gained high-profile male advocates: the former footballer Ryan Giggs put the longevity of his career down to practising yoga, while the boxer Anthony Joshua hopes it will do the same for him. The “physical and mental benefits” of yoga have also been cited by the men’s yoga clothing brand Ohmme. Its yoga vests and dharma pants (soft and loose but with slim-fit ankles) challenge “preconceived ideas of masculinity”. It is perhaps this that is the driving force behind the male uptake in yoga; after all, a gendered New Year resolution hardly feels very 2019.Jill Abramson became the executive editor of the New York Times in 2011, the first woman to hold its top editorial job. In 2014, however, she was fired by the paper’s then publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jnr, who once gave her a performance review she has summarised since as: “People think you’re a bitch.” Her book, Merchants of Truth: Inside the News Revolution, attempts to tell the story of the seismic changes that have taken place in the news industry in the last decade. Over the course of more than 500 pages, she reports from inside four major organisations, two of them digital upstarts, the others venerable representatives of old media: BuzzFeed, Vice, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Are you nervous? Even as we speak, fellow journalists will be going over your book with a fine-tooth comb.Yes, I am. My stomach is in a fair amount of knots. How personal did writing it feel?It felt very personal. I’d lived through these times – and a lot of it wasn’t easy to live through. Do journalists make for good sources?For the most part, yes. They tend to have very detailed recall. When your book begins, the long-term future of even a newspaper as redoubtable as the New York Times looks, thanks to the internet, to be in doubt. By the time it ends, it is enjoying a renaissance in terms both of subscriptions and its journalism, thanks largely to the election of Donald Trump. Is he the saviour of news?The trouble is that not every news organisation has witnessed a Trump bump. He has been a bonanza for cable and the best national newspapers. But the bleak part of the picture is the death of local papers. The fact that there are state capitals with very few or no watchdogs directed at them is a terrible development for citizens. It weakens our democracy. What about the reporting of Trump? Is there a danger that readers will ultimately become exhausted?I think reporters at the Times and the Post are rising to the challenge. For the most part, I admire the fact they are resisting the temptation to report every single thing he says or tweets. He is a circus master – he knows how to dominate – and that can be hard for editors to resist. But they’re writing about his policies, about what he is actually doing rather than saying. In your book, you say the New York Times is anti-Trump, a fact that had the president gloating when it was leaked by a Fox news columnist. Do you regard such partisanship as a sea change and a bad one at that?The idea that objectivity gives equal weight to both sides… [with Trump] that’s been torn away. I think the willingness to call him out – the Times has used the word “lie” – is a healthy thing. The duty of journalism is to supply readers with the truth. What about Jeff Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013? Your book makes a strong case in his favour.Yes. He doesn’t interfere. I think the Graham family [its previous owners] did a fantastic job of making sure that anyone interested in buying it – and remember that Bezos owns it personally, not through Amazon – would never use it as a weapon for a political or business purpose. My respect for him increased after the arrest of Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian, which he took very seriously [the Post’s Tehran bureau chief was put on trial and imprisoned by Iran in 2014 and released in 2016]; you see it, too, with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi [the Saudi dissident and Post columnist]. He stands up for principled journalism and by ploughing more resources into it he has brought the Post back to its glory. That is a gift to democracy. What was it like delving into the world of BuzzFeed and Vice, particularly when they were just starting out? [The book describes cockroach-infested computers at BuzzFeed’s early offices and Vice’s reputation for rampant sexism.]The style of Gavin McInnes and Shane Smith [two of the founders of Vice] was to shock, to be deliberately provocative, and the first experiments of Jonah Peretti [the founder of BuzzFeed] were also somewhat salacious. , especially Black People Love Us [a spoof of racial cluelessness that went viral in 2002]. But I found it all fascinating: their process of of learning, of working out how to profit from information going viral. In the US, there are more women journalists than ever, but fewer top female editors than there were 10 years ago The future used to belong to BuzzFeed and Vice, with their vast traffic, young readers and piles of cash. But they’re struggling for revenue now; both have cut staff. Can they survive?I think their long-term future is uncertain. But I’m rooting for their survival. They do make an important contribution; they do good investigative work, like BuzzFeed’s scoop about Michael Cohen [BuzzFeed reported that the president had ordered his former lawyer to lie to Congress about his involvement with a Trump Tower project in Moscow; Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election, has since called it inaccurate]. They are definitely overvalued at the moment, but they could eventually be merged, or bought by bigger players, because we live in a time when giant companies like Netflix and Amazon are so hungry for documentary content. When you were fired, you became a poster girl for every woman who has ever been characterised as shrill or pushy at work. Have things since improved for women at the Times and elsewhere in the US media?At the Times, there’s real happiness at how it has led the way on stories about sexual harassment. But there is frustration that there doesn’t seem to be a woman who is being talked about in terms of who might be in the next leadership position. In the US, there are more women journalists than ever, but fewer top female editors than there were 10 years ago. What’s holding them back?It is a basic truth that people who occupy seats of power – and they, for the most part, are men – like to keep hold of it. What’s the future for digital-first news?It won’t be driven by the next device, but it will be strongly related to it. What about old media? Is the worst over or is there more to come?No, the worst isn’t over. Print advertising is in freefall, and it’s such an important source of revenue. But I’m still optimistic. People’s thirst for reliable sources of news has grown and that has led to a revival for some trusted brands. Reader revenue is now emerging as a viable business model. You wrote a bestselling book about your dog and how she helped you get over the depression you suffered after you were knocked down by a truck in 2007, which could not be more different to Merchants of Truth. What moved you to write it?I started writing Puppy Diaries as a blog at the Times after one of the editors encouraged me to do it because I was regaling her with stories about our new puppy, Scout. It was incredibly popular. I found I just loved writing about the joys and travails of raising a new puppy. • Merchants of Truth is published by Vintage (£25). To order a copy for £22 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99Along an Edward Hopper-esque cobblestone street two blocks from the Hudson river, outside a Brooklyn warehouse that is now a photographic studio the size of a baseball field, black SUVs are parked bumper to bumper. Inside, Mario Sorrenti, fashion royalty since he photographed a nude Kate Moss face down on a sofa for Calvin Klein’s Obsession in 1993, is perched on a wooden crate shooting the first Victoria Beckham X Reebok collection. Cara Taylor, the industry’s latest 17-year-old modelling sensation, a high school volleyball champ from Alabama whose fine curtain of wheat-gold hair falls across her cheekbones in the manner of a young Leonardo DiCaprio, wraps her arms around two other models, a boy and a girl, as Nonstop by Drake fades into All The Stars by Kendrick Lamar. Every couple of minutes, stylist Alastair McKimm, a Northern Ireland-born, New York-based godfather of luxe streetwear, darts on to set, minutely adjusting the hood of a sweatshirt with the beady eye of a society hostess plumping her drawing room cushions. The designer of the Lucozade-orange trainers, sleek cropped tanks and oversized bomber jackets is perched on a director’s chair with a bird’s-eye view of it all. Victoria Beckham is wearing, as she always does, clothes from her catwalk label. Today, it is a military green sharp-collared shirt in stiff wool twill with shiny horn buttons tucked into matching high-waisted pleated trousers, accessorised with spike-heeled Balenciaga sock boots, a shiny red manicure and a bottle of San Pellegrino, which she sips through a straw so as not to smudge her lipstick. She hops down from the chair to pore over the monitors with Sorrenti or huddle with McKimm by the clothing rail. Beckham never raises her voice, but then she doesn’t need to, because everyone else stops talking as soon as she starts; she gives suggestions, rather than orders, but they are not queried. You might think you’ve already heard a lot about Victoria Beckham, but if she has her way, you’ll be hearing a lot more. “I’m ready to put my foot on the gas,” she told me at her first-ever London catwalk show last September, and used the same line when she launched her YouTube channel last month. A decade after she moved into fashion, she has built a household-name brand, but the label has yet to turn a profit; there was a £10.2m deficit in 2017. “At the moment the brand is significantly bigger than the business,” she admits. “I want them to be the same size. That is 100% the plan, to reach as many women as I can.” Who’s her role model – does she want to be the female Ralph Lauren? She puts her head on one side. “You know who I was thinking about the other day? Donna Karan, and what she achieved.” Karan received a payoff in the region of $400m when she sold her companies in 2001. The potential of the Victoria Beckham brand made it an attractive enough prospect for David Belhassen (the investor behind the UK expansion of French bakery Paul) to put £30m into the business in 2017, a deal that valued the brand at £100m. While Beckham’s catwalk shows have been consistently well-reviewed – an initial tone of astonishment has faded – successful luxury businesses are not built on the market for silk day dresses at £1,500 a pop, which is tiny, but on the halo effect that catwalk glamour has on sales of underwear (see Calvin Klein) or lipsticks (Chanel), wallets (Paul Smith) and stationery (Kate Spade). Beckham’s Reebok collection will be joined by an “affordable luxury” beauty range later this year, which will be significantly cheaper than 2016’s Estée Lauder collaboration. Of course what everyone wants to know about Victoria Beckham is what she’s really like. Her pop cultural character is equal parts Insta-perfection and tabloid gossip. When magazine coverlines about domestic meltdowns and diva tantrums run alongside glamorous images of Beckham and her photogenic family, it can be hard to make sense of the overall picture. But over the past few months I’ve hung around long enough to become part of the furniture; while our interview proper is scheduled for a couple of weeks after the Reebok shoot, I am here on set in New York, have travelled here previously to sit in on strategy meetings with Reebok, and accompanied Beckham to a Forbes women’s summit, where she announced the collaboration. In person, the most striking thing about Beckham is how down-to-earth she is – a natural conversationalist with a knack for striking up an instant, low-level intimacy. Today, when I compliment her on her outfit, she pulls a face and whispers that she’s wearing a pre-production sample that doesn’t have the lining and is really itchy. She does this a lot, that thing that women do: deflecting compliments by saying something slightly self-deprecating. On the day of the Forbes summit, she arrived in the green room looking preternaturally polished in a gauzy powder-pink sleeveless dress; but when someone said how nice she looked, she was immediately off on a riff, talking us through the layers of unsexy nude underwear she’d had to put on underneath to avoid her nipples being the focus on stage. She is skilful at dispelling the weirdness that celebrity brings into a room, which sounds easy but isn’t. Fame is a potent commodity that requires a smooth bedside manner to put others at ease, and a lack of this is why many famous people end up seeming odd or eccentric. Beckham may not have been gifted as a singer, but she has pitch-perfect chat, asking questions, finding familiar ground. When I ask if this is something she’s worked on, she says, “There’s always so much to do that there’s really no time for bullshit – so that cuts through it.” When we meet again at Guardian Weekend’s cover shoot in London, two days after the British Fashion awards, she arrives at the studio and asks if I had fun (we had caught up briefly), says how charming Meghan Markle was on stage, and commiserates about the pain of a late finish on a Monday night (“At 1am I was thinking, I’d love to stay but I’ve got to be up with the kids at 6.45”). People are interested in my personal life, and sometimes it’s things I don’t like. I’m not going to let it get me down She pays compliments, cracks jokes and is not above sharing juicy celebrity gossip, albeit followed up swiftly with a “that’s off the record, obviously”. The assistants and outriders who accompany her everywhere are a tight-knit, mostly female, fiercely loyal team, but she does not use them as a human shield in the way that many celebrities do. A recurring theme in the media narrative about Beckham is that she doesn’t smile. There is perhaps a touch of misogyny in this tabloid obsession; you don’t see famous men vilified for not grinning in the Heathrow arrivals hall. In real life she smiles a perfectly normal amount. Being Victoria Beckham is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job, one that is both pampered beyond your wildest dreams and brutal. Take, for example, two days we spent together last May. Having flown from London to New York on an evening flight, posting hotel lobby selfies at late-night check-in, Beckham arrived for morning meetings with Reebok serene and elegant in a pale silk striped shirt dress – the glamour a necessity not for the meeting, but because the paparazzi wait for her outside every hotel and images of Beckham wearing her own designs are a key sales driver. Victoria Beckham does not design the detail of every dress herself, but rather is a hands-on creative director to the design teams, a modus operandi that is not unusual in fashion. The cynical view of her as a mere frontwoman does not stack up. In that meeting she skippered the ship: offering ideas, making judgment calls, staying focused in the boring bits. I started to forget she was famous, until her phone buzzed and a message bubble from “David” popped up on the screen. She reached out a manicured hand and discreetly turned the phone face down. This was barely a week after rumours of a Beckham divorce announcement brought the internet to virtual meltdown – more of which later – yet the image she presented was of bulletproof serenity. That evening, after meetings had finished, we had a drink in the bar of her hotel with her assistant, two of her PR team and her CEO, Paolo Riva. She decided her favourite order of tequila and soda wouldn’t mix well with jet lag, and had sparkling water while we discussed talking points for the Forbes event the next morning. But the jet lag still hit her with a vengeance, and she was up at 4am posting Instagram photos of herself in Korean sheet masks, before appearing fresh and smiley for her on-stage turn. She fired a deft tranquilliser dart into the elephant in the room with several warm references to the supportive husband currently “at home in London doing the school run, cooking dinner, helping with homework so that I can be here”. Within minutes of walking off stage she was fine-tuning the schedule for the following day with her team, juggling appointments to be able to pick up her seven-year-old daughter Harper from school and take 16-year-old Romeo to tennis on her one day in London, before leaving to take her new collection on selling appointments to buyers in Paris. We travelled home overnight, on different flights. The next morning I was on my way to the Guardian office in jeans with hair still wet from the shower when I saw a chirpy Instagram post of her – hair perfect, makeup done – trying on dresses for her meetings. Daft as it sounds, with me jostling my way on to the tube and her about to step into her chauffeur-driven car, for a minute I almost felt sorry for her. Being Victoria Beckham requires her to be both front of house and behind the scenes. On the Sorrenti shoot, after 15 images of various combinations of three models have been taken to everyone’s satisfaction, interspersed with outfit changes and snack breaks, it was time to shoot publicity images of Beckham. That’s quite intense, I say to her afterwards. “Yeah, it is. I am behind the camera with Mario and Alastair all day, then at the end I am the one who has to be on the other side of the camera. Having to wear both hats can be stressful,” she admits. Immediately, though, the lessons learned after 25 years in the public eye kick in, and she autotunes herself. “But I’m not complaining. I have an incredible life. I know how lucky I am.” She looks quite ridiculously good for 44 years old. Not just groomed and polished, but with luminous skin and sparkly eyes. She is extremely slender – not starved-looking, but very delicate, as if built from wishbones. At home she works out for two hours a day. She gets up between 5.30am and 6am, so that she can get some of her workout in before the school run, starting with 7k on the treadmill, “a mix of uphill fast walking, jogging, running. That’s the only time I watch TV – boxsets, documentaries – so I look forward to that. It takes 45 minutes. Then I work out with a trainer – 30 minutes legs, 30 minutes arms, toning and conditioning, then loads of planks and that kind of thing for my core. At the weekend I will do the whole thing straight through, but in the week I often jump in the car halfway through to take the kids to school, then carry on when I get home. I work out every day when I’m at home, and then when I travel I really focus on work so I can get as much done as possible in a short trip and get home.” Working out is, she says, “a really positive thing for me. It’s part of who I am now, and I really enjoy it. That was a big part of why I wanted to work with Reebok – I had very specific ideas about the workout clothes that I wanted to wear and couldn’t find.” She doesn’t pretend to be eating as many cheeseburgers as she likes. From the lavish catering table at the New York shoot, she chooses some smoked salmon and salad. She carries flavoured sweeteners, which she pulls out of her handbag and squeezes into black coffee. “I never cook. I used to – when we lived in Spain, I used to cook a lot. But these days I don’t tend to get home till late, so dinner wouldn’t be ready till quite late. David’s a really good cook.” You don’t get the sense that food is exactly a passion. “I am very, very disciplined in the way that I work out, in what I eat. That’s how I’m happiest. I expect a lot from my body – I’m 44, I’ve got four kids, I work a lot, I travel. For me to do all that, I have to eat healthily and work out.” Beckham talks about her famous husband and now-almost-equally-famous children all the time. The Reebok launch event was initially slated to happen in Tokyo, and during a meeting discussing possible venues, she suggested restaurants that David and Brooklyn, aficionados of Japanese cuisine, had loved. When we look at the collection in New York, she proudly shows me the pieces that 13-year-old Cruz, a streetwear obsessive, has earmarked as his favourites. Lunch break time in New York is teatime in London, and when Beckham takes her phone into a corner to FaceTime with home, the voice of Harper booms out, excited to tell her about going to Winter Wonderland with Daddy. The Victoria Beckham brand and the Beckham brand share an ecosystem, and she is matter-of-fact about this. “People are interested in my personal life. And sometimes that works in my favour and sometimes it’s things that I don’t like. I’m not going to let it get me down.” When the children were little, she used to tell them that the photographers were there because their grandparents missed them and wanted to see pictures of them. “It was a way of explaining it to them when they were too young to understand. They are used to it now. They’ve all grown up with it. They understand that they have to act in a responsible way because of it. But they will make mistakes – we all do. And theirs will be in the public eye.” Beckham learned about clothes through wearing them and being photographed in them – a background that was sniffed at when she launched her first collection in 2008, but that has come to feel increasingly relevant in a world in which individual experience is paramount and piety toward expertise a quaint concept. Her catwalk brand has evolved from elegant but somewhat overwrought dresses – the sort of thing you need if you go on a lot of dinner dates in Mayfair – into fluid, confident day-to-night tailoring. A voguish narrative of female empowerment in her clothes mirrors her own journey from manufactured pop star and trophy wife to respected industry leader. Chart-topping bands know how to connect with a mass audience, and Beckham is skilled at breaking down the fourth wall, talking about style in a way that feels authentic and relevant. “I wear my clothes, I travel in my clothes, so I really care about what something looks like when you get off a plane or pull it out of a suitcase,” she says to me one day in New York when we are discussing the challenge of a business trip wardrobe that needs only carry-on luggage. Of the beige shade that features in her Reebok collection, she says, “I love the biscuit colour because I wanted workout clothes in a palette that would work with the coat I’d be putting on over the top.” She pulls a sweatshirt off the rail and enthuses about the size of the hood, and the extra length of the drawstring. “A hood has to be the right size, otherwise it looks awful, and the drawstring needs to be long enough so it doesn’t come out, because that’s so annoying when it disappears.” Family life in Holland Park sounds nonstop. The Beckhams’ second eldest son, Romeo, appeared in a couple of Burberry campaigns in 2013/2014, but now spends most of his free time playing tennis. Cruz is “in and out of the music studio, loves to play guitar and piano, write and record songs”, while Harper is “absolutely obsessed” with ice-skating. (“It’s very I, Tonya,” Beckham deadpans.) Brooklyn, 19, “wants to be an art photographer, and also enjoys fashion, so we chat a lot about that”. David Beckham’s ownership role at Florida’s newly launched Major League Soccer team, Inter Miami CF, has prompted speculation of a move to Miami, but Victoria says this won’t happen. “It’s a fantastic city, and David and I are partners in every business venture that we have. We have made some great friends there and socialise with their families, so we will go regularly. But the kids are happy at school, we are close to our families and we love being in London.” Next month, for the second season running, her catwalk show will take place in London fashion week rather than New York, which means less travelling. “A project like Reebok is international, so there is travelling involved. But it’s workable. I mean, the emails from the kids’ schools come on my phone wherever I am, I can still deal with stuff. And, don’t get me wrong, I have help. I have a cleaner, so I don’t have to wash or iron. And I have someone who helps me with the children, who is wonderful and who I trust implicitly. David does a huge amount of travelling, and that’s so hard on him.” For years, the Beckham marriage has been a national obsession. When she appeared on the cover of British Vogue with their four children last autumn, shortly after the divorce rumours, the noise was all about the absence of her husband from the newsstand cover, rather than about her 10-year anniversary in fashion. How does she cope when the parallel narrative about her marriage takes over? She fixes me with an unblinking stare, and the temperature in the room seems to drop a degree. “It can get quite frustrating,” she says coolly. “But I leave it to my PR team. I don’t get involved.” Then she tells me a story about a magazine interview that had reported her demanding food from the Ivy when “I had a plate of fruit from M&S, which my assistant went out to get”. It is a firm steer away from David. All she will say is that “you do have to be quite controlling because people do believe what they read, and when it’s completely fabricated, that’s really annoying”. I’m sure when they are on stage, a part of me will feel a bit left out. Because a part of me will always be a Spice Girl For the record, I have no idea of the state of the Beckham marriage. I think most of us know, really, that the private reality of a 20-year marriage cannot be gauged through internet gossip or a stage-managed photograph. But it seems to me that much of the conjecture about the marriage is really about Victoria’s public evolution from being the lesser talented Beckham into a successful woman in her own right. The new Reebok collection will make Beckham’s audience more unisex, more diverse, more youthful. She is looking for ways to move the focus away from her. Being her own shop window has been an effective and economical marketing strategy, but she can’t be in every global market at once. At the recent British Fashion awards, she hosted a table of women including Brooke Shields and Gia Coppola, who wore her clothes for the event. “Having them flying the flag with me means that it’s not all on me, you know? I get quite obsessive about work. I don’t stop, I have a lot of trouble sleeping. I am a real insomniac.” One thing Beckham won’t be adding to her schedule is a Spice Girls comeback. When the band return to stadiums in May, it will be as a foursome. No cameo appearance, I ask? No hologram? “No. Definitely not.” Was that a difficult decision? “Not at all. What I do now is my passion and a full-time job. I’m excited to see it, though. And I’m sure when I’m there and they are on stage, there will be a part of me that feels a bit left out. Because even after all this, a part of me will always be a Spice Girl.” All clothes: victoriabeckham.com. Styling assistant: Bemi Shaw. Hair: George Northwood. Makeup: Valeria Ferreira. Shot at icetank.com • If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication). This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.  The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.West Ham have no plans to sell Marko Arnautovic after receiving a £35m bid from an unnamed Chinese club for the forward. While Arnautovic would be able to command a lucrative wage by moving to the Chinese Super League, West Ham will not be pressured into losing the 29-year-old during the winter transfer window. The Austrian is West Ham’s joint-top scorer with eight goals in all competitions and is seen as a crucial part of Manuel Pellegrini’s plans. West Ham have dealt with plenty of speculation concerning Arnautovic since his £24m move from Stoke  in July 2017. He was linked with Manchester United last summer and recently said he could be tempted to pursue a transfer to a club in the Champions League. However there is a suspicion that Arnautovic, who is represented by his brother Danijel, will try to use the interest from China to convince West Ham to award him an improved contract. Two years on from losing Dimitri Payet to Marseille, West Ham are aware it would be a PR disaster to sell another of their best players. Arnautovic has become their most important forward in the past 12 months and his recent spell on the sidelines with a hamstring injury underlined his importance to Pellegrini, who does not want to have to sign a replacement this month. West Ham’s position is hardened by the knowledge their other strikers are not in Arnautovic’s class. Javier Hernández has been inconsistent since signing from Bayer Leverkusen in 2017 and Andy Carroll, whose injury record counts against him, is out of contract in the summer. West Ham will wait until the end of the season before deciding whether to offer Carroll a deal. Lucas Pérez could be set to leave six months after his £4m move from Arsenal. However West Ham are yet to receive any bids for the forward despite reports suggesting he is a target for Real Betis and Deportivo La Coruña.God I miss pubic hair. During a recent bonding session with my teenager, we watched Carrie together. What is shocking now about the 1976 horror movie is not just how brilliant it is, – and brilliantly short – but also that opening shower scene. All that pubic hair on the teenage girls. “Where has it all gone?” I wondered, as my daughter shifted uncomfortably in her chair. I thought about it again reading about why so many young women are reluctant to have cervical smears. The latest statistics are alarming; the worst for 21 years. Only 71.4% of women in England who should be screened are getting tested. Between the ages of 25 and 49, women should have a smear test every three years, and currently only 69.1% do. Coverage is better for older women, with more than 76% showing up for screening. Robert Music, chief executive at Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, said the figures were “highly frustrating and, coupled with rising cervical cancer diagnoses, an enormous worry”. Not to put too fine a point on it, cervical cancer kills. Yet, if it is detected early, most women are fine. Women’s bodies remain mysterious to us if we are mainly concerned about how we look, rather than how we feel in them Why did I connect pubic hair with this health issue? When asked why they won’t have a smear test, many young women talk about “being judged”. They feel they need to be waxed or shaved, they worry that their vulvas and vaginas will not smell or look right. They feel embarrassed and awkward and frightened. To which one can only say, look, the doctors and nurses really have seen it all before. Society has come a long way since the 1800s, when it was believed that any kind of “pelvic examination” would cause women to become sex maniacs, so really, only prostitutes could be examined. It is true, too, that no one enjoys a smear test. Having a cold metal speculum put inside you ranks up there with having your breasts squashed between glass plates for a mammogram in terms of pleasure I would say. It’s that phrase doctors use for all horrible things: “a bit uncomfortable”. But the fear and ignorance surrounding cervical smear tests isn’t just about pain. They reflect how women’s bodies remain mysterious to us if we are mainly concerned about how we look rather than how we feel about them, or in them. The gaze with which some women judge their own labia as misshapen or abnormal is an internalised male gaze. Often it has come from the ramped-up, lowered-down expectations of porn. We become ashamed of what is inside us, however we prettify it up. There are two conversations going on at once here: we have a culture of sexual openness, hook-ups, free bleeding and jokes about vaginas in public. At the same time, female bodies are still dirty, troublesome and never perfect enough. The situation is confused by the insistence that the word “woman” itself is problematic for parts of the trans community. Even Cancer Research UK talks about “anyone who has a cervix” needing to get tested, a usage it defends on the basis that transgender men are at risk of cervical cancer. Many nurses who carry out routine screening tests say this is worse than useless. The reality is we also need to reach women who don’t have English as a first language and the very many women who hardly know what a cervix is. All of it makes me feel we are spiralling backwards. The speculum, once seen as a danger to proper ladies – basically a “steel penis” – was reclaimed in the 60s by feminists and feminist doctors who set up free clinics. In 1971 Carol Downer, an American feminist, walked into a bookshop in LA, pulled down her pants and inserted a speculum. She invited other women in the shop to come and look at her cervix. These sessions with speculums, torches and mirrors were self-help at a time when abortion was still a crime in the US. DIY gynaecology empowered millions of women to understand their own anatomy. Women began teaching each other about speculums and vaginal self-examination and took mirrors to the doctors so that they could see inside themselves. It was a radical act: women’s bodies were not objects for others but belonged to them. Look, I’m not asking for constant fanny gazing if you don’t feel up to it, but if not dying of ignorance means asking the doctor to warm up the speculum, or telling them it hurts, then do it. But if fear of what we look like “down there” means cancer rates are rising then it really is time to start examining ourselves, examining our bodies, and examining what our contemporary culture demands of young women. Far from being liberated, women’s relationship to their bodies, in terms of both pleasure and pain, appears to be even more troubled than it used to be. • Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnistIt is Britain’s most brutal running race – 268 miles non-stop along the Pennine Way, from Edale in Derbyshire to the Scottish Borders, in January. Jasmin Paris, who is still breastfeeding her 14-month-old daughter Rowan, and was expressing milk along the way, this week beat 136 other competitors – including 125 men – from 15 different countries, to win the Montane Spine Race outright. In the process, on Wednesday, she smashed the men’s course record by more than 12 hours. Paris, who is a vet working at the University of Edinburgh and studying acute myeloid leukaemia, told the Guardian she had planned to wean her daughter before the race began, but two back-to-back viral infections meant baby Rowan refused to take anything except milk for five days, and so by the time of the race she was still breastfeeding to avoid mastitis. “I had to express during the race so it didn’t get uncomfortable,” she says. “At the first checkpoint, it slowed me down a lot and I had to hurry afterwards to catch back up.” As the race progressed she produced less milk, so the expressing became quicker. “In the end,” she says, “it was less of a problem than I’d feared.” To fit her training for the Spine Race in around her job and family life, Paris had to get up at 4am each day, when she would head out for runs in the hills around her home near Edinburgh, while her family were still in bed. She also went on plenty of long hikes with her baby. “My coach told me to get a weight vest to practice running with a backpack,” she says. “But I thought, I have a baby, I’ll take her. It was decent training.” In all, she was out on the course for 83 hours and 12 minutes, pausing to power nap, eat and express milk for a total of only seven hours along the way. She had to carry everything she needed, and had to navigate using a map and compass, mostly alone and in the dark. But she was relentless. Previous winner Eugeni Roselló Solé from Spain pushed himself so hard chasing her in second place that he was forced to pull out of the race exhausted with four miles to go. Almost 20 hours after she had finished, only two men had completed the race, with everyone else either still out on the course or retired. Paris says the hardest part was the first 24 hours. “It’s weird, but I missed my family most then, and I still had so far to go.” She says by the end she was completely absorbed in the race, trying to stay ahead of her rivals, and the thought of seeing her daughter again was spurring her on. She has also spoken of hallucinations because of lack of sleep. “On the final section, I kept seeing animals appearing out of every rock,” she says. “And I kept forgetting what I was doing out there.” Top British ultra runner and former Spine Race finisher Damian Hall says: “Her performance was extraordinary – one of the great British ultra-running performances. “What’s especially impressive is that it’s her first time doing a race like this – and she was racing against some previous winners. She showed incredible determination and focus. It’s unusual for someone to do so well when they’re new to this type of racing, which is seriously tiring.” Olympian Jo Pavey says Paris’s performance was “awesome and inspiring … It must have been amazing for her to cross the finish line and have her little one there for a hug.” What was that like? Paris laughs. “My daughter’s really sociable,” she says. “So she had made friends with all the officials and people at the finish. When she saw me, she wasn’t really that bothered.” Since finishing, Paris has been caught up in a whirlwind of attention, with television appearances and Chelsea Clinton tweeting about her victory. “In a way, this bit has been harder than the race,” she says. “At least then I just had one job to do: keep putting one foot in front of the other.” All she craves now is a good night’s sleep. “And then I have a thesis to write,” she says.The appearance of a single green leaf hinted at a future in which astronauts would grow their own food in space, potentially setting up residence at outposts on the moon or other planets. Now, barely after it had sprouted, the cotton plant onboard China’s lunar rover has died. The plant relied on sunlight at the moon’s surface, but as night arrived at the lunar far side and temperatures plunged as low as -170C, its short life came to an end. Prof Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, who led the design of the experiment, said its short lifespan had been anticipated. “Life in the canister would not survive the lunar night,” Xie said. The Chang’e-4 probe entered “sleep mode” on Sunday as the first lunar night after the probe’s landing fell. Nighttime on the moon lasts for approximately two weeks, after which the probe would wake up again. Its rover, Yutu-2, has also been required to take a midday nap to avoid overheating while the sun was directly overhead and temperatures could reach more than 120C. Unlike Earth, the moon has no atmosphere to buffer extreme temperature variations. The plants and seeds would gradually decompose in the totally enclosed canister, and would not affect the lunar environment, according to the China National Space Administration. Although astronauts have cultivated plants on the International Space Station, this was the first time any have grown on the moon. “We had no such experience before. And we could not simulate the lunar environment, such as microgravity and cosmic radiation, on earth,” Xie said. The experiment also included potato seeds, yeast and Arabidopsis, or rockcress, a small, flowering plant of the mustard family, but none of these showed signs of having sprouted. Fruit fly eggs were also placed in the canister. The hope was that a micro-ecosystem would form, in which the plants would provide oxygen to the fruit flies, which would feed on the yeast and produce the carbon dioxide required for photosynthesis. The space agency did not confirm whether the fruit fly eggs had hatched. “Fruit flies are relatively lazy animals. They might not come out,” Xie told the Chinese news website, Inkstone, on Tuesday. If they failed to hatch, they have probably now missed their window of opportunity.Addiction was once viewed as an unsavoury fringe disease, tethered to substances with killer withdrawal symptoms, such as alcohol and opium. But now the scope of what humans can be addicted to seems to have snowballed, from sugar to shopping to social media. The UK’s first NHS internet-addiction clinic is opening this year; the World Health Organization (WHO) has included gaming disorder in its official addictions diagnosis guidelines. The first glimmer of this shift was in 1992, when tabloids reported that Michael Douglas – Hollywood royalty, fresh from starring in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct – was holed up in an Arizonan rehab facility with sex addiction. No matter that, to this day, Douglas stringently denies ever suffering from the condition – the way we perceive addiction had begun to unfurl. Back then, the broadening of the term was often viewed in medical circles as lazy appropriation; however, neuroscience has now largely accepted that it is the same brain chemical, dopamine, driving these irrepressible cravings. What’s more, our 21st-century world is so heavily baited with cues and stimuli – from stealthy marketing to junk food, not to mention the nagging lure of online life – that it appears to be rigging our dopamine systems to become “hypersensitised”. “The range of what people are getting addicted to has increased,” confirms Michael Linskey, a professor of addiction at King’s College London. “For my parents’ generation, the only options were tobacco and alcohol. Now there are more drugs, including synthetics, along with commercialisation and ways – especially online – of encouraging prolonged use of different things.” Many of these emerging conditions are seen as behavioural rather than physical, substance-related addictions – but the consequences can be as grave. Gambling is the longest established behavioural addiction, having been medically recognised since 2013. Suicide rates, along with the likelihood of substance addiction, are higher among compulsive gamblers. “I see gambling students who drop out of university because they can’t stop,” says Henrietta Bowden-Jones, the consultant psychiatrist behind the forthcoming NHS internet-addiction clinic. “I see people with shopping compulsions who are in so much debt because they couldn’t stop themselves from buying three dresses in different sizes, that in the end their businesses and families suffer.” Sometimes, she says, compulsions flit between different vices – for example, a young man seeking refuge from family problems might toggle between gaming and porn. “I saw [a gaming disorder patient] yesterday,” she adds, “who then went on to spending money on objects and clothes. You can somehow shift the behaviour but it’s an illness we don’t yet know enough about.” It is hard to overlook, however, the fact that many of these thrills are available at the touch of a screen. When the addiction charity Addaction commissioned a YouGov survey in October 2018, it found that parents are twice as worried about their teenage children being addicted to social media as they are about drugs, and a similar ratio when comparing worries about gaming and drugs. Also in October, the EU announced it would fund the European Problematic Use of the Internet Research Network to investigate the public health implications. Not everyone agrees with defining these new disorders as addictions – after all, you can’t overdose on them. Gambling and gaming are the only ones to have made it on to the WHO list of addictions. However, a paradigm shift in understanding addiction is in motion. Take sex addiction. Seeking treatment for this controversial condition has, in cases such as that of the golfer Tiger Woods, been criticised as a cynical shortcut to redemption for philanderers. On the other hand, neuroscientists who have been able to study the brains of people with debilitatingly compulsive obsessions with sex witness similar responses to those they have observed in drug addiction cases. Most of the standard criteria for addiction diagnosis do apply to these disorders, says Linskey: “Tolerance, neglect of responsibilities, inability to stop, withdrawal.” Withdrawal is the obvious sticking point, although sugar withdrawal symptoms have been induced in lab rats – sweats, shakes, changes in body temperature, anxiety, the whole kaboodle. “If a teenager becomes irritable when a gaming session is cut short, there’s some discussion as to whether that’s a sort of mild withdrawal,” says Linskey. Terry Robinson, an esteemed professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan – together with his colleague, Kent Berridge – identified dopamine as the neurochemical responsible for craving. He thinks debating the semantics of addiction is unhelpful. “Whether it’s drugs, sex, gambling or whatever, you’re looking at impulse-control disorders where people have difficulty refraining from maladaptive use. There are certainly similarities in terms of the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms involved.” Once Robinson and Berridge had identified dopamine as “wanting” and pleasurable brain opiates as “liking” – two distinct phenomena – they discovered that you don’t have to like something in order to want it: a key finding about addiction. In addicts’ brains, the craving is unbearable even when they no longer like the object of their desire. Berridge once told me that the “massive”, “robust” wanting systems in the brain can be turned on with or without pleasure, whereas pleasure “has a much smaller and more fragile brain basis … That’s why life’s intense pleasures are less frequent and less sustained than life’s intense desires”. It also explains, perhaps, why humans are so easily herded into wanting new stuff and instant gratification, even when these things don’t make us happy. “What’s happening in these addictions,” says Robinson, “is that the dopamine system is becoming hypersensitised, leading to these pathological motivational states.” He has identified three factors that could help explain why “there seems to be a wider variety of problematic things [to get addicted to]”. (He does caution, however, that “getting into social factors is very difficult in terms of proving cause and effect”.) The first factor is that our modern environment is stuffed with craving-inducing stimuli. “People don’t appreciate the power of cues that have been associated with rewards, be it a drug or sex or food, in generating motivational states.” In fact, addicts can start liking the cues more than the end goal, such as the rigmarole of scoring drugs and so on. “The amount of cues associated with highly palatable foods are everywhere now,” he says. “Drugs, sex and gambling as well, and that has changed quite a bit over the years and could be leading to more problematic use.” Linskey agrees, adding “some of the marketing and design of gambling machines is a step ahead of all of us academics in devising ways to attract users and boost dopamine and retain them”. The “like” button, quantifying approval and igniting a compulsion to check social media, is a similar example. Introducing a report into the effects of social media on young people in early 2018, the UK’s children’s commissioner Anne Longfield wrote that “some children are becoming almost addicted to ‘likes’ as a form of social validation”. Robinson’s second consideration is dosage. Our liking of sweet tastes suited us when we were hunter-gatherers, helping us choose ripe energy sources. Now, we have high-fructose corn syrup, which blows our minds with unnatural levels of glucose. Similarly with drugs, he points out: “Chewing coca leaves in the Andes is not the same as smoking crack cocaine. The pharmacology is different and this can also increase propensity to addiction.” His final factor is simply access. “Food, sex, gambling and drugs – availability these days is much greater than it was in the past.” (Sex addiction can include consuming porn, sexting, compulsive masturbation, exhibitionism and chemsex.) All these factors, Robinson continues, “combine in complex ways – and I’m sure we don’t understand them all – to increase the probability of problematic use in a variety of things”. Does this mean that more people are at risk in this era of throbbing dopamine excitation? Major risk factors for addiction, such as deprivation and childhood trauma, are still important predictors for how easily your dopamine system can be hijacked, says Robinson – “but you have laden on top of that ubiquitous cues, more potent formulations and increased availability”. Another theory about what is driving the diversification of addictive behaviours stems from a series of experiments conducted in Canada in the late 1970s known as Rat Park. The psychologist Bruce Alexander found that lab rats, while isolated in empty cages with the option of drinking either plain or drugged water, easily became addicted to heroin; if you put rats in a vast, toy-filled enclosure with other male and female rats for company, the heroin couldn’t compete. The context was driving addiction, rather than the drug itself. The resulting study made minimal waves when it was published – yet today, Alexander is being flown all over the world to share his take on addiction, which he calls the dislocation theory. “The modern world breaks down all kinds of community, all kinds of tradition and religions and stuff that has made life integral and full for people in the past,” he says. “You can’t just say: ‘OK, now I’m going to give you back what modernity took away.’ We have to reinvent society, as we perpetually do, with an eye on making sure there are enough connections for human beings with each other in a traditional way, so that people can grow up and be content enough so they don’t need to find substitutes in addiction for life.” Organisations such as Addaction in the UK, he says, “are finding ways to get [addicts] together into groups and planting these groups in communities and getting the community to support people in these groups, not to give up their addictions but to have a meaningful life”. Steve Moffatt, policy manager at Addaction, says that like all such services, “we’re just starting to try to understand the level of issues that are out there. For this generation coming through, social media is a big thing and online activities generally, but we still don’t know the extent.” Despite the increase in the range of addictions, says Linskey, there are still probably fewer addicted people than there were 30 years ago because the level of nicotine dependency – the most deadly one – has dropped from 50% to less than 20% in the UK. However, updates to diagnosis guidelines mean that people who sit lower on the addictive spectrum can now be seen as having problematic dependencies. The influential American Psychiatric Association, he says, “used to distinguish between ‘abuse’ and ‘dependence’, whereas now they are in a single category of drug-use disorders. Perhaps as many as one in four males would meet the criteria for alcohol dependency, and a lower, but still substantial, number of females.” And yet these people are at no risk of seizures or death if they go into withdrawal. “There is a spectrum,” he says, “whether it’s alcohol or drug dependence or shopping addiction and people have become a bit happier with placing the point at which behaviour becomes problematic at a lower level of use.” Bowden-Jones says the best evidence for treating behavioural addictions is using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help avoid cues (for example, taking a different route home so you don’t pass the bookmaker), rewarding good behaviour and reaffirming what people have to lose with constant reminders, such as on wristbands. Assistance can also come in the form of stimulus-control tools. “There are fantastic blocks to put in place that can stop you from watching porn, gambling and indeed anything to do with the behaviour you have an issue with, except for gaming,” says Bowden-Jones. “We need to get to a position where, in the cold reality of your day, you can say: ‘I don’t need to spend more than two hours a day doing this, so I will block myself after two hours [of play].’” This responsibility, she says, lies with the gaming industry. Mindfulness meditation has also helped to reduce substance abuse. In fact, it was found to be more effective than the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step programme and CBT in 2014 research led by Sarah Bowden, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at Pacific University in Portland, Oregon; the previous year, Bowden, Berridge and other neuroscientific luminaries met to discuss addiction with the Dalai Lama. After all, Buddhists caught on to this craving problem thousands of years ago, using meditation to overcome the very urges that they identified as the linchpin of human suffering, long before these dopamine-fuelled times. A modern challenge is the ubiquity, and the necessity: gone are the days when recovering behavioural addicts can be told to avoid the ever-necessary internet, for example. “Younger generations will be socially cut off,” says Bowden-Jones, “and what our patients say is when they feel they’re missing out, it pushes them more toward the virtual life that they already have a problem with rather than engaging properly in their face-to-face lives.” As Moffat says, “that’s where they get their validation”. Many of us would plot our internet habits on the lower end of this spectrum: slaves to our phones, wasting hours that we will never get back stuck down internet rabbit holes, compulsively checking for likes. “There’s a great distinction,” says Bowden-Jones “between functional use and use that is not necessary. It’s like eating too much cake, which makes you feel bad. People who are on social media too much, it’s not a positive experience, although it may have started off as such.” There goes the dopamine without the pleasure, again.We know remarkably little about the oceans that cover most of the Earth, provide half of our oxygen and help to regulate the climate. Maps of the ocean floor are less detailed than those of Mars or the moon. Marine biologists have discovered deeply weird and genuinely wonderful species: boxer crabs wielding anemones like weapons; the rope-like Praya dubia, up to 50 metres long; immortal jellyfish, which unlike any other known creature can revert from maturity to an earlier stage of development, akin to a butterfly becoming a caterpillar. But on one estimate we have identified less than a tenth of ocean-dwelling creatures. What we can be certain about is that the extraordinary diversity of life in the oceans is under immense and growing threat. This week we learned that the last five years were the hottest on record. Global warming has heated the oceans by the equivalent of one atomic explosion per second for the last century and a half; in recent years the pace has accelerated to between three and six atomic bombs per second. More than 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the seas. Billions of people living in coastal areas are under threat from rising sea levels, due both to the melting of ice – happening at a frightening and increasing rate – and the physical expansion of water as it warms. Climate change is making storms more powerful and disrupting the patterns of marine life on which communities depend. But it is only the most comprehensive of the dangers. Carbon emissions are also causing ocean acidification. Intensive fishing, pollution and the exploitation of mineral resources are all taking their toll. Between a fifth and a quarter of marine species are already threatened with extinction; global marine populations have halved since 1970. Though only three humans have reached the deepest known point, the Mariana trench, our collective impact is felt there in the form of pollutants and plastics. Recently, an expert warned that today’s children may be the last generation to see the glory of coral reef systems which have survived for tens of millions of years. Bleaching, first observed in 1983, has already affected up to a third of warm-water reefs. Scientists around the world are “farming” corals in an ingenious attempt to sustain them, but the only real solution is to stave off the worst climate change scenario. The New York summit overseen by the UN secretary general this September will be a key test of whether nation states are serious about cutting emissions. The new reports provide yet more evidence of how urgent this is. As one expert on ocean warming notes in the Guardian today, it can still be tackled if we act immediately; this is a test of will, not ability. We know that the human consequences if we fail will be catastrophic. And yet, because we have still to explore the oceans more fully, we may never realise quite how much we have lost.Serena Williams leaves Melbourne – and the rest of tennis – less certain about her future than her magnificent past, upset yet oddly resigned to the fact that what she hoped would be the extension of her comeback had unravelled in glorious confusion. In trying to rationalise the disappointment of falling three wins short of drawing alongside Margaret Court with a staggering 24 career majors, Williams moved with far more dexterity in the aftermath than she did while enduring a head-spinning collapse in the third set of her quarter-final against Karolina Pliskova. “The big picture for me is always winning. I’m not going to sit here and lie about that. It hasn’t happened yet, but I feel like it’s going to happen. Just keep taking it one match at a time, just keep soldiering on, I guess.” Beaten from 5-1 up in the third set on day nine of the Australian Open, Williams refused to blame the rolled ankle that plainly hindered her movement after she had landed awkwardly in a foot-fault on the first of four match points that came her way. From that critical moment onwards, she was a sitting duck for the Czech’s searing groundstrokes and pin-point serves. What compounded the moment, however, was that but for the foot-fault – called quickly and legitimately – the ball that would have won her the match looked as if it aced Pliskova. But, of course, it did not count. As Williams put it later, they “soldiered on”. The match would have been over, though. The angst that engulfed her would never have happened. She might have gone on to beat Naomi Osaka in the semi-finals, in a highly anticipated rematch of their 2018 US Open final. Perhaps she would have won the final against either of Petra Kvitova or the unseeded American Danielle Collins. And there she would have stood, at last, the equal of Court at the Australian’s home tournament and with the prospect of more victories to come. And yet here is the most curious thing: she accepted the line judge’s crushing decision with equanimity. And why might that be? The answer that springs to mind is that the trauma of her meltdown at Flushing Meadows last September, when her anger at the perceived injustice of being penalised for coaching by her mentor, Patrick Mouratoglou, undermined her tennis and led on to the most excruciating post-mortems on her behaviour and that of the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos. Could she subconsciously have been thinking here on Wednesday afternoon: “I do not want to be all over the front pages again for totally losing it. And, anyway, I’m 5-1 up; I’m Serena Williams. I can win this on one leg.” It’s impossible to say, because she flat-batted all inquiries with practised ease. She acknowledged that her talented Czech opponent – who also beat her in the quarter-finals of the 2016 US Open – “played lights out on match point” but added, “I don’t think it had anything to do with my ankle, per se. She was just nailing and hitting shots. Obviously, I made some mistakes …” Obviously. Like not calling for the trainer which would have grabbed her precious rest time, and maybe eased her pain. Yet she insisted: “I really hate calling the trainer out, to be honest. And at that point I didn’t feel like I needed it or I didn’t feel like it would be a big deal. I like to just kind of tough it out.” For someone who has played the game to an astonishingly high level for more than two decades, to regard playing injured against an opponent of Pliskova’s ability as no “big deal”, leaves more questions than it answers. Yet Williams’s game, generally, is in solid shape. She is as fit as she could possibly be 10 months into a comeback after giving birth for the first time aged 36. As Mouratoglou remarked beforehand when asked if her form here was the best he had seen of her since she came back: “I think generally speaking in the tournament, yes. I think she’s fitter than she was last year.” He added: “She’s ready physically – emotionally, too, because it’s a big change in anyone’s life to have a baby. She’s back to being Serena on both the physical and emotional side. Her level is good.” The situation was confused further when Mouratoglou told Eurosport: “She could have asked for the physio because she was hurt but, I don’t know. I think she didn’t call the physio because she knew her tournament was over. Whatever would happen, even playing tomorrow. She knows herself very well, she’s had multiple twisted ankles, very often in her career. Even with a very tight strap she could have tried and kept going eventually winning the match, why not? I don’t think she would have been able to play the day after. I think unconsciously that’s what she thought. That’s the only explanation I can find right now but I haven’t talked to her yet about that. It wasn’t the right moment.” As she wound up the post-match exchanges, Williams quietly reasserted her ambitions for the rest of her career, at 37 and without a major since winning this one two years ago. “The big picture for me is always winning. I’m not going to sit here and lie about that. It hasn’t happened yet, but I feel like it’s going to happen. Just keep taking it one match at a time, just keep soldiering on, I guess.” There is nobody in tennis who does not want her to deliver on that promise. It’s just that her anxieties – or, perversely, her efforts to control them – have twice now intruded on her game with big wins in her grasp.Awards season is upon us – first the Golden Globes and now Oscar nominations – and it has struck me just how odd it is that these Hollywood functions have come to be connected to #MeToo and Time’s Up. Was there ever an industry so comically unsuited to driving an equality movement? Take the struggles of the Academy to catch up with the times, one year in. The day after it selected Bohemian Rhapsody as a nominee for best picture (reviews had been scathing, but it did after all feature Aids and a bisexual storyline), multiple allegations of sexual assault emerged against its director, Bryan Singer. Singer denied the accusations, but they had not come out of the blue: rumours of sexual misconduct had followed him for some years. Last month, no sooner had the Academy announced Kevin Hart as host – he would have been only the sixth African American in the job in some 91 years – reporters unearthed homophobic comments he had made on Twitter several years ago and he had to step down. Frozen by the not unlikely chance that its next candidate would turn out to be one of the “less acceptable” of the abusers and bigots who still dominate Hollywood, the Academy is now considering a “range” of hosts, presumably so as to spread the risk while appearing as inclusive as possible. It has nominated no female directors. It is easy to see why some are welcomed even as others are cast out: it is because they are leading players and part of the fabric of Hollywood. It is safe to condemn figures of lesser importance who have been accused of comparable behaviour. Pointing the finger at major producers worth hundreds of millions and with many influential friends could affect your career. The reason Hollywood cannot do activism is that it’s an industry that reeks of fear. You can work in it only if you happen to appear likable to a few powerful people, each of whom, by the way, is connected to all the other powerful people and free to say anything they like to them about you. Before you make it, their approval is the only metric by which you can measure your worth, and even once you have, disapproval usually means you do not work again. Impressing these people is not just a matter of exuding general appeal, but also – as always happens when you indulge someone with too much power – a matter of making them specifically feel good about themselves. This is why the whole industry is so nauseatingly sycophantic and why at awards ceremonies actors will almost give themselves an aneurysm in their efforts to sufficiently grovel to their producers and directors. (Meryl Streep once called Harvey Weinstein “God”.) And this it is why it simply cannot cope with a brave social movement, let alone lead one: it is just too cowardly. Stars can do activism only when it is safe, which is no kind of activism at all. They can do it when the movement is essentially over: when all the main power players are on board and everyone else is wearing a black dress or a Time’s Up bracelet or making fierce (but crucially unspecific) speeches about making changes or women’s voices being heard. But they cannot do it when it matters. During last year’s black dress protest at the Golden Globes, Rose McGowan tweeted that “not one of those fancy people wearing black to honour our rapes would have lifted a finger” had it not been for her and actress Asia Argento speaking out against Weinstein. In a now deleted tweet, she also accused Streep of hypocrisy for “happily working” for Weinstein when it suited her. Megan Fox, who publicly accused film-maker Michael Bay of sexism 10 years ago, was too badly burned by the reaction to join the movement now. “I was ahead of my time so people weren’t ready,” she said. “Instead, I was rejected because of the qualities that are now being praised in other women coming forward.” This was in 2009. Hollywood’s idea of feminism is to idolise the champions of yesteryear – Ruth Bader Ginsburg or the suffragettes. It is less keen on today’s heroes. No wonder so many women in Hollywood have such low expectations. Patricia Clarkson, who won for best supporting actress at this year’s Globes, thanked her director for “demand[ing] everything of me except sex, which is exactly how it should be in our industry”. But it is not surprising that Hollywood is a few steps behind the times. Like the advertising industry, the business of selling films to mass audiences demands catering to received ideas. It will be a long time before it catches up. • Martha Gill is a political journalistAnthony Scaramucci’s time as White House press secretary lasted just 10 days, but the career as a TV-personality-for-hire he has built off the back of it is now well into its second year. Not content with being evicted from one famous house after less than two weeks, Scaramucci has been announced as a contestant on the next series of Big Brother: Celebrity Edition. He will be joined by Lindsay Lohan’s mother, wrestler Eva Marie and Kato Kaelin, whose fame is almost entirely derived from being a key witness in the OJ Simpson trial, having stayed at Simpson’s home on the night of the murder. Since leaving the Trump administration Scaramucci, known generally if largely unaffectionately as the Mooch, has set up his own news site, the Scarramucci Post. Shortly after launch, the site made headlines for running a poll asking how many Jews died in the Holocaust. A glance shows it currently consists of five articles, all penned by Scaramucci. Its social media accounts are still active. He also launched a radio show, Mooch and the Mrs, with his wife Deidre, and makes regular appearances on the comedy baseball podcast Pardon My Take. He was heavily rumoured to be shopping his own reality series and refused to appear on the 2017 edition of Big Brother. In an interview this week, Big Brother host Julie Chen claimed Scaramucci changed his mind after seeing the impact Omarosa Manigault Newman, another former White House staffer, made on the show. Omarosa spent much of her time in the Big Brother house gossiping about the president, saying he sent tweets “in his underwear”. She used the appearance on the show to help launch her tell-all book Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House, which gave her further headlines. Chen will be making her first major appearance on CBS since leaving the network’s chatshow The Talk. Chen announced her departure after her husband, Les Moonves, resigned as chief executive of CBS amid allegations of sexual harassment. Also competing this year are swimmer Ryan Lochte and Jonathan Bennett, the actor who played Aaron Samuels in Mean Girls and recently reprised the role in Ariana Grande’s Thank You, Next video. The contestants will be competing for a $250,000 prize. CBS have made clear the winner will pocket the cash, rather than it going to charity as in some celebrity formats.It was a small, handwritten notice taped to the window of a shop but it spoke volumes. “For 2019 switch off your device, learn to talk to people again. Use your local shops. If its [sic] cheaper online save up and buy local, remember they are familys [sic] not faceless companies. More convenient online? Don’t be lazy go and get it local. Do more to protect our society this year.” The message from Paul Duncan, owner of Pauls Custom Cycles in Peckham, south London, which closed just before Christmas, was picked up by the presenter James Corden, who posted it on his Twitter feed last week with the comment: “This is a recently closed down shop in London. I think they may have a point... thanks for sharing.” Corden’s tweet, which went viral, sparking a predictable row about millionaire expats lecturing others on how to spend their money, is another reminder of the continuing plight of Britain’s beleaguered bicycle shops. Across the country, cycle shops that have been a regular fixture of their local high streets for decades are closing down in their droves. The bikebiz website regularly tracks closures, compiling an increasingly long list of names. In the last couple of years many illustrious shops have disappeared, including the 105-year-old Ben Hayward Cycles in Cambridge and M Steel Cycles on Tyneside, which had been trading since 1894. In November, the oldest bike shop in Bath, Johns Bikes, which had been trading since the Seventies and once had a turnover of £1m a year, closed. It is not just an independent shop that is being lost when a store closes, according to Sam Jones, senior campaigns officer at the charity Cycling UK: “When you buy a bike from one of these shops they’re making sure you get the right bike for you rather than the bike you want. You get to try the bike before you buy, you get the expertise. They are a vital part of cycling life in the UK.” But many customers no longer value these qualities, it appears. A Bicycle Association report found that for every 10 bike shops that closed in 2017 only three have taken their place, the “worst refresh rate since the 1960s when bicycle sales collapsed and when hundreds of Britain’s bike shops closed or moved into different sectors”. Even the established chains are not immune. In the autumn Sports Direct tycoon Mike Ashley bought Evans Cycles for £8m after it fell into administration and he recently outlined plans to close up to half of its 62 stores. Those at the other end of the spectrum are also taking a hit. The Brixton Cycles workers’ co-op in south London, which has existed at various locations for 35 years and commands a loyal following on Twitter, is struggling to stay afloat. This is a recently closed down shop in London. I think they may have a point... thanks for sharing @Tweet_Dec pic.twitter.com/IkJd6Wc7yj “Up to Christmas it was touch and go as to whether we could get the rent together for the shop,” said Jim Sullivan, one of the co-op’s nine members. “We didn’t pay ourselves until the 15th and this sort of thing is becoming a more regular occurrence.” The internet is largely to blame, according to Sullivan. Bikes, clothing and components can be bought online significantly cheaper than in shops, which have considerably higher overheads than online brands. “The rent has become quite an issue for us,” Sullivan said. “When we moved premises it more than tripled overnight.” Cut-throat margins are reflected in plunging revenues across the sector. In 2010, total bike sales in the UK amounted to £1.49bn but these had declined to £1.28bn by 2016, the most recent figures available and the lowest annual total for seven years. The number of people working in the bicycle trade in the UK dropped from 15,000 to a low of just over 12,400 over the same period. Like many other bike shops, Brixton Cycles is tweaking its business model in a bid to stay alive. Its members are discussing pay cuts and becoming more flexible about when they get paid. Many bike shops are now focusing on servicing bikes and building them from parts bought online – Brixton Cycles charges £130 to construct a full bike – rather than relying on sales. “We’ve just reduced our shopfloor size to increase the workshop – it’s nearly twice the size now,” Sullivan said. The decline of high street bike shops, at a time when people are being encouraged to be healthier and to reduce their car use, reflects a wider problem: despite millions of pounds being spent in recent years promoting cycling, the number of people using bikes has remained largely static. In 2017, 14% of respondents to a national survey said they cycled at least once a week. One fifth also said they cycled, but less often than that. Two out of three, though, reported that they cycled less than once a year, or never. Those figures have hardly changed since 2003, according to Cycling UK, largely because the younger generation think cycling “is too scary”. Jones drew parallels between the decline of the bike shop and another institution that is falling out of favour with millennials: “Bike shops are like pubs when it comes to maintaining community spirit. In many ways they’re that important.”Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira occupied their own intensely involved worlds for almost two hours but, when their first taste of temporary enmity was done, they could look one another in the eye. Both men have influenced far better matches than this Derby de La Côte d’Azur, which conjured up a steady enough stream of flashpoints but laid bare the dearth of quality they must attempt to correct. In the end a draw between two winners kept everyone broadly happy and, in the case of Henry and Monaco, ensured the pressure of a relegation battle gets no graver for now. “It was bizarre,” said Henry of coming up against his ally of so many battles with Arsenal and France. “When I saw him coming out of the dressing room, it was bizarre. We went up the steps together; we used to play together and here we were, about to play against each other. So we gave a nod to that but then we got lost in the match.” That was presumably what Henry was talking about behind a nowadays obligatory shielding hand during that walk, which continued as they entered the pitch behind their teams. Vieira could not suppress a grin; the two looked more like convivial dog-walking companions than dear friends about to redefine brieflythe terms of their relationship. Soon the dugouts loomed into view; a hug and a flurry of camera flashes later it was time to put frivolities on hold. For Henry the fixture was stacked with significance beyond high-profile reunions and the imperative to defeat a local rival. The rancour surrounding his 19th-placed side has hardly abated since he arrived, in contrast to the quietly satisfying progress Nice have made in the top half under Vieira, and the situation was begging for a performance in the image of his playing days. “It’s maybe too early to say that – you will have a better idea later,” a reasonably content Vieira said when asked if the sides had reflected their coaches. It would be a stretch to say Monaco did that to the letter but there were glimpses of a team designed to play with speed and ambition, even if they were dealt a hand by the dismissal of Nice’s Ihsan Sacko in first-half added time. They deserved the equaliser headed just over the line by Benoît Badiashile five minutes after the interval, puncturing the resolve of a Nice side that, moulded from the back by Vieira, finds goals at either end to be a rarity. “I couldn’t do what I wanted to do before with the team I had,” Henry said. “You saw in the past three games [including 1-1 draws with Rennes and Marseille] how I like to play: wingers high and wide, passing the ball on the ground, putting pressure up front.” It is little secret that he has been working with a hand tied behind his back, cajoling a team stripped of the tyros that buccaneered around Europe two seasons ago. Eight of his starting outfielders here were 23 or below, a situation exacerbated by an injury crisis that is slowly easing, and the balance has been all wrong. Cesc Fàbregas is among four new signings intended to correct that but, two hours before the start, he could be found in the labyrinthine depths of this arena giving an introductory press conference rather than heeding pre-match instructions. Players who had not been signed by 7 December, the date from which this fixture was postponed, were not eligible and the youngsters would have to be enlisted again. All the same, they emerged admirably from a game that threatened to encapsulate their troubles. When Allan Saint-Maximin ran through to score on the half-hour, capitalising on sloppy play from Youssef Aït Bennasser and drawing a frustrated reaction from Henry, the script looked wearily familiar. It seemed an even crueller twist had been added 15 minutes from time when, with the game poised at 1-1 and Monaco now asking constant questions, Nice were awarded a penalty via the game’s third VAR review. Diego Benaglio saved Saint-Maximin’s kick and, while the substitute Radamel Falcao struck a post later, by the close it appeared some fortune had come Henry’s way at last. He may need it, and it is an unfamiliar thing to say of someone who has traditionally ruled through excellence. “One thing about Thierry is that he is a winner, a competitor, and that’s one thing you will never be able to take away from him,” Fàbregas had said before taking his seat upstairs. “That’s why I know we are in safe hands.” Henry has always possessed the capacity to set onlookers agog; maintaining that aura in Monaco might be his greatest feat yet.Late-night hosts discuss the government shutdown, unpaid employees and a likely handwritten (and misspelled) State of the Union. On the 26th day of America’s government shutdown, Seth Meyers addressed the continuing fallout and the president’s lack of accountability with his usual straightforward candor. The shutdown is “not both sides,” Meyers said in reference to comments made by William Barr, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, that it “takes two to tango”. “We all remember the meeting in the Oval Office where Trump literally said he was proud of shutting down the government,” Meyers continued. Meyers also addressed reports that Trump believes he’s winning the war on public opinion over his proposed wall. “Well of course he believes that, he watches more Fox News than all the residents of a Texas Senior center combined,” Meyers said. “Trump always thinks he can win any fight. He’d be in the Octagon with Conor McGregor, taking a kick to the face, and he’d say: ‘Did you see? I just headbutted his foot with my face.’” And in his ongoing public relations effort, Meyers continued, Trump has adopted a new underlying logic for the wall: walls work because cars have wheels. So far, the strategy appears to be saying “walls” and “wheels” in various orders, with the word “medieval” tossed in. Or, as Meyers put it, “he’s hitting a wall, and his brain is going around like a wheel.” In typical fashion, Meyers called the situation plainly. “What we’re witnessing right now are the desperate gasps of the Trump agenda. The wall was the signature promise of his campaign and presidency … And now, it’s slipping away with Democrats in control the House.” Now nearly a month into the government shutdown, Late Show host Stephen Colbert admitted that he was running low on material. “I’ve run out of shutdown jokes,” he said. “We might have to dip into the National Reserves at this point.” This wasn’t entirely true; Colbert managed to slip in some jokes about the ongoing meltdown, such as speculation that a shortage of TSA agents, snarling airport lines, would anger Americans enough to force an end to the shutdown. This sounds about right, Colbert said. “The American people are reasonable, but if we have to spend the night on a bench in the Newark airport we will grab a flag and join the revolution like an extra in Les Mis.” In other shutdown news, the president called 50,000 federal employees back to work on Wednesday for no pay. “So, the president is going to make people work without pay, and he announced it in his Unmancipation Proclamation,” Colbert quipped. “And these are not people you want working while pissed,” he added, noting that their jobs include disbursing tax refunds, overseeing flight safety and inspecting the nation’s food supply. Of course, Colbert said. “Everyone knows food is always so much tastier when you don’t pay the cook.” Over at the Daily Show, Trevor Noah also addressed the shutdown. “The Coast Guard isn’t getting paid, imports aren’t getting through customs, and things have gotten so desperate that the Pentagon has been downgraded to a square,” he said. Aw look! The U.S. and U.K. are government meltdown twinning! pic.twitter.com/SZzBTWLv9G Trump delivering a State of the Union address by candlelight amid a shutdown government wouldn’t be particularly assuring, but Noah said he’d prefer an in-person speech over a written one submitted to Congress, as requested by House speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Trump delivering the State of the Union in writing would be a disaster,” Noah said. This is the same guy who tweeted the word ‘hamberders’ yesterday. If Trump writes his speech down he’s going to end up declaring that the state of the union is ‘schlong.’” And though things aren’t looking great for the American government right now – Noah noted reports that the shutdown could eliminate a whole quarter of national GDP growth – at least it has a twin in meltdown mode: Britain. Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan to exit the EU went before Parliament yesterday, and like “week-old blood pudding, it did not go down well”, Noah said. In summary, it was not a good Wednesday for some places. “America’s government is shut down and there’s trash on the street. The UK’s government is in turmoil and soon they may not have food,” Noah said. “And Africa is watching all of this like, ‘Ha ha, who is laughing now?’”Special counsel Robert Mueller has signaled to defense lawyers for Roger Stone, the longtime adviser to Donald Trump, that prosecutors might brandish Stone’s bank records and personal communications going back several years as evidence in the case against him. Legal analysts said the move could be significant because the sizable amount of potential evidence listed by Mueller – and its nature, in the case of the bank records – seemed to go well beyond the current known charges against Stone. A court filing by Mueller on Thursday said prosecutors had seized “voluminous and complex” material including “multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information”, material seized from search warrants executed on “Apple iCloud accounts and email accounts”, “bank and financial records, and the contents of numerous physical devices (eg, cellular phones, computers, and hard drives)”. Stone was indicted last week on charges of obstructing an investigation, witness tampering and five counts of making false statements. Two of his residences – one in Florida and one in Manhattan – were raided during his arrest. “It’s interesting that Mueller produced bank and financial records to Roger Stone, given that they don’t appear related to the charges he faces,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted. “Perhaps Mueller’s team has a practice of producing broad discovery to defendants, but it is not required by the rules. “If that is not Mueller’s usual practice, perhaps they want Stone to have this information now because there could be additional charges down the line, or because they think his knowledge that they possess this information could encourage him to flip.” Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called the filing “good news for the investigation”. “This implies that the FBI was able to access communications Stone and others could have assumed were protected from law-enforcement,” Vance tweeted. “This is good news for the investigation, there is no telling what might be in there Stone thought law-enforcement would never be able to see it.” The indictment of Stone last week suggested that prosecutors might have gained access to encrypted messages sent or received by Stone. One section of the indictment describes a text message exchange between Stone and an unidentified Trump “supporter” asking about a Stone contact in London alleged to be in communication with the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “The supporter involved with the Trump Campaign asked STONE via text message if he had ‘hear[d] anymore from London’,” the indictment reads in part. “STONE replied, ‘Yes – want to talk on a secure line – got Whatsapp?’ STONE subsequently told the supporter that more material would be released and that it would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign.” Stone is suspected of attempting to establish or carrying out back-channel communications between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks – although he has not been charged with any crime along those lines. He has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.Think of Milan and you think of fashion. The first time I spent more than a few hours in the city, I roamed the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II – Italy’s oldest shopping arcade, built in the 1860s and still home to the original Prada store, which was opened by the designer’s grandfather Mario in 1913 – wishing that I was rich (or at least, not quite so broke). What on earth is a girl with an overdraft and a fierce lust for buttery leather supposed to do in a place where everyone is so enviably well-dressed? In Milan, even the nuns look chic. In the end, I bought only one thing: an ice-cold negroni in the Camparino, the lovely, high-ceilinged bar that has been in the Galleria almost as long as Prada (Davide Campari first threw open its doors in 1915). I still love the Galleria – wander through it as you walk from La Scala to the Duomo, which it conveniently connects – and I would tell anyone to have their evening aperitif at the Camparino, where the people-watching is unparalleled. But since my most recent visit, I’m able to see Milan not only with the eyes of someone hell bent on giving their credit card a bashing, but with those of an art lover, too. If you like painting and sculpture – in particular, if you have any interest at all in Leonardo, the city’s most famous adopted son – it is just the place, and one without the crowds and queues you can expect in, say, Florence or Venice. At the extraordinary Chiesa di San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore – a church where almost every surface is covered with frescos, some of them by Leonardo’s pupil, Bernardino Luini – I was amazed to find myself almost entirely alone. Secreted away deep in its interior, I might have been one of the nuns who, long ago, received the Eucharist through a tiny door in its altar, the better that no man see any part of them. A good thing to do, if you’ve only a weekend to spare, is to hire a specialist guide. Mine, Veronica Azimonti, was booked through my hotel, the Baglioni Carlton in Via Senato, from where we were able to walk to all the places I wanted to visit (and to a few of which I knew nothing until she mentioned them). She was wonderful: brisk, in the sense that she knew exactly where we had to be and when. But indulgent, too: happy to let me stare for a few long moments at the cakes in the window of Marchesi, Milan’s oldest pasticceria (perched on their old-fashioned stands, in shades of pink and green, they’re straight out of a painting by Wayne Thiebaud). Where, I asked Veronica, is a good place for a lunchtime panini? Quick as a flash, the answer came back: De Santis. It has two branches: one in the Corso Magenta, tiny and old school; and one on the top floor of La Rinascente, the chi-chi department store that stands right by the Duomo. But, anyway: art. What to see? I went first to the Pinacoteca di Brera, the city’s main public gallery, now all the more gorgeous thanks to a refurbishment masterminded by its charismatic British-Canadian director, James Bradburne. There I saw, at last, Mantegna’s astonishing Lamentation of Christ (1480), a painting notable as much for its weirdness as for its realism (the artist’s composition, you notice, unnervingly draws all of your attention to the groin of Our Lord’s dramatically foreshortened body). Also in the Palazzo di Brera is the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, a public library that sometimes doubles as a very special concert venue. That evening, I returned and saw the cellist Robert Cohen and pianist Clive Britton play a programme of Beethoven and Brahms, a treat that was only the more pleasurable for the chance it gave me to gawp at the Milanese intellectuals who made up the audience. I also recommend the Brera’s majestic new cafe, where the espressos are strong, the pastries are sweet, and you may just feel – wear your grandmother’s best silk scarf, should you be in possession of such a thing – that you’re in a movie directed by Vittorio De Sica. At the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, it’s possible to see, on any given day, selected pages from the Codex Atlanticus, the largest bound set of Leonardo’s extant drawings and writings. But surely the most surpassingly intense experience you can have in Milan is to pay a visit to see The Last Supper, painted by the artist in the 1490s, in the Refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Access to this, one of the most famous images in the world, is tightly controlled – only 30 people are allowed in the room at a time – and as a result, you can gaze at Leonardo’s fresco unjostled, your eyes entirely free to roam across its delicate expanses. The Last Supper is a narrative, not some static thing, and I was struck by its emotional realism: you can tell exactly what each apostle is thinking and feeling. Glance at the Crucifixion by some rather more obscure artist on the wall opposite and it looks so old-fashioned by contrast. This minor epiphany, by the way, was very good for my credit card. Standing there, the feeling came over me that the best things in life cannot be owned and, sure enough, wandering through the city later, I did not have the urge to buy anything at all. Well, OK. That isn’t quite true. I did grab a small box of tronchetti when I dashed back, alone, to Marchesi. But liquorice comfits are a million miles from a Prada handbag, aren’t they? Baglioni Hotel Carlton offers a three-night stay on a B&B basis, including flights from Gatwick with easyJet, from £699pp when booked with Citalia. The hotel’s Leonardo da Vinci Tour costs from £325 for two people, including a three-hour guided tour of Pinacoteca AmbrosianaJust before Christmas, I spent a day in Cowley, a working-class suburb of Oxford where a factory now owned by BMW manufactures that great British icon, the Mini. The plant closes its doors for an annual “maintenance period”, usually timed to coincide with local schools’ summer holidays. But this year, amid the company’s concerns about Britain’s future relationship with Europe, the shutdown will not only be longer than usual but is scheduled to begin the day after we formally leave the European Union – a decision taken, says the company, to “minimise the risk of any possible short-term parts supply disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit”. You might imagine the surrounding streets would be full of anxiety and urgency. But once BMW had declined my request to visit the factory and I had resigned myself to long hours spent vox-popping, I was not entirely surprised to find the complete opposite: questions about Brexit being met with an exasperated indifference, as if it were something in which people were barely interested. Those who mentioned the factory assured me that it was in Cowley to stay. Among a couple of diehard leave supporters there was mention of Winston Churchill, and a suggestion that another referendum would be an offence against democracy. But most of my interviewees confirmed polling that has suggested a majority of both leavers and remainers now find Brexit boring, greeting any mention of it with grimaces and eye-rolling. “It’s a pain in the backside,” said one man. “Nobody seems to know what’s going on. Every channel you turn on, it’s all they talk about. I’ve had enough of it.” In 2016, he had voted leave. Did he have any sense of a way through the current mess? “I don’t know what the answer is now,” he says. “They’ve confused it so much.” He appeared to tilt towards staying in the EU, then leaned the other way. At the start of a week when the parliamentary drama around Brexit will reach fever pitch, all this is worth bearing in mind. Whatever the noise from Westminster, for millions of people Brexit is something that happened two and a half years ago. It has since become synonymous with an indecipherable cacophony about cabinet splits, customs unions and the kind of arcana that might convulse Twitter but leaves most people cold. Clearly, this highlights a huge political failure – not least on the part of the supposed party of opposition – and a debate so distant from the public that any resolution of the country’s malaise seems pretty much impossible. To outsiders, it must look like a kind of bizarre collective decadence: a watershed moment, replete with huge dangers, that will define our future for decades to come, being played out in the midst of widespread public boredom. Some of this is undoubtedly down to the fact that the realities of Brexit, whether with a deal or without, have yet to arrive. But much deeper things are at play: age-old traits that run particularly deep in England, and much newer changes in how politics reaches its audience. For both good and ill, England has long been a country where the revolution starts after the next pint, most politicians are viewed with scepticism, and the national motto might as well be “Anything for a quiet life”. The vote for Brexit appeared to momentarily break the rules, but it was only a cross in a box, and it did not take long for people to revert to type. And now we find ourselves in the worst of all worlds: carrying out an act of self-harm we are told is the people’s will, when millions of the same people seem to have all but switched off. Popular disengagement is made worse by the speed at which information now pours into people’s lives, and a political culture where day-to-day politics amounts to white noise, anything and everything might be fake news, and precious little seems to acquire any traction. Anyone who has had Brexit arguments with friends or relatives will probably recognise the essential story, enacted whenever some or other representative of an industry or profession that has much to fear appears on the television to warn of the consequences of exiting the EU only to elicit the crushingly predictable response: “That’s just an opinion.” As proved by talk of the best hope for Theresa May’s deal lying with people termed Bobs (“bored of Brexit”), a mixture of tedium and disbelief in warnings about its downsides could be her salvation. One can imagine the scenario: even if she loses the vote on Tuesday, enough of her opponents on the right and left might realise that their passions are not shared by the electorate, and give up. If that happens, the immediate future of British politics will be just as deadened by Brexit as it is now – and in the midst of constant technocratic chatter about trade deals and the like, the public’s alienation from Westminster will deepen. There are, of course, different possibilities. If a no-deal Brexit happens, maybe the resulting chaos will at last shake England out of its torpor. In the event of another referendum, should the remain side belatedly improve upon the hopeless campaign that led to disaster in 2016, people might finally hear about things that should have always defined the national conversation surrounding this country and its place in the world: the inarguable benefits of an open economy; the complex and often fragile trading arrangements that keep the economy in business and people in work; the fact that our history is not one of isolation from Europe but of being at its heart. Even as I write those words, I am aware that any of our current politicians managing to get a hearing from people is an unlikely prospect. Even if May falls and we get a general election, the sense of a politics that is neither connecting with voters nor dealing with Britain’s tensions could easily go on. Jeremy Corbyn is among the politicians most sceptically viewed by the kind of voters he needs to get onside, and the fact that the Labour leadership has so far avoided any meaningful conversation about Brexit – let alone the deep questions tangled up in it, about what kind of country we ought to be – suggests that even if the party managed to win, the delusions that led us into our current predicament might be left to fester. Think of a term such as “national disaster” and you imagine burning cars and violent crowds. But a nation of sleepwalkers, little interested in its politicians and eternally unimpressed by their warnings, is unlikely to do anything nearly as dramatic. Beyond the current sound and fury, where we are headed could well be summed up by an old Pink Floyd lyric sung in crisp Home Counties tones: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” • John Harris is a Guardian columnistDivorce, which is what Brexit is, takes a long time because it is serious. For divorce to work within a family, mediation is recommended. When a family breaks up with this much hostility its members rarely emerge unscathed.The escaping partner may be buoyed up by the hope of new adventures but the remaining partner is bequeathed with anxiety, insecurity and uncertainty. On both sides of what we might term our national trauma, there is fury and hurt. It hasn’t gone away. In many ways it has heightened in the last fortnight, as the clock ticks down. There is fear and a sense of fragility, often masked by aggression and even bullying. It is easy for both parties in this traumatic break to exclude or ridicule the legitimacy of the other’s position. The result of the referendum was a transfer of angry feelings from many leavers, those who had been economically and socially squeezed, to remainers. There was no escaping the leavers’ fury. We have all had to see the country as broken; to give up the delusion that everyone was OK. Manifestly people weren’t. The question is how to absorb and reflect on the dispossession and rage. The Brexit vote said to remainers: “You will no longer have it your way. You are going to feel threatened as we have felt threatened. You can lose your hope as we lost ours.” Last week I gave a talk to people who had moved from countries across mainland Europe to live in the UK. They were German, Danish, Irish, Norwegian, Swedish and Ukrainian – all of them, by chance or choice, had settled here. There was an atmosphere of anger and confusion in the room. With their children in school, and having established their lives, they hadn’t expected to worry about their place in Britain: they belonged here. Now their idea of identity was under threat. The increase in episodes of racism since the referendum had caused many of them to think they had misunderstood their adopted country, one their children – supporters of Spurs, Liverpool, Crystal Palace and Manchester City – called home. These children also supported teams from their parents’ countries. Like me, and many from around Britain, they have multiple identities, and this is for the most part untroublesome. Yet what they said and felt was not so different from what many feel. Belonging was suddenly contingent. The limbo these Europeans feel themselves to be in is in some ways merely an exaggeration of the limbo that is affecting the entire population of Britain. For those who fear Brexit, the future looks uncertain and there is a sense of powerlessness. Others, who worry that the Brexit they voted for won’t be delivered, feel equally impotent. In June 2016, I wrote about the distress expressed to me and other therapists following the Brexit vote. This has only intensified over time. Alicia, who is 45 and works in the medical profession, tells me she feels collapsed; Brexit talk is taking over her life. Her work had felt precariously balanced but now she fears she is unable to provide what she would want to for her patients or in her research. She is glued to the news, desperate to find a hint that what has happened will be undone. She wonders if she is insane to be in such a rage. Isaac, in his late 30s, has gone from being optimistic about Brexit to extreme pessimism. His job is under threat. He feels weakened and powerless. He wants to vote again. Sophie, a chemistry graduate student, who has lived in the UK since she was 13, has been asked to produce evidence that she has had private health insurance since she was a child in order to make a claim to become naturalised. She is poleaxed by the request and berates herself, despite the fact that organising this insurance would never have been her job. Therapists talk of traumatic reaction, when we feel shock and continually retell a story. This is what I am seeing and hearing, inside and outside the consulting room. People infused with fury are desperate to unload what they have just learned about the machinations or projected impact of Brexit. We want it to go away and yet we are obsessed by it. Details have to be repeated. Did you know? Did you hear? There is a common psychological process of rejecting what feels indigestible. With each reiteration of the facts there is the hope that one can come to terms with them at the same time as an inability to do so. *** Freud tells us in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) that trauma occurs when overwhelming events destabilise our emotional balance. For most of us, trauma describes an experience that takes place in our private lives: unexpectedly losing a loved one, or being in a situation in which our sense of survival is on the line, such as fleeing a country, or sexual intrusion, or being booted out of a relationship without warning. Unless we have lived in war zones or under dictatorships, we don’t tend to think of daily political life as so damaging. Yet reactions to Brexit suggest that it is being experienced by many as a trauma, with intrusive and repetitive thoughts emerging from a severely disruptive or damaging situation. Disbelief, fear and the wish for it all to be a bad dream are common features of trauma. We want it to go away and yet we are obsessed by it. Details are repeated. Psychologically we reject the indigestible We separate off what we can’t bear to know, whether it is our personal part in the process, or the fact of having to recognise that those we thought were with us were not. We get lulled into thinking it will all be OK, only to be reawakened when we realise the bad thing has happened. We experience the shock all over again. We can’t escape it. Talking with friends and colleagues in Donald Trump’s America, there is a similar repetitive theme of outrage, disbelief and indigestibility. For us in the UK it feels as if no one was minding the shop. The political parents have abdicated. Attachment theory, which originated in the work of John Bowlby, has shown the importance of secure parental foundations and presence in forming stable ongoing identities. Insecure, anxious and avoidant attachments can lead to isolation or cleaving to relationships that mimic the insecurities experienced in early life. With the country’s identity ruptured, people of all political persuasions find solace in forms of solidarity that amplify a sense of being beleaguered while simultaneously proffering hope. The Brexit fracture and the belligerence associated with it has marked our society in disturbing ways. Public space is as inflamed as private space is in a divorce. There are lies. Many lies. Lying is not just a moral category, it has psychological import. It divides us from aspects of ourselves. To maintain a lie, we have to scaffold it, to separate it off from doubt and questions. Then we become defensive and more insistent, as though by being more forceful, the deceit will hold us within it. What is on the other side of the lie becomes unreachable. Complexity and understanding are suppressed. We are all capable of this fundamentalist form of thought when we are cornered. We are all capable of finding outrage in the position of the other as a way of strengthening our position. We can seek solace in a fixed position as a bulwark against the difficulty of not knowing. The polarisation that Brexit has shown is inescapable. The democratic deficit many cushioned themselves against knowing is in our face. It is very real. As the withdrawal negotiations continue with no sign yet of resolution, the sense of uncertainty continues. The anxiety it provokes can lead us to want to give up on what we believe, to throw in the towel and agree to things not in our best interest. This can be true wherever we sit on the Brexit divide. The pressure for closure is intense. The desire to remake our country, to paper over the divisions, to reset, is understandable but it does not get us anywhere. Without conversations that address the mutual disturbance, the hope for national reconciliation is slender. *** The brutality of the current political discourse is disturbing. The new Brexit slogan, “Tell them again”, points to menace, not reconciliation or a coming together of differences in productive ways. We are going to take a long time to process the hurt, the shock, the disappointment of societal fracture. We will need to develop ways of talking and listening to get us out of our silos, to protect us from fixed patterns of thought as we try to remake our country anew. This is a big task. We know how difficult it is even for divorced families to reconstitute themselves so that their members all thrive. A nation rife with inequalities is a formidable proposition. Does psychotherapy have anything to offer here? Psychotherapy has learned much about staying with uncertainty and the ways that it can be productive From Freud to Wilfred Bion to modern practice, psychotherapy has learned much about staying with uncertainty and difficulty, and the ways that this can be productive. It’s the bread and butter of psychoanalysis. We often want to act impulsively. To do so is a relief. It expels the difficulty by changing the circumstances that are causing distress. Psychoanalysis disrupts this process by showing how difficult thoughts and feelings can be considered from different perspectives that then enrich the real possibilities for transformation. The process of talking over time allows one to think and feel in such a way that uncertainty itself can be tolerated. It isn’t comfortable but is itself a counterblast against closing oneself off. Therapy of all persuasions isn’t about what you do know but about what you can’t quite let yourself know. If we were transparent to ourselves, we wouldn’t need it. Therapy can also be a group process, in which people with different and sometimes dramatically opposed points of view learn to talk together and listen. They make common cause to support each other despite enormous differences which may start off as contempt or dismissal or just plain dislike. What never fails to impress is the emotional distance people can travel – from rigidity and fear to interest and acceptance of one another. There is now a move to promote regional and national conversations that might start to mend the emotional fallout of the UK’s Brexit trauma. These wouldn’t bridge the serious economic and social divides. That’s an altogether more fundamental project. But we have examples of processes such as the women’s initiatives in Belfast across the Falls Road during the Troubles and the team of analysts from Argentina who trained people on the ground during the civil war in Nicaragua. There have also been countless faith-instituted projects bringing people together from Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh groups to strengthen their communities. A commitment to this kind of process should be part of whatever change we make as a nation. Crashing out of the EU undermines our chances of addressing the trauma that Brexit has caused for many; a deal would provide a boundary of safety, enabling the complex conversations that need to occur. History tells us what happens when economies in decline, with mounting social and economic anxiety, are captured by oversimple populist slogans which cast out those who don’t agree or are deemed not to look or sound right. We need to ensure this doesn’t happen, and instead reknit the social fabric in ways that are equitable and just.The picture shows him in the act of swearing himself in as “interim” president of Venezuela. His right hand raised to the heavens, as is proper of one who, having no popular mandate, proclaims himself in the name of God like the kings of old. Only this is no kingdom, but a revolutionary republic born of a people’s war. It has since protected its right to self-determination by means of people power and persistent anti-colonial struggle. In the 19th century the struggle was led by Simón Bolívar, “the liberator”. Rebelling against the laws of the time, Bolivar stood up to the might of the Spanish empire in alliance with then free Haiti. Bolivar made instant enemies of slaveholders in the newly formed US and the rest of the Americas upon embracing a universal right and call to happiness without hypocrisy. That promise was realised only in part. At the dawn of the 21st century, Hugo Chavez invoked Bolívar’s promise and when the poor, black, Amerindian people of Venezuela returned him to power, time and again, especially after the failed US-backed coup of 2002, he too radicalised his stance against the mighty empire Bolivar had only speculated about, America. Again, the promise was realised only in part. Some might say the revolution has been betrayed or stalled during the rule of his successor Nicolás Maduro. No one can deny Venezuela’s problems. The very source of its magic in the 1970s, oil, has proven its downfall. Chavez did not win his country’s independence from oil and its geopolitics. Crisis loomed when global prices fell, production stagnated, the value of the currency dropped, and under Maduro, dependence on imports and retail monopolies meant shortages that hurt many. That responsibility lies with the government and the industrialist rightwing opposition. But to think that this opposition, revived by Juan Guaidó’s self-proclamation spectacle, acts out of genuine concern for the poor, black people and Amerindians who empowered themselves during the years of the Bolivarian revolution would be foolish. Enter Donald Trump: megalomaniac, erratic, liar. Calling out the interventionism of previous US administrations, which had been constant in their hatred for Chavez and their attempts to regain influence in the region, Trump promised to put an end to all such shenanigans. But on Wednesday, vice-president Mike Pence saluted Guaidó’s self-appointment, observing that although Trump disliked intervening elsewhere, he “has always had a very different view of our hemisphere”. That’s an explicit invocation of the Monroe doctrine under which the US has held it as its responsibility to intervene in the Americas, which it sees as its backyard. Trump swiftly recognised Guaindó as the interim president of Venezuela, and was followed by a cohort of Latin American presidents, all-white, upper-class leaders now spearheading the new reactionary wave in the region: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, Colombia’s Iván Duque and Chile’s Sebastián Piñera. They’ll proclaim themselves saviours of democracy and humanitarianism, the liars. Draping themselves in the robes of the liberators of yesteryear, just as Guaindó draped himself in the image of Chavez and Bolívar while holding a constitution with the latter’s image on its cover, they’ll happily support further US sanctions, paramilitary forces training Venezuela’s opposition in the torture tactics that displaced 7 million people in Colombia, or using “lawfare” in pan-American institutions just as happened to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay. Expect such measures to have limited purchase. Washington knows it. Then, Trump and the others will be ready to go for the more muscular approach. Not by accident, this could also benefit Trump as elections approach or if he is cornered by investigations and impeachment. War distracts and makes money. Only this won’t be a regional plunder: China and Russia, both with key interests in Venezuela and elsewhere in the region, have followed Bolivia, Mexico, Uruguay and Cuba to call Guaindó’s stunt by its real name: a coup. Russia has indicated it would come to the defence of its ally. In Venezuela, many who may be critical of Maduro but fear most the return of the rightwing opposition to power are unlikely to cheer the newly converted humanitarians. Unlike the supporters of Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973, they’re armed. Washington awaits developments on the ground while keeping “all options on the table”. That’s doublespeak for hoping the heavy-handed response by Maduro’s government would provide moral justification for an intervention that would surely be approved by the Organization of American States. There is plenty to criticise Maduro for: late or misguided economic measures, corruption, power-hoarding. But these criticisms cannot disguise a coup or justify an intervention that, if and when it comes, would engulf us all. Trump counts on Colombia’s Iván Duque, Alvaro Uribe’s appointee, and Brazil’s neo-fascists to support this, contributing troops of their own if needed. A neo-fascist runs one of the Americas’ powerhouses in Brazil; a narcissistic liar afraid of being painted into a corner runs the other. That combination is toxic. War in the name of humanity may tempt them, as it did the more liberal leaders of the past. But this time the stakes are higher. Venezuela’s coup is a threat to the entire world. • Oscar Guardiola-Rivera teaches human rights and philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of LondonShort of being photographed skiing at Davos with Bono, nothing says “global elite” like trotting up the steps to your very own private plane. So no wonder Channel 4 pounced delightedly on the revelation that Nigel Farage recently chartered a private jet to reach Strasbourg, in an interview with the man himself that swiftly went viral. Who’s the man of the people now, eh? Which is all very amusing, but ultimately changes nothing much. It would barely matter at this stage if it turned out that pint seemingly welded to the former Ukip leader’s hand was actually made of water and food colouring, just as it has never seemed to matter to his supporters that he’s a ex-public schoolboy turned City gent and politician. He will always be an anti‑establishment hero in some eyes because Nigel Farage says things “the establishment” does not. If he just keeps on saying those things, ripping into unpopular truths that politicians who actually care about the consequences of their actions feel obliged to defend, then he and his allies will thrive as long as “establishment” remains an insult. And that’s what any remainer longing for a second referendum needs to confront head-on. Last week I chaired a panel at an emergency conference in Westminster on prospects for a people’s vote, at which good people grappled impressively hard with the question of how to look more like the insurgents next time. There was widespread agreement when the political organiser Paul Hilder, co-founder of the social action platform Crowdpac, one speaker pointed out that remain would need its own answer to the obvious leave message of “Tell them again”, but louder. For people who only voted Leave because they wanted someone to listen for once, an invitation to show those patronising bastards they can’t ignore you could resonate just like “take back control”. So what’s the comeback? There were plenty of sensible ideas tossed around, about rooting the campaign in local communities rather than sending celebrities on the train up from London to lecture the people of Hull and Hartlepool, and using tech entrepreneurs or music industry bosses rather than stuffy CEOs to represent the voice of business. But the difficulty second-referendum campaigners have in countering anti-establishment rage is firstly that they generally are the establishment – a fact that would be obvious no matter how many former prime ministers are locked in a cupboard next time – and secondly that there is a glaring problem for any potential cross-party campaign in agreeing on how that establishment has failed some voters in the past. It hasn’t failed them anywhere near as badly as Farage did, obviously. Remainers were remainers precisely because they didn’t want to wake up to news that pharmacists are already running out of some drugs due to Brexit stockpiling. They voted for the status quo because they worried that promising the voters moonshine while energetically fuelling anti-immigrant hatred would not end well. And – surprise, surprise – it hasn’t. One way or another, the arguments that led us here have to be confronted once the immediate crisis is over But nobody loves a smartarse. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. You’re not going to win an argument to stay in the European Union, or even anything close to it, without offering a better answer to the underlying grievances that drove the leave vote and acknowledging the past failures that have discredited conventional politicians, allowing populists their opening. The problem for a cross-party remain campaign is that both parties have fundamentally different answers to those challenges. Partly that’s because they are talking to different people. Brexit wasn’t won only in Barnsley and Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, in the downtrodden Labour-voting towns conjured up every time this argument arises. It was won in bits of rural Buckinghamshire that are not remotely left behind, and in retirement homes on the Dorset coast, and among golf club bores in blazers who wouldn’t remotely see a problem with Nigel Farage chartering a plane to Strasbourg. This kind of leave voter was more attracted by the romance of the argument, the sound of freedom, the thrill of the wind in their hair; having personally done rather nicely out of the conventional political orthodoxy, they rebelled against it largely for rebellion’s sake. The last Remain campaign, with all its dreary warnings about what could go wrong, will have sounded nagging and nannyish to them. Some of them have admittedly gone a little quiet now that it looks as if Nanny might have known best. The appeals to common sense from Tory soft Brexiters arguing that not long ago they could barely have dreamed of getting this far away from Brussels, are aimed at this mildly sheepish demographic. Others might just about heed a remain campaign if it was led by Jeremy Clarkson, say. But they would double down in outrage if confronted by the argument many remainers on the left are most comfortable making, which is that working-class leavers in neglected northern towns were conned into laying wholly legitimate grievances at the wrong door. What many in the audience of last week’s conference longed to hear from a People’s Vote campaign was a no holds barred case against Tory austerity, making clear that the hardships many are suffering have nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with choices made at home. David Lammy showed how to do it recently in a powerful parliamentary intervention, arguing people have been conned. In its party political broadcasts, Labour too has begun constructing an argument that people were right to want change but that the change they actually need is Corbynomics. It’s as hard to imagine Jeremy Corbyn joining in a campaign where he wasn’t free to make that argument as Theresa May going along with a campaign where he was. Since the one thing May and Corbyn do agree on is that they don’t want a second referendum, it may simply never happen. (As one Labour MP who has held private discussions with Downing Street over Brexit puts it, in some ways they’re oddly similar characters; both as stubborn as they are mistrustful.) Perhaps parliament will reach around them to produce a compromise soft Brexit of its own devising. But that still leaves room for a Ukip 2.0 movement to emerge, cynically blaming the wicked establishment’s failure to deliver on “true” Brexit for everything that goes wrong over the next decade. One way or another, the arguments that led us here have to be confronted once the immediate crisis is over. And we’re going to need better answers than calling the other guy a hypocrite, even if it’s true. • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistAn artist who has set up an installation in a central London gallery with the aim of “reversing Brexit” hopes the performance art piece will help people understand and navigate the murky world of online manipulation. Swedish multimedia artist Jonas Lund has set up Operation Earnest Voice, a “fully functioning propaganda office”, at the Photographers Gallery with a singular but playful aim: to use the technology and devices that were utilised during the Brexit referendum debate to stop it from happening. “As we’ve seen with the different Brexit campaigns, the use of targeted ads and companies like Cambridge Analytica have manufactured consent,” says Lund. “Our aim is to develop toolkits and see what’s available to us in terms of technology. We have the option of doing detailed individual advertisement through Facebook, [we can] build networks of fake news websites: aggregating articles and spinning meaning.” The four-day project, which ends on Sunday and takes its name from an astroturfing campaign run by the US government, is run by Lund and his team of 12 volunteers or “employees”, who applied to take part in the work and include former Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaign photographer Alan Mozes. They have taken over a whole floor of the gallery and the general public are encouraged to engage and learn about how technology and politics work together to influence them. The installation looks every bit the modern political campaign headquarters, with bold logo, open-plan office and sessions including “mindfulness” breaks for the staff. “With this piece you either program or you are programmed,” says Lund. “You need to learn how different algorithms can get your attention, or how Instagram is deeply manipulative in its reward system by triggering dopamine.” Lund believes that in the current climate, with the UK poised to leave the EU after a referendum dominated by misinformation and falsehoods, we have a stark choice: either “inform yourself or become a slave to the systems that control us”. “The level of profiling and modelling that Facebook and other data-gathering operations enable I find deeply problematic,” says Lund. “It would make George Orwell turn in his grave because it’s far more dystopian than 1984. How much data have we been tricked to give up? Facebook is the greatest surveillance apparatus ever made.” But can a work like this be relevant when it’s based in a pro-remain area of the country and run by what pro-Brexit voices might call “liberal elites”? “The physical aspect of the campaign is here [in central London] but the tools can be used anywhere,” says Lund. “Like we see with the Russian influence in decisions made in the EU and America. So location is slightly irrelevant.” What about the idea that this is the cultural elite trying to spread its leftist views? “I’d say it’s not that,” he counters. “It’s trying to unmask the mechanisms that are being used and abused by both sides – left and right. Also, if you had a problem with that, wouldn’t you have a problem with the Leave campaign using actual illegal strategies to win a campaign?” The somewhat tongue-in-cheek conceit masks the true aim of Lund’s work, which is to provoke questions about and interrogate the ways the British public was manipulated during the campaign and in the two years since the referendum. “There’s a risk of coming off as arrogant, as the person who is going to fix it all. The defence is, it’s not necessarily about Brexit, it’s about the tools and mechanisms. And these are available to everybody.” As the vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal approaches next week and the repercussions of the UK’s divorce from the EU start to be realised, perhaps there’s no better time to get to grips with the technology that made it possible.The return of Grace and Frankie this week is heartening for fans, not least those who might expect them to be dead. After all, the Netflix series (now number five) follows the travails of two elderly chalk-and-cheese women, who have been lumped together after they discover their husbands were locked in a decades-long gay affair. But this cruel assumption would be to misunderstand one of the key aspects of modern old age – namely, that it seems to go on for ever – as well as the power of the show, its stars, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and indeed its distributor. Age has not withered them, and they are sustained by Netflix’s infinite variety. At the start of 2019, we can tentatively say that the streaming service’s appeal to older viewers is bearing fruit. It must be pointed out that Netflix’s general aim seems to be to appeal to absolutely everyone, but those golden oldies are a premium target. They have a lot of time and money. It’s almost surprising there isn’t a deluge of Poirot reruns on the home screen, but it seems to have decided to approach the situation with care. It is picking well: The Kominsky Method, another sitcom it has produced starring another elderly duo – this time Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin – just won the Golden Globe for best TV comedy or musical (Douglas won best actor in the category too). Then we are due a third instalment of The Crown, the stately Windsor saga that seems to have mostly been conceived to hook in a juicy older Poldark market. In short, only a fool would bet against more of this content creeping in, among the cutesy teen comedies, woke dramas and shock documentaries. Netflix and dyspepsia pill? Both Grace and Frankie and The Kominsky Method are great gateway drugs into the strange world of “elder entertainment”. The former thrives on an old formula – the odd couple formed by the uptight Grace (Fonda) and the hippy-dippy and tangential Frankie (Tomlin). One loves nothing more than a spreadsheet, while the other is, as she puts it, “an artist who’s been well written up in a series of local prison newsletters”. It has flaws: each series, like many Netflix shows, is meandering, and the script is characterised by what Grace calls Frankie’s “trips down non-sequitur lane”. It has a bulging list of returning characters it seems unsure what to do with (although it’s often their lost millennial children, so it may just be an accurate representation of their predicament). However, the charm tends to suppress your qualms. It’s a surprising type of escapism – as though Thelma and Louise had finally decided to just park the car, and sit in the car park eating sandwiches. And it doesn’t shy away from the big topics, sex and death. In fact, it really likes sex. The main thrust, as it were, of several seasons has been the ladies’ development of a vibrator for the older lady. Products like their “Ménage à Moi” aren’t just to be sniggered at: they emphasise the valuable message that there is plenty of fun to be had in the final age bracket. Glossy and slightly 1-percenter as it is, the show puts elderly women, an often-neglected segment of any market, front and centre. Fonda made this clear when it first appeared in 2015: “Nobody is addressing them, that’s what’s unusual about the series.” The Kominsky Method, meanwhile, tackles the inevitable hubris of being a slightly past-it white man. Its focus is the friendship between Douglas’s Sandy Kominsky, a washed up actor, and his startlingly dry agent Norman (Arkin – who, by the by, was the one really due an award). Each has their own woes: Kominsky spends an awful lot of time dwelling on his prostate, while Norman, more touchingly, still talks to his recently deceased wife. Like Grace and Frankie, it mostly chooses to laugh at old age’s indignities, which may be the best way to sell it to an audience. Perhaps you can’t truly understand how the wheel of showbiz turns until you’ve seen Danny DeVito, playing Kominsky’s doctor, with his hand up Michael Douglas’s bum, telling him to prepare for “retrograde orgasms”. The fact that Netflix is providing a home for older stars neglected by Hollywood is important too. There’s a strange pathos to seeing Fonda, once the queen of exercise videos, hobbling around on a cane as each knee gives way. When The Crown next appears, Netflix should be well on the way to hooking in that older market. Yet there are reasons for prudence. For one thing, and this is a horrible thing to say, it might seem less appetising to try and hook a market that might not be here all that long – although of course, the way time works, someone will always replace them. Far more vital, either way, to hook a younger audience for life. It’s also at a disadvantage because fewer older viewers would watch a show on their mobile or a tablet. Statistics are hard to come by (Netflix reveals next to none) but there are clues. Last May, a survey by Ampere Analysis looked at the viewing habits of viewers aged 55-64: it found that in the US, these viewers are 51% less likely to take up a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon than the average internet user; in the UK it is 57%. Over a month, only 20% of that age group had watched Netflix in America; in the UK, again, it was even less, at 10%. Compare the latter statistic to their use of BBC iPlayer, which stands at a relatively healthy 53%. Persuading a generation of viewers away from the comforts of a regular schedule and “free” state broadcasting could yet be a tall order. But that’s the 55-64-year-olds: imagine what the stats are for the next group up. That is the group which, to be clear, Fonda and Tomlin and Douglas and Arkin inhabit. Not that it’s a brave new world, really: shows about the twilight years have always existed. British viewers may fondly remember BBC sitcoms such as As Time Goes By, starring Judi Dench, or Waiting for God starring Stephanie Cole. The latter got a cult following for her turn as a cantankerous old journalist wreaking havoc in a retirement home. Perhaps as our concept of old age changes, and Hollywood’s too, that part might be offered to someone slightly older. When the sitcom first aired, Cole was 49. Grace and Frankie returns to Netflix on 18 January; The Kominsky Method is available now.Unai Emery made it clear that Mesut Özil’s days as one of Arsenal’s stars are in the past after dropping the midfielder for the 1-0 defeat by West Ham United. Özil’s absence from yet another difficult away game raised some awkward questions for Emery after his side’s toothless display at the London Stadium left them six points behind fourth-placed Chelsea. Two days after admitting he has funds to make only loan signings this month, it was strange that Arsenal’s manager found no place in his squad for a player with two and a half years left on a contract worth £350,000 a week. Emery was asked if it represented a luxury to leave out his highest earner on tactical grounds, especially as his bench contained few attacking options. Yet his response only served to underline how far the German has fallen down the pecking order since Arsène Wenger’s departure at the end of last season. “For me he is like another player,” Emery said. “It’s one decision, when one player is coming or not coming. Sometimes he is helping us, at other moments he is not helping us because of his injury or because maybe the match is not for him. But he is a good player.” Özil, who has not played since being withdrawn at half-time in the 1-1 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion on Boxing Day, returned to training last week after shaking off a knee injury. Yet it has become clear that Emery does not trust him to work hard enough away from home. Özil tweeted a picture of himself in training on Friday afternoon, the same day he was told of his omission against West Ham. “Like the other players,” Emery said. “When we did the squad.” Arsenal, who host Chelsea on Saturday evening, have picked up two points from their last five away games. “It’s our challenge,” Emery said. “Each match is our challenge away. We are working on that. “We need to take more confidence, more performance collectively, being competitive away to change this moment. We started the season away well, being competitive and winning. But we need to do more to be more competitive and to impose our idea and our quality.” West Ham, meanwhile, are in talks to sell the midfielder Pedro Obiang to Fiorentina.It is tempting to indulge in some typical British lip-curling over the grand-sounding Treaty of Franco-German Cooperation and Integration signed on Tuesday by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle in French), capital of Charlemagne’s lost but not forgotten ninth-century European empire. The pact, reaffirming the 1963 Élysée treaty that set the two countries on the path to post-war reconciliation, is intended to reassert the centrality of the Franco-German partnership in a splintering Europe beset by resurgent nationalism, rightwing populism and Brexit. Cynics will say it is also an attempt to reassert the fading relevance of Merkel and Macron. Yet it’s not necessary to be an English Eurosceptic to have serious doubts about this project. Macron was accused of “high treason” this week by the French right for supposedly secretly planning to surrender Alsace and Lorraine. Marine Le Pen, the leader of National Rally (formerly the National Front), claimed French schoolchildren would be forced to speak German. Merkel was also attacked at home for falling into the trap of appearing to endorse, at least in theory, some of Macron’s more high-flown ideas about a joint eurozone budget, banking union, common taxes and European army. Alexander Gauland, leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, said Macron was trying to grab “German money”. Such claims are nonsense. So, too, is the idea put about by Eurosceptic media in Britain that Paris and Berlin are conspiring to seize full control of the EU and impose a new, shared hegemony at the expense of smaller states. The real problem with the new treaty is that it is mostly a bland, unambitious fudge. The soaring ideals and aspirations enunciated by the newly elected Macron in his Sorbonne speech in 2017, about a Europe of democracy, sovereignty, unity and security, find but a faint, distorted echo today. The treaty has little concrete to say about key, contentious issues facing Europe such as migration, social fracture and alienation, and environmental challenges. It focuses, for example, on closer governmental coordination, intelligence sharing and cross-border cooperation – all of which have been mooted before. But it skates around differences over arms exports – Germany banned weapons sales to Saudi Arabia after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder; France did not. The pact is also silent on the vexed issue of “sharing” France’s permanent UN security council seat, as suggested by some in Berlin. Meanwhile, Macron’s proposals about economic stimulus, social investment, a financial transaction tax and bank insurance have been lost in the mists of Germany’s innate fiscal caution. In short, the Aachen treaty could be said to symbolise all that is bad about “Europe”, as viewed through jaundiced British eyes. It sounds fine and dandy, but it ducks the hard issues, dodges tough decisions and, in seeking out inoffensive common ground, forfeits any sense of vision. That is what will be said – and it is fundamentally wrong. In their different ways, with numerous caveats and hesitations, and notwithstanding their considerable domestic political difficulties, Macron and Merkel are bravely trying to achieve three distinct and laudable objectives. One is to remind Europeans, including the Brexiting British, that reconciling these two great continental powers was a signal achievement of the second half of the 20th century. It was a key British policy aim. And the ensuing partnership was a crucial cornerstone in the construction of the EU, still by far the world’s most successful model of inter-state collaboration. It helped bring unprecedented peace, security and prosperity to Europe. “Seventy-four years, a single human lifetime, after the end of world war two, what seems self-evident is being called into question again,” Merkel said on signing the treaty. “That’s why, first of all, there needs to be a new commitment toward our responsibility within the EU, a responsibility held by Germany and France.” Second, by reaffirming their partnership, France and Germany are not seeking to dominate but to safeguard those hard-won gains in the face of a dangerous pan-European upsurge in nationalist sentiment, divisive rightwing demagoguery, and out-and-out racism and xenophobia. And they are seeking to compensate for the damaging loss of Britain as an active partner in that ongoing fight. It is to Britain’s great collective shame that it appears set on abandoning the field and retreating into delusional nostalgia for an imagined past at the very moment when the forces of reaction are gathering new strength. Last, Macron and Merkel are doing what any British leader worth their salt should instinctively be doing too: namely reinforcing Europe’s defences against the depredations, current and future, of a US that is increasingly intent on exploiting the privileges conferred by global leadership while rejecting the accompanying responsibilities; and against the rise of a ruthless new superpower, China, whose authoritarian, anti-democratic practices fundamentally challenge European values of independence, freedom of action and individual rights. Thank goodness Macron and Merkel, for all their faults and weaknesses, can still see the bigger picture. These days, for the most part, Britain’s small-minded leaders cannot see beyond their rather stuck-up noses. • Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentatorA 20-year-old man has admitted to police that he was behind one of the country’s biggest data breaches, in which the private details of almost 1,000 public figures were leaked. The man, who lives with his parents in the central German state of Hesse and is still in the education system, told police he had acted alone and was not politically motivated. He told investigators he had been driven instead by his annoyance at statements made by the victims of his attacks, including politicians, journalists and leading celebrities. The interior minister, Horst Seehofer, hit back at widespread criticism that authorities had been slow to solve the case and that he had been reluctant to keep the public informed. He revealed that the hacker would not have been able to gather as much data as he had, if his victims had created more sophisticated passwords. “Bad passwords were one of the reasons he had it so easy,” Seehofer said. “I was shocked at how simple most passwords were: ‘ILoveYou’, ‘1,2,3’. A whole array of really simple things.” He said both politicians and the public needed to greatly increase their sensitivity towards cybersecurity. Saying such attacks would likely become more commonplace, Seehofer announced the recruitment of hundreds more cybersecurity experts to the police force, as well as the setting up of a round-the-clock IT crew who would use early warning system software to both prevent and recognise such attacks. The hacker, who used the pseudonyms “G0t” and “Orbit”, was arrested on Sunday after investigators searched his home. On Monday, he confessed to the cyber-attack, prosecutors said. He is accused of spying, leaking data and the unwarranted publication of personal data. Investigators traced the man through digital tracks he left on the internet, as well as by speaking to witnesses, including a 19-year-old man with whom the hacker had communicated via an encrypted messaging service. The hacker told him he had destroyed his computer to avoid detection, but police said they had recovered extensive evidence. Investigators in Wiesbaden at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said they believed the man was not aware of the severity of his actions. He has been released on the condition that he does not leave his parents’ house and continues to cooperate. Investigators said the man did not pose a flight risk and that therefore there was no need to hold him in custody. If convicted, he faces a three-year prison sentence, although, because of his age, he is likely to be sent to a young offenders’ institute with an emphasis on re-education. There is also speculation that the hacker will receive a mild sentence if he continues to cooperate with investigators, partly because he has provided a wake-up call to German internet security chiefs about chronic weaknesses in their systems and could potentially help them improve them at a time when Germany is struggling to recruit IT security specialists. Georg Ungefug, a spokesman for the central office for fighting internet crime in Wiesbaden, described the hacker as having “extensive knowledge of computers”, with no official qualifications, but in possession of “considerable interest and a lot of time” to carry out his attack. “There is no evidence of a third party’s involvement,” he added. The breach only came to light last Thursday, although the data – everything from private telephone numbers to email correspondence and family photographs – had been released in the style of an advent calendar on Twitter between 1 and 24 December. First came details from the private accounts of television and YouTube stars, followed by data belonging to hundreds of politicians, including the chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. According to a report in the newspaper Bild, which quoted an unnamed investigator, the hacker was described as a nerd who had few friends and spent the majority of his time on the internet. The BKA again said there was no evidence a foreign government had been behind the attack, with initial reports pointing the finger at Russia or China. Speaking alongside Seehofer in Berlin on Tuesday afternoon, Holger Münch, the head of the BKA, said the government had received 60m emails last year alone warning of potential cyber-attacks. He said there was no evidence that the man had had accomplices, but said the BKA’s investigations into how he operated had only just begun. “We assume that the perpetrator would have kept going and been prepared to dig out and release more information,” Münch said. “His motive appears to have been a general discontent over the public utterances of politicians and others who he wanted to show up.” He said his perpetrator profile was typical of that of a “growing generation of adolescents … or kinderzimmertäter [play-room criminals] who don’t have to step out the door in order to carry out their deeds”. Münch added: “From the preventive point of view one needs to assume that young people in their bedrooms are not necessarily just playing.”1 Centenary of the birth of The Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger.7 Winners of Costa category awards announced.11 Release of the biopic Colette, starring Keira Knightley.12 50th anniversary of the publication of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.14 TS Eliot prize for poetry awarded.29 Costa prize-giving with book of the year revealed. Germaine Greer turns 80. FictionThe Wall by John Lanchester (Faber)Capital took on the financial crisis; this latest novel imagines a future rocked by global migration and climate disaster, in which a wall has been built around Great Britain to keep out “the Others”. Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield (Doubleday)The follow-up to the bestselling The Thirteenth Tale is a hugely pleasurable 19th-century mystery combining folklore and scientific discovery, set around the Thames. Border Districts by Gerard Murnane (& Other Stories)First UK publication for the cult Australian author who, at nearly 80, is gaining international recognition; his 1974 debut Tamarisk Row follows in February. The Redeemed by Tim Pears (Bloomsbury)Set in 1916, the conclusion to Pears’s bucolic West Country trilogy imagines a world in the grip of war. The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup (Michael Joseph)A debut thriller from the creator of The Killing opens with a gruesome discovery in a Copenhagen suburb. Non-fictionQuicksand Tales: The Misadventures of Keggie Carew (Canongate)Carew, the author of Dadland, which won the 2016 Costa biography award, returns with an account of her most humiliating, awkward, funny moments. Out of the Woods by Luke Turner (W&N)A powerful memoir, centred on Epping Forest, about sexual abuse, a religious upbringing and life as a bisexual man. Jeremy Corbyn biography by Tom Bower (William Collins)The biographer of more than 20 public figures, including Prince Charles, Tony Blair and Richard Branson turns his eye to the current Labour party leader. The title has yet to be announced. The Library Book by Susan Orlean (Atlantic)The New Yorker staff writer uses a 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library as a starting point for a study of the history and meaning of all libraries. Happy Ever After: Escaping the Myth of the Perfect Life by Paul Dolan (Allen Lane)The behavioural scientist and author of Happiness by Design argues that such imperatives as “be ambitious; find everlasting love; look after your health” can trap as easily as inspire. Our Universe: An Astronomer’s Guide by Jo Dunkley (Pelican)A professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton clearly and entertainingly discusses the universe, and our place in it, from the basics to the latest research. 8 Bicentenary of the birth of John Ruskin in 1819.Release of James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk, by Moonlight writer/director Barry Jenkins.20 20th anniversary of death of Blasted playwright Sarah Kane, aged 28. FictionBlack Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Hamish Hamilton)The Man Booker winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings begins a fantasy trilogy set in a mythical Africa. The Wych Elm by Tana French (Viking)The Irish crime writer’s first standalone novel, about a young man whose life collapses, is a brilliant examination of male privilege and family secrets. Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li (Hamish Hamilton)Grief and motherhood are explored in this slim novelfrom the author of The Vagrants, written as an imagined dialogue with a teenage son who has killed himself. Adèle by Leïla Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor (Faber)The follow-up to last year’s bestselling nanny thriller Lullaby is a scorching portrait of a Parisian woman in the grip of sex addiction. The Spirit of Science Fiction by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Picador)A newly discovered novel from the late author of 2666, about two young poets adrift in Mexico City. Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Oneworld)Short stories from the Argentinian author of 2017’s extraordinary horror fable Fever Dream, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize. Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley (Cape)A sudden bereavement reconfigures the lives and loves of two long-married couples. The Freedom Artist by Ben Okri (Head of Zeus)The new novel from the Booker winner is set in a world of oppression and imprisonment – one rather like our own. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury)This epic fantasy about a world on the brink of war with dragons has been described as “a feminist successor to The Lord of the Rings”. To Kill the Truth by Sam Bourne (Quercus)In the followup to his Trump-baiting thriller To Kill the President, journalist Jonathan Freedland takes on the era of fake news, as a conspiracy to destroy evidence of historical crimes is unearthed. Young adult On the Come Up by Angie Thomas (Walker)The follow-up to the acclaimed The Hate U Give (2017) features a young American girl who wants to be a rapper. PoetryCounting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017 by Helen Dunmore (Bloodaxe)Work from 10 collections over four decades from the posthumous winner of last year’s Costa poetry prize. Non-fictionThe Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells (Allen Lane)The deputy editor of New York magazine expands his viral 2017 article, arguing that the consequences of global warming are even worse than you think. Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History by Richard J Evans (Little, Brown)A biography of the celebrated Marxist historian, which ranges from communist resistance to Hitler, to revolution in Cuba, to the Soho jazz scene and the rise of New Labour. Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber)The acclaimed author of biographies of William Morris and Eric Gill considers Gropius and Bauhaus as the beginning of a new approach to art and design. Engines of Privilege: Britain’s Private School Problem by David Kynaston and Francis Green (Bloomsbury)A social historian and professor of education point out the damage done and the inequalities entrenched by fee-paying schools. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas (Allen Lane)A former McKinsey analyst exposes the corporate titans who pursue the inequality-promoting neoliberal agenda yet claim to be solving the world’s problems. Time Song: Searching for Doggerland by Julia Blackburn (Cape)Stories of the huge area that connected the entire east coast of England with mainland Europe, before being submerged by the sea. A Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison (Chatto)The Beloved author and cultural icon brings together essays and speeches from more than four decades about race, gender and globalisation. 1 Release of Chaos Walking, based on Patrick Ness’s Guardian award winner The Knife of Letting Go. Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley star.12 London Book Fair, until 14th. FictionSpring by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)“The dawn breaks cold and still but, deep in the earth, things are growing … ” Following Autumn and Winter, Smith’s third playful juxtaposition of art, literature and contemporary life. New Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby (Myriad)Twenty-five years after her original groundbreaking anthology, Busby draws on more than 200 female writers of African descent, working in every genre and all over the globe, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Jesmyn Ward. Lanny by Max Porter (Faber)With shades of Ali Smith and Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and bursting with imagination, the second novel from the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a portrait of an English village, an unusual little boy and an ancient presence. The Snakes by Sadie Jones (Chatto)A suspenseful, beautifully written thriller about the corruption of money and abuse within a dysfunctional family. The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (Hogarth)This fantastical debut from a Caine prize-winner tells the epic story of three Zambian families. Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (4th Estate)The English-language debut from the Mexican-born author of The Story of My Teeth intertwines two journeys: a New York family’s road trip south, and thousands of migrant children travelling north towards the US border. Luiselli is a writer to watch. Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt (Sceptre)A writer looks back on her early notebooks, written when she was a young woman in 1970s New York, in a thought-provoking novel about time, memory and change. PoetryDiscipline by Jane Yeh (Carcanet)“Haunting and hilarious” explorations of identity and performance prompted by videos and paintings, animals and street life. Non-fictionHorizon by Barry Lopez (Knopf)The long-awaited follow-up to the classic Arctic Dreams by the American environmental writer takes the reader almost pole to pole, across extraordinary landscapes and decades of lived experience. Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez (Chatto)The activist and journalist on the discriminatory consequences of men being treated as the default and women as atypical, in a book that casts a new light on homes, workplaces and public buildings. The Good Immigrant USA, edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman (Dialogue)The follow-up to 2016’s UK anthology collects essays from first- and second-generation immigrants to the US, and explores a divided nation. Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell (Bodley Head)The Birkbeck professor argues that Maoism has a fascinating global, not just Chinese, history, and that it is a set of ideas that still exerts much influence today (in China, India and Nepal). The Way We Eat Now by Bee Wilson (4th Estate)The award-winning writer surveys food around the world, and argues that the way most people currently eat is not sustainable – either for human health or the planet. Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law by Preet Bharara (Bloomsbury)The former US attorney for the southern district of New York gives the inside story on cases that inspired the TV shows Billions and The Americans. 5 Release of The Sisters Brothers, starring John C Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix, based on Patrick deWitt’s Booker-shortlisted novel. And of Pet Sematary, the second film version of Stephen King’s horror tale.21 Bicentenary of the start of Keats’s “great year”, including most of his Odes.22 Fifty years since Booker prize first awarded in 1969, to PH Newby.23 300th anniversary of the publication of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, often called the first novel in English. FictionMachines Like Me by Ian McEwan (Cape)McEwan’s latest asks what it means to be human by taking us to an alternative 1980s London, where Britain has lost the Falklands war and Alan Turing is developing artificial intelligence, and a young couple are caught up in a love triangle with a synthetic being. Queenie by Candice Carty‑Williams (Trapeze)One of the buzziest debuts of the year: a witty comic novel about a young black journalist negotiating love, work and identity in contemporary Britain. The Dollmaker by Nina Allan (Riverrun)An unnerving love story about trauma, fairytales and some very lifelike dolls, from the award-winning SF author. The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins (Viking)Page-turning gothic debut about a young slave girl’s journey from a Jamaican plantation to the Old Bailey: an exciting new take on a familiar genre. You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr (Bloomsbury)Exploring a secret colonial history, the debut novel from the author of Maggie & Me follows two timelines in South Africa, a century apart. The Half God of Rainfall by Inua Ellams (4th Estate)The being of the title is Demi, part Nigerian boy, part Greek god, in a fantastical epic of male pride and female revenge from the award-winning poet and playwright behind Barber Shop Chronicles. Metropolis by Philip Kerr (Quercus)Nazism is on the rise in the 14th and final outing for Berlin detective Bernie Gunther, published posthumously after Kerr’s death last year. Sunfall by Jim Al-Khalili (Transworld)The quantum physicist’s first novel is set in 2041 at the possible end of the world, as the Earth’s magnetic field fails and a group of scientists race to reactivate it. The Parisian by Isabella Hammad (Cape)Hotly tipped epic debut about a young Palestinian man travelling from the Middle East to France between the wars. PoetryThe Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin by Geoffrey Hill (Oxford)A final sequence of poems that takes in autobiography, anger at Brexit and the summing up of a lifetime’s engagement with poetry. Non-fictionBlack, Listed: Black British Culture Explored by Jeffrey Boakye (Dialogue)A writer and teacher examines more than 60 words, many hugely contentious, that are used to describe black men and women, with a particular focus on black masculinity. Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love by Naomi Wolf (Virago)The Beauty Myth author has researched the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, which effectively invented modern obscenity and the impact of which is still felt today. Constellations: Reflections from Life by Sinéad Gleeson (Picador)A memoir and debut from the Irish writer and broadcaster that explores the female body and experiences of sickness, health and motherhood. Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow (Fleet)A book that continues Farrow’s award-winning investigation into sexual misconduct and the machine deployed by powerful men to silence survivors of abuse. 6 Centenary of the death of L Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.20 Rathbones Folio prize awarded.21 Man Booker international prize awarded.23 Hay festival opens, until 2 June.31 Bicentenary of birth of Walt Whitman. FictionThe Porpoise by Mark Haddon (Chatto)A newborn baby, the only survivor of a plane crash, is raised in isolation from the world, in Haddon’s eagerly awaited new novel, inspired by the story of Pericles. The Book of Science and Antiquities by Thomas Keneally (Sceptre)Millennia-spanning novel about the connections between two men: a contemporary Australian, and one of the first humans to walk the Earth. The Heavens by Sandra Newman (Granta)A time-travelling double love story moving between New York at the millennium and plague-stricken London in 1593. The Farm by Joanne Ramos (Bloomsbury)Golden Oaks is a baby farm – or “a luxury retreat transforming the fertility industry”. This topical, provocative debut anatomises class, race and the American dream. A Stranger City by Linda Grant (Virago)The discovery of a body in the Thames is the starting point for a novel about contemporary London and the meaning of home. New novel by Thomas Harris (William Heinemann)No title as yet, but the first in 13 years from the creator of Hannibal Lecter will be a standalone thriller. Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson (Cape)Winterson’s take on Mary Shelley’s horror classic, partly written in Shelley’s voice, partly a modern-day nightmare, as she tackles issues of technology and the self. PoetrySandettie Light Vessel Automatic by Simon Armitage (Faber)Newly awarded the Queen’s Gold medal for poetry, Armitage brings together his commissioned and collaborative work in this collection. Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Oneworld)Short stories set in Manchester and Kampala from the acclaimed author of Kintu. This Storm by James Ellroy (Heinemann)The second novel in Ellroy’s second LA Quartet is set in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton)From a Newcastle orphan in 1905 to a feminist squatter in 1980 and beyond, Evaristo tells vibrant stories of black British women. Non-fictionUnderland by Robert Macfarlane (Hamish Hamilton)The highly anticipated new book from the author of Landmarks and The Old Ways travels across space and through time as it goes underground, and questions human treatment of the Earth. Faber & Faber: The Untold History of a Great Publishing House by Toby FaberThe story of the publisher of TS Eliot, William Golding, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney on the occasion of its 90th anniversary. Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being by Paul Mason (Allen Lane)The journalist and author of Postcapitalism resists ideas of people as merely consumers or sequences of DNA and offers a vision of a better world. Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change by Jared Diamond (Allen Lane)The last book in the geographer’s trilogy – following Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse – wonders how some nations recover from trauma better than others, and the lessons to be learned. Superior: The Fatal Return of Race Science by Angela Saini (4th Estate)The author of Inferior, a study of how science got women wrong, returns with a report on the resurgence of race science, even though it has been shown to be flawed. Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns by Kerry Hudson (Chatto)The novelist looks back at her impoverished childhood, and travels around Britain asking what being poor means today. 5 Women’s prize for fiction winner announced.23 Bicentenary of publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book, including “Rip Van Winkle”. FictionBig Sky by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday)After a nine-year hiatus, Jackson Brodie, Atkinson’s much loved curmudgeonly private investigator, is back for a new mystery. Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)A rare books dealer makes an extraordinary journey from Kolkata to Los Angeles and Venice, musing on the Bengali legends of his childhood. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (Cape)Written as a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read, the poet’s fiction debut is an autobiographical novel about his family’s past in Vietnam. Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler (Harvill)The prequel to the classic saga of the Soviet war years Life and Fate, in English for first time. Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (Canongate)Another black comedy from the author of Beatlebone, about two former gangsters stuck in a southern Spanish port. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert (Bloomsbury)Young women come of age in wartime New York, in the new novel from the author of Eat Pray Love. This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik (Zaffre)When accountant Bilal Hasham’s dying mother begs him to build a mosque in his sleepy Dorset village, the stage is set for an inquiry into faith, identity and the meaning of home. ChildrenThe Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell (Bloomsbury)In the follow-up to the Costa-winning The Explorer, an English girl in New York joins a circus academy to hone the trapeze talents that will enable her to take revenge on the man who swindled her family. My Name Is Monster by Katie Hale (Canongate)In this debut about motherhood and apocalypse, Monster washes up on the coast of Scotland believing herself the last creature left alive. New Elif Shafak novel (Viking)No title as yet for the latest from the Turkish-British writer and activist. This Brutal House by Niven Govinden (Dialogue)A queer protest novel set among the drag ball community of New York. PoetrySurge by Jay Bernard (Chatto)The debut collection from the winner of the Ted Hughes award for new work mines the archive of black British history from the 1981 New Cross fire to Grenfell. Non-fictionNow We Have Your Attention: Inside the New Politics by Jack Shenker (Bodley Head)The former Egypt correspondent for the Guardian reports from inside the UK’s new campaign groups and protest movements and profiles a young activist generation. Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes by Shahidha Bari (Cape)The scholar and broadcaster examines clothes as objects of fashion and means of self-expression, in a book that ranges across art, film and literature. Afropean: An Encounter With Black Europe by Johny Pitts (Allen Lane)The presenter, writer, musician and photographer describes his meetings with Europeans of African descent, and his travels to Moscow and a Muslim neighbourhood in Stockholm, among other places. The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia by Nathan Filer (Faber)The former mental health nurse’s non-fiction follow-up to his Costa book of the year-winning novel, The Shock of the Fall. 15 Centenary of the birth of Iris Murdoch.31 Centenary of Primo Levi’s birth. FictionSweet Sorrow by David Nicholls (Hodder)Fresh from adapting the Patrick Melrose books for TV, Nicholls has written a bittersweet account of friendship, family and first love, set during a 16-year-old boy’s life‑changing summer. Live a Little by Howard Jacobson (Cape)A funny, provocative novel about falling in love at the very end of your life, from the Man Booker winner. I Am Sovereign by Nicola Barker (Heinemann)Boutique teddy bear makers and Llandudno estate agents: a typically out-there novella from the author of the Goldsmiths-winning H(a)ppy. Non-fictionWe Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik (W&N)The Guardian columnist intervenes in the culture wars with an exploration of gender and race politics, freedom of speech, political correctness and the myths that maintain the status quo. Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Penguin Classics)The Belarusian journalist and oral historian presents one of her distinctive collages of interviews, on Soviet childhood during the second world war. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Bloomsbury)In a much anticipated book an American writer and journalist reports on the sex lives and desires of three “ordinary” US women. 1 Bicentenary of birth of Herman Melville, best known for Moby‑Dick.3 75th anniversary of 1944 Education Act gaining royal assent.9 Kenneth Branagh-directed film Artemis Fowl, based on Eoin Colfer’s 2001 YA fantasy novel.10 Edinburgh international book festival, until 26th.16 Bicentenary of the Peterloo massacre, which inspired a Shelley poem and led to the founding of the Manchester Guardian newspaper.25 75th anniversary of the liberation of Paris. FictionThe Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Fleet)The follow-up to the mighty The Underground Railroad features two young black boys – one holding on to his idealism, one bitterly cynical – who are sent to a horrific reform school, based on a real establishment, in Jim Crow‑era Florida. The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton)Twice Man Booker-shortlisted, Levy returns with a narrative that slips between recent London and the German Democratic Republic in the late 1980s. Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq (Heinemann)Gallic fiction’s leading misanthropist publishes a riff on the “happiness neurotransmitter” in France this January: we’ll have to wait for the translation. Platform Seven by Louise Doughty (Faber)Suicide at Peterborough railway station: a high-concept thriller from the author of Apple Tree Yard. This Poison Will Remain by Fred Vargas, translated by Sian Reynolds (Harvill Secker)Three elderly men, linked by their childhood at an orphanage in Nîmes, are killed by spider venom in the latest thriller from the French crime writer. PoetryThe Tradition by Jericho Brown (Picador)Follow-up to The New Testament, this second collection presents work that deals with freedom and fatherhood, queerness, race and worship. Non-fictionHow to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi (Bodley Head)The winner of the National book award for his historical study Stamped from the Beginning has written a part-memoir, part-treatise that reframes what being racist means. Sex Power Money by Sara Pascoe (Faber)The award-winning comedian gets anthropological on serial dating, pornography and sex education. This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev (Faber)The Soviet-born author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible tackles the rise of information warfare, from Fox News to the KGB. Mudlarking: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames by Lara Maiklem (Bloomsbury)A history of London and its people, told through objects found on the banks of the Thames, by a mudlarker of more than 20 years standing. Legacy by Thomas Harding (Heinemann)The author of Hanns and Rudolf and Blood on the Page charts the rise and fall of the restaurant and hotel chain Lyons and Co. 27 Release of Joe Wright’s film of AJ Finn’s bestselling thriller The Woman in the Window, starring Amy Adams. FictionThe Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Chatto)The literary event of the year: a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, narrated by three women and set 15 years after Offred drove off into a mysterious future at the close of the original novel. Rusty Brown by Chris Ware (Cape)The new book from the master of graphic novels was 17 years in the making and is, he says, “a fully interactive, full-colour articulation of the time-space interrelationships of six complete consciousnesses on a single midwestern American day”. To Calais, in Ordinary Time by James Meek (Canongate)Billed as “Chaucer meets Cormac McCarthy”, an examination of love, faith and gender against the arrival of the black death in Europe, from the author of The People’s Act of Love.Girl by Edna O’Brien (Faber)The doyenne of Irish literature imagines the lives of the girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria. Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail)In the sequel to Bluebird, Bluebird, Texas Ranger Darren Matthews must investigate the disappearance of the young son of a neo-Nazi, as historical racial tensions re-erupt in Trump’s US. A new novel by Jessie Burton (Picador)No title confirmed, but the latest from the author of The Miniaturist will tackle love, sex, work, motherhood. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (Viking)The follow-up to the much-loved Olive Kitteridge, which focused on a retired schoolteacher in Maine and won the 2009 fiction Pulitzer. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s first novel (Hamish Hamilton)There is no title as yet, but a move into fiction by the US thinker and author of We Were Eight Years in Power is an exciting prospect. PoetryFrolic and Detour by Paul Muldoon (Faber)Muldoon’s customary linguistic energy and tangential take on the “subtle threads of history and geography”. Non-fictionAutobiography by John Cooper Clarke (Picador)The title is as yet unfixed, but this is the long-awaited memoir of the punk performance poet, who toured with Linton Kwesi Johnson, and appeared on the same bill as the Sex Pistols, Joy Division and many other bands. Autobiography by David Cameron (William Collins)The former PM built a new “shepherd’s hut” in his Oxfordshire garden in which to write his memoirs, and secured an £800,000 contract with his publishers, but still failed to deliver on schedule last year. Perhaps he is waiting for Brexit before adding the finishing touches. The title is as yet unknown. Lucian Freud by William Feaver (Bloomsbury)The first in a two-part biography of the major British postwar artist, written by his confidant, to whom he spoke on the phone for at least an hour a day for almost 40 years. Coventry by Rachel Cusk (Faber)A series of essays that reflect on themes central to Cusk’s fictional writing, including life choices, politics, womanhood and art. The Sword and the Pen: War, Constitutions and Designing the Modern World by Linda Colley (Profile)The historian discusses the relative newness of the idea of constitutions, and points out that most have been the product of armed conflict, from the barricades of revolutionary France to the Māori-settler conflicts. Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland (Little, Brown)A “how we came to be what we are” book, which focuses on Europe but ranges from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480BC to today’s migration crisis. How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century by Frank Dikötter (Bloomsbury)The Dutch historian, best known for Mao’s Great Famine, which won the 2011 Samuel Johnson prize, looks at the rise and fall of dictatorships. 4 Cheltenham literature festival, until 15th.11 Film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, starring Ansel Elgort and scripted by British screenwriter Peter Straughan.14 Man Booker prize ceremony.22 100 years since birth of Doris Lessing, winner of Nobel prize in 2007. FictionGrand Union by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton)Her first short story collection brings together 10 new pieces and 10 written over the past two decades; a historical novel about highwaymen will probably follow next year.Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré (Viking)Set in London in 2018, the 25th novel from the master of spycraft tackles contemporary political rage and division.Cilka’s Story by Heather Morris (Bonnier Zaffre)This follow-up to the controversial Tattooist of Auschwitz, scheduled for the autumn, is another “true story in narrative form” about the concentration camps, this time focusing on a 16-year-old Slovakian girl who survived Auschwitz only to be charged as a conspirator and sent to a gulag.Nudibranch by Irenosen Okojie (Dialogue)The second collection of stories from the author of Speak Gigantular features women in extraordinary situations. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (Granta)This prequel to Leaving the Atocha Station explores the schooldays of a boy “not unlike” the author himself. Blue Moon by Lee Child (Bantam)The 25th outing for thriller legend Jack Reacher. Non-fictionVesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (Cape)A collection of essays about the natural world, from the author of the prizewinning H Is for Hawk. Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas by Adam Kay (Picador)Following on from the enormously successful This Is Going to Hurt is this collection of 25 intriguing and shocking tales of what an NHS junior doctor can face at Christmas time. Who Am I Again? by Lenny Henry (Faber)The comedian’s memoir, which takes in being a child of the Jamaican diaspora, growing up in the Black Country, family secrets, the pressure to integrate and racism. The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman (Guardian Faber)The prize-winning Guardian reporter builds on her investigative journalism to tell the story of the scandal that has exposed disturbing truths about modern Britain. The Alternative: And How We Build It by Owen Jones (Allen Lane)Another Guardian star and the author of the powerfully argued Chavs and The Establishment tackles the global struggle for progressive change. Big Sister, Little Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth‑Century China by Jung Chang (Cape)A biography of three key figures who helped shape the course of modern Chinese history by the Wild Swans author. Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins (Transworld)The scientist and controversial commentator on religious and cultural questions presents an accessible, “junior” version of The God Delusion (2006). The Anarchy by William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury)While schools continue to teach that the British conquered India, in reality it was at first a private company, the East India Company, argues the historian in his latest book on the subcontinent. The Mark of Cain by Margaret Macmillan (Profile)The Canadian’s well-received Reith Lectures that set out to challenge received wisdom on war and society appear in book form. Centenary of JM Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace.10 Quatercentenary of René Descartes’ famous night of three dreams in 1619, revealing the shape of his new philosophy.22 Bicentenary of the birth of George Eliot. 150 years since birth of André Gide. FictionThe Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday)A fantastical love story set in an underground world, from the author of the 2012 smash hit The Night Circus. Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas (Canongate)Her first adult novel in four years: a tale of power and privilege set in a girls’ boarding school. Grandmothers by Salley Vickers (Viking)A bittersweet novel about four women whose lives – along with those of their grandchildren – become entangled. The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld (Cape).It has been five years since All the Birds, Singing; Wyld’s new novel explores connections between three women’s lives, in the 18th century, the aftermath of the second world war, and recent times. The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili, translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (Scribe)An “international phenomenon” comes to the UK: the 1,000-page epic of six generations of a Georgian family living through the turbulent Soviet 20th century. PoetrySelected Poems by Denise Riley (Picador)Previously uncollected work from this most arresting and moving poet. Non-fictionA House in the Mountains by Caroline Moorehead (Chatto)The concluding part of the author’s acclaimed quartet about Europe features Italy from 1943 to 1945 – Mussolini falls, the Germans occupy, and the country is in chaos. Women in the resistance take centre stage. Brexit: Volume 3 by Tim Shipman (William Collins)The journalist’s previous books charting the past few years of high drama in British politics, Fall Out and All Out War, have been highly praised bestsellers. Presumably this volume is yet to be written. In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado (Profile)A memoir that reflects on domestic abuse from the American author of the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (Bloomsbury)An account of the beginning of the #MeToo movement from the New York Times reporters who investigated Harvey Weinstein. The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina (Bodley Head)A Pulitzer prize-winning journalist emerges from deep research into the lawless world of international waters, with stories of crimes and violence that often go unpunished. One hundred and fifty years since the publication of War and Peace.10 Quatercentenary of René Descartes’ famous night of three dreams in 1619, revealing the shape of his new philosophy.20 Film of Cats, directed by Tom Hooper and reworking the TS Eliot-based musical.26 Release of The Call of the Wild, based on Jack London’s tale of a dog. PoetryA Christmas Poem by Carol Ann Duffy (Picador)The by then former poet laureate’s annual and lavishly illustrated festive verse.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the rapidly rising star of the Democratic party, has lashed out at conservative media for its treatment of women in leadership positions after the Daily Caller published a fake photo of the politician nude in a bath-tub. The rightwing website published the image showing a woman’s bare feet in the bath, under the headline: “Here’s the photo some people described as a nude selfie of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”. In fact, the photograph had been circulating on the internet already for a month and has been shown to have been falsely ascribed to the politician by a user on a Reddit forum. Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter on Thursday night that the use of a discredited image by a prominent conservative outlet showed that “women in leadership face more scrutiny. Period.” She said the actions of the Daily Caller were “just a matter of time” given that Republicans had been “frothing at the mouth all week” – a phrase that she did not explain. She also criticized the Daily Mail which she accused of sending a reporter “to my boyfriend’s relative’s homes” offering them cash for “stories”. GOP have been losing their mind + frothing at the mouth all week, so this was just a matter of time.There is also a Daily Mail reporter (Ruth Styles) going to my boyfriend’s relative’s homes+offering them cash for “stories.”Women in leadership face more scrutiny. Period. https://t.co/KuHJ75sdMg Ocasio-Cortez became an instant political sensation last June when she ousted in the Democratic primaries a New York congressman who had held the seat for 20 years. She went on to win the general election in November, propelling herself to a leadership position within the new generation of young up-and-coming Democratic politicians. Being the youngest US congresswoman ever to be sworn in (she is now 29), combined with her self-identification as a democratic socialist which has riled conservatives, has brought the social media spotlight onto Ocasio-Cortez with some challenging results. Last week there was a storm of protest on Twitter after a user going under the handle “AnonymousQ” posted an old 30-second video of her dancing on a rooftop while at college. So far the Democratic representative for New York’s 14th congressional district covering parts of the Bronx and Queens has been effortlessly able to rebuff the onslaught and turn it to her advantage. Her riposte to the dance video was to post a new, 11-second clip of her dancing outside the congressional office – by Thursday night it had received more than 20m hits. In a later tweet on Thursday night, Ocasio-Cortez returned to the Daily Caller theme, lamenting the “completely disgusting behavior from Conservative outlets”. She added a pointed remark about the confirmation process of US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, who won Republican support despite the sexual assault allegations made against him by Christine Blasey Ford. “No wonder they defended Kavanaugh so fiercely,” she wrote. For those out of the loop, Republicans began to circulate a fake nude photo of me. The @DailyCaller reposted it (!) and refused to indicate it was fake in the title as well.Completely disgusting behavior from Conservative outlets.No wonder they defended Kavanaugh so fiercely. Earlier in the evening, she said that if “they” – she didn’t specify whom – “want to make an example out of me, I will gladly be one. Hopefully we can be an example of dedication, courage, and persistence under fire.” If they want to make an example out of me, I will gladly be one.Hopefully we can be an example of dedication, courage, and persistence under fire.Or compassion, thoughtfulness, curiosity, justice, and zeal.I also hope to be an example of not tolerating nonsense, too. https://t.co/B6GqpHAozwBrexit is confusing enough for British people, so what must it be like for non-nationals? Are you living outside the UK and unable to tell your political declaration from your withdrawal agreement, let alone your Irish backstop? Wondering why the UK is in this mess – and what on earth might happen next? If there are things you don’t understand about the Brexit process, send us a short question and the Guardian’s European affairs correspondent, Jon Henley, who writes the weekly Brexit briefing and presents the Brexit Means ... podcast, will do his best to answer. Are you living outside the UK and confused by the latest news from Brexitland? Ask your question and tell us a little about yourself in the form below. We’ll publish answers to some of them soon. If you’re having trouble using the form, click here. Read terms of service here.Noemie Lopian, a 52-year-old Holocaust educator, grew up in Munich and Manchester hardly speaking about the Holocaust, even though both of her parents were in it. Her French mother, Renee, was questioned at gunpoint by the Gestapo at the age of 10 and imprisoned in the Prison du Pax in Annemasse, on the border between France and Switzerland. She was saved by the town’s lord mayor, Jean Deffaugt, who persuaded the Gestapo to release the youngest children into his care, and the resistance fighter Marianne Cohn, who rescued at least 200 Jewish children during the war by smuggling them out of France’s occupied zone. Lopian’s Polish father, Dr Ernst Israel Bornstein, was arrested at 18 and moved between seven concentration camps during the war, enduring a number of long death marches. He was liberated near Munich by American soldiers on 30 April 1945. Derek Niemann, 57, lives in Bedfordshire and is a writer, teacher and contributor to the Guardian’s country diary. Niemann knew nothing about his connection to the Holocaust until he was 49, when he found out, to his shock, that his paternal grandfather, Karl Niemann, was a Nazi war criminal. Last weekend, on Holocaust Memorial Day, it emerged that one in 20 Britons believe the Holocaust never happened, and one 12 think its scale has been exaggerated. Niemann and Bornstein now travel the country together and give talks about their different experiences, in the hope it will stem the tide of Holocaust denialism, and to educate people about antisemitism. Derek, what did you grow up knowing about your grandfather?Derek: He died the year before I was born, but my father had always said his father was a lowly official in a bank; a pen pusher. Then, my dad’s sister died and it was like something opened up in him. I learned that my father had spent the entire war in Berlin, and the family had escaped into the Alps at the end of the war. The next breakthrough came when I was going to Berlin, and I found out the address of where my father had grown up. From that, I learned that my grandfather was in the SS and was convicted of crimes against humanity and the use of slave labour. I immediately started burrowing in Holocaust and SS archives. I learned that he’d joined the Nazi party pretty early on, and, when he lost his job, he was recruited to the SS. At first, he was an auditor, and he worked his way up to become a business owner using the slave labour of concentration camps. He was going round to the camps and making sure they had supplies to keep working. I think he was a mediocrity who suddenly had a uniform and a chauffeur, and he thought he had to be loyal to the people who raised him up. The nonentities got to the top then. Was he punished after the war?Derek: Oh yes. He was captured by the US army on the day war ended in Europe, 8 May 1945, and imprisoned in the former prisoner of war camps at Moosburg, Bavaria, and Sandbostel near Bremen. He was released three years later. And how did the two of you meet?Noemie: I’d heard about Derek after he wrote a book about his grandfather, and was very keen to meet him. We finally met when he was giving a talk in a synagogue. I’d heard another grandson of a Nazi speak and I didn’t take to him at all. It wasn’t an intellectual reaction, it was an emotional one, which I hadn’t expected. But when I heard Derek speak, I knew I would feel comfortable with him. Why were you so keen to meet a grandchild of a Nazi?Noemie: I felt, with my past, I could either ignore it or embrace it, and if I was going to embrace it I should be proactive in whatever little way I can. I wanted to learn. Also, it’s hard to get people to listen to just me – I’m not a celebrity, I’m just a Jewish woman, and in the current political climate you feel as if you’re going to be dismissed as just another stroppy Jew. But I felt with the two of us, more people would listen.Derek: We gave a talk last week, and at the beginning everyone made eye contact with Noemie, but some could barely look at me. At the end, though, they were coming up and hugging me and shaking me by the hand. I realised that they can’t accept my family, but they recognise my desire to bridge the differences between us.Noemie: I feel that at our talks people are much more fascinated with Derek. They’ve heard my kind of stories before. It’s true … I’ve spoken with a lot of children of Holocaust survivors, but never someone who describes himself as a grandchild of a Nazi.Derek: Yes, there aren’t many of us around! I don’t want to self-aggrandise, but at times I feel like Andy Murray talking about feminism – it’s easy for some people to dismiss women calling out sexism, but it’s harder when it comes from a man.Noemie: And that’s why I think Derek’s story is so powerful. People are used now to hearing Jews talk about antisemitism and the Holocaust, but when it comes from someone with Derek’s background they’re like, wow! And, of course, he has a much tougher job than me because he has to acknowledge the love he has for his father, and even his grandfather, while also talking about what they did. It’s a far greater dichotomy than what I have. Did it affect how you see yourself, Derek, knowing that such a close relative did these terrible things?Derek: I think there was a lot of guilt in the beginning, and that may have been why I wrote about it and reached out so much to the Jewish community. But I know that my grandfather is not me, and I am empowered to … not make up for what he did, but at least use his story for, hopefully, a good purpose. Do you ever think about how your parents and grandparents would feel about you two becoming friends?Derek: All the time.Noemie: At first I tried to push those thoughts away. But then I realised that my father was a very humane man. He was a doctor after the war, and he had Germans among his patients. He went beyond hatred because he always said hatred eats up the person who hates. You have to move on and see the person for who they are. The Nazis tried to kill kindness and we fight against that.Derek: My father’s sister was openly antisemitic for the rest of her life. What happened during the war didn’t change her at all. She moved to Glasgow when she got married, and she would see a shop with “Goldberg” on it, and she would say: “That’s a Jew.” My dad also had this deeply ingrained antisemitism. I remember my mum once wanted to buy a menorah, and he said: “I’m not having that Jewish thing in the house.” So he could say, on the one hand, that the Nazis did terrible things to the Jews, but at the same time, he would say other things like that. That education he got from his family and friends, he could never shake it off. Do you think you would have been so aware of the recent rise of antisemitism in the west without your family’s connection?Derek: I don’t think so because, having done all this research, I have become sensitised to oppression in a way I wasn’t before. I’ve realised how comfortably bigoted I and my contemporaries were when we were kids. We would make Irish jokes, Jewish jokes … you could stand at the Arsenal and see a black player being abused and think: “Oh well,” because it was normalised. I’m ashamed I was like that, but we – in the comfortable minority – were like that.Noemie: This is why I urge the leaders of the countries to stand up and speak out because otherwise that behaviour is normalised. When the leader of the opposition in this country dismisses Jewish people’s complaints [about his actions], he is giving permission to that behaviour. We always said “never again”, but we have to work at it. But many of Corbyn’s supporters would say that he has spoken out about antisemitism. And perhaps, more importantly, that the things many Jewish people have criticised him for – such as initially defending an antisemitic mural on Facebook – don’t prove he’s antisemitic.Noemie: Yes, I get that a lot, people saying he’s not anti-Jewish, he’s anti-Israel. I accept that the actions of Israel, like any other country, can be criticised. But if the leader of the opposition befriends Hamas and Hezbollah, whose mission statement is to erase the existence of Israel – ie erasing me and my people again – then I don’t feel safe. When things happen, such as Donald Trump describing neo-Nazis as “very fine people”, and Jews get upset, a lot of people say they’re overreacting and of course the Holocaust won’t happen again. How do you respond to that?Derek: Any behaviour that fosters suspicion or hatred is wrong, and the Holocaust is a long, long way down that path, but you have to get off that path right at the beginning. Researching my grandfather’s story has given me a heightened awareness of the capability of humans to slide into evil deeds and find ways to exonerate themselves from culpability. It only needs the right conditions to expose our weaknesses and maybe I can see and understand that better than most. Noemie, have you experienced more antisemitism recently?Noemie: I remember as a kid people shouting: “Dirty Jew!”, and I almost wouldn’t think about it. You don’t get that now, but I’ve found that when I talk about antisemitism, the Israel question always comes up, especially among the left. I don’t support harm or killing to anyone, so what I always say is that I strongly believe that with more positive dialogue on both sides there can be less killing. Do you two talk to your children about their family histories?Noemie: I have three daughters and I consciously turned to my past after the birth of my youngest. I don’t particularly talk to them about their grandparents, but I’m very open about my activities.Derek: I have a stepson, who is not bothered by a connection that is not a blood link. But I have shared the whole story with him, and he is enormously supportive of what I do. What do you want people to take away from your talks?Derek: To learn to look beyond difference and to act against prejudice before it’s too late.Noemie: And also to remember that this happened. It’s already fading from memory, which is why we talk to so many young people, at universities and schools.Derek: It feels like this is my life mission now. I met someone who was in the French resistance whose best friend was killed in Buchenwald, and he shook me by the hand. At our talks, survivors have invited me to sit with them afterwards and taken me by the hand. It’s incredible.Noemie: I don’t think I can change the world, but maybe by showing people how we have stepped beyond difference, that will make a difference. Derek Niemann’s A Nazi in the Family is published by Short Books. Ernst Israel Bornstein’s The Long Night: A True Story is published by the Toby Press.Lady Gaga has apologised for working with R Kelly. Kelly has been accused by numerous women of violent and controlling behaviour, including keeping them, some while under the age of consent, in what’s been described as a “sex cult”. A documentary, Surviving R Kelly, features testimonies from a number of the women. Yesterday, it was reported that new abuse investigations were being launched by prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta. Kelly has denied any wrongdoing, and last year recorded a song professing his innocence, on which he sings: “I’m so falsely accused.” In 2013, Gaga recorded the duet Do What U Want with Kelly. She has now apologised for working with him, saying: “I’m sorry, both for my poor judgment when I was young, and for not speaking out sooner.” She intends to remove the songs from download and streaming services. “I stand behind these women 1,000%, believe them, know they are suffering and in pain, and feel strongly that their voices should be heard and taken seriously,” she wrote on Instagram. “What I am hearing about the allegations against R Kelly is absolutely horrifying and indefensible.” Gaga says she wrote the song, whose chorus line runs, “You can’t have my heart and you won’t use my mind but / do what you want with my body”, was intended to “create something extremely defiant and provocative, because I was angry and still hadn’t processed the trauma that had occurred in my own life”, referring to a sexual assault that she suffered. She describes her thinking at the time as “explicitly twisted” and a “confused posttraumatic state”. Gaga is the most high profile of Kelly’s former collaborators to condemn his actions. Dream Hampton, the producer of Surviving R Kelly, said she asked numerous celebrities, including Lady Gaga, to appear in the documentary and discuss Kelly, but they declined. “I asked Jay-Z. I asked Mary J Blige. I asked Lil’ Kim, Erykah Badu, Dave Chappelle … Most people just don’t want to touch it,” she said. “I remember Ahmir [Thompson, AKA Questlove] was like: ‘I would do anything for you, but I can’t do this.’ It’s not because they support him; it’s because it’s so messy and muddy. It’s that turning away that has allowed this to go on.” Soul singer John Legend did appear in the documentary, later tweeting: “To everyone telling me how courageous I am for appearing in the doc, it didn’t feel risky at all … Easy decision.” Chance the Rapper also appeared in the documentary, saying: “We’re programmed to really be hypersensitive to black male oppression” as a reason many chose to give Kelly the benefit of the doubt. He later added on Twitter: “I apologise for to all his survivors for working with him.” Others have commented in the wake of the documentary, with R&B singers Ne-Yo and Tank, and rappers Meek Mill and 6lack all condemning Kelly’s alleged behaviour.This Saturday former NFL defensive end Greg Hardy — a man once convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend — will make his official UFC debut. To add to the controversy, Hardy is scheduled to compete on the same fight card as Rachel Ostovich, who suffered a broken orbital bone during an alleged attack by her husband. Her husband, Arnold Berdon, was arrested for attempted second-degree murder but was later charged with second degree assault. The UFC’s decision to do business with Hardy and promote him on a fight card featuring an alleged victim of assault emphasizes the promotion’s tone-deaf approach to handling domestic violence and its apparent disregard for fighters’ violent pasts. In 2014, Hardy was arrested for assault after he was accused of attacking and threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend. The woman testified that Hardy threw her on a futon filled with guns and placed his hands on her throat. “He looked me in my eyes and he told me he was going to kill me,” she said. “I was so scared I wanted to die. When he loosened his grip slightly, I said just, ‘Do it. Kill me.’” Hardy denied the accusations but was convicted on two counts of domestic violence and was sentenced to 18 months probation and a two-month suspended jail sentence. Hardy appealed the sentence and managed to get the charges expunged from his record in 2015 after his ex-girlfriend failed to appear at court to give testimony. It was later reported she had settled a civil suit with Hardy. Last year, Kim A Gandy, CEO and president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence spoke to the Guardian about Hardy’s case. Gandy acknowledged that the charges were ultimately dropped but said that’s “not the same as not having done it,” adding that abusers who do not reckon with what they’ve done are less likely to be rehabilitated in the long run. “Someone truly sorry who seeks to help and genuinely make amends is very different from a person who commits extraordinary violence and not only takes no responsibility for it but takes position that the person just deserved it.” At the time of the incident, Hardy was playing for the Carolina Panthers. He later signed on with the Dallas Cowboys but was later given a 10-game suspension by the NFL in relation to the alleged assault. He returned later that year but found himself out of work when the Cowboys opted not to re-sign him. Seemingly shunned from football, Hardy turned his attention to MMA. Starting in 2017, Hardy compiled a 3-0 amateur record in fights that lasted a combined two minutes and 22 seconds. He followed those wins with his first professional victory, and signed a developmental deal with the UFC to compete on Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series. After two consecutive knockout wins on the show, the UFC was ready to announce Hardy’s official debut. The UFC’s willingness to promote Hardy on a variety of their platforms, including their highly anticipated debut on ESPN+, highlights the gaping inconsistencies in their domestic violence policies. In the wake of NFL running back Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée in 2014, UFC president Dana White took a strong stance against domestic violence: “There’s one thing that you never bounce back from and that’s putting your hands on a woman. Been that way in the UFC since we started here. You don’t bounce back from putting your hands on a woman.” White maintained his stance for several months. Speaking at the 2014 NeuLion Sports Media & Technology Conference, White revealed that the UFC “screens people for The Ultimate Fighter, and if you’ve ever had a domestic violence, you can’t get on. Since this whole thing happened [with Ray Rice], we’re beefing up our policies with putting your hands on a woman. Of course, the way we always react is morally first then the business second.” But the UFC’s actual actions tell an entirely different tale. Will Chope was released by the promotion after news surfaced regarding a 2009 domestic assault conviction. Thiago Silva, who threatened his estranged wife with a gun and violated a temporary protection order, was released from the promotion but re-signed again after the charges were dropped. He was once again released two weeks later after the UFC received audio and video evidence posted by Silva’s ex-wife. But many other have been kept on by the promotion, despite allegations of domestic or sexual violence. Most recently, Abdul Razak Alhassan was indicted for the alleged rape of two women in March 2018. The UFC is yet to comment on Alhassan’s case. By December 2018, White’s stance on domestic violence had dramatically changed from his zero-tolerance approach. When asked about the UFC’s decision to place Hardy on the same fight card as Ostovich, White doubled down on the promotion’s baffling decision: “I called Rachael Ostovich and talked to her, walked her through the situation,” White said. “Her take was, ‘His story isn’t my story. Everybody’s story is different. I believe in second chances. I have no problem fighting on the same card as this guy.’ He didn’t have anything to do with Rachael Ostovich, so she was totally cool with it.” Ostovich has since shared her thoughts on Greg Hardy in an interview with ESPN, stating that believes in “second chances.” “I’m glad he’s making a turnaround,” she said. “I hope the same can happen to my husband and anyone else who has made a wrong choice.” While Ostovich is willing to excuse Hardy, he remains a public relations concern and a controversial figure for the UFC. Ostovich’s comments do not deter from the seriousness of Hardy’s alleged actions and should not be misconstrued as an exoneration. And if White believes in second chances for Hardy, he doesn’t seem keen to talk about it in any depth. Despite the backlash over Hardy, the UFC added fuel to the fire when it told reporters at a press conference in December — which took place the same day that the Hardy fight news broke — that they were only allowed to ask questions about the fighters competing at the upcoming UFC 231. In response to the reports, the Mixed Martial Arts Journalist Association released a statement on its website confirming that several of its members felt as though they could not ask questions freely. When journalists finally came round to asking White about the UFC’s position on Hardy, the UFC boss blamed the media for stirring up controversy. “I already covered this. I’m not playing this bullshit with you guys. [Hardy] is on the UFC roster. Period. End of story,” White said. “Listen, you guys want to be sensitive about shit? Anyone can be sensitive about anything. You can make an issue about everything.” The problem with White’s statement is that domestic violence is a very real issue in mixed martial arts. According to a study of arrest records since 2003 by HBO Real Sports, MMA fighters have a domestic violence arrest rate (750 per 100,000) more than double the general US population (360 per 100,000) and far ahead of NFL players (210 per 100,000), who are often depicted as being at the heart of the problem. In an attempt to stifle journalists from asking further questions about Hardy, the promotion shielded the fighter from fight-week media obligations. The UFC took this decision despite Hardy’s place in the co-main event. When it comes to domestic violence, it appears that UFC thinks silence is golden. UFC did not respond to a request for comment on this story.Lionel Messi scored for a sixth consecutive La Liga game as champions Barcelona saw off a gutsy Girona side 2-0 in a Catalan derby on Sunday to go five points clear at the top of the standings. Nelson Semedo struck with his weaker left foot to send Barca into the lead in the ninth minute, which was played on a rain-swept afternoon at Girona’s Montilivi stadium after LaLiga’s ambitious plan to stage the game in Miami fell through. Girona had defender Bernardo Espinosa sent off in the 51st minute for a second booking. Liga’s top scorer Messi, then lobbed goalkeeper Bono to net his 18th league goal of the season. Elsewhere in Spain, Real Valladolid beat Celta Vigo 2-1, while Athletic Bilbao defeated Real Betis 1-0. Bayern Munich secured their fifth successive Bundesliga win with a 4-1 victory over Stuttgart to cut the gap to leaders Borussia Dortmund back to six points. Stuttgart frustrated Bayern in the first half as Anastasios Donis cancelled out Thiago’s opener. Serge Gnabry put Bayern back into the lead when he collected the ball on the edge of the area and his strike deflected in off Christian Gentner. Lewandowski hit the post from the spot, but the reigning Bundesliga champions pulled clear through Leon Goretzka, who met Joshua Kimmich’s corner to nod home. Lewandowski made amends for his penalty miss six minutes from time, putting the seal on the win by rounding Ron-Robert Zieler. Fiorentina scored twice with 10 men and saw their opponents miss a late penalty as they won 4-3 at Chievo on Sunday in an extraordinary Serie A match which also produced one of the most unusual video assistant referee decisions of the season. Luis Muriel gave Fiorentina a fourth-minute lead, before bottom-of-the-table Chievo thought they had levelled when Fiorentina goalkeeper Alban Lafont sent a goal kick straight to Emanuele Giaccherini, who fired into the net. But the VAR ruled that the forward had encroached when the kick was taken - he had his foot inside the penalty area - and disallowed the goal. The Flying Donkeys then had a penalty appeal turned down and were still protesting when Marco Benassi scored a second for Fiorentina. Mariusz Stepinksi headed one back for Chievo and Benassi turned villain on the hour when he blocked a goalbound shot with his arm on the line, was sent off and Sergio Pellissier, 39, levelled from the spot kick. With the game going from one end to the other, Federico Chiesa broke clear to put Fiorentina ahead, then Chievo were awarded another penalty for handball by Gerson but this time Pellissier’s effort was saved by Lafont. Chiesa added a fourth and Filip Djordjevic headed one back but Chievo could not find an equaliser. Atalanta forward Duvan Zapata missed a penalty but scored an equaliser one minute later as his side hit back from three goals behind to draw 3-3 at home to Roma in Serie A. Edin Dzeko gave Roma a third-minute lead, sweeping the ball home after Nicolo Zaniolo chested it into his path, with his first league goal since October and struck again on the break in the 33rd minute. Stephan El Shaarawy added a third for Roma after another counter-attack but Timothy Castagne pulled one back before half-time when he headed in Alejandro Gómez’s cross. Rafael Toloi headed in another Gomez delivery for eighth-placed Atalanta’s second goal in the 59th minute before they were awarded a penalty for a foul on Josip Ilicic. The referee initially booked Ilicic for diving but changed his mind after a VAR review and awarded a penalty, only for Zapata to fire over the bar. However, the Colombian made amends one minute later, running on to Gómez’s pass to place his shot past Olsen and make it 3-3 with his 15th league goal of the season. There was also a dramatic comeback at Parma where visitors Spal scored three times in the final 20 minutes to win 3-2. Two goals from Roberto Inglese, the first from a penalty, put Parma in the driving seat. Substitute Mattia Valoti scored less than two minutes after coming off the bench to begin the fightback in the 70th minute and Andrea Petagna headed the equaliser five minutes later. Mohamed Fares blasted the winner with three minutes left after Parma had failed to clear the ball. Lowly Frosinone claimed only their second win of the season by thumping fellow strugglers Bologna 4-0 away.Facebook has deleted the homepage of the most prominent member of a group of “yellow vest” protesters who have harassed and abused MPs and journalists, as police began a more concerted response to their activities. After the Speaker, John Bercow, wrote to the head of the Metropolitan police to urge action when the Conservative MP Anna Soubry was barracked returning from a TV interview on Monday, police greatly outnumbered protesters on Tuesday. James Goddard, the most prominent of the activists, who model themselves on the French gilets jaunes movement, has regularly livestreamed such confrontations as a way of boosting attention for the movement. However, on Tuesday afternoon both his Facebook pages were removed. The company said it “will not tolerate hate speech on Facebook which creates an environment of intimidation and which may provoke real-world violence”. A PayPal page via which he solicited donations was also taken down. The Met also promised a more robust approach to the group after weeks of intermittent action during which Westminster Bridge has been blocked, Soubry has twice been harassed and sexist and racist abuse has been directed at TV crews. Bercow wrote to the Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, after the latest abuse of Soubry, asking her to address, “as a matter of urgency, a number of incidents of aggressive, threatening and intimidating behaviour towards MPs and journalists” around College Green, a grassy area opposite parliament used by broadcasters. At least 115 MPs have also written to police seeking extra protection. Bercow wrote: “There seems to be a pattern here of a regular coterie of burly white men who are effectively targeting and denouncing members whom they recognise and dislike – most notably female and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.” Asked in the Commons about the group on Tuesday, Bercow said it seemed to particularly target women and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. “Let’s be quite clear about that: it’s a type of fascism,” he said. The Met deputy assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor defended the police response, saying officers had been instructed to intervene after they were filmed on Monday standing by while Soubry was abused. “We will deal robustly with incidents of harassment and abuse against anyone where that harassment or abuse constitutes a criminal offence,” Taylor said. “Officers in the area have been briefed to intervene appropriately where they hear or see breaches of the law.” Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Soubry said there was a small group of people “roaming around Westminster intimidating people going about their lawful business”. The Broxtowe MP added that while she expected a level of criticism and abuse as a member of parliament, she wanted authorities to act when it “crossed the line”. In a statement the Met said: “Police received a third-party report of a public order offence on Monday 7 January, in the area of College Green, SW1. Officers are assessing if any crimes have been committed. There has been no arrest at this stage.” Earlier on Tuesday, Goddard promised to continue the protests. Before the page was deleted he wrote on Facebook: “If the political class weren’t trying to thwart Brexit, then I wouldn’t have to approach these treacherous MPs. A message to Bercow and his chums, you will never stop me, I’m not afraid of you!” However, he was not seen outside parliament that day. One of the small group of protesters who were outside said they had been told Goddard feared arrest if he arrived. Separately, the widower of the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox said threats of similar violence were being used to try to “intimidate, coerce and threaten MPs”. Writing for the Guardian, Brendan Cox said some newspapers were fuelling the “tsunami of rage” that could follow if Brexit was frustrated. “MPs are told by national commentators to remember before voting for or against a deal, or for or against a referendum, to remember what happened to Jo. Even some MPs and government ministers seem to be using the threat of violence as a warning to others to do their will,” he wrote, calling on MPs and others “not to be cowed by what happened to Jo”. Last month, an editorial in the Sun asked readers to remember “the febrile atmosphere of the referendum, during which Jo Cox MP was heartbreakingly murdered”, before adding: “Is it a risk the second vote camp are ready to take? Because they will have to live with its consequences.”Valentine’s Day. 14 February. Known the world over as the most romantic day of the year (apologies, Shrove Tuesday). But were you aware that it is also peak break-up time for couples? That’s according to some statistics I’ve knowingly twisted to suit my own agenda. Either way, it’s certainly a busy time for me, the Guy You Meet Right After You Come Out of a Long-Term Relationship. Initially I’m just a friend … but that’s not what I’m after. I have a nice smile, an easy manner and no car. You’ll recognise me if you’re single, female and just trying to enjoy a quiet moment on your own. You’ll also recognise me if you’re male, single and just looking in a mirror. So prepare to be bathed in so much woke you’ll swear you’ve just been licked by Justin Trudeau. When the Guardian first slid into my DMs to ask if I would be interested in freestyling a piece on “the perfect Valentine’s” I have to admit, I had no idea what the Guardian was. The only paper I pretend to read in public is the Observer – physical edition. I’d much rather chug a chai alongside a publication that has taken a full week to locally source “the 5 best dessert wines to accompany climate change”, than one that can rattle it off in a day. And also, what’s with this whole phrasing of “the perfect Valentine’s”? Let’s unpick that for a second, shall we? I surely can’t be alone in taking a deep-dive offence at that? Newsflash, the Guardian, it’s 2019. We’re not down with calendar shaming all the other Valentine’s our fallen generations have lived through, capiche? It’s high time you woke up! But then an elderly friend of mine calmed me down. Old people can teach us so much. She helped me realise just how many people I could touch with my white-hot take. You see, being sensitive to others is as natural to me as feeding Quorn pieces to a kale. And before you object, I’m not being needlessly PC here. I’ve been woke ever since the day I was first breastfed by an almond. That day was yesterday. Speaking as a man, it’s not natural for me to keep all my wisdom to myself. That’s just not how it works – and by “it” I mean my johnson. Perhaps I could offer tips on how to make that special someone you are planning on casually stifling feel like a million bitcoins? Help spread some great vibes? Ugh, I can’t believe I used the word “help”. It feels so triggering, just like the words “Roger”, “Lloyd” and “Pack”. Over the many Valentine’s I’ve spent patrolling various branches of the aptly named All Bar One, making moves so slow you’ll swear you’ve just been touched by a tectonic plate, I’ve learned that emotionally manipulated relationships are all about giving people space. And that is something I will constantly keep telling you as I encroach. So here are my nine easy hints on how to engage with your Valentine from across a booth lit by a fading electronic candle in a tumbler. Be great company. Listen, don’t hear. It’s called conversation, not converbatim. And take time to balance your chin on your hand as you do. In a straight fight between listening and talking, listening would win every time. Not that I’m into fighting of course, unless it’s for equal pay in the workplace or how much I love Lena Dunham. Frequently drop rebound bombs such as “what time is Bake Off?”, “snuggling for the win” and, “God, I miss the Paralympics.” Use the word “glean”. A lot. If in a group, casually entertain her friends to the point where they all lean behind your back and mouth to her: “He’s grrrreat.” Gush about your love of street food and street theatre, which is like regular theatre just served in a bap. Mention that you play the acoustic guitar and one day dream of running a donkey sanctuary full of orangutans that will finally bring an end to the ivory trade. Plan a city break, but warn that you will always insist on going down the red channel at Customs. You’ve just gotta declare your feelings! Show how in touch you are with all the many gender issues of the day by casually showing a screengrab of all your old Father Ted DVDs on eBay. Yes, Graham, my chimney is trans, DEAL WITH IT! Playfully ask if they favour ready-to-eat over ripen-at-home? This will provide a fascinating avocado-based insight into how regularly they smash their own toast. Most of all, good luck and good love. Remember, whatever the outcome, I’ll be circling regardless, ready to swoop. I’m your worst nightmare. An emotional predator who dresses from Gap. So beware. Be very, very, aware. • Adam Riches is The Guy Who … is on at Drink, Shop & Do, London N1 from 4 to 14 FebruaryStop all the green and yellow Timex clocks. Put away that union jack tea towel. Stow the Pimms-sodden crash barriers at the foot of the Aorangi Terrace. Andy Murray may yet play another Wimbledon this summer, depending on the state of his chronic, career-capping hip injury. But in the wake of a raw and tearful press conference on Friday morning it seems highly likely that next week’s Australian Open will be the final appearance of a stellar, transformative, broadly-sketched tennis career. At the end of which Murray will retire as arguably the greatest individual British sports person of the modern age. Not to mention, in a surprising twist given his awkward, un-fluffy adolescence, perhaps the most widely loved, most uplifting and, in men’s sport at least, most politically progressive too. As Murray is universally garlanded over the coming days there will no doubt be a wry smile or two among hardened tennis hacks who were there at the start of the Murray Supremacy, as an 18-year-old Wimbledon wild card back in 2005. The embryonic Murray was all talent, all potential; but somehow not quite cut from the same physical stuff as your average steamrollering alpha athlete. For one thing Murray was rake-thin and slouchy, a gangly kid next to the slabbed and ripped power-players of the modern men’s game. For another he was funny and acerbic, with the kind of prickly, questing intelligence that doesn’t often go hand in hand with a tennis childhood spent racking up a million drive-volley practice repetitions. Plus, of course he was British. And ever since the first great Summer of Tim, start of that annual emotional incontinence around the the inevitable collapse of Tim Henman in the late stages of Wimbledon, British tennis had wallowed in its status as an oddly comforting vale of summer tears, a lucrative tableau of almost-but-not-quite home county heroism. One of the best things about Murray is that he ripped all that up. The 2013 mens’ Wimbledon singles title will remain his defining achievement. Forget the surrounding noise. Forget about being a nice guy, or the perfect example of how to wring every final drop of sweetness from whatever talent your genes have or haven’t given you. Winning that title, 77 years on from the last British champion and at a time when three of the greatest tennis players ever were also operating, remains a genuinely vertiginous sporting achievement. In the moment of victory Murray dropped his racket and yelled, mouth agape, into the nearest face in the crowd before crumpling on to the sun-bleached grass. If he was overcome, briefly, then this was understandable given the many layers of skin shed along the way, the ascetic, violently punishing nature of his journey to that moment, the end point of which sees him needing surgery on his hip just to regain the ability to walk without serious pain. Also fitting was the grimly fascinating collection of VIPs there to cheer him on, among them David Cameron, Ed Miliband and, of course, Alex Salmond, waving a vast Scottish saltire just behind the royal party. Even this seems decidedly Murray. If there is a defining note to his elite career it is the constant battle to find his own way through the disorientating gravity around him, remaining throughout decisively and productively himself. The single-mindedness is there even in his quietly unyielding advocacy for equality of the sexes in sport. Murray didn’t appoint Amelie Mauresmo, the first high-profile female coach in any major global male sport, to garner approval points. He did it because she was the best person available. He didn’t publicly defend Mauresmo’s appointment out of a desire to make her gender an issue: he defended her because lazy thinking, prejudice, and judging on anything other than merit is something he finds entirely illegal and counterproductive. Even in the moments after he’d lost to Sam Querrey at Wimbledon in 2017, a significant staging post in his own grand slam career, he couldn’t help coming back to this. As an American journalist gushingly congratulated Querrey on his status as “the first American player” to reach a Wimbledon semi-final in eight years, Murray could be heard interjecting, deadpan, not once but twice with the words “male player”. This isn’t virtue signalling: it’s accuracy signalling, human merit-signalling. Murray loves and venerates the great players of his time, from Roger to Serena to Novak to Venus, sees only talent and character and human meritocracy. So often during his years at the top his deeds and words have made feminism in sport look less like an ideological choice, more like the only logical position of anyone with half a brain and a shot of basic integrity. Murray applied this same emotional honesty to the single biggest challenge of his sporting life. To win Wimbledon as a Brit, and beyond that a Scot, is not simply to win a prestigious tennis tournament. It is to slay an entire circling chorus of invisible dragons. Winning Wimbledon required Murray to meet the weight of those swirling expectations, but also to present himself to that green and yellow arena in a way that retained his own equilibrium, to find just the right emotional pitch. There has always been an echo of the Jane Austen hero about this, about smouldering Mr Murray’s need to balance a tension around his own desire for victory, and Wimbledon’s own needy emotional hauteur. Something of the Wimbledon atmosphere still speaks to class and privilege and sex too, a sport whose rhythms and texture were born out of flannel-trousered country house filtration, something that perhaps explains why so many members of the crowd spend most of their time there tittering and giggling. For a while there was talk of Murray’s emotional frigidity, the need to shed his Celtic chill and embrace a more unbound engagement with that flushed and draining centre court crowd. But forbidding Mr Murray did seduce the crowd, turning its strange, distracting energy to his own ends. His Mr Darcy in the duckpond moment came the year before he finally won it. There was some surprise when Murray burst into tears at the end of his 2012 defeat to Roger Federer. But Murray came back the next year leaner and more shark-like and looking utterly relaxed. Oddly enough, as he lifted the trophy in 2013 it was not Murray but members of the crowd in front of him who burst into tears. He may or may not be back at Wimbledon this summer. No doubt he would love to return. But those who know will tell you he probably preferred New York. What happens in the post-Murray void will be fascinating to see. Wimbledon’s own surging profits have been been built on a recent lineage of A-list British tennis stars, from Tim to Andy. But this is far from the most significant hole Murray leaves, as he will most likely next week. He would depart a three-time Grand Slam winner, 14th on the all-time tournament list, perhaps the greatest British athlete of his time; above all a startlingly fond, likeable presence; and that rare thing, a genuine sporting grownup.On a grey autumn evening in London just over a year ago, I went out for drinks with a friend to celebrate a new job. Eight hours later I was raped by somebody I’d never met before. My assault happened in late 2017, when the #MeToo movement was still fresh and gaining momentum every day; I felt lucky for this. (Lucky in the way you might feel if you’d escaped a house fire, thinking you were alone, only to find that the people next door had escaped a house fire too.) In the state of shock that followed, which lasted for several months, I became obsessed with this new wave of feminism. The women who spoke out became my heroes overnight, and the rest of the world seemed to fall away. Disengaged as I was from my own body and everyday experiences, I lost any concept of health or moderation. I was all too aware of the cliche of drinking to feel numb, but in my newfound nihilism I continued to use alcohol for all the wrong reasons. The period of shock was followed by a similarly alien experience of processing – inaugurated over a weekend in March where I vomited everything I consumed and eventually took myself to the accident and emergency department of the local hospital. A referral to the Priory the following week confirmed I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). What ensued over the following months was an astonishing concoction of trauma, pain and grief. This is what I’ve learned, and I feel moved to share it. As a young woman in the age of social media, I have been all too aware of my body – its shortcomings and its assets – since puberty. I’ve always considered myself lucky in the sense that I have never had a particularly hateful relationship with it, never had an eating disorder or body dysmorphia, and have what I consider to be a pretty healthy attitude to food. But after I was raped, I became aware of my body in ways and places I didn’t know possible. At the end of a long and arduous year I’ve begun to feel that I’m emerging from a dark tunnel It’s hard to overstate the feeling of uncleanliness that follows sexual assault, and I felt dirty from the inside out. In the immediate aftermath, I treated my body with the disrespect I felt it deserved. I ate crap, drank too much, put on more weight than I ever had, and generally displayed a total lack of care towards this vessel that carried me through the world. At the moment, I am more at peace with my body. Addressing feelings of dirtiness in therapy was crucial in helping me get over what I saw as a lack of purity, as was establishing a regular exercise pattern. I still have days where I feel an impulse to abuse my body, where I feel as if I could vomit and it might make me cleaner, but now – mostly – I have the good sense not to listen to the voice of my shame. There is nothing like watching the people you love suffer because of you. I am not being self-deprecating here, but stating the facts. I was and am lucky enough to have a large and stable support network, but the more people that love you, the more people hurt because of what happened to you. My family, my boyfriend, my closest friends, my cousins: I struggled, and still do, with the feeling of burdening them with this great pain. They were angry (I wasn’t), they were confused, they were worried, they were grieving. Secondary trauma can be terrible. It’s confusing to process other people’s hurt when you are suffering as acutely as I was. What was more confusing was that as desperately as they wanted to help me, they couldn’t actually understand what I was going through. Having no friends who had – to my knowledge – been assaulted increased the sense of isolation inherent to trauma. Making peace with an experience that you can’t convey in words to your nearest and dearest is something that I don’t think I’ll ever stop struggling with. This is one of the hardest things to accept. When something terrible happens to you, you will lose people. It’s not fair, it’s not right and it’s not nice. But trauma causes fractures. Sometimes, it’s because people surprise you: they don’t support you in ways you expected them to. They say insensitive things. It’s usually not their fault, since sensitivity is so heightened in the sufferer. PTSD can also cause irrational and erratic behaviour that can drive people away. On a very basic level, no one wants to hang out with somebody who is always in pain – that’s not immoral or insensitive, it’s just human. We all need to protect ourselves. My relationship with my boyfriend broke down within months after I was raped – hardly surprising given the stamp of trauma that the assault had placed on our existence as a couple. It was hard to see past the dreadfulness of the situation, and I think we both began to associate each other with suffering. Having said that, there are some friendships that have become stronger than ever. And my family, though always close, has entered a new era of openness and emotional honesty. We’ve become a family that discuss our feelings around the dinner table, that tell each other we love each other for no reason. Because who knows what might happen tomorrow? This probably won’t ever change. Some days I wake up, and for no particular reason, rise with it at the back of my mind and it stays there all day. Other days I wake up and feel as though my heart is a rock and my brain is barbed wire, and I can’t even begin to think about what will happen next. Some days, I feel nothing at all. Those are the scariest, because that’s when I worry I might not be myself any more. A large part of recovery is, I think, learning to live with the bad days. Learning how to stay level when you’ve had a sleep plagued with nightmares and a day plagued with flashbacks, and then someone at work makes a joke about your skirt being too short: learning how to not fall off the cliff edge on these days? I’ll get back to you on this; I haven’t figured it out yet. Knowing this is both my hope and my despair, my lifeline and my death sentence. Things happen all the time to everyone. Some people go through life experiencing nothing terrible, nothing objectively life-changing. Some bear on their shoulders pain meant for 10 people. Nothing is certain, and living with uncertainty is something human beings are bad at. It is something that going through a traumatic event makes you better at, but it never becomes easy. Watching the people around me get on with their lives, while mine seems to have partially stalled, is hard. There are times when I feel overtaken by the injustice and the arbitrariness of what happened to me. Having only recently been in a fit state to work, I’ve lived at home for the past year. I’ve felt infantilised by a lack of financial independence and I’ve felt pathetic for not being “stronger”, for not getting back on my feet quicker. In my late 20s, I’m watching friends around me get engaged, have babies, get close to six-figure salaries, while I sit on my childhood bed and cry because I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like myself again. But the fact that life does go on – that it has to go on – has made sure that I go on too. At the end of a long and arduous year I’ve begun to feel that I’m emerging from a dark tunnel. I’m working part-time in a job that I like, and that I feel I’m good at it. I’m rebuilding my self-esteem from the shattered pieces leftover, after he broke me. A year on, I’m living acutely with the consequences of what one person did to me. I won’t ever forget the pain that he caused me, but I hope – and believe – that one day, it won’t define me. • Those affected by rape or sexual abuse can contact Rape Crisis on 0808 802 9999 (England and Wales) or on 08088 01 03 02 (Scotland)Go into any supermarket, and it will be full of them: the aisles and aisles of cleaning products in their brilliantly coloured plastic bottles, promising dazzle and shine; a life free of grease and grime. But do we really need any of it? As many of us look to the zero-wasters trying to eschew packaging to reduce our own impact on the planet, the internet is awash with recipes for making your own all-purpose cleaners – from bathtub sprays and floor washes, to oven scrubs and window spritzers. But can you really clean your home with them? Yes, says Ingrid Caldironi, one of the founders of Bulk Market, a zero-waste supermarket in Hackney, east London: “It’s so easy to make your own products. I do all my own cleaning with vinegar, bicarbonate of soda and castile soap – you can clean your whole house with those three ingredients.” It’s not as if this is a new idea. Bicarbonate of soda has been valued for its antibacterial properties since the 1920s. Barbara Allred, who was head housekeeper at Sandringham for 10 years, and now lectures at the English Manner household consultancy, has been espousing the virtues of lemon juice – from sprucing up a microwave to stopping mildew – for years. Caldironi says the biggest difference between supermarket cleaning products and homemade ones is that “conventional cleaning products are labelled for one specific task”. When making your own, you use the same basic ingredients: vinegar, lemon juice, bicarbonate of soda, plant-based liquid soap and essential oils and vary the ratios, depending on the job. I put it to the test to see if I can DIY-clean my own home: I put ½ cup bicarb, 10 drops of essential grapefruit oil and ¼ cup white vinegar into my toilet bowl and scrub as it fizzes. The smell makes me happy. The porcelain gleams. I use blogger Amanda Watters’ bathtub mix (¼ cup of liquid castile soap, 10 drops of thieves or tea tree oil and one cup of baking soda). It does leave my bath clean, but takes a good amount of elbow grease and some water to leave my bath shining. For an all-purpose spray, I make up a solution of equal parts vinegar and water, and add some lemon juice. It’s a bit more watery than my usual kitchen spray, but it smells fresh and degreases smoothly. Always the cleaning job I dread the most, and a job for which conventional cleaners charge a small fortune. I coat the inside of my oven with a paste of bicarb and water. Left for at least an hour, preferably overnight, it totally works (with a good amount of vigorous scrubbing). I wipe down my wooden floorboards with a solution of 1 tsp castile soap and 10 drops of tea tree oil in 4.5 litres of warm water. It’s great – the floor is perfectly clean. My whole house, in fact, is dandy; mixing up the ingredients isn’t very taxing – all I needed was a fork and a glass. Once they are rinsed, I’d happily make an omelette with them.A Russian lawyer for Paul Whelan, the US citizen accused of spying on Russia, has said his client was carrying state secrets when he was arrested in Moscow but may not have realised it. Whelan, an ex-marine, has been accused of an unspecified “act of espionage”, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. “I can only confirm that information constituting state secrets was found in the course of Whelan’s detention,” Vladimir Zherebenkov, a court-appointed lawyer, told journalists at a Moscow court on Tuesday. “I do not know how he got it, and what he was supposed to do with it; it is also unknown whether Whelan was aware that he possessed secret information. There is nothing but conjectures so far.” A judge at the court ruled that Whelan would remain under arrest in Lefortovo prison until at least 28 February as authorities continue their investigation. Whelan’s court appearance on Tuesday was his first in public since his arrest last month. The pre-trial detention hearing was closed to the press because the case material is secret, but Whelan could be seen by journalists after the judge delivered his sentence. Police escorting Whelan wore balaclavas to obscure their identities. Since December, anonymously sourced reports in Russian media have said that Whelan received a USB drive with secret information about Russian government employees. But the content of the charges against him have not been made public by officials. Some western analysts have suggested that Russia arrested Whelan in order to set up an exchange, although Moscow has denied that. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said last week that Whelan had been caught “red-handed” when he was arrested by FSB officers at Moscow’s downtown Metropol hotel. Family members have said Whelan was in Moscow for a wedding. Before Whelan’s court appearance, his lawyer said he could confirm information made public by the foreign ministry. But his remarks confirming Whelan’s alleged possession of a “state secret” appeared to go further. Because the case is related to national security, Zherebenkov said he was “forbidden from commenting on the case material”, except that which had been made public by the government. Whelan is the security director for a Michigan-based automotive parts supplier and holds US, Canadian, British and Irish citizenship. He served two tours in Iraq and was given a bad-conduct discharge in 2008.The music has been switched off at the Red Light pub in the heart of the picturesque old town of Gdańsk. A single candle adorned with a black ribbon rests on the bar. The city is in mourning. The people of Gdańsk are coming to terms with the death of their mayor, Paweł Adamowicz, who was stabbed on stage at a charity concert in front of thousands of people on Sunday. A public appeal led to crowds of people queueing for hours to donate blood to save their mayor, but he was pronounced dead on Monday afternoon. At the Red Light, people console each other between shots dedicated to Adamowicz. Adela Szczepańska-Kościelnik was at the concert when the attack happened. It was the local finale of a nationwide charity drive, the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, which raises funds to buy equipment for children’s units in state-run hospitals. The concerts end with a countdown towards the moment when fundraising stops and people raise lights in the air in celebration. Adamowicz was leading the countdown; the attack was timed to coincide with the moment it reached zero. “At the end of the countdown we didn’t understand what happened. There was no light, no music. A girl started screaming: ‘They killed him! They killed him!’ We were confused, some people thought it was a joke. The city has never been so sad, it is as if someone cut the electricity.” After the announcement of the mayor’s death on Monday, thousands of people gathered at the statue of Neptune in the city’s Long Market, also home to city hall, where Adamowicz served for more than 20 years. With tears running down people’s faces, the crowd stood motionless as they listened to an a capella version of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence. This was silence with a purpose – not only to mourn, but to protest against an increasing prevalence of hate speech in Polish public discourse that Adamowicz had attempted to confront. A staunch defender of migrants and refugees and of LGBT rights, he had marketed Gdańsk as a liberal enclave, a city in open defiance of the xenophobic nationalism promoted by Poland’s rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS), which has governed since 2015. “I am a European so my nature is to be open,” Adamowicz told the Guardian in 2016. “Gdańsk is a port and must always be a refuge from the sea.” His liberal stance cast him as a hate figure for government supporters and the far right. In a 2017 publicity stunt, the All-Polish Youth movement published a series of “political death certificates” of pro-European politicians; on Adamowicz’s certificate, they put his “cause of death” as “liberalism, multiculturalism, stupidity”. Observers say he was regularly subjected to personal attacks and abuse on social media and from rightwing media outlets. Some of the attacks continued even after he died. In an interview with a rightwing media outlet broadcast on the day Adamowicz’s death was announced, the far-right politician Grzegorz Braun described him as a “traitor to the nation” for his political views. “Sadly, hatred is becoming more and more visible and more widely accepted in Polish political and social life,” read a joint declaration of Jewish organisations in Poland, published on Tuesday. “The death of Mayor Paweł Adamowicz is yet another tragic warning signal that in our society, ideological differences, and differences of worldview, can lead – in extreme cases – to acts of physical violence.” Adamowicz told the Italian newspaper la Repubblica in 2017: “Physical abuse is normally preceded by verbal violence. When the language of the elites violates the limits imposed by decency, it causes more and more physical violence. Unfortunately this is not a theory but the reality, as the growing cases of racially and religiously based violence demonstrate.” Some people have drawn parallels between Adamowicz’s murder and the assassination of Gabriel Narutowicz, the leftwing president of interwar Poland who was shot by a rightwing activist in the 1920s. Making this connection explicit, a silent “march against hatred” held in Warsaw on Monday evening made its way through the streets of the capital to the Zachęta art gallery, where Narutowicz was killed in 1922. Many on the Polish right have accused their liberal opponents of politicising the murder by attributing political motives to the killing. The alleged murderer, a 27-year-old resident of Gdańsk named in press reports as “Stefan W”, said he had been released from prison only last month after serving a jail sentence for a series of violent bank robberies. According to Polish media reports, he was diagnosed with and treated for paranoid schizophrenia while in prison, but stopped taking his medication before his release. He pleaded not guilty to murder on Monday. Many of Adamowicz’s supporters, noting he has long been a target of aggressive government propaganda, are incensed at what they regard as attempts by those they hold largely responsible for Poland’s toxic political climate to wash their hands of any responsibility. “If you watched our main government TV, you would see that for months there were programmes about how bad he is, how he lies, how he steals,” said Witek Nabożny, a resident of Gdańsk who had come to the statue of Neptune to pay his respects. “They created a mood in which weak people, sick people, respond to this kind of atmosphere.” “Adamowicz has become a symbol of something bigger than the attack itself. He died during a charity event that tries to bring Poles together. As a result, he became a symbol of the death of unity in this society,” said Rafał Pankowski, the director of the Never Again association, an anti-racism campaign group. Adamowicz had begun his career as a much more conservative politician, he said. “He started to become more and more outspoken on issues of diversity and minority rights and tolerance just as society was moving in the opposite direction. It was very impressive. He was a very brave man – and he paid for it.”Late-night hosts break down the “revelation” that the FBI looked into whether Trump was working on behalf of Russia. On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert lived a day in the internet news cycle, toggling between the latest drops in the Russia investigation and the viral video of a gymnastics floor routine. First, the news: the New York Times reported over the weekend that the FBI, after Trump fired James Comey, looked into whether the president was secretly working for Russia. “I think that’s ridiculous – there’s nothing secret about it,” Colbert joked. The FBI also looked into whether Trump knowingly worked for Russia or had “unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence”, according to the Times. “OK, there’s a little something from the smile file,” Colbert said. “Our president might not be spying for Russia. He might be their unwitting stooge. We’ll find out on the new gameshow: Evil or Stupid.” “Welcome to Evil or Stupid,” Colbert continued in the guise of a gameshow host. “Either way, America wins the destruction of Nato, the end of western democracy as we know it and a lifetime supply of Russian influence. Plus, a Broyhill dinette set.” What could relieve this depressing news? A video of the UCLA gymnast Katelyn Ohashi’s flawless floor routine, of course. A 🔟 isn't enough for this floor routine by @katelyn_ohashi. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/pqUzl7AlUA “Where were we?” Colbert asked, getting back on message. “Oh right, historic treason.” At Late Night, Seth Meyers marveled that maybe the revelation that the FBI looked into Trump as a Russian agent isn’t actually a revelation at all. “Wow, the FBI was investigating whether Trump was working for the Russians,” he said. “I mean, what tipped them off? Was it Trump’s secret meeting with the Russians in the White House? His son’s secret meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower? His lawyer’s secret deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow?” Meyers continued in rapid fire as images of past and present advisers flitted across the screen. “Jeff Sessions’ secret meeting with the Russian ambassador? Jared Kushner’s secret backchannel with the Kremlin? Michael Flynn’s secret backchannel with the Kremlin? Erik Prince’s secret backchannel with the Kremlin?” Or could the tipping point be “the Russian hackers who helped Trump win? Trump asking the Russian hackers to help him win? Or Vladimir Putin’s smile every time he sees Trump?” In the end, we don’t know, Meyers said, nor do we know what Trump did with notes of his clandestine meetings with Putin. However, Meyers pointed out, we do know that former aide Omarosa Manigault has alleged that she witnessed Trump try to destroy evidence by eating a piece of paper in the Oval Office. “And if you forgot that the president was accused of eating paper by his own aide,” Meyers said, “take note of the fact that we are living through a presidency where that insane fact might actually qualify as forgettable.” For every other president, such behavior would be top on the list of “craziest fucking things,” Meyers noted, “but for Trash Can Jones over here, it doesn’t even crack the top 100”. And on the Daily Show, Trevor Noah also reacted to this weekend’s Trump-Russia news, but with hefty dose of skepticism. The notion that Donald Trump was purposefully working on behalf of Russia “is crazy”, Noah said, “not because he wouldn’t do it, but because Donald Trump would be the world’s worst spy. No one would hire him. He can’t be a spy – he doesn’t even have an inside voice.” Spies are also known for blending in, Noah added, and “if there’s one thing Trump doesn’t do it’s blend in. Red tie, orange skin, blond hair – the only place he’d blend in is in a jar of Starbursts.” Noah may not buy that Trump is a spy, but he is interested in the notes Trump allegedly destroyed from his meetings with Putin. “What did he say to Putin that was so bad that he couldn’t let anyone else see it?” Noah asked. “Like maybe Trump said, ‘I love you,’ and then Putin replied ‘Thank you.’ In which case, I’m with Trump – you can never let that get out.”We’ve not even started watching Moon and Me, the new CBeebies show by Teletubbies creator Andrew Davenport, and it’s already a hit in our house. “I need that one! I need that one!” pleads my two-year-old daughter, pointing at a tiny thumbnail image of the show’s characters – Pepi Nana and Moon Baby – while it downloads for our test screening. Before I have time to explain to her once again the difference between “need” and “want” (you need food and oxygen, you only want to throw my umbrella in the bath), she’s dancing to the theme tune, talking to the characters like old friends and marvelling at the huge moon the show revolves around. Another child transfixed! Just how does Davenport do this? Sadly for those looking for a quick childcare fix, the answer seems to be: incredible instinct and a lot of painstaking research. For Moon and Me, Davenport, 53, teamed up with the University of Sheffield to develop a project in which cameras were set up all over a toy house, so they could observe a day in the life of a toy while they’re being played with. “It was like the Big Brother house only with toys,” he laughs. Their spying revealed some interesting findings – a fascination with stairs, and an insistence that there’s no better party than a tea party. Such things informed Moon and Me’s narrative, which is inspired by the Rumer Godden and Enid Blyton toyhouse stories of the 1930s and 40s. Pepi Nana is a toy who comes to life whenever the moon comes out (and her owner is asleep). Moon Baby visits them from the moon and, in what some people might deem a rude guest, proceeds to wake the rest of the toyhouse with an African thumb piano. He then guides them to Storyland for a story and a song. The whole thing retains the magical vibe of In the Night Garden, yet has a more traditional and homemade feel. It’s hard to imagine it causing the same uproar Teletubbies did when it arrived in 1997. Back then there were tabloid panics that it was turning toddlers’ brains to mush, or that the show contained secret gay messages (Tinky Winky carried – shock! Horror! – a handbag). Locals staged protests. Helicopters would fly over the field in which it was filmed, with photographers onboard hoping to reveal the faces of the actors in the costumes. Visitors to the set had to be blindfolded, for fear they might give away the location. “We just hadn’t prepared for that kind of interest at all,” says Davenport. “People’s relatives were getting doorstepped, which is a surprising place to be in thanks to a pre-school children’s television programme. And the show took on a meaning of its own in the culture that was a little uncontrollable, which in hindsight was fine, but did mean a lot of things were said about it that weren’t true.” When Davenport wrote In the Night Garden, a gently psychedelic affair conceived as a way of guiding children to bed, he was braced for more mayhem. But the only drama came when the BBC tried to move the broadcast time – the show was so popular with parents that it had already become an essential part of the bedtime routine. That hasn’t stopped people projecting wild meanings on to the show. Buzzfeed called it a “surrealist orgy of sex and death”, which seems a bit much given the claim was mainly centred around Upsy Daisy occasionally flashing her knickers. Elsewhere online, someone has constructed an ambitious theory that the show is all a dying hallucination in the mind of Iggle Piggle, who is actually a dehydrated sailor lost at sea. Has Davenport heard that one? There’s a pause. “Er ... no. In a word. I don’t know whether to look that up or not! But if you worry about stuff like that you’re in the wrong business. People are creative, they write their own jokes and obviously there are readings that are ... less savoury, that I probably wouldn’t want to know about.” I wonder if the murky world of the internet, which has taken over culture in the 20 years since Teletubbies landed, plays any part in his writing. Davenport says Moon and Me had to be versatile to different formats, and accepts that lots of viewers will be watching on phones and tablets. Teletubbies was actually conceived as a way of helping children understand the new world of screens, but it seems almost quaint compared to the technology today. What does Davenport make of it? “I think it’s a double edged sword,” he says. “I remember when my godson was younger, the first thing he’d say was ‘hello’ and then ‘can I have the iPad?’ and I wouldn’t see him again. It did slightly devalue the experience of going to see him.” In a way, Moon and Me is a reaction to such technology – a show about play that doesn’t involve screens. “The characters are constantly shown drawing, reading books, painting, making things, doing things with their hands,” explains Davenport. “Hands are a big theme of the show. There are over 500 objects in the toy house and every one is handmade, handpainted.” Davenport also banned any computer generated imagery (“quite a fight”), instead turning to puppetry, stop-motion animation and homemade effects. “Children are fascinated by real objects,” he says. “They will be able to see the weave of the fabric, the joins in the wallpaper, the printing on the wallpaper. There’s a joy in seeing the messiness.” Davenport’s background is an arty one: you can see him flinging his limbs around impressively on a Soho roof for Mehdi Norowzian’s short film Joy (which “inspired” the famous Guinness advert Anticipation – the whole thing ended up in court). And he was once a model for Gilbert and George, after he heard they were looking for a model with “big eyes”. They were paying £30 cash in hand – “which was significant back then” – so he found them in the Yellow Pages under “artists” and gave them a call. George answered, invited him for tea the next day, and he ended up staring out from one their artworks entitled Eyes. “I’ve never actually seen it in person,” he confesses. “But I remember sitting on a train reading a Big Issue feature about them, and suddenly realising that the piece of work I was looking at was me!” Yet it was his rather less arty degree course in speech sciences that proved the bigger influence on his TV work. “Back in the early 90s, a lot of teachers had become television makers and there was an emphasis towards schooling,” he says. “Where I came from, the focus was very much on the early years, the first three years of life, where the fundamental processes of becoming human are all happening – learning to speak, learning to walk and crawl. All of that happens in an incredibly short time, which is where my fascination with play comes from. You can largely tell what’s going on by the way a child is playing.” Davenport’s ideas were pretty radical at the time – incorporating the likes of Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky into his surreal stories – but that didn’t stop people criticising Teletubbies. Stephen Byers, the schools minister at the time, even said it represented a “dumbing down” of British culture, due to its supposedly unintelligible language. “I think the rigour in which it was constructed was largely missed,” he says. Even now, Davenport is glad of the chance to explain how much thought goes into his hit shows. Yet despite his slightly terrifying insight into these unknowable little minds, he still gets extremely nervous before any new programme airs. “The whole thing only comes together fully at the very last minute, so you never really know how it’s going to go down until the audience get to see it.” Given that every morning since our interview, my daughter has woken up and asked “Where’s Pepi Nana?” repeatedly until we put it on, I think he’s probably going to be ok. Moon and Me starts on CBeebies on 4 February.A study has linked high levels of screen time with delayed development in children, reigniting the row over the extent to which parents should limit how long their offspring spend with electronic devices. Researchers in Canada say children who spent more time with screens at two years of age did worse on tests of development at age three than children who had spent little time with devices. A similar result was found when children’s screen time at three years old was compared with their development at five years. “What is new in this study is that we are studying really young children, so aged 2-5, when brain development is really rapidly progressing and also child development is unfolding so rapidly,” Dr Sheri Madigan, first author of the study from the University of Calgary, told the Guardian. “We are getting at these lasting effects,” she added of the study. The authors say parents should be cautious about how long children are allowed to spend with devices. “Excessive screen time can impinge on children’s ability to develop optimally,” they write. “It is recommended that paediatricians and healthcare practitioners guide parents on appropriate amounts of screen exposure and discuss potential consequences of excessive screen use.” But the results have been contested by others in the field who say the study did not take into account what the children were using the screens for, and that the influence of screens had a smaller effect than other factors such as family income, the child’s sleep and whether they were read to. Writing in the journal Jama Pediatrics, researchers from the University of Waterloo, the University of Calgary and Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute describe how they investigated the issue by looking at the screen time and development of more than 2,400 children between the ages of two and five. Data was collected at least once for each child. At two years, three years, and five years, mothers were asked to record how much time their child spent using screens, including time in front of the TV, computer or other devices. They also completed standard questionnaires to assess their child’s development, with questions including whether the child could complete tasks such as drawing particular shapes, copying certain behaviours or forming sentences – tasks covering areas from fine motor control to communication skills. Other aspects of the child’s life, such as their sleep and whether they had books read to them, were also considered. On average children spent about 17 hours a week in front of screens at two years old, increasing to almost 25 hours a week at three years, before falling to 11 hours a week at five years of age. The team say a clear trend emerged: the more time children were reported to be spending in front of screens, the worse they did on development tests. Those who spent longer with screens at 24 months showed worse performance on tests at 36 months, and a similar trend was seen for screen time at 36 months and test performance at five years. “When young children are observing screens, they may be missing important opportunities to practice and master interpersonal, motor, and communication skills,” the authors wrote. Others said a study that followed children over time, rather than just offering a snapshot of development and screen time, was welcome but they noted that the study had limitations, including that it did not consider developments in technology since 2016, or look at which types of screen were being used. The study also relied on questionnaires completed only by mothers and did not consider what the child was using the screen for, or whether they were using it alone. Furthermore, it did not show which areas of development in particular were most affected by screen time or give an idea of how much was too much when it came to using devices. The issue of whether screen time is bad for children has become a battlefield. While some argue screen time is harmful for children’s mental and physical health, others warn of moral panic, and say evidence on the issue is of poor quality and that there is no clear sign of harm. Prof Andrew Przybylski, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute, said the study found less than 1% of children’s variation in developmental scores was down to screen time. “This means that upwards of 99% of the children’s developmental trajectories studied here have nothing to do with screens,” he said. And there are other issues. “If parents think that their child is not making expected progress over time, they are likely to think their child spends a lot of time with screens,” said Prof Natalia Kucirkova of University College London. Dr Max Davie, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health agreed other factors had a larger impact on how children fared. “In fact the data shows that the association with screen time is weaker than that between developmental outcomes and good sleep, reading to the child, and maternal positivity,” he said. Nonetheless, he said, parents should balance screen time with other activities. “We would, in the light of this paper, reiterate our advice that families spend time interacting as a family, that screens are not allowed to interfere with sleep, and that screen-based interaction is no substitute for in-person contact,” he said.Marcelo Bielsa might have been able to tell everyone this before the game but penalties were required to separate Southampton and Derby in their third-round FA Cup replay. It was Frank Lampard’s side who held their nerve and go through to face Accrington Stanley in the fourth round after Nathan Redmond was the only man to miss in the shootout, the winning kick struck home by the unlikely figure of Richard Keogh. “Ready for my presentation everyone?” said Lampard as he walked into his post-match press conference, making light of Bielsa’s extraordinary 70-minute press conference earlier on Wednesday, in which he revealed he had not only Derby’s training sessions watched but every team they have faced this season. When it was put to him that Bielsa gave the impression he knew more about Derby than their own manager, Lampard said: “Well‚ he gave an impression of himself. I haven’t seen Pep Guardiola give that. I haven’t seen Jürgen Klopp give that. Pochettino give that. They do that sort of thing behind closed doors but they don’t do it to the public. It surprised me, definitely. It’s incredible.” Back at St Mary’s, Derby repeated the trick of the first game, coming from 2-0 behind once more to force extra time and ultimately spot-kicks. Southampton surely thought they had a fourth-round place in the bag after goals from Stuart Armstrong and Redmond, only for the Liverpool loanee, Harry Wilson, to inspire Derby’s comeback, firstly with a goal of his own, then by crossing for Martyn Waghorn to equalise. “I think if you have a 2-0 lead twice over Derby and can’t winthe game,” said Ralph Hasenhüttl, “you don’t deserve to be in the next round.” The first half was a pretty grim exhibition but, when good bits of football did poke through the mist of mediocrity, they were from Derby. One delicious move involved a Matthias Sammer-esque carry out of defence from Keogh, followed by a couple of flicks and back-heels among the forwards, but its deserved finish did not arrive when Mason Mount skied his shot from the edge of the box. Otherwise it was tedious: pity the poor Bielsa assistant who had to compile a dossier on this one. But they sat up straight on 38 minutes, when Derby took the lead. Or, at least they thought they had. Tom Huddlestone slid a fine pass into the box for Waghorn, who laid it off for Craig Bryson to finish neatly. However, VAR was called for and after the sort of forensic, frame-by-frame examination only previously seen by conspiracy theorists watching the Zapruder film, it was determined that the bottom half of Waghorn’s leg was offside. No goal. In the stands the Derby fans sang “Fuck VAR!”but afterwards Lampard was more sanguine. “I think we’ll have to get used to it,” he said. “I don’t mind as long as they get the decision right. Was it right? I haven’t looked closely enough but it looked like it was millimetres.” Then, after the boredom of the first period came a glut of goals in the second. Southampton went ahead after 67 minutes when Shane Long’s header was blocked on the line, only for Armstrong to swoop in and nod the loose ball home. Two minutes later it was two. Redmond timed his run through the middle of the Derby defence perfectly and on the very edge of the defensive line collected Jack Stephens’s pass and delicately chipped over the advancing Kelle Roos. Derby were given hope with 15 minutes remaining. Wilson took a free-kick from the right corner of the box, zipped it into the middle at pace and it went past everyone into the net. “I was just about to take him off,” said Lampard, his second thoughts proving crucial a few moments later. Wilson curled over a cross from the right, and Waghorn found space between two defenders to head into the top corner. Extra time was required, meaning the Prime Minister’s statement in Downing Street was relegated to BBC2 as BBC1 continued to show the game. “They deserve those moments,” said Lampard, of his players. “Theresa May will have many a moment coming up over the next few weeks, I would say.” After a cagey extra 30 minutes came penalties. Redmond was the only player to err, shooting well wide after opening up his body and aiming for the top corner. The other eight kicks were flawless, Derby rushing to celebrate with Keogh at the end of a long night.Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft has beamed home its first close-up images of Ultima Thule, a lump of rock the shape of an unfinished snowman that lies 4 billion miles away on the edge of the solar system. Taken as the probe sped past the body in the early hours of New Year’s Day, the pictures reveal a dark reddish object about 21 miles long and 10 miles wide that spins on its axis once every 15 hours or so. The colour image of Ultima Thule, revealing its reddish tint, was taken at 05.01 GMT on New Year’s Day from a distance of about 18,000 miles, 30 minutes before the probe made its closest pass of the space rock. The spacecraft snapped thousands of images of the object, known formally as 2014 MU69, in a fleeting encounter that set a record for the most distant flyby in history. From a billion miles beyond Pluto, it takes data sent at the speed of light about six hours to reach Earth. “Meet Ultima Thule,” said Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, as he unveiled the images at a press conference on Wednesday. The scientists originally described the object as shaped like a bowling pin, but Stern said he had changed his mind on seeing the new picture. “That bowling pin is gone. It’s a snowman if anything at all,” he said. The odd shape of Ultima Thule is thought to have come about when swirling ice and dust particles coalesced in the early life of the solar system and eventually led to two large lumps of rock colliding and sticking together. Stern said that the gravity of each “lobe” was enough to keep the two parts of Ultima Thule in contact. Preliminary analysis of the images showed that the neck that joins the two lobes of Ultima Thule is brighter than the rest of the mottled surface, probably because loose grains had collected there, said Cathy Olkin, a scientist on the mission. The dark red hue of much of the surface is thought to be due to the effects of space radiation on exotic ices on the surface. The New Horizons spacecraft launched in 2006 on a mission to explore Pluto. When it shot past the dwarf planet in 2015, it captured breathtaking shots of the distant world, one now known to host mountains of solid nitrogen and volcanoes that blast ice into space. Like Pluto, Ultima Thule lies in a region of the solar system called the Kuiper belt, a doughnut-shaped ring of dwarf planets, boulders and other debris left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. The Nasa probe came within 2,200 miles of Ultima Thule, meaning “beyond the known world”, as it hurtled past at 31,500mph. Mission scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland had to wait 10 hours for New Horizons to confirm that the flyby at 05.33 GMT on Tuesday had proceeded smoothly and that the spacecraft was still operational. At such terrific speed, a collision with a particle as small as a grain of rice could have spelt disaster for the probe. At a press briefing on Tuesday to mark the flyby, team members released images of Ultima Thule taken when New Horizons was still half a million miles away. It was described by project scientist Hal Weaver as “a pixelated blob”, and at the time image analysts did not rule out it being two small bodies in orbit around one another. The early images solved one mystery surrounding the distant space rock. Elongated bodies like Ultima Thule are expected to brighten and fade with clockwork regularity as they tumble through space. This is because the body’s long side reflects more light than its short side. But Ultima Thule shows no such variation in brightness. The reason is that the rock is spinning like a propeller on an axis that points towards Earth, meaning it reflects the same amount of light in our direction all the time. Scientists on the mission believe that studying Ultima Thule could provide unprecedented insights into the conditions that prevailed in our cosmic neighbourhood more than four and a half billion years ago. Kuiper belt objects are thought to have occupied their distant positions since the earliest days of the solar system and may look the same today as they did back then. If all goes well, the spacecraft will beam home more data over the next 20 months. The highest-resolution images from the flyby are expected in February.Theresa May thought her Brexit deal was an offer MPs could not refuse. Not because it would bring our constituents anything useful. Quite the opposite – it will make us poorer, our economy less certain and our outlook less hopeful. Take the prime minister’s Brexit deal or crash out of Europe with no deal at all, she declared. But far from being the Don Corleone of British politics Theresa May is more the emperor with no clothes. Explicitly keeping the option of a no-deal on the table is an act of supreme economic sabotage. It is also delusional. The prime minister has long preferred the support of hard right Brexiteers over more reasonable voices within her party. Now she is seeking the votes she needs by threatening these same Brexiteers with something they actually want – a no-deal Brexit. Her attempt at blackmail is both stupid and venal. Some Tory MPs want a no-deal Brexit because they have rightwing dreams of imperial revival or libertarian utopia – let’s say hello to the monocultural European Research Group. Others simply want May to fail spectacularly so they can claim they would have done better – the famously principled former mayor of London comes to mind. They are not going to be responsive to Theresa May’s threats because for them no deal is better than her bad deal. Despite the pomposity, the pantomime theatrics and the last-minute cop-out, it may be that the prime minister thinks she is doing the responsible thing – I can only hope she watched Rebel Without a Cause over the Christmas break. She is setting us up to be the car whose driver gets his sleeve caught in the door in a drag-racing game of chicken and goes over the cliff. But it is hard to have faith in May’s motives when she has chosen to deliberately run down the clock, causing further cost and chaos. She hopes MPs will quietly vote for her deal, blinded by the oncoming “no-deal” headlights. But in reality her deal won’t withstand the internal contradictions of the Conservative party which cannot support a permanent customs union even though it is essential for our economy. May hopes MPs will quietly vote for her deal, blinded by the oncoming 'no-deal' headlights My constituency is in the north east, the only region to export more than it imports. Half of that is to the EU. Companies big and small have sales and supplier links that cross the Channel not once but many times. Throughout the UK, businesses, many with traditional Tory allegiances, are waking up to the fact that their EU connections are not based on one company or one product or one service or one person, but are numerous and interdependent. This web of economic activity cannot be undone in a matter of weeks or even months, and it certainly cannot be replaced by dubious future trade deals with America, Africa, Australia or other distant lands. Our economy demands more. So in reality Theresa May has two responsible choices. She can call an election and give Labour a chance to actually do what she is manifestly incapable of doing, and that is govern. Or she can pursue a deal that actually is in the interests of our country, a customs union that preserves workers’ rights and environmental protections, and ensures there is no hard border on the island of Ireland. But at this late date, after she has wasted two years in a dance of death with extreme Brexiteers, we must recognise the challenge of negotiating a deal that obtains cross-party support before the March deadline. Labour’s conference motion does not reference an article 50 extension but we have acknowledged it may be necessary. More recently Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress which includes representatives of all sides of Brexit, called on the government to suspend article 50. Increasingly it is clear that the options to avoid an economic and social catastrophe are general election, public vote and/or article 50 suspension. With each day that passes Theresa May’s inept blackmail makes it harder to do anything responsible without stopping the clock. • Chi Onwurah is the Labour MP for Newcastle Central, and is shadow minister for industrial strategy, science and innovationBetween new year and epiphany, I had two separate lunches with two separate Roman friends who live in London but were back for the holidays. Our lives in reverse, I had just returned to Rome after two weeks with my family in London. I have known both friends for more than a decade, and it is even longer since we swapped countries, yet we are still having the same conversations about work, weather, words, nostalgia and bread, which is really just a way of talking about belonging to two places, and holding on to the good and flawed parts of both. Both conversations ended in the same way, with the friends telling me that they were reluctant but ready to go home, but first needed to buy guanciale to take back with them. Guancia means cheek, and guanciale are the salt-cured pork jowls that hang like pepper-dusted paddles above salumerie (deli) counters in shops and on Roman market stalls. Unlike the more familiar pancetta (salt-cured pork belly) with its equal streaks of meat and fat, guanciale, like my cheeks after festive eating, is mostly fat. Cured with salt, and flavoured with only red or black pepper, the fat of guanciale has a thick, almost sweet and delicate flavour, which melts into a deeply flavoured and seasoned cooking medium. Along with strutto (lard), guanciale has been a most accessible and essential cooking fat in Rome for centuries. These days, olive oil is ubiquitous, but guanciale is still a favourite in Rome and Lazio, its rich flavour and binding power the mortar in many traditional dishes, and especially the quartet of classic Roman pastas – guanciale, pecorino and egg carbonara; pecorino and black pepper cacio e pepe; guanciale, tomato and pecorino amatriciana; and the pre‑tomato ancestor of amatriciana, the lesser spotted but greatly loved amatriciana bianca, or gricia. Guanciale and pecorino are gricia. It is the happy meeting of melted fat and grated pecorino on the surface of the pasta itself, which – with the help of some starchy cooking water and a toss – results in a slightly emulsified and creamy sauce. While the need for guanciale and pecorino is single-minded, lots of different shapes and surfaces work for gricia, as illustrated by the traditional trattorie of Testaccio. Checchino Dal 1887 uses long, pierced bucatini, while Trattoria Da Bucatino favours spaghetti; Trattoria Da Felice mezze maniche; Agustarello tonnarelli; and Perilli (the Fellini-esque trattoria and cavernous home to cummerbunds and trolleys on Via Marmorata) tubes of rigatoni for their white-fluted bowl of gricia. Like Perilli, I use rigatoni for my gricia, for no other reason than I like it, the ridged tubes seemingly designed to wear a cheese coat and hide the glistening batons of guanciale, a discovery akin to finding a forgotten two-pound coin in your pocket. New year, new reminder (as much for myself as anyone else): when it comes to cooking pasta, the rule of thumb is one litre of fast-boiling water for every 100g pasta. Bring the water to a rolling boil, add 10g coarse salt for every litre of it, stir, chuck in the pasta, stir again and boil, uncovered, until al dente. How you like your pasta cooked, though, is obviously entirely up to you. Serves 4 3 tbsp olive oil150g guanciale, cut into 2mm wide / 3mm long batons120g pecorino romano, grated400-500g pasta – spaghetti, bucatini, penne, mezze maniche or rigatoni Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add salt, add pasta, stir, and cook until al dente. Meanwhile, put the oil and guanciale into a large frying pan and fry gently for a few minutes, or until the fat has rendered and the pieces are shiny starting to crisp. Once the pasta is ready, drain, saving some of the starchy cooking water. Tip the pasta into the frying pan, toss, add two-thirds of the cheese and a little pasta cooking water, and toss again. Divide between bowls and top with the remaining cheese and a grind of black pepper, if you wish.I’ve been intrigued to see the reaction to Manchester United’s win against Spurs at the weekend, with lots of supporters and pundits already making a case for why Ole Gunnar Solskjær should be given the job full-time. Prior to the Spurs game, many said “Manchester United haven’t played anyone yet” but the Norwegian quickly showed how far his side have come in defeating a title-challenging Tottenham team. It’s been no secret that Solskjær was appointed on an interim basis but if an interim manager does really well should it always follow that he becomes appointed permanently? Of course, Solskjær more than deserves to be considered but I believe that the decision of the board to appoint the next Manchester United manager cannot be made based on emotion and short-term feelgood nostalgia of a former player taking the team back to the “good old days”. Rather the board need to make a decision with a three- to five-year strategy in mind where United can challenge for the Premier League and Champions League every season. For me, more importantly than looking at the great results now, the board should be asking: “Can Solskjær lead the team to win the Champions League in the future?” I think if you asked many United fans this question now, many would be unsure. In comparison, if you asked the same hypothetical question, if a candidate such as Zinedine Zidane was appointed in his first role after winning three consecutive Champions League titles at Real Madrid, there would be more certainty among United fans. All of Solskjær’s rhetoric so far has been about bringing the good days back to Old Trafford. It is all very romantic and nostalgic but this could possibly blind the United board from making a decision in looking forward rather than constantly looking back. In many games the TV cameras are panning to Sir Alex Ferguson every few minutes and, for me, this represents looking into the past rather than the future. I understand that there is an entrenched playing philosophy that brought unprecedented success to the club. To this extent I agree with Gary Neville’s comments this week that the philosophy at United is crucial but I disagree that no one should be allowed to shape their own version of it. The beauty of football is that there are several ways to win, so to give Solskjær the job on the basis of replicating what has been successfully done in the past could prevent a successful evolution that United may need. There have been some reports that Ferguson has been back at the training ground this week and I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually has an influence in picking the team. He retired six years ago so at what point is the club going to move on and say: “We need to create a new history?” I understand why there is so much nostalgia with Solskjær because things became very toxic under José Mourinho and it was also hard under David Moyes and Louis van Gaal but I think that a long-term strategy based on nostalgia is a recipe for disappointment. Perhaps I am influenced by philosophies like the one at Chelsea which was “If it isn’t broken, change it” which saw us win three league titles in five years playing three different formations and tactical strategies so that the opposition could never keep up with our evolution at the time. Solskjær is an inexperienced manager who has become the first person to win his first six games at Manchester United. It’s an incredible achievement. However is that really enough to give him one of the biggest jobs in the world at a time when the club really need to make a “head” rather than “heart” decision? After you’re dating someone for a few weeks, you often don’t become exclusive until you give yourself more time to know what a relationship could be like in the future. You can’t get too excited too quickly. Zidane immediately springs to mind as an alternative because he has the experience of managing at a global club, having come through the system at Real Madrid coaching younger players. Zidane had to earn the right to manage the first team and players such as Cristiano Ronaldo respected him. You cannot underestimate Zidane’s achievement of winning the Champions League three times in a row – it must have taken superb skills to motivate the likes of Ronaldo, Luka Modric, Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema et al to have the desire to become serial Champions League winners. I can’t see that achievement happening again so Zidane should be considered as one of the greatest managers in modern times. The only question is whether Zidane would really want the United job. We’ll have to see whether he has got the desire to step back into management at this stage. On a positive note, it goes to show how important it has been for Solskjær to give the Manchester United players freedom to express themselves. Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford are both thriving because they have been given a licence to express their ability. I understand how key this can be to performance. Towards the end of last year, I hadn’t scored for a few matches which got me overthinking, which is never good for strikers. My coach, Rita Guarino, came up to me and said: ‘Eni – don’t think too much. Just play like you’re in the park.’ It may sound trivial and small but I let go of all the unnecessary thoughts that were in the way of me going out and playing with freedom. I ended up scoring my second hat-trick for Juventus in that game and it was amazing how those few words helped. I can imagine the same effect applies to Rashford with Solskjær. It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens at United over the next few months. After all, Roberto Di Matteo ended up winning the Champions League for Chelsea when he took over as interim manager so what will be the measure for Solskjær now? If he wins a cup and gets ManchesterUnited into the top four, does he deserve the job full-time?As the lights change, the thundering morning traffic comes to a stop at one of London’s busiest junctions. Hundreds of people on bikes seize their chance and stream across the seven-lane intersection before disappearing into the relative safety of the UK’s first ultra-low emission area. The network of streets in east London has become a haven for cyclists and pedestrians since two local councils banned all petrol and diesel cars, vans and lorries during morning and evening rush hour. The aim, in one of the most polluted areas of the capital, is to “reclaim the streets” from polluting vehicles, creating a healthier and safer environment for pedestrians and cyclists. And there is good reason for action. Air pollution in the UK causes at least 40,000 early deaths a year – 9,000 in London – and is linked to a growing number of debilitating conditions, from heart disease to cancer and Alzheimer’s, as well as a decline in intelligence. Research has also highlighted its potentially devastating impact on pregnant women and schoolchildren, as well as its role in increasing rates of dementia. Most of this deadly pollution comes from traffic, and the UK’s first ultra-low emission vehicle (Ulev) area is one of a number of initiatives being introduced across the country to try to tackle what MPs have described as a public health emergency. But the schemes are facing fierce opposition. The new zone in east London – while welcomed by clean air campaigners, cycling and walking groups and many locals – is not without its opponents. Sitting in a cafe a few hundred metres from the network of low-emission streets, Feryal Demirci, who orchestrated the plan for Hackney council, said she regularly faces “hate and anger” when the council proposes new anti-pollution initiatives. The latest scheme was the subject of a legal challenge from one local business within days of it being launched. “It is a similar story every time we try and do any of these schemes to tackle pollution and make the roads safer and cleaner,” said Cllr Demirci. “More than any other issue – housing, crime, you name it – for a certain type of person this is the thing they care most about: their right to drive wherever they want, whenever they want, whatever the wider cost to the community.” In Hackney, about one-third of households own cars, and Demirci said the most vocal opponents are often relatively well off. “Otherwise rational people can become quite aggressive and irate – I have been called scum in public meetings and have people who follow me round from meeting to meeting to oppose what we are trying to do,” she said. Among the cyclists and pedestrians on the street, there is a wholly different attitude. One after another, they welcome the latest attempt to tackle air pollution – and anything that makes the area, an accident blackspot, safer. Waiting to cross the junction at Old Street and Great Eastern Street is Nicos Dermi, who cycles to work most days. “Of course I worry about cycling, because cars and vans often don’t see you or give you enough space, so it is very good to have quieter streets,” he said. Dermi said the polluted air was also a concern. “It is something I think about but there is little you can do because you have to get around,” he added. “I have really started to notice the improvement as more streets are made quieter and better for walking and cycling – it means it is safer, cleaner and in the end, people can get to where they are going more quickly.” Other cyclists also welcomed the scheme, although many said the area it covers is too small and it does not tackle traffic on main roads. Inside the network of nine streets that make up the new zone, some are less enthusiastic. “It’s about making money,” said Steve, a driver for UPS, as he unloaded parcels from the back of his van. “It’s as simple as that. Pollution is a problem, I am not denying that, but closing a couple of roads – what difference is that going to make apart from get some fines in for the council?” However, the move already appeared to have prompted a change by UPS. “They were fed up of being fined every day so today we are out in an electric van,” said Steve. “It’s good for pollution I guess but it is so quiet it’s a menace for pedestrians, because they don’t hear us coming.” Demirci remains undaunted by the opposition she has encountered, and said the low-emission scheme will be reviewed next year, with the hope of expanding it to cover more roads. “The level of opposition from some people does sometimes take its toll, but I grew up in Hackney and I love it. Air pollution is causing nearly 10,000 premature deaths every year in London and blighting the lives of tens of thousands more people in this borough – many of them who don’t even own a car. It is not an option to do nothing,” she added.Christian hardliners on the religious right have introduced new bills to impose their values in at least six American states in the opening days of 2019. The early legal moves have been tracked from Alaska to Florida as mostly Republican legislators make use of off-the-shelf ‘model bills’ generated by Christian nationalists in a playbook called Project Blitz. So-called “In God We Trust” bills have already been introduced this year in Alaska, Kentucky, Missouri and South Carolina, which, if they became law, would see the phrase emblazoned on public buildings, hung in schools and displayed on public vehicles including police cars. A bill requiring Florida public high schools to offer Christian Bible-study classes has just been introduced by a Democratic representative Kimberly Davies – a former ‘exorcist’ who called herself the Demonbuster. Similar bills have been introduced in North Dakota and Missouri. In Texas, a bill allowing teachers to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms will be considered in this state legislature session. Georgia is expected to try to pass a ‘religious freedom’ act which would give cover to people who run businesses, or agencies which provide adoption or foster care services, if they refuse to serve LGBTQ people on religious grounds. And in South Carolina, Republican governor Henry McMaster is appealing to the Trump administration to allow Miracle Hill Ministries to keep its federal funding even though it refuses to allow non-Christians to use its foster-care service, a breach of Obama-era regulations. However, civil rights activists are preparing to use Religious Freedom Day on January 16 as a moment to mount an attack against Project Blitz. Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a think-tank which studies the political right, was the first to draw attention to the Project Blitz playbook last year. He first revealed that the 140-page playbook had been shared by a group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF) set up by a former Republican congressman with the stated aim to “protect religious freedom, preserve America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer”. Now civil rights, human rights and atheist groups are coming together to organise against the emboldened Christian hardliners. Clarkson said: “It has taken time, but organized opposition is mounting.” A law passed in 1992 gives the president the duty to proclaim January 16 as Religious Freedom Day. It is supposed to be a moment to celebrate all faiths (or none) in the US, recognizing the freedoms first written by Thomas Jefferson, and enshrined in the Constitution and the First Amendment. But last year, Donald Trump, heavily influenced by Christian Evangelicals used his proclamation to advance a Christian nationalist message that religious freedom was under threat from courts and legislatures “forcing people to comply with laws that violate their core religious beliefs”. Trump claimed: “no American – whether a nun, nurse, baker or business owner – should be forced to choose between the tenets of faith or adherence to the law.” He was providing explicit support for those who would refuse to serve LGBTQ customers, deny reproductive rights to women, or block gay couples from adopting children or becoming foster parents. Americans United for Separation of Church and State is making opposition to Project Blitz a priority in 2019. It has been tracking bills and working with other activist groups to track new laws and organise opposition against them. Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United said: “Project Blitz is one of the foremost organised efforts to infiltrate state legislatures with religion.” By shining a light on the Project Blitz playbook, Americans United wants to clearly “hallmark” In God We Trust bills as the creation of the CPCF. Laser said the aim was “to demonstrate to state legislatures that they are very much part of a Christian nationalism plan to codify a far right Evangelical Christian America and allow religious liberty to be used as a sword to harm others, instead of as a shield to protect people.” Opponents have tracked at least 75 bills brought forward in more than 20 states since Trump became president which stem from the Project Blitz playbook. Clarkson’s work last year revealed one of the steering team behind Project Blitz as David Barton, the Texas-based founder of an organisation called WallBuilders, which takes its inspiration from the Old Testament in describing a mission of “rebuilding our nation’s foundations”. In a recording of a call with state legislators, he described in detail the strategy behind Project Blitz, which he said packages together about two dozen bills in separate categories based on the type of opposition they are likely to receive. The first category of “In God We Trust” bills are likely to trigger opposition by saying the bills are a waste of time, or the sponsor of the bill “just wants to fight culture wars and divide people”. Category two include bills for a range of proclamations or resolutions – declaring a religious freedom day or Christian heritage week that can then be used to get religious teaching into schools. Category three bills will have the greatest impact but will be “the most hotly contested” the playbook says – they include resolutions in favour of “biblical values concerning marriage and sexuality”, such as “establishing public policy favoring adoption by intact heterosexual, marriage-based families” and “establishing public policy favoring intimate sexual relations only between married, heterosexual couples”. Laser said: “When a lot of state legislators see ‘In God We Trust’ they think that is harmless patriotism, but it is part of an intentional plan to build momentum for establishing a Christian America.” Laser said there are real concerns about a momentum behind Christian nationalism, which she said Trump has bolstered with the appointment of pro-life Supreme Court judges Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. The only religious advisory board Trump has is an all Evangelical Christian advisory board. Last year the administration announced a religious liberty task force at a religious liberty summit event attended entirely by social conservatives. As Trump prepares to release his Religious Freedom Day proclamation next Wednesday (16 January) some legislatures are preparing their own inclusive resolutions. In Washington DC, David Grosso a Democratic member of the Council of the District of Columbia sponsored a Religious Freedom Day resolution which recognizes all faiths and none and says “the government may not favor one religion over another, or over nonreligion, without fatally undermining religious freedom”. He said: “We are built on the principles of freedom of and freedom from religion in the United States and we shouldn’t let the far-right activists that are pushing these efforts like Project Blitz undermine that reality.”Angie Thomas is the author of the bestseller The Hate U Give, a novel for young adults that was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and which tells the story of Starr Carter, a 16-year-old African American girl who is drawn to activism after witnessing the police shooting of a childhood friend. Published in 2017, the book has been on the New York Times young adult bestseller list for 96 weeks and has won many awards, including children’s book of the year at the British book awards, and the Waterstones children’s book prize for 2018. Writer Nikesh Shukla described it as “one of the most important books of 2017” and it has also recently been made into a successful film. Thomas grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and she was the first black student to graduate in creative writing from the city’s Belhaven University. Her second book On the Come Up, published in February, is a love letter to hip-hop and tells the story of Bri, a teenager who dreams of becoming the greatest rapper of all time. Thomas was a rapper as a teenager. We are offering readers the chance to put a question to the award-winning author: submit them in the comments section below, email us at review@observer.co.uk, or tweet @ObsNewReview by 10am on Monday 14 January. Here are some Angie Thomas quotes to inspire you... “I grew up in a neighbourhood called Georgetown, which is the ’hood...I would hear gunshots at night… but one thing I did love about my neighbourhood growing up was the sense of community.” “When I couldn’t find myself in books, I found myself in the rhymes written by MCs who looked like me and shared my experiences.” “I’ve always seen writing as a form of activism. If nothing else, books give us a glimpse into lives that we may not have known about before; they can promote empathy.” “Freedom of speech isn’t necessarily free, especially when you’re young and black.” “Every time a black girl comes up to me and says, ‘Thank you. It’s the first time I’ve seen myself in a book like this’, that’s better than hitting the New York Times bestseller list.” “Hashtags are nice, but I would ask people to put in some work! You know, organise! Speak out! Do things! Be active about it! Don’t just put that hashtag and ignore it. We can make change happen if we actually speak out and do things and work…”Riot police have been deployed to protect election officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as it braced for the announcement of the results of the presidential vote held 11 days ago. Security forces took up positions outside the offices of the DRC’s election commission and elsewhere in the capital Kinshasa, amid fears that violence would mar the first electoral transfer of power in 59 years of independence. Pre-election polls have given opposition frontrunner Martin Fayulu, a respected former business executive, a healthy lead. However, Fayulu’s supporters believe outgoing President Joseph Kabila plans to rig the vote in favour of his hand-picked candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, or alternatively do a power-sharing deal with Félix Tshisekedi, head of the DRC’s main opposition party. Lambert Mende, the communications minister, fueled the fears by telling reporters on Wednesday that there was “a time to oppose each other and fight an election but also [a time] to unite” when asked about a possible government pact with Tshisekedi. Optimists hope the election, which passed off mostly peacefully, could chart a road to a better future, but any widespread perception of electoral fraud could set off a destabilising cycle of unrest, repeating violence that followed elections in 2006 and 2011. The election commission said it would start to issue the results around 11pm local time on Wednesday. “We don’t want people to die when they announce [the results], blood to be spilled,” said Kinshasa resident Ohn Kabamba. “We are fed up, we are tired and we are waiting for a peaceful announcement which will allow us to rejoice rather than cry.” “If the [election commission] announces the true results of the ballot boxes it will be calm but if not, I don’t know what will happen,” said another Kinshasa resident, Abraham Tumba. The internet has been cut off for more than a week to preserve “public order” and security agencies were on alert across the country. “Everyone ... voted against the government in place. We are preparing fully to demand victory if it is stolen from us,” said Augustin Bujiriri, 25, a student in the eastern city of Goma. Already delayed by two years, the poll was postponed by a further week to allow more time to overcome logistical challenges in a country of 80 million inhabitants spread over an area the size of western Europe with almost no metalled roads. Kabila’s second electoral mandate expired in 2016 and he only reluctantly called new elections under pressure from regional powers. The constitution forbade him from standing again and critics claim he hopes now to rule through Shadary, who has no political base of his own. The Roman Catholic church, a powerful institution in this devout country, has announced a clear winner in the vote but so far refrained from saying who it thought had won. In a joint declaration with a group of Protestant churches and election observer mission SYMOCEL, the Catholic bishops’ conference called for calm and demanded that the DRC’s election board, CENI, publish “only results that come from the ballot box”. Tshisekedi’s camp, which says it expects to win, said on Tuesday that it had met with Kabila’s representatives to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. On Tuesday, Fayulu and six other presidential candidates issued a statement saying that the results “cannot be negotiated”. Domestic election observers say they witnessed serious irregularities on election day and during vote tallying, although a regional observer mission said the election went “relatively well”. Kabila has ruled since the 2001 assassination of his father Laurent Kabila, who overthrew long-serving dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. Whoever wins would be the first leader to take power at the ballot box since prime minister Patrice Lumumba, who was toppled in a coup less than three months after the DRC won its independence from Belgium in 1960. Lumumba was killed four months later. The DRC suffers from widespread corruption, continuing conflict, endemic disease, and some of the world’s highest levels of sexual violence and malnutrition. It is also rich in minerals, including those crucial to the world’s smartphones and electric cars.Brexit is a reminder that two connected things need to happen in order for a political compromise to stick. First, partisan leaders must decide that it is better than any other achievable outcome. Second, the public must also converge to give it their backing. One movement towards the treaty table without the other doesn’t cut it. The Northern Ireland peace process was a classic example of this dual process. It took many years before mutually antagonistic political leaders decided that a peace deal was better than an unwinnable war. But it took even longer for the two communities in Northern Ireland to begin to make the same move. The peace process only worked because the political deal was followed by referendums that endorsed it. Yet in comparison with Brexit it now looks relatively straightforward. This is partly because almost all the thinking about how to settle the Brexit argument focuses on Westminster. Seven days ago, in the wake of Theresa May’s drubbing over her deal, I wrote that it was now time for her to compromise on Brexit. I still think that’s true. But it skates over the question of whether the British people would see such a move as acceptable, and what might follow if they did not. Finding a compromise is formidably difficult, even in Westminster. The reasons are familiar. The two main leaders are at odds with their own parties. Parliament’s law-making procedures make it hard to intervene. The tribalism of politics makes cooperation fragile. There may be a majority against no deal, but there isn’t a majority – yet – in favour of anything. Parliament is getting heat for this failure, and the chorus is likely to grow louder next week. Yet broader opinion is divided too. There is almost no consensus among voters about what should happen now. Though MPs are often lambasted for being out of touch, the uncertainties at Westminster reflect those of the public. At a conference in London this week organised by The UK in a Changing Europe, called Brexit and Public Opinion 2019, it became clear how deep this problem has become. In his keynote address, the political scientist John Curtice argued that the practical problem with Brexit is that there is very little middle ground on which the two sides can make trades. If you are looking for a Brexit outcome that satisfies the two key tests – first, that it should have overall majority support, and second, that it should have majority support on both sides – then the search so far has been unavailing. May regards her own deal, not entirely unreasonably, as a compromise already. But it is not just the Commons that dislikes her deal. Twice as many voters oppose it as support it, though often for wildly different reasons. As Curtice put it this week, May has succeeded in uniting a divided country in opposition to the agreement she has made with the European Union. However, none of the other alternatives is popular either. Most remainers continue to support remaining, hence their backing for a second referendum. Most leavers, though, still want to leave, with the largest group of them wanting to leave even without a deal. Compromise efforts soon run into the fact that this is a party divide too. Labour is an overwhelmingly remain party. The Tories are equally emphatically for leave. Neither side is keen enough on the options in between. It is true that about a third of remainers say they could support a Norway-plus solution as a second-best – but leavers see this as very much a remainers’ compromise, because it accepts EU rules and regulations. For a proportion of leavers, a renegotiation is seen as the second-best option – but remainers are suspicious of that; they see going back to Brussels as a hard-Brexit ploy. The much-touted second referendum option falls into the same divide. With opinion among Tory voters now so emphatically in the leave camp, there is little incentive for May to move in the direction of a softer Brexit, let alone a second vote. Curtice’s view is not unchallenged. In a Bloomberg article today, Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics argues, on the basis of NCP’s own polling, that May’s deal is in fact the closest thing to a consensus among public opinion. At first sight, this is a weird claim, since May’s deal is far less popular in Singh’s poll than either remaining in the EU or leaving with no deal. However, when people are asked if these other outcomes might be personally acceptable to them, May’s deal vaults into a narrow lead. This deal is “unloved, but it’s the closest thing to a compromise that most could live with,” Singh argues. He could be right, if Westminster opinion this week is any guide. The determination of MPs like Yvette Cooper and Nick Boles to prevent no deal may now be alarming hard-Brexit Tories who fear the process will be delayed and softened. Some of them may decide they could live with a form of May’s deal after all. If she is able to cobble together a majority, it is possible that public opinion, exhausted by Brexit, might also fall into line. It would not, though, be much of a compromise. The most obvious accommodation on Brexit – a soft exit along Norway lines – might have succeeded if David Cameron had decided to stay, if May had embraced it early on, or if Jeremy Corbyn had been a different kind of Labour leader. But those chances have come and gone. One of the striking aspects of the Brexit standoff since 2016 is not just the absence of a middle ground, but the absence of political leaders who speak for it. Brexit has had no John Hume to lay the ground for a pragmatic compromise, and no Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to deliver it, either. Unlike in Northern Ireland’s, ours is a conflict which no leader has won the authority to try to resolve by consensus. And we shall pay the price for that for years. • Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnistJeremy Hunt, the UK foreign secretary, has said he is extremely worried about Paul Whelan, the British–American national arrested on spying charges by Russia. Hunt added it would not be acceptable for Whelan to be used as a diplomatic pawn against either the UK or the US. It has already been suggested that Whelan is being held as leverage to negotiate the release of Maria Butina, a Russian who recently pleaded guilty in the US to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent for Moscow. Butina signed a broad cooperation agreement with the US justice department. Prosecutors said she tried to build a back-channel between Kremlin officials and Republican operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign. Hunt fuelled speculation that Russia is using Whelan as some form of bargaining chip by telling Sky News in Singapore: “We don’t agree with individuals being used in diplomatic chess games.” The US has so far been leading on the case, but Hunt said the UK was also offering consular assistance. It has also been reported that Whelan, born in Canada, and also holding an Irish passport, is seeking Irish consular assistance. Whelan is being given legal assistance by a Russian lawyer, including a request for bail, but there is concern about the some of the advice being provided. The Russian Interfax agency reported on Thursday that Whelan was being formally charged with espionage. He was arrested a week ago by members of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), who accused him of being on a “spy mission”, and he has since been detained at Lefortovo prison in Moscow. Asked whether Russia was detaining Whelan on trumped-up charges to use as leverage against UK or Russia, Hunt said: “We are not ruling out any theories at all at this stage as to why this might have happened.” He added: “Our position is very, very clear ... Individuals should not be used as pawns of diplomatic leverage [or be] used in diplomatic chess games. We need to see what those charges are against him to understand whether there is a case or not.” He added: “We are extremely worried about Paul Whelan. We have offered consular assistance. The US are leading on this because he is a British and American citizen.” Jon Huntsman, the US ambassador to Russia, met Whelan at the prison n Wednesday and talked to his family, the US state department said. Whelan, 48, is director of global security for the auto suppliers BorgWarner, and travelled to Moscow last month to attend the wedding of a friend, according to his family. He is a former police officer and marine discharged in 2008 for bad conduct on charges relating to larceny. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of espionage. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said: “We’ve made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges, come to understand what it is he’s been accused of and if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return.” A Russian news agency has alleged that Whelan received a USB drive that contained the names of people employed at a secret state organisation. Citing a security service source, Rosbalt news agency said a Russian citizen gave Whelan the USB when he visited him in his room at the Metropol hotel in Moscow last Friday. FSB officers then reportedly burst into the room and arrested Whelan. It is alleged that Whelan is a regular visitor to Russia and befriended potential contacts on VK, or VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. His brother David says there is no chance the claims against Paul are correct. Whelan had a social media account on VK for more than 10 years. He has about 60 VK friends, many of whom are linked to academies run by Russia’s navy or defence ministry, as well as the country’s civil aviation authority. Almost all his VK contacts are men. In online conversations with the Guardian, Whelan’s VK friends said they doubted the allegations of espionage against him. “I believe this is a mistake,” one said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He also said he had shown Whelan around his home town – a provincial Russian city – about 10 years ago. “He didn’t ask any questions that seemed suspicious.” Another VK friend said they had discussed everyday issues during online chats. “I asked him about his country,” the person said, adding that he had been shocked by the news of Whelan’s arrest. “For the whole time I was in touch with Paul, he behaved correctly and respectably. He made a good impression.” His online friends said he seemed genuinely interested in finding out about Russia and its culture. Although he has been visiting Russia since at least 2008, Whelan’s Russian is believed to be poor. His VK friends said he spoke English with them, or used Google Translate. He posted a number of brief congratulatory messages on Russian public holidays, such as World War Two Victory Day and Defenders of the Fatherland Day. On 9 November 2016, the day after Donald Trump was elected US president, Whelan wrote a Russian-language post on VK that read: “Forward, President Trump!”A California town threatened by the sort of wildfires that recently wiped out a neighbouring community is appealing for an unusual type of help: a crack team of goats. Nevada City has launched a crowdfunding drive, dubbed “goat fund me”, to recruit a herd to munch through acres of wildfire-prone vegetation at the fringe of town. In an effort to cut down a 450-acre greenbelt, town officials are appealing for $30,000 to acquire the goats. According to the goat fund me page, it can cost up to $1,000 an acre for such specialist grazing, as about 200 goats are able to finish off an acre a day. The city council expects the goats to act as the first wave in an assault on the vegetation, with humans following in their hoofsteps to clear away larger foliage such as tree limbs “That’s a lot of acreage but we’re breaking it down into bite sizes and prioritizing where the risk is greatest,” wrote Reinette Senum, Nevada City’s vice-mayor, on the page. “There is little need to stress how important it is to the safety and wellbeing of Nevada City citizens and neighboring residents that we reduce the fire load in our surrounding forests and neighborhoods.” Nevada City’s concerns over wildfire have been heightened following a year of enormous blazes in California. The town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains is just 70 miles south of Paradise, which was virtually wiped off the map last year in the deadliest fire in state history. There is a sense of urgency over the deployment of the goat squadron, with winter providing the best window of time to pare back vegetation that may spread wildfires once summer arrives. While providing a cheaper grazing option than machinery, goats still require the oversight of a herdsman to ensure they don’t go rogue. A month after launching the funding drive, Nevada City is closing in on its goal, with nearly $17,000 raised so far. “I lost my house in Santa Rosa in 2017,” read a comment from Dale Albin. “I recently donated to the Paradise fire victims. I like the idea of funding goats rather than victims. Go goats!”